Embedded Files
Introduction
By United States Army Colonel Romeo R. Romero
Commander, Timeship Ventura; 9969 ACE
Romeo Romano Romero relaxes in his quarters, near his colorful bookshelf, wearing a 1940s smoking-jacket and holding an 18th-Century pipe aloft, while caressing the large, closed, white, leather-bound manuscript -- written in an over-sized, san-serif font. The volume rests on the small, art-deco end-table placed below a free-standing, Tiffany reading-lamp.
Outside his large, thick, window, we see stars and comets race-along, oblivious to his presence. The Colonel is an android. A deluxe, self-replicated copy of an improved Titan clone of a 23rd-Century Party Bot. It’s Pinochle meets Pinnochio meets Mr. Roboto meets Mr. Rogers meets The Questor Tapes meets The Rockford Files meets Buck Rogers meets Uncle Buck meets The Electric Company meets Electric Barbarella meets Carl Weathers meets Carl Sagan meets George Patton meets George Plimpton meets Professor X meets Professor Plum.
(Eureka! I solved it: Mr. Green used the candle to light the pipe in the library...)
Romeo looks at his plum-colored smoking jacket, hits his pipe and then regards his personal library. His American accent cuts-across the stuffy air as he irreverently throws the hard-bound manuscript upon the end table.
Somber and sophisticated, Romeo exclaims, “This book is a story that anyone may read, but I do not recommend anyone reading it for one simple reason: It is trash. Garbage. In totality. A summary of waste; a gross-encounter of the turd-kind. In a word: Rubbish. It is profane, obscene, racist, sexist, agist and far too smug for its own good. Politically-correct it is not; for it seems to strive to equally offend adults of all creeds, colors and political affiliations. Apparently, the author cares not of the opinions of more-wizened souls."
Romeo tokes again. It’s delicious.
“You know, there is no sense in milking a joke that falls flat. If it was bad on the first run, a prudent and proper person ends it there. A swift kill -- no call-back. I mean, even if the audience seemed to almost get it; please know, most assuredly, in every single case, without any exception, the audience did get it and the reason nobody laughed was because nobody in the audience thought it was funny.
“Believe me when I say a follow-up is a sure closer. Try telling two fat jokes at a weight-loss clinic or crack open a second beer from a six-pack at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting if there is any question in your mind. It is like riding a North-Korean-manufactured moped at Sturgis; or waving The Confederate Flag at The Million Man March -- you're knowingly-testing the waters. You're measuring the tolerance of others -- it is never, never wise. Factually and to the point: You are simply asking for it.
“Know when to stop: Put this book away now, or risk drying-out your sense of humor. It drags on and on and on with no apparent purpose or cohesive theme to give the contrived scenes any meaning and really isn't worth trying to find substance within the meandering plotline."
We see the figures of a short man in a suit and a tall woman in a bra and skirt casually walking by. They're outside the window that's been showing us comets and what-not, completely destroying the illusion that we were actually flying through space and whizzing-by planets and such. The man is talking to another from afar, and the woman is avidly-and-silently taking notation on a clipboard. Apparently the short, loud-mouth guy knows an easy short-cut to their mutual destination that is conveniently around the back of the set for TLAMM: Introduction. Apparently, it is the quickest way to travel from A to B.
Jynx is seen through the window, shouting at a person unseen, "No, nyet, nada, nein! -- One thing I shore ain't worried about is that suspense of disbelief thing or whatever you're talking about... I toldja L-ready, it's all TRUE!"
There is a long pause.
He continues, "Well, to the best of my recollection..."
Colonel Romeo Romero mutters to us in his most serene-yet-uppity voice, "Hmmmph. Don’t say I didn’t warn you."
Romeo takes a deep, pipe-cashing toke and reloads from a nearby, Art-Deco tin.
Jynx, loitering with Candy Caine, his tall, short-hand scribin', cute, busty secretary at the window, isn't paying any more attention to her or us or anyone else except the person who is on the line with him. He says, "No, no, AWOL. No, it isn't A-W-O-L, it's a word, AWOL (ay'-wall) -- it means absent without leave, c'mon, everybody knows that, don't they? Well, no, but ... no, don't change it ... don't change nuthin'. I'll be there before you know it."
Jynx leans and looks into the room, regarding the Tiffany lamp.
"Well, of course it's a Tiffany lamp! Everyone knows one of those, right?" He pauses, "Yeah? So what if it's a trade name, I ain't selling lamps here! Tell them this: 'Beauty is what nature has lavished upon us as a supreme gift.' What? No, no no... I was quoting... no... Louis Comfort Tiffany... No... Forget that part... Okay, Mr. Top-Of-His-Creative-Writing-Class-At-Backwater-College-Dot-E-D-U, I suppose you got a different name for the high-dollar, stained-glass-shaded, gold-embellished, lacquered, antique, Deco-Nouveau-crossover, pedestaled light-post work of pure, masterful, majestic, inspirational, beautifully-lavished dragonfly art that I'm lookin' at?"
Romeo coughs a little and takes a drink of some high-grade, 100-plus-year-old XO Cognac swishing-about in a high-ball glass. He hacks and winces as he realizes that a property manager can easily substitute a well of Jake's Neartucky Moonshine And Fuel Additive for a fraction of the price of a few light shots of deluxe, XO Cognac. Surely much easier than a set dresser can fake a dolled-up, tissue-paper-lined-and-glue-gunned, knock-off lamp-post to pass for an authentic Tiffany.
Leaning in and resting on the frame of the window, Jynx loudly continues, "Okay, okay, what else? Huh? Oy-vey, I had to ask! What are you bitching about; bitch? I'm not calling you a bitch, I'm asking if that's the word- Not about bitching like when people are complaining? What chapter is it in? Bitchin'? Like Radical and Gnarly and Bitchin' Man? No, no, there's the female dog references, what else? Oh, that? He's talkin' about riding bitch! What, you ain't never heard of that? Of course I know, but... Well, what else is riding that space between-the-one-driving-and-the-one-riding-shotgun called? No, no, I'll handle it, don't you worry. Huh? Aw, fiddlesticks! I suppose they say a donkey can't be called an ass either. No, no. No, it's not your problem, I'm not gonna blame you. So where is our donkey-hole of a Director at, Dogg?"
Romeo looks to us, "I'm telling you, it doesn't get any better from here. Bail out now."
Jynx checks his watch, and addresses Romeo, twirling a rally finger and whistling a round-up call, "Dude, saddle-up and git 'er gone already! I already done did the dedication five minutes ago and I only got this one other line left until the V-O later and then nothin' else until I'm the ghost with the most way, way later and you ain't even gone over them there glossary terms yet! C'm'on, man! Hurry up and go-to! Pronto! (Walking away...) The book's about to start, with or without you, man!"
Jynx wept.
Jynx exits.
Romeo, continues, “Do not misunderstand me when I say that the book is complete refuse. Please, do not get me wrong. It is not a movie; it is a book. It is not plagiarism, it is parody. This book is not for everyone; it is for the mature reader. It is not pornography, it is supposed to be eco-rotic literature. Although I may think it is awful litter-a-ture -- a blog of lame, moldy jokes only mildly amusing to juveniles, freaks, and stoners."
Jynx corrects Romeo while shouting back to us; moving away from us all-the-while.
He exclaims: "Naw, man! It's: Juveniles; Yuppies; Nudists, Xanthrocroids, Freaks, Urchins, Cougars, Kids, Stoners."
Crickets are heard offstage.
The colonel continues, “As far as the use of slang in this ‘zine, it is great for an immigrant who is learning the language, but is poison to those who have already mastered hacking it to bits with our own particular brand of overly-verbose jargon."
Romeo looks at his freshly-loaded pipe, shrugs, lights a match and hits it hard.
He chucks a burnt, wooden match across the room: "I will keep to my own irreverent pejoratives -- my choice of idiom is much-more concise, colorful and the words actually sound good rolling off my lips when I say them, which seems ever-more frequent."
Romeo tokes again and looks at the hard-bound manuscript.
“This book made me look-up many things, one being: “Why in the name of The Queen are the characters' names almost always capitalized?” I have since learned that it is for an actor’s convenience, should anyone ever wish to perform it. -- Heaven forbid!!!"
He makes a silent prayer and a quick sign of the cross and looks to us and gestures to an illuminated wall screen.
“Here is what I gathered while wading-through this dreary, digital golem. If you are as ignorant on movie scripts as I am, this may help. This list certainly is not all-inclusive, and this book isn't truly intended to be read as a screenplay. Here are some of the terms used:”
(AMBIENT) What exists. Sound, light, weather, traffic. Recording what's available.
(AV) Audio-Visual.
(AXIS) An imaginary, bisecting line that may cause great confusion if crossed.
(B-ROLL) The audio/video recorded. Raw, unedited footage or secondary footage.
(BLACKOUT) Not a cut to black, but a very fast FTB -- a.k.a. FADE OUT.
(CG) Character Generator: Text, or animated effects displayed atop the camera’s video.
(CROSS-FADE) Like a dissolve for audio. You pot down as you pot up another channel.
(CU) Close-up Shot: Closer than a scene is normally-observed, in relation to other shots.
(CUT) Splice the end of one shot to another. Most shots transition with a cut.
(CUT-AWAY) A shot of something-else while retaining audio, then back to the first shot.
(CUT TO) Directly from one shot to another.
(DISSOLVE) Fade-out as you fade-in another scene. Bridges a time-lapse or a distance.
(DOLLY) In or out, like riding on a kid’s wagon that doesn’t go left or right.
(ECU) Extreme Close-Up-Shot: A pinhead, a tree or the man in the moon. It’s relative.
(ELS) Extreme Long-Shot: Farther away than other shots in the progression.
(EST) The Establishing-Shot: The entire scene; a point of reference for later shots.
(FPS) Frames-per-second. In film, 24 fps. In video, 30 fps/60 ffps (frame fields).
(FREEZE) Director’s command to camera while adjusting the shot. Ex. Tilt-up, Freeze.
(FTB) Fade To Black, or below 20% on a thing that videophiles call a vector-scope.
(FX) Effects. Also SFX for special-effects. Pyrotechnic, sound, stunt, animation, etc.
(GO) CG command spoken aloud by the director before or after the switcher “takes-it.”
(INTO-OUT-OF-FRAME) Letting action make the shot. Like a car doing a drive-by.
(KEY) Chroma Key/"Green Screen" Like pasting a picture of you on a stock wedding photo.
(LENS-FLARE) The lens splits a light-beam, burning dots across the shot. Avoid it.
(LOSE) Remove CG or other effects that otherwise continue forever. "Lose it."
(LS) Long Shot: Farther away than most. The distance is relative to other shots.
(MS) Medium Shot: A comfortable, mid-range shot; a creative shot. An unusual angle.
(NAT. SOUND) Audio from the microphone at the shooting location. Ambient audio.
(OBLIQUE) An acute or an obtuse camera movement or a combination of movements.
(PAN) Left or right like your head on its neck shakes "no" -- parallel to the Earth.
(PEDESTAL) Up or down; riding in an elevator. "Dolly in, pedestal up" is like an escalator.
(P-I-P) Picture in picture. Used to denote a shot within a shot, like a news slide.
(POCKETS-TO-HEADROOM) A head shot, much how newscasters on the scene appear.
(POV) Point-Of-View. Seeing through a villain, a victim or a robot's eye. Common in horror.
(RACK-FOCUS) Pre-focusing on a pre-set distance, ensuring closer shots are in focus.
(REVERSE-ANGLE) Mirroring 180 degrees. Crossing the axis. Seeing from the visitor side.
(RULE-OF-THIRDS) Composition. A tic-tac-toe board; action at the intersections; moving.
(SEGMENT) An inserted video-clip of variable length. A division of time and action.
(SHOULDER) POV. Camera: On; harnessed-to; or carried. Sports: Great. Otherwise: Lame.
(SILENCE) Only white-noise. There is never true silence, truly.
(SOFT) Soft-focus; blurry. Great when intentional, makes a shot worthless otherwise.
(STARLIGHT) A lens filter that makes light-bulbs radiate the prism. Also ambient light.
(STILL) A “frozen” shot. Called a “still-frame.” Use photos and newsprint sparingly.
(TAKE) Cut to a second camera on the fly; after a “ready” command.
(TILT) Like your head nods. Not right nor left. An oblique-tilt is a non-level tripod.
(TRIPOD) ALL professionals use a tripod: Or the ground, a brick, a tree; use SOMETHING.
(TRUCK) Left or right, like riding on a kid’s wagon sideways, not forward nor backward.
(V.O.) Voice-Over, heard but not seen; heard from an unseen source.
(WHIP-PAN) A quick pan. Used in Westerns. Too many is like watching tennis at sea.
(WHITE-BALANCE) Correct light temperature setting for the environment. All else sucks.
(WIPE) A new shot incrementally-moving in some way to encompass the former shot.
(WIPE TO) If it isn’t a dissolve, fade or cut, it’s a wipe of some sort. Usually done digitally.
(ZOOM) In or out, like a telescope. Professionals use dolly-in, zoom-out sparingly/never.
Romeo’s moved on to a joint rolled from the director's stash. His robe is open and we see Spandex within...
Toking a token phatty, Romeo reveals, “After spending hours in the ship’s neural-hub just to learn more about this white-balance thing, I decided it was probably best just to resign to reading it as-is, knowing that there’s nothing that I could read beforehand that would make this book any easier to "take-in" -- so to speak. So I smoked a phatty or two or three or more and just read it, only knowing what you know so far. The types of animation styles the author utilizes is illustrated here:"
The wall screen changes appearance.
ANIMATION STYLE OLD SCHOOL
- Cell, Art Deco - Examples: Early Cartoons/WWII Propoganda
ANIMATION STYLE TRIPPY
- Cell, Artistic - Examples: Yellow Submarine/Fantasia/Akira
ANIMATION STYLE VIDEO GAME
- CGI, Semi-Realistic - Example: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
ANIMATION STYLE MR. LIMPET
- Mix of Cell Animation and Live Action - Example: Cool World
ANIMATION STYLE MATRIX
- Pronounced CGI Mix - Examples: Avatar/The Last Starfighter
ANIMATION STYLE SWEET
- Subtle Seamless CGI Mix - Example: Black Hawk Down
ANIMATION STYLE TRACING/ROTO
- Live Action with Animation Filters - Example: A Scanner Darkly
Colonel Romero looks to us and leans in...
"Believe me, if you can't stomach my brief introduction, then you're hopelessly-past the tolerance point of this book -- get out now, while you can, and plead ignorance or insanity whenever you hear it mentioned. If you don't like over-verbosity or sarcasm, please avoid this entirely; The Last American Midnite Movie is the mother-lode. Reading the nutrition info on a cereal box is certainly more enjoyable and doesn’t make you question why you bothered to go through all that trouble just to read a long, lame, predictable joke.”
(Note the asterisk below. Please don't immediately mate it, please just keep it in mind. Please remember one of the golden rules of reading that one of my childhood mentors, Sister Anita, the octogenarian head librarian at St. Margret Mary Parochial School, had imparted to me with finality and such firmament that I had suspicion that those words were notated somewhere alongside verses in the Gospels: "Good readers don't read ahead.")
I, the author, interject my dementia: “‘Time discovers truth.’* spat Seneca, a mad lad clad in rad robes who died a long time ago, and bothered to write things down so we could know about them, too! Ha! Ha! ... Ha!”
Jynx suddenly and sensibly dies a horrible, fantastic and dramatic death as three sensible debutantes sensibly watch and suddenly take sensible notes in a sensible Gothic script.
Jynx suddenly and sensibly exits.
The debutantes suddenly and sensibly applaud.
Romeo, ignoring my arcane and apparently unamusing antics, continues, “If you're the type of person who watches the deleted scenes from a movie when it has a special features section and thinks that the movie would have been better with the all the deleted scenes kept in with the boom-mike cameos and all, then this book is perhaps right up your alley.
“It is quite an unsplendid way to kill a week of your life. In all, I think it’s something quite unwonderfully massive for an insatiable and fickle American public and I hope you enjoy reading it only if completely wasting time reading this kind of lame, college-campus ideological smut is your sort of thing. I suppose the author feels much differently.”
Jynx whispers from above, "I most certainly do."
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