INT. STEPHEN COLBERT’S NEW YORK PENTHOUSE
NICK: Gee Mr. Colbert, it’s pretty cool of you to invite me to a private party in your home!
COLBERT: Call me Stephen! I already consider you a close personal friend. I feel like I know you well from reading your various blog posts on the internet, a place I go a lot under secret usernames. Now drink up your White Russian, a very classy drink to order at a private party which reminds people of your impeccable taste in films like The Big Lebowski!
NICK: You mean you read my stuff?
COLBERT: I even commented, although to hide my identity I had to write things like “this wuz kind of funny” and “not bad i gess.” I couldn’t let all the other bloggers, each less talented than you, hear about it. I hope you understand, son.
NICK: D…dad?
COLBERT: Time for that later. Now let’s play naked Twister with the all-female, plus one androgynous male that will respect your boundaries as you grow more comfortable, cast of your upcoming show, Nick at Night, to be broadcast between the Daily Show and Colbert Report.
ANDROGYNOUS MALE WHO REALLY WOULDN’T COUNT AS GOING GAY: But Stephen, Twister is old!
The androgynous male whines in a way that reveals he is only, like, 19 years old.
ANDROGYNOUS MALE WHO ISN’T THAT HOT AND IS PUSHING IT AND I SATISFIED MY BI-CURIOSITY WITH WHEN I GRAZED ADAM’S THIGH IN THE HOT TUB (CONT’D): Can’t we play one of the many new editions of Rock Band?
COLBERT: Well, okay.
Image from indieretro.wordpress.com
The party guests quiet down. The androgynous male takes the microphone without asking. He hands a fake plastic guitar to Stephen. He hands a fake plastic bass to a naked college girl. Her ample, perky, but obviously real breasts fit snugly around the strap.
The male hands drumsticks to Nick.
NICK: Sorry, I’m not very good at the–
ANDROGYNOUS JERK-OFF: It’s easy, you’ll pick it up real quick.
Another naked college girl turns on the TV. She gets baby oil all over the screen.
NAKED GIRL 1, WHO IS VERY SMART AND PROBABLY HAS A NAME LIKE “ELENA,” THAT SOUNDS REAL PRETTY: Do “American Idiot”!
NAKED GIRL 2, PROBABLY “CASSIE”: “Welcome to Paradise”!
A cacophony of voices, each naming a Green Day song that got radio play.
COLBERT: “Good Riddance”!
The players start the game. Each tousle-headed youth is represented onscreen by a tousle-headed youth. Colbert is represented by himself.
Pretty-boy sings flat, but he runs his voice through the T-Pain iPhone app so it sounds on-key. Colbert is a god on guitar. The naked girl cannot play bass without swaying her hips seductively like that girl in the Wii Fit hula hoop video.
Nick struggles to learn the drums in under three minutes. His score hovers just above failing for the first verse, but soon after – possibly thanks to a subtle bump of the bassist’s bottom against his tom-tom – he loses control and fails out of the game, ending the song.
ALL: Damn it Nick, you lost the game!
NICK: It’s very difficult, the drums aren’t like the guitar parts where you’re just pushing buttons. I had to actually play the drums with the conflicting feedback of the actual drumpad sound and the simulated drum sound coming from the game!
COLBERT: I’m sorry Nick, but I cannot tolerate such sloppiness from my creative colleagues. You must go.
NICK: Can’t we go back to when we were drinking and talking and interacting? Maybe the problem is that we’re all staring at a screen and trying to replicate a song for a game that doesn’t reward creativity, and the rest of us can’t talk for fear of drowning out the “music” we’re not so much making as sort of telling a computer to make. Can’t we just act like adults at a party?
COLBERT: I’m afraid that’s unacceptable, as I have a secret deal with Rock Band to endorse their products to everyone I work with. The Saturday Night Live casting director is in on it too. I will also be instructing Wired Magazine to cancel your cover story.
FADE OUT
And that’s how I ended up writing for Lalawag.
