THE MAN WHO SLOWLY STOPPED TALKING: VANDERBILT VIM

 

Tai: so why have you stopped talking?

Luke Russert: i volunteered to be Gloria Vanderbilt's caregiver. she was getting on in years. as a favor for my fellow newsman buddy Anderson Cooper. i was all ready to hear the juicy stories, how Cameron Crowe had bought at auction the secret love letters Frank Sinatra penned for Gloria Vanderbilt. well i get there and she's a dry zucchini!!! she doesn't say ANYTHING!!! when you tell her something she forgets it one minute later. slowly i start to learn that it's useless trying to talk to her, i realize that it's better to just not talk anymore altogether...

Tai: oh come on, she wasn't that bad. why she did that thing just recently, right?...

*gauzy gauzy gauzy*

Gloria Vanderbilt: yes i am wearing the jeans. dears and gentlehearts i must tell you that just because you're old doesn't mean happy hour needs to end. a grandma can still have her strawberry margarita. so i petitioned on behalf of the people to have a law passed that continued serving alcohol at nursing homes. i drove up to my home in a Munsters buggy with my crate of Zima. Morrissey was there at my party.

Morrissey: this isn't my Uncola!!!

Gloria: that Morrissey, he's such a dear. he is so zany.

Anya Taylor-Joy: women don't Method-act because we have things to take care of and can't be assholes on set. 

Uta Hagen: that is very insightful, young woman. i am sorry for creating Nicolas Cage...

Andy Murray: now it's Chipotle jalapenos? now you'll REALLY never see my brother playing tennis again. is he my twin brother? Jamie is a girl's name.

Jamie Murray: i'm just the brother, why bother.

Cindy Lorenz: does this mean no Del Monte Center date?...

Safeway customer: can i talk to you about the troubles in my life?

Chola Butt: i mean not right at this moment. you know? i'm stacking the dental floss here. the floss that still has the wax. that's what a date is for.

Safeway customer: can we go on that date on your lunch hour?...

Christopher Nolan: okay but why am i THE ONLY PERSON who gets to do these things?...

Last Action Hero: the villain is Evil Prince Harry?

Evil Prince Harry: i've killed people smarter and younger than you. 

Austin O'Brien: i'm ten years old, that is such a weird sentence to say. you're saying you killed, like, Jimmy Neutron?

Charles Dance: i was born NOT to be a coalminer...

Glen Hansard: Irish sodabread is made of tears.

Marketa: it tastes like the swollen season...

pickleball: we tried to be cool and different like ping-pong or table tennis but it didn't work.

Nell Carter: i knew i was the fat lady. so i did it all in my 30s. i lived my whole life in my 30s: the Broadway fame, the TV show, the heavyset sex, the opera, the love.

Blossom's brother: you got your break...

Robert Redford: i didn't want the Hollywood fame. i just wanted to be the Gorton Fisherman and call it a day.

Caped Crusader: sometimes at night there are people in a museum who are there cleaning the glass case housing the crown jewels...

Shorey Wesen: my boyfriend looks like a Callum...

Luke Russert: where do i go from here?

Tai: you have to learn how to talk again. to women. as friends. i'll teach you...

THE MAN WHO SLOWLY STOPPED TALKING: SOCKS ON SHINS

 

at Luke Russert's podcast.

Glen Hansard: still no response from Marketa?!!! that is COLD. let's face it, i went out EXACTLY how i wanted.

Kurt Cobain: yeah, artists don't want to live to 100 years old, it's just too much for us, we can't take it. there's just too much depression in life to have it be a LONG life...

Glen: motorbikes and music, you know? Dylan Moran giving the drunken eulogy. why is Irish folk on an acoustic always so sad?

Treat Williams riding a scooter in a nursing home sings "I Got Life" from Hair...

Luke Russert: come together, people.

Gilligan: okay how do you wear your socks? pull them all the way up or left at the shin?

Kurt Cobain: i'm grunge so i go barefoot in the woods like a lumberjack.

Gilligan: i see, you're a grunge gringo so i should follow your priceless advice. i get desert-island sand in my socks. i leave them on the shin like i was left at the altar by Mary Ann.

Gene Rayburn: the Match Game black magic-markers are permanent.

Charles Nelson Reilly: can you draw a penis on my face? purely for the college prank of it.

parmesan chicken noodle soup: some things just aren't worth trying to create, you know?...

Pasqually: leave the cheese to me.

Chuck E. Cheese: some experiments should remain experiments...

Mr. Munch: i ain't mad at Grimace, look what happens to livestreamers. all he made was evaporation. 

chicken noodle: like chicken chow mein. not the soup. from the Chinese restaurant, not the hotel the Golden Girls run...

Gilligan: at the end of Small Soldiers, the good toys are sailing to Gilligan's Island.

Nietzsche: Gilligan's Island is an example of my law of eternal return...

gangsters toting tommy guns: men can't live on tough-guyness alone. a man needs a woman.

Rose: Thorn?

Rupert Thorne: when you're a head Batman villain you can have a TV, recliner with cigar ashtray, and shower stall in your jail cell...

Allison Mack: you were the one who introduced me to a "life coach."

Kristin Kreuk: yeah, looking back, life coaches aren't the best. it's better to just take drugs alone in your room. 

Allison Mack: i should've just gone to Berkeley and become an acting coach, not a life coach!!!

PBS: life's not boring, it's endlessly fascinating, but it's found only in our documentaries...

Taco Bell: it's time for us to do black beans again...

BombPoppie: i am right now riding the Great Space Coaster...

new... : ...no, you don't want news, you want the exact opposite of news: New Orleans food with Kevin Belton.

The Joy of Sex (1984): not a good idea to have a Venus de Milo as your school statue out on the front lawn of a public high school...

Gilligan: Gen X was the 13th generation, that waterlogged my brain, i never noticed that before.

Kurt Cobain: i TOLD you guys we were all doomed. the 13th generation of Americans on this land starting from Benjamin Franklin.

Gilligan: so we're all Ben Franklin's children?...

Rigby: STOP TALKING!!!

Tai: who's that talking rodent in the corner there?!!!

Luke Russert: how'd you get in the podcast booth?  

THE MAN WHO SLOWLY STOPPED TALKING: COLDWAY

 

Luke Russert: hello ONCE again and welcome to my podcast The Russert Reach.........i dunno, folks, i just can't do this anymore, i don't feel jokey.

Tai: what's the matter, babe? you're live on air.

Luke: i just don't feel i can put on the act anymore. i can't be Mark Twain ALL the time.

Tai: then be Samuel Clemens. 

Luke: can the audience at home hear my audible sighs?...

Luke: i'm finding it hard to talk. about anything anymore. from now on i'm a character called Coldway who doesn't talk. our first guest is Chola Butt i mean Sue from Safeway.

Chola Butt: actually my real name is Lourdes.

Liza: i KNEW it!!! i had that at the craps table last night. it's LEEZA because i'm Eliza.

Chola Butt: but you could also be e-LIE-za... 

Austin O'Brien: watch Last Action Hero and Small Soldiers at the same time, i dare you.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: weren't you that brat from Facts of Life? Alex P. Keaton's little brother on Family Ties? Alex P. Keaton would be me as President...

Austin O'Brien: i look like an Olympian's son, the son of a decathlete who came in fourth in Los Angeles... 

Burt Wolf: i'm Burt Reynolds playing the part of Rick Steves. i'm everyone's Jewish uncle. i look like an '80s Knight Rider villain. i'm the guy that stays at the restaurant all day drinking just one bottle of wine...

Geoff Edwards: may all your troubles be zapped. wasn't that a heartfelt prayer? you can pray at an arcade. The Big Spin wheel was better than the Wheel of Fortune wheel because it was tinier and cuter, a pocketsize wheel. Saturday at 7PM right before Small Wonder, 1987. taped in the same studio as American Gladiators. as the wheel spun i'd distract the contestants with small talk to ease their nerves, Pat Sajak never did that!!! sometimes that wheel spun so hard it'd take 5 minutes to stop. the ball would jump out of the wheel and land in the live studio audience. red red green. the prank calls that weren't prank calls. remember when your AYSO soccer coach won the Grand Prize?...

Xoxo: when you kiss my ceramic Mexican-trinket lips you think of Mercedes Ruehl...

daiquiri ice cream: it just turns to ooze...

Patti Smith visits The Pope.

Robert Mapplethorpe: i was Catholic.........but i liked to have a good time...

Panera: you always think of Aeon Flux...

Quonset hut: Star Wars hut.

me: how do you deal with all the shedding?

Trinity the cat: you don't. that's what happens when you get old. and hairy.

me: my hair is a tribute to Della Reese's fro on Match Game.

Austin O'Brien: i wish i had come out of Soledad O'Brien but i'm just Conan O'Brien's kid.

Conan O'Brien: son, i need comfort, you're the only family i have left...

CNN Miles O'Brien: my name-twin Star Trek Miles O'Brien used this transporter here to make me a new arm.

Soledad O'Brien: but can it bring me back my David Bloom?...

Michael Weiss: yellow flags now? if you date on Instagram looking ONLY for flags, you're gonna end up alone waving all your flags...

Tidy Bowl Man: i used to be the Gorton Fisherman until i ate too many minnows and guppies instead of straight sticks. i used to catch brown sharks on my line, now i catch only logs of poo. i developed a philia for staying in your toilet tank, scared to venture out into the All Blue...

garbage disposal: don't eat cottage cheese!!!...

that's so cool: because that's cool just sounds sarcastic...

Luke Russert: now we have *puts on eyeglasses* Boomy Chipmunk? a cool new goth-grandma youtuber, that's what it says on the card.

Boomy Reactions: i'm a mum thank you very much. but i still have my body. i still have my long midnight-black hair.

Tai: you're beautiful. these days being all tatted-up is the norm.

Tai: she's a laugh, i dig her stuff. and Luke, honey, when did you start wearing eyeglasses?...

Boomy Reactions: why do you think i'm laughing all the time? shrieking like a banshee at all cartoons equally. to curb the depression from being a dental assistant!!! ironically i wear adult braces...

Suzy Lu: the British dental industry has ALWAYS been bad. 

Luke: Family Guy is one of those shows that was more offensive than you remembered...

Boomy: well? on with it. i'm here to talk about how i discovered "Alone + Easy Target" sounded like "Orange Crush..."

 

DARTMOUTH DIGS: IT'S MASSIVE TO GET ON TV

 

Lis Smith sits quietly ensconced in the auditorium audience, satisfied with her love life and not needing to talk all the time, willing to listen. and she's listening now as her man is back up on that stage again:

Lis Smith: my man, my Beakman.

Beakman: they want me to do this show teaching science to kids. PIZAZZ science up, they tell me. i'm like only if i get to kick that mook Bill Nye the Science Guy's ass, i say that to all the studio executives in the pitch room with my Brooklyn accent to put a scare in em, make em think i'm in the mob.

the audience laughs. 

Beakman: they're like we're gonna pair you with a mouseman who went to Harvard...

the audience boos.

Beakman: ...and the standard babe lab assistant. at first it was Eliza Schneider and i'm like okay. then it was Alanna Ubach and i'm like okay i've seen her nudes. but then they wanted me to team up with that chubby chick from Saved by the Bell: The New Class?!!!

the audience laughs after Lis Smith because she already knows...

Quincy Jones: "Not My Lover" would have been a better song name.

Michael Jackson: no it has to be "Billie Jean" because Billie Jean King is my dream woman. i look like Billie Jean King. i'm gonna play Billie Jean King in the ABC miniseries...

Duckie Dale: i didn't get the girl. i didn't get Molly Ringwald. but that did free me up to be in the live-action DuckTales movie...

Raul De Molina: i can't do the drunk straightwalk not because of all the rum horchata i imbibe on a daily basis but because i'm fat so i fall down...

pickleball: it's just paddleball...

Scott Vander Dussen: i know that was cool and everything but there are many lifeguard rescues that happen without cameras, not everything can be a Baywatch viral moment. hidden lives matter. a life guarded is a life saved.

Norm Macdonald: i know people want more Dr. Steve Brule. but the actor HATED playing that part.

Mike Tyson: do i look good in clay?...

Andy Roddick: i always confuse my wife with your wife.

Pete Sampras: my wife was in Last Action Hero, you know the Queensryche movie. what did your wife do again?

Andy: me. 

Pete: you tried to be me but the weird thing is i ended up having a better serve than you...

Andy: i have a smarmy face because my last name has been made fun of by every single person in the world...

Genie Bouchard: i'm pretty but i can't act worth shit.

Sheldon Cooper: tell me about it, honey. 

Lis Smith: sorry babe but i can't follow you into science. i was meant to be a communications chick.

Beakman: yeah you're right that's your strong suit. you talk. i mean you talk throughout the entire process of when we make love, which is weird to me.

Lis: do i have your blessing? i'm not seeking approval but my dad was a complicated man.

Beakman: you gotta get on TV or no one will care about your nuanced views. which means a fragile country won't care about your nuanced views which is dangerous. stick with Pete Buttigieg, he's safe. don't get tangled up in the sticky web of Eliot Spitzer.

Lis: okay thanks for the fatherly advice.........wait, how'd you know what i was thinking?

Beakman: i built a time machine...