Week 21, Day 147 - “Rock and Roll Trouble!”

“Rock and Roll Trouble!”
Written by Joe Janes
6/14/09
147 of 365

CAST:
Johnny, 17
Trouble, 17
Dad, 40s
Mr. Dillman, 50s
Narrator
Various friends and students

NARRATOR (VO)

He came from the right side of the tracks.

(Lights up stage right on Johnny, a clean-cut young boy, walking to school, his books in a book bag.)

NARRATOR (VO-continuing)

He had never seen trouble…until she rolled into town.

(Lights up on stage left on Trouble in the cab of a semi-truck, her dad is driving. She is wearing a typical schoolgirl outfit and holding school books in her lap. He brings the rig to a stop.)

DAD

Now, young lady, you be good at school. Make your momma proud, you hear?

TROUBLE

Sure thing, Daddy.

(She exits and runs into Johnny as we hear the truck pull away.)

JOHNNY

Hi. You must be new. I’m Johnny.

(She throws her books into a trashcan and moves passed him towards the school)

JOHNNY (continuing)

I’m having a party at my house after school. Me and the gang. You can come over if you want. Hey, what’s your name?

TROUBLE

Trouble.

JOHNNY

Trouble?

NARRATOR

See Johnny’s world go topsy-turvy.

(Lights up on a party where Johnny and his friends are listening to Andy Williams. They are having a pleasant time. Trouble enters.)

JOHNNY

Trouble, you made it. Hey, everybody, this is Trouble. We were just listening to a cool new recording from Andy Williams.

(Trouble walks over to the record player and pulls the needle off it followed by a rally of “hey's” from Johnny’s friends.

JOHNNY (continuing)

Hey, Trouble, that was Andy Williams. One of the hippest cats around.

TROUBLE

Maybe you need to hear some of this, Johnny. It’s called rock and roll.

(She puts on a new record. It’s Chuck Berry. She starts to dance.)

JOHNNY (trying to join in)

Hey, where’d you learn to dance like that?

TROUBLE

Magazines.

(The kids all joyfully join in dancing.)

NARRATOR (VO)

Just like Romeo and Juliet… with a Rock and Roll beat!

(Lights up on a classroom. Johnny slouches at his desk and wears sunglasses. Mr. Dillman, the history teacher, is looking at him sternly.)

MR. DILLMAN

Who discovered America, Johnny?

JOHNNY

I don’t care, Mr. DILL-man. Not since I discovered rock and roll!

(Chaos erupts in the classroom. More Chuck Berry is heard. Johnny grabs Trouble and they dance around Mr. Dillman. All the students are up and dancing.)

NARRATOR (VO)

Rock and Roll Trouble! See how absolute rock and roll corrupts absolutely. (Mr. Dillman starts dancing, too.) Coming soon to a drive-in near you.

(Blackout)

Week 21, Day 146 - "Funk and Wagnall"

“Funk and Wagnall”
Written by Joe Janes
6/13/09
146 of 365

CAST
Dad, 50s
Mark, teens
Chuck, teens

(Lights up on Mark and Chuck sitting at a table across from each other, each with a laptop open between them. Dad enters with refreshments.)

DAD

You boys look like you might be working up a thirst. I brought you some soft drinks…(He sets two glass down on the table.) man, oh, man; studying ain’t like it was when I was a kid. Let me tell you. You kids and your computers these days. The world at your finger tips. We had to use encyclopedias when we wanted information. Funk and Wagnalls. Wanted to find something out, had to go look it up in the Funk and Wagnall… Look at that screen. It’s so clear. It’s like Star Trek… You boys studying graphs? Geometry? Tough stuff. Look at that screen. We had math books. Boring old math books. No color. No pictures. But look at that… Well, you boys keep studying hard. The old man’s gonna go down stairs. Watch some CSI-Miami… You boys need to take a break, come on down. We’ll throw some pizza puffs in the toaster oven…. All righty.

(Dad exits.)

MARK

G-4.

CHUCK

You sunk my battleship!

(Blackout)

Week 21, Day 145 - "The Constant Present"

(Back up and running! Whew! Here is Friday's post.)

“The Constant Present”
Written by Joe Janes
6/12/09
145 of 365

CAST
Marty, 30s
Arnold, 20s

(Lights up on Marty and Arnold, two US soldiers guarding the wall of the Green Zone in Iraq.)

MARTY

I’m just saying, maybe it already has happened, Arnold. Maybe somebody did it here. Maybe someone from the future came back in time to Iraq and made sure we killed Sadam Hussein. Maybe there’s a future where Sadam Hussein lived and became an even bigger evil asshole.

ARNOLD

That would mean he’s still alive.

MARTY

Maybe he is. If someone came back in time to kill him.

ARNOLD

Whoa, Marty. That’s nuts. If someone came back in time and killed him, then they changed the future. He’s dead. They changed the outcome. It would happen in a flash and we wouldn’t even notice.

MARTY

I don’t think it works like that. Suppose tomorrow you went back in time and killed Hitler.

ARNOLD

I would so love to do that.

MARTY

Let’s say Hitler, turns out, banged some German barmaid who got pregnant, had a son and that guy turned out to be your grandfather.

ARNOLD

Hey, my great great grandmother did not bang Hitler.

MARTY

Hypothetically.

ARNOLD

She didn’t do it that way, either.

MARTY

All right, it was my great great grandmother. Okay?

ARNOLD

That is a more likely scenario.

MARTY

So, by killing Hitler, you prevented me ever being born. So, what does that mean about right now. Are you on this wall right now talking to me? Or am I simply erased from the world in the blink of an eye? Or maybe you’re not here at all. Maybe my not being born threw things off so much you went on different path in your life. Different job, different location.

(They start making sandwiches as they are now working behind the counter of a Subway sandwich shop.)

ARNOLD

You’re making it too complicated. You kill Hitler, the Jews don’t die, everything is hunky dory. We would still be having this conversation because I don’t leave till tomorrow, right?

MARTY

Well, I actually agree with half of what you are saying. It’s like this foot long chicken teriyaki sandwich with tomatoes. Let’s say the sandwich is a timeline. (He holds up the sandwich.) Let’s say I go back in time and eliminate the first tomato in the sandwich’s history. Now, did that get rid of all the tomatoes that follow?

ARNOLD

No. I can still see them tomatoes.

MARTY

Right. This end of the sandwich is the present, as we know it. It doesn’t change. However, by altering that sandwich’s past, we create a new sandwich that exists elsewhere.

ARNOLD

And we live in that new sandwich, too?

MARTY

Maybe. If we do, we don’t know it. It’s a different reality. This is our reality and this is our constant present. The “now” that we live in.

(They shift to making a dam by hand with logs.)

ARNOLD

A constant present. Like, for us, there’s always us, here, now. If someone goes back in time and changes something, it doesn’t affect us.

MARTY

That’s right, Arnold. Now you’ve got it. It creates a new timeline. It’s like a reboot at that point in time, but it goes off in a different direction, leaving this one the way it is. The end of that log is too wide. Gnaw it down so it will fit in the dam.

(Arnold uses his beaver-like teeth to gnaw down the end of the log as Marty uses his beaver tail to pat down some logs into place.)

ARNOLD

So, if I was a Jew and invented a time machine in my concentration camp and went back in time to stop the holocaust, I’m not really stopping the holocaust.

MARTY

You are for a new reality, but not for your own. Not for the ones you left in the “present.”

ARNOLD

And when I come back, do I come back to my old timeline or the new one?

MARTY

You are just you, so you come back to your old timeline. Things don’t change for you. I mean, if they did, all sorts of things would happen. Not just circumstantial things, huge evolutional things could happen. We could like, lose our tails and fur because we accidentally changed nature and nature figures we don’t need ‘em anymore.

ARNOLD

I would be lost without my tail.

(They are now floating outside a spaceship making repairs.)

MARTY

But, you know, we wouldn’t even know or realize because this is our reality, our constant present. It is what it is. Man, I think we’re too close to that black hole.

ARNOLD

I didn’t want to alarm the rest of the crew, but, yes, we are. Once we get these thrusters repaired, we’ll warp out of here.

MARTY

All in all, I think it’s probably best not to mess with time travel. Be happy where you are.

(They are back to guarding a wall.)

ARNOLD

Yeah. I guess you’re right, Marty. Make the best out of your constant present because you really can’t change things.

MARTY

That’s right, Arnold.

ARNOLD

Let’s hope those Texans don’t try to change things by trying to sneak over this wall.

MARTY

God bless Oklahoma.

ARNOLD

Why would I want to kill some guy named Hitler?

MARTY

Who?

ARNOLD

Hitler?

MARTY

I don’t know who that is.

(Blackout)