Garrison Keillor: You always wanted to be a writer and so you endured years of rejection (BIG RASPBERRY, BOOS, NYAH-NYAH. Tim Russell: You bum. Sue Scott: Who told YOU you could write?) and then finally you break through with your novel Blown Away (Fred Newman: luminous...powerful...gripping....), you become a rocket in the literary skies (ROCKET PROPULSION AND SAILING HIGH), it's the book of the year (FN ECHO: BOOK OF THE YEAR), and you have a party (CHAMPAGNE CORK POP, NOISEMAKERS, WHOOPEE), you're tap dancing on the street (TR SINGING, TAP DANCING), your book is selling like hotcakes, you're interviewed left and right (TR SMALL VOICE: For me, writing is almost a dreamlike experience), you give lectures at creative writing programs (TR SMALL VOICE: When we talk about writing, we must begin with the unconscious, with the dream state.) and you get a million-dollar advance on your next book (OOOHHS) and your teenager stops listening to death metal (HIP HOP BASS) and starts enjoying piano concertos (TCHAI PIANO), and you look at your hair in the mirror. (TR: Hey. Pretty good.) and then someone discovers that -- TR SMALL VOICE: I plagiarized WHAT???) -- a computer analysis shows that large portions of Blown Away are taken directly from Gone With The Wind -- TR: How did it happen???? -- maybe it was a blood-sugar imbalance -- TR: It was a blood-sugar imbalance --- maybe it was a mood swing (TR REACTION TO SHARP TURN) -- and that day your phone rings constantly (OVERLAPPING RINGS) and a lawyer for the Margaret Mitchell estate serves you with papers (SS: Here you go, Yankee trash!) and there's a thunderstorm (THUNDERSTORM). the sewers start to back up (GLUP GLUP GLUP), your house is struck by lightning (CRACK) and your computer crashes, and that night a volcano that nobody had any idea was there in your town starts to rumble (SFX) and thousands of people are evacuated (CONFUSION, SIRENS) and that night it blows (ERUPTION) and red-hot lava flows down Main Street as you and your weeping family (WEEPING) watch from a nearby shelter and then prehistoric eggs buried deep in the earth's crust are heated by the lava (CRACKING, OPENING) and they are the eggs of pterodactyls (PTERODACTYLS) and tyrannosauruses (DINO), dinosaurs notorious for their bad tempers, and they roam around rampaging and destroying (DINOS) and the next morning you find that all of the Baptists in town are gone (CONFUSED VOICES) -- vanished, their clothing left behind, their toast still in the toaster -- the Baptists and some of the Methodists and of course the Church of Christ -- it's been a week of incredible events and then (GLISS) you have a great idea -- TR: I could write a book about this!!! (CHORD) --and so you do -- you whip out your old manual typewriter (FAST FURIOUS TYPING) you write in a white heat, page after page after page, it's the best thing you ever did (TR: EXCITEMENT) and you write a thousand pages in what seems like an afternoon (A BLUR OF TYPING) and you fall asleep happy (TR: HAPPY YAWN) and have a dream in which you are commanding troops in battle (ARTILLERY, HORSES WHINNY, SWORDS) and then you wake up and -- (TR: GASP. Oh no!!!) your manuscript is gone! (TR FRENZY, RUNNING FEET, RUMMAGING JUNK) It's gone. Your masterpiece. (TR: What happened?)
SS: You looking for the junk that was on the table? I threw it out.
TR: You threw it out????
SS: I told you yesterday. If you don't clean it off, then I will.
TR: My novel!!! (RUNNING FEET)
GK: The garbage man is just swinging the trash barrel up on his shoulder. (TR: No!!! Wait!!!) And he dumps it in the hoist and (TRUCK HOIST) it's dumped in the truck and the truck pulls away (TRUCK) and you running after (RUNNING FOOTSTEPS,
TR: Wait!! Stop!!! Please!!! I'm a writer!!!) and you arrive at the landfill hours later (WIND) and it's acres and acres of debris and garbage (FOOTSTEPS IN TRASH) and you wander across this smoky landscape and you see a page lying on the ground and you pick it up.
TR: The End.
GK: Wouldn't this be a good time for a piece of rhubarb pie? Yes, nothing gets the taste of shame and failure out of your mouth like Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.
(SINGS)
One little thing can revive a guy
And that is a piece of rhubarb pie.
Serve it up, nice and hot,
Maybe things aren't as bad as you thought.
(DUET)
Mama's little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb
Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.
Mama's little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb
Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.
Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.