ISOLATION HOTLINE: I'M HERE FOR YOU

 

dad: i always thought you'd go into public speaking. you had that stentorian Shakespearean voice.

me: nah, i was the actor in the bushes. the bush prop. i had a soft voice. soft Shakespeare.

dad: why didn't you become an actor?

me: i never had the money. besides, i really just wanted to go into writing.

dad: that's what all failed actors say. did you ever get with that Jen Pizarro?

me: please don't open that wonderful wound again...

dad: life is about duality. if you're feeling isolated, do something to make you less isolated.

me: i don't want to work from home, that's so basic.

dad: work at an isolation hotline.

me: huh?

dad: this world is batshit, more and more people are getting caged into a corner each minute. nobody has anybody to talk to anymore. loneliness is the new covid. be there for someone, be there for a complete stranger.

me: as a listening board?

dad: whilst on your skateboard. you'd be surprised, simply TALKING or TYPING your problems to another person, even a complete stranger, lessens the blow of those problems. takes the sting out for a minute and the pain subsides long enough for the person to feel sanguine again. calm. you hear it on their face: the person is serene again...

consistory: the papal Olympics...

Brewster's Millions.

Bud Cort: sadly this isn't me or the dog...

Michael Jordan: the Bulls, my baseball team...

Trent Reznor: a train going through a baseball field is so goth...

Jen R: i still don't know how to use that newfangled orange bottle-opener that looks like a lollipop, i'll just use John Candy's teeth.

John Candy: massagist, not misogynist...

Jen R in court: your honor, i sampled the new Martha Stewart CBD gummies...

Jerry Orbach: sorry boys, i can't get you out of prison, i'm the ol' ball coach, not a clever sarcastic police detective...

me: wait so this IS Cocoon 2 after all!!!...

Jen R: my daddy did the same thing with me, locked me in a broom closet with a box of cigars, i had to smoke every one.........i ended up becoming addicted to bubblegum cigars...

Hume Cronyn: unless the bimbo is that old woman from Titanic. i like em old...

Jessica Tandy: you didn't look at me in a miniskirt until i was 89...

whitehair: you can't use magic...

bowtie: i'm a completely neutral observer, like God...

Richard Pryor: see this is the INHERENT FLAW in this movie, NOBODY would refuse that million dollars, NOBODY...

Jerry Orbach: don't steal home unless you're down 11 runs.

Lonette McKee: my man's the OPPOSITE of Oppenheimer.

Richard Pryor: give the money to the THINKERS of the world.

The Pope: prior?

John Candy: like my MF DOOM-mask gold chain?

Stephen Collins: i want boxing to be non-contact. that's a Maiara Walsh piano...

Evian: buy back the icebergs from Trump!!!

Arabs: we can ONLY farm in the desert...

Luigi Mangione: wait, this is my perp walk...

Jen R: Inverted Jenny? you wish, pal.

me: i do wish for you on top in my bed, i wished for this on a Celtic stone...

Richard Pryor: like my Bill Cosby voice?...

Richard Pryor: i want to die in this Vaporwave Ancient Greece room with HOME "Resonance" as my funeral song...

 

Cell from DBZ, sucking: i'm a big fan of that midnight-matinee '80s flick Night of the Comet. leave the clothes behind on the street like the Secular Rapture.

Mr. Popo: i can't be at the Overlook Ramen-Bowl in the sky by myself, nobody is meant to be alone!!!

Yajirobe: i'd hang out with you but when you eat senzu beans you fart.

Mr. Popo: i get gassy when i'm nervous. 

Android 1: stop drinking pop, Popo. so you can make a gassy lifechoice like becoming Pope Popo.

Korin: and you're allergic to cats.

Mr. Popo: i swear i'll stop sneezing!!! it just takes willpower!!!

Dirg: oh ladies, you have to date me, i'm the only one LEFT on Instagram...

Daniel Day-Lewis: i'm doing one last in-ring WrestleMania before i retire...

Nicky Katt: i know Gene Hackman's wife, not Gene Hackman...

Ms. Pie: cat magic...

Vincent van Gogh: buy art from living artists, dead artists don't need the money.........except me because you still kinda feel bad for me...

Dune: dine on it some more...

Mark Hapka: avocado-toast yoga is not a thing...

me: you're my Kochanski.

Jen R: well i do have a crush on John Belushi...

me: it's funny because April 14 was supposed to be the day of my doom as my benefits ran out. 

Lindy Lenz: instead on that day i show up out of the blue...

me: and MAD Magazine because of dad.

dad: i must admit, MAD's spoof of Family Ties was superb. having Alex P. Keaton a closet liberal who voted for Dukakis to alter the Back to the Future timeline and it's Skippy in the car accident...

book token: the Scholastic Book Fair in London...

female Holly: i sing the Red Dwarf theme song...

me: our house has become a nursing home.

dad: not so, do you know how expensive those things are?...

me: why be two miserable souls lonely and apart?

Lindy Lenz: when we can be together...

Anthony Bourdain: i'm the Kurt Cobain of this generation...

the Monty Python rabbit: Happy Easter!!!

Father Navin: in the '80s, at 10 AM on Easter Sunday, you weren't in church for Easter Mass, you were in Gelson's getting groceries for next week...

Lucio Rossi: Easter in Encino...

Jon Hamm doing an SNL commercial parody: if you take Jardiance.........you could die...

Party Size Triscuits: too many of these and you'll never get to a Family Size Triscuits...

Jackie Fitzgerald: i used to sew my neighbors the loveliest rainbow hippie-patchwork masks. i was single during covid...

Blond Rambo: then i came into Jackie's life and body and taught her how to disregard all that mask nonsense...

Annie Adamson: why is everyone on Instagram dead?...

Suzy Lu: it gives me the boke.

Steejo: what.

Suzy Lu: when Cell sucks his victims out from the inside, the SLURP. 

Steejo: i wish you would have told me that BEFORE i started weightlifting to make my arm look like Cell's tail...

The Pope: i died perfectly on Easter...

The Pope: i was more like a college professor...

The Pope: wait, the last person i saw on Earth was JD Fucking Vance? seriously?

Stanley Tucci: The Pope as a food scholar is me...

The Pope: God has a father's heart.

boy crying in St. Peter's Square: will my atheist dad go to Heaven?

The Pope: anything's possible. did you see Conclave? that ending was WILD...

Kevin Garnett with the Harlem Globetrotters watching The Pope's zucchetto'd head with a spinning basketball on top of it as The Pope is shootin' the shit: ...

me at the isolation hotline my first day on the job: i'm so nervous i'm chewing my teeth. this is my first job. 

the phone rings and it's my first customer, uh, patient, uh, friend.

Olach: hello? you have no idea who i am.

me: i know, it's a big cold world out there.

Olach: no i mean you won't believe who i am. i'm calling from a public payphone outside on the sidewalk.

me: i sense you're hurting. *deep breath* i don't know what to say, except: i'm here for you...