Episode 72 - Bring It On Home 

Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. This episode: Our Season 2 Finale! Some of the plays may contain sensitive topics. For more specific content warnings, check out the timecodes below.

If you like what you hear and want to support the New York Neo-Futurists, subscribe to the show, tell a friend, and leave a review on your listening app of choice. We’d love to hear from you- leave us a voicemail at ‪(646) 820-4733. If you want to support in other ways, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon. And be our friend on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

2:19 [CW: language] An Aggressively Positive Rap Battle by Greg Lakhan 

feat. Yael Haskal & Shelton Lindsay

4:56 Neo-News Alerts by Rob Neil

5:31 Rest Home by Meg Bashwinner

8:56 Neo-News Alerts by Rob Neil feat Yael Haskal

9:16 Bring it on: homo…  by Shelton Lindsay

11:39 Neo-News Alerts by Rob Neil feat Greg Lakhan

12:00 [CW: Death/burial] Home(made) by Yael Haskal

16:06 Neo-News Alerts by Rob Neil feat Shelton Lindsay

16:29 Where you go we all are going too by Rob Neil

18:54 Neo-News Alerts by Rob Neil feat Meg Bashwinner

Our logo was designed by Gabriel Drozdov

Our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Hilary Asare, and Greg Lakhan

Take care!

Transcript 

Show Intro

electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Greg: Episode 72. Bring It On Home.

Hi, I’m Greg-- a New York Neo-Futurist.

Our live show is back, but we just can’t stop making art for your ears 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 rap for you.

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 reading a script at 6:04pm, recording at our desk, and getting ready for vacation we’re really doing that, like I am right now.

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

All of the plays in this episode are different interpretations of the phrase “Bring It On Home”

And now, Anthony will run the numbers!

Anthony: Hi, I’m Anthony-- NY Neo-Futurist technical director and producer of this show you’re listening to now. This episode 72 is going to be where we wrap up season two of Hit Play. Don’t worry, we’ll be back for season three in a couple months with new things for your ears and some treats I think you’ll really like. I have to say, it’s a joy making this show and in particular, making it with people I so love and admire.

In this episode we’re bringing you 6 new plays.

This week’s cast is Greg Lakhan, Rob Neill, Meg Bashwiner, Shelton Lindsay, and Yael Haskal.

That brings us to 324 audio experiments on Hit Play. Nice number to wrap up the season Enjoy!

Music winds down.

Play 1: An Aggressively Positive Rap Battle (2:19)

Greg: NYNF Presents: An Aggressively Positive Rap Battle GO!

REF: It’s time for an NYNF Rap Battle!!!!!!

SQ: ​​ Best DJ Airhorn Sample Sound Effect

REF NEO: Alright folks, lets get into it. Our first contestant (random fun fact about contestant), you know em, you love em, give it up for _______!!!!

SQ: ​​ Best DJ Airhorn Sample Sound Effect

NEO 1: (Thank you for being here type line)

REF NEO: Our next contestant (random fun fact about contestant). Give it up for ________!!

SQ: ​​ Best DJ Airhorn Sample Sound Effect

NEO 2: (Thank you for being here type line)

REF: Alright, I want a good positive rap battle you two.

SQ: Beat Of Greg’s Choice

NEO 1 will perform their verse. Once the first NEO completes their verse:

SQ: Beat fades

SQ: Best DJ Airhorn Sample Sound Effect

REF NEO: Wow (comments on verse)! Alright, let’s hear what (NEO 2) has for us!

NEO 2: (Responds)

REF NEO: Alright, drop that beat Ali!

NEO 2 will perform their verse. Once the first NEO completes their verse:

SQ: Beat fades

SQ: Best DJ Airhorn Sample Sound Effect

Once the second NEO completes their Round:

SQ: Beat fades

SQ: Best DJ Airhorn Sample Sound Effect

REF NEO: Wow (comments on verse)! So now that both Neos have spit their verses, I know what you all must be thinking: “Who won that?” Well, here on Hit Play, friendship is the only true winner.

Play 2a: Neo-News Alerts (4:56)

Nightly news underscoring

Rob: Neo-News Alerts. GO!

This just in, the world is still in chaos. The coffee ice cream was tasty, but made me sleepy, and not everybody’s idea of “good” government is the same, or even compatible. This is Rob Neill reporting live from an undisclosed location, nowhere near my home.

Play 3: Rest Home (5:31)

Meg: Rest Home. GO!

Meg: When I was a kid we used to drive down to South Jersey to visit my aunts and cousins. My grandma would come with us and sit in the middle seat between my sister and I, to keep us from fighting. On the long ride home, I’d fall asleep with my head on my Grandma’s cushy upper arm. She would describe it as a pillow for me, just for me. The softness of her sweater and the smell of her perfume holding me in the sweetest sleep, reserved for kids in cars on their way home.

I haven’t seen my grandma in over two years. The last time I saw her was her 90th birthday party. She knew who I was then but just barely. She had a good day that day.

She lives in the memory care unit of an assisted living now. I’m enamored of the rebranding of nursing homes to “assisted livings.” Nursing homes evoke the smell of urine, the sounds of the demented crying out for their lost selves. An assisted living facility evokes vitality, people living life with just a little nudge, the sounds of bingo numbers being called and the clinking of wine tasting nights in the common room. Who among us couldn’t use a little assist with living?

She didn’t want to be there. She wanted to stay in her home forever. She spent the first 85 years of her life within the same 10 miles of where she was born. Her last independent home was a one-bedroom apartment at the junction of Route 3 and Route 46 in, two of the more busy roadways in North Jersey. This was not a safe home for someone who could no longer drive. When she smashed her Ford Focus into a bus the jig was up. We noticed she was fading out, her brain no longer able to grip on to all of the things that one must to hold on to live an independent life. She needed assistance, the kind that her hardworking children and dream chasing grandchildren couldn’t provide.

My family set her up in a very nice place where she would be safe, she, of course, hated it. Wanting desperately to have a car, to have independence, but that hatred has faded now as she forgets what a car is and that she ever drove one or rode in one with her granddaughters sleeping on her sides. I hold that memory for her. And now you do too, in case I forget one day. I whisper it to her great granddaughter as she sleeps in my arms.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. My brain restless from fretting over details of a cross country move to my new home 2,769 miles from where I was born. The other night, after hours of insomnia spinning my brain into a tangle of moving logistics and the persistent begging of the self to just fall asleep, I thought about my grandma’s arm, of the pillow just for me. I drifted off, imagining myself there, in the car with her, heading home.

Play 2b: Neo-News Alerts (8:56)

Nightly news underscoring

Rob: This is a Neo-News Alert.

Yael: This just in: my orchid has sprouted its first orchid of the year, and my succulent is dying. This is Yael, reporting from the corner of my apartment.

Play 4: Bring it on: homo… (9:16)

Shelton: Bring it on: homo… . GO!

(or what if shelton rewrote iconic bring it on cheers to be about the house he has lived in for the last 6 years, that his landlord, who is terrible at being a landlord has listed for sale. For 2 million dollars! Which is for sure like 700 thousand more than its worth. In part because he is essentially a slum lord and has done zero maintenance on the building since shelton moved in. Anyway here is a journey though shelton’s time in this house as he ponders how does he raise 400k in the next few weeks so he can purchase this home, which slummy as it is, he has turned into a queer paradise. If you want to support his dream his venmo is @shelton_whimsy.

A why i moved cheer:

I transfer from a house of cat shit

But This place is made of home made walls

This is a last resort.

A 2019 cheer

I said burr it’s cold in here.

My landlord hasn't fixed the boiler for another year.

I said burr it's cold in here.

My landlord hasn't fixed the boiler for another year.

I said calling legal aid, nice nice nice

I said calling legal aid, no more ice

A Final thots cheet.

I’m not sexy im cute

but ive got black mold to boot

The stairs are squeaky

And the sinks always been leaky

The rats are not wanted

But they wont be daunted

live’n the walls

runnin like niagra falls

Who am i? Just guess

A house that should be repossessed.

The rent is vile

Wish i could skip payin for a while

Cuz da land lord is skeezie

Lies so often i feel Uneasy (Woah)

Yet the look is decor

Nothing in my house is a bore

Its cheer and its camp

Tho the basement is still damp

I hate it cuz it is a slum

But it’s the slum that I come from

Its real, real- real estate

It’s it’s brooklyn real estate.

Play 2c: Neo-News Alerts (11:39)

Nightly news underscoring

Rob: This is a Neo-News Alert.

Greg: This just in, I just had a delicious strawberry flavored frozen fruit pop, might circle back to the freezer for an ice cream sandwich. This is Greg, reporting from the office in my home.

Play 5: Home(made) (12:00)

Yael: Home(made). GO!

There is some music

It’s best to love a cemetery because at least you know it’ll be there forever. I get in the car, or vice versa. Easier done than said. It’s 5:58pm, the sun sets early in the south and all are welcome at Mount Moriah on Christmas. I put on my makeup. I put up my hair. induce nostalgia like labor and lock the car door.

Quietly in the background, the recording of my car on Virginia gravel.

The most time I’ve ever spent at my parents’ current house was four months in summer 2020. I gained 10 pounds and a hometown. In the orange evenings when there was nothing to see and no one to be, I’d wipe the pollen off the windows and get in the car. Garth Road takes you from Farmington to Boonsville, you can see it on the street as the Juul pods turn to cig butts and the Audis to tractors. It sounds like this. (Cut music to hear full volume of car on gravel.) I couldn’t stop driving that road. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” had just come out, I’d blast 20 past the speed limit and sing Fiona to the horses out the window. They never sang back but I know they knew the fucking words. And one of those nights I just went and went and went, past the farm, past the Crutchfields, past Free Union, where I lost my virginity, past the lake, past the church, past the playground with the plaster horse, and I found the only place in that friggin state I’ve ever felt wide awake: Mount Moriah cemetery.

It’s a mountain-view graveyard on a big open hill – the kind of place I’d call “vast” if I thought that was enough. It looks like a drive-in movie theater where all the tombstones parked to watch the Blue Ridge peaks on loop…and when the sun set, it just … it’s like this. (Audio recording from the cemetery) It was the most miraculously morbid thing I’d ever seen. And so I went back, every day until the graves were my friends. “Hi Shifflett,” “Hey Woodson,” “What’s new? Aw, I kid, I kid.” Mother’s Day. 4th of July. We took a thousand pictures there, the graves and I, every time I trespassed onto Maupin Drive to get a better view of the sun, every time a car drove down the path through the center, which is legal but hurts to watch. I went back to New York in July 2020, and left with the lonesome pseudo-rational terror that maybe I had imagined the whole thing.

Reversed sound of my car driving down the gravel road.

I went home again this year for Christmas, so I could not-celebrate along with the rest of my family. The living room got so cold in the mornings I started wearing winter clothing from high school. Everything, back around. And the sun was going down earlier in the winter, around 5:58pm. So I went before dinner, the first day I could. I brought Fiona on the AUX and one of those Vitamin Waters they make my sister drink. And I got back on Garth Road, driving west, the place I never imagined I could begin to belong, until suddenly, finally, finally, there it was. Mount Moriah. Eternal home to my marble friends. I get out of the car (audio of walking through cemetery) and say hello again. And really, I don’t know enough people in or above ground to bring home the remarkable answer to the unremarkable question, but I have to tell you what joy it is to rest, in peace.

Play 2d: Neo-News Alerts (16:06)

Nightly news underscoring

Rob: This is a Neo-News Alert.

Sound of shower in background

Shelton: This just in, my belly is full from the huge lunch I just ate but I’m pretty sure I have room for dessert. This is Shelton reporting live from his bathroom.

Play 6: Where you go we all are going too (16:29)

Rob: Where you go we all are going too. GO!

Sunil’s track plays under this

Rob: We are speeding

Rock bound

Passenger adventurers together

We cryout for freedoms

For happiness

For more things, better better

Trapped in the vice of destiny

Boomahhh whooshhey zzzzzhhhukh

We live full life existences

Short–lengthy–untimed

Full of contradictions

And are happier for it.

Or should be

We really don’t know light without contrasting darkness

Good without evils

Sunny raintimes

Love indifferent

Hope fearing

You get on the playground you get ready for play and skinned knees

We are at war with so much

we lose sight of

All the peaces

Voooooom

Minds

bubbbabababa

Hearts

shhhhhooooooooop

Hold on n’

Mine/d your joy

Play 2e: Neo-News Alerts (18:54)

Nightly news underscoring

Rob: This is a Neo-News Alert.

Meg: This is Meg coming to you from nap time in Los Angeles, California at 1:39pm on Sunday,

February 27th. Okay...

(singing)

I’m sittin’ in the railway station

Gotta take it for my destination, mm

On a tour of one night stands

My suitcase and guitar in hand

And every stop is neatly planned

For a poet in a one-man band.

Homeward bound, I wish I was

Homeward bound, home, na na na na na na

Home, na na na na na na, home, na na na na na na na na na na

(speaking)

(kisses) I love you, I’ll see you when you wake up, okay?

(baby fussing)

Show Outro

electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Greg: 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! We’d love to hear from you - leave us a voicemail at ‪(646) 820-4733. 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:

Greg Lakhan, Rob Neill, Meg Bashwiner, Shelton Lindsay, and Yael Haskal

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

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Hilary Asare, and me, Greg Lakhan. Take care!

Music fades out!