THE ONE YOU’VE SEEN A ZILLION TIMES
BY JOSH ABRAHAM
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The two friends are in their local coffee shop, again, sitting at their regular spot at the low-rider couch dead-set in the middle of the place, again, and they’re not even drinking any coffee. They’re just sitting there, chitchatting, shootin’ the breeze, blah, blah, blah, here we go again, just like yesterday, just like the day before. Probably just like tomorrow, too. Don’t these men have jobs? Lives? Other friends? The sarcastic one cracks a terrible pun and nebulous, disembodied laughter echoes throughout the place. The goofy one doesn’t get his friend’s joke, and there’s more laughter. Every day, they’re here, repeating the same jokes ad infinitum, laughing at the same punch lines, stuck in an eternal existential loop, repeating, repeating, repeating, never learning from their mistakes but never losing their unbridled optimism toward the future and its infinite opportunities either. Perpetually coming oh-so-close, but never quite pushing that boulder all the way up the hill, never sipping the water at chin level, never tasting those juicy, juicy grapes just overhead, never getting to bag Andie McDowell before “I Got You Babe” rings again… This is hell, this miserable Village café. Surely, someone somewhere is watching these poor, poor saps on the couch. Look at them: these sad coffee-shop habitués, antiquated relics of a bygone time when “counterculture” cafés and “alternative” music and, ahem, 20-something angst were hip and new or whatever the Man would have you believe. But wait – their sexy friend shows up, the one with the great rack. She’s wearing a short, short skirt and a too-tight shirt and when she bends over to sit on the couch beside her bedamned soulmates… Oh, yes, right there. That’s the stuff. That’s the shot. Did you see how you could almost see her… Anyway, the one with the great rack also does not drink coffee. But she makes jokes! Laughter, laughter, laughter. And the sarcastic one says something, and the goofy one doesn’t get that either. Ha, ha, ha. How have the café managers not yet noticed these loitering psuedo-yuppies? That creepy barback is always watching the one with the great rack. You’d think he’d alert the proprietors that these non-drinking guests are wastefully consuming valuable real estate in an establishment with such a high-turnover rate of thirsty, paying customers. Now, their remaining friends show up – the ditzy one, the chipper one, the nebbishy one. Hey, hey, the gang’s all here! Typical greetings and pleasantries are skipped entirely – the newcomers want to jump right in with their punch lines. Hey, how ’bout that annoying girl the sarcastic one is dating? With that shrill, grating laugh like an air-raid siren? Could she be any more annoying? Ha, ha, ha, the funny just keeps coming with this crew. Zing! You’ve just been euphemistically emasculated, sarcastic one! Where’s your sarcasm now? Pow! Take that, ditzy one. Your ditz can’t cut it here! Hey, hey, hey, pipe down, chipper one! Save that energy for scrubbing the grout in your bathroom, babe. The couch’s cushions, remarkably free of spilt-coffee stains, must absorb the ricochets of laughter. And now the nebbishy one, exasperated, makes a desperate plea for sanity… And… wait for it… Whammo! Here comes the music! The perky, perky music! And cue the skyline. And here’s the whole gang sitting on/standing on/surrounding a couch. In the park, at night. A couch! Outdoors! Crazy! And now look, they’re dancing in a fountain. And wait, one of them’s got an umbrella! Oh, you silly fool, an umbrella won’t keep you dry if you’re splashing about a fountain! Good lord, are these people rolling on X? Why are grown men and women cavorting about in a fountain? Fully clothed, yet. Who the hell is that happy? And they don’t even have caffeine to keep them so hyper! The song keeps going – how many times have you heard it? Remember when it was actually on the radio? When people were requesting its airplay? Buying it on tape or CD? And here come the clips. The “life flashing before your eyes” montage: Look how young they once were. The sarcastic one was skinny, then fat, then skinny, then fat. Hey, remember when the one with the rack had that haircut that everybody was copying? And what on earth is the goofy one wearing there? Hey, remember when the nebbishy one had a pet monkey? And the duck? And the chick? And Mr. Heckles? And wasn’t Giovanni Ribisi the ditzy one’s brother? Why isn’t he around anymore? And remember when Punky Brewster, all grown up and super-hot, was punching the goofy one? That one’s my favorite. No, no, the one with Jon Lovitz as a stoned food critic. Tartlets! Tartlets! Ha, ha, ha… no! No, it’s got to be the one with the trivia game show for the apartment. That was the best. Oh, wait – the one with flashbacks! No, not the Thanksgiving flashback, the other one. The one with the fat suit. No, no, the other one with the fat suit. Tartlets! Oh, how these accursed clowns dance so nimbly astride the line dividing Must-See amusement and soul-sucking despair. I hope they drown in their happy fountain, the fucks. [Josh Abraham does this.] [Forever after at http://eyeshot.net/zillion.html]
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