This Ain't Your Bob Hope Variety Road Trip, Folks...

This is day 11 of Nicky and Mike's "30 Minus 2 Days of Writing"...and we are fast (well slowly) approaching the half-way point of the challenge.  So far I've done pretty well, only using up two prior blogs (one because I just had to...it was a promise that I made -- and one because I had to...it was a migraine that I had).  I never write these things ahead of time - that would be cheating...and that's why some of mine are probably abysmally bad compared to the works of so many others.  So, with that said and out of the way, head on over there and enjoy today's prompt:  Road Trip

 

 

When you think of road trips...you might think of those Chevy Chase "Vacation" films...but I don't like them, so you will find no songs from Lindsay Buckingham here when I cue the intro music.

 

Cue intro music...
...The Who's - Going Mobile...

 

 

Aaaaaah...that's more like it.

 

I got my snacks packed and my pillow fluffed and I'm cosying on in for the long haul.  Let me just tilt my seat back like so and...okay...let me just try this again...ugggggggh...nope.  Let me ask someone else to do it. 

 

"Hey, could you tilt my seat back for me...I'm apparently too wimpy to push hard enough.  What do you mean my seat is already in the reclined position?"

 

Well, that's special.  If this seat's already in the reclined position, something tells me I don't want to see it upright.

 

It IS a nice plush bus, tho.  The school must have shelled out a lot o'cash to charter this puppy.  Let me just put my seat belt on...and...um...great...no seat belts.  I thought seat belts were mandatory?  Let me take a guess...seat belts are mandatory on every single vehicle except buses in Alabama, right?  

 

Great...my head is directly underneath one of the little "drop-down" movie screens -- happy, happy, joy, joy...I can see my head hitting it now when we go over a bump.  Lovely.  I take blood thinners.  I can see me having to be abulance'd over to the emergency room and everyone else going off to Washington, DC.

 

How long IS this trip anyway?  Twenty something hours?  Seriously twenty something hours stuck in the confines of this cramped seat with either the window to smash my head against or that thing looming up above my head?  Nice.  Oh, won't this be special.

 

Well, heat would be nice...what is it...like 50 degrees in here?  Everyone is complaining that it's freezin...everyone but the parents up front.  Seems the bus driver and his "entourage" get their little three feet's worth of heat...we get none.  Sheesh...you're kidding me...they actually want the air conditioner turned down lower.  That's great. 

 

I can't hear a damn word anyone's saying.  I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place...well, literally and figuratively.  All these girls...do they ever shut up?    All those parents...do they ever know I exist?  I guess not on both counts.  This will be fun.  I sense a never-ending headache coming on.

 

Could be worse I guess...I could be on the boy's bus...they are probably throwing each other and playing Frisbee in the aisle.  I would really be concerned about my head then.

 

Oh...someone is talking.  Something about a film.  Woohooo!  Someone's going to put on a VCR tape...that will quiet them down.  Well, that's great, not only can I not really see the screen (of which they have about six of them precariously placed about...one directly above my head by about three inches) - but I can't hear it anyway.  My hearing is shot...and I never played in "The Who".  I can understand Pete Townshend not hearing...but me?  I worked in an office...on the flight line with all the jet engines.  Nothing to lose hearing about there.

 

Okay, let's see what's about to start...all the girls are getting exceedingly  giggly.

 

Oh, for f***k's sake!  Are you kidding me??  "Twilight"???  Well, maybe my daughter wants to see it.  Nope.  Well, that's just great - but at least they seem engrossed texting among each other...maybe I can swap seats with that girl who has the whole row to herself.  She's younger than I am and I have a death box dangling above my head waiting to cleave it in half like I'm the only watermelon at the market and Gallagher just walked in.

 

Yes!  I shamed her into it!  Woohooo!  Old people guilt.  Gotta love it.  Three seats...all to myself; gotta love it!  Sure, I can't put my feet down because there's a ton of everyone's crap shoved on the floor and beneath the seats - but I don't have to touch the floor ever...because I can stretch the entire length of my legs out across all these seats.  Now, if I could just retract these arm rests.  There's gotta be a button around somewhere...or a lever. 

 

"Uh, could someone show me where the button is that..."

 

Oh, you're joking right?  You mean you can't move these things out of the way so I can get into a semi-prone position?

 

It's raining now?  Good. Maybe the bus driver will actually go slower than 80. No such luck.

 

There's construction barrels all over the road.  Good.  Maybe the bus driver will actually go slower than 80.  Ain't happening.

 

Does this bus driver think he's in the film, "Speed"?  Seriously, is there another speed he knows other than 80 mph??? 

 

Well, let me try to go to the bathroom while everyone is engrossed in "both" films.

 

Well, lookie there...isn't that cute?  Undoubtedly I have led a sheltered life. 

 

I have never been privy to the privy on a bus before.  Hmmmm...by the looks of it...many more things to bang my head into in here.  Let me work out the mechanics of it all -- I have to balance like the people in the Cirque du Soleil ...and I have to do it while peeing with my pants around my knees?  Oh...how rich.  I guess I missed that performance of theirs on PBS - as I have no clue how it's done.  Oh, wait...is THAT what I think it is...all the way in the corner of the toilet box?  Is that...oh, yes...oh, that's disturbing.  Great, now someone will think I did THAT.  I am NOT picking up someone's poop.  Wait...I couldn't pick it up if I wanted to...there's no toilet paper!  

 

This is going to be an interesting trip...a bus chock full o' girls...no toilet paper, a poop that at any time might decide to roll right at me...and I have to learn to levitate like David Blaine for the next two minutes in order for my posterior to stay well above touching range of anything in this germ-ridden cubicle.  Good luck unclenching my bladder during that 30 second window of opportunity when the ride finally smooths out.

 

How many hours left of this?  Twenty-one?

 

Time to cue some fade-out music from another "Who" album...

 

Potato Farmers - the New Vampires?

Nosferatu, Count Dracula, Lestat, those "Twilight" books, BBC's "Being Human"...and countless other books/films/shows...are all about vampires. Now, while the allure of the vampire is quite compelling...and makes for a good story...I sat here and wondered, "Well, anyone can create a vampire story...it's like just a "continuation" of something which has been done before...a rehash of sorts. It's like taking a story like "Alice in Wonderland" and embellishing it a bit. I mean, it's been done by Lewis Carroll...but if I take it one step further or change it up a bit...it's okay? It's now mine? Well, that's too darn easy. Let's do something which hasn't been done before...but everything has been done before, right?

Yes...everything but a book/film about a potato farmer.

Oh, I checked - "Of Mice and Men" didn't specifically have potatoes...and the film had a lot of hay in it. "Witness" had a lot of hayfields, too. Movies about farmers have been done...but the really hot, lurid goings-on - on a potato farm? Especially if you start it out back in the time of the potato famine...and work it forward. The whole history of "PotatoMan".

C'mon, Will Smith did "Hancock" - I saw "Hancock". "Hancock" was horrid...not even "PotatoMan" could possibly be that bad. Hear me out here...

...the potato has had a very illustrious and compelling history. First you had the famine. (Well, I'm sure there was something before then - but you have to start somewhere.) Sure, the famine was not fun...but if you take a very hot guy with an Irish accent, put him in a well-fitted, slightly worn and rugged shirt and pants...think of a cross between Daniel Day-Lewis and Bryan Brown and throw in a dash of Hugh Jackman...well, you already got your movie right there. All you need is a few words of dialogue. Face it...I'd watch a movie with Hugh Jackman just reading the dictionary...for me, it doesn't need to be Shakespeare here for it to work. Then if you have Hugh Jackman with a ripped shirt reading the dictionary...it could even be a "Serbian to Dutch" dictionary...and, well...I'm going to watch it MORE than once.

Then for some effect - some silly thing happens...like he gets bitten by a potato borer infected with blight and has an allergic reaction (think "Spiderman") - and he gets immortality. He doesn't have to possess superhuman strength or anything...and giving him "borer-power" would be plain idiotic...so let's stick with "everlasting life".

Segue years later...we see him wiping the sweat from his brow while he rests on his pitchfork...a 1940s tractor slowly meandering in the background...similar to the wheat field scene from "Gladiator" - only there's a tractor and a guy picking potatoes instead. With a nice sepia tone to it...really artsy...and sepia always goes very nicely with a moist bronze tan glistening in the sunlight. Yep...Hugh Jackman half-naked basking in the sunlight. Yep. Hmmmm...okay...where was I?

Oh, yeah...okay, there he is...toiling away in the field when, "Eureka!"...a "light-bulb" moment...comes into his head. You see the camera panning in quickly - so you know something super-inspirational has just occurred. It's one of those "epiphany" moments...and it's a definitive turning point in the film. (Yes...I decided to scrap the book idea - and go straight to the big screen on this puppy.)

"PotatoMan" gets this vision...this astonishingly "Nostradamus-clear as a bell" revelation...which will change history as we know it: Mr. Potato Head.


Oh, sure, scoff at Mr. Potato Head...but many lives were virtually changed because of him. And lest us not forget this...how many toys do you know were that famous enough to have a counterpart...other than Barbie...and her and Ken never did tie the knot...the harlot. But, Mr. Potato Head indeed made a respectable woman out of Mrs. Potato Head...and was willing to share not only the limelight with her...but also his very being. His parts...they fit on Mrs. Potato Head; both are willing to see things out of the eyes of the other...literally. This IS the way a marriage should be. We should learn from them...these are compromises...not who gets the car on Wednesday and who gets to control the remote...but when Mr. Potato Head lends a hand to the Missus....he honestly lends her one. I am near tears here, people...theirs is such...such...a giving relationship.

And don't forget how Mr. Potato Head saved Disney. Without him showing up to lend a hand...or eyes...to Woody in "Toy Story"...Pixar would have been yet another dream; with him...it was a full-fledged realization. Potatoes can be the glue to hold a film industry together...and they can even make and break people. History recounts, with much (and then even much more) snickering, the events of 15 June 1992, when our very own Vice-President sat down in Trenton, New Jersey, and matched wits against William Figueroa, 12, a sixth-grader from the Mott School...who bested Mr. Quayle "e"asily. Yes, I'm talking about the great "potato(e)" debaucle which metaphorically whipped the American public into a frenzy - and cut VP Quayle down more than a few slices...and because of the gaffe he couldn't shake...his career quickly went to pieces after that.

"PotatoMan", of course, in his prescience of mind years before...knew these happenings were going to transpire...but, being less the super hero and more just a "thinking man's potato farmer" [who is also immortal]...oh, he knows all. Well, all things potato-related.

When Spuds MacKenzie had to go into rehab in the 1980s...who do you think was there for him? When kids used to decide things by going "One potato, two potato..." it was not merely a nonsensical schoolyard game...but an homage to the great man himself. Yes...even the long ago-played game of "Hot Potato", shortened from its little-known original title of "Hot PotatoMan"...is proof positive that he has fielded and handled all manner of ridicule...and, not being someone who was ever thin-skinned - he has persevered. He has persevered throughout the centuries and never came across as half-baked. He stands resolute in his determination to do good all the days he has on Earth...until that fateful end of days when everything will be consumed by fire. And such is this man - known only as "PotatoMan"...who, even through the inevitable consuming conflagration...before he gets charred to an infinitesimal cinder, will, for one brief, shining moment...smell absolutely wonderful.


End Note: Yes...this was a silly blog. I thought it would be fun to take two totally unconnected items - in this case "Vampires" and "potatoes"...and attempt to give potatoes something which countless couch potatoes could eat up.

So, in closing, I'd like to point one fact out: Face it - potatoes are great. Without potatoes there would be no vodka. Without vodka there would be no Vodka Martinis. Without Vodka Martinis, there would be no James Bond. Without James Bond, Sean Connery's greatest role would have been the guy singing in "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" (oh, don't believe me - go look up the trivia in the IMDb). Without Sean Connery, Craig Ferguson wouldn't get any laughs when he does Connery's Scottish accent...and without Craig Ferguson...I wouldn't get hired next month to be one of his writers...thereby propelling me into the annals of film-writing stardom with my insanely riotous and insightful look into the oft-overlooked and tragically only taken for granted...lowly potato...

...man, what a roundabout way to not only validate this silly blog...but also to beg for a writing job from Craig. (Feel free to forward this on to Craig Ferguson...the least he could do is not laugh.)