PAT'S PREP: '80s CHEESE

Julie: are you okay? i was worried sick!

Pat's tongue in the morning has been hung out to dry for hours and is hanging by his ankles. he is stuffed inside that locker so well his body is a pretzel pizza crust. he's a perfectly-shaped human cookie cutter. Julie and the rest of the clique pull him out by his ankles...

Julie: say something! are you alive?

Pat can't mouth words anymore, he is swallowing his own saliva. but he regains word thought and feeling when he sees Julie's butt in that silver dress.

Pat: it was horrible. it was an event which will define my life forever. my sense of self will be strained. i won't have real relationships. i'll never experience love.

Julie: oh you poor thing.

she hugs him and gives his tongue an Indian burn with her elbow. she then gets down on her knees, takes out her camera, and takes a Polaroid picture of Pat's belt area of his beige khaki shorts where his penis sleeps.

Julie: this one's going on the wall!!! just gotta flap it like a bird escaping school. will you join us for camera club later this afternoon?

Pat: sure. i got all the time in the world today. just have to go see the father and the mother to let them know why i'm not in school. hanging out by a lamppost at the 7-Eleven till you get let out at 3.

Julie: it's rad that you can tell your parents anything. it's awesome and cool that they are just around the corner. literally. as teachers at this school.

Pat: i tell them nothing. i'll make sure to give them some excuse like i needed my Gundam project to have the best glue possible. shipped direct from Japan. i'm leaving this one to myself. where it will bury into my soul psyche rot and ruin me from the inside till i decay and die.

Julie: next one, babe, next one, i promise...

Comey: believe me, NO ONE cares about me now, NO ONE is thinking about me now...

Avenatti: how'd you do it, boss!

Mueller: the old boy's got some skin in his bones yet. wings what flap. what will you do with your second chance?

Avenatti: i'm gonna bring back the Air Jordans!

Wolf: sir, what is your message to a dying nation?

President Bump: *smiles* time to make love, baby.

Wolf: and what of your daughter?

Bump: Ivanka? what happened now? is she pregnant by her mother again?

Ivanka: yes. i left. yes i broke the rules. people, i just don't care anymore. i am SO tired.

covid wolf: and what of all the lifetimes? the lifetimes and daguerreotypes, the brown photos which would have seen the light of day opened 50 years after the war from their green lockdowned chest in the attic, but you ate the key. the untold stories of buddies who never made it back, their striped letters shortened, who would have been better lovers than those who lived and made it.

Bump: just write all that down on a thank-you card and send it to me, thanks.

covid tiger: all that preventable old-timer death...

Bump: i took the vape away from them. old people die because they vape. there are only three flavors: bubblegum, gin, and shoeleather. i vaped all of it so they wouldn't have to. iodine, iodine is the gamechanger. hydroxy-iodine. silver, people are starting to 49er silver again. in the West Virginia mountains. you see what's coming out of my mouth? that would be mercury vapors, i got the vapors...

Tiger Woods: all that dying alone...

Federer: come on!

Genie Bouchard: no. no means no.

Federer: you have to do this with me!

Bouchard: NO! it's a stupid idea! combining the women's and men's tours. playing together. it's unnatural!!!

Dirg: ONE film i will wait to die to see is that film being made as we speak of Genie Bouchard's forced date with that random dude on twitter cos he won the bet and she's a girl of her word...

Yellow Ranger: so...

Dirg: oh NO!!! you played me! we were all expecting that episode where you and Nate are caught kissing on work hours! that's the ONLY thing which matters in your whole franchise!!! the rest of it is DIRT BORING!!!

Yellow: yeah sorry, it's next week. our last one before the LONG hiatus. what was supposed to be the Olympic hiatus...

Dirg: frankly the only thing which will salvage your show is an uncensored fuck session between you and the nerd. Nerd Nate. make it happen, Nickelodeon. only if I'M impressed. only MY blog matters.

Laertus: that was cruel. you had a Pan-American Games episode.

Eye Luggage: and i swore that last line was weird, the Red Ranger says karate finals but it sounded like coronavirus...

Doryce: what salad are you having now, dear?

Gladyce: warm salad. but it's weird. guac should never be hot.

Doryce: unless you're at a frat party. are you still cleaning?

Gladyce: yes. i tossed the brushes. i find it's easier to just rub your fingers on the dirty plate and clean it that way, the food comes off faster, just use your hand as a brush.

Dirg and Takahashi in the Onward van parked at the high-school parking-lot at night after their day-trip. Dirg is hogging all the Donut Friend donuts in his mouth:

Takahashi: well that was rewarding. it's always entertaining traveling with you. never a dull moment. but my sense of taste on my tongue has been dulled.

Dirg: we've been to so many drivethrus we might as well take over the Post Office before they bankrupt. Wales Millennium Centre looks like the Roman Colosseum Bronze Age on the back of a matchbook. my birthday is Earth Day.

Takahashi: that's birfday. and Erf Day. Mike Tyson's Punch Out made boxing palatable for me. you know you can't have the word hate anywhere in your Wikipedia username.

Dirg: the antibody test scares me. it looks like those horrible acupuncture Medieval bloodletting cutting out holes in your back tests.

Takahashi: that's the allergy test. got hay fever? smoke a pound of hay for 420.

Dirg: didn't feel 420 this year. too depressed. that we're not in a liberated state. nobody cleans their mask right, you're supposed to steam it afterward like steamed vegetables.

Takahashi: do you pronounce vegetable Veggie Table? when was the last time you ate a vegetable? that wasn't fried.

Dirg: these masks are ridiculous. you're supposed to sew your own? like that's gonna happen. like the governor is telling me to magically procure a mask. and then FIVE WEEKS LATER oh! great. they decided for everybody to get in a line in your van at the WalGreens parking lot and they'll pass out the masks to all the citizens. well THANK YOU. now is the time, i gotta do this for my own wellbeing, for my own sense of self. time is running out.

Takahashi: do not do anything for your own sense of sanity, the worst thing YOU can do is think about yourself and your situation. don't get into trouble.

Dirg opens the van door and takes a deep breath in the chilled cold night air. he takes a pace and dashes through the hedges across the street to the gym where you can also buy weights. he takes another deep breath and smells the musk on the handle of the glass door.

Dirg: *eyes closed* i've been mentally preparing for this moment, mates. Czechs, i'm ready to check you...…...i can't open the door...*his eyes remain closed*...what's happening?...

the gym is closed for covid. with the paper note on the inside of the glass this time.

Laertus: Basehor, Kansas??? come on!!!

Eye: i want Dex Parios in my bed.

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

Tyzik: Elisabeth Shue in Cocktail should have invented the eyelets of shoe laces.

Dirg: you could tell Elisabeth Shue HATED Cruise on set. when they do the play-fighting scene between two burgeoning lovers in the lagoon, and she's trying to sweep-kick him into the water, that ain't acting! she was going for blood! she would have punched his lights out if she could. poor Tom. that was a trick kiss to get him off his guard.

Laertus: can a bartender make a good father?

Dirg: depends what he drinks.

Eye: that is one of life's unanswerable questions. i can see it now: that poor kid. he's being bullied by his classmates---not the school bully---about what his father does for a living:

kid: HE'S A BARTENDER, OKAY!!!? MY DAD'S A GODDAMN BARTENDER, YOU HAPPY NOW!!!?

and the kid cries all the way home, running his little feet on highways racing with post-covid pent-up traffic, till he runs upstairs and dives into his Top Gun bed in the shape of a jet.

Eye: Loverboy and go.

Dirg: not the other 1989 film. Australian. they have weird laws over there. Patrick Dempsey looks weird here. like he's supposed to be the hot sexy boytoy but he's too gangly, too nerdy, too geeky with the friend's calculator, with that fro, it just doesn't read. he looks like a toy elf, not a toyboy.

Laertus: this is basically a porn. it's the same structure as a porn, has the pizza like a porn, except there's no nudity. it's amazing with this kind of movie that no sex is shown, it's all implied.

Dirg: again there's that one scene in the Chinese boudoir with the pink silky drapes where it's two body doubles flailing their legs and arms around on top of each other like they're wrestling on the bed while flapping around rose-colored lace sheets. was that how they did all sex in the '80s?

Laertus: the only person who is ever really scantily-clad is Kate Jackson!

Eye: OMG i LOVE Charlie's Angels!!! i'm not ashamed to admit Jaclyn Smith was the first celebrity i cummed to. Kate Jackson said her career was derailed by various forces.

Dirg: i like her. i'm gonna send her a pair of those 5-pound dumbbells everyone in the '80s had with their fuzzy headband and leg warmers. if Judge Reinhold is introducing your film, your film's got problems. Nancy Valen! she doesn't take valium! she later went on to do Baywatch. it was her idea for New Order to do the Baywatch version of "Regret". which they regretted.

Laertus: yeah but Carrie Fisher. see but Carrie Fisher is in this. so nothing matters. she INSTANTLY adds credibility to whatever project you're in. you got Princess Leia, that's it, this thing is destined to be a cult classic.

Laertus: pay attention, Dirg! the woman who does the animation of the opening titles is...a woman! and she worked for Sesame Street doing all their classics! you could learn a lot from her.

Dirg: i'd much rather daily EG Daily. yum yum yum. in her prime! the fact that she voices a cartoon baby makes it kinky. babyplay and such. but she had to get with a salmon. SHE wasn't a dead fish but HE was. she chirps like a chihuahua in this it's great!

Laertus: Barbara Carrera intrigues me. she's a mystery woman from the away-away islands. no one knows her origins, no one knows what her accent actually is, she speaks in seduction, the native language of all boys trying to be men. she had a nice career. many men, but no children.

Dirg: sounds good to me. the drug kingpin island girl with the lei for her floss bikini.

you're just a boy. i don't date boys, i date men.

pffft, what does that ginger know! you were all up salivating internally on him when you thought he had that mustache instead of it glued to his lip! those two were in the perfect place to sit down and watch Mannequin together to learn about love. by the way, Senor Pizza, not racist, a perfectly legitimate business. pizza was invented by the Aztecs.

Eye: but the extra anchovies thing? anchovies are disgusting. Madame Pons is begging me to try them but i can't get past the eyes. i think that's her test. if this movie was REALLY rad they should have been prescient and it should have been extra pineapple!

Eye: '80s gigolos are cute. i admit, the leaving the rose on her bed afterward is pretty adorable. and the dancing like Fred Astaire, see back then that WAS masculine. and the expected and anticipated tribute to the past of Old Hollywood by the '80s decade.

Laertus: and what's with Robert Picardo ALWAYS playing doctors! he always plays a doctor! whether in space or on Earth!

Dirg: he's got his two feet on the ground. Kirstie Alley. Kirstie Alley was riding high in this time, she would never have it as good in her life as her Cheers years ever again. the glass balls scene, like THAT wasn't symbolic.

Laertus:

I have fantasy.

gotta love Kim Miyori.

Dirg: as long as this fantasy involves pizza savers up my butt. i'll do it for my country.

Laertus: and Vic Tayback, you know that is EXACTLY how i pictured Mel's home life being!!!

Dirg: revenge of the jilted husbands. The Three Amigos! hey i did like how they gave the blond buff WWF champion-belt muscle monster a heart, he cried. see?, we're sensitive, too! it's okay, buddy, you still have American Gladiators.

Laertus: ah the good old days, when it was the WWF, and steroids was still untraceable. needed contact tracing back then. boots on the ground, no tech.

Dirg: i feel sorry for my other blond brother Ray Girardin. you know he thought he'd be the next big thing. he'd be Bill from Bill & Ted. sometimes you just gotta ride another wave, brother. oh and Dylan Walsh. THAT's Dylan Walsh!!? he looks WEIRD in this, he doesn't read at all. Dylan Walsh as the mullet bully. tho he is in the right spot---Beverly Hills---to start his plastic surgery practice later.

Laertus: real doctors. in space. a lot of '80s movies were about Beverly Hills. made it easier to film.

Dirg: Patrick even had to endure talking to a...how shall i put it...a business woman. two shots of golden wine! yeah see you never challenge an Italian on a scooter, be prepared for a street race with your car all over the Los Angeles congested highway system. we know this way back from Roman Holiday. and suddenly this becomes the set of Legends of the Hidden Temple. the good one, the Nickelodeon one, the original one! not the godawful movie PLEASE tell me we never have to review that!

Dirg: Pat and Dylan, here we go, the inevitable showdown. between Luke and Darth. for Princess Leia's hand. not chopped hand.

Laertus: Carrie's line:

FUCK FIBER

haha, love it! that was funny. that should be the name of a brand of cereal. right on the front of the box. and that photoshoot reads back to her Postcards From The Edge experience.

Dirg: right on the front of the box of any toys NOT from the original trilogy. it makes you go poo. look, here me out: maybe they should have had the son fuck his own mom. it would have been an important psychological study. NOW the two really have to talk to each other. she questions him on what he gets out of empty loveless sex with random women, he asks her pointedly what's wrong with dad that she had to stray from her marriage. a nice heart-to-heart pillow talk after the act.

Eye: i feel sorry for pianos. they are so beautiful and graceful. they elicit sounds only a goth could admire and secretly love under her tearstained pillow. but do they have to be so big!? they are dangerous weapons when used improperly.

Eye: ha, joke's on you, dad! you thought your son was the worst '80s disease there is---being gay---so you bought him a baseball bat......which he used as a balance stick to do Fred Astaire dances!!!

Laertus: and also, the dad looks like a porn star with that mustache. he would have fit right in to his son's work. at the pizza place.

Dirg: why the girl mad tho. he was doing it for her. so he could please her better. escort? yucky. paid escort? now her college is paid and she didn't have to take the stage. as anything but an actress.

Laertus: i sure hope Pat doesn't have this hard a time getting through college.

Dirg: yeah so this was an extended episode of Three's Company. but why oh why wasn't the ending the way it should have been. the last line writes itself, it was perfect, it was all set up:

Italian Tony comes into the pizzeria and says to Patrick:

I fucked your mom.

g'night, folks.

Madame Pons: *on the phone* babe? Taki? you want to take the walk from The Treehouse to the pizza place AGAIN!? i only wanted to show you what i walk every Tuesday when i don't go grocery shopping at The Store.

Taki: i want to do it tomorrow. at least four times a week. it's good exercise for me during these times!

Madame Pons: i only do this walk once every two weeks! how do you manage to walk so much? why are you walking all the time? where are you? you're never around.

Taki: i have my ways. i like planes. oh i love the primrose path when you skirt through all the rosebuds littering the Obec Outdoor Mall! nobody's around so you can eat the buds. how do all those flowers get watered now?

Madame Pons: automatic sprinklers. essential workers operate them. still gotta have love.

Taki: yeah so you could say i skip to my heart's content! i glide, i float when i walk...

Pat is all better now that he got 8 hours of Julie's arms. he and the rest of the clique are quietly causing a ruckus with all their snaps around town. a girl with a purple bow in her ribboned hair tugs at Pat's vest shirt.

girl: excuse me, mister, want to take a picture?

Pat: you're a member of Camera Club? aren't you a little young to be going to our school?

girl: i'm her sister. not by blood. no, i'm a genius, they say i could attend college already if i wanted. i'm 35 years old. i'm just short.

Pat: sorry. you have the newest expensive Polaroid camera, i can't afford that. instead i take pictures with my mind. i find those images last longer. they remain forever in my frontal lobe. lobe love. i will be able to recall them decades later when i'm feeling low.

and Pat does just that, he looks around all 360 degrees of the corner he's on, he takes in all the sites and sights, cos he knows he'll need them for later:

the skateboard shop Skate Rabbit with the huge bay windows, the Pic Mart with the outer windows all covered in long scrolls of white butcher paper with today's specials in red ink: 5 cents for a cut of fajita, 14 cents for crabs, the Greek place on the other side of the wide road which was Pat's first pronunciation of the word gyro, dripping in street grease, Don's Plum where Pat first learned what a bar was. and what a newspaper was. and that narrow green alleyway with the chainlink fence and dark-green tree which obscured the view of the black dog barking slobbering on his tiny cheek tied to a forgiving chain planted in an aisle cut of out the center of the building, another hall of mirrors which tricked sound as well as wheels.

it's been a watery day for Pat, he sits down exhausted on the curb and dusts up his sockless feet. he gets used to the road. somebody something comes out of the jangling bushes and whacks him on his head with a golf club. but the silver stick feels good. maybe cos it's night. and Julie's face is staring at his with her moonlit eyes and her neon lips. Pat takes the club and does a practice swing, cutting the chilled night air with a hot knife.

Pat: which way's the golf course?

Julie: school.