Extra Extra

We Are. Extra.

Backgrounding in a comedy in the making. Just like those men of the mass who once surrounded Howard Cosell in the hope of showing our faces on “Bananas”.

Been a long time, but the script kept rehashing. Especially when writers strike.

Machine learning, writing and scripting. A new mix of formula: boy meets girl, loses girl and gets girl back in the end. Be it Count Monte Cristo, Papillon or Gatsby.

The latest did not get her back. Only regret, sorrow and tormenting: “Summer ends. How I wish I could grab it and wouldn’t let go of it”. Something in similar vein.

I finally got to finish “In Cold Blood” by Capote. What a treat (not a feast of violence and dread). I felt cold, chilled and everything in between, just to enter that world, that scenery and setting.

Extra extra.

We are. All tied up, gagged and shot. To our eternal sleep, some in pajamas, others, naked.

Extra extra. Bananas we are. Dictators are meeting up, making deals and promises.

Lots of extra standing around, getting their faces on camera: “Mom, did you see me on TV”.

Shakespeare once said the world is a stage. If so, we’re all extras, “Take two” (start walking, try to make it as normal as possible, as bystanders would, minding one’s own business and not of the world’s).

Let Moroccan die on their own. The 9/11 victims, the once Mayor of that fateful town, the semi-conductor business shift to Vietnam, away from its once-concentrated China facilities.

Let the fight and competition be then between Ohio and Hanoi (once, Silicon Valley vs Taiwan).

Extra extra. We all are. The writers strike. The world spins. And the people walk, drudgingly dragging their feet until hearing the director say “Cut”.

Let’s do it once more. This time, try to fake it until you make it.

Sylvester Stallone, go “Do we get to win this time?”.

P.S. Saw him as an extra on the Woody Allen’s Bananas (subway hooligan).

We shall rise, shall overcome….SOME day. Maybe not today, not tomorrow. Some day.

Meanwhile, just act normal. Walk like you normally would, crossing the street, minding your own business. Leave the war, the weapons and the worries to main actors on world stage. Yes, the world is a stage. But yours is so small. It doesn’t even count. As soon as you’re gone, they issue death certificate, and with birth certificate, you’re a new logged away case. Cold case. If not killed In Cold Blood.

Capote says goodbye to Kansas like this:

“Then starting home, he (Dewey, the detective) walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”

The End. (each life killed was worth 10 dollars, per robbery gone misinformed and misguided).

Extra extra. We all are.