at the Debate:
Rubikon: fix yo lips. let's just get this over with...
Biden moves to shake hands as is his reflex good nature, but pulls back when he forgets the rules.
Biden: *deep breath* no that's right, i remember now, no more inner malarkey, i'm here to talk, not to fight. when they announced my name i thought i was in the WWF ring and was seriously ready to jump him and start in on the whaling on...
Rubikon: well you do need the Jamaican vote...
President Bump: i do very well with whalers...
Pence: not whaling in the sexual sense, sir...
Bump: did you know average temperature around the world is 69?...
Boc: last night, i waited till the night got cool. which i'm pissed about that i have to do still in Autumn. i was so discombobulated from my tennis lesson in the day of heat...
Galivant: yeah mate you REALLY can't slice-serve!
Boc: ...my head wasn't screwed on straight, i got dizzy. i ended up watering the whole nine lawns WITHOUT my special shoes! i had on just my regular tennis shoes...which were caked in mud after and i had to wash them the rest of the night and didn't get any sleep and i'm dizzy again.
Melbourne: yeah mate i know the feeling. you start in on something and you don't feel what's under your own two feet. next time don't use any shoes at all, do it barefoot. that's what i did all those years at my estate with the lawn in front.
Boc: oh hey man, what are you doing here?
Melbourne: car-watching. it's like bird-watching but, well, you need a car if you're ever gonna catch a bird. love watching them whizz by at golden hour. then i take a whizz in the street, no one minds, it's Monte Carlo.
Boc: yeah, you might as well be peeing gold here. get in any rides?
Melbourne: nah, Lewis Hamilton is hogging all the trim. the racing stripes i mean.
Gladyce: so dear with a knife gently puncture a hole in the plastic covering the bowl of chili so when you take the wrap off it won't be as steamy.
Doryce: but i like it steamy. are you sure you trust me with knives?
Gladyce: use a paring knife. i use a paring knife with the cats.
cat familiars: CAT RAINBOW HEAVEN FORBID!
Gladyce: when i pour the wet cat food packet into their saucers, there was always so much stuff left in there. the packet was half-full of sliced carrots and meat bits and gravy. now i use a paring knife to scoop out ALL the good food.
Laertus: you don't really need another girl to do traffic. just have the anchor do the traffic.
Dirg: FIE ON YOU! the world ALWAYS needs more tits.
Mardith: and more JOBS!
Mardith shows Madame Pons the Heartopener yoga technique position.
Mardith: it's all in the chest. i mean wrist. this will help you conquer a heartbreaker.
Pons: thank you, dear. awwww, look at us, we're Kelly Ripa and daughter Lola!
Dirg: not Apple and whoever her mother is.
Isiah Thomas: when there's chaos, that's when the greatest change and growth comes...
Mardith: thank you, Isiah Thomas.
Paris Hilton: i mean have i sunk so low my new show's on YOUTUBE!? i'm a French bitch, dammit!
Donald Glover: social media's a rabbit hole, no more. i'm healthier now. didn't know if i was bisexual in college but fuck racists. i realize the irony of my wife's name...
Rubikon: everyone's bisexual. identity is a great thing, not identity politics.
Marilyn Manson's Ex-Girlfriend: see? the fact that you know me as Marilyn Manson's Ex-Girlfriend means i've won. social media's a rabbit hole.
Amanda Knox: don't know why i'm on social media. i need to escape the world for a lifetime in order to heal and recover, and even then i won't heal and recover, tho it's better than prison. but it's a prison outside...
Dirg: why should you help a world that never helped you?
Laertus: trust your heart, girl, but the cult guy is probably not your best choice to prove a point, are you two friends or something?
Amanda Knox: and yes i'm a DJ. all white women in their 30s eventually become DJs...
Gladyce: it's so sad to see Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan fighting. come together for Shannen Doherty in her time of need...
Alex Trebek gets down on his knees and says a loud prayer for Shannen.
Doryce: witches should always have each other's pointy backs!
Mardith to Dirg: you're lucky i'm an empath, i'm willing to give everyone a chance...
Dirg to Mardith: all girls think i'm a creep after the first tweet...
Gladyce: Pasta Roni has the most delicate noodles! they're so tiny thin and brittle, i feel responsible for them...
Dirg: hate to say it, but 9/11 has become a localized New York thing. if you weren't from New York you won't even remember it anymore...
Eye Luggage: why do people pay so much attention to something that happened back then and not what's happening now...
at the French Open Nadal is wearing a full-on bodysuit of yellow: yellow rainslick, yellow fishing-boat-captain hat, yellow gloves, and yellow galoshes...
Boc: can i borrow those?
Nadal: this is stronger than a hazmat suit. i'm the Gorton's Fisherman. fuck fish.
Dirg: i'm calling it now: Coco Gauff at night for the French, that little pound of dynamite's gonna win the whole thing...
Heather Watson gets up to the crackling mic:
Heather: you know, i am the ultimate journeyman, journeywoman. i will never win a Major and that's okay, i've made one million *raises her pinkie finger* so i'm set for life being anonymous, not Anonymous. the only thing you'll ever remember me for is that time at Wimbledon when i ALMOST beat Serena Williams, remember that? i would be the Dark Queen now not Meghan if that had happened. the queen everybody likes cos everyone likes sports heroes! my mom was so nervous she was ringing the neighbors like this was Braithwaites. i coulda been on Footballers' Wives! oh it was so tantalizingly close!!! i was THIS close to power!...hold on, hang on, wait. hey you know what? i DID win a Major. i won Wimbledon 2020...
Cotard: what's that rumbling? the sound of thunder?
Takahashi: nah, that is the sound of the rumbling wheels of trash and recycle trucks.
Pat to Galivant under the starry twinkling twinking night sky: i finally get the whole dust-to-dust thing, from dust you came and from dust you shall return. the dust is stardust.
Cotard smiles, while Codrus lies in wait in the shadows hiding in a bush holding a dustbin...
Dirg: i'm a peeper...…...it's not what you think, i'm a leaf-peeper.
Rubikon: i like pepper. yeah so what!
Mardith: i've glommed onto Ken Hom. all bald men are spiritualists. i like Ken's Om. i'm studying with Burgs about bugs in the burg...
Mardith: ...of Vienna...
Mardith: when you see people smiling all the time on Instagram, they're being happy to drive someone crazy...
Pons: Pentax, for shooting on pentagrams...
Tyzik: why doesn't Toonami have its own youtube channel again?...
Laertus: i have faith.
Dirg: yeah, facebook campaigns always work...
Laertus: there's only one way to resolve this: there MUST be a Metalocalypse/Venture Bros crossover movie...
Mardith to Pons: broth bath...
Gladyce: oh i LOVE soup!!! it's all i eat!!!
Tyzik: the Differin commercial...
Dirg: i can't believe it! they actually left it in!!! they left in "a alpha" instead of "an alpha". no wonder there aren't any more alphas in the world. i want to fuck the Differin bitch like an alpha...
Laertus: she was on that adult swim Hell show...
Eye: i remember her...
Gladyce: it's next-level British stuff to call a man you adore "chick"...
Nikita Gill swarms in, she swims to the island and with a nail pins her application letter to the door of the Orchid Girls chapel castle turret.
Nikita: like they did in Medieval times. the number dead from the Black Plague, shoulda called it something else. it's not an application btw it's a poem. i'm the last professional poet on Earth...
Takahashi: Starbucks coffee with essential vitamins? who drinks coffee to be healthy?...
Amanda Knox: Turmeric Starbucks, its like a PSL but with a slightly-different spice.
Takahashi: the poor Salad Toppin plastic bottles! all of them, EVERY single one of them, has been crushed, bent over, doubled-over, and jackknifed!
Eye: what were we talking about again?
Tyzik: Bill & Ted were on PBS!!!
Eye: Before Sunrise and go.
Dirg: French chicks, French chicks do it to me EVERY time...
Eye: Ebert was right, she was ravishingly beautiful in this.
Laertus: the greatest romance ever committed to film, Julie Delpy's smile will cure cancer on earth.
Dirg: boys, she looks derpy but she's anything but! how did Julie not have a kid till late in life? Hollywood hates her but she don't care, i like that, i like it a lot. i like you a lot.
Laertus: not for nothing but Ethan Hawke and Julie shoulda hooked up in real life. i mean looking back, the whole mess with Uma and Oprah and the babysitter, all used as fodder for one Lars von Trier, i mean was it all worth it?
Dirg: you see? science fiction is bad for your Christian soul.
Eye: you're not a bad person just cos you cheat...
Dirg: i always think this takes place in France...that's why i never watched it...
Laertus: this is a romantic comedy written by a French existentialist...
Juliette Greco: i fucked Camus. he was quite technical in bed. when we both cummed simultaneously he didn't yell GOD...
Laertus: this was based on an existential walk Linklater---who looked like Trent Reznor in a leather jacket at the time---took with Amy Lehrhaupt.
Dirg: she was a midget? a Lilliputian?
Eye: Lehr could have been a better moderator...
Amy: no i'm not an anime twink on youtube now. see? walking is the best, walking is the best medicine for the soul, just, just walk everywhere all the time everybody, okay? no bikes, no Tour De France, no trains especially Eurail, it's all garbage.
Cotard: no more bodies. i'll be praying for you, Dick Linklater, i'm praying for you for the not finding out till 2010 thing, the hard part, the hardest part to take. you'll get through this...
Eye: it's so so sad. all the great warm feelings engendered that come out of this film and the sequels, all the French and American existentialism epees and parries and philosophical passing shots, the perfect dates, and what did this poor woman get for any of that? a plot of land in a graveyard...
Laertus: after all we're all just descendants of 30 old spirits. and this was back in the '90s...
Dirg: of course this whole thing is a fantasy that could never be based on anything real. i mean you just will NEVER run into Julie Delpy or anyone who looks remotely like her on a train, not Julie Delpy alone!!! all those Hollywood illuminati have bodyguards. i'm taking notes. and she would NEVER leave with him in real life. especially after Hawke makes that weird squeaking sound.
Eye: German couple arguing is what starts this whole process...
Dirg: always blaming the Nazis...
Dirg: Ethan Hawke should have flown away on his hawk wings like the dude at the end of Waking Life...
see, i can never know what exactly is the right paperback book to be reading to impress a girl...
and what do you eat on a train? scones? real men eat hard scones, none of that flaky-scone shit. none of that scones with the chocolate filling...
Eye: trains are romantic.
Laertus: cable-access tv. 365 different interviews? his idea was youtube before youtube...
Pat: 365 different locations around the planet. gallivanting the world...
Laertus: ah the '90s were a gentle halcyon time. i mean the thing these troubled post-teens are worried about is that they didn't please their parents! that's it!
Eye: Julie had the PERFECT childhood, both her parents LOVED that she became an artist! hard to be a rebel that way...
Dirg: parents, NEVER get divorced, ALWAYS stay together for the kids...
Laertus: btw, this is my local tourguide of Vienna, i will never be able to afford it in real waking life...
Eye: that's okay, dear, we both have minds...
Laertus: okay now LOOK. see when Ethan talks about seeing his dead grandmother in the rainbow of the nozzle water sprinkling the rainbow of water all around the lawn?...
Boc: ...i see dead people. and phoenii and penii...
Laertus: ...remember the scene way after that when Julie admits she wanted to sleep with him when he told that story way back at the beginning of the train, look at Julie's eyes RIGHT NOW to see if the sex sparkle thirsty look is there...
Dirg: wait i'm taking notes on my ipad maxi...girls like little boys...
notice how wherever you go on the globe, the churches are the ones that are the most beautiful, not the city halls...
Takahashi: the arches...
Eye: here they are visiting the cemetery...
Juliette Greco: i'm there!
Amy: same.
Dirg: i've talked with suicides and they all tell me they don't care to have a grave...
Laertus: okay that first kiss on the ferris wheel is MAGIC. pure magic, folks, this is what living your best life REALLY is...getting kissed by a woman with full lips in the cool crisp air along the cobblestone of a foreign city. like Monte Carlo nights. a woman who speaks broken English the cute way where it's half-French. fuck is used in this film's script but not in the '80s way, in the classical classy way...
Dirg: he's right about the poet tho. all poets are scam artists, he wrote that thing beforehand and just inserted the word milkshake which he already stole from Kelis...
Laertus: hey look Dirg, it's the first The Secret scammer, the first Criss Angel, the first Pick-Up Artist. this guy is an actual lauded poet, writing his verse by street-water. i loved how Linklater used local Viennese actors and actresses and belly dancers in this. incorporated them into the seamless scenery. the woman who played the esmerelda palm-reader, she was FANTASTIC in her linereading, what delivery, what presence! so natural!
Cotard: *wistfully* see those two monks in the film? that takes me back. when i was a novitiate. hazing. the two of us would stroll the streets in a city of ill repute. like men, thinking up impure thoughts of each other, planning architecting how we were gonna fuck each other when we got back to the monastery gate, how we'd sneak into the other's single-cell room, use the wall for positions. all the while reading Hero Magazine and bartering mushrooms for our penny buns...
Dirg: you had all the time in the world. but why did Adam Goldberg need to be in this…
Dirg: remember pinball? oh, it's the whole As Told By Ginger thing! you know, you write a story that is so vivid about a girl killing her boyfriend...give it to your school counselor or shrink...and suddenly before you know it the whole town and school district gets worried...
Laertus: of course there needs to be a Viennese coffeehouse scene. and a ginger grunger up on stage who looks like Kurt Cobain who spoken-words more than he sings...
Dirg: see? God exists. He exists in the attempt...the attempt of getting to know another person other than yourself...
Laertus: do not get to know yourself more, buddy, don't go down that rabbit hole...
Eye: the whole island thing is true tho. men would kill each other to fuck the one woman. all the women would eat the men not-pleasurably and rule the amazon island. it's the whole Smurfette thing.
Laertus: the Telephone scene between the two lovers is a MASTERPIECE, never thought to draw out qualities and hidden beliefs and mannerisms from two characters like that. see? simmering hot in Simmering, Vienna. if he had been rich, none of this would have happened for him...
Eye: European bartenders will always spring for love. just ask Tom Cruise. what would you do if you only had a day to spend with someone? the themes here are GO FOR IT. DO THE CRAZY THING. FORCE THE CHANGE OF PLANS. this takes place on Bloomsday...
James Joyce: yeah Being and Time is overrated. one night is a whole lifetime of being? maybe. i could explain it better...and more longwinded...with a single word infused with meaning...
Laertus: remember music stores? like Rasputin near Obec? when you flipped through records with your thumb. and could HEAR the stuff with headphones before you bought it.
Laertus: these last scenes are heartbreaking, when Julie says Au revoir instead of Good Bye, it just makes that word better, more charged with life and feeling...
Dirg: okay this all comes to a head, what really matters here: did Jesse and Celine FUCK???! that's all that matters! did they fuck on the grass outside! like they did in River's Edge? did they end up in bed? the Waking Life scene doesn't count...
Eye: okay my first poll: who here thinks Ethan and Julie should have had sex?
Dirg: i raise hand. yes of course, dude will never get this opportunity again!!!!! this chick feels him, she notices him, she notices his gangliness. Vanilla Sky it, once you fuck someone, your body makes a promise to that person which binds you forever to them no matter where you or she may roam. you're linked to that person even if your mind forgets her, that's commitment!
Eye: her argument would be fucking would leave her sad cos she'd get depressed that she'd never see him again after such an intimate act. no more such unbridled closeness. no follow-through you see.
Laertus: yeah that's the part that doesn't make sense. what does this dude have at home where he wouldn't immediately move in with this magical pixie girl. do whatever she wanted for the rest of his life. what's so damn pressing! why does he need to get back in a day? for what! to do WHAT exactly!!?
Dirg: hey, feeding the dog is important.
cat familiars: no.
Dirg: MARRY THAT BITCH!!! sorry...
Laertus: of couse it ends with a harpsichord...cos it's Vienna, it demands a harpsichord!!!
Boc: i'll be Bach...…...not me...
Laertus: the final scene by the train, i couldn't keep it in. i recognize that as we'll be watching the two sequels in this three-week span, i'm preparing myself for major tears by the end of it, i'm gonna go on such a crying jag with these two caring conversationalists.
Dirg: men---like Ethan Hawke and Jesse---don't cry...
Eye: promise to write, yeah, that never works out. no follow-through. the only ones who write anymore are the writers...
Laertus: but do you see how interesting the ending is? see? the initial thought was not for them to meet in six months but rather five years. Linklater was thinking in his head about a sequel. of course they ended up being a decade apart and a decade apart again. oh, they never went to those boys' weird stage-play about a horse that needs to sing before he can talk. you see what happened there? Linklater was rushing through the script and just FORGOT to write the couple going to the play for continuity, so he writes a few lines explaining this instead of bothering with that whole full scene...
Dirg: ..which would have been stupid and boring anyways...
Laertus: when the two new lovers are on separate trains at the end, there are sly subtle Mona Lisa smirks on both their faces, knowing smiles. are you kidding me? that is completely unrealistic and emotionally dishonest. if it was me having just been ripped apart from my soulmate, i'd be BAWLING MY RED EYES OUT on that traincar!!! g'night, folks.
Eye: i can't take it anymore. can you?
Laertus: no. i want to love you forever.
Eye and Laertus under cover of night scurry the hilly cobblestone to a Viennese café klatch on the top of the island:
Eye: this is where we make love for the first time. first, put on this black beret.
Laertus: i look like Trent Reznor.
Eye: your name is Jean-Luc now.
Laertus: then i should be bald and order tortellini.
Eye: no, quick, serve me this General Foods International coffee in this bone cup with your feet wearing a green apron with a fuzzy purple sweater underneath, this is getting me in the mood. this is giving me a boner.
the two escape to the sticky bathroom...
Laertus: please don't put the hot coffee on my penis...oh i see you're sucking my penis, thank you...no but wait honey, i want to make real passionate sweet love to you...
Laertus drags Eye back up by her armpits and hugs her face.
Eye: *kissing Laertus on his skinny lips and hugging his thin stomach* I'M YOURS FOR 3 HOURS!!!
at Galivant's private tennis court:
Galivant: how'd you like your Little Caesars pizza?
Pat: yuck. i hate it when the pepperoni are triangle-shaped...
Galivant: *angrily* tink tink well look at you who do you think you are, Mr. Picky Priscilla! i take my job seriously and i hope you do, too! this ain't tennis, this ain't a kid's game, this is LIFE. you think you don't have to pick up your balls everywhere after practice? you think you can get a neighborhood kid to be your ballgirl? get to be a pro like me before you can have the ball bounced to you, handed to you in your palm your highness. in the meantime you stuff your pockets with your balls. 3 balls each pocket! YOU STRETCH YOUR POCKETS WITH YOUR BALLS!!!
