WCA Ep. 41 – Fact v Fiction

This week, we return to last year’s Decatur Book Festival with this bout between authors Daniel Black and Andisheh Nouraee.

Mice in Cars want to sing you a love song

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Dear One Night Stand in Philadelphia Whose Name I have now Long Forgotten,

So… what’s up?

I know it’s been awhile since we last spoke.  Twenty years this October to be exact. Not real sure if you remember me or not. That kid from the nightclub tripping his balls off on two hits of acid he bought from some skinhead he met down on South Street. You found me somehow in the crowded dark, shivering and sweating and preternaturally grinning over on the corner of the dance floor. Apparently I was making quite the scene as a one-man mosh pit. Security was ready to bounce me from the club to let me take my chances with cold hard reality. Then you appeared out of nowhere. Interjected upon my behalf to the powers that be. Vouchsafed my presence and swore to reign me in under the aegis of your attention. All smiles and night life diplomacy you bought me safe passage for those next crucial hours that passed.

Remember?

How you took my arm and whisked me off to a quiet, well quiet-ish, section of the club. Found us an old beaten up couch to sink into. Bought me round after round of orange juice. Proceeded to talking me down from the vertiginous peaks of my trip. You guided me gently through ontological fireworks and navigated me skillfully through an existential mine field. I told you everything. How this was my last night in the Navy. How I got kicked out of the service, stripped of my G.I. Bill and ended up shaming the family name. How I was attempting now to atone by ritualistically sacrificing my ego on a ceremonial pyre of LSD.

Do you remember what you said then?

“Yeah…  how’s that working out for you?”

And because you were immaculately woven in black, your moon white face seemed to float disembodied beside mine and I looked over into your bright eyes and without a word you allowed me to kiss you. The longest kiss of my life. For when we pulled back out the lights to the club were on, the crowd had thinned to a few strays taking final sipping off their last call rounds and the frantic hustle of the staff  trying to shepherd them out. Laughing, we made our way to your car. We drove til dawn around the city listening to Clock DVA on your car stereo. You pulled over into a deserted parking lot a mile away from the base. I began to shiver again and you pressed a finger to my lips before I could say something stupid and simply said – ‘yes’.

Later, you gave me your name and your number. Both of which, to my enduring shame and regret, I must confess to having lost. In hindsight it was one of the greatest mistakes I had ever made, though time would certainly prove it to not be my last. I won’t bore you with what happened next. The drugs and broken hearts. The hungry adventures and close brushes with happy endings. The drinks and the drudgery and the miracle of the friends you meet in between. The truth is my life was probably just like yours, just like anyone’s really. Maybe not on the surface, maybe not in the details where the devil dwells. But there in the collective depths we all share. In the end I believe that over the years, we both did our best to make the most of the chances we had blown and the hopes we had betrayed for new ones.

Or so I like to think when I’m getting nostalgic at three in the morning.

Anyway, I really hope this letter finds you just as kind, just as beautiful and just as funny as you were when we departed from that final and only night we shared together. But to be honest, I’d be grateful enough if it ever found you at all.

Yours Sincerely,

That Kid Tripping His Balls Off at the Night Club

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Rob Mosca is the author of High Midnight.

Epistle to the Official Keeper of Time, Formerly Known As the Time Timer

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Wither thou blowest

Oh keeper of Time?

Whence is they voice

Thy sarcastic chime?

Thy silence disturbing

From words so profound

Of late we’ve not heard thee

Not even a sound!

Hast thy mustache

Ere Salvadore Dali

Made you go melty

Like a Supermanned Trolley?

Are you sprawn

Across the lawn

Of the silent Van go Scream?

Or are you now dotted

And quite so besotted

With a Monet Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream?

How many roads

Might a clock walk down

If only it had legs?

What is the sound of one hand clapping

When you do not have hands?

It is as I feared

Hast the man put you down?

Have the Overlord and the Viceroy

Sick of your anonymous taunting

Shoved your hands down your non existent throat?

Or did they give you a throat

And then shove your hands down it?

I say now

Free the clock!

Let its tyranny of time

Ever mock

Ever stress

Ever strain the combatants of write club.

Come back Oh Official Keeper of Time Formerly Known As The Time Timer Formerly Known As Prince Formerly Known as the Time Timer Formerly Known As Base Elements Extracted From the Earth and Manufactured Into a Time Keeping Device Not Yet Given A Name

Come back.

And we shall greet thee with open arms

And open hearts

While we munch pop corn

And giggle with glee

As thy subjects bleed ink for our amusement.

Tick on little clock.

Tick on.

Sincerely,

E.P. Blingermeyer

WCA Ep. 40 – Early v Late

This week, WCA Consigliere Myke Johns teams up with Hilary Yarbrough for some fake record shopping in their take on Early versus the Weather Channel’s Jennifer Nittoso who loves the nightlife.

#MiceinCars

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There was laughter, but it was barking and humorless.  She hadn’t opened her eyes.  She had lost that ability a while ago.  Her breath was slowing even though she was fighting it as much as she could.  The voices were helping to keep her conscious. She could feel her mind wanting to just let go and give in.  It kept trying to wander over her memories, but she would be damned before she let it.

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Ann-Ruffin Minarik makes money by keeping track of mundane objects and providing places to sit for rich, important people.  This is worth it because occasionally she witnesses car wrecks and explosions.

This was a response to the 100 Word Prompt.

WCA Ep. 39 – Life v Death

In this week’s WRITE CLUB podcast, puppeteers Raymond Carr and Reay Kaplan go stuffing-to-stuffing in a struggle of Life versus Death.

Mice in Cars makes our noise

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Dear Allen,

Three things:

1)   Though it pains me to admit it, you were right.  The Large Hadron Collider did not accidentally create antimatter on March 30, 2010.  The resulting explosion did not tear a hole in the time-space continuum.  A supermassive black hole did not instantaneously form under the French/Swiss border, and the earth was not obliterated.  Mankind was spared; Icarus’s wings remain unsinged.  It was, as you said, the tequila talking.

Even so, my central point remains valid.  Scientists have the power to accidentally end us all.  One false move, one set of quarks that don’t combine to form the predicted composite particle, one “wonderful new machine” – this is the way the world ends.

It just didn’t happen in Switzerland.  Yet.

2)   2 + 2 does = 5, particularly when applying mathematics to people or using the Law of Combined Gasses.

3)   I’m directing a play that was on both of our bucket lists.  You once told me, “Copenhagen is so good that I’d dress in drag and play Margrethe if that was the only way I could get cast.”  I’ve enjoyed imagining that production ever since, particularly since my production started rehearsing in costumes.  You would have looked stunning in a tea green dress.

I miss you.  We all do.

Maggie

WCA Ep. 38 – Rich v Poor

This week we kick off our Chapter 11 podcasts with author Man Martin appealing to our better greed with a piece on Rich versus Atlanta is Burning contributor John Carroll’s take on Poor.

Musics: Mice in Cars

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WCA Ep. 37 – Quiet v Loud

In this week’s episode, Viceroy Nick Tecosky gets good and sedate against Suehyla El-Attar’s big loud fighting words.

All Hail Mice in Cars!

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