Cataclysm
By Mitch Berg
(SCENE: MITCH Berg is leaving the gym. He runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is walking into a group Twerking class. MITCH tries to duck behind a shoulder press machine, but LIBRELLE sees him).
LIBRELLE: ZOMG! Tom Emmer did an ad for a remodeling company!
MITCH: Right. And his manager says it’s a mistake – a testimonial that was never intended for broadcast, that got broadcast! And if you’ve seen the production value, it sure seems plausible…
LIBRELLE: It ain’t the crime! It’s the coverup!
MITCH: What coverup?
LIBRELLE: They had to wait for Aaron Rupar at the City Pages to cover it before they’d comment!
MITCH: Aaron Rupar?
LIBRELLE: Yes.
MITCH: Aaron RUPAR?
LIBRELLE: Yes…well…
MITCH: Spill it.
LIBRELLE: OK. He’s just repeating what Sally Jo Sorenson writes.
MITCH: And?
LIBRELLE: Like usual.
MITCH: We’ve talked about this before.
LIBRELLE: I know. Anyway – This probably violates campaign finance laws!
MITCH: Says who?
LIBRELLE: Sally Jo Sorenson.
MITCH: Huh. Well, on the one hand, pretty much everything you do, and everything you don’t do, violates one campaign finance law or another. Campaign finance laws are mainly designed to protect incumbents. They make campaigning a niggling, nonsensical regulatory maze, full of arbitrary restrictions on free speech.
LIBRELLE: But it keeps money out of politics!
MITCH: No, it doesn’t!
LIBRELLE: Yes it does!
MITCH: How?
LIBRELLE: It’s the law!
MITCH: Right. So the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which alone outspent the GOP candidate in 2010, doesn’t spend money?
LIBRELLE: That’s different. Unions are The People.
MITCH: Oh, for the love of…
LIBRELLE: The laws keep big money from influencing campaigns.
MITCH: Clearly they work wonders.
LIBRELLE: Of course!
MITCH: So here’s a question: who’s paying Sally…
LIBRELLE: …whoah, look at the time. Gotta get to class! (LIBRELLE dashes into room).
(And SCENE)
October 1st, 2013 at 4:35 pm
He runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is walking into a group Twerking class.
I think I know that place! Is it the class given by the Unitarians Monday nights at Washburn High School? Those Uni’s really know how to twerk!
October 1st, 2013 at 9:29 pm
I think this is brilliant. You have added another jewel to a large number of insightful posts. How terrible to live in a age where unbridled egoism is seen as a model for social behavior instead of the path to becoming a moral monster.
October 1st, 2013 at 9:45 pm
“unbridled egotism?”
Ok, I’ll bite. What?
October 1st, 2013 at 10:17 pm
I think that Emery meant to write “How terrible to live in a age where unbridled twerking is seen as a model for social behavior instead of the path to becoming a moral monster.”
Tell that to the Unitarians, Bub!
October 2nd, 2013 at 4:20 am
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October 2nd, 2013 at 7:12 am
@MBerg
I’m still in the afterglow of a very satisfying end to the Breaking Bad series. I may have been projecting a bit. ;^)
October 2nd, 2013 at 8:08 am
“I’m still in the afterglow of a very satisfying end to the Breaking Bad series”
Images we really didn’t need in our heads. Emery twerking every time Walt as on screen.
October 2nd, 2013 at 8:41 am
I watched seasons 1 through the first half of five in a two-week binge on Netflix a couple of weeks ago.
I’m hoping to see the rest of the show on OnDemand this weekend.
No spoilers please. Thanks.
October 2nd, 2013 at 2:12 pm
The “group twerking” class reminds me of when I lived in Boulder, and one fine day my wife and I walked by and saw a group of young ladies in a dance studio learning the subtleties (if that is the right word) of “hip-hop dance”. Suffice it to say that Jennifer Lopez was in no danger of losing her job to any of these.
(was Avery once a Boulderite?)