BERKELEY CITY COLLEGE: A SPOONFUL OF SPORES

 

the three of us are at People's Park in Berkeley.

Joni Mitchell: you can feel the history in this place. it's SATURATED in the air, you can taste the radicalness on your tongue. even a place like Berkeley can forget its history if enough years pass by, history is tricky like that, it turns on a dime. it's up to YOU young people to NEVER forget the sacrifices made here for the hippie cause, to unleash free love.

Jen P: never, ma'am. i'm the only one here who's still a student. 

me: well, an official student.

Jen R: i'd rather be a travel writer of this place. so much looseness i'm stretchy in my pants right now.

we sit on the bench made famous by Forrest Gump's illegitimate child who became the first hippie retroactively with help from Superman's wind.

Christopher Reeve in an Easter-bunny suit: not my fart.

Jen P: a spoonful of spores. a teaspoon of spores will do it.

Mary Poppins: everybody tryna get in my bitch ass.

Jen R: yeah, to plant shrooms throughout the land.

Jen P: trees, i was thinking more trees. it's about seeding. as long as THIS place has NEW trees, NEW people will notice it, see the good graffiti on the outhouse stalls, help a squatter's grass tent, help humanity remember when it wasn't about politics. 

Jen R: another miracle that comes from a spoon of spores is a baby. a spurt of cum.

Jen P: yes. in another timeline you were OBSESSED with me. and my miracle baby. after so many scarring miscarriages. funny how timelines and feelings change on a dime. 

me: blame me for the feelings, but blame the endless timelines on Einstein. obsession is a funny thing, it was obsession for me because there was no one else. so it was more like desperation. i really do feel Jen R is my soulmate.

Jen P: yeah i know, that is something which cannot be changed in any timeline.

Jen R: i can get a sitter for you guys, i hear Cher lives in Huntington.

me: i promise to be the best father i can. as soon as i get a job. or become a permanent student.

Jen R: loving someone is a revolution.

Suzy Lu: so i went to a red-carpet premiere. me.

Kakashi: you know what everyone is saying about this, right, babe?

Suzy Lu, hangdog: i know.

Kakashi: the world has truly come to an end now.

at the park.

me: no one noticed my birthday. it was exciting. it was exhilarating.........but then the next day it was just kinda depressing.

Jen R: that's your other you talking, the other me that thinks about it in internal-dialogue form.

Jen P: it completely slipped my mind, i was busy buying Pampers.

Michael Weiss: only Instagram noticed my birthday. the Instagram Birthday Feature.

Mardith: what do women do when they become old and unfuckable? where do women go?

Marketa Irglova: ...

Shirley Manson: get you a band for life in which in order to achieve anything in the long run, in other to achieve longevity around an actual business model, the bandmates realize from jump NEVER to fuck one another.

Dr. Kevorkian at the park: i don't jog alone anymore. jogging is such a lonely exercise. i jog with Special Olympics athletes in wheelchairs alongside. in the Boston Marathon. i'm trying to turn my life around.

Lorne Michaels: it's only live once.........i'm not talking about SNL, i'm talking about the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

at the City Berkeley Library.

George Orwell: 1984 was banned? thank you, that plays right into the narrative of my book.

Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 was banned, too? banned by being placed in a fire at a book burning. i mean think about it.

 

Carmelo Anthony: what? i'm a David Byrne fan.

KION: working hard.........bringing you the news.........local stories that matter.........with the volume VERY LOW.

Trent Reznor summering away from New Orleans in a Berkeley hostel: the best part about Invincible? the drums.

Boc: let me stop you right there. you simply cannot take a walk when the forecast calls for "scattered showers." 

Ariana Araiza: jumping from puddle to puddle not knowing what direction you're going. in life. like me club-hopping.

Greykid: when two dogs sniff each other along the only brick Barnyard path, it's a shitshow. it's a sniffshow. 

bum: i FUCKING hate that carburetor noise those dumb male Miatas make.

Alana Haim: you gotta eat more tofu, you know? drink more corn syrup. kidney beans, tomato PASTE not spaghetti sauce, lentils. food and drink rich in iron.

Ryan Phillippe: i feed the pig. in fact i'm quite frugal with my coins. i dry my laundry outside by the pool. i only appear in ONE episode of a TV series.

Saturday-morning cartoons: laughter, your kids knew about wellness in the '80s before wellness was a buzzword for adults in the 2020s.

at the Berkeley public tennis courts covered in good graffiti located in the center of the park.

Emma Raducanu: back.

Nick Kyrgios: you're back? you're coming back?

Emma Raducanu: no, my stiff back. i'm canceling the rest of my year.

Peter Griffin: you finally won, America. you got the matchup you always wanted: Family Guy vs. South Park on Wednesday nights. who will win? the liberals or the conservatives, who have the better ideas?

Seth MacFarlane: the answer is the good guys.

Wendy: you walked all the the way to Safeway in the rain just to get ONE pack of Doublemint gum?

me: expressly to see you, the grand gilf, the last hippie who was on the Two-Lane Blacktop set.

Wendy: you're not from that Compass Church in Monterey, are you? that place scares me. that pastor is creepy. we learned free love the natural way, not from some manufactured religion. it's a culvert not a calvert, you know? it's not a Calvinist culvert.

Easter eggs: never meant to be dropped from a helicopter.

me: don't i know you from somewhere? you have a familiar face to me.

Ariana Araiza: yeah, we were classmates at Palma. well we should have been.

Tai meditating in her yoga shoppe: i'm a masterpiece trying to master peace.

Wayne Brady: yeah that's me in Ninja Kamui at the end there. i'm this show's master plan for humans to achieve free love, which is pansexual love.

Fareed Zakaria is asked to deliver a lecture on campus.

Fareed Zakaria: the Lutherans are a rational people. they can discuss politics in a church.

Jen R: it's funny when you realize how SHORT David Lynch's filmography actually is.

David Lynch: stick with the first item on any list. always go with someone's first. go with Eraserhead.

Nic Cage: Wild at Heart had a good ending. i liked the ending. it's always a good thing having me in a leather jacket giving another of my patented zany performances. 

Sally Field: '80s Andie MacDowell.........yep.

Michael Weiss: but what if the internet COULD be erased?

Julia Ioffe: my father wanted me to be a Russian spy.

Gargoyles '98: we're combining with that '80s live-action Beauty and the Beast show and we're seeing how that goes.

seagull: hey Boc, you just take for granted that you go for your walk each morning and there aren't any car crashes. do you know how that happens? me. me and my bird magic.

at the park.

me: i gotta get out of here. i need to go to Baltimore. or have one of you lovely lifesaver ladies SCOOP me away to Baltimore. i would spend my life savings on a ticket to Baltimore if i could, pour my life savings into one ticket. do i even HAVE a life savings anymore? or was life savings just an '80s thing?

Lindy Lenz: i would but my house has no roof. call me Cynthia.

me: and you.........oh god i'm gonna cry.........i will never stop being your friend, i'll NEVER stop answering your texts each and every time you reach out to me, you're all i got.........even though WE CAN NEVER BE.

Jen R: it's a pipe dream. but think about it, some of the best skateboarders skated pipes.

Tony Hawk: for a skateboarder i lead an incredibly NORMAL life.

Jen P touches my bony shoulder then slaps my face.

Jen P: you gotta look at it this way, all you've got at any given moment are TODAY's feelings. so feel them. me? right now i'm feeling that unsettling sensation when you've been sitting in your computer chair for too long and an itchy blood bubble forms at the tip of your butthole along the crack that sends an uncomfortable yet tingly warm pool of blood through your body like spine shivers when you wipe.

Tom Hanks: nobody invited me to their last prom, i can't dance.