Wednesday, August 25, 2021

TWELVE TONES OF FREEDOM: SING FOR YOUR SUPPER















Cotard: you often speak of valor. nobility. but you were blind to your own power. that's the thing with power, it's self-limiting, never allows one to see beyond himself.
Codrus: or herself?
Cotard: Fuerza ain't coming.
Codrus: yes she is. Ye says so.
Cotard: you missed the one in the crowd in your arrogance, didn't kiss him. you couldn't spot him, cos he was as ordinary as what an MMA dubs average. but i was right there. under your chipped Roman nose. i was he, the Burmese boy, the boy from the land of Burma, of waterfalls acid from war, of flowers smelt of tar. it only smells sweet in the afterlife. in the heavy hereafter. 

Cotard: they say a song is a wondrous thing, a miracle. it consists of twelve tones, you know there are only TWELVE notes in ALL of music, you use these 12 notes to create ALL music, all harmonies, all bridges. 
Codrus: what an industrious implement! or rather a self-limiting one.
Cotard: on this day i have created the perfect song. as i blow my own flute. it reverberates through the ages, a clarion call to freedom, real freedom not media freedom. it started out as a reggae song of course, but it morphed into something even more universal. it became an opera song, for opera is the best way for a human to regain their voice again, to learn to BREATHE again after the ravages of covid. to learn to LIVE again after passages and vocal airways have clogged from talons of temperature and tests. and terrible time. 

Codrus: covid? you speak of the permanent virus through all of time. named after me.

Cotard: i have rallied the troops with my song, an army of heart defeats an army of the world. good defeats a global army, and we have won this day, we have defeated you.
Codrus: whatever. i still got my driveway. 

Danny DeVito: don't eat Oreos.
The Penguin: cos of the Satanic cross carved in them?
Danny: no cos they taste disgusting. too creamy for my tongue.

Sonya Curry: i TOLD you you should have tried the new steak seasoning!

The Pope: i've read the Jewish bible. it's a page-turner. i'm thinking what the cover of the book would be to sell more copies. we don't want to promote war anymore, we're sick of war, so i'm thinking a burning bush. not a yeast infection, a nice soft fuzzy Harlequin romance cover. with a rabbit.

Jo Martin: but I was the first black Doctor Who!
Whoopi Goldberg: but I'M Doctor Who, i'm the REAL Doctor Who tho. i was the real Doctor this whole time, couldn't you tell? i have the perfect voice for narration.

Hugh Jackman: do you reminisce, mother?
Hugh Jackman's mother: what? stop jacking off!
Hugh: remember?
Hugh's mum: you were a handful growing up. you cut me with your claws when i cut your meat.
Hugh: all is forgiven, mom. if you transform into the Dark Phoenix when i need you.

Cyndi Lauper: my boyfriend in "Time After Time" wears the '70s tight long bluejeans and the chapeau paperboy hat from Hair.

Boc: in the still of night give your lawn just a hint of grapefruit soda. it deserves dessert, too.
Cotard: it's not a sticky pill.

White Nancy: the first female bishop

Japan: on this country's lush Victorian hills men of culture shake it like a polaroid picture. 
Spock: that was me on bassoon clarinet.

Dirg: i've been banned to Block Island.

Gladyce: The Store is a cool place to work. both meanings. it's nice and cool in there.
Doryce: gotta love the oldtimers. all the old men and women who go inside without masks.
Doctor Who: Oldtimer is an anagram of Time Lord.

Laertus: your worldbuilding is World of Warcraft. my worldbuilding is Everwood.

Woody Allen: i spent so much time writing characters behaving exactly how i wanted them to that i never learned how to interact with real people.

lobster: we were once fed only to prisoners. where do you think all those files came from?
David Pajo: i'm a prisoner inside my own heart. i need another, flanging or no flanging.

Dirg: that lady on Instagram, she is not having a good time. she is not living her best life, she needs a flanger finger. you can tell her smile is forced, it's all the same forced smile in all her pics.

Melissa and Chad: eh we're sawry. but come on we're free and loose in Canada. the border is open and wide, a few cannabis cupcakes crept into our garden undeterred and undetected, we thought they were weeds and blessed them.

Block Island: of course the aliens landed here, nobody knows about this most private place in the United States. the space aliens that is.
Takahashi: still has a McDonalds and a Starbucks.

Boc after watering the lawn lands on his wet knees, closes his eyes, prays his hands, and wears a fez in honor of Fez Whatley.

Endeavor from My Hero Academia: call me Norman Lear.

Prudence Farrow: i was the wild child of the family, take a moment to think about that, let that sink in. i inspired the Sgt. Pepper's cover.

Dershowitz: CHILL, MAN! we're in Chilmark.
Larry David: that's MY line, pal!
Dershowitz: is this an SNL skit you're doing? i'm helping Pence lose weight.
Larry David: this is a sacred place. it's the place of The Angel Gabriel playing handball with a red ball. it's the caves of the origin of the Stones.
Billy Corgan: my mom's buried here at sea.
Larry David: please leave this place.
Dershowitz: why are you so mad at me?
Larry David: I HATE TRADER JOE'S!!!!!!!!!!

the Field of Dreams tv series: we're Party of Five meets A League of Their Own.
Debra Winger: not on my watch! besides, there are nine players on the field not five.
the Field of Dreams tv series: we're Everwood meets Major League...

The Midnight: Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital.........is where our sax is.
cat familiars: we weren't on the plane.

Billy Corgan: Fluffy Buttocks, that was name of of my band in college.

Queensryche: "Out of Mind" clearly is a serious song about a psych ward, a musical meditation. but as you're singing the lyrics it's hard not to laugh.
Michael Stipe: ...
Geoff: first shot of the "Anybody Listening" music video i look like a gorgeous woman with big tits in a huggy black cocktail dress.

Siskel & Ebert in Heaven:
Siskel: Roger, look ay my hippie hair, wanna grow your hair long like i'm doing?
Ebert: no, Gene. almost but no.
Siskel: thought that was something we could have done together to bring us closer in Heaven.

Mardith: is it weird when a store tells you you're pretty on Instagram?
Madame Pons: not at all, LUSH does that all the time to strangers.

Clarissa Ward: name the award for me, the Ward Award. wards off evil spells.

Pat: i'm watching The Chair and getting sweaty unnervy Princeton flashbacks.

Ireland: green but not orange.
India: both.

Doryce: dear is that mashed potatoes and a stick of butter or kona pie in that huge tub?
Mardith: pie.
Doryce: my favorite. 
Gladyce shaking her bum in a grass skirt: hella hula!

Dr George Huang from SVU: like my David Bowie 'do?

Gov Cuomo: i am SO pissed off that on my last day i have to deal with a hurricane...
Celine: you are NOT welcome in France!

Emma Raducanu: you forgot about me. you thought i only existed in the Wimbledon air. my eyes zoned out and made of nothing. only in one zone. not beyond the bounds of the strawberry seeds. my house made of lawn, i couldn't leave the Wimbledon grounds. i was a ghost.

Chloe Frayne: I am why poetry is back popular.

apartment in Berkeley right next to campus on Telegraph Avenue: i took on a moss of Moor and Tudor. it was like if Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe had a baby.
ipad mini: who am i? a piece of spotted dried-asphalt chip charcoal roof shingle?
apartment: no, you're my entire world. my entire life in a black square.
prom photo album: you have to wonder about all these dates who took all these Hollywood celebrities to the prom, where are all of these girls and boys now? and are all of them kicking themselves?

disc jockey: can i buy a house with socialist bitcoin?

Henri: i want FAA to win the tennis U.S. Open...

Jennifer Lopez: you gotta be cold-hearted if you want to find love in this world.

Codrus: you live in a world where Susan Sarandon can't find companionship. i mean what's the point?
Cotard: will you be my traveling mate, Codrus?
Codrus: don't have a choice, we're fused at the hip spiritually.
Cotard: consider us lucky, billions don't have that.

Jil Teichmann: i'm gonna do what Federer never could.........and what Genie Bouchard never could.

Pam Shriver: i am DEFINITELY the WTA logo.

Ochaco vomiting in an army plane: i watched a lot of Gravity Falls.........hence the name Uravity.

Catullus: i was Obama before Obama.

Jennifer Connelly: why does the girl on the Labyrinth poster look like Salma Hayek and not me?

Mike Richards: what am i gonna do next? NFL referee.

Gladyce to Doryce: dear when you're taping the holes of your toes on your socks up, be sure to use mailing tape not double-sided tape.

Sergio Giorgi: right now i'm between jobs. i need something weird, i cannot stand for normalness. should i coach Djokovic? i was kicked out of the Muppets.

Tom Cruise: you wish you watched all of my films again fresh for the first time.........but especially Magnolia.

Pat: yeah, Princeton couldn't beat the inmates either...

Lorne Michaels: why were you always on my ass? like a rider.
censor: buddy without me, SNL would have been yanked off the air after the first episode! the stuff you were trying to get away with back then was crazy!
Lorne: did you at least in private laugh at our skits?
censor of course. i am human.
Lorne: you were the only one who ever found our television show funny.

Doryce: is Obec a city or a village?
Gladyce: it's an enclave, dear.

Catherine Ramen: i still couldn't do Naruto's voice. that was left up to a very special woman.

Brecon: for Decepticon breakfast

Jago: i am not a jagoff. i'm the reason there's love, women, and religious spirituality in the world.

Gladyce: junk hunk? bad boyfriend?
Doryce: no, 1-800-JUNK junkman. very muscular.

Mardith: a senorita does not have seniority...

Justin Long: are you strong?
Cecily Strong: no i'm long. 
Justin Long: sorry, babe, i'm taken.

Mardith: for girls it's quite easy. without saying a word simply post an Instagram pic in your DMs of you staring at the camera and lifting your tits.

bozone layer: the Trader Joe's ozone layer

Sve: that was FM-84's first song

Brecon McDonalds: where all the bacon is being held. come in for the porridge!

Laertus kisses his HP laptop.
Laertus: don't worry my baby, it just needs some time. give it some time, just give it a minute. it needs to warm up, give it 30 minutes.

Jonah Hill: the surfboard at times gets a bit wobbling...

Trent Reznor: wow that was bad. you know what? i'm gonna go back to my previous project, i was trying to rework the Simpsons theme song...

Hartlepool: the best plunge

Eye Luggage: what were we talking about again?
Kyojuro: my death scene in Mugen Train played out like an episode of thirtysomething.

Eye: Hair and go.
Oliver Stone: Hair was exactly like my Platoon. Platoon is a musical when you think about it. i think a lot but i'm not crazy.

Dirg: oh, so this is about Biden's botchjob in Afghanistan?
Eye: i need to get my hair did.

John Savage: everyone mistakes me for Jon Voight. Jon Voight was never this skinny.

Treat Williams: i've only done this and Everwood. pretty good career. i was named after a candy bar.

Beverly D'Angelo: did it seem to you like i didn't really want to be in this movie? i thought i was gonna be naked on stage not in the water.

Annie Golden: i'm that girl you saw one time on Facts of Life.

Dorsey Wright: sorry but white women are irresistible. Bill Cosby called me up in my trailer and in my taxi to complain. i should have landed the Warriors job.

Nell Carter: everyone knows me from tv, they have no idea i was a singer. they think i sold vacuums and fishtanks.

Ellen Foley: i've done this and Night Court. pretty good career. 

Charlotte Rae: i actually had no lines. i tried to sing but...
Milos Foreman: ...it came out as you worrying like Olive Oyl then fainting. 

Michael Jeter: i am now Derek's father.

Rubikon: hold up hold up. the woman who sings "Age of Aquarius" and Hud's fiancee, they deserved to be big stars, they should have won Tonys and replaced Julia Roberts and Kate Hudson for us. Hud for Hudson. not to mention the Vietnamese singer who belted out a new one, that was historic.

Princess Anne: I HAVE BREAKING NEWS! DIANA IS ALIVE! in all our hearts. i was with her when we both got up on stage and danced completely naked in the crown-british local Manchester production of this musical. nude as a jaybird! atta girl! see? that was the ONE time she showed up the Family and was FREE! her life would have been so different if she had become an actress. for my part i was never the same after Hair, my ugly hair was allowed to grow long...

Claude's dad: here's some money for strippers. or to help a stripper. if you run into Charles in New York shank him.

Laertus: this was the classic Americana scene where the cowboy from Oklahoma travels on a bus to his destiny of decadence. his destination of sin in the big city.
Axl Rose: i did this in real life.

Mardith: we need an Age of Aquarius NOW!
Dirg: like a climate-change flood?

Laertus: without Hair there would be no Sesame Street.

Sheila: i don't have short hills. think of me more as sodomy. gotta remove the pedo line from the song nowadays. 

Uncle Sigh: was not expecting all the horse stuff in Hair.

Treat: pee on the princess.

Rubikon: props. they went for it here in this song. they didn't hold back on the racial epithets.
Milos Foreman: the Roman Polanski line didn't age well. he was my friend, OKAY?!!!

Fuerza: Claude is me? brilliant chap! that explains everything.

Sia: i'm loving the chandelier song!
Laertus: man Sheila's father is a fucking asshole. i mean at least let the hippie SPEAK!
Eye: at least let him talk edgewise.

Treat: i got nothing. i believe in nothing. humans' true religion is nihilism. it's rough out there in the city. tough for atomless gunk. and the country. my moms and pops want me to get a job. they want me to get haircut. but all i've got is my hair to my name! it's mine and i'll style it as i please!

Elvis: i coulda been a judge...

Dirg: stealing cars is lame, get your own car. whoa! this is getting satanic, there's a lot of Enigma candles and ladies floating on clouds of invisible air everywhere.

Claude: i was an idiot not to marry Jeannie! Afghanistan has proven war is worthless. a useless utility. tool of he tyranny. why die for anyone else? once you're dead nobody cares about you.

Claude: why'd you do that? that was mean to Sheila.
Berger: hey man, fuck her and everything but i eat the rich.

covid: personal vs. communal responsibility, sound familiar?
hippies: hence the commune.

Mardith: oh i'm LOVIN' the celebration of interracial love!
Dirg: please tell me you didn't have Rubikon.

Laertus: o this is old skool! that's what you had to do, strip in front of the board to prove your warness. i'd be okay with it if the entire board started singing about boys. you feelin' patriotic, Dirg?

Hud's fiancee: you going to Nevada? what the fuck is in Nevada?
Hud: Nevada was the Arizona of the '60s.

White Diamond: hello, starlight. welcome to the base. wanna go bowling?

Berger in the Firebird: come on, man, let us through, we just want to start a fire. campfire, campfire.
Milos: how did i film the car scene? that was crazy! i did it all in a real moving car!!!

Sheila at the bar: you know what burns more calories than basic training? sex. i think it's real sexy when an officer wears an underwear uniform. you're cute, you look like Quark.
drunk-on-love officer: Ferengis are real. classified top secret.

Treat: so i'm marching to my death. i'm boarding a plane that will take me to a place where i'll get shot for no reason. but i'm protected cos i'm God. um, hey, can i get a waiver cos the drill sergeant is my father?...

Fuerza: the flesh is weak...

Claude: BURGER!!!!!!!!!!.........i was hungry.

Claude: this is so sad. i was meant to die under a bathroom stall at school.
Treat: i'm not meant to die! i'm a doctor! i save MY life and the life of Stephanie Niznik.
Hud: good, you have her, cos let's be real here, the baby is obviously mine.

Trent Reznor: i was named after a candy bar...

Davy Jones: i was the other member of the group...

peace flag: we're peacin' at a peace-in. g'night, folks, peace.

LET THE SUNSHINE IN!!! LET THE SUNSHINE IN!!! not orange sunshine.
Jimmy Carter: darn. 

Dirg: WHOA! is that a Confederate flag i see in the crowd!!!?
Milos: yeah, think about it, i was trying to show a scene in which ALL the tribes of humanity come together for this one glorious purpose of peace. imagine that. we still had dreams back then. of big things. of hard things. of new-agey Aquarius things. g'night, folks. dream.

Laertus: this goes out to all the OLD hippies. never lose faith! when a beautiful old soul like Kylen can be murdered simply because she wore her hair in braids and wore horoscope tattoos and wore a yellow flower in her braids. simply because she was old. simply because of lesbian love. stay strong people, one day we will achieve the dream, of this play, play will become reality. one day we will have an Earth free from disease. g'night, folks, peace forever, hope. HIPPIE HOPE. 

Laertus's dad: Head of the Class. remember that episode? when the class did Hair. that was the first time for me hearing "Let The Sunshine In", i didn't have any context for it back then tho. i do SPECIFICALLY remember the scene where Brian Robbins says:

hey teach! you gotta get naked if you wanna do Hair, right?

Dan Schneider: are you planning on beaning me with that baseball, Mr. Moore?
Brian Robbins: you're lucky i looked out for you at Nickelodeon, Dan.
Charlie Moore: i love how i left all you geniuses and my life as a teacher for an acting gig. AN ACTING GIG, BABY!!! don't worry i won't end up like Spalding Gray...

Brian Robbins: i really took my acting gig to heart, i became a genius in real life. just one bout of IBS. i climbed the rungs to executive as fast as i could, i got ahead quick, couldn't have any friends. i wasn't gonna be another washed-up actor, i knew executive was where the real power was. the rest of the cast on that show went on to become big Broadway stars.........i think.

class: come on, Mr. Moore, we know where the real money is! Broadway!

Brian Robbins: i got my feet wet, i self-analyzed, i freethought, i didn't harm Shamu, and that little girl who was in our class was fucking weird.

Laertus's dad: i swear, i'd give up EVERYTHING for one chance to be in a production of Hair, just ONCE. i'm ready. no i'm not an exhibitionist i just want to act! i missed my chance in Calcutta. i wanna lick the same stageboards Uta Hagen licked!

later that night Laertus's dad does not realize his dream of being in Hair. cos he can't sing. but he does lick the floorboards cos he's crazy. and they do allow him in the Bosun's chair to swing for awhile. and he does, in a way, become part of the Hair cast as he's invited up on stage for the final number, "Let The Sunshine In". Laertus's dad dances the night away with the mix of cast crew and crowd. he dances on that stage at 3:53AM when everyone else has long gone home. the audience becomes the watched.  

boy soldier: you have lost. do not be fooled by my uncertain expression on my face, i am merely curious of the world as i travel it not puzzled by it. no matter how long you stay i will be here with my spear. this land is my land, this land is not your land. this land is FREE! the MUSIC makes it free! this is my MYANMAR!!!!!!!!!!

the boy soldier with the permanent tan and feather in his headband morphs back into Cotard.

Codrus looks up. Codrus looks at the cracked and shattered driveway by his stone cathedral. 

Codrus: it was cracked for a reason. the driveway was meant to be the roof to my stone house. that way i could let the Spirit of mom in.

but Fuerza remains silent. the night is silent. black. soaked in. Fuerza is nowhere in this land. no wind no frost no fire. just the silence of a thousand suns.   










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