Dan Zukovic's Dark Arc (2005) review

If anything is obvious about Dan Zukovic it's that he's a cultural enigma and that a violent personal sense of boredom with modern life pervades his work. Why would someone want to piss off their audience? Why not if it's art with a purpose? The man loves to provoke his audience, to piss them off, and to make them laugh again and think, which in turn makes them even more pissed off, a neat trick.

I can relate. In the embarrassing days of “grunge” he fronted the incident-provoking Northwestern Canadian band “the Gargoyles” whose recorded works must be somewhere next to impossible to find and could be described as incredibly obnoxious. Good luck in your search of his music outside of his films, he's shooting for obscurity on purpose.

Since that time, the raconteur’s been writing and playing his inimitable style of underground rock, writing and directing plays, and so far, one film each decade. His career in theater seems to stretch back to the late 1980s. Zukovic, then, has a solid background in stage, television (he was seen in two episodes of the X-Files) and screen and is mainly known for creating one of the great satiric cult hits of the 1990s: The Last Big Thing, which featured the then-unknown Mark Ruffalo (Shutter Island) in one of his first film performances. Call it myopic, but I have to love someone this determined in making their vision a reality, then hiding it under a bush for the thoughtful.

Zukovic dipped his own toes into the mainstream culture during that lame-ass decade of the 1990s and is found in a memorable character performance in the sci-fiction horror film, Disturbing Behavior; but that's about all he's done for the most part of over a decade as a freelance actor. At one point in the early 1990s he was making appearances in "Matlock" and several in "Days of Our Lives." He's a very elusive man. Just try finding much information on him, anywhere. Even in the age of the Internet, he's managed to remain mostly an enigma. Is he hiding from the “suits”? These are some of the other people he's interested in within his works, those people who took that other path he mostly rejected, the careerist. From what I took from both of his comedies he both admires and loathes them.

He saves some special hatred for corporate suits, but if the suit fits... ”Admires”? Yes, Zukovic admires them, though he sports a cravat more often than a conventional tie so the blood-flow to his brain is intact.

"Admires?" Yes, I wrote admire, so shut the fuck up already. First: he admires them for their nihilist discipline and even some of their accomplishments, but he also fears and hates them since they're probably some of the very same people he has to deal with in order to get a film financed and distributed, and his films are extremely low-budget as it is, he has to go begging for money. The fear is always going to be there that you're dealing with a flaky, ineffectual desk-bound asswipe with an ego (and bank account) big enough to poison your vision and kill the movie with the swipe of a pen, potentially ruining years of work and preparation. In other words, an executive producer—or worse—some asshole that they sent to represent their interests, a shill, a glorified gofer with an MBA and no imagination.

If your luck's really bad the shill will also secretly hate creative people, not simply the director, but anyone with a creative bone in their body working on the production and go after them.

There are other problems: you still need a competent and motivated crew--however small--and that's even before the costs of post-production editing and dubbing, the finishing of a movie, and promotion. This is the curse and the bane of all artists who have to work in expensive mediums like film, a century-old battle between art and commerce. I believe Zukovic keeps things small so that his chances of ever brushing-up against redundant bureaucratic asswipes is going to be a statistical error. I'd imagine that he witnessed his share of these kinds turds and their malignant influence working on the "X-Files" and its spin-off, "Millennium," as well as in his walk-on parts in other Hollywood fare. That's probably some of the key to his self-accusations, that he felt he'd sold-out at some point as an artist and was making-amends for being a hypocrite and a pretentious ass in public to average, naïve people who sincerely just wanted to have fun when they all collided some two decades ago.

Yes, it was artistic “frisson” at play to screw with ordinary people, and yes, he's clearly learned from his mistakes. That still doesn't stop him from pointing the finger at his audience and needling them, which he does expertly. His movies, then, can be seen as a form of penance and Zukovic should himself be admired for it. This is something that takes incredible courage--to put yourself out there like that. ridiculing oneself. The “war”--if there is one between the writer/director and the money people—often seeps into the narrative of his stories, and that's where some of the self-accusation comes into play. Many motion pictures, and even plays, have this “hidden” subtext in them (like later Peckinpah), but Dan just lets it all hang out, all over the place, so it's not so hard to understand why it takes a special group of backers to be attracted to his work. Like the suits, nothing stops this guy from doing his thing.

They say that the tough get tougher and the weird just get weirder, but who wants to hire a Private Detective just to experience someone's art? In the modern world, the weird is becoming commonplace and it's not necessarily entertaining, though art and entertainment are two different things. What's left when everything is the same urban sprawl? Don't people start to hallucinate in solitary confinement after awhile? Yes. The mind is eventually going to wander, create, and entertain itself when everything becomes the same empty routine. But when is something adapting to life through humor and when is it someone going nuts? When is it all of the above? Raging against an ocean of indifference and a vast cultural wasteland that was always there in some form or another has an implicit comic humor to it, but also all of the elements of profound tragedy.

Zukovic is so divinely twisted that he's capable of finding humor in a yawning spiritual abyss, an impressive feat for any artist. I've known about Dark Arc for over five years wondering how I was going to be able to see it outside of some stodgy, remote film festival. There's some implied strategy here, like that of his protagonists. Leave them wanting more, and so he does, a good rule of thumb for anyone wanting to make an impact and to preserve the power of their images.

Even being able to find a trailer or a clip of the The Last Big Thing online--until very recently--has been practically impossible and any biographical information on its author is scant at best. Does this guy ever do interviews? I'd imagine promotional appearances are a rarity for Zukovic and I can't blame him. The availability of his films still begs the question: “Does he attempt to promote his films at all?” Yes, apparently so, since they've made the rounds of various international film festivals without much luck in getting the attention and the interest of distributors--or at least ones who were willing to cut him and his investors a square deal (for readers who don't understand traditional movie distribution, just recall all the horror stories from the music industry and it should make sense).

Zukovic doesn't seem to be interested in some kind of hollow fame or anything beyond his ability to keep producing plays and his quirky comedies, which is enough effort in itself.

What's most interesting is that he's had more luck finding American investors for his low-budget comedies than native Canadian ones, but that's also a matter of the Great White North's legendary tax credit laws and his projects come cheap to foreign backers. Americans always love a deal. Being a fan of this guy's work is a daunting task, but I think like all great finds, the hunting was worth the effort. No matter: The Last Big Thing was picked up for cable in the late 1990s. It's been shown at film festivals and on IFC and Cinemax over the years and received the inevitable bootlegging treatment—my own copy was taped off of broadcast TV over a decade ago.

Cultural obsessives of the obscure will be happy to know that a DVD of it is slated for release for sometime in 2011, just shy of twenty years after its obscure initial release. Does the mainstream media shun this guy? Does he shun them? Both? It's a hard call in an era that demands answers to everything, and be fast about it, will ya? Zukovic's having none of that and I'd wager that had he wanted stardom he would've achieved it around the same time that Ruffalo did, within the last fifteen years. Did he ever want that fame? I believe he did, but rejected it and its trappings.

He's a strange bird--to put it mildly--and he has a screen presence that's unforgettable, looking like an emaciated John Saxon-on-Sartre with an obsession for high culture street fighting. There must have been some intellectual crisis for Zukovic by the mid-1990s since high culture and its failings was the main theme of his first film. Logically, he's also obsessed with criticizing cultural snobbery, namely his own, and opening oneself up like this can only be art; the humor of it all is obvious without being preachy. Like all of the greats of comedy, he understands comic timing and rarely ever misses a beat. To make great comedy takes incredible effort in such jaded and cynical times, but he manages to pierce the layers of defense in a way that's timeless, a rare gift in a world that doesn't care that it doesn't care.

The key to some humor is in being annoying which Zukovic excels at, right down to his hilarious fuzz-guitar stings which always come at the right emotional moment. To be sure, he's a good example of a Renaissance man working on several levels at once. You could literally ignore the high culture jargon in his two films and have no difficulty understanding what he's saying about the characters--just listen to and observe the comic interactions between them and it all makes natural comedic sense. There's also a great love/hate/ambivalence for the everyman at play, the “average fuck,” the “basic fucker,” in the Zukovic universe, a love of people who are simply unassuming and sincere in their basic ignorance. If you've ever been in a scene or an artistic milieu, these gasps for “normal” air can be refreshing.

There's a point where you have to admit to yourself that you wouldn't want to be, for example, in the same room as Picasso or Rimbaud, and certainly not with Jackson Pollock on a drunken tear. This love of ordinary people is something to be treasured and the director's finest moments are when his snobbish stand-ins for himself are confronted with their jaded assholism by people who aren't nearly as stupid and ignorant as they assumed. Too often, the life of the self-described Bohemian has been a refuge for emotional retards too afraid to embrace people and life, running to elitism, a manufactured classism that obscures their lowly-roots and what most of them really are: cowards.

Zukovic is no coward. Both of his films have some magic turning-points where these confrontations with "normals" happen, though I'm not going to give those moments away to the reader, they'll know them when they see them. The truth is, if we don't change and grow in this life, we ultimately die.

With its obvious use of theme-named characters Dark Arc could be a satirical story by Terry Southern. Zukovic casts himself once again as the protagonist of the tale, a Viscount Laris, a walking cultural anachronism out of Cervante's Don Quixote searching for...searching for what? Does he even know? Laris is the quintessential wannabe artiste since they have such an ill-defined place in a modern technological world, an almost soulless human society that has no appreciation of the divine, of the symbols or of art itself, only viewing it as a commodity to be sold. It's a world that devours meaning and that's ultimately what the characters of Zukovic's stories so desperately want in their colorless lives; their feeble attempts at finding that meaning is often their first mistake since they should stick with making it honestly and for the right reasons. Instead, most of them use it as an indirect form of communication that's bound to fail.

This is a lot like the dialogue of the equally damaged characters in Steven Soderbergh's very personal Schizopolis (1996) which not-so-ironically contained actual sentences taken directly from the incomprehensible notes of movie producers to the director from his early days navigating the completely batshit Hollywood system. Do they ever connect with each other? In Zukovic's universe, they do, and the writer/director offers a sense of redemption for his tortured creatures, albeit an utterly bizarre one in the case of Dark Arc. Zukovic offers us a very peculiar love triangle, because...well, just because, folks. Boy-meet-girl still packs-'em-in.

Without giving too much away, Laris takes his recently acquired aristocratic title to its logical conclusion in a way that would do Aaron Burr proud. Laris is looking for love, yes, but also the ultimate experience in a mind-deadening present, that great image he's been looking to recapture from his childhood, an ineffable archetype to heal something that's missing, something that's broken inside. Serendipity brings Lamia his way, but is it a good thing? It's tragicomic, but Zukovic is being very serious while at the same time prodding us into laughter; oftentimes, he makes both possible, as though he were some Peckinpah of art house cinema, making us confront ourselves for a laughter that he's coaxed us into, a mercurial touch. What's funniest is when his well drawn characters have their social masks fall--or are ripped-off violently--and the gloves are truly off.

Once the quasi-aristocratic facade slips, the North American working-class origins start coming out in full-bloom like a drunken sailor out on a mission for a prime piece of ass, and expressed in roughly the same terms.

Laris meets “Juxta/Lamia” (a role which is nailed to the floor by Sarah Strange who also appeared on the X-Files), his muse, a woman straight out of an image he first encountered in his childhood: a vintage photograph of a woman lying on a couch in a Berlin opium den, circa 1923. That's pretty specific, isn't it? The dryness of it all reminds me of the best of Bunuel, that sardonic laugh at the absurdity of the human condition and all of the pointless machinations people descend to on the Pilgrim's road to getting laid. To make things more absurd, Zukovic throws in a geeky, aged graphic designer (played subtly by Kurt Max Runte) with a dead-end life who suddenly comes to the attentions of Laris and Juxta. Laris has it in mind to cultivate the “basic fuck” through repeated exposure to “charged imagery,” frequently in the form of his muse, festooned as a “slash of pink.”

The sexual tension is everywhere in the storyline to the point that I felt compelled at one point to utter aloud, “For fuck's sake, just tell him to fuck you, goddamn it.” I was watching it alone, at home on my laptop. That's good filmmaking and a natural storytelling ability.

Dark Arc's obsessions are similar to the Last Big Thing's, but where writer/director Zukovic and company diverge is the greater focus--and I mean this literally--on imagery and the power of the image on people, so it has a greater visual beauty than his first feature. Intriguingly, there's an examination of both the male and female gaze, a visual-pun that the director handles well, if darkly. For fans of his first film, yes, Edvard Munch's “The Scream” makes a comic return more than once. The beauty of all this is that you don't have to know about the great artistic, intellectual and literary movements of the last two hundred years to get the humor of this very dry film. For all of its high flown language and imagery, the focus is still on what it always has to be in drama: people and their problems.

These are extremely weird ones, mind you, but people all the same. Suffice it to say that Zukovic is most obsessed with people who are unable to relate to or to communicate with each other conventionally anymore, which is the great tragedy of our time. These are people who are--to put it politely--profoundly neurotic, dysfunctional, and terminally middle-class. There's always a deep sadness about our eternal consumerist present underpinning all of this—that over-thought and desaturated bleakness of modern life, the unfulfilled promises of rock, religion, politics, art, philosophy and literature. The hipster sense of elitist solitude that was always a part of North America's counterculture is his clay to fashion as he will and damned if he isn't angry about it, and at himself, for once being that snobby social creature.

There's a lot to be angry about when unfulfilled promise is the rule of the day. This sense of an end of culture is echoed in the brilliant comebacks Zukovic nails a vapid scenester with in the third act of the story; it's a brilliant compression of the life-cycle of a hipster scene, going from superficial fun that in-turn almost as rapidly disintegrates into conformism and paranoid cliquishness, alienation and acrimony. You have to hand it to an artist who's accusing himself for laughs while kicking his own milieu squarely up the ass.

When everyone's a hipster and in on the joke, the ultimate irony of this era, what's left? A film like this is a rare event indeed, even in an age when most are going to view it for the first time on their laptops or in the privacy of their own homes. What's left after every conceivable form of cultural rebellion has been assimilated and drained of its power and purpose (originally intended to subvert a death loving dominant culture)? What's left? The individual. That's who made Dark Arc, for the rest of us sitting out there in the darkness, often alone, in a room full of people.

Why nobody gets that Sarah Silverman did (and said) the right thing at the TED convention this week

WWW--The reaction to this has been--well--retarded, and that's being far too kind to most who organized and attended TED. As the story goes, Sarah Silverman was invited and paid to do her stand-up routine at the TED convention in the ugly town of Long Beach, California that took place from February 9-13.

Silverman's appearance seems to have been on the last day. Most Americans don't even know what the fuck this convention is or even care (I'm in their ranks), but they made the news with Silverman's routine and are smarting over it for some reason. They're also trying to misrepresent what happened and show a great case of being unable to think laterally or outside of the box. In other words, the public doesn't know or care about TED for most of the right reasons.

This is what TED is: a lot of bullshit propped-up by money and more bullshit to recruit and to not listen to people with ideas, misuse and misapply them, piss the originators of said ideas off, and then watch them quit in disgust a few months later like most employer-employee relationships in the happy old US of A. But hey, when you have a dumbshow of already ossified bourgeois mummies you have to at least go through the motions:

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize. ... The annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). (Ted.com, "About" page)

That's exactly what they got from Silverman, yet the organizer of the event, Chris Anderson, isn't exactly a genius, and that's why he's not showcased as a real thinker, slagged Silverman for her routine. This was the talk of Silverman's life and she felt very strongly to do what she did, think what you will. Did she take the TED engagement seriously? I believe so, this wasn't a "for the hell of it deal." You see...how soon we forget.

Silverman's repertoire and themes are always changing, just as they have with the great American stand-up comedians and social critics like Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Mort Sahl, and even Noam Chomsky (one of the most often-quoted intellectuals in Western history, yet apparently never invited to speak at TED in its 26 year history). For some reason, the onus is on Silverman for saying the word "retarded" at least ten times in her stand-up routine, and again, remember that she was invited, she didn't crash the event and run up onstage yelling the word without any logical context. That would be the job of another woman named Sarah, a goyische one, a WASP one. Besides, seeing things without any logical context--as we all know--is the job of CEOs, politicians and the public in these here United States. Context is everything, or nothing, if you find thinking painful.

But not more than two weeks ago we had a "controversy" about the word "retarded" and all of its many permutations (my favorite being "tard," mostly because it sounds funny and makes the person saying it look and sound funny), and it was trotted-out all over by a supplicant media and Internet by none other than failed VP candidate, Sarah Palin who has a child with Down syndrome. It should be mentioned here that most women approaching and past the age of forty years old are or should be informed by their personal physician or gynecologist that the risks of having a child with Down syndrome become considerably higher with a woman in this age range. But she had a child anyway, and drags the poor baby around the country while she's trying hard not to get elected. Never mind all this, it's just context, very inconvenient context, and it's all about that evil Sarah Silverman.

It gets better, and in case you've been in a coma, here's a little summary of the last couple weeks of political and cultural idiocy and general human folly:

The latest battle over the R-word kicked into high gear with a Jan. 26 Wall Street Journal report that last summer White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel blasted liberal activists unhappy with the pace of health-care reform, deriding their strategies as "[expletive] retarded." Palin, the mother of a special-needs child, quickly took to Facebook to demand Emanuel's firing, likening the offensiveness of the R-word to that of the N-word. Limbaugh seized the low ground, saying he found nothing wrong with "calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards," and Palin rushed to his defense, saying Limbaugh had used the word satirically. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert took her up on it, calling Palin an "[expletive] retard" and adding, with a smile: "You see? It's satire!" ("The case against banning the word 'retard'," The Washington Post, 02.14.2010)

Yes, it's "satire," but only the elect (not elected, however) get to use the term, and in whatever context they feel they want to use it in. But not anyone else, and they'll use the word to suppress other words if they have their way. Players only, yo.

As a matter of fact, the herding instinct has already set in and very naive and pathetic people are taking pledges like it's go time at Masada. In that same Jewish tradition, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel fell on his sword, but probably not without a lot of prodding from his ostensible boss, the president, a man who seems intent on fucking-up and showing no vision or leadership skills unless he's left with no other alternatives. Hey, it's America.

But what did Silverman say exactly? This is where things get kind of sketchy since we're not seeing any footage with audio yet, but I would imagine we will eventually. Tech Crunch.com seems to have the most cogent version so far from a female attendee in the audience:

“I want to adopt a special needs child (to which one person applauded), because adopting a special needs child, who would do that? Only an awesome person, right?” I looked around the room and I knew exactly what was coming next. She was going to say retarded and not only was she going to say it, she was going to drop it like 10 times. I knew it wouldn’t be ok, but I was excited about it.

Words are powerful. They are mightier than the sword and all of that, but if you let them have too much power, you can create what I feel is evil. You create a society of people who are so concerned about what they say and what is PC and you destroy creative expression. ...

She went on to say:

“The only problem with adopting a retarded child is that the retarded child, when you are 80 is well, still retarded and that she wouldn’t enjoy the freedoms of setting them free at age 18, so she was only going to adopt a retarded child with a terminal illness so it has an expiration date, because who would adopt a retarded child with a terminal illness? Well, someone who was awesome like her”.

The room went silent and she went on with her show and sang a song about how all of the penises in the world couldn’t fill your heart holes. ... ("TED Organizer Trashes Speaker [Silverman], Fails Social IQ Test, Tech Crunch.com, 02.14.2010)

According to the attendee, roughly half of the audience applauded, and out of those, half appeared to have "gotten" the real message. We're a slow culture, so bear with me, please, since the future hinges on it. Apparently they, and a few others in attendance, have a clue where Silverman and the nation have been and what actual stand-up looks and sounds like. It's no secret that she's a shock comedienne, she's even on Comedy Central with her own show, and has been around for over twenty years. It seems TED is as ignorant about Silverman as the public is about them.

Certainly the well-heeled puds that were populating some of the ranks of the audience that received her well-aimed cultural assault on the suppression of words had little idea of who she is and what kind of a comedienne she represents. Silverman is a social critic and a satirist. She is brave, and she's cut through the bullshit of our culture...if only we had eyes to see it and ears to hear it. At least some of us do. Sarah Silverman just did America a very big favor and she's a hero, you betcha!

"Is Sarah Silverman Retarded, posted 10.13.2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRegd02Qiew

"TED Organizer Trashes Speaker [Silverman], Fails Social IQ Test, Tech Crunch.com, 02.14.2010: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/14/ted-organizer-trashes-speaker-fails-social-iq-test/

TED (not your uncle): http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/7

Once again: Check comic genius Eric Filipkowski's site, 'cuz he's a rocket man

This guy is a laugh-riot. Ever since I began this site I've had a link up to his, and he's just genuinely funny. Not only are his cultural observations usually spot-on, but his fictional routines are simply hilarious. You won't be disappointed, trust me, he's got the funny gene! (he's on my linkroll to-the-left, hit it!) Fuck you, I wish I was half as funny as you are, Eric! ;0)

"Radical Pirate Chic," a satire by an effete who wears ice cream colored suits (Matt Janovic)

“Queenie” was the first to saunter onto the aft deck, stepping insouciantly over the bodies of food and drink servers, piles of banned-in-the-USA flintlock AK-47s, broken unbreakable combs, and Bam-Bam’s toys. Her moves were getting the boys in the crew pretty hot, and they weren’t even over-hyped gangster rappers. The atmosphere was assuredly sultry, that was for sure. The armed Somalis running all over the place had boarded The Fountainhead several hundred miles off of the coast of Yemen, beating a flotilla of Babary Coast pirates to their quarry. Normally, it was “hands-up,” but something was amiss with the passengers of this particular vessel.

“Really, do any of you pirates have air-conditioning? I mean—really—it’s unacceptably balmy here in…where the hell are we? Who’s got a map? Not that I could find where we are on it, “exhaled the washed-up diva. Her face had seen better days, and so had her career, but she still had the gams and she was loaded in every sense. Perhaps this pirate fundraiser could get her more exposure in the mainstream media, she pondered. How that was going to happen off the coast of Somalia was anyone’s guess.

A teenage Somalia pirate angrily pointed his assault rifle at her and started yelling at the top of his lungs. Where were the canapés?! No, this GOP fundraiser wasn’t going as planned, let alone according to schedule, but at least the collapse of the voting base was still coming in on time (these were hard times for issue-baiters). If they couldn’t politically demonize these pirates, maybe they could bore them to death, or even join them. It seemed redundant. Who was responsible for this mess? Who did the booking? Who could they scapegoat when the usual victims were pointing guns at them without a nigger-beating cop or a gullible and bigoted public for thousands of miles?

Had Karl Rove planned it, or was it Bebe Rebozo? Nobody knew who Bebe Rebozo was, so it didn’t matter. A Republican junket had gone off-the-rails again (and again, and again…), and they were all looking like the ruthless, scurvy dogs they always were. At least they could glean their Vitamin C from some of the cocktails, but the food was rapidly running out, if not being looted or immediately consumed by the starving Somalis. But these good people were taking it in stride; they weren’t going to let anything ruffle their feathers, not even objective reality. Maybe a saber-or-two up against a throat might; or maybe a bullet in the arm, a leg, or the trunk, but not from a randy corsair or some buggery dog from the Spanish Main.

“Quick, quick,” many of them were thinking, “where is a copy of The Wealth of Nations for a Confucian-like consultation?” They couldn’t make a move without it--or a functioning nervous system--so it was going to be hard going for the foreseeable future. Were there ever Chinese pirates? Sure. But, after all, every fear hides a secret desire, and besides, the booze and grog were flowing, there were tons of Black teenagers (albeit training guns on them all), and the drugs were on the way. How was this different from a party at the Westin or Watergate? Right: the CIA wasn’t here.

“Those Somali pirates were just teenagers, and our Black Muslim president MURDERED them, that dirty racist mulatto—that tragic mulatto. I know, I know, it’s not as though I’ve ever shown much empathy for those Negroes—publicly--but I do have a yen for them black teenagers!” said a shaking, sweating Rush Limbaugh.

Withdrawal and the rhythm method weren’t part of the Republican lexicon, but the monkey on his back was getting vicious, barbaric, and it had to go. Rush called it “Joe,” but its real name was “Sam.” Hey, don’t ask me--I don’t write ‘em, ask the fat man. In a moment’s notice, the well-muscled simian sprang across the foredeck, gingerly and lovingly ripping the faces off of every suburbanite that motioned to pet him. Just as suddenly, he grabbed for a vegetable tray, but was violently rebuffed by violence. The chimp didn’t look very amused by this unacceptable state of affairs, and began effortlessly throwing pirates overboard. The “hosts” didn’t seem too amused either, pointing their flintlock AKs in Limbaugh’s undulating, porcine face, forming an aesthetically pleasing semi-circle that would’ve looked natural in a Fritz Lang film. One of the young pirates dropped his saber and started to dance in a delightful pirouette. This Republican Party wasn’t amounting to very much, but at least it had some camp value.

Limbaugh began shaking, pulled a microphone from nowhere, and spat out: “Look, look, we can do business…I’ve contributed greatly to your people in the Caribbean, I understand you people—as crazy as that sounds—I understand you. Wait exactly one minute and thirty-three seconds, and I’ll say something crazier.” The Somali pirates were not amused, and began rifling through his pockets, finding pornography depicting young black men in various states of undress, several bottles of Viagra™, Oxycontin™, and a key of heroin and some Havana cigars in a diplomatic attaché case affixed with the Seal of the Department of State. That was when the real party began. It was time to get fucked-up, and that’s exactly what the skeletal Somalis did (wouldn’t you?).

With superhuman swiftness, they began whipping-out their grubby shooting works, grabbing cafeteria trays and any flat, reflective surface that they could get their mitts on. Now the Republicans finally saw their quarry, and an opening; they knew how to play this game. The old divide-and-conquer routine was coming, and they all knew it. It was at that point that a doddering old country doctor from Dallas came forward, brandishing a flaming (Christopher) cross, speaking utter nonsense (the nomenclature of American politicians, Libertarians and businessmen). Everyone was seriously fuuuuuccccckkkkkkeeeddddd uuuuuuuuuuuuup--even Ted Nugent, who appeared to have become a switch hitter.

Ron Paul misspoke: “Ya’ll need to hire some more pirates to deal with these here pirates, it’s worked before! I’m a Medical Doctor, and as we all know, we’re experts in foreign policy,” he droned on. The Somalis began nodding-off, and it wasn’t from the heroin. “…But there’ll be MONEY in it.” At those words, the young, Black, and gifted Somali pirates began gathering around the doddering redneck from the failed and theocratic Republic of Texas, now occupied by federal troops after a failed insurrection. The Doc was right for once in his miserable life: the pirates began rifling through his pockets, and when they were done, he was unceremoniously thrown overboard with a volley of RPG and Kalashnikov rounds following him.

“You’ll never take me alive!” he said, frantically clutching and wrapping himself in an American flag as he took several dozen rounds in the trunk. Absolutely everyone on the ship applauded for ten-minutes-straight.

“He was right!” chuckled one of the bilingual pirates, and I don’t mean “bi” in that other respect.

The rest of the pirates thrust the RPGs and flintlock AK-47s into the air in a defiant cheer. It was time for MORE sailor’s pay, and there were plenty more passengers to loot and…you know. They all spread-out across the main deck and filtered down to every level of the luxury cruiser, it was a spectacle that Michael Bay or any number of kiss-ass Hollywood producers would have drooled over, and it didn’t require any set up or union guidelines. Had there been video cameras, it would have been a reality TV show. Once the press arrived, it would be, and the surviving passengers could snap-up the distribution rights in-perpetuity.

But Harvey Weinstein was all ears, and had been hiding in the engine room eating blintzes and snorting coke off of a starlet’s taint. He motioned from his new hiding place in a lifeboat from beneath the tarp-coverlet to one of the Somali sentries running past: “Hey—you—fuck nut! Get over here! Gonna make you a star, asshole [SNUFFLE!].” The sentry was interested, though mainly in the peculiarly positioned starlet and the cocaine.

Meanwhile, on the foredeck, Limbaugh and others were finding escape in watching one of the few operating television sets that had been left unplundered by those scurvy dogs. “Socialists!” yelled the pathetic gaggle still gathered around the sweating, porcine reincarnation of National Socialist Gauleiter, Herman Göring. George W. Bush was onscreen at that moment. In the end, anyone who tried to escape reality by watching television was shot by the pirates.

“Are there any real socialists left?” queried Chuck Norris. He didn’t have that dumb animal look most rednecks have, so his rank was higher, but not much.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Chuck?!” chortled Limbaugh.

“Well…I don’t know. We just keep calling everyone who isn’t an actual socialist a socialist. I mean, how times have any us referred to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as one? He actually is one, y’know? Don’t you think red-baiting is over? If only I had the martial arts abilities that I do in my movies, we’d be out of this mess in no more than seven edits or wipe-dissolves!” Like the still-decaying Queen Victoria, Limbaugh was not amused.

“I decide who’s what—either a Republican or a socialist!” exploded Limbaugh. Food was flowing out of his mouth as he said it, and his pupils were dilated, as always. Finally, belatedly, he too was thrown overboard with the same treatment Ron Paul got from the angry Somalis. More were to follow, with the end result being the entire decimation of the original passengers and crew. In short order, the Somali pirates had commandeered the ship and set the navigation computers for New York City. A midshipman was perplexed and asked their ostensible leader, “Why New York City?”

“That’s easy,” said the pirate captain, “We’re all going to work on Wall Street with the phony credentials we’ve gotten off of these dead assholes. Soon, we’ll all be embedded permanently in several key lending-firms, with little-or-no accountability. That’s where the money is….”

The End

?

Coming to this space soon: "Radical Pirate Chic," a satire of Tom Wolfe's famous article!

J to the Powah of 7--There will be humor...wenches, grog, and the occasional flintlock AK-47 and RPG for all!!! Arrrrrrrrrr!!!!!! Can someone find me a schooner in Somalia? Starring Ron Paul and a cast of millions!

Blame Chris Dodd, Wall Street insider: On the AIG controversy

Republican Senator Charles Grassley's comments that AIG executives who have been awarded $165 million in bonuses that come from government bailout funds (TARP) should return the money--or kill themselves--comes at a very interesting political moment:

Republicans, seeing that the Obama administration are as apathetic as they are about corporate accountability have found an opening-of-sorts and are doing their best to steal the coveted "Populist" outrage ball. This entails very real risks when one is engaged in the same behaviors. The Obama administration and many legal experts are saying that the contracts cannot be violated, that they're "airtight," and were made in the spring of last year. But contracts can be broken, and the federal government now owns 80% of AIG at this writing.

There's an interesting dynamic here of the dodge, and by all sides.

Most of the problems arising out of the bonus issue were the creation of the Bush II administration, just one-of-many gifts they left the American public and the Obama administration before leaving office. This could all have been avoided, and it appears that the new inhabitants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. have walked right into one of their bear-traps...and one created by Congress, generally.

From the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Title VII, Sec. III:

"(iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009 [Ed.--My emphasis.], as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.

And who wrote these lines? According to Rawstory and the papers on the bill itself, it was Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), one of AIG's largest recipients of campaign donations in 2007 and 2008, and a former Goldman Sachs executive.

The AIG contracts-in-question were written in April of 2008, so you cannot say Dodd and his fellow Wall Street lobbyists aren't proactive in their corrupt and unethical practices. They even left a little clause in there so that the burden then rests with the Treasury Secretary, a kind of a catch-22 of throwing the ball to the executive branch.

Yet the new president signed the bill with this language still contained within it. He may not have had any real choice in the matter and was more-or-less blackmailed into accepting the stimulus package "as-is." As a matter of fact, these could be some of the very lines that were fought over behind the scenes and reported about widely, though without detail since there was little transparency in the negotiations. If so, little of this is Obama's fault at all, and the attacks and demands that he do something are little more than political theater and a way for the authors of this mess to avoid the real brunt of public outrage.

But then, there's the president's lack-of-enthusiasm for doing much about the bonuses or the questionable methods of expediting the bailouts and the creation of the stimulus package of which Dodd was a major party to.

To say that President Obama's outrage is more than a little too subdued over the bonuses during an economic crisis would be euphemistic, as evinced by his comments yesterday, but it's possible that he had no other choice but to accept this provision or get no stimulus deal at all. That should tell you all you need to know about most incumbents now sitting in Congress. Is there a game being played? Of course there is, and by all sides, it's poltics. My bet is that much of this was done to smear the president, frankly. It's all about avoiding responsibility, and the longer these kinds of shenanigans continue, the longer we're going to be in this crisis. So be it until we get real representatives. Trust: where is it?

The crisis could even deepen as a result when trust becomes a foregone conclusion, a casualty of some of the same practices that created this economic crisis in the first place.

The GOP are the kings of claiming that someone else has engaged in "political theater," just never them. Rational adults should understand that it's a hollow position in every rewspect, but the real danger is in representatives like Dodd. However, the public's outrage, the monkey-like flinging of dueling rhetoric, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's introduction of a bill that would recover most of the funds could bring a kind of a "fix" for the public since it's the squeeky-wheels that get oiled.

If you want to blame anyone, blame Congress--especially Republican incumbents and red dog Democrats like Dodd who have an identity crisis of their own. The time to clean house is coming up again next year's elections. If order hasn't eroded by that time, we might know what to do to repair and restructure a wrecked economy.

One thing's certain here: President Obama had better start reassessing who his real friends are in his own party, and fast, and begin sweeping the federal bureaucracy of all Bush II appointments. The public also needs to look very closely at the voting records and public behavior of those yelling the loudest in Congress over these bonuses and the need for reform. Trust--it's a hard thing to come by in Washington and on Wall Street, and it's going to be crucial to any kind of a recovery, but there's little reason for it these days from so-called leadership.

These clowns could be running themselves out of office sooner than you think, you watch. At the head of the list should be one Sen. Chris Dodd, former Goldman Sachs employee and still a lobbyist for Wall Street.

"Senate plans on introducing bill to claw back AIG bonuses," Rawstory, 03.17.2009: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Senate_plans_on_introducing_bill_to_0317.html

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Title VII: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009/Division_B/Title_VII

Arianna (A satirical play of high camp in one act) by Matt Janovic

“Arianna”

(A satirical play of high camp in one act)

by Matt Janovic

Cast of Characters

Arianna Huffington: Grecian belle of the ball, radical socialite, alleged raconteur, poseur, and social climber. A Cambridge graduate (boo! bad show!), and best-selling authoress. She has a face that would launch a thousand franchise-outlets and a voice similar to Barbara Walters (the bridesmaid at her first wedding) in the 1970s.

The Decaying Ghost of Ronald Reagan (reanimated scientifically by the Republican Party for your convenience): the greatest dead president that never lived in American history.

Newt Gingrich: a pathetic excuse for a man--a politician and Republican.

Michael Huffington: a bisexual Houston oil heir, former congressman, and former husband of the leading lady. Constance was to Oscar Wilde what Michael was to Arianna.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Two Rednecks

Rahm Emanuel: Former Illinois Representative and the man closest to the President, and linguistic cousin to Richard M. Nixon, Rod Blagojevich, and potty-mouthed politicians and writers everywhere.

Author Tom Wolfe: An astute chronicler of ongoing social/political/cultural satires/catastrophes who wears Tennessee Williams-esque ice cream suits.

Actor George Clooney: a strapping Irish-American lad and icon of mainstream Democrats.

(Standing in as the Chorus) The American public, playing (with) themselves offstage, as they tend to do.

Al Franken: comedian and DNC court jester.

Chris Matthews: MSNBC political commentator and enemy of Arianna Huffington.

A Former Huffington Post staffer: [Name Redacted]

The scene: (The Huffington villa, at an undisclosed location in California. The set is what can only be described as one of the finest, most expensive examples of stagecraft the theater has ever known, you should really should have seen it, it was some choice digs, even with the break-away walls and ceilings. Indeed, Leni Riefenstahl is spinning in her grave as I write this, the spectacle being so wonderful and New Agey that I can feel it within my Shakras as I write this.

An explosion occurs, and a mandala is formed from a swirling column of smoke and the use of mirrors above the set. Newt Gingrich and Al Franken are sitting next to her; both are seated on gold-anodized lawn chairs. They’re all very clearly drunk…on alcohol and the power that comes with notoriety.)

Arianna: “Not only is it harder to be a man, it is also harder to become one,” and I should know since I’ve tried to be one all of my life. [Disembodied applause and catcalls commence from the Chorus, the voices being female with one very low male voice, laughing.] They say—whoever-the hell they are—that a “penis is a good thing to bring to a picnic”—I concur on that. Ever had to squat in the brush? Why are you here anyway, Newt? I thought we had 86’d our ties long ago. What gives?

Newt Gingrich: "I'm going to tell you something, and whether or not it's plausible given the world you come out of is your problem. I am not 'running' for president. I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen,” or so help me God I’ll wring your Greek neck! [He motions towards Huffington while still sitting in his chair, his hands moving towards her throat. She shoos him away with a flyswatter, smacking him in the face repeatedly, which makes the same sound as when Curly of the Three Stooges is slapped by Moe. Newt looks dumbfounded then settles back into a martini.]

Arianna: That kind of talk again. I know, I know. “I truly believed that the private sector could step up to the plate and provide the financial resources and the volunteer time to tackle poverty and all those social problems. I really did. But then I found out firsthand, through observing the Republican leadership at work, how unserious they were about addressing those issues.” [She’s shaking her head back-and-forth much as a Sicilian mother would.] How did I ever believe you cared about the poor? Oi-yoi-yoi…

Franken: [Shaking his head.] Until you fell off of that mule on the road to Damascus, hitting your head on a rock…me! I may have taken LSD at SNL, but I could never have been so high as to think that the Republicans would ever care about the poor. Frankly, it’s just the reverse: I’m high enough right now to believe that the Democrats care about the poor. I gotta split, there’s an election to contest and win. [Laughing uproariously as he exits, continuing offstage, interrupting subsequent dialog occasionally.]

Chorus: You go girl! How could she believe the Republicans would help the poor, like ever?! [Looking at directly at her, slightly out-of-unison.] What…were you stupid or something?! [Voices rising-in-unison again.] We’re talking about the Republicans here, shithead. Pf-ffft! [Resignedly] Rich people. [Grumbling] She’s worse: a social climber. Arianna was suffering from Stockholm’s syndrome.

[The Chorus walks offstage grumbling, to the left.]

Newt Gingrich: Yup, Stockholm syndrome, and I should know. [Breaking the fourth wall, he winks directly at the audience.] “You can't trust anybody with power.” [He winks the same way again.] I don’t even trust myself—you know, that whole thing with “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,” especially when the left hand doesn’t want to be briefed on it without acceptable counsel. Yawp.

Yet, “[a]ll free people stand on Reagan's shoulders. His principled policies proved that free markets create wealth, that the rule of law sustains freedom, and that all people everywhere deserve the right to dream, to pursue their dreams, and to govern themselves.” [Snickers loudly, and then shrugs. Arianna looks bored.] “How to Overthrow the Government”? Been there, done that.

“I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract. I think too much,” and I have a very large head. [Arianna yawns, while Gingrich begins to look nervous. His delivery accelerates accordingly, sounding similar to a hog auctioneer.]

“Frankly I believe that there's too little funding for intelligence, we have too few assets and too few analysts. And I think if the Congress and others are going to demand a greater capacity in intelligence we're going to have to be prepared to pay for a more sophisticated and a more intense structure of intelligence capabilities, and I think its wrong for some members of Congress to vote to cut intelligence spending, to vote to cut the number of intelligence analysts and then to set unrealistically high demands on the intelligence community.” [Whispers]

Do I have snot on my corduroy suit? It’s impossible to get it out. The more you rub-it-in—don’t get any ideas, woman—the worse it gets, Jesus. Out, damn spot, out!

[The Chorus returns, some smoking discourteously, others holding a hard drink.]

Chorus: Hmmmm. Is he retarded? Yes…emotionally.

Arianna: I’ve taken down bigger, fatter men than you Newt Gingrich, even with your bizarrely enormous head and girth and all your cronies and mistresses--I can do it. My namesake husband was more of a man than you—and he’s gay--making me a very curious form of social climber, but not atypical. [She looks self-consciously around with her eyes.]

But never mind all of that: You have bigger problems. “When your house is burning down, you don't worry about the remodeling…” lard ass, you hit the fat farms.

Your flabby ass is the new symbol of the end of conservatism. You look and sound like an old Soviet commissar...like that Tim Russert asshole. And how dare you—I loved Michael!

Chorus/A’murka: Who-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oah! Score! [They sing] That’s gotta hurt! Oh! Newt feels wounded.

Newt: Speak for yourself Cambridge bitch, Oxford’s the better school, even if it’s teeming with English ponces. [Pauses, confused.] What other kind of ponce would they be? German? Goddmaned--just shut-up, shut-up with that. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Gatsby was an “Oggsford man,” not a Cambridge one.

You know how I can tell if it’s love or lust, Lady Macbeth? I cut my finger…if I bleed and it hurts, I’m real, and therefore there is no love, simple as that. So: lust it is!

Forget sentimentality, Arianna. You know that “[w]e must create to destroy,” and that one of my favorite bands in the 1990s was Too Much Joy, not Anita Bryant. Over is over. I know, I know—they turned out to be a bunch of pinko musicians. “It's going to be a bummer if Mars turns out to be like us,” and that ain’t hay, sister. So forget all your “yadda-yaddas,” and get on with it.

You know--toots--I still don’t understand to this day why you created that anti-poverty foundation for my think tank, it was completely bat-shit crazy [He stirs his martini with his finger.]. It wasn’t sad seeing you go, but we still need your likes. When you’re a true believer, you’re a true believer, and the GOP thrives on that bullshit. You know, people who think the world’s flat.

As a Republican, you were a paradox, and as a liberal or a “lefty,” you’re the same. Being around the rich is your world, your milieu, even more than mine, yet you actually care about the poor. I’m also a social climber, but you’re the Edmund Hillary of rising above the herd, Lady Macbeth. Forget Mt. Everest, baby, you’re shooting for the top-slot, to be the “womyn” behind the curtain, the real power, the “head cheese,” the brass, the barista of braggadocio, the Grand Wazoo, the Wizard of Oz…shit!

[The sound of a singing chorus of angels begins. A giant and expansive half-shell appears above and behind Huffington and Gingrich. Inside it appears the smiling Hollywood star George Clooney. He walks down onto some invisible-stairs that lead down from the pod. Huffington begins swooning, panting, and yes, salivating uncontrollably, quite a feat for a post-menopausal woman, but she drank a lot of fluids beforehand.]

Arianna: Ohmigod!!!!!!!!!

George Clooney: Hi guys. [He winks. Sustained applause ensues.] “I am a liberal. And I make no apologies for it. Hell, I'm proud of it. Too many people run away from the label. They whisper it like you'd whisper "I'm a Nazi,” like it's a dirty word. But turn away from saying "I'm a liberal" and it's like you're turning away from saying that blacks should be allowed to sit in the front of the bus, that women should be able to vote and get paid the same as a man, that McCarthy was wrong, that Vietnam was a mistake. And that Saddam Hussein had no ties to al-Qaeda and had nothing to do with 9/11.

This is an incredibly polarized time (wonder how that happened?). But I find that, more and more, people are trying to find things we can agree on. And, for me, one of the things we absolutely need to agree on is the idea that we're all allowed to question authority. We have to agree that it's not unpatriotic to hold our leaders accountable and to speak out.

That's one of the things that drew me to making a film about Murrow. When you hear Murrow say, "We mustn't confuse dissent with disloyalty" and "We can't defend freedom at home by deserting it at home," it's like he's commenting on today's headlines.

The fear of being criticized can be paralyzing. Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit, which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, "We were misled."

It makes me want to shout, "Fuck you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic."

Bottom line: it's not merely our right to question our government. It's our duty, whatever the consequences. We can't demand freedom of speech then turn around and say, ‘But please don't say bad things about us.’ You gotta be a grown-up and take your hits.

I am a liberal. Fire away. ” [Clooney walks back up the staircase, returns to the “Venus on a shell”-like pod, and vanishes dramatically, but under the production’s budget. Arianna runs to the stairs that abruptly vanish. She’s despondent.]

Newt: What the fuck was he talking about? Hey!! You didn’t really say that!

Chorus: No shit, Sherlock…well he did, but… [They moan in-unison.] Newt was right…and wrong. He did say it, except not just now. Is that clear? Forget it.

Newt: Where’d he go?

Arianna: N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o! God, that man is catnip! [She starts sobbing.]

Newt: "You talk about crying! The spring of 1988, I spent a fair length of time trying to come to grips with who I was and the habits I had, and what they did to people that I truly loved. I really spent a period of time where, I suspect, [?!] I cried three or our times a week. I read Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them [,] and I found frightening pieces that related to...my own life."

Hey, what was the deal with you and Michael Huffington anyway? I mean, “[i]t is madness to pretend that families are anything other than heterosexual couples. I think it goes to the core of how civilization functions,” yet here you are, the biggest fag hag in the Western world preaching tolerance when you used to be one of us. What happened?! We’re both social Darwinists at heart--c’mon toots, gimme some skin, give us a kiss.

[Acerbic author Tom Wolfe enters the room, eyeing Gingrich and Huffington with disdain. At the same moment a bag of bones falls from the ceiling and crashes to the floor. The sound of a charming old man’s voice groaning is heard, then sputters-out. It’s the legacy of Ronald Reagan.]

Tom Wolfe: Arianna, have you read my book, Radical Chic? I-

Arianna: [Cutting him off like Charles Foster Kane.] I have. [They glare at one another.] Wearing that stupid ice-cream colored suit isn’t ever going to make you Tennessee Williams, unless perhaps you choked to death on a plastic bottle-cap. Are you retarded?

Wolfe: I seemed to have walked into the Algonquin. [He pauses for a painfully long time.] Nah, too easy… [He exits.]

Newt: [Sound of knocking.] Why, I think I hear a knock at the door. Who could that be?

[The door opens, and a masked figure enters the room. The unknown person is wearing a Young Republicans t-shirt.]

Arianna: Is that the pizza we ordered or the hummus platter? [She looks at him, drolly.] You know—what time is it? What day is it? I need to get something done around here. They say that procrastination is a “failed state.” I should know being a former conservative.

A Former Huffington Post staffer: M-mfhhh, mfghaghrrrrrrrrrr-gghggggnashhhaahhhhhhhhhhhmmrrrrrfff!

Newt: What the hell is he saying? Goddammit, spit it out boy! I hate this shi-hey, he’s got something in his mouth! Look! [He points his index-finger insouciantly at the staffer’s mouth. It contains a black rubber ball. It pops-out and rolls onto the floor. The staffer begins talking.] There it is….and out it goes.

Staffer: [Whining, outraged.] She called me a “retard” once and made me get her coffee and Bears tickets!

Newt: You too, huh? Welcome to the club, pal, she had me running her errands all the time, and I was her boss back then. [Gingrich takes the staffer aside.] Look, "It is perfectly American to be wrong." I reserve this right, as does Arianna…or is it areola? Excuse me, I’m getting horny just thinking about it, but maybe that’s just me. [Huffington glares at him without comment for thirty seconds.] [Depressed.] …

Yep, it’s just me. Does anyone know where I can get a good Chinese hooker? Let’s go hit Chinatown, go out kickin’ the gong around, going ha-cha-cha! [He begins dancing, badly.]

Arianna: Wrong decade, Newt, I know you pine for the 1920s, but the 1930s and the New Deal are coming anyway and there’s nothing you or your imperiled GOP can do about it. You did it to yourselves.

Newt: [Speaking to the staffer.] Listen pal, buck-up and accept the rules of the workplace like everyone else, and all that Horatio Alger crap we’re selling all the time at the GOP, all that “rags-to-riches” bullshit for the dumb-fucks, the “help.” Excuse me again… [He reaches around and scratches his ass.]

Staffer: Who the hell was Horatio Alger?

Newt: [Continuing as though the staffer never said anything.] …Everyone’s had a retarded boss who tells us to do one thing--we do it properly--and then they yell at us later for doing it because they’re fucking senile and they forgot what they originally told us. Happens all the time, mack. Regardless, I support Arianna’s right as an employer to treat you like that. God, I’ve got “ragged dick” these days, ouch, shit, sorry.

My first wife infected me with a conscience, which gives me eczema on… [Whispering in a strange drawl.] You know. I’ll never let that happen again…uh, you know, being “infected with a conscience,” never.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger enters, and don’t get any ideas from this stage direction, pervs.]

Schwarzenegger: Yoo know, I haff’ worked with many fagsz here in my time here in Cal-i-forn-ia—‘dey are not so bad…fagsz. ‘Dey do not know da’value of tearing-off a goot piece-of-assth, but dey are fery hard vorkars and can re-dec-or-ate like no one else, fucking hands-down!! [Sincerely, pleadingly, with an Austrian sense of sentimentality.] Homos are not so battt. Why da’ fuck did I want to be gov-er-nor? [He starts sobbing.]

Newt: What the hell is he talking about? At the GOP, we always say, “Until the grownups come to find us, we’ll have some fun.”

Arianna: Why are you quoting William Golding?

Newt: Who’s that?

Schwarzenegger: [As though the last exchange never occurred.] "If I would do another 'Terminator' movie I would have Terminator travel back in time and tell Arnold not to have a special election." …"It's the most difficult [decision] I've made in my entire life, except the one I made in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax."

Yooh haff made mis-takes as well, Arianna. But I am with you on this: "I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman."

"Nixon was always being attacked sexually. It was always said that he was a fag and that he had no sexual relations with his wife for 15 years and that was why he liked power. And Hitler had only one ball, and that was why he wanted to conquer the world." As we know today, ‘dis hass all been found to be ‘da truth, it’s in ‘da new Kinsey Report, I read it avidly.

Arianna: Uh, let’s not talk about all that—my last marriage--shall we? This is all getting too close to home, thank you. “We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of success.” I’ve made mistakes, but marrying Michael wasn’t one of them, he was my entre into the world of well-heeled West coast elites…the gay mafia.

These guys don’t “burn the saint,” they burn an image of Divine or Judy Garland! Eek! [Looks up.] Thanks—Plato—for inventing camp. My heart really yearns for Greece, it really does, but I prefer more “cosmopolitan digs.” …“Of course, at heart, I’m still a superstitious Greek peasant girl, so I’m not counting my chickens – or my lambs – yet…,” and not without prepared talking points.

Schwarzenegger: [With Germanic cunning.] You too, huh? Oh, uh…I never married Michael, but…uh…I had better shut-up now.

Chorus: Now?!

Schwarzenegger: And I ‘vuss never a Greek peasant girl--at least not in this life! I must go now, my head hurts. There is a state to run—I ‘tink--but I am unsure which one. [He exits.]

Newt: What a man. I’m feeling literary tonight—and why not? OK, I agree you’re not any more senile than I am, Arianna. “We're all human and we all goof. Do things that may be wrong, but do something.” Hey! We’re really not so different after all!

[Cue Keith Forsey’s very bad 1980s-instrumental music from the John Hughes movie, “The Breakfast Club.” They all get up from the lawn chairs and do an incredibly goofy dance found only in the Carpathian Alps, the Caucasus, and America. NBC political commentator and avowed enemy of Huffington walks onstage unnoticed and places wiretapping devices on Gingrich’s forehead and on Arianna’s purse. They are very large bugging-devices shaped and designed like Obama campaign buttons.]

Chris Matthews: Bitch. [He scurries offstage much like a sand crab, but not before copping-a-feel from Gingrich.] Hee-hee-hee! [Audibly grumbling within audience earshot.] At least there’s a Chris Matthews doll! [Looking squarely at Huffington, he physically punctuates every other syllable with karate-chops.] Spy…on…my…friends…for…your…pansy…husband—I’ll show you.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen in the background of the stage, shaking his head sadly.]

Schwarzenegger: I have been in this state for too long. I have totally fucked-up my life.

Chris Matthews: I never liked this place either. “Keep your enemies in front of you…” that’s all I can say to you, Arnold.

Schwarzenegger: Aren’t you some kind of a pinko, some pathetic liberal talking head?

Chris Matthews: Not to my friends. “My audience is much more center right, or centrist.” Besides, I keep telling people that I saw a doll of myself in Toronto—you can’t get more mainstream than that. No, no, it’s all talk, I can assure you.

“I tell my staff, we’re riding a tour bus around, and we’re going to stop and look at some weird stuff - but we’re taking our viewers around safely. They’re just looking out the window at it. I’m trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience.” You know, bullshit.

[Cue “Rocky Mountain Breakdown.”]

[Two rednecks come hither, sidling-up, both carrying incredibly old shotguns, one with a bandoleer and brandishing a sidearm in his hands.]

Chorus: Hee-haw! Two rednecks approach. They mean well, but have read just enough to be a problem to everyone.

Redneck #1: [To Schwarzenegger.] Hey…you ain’t from around these parts, are yeh?! Hehehehehehehaha-bleah-hahhahahahahah!!

Chris Matthews: As a matter of fact, I’m from Nicetown, Pennsylvania. Sounds better than “the man from Hope,” doesn’t it?

Schwarzenegger: …Nein, I am not from “around deese parts,” as you call it.

Redneck #2: Hey Zeke--we ain’t from around these parts neither!

[The rednecks both look at each other confused, then shrug, and leave the stage.]

Schwarzenegger: Where can a guy get a goot trink around ‘dis fucking town, because I need one. Once, there was a time when …"I was always dreaming about very powerful people - dictators and things like that. I was just always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years, or even, like Jesus, be for thousands of years remembered." Now this can never be for me, it is ovah, and I haff been made a girlie-man by the state of Cal-i-forn-ia. “Now I understand why you humans cry.”

[He lowers his head, sadly, poignantly, in a way that would make director James Cameron gush. The Hollywood sign rises in the background of the minimalist set that would make both Derek Jarman and Busbee Berkley proud. Birds are chirping, wildfires erupt to the right in the forced perspective “distance,” sirens are blaring, and the sounds of faraway gunplay and yelling are heard.]

Chris Matthews: “Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City”. It was one of those days, I guess.

[Meanwhile, Arianna and Newt have been paid a visit by Rahm Emanuel, the Dutch Schultz of American politics.]

Arianna: Oh! What a powerful man! Wow. [Emanuel looks pleased; he’s preening.]

Rahm Emanuel: “When people told me 'It's great to be here', they meant at the house, not with me.” …”As individuals, we will be judged in our lives by the totality of our actions. Not one thing will stand out. And I think that's how we get judged by our colleagues and that's how we get judged by the good lord.” …”I sometimes joke, [Arianna], [but] even paranoid people have enemies.

Newt: I think you’re looking at one right now…

Chorus/Arianna/Rahm Emanuel: Shut the fuck up!

End