YET MORE PROGRESS

Special to the Washington Post

Dateline April 1, 2016

By Staff Imposters

The Osher Lifetime Learning Institute in Washington, DC has announced the cast for its Upcoming Bloomsday Celebration:

Jay Leno will play the part of Leopold Bloom, Lady Gaga will play Molly Bloom, and Woody Allen will play Stephen Dedalus.

Mr. Leno expressed his satisfaction at the chance to be active and to spend time with the world-reputed intellectuals of OLLI-DC. He has thoroughly immersed himself in Ulysses to the point that he is telling only jokes that appear in the novel and he is on a diet solely of foodstuffs that Mr. Bloom was known to favor – gorgonzola sandwiches, giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes, grilled mutton and pork kidneys, all washed down by burgundy, cider and cocoa. Mr. Leno expressed confidence that he was living the part, as much as that is possible in Los Angeles, but, just to make sure that he was up to OLLI standards, he would be spending two weeks in Dublin prior to the June 16 performance in order to absorb that city’s atmosphere and stimulate his method muse.

Lady Gaga intends to sing Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. “After all,” she said, “Molly was a singer, wasn’t she.” Gaga has picked an appropriate score to carry the finale of Ulysses to a stirring conclusion. “I appreciate the opportunity that OLLI has given me to break cultural ground bigtime despite my not being zaftig enough for the part yet – but, I assure you that I will consume enough avocado ice cream and chocolate cheesecake between now and June 16 to be able to play two Molly Blooms”

Woody Allen said that he was flattered to be chosen by the prestigious OLLI Academy, and he was humbly grateful to be able to take on a role for which he has been training all his life. “They will be happy they made this decision” he said, “despite my being rather too good looking for the part, I comprehend the persona, and I think that with the cast that we have we will be able to exceed the performance of the greatest Americanized presentation of Ulysses to date when John Belushi, Marilyn Monroe and Don McLean opened the eyes of the academic, artistic and critical communities worldwide.”

Asked why this effort was being made by OLLI-DC, Executive Director, Anne Wallace, remarked that “Bernard Osher would expect no less of us. This performance will exemplify the kind of durable curiosity that OLLI-DC pursues. This is the kind of production that would have made Sam Goldwyn proud – we are paying Mr. Allen too much, but he’s worth every penny.”