Suicide Solution: A One-Act Play
Scene: Seven adults sit gathered around a television in a dimly lit, 1970s-style rumpus room, watching the Democratic rebuttal to President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union Address. Some are wearing flannel pajamas, eating ice cream directly from the container with large spoons. The others are sipping from highball glasses.
Jonah Goldberg: I wonder if Jim Webb wears a rug. Ha-ha.
John Podhoretz: [using ink pen to scratch between shoulder blades beneath flannel shirt] I’m as big a Jim Webb fan as anybody in the world, but I have a few superficial criticisms of his otherwise awesome speech.
Peter Robinson: Woof-woof! Who knew Master had so many bones left to toss us? Pant-pant. He’s still the best Master. Yes, he is. Aw-rooooo! [tries to scratch right ear with foot, tips over comically]
Jonah Goldberg: I’ll put it this way: This speech isn’t as boring as most Democratic rebuttals, but — heheheheh — lookit his hair.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: [scraping bottom of ice cream container] Who else here wishes George Allen had won?
Jonah Goldberg: [walking offstage] G’night, I’m off to read comic books under the covers by flashlight.
John Derbyshire: [looking up from newspaper] What’s especially revealing about Jim Webb is what he almost said about our troops.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Hm. Surprising fashion choice by Nancy Pelosi. I expected her to show up in a red pantsuit and a tiara. It “suits” her. Get it? “Suit”?
[prolonged, awkward silence]
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Jim Webb sure is masculine. Almost too masculine, as Andrew Sullivan says.
[another prolonged, awkward silence]
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Nancy Pelosi changes her outfits more often than Mariah Carey, and she eats chocolate constantly without worrying about her figure. Don’t you just hate her!
Jonathan Adler: [clears throat] Energy conservation plans will do nothing but increase taxes and fuel production.
Peter Robinson: The president’s performance was positively Reaganesque. There. I said it.
Jonah Goldberg: [wanders onstage, wearing pajama top and distended jockey shorts] Jim Webb reminds me of John Kerry, except he’s more hostile to capitalism and has a less of a neck. [picks up ice-cream container from floor and tips it upside down to noisily slurp what’s left]
Jonah Goldberg: [wipes mouth] Am I the only one who was distracted by how much Nancy Pelosi blinked while the president was speaking? What a hypocrite!
Kathryn Jean Lopez: [thumbing through encyclopedia] I’ve found some new information that might possibly discredit Jim Webb’s criticism of the president’s war plan.
Ramesh Ponnuru: [suddenly picking up telephone receiver and shouting into the wrong end] Please, Brer Webb! Please don’t throw the Democrats back into the triangulation briar patch. Anything but that! The Republicans will never win another election again! Please!
Kathryn Jean Lopez: [halting, as she continues to read an encyclopedia entry] You can’t trust … Jim Webb on … the military … because … he’s, um … grinding a partisan ax over Harry Truman’s antipathy toward the Navy and … oh, I give up. I wonder if he’s secretly a Republican? [grabs laptop computer and begins typing furiously]
A single gunshot is heard just offstage, followed by a thud. The curtain falls.
I need to start reading the Corner. They really have a knack for saying as little as possible in the most posts as possible. In fact, I bet that the average response to this post is longer and contains more content than the average linked post above.
Well played. It’s like Wingnut Welfare turned into its own New Deal-style Federal Theater Project.
Except for the NRO crowd, the project would be to find the federal theater and burn it down.
I love legitimate theater.
comic books should be in quotation marks.
Jonah: Don’t go yet.
Ramesh: I’m going.
Jonah What do you do when you fall far from help?
J-Pod: We wait till we can get up. Then we go on. On!
Jonah: Before you go tell him to sing.
J-Pod: Who?
Jonah: Patterico.
K-Lo: To sing?
Jonah: Yes. Or to think. Or to recite.
Ramesh: But he is dumb.
J-Pod: Dumb!
K-Lo: Dumb. He can’t even groan.
Jonah: Dumb! Since when?
John Derbyshire: [looking up from newspaper] Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
Scene: Five guys sit gathered around a television in a brightly lit, futuristic chamber that looks much like George Jetson’s living room, watching the President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union Address. Some are dressed in t-shirts with comic book characters on them, while others wear unzipped gorilla suits over Ghostbusters style jumpsuits. A few of them are eating raw Pillsbury cookie dough by biting chunks directly off the tube itself, its long unpeeled wrappers hanging down like tattered mourning jackets. The others are eating paint chips out of old grease spotted KFC buckets.
SEB: Good paint chips.
GAV: Where did we get paint chips, in this strange Jetsonsesque future?
BRAD: We don’t ask those questions. We just thank God there’s something we can eat that will lower our IQ enough to make life here bearable.
RETARDO: Could there be a paint chip black market?
TRAVIS: Could life here be bearable?
BRAD: Sure, eat some more paint chips. Plus, that hot Judy Jetson chick should be around somewhere…
SEB: Dude, she’s animated!
GAV: Like you didn’t have fifty different homemade nude drawings of Jessica Rabbit on your dorm room door in college.
BRAD: Heh. That’s why we called him The Dip.
SEB: That’s different. Jessica Rabbit was designed by insane cartooning maestros with advanced degrees in tantric psychology to be Teh Hotness. Like that Clarice bitch on RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER.
BRAD and GAV in unison: Clariiiiiiiiiiiiice! I can smell your cunt!
RETARDO: You guys frighten me sometimes.
SEB: Hey, look, Bush is on TV!
BRAD: No shit? What the hell is he doing on TV?
GAV: I think he’s still President, dude.
RETARDO: He was never President!
BRAD: No, no, he’s our legitimately elected Commander In Chief.
SEB: You don’t vote for Commanders in Chief.
GAV: Well, I sure don’t… wait, what’s he saying now?
RETARDO: Uh… something about appointing Harriet Meiers as Theater Commander in Iraq.
BRAD and GAV in unison: Harrrrrrrrrriet! I can smell your cunt!
SEB: Okay, pass the paint chips.
RETARDO: Wait. ‘Tantric psychology’…?
awesome Travis. nice work.
I wonder if Johah Goldberg is a doughy fucking pantload. No Wait, I know he is, he should set himself on fire for being one.
mmmm, paint chips…..
Humans are weird. Not as weird as Republicans, but still, pretty fuckin’ weird.
Is there any ice cream left? I like the Cherry Garcia, but you got to pick the chocolate chips out for me, on account of I’m not allowed to have chocolate.
I’m thinking of moving in with this K. Lopez person; I think she has ice cream way more often than my current handmaiden does. Do you think a Republican would pick out the chocolate chips for me? I mean, they have opposable thumbs and everything, right?
I don’t want any paint chips, either, thank you in advance.
The handmaiden says I don’t need to eat paint chips, as I couldn’t possibly be any dumber, but she doesn’t read that stuff at The Corner. Or she would know that I am actually fairly bright compared to those Republicans. I mean, when I run into the fucking wall, it’s at least a couple of days before I do it again.
What does a Republican appointments calendar have on it? Monday: Wall. Tuesday: Wall. Wednesday: Wall. Etc.
Hahahaha, just a little feline humor. That El Gato Negro guy usually gets all the laughs, and Mehitabel is always all, EGN this and EGN that on the IMs. Which totally sucks.
Oh Seb, I wish I knew how to quit you…
As one whose day job includes teaching playwriting, I offer the following: Travis’ script has promise and Jiggavegas’, although derivative, is compelling, while Doc Nebula’s seems to shortchange the need for characters with something at stake. However, I’d be happy to read revisions of all.
Having said that: Jonah Goldberg: [wanders onstage, wearing pajama top and distended jockey shorts]
Eww, Travis.
MARIE JON’enters the room, totally naked except for three strategically placed paint chip squares, one red, one white and the third blue.
MARIE: Well, boys, you can smell MY cunt all you want, but you can’t touch MY paint chips; I’m saving them for Doc Nebula.
SEB, GAV, BRAD, RETARDO, TRAVIS: Doc Nebula? Oh, you mean that guy sitting in the bathtub, farting and then trying to bite the bubbles?
GEORGE W. BUSH: Ha ha, they said “farting”! Hey, pull my fingers, you five faggots!
NOT-JENNA: Daddy! What are you doing here? We’re trying to have a party!
GEORGE W. BUSH: You put your panties back on this instant, young lady.
Chekov be damned, when this curvaceous pundit is around, there is no danger that the warblogger’s lustily stroked “pistols” go off.
Kathryn Jo Lopez in “The Intact Cherry Orchard”
I worry that you guys are getting too high-concept for your own good and that you’ll soon be veering into meta-meta humor, at which point casual readers of this blog will lack the meme knowledge necessary to follow what’s going on. Keep up the good work.
It’s not as good as Stop the Planet of the Apes I Want to Get Off, but Jonah certainly channels Homer Simpson pretty well.
Jonah Goldberg: I’ll put it this way: This speech isn’t as boring as most Democratic rebuttals, but — heheheheh — lookit his hair.
I don’t fart, I stink up the place with gas. See? See? ::arching eyebrows suggestively::
As for Marie and her paint chips, that hoyden can save herself or Green Stamps, for me or Warren Ellis or a throbbingly priapic Mr. Magoo, it makes no never mind. My heart belongs to Kay. (Although I wish to God she’d at least lease it back to me occasionally. All this goddam artificial circulatory tubing really cramps my style.)
Twenty three skidoo, gentlemen! And never… no… always… check your references.
I think the young people enjoy it when I ‘get down’ verbally, don’t you?
Again with the ‘Real Genius’ references!
Forget the cookie, I’ll settle for a glass of malt.
Forget the cookie, I’ll settle for a glass of malt.
You… drank what?
“A single gunshot is heard just offstage, followed by a thud. The curtain falls.”
Ooooooo….a mystery!
According to the stage directions, all 7 characters were onstage at the scene’s end (Jonah had exited, but returned for the ice cream dregs), so….
Another wingnut in the wings (a wing-wingnut?) has offed themselves.
Who was it? Byron York? John Miller? Victor Davis Someone Else’s Blood ‘n’ Guts Hanson getting a little too into his Deer Hunter fantasy?
Or was it just the pizza guy waiting in the foyer who couldn’t take any more incoherant babbling while waiting to get paid….
You… drank what?
It’s basically a cure…for not being a homicidally axe-wielding maniac.
You… drank what?
Mikey, explain to these heathens about whisky. The real stuff. I shudder to think how DN would have twisted my words if I’d said anything anything about “opening the 12-year-old”.
thelogos:
you remembered to put it in a coca-cola can so that no-one woud ever think to drink from it, right?
as for me, just once i’d like to keep the lentils off the floor
Feh. I know all about whiskey, which I spell with the penultimate ‘e’, proving how fucking manley I am. Or subliterate. (It’s a floor polish. It’s a dessert topping.)
As to ‘opening the 12 year old’, yes, yes, I yearn to return to the glorious days of Queen Victoria also, when men were men and women were women and pre-adolescent streetwalkers of either or both genders were a farthing a dozen, cheaper if you had an advance copy of the latest Dickens chapbook to recite from before and/or after. (This is the actual origin of the term “give her the Dickens”. No! Don’t believe him! He’s insane, a drunkard, and he lies for sport and/or small change! Quiet, you.) Imagine if that were so today, when we actually have penicillin! It would totally rawk, I’m telling you. Although I imagine one would need to somehow procure not yet aired episodes of something dreadful from the Cartoon Network instead of the Dickens.
Somehow, though, “give her the BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo” just doesn’t work as well for me. Or maybe it works better. I don’t know. I just wish I hadn’t drunk all that cough syrup this morning.
Heh. Thelogos, is your real name P…Rick?
Sorry, Herr Dok, but with all the ice cream and cookies smeared all over this otherwise impenatrable (unless you happen to be Nebula) post, I assumed your reference was to a chocolate fountain drink.
Either I’m getting senile or S,N! is getting harder to track…
mikey
DocNeb lost me when he had his characters eating paint chips. “Munsell colour-calibration samples?” I thought (these being the only paint chips I know). “Eating? The price –” Then the red mist came down, and Penny had to use the dart gun again.
EGNs? IMs? These days I have no idea what the young people (or the Bengal cats) are talking about.
Shouldn’t the fatal gunshot happened directly after this? Gah! Dear, sweet Cthulhu, what an awful mental image!! You boyz are trying to wean me off teh cocksucking, aren’t you? That came closest yet to doing it, but no cigar.
And I probably wasn’t reading this as closely as I should have–I’m about to watch Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, so I’m in a hurry–but who shot him/herself offstage? The “playwright”? Midge Decter? Britney Spears’ twat? The pReznit? I’m dying to know!
Herr Doktor,
You shouldn’t read liberal blogs when your personal gamma ray count is up. Otherwise, yeah, it will be the crimson haze and the tranquilizer hangover every time.
Paint chips aren’t expensive when you live in tenements, which is, of course, where we’ll all be living in a Bush-presidented, George Jetsonesque future.
Would you qualify that as a launch problem or a design problem?