Playman: The O. J. Play

"If it twere done when twis done...."
The Scene: The Stage of The Sheridan Opera House, Telluride, Colorado, October 5th, 2008.

The Players: Older Playman, around 5’ 10”, strikingly fit, impeccably dressed, enters. The lights on his proscenium head are on. Younger Playman, about 4 feet 2 inches tall, also with a proscenium for a head, though this one is smaller. …enters and crosses over to Older Playman. They engage in dialog.

Younger Playman: You know, last November, I was at Shea, and I saw something I had seen before many times. It was snowing….the Buffalo Bills were playing the Jets…. and the ball was handed to Number 32. He ran to the right, the Bill’s line cut a hole in the Jet defense that looked like it could be from a scene cut from the 10 Commandments, and Number 32, OJ Simpson, arched his shoulders, and gracefully fluttered through that hole for eight yards in a way that no one ever ran with a football…and no one ever will again.

Older Playman: Wow. That’s heavy baby.



Younger Playman: Then something happened that I had not seen before….the scoreboard started flashing the number "2003”…..OJ Simpson had just rushed for over 2000 yards in single season…an unheard of feat...the first man to do so, shattering Jim Brown’s long held record for yardage in a single season.

Older Playman: He was one of the greatest athletes I’d ever seen. And you, young man, haven’t even seen any of the "Naked Gun" movies yet.

Younger Playman: That’s true…if you’ve ever seen those financial planning commercials where the young version of a guy is talking to an older version the same guy about his retirement nest egg…that’s what’s happening right now. For me…it's 1974…and yes, I’ve never seen a "Naked Gun" Movie.

OP: Well let me tell you…If no-one ever ran on a football field like the Juicester, nobody definitely ever ran though an airport carrying a briefcase like him….you never saw a Hertz commercial either, right?

YP: No…those, too, were after my time.

OP: Well, then you prolly never smoked crack with a well known crack trust-funder in Malibu, and you never heard that fellow tell you that he was using drugs heavily with OJ in the early 90s pretty much all the time.

YP: You know, sir, I can’t say I did. Though I did see Jill St. John smoking a joint in a tin hot tub with “Mr. Leisure” under this building about an hour ago…

OP: O. J. Simpson may be done. His conviction for armed robbery and attempted kidnapping may very well send him to jail for life…and what I came out here to say is that he took the sway of “that demon life” just a little too seriously.

YP: Elaborate, guy.

OP: His life really probably become cocaine, ecstacy, sex and golf….and the giant buzz the combination of those elements can create…a common combo in South Florida, yes, but OJ took it too far. I mean, after…after most likely killing his wife and her boyfriend, he went to South Florida, partied, got together with a stripper named Chirsty Prody, and allegedly definitely used drugs with her and many other strippers for like…years. In my day that just wasn’t what they called Yale material…

YP: I hear you. Wait…you mentioned something in there I didn’t quite understand….

OP:…and the reason that I’m writing this, is that what I constantly see in young people, and what I saw in myself at your age, is too much of a common emphasis on the desire to have a good time…look I’m not telling you not to have a good time… I am, you know, Playman…but being consumed by it is a mistake.

YP: Listen I have an appointment with “Mr. Leisure” and Jill St John…they’ re going to teach me how to start a fire with just a Spring Roll and a copy of Field and Stream magazine, and….

OP: If the greatest athlete in the world can be consumed and destroyed by that….

YP: I’m listening….um…maybe a little bit more carefully now…

OP: I remember being in Venice in a bar by the beach, hooked on Playdough, Serious in da hood Leisure, Pina Colodas with 151 rum and half-priced sushi happy hour at Chaya Venice…and I remember seeing a white Bronco on the tv in the bar, and a guy saying “At this moment…OJ Simpson is a fugitive from justice…” this was the moment that the entire world realized that maybe, just maybe…the jury got it wrong, and OJ did kill his wife and Ron Goldman.

YP: What? ….what are you talking about?….you were just talking about "Naked Gun 4" and Yale…and…what?

OP: Yeah…that’s what I’m talking about…and I’m not even going to try to make a "Naked Gun 4" joke….

YP: Hey…you’re kidding me… (Young Playman would begin to tear up…but he doesn’t have a face).

OP: No, I’m not kidding you. So I am out here saying that maybe, just maybe , a good time can be had without Cocaine and Strippers.

YP: Look...ok...that’s categorically untrue!

OP: I’m learning that its not, my fren….have you heard “Gator Country” by Molly Hatchet?

YP Also after my time… so you came out to say that a good time can be had without Cocaine and Strippers…Know Yourself, Take It Easy Baby, try not to let a good time be destructive to you and your work ethic, which suffers enough anyway, what with the new season of The View and also Gossip Girl, find Molly Hatchet online and cool it with the Tabasco sauce, right?

OP: Right.

YO: Bravo, sir!

OP : You got it, guy.

YP: Look Playman…next time try not phoning it in.

OP: So far, I’m at the bottom of a abandoned mine shaft in the hills above Telluride…and I’m actually Telexing it in….but I’m just warming up.

CURTAIN

The GLAMWIRE One Minute Interview: John Basedow
BONUS: Episode 4 of John Basedow TV, with special additional commentary work by a Mystery Correspndent on Screen #3

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