"A Streetcar Named Denial"

"A Streetcar Named Denial"
 by Buddy Lee Trickham, Ph.D.

 

A three-act play in minimalist, post-Gothic, neo-Bellum. 
 (ROUGH DRAFT)

ACT ONE

Curtain rises on a Virginia courtroom.  The defendant is wearing over his face a paper bag with a photo of John Boehner pinned to it.  Blanche du Zilla rises to make her opening statement to the jury--which consists of seven figures with paper bags over their heads.  (The paper bags have smiley faces painted on them.)  Blanche is wearing a red silk suit and crocodile boots.  She is fanning herself with a "Southern Living" magazine. 

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Carpetbagger will try to tell you that my client is a heartless, crazy, fundamentalist Christian home-schooler who broke his son's arms.  But I'm here to tell you that life is like a box of non-responsive documents:  sure, most of it is completely irrelevant rubbish which benefits nobody at all, but if you dig deeper, and really look hard, you will find the most unexpected gift of all."

"What is that?" cries Don Giovanni, rising from the gallery to blow a kiss to Blanche.

"Silence in the courtroom!" exclaims the judge, pounding his gavel.  The judge is wearing a paper bag painted with a caricature of George W. Bush.

Blanche opens a bag of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and tosses one to Don Giovanni.  Then she approaches the bench and tosses a doughnut to the judge.  Then she returns to the jury.  "This trial is about what it means to be an American!"  The jury applauds wildly, and she tosses them the rest of the Krispy Kreme bag.  "Better to cut out your eye than go to Gehenna with both evil eyes intact!"  The gallery applauds wildly.  "Better to ascend armlessly to Heaven on the wings of the angels than to crawl down into the fiery pit on your own hands and knees!"  The judge joins in the clapping.  "Only Americans know how to go to Heaven, and I know that this jury will do their American duty!"  With that, the judge, jury, and gallery all rise to give Blanche a standing ovation.

Curtain falls.

ACT TWO

Curtain rises on Howling Wolf conference room.  The walls are hung with pretentious, over-sized, abstract paintings, and a three-foot sculpture of a three-headed wolf sits at the center of the table. 

"You mean to tell me that Blanche du Zilla is out in the Virginia Colony doing pro bono work all morning?" thunders former Senator Balthazar Rouge, who has a paper bag over his face painted with dollar signs for the eyes, nose, and mouth.  "She is spending hours of her day billing nobody?!  Have we learned nothing from the International Development Nerds fiasco?!"

A young associate with a paper bag over his head painted as a serious face answers him.  "She desperately wanted to get trial experience, Senator Rouge, and she thinks it's alright because her team has already billed $17 million to Dead Dinosaur Diesel this year."

"Ha, ha, ha!" bellows Rouge.  "I love that case!  "We've insulted the Republic of Pizarro, filmed their so-called Indians speaking fluent Spanish, disgraced all the class-action attorneys at Goode Peepz law firm, and scared their expert scientists so much they've run for the hills to become 7th grade teachers!  But that's the problem, isn't it?  What else can we do?  It's been twenty years, and we're about to win this arbitration:  the other side will give up on cleaning that spilled coal, and Dead Dinosaur billables will be no more.  Blanche should be out there finding new clients!  Possibly in Iran."

"Some attorneys are concerned about the legal precedents the case has set," adds an attorney with a paper bag over her face--the paper bag has a photo of Scarlett O'Hara pinned to it.

"Oh," says Rouge, "like getting Judge Lame Boy to adopt our 70-page brief as his 70-page opinion?  Ha, ha, ha!  That's the wave of the future, my friends!  Judges are too lazy to do that much research themselves, and all the budget cuts have eaten away at their clerk positions."

"Precedents about attorney-client privilege, sir," says the young associate with the serious-face paper bag.  "There's a rumor that Gibson Dunn has already had to turn over three partners' computers, and one of the emails showed one attorney saying, 'it's time to shit or get off the can,' and the other attorney saying, 'I vote for shit', sir."

"Gibson Dunn?!"  hollers Rouge.  "Attorney-client privilege is only supposed to be overcome for fraud--like with those idiots at Goode Peepz!"

The Scarlett O'Hara bag girl says, "they're saying Howling Wolf has lowered the bar so much on the fraud question that--"

"It's not about lowering the bar:  it was a one-time bribe to Judge Lame Boy, wasn't it?" hollers Rouge.

With that, the three-headed wolf sculpture explodes to reveal a hidden recorder at the center of the table labeled "NSA-FBI-CIA-DHS".

Curtain falls.

ACT THREE

Curtain rises on the Virginia courtroom.  Blanche is speaking to the jury.

"Everything Mr. Carpetbagger has said to you about my client is sound and fury signifying nothing!  Why?  Because, Mr. Carpetbagger asked for an extension on his Reply Brief Memorandum Appendix Exposition of Enumerated Witness Factoids and Minutia so that he could observe Rosh Hoshanah, and the Virginia Rules of Criminal Procedure Regarding Minors do not allow such special treatment--not even for fancy, Northern prosecutors in Calvin Klein suits!" 

"I object, your honor!" cries the prosecutor, rising to his feet.  "Those rules are meant to protect minors, not send them back to their parents for more abuse!"

"Objection overruled!" shouts the judge.

"I have always depended on the kindness of judges," says Blanche.

"Stella, how could you?!" cries the young boy with two arms in casts, and he rushes the bench to rip the paper bag off the judge's face, revealing a woman.

"He's possessed!" cries the defendant (John Boehner bag face).  The defendant pulls out an assault rifle and shoots up the whole room. 

The only people that do not fall down dead are Blanche, Don Giovanni, and Professor Genius.  Professor Genius rushes to Blanche, takes hold of her hand, and runs out of the courtroom with her. 

The defendant turns to point his gun at Don Giovanni.

Curtain falls.

NEXT WEEK:
Looming Federal shutdown has no bearing on National Security Agency--which will continue to spy on everybody from the President of Brazil to Cap'n Crunch.  Despite their omnipresent spying, the NSA will fail to bust an underground pornography racket in D.C.--which will be exposed by TFFT television reporter Holly Gonightly....