Playing the Victim

We’re looking for anyone between the ages of 1 day old (union rules, sorry) and 100 years old (it’s an insurance thing) to be a part of a grand television project, a mini-series of sorts.  

So who are we looking for? That depends…

Have you ever ordered something at a folksy delicatessen only to find out the cutters behind the counter held the mayo when you specifically asked for it? If you walked away and “let it go” then this role is not for you. We want someone who confronted the bread boy and demanded an explanation for this perceived, highly imprecise slight. Someone who relished the moment, performing in front of horrified lunchers and launched into a diatribe on the importance of condiments.  

Taking things personally takes practice and years of paranoia. Do you ever feel like everyone is looking at you when out in public? Good. Because they are. They’re thinking, “what a sensitive SOB.” They don’t have to say anything to offend you, do they? Their existence is what takes you off your kilter and out of your kilt. 

We like sensitivity. We don’t want someone who walks across hot coals during a corporate retreat pain-free. But if your feet are getting prickly simply reading about just such a briquette walk, then this might be for you.

Because we’re not looking for actors or actresses and definitely no thespians. We’re looking for real people with real problems. 

Please include a headshot and a lengthy description of past lives. References are superfluous, unless they’re famous.

Must be available to work from tonight until the foreseeable future. This could take a while.   

 

All decisions will be final, capricious, and without merit.

The Autumn Windbag

 

The Autumn Windbag is a moron,

Blustering in from TV,

Constantly wrong, he drones along,

Yammering incoherently.

His collar is vermin-eaten,

He wears a bag of trash,

With a tinfoil hat above his head,

Spewing some balderdash.

He groans as he opines dumbly,

A pundit’s brain of mold.

And the producers shake and quiver and fake,

As he embodies the perfect scold.

The Autumn Windbag is a nitwit,

Pontificating just for fun.

He’ll embarrass himself and act like a bum,

And cry when he’s cancelled and done. 

*With apologies to the late Steve Sabol and the great John Facenda. 

Horse Dean Wormer

Standing at attention in a barn, on his hind legs mind you, was Horse Dean Wormer, a noted thoroughbred and well-respected college dean. There, surrounded by hay and manure, he was addressing one of his most trusted students, an unctuous billy goat named Bill, neighing and bristling at every turn. 

“What's the worst group on campus?”

“That would be hard to say, sir. They are each creative and conspiratorial in their own special ways,” said the goat. 

“Enough. I’ve read the reports, followed the disciplinary history very closely. Remember, horses have binocular vision, so there’s very little I can’t see. Really, it’s just those flies that are always landing between my eyeballs. But let me ask you, who did shots of bleach during Alumni Laundry Day? Who stole my diamond-studded horseshoes during the winter dance? And who filled the teacher’s lounge trough with rolled oats when everyone knows I, and every professor at this darn school, prefer the steel cut precision of the great John McCann? Every Halloween the trees are filled with N95 masks and every spring the stables explode.”

“You’re talking about Delta, sir. They’re a substantial variant from the rest of us.”

“I know that, dummy. This year it’s going to be different. I want them off campus. The standard six feet isn’t going to cut it.”

“What do you intend to do? They are already scheduled for vaccination.”

“Then as of this moment they are on Double Secret Vaccination.”  

“Double Secret Vaccination?”

“There’s a little-known portion of the college constitution that clothes me in immense emergency power to preserve order during times of crisis. Kind of like now. We can’t have another laundry day fiasco, now can we? Plus, I need the medicine they’re taking. I’m a horse with an upset stomach and what are they? 

“It depends who we’re talking about, sir. But I believe most of them are pigs. Porcine fellows with an above average sense of smell. 

“Then I hope they know where to find truffles, because their days here are numbered. Question: do we have any clean syringes left over from The Orientation Day Derby?”

Horse Dean Wormer now stands in his office in front of the members of Delta, a campus cult famous for their aversion to bathing and the scientific method.

“You all make me sick,” said Horse Dean Wormer.

“Why’s that, sir?”

“Because I have worms and I’m missing my medication. Do you know what someone with worms is supposed to do?

“Take them apple picking?”

“Go fishing?”

The group starts chuckling and high fiving. 

“You think this is a joke, don’t you? Well, your whole life has been a joke.”

“The good stuff better be on my desk by noon tomorrow or else."

“Or else what?”

“Or else I think I have a sudden hankering for BLTs.”

War on Rugs

Here we are spending time waxing and washing our floorboards, looking for some of that nice reflective grain to mug for the varnish. Enough sheen to reflect and recharge. We sand down the edges, touch the molding, sob over subtle scratches, and engage in highly pedantic exchanges surrounding the quality of good wood. Yet when it’s all said and done, we carpet the place, covering our exhaustive work in thick Persians and creepy bearskins (wishing the head possessed similar prophesizing abilities as that fella from Delphi or a shiny new magic 8 ball, learning the future simply by shaking it). That and long, winding runners.

Why is that? Why must we willingly cover up reality at every chance? What’s the purpose of wood when we pretend it isn’t there? The very real risk of a splinter or stubbed toe teaches us humility or makes us consider adopting better footwear. Stains on wood add to it, giving them character. Stains on carpet remind you of spilled sour cream or worse, losing their luster and darkening your dreams of floorplan independence.

There are musicians, some of whom I won’t name, others of which I can’t name, who cover the stage with thickly threaded Orientals beneath their amps and snaking cords. Any aesthetic sin is accepted in the name of acoustics, as they all pray at an audiophilic altar nightly (twice on weekends if there’s a late show). 

I want carpeting ripped up in convention centers and chain hotels. I want it out of international airports and transit hubs. I want to see the staples stacked up in the garbage. I want to hear steps when someone is coming up from behind, not the silent treatment of a shoe-on-rug pedestrian. Carpeting these public places is akin to Major League Baseball’s love of artificial grass – another sickening form of athletic carpeting. 

It’s okay to be a doormat as long as you don’t own one. Just ask any tech bro you come across. They’re always there to welcome you inside if you promise to take your shoes off first.

Greener Berets

I do a lot for the environment. Some you can see, most you can’t. Because of that, I am going to show everything to you. Otherwise, how am I supposed to get the credit? I could just tell you all the things I do. Like how I always turn my many air conditioning units to exactly 68 degrees Fahrenheit, instead of a much cooler, far more inefficient 64. It’s the little things that count. I could also tell you about how I refill plastic water bottles with rainwater. I still drive a ton, but I make sure to park farther down my long, winding driveway so the walk back is rather arduous. There are times I use my second car to drive up, but that's extremely rare. I clean up dog excrement with my reusable public radio tote bag. And I don’t even have a dog. We all just have to do our part.

I started taking private jets one way instead purchasing the far more economical roundtrip ticket. It’s always awkward when I wave goodbye and wish my skymates a friendly farewell in Omaha or wherever we’re refueling this time. There’s a lot more I could tell you. How instead of using the fridge I leave food out on the counter now. I try my best to eat it before it goes bad or the neighborhood critters get to it. It’s a a little game I play with them, strengthening the interspecies bond among the locals. Or something.  

But I don’t want to tell you everything I do. How I wash my clothes once every six months on a piece of jutting Manhattan schist located in a public park several miles away with the help of some teamster buddies and a few hundred galloons of collected rainwater. I don’t just collect the stuff in tiny bottles. That you might have already guessed.

The thing is, I want people to know this about me without having to tell them. Without having to stop them on their merry way and learn from the best (me). I have a solution. I started wearing a green beret to signal my good works. I know, I know, people might think I’m French. Which is fine, most of the time, especially when ordering snails. But green berets are rare. Black, sure. Red, on occasion. But green – that’s mine and mine alone. Reach out if you want one, seeing as I had to buy them in bulk to get a better deal. 

I could go on, but the beret should say it all. C’est magnifique. 

The Missing Link

How did we get here anyway? More importantly, how did you get here? There’s no rhyme, no reason to it. On your screen is a scrolling set of unfamiliar images. Suddenly, and without warning, you were staring at a webpage that you can’t quite recall. It’s as if you woke up and there it was, looking back at you. Which is a serious risk, since you never bothered to cover the camera on the top of your computer. They could be watching you, whoever they are.

The morning started normally enough. You grabbed a bucket of coffee from your bathtub and a moist hand towelette (not to be used together, caffeine is not a natural exfoliant as far as I can tell) and immediately found your nearest laptop. On it, you search for anything that piques your interest – miracle cures, fun-loving tales of woe, and embarrassing stories concerning celebrities you’ve never heard of. While it may seem random, what you do, and how you do it is extremely calculated. 

You start on premier news sites (the Yahoos, the Yoohoos, wherever there is brightest font written by the dimmest bulbs) and start the scrolling process. There are browser accidents. It’s called the navigation bar for a reason. But that still doesn’t explain where you are. Reading the transcript for some obscure C-Span call-in show in the mid 90s. I know what you’re thinking, aren’t they all obscure? To a point, perhaps, though this one is worse.

You’re looking for logic where there is none. This page must have a common ancestor with your homepage. But you can’t account for the strange little spongey thing situated between your ears. You’re not in control, you’re only the vehicle. The brain is not you any more than air traffic control is a 747 taxiing before takeoff. 

And if you clear your history what chance do you have to find the missing link? 

Shuck and Awe

To throngs of summer loving automatons, corn is nourishment and nothing more. It’s something to be picked out of one’s teeth using rusty metal skewers, charred and greasy from hours of silent marination. There, atop picnic tables with more than a few visible splinters, we rest our elbows for safekeeping, hoping that with each new bite, our skin doesn’t crack under the pressure. 

Then think of all the bald people struggling with their combovers, picking clumps of hair out of the shower drain, tearing up at ancient photos of their once proud manes. Because what many a college professor and journalist lack on their dome can be found in a large supply on the average cob of corn. There, hair is an afterthought, something to be picked away and thrown on the dirt. 

So here am I, racing through the cornfields in a terrifying maze of maize, calling on all of us to stop ditching these miracle fibers. Have you always wondered what being blonde was like? Did you want a mustache or beard but stopped because of social pressure? Has mesh been a guilty pleasure but you worried about its consistency? Does your bald spot affect air traffic controllers during sunny days, blinding pilots and sending the FAA into a frenzied tizzy? Then it’s time to wrap yourself in corn hair or whatever it’s called. Give yourself a blonde ponytail. Get that mustache you always wanted and fill in the blanks atop your grape. 

It’s almost like wearing a new perfume, too. People will ask, “what’s that smell? It’s interesting. Smells like summer.” You’ll laugh and rub a little butter on your soul patch (you have a soul patch now) as a clever way of giving them the answer. Instead of resigning yourself to salt and pepper hair, why not use salt and pepper in your hair? 

Look, this is certainly nothing to sneeze at. Though the pepper makes that a rather difficult undertaking.