SMASHING PUMPKINS AT CARNEGIE MELLON: KHENE: SCHOLARSHIPS LIKE TISSUE PAPER

 

Billy Corgan is in the middle of campus strumming his acoustic guitar playing the Bonnie Raitt country classic swaying his corduroy hips back and forth to the music as he sings his own song: "let's give em Pumpkin to talk about..."

immediately a school minder picks up Corgan by the haunches and tosses him out the heavy green iron Carnegie Mellon gate onto the cobblestone outside.

Billy, crying: AGAIN!!! it happened to me AGAIN!!! i got kicked out of college!!! i'll show all you elites, i'll get back to delivering pizzas in my new old car to make enough money to make this first album, Gish, and my songs will cry out with chords, you'll FEEL me: the outcast, poor, ugly, me getting gatekeepered out of the good life. this music is FOR THE PEOPLE!!! the weirdos.

James Iha: so i got a job at the Research Triangle...

Mr. Belvedere is still on campus tho, he's performing in the circle. the tubby Englishman sings and dances a breakdancing spinaroonie.

Mr. Belvedere: "i don't see nothing wrong.........with a little bump and grind..."

Mr. Belvedere: so it turns out i was gay.........yeah, i mean this whole time nobody ever thought about that, i was just this character everyone in the world loved because i was witty and warm-hearted.

Mr. Belvedere: i did Falstaff in university.

Sir John Falstaff: the whole WIDE world. the word is rotund, fatty.

Alan Watts: THE DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK, LADY!!! MY DHARMA DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK!!!

Professor Raygun: you don't have a dharma dog.

Alan: how do you know, lady? i'm supposed to learn how to be a teacher from a teacher like you? being a student SUCKS.

Raygun: i popped and locked my way through your bedroom window last night.

Alan: this is what i get for doing the dorms instead of my own off-campus housing: my villa.

Raygun: look, man, i don't have time for your dreams, i'm busy filming the Breakin' reboot for Peacock. Mr. Watts, you can't consider yourself an official Zen Master unless you complete your degree.

Alan: catechism is for Catholicism!!!

Alan Watts runs away. he runs FAST out the door of the classroom inside the amphitheatre and runs like a bat out of hell ACROSS the BREADTH of the Carnegie Mellon campus without a compass from one corner to the far other corner. he is never seen again...

Alan: i'll be in a wood somewhere... 

Raygun: he'll be back. they all come back. it's like cycling in Alabama, it's strange... 

Billy Corgan, crying, starts in on the Carole King song "So Far Away."

Billy: i like the Rod Stewart version better, so sue me. i can still play, the minder broke me not my acoustic guitar. "doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?" i got no friends and no future. my happiness is so far away. my career goals and livelihood are so far away. they wouldn't give me a scholarship, i didn't qualify, i didn't meet their standards, i didn't live up to my potential, because i didn't make the university band playing the tuba. man this life sucks.

me: i wish i had a pink box of 12 glazed donuts in front of me right now.

Jen R: in the pink grandma sweater box.

Jimi Hendrix: to glaze means to rock.

Julie Patzwald: so after roaming the campus of Carnegie Mellon this week, forcibly opening a few locked doors, we've come away with our perfect goth-band name: Pussy Bow.

D'arcy: Jimmy has been a perfect gentleman. a fellow, a fella, a feller.

Billy: you just love him because he brings you a different flower each week. 

D'arcy: freshly cut, you tall-ass bridge troll.

Billy: "Feller," that's a good name for a song...

Jimmy Chamberlin: i only drink when it's a $26,000 bottle of champagne for many special occasions...

Kevin Smith: Onomatopoeia? i was trying to do Rorschach or something but he ended up being that sound-effects guy Michael Winslow from Police Academy...

Edgar Allan Poe: onomatopoeia was named after me...

Billy Crudup: was my best work the Allman Brothers rocker or Doctor Manhattan?...

Shirley Valentine.

Shirley Valentine: i mean, doesn't the cocoa already have sugar in it?...

Shirley speaking to her daughter's wall: someone with a goddess name like Milandra shouldn't be a brat like this...

Anna Keaveney: hey Wikipedia, no one is Low Importance, every human has value.

Shirley: being naked with a Greek man was more fun than being naked with my newlywed husband in a tub.

Costas the Greek man with the mustache: i call you Shirl.

Simone Biles: this is Greece but it ain't the Olympics. only at the Olympics will you be asked to pay for a $26,000 bottle of champagne...

Costas: dreams.........they're never in the place you think they're gonna be.........how's that for an opening line?...

Costas: Princess Diana and i are just friends...

Shirley: all men are bullshitters.

Shirley: most blokes don't know how to talk to birds. men can't talk to women...

Costas: let me interrupt you, i listen to your heart. Autumn in New York, right? that is why you are here in Greece.

Shirley Valentine: the ending? i became a poet like my son. i entered into a lesbian relationship with Joanna Lumley, wasn't that such a warm encounter we had?

Joanna Lumley: quite. an encounter of longing and wistful desire. the lifelong friendship that never was. maiden mates. our love shack is in Gurkha territory, we'll be at peace there.

Tai: doing your exercises on your chair is how you get a massage when no one's around...

Jen R: okay so in my dream i'm in this HUGE-ASS warehouse and i'm completely lost. there are no exit signs, no entrance signs for that matter, no doors, no windows, just neon light and the smell of lilac. endless stairs, endless rooms, endless levels, endless roofs.

Kung-Fu Master: endless ceilings.

Jen: no elevators. turns out it's a Pokemon palace but i'm not into Pokemon cards at all.  

me: are you telling me it's time for me to try to escape the '80s?...

Kung-Fu Master: Japanese people, my precious Japanese kin, don't die in your rooms, escape the room, karate your way out...

Jules Smith is at the parish council.

Jules Smith: i call this meeting to order.

me: aye *)

Jules: first and last item on the minutes, let's only put cold pizza in the community air fryer from now on, not French fries.

Jen R: why doesn't Domino's Pizza deliver?.........on DoorDash?...

me: Jules, on the count of three, mah dahlin, we both say "I love you" in front of the boys...

Shirley Valentine: "I love you" is not the cure-all to all of life's problems. "I love you" doesn't fix a thing.

Annie Lennox: ...

Gavin Newsom: there are no longer any tobacco sales in California. i realize this is the home of Hollywood, the home of COOL, but can't we still be cool without having to light up and pretend that we're smoking cigarettes?...

Gavin Newsom: i am not Gavin Rossdale. i have no idea who Gwen Stefani is.

Robert Mapplethorpe: i'm not just JFK Jr. when he got kinky...

Brussels: nobody's here anymore. nobody's on Instagram. all that remains are the staggered steps of the old city. that one door with a star above it. the lower light.

Madame Pons eating a croque madame in Paris three weeks after the Olympics: i missed everything. is Tom Hiddleston still here?

McDonald's: we're in Paris now. with our Sausage + Egg McMuffins. Hiddleston slung Mireille onto the back of his motorcycle and scootered back to Yale.

Sasuke: no fair!!! i get dekopin'd by my older brother Itachi and he gets to keep the dog!!!

Sakura: dekopin me, Sasuke. 

Sasuke: do you have a dog?

Moses Malone roams the halls of James Buchanan High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in the 1970s.

Moses Malone: i play basketball here. but not for long.

Arnold Horshack: you planning a B&E?

Moses: no, i'm gonna be the first prep-to-pro.

Mr. Kotter: where's Washington? oh shit, we left him on the bus!!! this was the Sweathogs' first field trip, you see, we left Washington in Washington, D.C....

Ludacris: remember Otter Pops when we were kids? i'm just doing my part to show the melting glaciers are a bad thing for the planet.

glacier graveyard: ...

Crystal Dunn: i've always been a trailblazer and this was a first: the names of someone's pet chickens are on their Wikipedia page.

UN in NYC: come on, the United Nations is cool. after we use a building it becomes an ice-skating rink and a place for roller derby...

Dr. Robbins: my daughter is a spry one.

Mel Robbins: a spitfire.

Dr. Robbins: an ice rink.

me: in my dream Uncle Wiggily is IMPLORING the little chefs of a greasy spoon backstage to NOT prepare Welsh rarebit.

Uncle Wiggily: rabbit meat does not taste good. don't add meat, make the Welsh rarebit like a vegan pizza...

The Twilight Zone "20/20 Vision".

Michael Moriarty: have you EVER seen me smile?...

Carlos Alcaraz: i am upset...

Julia Butterfly Hill: i created my own monastery in the trees...

Abbot Butt: Julia Butterfly Hill, her location in California is near enough to us for her to be our first female monk.

Thomas Merton: i'm on it...

Lucio Rossi: omg a public payphone!!! i thought they were all gone. vanished. i'm checking my pocket for a dime...

rain room in an arts museum on the Carnegie Mellon campus: it's just the fire sprinklers on the ceiling overhead turned on with the lights out...

Billy Corgan: one way or another, i'm gonna getcha, i'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha. i'm gonna get all you elites, you'll see, i'll become a Republican. i shall have my revenge with all these songs on this album, they're all great songs. about my pain, back pain, and struggle. about how life sucks when you're not the popular kids.

Billy Corgan switches to his electric guitar and starts playing the Smashing Pumpkins song "I Am One."

Robert Plant: come on, man, that's the Led Zeppelin song "Immigrant Song."

SMASHING PUMPKINS AT CARNEGIE MELLON: JIMMY AT THE END OF THE DAY

 

Billy Corgan: anybody know a drummer? D'arcy, have you fucked a drummer?

D'arcy Wretzky: i'll pretend i didn't hear that.........but i did...

James Iha: i know a guy.

Ralph Bakshi: i'm just over here drinking my crotchety old-man Coke. crotchety Coke.

Billy: wait, sir, get a load of us first before you make your God judgement. 

the three in the band mount the small syrupy stage.

the Smashing Pumpkins perform the Laid Back song "White Horse."

Ralph Bakshi: no dice. tho i do love your Sgt. Pepper's silkscreen shirts. very paisley. in the '60s i was still cool.

Billy Corgan: i don't give a fuck about Oasis. we met at a Princeton pub, they were rude to me. all their songs are fluff, they're not deep. while serious grunge is going on they're doing light airy Britpop. they have a song about drinking champagne while driving. 

Alan Watts: and morning glory is masturbation.

Billy: they even have a song "Live Forever" that MAKES FUN of depresso guys like Eddie Vedder. "Don't Look Back in Anger," they copied that song from the Beatles, that makes me angry, i turn my head at them like Live.

Liam Gallagher: mate, Gerard Way is your bastard son.

Billy: shut up about that!!! that's a sensitive subject for me, shut up!!! i'm sore about that. i'm gonna write a song called "To Forgive" with the line bastard son about my son Gerard Way, i call him Gerry, who is my way, not Jesus, Jesus was an only son for God.

Alan Watts attends his first really hard rigorous college class at Carnegie Mellon taught by Professor Raygun.

Raygun: Mr. Watts, i'll make you a deal: you take me seriously, i take you seriously...

Alan Watts: this is too much homework, miss. i need to think.

Raygun: you're not in high school anymore, man. or even, like, 5th Grade. if you want to graduate from this university with a degree in Being a Zen Buddhist Monk, you'll have to go through me!!! i want a 200-page essay from you on the Zen-ness of flowers on my desk tomorrow morning at 1AM.

Alan: THAT'S SOME BUDDHA BULLSHIT, LADY!!!

Raygun: you wanna go? i'm not above challenging my own students. 

Alan: i shall lay down the gauntlet, madam.

Raygun: let's take it outside, dance-off right now on the library steps...

Billy and Alan console each other after in the library.

Alan: i'm silly, ey? i'm a silly man, aren't i. it's just Zen is so cool, Catholicism is so stuffy. being a Catholic is like being a stuffed shirt like you.

Billy: i wear sweaters. hockey jerseys are called hockey sweaters.

Alan: paint that picture of Americana for your third double-album.  

Billy: should i start lifting weights or something?

Alan: no no no, do NOT go down Trent's path. i'm sorry, sensitivity is strength, i forgot about that. especially in men. we softies have to stick together.

D'arcy: okay which of you picked the better flower for me illegally digging on campus?

James Iha: nobody noticed me because i'm so small.

Billy: ditto for me. exactly the same experience but change mine to big.

D'arcy holds up her long straight silky golden hair with her hand as she sinks her head into the water vase, closing her eyes as she takes a BIG WHIFF of the flowers into every pore of her nostrils.

D'arcy: THAT'S how you smell flowers. men don't realize this when they give women flowers: every time the woman INHALES DEEPLY the flowers each day, day after day, she remembers her man's scent. soon the flower smell replaces the man's hairy-crotch smell in her tub.

Billy: who wins?

D'arcy: sorry, Billy, James wins, you had your typical red roses, Billy.

Billy: what's wrong with roses?

D'arcy: they're roses. James got me exotic black-and-white-striped zebra flowers.

James Iha: very gish...

at the wedding of Meryl Streep and Martin Short, Meryl Streep is wearing a black Three Amigos suit and sombrero.

Meryl Streep: i make this look good. but this is kinda weird.

Martin Short: do the thrust, Meryl, do the thrust.

Meryl Streep: i can't do the Three Amigos Salute, my tits are too big for the crossed-arms-on-your-chest step...

Matt at Safeway: know why my face always looks so fucking WIZENED all the time? my eyes are always sad, i've never smiled in my life, i always look like i've just been told i have to fix the ice machine AGAIN and i won't get paid for overtime because nobody works here anymore. because Safeway. because i work at Safeway. my lines are not the lines at a grocery store, they're the lines on my fucking face.

at the wedding of Judith Light and Tony Danza on the Carnegie Mellon campus, Tony Danza starts dancing.

Tony Danza: Danza is Italian for dance.

Judith Light: wait this is happening in real life?...

Tony Danza: all wedding dances from around the world came from Italy. 

Judith Light: i can't tell what's real and what's TV anymore...

Johnny Mathis: what would we do, baby, without us? Family Ties would be NOTHING without me.

Brian Bonsall: without us. just making a joke.

Johnny Mathis: that song of mine is a new category i invented: tender yacht rock.

Brian Bonsall: i guess i'm in a band with Tina Yothers or something?...

Alan Watts: you know those funerals where they show a video-projector projection of slides of the person on a screen above the coffin and each slide changes after 10 seconds? that whole thing is creepy.

Steejo: Naruto?

Suzy Lu: i'm saying narrator, the word narrator in Scottish.

Steejo: feed me, woman.........for the past three months i've just eaten 90 cans of beans...

Shirley Valentine.

Boc: this is the only dog i'm not scared of: a bloodhound that eats mueslix. 

pub gal: you have an eggboard on your bed?

Shirley Valentine: for the chips and egg after sex. clitoris is a name...

Alan Watts: the worst is when your second family becomes lonely.

son: i'm a poet, mum.

Shirley Valentine: well it's better than being a nutter like that Ian Curtis boy. 

Julia McKenzie: no i don't solve mysteries in Maine. i became vegan after i saved the foxes from the hunt.

Akira Kurosawa: thank you, random lady, one of those foxes was my father.

friend: no boring Englishman listens to Bobby Brown.

Skylar: Shirley's right about the supermarket sex. i ring up ten dozen Shirley Valentines a day at Safeway, especially at 10AM...

me: i'm a housewife. i live like a housewife.

Jen R: except you're not married. 

Laertus: but why is this movie written by a man?...

me: remember the Travel section of Waldenbooks in the '80s? i slept on that carpet.

granny grabber: it's a stick...

Capp: nobody cares, that's the problem with the world.

Jen R: but do YOU care?

Capp: no.

Amanda Knox: do NOT go to that same Italian court to solve the mystery of the yacht bodies!!!

Lucio Rossi: Italian vessels don't sink.

Johnny Mathis: this is NOT tender yacht rock.

New Zealand: let's get back to oracle cards...

Alan Watts: get a second family mostly for the SECOND HOUSE...

Abbot Butt: people mostly join the monastery to be left the fuck alone.

Enigma: i have the best panpipes.

Aztec music: no, we do...

Indiana Jones hat: the white-lady pumpkin spice latte sombrero.

Claudine Pepin aboard the Sirena: Claudine Cruise!!! it's a boat, not Tom. food excursion. 9 days and 9 nights. sample my caviar, cunt, and crouton. don't get wet, you can't swim...

John Lennon: imagine: the Beatles scoring the music for the global Age of Aquarius...

Mayim Bialik: are you really a punk?

Anthony Michael Hall: no way.

Mayim Bialik: did you say new wave?...

me: should i get a sleeve tattoo? tattoo sleeves. would that make me sexier? i need to get a wife.

Jen R: only if you come from the Islands.

me: should i get a sleeve tattoo?

Lindy Lenz: do you come from the Islands?

me: if you say yes i do...

Lindy: get a tattoo to have lunch with me...

Pete Sampras: i can do Broadway...

Jannik Sinner: where's my dinner?

Arnold Schwarzenegger: you want some sugar?

Jannik: why doesn't anybody in the stands root for me anymore?

Arnold: carrots are root vegetables.

Jannik: it was my asthma medicine.

Arnold: you don't have asthma.

Jannik: i developed asthma the first time you shot at me as The Terminator.

Steven Tyler at CVS: got any nose spray?...

pledge season: not a frat, PBS public television.

me: in my dream, Mel Robbins is on the set of her latest local venture talking to me about the biz.

Mel Robbins: getting a TV show on the air is a bitch. it takes shitloads of money, even local TV. i'm just trying to help the community with my pop psychology and jokes. 

Jen R: you're helping according to your limited means.

Mel: limited resources. fuck sponsors, i need an angel investor.

Akira Kurosawa: or a devil investor.

Jen R: we are all Mel Robbins: kind of famous, kind of a psych nurse.

Dr. Robbins: my daughter is a spry one.

Caitlin's Way: would you rather go to juvenile hall or a rehab ranch in Montana with horses?

Caitlin: juvie.

Fiona Apple: i only write music when i'm angry or sad. if i'm having a good time, why would i stop that good time to write at my dusty piano? i look bombed. too much apple sauce. too much McDonald's apple pies.

Quentin Tarantino: too much me on our first date...

David Blaine: you married and had 9 kids with me, Fiona Apple. i call her Fiona Pie on the phone.

Fiona Apple: our honeymoon period was nice, i felt i was always levitating. and then i woke up one morning alone in my dark NYC hotel room with the curtains drawn closed and i thought to myself, did i really marry a magician?...

David Blaine: i'm the only human who's ever flown.

Brewster McCloud: ...

Schoolkate playing tennis: wanna get back together with Kate Newcom from St. Cyril's?

me: yes.

Seb Korda: you think it's easy for me? when i wear this hairband?

Medvedev playing tennis while drinking a Honey Deuce: i get no respect. i'm always underrated. i'm always angry. i'm the Mad Russian, i'm a character in an '80s Nintendo sports game, Mike Tyson's Punch Out For Tennis. i know Soda Popinski. i don't know for sure because it's Siberia but Soda was probably my father.

solo trip: humans were not supposed to have evolved into this. we are meant to be together. this is not the way it was supposed to happen...

Maya Joint playing tennis: i'm using ALL the new money i'm getting for more marijuana and more dreadlocks. college is gonna be fun this semester, i'm gonna perform a seance in my Michigan dorm room to bring back Bob Marley better than that film could. one love, bitches.

Jimmy Chamberlin: have you seen my hoe?

Billy Corgan: pardon me, sir? i like your muscles. and your muscle shirt. and your square head, you got a beefiness to you, sir. you're the jock i could never be. i like your Luffy hat.

Jimmy: cowboy hats are lame.

Billy: whatcha up to? why are you sweating all the time?

Jimmy: not drugs, i'm the campus gardener.

Alan Watts: you're an herbalist!!!

Jimmy: no i garden. long hours under the the beating hot sun, no pay. 

D'arcy: i like this guy.

Jimmy: i stick my fingers in holes. dirt mostly. i was planting some clumps of red roses and zebra flowers around here but somebody picked them clean. 

Billy: James Iha is a criminal.

Jimmy Chamberlin: they force me to wear jean overalls.

Billy Corgan: are you a drummer?

Jimmy: yes. i will fundamentally change the Smashing Pumpkins sound.

Billy: yeah, i can sell the drum machine to get a car.

Jimmy: no, now the Pumpkins can actually ROCK!!!

  

 

 

SMASHING PUMPKINS AT CARNEGIE MELLON: ROBOT DRUMMER

 

Billy Corgan: i'm making my days shorter. less busy. with less to do. so i'll be able to live my days again. i'm cutting work in two. i'm looking for shortcuts at work. even more shortcuts. i've always wanted to go back to college to complete my degree.

James Iha: what did you study?

Billy: they wouldn't let me into college. they said i had a weird face. this band we're forming is the result of me trying to get back at the establishment.

D'arcy Wretzky: treat me right. by paying me.

the three friends and bandmates walk for days until they make it to the Carnegie Mellon campus. Ted Danson, Judith Light, and Zachary Quinto greet them.

Billy: great it's the fucking welcoming committee. what do you want, handsome man?

Ted Danson: it's weird because in the '80s i had this handsome rough brute-guy image i had to maintain. i had brown hair back then. but now that i've let my hair go grey women see me as SEXIER, i'm a soft silver fox.

Judith Light: i hated my own daughter for never having an awkward phase.

Alyssa Milano: no, i was Tony Danza's daughter, remember?

Judith Light: no, we are a regular family after i married Tony Danza.

Alyssa Milano: college taught me how to be the best witch...

Zachary Quinto: before i enrolled in CM i was an evil supervillain. but after getting my doctor degree from Carnegie Mellon, i started only taking good-guy roles. i'm a doctor who enters his invalid patients' lucid dreams to see what's really wrong. Dream Corp LLC on broadcast TV. Mellon mellowed me.

the trio enter the dorms.

Alan Watts: the silk sheets in these beds are too loud. they make too much noise at night when i'm  masturbating. hey you know when you wake up and you have to scratch the itch in the two spaces between your penis in the morning? your high legs?

Billy Corgan: have you changed your pants at all this year, old man? that's not bits of toilet paper coming from your crotch, that's asbestos.

Alan: you should learn to calm yourself, young man. and lose some weight, you're a white whale.

Chloe Mendel as a freshman: that's what i said, Billy is a CATCH. someday...

Alan: listen to the lady, Billy, she's the great-spawn of Gregor who dealt in magic downer herbs.

Chloe: my grand relative was the first man to discover Hello Meteor...

Billy: hey i thought you and me were going steady.

D'arcy in a mushroom tee: we'll see how it goes now that we're in college. relationships fizzle and you write another song. we'll see if you can pick flowers for me on campus. Sir Alan, i've been getting into oracle cards.

Alan: yes, my dear, the fluff of the young. try mushroom tea, it's good for ladies. lady guts. ladies come to me all the time asking me to help with their digestion.

D'arcy: my favorite is the Garbage Pail Kid oracle card.

James Iha: i was thinking of renting housing off-campus but we got iced out, me and this other dude named Jimmy got kicked out. we bonded over the Jimmy thing. three were forming a Three's Company House where the frat caught fire: Michael Landon, Jack Tripper, and Mr. Furley.

Michael Landon: that may be a little house.

Jack Tripper: it's an apartment.

Michael Landon: but that ain't no prairie...

Mr. Furley: do you want to be hot and clean or cold and smelly? your choice.

Greykid: the bacon you're crumbling in front of me looks like Autumn leaves...

tennis players are walking in and out of campus.

Coco Gauff: where are the tennis degrees? everyone wants to know the Cori score. i won, breadsticks. this place has a Parisian cafe, right? my cousin is Dionne Warwick, she taught Alan Watts how to be a medium... 

Billy enters his first class. on the football field.

Billy Corgan: is this Professor Pete Carroll? what are we doing here and why aren't we in a classroom? or lecture arena.

Pete Carroll: i teach the Physics of Field-Goal Kicking here. do you what your degree in science?

Billy: despite the fact that i look like a basketball center who's also a linebacker, i was never a jock, i never played sports, that's why i'm an outcast. i was thinking more a degree in music theory. i don't want to learn rocket science, i'm smarter than those guys. i write songs ABOUT rockets to the moon. Polaris Dawn, they STOLE that from me!!! that was gonna be the title of our debut album!!!

Pete: concentrate on being the first civilian in space, William Shatner is an asshole who can't throw.

Bjork running away from the sorority: there is no railroad in Iceland.........except on me...

Rachel Maddow: i'm an animator on the Sailor V anime...

the sweet sound of snoring: everything's gonna be okay.

Deadpool: is there a more perfect pairing than me teaming up with Jack from Jack in the Box?...

McCartney Kessler playing tennis: the name on my birth certificate is Ringo but nobody wanted that.

Capp: who goes all the way to Dublin, Ireland, for an American college football game? that's not Notre Dame.

Jen R: yeah, nobody loves their alma mater THAT MUCH...

Don Riddell: gotta love a British man commentating on American college football...

Christian Slater: only i am cool enough to name my dog Fish.

Cheryl Hines: this is, as Larry David would put it.........pretty pretty awkward...

Steve Blum at anime club: before, i was Blum, Blum bum. then i experienced the dream of every shut-in otaku out there: Motoko Kusanagi fucked me. then i became Steve BLOOM...

Steve Blum: by the way, if you want a project to distract you from the fact that you wasted your life, watch EVERY SINGLE animated Scooby-Doo movie, that will take you the rest of your life...

Cher: snap out of it!!! i won an Oscar for that one line.

Marisa Tomei: my biological clock is ticking!!! i won an Oscar for that one line.

Patrick Dempsey from Can't Buy Me Love: school spirit was a REAL THING in the '80s.

Amanda Peterson: college will be worse than high school...

Fairuza Balk: if only high school was goth school...

Amanda Peterson: never wear white ON Labor Day unless it's severe suede.   

nerds: it's weird that you're not weird.

Patrick Dempsey: i am not a nerd...

Wheels from Degrassi High: maybe not have a Columbus Day DANCE...

Amanda Peterson: Nexxus, when there's no more Vidal Sassoon...

Laertus: i felt so HEARTSICK for those nerds.

Amanda Peterson: me, too, that's why i discovered religion later in life...

Dirg: you shoulda stuck with poetry. religion is too big for you. i'm scared to call you babe.

Amanda Peterson: that's rich coming from you. 

Dirg: i've never been rich, that's been the problem. i want to be rich so bad, that's my single motivation.

Eye Luggage: that's why i love Laertus and will never like you.

Dirg: damn, woman, harsh much?

Eye: Laertus feels for nerds. 

Tony Hawk: i had a mohawk like that.........once.........in 7th Grade...

Amanda Peterson: I wanted a goth mohawk but this wasn't The Craft...

Amanda Peterson: i wanted a Tony Hawk Highway but named after me...

Tony Hawk: you can fly with a skateboard.

Amanda Peterson: all of us in Arizona want to escape. our brick houses are made with red bricks. but the ROOFS are red-brick, too... 

Elton John at Safeway: i'm buying some baby cabbages.

Weiland: you didn't want me in Temple of the Dog? fine, i formed Velvet Revolver, the last grunge supergroup.

Billy Corgan: nobody wanted me in their supergroup...

me: i got covid and it freaked me the fuck out, my body had never been attacked like that before, it felt like a giant stone was on top of my lungs.

Gavin Rossdale: how much does Mick Jagger weigh?...

Meryl Streep in hushed tones: don't tell Peter MacNicol this, but i wanted you as the third wheel in Sophie's Choice.

Martin Short: i'm in love with you, Meryl Streep. and not like admiration as a fellow actor, i want to fuck you and suck you.

Peter MacNicol: i'm standing right here.

Meryl: i'm sorry, Peter, but when you're standing you're a foot high.

at the school cafeteria.

girl: are you really a punk?

boy: no way.

girl: did you just say new wave?...

Robin Williams in One Piece: here, take this bat, i abhor violence. i wear this red-and-white-striped Where's Waldo shirt so you can locate me, i surrender. 

150 Turks in Monterey: hey, it's more coffee for us.

West Side Festival in Sand City: your only chance to see Banksy paint a giant electric-blue monkey on a wall HERE.

Rigby: NO, SQUIRREL!!! come on, don't go inside the tailpipe of that KITT-car Porsche, go inside that treehole. 

Greykid: probably best not to clean the kitty litter RIGHT AFTER your walk...

me: bending on my knees in a squat...

Eliana Ghen: are you ghen of Ghen?

Dirg: yes, i am jealous of you, Vietnamese-wise. i will never understand YouTube culture.

Margravine: the name of our goth band.

Julie Patzwald: being on campus will influence this name later in the week...

aftermath: the newly-discovered math that tragically was used to devise The Bomb...

at a Princeton pub.

dad: cheers, everybody, to Gershkovich, glad you're back, buddy. i don't drink beer but. i'll take a handful of pretzels.

Evan Gershkovich: thanks, everybody, call me Gersh, it's gonna take the rest of my life to get back into life. i'm so blessed and thankful all of you at this bar table are around and surrounding me, watching over me.

Julia Ioffe: we're your friends, Evan, we'll be your safety net.

Michael Weiss: not your spynet.

Pete Sampras at the Opening Ceremony Night One of the U.S. Open: there's always a glamorous singer singing a song here. i, not my actress wife, want to be in that slot here. me in my gold dazzle dress, i will sing a Ween song in front of this crowd.

Banksy: imagine me as an old man...

at the psychiatrist's office.

Dr. Robbins: how can i make you trust me?

me: smoke.

Dr. Robbins: like Freud?

me: no, cigarettes.

Shirley Valentine: so, My Big Fat Greek Wedding?...

Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine: this is what happens to the Liver Birds in the '80s...

Dirg: i'm not the best, i'm the rest. but you see, i'm what's left...

Joe Jackson: it's not New Wave until it's early-'80s New York New Wave, New York Wave.

Billy Corgan: imagine if i had been from New York City...

Billy Corgan is talking with the manager of a local club.

the manager of the club, Ralph Bakshi: i won't let you have your first gig here unless you get a drummer.

Billy Corgan: we can't just use a drum machine?

Ralph Bakshi: let me guess, you do Cure covers. that sucks, no originality.

ALAN WATTS'S TRIP SITTER: TWEEZERS

 

i knock on the gargoyle door to Alan Watts's private library in the mushroom room. Alan greets me with his big wide grin and the Wakanda Symbol he makes with his arms while not dropping his Buddha beads.

me with the notebook and pencil: gotta ask, your adoring public aches to know, what's the deal with the hair?

Alan Watts: i haven't always looked like this. when i was a Catholic priest i looked like Hugh Laurie. and then i donned the Jedi robe of the Zen Master. eventually after riding a few hogs with Dennis Hopper and Jane Fonda i at an easy pace adopted the Jeff Bridges look everyone knows me for in TikTok memes. 

me: i heard a lot of screaming last night coming from your chamber.

Alan: i had a lucid nightmare. it shrunk my normally lantern-shaped head into the shape of a melon. but you know something? i've never used TWEEZERS. not once in my life have i tweezed my eyebrows.

me: why are you looking at me? it gives me a thrill to know you're looking a me with your third eye.

Alan: i want the Bert look. i want you to tweeze my eyebrows.   

me: where does one find tweezers in the middle of the forest?

Alan: there's a CVS inside the retreat house...

Bob Feller: i was a teenage baseball pitcher in the Majors. 

Michael J. Fox: better than being a teenage werewolf playing high-school basketball.

Bob Feller: i was never a feller. i did manage to throw Curly from The Three Stooges out.

Curly: that's cuz i ate the baseball, kid. it turned into sawdust spaghetti in my belly.

Bob Feller: my fastball had HEAT. but i wasn't fast enough to sweeep Marilyn Monroe off her feet.

Marilyn Monroe in her Jean Harlow voice: this kid tried to pull a fast one on us!!! on the country. this boy tried to ask me out!!! i mean it's not like he was as famous as Shirley Temple or nothing.

German boats under London Bridge: don't worry, we're not starting World War III. the space Stormtroopers aren't the same as the other stormtroopers. remember, Darth Vader turns out to be a good guy...

German boats under London Bridge: do you want to have people coming back to London? in the pubs, serve Butter Lay's. yeah? Lay's potato chips that are just butter. butter chips...

Humphrey Bogart swimming in the rag-and-bone shoppe from The Liver Birds: do you know what the Maltese Falcon really is? a lamp.

self-help books in Alan Watts's library: you never realized this when you were reading a self-help book, but self-help is New Age... 

Kamala Harris: when i'm President all McDonald's will serve only healthy food...

Morgan Spurlock: in Heaven you can eat as many Big Macs as you want and never get sick. Shepard Fairey did my posters!!!

Greykid: i am honored to be Kamala's cat.

Oprah: i'm running for President after Kamala. it's the only way to keep democracy going...

Patrick Dempsey in Can't Buy Me Love: my blood sugar is tanking.

Amanda Peterson: shall i call 911?

Patrick: no i'll be okay once i eat this whole pepperoni pizza here. speaking of pizza, i'm gonna be Loverboy.

Amanda: i know, which is why i find it strange that you're so DESPERATE to join the jocks. in high school. you're gonna fuck older lonely rich women.

Patrick: and the pizza will be better there.

Patrick Dempsey: why is high school so hard? fuck cliques.

Amanda: it's hard for everybody. remember, we live in Arizona, Arizona sucks.

me: Patrick Dempsey had big ears like me.

Patrick Dempsey: but unlike you, Patrick, THIS Patrick was only pretending to be a nerd...

me: in my McDonald's dreams i am YOUR Patrick...

Patrick Dempsey's dad: i have a mansion big enough for Seth Green to go wild in because of my tile business. so it stands to reason that family game night consists of us playing Battleship as a family, the game of tiles...

Patrick Dempsey's dad: i need an Alan Watts pipe. i need a dad pipe.

girl in covered convertible: have you ever seen pretty titties?

Patrick Dempsey: not like yours. not up close like this.

girl: tits are meant to be in men's faces.

Patrick: see this is the '80s so cable is still mystical. nobody has cable TV in the neighborhood. do you watch that Nickelodeon game show Double Dare and play along at home?

girl: where do you see tit? 

Patrick: in magazines and stuff. it's the '80s so there's only your father's Playboys...

Alan Watts: despite my name, i am human...

Alan Watts: you hear that strange booming sound?

me: a squirrel is knocking on your glass screendoor.

Rigby: i'm a raccoon. come on, Alan, let me in. 

Alan Watts, sliding: sorry, Rigby, Mordecai had the New Age chops, that's why he disappeared.

Rigby: i don't have the New Age aptitude so i'm still here?

Alan Watts: sucks for you. you have to get a real job now.

me: Jen, you're the best American i know.

Jen R: no, the correct answer is Oprah. the Queen of Chicago. the Queen of the DNC.

Kamala Harris: when i'm President, Berkeley will become the world city it was always meant to be. Berkeley will be like Paris.

Dan Schneider in the stands at the San Francisco Giants baseball game: the Head of the Class theme song sounds like Journey "Don't Stop Believin'."

Steve Perry: don't stand up, Dan, thinking you're gonna receive a standing ovation...

me: you are hot. i wanna fuck you. you got a man?

Melissa Maker: um, Patrick? it's me, remember?.........i'm married to Chad Reynolds...

Jen: don't you know anything?!!! limit your distractions by staying alert, by paying attention in your life.

me: can i be your live-in boyfriend?

Jules Smith: before we go on our first date?

Jen: this is not working out.

Alfred Vogel: all herbalists are monks. don't make fun of me, i know Roger Federer. i know Batman. Herbamare is a great replacement for Shake-N-Bake pork powder. i wanted Sonic the hedgehog to be an echidna.

Jacques Pepin: my secret ingredient? add Tabasco Sauce to EVERY DISH...

Claudine Pepin: summer's over, pops.

Capp: why is it that nobody talks anymore? everyone stays silent. nobody says a word. traction is nonexistent. conversation is unsustainable. it never gets beyond one sentence. any response whatsoever?

Jen R: you're not in the right clubs. 

Capp: i want a club that TALKS.

Jen: no chess club then. and not a dance club.

me: this is not working out.

Jen R: no it is not.........this is gonna be in your book...

me: what is it like to receive a voicemail that is one hour long?

Melissa Maker: i don't listen to hour voicemails anymore. not even from my husband...

Skylar: what have i been doing since i retired from Safeway? steampunk sewing machine...

Bert and Ernie are at home in their bathtub together bathing each other.

Bert: i'm spinning.

Ernie: we're all spinning on this spinning rock, Bert. snap out of your depression. at least you're not Snuffy, that guy is REALLY depressed. i gave Snuffy my rubber duckie to soothe himself with and he snorted it up into his trunk.

Stephen Nedoroscik: i'm not a dancer. i'm a gymnast. but everyone HAS to do Dancing with the Stars whether or not we hate dance. show business is a totem pole. i'm representing for all the Olympics out there. i'm representing for all the breakdancers out there...

Stephen Nedoroscik's girlfriend: you're a ghost because you're a meme.

Eric Clapton: my "Layla" riff is played every time they're advertising a new rock radio station...

Hurricane Gilma: Gilmore girls is back, this time the daughter has to care for the mother who's an old lady...

Richard Belzer: i'm of Fame fame.

Leslie Sbrocco: my favorite dish is cum but i love a good clam chowder.

Morgan Bolling: those two are not the same. 

Leslie: only Chicago Clam Chowder, i will not eat clam chowder from that racist city.

Rinvoq: meat skewers at the beach?...

Dirg: those people who post weird shaved-head pics of themselves when they were 18 wearing non-military fatigues, i mean what IS that on Instagram?!!!

Michael Weiss: they're documenting a wasted life.

Richard Hatch: all reality-show contestants go to prison, right?...

Jeff Probst: yes, the whole thing is one big racket.

Engelbert Humperdinck: i got a Little Indian in me, you know what i'm saying?

Humphrey Bogart: you're related to me. you're my cousin. your name means "mystery man" in the language of Land of the Lost from the 1970s.

Alan Watts: see what i mean? see with your third eye. think about it, you have no choice on how to live. everybody is born into a family. and with it a job of some kind, a legacy that spans generations. your father was a vintner so that is simply what you are gonna be doing in YOUR life: wine merchant. whether you want to or not. liking it is not in the equation. you have a legacy to protect, YOU are in charge of your grandfather's bottles of wine. you are born innately with responsibilities, within a system. you realize that when you get to be a teenager you're gonna have to take care of your ailing old parents. that is your job: caregiver. you have no time to be an artist. you have no time to create your own destiny. you were born to be your parents' caregiver. you were born to look after your old mom and your old dad.

Alan can see that i'm sullen.

Alan: don't hide back in your Vision of Escaflowne VHSs. for you it's different, huh.

i nod my head faintly.

Alan: it's the exact opposite for you, you WANT to be part of a family desperately.

me: i loved that my dad was a writer, i wanted to be a writer, too. but a real writer, a famous writer, a writer that somehow gets money for art. okay how about just a known writer? but dad had no contacts, no writer-circle buddies, thus i am left without a legacy, i am a friendless writer looking to get in the game of art.

Alan: you aren't an author unless you're published. so you desire destiny, you wish you had been given the structure of the plan for your future, that the plan had been laid out early, that you knew all the rungs you needed to ascend to follow in the family business. of being an artist, a writer. tricky that. but YOU must choose: family or going your own way.

me: it'd be easier if my girl was Stevie Nicks.

Alan Watts: precious few get that Almost Famous "you ARE home" moment in the bus with your second family because your second family came to you easily. the yearning, the desperate search for your second family, the finding of it, and ultimately the permanent transition into your second family, this is the most beautiful thing a human can experience in life. always remember, kid: FAMILY IS ALL.

ALL OF THIS i write in the notebook.