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.

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

Your NOFC Time-Back Guarantee!

How do I do it?

Nope, don't got one of these ...

It will come as little surprise to regular readers of this blog that there are no regular readers of this blog. In fact, if blogs were able to time travel and my blog time traveled into the past to the time and place of my high school years, I would seem popular by comparison. 

How to change this?  

I can't give away a book, because I have no book to give away.  I can't see a product giveaway, because a coffee cup with my face on it would instantly hurtle both Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts over the fiscal cliff. And I  certainly can't offer you a money-back guarantee, because you've paid no money. All you've done is spend an unfunny minute or two having the ass bored off of you.

That's it!    Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to offer you: 

The World's First
 Time-Back Guarantee!

Only from Nouveau Old, Formerly Cute

Hated something you read on my blog even more than I hated writing it?  Wasted precious time you could have been watching Hoarders or In Search of Bigfoot?  Lost the opportunity to procrastinate important work or life decisions even a few guilt-ridden moments longer?

Now, you can relax!  With the new NOFC Time-Back Guarantee, simply tell me which post or posts you detested and I'll give you back 100% of the time you squandered, no questions asked.  I really don't want to know the answers anyway!  

Here's just a few of the things I can do for you to refund your wasted time in full:   

1) Fill out a simple Internet Form.  Register a product purchase, add your voice to a petition provided it doesn't overly push the phrase "Aryan Nation," or sign up to receive regular updates from a way more interesting blog than mine. 

2) Join ChristianMingle.com.  As long as you promise to raise the children Jewish.

3) Set up that holiday app that makes it look like it's snowing on your blog.  Which is a great service because if not set up properly the snow begins to pile up and Twitter accounts start smashing into your Blogroll.  

4) Unfollow two or three of your Twitter followers who seem so nice you hate to unfollow them, but all they ever damn well tweet about is where the fuck they are!

5) Check spelling in a blog post.  It's a well known fact Spell check check doesn't catch everything. But I'm foolproof!

6) Write a Christmas card or two. "And though it's been said many times, many ways," I'll say it again in whatever time or way you want, provided you don't overly push the phrase "Aryan Nation." 

7) Have an uncomfortable conversation about something over Skype. Tell your wife you're leaving for your pilates instructor, talk to your children about drugs and sex (especially if you want to take the "for" position), come out to your Tea Party parents ....   I'll even tell your enemies how badly they're aging!

8) Tie your tie, wipe food from your face, administer an enema. If you live in the Philadelphia area. Deals off if you're going to enjoy No. 3. 

9)  All0w you to tell me your troubles. But you must give me equal time to tell you mine. Dude, you're really in for it! 

10) Comment on how funny somebody else's blog post is.  Yeah, I'll even do that for you,  jerk!

So why delay?

Plenty of unfunny posts are waiting for you right now!  May I suggest  How to Secede from America without Really Thinking,  It's a Quarter to Three, and The War on Christmas - A Film by Ken Burns. Those ought to keep me plenty busy post-Christmas.

Void where prohibited by law. 

Which I hope is one shitload of places.

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

Yes, I'll animate this for you!

But you've got to hate me first.

Indiana Jones and the Lost Café at Borders

Lost Cafe at Borders!

___________________________________________________

Quickbreath High Concept Cinema Consulting

High Concept E-Mail

From: Sidney Quickbreath

To: Mel Greenglass, President Sparkle Entertainments

Re:  Smokin' Hot Concept for the Indy Jones Franchise!  

Date: April 25, 2087
____________________________________________

MG, I have truly outdone myself this time!

Which isn’t easy, because outdoing myself anymore is causing myself to be really pissed off at the rest of me!

I have come up, MG, with a fresh and original concept for the Indiana Jones franchise as we prepare to make our 37th entry in the series.

It will well complement the last three smash hit installments: 

Indiana Jones and the Lost City of New Brunswick NJ,

Indiana Jones and the Lost Car Keys of Murray Blitzstein, and

Indiana Jones and the Lost Building Fund of Temple Boray Perry Hagulfin

The film will be entitled:

Indiana Jones and the Lost Cafe at Borders! 

Here’s the high concept, MG:

My meticulous and painstaking research on Wikipedia has indicated that many years ago there existed places called brook stores where contraptions called brooks were sold.  Brooks  had words printed on paper stuck inside them, and people actually read these brooks just as if they were Kindle Plus 473s, Kardashians, or SituationSnooki11’s!

The most fabled among the brook stores was  a place called Borders, probably because it was usually bordered on both sides by a Starbucks Coffee. Sometime in 2011 all the Borders mysteriously vanished! The fossil record is unclear, but we believe they were destroyed either by a natural catastrophe, climate stasis, or some man named Jonathan Franzen.

We just don’t know!

Inside each Borders was a hidden sanctuary where people drank coffee and lattes, ate muffins and scones, and thought and talked about smart stuff --- really smart stuff like the capitals of the fifty-some states of the Union! Legend has it that the awesome power that gave rise to the smart stuff was in the lattes!

Or maybe the scones.

You see, MG, in this way we keep the audience in a state of heightened suspense throughout the entire picture!

And now Indy must outwit an army of neo-Nazis intent on being the first to discover the Lost Café at Borders, learn the secrets of the lattes/scones, and use them to clone Hitler, but this time with a much better mustache!

In this desperate race against time, Indy will be aided by:

• a sexy but high-spirited female archeologist who at first dismissively and condescendingy trades jab for jab with Indy but later chooses to leave all the jabbing (wink, wink, MG!) exclusively to Indy. BTW, MG, our female archaeologist will have breasts so large she wouldn’t be able to excavate Stonehenge without knocking a good third of  it down!

• an  adorable,  wise-cracking, backwards-baseball-cap wearing 11 year old street urchin  whose precocious witticisms and plucky determination will steal your heart!  So I suggest you and I leave ours home in the safe, MG, before we attend the premiere!

• a mischievous,  curly tailed,  tree-climbin',  banana chompin' wooly monkey who’s equally adept at bedeviling Indy with his wacky laugh-a-minute antics as he is at annihilating neo-Nazis with a flying electric chain saw as he merrily hurls guts and gore directly at the audience in a SuperDynamo 8D Effect so superbly revolting that they'll  never get the blood stains out of their collective cheap ass clothing!

I know what you’re thinking, MG.  Is Harrison Ford up for going through the motions once again of yet another of these formulaic romps whose freshness seal was well past its expiration date when Steven Spielberg was still married to Amy Irving?

Dude, any 147 year old guy who thinks a dippy little earring is going to make him attractive to the opposite sex will be less than primordial putty in our skillful little overreaching hands!

As usual, the film will be shot by Sparkle Entertaiments in association with Fu Yen Pictures, a Division of Fu Yen Behemoth Financial, Inc., Trustee-in-Bankruptcy for the United States of America, a Country,  in coordination with the Rancid Organization and Quickbreath High Concept Cinema Consulting.

I can see it up in lights now:

Indiana Jones and the Lost Café at Borders!  

That is,  in somebody's den lights shining on their just purchased obscenely overpriced Blue Ray,  Holographic Sheen-Lohan, or HypnocentricPresidentRickPerry Mindplop!

Who knows? It might even spark a whole new interest in excavating these Borders places.

And I think that would be cool.

After all, I’ve never even seen a brook!

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

Dear Mr. President ....

  

PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Date: August 3, 2011

To: The United States of America
       c/o President Barack Obama 

Subject: Interest Payment on Loan No. 2011-13C
_________________________________________

Dear Mr. President:

Please be advised that as of today you have missed a payment of interest due on the above captioned loan. The amount now due and payable is $68,000,000,000.47, covering interest, late fees, and a touch of hush money to keep this letter out of the hands of Rupert Murdoch.

As you recall, Loan No. 2011-13C was arranged to provide financing for you to provide tax, farming, and tanning/bronzing subsidies for the wealthiest .5% of Americans, six (6) month’s salary for one of the two (2) annoying brothers on Car Talk (the only currently permissible funding for the Arts per your Republican Party), and two lattes at Starbucks Coffee in Havertown PA.

We are sorry we had to turn you down for a smoothie, but it rendered the financial risk just too steep.

Perhaps you have simply overlooked this obligation.  Maybe you left your wallet in your other suit.  Oh, your other suit is at the dry cleaners,  and you don’t have the money to reclaim it? 

Well, just ask the dry cleaner to hand back the wallet!   You are the President of the United States, man! 

In some circles, you’re still perceived as having clout.

Please be advised that if you do not make payment of the above amount within five (5) days of the date of this letter, we will turn the matter over to the law firm of Ginsberg, Hirschberg, Feinberg, and Mishkin. Lotsa luck taking them on when your Michele Bachmann cannot even pronounce the word “chutzpah!”

Please also keep in mind that we have liens on everything in your country.  If necessary, we will foreclose on any and all assets necessary to satisfy the debt, including:

~ your Mount Rushmore,

~ your Grand Canyon,

~ your other suit, and

~ the armored and booby-trapped vault that contains your nation’s most heavily guarded and strategically valuable secret: Whether it really, truly is Oprah and Steadman, or  Oprah and Gayle, as even we suspect!

Please do not compel us to take this action. 

Very truly yours, 


The People’s Republic of China,  a/k/a

The Money Store

 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

To Sing or Not to Sing

It has always bothered me that I cannot sing.

Carry a tune? I can’t even lift one.

My semester-by-semester  grades in Vocal Music on my junior high report card read like the provocative bra size of a woman whom if I ever met I would most certainly propose to on the spot!

D .... D .... D .... D

My musical disability, however, has never prevented me from singing.  I sing in the shower, in the car, and occasionally just while walking down the street.

Since I sound something like the late actor John Wayne performing scat selections from the Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks, sometimes when I’m traipsing through Philadelphia warbling Stairway to Heaven, people hustle their children across the street as though I were a drooling degenerate instead of merely a menace to the membranes of the inner ear. 

Sadly my musical infirmity has been passed on to my 16 year old son Brandon, whose vocal stylings sound as if they were specially arranged just for him by John McLaughlin of The McLaughlin Group.   Sometimes even I want to tell him to shut the hell up!

But I know how it is; music is in our very souls!

Too bad it isn’t in our diaphragms.

Recently Brandon and I both took in the hottest show on Broadway, The Book of Mormon. Watching the show, I envisioned myself singing and dancing with the cast and earning a thunderous standing ovation as admiring audience members turned their smiling and winking faces towards one another as if to say

 "Wow! An ungainly overage  Jewish star is born!”

Brandon probably had a similar fantasy,  except it most likely also entailed 16-year-old female members of the audience hurling undergarments at him.  In my fantasy, women in my peer group were heaving intimate objects as well --- in this instance, dentures.

Exiting the show, the two of us couldn’t help but perform a duet of the show's signature song.

"I believe ...." I belted out with the same melodious vocal quality I produce after eating clams at Moe's House of Five Day Old Seafood.

"....  that one day I'll have my own planet!" chimed in Brandon, performing in a manner that would inspire many to want to blast him off to that planet far sooner than he'd intended.

Even in a town as jaded as New York, passersby glared.  A mounted policeman's horse reared in panic, throwing the officer into a Starbucks storefront window and just narrowly missing a Starbucks storefront window!

A group of school children wept.

It was apparent Brandon and I were costing musical theater countless fans with every mega off-key note we sang.

“Bran," I said, “Maybe we ought to cut the singing. People are staring at us and not  for the purpose of lining up the affectionate tossing of undergarments!"

"Why, Dad? We're on Broadway in the coolest city in the world.  It's fun!"  

“Yes, but when the people here ….”

“Just don’t give a crap, Dad.  Just enjoy!"

Brandon, of course, was right.  He usually is.

I jumped back into I Believe from The Book of Mormon and scatted it as only the late Duke could!

For all The Big Apple to enjoy. 

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