For more than an infinity gazillion years*, the expanse of a simultaneous nothingness and everything-ness has existed.
Inside this expanse, a speck pulsates. The speck is a sweeping dust bunny tornado, roaming and floating about without intention.
Inside this spinning tornado, lies a randomly uncomplicated bunch of solar systems tumbling around like socks in a massive clothes drying machine.
Each of these “socks”, for some inexplicable reason, has a myriad of gasses that sometimes attract themselves to one another and they form minute atoms that you ** recognize as stars.
Many of these stars have even smaller considerations of minerals that are both attracted and repulsed to them, and are left suspended but spinning around them. This likely makes the stars feel good about themselves.
On several of these trillions upon trillions (believe me, we are not the only ones who have water) mineral star thoughts, two specific elements out of thousands of other elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen, have been introduced to each other, courted and sexed up one another and reproduced a love child. (Oxygen, it turns out, is a polyandrous little element and refuses to produce a liquid offspring unless she is getting DP’d by two hunky Hydrogen stud elements).
On one specific mineral marble, a stage was set up and a very brief (for everything but you**), but multi-act play occurred. The play, “Evolution: The Musical That Ended It All”, really is not that important in terms of the multiverses’ intergalactic theatrics; however knowing what is known about you**, you’ll find this play somewhat entertaining.
The following is the Cole’s Notes version of the performance. For song lyrics and a copy of the script, please see the artist:
_______________________________________
EVOLUTION: THE MUSICAL THAT ENDED IT ALL!
INTROLUDE: Explosion, Expulsion
It all begins with silence (completely stolen from John Cage’s “4:33”), however the last 33 seconds end with the first Violin player standing up and clandestinely walking to the conductor, then doing the old gum + firecracker prank on the conductor’s shoe. The burning shoe is meant to be connected to a fuse that kicks off a popcorn machine in the rafters of the hall and popcorn-y goodness rains on the baffled audience as a wake up. While this is happening, slide whistles and tuba drones are amplified to signify the buffoonery.
Who’s Got Your Back(Teria, That Is!)
Out of the orchestral pit among the smoke and popcorn carnage comes a 14 meter wide faux petri dish with androgynous dancers in mold costumes moshing and banging into one another, while electric guitars play space anthems. The lights go down and the petri dish is again lowered into the pit.
I’m Scum, You’re Scum
A love ballad duet between Tom Waits and Bette Midler impersonators about two skiffs of scum falling in love and their struggles to multiply to create their dream multi-cellular love-child. The act of course, contains foreshadowing references of the 21st Century banking and litigation professions.
Life’s A Beach, Baby.
A military march of nicely choreographed amoeba soldiers hitting the shores set in a WWII Normandy-type setting. These amoebas are slightly transformed once they hit land, (thanks to the help of Velcro and button technology) as hair, limbs, and tails are added to the dancers’ costumes while they float around on stage.
Levi-a-thon
Set as a pubescent and squeaky voiced demi-god’s charter school fundraiser to raise money for early onset diabetes, a corporately sponsored science fair takes place, where each demi-god is encouraged to create the most hideous beast to roam, swim, or fly about planet Earth. Tom foolery ensues and the creations get bigger and increasingly more ridiculous…. until the school janitor (played by an emotional Nate Ruess impersonator singing his famous “Why Haven’t You Decided to Leave the Gym Yet” number) gets increasingly depressed and turns off the furnace to freeze the pupils into leaving so he can clean the gym.
Hits Like a Rock
Just before the intermission, as demi-gods and their creations are lingering from the previous scene in the school parking lot set, a huge foam meteorite that has been strapped to the back of the room is released as it swings like a pendulum onto the stage and completely obliterates the set like a wrecking ball, destroying everything. Smoke machines pump out their smoke and (this scene has a budget well in excess of $100 USD) yellow and orange radioactive-like lights are blinked and strobed inside the smoke. When it clears, what has been a nice forest scene now has been replaced by orange light shining down on a desert. If Jon Bon Jovi is available, he should be cast into this scene as a stegosaurus (Guitarist, Slash, should be wearing back end of stegosaurs outfit) and will gallop away screaming to stage right. If Jon Bon Jovi is not available for casting, Roger Whittaker should be willing and the soundscape of screams could be quickly replaced with whistling.
INTERMISSION
(During the intermission, every audience member is given a small bunch of bananas to carry with them back to their seats).
Hey Hey We’re The Monkeys (Copyright 1966)
As the intermission winds down and the house lights are dimmed, monkey sounds are blasted through the speakers, as ambient Dan Gibson-type jungle music is playing. All sorts of people dressed as primates, dressed as future leaders of Planet Earth (Ghengis Khan, Ghandi, the special needs actor who played Corky, Footballer Ronaldo, The Beatles, etc), go about their jungle business, showing hints of dissatisfaction in their current lives while they sing a “Feed the World”-type anthem-version of the Monekys hit, “Hey Hey, We’re The Monkeys”. This is all being done as the audience devours their (free) bananas and hurls the peeling onto the stage with yelps.
Erectable and Electable (The Pork Barrel Burlesque)
Eventually, the monkeys fade away into the background and smoke is produced onstage as we are all introduced to “Advancement Woman”, when a sexy Marilyn Monroe-type broad in her monkey suit starts a sultry warble about democracy while she is on all-fours, and as she slowly climbs out of her monkey suit (with evening gown on underneath), she moves into an erect stance on her two sturdy gams, removes the final piece of her costume to reveal she is actually wearing a Neanderthal-ish Gro Harland Bruntland mask under the ape mask (Or is in fact the actual Gro Harland Bruntland, based on funding). The act ends with the heros/villains of the story “Erection Men”, the group of suitors for “Advancement Woman” dancing across the stage and sweeping their gal into their collective arms and they carry her off. It seems a little late in the play to introduce the main characters, but really, no one notices since the first several scenes have been absolutely stunning!
Motorcar, Motor Car
This act is a Dick Vandyke-like dance number with a lot of action, including the famous horse-shooting scene people have been talking about. SPOLIER ALERT: he shoots his horse from the open cockpit of his jalopy, while Erection Man sings “Didn’t Need The Nag Anyway”. Advancement Women in her sunglasses and scarf is in the cockpit too looking very impressed.
Fuelled Up!
Teams of dancers continuously outmatched by the one preceding it take the stage in a choreographed piece only second to the North Korean Mass Games, with teams of male chorus men dressed as woodsmen, coal miners, oil derrick-hands, military combatants and corn farmers all vie for their piece of the Advancement Woman’s attention-pie. Let me be the first to explain that the metaphor here is really quite stunning!
Hubbard’s Lament
Eventually, Advancement Woman is given the gift of a suckling baby by the oil producers and she gladly falls into a fit of new mother brain-dead-idiocy. Her and her baby drink and bath in what appears to be oil (It is actually really dark blue water but from the audience it really looks like the real McCoy up there). Erection Men and Advancement Woman and their child are all in an orgy of guzzle and splash, all sorts of gluttony and cavorting, and within minutes, the stage is covered in dark and wet liquid. A previously arranged member of the audience who is actually a part of the play but for effect is placed among the rest of the viewers, stands up and shouts “STOP!”. The music dies down with a heavy emphasis on the brake-like screeeeetch of the viola in the orchestral pit. All eyes look at the protestor. He does a 180 and looks at the audience, then looks at the now silent cast on stage in their covering of dark liquid goo, and says “If you keep doing that, there will not be enough goo for the rest of the shows scheduled for this week”. The cast all pause for a moment, then look at each other, wait 2 seconds, then break out into a mocking laughter. One of the Erection Men (who is holding what looks like a ½ eaten turkey leg) shouts back at the gentlemen, “What? Next you’re going to say there won’t be another dodo leg to eat for tomorrow’s play as he waves his meat wand at the man!!!” and they all start laughing again. The audience man, embarrassed, leaves the auditorium angry, while the folks on stage continue to frolic and the curtains close.
Dance of the Pumphandles
The stage is silent, and a small skinny child in steam-punk welding goggles (these are easy to get now) is the only living, breathing thing left on stage. Pieces of amoeba costumes, shattered portions of the petri dish and piles of confused brick make up the set, while the child just roams like a gypsy, silently looking for companionship. Part of the set contains a rusty, abandoned Petro Canada Service Station (Substitutes for other, local petrol station companies can be used if this play is picked up abroad) A very rusted version of what was once the Erection Man jalopy, is parked at a weird angle and the child climbs into the automobile, dramatically picks up a tattered scarf left by Advancement Woman, and uses it to wipe away tears as the lights dramatically fade.
POSTLUDE: Is this the end?
A single piccolo plays as shrilling as possible as a guy dressed as the wind (wind costumes come in many shapes and forms, I would like to see a lot of flowing shear sleeves and dress-tails and of course hidden stage fans could be used for effect), with a huge broom comes and sweeps all the debris left from the last scene off to stage right. (Also he is wired so that he can be ascended into the rafters). A beam of light from presumably a spaceship shines a spotlight onto him as he ascents. Something obviously drops from his pocket as he ascends and lands on the stage. The curtains close. Then open again, almost like a mistake has been made by a stage crew member. When they open again, a small houseplant has been placed where the package from his pocket landed.
Curtains close again. Fin.
House lights come on.
Narrator reminds people not to slip on bananas as they leave.
___________________________
*It is assumed that because the consideration of time or concept of tense has not, does not, or will not exist in this expanse, it will continue to exist for another infinity gazillion years.
**You, the reader, are likely human, and are caught up in your closed-minded self. The lot of you are religio-centric, age-centric, gender-centric, ethno-centric, idealo-centric, species-centric micro-organisms trying to co-balance your collective sense of entitlement with each others’ self-declarations of useless privilege. You are short-sighted fools who are only good at developing yourselves into an oblivion, all while sucking life out of one another on one of the most ugly and insignificant planets, in quite possibly the least organized and filthy solar systems in one of the shadiest corners of the universe.
and everythingness, a speck of a marble
Around 1 gazillion years ago, herds and flocks of beasts (Leviathan) wandered, swam, and flew around on or near the surface of a tiny green and blue space marble. The ball, mostly made of minerals and water, supported these animals to excess and they lived hundreds of years and were nourished by living chlorophyll-infused organizsms.
Oil comes only from a small green and blue ball, that quickly spins on an axis while is revolves around a horribly frustrating giant star made of gas. We cannot reach this thing. We feel it and get our energy from it to grow food and
There once lived a human being named Marion King Hubbard who developed the concept of Peak Oil. The theory in a nut shell is that earth will eventually run out of oil. Oil, for the last several decades, has been the blood that pumps through the veins of industry, recreation, economy, distraction.
to back up the oil bus a little bit, a small explanation of mankind and its relationship to oil. ________________________________________
From: Matthew Holden
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2013 4:34 PM
To: Matthew Holden (sonisface@gmail.com); Matthew Holden
Subject: oil end is near
There once lived a human being named Marion King Hubbard who developed the concept of Peak Oil. The theory in a nut shell is that earth will eventually run out of oil. Oil, for the last several decades, has been the blood that pumps through the veins of industry, recreation, economy, distraction.
to back up the oil bus a little bit, a small explanation of mankind and its relationship to oil.
For more than an infinity gazillion years (keep in mind that this time was not being measured until recently) an expanse of a simultaneous nothingness and everythingness existed. It is assumed that because there is not time in this expanse, it will continue to exist for another infinity gazillion years.
Inside this expanse, lives a speck. The speck is a sweeping dust bunny tornado, roaming and floating about without intention.
Inside this spinning tornado, lies a randomly uncomplicated bunch of solar systems tumbling around like socks in a massive clothes drying machine.
Each of these “socks”, for some unexplained reason, has a myriad of gasses that sometimes attract themselves to one another and they form minute atoms that we recognize as stars.
Many of these stars have even smaller considerations of minerals that are both attracted and repulsed to them, and are left suspended but spinning around them.
On several of these trillions upon trillions mineral thoughts, two specific elements out of thousands of other elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen, have been introduced to each other, courted and sexed up one another and reproduced a love child. (Oxygen, it turns out, is a polyandrous little element and refuses to produce a liquid offspring unless she is getting DP’d by two hunky Hydrogen stud elements).
On one specific mineral marble, a stage was set up and a brief, but multi-act play occurred. The play was called Evolution: the musical. Not to bore with too many details or the play, but the song list from the plays soundtrack is the following:
Explosion, Expulsion: interlude
Photosynthesis: Let’s be buds
Storm the beach
Why Is It So Hard to Deal with Change?
Levi-a-thon
Hits Like a Rock
Ice, Ice. and Babies
Hey, Hey We’re the Monkeys
Walking after Midnight
Motorcar, motorcar
Coughity cough cough
Dance of the Pumphandles