Shalampax Speaks

Those silent movies were really something, weren’t they?

Yesterday, I attended a six-hour silent-film marathon. The films were modern, but the theater’s sound system was broken. The theater has a no-refund policy, so I stuck around.

Actually, it wasn’t quite a movie marathon in the usually sense. There was only one two-hour film, but I couldn’t follow the plot worth a damn without the sound and, as best I could tell, the film was horrid, so I sat through it three times to make sure I got my money’s worth.

Redpencil, owner of the Third-Floor Pub, is always on the lookout for exciting ways to entertain his customers. He recently read that some raunchy bars elsewhere in the world have had considerable success with wet t-shirt contests. He decided to try it out in his bar.

His first, and probably his last, experiment with a wet t-shirt contest occurred last night. Redpencil had no problem finding women who would agree to participate. However, the contest got off to a slow start.

The problem was that Redpencil did not realize that he would have to provide the t-shirts. The start of the wet t-shirt contest was delayed for more than an hour while he hunted down 12 t-shirts for the 12 women who participated. All of the women had come to the bar topless and, until the event was announced, they had intended to remain topless.

When the contest was over, it was generally agreed that it wasn’t particularly entertaining. Redpencil and his customers concluded that the bar owners and patrons in the rest of the world who get excited over wet t-shirt contests must all be crazy.

Moldybread the Mime

Moldybread, who is infamous for his disastrous weather balloon experiment, has been studying the art of mime through a free online course that he found on the Web. His studies almost ended in tragedy when, while a rehearsing a performance piece, he became trapped in his imaginary box and couldn’t get out.

Moldybread was stuck in the box for more than a day. Fortunately, on the day after first becoming trapped, his wife wasn’t sleeping with anyone else that night so she came home. She found Moldybread, led him by the hand out of the imaginary box through the imaginary door that Moldybread was unable to imagine, gave him some water to hydrate him, and had sex with him because, like I said, she wasn’t sleeping with anyone else that night.

Thanks to his study of mime, Moldybread did not make a sound during most of the sex, but he was unable to squelch a moan when he climaxed. His wife, on the other hand, moaned loudly throughout and screamed when she had an orgasm. She hates mimes.

Not deterred by his initial failure, Moldybread persevered with his study of mime. Convinced that he his now ready to perform in front of an audience, he will present a show in meeting room 1F, formerly known as the janitorial closet, at 8:30 p.m. tomorrow evening.

To avoid embarrassing himself in public, Moldybread will not perform the classic “man trapped in a box” routine. Instead, he will perform “man standing still,” “man sitting on chair,” “man lying on the floor,’ and “man dead.”

See if you can distinguish between “man lying on the floor” and “man dead.” I’m told that the difference between the two is extremely subtle. Apparently, even Moldybread has no idea what he’s doing differently.

It promises to be a rewarding evening for anyone suffering from insomnia.

Cherrytart, the closest thing Shalampax has had to a celebrity since our celeb-wannabe, Openfly, flew the coop, attempted to launch her singing career at a concert last night.

The room, the largest in Shalampax, was packed with more than 300 people. The record attendance can be attributed to the fact that the concert promoters promised—and delivered—plentiful posh food and drink, along with a payment of $500 each to everyone who attended.

The critics were uncharacteristically unanimous. As if with a single voice, they all exuberantly proclaimed that Cherrytart should, in the interest of public safety, never sing again.

Five people were seriously injured in the stampede to the door that commenced as soon as she belted out her first couple of notes.

The few people who lasted through a whole song are expected to suffer lifelong mental scars, not to mention damage to their hearing. No one stuck around longer than that.

As it happens, the concert would not have gone forward at all had it not been for some fraud on the part of the promoters. Being a Shalampaxian herself, Cherrytart should have expected deception in her dealings with Shalampaxian companies, but she was apparently oblivious to that possibility.

What happened was that Cherrytart instructed the company that she hired to promote and stage the concert, ShalProductions, to first conduct market research to determine whether her singing career stood any chance of success. She told ShalProductions that she would not go ahead with the concert if the research showed that people did not enjoy her singing.

Because there is almost no arts scene in Shalampax, ShalProductions does not get a lot of work. It was desperate to have the concert go ahead.

Surprisingly, ShalProductions did do market research rather than fabricating the results out of thin air, but it intentionally biased the survey to try to get the responses it wanted.

ShalProductions made a recording of Cherrytart singing a song. The company then spent weeks doctoring the recording to remove the constant shrieks, squeaks and squawks in Cherrytart’s voice, smooth it out and add something vaguely resembling melodic tones.

ShalProductions played the recording to 50 men and 50 women. Despite the extensive electronic enhancement of Cherrytart’s voice, fully 100 percent of the men said they’d rather have a colonoscopy than listen to Cherrytart sing. ShalProductions offered to provide them with colonoscopies while attending Cherrytart’s concert, but no one accepted the offer.

The women’s reaction wasn’t quite so harsh. Only 98 percent of them said they’d rather get a yeast infection than listen to Cherrytart. The women’s response likely would have been unanimous had ShalProductions not asked Cherrytart for her opinion. (The researchers didn’t play the recording for her.)

Not able to get the response it wanted, ShalProductions simply lied. It told Cherrytart that 94 percent of the women and 88 percent of the men loved her performance and would be thrilled to attend her concert. (The company didn’t report a 100 percent approval rating out of fear that Cherrytart might find that to be implausible.)

So the concert went ahead. Clearly, those people who attended hadn’t participated in the market research and hadn’t talked to anyone who did participate.

Ironically, Cherrytart’s opening number—the only one that anyone heard—was I Want to be Happy, a jazz standard by Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar. Considering the response to her concert, I don’t think Cherrytart or any of the attendees are particularly happy today.

Hey peeps, I have news from Shalampax’s performing arts scene, such as it is, which is not very much at all.

Word is that Shabbycardigan is getting ready to start rehearsals on a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There’s no news yet on when, if ever, she expects it to open or begin previews.

To say the least, this is a questionable undertaking. The attention span of most Shalampaxians is not adequate to carry them through to the end of a four-word monosyllabic sentence. (This partially explains why almost no Shalampaxians read Shalampax Speaks.)

Under the circumstances, mounting a successful staging in Shalampax of Hamlet, or any of Shakespeare’s other plays for that matter, would be a challenge for the most innovative of directors. And Shabbycardigan is definitely not the world’s most innovative of directors. Hell, to-date, her mind has shown little indication of even being from the same galaxy as directors who are capable of demonstrating the slightest of inventiveness.

I don’t know who gave her the idea, but Shabbycardigan is expected to adapt Hamlet to accommodate Shalampaxians’ mind-boggling attention deficiencies. Rumor has it that she intends to modify the play so that, very early in the Act I, scene one, Hamlet will quickly and resolutely decide to not be. The audience is then expected leave and go to the bar for an after-theater drink or ten.

The world premier of Sausagewithonions’ latest film, A Day in the Life of a Housefly, will take place at 8:30 tonight in the second-floor cafeteria. There will be no charge to attend the premier.

I was honored with an advance screening so I could write the following review.

This epic film opens with a housefly pupae, which Sausagewithonions placed under an upturned glass jar, transforming into an adult housefly.

To make her film, Sausagewithonions mounted a camera on a locked-down tripod and left it focused on the jar for the entire length of the film. For about 97 minutes, the fly buzzes around the jar, trying unsuccessfully to find a way out.

Sausagewithonions then lifts the jar and the fly momentarily gains its freedom. Within an instant of the fly escaping the confines of the jar—before it leaves the camera’s field of vision, Sausagewithonions swats the fly dead with a flyswatter.

The credits then roll. Sausagewithonions, the flyswatter manufacturer, the jar maker, and the fly, which Sausagewithonions creatively named Fly, are all given credits.

The film adheres to the classic Shalampax cinéma vérité style, meaning that it consists of one long shot, with no editing whatsoever.

Sausagewithonions anticipates that, after the world premier in Shalampax, her film will be shown in art houses in the hippest cities around the world. She expects that her work will be warmly received there as people who attend art house films tend to go in for this sort of nonsense.

I can promise that this film will arouse in you the full gamut of emotions. You’ll laugh thinking that people will actually pay to see it when it hits the art houses. You’ll feel sad that you and your fellow viewers are being put through this crap. You’ll feel anger when you realize that Sausagewithonions has locked the doors so you can’t walk out on the film. But most of all, you’ll feel drowsy.