What has been on my mind lately is fables. The truly wonderful thing about fables is that they are designed to teach a moral lesson, such as ‘wear red in the woods so hunters don’t shoot you and stay away from pedophiles, little girls’ or ‘lock your doors because some kid that gets high too frequently is going to break into your house and eat your exceptionally filling but essentially bland carbohydrates that are cooling on the table’ or ‘just because someone sleeps with you, doesn’t mean they really like you.’ OK, that last one was from a show I did,

but…puppets are mythical creatures, and that’s a moral lesson too, of sorts. Ask Nene Leakes.

So now I would like to write a fable of my own – I am going to start it with “Once Upon A Time…” because that is where all good stories start, and I am going to set it in the mythical land of…oh, what the heck, Ja Lolla, why Ja Lolla? Because it’s mythical, it does not exist. Ja Lolla is a made up place that you may be able to see yourself in, unless you are an actor who ‘is not appropriate’. Those actors exist, it’s just that sometimes, Children, people like movements instead of authenticity.

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a kingdom called Ja Lolla. Ja Lolla was a beautiful place, right by the sea. Ja Lolla was known for many things – it had a large population of seals and surfers,

which is why this is a fable- as any good surfer knows you should not get in the water with seals, as they tend to be a staple food item for Great White Sharks

Only idiots swim with seals, this has been your public service announcement for the day

but Ja Lolla was blessed in this way, the Great Whites had all turned vegan, that’s how magical a place it was, and in this,

the early mythic second thousandth of a year that is yet unnamed, as the rising gasoline prices made the cost of buying fresh fish astronomical and a vegan diet, wait, …I digress. I apologize. Back to our fable.

What else was Ja Lolla known for, children? Dare you ask? Why, music! Yes, Ja Lolla was known for taking adults who never got enough attention as children, and giving them new songs to sing, new dances to dance, and after they put it in the magical music shop and worked on it, these songs and dances entertained people. (Except for Micah McCain, who DOES exist, he just walks out at intermission at everything!)

One day the King of Ja Lolla wanted a new show, so he called his Master of the Stable

er…Fable to get him a show about a king, but it was not to be about him….it was to be about a ‘mythical’ King and it was to be about a bird

That is Florence Nightingale! C’mon!

I said, A BIRD….a bird who sings…Great, now make her ‘mythic’….

I totally need my next headshot done ‘mythic’

And then the King went off to get a latte and relax before his laser facial, well…that’s what they do in Ja Lolla.

The Master of the Fable called upon three of this BEST PEOPLE…

and they began creating. When they were done, they had a beautiful show based on someone else’s story, but that someone else was a very pesky person, because he wanted his story set in a real place that he had never visited. (That, my Children, is called imagination.) Now the BEST PEOPLE had not been there either – they had seen photos and met people who had ancestors from there, but…the people whose ancestors were ‘from there’  were inappropriate.

After all, these were very important Best People and no one ever, and I mean never, ever, ever, never in a million years ever, told them what to do. And if they wanted to set a show ‘from there‘ and they didn’t like the look of the people ‘from there’,

why,they did not have to have those people! “Those People” were INAPPROPRIATE, and no one could tell THEM what to do! And no one did. Because no one cared. Because, Children, everyone did that all the time. And, they kept saying it really wasn’t about being ‘from there’ because they were basing it on a movement that was about vases and rugs and not about people at all. Which was confusing, but made sense if you lived at any point in your life, in Titipu

But there was one little bird who wanted to see this show, and this little bird had ancestors from ‘there’, (In Ja Lolla, birds can read and surf the mythical internet and mynas are talking birds anyway). She was very excited about it, because she liked that it was going to be new, and it might have other birds in it that looked like her – after all it was a show about a bird who lived ‘there‘, but then she read that birds with ancestors from ‘there‘ were inappropriate.

She wondered why, oh why, oh why-o, why did they ever leave..I mean, she wondered ‘Why’, this little myna bird – ‘why did those BEST PEOPLE think that she and her fellow singing birds were ‘inappropriate‘? Because they put the show in a real place, not in a land far, far away. After all, she knew that in a land far, far away there were rainbows. This little myna bird loved rainbows, the myna looked for rainbows everywhere because rainbows are beautiful, who doesn’t love a rainbow?

So the myna bird started singing. She sang to other myna birds, and then they started singing, and pretty soon, over 18,000 people heard the song of the myna. Not only was the song heard, but other people wrote songs based on the first song. (The myna finds this very flattering and thanks those birds). The singing grew so loud, that the Master of the Fable heard it, and he had to answer it with a song of his own.

Now, all the Mynas appreciated the Master of the Fable’s song, but they really wanted to hear from the BEST PEOPLE, because they wanted to know why did they not move the setting of the story to a real mythical place, not the place that was real that they decided was mythic, but a real mythic place – like…a land far, far away? They also wanted to know why they were “inappropriate’.

And as the Master of the Fable had scheduled a concert where he could sing to the mynas and they could sing back, the mynas all hoped that the BEST PEOPLE would sing with them.

But the BEST PEOPLE said no. They were writing another show about another Emperor who had nothing to wear, and they were going to play all the parts themselves, they were busy. We will never know why the BEST PEOPLE would not attend the concert. Some thought that the BEST PEOPLE were afraid, but the myna did not think so. The myna felt that the BEST PEOPLE, were nudists – and nudists do not care if they are naked. So be it.

But the moral of the story is, even if you do not get exactly what you want, you keep singing, because you never know…maybe 18,000 will hear you!

Also…if Nudists run around in front of you, you are more likely to note who amongst them are eunuchs. And fyi, you would have found Eunuchs in China…feudal, totally real, non-mythic China.

xxxxx

This post is dedicated to my Father, a brilliant lawyer, Family man, and one hell of an Irishman. He always said I was really a writer, he was the best Daddy around. He passed recently.  I had the good fortune to be at his side. He knew about this blog. He spent his entire career going up against the BEST PEOPLE and winning. He always knew when the Emperor was naked, and he never backed down from telling him.

The One and Only, Himself

R.I.P. Daddy and Thank You for Everything