This diary is an experiment in public domain political storytelling, presented for entertainment purposes only at 6 a.m. EST on a Saturday morning so if it fails not so many people will notice.
I'd like to invite your collaboration in the writing of a 30-minute "transparent" television script to pitch to CBS-TV executives in New York.
The writing will be conducted solely in this diary, so everything's public domain.
Every comment in the diary will comprise a line in the script.
Everyone who doesn't litter gets a 4.
Concept: A sitcom - All in the Family, magically set present time. For purposes of this experiment, imagine the same principal actors as in the original, in the same condition as when the show premiered on CBS. That makes Sally Strother a hottie.
Archie Bunker is a Bush-loving, Fox-watching, Hannity-quoting Viagra dad who leers whenever Ann Coulter comes on TV.
Edith Bunker is sensitive, devoted, admirably moral, occasionally menopausal and watched over by a guardian angel.
Gloria Stivick is their daughter, young, liberal, twentysomething, a firebrand who speaks passionately before she thinks.
Mike Stivick is older twenty-something, just as liberal and ponderously intellectual.
Archie has inherited an economy priced 18-unit motel and swimming pool one block from the ocean in Jupiter, Florida, real-life home of the Burt Reynolds Theater. An "old friend" he'd never told Edith about and hadn't heard from in 27 years left it to him in a will. Archie and Edith have been married for 27 years.
Motel guests are quirky: clueless Midwestern tourists with hyper-intelligent Asian kids, paleo-right-wingers whose crude bondage references make Archie blush, occasional friends from Brooklyn, including Lionel Jefferson and anyone else who fits. Be inventive.
Their living room, as it were, is the motel lobby.
Writing rules:
- Use the subject line of your comment to either name a character or initiate an action. Use the comment box (text) of your comment to reveal dialogue or to describe action.
- To name a character, enter the character name on the subject line and nothing else. Your comment box (comment text) is then dialogue and nothing else - no quote marks or cool grey boxes needed.
- To initiate an action, type Then as your subject line and nothing else. Then, use your comment box (text) to describe the action, no dialogue allowed.
Start here, like this
Archie
Edith, where are my keys?
Edith
Maybe you left them in your other pants.
Then
Edith leaves the room to look.
Then
Archie turns to Gloria and speaks
Archie
Gloria, have you seen my keys?
Gloria
I gave them to Michael. He went to Starbucks.
Archie
Starbucks? In the company van? For what?
Then
Edith comes back into the room
Gloria
To get a latte.
Edith
I didn't find your keys, Archie.
Archie
A latte? Aw, jeez, why not a mocha-mocha grande or something?
Edith
Oh. That pair of underwear you lost?
Then
Archie waves at her to shush.
Edith
I found them.
Then
Edith wrinkles her nose and frowns.
Gloria
I've got to get unit 12 ready, the Morrison family arrives at noon.
Okay, who wants to go first? Continue the story...