(GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell)
Tonight's show is also brought to you by Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.
It's a cold rainy day (THUNDER, LIGHTNING). You kiss your wife (TWO DRY PECKS) and out the door you go (SS: And don't forget the Dean is coming for dinner!) (DOOR SLAM) and you get on your bike and ride to campus (TRAFFIC PASSING) and you don't see the car come racing through the puddle (CAR, BIG WAVE OF WATER, TR CRY OF ALARM) and you're drenched. Soaked. You get to the English Department office smelling like an old dog (TR STINK REACTION, SOGGY COAT DROPS) and you take off your coat and Sheila, the department secretary (SS NYER: English Department - how may I direct your call please?) she's all dressed up in a black suit with a string of pearls (SS: Good morning, Professor Hawker). What a peach she is. And today is her last day. She's leaving to go into corrections work so she can be with her boyfriend. And now you suddenly realize (TR TO HIMSELF: Which button makes it go?) you don't know how to work the copier, you don't have a clue (TR: Maybe this one. CLICK. RAPID HIGH SPEED PRINTING, WHIRRING. TR PANIC. TR: Sheila!) The coffee machine. The fax. You don't even know how to get your e-mail (TR: I think I just click on here - KLAXON - uh oh). You shut the computer down (CLICKS) and then it won't go back on. (TR RAGE, SHAKING COMPUTER, SHORTING) And now the screen is doing crazy things.
TR: Sheila!!
SS: What?
TR: What's wrong?
SS: There. (CLICK) All better.
TR: Gosh, thanks. What are we ever going to do without you?
SS: Want me to tell you, Professor Hawker?
You go to the farewell lunch and Sheila has three glasses of wine (SS A LITTLE TIPSY: Let me tell you clowns something ... you're unemployable. In two years the University is going to give you the old heave-ho.) Cruel words. Everyone sits there lacerated (SOFT SOBBING) and to console themselves they all have flaming desserts (POOF OF FLAME) and (TR: My eyebrows!) your cherry flambe burns off both your eyebrows (FAST FOOTSTEPS) and you dash to the men's room and (TR GROAN) you look strange without them so you take a felt-tip pen and color them in (TR: There. Better.) and then you notice by the time you come back (TR: Hello?) you're all alone with the check (TR ANGUISH: Three hundred and - Oh my gosh.) and it takes awhile to settle up (TK QUIET WAITER: Would you have another credit card? This one has been declined.) (TR: I have one in the car, I think.) And you sneak out back. (TIPTOE STEPS) And you dash across the parking lot (FAST STEPS) and you get to your three o'clock class with moments to spare (TR PANTING, BELL RINGS) and the students are staring at you like trout in the butcher case --- (TR: Good afternoon, class.) - And suddenly you have no idea what class this is, if it's the 19th Century Novel or Chaucer or what. (TR: So ... who'd like to stand up and talk about this week's reading assignment?) Nobody says a word. You break out in a cold sweat and your eyebrows start to run. (TR PERSPIRATION) And somehow you talk your way through the hour without being too specific about anything. (TR: The aggregate banality of the paternalist consensus of sensibility consequences and legitimates the modernity of the derealisation of the dichotomy of myth and mass narrative as ethnocentric periodization - or should I say, the politics of gender?) Fifty minutes in which you never refer to a specific work of literature, hard work, but that's what you're trained for; you hustle home (SS OFF: Honey? The Dean'll be here in half an hour.) and then you notice (TR ANXIETY) - Sheila's blue silk garter is in your shirt pocket. (TR: Where'd that come from?) Must've been when she stood on the table and threw it. (SS OFF: Honey???) (FAST TIPTOE FOOTSTEPS, EASE DOOR SHUT) It was there all during your lecture. (TR: Oh boy.) You sneak into the bathroom and you try to (FLUSH) flush it down the toilet. It comes back up (BLOOP). You throw it in the wastebasket. And you go to leave and (WOOF) there's Rex. With something blue and frilly in his mouth. (TR: Rex!) (WOOFS) (DOG GROWLING. TR: Gimme that, you stupid dog.) You grab the garter - (FOOTSTEPS, GLASS CRASH) (TR: Oh no!) And the entire glass cabinet full of your wife's toiletries is falling toward you (TR PANIC, CLATTER, GLASS) and you throw yourself against it - thousands of jars and bottles and tubes - (GLASS BREAKAGE, CLATTER, CRASHING, THEN SILENCE)
SS: Chuck?
(PAUSE)
SS: Is something wrong?
(ONE OBJECT DROPS AND CLATTERS)
SS: And what is this that Rex has? It looks like - an armband from a banjo player ...
TR: Yes! Exactly! (ANOTHER OBJECT DROPS) I used it in a lecture on the cognitive foundation of the fragmentation of paternalist alienation.
SS: But why does it say "Angel Baby"? (ANOTHER CRASH)
(THEME)
Wouldn't this be a good time for a piece of rhubarb pie? Yes, nothing takes the taste of shame and humiliation out of your mouth quite like Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.
One little thing can revive a guy,
And that is home-made rhubarb pie.
Serve it up, nice and hot.
Maybe things aren't as bad as you thought.
ALL:
Mama's little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb,
Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.
Mama's little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb,
Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.
(c) 1999 by Garrison Keillor