(Scene opens outdoors,
sound of traffic, birds, etc.)
BUT: So, I see we’ve got the sound effects thing figured
out.
PAZ: So, that’s what the inside of a warehouse is supposed
to sound like?
BUT: I was being sarcastic for Christ’s sakes.
MIK: Oh, faith and a lamb, we can’t take the Lord’s name in
vain! Sure and I’d rather you cut me legs off at the knee with a nail file and
stomp me to death with me own feet.
PAZ: I don’t think that will be necessary, Mike. Maybe we
could just apologize…
MIK: Oh, apologizing is it? I’d rather you cut off me head
and spun it around quick so’s I could watch me own headless body drop to the
ground.
BUT: Doesn’t that seem a bit excessive, Mike?
MIK: Excessive? EXCESSIVE? To please the Lord? Excessive
would be to have you take down the crucifix from the wall and have me do this
and you ram it…
ALL: WE GET THE IDEA, Mike!
BLI: Why does he have to be so gross all the time?
BUT: He’s just passionate about the way he feels, I guess.
PAZ: Getting back to this warehouse…
(SFX: Cattle, jets, babies crying, typewriters, car racing,
bird songs)
BLI: Lookout! That number 43(or whatever is Tony Stuart) car almost hit me.
PAZ: Better luck next time.
BLI: Shut up Pazlo. You wouldn’t want to end up in the bread
line.
PAZ: Bread line, soup line, buffet line…as long as it’s
food. We haven’t eaten for like 12 or 15 scenes.
BLI: Most of us.
PAZ: Okay, Mike. We need you to lead us to where they were
keeping the guy locked up.
MIK: Aye. Right down this corridor to the elevator. Through
these doors here…
(SFX: music, sirens, anything but a door opening)
BUT: Great sound effects.
BLI: That’s what you get for hiring Sunbright rejects.
PAZ: I didn’t know Stewart came from Sunbright.
BLI: That’s not all you don’t know, too.
MIK: Now it gets pretty dark down in here, sure as yer born.
PAZ: What does that mean, exactly “Sure as you’re born”? I
mean, you wouldn’t be talking to me if I wasn’t born.
MIK: You see the wisdom in it, then. A fine boy.
BUT: All these doors look the same. How do you know where
Marsh is being held?
MIK: Well, it’s down here somewhere, sure enough. I’d stake
me own name on it. I’d stake me brother’s name on it. But not my father’s. Oh,
he was a no-account bastard from the old days. Thought nothin’ of keepin’ us
kids squirreled away in that house, isolated.
BUT: Well, you were home-schooled in a mansion. It’s not
exactly like it was tough on you.
MIK: Oh, the days on end! Breakfast, lessons, nap, lunch,
lessons, supper. Over and over. Torture!
PAZ: That pretty much describes like an idyllic life…
MIK: But if you lived it! Rather I’d have you pull my
intestines out through my nose and make me smell ‘em.
PAZ: Oh, God, here we go.
MIK: Rather you sawed off my arms and beat me to death with
them.
BUT: Okay, Mike. Maybe you could stop there.
MIK: Better you chop off my leg and sharpen it like a spear
and jam it far up…
ALL: THANK YOU, Mike.
PAZ: We, uh, get the idea.
BLI: Get the idea? It’s gross! Why is he so gross?
BUT: It’s a cultural thing, I guess.
(SFX: A ship’s bell, boat whistle, tires screeching)
BLI: Look, the door is opening. Not that you could tell by
the SOUND EFFECTS!
PAZ: Alright, everybody freeze!
MORitorium: Stay right where you are or you won’t get hurt!
BUT: You mean “Stay where you are or you WILL get hurt.”
MOR: What? Are you prepared to not die?
PAZ: You mean “Are you not prepared to die?”
BUT: No, I don’t think that’s it.
PAZ: Sure, it’s like a double-negative.
MOR: Silence! Morons!
BLI: Don’t lump me in with them. This is just my day job. I’m
not gonna die for it.
PAZ: I’ll kill you for that myself!
MOR: Stop! Shut up! I am the great and powerful…no that’s
trite. Wizard of Oz. I AM Professor Moritorium. You shall…
BLI: Wait, wait. The fat guy’s talking, I can’t hear.
PAZ: Probably the bad sound effects.
MOR: How am I supposed to make my big entrance if you guys
keep walking all over my lines?
MIK: I guess you shoulda thought about that before you
married the Devil, eh?
ALL: What?
MIK: As my dear sainted mother would say: “Close the damned
door you stupid kids!”
(SFX: door slamming)
BUT: So, all of a sudden you get the right sound effects?
PAZ: Who turned out the lights?
(SFX: a fight ensues, breaking glass, maybe a gunshot)
BLI: Help! Help! I’m being repressed! (gagged, mumbling: mum
mum mum)
PAZ: Alright. Do you really think they had to write out “mum
mum mum” for Blinds mumbling.
BUT: Well, he doesn’t do well without stage direction. His
ad-lib skills are weak.
PAZ: Yeah, but “mum mum mum”? I mean, how about “Gning mnm
mummavum”? Now there’s some creative writing.
MIK: Don’t look now, but I think your sister’s been nabbed
by those goons!
PAZ: My sister? Blinds? This isn’t another plot twist, is
it?
BUT: Paz, they’re taking Blinds!
MIK: Blinds? But there’s not window one in this place, lad.
BUT: No, Blinds the twittering dingbat who doesn’t know what
you’re doing here.
PAZ: Do you think Blinds could really be my sister?
BUT: Well, he was adopted. Anyways…we better get after those
goons before Blinds is killed!
PAZ: Wait! You can’t do that to my sister! I’ll kill ‘em.
MIK: Aye! Murder’s a sin, son. You can’t be talking like
that! Surely I’d rather have my ears cut off and taped to a fire siren ‘til I
was deaf, rather than hear you talk like that.
BUT: Oh, geez.
MIK: Rather you’d pop out my eyes and set my head on fire
and blind me with the flames as I watch.
PAZ: Okay, Mike. We get that you’re serious about it.
MIK: I’d rather you took a Bosch Bulldog Hammer drill with
an 18-inch mortar bit, about three-quarters inch diameter, and set that thing
on hammer and take it and put it right…
ALL: OKAY! OKAY! Thank you, Mike.
PAZ: Blinds was right. He is kinda gross.
BUT: Well I didn’t hire him, so don’t look at me.
PAZ: Wait. How do those two things fit together? What’s the
correlary?
BUT: What?
PAZ: You didn’t hire him, and I can’t look at you. Why the
two concepts stuck together? What happens if I look at you? (pesty) I’m looking
at you. See? Look, look, look, look
BUT: Yup. Real mature.
PAZ: Na-na-na-na-na…I’m still looking at you. Still looking!
Still…
(a brief pause followed by the sound of someone falling ten
feet onto junk you’d have outside a studio)
BUT: You should have been looking where you were walking.
(Shouting) Alright, I’m taking off after Blinds and the goons. Maybe you’ll
catch up?
PAZ: (voice distant): Yep. I’m okay! It’s alright. I’m
alright! Just a little blood. Or is that taco sauce?
BUT: Oh, boy. Now if I can get this crazy car started. Zuzu?
Start the engines.
ZUZ: There is only one engine, Mr.Butto.
BUT: Well, start the engine then. I gotta go!
ZUZ: Do you wish me to wait until after you’ve relieved
yourself?
BUT: Not that kinda go. We need to make tracks! Go! After
those goons!
ZUZ: Where do you want to make tracks? Or did you mean “record
tracks”?
BUT: No, I mean let’s go! After those goons!
ZUZ: Did you mean “loons”?
BUT: Goons! Bad guys! Go! After them!
ZUZ: Bad guys go after goons? Please rephrase your question
in the form of a question.
BUT: Can we go now?
ZUZ: Yes.
(silence)
BUT: So… going now? Come on. You can do it!
ZUZ: Do you wish to accelerate toward the loons?
BUT: Toward the GOONS! Yes! Accelerate.
(SFX: rocket engines, screeching tires, noise galore, super-speed
Zuzu tearing down the road)
BUT: AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
(Zuzu & screaming Butto fade off into the distance)
PAZ: Wow. That only hurt a lot. Say, where is everybody?
STEWART: They went to look at the loons with Mr.Butto.
PAZ: Loons? Like Blinds?
STE: Yes.
MIK: It looks like your friends held onto your friend and
took off with your friend.
PAZ: Yes, I…wait a minute…I don’t have any friends! You’re
an imposter!
MIK: No impasto, no. I dabble a bit in oils, but mostly it’s
watercolors. After me kinsman, Frank Clark.
PAZ: As in Frank Clark’s Paint Box? You know Frank Clark?
MIK: Oh, me and Frank go way back. We were in third grade
together. Yes, plenty of afternoons on the hall bench. Plenty of recesses spent
being whacked with a ruler.
PAZ: Your teachers hit you with a yardstick?
MIK: No a ruler! Sometimes it would be Queen Elizabeth,
sometimes Sheik Ahmad.
PAZ: (narrating:) Now I really needed a plan. Actually, I
needed a plan a lot earlier. I mean a plan for the plot. Not a health plan. Pots
and pans. A man with a plan. Stan the plan-man…
STE: Mr.Pazlo?
PAZ: Scan the land for a plan man. Making a plan. Planning.
STE: Excuse me, Mr.Pazlo?
PAZ: Yes, Stewart. What is it? You’re interrupting our
recording session here, y’know.
STE: Yeah, the session ended about five minutes ago. We need
to clear the studio for the jingle people.
PAZ: The Jango People? From the Amazon? My dear old friend
Garza?
STE: JINGLE! JINGLE! The people who sing the jingles, from
Sunbright.
PAZ: Sunbright? What are they doing here?
STE: Well, they’re remodeling over at Sunbright. New lights,
windows, Blinds.
BLI: I’ve been kidnapped, Stewart, not installed at
Sunbright.
PAZ: Wait! Why would we let people from Sunbright use our
studio? They’re our direct competition! What jingles are they recording?
STE: Billy Fermento’s. And Mom Mocady’s Taco and Small Arms
Stand. And Presto.
PAZ: Oh. Um…I gotta go.
STE: Okay. But what about these air ferns?
Mr. Pazlo?
Mr.Pazlo? Hello?
ANNOUNCER: Perhaps you’ll have the grave misfortune of
joining us for our next exciting episode of The Adventures of Butto and
Pazlo and also Blinds the flittering wheezbag.
STE: That’s a long title. Good thing we’re not on TV.
BLI: Who put in the flittering wheezbag bit? Wait ‘til I get
my hands on ‘em. Where are you?
ANNC: We’d like to thank our sponsors for bringing us
tonight’s episode. We’d like to, but we don’t have a sponsor since
Sulphur-Wonder Polish dropped us like a hot potato.
BLI: Did you say potatoes? I love potatoes.
<SCENE END>
