TWELVE TONES OF FREEDOM: OUR HISTORY, PART DEUS EX MACHINA

Codrus: it's like when your whole life you're thinking Jeremy in the Pearl Jam video "Jeremy" shoots up his classmates when what he really did was shoot himself in front of his classmates.

Cotard: R.I.P. Jeremy. the real Jeremy. i bless you and confirm your spirit to the sweet hereafter.

Jeremy: i wish Pearl Jam had done the video for "Do The Evolution" live.

Judge Harold T Stone: Mr. Cosby, NO MORE JELLO!

Cosby: can i get some grass?

Stone: no you may NOT attend Wimbledon! i am NOT related to the Stone on Law & Order!!! same city. i'm my own man.

Jena Friedman: you thought my act was dark before?.........it's about to get a whole lot darker...

Doryce: Gladyce dear you weren't one of those old ladies who went wet over Donald Rumsfeld? thought he was the bee's knees cos of his ruffian persona? 

Gladyce: i do get wet but that's a bladder problem. i do remember throwing my panties at the podium. but that must have been Clinton, right?

Donald Rumsfeld: *squinting like Clint Eastwood* i had the name for the job. when i talk of dead-enders i mean those video-game cabinet punks on the street who can't get past Level 1 on Ghouls & Ghosts!!! i make fun of those poseurs. there are known knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns. but nobody ever talks about the unknown knowns...

Venus Williams: *laughs* i might be undateable.

Chrissie Evert: you and me both sista. i had a slip, too. i mean I dumped Roger Federer but it still hurts i don't want to talk about it. wanna give it a go?

Venus: aren't you just hiding out in the Wimbledon bunker to escape the authorities?

Chrissie: yes. i am the Tour de France sign woman.

Codrus: so what song did your genius brain come up with today at the studio?

Cotard: oh you'll see. it'll top the charts.

Codrus: yeah but Rebecca Black topped the charts.

Cotard: her new stuff is good, quite the departure for her.

Codrus: yeah just whatever. make any music that's serviceable enough to drown out that INCESSANT droning of your stupid cranes piledriving into the concrete at all hours of the night to make a stupid DRIVEWAY!!! that nobody's gonna notice cos it's covered in WEEDS!!!

Pret A Manger wrap in NYC: we saw Jesus. without a time warp. we saw Celine same way.

Mardith: the imaginationships are killing me. 

Willy Wonka and SpongeBob SquarePants: tell us about it!

Mardith: but they're good for my writing.

King Harvest: we were a cool motorcycle gang, we allowed in men wearing eyeglasses. 

Celine: didn't i see you on my rue? on my street? want some roux?

Maria Scrivan: my jokes are eternal, they are scrivened.

Snoop: you can't hang with me!

Pete Davidson: i know, on both counts.

Snoop: it's alright, cuz, just get me into that Shaolin temple, i'm training to be the next Ghost Dog.

Wolfgang Puck: i'm late for my appointment to the Chef's Red Table!!!

John Cena: just doing research for the Wedding Crashers reboot...

Matthew Perry: i'm Batman.........i can say that now, my teeth are fixed.

Gladyce: you can't shake syrup.

Jen Carfagno at The Weather Channel:

Jen: my body's springier than Jacqui Jeras, i'm packin dynamite!!!

Jacqui Jeras: like our Weather on the 8s, the pic is of golf. telling you to get out in the out there and golf. so, golf. golf is our suggestion for you.

Mardith: if you fall in love, can you be a goth girl anymore?

Eye Luggage: good question, you might be too lovey-dovey.

Hash Halper: don't love me. love yourself. look for the helpers like Mister Rogers. i was a real person not a hashtag. i became too obsessed with the shape of hearts not their center. have a burger in my honor on the wharf. i'm dining tonight with Etika and Tony Scott.

Dirg: there's too much passive-aggressiveness in society.

Dirg: those T-shirts with the doberman's face on them are freaky, their snouts are too Joy Division 3D mountainous.

Madame Pons: i'm gonna try to become the first person to get a PhD in functional medicine.

Madame Pons: Mardith honey the BBL will not make you happy.

Mardith: no but if they brought back the McDLT it might.

Lester Holt: Jerry Springer and i were always more than just friends.

ScarJo: i'm playing Sheryl Crow in The Frank DiLeo Story.

Beatrice Dalle: i'm Angelina Jolie if she needed the new Oral-B spinbrush.

Sophie Leigh Stone: not related. i got better hearing than Ukyo it's just that nobody ever bothers to talk to me.

Zina Bethune: i'm electric, baby! i'm the chemical compound in your ear. i don't care, my love of Shirt Tales will endure forever.

Mardith: why do people pick friends that look like them?

Louise Lasser: okay so i was on drugs for my SNL episode. but don't blame me, Requiem For A Dream was my pimp.

Tony Hale: that was not me as the sex-show psychiatrist.

Jennifer Connelly: that was actually the New Jersey Boardwalk. but NY/NJ, same difference. pier planks are pier planks.  

Steve Ballmer: if the Clippers had made it to the Finals i would have become Mario, jumped, and died.

leftugee: not political, necessary.

Enterprise Star Trek show: we could have also used an FM-84 track.

Boc: no delivery?

Togo's: no, no-contact delivery.

Boc: you don't look old for being 50! what's your secret?

Togo's: we eat real tuna.

Kenyatta, editor at Wikipedia: when i type my stories i have a crucial critical decision to make: do i leave the lights off to stay cool and not see the paper i'm typing? or do i leave the lights on and not make deadline cos i pass out.

Kurt Cobain: *waving* i've solved all dilemmas over on this side...

Boc: when i water i forget to breathe for the first 10 minutes getting the nozzle on and spreading my hose, when i take that first breath my mouth is cobwebby dry...

Anne Truitt: i was Sylvia Plath's MOM!!!

Roger Federer: i have no regrets. i am the Prince of Tennis, Djokovic is the king.

Hester Finch: i'm what you read in school. this is how i quit smoking...

Mardith: Instagram is constantly telling me to look at my post from a year ago but i never want to live in the past...

Dirg: i love Instagram. you get to experience the Upper-Crust Life without going to Harvard. i'm a cheater!!! i'm a big fat CHEATER!!!

Laertus: the high life in high-rises. all those parties up there in the penthouse suites of Manhattan where the real art gets discussed. the Broadway Elite.

Eye Luggage: just don't make that view from the top floor the last image you see on Earth.

Olivia Rodrigo: sorry. Kurt Cobain is a big influence on me for my rock songs.

Courtney Love: oh yeah? 

Olivia: Kurt is HUGE in Gen Z!!! all the American Idol Gen Zers copy his songs!

Courtney: okay. we cool.

Olivia: wanna go see Carrie?

Courtney: not cool.

Olivia: no the copy, not the original.

Courtney: that wasn't blood at the prom, that was my lipstick melted.

Charli D'Amelio: anyone have an extra spinbrush?

Six Flags New Orleans: well there's ONE flag we couldn't put up...

Gina Coladangelo: he liked Pepsi i liked Coke. i'm Gina Gershon he's Hugh Grant. we made out to a music video of a naked jazzman. somehow it worked. love is love, love is not marriage. now if you'll excuse me i got an Italian fountain to jump into naked.

Caroline Dries: first person i called was Seth MacFarlane. if it wasn't for my video conspiracy theories about 9/11 would be taught in schools. the apple juice was dry that day...

Cotard: brother do you kill big flies or let them fly out the window?

Codrus: what do you think. the catchy nursery rhyme saved them from being caught. i go shoo fly shoo.

Gladyce: i heard the doorbell, mail or nails?

Doryce: male?

Salma Hayek: gimme the Aspercreme. we're atheists but we're Romans.

Cotard: not the Bible chapter.

Dirg: that Clifford The Big Red Dog trailer is creepy.

Charles Grodin: Clifford (1994) was my best film.

Takahashi: sponsored by Big Red Gum.

Tuca & Bertie: we're adult Shirt Tales.

Boc: what is this, a TED Talk or TikTok?

Robot Chicken: Bawk Bawk.

Lucille Ball: if i had had Nintendo Switch back in the day i would still be married to Desi in the Afterlife...

Takahashi: afterlife as a video-game concept, i dig it, mama...

Joyce Jue: i'm gonna be the new voice of Major Motoko in the next Ghost In The Shell anime...

Mary Elizabeth McGlynn: i'm getting married...

hyaluron pen: from the Gamma Quadrant.

Dr Orchid: i was the one who stopped playing around and actually solved the heinous murder! Boddy and i weren't related, okay? sure i enjoy the odd snuffbox now and again but so does everybody in the '40s! i swear i had no idea those flowers were poison, i asked my roommate Janet and she said they were fine.

Mardith: GRWM, i'll only do it if it's with Grover.

Dirg: that Ukraine man celebrating like that chick form the U.S. Women's Team. bra solidarity.

Sasnovich: i beat Serena Williams the first time i played her...

suslin: sussing out the cereal

Gwen Goldman: i promise i won't screw it up like Billy Crystal.

Mardith: you know it's funny, i have a million Instagram followers but i'd be okay if i lost them all and it was just back to how it all started, just me and him.

Madame Pons: Daniel Dae Kim?

Mardith: yep. that him. Kim him.

Jennifer Aniston: no, please, give the bread to Matthew Perry, he needs it more. i want to see that boy sober.

Dirg: when i go into Pizza Factory and say gracias i feel like a Colonizer.

Laertus: you have NEVER sad gracias in your life. 

Eye Luggage: Elite, the Spanish soap opera, reminds me so much of MTV's Undressed. same dorm-room Christmas lights. 

Cureheads: we have full sets of hair.

Eye Luggage: i love seeing the Wimbledon stands all full of people! and i hate people! 

Eye Luggage: what were we talking about again?

Pauly Shore: i hate when i see Encino Man in the porn-cassette section at Blockbuster. 

Takahashi: one of the few remaining VHSs.

Pauly Shore: it's not Chatsworth Man, okay? it's New Radicals "You Get What You Give" vibes, buddy.

Rose McGowan: i'm playing Sasha Grey in the next Ghost In The Shell...

Sasha Grey: and i'm playing Jennifer Connelly's orgy in the next Snowpiercer...

Muse: remember us?

Eye Luggage: What We Left Behind and go. Kirk Cameron you are hereby LIFETIME BANNED from the podcast room!

Kirk Cameron: don't care, i have another Life, i have another pod.

Ira Steven Behr: yes so obviously i had Main Character Syndrome, but i was Head Writer for fuck sake!

Dirg: what's with the blue goatee, chief? it looks like you're stuck in a time warp. a Jim Morrison time warp.

Ira: this is my protest, i won't shave it off till we get that Smurfs live-action film we all want. in Fathom Theatres.

Robot Chicken: he means the SMURFS are live-action, not the humans or cats...

Ira: how did we get away with having a lounge singer as a main character?

Ray Combs: you flunked my audition for this part. all i needed was a clever accountant, why didn't i watch more Doctor Who? i'm okay with gay. 

Ed McMahon: HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEREEEEEEEEEE'S JOHNNY!!!.........sorry...

Ira: i have the cast members read letters. remember angry letters?

Abe Lincoln: i do.

cast: we didn't get any sleep for 9 years but it's okay, we got paid handsomely. despite this show struggling the whole time with low ratings.

Ira: why the blazes didn't we make it to the nice round number of 10? well we're fixing that today...

Michael Piller: i was a pillar in the community. i had the whole goddamn giant set built, that thing was 3 football fields!

Merv Griffin, producer: i had to foot the bill for that thing! why wasn't the floating space-station more like Babylon 5?...

Ira: i promise, moneyman, we won't change it that much, just get rid of Nog, bring in Picard, and we do most of the scenes on a ship.

Nana Visitor: in light of this week i am just glad they didn't make me make out with my rapist.

Dukat: but there was a latent sexual attraction there, right? you loved my gills.

Nana Visitor: not between Kira Nerys and Gul Dukat, between you and me, Marc Alaimo. but i was newly married.

Marc Alaimo: i'm Clint Eastwood i'm not a lame-o. remember the Alamo? nobody does. nobody remembered me, i would have appreciated ONE comment that i'm killing it out there, that my acting hits outta the park. not ONE kind word.

Nana: you wanted a kiss everytime you remembered a line.

Niners: wrong soundstage, Jimmy G, this is for baseball players only...

Avery Brooks: i had a very specific acting style. it seemed like i was dour and disgruntled all the time but i was just trying to keep everyone alive. truth was my castmates annoyed me, they were always playing around. i did Shakespeare In The Park, man. a park in Queens! where if you dodged the hailing stray bullets reciting your monologue you'd get a standing O for surviving! my castmates weren't very good athletes either, they sucked at baseball, i was trying to Boondocks baseball for them, i gave them each a packet of Big League Chew for Christmas. why didn't you feature "In The Pale Moonlight"?

Ira: i wanted to i really did. but *Ira shakes his head* i am okay with the omit.

Avery: i did "Moonlight" before Moonlight!!!

Nana: remember when i held you in my arms when you fell over during the Civil-Rights episode?

Avery: no, my acting was so genius there i fell into a trance. all i saw as i was crying for all time for all my ancestors and descendants was me floating in space toward a flash of light...

Nana: that was the set lights on your bald head.

Dirg: okay Ira, i at least love you for giving it to CNN. not may people are willing to be brave like that.

Jann Wenner: wasn't me.

Terry Farrell: as Pride Month draws to a close today i just want to say that when i kissed that other hot alien spotted babe that was a first for television. we did the lesbian kiss before Ellen.

Ira: yeah but why did you leave the show? right in the middle of that hot Worf romance! as Head Writer i felt betrayed. you really hurt the fans. 

Ted Danson: yeah i mean Becker was never gonna last, we were trying to be Cheers 2.0.

Megan Rapinoe: remember, girl, when WE win, we ALL win, when we lose, we ALL lose.

Pete Davidson: working at Kmart isn't so bad. i listen to Ariana Grande songs at checkout leaning my leg through a red diamond cart.

Dirg: why did this have to go woke? the show wasn't woke back in the '90s. 

Mardith: are you triggered by strong women?

Dirg: no it's just i need Nietzchean confidence to approach them.

Gavin Newsom: did you see me in that one episode? i played a Cardassian extra. homelessness is not my fault.

Mardith: okay so cosplay is problematic nowadays but i did love that girl in the Wormhole getup. yes now THAT's the costume i'd wear, a giant purple wormhole that opens up.........not my vagina, it's a cute innocent thing.

Dirg: your vagina IS a cute innocent thing.

Laertus: yeah i never got that, all the billions and billions of fans who watched Deep Space Nine all wanted to go into the military. i had the exact opposite reaction, this made me want to become a writer of science fiction! 

George Clooney: when i aw ER i didn't want to become a doctor, i wanted to become an actor. 

Laertus: this writing room scene is DYNAMITE, i'm learning so much. 

Eye: i know it's awesome.

Dirg: and the hippie from the Battlestar Galactica reboot is there, too! on the shrink couch.

Laertus: this is so educational. it's like i'm in film school but i could never go, too expensive. i'm learning what INT and EXT mean, interior, exterior. take notes, Dirg.

Dirg: i like the whiteboards.

Laertus: oh SHIT. there was SO MUCH writing on that whiteboard in magic marker of all the colors of the rainbow i thought they were writing the WHOLE 8TH SEASON!!! turns out this was just ONE EPISODE!!!

Nog: i die in the first episode? i would have played that PERFECTLY...

Nana: Avery is Jesus? i'm a whitehaired priestess? that one works i'm one in real life! Space Spirit, Intentional Breathing and all that jazz, i do that stuff now. want to enter my private studio in Pacoima? i get all my LUSH soaps for free. so i'm the rebel leader of a secret faction of Jem'Hadar. no wonder those lizard illuminati worship me, i know what alien cum tastes like! it changes on the tongue. i wish there had been a plotline in which Picard comes back from the dead to singlehandedly rid the entire universe of all Bump incels by punching each one until they're dead.

Dr Bashir: everyone hated me, i was the Urkel of the show. wish i had been more like Dr Vacc in the '70s. so i knew what i had to do, i got a private meeting with the Paramount producers up in the Tower and demanded i have a gay romance with a Cardassian. 

Colm Meaney: i'm a ruffian. i have a ruff exterior but i'm not a meanie. i watch PBS. i told them, the only way to save the show was to have an Irishman in the cast.

Odo: i'm actually quite funny in real life. but with the makeup my mouth was immobile, i literally couldn't laugh or my lips would have sheared right off.

Ira: i still have your face. i keep it under my bed. sometimes in the closet.

Chase Masterson: to this day i get stopped on the street and asked for my credit card.

Hana Hatae: i'm hot now.

Keiko: i'm not. not anymore. but i did Joy Luck Club, bitch! i'm your ancestor FOREVER!!! all the money you ever make is MINE!!! i will haunt you when i'm dead if you don't pray to me each night.

Marc Alaimo: i don't want to be an alarmist. but what the hell is wrong with me! i'm ruggedly handsome, i'm a ruffian, i was Avery Brooks's equal. why didn't i ever mate?

Ira: okay, i talked it over with my wife, she says it's okay. go for thruple. she loves pregnancies but only if YOU are the one who gets pregnant. and you have to give birth to it the Cardassian way.

Ira: i was the last person to talk to Gene Roddenberry on his death bed, the legend was looking frail and emaciated, he was sweating as his eyes glazed to the sky to see that one last star. i shook his hand and told him Deep Space Nine would screw up his entire lifelong Star Trek vision. look, audience, i'm showing you my behind. g'night, folks.

Eye Luggage: i liked this dark Star Trek. it was messy, everyone was a warmonger profiteer, a gambler, a sex addict, and willing to kill their comrades for nothing. all in the name of science. the morality was as grey as their suits. and their tea. Starfleet was more like America really is. just wish there had been a 24 clock at the bottom. i think both sides of the war went crazy cos they were too cooped up in that stationary station!!! they went stir-crazy and started to throw their ideals up to the low ceilings. one thing was for sure, everyone loved up every alien on that show.

Laertus's dad: we had a kid named Roddenberry in my class. when i saw those scenes in the writers room i cried. that should have been ME. i was meant to be a television writer, that was my destiny, my spacetime fate on the correct timeline. oh well. at least i got to see what goes on inside, behind-the-scenes. i thought they'd all be smoking cigarettes but whatever. you see how they have to come up with ideas from thin air on the spot? imagine that pressure working under a deadline? that's why you get paid the big bucks. you see how the hippie keeps going when the rest of the writers are tapped dry? see i'd have to do the whole thing myself, i could never collaborate with other writers.

Laertus's dad: this was back when times were simple. when you viewed Requiem For A Dream not knowing this would be your last movie as a functioning member of society. not cos you took those drugs but because you went crazy. i still remember walking out of that theatre. the light was so bright i covered my eyes the rest of the day. the glare coming off that white wall bounced the sun's rays directly into my retina, that wall was one giant dome of yellow and pink Floyd. like magic dust. like stardust. i can still smell that salty ocean air when i stepped out of that theatre.........g'night, folks, i'm crying.

Cotard: my song is about two people finding each other again after many years. many decades apart.

Codrus: reunited and it feels so good? poppycock!

Cotard: you just love saying cock.

Codrus: pigwash! 

Cotard: Bennifer 2.0 has taught us to never give up. soul mates will meet eventually. i was kinda hoping this song could be about..........you and me?

Codrus: sure. but not us. come on.

Cotard: i mean how do you explain Jean Smart's resurgence?

Codrus: Golden Girls. they're doing a Golden Girls reboot with Mischa Barton, David Spade, Keira Knightley, and Rebecca Black as Betty White.

Cotard: did you ever think in a million years Carrie Underwood would do a sports drink commercial? miracles happen.