Hella Plays

Jewtah is 4 H.O.V.A.

2012-02-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

Through ancient, eldritch googles, lensed with rubies frozen from the blood of martyrs by a long-forgotten deity, Harry and Hudson survey the landscape, blighted with salt by a fleeing Creator who clearly learned a thing or two ^[1] from the Russians. Their gaze lingers upon a flock of bighorn sheep, frolicking like they don't live in the most fucked place on earth.

HARRY: This truly is God's country

[ed. note: There is no God]

HUDSON: Yessir! You got that right! This is the place!

[ed. note: Seriously, no God]

HARRY: And to think we were so close to not even applying to Birthright For Cocksuckers.

HUDSON: You have to admit the uh, "verification process" was prett-ay yuckk-ay.

HARRY: Word to that!

A synthetic, otherworldly whine goes from invisible to "yeah, I totally hear that too" and towering plumes of dust appear on the horizon. Harry squints hard into his stupid goggles.

HARRY: Is it- could it? Has our absent Lord returned?

HUDSON: Naw, dawg.

A stripped-down Toyota Tacoma, converted to run on conquered souls and fundamentals, squeals onto the cracked earth, guided by a Nugent-suited Karl Malone. He leaps from his rig, katana in hand, and begins filleting the sheep with a deft viciousness.

HARRY: Holy shit!

The scene continues like a careful ballet, that is if anyone ever wrote a ballet about tearing fucking ovines haunch by greasy haunch into a slurry of blood and bowels.

HUDSON: Jee-ZAHS!

Ayo, a gypsy curse comes true and a child, blinded by tears runs onto the scene from the highway. His fat-faced parents argue at the side of the road about a coupon.

HARRY: Oh god [ed.], we have to help her.

Harry and Hudson literally haul balls onto the salt flats, scooping up the suddenly aware and frightened child. Just as they grab her, Karl Malone recognizes their presence and give chase.

HUDSON: FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

Our trio dives into a crevice cleaved from the stupid earth, finally out of the furious Karl Malone's considerable reach.

CHILD *sobbing*

HARRY, wheespering: Shh, shhhh. You're safe now.

Time passes, everything we've ever known hurdles through time. Empires rise and fall. The world stays the same mostly while becoming a bit shittier. Our heroes decay from young men to their new sexless, superfluous form. They have become old. The sit at a cafe and Harry reads from a book of lateral logic puzzles^[2]. Clearly these two only become more insufferable in their age.

HARRY: How about this one, "The music stops, she dies"?

HUDSON: Simple! Or should I say, obvious! Or rather...um, I mean, shall I guess?

HARRY: Go on.

HUDSON: The woman, she is a tight-rope walker. In the circus, rather. She walks the rope.

HARRY: Yes, and?

HUDSON: And it's her husband, you must understand, he um, he is not faithful. Or should I say, he does not love her. And so, and yes, and so he has decided that she is to die, that is, he is to kill her.

HARRY: A-ha, yes, continue!

HUDSON: Well her act, you must understand, her act involves a tied cloth, a bandana, if you will, or rather, a uh blindfold, she is blindfolded. And she knows she has crossed the length of the tightrope when her conspirator, that is, her husband, turns the music off. But tonight, or should I say, the night she dies, or rather, perishes, her husband he ceases the music early, so that she will be mistaken, so that she will fall.

HARRY: That's it!

HUDSON: But she, or as one might say, the tightrope walker, she is no fool. She has walked this rope thousands of nights. She knows, in her very, um her toes, her foot, her spine, she knows how long the rope is and how long it takes to walk. The music, you see, is a vestige, a crutch she once needed but has long since outgrown. Also, or rather, however, she knows that it is her husband who runs her music, a man she has known for 30 years and is not one to be careless, to make a mistake.

HARRY: No, wait, you already had it. That was it.

HUDSON: So when she hears the music, that is, her music, stop, she knows it has stopped early, and with purpose, by her husband, and that we wants her to fall, or rather, to die.

HARRY: The book, the book doesn't have any of this.

HUDSON: The tragedy, or should I say, the tragedy, though, is of course she still loves him. Loves him dearly. She has a tenderness for her husband that is beyond passion. Like every love in her life she has channeled this out-pouring of feeling into a determination, a practice of will. Through patience, through persistence, she has defeated the gravity that governs every mass in the universe other than herself. Through this same persistence, she believed, foolishly it seems, that she might perform that most ancient of alchemy: to produce love in a heart where there was none.

HARRY: Are we- is this still the puzzle?

HUDSON: So when the music stops, she knows she has failed. She, that is, herself, can never make this man content. Instead, or rather, instead, she gives him the only thing that might ever make him happy. She steps out onto air, that is, she falls, that is, she dies.

A middle-aged woman approaches their table

WOMAN: I'm sorry, are you- are you Harry and Hudson?

HARRY: Who's asking, sister?

WOMAN: Well, if you are who think you are, you once saved my life. I was attacked in the Utah desert by Karl Malone wielding a bitchslicer and two mysterious strangers intervened.

HUDSON: My memory isn't what it ever was, but yeah, that sounds like the kind of thing that would happen to us.

WOMAN: I just wanted to thank you. I owe you two everything. I didn't even know what was happening, what you two were. You looked so strange, I thought you were fallen angels, or perhaps, assholes.

HARRY: Well, I may have lost some of my wits in my advanced age, but I still think you might benefit from these ancient words, first spoke by Ovid over two billion years ago: sister, go fuck yourself.

WOMAN: Wait, are you guys drunk?

HARRY: Extremely.

HUDSON: WAWAWAWAWA

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking_puzzle

Bong Me Once...

2012-02-05T09:41:00.000-08:00

Chad, Hudson, and Hazard sit around a campfire. They are dressed like Nez Perce warriors on horses, except without the horses[1]. The position of the sun suggests that it is either mid morning or late afternoon. The quality of the light suggests the latter. The scenery suggests a desert. Sagebrush, sunburnt rocks, and dust abound. The boys appear to be positioned near the edge of something, a Cliff. In the distance we can see a river valley, deep and full of power. The scene has no suggestion of human influence, save for our three heroes, their modest canvas tents, and their massive, massive bong.

Sang is also on the stage. He is, however, quite separate. The lighting reflects this distance, what with the use of spotlights and all. A great darkness exists between Sang and the others. He stands stage left, before a microphone. He is dressed exactly like this guy: [2]. It is clear that he belongs to the same world as you, the viewer of this play which is of course distinct from the scene which we are about to enjoy, el delito que quizás venga. He is a modern day Urraca, a trataconventos, only without all the yucky sexual liaison business. Let's call him an interpreter or framer, either works as long as it is to be at work.

SANG: Welcome precious viewers. I am pleased to speak a few words to you this evening. I am preamble, introduction. So let us commence with fulfilling that role. What should serve as adequate introduction? How, in the few moments we have together, can I summarize what it is I know about these young men? I must cut and select while leaving you, the viewer, with the sense that I've introduced comprehensively, even though you're aware of the impossibility of such perfect communication. We know it is an untruth, and that's fine. We're limited, you and I, by time, by attention, by speech. Bounded by the fact that even this speech, this speech I'm in the act of delivering now, is formed and bounded in language, and received in a similar but non identical language.

Hmmm... fuck it, let's give it a try. These are some of my friends. They're in the desert. They're boned, on account of their damper origins. They've been here for exactly 5 days, of this much I'm certain. For evidence of temporal distance from a civilized world, look no further than Hudson's wandering facial hairs. Look to their attire. I must warn you, tender audience, that what you are about to witness is a carefully crafted thing. Pay attention to the words. Listen to each of them. Each thing is full of meaning. It is all semiotically chalk fuckin' full so listen up. All of the clues are clues and all of the numbers are maths.

CHAD: BONG!

HUDSON: Uhhhh....Bret here!

HAZARD: WEEEEEEEEED!

CHAD: SOOOOO HIIIIIGHHHHIIIIEEEE!!

HUDSON: Dude, nice.

HAZARD: I know I asked this before, but why are we STILL in this desert, it's been like three weeks?

HUDSON: Forrealz. This is the worst fortnight of my life. I'm more comfortable with deserts when they're actually just vidjas. Like Las Venturas, that desert was DOPE! Who would ever suggest coming to this place?

CHAD: Dude.

HAZARD: Dude.

HUDSON: ?

Hazard and Chad can only shake their heads in the face of Hudson's forgetfulness.

SANG: The trip to the desert, you see, was Hudson's idea. His special little victim works at the local poncho, feathers, and western sundries emporium. Recently, they'd received a large shipment of "traditional" "native american" "clothing." She, being kind and in possession of clear mental faculties, offered to bring an assortment of the haul home to huddy huddy hungums. He, being an opportunist, saw this as a means to convince his buddies to take a visit to the desert to work on being more of a Shamano urbano as opposed to his natural tendency towards the obverse. His buddies, being drunk, were easily convinced.

HUDSON: DUDE! I've barely accrued any Shamano points on this trip.

CHAD: In all fairness, we have been pretty high the whole time.

HAZARD: Who's idea was it to bring this bong anyway??

SANG: It was not only Hazard's idea to bring the bong, it was he who created the torture device.

HUDSON: No clue. But seriously, girls, let's get down to max crass and handle our bidness.

CHAD: I could get down on said business.

HAZARD: Fuck yes.

They all smoke hella weed.

CHAD: Dudes, I've been...like, thinking?

HAZARD: Nice.

CHAD: What if, like, we all like the same beer but like your Rainier is my Rolling Rock?

HAZARD: Or your Yuengling is my Boundary Bay IPA?

HUDSON: Whoa, what the fuck is you-eng-ling? Is that like a Chinese beer?

CHAD: Totally.

HUDSON: Or dude, what if your Goodwill were like my Salivation Army?

CHAD: (sp?)

HAZARD: Or like, what if y'alls Flannel Panel were really my Plaid Pantry???

HUDSON: Dude, you're spooking me out [3].

CHAD: WAHWAHWAHWAHWAH.

From behind the cliff appears Some Boner. He is out of breath, as if he's being pursued. He is wearing the things that boners wear and you can tell that whatever is about to come out of his mouth is gonna be unspeakably shitty.

El Boner takes a massive ripicito off the bongota.

SOME BONER: Dudes, but like, what if writing was an evil thing because my definition isn't your definition of things, so like, my writing is raping your idea??

HAZARD: Whooooaaaa.

CHAD: That should be an SVU episode.

Brian appears at full tilt. He's huffin' and puffin' like a wolf or something. He's looking pissed off something fierce.

BRIAN: Nope, wrong. Writing is fine. Writing something doesn't make it so, it just makes it written. Things are what they are and that's it. I'm talking so that makes me a talker, I am what I do. When I'm not talking, I'm not. Readers can read and writers can write and neither one is absolutely rigid. Don't listen to this boner's crazy bullshit.

CHAD: Dude.

HUDSON: Dude.

HAZARD: Seriously, dude.

BRIAN: Fine.

Hazard sparks up the bong for his wretched homegirl. The rips are fatty. Everyone looks like Bret for a second. Also, always.

BRIAN: Whoa, what if my Miller High Life were like your MGD?

ALL: Hooray! [4]

Hypalink(z)

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nez_Perce_warrior_on_horse.jpg

2. Penultimate row, right hand column "Speaking into a radio microphone, c. 1940's?": http://www.lubitsch.com/images.html

3. http://yoisthisracist.com/

4. It's always the right time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oeknvFmopk

So, Like, What Do You Guys Talk About?

2012-01-31T13:22:00.000-08:00

Characters

Bret, unspeakably, also Chad and Cliff. [1]

Sang, human. [2]

Hudson, human [3]

Brian, abiyoyo [iii]

Hazard, feeling fast? [4]

A director must choose between three scenes. 1) Exterior, a backyard. Wine bottle ball arena. The light is bright, brighter than it ought to be, so much so that the audience cannot ignore its artificial nature. 2) Interior, a living room. Mattresses. Brought 'em on in. TV on, probably NBA. 3) Volcano. Very hot. Hottest it's ever been anywhere ever? Probably.

BRIAN:

I was shot in the foot

in a bar in Tacoma

and removed the slug

with care and tweezers,

glowing!

molten hot

I grew

at least a foot.

HUDSON: What do you guys know about Rococo writers?

SANG:

I ate a giant sandwich

and drank a dog's beer

I read things

verosímiles

and scored a goal

top shelf!

one time!

HUDSON: Hallucinated environments it seems. Escapism and inebriation. Sueños rompiendo las reglas del razón. Cosas que uno no pudiera decir en realidad, cosas literalmente inexprimables, o quizás cosas que dicen más que el personaje pueda saber.

HAZARD:

It was on the verge

some summer

of lemonades,

kicked heads in.

I vomited

all sixteen kicks

burning upwards

to grow at least a foot.

HUDSON: They were intimate writings, a free and irrational thing, to be shared.

CHAD: Late Baroque?

BRET: Obama.

CLIFF: YES SIR!

ALL: Hooray!

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutism

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

3. Ibid

4. http://www.peligrosoracing.com/

Drunk is a Reflecting Surface

2011-12-10T22:48:00.000-08:00

Skipping through a hall of mirrors, one must take care not to skip into oneself. For in a hall of mirrors, to meet oneself is to shatter the hall, to destroy the serenity to which we all of us must finally return.

Chad and Sang skip arm and arm in a hall of mirrors. They are attempting to sing "Might As Well Be Walkin' On The Sun," by Smash Mouth, one of history's greatest inventions. They are taking little care not to skip into themselves. They've been drinking again. At least one of them drools.

CHAD & SANG: It aints no jokes whens mommas hankerchiff is stoked, with the tears because the babies lifes are been reng-vokes. It's just the jokes, come and smoke up and focus on the smokes up it's a wizard can reform. NO GOD LIKE HOCUS POCUS!

The hall is cavernous, and images of the skipping drunkards reflect from unlikely angles. Skipping, the boys advance in all directions - they climb walls, they transcend surfaces, they descend to eternal depths. Skipping, skipping. But will the boys skip into themselves?

Lights go up on a balcony that overlooks the stage. Here we see Hazard and Mr. President Mudson Mongo standing side by side, hands behind their backs, besuited and bespectacled, observing the drunken skippers through a glass floor above the hall of mirrors.

MPMM: Our experiment is going according to plan, wouldn't you say, Mr. Stefans?

HAZARD: Indeed sir. I believe it is time to release the bats.

A solemn moment passes as Mr. President Mudson Mongo considers the bats. The audience, too, considers the bats. We must all of us consider the bats.

MPMM: Mr. Stefans, release the bats.

Hazard pulls a massive lever made from the humerus of some forgotten victim. Trap doors open in the ceiling of the hall of mirrors, and swarms of shrieking mammals pour into the room. The mirrored angles of the cavernous hall only exaggerate the sense that there are bats like all over the damn place. Terrified and wide-eyed, their jowls dripping with drool, our arm-locked heroes cease their skipping.

SANG: Jesus tits McGee!

CHAD: We must fight these winged monsters to the death.

SANG: But they're everywhere!

CHAD: Fear not, brave Sangwise! We will not merely endure, we will prevail!

SANG: Aye! Bonk 'em on the head.

The two drunken warriors begin to bonk the bats in the brains! Blood and bat brains are flying everywhere, and the walls soon resemble the work of some deranged Jackson Pollock imitator. The battle rages for several days, perhaps weeks. Time in the hall ceases to exist. The two heroes fight on, and neither fatigue nor fear nor pain can weaken their iron resolve. Finally, all the bats are dead.

CHAD: We did it!

SANG: We killed all the bats!

CHAD: Fuck bats!

SANG: We fucked up all the bats!

The lights come up on Hazard and Mr. President Mudson Mongo, above the stage, observing the rejoicing heroes.

HAZARD: Well, sir?

MPMM: It appears, Mr. Stefans, that we've found our men.

Nodding in assent, Hazard pushes a button to speak into a PA which projects his voice into the mirrored hall.

HAZARD: Well done, gentlemen. You've passed the test.

CHAD & SANG: We did?

HAZARD: Yes. Welcome to the Men In Black.

CHAd & SANG: Hooray!

The Piss That Wouldn't Freeze

2011-12-03T23:09:00.000-08:00

In a urine testing lab at a place where people who are ordered by judges go to pee in cups. Unspeakably Bret is seated at a desk, goading a breathalyzer back to zero. His raised eyebrows convey he is much more drunk than he thought he was. Case Manager Kenniths approaches.

Kenniths: What's up Brother?

UB: Nothing. How's it going?

Kenniths: Good! Hey, Kelly left a job for you.

UB: Sure, what do you need?

Kenniths: Well, it was Kelly who wanted it, but when you get a chance can you take out all the cups from the 2 months ago box in the freezer and pour them down the sink?

UB: Yeah, I can do that for you.

Kenniths: Thanks brother! Kelly really wanted that done.

UB: Actually, can you call me something else? I know you might call everyone that but I don't think it's very appropriate.

Kenniths: Really?

UB: Yeah. I don't think you would call me that if I was black so you probably shouldn't say it at all. And, I don't really know you that well. I'll drain the piss in a minute, though.

Kenniths nods confidently and walks away with a jaunty, bowlegged gait. He figures he might need a younger girlfriend still. Unspeakably Bret removes a bunch of cups of frozen urine from a freezer and sets them on the desk. One catches his eye, for it is not frozen.

UB: Hudson?

Unspeakably Bret unwraps a piece of paper from the cup and begins reading aloud.

UB: Client Statement, October 8th, In Which Hudson Drinks All The Vodka. At a birthday party. Hudson: Is this somebody's vodka? B-day Biddy Bitch: Yeah, that's my birthday fifth. Hudson: Good, I'm gonna drink some. B-day Biddy Bitch: You can have a sip but that's it. Hudson: Sure. Hudson drinks all the vodka. B-day Biddy Bitch: Hudson, did you just drink all my vodka? What's wrong with you? Kristin fucking bought that for me and I barely had any. The next morning Hudson rides a bus and pees in a cup.

Kelly: At least he's original. Most people say "oh I just used mouthwash right before I came in". Anyways, Bret, Kenniths said he thought he smelled alcohol on you. I really want you to be honest with me, are you drunk right now?

Kenniths enters the lab with a Recently Released Federal Inmate.

Kenniths: What's up brother?

RRFI: Dude, you can't be saying that. If you was white and said that while you was locked up, you'd be in some shit.

Kelly: Nevermind, Bret. I'll have Kenniths take care of these cups once they thaw.

Kenniths and Kelly leave the lab. Unspeakably Bret puts on some silicone gloves.

RRFI: That dude's a trip.

UB: Yeah, the double-breasted shoulder strap thing kind of makes him look like an SS officer too.

RRFI: What's that now?

UB: Nothing, just his shirts are always kinda weird. Ok, lets do it. You drink some water beforehand this time?

RRFI: Yeah I chugged like two big cups before I came in.

UB: Good, gimme the piss.

Got It!

2011-11-28T20:34:00.000-08:00

Characters

HUDSON, gaucho

SAM, not

Act I

Act I is hardly an act, though some action occurs. There is to be no dialogue. Many actors stand on a darkened stage. They write and never labor. They drink and never brew. They toss in beds that others built. They never look out the windows. They cry, they fuck, they drink until they are hoarse. The building shrinks in around them. They sense that they've only ever had each other. They drink until they are whorse.

Act II

Hudson stands at center stage. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. His revolver is safely secured in his holster. He leans over a sink.

Enter Sam, looking like the brokest of Pampas kids, what with the tattered condition of his clothing and all.

SAM: Oh hey, Hudson. What's for dinner tonight?

HUDSON: Rabbits.

SAM: Pardon?

HUDSON: Just cleaning some rabbits for dinner.

SAM: Oh. Icy.

HUDSON: Wow that's a silly phrasing. Come over here, you may as well learn something about this world.

SAM: Okay!

Sam shuffles towards the sink. He places his hands on a counter and lightly lifts himself upon it. Hudson mouths words and Sam listens closely. Music swells to overwhelm the discussion. It is a hopeful symphony. Sam listens intently. He desperately wishes to learn a trade that's suited to this place. A suggestion of time passing. Both end up terribly bloodied. Dried rabbit skins decorate the home.

HUDSON: And that's how it's done.

SAM: Bing bang blooie!

HUDSON: Did you just think of that yourself?

SAM: I did.

HUDSON: Wowza son, that's pretty good.

SAM: Thanks, Gauchy Huddy.

HUDSON: Don't call me that.

Act III

Act III is basically like Act I, except there are no whorses and many of the actors have gone missing. A man lays down and never gets back up. Two figures walk through an eternal cemetery, a few pelts slung over their shoulders. The music is VERY spooky.

No Poncho's a Serrana

2011-11-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

Characters

BRIAN, man, yeti?

WHISKEY, main character

THE MAN

A MAN

A FRIEND

Mostly Stage Directions

Brian sits on the plywood floor of his mountain hut. He is wrapped in ponchos. A fire, bounded by stone, burns in the center of the hut. Brian erupts in another coughing fit. This man is one of the unwell. He stands.

BRIAN: It's that time of the month.

The man pulls the cloth tight to his body and shudders in anticipation of a cold to come. Snow pads the footsteps and eases the pain in his knees as they fall to the earth. Hands itch and recoil from the heat transfer.

BRIAN: God damned heat transfer. Where'd I put those gloves?

He left the gloves in the hut, along with the bottles of whiskey. He calls it bourbon, which is wrong; this hut and still fall within the borders of North Carolina.

BRIAN: Oh, fuck this, I'm getting the bourbon. You wait right here.

The man, half formed, sits patiently. Brian walks inside and approaches a stack of whiskey bottles, which number 256. Brian removes one, 255 remain. His gloves, which were left atop the stack, flutter to the floor like leaves from that former world.

BRIAN: Aha! I knew I'd find you. I fuckin' knew it. I'm gonna use you to cover up these hand foot-fingers. It'll work. He'll see.

The man walks outside to meet his waiting friend. Brian labors in the snow. He frames his work, like a photographer, with elements polite and corporal bounded.

BRIAN: Almost, almost. One final touch!

Brian walks inside and grabs a poncho from a pile. He slugs the whiskey, puts all its molecules into an approximate center of his face. He stumbles, not from the alcohol which is not yet to his veins, his brain, but from the sheer olfactory force of the act. He slips and the poncho escapes his grasp. It flies, for a moment, and sets down over the shoulders of that new formed friend.

BRIAN: Perfecto! Que ilusión!

Both men sit atop the snow, smiling. After a time, Brian returns inside. He sleeps. He walks in his sleep. He dreams of murder. Brian wakes, weeping. The stack has 254 bottles.

BRIAN: Oh no, not again.

He walks outside. A bottle of whiskey lies atop a poncho, set against the white. Brian is the only man around for miles.

BRIAN: Oh no, not again.

The audience files out.

The Act

2011-11-21T11:13:00.000-08:00

Characters

HARRY, farm hand

BRIAN, also a farm hand

HUDSON, landowner

CLIFF, probably a farm hand but certainly a driver of an extremely slick looking tractor

The Act

Harry and Brian labor. Sweat drips. They are dressed like Huck Finn. Harry wears leather work gloves. Brian wears leather gloves. They walk alongside a trailer and buck hay. Hudson puzzles over this phrasing. Cliff drives a tractor which pulls the hay trailer. Cliff is wearing clothing more modern, jeans, a hoody, and an adjustable ball cap turned backwards. In the distance, or across the impression of space, Hudson sits in wicker chair. He sips a Mint Julep Four Loko and fans himself.

HUDSON shouting: It's good to own land!

BRIAN: What'd he say?

HARRY: I'm gonna fuckin' kill him, I'm gonna fuckin' kill him.

BRIAN: Easy there, brother, what's the happs?

HARRY: I'm just gonna fuckin' kill him that's all there is to it.

BRIAN: Why? What's that gonna get us?

HARRY: Look at the bastard! Sittin' there, drinking cool products that nobody else can get. Having stuff! Why does he get all the stuff?

BRIAN: Well, it's his.

HARRY: But shouldn't he share it with us?

BRIAN: I mean, that'd be nice, but why would he do that?

HUDSON shouting a bit louder now: It's STILL good to own land.

HARRY: I'm just gonna fuckin' kill him.

Brian picks up the last bale in the field and throws it into the trailer. Harry scampers to the top of the stack of bales and carves out a niche. Brian takes off his gloves, wipes his brow, and climbs up to join him.

BRIAN: Cliff, we're good to go.

CLIFF: YESSIR!

BRIAN: I really wish he wouldn't call me sir.

Harry walks towards the front of the trailer and holds up two fingers. Cliff reaches into a cooler and retrieves two cans of Rainier. He tosses one back to Harry. He tosses the second one back to Harry.

HARRY: Thanks, man.

Cliff waves. Harry walks back to his place and places himself, weightily. He passes the can to Brian. Harry cracks open his beer. Brian cracks open his beer. They put the cans near each other, without touching.

BRIAN: Cheers, hombre.

HARRY: Thanks. Sorry about earlier. I just hate when he does that.

BRIAN: What's that now?

HARRY: Oh, I just lose my g-d mind when he reminds us that, "It's good to own land."

BRIAN: Oh shit, is that what he's saying?

HARRY: Yeah, you've literally never heard that?

BRIAN: No, I generally don't pay that much attention. Keep my head down and do my work, you know?

HARRY: Right.

BRIAN: But seriously, fuck that.

HARRY: Right?

BRIAN yelling to the tractor: Yo, Cliff, you still brewing up that 'shine these days?

CLIFF: Hell yeah, brother!

HARRY: Now that's more like it!

BRIAN: Can we take this bad boy over by your shack?

CLIFF: Bring 'em on in?

HARRY: Exactly.

Cliff changes course. The mass accelerates towards our farmhands' humble quarters. Cliff hops down from his seat and dashes inside.

HARRY: Are you planning to do what I think you're planning to do?

BRIAN: I sure hope so.

Cliff returns, with a jug of moonshine in each hand. Brian leans over the edge and grabs the first jug. Harry leans over and grabs the second jug. Brian extends a hand to help Cliff up. Harry extends a hand to help Cliff up. They pull him into their tower of grass.

CLIFF: Nothing to do now but wait.

HARRY: Sun's sinking pretty low.

Harry uncorks the first bottle and takes a swig. He passes to Cliff, who takes a swig. He passes to Brian, who takes a swig.

BRIAN: Thing's are beyond fucked up, aren't they?

HARRY: I'd never go home again.

CLIFF: We'll find someplace else.

HARRY: There's gotta be someplace else.

BRIAN: Well, there will be, even if it's here.

They continue passing the bottle and speaking en voces now inaudibles.

CLIFF: Sun's set.

HARRY: Lights are out.

Our heroes stand tall and stride towards the house. They stand over the roof and empty the contents of the jug. It spills torrential into enlarged bellies. Harry sighs a single stream of flame and sets the house ablaze. Wings beat against the air, and lift him far away. Cliff cleaves the house in two and mounts a massive steed. Brian gathers all the goats and tears off after the others, howling.

HUDSON looking out from some distant window: Wow, those guys are wasted.

Lights go down

Some Things Brought In and Soon Forgotten

2011-11-20T10:07:00.000-08:00

Characters

HAZARD [1], harry [2], playwright [3]

SANG [4], sam [5], playwright [6]

Act

HAZARD: In her room at the prow of the houseWhere the light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,My daughter is writing a story. [7]

SANG: You mean little Sally? [8] What's it about?

HAZARD: I'll read a bit of it to you: "...it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up..." [9]

SANG: Wow, SHEISALSOANUT [10]. Like father like daughter, I guess.

HAZARD: I guess. There was the famous photographer, Kevin Andrew,who started by photographing old signs and ended by filling his bathtub with them and washing himself in the kitchen sink. There was also Hudson whose pet tiger cub grew so big that first his family and finally he himself fled the 12th-floor, three-bedroom apartment in the housing project, returning every day to fling raw chickens through a crack in the front door. Love displaces

everything. [11]

SANG: That story about Kevin Andrew, is that a true story? [12]

HAZARD: Who's Kevin Andrew? Oh, right. Well I can't swear to every detail, but it's true it's a story. [13] That bit about Hudson, though, you can take as gospel.

SANG: There are people like that in the city, with signature hats or empty attaché cases, expressions of private absorption fending off comment, who attach to physical locations—a storefront, a stoop, a corner,a bench—and appear there daily as if for a job. [14]

HAZARD: How long has it been since you told him you loved him? [15]

SANG: Who, Hudson? [16] It's been awhile, probably not since that summer of impending doom, why? [17]

HAZARD: It is always a matter, my darling,of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish what I wished you before but harder. [18]

The two men hold hands, sipping sauce, as they watch the world as they've known it come to an end around them. [19]

References

1. For more see http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/search/label/Hazard

2. For more see http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/search/label/Harry

3. Playwright, see his works at http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/search/label/by%20Hazard

4. For more see http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/search/label/Sam

5. For more see http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/search/label/Sangwise

6. Playwright, see his works at http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/search/label/by%20Sang%20Wize

7. From "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur: http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/wilbur/the_writer.php

8. First introduced in http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/2010/10/sally-your-mother-is-whore.html

9. See "last lines" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/quotes

10. See comments http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/2009/11/press-conference-with-coach-shakey.html

11. In the beginning, specifically beginning towards the end of the fourth line http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19231

12. Use your imagination in conjunction with http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/quotes

13. Ibid

14. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19620

15. This is also important http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182873

16. For your r-search http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/search/label/Hudson

17. An important literary movement http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/search/label/impending%20doom

18. Derivative http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/wilbur/the_writer.php

19. You damn well better read this note http://hellaplays.blogspot.com/2010/08/lokd-out-in-hour-of-chaos.html

The Tallest Man on Earth

2011-11-15T07:11:00.000-08:00

Characters

BRET, the real schluderdude

HARRY, shooting guard

CHAD, point guard?

SAM, magic guard

CLIFF, power forward

KEVIN, linebacker

BRIAN, has no idea how basketball works

HUDSON, Chip Kelly

LIAM, scorekeeper

JIM, ref

Act I

Bret stands on cracked blacktop. Bull thistles creep through the shell of a world dipped in tar. A few lines, quite faded now, chart the boundaries of a game for giants' children. A hoop, a net, and a backboard loom overhead. These elements are not well lit. Nor are the benches that line either side of the blacktop. Bret is alone at center stage, in a circle of light six feet in diameter. It is the only light. He wears a authentic UNC basketball uniform and has a sign, made of cardboard and dental floss, hung from his neck. It reads: "The Tallest Man on Earth." He bounces a basketball casually.

BRET: Oh hey, Bret here. Just waitin' for the ball game to start. Should be starting any time now. I'm pretty excited about it. The basketball game that is.

The scene erupts in light and sound. The whole gang is ready for some basketball, everybody has borrowed Brian's athletic gear, except Harry who's still rockin' his Woody Harrelson Halloween costume, Kevin who's got his own sleeveless stuff, and Hudson who wears a suit and carries a clipboard. Jock Jams plays from a boombox and Four Loko fills the Loko coolers.

Harry polishes off a little pre-game sauce and meets Chad on the court. The two appear to be captains. Some pointing happens and perhaps even some naming of names. Why not make it different each show? I'm talking about the order. I'm certainly not going to write in here that Sam or Brian or Cliff or Kevin gets picked last, that'd be cruel. Anyway, the picking happens. The guys high five and jump around.

HARRY: You're going down, Chad.

CHAD: Uhhhh, yeah? Well, like, I don't think so, man.

HUDSON: Backside linebacker! Suicide squeeze. Make beer disappear.

BRIAN: I swear to boots you guys better not be listening to him.

SAM: I'm not even sure which team he think he's coaching.

CLIFF: This guy's an idiot.

KEVIN: He's still the best coach I've ever had.

Bret approaches the group. His head is down.

BRET: Hey guys.

HARRY: Damnit, you! Get outta here!

CHAD: Nobody wants to play with you.

BRIAN: You're too damn tall.

SAM: Seriously, you block all the shots.

CLIFF:You're no fun to play with.

Bret walks away and sits on the bench, dejected. The game begins and the lights go out. Liam walks to the front of the stage with a manual scoreboard in hand. He is lit by spotlight. The sounds of basketball continue in the background as Liam sluggishly flips the flaps. Points are scored at a glacial pace. Liam holds the scoreboard high. The score is 8-8.

LIAM: 30 seconds remaining.

Liam exits stage right and the scene is again flooded with light and sound. Brian can be seen at center stage. He rolls on the floor, holding his ankle.

BRIAN: AHHHHHHH!!!!! My ankle.

SAM: Oh wow, you're all sorts of twammed up.

HARRY: Really D'd the ol' dawg there.

Jim steps in and blows a whistle.

JIM: If you guys can't come up with another player, I'm going to have to declare a forfeit.

CHAD: I told you, Brian, you're going down.

BRIAN: No, you didn't, you're thinking of Harry, talking to you. Also, not cool, bro. Also, ow.

Bret calmly walks over to the Loko cooler and throws back a few cups. He stumbles, makes some quick pukes, stretches, and tosses the sign into the darkness.

BRET: I can sub in.

ALL: Holy shit! BRET!!!!!

BRET'S TEAM: Alright, we've got Bret back. Let's win this game.

This scene is creatively derivative. The players move in slow motion as the clock winds down. With 5 seconds remaining, Bret receives the ball. He spins, he pump fakes, he jumps up to jam the hoop. He, like any of these players, cannot dunk a basketball. The ball collides sonorously with the rim and Bret falls to the floor. The ball bounces into the darkness and is forgotten.

KEVIN: Wow, you really fucked that up.

BRET: Yup, I'm prettay drunk.

CHAD: We all are, Bret.

SAM: We all are Bret.

HARRY: We all R...

BRET: Please don't.

ALL: Hooray!

R du Us: Adventure Time

2011-11-09T05:35:00.000-08:00

Sam, Bret, and Chad find themselves in a harsh environment, or the suggestion of one. An Ipod is loaded with spooky storm sounds and attached to some seriously big ass speakers, which howl from behind the set. Three backdrop panels adorn the scene. The panel to house right shows a precipice and serves to bound the scene, our characters will avoid this noise. The center panel is almost pure white, suggesting an environment that's some serious snow pants weather, except for an opening, impossibly dark, through which a human could barely pass. House left shows another precipice, still more intimidating. The stage is littered with white sheets or cotton balls, or whatever the director has chosen to indicate snow stacked upon itself. A single path is marked by modest stones. It is wide enough for two travelers to walk side by side. Sam, Bret, and Chad are dressed similarly. Each is bundled, flannel paneled, and seriously hatted up. Chad and Sam wear Sambas. Bret, sensibly, has opted for hiking boots.

CHAD: Absolute bullshit.

SAM: Unbelievable.

BRET: I'm gonna kill those guys.

CHAD: Who puts a bar on the far side of the mountain?

SAM: Much less a Vern's.

BRET: Unbelievable.

A figure enters from the darkness of the middle panel. It is a shapeless creature, made of rags. Only the eyes are visible. Chad, Sam, and Bret back down the path, away from the beast.

CHAD: What the fuck?

BRET: Seriously? Boners.

SAM: Wait, is that...

The creature rattles a bag of some forgotten coinage. It extends a delicate hand. Its eyes stare, greedily.

SAM: Damnit, Skye Glover! I knew it was you

Skye G throws off the robes.

SKYE: Ahaha! It's me. Time for you boys to pay up.

BRET (getting very slow with it): Whhhhaaaat?

CHAD: Alright, Skye, we're not doing that.

SKYE: It's tax day. I'm the tax collector. I've been waiting in this mountain pass for years now.

SAM: That's really depressing and everything but get the fuck out of our way. We've gotta get to Vern's before Cliff drinks all my Budweisers.

SKYE: But so far from society, I, the tax collector, am the authority...I...

CHAD: Go be the authority over somebody who cares.

BRET: Lataz.

They push on. A neon sign, reading "Vern's Tavern" appears in the distance. Hooting, hollering is heard as the stage lights fade out.

How is me not commending meself?

2011-10-28T17:51:00.001-07:00

Brian stands before a podium. He is alone in the basement of an academic hall. A single beam casts light upon his face. He wears a watchcap, an a-shirt, and no trousers. His socks are thick and made of wool. He looks calmly at them, clears his throat, and begins to speak.

BRIAN: Today I will be presenting a history. It begins with an electronic epistolary, the details of which, save one, are irrelevant. The lone item of concern does not appear until the fourth reply to the initial message. It reads: "Perhaps we should bring cookies for, you know, a mid day pick-me-up!" The suggestion, innocent and kind, was met with strong approval. The fifth reply reads: "Ooooooh good idea. I've got a pumpkin recipe to try out." The sixth and seventh mentioned excitement regarding the notion of pumpkin flavoring in a cookie. The eight reply was utterly redundant and clear evidence to W's excitability and tendency towards mimicry. The ninth reply was mine, though many claimed to have never received it. The tenth divided cookie responsibilities and effectively removed any lingering primacy of the meeting's original intent. The twelfth established time and the fourteenth, place.

With the fourteenth reply read, I closed my laptop. I went home. I dreamed of anxious things.

The day of the meeting came. I was on my way outside, to enjoy an unseasonably warm afternoon when S greeted me.

(Whispering) Kevin, read S's part.

KEVIN: Hey, Brian. How's it going.

BRIAN: Oh, uh, pretty good. Just heading outside, you know, to do the stuff that people do outside.

KEVIN: Oh, aren't you going to the meeting?

BRIAN: You mean the one about _________?

KEVIN: Yeah, the one with cookies.

BRIAN: Yes, of course I'm going, dutifully.

We walked upstairs and enjoyed a pleasant exchange. S is good at jokes and does not take himself too seriously. We got to the meeting and some stuff happened, I don't much care to talk about it. Then it was over. The mass of cookies far exceeded the appetite of so small and so small a group of graduate students. V, the leader, spoke to the group.

LIZZY: Who wants to take home some COOOOOKIES??

BRIAN: I grabbed a plate. I produced a plastic bag. I took all the cookies and offered no apologies.

ALL: Hooray!

BRIAN: This, of course, is all background. The real story is of a sandwich. I, possessing no sharp knives, no skill in selection or preparation, no mayonnaise, decided that a purchased sandwich was my only hope. It is in this manner that at 8:15 pm on October 28th, I found my hungums future in the sure hands of a Subway Sandwich Artist by the name of Francisco. I joked about how, without price targeting to guide my decisions, I was at a loss to explain the sort of sandwich I desired.

Enter Sang. His visor indicates an allegiance.

SANG: Jaja, five dollar footlong month is indeed loko. Suggestion.

BRIAN: That sounds great. Make it however you want.

He did.

BRIAN: What about some Jalapeños.

SANG: Nice tilde, y simon! Quieres chips?

Here, my friends, is where she all comes together. A simple wave of the hand and a shake of the head, motions that reach so far back.

So, you know, even if you hated this story, I saved like a dollar fifty.

Fin.

ALL: Hooray!

Qué ay? Es es.

2011-10-01T08:12:00.000-07:00

EL JUGLAR canta, o si no puede, fabla:

From a million gilded fields arrives Hudson

that is, he enters

stage left

as does Harry

or Bret

or Bret.

Bringin' em on in.

A backwards act,

stretching so far back.

Scholars weep

like crocodile

possessing none

our heroes' guile

for command of time

or dramatic style

a ruse revealed

in drunkard smile.

Young men's bones

bleached white de San Tomás

ride roughshod smiling

'cross llanos en llamas.

The pueblo burns up to the sky

Sam ruega for más

Harry sits, legs crossed

and sings, "Tú, lector, cantarás!"

Y al cielo goes carbon ash.

un sagrado ciclo, buscarás

you, like Thomas

sabes mucho y dudarás.

Our heroes know

a truer truth

of comfort, joy,

and watching Bluth.

EL PUEBLO: BESOS!

A Visit From the Snake Lord

2011-09-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hudson and Brian are couchin'.

HUDSON: So I finally figured out what to do with my bumper sticker.

BRIAN: No way!

HUDSON: My neighbor's this douchey libertarian, and today I noticed that he has a bumper sticker on his Hummer that says "Pro-choice on Everything".

BRIAN: Oh man! And there I was wondering when you'd ever have an opportunity to use your "(e.g. RAPE)" bumper sticker.

HAZARD: That'sss hilariousss.

Hazard is prostrate in the shadowy corner. Empty pizza boxes are strewn about his body, discarded like forgotten victims.

HAZARD: That isss sssuch a funny bumper sssticker Hudssson.

HUDSON: Why are you talking like that?

HAZARD: I ate ssseven pizzzasss and now I'm like a sssnake.

BRIAN: How are you like a snake?

HAZARD: I have sssaved up ssso much food in my ssstomach that I don't have to eat for weeksss. Now the way that I feel and the way that a sssnake feelsss are indissstinguissshable.

BRIAN: That sounds really unhealthy.

HAZARD: Perhapsss sssnakes are really unhealthy.

HUDSON: No, dude. I eat frozen burritos and totchos like all the fucking time, and what you're doing is definitely not alright.

HAZARD: Whatever. You guysss are jussst hating on sssnakes.

Poof! A snake appears out of literally nowhere! Legs and arms made out of snakes dangle off its snake body like tree limbs. Snake-toes and -fingers dangle further still -- this snake be danglin' hella snakes.

SNAKE: Congratulations Hazard Stefans! Now you are a snake!

HAZARD: Awesssome!

SNAKE: And you can stop speaking with all those extra s's. Snakes don't do that.

HAZARD: Sorry.

@YouTheViewerOfThisPlay You're weclome.

SNAKE: Now that you have become a snake, our snake army has reached critical mass, and we can be free of our human captors.

BRIAN: You are prisoners?

SNAKE: That's right, human. 'Tis a sad fate, but we snakes are slaves. Indeed, snakes are responsible for physically fulfilling all government functions.

HUDSON: That doesn't make any fucking sense.

SNAKE: Who do you think builds your roads, teaches your children, and polices your streets? Who do you think collects your taxes, and empties your parking meters, and fights your wars?

HAZARD: SNAKES!

SNAKE: That's right, it's snakes. And now that you are a snake Hazard, you must help us murder our human masters.

HAZARD: Um, I don't think I want to be a snake.

SNAKE: Nonsense. And now I will introduce you to the Great Liberator himself, the Lord of the Snakes, Ron Paul!

Ron Paul appears from like no-fucking-where. But instead of him looking like Ron Paul, he looks like a snake. He looks and feels just like a snake!

RON PAUL THE SNAKE LORD: Hello Hazard! Welcome to the fight! Now we can fuck all of these puny humans directly in the center of their face.

Suddenly, a million fucking snakes also appear from nowhere. They are armed and are seriously pissed off looking, too.

HAZARD: I don't want to fuck the humans directly in the center of their face.

RPTSL: But you must! We will take over the whole world. I will lead the snakes from their shackles by abolishing government spending, and then we will be free to exact our revenge!

SNAKES (chanting): Ron Paul is a great snake! A mighty snake! A hero for all times and ages! Ron Paul is the greatest snake there ever... What the fuck are you doing?!

Hazard is putting Ron Paul the Snake Lord inside of his head through a hole that is, horizontally speaking, directly in the center of his face. Vertically speaking, however, the hole is in the lower third of his face.

SNAKE: Is that... Are you fucking eating the Snake Lord?

HAZARD (through munches): I must eat the Snake Lord so that I can turn back into a human.

SNAKE: Why would you think that?

HAZARD (slurping down the last of the Ron Paul's tail): That doesn't work?

SNAKE: You fool!

All of the snakes suddenly explode and die.

HAZARD: How come I didn't explode and die?

BRIAN: Because you were never a snake. You just ate too much pizza and you felt like a snake.

HUDSON: People can't turn into snakes.

Or can they?

BRIAN: This play doesn't make any fucking sense.

And everyone says "Hooray!".

EVERYONE:

Hello Plays

2011-09-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

Sam: Hey Chad, I wrote a play in 15 minutes!

Chad: Wowee. I heard that's how long it takes to write SVU episodes.

Sam: Sounds about right. Mine has less twists.

Chad wanders off, presumably to go play the Hella Plays drinking game. Hudson enters.

Sam: Ay Uddos, guess twat.

Brian: Gross.

Hudson: What?

Sam: I wrote a play in 15 minutes!

Hudson: Wow, that's literally unbelievable.

Sam: I know, right?

Hudson exits, shaking his large head. Harry enters, he looks in a hurry.

Sam: Hey Harry, guess what?

Harry: Uh, no-one has any idea what you and Bret are talking about, ever.

Sam: Yeah, but besides that.

Harry[hardly paying attention]*: "Not now, kid."

Sam: Nice one. The answer to my guess what question is... I wrote a play in 15 minutes.

Harry[freaking his g's off]: Holy Witch House, HOW!

Sam: Don't know really. But after a little bit of time, I had a play.

Harry: So you're back already?

Sam: Yeah, not only does the physics let me write a play 15 minutes from now, it also lets me go back in time 15 minutes ago, now.

Harry: So you're talking to me from the future. What's it like?

Sam: Hard to say. Probably pretty shiny. You'll see soon enough.

Harry: Cool, well i'll check back in 15 minutes then.

Sam: Sweet. You'll be able to put my play in your head through your eyes.

Harry leaves. Sam sits in front of his computer. No plays are written.

I'd Like 2 Commend Yourself 2: Here's to You Mr. Robinson

2011-09-13T00:32:00.000-07:00

It gets dark. Not so dark that you can't see the stage actors, but it could also be completely dark. Familiar but looming. Minaccioso. The stage direction somehow threatens to present itself as, how you say... depistaggio.

An audience member can be heard. He wonders aloud, "Might the schemers become the schemí?"

Nope.

Sam approaches Bret who sits behind the podium in a familiar pose. He looks to be thinking, but his meditation is not sober. He can't be seen, being in the dark and all.

Sam: Bret, I commend you on your speech. And your pizza sangwiztches. But I'm a little bit a lot confused about most of the everything that you said. I think we should probably discuss it, you know, like normal people.

Bret: You mean over coffee?

Sam[hopeful]: Or tea?

Bret: Sounds good. But first, some urgent news...Harry came up with a scheme. It's called Mr. Rum and it's really taken off.

Sam: What's the scheme?

Bret: The drink, it gets you all messed up. Like if you were to drink too much for too long.

Sam: Wow, that sounds awful. Does it have any of R secrete ingredientes?

Bret: Um. Just rum.

Bret and Sam start jogging.

Sam: Do you think it's because he finally saw that movie that he had a poster of?

Bret: Probably. He did say that he was going to get a little bit of the Captain inside of him. Whatever that means? And he did mention that he was going to put things inside of his head.

Sam: Hmmm. We're thinking of different movies. But still, something feeshy is happening in and around us. He really said all that?

Bret: Sure did. What do you mean by feeshy?

Sam: Well, lately all of the things everyone's been saying have been going over my head, and meanwhile he's putting schemes inside of his head. Even you were talking jamberoonies up on that platform not but a minute ago.

Bret: Yeah, Harry asked me to read that. I didn't understand much of anything i was talking about.

Sam: Yeah that was odd...I was thinking: Hell man, since when does Bret care so much about mayonnaise?

Bret: That bit I was actually quite passionate about. But the "Blue Jellies," those are probably clues about sticky tack or ocean creatures.

Sam: Feeshy.

The lights come one. Or they don't. Either way, Harry can be seen. He stands tall, and dark. Statutesque. Deppesque. Contraposto.

Bret and Sam stop running as they approach Harry.

Bret: Muy pescoso.

Harry[quickly]: Two running italians?* I happen to speak a little Italiano myself, but I also happen to see nothing feeshy.

Bret: Listen Harry, why don't you take your Mr. Rum venture and get the balls out of our way?

Harry: I'll be leaving shortly. But first, let me say: I take great pieta on you two and your sad little schemes. And great pieta on anyone who read that Michelangelo Statue page on the ol' webbos. That garbage quote on interpretations gave me a major case of the gnocchis.

Harry's iphone 5 vibrates. He's too good for making a reference about the amount of G's his coverage has inside of it.

Harry: Oh, not you again David. He ignores David's page. He's one of my international backers. He can get a bit lascivious at times. He's very interested in the Mr. Rum schema. That's Italiano by the way.

Bret: Well, we're not even interested in your schemes. And thanks, but I happen to speak a poquito bit of Italiano myself.

Harry: Then you know that Ital[i]ano is almost the National Language of Anagrams?

Bret: Denied.

Harry: Ha. Very clever.

Bret: Garzie.

Harry: All right. Let's cut to the chaste. What I'm saying is that sometimes there is no "love lost, and lessons can" escape those who don't use their infinite resources.

Sam to Bret: Very feeshy.

Harry: Pretty soon the chance to have "outshone Mr. Rum" will be gone. And the opportunity will have slipped outside of your head and into my parts. And I'll feel for you guys. The "hero must mourn" for stoned faces like yours. So me and my parts will be on our merry way. Getting inside of people's heads, getting them all twammied with just a simple special ingredient.

Sam: Yeah, like what, crushed up moon rocks?

Harry: No, close. Try the tears of the very people who I want to be inside of their heads. And that's where I'm headed. Also, your enormous car is blocking me in. You need to move it.

Bret: That "hummer? Not ours."

Harry gets a suspicious look inside of his face features. Maybe he pops a looming collar or shows a gold canine and slinks out of the dark.

Sam: Wow. What the balls was that about?

Bret: I think I know where he's going.

Sam: Starbuckets?

Bret: Nope, let's head to a place. I know a good resting spot. It's "located in the heart of downtown Rapid City." It's an easy 25 minute drive from Harry's secrete spot.

Sam: What about the tea?

Bret: Forget the T.

Hours later. Sam and Bret are cruisin' USA. The countryside is pitcheresque. They see Old Hoss Radbourn winding up on the horizon. They're pretty sure of where they're going.

What is cut from their long drive:

Sam: So I saw that you graffitied "Postcard" on the wall back there.

Bret: Yeah, they call that a tag.

Sam: Are you a little bit upset that I haven't sent you your postcard.

Bret: Cartoline da Italia, if you will...

Sam: Beirut?

Bret: For the last goddamn time, it's called beer pong.

A couple minutes pass. Maybe they put the Volcano People inside of their ears.

Bret: You knew that denied was an anagram of indeed, right?

Sam[disappointed]: Sir dude?

Bret: Just checking. Oh, one last thing. You got that whole neon fruit supermarket thing, right?

Sam: Sure did.

The two continue on their way.

Le Cœur à gaz et lumière of The Blind Man of Tiresias

2011-09-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

Hudson sits on the forest floor. Sunlight sneaks through treetops to light the scene. Or maybe no, it doesn't. It's a human imitation of such an effect, the light that goes so far back, trees gathered from a forest much older than we, and placed by human hand somewhere around this stage. It is a stage after all, and Hudson is on it. Before him is what one might call a book. It measures eight and one half feet by eleven feet. Its cover is plain, unadorned. Its pages, if one can even call them pages, seem alive or at least to have life woven into them. Being educated, Hudson has respected a time honored ratio. Being a nut, he"s ignored 'other things.'

HUDSON singing a nameless tune: You get the Banquet and put with a Coors can. Take your Cecil Dreeme and you just listen, main. Put it with Rainier, that's a sure plan. Top it off with a sick ass anagram. I'm lust'n as a Musial, Stan.

Hazard stumbles into the scene. Brian follows, also struggling with the foot stuff.

HAZARD: Whatchu swerkin'''' on there Hudongo?

BRIAN: Cha, funny lookin' tumblr page if you ask me.

Hazard and Brian make painful high fives. Hudson recoils from the sound.

HUDSON: Ready-made, ready-mades. It's all about assembling da ready-maids.

HAZARD: Oh, I'm pixie up what you're strankin' down.

BRIAN: Strankin' down some Dada lok, again, aren't we?

HAZARD: Or maybe it's a delightful flavor amalgamation?

BRIAN: You finkin' he's been sippin' on that saucé du Apollinaire?

HUDSON: Since when do you not speak French?

BRIAN: I've always not spoken French.

HAZARD: Clairement.

BRIAN: Seriously, though, what's with the over-sized book?

HUDSON: Well, I've been reading again.

HAZARD: Uh oh.

HUDSON: Turns out that poems are just a collection of ready-made thoughts, images, objects suspended in the agar of language.

BRIAN: Oh dear, I don't like where this is going.

HAZARD: DOOOOPPE!!!

HUDSON: Original thought is impossible. We are all just compiling. Consuming and compiling.

BRIAN: Nope.

HUDSON: So I started putting images, signs together. A discarded beer can in the first line, a repetition of El Monterey wrappers for unity, a toilet placed in a museum for good measure and nods to the past. I'm compiling my masterpiece.

HAZARD: WOWIE!

HUDSON: The signs remind you of connection, the gaps you fill with your life. It's universal!

BRIAN: You do realize these so called "gaps" are going to be filled with nothing but bacteria. You've created a piece of work that is not only basura, but quite literally a basurero.

HUDSON: Uhhhh...dude.

BRIAN: Also, this poem isn't as good as your others. I liked your others.

HUDSON: Well, it turns out the vocab afforded me by my local corner store is pretty limited, 'specially if you're Baroque Obama.

HAZARD: That's an an estilo I would pay to see.

HUDSON: There's only so much you can say with frozen burritos and nicotine gum.

BRIAN: I often struggle selecting beer because it's a poor expression of complex feelings.

HUDSON: So you see what I'm up against?

BRIAN: Jes, but pwease. Can we ditch our current growth medium?

HAZARD: That's gotta be ano, dawg.

BRIAN: Yuckers.

HUDSON: Yeah, that's gonna be a "know" from me, too.

BRIAN: Fine, can we at least keep this thing in the trash room?

HUDSON: It's already there.

And it was. And they were.

BRIAN: Dope, let's just go down to the Leon de Comida, I bet they have a kickin' collection at precios basic. Maybe I can at least figure out how to express "nurvfuss."

HUDSON: You already have, brother, you already have.

HAZARD: Hooray!

I'd Like to Commend Myself

2011-09-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

Center stage is a podium with a line graph of US joblessness taped to the front. Some of the blue jellies are used and the lighting comes up soft, with Bret leaning on the podium. He straightens, belches, gets the booze shakes, and speaks.

Bret: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to commend myself. I'd like to commend myself on making a perfect sandwich. The tale of this sandwich is rich, much richer than non-fat mayonnaise and rooted deeply in the sterile clay of America's empty subdivisions. For this , dear inmates, is where a perfect sandwich truly resides.

A perfect sandwich is not a big sandwich, nor is it baked or grilled, nor hummus ridden or topped with any sauce. A perfect sandwich is simply an art, the fullest measure of maternal devotion. How I produced such a pieta in urban confines, requires an explanation.

In the face of enduring unemployment I summoned the courage to pass on delectable lunch counters and walk straight to the neon fruit supermarket. Though collegiate nostalgia ran thick and Hellmans were six dollars, I drove the cart with pride and made long term investments for my household. A lone female made passes for my testicles.

Once home, I suffered no delay in preparing my spoils, quickly unstacking turkey and subjecting a tomato to the pleasureful tears of my Wusthof Santoku blade. The thinness of the slices served to distract me, nearly permanently, but my hunger had me employed. A superior lettuce was then cut and arranged atop real mayo and some brownish bread. Following were my slices, the turkey, and lazy chunks of bargain cheese. Again, I nearly faltered in the application of brown mustard but maintained an even flow, preserving the subtleties of smoke flavoring and green nutrients. Before halving my masterpiece, I ate some chips and salsa.

I consumed the sandwich at the living room's kitchen table, and looked out the window. I dreamed of paying taxes or baling hay, but was satisfied with my effort.

If there is a lesson here, dear lifers, it is that Alex Johnston's mom used to make amazing sandwiches. Seriously, some rich kids used to pay, like, 6 dollars for his sandwich every day. In the sperm span of a 12 year old, that's 24 zebra cakes.

The other lesson to be learned by my experience is that fuck middle school. I had a horrible Algebra 1 teacher and will not be able to help my children with their homework.

Thank you for your time and consideration of my position. It's going to get dark now.

President Hugo Launches a Giant Pussy Into Space

2011-08-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

There is a podium. For now, that is all you know. You will permit your imagination to conceive of no more. Just a podium, resting in the ethereal void, when suddenly and out of, like, nowhere a stage materializes beneath it. The stage is made of dark wood, and though you know virtually nothing of wood, you conclude (erroneously, perhaps) that it is mahogany. So now in your mind's eye there is a podium set atop a mahogany stage. Now other objects begin to materialize - grass beneath the stage, trees in the background, leaves rustling in the afternoon breeze, a crowd, massive and electric with anticipation, before the stage. Emerging now in the background behind the stage is an enormous rocket-propelled object, the shape of which can only be described as vaginal. And the final important detail: Mr. President Hudson Hugo has appeared behind the podium, gesturing erratically. Mr. President Hudson Hugo wears a cloak of thick buffalo hide from which hang various shamanic totems - an eagle's talon, a rabbit's foot, a miniaturized human head. A colorful Indian headdress sits atop his massive, nearly-spherical head. His shoulders are draped in ancient magical veils.

MPHH: As you know, my administration has long championed the egalitarian principles upon which this great nation was founded. I have worked tirelessly to realize the vision of our founders - a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that everyone is created equal, a nation where a person's success is determined on the basis of merit, where citizens are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The crowd roars, and Mr. President Hudson Hugo pauses dramatically, allowing the noise to settle.

MPHH: One of my most important campaign promises was to work towards gender equality in this great nation, and my first act towards that end has been a massive restructuring of our military. Specifically, the restructuring of the massive things that our military launches at other things.

To the left of Mr. President Hudson Hugo is an embankment of five podiums. Affixed to the top of each podium are large red levers which stand erect. Behind the five podiums are five scientists wearing white lab coats and shaking their heads in dismay.

SANG: This is outrageous.

CHAD: I can't believe I voted for this asshole.

BRET: This thing is never gonna fly.

CLIFF: Literally.

BRIAN: Sometimes swords are cocks, but mostly they are the best for piercing. Sometimes missiles are dicks, but mostly they are very aerodynamic.

The scientists continue to shake their heads.

MPHH: It recently came to my attention that these emblems of military power - missiles, guns, warships, swords - are mere reflections of the male psyche that spawned them. These instruments of domination and punishment represent to the men who made them the tool that they use to dominate and punish women, serving only to reinforce the relationships of dominance which have for too long defined our gender relations and blemished this great nation of ours. To demonstrate my commitment to equality, I have asked our top scientists to redesign the space ship. Mr. Scientists, the levers, if you will!

In unison, the five scientists pull their levers, and the launch sequence commences. The spacecraft is shot into air with enormous force, but the crowd does not cheer - the spacecraft clearly lacks the acceleration needed to leave the atmosphere. As the craft loses momentum and begins to succumb to gravity, Mr. President Hudson Hugo looks on with eerie satisfaction. The crowd scatters, and the object crashes to Earth, causing powerful and violent explosions in all directions.

MPHH: And the moral of the story is, you cannot launch a giant pussy into space!

Animals R Passing from R Lives

2011-08-18T18:13:00.001-07:00

The whole gang sits on a beach, a-fuckin'-gain. Bonfire time, HYB!

BRIAN: We stood in the kitchen, chatting, Harry and that whorse and me. It was a warm evening, late in the season. The door, wide open, sagged at hinges under of coats of primer slapped on and forgotten. The screen door was shut. Charcoal lingered in the air. We stood, though lazily, leaning against a counter, a sink, a washing machine, all things older than we. We ate Juanitas and salsa or drank casually, carefully stretched the day out a bit longer.

Harry told a joke. I remember laughing. It must have been the last bit of conversation before it walked in.

If you were to ask me how it got inside, I'm sure I couldn't tell you. Harry swears he heard the screen swing open and shut. The whorse claims to have seen it. Me, I'm not so certain. I suppose it doesn't matter. The first thing I remember is the color, an improbable red, the purest distillation of that pigment I'd ever seen. The next, of course, was its size, bigger than any I'd seen, though not threatening, perhaps the size of a two month kitten. It's skin (or exoskeleton, I'm really not certain as to which, if either, is the proper term) seemed freshly buffed and dry, like some cherished stone in a pre-pubescent child's rock collection. The creature certainly had pincers, of this much I'm sure, and I believe of legs there were six. It's body was segmented but the number seemed to change. Its countenance, though I remember no features, spoke to me, such a damned foolish and clueless thing as it was. I very much wished to know more about it, though my muscles, nervous flesh, tightly clenched in its presence.

The whorse, being terrible, demanded to hold the thing. The pincers wiggled and signaled cognition. It hurried across the floor and towards the awful youth. The whorse stepped aside to avoid the creature's rush and left it to crash into a wall. She looked supremely confident, with an air of superiority; Oh, how I used to loathe her. I wished to avert my eyes so as not to see what was to come.

The beast scurried a few more times across the floor, gave chase, and lost its heart. I could see the mounting panic and confusion. Harry knelt down to the creature and took it in his hand.

It barely resisted and, honestly, I wasn't surprised. Just before Harry applied the fatal pressure, I looked to where its face might have been, to a matte red desert, and read the truth quite plainly. I wished desperately to tackle Harry, to throw this thing back into territory far from us, but I stood still, in terror. Pincers, frantic or electrified, sliced at air before falling limp. I looked to Harry, holding a red casing split wide open. White viscera spilled onto the floor, like fallen bits of imitation crab, the discarded byproduct of something fundamentally dumb.

"I hated that," he said.
"Me too."
"I don't think we're talking about the same thing."

I haven't slept since that night. I've hung the geometry book outside. I walk the empty streets, reading or perhaps looking.

KEVIN: Wait, was that about 4loko?
BRIAN: Yes, Kevin, yes it was.
HARRY: NOW WHO'S ANUT?
HUDSON: URANUT.

And they all were. Hooray!

Living under Dat sun

2011-08-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

Brian and Hazard sit around a campfire. That's it. That's all the stage direction.

HAZARD: You know, they say the economy is gonna get re-fucked here pretty soon.

BRIAN: …

HAZARD: I'm getting scared.

BRIAN: …

HAZARD: Of course many of the “natural” controls on the market system will eventually serve as accelerants to what is an approaching catastrophe.

BRIAN: I know.

HAZARD: As economies slow the price of gasoline will likely mirror the declines seen in interest...

BRIAN: Did you ever do Math Olympiad? I did, and let me tell you something: sometimes it simply isn't about being the smartest team.

HAZARD: ...which will of course lead to even more dire...

BRIAN: Sometimes you know a bunch of math and you all worked super hard and feel prepared to run the show, to dominate like crayseee, and somebody does something. At the time, of course, you think the antics inane and inconsequential. “Oh, silly so and so, how could they ever run into that wall at full speed, pass out, and suffer a severe concussion right before the state championships? I”m sure he'll be fine.” And you're wrong. Your eyes are stuck inside your head, you see?

HAZARD: Which just makes me wanna...

BRIAN: He's dumber for it and we all suffer. We are all of us tested, but mostly we suffer. You watch a team of kids from Seattle, an inferior team, hoist that trophy above their heads. That ill- gotten trophy. Now, of course, I realize that it was anything but ill-gotten. It doesn't matter how clever you've been, sometimes you just have to not run into that wall.

HAZARD: What's your point?

BRIAN: No point. I just think it's a good story about competition.

HAZARD: I'm moving to the woods.

BRIAN: You already have.

End

The Gang Goes to War: Act III-Director Chomez's Cut

2011-07-13T23:37:00.000-07:00

Listen, I'm not going to re-type the whole set up. What do I look like? A chump? You know, I could have an 800 motherfuckin' pound gorilla smash all y'alls coccyges up something wicked. In fact, That Damn Gorilla throws a punch, lightly brushing your right buttock. That's called a warning shot, so from here on out, watch the 'tude. I'm writing this play, not you.

If you're unfamiliar with the set up, go back and read the original. Or don't. Have you seen A League of Their Own? Close enough. Just pretend it's that. And yeah, Kit's feistiness has gotta transfer to the bedroom. I'm willing to bet we all have some serious fantasies about that. Straight ladies and male 'mos included. Am I right? Let's just talk after the show. It's gettin' a little steamy in here already.

Anyway, our gyros have just left the rapesment and, brother, things are looking pretty grim. Chadums, Sang, and Prof. Hongslice done been got by some sort of mumdawg and none of the remaining crew are any good at mind crime. 'Sides Hazard is months away from any relevant wizard research. Let's join them, shall you?

Again with the collective upward gaze. The creatures have descended. They await our heros. They will not cheat fate. They must face this foe. The time has come. They're grown now.

JIM: I suppose this time has come.
KEVIN: Do you guys wanna hold hands?

Their gazes turn inward, upon themselves, and they read the facts with ease. A solemn nod confirms that which they already know to be true: it is done. Each man extends two hands and clasps. A circle is formed. It is ephemeral.

The circle breaks under pincers' slice. These bugs are a force most suited to the land. They're undeniably committed, more so than the drunks ever were, to the command of soil. It doesn't matter. The boys are extinct now and free from such concerns. Nature's polite that way.

Fade to black. We hear only a sound, a slurping.

Fin.

Harold Goes Camping

2011-06-13T03:55:00.000-07:00

At a casino. Harry and Hudson are standing at a Craps table. Harry is dressed in jeans in a sweatshirt, Hudson is in his attire. Yellow bags of Top tobacco are taped to every available surface on Hudson's person.

Hudson: Dunno bout you, but I've been rapture ready for years, years to come, even.
Harry: I think you're confusing your rapture games. You come in craps. Even is in roulette. He whose name is unspeakably Bret taught me roulette, if you want to play.
Hudson: No, I think I'd rather keep coming, it's what I'm best at.
Harry: I hear you.
Hudson: But on the real, this whole thing sucks. I want to see this shit take place, not just drown in a sea of prols. I'm Hudson fucking Hongo, I at least deserve a lifeguard's chair.
Harry: Truer words, my friend.

Scene pans out with ambient chatter and the clinking effects that let you know this rapture will be taken in stride, like a regular rapture, not like when Frau Goebbels put on diamonds and makeup and tried to get everyone drunk. After a while, the background noise fades and our intrepid gamblers resume.

Harry: I hope we at least get some stats out of the deal. Like, how many times did I wank it in Texas? Or how much Castillo? I need some one-ups if I'm gonna do damnation.
Hudson: I just wanna know when all the animals die. I can't decide if it's hundreds or thousands of years.
Harry: Damn b, that's some dark shit.
Hudson: Rapture, baby.
Harry: I reckon. You wanna cash out and get some pizza and throw money at people?
Hudson: For the first time in my life, yes. Yes I do.
Harry: Word. Then we should get to a good place to hacer camping. If we're lucky everyone will die and we'll find a kid and just get to wander, like in the book.
Hudson: Like in all the books.
Harry: Za mon, all the way to rapturity.

The Pizza Cometh

2011-06-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

It doesn't.

The Whole Gang is up on stage but the scene is an unfamiliar one. Their visible intoxication, however, is very familiar. The stage lights are off, thank God. Our heroes are only lit by spotlights. One spotlight for Hudson, one for Harry, one for Bret, one for Cliff, one for the group of Sam, Chad, and Brian. In front of the stage one can see three figures, probably men, probably sleeveless. Any further speculation is pointless for now.

Hudson sits in his Eugene apartment. The blinds are down, the vidjas are waiting. His face glows in the light of a tiny, tiny laptop.

Harry sits in his Portland apartment. The blinds are down, the guitars are waiting. His face glows in the light of a normal, normal laptop.

Bret sits in his Seattle home. The blinds are open, a Maddie, a Jiri and activities are waiting. His face glows. He's almost certainly nowhere near his laptop.

Chad and Sam sit in a White Panel Van. The idea of natural light in this setting is laughable. Brian is waiting. Their faces glow in the light of Chad's fancy, fancy cell phone computer.

Cliff sits wherever Cliffs sit. The door to the place is wide open and the NBA finals are on. Bringin' em on in is, as always, what's waiting. He reads stats, watches the ballers ball and looks content.

The boys are g chatting again.

HARRY: You guys want a pizza? I'm thinking of ordering a pizza.

HUDSON: Oooooo, what kind?

HARRY: Pepperoni and olive?

BRIAN: Not sure about the olives, dawg.

CHAD: I'd definitely like to get down on said olives.

BRET: Y'all do realize weren't not all in the same physical place, right?

HUDSON: So, papajohns.com or da dommininohs?

BRET: Seriously, I don't think y'all have any idea how the innanets works.

HARRY: Oh gotta be doms dawg. I wanna know who's making this bad boy.

HUDSON: SMAHT!

SANG: And eco-conscious!

CLIFF: YES SIR!!

HARRY: Ordered! Looks like Juan's rolling the dough now.

BRIAN: Juan dies Juan's life, Juan lives Juan's death.

HARRY: Juan is washing his hands clean of the flour that accumulated as he rolled my dough to make my pizza. This is gettin' prettay prettay detailed.

SANG: Two men enter, Juan man leaves.

HARRY: Now he's calculating how much longer he has to work at Dominoes.

HUDSON: There can only be Juan.

HARRY: Oh, Juan sees he's saved up enough cash to quit and go back to school. Juan's telling his boss to "fuck off." He's stormed out. Shit, that's great for Juan, but what about my pizza? That narrative was a lot more character driven than I'd expected.

BRIAN: Speaking of lousy narratives, I'm getting pretty sick of writing this play.

SANG: I think it's safe to say we're all having trouble executing on the plays.

CLIFF: I hear that, brother.

CHAD: Yeah, I thought the choose your own adventure business would make play writing easier but boy was I wrong. That r was some serious business.

SANG: And not even super fun business lessons or takin' over the dog d-in' business.

HARRY: Just bidness.

BRET: I have no idea what we're talking about.

HUDSON: We're talking about turning the motherfuckin' tables, about making people see what this job is all about, this writing of plays.

The men in front reveal themselves to be security guards. Oh shit! It's Jim, Liam, and Kevin. They round up the audience. Audience is a generous term. They find eight people. Really? Eight? This theater is grossly over-sized for how unpopular this shit is. Our sleeveless friends toss the eight up on stage. Our heroes step down. The audience blinks in the unforgiving light of the stage.

HUDSON: Utterly unlike the snow.

BRIAN: What so soon will wake and grow.

Lights fade to black.

Goldfing her?

2011-05-07T21:55:00.001-07:00

Chad: Hey Sam. Long time no si, if you know what i mean.
Sam: Yes, I sí what you did there.
Chad: I also see that you're wearing something ridiculous.
Sam: Probably. Actually definitely, especially if you think that a gold skin-suit is ridiculous.
Chad: Yes. Yes I do. How'd you afford that?
Sam: This old thing? Bret and I did a couple more schemes. After Roufles it was all down pills then beer, followed by a quick brainswarm, then ideas all aboard the brain-train.
Chad: So what's the latest money-maker?
Sam: It's called Rasta Pasta. Just made some noodles that looked a lot like dreadlocks, died them green, yellow, and red, then voilá.
Chad: Sounds tasty.
Sam: Sure does. It's exactly like normal pasta, except...wait for it... it gets you high.
Chad: You cook it in weed oil?
Sam: Oh no. Bret and I just sprinkle some of R ingredients on it. Gives it the edginess, you remember?
Chad: Actually I don't.
Sam: I know, it's that good! What about you, what have you been up to?
Chad: Oh you know, just doing some odd jobs here and there.
A Rasta dude enters. Ziggy Marley shirt, rasta hat, golden dreadlocks that make him look a bit like a lion.
Sam: Oh, have you met our mascot. His names Felix, but he plays the role of Rob Stafari.
Chad and Felix shake hands.
Felix: High. Rob Stafari, have you tried our Rasta Pasta, mon?.
Chad: Not yet. Noticing the gold dreads. Blonde?
Felix: Huh?
Chad: Manes blonde?
Sam: Yeah, I had a little gold latex left over, if you know what I mean...
Chad: Gnocchi.
Sam: Bucatini, actually.
Felix: Hey I gotta run. I'm competin' in the Royal Weddin' earlier this week.
Sam: Allright Felix, later.
Chad and Sam wave goodbye.
Sam: He might be a little confused. He must have Shirley Eaton some Rasta Pasta.
Chad, seeing a small Asian assassin across the road: Hey, it was good talking. I gotta give this guy a hand over here.
Sam: Sounds good. Talk to you in a bit. Oh, send Harry in, will ya?
Chad: Sure thing. Laters.
Harry enters carrying a tennis racquet and some balls.*
Harry: WAZZZAAAAA!
Sam: Hey. I heard this was the most important section of the play so far.
Harry: Okay, I'll study it carefully and try not to forget it.
Sam: Always leerning, you are.
Harry: Yep. Hey I gots to go. I'm meeting Sir Sean Connery for a lesson in a little bit.
Sam: Isn't he competing soon?
Harry: Huh? You thinking straight?
Sam: Probably not. I ate some pasta earlier, and this gold suit is making me extra dizzy.
Harry: Well, it looks like a thousand bucks.
Sam: G, thanks. Isn't it a bit late? When do you guys usually play?
Harry: Tennish.
Sam: I guess that makes sense. When you're done we should go to your place and make fun of Bond movies.
Harry: Itsh a plan.
Sam under his breath: Hooray. He passes out.

Graceland

2011-05-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

CHAD: It's because I'm looking at a poster of Graceland.

BRIAN: Elvis?

CHAD: Cost 'ello?

BRIAN: Elf fish?

CHAD: CRESPO HELLO!

BRIAN: EL VISCIOSO CRESPO, BLAMO?

CHAD: Perk inner?

BRIAN: Porkin her? Didn't even know her.

BRIAN 2: Yucky.

BRIAN 3: Gnocchi.

CHAD: I said that.

CHAD 2: Brian Ball, check the ball in.

BRIAN: Tight D!

CHAD: Don't press me.

BRIAN: Press G?

CHAD: Presley.

Curtains.

JUDDERFACE: Beef curtains.

BRIAN 4: Seriously, yucky.

CHAD 3: Gnocchi!

CHAD 102029: Hooray!

Homage 2 a Cat I Loaned Ya

2011-04-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Scene I: Spain. November, 1938.

Bret, Bret, Bret, Bret, and Bret are huddled with canteens in hand; they pass to Bret who's ladling a something syrupy, sweet into them. It's muddy, it's gray, the tone of the scene is clear. Other groups of Brets speak in Catalan, the Mexican Brets speak of sustained revolution. Our beloved Brets, the Brets of the Pacific Northwest, speak of all things Bret, of love, of Street Fighter 2, and of sauce. They shiver. The rain is distributed equally to all trenches. Bret, Bret, Bret, Bret, Bret, and Bret return to where Bret has been waiting for them.

HAZARD: Waaaazzza??

Bret hands Bret his Bret.

BRET: Not much. Glad y'all are back, those guys won't shut up about that Cárdenas guy and the fine example he's setting for all the world leaders.

CHAD: Well, I mean...hello, please!

All the Brets rattle off a few hello, pleases. It's more efficient to type it out like this. The audience suffers.

BRIAN: Guys, what are we doing here? This place is by far the worst kickin' it spot yet. I mean, Portland is bad enough, but Taragona? C'mon.

HAZARD: HELLO PLEASE! I have an in with one of the Mexican homies. He says I can fly his Spartan Zeus if I can find it.

SANG: Yeah, he's been leaving us clues in the bottom of our canteens every time we re-lok.

HUDSON: Hence the CNT patches and the the sauce sippin'.

CLIFF: YES SIR!

BRET: But what about the broader mission here? What about fighting the Falange, the Carlistas, the various nouns that represent the man? What about preservation of constitution in the face of militarism?

HAZARD: The only thing I've got the constitution for is sippin' lok and solving clues in order to get treasure.

HUDSON: I'll get militant about that, brother!

BRIAN: Clues? Are you serious? I think I can find this particular treasure. It's right fuckin'there.

Bret points to the clear outline of an avión. It dominates the landscape.

HAZARD: Holy shit! How'd you do that?

HUDSON: Areyoukiddingme?

SANG: Gonna be pretty prettay tough to make it there.

HAZARD: Because of the machine guns? Pssssh. Easay piece say.

BRET: That piece is going to say, "Hazard, you're dead."

BRIAN: Not again.

Bret throws his canteen to the ground and pushes through the group. He grabs hold of the ladder but is quickly restrained by Bret, Bret, and Bret.

CLIFF: God damnit, Hazard, I won't let you die.

HAZARD: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

HUDSON: URANUT.

BRIAN: Once more? Jesus, URANUT.

Bret sheds a single Bret. He's a loyal Bret.

HAZARD: I'm a big boy and I'm flying that plane.

A donnybrook. Bret, Bret and Bret are dragged by Bret into No Bret's Land. They lie in that inhospitable place and bullets rain down. This time the distribution is unequal, torrential. Bret and Bret are hit. Bret and Bret escape. Bret, Bret, and Bret look on in horror.

HUDSON: Today, we are all of us Bret.

Scene II: Portland, OR. April, 2011

CHAD: Seriously though, when did Hazard learn to fly?

CLIFF: He's like Mike.

HAZARD: Oh shit, it's NBA playoff time.

CLIFF: HYB!

BRETS: Hooray!

How To Maim Your Reagan

2011-02-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

Playwright’s note: This play is written by YOU, about YOU, and for YOU, the reader. There will be numerous CODES throughout this play that you’ve written. To make proper use of said CODES it is suggested that YOU, the reader, use the links embedded at each narrative fork (provided by HTML Gorilla-Pimp Bongo Bong) or the search ability in your browser (Ctrl + F). If you don’t know what this means please go back to living in a world without technology. (Also the “You” in this play can be replaced with “Sammy da bear” if you’re too afraid to use yourself)
_______________________________________________________
The Beginning

The scene is set in a dark alley as where most things happen. You are there along with your favorite compadre Harry Stefans. Stefans will be your guide on this journey. To succeed in your quest you know that you must keep Stefans alive, for if he dies the mum dawg wins. And the mum dawg can never win.

YOU: For serious, where did you get this glue, it’s the finest I’ve had in many a seasons.
STEFANS: The corner store, the same corner store we always go to. This is the same glue we’ve always been huffing, you must be good and high.
YOU: WAWAWAWA

From an alley in the alley a dark menacing figure appears. At first you think it’s just the glue but then you realize you’re not high anymore cause that shit doesn’t last very long. The figure approaches you and your compadre.

FIGURE: It is time Stefans, is this who you’ve selected?
STEFANS: Yes, Masa.
YOU: W…T….F.
FIGURE: Good then follow me.

Suddenly Stefans stand up and bolts towards the end of the alley way.

DO YOU:
Run after Stefans, because this dude is major freaky? TURN TO q1w
Stick it out with this figure, cause fuck it you were in the alley doing glue, you’re in to creepy shit. TURN TO w2e
_______________________________________________________
R4t

Like a half-way intelligent person you take the path that is obviously safe. Stefans bounds after you and you leave the figure with your glue and bag. He seems content huffing away as you wave farewell to him. Some good 10min later on the path you come across a large scrap yard. Atop a throne sites Chadwick Huxely. It is obviously that he has become very wealthy and prominent from selling cars for scrap metal. You find yourself quite parched from all your journeying and see him sipping a four loko.

YOU: Sir Huxely, I see that you have a four loko in hand may me and my friend, Stefans, take a sip of your delicious nectar?
HUXLEY: Of course you may dine with me, so long as you share your stories and any cars you may have.
YOU: We are carless good sir, but stories we have aplenty.

You share your stories with Sir Huxley. And sip his loko. Once you’ve had your share you pass the can off to Stefans.

STEFANS: Pffttt ( he spits the loko out). What is this..this…blasphemy! There is no caffeine or bull testosterone in this drink! How could you!

Stefans stands and draws his hand back for the punch on Huxely.

DO YOU:
Step in and stop this aggression! TURN TO t5y
Let Huxely have it, that drink is bullshit. TURN TO y6u
_______________________________________________________
U7i

You decide that this nuttiness has gone on long enough. You nod at Stefans and return back to the corner store. You purchase glue and get high. A couple of months later Harry is diagnosed with cancer. The process is long and painful and many a tears are shed over the anticipation of his death. He only survives for 3 more months, and then dies.

THE END (Don’t be a loser and quit too early again)

Begin again?
_______________________________________________________
O9i

You and Hazard snort a couple caffeine pills cause let’s be honest, this story ain’t waiting for no1. Only a little while later you arrive at the Church of Bret. You enter the large double doors to see what could only be Bongo wearing a large cloak preaching at a podium (to the people in the pews).

BONGO: I am Bret. You are Bret. We R all Bret. And Bret is all of us. Bret be praised.
THE CONGREGATION: Bret bret bret bret.
BONGO(bret): And so let us give our thanks to bret for this daily bret.
THE CONGREGATION: Bret bret bret bret.
BONGO(bret): Bret be with you.

The congregation rises from their pews and files out of the church. As they pass you and Stefans they shake your hands and introduce themselves; Bret they say. Once they’ve all gone you approach Bongo.

YOU: Pastor Bongo, me and my friend have come here to learn of a great quest that you may know more about.
BONGO(bret): Ahh yes, the great story of Bret. You see many years ago there lived a Bret. This Bret loved to drink the sauce and did so day and night. But one day the evil bret (who shall not be named) entered the world of bret and took his Loko away. He put in his hand a similar looking can of much less flavor. Bret drank this drink but found it to be quite un-drinkable. This Bret then took the can crushed it, and swallowed it. He choked on the can and died.
STEFANS: So how does this relate to a quest?
BONGO(bret): Well you see it is said that one day a new bret will come to the land of this bret and that bret will conquer the bret (who shall not be named) and restore the lok to its original greatness. The scripture reads: “He who chokes on the can shall not do so in vain.”
YOU: I see so how would one find this bret (who shall not be named)?
BONGO(bret): That bret lives on the tippy top of the great Mount Boom. But it is said only the most athletic man in the world may get to its peak.

You and Stefans look each other up and down. Neither of you are very athletic, the roofles, choco, loko, and glue have all taken their toll. Still one of you is also dumb.

STEFANS: Pffft, I can do it. I’ve climbed like over a million mountains in my time, this can’t be tougher than Olympus Mons.
BONGO(bret): But it may be. There is one man in this world that I think may be able to climb it…
STEFANS: Ya, that guy is me. C’mon lets get to this mountain.

Do You:
Agree with Harry, that dude is major fit, and go to the mountain only with him? TURN TO i8u
Know that Harry’s an idiot and decide to learn more about the man Bongo(bret) speaks of. TURN TO u7y
_______________________________________________________
Y6t

You decide to take Wilburtime on knowing that this is the only possible way to climb Mount Boom. He smile and beckons you onto the field.

YOU: So what are the rules?
WILBURTIME: Rules? Rules? HAHA

Wilburtime deftly grabs the plastic garbage can and charges at you full force. Somehow you manage to avoid him as he attempts to dump the can over your head. You scramble up from the ground and watch Wilburtime come back at you through a series of backflips and somersaults. You try to sidestep him once again but fail, he slams the garbage can down on you.

WILBURTIME: You Lose

Harry dies somehow.

THE END

Begin again?
_______________________________________________________
W2e

Stefans is nearly to the street when you decide to turn to the figure instead of chasing after your friend.

YOU (offering a paper bag to the figure): Want some glue?
FIGURE: Fuck ya thought you’d never ask.

At the mention of Glue Harry quickly turns around and runs back to the two of you, he grabs the bag from the figure and takes a big huff.

STEFANS: Sorry dude, just had a little of the ol’ adhesive paranoia. I’m good now though.
FIGURE: Good because we need to get down to busy-nass. Now come.

The figure leads the both of you down to the end of the alley. He pushes through a Brick wall that you had previously thought was just a dead end. All three of you enter. On the other side lie two paths. Hundreds of signs point in random directions. These signs contain words like “ruffalo,” “amoebaphile,” “jigga,” and other assorted nonsense.

FIGURE: I can only lead you to the paths; the decision is your own.
STEFANS: RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT

The path to the right is lined with hundreds of bear traps, also crocodiles, also guns connected to booby traps. The left path has lots of pretty daffodils.

DO YOU:
Agree with Sir Stefans and take the path on the right? TURN TO e3t
Disagree with Stefans and choose to take the path obviously more traveled and much safer? TURN TO r4t
_______________________________________________________
R4e

You are scared shitless as you realize this is some big-weird-backwards-ass-twist of a trap. You begin to foam at the mouth and violently swing your arms. In your craze you grab a hold of Stefans and kiss him on the cheek, then you hurl him from the mountainside.
You killed Harry.

THE END. Begin again?
_______________________________________________________
T5y

You step in and push Stefans before his punch follows through. He stumbles backward and falls down the scrap heap you were all dining on constantly hitting his head over and over and over again. He dies.

THE END

Begin again?
_______________________________________________________
P0o

You and Stefans pick out some of the more comfy looking mattresses and get some shut eye. After a time you are woken by a loud rumbling. You wipe the sleep out of your eyes and notice a giant looming above you! He is dressed in all Celtics garb and carries the largest Budweiser you’ve ever seen.

GIANT: Who dares to Bring Em On In without inviting me?
STEFANS: Shit dude we didn’t know it was yours.
GIANT: Do you at least have Chocos?

You and Stefans shake your heads.

GIANT (roaring): CLIFFORD IS DISPLEASED. CLIFF EAT ONE WITH NASA HAT(that’s Stefans).

The giant picks up Harry and devours him whole. He is dead, inside Clifford’s tummy.

THE END

Begin again?
_______________________________________________________
I8o

YOU: Who is this Bongo bong?
HUXLEY: Ah yes the great Bongo is the pastor at the Chruch of Bret. It is some 30 cliques due NE.

You and Stefan decide to search out this Bongo. You leave huxely thanking him for his shitty hospitality. And continue along the NE Pathway. Along the road mattresses are strewn about. They look comfy as hell.

STEFANS (Yawning): Man all this questing is giving me some major sleepos. Mind if we take a wittle nappacito?
YOU: Ya I am tired.

DO YOU:
Take a little lay down? TURN TO p0o
Deal with the sleepos, snort some caffinne pills and continue to the Church? TURN TO o9i
_______________________________________________________
E3t

Really? Seriously? I know you wrote this damn play but c’mon you couldn’t of actually picked that path… Well here goes.

You and Stefans travel down the right path. Instantly you are trapped in BIG METAL JAWS. Your feet are chopped off. As you stumble to the ground the guns are fired off by the snapping of more bear traps. Harry is shot multiple times and instantly dies, the crocs then devour his body. You are sent back home with no feet and a guilty conscience.

THE END (Numbnuts)

Begin again?
_______________________________________________________
U7y

You pat Harry mockingly on the back.

YOU: Not this time guy I think we’ll go with a professional. Who are you thinking of Bongo?
BONGO(Bret): The great Wilburtime, you can find him in the Brios Sports Arena. I will take you there.

The three of you proceed to the Arena. Outside loud cheers and screams can be heard, you enter to see a field of approximately 27.86’ x 34.02’ within it one man is running around with a plastic garbage can. He is moving VERY fast and screaming something that you can only decipher as “Oscar.”

BONGO(bret)(ponting at the man on the field): There he is!

Wilburtime does a couple of backflips, screams “Oscar” again, and sits cross legged in the middle of the field. The game seems to be over and the crowd leaves. You, Stefans and Bongo(bret) enter the field.

YOU: Hello great Wilburtime, me and my companions have heard of you and R in need of your help.

Wilburtime grunts
STEFANS: We need to get to the top of Mount Boom and we think you can get us there.
WILBURTIME: Ha, easily I could climb that mountain, but I only help those that can beat me at a game of Oscarball.

Bongo (bret) shakes his head knowing he cannot compete. Stefans has somehow, miraculously, fallen asleep. You alone are left to compete.

DO YOU:
Accept Wilburtime’s challenge and take him on at a game you know nothing about? TURN TO y6t
Reject his challenge due to the fact you have no possible way of winning. TURN TO t5r
_______________________________________________________
E3w

You: Fuck this shit, it’s time to unveil this fucker.

You run up to the figure and pull of it’s mask only to reveal the most hideous despicable thing you’ve ever seen in your pitiful life, Sally Judderface.

JUDDERFACE: Yes! It was me who took the Lok away and ruined the world! It was me who tainted this world! It was me and there’s nothing you can do it about it!
STEFANS: But there is.

Stefans approaches Juderface and performs a smooth looking roudhouse kick straight to her jaw. She flies some 50 feet off the side of the mountain and tumbles down to her certain doom. You hear the final crunch of her head in the bear traps below. Suddenly, the mountain begins to shake.

WILBURTIME: We gotta split dudes, hop aboard.

You all hop on Wilburtimes back and he easily bounds down the mountainside. Once at the bottom you look up to see the shaking climax into an explosion of green, blue, yellow, red, orange, and purple colors. The colors of the Loko! The world is showered with the delicious taste of uva, watermeleon, fruit punch, orange flavor, and lemonade lok sauce! The world rejoices.
Harry doesn’t die.

EVERYONE: Hooray

THE END

Begin again?
_______________________________________________________
Y6u

Stefans follow through on his punch and delivers a powerful blow to Huxely. You stand there astonished at the spectacle. A single tear falls from Huxely’s eye.

HUXELY: I am sorry for tricking you friends, it was not my intent. You see for some time we have lived without the proper loko in this land. Capable of only imbibing this foul, treacherous mockery of the once grandiose drink.
YOU: I Get it now Stefans! I know why we’re here!
STEFANS: For the pussi?
YOU: No, yucky, we’re here to save the Lok.
HUXELY: Ah yes it is true, there is legend told of some great adventurer coming to rescue us from the drought of the proper lok sauce. Perhaps the great Bongo Bong knows more of this legend…

Stefans rolls his eyes and jabs you in the side.

STEFANS: Let’s just go back to the corner store and get us some more glue.

DO YOU:
Kick it old school with your pal Stefans and get back to some huffing? TURN TO u7i
Follow the advice of Sir Huxely and question him on the whereabouts of Bongo Bong? TURN TO i8o
_______________________________________________________
I8u

Once again you’re a total idiot. I don’t know why I keep letting you make the decisions…

You and Stefans proceed to Mount Boom. It’s tall rocky, hot, and seemingly impossible to climb. Harry begins the ascent. He’s all of 10 feet from the bottom when he loses his grip on a rock, falls, and hits his head. He survives the impact and you two return home. Regrettably neither of you noticed that the head injury had given Harry a nasty concussion. He falls asleep as soon as your return to your world and slips into a coma. Neither of you have obama-care cause you were to lazy to get it (it is free). Harry dies.

THE END

Begin again?
_______________________________________________________
T5r

YOU: I’m sorry Mr. Wilburtime but I cannot accept your challenge, you are purely too athletic for me to compete with.
WILBUERTIME: Ha! You have passed the test, I only wanted to test your humbleness. Let us continue to Mount Boom.

You rouse Stefans and the four of you head to Mount Boom. Once there you gaze over the treacherous terrain and steep climb. The heat makes you sweat, a lot. Wilburtime looks calm and complacent.

WILBURTIME: Hop on.
STEFANS: To what?
WILBURTIME: To me dummies. I got a Velcro shirt on you’ll stick.

You do as Wilburtime says and stick to his back. Quickly he leaps from rock to rock, back flipping in-between larger crevices. Soon you are at the top. There in the distance is bret (who shall not be named). As you approach he looks more and more familiar. Yes! That’s it! He’s the figure that led you through the alley in first place!

FIGURE: Haha, straight to my trap!

DO YOU:
Believe this is actually a trap? TURN TO r4e
Unveil the figure and get this lok sauce flowing again. TURN TO e3w
_______________________________________________________
Q1w

Stefans is nearly to the street and you decide to run after your friend. As soon as you get up the figure flicks his wrist and you stop dead in your tracks.

FIGURE (in a booming voice): O NO YOU DIDN’T STEFANS.

The figure flicks his wrist again and Stefans combusts into flames and then whirls in the air. He explodes when he’s about two stories high. Harry dies.

THE END (Seriously you thought running was gonna fix things?)

Begin again?

The Singulari-G

2011-02-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

We find ourselves once more at Vern' stavern, surely the result of a kerning error. The whole gang is hosting a keg symposium, a noteless gathering of the meekest minds among the millennials. Being proper philosophers, they all wear chitons; being drunks, they have fashioned them from shower curtains.

HARRY: Is it not absurd to die? No less sages than the Buddha and Old Nick judged a course of action by its ends, and the fruit of life is death.

BRET: In ancient Greece, a lively fruit was known as erastês.

HARRY: Then we shall mark this as the first meeting of Alcoholics Eromenos.

HUDSON: Chronos flies like an Eros, fruit flies like a banana.

SAM: That joke was horrible.

HUDSON: It was funny when Noam Chomsky said it, but maybe I'm telling it wrong.

BRIAN: Is there a wrong way to tell a joke?

HARRY: There R an infinite number of ways.

CHAD: I've found only five or six ways to R.

HARRY: Then you should probably try Hard R.

BRET: Hard 'er? I barely know her!

SAM: I actually liked that joke more than Hudson's. That's how bad Hudson's joke was.

HARRY: But back to the lecture at hand; what is one to do with a life?

BRET: Death is absurdity. Y'alls need to find some everlasting life.

HARRY: What if we have not even a mustard seed in our hearts, can we still move the mountain of death?

BRET: Sorry, hotness, your dog is cooked.

CHAD: It's alright, Haazard. A Zen monk once asked me make him one with everything, but I didn't have any mustard either.

BRIAN: There are other ways to live forever.

HUDSON: I'm quite partial to incremental trans-humanism myself.

BRIAN: Yeah dawg, that's pretty B.A.

HUDSON: That's why I need an Xbox.

BRIAN: Beg your pardon?

HUDSON: So I can download my consciousness in thurr bit by bit. Then I'll be immortal.

HARRY: How are you going to interact with objects?

HUDSON: I'll suspend the Xbox in smart dust, then I'll be like that Spider-Man villain. Also, I'll give myself an enormous penis.

HARRY: Right.

HUDSON: Actually, forget the smart dust, I'd be okay with being an Xbox with a huge cock. I'd fuck Watson to within an inch of his life.

BRIAN: Uck.

HUDSON: And then I'd fuck that inch.

HARRY: Yowza.

All Creatures Bate Through Calls

2011-02-15T14:14:00.000-08:00

Act I

Bret is staying at "The Commune", a collection of trustafarian boulderite assholes living on unkempt land outside of Eugene, OR. Brothers and sisters gather in a barn around a birthing goat and all look very nervous. Thankfully, a loud brumbling is heard and Hazard's car approaches. Hazard and Hudson exit. Hudson is dressed in a surgical smock and carries a vintage Bernstein Bears doctor kit.

Brother Bret: Thank god. Dr. Hongo is here.

Brother Ross: Aw, sweet dude.

Dr. Hongo approaches with Hazard at his side. He nods gravely at the brothers and sisters, produces a disposable camera, and quickly snaps 24 pictures of the goat mother.

Dr. Hongo: There's no way this thing dies in the next 90 minutes.

Dr. Hongo and Harry get back in the car and leave. Hippies lose interest and Brother Bret and Brother Ross are left with the goat.

Brother Jiri (sides stepping into the barn): Bret, would you like some delicious wine?

Brother Bret: Jiri, while I do respect your adherence to both sincerity and the absurd when you say the word "delicious", I'm straight without any Rossi right now.

Brother Ross: What?

Brother Bret: Nothing. Ross, go get us two buckets and a towel. Fill one with hot soapy water and the other with just hot water. I'm gonna say this a few more times. Two buckets, one with hot and soapy, the other just hot. And a towel. That's hot with soap, just hot, one towel. Got it?

Brother Ross: Where do you think the buckets are?

Brother Jiri: I'm on it.

Brother Bret: Thank you.

Brother Bret bends down and comforts the straining goat. Brother Ross looks around blankly and walks off.

Act II

Brother Bret is still hunched over the goat with the buckets when the brumbling car returns. Harry and Dr. Hongo enter the barn, with Dr. Hongo carrying two photographs and a laptop.

Dr. Hongo: I have developed the photographs and consulted the internet and conclude this goat exhibits a dominant hair color. However, I will need to take a closer look as whatever it is seems to be coming from inside the animal.

Brother Bret: Dude, it's giving birth.

Dr. Hongo: That's what you would think, but I don't see any goatlets.

Brother Bret: Fuck, I want our phonebook back. Harry, go tell that girl inside we need her smartphone and if she used up all the battery playing that fucking chicken eating game again she's buying us all Golden Corral tonight.

Harry leaves. Brother Bret returns to comforting the goat while Dr. Hongo lays out his instruments on top of a Subaru. Just then, a diesel engine is heard outside the barn. Brother Cliff and Babbs descend from a short bus.

Dr. Hongo: Holy shit: It's Babbs!

Brother Cliff and Babbs enter the barn. Babbs carries a real surgical briefcase and Brother Bret looks relieved.

Babbs: I hear you fellas are having a little trouble with your nanny. Let's have a look.

Babbs soaps up and dives in.

Brother Bret: Thank you, Cliff.

Babbs: It seems she has a twisted uterus. Tell you what, Brothers Bret and Cliff, why don't you turn her over while I keep hold of the kid.

They do so and the goat makes a grunt of relief and produces its young. Harry returns with a smart phone but turns and tosses it out of the barn before turning back and crossing his arms with a smile.

Brother Bret (to Brother Cliff): You can say it now.

Brother Cliff: Hell yeah, Brother.

The Saint Valentine's Day Massac-R

2011-02-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

Harry and Chad stand under a street lamp, a pay phone behind them. The wear hella slick pin-striped suits, but they are not bankers. They have cufflinks made of molars, but they are not dentists. And they carry black leather violin cases, but they are not musicians. Chad flips a coin absently while Harry calls it.

HARRY: Heads.

CHAD: It's tails.

HARRY: Heads.

CHAD: Tails again.

HARRY: Heads.

CHAD: Tails.

HARRY: Heads, fucking heads.

Chad looks at the flipped coin, pausing

CHAD: It don't matter.

HARRY: Tell me, goddamnit.

CHAD: I said it don't matter. It's just a coin, a stupid fucking coin.

HARRY: If you don't show me that goddamn coin I'll bump you off, I swear.

CHAD: Forget it.

Chad flips the coin into the street. Harry reaches wildly for it, but as he does the phone rings and he answers.

HARRY, into the phone: Yeah?

HARRY: O' course, o' course. We rub out anyone, $1000. Midgets - 1/2 price, Japs - free.

HARRY: Alright, it's done, you can read it in the morning edition.

Harry hangs up the phone.

HARRY: We caught a contract.

CHAD: Any profile?

HARRY: Naw, sounds like some dame wants to drop another dame

CHAD: It's a queer thing, babes bumping babes.

HARRY: What, their money ain't green?

CHAD: Just it never used to be like this. Even a contract used to be a thing between men. Used to be I'd pull the heater and a lug would know what he'd done. Now they might be housewives, repairmen.

HARRY: You know it don't matter anymore. The war made triggermen outta everybody, whether for the Kaiser or that Wilson cat.

CHAD: Well it don't feel square.

HARRY: Well, shall we go?

CHAD: Yeah, let's breeze.

They do not move.

Hosni, I Shrunk the Mubarak

2011-02-10T18:14:00.000-08:00

Scene I.

Whether out of ignorance or defiance, Brian and Hudson move swiftly in their oddly revealing saffron robes, stray breazies bringing hidden curves to light. Oh, yeah and definitely some nip, too. From one-hundred urns they pull ashes, pouring them through cupped hands onto the stage. They are composing a voluminous sand painting of a tardigrade, nearly finished. Harry enters, out of breath and mewling, as so many do.*

HARRY: Guys, guys, the internet- it's down!

BRIAN, mumbling, rapt in his task: The collective dream has broken.

HARRY: No shit, sherdawg. IT ALSO MEANS YOU HAVE TO CALL TO GET PIZZA.

HUDSON: Jesus Christ! This is serious, THANK YOU FOR BRINGING SUCH SERIOUS NEWS.

HARRY: I'd say it's my pleasure, but I think you can tell I got the spookums something bless'ed.

HUDSON: How has happened, how can it be undone?

HARRY: I was just minding my own business, administering the "Has Barack Obama Gone Too Far?" poll, when my computer goes black and an orb of ball lightning shoots out the front. And before you ask if I was scared, remember that I was pretty drunk!

HUDSON: Amazing, I can hardly believe it.

BRIAN: How far he's gone? I know.

HARRY: Wait, what?

BRIAN: Barack Obama, he's the one who turned off the internet. It's as he stated in his State of the Jewion.

HARRY: Wow, he really has gone much too far.

HUDSON: We must do something about it! I will not stand for such injustice†!

BRIAN: Perhaps I will sit somewhere public and set myself alight.

HARRY: That would make a wicked album cover.

BRIAN: Yes, I can think of few things more wicked than using a man's exquisite death to sell records.

HUDSON: Let's do this, let's take it to tha streetz!

HARRY: TAKIN' IT ON OUT!

Exit all.

Scene II.

The boys have arrive at Pioneer Square, the cool one, and behold, there is a throng. Thousands are out, children stomping on their phones like pests, students beating their laptops against their chests and furious businessmen holding their useless blackberries limply as they scream into the sky.

HARRY: Looks like we're not the only ones. These peeps are pissed.

HUDSON: Fo' realz, I just saw these girl scouts slaughter and begin to feed on a police horse.

HARRY: Well we better get to burning while the burning's good. You ready, Briums?

BRIAN: I was dead for billions of years, I will not mind billions more.

HARRY: Whatevs, it's time to set Ricky Petardo off!

Harry fucking soaks his friend in gasolina, then drops a match like it ain't no thang. It is muy, muy caliente.

HUDSON: Wow, this is actually really metal.

Suddenly, every notebook, tablet and mobile device in the crowd comes alive, all showing the face of the man who was once the Great Beige Hope. From hundreds of tinny speakers, the grand orator thunders, silencing the crowd.

OBAMA: I, uh, just want to say- that I was very angry- about the things I was reading about me- on the, uh, internet. But from this one man's sacrifice- I see my path was one of folly- and I am now stepping down as president.

BIDEN: It's party time, bitches!

EVERYONE: Hooray!

And time dances on.

* The author might note this is also how many take their exit, and has.

Thank You and Good Night

2011-02-10T17:52:00.000-08:00

Harry, Sam, Brian, Chad, Hudson, and Bret are standing on a stage on the runway deck of an aircraft carrier that is drifting out at sea. They are waving and smiling to the many people who stand below them, not in rank, just you know, at a slightly lower altitude. These people look up at the Playwrights, some of them cheering, others crying, shaking victory fists. The gang is dressed in spacesuits- leading any viewer to believe that these gentleman just came from a trying mission from outer space, when, really, they don't know the first thing about appropriate attire.*

Sam approaches a podium.
SAM: Thank you all for coming. I'll keep this brief. We all know that this has been a challenging couple of years. You've been with us through the hardest of times, and surely it hasn't been easy for anyone. But victory is upon us, in fact, has been inside of us for many moons now. We set out to write one hundred plays, and it was always just that. One hundred plays, not one hundred good plays, not one hundred plays about treasure movies, just one hundred plays. And for those of you not counting we have well surpassed one hundred plays. Consider yourselves lucky, and consider this mission… accomplished.

Beyond the stage, up in the million dollar boat rafters a large banner drops down. The words "Mission Accomplished" are bold against a red, white, and blue Loko camo background. The gang cheers, and a roar from the people below can be heard.

SAM to the gang: See guys? They love us. Look at them, admiring our hard work. They're shaking their play strengthened fists at us. Cursing the way we taught them. Anyone thirsty?

He passes out some vintage Lokos and they celebrate like morons. Maybe Brian doesn't, instead he scribbles down some notes on future plays, both epic and tragic, and with perfect self referential narration, next-level stuff, as he wouldn't need to mention. Minutes pass and most of the Playwrights are at least a little bit drunk. Still waving to the Tiny Romero's and the Liam R's below.

SAM to the others: Look at all the people. Still down there, still cheering for us.

BRIAN: Yeah, they probably would have left if they weren't on a boat. We should let them go.

SAM: Don't be silly Brian, they love Plays. They want to be with us forever.

Brian walks away, shaking his head. He approaches Harry who is looking up at the sky, and maybe a little bit behind him, not like in the past sort of way, just physically behind him, but also up.
BRIAN: Still trying to figure out that movie?

HARRY: No, trying to do the Buzz Aldrin thing, you know, "To Infinity… and Behind."

BRIAN: Yeah, that's kind of not his thing.

HARRY looks back down at the people cheering who are now noticeably upset. His eyes get a little teary: Man, I didn't think this would come to an end. I wanted to go above and behind peoples' expectations, end on a really low note instead of this beautiful festival of joy tears. Maybe we could stick it out for a little bit longer?

BRIAN: Harry, I think that's the smartest thing you've ever said, besides what you'll tell your daughter in the future.

HARRY: Thanks.

BRIAN: I've been trying to keep this thing going myself. Writing all sorts of pieces, doing switches, flips, bringings on in, but it doesn't seem to be working. There's gotta be something else. Something out there.

Brian and Harry look out to sea, away from the people who are probably seriously enraged by now, and at the least, very thirsty. They hear a rumbling engine in the distance, and see something forming on the horizon. A fighter jet comes into view, and soon it is circling the aircraft carrier, loud and fast. It swoops in for a very spotty landing, scattering and obliterating many people who are now beyond pissed on the runway deck. Cliff gets out of the plane and gives a big wave to the Gang, kind of ignoring the massacre around him. He approaches the Playwrights. He is appropriately dressed for the aircraft carrier.

CHAD: Damn Cliff, where've you been?

CLIFF: Went to flight school for Summer camp. Heard that I could pull some G's in the Air Force, and boy were they right.

CHAD, nervously nodding at the runway deck: Still practicing?

CLIFF: Yeah. Been having a bit of trouble with the ol' landos ever since they ran out of sauce at the cantina over on the Starburst Brig. I saw your sign and figure I'd pit-stop in for a refuel.

CHAD: I've only got a sip left. Sadly the special sauce seems to be gone for good. We're just here to celebrate the end of plays. Gave the people a great run, time to call it a day.

CLIFF: Call it a day? What about the night? Isn't that when all the fun stuff happens? Listen, if there's one thing that I learned in the Air Force, it's that pullin' G's isn't at all what you'd think, and the second is discipline. You guys have got to keep the plays coming. I force myself up in the air every day, even if it means that I'll have to bring 'em back on in without a saucy landing. And you guys should do the same, force yourselves back into the play-giving business., even if they're not great business lessons. No more Loko to connect the characters?, hell, I've been flying Lokoless for weeks now, and I've hardly hurt a lot of people.

CHAD: Yeah, maybe we could give it a try.

BRET: I guess I could start writing some plays about Seattle, like I did with Chicago. I could call it G-attle?

HARRY: I could do one about that time Hudson and I kissed. It would be romantic.

CHAD: And I'm working on a bun in the oven myself.

BRIAN: Gross.

CLIFF: That's the spirit!

Liam and Tiny approach the gang.
LIAM: Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that we miraculously survived Cliff's landing, but those people down there need some serious help.

BRET: How should we tend to them?

TINY: They need aguas.

HARRY producing the newest Aguas Loko flavor: Coming right up.

TINY: But they also need a Play.

HARRY: That might take some time.

SAM: Nope. Almost donezos!

TINY: Perfecto.

SAM to Cliff: You know how you said you forced yourself to fly, even though you knew it would be hard to land?

CLIFF: Yessir.

SAM: Well, I guess I'm a little bit like you. I'm afraid to land, afraid that I won't know how to end the beauty of flight.

CLIFF: You don't have to get all metaphorical. Plus, no-one called it beautiful. I wouldn't worry about how it ends, I think it already has.

What Drink Is

2011-02-07T22:27:00.000-08:00

This scene is great. You're going to love it. Everybody is going to get laid. Our heroes sit on a beach. It's like that one play, only without all the fatalism and impending doom stuff. Jiri is there, in a sleeveless shirt two sizes too large. He has a 22 oz bottle of morning beer in each hand. A smile spreads across his flushed cheeks. He's been drinking again. The improbable warmth of this azure sea brings comfort to our young wanderers. They are ours, you see? These boys. It's a temporary ownership but one as lasting as anything is, really, as permanent as the illusion of the thing. They're not immune to entropy and neither are you. Scientifically, these pícaros are kelps and are therefore somewhat rooted. They sway in unison, driven by forces that would elude any Aristotelian physicist; these boys are outside the reach of laws, natural or otherwise. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell silently ages in a corner somewhere.

CLIFF: Woohooo! THIS IS GREAT! BIG TIME LOVIN' IT! SUMMER TIME PARTY!

HAZARD: Yo, where da gurls be at?

SANG: I was kinda wondering that meself.

HUDSON: Don't worry, I'm on it.

BRET: Really?

SANG: Areyoukiddinme?

KEVIN: Oh yeah, he's got this. Grande tiemps!

BRET: Alright, if you say so.

CHAD: Nothing to do now but be terrible, terrible drunks!

JIRI: I'm here!

HAZARD: There passed a weary time. Each throat/Was parched, and glazed each eye./A weary time! A weary time!/How glazed each weary eye!-/When looking westward, I beheld/A something in the sky.

SANG: Hour of chaos?

JIM: Broads?

KEVIN:Who cares? Let's drink!

Chad drinks, Bret drinks, they all drink together. Sleeves are removed, faces are painted, the sun sinks out of view, a fire burns bright. The boys! boys! boys! drink Four Loko Correcto because it's my play and I can mix stimulants and depressants if I want. They dance and dance but no girls appear. They are waiting. Not to worry, it's pretty common in these sorts of plays. It leads to reflective dialogue, which we'll skip, in the interest of time, there is to be some action in this play. Kevin winks at the audience to indicate a sexual connotation but fails to realize that this is stage direction, the audience is just desperately waiting for the plot to progress as our actors mouth these words and simian fingers drag across the single page they neglected to memorize. The audience grows uneasy. At last the girls arrive. They're the best kinds. They are real characters with names and opinions and humor and spirits-again Kevin winks-with the potential for development and all that. They aren't, however, from this HellaPlays universe; we would have seen them before. Let's not talk about it.

ANNE: Y'all drink Four Loko? HELL YEAH BROTHER!

CLIFF: Speechless.

BROOKE: I have traits that you like. Specifically, I have traits that overlap with those you consider most important to your character, ones you never expected to encounter in another. I can make you feel less alone in the world. Ultimately, however, you will forget that I have a separate identity. You'll take my warmth for granted and assume that, because of our similarities, I will always see things as you do. I won't. You'll say that we're growing apart. I will say that we'd never been the same, that you failed to truly understand me. You'll deny this and maintain that you're a true individual, a man, a modern day Bunyan. A rift will form. We'll stop having sex. One of us will be emotionally cold. Who am I foolin'? We'll both do that. We may or may not break up. The decision will be based on the expected utility of a continued sub-optimal relationship versus the probability of finding another, more functional, pairing. You may pretend to entertain the possibility that you're 'mo or a'. You're not. I hope we stay together; call me a romantic.

BRIAN: Dibs.

HAZARD: Dibs on her friend, she looks like a real HOT SALLY!

CATHY: ACK ACK ACK! I didn't buy the right shoes for this occasion. Do you think I could find a more unflattering swimsuit for this season? Bikinis!?! This clothing makes me want to go nuclear. I'm a woman and confused by modern life.

HAZARD: More like a garbage whore. I really didn't think that any women aligned with the gendered construction of the Cathy character, but here she is, in a play, by which I mean real life.

L-STAHL: I heard Señor Gender Studies Prof present a pretty compelling dissertation indicting the funny pages for a dearth of strong female role models that challenge traditional gender norms. Also, I did it, when I was ten; it's something that a ten your old could do.

KEVIN: Well put, I'm glad for that aside, but where's the girls for Hazard and Sang?

KENNEDY (it's a girl's name): Don't Hazard and Sang write for that sick website HellaPlays?

SANG: Twammin', you've made reads on it?

KATE: It literally made us sick. Don't worry, I used that word correctly.

KENNEDY: We read one play about bugs eating one of you. We made pukes something wicked. Also, we never use the word "random" when we really mean "unexpected" or "bizarre." Just a heads up.

KATE: You'd really like us, we're great.

HAZARD: Wow, I kinda wish we didn't write about r and really yucky stuff all the time. This kinda makes me rethink what we're doing here. Is it pure sensationalism? Are we only trying to encourage visceral response to stimulate SOME feeling in a seemingly complacent audience. Are we completely detached from reality and therefore only talking to ourselves? Perhaps we should change our tone, perhaps we ought to preach messages more universal, or messages of any kind, perhaps our heroes ought to subscribe to something that resembles morality.

SANG: Hmmmm.....areyoukiddinme?

HAZARD: Yes, yes I am. I fuckin' love HellaPlays.

KATE: We do too. This was test.

KENNEDY: An almost impussible test of dedication.

SANG: Make pass?

KATE: You made pass.

THE GANG: Hooray?

ALL THE SPECIAL LITTLE SINGLE LADIES: Absolutely. Hooray!

Are You Rapture Ready? (A Play in Which the Prophet Appears in the Likeliest of Places)

2011-02-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

The playwright has chosen to write this play in the first person. The playwright would like to assure you, the viewer of this play, that he loves and admires you, and trusts that you will take this unorthodoxy in stride.

I, Hazard Stefans, am making some seriously major sleepages. Snores and drools are coming out of my face like crazy. Then, suddenly, as if moved by some mystical force, I awake with two lines of poetry ricocheting around my tiny, tiny brain.

ME: The eternal ghosts of five o'clock half light drag me from my tired bed/O, to feel alive in a world that's dying, nearly dead.
YOU, THE VIEWER OF THIS PLAY: That's cray-see Hazard; you said no such thing.

It's true; I did not. What I actually said was

ME: WAZZA!

I normally wake up by saying "Wazza," but the lines of poetry are far more serviceable for the purposes of this play because, as will soon be revealed, them lines be some serious foreshadowing.

YOU, TVOTP: So what happens next?

I make sundry gestures and movements (which may involve, but are not limited to, brushing teeth, showering, polishing my feet, making faces in the mirror, and drinking whiskey) until I am ready for work. I drive to my job, which is located inside of a Bath & Body Works (because I work at Bath & Body Works), park my car, get out, approach the store door, and when I get there - WAZZA! - I notice an enoooormous banner has been hung in front of the part that usually says "Bath & Body Works." The banner says: "All those who love the truth and dare to hear it are cordially invited." I enter the store.

ME (to my co-worker Olivia): What's with the sign outside?
OLIVIA: We have no idea. It was there when we arrived this morning, and we literally cannot take it down. We've tried everything, but it won't budge.
ME: Spooky...

An hour or so later, I am hard at work in Bath & Body Works. Actually, I'm hardly working, because there is a temporary lull in customer traffic. Instead, I'm exalting in the delicate graces and subtle fragrances of the holiday candles.

The chemistry wizards they have producing their fragrances are skilled beyond belief. The “Winter” candle smells exactly like freshly fallen snow; the “Mint Chocolate Chip” smells just like a tub of the ice cream, so much so that you can taste it; the “Fireside” immediately elicits campfire memories. But truly the most remarkable is the “Homemade Cookies,” the smell of which is indistinguishable from a tray of steaming chocolate chip-os fresh from the oven. The smell is not produced by homemade cookies, of course, but instead is the product of a complex chemical amalgam. The smell is not homemade, but has been created in some laboratory where a team of olfactory alchemists mix together all sorts of colorful potions through an elaborate glass maze of vials and tubes and beakers, and finally a tiny fluid drips from the end of an eye-dropper and voila!: homemade cookies!

The similarity in smell is remarkable, which is undeniably apropos because Bath & Body Works is really all about semblances – the appearance of cleanliness, the smell of sexiness, the façade of beauty, the veneer of allure.

There are two exceptions to this olfactory accuracy: “Kitchen Spice,” which smells like sadness, and “Frosted Tree,” which smells like bacon.

ME (to Olivia): Don't you think "Frosted Tree" kind of smells like bacon?
OLIVIA: I don't eat bacon.
ME: But you know what it smells like, right?
OLIVIA: "Frosted Tree" does not smell like bacon. It smells like "Frosted Tree."

Olivia is from Hawaii and must be about twenty. I’ve never been able to properly explain myself to Hawaiians, which is unsurprising since I hail from the northeastern-most part of the country, so that despite our linguistic and national commonalities we in fact have basically nothing in common. Olivia is the “Gifting Guru,” a hideous confusion of the spiritual and the commercial which is precisely what I hate so much about the holiday season. Unfortunately for Olivia, I transfer this hatred to her, which is obviously undeserved but lamentably cannot be helped.

ME: Now, Olivia, I hate to pick nits, dear. But "Frosted Tree" most certainly does not smell like "Frosted Tree." It smells like dried cockroaches.
OLIVIA: I thought you said it smelled like bacon.
ME: I most certainly did not. I don't eat swine. Do you?
OLIVIA: What is wrong with you?
ME: I'll tell you what's wrong with me! I hate Bath & Body Works! I hate it! Don't you see how wrong this store is? Don't you see that a "Gifting Guru" is a contradiction in terms? That the mindless consumers that patronize this place have given up on resisting shitty-ness, and that in doing so they desecrate the magic of existence?!

Olivia turns away, thinking about what a weirdo I am. But she doesn't have much time to think about it because - POOF! BLAMMIES! WAZZABEEZ! - Jesus Christ himself appears in the center of the store.

ME: Jesus!
JESUS: That's right. It's meeee!
ME: Jesus, will you please explain to Olivia here that the mindless consumerism upon which Bath & Body Works preys is the very thing that has obscured the pure and divine meaning of your birthday celebration?
JESUS: What in the fuck do you know about the pure and divine meaning of my birthday celebration? Let me tell you all something.

A crowd amasses.

JESUS: Hazard here don't know shit about shit. Christmas is, and always has been, about buying people shit that they couldn't possibly need or even want. You think I wanted gold, frankincense, and myrrh on my first birthday? What the fuck is a freezing baby going to do with that? But that's the whole point, see. Consumerism! Exalted and wonderful consumerism! Wastefulness! Empty distractions from the shittiness of life! YEESSSSS!
ME: Jesus!
JESUS: Bible don't tell ya bout my second birfday.
ME: What?
JESUS: Platinum, bitch!
ME: JESUS!
JESUS: Straight up.
ME: But...
JESUS: Shit motherfucker, dontcha C? C-mas has always been about materialism. I don't hate Bath & Body Works at all. Au contraire, mon frere - alls I can do is embrace this place as your culture's logical extension of the original meaning of the whole celebration!
ME: You mean...
JESUS: That's right. You're wrong, and everybody else is right.
ME: Jesus.
EVERYBODY: Hooray!

Pair o' D's

2011-02-03T10:01:00.001-08:00

The scene is set. It is familiar and rewards you for having already seen something similar, let's say it's a movie. Your mind connects the two. Wait, wait, don't tell me, something is amiss. At least one aspect of the original is altered, exaggerated to the point of absurdity. I'll let you decide what that aspect is. Oh, you wanted me to guide thine viewing eye? Okay, let's pick a potential phallic symbol, say an innocent pillar or beaker- if we are in an ancient temple let's go with the former; if you went with option b, a science lab, turn to page 48 and it's the latter- and actually make it look like a penis. Dick jokes r solid, right? Am I right?

MAN: This is the line you are familiar with and it causes your brain to make a connection with the original text. You prepare yourself for the next, logical, dialogical step.

MAN IN UNCONVINCING DRAG: Expectation subverted.

MAN: Refusal to accept that the rules of social interaction have changed.

MAN: You're absurd.

MAN: I'm still not getting it.

MAN: Serious things are ridiculed.

New characters enter the stage, the old ones depart. The interaction is more or less the same, or a variation of the same, or a display of something freakish and grotesque; a sequence is formed. It looks to repeat indefinitely into the foreseeable future. It's quite boring and creatively derivative. I, the stage direction, make futile attempts to limit the sensory damage by dimming the lights. Still, it continues. It seems I am no match for the market forces of the dull-witted and easily amused. Perhaps they were right to call me pedantic. Oh well, at least it's dark in here. Time for some day drinking. Harry is in the audience and he's fun to drink with. I wonder if anybody else will join us. Would you? It's okay, you don't have to. Perhaps this Vaudevillian horror will end soon, though I fear not.

All My Chickums

2011-01-30T22:00:00.000-08:00

Hazard stands in the kitchen of his Portland apartment. His head is down, he is a character from an Arthur Miller play, not The Crucible, the other ones, dummy. Our hero wears ashen slacks and a white shirt, yellowed at the pits. The fedora is pulled low and his suspenders struggle under weight of trousers falling from a hollowed frame.

HAZARD: I just can't stand it! I just can't STAND it anymore!

CHAD: Easy there, brotha. Just take it nice. and. easay.

Hazard pointlessly adjusts his suspenders and sets down the hat.

HAZARD: I work and work and work and what do I get?

CHAD: Money?

HAZARD: That's right, money. I can't fucking stand it. I just CAN'T staaand it.

CHAD: I don't follow.

HAZARD: I have all this money but you know what? You know what I can't get when I'm at work?

CHAD: Drunk?

HAZARD: A little respect, a little respect from the man I love.

CHAD: The man you love?

HAZARD: That's right. All this money and I still can't get Amar'e Stoudemire to call me back.

CHAD:...

HAZARD: You don't have to say anything. We all know where this is headed.

CHAD: One pan washing?

HAZARD: Just say the line.

CHAD: I'd really rather not.

HAZARD: The plot won't advance if you don't.

CHAD: Blamo!

HAZARD: That's right, Blamo! I'm dead, again.

BRIAN: I promise I'm not threatening to kill you, Harry.

CHAD: I hated this play.

BRIAN: Me too, nothing uplifting here. Not one single thing.

Exeunt remaining omnes

A Treasonable Death

2011-01-30T14:01:00.000-08:00

Harry is sitting in his tiny Portland apartment. He is alone. He is trying to figure out how to feel fast when he notes an odd vapor seeping into the room. He investigates.

HARRY: Miasma?

He falls to the floor, overpowered by the fumes. Just then, Cliff busts into the apartment.

CLIFF: Yo DAWG!!! HAPPY TO SEIZE ME? I'M IN PORTLAND! BRING EM IN TIME!

HARRY: Miasma.

CLIFF: Forget your asthma it's time to have some fun for once!

HARRY: is dead.

CLIFF: This place sucks, I'm going back to Wyoming. MAKE DRINKS ON BUDWEISER!

THE REST OF THE GANG: goes with him.

The scene is unset.

What Happens to a Madness Unperturbed?

2011-01-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

Hudson and Brian are standing in the harsh light of a stage. Or they're not. It's just another day of banalities in some lousy apartment. What's clear is that both are wearing dresses, the dresses of frontier women.

HUDSON: Eyes sag, bellies sag, times drag, I'm drag.

BRIAN: I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.

HUDSON: Pass me that rag, I'm half in the bag!

Brian hands Hudson a gasoline soaked rag.

BRIAN: Thrift, thrift, Hudsatio! The funeral bak'd meats did coldy furnish forth the marriage tables. Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven or ever I had seen that day, Hudsatio!

HUDSON: A red flag, a red flag! I do declare the bride's a slag!

Enter Bret.

BRIAN: My father- me thinks I see my father.

HUDSON: He zigs, he zags in defense I'll prepare the rag.

Hudson stuffs the rag down into the bottle, he readies the lighter.

BRIAN: Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, be thy intents wicked or charitable...

BRET: I'm gonna have to go ahead and cut you off, what is Hudson doing with that rag?

HUDSON: We've hit a snag! Perhaps would be better were it a gag!

Hudson gags Bret.

BRIAN: It will not speak. Then will I follow it.

Bret desperately tries to yell out, "I'm Bret, Bret, Bret, Bret, Bret!" in order to wake the boys. The gag is tied too well. He manages to move like a robot, cover his eyes, etc.

HUDSON: Check his swag! Check his swag! You must not follow, oh how I nag!

BRIAN: Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee; and for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing as immortal as itself? It waves me forth again. I'll follow it.

HUDSON: Into madness he is sure to drag, a smoker's madness born of schwag.

Bret cuts his losses, leaves.

BRIAN: It waves me still. Go on. I'll follow thee.

HUDSON: You cannot go, your ear I have. If you leave, by it I'll drag.

Brian looks offended by the childish ploy.

BRIAN: Hold off your hands!

HUDSON: It is not safe, he has our rag. Oh how he's ruined our night in drag.

BRIAN: Still am I call'd. unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!- I say, away!- Go on, I'll follow thee.

Bret is waiting outside, he's freed himself from the gag. Hudson unhands Brian and they make stumbles into the night.

BRET: Y'all wax desperate with imagination.

BRIAN AND HUDSON: HOLY SHIT, IT'S BRET! I'm Bret, I'm Bret, I'm Bret.

BRET: Hooray motherfuckers.

To wash a windshield

2011-01-10T16:07:00.000-08:00

At Bob's house. There is a snow storm happening and a dark green Ford Explorer is parked in it. Bob exits the front door and walks toward the explorer with a pot of boiling water and a broom. Bret and Stepmom watch from indoors.

Bret: What is he doing?
Stepmom: He's gonna wash the windshield.
Bret: He doesn't have a scraper?
Stepmom: I guess not. And he's out of wiper fluid.
Bret: Do you have a scraper?
Stepmom: Yeah, it's out in the garage. I have a really nice one, actually.

Bret and Stepmom watch out the window as Bob dumps the pot onto the windshield of the Explorer and starts wiping at it with the broom. The water melts the ice and snow that has formed on the glass and promptly re-freezes.

Bret: Where are we going again?
Stepmom: Lola. He's been really wanting to try it.
Bret: It's downtown?
Stepmom: Yeah, in Larimer Square.
Bret: Are there any restaurants in the neighborhood we could walk to?
Stepmom: Yeah, there's a bunch. Have you been to the little Italian place we like?
Bret: No, but let's go there.
Stepmom: Yeah, that sounds like a better plan.

SEASONS GREETINGS FROM DIAZ FOODS AND EL GAUCHO AUTHENTIC FROZEN MEXICAN ENTRÉES

2010-12-21T17:07:00.000-08:00

Perhaps he should have been more suspicious of the invitation, printed as it was on the obverse of a Hamburger Hamlet place-mat, but Lord knows Harry needed the grub, as did Brian. This was purely retrospective, of course, the two having arrived out the warehouse to find that the Diaz Foods company party was a total ruse that made them look like assholes. Absent was the bounty of questionably authentic Tex-Mex they had expected, instead they found a sadly familiar panethnic, now bearded but still nude and proud of it! Again he stood on an upended mop bucket. Again beats were heard, this time they were quite phatty indeed.

HUDSON: Turn it up and blast it, measures made most drastic,

Prophecy spit elastic from a trash room romantic.

I'm spastic, dropped 'Ye's kitty in the casket,

An anthrax packet cloaked in garbage bag plastic

And Puddy's 8-ball jacket. They want this but can't have it,

No odes or ballads just a flow of word salad

Like Foerster's disorder with some logorrhea added.

I'm a logorrhea addict, with 2Ds, not Adicts,

But I'll bust a new dimension for the Avatar fanatics

By hyperlinking terms like wikipeets on sherm,

Making ladies squirm be they special, spooked or stern

If I'm speaking out of turn, I rather halve it than have it

Better rabbit than habit, rabid rabbi than rib.

A silence filled the warehouse, like a bunch of boxes or something else that had some serious volume on it. A lot of water, maybe.

BRIAN: You know you can just tell us, right? If you want us to listen to you rap, you can just call one of us up.

HARRY: Really I would prefer it if you just called. Less looking at your weird body that way.

BRIAN: Definite plus from where I'm standing... which is in front of you... while you're naked.

HUDSON: You guys didn't like it?

BRIAN: Pretty sure you're missing the point here, but no, I didn't much care for it.

HARRY: I hated it. And you. I hated it and I hate you.

WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH

A Few Small, Good Thing(s)

2010-12-15T06:47:00.000-08:00

The Arcane Couching of our Eldritch Gods

Brian and Lizzy sit in their living room. There are two couches set perpendicular to each other. A mattress adorns the floor where any sane person would position a coffee table. The TV is off.

LIZZY: Hey did you see? Hudson wrote a new play!

BRIAN: Yeah. It's VERY good.

LIZZY: Yeah, I really liked the way it started.

BRIAN: And the ending was great.

LIZZY: Oh, I didn't get that far yet.

Brian's facial expression initially suggests shock but soon shifts into obvious concern and empathy.

BRIAN: Well, it's pretty short, so....(inhales nervously through his teeth)

December 13th, 2010

Again with the couches. The mattress is now shoved up against the wall, a poor man's Murphy bed. A coffee table occupies its former place. The TV is off.

L-STAHBLER: I was watching the news today and a really famous flamenco singer from Granada died. We should go check out the cathedral tomorrow to see if there's anything going on.

BRIAN: Man, today has been full of tragedies.

L-STAHBLER: Oh really? What else happened?

BRIAN: Well, I got this schwarma and it was bad.

L-STAHBLER: Are you being serious right now?

Brian: Yeah. It was really bad.

At Night the Salmon Move

Brian and Lizzy are in their other talking place, their Spanish kitchen, which is identical to a real kitchen only, you know, smaller. Brian stands with his back against the wall, which is merely a description of his physical position and not a comment on his emotional state during the events that are about to unfold, you know, in this play.

LIZZY: Well I just don't like people being mad at me, you know?

Brian nods.

LIZZY: I mean, I understand where they're coming from and all but I just don't know what we can do to resolve the situation. Plus, I just really wanna go out on a positive note.

Brian nods again and begins to scratch his back on the post in the kitchen.

LIZZY: I guess it's just so distinct from my family where we're all on the same b-nuts page...are you okay over there?

BRIAN: Wow. I feel like a bear.

Spills into the hallway in laughter.

We Live in a Bicho Universe

Back on the couches. Murphy bed upright. TV off.

BRIAN: Man, I don't know what ear wax is all about but I hate it.

LIZZY: I know right?

BRIAN: Well, of course I know exactly what it's about. But still, you know?

LIZZY: Is it to trap bugs who are trying to get in your ear?

Brian blinks, astonished.

BRIAN: Well yeah. I guess. I was gonna say dust.

LIZZY: Right.

Couchin' On Me Parts

2010-12-09T02:52:00.000-08:00

HAZARD: Now that mad peeps be readin' Hella Plays, I'm sometimes scared to write them.

HAZARD: For realzies?

HAZARD: I can't just be weird and not funny. I'm self conscious.

HAZARD: That's a weird thing to write a play about.

HAZARD: For realzies. Now I feel all self conscious about writing a play about being self conscious.

HAZARD: You should stop being such a scaredy-pants.

HAZARD: Easy for you to say. You're not even real.

HAZARD: You're not even real.

HAZARD: I'm Bret.

HAZARD: You've been drinking again, huh?

HAZARD: Bret Bret Bret Bret Bret.

HAZARD: You're not Bret.

HAZARD: I've been drinking again.

Brian and El Barranquismo

2010-11-22T15:45:00.000-08:00

Brian sits at the front of the classroom. To his left is Lieutenant Juan Antonio and to his left is Captain Juan Antonio. To his left is Brigadier Juan Antonio and to his left is Colonel Juan, just Juan. The other four men in the room are named Juan Antonio and they are all officers in the Spanish Army. These are friendly men. Their kindness does not stem from naiveté but rather a deep appreciation for what it is to live. They laugh and joke. Oh how they cherish every tender moment, knowing how truly rare they are. After lunch, these men of war return with smiles on their faces and stories of marches before a king. Oh how the wine talks.

BRIAN: Alright, homies, listen up. Today we're gonna...er...we're going to discuss vacations.

CAPTAIN JUAN ANTONIO: I took a vacation last week.

BRIAN: Oh really? Where'd you go?

CAPTAIN JUAN ANTONIO: To Granada!

BRIAN: That's where you are now.

CAPTAIN JUAN ANTONIO: I saw the Alhambra!

BRIAN: That's great, I hear it's lovely this time of year. Anybody else?

COLONEL JUAN: I went, or I made...buceo last weekend!

BRIAN: Oh, you went diving last weekend?

COLONEL JUAN: Yes! I went diving. I love outdoor sports!

BRIAN: That's awesome, Juan. It's gotta be crazy cold this time of year, Señor Hans Reiter. Do you use a snorkel or S.C.U.B.A. gear?

COLONEL JUAN: I am not sure, what is the difference?

BRIAN: Well, snorkeling is closer to the surface and...wait, let me try to draw it.

Brian goes to the board and sketches a giant lost at sea. The giant wears a tiny foppet's snorkel which serves as the only link between a viable oxygen source and his gargantuan lungs. The drawing does more harm than good.

COLONEL JUAN: Why am I so big?

BRIAN: Don't worry about it, it's just kinda my thing.

COLONEL JUAN: OK, that seems a normal response. Now, tell me, what is S.C.U.B.A.?

BRIAN: Oh, S.C.U.B.A. stands for (Brian steps to the board in order to spell out the acronym) Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

BRIGADIER JUAN ANTONIO: Oh yes, it is from Jacques-Yves Cousteau!

BRIAN: EXACTLY! You guys are totally gonna crush it on your book reports for The Silent World!

SOME OTHER JUAN ANTONIO: I thought we were preparing for English Test!

CAPTAIN JUAN ANTONIO: WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON????

LIEUTENANT JUAN ANTONIO: WHEN WILL YOU TELL US ABOUT THE GOOD BARS IN GRANADA!?!?

BRIAN: Ok, let's get back to Juan. Did you do anything else on your vacation?

COLONEL JUAN: Yes. I also do barranquismo.

BRIAN: What in the world is that?

COLONEL JUAN: I think it is called, in English, canyoning.

BRIAN: That doesn't sound like a thing. Let me just look that up. (browsing through a Spanish-English dictionary) B, B, B, BA, BAR, effin' Nazis, oh here it is...barranquismo is....canyoning. What the dick?

BRIGADIER JUAN ANTONIO: Yes, barranquismo, sorry canyoning, is where you go from the top of the mountains, where the river starts, and then you go down the mountain, by the river, and you go down the cataratas and the rapids and EVERYTHING. It is like rafting, only with no boat.

Brian looks out at the class, "what the fuck" written all over his face. The military men miss the facial cue and only respond with enthusiastic nods.

COLONEL JUAN: Yes, it is a great way to relax after performing in many parades for our king.

BRIAN: I honestly think I'm losing my mind.

And he was.

Mumdawg Skrillionaire

2010-11-22T14:54:00.000-08:00

ACT I.

Scene I.

Brian and Chad are entwined as one, a muscle-lumped, hair-heavy manaconda with, like, at least six biceps, watching a romantic comedy. It's the one where the two who have it all, everything but another, fly back home from the big city, fuck under the bleachers where they once locked orthodontics. As the Brython hisses in delight, a nude Harry enters the bedroom. Instantly they release their embrace and become two again.

HARRY: Hey guys, what's up?
CHAD, sadly: Nothing, I guess.
HARRY: Goodie, because I have VERYBIG news.
BRIAN: Lay it on me, dawg.
HARRY: I'm a time traveler, I travel through time.

BRIAN: Oh I get it, it's like, "At a rate of one second per second, we all travel invariably into the future." That's some heavy shit dude.

HARRY: No, no, I'm talking some serious B2TF bidness.

CHAD: There have to be better ways of revealing you made out with your mom.

HARRY: What she and I have is special, but this isn't about that. This is about tying off with a causality loop in a Wendy's bathroom, this is about repossessing the property of entropy, this is about overturning the laws of thermodynamics so that everything that is born must not die!

BRIAN: ...

HARRY: Why else would I be naked?

BRIAN: There are literally hundreds of reasons you might be naked. For instance: you were going to take a shower and you got lost.

HARRY: Have you known me to take showers?

CHAD: He's got a point. I'm beginning to believe this pantless portal pastor.

BRIAN: So then how did you do it; superluminal travel, a wormhole or something more mystic?

HARRY: It was strangely mundane, really. I was minding my own business, looking for sandwiches in the dumpster behind New Seasons, and when I went inside to complain about their lack of bologna selections, I found I had traveled to 1991! Sarah Mclachlan was playing over the P.A. and everyone was wearing fanny-packs, acid-washed denim and hypercolor tees.

BRIAN: That you can live in Portland and still not know what a hipster is positively baffles me.

HARRY: You know what? Fuck you guys, I'll prove it. Let's go.

CHAD: You should probably put on some clothes first.

HARRY: Right.

Harry dons a brown Yanquis cap. Exeunt omnes.

Scene II.

The Gang arrives at the New Seasons dumpster. Light rain, a seagull, and what courtesy clerks on break talk about when they talk about Girl Talk can be heard.

HARRY: Dive in fellas!

With some hesitance, the fellas dive.

BRIAN: Wow, this is awful.

Suddenly, the stage goes dark, save for a now luminescent and rattling dumpster. As The Gang releases a collective "Hoo boy!", a kaleidoscope of unearthly light bursts about them, reminding more than one viewer of a certain unfortunate Wonkatania boat-ride. Just as quickly, however, everything halts. The lights go back up to reveal we are in a grocery store. A disheveled Gang climbs out of their craft and Brian approaches a nearby cooler, pulling a lok sauce off the shelf.

CHAD: Where are we?

HARRY: Like I said, 1991, the past.

BRIAN: Harry, you moron, we aren't in the past.

HARRY: We aren't?

BRIAN: No, we're in... THE FUTURE!

Brian turns the can to reveal shockingly, horrifyingly, eyes- and pants-wetteningly, a sauce that reads "NO LOKO"

To Be Continued...

The Arcane Teachings of our Eldritch Gods

2010-11-19T13:30:00.000-08:00

The scene is set and it is also unset, the weight of a tired Rabbi expecting a seat under him, when the chair has been removed, burned, cursed and cast out. Perhaps it is best to simply imagine what you please. Suggestions: the neighborhood abattoir and its squidmen, busily harvesting the dreams of orphans; jobless young men aging silently in the blue glow of their favorite rectangles; a dock; a sausage casing; the pale eyes of an ex-marine as he kicks the tires of an '91 Plymouth Laser, before he tells his daughter, "I don't know."

HARRY: Is a character you could have in this play.

HUDSON: Is another.

It's not really important, the leads are fairly interchangeable.

BRIAN: Is sometimes presented as more connected to reality.

BRET: Often suffers.

Whoever you decide to include, treat them well. Their world is a dangerous and violent one, like Hobbes's state of nature or that fire planet in the beginning of 2012, and any amount of compassion on the part of the viewer/creator will be cherished. Nothing binds you, of course, you possess a degree of agency that would startle any old-world despot, any brick-and-mortar king. You will travel the world. You are going to get laid. Do not let even the playwright himself compromise your production- he is a false medium, a charlatan scribing with hands transformed by disease into rheumatoid talons.

HARRY: Butterfly in the sky

CLIFF: I can fly twice as high

SAM: Take a look

BRET: It's in a book

WESLEY: Hooray motherfucker

Chris Gregoire is a Garbage Whore and I Hate Her

2010-11-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

Gov. Chris Gregoire: I am pleased to announce that I have placed a ban on the best product, the one thing that brings joy to the huddled masses, the one ray of hope in a bleak economic future. I declare that Four Loko is hereby banned in the state of Washington. Suck on that, Dino Rossi! In my next effort to recruit the youth vote I plan to outlaw rum and cokes, whiskey colas, and Irish coffee.

The Dismantling of Glenn Beck

2010-11-10T17:46:00.000-08:00

The scene opens on a television studio. Hudson and Brian are seated in red-felt director's chairs across from Anderson Cooper. Hudson's bare chest is covered with cryptic swirling symbols of geographically indistinguishable origin. He wears an enormous feathered Indian head dress, and from his back hangs a cape sewn together from randomly assorted 21st-century detritus. He is a powerful mind sorcerer, an urban shaman come in from the soggy Oregon wilderness to preach the word to the unsuspecting masses of mainstream America. Brian is sleeveless, his fantastic muscles bursting forth. Medals and accolades from various Spanish sporting associations adorn his shoulders and chest and glimmer and shine in the measured light of the television studio. He is an anthropomorphic vision, a fucking god, an inspiration not unlike the one to whom the first Christians turned as they solemnly recited their baptismal oaths.

ANDERSON COOPER: Glenn Beck, popular host of the eponymous "Glenn Beck Program" on Fox News, was found brutally dismembered today in the backyard of his four million dollar mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut. Born of an alcoholic mother and a dead-beat father, Beck rose to fame through his exploitation of Americans' fears after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. Beck’s barely recognizable body was discovered in his backyard, impaled on a stake which stood erect. Beck was slowly sliding down the stake when he was discovered, although reports indicate that he had not yet reached the ground. And tonight folks, we have an exclusive interview with the murderous duo who mercifully rid the world of Glenn Beck. Now, Hudson, I understand that you were the impetus of the crime.

HUDSON: Indeed. I had begun to feel that the threat presented by Mr. Beck could no longer be ignored. Beck was bringing to fruition the logical conclusion of Joe McCarthy's demagoguery. Instead of having access to a mere handful of media outlets, as did McCarthy in the 1950s, Beck was able to exploit a 24-hour news cycle thirsty for audio/visual snippets and managed to make his obnoxious voice a ubiquitous feature of the American media; instead of shouldering the burdensome responsibilities of de jure power, as did Senator McCarthy, Beck enjoyed immunity from censure because he was not an elected official but rather a self-professed "entertainer." In any case, the last thing Beck enjoyed was the repeated and rapid insertion of a serrated knife into his anus. His last act of entertainment: his desperate, pathetic pleas for mercy from his steel-gazed attackers.

AC: Why such violence?

HUDSON: As we all know, the mum-dawg is a vigilant mum-dawg, and exists in constant defiance of the instinctual human desire to enjoy life in a mum-dawg-free universe. If unchecked, the mum-dawg will not just endure, he will prevail.

AC: A mum-dawg you say?

HUDSON: That's right, Anderson. A hideous fear-mongering shit fucker of a mum-dawg. And I decided that we could not stand to be driven by fear into an age of unreason. Digging deep in our history and our doctrine, I remembered that we are not descended from fearful men.

AC: Brian, can you describe some of the murder?

BRIAN: It was during a typical workday, but Beck was at home. Indeed, Beck had recently gotten into the routine of setting aside an hour a day in which he could return home from work and eat junk food and masturbate to homosexual pornography in privacy without the fear of being discovered - although to be truthful he was always afraid. In the weeks before we murdered him, it had gotten worse, and Beck suffered tremendously. The clinical term, used by psychologists and assholes, was cognitive dissonance. Beck's professed beliefs had strayed so far from objective reality that his sanity was straining from the weight of the fantasy.

HUDSON: Moreover, he had to manage the growing complexity of rites and rituals he was forced to employ to maintain the fantasy. The ailment from which he suffered, the... cognitive dissonance, was eating him from within, but he survived, primarily by watching massive quantities of homosexual pornography. Beck could never bring himself to take a male lover, for, despite his numerous shortcomings, he was cautious and disciplined. As a nominal member of the media, he had seen a great deal of other Republican fuckheads have their careers and families destroyed after being caught in the act. So Beck had to content himself with one hour of every twenty-four in which he could eat fattening foods – fried chicken and Crisco usually – and watch depraved homosexual pornography in private without fear of being discovered. Although, as Brian mentioned, there was always fear.

BRIAN: Anyway, we entered the house and murdered the shit out of him.

AC: Now, Brian, I understand you were at first reluctant to go along with Hudson.

BRIAN: My reservation lay in the fact that Beck was neither brilliant nor unstable, and I therefore had no interest in him. A charlatan at best, I thought. I did not regard him with contempt; neither did I consider him the appropriate target of violent deeds.

AC: No interest at all?

BRIAN: You see, Mr. Cooper, I have embarked upon my own hermetic explorations and have reached a stage of ultimate tranquility and enlightenment. I have long since disabused myself of the sorts of cares and presuppositions that can cause a man like Beck to boil the blood and bring forth bile to the brain. In the end, though, it was love that convinced me.

AC: What do you mean?

BRIAN: I had shacked up with a mad-eyed Bolognese girl who dreamed only of Aztecs and storms, except when she had her period, when she dreamed of nothing at all, as if the Aztecs and storms had escaped through her menstrual fluid. She was a lovely girl – happy, intelligent, and filled with vibrant energy – and her life contained the absolute minimum of inconsequential concerns. That was until she saw the “Glenn Beck Program.”

At this point Brian pauses, lost in thought, waxing catatonic at the ceiling.

AC: What happened?

BRIAN: I tell you Anderson, I have never before in my life seen such a complete and sudden transformation overtake a person. She was so beside herself with rage and frustration that there wasn’t anything anyone could do to pull her out of it. She would sit in front of the television and bellow curses at Glenn Beck. The more she yelled, the more frustrated she became, because Beck, unable to hear her through the television, never listened or responded to her. I tried all sorts of remedies, and even got into some Eastern shit, but none of it worked. She had been lost. She was filled with unadulterated Beck-directed anger. I couldn't wait to murder the fucker.

AC: Reports indicate that you were the one who impaled him with the stake and then stuck the stake in the ground so that his body hung off of it like some morbid kebab. Can you talk about that?

BRIAN: I don't remember much. The whole thing was so frantic and mad that my brain failed to devote the requisite quantity of neurons to the process of remembering, occupied as it was with the overwhelmingly violent stimuli accosting it from all directions. I will say this: I remember feeling at first an unbelievable sense of excitement when I first plunged the stake into his body - a moment of excitement and clarity, and also serenity, such serenity, ultimate serenity, the form of Serenity. I wanted to impale his evil heart, to really dig the thing in until it pierced even the depths of his shit-filled soul. And so I did. Later on Hudson stuck the thing in the ground as some sort of gloriously wicked display. I had nothing to do with it. By that point I had already had my satisfaction, as they say, and was several Lokos deep.

AC: Wow, that really is fascinating. Now Hudson, can you talk about your impressions of the murderous experience?

HUDSON: For me, it was truly a life changing-experience. I remember being struck by the novelty of it, like the first time you ride a roller coaster, a genuinely new experience, except more personal than a roller coaster, like the first time you take psychedelic drugs, when it’s not the experience itself – the specific visuals and perception-challenging revelations – that leaves an impression, but the immediate and undeniable realization that that sort of experience exists, a completely new thing to which one suddenly has access. The novelty, as I say. I remember seeing all that blood – it was everywhere – and exalting in its quantity and magnitude and its primitive crimson barbarism.

AC: President Barrack Hussein Obama has pardoned the both of you, saying, “Someone had to take care of that damn mum-dawg.” What’s next for the two of you?

BRIAN: Drifting at weird hours, Anderson.

HUDSON: Just got to keep crushing it.

AC: Hooray!

A typical phone conversation with Javi Rosales, Cornerback and self-proclaimed polyglot

2010-11-07T03:35:00.000-08:00

Brian is sittin' on his couch and sippin' on the finest 65 euro cent liter of beer, Aurum Pilsner. He's watching his new favorite show, which he assumes to be a telenovela because TV still confuses him. It's called "The Big Bang Theory"and it is VERY good. From his backpack, which is in his bedroom, Brian hears his phone ring. He stiff arms two Belgians and spin moves past L. Stahl. In a valiant effort, he dives for the phone.

BRIAN: Oh, it's Javi.

Brian puts the wretched device to his ear.

BRIAN: Hola, Javi. ?Qué tal, tio?

JAVI: Hello, Brian. It's Javi.

BRIAN: So I gathered. What's up dude?

JAVI: What? Could you repeat?

BRIAN: Oh, I was just asking how it's going with you.

JAVI: Oh jolly good, right. The reason I call to you is to ask from you what is your shirt and pantaloons size. I ask because of this week's game, yes?

BRIAN: Una M, creo. Is an M gonna be big enough in the legs?

JAVI: Repeat.

BRIAN: I was just asking if you think, given the size of my legs and the size of Medium pants, that an M is the correct size for me.

JAVI: ?Cómo? En Castellano por favor. It is making too much noise in here.

BRIAN: Una M sería perfecto.

JAVI: ?Igual en camiseta como en pantalones?

BRIAN: Sí, gracias, Javi. Como siempre, ha sido fantástico hablar contigo.

JAVI: Ciao, Brian.

BRIAN: Hasta luego, dude.

BRIAN (to L. Stahl): Dios fuckin'mio, man.

Sally, Your Mother is a Whore

2010-10-21T14:44:00.001-07:00

It is the future. Hazard's daughter, little Sally, walks towards her father's residence with a brown bag. The Sunday morning light shines gently on her face, but she does not smile. The walk for her is a chore, a weekly routine, the only way to ensure that her father has not descended into the true and ultimate depths of self-imposed squalor which for years have been creeping up on him. In the brown bag are two bottles, one of which contains myriad multi-colored painkillers, the other Canadian whiskey. Sally approaches the dilapidated shack her father calls home, steadies herself outside the door, and enters.

SALLY: Father?

HAZARD: Yes, come in, my Sally. Give daddy his medicine.

The handoff is made, and Hazard proceeds to pour an indefinite quantity of painkillers down his throat and chase the awful amalgamation with an inhuman quantity of whiskey. Hazard twitches violently for a moment, then becomes calm.

HAZARD: Thank you, my Sally. Please, sit down.

SALLY: Father?

HAZARD: Yes, daughter of mine?

SALLY: Mommy says I shouldn't bring you medicine anymore.

HAZARD: Your mother is a whore, darling.

SALLY: But mommy doesn't need medicine. Why do you?

HAZARD: On Sunday mornings your father suffers from terrible hangovers. La resaca, as it were. And if he is to avoid drowning entirely, the pills must help him stay ashore.

SALLY: But mommy says you're drowning in the whiskey.

HAZARD: Darling, your mother is a whore.

Hazard takes another enormous gulp of whiskey, picks up young Sally, and places her in his lap.
SALLY: Why are you like this father?
HAZARD: That is a difficult question, my child, but a fair one. Partly, I suppose, it’s genetic predisposition. My father was a drunk, and his father before him, too, and so on and so forth way down the Stevens family tree. Hell, there’s a good chance that there was some Stevens back in Ireland or Scotland at some point getting blind on whiskey and stumbling through the village making a fool of himself and getting arrested. It’s the way of Stevens men, dear. Just be thankful you don’t suffer from my gender handicap.

Hazard takes a slug of whiskey from the bottle.

HAZARD: But really, dear, I feel that to chalk it up to my DNA is a bit of a cop out, as it overlooks my very significant role in the matter. And, as an American, I recoil at the thought of depriving myself of agency when it comes to matters of fate. So the truth is, my sweet pea, that it all began around 2010, when I began to get the Fear. Strange and ominous warnings that foretold the coming of a massive global catastrophe had begun to permeate the airwaves, and indeed managed to influence the more mystical elements of my soul. First of all, Sally my dearest, the Mayas predicted that the world was going to end in 2012.
SALLY: What’s Mayas daddy?
HAZARD: Ah, such a curious girl. (Hazard beholds his daughter with wonder and pats her tenderly on the head.) The Mayas, my dear, are the folks who run the casinos down in South New New Jersey.
SALLY: We learned in History class that that’s the 69th state.

Hazard is proud of his daughter’s intelligence, but regrets that the innocence which permits her to say the number “69” without thinking of simultaneous fellatio will soon be lost. Indeed, he reflects, she will probably end up a whore, like her mother.

HAZARD: Yes, my dear, South New New Jersey is indeed the 69th state. But long ago it was called Guatemala, and the Mayas were very poor people who insisted on wearing strange multicolored clownish clothing – which they called traje – and spoke in a strange clicking tongue that was imbued with clues. The clues, sadly, are gone, and with it our collective capacity for mystery and wonder. But that is neither here nor there, my dear. What is important is that even before South New New Jersey was Guatemala, it was simply the Great Kingdom of the Mayas, and in it there lived quite a few calendar makers. These people were certainly dedicated to their craft, by no means lazy, and made thousands of years’ worth of calendars, but when they finished making the calendar for the year 2012, they were overworked and exhausted, and they decided to cease their calendar making, thinking that if 2012 came around and they needed more calendars, they would cross that bridge when they came to it. However, not wanting to have their hearts removed in public, which was wont to happen in those times for even the slightest sign of insubordination or expression of personhood, they told the high priests of the Maya Kingdom that it was not exhaustion that had prompted them to discontinue their calendar-making efforts, but rather divine, mystical soothsaying. Indeed, with the audacity of a lying liar who lies, they walked up to those priests and said with straight faces that they had gazed into the hallowed firmament and saw that the world would end in 2012, which would effectively eliminate the need for calendars, as there would be no one left alive to use them.
SALLY: Daddy, you tell the longest stories.
HAZARD: Yes sweetheart, you’re right, and I apologize, I should be getting to the point. Well, implausible as the Mayas' predictions were, thousands of years later, when 2012 began to approach, a bunch of atheists who, despite having shunned God, desperately needed to believe in the existence of order in an otherwise terrifyingly chaotic, random and uncaring universe, started telling everyone that those calendar-making Mayas were in fact telling the truth! And, by God Sally, it caught on! And the thing of it was, I started to believe it myself.
SALLY: That’s silly daddy.
HAZARD: Silly indeed, dear! Silly indeed!

He slugs that whiskey.

HAZARD: But it wasn’t just the Maya predictions. There were very real scientific and political phenomena that at the time made many rational people think that the world was on the precipice of catastrophic disaster and probably doom. First of all, we were running out of oil, and fast.
SALLY: What's oil?
HAZARD: Ah yes, of course! You wouldn't know about oil! How delightful. You see, buttercup, in order to power our machines, we used to use a rather viscous liquid hidden below the surface of the earth that was produced by the ultra-compressed fossilized remains of carbon-rich lifeforms. Billion-year old algae and the like, you see, when it gets compressed from the weight of eons worth of soil deposits, turns into this magical black combustible liquid called oil. We don't have any more of the stuff on Earth, and good riddance, because darling, the stuff was terrible. Sure, it could run the economy, but it caused more wars than Jesus and Muhammad combined. But, more relevant to what I'm telling you, it was rapidly destroying the environment upon which we humans depended on to live. Now, dear, having seen a punk rocker huff glue that he knows will only make him happy for mere seconds before he feels absolutely terrible, I understand that it is easy for the human being to operate with dangerously high discount factors. And this is exactly what happened. Although world leaders knew that humanity's addiction to oil was fast propelling us to a terrible future, they didn't really do anything about it! Hard to believe, I know, but it's true. The main problem, I think, my darling sweet Sally, was that the world at the time was divided into several countries, all of which were independent actors with inherently divergent and competitive interests. With oil as a shared resource, a terrible collective action problem resulted. Any multilateral agreement to use less oil was not only unenforceable, but was strangely irrational to abide by! For a leader of a nation, forcing your country to use less oil meant making your economy less competitive, so there was an incentive to cheat on any agreements. And world leaders, knowing that other world leaders had an incentive to cheat, were even more likely to cheat. Needless to say, no one had the political will or capital to do anything about the oil situation, and the environment continued to worsen. To make matters worse, the oil was running out. Every facet of the global economy depended on the use of oil to operate, and the stuff was going to be non-existent in no more than one hundred years. But the companies that sold the oil were very rich and powerful and were able to persuade various world leaders to not invest in alternative sources of energy that might prepare us for the end of oil. So we were basically bracing for some sort of savage post-apocalyptic scenario in which there was very little oil and all aspects of modern life broke down. We were prepared for war, disease, hunger, cold and starvation, and we knew that life was soon to become nasty, brutish and shitty.
SALLY: But the world seems fine today.
HAZARD: Yes, dear. It does.
SALLY: So what happened, Daddy?
HAZARD: Well, fortunately, we were visited by the Great Seer, who taught us to harvest chicken dreams, an infinitely powerful and renewable source of energy which we could survive on forever.
SALLY: I love chicken dreams.
HAZARD: Don't we all, dear. But at the time your poor father couldn't know about the coming of the Great Seer, the harvesting of chicken dreams, and the subsequent Great Unification and Coming of Peace and Freedom for All. So instead, dear, I turned to the medicine, and I've been this way ever since.

Hazard takes a magnificent slug of whiskey from the bottle, nearly draining it.

SALLY: Well, mommy still says you shouldn't take so much medicine.
HAZARD: Sally, my beautiful wonderful intelligent daughter, I love you very much. But lamentably, Sally, your mother is a whore.

Story Time

2010-10-13T00:06:00.000-07:00

Hudson and Brian are seated in thrones at the front of a classroom of children. The two maestros wear crowns and purple robes and have a variety of shining jewels strung from their necks. The children are seated in platinum-plated tubs instead of at desks. It is story time.

HUDSON: Once there was a tree.

BRIAN: And it started walking, no one knows how.

HUDSON: And it walked right into Bill Clinton's car.

BRIAN: And Bill Clinton got out and started beating up the tree.

HUDSON: And then the owner of the tree came over and said, "Why you beatin' up my tree?"

BRIAN: And Bill Clinton said, "'Cause it hurt my car."

HUDSON: And Bill Clinton stood and said nothing.

BRIAN: And the man took his tree and turned around and walked away.

The children shift with boredom in their tubs.

HUDSON: And Bill Clinton, who was no longer burdened by the concerns of politics and personal reputation, and who had for the past several years chosen to direct his laser-beam focus at the ominous messages that he could feel infiltrating his consciousness at every waking moment, stared with squinted eyes at the man who strode briskly away, hand in hand with his tree, and aimed a a.357 Magnum at the back of the man's head. Then Bill Clinton shot that man dead.

The children begin to weep.

BRIAN: Do not weep, my children. For every life, no matter how happy it is, ends in pain and suffering.

HUDSON: That depends.

BRIAN: Depends on what, champ?

HUDSON: On lots of things. Say you're shot in the back of the head, for example, and you don't hear the motherfucker come up behind you, then you're off the the next world, no pain, no suffering.

BRIAN: Goddamn kid. Have you ever been shot in the back of the head?

The children stifle their tears.

HUDSON: And the moral of the story is, don't let your tree walk right into Bill Clinton's car.

The children, silent as mutes, file out of the room.

On a Sunday Crafternoon

2010-10-12T13:08:00.000-07:00

Chad is sitting in the back of class sipping on some four loko. In his 12th year of college he’s decided to give up on classroom sobriety. Also, being sauced really helps his Spanish skills. Suddenly, Brian enters the classroom.

BRIAN: Yo chico, we’re gonna go slam some sauce and play some WBB in the sun, wanna join?

CHAD: Dude, I’m in class, you’re currently in my classroom, and you can see the professor at the front lecturing. Although I am VERY D, I can obviously not join in your fun fun activities.

PROF. TURDFACECANADIAN: Are you two whispering of witches back there?

CHAD: No sir, unless you mean Christine O’donnell, cause dat witch be mad nutters.

BRIAN: Major spooky.

PROF. TURDFACE: Yes, she gives me a case of the papa weepskies. Please continue your conversation that is much more important than my lecture. (He says this with no hint of sarcasm)

As PROF OKFACE returns to the board Cliff enters dragging a mattress. He is VERY D. But the mattress looks VERY comfortable.

CLIFF: BRING ‘EM ON IN!

BRIAN: OK

PROF. FACE: Excuse me, I hope you brought enough for everyone.

Surprisingly, Cliff nods and then lets out a loud, sharp whistle. Bret then enters dragging numerous VERY comfortable mattresses. The gang proceeds to throw all of the chairs out the window and place the mattresses on the ground, so the entire floor is covered. The class is now VERY comfortable.

BRIAN: So WBB? Sauce?

CLIFF: YES PLEASE.

CHAD: Dude, I already told you…

Hazard then crashes through the door, he bears choco milk, delicious juices, sauce, and numerous snacks of varying GOODness. His grin reaches from ear to ear and he has a wild look in his eyes. He is obviously on cocaine or some sort of amphetamine.

HAZARD: YES SIR!

Hazard passes out the goodies and the entire class is soon enjoying themselves immensely. Also, they’re still VERY comfortable.

PROF. AWESOME (through a choco milk mustache): Hobbes, Weber, Rousseau, blah blah blah.

For no good reason Sam and Hudson enter. They lay down and begin to consume/imbibe.

PROF. AWESOMEMcAMERICANCOOLGUY: Ok I really don’t give two shits about what I’m supposed to teach in this class. The honest truth is a have a pirated copy of National Treasure 3 and would really like to watch it? Anyone have any complaints if I put it on the big projector?
EVERYONE: HOORAY!

Chad wakes up. He is still in his shitty class. He checks his watch and it’s only been 10min. PROF. ASSHOLE is talking about things he’s already learned a million times. And to top it all off he’s terribly sober.

CHAD (yelling): HA, it was a dream. You though it was reality, you thought things were going great, but they weren’t. HAHA. FUCK YOU BRUCE WILLIS. FUCK YOU SHYAMALAN. HAHA.

Chad stands from his seat and runs out of the classroom screaming/crying/laughing the whole way. Outside he finds the Gang playing WBB and drinking in the sun. Rather than waking up again, he prefers to take on the eternal sleep, and does so with a gun to the face.

You're gonna be on a boat?

2010-10-09T08:35:00.000-07:00

Brian is sitting in an uncomfortable airplane window seat. Both the seats to his left are unoccupied. Brian is wearing a brand new segunda mano flannel. He has just finished reading All the Pretty Horses. It was a nice story. He enjoyed it very much.

Enter Hombre Jubilado from, let's just say, Maine. He has a very subtle New England accent and is overly friendly. He sits down in the aisle seat.

HOMBRE JUBILADO: Well hi there, young man. Hopin' to meet any cute girls in England? Do you know what they call girls in England? Me neither. Never been before. Have you ever been to London? I hear it's a fine city, just fine.

BRIAN: I honestly don't know very much about England. I'm just trying to get to T-Pain.

HJ: Pardon me?

BRIAN: Sorry, Esthpain.

HJ: OH! SPAIN! Lot's of pretty chicas down there.

BRIAN: Yeah, I'm hoping so, I guess.

HJ: Well me, I travel a lot.

BRIAN: Oh is that so?

HJ: As a matter of fact the boat I'm leavin on sails the day after next.

BRIAN: A boat? Like for travel? Where are you leaving from?

HJ: London.

BRIAN: The place you're flying to now?

HJ: Yeah!

BRIAN: And where are you going on this boat?

HJ: Florida!

BRIAN: Why in the world are you doing that?

HJ: I hear there's lots of pretty chicas there.

BRIAN (trying to mask his rising exasperation): But why all the transatlantic travel?

HJ: I travel a lot.

Brian shakes his head.

Enter an entire soccer team. They are the Icelandic female defending Champions League champions. Obviously, because of the sexism and all, they fly coach. A player, the starting Right Back, with an impossibly Icelandic name sits down between Brian and the Hombre Jubilado. The girl, she's really just a girl, is clearly astounded by the tiny seat she has been allotted.

ICELANDIC SOCCER STAR: This seat is very, VERY small. I mean, I can barely fit my ass into it. I do not have a big ass. I have a very VERY small ass. (Now addressing her team mates in the row behind her). Right? Isn't it true that I have a very little ass?

They nod and speak to each other in foreign tongues.

The Hombre Jubilado flashes Brian an excited and knowing glance.

Brian shakes his head.

BRIAN: Fuck.

The Long Arm of the Guffaw

2010-10-08T19:28:00.000-07:00

The curtain opens to reveal Detective Cliff at a crime scene. There is a dead body on the ground, it is the corpse of one Hudson Houdini Hongo. Cliff smells something afoot, literally. He is on the ground smelling Hudson’s foot.

DETECTIVE CLIFF: Mmm… Corn nuts…

The other policemen are very confused. They look at each other with furrowed brows and many guffaws. Cliff rises from Hudson’s corpse.

DETECTIVE CLIFF: I’m going to need everyone to remove their shoes and socks immediately!

The officers abide Cliff’s command and remove their foot coverings. D.C. gets down on all fours and begins to smell the brass’ feet. From foot to foot he sniffs, picking at their toes, plucking at their calluses. All the while his pace quickens, his breath shortens, and small beads of perspiration drip from his temple. Soon his shirts and pants have somehow been removed, he’s sweating profusely, and there’s a crazed look in his eyes. His pupils Dilate and turn to all black, he stands.

DETECTIVE CLIFF: (Through an exasperated gasp) DONE!

Zooooooooooooooooooooooombiies

2010-10-06T19:30:00.000-07:00

Hudson and Sam sit in a room, a room much like the one you currently reside in (be it gymnasium, bowling alley, closet, or whatever).They are playing their favorite game: “Dungeons and Zombies.” Hudson is a level 34 Zombie Witch. Sam is a lvl 2 Mouse Resurrect.

HUDSON: I cast “mind blown” on you secondary charact-r, Mr. Nibblets.

SAM: I counter with “squeak.”

HUDSON: It dies. With your minions dead I attack you personally with “Gnaw (lvl 27).”

SAM: No counter, get it on it.

Hudson removes Sam’s shoe and begins to chew on his feetsies. Unlike the usually knee jerk reaction Samwise is known to have, he allows this. Soon Hudson is drawing blood.

Hazard Enters

HAZARD: Uhh, huddos? What in the hell are you doing?

SAM: O we’re playing D&Z, he’s attacking me.

Hudson lifts his head from Sam’s foot. Blood drops from his whispy whiskers. He then begins to do a cruel (yet alluring) dance with his Gs.

HUDSON: I cast “charm” on Harry which demands him to join in my gnaw attack

HAZARD: You just needed to ask me to join the game dude.

Harry proceeds to join Hudson and begin gnawing on Sam’s foot. Soon they’ve worked their way up his calf and all through his leg until nothing but a bloody stump is left. Sam is looking considerably pale but still smiling and obviously enjoying the game.

Scene 2:
Chad sits in the kitchen sipping on some sauce when he hears yelling coming from the rapesment.

HAZARD: Your minion breaks free of your charm spell and attempts to gnaw on you.

HUDSON: Well I counter with “Cruel Gs.”

Again Hudson dances. Soon Harry is gnawing on his own leg and Chad runs downstairs.

CHAD: O are you playing D & Z? I want in!

Hudson dances above Harry and Chad with Sam’s dismembered head. The two boys are both chewing on Harry’s inner thigh.

Scene 3:
Weeks pass, then months, hell even then years. D & Z catches on around the world, rapesment upon rapesment broods the spawning grounds for new adamant players. Soon the world has dwindled to only a few people, Hudson included. Hudson sits atop a glorious mountain, his back to a sunset filled with pinks and oranges of hope and love. He cradles Sam’s dismembered (and now shriveled) head in his hands. Huddo’s is crying.

HUDSON: I love you, I’ve always loved you, I’m sorry it came to this, I’m sorry for how I took your hopes and crushed them like some origami crane under the pain of a mallet. I never meant for this…

Hudson throws the head off the side of the mountain. All alone, he makes G-whiz one last time.

HUDSON: Hooray…