A Prairie Home Companion: February 21, 2004

Duct Tape
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Listen

…..and here with a word for duct tape is supermodel Cynthia Maxwell and ballerina and memoirist Jitka Ozymandias.

SS: As a supermodel who is required to be stunningly attractive at all times, I know only too well how things can go terribly wrong at the last minute.

ER: That is so true. The last time I danced at the Wang, I stood in the wings, about to make my grand entrance in Swan Lake, and people were spraying my hair and powdering my forehead and putting sparkle dust on my teeth, and I ran out on tiptoes and I leaped and my right shoe flew off my foot and struck a small child on crutches, and my career was never the same.

SS: You're the lead model for the fall fashion show and you stride toward the runway, as a thousand awestruck faces turn your way, and suddenly the seam gives way on the ormolu jacket and you're standing there with an armful of feathers.

SS: Costume malfunctions. They're common in modeling too. You split a seam and suddenly everyone can see that you wear boxer shorts with little rainbows on them.

ER: That's why those of us in the performance field always carry a pocket-sized roll of flesh-tone duct tape ---- it can fix anything in seconds. ---

SS: Things break. Things collapse. You walk out onstage and trip over the footlights and land in the lap of three men from Topeka.

ER: Duct tape: it's the only thing that almost works sometimes.

GK: A message from the American Duct Tape Council.

ER: Look out for those ducks. (DUCKS CRY, FLY PAST. BIG PIANO CLUNK CHORD. CREAKING. "Heads up!" METAL CRASH. FEEDBACK. "NO, DON'T TOUCH THAT" WHIRRING OF COPIER. KLAXON. "LOOK OUT!" FALLING CURTAIN. CLANG.)