the show: 10-26-06

From zefrank

Transcript

[woman in very red bed with cat]
woman: Morning.

[Group of people in a dining room]
Group: Good morning sportsracers! It's the show with Ze Frank!
Woman in back right: quack!

[sequence of Ze head shots]
Ze: I know, it's late;

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I'm sorry.

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But yesterday was a travel day and I also seem to be involved in a nerd fight

[High drama Ze (in black and white) overacts/sings in hallway]

nerd fight
fighting nerds
we dont use guns
we use words
nerds nerds nerds nerds nerds!

[More head shots]
Ze: More nerd fight in the sidebar!

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It's six days before the election and I find myself in the lovely battleground state of ohio.

[cut to cannon, pan right to hotel]
Check it out there's even a cannon pointed right at my hotel room. Not kidding.

[baby crossing sign?]
Pac man's getting old.

[Sign reading: "Please pardon our appearance while we make exciting changes."]
This is the t-shirt to get someone going through puberty.

[Sign reading: "?i"]
One of these two letter 'i's is showing off, but I bet he'd fall down if his friend let go of his butt.

[Ze's patented series of head/face shots]
I'm in the bustling city of columbus, named after the explorer that landed here many years ago.

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My stepfather was born here and brought with him to the east a local delicacy which he would pack in my school lunches:

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Peanut-butter, mayonnaise, and tomato sandwiches.

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Try trading that for a pack of fritos.

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Ze (sounding uncertain): Trust me, the mayo and tomato together taste just like jelly.

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Ze: Growing up it was my duty to rid the family bathtub of soap scum that would inevitably build up.

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I did this with a scowering sponge and powdered ajax.

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You get that nice little green slime.

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Some of that scum seemed to fuse into the very essence of what was that bathtub.

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On several occations I half-assed it, grinding down the scum into an even shade of off-white that I hoped would blend into the background.

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Maybe over time the tub would even slowly change color, eliminating my job altogether.

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But one day, my step-father caught me.

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Here's the thing, he didn't get pissed,

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he didn't talk about the things I wouldn't be able to do until I finished that menial task,

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and he didn't threaten me with punishment.

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Instead, in a voice that was certainly disappointed he said:

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Ze (as step-dad): Why would you do anything unless you were going to try and do it right?

[with Ze looking wide eyed/shocked]
Ze: uhh

[next, with Ze, lips pursed, looking ashamed]
hmm

[head-o-rama continues]
Now I can't say that I've lived up to that,

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but I do think it's something worth living up to.

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But I have carried it with me

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back here to where he was born.

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And I will say that over time I've found the joy in exploring certain details of my life for that doing-it-right moment.

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Whether it's taking those two extra minutes to figure out all those knobs on that fancy chair,

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or doing a little research on the best way to get the skin off a piece of garlic,

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or busting out an old toothbrush to get that bathtub back to white.

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In any case that change in perspective from getting through a job I don't like to getting it right

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has been enough of a good thing to offset those peanut butter tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches.

[Head shot, with emphatic eyebrows]
Those sucked, yo.

Whining

First!

Just not the same as the old days.

• The only constant is change. It is in changing that things find purpose. [Heraclitus]