Frankie had a good thing going in his act.
He had the best writers, the audience in the palm of his hand as he threw gag after gag.
He played that audience like a conductor of an orchestra.
Everyone laughed.
But when they put him in movies, he fell flat.
No audience to play off of, no audience to show up.
If the crew laughed, he had to do another take.
Box office poison.
Defeated. Desperate.
Back to television? Back to the stage?
He watched as the crew tore down his posters, putting new ones up giving others top billing.
Freddy Sneezes
Freddy sneezed himself back in time.
It wasn’t by much. Just three minutes.
But still whenever he sneezed, he went back in time.
Little sniffles sent him back a few seconds.
A big blast, maybe an hour.
Whenever he caught cold, he went to Vegas.
Turning a few bucks of chips into a nice stack to cash out.
The casinos tried to prove he cheated, but their tapes showed all kinds of strange glitches and errors.
They couldn’t prove a damn thing.
So, they took him out back and shot him.
Dead men tell no tales.
And they don’t sneeze.
Are you a whore?
Customers don’t buy prostitutes.
They only rent them.
Pimps, on the other hand, buy prostitutes.
How they do it, well, this is no Julia Roberts fairy tale, folks.
And prostitutes who are owned will save up money to buy themselves out from under their pimps.
Not that many ever really get free, because of the drugs. Or the pimp taking their cash and killing them anyway.
Then there’s the independent contractors who work for organized brothels.
Those arrangements vary depending on the contract.
Healthcare, security, retirement plans.
Look at your job.
Look at your contract.
Are you a whore, too?
The King and the Black Eye
Before Broadway, Yul Brynner was a television director.
He did dramas for CBS. And he did them well, he did them his way.
CBS executives, being executives, wanted more.
And being executives, they ordered him to direct the Whats My Line? game show on Sunday night.
Yul hated it.
So, one night, he rolled the credits 4 minutes early.
And for the last three minutes, the camera showed Yul’s director credit while the audience clapped.
The executives relented, but they didn’t fire Yul.
He continued to direct his beloved television dramas, while doing 8 shows a week as The King.
Smoke and writers
Smoking came naturally to Bill.
He’d be writing a story, and then pause… and he’d need something in his hand and his mouth.
Gum? Carrot sticks? Celery?
No, only a cigarette would do.
He was a writer, after all, and that’s what writers do.
Take out the pack, open it, knock out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, ready for the lighter, and light it.
Maybe he sits there with it in his fingers, thinking.
Maybe he’s typing so much, he smokes it down to the filter.
Stubs it out, lights another one.
And keeps writing whatever he’s writing.
Weekly Challenge #819 – PICK TWO: Don’t push me…, Animated, Compassion, Indifferent, Ally, Whale, A fork in the road
TOM
What Could Go Possible Wrong 019
Normally I ( and I use that for your temporal reference) would let the sure mass of the narrative reveal what the hell is happening. Don’t have the time, little time entity joke, there. Normally Indifferent Compassion is how I roll. What animates my actions is whenever there is a fork in the road, I take it. My motto is Don’t push me, I’m the Whale, or was that the Walras, ooo pooka choo. Foe or Ally, you decide. Damn, that liquid blue will mess with one’s internal synapses. Back … To maintain a time bubble, you need maximum density. Did that help?
SERENDIPIDY
“Don’t push me!”
I turned to face the woman who had barged into me at the checkout and looked her straight in the eye.
“Just wait your turn, won’t you? You’ll get served when I’m done!”
Well, if looks could kill, I’d have been dead on the spot.
I returned to my shopping, taking all the time in the world, indifferent to her protests.
Outside, as I drove away from the store, I saw her. She gave me the middle finger and an evil stare.
Without any hesitation, I ran her down.
Barge into me, and I’ll barge right back!
TURA
Animated, Indifferent
———
Professor Proteus was indifferent among the many ideas that he lectured upon, yet always animated in his exposition. Whatever he spoke on, he was its most fervent advocate. Then he would take up an opposite idea and demolish his previous arguments. He could convince anyone of anything, then refute all that he had just said, then refute the refutations. His audience found themselves willy-nilly convinced by every successive turn. He could demonstrate the consistency of contradictions, and the inconsistency of tautologies.
He was eventually revealed to be a mouthpiece for an AI trained on the entire contents of the Internet.
RICHARD
Year’s end
Here we are, once again, standing amongst the dying embers of the year past, looking ahead to what the future might bring.
In many ways, it’s a completely arbitrary moment in time for decision-making – there’s nothing to prevent us from resolving where our destiny may lie, on any day of the year.
But tradition dictates that with the passing of each year, we face a fork in the road, and choose which route we will follow.
However, I’m rubbish at making resolutions.
And I’ll decide which direction to take, in my own good time.
So, don’t push me, OK?
LIZZIE
I am a good mother. I always knew what was good for you. But you never accepted what I said. I always pointed out your faults. That’s how you learn. I never praised you because that wouldn’t teach you anything. And that day when you wanted to hug me and I was horrified. A hug? Don’t push me. And you had that pathetic look on your face. I am a good mother. You came out alright, except for not accepting my orders. You were always stubborn. Now you’re indifferent. And we don’t talk. Yeah, it’s all your fault… your fault.
NORVAL JOE
Sabrina and Billbert walked along a path through the forest. She carried the bag of freshly made caramel corn in her backpack.
The trees were so thick, blocking the starry sky above, if it hadn’t been for the weak flashlight they would have completely missed a fork in the road.
She put her hand on Billbert’s shoulder. “We go this way.”
Billbert shrugged off her hand. “Don’t push me.”
Sabrina’s smile looked evil in the yellow glow of the flashlight. “Billbert. I’m your friend. I want to help you be a better person. Come along. The ceremony is this way.”
PLANET Z
Early in the days of animation, when Gertie, Mickey, and Bosco and other crude noodle-armed figures ruled the cinema, Xavier Walton came up with Bertha The Whale.
All you could see of her was her eye and a few folds around it.
But Xavier was a master animator, and put a lot of expression and character in that eye.
He would stand on stage with props, run the film behind him, and they did an Vaudeville act together.
Bertha’s reactions to Xavier’s antics were priceless.
Then someone hidden above the stage would dump a bucket of water on his head.
Easy to
I used to have a rolling laundry hamper, but it wore out and broke.
So, I bought a beach wagon.
The kind that people use to cart beer to the beach
I put two laundry baskets in it: One for whites, one for darks.
It’s easy to separate things as I put them in the baskets.
But it’s also easy to make things hard for myself.
After a few days, I throw everything in one basket.
And I sort them out on laundry day. Badly.
Invariably, a sock ends up with the colored stuff.
I should just buy colored socks.
For all the marbles
The virus came, and hasn’t left yet.
So, we stay apart, we keep our distance.
There’s no sports going on right now, so the sports stations are showing documentaries and repeats of classic games and matches.
And, of course, panel shows and interview shows… where the panelists and interviewers are in their homes, of course.
They’re even showing marble racing.
That’s where people set up elaborate tracks and challenges, with ramps and loops and other features, and they race and collide and roll along.
You could say that in finding marble racing, the sports stations have completely lost their marbles.
His Rick
Whenever Peter Lorre would leave an actress’ dressing room, he’d make like he was zipping up his fly.
The crew and costars would see him do this and laugh.
The jolly prankster went from the heavy to the Hollywood outcast, comeback after comeback.
Off to Germany. And then radio serials and television horror comedies.
He did it all for his daughter, to leave her with something.
Sick and tired, he suffered Jerry Lewis and The Patsy.
The shame of that role, he said he wouldn’t see it when it came out.
Did he die before its release out of spite?
Camelot
So, where was Camelot and The Round Table?
Well, you know how any airplane that the President is on gets the designation of Air Force One?
That’s the same with King Arthur and any building he’s in or the name of any table he’s sitting at.
He could be sitting in an outhouse taking a dump, and he’d be in Camelot.
(It’s why we call the toilet a throne, you know.)
Or he could be at a table in Olive Garden and that’s The Round Table.
Oh, did I call it Olive Garden?
Sorry, I meant to call it Camelot.