The time of the BertHorse has come…

AWAKE, AND SMELL THE BERTHORSE!

BertHorse was born during a Friday morning email exchange between myself and two friends, co-workers of mine from The Project, waaay back in Disco Charlie.  (I’m being vague for a reason.)  We’d had some laughs about an online article featuring Google map photos of people wearing horse masks in unusual settings.  We began brainstorming professionally inappropriate events to wear such a mask to, ignoring the gawking crowds and shrugging in an oblivious manner. “They must be talking about some other fellow in a horse mask! How interesting!”  We imagined BertHorse making his cameos at trade shows, being the quiet hit of cake-fed office parties, giving a rousing PowerPoint presentation to a cheering crowd of fresh-faced go-getters at a quarterly conference, making off-color jokes at a Monday morning planning meeting, or blowing off steam at a Friday night punk show at the 930 Club.  I spent all of ten minutes that night creating a Twitter account for @BertHorse and the weekend generating content, a personality, and followers.  This is a more recent email conversation between five BertHorse-savvy fellows.

MV:  BertHorse as Voltron would be a smashing Saturday morning hit.  Of course, for prime time television, they’re already shopping the BertHorse Vigilante pilot to cable…

Me: (dramatic voiceover) “His left leg is LAW.  His right leg is ORDER.  And his front legs are both called JUSTICE.  He’s the one horse you can bet on when the chips are down… Coming to NBC this fall!

OX: STARRING Ernest Borgnine as DETECTIVE LEFTY “LUCKY” McGILLICUTTY, the hardened, alcoholic police veteran and the only one in the department who trusts BertHorse.  His catchphrase, uttered every episode: “Dammit to Hell, BertHorse!”

ALSO STARRING Paul Simon as PIETRO DE LOS CAMPÁSIOSO, the plucky cub reporter whose journalistic instincts put him in the thick of the caper!  He wears a false moustache and sideburns, mirrored aviator sunglasses and a fringe leather jacket when working undercover — which is every episode.

Delta Burke as TALLULAH BERTHORSE, BertHorse’s ex-wife whose hard heart can’t let go.  She’ll say this at least once in every episode: “BertHorse … be careful out there.”

Larry Hagman as DR. RECKETT VON FORTHLIN VII, the powerful crime syndicate super villain billionaire and BertHorse’s sworn adversary.  His schemes usually involve hijacking something — every episode.

-and-

BertHorse as HIMSELF

Me: (practically wetting myself with laughter at his desk) Roll title sequence! A flaming brand comes whooshing out to the forefront of the screen and burns away one confident, fiery word: BERTHORSE!

We see: BertHorse in a denim shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest and turquoise belt buckle! BertHorse punches up the bad guys!  He falls onto a hay bale!  There’s an explosion!  BertHorse makes a phone call from a phone booth!  He jumps onto a speedboat!  BertHorse drives down the highway in his red Mustang convertible.  He lowers his aviator sunglasses as bikini-clad women climb out of pools.  He cocks a sawed-off shotgun and kicks in a door!  BertHorse, disguised as a dockworker in a knit cap and plaid shirt, knocks a guy off a ledge!  A bad guy falls onto a pile of cardboard boxes and the boys in blue swarm in to arrest him! Hooray!

Each of the main characters freeze on the screen place as their names scroll up. The theme music is fast, catchy.  Lots of guitar riffs.  Somebody get Dire Straits on the phone!

OX:  Also, we need a car chase where the bad guy’s car — preferably a late ’70s Plymouth Gran Fury — goes careening off a dock into the water.  When the bad guy surfaces, BertHorse is standing there, hands on hips.  A Coast Guard response boat pulls up, blue lights flashing, and the crew begins hoisting the bad guys out of the water:

MCGILLICUTTY (observing the scene with a look of satisfied determination on his long face):  ”What in the hell, BertHorse!?”

BERTHORSE: “I called in a favor to some old shipmates, detective… Take ‘em away, boys!”

Me: Oh, yeah!  And the guys on the boat will mention their days “in the shit”; turns out BertHorse and his buddies were in some “special unit”. That way you can do a flashback episode where the daughter of one of his war buddies comes to BertHorse for help when her father, a little league coach who worked with at-risk youth, gets killed by gang members from the Golden Triad who are pushing dope in his neighborhood.  ”Oh, BertHorse!  I don’t know who else to trust!” She sobs once, and buries her face in his large horsey chest. I’m telling you, this thing would go GOLD.  A live-action 80s retro shoot ‘em up, and the protagonist just *happens* to have a horse’s head??  Why not?  It’d be like Matt Houston, Riptide and Magnum P.I. all in one.

HK: [Mac and OX sit in Francis Ford Coppola's office, brief case and laptop in hand]

Me: “He’s like Magnum P.I., but with a horse head!”

OX: “It’s like Charles Bronson meets Secretariat.  The kids love Secretariat!”

Coppola’s finger taps lightly on the ejector seat button… the moment is tense.

FFC: “Alright kids, let’s do it, but if one of you mentions Brando being involved, you’re all taking a short ride to the glue factory.”

-END-

Performance art for a co-worker

Dear Brian,

I’ve think I’ve got just the thing for the next communication managers meeting. We may have to do it offsite, though. That shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Performance art: I’m sitting center stage in a walrus costume with a microphone, reciting the following: “Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream, separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream? Yeah. Brian Olexy can.” Then I scream out some leftover frustration from the Mondale election and hurl myself across a pile of broken glass and concertina wire before bumming cab fare from the audience.

Fame awaits. Let me know.

TWM

Price Check on Joey Lawrence

091105 – Yesterday.

Seventh floor, somewhere in Chocolate City, just down the street from the Big White Building where all the troubles of the world are born. Wringing an existence from this town means elevator speeches, and learning when to nod your head and just say “Yeah…”

Listening to: Clutch, Killing Joke and Nick Cave, amped off my face on a cup of heavy fuel – Colombian, black, two sugars.  Waiting for: assignment feedback.

My task, photograph a roomful sullen adults attending what must be the single most boring event on the planet; a teleconference, in which a wisened figure in enormous glasses drones on about contractual requirements, and the proper formating thereof: “Now when I… started doing this in nineteen seventy… five, we didn’t have… the same template… that you see on the screen.  We had something… different.”

I can geek out on most anything. Add this to my ‘except’ list.

I enter quietly and wait against the back wall, waiting, thinking it through.  How to shoot this? Low light, and the room looks empty, uninteresting.  Lining them up against a wall won’t work, and whatever interest they have in the subject matter must be preserved in order to look real.

The instructor calls for a break and I spring into action, explaining myself and my purpose as I begin rearranging some of the furniture, visually reducing the size of the room. Moving with certainty and speaking authoritatively will take you far in this world.

“Uh, excuse me? Why is this photo being taken?”  The demanding voice of dissent belonged to a dumpy, dour-faced thing toward the back, a half-empty bottle of Diet Product Placement on the table before her.

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

“Well, I don’t want to be in it.”  Arms crossed over her chest, disapproval written across her forehead. Good luck, wild horses. “Why can’t you just do a group photo or have us stand in front of the screen?”

“That takes you out of context, ma’am.” We are nothing without our manners. Thumbs are good, too. “I was assigned to capture a certain shot a certain way. Putting you in front of the projector means you get a bright light in your eyes, resulting in an even funnier face.”  Oops. I’d taken my mouth off of the ‘safety’ setting again.

“Who do you work for?” The rest of the room were subtly ignoring her, or helping me move furniture. I remained motionless, meeting the glare of her tired eyes. I could have been an ass about it, but I calmly fed her a string of department numbers, and name-dropped my supervisor, who sits pretty far up on the food chain.  I ended the sentence with “ma’am.”

“Well…” Her response was non-commital, as she thought this through. I hadn’t really won, and she hadn’t really lost. I got my shots, left.  The rest of the day crawled by like a bowl of unhappy oatmeal.

Last night: my train to Maryland smelled like a lion had taken a crap in the air ducts. I tried to picture this taking place.

Later, another coffee house, another page filled, another pen spitting its last.  The never-ending quest to capture the blitzkrieg butterfly of the brain. Feel the bright red burn of an idea, the resulting smell of smoke and burning tissue, the urge to capture a concept - seal it in a jar, paste it in a book, put it on display, cup it in the hands, take a picture of it, sketch it in pen: “There is something else in here with me, something staring back from behind the curtain!”

Listening to an older couple discuss the unsexy mechanics of relationships: household chores, bank accounts, wills.  Use the following words in a sentence to your loved one: “Well, when you die…”

Watching a new relationship take hold and bloom is like watching two massive spherical computers, each bristling with spikes and amature.  At the end of those arms are various ports and devices; plugs, nodes, hardware, software.  These represent likes and dislikes, concerns, needs, skills, and must-haves:

“Does your port/need #11,345 mesh with my port/need 12,345?  If  it’s at least a v.2, we can discuss. If not, it’s a mark against. Conversely, I shall strive to meet your expectation for cleanliness, #556.  My own port is a #400 series, but I make up for it with my grandmother’s recipes, represented here by nodes #223 – 470.”  The sound of servos whirring, sphere rotating on their X,Y in an effort to be compatible.

“Reptiles. Yeah, now see, they’ve got scales and stuff. They have their babies in eggs.  Sure, like birds. Now mammals, they have their babies live, kicking and screaming, already worrying about college, playground heartbreak, and the child’s 21st birthday hangover. Do alien species ever have to sweat this kind of shit? ‘Dragnor supped of the brew of the Lathgor, and suffered from an excess of chuth’lah.’”

There will be sandwiches,

Seven Floors Up, Six Worlds From Home

My hands are red from the length of rubber tubing I keep in my bag, the veins on my forearms are full, engorged. I wrap the tube around my hands and tuck a loop under my boot for curls; 60 per arm, another thirty spent in straight lifts. My shoulders feel like a dull roar, which is nice. I used to be self-conscious about it. People would walk by my cube and say, “Oh, you’ve got your little fitness thing happening there!” That usually gets a blank look from me. I’m not being rude, I just don’t know what to say in return. All the evidence is laid out on the table. Did that require a comment, or a witty observation? However, we are nothing without manners. “Yes.” I smile and continue.

The office is dead right now – I sifted through The Guardian, The Independent, CNN, and six other websites in search of news related to the Project. Nothing. I can’t complain; it’s an excuse to educate myself. Hard times stand gaunt and skeletal outside my window. I’m grateful to have a job, period. Christmas always means layoffs somewhere.

I spent some time online last night looking up information on ferrets. Thought maybe I’d get a pet, something that would be happy to see me when I walked in the door, something to talk to. I’ve decided a cat would be simpler, just gotta figure out where to put the litter box.

It takes me a moment to realize that I’M the polite young man no one knows anything about. The neighbors know nothing of me. I’ve said hello in the hallway a few times, but they just keep walking. Nervous hands drive jingling keys in a scramble for the lock. My co-workers see only the cordial guy with the tattoos on his arms, and seven dollar haircut. No one stops by my cube, except to ask some mundane question about work, which is the equivalent of the ‘coversheet on the TPS report’ question from Office Space.

I’d go mad if I didn’t have my iPod with me. Guitar is such a guttural word; just a hollow box of wood with some strings running along the long axis. The sound, however, can turn you inside out. It can make you light and happy one minute, or send you crashing to the ground the next. It can take you back in time and drag you through the muddy riverbank of memories, or make you hopeful and optimistic about your future.

Neither side of the coin stays ‘heads’ for long. It just keeps spinning, waiting for that final moment when the Great Hand will slap down hard and say, “CALL IT.”

TWM