Wild About Larry

A youthful and dishevelled Larry is dressed in tattered remnants. Strips of cloth hang around his lower half and his chest is almost bare. He is wandering across a rocky desert, a solitary figure in a vast expanse of void. He looks dirty and exhausted, starved of food, love and hope, and is aimlessly staggering around. He trips over his own feet and falls to the ground. He slowly and painfully picks himself up, and from out of nowhere an old man appears before him. Larry stares intently at the man for a few seconds in shocked silence, and eventually says “G’day mate.”

  “G’day sport.” replies the stranger.

  Larry then seems to fearfully flinch away from the old man before summoning the strength to look him in the eye. He appears to have a burning desire to ask a question that he’d rather not know the answer to. His eyes pop and his lips tremble.

  He eventually asks “Are you a bloody mirage mate?”

  The old man looks straight back into Larry's eyes and solemnly replies “Yes mate, I bloody am.”

  And then his lips continue to move in silence for three or four seconds.

  “Thanks mate.” replies Larry, tears welling up in his eyes, and he staggers on.

  “No worries.” says the old man and he vaporises away.

  Larry mutters to himself as he scans the emptiness of the horizon. “You know, for a mirage, he was a bonzer bloke”.

  “What about Romeo and Juliet, Roxanne?”

  “Cancelled, Ray”.

  “And what about Oliver Twist?”

  “Cancelled”.

  “And Tom Sawyer?”

  “Cancelled. They’re all cancelled Ray”.

  A man and woman were seated at opposite ends of a desk in an office at television station KPBS-13, the Public Broadcasting Service for Santa Domingo, California. The woman was of uncertain age, smartly dressed in a matching grey skirt and jacket, with elegantly coiffured brunette hair. The man was naturally scruffy and sported tousled black hair, an unshaven face and an ill-fitting dark blue suit. Ray Parlour was growing evermore animated. The anger that had been festering in him for some time now was coming to the boil. Like an unattended pan of water on a stove, it had started by producing the odd bubble, then a rippling surface and finally clouds of hissing, spitting steam cascaded over the sides.

  He recently joined the station as programme director. He wasn’t overly interested in material wealth, having spent a lifetime earning more than enough from the television industry to placate his meagre needs. But as time passed he realised his creative soul had boarded the corporate boat, sailed on it down a river and fallen headlong over a waterfall. He yearned for the freedom to make quality television which might be judged purely on the critical value of the production. Maybe even win some awards. Instead he was ruled by interfering, incompetent, ego-driven executives who forced him to make cheap meaningless drivel, simply to fill in the short spaces between commercial breaks.

  So when the opportunity presented itself, he took the plunge and a large pay cut to work at KPBS-13. In return he was promised creative and commercial independence, and an ethos that wasn't based purely on making money. To begin with he eagerly drank the dizzying freedom like a man wandering out of a monastery into a whorehouse. He was even given time to formulate production strategies instead of running around like a lunatic all day long, chasing up his own backside. The ease of the job and lack of restrictions led him to wear a suit and tie to work for the first time in his life.

  But when he started to sift for the palpable benefits of his new freedom by getting his various projects up and running, he found that in reality things weren’t quite so relaxed or easy. After several months of being forced to pick his way through clerical obstructions and over fiscal obstacles, he finally realised the truth. He’d been lied to. He pounded the office table with his fist.

  “Jesus Christ Roxanne! But we’re a TV station, goddammit! And you made me promises that aren’t being kept. How are we supposed to function if we don’t make any programs?”

  If Ray was a rough diamond then Roxanne was the smooth operator. The one gift above any other the Good Lord bestowed upon her was a chilling ability to gaze into the minds of other people. She was able to untangle their subconscious threads of thought like an Apache scout scouring the prairie, interpreting the scuffed marks on the ground to conclude how many horses had passed by, when they passed, and how fast they were travelling. She’d made good use of this gift by manipulating those both above and below her on the ladder of power, and she wormed and weaselled her way from the bottom of the ladder to the top. She also lied, betrayed, threatened and flattered and even, on occasions when there was no alternative, delivered the goods. But even the best get tired, and turning the corner into her latter years she grew weary of playing psychological war games against inferior opponents. She decided to take early retirement but discovered there’s only so much gardening, golf and shopping you can do before the stale feeling of ageing sets in. She craved the mind building exercises and the power of a daily adrenaline fix that a decent job provides.

  So, in a compromise she used her well honed skills to network herself into a job nobody else appeared to want, running the local Public Broadcasting Service television station. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone else whether she achieved success there or not, but she retained her pride and the oldest habits die hardest. Every Easter she still made her annual visit to mass at the local Roman Catholic church, in a guilt ridden pilgrimage. Here she murmured the words instilled into her by rote during childhood. “Lord, I am not worthy to receive thee under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed”, while the rest of the congregation recited the modern response instead.

  Her first task at KPBS-13 was to drum up some much needed revenue, so she performed her equivalent of handing out the begging bowl by calling in favours for cash. Then she required the services of a seasoned professional television executive to add a sheen of respectability to the thinly veneered surface of her venture. She became predator and Ray became her prey. If he’d bothered to canvas opinions of Roxanne from other PBS station heads in the region he would have discovered that her reputation had already sunk far and wide. He would have heard phrases like “Shabby dealings”, “Shady dealings”, “Not really one of us” or “She doesn’t seem to have much interest in the arts”, and he would have run as far and fast as his legs could carry him. But he didn’t and was ensnared in a trap which was actually a gilded cage of his own making, built upon his own assumptions and imagined resources. Of course Roxanne did nothing to dampen these and indeed spent time and effort massaging and assuaging Ray’s insecurities and inadequacies. But now she peered into his mind and concluded she had carried him in her arms for long enough, and she judged it was time to put away the carrot and bring out the stick.

 

  “Yeah, but unfortunately we’re a publicly funded TV station.” she drawled. “Listen Ray, I’ve called you up here because the bottom line is we operate on the goodwill of the people, and there hasn’t been much evidence of it lately. We’re just going to have to sit tight until the corporate sponsors start showing again. In the meantime, as my dear old mom used to say, if you ain’t got the dough you can’t make the show. But I have every confidence you and your boys can come up with something for the 8pm weekday slot for next month”.

  Ray shook his head wearily, took a deep breath, smiled a despondent smile and started to make his way out of the office.

  “Look real hard Ray, because if you can’t come up with something I’m gonna have to start going over the headcounts again!” shouted Roxanne behind him as he trudged away.

  Ray sloped into his office, slumped down at his desk and looked upon his empire of three young bespectacled, long haired subjects, huddled next to each other like newborn mice in a nest. He was surprised to see any faces there at all, considering how earlier that morning the three of them were gleefully discussing the merits of chucking a sickie this arvo, because the radio buoy reports predicted a sucky sur
f for today. Though he tried as hard as he could to feel a paternal love towards them, he always ended up losing his temper and hating them (and thus unwittingly also losing grace). When he first started in this business, he and his peers possessed a shining, driving enthusiasm and vision. They all yearned to create quality shows which might be capable of challenging people’s views of the world they lived in, maybe even alter their perception of their own lives. And it took twenty long, arduous years to wear down this sharp vision. Even now on occasion he could, if the view was good enough and worth the effort of getting up out of his seat, still see the world through those rose tinted glasses he’d worn in his youth. But all these wealthy white boys seemed to want to do was ingest drugs and make believe they were part of some weird imaginary surfing subculture, and speak their strange language named Strine which used English words in an arbitrary fashion. What was it with kids these days? It was as though they arrived in the world pre-loaded with nihilism at birth. But wish as he might, he couldn’t get rid of them because Roxanne had foisted them upon him.

  “Roxanne”, he said dismissively at the time. “I came here because you told me I’d get the chance to make some quality TV. Wet nursing the three stooges was never in the brochure”.

  Roxanne could be a snake tongued son of a bitch when she wanted to be. She judged his weakness and salivated his ego. “Ray, do you remember the movie, My Fair Lady?”

  “Actually Roxanne, it was based on a George Bernard Shaw play called Pygmalion”.

  “Well, whatever. I see you in the role of Professor Higgins and each of these boys as an Eliza Doolittle. There is an opportunity to take this raw talent, teach it and nurture it and grow it into something beautiful. You’re the only person in this station who is capable of meeting this challenge, Ray. I can just imagine you now, saying in your best English accent ‘By George, I think he's got it!’ Tell me I’m wrong”.

  And of course Ray succumbed to the notion that this might be a worthy experiment because he desperately wanted to find a noble cause to attach himself to in order to make himself feel worthy. Roxanne omitted to mention her real and sole interest in the experiment was that she was being paid to perform it.

  The following three entries are in the current edition of the Marvin Hopkins Progressive College yearbook. The school encourages self expression and prides itself on permitting the students to compose and produce the book themselves under the auspices of a student publication committee. This year the committee decided their yearbook theme should be “Words Matter Most”. So they banned student photographs and encouraged them to tell their own story. As a result the entries tell more about the true nature of its pupils than most cosmetically enhanced yearbooks.

  Name: Kenny Savage.

  Likes: Surfing, surfing and surfing.

  Dislikes: My stepmother.

  Ambition: Find a Surf Betty and catch the big one at Sunset Village.

  We Say: Surf’s up Kenny, but watch out for the folks!

  Name: Neil Petit.

  Likes: Surfin’ and Snortin’

  Dislikes: Being forced to run in the rat race.

  Ambition: Respect.

  We Say: We respect the snortin’ man.

  Name: Brian Lovett.

  Likes: Malcolm X, Kurt Cobain and John Lennon.

  Dislikes: The pollution of white oppression.

  Ambition: None.

  We Say: Hey Brian, when’s the suicide?

  And that says just about all we need to know about the three of them. Apart from the spiritual butterfly that had earlier fluttered its wings and started the storm where the marijuana farm got destroyed, along with the principal's car. Then there was the court appearance which, thanks to the efforts of their expensive defence lawyers, led to a sentence of three months community service. Donations from their parents of a new car for principal Givens, replenishment of the marijuana farm and a sealed envelope for Roxanne turned the sentence into a temporary exclusion from school and a sabbatical at station KPBS-13.

  Unaware of any of this, Ray leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the desk and his arms around the back of his neck. It was time to assume the relaxed position of authority for which he strove. “Ok you guys. Heads up. I just been up to see Roxanne, and she tells me we gotta short term situation with consumer rationalization, leading to a shift in sponsorship revenue and deficit expectations. I’m sure you can all guess where this is leading to…”

  The three boys looked at each another, then at Ray.

  “No worries dude, she'll be apples.” smiled Kenny.

  “Yeah bro, and you can bet London to a brick on that.” nodded Brian wisely.

  “Absolutely. It's totally better than a poke in the eye with a hot stick.” agreed Neil.

  Ray frowned with confusion and disbelief at the evidence dancing on display before his own eyes and ears. His best guess was they were expressing a nonchalant response. His teaching, nurturing, growing-it-into-something-beautiful experiment was no nearer to bearing fruit than it had been at the very beginning. For how could it succeed, when the seeds he was sowing always fell on dumb ground?

  “OK. How can I put this?” he continued, ignoring them. “We got no programming budget for the 8pm weekday slot next month. Roxanne says we’ve gotta get creative with the schedule, otherwise you’re all out of a job. Any ideas as to how we can get hold of some free TV time?”

  Kenny stuck up his hand like an enthusiastic fourth grader and shrilled “How about if we pull a Clayton's and just lay on some repeats?”

  Ray neither knew nor cared what a Clayton's was, but he managed to mentally decipher the gist of the message and exhaled heavily through his teeth, creating a vague whistling sound.

  “Well, we got really limited mileage there. We’d be repeating the repeats we already repeated and we don’t want a repeat of the FCC on our case yet again. Any other ideas anyone?”

  Neil spoke at a slow measured pace, as the thoughts which create and comprise an idea slowly assembled in his mind at the same time as he described them. “Well, Ray, bloke, dude, we could like, go to one of the major studios, do the tour and while we're in there, nick some of their show tapes and run them on KPBS-13”.

  “What does nick mean?” inquired Ray suspiciously.

  “It’s like rob or steal or something like that most probably.” replied Neil vaguely.

  Ray stared back at him, attempting to make eye contact so he could beam his contempt into that wasteland of a brain, but Neil's attention was fixed on his fingernail.

  Ray snapped. “Even if we were ever dumb enough to contemplate this, what happens when we run the shows and the studio hears about it and sends their lawyers out for a visit, huh?”

  Neil looked up, startled. “Fair suck of the sav, dude. We could say a bloke we’d never eyeballed before and never eyeballed since flogged them to us and we don’t know his handle, or where he hangs out, and we just went in like Flynn. Couldn’t we?”

  Ray quickly decided this was a fight which wasn't worth pursuing. He knew that although Neil's argument sounded faintly exotic at face value, this was merely because the English was incomprehensible. Once it was parsed and translated into something which made sense it would turn into something pitiful, like a beautiful white swan turning into an ugly duckling.

  He bellowed. “Well don't any of you geniuses have a single reasonable idea? Don't you have a single functioning brain cell between you?”

  Neal squirmed in his seat and muttered “I need the bathroom, man” and staggered out of the room, clutching his groin.

  As Brian’s gaze followed Neal out of the room, his face started twitching and he fired a surly reply back towards Ray. “Hey sport, haven’t you ever thought of trying the net?”

  Ray looked back at him quizzically, and motioned him to continue.

  “You just might find telly programs out there in the surf that we haven’t skinned yet and could download.” he shrugged. “I mean,
the net means like the whole world, bush and all, and there must be something out there somewhere”.

  Ray mentally threw away most of Brian’s words, examined what remained and realised that the essence of this particular conversation actually had some worth. He stepped up, walked across to Brian’s desk and stood over him, peering at his computer monitor screen.

  “OK then.” he said. “Let’s give this a shot. Go to a search engine”.

  “Now enter the search words Video +Download +Free”.

  Seconds later the query return results appeared on the screen. “Woohoo! We’ve hit the jackpot!” whooped Ray, raising a triumphant fist. “2,988,322 web pages found! We’re really onto something here”.

  Then he bent down, started to inspect the screen and muttered “What’s this? Debbie DoubleDee meets King Goliath… Alicia Amazon gets it on…Jeanette Juggs…Sylvie StackedUp…What the heck is going on here?!”

  “Don't do your block, dude.” sighed Brian, his facial twitches having faded away. “You forgot to filter out the porn sites. You need to add -fuck –sex –porn –hardcore –screw –tits to the search string and resubmit the query”.

  “Include the words TV and guide in the query.” added Kenny, “There’s an awful lot of garbage out there on the net and we only want shows that are in a tv guide”.

  “Add the word great as well.” said Neal, returning to the room. “There’s an awful lot of garbage out there on tv and we only want stuff that’s got great reviews”.

  Brian made the amendments himself and pressed the button. The response flashed back in a microsecond.

  “One single web page!” groaned Ray. “We’re dead meat”.

  He tramped back to his desk, muttering “I’ll leave it to you to explore the internet while I phone around to see if we can visit any of the major studios and steal something”.

  Brian stroked his chin as he mulled over the screen. The link description was written in some weird undecipherable foreign language. He clicked on www.gov.sj/execution_of_television. Within seconds he was redirected to the execution's web server and arrived at the website. The typeface was all squiggles and spirals and squirts, and he couldn't understand a damned word of it. However, he noticed some of the links were ftp URLs which meant they were downloadable files, so he just blindly started downloading them. Eventually he amassed around twenty files. He ran the first of them through the media player software and Humvat's image flickered on the computer screen. Brian stared in silence for a second or two and then shouted excitedly “Hey, you two blokes! Get over here and have a butcher's at this. It's some guy in whacky clobber, speaking Double Dutch and beating up an entire army with a wooden stick!”

  Ray was once again in Roxanne’s office. “We’ve gotten something from this country called, er, South Jefferstown, and we’ve been looking over it.” he pronounced. “The good news is we’ve managed to download around 20 hours of footage which will keep the eight pm slot going for four weeks. The bad news is we don’t have a clue what it’s about because the soundtrack is in some geek language nobody around here can understand. But looking at the acting, my best guess is it’s some form of comedy. Do you want me to contact the Jefferstown authorities to find out more details?”

  Roxanne visibly shook in her chair. “Hell no, Ray! Right now we’ve got all this for free, and I’d like to keep it that way. They’ve done the expensive work by producing the footage and the music. You’ve simply got to come up with an English dialogue and dub it in. I’ve every confidence in you and your boys, Ray, every confidence. We’ll run it daily, starting next Monday”.

  “But fer Chrissakes Roxanne!” he roared. “We haven’t even done the first episode yet!”

  Having taken out the big stick when it came to dealing with Ray, Roxanne now started to beat him about the head with it. “You’d better get those boys started on it right away then. You wouldn’t want me to lose confidence in your ability to deliver, would you?”

  Ray assembled the boys in order to address his empire and issue forth his imperial decree. “Heads up. Roxanne is sending me to Los Angeles to firm up some production details, so I'll be out of town until Friday. In the meantime she wants you three to create the dialogue for this foreign TV show you downloaded. She wants to be able to start transmitting it at 8pm on the following Monday, so this means the lines have to be completed and ready for laying down on Friday afternoon when I get back. We’ll have to work all weekend to get the job completed, so don’t make any plans”.

  His manner was brisk, efficient and to the point. Then he realised the enormity of what he'd just said and what he was about to do. Not only was he leaving those three sweet toothed fools in charge of the candy shop, but he was also leaving them in charge of the apartment above and the basement below.

  “I can trust you to do this, can't I?” he asked weakly, in what started off as a statement of intent but ended up as a plea for clemency.

  “No worries!” the three of them chorused. Kenny, Neil and Brian each understood the enormity alright. If the job didn't get finished in time then they were fired, and unlikely to find another number which was so cosy it allowed them to take lunchtime and surf time.

  A few minutes later Ray departed and they each pored over their own computer screens, pen and notebook at the ready to try and decipher the footage being acted out before them. The aromatic scent of the farm's finest marijuana hung in the air. Neil thoughtfully looked at the scene where Humvat makes his grand entrance. “You know what, cobbers?” he announced. “I’m gonna call this dude Larry O“.

  “Which dunny seat did that idea come from mate?” enquired Kenny, pushing a finger into his own mouth and imitating a gagging motion. “Shouldn't we be calling him Bruce, Bloke or Digger or something?”

  Neil shrugged and, for a second, his masonic mask slipped. “I dunno, he just sorta reminds me of one of those people like Sir Laurence Olivier and Jackie Onassis in the high society sections in old magazines”.

  Kenny and Brian stared back at him, vacantly unimpressed.

  His eyes darted around the room searching for the presence of any prying ears, then he leaned towards them and whispered conspiratorially “If Laurence Olivier were still alive and he went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, Larry O is the handle he'd be given. I know this from what my mom was telling one of her friends, but it can be our secret, our private joke”.

  “Hmm. Okay then, Larry O works for me.” mused Brian, “And if the guy is called Larry O then how about we call the show Wild About Larry?”

  The other two gazed blankly at him. “There was this ancient song called Wild About Harry. It's a play on words. Come on you blokes, don't drag the chain”.

  “Okay then. And his sheila can be Viv, after Vivien Leigh” added Neil. “Laurence Olivier’s wife. She played the part of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind”.

  The three of them nodded at each other sagely, because they all liked that particular movie.

  Once the names of the leading characters were established there remained the slight problem of translating the dialogue. Having discussed their overall approach, the three of them sat before their computer screens, playing various downloaded files.

  Kenny studied the opening scene on the first download file, showing the Great Guide’s birth and the prophecy made at the time about his destiny. There is a tent in a desert. Inside the tent a baby is crying. An old man sitting nearby gibbers something incomprehensible. But what on earth was he saying? Kenny put pen to paper and transcribed the following:

  MAN IN TENT: Stone the crows! It's noisier in here than outside a knocking shop at kicking out time! Will somebody shut that flaming ankle biter up?!

  Mission accomplished, he then perused the footage of the Great Guide at school with the early display of his genius, where he instructs his teachers. There is a teenage boy at the front of the class. He is scrawling some undecipherable squiggles on the blackboard. A man who is sitting with the kids says something. Ever
yone laughs. Kenny instantly assumed this kid was Larry as a youngster, and he was being punished at school, probably being made an example of for being stupid. And all he knew so far about the young Larry was that he lived in a tent out in the middle of nowhere. Kenny thought for a while and wrote:

  MAN IN CLASS: Okay then, young Larry. You’ve done your punishment of one hundred lines of 'In future I will inform my teachers before I go gallivanting through the outback to the back of Bourke and along the wallaby track to the Black Stump then past the billabong onto Bullamanka where the crows fly backwards!' Just remember the next time you feel like going walkabout without telling anyone, you’ll get TWO hundred lines!

  Neil looked at the scene where the Great Guide first displays outstanding warrior abilities. This Larry guy dismounts from his charger and runs over to a bunch of guys, waving some sort of wooden stick at them. He knocks a few of them down and the rest run away in disarray, yet as one, like a flock of swallows flying through the sky at dusk. The guy on the film is shouting something and waving something, but what the hell was going on? Neil paused for thought and scribbled on his notepad.

  LARRY O: Go and dip your eyes in cocky shit, you bunch of two pot screamers!

  Brian was reviewing the scene where the Great Guide rescues princess Medina from the burning palace and wins her heart. Humvat rides up to the palace and runs inside as everyone else is busy running out. He dashes up the burning stairway, kicks down a door and enters a room. He strides over to the window, picks up Kipdip in his arms and they have some sort of conversation. He smiles, she smiles, they embrace and he carries her out of the room as a burning beam comes crashing down onto the floor behind them. Brian slowly wrote the imagined dialogue of all this on his notepad:

  LARRY: Strewth Viv! This place has really gone cactus! That's the last time I let you fire up the barbie - from now on it's strictly dunny duties for you!

  Now Brian considered what the woman might say in reply. He had a problem with this, because his exposure to the fairer sex was rare. Well, actually it was non-existent. He decided to imagine what Vivian Leigh might have said in Gone With The Wind and pensively wrote:

  VIV: Will you always be here to look after me Larry? Say you will, say you will.

  Larry's words were already becoming easier and he promptly penned the response:

  LARRY: Of course I'll always be here for you mate, just as sure as there's cold shit in a dead dingo.

  However, imagining Viv's words was becoming as hard as the stilted conversation he would be having with her in reality. He decided to surmount the problem by writing what he would like her to say if she were speaking to him instead:

  VIV: I love you Larry O and I want your children! I want you to make love to me right here, right now!

  He finished with the following piece of repartee:

  LARRY: Oh Viv, you're hotter than a piss in a sauna.

  He showed this to the others and they quickly decided this was going to be the show's catchphrase, to be used to expedite the script whenever they lacked the inspiration to come up with an original creation.

  Later, Kenny was watching the Great Guide and the princess getting married. Humvat and Kipdip emerged from some sort of a church and a line of soldiers outside formed a guard of honour with their swords held up high. The couple walked through the line with their heads stooped. They then paused and Humvat said something to Kipdip. He smiled, she smiled and they shared a passionate kiss. Then they shared an intimate conversation. Kenny wrote:

  VIV: Oh Larry. I’m so happy right now. I reckon you and me fit together like a bum and a bucket!

 

  LARRY: Well, sprinkle me with bulldust!

  He showed this to the others, and they all agreed this would be used as a second catch-all catchphrase. Then Kenny added a final line with flourish.

  LARRY: Oh Viv, you’re hotter than a piss in a sauna!

 

  It was now Friday afternoon and the four of them sat around Ray’s desk. Kenny, Neil and Brian looked at each other with excitement and pride. Meanwhile Ray read through the various scraps of paper in growing disbelief. He shuffled them around, attempting to create some sense of order from the mess before him, some sense of hope, but it was futile. He put his head in his hands and quietly sobbed. “This is crap!” he wailed. “My life is total crap!”

  The three boys looked at each other anxiously and then together at Ray. “Does this mean we’ve wasted our week, mate?” asked Kenny. “'Cos, I tell you dude, we missed out on some ripper surf to do this stuff”.

  “No Kenny. It means you’ve laid waste to what’s left of my career”.

  He forlornly shook his head, rubbed his chin and brooded for a few seconds. Eventually he sighed “We’ve got to run with this. We don’t have time to change anything. There’s no choice. Let’s just go down to the sound booth and get this thing over and done with”.

  Ray sat at the mixing desk in the recording room, playing the tapes the computer files had been transferred onto and adjusted the various track settings. The boys stood by a microphone, with a silent screen playing before them and the soundtrack music wafting through the earphones they were wearing. They were running through the script for the final time when a moment of discovery descended upon Brian. He took off his earphones and motioned to other two to do likewise. Then he hissed something to them with a look of embarrassment, and there was a hissing in return and a self conscious shrugging of shoulders. Then they played rock-paper-scissors, and checked amongst themselves to see the results. Neil and Brian laughed triumphantly and pointed at Kenny.

  “What's going on?!” snapped Ray, impatiently.

  “Kenny gets to do the voiceover for Viv.” chuckled Neil as they put their earphones back on, Kenny scowling.

  “Right then.” commanded Ray. “I’ll rewind the tape and we can get started”.

  On the screen, a camera rode across the desert, as though on horseback, and closed in on a single tent erected by the side of an oasis. The camera moved through the open door flaps and into the tent, where a newborn baby was being held up before its proud parents. The camera scanned around the tent and came to rest upon the face of an old man. As he opened his mouth Brian howled “Stone the crows! It's noisier in here than outside a knocking shop at kicking out time! Will somebody shut that flaming ankle biter up?!”

  It was first thing Tuesday morning, and Roxanne sat wearing her executive suit, at her executive desk, in her executive office. Ray entered, his heart full of dread and his bowels threatening to empty his troubles away.

  “Good morning Ray. Thank you for coming in early today. I conducted some audience research last night by phoning some folks around town after we showed the first episode of Wild About Larry, and I'd like to discuss the results with you. Please take a seat”.

  Ray swallowed the lump in his throat. He knew what a call for an early morning meeting with Roxanne meant. It meant the assassin's bullet could be delivered without any witnesses. He felt flecks of sweat building up in his armpits and soaking into his shirt. He could smell it too.

  “Er, how did we do?” he asked. He didn’t need to ask. The program stank even more than he did right now, for God’s sake. His career was finished. Why, oh why, hadn’t he fired those goons on their first day?

  “Well, Ray. There wasn’t much of an audience, but it would appear 92% of those who did tune in really liked what they saw. And 95% of the 92% indicated a willingness to advise their friends and family to tune in. The only negative reaction was from our town lawyer, Eli Levenson. He said that out of a million words in the English language, there are seven that the FCC deems unacceptable for transmission between the hours of 6am and 10pm, and we used three of them in the first episode”.

  She shuddered slightly and considered for a moment. “We don’t want the FCC on our case yet again, so we’ll have to transfer the show to the 10pm slot instead. Otherwise, it looks like we may have a hit comedy show on our hands. Congratulations??
?.

  There was a dull thud. Roxanne looked up from her notes. Ray had disappeared. She stood up and leant over her executive desk to discover he’d fainted and was lying on his back, prone on the floor.

  Ray came round and blinked up at the ceiling. Roxanne’s face stood over him, looking down on him, an empty glass in her hand. “Come on Ray. This is no time for goofing around. You and your boys have gotta start delivering the rest of those scripts”.

  She turned away and returned to her seat.

  He struggled to his feet and gradually realised the moist sensation he was feeling was water dripping from his face. As he staggered towards the door Roxanne’s voice followed him out of the room.

  “If I’m right about this, you might yet be making Romeo and Juliet, Oliver Twist and Tom Sawyer. And it’s not often I’m wrong”.

  Roxanne looked at her audience research notes once again and smiled to herself as she thought about her peers running the neighbouring PBS stations. Pretty soon all those corduroy pants and cashmere sweater wearing sons of bitches would be panting down the phone, begging her to let them have this show. She pictured herself asking each of them “So how much do you want it?”, to which they would reply “Oh, Roxanne, you wouldn’t believe how much we want it!” and she would smile and reply “Well, how much you got then?”

  After so many dormant days and nights, it felt like life might be getting interesting again.

  Back in South Jefesta, Doctor Wirliv had just finished translating Chapter 3 of the Book of Finding Contentment. It opens with the following passage:

  “Last night I dreamt I was walking across a field of green when a man wearing a black cloak approached me. A hood covered his head ‘Do you remember your stolen sheep?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I do’ I replied. ‘I was angry when it happened, because it meant me and my family went cold and hungry whilst somebody else was warm and feasting’.

  He nodded. ‘I was the one who stole your sheep’ he said ‘And I have come to beg your forgiveness’.

  ‘Forgive you?!’ I shouted. ‘I will kill you!’ and I went to draw my dagger.

  ‘But I am truly sorry.’ He stuttered. ‘I will do whatever I have to in order to make peace with you’.

  I shook my head and cried ‘No! I shall have my revenge!’

  I went to plunge my dagger into his chest, but suddenly noticed he was not trying to defend himself, nor did he attempt to flee, and something made me stop.

  ‘I would have forgiven you’ he said sadly, and pulled back his hood to reveal himself. It was the Inventor”.

 

  “The meaning of this dream is that if you can forgive those who truly beg your forgiveness, no matter what act of crime, shame, infamy, sleight, usury, malice, insult or hatred they have committed against you, then you will find contentment within yourself. If, on the other hand, you cannot forgive then both your heart and your mind will remain polluted with anger and aggrieved with injustice which will gnaw away and destroy all the good grace within you. In order to reach the state of contentment you must find forgiveness in your heart”.

  Chapter Nine

  Hello Hollywood!