Mueller, still on top of the Cream House roof, hasn't slept a wink and is trying not to add to the color. he wearily raises his hand but it's too heavy even for a pen. he lies back down on the cold roof. he's never given up in his life but he's tired.
President Bump gets the lithe lilac curtain stuck in his hair.
Bump: you share my grogginess. are you still holding up?
Mueller: trying to. holding out. you're not gonna...you know.
Bump: i'm keeping my hands in front of me at all times so i can see them, which isn't an easy task. they're blue. always on lockdown watch.
The Doctor flies on Aladdin's carpet to the center of the Cream House staging area on the roof.
The Doctor: i'm The Doctor. fear not, i'll be taking over this investigation. needs a new face, new perspective, aye? you're not indignant of a female boss, are you?
Bump: it's getting hot around here. and there hasn't been any rain all winter, what's going on? this is not good for my farmers. i'm gonna rub Gina De Vecchio's tits together in my hands at my computer and see if i can perform a rain dance up in here to get some wet action going. i'll whoop my flat fingers, dick-tapping my circled mouth as i holler 1940s-Indian-style. right on the front Lawn. i'll be light as a feather cos i'll wear a headdress full of 'em. my hatchet will be at my belt cos i don't need no hatchetman, i do it myself. i do still need Teri Hatcher, tho.
Mueller: Cher called you sexy.
Bump: eh. old. flexible, bendable, but old. has a weird mouth like you, Bob.
Mueller: *to The Doctor as he points to Bump* i know where he lives. but i let him escape each night and the knight chase begins all over in the morning. i want it to be celestial, it'd be too cinchy otherwise. gives me an excuse for me to whip out my
The Fugutive speech when i'm taking a dump in an outhouse cos i'm hiding, too. cat and mouse for the cheese. Heathcliff and Mickey Mouse.
Mueller: *puckered lips* the doctor?
The Doctor: Jodie Whittaker.
Laertus hides behind a bush and saintly snaps a selfie with him, the bush, and the roof above with Jodie, but when he develops it with his finger the button works too well and there's no image there.
Laertus: why can't i be happy? i ask for so little. Jodie's bucktoothed smile was so bright and warm it broke the camerascreen and i am satisfied with this. *hugs his phone*
later, at the pad in the woods, the birds are getting restless. not the brides. at the The Magical Fruit café tho:
Laertus: i like what they've done with the place. they added the The on Camus's forehead, classy.
Dirg: i really shouldn't be here. they're looking for me.
Laertus: especially after last night. first time I've breathed since hot yoga went out of style. the choice was clear: a vote for simple sanity. i must say the moon shined for me for the first time, the air felt heavy and grave with promise. like a brand new day, green was beautiful once more, so much so it was orange. i felt lighter getting up in the morning, light as a feather…
Dirg: stiff as a board for me. not a bard. not getting up.
Laertus: was it good for you, too?
Dirg: it's okay, we knew we'd have to sacrifice several election cycles to get the Court. you may be looking at a Reagan Bush Twelver in reverse and i'm happy for you. we're still ontrack for our long-term goals.
Laertus: speaking of bush, the new Doctor…
Dirg: too early. to tell. i don't want to watch it to give it numbers but it's the only thing i can glance at when i'm jogging-in-place past the Frye's Christmas window cos i can't stay in one place too long.
Laertus: holiday window, everyone skips right to Christmas. you've never exercised in your life. sweaty masturbation doesn't count. my heart leaps and melts when i see those fan drawings at the end of the recap. i see a woman's face lined in crayon and realize what an insane reversal this is, a fundamental shift, with an impact which would not have reached the blind girl by the shore who waits to hear the TARDIS hampered hum.
Dirg: too early. for specialty foreign covfefe. is that the red shiny Faema over there?
Laertus: Covfefe is now a featured artist on this café's official shrinkwrapped soundtrack which it sells on a cute cardboard stand at the counter. it can only be red. think of it as pizza coffee. let's toast you and i with a Guinness, for only with a frothy Guinness in a brown mug can we realize that our brown mugs are more alike than different. let's just pretend the coffee is Guinness.
Dirg: make and male mine frosty, and in a foam mug. i like how
The Fly starts out…
Laertus: yes, grand, me, too. it's the greatest cinematic example of
in medias res i've ever seen. and it starts the film! you're just thrown in there haphazardly right at jump like a lotto pingpong and you have no idea what's going on, it's some college mixer you've been to a thousand times but you're disoriented with the scientific gobdly and you love every inch of it cos it's new somehow in the '80s.
Dirg: i love how Goldblum doesn't drive, i latched onto that, i'm scared to drive, too, he's content to stay in the passenger seat like a good beta and just enjoy the ride. he's got more important things to do, like think in his lab his whole life. i'm glad we got that representation and he's still depicted as a cool guy.
Laertus: hey, nerds are cool. especially swole buff nerds who suddenly invented the rings in Olympic gymnastics and should go by the moniker The Jewish Hammer on NBC.
Dirg: i want the women to do the rings.
Laertus: come on. you already see they have no tits. heartbreaking, metaphor for AIDS which was raging back then.
Dirg: still is. which is a metaphor for all loneliness. Goldblum just doesn't look cool without the long hair.
Laertus: i'm sure i saw shortly after as i was an eater a McDonald's commercial with Jeff sitting on a beige table and his "cheeseburger" line with the fingers.
Dirg: yes i'm sure inside indie Cronenberg was just LOVIN' that. fixes?
Laertus: the telepods, they were out of a bad 1950s science-fiction B&W, make them modern and '60s
Star Trek teleporters with ice atoms. swingin' bachelor telepad. i loved how intimate it was, all Vancouveresque street cinema is like this, all the streets are empty and grey save for our heroes, the heroes are the only ones who seem to live in the city, making the smoke all the more sewery. i'm sorry, but despite ALL that fluid being let out, i STILL can't find Geena Davis sexy. i realize she's intellectually pretty but she's never done anything for me. no spark.
Dirg: what a surprise. none of this would have happened if he had a better computer that knew it was silly to splice. anti-abortion which i liked, the message was women don't want a baby, they just want a giant vibrator that looks like a worm, it's easier.
Laertus: business women or women who mean business? after all these years the jumpscare WASN'T SPOILED for me. i still lose it at the abortion clinic glass, brilliant. like the robot from
Alien, not spoiled for me cos i have self-control and am not online every other minute. this was really the first example of true body horror to go mainstream.
Dirg: the makeup guy won the award cos he didn't have to do much work, the face peeled off in short order, Brundlefly was not long for this world. dumb people don't realize "be afraid, be very afraid" came from this.
Laertus: no, "have some coffee with your sugar" came from this. which is what i'll have right now at this cafe. made me paranoid. now whenever i'm at a supermarket i make sure to wait an extra five minutes for all the flies to pass the sliding glass doors. i never turn on my windshield-wipers.
Dirg: no rain.
Laertus: i open the door to our house to let all the birds AND bees out, i wait five minutes, i treat the straggler fly as if it were a human, i afford them that measure of respect.
Dirg: or maybe you see the fly as human-sized.
Laertus: tragic. poor guy just wanted to be so human he was a god. he wanted to be more human than human, a creation that never before existed, we all want that. YOU, dear Dirg, are something which has never existed before and i love you for it. i'd never terminate our baby, i'd raise him by myself though i'd make sure to burp him over my shoulder and over the barrel railing of the toxic nuclear plant just in case.
Dirg: the The Joker-style. weird ending i approve. the weaselly alpha with the beard ends up being the hero despite no redeeming qualities or values or earns. janky. but i suppose they had to end it that way. which of the many alternate endings do you sign up for?
Laertus: Villains Act, Heroes React. dammit you, i'd been trying to push out all that stuff from my memory bank and into the sayings stock market to not use it anymore in daily life. which alternate ending? the one where there's no sequel. Hollywood if you're listening, NO good film EVER needs a sequel, movies were not MADE to have sequels, NONE of them!
Dirg: and why o WHY did the buxom butt babe in the jean jacket Blum picks up at the bar NOT do any more movies?!! her career abruptly disappears after the decade asudden like a hot match and no one knows why, she was on the fasttrack to soft-core greatness, she coulda been a contenda for Joan Severance! why does this always keep happening to me!!?
Laertus: the fast life has no path. she went into mystery-writing. which explains why her publishers thought her first short story would sell more than your usual autobiography.
Federer is trying to justify to himself while he's still out on a tennis court. so late. it's like shopping for groceries at midnight, it seems cool in concept but it ends up just being uncomfortable. the lights on on Savannah Guthrie's court somehow makes it worse, it amplifies the silent loneliness. the balls don't carry in this grief.
Guthrie: i shop wayfair. i do the dance and everything in my living room. and sing the jing.
Roger breaks the awkward in his customary way of pleasantly answering his Pear Watch.
Roger: Rafa, buddy, what's up with you? are you holding up? and holding on...to your pride?
Nadal: as best as i can this month, but it's the missus mistress. Chris Evert wants it BAD again. that's why i had to cancel the rest of the year: to fulfill her animal urges, it's gonna take a Christmas miracle to release all that fluid. i'm holed up here in Rome for the time being but no mucho worry mate this isn't a Cobain situation, i've already died and gone to purgatory. it's a Spanish missile crisis. i'm using that Brett Favre medicine and hope it's enough.
Fed: i feel ya, buddy, over on this pole it's...……………..aughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…….
Fed turns around to bright lights but it's not the lights! it's a whole mess pile of cracked hardboiled eggs and messy yolks everywhere taking up space in the center of the court, dropping on the net disgustingly and with sexy smell.
Roger: what? what?
Savannah: you're an android, right? all the best tennis players are. i do my research i'm not just another face, how do you think i got that job? i want to make love to you in Paris. or Rome...as the song goes...but save that let's enter each other on this bed of eggs i've prepared, soft as downy dirt from down under. this gives me the best chance to conceive a side-family with you and to continue the rich legacy of tennis!
Rog and Guthrie fuck intensely and intently and ignominiously all night long on broken shells and broken dreams and broken promises. and a broken backcourt. her creamy screams are so loud they fall and fold into the silence of the hills, his wanxious wails so whale he speaks French for the first time in a long time.
Federer: do you have a husband? check, don't answer that, i don't want to know. why does this keep happening to me?
Savannah Guthrie: simple. your're irresistible. you're the best and yet you're not cocky, which is impossible, it's as if you're a robot.
Fed: it's all camera tricks, man. everytime i sit down for an interview i'm constantly trying to make myself laugh to get through it. i tell myself jokes in my head.
the crones do their due diligence to dogcatch every one of the precious animals they strayed to fate. they ship their way to Florida where a new law has just been enacted---well written in the books anyway---to ban all dograces from the face of the state earth. then, like any good Trappist trapper, they let their little legs out of the steel trap of their willful protection and set them loose in the wild. but a funny thing happened on the way to the duo restoring order and retiring for the night ondeck after this titanic task...
Doryce: i was just about to take a shower, care to join me?
Gladyce: it's too cramped in there, the showers are the size of matchbooks.
Doryce: clever simile, now smile. you've met your match. exactly. a slit for.
Doryce can sense other water whenever she's taking a shower. she sees the waves outside in her mind and glasses-ears...and she sees ALL THE DOGS! lapping up to the side of the Titanic after they had jumped back into the ocean from the woods!
Doryce: what the? wha? i'm naked over a railing over here! what do you want?
the dogs all speak in one unified woof but there's a head dog who does the panting:
head dog: we don't care about nakedness the way you obsess over, we are unisoned in this. look, thank you kindly, really, thank you for freeing us from that asshole who was making mommy money by selling miniature horse saddles he thought were cute---his stated typed reason in his online manifesto was to make Florida weird again---but the thing is, we came back to you with our kind radar cos we actually really don't want to be out in the woods wild and free. and dusty. we want to feel pretty again, can you do us like before? with the shampoo and spray and everything? the woods are actually a very dirty place. made under our fingernails uncomfortable.
Gladyce: jump up, dears, into the shower with the lot o' you.
head dog: turns out we aren't fish, the saltwater is corroding our coats. can we take a shower in you guys' and wash it all off? the salt and the shame? we stink.
Doryce: NEVER take a shower on a cruise ship.
head dog: bet on Beto, boy can bark.
Gladyce: organizing is all the game.
Madame Pons writes in her diary as long as the stovelight stays on in the LUSH kitchen:
Madame Pons:
supplemental but official. and original. i've noticed a slight lift on campus, like a college bra. women are starting to sing as they step out again, smell the do-nuts on their way to the dairy, trying to move their professor crushes into a category something more serious. it's not much but we must have something to hang our hats on, even if we don't wear hats anymore. i'm still feeling unappreciated and underappreciated but i'm busying myself with the distraction of this egg, still can't crack the code. maybe now this opening gives me the hole i need to make me an honest woman again. brave, in need of tissues. i'm stepping out again as well, and i've decided to change the axis of the world. i'm gonna be a marriage counselor to those two rejects---rejected by their families that is---poor dears whose sexy pouts bely their grief. i'm gonna be a witness to their unholy union and hug all the hate that's been splashed on them with my hat. i'll sanctify it if their kin won't, i'll be their tribe as they set out two-by-two only two into their wilderness of loneliness. i've named this: i'm gonna be their
wild witness
good night. and may we have good nights again…
Pons falls asleep on herself. in the still of night Taki comes into LUsh to clean up after her lost sister, long-last-seen sister, and her smile breathes out as she works. she scrubs with her ringfinger not a gold-haired brush all the caked-on grease and grime brown off around the rims of all the dishes which have oiled up at her sister's workstation but it turns out this grease was the Lush soaps used to grind grime to a halt with salt. Taki adds her sweet scent to the salt, wipes quietly, loads the steal into the steel sink, finishes before Pons wakes up, and drifts away out like a thought in the dark.
Madame Pons awakens none the wiser and tries to break the egg on her sharp nipples. no crack.
Dirg: UNBELIEVABLE!!!
Laertus: zip up your fly.
Dirg: not my fault. these jeans are button-fly.
Laertus: how are you holding up, buddy?
Dirg: i'm not getting up that's the point.
Laertus: huh?
Dirg: No-Nut November. i've already failed.
Laertus: oh come on! disgust! i haven't had my eggs yet! is this what you and your little incel buddies do on youtube comment sections to keep each other alive and up and prove you exist? to encourage your egalitarian efficacy and efficiency and good egg and e-peen?
Dirg: you normies will never understand. the struggle for a Stacy is real. YOU failed NNN, too, to celebrate, don't front, you just will never admit it as i, you're not as brave online as me. i will break into that mansion...
Laertus: yeah weren't you coming from a library lecture? the classics series? the Plum Boys, right? bastion of free speech and free thought and any thought. that place looks like a library but is really the terrible ideas of an empty warehouse.
Dirg: i don't need their front anymore, i got a back: a Plum Girl. that's what happened when i failed. to a picture of her.
Laertus: you deliberately don't learn here, right? to prove a point?
Dirg: yeah well, others don't, either. that bitch is still blocking me! she is so conceited! i'm blocked from watching her show so i browse the dailies of her daily blog, this thing is a litany of how she's a better writer than ALL of the books she reviews, she's just gonna keep doing this day after day, getting fatter and fatter off herself. expend all that eternal negative energy instead of trying to write her own book again and getting out there. and the worst part is, i leave her a comment and it gets BLOCKED! she has ZERO comments what's the point!!?
Laertus: the internets is for connecting competing nets...
Dirg: i wrote this lengthy comment in her box, ALL PARAGRAPHS, the exact same lengthy conversation we had about
The Fly earlier this earlierer, burying the hatchet, all cordial-like conversation and TED talks like our talks. growing my olive branch, letting her inside me. some may say drawn-out but i wanted to get all the details right, and she doesn't have the courtesy to read it? i wonder if she just glanced at all my hard work for an hour and didn't print it for spam. well two can play that game. she'll be sorry she didn't listen to me, she coulda had in. imma get into that mansion in my own way i won't share it with nobody. and i am NOT looking at her boring blog again!
Laertus: boi you could have at least done Movember. that's what i thought you were gonna say. didn't your dad die of testicular cancer? mustaches are sexy, not beards.
Dirg: yes he did, that's why i don't do it. tho i did grow a mustache instantly right after i jacked off to and finished on Eye Luggage's picture. No-Nut Movember. like the taco girl says, 'why not both?'
Laertus: *sighs and points his finger up* check please! i mean more pots!
