Om’let | Act 3, Scene 1
****
Om’let | Act 5, Scene 1
SCENE I. A field in Red Bank, New Jersey. Prince Omlet examines the skull of a famous news anchor.
PRINCE OM’LET
Alas, poor Rather! I knew him, Teddy: a fellow
of fine buzzcuttery, of most excellent folksiness: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my flip flops at
it. Somewhere hung that weathered ass I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your crackling hickory now, Dan? your
Aunt Milly? Your Uncle Charlie? your flashes of wild-eyed
dementia that were wont to set TV screens ablaze? Not one
now, to mock your own thin-lipped scowl? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her—
oops, beg pardon—ask her, for she can be quite
the bitch sometimes—to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Teddy, tell
me one thing.
TEDDY KENNEDY
What’s that, guy?
PRINCE OM’LET
Dost thou think I will look o’ this fashion i’
the earth?
TEDDY KENNEDY
E’en so.
PRINCE OM’LET
Wait—even with the freakin’ Botox? pah!
(Puts down the skull)
TEDDY KENNEDY
You should try pickling yourself,
dear boy. With gin and fine scotches.
That’s always been my plan. And
banging a few Hooters girls from time
to time, that wouldn’t hurt, either…
****
update: Write your own act and let’s see if we can’t complete the entire play. Leave a link in the comments and I’ll try to put it all together at some point. Maybe even have it staged. I’m picturing Chris Cooper as Rather, James Cromwell as Kerry, and maybe Sally Field as Bill INDC. Allah will be played by a burning bush; Al Gore by a heavy oak coat rack.
Give me more egg, nuncle, and I’ll give thee two crowns.
It gladdens my petticoats.
That was even better than the original, L.A. story.
FYI,
Your RSS feed has been broken for a while now:
http://feedvalidator.org/check?url=http://www.celluloid-wisdom.com/pw/index.php/weblog/rss_2.0/
Me thinks he doth protest to much.
You’ve nailed it. I’ve been trying for some time to figure out who John Kerry cira 1971 through today reminded me of. Now I know – Hamlet. The poor nuanced, tortured soul. But really, do we want the Dark Danish Prince as President? No thanks.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on this petty fraud from day to day,till the last super script of recorded time all his yesterdays have ignited Rather to a dusty death
as i live just outside of red bank i’m checking the fields when i get home…
Mmmmm. Danish.
</Homer>
The Candidate of France
SCENE I. Washington. A street.
KerryLock:
to bait bush withal: if it will not feed my electorate
it will feed my revenge;
He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million;
laughed at my losses,
mocked my gains, scorned my party, thwarted my 527s, cooled my media;
and what’s his reason?
I am a democrat. Hath not a dem eyes, hath not a dem hands, organs,
dimensions, affectations, blind ambitions, nuances
a scorning shrew of a wife, a snowboard, lots of nice houses,
an SUV I don’t own but my family does?
fed with the same electorate,
hurt with the same scandals,
subject to the same disgraces,
healed by the same media,
warmed and cooled by the same rasmussen polls,
as a republican is?
Appologies to the merchant of venice
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of Internet,
A weblog for a stage, bloggers to act
And readers to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Kerry, contradicting himself,
Assume the port of Mars and at his heels,
Leash’d in like hounds, should Carville, Cahill and Begala
Crouch for employment.
I’ll wait for Tom Stoppard’s off-beat take on The Tragedy of Omlet, Prince of Massachusetts from the viewpoint of two minor players, Atrios and Daily Kos Are Dead, metaphorically speaking, of course.
But here’s my ten minute contribution anyway:
To flip, or not to flip: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of Swiftboat veterans,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To lie: to spin;
No more; and by a spin to say we end
The heart-ache of compassionate conservatism
That Bush is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To lie, to spin;
To spin: perchance to scheme: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that spin of depth what schemes may come
When we have shuffled off this latest poll,
Must give us pause: where’s the respect
That makes calamity of purple hearts;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The pajama clad’s wrong, Zell Miller’s contumely,
The pangs of medals miscast, the law’s delay,
The insolence of bloggers and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With simple answers? Who would Edwards bear,
To grunt and sweat under a long campaign,
But that the dread of ‘lection day returns,
The landslide loser country from whose bourn
No Senator returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather speak those ills we have
And make up others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of media scrut’ny
Is sicklied o’er with a pale bash of Bush,
And Big Media of great pitch and moment
With this regard their bearings turn awry,
And lose the name of action.– Soft you now!
The fair Teresa! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
Funny funny funny. .
Too bad there aren’t too many of my fellow Upper West Siders in New York I can show this to… they’re really missing out.
“Former President Bill Clinton, in a 90-minute telephone conversation from his hospital room, offered John Kerry detailed advice on Saturday night on how to reinvigorate his candidacy …” New York Times, Sept. 6, 2004.
Exclusive transcript:
“Yet here, J. Kerry? Snowboard, snowboard, for shame!
The wind plucks up the surf and calls your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There, my blessing with thee,
And these few precepts in thy memory:
Look thou Ohio. Give Arizona no tongue,
Nor apportion’d Missouri its ad;
Be thou stately, but by no means morose;
The Boston Globe thou hast, and CBS well tried
Grapple them unto thy camp with documents of Word,
But do not dull thine own palm with forgery
of each new-typ’d unvett’d memo. Send a campaign lackey with it; Beware
Of mentioning Iraq, but being in,
say the French and Germans’ll bear’t;
Give all free health care, but reserve thy own private doctors;
Costly TV ads as George Soros can buy,
For 527 groups oft proclaim the man,
And they in Swift Boats of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and onerous chief in that.
Neither a flipper nor a flopper be,
For flipping oft loses both itself and votes,
And flopping dulleth the edge of certitude;
This above all, to thine own polls be true,
And it must follow, as the Gallup the Zogby,
Thou canst not then be taken by any bounce.
Farewell; my blessings season Hill’s 2008 in thee!”
Methinks I’m being upstaged in my own comments section.
“My horseface, my horseface, a kingdom for my horseface!”
Prince Omelet seeks consolation from the fair Tereza
Tereza: My dearest, my lord, my transport, my love; tis the lion who holds forth in loudest calm unerring in that ever folding darkness that overtakes the earliest dusk..
Prince Omelet: And by thine own sparks, Lady, thou wilt awaken the kens of hell
upon the very smithing of a glowing earth that heats within thy breast. Yet merry unbind thy froth; unspume the muffled tendrils that brine the untoward casings of thy tongue. Vulcan’s hammer would yet sing.
Tereza: Tis morning and once more the turning spoke and the acquiescent spur shall awaken the tilted skies and sliding berth of nature’s complacent lap.
Aye, an earth-boweled quarry shall hold all fitted pretenders into a knot of sea-launched bereaved, for my love hath sent me earnest conjurings worthy of my enthronment. Anticipate we must each crown headed morning to withdraw her polished blade and strike the turning heads of the pretending running dog minions who would fain route milord’s flailing hook.
Omelet: How blank an absence when every spear of the rising sun doth proclaim Milady’s frank majesty. I’ll tarry, cloud bruised and barren as a French farthing. Thou makest me to amend my farewells with embossed brows. Our jointed craving is not yet measured. Thy articulated wound hath not been fallow and from its cleft showers geld in sparks. Ah Milady, unto the usurper must come erasure as from an embrace of Saturn’s wind.
I am in awe of this crowd!!!
TO POLL WITH SUCH DEXTERITY FOR INCESSANT CHEATS
Needs some formatting.
Act I; scene ii.
O, that this too solid Lurch would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into French Bleu!
Or that the ever-flycasting had no rule against
Blowing Swift Boats out of the water.
How weary, stale, flat and unelected
Seem all that lies before me in this world.
Fie on’t! ah fie! ‘tis a polo field
That’s gone to seed; things of the common folk
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months after my convention;
Nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent am I; that am to this
A Clinton to a Nixon; so fawning to my public
I might forego botox on both sides of my face. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? How they cheered me as a hero
When I reported for duty as if I had retained
My medals and my honor? And yet within a monthâ€â€
Let me not think on’tâ€â€Public, thy name is woman!â€â€
A little month, ere those balloons popped that
Did hit the floor at my grand conventionâ€â€
Like loyal dogs they did obey my will.
O God! An aloof cat that avoids all commitment
Would have supported me longer. Supporting Bush!
The common Texan, no more deserving to be President
Than a common Midwesterner: Within a month:
Ere yet the cheering of the screaming zealots
Had left the ringing in my ears
They deserted. O most wicked speed, to poll
with such dexterity for incessant cheats.
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But spoil my lobster tart, for now I poll like dung.
No act to add, but I do have a
picture
Sarah – love the pic.
We need to cast this production. Teresa to be played by either Elaine Strich (sp?) or Rulla Lenska. The Danish Omlet by Tim Robbins or Alec Baldwin (whoevers has not yet moved to France) and Edwards should be played by any pre-puberty Calkin.
More suggestions?
I’d always thought of John Kerry more as Polonius, in a Harold Hecubah musical sort of way, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
Do not forget, stay out of debt.”
And come November 3, across the land of Blue States will be heard, “Let us sit upon the grass and tell sad stories about the death of Kings.†But if Senator Kerry should bow out before then, I will gladly say, “Nothing in his campaign became him like the leaving of it.”
Scene V: The election, aftermath
Let four captains
Bear Kerry, like the loser he be, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally, an ass: and, for his passage,
The democrat’ votes and the rites of selection
Speak loudly for him. But not now
Take up the candidate: such a sight as this
Becomes a recrimination, and shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot Kerry.
apologies to Hamlet
Doctor
You see, Rather’s eyes are open.
Andy Rooney
Ay, but their sense is shut.
Rather
Out, damned ink! out, I say!–One: two: why,
then, ‘tis time to do’t.â€â€IBM Selectrics are murky!–Fie, Andy Rooney, fie! a network pundit, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?–Yet who would have thought the pajama bloggers to be such typesetting geeks?
Doctor
Foul whisperings are in the pajamasphere: lame forgeries
do breed unnatural pile-ons: infected minds
To someone upstairs will discharge their secrets:
More needs he the internal investigation than the live interview.
God, God forgive us all! Rooney, Look after him;
Remove from him the typewriter ribbon,
And still keep Microsoft Word from him. So, good night:
My mind he has lied to, and changed my opinion of network news.
I think, therefore I will post.
..the Rather scene is, of course, a flashback
I guess there is a special providence in the fall of an anchorman.
Rather than focus on actors, I think it would be more interesting to cast political figures:
Claudius – Bush (He “killed” Gore)
Gertrude – The American People (Seen as faithless by Kerry)
Hamlet – Kerry (torn between flip and flop)
Ophelia – Teresa Heinz Kerry
Polonius – Clinton (Precious “Neither Lender Nor Borrower Be” post above)
Horatio – Ted Kennedy (Great Alas Poor Yorick speech above)
Laertes – Hillary (Trying to avenge damage to Dems and election loss)
Rosencrantz – Biden
Guildenstern – Leahy
Marcellus – Jesse Jackson
Barnardo – Gephardt
Francisco – Daschle
Fortinbras – Giuliani(heir apparent)
Two Gravediggers – Biden and Leahy
I think Charles Austin’s soliloquy post above would make a GREAT campaign commercial. It would take about 90 seconds–but imagine this:
Actor wearing Kerry mask or looking like Kerry is sitting on a box, spotlit, in a “Thinker” pose. He is wearing a blue and yellow body suit, like one might use for windsurfing. The soliloquy is given.
This would be great because:
1. It’s funny.
2. It’s on message: “Kerry is a flip flopper.” Hamlet’s indecisive nature perfectly reflects Kerry’s.
3. It would appeal to uncommiteds because it is “lighter” than most of the ham-fisted ads that are run.
4. It would appeal to Democrats who are disaffected with Kerry and upset with his ineptitude.
Do you take requests? ‘cuz I think I’d pay good money to read some passages from The Merchant of Venison. Starring yew-know-hoo.
I see Carville and Begala as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Now who plays the ghost
Maybe Dean as the Ghost
Who forgot to tell the Kerry campaign that the everlasting hath fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter?
Omlet’s struggle draws to a conclusion:
Mary Beth Cahill (Campaign Queen): No, no! the electoral college, the electoral college! O my dear Omlet!
Florida, Florida! Your hopes are poison’d.
Omlet: O villany! Ho! let the ballot boxes be lock’d.
Treachery! Seek out Florida’s supreme court.
Daschle: It is Ohio, Omlet. Omlet, thy presidential hopes art slain;
No media whitewash in the world can do thee good.
In thy candidacy there is a mere concession speech of life.
The treacherous instrument is Ohio,
Electorate envenom’d. South Dakotans
Have turn’d themselves on me. Lo, here I stop,
Never to obstruct again. Thy campaign’s poison’d.
I can no more. Bush, Bush’s to blame.
Omlet: Ohio envenom’d too?
Soon afterward:
Omlet: O, I slink off, Ted!
The potent electorate quite o’erthrows my ambition.
I cannot bear to hear the news from Fox,
But I do prophesy th’ election votes
On Bush. He has my leaving concession.
So dog him, with th’ Senate, obstructionism and filibuster,
With liberal solicitation – my rest is silence.
[Slinks off.]
Ted K.: Now flees a bleeding-heart. Good bye, sweet senator,
And flights of leftist protestors chant thee to thy retirement!
When W swears he is made of truth,
I do believe him, though I know he lies,
Fumbling, subliminably uncouth,
Bless’d by Kenneth’s forgeries.
While vainly aping the X-tremely young,
dissembling and saluting lest
By Rovencrantz he’d quick be hung,
Jean ducks and swats at Swiftie pests.
But wherefore says the Prez that he is strong?
And why dost Forbes leave even William cold?
O! politics’ habit is a forked tongue,
Faction, funds, the pundit fold.
Therefore we’ll lie with George, and he with we,
Since that our faults in love thus smother’d be.