Thursday, June 30, 2011

(Evan types out notes for an outline of his latest hare-brained scheme: to make an opera out of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments. He is more than a little overwhelmed at the size of this undertaking. Out of one of the three or four Bibles he has lying around the room materializes Moses as though he's TNG-beamed into Evan's room)

Moses: If you do this, you'd better be prepared.

Evan: Don't I know it.

Moses: Being the prophet of prophets is awful: Bad weather, unreliable subordinates, dangerous rivals, difficult clients and a psycho boss. I can only imagine what writing about me would be like.

Evan: Don't worry, I'm only interested in writing the Charlton Heston version of you.

Moses: (snickers) OK. That makes life a little easier. You cut the Book of Numbers.

Evan: Actually I'm planning on putting that back in.

Moses: Dude, you crazy.

Evan: Says the guy who went from door to door killing people for worshiping a cow?

Moses: Touche, salesman.

Evan: So I figure... I could get at three operas out of this one. Five-to-seven years to write the texts, another seven to nine years to write the music. Then another twenty to raise the money to put it on. I'll be in my sixties then, so I figure this will make a decent headline and might me get a good ten years of endowed tenure at a gullible SUNY school where I can live however I want before senility and incontinence kick in.

Moses: Are you sure your job won't tie you up?

Evan: I'm writing this at 3 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon.

Moses: Shouldn't you be working on that outline?

Evan: Probably.

Moses: You're not going to write this are you?

Evan: I'll be lucky to finish the outline.

Moses: You're much too ADD for a project like this.

Evan:

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