FADE IN

INT. UPPER CLASS HOME LIVING ROOM – NIGHT

A man, BEN, wearing pajama pants and a tee shirt, is reading his newspaper. His wife, BARBRA, wears a flowered robe and is curled on the sofa, reading a book.

BEN

Do you hear that?

Ben drops his paper and tilts his head. We hear the faint sound of music coming from outside the home.

BARBRA

What?

BEN

Sounds like… music.

The music is getting louder. The song is ‘Toot Toot Toosie Goodbye’  by Al Jolson

BARBRA
(shrugging, unconcerned)

I guess someone is having a party.

The doorbell rings.

BEN

Who could that be at this hour?

The man gets up from his chair and walks to the window by the front door. He peeks outside.

BEN (CONT’D)

It’s the Johnsons!

The man moves to open door. As his hand touches the doorknob, his wife leaps from the sofa.

BARBRA

Wait, Ben! Don’t open the door!

BEN

What? Why?

BARBRA

The Johnsons. What are they wearing?

BEN
(peeks out the window again)

She’s in a dress and he’s in a suit.

BARBRA

Old-timey outfits?

BEN

Old-timey? Well, now that you mention it, they’re both wearing hats…

BARBRA

I knew it! Whatever you do, don’t open that door!

BEN

Barbra, what is it?

BARBRA

The Johnsons… They’ve gone Gatsby!

BEN
(his face is awash with horror)

Turn off all the lights!

Ben and Barbra scurry to turn off the lights on the first floor. They meet back in the foyer, holding their breath as they stare nervously at their front door. The doorbell rings again and they jump.

MRS. JOHNSON
(calling from outside in a sing-song voice)

We know you’re in there, sillies…

MR. JOHNSON

Yes, come on, old sport! Open the door!

Barbra covers her mouth, trying not to scream.

BEN

Do you think it’s the whole community?

BARBRA

I don’t know! This happened to my sister’s neighborhood, but I never thought it would happen here!

There is knocking at the door and the doorbell rings again.

MRS. JOHNSON

Do come out and have a glass of giggle water with us!

There is rapping on the window at the side of the house. Ben and Barbra whirl towards the noise. We can see a woman in flapper dress waving at the window, the large yellow feather in her headband bobbing.

BEN

They’re coming to get you, Barbra, there’s one of them now!

FLAPPER
(calling through the closed window)

Barbra! You simply must join us! It’s the bee’s knees!

BARBRA
(turning to Ben, her face ashen.)

We’ll have to board up the windows.

There is shuffling on the front porch.  A crowd is gathering. Gay laughter erupts.  The tune ‘My Blue Heaven’ fills the night air.

BEN

My god, the movie’s just come out. This could go on for weeks! Hell, it’s DiCaprio! It could be months! Remember ‘Titanic?’

BARBRA

This will be worse than ‘Mad Men.’ The theme parties, the costumes…

Barbara touches her head, a glazed, faraway look in her eyes.

BARBRA (CON’T)

I don’t even own cloche hat…

BEN
(grabbing Barbra by the shoulders)

Barbra! Snap out of it! Don’t be a dumb dora!

Ben slaps his hand to his mouth, horrified. 

BEN (CON’T)

It’s happening. Barbra, we’re doomed.

Ben turns and steps to the window. With a final glance back at Barbra, he throws back the curtains. On the porch there is a party in full swing. Men in homburg hats and women holding cocktail glasses grin and toast to them through the window. 

MR. JOHNSON

Join us, old sport! There’s plenty of hooch for everyone!

MRS. JOHNSON

Everything is jake!

BARBRA
(her attention captured by something beyond the crowd)

My god… Ben, look! Look out at the bay!

BEN

What?

BARBRA

Remember when you asked Sampson to replace the dock light bulb?

BEN

Yes?

BARBRA

Look!

We see the light on the end of Ben and Barbra’s dock, glowing in the darkness. It shines with an eerie green hue.

BEN

 That fool!

BARBRA
(monotone, all hope lost)

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ swells, mixing with the sound of the people chattering and glasses clicking outside.

FADE TO BLACK

When people first explained Twitter to me, my response was: “So it’s Facebook, but with less words? I don’t get it. That’s stupid. That won’t last.”

I’m not what you call a “visionary.”

So when Twitter released the Vine video app, dammit, I hopped right on the bandwagon (well, like 6 months later) and made one:

What is a Vine Video?

A Vine video is just a video, but you make it with the Vine video app. In short, all the Vine video app does is provide an interface that triggers the video record when you touch your screen, and stops it when you remove your finger (I assume you were using your finger) from the screen. After 6 seconds (well, actually 6.4 seconds) the video ends. That’s it. You get 6 seconds of video.

Vine Video Sounds Really Stupid.

Yes. See Twitter story above.

I think the point is to encourage people to share very short videos much the way Twitter encourages people to share every nuance of their day in micro-bursts. The bonus is that you can take a little video, change something, take a little more,  change something… much like stop motion photography. With regular phone video, when you stop, the video is over, and you’d have to edit various clips together to achieve what Vine video does.

Fine. How Do I Make a Vine Video?

1. Download the Vine video app to your phone. Be sure it is a cell phone, because old fashion rotary phones have very low bandwidth.
2. Ta da! You have the Vine video app! Now open it and tap on the little video camera in the upper right to take your first video.
3. Point at something interesting. Touch the screen. See the little progress bar at the top? When that fills up, your video is done, and you’ll see a preview of it. It loops eternally, which can be funny or annoying.
4. Delete, upload/share or just ignore your video.

Tips for Vine Videos

I learned a few things while trying to make my Vine video, that I’m hoping to can help you should you decided to be cool and make one yourself.

1. When you finish a Vine video, you are immediately confronted with a screen that asks you to share it. This caused me a lot of anxiety. I didn’t want to share it, but I didn’t want to lose it. Don’t worry, it is automatically saved to your camera roll. You can share it later if you like.
2. After finally getting it into my head that videos look better when you hold your camera horizontally (landscape), I discovered Vine video only works holding the camera vertically, which is why when I proudly shared my first Vine video on Twitter and the Vine video site, it was sideways. Which I didn’t realize. I thought it would correct. Not so much.
3. Be conscious of noise. Remember it records sounds too, so if you’re talking while you’re doing your little micro-bursts, it will sound like “eh- bu- de- soup- bur- ha-” when you’re done.
4. Also watch for shadows. In my wine cork video above, you can see where I leaned in too far and cast a shadow that blips on the lower left.
5. You’ll quickly realize that your Vine video is sort of shaky. It’s hard to keep a camera still and tap on the screen and keep it in the same spot if you’re doing a stop motion-type project like my wine corks. Get a tripod.  I got this one, which I LOVE. Its little arms can be curled around objects for odd angles and everything.

Those were the most important Vine video tips I discovered. This post is by no means all encompassing, so if you have any questions, just let me know. I don’t know much, but I DO know we have to take down the 60 foot dead pine tree in our front yard and I can’t wait to make a Vine video of it coming down!

Another Vine video:

a person affected with a mental disability who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (as mathematics or music).

My husband, Mike, is an idiot savant. This might strike you as lucky for me, in that we can go on road trips to Vegas and make millions thanks to Mike’s card counting skills, but he isn’t that kind of savant. Definitely. Definitely not. Nor can he pluck music from the air and instantly create it on piano, or calculate the size of the universe. He’s not that useful sort of idiot savant.

Mikey is an idiot savant in the truest sense of the word.

My husband is an Idiot Idiot Savant. A savant at being an idiot.

Shortly after meeting Mike’s mother for the first time, she was crying laughing at something he said. We’re talking break out the Depends, call-the-ambulance-this-woman-has-stopped-breathing crying laughing. Consequently, almost the first thing I ever heard her say to him was “You’re so stupid!”

I remember being jarred by the comment. What sort of mother calls her son stupid? Seemed a little harsh. Especially when she was turning all purple like that. She had to really try to call him stupid.

I totally understand now. Now I say that phrase every day.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you may have a taste of what an idiot idiot savant Mike is, but now, Animal-Channel like, I’ve captured the essence of it on film for the first time. Well, actually, he captured it. Because he’s an idiot.

Idiot Savant Theatre Presents: Attack of the Falcon

The Scene:

INT: Night

Mike says he’s going to stay up to watch baseball. I rise from the sofa and head to bed, because it is late (for me) and because I’d rather go to the prom with Pinhead from Hellraiser than watch baseball.

As I begin to fall asleep, Mike walks into the darkened bedroom. On the bureau across from the bed, just inside the door, there is a phone/camera perched on a neat little tripod I bought for making Vine videos. It is there because we’ve been trying to nanny-cam-style capture the dog, who sneaks off and humps my pillow whenever he gets frustrated. (I didn’t say we weren’t both idiots.)

Mike sees the camera and announces we’re going to make a sex tape.

I immediately know I am in trouble. Not because Mike has any interest in making a sex tape. Exactly because I know he has no interest in making a sex tape.

Mike announces there is one rule to the sex tape: I have to refer to him as “Falcon.” I have no idea where this came from. He has never asked me to call him Falcon before.  Cheetah, sure, but never Falcon.

*sigh*

He is so stupid.

Mike starts the video.

Shit. Here we go…

I start chanting a fevered litany of “Michael. Michael. MICHAEL” as he approaches me, but there is no stopping the Falcon. He pretends to be a bird of prey repeatedly attacking me. Which tickles. A LOT. I doubt falcons tickle their prey as a rule, but he’s an idiot savant, not a falcon savant.

Sadly, what you can’t see because the video is dark is that in-between attacks he turns to the camera and smiles like a lunatic to show that he knows he is being filmed because that exactly what a person actually making a sex tape would not do.  Let me be clear: he isn’t pretending to be a falcon, he is pretending to be a porn star named Falcon making the worst porn of all time. If you asked Mike to make a sex tape, this is what you would get.

Be sure to have on the volume as you watch the Falcon caught on tape, as it is my laughter that really elucidates what daily life with an idiot savant is like. If you’re at work don’t have it too loud because it will sound like someone is being murdered in your cubical, and after all the time you took hiding the evidence of the person you really did murder in your cubical, discovery now would be sad and ironic.

Oh, and don’t forget to win a wine cartoon tee shirt! 

As I’ve mentioned before, I couldn’t draw a bath, something that saddens me and has caused me irreparable mental anguish. I was born to be an artist… except for that whole talent thing. But then (cue the trumpets) a twitter buddy Harrison Wheeler, who IS a cartoonist (and who also wrote a book, what an ass) sent me some art based on one of my tweets and we’ve now collaborated to create the awesome wine cartoon below! Which means…

You can now share this wine cartoon with all your drunken girlfriends!

This friendship-saving wine cartoon will save you the embarrassing issue of having to tell them what a lush they are. I’m all about public service.

You can also follow either one (or both!) of us on Twitter (@kidfreeliving & @wheelerharrison) or Facebook (Me - Him)  and share the wine cartoon that way blah blah blah.

Also available as a wine cartoon tee shirt!

WIN A WINE CARTOON TEE SHIRT! Just by commenting below….

What’s that? A high quality wine cartoon tee shirt for free? Have you gone mad?

NO! I’m going to give one wine cartoon tee to a random commenter on this post. It may help your chances if you tell me if “commenter” is spelled “commentor” or “commenter” because I have no idea and I’d like to know and I’ve already used up all my Google searches for the day trying to figure out if Beyonce is pregnant.

I’ll put all the commenters -ors in a hat and let the dog pick the winner on June 21st.

Now go get yourself a glass of wine, it’s FRIDAY!

Sad Monsters: Growling on the Outside, Crying on the Inside

The concept is brilliant in its simplicity: What if monsters more complex than we imagined (other than teen vampires waxing mopey)? What if that hairy hand reaches out from under the bed because the monster attached to it has abandonment issues?

Some of my favorite sad monsters:

The Joy of Unicorns, where the narrator makes it clear if you’re not hanging with unicorns like the other virtuous maidens, there’s a good chance you’re a slut. “Good luck finding a husband!”

Diet Hansel, where the witch from Hansel & Gretel’s diet of children fattened on her house of candy catches up with her. Time to start feeding Hansel veggies.

The Werewolf Whisperer, where chunks of the text are “text obscured by blood stains.”

Whao Oh Here She Comes, where Hall & Oates’ “Maneater” is a real monster.

And there is a SAD MONSTERS BONUS!

Not only is Sad Monsters  funny, it is excellent for bathroom reading. Each story is only 2-3 pages long. The downside, is my husband thinks I’m insane because I spent the last few weeks cackling in the bathroom.

Not every essay is a blue ribbon winner, some made me laugh out loud, some just made me smile, one or two I flipped through because I have the attention span of a two year-old, post-Easter basket buffet. But Sad Monsters definitely keeps the funny coming much more reliably than writers of similar fare who tend to beat a clever premise to death with cliche jokes.

So if you’re looking for a funny book, built for today’s short attention spans, Sad Monsters might just let you live long enough to read it.