A Prairie Home Companion: February 26, 2005

Catchup script
Saturday, February 26, 2005
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Sue Scott: These are the good years for Jim and me. We signed up for basic cable and it was amazing to get good reception after all these years of living with shadows — we missed most of the facial expressions. Jim and I have gone on this all-pork diet where you just eat sausage and we've lost four pounds apiece though we have terrible indigestion and the pills we're taking for that make us drowsy so we're drinking quarts of coffee every day which give us headaches for which we're taking codeine, one side effect of which is memory loss, so when I sent Jim to the grocery for milk and coffee and frozen waffles, he came back with extra-virgin olive oil and the swimsuit issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Tim Russell: I was in the check-out line behind a woman who was getting twenty rolls of breath mints and an orange and she was writing a check, so I had a minute to look around, and that's when I saw the cover of The Atlantic.

SS: Why does The Atlantic have a swimsuit issue?

TR: People go swimming in the Atlantic.

SS: Yes, but usually they wear suits that would stay on their bodies. What do you see in this, Jim?

TR: I guess I saw it as striking a blow for equality—

SS: Equality—!

TR: All the women in swimsuits are Harvard graduate students in the sciences.

SS: I didn't know that.

TR: They're fine women. Any one of them could've gone into Renaissance literature or nursing or child development or married a chiropractor and settled down in Kansas City and learned how to make pad thai with lemongrass and coconut milk. But they didn't. They went to Harvard to do research in mathematics and organic chemistry and molecular physics.

SS: Jim?

TR: Yes?

SS: Why did you get extra-virgin olive oil?

TR: You didn't want extra virgin?

SS: I wanted milk and coffee and frozen waffles.

TR: Oh.

SS: This is the ninth quart-bottle of olive oil you've brought home in the past thirty days, Jim. We have enough olive oil to make The Godfather Part 4.

TR: Sorry. I guess I had other things on my mind.

SS: Jim, I don't think you're getting enough catchup. Harvard scientists aren't sure exactly how much catchup a person needs, but it is known that catchup contains natural mellowing agents that steady a person when your body chemistry becomes complicated.

Rich Dworsky (SINGS): These are the good years, the mornings soft and dewy Flowers on the table, a gift from uncle Louie Life is flowing, like ketchup on chop suey..

GK: Ketchup, for the good times...

RD: Catchup! Catchup!