#i had to squash the voice that showed up in episode twelve

[annabelle--cane]

congratulations, guys, you got it right! "carlos climaxes in person in voice on podcast" had been in the lead for almost the entire the week the poll was open, but about twelve hours ago a legion of anti-tiktok psionic warriors appeared and secured the win.

it is actually carlos who's the wannabe tiktok star. from episiode "218 - the sitter cancelled,"

I tried to get Carlos to take Esteban to the lab, but apparently today they’re doing a dangerous experiment and he doesn’t want our son to get hurt. I’m not sure I believe that. I think Carlos might just want some time alone to work on his Tiktok dances. He’s obsessed these days with getting one to go viral, and he’s putting a few too many hours into choreographing and filming these things. 

now onto sourcing the rest of the answers. as a heads up, this is going to contain some major spoilers through episode 230.

NVlians have to fill out triplicate sex paperwork with all potential partners:

canon in the novel it devours! a few paragraphs from chapter 13,

k[h]oshekh the floating cat is a misogynist:

from 195 and 196, silas the thief parts 1 & 2. these episodes are told from the perspective of silas, a former successful french art thief who used to work with a partner called sandrine whom he never got on with, largely due to his self-centeredness and misogyny never letting him see her as a full person. it all came to a head when sandrine, as an act of revenge, cursed him to be an immobile mutant cat for the rest of his days, and this is the cat we have known all along as khoshekh gershwin-palmer. however he has mellowed since then and his misogyny has kind of cooled, having kids really changed him. silas's human form is also canonically really hot.

cecil turns a recurring nightmare of his into an nft:

I feel the need to say he turned the nightmare itself into an nft, not an artistic representation or anything. from “199 - guidelines for retrieval,” the context here being that a dump for purely intangible concepts has changed up its guidelines and is allowing people to retrieve one (1) item they'd previously thrown away and would like back,

And thus ends the new Guidelines for Retrieval. Aw, that’s such a nice offer from the Sanitation Department! A little long winded maybe, but I don’t want to be too critical. I know their public communications department has had a lot of turnover lately. Anyway, I definitely will be taking them up on that offer this week. There’s a super vivid recurring nightmare I used to have that would make a great NFT.

cecil doesn’t know what fridges are:

this one comes from the 2017 live show “ghost stories,”

Cecil: Oh yeah! Carlos and I have one of those humming closets, and when I open it up, there’s a light inside and cool air washes over me and I’m just like – what is this thing? Earl: Well, that’s just your refrigerator, Cecil. Cecil: Wait, that’s a refrigerator?! Earl: What have you been using as a fridge? Cecil: [beat] So tell us more about this master class um, Earl.

carlos climaxes in person in voice on podcast:

so this comes from the patreon bonus episode “holiday” that was actually just unlocked to the public earlier today (I'm choosing to believe I summoned it), you can find it on any of the wtnv podcast feeds and here’s a youtube link. it is generally pretty well established that talking or thinking about science at great length can make carlos hot and bothered, and in that episode he’s talking about the idea of doing science with cecil/romantic partners in general and he genuinely just achieves orgasm in the middle of his sentence as he’s talking about it. the clip of just that one part, if you want it.

a big villain is defeated by getting squashed under a falling cow:

in episode “230 - carlos, explained,” right as dr janet lubelle is giving her big villain monologue, this happens,

DR. LUBELLE: Now you’re starting to understand. There is no defeating me. No trick to wriggling out under my thumb. I’ve gamed out every gambit. Foreseen every fumbling, sweaty strategy. You have lost. And now… now Carlos, I will explain you away. You, Dr. Carlos Robles, were the son of [WHISTLING SOUND OF SOMETHING FALLING FROM THE SKY. LOUD SPLAT] [LONG PAUSE] CECIL: And that’s when the Glow Cloud dropped a dead cow on Dr. Lubelle. I sure hope she wasn’t injured. We should definitely check on her at some point, you know, eventually.

joseph fink, irl writer of the podcast, has been a NV radio intern twice:

once, in the live show “the investigators,” an intern played by joseph fink introduces himself as intern joseph fink. in all fairness, he could just be playing a character with his exact name, I mean, that’s what maureen johnson does. however, from episode “188 - listener questions” onward, our world has in-universe been merging with the night vale world, and the actual writer joseph fink has been trapped in the town of night vale for over two years, at one point doing a stint as an intern.

a big villain is offered “an extra hour in the ball pit” as a bribe to go away:

this one’s about dr janet lubelle, again. in the last couple of seasons, tamika flynn has been feeling like she’s outgrowing using violence as a tool to solve her problems, so in “228 - diplomacy,” she tries the following,

Frustrations have swelled to a new high in Night Vale after Councilmember Tamika Flynn’s failed diplomatic attempts with the University of What It Is. Tamika tried offering them everything from limitless use of the scrublands to a coupon book full of cute tasks like free backrubs. She even offered an extra hour in the ball pit at the Night Vale Convention Center. But Dr. Lubelle and all of her henchmen will not budge.

info taken from main podcast episodes, novels, liveshows, and patreon bonus content

[aevsfires]

Uther. Has touched. My last. Nerve.

(Spoilers beware)

Ok so since I’m going into the season one finale of Merlin tonight might as well get it all out now before I’m crushed by the inevitable weight of the feels I’m expecting. Aka y’all get to read me ranting about Uther again. But before that, quick thing:

Holy crap I was not expecting the ending of episode eight. I kid you not when they dropped that bombshell my jaw dropped and I spent a good twenty seconds staring at the screen uncomprehendingly while the scene finished playing out. I’m not as well versed in Celtic mythology and Arthurian legends as much as I am in Greek and Norse, but when I hear the name Mordred it’s practically instinct for my brain to short circuit. A similar thing occurred when I told my dad; he reminded me of some versions of the legends I forgot- and prompted another short circuit. Thanks, dad.

Speaking of, I spent the majority of episode eight coming up with increasingly... creative ways for Uther to die. Yeah, try all you want to humanize him in like three scenes in the whole show so far (at least, thats how many I bothered to remember), but trying to kill a child (even if I don’t exactly trust said child)? No thank you, king of annoying me, you’ve sunk so far into the hate sink I’ve added you to the list of Characters To Be Brutally Tortured By Hekate For Writing Practice.

My dad finds my rage amusing.

Episode nine was a bit of a wham one for me too, not nearly as much as eight, but it got a gasp outta me.

So wish me luck with this finale everyone, because depending on what happens- and I have no idea, I’ve been avoiding spoilers like the plague- I might be a wreck in a few hours. Expect more ranting.

That will be all. *bows and scrambles to gets siblings to bed early so I can watch this dang thing*

[mst3kproject]

The Star Wars Holiday Special

Happy Holidays, MSTies!  Your present is Episodes that Never Were are back!  Remember last year, when I said Elves was so bad I wished I’d watched the Star Wars Holiday Special instead?  Let’s find out what those words taste like.

The galaxy may be in the midst of a rebellion, but Chewbacca promised his family he will be back for Life Day, and god damn it, he’s gonna get there!  He and Han Solo dodge Imperial forces and asteroid fields on the way, but the real danger may be waiting for them at home, as Stormtroopers do a treehouse-to-treehouse search for rebel sympathizers.  It won’t be much of a holiday if Chewie arrives home only to be immediately arrested!

That sounds exciting, doesn’t it?  It even sounds like it could be made to mean something. There is perhaps a point here about inter-ethnic empathy – Life Day may be a Wookiee holiday, but Chewbacca’s alien friends still know how important it is to him and they’re gonna help him keep his promise.  We could also compare it to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  In that movie, the Martians want to celebrate Christmas but aren’t particularly interested in what it means.  They get all their information about it from pirated television and from children who don’t understand anything much more than ‘free stuff’.  We didn’t give Christmas to them, they literally stole it by kidnapping Santa.  In the Holiday Special, the Wookiees are sharing their cultural traditions with outsiders who have become part of their family – Leia’s speech at the ends notes the humans’ respect for this.

But none of that’s relevant, because this is just a bad 70’s variety hour in a Star Wars costume.  We don’t get to see claustrophobic scenes of our brave heroes hiding from the Storm Troopers.  We don’t get sweeping space battles or bickering robots or weird new planets… we don’t get anything we go to see Star Wars for.  Instead, we mostly watch the Wookiees sitting around their house passing the time as they wait helplessly for Chewbacca to get home.  This could have been neat in itself if Wookiees had an interesting culture, but they live in a Mod 70’s Treehouse and seem to spend most of their time watching television.  The brief opening sequence, in which Solo and Chewie outrun their pursuers in the Millennium Falcon, is just a tantalizing offer of chocolate on the tip of a giant turd.

The actual point of the show, as far as the people who produced it were concerned, was the various little musical numbers and comedy sequences along the way, some of which are more Star Wars-themed than others.  Most of these are presented as one or other of the characters watching them on some form of television, which often doesn’t make any sense.  The sequences themselves are usually not very well-presented and a lot of them are just downright boring, so let’s go through them one by one. Top up your eggnog, folks.  We may be here a while.

Our first setpiece is a holographic circus featuring jugglers and acrobats, which the adults use to distract Lumpy so he’ll stop bothering them – like parents at the mall letting their kids watch Paw Patrol on a tablet while they shop.  When you see televised circus acts, they’re usually filmed up close and at interesting angles, to heighten the sense of danger, and give you a good look at what’s going on.  The Star Wars Holiday Special presents it as tiny figures on a table, always shot from far away and looking down, which removes all the drama from the stunts.  Lumpy enlarges a figure, but it’s only the ringmaster.  The others remain tiny, all while this little Wookiee looms over them like a kaiju that will start stomping if it isn’t entertained.

Then we get Mark Hamill’s cameo (in which he looks weirdly like one of the puppets from Invaders from the Deep), followed by Malla’s attempt to cook Bantha Surprise by following the directions on a tv show.  I’m not very interested in cooking shows anyway, but I have a hard time imagining anybody being interested in a fake cooking show featuring fictional ingredients from other planets.  What we see on Malla’s screen comes across as a sort of parody, but not actually a funny one. I’m tempted to think Harvey Korman must have been making fun of some particular 70’s cooking show maven but I don’t begin to know who that might be.

The ‘humour’ of the sequence is supposed to come from Malla’s attempt to follow the directions even though the cook on the show has four arms and Malla only two.  I could pull some commentary on ableism in cooking and cooking shows out of this, but it would be a stretch, and nobody on the writing end was thinking about it that hard.  It’s just stupid, and so is Korman’s plastic wig.  Malla eventually turns it off in frustration, long after we’re tired of listening to it.

By the way, if you’re wondering whose stupid idea it was to set the whole thing on Kashyyyk (or, as a guy in the Special calls it, Kazook) and not have any subtitles to the Wookiee’s dialogue?  That was apparently 100% George Lucas.  The actual script and everything was in the hands of the television producers, but Lucas would not budge on the premise being Wookiee-centric.  At least he exorcised that particular demon here, instead of subjecting us to it on the big screen.

Anyway, next Art Carney drops by to deliver some Life Day presents, among which is the source of our next setpiece: a VR machine which reads Itchy’s mind to present a personalized fantasy!  This takes the form of Diahann Carroll in a sparkly feather wig, singing a song and saying things like “I am your fantasy, experience me!”  The song is okay, I guess, and Carroll has a lovely voice, but what we’re seeing is basically a boring music video.  She’s just standing there on a glittery black background, and we can’t forget that she’s singing to a geriatric Wookiee who is doing the Wookiee equivalent of jacking off to this (emphasized by the appearance of literal little swimmers in part of the sequence!).  The fact that it’s a personal fantasy plucked from his subconscious makes it feel like this was something we weren’t supposed to be privy to, like we’re looking through somebody else’s computer at his girlfriend’s nudes.

Princess Leia (also looking disturbingly puppet-like… are we sure the actual actors appeared in this, and not look-a-likes in heavy makeup?) and C3P0 get their cameo, and then there’s the single actually effective moment in the Special.  This is when we think Han Solo and Chewie are about to arrive home, ending our torment a full hour early, but no, it’s the Storm Troopers!  This bit isn’t fantastic, but it does work.  Then, sadly, we’re on to the next variety act.

This is a holographic music video which Carney shows to the Imperial troops as a demonstration that the device he has brought Malla for Life Day is harmless.  It’s Jefferson Starship moaning out a rock song, in which I can understand at best one word in three.  The visuals are in intense soft-focus that’s probably supposed to be artsy.  The costumes (what I can see of them) aren’t any more Star-Wars-y than anything else bands wore in the 70’s.  And the song sounds like something you’d find in the ‘easy’ setting on Rock Band.  Why does Black Helmet sit there and watch the whole thing when he’s supposed to be searching every house on Kashyyyk/Kazook for rebel sympathizers?

The version of the Special currently available on YouTube, which tragically lacks the commercials, has a lot of comments along the lines of this is what you hallucinate after buying Death Sticks from that guy on Coruscant.

To drive the point home, the next thing we see is Lumpy watching a cartoon about Han Solo and Chewbacca crash-landing on an ocean planet while searching for a mystical talisman that makes things invisible (I wish they hadn’t actually shown this object – then I could have made jokes about it being the One Ring).  This sequence is generally regarded as the best thing in the Special, and it introduced Boba Fett and provided some characterization for him.  It is definitely true that this is the only segment with a plot, and with its weird aliens and grubby outposts it feels a lot more like Star Wars than anything else going on here.

The main thing that keeps me from enjoying this segment is that it just looks weird.  The animators use exaggerated squash-and-stretch on the droids, even more so than on the living characters, which makes them look like they’re made out of jell-o. Princess Leia looks like something out of a cheap 60’s manga and Luke like he was drawn by a twelve-year-old based on an action figure that wasn’t actually of Luke Skywalker.  Luke has no pupils, which is very distressing, but not as distressing as when C3P0 blinks.  Even worse, as far as I can tell Han Solo has no eyes at all.

The design of the alien planet in this sequence is pretty cool, though.  It appears to be entirely covered in a kind of goopy ocean and the creatures that live in it are neat-looking, even if not terribly plausible.  Animation is really a great medium for fantasy and science fiction, because it levels the playing field: we’re not thinking about the special effects because everything on screen looks equally unreal.  This is something Disney, who used it to such beautiful effect in Lilo and Stitch, totally forgot at just about the same time as they acquired the rights to Star Wars.  Oh, for what could have been.

I want to note here that the average review on this blog is about as long as what you’ve read so far.  We’re only about two thirds of the way through the Special, though, and I can’t really divide a holiday review up into two weeks.  Therefore, consider this your permission to take a break and go snag another latke or whatever you’re snacking on, and then we’ll continue.

There’s one fun bit of background social commentary in the animated sequence, too: the only way for humans to survive the virus is to hang them upside-down so their brains will get enough oxygen despite their weakened hearts.  In the city there’s an advertisement for the cure – and the upside-down human pictured in the ad is, of course, a woman in her underwear.  The image isn’t detailed and it’s not the focus of the shot, so I don’t think it’s an actual piece of gratuitous cheesecake.  Apparently somebody at Nelvana Ltd was just salty about the advertising industry.

The self-contained story in the cartoon makes sense within itself. It justifies Fett’s fearsome reputation far better than anything in The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, and the characters seem to be in-character even when they’re off-model.  The problem is with it as a part of the framing story about the Imperial troops searching Chewbacca’s house!  The Special is very explicit that this is not something that’s actually happening in the real world at the same time as the other events – it is a cartoon Lumpy is watching on TV.  Why, in a galaxy controlled by the Empire, would there be cartoons using the real names of real rebel operatives and presenting them as the heroes?  If nobody’s supposed to know Boba Fett is connected with the Empire, why does the show blow his cover?

More importantly, where can I get one of those awesome giant stuffed Banthas Lumpy has in his room?  I don’t know if that’s a real toy that was available in the late 70’s, but Comic Images does make something similar and you can buy them at Wal-Mart or Toys R Us.

While cleaning up the mess the Stormtroopers made of his room, Lumpy watches an instructional video of how to put together some kind of radio. This features Harvey Korman as an android who keeps getting jammed.  Like cooking shows, instructional videos aren’t very interesting unless you’re trying to follow the directions – since we can’t follow the directions, this one is pointless to begin with.  The ‘joke’ is not funny, and lines like “every one of the ten thousand terminals on your circuit breaker module is a different colour” might be amusing when written down but they just don’t work when somebody says them aloud.  Fortunately, it doesn’t last long.

Then we get on to what’s probably the second-best thing in the Special, the bit where we learn that the Mos Eisley cantina is owned by Bea Arthur.  It would be easily the most expensive thing in the Special were it not made up of b-roll footage and re-used puppets from Episode IV.  It’s also kind of got a plot, in that a guy with a baking soda volcano on top of his head (this is certainly an efficient way to get the alcohol directly to your brain) is trying to confess his love to Bea while she just wants to get on with running her business.  Eventually he gets his heart broken and leaves, and then the Empire shuts the bar down, so Bea throws everybody out with a song.

I have to admit, in The Force Awakens when Han Solo mentioned a female friend who ran a ‘watering hole’… there was a moment there when I was half-expecting it to be Bea Arthur’s character.  I’m relieved that it wasn’t, but also just the slightest bit disappointed.  We had to wait for The Mandalorian to get a proper Holiday Special callback.

This bit almost had a chance to say something with its ‘thwarted romance’ plot.  Usually such a thing in a tv show would get what the male character would consider a happy ending.  He would prove to his love interest that being cared for is important, she would realize that love is better than money, and they would metaphorically ride off into the sunset.  What it looks like we’re going to get here instead is something more like the episode of South Park where Butters fell in love with the Hooters waitress. Harvey Korman’s character (yes, he plays three different characters in this Special and this was apparently supposed to be a selling point) realizes his crush is based on a misunderstanding, and while it makes him sad, he’s not going to be an asshole about it.

Nor is Bea’s character vilified for rejecting him, which she does tactfully but firmly, as if she’s gone through this many times before. He’s just a minor annoyance in her day before she goes on to worry about bigger problems, like getting everybody to obey that Imperial curfew.  Then, however, at the last second he pops up from behind the counter after everybody has left – and that’s where the segment ends.  I think we’re supposed to assume they got together after all, but I kind of hope she just threw him out with the rest of them.  No means no, damn it.

Bea Arthur’s Go Home Song is to the tune the Cantina Band was playing in Episode IV, so it pretty much goes without saying it’s the catchiest piece in the Special.

Then, finally, it’s time to celebrate Life Day!  The Wookiees hold up some glowing Christmas balls, then dress in red robes and walk through outer space into a, uh, wormhole, I guess, that takes them to the base of the giant tree from Avatar.  There it’s time for our final setpiece, the culmination of this whole ninety-minute ordeal… Princess Leia sings!  The Life Day Carol is to the tune of the main Star Wars theme, and the lyrics sound like something from a generic Christmas album you get free if you buy three cards at Hallmark.  Carrie Fisher is a decent singer but she looks like she’s as glad this is over as we are.

Much like Howard the Duck, The Star Wars Holiday Special is a production in which they made all the worst decisions they possibly could.  Focusing on the Wookiees at home rather than following Han Solo and Chewbacca through the action killed the whole thing at the starting gate.  Then that plot is nothing but a frame on which they can hang the various variety acts, and none of those are very good.  It’s only towards the end of the sequence that what we’re seeing even has anything to do with Star Wars.  Watching it is an ordeal on the order of an un-riffed Coleman Francis film.  It’s so bad, it’s not even something people get together and watch like they do Manos or The Room.

So why do we still have it?  The Holiday Special was only broadcast once, and was met by fathomless loathing from critics, Star Wars fans, and ordinary people alike. It has never been released in any other format (Andrew Borntreger of badmovies.org has a story about how Lucas had him thrown out of a Q&A panel for asking if it were getting a DVD release), so the fact that you can find it on YouTube today is down to some nameless hero who recorded it on their newfangled VCR back in 1978.  That person then showed it to friends, apparently on the basis of oh my god, you guys, this is so bad, you have to see it, and then because misery loves company they copied it to show to their friends. What we have today is copies of copies of copies of copies, like fragments of Sappho only with VHS artefacts instead of holes in the papyrus (and without the artistic vision).

Humans like to preserve remarkable things.  Sappho we’ve preserved because it’s remarkably good, but the Star Wars Holiday Special we preserve because it’s remarkably bad.  Lucasfilm has tried very hard to stamp it out.  George Lucas himself has said that if he could he would gather up every copy that exists and smash them with a sledgehammer… but we won’t let him do it. We keep copying the Special and passing it along, in a way that’s very familiar to MSTies in particular.  We’re circulating the tapes!  Why this tape in particular?

I don’t claim to know, but my working theory is that it keeps us humble.  We are a species that can produce great things when we put our minds to it.  We landed on the moon.  We eradicated smallpox.  We built the Taj Mahal and the Sagrada Familia.  We wrote The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Einstein Field Equations and the aforementioned works of Sappho.  But for all that, we are also capable of throwing the same kind of effort into creating utter disasters – and the Star Wars Holiday Special is the rare example of an unmitigated disaster that didn’t actually hurt anybody.  It reminds us to take a step back and look at what we’re doing without getting too invested in it, but does so while being harmless and at times humorous.

Would I still rather watch this than Elves?  You bet your shaggy Wookiee ass I would.  The Star Wars Holiday Special may be longer, but it doesn’t leave nearly such a bad taste in my mouth.

I will leave you with this: the Special was, as I mentioned, only broadcast once, in 1978 – that means its signal is now forty-one light years from Earth and still going.  There are several hundred stars within that bubble, around two dozen of which are known to have planets.  Somewhere out there, aliens might be getting their first signal from humanity right now and it’s the Star Wars Holiday Special.

[amarantine-amirite]

Once is an Accident

"Accidents happen", they say.

"Everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes help us learn."

We've been taught this since the beginning of our lives. We've been taught that mistakes are what makes us human. There's no shame in screwing up.

Or so I thought. There comes a point where the mistakes add up. There comes a point where people start to see a pattern. One time, it's an accident. Twice, it's careless. Three times, well; God help you if it happens a third time. After a while, it stops being a mistake and evolves into a pattern of incompetence. People get mad at you for your carelessness. They think less and less of you. If you screw up, they kick your ass.

It embarrasses me to admit that I just plain can't do the same things that my friends can do. I have virtually no stamina. I lose things. If plans change, it freaks me out, as does uncertainty. I have the social skills of a raccoon with dumb rabies. I struggle to try new things on my own. No really, I have to have someone physically show me how to do something and watch me as I complete it. It's gotten me rejected from everything.

Sometimes, I can't accurately gauge how “new” something is going to be. Case in point: the time I tried to resume piano lessons after we moved.

I’m not going to bore you with why we moved. I’m just going to cut to the good part.

I’ve done piano lessons since I the age of seven. A young lady named Marissa taught me, and she was a good teacher. When I say she was a good teacher, I mean that she was both nice and effective.

How? Most kids give up music because playing scales and stuff from beginner’s song books bores then half dead. Most kids would much rather play popular music than, well, this; and I can tell you from experience.

While working through the beginner songbooks, I did not progress quickly at all. In fact, I progressed about 45.5% slower than Marissa’s three other students (not enough perspective for you? I progressed slower than the boys!) In fact, they only thing that I had to show for the piano lessons was that my eye-hand coordination was approaching that of my normal peers.

Everything changed once my mom got me a Harry Potter piano book for my eleventh birthday (I loved Harry Potter back then, by the way). All of a sudden, I got good at piano. I liked playing the piano. I went from “that girl that lags behind the boys” to “that girl that almost got offered a record deal” (I would’ve taken it, but I was only twelve, a teeny bit sceptical about the whole thing, and my mom said no.) Bottom line is, I felt much more motivated to learn (and more motivated to practice, most importantly) than before.

Well, that all stopped once we moved. Instead of doing music lessons outside of school with someone like Marissa, I did them through the school. I’m won’t bore you with details does that made doing music through the school a pain in the ass, like having to complete sensitivity training, ear training, and get up early for 2 AM rehearsal because our band teacher had non-24 hour sleep-wake disorder.

Three months into the program, our school band got a gig recording music for (and I still don’t believe it) The Hannah Banana Movie. A preschool cartoon about an anthropomorphic banana that would help kids, the original Hannah Banana used to air on Nick Jr. sometime between the years 1994 to 2001. Even though the show ran for 7 years, they only filmed 13 episodes in the winter of 1994. Of those 13, Only about five of them ever actually saw any airtime on TV. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that The Hannah Banana Movie even got made. Given how many episodes they ultimate aired, I don’t think the show was too popular.

Not what I brought you up to speed with The Hannah Banana Movie, I can get to the good part.

One scene of the movie featured Hannah driving a school bus. I don’t really remember how it fit into the context of the story, but then again, The Hannah Banana Movie didn’t have much of a story to start with. Anyway, at some point during the journey, somebody rolled a large rock out onto the road. The rock smashed into the side of the bus, sent it hurtling over the edge of a cliff, where it later crashed into a birthday party and set the room ablaze.

I remember the scene because Jessi-Lee Hill, the music director for the film, showed it to me and two other girls (Kimberli, a slim, bug-eyed Mexican violinist with red hair, and Vivian, a short, Indian drummer with albinism, wacky hair dye, and an eye patch). “What is that,” asked Kimberli, “Revolution 9 backwards?”

“Precisely!” said Jessi-Lee as she pointed to Kimberli, “we can’t use the music in the scene. Copyright problems. I turn it over to you guys. We need about 6 to 10 minutes of new music for that scene in the movie.”

The three of us jumped at the chance to write music for a movie. “Now,” Jessi-Lee began, “technically, I’m not allowed to assign you this job, because you aren’t on the studio’s payroll as music personnel. If anything goes wrong, the studio executives are going to hand my ass to me, so don’t screw this up. Got it?”

None of us of written music before, and consequently, we had no idea where to start. “OK, Vivian, I’ve got nothing.” I said, “Any ideas?”

Vivian leaned forward in the chair and scratched her head. “Well, Carol,” she began, “that song that they used in the original only consists of random clips of music played forwards and backwards, sound effects, and random snippets of dialogue. How about we make something like that?”

Kimberli nodded in agreement. “Good thinking, Viv” she said, “something like Revolution 9 practically writes itself.” She later furrowed her brow and frowned a teeny bit. “But, Revolution 9 really scares me,” she added, “Is it OK if we write it to sound like something else?”

“I know, but so was that scene.” I responded, “Even without the music, it really gave me the willies. It just works. Let’s do it.”

It only took us an hour to have everything recorded and produced. Vivian had a point. The song practically wrote itself. We only had to throw together random sound clips and see what stuck, distort, reverse, and echo the crap out of everything, and toss in a motif (in this case, the sentence “moving forward.”)

Except, it didn’t go quite the way we hoped. About a day or so after we emailed the files to Jessi-Lee, she called us into her office. “Girls,” she began, “We have a problem.”

I plunked down on a bean bag chair, crossed my legs, and looked at her. “Lay it on me” I replied.

“We can’t use your music.”

All three of us sat there in confusion. “Why can’t you use it?” Kimberli asked, tilting her head to the side.

Jessi-Lee’s expression dropped. I could immediately sense a subtle yet profound fear in her voice. “Girls, when you recorded the song,” she began, “a school bus flipped over and rolled off a cliff.”

Kimberli turned around and flashed a smug expression in our general direction. “I told you that emulating Revolution 9 would cause problems,” she said, wagging her finger “but did you listen? Nope.”

I don’t know if that meeting solved any problems, but regardless, we had to record it again. This time, we had an easier time of where to start with the songwriting: start off with some normal, jaunty music, glitch it up, and then feed it into random chaotic gibberish.

The day to record the music came. We turned off all the lights in the studio and lit candles to set the mood. The entire session had a bizarre, transcendental feel to it. As we recorded, it felt like we had exited our universe and gone someplace else. When we heard it back, it spooked us; much more so than the first piece we wrote.

And we still couldn’t use it.

Jessi-Lee called us into her office again. “I’ve explained this to you, but it’s as if you never learn!” she barked.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get so angry over a piece of music before. “So what?” I said “Nothing bad happened this time.”

Jessi-Lee’s eyes widened. I could see veins bulge on her neck. “Nothing bad happened?” she said, gasping, “Nothing bad happened?! Well, not only did another bus sailed over a cliff, but it caught fire as it did so, and on top of everything else, the lone survivor from the previous crash died that evening. What do you fucking mean nothing bad happened?!”

Jessi-Lee got so mad she had to leave the room. We spent the next few minutes talking amongst ourselves. We didn’t talk about the music; what happened with it still spooked us too much.

Some time later, Jessi-Lee came back with our band teacher, Mrs. Newbury. “OK, guys,” she began, “Jessi-Lee has explained the situation to me, and we will give you one last chance. Just...one more chance.”

“Right,” Jessi-Lee continued, “if you screw up again, all three of you are out of your school band. Got it?”

We nodded solemnly. “Good,” she said.

We had to record the music again! Unfortunately (and, really annoyingly) for us, disaster struck before we could even start. I know because as we brainstormed ideas, Mrs. Newbury came into the room.

“Save it,” she said, “all three of you have been kicked out of the band”

“Why” I asked.

“You know what you did.”

I don’t think we did wrong. “This needs to stop happening.” she said, “Once is an accident, twice is careless, I have no idea how you even got a third chance to screw something up so badly.”

“What do you mean screw up so badly?”

Mrs. Newbury shook her head. “This morning, as you sat down to brainstorm the music, two gasoline trucks crashed head on into each other, exploded and squashed a little Vollkswagen beetle painted like a ladybug flat. Need I say anymore?”

All three of us got kicked out of band for something that we had no control over. Nobody would call what happened to us fair by any stretch of the imagination. We got blamed and disciplined for something that wasn't our fault. We did nothing wrong, but we still got in trouble.

Do I know what became of The Hannah Banana Movie? Probably not, but I highly doubt they finished it.