DARRELL VICKERS – CHAPTER TEN: EVERYONE’S GONE TO THE MOVIES

OSHAWA:

The night was still as cold as Walt Disney’s mustache. A paralyzing frigidity inexorably chewed its way through layer after layer of protective clothing like the Creature from Alien breaching security locks in its hunt for human flesh. The life-affirming warmth radiating down from the sun felt as far away as Pee-wee Herman’s next hit film.

The boys were still shivering in the street, with no better place to go (as hard to believe as that sounds).

Llew pulled a crumpled card out of his Army Surplus jacket and ogled the creased palm trees printed on it. “So, Spanky sent a postcard to Marybeth, eh?”

Boden looked over. He was sort of interested, but a big fat doob would have been way more interesting. “Huh. What’d he say? Stuff like, it’s way warm and stuff?”

“He just said ‘how ya doin’?’” Llew pressed his finger onto his right nostril and bazooka-ed a big payload out of his left, just missing Boden’s shoe. “Oh, and that he’s one of The Chosen and the Earth is going to burst into flames and kill everyone except for him and a bunch of his new friends.”

“Huh. Cool palm trees, eh?”

“Totally. Apparently, they got ‘em almost everywhere.”

“It’s a pretty magical place, fer sure.”

“Oh, fer sure.”

“I’m surprised Marybeth didn’t keep it. Maybe put it in a frame or something.”

Marybeth was just the topic Llew wished to pursue. “So, you intendin’ to attach the old feedbag to ‘er again?”

“Well, yeah, I pretty well gotta, eh? ‘Cause of the hummer an’ all. ‘Cause that was like, super nice of her.”

“Oh yeah, super nice.”

“So, when was the last time you got a real good beej?”

Llew considered this question carefully, then nodded. “Oh yeah, it was super nice of ‘er. No doubt about it. Fancy a beer?”

“If the day ends in a ‘y’ I do.”

“Totally funny stuff. ‘Cause, that’s like, practically all of ‘em, right?” Llew pulled the puffy gloves out of his puffy coat pocket, turned into the punishing wind and headed off in the direction of premium ale. David’s postcard fluttered to the ground unnoticed as the two late night movie lovers rushed off to find finely fermented refreshment. The frame-worthy, professionally colored and airbrushed Malibu scene was ground into the ice and concrete by dozens of sure-grip winter boots. Luckily, a nearby Twizzlers wrapper was spared.

INT. ‘BU HOUSE – NIGHT:

Amos held court behind a humongous whisky sour at the head of a long folding table. A script as tall as the dreams of titans sat before him. There is no more underappreciated alchemy in the modern world than the recondite ability to take the base metal of everyday words and forge them into wondrous tales of infinite scope and variety. Scripts that make us laugh ‘til we weep and those starring Rob Schneider. Scripts that touch our hearts and forever change us as people like Steel Magnolias, Terms of Endearment and Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (Talk about a hanky soaker!). Scripts that light our darkest skies with the glittering, dazzling stars of imagination.

Switch, Rita, Patti, Dack and Artie gathered ‘round like unemployed flies on a cut-rate cow pat to witness that epically transformative, Homeric moment when mere paper and ink explode into colors, pageantry and magic. Splendiferousness was about to abound, and all those present would soon be held on high by the illimitable majesty of being told where to stand and say words they didn’t think of. Plus, there were just enough ingredients left over from the party to make fluffernutters!

“All right, so does anyone have any questions about the new pages?” Amos inquired between impressive puffs on his cigarette.

“More of a concern,” Switch immediately piped up.

Now, the last thing that any writer worth his lucubrationary salt wants to hear after he inquires, “Are there any questions?” is an actual question. But the magnanimous director tolerantly feigned interest. “Proceed.”

“It’s these here talkin’ fruit thingies.”

“I fucking told you,” Rita chirped.

“You aren’t even in that scene, you oleaginous fucknut!”

“Now, hold on to yer movie-writin’ knickers there, Amos. As an actor, I have to consider my audience’s overall movie-going experience.”

“I didn’t get it either,” Patti piled on, licking a huge dollop of Marshmallow Fluff and peanut butter from between two slices of toasted bread.

“Do you people have even an inkling of how much smarter I am than all of you. And I’m talking combined.”

“Fruit don’t talk,” Switch remonstrated. “And even if they did, would anyone really take ‘em seriously?”

“I took it to be more of a metaphor, a conundrum and a moral interrogative rolled into one,” Dack casually threw out.

Amos turned the color of charoite. “Don’t you fucking dare understand what I was trying to get at, Dack Hoffman!”

Artie had thirty-two purloined Swiss cheese triangles in his pocket, so he wasn’t going to say anything to rock the boat.

“I said it before and I’ll say it again…” Rita almost said.

“I’d bet the mineral rights to my kidney stones on that fucking pronouncement.”

“How hard can it be to write something better?”

“I don’t know. How hard can it be not to be a fat, pregnant, coke-snorting cunt?”

Rita shot up like a clown’s fright wig and laid a crushing left hook on Artie’s unsuspecting facey bits. Nose-blood, a gold tooth and assorted cheese triangle flavors sprayed out in all directions.

Amos was a tad confused. “I’m the one who called you a cunt. Why didn’t you hit me?”

“What? And get fired off this movie? Fuck you!”

HIGHWAYS AND BI-WAYS:

The jeep careened, like a pachinko ball in reverse, back up through the misty, windy hills to the Cult Mansion. Visibility was severely circumscribed, which was a considerable blessing. Being able to actually see their precarious course would have had yon passengers shitting hairy bananas. Being only two pebbles and a gum wrapper away from a 70-foot plunge into Lauren Tewes’s Jacuzzi will definitely push your digestive system in that pilose and potassium-rich direction.

David crouched in the back with his big paper bag of unfathomable merchandise and tried not to think about gravity.

“So’s, you’re not specifically sure as to what it is that I’m world-savingly needed for?” he asked.

“All will be revealed,” answered Alison, taking her eye off the road she was barely on.

“So, do you prefer corn on the cob or pre-frozen niblets?” Leslie inquired.

“Corn?”

“It’s a proven scientific fact that you can tell a lot about a man by the way he likes to consume his corn,” Alison tutorialized, winging two Cyprus trees and a “Vote for Walt Keller” sign.

“We had a gay uncle once who ate nothing but creamed corn,” Leslie too-torialized. “After he died, it took three weeks to get that smell out of the crematorium.”

“This Armageddon preventin’ activity we’re doin’ has something to do with eatin’ corn?”

“Don’t know,” Leslie smiled and ninety-seven cases of male pattern baldness were stopped in their tracks.

“It’s anyone’s guess, dear Spanks. With the exception of the Divine Prophet, of course.” Alison calmly swerved the jeep, narrowly avoiding a Simonized Lotus Esprit. “Could be corn. Could be ham steaks. It could have nothing whatsoever to do with the five major food groups. The dark forces of untold perfidiousness are all around us. Our lives are nothing compared to this noble struggle.”

David’s eyes nervously darted about the vehicle, as if some non-food-group blob of evil might suddenly pounce upon the tenderist of his killables.

Alison continued her holy call to arms. “Like your country people, la Familia de la Amapola, once musically portended: ‘Evil grows in cracks and holes and lives in people’s minds.’”

“Well, that may be true for some, but I can dig-darn assure you that there ain’t nothin’ growin’ in the cracks and holes of my mind.”

“I think that’s become abundantly clear to us all,” Alison confirmed.

Leslie nodded her bone-achingly beautiful head. “The whole town is talking about it.”

The jeep screeched past School of Fish guitarist, Michael Ward, and was lost to the night.

‘BU HOUSE:

The script summit continued to blunder along. Pages were flipped and heads were scratched. Peering through the thick and mystifying window of genius was thoroughly beyond the facility of the remedially sighted.

Rita readjusted her privates and glanced at her watch. “Where the fuck is that donut-scarfing son of a bitch?”

“Can we concentrate, people?” Amos barked. “Don’t you see how much of a privilege this is? I’m inviting you to be a part of the greatest film in the history of cinema.”

Dack took this as his cue and dove headlong into the conversation. “And that is why we should get out in that desert and start shooting immediately.”

“Maybe even today,” Switch quickly agreed.

“Taking all the props from the storage bin with us,” Patti vigorously nodded.

“Switch can handle all the heavy hauling and I’ll supervise,” Dack offered.

Switch frowned and subconsciously stroked the left side of his battered and frequently malfunctioning chest.

“While I appreciate your anxious enthusiasm, filming cannot commence until the script is breathtakingly, inarguably perfect.”

“But it’s perfect enough just the way it is,” Patti faux-applauded.

“I had considered these august pages to be some of my greatest work – and that is truly an unthinkable testament to the unconscionable beauty of the words before you. And then this whole fucking shit storm came up about the talking fruit…”

To truly comprehend the tormented, mangled soul of “the writer”, one need look no further than the Tolkien-penned transmogrification of elf to orc. At the most vulnerable of ages, beauty, innocence, hope and charity are squeezed and tortured from their very bones by the tireless crushing fist of a world made for others. They spend their formative years holding a Twistian bowl up to the perpetually indifferent. Scribes are forever in search of that mystifying key that will allow them “inside,” while being drenched by the unrelenting rain of their own loneliness. It corrupts and gnarls the psyche. It puts their id on the skids. Entombed and suffocating in self-doubt and alienation, these warped and wounded hearts wither away from the light, preferring the comfort and companionship of a blank page to the society of their own kind.

Beneath his boorish banter, alcohol, and tear-inducing body odor, Amos was the owner of such a heart.

“I need time to think,” the anguished auteur agonized.

“So, how long’s that gonna take?” Dack whined in his whiniest voice.

“Yeah, I heard on the news that there’s a mini heat wave coming up,” Rita ominously announced.

The corpse-concealing conspirators gazed at each other with concerned eyes. Amos didn’t quite get it.

“So?”

Dack assumed a very lawyerly stance and leaned across the table towards his soon-to-be director. “Exactly how good is your sense of smell?”

CULT MANSION:

Alison, Leslie and indomitable David looked down upon the DIY Persian shroud that had been unceremoniously dumped on the edge of the sanctified property.

“He wants us to move a world-ending carpet?”

“Maybe there’s a genie trapped inside, and we’re supposed to free it,” Leslie hoped.

Alison gave the expensive floor-ware and exploratory a kick.

“Well, it sure feels like there’s something inside those Tabriz-knotted threads. Perhaps, if we open it up, all will be revealed,” she suggested.

Leslie practically bubbled. “I just love when all is revealed!”

“Grab an edge there, Spanks,” Alison ordered, and let’s see what mysterious, possibly portentous treasure lies within.”

David was not at all curious to see what lay within. Recent exceptionally painful experiences had taught him that it was a pretty good idea to let what lay within remain good and laid, but he was, alas, a Canadian. He sighed, bent over and grabbed a fistful of antique carpet tassels.

Perhaps this one time, fortuity would be gloriously, unprecedentedly propitious and he’d be delightfully surprised upon beholding its clandestine contents.

BACKSTORY:

Randy Ottenbrite had been the star of every high school musical in his hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. He was a perennially featured player in local Little Theater and even acted in dramatic festivals as far away as Dewey and Bartlesville.

When Randy graduated, there was only one place he wanted to go. Over to his girlfriend’s house. He hadn’t had a descent blowjob since before Final’s Week. Vicki’s parents were home, but Ran was such a local celebrity, they proudly let him detonate a semen bomb across their daughter’s extortionary orthodontics.

Once the blue-ing of his balls had returned to pink, he borrowed his second best girlfriend’s car for an afternoon drive and headed off to Hollywood, never to return.

Upon his arrival on America’s fabled Golden Coast, it only took Randy three-and-a-half years to land a plum non-speaking, non-paying role on an independent short film that was never finished. But despite his awe-inspiring lack of success, Randy refused to give up.

By 1979, he was homeless. By 1980, he was car-less. By 1982, he was shoeless. By 1983, his agent and manager were also homeless, car-less and shoeless.

Even though Randy lived in the heart of Dreamland, U.S.A., he often thought of dear sweet Vicki back in Oklahoma and that loving sparkle in her eyes… just as he began to ejaculate. Of late, he’d grown a new and abiding appreciation for her womanly willingness to swallow his slippery soldiers. Especially, since he began sucking cock behind Oil Can Harry’s in the Valley for spare change and Mojitos.

He hated every last fucking second of it. The taste of strangers’ testicular excretions used to hang on his tongue like the lingering bitterness of a cheap cigar. Pretty soon, he replaced tubes of Pepsodent with gallons of vodka in an effort to freshen his breath. Amazingly, and against all odds, things found a way to go downhill from there.

His last audition was in 1986, and his concluding professional knob-gobble was a mere six months later. After a decade-long struggle to dream the impossible dream, when it turned out to be hopeless and way, way too far, Randy decided to fuck unbearable sorrow and let the unbeatable foe have his car keys and SAG card. This Sooner said, “Later.” Once Ran finally decided to abandon his quixotic quest to become a thrice-divorced superstar, he began to concentrate on a goal that was actually within his grasp. From that pivotal moment, Randy turned his whole life around. The “new him” now lived in Malibu and feasted at the finest restaurants.

POLICE STATION:

A familiar pair of sinus-separating knuckles relocated the permanent address of Randy’s nose from “his face” to “adjacent.” Paralyzing proboscisian pain mingled with stars, blood and gum butter.

Officer Sturch yanked the recently fisted fellow and his chair up off the gratuitously gruesome ground where they had recently found purchase.

“Now, let’s review what we just discussed about eating out of the Moonshadows dumpster.”

Sturch had his guest’s full and undivided attention, plus pieces of Ran’s cheek and upper lip under his fingernails. Malibu’s finest reached back and prepared to plant another denture-denting didactic on the terrified schnoz of the second-hand-seafood-consuming itinerant. But, before the cop could re-mangle Randy’s refuse-munching mug, Officer McLaughlin poked his square head into the room.

“Excuse me, sir, but we just got an anonymous tip about a mysterious carpet up at the old Cult Mansion.”

The police officer’s prodigious fist dangled like a shaky puppet held reluctantly at bay by its owner. Pleasure and duty were pulling at him in equal measure. What to do? “How much weed have I got left?”

McLaughlin shrugged. “A dime bag at the most.”

Duty pulled slightly ahead.

“Maybe we should go and check it out.” Sturch turned to his peripatetic prisoner and sighed. “It seems like this is your lucky day, fuckwad. I’m releasing you on your own recognizance.”

A very relieved hobo smiled through his cracked and loosened gubbers.

“Once you come to.”

That said, Officer Sturch gifted the noisome nomad with a skull-reshaping right hook.

=DV=

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But best read Vol. One first.

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Darrell Vickers started out as one half of Toronto area band, Nobby Clegg.  CFNY fans may remember the cheery song “Me Dad” which still gets airplay.  From there, he valiantly ventured to L.A. and eventually became head writer for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  Since then, he’s created numerous sitcoms and animation shows in Canada and the U.S.  He still writes music and has an internet band called Death of the Author Brigade (members in Croatia, Canada and the U.S.)   Mr. Vickers also had a private music mailing-list where he features new and pre-loved music.  Anyone who would like to be added to his daily mailing list, just write him at Radiovickers1@gmail.com