Stand up. Stretch. Reach for the Cocktail of vitamins and potentially illegal performance enhancing drugs -- and wash it down the enriched wheat-grass-protein smoothie sitting on the desk.
The Time is Now my friends. Warm-Up. Do some calisthenics, unsheathe the Saber resting so quiescently, inert, flaccid over your mantle. In a cinema-worthy montage, to your favorite upbeat tunes I need you to Don all brightly-colored, poofy garments -- Bandanas are a must -- some sort of gender-bending boots as well, and: Let's Go Hunt Some Pirates!
If I -- in all my infinite fictional wisdom (I mean Wisdom pertaining to creating Fiction, so you Sardonic Sally's can suck-it) -- were to write a screenplay based on current events, it would go like this:
Just as U.N. forces had the Somali Pirates (SP's) cornered, their assets frozen, their armaments seemingly cut-off...an unholy alliance was formed: The Mexican Drug Lords (MDL's) come, unrelentingly, to their rescue. But little did anyone know the Radioactive Waste the Somali's were harboring, and when United States forces intervene, hot on the MDL's trail: The Shit hits the Fan. This Summer, the Navy Seals face their greatest threat: Mutant Somali-Mexican-Pirate-Drug-Lords...and this time, It's PERSONAL!
And there we are! Michael Bay: I'll take my paycheck now. I'm sure we could tie-in a War On Drugs message, maybe something silly like all of us doing Blow and smoking Weed here in the States are somehow strengthening, Emboldening the mutants. So, in one fell swoop, we could thwart an international crisis and rid the U.S. of A. of it's pesky Drug Addiction. Of course there'd be a sequel... but we'll save that for next time.
And for the record: If you participated in any Tea Party Protests you are a complete, repugnant, devolving Tool. I'm sure you went home afterwards, watched your favorite episode of Two And A Half Men, cranked the Fox News Channel, ordered pizza, trimmed your goatee, maybe took your truck to the car wash and then to Wal-Mart because your oh-so-sophisticated Household has run perilously low on Corn-Based Snacks, and felt like a real, live, Revolutionary. Fuck off, please.
This is it: my last week of Second City, well, in their Writing Program. We make our final submissions for The Show (the culminating Sketch Revue written by us) this Monday. Afterwards we audition actors and go into production. It all feels terribly anticlimactic to be honest -- I'm not sure what this implies. I suppose the answer is It's the Journey, not the Destination-type didactic axiom -- or perhaps if I watch myself do push-ups in the mirror it will reveal the same thing (a breathtaking sight I might add). No: I fault myself for lack of focus, and I fault my teacher for the Anticlimactic Atmosphere. There's a difference in Coasting, with a group of Writers who know the drill and being cognizant of their talents (or lack thereof for some), and general up-to-speed-ness of how the whole thing works while continuing to teach and prepare them for what comes next. And what, my Pirate-Slaying Friends is exactly, Next? It could be anything really. Some of us (like moi) will go on to mega-stardom and adorn the culture of entertainment and literature with a cornucopia of ornate filigree and bombastic hyper-poignant tales -- and others will go back to their jobs more accomplished, well-spoken and generally more apt people. But this -- this is where the Instructor can Shine! He/She can Pontificate like no one's ever pontificated because the stage is set, these students have jumped through hoops and leapt over hurdles to be here for, something(?) and they can be malleable, squishy puddy in your pedagogical hands.
But, no, we've got the equivalent, meek-minded rhetoric of a small-town Jane Austen Book Club where everyone's too embarrassed to pick at the subtext and obvious Homosexual Allegories in her work (God I hope people get that joke).
Sometimes we have to be our own, engine, spark our own fervor, Impale our own Mutant-Pirate-Drug-Lord...you know?
xoxox,
michael
No comments:
Post a Comment