Angry Birds

Ad Exec – up and coming ad exec dressed to the nines, got lost out walking because he had his head down looking at his cell phone

Bag Man – homeless man in alley who meets Ad Exec

Rodrigo – restaurant worker who chimes in occasionally with Ad Exec and Bag Man as he takes out the restaurant’s trash

***             

Bag Man: Spare change?

Ad Exec: What? Where am I? Is this an alley?

Bag Man: Best alley in the city. You got yer scrap food from Carmines, pretty clean syringes, cats to pet, cans for fires…sometimes we make poorsmores.

Ad Exec: What are poorsmores?

Bag Man: Well when you can’t afford marshmallows or graham crackers you gots to melt any half eaten candy bar you can find and put it between two slivers of thrown out pancakes. Mmmm, just as good. Sometimes you feel like a nut. Ha ha.

Ad Exec: I guess I didn’t look where I was going because I was texting.

Bag Man: You sure you weren’t playing angry birds? What’s your high score?

Ad Exec: What no (looking around)…is there a way out of here…

Bag Man: I love that game. But without my cell phone I just play in real life by fighting off the crows. You know what a good game would be? Angry rats. Ha ha fightin’ off rats for thrown-away veal piccata and urinating on them for bonus points. That would be a hit.

[Rodrigo enters, throwing away restaurant trash]

Bag Man: Hey Rodrigo!

Rodrigo: Hey hey bag man. How’s scraps and coins today my man?

Bag Man: A+ on the scraps when I scored some half-moldy wonder bread and a partial can of cold Hormel chili but Mr. Angry Birds here can’t spare a dime because of his app addiction.

Ad Exec: What! I wasn’t playing angry…I’m not addicted to anything…

Rodrigo: What’s your problem mister! You think you’re too good for the bag man?

Ad Exec: What, no! -I…I got lost and…and how dare you accuse me of elitism.

Bag Man: Whoa whoa whoa, no one said a word about botulism! Them’s fightin words in this here alley my man! This is my house!

Ad Exec [frustrated]: yeah well, who’s yer decorator?

Rodrigo: Oh snap bag man! He got you! Angry Birds laid it down!

Bag Man: Oh it’s like that is it Mr. Counting Crows. Well when you’re done texting your mom about the blind date that ended when she beat you in arm wrestling, you can bring that cell phone over here and I can show you how it’s done on angry birds.

Ad Exec: I wasn’t playing angry birds! I was actually sending a very important text about a possible merger I’ll have you know.

Bag Man: the only thing you were merging was rocks to pigs Mr. Blue Jay. Uh huh, if you were any redder you’d be an irate cardinal.

Rodrigo: He’s baaaaack! Nice one bag man. He scared to play you!

Bag Man: Buck buck buck begaaaaalk! Ironic isn’t it, mr. chicken here doesn’t want to play angry birds.

Ad Exec: I’m an ad executive and I drive a Honda crossover. I don’t play angry birds.

Bag Man: Sure you don’t. You probably don’t know anything about King Pig or Boomerang Bird, what with your merger between Kibbles and Bits about to fall through. Buck buck buck begaaaaalk!

Rodrigo: Buck buck buck begaaaaalk!

Ad Exec: I can’t believe this. A homeless man thinks I play Angry Birds.

Bag Man: Oh you play alright, you sneak away from your brunches, you play on the toilet, you feign reading the Wall Street Journal to play, you play on-line waiting for a Frappuccino with soy, you play in your Honda crossover. Oh you play, and when you don’t play, you’re thinking about playing. You just don’t want to play me and not just because my fingers will leave feces on your phone’s screen but because I will destroy you!

Ad Exec: ok, one game!

The Mother of Invention

Scientist: I’ve built a machine that can read minds.

Scientist Assistant:  Oooh ooooh what am I thinking, what am I thinking?

Scientist: I don’t need a machine for that. You’re thinking about lunch.

Scientist Assistant:  Cool! How’d you do that?

Scientist: It’s after breakfast and before dinner time. Now help me with the neuronal-transducer steam engine. I need to plug it in to the electro-centrifuge.

Scientist Assistant:  You mean the blender?

Scientist: Oh just get out of the way. Here, go hook these up to the wire hangers over there.

Scientist Assistant: Should these wires be exposed like this?

Scientist: Who do you think you are working for here? Tesla’s third cousin? I have a degree from MIT. I cut the power to those so go go, hook’ em up.

Scientist Assistant: That’s a welding school.

Scientist: Metallurgy Institute with Tools also taught electronics! You saw the stereo speakers…I hooked up.

Scientist Assistant: It’s just that the wires are warm.

Scientist: They’re supposed to be that way. They heat the induction facsimile trans planter. If it’s not warm it can’t make it through the ear canal. Duh.

Scientist Assistant: I don’t know. Exposed wires connected to coat hangers. I think there’s a risk of shock.

Scientist: Do you have a degree? No, no you don’t. Do you have any idea what my budget here is? Huh? Any idea? An inkling? Look if this works we’re both gonna be on easy street. Now pretty please, with nougat on top, go hook up the wires.

Scientist Assistant: You think we’ll be rich?

Scientist: Not only rich but we’re gonna know what women are thinking! Imagine it!

Scientist Assistant: What if we know they think we’re dorks?

Scientist: Nonsense.

Scientist Assistant: I think that is what they think now.

Scientist: You are almost there, go ahead and attach those…

Scientist Assistant: Why can’t we ask them what they think?

Scientist: I didn’t go to school all those year…to ask questions. Now you’ve got one, just attach the other…

Scientist Assistant: Should you be holding that…

Scientist: Holding wha-

ZZZppppthHHHT!

Scientist Assistant: You ok! Are you ok?

Scientist: Are my eyebrows smoking? It smells like burnt hair.

Scientist Assistant: I think your nose hairs caught on fire. And actually, where your eyebrows were, is smoking, your forehead is smoking.

Scientist: Great, just great. If I never invent this, I’ll never know what women are thinking.

Scientist Assistant: You are married.

Scientist: The mother of invention my good man, the mother of invention.

Captain and Officer – The Feliciano Files

Captain: I’m starving. What’s the latest on the Feliciano case?

Officer: Which one?

Captain: Whaddya mean which one?

Officer: We’ve got two, Jose and Sanford.

Captain: Well felice navidad me with no lube. Two Felicianos. Maybe tacos for lunch. Well give me the status for both.

Officer: Juan’s has good tacos and I know Stan who works there will cut us a deal. Well for Jose, he was caught stealing an acoustic guitar from a blind man but our only witness is a deaf mute so we’re having a bit of a communication snafu. The witness writes but it is all in hoch deutsch so we’re trying to find a German speaker which isn’t so easy and the free on-line translator stuff indicates that she saw a well-maned lion fingerpick either a booger or a boogie woogie tune on a martin d-28 just before jogging in place or juggling plates. The Sanford case is a little more cut and dry. Guy runs a waste disposal site with his son and they reprocessed some of the rubber products into a synthesized carbon capturing photosynthetic diffusion chip that allows car tires to catch light from the sun and heat from the road to recycle through the carburetor and allow the car to get around 50mpg. The proprietor Sanford was booked on a citizen’s arrest for lewd conduct with an underage rubber tree.

Captain: What kind of deal on the tacos?

Officer: Probably 20%.

Captain: Good salsa?

Officer: It’s ok.

Captain: Hmm. What’s the point if the salsa is sub-par?

Officer: Skirt steak for the fajitas.

Captain: Grilled?

Officer: MmHmm.

Captain: Ok, bring in Sanford’s son and grill him to see what he knows and threaten the old man that he could get placed on the Ficus offender list and a scour the universities for a German professor and also scour the pawn shops for a martin d-28 with boogers on the back of the headstock and most importantly, try to get your boy at Juan’s to get us half-off.

Ruminations

I read ‘Infinite Jest’ -the magnum opus of David Foster Wallace. This book was fascinating on many levels. I read the book knowing that Wallace suffered from depression and committed suicide but this did not deter appreciation in any way for his incredible descriptions of drug use, addiction, and recovery. The book was very funny at times and it had to be given that most of the time the subject matter was abuse and addiction with sides of tennis, Canadian conspiracy hit men in wheelchairs, and avant garde film. You may know that the book is filled (about 15% of the total book) with endnotes with some being insightful and some confusing, and some where Wallace indicates “no idea.” Truly a wonderful mind he had. The book does not offer closure and it doesn’t matter. The ride is enough in and of itself and the ride never really ends. I find myself thinking about the book weeks after and figure that most will. I also did this with his ‘Broom Of The System’ –where there was no closure but the ride more than made up for the open end. Infinite Jest does however tease that it will come together. The end is in sight for the beforehand parallel lines but they never converge leaving you wanting more. The truly sad part is not that there will be no closure but that there will be no more.

I also saw ‘The Perks Of Being A Wallflower’ and think this was a great movie. Connection: my wife went to the same high school as the author Stephen Chbosky and parts of the movie were filmed in the neighborhood where she grew up. You know how that is when you have some small connection to someone famous and you take some silly little pride in what they’ve done – like someday you’ll meet them and talk about your connection and hit it off. It is hard for me to believe that Chbosky was a first time director for this film. The directing is just so good that it is hard to believe this was his first time. Where some directors mishandle things like scenes of actors being stoned or tripping on acid, Chbosky nails these with both sensitivity and humor. Maybe some of this is because the plot is close to my own high school years but the box office receipts sort of confirm his directorial ability. The performances are an important part of the success of the film. Where other teen movie performances lack gravitas, these performances (coupled with complementary editing) deliver if you are patient. The film culminates around topics of mental illness, implied sexual abuse, and therapy, ergo the necessary need for gravitas, and the film finishes in a big way without wrapping things up in a bow that suggests there is not work to be done but we believe in Charlie in a not too saccharine way – in a realistic way, warts and all. Conclusion: the ‘Breakfast Club’ of the oughts.