Summer Re-Run; "A Star is Porn!"

Hello friends.

While Rusty’s on Summer Break,

We present a repost 

Of our most popular pieces.

Which believe me 

Weren’t too damn popular 

In the first place.

But here it is!

One of Rusty’s scripts

From a live reading.

If you call Rusty Pliers live.

Complete with stage directions

And down to the last word.

Proving perhaps he isn’t 

Such a lazy no-good one-eyed drunken bastard 

As he’s made out to be.

Maybe.

Please enjoy. 

And have a safe summer!

Hugs from Rusty Pliers. 

                                                 [Pulls Up Barstool, Adjusts mic]

[Reads from script]

Thank You.

I’m Rusty Pliers.

If you could please hold your, uh, applause,

until the end … 

I’d appreciate it.

Thank you.

(Laugh gently.

Clear throat.

Big breath.

Be Rusty …)

A Star is Porn!

or

How With the Aid of 

Kitchen Counter Serendipity

I Acquired the Non de Plume of … 

Rusty Pliers!

[Prologue]

     It all started in the 1970s when I’d been bumming around Europe for a couple of years, trying to make my living as a film animator.

     I say trying to make my living as an animator because sadly, to be an animator in this world is to learn the true meaning of the term …

   …Art for Art’s Sake.

[Pause]

   So, when I was flat broke in Paris I answered a want ad in a Left Bank newspaper and, after a most memorable job interview (which unfortunately we haven’t got time to go into now)…

  … I was hired as an actor in pornographic films. 

[Matter-of-Factly]

  I signed a one-picture deal with a three-month option and they told me to be in Stockholm by the end of the week.

[Reflective]

  That night, sitting alone on the train to Sweden, I stared out the window and listened to the wheels rolling rat-ta-tat-tat rat-a-tat-tat rat-a-tat-tat …  and I thought, not for the first time since becoming an animator…

   “What have I got to lose?”

[Act I]

[Eye Patch Gag Here?]

   So I found myself in Stockholm with my pants down… trying to make a buck, you’ll pardon the expression, the hard way.

[Pause]

   Ah, but the gods love a fool because while we were filming that week a wondrous thing occurred! 

   A thing called serendipity!

[Pause]

   It was during the kitchen counter fellatio scene.

   While my partner was down getting her close-up I happened to notice, just off-camera beside me on the counter, a pair of stainless-steel vice grips.

   They gleamed beautifully in the bright studio lights.

   Right then and there, serendipity struck me! 

   I introduced the vice grips into the scene.

   My partner, whose name was Heidi, found this quite stimulating … so as the cameras rolled Heidi and I improvised with the vice grips while the crew looked on in amazement and, I like to think, in awe. 

[Slight Pause]

   The scene was very successful.

[Pause]

   Especially the happy ending.

[Pause to let it sink in]  

   We got it in one take. 

[Up Tempo]

   “VOILA!” cried the director, who was French.

   “Bueno!” added the asst director, who was Spanish.

   “My close-up, it was good?” asked Heidi, who was German. 

   “A star… she is born!” predicted the director.

   Only he didn’t mean Heidi.

   He didn’t mean me.

   He meant the vice grips.

[Act II]  

   That night I got to know the cast and crew a little better over a few drinks at Zum Franziskaner, an ancient pub just around the corner from the studio in downtown Stockholm. It was here, in the cozy beer cellar running up a ruinous tab, that I acquired the non de plume of Rusty Pliers.

   Everybody in the business had a non de plume, Heidi explained. Now that I was in the business, I needed one too.

   So we had a few beers and we thought about it.

   “How about Lonesome Orgasms?” I suggested.

   But nobody liked that one.

   “Bob Drillin?”  

   Nobody liked that one, either.

   After about the eighth beer the cameraman suggested Holden McGroin which made us laugh, but then guess what?

   Serendipity struck again and without thinking I said, “How about Rusty Pliers?”

   Everyone liked that, including Heidi.

   “Rusty Pliers,” she purred, trying it out in her luscious porno mouth.

[Pause]

   She said it suited me to a tee.

[Act III]

    At the wrap party later everybody predicted the movie would be a box-office smash. 

   “I smell a big hit!” said the producer, who was Hungarian. He liked it so much he picked up our options and gave the crew the green light to make a dozen more films. 

   That pleased everybody because, as I said at the beginning of my story… it’s a wonderful thing to find steady work in show business. 

[Pause]

   So, over the next three months we made seven toolbox movies in Stockholm, and four in Paris. 

   Oh. And one on the overnight train to Paris.

   That was a quickie, as we called it.

[Pause]

   They even hired a scriptwriter. You should’ve seen the crazy situations he invented to have a man with a toolbox arrive and fornicate repeatedly with a beautiful actress and / or her friends and the hand tools they so desperately craved!

[Laughs]

   Oh boy! It makes me laugh to this day!

[Reflective]

   (Sigh)… Show Business …

   … there really IS no business like it. 

[Pause]

    ….But no animal acts!

    I was very particular in that respect!

[Epilogue]

 Well, that’s the story of how Rusty Pliers got his name.

   If there was any kind of deep wisdom or high moral to be learned from this story… then this would be the place you’d expect to hear it, isn’t it?

[Pause]

   I’d like to thank you for listening. 

   It felt good to tell it. 

   To let it out, so to speak.

   You know, I’ve been calling myself Rusty Pliers for so long I can hardly remember what my real name ever was…

[Big Smile]

   But that’s okay … I like being Rusty Pliers!

[Pause]

Thank You!

You made it fun!

If you enjoyed my story,

Please follow me on social media.

If you didn’t enjoy it … 

… Thanks for not throwing things!

I’m Rusty Pliers!

Goodnight!

[Time; Around 5 Min?]

Prologue with Señoritas

I’ve always been a lucky son-of-a-bitch. 

Ask anybody. 

For instance, they paid me eight-and-a-half thousand dollars to write this prologue, and I haven’t even finished reading the manuscript I’m supposed to write the prologue for.

Wouldn’t you say that was lucky? 

Or at least admit that I’m a son-of-a-bitch?

My publisher finally tracked me down at El Gato in Madrid. “Where’s that prologue?” she demanded over the phone. “And keep it under five-hundred words this time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied sarcastically, trying not to let her hear me laughing with glee.

“Who’s that with you?” asked my publisher, somewhat annoyed. She thought I should always be writing, not enjoying myself in some tapas bar with the señoritas.

I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. “Shhh, she can hear you,” I said to Glee and the others. “Stop that! Please girls! I’ll be with you in a minute. Order me another Mahou and some croquetas, will you?” 

“Is that your wife?” asked another, reaching for the phone. “Let me talk to her.”

“He’s married?” asked a third. “He sure doesn’t act like it.”

“Shhhh,” I hissed at them. “Quiet girls, please!” 

“There’s nobody here with me,” I lied into the mouthpiece. “I’m writing.”

With any luck, of which I have plenty, I’ll knock this prologue out by siesta time, I thought. Then maybe go uptown, get a bite to eat. I know a great little place just off the Calle de Alcala.

“I need it by Friday,” said my publisher. 

“What’s the hurry?” I asked. “It’s just an autobiography by a broken-down old animator, isn’t it? How interesting could that be?”

“The Company thinks it has great potential,” she answered.

“He named it Hold the Beetroot, for fuck’s sake,” I said. “What does that even mean?”

“Remember, Rusty. By Friday please.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “Bye.”

“Don’t you hang up on me!”

“Eureka!” I answered. “Inspiration has just struck! Gotta go.” 

“Inspiration my ass! Listen, you no-good, lazy …”

I hung up.

Turning to the girls, I said, “Sorry ladies, I’ve got to get to work. Why don’t you meet me at La Paloma tonight about ten o’clock. Okay?”

The girls picked up their things and left, calling me a few choice names in Spanish.

That was okay. Luckily, I don’t speak Spanish very well, so I couldn’t be too offended.

The beer and croquetas arrived.

I picked up the manuscript and began to read…

The Sound of No Hands Clapping

More Selections from the Soon-to-be

Possibly Forthcoming Book Entitled;

Rusty’s Zen Moments

Undoubted Zen (pg. 33)

I have never doubted my zen.

It has brought me to where I am.

It has always been with me.

From before this life to well beyond it.

“In perpetuity and throughout the universe.”

As my Disney contract used to say.

Forever and ever and everywhere.

Hmmm.

That’s big talk.

But don’t worry,

They weren’t bragging.

They really did own 

The work I produced for them,

And any subsidiary spin-offs,

Throughout time and space.

About my zen.

I wasn’t bragging about that either.

It really has helped bring me 

To where I am.

Yes, I worked for Walt Disney.

After he was dead, of course.

I’m old but not that old.

My zen was strong and I was lucky,

And got to grasp my dreams of being an animator.

I even got to work with Mickey Mouse!

Which was a dream come true.

He was difficult to draw though.

At least he was for me.

You had to get him just right

Or he didn’t look like Mickey Mouse at all.

And you know what?

When I worked with him I discovered that

He was even nicer in person 

Than he is in the movies!

The really big stars are like that, they say.

Hard working.

Considerate of others.

Kind to their inferiors.

Like zen is.

Who Put My Zen Where It Is? (pg. 39)

Who put my zen where it is?

That’s a silly question.

I did.

The Zen of Strawberries (pg. 39)

Strawberries are very zen.

They are natural, simple, beautiful things.

And they taste good too.

That’s strong zen.

Strawberries are good for you as well.

So I’m told and do believe.

Except for the whipped cream we put on them

To make the sweet even sweeter.

Put down your whipped cream I say!

And let the zen take over.

Empty your mind.

Let nothing interfere with the strawberry 

And your experience of it.

Touch it.

Lift it to your nose.

Smell it.

Feel it on your lips.

Bite it.

Now feel it inside your mouth.

Yielding between your teeth.

Taste it.

Ahhh! 

Chew it.

Your tongue exploring, pushing, probing.

Swallow it.

The taste is savored as your throat works and …

Down it goes to a thankful stomach,

There to begin another phase of its metamorphosis

Into shit.

From food of the gods.

To food of the worms.

For are we not gods, you and I?

And tomorrow?

Same thing.

Only eventually, we are the food.

That’s the zen of it!

More Writer’s Rules

   Please come back with me to Auckland, New Zealand, 1968.

   Yes, a long time ago in a far off place. 

   My family and I had emigrated from California to New Zealand the year before, when I was fourteen-years-old. I confess I didn’t adapt to my new country very easily. I couldn’t fit in at school and was unhappy at home. I was a lonely kid who always had his head in a book. 

   It’s not easy being a teenager in a strange new country, and if there are any teenagers reading this you have my sympathy.

   But what am I talking about?

   No teenagers could possibly be reading this!

   Anyway, after a miserable week of failure at school, I used to love going to Queen Street in downtown Auckland on a Friday night. Queen Street was the heart of Auckland, its biggest avenue, alive with people and motorcars, lined with shops and pubs and cinemas. On Friday the shops stayed open late (till 9pm, before closing for the weekend) and the bright lights of the city crackled and flashed with extra excitement! The streets of the city looked so beautiful at night, especially if it had rained (as it often had it seemed that first year), and the reflections glittered on the wet, hissing streets.

   Sometimes on these Friday outings, feeling nostalgic and missing California, I would catch the electric trolleybus at the Civic Theatre and take it to Shortland Street. From there I’d walk around the corner to Wimpy’s for an “American-style” hamburger and a Coke.

   Wimpy’s was the only burger place in town. It was an English imitation of an American “burger bar,” as the New Zealanders called it. I’d sit there, the garish Formica surfaces and tasteless flashing neon signs somewhat reminding me of America, sipping on my Coke and feeling homesick as only a little boy can, until I discovered the slice of beetroot in my hamburger. 

   What the?

   I was from Los Angeles, where you ordered your drive-thru burgers from a clown and received them piping hot thirty-three seconds later. 

   With French fries and Cokes! 

   (None of this “chips” and “soft drinks” stuff.)

   And now I'm getting a burger contaminated with beetroot?

   New Zealand. Even a hamburger dinner was strange and different here.

   About halfway down Queen Street was Whitcoulls, the booksellers. This was the biggest bookshop in Auckland, so I never missed a chance to wander in and nose around. 

   Whitcoulls was heaven, for I’ve always been an avid reader. And guess what? Not a slice of beetroot anywhere to be seen! And by that I mean I felt comfortable in Whitcoulls and forgot I was a foreigner, that I was a strange boy in a strange down-under land. 

   Perhaps unlike hamburgers, books are books wherever you go.

   There was a section at the back called ‘Performing Arts’ that I always headed for. I’d stand there reading about old movies or animation art until someone, usually with kindness, told me to buy something or please leave.

   “Sorry,” I’d mumble, a little embarrassed. My schoolboy means would not permit of too many expensive books. I checked my watch. There was still one more stop I had to make. And I had to be there before they closed at 9PM. 

   Leaving Whitcoulls I would catch the trolleybus back up to the Civic and walk around the corner to the tiny newspaper kiosk and see if they had any new American magazines.

   Especially my favorite, Mad Magazine. 

   The friendly woman who worked the place recognized me, for I showed up every Friday night. She sat huddled in her tiny kiosk, surrounded by newspapers and magazines winter or summer, a cigarette constantly dangling from the corner of her mouth.

   “I’ve put one aside for you, ducky,” she’d say, reaching behind the counter and bringing it out. She was like a million years old, but very kind. They only got a limited number of Mads, and she usually put one aside for me when they came in. 

   She handed it to me, a smile creasing her wrinkled face.

   “There ya go, lad,” she said kindly.

   “Thank you,” I answered, handing her a few coins.

   She turned to another customer while I glanced down at the prize in my hands.

   Mad Magazine. All the way from America! I smiled to myself.

   As usual, the cover showed the dimwitted visage of Alfred E. Newman, smiling idiotically out. 

   

   At this point perhaps you have expectations to hear me wax poetic over Mad Magazine? 

   Sorry to disappoint you, but I have a writer’s rule about not discussing books or magazines. Can you see how it relates to the rule I also have about not discussing movies? 

   I ask you because I’m not sure I see the connection any more, just wondering if you did. I made the rule up a long time ago, when I first started writing this blog. 

   An artist has got to consider the future, I figured. 

   If I’m not careful, no one will know what I’m talking about in eighty or a hundred years, when my blogs (collected together and published under the  title of Hardly a Horse Kiss) have been translated into dozens of languages and even made into a few movies. (Two of which I would live to see. Of these my favorite was the pirated Chinese computer-animated version released in 2033, retitled Super Fantastic Horse Kissing Fun). 

   Oh yes! The future looks bright for the career of the late Rusty Pliers! 

   Especially when you consider my acclaimed-as-a-masterpiece literary tome Hold the Beetroot topped the NY Times bestseller list for eighty-seven straight weeks and is now on every high school student in America's required reading list. 

   Ha! Ha! Who said Rusty Pliers never got within a mile of an education? 

   I can see it all now. How I’ll be detested in my posthumous future, with resentful students forced to read Hold the Beetroot with one eye while battling horrible, undead, flesh eating Zombies with the other … for I have a rather pessimistic view of the middle future that’s a little hazy on mortality and biology and stuff like that. 

   I’m glad I won’t be alive to see it, or shouldn’t be unless they can’t perfect the software they’re designing right now in time to replace me after I die. In which case they’ll keep my brain alive in some sterile underground laboratory, probably stuck between the brains of Hunter S. Thompson and Walt Disney to keep those two from fighting. My poor brain prodded with electrodes and wires, hooked up to a supercomputer and forced to keep pumping out the masterpieces while serious young techno-geeks with clipboards, interning for the vast, faceless Multinational Publishing House that keeps me alive, wonder what Rusty Pliers was like when he had a body and could talk.

   Back before flesh-eating Zombies roamed the land.

   Yes it won’t all be beer and skittles for the late Rusty Pliers! 

   I don’t know why, but I take consolation from that fact.

   Perhaps you do, too?

   So you see, there’s a good reason for these little writer’s rules.

   Have a nice week. See you Friday.

Whine and Cheese

   Last week I met my friend Kathy at a Wine Bar on Orange Avenue. 

   I arrived early. After scanning the menu, which listed at least two-hundred different beers, I couldn’t decide and settled for a local brew, and some Spanish cheese with crackers to go with it. I couldn’t be bothered flirting with the young lady behind the bar. She was probably half my age, which to some men might sound good, but not to me and besides, three other guys were flirting with her already. They jabbered on about what successful, important days they’d had, and dropped hints about the foreign sports cars they drove. She smiled sweetly but seemed unimpressed.

   The beer I ordered was called, rather appropriately, Swamp Brew. Made from the finest Florida waters, bragged the label, and collected at the shores of Lake Okeechobee when the moon was full. Why during the full moon I couldn’t say, maybe the water tastes better then. It’s a very dangerous profession, by the way, collecting this water, because of the alligators and snakes that inhabit the lake. 

   That must explain the excessive price, I reckoned, danger money for the brewmasters.

   That might have explained the taste, too, alligator and snake poop in the water.

   I was reading my Kindle, chewing cheese and sipping beer. I like reading from a Kindle, no one can see what you’re reading. I like my privacy, especially about what I read. Don’t worry though, I wasn’t reading anything naughty. I was reading Aesop’s Fables.

“After all is said and done, more is said than done.” ― Aesop

   “Hi Rusty!” called Kathy as she entered. We’d been friends for many years, Kathy and I, both of us having worked for Walt Disney Feature Animation, animating gorillas and lions and horses and bears and Stitches. All of whom, when they wanted to, spoke perfect English, except Khan*, the horse from Mulan, who never said a thing. Then, after the Disney execs laid us all off and closed the Florida studio in 2004, we’d worked together for five years at Full Sail University, teaching animation to mostly disinterested young video game players.

   They thought animation was going to be easy. How wrong they were!

   Funny how life is. I’d been Kathy’s boss at Disney, she’d been my boss at Full Sail. 

   So remember; you artists out there! You’d better try to be nice to the people you meet as you make your way through life, because you don’t know when you might meet them again.

   “What’s new?” asked Kathy.

   I noticed the slight look of apprehension in her eyes. She was afraid I’d start on one of my favorite subjects, my impossible-to-finish book or my sometimes pugnacious marriage. She’d heard it all before, many times. Disregarding her apprehension, I pitched straight in.

   After all, what are friends for?

   “I’m fighting with the missus again,” I started.

   “Oh really?” she asked with more than a touch of boredom. “What about this time?”

   There were so many things we fought about, it was difficult to choose just one. I looked down at the table, where the Kindle and plate of cheese sat, and answered simply, “Crackers.”

   “Crackers?” 

   “Yeah,” I sighed. “Crackers.”

   Kathy poured herself a Swamp Brew. After tasting it, she made a sour face and said, “Go on, I’m listening.”

   “We’d been fighting like cats and dogs,” I began. “About what I can’t remember. I think it was the weather. Her smartphone app said it was going to rain, mine said it wasn’t.”

   Sometimes even our apps can’t agree, so what chance have I got?

  “Anyways,” I continued. “I was making a salad for my dinner and I needed a bowl. Well, the bowl I reached for contained small packets of crackers, like the ones you get with your soup at Denny’s, you know? So I spilled them out onto the counter top, intending to replace them when I’d finished with the bowl. I’m not that stupid!” I insisted. “I know enough not to mess with my wife’s stuff, even if it’s just crackers. 

   “She comes in and seeing the crackers, starts yelling at me not to touch them!”

   I took a sip of my beer as Kathy asked, “What happened next?”

   “‘Don’t touch those crackers!’ she ordered. ‘They’re for the meatloaf I’m going to make!’ And I said, ‘Fine, I’m not touching your crackers. I’m making a salad. Don’t worry, your meatloaf is safe!’ 

   “‘Yeah?’ she says, ‘Well, I’m not going to make the blasted meatloaf now! It’ll be a cold day in hell before you taste my meatloaf again!’

   “‘Okay,’ said I, ‘Then I won’t touch the crackers you won’t be using to not make the meatloaf!”

   Kathy excused herself and went to get a beer.

*Disney's Mulan 1998