MSTing: NEW YEAR'S EVE (3/6)
a.ca...@genie.com
[Back in the theater.]
> "I like art, myself," Ellen said bubbling happily.
Mike: It's the Amazing Carbonated Woman!
>David stood over his fallen instrument,
Crow [falsetto]: "That's okay, David. It happens to a lot of guys. We can
still talk, or cuddle, or--"
>looking down upon it, marvelling at how its warm, golden softness
Mike: Oh, he must've used that new squishy-soft kind of brass.
>could look so small and helpless before the unforgiving emptiness of the
>Grid.
> "...I was never a very good painter while I was alive," said Ellen,
Crow [falsetto]: "But now that I'm dead my paintings are worth millions!"
>but I did dabble in it. Now I have lots and lots of time to spend on it.
Mike: Isn't that a little like saying that the bright side of having your
legs sheared off in a freak industrial accident is that you wouldn't have
to spend so much on shoes?
>Here, let me show you my latest project!" she said, and she reached into a
>fold in the air
Tom: Ah, the advantages of ozone depletion.
>whence she drew a large canvas. She positioned it neatly on an easel which
>she also conjured for the occasion. On the canvas was limned a half-
>completed picture of an young woman riding a horse across a meadow.
Mike: I'll never understand modern art.
>David bent down and retrieved his saxophone; unconsciously, he
>cradled it against his chest.
Crow: "I will love him and feed him and call him George and we will be the
best of friends!"
> "I'm just having a little trouble here, getting the shading right on
>the girl's face. I want to give the impression of
Mike [falsetto]: "--Jack Nicholson."
Tom: "You can't handle the truth!"
>sunburnt cheeks without making her look fat or exhausted."
Crow: Fat and exhausted? You just described my dream girl!
>Ellen stood back from her handiwork, hands on hips,
Tom: Whose hips?
>to examine it further.
> "I feel like I'm in a dream, almost," David said, fingering
Crow: --all his friends' e-mail accounts so he could read their .plan files.
>the saxophone's smooth, playful valves. "Is this real?" he asked Ellen.
> "Oh come on," Ellen said, annoyed, still examining her painting.
Mike [falsetto]: "Yes, I definitely see some paint here..."
> "Um, you need to be careful about that," Jason cut in, suddenly very
>serious.
Crow: Yeah, so far his character's just been wacky slapstick.
>"I've been here for longer than she has," (he nodded toward Ellen), "longer
>than I can remember -- I mean literally. One has no sense of time here, and
>except for those eternal white gridlines, one really has no sense of reality.
Tom: "One even begins to find oneself using the third-person singular
impersonal pronoun!"
>Sometimes I think those lines are watching us," he said.
Tom: "And sometimes I think SHOWGIRLS is really an unsung masterpiece that
the critics are desperately trying to stamp out because of the light it
sheds on their own moral corruption!"
Mike: Wow, you =are= insane.
> "Anyhow, I got bored with this =emptiness= very quickly and so, in
>the beginning, I created millions of things.
Crow: "Little plastic trolls, to be specific. There were ones with pink
hair, and ones with green hair, and ones with rainbow-colored hair, and
black ones for the urban market, and you could hook 'em to keychains, and--"
>I spent what must have been months painstakingly designing an extensive
>labyrinth of hedges and stones.
Mike: "You'd wander around and around, and then you'd walk into this
clearing and bang! there's Mick Jagger!"
>I built a cathedral flanked by lonely towers of spiralling glass so tall I
>never saw the top of them.
Crow [Freud]: "Hmm... zis iss clearly a sign uff sexual frustration!"
>I made trees, rivers, mountains -- once, I made an entire city, populated
>and everything! But
Tom: "--no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't work my population up high
enough to get Forest Arco."
>I began to feel so entranced by the things I'd created that I forgot they
>weren't real. I almost lost it once, but Ellen got through to me in time.
>We need to watch
Crow: "--Letterman tonight, I hear they're having Drew Barrymore on. But
I've gone and changed the subject, now haven't I?"
>out for each other."
> "Yes, Jason is right," Ellen said and, dissappointed, she turned
>away from her canvas to face David. "You can get so caught up in your own
>thoughts that you don't realize you are living entirely inside yourself.
Mike: Hey, better than living inside someone else.
Tom: Like George Wendt. He's got two or three people in there.
>It can happen anytime. Look at the painting, for example."
> Ellen did not turn around, yet behind her the painting seemed to
>shine brighter. "If I wanted to, I could imagine that the woman were
>actually there, riding a pony," -- the image started to move --, "and then
>I might picture
Tom [falsetto]: "--myself on a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and
marmalade skies... there goes one of them trees now... wow, man..."
>that I was actually standing in the field..." as she spoke, the Grid grew
>earthen and sprouted wild grassses,
Crow [David]: "Dude! Don't bogart that Grid, man!"
>and daylight like loose crumbs off a tablecloth fell from the unfolding
>blue sky. David smelled the fresh, dewy clover, and for the first time
>felt his senses reawaken. Looking across the field, he watched as the
>woman clutched the bridle, pulled back sharply on the reins,
Tom: --and then mercilessly beat the poor animal till it keeled over.
>urged her horse into a gallop to the far edge of the field, then brought
>him to a stop and restarted him in a new direction.
Mike: She put him on hiatus, replaced a few cast members, and brought him
back as a mid-season replacement.
>She was very pretty. He wondered what she would say if she saw him standing
>in the meadow, smiling as he watched her put the horse through its paces.
Crow [falsetto]: "What's wrong with you? The restraining order says you're
to stay 500 yards from me at all times!"
>How sweet and seductive her voice must be! He longed to hear
>that voice, and sure enough, faintly, he began to hear it...
> Then it all vanished into the deadness and emptiness from which it
>had sprung. There was only the black sky and the Grid again. David felt
>oddly disappointed.
Mike: He's about to have a delightful conversation with a lovely young woman
in a sparkling meadow, suddenly realizes he's really just standing on a big
sheet of graph paper, and he feels disappointed? How odd.
> "You see how tempting it is." Jason said, his voice sounding thick
>and old. "Some people choose that route, and enter a dream-state. We do
>not know what becomes of them.
Tom: Thank you, Commander Data.
>They wander off; they disappear. Sooner or later, of course, anyone tires
>of a dream, but waking up is not so easy here. I think perhaps that they
>lose their sense of direction: they forget where reality is
Mike: I hear that lately they've been keeping it in New Jersey.
>and they can't get back again. Sometimes I wonder if they cease to exist
>entirely." Jason closed his eyes as if to clear his mind of unsettling
>thoughts.
Tom: He just got a mental image of Phil Gramm naked. [all shudder]
>"Most of us, though, feel that it is somehow wrong. We help each other out."
> "Well that's good, I suppose," David remarked distantly. He was
>staring at the brutally straight gridlines on the ground, wishing they were
>earthen and green again.
Mike: Even Astroturf might not be so bad.
>But before they did, Jason laughed and startled David with a slap on the
>back.
> "Death is what you make of it," Jason grinned. "I'm having a great
>time."
Crow: Hey, I'd be startled too. The guy just underwent a complete
personality reversal in the space of five seconds.
> "Yeah, right," David said.
> Jason turned and called to the people sitting around the fire. "Hey,
>everyone!" he shouted. "Why don't you come over here and meet David Disch.
>He's new." David looked up and found Ellen staring at him, with a strange
>mixture of hope and pain
Tom: To be precise, six parts pain to one part hope. Or is that vermouth?
>glistening in her eyes. She turned away and set about hiding her canvas
>back in its invisible fold in the sky.
> "Hi, David," a girl said, standing up from the fire. She was
>remarkably attractive and had wavy blond hair. "My name is Jennifer."
Crow: But then, you could say that about any girl born between 1968 and 1982.
>She offered her hand with the slightest of curtsies. For a moment, David
>was struck dumb.
Mike: I think he's been dumb for a lot more than a moment.
>He supressed a sudden and wholly unexpected desire.
Tom [David]: "Y'know, I could really go for a cheeseburger."
> "Well hello!" David shook her hand, smiling handsomely.
> "and I'm Flint," a slim young man introduced himself.
Crow: "This here's my good friend Lady Jaye and my pal Snake-Eyes. That's
Shipwreck there in the back. Have you seen Destro around here anywhere?"
> "Hi there..." David said vacuously, and his eyes drifted back to
>Jennifer. She smiled at him.
> "Why don't you sit down, enjoy the fire for a while, and then we can
>all tell our stories," Jason said.
Crow: Hey, guys, get this. [Bullwinkle] "Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit
out of my hat!"
> "Again?" Jennifer, annoyed.
Mike: That's cheating!
Tom: It probably would've been funnier if Neal had remembered to put a verb
in the sentence.
> "Sure, why not?" Flint said. "I never tire of hearing them," he
>said.
Crow: "In fact, I never tire of anything! Why, I even still like that song
'Lump'!"
>The images continued to jabber noiselessly among themselves.
> Flint lead them to the fire, and as they approached, David felt
>Jennifer leaning close to his ear. "Don't be alarmed by what you see when
>you get close," she whispered. "Just be prepared for a suprise."
Tom: Why, it's an unbilled cameo appearance by Robin Williams!
>She grinned at him; he returned a nervous smile. "Oh, and you can leave
>that thing behind," she gestured toward
Crow: --his area.
>the saxophone he was still holding. Reluctantly, he laid it gently
>on the Grid.
> David sat down on a large rock next to Jennifer and Ellen, while
>Flint and Jason continued to wander around.
Tom: Watch the laughs ensue as Bil Keane traces their wacky meanderings with
a whimsical dotted black line!
>David leaned forward, thinking to say something to Jennifer, but he was met
>with a sudden blast of heat from the fire. Startled, he realized that not
>only was the fire now radiating heat the way an ordinary fire would, but
Mike: --also deadly radon gas, the way a General Electric range would.
>the strange, noiseless image-people sat around it had become complete and
>substantial.
> His sensorium erupted
Crow: Ewwww!
Tom: That's gotta hurt.
>from its deprivation once more, as it had done when Ellen brought her
>picture to life, but this time there was nothing gradual about it: the
>silence and darkness were thrust aside and raw sensations surged about him.
>A million forgotten noises of every pitch flooded his awareness. Crickets
>were crackling underfoot
Tom: Oh, yecch! If we ever end up here remind me to wear boots.
Mike: What, on your head?
>in the low-cut grass; caterpillars were munching noisily on leaves;
Mike: If there's one thing I can't stand, it's those 130-dB caterpillars.
>and high-set branches, like tendrils raised to touch the sky, were bending
>with the wind. Powerlines whined their ugly, incessant high-pitched whine
Crow: --or maybe someone had just put on the Alanis Morissette CD.
Mike: I thought we agreed we were going to lay off her this time!
Crow: What do you mean "we", white man?
>and electric generators hummed and automobiles rolled along distant roads.
>So much life and motion... and yet there were other sounds, more fundamental
>sounds,
Tom: "Send me money! GAWD himself comMANDS that you send me money!"
Mike: No, that's a fundamental-IST sound.
>that murmured on the very edge of his hearing. They were sounds so deep and
>terrible that he felt if he could only hear a little lower, he would hear
>the doom and grind of the celestial spheres as they moved along their orbs.
Tom: So you're saying the cosmos could use some WD-40.
>Here, close to the fire, the world of the living poured molten onto the
>receiving emptiness of the Grid.
> David looked down at his feet and found that the gridwork was gone,
>replaced with familiar earth. Once again, the sky had stars.
Crow: "My God, it's full of stars!"
Mike: "My stars, it's full of gods!"
Crow: Uh, Mike... mine was from 2010. What's yours from?
Mike: It's Dave Bowman reading BULLFINCH'S MYTHOLOGY.
Bots: [groan]
>The image-people
Tom: Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld...
>were perfectly normal people to him now,
Mike: Why weren't they before?
Crow: They're Image people! They were holding back.
>but it was clear that, as far as they were concerned, he didn't exist at
>all. David found it fascinating just to watch them.
Tom: 'specially since one of them shure had a purdy mouth.
> He felt a breath in his ear, and Jennifer whispered, "It's almost a
>religious experience, isn't it?"
Crow [David]: "Yeah, except this time God isn't telling me to stop touching
myself!"
>David nodded without turning to look at her, still transfixed by the sight.
>Jennifer continued, excitedly: "Don't ask why or how.
Mike: I see she used to write beer commercials.
>We don't know. Nobody knows. Just enjoy it. Immerse yourself in it!
>Remember what it was like to live."
> David tried to =immerse= himself in the lives of these chattering
>people, who had so recently and suddenly become real to him, but something
>inside him held him back.
Tom: Or maybe it was just the poor characterization.
>Though he could clearly see the sky and the grass, it felt as yet...
>incomplete. He turned to look at Jennifer, intending to say something
>again, but he was arrested
Mike: I knew the statutory rape laws were pretty harsh in certain states,
but this is ridiculous!
>by the glaze and wildness that flickered in her eyes. She seemed to be
>completely absorbed by the spectacle, so he decided not to disturb her.
>He just gazed mindlessly
Tom: I think we can pretty much take the "mindlessly" part as a given, don't
you?
>at her delicate features and let his thoughts wander. After a
>while, Jennifer realized that he was not quite sharing her vision.
> "David!" she hissed sharply at him. "You've got to feel it. It's
>hard the first time, I know, but you've got to try." David concentrated
>hard for a while, but felt no change.
Crow: "Stupid brain! I knew I should've practiced this concentrating thing
more! Doh!"
> "I guess I'm just not seeing it," David said. "Not the way you are.
>It's like you're on drugs or something."
Mike: "Are they good? Can I have some?"
>Jennifer shook her head.
> "No, no, not like that! You're thinking too much.
Tom: That's a little like calling Karen Carpenter an overeater, dontcha
think?
>Try =this=," she said and, grabbing a handful of dirt from the wet ground,
>she shoved it in his mouth.
Crow: All right! Now go back to the other experiment and do it to J. Neil
Schulman!
> David choked and tried to spit it all out, but some of the grit got
>caught in his teeth and he felt nauseous.
Tom: Nauseous: adj. Causing nausea; specif., a) sickening b) disgusting.
Mike: Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate. He's making me feel pretty
nauseated.
>He fell backward, off of his seat, onto the wet grass. When he regained
>his composure, he sat up, gasping at the air. Jennifer was there beside
>him, picking the grass off the back of his shirt and massaging his stiff
>shoulders. It felt good.
> When again peace returned,
Crow: --returning veterans came home and set to the task of having so many
children that it'd bankrupt the Social Security system.
>he was resting next to Jennifer on the cool moist earth beneath the starry
>sky -- and he realized that the transition had taken place.
Tom: Was it a Janus transition?
>He didn't know where or how, but he was in the world again. He was
>relieved and he was happy, more than he could ever have imagined, and for
>once he allowed it to overwhelm him. For a long time, he just laughed
>silently to himself.
Mike: Great, just what this story needed. A mime.
>
> It was New Year's Eve, and rain had come and gone the day before,
>leaving the sky a mess of tattered clouds.
Crow: Rain: the Jack Klugman of weather.
>There were men and women sitting on broken beach-chairs around a makeshift
>firepit. People had been coming and going for several hours, but now, as
>midnight neared, the party was quieting down.
Mike: You know your New Year's party is a bust when everyone starts leaving
at 11:35.
>Most of the expected guests had already arrived or had stopped by to say
>hello to everyone and to explain that they would be spending the Big Moment
>somewhere else.
Tom: A more interesting story, maybe.
>The small fire was burning brightly and the thin, woody smoke curled upward
>to the sky.
> "Ahhh, smell that," said a young man, inhaling deeply and
>contentedly. The steaming greenwood gave off its own sweet but acrid scent
Mike: Oh, sorry, that's me. I had the chili relleno platter for dinner.
>of burnt sap. He leaned back in his chair and gave a little yelp when one
>side seemed to give way and bury itself in the soft earth. The young woman
>sitting on his lap giggled.
> "The ground must still be moist, there," another young man called
Crow: That's not the only place that's moist!
Mike: [sigh] Why do I bother?
>as he walked down from the farmhouse to the side of the hill, where they
>had built the fire in the old metal insides of a clothes-dryer.
Tom: Oh, =that's= safe. Hey, I hear you can warm up your bathwater real
fast by sticking a blowdryer in it.
>All faces turned to see who this newcomer was.
> "Andy!" the woman exclaimed, standing up. "I thought you were in
>Nebraska!"
All: [laugh]
Crow: Sticking an exclamation point after the word "Nebraska" is inherently
funny.
> "Well ah =wuz=," he drawled with great exaggeration
Tom: Really? Gee, I couldn't tell.
Mike: I get the feeling Neal's the type who'd write, "'=NOOOOO!!!=' he
screamed loudly."
>(to the delight of the small crowd), "but then ah figgered, why not pop
>down and see y'all 'round Christmastime." He grinned widely and put his
>arms around the young lady.
Crow: "Young lady"? There's a term you don't hear much. Unless it's
immediately followed by "go straight to your room and don't come out until
you've gotten rid of that tattoo."
>"So here I am. I couldn't spend =all= of winter break away from you."
>There were a few "awww's" from the crowd as they embraced.
Mike: Canned audience "awww's"? What's next, a laugh track?
> "So Andy," the first man said, "what was that you say your father
>was doing for a living now?" Andy pulled a wry face.
Tom: --out of his pocket.
> "Why =do= I come here," he smiled. "My Dad's raising turnips now,
>and -- don't laugh, Mike --
Mike: Considering the level of comedy in the story so far, I don't think
that'll be a problem.
>he keeps saying that raising turnips is a very old and respected" (Mike
>laughed)
Mike: I did not. That's libel. I ought to sue.
>"profession. Next year, we're hoping he will graduate to carrots so at
>least we will =want= to eat some of the shit."
Crow: Hey, Mike, what's that word mean?
Mike: Uhh... it's another word for "carrots".
Crow: Oh. I guess I could've figured that out from context.
> "Hey Feliz," one of the guys called to the woman standing with Andy,
Tom: "Feliz"? Yeesh, the things some parents do to their kids.
Mike: The really tragic part is, her last name's "Navidad".
>"what happened to the accent your Cornhusker was putting on?"
> "I like Andy no matter what he puts on."
> (he blushed)
Tom: Wow. That was quite a paragraph.
> The whoops of one rather tipsy guest were generally ignored, to
>Feliz' obvious relief, and Mike offered Andy and Feliz his seat by the
>fire. After all, he explained, he was the host.
Crow: I thought Wink Martindale was the host.
>Andy reached out and tousled Mike's hair. "Host, my ass," he said -- and
>remained standing. It was evident that he and Mike had been very good
>friends for a very long time.
Mike: You can tell from the use of the word "ass".
>
> David leaned over to whisper to Jennifer. "What's the point of all
>this?" he asked.
All: Good question!
>"I'm not sure I get it. Who =are= all these people?"
> Jennifer shushed him.
> "How long are you back for?" a voice asked Andy from across the
>fire. Andy looked over at him, surprised.
> "Whoah! I didn't even see you!
Crow: It's Zandar! You know, the one people are always sitting on 'cause
they don't notice him!
Mike: That's two "GI Joe" references in one MSTing, Crow. Do you really
think there's a big demographic for that kind of thing?
>How long are =you= back for?"
> The other guy smiled. I'm out now. Permanently -- honorable
>discharge
Tom: If honorable discharge persists or changes color, see your physician.
>and all that. It was in October. No more moving around for me, Andy.
>I'm gonna go to college here."
> "Where?"
> "U.C.L.A."
Crow: You mean they're in Los Angeles? But I thought it just said they were
next to a farmhouse! There aren't any farms in LA!
Mike: Oh, I don't know. I remember passing a cornfield on the way from
Compton to Echo Park once.
> Feliz kissed Andy's astonished mouth. "Tom was hoping you'd help
>him look for an apartment before school starts again."
> "Tommy," Andy wagged his head.
Tom: "He sure do play a mean pinball, don't he?"
>"Well hey, we've got to get together and play volleyball sometime then." He
>turned to Mike. "So this was the big secret, huh?" Mike rolled his eyes.
Crow: I thought the big secret was that the chick from THE CRYING GAME was
really a man.
> "Uh, sure Andy," he said.
> "'see," Andy said to Feliz, "when I called to tell Mike I was going
>to fly out here for New Year's Eve, he started to get all excited about
>something and was going to tell me what it was, but then he pretended to
>forget and tried to change the subject.
Mike: Thank you, Captain Backstory!
>But I know him too well for that."
> "That's what you think," Mike said testily.
> A look like dawn
Tom: --Wells.
>came over Andy's face. "Aaah!" he pointed his finger at Mike. "So this
>=isn't= the surprise you were thinking of!"
> "I wasn't thinking of any surprise," Mike said unconvincingly. Andy
>crossed his arms insolently.
> "All right, what is it," Andy said, sounding bored.
> "Nothing," Mike said.
Mike: You know, this better damn well have a dramatic impact on the plot.
Crow: There's a plot?
> "Yeah, like you really think I'm going to believe you when you've
>got that really-I'm-so-innocent look on your face.
Tom [Mike]: "Oh yeah? Well, a Los Angeles jury would believe me!"
>Get with the program, Mike: everyone knows you can't lie worth a damn."
> "Look, there's no secret," Mike protested. "Would you just drop
>it?" Andy did not respond. He just stood there, tapping his foot.
Mike: Oh, boy. Another standing-around scene.
Tom: But look! He's tapping his foot. In this story, that qualifies as an
action sequence.
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[Continued in Part 4]