by John Moe
17. Please give Mike $45 for your Fight Club satin tour jacket.
18. No more toddlers! Seriously!
19. The “Hey look over there!” pointing move is forbidden.
20. Don’t tweet about Fight Club. Seriously, guys, I’m surprised we even need to include that one.
21. Fighters are forbidden from bringing in puppies, kittens, bunnies, or anything cute, small, and defenseless.
22. When Mr. Norton is fighting, please refrain from shouting, “Whoa! It’s Ed Norton! The movie star!” Same goes for Mr. Pitt and Mr. Loaf.
23. “Flight Club” is an organization of fans of that 2012 Denzel Washington movie. It’s mostly alcoholics in pilot uniforms. Please read the signs on the doors closely. We’ve had some of our guys going in there and beating them up and the community center is pretty upset when that happens.
24. Handguns are not allowed. Again, I’m really bummed out that this was not assumed. RIP Steve.
25. Please don’t call it Fart Club during a fight because it makes everyone crack up every time.
Rachel.
Hear me now.
Hear my words.
It is clear to me that you and your friends are still hanging around the coffee shop. Customers report doors opening and closing for no apparent reason, there is an odd sound of laughter occasionally, and then there is the matter of the orange couch. Regulars to the shop know to simply leave it alone, of course, but new customers occasionally attempt to take their coffees and pastries over to the couch to sit down. When they do so, they are greeted with a sudden, remarkable chill and an overwhelming sense of dread. They generally run fleeing from Central Perk. It’s understandably scary and bad for business.
Do you understand why this happens, Rachel? I don’t think you do. I’ll tell you: you are dead. All of your friends are dead. You’ve been dead for many seasons now. Years, even.
I’m writing this in chalk because as everyone knows, that’s the only thing that can get a ghost’s attention. I hired you to be a waitress soon after you arrived here in the West Village. You seemed to need some help and, if I’m being honest, I found you very attractive. Also, I enjoyed the easygoing bonhomie you shared with Monica, Joey, Ross, Chandler, and Phoebe. That’s why I made a rule that no one else was allowed to sit on the orange couch.
The day after you were hired, you and your friends apparently chose to go to a nearby park to play around in a fountain while fully clothed. For whatever reason, you brought the orange couch with you. Well, you all drowned. Your bodies were fished out the next morning and the police brought the couch back to Central Perk.
So imagine my surprise when you all showed up the next day, mostly as flickering bits of light and dark translucent cloaked figures, all clustered around the couch. You were apparently visiting with one another, as if nothing had happened. As if you didn’t know or couldn’t accept what had happened.
I thought this would last for maybe a day but it just went on and on. That’s why when you talked to me, I would appear flustered and uneasy. You are a ghost. That’s why I never criticized your waitressing skills when you would hang out with your friends instead of helping customers. Ghosts are scary, Rachel.
This news must come as a shock and maybe you’re not entirely convinced. Here are some things to think about:
• There’s no way you and Monica could afford that apartment on your alleged salaries. Have you noticed how you never pay rent? That’s because it’s someone else’s apartment and you’re haunting it.
• The same goes for the nebulous “office” where Chandler works, the acting gigs Joey lands on shows that don’t really exist,, the way Phoebe supports herself despite being unemployed and recently homeless. None of it is real, so all of it is possible.
• You and your friends rarely interact in any meaningful way with anybody aside from one another. When you do, those are other ghosts.
Rachel, I would dearly love for you and your friends to ascend to the next place, to go into the light,, to do whatever needs to be done. I think knowing that you’re dead is a big step in that direction. In the meantime, if you need to hang around Central Perk, that’s okay. Everyone is too frightened of the orange couch to ever sit on it. I tried to move it out once and it emitted a deep Satanic growl so I just left it.
I’m sorry no one told you life was going to be this way. Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life is literally D.O.A.
Gunther
James Taylor
“Like Martha’s Vineyard Set to Music”
March 15, 2004
Dear Friends,
As you know, I’ve always been there for you over the years. Due to circumstances that have proved overwhelming, however, I regret to inform you that, as of July 1, I will no longer come running when you call out my name.
I realize this comes as a shock to some of you, especially those who seem to have had occasion to call out my name several times a day, thus forcing me to come running with great haste. While I hope that you will still think of me as a friend, I know it will be a blow to not have me at your disposal. You may be angry. But this change in policy must take place.
When I originally recorded “You’ve Got a Friend,” in 1971, it was meant to reach a select audience of people to whom I was actually very close. Having been endowed by my secret alien parentage with certain abilities (super speed, ultra-hearing, a pleasant singing voice, and a loving nature), I decided to use my powers for good and provide assistance to others in the form of a sort of “super friendship.” While other superheroes chose to fly, catch bank robbers, patch up dams, and the like, I decided that James Taylor would be the most powerful and loving friend this world had ever known. And, hopefully, maintain a successful recording career at the same time in order to pay the bills and have a creative outlet.
The plan worked well. The song became a hit, selling millions of copies, and was distributed around the world. Since it was a song from my heart (even though Carole King wrote it), I was pleased by its success. I hoped that listeners would think of it as a sentiment to be shared between two friends, neither of which would necessarily be me.
For the most part, that was the case. But soon there emerged a growing group that cracked my code, realizing that “You’ve Got a Friend” was not just a song but an implicit contract. Almost none were really my “friends” to begin with, but they started calling out my name. I would be in the middle of tuning my guitar or making tea in my kitchen at the Martha’s Vineyard house and my ultra-hearing would pick up a desperate “James Taylor!” from someone who had just had a fight with their boyfriend, or binged on junk food again, or lost out on a promotion, or needed someone to hold the ladder while they cleaned the gutters, or whatever. When that happened, I would dutifully come running to see them. Again.
For a while, I was fine with this. My superpowers made it all feasible, if a bit time-consuming. I was seeing the world and I really seemed to be helping people. Sure, I never knew the boss or the family member that they were complaining about, so I couldn’t give advice really. I just listened (a lot!). That seemed to be what they needed anyway. But by the late ’80s, I noticed that my recording career was tapering off. Billy Joel or Christopher Cross would call me up (using the phone, thank goodness) to record something, but I would be too busy responding to a farmer in Iowa calling out my name or a banker in Tokyo who decided to yell “James Taylor!” as loud as he could because he felt “uneasy.” And boom, because I was being a friend, I lost out on the gig.
By the ’90s, things were clearly out of control, but a deal was a deal. I had told people that I would be there, yes I would. But I was going days without sleeping, eating whatever food I could grab on the road, and rarely seeing my family, who wondered, quite fairly, why I never seemed to be around for them. And it was always the same people calling out my name. Four or five times a day. Occasionally, in desperation, I would bring them puppies or kittens, something else to channel their love to, but they would never
get the hint. Free copies of the Sweet Baby James album were rarely accepted enthusiastically.
Finally, after a particularly harrowing beginning of 2004, I’d decided that enough was enough. Was it Mrs. S. of Minneapolis who had taken to calling out “James Taylor! And grab some Oreos!”? Might have been. Could have been Mr. F. in Melbourne who screamed my name at two in the morning and then changed his mind when I got there and told me to leave. The entire classroom of first graders to whom Ms. W. taught the “James Taylor trick” certainly didn’t help matters. It just wasn’t funny. To me, anyway.
But in reality, it’s all of these cases. And so many more over so many years. Because while I have been a friend, I don’t think most of you know the meaning of friendship. It’s a two-way street, and frankly it’s time you all learned that the hard way by realizing your actions have consequences. So the deal is off.
As of July 1, if you call out my name, all you’ll hear is the sound of your own voice. I will be taking time to work on a new album and touring some colleges in the Northeast with my good friend Art Garfunkel. Between now and June 30, however, the deal still stands, but I do ask you to use it judiciously and perhaps begin to taper off.
Thanks.
Your “friend,”
James Taylor
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: The Lost X-Files
Scully, I’m pretty sure I’m about to be captured or killed or something by the government or aliens or the government working for the aliens or vice versa. It’s hard to tell anymore. Point is: I’m in danger again. So I need to pass along some really high-level information, the kind of thing that people need to know about and that no one can ever find out about. The truth needs to get out there and it will endanger everyone and lives will be saved and/or lost. Anyway.
Here:
1974–1979: The United States and much of the world is caught up in the disco craze. It involved steady beats and high-pitched, heavily reverbed vocals. Also a great deal of dancing and cocaine. The FBI has evidence that this craze, while initially seen as a reaction against the heaviness and earnestness of arena and prog rock music, was in fact a standard take-over-the-world alien plot. The plan was to hypnotize the world’s population, get them high on drugs, and then simply kill them all. The plan was foiled purely by accident when the alien leaders began hanging out way too much at Studio 54 in New York, partying with Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol, and dying of overdoses.
1977: A series of “close encounters of the third kind” occur in the desert Southwest, leading to odd and obsessive behavior by people who reportedly witnessed alien crafts. This obsession, in at least one case, leads to the compulsive creation of mashed potato replicas of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming where the crafts were believed to be landing. In the end, the entire project was a marketing stunt by the American Mashed Potato Council, who poisoned many Americans with hallucinogenic drugs in order to promote their sickening product.
1983–present: Various companies begin selling water, regular water, in bottles. This despite the fact that you can go right to a sink and fill up any old cup with water that is pretty much the same. Some of the bottles of water eventually cost three dollars or more. People buy it, too, in increasingly large numbers. The Bureau has come to believe the theory that there is a virus at work here wherein the public presence of one water bottle compels otherwise sane people to go out and acquire bottles of their own, even though, again, tap water is always available. As for where this all comes from, it may be a cabal of industrialists, it may be Chinese mystics, or it may just be that people are kind of dumbasses.
1985: Duran Duran suddenly stops being popular, which makes no sense. You remember them, right, Scully? The earlier stuff was great, “Girls on Film,” “Rio,” and all that. But Seven and the Ragged Tiger is a really underrated album. I guess they lost some chemistry after Andy and John did Power Station while Simon and Nick split off to make the Arcadia album. Still, you’d think the real fans would stay with them. Yet, I’m one of the only ones who did. What’s up with that? Theory: the Pentagon is somehow involved.
1990: A dog near Phoenix acts weird all day and then returns to normal. Unsolved.
1997: A huge influx of Sasquatches (aka Bigfoots) is reported in the Pacific Northwest. The beasts are said to be well over six feet tall, hairy, and constantly emitting a powerful stench. Investigations reveal that for the most part, these Sasquatches are members of the Seattle Supersonics NBA basketball team. In particular, Shawn Kemp, Jim McIlvaine, Detlef Schrempf, and Steve Scheffler. The players would don ornate disguises immediately after games when their body odor was strongest and roam the countryside of suburban Seattle just to freak people out.
Ultimately, the players were abducted by actual Sasquatches with whom they actually fell in love and mated. The NBA soon had to deal with the competitive threat that these half-human, half-Sasquatches posed to the league. They were all well over seven feet tall and had the innate rebounding instinct that we know is common among Sasquatches.
The progeny were kidnapped and raised in captivity by the Bureau. When they grew to adulthood, they were shaved and sent to play in overseas leagues. Trying to prevent such cross-breeding in the future, the NBA relocated the Seattle franchise to Oklahoma City, which is relatively Sasquatch free.
Oddly, after retiring from the NBA, Kemp, McIlvaine, Schrempf, and Scheffler moved into the woods, reuniting with their Bigfoot brides.
1999: Jesse Ventura is elected governor of Minnesota.
2001: A reported alien presence said to be terrifying beach areas in Louisiana turned out to be a pelican. To be fair, pelicans are freaky looking, Scully.
2003: Ventura leaves office and Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California.
Look, Scully, maybe you shouldn’t investigate this one too closely. Some things are better left unknown. Let the truth just stay out there.
Mulder
HARPER LEE’S LETTERS TO HER EDITOR AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
October 12, 1960
Mr. Hohoff,
I am delighted, as I know you are, with the success of the book and I am eager to begin a new novel that I can get out to the public as soon as possible. I am absolutely bursting with ideas and feel the name “Harper Lee” will be synonymous with prolific writing for generations to come. “Harper Lee has ANOTHER book out ALREADY?” That’s what people will be saying.
Here’s my first notion and I am prepared to start work on it right away:
Boo Radley: Time Cop. The reclusive Mr. Radley, who emerges, however briefly, from the shadows at the end of Mockingbird, is revealed to not really be a shut-in after all but rather a top officer in the Interchronological Police Squadron! Once he gets his orders, he climbs in his time machine (located in his house, that’s why no one is ever allowed in there!) and blasts off to ancient Egypt, Victorian England, or whenever. His mission: stop time-traveling criminals—generally by stabbings staged to look like accidents as in Mockingbird—from altering the proper course of history.
I await your approval.
Ms. Lee
* * *
July 8, 1961
Mr. Hohoff,
No traction on that last idea, huh? Okay. How about this:
To Surf a Mockingbird. Tired of living in the repressive South, Atticus, Jem, and Scout set out for sunny California! Atticus becomes a level-headed surf champion and defends minority surfers from charges of breaching surf protocol. In the end, when the bad guys die of unexplained knife wounds as Atticus’s children hide nearby, the deaths are chalked up to simple accidents.
Note: this might work as a movie as well. Frankie Avalon as Atticus?
Ms. Lee
* * *
February 21, 1974
Mr. Hohoff,
Just wanted to let you know I’m still brainstorming. I’m just going to say the title and see what you think:
TO BE KILLED BY MO
CKINGBIRDS
People like horror. The Exorcist was huge. So it’s years after the first book. Jem has moved away. Atticus has died, and without his presence and expert marksmanship to worry about, the people of Maycomb finally let out their pent up aggression on the now grown-up Scout with threats and vandalism and all sorts of cruel acts. Finally, she can take it no longer and uses her MAGICAL ABILITIES to summon forth great clouds of mockingbirds to attack and kill the racist people of Maycomb!
See, there’s, I don’t know, a witch or something in Maycomb who gave her special powers as a thank you to Atticus for defending her in a witch hunt. Yeah, that’ll work. Or maybe Scout just fell and hit her head in the woods and when she woke up she could control mockingbirds and the head injury screwed her up a little, so she’s VENGEFUL. In truth, I haven’t really worked this part out. But I will!
Anyway so she’s being harassed by the townspeople.
“It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird, but for me it’s a blessing for you to be killed by a flock of mockingbirds!” Scout shouts as millions of bloody-beaked birds swarm around her, following her every command. “YOU’RE ALL SINNERS!”
Then the killing really kicks in. Tippi Hedren ain’t got nothing on this carnage.
RIGHT?
Ms. Lee
* * *
May 27, 1977
Mr. Hohoff,
I just saw Star Wars. How about To Kill a Space Mockingbird?
Not really formed yet. Just a thought.
Ms. Lee
* * *
June 19, 2011
Mr. Hohoff,
Okay, I think I better just let the Mockingbird thing rest. Been trying for decades and just getting nowhere.
I am pleased however to be writing again, this time under the pseudonym E. L. James, whose first book, Fifty Shades of Grey will be published tomorrow. Wish me luck!