PRINCETON PAT: MOISELLE

Gladyce at The Orchid with Elizabeth Pich:

Pich: i'm not a bitch. pitch me.

Gladyce: well Doryce and i of course were having the rest of the habanero jalapeno chicken, shielded from view from the rest of the cruise passengers cos we felt guilty. they were saying the virus was transmitted by putrid poultry. that Doryce, as you would expect, she only ate the tangy skin, leaving me the bulk of the bird. by then i just lost my appetite, my tongue was not tasty at all, i stared at that precious bird's eyes as he flew the coop. or in this case, the corona. in the cabin. i miss my baby.

Pich: yes i am a Warren supporter but that's just a coincidence.

Gladyce: yeah we did Collette tours. cos we thought they were run by Toni Collette. they weren't. instead they forced us to only form small groups. we said it was just the two of us and sang the song but they wanted smaller...

Dirg: the Sesame Street Humphry Slocombe ice cream is exactly how you'd expect: it's like eating Chinese food. except you ARE full afterwards. my wish was fulfilled. i got sesame seeds stuck in my root-canaled tooth, a tooth i performed a root-canal on myself, late one night in my empty dorm room cos i was bored. and it wasn't even Spring Break, it was midnight and empty.

Laertus: hey, your dad can't complain now you didn't go to a vocational college...

Dirg: my lip is still swollen. from the blowjob, not the procedure. or the chap stick. none of that godless Ben & Jerry's from Vermont!

Eye Luggage: we always find out about a celebrity's death AFTER THE FACT. about his underlying condition---the one he was lying about---all the ailments and conditions he had that he kept secret from his family and agent. why not announce it all WHILE you're still able to get help for it? that goes for fathers, too.

Takahashi: on Wikipedia---where i work now part-time---you need a portmanteau pointman who's always at his station midnight to noon on duty ready at a moment's notice to change that is to was...

Dirg: i never want to change Natalie Portman's article...

Klobuchar dons the cape. her secret identity is The Iron Ranger. she whisks and secrets away Meghan and Harry from Canada before the taxes on their protection run out. she squirrels them deep in the Minnesota snow. in the underground layer of the Iron Fortress of Solitude immune from global warming...

Fox Mulder: ...and then we take over. this is the PERFECT X-File! it's what the fans always yammer in our ear they want at cons: to go back to the past, when life was better, simpler, easier, when you could still wear capes outside. i mean think of this coronavirus thing: it's wiped out Seattle, the land of grey skies, all our early Season 1 eps had wall-to-wall blanket-to-blanket grey skies. the British Columbian woods, Victoria, are like the Seattle backwoods. THERE is where my ginger and i solve the mystery! stop it, stymie and squash the virus once and for all! with the help of Casper the Friendly Ghost who kills himself in ritual Satanic Warren sacrifice in a red circle painted on a forest clearing for the cause. Casper inhales the virus so no other human will. unfortunately he doesn't return back as a ghost this time...

Scully: you didn't mean me. Mulder takes garlic pills to ward off the virus. he will only take them with lemonade...

Scully: it turns out Prince Harry is Patient Zero to which Harry has the most memorable line when he utters, and i can relate:

fuck all. blame the gingers again. [and then he breaks the fourth wall looking directly at the camera:] 

Harry: do you want a divorce, Meghan?

Meghan: actually yes babe. it's not you, i didn't really think through this whole thing. i mean my normal trajectory back home by this time would have been Jim Carrey then Amanda Bynes.

Harry: i'm afraid the Magna Carta doesn't allow divorce...

Buttigieg: i'm her Boy Wonder.

Klobuchar: where are you going, my sidekick Boy Wonder? the fire is over here...

Buttigieg: holdup.

Buttigieg knocks on the door. to ScarJo's dungeon.

Buttigieg: is Colin home?

Colin: you're looking right at him. in makeup.

Buttigieg: *blushes* Jost, can i......um, well...*beams wide bright Boy Wonder smile full of teeth*...can i write for the show? i always wanted to be an SNL scribe...

Colin: don't give me that aw-shucks grin! you're smarter than that, Butt...your first assignment: write a skit that makes Johnny Knoxville funny...

Laertus: why does the Cesar Award look like the Tower of Babel...

cats: meow.

Pat: hey guys! *knocks on dorm door* i brought the Caesar salad! vacuum-packed in silvery NASA packages! and also chips!

Laertus: hey buddy! nice to see you, babe. fraid you're a week late. but those chips look mighty tasty good despite being blue which normally indicates rot.

Pat: organic.

Dirg: NASA makes fun of flatearthers behind their backs. which is unfair cos all our backs are flat. let me guess, you're doing the organic thing for a girl.

Pat: not a girl. not a woman. a walking experience of exoneration in high heels.

Madame Pons: the utonagan dog breed looks like a wolf. they're my leap fur babies! they sleep in my bed in The Treehouse on the canopy so none's the wiser. except nones. remember, make sure your wolf familiars are the real thing.

at Colette Boutique, Doryce sits by her lonesome at a glass bar her ankles knee-deep in day-old blue water sloshing around the studio as she waits…..for no one in particular. staring at her watch which is really just her casting wrist. for a Turkish twist.

Doryce: water bar like The Love Boat...

Madame Pons: oh i love that place! it's the next LUSH! in fairness EVERY place is trying to be the next LUSH...

Rubikon: i've got a handle on this coronavirus thing. it's obviously the plot of the Iranians. the coronavirus caused the power to go out! all the blackouts! it's the virus seeping into the nation's infrastructure. infecting the wiring. but i will PROTECT you! Americans. ALL Americans. phew, it's a good thing i was able to scoop up all the black vote just in the nick of time by making Biden my V.P. again before he got any harebrained ideas to run himself!

Bernie: so it was explained to me that while i have a rabid fan base there's just not ENOUGH of them to win anything! i mean fuck! if i run a third time i will essentially be running as a walking skeleton. i want so BADLY to see Whitney Houston in real life! i mean i can't do this forever, i'm gonna have to pass it down to AOC who of course will take credit for everything when SHE becomes the first Female President. don't you wave that water pistol at me! that's how the virus spreads! laying the groundwork takes a bridge, it takes an infrastructure bill. i'm a writer. revolution takes time...…...like at least 100 years. Larry David just texted me saying he just had the biggest messiest orgasm of his life, it was so hard it shattered his glasses. look i get it i get it, no more Bernie Bros. Bernie Hos? no no i mean Bernie Girls, we'll do Bernie Girls. definitely. next time...

the ska band Casual Zipper plays on the dorm roof...

President Bump: stunt on dem hos. the Dems not the Republicans. no i don't wanna go to Olga's Kitchen! no babe has ever been named Olga!!! Ospina? deport her! from Britain to here, get her away from Simon Cowell's sweaty hairy arms! SEE!!? the virus will dissipate when summer hits, when the temps rise, the temperature, the weather, AND the climate……...uh oh, i've been watching too much Weather Channel to see if they got any new babes, shit that means global warming?......shit i just confirmed the globalist cabal...i need global warming to be a thing to end this virus...i am fucked...cold soup for me only thank you...

Madame Pons sticks her hand in Henry's mouth.

Henry: *muffled* oh great, here we go again.

Madame Pons: oh Henry, dear...

Henry: my voice is fine, madam. i can talk, you're showing me how to speak.

Pons gets her whole elbow in there:

Madame Pons: just checking for tonsil stones...don't want you contracting any magic...a puny human such as yourself couldn't handle magic like that...you'd explode in a pile...we can't cheat the process, believe it, you'll feel such a case of accomplishment when you do this the honest way.

Henry: you're talking like you're sick.

Pons: why thank you, dear, *kisses him* i know i know. but the ibuprofen doesn't work. i just have one of those bodies, one of those constitutions, where the only thing that works on my plumbing is Vanquish. it's not like i'm drinking brandy all the time...

Dirg: how are the Honey Pot ads racist? this is about black entrepreneurship, Magic Johnson can't swoop in and save the day all the time, he's busy...with his things he does. sure we put a Target on her back, but......and i FUCKING hate the Selsun Blue guy! who does that clucky Southern-lawyer-KFC-Colonel-Sanders wannabe think he is!!? Sanders? at least audition for the role of Colonel Sanders like everyone else, don't cut in line! he gives me cluster headaches, suicide headaches. he gets under my skin, he literally gives me hives when he comes on with his particular brand of whiny screeching, they grate my sense and cause dandruff to form on my nerves...

Eye Luggage: i have suicide headaches. people thought for years i was just doing Hollow from Bleach cosplay on my face with masks...

Gladyce: i was so lonesome without my Dory at The Store i cried tears ears into the POM glass bottle shaped like a Mrs. Butterworth's bottle...

Jodie Whittaker: Happy International Whoman's Day! a Whoman of course is a female fan of Doctor Who...

Yellow Ranger: did you see our show this week?! inbetween your trips to the hospital. it was awesome! there were virtual real-life-sized video-game characters the size of humans fighting as holograms at our juicebar! i can't believe Nintendo never thought of that yet! or PlayStation for that matter! this is a cash cow. it's virtual reality...but on Earth! it's how we all get closer to seeing Whitney again...

Doryce: i'm a girl but i LOVE going poo now! it gives me another excuse to wash my hands again...

Gladyce: *at the office* so it's a bitch cooking the meat, you know? sigh. so far away the European bacon---which is just a cut of thick steak---on the plate is hot as fuck when you take it out of the microwave! the plate burns my fingers! it's impossible to remove the plastic wrapping vacuum-sucked onto the plate letting no air out! burns my fingers more! all so nobody has to ever clean the grooves of a skillet ever again!...

Cotard: nones are the atheists or the irreligious. but None is a very ancient sacred part of the Catholic monk liturgy. the Novena. Chaucer was a secret atheist...whose progeny settled in Vermont...

Dirg: that Alex Guarnaschelli is a fatbottomed girl, me likey.

Tyzik: all i'm saying is they should have let Roseanne continue on the air. it would have been a fascinating psychological case study of a character in real-time having to confront her inbred racism and the reasons for it. the answers would be complicated, they would involve childhood abuse, they would involve mental institutions. they would involve the oblivion of Utah. you would make her go there, she would have made a breakthrough live on air during their Broadway show. talk about a writer's dream!

Laertus: i'm writing THAT script, Dirg, THAT script.

Eye: what were we talking about again?

Tyzik: that was some horrific violence. sawing a man's chest with a saw? before Saw!

Dirg: because of that scene i can no longer enter a Pep Boys. i'm sorry all you dykes i mean lesbians who were offended/fondled by me, i'll never play Pep Boys again.

Eye: Pep Boys? is that a thing? a sport? i would have played it in the street by now.

Dirg: you do a Pep Boys when a lesbian goes to a Pep Boys and seeks out searches for the auburn-haired woman in the aisle with the backwards baseball cap. under that cap is always a mullet. she picks this broad up, literally, lifting her off the ground, swinging her arms and legs side to side, that's the signal to take her home. they drive around the asphalt oval in the front of the store 9 times cos that's the Wicca number. then they get in the trunk and have sex.

Laertus: forgetting something, Dirg? this was your first exposure to Juneteenth. forgot about it, huh.

Dirg: i was too distracted with Bokeem Woodbine. his acting binds me in fear, with wood bamboo down my fingernails. his head is too shiny, too sheen. he's from the first place. he drinks orange juice. he's one of those ganstas that wears kid stickers on each of his cheeks.

Eye Luggage: Eve's Bayou and go.

Laertus: SO glad i finally saw this! after hearing about it for so long.

Eye: i saw this in college...when i was still a freshman...at the other college...a long time ago...after my first final. in a little grindhouse theatre on the edge of campus. after hearing such good things about it. to treat myself. by myself. at night. freaked the fuck out of myself. i swore the EXIT sign said LEAVE but it said EVE. the popcorn napkins looked like ghosts in my lap. it was so windy that night i went bald. that was the night i became goth...

Laertus: fabulous script! so well-written. richly deserving of every kudo it received. studio, too. yet it still remains strangely forgotten despite being remembered forever in Congress. loved every bit of it. the slow-moving mood of it. the girl is a revelation with her performance, her acting is so natural, not a false note to be had she ever evinces, we genuinely feel her feeling throughout, each one of them, we're with her facial expressions, her crying lips, this powerhouse of a little girl sends us on an emotional journey. and the swamp, i love the Louis bayou, i love those dangling white garland trails of flowers, like slides, which fall from the moat trees, what are those things called again, honey? they would make perfect Antebellum Civil War Gone with The Wind swings!

Trent Reznor: i commute from my Nawlins mansion to the gated graveyard...

Eye: i think they're just weeping willows. not a lemon from Kasi Lemmons, in her directorial debut! SHE's a writer! i love when prodigies spring up out of nowhere from the swamp!

Laertus: this film is so good it looks like it's based on a true story. but it's not.

Dirg: sure, it's fun to see where Gambit came from. but honestly this is a dangerous DANGEROUS movie. i mean this film is about the unreliable narrator, about how we force ourselves to misremember things when our minds and imaginations are bent by trauma and can't take the pain and awkwardness, when we push bad feelings and memories down our subconscious cos it's too messy to embrace them correctly. this is the Smollett family we're talking about here! Jussie Smollett wanted to be the boy in this film but was switched at the last minute with the other Smollett brother cos the director knew Jussie would ruin the whole project with his lies! she made him try on a Mighty Duck skate instead...

Rubikon: WATCH IT BOY! WATCH IT, WHITE SANKA. WE PROTECT OUR OWN!!!

Jada Pinkett: i mean i got on the horn and tried to get Tyler Perry to help Jussie. he did not return my calls. while on this same phone i looked up my ex-boyfriend lawyer at the flower shop...

Laertus: huh, well i'm happy you're at least now actively seeking out truth, Dirg. continue.

Dirg: *laughs heartily* what's the deal with Vondie Curtis-Hall as Julian Grayraven! where's my Blondie music in the background? THAT GRAY MICHAEL BOLTON HAIR!!! Grayraven, that sounds like a mental institution "hospital" in an X-Men swamp without a map! do we need a black Edward Cullen? do we need a black Fabio?

Eye: that's Kasi's husband. from Chicago Hope! i think she was playing a trick on her husband with this part. getting him back for a dare. Chicago Hope again. that show you begrudged while it competed with ER but now you've come to see was better than any of the medical dreck we get today.

Dirg: what's the deal with the voodoo witch? whiteface is acceptable now?

Eye: take it from me, i've been studying them. and around them. that isn't an offensive stereotypical bullethole, that's a black hole in her third eye!

Laertus: Lisa Nicole Carson again! see? i told you! she was HUGE in the '90s! she would have become Beyoncé if she had continued. there's still time, Notorious LNC! there's always time as long as you open your eyes the next day...

Dirg: watch yourself with that thing, boy! *laughs heartily* well at least she could have become LisaGay Hamilton.

Eye: Lynn Whitfield---the bayou's own---is so classy in this, her smile is sublime, she's like Walking Pearls.

Dirg: Lynn is the sophisticated stoic one you marry, Lisa Nicole Carson and her ass which fills the entire drawing room is the one you fuck. and who do you kill? why the man of course, the husband! and it's Samuel L Jackson this time with voodoo! i mean he has more Oscar hardware than the other dad! more noms anyway. how much talent you want to snuff out, Hollywood?

Laertus: so interesting seeing Branford Marsalis in this, he was the Marsalis we all grew up with, he was so cool as the jazz bandleader of Leno. back when Jay Leno was still new and cool. Marsalis and that goofy Dizzy Gillespie cheeks grin of his.

Dirg: when two old black men fight, it's hilarious. why can't the ganstas be less scary and more like these two geezers? make it a Cosby Show fight.

Dirg: but what's the deal with the black widow? the one where all her husbands die. like in that rain scene she's the one doing the driving, he's the one in he passenger seat, and yet somehow she survives the crash but he doesn't!? come on. do i have to get out my women drivers rant, i mean that's my DAD's rant!

Laertus: the fortuneteller blind to her own fortunes. Debbi Morgan. HAD to have won the Oscar that year, don't want to hear anything different...

Dirg: Ebert said this was the best film of that year. *laughs heartily* oh Diahann Carroll, poor dear thought she was doing a baking show. oh Meagan Good! yeah i didn't recognize her as the crazy girl. i only know Meagan Good from rap videos. you know that's a real problem in your community, the black community never wants to admit its scores and scores of mentally-ill people in it. sign of weakness, right?

Jada and Rubikon glare at Dirg in silence.

Madame Pons: or rather some Madam CJ Walker skin cream for the legend Diahann Carroll.

Dirg: Roger Guenveur Smith sounds like a Gundam. and Victoria Rowell, the director merely told her, "act like you do on the soaps. come-hither look, you want to fuck the doctor like all women do. but......more saucy...like you're not on noon anymore..."

Eye: the African-American Upper Class...

Dirg: all Bernie voters. the house negroes who made it out of the house...and became stuck-up Frenchies...

Dirg finishes the rest of the review online from home at the dorms...

Dirg: i'm happy for them. misrepresentation, this is a long black Three's Company.

Eye: puberty in girls back then was like being gay in the '80s, treated like a disease that would mess you up permanently. period blood is voodoo blood.

Dirg: i mean that was pretty creepy, pretty Twilight Zone, when the oldest daughter comes back from the rain looking exactly like the mother's perm hair at the salon. don't these kids go to school? it's Creole claustrophobia. that death scene was so sad. cos it was eminently preventable. yet with each frame i felt i was back in film school again. all Samuel L Jackson had to do was hop on that train! he'd be alive today! isn't he a big action star!!? "where'd my daughter learn to breakdance?!!"

Dirg: final scene beautiful sunset...it becomes an Of Mice And Men situation, the girl tells her older sister to stare at the sun while she pulls something out of her sweater-pocket: … … it's the Meg divorce papers ready for her to sign, Good is officially being disowned from the family fam, i mean this whole dang mess was her fault, dat girl REALLY needed a boyfriend...

Laertus: i love when Mozelle is explaining her life and it appears as a Broadway play in the back, and the ghost actors interact with the actors just the same in the same space. right in front of us. memory. cats. not knowing which stage is real. it's a narrative device and choice that works cos it's off-putting. it leaves the viewer wobbly, not knowing what scene is coming next. Mozelle says the most memorable lines of the film:

life. all the pain, all the heartbreak, all the loss. all the not knowing. not knowing where you're going, what it all means, it has to mean something, you have to one day join up with your dead loved ones and be like, "oh okay, so THAT was what it was all about." otherwise, if there's no point, that's just sad. 

g'night, folks.

there's a coronavirus confab happening at Princeton. in attendance are the usual luminaries of the day and age, the experts and "college people" Bump hates, all the doctors, all the sexy doctors on tv, all the scientists. the ones who trace the contagion and contacts and trace your phone number back to you to call you for a date.

Julia Ioffe: come on, guys, we gotta just do it! we gotta bear down and bare down and just do it!!! we'll get through this!

Codrus: haha, brother! this virus you caused is driving people further and further apart. they'll never come together to shake hands ever again!!! the Peace Be With You at Church is canceled. along with The Bachelor!!! no more love...

Cotard: negative. the virus YOU caused will have the opposite effect, it will make every person in this world FINALLY come to realize that we really are all in this together, we always were. we gotta pray. we gotta pray harder than we ever have before.

Codrus: haha! pathetic, brother, you and your pathetic patient prayer.

Michael Weiss on stage: Instagram, it's GOTTA be more than memes...

SUDDENLY a shoe is thrown in Michael Weiss's face. he stutters. more than usual. and is knocked off balance. his tongue tastes like the tongue of a shoe.

Pat didn't mean it. he scurries off into the auditorium shadows before anyone can get a glimpse of him. he was just trying to take off that damn shoe from his foot that was so stuck on. the hallways outside the exit are pitch black as he runs. on one foot. but Pat closes his eyes anyway, not wanting to look at his feet.