Pat reaches his dorm room. the door is different from all the other doors on the floor. it's not shiny and metallic, it's wood and knotty. a female voice beckons from within:
voice: hear hear. i mean here here. this is your call.
Pat: um, i'm trying to open the door. but i can't. this isn't a key. but it is a key. um, the guy said this was my room,. what do i have to do? now. how much does it cost?
voice: oh silly. but it most certainly is a key! but that golden credit card ain't worth anything! squat. for me. 0 in the bank. you use that card to slide it through the door until it jams open...
Pat: oh, right. okay.
when he enters the voice is Julia Ioffe. she lays on the metallic bed completely naked, lips pursed, Russian-blue eyes lasered on the bookbag around his waist in the back. her room is completely wallpapered with litters of Russian nesting dolls which increase or decrease in size depending on the angle of your eyesight, getting larger or smaller with no middle nor end. the room is utterly lit red tho there is no light source in it at all. and her boudoir bed is covered in frilly red tassels.
Pat: OH MY GOD. i can't believe it's you! i've seen you...i mean i've read you...you're like the most beautiful woman who's ever lived!
Ioffe: i get that a lot. this is gonna hurt. i don't have a soft adjustable mattress. you smell that?
Pat: um, yeah. Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina, right?
Julia: no MY vagina! LUSH makes special-order candles just for this floor, Palekh Pussy. i need to have my own space to function. you ready?
Pat: *shaking* yes. for what?
Julia: well you've heard of the thing where if your roommate commits suicide you get a 4.0, right? well here at Princeton it's a bit slashed. we're only gonna do this once. but i swear to you, when i've finished with you, you don't know me, i don't know you, but you will never ever forget me. i'm gonna fuck you 30 times in a row. at first your cock will love it, it'll get all purple and swollen and swole. your peehole will form the happyface emoji. but soon your cock will turn stale and start to hurt, really hurt, like the hurt of a dump. if you survive you get a 4.0 for this semester but you still have to go to class. cos, why wouldn't you want to listen to our professors, they're as we speak literally rearranging the meaning of life like deckchairs.
Julia fucks Pat hard against the wall, in her fishbowl, and in the closet. so hard Pat's eyes pop out and look around the room like a drone. he is naked but never once takes off his dress shoes, which Julia finds kinky so she goes harder. Julia is so talented she can light all her candles just from the air from her vagina. when all is said and done, Pat blows out a tornado from his mouth and Julia's red walls have been painted white.
Julia: wow! you turned my blue eyes brown! or is that just the lighting. i think i might have moaned once myself that time. anyway, you passed, kid, congrats. so, be a stranger. bye. take care. enjoy college life.
Pat staggers out of the room and misses his lips when he goes for the water fountain. he goes to the student store out of base instinct to buy books...
President Bump at the Impeachment Trial:
Bump: not fair! Kobe blocked my defense!
Rubikon: as any good basketball player would.
Bump: nobody saw my defense on tv! it got terrible ratings!
Ivanka: and don't forget Auschwitz, daddy.
Bump: what? what is that?
Ivanka: the memorial. don't forget for me, daddy. i wouldn't be here right now...
Bump: oh you mean that Holocaust Museum? that place is a disaster! do you see that building? so unclean. that should have been MY building! i mean i even made the flags fly half-mast for Kobe, don't i get a little credit? who is this Zoe Manager? she looks like a Muppet. Muppet Manager.
Bump: okay, Senators, recount the vote.
they do, the first vote to Remove is declared a mistake.
Bolton comes dancing into the Chamber, doing the Nutcracker Russian Dance down the steps for each Senator to gander at. he twists and turns and holds up a large sword. he is so tired at the end of it the sweat from his mustache lands on Bump's hair which he doesn't feel.
Bolton: i did the Trepak all by myself to prove a point, normally there are 13 dancers doing this on stage.
Alex Trebek: did i just hear my name? call me to the Floor, Senators, i will testify. you can trust me, i'm Canadian. i know all the information cos i got Bolton's book special-rush-ordered out to my island home.
Bump: i'm not sayin but yesterday i saw the Hopak performed at the Nutcracker instead. just sayin.
Bump raises his right hand.
Bump: i pledge to take the oath. from now on. not that i will be a better President but that i will sign the Oathbook. because i want to meet that hot older blonde woman who was passing out pens, who is that fox!? i want to date her.
the LSU coach comes out of the Ohio Clock...
Pelosi: speaking of pens, i got all the pens you'll ever need back at my office! all the commemorative pens you need!!! got a shitload of 'em in a big brown apple barrel when Disney Plus came to our office. Goofy himself shook my hand! actually it was just Vince Vaughn with a Goofy glove. Vince said he'd smelled a funny rag and ended up in Vegas for a week. Mitch McConnell was steamrolling the pens wearing a cute yellow hardhat i recognize from my grandchildrens' tv down there in the Senate graveyard parking lot but the joke's on Mitch, he just made them into squashed Disneyland pennies!
Mitch: *fist in the air* damn you, dame! as elongated as your turkey neck!
Rudy Giuliani enters the Senate for movie night. he drags with him two copies of the film he's worked so hard on. the Senators watch it on the overhead projector:
Rubikon: huh. interesting. you know we are in modern times. there's a lot of video the Managers are using this time around, not tape. in court trials now, the case is hinged on text messages, text messages are the new irrefutable proof.
after they watch the film, all the Senators are unanimous for once and give the movie thumbs-down.
Senators: you should have gone with 20th-century
Star Wars, Rudy, not 21st-century
Star Wars.
Manu outside the Cloakroom: i don't get it, i work for CNN, not MSNBC. Susan Collins just called me Mowgli. i think. everyone thinks Sanjay Gupta is my brother.
Chris Matthews: this whole thing is a bushfire...…...i mean brushfire...
Alex Trebek: the
Jeopardy GOAT tournament was weird. it should have been play 5 regular games one each day for a week and the one with the most money after five is the champion. instead you have this open-ended concept where nobody knows how many days it's gonna be, other shows have to be preempted till this thing finishes. the first to win 30 games or whatever it was. i don't have time for this!
Jodie Whittaker: *goofy grin* oh brilliant to be here, i am chuffed. it's my first girls night ever! and it is right proper we discuss
Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging as the topic! btw, fam, do you think the show would have been less popular if it had been called
The Doctor?
Eye Luggage: no
Harry Potter comparisons here, okay? okay, so basically, what we're asking for here is, who made out the best from this film?
Madame Pons: as you can smell, your dorm room is covered in a lather of scent from my newest candle, Mushroom! yeah, all the Paltrow Pussies are gone. as you can see, i've done a bit of gardening in here, i forswear all men! i'm a plant mom now!
Doryce: you know for the longest i had no idea Georgia Groome actually ended up snagging and marrying the ginger from
Harry Potter! never the bridesmaid always the groom. she wins, that is a GET for a girl! i honestly thought she just disappeared after this film missing her chance at stardom...
Gladyce: that poor boy. he escaped your clutches, dear, but Aaron Johnson was turned and turnt into a toyboy by an older cunning woman and never really recovered. father at a young age, i'm sure he would have preferred to be at a dorm party right now with Bama.
Doryce: we older women sharpen our claws at the salon. sink them in young flesh with our sanka.
Eye: Eleanor Tomlinson got to snog some
Poldark dark meat and some
Doctor Who timey-wimey tush, she made out good.
Jodie: it's pretty obvious Tom Baker wears a thong. rainbow like my stirrups. i'm a vegetarian but i like a good steak every now and then if you catch my scent. and Georgia Henshaw better bring back
Skins...AND
House of Anubis!!! that was fun, fam, gotta fly.
Doryce: how are you finding the café, dear?
Gladyce: well same. the ice thing, you know.
Doryce: yeah, here's the deal. you HAVE to push for both the block ice and the shaved ice. see if you neglect the shaved ice, the machine will start to rust on that side from disuse.
Gladyce obliges down there. she pushes the button.
Jessa Crispin: whom were you expecting? a lazy Steinem wannabe or something?
Gladyce: oh hello dear, didn't see you there. shaved ice is like a shaved pussy, so much work!
Jessa: agreed. i just use ice for my cereal. just finished mine.
Gladyce: oh how i love Crispix! they were clean out by the time i got down here.
Jessa: come with me and i'll show you a whole new generation of young women writers, the best twitterers out there.
Gladyce: well Dorcye doesn't like me going with strangers but if it is for the cause. we always need more witches to come into our fold. lead the way, dearie! oh but i need to make some copies first for my workstudy...
Jessa: where we're going, we got something better than copiers. we got printers.
a room over from the café is the library. where Madame Pons works.
Pons: and where i love it! it's so quaint here, the shag carpeting is the walls and it still has that grey metal subway bar from the '70s that opens up automatically like a robotic arm to let the bookers in, waterfountaining their thirst for knowledge.
she meets Henry here. a man with sad eyes.
Pons: oh Henry! you have such Robin Williams eyes, they're mesmerizing. you can open up to me. i mean i'm a counselor...well i took a break but...if you ever need me here's my library card.
Henry ups his lowered head: i just don't want to take advantage of you, miss.
Pons: my you're precious! you and your babyface *she smiles*. stick with me, kid, hold my hand, i'll teach you the Reishi ropes, how to express your sadness. your emotional intelligence here at college.
Cory Booker is filming his campaign farewell video at a corner of this library full of hanging potted plants. he is sad yet joyful for the experience, the rest of his team is goofing off in the background as Cory is trying to give a heartfelt thank-you to all his donors who must wander now. he starts and stops and corpses and starts over. Rosario Dawson sticks out her tongue on his right side of the screen, Spike Lee makes a face on his left. and Usher for some reason is in the background, licking Eddie Murphy's shaved head that it's turning red.
at the Clevelander in Miami, Tony Kornheiser is reminiscing on his East Coast provincial college days while at the new
Pardon The Interruption set full of open and a big blue pool in the back with girls in bikinis.
Tony: my agent said i could come out in swimming trunks. i've never done this in my life. i worked for the Harpur Palate which is a play on
Harper's Gazette. i did the Bluebook Literary Journal and thus deserve the blue-ribbon early-bird special to eat.
Wilbon: my eyes my eyes! i need glasses now!
Tony: you know this reminds me of those Super Bowl scenes from
Where The Buffalo Roam...i know, i was there with my tape recorder!
Shaq is here but is crying and not in the mood to talk. not even about his General commercials.
Shaq: i do all the commercials generally. but i'm too broken up, i'm sick. not even seeing the General as a bullied boy with a mustache cheered me up. i had to swoop in and save his ass from all those antiwar hippies who were kicking the fuck out of him, his helmet was no protection for his head. i don't get it, he's the brother of the Monopoly Man, he's got the money already.
Dirg: yea these commercials which try to fight back against their opponent's campaign is weaksauce as fuck! like after those detailed funny Bud Medieval commercials, the Miller people simply show a set on the Medieval Times parking lot to show it's all fake. seriously? that's all you got! and the Geico commercials, Dennis Quaid just goes "pip pip cheerio" like that's gonna hurt n harm that creative machine juggernaut. are we selling cereal here, Dennis?
Prince Harry has found work at a Canadian retailer, LL Bean. he wears his plaid shirt with pride till one day one of his customers is Kurt Cobain.
Cobain: you know i could have been President...
Meghan Markle in line: well i'm off to my swim class! wish me luck, babe *kiss*
Thomas Markle follows his daughter in line, plopping a trowel down on the counter.
Harry: what's this? we don't sell these here.
Thomas: use this to lower me in the ground.
Eye: what were we talking about again?
Tyzik: Julia Ioffe...
Laertus: OMG i just have to say this: Julia Ioffe is the greatest woman who ever lived! she is perfect! from the blue eyes to the snarky lips. she is sarcastic as fuck as an American and she speaks fluent Russian so she's the perfect double-agent! she will suck the soy from your boy with her spy sex. she will turn an alt-right man into a girl. she will turn Yellowbeard into a girl dad. you can't be sarcastic without being smart. she will bend Putin to her will with that cheeky grinny smile. she's got it all: beauty, brains, and ballbusting.
Dirg: if only she dyed her hair red...
Eye: *redfaced* i could dye my hair red...…...anyway, where were we?
Tyzik:
Waterworld should have won the Oscar that year......for Best Documentary...
Eye:
The World According To Garp and go...
Laertus: this was the first film i ever watched. seriously, the first one i remember. the very first man i ever saw up there on screen, the first concept i had of "movie", was Robin Williams. i was 2 and it was a typical lazy Sunday afternoon. this was back when they had those Sunday movies on Channel 5. i distinctly remember that scene where Robin Williams is doing situps on the bleachers trying to impress that girl by saying the TS in his name stood for Totally Sexy. my first sex...
Dirg: garp? garp? sounds like a fish. the Gorton Fisherman needs to slather his lips in salmiak lipstick and kiss that fish with the Don Knotts lips.
Eye: OMG can you believe this was Glenn Close's debut!!? that is crazy! talk about making a good first impression! i mean she stole the show from Robin Williams, the film is really about her. i'd say the kid is gonna make it in the industry. how old was she then? it was like she walked onto set middle-aged and unknown after being a grocer her past life and killed it.
Dirg: the one thing going for her was being a Meryl Streep body double for the morgue scenes...
Laertus: and Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, those two were INSEPARABLE in the '80s!!!
Dirg: i will always be uncomfortable with crossdressers, but John Lithgow makes it okay for me, i can accept Lithgow, he always has one of those reassuring smiles.
Laertus: this is a loveletter to writing and writers, i love it. i never knew i liked John Irving as much as i do. that i need him. he should be a wrestling coach, those guys are crazy. and this story is...WEIRD. it's just...strange...but it's strange WITHOUT being a fantasy or scifi film! that's my kind of reality! i agree with Ebert when afterwards he thought to himself WHAT DID ANY OF THIS MEAN!!? this is a very obscure and fascinating subgenre: strange slice-of-life...
Dirg: i am scared of this world. a woman's book outsells a man's book!!? blasphemy! that can't happen! a feminist world where all the men are heeled and made to just be caricatures of themselves, snipers in trees?
Eye: not hanging from them unfortunately. what you don't understand you kill.
Dirg: i mean she preaches on about lust but she rapes an incapacitated man to get Garp in the first place! that will be a woody which will live in infamy. more Nazi gunners. a world where they TALK to hookers? what to see their feelings?
Laertus: btw, that beautiful scene with the beautiful Tudor house by the waves crashing against it and the angry grey sky in the seaside village, i remember that scene at 2, too.
Eye: oh the hooker, that did NOT look like Swoosie Kurtz! right? Swoosie Kurtz did not look like Swoosie Kurtz when she was young.
Dirg: but Amanda Plummer looked properly disheveled with the Muppet hair. Ellen James, daughter of James Joyce, the music guy? btw that college looks exactly like Princeton. despite being a beta, Robin Williams was so cute in this!
Bump: out of respect for Kobe let's not discuss the plane crashing into the house.
Rubikon: i disagree, Kobe would have wanted us to confront death, discuss it in depth. he would have played on. the show must go on.
Laertus: except to show that that scene actually has nothing to do with anything, it's completely random. to show the randomness of life. and it proves that when the director makes a cameo in his own film, it never goes well...
Dirg: speaking of hurting me, Mary Beth Hurt! what a fox! why didn't she become a big star! she was more than the man she married! sadly, i tried to look up nudes of her and they only have some when she's middle-aged...
Dirg: seriously tho, what was Pooh's deal? like, was she spastic or something?...
Eye: just jealous. REALLY REALLY REALLY jelaous of Garp his whole life. no dog discussion.
Dirg: it's hard to compete with a girl named Cushie.
Laertus: the weirdness. first, when the boy starts drawing with his crayons and it becomes a Disney animated feature. then when Garp is thinking about his stories and the stories come alive with the falling piano, you don't know what's real and what's the dream. the Apache line was funny tho. that girl fixing the tire with the jack? who was she exactly? and then when they do the Dirty Thirty bit, like that's the same Robin but then that's his wife in his car as an impressionable giggling 17-year-old?
Dirg: in the '80s 30 was considered the age when adults were emotionally mature and had their shit together, so they could afford to get a litle dirty.
Dirg: the lesson here is a man wanting to see his wife as she grew up. from a kid to the various tit sizes.
Eye: no the lesson here is go secretly look at your kids every chance you get. watch them through a window as they sleep and play and eat pizza, the arc of your life will flash before your eyes.
Laertus: speaking of dreams, the death of that poor boy, Garp's youngest, why'd it have to be him and not the snotty brother? while they're hydroplaning the boy feels it is all a dream, then BAM, dead, and camera pans to stillframe of said innocent face. and the ending, it's so unresolved, in the helicopter, but will their marriage be saved?
Dirg: will he even live? is he already dead as indicated by the clouds?
Bump: no helicopters right now.
Laertus: the teacher-student affair is the hottest thing art can ever tackle and this one was done well. accurate trope. handled as the times would indicate, this is how it was done back then, in strange cars. just wished they showed the sex. whenever a woman---especially one of a certain age---wants to know if your apartment is clean, that's code for she wants to break her vows.
Eye: Marge Tallworth, the original name of Marge Simpson...
Eye: but anyway what's the deal with Mary Beth's boytoy blond hunk student? after all that trouble he doesn't want the seasoned love of an older woman? he simply wants to get his dick sucked in a car?
Dirg: the Ellen James Society, cutting your tongue out to prove a point, that's their version of male castration. is this another Nirvana "Polly" thing? is it better to voice your pain, write your pain, or sing your pain? there's gotta be a better way. pay them already!!!
Eye: i will never eat tongue. it's like for me i used to eat liver as a kid but i don't anymore cos i found out as an adult it's disgusting. g'night, folks.
Robin Williams: beware the understood.
Eye: thank you for that, Mr. Robin, much-needed at this time of ours of grieving.
Diane Neal has one more café interview to go:
Diane: and what makes you Princeton material, Joe Pera?
Joe: look at me.
Diane: yes. you're either a nerd or a serial killer. have any friends?
Joe: that one guy online who complains that no one watches
Black Jesus. and that other guy online who is obsessed with game theory...
Diane: your show went all
Poldark there during the summer! but your show just doesn't belong with the alt-rights of adult swim and MTV, it needs to be on another channel. Hallmark Channel.
Joe: i said my favorite show was
Dragon Ball just so i could maybe get on the toonami channel. i said
Sopranos as a joke cos i was certain my show was HBO material...
Pat scours the hallowed halls of Princeton in a daze, hopping from building of ancient wood to building of fall leaves all draped in magic orange and black throwrugs like Harry Potter. Ralph Nader is there in the garage as the metal-shop instructor. Jessica Simpson is in a class trying to get sober and brainier for John Mayer. Brooke Shields is there teaching a class on the dark arts and black magic.
Cornel West: *calming down Anderson Cooper* look at my hair! NOW i'm a professor! i'm not just an intellectual like Kobe, i'm a public intellectual, i'm keeping 3 networks up! i call everyone brother and sister cos i'm a Christian not a Marxist! i know both sides. both Princeton AND Harvard! and Cornell, i studied Eastern Mysticism.
Pat can't keep her out of his mind. he stumbles into expansive Auditorium W, where Michael Weiss is giving a talk on stage:
Michael Weiss: now that everyone posts private videos inside their homes and offices---even celebrities---scrolling through Instagram is akin to the ancient Aztec experience of being a ghost, an omniscient spirit navigating others' streams of consciousness, conquering their campfires, inspecting their innermosts, floating through Earth...
Julia Ioffe pats Pat on the shoulder and smiles, she's eating popcorn in the audience.
Julia: that's my boyfriend.
Pat looks at Michael Weiss's exposed-shirt hairy chest as he pats the beating heart jumping out of his hairless chest.
