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Some of you might not know this,
but most of the Northeastern United States was plunged into
darkness and medieval chaos when some night-watchman yahoo
who'd had one too few Diet Cokes mistook the Don't Touch This
Button, It Will Plunge 50 Million People into Darkness and
Medieval Chaos But With an Oddly Warm Sense of Community Button
with the Button That Turns Up the Volume on Matt Lauer.
Luckily, this man's negligent actions didn't affect the West
Coast, where me and my ilk could continue the business of
entertaining the people of the world unimpeded by candle-light
working conditions. But somehow this didn't seem fair. After
I'd done my best to roll in the happy pig-shit of unlimited
electricity resources, pangs of guilt began to set in. Why
should I have light and Blind Date three times a day and chilled
Aste Spumante while people in the world's greatest city sit
on stoops, forced to interact on a neighborly level? So I
did what I've always done when Guilt takes up extended residence
in my poolside guesthouse:
I called Harrison Ford.
This wasn't easy, since it had been quite a while since we'd
last locked horns.
"Oh, look who's calling now?" he sing-songed in
my ear. "What are you going to do, flush the toilet and
hang up on me?"
I took my hand off the toilet handle. "Indy, we've gotta
do something about this blackout."
"I was thinking of doing something. Shouldn't I fly my
helicopter over there and, you know, start rescuing people
stranded on the top of skyscrapers without power?"
"Don't be stupid."
"Well, what then?" said Ford, then breathed loudly
through his nostrils.
"Two words: blackout party. We're gonna turn off all
the lights and play flashlight tag!"
"I am going to do no such thing," he said. "There
are people that need help."
"Fine, don't play." My dismissal of his wishes was
utterly casual.
"I won't," he said. "I've got to go and run
Calista's bath, so if you'll excuse me..."
I let the line go silent for a long moment. Then, with the
indifference of a hooker on her fifth trick of the night,
I said, "If you are not over here in ten minutes with
a flashlight, I'll just walk over to my tote-board and chalk
this up as an easy victory in what is becoming an awfully
lopsided titan-feud. And I'll write that you didn't show up
because you had to run Calista's bath."
I heard only an incredulous "You wouldn't!" as I
placed the phone's receiver in its cradle.
Eight minutes later, my door-answering girl responded to an
impassioned knock.
Ford was, as they say, in the house.
"So how does this work, exactly?" he asked, pushing
past me, clutching the biggest Mag-lite male-impotency totem
available on the retail market. I, naturally, used a pen-light.
I explained that on my signal, the basement rumpus-room attendant
would flip all the circuit breakers in the house, rendering
my Hollywood compound a power-deprived oasis in a desert of
excess wattage. I'd loudly count to ten as Ford would scramble
through the house and then start the hunt for my blinded supernemesis.
He nodded in agreement and absent-mindedly ran his fingers
over the Mag-lite, much as a musician touches his strings
while pretending to listen to you when all he can think about
is the next chord.
"Power!" I yelled. The in-house curator of my acclaimed
porcelain tiger collection flinched at the sound, as she'd
never heard me yell anything but my own name in the boudoir.
The house, like millions a continent away, was plunged into
darkness.
"One!" I shouted, listening to Ford's feet scramble
over the marble floor. Then, filling my lungs with the predictable
air of treachery and poor sportsmanship, yelped "Ten!"
I tore off into the black, confident that I would stumble
on no stray obstacles. I'd spent the previous two weeks grappling
a severe writer's block (I was down to an anemic ten pages
a day) by practicing running at top speed through a darkened
house, quickly becoming so adept at navigating without my
sight that I'd ask the staff to lay down in doorways when
they'd hear me coming.
I had an inkling that Ford would immediately head upstairs,
but knowing that he'd think I'd go upstairs to look for him
and then countermove by hiding in the basement, I decided
to ferret him out in the pantry. The mental chess game was
on as I leapt into the pantry with my pen-light ablaze, apprehending
only a half-empty box of Bisquick with my beam, my heartbeat
thrumming in my ears. I wondered if the foot I thought I'd
seen scurry out was a trick of the night; it could have just
as easily belonged to my pretend-archaeologist quarry or one
of the Twinkie-pilfering help.
"Where exactly do you keep that tote-board?" came
a voice from behind me.
Ford.
I knew defeat was nigh as I turned slowly, my vision washed
white in the corona of his Mag-lite's beam. I could make out
only the silhouette of his leather fedora (a fashion choice
I'd always found affected), until he dropped the spotlight
slightly and I could see he was feasting on a chicken leg
from my refrigerator.
"I'll draw you a bath," I said, shoulders slumped,
"and call Calista. Lights!"
The house was restored to its energy-guzzling normalcy, abandoning
our brotherhood with our blacked-out compatriots. Televisions
buzzed in unoccupied rooms around us.
Ford walked off toward the master bath, twirling the picked-clean
legbone in his fingers.
Just as he disappeared around a corner, I turned to my tote-board
and carefully marked a line in the Ford column, turned off
the lights, then erased it with a swipe of an elbow.
Such wonderful things happen in the dark.
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Above:
Harrison Ford is better looking than me even in the dark.
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