Saturday, December 15, 2001
Listen
(GK: Garrison Keillor; SS: Sue Scott: TR: Tim Russell)
(CHILL CHORDS)
GK: The nights get longer, the days get colder in America's northland, as blizzards (BLIZZARD) sweep across the frozen tundra (WOLF HOWL) and the inhabitants feel that old winter drowsiness creep over them ----
SS (LOW): I get so logy in the winter…..all I want to do is sleep ----- boy, that snowbank sure looks inviting, don't it.
GK: People falling asleep at work, snoozing at the computer. (TR SNORING) Teachers dropping off during class…..
SS: (DOPILY) The aesthetic narrative of 20th century expressionism is evidenced most clearly……….(VOICE FALLS AWAY INTO INCOHERENT MURMURINGS)
GK: Surgeons (CLINKING, ASPIRATOR) in the midst of delicate operations suddenly losing focus…….
TR (DROWSILY): Is this a nose job or a hemmoroidectomy? Suddenly I forget-----
GK: But disaster is averted, the day is saved, by a life-giving beverage --- the aromatic drink from tropical rainforests that keeps northern people dancing on their toes ---- (LATIN CRIES, MARACAS) yes, coffee!!! (MORE CRIES) Coffee! It's joyful! It's arousing and provocative! We northerners are not a tea type of people. These are tea people----
TR (BRIT): Oh. I adore these tea cozies! The embroidery is exquisite. Wherever did you find them?
SS (BRIT): I love the mauve, don't you?
TR (BRIT): I adore them!
GK: These are coffee people----
TR (JOHN WAYNE): We're going in, lieutenant.
SS (GUY): Aye aye, sir.
TR (JOHN WAYNE): That's the driveway and we're going to gun the engine and make it through those snowdrifts and get to the house.
SS (GUY): Yes, sir.
TR (JOHN WAYNE): And when we get there, we'll fix us a cuppa java.
SS (GUY): Coming right up, sir.
GK: Those are coffee people. We're coffee people. You and I. We're not tea people. We're certainly not herbal tea people.
SS (AIRY): I love the water imagery in her fiction. It's so luminous. Her descriptions of ponds and small streams.
GK: We're coffee people. We have a coffee sensibility. Sometimes we try tea for awhile----for a change----
TR (JOHN WAYNE): I've been out on the desert alone, trying to get in touch with my feelings about my dad---
GK: But eventually we come back to coffee----
TR (JOHN WAYNE): And then I kicked the crap out of a cactus and I felt a lot better.
GK: And that's because we're Americans, we're about action, we're about saying what we want and what we think ---
SS (LOW): I want you, Joe, I want your body. Twenty-one years of marriage and yet---- you still make my heart pound and my eyelids flutter. As soon as I take Megan to play rehearsal and pick up Josh at soccer and take him to therapy and heat up the meatless chili in the Crock Pot and pick up the babysitter, I'm going to take you to the Silver Dollar motel and rip the clothes off you and make love until the sun comes up and we lie exhausted and naked, in a tangle of sweat-stained sheets.
TR: Okay. But what about the Andersons?
SS (LOW): I'm not into group sex, Joe.
TR: No, I mean we were supposed to go over to their house for the Christmas cookie exchange. ----Sorry, but that was the plan.
SS (LOW): Let me pour you some more coffee, Joe.
TR: Okay.
SS: I think you're down a few cups. (MUSIC BUILD STARTS)
GK: Yes, if you're getting drowsy, losing focus, losing your interest in things ---- coffee can help wake up the inner you. It's the elixir of life here on the northern tundra, living in our yurts surrounded by our animals, slogging through the dark ---- there's nothing like a cup of coffee to bring out the best.
GK & LADIES:
Smells so lovely when you pour it,
You will want to drink a quar't
Of coffee.
It's delicious all alone, it's
Also good with doughnuts.
Black coffee.
Coffee stimulates your urges,
It is served in Lutheran churches,
Keeps the Swedes and Germans
Awake through the sermons
Have a pot of it today,
I'm sure you'll say it's awfully good coffee. (BIG BUTTON)
© Garrison Keillor 2001
