THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT AT THE LIBRARY: TRY ON GREY SWEATPANTS / NEVER TAKE OFF GREY SWEATPANTS AGAIN

 

Melissa Maker walks into the library at 11:32PM in the grey sweatpants.

Melissa Maker: my mom's been on my butt to remarry.

One Sock: you have a nice butt.........sorry. wait, remarry as in marry again or marry the same person again?

Chad: ...

Melissa: you know how Jewish moms are. 

One Sock: yes, because you are one.

Melissa: look at my leg. i've decided to wear the grey sweatpants. 

One Sock: not your usual '80s hair-band black leather pants. have you given up? are you backing away from life?

Melissa: no, it's just, i'm TIRED, you know? having a kid is the exciting life.

Aubrey Plaza: i once almost married Michael Cera in Vegas before we both got too high.........don't make a joke here...

Michael Cera: it's just, Vegas and people deep in debt who find themselves hanging off skyscraper ledges by their ankles like Vanilla Ice...

Gorillas in the Mist: the perfect PBS movie.

Gorillaz: Gorillaz in the Mist, our upcoming album...

the country: the greatest revenge is to never talk to your Trump-voting friend again...

One Sock: i'm in the cramped dressing room of Mallory from Family Ties. she's about to go on stage for Les Mis in a FLOWERING cream ballroom gown. the mirror is encircled in 1910 lights. it's a forest theater, a stage surrounded by woods.  

Jen R: i see a powder puff on the table.

One Sock: good eye. the powder puff turns into a paper tray of french fries.

Jen R and me: your dream?

One Sock: yeah.

Jen and me: nice.

7-Eleven: home of the pizza with the cuboid pepperoni...

Brooke Trantor: become a filmmaker so you make that ONE movie about your fucked-up hometown. or your dysfunctional family. or the generational trauma of your local priest. or how the system is rigged for health care at the grain mill so it becomes a pill mill. or your cat. it's not about the box office, it's about making that one personal documentary that only YOU can make...

Android 17: it's just weird that i ended up the hero of Dragon Ball Super...

10PM: the time most people have sex. if you're not sleeping.

Jen R: that's when i watch Hawaii Five-O on MeTV. 

the Adam Ant shirt: the Michael Jackson shirt...

a portable blue-flame burner: the SCARIEST thing in the world!!!

Hank Hill camping: ...

UPN on a Tuesday night in the year 2000:

8PM-9PM: Roswell 

9PM-9:30PM: Martin...

Dianna Russini: yes that was 6 years ago but it was during covid so it doesn't count. the last week of April is when bears come out of hibernation, i thought Vrabel was a bear.

Mike Vrabel: Chicago is colder than New England...

Dianna Russini: what's the big deal? i should have married Mike Vrabel from the start, that's all. 

Mike Vrabel: love takes 6 years.

Richard Kiel: why didn't i play Lurch?...

Shiri Appleby: that was not Adam Driver's cum on my tits. okay? this was not Brown Bunny. it was glue.

Kylo Ren: they switched the glue with my cum at the last minute, sorry. HBO wanted realism. this was RIGHT BEFORE MeToo. but i've changed my ways. i no longer believe in The Force. no more exploitation of women for art, i'm Christian now.

Shiri: nice try, Russell Brand. as you can painfully see, unlike porn, women in real life don't enjoy getting cum on them!!!

One Sock: what book are you checking out tonight, lovely lady?

Melissa Maker: How To Get Love, Not Sex.

One Sock: i don't know about that.........i need this book.

THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT AT THE LIBRARY: MAKING OUT IN THE STACKS

 

One Sock: a lady professor and a male undergrad are certainly not the province of only a library at 1AM, but it certainly sets the mood. i'd see the secret couple come in here under cover of night, i mean REALLY of night. the two would fool around between the shelves, use the piles of books as a hill to block their mutual nakedness. pardonne-moi for seeming timid and tame, but i had never heard fuck sounds coming from a library before!!! all that porn that takes place in a library is fake, you know.

One Sock: i mean the thing of it was eventually i'd catch eyes on the lady professor, she'd look back at me, and she wouldn't care that i was watching her make it with her student. ah, the freedom of higher education, when you reach this level you don't care anymore. this dynamic duo was living their best life. and then that dark day, a night similar to this one: my skipper, who's a fly, went downstairs in the book lift and, using her skipper tool, buzzed around clearing the stacks of new books---we want all our books old and moldy so the knowledge is useful---when she spotted the taboo couple having sex, both their shorts down to their ankles. she turned the steel wheel to the left, then to the right, moving the heavy steel stack back and forth.........and the couple was gone!!! never heard from again!!! two bodies, like, they were like two tragic lovers from a Shakespearean scroll caught in the undercarriage of a stack...

Allen Iverson: only you could catch my crossover.

Michael Jordan: because i'm Michael Jordan. i wore UNC blue shorts under my Chicago Bulls jersey because all that red is the devil's stuff.

Allen Iverson: Duke is heavenly blue, too...

Jen R: Dave Gahan is in an Irish Spring commercial. his barrel-chested body is completely naked UNDER the suds of his washing his pecs in a circle. he lifts his left arm and a whole river comes gushing out of his armpit.

me: your dream?

Jen: both meanings.

at the White House, President Clinton with 3 Secret Service agents takes Ted Danson into another room.

President Bill Clinton: what are your intentions with Mary Steenburgen?

Ted Danson: when you said you were good friends with the Clintons, i thought you were lying on a first date to impress me!!!

Mary Steenburgen with a left-eye wink: it's real, baby, it is fucking REAL.

Hillary Clinton: i have nightmares about counting votes...

Ted Danson to the agents: don't rough me up, fellas, i'm not my character from Cheers, i'm not a lech like Sam Malone, i'm celibate like Mulder!!!

Abbot Butt: just rechristen Halley's Comet Bayeux Comet after the tapestry, that's a cool rename.

Brother Peewit: after Bayside where we all went to high school.

Beck: got a Devil's Pancake in my mind...

Rose: where's Christopher Kimball? why'd they cancel us? can you make a blueberry crostata in Antarctica? i am NOT gonna lose my shit over a crostata.

Hawaii without golf: like toast without butter, golf was INVENTED to be played in Hawaii!!!

Cher singing with her tongue: the est hills are alive.........with the sound of music...

white bean soup: eat it before it gets VISCOUS or it'll last until the next Ice Age then the next Medieval times tavern...

Sphinx: when a cat sheds on your tiny desk computer, that's a blessing.

Olive Garden: when you're here, you're family. that doesn't mean your real family. you're eating our Giant Meatball on a desperate first date trying to get yourself a makeshift family...

BOAT: Best Of All Time.

One Sock: after their deaths, which was the couple's death, this was haunting but i remembered, i remember her voice, she spoke to me, yeah i forgot about that, she checked out a book the night before as i was at the counter, she told me the book was How To Let Your College Card Lapse... 

  

THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT AT THE LIBRARY: SIDESCROLLER

 

the graveyard shift at the library is an ATMOSPHERE. it's an interesting place, picture it: a library open at midnight. see most students don't even know they can check that emergency book out of the library at an ungodly hour when everything is black and midnight blue and there's no noise, no sounds just the interior pall of a few people studying inside. it's spooky. yet invigorating. inviting. you see yourself and others differently at night. there's a desperation at night, students needing that one last-chance ditch effort to retrieve something before the dawn spoils their dream...

who are the people around at this hour at a library? the interesting people, that's who!!! the man at the counter is One Sock, he's like, picture this: he's like the CryptKeeper but human. tonight it's a talking cat at the desk.

Sphinx the cat: you know when you're cleaning the kitty litter, wipe the litter off the ledge of the box with the blessing "precious paws." then make sure you wipe INTO the box any excess litter pebbles and say this prayer to yourself in your head: "keep that cat dust magic in." 

One Sock: cats have a sixth sense about life.

Sphinx: turn the litter box so it looks like a giant Nintendo Switch screen, the sides smaller than the top and bottom. use your scraper and scrape the sides up and down fast. see? that's where the hidden fossilized cat poo is buried. 

One Sock: i thought it was the tiny dried cat-pee clumps that were impossible to find.

Sphinx: see? it's like a sidescroller video game.

One Sock: yeah, like Super Mario.

Sphinx: please, fool, i'm old-skool, i was thinking more 1989 Prince of Persia.

One Sock: i mean that's technically a computer game.

Saska Stanisic: not Satanist...

Suzy Lu: in a world where everyone ignores the new Dragon Ball Super stuff coming in the fall. in a world where soda is juice...

principal: not all principals need to be at the picnic, okay?

Rick Steves downing another aperitif in Turkey: before my PBS travel show i was Rick Stevs without the e.

Jen and i are at a back alcove of the library lit in neon purple light at midnight.

Jen R: at least it's easy to see at night. by the stairs.

me: i'm in a secret lab with Morrissey. a wall of screens in front of us churning out Vaporwave graphics and flashing stats. we're building the Six Million Dollar Man. Morrissey turns to me and says, "i'm the Six Million Dollar Man. don't worry, i'll give the money to charity."

Jen: your dream?

me: yes. 

Jen: nice.

me: while i was sleeping last night.

Morrissey: the neon elevator in this library was too much for you two. but not for me.

late '70s/early '80s: by this time everyone was on their second marriage...

FBI: Fox Mulder's Basic Income.

orphan kid in the Alice Thanksgiving episode: i was the first kid to say the word "cop-out" on television...

SCTV: you knew we'd be good, we used the PBS station-identification music as our interstitial music between scenes. 

PBS Man: you see me in your good dreams...

Harry Potter Butterbeer coffee creamer: Rebecca Lowe juice.

Kurt Cobain: life happens, man.

Aubrey Plaza: that's not helpful.

Pythagoras at a stone singles bar: all triangles are love triangles if you love triangles.

Wilma Flintstone: can you come to my house and tell Fred you think a woman like me is still attractive? don't worry, Fred doesn't have a temper, let's get him jealous so he takes it out on his bowling ball, not your nose. square tires are a thing in my world so that disproves your theory.

Franz Wagner: i shoot playoff hoops for the NBA and i compose dark doomy German Expressionist classical music on the side. Nietzsche and i had ONE dinner party, okay? we're not friends. 

John Waters: i'm the Baltimore Andy Warhol.

Jack McCoy wearing a NO GAS CHAMBER button: ...

Texas-style pizza: it's just pizza with a little barbecue sauce drizzled over top.

One Sock: what book are you checking out tonight, my wondrous cat friend?

Sphinx: The Prince of Persia Movements Scare Me.

One Sock: interesting. 

Sphinx: you know Talia?

One Sock: i've read of her.

Sphinx: Talia the cat is the most precious entity the universe has ever created. 

PICKED LAST FOR KICKBALL: BE HAPPY, BE GAY

 

17-year-old Charles Nelson Reilly lines his foot up at home plate of the kickball diamond at recess.

when the pitcher pitches the red rubber kickball---on the ground, a little bouncy---Charles kicks it LINE-DRIVE and SMASHES the ball into the pitcher's face.

17-year-old Brett Somers: why'd you do that for?

Charles: he knows what he called me!!!

the male teacher's assistant drags Charles by the ear to the principal's office. 

Charles: that's okay, i like it rough. i watch the boxers, they call that earmuffs. 

on the way 17-year-old Connie Stevens smiles hi and waves at Charles, she's wearing a Scorchy T-shirt in left field.

principal: why'd you do it, Chuck? i see you're wearing your nice grey sweatpants today.

Charles: why thank you. i wore them for this very occasion. the cute pitcher's a typical jock who called me a sissy. and you're gonna call me a nancyboy before this meeting is through so YOU should be expelled.

principal: name me one reason why i shouldn't transfer you to the Notre Dame School for Girls this instant.

Charles: i'm smart. you need me. jock jerks are a dime a dozen, my speedo is gold. i glide through the water because i'm bald. remember yesterday when you were sad your wife left you and i was drinking your teacher's-lounge coffee and told you why coffee makes you poo?

principal: i didn't appreciate your graphic description of our bowel muscles but yes.

Buddhist monk: caffeine takes you to the self. LSD takes you away from the self to the oneness of all things...

Aubrey Plaza: in the face of old death, create new life.

Starbuck: so like was i supposed to be Buck Rogers?...

the 20th century: the 1900s? it's too complicated, just start with Year Zero...

the Hare Krishna SMILE sticker: but would Charlie Brown ever drop acid?

Kurt Cobain: i think i'd be okay with wearing a nose ring.

Jeff Passan: if you're having a bad day, look at my WIDE-GRIN SMILE and you'll feel better. i was your neighbor on Gilmore Street. in the '80s i played Nintendo Baseball with you on a Saturday night when you were left alone in the house. when our moms went out wearing pink panties. 

moms: fuchsia panties.

Jeff Passan: me, not my dad, told you about Dark Side of the Moon.

James Blake: would you consider me a tennis legend?...

Genie Bouchard: ...

El Gordo y La Flaca: the woman is taller than the man, that never happens in television.

Carlitos el productor: and then you have me which emphasizes the point...

Rebecca De Mornay: i'm playing Traci Lords in the Lifetime movie...

Allbirds: AI shoes are softer on the feet at the beach...

Ken Jennings: what job has you making $70,000 a day? besides McDonalds. okay i'm out of touch like Brett Kavanaugh. 

dad: you didn't used to be out of touch when you were a lowly computer programmer like me who worked at Fry's. i should have been the Jeopardy champion you are now, i knew how to prepare for the Jeopardy test: keep the air about you.

soccer players: why on the group photo is the bottom row always bowing down?...

The Terminator: i was drinking barium for my head CT scan...

Siouxsie: goth is beautiful, corpse paint is ugly.

Brett: i wanna be a slut.

Charles: there's no faster way to lose your inhibitions and morals than going to Hollywood. i'll set you up with my associate, 17-year-old Jack Klugman, he works the corner by the liquor store by my mom's house. he'll get you into all the parties by blowing a bubble.

Brett: let's try this new thing called a carpool.

17-year-old Jack Klugman: stick with me, bessie, i know where to get the ice cream with the brick and the ripple. 

Brett: why are your fingers sticky, random boy?

Jack: i'm allergic to water, as a medical condition. the doctors say i can only have water in and on my body if i put sugar in it...

Charles: Jack Klugman flips Pac-Man arcade quarters all day...