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INT, WIZARD OF OZ THRONE ROOM
The Wizard has now revealed himself. Dorothy and friends surround him. The Wizard holds a sack full of junk and addresses the Tin Man.
Wizard: Well, my galvanized friend. In consideration of your kindness, I take pleasure in presenting you with a small token of our . . .
Reaches into bag and pulls out heart-shaped watch. Tin Man takes it.
Tin Man: Seriously? What the hell is that?
Oz: A heart.
Tin Man: Thanks.
Throws watch across room. It shatters.
Tin Man: I don’t need a f***ing heart.
Scarecrow: Actually, I think it was a watch.
Tin Man: I don’t need a f***ing watch.
Lion: Well what do you need?
Music up. Wizard rolls his eyes.
Scarecrow: Yes. Explain it to us in a song!
Wizard: Yes, please. You already did in the second act. But please, explain it again.
Tin Man: Happy to oblige.
He starts singing …
Tin Man: A tinsmith built my body
But his work was kind of shoddy
He left out a vital part
He thought that sex was naughty
So I can’t attract a hottie
Because I lack a schlong.
If I had the right equipment
I’d deliver on the shipment
That makes ‘em sigh and moan.
I’d be Mister Heavy Metal.
I’d be banging like a kettle.
If I only had a schlong.
Scarecrow: Gee. I always thought …
Tin Man: People ask me “Are you gay?”
Then they’ll say that, “It’s OK.”
But they’ve really got it wrong.
The tinsmith also left out balls.
I’m not anything at all.
If I only had a schlong!
Dance number, instrumental.
Tin Man: I’d be Mars, and she’d be Venus
If I only …
Wizard: Stop singing. Please. Take this … Just take it.
Hands him a box.
Tin Man: What’s in the box?
Wizard: A mechanical device.
Tin Man: What kind of device?
Wizard: Well, Dorothy wouldn’t know that because she’s only sixteen.
Dorothy: The hell I wouldn’t.
Tin Man: But you know, right?
Wizard: No.
Tin Man: Why not?
Wizard: Because I only know what she knows! It’s obvious, you idiots!
Tin Man: Not to me.
Wizard: Listen, morons. This is all her dream.
Tin Man: Wha…?
Wizard: We all exist in Dorothy’s head, get it? She’s real — we’re not.
Scarecrow: That’s metaphysically confusing, Wizard.
Wizard: Tell me about it.
Scarecrow: And logically inconsist—
Wizard: Shut up, strawhead! Just get the hell out of here, OK? All of you!
Tin Man: Fine by me.
Scarecrow: (to Tin Man) Say, you wanna trade that “device” for my diploma?
Tin Man: F*** off.
Walks out. Dorothy takes his arm.
Let us now pause to remember the most amazingly prolific duck SF writer who ever lived. Philip K. Duck's novels included ...
The Asshole in the High Castle
The Three Smegmata of Drumpfer Shmendrick
The Quack in Space
Udick
Through a Spammer Darkly
Counter Cock World
Election of a Crap Artist
Do Android Farmers Screw Electric Sheep?
Galactic Pot-Dealer
Radio Free Albumen
WEEVIL
Thanks and a hattip to Bobby London for several Dick related puns.
Dearest Mother,
I write you from the battlefield. The Battle is over, for now. Night has fallen, or something did. We have set up camp on an old spittoon waiting for the next Battle to begin. I am weary, and tired, and sleepy, and other things having to do with not being fully awake. I am eating hard tack right now. That is all we ever eat. Hard tack soup; hard tack sandwiches; hard tack ice cream cones. I’ve lost almost all of my teeth because that hard tack is so ferociously hard, as its name would imply, O, Mother. But this is mere selfishness and vanity! I must not think on my own concerns or the insults to my fragile corporeal body on this Earth. The tribulations of Others are far, far greater than my own. Last night, a Velociraptor tore our Captain in half. He was shrieking something fierce. (The Captain being my meaning here, not the Velociraptor.) His pitiful cries did not dissuade the Veliciraptor from sinking its teeth into him. And then, with its prodigiously powerful yet surprisingly small forearms, the Velociraptor ripped the poor man asunder. Intestines splattered every which way! O horrible sight! Such Horror has become a common occurrence in our Struggles, though I am not inured to it. I do not long for Death, Mother, though I long for what comes after. In the next World there will be no more Dinosaurs. Of this I can only hope.
I remain your most loving and dutiful Son —
—Clement
Load of Bollocks: Theater News Theatre News
When The Show Is Oh No No-Go: Pissed-Off Yorkshire Artists Skip Audition and Shut Play Down Before Reading Script.
On Wednesday, September 19, several Yorkshire artists received an invitation to audition for a play called “The Adventures of Robin Hood” by playwright Roger Screwe. The play is the second production in a series of Screwe's historic plays called “Tales of Merrie England.” The ugly truth is “The Adventures of Robin Hood” is inspired by the fraudulent 19th-century British writers who distorted an ancient legend to make Robin Hood a self-exiled Saxon noble fighting Norman lords. Both the original legend and the subsequent Victorian confabulation have no basis in fact! According to Wikipedia and most historians, “Robin Hood” never existed at all.
The production, which was slated for a December 2018-February 2019 run at Dolamite Theatre in Danby Wiske, was not only written by the Irish playwright Roger Screwe, but was programmed to be directed by the Liverpudlian director Jennifer Lastnamehere. Over the course of the past few days, actors in the Saxon and Norman communities in Yorkshire have called for the show to be withdrawn from Dolamite’s upcoming season. Load of Bollocks asked some of the artists who were invited to audition for “The Adventures of Robin Hood” to comment on why they are speaking out against this production:
According to Saxon actor Kenneth Rawhead, “Who’d’ve thought in 2018 we’d be back to Robin fannying about in Sherwood Forrest, eh? It’s one stereotype after another, and no lie. The Saxons live in forests and shoot arrows. The Normans are fat, speak bad French, eat quail and the like. Wot a load o’ rubbish, that! It’s simplistic, in’t it? That there programming stirs up like Saxonphobia and Normanphobia and I dunno all wot else as I ain’t read the sodding play. Have a real Yorkshireman and/or Yorkshirewoman put pen to paper or finger to keyboard or what have you, or don’t write the play at all!”
Welsh actor Ian Fluellen noted, “That scouse bitch asked me to audition—I spit in her face, I did! ‘I’m Welsh, you bint, are you blind?’ That’s wot I said, I did. It’s wrong on every level, this. You got Saxons playing Normans and Normans playing Saxons, and wot’s with the sodding pantomime horse, eh? Real horse or no horse, I say! Bloody abomination, that. Kiss my leek!”
Cornwall-based artist and activist Ella Leek quickly added that, “As an artist and an activist, I am outraged at the disruption Brexit is causing in the—oh, this isn’t about Brexit? Sorry. I’ve done five interviews this week and I just naturally assumed … sorry.”
After three days of back and forth between artists in Yorkshire and administrators at Dolamite, the play is now being pulled, to be replaced by a different, and entirely uncontroversial, script as yet to be announced or, for that matter, written.
"Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?”
—As told by Ernest Hemingway
"Close to the northernmost limit of the Alaska Highway there is the dried and frozen carcass of a chicken. No one has explained what the chicken was seeking at that altitude.”
“Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?”
As told by Raymond Chandler
Los Angeles. My office. Philip Marlowe, private detective. People confuse me with the playwright. But he's dead, and I'm not. Though business hasn't been good lately.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon, mid-August. I had no idea what day it was. I wore a wristwatch, but didn’t have a calendar. If this case paid off, maybe I’d buy one. Colonel Sanders was dead. I got the news like anybody else, and then got the call. An hour earlier, which would’ve made it three o’clock in the afternoon. I still had no idea what day it was.
I remember the call like it was only an hour ago.
Women’s voice. Southern accent. Like butter, if butter instantly triggered the gallant reflex. Which I suppose it did, in the right hands.
“I’d like to discuss a case. Are you free this afternoon, Mr. Marlowe?”
“It depends on your definition of freedom. There’s some disagreement on that point.”
“Are you free to come see me?”
“You come here. Bring a calendar.”
We set a time. She showed up on time.
My secretary buzzed her in. And there she stood in the doorway. Like a metaphor poured inside a simile that didn’t quite fit.
I stood up.
“Have a seat, Ms. Sanders. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“You know my name.”
“I know a lot of things. It’s my job.”
Thank God for Caller-ID.
She sat; I sat. You know the drill.
The dame slid a packet of crime scene photos across my desk. I opened it, and got a good look. Colonel Sanders, naked in an alley, dead as a sack of doornails. He was holding a bucket of chicken. Not entirely empty. They’d cut off his little colonel, breaded and fried it. Extra crispy.
“What do you see, Mr. Marlowe?”
“A deceased white male, approximately 90 years old. White hair, white goatee. No distinctive tattoos. Signs of violent trauma. Lacerations and bruising on lower abdomen and upper legs. Missing genitalia.”
“Look closer, Mr. Marlowe.”
There were chicken tracks all over. Big ones.
“Well, that narrows down the suspects to giant chickens.”
“Which one, Mr. Marlowe?”
“Well, that’s hard to say, Ms. Sanders. Every chicken in the world had a beef with your … I’m sorry. What was your relation to the deceased? Father? Lover?”
“Yes.”
She pulled out an elegant cigarette case. Silver, reflecting her pretty blue eyes. She removed a cigarette, as I figured she would, being a detective and all. I lit it for her. She took it like her due. She sat for a minute, her pretty faced wreathed in pretty blue smoke. She was thinking. Or maybe she had a migraine. Then she finally spoke.
“Pardon me for stating the obvious, but I want to get the bastard who did this, Mr. Marlowe. Money is no object.”
“That’s great, Ms. Sanders. I have no objection to money. You got any leads?”
“Ask him.”
She pointed out the window. Like a good boy, I turned to look. That’s when I saw him, through the slits in the Venetian blinds. A giant chicken, crossing La Brea Boulevard.
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
“He’s crossing the road. Why the hell is he doing that?”
“You tell me, Mr. Marlowe. It’s ‘your job,’ right? Do your job.”
She stood up. Then tossed something thick and heavy on my desk. It landed with a thud.
“Here’s your goddamn calendar, Mr. Marlowe.”
The chicken in question got to the other side. An hour later, I got him in the backroom. Then I grilled him, in the metaphorical sense. He had an airtight alibi, in the literal sense. At the time of the murder, they put him in a diving bell over at UCLA research. “The scientists will all vouch for me,” he pleaded. “Just call them!” I called. They vouched for chicken.
“Can I go now?” he asked.
“Sure … as soon as you answer my question.”
“I’ve answered your questions!”
“I’ve got one more.”
I stood up. I knocked over my chair and threw stuff around. I wasn’t really angry. With punks like this, you have to look intimidating sometimes. It’s an act, and I’m good at it. I took improv with UCB last summer.
“Why’d you cross the road?”
“Road? What …?”
“Stop stalling chicken! La Brea Boulevard, 4:15 p.m. yesterday. I saw you with my own eyes! You crossed! Why?”
“I want a lawyer.”
“I want a house on the beach. Why’d you cross the road?”
“To get to the other side.”
I slapped him. Hard.
“Can the doubletalk, chicken.”
I slapped him again. Harder.
“I want a real answer, this time! Why’d you cross the road?”
“To get to the other side! To get to the other side!”
I slapped him harderer.
The chicken blubbered like a weak sister. Or a chicken. He stuck to his lousy story. I finally let him go.
Two days later, they found him. In a breadpan, kicking out dough. Reflex action. The chicken was dead. And I had no more leads.
"Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?"
As told by William Faulkner
The asphalt steamed in the sun’s unblinking glare with a misty evaporation of the rain from before, a mist tainted with the smell of oil from untold leaking cars and trucks, soaked in (like the rain) from the numbing repetitions of Man’s vain journeys, as the Chicken on its own enigmatic journey approached the two-lane blacktop bobbing its head as chickens do, its motion reflected in the few remaining shards of glass in the spiderweb shattered window of the rust triumphant ramshackle abandon of a Gulf station, its faded orange sign no longer orange, its ICE machine speaking a lying promise of cool relief from the relentless heat of the all-surrounding New Mexico emptiness, yet indifferent to this evidence of human futility, the Chicken approached the unforgiving road, ignoring the heat steam mist rising up from the cracked alligator skin of the blacktop, ignoring the flickering mirage oasis visible far distant in the road’s converging perspective lines, (mute testament to the road’s futile pursuit of the horizon, ever unreachable), ignoring also the flies blowing around a dead thing in the road's shoulder, the Chicken without ceremony crossed. Why?
The Chicken who was a talking chicken gave an answer that was no answer. For no reason he clucked. Because no road is ever crossed. And no road is truly a road, for all roads take you nowhere. The road only reveals to chickens their own folly and despair, and crossing is an illusion of philosophers and barnyard poultry.
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