Cora rips open her minivan door and shuts it, concealing the children noises. She takes a moment to breathe in the cold Ohio air and to listen to the silence, broken only by a few passing cars and the muffled sound of her rampant children.
She walks around to the gas pump. She looks around; only one other man pours gas into his pickup truck on the other end of the station. She inserts her Mastercard into the machine.
"INSERT CARD AND REMOVE QUICKLY" The small screen instructs retroactively. "PLEASE WAIT JUST A MOMENT . . ."
And then the silence is broken: The small screen above the gas meter pops on. A man and a woman appear, decked out in clothing so glamorous and hair done so perfectly it's not even worth describing. They stand in front of a crowd with microphones. The word "LIVE" appears in the upper right hand corner.
"And tonight begins the Gassies!" says the woman. She motioned over to the spectacle the people in the crowd snap pictures of: More people dressed in fancy dresses and suits walk down a purple carpet amidst flashing bulbs. "The annual award show for the actors and actresses in the gas pump video entertainment industry! Oh, and I'm getting word that we're going live into the award show now!"
The camera fades into a huge auditorium filled with glamorous people. Yet another fancy lady in a dress walks up to the microphone in front of the stage. "Welcome to the second annual Gassies!" The crowd claps.
Cora's gas tank has already clicked full, but as with many of these gas entertainment videos, she can't stop watching. She also doesn't want to get back to her animal family.
"We're gathered here tonight to honor the men and women who make up the gas entertainment video industry. Gas pumps didn't used to be a media outlet. When we first started making them, they called us crazy. But that's what they said to Walt Disney, too. And now look at him: He's dead. It's only been a few years but already the gas entertainment video industry has introduced the world to incredibly innovative techniques in the field of video entertainment, such as use of full volume shouting; targeting an untargetable market; the use of muzak as a foreground element; record-breaking number of camera cuts per minute; reverting back to 4:3 monitor display and standard definition; and producing entertainment videos despite zero return value.
"So what makes a gas video actor or entertainer? Well lots of things, but the one thing they all have in common is that they all want to be on television or in the movies but aren't." The audience claps. "So let's get to our first nomination." She opens up an envelope in her hands. "Our first nomination is... Director of the video most unrelated to gas. And the nominees are..." As she reads them her card, the screen displays montages of the nominated video. "Hoss Orwich for his segment on the volcanos of Hawaii for Shell!"
The screencaps show a man with spiky hair walking up crags and river valleys and pointing up to a volcano far away. The video fades to the next nominee: a group of tap dancers dance on a small stage. The camera gets closeups on their feet and smiling faces.
"...Anne Borone for her tap dance music video with Citgo! And finally, Steph Gorgopolis with his amazing mini documentary regarding the birthing of giraffes!"
The montages shows a giraffe stretching its neck down to nuzzle its offspring.
"And the winner is... Steph Gorgopolis!"
A man in the audience stands up with a dignified, stern look on his face. The camera angle pans around him as he walks through the audience and up to the stage. A voice over explains, "This is Steph Gorgopolis' third Gassie. Steph is currently a community center play director in the town of Alpine, Colorado and hopes to use his experience in the gas entertainment industry to one day do anything else. His car is electric but that doesn't stop him from pressing the gas with his incredible seven second-long segments for our consumers!" The man reaches the stage and is handed a golden gas pump handle statue. He takes a moment and pauses and then bellows into the microphone:
"We hurt the giraffes! We tortured them for the gas video! The gas entertainment industry is corrupt! They're addicted the power! They're addicted to the money! They made me do it! None of those giraffes were ready to give b-" and then all of a sudden the video cuts out and the two original hosts appear in front of the camera. They look at the lens with startled looks on their faces.
"Uh oh, looks like we just had a little... oil spill of sorts."
"Great night, huh?" said the other host, terrified of the silence.
Cora finally returns the gas pump handle back to its holster. She walks back to her car door and takes one final glance at the screen, which she now vows to be on the other side of, no matter what it takes. She opens her car door and the sound of youth blasts her ears.
"Mommy, what took you so long?!"
"I'm not your Mommy anymore. I'm going to be a gas star!" She starts her car. "Get out!"
No comments:
Post a Comment