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Ketchup script
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Listen
TR: These are the good years for Barb and me. We discovered a list of things to do that we wrote in 1982 so Barb picked up some dry cleaning from back then, clothes we couldn't remember wearing, pastel stuff, some jeans with zippers on the ankle. And I called up my old pal Andy for lunch, but he had died a few years ago. Too bad. I owed him a couple hundred bucks. Oh well. The list said to clean out the garage, I put that on my list for June. So we were getting a new start. And then one day I came home and found a piano in the living room. Barb-what's going on here?
SS: It's a piano, Jim.
TR: I know it's a piano. I see that. But why?
SS: I decided I wanted to play again.
TR: I don't remember talking about this, Barb.
SS: Well we didn't. I was inspired by the lunar eclipse.
TR: I think I'd like the shadow of the earth to pass over this piano. So I don't have to look at it.
SS: But Jim—I want to play! I know I can!
TR: Barb — A sense of rhythm does not come to a person suddenly in middle age, Barb
SS: I used to have talent. When I was a kid. Everyone said so.
TR: Those people were related to you, Barb. Listen, we already have a musical instrument. It's called a CD player.
SS: But what am I supposed to do with the piano?
TR: We'll do what other people do. We'll put a lace runner on it and a bowl of ceramic fruit and a photograph of your mother in a silver frame, and let it go at that. And then we can go inside and have some hash browns with ketchup.
SS: Ketchup, Jim?
TR: Ketchup contains natural mellowing agents that help you accept that some people are good at playing the piano. And some people are good at removing stains from all sorts of fabrics, even carpets. And usually these talents don't overlap, and that's fine.
RD (SINGS):
Pianos are lovely
For etude or caprice
Chopin polonaises
Beethoven's Fur Elise
But you are good at cleaning
Coffee stains and grease—
GK: ketchup, for the good times
RD (SINGS): Ketchup, ketchup.
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