Foolish Words 2007

The entire shoot­ing match! Here’s the edited ver­sion, from start to fin­ish, as it pro­gres­sively appeared in Bozeman’s Trib­u­tary mag­a­zine from May through Decem­ber 2007. A spe­cial thank you goes out to Trib­u­tary edi­tor Corinne Gar­cia for wel­com­ing this non­sense year after year.

Part 1 — Trib­u­tary, May 2007

This year’s Fool­ish Words got off to a mile-high, mile-low start with poet/gardener Sam Louden tak­ing the story straight off to the Rich­est Hill on Earth, set­ting the literal/metaphorical stage for “Butte, the Musi­cal.” Poet Liz McRae took the story a mile higher, with the intro­duc­tion of the Tibetan-linked producer.

Sam Louden

“This is my idea, see?” said Lenny. He could sell lone­some­ness to Ekalakans. He could talk the pants off a nun. He was smooth and per­sua­sive. He was also ugly as all hell.

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Vir­ginia, grab­bing a firm hold of her pants.

“Musi­cals! Peo­ple love musi­cals. They love to gag at their ridicu­lous sen­ti­men­tal­ity. They love to point out the absur­dity of peo­ple break­ing out into song — in har­mony, with danc­ing. Peo­ple love to pre­tend they hate musi­cals, but they can’t get enough of them,” he said.

“I’m skep­ti­cal.”

Lenny expounded on the need for Butte to have yet another blue rib­bon tourist attrac­tion. He con­tin­ued with how the glo­ri­ous city needed — deserved — an emo­tional pick-me-up. He con­cluded with the saliva of sin­cer­ity drip­ping from his mal­formed mouth: “Yes, Butte, whose his­tory begs for the honor it long ago earned in sweat and blood and has so long been denied; this Butte, my Butte, our Butte; our majes­tic, beau­ti­ful Butte is the mir­a­cle it has waited for!”

Virg­nia word­lessly begged for the mir­a­cle. It would take orga­ni­za­tional skills Lenny lacked. Vir­ginia, how­ever, was prac­ti­cally made of orga­ni­za­tional skills. She had devel­oped a for­mula to deter­mine anyone’s per­sonal sock needs. She was rid­den out of Helena on a rail for demon­strat­ing short­cuts through red tape that could elim­i­nate hun­dreds of state bureau­cratic jobs. She trimmed out nearly fifty per­cent of her own use­less DNA. Holy Butte would rise from the ashes, borne by the silk of Vir­ginia Sullivan’s net­work­ing and Lenny Crenshaw’s hot air.

In min­utes Vir­ginia had secured two the­ater venues, acquired the nec­es­sary per­mits from her cousin Eddie in City Hall, and enlisted the sup­port of the unions. Lenny sat gap­ing in awe of the pres­ence of excellence.

“Can you find me pro­duc­ers?” he asked.

“There isn’t enough loose cap­i­tal here to float a Sun­day school skit,” said Virginia.

“Do you know any­one in Bozeman?“

Liz McRae

Vir­ginia closed her eyes and imag­ined a float­ing Rolodex before her. Lenny watched, mes­mer­ized as she raised up her arms and flicked her fin­gers in front of her face like some sort of off-the-hook admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant. She fever­ishly flipped through her 400 non­profit con­nec­tions in Boze­man. No, she thought, we need cash, not the under-funded, lib­eral crowd. And then she hit ‘F’. Vir­ginia opened her eyes, looked Lenny as straight in his crooked face as pos­si­ble, and said, “I think I’ve got our man.”

Vir­ginia had come to Irwin Fin­klestein. The image of this eccen­tric, Jew­ish New Yorker flashed before her as she last saw him: stand­ing in front of a win­dow fan in his Man­hat­tan apart­ment, long gray hair blow­ing in all direc­tions, leop­ard skin briefs — whoa. The image wasn’t all that appeal­ing. A down­side to chan­nel­ing con­tact peo­ple was that you always got that last vision of them.

Irwin was a scholar of ancient Tibetan script, spe­cial­ized in grow­ing rare orchids, and was Virginia’s for­mer lover. He lived between his apart­ment in down­town Man­hat­tan and an old, ren­o­vated grain tower out­side of Boze­man. Like many Tibetan schol­ars and rare orchid grow­ers, Irwin had a siz­able trust fund and was highly con­nected in NYC. Also notable, she explained to Lenny, was his pro­duc­tion of the very pop­u­lar Okla­homa per­for­mance in Lhasa – the only West­ern musi­cal of its kind per­formed entirely by Tibetans for Tibetans.

Lenny’s mind was schem­ing like a whirling dervish. Visions of Vir­ginia as the next David Cop­per­field blended with saffron-robed monks yodel­ing and danc­ing across his Butte stage. Peo­ple would come from China, New York, maybe even from the Yel­low­stone Club to visit and fall in love with the land of pul­chri­tude and plenty, Butte! He was nearly in tears with visions of fame, money and peo­ple burst­ing into song.

Stayed tuned for future install­ments of Fool­ish Words 2007!

Part 2 — Trib­u­tary, June 2007

The Fool­ish Words 2007 odyssey con­tin­ues! The reins of the sec­ond install­ment have been taken over by free­lance writer and edi­tor Heidi Lasher, and poet, play­wright, com­edy writer, and sports colum­nist Craig Kenworthy.

When we left off last month, Lenny and Vir­ginia had joined forces to make a musi­cal to save Butte — but where to find the money to pro­duce it? Why, Boze­man, of course, home to orchid-growing Tibetan scholar Irwin Finkelstein.

Heidi Lasher

Irwin leapt from his chair and twirled with delight. “My Pan­golin! She LIVES!” he exclaimed. His index fin­ger cir­cled his iPod, land­ing quickly on “O What a Beau­ti­ful Morn­ing” by the dash­ing and flam­boy­ant Jengbu Lakhpa. He shook his hair loose from its rub­ber band, and held the Boze­man Daily Chron­i­cle to his cheek. Wear­ing noth­ing but his leopard-skin briefs, he pirou­et­ted in front of the pic­ture win­dow and gig­gled in anticipation.

For nearly 12 days Irwin had scanned the Boze­man police blot­ter for news about the rare and scaly anteater he’d res­cued from a Chi­nese restau­rant in Lhasa. He shut­tered, remem­ber­ing how the poor crea­ture had been dying a slow death in a cage, los­ing up to six scales a day to greedy cus­tomers eager to enhance their sex­ual per­for­mance by drink­ing tea spiked with her potent scurf. Moved by the animal’s dis­mal exis­tence and the sense that he could pro­vide a bet­ter life for her (and per­haps a more last­ing sex­ual state of arousal for him­self), he devised a plan to res­cue her like he’d done for so many other rep­tiles in the past.

For the past month, Irwin safely har­bored the Pan­golin in his ren­o­vated grain tower apart­ment in Boze­man. With love, plenty of fresh, local, organic ants and water, her scales grew back to their God-given glory. Irwin, too, began to heal the emo­tional scars of his pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship, pour­ing his pain and humil­i­a­tion of their last sex­ual encounter into a deep and soul­ful song called “O Virginia.”

Then, one night, with­out warn­ing, the rep­tile van­ished. Every day since, Irwin had combed the neigh­bor­hoods, call­ing her name. His devout prayer was that a neigh­bor would spot her and call the police. And today his prayer had been answered. The Pan­golin was spot­ted by the dish­wash­ing staff at the Panda Buf­fet, scut­tling across the park­ing lot.
Irwin pulled a saf­fron robe over his head and grabbed his Sorels. Just as he was walk­ing out the door, the phone rang.

Craig Ken­wor­thy

After three hours, Irwin finally gave in and bought the mort­gage dis­abil­ity insur­ance. For­tu­nately, he had call-waiting and spent fif­teen min­utes of that time talk­ing with Virginia.

That girl had nerve, call­ing him for a favor after what she’d done to him. But any show that included two dif­fer­ent troupes of blind acro­bats reen­act­ing a min­ing dis­as­ter and the exhuma­tion of the body of the late Bob Kee­shan, a.k.a. Cap­tain Kan­ga­roo, was a show he wanted to be a part of. He hit 666 on his speed dial and called his for­mer part­ner, Squids Guggenheim.

Squids loved the idea of a musi­cal set in Mon­tana; he loved it so much that just the week before he’d sunk all of his money into a new play called “Custer slept here… for­ever,“ by an up and com­ing Native Amer­i­can playwright.

“Lis­ten, Irwin, I can’t help you but I know a guy in Big Tim­ber who might. His name is Still Bot­tled Water. Runs a small fam­ily foun­da­tion that sup­ports the arts. Some of their stan­dards for grants are a lit­tle strange. You don’t hap­pen to have an anteater, do you?”

After a quick trip to Panda Buf­fet, Irwin fin­ished perus­ing the foun­da­tion guide­lines. Only using com­pact flu­o­res­cent bulbs in the foot­lights? Still, he thought his pro­posal had merit, based on his dig­i­tal photo of an anteater — although he wasn’t really clear on why the foun­da­tion insisted that the ani­mal be wear­ing only high heels and a pio­neer bonnet.

Irwin fin­ished proof­read­ing the grant appli­ca­tion and clicked “Send.” He went down­stairs to look in on his cold-blooded guest. As he entered the reptile’s room, Irwin smelled mod­er­ately priced per­fume and felt a damp breeze. Look­ing up at the shat­tered glass of the sky­light, he spot­ted a woman’s leg dis­ap­pear­ing through the opening.

He leaped up to grab it, then remem­bered he was only five foot four and should never have put a vaulted ceil­ing in the laun­dry room. By the time he returned with the exten­sion lad­der, the foot was gone, but he found a note lying on the floor. His palms adrift in sweat, Irwin read it over and then read it again. The note con­tained only ten words, but they were words that no sane per­son ever wants to see.

Part 3 — Trib­u­tary, July 2007

The Fool­ish Words 2007 epic con­tin­ues, with our heroes des­per­ate to pro­duce the sure­fire the­atri­cal sen­sa­tion, “Butte, The Musi­cal.” When last we left, loinskin-clad pro­ducer Irwin Finkel­stein was check­ing up on the illicit pan­golin he had been har­bor­ing in his grain-elevator abode. This month, author/veterinarian Sid Gustafson takes over the type­writer, but not before free­lance writer/herbalist Rebecca A. Kin­man picks up where com­edy writer Craig Ken­wor­thy left us last month: with a note con­tain­ing ten words “that no sane per­son ever wants read.” Read on, Fool­ish Words fans, we dare you:

Rebecca A. Kinman

“Take the garbage out and unclog the bath­room drain. — Mom”

Irwin felt a moment of remorse for allow­ing his mother to live in the PVC pipe tree house out­side. He also regret­ted con­nect­ing the two houses with a swing­ing bridge. To Irwin’s fur­ther dis­may, he found that the lizard’s swim­ming pool, cap­puc­cino machine and hair-rollers had yet to be used, and the pan­golin her­self, Sweet Banana Tail II, had van­ished once again.

Irwin paced the house, call­ing her name to the melody of Rain Drops Falling on My Head, but then jumped into his hot pink heli­copter and searched Peete’s Hill and beyond for his pre­cious dar­ling. He called Vir­ginia with the news.

“Irwin, you KNOW how those scaly things always take off when­ever you men­tion my name,” said Vir­ginia, rolling her eyes. It reminded her of the time that Irwin took her to the Bistro wear­ing a polka-dotted boa and cat-eye glasses. The pet was so jeal­ous that she skipped town and was found three days later singing karaoke at the Owl in Livingston.

The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion wasn’t all that dif­fer­ent. Sweet Banana Tail II was fed up with Irwin’s lack of decency to for­get their twelfth anniver­sary (in pan­golin years).

She scur­ried west on 1–90, sens­ing she would come closer to achiev­ing her dream. She didn’t need Irwin any longer, she had her strength and her trusty book enti­tled “From The Cage to the Red Car­pet: How to Suc­ceed as an Exotic Pet Actress.” She con­fi­dently ran down the high­way as semi trucks and multi-colored Hum­mers with ski racks wailed past her.

Snow began to flit­ter down around her double-jointed ankles, and soon she was cov­ered in two feet of slush. She grad­u­ally moved slower and slower down the Inter­state until she came to a com­plete, cold-blooded stop.

Even though Sweet Banana Tail II was almost com­pletely frozen, she man­aged to spot a large mass in the dis­tance slowly approaching.

Sid Gustafson

Before she could see what it was, Sweet Banana had iden­ti­fied the crawl­ing crea­ture with her vomeronasal gland. It was none other than her old neme­sis, the dog­woman from the Heel of the Val­ley Ani­mal League. Evi­dently some­one had reported what had been per­ceived to be a dazed, lost Lhasa waltz­ing down I-90… but then Banana did have her Tibetan roots.

Banana was bagged and in the trunk. In the quar­an­tine ward at the pound, the ani­mal offi­cer picked up an elec­tronic ID bleep under Banana’s mange-riddled hide, which was traced to Irwin’s address at his silo flat. Next thing Banana found her­self in the tree house with a bowl of maggots.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Irwin was on the phone with Bot­tled Still­Wa­ter (his real name, in the proper Absaroka order). Bad news. Still­Wa­ter dis­cov­ered the play had been writ­ten to good affect by a fail­ing horse doc­tor, and pre­vi­ously pro­duced at High Horse Uni­ver­sity in Dil­lon — sell-out cow­boy crowds for a three-week run. “Stole the thun­der plum away from Butte.”

“Couldn’t be,” cried Irwin. “Vir­ginia swears her pal Lenny wrote it all his self.”

“Nope,” said Still­Wa­ter. “That Lenny’s a lit­er­ary thief with a faux bib­li­og­ra­phy long as a pan­golin tail. The horse doc­tor had him­self a hit in Dil­lon, and later in Dell on the Red Rock River.”

“Are you sure it’s the same play?”

“Same play, same clowny, cow­boy plot,” said StillWater.

“What about the music?”

“I didn’t hear the music. Can’t read music.”

“Well, can’t we just change the music, if that’s the case?” asked Irwin.

“I sup­pose we could. We could change the words too, as long as we’re at it. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.”

“Well jeez, let’s do that. Change the words, write the music.” “Any ideas who might accom­plish that?” asked StillWater.

“No prob­lema. There’s enough deluded writ­ers hang­ing about the Seed and Bean cof­fee­house to have a cir­cus, and all those ring-nosed musi­cians strum­ming away just out­side the door — I’m talk­ing tat­too talent.”

“Well, let’s get down there and see what kind of cre­ativ­ity we can res­ur­rect. Maybe we’ll find some actors sip­ping lattes to script in, too. Maybe we can turn this key­board­ing cha­rade into some­thing real, a real play, with live music and actors. Some­thing like art.”

“We’ll have those Will­son and Main jug­ger­nauts write a play, find some strum­mers to strum in, drag actor folk off the street, and turn this into a real pro­duc­tion behind a real script,” declared Irwin.

“See you down there in an hour.” Still­Wa­ter, Montana-CoffeeHouse-AmericanIndian-PlayProducer he was, fired up his Pon­tiac and headed to BozAngeles.

Part 4 — Trib­u­tary, August 2007

When last we left Fool­ish Words 2007, “Butte, the Musi­cal” was ramp­ing up pre-production. Pro­duc­ers Irwin Finkel­stein and Bot­tled Still­wa­ter real­ized that to make the musi­cal a real­ity, they had to hit up Montana’s pri­mary tal­ent hang­out: Bozeman’s Seedy Bean Coffeehouse.

This month, free­lance writer/editor Mar­jorie Smith and playwright/improv come­dian Ryan Cas­savaugh take you deep within the dark and squalid belly of the Seedy Bean.

Mar­jorie Smith

Donna Lou deChris hur­ried to the Seedy Bean imme­di­ately after work, as she did every day. She ordered her hazel­nut latte, put on her shades and slouched into her reg­u­lar chair at her reg­u­lar table with the insou­ciance she knew marked her as very experienced.

She recalled her child­hood naiveté when she had spent every day­light hour in the front yard look­ing cute, wait­ing for Samuel Gold­wyn Mayer to drive by and rec­og­nize her as the next Shirley Tem­ple. She had learned a great deal about geog­ra­phy in the interim. Now, at 25, she knew that a front yard in Absaroka, Mon­tana, was no place to be discovered.

The Seedy Bean on Main Street in Boze­man – that’s where pro­duc­ers hung out.

In the Rolodex of her mind, she flipped through mem­o­ries of her stint as a film actress three years ago when an intense young man who needed to replace a cast mem­ber in his junior film had approached her at this very table. “I orig­i­nally saw this part as being for an old man,” he told her. “But I think I can use you.”

It had been the most won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of her life. The whole thing – the days of film­ing on snowy Boze­man streets wear­ing soggy bed­room slip­pers and ugly knee high stock­ings, the stu­dent makeup artist pat­ting pow­der on her fevered brow… and, of course, the intensely pas­sion­ate if brief love affair with the author-director, Gary Geek.

“Ah, Gary,” Donna Lou sighed, clos­ing her eyes, reliv­ing scenes of unbri­dled pas­sion. Oh, why did she have to be such a nit­picker! She just couldn’t let him go through life under the mis­taken impres­sion that anteaters were rep­tiles. She’d screamed at him right out there on Main Street: “Tits, Gary! They have tits!”

Gary Geek had strode away from her, never to return. She knew he had gone on to grad­u­ate and high­tailed it to Hol­ly­wood where he would one day be famous, or at least employed. And here she sat, at the same table in the Seedy Bean, wait­ing to be discovered.

A large tear oozed out of her brown eye and plopped into her latte. As she opened her eyes to search for a Kleenex, there, stand­ing beside her table, were two men.

“Excuse me,” said that smaller man. “Are you by any chance an actress?”

Ryan Cas­savaugh

The ques­tion sent Donna Lou’s mind reel­ing back thor­ough the years, to when she had first been asked that ques­tion. She was on-stage in a high school pro­duc­tion of “Annie Get Your Gun… Again!”, an ill-conceived and short-lived sequel to the pop­u­lar stage musi­cal. Her drama teacher had posed the ques­tion as he flung a toasted sesame-seed bagel at her head.

“Are you an actress?” he had asked. “Because you give the impres­sion of a tone-deaf cow in high-heeled slip­pers hav­ing a seizure!”

The ques­tion con­fused Donna Lou, since she was, in fact, play­ing a tone-deaf cow in high-heeled slip­pers hav­ing a seizure. To this day she was still unsure if the com­ment was a com­pli­ment or an insult.

“I think she’s deaf,” the taller man said, star­ing at Donna Lou with a look that strad­dled the fine line between pity and annoyance.

“Pity,” said the small man. “She would have been per­fect for the part of the min­ing pit.”

The taller man smiled a pleas­ant smile and nod­ded; the two men moved away both shak­ing their heads.

Donna tried to yell, “Wait, come back!” but the words didn’t come. She was par­a­lyzed with antic­i­pa­tion. This was her big break, she knew it. Why couldn’t she say any­thing? They were leav­ing. Worse… they were going to another table. To Patti Ponderfund’s table. Patti was Donna’s arch-nemesis, or at least Donna thought so. Patti was the lead in all the local pro­duc­tions. She had even been in a national com­mer­cial for a line of veg­e­tar­ian pet food. She had an entire line: “Cats don’t know it’s not real fish!” She said it directly into the cam­era. The thought of it made Donna Lou queasy. Patti was going to get Donna’s big break. It wasn’t fair. This was Donna’s break, not Patti’s. She had to do some­thing! Why couldn’t she speak? Time almost stopped. Donna watched as the two men inched closer to Patti’s table. In an instant Patti would see them and smile that million-dollar smile at them and it would be all over. It was now or never, Donna had to act… that’s when it hit her.

Of course! There was only one thing she could do…

Part 5 — Sep­tem­ber 2007

In the last install­ment of Fool­ish Words 2007, Donna Lou deChris ago­nized as pro­duc­ers Irwin Finkel­stein and Bot­tled Still­Wa­ter pro­ceeded toward Donna’s arch-nemesis, Patti Pon­der­fund, to hand out the lead role for “Butte, the Musical.”

Donna had to act. What would she do?

This month, free­lance writer, poet, and poetry-dispenser orig­i­na­tor Michele Cor­riel has the answer. And award-winning play­wright, Broad Com­edy co-author, and Equinox The­ater exec­u­tive direc­tor Soren Kisiel has more wacky shenani­gans than a Butte-Irish wake.

Michele Cor­riel

Donna opened her mouth, and her humon­gous set of ton­sils began to whirr. She reached deep inside her­self for a word, a sound, any­thing to get the atten­tion of the small man and the tall pro­ducer. As her mouth opened wider, peo­ple began to cling to the Seedy Bean’s over­stuffed chairs and under-upholstered couches. But it was too late. The vac­uum effect had begun.

Hold­ing their hands over their faces, care­ful to avoid the fly­ing chai, Still­Wa­ter and Irwin made their way over to Donna, who had the good sense to close her mouth.

“My God, she’s per­fect as the Berke­ley Pit!” Irwin said.

Just then, who should walk into the Seedy Bean but Vir­ginia her­self, accom­pa­nied by none other than Sweet Banana Tail. And they were laughing.

Irwin was bewil­dered. His fin­ger wagged back and forth between the two of them. He knew Virginia’s his­tory with rep­tiles and this wasn’t mak­ing any sense.

“Anteaters, even giant pan­golins from Uganda, are not and never were rep­tiles,” she said to Irwin. “So don’t even start with me. Besides, I’ve found I have a soft spot for mam­mals that can roll them­selves into balls. Me and Sweet Banana Tail have a lot in com­mon.” And they both made noises that no mam­mal should ever have to lis­ten to.

Irwin was intrigued. But Vir­ginia, the human Rolodex, got back to business.

“What’s this I hear about chang­ing our script?” she asked.

“It’s true. We here in BozAn­ge­les decided to find us some tal­ent, rewrite that piece of crap you sent us, and get the show on the road, so to speak,” Irwin said, now star­ing at Donna, who had stolen his heart. He was done with rep­tiles. His life was now all about a woman who had the lung capac­ity of a submarine.

“Just hold your damn horses, there,” Vir­ginia said, unwill­ingly remov­ing her eyes from Sweet Banana Tail. “I checked the Internet’s Sub­ur­ban Leg­ends site and that fail­ing horse doc­tor in Dil­lon is noth­ing but a big myth. He never wrote any­thing except a bor­ing account of breach horse births at the turn of the cen­tury. The guy’s as phony as an Indian arrow­head found at the Buf­falo Jump. As a mat­ter of fact there isn’t even a High Horse University…”

Just at that moment who should walk into the Seedy Bean but…

Soren Kisiel

A plumber.

Plumber by day, that is. Plumber through the cracked-pipe frozen Jan­u­ary morn­ings below the streets of Butte. Plumber through the soul-stealing corroded-copper after­noons of Butte’s sweat­ing August. Plumber by day, but Irish Fairy by night.

The Irish Fairies, the tough­est ethnically-based street-gang in Butte since the “Uptown Danny-Boys” of the 1950s. The Irish Fairies, who once threw one of their own into The Pit just for men­tion­ing that he was also Scot­tish. The Irish Fairies, so tough that no one in all the years of The M&M’s exis­tence ever once cracked a joke about their name. Yep, those Irish Fairies.

The Plumber popped his thick knuck­les, the for­ward motion of his hands strain­ing the shoul­ders of his green poly­ester blazer. Across his chest “Kiss Me I’m Irish” leered like a threat. He revealed teeth inlaid with golden shamrocks.

“Which a’ ye is Irwin?” the Plumber asked. He had never been to Ire­land, but his grandmother’s accent had moved though his umbil­i­cal cord and deep into his soul. His voice was high, scrap­ing Irwin’s brain with its fin­ger­nails. “Which a’ ye bas­tards is sell­ing Butte’s heart to Bozeman?”

Silence spread through the Seedy Bean.

“Which a’ ye is it that believes that the bold, wild, unruly soul of Mother Butte – the finest city west of Gal­way – needs these leather-furniture-buying fleece-wearers to help it stand on its own two damn feet?”

Donna saw her chance. What­ever this artist’s, this genius’, this Irwin’s past – oddly-reptilian mam­mals, fraud­u­lent claims of pla­gia­rism, Native Amer­i­can grant-makers – she knew she was his future.

She stepped for­ward, draw­ing air into her great­est asset. The air poured out, lov­ingly, bravely: “I’m Irwin.”
Irwin’s head snapped around. His first thought — “I get to keep all my teeth” – was quickly swept away by a surge of emo­tion. Could this be what he had been look­ing for in those cold, semi-reptilian fea­tures for so many years? When he’d first laid eyes on Donna all he saw were those mis­matched eyes, that lumpy nose, that uni­brow. Now all he could think of was things he wanted to do with that gap­ing mouth.

A voice spoke behind him: “No, I’m Irwin.”

He turned. There Vir­ginia stood, gen­tly stroking the pangolin’s scales, eyes defi­antly hold­ing the Irish Fairy’s.
“No,” spoke a male voice. “I’m Irwin.” StillWater’s braids danced around his shoul­ders as he held his head high.

Silence fell over the Seedy Bean, all eyes on the Plumber.

“So that’s the way is it then, is it? Ya bunch of bleedin’ tossers. You think you can beat the Irish Fairies, do ya? You don’t know how we beat the fish-and-chips out of the Great Falls Lep­rechauns, or the way we pounded the Gilette Pen­ny­whis­tle Gang all the way back into Wyoming for steal­ing Fer­gus’ mushy peas recipe! You Boze­man Irwins are nothin’ com­pared to them!”

Delight danced in the Plumber’s green eyes as he scanned the room. “You’ll not get away with this. No one will pro­duce a musi­cal about my beloved Butte – no one that doesn’t live there, breathe her air, drink her water. No one will make a feel-good fam­ily expe­ri­ence out of dear­est Butte with­out includ­ing among its the­atri­cal delights a bit of its his­tory: the Scream­ing Panda bit.”

Irwin’s nerve rose in him like fire. He looked to Donna – my Lord, that mouth – and found brav­ery in her eyes. He stepped forward.

“Sir, my name is Irwin. And while I hap­pen to live in Boze­man, I actu­ally was plan­ning to include the Scream­ing Panda bit.”

Part 6 — Octo­ber 2007

A Seedy Bean show­down loomed large in the last install­ment of Fool­ish Words 2007, as the Plumber from Butte threat­ened to take on all the Seedy Bean’s leather-furniture-buying fleece-wearers to find Irwin, the one who would sell Butte’s heart to Boze­man for the sake of fund­ing a musical.

This month, Liv­ingston poet/storyteller/singer Polyestra, a.k.a. Susan Con­nell, gives the story the fetid aroma of immi­nent dis­as­ter, and screen­writer, actor, and KGLT “Cof­fee Show” host Keith Suta shows how a sim­ple vowel move­ment could alter Bozeman’s fate forever.

Polyestra

Irwin’s mother sat alone in her tree house, and extin­guished her cigar out in the “80” writ­ten on her birth­day cake in bleed­ing red icing.

“Fool­ish boy,” she said.

She moved along the rope lad­der like a whip snake into the vaulted laun­dry room, and retrieved her spe­cial “going out” tur­ban from the dryer. Back in her tree­home, she sat before a can­dle, closed her eyes halfway, and began to levitate.

“Fool­ish boy spend­ing my money on this over­priced Boze­man dump,” she hissed, hov­er­ing two feet off the floor. Her astral body peeled off and shot like a bolt over the land to the Berke­ley Pit.

“Hello lit­tle lovely,” she said to the angry wound below. The bright red stink­ing liq­uid stared back at her with words ema­nat­ing from its burned mouth, like: “Arsenic and sul­fu­ric acid and pH level of 2.5.”

“Soon, it will be soon,” she said.

Her stiff lit­tle body hov­ered along above the road to Uptown, where she met her friend Bob, astrally vis­it­ing from Jack­son Hole, for lunch.

“He for­got my birth­day because he’s try­ing to make another stu­pid Mon­tana movie,” Irwin’s mother said.

“The pit is going to breach,” Bob said.

“Yes, soon.”

“That stretch of track in the mine was espe­cially steep,” said a man at the next table. “A panda like that didn’t have a chance.”

All the dishes in the restau­rant began to tin­kle and vibrate and tip over edges. The astral trav­el­ers shot out of the roof and over to the Pit.

“It will melt all the inhab­i­tants of Butte,” Bob said.

“I’ll use my tur­ban to divert it.”

Laser-like rays beamed from the two elders’ eyes, lift­ing a wave of red acid up onto I-90. As Hum­mers popped and dis­solved like effer­ves­cent sugar cubes, flocks of ducks and geese hov­er­ing above the heavy metal-saturated liq­uid turned north to land on the asbestos piles in Shelby instead.

As the last drop of red diges­tive juices joined the tidal wave head­ing east on I-90…

Keith Suta

…Lenny sat in front of his com­puter, study­ing the final draft of his musi­cal mas­ter­piece. He rea­soned that no musi­cal mas­ter­piece to date had included a sec­tion of end­notes, and since so few musi­cals were truly mas­ter­pieces, surely the miss­ing ele­ment was a com­pre­hen­sive his­tor­i­cal bibliography.

Upon final anno­ta­tion of the Scream­ing Panda Inci­dent — includ­ing the Time Mag­a­zine cov­er­age and Edward R. Mur­row com­men­tary — Lenny sat back and poured him­self a hearty glass of Midori as a treat for a job well done.
Lenny’s cell phone rang. It was Vir­ginia, call­ing from the Seedy Bean.

“I’m sorry, Vir­ginia, you’ll have to speak up…” The call was on the verge of being dropped when the Boze­man City Coun­cil hur­riedly erected another cell phone tower. Lenny caught the end of Virginia’s statement:

“…can­not believe they don’t serve ter­mite lattes here.”

“Ter­mites?” inquired Lenny. “Aren’t you kosher?”

“Of course I am, Lenny, but pan­golins are noto­ri­ously finicky in their dietary needs.”

The rest of the con­ver­sa­tion was lost with a sud­den scream ema­nat­ing from a cor­ner of the Seedy Bean.

Irwin and the Plumber from Butte had agreed to set­tle their dis­pute via a game of Scrab­ble, the win­ner of which would receive the right to stage the play wher­ever he saw fit. Not three min­utes into the game, it became appar­ent that the cof­fee house’s Scrab­ble set was lack­ing three D tiles and no end of vow­els. The Plumber stared for­lornly at a rack hold­ing F, N, X, P, Z, and L as Irwin placed down let­ters spelling “per­spi­cac­ity” for a Triple Word Score of 69 plus a bonus of 50 for using all seven of his tiles. See­ing as how “per­spi­cac­ity” con­tains twelve let­ters, the Plumber began to sus­pect that the fix was in. He picked up his rack and flung it square at Irwin’s solar plexus, scream­ing, “I’ve a moind ta smash yer face into that dis­play of attrac­tive and reasonably-proiced gift oitems fer such fourberie!”

That par­tic­u­lar moment was when the acidic tidal wave wiped out Montana’s Cen­tral Cel­lu­lar Phone Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Cen­ter in White­hall. Piz­zas were sud­denly half-ordered, ren­dezvous were only par­tially com­pleted, and thou­sands of overly pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions were sud­denly silenced. Vir­ginia closed her phone, sat down, and won­dered how any cre­ative project can take form with­out a cell phone.

Sweet Banana Tail II wad­dled over to con­sole Vir­ginia by shar­ing her ant latte – which, for­tu­nately, had been on the menu.

Part 7 — Novem­ber 2007

In the last install­ment of Fool­ish Words 2007, Lenny and the Irish Plumber decided to set­tle their dif­fer­ences with a Seedy Bean Scrab­ble show­down, while Irwin’s mother trav­eled astrally to Butte to breach the mighty Berke­ley Pit — because her ungrate­ful son for­got her birth­day. When we left, a toxic tidal wave was head­ing up and over the Con­ti­nen­tal Divide on its way to Bozeman.

This month, Equinox Theatre/Broad Com­edy founder Katie Good­man adds an immor­tal ele­ment to the tale, while writer/massage ther­a­pist Liz Allen lets us wade in the Berke­ley Pit’s free-flowing river of ferredentin.

Katie Good­man

“A musi­cal?” Adonai, The One Who Can­not Be Named, asked.

“Yeah,” Jesus said, thought­fully. “It’s worked before. Look at what Menopause The Musi­cal did for Orlando.”
“Orlando already had a few things going for it, finan­cially speak­ing,” Shiva said smugly, always the one who had to be right.

“It might work,” Adonai said, pop­ping a piece of pick­led her­ring into his mouth.

“Yes, let’s not judge too quickly,” Jesus said.

“You always say that,” White Buf­falo Woman snapped. She was tired from recent appearances.

“I thought we were just going to write off Butte,” Shiva sulked. “Let the damn thing destroy itself and fall away to dust. That’s such the obvi­ous answer.”

Adonai shrugged his shoul­ders, palms up, eyes squint­ing like his grand­mother used to do. “Look, they need a hand. They asked. Their inten­tions are pure… Plus I owe Finkelstein.”

Bud­dha perked up: “For what?” He was so damn quiet. It was unset­tling. Every­one pre­ferred it when he spoke up occasionally.

“Um,” said Adonai. “I’d rather not say.”

St. Patrick was tak­ing all this in. He was chew­ing on some road-kill beef jerky White Buf­falo Woman had brought for every­one. The stuff got stuck in your teeth like noth­ing else.

“I don’t think we should get involved,” he said. “We’ve got sev­eral war­ring fac­tions here and it’s get­ting hard to tell them apart. We don’t want another Mid­dle East.”

“Or mid­dle west!” laughed Bac­chus, lamely try­ing to lighten the mood.

“That is sooooo not the mid­dle west, you moron. It’s the West,” chided White Buff, as her girl­friends called her.
“It’s all the West, out there,” Shiva snipped. “West, west, west.”

“All right, all right! Enough!” Adonai shouted, shush­ing every­one into a shamed silence. “So, what should we do? Con­sen­sus says…?”

The one who hadn’t spo­ken yet sat up:

Liz Allen

“We can­not inter­fere. I have to admit these mor­tals are damned enter­tain­ing,” Ullr quipped. “Besides, I don’t feel like snowing.”

Not want­ing to fur­ther the argu­ment or make another dreaded appear­ance, all the immor­tals sim­ply gazed back into the cir­cling blue orb.

“Blixseth devel­op­ment hour on XM radio?” Lenny’s cousin Jane mur­mured from her motor­cy­cle some­where near the Con­ti­nen­tal Divide. She wasn’t sup­posed to be lis­ten­ing on the job, but she despised giv­ing speed­ing tickets.

Uncan­nily, Jane’s spir­i­tual growth had recently burst forth, like so much Burn­ing Man apparel rid­ing a Nevada dust storm. Her secret admir­ers at the sta­tion had watched in awe as she patiently fanned these writ­ings, these pon­tif­i­ca­tions, into a not-unpleasantly-fulfilling “way-of-being.”

“No one insults Cor­mac McCarthy!” Daddy’s sugar-lump was spew­ing these hor­ri­ble, right­eous, and assuredly judg­men­tal statements.

“I must sit in my zendo for at least four hours tonight,” she told her­self. “I will cleanse.”

Just then, Sweet Banana Tail II jet­ted across I-90, sud­denly end­ing up in Jane’s sur­prised arms.

“What the… Who are you?”

Her pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with her own filth blinded Jane to the first blast of light that licked the edges of the putrid soup spew­ing from the Pit. It seemed to be pour­ing out of the dusky sky.

“What the beje­sus? Sweet lord…” With the reflexes of a newly trained CIA Offi­cial Guan­tanamo Inter­roga­tor and more than five times the men­tal prowess, Jane fired up her ride and started the hor­rific flight east to White­hall, with Banana Tail rid­ing sidesaddle.

Her motor­cy­cle squeal­ing to a stop on the roof of Bob’s Auto Barn, Jane took quick note of the hun­gry toxic stew’s work on the Mon­tana Cen­tral Cel­lu­lar Phone Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Center.

The soup hissed and bub­bled, encir­cling its next vic­tim – an 8-foot-tall knap­weed fence. As the knap­weed smoked, Deputy Max joined Jane on the roof.

Max swal­lowed the lump in his throat. “Sweet child of mine, is that a free-flowing river of ferredentin?”

“My evil thoughts cre­ated this river of bile!” Jane swooned.

“Is this meth?”

“All this time, I was cre­at­ing my own real­ity… I didn’t even get it…” Jane trailed off.

“Is there more scrip­ture tran­scrip­tion tonight?” Deputy Max meekly pon­dered. “I don’t feel so well with that med­ical lookin’ river comin’ at me.”

“I’m get­tin’ out of the force, Max, start­ing right now!” Jane ripped her badge from her vest.

Glanc­ing at the badge one last time, Jane remem­bered her inspi­ra­tion – her cousin Lenny. She held onto the badge.
“I’ll play a cop in his new play, and med­i­tate in my time off,” she decided.

Sweet Banana Tail II approved. With her highly tuned tele­pathic pow­ers, her silent call vibrated out to Vir­ginia, her new love, with a request:

“Ant latte – with soy.”

A mix-up in Banana Tail’s telepa­thy pro­duced an odd result: With the power of a pit bull pro­tect­ing a trailer, a sud­den dust storm blew in the Irish Fairies. Their fists clench­ing and unclench­ing sig­ni­fied a grave situation.…

Part 8 — Con­clu­sion — Decem­ber 2007

When last we left our fear­less Fool­ish Word­sters, a toxic river of ferre­dentin was mak­ing its way from Butte’s Berke­ley Pit to Boze­man, promis­ing destruc­tion of our fair city. To top it off, Butte’s fero­cious Irish Fairies gang was threat­en­ing the would-be pro­duc­ers of “Butte, The Musi­cal” in Bozeman’s Seedy Bean Coffeehouse.

Free­lance writer and Fool­ish Words edi­tor Ray Siko­rski picks up where we left off – the Irish Fairies fists clench­ing and unclench­ing sig­ni­fied a grave situation.…

…and their toes tap­ping and heels click­ing sig­ni­fied an authen­tic sense of rhythm.

They had not come to Boze­man to rum­ble. They had come to Boze­man to audition.

They intoned, from high to low, and went into their ren­di­tion of “It’s a Long Way From Clare to Here.” A hush fell upon the Seedy Bean. Those Irish Fairies could har­mo­nize. They even had match­ing out­fits. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

“You guys are in!” yelled Lenny. Irwin and Bot­tled Still­wa­ter grunted their approval.

“The male lead shall go to me,” demanded the Plumber. “For I am the most charm­ing Irish Fairy in all of Uptown Butte. I can dance the River­dance, and I can sing from me heart so sweetly, why, the fair Lady of the Rock­ies her­self would come down for a listen.”

Mum­blings arose from both the over– and under-upholstered seats of the Seedy Bean. “Prove it!” the crowd yelled.
“It would be me plea­sure,” said the Plumber. “I shall sing this song as a trib­ute to me plumber’s helper, Danny.
“’Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…”

The Seedy Bean patrons put down their cups. Even the milk steamer was silent. And way, way off in the dis­tance – 81 miles away, to be exact – one could dis­cern the faint yet unmis­tak­able per­cus­sion of mas­sive stone footsteps.

Just then Jane and the rest of police burst in to the cof­feeshop. “The Berke­ley Pit is com­ing down the Inster­state,” she cried. “It’s headed for Bozeman!”

Tables over­turned, cof­fee went fly­ing. The Irish Fairies urged calm. “The water in the pit isn’t bad for ye,” one said. “Me broth­ers and me drink it all the time. Keeps ye young.”

The police tried to set­tle the crowd. “He may be right!” Jane said. “What we need is a guinea pig to go out there and test it. And, if we can’t find a guinea pig, I hear a pan­golin will work in a pinch.”

Sweet Banana Tail’s ears perked up at that. She put down her latte, wip­ing the ant residue off her upper pro­boscis. “I’ll be freakin’ damned if I’m going out there,” she said.

Off in the dis­tance, the foot­steps grew louder. And sploshier.

“Oh, dair, she’s a comin’ all righty,” said the Plumber. “Sounds like she’s walk­ing along the Inter­state. She’ll be a’trompin’ in the Pit water, and I fear she won’t be wearin’ her irri­ga­tion boots.”

“Sir, let me get this right,” said Jane. “Along with the flood­wa­ters of the Berkely Pit, the giant Our Lady of the Rock­ies statue is headed to Bozeman?”

“Aye, and she’s hop­pin’ mad! Oh, and that Pit water will make her grow, a kilo­me­ter if she’s an inch. And that’s no Blarney!”

Half the crowd went into a panic — too much caf­feine. The other half, who also had too much caf­feine, started brainstorming.

“I know, we’ll fight her with an enor­mous icon of our own!”

“What have we got?”

“Uh, how ‘bout the ‘M’?”

“But that’s just a big let­ter ‘m’! Can it fight?”

“Comes in handy in Scrabble.”

“I know!” said Lenny. “We’ll film it. It’ll be the great­est new real­ity show ever – part Cops, part Sur­vivor, part Amer­i­can Idol, and part America’s Fun­ni­est House Pets.”

“I resent that,” mut­tered Sweet Banana Tail, swal­low­ing an ant clump.

“And part Godzilla ver­sus Mothra!” yelled Virginia.

So it was on. The denizens of Boze­man no longer feared being flooded with toxic water and stomped to death by the mighty Lady from Butte, because they would be made famous in the process… with help from the song and dance accom­pa­ni­ment of the Irish Fairies. The pro­duc­ers bran­dished their cam­eras – it was showtime.

The drum­beat of stone foot­steps grew louder. Dark­ness fell along Main Street; it wasn’t a thun­der­cloud, it was the mas­sive shadow of Our Lady, now pass­ing the 19th Street inter­change, her feet slosh­ing with poi­son. Rather than hid­ing in their base­ments, Bozeman’s overly recre­ated came out in their Patag­o­nia haz­mat suits, hop­ing to be on TV.
The Plumber was right: She was a kilo­me­ter tall if she was an inch. She approached Main Street, tow­er­ing above it. Some peo­ple screamed. The rock climbers in the crowd des­per­ately searched for their chalk bags and har­nesses – oppor­tu­ni­ties like this didn’t hap­pen every day. It would be Bozeman’s day of dark­ness; Butte would finally get the respect it deserved.

But the Plumber wasn’t right about every­thing: Our Lady of the Rock­ies wasn’t hop­ping mad. She was con­cerned.
“That Berkely Pit toxic sludge made my feet itch,” she boomed. “And it’s headed for the North 7th Avenue exit!”
The crowd screamed. Pan­ick­ing loot­ers broke into Schnee’s and cleared out their stock of irri­ga­tion boots.

“No!” boomed Our Lady. “You can be saved!”

“Save us, O Lady!” yelled the crowd.

“I’m not the one to save you. The one who can save you is among you. It’s… Donna Lou deChris!”

A con­fused mur­mur went through the crowd. “Who’s she?” some­one asked.

“She is an actress,” said Our Lady. “And she will be the true star of this show.”

Donna Lou, who had been mop­ing silently this whole time, sud­denly bright­ened. At last!

“Is she any good?” asked another.

“She sucks,” said Our Lady. “I mean that lit­er­ally. She has an exceed­ingly large capac­ity for air intake… and, hope­fully, for toxic Berke­ley Pit efflu­ent intake. She is Bozeman’s only hope!”

They all look at her endear­ingly, Lenny and Vir­ginia and Irwin and Squids and Bot­tled Still­wa­ter and Sweet Banana Tail and Gary Geek and Patti and the Plumber and the Irish Fairies and the Great Falls Lep­rechauns and the Gilette Pen­ny­whis­tle Gang (who had also come to audi­tion) and Irwin’s mom and Bob and Adonai and Jesus and White Buf­falo Woman and Shiva and Bud­dha and St. Patrick and Ullr and Jane and Deputy Max and Cor­mac McCarthy and Our Lady of the Rock­ies. They implored: “The show must go on, Donna Lou.”

Donna Lou pon­dered for a moment. She would have to swal­low up the entire con­tents of the Berke­ley Pit. She con­sid­ered the pros and cons: She’d be famous, but it prob­a­bly wouldn’t be very good for her com­plex­ion.
“I’ll do it!” she said.

The crowd cheered, and car­ried the exhuber­ant Donna Lou on their shoul­ders to the I-90 inter­change, just as the toxic stew was bub­bling off the exit ramp. “You suck, Donna Lou,” the crowd yelled. “You suck!”

And suck she did. At last, it was her moment in the spot­light – all the audi­tions, all the humi­la­tion was finally pay­ing off… and for some­thing she was nat­u­rally good at. She inhaled pow­er­fully, and the toxic pit water was vac­u­umed straight into her cav­ernous mouth. As gal­lon after gal­lon of the gur­gling brew dis­ap­peared into Donna Lou’s capa­cious maw, the crowd held its col­lec­tive breath.

She had done it!

Donna Lou had sucked the entire Inter­state dry, and she mopped the damp asphalt with her unibrow.

Boze­man was saved, Butte made it hap­pen, and it would all be on TV. Both towns erupted in glee and mer­ri­ment, prais­ing Donna Lou, the Irish Fairies, and Our Lady of the Rockies.

As drunken rev­el­ers ascended her flanks to give her big, wet kisses, Our Lady shushed the crowd, for she had one last ques­tion before return­ing to her perch above the Rich­est Hill on Earth:

“Just what the hell is the scream­ing panda bit, anyway?’

Thus con­cludes Fool­ish Words 2007! Thanks to all 15 local writ­ers who helped put together this glo­ri­ously silly and incom­pre­hen­si­ble tale. To view the story’s com­plete text (edited and unedited ver­sions), or to inquire about par­tic­i­pat­ing in Fool­ish Words 2008, please visit foolishwordsbozeman.blogspot.com