Chicago Pachyderms coach Terry Patterson declared victory over the New Haven Vaqueros with twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds remaining in the third quarter Sunday, claiming that “a very sad group of people” had taken mysterious steps to cheat his team out of what would have been a certain victory in spite of the fact that his team was losing 27-24 at the time.
When asked to identify “the very sad group of people” and exactly what steps they took to steal a win from his team, Coach Patterson instead complained about the interruption of his club’s post-victory celebration. “We were getting ready to celebrate a great victory for our team. This is a very sad moment for our team and for football fans all over the country. We were getting ready to win this game, and frankly, we did win this game, even though there was still twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds left in the third quarter.”
Deceased Trump supporter Phil Jaworski has scored another top country hit with his new song “Militia Boy.” Jaworksi, who died of the coronavirus back in March, took the country music world by storm last month with the number one hit “Buried in My MAGA Hat,” a rollicking ode to the joys of dying of COVID 19 to trigger liberals. His new song, “Militia Boy,” is a solemn salute to those brave Americans who take up arms to combat the evils of government subsidized healthcare, voting rights, and pale, skinny guys who wear black and break Starbucks’ windows.
Department of Conspiracies Deputy Director and QAnon puppeteer Nancy Hagan-Bartlett’s new puppet show The Reckoning, which she has been performing as a warm-up act at Trump rallies and live-streaming on Trump websites, has injected a much needed shot of adrenaline into the campaign. Trump campaign officials were dismayed at the flop of the dubious Hunter Biden laptop story, but are optimistic Hagen-Bartlett’s miniature morality play can help turn things around for the increasingly sweaty, hoarse and erratic commander-in-chief. Dangerous Neighbors is proud to present the unabridged script of The Reckoning, which is a sequel to her hit puppet show The Storm.
The secret and very luxurious basement of the Comet Ping Pong Pizza Parlor in Washington DC. TOM HANKS and OPRAH WINFREY are preparing for what appears to be a huge, almost Gatsbyesque party. There are tables and chairs, balloons and streamers and an enormous beverage fountain in the shape of a grinning Satan. HILLARY CLINTON enters wearing dark glasses.
HILLARY: Good afternoon.
TOM: Madame Secretary.
OPRAH: Anyone see you come in?
HILLARY: Of course not. (takes off her sunglasses) We all prepared for the party?
TOM: Yeah, we just received our monthly Wayfair delivery of corn-fed, flaxen-haired children freshly kidnapped off picturesque Heartland farms.
OPRAH: (filling a glass from the fountain) And the adrenochrome fountain has been fully replenished. (handing Hillary the glass) Enjoy.
HILLARY: Thanks, Oprah. I’m feeling a little fatigued from all the molesting Bill and I have been doing.
TOM: (filling a glass) I know the feeling.
OPRAH: (filling her own glass) I am so ready for this.
HILLARY: To the Deep State.
TOM: Here here.
OPRAH: Bottoms up.
They all drink with the desperate glee of addicts.
TOM: Wow, that’s good shit.
HILLARY: Now if we can mix business with pleasure, any word on who this damn Q is and how he has been exposing our worldwide Satanic pedophile ring so effectively?
TOM: I’ve had my people on this round the clock, but the son-of-a-bitch is too smart for us.
OPRAH: My book club people have been working some leads, but like Tom says–
HILLARY: I’m sick of your goddamned excuses! I want the bastard’s head on a pike before election day, is that clear?
OPRAH: Yes, Madame Secretary.
TOM: Yes, Ma’am.
OPRAH: But it’s not just Q that’s the problem.
HILLARY: What?
OPRAH: It’s the damn bakers.
HILLARY: Bakers?
TOM: The QAnon people who interpret the bread crumbs.
HILLARY: The bread crumbs?
OPRAH: The clues Q leaves in the Q-drops.
TOM: Like the fact that JFK, Jr. faked his own death and is working against us with President Trump.
OPRAH: And the fact that Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation was really a clever ruse and that he’s working along with JFK, Jr. to help Trump take down our pedophile ring.
HILLARY: The QAnon people figured that all out from Q’s cryptic posts?
TOM: I’m afraid we never anticipated that such an intelligent and courageous grassroots movement would mobilize against us when we were painstakingly assembling our Satanic worldwide pedophile ring.
HILLARY: Goddamnit, I pay you people to anticipate things like this! Where the hell is Soros in all this?
OPRAH: He jetted down to Central America to organize another dangerous migrant caravan to invade the United States.
HILLARY: Jesus Christ, we’ve got an international pedophile ring to protect and George is off playing Zapata down there? (to TOM) You get him on the goddamn phone and tell him to get his ass back up here pronto!
TOM (scurrying from the room) Yes, Madame Secretary!
HILLARY: (shouting after him) You tell him I want that Q prick hogtied, disemboweled and hanging from a gibbet by November 2nd, you got it?
TOM: (exiting) Yes, Ma’am!
OPRAH: Don’t worry, Madame Secretary. We’ll nail him soon.
HILLARY: (handing OPRAH her glass) Spare me your empty promises and pour me another adrenochrome.
OPRAH: (filling her glass) Yes, Ma’am.
OPRAH hands her the glass.
HILLARY: Now, I didn’t get here an hour early for nothing. You’ve made a selection of the choicest, premium children for me?
HILLARY downs her drink.
OPRAH: Yes, Madame Secretary, I think you’ll be quite pleased.
HILLARY: Let’s hope you can at least do this part of your job right.
OPRAH: (ushering her toward a back room) Right this way, Madame Secretary.
Just then the door bursts open and DONALD TRUMP, JFK, JR. ROBERT MUELLER, JESUS CHRIST and a squad of FEDERAL POLICE AGENTS storm into the room. HILLARY and OPRAH are stunned.
TRUMP: Well, well, well, Hillary…I hope we’re not interrupting your party.
HILLARY: My God, that’s JFK, Jr!
OPRAH: And Jesus Christ!
JESUS: You think I’d miss this?
TRUMP: You knew this day was coming, didn’t you, Hillary?
TOM HANKS returns from the back room.
TOM: I just spoke to George and…(noticing the posse) What the–
TRUMP: Tommy boy. Your days of molesting wholesome farm girls are through. The storm is here.
TOM: Is that Jesus?
JESUS: I’m very disappointed in you, Tom. I thought The Green Mile was bad, but this–
TOM: You can’t hurt us. We drink adrenochrome!
JESUS: Tom, I’m going to give you a moment to repent and then–
TOM (filling a glass from the adrenochrome fountain) Repent? Hollywood liberals don’t repent!
TOM downs his glass of adrenochrome.
TRUMP: Well, it’s been nice chatting with you perverts, but we have a helicopter outside waiting to take you all to Guantanamo Bay.
TOM suddenly shrieks and lunges at JESUS. JESUS punches him in the stomach like a veteran action star, grabs him by an arm and throws him to the floor. He casually picks up a chair, walks over to the adrenochrome fountain and smashes the Satan figure with one violent blow.
HILLARY: (collapsing to her knees) No, no!
OPRAH (also falling to her knees) Satan, help us!
TRUMP: (to the FEDERAL POLICE AGENTS) Get this scum out of here.
The FEDERAL POLICE AGENTS pull the hapless trio off the floor and start hustling them toward the exit. As HILLARY passes ROBERT MUELLER, she scowls at him.
HILLARY: I thought you were on our side.
MUELLER: Shut-up.
The FEDERAL POLICE AGENTS exit with the unholy trinity. TRUMP, JESUS, JFK, JR. and ROBERT MUELLER look around the room and mull over what has just transpired.
TRUMP: (to JESUS) I don’t know. I kind of liked The Green Mile.
Phil Jaworski, a fervent Trump supporter who died of the coronavirus in March has taken the Country music world by storm with his posthumously written hit “Buried in My MAGA Hat,” a musical encomium to President Trump that celebrates contracting the virus and dying of it as a means of “triggering the libs.”
Jaworksi, who made news last year when he warned during an interview at a Trump rally in September that “My AR-15 is locked and loaded if Democrats abuse the Constitution by using one of its provisions” in reference to House Democrats’ efforts to impeach the president, edged out Country star Randy Weatherby’s hit “Take Your Koran and Shove It” for Billboard’s top spot. Dangerous Neighbors is proud to present the full lyrics for “Buried in My MAGA Hat.”
Liberals and Never Trumpers have made much of the supposed irony of President Trump, who has gleefully flouted mask-wearing and social distancing guidelines, coming down with COVID-19. What they don’t seem to realize is that his diagnosis was no accident. President Trump is boldly putting into action a plan he described as “herd mentality,” a plan to allow widespread infections among our population in the hope of gradually creating immunity to the disease.
Naturally, being the headstrong, fearless leader that he is, Trump is leading from the front, not just exposing himself to the deadly disease but even his own wife, family and close associates in the Republican Party, who have embraced the moment and all but shouted, “Cough in my face!” to any unmasked patriot who comes within pussy-grabbing range.
And so far Trump’s plan, like all of his plans, has been working out splendidly. His September 26th coming out party for Amy Coney Barrett in the Rose Garden was a highly successful herd mentality kickoff for the Republican Party, with at least eight attendees subsequently coming down with the disease, including the first lady, Hope Hicks, the president’s former counselor Kellyanne Conway, Senators Mike Lee and Thomas Tillis, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and the president of Notre Dame University.
And the really great news about herd mentality, sometimes referred to as herd immunity, is that it only requires 50-70 percent of the population to become infected, perhaps 200 million people! And probably only a couple million people would die, more than likely poor saps with no access to the type of excellent government medical care President Trump enjoys, so what are we waiting for? Bravo, Mr. President, and let the COVID orgies commence!
All right, so they found me in the fountain of the town square at four o’clock in the morning, naked save for a plastic Halloween mask and a hockey goaltender’s mitt, belligerently brandishing a bottle of Mezcal and scat singing in a previously undiscovered chromatic scale. I wasn’t the first orthodontist who had raised eyebrows in Parched Thistle Prairie by going a bit overboard in celebrating Orthodontist of the Year honors from the National Orthodontists’ Association, and I wouldn’t be the last.
In fact, just four years before my now fabled spree, another NOA honoree, Dr. Richard Nesbeth, had been arrested while sitting astride the life-size steer replica atop Chuckwagon Charlie’s Steakhouse wearing only a lobster bib emblazoned with the likeness of J. Edgar Hoover and drunkenly shouting, “Free yourselves, you poor, doomed bastards” at passing vehicles and pedestrians. Dr. Nesbeth had quietly resumed his practice after a brief hiatus, and his little indiscretion had been forgotten. Why then had I been stripped of the award I had sought my entire life and ostracized by the citizens of Parched Thistle Prairie for my single night of Dionysian revelry?
Initially, I thought that my brief but well publicized association with the Radical Anarchist Atheist’s Union for the Immediate Destruction of Patriarchal Oppression and the Nuclear Family may have created the impression that I was out of step with Parched Thistle Prairie’s ancient, stolid conservatism. But I soon realized that it was the full-frontal, full color photograph of me cavorting in the fountain splashed across the the front page of the Parched Thistle Prairie Courier that had stripped my credibility away in the eyes of the community.
True, the plastic Yertle the Turtle mask I was wearing obscured what was undoubtedly an outlandish expression, judging by the wild, red, glowing orbs behind the eye-holes, and would have afforded me a shred of plausible deniability had it not been for the tattoo of Popeye and the Virgin Mary clog-dancing on an asteroid I had gotten seventeen years earlier during a drinking binge with members of my Bible study group.
Nevertheless, the picture cast doubt on my character. Bathed in an eerie, yellow-green light from a nearby rent-a-car sign, I appear to be in the midst of an improvised pirouette while apparently performing some sort of imaginary religious rite with the Mezcal bottle, which I am holding like a staff.
Incredible as it may sound, I am as bewildered as to what my intentions were that night as the shocked citizens of Parched Thistle Prairie. I vaguely recall coming under the impression that the rent-a-car sign was God and hearing the voice of Barney Rubble command me to “purify my soul.” I have no idea what happened to my clothes or where the Yertle the Turtle mask and hockey mitt came from, although I have been having a recurring nightmare about being chased through a toy store parking lot by a man with a tremendous overbite.
I tried to resume my career far from the placid confines of Parched Thistle Prairie, but the scandal followed me everywhere. The tentacles of the National Orthodontists’ Association reach far and wide. Strangely enough though, there is a secretive religious organization that utilizes Mezcal bottles in their religious rituals in a similar fashion to my intoxicated improvisation, and after my fountain photo went viral, they contacted me to see if I might be interested in joining their exclusive brotherhood. They liked my chromatic scat singing but insisted I must wear one of their elaborate robes for the ceremonies, which they said they would provide for free if I agreed to straighten the teeth of their guru. As they say, when one door closes, the glass is half full.
Okay, so you’re Senator Lindsey Graham, and you are doing precisely the opposite of what you passionately declared was your principled position four years ago. You are seemingly hoisted on your own petard. “I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, ‘Let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.’ And you could use my words against me and you’d be absolutely right.”
Case closed. Egregious, in-your-face, Beltway hypocrisy, right? Wrong. Lindsey is far too clever to be held accountable for the things that he said that people might have been foolish enough to believe were honest and sincere. What many conservatives don’t realize is that rather than address one’s own dishonesty and bad faith when caught in such an ethical snag, one can simply insist that your political opponents would do the same thing that you are doing in some hypothetical reality that you make up out of thin air. You don’t even need any evidence to back up your accusation!
Never mind that the Republicans’ refusal to hold hearings for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016 was unprecedented and that no Democratic-controlled Senate had ever refused to hold hearings for a Republican president’s nominee in American history. Nor had a Democratic held Senate turned around four years later and rushed through a candidate with six weeks before an election. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s your hypothetical reality!
And don’t worry about being accused of “moral relativism,” a charge we gleefully fling at liberals as freely as Trump officials violate the Hatch Act. As conservatives we own the moral relativism charge in the same way that we own family values, patriotism and Christianity. As owners of these sacred beliefs, we can never technically be in violation of them, no matter how far we might diverge from them in actual practice. Sure, some might accuse us of hypocrisy on that count, but they would certainly do the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot!
A tape recording of Hitler’s last minute marriage proposal to Eva Braun has been discovered in the ruins of the old Reich Chancellery Bunker in Berlin where they were married and shortly afterward committed suicide in April of 1945. Dangerous Neighbors is proud to present an English translation of the transcript for the very first time. As the transcripts begins, EVA is sitting in their bunker bedroom, listening to polka music on the radio.
RADIO ANNOUNCER: Good morning, Berlin! That was “The “Ubermensch Polka” by the delightful Steitz Sisters. Well, traffic is anything but delightful this morning as Russian tanks are blocking the autobahn. You may want to find alternate routes to work this morning….but don’t worry, Final Victory is just around the corner! And now we resume our musical program with “Polka Pandemonium” by, ja, the Schmidt Twins!
A vivacious polka starts up. Loud bombs blasts outside the bunker. ADOLPH HITLER stumbles into the bedroom.
ADOLPH: Eva, there is something I’ve been meaning to ask you.
EVA: Ja?
ADOLPH: It’s just that…well, we’ve grown so close these past few months.
EVA: That’s because we’ve been trapped like rats in this lousy bunker since January.
ADOLPH: I tried to make it nice for you, Eva.
EVA: Ja, a couple of rhinemaiden statuettes and a few doilies with swastikas and you think we’re at the Kaiserhof.
ADOLPH: Liebchen, I know these last few months haven’t exactly been a lotta laughs.
EVA: Oh, but the chill, dank, paranoid monotony of it all is only just beginning to grow on me.
ADOLPH: Like I said, we’ve grown very close these past few months.
EVA: We did this one already.
ADOLPH: And it’s come to my attention that you’re a very special girl.
EVA: What do you mean?
ADOLPH: What?
EVA: How am I special?
ADOLPH: Well, uh…you know, uh…
EVA: Ja?
ADOLPH: You’ve got a certain…
EVA: Ja?
ADOLPH: I don’t know…flair.
EVA: Flair?
ADOLPH: Ja.
EVA: You want a girl to love you, you tell her she’s got “flair”?
ADOLPH: Well, what would you call it?
EVA: You’re supposed to tell me.
ADOLPH: I’m fighting a war with phantom legions for God’s sake! My stomach is tied in knots. You can’t expect me to come up with poetry on the spot.
EVA: If you really loved me–
ADOLPH: Don’t give me that. A lot of girls would love to be in the Fuhrer’s bunker, believe me. Berlin’s in flames, Baby. You could do a lot worse!
EVA: Well, maybe Berlin wouldn’t be in flames if you hadn’t opened up that goddamned second front.
ADOLPH: Oh, no, we are not having this conversation again.
EVA: What did I tell you, Adolph? Bring the Allies to their knees first, then crush the Russians, but nooo–
ADOLPH: All right, so I had a little too much schnapps that day.
EVA: But, no, I’m the Fuhrer! A genius, don’t you know? Look how everyone gives me the stiff arm salute!
ADOLPH: I really must insist you stop this, Eva.
EVA: And now look at us. Living like moles in this godforsaken hole…playing Yahtzee with the S.S. every night. Listening to you and Goebbels reminisce about the salad days of the Nazi Party. I should have married Horst Schtenkel when I had the chance.
ADOLPH: The sausage vendor?
EVA: Laugh if you like, but Horst had style.
ADOLPH: Damnit, Eva, I’m the Fuhrer!
EVA: Well, if you think I’m going to marry you just because you’re the almighty Fuhrer, you can forget it!
ADOLPH: Who said anything about marriage?
EVA: Isn’t that what you were leading up to here?
ADOLPH: Well, uh…actually, yes.
EVA: Oh, my heart is singing. Out of all the girls in the bunker, you want to marry me.
ADOLPH (going down on one knee) Eva Braun, will you marry me?
There is a tremendous explosion, throwing them both to the floor.
EVA: We’re not getting any younger, are we?
ADOLPH: What do you say, pussycat? Goebbels has promised to play the spoons at our reception.
There is another, even louder blast, shaking the bunker.
EVA: Oh, my God! Are we going to die?
ADOLPH: Well, I wouldn’t bother renewing my book club membership.
EVA: I don’t want to die! I still fit into my high school gym clothes.
ADOLPH: Eva, we must face up to our fate with courage.
EVA: Our fate? This is all your fault. I should have known you were trouble the minute I laid eyes on you and your beer-swilling, brown-shirted buddies.
ADOLPH: We were meant to be together forever, Eva!
EVA: Oh, yeah? Then why didn’t you ask me to marry you until we were entombed down here?…No snappy comeback for that one, eh?
ADOLPH: You know, I’ve always had difficulty making commitments. You see my father–
Just then, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, Reich Propaganda Minister, enters the bedroom.
EVA (rising) Oh, go to Hell!
ADOLPH: (rising) Goebbels! What are you doing here?
GOEBBELS: Forgive the intrusion, mein Fuhrer, but there is a forty reichsmark deposit for the bunker reception hall, and…I was a little short.
EVA: Nobody’s getting married.
ADOLPH: (pulling cash out of his wallet) Your timing is deadly as usual, Goebbels.
GOEBBELS: Forgive me, mein–
ADOLPH: (handing cash to him) Does forty reichsmarks include the use of the bubble machine?
GOEBBELS: Ja, and for another ten, the Schmidt Twins will play all your favorite polkas and marches.
ADOLPH: If I see either one of the Schmidt Twins anywhere near the bunker, they’ll both be shot! Is that clear?
EVA: Adolph!
GOEBBELS: Yes, mein Fuhrer!
ADOLPH: Okay, now I want everything done first class. The ice sculpture will be at the center of the buffet table, which must be double-sided. I want black skirting around the edges and red and white fluff along the top. We’ll have black napkins tied in little bows arranged around the knockwurst platter and two additional rows of–
EVA: Nobody’s getting married!
GOEBBELS: Oh, you kids will work this out.
EVA: Shut-up, you creep!
GOEBBELS dashes for the door.
ADOPLH: Goebbels!
GOEBBELS: (stopping in his tracks) Yes, mein Fuhrer?
ADOLPH: Don’t forget the little Panzers from the war room. They must be–
GOEBBELS: Placed strategically in a ring around the champagne fountain!
ADOLPH: Excellent!
GOEBBELS: Mein Fuhrer, I did have to borrow champagne glasses from the Luftwaffe so they do have little wings on them, but–
EVA: Nobody’s getting married!
GOEBBELS: (saluting ADOLPH) Heil Hitler!
GOEBBELS turns and flees the room. A tense pause.
EVA: So, you made all the arrangements without even asking me?
ADOLPH: My horoscope said it was a good day to take big steps in my personal life.
EVA: Mine said to let go of negative attachments.
ADOLPH: Please, Eva, will you marry me?
There is another enormous explosion outside, rocking the bunker and throwing them closer together.
EVA: Do you really love me?
ADOLPH: I love you more than a night bombing of London.
EVA: Oh, Adolph.
ADOLPH: I love you more than a stroll past the Eiffel Tower on a June afternoon.
EVA: Oh, mein Fuhrer, I love you too.
ADOLPH: Then you’ll marry me?
EVA: Will you let the Schmidt Twins play at the reception?
ADOLPH: No, on that point, I will not budge.
EVA: Adolph!
ADOLPH: Oh, all right, but they will be shot immediately after the reception!
EVA: Oh, thank you, Honey Bear!
They embrace and kiss as passionately as the moment will allow.
You know you’re not the you you could be. I’m Zack Keane. I can help you become the you you could be. The you you always wanted to be. Where is that you? I’m Zach Keane. Before I became the me I always wanted to be, I was just like the you you are, the sad, miserable you that’s not the you you could be. I’m Zack Keane, Director of the Institute of Advanced Transpersonal Methodologies, and I no longer use cocaine. I’m here to disrupt the mindful reinvention of you!
Before I became the me I always wanted to be, I was a clammy, acne-scarred, depressed Uber driver living in a dingy apartment, washing down bags of Doritos with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and snorting cocaine as I slumped on a mangy thrift store sofa and binge-watched the dregs of reality TV, hoping to find solace in comparing myself with the rejected losers of those tournaments of misery. I was a modern day Travis Bickle one or two failures away from a grisly pimp-hunting spree.
Now I’m the me I always wanted to be helping you to become the you you could be. I’m Zack Keane. Director of the Institute of Advanced Transpersonal Methodologies. You may have read about me in the media recently. But don’t believe the fake news concerning the lawsuits against me or the Institute.
Those people chose to attempt the fire walk all by themselves and none of them had worse than second degree burns. And the sexual harassment suits were the product of embittered, unattractive women who failed to become the them they could be. And those Institute members who chose to live on our compound lived in comfortable bungalows, not dilapidated lean-tos and they were not forced to do menial labor but rather encouraged to engage in self-esteem-building endeavors.
As you’ll learn in my 27-part audio course The Seven Antidotes to Self-Loathing, (we accept all major credit cards) these things happen to successful, self-actualized winners, but they are just one more challenge for us to embrace with mindful exuberance.
I’m Zack Keane, Director of the Institute of Advanced Transpersonal Methodologies, and I don’t use cocaine. I have made the four agreements, speak the five languages of love, have the six pillars of self-esteem, the seven habits of highly effective people and the seven antidotes to self-loathing, the gifts of imperfection and emotional intelligence. I’m co-dependent no more and I shit the 48 laws of power! I am the love child of Tony Robbins and Marianne Williamson! I make the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket do push-ups! When I walk by, people immediately race home and scour their kitchens from top to bottom. I am Dale Carnegie with a six-hour Viagra hard-on, and the room is getting blurry so get the fuck out of my way because there’s nothing more dangerous than a blind man with a six-hour hard-on!
I’m sorry, I got a little…My name is Zack Keane, and I will help you disrupt the mindful reinvention of you with my new 27 part audio course The Seven Antidotes to Self-Loathing. We accept all major credit cards. We are winning all our lawsuits and I definitely don’t do cocaine!
A bored sports reporter slipped Chicago Pachyderms coach Terry Patterson a cup of Gatorade spiked with LSD, and the coach finally gave an interview worth reading.
INTERVIEWER: Coach Patterson, it was a tough first half for the Pachyderms…three turnovers, a blocked field goal, a stalled drive in the red zone and just two third down conversions. What does the team need to do turn this thing around in the second half?
COACH: (heavy Texas accent) Well, Bill, this ball club needs to step up to the plate and do a gut check. This ball club needs to move the ball, move the chains, put some points on the board because the point of this whole thing is…to, uh, you know…score more points than your, uh, your…
INTERVIEWER: Your opponent, Coach?
COACH: Right, your opponent. (staring intently at him) You have these strange patterns on your face…
INTERVIEWER: Coach, have you ever had the feeling that traumatic events in your childhood have psychologically damaged you and rendered you unable to experience a more emotionally satisfying sense of reality?
COACH: Well, like I said, Bill, this ball club needs to get back to the fundamentals of blocking and tackling because…you know, when I was nine years old, my mother called me a “yellow belly.” I was batting in a little league game and the pitcher beaned me. I charged the mound, but he caught me with a roundhouse right and knocked me out cold. I woke up in the hospital an hour later and…my mother was sitting there looking at me in disgust. She called me a “yellow belly.” I couldn’t understand why–
INTERVIEWER: Coach, what do the Pachyderms need to do to improve their third down conversion rate?
COACH: What?
INTERVIEWER: How do you improve your third down conversions?
COACH: Uh, well…it’s all about execution on third down. I mean, your O.C. can cook up all sorts of pyrotechnics, but if–
INTERVIEWER: So would you say your mother was withholding?
COACH: What?
INTERVIEWER: Your mother called you a “yellow belly” when the pitcher knocked you out?
COACH: He caught me offguard.
INTERVIEWER: And your mother made you feel inadequate?
COACH: Why are we talking about this?
INTERVIEWER: You were stressing the importance of execution.
COACH: That’s right, Bill. This is not just a game of “x’s” and “o’s,” it’s all about–
INTERVIEWER: Coach, is this your first time taking psychoactive drugs?
COACH: What?
INTERVIEWER: Psychoactive drugs? Psychedelics? Hallucinogens? Is this your first time?
COACH: What…what do you mean?
INTERVIEWER: How do you improve your turnover rate?
COACH: Uh, well, we need to–
INTERVIEWER: What about the patterns on my face, Coach?
COACH: What?
INTERVIEWER: When your mother called you a “yellow belly,” how did it make you feel?
COACH: How did it make me feel?
INTERVIEWER: Coach Patterson, are you now or have you ever been an advocate of Sharia Law?
COACH: What?
INTERVIEWER: It’s just that you have certain past associations which–
COACH: What the hell are you talking about?
INTERVIEWER: How did you feel when your mother called you a “yellow belly”?
COACH: She made me feel like a speck of dust…like a piece of shit!
INTERVIEWER: Your mother made you feel like a piece of shit?
COACH: Yes!
INTERVIEWER: So would you say your whole adult life has been one big “fuck you” to your mother?
COACH: Yes!
INTERVIEWER: Would you like to say it to her right now on national television?
COACH: What?
INTERVIEWER: Come on, Coach. Get it off your chest once and for all.
COACH: Fuck you, Mom!
INTERVIEWER: That’s it.
COACH: Fuck you!
INTERVIEWER: Anything else?
COACH; You made me feel so small! Like a tiny seed flung into a huge, charred crater. But guess what? I grew in that great, dark, barren hole without your help, and look at me now! I’m leading a multi-million dollar sports franchise, and you’re moldering away somewhere in a shoddy convalescent hospital!
INTERVIEWER: Must feel good to get that off your chest.
COACH: You have no idea.
INTERVIEWER: Psychoactive drugs can often be very helpful in retrieving these buried memories.
COACH: Wait a minute…that Gatorade you gave me. Did you put something–
INTERVIEWER: Coach, we brought your mother here to tell her side of the story.
COACH: What?
Somebody pushes MRS. PATTERSON onto the field in her wheelchair. She is an ancient, gnarled buzz saw of a woman. She is holding a Gatorade cup in her hand.
MRS. PATTERSON: I would have preferred you had just slit my throat like a chicken than leave me in that dump!
COACH: Mom!
MRS. PATTERSON: They keep me doped up all the time, I haven’t had a bath in a week, there was a corpse in the bed next to mine half the day yesterday, I have bedsores that could swallow a truck, and Papillion would choke on the putrid gruel they dish up.
COACH: I’m sorry, Mom.
MRS. PATTERSON: Oh, quit your blubbering. Life is a brutal power struggle–even between mothers and sons. You packed me off to that charnel house so you could get on with your career. I don’t hold it against you, but look at you now Mr. Multi-million Dollar Sports Franchise. 7 and 9 ain’t gonna get you into the playoffs.
INTERVIEWER: Mrs. Patterson, what do the Pachyderms need to do to to turn this thing around?
MRS. PATTERSON: First off, you need more production on first down. They’re stacking the box against Jackson, and you’re looking at a lot of third and nines. Run some play-action, put Ballard in the slot. Go deep to McDonald, stretch the field.
COACH: I was lying in the hospital with my face swollen up like a boulder, and you called me a “yellow belly.”
MRS. PATTERSON: You had ten pounds on that boy. If I hadn’t a kneed him in the groin, you’d a shamed the family for sure.
COACH: I was nine years old!
MRS. PATTERSON: You got any more of this vitamin water, young man?
INTERVIEWER: Coach, if you could express a successful second half strategy in terms of a naked, lesbian performance art piece, what would that look like?
MRS. PATTERSON: But he ain’t a lesbian.
INTERVIEWER: Perhaps you could illustrate your plan of attack with some interpretive dance, Coach?
COACH: Well, okay…
The COACH starts making free form, space dance moves that one might see during the encore at a Grateful Dead concert.
INTERVIEWER: Do you plan to–
COACH: We need to spread the ball around more in the second half, Bill…
MRS. PATTERSON: (watching his moves intently) That’s it. Put Ballard in the slot. Send 86 in motion. No more old school West Coast offense. That kid’s got an arm. Take it deep!
INTERVIEWER: What adjustments will you make on defense, Coach?
The COACH continues his dance with increased intensity.
MRS. PATTERSON: That’s it, get rid of that stale 4-3 package. Mix it up with some zone blitzes and amoeba sub-packages. Drop your DE back into coverage and send your corner in there on Rivera’s blind side.
Annoyed, the COACH stops his space dancing and turns on his mother suddenly.
COACH: Would you shut-up? I got where I am without your help!
MRS. PATTERSON: Where you are is the hot seat, boy. I read the sports papers. You think you’re walking in tall cotton, but if you don’t run the table the next three games and grab that last wild card spot, you’re gonna be coaching defensive backs for a Pop Warner team in Ass Scratch, Arkansas!
COACH: Okay, that’s it! I quit! I’m done with football, you hear me!
INTERVIEWER: Coach, do I understand you’re resigning as–
COACH: I only went into football to please you and the old man in the first place.
MRS. PATTERSON: (to INTERVIEWER) He always was a quitter.
COACH: I never had the guts to follow my real passion…I’m a poet!
MRS. PATTERSON: Oh, get out of here!
COACH: (pulling a slip of paper out of his back pocket) I had to channel my pain somehow.
INTERVIEWER: Coach, are you–
COACH: (grabbing INTERVIEWER’S microphone) Give me that mike! (turns directly to camera) You slobs think football is what it’s all about? Let me share something with you, brothers and sisters…
INTERVIEWER: (trying to grab his microphone) Coach, I think–
COACH: (moving away from INTERVIEWER) This is a poem entitled “My Shriveled Inner Child Hates You”…(reading dramatically) “A pale, languid cipher, he moves ghost-like through the mall…”
The INTERVIEWER and his CAMERA MAN follow the COACH as he begins to wander off.
MRS. PATTERSON: Oh, please.
COACH: …”brushing past waxy palm fronds and…”
INTERVIEWER: (pursuing him) Coach, I really need my microphone.
MRS. PATTERSON: “Waxy palm fronds”…That is so trite.
