What I'd Say to the Martians (4 page)

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how monkey in a tree. Narrator says, “The monkey, proud and smart, in his native habitat. But one thing he does not have”—show a giraffe—“is a long neck, like the giraffe. Which is why nature has allowed them to combine forces.” Show monkey on giraffe’s neck. (Note: monkey may have to be tied on.)

Then the narrator says, “The monkey can now see very far, and has protection from predators. And the giraffe has a little friendly guy to ride around on him.”

Show monkey shot by a poacher and falling from giraffe. Put ketchup on monkey to make him look bloody, but put something bad-tasting in the ketchup or monkey will lick it all off. Shoot BB gun at giraffe to make him run off. Narrator: “The monkey and the giraffe have been separated.”

Show monkey wandering around, injured, lost, and alone. Make him trip, using fishing line attached to his leg. (Try to get shot on first take, because after that, monkey will probably try to bite off fishing line.)

Show giraffe being chased by a lion. If not too expensive, use full-sized, realistic, robotic lion, able to run at full speed. Or a man in a lion suit.

The oppressive sun beats down on monkey (heat lamp). Monkey looks up with an expression that says, “Why, oh sun, do you torment me so?” (Get good director.)

We see lion eating a giraffe. At first we think it is our giraffe, but then we are relieved to see it is a baby giraffe.

Rock slide covers monkey (fake monkey). Show monkey crawling out (real monkey with a few heavy rocks laid on top of him). Narrator: “Can the monkey and the giraffe survive? Will they ever be reunited?”

Show monkey trying to join group of monkeys (children in monkey suits). Our monkey is driven away by the leader of the monkey pack, a vicious, snarling brute (papier-mâché marionette). Subtitle translates snarls as: “You thought you were so great when you were riding on that giraffe’s neck, but you aren’t so high and mighty now.”

Show giraffe, alone in the darkness, shivering from fear (ice packs on legs). Finally, he falls asleep. (Sleeping pills?) We see his dream. In it, the giraffe fearfully approaches a gravestone. At first he can’t make out the name on it, but when he finally does, he is shocked. The name on the gravestone reads “The Monkey.” The giraffe wakes up in a cold sweat (heat lamp).

Show two female explorers swimming in a crystal-clear lagoon, so you can see they’re nude. Narrator: “Meanwhile, nearby, are two explorers, Laci and Brandy.” Show the explorers swimming for quite a while. Then show them getting dressed and leaving. We notice they have left a pair of binoculars behind.

The monkey is starving now. We know this because when he looks at a parrot on a branch, it turns into a roasted, steaming parrot on a branch.

Narrator: “The monkey is now at the end of his rope. So he puts his faith in the Almighty.” Monkey prays. (Glue monkey’s hands together.) Show monkey walking along later. (Be sure to unglue hands first.) He sees a glowing treasure chest, and opens it—it’s filled with bananas. (Have choir singing in background, so you know it’s from God.)

Refreshed by that good banana nutrition, the monkey heads off. For comic relief, show monkey approaching a skunk and getting sprayed. If monkey will not approach skunk, feed monkey whiskey so he will relax and go up to skunk. However, do not let him drink too much or he may kill skunk.

Show monkey finding binoculars. Monkey learns how to use binoculars. (Have plenty of film, because this may take a long time.) Monkey climbs up tree and scans horizon. We see his point of view, which finally focuses on yes, the giraffe! He screams (BB pellet) with joy.

Just then the giraffe is shot by a tranquilizer dart. We show the shooters, two trappers from a zoo. We know they are evil because we saw a part earlier where they were shooting each other with tranquilizer darts, to get high.

Cut to a truck traveling across the savanna. In a cage in the back is the giraffe, looking sad (half a sleeping pill). But then we reveal that it’s not the two trappers driving the truck, but the monkey! (Note: Use cheap truck because monkey will probably wreck it.)

Show the two trappers sitting on ground, tied up. No need to show how the monkey captured them; just have one of the trappers say, “That damned monkey!”

Show monkey releasing giraffe from cage and monkey leaping onto neck of giraffe. (Note: monkey may not do this, so put monkey on giraffe neck and jerk back with harness; then show film in reverse.)

Narrator: “The monkey and the giraffe are reunited at last, as nature intended.” Show giraffe trying to reach a piece of fruit high on a tree branch, but he can’t. The monkey clambers up on top of his head and picks the fruit, but then eats it himself. The giraffe shakes his head and laughs. (Give giraffe something to induce choking, then dub in laughing sounds.)

Show the two female explorers returning to the lagoon, looking for the binoculars. They can’t find them, so they just decide to go swimming again.

Monkey and giraffe gallop off into sunset. Question: Would it be too much to show monkey wearing a little cowboy hat? Cute, but maybe hurts reality of the documentary.

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his is no game. You might think this is a game, but trust me, this is no game.

This is not something where rock beats scissors or paper covers rock or rock wraps itself up in paper and gives itself as a present to scissors. Or paper types something on itself and sues scissors. This isn’t anything like that.

This isn’t something where you yell out “Bingo!” and then it turns out you don’t have a bingo after all and what are the rules again? This isn’t that, my friend.

This isn’t something where you roll the dice and move your battleship around a board and land on a hotel and act like your battleship is having sex with the hotel.

This isn’t tiddlywinks, where you flip your tiddly over another player’s tiddly and an old man winks at you because he thought it was a good move. This isn’t that at all.

This isn’t something where you sink a birdie or hit a badminton birdie or do anything at all with birdies. Look, just forget birdies, okay?

To you, this is probably all one big party. But sooner or later the party is over, and when you wake up a little kid is poking you with a stick and his mother is telling him to get away from you.

Maybe you think this is all one big joke, like the farmer with the beautiful but promiscuous daughter. But what they don’t tell you is the farmer became so depressed that eventually he took his own life.

This is not some honey-flavored, sugar-coated piece of candy that you can brush the ants off of and pop in your mouth.

This is not something where you can dress your kid up like a hobo and send him out trick-or-treating, because first of all, your kid’s twenty-three, and second, he really is a hobo.

This is not playtime or make-believe. This is real. It’s as real as a beggar squatting by the side of the road, begging, and then you realize, uh-oh, he’s not begging.

This is as real as a baby deer calling out for his mother. But his mother won’t be coming home anytime soon, because she is drunk in a bar somewhere.

It’s as real as a mummy who still thinks he’s inside a pyramid, but he’s actually in a museum in Ohio.

You go skipping and prancing through life, skipping through a field of dandelions. But what you don’t see is that on each dandelion is a bee, and on each bee is an ant, and the ant is biting the bee and the bee is biting the flower, and if that shocks you then I’m sorry.

You have never had to struggle to put food on the table, let alone put food on a plate or try to balance it on a spoon until it gets to your mouth.

You will never know what it’s like to work on a farm until your hands are raw, just so people can have fresh marijuana. Or what it’s like to go to a factory and put in eight long hours and then go home and realize you went to the wrong factory.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against having fun. But it has to be a controlled kind of fun, where those who are having too much fun are asked to leave, and those not having enough fun are beaten.

You’re probably not even reading this anymore. You’re watching one of your “television shows.” You’re probably laughing at a joke some man is making at his wife’s expense. But trust me, one day you’re going to have to get down on your knees and beg God not to split your head open with an ax, because believe me, He’ll do it.

I don’t hate you. I pity you. You will never recognize the magnificent beauty of a double rainbow, or the plainness of a regular rainbow. You will never understand the joy of teaching a young boy how to swing a bat, then watching him go all over the place, swinging away.

I used to be like you. I would put my napkin on my lap, instead of forming a little tent over my plate, like I do now, with a door for the fork to go in.

I would go to parties and laugh—laugh and laugh, every time somebody said something, in case it was supposed to be funny. I would walk in someplace and slap down a five-dollar bill and say, “Give me all you got!” and not even know what they had there. And whenever I found two of anything, I would hold them up to my head like antlers, and then pretend one “antler” fell off.

I went waltzing along, not even caring where I stepped or if the other person even wanted to waltz.

Food even seemed to taste better back then. Potatoes were more “potatoey,” and turnips less “turnippy.”

But then something happened, something that would make me understand that this is no game. One day I was walking past a building and I saw a man standing high up on a ledge. “Jump! Jump!” I started yelling. What happened next would haunt me for the rest of my days. That man walked down off that building and beat the living daylights out of me. Ever since then I’ve realized this is no game.

Maybe one day it will be a game again. Maybe one day we’ll be able to run up and kick a pumpkin without people asking why you did that and are you going to pay for it.

Perhaps one day the Indian will put down his tomahawk and the white man will put down his gun, and the white man will pick up his gun again because haha, sucker.

One day we’ll just sit by the fire, chew some chewing tobacky, toast some marshmackies, and maybe strum a tune on the ol’ guitacky.

And maybe one day we’ll tip our hats to the mockingbird, not out of fear, but out of friendliness.

If there’s one single idea I’d like you to take away from this, it’s this: This is no game. The other thing I’d like you to think about is, could I borrow five hundred dollars?

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: Since finishing this article, I have been informed that this is, in fact, a game. I would like to apologize for everything I said before. But please think about the five hundred dollars.)

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hey say that when the October moon is full, and the swamps and meadows are covered with an eerie mist, I will put down my beer and go walking through the streets.

According to legend, my hair will stick out wildly, from lying on the couch all day. I will walk with an awkward stagger, my arms held forward. No one knows why I walk this way. Some say it is to be ready in case I trip. Others say it is to make sure I don’t go face-first through a spiderweb.

When I am abroad in the land, many of the frightened townspeople report hearing a ghastly, bloodcurdling howl. This is the part of the legend that hurts my feelings the most, because I think they’re talking about my singing.

Some stories claim that if you confront me during my midnight walks and chant, “Jack Handey, Jack Handey, give me some candy,” that I will give you some candy. Man, forget it. I need that candy.

I am said to prey upon young lovers, and that if I look into a bedroom window and see them having sex, I will stand there and watch with my red, flaming eyes. But I am not looking for young lovers; I am usually looking for something else, like, I don’t know, my lost treasure or something. If I happen to see two people having sex, I will stay and look, for I am curious about your human ways.

They say I can turn into a bat. I can, but not very well. What I am probably best at is wandering into a party and transforming myself into someone who looks like he might have been invited. And woe to him who fingers me as an impostor, for he will be greeted by a hideous hissing sound coming from the tires of his car.

It is whispered that I can suck the blood out of you. Others say I can start to tell a joke, but then get really confused and not remember how the joke goes, and start over again and again until it drives you mad. But it’s not my fault. You see, I am the offspring of an unholy union between a man and what people in these parts call a “wo-man.”

Some of the townspeople believe in me, and some don’t. But if I don’t exist, then how do you explain the hook scratches around your car-door lock, or the coat hanger thrown in the bushes? Sadly, even those who believe in me are reluctant to loan me money.

A few say I exist, but that I’m actually dead. As evidence, they point to the old gravestone in the cemetery with my name carved on it. But I have apologized for doing that and agreed to do community service.

The truth is, I live in a weird netherworld, somewhere between the dead and those guys who are out riding their bikes, doing stuff like that.

People are always asking if there’s anything they can hold up that will frighten or repel me. One is a screaming baby. The legend also mentions my fear of fire, but come on, who’s not afraid of fire? Man, wise up.

To be honest, just about anything you hold up is going to frighten me. About the only thing I can think of that might not is an ice cream cone, so long as the ice cream isn’t in a scary shape.

Legend says that if sunlight ever hits me, I will wither into a pile of dust. That’s true.

Can I be stopped by bullets or clubbing? Of course I can! What are you thinking?! And I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t shine a flashlight in my face.

How did I come to this curse? I’ll tell you. I was bitten, bitten by a wolf. And not an ordinary wolf, but something called a “schnauzer.” A schnauzer owned by my so-called friend Don. Ever since then I am compelled to wander the night, like a schnauzer.

They say my midnight haunts will never end until I am united with my true love. The sad thing is, I don’t even know her name. It’s that French girl from the movie
Swimming Pool.
But unless I can figure out the area code for France, my love is probably doomed.

Maybe magically the curse will be lifted. I’ll get up bright and early and point to myself in the mirror and say, “You’re going to do great things today.” No, wait, that’s a different curse.

And so I stalk. Usually Friday and Saturday nights are the main times I go stalking, and also, like I said, the moon should be full and mist covering things. But to be honest, it could pretty much be any night of the week.