MSTing: NEW YEAR'S EVE (2/6)
a.ca...@genie.com
>NEW YEAR'S EVE
>by Neal Mentech
Crow: Hey, Mike, didn't you do some temp work for Mentech once?
Mike: Yeah. The problem was, I couldn't figure out their computer system,
and the all-male thing got a little creepy after a while.
>
> David was sweating
Crow: Great! Nothing gets a story off to a promising start like a sweaty
protagonist.
>as he rocketed through a long curve in the bumpy road. =This is wild=, he
>thought.
Mike: "I'm channelling Johnny Carson!"
>He could not believe he was doing this -- he was flying!
Tom [David]: "Cool! That thing about throwing yourself at the ground and
missing really works!"
>Daring a glance down at his right foot,
Tom [sarcastic]: Oh, do you =dare=?
Mike: Hey, you haven't seen this guy's toenails. [shudder]
>he saw that it was still almost magically locked in place, forcing the gas
>pedal as close to the floor as it would go. He was heading for a New Year's
>party, and he knew with a flutter in his stomach that he was almost there.
Mike: Either that, or he shouldn't have eaten those bad clams.
> As he finished rounding the bend, he saw the last intersection that
>barred his way in the distance ahead of him. Three traffic lights hung in
>an arc over the empty road,
Mike: And drivers passing through the intersection had to swerve around
David Lynch, who stood there entranced.
>pronouncing their unanimous judgment:
Crow: "Not guilty. Nah, we don't care about the evidence. Now, c'mon, we
gotta get home. It's almost time for 'Living Single'!"
>the intersection was bathed in a baleful red glow. Unimpressed, David
>shifted his truck into the highest gear.
Bots: SCREEEEECHKKKHKHKHKHKH-FMP!
Mike: "Someday I'll hafta figger out whut that pedal on the left does."
> He fixed his eyes on the three traffic lights as he rushed toward
>the intersection, as if he meant to stare them down. Mentally, he began to
>count down the seconds before he would reach the intersection. Eight.
>Seven. Six.
Crow [David]: "Whoops! Misdialed. That should be NINE-seven-six--"
>He passed beyond the point where he could have comfortably stopped, and he
>shuddered. The pavement still lay bleeding under the three lights.
Tom: Actually, that was David Lynch. Someone didn't swerve in time.
>At last, just as his front wheels were about to cross the white lines of
>the intersection, the lights changed to green and he soared through.
Crow: Oh, come on! There are always those three cars that think they can
still go 'cause the light was green just a minute ago.
>He breathed a sigh of relief, and of wonder: in the end, every
>set of lights he had passed through that night had been green.
Mike: Jay Gatsby would've loved this town.
>With a sureness he could not explain, he guided the car around the next
>curve in the road and onto the final straightaway.
Crow: Then over the river and through the woods.
>He was almost there.
Mike: TraveLodge?
>He just had to find the right driveway. As he sped onward, the jolting was
>so bad that it was all he could do to keep himself from bouncing all over
>the cabin.
Crow: "I knew I shouldn't have bought that Whammo upholstery!"
>The road, he reflected, was in definite need of resurfacing.
Mike: Or maybe he should've given those kids playing baseball in the street
a chance to get out of the way.
> Suddenly, he realized he was about to miss
Crow: --"The People's Court". 4:30 -- time for Wapner!
Tom: No =wonder= he's been speeding!
>the driveway. With a violent motion, David slammed the wheel hard right.
Mike: You get the feeling someone saw that exploding-bus movie a few too
many times?
>The truck commenced the maneuver, but already David knew that the truck
>wouldn't bank
Tom: --at Wells Fargo. The per-check charges were just too high.
>steeply enough or tightly enough to make the turn. He was skidding across
>the poorly lit back-road on two wheels, overshooting
Crow [J. Neil Schulman]: "'Overshooting'? No such thing!"
Mike: Please, let's just put Janeil behind us.
>the driveway he had aimed for, and was going to ram into the concrete
>side-wall. His whole body tensed. He tried to fight for control, yet at
>the same time he found himself morbidly fascinated by the smell of the
>burning tires
Mike: "Mmmm... reminds me of Mom's cooking."
>and the shriek of the metal hubcaps as they were scraped along the pavement.
>For a brief moment, he was seized by a vision of what this scene might look
>like, if seen from above.
Crow [Neal Mentech]: "I paid for the friggin' crane, I'm going to use it!"
Tom [editor]: "But... this is a story! You don't need to worry about artsy
camera angles!"
>It made him feel strangely lifted. In distorted time, David watched the
>wall stagger toward him.
Crow [David]: "Please, God, I'm only 17..."
>Then with a final lurch,
Tom [Lurch]: You rang?
>blackness replaced the world.
Mike: It's Louis Farrakhan's dream come true.
>
> He blinked and swallowed, but still he could see nothing. It was
>as if he had been staring at a color television for all of his life,
Tom: --instead of only 98% of it.
>and someone had abruptly pulled the plug. =Game Over=, David thought. He
>seemed to wait a long time.
Crow: No one will be seated during the suspense-filled waiting scene!
>Eventually, he became aware of an unnatural fatigue that was tugging at him.
>It made him feel very tired.
Tom: Yeah, well, fatigue tends to do that.
>He felt a chilling wind pick up about him, slithering around his bare ankles
>and up his unprotected legs, prickling his skin, as if he were hurtling with
>blinding speed through the black air.
Crow: So... there's a lot of smog in the afterworld, I take it?
>David shivered. The weariness pulled on him more forcefully now, goading
>him to let go -- to allow himself to drift into unconsciousness. He tried
>to fight it, but even as he did,
Mike: --his manager jumped into the ring and the fight was called.
>he knew he would not be able to fight the numbing forever. When at last he
>was too tired to resist, he succumbed to the cold and empty void. In that
>frigid darkness, he slept. Dreams more vivid and terrifying than any he had
>ever experienced tormented him in that troubled sleep.
Crow: "NO! I WON'T EAT IT!"
>What ages he had passed then he did not remember.
Mike: The Age of Aquarius?
Tom: The Age of Innocence?
Crow: The age of consent?
>
> When again peace returned, his world was very different.
Tom: For one thing, there was less war.
>The sky, if one could call it a sky, was black and empty. It was as if a
>great gulf had opened up where the stars had been;
Mike: Really? I'd heard they were opening up a Starbucks.
>it was so black that it hurt the eye to contemplate such an affront to
>Being. The ground was an endless plane,
Crow: --and flight attendants would periodically wander by to point out all
the emergency exits.
>like the floor of some vast, deserted warehouse,
Mike: --and off in the corner Tim Roth lay slowly bleeding to death.
>and etched into its dark surface were thin, faintly glowing grid-lines that
>criss-crossed at right angles and stretched, as far as David could see, out
>to infinity.
Tom: So... the afterworld is a big piece of graph paper, then.
Mike: Wow! I had no idea my quadrille pad was a religious artifact.
>As he stood there, straining to see what might await him in the darkness, he
>felt very small.
Crow [David]: "My girlfriend was right!"
> David found that he was still dressed in the sleek white tuxedo he
>had rented for the party.
Mike: An all-white tuxedo? What, was powder blue out of stock?
>=Jesus=, David thought. Any fool could have seen that he was driving way
>too fast to make that last turn. Now all of his friends at the party were
>probably sitting in their cars, sober and silent,
Tom: Well, silent anyway. It =is= a New Year's Eve party.
>following the mad wails of
Crow: --Alanis Morissette!
Mike [laughing]: Let's not start that again or we'll be doing it all night.
>an ambulance siren to the emergency ward at the city hospital. Some way to
>spend New Year's Eve.
Tom: On the other hand, y'know, it beats being dead.
>David looked down at the mud-stain on the cuffs of his pants that he had
>acquired trying to climb into the Blazer. I knew I was going to die, David
>thought dismally.
Crow: "Leo: Be careful in money matters today. Trust your friends; they are
looking out for your best interests. Virgo: Today is a good day to make
that decision you've been pondering. Use the morning to your advantage.
Libra: You will smash your truck into a concrete wall and impale yourself
on the steering column."
> "Catch!" someone called to him from behind. Startled, David spun
>around just in time to grab a marshmallow-on-a-skewer before it would have
>flown past him, tumbled onto the perfectly smooth Grid, and presumably
>rolled onward to oblivion.
Mike: This would've had absolutely no impact on anything, of course, but
we'll treat it like a tragedy averted anyway.
>He looked up from his prize
Crow: "Twelve boxtops and all I get is a lousy plastic dwarf? I didn't even
want Crackle! I wanted Pop!"
>and met the eyes of the woman who had tossed it to him.
Tom: "Hello, eyes."
[Mike and Crow groan]
>She had soft, brown hair that fell
Crow: --out in ragged clumps. She'd died in a tragic radiation mishap.
>to her shoulders, and she stood in silhouette from the light of a campfire
>behind her.
> "What...?" David waved the skewer. She only twitched her lip
>slightly.
> "I was sixty-three," she said clearly. "I died alone." David just
>stared at her.
Crow [David]: "Whoa, for a dead elderly chick she's pretty hot!"
>By the flickering light, David could see she was tense. She wore
>a hard expression, a mask
All: SMOKIN'!
>-- but David sensed that this control did not come easily to her. She
>waited, studying his reaction anxiously. If she was looking for something
>in particular, David had no idea what it was.
Mike: I think it's probably safe to say that David's never had an idea in
his life.
> "You don't look that old," he said finally. The tension on her face
>lingered for a moment longer, and that all at once she looked very relieved,
>as if a great burden had been lifted. Somehow, David decided, he must have
>hit upon the right answer.
Crow: "Uh... green! Thirty-seven! Jefferson Davis! Am I close?"
>She even smiled.
> "I can look like anything I want to here; we all can," she explained.
>She offered her hand. "I'm Ellen."
> "David Disch," David enunciated,
All: Ewwww!
>as he politely shook her hand.
> "Yes..." Ellen said, sadly distant -- but then she tossed her hair.
Crow: --out the window.
>"You must have many stories!" she said, brightly.
Mike [David]: "Actually, yeah I do, but they're all by Ratliff."
Tom [falsetto]: "AIEEEEE! Do not bring your evil here!"
>"Please, join us! Let me introduce you to everyone."
Crow [falsetto]: "No, we're =not= affiliated with the Reverend Sun Myung
Moon -- why do you ask?"
>She took him by the hand and led him to the campfire.
> As they approached, David realized that the fire, and most of the
>people sitting around it, were not real:
Mike: But David was from Los Angeles, and he was used to people being made
mostly out of plastic.
>they were just parts of an image. It was partly transparent, so he could
>look through it to see the Grid beyond, and every so often the whole scene
>appeared to waver uncertainly in the air, as if it were a holographic movie
>projected onto an unseen curtain that shifted with the wind.
Tom: Yeah, but did it have THX?
>The people in the image were gesturing happily to each other and warming
>themselves over the fire, unaware of the Grid or the emptiness.
> There were a few real people watching this bizarre spectacle, though,
>and Ellen tapped one of them on the shoulder.
> Jason, I'd like you to meet =David=," she said, emphasizing the name.
Tom: That =would= be what those emphasis marks are for, wouldn't it?
>Jason immediately stood up to shake hands with David. Jason was somewhat
>taller than David, and he looked a few years older, but David figured that
>he could no better guess Jason's true age than he had guessed Ellen's.
Mike: He used to work one of those carnival booths and wound up losing over
$91,000. And he was even worse at guessing weights.
> "Charmed," Jason said.
> "Likewise," David smiled.
> "After such a long journey, you must be cold. Here," Jason stepped
>away from the fire and started to take off his jacket.
> "Oh -- No, thanks, you don't have to do that," David said quickly,
Crow: "--let's have as little nudity in this story as possible."
>but even as he declined, he realized that he did not feel particularly warm.
>Jason smiled down at him, in a fatherly way, and David squirmed in his
>tuxedo, feeling very awkward. Jason looked to Ellen for further direction.
Tom: "Okay, what's my motivation here? Should I be putting on some kind of
an accent, or--"
> "Ooh, look here!" Ellen exclaimed as a giant monarch
Mike: --wandered by. It was Louis XIV, and he was fifty feet tall.
>butterfly alighted on her finger. She stroked its wings.
Tom [singing]: o/~ Despiiiiite all my rage I am still just a rat in a
cage... o/~
>"Isn't it cute?" she asked David. Out of the corner of his eye, David saw
>Jason frown at Ellen.
Crow [Jason]: "Cuteness iss not allowed in ze New Reich!"
> "Um, yeah," David said, casting a questioning glance at Jason.
> "There's one about to land on your nose too," Ellen giggled, and
>David instinctively brushed his nose where he did, indeed, frighten away a
>small butterfly that had been preparing for a nap.
Crow: I think we're all preparing for a nap the way this story is going.
>He wiped his hand on his pants in a sudden spasm, as if it had been touched
>by something unclean.
Mike: Like, say, an enormous insect maybe.
> "Where the hell did that come from?" he said angrily.
> "Oh, I'm sorry," Ellen said, and lightly kissed his cheek.
Tom [David]: "Ack! Cooties! Yecch! Bleahptf!"
>"I was just playing around. I forgot that you were still unsettled from
>your trip. Don't be alarmed. I made it."
> "You what?"
> "The butterfly -- I created it. We're spirits, all of us. We can
>make anything we want.
Crow: Really? Anything? Then bring me all the unclothed women my poor eyes
can stand!
Mike: Jesus, Crow, take it easy. You don't even =like= girls.
Crow: Oh, yeah. In that case -- how about some more of these great peanuts?
Mike: You crack me up, little buddy!
Tom: Uh, guys? Steve Purcell's lawyers are on the phone.
>Look here," she said. She stepped up into the air and hovered, as if she
>were standing on an invisible platform a foot off the ground. "I can even
>float if I want to," she said.
Crow [David]: "Yeah, big deal. Let me get some booze in me and you'll =all=
be floating."
>David backed away.
> "=Ellen=," Jason reproached at last. She looked up at him, hurt.
>He winced and looked away.
Tom: Was that little interplay =really= worth spending two complete sentences
on?
> "I know this life is going to be difficult for you to get used to,"
>Jason addressed David,
Tom: "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers..."
>though he was still searching the empty sky. "It took me time too. It's
>hard to come to terms with what it means to be here." He turned to look
>straight
Crow: --but he wasn't fooling anybody.
>at David. "It means that you are dead. Your past life is over. You're
>never going back."
Tom: You get the feeling that when this guy took the career aptitude test
back in high school the computer said he was best suited to be a
high-ranking SS officer?
> "Well, that's just a little blunt isn't it?" Ellen said.
> "Yeah, but it's true," Jason said, continuing to look at David
>directly in the eye. "He can take it. He just needs to know where he is."
Crow: He needs to get Lojack!
>David did not answer; he just waited.
> "Things... don't make sense here the way we were used to," Jason
>continued.
Tom: "Like, you can have tea and no tea at the same time here! Weird, huh?"
>"You just have to get a feel for it, I suppose. Why don't you try making
>something yourself?" he offered. "Maybe it'll all seem more natural to you
>when you get the hang of it yourself."
> "Whatever," David muttered. Ellen glanced at him sharply.
Crow: Hey! I wasn't prepared for this kind of graphic brutality!
Tom: Yeah, they could've at least had the courtesy to include one of those
"May Contain Violent Scenes" warnings.
> "Just picture something clearly and crisply in your mind," Jason
>said, trying to sound cheerful,
Mike: But failing miserably, being a Nazi and all.
>"something familiar to you, and think to yourself, 'I'd like that something
>in my hand.'"
Crow: HEL-lo.
Mike: Don't start.
> =I'd like a saxophone=, thought David, for he used to play the
>saxophone and had liked it very much --
Crow: Oh, come on! A =saxophone=? You can have anything you want! Go
nuts! Ask for a million billion dollars!
Mike: Actually, Crow, that wouldn't be all that smart. Think about it --
there's nothing to spend it on. It'd be totally useless. Who'd want a
bunch of money if they couldn't spend it on anything?
Crow: Warren Buffett would.
>and as soon as he wished it, a perfectly crafted brass saxophone appeared
>in his hand. David was so astonished that he dropped it. The newborn
>saxophone clattered to the ground.
Mike: The scary thing is, when he was alive he was an obstetrician.
Tom: The scarier thing is, we've been in here forever. C'mon, let's go.
[1...2...3...4...5...6...]
Crow: Okay, is it just me, or is this David guy about as sharp as a beach
ball? I mean, he can have anything in the world, anything at all, and he
picks a =saxophone=.
Tom: I'm with you, Crow. What an idiot! But how about you? What would
you pick if you were David?
Crow: Hmm. Good question. I'd have to go with an oboe.
Tom: An oboe? Don't you think their sound has a bit too much of an oily
quality?
Crow: Ah, but that's the charm! Why, what would you pick?
Tom: I was thinking more along the lines of a bassoon. You see--
Mike: What's wrong with you two?! You can have anything you want, and you
pick oboes and bassoons?!
Crow: What's wrong with that?
Tom: Yeah, Mike, what would =you= pick? Enlighten us, O superior one!
Mike: Well, the love of a good woman might be a start.
Crow: Come on, Mike. He can =make= stuff. Love is a function of free will!
It can't be created or forced. Anyone who read SECRET WARS II knows that.
Mike: Fine. Then I guess I'd go with eternal happiness and inner peace.
Tom: That's not exactly a =thing= either. We're talking about material
objects. You can't create psychological states.
Mike: Commodity culture, huh? All right, then, I've still got you beat.
I'd whip up a really cool car!
Crow: And drive it... where?
Mike: [sigh] ...then i guess i'd take a clarinet or something. grrr...
Tom: Good choice!
Crow: Very good choice!
[red light flashes]
Mike: And what do =you= want? A trumpet?
[Deep 13B]
Dr.F.: Oh, dear God, no. In fact, a trumpet player just moved into Deep 13C
and he's driving me insane.
[SOL]
Crow: Practicing at all hours of the night, I take it?
[Deep 13B]
Dr.F.: No, he just has these incredibly loud phone conversations where he
goes on and on about what a great trumpet player he is.
Voice: HELLO? HI, IT'S NEILS.
Dr.F.: Oh, no, he's at it again. [pounds on wall] Shut up! SHUT UP!
Voice: Hold on, the jerk next door's pounding on the wall again. Anyway,
I had another trumpet lesson today and the instructor says I have the best
=tone= he's ever heard. And you can't teach that. You either have it or
you don't. The rest of this orchestra's pathetic, though. I'm the only
one with any kind of natural ability. Luckily I have enough for all of us.
Did I mention what great =tone= I have? Oh, and the football team won
again. This ought to push us up in the polls. We killed them. Now we
just need to get ten wins. If we get ten wins, we go to the Super Bowl.
If we get nine, we only go to the Rose Bowl. Who would we play? I dunno.
Where =is= the Rose Bowl, anyway? Pasadena? Then I guess we'd play the
University of Pasadena. Nah, I don't know what their ranking is. Hey, did
I mention what great =tone= I have?
[SOL]
Mike: Uh, I think we'll be heading back to the theater now...
[Deep 13B]
Dr.F.: No! Don't leave me! Don't... oh, hell.
[Commercials]
[Continued in Part 3]