|
<<
Home
|
A Father's Misplaced
Tail: The Accidental Marginally
Upset Pole-Vaulting Pumpkin Man
By Timber Masterson
Mel Torme...sounds eerily like
Macramé: they’re both kind of brown and yellow, bordering on jaundice and
both can pretty much magically alter their shape and texture at will. AND
they both hang nicely from a window with a plant in them. This I’ve found.
What of Mel Torme weaving macramé while dancing the
meringue? Tough to execute, no doubt, but there are etch-a-sketch detailed
notes and pretty blue prints being drawn up by Mr. Brady as we speak. All of
this as intensely puzzling and creepy as "The Man Who Mistook His Wife
For A Hat." (Boy, he must have been REALLY messed up.)
All
right so, The Dream Sequence:
I hum loudly to the tune of a morbid, ‘Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley’,
snapping my fingers musically as I head down to the cellar to begin the days
work. My agent got me this great gig living indefinitely in Brian Dennehy’s basement: he thought I’d be right for the job
on account of I’m compulsively imaginative - I’m paraphrasing here - and
I’ve been known to think ‘outside the box’.
FYI
- This ‘agent’, by the way, only has a pager number and represents primarily
Latino dancers and singing paper boys; also, the vertically challenged, the
meek and off-putting, and I’ve heard through the diseased and rotting
grapevine, apparently, he’s in league with cubic Zerconia
sales, though when you ask him of this, he pulls a cape around himself, skits
away giggling, and mumbles something about being on a strictly "kitty
litter diet".
I’ve
got to look into more professional representation.
I’m paid an enormous sum to concoct potions that’ll enable the now reclusive
Mr. Dennehy to solve crimes in a sexy shroud of
invisibility. He needs this cloaked veneer for an upcoming role, to
reestablish a once flourishing career. The downside is this dumpty-shaped, sweaty has-been screams at me, while
fidgeting away autographing headshots with an old purple crayon and pipe
cleaner, "Max,
get the car. It’s the pictures that got small, I’m still a star",
and I can’t imagine just what this means, or what he wants me to do.
My real goal down here is to get him accepted once again, reintroduce him to
the theatergoing public. He will drive a myelin sheath of a car fueled by
sensitivity and a portly waistline but his all too visible overacting will
give him away. The fact that his skin has turned the color of unbrushed teeth and in recent weeks has seemed to develop
a pretty full-on case of Tourette's Syndrome
isn’t going to help matters any.
Hopefully,
America still has
a sense of humor.
It’s up to me to conjure up creative ideas from his pit of curried concubines
and the rabbit advisory committee in this demented weird-ass workshop down
here. The stench is what I’d imagine damp squirrels and a past-it’s-prime
Veal-and Pimento-loaf-concern to smell like, but there are benefits. I’m
gaining a lot of hands-on experience in cleaning these cages of
unverifiable four-legged creatures down here, experience I can take with me
to other positions. Though, I can’t imagine what in God’s name those might
be.
Mr. Dennehy is enraged at the world, drained by his
own addiction to Neo Citran and Flintstones
Chewable Vitamins with Extra C. His all-too-husky demeanor weakens him and
he’s helpless in that his spectator-hazardous belly arrives on crime-scenes
before his brains do. A now completely self-conscious Heavy B. (what we refer
to him as behind his back) is
embarrassed to still shop in Nordstrom’s Big and Sloppy section. I console
him at night by banging out 3 Coins in a Fountain repeatedly on a dusty toy piano then
wrapping him up gingerly in a down duvet and amusing his pallet by feeding
him a good dozen or so
pork sandwiches in front of a roaring fireplace.
Everyone needs a Father Figure.
Myself, I’ve got on a hand-woven flannel mope cape. And tall dark socks with
sandals. I’m also sporting Green Lantern ultra-slick lycra
underwear. Over my jeans. I’ve also got (comfortably fastened around me) a
utility belt complete with gargantuan fresh-ground black pepper mill, a cell
phone (made from a retarded boy’s Star War’s lunch pail, soup cans and silly
putty string), an imaginary voice-activated hand-held tape recorder, plus
plenty of black and silver plastic Pirate swords. Just in case. Attached, of
course, a shiny brass ‘Team Timber’ belt buckle. This ends up being
disconcerting and just confusing to guests, especially when introduced to me
for the first time. It’s an outfit disturbing enough to make visitors head
right back out the door.
Sad that guests are so far and few between around here.
My maverick designer loner outfit has been hand crafted by a crew of freshly
shampooed Oriental opium hounds working around the clock, also employed by
the actor to assist me with this momentous project. The teal tank top is, I
have to admit, amazingly fetching, bordering on inspirational, and boasts the
words I
KNOW WHAT’S MINE, and my chef’s hat reads, KISS THE COOK.
A good part of my get-up is made of titanium and is, I’m told, worth three
million dollars, but is a bitch when I have to get up and down the stairs to
prepare the lord’s delicate ‘of the sea’ snacks. Brian Dennehy's
sweat-stained two-sizes-too-tight maroon-colored chemise states proudly, in
bold letters NOT KITTEN and I have no idea what the story is on
this, and after so many days that have past, I’m too damn scared to ask him about
it. And, that wicker-man-purse he never lets go of, well, the less time spent
on this the better.
Between the complex rules, the crappy ventilation and after yet another day
of toiling,
desperately trying to piece together the Dennehy-Hollywood-Schlock-inviso-suit,
I figure it
just ain’t gonna happen.
I don’t have the steady hands, the sensitivity (or the tools) needed for this
operation. I confess to him that I lied in the interview process, and really,
don’t have the experience or background for what an undertaking of this
magnitude needs.
My agent,
once again, miscalculated my talents.
Time to strike the set. I tell Qwon, Professor
Shin-wa and the rest of the squad that I can’t go
on. They weep and in their wingding native tongues say they will miss me and
the manner in which I embrace this life. The boys say "Godspeed"
and return to taking monster tokes from the Jabba-the-hut-gong-bag,
and through my own damp fizz of tears, I wave "So long, boys" and
reemerge from the basement.
I escape with the outfit and do my best to shuffle downtown, because now I
have a plan.
"If I
can just sell this costume, if I could even get a quarter of its true
value..."
I’ve begged a pawn shop prick to take it off my hands, but the best he can do
is hold it on consignment. The costume now hangs in a pawn shop, now this
less-than-amazing, so not a Joseph Technicolor dream coat. Their persnickety
placement of it dangling beside a scratched up tuba amongst boxes of tainted
accordions and unwanted Sunday school pageant-wear did nothing but stir in me
a tremulous sadness, missing my Dad’s strange sense of humor that he had for
such things.
So now I’m standing outside in an unseasonable hail on fuckin' Father’s Day, decked out in a much less glamorous
costume purchased at K-Mart. All they had left was this sort of ‘Sylvester
the Pathetic Putty Cat Pajama with Catheter’ outfit, (with feet in it) three
sizes too small with shoddily sewn-together zippers. Everything rips
immediately when I slither into it.
There are whiskers, but some marble-headed-lame brain jokester
on-the-assembly-line has sewn them into the ass. The hood is no good either.
I feel dumb. Maybe I do look unapproachable, even threatening, though I can’t
see my protective inflatable-water-wings being as intimidating as the officer
said. Sleepy doddering seniors stare. Happy couples point
and giggle. I pull out a picture of my father (who’d passed on many years
earlier) from the back of my feline-ass-pocket, and the Polaroid photo falls
to the ground and I see the colors dissolve in a puddle and fade away.
Once
again, in this lifetime, my confidence soars.
I am one weird looking cat though, drenched in soggy acrylic and fake fur,
nose-running, miserable, staring longingly through the window at the suit I
sacrificed to be a big shot cash tycoon. "Suffering succotash," I
mumble, and it sure is neat how I now seem to have developed a lisp to
accommodate these lines. My tail is no pleasure picnic either; it being
set ablaze earlier by spoiled tots shooting firecrackers, the hurtful inner
city souls.
This is
shaping up to be one hell of a holiday.
I was so lost in thought that I barreled right into another surreal scenario.
Gustav’s early years ensconced in isolating muddy-field-training
sessions throughout high school, all for this moment. Gustav the star
pole-vaulter, who’s committed his entire life to training for this Olympic
High Jump competition, is suddenly stricken with a horribly unexpected bout
of amnesia. Everything is as it should be, he’s done
this a million times before. BUT a flashbulb of an image jumps out at him
from the dark recesses of his mind.
Gustav, the one armed high jumper approaches the high bar above his head to
catapult over, the big blue cushion awaiting him on the other side.
From out of nowhere, he remembers his Father yelling at him, "Gustav, throw!
Throw far!" this from his earlier truncated career of
Javelin and Discuss Toss competitions, abandoned for a more socially accepted
High Jump, I guess. The 20 foot long pole that should at this precise moment be assisting him in clearing his way over the top of the
bar has now just been thrown 360 yards down field between the goal posts used
in the varsity football games.
"A
perfect hat trick!" Gustav congratulates himself, and does a
little self-congratulatory Turkish dance in celebratory stance.
Fans in the stadium seats can’t believe their eyes. They angrily hurl bags of
scalding hot oily cashews and attack him with disparaging comments as they’ve
lost out big time with their bookies on this one, he, once the home town hero
who never loses, now the amnesiatic outcast dancing
inappropriate and embarrassing jigs. A fall from Grace. His cerebellum
mashed, his dreams come crashing down around him, now a tartar sea food
platter, the poor un-special athlete confused and dislodged.
Most figured that to bet the farm on Gustav would be a sure fire bet. Not so
today.
Now the no good crafty carnival owner with that escargot mustache will rule
the town.
The overall-wearing slack-jawed-sport-fan-yokels tie him to the goal posts
and spray-paint him a bright orange while tar and feathering him. He is
tragically left disfigured but now at least has a costume. And a new title.
While leaving the parking lot, agitated Preparation H equipped townsfolk
affectionately bellow from their tractors, PUMPKIN SKUNK HEAD!!! Leaving poor
Gustav wrapped in a sticky and patched together suit of woolly Mel Torme...I
mean macramé.
So
often in life, we are often playing the wrong sport at the wrong time, and
imagining unhelpful terrifying scenarios.
I see it now, all too clearly…
"Someone
is killing the great mammals in captivity, yet no one wants to lift a finger
in the direction of the bloody porpoise pool. One man, one cape and the woman
that sews them together are all that stand between a
washed-up-actor’s subbasement petting-zoo-merriment and just one more crass
capital corrupt gain. Together, Rex Smith and Mary Lou Henner
forge their way down a murderous path that takes them to an unsolved late
night killing spree. An unfortunate wheel-chair-ridden and potentially
malevolent Brian Dennehy will star as the shifty
pawn shop owner, a closet accordionist-with-a-plan and stolen utility-belt
made from steamed yams in, "The Accidental
And Marginally Upset Pole-Vaulting Pumpkin Man."
|
Next >>
|
GH O TI