Dear Luke, We Need to Talk, Darth

by John Moe

  BLUTO We got out of the Navy at the same time and we didn’t know what to expect. I picked up a little work as a bouncer here and there, and I was in demand from some, shall we say, business gentlemen, to provide security services.

  OLIVE OYL Bluto was providing some muscle for loan sharks—beating up guys who didn’t pay their debts. He was good at it. Usually, they’d see him coming and just give him whatever he wanted. He looked like a monster. And I think Bluto liked being scary.

  BLUTO I felt like a monster. Big scary beard, impossibly muscular torso, so when I was treated like a monster, it made a sort of sad sense. That’s what I had for happiness. I became a bad guy because I felt like a bad guy. I was punching palookas so hard that they flew up in the air, but I was really punching myself. It took me about forty years to realize that.

  POPEYE So this was the early 1930s, you understand. The Great Depression was going on and work was tough to find. I had just left the Navy and I was looking for a job. My prospects weren’t especially good given the way I looked. For a time there, I think it’s safe to say that I went insane. I would walk around town in my sailor suit, literally the only clothing I owned, and just mumble to myself or make up little songs. So one day I was doing that and I see these two old friends of mine.

  OLIVE OYL I had met up with Bluto to try to talk him out of this life of crime he was starting and then suddenly there’s Popeye. Psychotic, contorted Popeye the sailor man. And he starts confessing his love for me, and then Bluto steps in and they start arguing.

  BLUTO Popeye starts throwing punches at me, which is the wrong thing to do. I punch back. It was ostensibly about Olive Oyl, but it was really so much more. It was this cathartic release of all of our rage about what happened in the Navy, what our prospects were, the whole pathetic charade that our lives had become.

  POPEYE Anyway, our fight attracted attention. This was before Spinach, you understand.

  BLUTO This guy comes up to us, little birds still circling around our heads from our mutual clobberings, and he says he’ll pay us to beat the crap out of each other while he films it. He’s confident that people will pay money just to see us hurt each other. It’s like dirty movies, really, but with violence instead of sex.

  POPEYE Look, it was money. And the punches I took from Bluto, I mean at least I was feeling something.

  OLIVE OYL The story I was told is that the boys’ screen tests went well and the director, this guy Fleischer, thought he could go a little more legit and be an auteur. So he wants to not just show the guys fighting but WHY they’re fighting, and have that reason be me. But, he tells me, I need to lose weight. I was not heavy at the time.

  BLUTO Olive used to look normal.

  POPEYE Before the films, Olive was even a little on the thin side. It was the Depression! None of us had much to eat.

  OLIVE OYL So I say fine. I stop eating entirely. It’s just coffee, cigarettes, and cocaine. And I slimmed way down.

  POPEYE So now we all look like monsters. What’s not okay is that I lose to Bluto every time. I think they intend for me to be the hero, but have you seen Bluto? He’s huge! I can’t beat a guy like that. And that’s when they start talking about giving me Spinach. Not spinach, mind you, but something that they called Spinach. It’s a street name.

  BLUTO We felt pretty stupid for believing that someone in the movies just happened to be watching our fights. The Navy had been watching us ever since we got out. They were working with these filmmakers to use Popeye and me as recruiting tools. So it was back to the substances. For me, steroids. Popeye got Spinach.

  POPEYE As far as I can tell, Spinach was made of PCP, ox hormones, plutonium, and buck shot. I would take it and then the next thing I knew the director was yelling “cut!” and I had almost killed Bluto again.

  BLUTO I begged them to let me take Spinach. I didn’t want to hurt Popeye—we were actually very close friends by then and were the only people who understood each other—but I wanted to not die. He wasn’t responsible for his actions. It was the drugs.

  POPEYE We should have quit right there. But that’s when the money started showing up.

  OLIVE OYL I could afford to eat. At last. Ironically, however, I could NOT afford to eat if I wanted to keep getting paid. I was hospitalized several times and hooked up to IVs, but the Navy always came and got me out. Just yanked the thing out of my arm, yelling “she’s better now!” as they rolled me out the door.

  POPEYE Things got weird. I think everyone around that set was doing some form of Spinach. They would introduce these characters that served no real purpose. They brought in this character actor, Jeff Wimpy, who was just told to bum money for hamburgers from me and Olive Oyl and anyone else he saw. Why? Because he loved hamburgers. That was his whole thing: he was broke and loved hamburgers.

  BLUTO Jeff Wimpy died. Heart attack. Odd guy.

  OLIVE OYL This baby started showing up. Was he mine? Was he mine and Popeye’s? I don’t…

  SWEE’PEA MATTHEWS I don’t remember much from my work on those cartoons. My parents lived off the money I made. I remember reaching for some of that Spinach on the set one time. I was a baby, that’s what babies do. And I’m pretty sure that’s why I can’t remember numbers and why I always see large black birds wherever I look.

  POPEYE Look, I don’t want to blame anything on anyone but myself. I put my own body through those fights. I took Spinach even when I knew it was not spinach. So now when I can’t move my back for a few days at a time or when I wake up with no pants on a freeway, it’s because of choices I made.

  BLUTO I loved Popeye. I mean, I was in love with Popeye. But you couldn’t have those feelings back then. Again, I was punching those feelings, really. But I was also kissing the man I loved with my fists.

  POPEYE Bluto was a good guy.

  OLIVE OYL I was caught eating a Ritz cracker and that’s when they fired me. Called me “Tubby.” And when I was leaving that production lot for the last time, I saw this girl coming in, looking exactly like me. They just got a new me and named her Olive Oyl and everything.

  POPEYE I left soon after that and sure enough there was another Popeye, same face contortion, same forearms and everything. They knew what they were doing by then. They had the formula down.

  BLUTO I haven’t seen Olive or Popeye in years. We used to go to the conventions sometimes but I can’t really get out of the house much. My body doesn’t work. I watch a lot of TV. I like Judge Judy. How is Popeye? Does he ask about me?

  POPEYE What did we accomplish? I guess our suffering and our hostility made people laugh, but isn’t that just an indication that we’ve made the world worse? I think about those things a lot now. Thank god for marijuana.

  OLIVE OYL Show business? I don’t miss it.

  W.W.’s

  (That’s Walter White, Not Walt Whitman)

  JOURNAL

  Okay, Walter.

  Think. THINK. You’re barely scraping by on a high school teacher’s salary and a part-time job at the car wash. Skyler sells things on eBay and sometimes makes up to ten dollars doing so. Inexplicably she seems unwilling to get any other kind of work despite the fact that your only child is in high school.

  Meanwhile, you got debts piling up from Walt Jr.’s medical expenses. And now cancer. And of course a chronic case of hubris. Inoperable hubris.

  Quite a predicament here. What can you do about it? What skills do you have? Well, you can find a way. Believe in yourself. You’re a brilliant chemist, Walter. What to do, what to do.

  Cold Pizza Breakfast Business. Okay, everyone loves having that great slice of cold pizza for breakfast the next morning. I mean, fine, maybe not me, maybe not someone who will DO ANYTHING FOR HIS FAMILY? I MEAN ANYTHING, but like college kids.

  They like cold pizza. So I drive around to all the pizza joints at closing time and buy up all their leftover pies. Then the next morning I hit college campuses and high school parking lots selling cold pizza. Charge twice the price I paid for it. I could mix up a lit
tle methamphetamine in there, just for a little added zip. It would be the MOST POWERFUL COLD PIZZA THE SOUTHWEST HAS EVER SEEN. Then it’s off to teach high school. Sleep maybe two hours a night between 8 and 10 p.m.

  Birthday Party Clown. Look, everyone loves clowns. They make everyone happy. There isn’t a single person who is frightened of them. So my manic intensity and “I’m already dead” vibe wouldn’t be off-putting. I can be Loyally, the Loyal Clown, who is ALWAYS LOYAL TO HIS FAMILY. Kids like loyalty, right? Maybe a bit where I make various molecules out of balloons and then sell them to the kids because I REALLY NEED THE MONEY. How much do birthday clowns charge? $50,000? Sounds about right.

  Bacon Birthday-Number Arranger. My family, TO WHOM I AM DEDICATED, has developed an amazing talent whereby we can arrange strips of bacon, ordinary bacon, into numbers. THE SAME NUMBER AS WHATEVER BIRTHDAY ONE WANTS TO CELEBRATE. Who wouldn’t pay big dollars to see their new age represented by bacon on a pile of hash browns, eggs, or whatever they want? What a unique gift. I’m on to something here. I know it. And I’d be GOOD at it.

  Whatever I Did at Gray Matter Technologies. I started that one company with my friend. Then I left. Now I’m bitter. What happened there? I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. EVER. Seriously, I never explain it anywhere. Maybe I could figure out what I did there. Do that some more. I mean, I’m pretty smart and those guys got rich, so it must have been something special. If only I could remember. Maybe I should call up the writers and see if they could fill that in a bit.

  Freelance Intensity Feeler. It’s easy to get kind of numb and comfortable in this world. You go to work, you come home, you watch TV, you go to bed, you get up and do it all again. And here in Albuquerque there isn’t much bad weather to interrupt one’s placid point of view. So who do you go to for intensity? ME. I AM THE ONE WHO FEELS. For a modest fee ($50,000?), I can come to your house and feel VERY STRONG FEELINGS about MY FAMILY or SCIENCE or anything else you need.

  Math Lab. Look, science and math aren’t the same thing, but the logical, rational approach is the same. There is HUGE demand among young people around here to improve their math skills. But the math tutoring around here is a JOKE because it’s being done by IDIOTS who don’t take a SCIENTIFIC APPROACH. I could create math skills that are pure, that are of superior quality, that will give these kids a HIGH grade THEY’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE. And if I have to kill people who get in my way, THAT’S OKAY BECAUSE FAMILY FAMILY FAMILY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. FAMILY HUBRIS PRIDE FAMILY FAMILY ME ME ME FAMILY.

  Or I could make drugs.

  Dear Mr. Plant,

  I wanted to talk with you in person but you haven’t been around much lately. At the hair salon or at your Tolkien book club, I’m told. There are things we need to figure out, but you only seem to want to communicate through songs. So I got this cassette and I’m finding it kind of hard to figure out what you need done because your lyrics are kind of crazy talk. To me, anyway.

  Well, they delivered the stairway as you requested and there’s a receipt on it. It’s outside right now. I know your wife was excited about getting a golden stairway at a cheap price. I know that’s why she bought it. I hate to tell you this, but the stairway’s not made of gold. It’s just made of plywood and old loading pallets that someone painted gold. There are old cans of Krylon still inside it.

  And while that’s a problem you might want to take up with your stairway dealer, I have a problem of my own right here. We’ll never get this thing into your house. The stairway is infinity feet tall. Goes all the way to heaven. I didn’t know they made those. You have a big house, mind you. Three stories. But again: this is a stairway to heaven.

  Okay, later in this cassette you mention looking to the west and your spirit crying for leaving? Again, hard for me to really get what you’re talking about when you talk hippie language. I’m a contractor. Does this mean you want a large window facing west? I’m just completely in the dark here.

  The rings of smoke you see through the trees, don’t worry about that, Mr. Plant. Not a forest fire or nothing, those are just my guys smoking Marlboros. And they’re standing and looking because they don’t know what you want them to build. We need blueprints. You give us eternal staircases.

  The kids in the neighborhood keep climbing on the stairway too. I yell at them to get off, but they don’t listen. I admit I’ve thought about climbing it myself to see if I could go up there and visit my dead relatives or something. Do you think that would work? It’s a really big stairway though and my knees aren’t so good. There’s a lot going on with this project that I just haven’t encountered before. There are no handrails on it.

  Look, there are a lot of paths we can go by with this remodel, Mr. Plant. We can even completely change the road we’re on. But I can’t have my guys just standing around. You gotta meet me halfway. I have other jobs I need to do. Clapton keeps calling me.

  Thing is, when I ask you to be specific, you tell me something about how a piper will lead us to reason, a new day dawning for those who stand long, and a forest echoing with laughter. It’s hard to pick out exactly what you’re saying because you get pretty yelly.

  Okay. I suppose we have to talk about the hedgerow.

  Mr. Plant, I am alarmed about the bustle in the hedgerow. All the guys are. What you call the May Queen is in fact a live badger. You released badgers into the hedgerow when Mr. Page was here last time, remember? When you guys dressed up as hobbits? They’re biting everyone and there are infections. We need to do something about the hedgerow.

  There was more on the tape but I really can’t make anything out once Mr. Page starts in on his solos, which seem—I’m sorry—a little self-indulgent to me.

  But seriously, the stairway. There’s no way I can bring that thing up to code. It’s huge.

  Sincerely,

  J. P. Jones

  A LETTER TO THE ISLAND ON LOST FROM THE HEAD OF THE AD AGENCY HIRED TO PROMOTE TOURISM ON THE ISLAND

  Dear Sir/Madam/friend/entity,

  As requested, we’ve come up with some slogans for you to consider as possible centerpieces for a big new marketing push. So just take a look, let these roll around in your mind (if you have a mind? Can islands have those? More on that issue in a moment) and see what you think:

  The Island: things are happening here!

  Come to The Island somehow and see the magic probably!

  There’s nowhere and no when like The Island!

  Visit The Island for a killer time! (That one is admittedly a bit dark, but it sure is edgy and provocative!)

  A great place to get away from life, people, society, and reason!

  Now, I grant you: these are vague. But you haven’t given us a lot of guidance here. We would LOVE some further data in order to prepare a more comprehensive advertising strategy and, together, accomplish our goal. I hope that you received our last several letters to this effect, although frankly I’m still confused how you could have.

  The first letter, as specified by the instructions we were given, was thrown down a sort of energy vortex out near the airport in Los Angeles. The second, again per instructions, was released from an airplane en route to Australia during a storm. This one was given to a heavyset man at a mental institution. None have received any kind of response. Do you have an e-mail address? A fax number?

  Frankly, it would have been nicer to have a human name as our contact. Instead we were told that the one really running things was The Island itself. Our agency hasn’t really worked directly with a landmass before, nor have we ever heard of an island being sentient. I mean, you can’t really talk, can you? Or type a letter back to us? Maybe you have an isthmus or peninsula working as a secretary! Ha ha! A little geography humor there. Don’t kill us.

  Still, we were delivered a large sum of money, in cash, to do the work and we are professional brand managers.

  Here are our questions we would like answered to move toward our goal:

  • Do you, in fact, have a name? There seem to be
several people who have spent time on (with? at?) you. What do they call you? It doesn’t even have to be a formal name, just like a nickname or something. We find that in our experience—and I really don’t mean this to sound condescending—a NAME for something helps a lot with the marketing. If you don’t have a name, would you be amenable to us coming up with one for you? We could brainstorm. We’re very good at that. We have a conference room with a HUGE whiteboard. Magicfun Island! That’s just off the top of my head. Spitballing.

  • Where are you? It would be great to know because then we could work with travel agencies on putting together some packages. Should people fly out of Los Angeles? Sydney? Honolulu? Moscow? Help us out here!

  • What kind of lodging might visitors expect? From what we gathered, there are several huts. Are those owned by permanent residents? Are there rentals available to anyone? Also, we have seen some photos of what looked like a compound, although it’s unclear to everyone in our office when those photos were taken. If we know just how much development there has been, we can strategize about pitching our campaign more toward developers like Hilton and the Sandals resort chain versus tourists seeking a specific getaway. Also, The Hatch: perhaps a premium VIP rental?

  • Is there anything we can do about the smoke monster that kills people? We understand that many exotic locales have their share of wildlife. That’s part of the fun! And of course some of that wildlife could be carnivorous in nature. But that can generally be managed. Would it be possible to capture the smoke monster and put it on display in some kind of wild habitat where it could be happy in its own way? That could be a possible revenue source for you, as well. Or could it at least be convinced to stop murdering people?