“Peabo, Peabo, Peabo Bryson. I’m the mice man, and the mice man wants a motorbike. Hostile gestures, cheap and easy, toss me a candy, oh sweet monkey. Shake your fist at the sky, and cry out for wine. Add it up to one dim sum, I’m changing my name to something like Bertrand Mumbo Haverstrom. ”
[Pause for other background extra sitting at the table with me to say something.]
“It’s a nice day. It’s nice here. I like this café.”
“Me, I have to hope that all brides have gumption. We all fire up the unseemly mountain, and mingle like flies in a prison. I’m on fire, right? Hey, the leak in my brain is wily, my resolve is not so steely, my heart and drive want love so fast and everything. I smile, and you smile, and there’s a sale that takes a while, but what we do with our time is hide. Frightened of a gift, we seek permission.”
“I enjoy skiing, so skiing is nice. Skiing is a sport that I enjoy. ”
[I really take a moment to consider this sentiment before I speak.]
“We made a fake wasp out of a firecracker, tied him to a thread leash, and put him into the nest with the others, the real wasps, and made a video of how the real wasps treated him. Weeks and weeks he was there, our fake one, and then one day, we lowered him down from the nest on his string, onto the porch below, safely away from the real wasps, and we ignited him, since he was a firecracker. And we left the video camera focused on the real wasps in the nest, and the real wasps in the nest were looking down at the porch where the firecracker dressed as a wasp ignited and exploded. We would drink and do nitrous nightly while examining the footage closely, sometimes on slow speed, to see how the real wasps handled it. We think the whole experience really rearranged the wasps’ heads. This peer that they lived with seemed fine and surrogate, but turned out to be this fiery explosive alien completely unlike them; they seemed to be scratching their heads about this. You can see them in the video footage looking down at the situation and trying to understand it. Then one night we were all drunk and Allen agreed to let us set his bike’s seat on fire, in the street, with lighter fluid, while we made a video of him looking out the apartment window and watching us do it. He didn’t think we would. But we did it. And in the video, his face gets confused and then he gets fighting mad, he’s, like, 35-years-old and out of shape and he punches Jeff in the side of the head really hard but Jeff still had the sense to keep the video rolling while Alan came out into the street and tackled me. He jumped on me right as I was coaxing the seat’s flames even higher by adding more lighter fluid; just before he tackles me, I shove the bike off on a flaming ghost ride, just sent it on its way, on fire, with no rider on it. Allen’s bike was like a gigantic torch on two wheels. We would also watch that video, alone, repeatedly, while drinking. Even Allen would watch it with us, weirdly amazed. We would surmise drunkenly, finally, at four or five in the morning, after repeated viewing, that there is a big emotional difference between wasps and humans.”
“It sounds like you guys were kind of idiots.”
[Long pause between us that I hope didn’t ruin the background action in the scene.]
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be having an actual conversation.”
[The director yells cut, and the Assistant Director says that all extras can go back to the holding area since the café scene is done.]