The Audition
Nov 27, 2022 21:14:59 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 27, 2022 21:14:59 GMT -5
The Audition
by
Radrook
by
Radrook
I had always dreamt of being a superhero. You know, someone like Superman, Batman or the Flash who was there to serve and protect. But of course, those childhood fantasies had long faded with the years, and I had reconciled myself to being just little insignificant me.
Not totally of course. Everyone has value if you get my drift. I mean, even a janitor, shoe shine boy or a homeless person. You know, the intrinsic worth bit about being important cause you are human shpiel? Yep. I subscribe to that too,.
But of course I had to. It isn't the same subscribing to such a philosophy when one is a millionaire, a world champ of something, it doesn't matter it could even be pea knuckle-but something. But when one hasn't got a famous leg to stand on then that human-worth idea feels like-you know-a crutch for not having to face the real you.
Anyway, as I said, I always admired them super heroes in the DC and Marvel comics. Read them, collected them, and even dreamed of them. In a way now I realize that reading those absurd stories was like the opium they tell us about in social studies. You know, when they say that religion is the opium of the masses or the poor people? Yeah. Like that. Kept me tranquil and hoping deep inside when I submerged myself in those impossible worlds where everyone was flying around, lifting absurd poundage and flitting about at ridiculous speeds.
Never mind the laws of physics. They didn't apply to our super heroes. The Flash didn't flare up in flames because of air friction. Superman's arms weren't ripped off whenever he hoisted entire buildings aloft, and the x rays from his eyes never did his brain any damage. I of course suspended disbelief as required just like everybody else. But you had to. Otherwise the laws of physics would kick in and you'd be left with no superhero at all. So we went right along with it for the sake of the ride.
Anyway, when we grew older, we had to shelve all that nonsense and face stark reality
People get hurt when they are shot, if they jump off building they fall like a brick, and the most a human might be able to lift after serious training is maybe an 800-pound dead-lift and watch out for the possible herniated disk or inguinal hernia.
No, those comics didn't prepare us for the true world with its constant reminders of just how frail we humans really are and how far we are from those superhuman heroes of our comic book days. Yet somewhere deep inside, they lived, and when a film came out like Superman the movie the fire of our former dreams were once more ignited and we were there to see it.
Which brings me to what this rambling is really all about. You see, I had unemployed for several weeks and the rent was due. So I scanned the help-wanted adds in the newspaper every day. Well, my persistence paid off. There was an add that read: "Wanted Actor to play superhero in local college play. Salary negotiable" Well, since the landlord was foaming at the mouth and threatening eviction, I decided that maybe this could tide me over for the duration of the month after which maybe I could get a real job. Anyways, I arrived at the university auditorium, necktie, suit, the whole bit.
You know what they say about first impressions, right? I had that base covered. Patent leather shoes to a spit shine, black leather jacket and a beret I had dragged from my closet. In short, I had prepared my grand entrance and if I were to be rejected it wasn't going to be for being dressed shabby. No siree Bob!.
So I go to the audition and find the college auditorium with just two people, a student who looked totally abashed, and this wiry high-strung professor who was berating him. The wiry adult’s neck veins were bulging from and his face was flushed with blood giving him this weird unearthly look. After the student left dejected, I overheard him whisper “Idiot!" Then he turned to me with this predatory look in his eyes and asked while wringing his hands nervously:
"Are you next?"
"Is this the place for the superhero protagonist audition?"
"You don’t know where you are?" he gazed at me suspiciously as if I had been some escapee from some insane asylum.
"Well, sir, it's just that I was expecting more people--"
"That's because you are an hour late! Forgot the Daylights Savings Time switcheroo I suppose?"
"Well sir, I have many things on my mind and--"
"And this audition wasn't quite on your priority list, was it? Otherwise you would have made sure to be here on time."
“I apologize for the inconvenience sir," I said as humbly as I could while controlling a strong urge to wring his scrawny neck.
“Ha!” he said after suddenly turning his back on me and hopping up on the stage.
"Let's dispense with the formalities! What are your qualifications to play this part? Do you have any previous acting experience?"
"Well sir," I've been a Marvel and DC superhero fan since I was a kid--"
"Oh really?" he asked with this cruel sneer on his cadaverous face. "And what makes you think that just being superhero fan qualifies you to be an actor? Do you even know what acting is?"
"Yes sir I do. It's making as if you are someone else?"
He frowned as if he were deeply thinking about my answer, Then, he suddenly began pacing the floor from one corner of the auditorium stage to the other in what looked to me as a slight imitation of how a rooster walks. He finally stopped, stared at me with his beady malicious green eyes and said:
"OK. Good enough. I'll cut you some slack. Let's see what you've got!"
"First let me see how you do a rooster-strut to the sound of the music.”
He pressed some buttons on this music synthesizer and suddenly music blared with drums and the trumpets as if someone were making a grand entrance. Caught me by surprise. Very nice beat. I stood listening to it and forgot what he had just told me to do.
“Are you an infant?”
"Sorry sir I forgot. What was it you wanted me to do again?
" As I just clearly said in clearly spoken English, I want you to walk like a rooster from here," he pointed one quaking index finger to the far right of the stage “ ...to there!” the left side of the stage with his other quaking index finger. All the time I’m wondering what the hell does all this have to do with super-heroes. But I figured it was some kind of basic audition test that he had come up with in one of his frequent moments of lunacy so I went along. So I gave it my best shot. I had a fairly good idea of how roosters strutted from my time at grandpa's farm.
"That's it! That's it!" he shouted as I rooster strutted from one end of the stage to the other wondering just when the idiot was going to tell me to stop. Finally he said:
“Now let's try it with the this rooster costume, and with the music, and you crowing like rooster at the same time!"
"Now wait just a minute!" I said. "I'm here for an audition to play a superhero. What does this garbage have to do with that?"
"What's the matter, you have something against fowl?"
His face is had turned beet-red, his narrow chest was heaving, and beady eyes were bulging.
"No, I don’t have anything against fowl," I replied, "They taste just fine. But I'm not about to play some ridiculous Big Bird! That's not what I came here for.”
“Well, then I guess this audition is over, mister. You fail as Chicken Man!"
“Keep your Chicken Man! I’m out of here!"
A week later I was evicted for not having the rent money. Funny How I seemed to hear a rooster crow in the far distance.