The lead singer should really stick to the part where he sings and not come right up to me. I’m the guitar player, and I know that this is pretty much standard rock-and- roll practice, but it is distracting. It is hindering my ability to perform my guitar-playing duties.
Quirky is a word often used to describe the stories of Juan Martinez. But quirky is one of those words that can really be bent to mean just about anything. A much better term would be idiosyncratic which puts a method to the madness of quirky. A lot of his stories are events taking place every day and just waiting for someone to realize there’s a story to be told there. Like the story told here. How many times has anyone seen a concert where the lead singer goes over to the guitar player when the lyrics take a break? Ever wonder if the guitar player wishes he would just stay where he was? What is going through the minds of musicians on stage during a concert? Here is one man’s answer.
They are at Disney World. A man or woman in costume is with them. The costume is not immediately recognizable as belonging to the pantheon of Disney characters. It is a weevil. They are at Six Flags. The same man or woman in the weevil costume is with them.
This is one of the author’s very short stories. Two pages of descriptions of photographs taken by the same family at various popular vacation spots: Coney Island and Mt. Rushmore join the amusement parks. And always, in every image, that same weird character in the weevil costume. Is this a horror story? Science fiction? Some kind of genre piece to be sure, right? The final line clears everything up in the tidiest and satisfying way possible.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is showing my movie. The silhouettes running along the bottom edge of the TV screen are making fun of my movie. I can’t blame them. We tried. We tried to make it good and could not. We were not good enough to make it good.
This quote serves as another good example of how Martinez is idiosyncratic and not just quirky. How many people have watched episodes of MST3K over the years and wondered what the heck ever happened to those poor people who probably tried as hard as they could to make something good, but still managed to wind up making a movie that gets riffed. MST3K has become shorthand for a movie so bad it might be fun, but it’s still bad. Martinez does not just wonder, he shows what happens with his fictional director of a movie that was bad enough to be shown in the movie theater aboard the Satellite of Love.
If the poster depicts a kitten hanging from a branch, your significant other is a secretary. She will file your papers and fold your clothes in ways that are both efficient and inexplicably irritating. You will be very happy and in love and have many children, most of which will serve illustrious careers in the military. You will sometimes weep when you are alone and watching the History channel. Hang in there.
This is the last entry in the story. Prior to this, the narrator has given a psychological profile of the type of woman and a prediction for the future of the man who loves her if her kitten poster depicts, in order: kittens in a lavatory, yawning kitten in a kitten-sized hammock, a Kliban cat, two tigers cubs frolicking on a verdant field of green, and a cat drawn in squiggly lines. Each of the women who are the type to own the poster in question has something to offer the man who loves her, but suffice to say some posters acts are more desirable crystal balls than others. The final line officially makes this story perfect.
