(THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions---- Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(THEME UP AND OUT)
GK: It was early January, bitterly cold back home, but I was in San Francisco. I'd been hired by the California Green Grocer Association to investigate the kale shortage. Kale was selling for about $5 an ounce. Low-cal kale. California-grown. Much of it was going to Colorado.
SS: There is a kale cult in Columbus, Colorado, led by a columnist named Colonel Cal Killian, a graduate of Colorado College, who cultivates and collects hundreds of kilobytes of high-calcium kale which he says can calm colic, cure colds, chilblains, cholera, and combat colon cancer when combined with Coca-Cola, chocolate, kelp, coleopteran, Chilean chilis, calves' liver, calamari, cilantro, and Colombian coffee.
GK: A columnist named Cal Killian, huh?
SS: Mr. Killian was feeling off-kilter and he ate a kale calzone and was cured.
GK: Cured of a cold? Colic?
SS: Cured of Calvinism. He lived in a Calvinist colony, a collective, and they coldly and callously rejected his kale calculations and he got hot under the collar, called them some colorful words, and moved to California.
GK: Where?
SS: California.
GK: What town?
SS: Ojai.
GK: Not Culver City, Clayton, Clear Lake, Calistoga?
SS: Ojai.
GK: Why?
SS: It just sounded friendly to him. Ojai.
GK: So what happened to Mr. Killian in Ojai?
SS: He was killed.
GK: Killed by kale?
SS: Killed in a choral calamity. By a coloratura. Cal Killian sang in a college choir called the Creole Chorale and a coloratura named Chelsea Carlson collided with him in a calypso number and he'd had a colossal colostomy and it collapsed.
GK: His colon collapsed, but not caused by kale.
SS: Correct.
GK: So there is no more kale crisis.
SS: All is calm in the kale culture.
GK: So I came for nothing.
SS: Sorry. Mea culpa. (BRIDGE)
GK: I was not so much disappointed as wondering what I could do to extend my San Francisco stay and avoid the polar vortex at home, and I sat on a bench in Golden Gate Park to clear my head, and a woman approached, tall, blonde, in spandex. Her pants were so tight I could tell that she'd had knee surgery.
JC: Mind if I sit down? (BRIDGE)
GK: Do I mind if the sun shines? Do I mind if birds sing? ---- She sat down next to me and I felt heat. Nice day.
JC: Yeah. I just got out of rehab. I was addicted to social media. I had to check myself into a technology addiction override center and go through Facebook withdrawal. They made us do real life activities like play basketball and knit. And talk and make eye contact. We were allowed one call a day from a landline.
GK: So how did you do?
JC: I missed texting. But I started writing in whole sentences and paragraphs and one day I realized I was not using numbers as words, and I was capitalizing proper nouns. I started to feel sort of alive again. I read a book, the whole thing, and I knitted a scarf, and I ran 3 miles. It's like I'm getting my life back. My therapist says I should start a romance but I don't know.
GK: Well, maybe if you met the right guy.
JC: Yeah. You know anyone?
GK: Sometimes the right guy is right there and you just walk up and strike up a conversation with him.
JC: I want to be positive and keep my heart open to whatever the universe has planned for me.
GK: Can I buy you a cup of coffee?
JC: I'd like to but I'm supposed to meet someone. Oh---- here he is now.
(FOOTSTEPS)
TR: Hi doll. Sorry I'm late. Who's this?
JC: He's a guy I just met, Brian.
TR: Yeah, well, it's time to unfriend him.
GK: Nice talking to you----- I didn't get your name.
TR: And you ain't gonna. Beat it.
GK: I was talking to her, meathead.
TR: What did you say?
GK: I said, let her decide who she'd rather be with.
TR: Oh yeah? How'd you like a knuckle sandwich, lamebrain? (CELL RING) Whoops. Be right back. ---- Yo. Dude. Wassup?
GK: He turned away from me and I took a step toward him and (POW, TR OOOOFFFF) got him right in the solar plexus and he went down like a redwood (COLLAPSE) ----- how about that coffee----?
JC: I think the universe wants me to say yes.
GK: That'd be my guess too.
JC: I'm off caffeine though.
GK: A glass of wine.
JC: I don't drink.
GK: Lunch?
JC: I'm vegan.
GK: Well, we'll think of something.
(THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets but one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions. Guy Noir, Private Eye.