(GK: Garrison Keillor, SS: Sue Scott, TK: Tom Keith, TR: Tim Russell, RD: Rich Dworsky)
Tonight's show is brought to you by the Ketchup Advisory Board.
TR: These are the good years for me and Barb. We turned the mattress over and found my billfold I lost a couple years ago. One night, for no particular reason, the toilet suddenly stopped running. Margaret, the woman at work who's been in the cubicle next to mine for ten years got transferred to Marketing so I didn't have to listen to her conversations with her sister anymore. And Barb found a bathing suit that looks pretty good on her so long as it's cloudy and it's after 8 o'clock in the evening.
SS: Happy birthday, darling.
TR: Oh, honey, you shouldn't have bought me anything.
SS: Open it.
TR: Oh. Nice. A tie.
SS: It's Teflon.
TR: Great.
SS: You spill soup on that, it beads right up. And you can use it for a hotpad. It'll go well with your yellow plaid pants.
TR: I was looking for a necktie just the other day, and you know what I found in my tie drawer? My old love beads.
SS: Really.
TR: Remember? you in the white dress and hiking boots and rose-tinted granny glasses and the flowers in your hair, me in the tie-dye shirt and the bell-bottoms and the love beads and the ponytail?
SS: We danced to that band every weekend, what was their name? The Psychedelic Giraffe?
TR: The Rainbow Rhinoceros.
SS: No, no. The Eclectic Kumquat?
TR: How can we remember? We were stoned out of our minds.
SS: That's for sure.
TR: I smoked so much dope I forgot the multiplication tables. Still can't remember em.
SS: Really.
TR: Thank goodness they invented calculators right about that time.
SS: Guess other people had the same problem.
TR: Guess so.
SS: Was it The Perverted Spaniels. The Improbable Spaniels. No? The Universal Strawberries? - whatever - we'd dance in the strobe lights until we got dizzy and go out to the van, our home? Remember? With "End The War, Start The Music" painted on it? And we'd go inside and neck like crazy and then we'd go drive to Colorado or something. Boy -
TR: We used to be so spontaneous. What happened to us, Barb?
SS: We got kids and we bought a house.
TR: Oh. Right.
SS: But the flame of romance can always be reignited -
TR: Really?
SS: Ketchup.
TR: Oh. Right.
SS: Ketchup has natural endorphins that give a person's hormones a boost. That's why ketchup is considered nature's aphrodisiac.
TR: The Demented Tomato.
SS: What -
TR: The band you were trying to -
SS: Oh right! The Demented Tomato!
TR: You get the ketchup, Barb, and I'll light the fire.
(KETCHUP SONG)
RD:
Colorado sunrise, the mountaintop in fog,
Coffee brewing, flames leap from the logs,
Life is flowing like ketchup on hot dogs.
GK: Ketchup. For the good times.
RD: Ketchup ... ketchup ...
(c) 1999 by Garrison Keillor