MY MATTRESS: COTTON-CANDY GRAPES

 

Georgia Kernell: your bed saved me from those godawful frat beds. this mattress was my mattress sanctuary from that oily mattress at the far-end corner of the last frat on the block!!! i know when i'm not welcome at a place, i can sense it. the wine over there didn't smell right.

me: was it any better than, say, a Palm Springs bungalow? the Marilyn Monroe bungalow? the Marilyn bungalow at Palm Springs?!!!

Georgia: you'd think but the wine in Palm Springs never smells right either.

me: omg i mailed a letter for the first time as an adult. you know? from my apartment i took an envelope, licked the Cat Stevens stamp myself, and put it in the blue mailbox next to the Berkeley suburban 7-Eleven, i felt so alive!!! i felt like a man who pays bills!!!

Majin Buu: i'm Curly from The Three Stooges...

Curly: i love bubblegum, too. i eat it, i don't chew it. during The Depression gum only came in pink...

The Fisher King.

Ethel Merman: think of me as Ethel Mermaid...

Amanda Plummer: what a gyp. i can say that because i'm half-gypsy. it's like when you can't find Cinnamon Coke at BevMo...

Jen R: everyone had that white ceramic casserole dish.

mom: ...bot not the one with the grapes.

Amanda: $40? okay, i'll begrudgingly sell my beret.

Robin Williams: i'm the first man in history to do a mudmask.

Jen R: see? I'M HEXED, TOO!!! next time i'll just be a lesbian in a past life...

Muriel: it's the Chinese restaurant from Muriel's Wedding...

Martin Yan: this was the very FIRST dim sum...

Robin: i drink breakfast coffee.

Robin: i have a hard-on for you the size of Florida.

Amanda: we're going to Disney World!!!

doctor: i hang around catatonic patients all day, you'll excuse me if i snort the occasional snuff.

Q: Home Free, a show about three wacky wise homeless guys who love being free, starring Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, and Robert De Niro, Thursday nights on UPN.

Robin: let Yanni without the mustache take over as conductor.

Jack: i realize i love you. and i hate this earring.

Robin Williams: i was a Ronin roaming the streets.........a Robin Ronin. 

Jack: name one person who survived a suicide attempt then went on to be Bill Gates...

Robin Williams: you were given 30 years of bonus time, enjoy it.

Steve Irwin: i was a helper on Legends of the Hidden Temple...

The Big Amish: baseball distracted me from the nervous jitters of Amish prom sex in the back of a covered wagon.

It's a Living.

Earl Boen: i'm Larry from The Three Stooges in your favorite '80s sitcom...

Louise Lasser: it's strange me being on this show, you know? in the tits-out sky-high waitress uniform. i smoke too many cigarettes to be a waitress. 

Z Sword: i mean it's just a regular Zelda white sword...

death in the '80s: a kindly old man with a cigar...

Sonic the Hedgehog speedrun: get it?

beanbag chair: if Shel Silverstein was a chair.

Janis Joplin: i'm in the audience in every Match Game '74 episode...

Friday: Happy New Week!!!

ngon ngon: not that hot dog...

tetrazzini: eating chicken whilst playing Tetris.

Leigh Ann Caldwell: if Joyce Bulifant was a reporter...

Justin Trudeau: but i already look like a Tolkien elf.

Katy Perry: let's go away for the weekend to Orlando, Florida.

Justin: do we have to fuck?

Katy: no, but maple-bacon room service the next morning is a must. 

mom: Deion Sanders and i shop Costco together in the WIDE-ass aisles for 2 green boxes of Depends.

Liam Neeson: Pamela Anderson, i'm dating you because you said you'd help me get Natasha Richardson back...

Los Angeles Clippers: we're the oldest team in NBA history.........we started in 1809...

Frog & Toad: we're an old married couple, now THAT's friends...

Doctor Who dies: it's about bloody time...

Sparky Anderson: when you switched from lion to tiger as your favorite animal, Age 8.

Olmec: dance to the '90s Legends of the Hidden Temple theme song by shaking yo hips then shaking yo ass like that bassist in the Flock of Seagulls "Space Age Love Song" music video...

President Trump: i can never make up my mind because i was a bad actor...

Michael Weiss: approach each day on Instagram as if it were a new day, a brand new day, meet your followers for the first time...

Charles Nelson Reilly: bra.

Richard Dawson: you know what that is?

cheeseboard: chessboard.

Allyn Ann McLerie: i'm the mother of Laverne & Shirley...

Monica Pro: wanna go to San Diego Comic-Con with me? seeing as we suddenly have a lot of free time now with the strike. an indefinite amount of free time...

Leslie Sbrocco: don't have to ask me twice.

Monica: i'm dressing as Android 18. you should dress as Android 18, too.

Leslie: i see it now!!! 

i take Georgia to Star Wars at the Berkeley theater on the corner near the shoebox apartment. matinee showing, there's no one in the crowd, a scant audience.

me: i might as well show you my world. you showed me yours.

Georgia: this is weird. there's no one here. where are all the college students?!!! the point of going to college is to finally watch Star Wars alone!!! well it is the modern flat watered-down turn-of-the-century Star Wars movies that are here just to be cash-grabs, right? here's how you know i'm comfortable in your presence: i'm eating a plate of spaghetti in front of you in a darkened theater.

me: what's that smell?

Georgia: AH!!! THAT's the smell!!! the burning of wine!!! it's my Cabernet Marinara sauce!!!

me: let's get drunk off sauce. yeah i'm with you, that sauce over Four Cheese spaghetti sauce, that stuff is too much cheese, spaghetti already comes with Parmesan cheese, it's too much cheese.

Georgia: i'd swirl some orange vodka spaghetti sauce into my pasta before i'd use Four Cheese.

me: what's the classic use of eggs sauce?

Georgia: sauce on eggs? salt, no pepper.

me: salt AND pepper in the '80s.

Georgia: Tabasco sauce came in the '90s.

me: don't mind me, continue studying this Star Wars film we're watching, i'm just opening my mail from my desk this morning. 

Georgia: don't make noise opening mail, people are trying to concentrate on this Star Wars.

me: that's not fair, the envelope was caught INBETWEEN the middle of the grocery-store coupon-flyer magazine everyone tosses.

MY MATTRESS: SEX LIKE IN THE MOVIES

 

i remember that junior year at Berkeley, i've never felt that way since. i could do anything, go anywhere, go outside, i was invincible, i was Spider-Man, i was FREE!!! free to walk the sidewalk at midnight to go to school. free to peruse a zine at Amoeba at 3PM when everyone got off school. free to donut-run at 4AM with the stoners who hadn't fallen asleep since they got their syllabi. free to watch the whole hour of ER alone. why? because i had my own mattress. yeah. my own flat mattress on the grey-carpet floor of my tiny shoebox apartment overlooking Telegraph Avenue. that was my bed. see if you have your own bed, you can have a life. a bed away from your parents, thousands of miles away, your own cave, your own sanctuary, your own hole of QUIET. your own PLACE. a place to rest your weary head because your weary head is not required to talk to anyone anymore. if you don't have your own place, you got nothing in life.

Georgia Kernell: i would agree. college isn't fun unless you meet the right man. and i am not dating a man without his own mattress. it's a nonstarter, you know? humans need to be QUIET together to get meaningful things done. i mean that's why i started noticing you in English lecture, because i heard you had your own mattress.

me: a mattress to call my own, finally, away from my family drama, a mattress in a faraway city, in an unknown corner of dust.

Georgia: that's why i invited you to Soup N Nuts and started feathering your arm with my finger during borscht with CornNuts over top.

me: i thought that was the wind.

Georgia: that's why i gave you your first kiss!!! that's why i gave you your first fuck!!!

Mark Consuelos: on Dreamcatcher the English-language-course soap-opera i was on, there was a scene where i eat a banana with a fork and knife.

Kelly Ripa: but you don't speak English, you speak Spanish. when we make love you don't speak at all, you grunt.

Mark: New Jerseyean isn't a real language, it's just mangled Italian.

Gelman: i eat my bananas whole with the peel on like a cartoon gorilla.

Mark: when i signed up for this marriage i really wasn't thinking i'd end up being Regis.

Regis Philbin: i remove all the bananas in my Runts box then eat the remaining candy. i save the bananas for later...

The Fisher King.

Robin Williams: for once I don't play the suicidal character...

I can't blink without pain: when I read the National Enquirer.

Snap! "I've Got the Power": why is this song in EVERY movie trailer?...

Monty Python holding the Grail: not funny.

Jeff Bridges: save the action for the SeaWorld parking lot, not those poor whales. the Thrifty ice-cream girl? they negotiate love moments.

yuppies: like The Cure...

Jack putting Joker makeup on his face: i hate my life. you see it's this earring i wear...

Jen R: this is so New York City, the dingy VHS movie-rental shack that's actually the lobby of the dingy apartment-ghetto tower above.

Jen: remember in the '80s when you'd ask the clerk a very obscure question about a movie recommendation and he'd know the trivia? back when people still cared about stuff.

me: i hate people but i never got to be with Mercedes Ruehl in gold skintight pants.

Pinocchio: you're the bungled and the botched. don't you feel better knowing you're part of a group?

me: thanks, Pinocchio.

Robin Williams: ditch the yuppie Old Navy shirts but take these BM pills, it's impossible to stay regular in New York. varlets go wayward in the city earlier and earlier these days...

Jen R: a good bowel movement is better than sex. BM: Bowel Mystical. Thorazine cured my hiccups...

me: the Mercedes Ruehl God/Devil speech, that finally explains me in sum total. Satan created me, i always felt i was part of the underworld. that explains the lifelong hex put on me that seems to have come from a past life...

Jen: women are attracted to bad boys for biblical reasons.

Hunter College: where dad should have taught as a professor. 

dad: ...and shaked Carl Sagan's hand.

Robin Williams: it's not like that, i'm a smitten stalker.

Amanda Plummer: i knew my jaw was there for a reason...

Red Knight: i'm not from Mortal Kombat...

Brenda Frazier: i know it's the Great Depression, but i'm a debutante this year...

Mother Teresa: i didn't retire, i just really needed to get my bikini'd ass to the Bahamas for some R&R.

Terry Gilliam: that pizza was for the crew...

Tom Waits: quitting time.

Michael Jeter: the world went to hell because we stopped doing singing telegrams. that was a better tribute to VHS than that Com Truise song...

Georgia: under the pretense of getting better soup at your place.

me: yeah sorry about that, all i had was a broken soup-heater that was really just a large silver square. and one can of Campbell's chicken noodle. and a fire-hazard sparkplug-on-a-wire, i'm a college student.

Georgia: we college students do a highwire act daily. a man with his own mattress, a mattress not connected to his mother. not his mother's mattress, you know? you should put a cup of water in there with the can of soup. we ate JUST the can of soup WITHOUT the water, it tasted gamey...

Charles Nelson Reilly: where'd you put my loincloth?

Richard Dawson: in the garage.

disappointments: make you disappear...

It's a Living.

Barrie Youngfellow: my name sounds like i'm a hobbit. i was always a Borg guy, John McEnroe couldn't grow long hair. my heart SANK when the Enterprise exploded. why was our chef replaced with Odo?...

Jen R: i love that GIANT CIRCULAR SILVER STAINLESS-STEEL UFO HOLE OF SALAD the waitresses get the salad from.

me: that one community coin-payphone in the ladies' lounge.

Jen: and the bunwarmer.

Jacques Pepin: offal is not awful.

Leslie Sbrocco: how do you talk to a blonde stranger?

Monica Pro: have you talked to yourself lately? because you need to.

Leslie: what would be a line that would work on you?

Monica: "where are the Teddy Grahams?"

me: i need you two mellow.

Talia and Trinity: to mellow? more catnip cat treats please.

As Time Goes By: the British Wonder Years...

Mara from Progressive: new to the big city? i'm Mara.

woman: hi.........i'm not telling you my name...

Medusa: yeah i hung around Legends of the Hidden Temple for a spell. then Kirk Fogg dumped me for my mother so i left after Season 2.

Missy Davis, crying: this game show fucking MATTERED to me. my real name is Misty, why isn't my nickname Missy? why don't i just use the name Misty as my name, it's the cooler name...

David Foster Wallace: my publishers were PISSED OFF when they had to make millions of Infinite Jest, just one Infinite Jest is 1000 pages, it was a waste of paper, a waste of trees. see this was back when books mattered...

Bulma: i don't have my own house...

God: humanity does not reflect well on Me. why are humans so dumb?...

Paul Kreppel: i was the Larry of It's a Living...

Chloe Kelly at Penalty Kicks: *Super Mario jump*

anime: is the show good? doesn't matter, is the girl hot?...

Super Coke: let's make this happen...

me: that sex was cinematic.

Georgia: you're standing tall in the shoebox apartment naked like a Greek god. well not really godlike, you're too skinny to be musclebound.

me: i'm holding my fully-erect cock in my left hand. that dick is SWEATING. i can feel my naked toes squirming.

Georgia: i'm naked with my knees on your bed on the floor, your cum on both of my shoulders. nice aim. you know i had to test your cheap-ass dirty mattress with my finger, i had to push down, press play, it was surprisingly springy and spongy. men with mattresses. men with beds.

me: my butt is naked for all the outside world to see, a view from the aft bay window for the jet set and an askance view from the starboard bay window for the college street. i'm like the fucking Statue of David or something. 

Georgia: golden rays of sun peer outlining the room with a yellow haze. because you lifted the Rear Window Venetian blinds like a bad film-noir...

me: but you know, in this moment of ecstasy, i feel nothing. because i'm not in love with you.

Georgia: i know.

MATCH-GAME MANSION: TAKE OFF YOUR GLASSES

 

Charles Nelson Reilly and Richard Dawson are making love in the upstairs bedroom of the Match-Game House at 9PM after supper to the sweet strains of Chuck Mangione.

Charles Nelson Reilly: by my count you've bounced on my dick 50 times now.

Richard Dawson: hum, baby, hum. dick to Dick. feels so good.

Charles: dat dere is a dick. b'bye.

Richard: give it all you got. are you real?

Charles: along came Betty White. 

Richard: our love will chase the clouds away.

Charles: okay, we can be cordial with each other after this. 

Richard: isn't cordial an English alcohol?

Charles: more like French on a train. one thing we CAN agree on, Chuck to Chuck, is Chuck Mangione's timeless trumpet music. like spaghetti in your mouth. 

Richard: the soundtrack to the '70s.

France: can we FINALLY redraw the map? redraw the district lines of the world's nations to reflect long-withheld justice? no justice, no piece of the pie. i ain't brightsiding you, Palestine is real now. let's go back to the days of peace when Talk Soup was the show everyone watched for news...

Leslie Sbrocco: i'm getting scared. this is getting real now. are we really gonna strike?

Monica Pro: fuck yes we are. 

Leslie: oo, i love it when you take authority, take control, announce your missives on the Safeway loudspeaker, i'd follow all your orders to me.

Monica Pro: you do realize this relationship would only work if you DIDN'T work for me?...

Leslie: i love it when you wear those workman's black jeans, you mean business when you're wearing those black jeans, i wanna rub your butt, i wanna touch your butt.

Monica: the thing is, I am the one who's surrounded by food and wine all day!!! but YOU'RE the food & wine expert?

Leslie: i was thinking the other night, you are the doctoral-thesis level of asking out. you're the PhD of the date challenge. how would one ask you out on a date cold? 

Monica: bump into me in the aisles as i'm unboxing the Teddy Grahams.

Leslie: yes but how would i broach the question? to find out if you were married with kids? and then somehow ask you out on a date. as if that would come up in the natural course of an impromptu conversation, this is simply an IMPOSSIBLE TASK.

Gene Rayburn: contestant 1, your story.

Ellie Noble: i'm Ellie Noble, the prettiest contestant you've ever had on this show. i would have been an actress but Shelley Duvall beat me to it. we look alike but she has a SLIGHTLY MORE INTERESTING LOOK TO THE FACE.

Gene: and our civilian-player contestant #2?

contestant 2: i'm a happy homemaker, two kids, a husband. you know, a housewife who watches soap operas.

Gene: of course you are. don't we have any childless swingers who watch Daytime TV?

spinster in the audience: a spinster is a swinger...

Gene: why are you crying, Brett? is it because i asked you to answer a question that had TWO blanks?

Brett Somers: no i was thinking back to my marriage to Jack Klugman. i was a good mother, dammit. i liked the man well enough, Jack was always away fishing on Lake Huron with his B&W college buddies. Jack Klugman made me do Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on Broadway with him, that's why we divorced...

Melissa Maker: we still have good tennis in Toronto, okay?...

Dirg: i love a woman in her 30s with gray hair. 

Laertus: you're still alive?

Suzy Lu: everybody else watches, i delve...

Majin Buu: i'm an ocarina...

David Foster Wallace: DFW, Down For Wikipedia...

Ozzy Osbourne: i had the best natural singing voice.

Sharon: it was hidden in your British accent.

Jen and i spend the night at Match-Game House.

Jen R: your fart is our alarm clock.

me: one date changes everything.

Jen: WWIII?

me: no, with you...

Instagram: that new pic that was posted up there just now, that pic indicates life, that pic is a blessing...

Hulk Hogan: i'm the Logo. i AM pro wrestling. i'm if Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan had a child after wrestling. i made the '80s the '80s. i made the '80s magic. you know in the '80s, you had to wrestle a double-bill 300 days a year, including on Hanukkah. the show must go on even if your bicep is deflating like a cheap tire right in front of your eyes. most importantly, i kept you from having to watch that Garbage Pail Kids cartoon...

Roger Federer: in order to be the man, you must beat the man.

David Foster Wallace: the man was you.

Liam Gallagher: i go on wonder walks to relieve stress.

Noel Gallagher: not to relive stress. i have a bath caddy so the pages don't get wet when i'm reading my favorite book Infinite Jest in the tub.

As Time Goes By intro: beautifully melancholic, painfully haunting, as we all go through our long lives of despairing disappointments, missed opportunities, and hope against hopes against the backdrop of shared historical events, the sands of time...

Billy Corgan: those B&W newsreels of Queen Elizabeth, The Beatles, JFK, and that one British hurdler give me the morbs.

on your son's bed in the '80s: where all serious talks took place.

Godfather: not hearse, horse.

Legends of the Hidden Temple: see we're not into that Battle of the Sexes crap for cheap ratings. we're into unity of the sexes, harmony between the halves, the coming-together of woman and man, so our planet can heal, so our planet can grow jungles again, jungles for more temples to hide in.

cats: our feelings are just beneath the surface...

Kaye Stevens: look into my soulful warm eyes. i am caring and nurturing and nourishing. i would make you a wholesome wife.

Richard Dawson: but why you gotta all the time flirt with the male contestants? especially when i'm sitting right here!!! next to you!!!

Kaye: YOOHOO!!! OVER HERE!!! not all the male contestants, just the handsome ones. like Blue Eyes over there with the football build who looks like dad. and this man with the '70s-pornstache in the beige leather jacket who looks like Mark Spitz.

Mark Spitz: that man is an undercover agent for the CIA who works with cats.

Kaye: if Debbie Reynolds hadn't gotten sick, i wouldn't have had a career. nobody would know my name, most especially not my father. was that like an early form of covid or something?

Charles Nelson Reilly leaves his perch atop the top row, races down the shag stairs, and jumps the Mark Spitz-looking contestant kissing him large right in his hairy mouth right in front of the cameras.

Charles Nelson Reilly: THAT is what a free America looks like.

 

MATCH-GAME MANSION: COMFORTABLE CONVERSATION

 

Brett Somers: let's make amends.

Charles Nelson Reilly: i'll try if he tries. i'm exhausted, chick. well let's get a move on, hoity-toity!!!

Richard Dawson: alright look, see this glass goblet?

Charles: mmm, smells good. smells like New Orleans when it was still spicy. a blood-orange margarita?

Richard: no, it's tomato sauce, i'm English. 

Charles: you gentleman FUCKER.

Brett: let's try this: name one thing you like about Charles.

Richard: his ascot. now if you'll excuse me, i have to use the toidy.

Charles: i like that he looks like my father. my father rejected me at a young age, he put me on a tugboat with Donald Duck before enlisting in the Navy.

Theo Huxtable: life's not fair, dad.

Cliff Huxtable: i know, son. how the hell is Bill Cosby still alive? i lose BOTH sons?!!!

Theo: why didn't the Ugly Shirt save me? that shirt was meant to be a flotation device, right? a lifejacket?

Ozzy Osbourne: i had Parkinson's but i was lucid throughout. that is what reality shows were supposed to be, a quiet introspective look at a family surrounded by love. nice kitchen-table conversations, moments with the dog. none of this bachelors and islands and naked coconuts bollocks.

Sharon Osbourne: i lost my soulmate.

Raising Arizona.

John Lewis: hey Hi, try good trouble instead.

Hi: i would prefer not to.

John Lewis: there you go, boy, see? you're getting the hang of it already. your soul needs orange juice. if you're not uncomfortable, you're not living.

Frances McDormand: oh damn i used to actually be HOT!!!

Krista Catwood: i have the last Jem VHS cassette...

Woody Woodpecker, singing: it's the Woody Woodpecker Show. my laugh is truly the domain of the demented. look, we all hated Andy Kaufman, it's okay to admit it.

Leonard Smalls: you were about to eat that fly!!! i pinched it just in time, i saved your soul.

father: i really wasn't.

Smalls: i just Mr. Miyagi'd your ass.

Jen R: I DRIVE NAKED is lame. here, you can borrow one of my BABY ON BOARD octagons.

Nic Cage: i really wanted to be Bruce Lee.

tapette: small cassette.

Mondale/Ferraro: what could have been...

Richie Rich doing a robbery: got any more of those burlap sacks with the $ symbol on them? 

Nic Cage: before i fight i like to vomit. clears the sinuses. that was YOUR tooth.

father: you know, the Harley guy who looks like Ozzy Osbourne.

no questions asked: but for the reward money, we need a story.

Ed: if we don't have a kid, why would we stay together?...

Hi: oh it was such a lovely dream, an ethereal dream, high in the sky, one of those Terrence Malick dreams. wait, i can't play football. and that's just a random family enjoying their Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving... 

Coen Brothers: see? our style is DISTINCTIVE.........live-action Looney Tunes, it's all good.

dad: Beethoven banjo?

Leslie Sbrocco: strikes are scary, you never know how they're gonna turn out.

Monica Pro: and they might last for weeks.

Leslie: but i'm comforted knowing you're in charge of the workers' response.

Monica: see? i'm not really a boss, i'm one of you. 

Leslie: you're on our side. can i lick your side?

Monica: give me a boost on your shoulders, i'm gonna do a Sally Field.

Leslie: you don't have to ask me twice.

Monica hold up a sign which reads

ABBA > BEATLES

Nick Arcade: i mean what the hell are these weird dink video games supposed to be? why aren't the contestants recreating Mario Bros., Link and Ganon, Sonic on a date with Princess Peach...

Jen R: yes i'm a choke artist but i'm great under pressure...

me: it's Patti Smith & Mapplethorpe every time.

Bartleby, the Scrivener: it's not A Christmas Carol...

Watanabe: only the Pepsi-drinkers would have survived. that would have been kinda cool and quirky, right? a Michael Jackson '80s throwback. the cat was AI. Hapna was like Doan's.

Goku: Go KU. i like Kansas. but i honed my Kamehameha on the plains of Nebraska.

Shel Silverstein: i was in the band Toto...

Comcast: no, calm cats.

Greykid: only when the TV's working the COOL cable channels. Diana from Sailor Moon is not mine!!! she's cute tho. tomcats are everywhere, it's sad.

Pablo Torre: do you deserve your job? i'm the Ronan Farrow of sports.

tennis: should never be played next to Little League stands...

Sarah McLachlan: "Adia" is SLOW, man. "Adia" is a fucking SLOW song, man.

Larry from Three's Company: you know my secret with women? it's not vitality pills. it's coffee. Max-Pax coffee.

Manny Pacquiao: how can i get some of that coffee, Jack? i need to get my dopamine hit from caffeine, not boxing. i shouldn't be boxing nor running for the Philippines Senate, i'm too old for both. we need fresh new ideas...

the Nerd from Robot Chicken: i should just be grateful that my annoying mom is still middle-aged and healthy...

Tears For Fears "Woman In Chains"

well it's a world gone crazy, murder exchange

well i feel

deep in your heart there are wounds time can't heal

says Kool Moe Dee

Gene Rayburn picks his mic up and proceeds with the lunacy.

Gene Rayburn: this microphone is skinnier than my tie. i have the worst sunburn on my neck. next question: BLANK September. 

Richard Dawson: pregnant September. 

Charles Nelson Reilly: cue the porno thinking music.

Gene: BLANK rib.

Richard: not prime rib in this Carter Recession. 

Charles: and i'm not talking about the recession during Carter's funeral.

Gene: why does the audience boo all the time? why are our audiences so mean? why? because they are free. and that is why i love this country so. you know people think we ply the celebrities with booze and liquor right before the show, but actually we ply the AUDIENCE with booze and liquor...

Brett Somers: Gene, before we start the next card, can we have a moment of silence for my friend and yours Fannie Flagg? well she's just the sweetest little Southern-belle Little Miss Ginger thing, my best friend, my only friend, the only woman who will talk to me. she's got a fanny tight as an Alabama snare drum, i see it every day from the top row. she's having surgery this week, that's why she's not here. i'm getting the vapors in stress over her.

Richard: she drank the Kool-Aid on you, the Kool-Aid you serve with those pork cutlets that are so vinegary they made me belch. that Kool-Aid pork made my butt clench harder than Fannie's butt. 

Gene: aw, sure. everyone in the audience, and the celebrity dingbats upstairs and downstairs, let's everyone come together for this one thing. only prayer can bring this country together.

Charles: only A prayer can save this country... 

Gene: Fannie Flagg is getting surgery to reduce her breast size so she can better fit into her sweaters, so it'll be easier to read the funny messages on her sweaters.

everyone in the crowd and on stage on the panel and the two contestants wearing housecoats all bow their heads and stay silent for 30 minutes...