(GK: Garrison Keillor; SS: Sue Scott; TR: Tim Russell; FN: Fred Newmann; RD: Richard Dworsky)
GK: ... this portion of our show brought to you by the Catchup Advisory Board.
(MUSIC)
TR: These are the good years for me and Barb. Barb talked me into taking dance instruction, but our dance instructor was arrested for sexual harassment, so now I don't have to do the mambo anymore. With a Republican in the White House, we no longer worry about our armed forces getting involved in "nation building" or the federal budget going into the red. Our neighbors had a condor build a nest in their TV dish antenna, and suddenly the neighborhood cat population is under control. Our kids have stopped calling us up to tell us they're not speaking to us anymore. We should have been happy. Then one evening I found Barb on the back porch, sniffling into her hanky. ---Honey, what's wrong?
SS: Oh, Jim. I'm so embarrassed. We're the only people left who don't have a digital camera. My sister handed me hers this morning and asked me to take her picture and I didn't even know how!!! Oh Jim----
TR: But we have an Instamatic, we have a Polaroid, we have the one that takes wide panoramic shots of your family...
SS: We need a digital camera, Jim. With megapixels. And plenty of memory.
TR: But I just got finished glueing all our vacation pictures into our picture scrapbook, Barb!
SS: Scrapbooks are over, Jim. They're passe. Everything is digital now. Did you see that picture of Joanie Carlson's baby on our e-mail?
TR: I deleted it. I thought it was another plea to end genetic research.
SS: She had that baby just two days ago. And already the baby has its own website!
TR: I don't want to have a website, Barb. I'm happy here at home with you.
SS: But we could post pictures of us, of our trip to Hawaii, of our backyard.
TR: Why? Who needs it?
SS: Because digital's so much faster and easier. No more taking film down to the drug store.
TR: I like the drug store. Walking the aisles, picking up mineral water, ballpoints, analgesics, bags of potato chips, magazines.
SS: Did you know, you can take up to a thousand pictures with a digital camera? A thousand!
TR: Barb, there aren't a thousand different ways for us to photograph ourselves.
SS: What do you mean, Jim?
TR: I mean just that.
SS: You mean, we're not as ----
TR: No, we're not.
SS: Are you sure?
TR: Barb, I love you, but we are people whom photography is no longer kind to. It's sort of like when digital recording came in, it wasn't a big boon to polka music ---- you know what I mean?
SS: You don't like pictures of us?
TR: Some I do. The campfire shots. But I like us more. The feeling of the moment. The feeling you get from catchup.
SS: You do?
TR: Barb, catchup has natural mellowing agents that turn any moment into a memory. Why don't we expose ourselves to some ketchup right now?
RD (sings): These are the good times, the pictures in our eyes
Time's magic moments, our memories realized
Life is flowing, like ketchup on French fries....
GK: Ketchup. For the good times.
RD (sings): Ketchup... ketchup...
© Garrison Keillor 2002