(GUY NOIR THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions -- Guy Noir, private eye.
(THEME UP AND OUT)
GK: It was October, the week before Halloween, and I got a call from Bernie Sanders asking me to go to Anoka.
TR (BERNIE): It's the Halloween Capital of the World, you know.
GK: I'm aware of that.
TR (BERNIE): And were you aware that the top one percent of kids get 90% of the full-size candy bars while the bottom 99% have to settle for the miniatures. The children of millionaires get the King-Size Hersheys with almonds, the Toblerones, the Lady Godivas, and the workers' kids get a tiny Butterfinger not big enough to feed a bird.
GK: Yeah, but statistics show that kids who have to walk twice as far to collect the same amount of calories will tend to live on average 4.6 years longer.
TR (BERNIE): Is that right? That's great. (BRIDGE)
GK: The statistic made him happy. I just made it up. I do that a lot nowadays. But I went to Anoka anyway because a man named Johnny "One Note" O'Toole offered me $700 to follow the quarterback of the Anoka High School Tornadoes and see what kind of books he was reading before their big Pumpkin Bowl game against Visitation.
TR (IRISH): The team had a losing season, Noir, and you know why? Because they're reading the wrong books, they are. Sad books about losers, like Hamlet and Moby Dick. They have the best facilities, the best coaches, all the best, they have, and the town has done everything for these kids, it has, and they've got no fight in them whatsoever, they don't. And Halloween, doesn't help either. Free candy. It destroys a kid's incentive, it does.
GK: I notice that you have a habit of repeating your predicate at the end of sentences, Johnny----
TR (IRISH): Yes, I've noticed that myself, I have.
GK: But their opponent, Visitation, is a girls' school.
TR (IRISH): Great big aggressive girls, they are, and they do not bathe for a week before a game, and on the field, they use terrible language, they do.
GK: So you've got money on the game, huh?
TR (IRISH): I bet my sister, Sister Mary Helen, $1000.
GK: Where does a nun get a thousand dollars to wager on a game?
TR (IRISH): She took it out of the mission fund, she did. (BRIDGE)
GK: So I found myself at Anoka High School, sitting in the library, waiting for the quarterback Brent Bracket to show up.
MADI KELLER: Excuse me--- You somebody's parent?
GK: No. I'm working security.
MADI: Oh? Is there a problem?
GK: Hundreds of them. I'm Guy Noir.
MADI: I'm Sarah. Sarah Tonin.
GK: You a student here?
MADI: Senior. Majoring in Social Harmony.
GK: Really. They never offered that major when I was in school.
MADI: Well, it was wartime, back in the Forties.
GK: What is Social Harmony?
MADI: What are you, stupid?? It's learning how to get along with other people. DUH.
GK: Okay. You know a student named Brent Brackett?
MADI: Of course.
ALEX STOKES: I know Brent. He and I are in Creative
Writing together. And we're both on the football team.
CALEB LOCKWOOD: So am I.
GK: Who're you?
CALEB: Preston. Preston Folded.
GK: What position you play, Preston?
CALEB: Reserve.
GK: Reserve what?
CALEB: Reserve substitute.
GK: Football players aren't supposed to be in creative writing. You're supposed to be in the weight room, lifting weights.
ALEX: I go to the weight room to wait.
GK: What do you do in creative writing?
CALEB: Write poems.
GK: What?
MADI: They rewrote our school Fight song to make it less
In-Your-Face.
GK: Sarah, In Your Face is what football is. It's not tai chi.
ALEX: You want to hear it?
GK: I don't know if I want to or not. (MUSIC)
CHOIR SINGS:
Try to live peacefully
Grow nice tomatoes
Play chess and read good books
Like St. Augustine and Plato
Try not to push and shove
Don't be aggressive
Practice silence and non-violence
Peace and love. (BRIDGE)
GK: That morning a carload of cheerleaders from Visitation drove up in front of school and stood and taunted Anoka.
SS/FN/TR (GIRLS):
We're the girls of Visitation
You are headed for damnation
We got Mary and we got the Pope
You got nothing but grief, you dope
Here we come, swinging a rosary,
To knock you down and eat your groceries
Bang your head into someone else's
Gloria in excelsis
You'll hurt so bad, you'll go to Mayo
Pax vobiscum Dominum Deo
Cause Visitation is the Best
Et Incarnatus Est. (LAUGHTER & NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH)
GK: And then from the battlements of the high school, I heard a battle cry----
ELLIE (SINGS): HO-JO-TO-HO
HO-JO-TO-HO
GK: And there stood a tall woman wearing a helmet with horns.
ELLIE: Come on up here and say that, you sissies! Ha!!! You don't know what pain is until you have tangled with a soprano! When I left Anoka, I went to Conservatory and the competition was ferocious and I beat out every other soprano. You want to know how?
CHORUS: How?
ELLIE: I stabbed some and the rest I poisoned. I left a trail of mutilated mezzos and injured coloraturas behind me and clawed my way through auditions and made it to the Met, to Covent Garden, to La Scala, all the big opera houses, and baritones took one look at me and they became tenors.
GK: Why----- you're Miss Rome. Gloria Rome, the great soprano----
ELLIE: Shut up. I'm talking. ---- When I heard that the Anoka football team needed a cheerleader, I dropped everything and flew out here. HO JO TO HO!!! Because football is where I learned to fight for myself. Other girls played flute and twiddled with their hair. I put on a helmet and played right guard. Come on, people.
(SHE SINGS, WITH CHOIR)
Fight fight Anoka fight
With dedication
De-stroy our cursed' foe
And cause utter devastation
Tear off their heads and arms
Torture them boldly
Pluck out their eyes, ignore their painful cries
They bought the farm.
HEY!!! (BRIDGE)
GK: I had to leave Anoka --- I had to deal with another case ---- actually, a six-pack ---- and when I got back, the game was history. Anoka had won, 6-0.
TR (IRISH): I won the bet, I did, no thanks to you, Noir, but here's fifty bucks anyway, it is.
GK: So was it a good game, Johnny?
TR (IRISH): It 'twas if you were from Anoka, you were.
GK: And was there a fight afterwards?
TR (IRISH): There was none, there was.
GK: There was or there was none?
TR (IRISH): There was none, there was. Everyone just lay on the field and looked up at the clouds.
GK: Well, fine.
TR (IRISH): All thanks to this one here.
GK: Aha. (FOOTSTEPS)
TR (IRISH): Meet Angie O'Plasty. She's Irish too.
GK: She was beautiful in a way that made Taylor Swift look like a cashier at Walmart. She gave off a warmth that could have defrosted your refrigerator and her dark hair was swept back as if she were driving fast with the top down.
KB: The problem with the football team was very simple, Mr. Noir. They were so afraid of losing that they could hardly play, and so we changed the school song. And we gave them an anti-anxiety medication.
GK: Who wrote the new words?
BEN THACKER: I did. I'm Brent Brackett.
GK: The quarterback.
BEN: We don't call it "quarterback" anymore. We call it "facilitator".
GK: And the tackles and guards?
BEN: We call them "impediments".
GK: I see.
BEN: The game isn't about Possession of the Ball anymore. Many of us found the idea of Possession offensive.
KB: Whether you win or lose, it's still an experience.
KB (WITH CHOIR):
Fight fight Anoka fight
As you are able
And if you lose be sure
Our feelings for you are stable
Play play maroon and gray
Don't be embarrassed
Do your best but if you flunk the test
You're still okay
GK: Six to zip, huh?
KB: We lulled them into a meditative state and then we ran the quarterback sneak as the clock ran out and scored. Easy as pie.
BEN: It wasn't a sneak --- it was an Interpolation. I facilitated an interpolation.
KB: Whatever-----
GK: It's another generation, for sure. Self-assured, easy-going---- smarter---- laidback---- I envy them---- I do.
(HE SINGS)
Experience your life today,
Drop your defenses.
Go to the huddle and
Try to achieve consensus.
Play from within yourself,
At one with others.
It's about healing as you're feeling
Mindfulness.
(THEME MUSIC)
SS: A dark night in the city that knows how to keep its secrets, but one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions -- Guy Noir, Private Eye.... (THEME UP AND OUT)