Pay the Rent: A Solo Play Exploring Gender Politics

by Russell Bradbury-Carlin

The Scene: None, except for one prop—a single piece of paper folded into an accordion.
Enter Actor. Picks up piece of paper, holds it in the middle, and places it under his nose—a moustache. He is now the Evil Landlord.
Evil Landlord: You must pay the rent!…

Little Mouse Feet

A mouse questions the cat regarding the whereabouts of his slippers. The cat ate them, but swiftly regurgitates the rhodent’s footware, amazingly whole….

Cruelty to Animals

The mongoloid mongrel fetches a ball; the wicked tabby did not want it back….

Does the Appropriation by Target of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” Disquiet You?

Your Disquieting Modern Trendsetters request the pleasure of your commentary. Is Target’s recent “Baby Got Back (Pack)” advertisement a modern trend that sparks disquitude? Please drop Messers Layman and Osmond an e-mail….

How You Say, “Michel”?

“For the new novel, however, having paid Mr. Houellebecq (pronounced WELL-beck) a reported $1.2 million advance, his publisher, Éditions Fayard, has taken no chances.” “The French Still Obsess Over Novelist of Despair” by Alan Riding, The New York Times, Sept….

Happy Cat

The ubiquitous kitty is seen reveling in his message of hope, of dreams fulfilled. When pushed further by his mildly retarded owner, the feline reveals the context: a shopping list of food!…

The Cat Smiles

The gluttonous cat exhibits a Cheshirelike inability to drop his creepy grin, even for a second. It is because he consumed his master’s last doughnut….

Cat Nap

The blissful, open-mouthed vapidity of the dog, combined with the goofy ineptitude of his mentally disabled owner, causes the cat to rhetorically ask if there’s any wonder why he chooses to spend three-fourths of his day asleep….

Schrödinger’s Call

The cat dials the local pizzeria and attempts to confound his mentally disabled owner by pretending the pizza dispatcher has called and wishes to speak to him….

Doing Our Part

Y.P.R. faithful, We’re rarely serious (ask our parents, bosses, wives, fiancées, roommates and the people at Starbucks who correct us when we insist upon ordering a “large” coffee rather than bow to their needlessly complicated coffee-ordering nomenclature), but there are…

Bet There’s a Half-Eaten Bag Stuffed under the Cat’s Bed

The person points out that they’ve reached the penultimate bag of potato chips, which is, as the cat astutely points out, unfortunate and strange. Indeed….

Standing and Delivering

The awkward human wishes to be alone. The cat offers to stand guard….

A Pleasing Labor Day to You All

Propaganda by the War Production Board, 1943, courtesy World War II History….

Belabor Day

VH1’s “I Love Christopher Monks’s Labor Day Weekend 1986” by the eponymous idle thinker, Mr. C. Monks….

Transmogrify This

“New Orleans is not fast or energetic or efficient, not a go-get-’em Calvinist well-ordered city.”

—from “What It Means to Miss New Orleans” by Mark Childress, in The New York Times, Sunday, September 4, 2005.

“There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them. It’s already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade.”

—from “The Bursting Point,” an Op-Ed column by David Brooks in The New York Times, Sunday, September 4, 2005.