(WESTERN THEME)
SS: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS....brought to you by Brainerd Brand Whole Bran Brown Bread.....it contains no kale ....and now let's join Dusty and Lefty out on the trail....
(OUTDOOR AMBIENCE, HORSES HOOVES)
GK: We were in St. Paul, me and Dusty, heading for a 4th of July shindig at McAlester College where we figured we'd pick up some easy money in the shooting, roping, and spitting contest. Few people in Minnesota realize it but McAlester was founded by a cowboy named Dangerous Ken Dayton from McAlester, Oklahoma, down in the Choctaw Nation, and though the college was taken over by genteel Presbyterians and became a high intellectual citadel, still there was a provision in Dayton's will for a cowboy contest on the Fourth, and there was big money at stake.
TR: St. Paul! Ha! City of liberals. Afraid of guns, and brought up not to spit and besides chewing tobacco is illegal. We got it made, pardner.
GK: And all the students will be gone for the summer. Easy money there. Whoa. Whoa. (HORSES STOP, WHINNY)
FN: HALT! Who goes there??
GK: Two cowpokes here for the Fourth of July contests. What you doing wearing a skirt, mister?
FN: This is a kilt. And I wear it proudly.
TR: I've known cowboys who were kilt but they weren't proud of it. Quite the opposite.
FN: State your names and the institutions from which you matriculated.
TR: My name is Dusty and if you accuse me of matriculation once more, I am going to matriculate you.
GK: My name is Lefty and I graduated from the College of Hard Knocks and the School of Broken Dreams.
FN: You two carrying firearms?
TR: Yes, and we're also wearing underwear and neckerchiefs. So what?
GK: Where does the competition take place, Mister?
FN: Out there on the Great Lawn.
TR: All I see is a kid tossing a Frisbee. (GUNSHOT) They fly better with a hole in em.
FN: Contest registration is that way, gentlemen. (BRIDGE)
SS: So you are here to register for the Macalester Cowboy Sweepstakes? I was just about to close up. We haven't had any entrants.
GK: Well, now you do, ma'am. Two of us.
BR: Make that three.
GK: Who're you?
BR: You're not from around here, are you.
GK: Is that going to be a problem?
BR: Around here, people know me as B.B. Big Brian.
GK: What you doing in that suit and tie?
BR: In my line of work, that's called camouflage.
GK: And what line of work would that happen to be?
BR: Depends on who you ask.
GK: I'm asking you.
BR: I call myself The Extricator.
GK: What does that mean?
BR: I take from the rich and I give to the poor. Big tycoons who put a dollar bill in the collection plate on Sunday and give out Tootsie Rolls at Halloween ---- I talk to them for ten minutes and they hand me a blank check and I write in a number with six or eight zeros after it.
GK: What's the secret?
BR: I just look them in the eye like I'm looking you in the eye. It's all in the look.
GK: So Macalester is doing pretty well----
BR: We're halfway through our big endowment drive. We're at fifty billion, going for a hundred.
GK: But Harvard only has an endowment of $42 billion.
BR: That's why they're referring to it as the Macalester of the East.
GK: And they just got a gift of $400 million.
BR: We just got one for $500 million.
GK: From who?
SS (OLD LADY): Me! LaVerne Snelling.
GK: You? You look like a cleaning lady.
SS (OLD): I am a cleaning lady. But my daddy was an artist and he got a copyright on a drawing of an apple with a bite taken out of it.
GK: Aha.
SS (OLD): The folks at Apple made us a very nice offer. And Daddy took out a copyright on the name 3M. He did it for him and his brothers: Marvin and Melvin. But still. And Daddy got a trademark on the golden arches. He designed it for a man named Harry Golden who sold Arch Supports. McDonald's sends me a large check every month.
BR: Miss Snelling is on the Macalester staff.
SS: I love being around young people. And what would I do with $500 million anyway?
(DINGING BELL)
FN: All entries in the Spitting Contest, report to the starting line.
(CROWD MURMURS)
GK: You entered in this, B.B.?
BR: Of course.
DR: Me too.
GK: You?
DR: Yep.
GK: You from someplace nearby around here, mister?
DR: Nope.
GK: From a ways away then, I gather.
DR: Yep.
GK: You seem to be what one might call a bit taciturn or even close-mouthed, mister. You don't say much, do you.
DR: Nope.
GK: There any particular reason for your being this way, if you don't mind my asking?
DR: Yep.
GK: Care to say what it is?
DR: Saving my spit.
SS: Okay---- contestant No. 1---see the barn swallow sitting on the feeder?
BR: Yeah.
SS: You see the little metal band around his left ankle?
BR: Yeah.
SS: And underneath it says "State of Minnesota, DNR"?
BB: Yeah.
SS: You see the dot on the I in Minnesota?
BB: Yeah.
SS: Spit.
BR: Okay. (HE HAWKS, SPITS, PAUSE. DISTANT BWANG, BIRD CRY)
SS: Pretty good spitting. Contestant two ----you see that horse trotting down the street? (HORSE HOOVES, OFF)
DR: Yeah.
SS: You see how every other step his tail flies up in the air?
DR: Yeah.
SS: You see what's right under his tail?
DR: You mean, the------.
SS: That's what I mean. Spit.
DR: (HAWK, SPIT. PAUSE. HORSE WHINNY)
SS: Contestant No. 3 ---- you see that bookstore over on Snelling Avenue----
GK: Yeah.
SS: You see the poster in the window for the poetry reading by Robert Bly?
GK: Yeah.
SS: You see the butterfly on the shoulder of his serape----
GK: You know, I think I'm gonna drop out right here. Sorry. (STING) I was in the whooping contest against one other contestant.
JS: I am Shoshana, Woman of Steel, and Dean of Alternative Studies.
GK: Alternative to what?
JS: Everything other than what they think they know, that's what I teach them.
GK: You teach whooping?
JS: I teach a workshop on whooping for Wasps and whimpering whippersnappers, teach em how to whoop so they can strip wallpaper. Where I'm from ---- Winnepesauky ---- whooping is part of worship. (SHE WHOOPS) Oh yeah. We don't sit in church Sunday all silent and grumpy. No, we do not. (WHOOP) We are not statuary. We are living beautiful men and women. Amen. (WHOOP) (BRIDGE) (CHORD)
GK: So I lost on the whooping, too.
FN: Shooting competition. Entrants step to the line, please.
(CROWD HUBBUB)
TR (BRIT): Each contestant shall use his pistol to punctuate a line from Shakespeare. Read the line and insert a comma (SFX), colon (SFX), semicolon (SFX), or period. You first, sir.
BR: Be not afraid of greatness (COLON) some are born great (COMMA) some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them(PERIOD)
GK: The better part of valour is discretion(PERIOD)
BR: Though this be madness (COMMA) yet there is method in 't(PERIOD).
GK: To be, or not to be(COLON) that is the question(PERIOD)
BR: You forgot the comma.
GK: Where?
BR: After "TO BE". To be (COMMA), or not to be (COLON) that is the question (PERIOD).
GK: Guess I am not then.
BR: Yes. You have achieved non-existence.
GK: Oh for three. Skunked.
BR: We had a football team like that once. This year we were conference champions.
GK: How'd you do that?
BR: When the college president can shoot straight AND punctuate, it gets people's attention. I don't say it was the reason we won----- but it didn't hurt.
GK: Good to meet you, Big Brian. Anytime you're out west on the dusty godforsaken plains, look us up.
BR: I must just do that.
GK: C'mon, Dusty. We been out-spit and out-whooped and out-gunned --- time to vamoose. (HORSE WHINNY)
TR: Let's get out of here before we are outsourced and depantsed.
GK: Decertified.
TR: Dishonored and discounted.
GK: Unsung. Unseated.
TR: Decreased, demoted, and downgraded.
GK: Deprecated and downplayed.
TR: Dislodged.
GK: Deposed.
TR: Unhorsed.
GK: Unhorsed indeed. One good thing about being a cowboy, no matter how degraded you may feel, you still get to ride.
TR: Keep moving.
GK: Don't stop, or they'll catch up with you.
TR: Let's go. (WHOOPS, HORSE WHINNIES, GALLOPING HOOVES)
(THEME)
SS: The Lives of the Cowboys.....brought to you by Durango Brand Deodorant.....makes you smell good but still like a cowboy.
(THEME OUT)