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...

WOOLGATHER: BASEBALL IN THE SNOW

 

me: so you're gonna enter more of my dreams in future?

dad: i don't like how you treat mom.

me: my life is on hold.

dad: that's what happens sometimes in life. sudden unforeseen change of plans. control is a fantasy. you realize you will never have control of your life, right?

me: i never asked for caregiver to be my unexpected permanent job.

dad: this is what it means to be a son. you gotta stop letting mom get under your skin for EVERY LITTLE THING she does. no more insulting her softly under your breath. stop sarcastically snipping and swearing at her softly under your breath. stop with the snipe and sear. you gotta have the EXTRAORDINARY PATIENCE of fucking Job, that's your job.

Axl Rose: ...

me: i hate it when mom acts like she doesn't know what she's doing, saying, thinking, or where she is. 

dad: she's not acting, she's old.

me: i can't do the suitcase-in-the-car thing one more time...

dad: i'll buy you a new set of luggage each week, 7 suitcases a day...

dad: you can't use the '80s thing as an excuse to be mean. mom may not be an intellectual but she taught you what love is.

me: how do i approach nostalgia in future?

dad: in the future, you're not British. and you're certainly not Suzy Lu. you mean in the past...

me: the Jules Smith thing has been family'd up like a Sandman sew.

dad: nostalgia without love is unpurple.

Lindy Lenz: Jen? we're friends.

Jen R: Baltimore bezzers.

Lindy: do you think we'll reach the level of Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in Out of Africa? 

Jen: we need a WWI biplane for that. one WITHOUT a naked-woman decal on the side.

Lindy: that midair hand-hold was the most romantic scene in cinematic history.

Jen: that or Robert Redford washing Meryl Streep's hair by the river...

Tony Kornheiser: i'm what your dad would have been if he had lived.

dad: but with hair.

Erin Brockovich: things will only change once i become the CEO of PG&E...

me: and the aquarium.

dad: i mean we only went to the aquarium like 6 times. ONCE to Marineland...

Yogi Bear: ...

Michigan State: we're joining the United Nations against Trump.

me: and the Rigaudon.

dad: nah that was Mrs. Talbot. why did you hate me for making you learn that? it's a lively French folk dance, everybody's supposed to be happy.

Jacques Pepin: a smelly dance like French cheese.

me: it was the song they played sending prisoners to the gallows. ruined drums for me forever until Trent Reznor came along.

Mrs. Talbot: plus the sheet-music notation looks like a vagina...

"The Safety Dance" plays in the background.

dad: remember? 

me: what.

dad: remember what i taught you? get in a relationship if only for safety...

Safeway by the wood vat wine-barrel bath: if your lunch is at 9 AM, you work for Safeway...

Maiara Walsh: i need my vanity to be a square bottle of Jack Daniel's. and the tub in my bathroom to be a wood vat...

Townies: if Friends was Dawson's Creek...

Molly Ringwald at The Breakfast Club 40th Anniversary: it's a shame Townies didn't last, that Townies Christmas episode would have been something special...

sunshine sauce: that eggs Benedict you have the morning after fucking your soulmate the night before.

David Bowie on Mars: i checked. i flew around the galaxy. there are a couple of distant planets with trees, that's about it...

Goku, smiling and waving: hey David, have you checked here?...

Rory McIlroy: i'm using this rangefinder to find the nearest pub...

the portal: one team will have 0 players after this. Happy Easter.

Stargate SG-1: ...

Annie Adamson: i wanted to name Atticus after my favorite prog-rock band: Uriah Heep.........although Heep would have been unique...

Charles Dickens: cool and different. prog-rock to me was Liszt. why were '90s sitcoms and dramas obsessed with wedding planning?

Jaren: i wanted to name our son Yes.

Annie: at least name him a character from Venture Bros..

Michael Weiss: remember, people on Instagram are unstable...

Jaclyn Dunn: good Friday, everyone.........Good Friday, everyone...

Everton fan: in my defence, i'm 62 years old and mummy NEVER bought me Chicken McNuggets in my whole slagging life...

dad: you have to look on nostalgia as if it were baseball in the snow...

me: remember?

dad: what.

me: that rickety wood Little League dugout you took me to to learn baseball. the four basepaths never lined with fresh chalk. we'd field balls early Sunday morns, me with my tiny leather glove, you rolling a softball on the wet grass of the Left field.

dad: that outfield always had 11 green sprinklers nipping at my grey bulbous socked feet. that Pirates manager with the black beard looked scary but he saved a suicide so he must have been very velvety with his words.

Peewit emerges from the snowfield.

Peewit: speaking of beards.........now THIS was the '80s!!!

Peewit sports a beautiful long flowing blond beard and an umpire's pouch.

Peewit: see when you have a monk beard you can only be one thing in the outside world: a baseball umpire. but i was not granted even THAT allowance. the Pope held i looked menacing with a beard at the Diet Down Under. so i was reduced to being Teddy Ruxpin's father...

dad: the most GHASTLY injury you can sustain as a human is a scraped knee.

Jen R: right? and then you have to spray it with Binaca and it hurts like the motherfucking dickens.

me: i envision your car in my empty Carmel driveway. that's my Life Manifest.

Lindy Lenz: my car is a 1981 Datsun, the first anime car...

dad: remember, life is ever-changing...

 

WOOLGATHER: THE ARCHITECT OF THE '80s

 

me: i had a thought.

dad: and?

me: YOU were the '80s. the '80s were "magic" to me because of YOU. you made it all happen. made the gears of golden grace turn with your nostalgic grease. by being alive and my father. starting with reading me Tolkien as a bedtime story when i was 5. that got me interested in literature and learning, thereby i enrolled in school.

dad: you enrolled in kindergarten by yourself?

me: and all the stuff that came with having STRUCTURE in my young life. when you have a schedule, when you have weekdays, that makes way for the stuff after 3 PM. hence all that great '80s TV. and on the weekends and days off: Chuck E. Cheese, AYSO soccer, Q*Bert Smurf, Rainbow Brite, Lite Brite, Reagan, the Handel cover, the silver glitter glove, Garbage Pail Kids, a potato man that teaches you how to be a surgeon, hard-to-pronounce candy, midnight libraries with books on the ceiling, and the need for some reason to watch every single episode of Small Wonder. 

dad: i don't know anything about you now.

me: this path allowed the means by which to have a car so we could go places going to places like church and the arcade.

dad: i just wish you had finished your schooling i started you on. oh wait i know, you like those Bourbon biscuits, right? because they have BOURBON in those block letters you like...

electric stand heater: i need to rest, not recharge. humans could learn from me.

Time Bandits.

Kevin: when you're being bullied by dwarfs, you're having a bad day.

dwarfs: all dwarfs can swim...

Katherine Helmond: Tony Danza has clearly let himself go here. why is the inside of this pirate ship a wrestling ring?...

ogre: it's the '80s, environmentalism is still cool. wife, where the wild things are?

Katherine Helmond: certainly not in the bedroom, good fellow, that's for sure. 

ogre: got any Doan's?

dwarfs: it's the giant head from the Pink Floyd "High Hopes" music video!!!

Kevin: drugs!!!

dwarfs: you're too young to know about drugs!!!

Kevin: i said droogs...

giant: when i sleep, i dream. my dreams are so big that Geraldine Ferraro wins the U.S. Presidency...

Kevin: damn, mom's hot as a Vegas showgirl. and dad looks like the 90210 dad.

R2-D2: chin up, Kevin, you miss Sean Connery but Sean Connery is an arsehole.

Evil: i shall make the wind power Kate Bush's zeppelin!!!

Evil: sorry but i have to turn you into a dog,

Benson: the Fraggle Rock dog, please.

Evil: i am the Ultimate Pincushion!!!

Supreme Being: now THIS is how God should be portrayed, as a stuffy Englishman quick to irritation.

Sunday joint: Snoop Dogg speaking in a British accent.

Sean Connery to Kevin: you're an orphan now, kid *wink*

Kevin: THAT'S the ending?!!! British firemen look weird.

Jesus: the most important people on a film set: carpenters.

George Harrison: i was really getting all my stuff done in the early '80s...

Terry Gilliam: don't worry, luv, i won't make you scream till your lungs give out 71 times.

Shelley Duvall: bless you. can you be my father?...

Lindy Lenz: Baltimore to San Francisco isn't far to me, we can be together, distance is no match for love.

me: unlike SOME people i know.

Jen R: hey, Baltimore to L.A. is FAR, dude. it wasn't my fault, my password went kaput...

me: the fantasy of hope.

Lindy Lenz: keeps you buoyed one more day.

me: the fantasy of climbing out of that hole and flying to the mountaintop.

Lindy: like that Alice In Chains song. you're a homeless man who needs a woman...

Melissa Maker: why'd you DM me your phone number? that was a power move, bud, you knew i'd never DM you back my number...

me: it's my cell number. get it? my monk-cell number...

Ear Horn: as a witch i know watches. those Casio calculator watches. no evil digital demons are getting by on my watch...

Florida Evans smashing the glass lace punchbowl: Damn Damn Damn.

JJ: don't do that, breaking glass is bad luck.

Florida: your father died BEFORE, THAT was the bad luck, my idiot son.

JJ: Dyn-O-Mite to death.

incontinence medicine: sleeping pills...

Sarah from YOLO: Crystal Fantasy: see i have a NORMAL body. it's a completely NORMAL body.

Rachel: i'm gonna eat you, Sarah, ONLY the second meaning...

competency porn: when the cumshot curves at a perfect 45-degree angle...

Suzy Lu: for my wedding feast i used the Final Fantasy Cookbook, not that Food Wars shite.

Steejo: is it normal to eat nothing on your wedding day?

Suzy Lu: that Capshule Corp time machine has been here for donkeys.

Dragon Ball Z Cell-season writers: oh no, we ain't doing time-travel shit, writing time-travel stuff is too complicated, we'll lose the audience, way too confusing, the audience wants karate chops, nuke balls, and Bulma's panties. this ain't no Doctor Who...

Utada Hikaru: why does everyone have to have their OWN pic of the sakura on Instagram?...

Dirg: why are women constantly complaining on Instagram posting all their my-life-is-boring memes instead of DMing me for excitement?...

Hessian Hellcat Annie Adamson: it is COLD how everyone on Instagram has just forgotten that i ever existed...

cats: we have the best paw-swipe.

gum: you won't miss me...

Suzy Lu: i went to uni to learn to become a YouTube reactor...

Kochanski: i bring the melancholy to Red Dwarf...

Jen R: if it's meant to be you have to WAIT.

Capp: ...

Harriet Dart: she smells real bad.

Lois Boisson: i don't smell bad, i smell French. 

Dove: sorry, ladies, but Dove soap is now as expensive as LUSH...

dad: i wish you'd act more like Honeyetta on Instagram.

me: you know her?

dad: she does Instagram the right way. she uses it to find dates for herself. like her Instagram Stories are all of her videoing herself doing seductive Iranian bellydances before the Revolution and atting them to a professor of Iranian history before the Revolution in Canada to see if he likes her.

WOOLGATHER: DAD DREAM/WRANGLING A WRAITH

 

me: i'm searching for my father.

but there's no answer. i'm locked inside a strange room. luckily my gurubhai cracks the uncertainty.

gurubhai: i'm not here to deliver you GrubHub. 

me: forget the Chipotle, DoorDash, just deliver me to the hospital...

gurubhai: well you did say you always wanted a private library. kinda lonely, huh?

me: books aren't people. am i locked in here?

gurubhai: you're locked inside yourself.

me: but where's my dad? i haven't sensed his presence in a long time.

gurubhai: when you get to Heaven you have things to do. he went on a spiritual quest for a few months to better himself. 

me: what's the point of a spiritual quest in Heaven? 

gurubhai: NEVER stop learning...

dad: hey.

me: omg i missed you terribly!!! where the fuck have you been?

dad: out. it was nothing, my password just went kaput.

me: thanks for bringing Lindy Lenz back to me after nine years.

dad: like two fledglings...

me: you gotta HELP me!!! i need HELP!!!

Beatles: ...

dad: help hurts.

me: you gotta be my guide through life 24/7.

dad: nah, i'm busy, you gotta figure it out for yourself. 

me: i'm too old to be going on quests just to find people anymore.

dad: but that's what life is. you're older than i was when i died.

me: what is this place?

dad: the place i was most comfortable. or perhaps the place YOU'RE most comfortable.

Jen R: did you see me in your dream last night?

me: i'm only starting to remember that now, that is not fair.

Jen R: what's Baltimore time?...

Pendrith: i'm the golfer in Arthur's Roundtable...

Time Bandits.

ginger kid: i'm not a future psychopath, i just like history...

Patrick Stewart: one of the dwarfs is me...

boy: mummy, dwarfs told me about sex.

dwarfs: it's a Giant Jim Carrey Head!!!

Jules Smith: there are always GEESE in every British film...

Pirates of the Caribbean dark ride: we're dark, but at least we don't have a firing squad.

Napoleon: excusez-moi, i'm trying to save French history here, the French history of this puppet show so it can appear on French In Action...

Shelley Duvall orgiastically about to kiss: you came for me.

me: i sure did. and it's a mess in here now.

Jen R: me too. and i didn't need no fruit.

John Cleese: nice horde. so that Mona Lisa is worthless, it was painted yesterday...

Horseflesh would have been played by Danny DeVito...

Evil: i have an understanding of Casio calculator watches and Betamax cassette tapes which are weird halfs.

Sean Connery: i am Zardoz. i just killed this man wearing a costume Minotaur head.

Kevin: this is cool!!! i'll use it to scour my dishes!!!

Sean Connery: that's my Roman helmet. and men never do dishes.

Michael Palin: how do you women play tennis in those long skirts? don't you trip on the court?

Musetti: if you don't want to root for Djokovic...

CNN: we're cool, we let our reporters have tattoos...

Suzy Lu: tirteen is not an unlucky number nor a filthy movie...

Andrew Dismukes: put up your dukes.

Dirg: how many separate comments can i type on one post of a woman's Instagram before it becomes creepy?

Mardith: 3...

Erling Haaland: soccer is the wrong sport for me, i should have been an '80s WWF wrestler. if i have to play soccer, i should be the goalkeeper...

Jon Hamm: herpes, not heroes...

Dirg: i solved women. go to her Instagram, wait till there's a pic of her and her friends at a table, then ask to join her brunch circle... 

Full Moon shining brightly this morning... 

Elizabeth Thacker: why should i give up my house? get outta here, sonny, unless you like me chasing you with my Thacker weedwacker.

Jim Nantz: ma'am, please...

Elizabeth Thacker: my front lawn is LITERALLY the green of the 11th Hole of The Masters!!!

Diego Luna: do you know why Andor is so good? it has nothing to do with Star Wars, it is Y Tu Mama Tambien 2 in which the cancer lady is healed by Yoda and becomes Female Palpatine...

Rory McIlroy: it's a Holywood ending...

Shake N Vac: NOT Shake N Bake...

spoiler: don't soil with spoil...

explorer fedora: not just for Indiana Jones...

Harrison Ford: Diego from Dora is my son with Bonnie from Bonnie and Clyde...

dad: YOU need to be donning that explorer fedora and adventuring more.

me: can't i just wear the monk hair and go choiring?

Tony Hawk: i've had a charmed life. it's like that song "Semi-Charmed Life," which is the type of song i'd write if i was in a band.

Kurt Cobain: yeah you're more Third Eye Blind-speed.

Jesus: why is Tax Day on Holy Week? The Cleansing of the Temple, remember?!!! duh. man people are dumb.

Joan Mitchell: i'm Sylvia Plath as a painter...

the library is the library now but the roof is made of mist. the smell of clouds permeates the space.

dad: there is no smell of money here. cloudbank. 

me: it's just, i never got the memo. i look around at the world, the rest of the world, everyone got the memo on how to live life. yes everybody is on their phones but everybody has their second family.

dad: that's not the world's fault. instead of watching another episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you should have been out on dates in high school!!!

The Smiths song "The Bond" lilts in the background.

me: did you happen again? or was it all a cruel dream?

Lindy Lenz: i finally have a roof over my head...

me: i'll memorize your password.

Lindy: Islands restaurant, Del Monte Center, Monterey. Monterey, not monetary. i remember what you said. the lawn. by the duck pond, right?

me: i'm hoping it eventually is a fuck pond.

Lindy: with that tense atmosphere of underwater noir. where the Thousand Island dressing is always fresh and ocean breezy. Islands is an eternal reservation...