Popstars of the apocalypse Act 1 Scene 1

Popstars of the apocalypse

Act 1
Scene 1

‘Stankos’
bar Whitechapel high-street, a music venue and bar in one of thefasjionably  unfashionable, kebab grease stained suburbs
of Shoreditch. An area known primarily for the presence of a Burger Monster
restaurant, a 24 hour off-licence and conveniently placed Accident and
Emergency department of a major London Hospital.  It is rumoured that the remains of Joseph Merrick
‘The Elephant Man’ are to be found somewhere within the inner recesses of the
hospital, rumour also suggests however that these remains now actually form
part of the estate of the late Michael Jackson. Regardless, this fact is not
essential to the development of this play and perhaps undue focus on it may
detract from the story itself.

It’s
late afternoon in mid-summer in London, outside people stroll passed with
bellies hanging out looking for some kind of party atmosphere between the cars
and dustbins of a London street.  Inside
the bar, through the smoked glass, on comfortable brown sofas humans aresipping
tall straight glasses of expensive but mediocre Czech lager. The mood is
designer shambolic. Hair is unkempt and clothes are torn despite being bought
new earlier this week; their hair tends to be  professionally untidied and matted with
bio-reverberative hair-grease at the Doghouse, an avant-guard hair salon where
prospective customers must undergo a thorough vetting based on the prominence
of their cheekbones and the originality of their footwear. The trendy ‘look’
this month is ‘wealthy tramp’.

A
sign outside the newsagents next-door to Stankos relates the recent sudden
disappearance of a famous record producer from his London flat in the following
terms: ‘Top-Ten Top-Man Gone!

Crew (who is actually only
one person), Steve and Philipo known as ‘Felatio’ are lolling together on a
brown sofa. Crew has no shoes on.

Steve: Are you going for that Bilbo chic now Crew?

Crew: eh?

Steve: What happened to your shoes? Why haven’t you got any shoes?

Crew: I needed a haircut. Went round the doghouse in a pair of DM’s.

Steve: Not original enough?

Crew: Well I’d just got out of bed, so I had to jettison ‘em.

Felatio: Peace!

 Crew: Went in bare-foot!
Quite original, so Poppy cut my hair.

Steve: But why do you go to Doghouse anyway? You always get a number
one.

Crew:  Yeah but I know I paid
50 quid for it.

Felatio: That’s a pretty expensive baldhead dude!

Crew: Worth it doh.

Steve reaches over and
picks up the newspaper and starts to read.

Felatio:  What you reading dat
for G?

Steve: I’m looking for this week’s code words.

Crew: What you talking ‘bout Willis?

Steve: They use this paper to transmit code-words to operatives
around the world. That’s why you can get this newspaper in Spain.

Crew: Oh!

Felatio: How do you know if d’word is a code-word?

Steve:  Simples, you go
through the paper and count how many times the word occurs, if it occurs
precisely 46 times then it’s a code word.

Crew: Why 46?

Steve: Because that’s the special number... and the funny thing is,
there is always only ONE number that occurs precisely 46 times.

Crew: How do you know?

Steve: Because I made graphs.

Crew: Must have taken ages?

Steve: Nah, confuser did it all for me. PC Just scanned all the
pages and then got this text recognition software. Did it a few times and
noticed that only one word occurs 46 times each time, but it’s a different word
each time, but there’s always only one word.

Crew: What made you want to do that?

Steve: 3 litres of white cider. 

Felatio: What was yisday’s code word den?

Steve: ‘Series.’ They used to use the letters section of the Times
to send messages but people cottoned onto that quick. Of course I’ve only found
one word but I’m sure I’ll soon figure out the rest of the code. People used to
read the Times letters sections just to keep abreast of activity in the secret
services. Became overrun with tourists, some even started sending spurious
messages out to each other for a laugh. Some of these messages were read by
real operatives who acted on the instructions: ‘Charlie, open the door and make
the monkeys welcome ’ thing is they didn’t know what it meant but assumed that
it must be some kind of secret instruction, but that they had missed a
briefing, so they just improvised. That’s how the Balls brothers ended up in
the Labour government.

Felatio: You can’t be series? (to sound like serious)

Steve:  Nahh, just messing
about.

Felatio: So dere ain’t no code word?

Steve: I dunno. Funny idea though.

Felatio: Innit!You ‘ad me on do dere! But how did you come out with
all dat stuff?

Steve: I prepared it beforehand. As soon as I picked up that paper I
knew you’d ask me about it, you do it every time I do it, so I thought this
time I’d spin you a yarn.

Crew: Sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory. Like the
Illuminati murdered Frosty Sampson.

Steve:nodding in agreement
Safe!

Crew: And that guy out of that band, he was killed too, that funny
guy on the TV even said it.

Felatio: What funny guy?

Crew: You know, the curly one.

Felatio: Oh yeah. But why did the Illuminati want to kill Frosty?

Crew: ‘Cos he tried to expose them. In that song he says: ‘they don’t
like you very much!’ he’s talking about the Illuminati, so they killed him.

Felatio: They killed him just for that song?

Crew: Yeah!

Felatio: Bollocks!

Crew: What do you mean bollocks. Anything’s possible!

Felatio: Just saying, it’s a load of bollocks, they didn’t kill Sampo
for that.

Crew: Well, I’m just saying.

Felatio: They killed Sampson because he was physically unable to
perform 60 dates at the Megabowl, and they were planning on adding 50 more.
They soon realised that physically he would be unable to fulfil his contract.
So he was liquidated. Insurance paid up and covered the costs and the thousands
of fans who kept their worthless tickets as a souvenir helped cover the bonuses.

Crew: Yeah, Craig Cutston got the same treatment I reckon.

Felatio: Like you say man, anything’s possible. When you’re worth
more dead than alive you’d better open your eyes to who you think your friends
are.

Steve: I heard from one of his neighbours that they heard weird
rhythmical drumming and wailing the night he died.

Felatio: One word: Ritual-sacrifice.

Steve: That’s two words.

Felatio: Well, it’s hyphenated.

Steve: What about Faul Mcartney?

Crew: eh?

Steve: There’s a theory that Paul Mcartney died in 1966 , and
replaced with Faul, that’s why he had

bare feet on the zebra crossing on the cover of Abbey Road and is
out of step with the rest of the Beatles.

Crew: eh?

Steve: Thing is Faul Mcartney himself, also became a loose cannon
and so McCartney himself was killed AGAIN and replaced by Billy Shears.

Crew: eh?

Steve: Think about it! It all fits.

Crew: Does it..? Think about it yourself, why does Paul having bare-feet
and walking out of step on a zebra crossing on an album cover mean he’s dead?
How does that work?

Steve: Well I didn’t really think about it. It just made sense at
the time.

Crew: Did it? I’ve got bare-feet, does that mean I’m dead?

Steve:  Nah, it just means you
you’re a chump who paid fifty notes to get his head shaved. They do that to
monkeys at the Bloody Mary university for free. Why don’t you volunteer for
vivisection?

Crew:  Yeah, i’d get a free
haircut I suppose.

Steve:  Anyway, Roach told me,
I think he believes it, and somehow it rubbed off on me. Something about the
way he talks to you, you can’t draw a breathuntil you agree with everything he
says.

Crew: Roach’s a nutter, he smokes dried banana skins.

Felatio: Roach was trying to tell me about Niburu the other day.
Reckons the ancients had spaceships because there’s a hover-speeder and a
picture of a helicopter on the wall of an Egyptian temple, says there’s also an
engraving showing an extra planet in the solar system, but it has such a long
orbit that it’s been invisible for the past thousands of years but now
apparently it’s coming home and there are loads of aliens on it too and they
used to live on earth and it explains the missing link and why there are ONLY
twenty four hours a day AND why the planet Venus spins anti-clockwise.

Crew: Well it would make a bit of a change.

Steve: I believe in space dogs from Sirius!

Felatio: You can’t be Sirius!

Crew: What about that guy who disappeared then?

Steve: What guy?

Crew: That famous guy who was on the telly.

Felatio: Narrows it down.

Crew: That guy who was that pop producer, what happened to him?

Steve: I dunno.

Crew: Yeah you do?

Steve: What do you mean ‘yeah I do’

Crew: He went like the Mary Celeste. He was in the middle of eating
dinner at his Chelsea flat, glass of wine on the table, a few mouthful’s of his
mash tater gone. Then suddenly so is he.

It’s been 3 weeks now without sight of him. Missing person’s bureau
had an advert on the TV, the newspapers ran the story.

Felatio: You mean Tommy Sugarspoon? He’s dead.

Crew: Maybe, but what happened, what’s the circumstances? Who gets
killed halfway through eating their dinner at home? No signs of a struggle, the
guy just vanished while eating his taters.

Steve: That’s deep man.Taking  a man while eating his taters.  How can you do that to someone while he’s
having his dinner. That’d be like fighting someone while they’re on the toilet.
Should have let him clean his plate first. There’s no dignity anymore.