Indiana Jones and the Lost Café at Borders

With many of us eagerly awaiting the return of Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the upcoming Star Wars sequel, some have come to wonder if we'll ever see Harrison Ford again in his other great iconic film role. Well, who knows?Here's a taste of what such a movie might be like as Harrison Ford once again essays the role of Indiana Jones in ... 

Indiana Jones and the Lost Cafe at Borders! 

As Indiana Jones wraps up a class he is teaching at Marshall College, his friend and colleague Marcus Brody approaches him.

Marcus:   I see you’re back none the worse for wear, Indiana.  I hear your latest escapade is being referred to as Indiana Jones and the Lost Car Keys of Murray Blitzstein.

Indy:  Yes, Marcus, the keys had been missing for almost three days.  The Nazis were already there at Blitzstein’s home jumping at the chance to steal a Studebaker from a member of the Jewish faith, and I had to tangle with Belloq in the kitchen and the hall bath to find them.

Marcus:  How did you locate the keys, Indy?

Indy: In the morning rays of the sun at precisely 5:42 A.M., I saw the glint of the keys in the left back pocket of Blitzstein’s seersucker suit pants.  He had accidentally placed them there, normally being a front right pocket man.

Marcus:  Brilliant, as usual, Indiana.  Did you restore the keys to Mr. Blitzstein?

Indy:  No, Marcus, the Lost Car Keys of Murray Blitzstein belong in a museum. Blitzstein will have to buy himself an Edsel.

Marcus:  Indy, there’s another important matter I need to discuss with you.  Have you ever heard of Borders?

Indy:  Indeed.  It was a book store, a chain of book stores, which proliferated in North America prior to the rise of the Amazons.  The fossil record is unclear, but we believe they were destroyed either by a natural catastrophe, climate change, or some woman named E.L. James.

Marcus:  That's right, Indiana.  And what we have learned is that inside each Borders was a hidden sanctuary called a café where people drank coffee and lattes, ate muffins and scones, and thought and talked about intelligent things, like would Henry David Thoreau have written more about throwing up in Walden Pond had he hung out with Charles Bukowski.

Indy:  But what does this have to do with me?

Marcus:  Legend has it that the awesome power that gave rise to this intellectual conversation was in the scones! Your old friend Belloq is intent on being the first to discover the Lost Café at Borders, acquire the wisdom of the scones, and use it to clone Hitler, but this time with a much better mustache!

We next see a map plotting Indy’s route by car from Marshall College in Western PA to Bala-Cynwyd PA where one of the Borders is reputed to have been located. The route stops in Altoona PA where Indy purchases a Slurpee from Seven Eleven and then proceeds to Bala-Cynwyd.

Sallah:  Indy!  I knew you’d be here.  Look, Belloq’s got full excavation going already! And Marion’s here now too.

Indy:  Marion?  Belloq?

Sallah: No, that’s two people, Indy, one named Marion and one named Belloq. Not Marion Belloq.

Indy: What do you know about the Lost Café at Borders, Sallah?

Sallah:  I know one thing.  They are digging in the wrong place!

Indy:  How can you tell?

Sallah:  See the two Starbucks Coffee Shops 100 yards apart from each other?  I believe the book store was called Borders because it was usually bordered on both sides by a Starbucks.  Belloq, the fool, is digging by the Bed, Bath, & Beyond!

Digging a make-shift shaft, Indy lowers himself down into the inner chamber of the ruins of Borders.

Sallah:  Indy!  What do you see?

Indy:  Books everywhere!  Magazines.  CDs of all kinds!  This would be a great place to browse on a Saturday afternoon!  Make a note of that.

Sallah: Any snakes down there?

Indy:  Just Belloq.  And he’s got Marion!

Belloq:  Hello, Dr. Jones.  I was in one of the two Starbucks 100 yards apart trying to get Marion drunk on espresso when I heard you underfoot and knew where to dig.  And I’ve got the intellectual scones too!

Marion:  Indy, if he eats one, he’ll be able to make another Hitler, this one with a mustache even bigger than Stalin’s!

Belloq:  Soon, Dr. Jones, you will see that I have acquired all the wisdom of the Lost Café at Borders!

Belloq brings a dry scone to his mouth and makes a face.

Belloq:  I think I’d rather open a lost ark.

Indy:  You think that thing’s dry now, you should have had one when it was fresh!

Belloq eats the scone.   

Belloq:  Yes, I feel the power of the scones coming over me now, Jones!  Sweeping over every pore of my body!  It’s beautiful!

Marion: Kind of predictable, isn’t he?

Belloq:  Now … If you get your Borders ticket punched five times, you will get a free latte in the cafe! All Joni Mitchell records 50% off with purchase of a cappuccino! Buy three dry scones and take 25% off Jonathan Franzen’s latest book! What is this?  This isn’t the wisdom of the Lost Café at Borders!

Indy:  No, but it is the wisdom of managing the Lost Café at Borders.

Belloq:  And we have the finest Judaica section in Bala-Cynwyd too!  Every book by Elie Wiesel!! And don’t forget Schindler’s List in videos!!!

Belloq screams, shrieks something about free wrapping in the mezzanine, and thereupon his head gruesomely explodes.

Marion: Shall we take a look at some of the books here before we leave, Indy?  Maybe one by E.L. James?

Indy:  No, I think we’ve done enough with anachronisms already today, Marion.

Marion: Where to next, Indy?  

Indy:  Off to discuss the next Indiana Jones sequel with Steven Spielberg.   I’d like to get it wrapped before I’m 80.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walden, Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Written By Henry David Thoreau

                          Directed by Quentin Tarantino

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord Massachusetts.  I lived there two years and two months, immersing myself in nature, self-reliance, simple living, and personal introspection.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  But my life is anything but quiet or desperate. You see, I'm in the killin' Nazi business, and cousin, business is a-boomin!

It all began shortly after my arrival at Walden Pond. I was pondering the indescribable innocence and beneficence of nature and the notion that time is but the stream I go a-fishing in when my reveries were interrupted by a strenuous knock on the door of my small but thoroughly amenable tightly shingled and plastered cottage perched within the New England countryside. 

"Are you Mr. Henry David Thoreau, the transcendentalist?" called a voice through the cottage window from the direction of the bean field I had diligently and gingerly planted and was so tenderly nurturing. "I am Colonel Hans Landa, the Jew Hunter."

Now I think that I love society as much as most and am ready enough to fasten myself to any full-blooded man that comes in my way, so I welcomed Colonel Landa as proudly as Chanticleer into my humble yet fully self-sufficient dwelling abode.

"May I smoke my pipe?" inquired the Colonel.

In the spirit of fellowship and conviviality, I nodded in the assent. 

"So you're the Jew Hunter?" I asked of the Colonel.

"That's a bingo!" replied Colonel Landa with churlish frivolity. 

"Colonel Landa," I offered in deepest sincerity, "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor."

"Mr. Thoreau," retorted the Colonel with brusqueness of a most crude and acute nature, "I must now search your house for Jews, unless you have something to tell me that makes the conduct of a search unnecessary."

It was a propitious moment for Colonel Hans Landa to meet his transcendental maker.  

"This will make the conduct of your search unnecessary!" I shouted, quickly reaching under the table and pulling out my Glock 34 Semi-Automatic Pistol, a present from Emerson.  I blasted Landa all the way to Walden Pond, where his blood drenched pulverized remains scattered into fish food for the random pickerel, perch, and pouts which local industrious fishermen are wont to catch in its expressive translucent waters.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. What I learned, what nature had to teach, was that I wanted me 100 Nazi scalps real bad! And I did not want to discover when I came to die that I had one Nazi scalp less.

After that my life became a 24/7 Kill Wilhelm-A-Thon!

I destroyed Nazis by bashing in their brains with baseball bats, choking them with wild hickory nuts, slicing and dicing them with a machete, and reading them the first draft of my chapter on Economy with special emphasis on the accounting and bookkeeping details. Once I dispatched a Nazi by reading him the entire First Series of Emerson's Essays after which I carved a giant likeness of a loon landing upon Flint's Pond on his forehead. 

I think this just might be my masterpiece!

The day is an epitome of the year: the night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.  I prefer the winter for killin' Nazis because I hate to get up early.  If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.  But if the music be Wagner, shoot him right through the head!

I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847 as it seemed to me that it was time to look onward to the morrow. I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this, but only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

When the next day dawned I asked Marsellus Wallace for a job, and I turned out to be one hell of a hit man.  

I even got to work with John or Jonathan Travolta! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Life in the Woods,or 
Die, Nazi, Die!
                                                                                                            Where I Lived

     What I Lived For                       

Brute Neighbors                        

                                        

Former Inhabitants (Very Former)

                                                              HOUSE-WARMING                                         

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you liked this post, you might also like Rhinoceros Impoceros, 1984 Once More, Slight Club, and The Metamorphosis, The Musical. 

If you hated this post, I hope you spend the rest of your entire life sitting through a lecture on Walden by an Associate Professor at a third rate university with only occasional short breaks to watch Kill Bill Volume 1 and Kill Bill Volume 2 over and over and over and over!