Tuesday, September 18, 2001 5:46:29 PM
It happens every night. It is an obsession I will admit to, not freely, mind you, but with grave worries about the state of mental acuity.
I sit down to dinner. This evening it was some chicken and rice in a mushroom sauce nicely cooked by my mother. I descended into the basement, sat at a table and turned on the TV. I should read, I know, I have so much to read! I flip around the channels, there is Emeril preparing a chicken in rice with a nice mushroom sauce, there is the recycled newscast, and there is a western about a dead horse on AMC, and then I find it. The Pennsylvania Channel or whatever it's called and tonight, so help me, and I think I do need some kind of help, there is a visit to a knitting factory in Hometown, PA. I watch. I chew. I forget to gulp!
Can you remember the joy of a program called Industry on Parade on Sunday mornings? I would sit with about fifteen meat ball sandwiches and a bottle of Vernor's Ginger Ale and feast on plants in America that made shell casings, sausage casings, or beer cases and gyros and nuts, bolts and grommets, glass windows, aluminum extrudings, pig metal castings, airplane wheels, automotive oil and soap. Man, I loved that program. And the Pennsylvania Channel delivers same! I swear I watched for about three hours one night when a factory in Warren, PA made a fire truck. I am most definitely hooked.
It was with some sadness that I realized that I do not belong to an industry that would ever be featured on this most worthy of cable channels.
ME: Hi! (I might say to the camera), my name is Joe and I would like to take you around the comedy factory at Lackzoom Acidophilus.
CUT TO: EXT: Dean's house on the South Side
ME: Here is the entry to the comedy factory. We'd better knock!
DEAN: Well, Hi, to all you nice folks come on in. The place is a mess but comedy is a sloppy business.
FADE: INT A long room that leads to the kitchen. A desk with gads of computer paraphernalia that cascades into metal and plastic boxes full of blinking electronics on the floor, an audio mixer set on an end table and three mics on stands with loops of cable tossed artistically about the black heavy metal bases.
ME: Here is where we make the actual comedy. But (I smile for the camera) it is only one end of a long process. We sometimes sit for hours and throw lines at one another that somehow transform into the brand of humor that we practice.
CUT TO: INT Three people sitting around a kitchen table. Scraps of congealing dinner on the plates in front of them and various colors of liquids in jelly jars that we sip.
FOLEY: I don't think the chicken would cross the road, Joe.
ME: Oh!?
DEAN: I just flew in from Akron and boy are my arms tired!
ME AND FOLEY: Cleveland!
ME (Still smiling at the camera with a knowing grin): Once the writing is down. It's time for the performance!
FADE TO: Three faces huddled about and three microphones
DEAN (Italian accent that turns Irish): And at these prices you won't get any!
FOLEY: (Scottish accent that turns Yinser): That'll be three fitty, Mac!
ME (Simian accent that turns Jewish): So, nu you've done it.
ME (I turn to the camera): We then mix all these comical hijinks with sound effects and music.
CUT TO: INT. Dean madly moving a mouse about a computer screen that has all kinds of scrolling squiggly lines, then hitting a mini disc recorder soundly with the back of his hand while holding a patch cable tight to the audio in of the sound card.
ME: And finally we turn all of this stuff into a CD.
FADE TO: INT. The three of us staring with mad glazed eyes, silent with our thoughts as the computer screen ticks off the number of bytes that have been copied.
The more I think about it.... I'll bet they have a phone number when they flash the channel ID.