(THEME)
SS: The Lives Of The Cowboys......brought to you by Maricopa Brand Mouthwash ---- gives you whiskey breath day after day so you smell like a real cowboy even though you're sober. And now.....the Lives of the Cowboys.
(ESPRESSO SFX)
SS: Welcome to Dallas, Mister. What can I get you?
GK: Like a latte, ma'am.
SS: You want the Arkansas size, the Oklahoma size, or the Republic of Texas size.
GK: Guess I'd have the Texas one.
SS: Good choice.
GK: You haven't seen my pardner Dusty, have you? I was supposed to meet him here.
SS: What does he look like?
GK: Big sad lookin' guy with watery eyes and a leathery neck and an air of hangdog desperation about him.
SS: Oh, I just saw him go across the street to the saloon.
GK: Oh. Well. Okay.
TR (DUKE): This here seat taken, stranger?
GK: No, sir.
TR (DUKE): Good. (HE SETTLES DOWN, PUTS COFFEE ON TABLE) I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.
GK: Well, for the time being I am. Until I hit it big as a songwriter.
TR (DUKE): (SNIFFS) What's that you're drinking? Smells like a decaf to me.
GK: Well, it isn't. It's a latte.
TR (DUKE): A what?
GK: Latte.
TR (DUKE): Around here we pronounce that LATE. On account of it takes so long to make it. We just get the regular campfire coffee. Made from water from the Rio Grande.
GK: You a cowboy?
TR (DUKE): Used to be and now I'm in software management.
GK: I see.
TR (DUKE): Ever hear of designated network protocols? Where you take autonomous components and make em interface and then decouple the ETF and reconfigure and reroute the LAN to exponentially bridge the traffic platforms and create an open flow overlay to make a totally new control plane?
GK: I don't understand a thing you're saying.
TR (DUKE): That's good cause if you did understand it, I'd have to shoot you, cause I just gave away a big trade secret that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
GK: So you've done well in software management.
TR (DUKE): I own about half of downtown Dallas.
GK: What you come into a place like this for?
TR (DUKE): I like the coffee. It reminds me of back when I used to drive cattle from Amarillo to Abilene and sleep on the ground and go without bathing for weeks at a time. And also because I'm in love with this waitress. Hi darling.
AO: You gentlemen need lunch or you going to just drink coffee?
TR (DUKE): I'd have a bowl of steamed kale and some lentils on the side.
AO: And you?
GK: Just coffee, ma'am.
TR (DUKE): I gotta go put some money in the meter so they don't tow away my Lamborghini. Back in a minute. (FOOTSTEPS AWAY)
AO: I see by your notepad that you are a songwriter.
GK: Just working on one right now---
AO: How does it go?
GK: (SINGS) She's got a heart as big as Texas
And a New Hampshire mind
She's got a Rhode Island bosom
And Nebraska behind.
She's hot as Arizona
And mainly she is kind
So someday Alaska
And I hope she will be mine.
And then there's a yodel. I like to put in a yodel.
AO: Yodelling was what ruined my life, mister.
GK: Yodelling?
AO: I used to be in data development. I did algorithms all day. I was earning eight-hundred grand a year and I lived up in Preston Hollow. And then I went to see the movie "Sound of Music"----
GK: Good movie.
AO: I became obsessed with it. People like me, on the genius end of the Asperger spectrum, are susceptible to OCD and the song that keeps running through my mind is.....
(SHE SINGS)
High on a hill was a lonely goatherd
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo
Loud was the voice of the lonely goatherd
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo
Folks in a town that was quite remote heard
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo
Lusty and clear from the goatherd's throat heard
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo
O ho lay dee odl lee o, (KONK) ----- Sorry. It's hard to stop.
GK: So this song keeps going around in your head.
AO: I can't remember what an algorithm even is. Lost my job. Had to come to work here. (SHE HUMS GOATHERD SONG, THEN KONK) Sorry.
GK: Maybe if you try singing a duet, it could cure that. Try it. Come on. "Unchained Melody".
GK, then w AO: Oh my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch, this long lonely night. Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much. Are you still----
AO:
High on a hill was a lonely goatherd
Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo
Loud was the voice of the lonely goatherd
Lay ee odl lay ee odl-oo (KONK)......Sorry.
GK: That obsession must about drive you to distraction.
SS (OFF): Rosalita!! You got customers.
AO: Excuse me. Good luck with your music. (FOOTSTEPS AWAY) (THEN BIG FOOTSTEPS CLOMPING TOWARD)
TR (DUKE): Okay. Got another fifteen minutes. Where'd Rosalita go? I want me a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of chili. Hey, you mind if I plug my computer in here?
GK: Go right ahead.
TR (DUKE): Want to tune in my favorite radio show. Excuse me. (TUNING ACROSS RADIO SPECTRUM. SAXOPHONE. RUSH LIMBAUGH. "This is Cory Flintoff from Moscow." IRA: This American Life.....chapter two.....novels that take place in coffee shops." BANJO. SS: Quand il me prend dans ses bras. Il me parle tout bas. FN: And now we return you to----- RIVER OF TEARS (DRAMATIC ORGAN) SS: What are we going to do? FN: I don't know. SS: My eye feels like someone poked me with a stick. FN: You're so brave. SS: I need to see a doctor. FN: But the car won't start. I don't know where we are. And nightfall is coming on. SS: Oh Jack. FN: I'm sorry, Julie. TR (PREACHER): And in the second chapter of the book of Leviticus we read, And they shall be an abomination unto the Lord. An a-bom-i-NA-tion. Amen. (SAXOPHONE)
TR (DUKE): Dang. Doesn't seem to be on.
GK: What show is that?
TR (DUKE): "Billy Pedersen and the Pedernales Boys." It's a western adventure show. On every day.
DR: Did I hear you mention "Billy Pedersen and the Pedernales Boys"?
GK: Who are you?
DR: I was the writer of that show. It got cancelled yesterday.
TR (DUKE): "Billy Pedersen and the Pedernales Boys" got cancelled?
DR: Took it off the air and put on rocknroll. Right over there is Durward Rollins who used to play Billy.
FN (HIGH): Hi. How you doing?
TR (DUKE): Well, I'll just buy that radio station. What does it cost? Five, six million? I'll just write a check. (SCRIBBLES)
SS: Johnny, if you're writing a check for the coffee, don't bother cause the one you wrote for fifteen dollars this morning came back Insufficient Funds.
TR (DUKE): What? My bank sent it back. First Mirage Savings & Loan of Midland?
DR: I believe that's the bank I read about in the paper today. First Mirage went belly up yesterday.
TR (DUKE): All my money's there. That means I'm busted. Don't have a dime to my name. Dog my cats. (FAST FOOTSTEPS APPROACH)
AO: I'm cured!!! The yodeling goatherd is gone. I'm free of yodeling.
GK: What happened?
AO: I got the hiccups and it just went away.
DR: Well, Durward, we had a glimmer of hope there for a minute and now it's gone.
FN (HIGH): Oh well.
TR (DUKE): Gonna have to sell my Lamborghini and go on food stamps. Hey, ma'am?
SS: What is it, Johnny?
TR (DUKE): You got an opening for a dishwasher?
GK: I thought you owned half of downtown Dallas.
TR (DUKE): I did but it was the wrong half. And the bank owned two-thirds of my half.
AO: I can sing. I can sing!!!
(SINGS)
The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears
My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds
That rise from the lake to the trees
My heart wants to sigh like a chime
That flies from a church on a breeze.
DR (OVER THE ABOVE, AFTER "EVERY SONG IT HEARS"): Hey mister.
GK: What is it?
DR: You need a writer on this show?
GK: This show? You mean "The Lives of the Cowboys"?
DR: It just seems sort of confused. The guy goes broke, the woman sings "The Sound of Music," Dusty never shows up, you never hear the Billy Pedersen show, it's just one non-sequitur after another.
GK: Suddenly the trap door on which the writer was standing opened up (SFX, DR FALLING CRY, THUMP) and then the trap door closed. There was a flash of flame. (SFX) And a tall dark stranger stood in the middle of the room.
FN: So which one of you fellas has got the jewel from the statue of the corn god in the jungle of Rawalpindi? Set it on the table.
GK: Johnny reached for his gun---- (TR DUKE: Wouldn't you like to know) ---- and the stranger whipped out a whip and (WHIPLASH) ----
SS (OFF): Lorenzo? Are you all right?
GK: Who was Lorenzo? And who was the mystery woman in the shadows. And who were the three women in black humming quietly to themselves. (CARPERS, HUMMING, "THE WORMS CRAWL IN, THE WORMS CRAWL OUT"). And whose bright yellow eyes were those shining from behind the back door? (HOWL) Back where the wheel of fortune was spinning (SFX) and the cards were being dealt (SFX), and there came the sound of a fuse that had just been lit. (SFX)
(THEME)
SS: Join us again next week for the Lives of the Cowboys, brought to you by Maricopa Brand Mouthwash, makes you smell like a cowboy even though you're sober. -
(THEME OUT)