THE PURPLE HOURGLASS: THE ONES WHO LOVE US WILL MISS US

Keanu Reeves at The Late Show, Keanu wearing a Wayne's World T-shirt, Colbert wearing a Beard Papa T-shirt, both under their tuxes:

Colbert: you didn't just swipe that saying from a google quote-search with the motivational mantra in front of a dying sunset behind mountains, didja?

Keanu: no, i don't steal in my life, goes against my Neo Buddhism code, the religion i invented. i got a call from my best friend Jim Carrey asking for advice about a matter, then it popped into my head. entirely my own creation. gained from my cruel experience with this life. had some family tragedies, a crucicble which makes my vote for one religion or another extremely stingy. if i told you The Brothers Karamazov was based on my life, despite that being impossible timeline-wise, would you believe me?

Colbert: yes, cos you're Neo.

Keanu: i swear, i want to be a Buddhist. but i'm just not there yet. it's pulling me there but there is mist on the bridge, and atheism seems too easy, you know? trust me, but it still hasn't made all the way sense yet, i've gotten that a lot in my career.

Chris Cuomo at the HLN Studios, the CNN Proper studios are getting a makeover (read: being fumigated). Cuomo has one glass eye. and curly hair. Cuomo is interviewing Alyssa Milano who wears a bonnet over her hair:

Cuomo: okay, i get it, sex strike, it's playful tho, right?

Alyssa Milano: dead serious. it's actually dangerous for women to have sex in this current political climate. i stand in solidarity with my dark sisters. sisters of the dark arts. Chris, we gotta be witches again, our sex is our power. you want me to wear my Bellona Warrior Princess copper kneepads and silver helmet covering my nose instead? i've got it in my Spade bag right next to my ankle bracelet here.

Cuomo: i get it, stare decisis, your eyes are like stars, let's decide to stare at them together, and all that. sex strike and the Peloponnesian Wars, was a crucial bargaining chip, helped turn the tide.

Alyssa: that's where penis comes from, Pelopopenis.

Cuomo: but there's gotta be a better way. you think you're getting twitter hate now, just wait till the incels come on board attacking you. hey, wait a minute, i'm checking my notes about you---for research---and...you're 50?!!!

President Bump: you're a GILF!!?

Alyssa: i never had an awkward stage nor phase: i was a cute kid, the girl-next-door teenager, and a hot babe adult, and now i'm a gilf. thank you for having me on not cos i'm hot but to discuss women's health. you know a woman doesn't need a man to achieve pleasure. sorry, guys. she only need use of her wand.

Cuomo: look, i mean, right, i get it, no need for apology. but you're Italian like me, too, right? it's just...okay...so you wanna after the interview go see that millennial teen movie flick about the stars? the mob is not making me go to the OC one but i'd like to have some of your protection. against pregnancy.

Maria LaRosa, one foot barefoot: see? this is what i mean. i had to say MOTHER of all storms last weekend recharge. my black man cabana boy had to say City of MOTHERLY Love. cos it was Mother's Day for him...

at the TNT Studios, which is right next door to the HLN Studios:

the original Red Circle Table is there all gathered. Ernie, Kenny, Shaq, and Bald Bull:

Ernie: not the cartoon thing with the turtles. those were the ol' '80s TNT days when it was owned by Cartoon Network. i hold a lot of secret pain about my family that the audience never sees. the fact that i can still laugh is a blessing. thank you, twitter, for my gold tooth. i come from the mean streets of Milwaukee.

Kenny: i have a daughter who raps. she invented Gansgta Walking. i don't appreciate the other panelists' comments about my daughter.

Bald Bull: you know i LOVE the NBA Draft! it's so much better than the NFL Draft, that Draft is fucking four days long!!! all wind. this NBA Draft was so fun, it's only 30 minutes, and there's a collegial atmosphere in the air, everyone all the owners and that kid owner shake hands after, Cassidy keeps it loose with the jokes, and it's just...well...it's like The Round Table in Arthurian Times used to be, people coming together gathering round a round table and discussing the issues and chastity belts of the day and shooting the breeze over mead, not Bud. real buds. everyone was wearing a suit but nobody would have minded if we were all naked. nobody cared if you were a man or a woman. the lottery used to be jovial, till stones, family tragedy, life savings, raping of the poor, and mental health got involved, stories started to be told. it was just nice and short and pleasant, like life. should be. i hope the sitcom format persists after Big Bang. and Big Bang.

Shaq, wearing a rose in his pocket: Charles, you sure you okay? you're rambling.

Bald Bull: i did get hit in the head a few times. but all boxers wear helmets now, right?

Shaq: this year's NBA Awards were lit. i mean you had that dude with the fro which i awarded cos he has a fro like me. i'm gonna be Shaft, Samuel L. Jackson can't play EVERY part. and i give an Honorary European Mention to that Ricky-dude player from Europe who would guard James Harden by literally…

Kenny: Euro step?

Shaq: no, but kinda. it was weird. Ricky would step IN BACK of James Harden's heels as Harden went for the J or 3-pointer. to prevent Harden from doing his patented juke of his shuffling feet step-back. quite innovative. never seen anything like it before, and i've seen it all. even Space Jam 3, which i will star in. and finally, the Oscar goes to Enes Kanter, for all the shit he's dealing with back home. i mean dude really can't have a moment's peace to himself, even when he's ON the court.

With Kanter, You Kan

hey, that has a nice ring to it. Enes should run for President. of Turkey.

Ros Gold, wearing gold teeth and curly hair: Big-Shot Kawhi?

Kawhi, quietly like Prince: nah, that was Big Shot Rob. i'm happy still with Shy Kawhi. cos i like the R&B group Shai. i don't want to step on any toes. why did you talk directly into my ear?, that was kind of warm and personable, i'm not used to that.

Ros Gold: cos of the stadium crowd noise. Kawhi Lemon? it's always the quiet ones.

Kawhi: i'm not a quiet one but i'm a young one, i like to have fun, have you seen me laugh?

Ros: why is peeping at sideline reporters and cheerleaders at NBA games a meme? are they implying celebrities aren't human? they're robots?

Kawhi: i'm nursing a cold. we're not the Toronto Raptors, we're the Canadian Raptors.

the crones are lazing around doing nothing, lying down laying on a Viking Funeral ship. for kicks. for fun. they are at Uncle Harvey's Mausoleum in Duluth, Minnesota.

Doryce: i don't see why everyone says Duluth is dull. Minnesota is awesome! you got the freshest freshets here. and Prince.

Gladyce: hmm, this isn't Viking Cruiselines. well, not Prince anymore.

Doryce: Mary Tyler Moore? David Foster Wallace? oh well. i guess i'll be their new Princess. but not a racist one who wears a blackamoor brooch. who names their princess Michael? oh, and Betty White! Betty White, that's it! that's her! we still got Betty White!

Gladyce: this is a wonder of the world...that no one knows about.

Doryce: i was hoping Uncle Harvey could direct me to the rabbit sex around here. introduce me, put in a good word, a spell. as in sex with rabbits, that's how we witches get more familiar with our familiars.

Gladyce: there's no one book on the subject. dear, you see the conflagration going on with high licking flames of red blue and green befalling our ship? you know where that comes from? you know why there's a thick fat long brown streak running straight all along this blue lake?

Doryce: oil? crude oil must be a thing of the past.

Gladyce: more specifically, grease. cooking grease. you know all those French fries you're so fond of? you cook them in fry grease batter. fried food isn't good for you, too much fried food is like having a restaurant in your mouth. gotta cut back on the fries. i'm so scared for you, your diet is terrible: bacon everyday, french fries, fried greasy potatoes for lunch. you gonna die.

Doryce: we're all gonna, even if WE specifically will take longer.

Gladyce: as your eternal wife it's my job and duty to protect your heart.

at the SNL Studios, Cecily Strong in a red robe is chatting up Beck Bennett in the eaves after the season finale.

Beck: *slight-chance-of-rain chuckle* there will never be a SERIES finale to this show, huh. it'll keep going on forever.

Cecily: *chuckles back, slightly* huh. yeah. and to think it was almost canceled in the Eighties. who cancels an Eighties show? i can't believe you've been with us now at the Company for 19 years.

Beck: has it been that long? my jowls are jowling right now! so whaddaya say?

Cecily: yeah, i know, i've felt the attraction ever since you signed. from your first skit. it wasn't the two of you as a comedy tandem, it was always just you.

Beck: but is it mutual? i can be the handsome yet woke guy you need. i know you have an image to maintain.

Cecily: it's not an image, i worked in a women's clinic for years, horror stories shaped my opinion of men. it's just...…...i have a man at home. in my NYC apartment. i can't abandon him.

Beck: *hangdog* i see...…...hey, Emma Thompson should've done a skit where she runs around naked to the everloving embarrassment of Stephen Fry running around in their apartment she trying to chase him down. that happened in real life. it's funny cos it plays on the stereotypes of gays, you know?

Cecily: right, i agree. who would turn down a naked Emma Thompson? except a stupid angry abusive ego-driven Kenneth Branagh, who thought he was God in the Nineties. why the hell did SNL wait SO long to get Emma to finally come? she's an old woman now!

Beck: well, when it comes to comedy, nothing tops The Young Ones. who do we get for next season's opening host?

Cecily: hostess. Bonnie Bernstein, another oldie-but-goodie legend. gracing us with her presence on our tired old creaky stage. i might leave next year, my commitment is that cement. already got a preview of her monologue.

Bonnie Bernstein steps out on stage in a neon-green gogo-dancer outfit. after a Berenstain Bears joke, she delivers the thunder.

Bonnie Bernstein: hey! Bump official! get my name out yo filthy mouth!!!!!!!!

Dirg: this is so bullshit! why does the AV Club Reviewer do a review of ONE SNL skit. ONE skit!!? are you kidding me? just to line his pockets more?! typed lines for lines for lines of coke. i see you, Dennis AV Reviewer. and no, i WON'T have a nice summer waiting for your imminent eminent return this Fall!

Eye Luggage: i LOVED how Family Guy handled the James Woods conundrum imbroglio quagmire they were in. Quagmire, get it? that was becoming a sticky situation, giggity. bye, Batman.

Laertus: The End of the Tour, go.

Dirg: good movie, terrible title. how generic can you get?, how non-DFW. FU. just name it Infinite Jest to sell more tickets.

Laertus: yeah but that's false advertising, they'll think it's ACTUALLY the film version of Infinite Jest, which would be a monumental achievement, an insane undertaking.

Dirg: don't even try it, it would be another Dune. the unfilmable script.

Laertus: LOVED this biopic. it makes me wonder how Jason Segel would have fared if his career had been straight drama, no comedy. but Jason was always constantly pulled by and to that Muppets sauce.

Dirg: like he were on strings. "puppet" is code for "furry". OMG, but that Lipsky guy! he's got a set of lips on him huh! on set. i mean he reminded me of YOU, that guy was SO FUCKING JEALOUS of David Foster Wallace it showed and would seep out of every conversation and interview, it was painful and pitiful to watch.

Laertus: more like human. i related to him actually. not in the crude base way you think. we all go through those pangs of wanting to be someone else, someone with more fame, money, birthday money, and side-sex after sides at Sizzler. why did sides have to die? i love what Lipsky says about how when you read Infinite Jest, since it's a secret personal memoir and memory-machine and accounting of Wallace's, laden with code words and melancholy and life experience and male disappointment peppered throughout all those footnotes, since it's an all-encompassing encyclopedic novel of his life experience, a mushed-in memoir of sorts, when you read that book, it's like you're becoming Wallace's friend, you get to know the man, not just the author. you read all about him, who he is and what he's like. like a massive profile FBI file. that's nice, that's how all books should be, a glimpse into one's inner life.

Dirg: remember when Rolling Stone was still a cultural touchStone of culture? they had the quiver in their hands and directed how pop culture should think.

Laertus: can you imagine being a student in David Foster Wallace's writing class? how lucky were those damn students! they weren't Obec students that's for sure. it's like those few who were taught creative-writing in a small upstate-New York liberal-arts college by none other than Rod Serling himself---right before he died.

Dirg: i dunno. i'm suspicious of all these Great American Authors who were only great cos they wrote long books. strange heady impossible-to-follow books. is EVERYONE the next Faulkner or Mueller? that conflict with the lady-babes from college-grad school was completely manufactured for the film. but i DID love how they watched Broken Arrow of all great classic films at the Great Mall of America, as that Mall was just in its infancy learning to walk getting off the ground taking off. one escalator at the time. goddamn the Nineties were a simpler time! when the only war we had to worry about was Letterman vs. Leno.

Laertus: can you blame him? you can't resist the shadow of Meryl Streep. those poor dogs, i think i felt for them the most at the end. i think those long winters he endured up there in desolate Middle America were a little too quiet. if he needed Midwest i think Chicago would have been the perfect place fit for him. crazy writers can't have TOO quiet, it makes their already-fragile psyches that much more crazy. it's sad, this brilliant man writes all these unfiltered pages and pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness brute strength and brutal wisdom, and it's like his brilliant cosmic unearthly alien brain couldn't catch up with his human feelings so his only option was to join the two of them together in the sky.

Dirg: as in the high-arching wood crossbeams of the ceiling. David should have just become a dancer, that's what he REALLY wanted to do. i wanted to see him on Dancing with the Stars. and what about that suicide note? WHAT exactly is in the note?

Laertus: get Mueller on that. no doubt more abstruse packed brilliance which will be debated for centuries. Library of Alexandria stuff. i'm thinking some mathematical equations and circle graphs with the Michelangelo Human Body of Man in the center of the circle.

Dirg: that's the most-guarded secret in pop-culture history. how does DFW get all the vault stony silence? he gets a pass but Cobain's is strewn and flung around every conspiracy theorist's website and web black-hole? but Foster's is so tightly-locked-up there is no key.

Laertus: runs on automatic now, no key, just a key card placed in the slot. i GREATLY appreciate Jesse Eisenberg's work ethic, his process. his reason for acting, you know he would watch his mother come home from work as a clown and she'd say to him that all acting work is noble and you should approach it like a job. that's why Jesse is so brilliant, he treats an acting gig as if it were a job, like he were breaking rocks on a construction site.

Dirg: Jesse in this movie made me want to punch his big nose and spew into a tissue. no, seriously. but i guess that's good acting. he has this tickish weird awkward mannerism to his style that irks me, like he's always trying to be a brusque asshole underneath his seemingly placid nerdy curly-haired demeanor. weird acidic tongue mixed in with his easygoing geeky manner, his eyes aren't quite right, they're hiding something. like if it were his choosing he would have been a school bully if he had been bigger and more muscular. his mom is a clown? that explains a lot.

Laertus: i just hope this film brings back tape recorders. there is no medium more human, more brimming with energy, more crackly to record experience, more live and alive than tape tape. the human voice is basic on tape. i love the sound your thumb makes when it pushes the button of a tape recorder.

at LUSH Madame Pons receives a phone call. from her sister. Pons picks the mouthpiece up with food stuck in her mouth and on her teeth, talking with food in her mouth---yes, the food is LUSH soaps:

Pons: what up, sis, i'm kinda busy, what do you want? don't take that tone with me! no, i'm not pretending to go under a tunnel, no scratchy static sound, i'm eating soap, that's why you can't understand me.

Taki: i can't understand you even when you're speaking clearly.

Pons: i love you.

Taki: dammit! you undermined me. now with what energy have i to be angry with you?

Pons: look, sis, i get it, that's why i'm leaving it to you.

Taki: what?

Pons: you are the strongest woman i know. that's why i'm gonna let YOU solve your own mystery! surely you can figure out why you've disappeared from us. your son can't crack the code?

Taki: or he doesn't want to. anymore. Takahashi is off trying to become a video-game athlete, whatever the hell that is. and my husband Melbourne...i fear he's dangerous.

Pons: no, i honestly don't think so. but it has to do with planes, spheres of existence. take a bath tonight with some LUSH soaps and relax your mind, it'll come to you. only YOU can get out of this. YOURSELF.

Taki: *tearing up* i appreciate you, my beloved sister, and i honor you. you know all the other women in my life, my work colleagues, they were all jealous of me cos they thought i had it all. i was a beautiful woman with a high-stress career who was getting it done. mother and breadwinner. everyone thought i was constantly being promoted just off my good looks and not my abilities, they disparaged my journalistic skills. but i fear my final dream of stable family may be in jeopardy.

Pons: hey, it's not as bad as all that, it's not Alex-bad. yes, everyone thought the good-looking one on tv was the Asian woman. we are still talking about the Eighties here, right?

Taki: okay fine, well i was petite if not pretty, that's the same thing to men, right?

Pons: despite your concerns---which i validate---i still think Melbourne's a good guy, i still think he can come out of this the good guy, he's redeemable. but i got a plan to shake him out and loose and prove my theory...

at the Clearing:

Llywarch: the time has come. for you to decide. who you really are. your destiny and your dreams will combine and join and meld here.

Laertus: or melt here. i'm not sure i'm ready.

Llywarch: you are not ready for this, i can guarantee that.

Laertus: what's up with business instagrams? right? they're all so ugly, and they all look the same, they all seem to come from the same white square cookie-cutter design. how ANYTHING gets sold through Instagram is beyond me, it's witchcraft, a real head-scratcher.

Llywarch: i'd scratch my head but i have a hoof and goat ears.

Laertus: beyond the beyond. the Almighty Algorithm. you think Instagram had any idea when they were trying to pair up people and things and ideas looking for similarities and patterns and matches, trying to define us, that they'd land on YOU and ME as a couple?

Llywarch: no, that's the point. we broke the system, we're illogical, and yet here we are. are you ready to step into your new life?

Laertus: will it be like an NBA Draft prospect getting signed to his first pro team?

Llywarch: no, that's more about the upgrade. dealing with money and such, but still in the same realm. what we're dealing with with you is entering a new frontier, exploring a space yet to be timed out. a shift in your consciousness which affects the clouds in the sky.

Laertus with his mouth in a pucker turns around to face Llywarch. Llywarch smiles then bleats.

Llywarch: a new reality...