ENSLAVED IN SEATTLE

Here is the full script for "Enslaved in Seattle" that I wrote in a matter of hours for Venture Theatre's 2nd Annual Wet Ink Festival. PHOTOS by Amanda Lackman.

FULL VIDEO of the production is available on youtube!



Dramatic music, “Carmina Burana” or something spookier. A robed figure walks out onto the stage, unfurls a scroll, the music fades and they begin to read:


FIGURE
Enriched flour, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, vegetable oil, cottonseed oil, palm oil and/or ascorbyl palmitate, dehydrated vegetables, chicken powder, monosodium glutamate, dextrose, potassium carbonate, sodium carbonate, sodium tripolyphosate, sodium algate, natural flavors, disodium inosinate, artificial flavors…

The spooky music resumes, our figure then dramatically places a “Cup Noodles” into a microwave and begins to start the timer… the music stops and then the figure continues to read from the scroll…

FIGURE
…manufactured in a facility that also processes milk, egg, peanuts, tree nut, fish and shrimp products.

The music resumes, the figure returns to the microwave and starts nuking the “Cup Noodles” and quickly exits the stage. The noodles continue to cook as ELIZA enters the stage. She notices the operating microwave…

ELIZA
Dammit Seth…

SETH enters.

SETH
What?

ELIZA
You left your damn cup o’ noodles going in the microwave again. How many times have I asked you NOT to leave your food unattended?

SETH
And how many times have I told YOU that they’re NOT Cup O’ Noodles… there is NO ‘O’ anywhere in the name of the product! It is simply… CUP NOODLES… thank you very much.

ELIZA
Whatever! All I know is that I’m tired of your toxic pasta cups spewing all over my clean microwave.

SETH
I’m sorry, babe.

ELIZA
I guess that I thought when you started making better money at the office that it would be the end of Cup o’ (stops herself) …uh cup noodles and macaroni dinners.

SETH
What can I say? I’m hooked. Blame my mother… she never let me have that stuff growing up. My sister Shelly and I used to call her MAMA SODIUM GLUTEMATE for the way she used to scrutenize the ingredients of everything we put in our mouths. The day I moved out of the house my first stop was the inappropriate starches aisle at the Grocery Outlet.

ELIZA
And you’ve been fattening up your tapeworm ever since.

SETH
Ha Ha. Admit it you enjoy a cup or two now and then.

ELIZA
Maybe… but only the Picante Shrimp flavor.

SETH retrieves a shrimp cup noodles from the cupboard, offstage (?).

SETH
Happy anniversary!

ELIZA
I hope you’re joking.

SETH
Well… I didn’t want to ruin the surprise… but…

ELIZA
Stop with the suspense already! Tell me.

SETH
Mom’s coming to see us.

ELIZA (clearly not pleased)
Oh.

SETH
Jeez… you don’t have to sound so elated.

ELIZA
I think I’d rather just have the cup noodles and skip this round of maternal visitation.

SETH
Aw, c’mon mom loves you!

ELIZA
Yeah, about as much as she loves top ramen.

SETH
Well, I love you.

ELIZA (sighs)
So… when is this visit?

There is a sudden knock, rapid rapping at the door.

SETH
Uh, well…

ELIZA (frustrated)
Ugh. Seth.

Without being welcome in SETH’s mother bursts into the apartment w/ her daughter SHELLY in tow.

MSG
Baby boy! Give your mother a hug!

SETH embraces his mother.

ELIZA
Hello Shelly.

SHELLY (in Spanish)
Go to hell, you stupid bitch.

ELIZA
I don’t know what you just said. But somehow I don’t think that you were complimenting my shoes.

SETH
Shelly!

SHELLY (in Spanish)
Brother!

They hug.

SETH
Still stuck in Espanol mode ‘eh sis?

ELIZA
Is she still hung up on marrying Antonio Banderas?

SETH
Ever since she was 14.

MSG
It was all of those repeat viewings of Evita… I knew I should have taken that DVD away from her. My poor, sweet baby girl! At least she has her mother.

ELIZA
So… uh, Seth’s mom… what brings you to the Emerald city?

MSG
Didn’t Seth tell you?

ELIZA
Tell me what?

MSG
I’m moving to Seattle!

ELIZA (shocked)
What?


SETH (sheepishly)
Surprise!

MSG
It’ll be wonderful! Shelly and I will be able to visit every weekend!

ELIZA (not thrilled)
Great.

MSG
We’ll be able to enjoy the coffee, the space needle,

SHELLY (in Spanish)
Go Seattle Super Sonics!

MSG
The sports teams, Ooh and the local art scene…

ELIZA
The high suicide rate…

MSG
What was that dear?

ELIZA
Nothing.

MSG spots the cup noodles sitting on a table.

MSG
What is this? This garbage is what you’re feeding my boy? I hope not on a regular basis.

SETH
Mom, I am perfectly capable of feeding garbage to myself. I don’t need Eliza’s help.

MSG
What you need is a gal that can cook OR at least a gal with a decent recipe collection. (to Eliza) Write this down dear…

ELIZA goes for a pen.

ELIZA
Gah! Wet… ink...

MSG
Wedding? You’re getting married? I suppose I am the last to know. Oh, god… you’re not pregnant are you?

ELIZA & SETH
NO!

SHELLY (in Spanish)
So much for the virgin bride!

SETH
And we’re not getting married either… at least not yet.

MSG starts going through the(offstage?) cupboard and unloading all of the cup noodles.

MSG
OH MY GOD… look at all of these CARBS!!! Cup o’ noodles, cup o’ noodles…

ELIZA
Um, actually its cup noodles… there is no ‘O’.

MSG
Do you know what this stuff does to your system? It just sits there… rotting away in your intestines…

SHELLY (in Spanish)
Nasty caca!

SETH
Cup noodles aren’t so evil mom. C’mon look at the packaging… you’ve got carrots, corn, peas… Remember how hard it was for you to get me to eat my peas as a kid?

MSG
My god! Listen to you… you’re like some sort of cup o’ noodles ZOMBIE!

SETH
What did you say?

MSG
Okay… I’m sorry… cup noodles.

SETH
No… the other thing… Z-

MSG
ZOMBIE!?

The spooky music starts again and SETH goes into a trancelike state. He goes “crazy” and begins throwing out unopened “Cup Noodles” into the audience. The music stops and SETH passes out onto the floor.

MSG & ELIZA go to SETH.

MSG
Seth! Oh my baby! Somebody dial 9-1-1!

SHELLY runs around w/ her cell phone repeating “9-1-1” in Spanish.

ELIZA
What are we supposed to tell them exactly? That he OD’d on cut-rate noodles?

SETH sits bolt-straight up!






SETH
Join me…. Join meeeeee…

ELIZA
Join you?

SETH
It’s beautiful here… everything smells like broth and there are 0 grams of Trans Fat… join meeeeeeeee.

MSG
I knew it! My boy is a SOUP ZOMBIE!

SETH
Much more than a soup… Much more than a soup… Much more than a soup…
Much more than a soup…

SHELLY
EAT THE NOOOOOODLES…

MSG & ELIZA turn to see SHELLY eating the noodles with her bare hands.

MSG
OH MY GOD! Shelly not you too!?

SETH rises from the floor and takes 2 fists full of noodles and begins lumbering towards his mother and girlfriend.

SETH
EAT… NOODLES… EAT… NOODLES…

The stage goes dark. When the lights come back everyone is in robes… end the show with an interpretive dance number… then they throw any remaining (unopen) noodles into the audience.

THE END

The Seven Year Itch

Well... I auditioned for "Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol" at Venture. I didn't get cast. Naturally. At this point I'm pretty certain I'll never get cast in anything... at least until someone comes up with another twitchy, moaning mental patient role.

Ah well, after reading the book I think they made a mistake not doing the classic Dickens version of "Carol". It is afterall one of my favorite stories of all time. Or they could do my version... Twas the Night Before a Wonderful Christmas Carol on 34th Street.

Recently my station has started offering a weekly poll for viewers to vote for which NFL weekend games they'd like us to air.

Great idea, right?

I thought so too... when I thought of it like THREE FUCKING YEARS AGO!

*sigh* And I don't even like football.

Earlier this week it was brought to my attention that my 7 YEAR ANNIVERSARY at the station has come and gone. Ugh! What a fucking nightmare.

Recently I had a (albeit brief) flash of confidence and I sat down with a list of the schedules and shows available for both stations and I came up with my own ideas to improve upon our current "monkey with a dart board" daily lineup(s). I was so confident in the results I came up with that I forwarded them to our general manager along with some promotional ideas I also had .

Friday morning I spoke with our GM about the material I sent him. And he said that I had some "great ideas". However he also said that our current program directors does a "very good job".

Whaa--!? NO. SHE DOESN'T! That was part of my reasoning for sitting down and trying to figure out how it could be done BETTER!

My conversation with the GM ended with him telling me "Small market television is not the place to get rich." WTF!? I wasn't trying to get rich! I was trying to add something to my resume besides "button pushing monkey". I was attempting to turn our station into something besides the punchline it is to many local viewers.

I am so fucking sick of going to a job that makes me feel like coming home and simultaneously sticking my head in the oven and slashing my wrists while OD-ing on illegal narcotics.

I'm tired of giving 110% at everything and feeling nothing but pissed on... Oooh and FUDDBUCKS!

Last weekend when the station was in a constant state of CLUSTERFUCKDOM... due to the first blizzard of the year... there was an attempt to soothe my frustration with the suggestion that there might be more Fuddbucks in it for me.

Y'know I actually attempted to use some of my Fuddbucks a while back. Unfortunately I was at Rimrock Mall and the the F'bucks are only good at the Overland Ave. location. Hmmmmph... some bonus.



"Where's my golden shower?" Does Michael Scott know how to throw a baby shower or what? Last night's episode of The Office was another classic... an awkward, awkward classic. The last scene with Jim and Pam's phone messages was kind of cheesy... but I loved it.



This week TWO different Ghostbusters comics were released. The first in what may be a series of manga graphic novels from Tokyopop. And issue one of IDW's 4-issue mini series. Ghostbusters: The Other Side.

To be honest I was more interested in the "traditional" IDW series than the manga book. However after having read them both... it kind of saddens me to say that the manga was better than the IDW series.

Tokyopop's Ghostbusters: Ghost Busted. Was funny and charming, but now without it's flaws. However you can tell it was created by people who love Ghostbusters.

IDW's Ghostbusters: The Other Side is terrible. It's like rancid fan fiction. In fact I'm pretty sure there is a lot better GB fanfic out there somewhere on the internets. I'm also pretty sure that there are a couple of big name comic book creators who would do a Ghostbusters comic for FREE! Instead we get this... P.O.S.

I actually began to worry about The Other Side back in July when I read an interview with the guy who wrote it - Keith Champagne. He really didn't seem to be that big of a fan of the source material, not that you'd have to be a GIANT 'bustin fanboy to write a decent Ghostbusters tale... but this guy just didn't seem to get Ghostbusters.

The Other Side pits the Ghostbusters against a group of Ghost Mobsters. The end result is lukewarm at best.

I'd pull some examples of horrible dialogue/script issues for you guys... but I've already passed the issue on to a friend to see if he thinks it's a god awful as I do, or if I'm just being too much of a geeky fanboy.



Not to mention the Ghostbusters have already fought Ghost Gangsters... Twenty years ago (Yipes!) is issue 7 of The Real Ghostbusters comic book series.

This makes me ponder if there's anyway someone could revive the RGB property in comic book form!? Why can't they use the eternally young versions of the boys to keep telling stories for years? It wouldn't be any different then all of those seemingly ageless guys in tights and capes who have been around for sixty and seventy years.

Oh... the weather outside is spiteful...

HOLY CRAP! It's Captain America... ON THE ROCKS! Heh. This is a screencap from a deleted scene on the upcoming DVD release of The Incredible Hulk.

There's a point when Bruce Banner gives up on his quest for the cure and decide to kill himself. So he travels to the Arctic Circle. The result was a very dark scene, which Marvel considered to be too hard for young audiences to take.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cap's origin: sometime after WWII he winds up frozen in the arctic, decades later he is thawed out so that he can join the AVENGERS!

Speaking of the HULK dvd... wouldn't it be cool if there was a Hulk Head case like the recent IRON MAN collector's edition!? Ah... a geek can dream. Can't he? The Incredible Hulk hits DVD on October 21st.



I had the weekend from HELL at the tv station. A 12 hour shift that felt more like THIRTY-SIX.

I lost a good chunk out of one of my fingers on the fence outside the station while I was attempting to sweep snow off of the satellite dishes at work. I swear there's a nice slab of Travis meat still hanging outside the station.

Not to mention I fell... TWICE! If I had twisted my leg or cracked my head open I would been stuck laying in the snow until about 9 in the morning when the new guy showed up.

Let's see... the phone rang every 5-10 minutes between the Miles City transmitter, the douche from Dish TV calling and bitching about the audio, our engineer having to go up and work on the iced over KSVI transmitter.... Argh!

To top it off the new guy comes in bitching about how he's "so sick". FUCK YOU! I've never even been able to use a sick day without getting a major fucking guilt trip & this includes the time I spent 5 days in the hospital. And newbie sure as hell wasn't letting his illness prevent him from going out for a cigarette every 5 minutes.

Then the new guy proceeds to bitch about his wife and how I should "avoid getting married at all costs". DOUBLE FUCK YOU!

*sigh*

After the e-mails I sent out to my supervisors about how I thought my talents might be put to better use... who knows if I'll even have a job at the station much longer.

Kind of scary. But it would also kind of be a relief.

When I got home from work the POWER WAS OUT! Hallelujah! I was actually kind of relieved to NOT have to deal with technology for a while.



Dad got an update from the doctors. It seems they were rather puzzled by what they found and had to send their findings out of state for further studies! Apparently he has some extra PROTEIN deposits growing inside his lungs. WTF!?

Apparently this is rare enough that they can't just look it up in some medical book.

The Apocalypse? Sweet!

The Umbrella Academy is difficult to summarize without sounding outlandish. I suppose this is part of its appeal. Part X-Men, part Wes Anderson flick.

The Umbrella Academy starts with the birth of "forty-three extraordinary children", born on the same day at exactly 9:38 pm, mostly to unwed mothers who showed no sign of pregnancy in seemingly random locations around the world . The children who survived were all either abandoned or put up for adoption.

Enter, Sir Reginald Hargreeves a.ka. The Monocle. He adopts as many of the children as he can find (seven) and shows them so much love that he doesn't even bother to name them!

The Umbrella Academy has all the absurdity, vibrancy, and energy of 1950s or 60s-era comic book. In the first issue when the Eiffel Tower, commandeered by Zombie-Robot Gustave Eiffel, attacks Paris before blasting off into space, it's baffling and hilarious at the same time. And when an appreciative Parisian mayor gives the kids the key to the city and declares "ice cream for everyone" immediately afterward, the tone and pace are set for the series.

Issue 1 ends with this note, which made me incredibly giggly upon reading it:

This is the end of the first part of the Umbrella Academy adventure: Apocalypse Suite. There are five more chapters to the series, with twenty-two pages per chapter, totaling one hundred and thirty-two pages, there are seven members of the Umbrella Academy, and Seventy-Two names on the Eiffel Tower. There is no connection between these numbers.

The Umbrella Academy was created and is written by Gerard Way (lead singer of My Chemical Romance). Instead of doing a tradional "on going" series, Umbrella Academy is being presented as an infinite series of mini-series.

The first six issues, dubbed "The Apocalypse Suite", are avaiable in a handy trade paperback. The next ssix-parter titled "Dallas" begins next month.

I highly recommend this book for hardcore OR casual comic book readers. Especially those who have recently boarded the ol' Watchmen bandwagon.

Yeah, cuz believe it or not... Rumor has it.... (Ha! You'll get that when you've read the book!) that Umbrella Academy has been optioned by a "major Hollywood studio".

"Thar she blows! A hump like a snow hill! It is Moby Dick!"

A little sneak peek at the EWE-NIBOMBER for y'all. He is just one of the six characters that will be featured in Series 1 of the F. EWE BUDDIES!

Universal pictures announced a big budget reimagining of Herman Melville's classic literary tale 'Moby Dick' with Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) to work from a screenplay being written by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage. Some of the changes that are being planned for the new version of Melville's tale:

Gone is the first-person narration by the young seaman Ishmael, who observes how Ahab's obsession with killing the great white whale overwhelms his good judgment as captain.

This change will allow them to depict the whale's decimation of other ships prior to its encounter with Ahab's Pequod, and Ahab will be depicted more as a charismatic leader than a brooding obsessive.

"Our vision isn't your grandfather's 'Moby Dick,' " Cooper said. "This is an opportunity to take a timeless classic and capitalize on the advances in visual effects to tell what at its core is an action-adventure revenge story."

B-but what if I want my grandfather's 'Moby Dick'? Um... wait... that sounds extraordinarily bad.

Changing Ahab from a brooding obsessive to a charismatic leader!? WTF? The whole book is about OBSESSION!?

Of course ya wanna know something really sad? The only reason I even know the quote that I used in my subject title is because it was engraved on my brain by an old tv commercial for "Classics Illustrated" (comic book versions of classic books) that ran adnauseum when I was a kid.

It Looks Good On Ewe!

Yeah... so that's happening.

Yup.

F. Ewe Buddy t-shirts series one!

Six characters, multiple shirt styles, perhaps some coffee mugs, mouse pads and other goodies? We shall see.



There will also be Planet Bierwagen and Mel & Al Gordon tees... once those comics get started.

Flash of Genius looks like a fascinating movie. I kind of wish that I hadn't read all about the TRUE story in the latest issue of GEEK Monthly. Damn you Greg Kinnear!

Flash of Genius depicts the true story of college professor and part-time inventor Robert Kearns' (Greg Kinnear) long battle with the U.S. automobile industry. When Bob invents a device that would eventually be used by every car in the world, the Kearns think they have struck gold. But their aspirations are dashed after the auto giants who embraced Bob's creation unceremoniously shunned the man who invented it. Ignored, threatened and then buried in years of litigation, Bob is haunted by what was done to his family and their future.

Flash of Genius opens October 3rd.

My SAVED BY THE BELL 2008 youtube video has generated almost 400 views in a relatively short time. I guess all you need to do is throw in some pole dancing and a little girl on girl action to make your videos a hit! I also find it amusing that both the comments left on it are about how big of a bitch "Jessie" is.

For some reason it also highly amuses me when someone goes through all of the trouble to leave a youtube comment and all it amounts to is an "LOL".

NEW How I Met Your Mother & Heroes tonight... WHOO-HOO! Though I don't know if I'm too excited about Heroes... but I'll give season 3 a shot.