JEN THE CONFESSOR: THE WOMAN ASKS THE MAN OUT

 

Jen R: we're helping out some folk today.

Jack Tripper: you're asking a man out on the corded tan telephone by the fern?

Janet Wood: and why not, Jack Tripper!!! it's better than sitting on this ratty couch all Saturday night like a sad lump.

Jack: huh. you know i've never really thought about it. why not that is. and i read Playgirl.

Larry Dallas: Janet Janet Janet, the man asks the woman out, it's just been the way of the world since recorded history.

Janet: the way of the jungle more like it.

Larry: why do you think i wear these garish gold chains over my wombat chest hair? so i'm always at the ready to get naked at a moment's notice.

Janet: this is all Medieval monks' fault. cavewomen earned the bread but nobody reads their history.   

Jen R: i'm thinking about this. why EXACTLY don't women ask men out?

Janet: they feel if a woman asks a man out, it means she's desperate.

Jen: yeah i'm thinking about this.........i don't see that tho. especially if the woman is hot, that necessarily means she could get any man she wants so there's no desperation there. i see it the other way: the woman taking INITIATIVE in a chauvinist world to go after and get what she wants, that's HOT. drive is SEXY.

me: sure would be a weight lifted off my shoulders. i sweat over the phone. i have skinny shoulders, i don't need burden, i need Borders.

Jen: okay so let's do this for real.

Janet: right.

Jack enters the apartment.

Jack: Janet, i peed in the houseplants. but only because Furley wouldn't fix the toilet.

RF: as the kids' landlord let me just say, i love those three. four, whatever. who's Chrissy? she told me over the phone to hate fruitcake...

Jack shuffling the mail: i haven't paid rent in 8 years...

Janet: Jack, never mind all that.........will you go out with me? 

Jack: um.........yeah. over the course of 8 seasons you're the only woman who sees ME, not my body. we really should have gotten married.

Vicky: hey, i agree, too. Jack and i are an awkward match. i have the personality of laundry detergent. i'm more suited for a judge...

Jen R: hey, what are you doing?

me: i don't know.

Jen: you spent all morning with a headache? it's the afternoon now, boy, you can't function like this!!!

me: i know but pills scare me now. all food and drink tastes slightly off.

Jen: you gotta take the two Vanquish in the morning. especially if you have a headache. it's the only way. water won't help. water tastes disgusting to the human stomach.

me: i'd be dead without you.

Jen: got any Clorets gum?

me: i wish. breath deodorant. green gum. barrel-shaped.

Jen: i'd get a CASE of Clorets at Costco in the '80s. 80 packs of gum. each pack 20 gum. i'd shovel the whole pack of Clorets in my mouth in one fell swoop, it was better than smoking.

Jen: our lazy mall days are over. all the '90s stores no longer exist: Wet Seal.

me: i always thought they made computers in Wet Seal. The Limited.

Jen: The Limited was so limited i never saw one. Sharper Image.

me: where everyone bought a new TV to see that Michael Jackson music video. Borders.

Jen: remember when Borders were innocent places? Barnes & Noble always had a cobblestone fountain in the middle of the bookshop.

me: no pee, just pennies. the water was bronze, not green.

Jen: ferns everywhere at a Barnes & Noble, ferns on the stairs, ferns in the corners, it was quite the lovely jungle.

crosses on collars: nurses, not priests.

Tom Noonan: my voice is UNSETTLING.

Judy Landers: i mean you look at me and you know that i did all the voices on Animaniacs.

Rachel Nazarian: if Melissa Maker became a doctor...

Spalding Gray: i was a singer-songwriter. i didn't do lectures, i did art.

Aryna Sabalenka: sorry for signing your forehead, Jimmy Fallon, i thought you were the camera...

Timothee Chalamet: EsDeeKid? nah nah nah, my English accent is terrible, have you seen Willy Wonka?

Dot from It's a Living: i want to ask him out, but it'll look like i'm desperate.

Jen R: break free, woman. i mean you are Top Ten most gorgeous woman who ever lived on the planet. okay so it's the series finale, the last scene, so let's do the scene for real!!!

Dot: okay. 

Sonny: a beautiful woman's gonna ask me out? me? Sonny Mann? i can't process this. my life is a lie. up is down, right is left, and the sky is green. wait, this is Earth we're talking about here, the sky will never be green... 

Dot: Sonny, will you go out with me?.........omg, that just hit me.........the fact that Sonny Mann really is my soulmate!!!

 

JEN THE CONFESSOR: McDONALD'S IS CLOSED

Zalman King: you know that final trapeze-artist angel episode we did? i did it on a broken foot.

me: how broken was it?

Patricia Louisianna Knop: just the top part. my foot was broken too, slightly. 

Jen R: now THAT's a marriage team!!! not the consultants and counselors, the real people.

Patricia: it was the type of thing where it was a nuisance to direct and make writing changes to the script with the foot pain in the back of your head. but it didn't REALLY require a cast, you know? and this dialogue i was coming up with was sizzling. it could heal on its own, we didn't have time to go to a country hospital in Romania where we were shooting, that shit's expensive. i was thinking of the CAST...

Zalman: what the fuck's private equity, you know? i'm a painter, not the business world, i need my mind and water-based paints clear. there were these four Romanian nurses there on set from the hospital with those curious red-outlined crosses on their lapels that look like Klingon symbols.

Patricia: Romulan, dear, get with the kids. i raised our kids, i got tired of the smut. just saying, everything gets worn out after a while. why are nurses' outfits the only ones you can go to the club with?

Zalman: one of our peerless nurse crew asked me if i wanted a foot rub, a foot massage. i swear i needed one in the MEDICAL way...

the clerk at the dentist's office: look i lost your file. don't worry about it, go potty. okay? i go potty, you go potty, the dentist goes potty before your root canal. we're ensuring a good outcome here.

Tim Conway: not insuring it. i LOVE golf. i hope you can forgive me. i poo'd in a golf lake ONCE.

Jen: those manila folders were so cool in the '70s in offices. you wouldn't have lost the page if it was snugly placed between the folds of a manila folder, that's why it's called a folder not a holder...

Walker: do you know how many DECADES OF IMPRESSING i have to do before...

Jackie: before what? before i finally say it's okay and i go ahead and suck your dick?

Walker: before two souls fall in love?

Jackie: better.

Walker: .........it's just.........you know it's the chainsawing Christmas trees, going to computer school, turning away the plumber and the electrician, walking Falkor-sized dogs, carrying on my shoulder a full California Redwood trunk as i cross the street alone in the fog...

week to week: weak.

Kristen Stewart: acting is inherently unmasculine. it requires vulnerability. have you ever seen a female Method actor?

Meryl Streep: well me but i got into Stanislavski so i could scrub off Ethan Hawke's beard.

LARGE Santa lawn balloons: you want us this Christmas? you're gonna have to CHASE us...

Kirstie Alley a CONTESTANT on Match Game: yeah it's Kirstie. unusual name, huh, Gene? MEMORABLE name though, maybe i should be an actress. i'm an "interior designer" now. but now that i see a young 18-year-old fresh-faced Jamie Lee Curtis on the panel, i'm thinking i can take her...

Jen R: there was that one time you were ADORABLE to me.

me: just once?

Jen: when you were going on about Dutch ovens. how you wanted your Dutch oven the color of Kurt Cobain's powder-blue guitar. like you were sincerely talking about cooking, not farts, you watched a ton of PBS cooking shows and you wanted to learn to cook spaghetti in a Dutch oven, it was adorable. tender, not like the chicken you cooked in there that sent me to the dentist. 

 

 

JEN THE CONFESSOR: DELIRIOUS WITH FEVER AND DRY COUGH

 

Walker squeezes the driving wheel of his kei truck.

Walker: i ain't that pretty boy Josh Holloway, okay? i ain't no pulchritudinous pansy like Sawyer from Lost. 

Jackie Fitzgerald in the passenger's: why did you take up with me?

Walker: look i'm gonna be honest, my dick is SLIGHTLY above average in size. i really just wanted it to get sucked ONE TIME by the mouth of that hot aunt at the Christmas party. 

Jackie: and you wonder why we don't discuss having kids.

Jen R in the back: you guys gotta calm down. live the life of Tommy Brennan suddenly walking down the street.

Walker: real good one time, balls and all.

stay good: stay gold at the barbershop.

Urkel: listen, me as a father? i wouldn't remember ANY birthdays. my wife's birthday, my mom birthday, my grandmama's birthday. i'm just over here by the snacks, you know what i'm sayin'?

Excedrin: the red pill...

Pablo Torre: political fellatio. yeah i said it.

Uqora: i mean UTI doesn't really affect the man, you know?

Hanako Montgomery: i was in my pajamas during the Tokyo tsunami.

Wolf Blitzer: not lingerie swimwear? awww...

Rambo: the rules of war matter. remember, i'm the most famous P.O.W. ever.

Led Zeppelin: after a LIFETIME building a resume that merits a Kennedy Center Honor, we have to get it handed to us by Donald Trump?!!! are you fucking kidding us?!!!

Mister Rogers wearing a conductor's cap: i'm sorry but there's gotta be something less strenuous than working on the railroad just to pass the time away. you'll pass away if you continue.

dad: all the live-long day, nobody says that anymore.

Jen: what's with the 2AM packages?

Walker: say what?

Jackie: oh sorry about that, you hear the FedEx truck at 2AM, right?

Jen: it's all good, i put on my fuzzy Snoopy earmuffs to drown out the moaning.

Jackie: yeah i really get into it. i lose myself in the ecstasy. i still have the butt of a 30-year-old. 

Jen: what's in all those large purple cardboard boxes that get dropped at your gate? night deliveries are freaky.

Jackie: just your standard BDSM stuff for older couples: whips, boots, plates.

Jen: i'm the next house over, don't worry about it.

Jackie: but we haven't been receiving our packages this week. did you do something?

Jen: yeah it's all good, we just REALLY needed our sleep this week. me has BAD headaches and i'm trying to figure out what he's got: general fever, covid, jaw misalignment, caregiver stress, or that concussion he got at acting camp in '96.

Walker: we haven't done it all week. are you punishing me?

Jackie: yes. remember when you left your chainsaw on our roof?...

 

DAD WRITING FOR ZALMAN KING: I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S YOU

 

Jen and i are invited to the house of Zalman King and Patricia Louisianna Knop.

Jen R: it's not a house, it's an art house.

me: let's take this opportunity to explore.

Jen: i'm sure they won't mind.

we see the entire square area lined with TINY red-clay pots. 

Jen: and sword ferns. you know it's a hip pad when the front door SLIDES.

me: see i've always wanted this for you and me. a husband and wife not just of love but of art.

Jen: GIANT marble statues in every color in the living room. with faces like Mayan gods and goddesses yet also strangely the faces of our family, friends, and neighbors...

Kevin Costner: the Color of the Year is Cloud Dancer White. remember when i was Dances With Wolves? i was more genial towards and accepting of people who didn't look like me. integrative of different cultures. one with the Indians, not the cowboys. i gotta stop doing those Fox specials...

Apple phones: we took a VapoShower...

VICKS: should have been called VapoHaler.

Clint Eastwood: the musical song should have been "Paint My Wagon" to have it be the gay anthem we all wanted it to be.

Cindy Bear: i should have stayed in my cave to avoid covid...

tidings: only on Christmas.

Blue McDonald: how many times do i have to say it? even if you're a whore the meaning of life is FRIENDS. sometimes you only find friends at school...

Blue McDonald: my favorite song? "Rock Around the Clock," i guess. i hate farms. poodle skirts are so chintzy, i'd rather have a poodle.

Bart Braverman: i have the standard Native American name. so what am i doing on the set of Vega$? i should be doing Dances With Wolves and Northern Exposure. oh, the casinos, that's dirty rotten lowdown.

what's the meaning of this?: nobody says this anymore.

Sophie Throckmorton: you thought i was gonna be the villainess, huh?...

Zalman King: so what? so what if i offer you a writing contract? what episode will you contribute to add to the Red Shoe Diaries lore? 

Zalman: wait, let me turn my back to you. not out of rudeness, so you can sign the contract.

Jen: this is such a '90s thing, remember when people used their backs as tables?

dad: well i was thinking of the Amber Smith episode.

Udo Kier: why must i always play the weirdo? look at my face. do i look like i'm hiding something?

dad: the Bulgarian revolutionary, remember?

Patricia: oh yeah.

dad: picture it: a Bulgarian revolutionary. barechested in a silk shirt on a hill. and the single mother in peasant garb who's forced to flee her cow farm after her soldier husband dies in the war. what happens when these two literally bump into each other, bump heads, when they're both running away fleeing their country...

Zalman: milk farm, i get it, i like it. lots of milk everywhere. 

Patricia: the open fields. we'll have a lovemaking scene next to a cow.

Jen: another stupid war. war is stupid, it has never solved anything. not even a cold snap. the only thing war is good for is war romance...

dad: i'll write THAT episode...