entertaining | Metamorphosism

Disn3y scriptwriter 1: (Drains martini, lights a new cigarette from still-smoldering butt of last one, glances around lunchtime crowd at bar, returns script to scriptwriter 2) It’s not that I don’t like it. I love it. It’s hilarious.
Scriptwriter 2 (Snubs out his own cigarette in ashtray): But…
Scriptwriter 1: Go ahead and pitch it to Him if you want. But he’s not going to like it. Put a phony name on it and pitch it to Hanna-Barbera – I can totally see something like that happening to Tom, you know what I mean? You can pitch it to Him if you want, but if you do he’s gonna say…

(Cut to new scene, in W4lt Disn3y’s office)
W4lt: …it’s not realistic enough!
Scriptwriter 2: With all due respect, Mr. Disn3y…
W4lt (to blonde boy sitting on his desk): Give us some fire, Timmy. (Timmy light’s W4lt’s cigar with teapot-shaped lighter) Tell me, Timmy, do you like Collie dogs? (Turns back to Scriptwriter 2) Okay maybe I missed something. Walk me through it again. You have a minute (looks at watch).
Scriptwriter 2: It’s a Goofy cartoon, Mr. Disn3y! Realism is not in the nature of a talking dog!
W4lt (looks at watch): Fifty seconds.
Scriptwriter 2 (Holds hands up as if framing a shot): Goofy’s Backyard Debacle. Goofy is barbecuing. I dunno, like his wife has invited people over. Important people, of course, to raise the stakes.
Timmy: Ah! High-stake barbecue, I like it. Get it? Barbecued stakes? (The others ignore him)
Scriptwriter 2: Goofy’s nervous. His old grill didn’t get hot enough and so he got a new, bigger one that he’s still figuring out, reading instructions et cetera. Oh and BTW Goofy has long white hair and a bushy white beard.
W4lt: Why.
Scriptwriter 2: It’s necessary to the… dramaturgy. Maybe he’s a wizard or something. Anyway. He tries the new grill and it doesn’t get hot at first either because it’s using this new system with hot and cooler zones right, and for the life of him he can’t get it to go over 500F/260C, if that and his steaks just don’t cook right and he’s getting frantic so the big day comes…
W4lt: Wizard. Okay. I like it.
Timmy: I like it too!
Scriptwriter 2: …the big day comes and he goes for broke and like just fills the grill up with charcoal and lights it and it gets hot as hell. Like, he puts on the lid and the thermometer needle goes all the way around, past 600F/315C, all the way back to zero. So it’s hot. And Goofy is like, uhoh. And he cooks in this order: vegetables, sausages, ribs, steaks last. And it takes, like, a minute per vegetable. He just throws them on and basically they immediately turn black and he takes them back off. Same with the sausages. Black. And he’s desperately trying to find a cooler corner of the grill to move them to but the heat of the coals singes the hair off his arm whenever he tries to move them and he’s like getting frantic like Goofy does, right?
W4lt: I dunno… it’s not realistic.
Scriptwriter 2: And then he throws in some wood chips for fragrant smoke and puts in the ribs and closes the lid. And the smoke comes roiling out. He reads the directions on the rib packaging, they say 30 minutes on the grill and he’s like, no way. He wants to turn the ribs after a minute, or at least check them for blackness, but when he lifts the lid from the barbecue a huge cloud of smoke and steam roils out and envelopes his face and he pulls back and is like, Holy Shit and he smells a smell he hasn’t smelled since he played with fireworks as a kid: singed hair. And Goofy is like, oh shit.
W4lt (just shakes head): mmm.
Scriptwriter 2: He takes the blackened ribs back off the heat. He checks his eyebrows which just crumble. He goes into the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror and his formerly white beard is brown and crumbles away when he touches it, from a long white beard to a short white beard. See, this is why we need Goofy to have long beard and long hair. Some of the long hair gets singed off too.
W4lt: Yeah, no. It’s not realistic.
Timmy: (sits silently, shaking head)
Scriptwriter 2: What’s not realistic about it? Why does everyone suddenly care about realism in connection with a fuck1ng Goofy cartoon? Goofy is a fuck1ng talking dog fuck1ng married to a human woman!
Timmy: What about Clarabelle the cow?
W4lt: That was old Goofy. Modern Goofy was updated.
Timmy: Why?
Scriptwriter 2: Who the h3LL cares, Timmy? It’s a hilarious script. Goofy. Social panic. Barbecue. Fire. Panic. Series of catastrophes. Hilarious.
W4lt (presses button under desk. Security drag away Scriptwriter 2. W4lt Disn3y shouts at him through the open door): It’s unrealistic! It’s impossible! It could never happen in reality! If that ever happens to someone in real life, cut off my head and freeze it under the Pirates of the Caribbean ride!
(Turns to Timmy). Scriptwriters. (Shakes head)
Timmy: Scriptwriters. (shakes head) Sure, I like Collies, Mr. Disn3y.

What is this all over my bag? [tastetaste]

Hm. Pizza sauce. The miniature pizzas I packed for lunch a few days ago were insufficiently wrapped, it seems. Packaging is important. Life reminds us of this occasionally.

So anyway there we were at our friend’s place. Being terrible guests. Late. Lost. But finally there. I was exhausted and could barely stay awake. My wife was making up for it. I felt terrible, though, our friend was running back and forth between the dining table and the kitchen and we just sat there watching.

She brought in food. The musician said something about the spinach when she brought that in, because he didn’t like spinach.

Then she brought in the main course. It looked interesting. It looked like a little alien, skinned and roasted amidst root vegetables. They conversed about it. Apparently it was rabbit, and our hostess was surprised that none of us were into rabbit. Except as pets.

I stared it down. If it moves, I thought, the night will be perfect. If it moves, it will be Eraserhead, I thought.

Come on, move.

But it didn’t move, as far as I could see. We ate it. One friend pleaded vegetarian and just ate vegetables and spinach. Her husband the musician took some rabbit, but just had a taste. He may have had some vegetables. No spinach, though.

Alpha had spinach and vegetables. She took some bunny rabbit, but ate none, not even a taste, maybe because I mentioned that her piece was ear-shaped. I had rabbit and spinach. The spinach was great. I neglected to take other vegetables because I was busy waiting for the pieces of rabbit in the pan to move. A roast rabbit puppet, I thought, would be awesome. You could really have fun with guests. “Here, have some rabbit!” and they stick their fork in, and the rabbit goes “Squeeeee!”

Rabbit is kind of chewy. I suppose because it is a wild animal. If you imagine you are starving in a post-apocalyptic scenario, like The Road, for example, it’s mouth-wateringly delicious. If you imagine you’re sitting around a dining table with friends trying to stay awake, it’s okay, except that it’s rabbit.

If it’s beef, you think the cow doesn’t die so you can eat it? So what’s the difference? Logic, I regret, does not change the fact that it’s rabbit.

Anyway. Staying awake was so hard. The cats had gotten me up at 3:30 that morning, I kept looking at the sofa and wondering if it would be weird if I lay down for a brief nap.

No one else was helping carry dishes back into the kitchen so I helped a little, but I got a late start and it didn’t help much, it sort of just emphasized that no one else had been helping.

Panna cotta. Panna cotta was dessert. One of the guests made a joke about how it resembled raw tofu, but I found it tasty. Is panna cotta complicated to make? I bet it is.

“Would you like coffee?” our hostess asked me, as I sat at the table, eyes narrowed to slits, having a particularly vivid dream while still endeavouring to follow the conversation around me.

“Yes, please,” I said.

Metamorphosism

Tag Archives: entertaining

Goofy’s Backyard Debacle

Coincidentally, it was the 20th anniversary of Twin Peaks