(GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell)
(BLENDER SFX)
GK: What time you get off?
SS: Six.
GK: Oh. Me too.
SS: I thought you were working til closing.
GK: No, that was last week.
SS: Why'd you change?
GK: Just thought I'd like to have my evenings to myself. How's your job search going?
SS: It's going.
GK: You looking for a teaching job?
SS: Actually, I'm thinking about going to grad school.
GK: Really? More school?
SS: Sure. Why not?
GK: I don't know. It's up to you. I suppose the B.A. is essentially worthless now that universities have been taken over by the post- modernists, and the whole tradition of liberal education has been overthrown by political correctness. There's no intellectual competence being taught, the professors are essentially a little police force.
SS: Where'd you get all this horse hockey?
GK: I mean I'm sitting here with a B.A. in English that's basically worthless because the faculty believes in all this reductionist deconstructionist crap that turns the liberal arts into hegemonist apologetics.
SS: Hegemonist apologetics?!!!
GK: You heard me.
SS: Hegemonist apologetics!!! What is that supposed to mean?
GK: I have no idea. If I'd gotten a decent education, I'd know, but I don't.
SS: Who told you all this stuff? It's crazy. You been reading one of your right-wing wacko magazines again.
GK: Right-wing to a post-modernist like you, Lindsay, but to most Americans, just plain common sense.
SS: To you, everything after the 18th Century is post-modernism!
GK: You and all your fellow deconstructionists and post-structuralists, neo-marxists, you've politicized the University so no education can take place - everything is black or white: everything is either progressive or its reactionary, its feminist or it's patriarchal, it's colonialist or post-colonialist, and all this is is a form of thought control and censorship. That's what they said.
SS: Oh give me a break. You are so full of it.
GK: But because I had such a lousy education, I don't even know how bad my education is. They never had us read Kant, or Aristotle. All they offered us were P.C. cookie courses. They threw out Shakespeare and taught the Oral History of Guatemalan Peasant Women. The Cultural Implications of Elvis. I tell you, if they taught medicine the way they teach the liberal arts, most of us would be dead. (DING, CLICK) Welcome to The Big Cheese, may I recommend one of our economy meals today?
TR (OVER SPEAKER): Hi....uh, I'd like one of your Grilled Cheese Biggies and - no, let me have the Mister Cheese.
GK: We have your choice of Swiss, cheddar, provolone, gorgonzola, Monterey jack, brick or Brie -
TR (OVER SPEAKER): Swiss.
GK: You want a Swiss Mister Cheese - would you care for curds with that?
TR (OVER SPEAKER): Uh. Okay.
GK: What size curds? We have Spider, Tuffet, or Whoopee size.
TR (SPEAKER): Uh. Whoopee.
GK: You care for a beverage today?
TR (SPEAKER): Uh. Coffee.
GK: A cup, a mug, or the hubba-hubba bucket?
TR (SPEAKER): The big one.
SS (OFF): Swiss Mister with a Whoopee and a hubba-hubba!
(COMPUTER REGISTER SFX, ENTERING EACH AMOUNT AND TOTALLING)
GK: That'll be three-sixty-nine. Please pull ahead to window two. And thank you for coming to The Big Cheese.
SS: Here's the coffee and the Whoopee.
GK: Here's your change, a dollar thirty-one (RUSTLING) and here's your Mister Cheese, your Whoopee curds, and the hubba-hubba. Have a nice day. (CAR PULLS AWAY) I mean the University designs curricula in which competence and literacy don't matter.
SS: Depends on your definition of literacy, of course -
GK: The entire intellectual canon of Western civilization. Whatever that may be. How would I know? But it's been trashed. Political correctness is everything.
SS: So what are you saying? Everyone should kneel down in adoration of the patriarchal pantheon of dead white European males?
GK: If that's what it takes to get an education maybe, yes. (DING) - Welcome to The Big Cheese, may I recommend one of our economy meals today?
TR (SPEAKER): Uh, you got cheeseburgers here?
GK: Yes. We have the large cheeseburger, the mammoth, the titanic, and the Oh My God.
TR (SPEAKER): Uh ... mammoth. No. I'll have the biggest one.
GK: The Oh My God?
TR (SPEAKER): Right.
GK: Is that with Swiss, cheddar, provolone, gorgonzola, Monterey jack, brick or Brie?
TR (SPEAKER): Uhmmmm. (PAUSE) Could you go through that again?
GK: Swiss, cheddar, monterey jack, or Brie?
TR (SPEAKER): Brie.
GK: You care for curds with that?
TR: (SPEAKER) Uh. Okay.
GK: Spider, Tuffet, or Whoopee size.
TR (SPEAKER): Uh. Regular.
GK: You mean the Spider?
TR (SPEAKER): Is that the smallest?
GK: Yes.
TR (SPEAKER): Then I'll have the medium.
GK: The Tuffet.
TR (SPEAKER): Okay.
GK: You care for a beverage with that?
TR (SPEAKER): A Coke?
GK: You care for the Big Splash, the Tidal Wave, or The Monsoon?
TR (SPEAKER): How big is The Monsoon?
GK: That's the two gallon.
TR (SPEAKER): I'll have that.
SS (OFF): Brie Oh My God, a Tuffet, and a Monsoon!
GK: That's nine forty-three, please pull ahead to Window 2. (SODA FOUNTAIN FAUCET)
SS: Regular curds - (RUSTLE OF PACK)
GK: Man, I hate the smell of cheese.
SS: Tell me about it.
GK: Went to a party the other night, and they passed around a cheese plate, I about tossed my lunch.
SS: And you've been here what? Six months?
GK: At The Big Cheese? Six months. Ever since I got my degree. Hey, where's the Oh My God -
SS: Right here.
GK: Oh. - (RUSTLE OF BAG) Here's your change - ten fifty-seven. And a Monsoon, a Tuffet of curds, and the Oh My God cheeseburger with Brie. And thank you for coming to The Big Cheese. (CAR PULLS AWAY)
SS: It's sort of ridiculous, us fighting about the philosophy of education - I mean, look at us - a couple of counter clerks -
GK: You were in archaeology?
SS: Women's archaeology.
GK: Oh boy.
SS: Don't get started, okay?
GK: Women's archaeology!
SS: Just don't go there. Okay? - I mean, four years of college and here we are cutting cheese for a living, and why? For the same reason. The free market doesn't want educated people.
GK: Oh boy.
SS: The whole emphasis is on vocational training, training for jobs, and corporations don't want thinkers, they want skilled drones. So that's what colleges produce. You conservatives complain about the lack of standards and the dumbing down of education, and yet you believe in the reign of the free market, (FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING) and it's the values of the free market that lead to dumbing down the schools. I mean, take a look.
GK: You're so wrong - The only point we conservatives make is: if you don't like it, don't buy it. If the school isn't good enough, then educate yourself. Everybody has to make his or her own life. The government can't do it for you.
SS: But we live in a society that is pushing entertainment as hard as it can, so what's the point in learning?
GK: And as for free market values, there is no place in the world where the arts flourish as they do in this country - that's what you neo-Marxists can't get through your heads -
SS: Neo-Marxists!!
GK: Every art - right across the board - dance, music, painting, literature, film - America leads the way. Scandinavia and all those countries with the huge government subsidies to the arts? Swedish ballet? French opera? where is it? All they do is create new levels of dead wood bureaucracies. Free enterprise and culture are not mutually exclusive. That's where you pinkos are wrong.
SS: What you call Culture is a prison, Josh, and life is what you see through the bars.
GK: Oh get out of here.
SS: I mean it.
GK: Get real.
SS: What are you doing after work?
GK: Me? I don't know. Go home.
SS: Go home and what?
GK: I have no idea. Why?
SS: Why don't we do something together?
GK: You and me?
SS: Why not?
GK: Like what?
SS: We're educated people. We'd think of something.
GK: We could see what's on TV?
SS: Do you like to cook?
GK: I don't cook much, no.
SS: We could cook something.
GK: Usually I just take home a Mister Cheese and a Tuffet and a Monsoon.
SS: I thought you hated cheese.
GK: I do, but when you put enough ketchup on it, it's not bad. It's like pizza.
SS: Why don't we get some frozen pizzas and go to your place and have supper and - talk?
GK: Talk?
SS: Yeah. Talk.
GK: About what?
SS: Anything.
GK: I may have to run over to my folks tonight. I told em if they needed some help, I'd come over. So I donno. Kinda shoots the evening. You know how old people are, they gotta sit you down and feed you and then they talk your ear off.
SS: Fine. You go see your folks and I'll wait for you at your apartment.
(DING. CLICK)
GK: Welcome to The Big Cheese, may I recommend one of our economy meals today?
TK (SPEAKER): Uh, I'll have the tuna melt?
GK: Is that with Swiss, cheddar, provolone, gorgonzola, monterey jack, brick or Brie?
TK (SPEAKER): Uhmmmm. Provolone.
GK: You care for curds with that?
TK: (SPEAKER) No.
GK: Beverage?
TR (SPEAKER): What do you have?
GK: The list is there on the billboard.
TK (SPEAKER): Where?
GK: Right in front of your face.
TK (SPEAKER): I don't see it.
GK: Look at the sign.
TK (SPEAKER): It isn't on the sign.
GK: It's right in front of you!
TR (SPEAKER): Why can't you tell me what you have?
GK: The list is there on the billboard.
TK (SPEAKER): I can't see it. Oh. There it is.
GK: See it now?
TK (SPEAKER): I'll have the Monsoon Coke.
GK: Okay. Tuna melt with provolone, and a monsoon coke.
TK (SPEAKER): And gimme a big curds, too.
GK: And a Whoopee. (COMPUTER) That's six forty-three, pull ahead to window two. (CLICK) I may not get home until ten or eleven.
SS: That's okay.
GK: Kind of late.
SS: Hey, it's spring. (OFF LOUD) Provolone tuna melt! Monsoon! And a Whoopee!
(MUSIC OUT)
(c) 1999 by Garrison Keillor