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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
(First today, an update for any interested parties on the pooch. Our Frankenpup is home this weekend, with various bits of metal shoved down her jugulars into her heart, apparently. Because who wouldn’t want that?
But she’s resting comfortably and — hopefully — slowly recovering back to resume being the sweet little persnickety pain-in-the-ass we know and love and often want to beat with a large stick.
Many thanks to the well-wishers and pooch fans out there. Also to anyone who offered to send a large stick. For later, of course. I’ll have more news — hopefully good — later in the week.)
Meanwhile, sketch writing class over at ImprovBoston rolls on.
This week was a ‘free skate’, where we could choose pretty much any topic we wanted.
Oh, we did a couple of brainstorming exercises in class, and were encouraged to use the results of those, if we liked.
But one of those exercises was ‘Make up fake action movie taglines.” And how the hell I’m supposed to write a four-minute vignette covering:
‘Two cops. Four eyes. EIGHT WAYS TO DIE.‘
I have no idea. So I punted. It’s what I do.
Anyway, I had this idea kicking around for a few weeks, so I plopped it down and called it homework. Maybe if I’d thought of a tagline fitting this skit up front, I could have done things the right way, for once. But no. I went off on a tangent.
I think that mutt might finally be rubbing off on me. Woof.
MAIL CALL
[Drill Sergeant NAILS stands, facing offstage. Privates WILLIAMS, BATES, JOHNSON and COOPER march in to face him, following his cadence.]
NAILS: Lef! Ruh! Yo’ lef, ruh, lef! Comp’nay, HUH!!
[The recruits stop marching and stand at attention.]
NAILS: Awright, maggots, it’s mail call! Seein’ as how our beloved Uncle Sam owns your butts and your correspondence, I have been tasked with the duty of reading your mail and relaying the salient points to you. Comp’nay, ready… HARCH!
[The recruits resume marching, now in place. Nails pulls out an envelope and letter, and scans the envelope.]
NAILS: Maggot Williams!
WILLIAMS: Yes, Sarge!
[Nails reads the letter intermittently during the exchange.]
NAILS: Letter signed ‘Kimmy’. That your girl, Private?
WILLIAMS: Yes sir, Sarge, sir!
NAILS: All right, then.
(chanting)
I don’t know, but it’s been said!
RECRUITS: I don’t know, but it’s been said!
NAILS: Kimmy’s tired of the empty bed!
[Williams cuts off in the middle of the chant, looking confused and distraught.]
RECRUITS: Kimmy’s tired of the empty bed!
NAILS: Since you’re not there to have the sex!
RECRUITS: Since you’re not there to have the sex!
NAILS: She’s having it now with your brother Tex!
RECRUITS: She’s having it now with your brother Tex!
NAILS: It’s a ‘Dear John’!
RECRUITS: Dear John!
NAILS: She gone?
RECRUITS: Real gone!
NAILS: How gone?
RECRUITS: Way gone!
NAILS: What now?
RECRUITS: Move on!
[Nails pulls out another envelope and reads.]
NAILS: Give my regards to your brother, Williams. Family’s important. Next letter. Maggot Bates!
BATES: Yes sir, Sergeant Nails, sir!
NAILS: Let’s dance.
(chanting)
This is mah rifle, this is mah gun!
RECRUITS: This is mah rifle, this is mah gun!
NAILS: Publisher’s Clearing House says you won!
[Bates stops in the middle of the chant and gapes, excited.]
RECRUITS: Publisher’s Clearing House says you won!
NAILS: They’ll send you a check real soon!
[Bates is ecstatic, jumping for joy.]
RECRUITS: They’ll send you a check real soon!
NAILS: And I’ll take it for the platoon!
[Bates is now beaten and defeated.]
RECRUITS: And he’ll take it for the platoon!
NAILS: That’s my cash!
RECRUITS: His cash!
NAILS: Your cash!
RECRUITS: Our cash!
NAILS: Sam’s cash!
RECRUITS: Sam’s cash!
NAILS: Corps cash!
RECRUITS: Corps cash!
[Nails pulls out another letter.]
NAILS: On behalf of the You-nited States Armed Forces, Maggot Bates, we thank you for your generous and timely donation. Maggot Johnson!
JOHNSON: Here, Sergeant!
[Johnson looks nervous already.]
NAILS: Letter from home. Listen up!
(chanting)
I don’t know, but I hear tell!
RECRUITS: I don’t know, but I hear tell!
NAILS: Your momma, she don’t feel too well!
RECRUITS: Your momma, she don’t feel too well!
NAILS: Got pneumonia and the doctors tried!
RECRUITS: Got pneumonia and the doctors tried!
[Nails turns the letter over and reads.]
NAILS: To save her… uh, but she up and died!
[Johnson slumps, head in his hands.]
RECRUITS:
(without skipping a beat)
To save her, but she up and died!
“PAT, two, tree, fuh, PAT, two, tree, fuh, look sad.”
NAILS: That’s a real shame!
RECRUITS: Big shame!
NAILS: Too bad!
RECRUITS: Real bad!
NAILS: So sad!
RECRUITS: Way sad!
NAILS: And comp’nay… condolences on my mark… HYEAH!!
[The other recruits surround Johnson, and pat him on the back to Nails’ cadence.]
NAILS: PAT, two, tree, fuh, PAT, two, tree, fuh, look sad. All right, back in formation. Maggot Cooper!
COOPER:
(practically sweating bullets)
Y-yes, Sarge?
NAILS: Maggot Cooper, you have no correspondence. This is because you are an unloved lonely maggot, and not yet a useful killing machine. Do you understand, Private Cooper?
COOPER: Sir, yes, sir!
[Cooper clasps his hands to the sky and mouths a grateful ‘thank you!’]
NAILS: Awright, pukes, enough play time. You maggots are overdue for a twenty-mile march and a synchronized swimming lesson. Comp’nay, HUH!!
(chanting)
They tell me there’s no rhyme for orange!
RECRUITS: They tell me there’s no rhyme for orange!
[The recruits and Nails march offstage.]
Permalink | No CommentsI’ve been toyed around and screwed with by all sorts of people. Family, friends, bosses, coworkers, spouse, pet, strangers, the IRS — you name it. But never by the local Adult Education people.
Okay, that’s totally not true. The Adult Ed. people have royally screwed me over, twice already. First, they canceled the class that I wanted to take this summer, which my friend Jenn was scheduled to teach. Then, when they’d only give me ‘class credit’ rather than a refund, they scheduled a bunch of clearly fake ridiculous classes to keep me from getting my money’s worth in the fall.
Now their winter class schedule has come out — my very last chance to use that credit for good, rather than lining the pockets of some smarmy part-time adult-ed administrative hack. Who’d probably use it to detail their Passat wagon, or some ridiculous shit like that. So I was totally motivated to find a viable class in this semester’s program.
“I’d have an easier time finding a vegan at a Vietnamese rodeo.”
I’d have an easier time finding a vegan at a Vietnamese rodeo.
(No, I don’t know how that fits, either. But I bet there are no damned vegans in attendance. Work with me here, already, would you?)
I looked through the schedule, and I’ve determined that the Adult Ed. people are screwing with me. Just blatantly, now — that’s the only possible explanation. They’ve probably never had anyone shoehorned into taking ‘class credit’ before, and they’re milking me for everything I’m worth. Or at least everything I paid for that one class I wanted to take. Once. At a time that now seems so, so very long ago.
Meanwhile, their ‘catalog of classes’ is a farce. An intentional laugh. It has to be. Oh, sure — there aren’t quite as many over-the-top goodies as last time. There’s no ‘All About Water‘ or ‘Yoga Dance‘ in this set of offerings. ‘Learning to Be a Hospital Clown‘ is absent; ditto, ‘The Language of Paint‘.
(Who will now speak for the silenced watercolor martyrs? Has oil no longer a voice? It’s a tragedy in acrylic!)
Still, this catalog has its moments. There’s ‘Outdoor Composting‘, for instance — far less dangerous (or pungent) than its indoor cousin, presumably.
Also , Get to Know Your Sewing Machine — where the inner life of Singers are exposed; The Art of the Tart — less about painted hussies than you might hope; and Barre Workout, which is not, in point of fact, ‘bare workout‘, but you try telling that to old Mrs. Jenkison and her free wrinkly spirit.
Then there’s Afternoon Intermediate or Advanced English, which not only can’t decide what level it’s at, but also starts at 11:30. In the morning.
Dizzying is the array of hastily thrown-together classes and descriptions. But I thought perhaps it was coincidence, just a simple general lack of interestingness on the part of mostly every available class there is.
Then I flipped to the ‘Writing’ section, and realized that they’re frankly just screwing with me. And for the sake of nothing but laughs, it seems. Yanking my chain is more fun than Bare Workout with a bunch of Artsy-Fart Tarts, apparently.
Here’s what I found lurking in that writing section — a testimonial, meant to entice a chap like me into one of their classes:
“Kathryn is very good at imparting her knowledge of how to get us writing and assigning exercises that work.” — A student in one of Kathryn Deputat’s writing courses
Sounds lovely. Right up my alley, and me with ‘class credit’ to spend on a course. I scoured the page to determine which class Ms. Deputat was teaching this session.
Nothing.
I flipped the page, and perused the rest of the writing section.
Diddly.
So this Adult Education group, best as I could figure, had decided to include a glowing testimonial by a student about a teacher — who’s not teaching one of their classes. What the hell kind of course-tease is that?
It’s like quoting some yutz in your brochure as saying, ‘Ooh, I just LOVE that Annie Sullivan — she positively works miracles in the classroom!‘
And then disclaiming that, ‘Oh, but she doesn’t actually teach here. Hoo boy, wouldn’t that be awesome? Ah, but a schoolhouse can dream!‘
Which leads me to the obvious and inescapable conclusion — the Adult Ed .people are pulling my leg over here. I bet they don’t even have a winter session, and the whole brochure is the culmination of some class from the fall called ‘Stick it to the Jerkwad Who Thought He’d Ever See His Class Credit Cash Again‘.
This’ll teach me to ever sign up for classes again. Take heed, children — learning is dumb. And everyone’s against you.
Words to live by, there. Maybe I should teach my own damned class, eh?
Permalink | No CommentsIn this week’s assignment in sketch writing class over at ImprovBoston, we were asked to write an ‘ensemble sketch’ — one where several characters have more or less equal parts to play, rather than a single central character.
This sounds reasonably simple. And maybe it is, if you’re not me. But I’m me. And NOTHING is simple in my world. Including this.
We brainstormed some possible ideas for these sketches in the last class. We even got a list at the end of the session, to help goose our creative juices. I pored over the list a few times over the week, but sadly, no juices were goosed. I remained goosed juiceless.
Finally, I gave it a stab. Two stabs, actually — although really more like a stab and a half. The real, honest-to-goodness stab, you’ll find below. It was based on someone’s idea in class of an overly-sensitive football huddle. I don’t think I quite took it in the original direction — I don’t recall him mentioning “window-licking husky-boned block-chuckers”, just for starters — but it was produced in at least the spirit of using the list we’d made.
The half-stab came from a mention I made early in class of something I’d written here a few months ago parodying the Food Network show ‘Chopped’.
“A couple of window-licking husky-boned block-chuckers, riding the short bus into the huddle. That’s just great.”
(Because evidently the only stupid TV that sinks into my squishy brain is about food. If it weren’t for Chopped and Good Eats‘ and… oh, everything else on that godforsaken channel, I wouldn’t have a TV category.
Also, I’d probably be thinner. Watch an hour of Food Network and not raid the fridge afterward? Unpossible.)
Anyway, I asked if anyone had seen ‘Chopped’. Nobody had. I described the show, then my idea for a similar contest show involving surgeons. Blank stares. I said I’d written up a rough treatment already. No love. And ‘Chopped with surgeons’ did not, as you might imagine, make it onto our list of ‘viable ensemble sketch ideas’.
Think that stopped me from pooping it out in sketch format and printing it out to read, anyway? No chance, sunshine. ‘Butchered!‘ will have its day in class. Blank stares and all. Oh, yes.
Meanwhile, enjoy the clusterhuddle nightmare below. It’s pretty much how I imagine the Colts are operating this year. And that’s comedy gold.
HEAVY HUDDLERS
[JACK, PETE, DENNIS and FRANK are standing together in a football huddle. Pete and Dennis are big burly guys; Jack and Frank are skinnier.]
JACK: All right, guys; this is it. We need a touchdown here or it’s all over. Pete and Dennis, you block the pass rush. Then–
PETE: Whoa, whoa. Why do we have to block?
JACK: Uh… because you’re blockers. That’s what you do.
DENNIS: Oh, that’s how this works? You look at us and automatically assume we’re blockers?
JACK: I’m not assuming. I’ve seen you block. You’ve been blocking all day.
PETE: Oh, nice. Now you block one guy, and you’re a block-chucker for life.
DENNIS: You think society is making progress, and then wham — we’re back to the Dark Ages.
JACK: Look, I don’t… it’s… you guys are just built to block, okay?
DENNIS: Did he just call us fat?
PETE: He did. Totally uncalled for.
JACK: No! Not “fat”. Just… “stout”. “Big-boned”? “Husky”?
FRANK: I think what Jack’s trying to say is, we all appreciate what you do here. Your contribution is…uh, significant. And “sizable”. And very special.
PETE: So now we’re “special”. A couple of window-licking husky-boned block-chuckers, riding the short bus into the huddle. That’s just great.
FRANK: What? No! That’s not–
DENNIS: Oh, we get it. Pete and Dennis, the big dumb jocks — let’s all hide behind them so we don’t get hurt; then we’ll laugh and point between plays. Big fun!
JACK: Okay. Okay, fine. We’re sorry. Maybe we judged you based on size.
FRANK: And that was WRONG.
JACK: Yes, and we apologize. We’ll work harder to give you the respect and consideration you deserve.
DENNIS: And love.
JACK: What?
DENNIS: Love. What about the love we deserve?
FRANK: Of course! We’re like brothers here.
JACK: Fine. Love, too. The whole shebang. All right?
PETE: Apology accepted.
JACK: Good. Now, will you guys block the pass rush for me?
DENNIS: No.
JACK: Why not?
DENNIS: We’re tired of being pigeonholed into a role based on outdated stereotypes. We want to try something new.
JACK: New? Like what?
PETE: Like wide receiver.
FRANK: Wait. I’m the wide receiver.
PETE: And now you can be a blocker. It’s only fair.
DENNIS: Not just fair. “Loving.”
FRANK: Jack, come on. Help me out here.
JACK: Hey, you promised them love. You’re on your own, brother.
FRANK: But it’s the last play of the game! Our whole season is riding on this next fly route!
PETE: “Fly”? Oh, no, I’m not running a fly. Lord. I was thinking maybe a short hook. Two steps, turn, and BAM — there’s the ball.
FRANK: We’re fifty yards from the end zone! How’s that going to help us?
PETE: I dunno. I could juke some defenders. Bob and weave and such. Show off my moves.
FRANK: This is a Hail Mary, not a sumo watusi!
PETE: Hey, hey — ouch. What happened to “love”? And anyway, there’s no point in running all the way down the field. Dennis can’t throw that far.
JACK: What does Dennis have to do–
DENNIS: Oh yeah, did I mention? I want to give quarterback a shot. Get the old ‘heave-ho’ working.
JACK: All right, let me get this straight. You want to quarterback?
DENNIS: Right.
JACK: While Pete runs a three-yard hook?
PETE: You betcha.
JACK: When we need fifty yards for a touchdown?
DENNIS: Yep.
JACK: And Frank and I block a bunch of three hundred pound linemen who bench-press Buicks for breakfast?
PETE: More or less.
JACK: I see. And other than a sudden deathwish, tell me WHY we should run such a ridiculous cockeyed play?
PETE: Uh…
DENNIS: You called us “husky”.
PETE: Right. That.
JACK: Fine, here’s the ball.
[The four break huddle. Pete awkwardly practices a throwing motion and Dennis works on his ‘moves’. Jack and Frank lag a step behind.]
FRANK: Man, Coach is going to kill you for this.
JACK: That lardass? Fat chance.
[Pete and Dennis turn and stare at Jack, aghast. He shoos them off, annoyed, and all exit.]
Permalink | No CommentsWe’ve had a bit of an interruption in the updates around here this week. For that, you can blame me. Because you probably will, anyway. But it’s not actually my fault.
It’s the dog’s.
The mutt and I, in happier — albeit weirder — times.
My plucky pooch Susie, for reasons fathomable only to her and perhaps the Eternal Wheel of Doggie Fortune, chose this weekend to fall gravely ill. This is not new for her, sadly. Gravely ill is kind of her ‘thing’.
Okay, so maybe two events don’t establish a pattern. If she’s a ‘gravely ill type’, then by the same logic I’m a skydiver. And I have an unhealthy-healthy obsession with granola. Also, I enjoy using womens’ deodorant, apparently.
Still. Last time she was sick, she had cancer. It took nine months or more to get her checked out, cut open, chemo-ed up and recovered. It’s not like I rubbed on Secret every morning for a year. The mutt makes commitment to a bit, is all I’m saying.
This time, it appears the old gal has a heart condition. A serious one, at that. The dog docs kept her in the hospital for a couple of days, and hooked her up to ECGs and ultrasounds and all manner of other gizmos and testers. We got her back last night, and she’d been Frankenshaved in all sorts of weird spots where the electrodes and such had gone.
Either that, or they were selectively harvesting fur for some sort of tiny hairy suit. Maybe there’s a naked rat running around the joint that thinks he’s Buffalo Bill or something.
(My dog would totally put the lotion on her skin, too. She hates the hose.)
Sadly, the pooch is still very much in the woods, diagnostically speaking. In the best-case scenario, the canine cardiologist — or ‘hound heart hack’, if you prefer — says that they can fit Susie with a pacemaker.
“What wondrous Snausagy times in which we live.”
A pacemaker. For a dog. What wondrous Snausagy times in which we live.
I asked if that also came with a little cane, and doggy dentures, and training her to bark so it sounds like ‘Git offa my lawn!‘
He told me to stop being ridiculous. Those things were all outlandish fantasies. He was a professional, and he’d be happy to cut my dog’s jugular to snake a wire into her heart and bury a battery permanently into her neck to keep her alive, but I was just talking nonsense.
I bet this guy’s loads of fun at parties.
Unfortunately, there are complications — even apart from the science fiction space technology voodoo doggy science that he described. She’s got some other health considerations. Troubling oddities seen in a chest X-ray. Also, she farts a lot.
(I’m not sure that affects the treatment options. But I did ask if, for the love of god, they could do something about it.
They said no. But that was before she peeled the paint off their CCU walls for two days. They might sing a different smelly tune now.)
So we get her back for a week to treat and nurse and pamper for a few days, and then we go back for more tests. And some tough decisions. The heart doc told us when he found these mitigating factors:
‘It’s disappointing. From a cardiac standpoint, she’s a great candidate. I wish it were more straightforward.‘
Yeah, well. That’s not how our Susie works. She’s a persnickety little bitch. And one hell of a fantastic dog.
If you’re interested in other Susie (mis)adventures over the years — most of them are less depressing than this one, I promise — check out most anything from the Dog Drivel category.
And I don’t believe in much of anything that you or I could personally do to change the little mutt’s fortunes on this one, but if you wanted to say a quick ‘Good girl!‘ in the next few days, maybe — just maybe — she’ll hear you.
Just try not to do it near some kids’ playground, or in a strip club. You might come off as creepy. Just a touch.
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