Interview With A Figment

Good day to you, Bloggers — so here, for no reason at all, is much of the substance of the dream I had just before waking this morning. Because sometimes life gives you lemons, and you think “hey, great, I can make lemonade from these!” but then you look around and realize you don’t have anything to make the lemonade in, and you don’t have any sugar either, so you decide you might as well try using what you do have, so you cut the lemon into thin slices and arrange the slices on a plate, and dribble some honey and some balsamic vinegar over them, with a little bit of salt, and then you take a little nibble and you think “hey, this isn’t too bad”, and then you take another and you think “my God, what’s wrong with me?” But then — and this is the most important part — you do not throw the lemons out, but instead put them in the fridge with some plastic wrap over them and stand there staring at them for a second or two before saying to yourself “yah — well what the hell. You never know, somebody insane might come over, and demand lemon slices with honey and vinegar. It could happen.”

And then you close the fridge door.

So, thanks for stopping by! And here’s what I dreamt: as you’ll see, it’s not so much about where ideas come from, as it is about where in the hell do they think they’re going.

Come back here, damnit!

***

Me: So, Andy, where do they make the show now?

Andy: They make the show in Ulan Bator. I don’t know why.

Me: How long does it take to get back home from here?

Andy: Oh man, it’s seriously almost not worth going, it’s like the worst country in the world between here and the Trans-Siberian, and because of the taping schedule it’s almost always full winter before we can leave…sometimes I think Bill’s got the right idea…

Me: That’s your roommate and fellow cast member Bill Hader, correct?

Andy: Yeah, he just stays here all year round, says around about the end of January it gets real quiet. (laughs) I’m a terrible roommate, it’s the isolation, it’s the weather, it’s everything. I’m a city boy. I’ve got to go back. This is probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, even in a picture, seriously…but eight months without being able to get even a…a grape soda, you know? This white guy came to one of the tapings, he had a grape soda for some WEIRD reason, and I practically wrestled him to the ground for it. “Where’d you get that? Gimme!” In the end I gave him ten bucks for it, and he agreed not to sue NBC. But I can’t stand too much majesty, I’m telling you, I’m a pretty…pretty chatty guy, you know? I need to have trivial bullshit to stream-of-consciousness-ize about…around about September I notice Bill starts wearing his iPod all the time, I can get his attention if I need to but he’s wearing his iPod…and running out of things to listen to, too, I can hear it, he’s listening to stuff he doesn’t even like, he’s bobbing his head like it’s some kind of really cool, cool jazz but I can hear the Ring Cycle coming out of it. Rather than listen to me jabber! ‘Cause I really go a little stir crazy.

Me: It makes for pretty, ah, I guess the word is zany…pretty zany comedy.

Andy: (laughs) It better. I bled sweat for your belly laughs, America! I’ve ridden in blimps for you!

Me: Oh yeah, the blimps.

Andy: They seemed like such a good idea, you know? Like, I seriously can’t stand that trip to the railway station, SERIOUSLY can’t stand it, it’s like everything that’s bad about living here multiplied by a thousand and then divided by Fuck You…I mean it kind of makes you want to Rage Before Kraal, if you know what I mean…AHA! That’s right, I’m a geek and I dropped that one on y’all: little Charles Wyndham Soros III for you out there, come on don’t pretend you don’t know it! Don’t feel shame, Hawkclan Nifl-Men! It’s only us Robotic U.N.I.C.s here…

Me: Uh…

Andy: You don’t know the Kraal?

Me: Well, I…

Andy: Marching across the battlefields of a thousand planets, pretty much looking for divorce lawyers to kill and donut holes to fuck and “Brotherhood”? Come on, I know it’s not exactly considered highbrow reading material — Gor fans look down on the Kraal, for Purnitz’ sake! — but this whole “let’s just forget it ever existed” thing…I mean we were all in Grade 8 once…

Me: Are you making this up?

Andy: What?

Me: You’re making this up.

Andy: No! Man…Kraal, you know? You don’t know? (pause) Did I just have the world’s most fucked-up school librarian or something? Was it his fan-fic, he just slipped it onto the shelves? I don’t know. Bill’s heard of the Kraal.

…What?

Me: I just…like, you’re fucking with me, right? Should I stop tape? I mean I don’t want to spoil the…

Andy: No, man! Look, they even did like, a comic of it in about 1992 or something. Really shitty, there’s the scene with Gonchar Nifl-hawk deciding to turn around and march on the Imperial Capitol… “We rage.” …No?

Me: I’m telling you, there’s no such comic. There’s no such book.

Andy: Well, there totally is. “Volcano-Women Of Venus”, “The Subterranean Sea Of Saturn”. “Janissaries Of Jupiter”. They were all like that.

Me: Really? What was Mercury?

Adam: “The Mad Minarets Of Mercury”.

Me: Mars?

Adam: Uh, yeah…that was “Monster-Men Of The Martian Maze”, of course! I really liked that one as a kid. That was the first one I read, actually. I think the librarian actually handed it to me and told me to check it out. I was…nine, maybe? Maybe ten? My Mom saw the cover and freaked out, it was like…anatomically-incorrect porn with red skies and swords and cups and guns and piles of gold and jewels and pork pies and burgers an’ shit just laying everywhere, it was like John Carter for retards. Really horny retards. Who couldn’t, like, differentiate between food porn and regular porn. “Oh, mannn…looka that shake, that’s like the thickest milkshake I’ve ever seen…only two bucks, such a good deal, I’m gonna get two and put ’em both in the same glass…” Absolutely no understanding of the female body, so…I guess they had to pencil it in with something. Milkshake three-ways. I’ll tellya, the sex scenes in that book were pret-ty crazy…

Me: You are totally fucking with me.

Adam: Don’t judge me, man. Nights can get pretty long in this part of the world, I’m telling you. I only get Mongolian TV on alternate Tuesdays in my yurt. Very hard to write jokes for American college kids under these conditions!

Me: You killed and ate Hader, didn’t you?

Adam: I will tell you something about my good friend Bill Hader, that you probably did not know, which is that in addition to being one of the sharpest guys I’ve ever met, and basically being able to just do call-out impressions, like you can just start calling names out and he’ll go on making coffee or chopping vegetables or stoking the fire or whatever and roll through ’em all without missing a beat…in addition to all that, he makes some of the most tender brisket I have ever eaten, the meat literally just falls off the bone, it is fabulous. And I am really — really — REALLY — going to miss that guy while I’m back in the States, because that was some tasty, tasty, TASTY brisket.

(laughs) Oh, hell, do you just want to start over?

Me: The thing is, they only give me so much of a word-count, right? I mean I wish I could keep it in…

Adam: No, no, totally. Totally. Let’s do it.

***

So now, Bloggers, you know…a little bit less of the story.

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