PAT'S PREP: THE LESSER CHILDREN

school sucks. but this is different. this will be different for Pat. because this is no ordinary high school. this is Pat's school. this is Nice Guys High. and soon the body of the school will become indistinguishable from Pat's body. he will learn here not things but rather feelings. images. primal images. primordial images. of a time before he was born. before he was human. these will instruct him on what was here before. and what will be here after. how childhood feeds prehistory. how nostalgia is identity. how Pre-K is NOT the most important thing. how love is. how first love is. most importantly, how the remembrance of love is.

Pat is nervous in the morning. not cos it's his first day of high school, cos both his parents are teachers here. but he lucks out. Pat's always had a sense of himself, that no matter how bad things get---and they get bad---he somehow manages to get by with something unexpected good happening. he is too down on himself ever to notice this good thing tho. here, the father teaches college prep and the mother teaches metal shop, both electives which Pat was able to skip. he races as fast as his feet will carry him to the school stage, not cos he's a drama nerd, cos he needs to hide from all his bullies real and imagined.

Michael Weiss on stage and with a monytail: so this Instagram thing...turns out, it was all a joke...

Pat positions himself behind the curtain as the first bell rings. he feels a sharp black fingernail digging into his back ribs. it's actually a female V-sign.

Julie Brown: this is MY hiding spot.

Pat: why are you talking to me? you just won Homecoming Queen.

Julie: i immediately abdicated upon winning, i take leadership at this school very seriously. i'm forming a club here. the first club anywhere in any school in America, that concept has only become recently vogue cos anime is just starting to break through here on our shores. the Orchid Club Girls. we meet every morning after school at the Dalgona Dragon Coffee Shop, which just HAPPENS to be behind the bleachers. we already got quite the team! we got Dami Lee. we got Olivia de Recat, our resident cat-familiar-tamer. we got gamers but don't tell anyone. and we got Annette Kellermann, the first nude scene of all time and the first real woman who is a real mermaid. we meet with Anne at the aquarium. sure it's a student newspaper but it's so much more.

Pat: i heard it was recruiting. now what am i supposed to do with myself?

Julie: we don't know each other, we never did. now we do.

she was right. Pat takes a moment to ponder this, he stares at her without her noticing: she has curly brown sandy hair in perfectly tiny ringlets in a Shirley Temple braid that no other girl in America is wearing now. she is short but a powderkeg. her most prominent feature is her glistening dimples. they are huge, bigger than her eyes, on either side of her permasmile. that smile of hers is contagious...

President Bump: i LOVE the gifs on facebook! my favorite show right now i can binge it cos i'm doing nothing all day at home is Highway Through Hell and Heavy Rescue!!! i know, right, Mike, i surprised myself, too! i'm watching The Weather Channel sans babes. this show has everything: it's just one hour of a Canadian dude smelling highway chicken and pulling on the same rope to lift oil-tankers out of bad-infrastructure roads. i love when the oil spills all over the place! what were we talking boot again?

Dershowitz: i'm in the clear. the heat is off me. i just have to keep the fact that i'm Weinstein's lawyer a secret, least i could do for my brother at Passover. uh, sir, the Election.

Bump: ah, right. it won't be long now. this will all be over soon. the virus will get rid of all the Democrats in this country and i'll keep postponing the Election like the Olympics. every four years. blame Doctor Who.

Jodie Whittaker: that's the WHO. not the band.

Bump: is Elton John in that? a female doctor? but you're not in the country.

Doryce: Gladyce dear, i know why you're suddenly looking so slim. you're taking that powder, right? but you're only doing it cos you saw that huge canister of powder on Oprah and it had that good-looking Norwegian doctor on the label.

Gladyce: no, dear, i'm really looking out for my health. stop projecting. i eat a lot of salads now. well i used to. i've never been so free, mah dahlin! and i want to tell you about it! i QUIT SALADS!!! i've been eating salads one a day since i was a little girl---at least 40,000 years ago---but I'VE HAD IT NOW!!! i had my LAST ONE yesterday! quit! done, forever. i feel light as a bird's feather! a great albatross weight has been lifted off my nads. i don't have to eat salad anymore, i don't have to prep that damn salad anymore, i can just easily swallow a can of peas, corn niblets, garbanzo beans, or French green beans as my tongue sees fit. no more eating one salad for five days...

Doryce: i'm so happy for you, lover!

Pat: it's sad, the salads here at the caf are...good. they're green. and healthy and nutritious. but none of the kids eat them, so they turn brown. and then the principal comes around and sees them brown, but it's not the salad's fault!

Dirg: is the lunchlady here hot?

Eye Luggage: no, that's Fern Riddell, teaches Medievalist History.

Dirg: i'd like to stick my German broadsword in this broad. she doesn't teach football? she's not Poison Ivy at night? RAAAAIIIDDD!!!

Pat: the mother is conscious of the fact that kids who go to school eat while the ones who do not do not. we are allowed to eat in her class. we have a meal before any flash cards or anything else gets flashed. today's: Louder Chowder.

Laertus: we are all gathered together like this at this school cos of the changes to Princeton. Princeton has been retrofitted into a huge negative-gravity hospital servicing the world's needs. all the dorm rooms are lost to the paying public, everything is a hospital now. even all the Starbuckses.

Dirg: but do they still teach gravity? college is so negative, full of negative rooms. yeah i went in for a mental-health check but it's there i found out they were handing out the vaccine free of charge like candy. i'm an anti-vaxxer so i politely refused.

Cotard steps out of a cathedral. Codrus is waiting for him there.

Codrus: your prayers won't save you, brother. and especially not the Call The Midwife Christmas special!

Cotard steps into the light wearing a mask the bishop fashioned from a sewing machine, some thread from his baldcap, and tearing up sheets from his robe.

Cotard: no, but this will. i was tearing up the sheets in there.

Eye performs her first spell at the chemistry lab. despite the primitive equipment she manages her first spell! a primitive one. based on primal urges and desires.

Eye holds up her bottle of Pernod Fils.

Eye: this is banned absinthe! the original formula from way back in the day in the Spanish Flu 1910s days! you can use this strain in your LUSH tonics!

Madame Pons: oh dear dear dear honey child! what were you thinking! the one that tastes like honey? oh child no. i must explain to you the wormwood experiments performed on those poor animals.

Eye: i'm sorry. i always wanted a horse, i went too far.

Kylie Jenner is talking wth Nadal at the Cathedral:

Kylie Jenner: yeah, i know you're doing a good job with it here in Spain, i have more followers than anyone else in the multiverse even The Pope so if i tell them to do something the entire world will move and budge. i tell my young people to do The Rona and they do. i tell them to kick rocks off springbreak beach and they did it. i told them about masks and they built ventilators out of their old Transformers...

Bernie: i am now using the Defense Production Act to build ventilators for the UK...including one special one...

Kylie: I told them about Spain and they all came flocking over. but i can't understand you, Nadal, i don't like mumblers when i'm fucking, i like it nice and quiet. we can never be sex partners or tennis partners again.

Nadal hangdogs his head. crestfallen, he joins the Guardia Civil.

Cecily Strong: we made it out! out into the New York wilds away from the city! here we will sanctary till...i dunno...I guess October, haven't seen Lorne in ages...SNL Summer Stock? maybe?...

Pete Davidson is alone in the barren SNL Studios:

Pete: i FINALLY get my chance! for the first time EVER, i'm gonna do an entire episode of Saturday Night Live with only MY skits starring ONLY ME!!! there are so many things i've written which went in the fire hopper but i'll pulling them back up from the brink! what. i don't care! i already look sick, everyone thinks i'm sick with something, my face is contagious, so i don't care! here i go! how do you operate this camera! i'll put it on Youtube Red Warning if i have to!

Dirg is in the passenger's with Takahashi driving the Onward van: they are currently parked at the school:

Takahashi: what's the mater now, buddy? i mean matter. you seem stressed.

Dirg: cos i'm at school at night. i dunno. you know the John Deere Gator is my favorite car of all time. but everyone's gotta make sacrifices in this thing. in this time. WAIT! are they still making cartoons? are anime workers essential? what's gonna happen if i don't have my Toonami to distract me!

Takahashi: relax. it's all on tape-delay. so where do you want to go now? we went to that graffiti hot spot in New Zealand where AC/DC became The Grateful Dead. you can learn a lot from how New Zealand handled things.

Yellow Ranger: so as you saw, i have a goody-two-shoes accent on the show, in real life i sound like a man.

Dirg: you're just another gravelly-sounding Pole going to the polls eating a pierogi. then going to your pole. your prerogative. your experiments we learn from in this country. and Liana, she sprinkles men's cologne on her hairy armpits before takes, that makes her even MORE hot!!!

Rebecca Sugar: sorry. we used the This Is Fine firedog meme for our finale. we were butting up against the deadline and needed a quick out. normally we're more creative than that. we'll fix it in the next series...

Takahashi: why are you sweating?

Dirg: look i'm still not over it! i get intimidated by Czech porn. that one man with those 200 girls, that is goals but i can't do the Eastern European thing, it would swallow me up with too scary freedom, i need bootstrapped American freedom, okay? let's go to McDonalds. it's so clever how they have the Golden Arches into two distant Upside-Down Us now. social distancing is here to stay. forever. we need to help out Tiger at his Masters Breakfast, there was no one there! that can be the food served! i'll call Paula Cole!

Laertus: i was thinking more Feeding America but. you can't get a date and you're dated. the only good thing about all this is we get to see inside the homes of all our favorite newcasters. i mean who knew Maria LaRosa's mansion would be the human chessboard lawn with hedges of Marienbad?

Dirg: hehe, i'm sweating again. Marienbad is bad, very bad. you can't tell if it's reality or fantasy...

Governor Cuomo: you're not faking it, right, Chris? you already received the most attention being the baby brother. and better-looking than me. let me have this one, Chris.

Chris Cuomo: only if you pay for the final Sex And The City movie to be filmed in New York City. you know she would have done a better job than you. i wasn't good in school, i need that blue screen you use to deliver the news, monitor the crunches, that organizes all the numbers with bright colors and graphics, i only learned from you, i learned how to live from you, Pop was never around.

Governor: cos Pop was dead.

Chris: no he is not! i saw Pop just yesterday...

Dirg: hey why are you in your basement like a hikkikomori? trying to feel and understand how the other half lives? how Takahashi lives?

Rand Paul: i joined the swimming team here at this pool this year. i'm a nerd with a fro so i don't fit in, i have weird ideas abot how to play water polo. the other kids laughed at me when i peed in the pool. they said all that yellow meant i was a farmboy who only ate wheat.

Julie: are you trying out for any clubs this year, Pat?

Pat: sports?

Eye Luggage: what were we talking about again?

Tyzik: oh, just how Jennifer Connelly's earrings in Career Opportunities were where Sia got the inspiration. everything good came from the '80s. how the dude in that film finally found a good use for backscratchers: as drum sticks.

Dirg: and that dance scene in the middle of all those aquariums, that was the PERFECT opportunity to hoard all the chloroquine in those water tanks!

Tyzik: why the hell is it called Armor All? stupid name. the brand obviously should be called Viking Brand...

Eye: Children Of  A Lesser God and go.

Dirg: but how can God be lesser? you mean the pagan Democrats? Jesus was the first surfer.

Laertus: let me begin, intimate again, am i preaching to the choir? they just don't make movies like this anymore. the '80s were a special place and time and fixed circumstance which will never come back. i can't imagine a studio now even ATTEMPTING to make a film like this, they wouldn't be able to. soft quiet intimate New England character studies under a grey sky and wheat and cliffs are so '80s. imagine watching this fantastic film when it first came out in the theatre right before Halloween when things started up again...

Dirg: yeah, and after the movie you go to a steakhouse in the '80s in New York City...

Stephanie Ruhle: yeah, i've been to those dinners. that was the way business was done back then...strippers in the glass punch bowl...a truffle to buy Amazon...but not anymore...smoke filling the air...no, Dirg, i was not one of those strippers how i got my job at MSNBC...

Dirg: remember, this is the same area where Peter Griffin was born...

Laertus: okay i hate cars and despise car culture but THAT's pretty cool. every morning driving your car onto a barge which boats across the river and into the harbor and under fog the barge lifts its silver tray and your car spills out onto the coastline coastland. like the Staten Island Ferry but with cars, not people.

Eye: how the HELL didn't William Hurt win the Oscar for this performance. the man learned sign-language fluently. i know the answer to this and it's ugly.

Laertus: there was controversy that this wasn't told through the deaf woman's perspective, that would have been an interesting choice...

Dirg: silent movies are so passe. instead you have William Hurt talking to himself and nobody says anything. haha! all the deaf kids just want to do it like we all do! that's the only thing that matters in life, kids: fucking!

Eye: yeah seems so. i mean Marlee Matlin, here is this bright whipsmart smartmouth woman with the telling pained jeweled eyes who happens to be deaf and ALL that she or anyone else sees is someone to fuck. it's so reductionist, that's all humans are worth? even after years of college?

Dirg: in fairness, that really is a juicy taboo. that's the final fetish. i mean to fuck a deaf girl is the ultimate.

Eye: in all these classic '80s movies there's that ONE line when the character has had it and uses the word FUCK to mean sex as a kind of jarring effect on the audience. every R-rated audience always listens for that one line to drive home the plot.

Laertus: William Hurt uses pimplyfaced teenagers as Marlee's young inexperienced suitors. that's obviously from his own past when he was hurt...

Dirg: we all know sign language, we all learned how to swear from the band Oasis. ha! what is veal? it's cow, buddy, it's cow.

Eye: she's the only one who gets music cos she feels the vibrations of it in her inner sanctum. we on the outside of her world can only glean bits and pieces form lyrics.

Eye: that was so cute! at the swimming pool...I'm falling in...into the pool!

Dirg: oh my Lesser God that butt on her tho! that butt in the water cured me! i'm asking this soberly, is Marlee Matlin the hottest deaf chick of all time? the hottest deaf person of all history?

Eye: nothing more romantic than pillow talk. aww, that's so good. William Hurt knows people have hurt Marlee cos his last name is Hurt.

Laertus: the man is getting into trouble. he assumed that she wouldn't be smart as hell as he puts it. what i don't understand is why she doesn't just go to college, she'd ace it all.

Dirg: if everyone was a star we wouldn't have hot dogs. some are meant to be mediocre and meagre and lick toilet bowls---in other times---and some are meant to be Rick Sanchez.

Eye: it's her stance, she doesn't want to talk to blend in with society like everyone else, she wants her world to be her own unique. she's a true rebel.

Eye: hey did you notice that little detail? Marlee's mom during the living-room interrogation takes out a smoke and begins to smoke, that's where Marlee got it from.

Laertus: that living-room is straight out of a Western saloon. and as always with '80s movies paying homage to the past by casting the inimitable Piper Laurie.

Laertus: sadly teachers can't dance with students anymore...

Laertus: father flashback time again! memories. i remember that scene specifically perfectly, like non-drug crystal, when William Hurt in his college sweater gets down by a warm-glow lamp, takes out the record dustjacket of his favorite classical-music LP, puts Mozart on the turntable and fires up the old stereo, and exhausted tells Marlee,

it's time for me to listen to something beautiful...

that image sticks in my mind for eternity. i remember it even today, it was on one of those lazy Sunday-afternoon movies they used to play on Channel 5 in a simpler time..

Takahashi: why are those kids playing video games so loud!!!

Dirg: don't speak to a deaf person's back. unless she can hear. this is how the iconic scene should have gone down: William Hurt is badgering her, shouting at her, yelling at her, FORCING HER TO OPEN HER DAMN MOUTH AND INTONATE VOCALIZE THE SYLLABLES OF WORDS!!! SPEAK, DAMMIT, USE YOUR VOICE, WOMEN DIED FOR YOUR VOICE, BREAK YOUR VOCAL CHORDS, TALK, BITCH, TALK!!!

and then Marlee opens her mouth and speaks normally in a British accent...

and then that scene should have gone William Hurt surprises Marlee at the manicurist's and lays out his fingers in front of her face for her to paint red. that's when Marlee realizes he wasn't the man she thought he was...

and final scene outside the prom Marlee should have wolf-whistled for William to turn around...a world not in the silent world nor the noise world...meet somewhere in the middle, in the Naruto Underworld...

Dirg: hey that was fucked up! that one kid in the teacher's class, the one who never talked. well he STILL never talked throughout the whole damn film!!! he remained mute! no character development progress at all! g'night, folks, i'm signing you something right now...

Laertus: Marlee, well-deserved Oscar! i'm sure she looked at him in the audience during the Oscar Ceremony. those two had a real-life romance, right?

Eye: yes. and i'm usually so in favor of that, that's always the OTP. but in this case, the short-lived frenetic relationship was filled with drugs and violence.

Dirg: nah i don't believe it, William Hurt is such the modern sensitive man in this, he's such a pansy, he's got the Alan Alda carriage to him, quiet voice, weird smile, combed hair.

Eye: it's so cold and sad when relationships end like that. two passionate people who once loved each other---at least for two years---30 years later the dude is communicating through a black-and-white readout from his agent that yeah, he's, uh, sorry for any pain he may have caused her. he didn't mean it. an eternal flame reduced to nothing.

Dirg: in fairness, silent rough sex, that's hot. the world looks like everyone is just coming out of a cancer ward. nobody's listening to each other. buttertop bread is a hoax. i miss Chris Matthews's take on coronavirus...

Madame Pons: *on the phone* hello Taki. long time. it's nice to hear your voice, what have you been doing? why does everyone---even Canadians---call their children kiddos nowadays?

Taki: why, are you thinking? i'm doing the A-Z Challenge...

Madame Pons:...IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC!!!? the A-Z Challenge is hard enough clean!

Taki: that brings me to my next point: i'm volunteering to be a nurse, i'm going back in the field...

Madame Pons: NO! you're too old! fuck your vanity! you're in the worst group! after everything i've done for you, all the sacrifices i've made, you're just gonna throw your life away like this!!?...

Julie, Pat, and their horde of masses of clique people all cross the street carefully, go downtown, and walk back to school to their meeting room:

Julie: i'm what they call...what i call...it's a new term for this new thing...i guess you could say..i'm an influencer...

Madame Pons: you know who the best actors are? it's not the actors, it's the influencers. i worry about my girls. i try to steer them right. through the crashing waves into counsel cove. i tell them, think of me less as Lele Pons and more as Lily Pons.

Julie: i worry about my girls. i try to steer them right. through the crashing waves into counsel cove, they all want to join the Women's Land Army. but i've slowly turned them around, i want them not to die for nothing but to live and become famous writers. i'm talking to them about writing...

Julie wraps her long rubbery arms around Pat's head and gives him a burning noogie on his noggin. she takes her crown off and places it on the red spot. Pat also wears Julie's red high heels, he tries them on for size staggering up and down the stairs and walking the freshly-waxed hallways in a glissando glide, attracting the attention of the desirables. who are undesirable to Pat.

Pat notices the purple flower on the left-side of Julie's head on her hair. which matches the purple flower as a tattoo on Julie's right foot.

Julie: stick with me, kid, this is gonna be a year...