MTF XV-- The Program
Moeller TV Festival 15 came off hitch-less on Saturday. Here's the annual publication of the greetings from the festival program....I've written sixteen of these festival greetings. No wonder I've been staring at a white screen all afternoon. I turn on the television—maybe the world's truest source of spiritual and creative inspiration—for ideas, and it's nothing but news, cooking shows, a few animated kids’ programs, dull movies, and duller sitcoms that have never made the cut at a Moeller Television Festival.
I've been procrastinating so much, doing everything but write this. I raked some leaves today and folded laundry. I've written all my comment box cards for the next five festivals. I washed dishes. I wrote a murder-mystery movie script about a television festival held at the White House, where the murderer hides the knife in a comment box and flees from the Lincoln Bedroom through a trapdoor into the secret Taft Pantry (he weighed 400 pounds, folks). I couldn't come up with an ending, not knowing which member of the president's transition team to make not the murderer. I checked emails, then Facebook. You know those political articles that your friends share? I was so bored I even read some of them—even those pretentious "open letters" that people write and then, oddly, publish.
I called Christopher (or Chris, as I knew him when we were growing up—I found out he was Christopher when we got our diplomas), but he didn't answer. Couldn't even leave him a message. He told me last week his answering machine chewed up the cassette tape. Have you ever Googled "writing TV Festival greetings"? Besides providing links to copycat festivals in Edinburgh and Monte Carlo, there's nothing. I even called some of my ex-students from when I taught a community college television festival class, hoping for maybe some “the student is now the teacher” inspiration, but that didn't get anywhere. Turns out that a few of my former students had enlisted in the army and were busy this time of year fighting the war on Christmas. And you know how young people are these days. Half the kids told me they don't even watch TV anymore, favoring gaming instead, and the other half had gotten pretty good jobs, mostly as professional protestors.
So I won't even write an introduction, just a few words instead from the heart. I hope you enjoy this year's festival, all the food and drink, the cramped quarters, and the lap-sitting. The Sammy Davis Jr. thing is really cool and unique, and the All in the Family and M*A*S*H episodes are knockouts. Welcome, and know we love you now and for all time.
Aaron Moeller
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To this day, Katie Holmes won’t return my calls.
Over a period of several months, about nine years ago, she and I were quite close. Katie and Tom would come over to the house and the four of us would play gin rummy nearly until our fingers bled. We would pop some popcorn, and for background entertainment, Tom would bring along a DVD of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The card playing action would pause every time Mickey Rooney came on the screen during that picture. Tom would just laugh himself sick over Rooney’s character “Mr. Yunioshi,” a hilarious depiction of what Asian men were like in the 1960s. Tom would jump up and down on Anne’s slip covers and offer his own characterization of Yunioshi, and before any playing could resume, the rest of us were expected to coax him “back to being Tom” with our laughter and our applause.
Then came the nasty break-up of our little couples club. Anne is one of the Latter-Day Saints, as you know from the emails, and we had the Cruises stop over with their little Suri so that we could baptize the girl into the faith. I guess it’s easier to baptize non-Mormons during their life, rather than after. Posthumously baptizing the Holocaust victims, for example, was a logistical nightmare for the church, even with numbers tattooed on their arms. “Better to give with warm hands than with cold,” Anne says.
A small complication arose,however. Anne didn’t think it important to tell Tom and Katie about our sectarian motivation prior to their arrival. Tom has no sooner stepped into the foyer when he sees the prayer pajamas and he comes completely unglued, nearly stepping out of his lifts in a grasp for my jugular. I’m like, “Ease up, Goose. Just think of it as a kind of supplemental insurance policy on her immortality.” (I don’t know if you know anything about Scientology, but the closest thing I can think to compare it to is 4-H.) Now there is literally steam coming out of Tom’s ears. Am I using that word right? “Literally?” It’s literally coming out of his ears. They dart for the door and peel out of the driveway and back down Mulholland just as Will and Jada are arriving, confused to the gills, naturally.
Fast forward to 2013. The Cruise/Holmeses have divorced, the cleaning crew at Gold Base is all atwitter about some new tenderfoot on Tom’s arm, Katie is back under the sway of Rome, Suri is an Operating Thetan on the fourth level—the entire universe being slowly revealed to her, and I’m getting E-meter-audited as if I was carrying Xenu’s love child. I make tax-exempt contributions up the butt, yet they just won’t cut me a break—and I’m not even a member of the church. Meanwhile, I haven’t landed a legitimate part in all in this time, except for my one-week appearance, and early elimination, from the reality competition series Undercover Congressman. On principle, I refuse to audition for roles—that’s an exercise in debasement I left behind in the ‘90s—but I also refuse to be industry-blackballed by a two-faced midget that, after all this time, still refuses to come out of the closet… as a Trump/Pence voter. That’s why I’ve decided to write the book (from which these passages are excerpted), and to do the exclusive television interview with Wendy Williams during one of her “Hot Topics” segments.
Anne and I have since divorced as well. I now find myself talking to a psychiatrist three days out of the week, and during the other four, sitting in auditing sessions where I’m renouncing psychotherapy as a barbaric affront to the Galactic Confederacy. Xenu help me if either of these advisers ever finds out about the other.
Jesus Christ, 15 years of this shit,
Chris Moeller
posted by CM @ 9:51 PM
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