PRINCETON PAT: THESE PANCAKES ARE RIDGED

Chris Matthews: so who has the best shot in Vegas?...…...oops i did it again...

Dirg: what's going on with the Left? i mean seriously. does the Illuminati even try anymore? all flatearther deaths are the blood on your curved hands! it's infecting the Left in Britain and the UK, too. i mean all these woke females running for office, they're ALL pansexual! pansexual?! that's just weird and unnatural. that reminds me, Meryl Streep in Out Of Africa, the ending didn't sit well with me.

Meryl Streep done with her danish popping her head out of the booth like Hollywood Squares: how do you mean?

Dirg: like after ALL that sturm und drang she went through to find and keep love, dragging it by the throat, to maintain her agency, be the first female entrepreneur who ever lived, to fight to make those coffee beans as red as possible, to make the royal family not a laughingstock, to protect her land with lioness guns, she just ups and leaves Africa and never returns...

Meryl: well yeah, i don't care if Africa was once beautiful, there's no point in living if you can't be with Robert Redford.

Mike Bloomberg steps onto the Vegas stage with his legs and with a more well-rehearsed version of himself:

Mike: i want to learn from you. here's my plan, it's the best plan...

and then he goes on about his usual moderate millionaire muddle. the crowd boos.

Mike: okay i'm sorry. i guess i'm doing it wrong. i want to relate to you. excuse me.

he returns with a red baseball cap---inverted---baggy pants, a belt that is so big it could strangle him, a Looney Tunes shaggy extra-medium shirt of Mrs. Tasmanian Devil, and a gold chain from the film Uncut Gems with H on it for Hizzoner:

Mike: i will never drink Starbucks again. i'll buy out Starbucks instead.

the crowd cheers.

Mike: Michael Jordan can't hold my jock.

the crowd cheers and hold up Crying-Jordan signs.

Mike: Diana Taylor's my side-bitch.

the crowd erupts and joins in a singsong chant of Be Like Mike! Be Like Mike!

Jerry Springer: she's no Dianne Feisntein that's for sure. i should have run for President...

Laertus: i got ya something for your birthday, pal. open it up, don't wait! it's wrapped inside a stack of delivered newspapers in a cube tightened by a string to prove a point.

Eye Luggage: if you work for Wikipedia, you betta be an INSANE speller!

Dirg: oh how kind of you. my father certainly didn't. well, what do we have here? it's...

Laertus: a year's subscription to Starfuckers Magazine! super-rare. praise me, i had to sacrifice for this one, it cost me dearly, i had to give up ice cream for a year to afford it.

Eye: no! i like you a bit chunky. when you get too skinny i think it's cos of the Scarface routine. you don't mean Humphry Slocombe ice cream do you?! i mean it's named after the greatest tv show of all time! the one with the tv tailor and the tv temptress!

Laertus: i am being served. i'm getting my ass handed to me. but i know what you mean, especially the Sesame flavor...

Eye: that one makes me open my mouth...my vagina mouth. whatever it is, i know my female ejaculate is not pee.

Dirg: Lemonade flavor? so i'm expecting Nine Inch Nails articles here---some wedding tips and Trent juice-cleanses---but this seems to be an ultrarare gay men's magazine focusing on reckless youth in all-black spraying the graffiti instead of huffing it outside of their local tv station. you could wear real leather in those days.

Laertus: super-rare.

Dirg: don't say that, don't use that, i hate two things and two things only in this world: using super- for every possible word as a prefix. and the word merch.

Laertus: what we need is an NIH magazine.

Jodie Whittaker: i mean come on. don't change accents on me and tell me it's raining in London. with a huffy Hugh Grant brolly. we over here still use wee to mean little. like they were meant to be menacing but Cyber-Man heads just flying around in the sky is just too silly to take seriously.

Dirg: Hugh Grant is the manly Cary Grant. just a question, why are you always talking out of one side of your mouth? no i mean physically.

Yellow Ranger: so those extremely-tight leather pants i was forced to wear, they would have been sexier if they were real leather jus sayin'...

Madame Pons: things are going good with Henry. late nights and early mornings. i'm trying to untap something out of him and he's trying to tap me. his potential, my pussy. i admit, my skirt does look like an umbrella. i'm trying to draw out of him chakras he never knew he had. i've shown him all the nodules which grow along his ballsac. i mean will i always have to take two Vanquish every time i drink a cup of coffee? you know why i love Vanquish? cos it's magic. those little white pills dissolve and work instantly on the pained part, instantaneously the pain is gone. not like amoxicillin which needs a good night's sleep to work. i don't want to be amoxichillin'.

Eye: yeah but Vanquish is bad for your liver. i hate liver.

Samantha Allen at The Orchid:

Samantha: so. Gladyce, anything yet?

Gladyce: well there was that one time Doryce and i went psicobloc. no we're both clinically and magically insane it's not that. i mean climbing rock formations with just the water of the land to break your fall. poor dear Doryce was still fitting in her glasses and didn't read the label on her orange bottle and thought we were on a hunt for cheaper psilocybin across the border. it comes in pill form now you know. and me being really really old i was surprisingly spry for that age, i actually climbed, Doryce cheated and just flew on her broom over the water. tho admittedly this is a good exercise to strengthen one's flying magic. in a twist we did OUR climb naked, no one else on our tag team tether tried it that way and we never saw them again once we broke camp. i guess they all got eaten.

Gladyce: we were famished of course. rock-climbing is hard work! harder than working in a factory. we stopped at a mountintop where one tuft of green grass grew but of course this was college so that wasn't grass. it was a Ritter Sport mint Kit-Kat Schoko & Gras hemp chocolate bar! super-ultra-rare!!! you know, the thing all the Olympic cyclists eat. look i want to be cool and everything but honestly if the hemp isn't mint-flavored it's just disgusting.

Dirg visits yet another strange class on campus. what's strange and disorienting is he is finding that he has nothing to do most afternoons...

Dirg: shoulda went to orientation.

Mary Beard: take my word for it, i look like a slash Gandalf.

Dirg: i mean that's the thing. here you are at Princeton. unlike our plethora of pussy i mean young woke girls we have crawling around here, you are a decidedly woke OLD girl.

Mary: i'm a scholar. i earned it. i worked tooth and nail until i only had one nail left, my witch's nail. i had to use my last witch's tooth for my rheumoid medicine. my teeth are gold not yellow. have you ever earned anything in your life? have you worked for something your whole life?

Dirg: can't say that i have, i'm young and lazy. but it's worse to be old and lazy. i see your beard. it's faint but i see it, it's on your lip and chin, all puffy from some burning numbing agent. which pedo professor on the staff here at Princeton are you bearding for to protect them!!!?

Dirg points at Mary ferociously.

Mary: take an ibuprofen, pal. have some bread next door, you need to relax. i normally don't tell my students this---cos i want my students to be students---but you are in dire need of some holy bread!

the classroom next door is taught by Ren Hang, who has blue eyes and floats ever so creepily just microinches above the floor, noticeable only to the enlightened. a chalk of CHINA sits on the blackboard, Dirg comes up and erases CHINA and puts COTARD on there instead with a long piece of chalk. he puffs the puffy eraser in Ren's eyes.

Dirg: oh, so YOU caused this flu bug going around! the pansexuals caused the pandemic! typical, leave it to the university to shelter criminals! give their heroes havens!

Dirg: blackboard, huh. i've never seen an actual blackboard before except in cartoons, mine were always green...

Ren: i am a philosopher-poet. but you can address me as Ren.

Dirg: Ren is an anime-only name.

Ren: please have some of these bacon bites in a basket my mom just whipped up for the class! yummy!

in the meantime Ren shows Dirg his scrapbook of photos.

Dirg: oh okay. nevermind. now i get it. okay. i need to learn sex ed from THIS Princeton professor!!!...i never had sex ed...

Ren: hey... before you go... remember to tell the local newspaper...i didn't hang myself...*Ren disappears*...

the Iranians attack a Milwaukee beer factory.

Bernie: i mean i'm white. i can't help it.

Rubikon: you use brother and sister much differently than i will as President...

Eye: what were we talking about again?...…...

Eye: where's Tyzik?

Tyzik: i'm not here. i had to get a dental dam implanted in my mouth. i played hooky from school and saw Mary Hart and John Tesh hosting Entertainment Tonight and thought the gas hadn't worn off...

Cotard: Tesh came to my office seeking counsel. what he was asking for was some wacky science. i told him to trust the CDC and if Connie Sellecca ever considered dyeing her hair red...

Eye: Doing Time On Maple Drive and go.

Laertus: oh wow. this thing. my dad told me about this thing. this was in the '90s, back during the age of the televisioned special, the miniseries, the one-time-event broadcast of a tv-movie pertinent to the age and time. my dad told me this thing came on right after Married With Children one Sunday night---one-night-only---he didn't watch it cos he was scared of Married With Children. he regrets it ever since.

Eye: the poster of this film is wrong. the names above the faces don't match, they aren't the names of the actors. but baby that William McNamara! those eyes! if there was ever anyone the personification of pretty-boy beautiful gay porn star, it's Billy Boy! whatever happened to him?

Laertus: confession. i knew about this a long time but never actually watched it. i had to reset my bearings to get back to the AIDS epidemic, those days, those Pedro times, those Ryan White times, all the fear and trepidation filled by the media, the fright of those times that it would become a pandemic. and as i watched this i didn't know the perfect child would be the gay one till much later, they got me.

Dirg: it doesn't list him as having any relationships. if you know what i mean. Baywatch doesn't count, that's just put out by the publicist.

Eye: Jim Carrey was nice in this. showed his range as an actor. and it confirms the Whedon Theory: comedians make the best dramatic actors. you could tell Jim was sick of plotting In Living Color skits with Damon Wayans on the set of Earth Girls Are Easy and wanted to try something new.

Laertus: that one scene with Jim and Lori in the bathroom mirror reading the cards of anal history teacher Dad. Jim starts to veer into his comfortable comedic territory when he starts in on the pixies in his hair. you know the director came up to him at just that moment to nip it in the bud:

director: Jim, we talked about this...

oh and the director is Ken Olin! the Lion of the senatorial Screen Actors Guild. from thirtysomething fame. for the life of me i tried SO HARD to like thirtysomething, i wanted to like it SO BAD so i could join the hipster parties...but it just never stuck to me...

Eye: maybe if one of the scripts had been written by ee cummings...

Laertus: Jim Carrey is nice in this. you could tell underneath the drink he was a sensitive soul who referred to men as fellas. only nice men use fellas. then again there is the Dad, James Sikking. i'm SICK of Sikking!!! HE uses fellas in a different way! what a brute this tennis-shorted man was the whole movie. tho ironically it's him who comes around first, both meanings. before the mother. Jim Carrey plays a very convincing drunk considering he's a teetotaler. i wonder if it was this movie which sent him over the edge to never take something to take the edge off.

Dirg: Dad reminded me of someone. shit at least this was a manageable 90 minutes. all movies should be 90 minutes. looking back at the first scene after having watched the entire film, you see what Pretty Boy was doing. and Lori Loughlin grandstanding and lecturing and looking down on someone for breaking into a locked dorm room is rich.

Laertus: back then being gay was real. it was scary, people didn't know how to react. getting a revelation that a family member was gay was like if that family member had gotten a diagnosis of cancer. that's how families dealt with it, like that person was sick and diseased. the mother thinks the gay son is shaming her and all the hard work she put into the family.

Dirg: to be fair the mom is trapped in a loveless marriage, she only stayed together for the kids. so she has the right to get a little upset. there's some reason to get upset.

Eye: Dad feels locked in, like the Nazis in France. the mom gave up her teaching position to raise the pregnancy. just think, she could have been Elizabeth Warren now! the glorious source of all of our power here on campus!!!

Laertus: James Sikking...from Hill Street Blues...i always thought he was the father from Wonder Years. don't mess with Jim Carrey's afternoon drink. he NEEDS that afternoon drink to maintain! give the man his goddamn Cape Codder!!! he will go ballistic if you don't give him his motherfucking Cape Codder!!!

Dirg: the name of the movie is said as a line in the script. that's super-rare. like imagine Kurt Cobain using the lyric nirvana in any of his songs.

Laertus: turns out one of the actors here actually did die from AIDS in real life. his life cut short as he put on his Mighty Ducks skate. to innocently play in the snow on a clean New York City street. before Disney had all that money. so the message here is apt and relevant.

Eye: Philip Linton! and he's so adorable in this, too, great natural rhythm to his acting. he was a natural, he lit up the screen, he would have replaced Tom Cruise. what a tragedy. he's so understanding when his best friend comes out.

Dirg: he's now a piece of lint.

Laertus: and Jayne Brook! remember her from Chicago Hope? the good CBS Chicago, not the bad NBC Chicago. i'll never forget that awkward kiss between Jayne Brook and Adam Arkin, they wll talk about that force forever!

Laertus: i mean that navy-seaman Dad or whatever is supposed to be all tough. but they're playing tennis. tennis.

Federer: hey man, not cool. i've had to deal with that stereotype my whole life.

Dirg: this was pretty controversial for its time but it's Fox so they should have gone more all the way. it's never explained why Jim Carrey was kicked out of military school. it's cos he was drawing political cartoons of his bunkmates. and took a dump in every single dorm. the photographer boyfriend of Jayne Brook should have been a porn photographer. that's how he got Jane pregnant, by ensnaring her. Lori Loughlin SHOULD HAVE gotten married to gay boy, that would have been one HELL of a marriage! and at the end, when the Dad is trying to understand his son, he should have point-blank asked the son, "you know God Hates Fags, right?"

Eye: Jayne Brook got pregnant but those weren't baby blood cells, those were midichlorians...

Laertus: i always liked Jayne Brook's teeth. the gay boy really displays the acting chops during the yelling scene. he really brings it, props, i was surprised, he was so subdued throughout the rest of the movie. ice cream for the punch, no thank you, ma'am, i take my punch straight now.

Dirg: one punch from me to your face and you'll come round to your senses, you'll get knocked out of it. your gay flirtation. i'll scare you straight! gotta have Dad tough love.

Eye: and whoa, more animal abuse! "next time, don't swerve, just hit the dog". really? fuck that.

Laertus: yeah, and pretty graphic depictions of suicide for a non-cable show. casually talking about hanging in a garage and brains splattered all over the road. like this were PBS Degrassi. i had to double-take. at least they were able to laugh about it all at the hospital bed. i find the best laughs come when you're in a hospital bed.

Laertus: did you know the ultimate symbol of cromagnon conquer, the sinewy sculptured showman of muscle manhood himself, Alexander The Great...was gay?

Dirg: sure i buy it, makes sense, that's how he conquered all the lands of the world, all the kings made fun of him and he got angry. along his rampage way he flattened out the globe with his large feet.

Pat: what did you expect? these were all a bunch of Yalies. g'night, folks.

Michael Weiss: Instagram is the legal way to stalk. i mean is it enough for your psychological wellbeing to be treated to videos of your favorite celebrity each day to cheer you up after you get punched in the face at the UN and your tooth gets knocked out? i'm gonna marry my celebrity crush...

Pat and Julia Ioffe are in bed together in Pat's bed in his dorm room:

Julia climbs on top of Pat and begins unbuttoning his shirt.

Julia: i hope i'm not making you uncomfortable. we don't have to if you don't want to.

Pat: i'm comfortable. what brought this on?

Julia: it's starting to turn into more like love than lust, i'm feeling things not the thrust. i dunno, you showing me your life, where you were brought up, your high-school troubles, where you lived as a boy, how you lived as a youth, your fights, your raises, your first pet, your haircut, it's brought me closer to you. gotten my cheeks red.

Pat: why do you have it out for Lawrence O'Donnell?

Julia: he's WAY too enamored of Hollywood celebrities. oh and once again your shoes! are on point!

Pat is naked save for wearing moccasins in bed with a barefoot Julia.

Pat: they're moccasins. you want me to take them off so i can slip them in your vagina and you can get that First Nations aboriginal primal Peoples urge glow of being part of the Mama Earth spirit all you college girls crave. part of the unconquered lands?

Julia: you still have work to do on that front. the golf course is not enough. oh no! i would never ask that of you! i would never ask you to remove a piece of your beauty! i'm like a dentist trying to save your tooth. a good doctor never wants to remove a patient's body.

Julia, tongue out, starts painting diligently the back of Pat's shoes. she paints them red not using a brush, only using her red fingertips...

Pat: hey man, not cool.

Julia: no, i'm making them Redbottoms. POP QUIZ, HOT SHOT! come on, you can't get lucky EVERY time! use the moccasins and guess my way of thinking...

Pat thinks for a moment.

Pat: um...wait...it's on the tip of my tongue...oh yeah! Sir Nighteye from My Hero Academia! "are you mocking me!?"

Julia: damn, you pass again! we're getting better at reading one another.

Pat: one another's books anyway.