Originally printed on yellow lined paper, each part on a separate page. Performers had envelopes in which each of their speeches were kept, one envelope per speech. Each set of speeches began with the performers opening their envelopes.
Narrator: Welcome, again, to another installment of Disaster Opera Theatre.
The premise, tonight, is -- of course -- that of the alien civilizations represented on Earth's outer aura -- that aspect of the planet which we can experience and observe -- say -- in UFO's or otherwise -- and most especially among us, as they must be -- are only the most second-rate found -- Earth deserving no serious attention -- scholarly or touristy -- being so very fucked-up, as we have found to be the case exactly on an other occasion on this very spot: the floor of the Hotel Utah. Which supports music such as we are interested in performing tonight most probably due to an infestation of aliens -- who -- as I have remarked -- are far less than the cream of the alien crop. We're in for a senseless time of it, folks; here, as we await the end of the world (due to excessively dire calamities which include total lack of sense on the parts of pretty much everyone, and cowardice too). You know the story: we're all pretending it's not as bad as it is -- which is why I'm not going to go on with this intro much longer. We've agreed to ignore the environmental catastrophe which is the world. And we're on drugs, and it helps. So this, my friends, is the Disaster Opera Theatre "Insider's Guide" into the story of those who will be able to pull out when the final curtain comes crashing down on the rest of us: they having UFO's to get into. This evening is dedicated to those few foreign souls who walk our planet, simple-minded as they may be. Worth absolutely nothing to us. Not going to help. Just here for a bit of the great plunge into the crap-heap of us, to witness and to ignore. Gonna be bozos just like me and you, and going to laugh about it all -- life and death -- and maybe give each other a kick in the pants. And totally beyond our understanding: mocking and taunting us, perhaps entirely inadvertantly, with their nonsensical chatter.
Please -- as always -- drink up. We want you to be as sloshed as possible 'cause the end of the world does approach, and it's best to ignore it and be out of our minds and bodies, and off somewhere else when it happens, 'causeconceivably it might hurt -- a lot, and for a long time. Meanwhile, we've got three good-for-nothing aliens laughing and talking about nothing, and we're going to play the music you've come to hear...
ONE: Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight we present an ill-starred story of the cosmos. Our sun: no more than a cheaply gilt ball of fabric! Our planet Earth: A place where kleptomania is considered injurious! Where stories are invisible if they are too "abstract." And whose mode of dress is irrationally based upon whims of fashion, rather than being determined by a vote.
TWO: Previous description of space overridden. The big answer: how big is it? And how many doctors? How many stories is it tall, and how widely built is yet to be told? No one knows!
THREE: Noiseless description of space: a place where big punks hang out asking each other: "How stoned is well enough? And when do the doctors get here? And was Elvis tall, and was his family spontaneous?"
ONE: I sign my stories in broken pencil: there's no fasting the meat of the bones of this libretto's slam-damaged frame. The words exist in the stomach first.
TWO: MY pen-name is "Dictionary Apollo." Unstable everywhere: They tell me: "You'll be existing in the minor leagues -- if anywhere, Dictionary Apollo!"
THREE: Apollo has laundered the TV: we see a galling kind of milk commercial, in which a cat scampers around with expressionist and wordy rodents. "You'll be swimming in the adjustable cat vat -- if the eeriness of space doesn't get you first!" they squeak.
ONE: I have sorrows to report: that my attempt to play possum failed yesterday. Steelworkers smashed my car to bits. Penniless friends of mine had to slip by the guy at the door by native cunning; they are here consuming jukebox songs and the jokes of the planet's sweetest orchestra. Our president promised "One waffle for everyone and every thing." Given my lack of experience with aliens, I wondered what city would they arrive in? Would they fart about in Europe like homesick college kids? Viewing it all as a monument to eeriness? Or as a bunch of silos stuffed with Picassos and pigs? Or would they appear in New York, wasting time in ass-first regressive jazz dives?
TWO: Some sorrows to report: that stunned calf we pummeled to within an inch of its life has recovered sufficiently to slip by the native guards, and is continuing its quest to eat of a remote apple -- which experienced some emotional difficulties. Impatiently, experiencing sudden interruptions to the harvest, farmers are getting acquainted with the feelings of families who were behind their expulsion from tractor-ville. How could city people carry a grudge so rooftop in its outlook that construction of tall silos took precedence over tending to the distraught apples and pigs? One farmer lifted his hands to the night skies in an attitude we could not fathom, saying, "I will repay my brail-learning days by wasting time marching around in amazement with jazz."
THREE: I have seven pimentos to report! Pimento Uno criticizes our application of fists when we pummeled you. Number Two questions our clumps. The third says, "C'mon! We recovered after slipping on your banana peel, but what gives?" The fourth says, "The natives are continuing their quest for an alphabet of sniffles." The fifth is in where farmers plant pimentos, next to the sage. The sixth is petrified, chained to a stump and flogged. The last one will fit in only the biggest of tummies."
ONE: "We come on this night from Aquarius," say the aliens to Ames, exhibiting an attitude toward keyholes we could nearly -- but ultimately could not -- fathom. The aliens pounded on doors, even after Ames gave them his keys.
TWO: Sundays want to match Christian days against Saturdays which are pagan. They are advertising for a saxophonist to walk around in a gulch with jazz. This will prove Sunday's superiority, as they have to hire musicians while Saturday gets them free. "I may be but an idle theorist, but what you're doing will only work on clarinetists," says Ames. "This is why Autonomy of Reason has rebelled."
ONE: Last night I lifted my binoculars to my eyes and saw the aliens infiltrating my neighborhood. Now, I'm not opposed to quiet, nor do I want to slam cleanliness, but the blaring gorgeousness of purple flowers overgrowing our house had likewise not been going unnoticed. So when that expedition of rigid-minded aliens lined my street, well, gentlemen and ladies, you can imagine the sound of the eight symphonies of Bruckner I played simultaneously until, bored of the accidental dissonance, I employed a guitarist whose reawakening cattail-sonics had to banish these space-visitors from my midst. But they would not go.
TWO: In like manner, baths weren't taken, nor did cleanliness go unnoticed many years ago, when an exploratory expedition was launched by a civilization of steelmakers of religious material. Eight masochists who felt everything as tumorous: trees, oceans and rivers. They headed into stalls manned by pump devotees. The journey was long and successful. Pleasing to the sedate as well as the great.
THREE: "Ames, we presented an unnoticed and hence banished lapdog long ago, and the dog said you were pitiless," replied the aliens. Ames scoffed. "Eight masochists who felt the lash from your hand have identified you as purveyors of chronic. Do you think me a gringo, idly headed into some kind of misconceptions market?"
ONE: Now they're staying at a friend's house in El Cerrito -- a computer programmer named Ames. And what we'd like to know is whether the original explorers were competent, because these ones staying with Ames are not. I'm afraid we've got a bit of a problem.
TWO: The story proceeds murkily. What we'd like to see levelled is the blocks of logical give-and-take as the drama advances. You don't follow us? That's good! What Ames has done is not. I'm afraid we've only got a concept of the problem.
THREE: This story odorizes the Hotel Utah in chapters, consecutively. What we'd like to see instead is a mix of its implicit Hinduism with the logic of dramatic advances. That's our concept of the problem.
ONE: They pulled into town in April. "Hey Ames!" they said. "Hey guys!" said Ames. "I haven't seen you since you had me abducted from that cornfield in Iowa!"
TWO: My work was interrupted just now: I've been working my way into comparisons since April. "Hey Ames!" a goat-herder said. "Hey, stay out of my dubious affairs!" said Ames. "I haven't suspected you since you had that microphone through which you berated me in your spaceship!"
THREE: My work contains time magically now: I'm working in comparisons to April. "Hey Ames!" a knee-high alien said. "Hey, speak into my opening of hair!" This plea influences Ames to respond. "I lingered in this opera because this particular microphone has a hole through which honey drips, bathing me in feelings."
ONE: "Man -- we keep telling you Ames: that wasn't us. It must have been someone else who looked like us!"
TWO: "We keep telling you Ames: that wasn't us. Our companions smartly disguised themselves to look like us or indeed anybody else but us who looked like Rhoda from the Mary Tyler Moore show!"
THREE: The aliens got mad. "We rule you Ames, by our terms. Our sadness is only a show to sedate police who have picked on us, or, unthinkably, anybody else!"
ONE: Ames raised his eyebrows and muttered, loud enough that his visitors yelped. "Your eyebrow raising is too loud, Ames! Wait -- what did he just mutter?"
TWO: Ames' perch upon the branch of reality is precarious enough that sunshine can knock him off. "Your bothering of me is relatively vile," he said. "Can you tremble your way into a frenzy with your buttony-lipped mutter?"
THREE: But Ames' suggestions were engraved upon the plaque of reality. We trudged him off the premises. "Toilet entertaining of idols is just a lot of twirling," he grumbled. "I tremble on bar stools to hear your muggy mutter better!" I told him.
ONE: Ames unbuttoned his lips. "I don't know; the eyebrows and my yelping drowned it out."
TWO: That Ames was then arrested we only fantasized; the wiggling of the aliens' eyebrows and my yelping like a dog providing the accompanying amusement necessary for the imagination to latch onto, giving us a boost into hyperspace and back to Earth, or at least one of the larger satellites, upon which Ames sat, grinning like a monkey.
THREE: Ames then carefully configurated the situation: the stumbling over the aliens' eyebrows and my subsequent straddling like a dog. Light amusement, lack of imagination -- just enough to get us out into hyperspace and back to Earth: looking at economically disadvantaged marsupials of the comfortable sort, burning carbohydrates, speaking like a policeman.
ONE: "I said, `Yeah, right.' They (my abductors) just happened to look exactly like you, and they came from the same planet as you, and they looked at my driver's license to get my address -- just as you must have done because here you are!"
TWO: "Ha ha," I said. "Yeah, the humor sure is topographical," they agreed. Whoa! My ego (my "yourself") just led me along the edge of this story's cliff, exactly like any other narrative. Defined posthumously, the Bill of Rights is analogously compacted garbage of all the freedoms you aren't allowed to have!"
THREE: "Ha ha," I said. "Yeah, the belts sure are loose on my pants!" The aliens laughed too. "Whoa! Current contempt of the totalitarian regime consisting of you!" Hey! Pick me up off this story's page, won't you, Plonsey?
ONE: The aliens speak through the mouths of us. "Posh! We looked you up in the phone book!" "Yeah! And lots of people come from our planet!" they said -- or we did.
TWO: Impossibilities coerced bits of sense from the idea-shortage book. "Yeah! And obviously lots of people presume you're my son!" the space-junkies said.
THREE: "Yeah! And obviously lots of slumlord wrestling matches! You're in my dreams tonight!" the space-ogress dictated.
ONE: Rick shook his head sadly. "Your tiny pants are on fire from all the lying you've been doing. Come on: the only time we spent together was on your spaceship during that segment of my abduction which was devoted to prodding me and tormenting me, so that's the only place you could know me from, and it's clear form our friendly greetings that we do know each other."
TWO: Ames basks in fog sadly. "Tropical tiny-hoof horses are ridden by hucksters, willing to explain what you've been seeing. Come on: the only chance of sense-portrayal shakes your spaceship to pieces!"
THREE: Ames basked in the doorway. "Blunt and tiny orgasms are honked, grunted upon, and then discarded."
ONE: "No it isn't, Ames! We just like you!" they said. "But you are crazy beyond our help if you think we're your friends. We're just here to hang out for a bit. We know no one else on this planet. Maybe you can introduce us around, and we'll get into some `tight spots' and `scrapes' from which Batman and/or Superman will rescue us. We have some kryptonite of indeterminate color that we would like to try on them. Do you know if Batman will lose his powers of reason or speech?"
TWO: "Rock isn't beating scissors anymore, Ames! But a single penny can be a gentle if flimsy reminder, if you get one in brown dress like all our friends wear. We're regularly hanging out in fur, one bit at a time. Do the guys in the lunchroom know whether Truth itself will survive in the `spaceship of reason' -- which is the collected works of Shakespeare?"
THREE: "Methods, Ames! Irritation with the youngsters! If rain spills contaminated water on the tympani our friend Ward plays; if we're filthy and drenched, out in our suits -- it's still a bargain, whether we survive or go up in smoke."
ONE: Ames shrugged. "Batman's a real jerk. You wouldn't want to meet him. I know a guy who used to work for him -- guy's name is Robin? And Batman just totally repudiated him one day, just because Robin made some mistake driving the batmobile back from one of those lousy parties at Commissioner Gordon's office."
TWO: Ames shrugged. "Batman's a querulous match-making goose of a clown of a child. I offered the dolt guidance when he captured a criminal whose wish it was to stifle kronos. I grabbed a shillalah, danced with Police Chief O'Hara, then engraved my knuckles in his face. Batman had a tantrum for two hours, tyrannously ordering us around, just because Robin shared some medicine with a Policewoman named Suzanne, using the framework of his hyperactivity as a veil. Suzanne got wired and flung herself at Commissioner Gordon's baseball, if you know what I'm indicating."
THREE: Ames boiled over. "Sloshy and querulous label-making! That's what you are up to, you goose! My advice and comment to you would be to proceed to get the dream-guidance you need. For instance, your apocalyptic vision is no more than the story of the magician who dies when he captures a princess to attain a few gold marks, and to stifle his father. A Sunday thief, drained of significance." And Batman's a chicken, I say. Thus revealing the fowl behind the cowl, so to speak.
ONE: "Oh, wow! That's really lame! Batman didn't even give this guy any warning? Maybe it isn't lame: maybe that's how they do it here?" asked one alien of the other.
TWO: "Wow! That's really lame! Batman said for us to give this guy an overlapping sort of drubbing, you know? It was bad, yeah, but also notoriously bawdy!" said one motley alien to the other.
THREE: The aliens were intrigued, of course. "Wow! That's Batman talking! He's overlapping the edges of nonsense, sort of curbing it, you know? Yeah! Earth: again pioneering its notorious rudeness: bawdily howling like a billion demons, nudging each other, frenetic faces twisted in grimaces!"
ONE: "Perhaps," said the other, waiting nervously for Ames to respond. Clearly neither alien enjoyed hearing about this side of the Cowled Crimefighter -- but Ames was inexorably demystifying that individual for them.
TWO: "Obviously," said the other, waiting formerly for Ames to sign over his right to live in houses. "Clearly our saviour reneges upon his promises due to the uncouth antics of the Cowled Juggler -- but Ames smelled out our plan!"
THREE: "Precisely," said the other alien, too sheepish and petrified to speak so bluntly. "Recently aloft, we speak the uncouth language! But Ames deserved to hear it."
ONE: "What's worst is the way he did it," said Ames. "He called Robin in for a meeting, told him he was fired, and then had security guards walk Robin off the premises. In front of Aunt Harriet and Alfred. Robin didn't even get a chance to clean his desk."
TWO: "I did?" screeched Ames, aghast. "I was inexorably counting down from ten for your blast-off when Monteverdi's opera `Orfeo' was played. What is worst is the way that Monteverdi revived ecstasy," said Ames reprovingly. "I suppose that is how I foiled you."
THREE: "I did?" screeched Ames. "I blanch inexorably! I take issue with your talk! You can buy me off with cash, though. Why is the worst estimate always the one that you get? I mean," Ames said glumly, "I'll get nothing." And he devoured a large piece of marzipan.
ONE: The aliens shook their heads sadly. "Did he have lot of personal stuff on his desk?" one asked.
TWO: The aliens bowed and grimaced. "Proof of our foiling is how we called Robin in from hiding, told him he was much improved, and we had ream of paper to thwack him with. Next thing was we went to some isolated spot, for humping Robin off the premises. In a wobbly old car belonging to Aunt Frankenstein or someone. And she did protest. That is when we got foiled."
THREE: The aliens bowed and added, "We are nervous," said one. "We told you we had improved an aspect of paper. What it is is that what you write on it changes, in gradual stages, from something generic to a complete vacation to a wacked-out rawness. We sing a wobbly old polyphony while tumbling, making a heap of mistakes and misconceptions." The other alien nodded. "And a `jingle sniff protest.' That is, we sing smelly commercial songs outside the White House. Thereby, it is your president whose brains we get vibrated, and we get foiled."
ONE: "Who?" said Ames. "Oh! Robin? Well, yeah! Robin had momentos and memorabilia from encounters with King Tut, the Riddler, and Mr.~Frigid!"
TWO: From this angle, of course, it's in incident we would prefer to downplay. Our religious advisors shake their heads evangelically. "Attempts to have one's way with Robin are an insult to our personal compact with the Creator," one says. "You guys make me want to get out of the business and into pornography," says another. "Let's launch a torpedo assault upon Ames," says a third. But Robin waved bye-bye to the bogeyman-in-the-snowsuit-trapper (which I believe must be the King Metaphor of this event).
THREE: From this angle, Mantra, it's an incident of performance off-the-cuff. The fictional religious jerk shakes his head nearly off his neck, and says, "One's way with food is one's way with the sacred Birdie in one's own personal Tree. So let's give a plant to Ames! By my calculations he has writhed long enough for taste distinction!"
ONE: "Mr.~Freeze? Wow! Do you think we could meet the Riddler?"
TWO: Meanwhile, the aliens were examining our religious advisors with openmouthed enthusiasm. "Crosses? Wow! You made them at the mill, right? You shook splinters out of your eyebrows, peripherally observed our untucked shirttails, and you chastised us for the sin of slovenly?" "You have truly been guilty of the sin of slovenly, so I spit at you and try to hit you and hurt you and do you harm!" said our religious advisors. "Planet Earth repudiates you!"
THREE: Meanwhile, misdemeanors were being committed by Ames. Certain valuable advisors were greeted with warmed enthusiasm. "You are celebrated? Wow! You observed our untucked-shirts phenomenon, and you published a book about it? Then give me all your money!" Ames was truly guilty. I spit at his jokes and concentrate instead on drugs and manners. The religious jerk nodded agreement. "Jokes will do you harm!" he warned, raising an accomplished finger. "This Planet un-horses you!"
ONE: Ames laughed. "The original Riddler? Yeah, he's over here all the time. He comes by to watch TV! His own set was compounded by the police because they found marijauna seeds on it. Every time you turned it on, you could smell the dope smell. It's just as well that he's rid of it. Or sometimes we go over to the Peddler's place -- he's got a big screen."
TWO: Ames laughed. "The forward-moving part of Earth? Or the part that stands still and gets slapped? Yeah, there's misery spread all over our little ensemble. The masses imagine their worth to be that of TV receptors! Though my own set is but one inch wide!"
THREE: Ames laughed. "The greeting of Anything is a joke! And the shiver of poet's garrets, and bags of candy! And Philosophy is laughing itself away!
ONE: "Who's the Peddler?" asked one alien.
TWO: Incidentally, every backdrop you see next March at the Opera Renaissance was made possible by Disaster Opera Theatre. We work on opera, sucking down good artificial sweeteners while we toil. We tangentially sell the junky doors we salvage to the vitamin storehouse.
THREE: The very Air of the Sixty Unbreakable Minutes is Theatre!"
ONE: "He's the Riddler's older brother," explained Ames. "He just sells junk door-to-door."
TWO: "Excuse me," said Ames. "I've just received a telegram from the president." Ames cleared his throat. "`We measures!"' it says. The telegram converses with us."
THREE: "I'm a trapshooter," continued Ames. "I've just received a frustrating response to my bloody rebellion. It says, `The flyers surface with us.' I guess it's talking about you guys."
ONE: "Oh! We understand!" the aliens nodded. "You mean like lightbulbs and magazine subscriptions?"
TWO: The aliens grew excited. "You mean: `In goes the leaders and out drains the wisdom?' That is a saying we abide by."
THREE: The aliens raised one eyebrow. "You innocent goofball, Ames!"
ONE: Ames squinted at them. "Man, what planet you guys from?" Ames scratched his head. "Oh -- wait -- yeah, I guess people do sell those things here too."
TWO: Ames squinted at their vanity. "By my achin' fanny! You think everything has to do with you and the stupid planet you guys are from! I'm from a planet too, but I don't go on and on about it!" Ames scratched his pound of chicken parts surreptitiously. "I snuffed this bird myself," he admitted. "I cry rose petals of sadness when I think of the suffering I went through! I've only popped up to sell those whatever-they-are things you got here. They're somewhat stale, so it's not going well."
THREE: Ames squinted at his damaged vanity. "By my shabby fanny! Laughter abuses everything I have! Imagine myself with you, and the whole stupid planet howls!"
ONE: "And candy bars!" said the aliens and Ames together, causing us all to laugh ruefully.
TWO: The aliens looked at one another and at Ames' empty ledger book. "Nought transactions!" they howled.
THREE: Since that time, months of sadness have passed and the twitching records of aliens have nullified our music. I've only popped up to sell you our flaws, like so many shovels. Ames would say we're no more than "derivative heckling primates." But I've exchanged the post-mortem with the prologue. The aliens look at their multi-colored ledger book of transactions, and take their leave.