Casting Call on the set of “Peach Blossom Clambake”, left to right…

  Starlet #1: “I’m going to smile like hell even though I know I’m having a bad hair day. Momma always said that clean, pretty teeth will keep you out of jail. Of course, Momma drank a lot. And now that I think about it, she was in jail a lot, too, instead of out of it. Maybe all that ‘advice’ from Momma was really ‘stupid things people say when they have gin for breakfast’.

  “Wait, am I having a tiffany? Isn’t that what they call it? Maybe it’s a pimphony. Something like that. Whatever you call it, I’m having one. Because I think Momma is a liar. She’s the one who told me to use bacon grease as a conditioner for my hair, and I don’t think that’s working out. I electrocuted myself this morning when I tried to use the curling iron and now there are scorch marks in my bathroom, which is never a good thing, not matter how you try to pretty it up.

  “I don’t think I should talk to Momma anymore. Which should be easy, because she’s in jail again. Who knows what she was convicted of, this time. I stopped paying attention to details after she got arrested for violating a clown at that rodeo in Amarillo-By-Morning.”

  Starlet #2: “Eventually, I will give birth to Christina Ricci! But I have a sense that she will be a sullen child, fighting me about everything and eventually appearing in independent films wherein strange things happen and people have sex out of boredom and spite.

  “It’s hard being a parent these days because they just don’t pay attention to you anymore, listening to that rockabilly music and going to sleazy carhops where your food comes on a tray and not a proper plate. It’s not like the good old pioneer days, when the children were too busy milking cows and being poor to get into any mischief. Of course, most folks were dead by the time they were forty, but that’s better than getting a call from the school principal that your daughter was caught doing something with Mary Jane in the bathroom. I don’t know who she is, but my daughter will not be doing any sleepovers with her if I can help it.”

  Starlet #3: “I have the biggest breasts, so I should at least get a walk-on part in this movie. Unless George Cukor is directing the flick, which only works for a female actress if you don’t want to sleep with him. I don’t really think that’s fair, but nobody ever cares for my opinion in this wretched town. Still, I really want this part, so I’m going to do whatever it takes to get a callback, even if I have to be on my back to get the call.

  “But maybe I should tone down the Hitler symbolism with my arm. I don’t know where that’s coming from. I spent some time in Berlin when I was with the road company of ‘La Man of La Gulag’, and back then I thought that was just how you signaled the bartender that you wanted another round. I know differently now, but habits are hard to break. Just ask anyone in the Republican party.”

  Starlet #4: “I have enough prescription drugs coursing through my body that I don’t care if I get this part or not. But I sure would like a pizza. Isn’t pizza great? It’s beautiful and lovely and the colors are so pretty. And it’s so round. Whoever created pizza should be a god. I would certainly go to that church.

  “Wait, what movie is this again? ‘Peach Blossom Clambake’? That doesn’t sound right. It sounds like something on one of my prescription bottles. I think I’m supposed to be on a different movie set. But I really don’t remember. Actually, the last thing that’s really clear is somebody named Mary Jane offering me pizza in the bathroom at Timothy Leary High. It’s been a blur since then, other than that one time when George Cukor told me he had no interest in the extra toppings on my pizza. He was mean. I don’t like him.

  “What was the question again?”

  Starlet #5: “Eventually I will give birth to Sarah Silverman! But just like Starlet #2 over there, my daughter will not fully appreciate my begetting and belaboring. It seems that this denial of origin is now trending on Twitter. #DefyTheBirthCanalOppression. I think that whole movement is stupid, but that’s what you get when let just anybody share their thoughts on social media. I prefer the simpler times, when it took two months to deliver a hand-written letter and, by the time you got it, whatever the letter was talking about was no longer relevant.

  “On the flip side, back in that snail-mail day, I would never be allowed to show as much flesh as I’m doing now, and that makes me blue. Social mores are intricate and complicated, and it’s no wonder that some countries have changed names 46 times in the last century.”

  Starlet #6: “I am so screwed. The skank on my right has a hairdo bigger than an aircraft carrier and the palm tree on my left is bigger than my apartment. The producers are not going to notice me even if I rear back and give birth to an alien. Welcome to Hollywood.”

In the cave just below the ledge on which the starlets are perched…

Barney: “Say, you wanna go objectify women at the Flintrock Bar and Grill?”

Fred: “Yabba dabba doo!”

Pebbles: “Both of you are sexist pigs and I want nothing to do with you. #DenyTheConception.”

In the skies above the starlets…

Other Fred: “We might have made a wrong turn somewhere.”

Amelia Earhart: “Ya think? We’ve been circling the planet for decades. Thank god you developed that special airplane fuel that regenerates itself. Wait, are those the Galapagos Islands down there?”

Other Fred: “Um, no, that looks more like the breasts of disillusioned Hollywood starlets auditioning for yet another vapid movie. I think we should keep going.”

Amelia: “Fine by me. That gives me time to finish reading ‘Gone Girl’ on my Kindle.”

#Fin

Previously published, considerably revised and expanded for this latest post. And yes, I’m fully aware that this one veers in so many wrong directions. And I wouldn’t have it any other way…

#Peace

P.S. “Other Fred” is a reference to Fred Noonan, the navigator (and only other person) on Amelia’s final, puzzling (never-ending?) flight. I think it’s time we finally had some answers from him, don’t you?

Other Fred: “Hey, don’t act like I’m not sitting right here next to you as you type this.”

Brian: “Shut your piehole, Other Fred. I know what I’m doing, unlike you.”

#ImaginationWillSaveUsAll