BANKSY'S SECRETARY: IT WAS BETTER WHEN HE WAS FACELESS

 

Jen R: feeling better?

Banksy: no. nobody looks at my art anymore and sees the subtle political underleanings. they just see my ugly face.

Jen: you're having an identity crisis but in reverse.

Banksy: how do i inspire again? 

Jen: you need a pseudonym...

Jen R on the dusty-green telephone: it's okay, we can talk now, we can talk again.

me: what happened to Banksy?

Jen: he's feeling like himself.........which is an unknown...

me: so where was Banksy staying this whole time?

Jen: my place.

Banksy at Jen's place: the minute-long Burger King commercial where the new president kicks the creepy King plastic-head-can't-talk-mouth mascot out of his hostel and vows to make the Whopper taste like it did in the '80s, that's the only thing that gives me hope for the world right now!!!

bodega: it has to have a coin-operated horsey ride out front for the kids.

Sorsby: forget the NFL, i'm entering the supplemental Scooby draft. i bet you i can solve the mystery of the old miner, grow the first goatee in the '70s on my chin, become Shaggy, and disappear.

Fred: none of us had jobs, we all just wandered the countryside solving mysteries in our van for free. we'd eat when we'd drive into the city...

Lili Estefan: Rauly? Raulie?

Raul De Molina: no, Rauli to match with Lili...

Atom Egoyan: omg my daughter Lucine in Calendar is Paris Jackson!!!

Paris Jackson: no it's the Afghan Girl from that famous National Geographic cover.

Lucine: ONLY an Armenian name...

the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man: but i was a gentle giant. i don't get it, look at my derpy face, i have a derpier face than Barbarino.

live-shooter drill in the town square: does this make you feel safer? or more scared? let's have a multicultural parade here instead.

Trump: the only way this ALL ends is.........the 2028 general election.........maybe...

Christiane Amanpour: Bosnia vs. the U.S. brings back those old '90s memories when your dad fell in love with me.

dad: Sarajevo. the war. Christiane poured the news into me with a mother's pat. swaddling me in a working mother's pillowy towel. despite being at work she gave me soft yogurt when i came home from school at 3PM...

Christiane: i will always be the greatest Iranian who ever lived...

Suzy Lu wearing a Luffy hat: i'm ready, where do i enlist in the Tartan Army? it's an anime club, right?

Michael Stipe: the "Stand" lyrics make sense if you're a human compass...

Waldo: ...

Rush: the trees...

Chris Elliott: i choked on my cereal and went to Heaven, that's the dream of every single man living with his parents. while up there Abraham Lincoln punched me in the gut. i was witness to Honest Abe's legendary wrestling moves up close.

The Music Man: the ULTIMATE musical.

Anderson Cooper: ...

Lifetime Movies: Hallmark Movies with crime...

black Playboy Bunny: is this progress?...

me: i'm off.

Jen R: leaving?

me: not right.

Jen: have a honey yogurt, it'll restore your pH balance. 

Jamie Lee Curtis: which is just your mental balance. i do NOT look good with long hair...

Jen: why is all the honey yogurt at your place hard?!!!! 

me: i need a chisel, not a spoon.

Jen: there's no such thing as Iranian frozen yogurt...

me: why does all my milk taste metallic? the expiration date is July 4.

Jen R: revolutions are messy, they require guns.

me: and the Heinz Chili Sauce.

Jen: right? it's just ketchup, they forgot to put chilis in there, all the bottles look the same.

our dusty-green telephone sits on top of an unfinished Banksy street stencil about the Three-State Solution in army-fatigue green that looks like olive-branch green. 

me: i give up, all spaghetti sauce tastes terrible. 

Jen R at my place: Rao's Marinara. and homestyle mini-meatballs. the Kraft parmesan cheese in the green shaker is more powdery than you remember from the '80s. there, you've reclaimed your spaghetti for dinner!!!

me: i am devoted to you.  

BANKSY'S SECRETARY: PUFFA

 

Jen R on the powder-green telephone: i gotta go, Banksy is depressed.

me on the phone: talk to you soon.

Jen: i'm not a psychiatrist.

me: i don't trust clinical psychiatrists, only street psychiatrists.

Jen: so i set him up with a friend to talk to. he needs a friend, not a doctor. 

Banksy at his place: i'm freaking out, man.

Harvey Pekar: calm down, Banksy. be chill like me. it's not that bad. life is happy.

Banksy: for you always but not me this time. i'm peak stress. i wish i could hide from everyone forever.........wait, that's what i'd BEEN doing!!! i can never hide again.

Harvey: listen, Robin.

Banksy: at least call me Davey!!!

Harvey: do you know why i went BUCK WILD on Letterman that one time? they didn't feed me in the dressing room, i was HUNGRY!!!

Jen R: okay we can talk. crisis averted. all i have to do is fetch Banksy a Puffa jacket so he feels like a New Yorker again. so he feels he can blend into the crowd again. 

me: i'm at church with Jaleel White's mom, she wears all-white: dress, hat, heel shoes, gloves. her fellow church divas are all little old short ladies in eggshell blue: dress, hat, heel shoes, gloves. she lines the church ladies all neatly up in a row in the pew and SLAPS them all across the face in one fell gloved swoop slap for disrespecting her son for being Urkel.

Jen: that was a surreal one. your dreams are always so much more interesting than your real life...

Lorne Michaels: you want living history? watch the first SNL after a new American President has taken office...

Hunter S. Thompson: don't be afraid of me, i'm just Ernest from Ernest Goes to Camp...

Denny's: there is nothing more moldy than three blue dots in your giant potato pancake that's been sitting in your fridge for four months in our impossible-to-open suction-suck circle black containers.

Marketa Vondrousova: listen man, it's not like that, man.

Scooby-Doo: it was market forces. people don't buy Vidal Sassoon no more.

Marketa: my new husband Shaggy, man, we solve crimes in a van. is the dog talking or is that the weed talking? we're children of the flower. i don't like the popo knowing about me, knowing where i am at all times, knowing where i'm going, harassing me, having me on file.

Chutes and Ladders: if Sesame Street was a board game...

Trading Places: who knew Coleman could act?...

Don Ameche: i'm pizza.

Lili Estefan: when do the soccer players go to the bathroom?

Raul De Molina: that's what the hydration break is for, Lili: pee.

Lili: what if they have to go poo, Rauly?

Raul: they poo on the pitch, Lili. they pinch one out on the pitch.

Melissa Maker: when the next man comes along? well he won't be wearing a cowboy hat, this is Canada, not Mexico!!!

Chad Reynolds: ...

me: i love you.

Jen R: you wouldn't say that if you saw me now. i'm fat.

me: bah!!! i love your soul, not your body.

Jen: you say that but...

me: oh now i get it, the puffa jacket was for YOU!!! to hide your whale body in shame.

Jen: i'm not THAT bad. huh, maybe i can believe a man in this one instance...

Jen R on the dusty-green phone: Calendar teaches us to always respond to messages. 

me on the phone: there's nothing worse than unanswered letters.

Atom Egoyan: call her back while naked on a leather couch.

BANKSY'S SECRETARY: REFRIGERATOR IN THE WILD

me on the phone: I WANNA HAVE YOUR BABIES!!!

Jen R on the powder-green telephone: i told you never to call me at work.

me: it's your first day?

Jen: maybe. i'm Banksy's secretary.

me: so your job doesn't officially exist.

Jen: exactly. let's keep it on the down low. well it used to be that way until he was outed...

Jen: okay i guess we can talk on the powder-green telephone now.

me: dusty-green.

Jen: it's not like it's being tapped, MI6 doesn't care about Banksy. speaking of work...

me: you're not gonna believe this but i have a job, too!!!

Liza: i'm showing him how to stock shelves at Safeway. i tell him it's just like stocking books at his old library job.

me stocking stacks. ah Berkeley, you made me cry. stocking zines is just like stocking fishsticks.

Jen: well a grocery store is a food library. hi Liza, i'm not jealous.

Liza: have you seen the Bank of America sign lately? there are crows on it!!! that's a bad sign...

LensCrafters in the back of the mall: we have SportsCenter...

Riding Bean: see it's Chicago but it's anime...

Vinicius Junior: i don't play for Brazil, i play for Ancient Rome...

Harvey Pekar: remember when the worst thing you could call someone was a shill for GE?

David Letterman: General Electric is now one bitcoin. let's go to the Obama Library together, Harvey. 

Joyce Brabner: your voice becomes clear when you're yelling, Harvey...

Melissa Maker: they say keep busy as a divorcee, keep doing that job where you tricked the world by getting paid for doing what you love. it's about passion, right? be prepared for when the next man comes. but how do you know there's gonna BE a next man around the corner? i'm Jewish, we don't fall for that life bullshit. most Jewish people end up atheist. i'm 40 but i still got the insane tits. these tits can still be a gift for someone new!!! old milk jugs don't clump. what if there's no one? can there be a someone special after 40?...

Henry Winkler: why did you start barfing when Happy Days switched to a live studio audience?

Ron Howard: craft service switched to shark sandwiches...

Joanie: i love Chachi? *vomit* 

a European in Costco: this store scares me...

Mitch Hedberg in soccer Norway gear: right? why does it have to be so cavernous of a warehouse? i got lost in a Costco once. i slept in the freezer aisle for 30 days, i didn't know Costco had beds. there is no such thing as a broken escalator because it turns into a Viking ship.

at the World Cup.

a soccer player kicks another soccer player in the nose with the soccer ball. 

soccer player: he was stealing my joy!!!

referee: i'll allow it. no yellow card.

Atom Egoyan: my work has been described as elliptical. that is the perfect revenge for all those math teachers in Canada who said i'd never amount to anything despite me with my glasses looking like a math nerd.

Atom Egoyan in Calendar: great, my first onscreen cameo and i'm giving off Woody Allen vibes...

Messi: Lionel Messi, not Little Messi...

Tom Hanks: in Cast Away when i finally reunite with Helen Hunt after being on an island with a beard and a talking volleyball for four years, i make this gesture, i just wasn't there, it's false, it's me, it's not Chuck Noland.

Helen Hunt: when you say to me "you make me want to be a better man" and then you give me the finger.

Wilson the volleyball: but when you CRIED when i "died," Mr. Hanks, those tears were REAL, man, they moved me.

Jack Nicholson: cast away, not castaway, get it?...

Jen: okay we can talk. i'm on the phone all day. there's nobody here.

me: are you at a secret location?

Jen: home is where the heart is. instead of visiting my mom i coulda bought a new refrigerator...

me: remember the refrigerator episode of Punky Brewster?

Jen: left me and all kids scarred for life. nightmares from childhood. poor Cherie Johnson, that refrigerator in the wild was ominous, growing like a weed in that junkyard.

our cats: we stay under your refrigerator because it's a WARM spot...

Jen: does your refrigerator make that SIGHING sound like it's a heavy-breather phone call from the '70s?

Punky Brewster: kids, don't go inside a refrigerator that's outside...
 

ASKED AFTER: DUTCH UNCLE

 

Liza: your house is weird.

me: you made it normal.

Liza: it's just, there's no tablespace, there's no space on any table in this whole house where i can place the Sprite Pints!!! i also can't sit down anywhere, all the chairs are full of your dirty laundry.

me: you can sit on the bed but that's a technical foul.

Liza: why do you like me? i'm a grandmother, i'm too old for this wild shit.

me: next time don't be so friendly :)

Liza: all grandmothers are friendly because they can't believe they've lived this long!!! 

me: doesn't it get lonely at the sports bar?

Liza: grandmas shouldn't really be drinking beer, right?

Michael Weiss: don't add music to your Instagram post, people will just start humming the song and ignore the important words you wrote...

Bart Simpson: nothing ruins a summer more than a drop of new Simpsons episodes in July.

Marge Simpson: episode dump. like i'm doing right now, taking a dump in Bart's bathroom.

Bart: keep summer simple: a Don't Have A Cow, Man T-shirt that Mrs. Rossi disliked at Target.

Molly Qerim: omg imagine me as the First Lady. i'd be Melania but cool.

Atom Egoyan: look at us, we look like brothers.

Zalman King: Armenian brothers. we should do a film together, we explore the same themes.

Atom: Avo, a film about Avo Babian.

Avo Babian: no sex, just dentistry, but none of that Marathon Man stuff. 

Zalman: seeing it: LASIK in the back of a mall like A Clockwork Orange.

Atom: i need that. glasses are so '90s.

Harvey Pekar: there is no sweeter day in your entire miserable existence than when your errand for the afternoon is moving your girlfriend's stuff into your apartment...

Wikipedia: the place where everyone dies...

Charles Nelson Reilly: a terrycloth shirt is just the top half of a robe.

Kaye Stevens: can i call you Nelson?

Charles Nelson Reilly: call me Dude...

Barry Bonds: wait, the only hall of fame i can get into is the COLLEGE Baseball Hall of Fame? but everyone took the clear and the cream in college as practice for the big time!!!

Banksy: Banksying? do not be naming a toxic dating trend after me, my art is the ANTITHESIS of toxic, my art heals. art is not an Irish Goodbye, it's permanent. all you have to do is tell her where you're going!!!

match game: Joyce Bulifant's un-bra'd Mrs. Brady tits, not a soccer friendly between the U.S and Australia. everyone knows Cape Verde's winning the World Cup.

Willy Wonka: in Carmel the sidewalks are cobblestone...

Raul De Molina: when i was on safari and my little red car caught on fire, i took it as a sign from God, you know Dios, that he wanted me to lose weight. i was put in this world to run with the elephants...

Lili Estefan: mundial. but the Copa Mundial doesn't matter.

Liza: after we fucked, any food you get at Safeway will never taste the same.

me: why does fucking change the taste of food?

Liza: Chef Boyardee told me when i was a college girl that it had something to do with the nature of Italian love.

me: i can never go back to Safeway again.

Liza: i don't want you to starve. that's why we gotta go back to me just being your checker.

me: yes, please do a wellness check on me daily, you're nearby.