Transcript

Show Intro

__ electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Michael: Episode 61. Summer Variant #1

Hi, I’m Michael John Improta-- a New York Neo-Futurist. 

While we’re slowly bringing back our on-going, ever-changing, late-night show, The Infinite Wrench, we wanted to keep making art just for your ears. And so, Hit Play continues!

If you’re already a fan of The New York Neo-Futurists, or any of our sibling companies, hello! 

We can’t wait to sit down next to you and have a chat about the new Marvel movie and how they’re basically like 2 hour long commercials for the next Marvel movie. Right?

If this is totally new to you— welcome to it!

We make art by four rules: We are who we are, we’re doing what we’re doing, we are where we are, and the time is now. 

Simply put: we tell stories, and those stories are our own. Everything that you hear is actually happening. 

So if we tell you that we’re recording this from our roommate’s room because our room is being redone because the walls had to be torn down because of that hurricane that happened, then we are really doing that thing, like I am right now. 

Some of the work in this episode may contain sensitive topics. For more specific content warnings, check out the timecodes in the show notes. 

And now, Borg will run the numbers!

Borg: Hi, I’m Borg--and I’m, you guessed it, a New York Neo-Futurist. In this episode we’re bringing you 6--6!--new plays. 

This week’s cast is Jacquelyn Landgraf, Michael John Improta, Shelton Lindsay, and me Chrostopher Borg.

That brings us to 261 audio experiments on Hit Play. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Music winds down.

Play 1: An Ode to Memories and Long Days (2:06)

Borg: An Ode to Memories and Long Days. GO!

Sound of cicadas. Low nostalgic music plays under the cicadas. 

BORG: I grew up in in Salt Lake City Utah 

MICHAEL: New haven Connecticut 

JACQ: Orland Park, Illinois. Allegedly the "World's Golf Capital."

SHELTON: Rhinebeck, New York. On a dead end street. In a forest. 

BORG: The highlight of the summer was our family’s yearly pilgrimage to Balboa Beach in sunny California

JACQ: we would drive to Mosinee, Wisconsin to visit my mom's family, on Lake DuBay 

MICHAEL: visit family in Puerto Rico

SHELTON: Maine. Camping in the summer. We went on trips all the time

JACQ: The kickoff was Gaelic Park's Irish Fest...a celebration of being Irish on the South Side of Chicago, with a carnival and Irish food and Irish music and Irish dancing and Irish fighting and Irishing Irish Irish Irish-- 

BORG: In Balboa we didn’t have to go to church, we laid out on the beach, played in the waves, and the boardwalk ferris wheel in the evening and arcade games and pizza-- 

SHELTON: The smells. The light. Driving through fields of corn. Not needing a pack back. How alive the forest was 

MICHAEL: Catching lizards with my cousins on the island

BORG: I love the long days and the fresh fruit and the warm dusk and the outdoor music 

JACQ: swimming all the livelong days at my grandma's condo or at the Arthur twins' house

SHELTON: I love the sunlight and lakes and hiking and staying out under the stars

MICHAEL: No sleeves no rules

JACQ: late pink sunsets lingering over the mountains and fresh tomatoes

BORG: Now I live in New York.

MICHAEL: Brooklyn

JACQ: Los Angeles

SHELTON: New York has three seasons:  Fucking beautiful, smelly trash, and super impractical. 

JACQ: Los Angeles has fire season. 

BORG: The "tone shift" of Indian Summer brings me spiritual pain--the weather is still beautiful but it’s back to school, back to work 

SHELTON: Watching the darkness come. The first Jean jacket. The end of the mulberries 

JACQ: figs and pomegranates splattered on the streets, more traffic, moods shifting 

MICHAEL: And the coffee shops start advertising pumpkin-spice everything. 

JACQ: Always a wistfulness in the dog days of summer, feelings of tenderness and gratitude

MICHAEL: the melancholy is a satisfying feeling for me. 

SHELTON: It’s a fucking travesty. 

JACQ: I think I will mark the season by changing my hair somehow, more respectable, less blonde, more autumnal, somber, less fun hair...sad hair

BORG: the halloween decorations are pushing the popsicles and sunblock off the shelves and soon we will wade through slushy gutters to the cold, damp subway.  I’m not ready. I’m just not ready, not ready...not ready….

Borg’s “not ready”s fade under the growing sound of the cicadas. The cicadas continue into: 

Play 2: It’s coming from inside the house (5:43)

Live recordings of crickets from inside and just outside Jacquelyn’s apartment.

Shelton: “The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. ‘Summer is over and gone,’ they sang. ‘Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying. The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into fall – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change. Charlotte’s Web.”

The crickets continue to chirp. 

Jacquelyn: Shut the fuck up, crickets. Shut up. Literally nobody asked you. This is my house. This is Los Angeles, California, and there are no seasons, and summer will last forever, ok? That leads to other kinds of existential despair, but the weather is great. So pull yourself together. I’m sick of this shit. We’ve all had enough sadness and enough change and enough absurdity in our lives without a bunch of creepy ortheptoran Paul Reveres leaping around going, ‘it’s-over-it’s-dying-it’s-dying-it’s-all-going-everything-is-dying-so-mate-with-me,-I’m-dying.’  

We all feel that ok?? Grow up. We’ve all felt that for a long time. 

Don’t cricketsplain sadness to me: you’re embarrassing yourself.  Do you know that I do voiceover work? That’s what I’m doing right now, do you even think about that? Do you think about how you’ve basically inserted yourself into every one of my recordings for the past year and a half, do you think that might be detrimental to my career? 

Crickets.

No? No you don’t think that’s a factor? Oh shut up Jiminy, shut up Gemini, and tell your kids they’re FINE, what about the crickets in New Orleans right now, or Texas? How about them Afghan crickets? They have something to complain about. Do us all a favor: go to therapy, take care of your mental health, because you are wearing your sadness like a cloak and it is bringing us all down and by all of us I mean me because this is my house and when I come towards you with the swiffer I do not deserve you jumping 3 feet away from me like a creepy little psycho when I am trying to HELP you. We are all trying to get on with our lives. We are trying to be happy. I can get you back outside via the swiffer, I am not trying to kill you, you always expect the worst, it’s exhausting. Let’s count our blessings. Look, a lemon tree. Explore it. Look, there is a fig growing right here on the goddamn sidewalk, for god’s sake. Eat an avocado. It is a beautiful day. Say it. It’s always a beautiful day here. Period. Don’t you dare say otherwise. This is a beautiful day. Lighten up.

Crickets. 

Crickets continue. Amusement park sounds over lap with crickets into: 

Play 3: Fall of America (9:07)

Shelton: Fall of America. GO!

Crickets and amusement park sounds drop out and are replaced by a cheesy hip-hop remix of The Star Spangled Banner into. Then in silence, Shelton raps: 

Lazy hazy America go crazy

Summer days die

as democracy pushes up its daisies

Road map to history gettin all Tracy 

Stuck in'a dark drama ala Scorsese

(If this year was a meal, 

it’s a tragedy Caprese)

Cuz Baby, lately, everything innately

feels the opposite of mother fuckin stately

Sedate me greatly for nothin’s feeling sagely 

trying to break the waves of this storm

Holding up an unstringed ukulele. 

In circle overlapping, 

Been work and appocaypse

We fit, the elipise

Standing tall making quips

Reading scripts speaking lips

While a(round) us the future unzips

Into Full automated 

world ending warships.  

On the day to day Kids got

Schools around the corner 

And we all scream out to warn her

lady educations dying 

soon we all have gotta mourn her. 

With our children paying the price

Of this  government in strife

desantis doing nothing 

ending days and ending lifes 

Let here it for the unborn 

who gestate in thunderstorms.  

their ex(istance) beating, breading

a political maelstrom 

They say they live

before their livers formed

subjection of the living

not about nascent lifeforms

publicans) stripping power from utureses 

Like their shuckin ears of corn.

We need to reform or transform

(Frankly we need new political platforms)

To bring justice to this world 

Protecting the rights of all life forms. 

Summer is fading now

But on on existence not the season

And i can’t find hope with reason

It’s seems optimistic treason

To just say “what if we put more trees in?”

Yet i still want universal cohesion

For life is already elysian 

At least it is to this life long pagan heathen

So I pray the seasons come again

That the fall down isn’t long

That nothing withers in the winter

And spring brings on more song

we are turning in the turning 

it all spins out alright 

in the chaos of existence be the stalagmite holding tight.

this year is not the ending 

hope will never die

sing on my faerie family

send your dreams into the sky.

“Sky” reverberates. Then, campfire sounds for a moment before:

Play 4: My First Pumpkin Spice Latte of 2021 (11:06)

Street sounds. Michael records from outside a Starbucks. 

Michael: Okay, my name’s Michael John Improta and I’m about to get my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of 2021. Here we go. 

Michael enters the Starbucks. The store’s music is in the background, but undistinguishable. Some pop song, probably. Employees calling out names. Then, we hear the recording fast forward. The indistinguishable pop gets faster. Then the speed returns to normal. 

Michael: Hello!

Starbucks Employee: Hi.

Michael: How ya doin?

Starbucks Employee: I’m good how are you?

Michael: Great! Uh, could I please have the-- y’all doin the Pumpkin Spice Latte?

Starbucks Employee: Yes.

Michael: I’ll have one of those, uh--

Starbucks Employee: cold or hot?

Michael: hot please. I know it’s hot outside, I don’t care, I want it. And uh, grande. 

Starbucks Employee: Grande. Whipped cream is okay?

Michael: No whipped cream, actually. Thank you, thank you for asking. 

Starbucks Employee: A lot of people been doing it without the whipped cream these days.

Michael: Yeah? I didn’t even know y’all put whipped cream on it!

Starbucks Employee: Yeah, it comes with whipped cream. Your name?

Michael: Michael. 

Starbucks Employee: Alrighty. 

Cash register beeps. 

Starbucks Employee: When you’re ready. 

Michael: Thank you.

Cash register beeps. 

Starbucks Employee: You’re welcome. Thank you, Michael. 

Michael: Thank you. 

Michael to the recorder: Oh man, I’m so excited! So excited! Alright, now we wait. 

The recording fast forwards again. Then,

Different Starbucks Employee from afar: Michael!

Michael: Yeah, Michael!

Starbucks Employee: Pumpkin Spice Latte

Michael: Yeah! Thank you so much. Have a good day!

Michael to the recorder: Alright, here we go. Okay, let’s take a sip. 

Michael sips

Michael: Oh, man. Ugh! That’s just as good as I remember it!

Michael laughs

Michael: Mmm, okay! I’m gonna leave you be now and go enjoy this. 

Ambient sounds fade under: 

Play 5: Why Women Aren’t Funny (13:35)

Jacquelyn: Why Women Aren’t Funny. GO!

Jacquelyn: So a girl walks into a bar and the bartender says why the long face and the girl says because we can’t get an abortion. She’s 15.

(silence)

Hey can I have some ambient din? Maybe like every now and then someone coughs or something? 

Ambient din of empty club sounds. Every now and then someone coughs. 

Thanks. 

How’s everyone doing tonight? 

Alright. 

Pause. 

Knock knock?

…

Orange.

…

Orange you glad you naturally miscarried instead of dying in childbirth?

long pause

We got Texas in the house tonight?

Mm.

Yo mama’s so big--cuz she’s past six weeks and there’s nothing she can do about it, and she’s terrified about what will happen when your daddy finds out.

long pause

A priest, a rabbi, and a minister are in a hot air balloon, and you’re there too, so good luck not getting pregnant. 

long pause

Is this thing on?

long pause

Did you hear the one about the blonde who was so dumb he forgot to rape your friend? Phew, right? Polish people.

pause

How many women does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One to screw in the lightbulb, and millions, millions more women, millions more men, millions beyond the binaries, have come to stand around her as she lights the room, and you’ll see her, out of the darkness, illuminated, and the rest of us are there, we’re there, to protect her, to see that you keep your hands off her, we’re the Deputies now, there’s some new deputies in town--so sue us, sue us, sue the millions of us, sue the world, sue the light, sue God, she is God, her body, right there under the light, there she is, she’s smiling, she’s laughing, she is in her body, her body, she has the light, she sees it all clearly, now we see it, you can’t see it you are small you can’t see, so just sue us, as she throws back her head and laughs with joy, her own joy, we are there, in millions, progressing forward, she is safe, she is the light, she screwed in the lightbulb, she just screwed in her own lightbulb, but we’re there, we’re there too. So watch out. There’s more of us.

Ambient summer sounds, then old timey 40s music plays, as if through a radio.  

Play 6: THE LAST GASP OF SUMMER (15:58)

Borg: THE LAST GASP OF SUMMER. GO!

I don’t remember the exact moment I became comfortable being naked in public. It was definitely not gym class. I didn’t like my body and I didn't need other people looking at it either.  So falling in love with a nudist presented me with some growth opportunities.  In my first introduction to "Naturalisme" I stepped off the boat in the South of France to be greeted by a dozen, leather-skinned octogenarians wearing nothing but smiles and I realized that body image is relative!

So, six years ago, when a friend introduced us to the clothing optional campground in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania I wasn't a complete novice. And compared to these campers I was young - and thin.  SO - I proudly embraced the naked me - safe and comfortable with the retired bears in the woods under a bright summer sun: 3 weekends a year: in June, July and August.  

The August trip is bittersweet.  It gets dark earlier and there are always a few overachieving leaves turning gold.  The last camping trip of the year means Labor Day is approaching - vacations ending - long sleeves - short days.

So I try to stretch out the final hours of camping as far as I can.  We pack the car, check out of the cabin and hang out by the pool for one last afternoon of naked freedom in the August sun.  

I was pushing it a few weeks ago when I begged for another hour of swimming ("Swimming" means flirting and laughing with boys in the pool).

I was air drying my nude body and innocently chatting with a bear named Mike when something...a fly landed on my...ahem….penis - I brushed it away, but it felt chunky - the insect - and I looked down at a yellow and black monster on my member. "get off,” I swat - then “ouch!” A sharp, hot pinch!

The saucer-eyed look of horror on my face made it clear to Mike that I had been stung. By a wasp. On my dick. And time warped as I slid into a mild state of shock.

The wasp had chosen for its target, the frenulum, which is  the particularly sensitive line of tissue that runs from the glans down the underside of the shaft.

My husband and friends rushed over...I kept stammering "I'm all right, I'm ok" to reassure myself and everyone else - but it looked BAD - the sting area turned red and angry and was bubbling up.

One of the boys was an EMT and insisted I stay put until he could be sure I wasn't going to go into anaphylactic shock...how reassuring. 

"It's fine!" I insisted, but the faces staring at my enflamed phallus were saying “This was a guy’s worst night-mare - a "what if" story teenage boys tell each other around a campfire.” We were watching the most sensitive part of my body swelling into a twisted balloon animal.

Surrounded, with all attention on my naked, chubby, stung, vulnerability - my genitalia somehow simultaneously shrinking and swelling - my thought was "this is...extraordinarily...embarrassing" - and the safety and comfort of my nude paradise faded away with the late summer sun. 

I sat very still in the hot car, gritting my teeth at the excruciating, burning pain in my crotchal region and I thought “What a way to end the season.”

We stopped at the pharmacy on our way home.  Driving on I-287 away from the campground and the bee and the summer, speeding past the trees, some of them yellowing way too early, I was sad that the last few minutes of the last camping trip of the season had turned, somehow, into a horror movie. It didn’t feel fair. Why now? Why me? 

It was just a “prick on the prick" my husband would say. Sigh. And I watched through the windshield as the gray NYC skyline rose on the horizon.  

Show Outro

__ electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Michael: Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. 

If you liked what you heard, subscribe to the show, tell a friend, and leave a review on your listening app of choice! If you want to support the New York Neo-Futurists in other ways, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or by joining our Patreon--Patreon dot com slash NYNF. 

This episode featured work by: Shelton Lindsay, Jacquelyn Landgraf, Chrostopher Borg, and me--Michael John Improta.

Our logo was designed by Gabriel Drozdov and our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean. 

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Julia Melfi, and me--Michael John Improta.   

Take care!

Music fades out!