Matinee on the Bouncy
Picture this: A grand passenger ship, MS Bouncy, far out in ocean, we're you're bound have the time of your life.
…if you're a paying passenger and not a janitor on the ship, like Woody Woodpecker here. He's been working on the poopdeck since 5 A.M. armed with a mop and a bucket, steadily swabbing away.
"Aw, shut up, ya lousy narrator!"
Well excuse me for setting the scene, Woody, but someone has to do it for the audience.
"No ya don't! It's your darned fault that I'm acting in this story, and if ya make me stay here too long, I'LL BREAK YA WITH MY MOP!"
Now now Mr. Woodpecker, if I were you, I'd restrain from threatening the narrator.
"Oh, so you're challenging me, eh? Come at me, Mr. Narrator, and I'll-"
"Ahem!"
Oh, bad move, Woody. That's Wally Walrus, the ship's boatswain.
"Shut up already! I know who he is!"
"Then you should also know how much I dislike people who are lazing at work!"
"I'm not lazing around! Honest! I was just having a calm discussion!" Woody replies angrily trying to defend himself, while he imagines pecking on Wally's head.
"I don't believe you, and I don't want to hear any more silly excuses from you! Now get going!"
"Aright! Aright!" Woody says before goes away swabbing like he was before.
"Doggone boa'swain always tellin' me do that don't do that ah woudn'a ha'e taken this job if ah was so poor and desperate for a job bet ah cou'd do a better job then him or the captain…"
"Oh, is that really so, eh?"
"Er, no, not at all! I, uh, I was talking about a, eh, another boatswain and captain I worked for long ago."
That fellow over there in that adjustable sunlounger cusioned with springs, drinking something with an umbrella in it, is Buzz Buzzard, a passenger also on board on this ship.
"And an annoying one, too."
In an instant, Buzz holds Woody so close their beaks touch, with Woody smiling nervously.
"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!?"
"Er, I said 'all employing's done, too'. It means there are n-no more jobs."
"It better be what you said, woodpecker!" He then throws down Woody on the ground, then pours down his drink on his head, then finishes by putting Woody's head inside his glass.
"Har har har!"
"Oh ha ha ha, you're so funny." Woody takes off the glass, gets up, then goes away swabbing. "Why, you're a regular Bob Hope."
You know Woody, as tempting as it might be, you shouldn't provoke him either or-
"Yeah, yeah, I know, he'll tell someone on me, that stool pigeon."
And so, for the few next hour or so he continues to swab the decks, with nothing interesting happening.
By then he's sweating and ready to fall down. At that point he's just a few feet away from the cinema on board the ship. "Maybe I'll just take a quick break in there and hope that no one notices", he says to himself.
So he sneaks into the theater to see the movie rolling; "Mutiny on the Bounty".
"Ah gee, I wish I was making a mutiny like those guys", he says before he falls asleep, with his head resting at the broom he holds, as he enters Dreamland.
We then cut dissolve the scene to show Woody's dream, where he's on an old ship, namely the H.M.S. Bounty.
Akin to what he did when he was awake in the present, he's swabbing the poopdeck, while he's feeling in a bad mood.
"SWAB HARDER! SWAB FASTER! SWAB BETTER!" says Wally Walrus, whipping Woody with a nine-tailed cat between each sentence.
Also screaming on the ship is the captain, a fat, bearded man also brandishing a whip which he also uses between each sentence.
"LET GO THE ANCHOR!" Crack! "LET GO AFT!" Crack! "HARD-A-PORT!" Crack! "CAST OFF THE SHEETS!" Crack! "STAND BY TO COME TO!" Crack! "DOWN HELM!" Crack! "CLOSE HAUL!" Crack! "BREAKER ASTERN!" Crack! "ROLLING BREAKER TO STARBOARD!" Crack! "HOST ALL SAILS!" Crack! "STOP SMILING!" Crack! "STOP LAUGHING!" Crack! "NO FUN ALLOWED!" Crack!
In a short while, morning becomes midday, midday becomes evening, evening becomes night, night becomes morning and a new day, with the above-mentioned whippings never stopping.
"OUR SAILS ARE DROOPING!" Crack! "CLOSE THE HAUL!" Crack! "DON'T LOSE THE WIND!" Crack! "AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE?"
"Fishing, sir", Woody says sitting on the railing, holding a fishing rod with its line going into the seawater. "Am I not allowed to fish?"
"NO!" Wally declares, whipping Woody making him drop the rod in the water. "YOU'LL EAT NOTHING BUT HARDTACK AND GRUEL, AND THAT'S THE END OF IT!"
The whole crew including Woody is trying to eat hardtack and gruel, clearly disgusted while doing so. A few crewmember are skinny their ribs are visible. During their meal most of the crew are leering over at the captain's big quarter, and you can clearly see through its window that the boatswain and the captain are having a fine dinner, with vegetables, fruits, fish, potatoes, eggs, sausages, turkey, gravy and wine.
Finally the night falls, and in the berth deck, the crew is plotting.
"It's not fair!" Woody says, standing atop a barrell, to the rest of the crew. "They do nothing but whip us making us do the hard work! They eat fine food while we almost starve! They get paid in big money but we get paid in peanuts! I've had enough! I think we should make a mutinee! Who's with me?"
"AYE!" The whole crew reply.
Woody then sneaks tippy-toe across the main deck to where the where the captain is sleeping in his quarter, in a canopy bed and wearing pajamas and a sleep mask. Standing outside his door, Woody raises his hand anticipating to knock gently – only to instead peck so violently and loudly that the captain wakes up startled and takes off his mask, to see that Woody has pecked an arc in the door, causing the lower part of the door fall inwards, making a hole that Woody now casually walks in through.
"Top of the morning to you, cap'n! Ya know, mac, it's a really nice morning, and some exercise mite make it even better. You sure look like you could use some, wat wit your big, boulbus, flabby-"
As an answer to this the captain takes his whip and cracks it at Woody while he's still talking. Except, he misses him every time, because he jumps upwards every time, looking like a cross between a jumping jack and a ballett dancer when doing so. "One! Too! Tree! Foor! Fivv!" Now the whip almost hits Woody, but instead he grabs it and swings it around forcefully, with the captain still holding the other end of the whip flying from the bed landing headfirst on the floor at the other end of the room. Woody swings it again vigorously several times with the captain pounding down like a hammer.
Woody laughs like this while jumping out like a jackhammer: "HeheheheheheheHEHEhehe he he hhehehehehehehehehe he he!"
The captain jumps up and down several times in frustration going "OOooooh!" the runs after him out the door - only to run into every single crewmember on the ship.
The captain does a "take" then goes back to normal except now he's looking very distressed. A few seconds later, he's assaulted by the crew, a big ball of dust appears, and when the dust clears away, the captain is now tied up, clearly looking unhappy. We now also see that the boatswain is also tied, looking equally grim.
"I hate you", the captain growls at the woodpecker.
Woody comes closer with his beak, anticipating to kiss him, only to bite his nose instead. "I loathe you!"
In the next scene, the other crewmembers force the boatswain and the captain to sit at the table and eat their own whips. Even after putting salt on them, they still grimace while eating the whips.
Then the two are sent away in a small dingy, reluctantly rowing away, while the crew wave at them.
"Watch out for the sharks", Woody calls out after the two. The other crewmembers laugh.
So because it was his idea to make a mutinee, Woody is now the captain, with a hat and a coat similar to the one the previous captain was wearing.
"DRIVE TO THE STARBOARD! GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD! HIT THE BRAKES! KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON!"
"Hey Woodpecker, I can't understand any of those instructions."
"Neither can I", Woody replies shaking his head.
"BLACK SAILS AHEAD!" someone calls from the crow's nest.
Black sails! Everyone knows that could only mean one thing: pirates!
"We must sail away as quickly as possible!"
"Stand by to tack ship!" The captain on board the pirate ship ordered his men. And the captain is none other than Buzz Buzzard.
"Sail faster!"
"We're sailing as fast as we can!"
But the pirates are faster and soon they're next to the Bounty, and the pirates swing over on ropes onto their ship.
A fight against the pirates ensues, with cutlasses clashing and guns blazing!
Suddenly, one of the oil lanterns on board drops on the deck, spreading a great fire, then a rain comes and puts out the fire, but the rain turns into a squall with winds and waves so big the ship threatens to go down!
"LEAVE THE SHIP!"
The pirates have no choice but to go back to their own ship, and quickly sails away over the horizon. The crew of the Bounty go down into the lifeboats and quickly row away.
Soon enough, Woody is the only one left on the ship in the raging storm holding on to his dear life!
"GET OFF!"
"NO! IT'S MY DUTY AS CAPTAIN TO STAY ONBOARD THE SHIP!"
"NO! I MEAN YOU HAVE TO GET OFF THAT MOP!"
And that's when Woody wakes up. He notices that he's not holding on to a mast but his regular mop, a mop that Wally Walrus is now holding high in the air.
"What? Oh, how silly of me, it was just a dream. Oh, Mr. Walrus!"
"Please, relax, woodpecker. Look, I want to apologize for my behaviour…"
"No, no, I'm the one who should apologize. In my mind you came off as worse than you really were. Here's to you, pal" Woody says, and kisses him, and then starts to clean again.
Wally looks at Woody now cleaning happily, down the the corridor, around a corner and out of sight. Wally then looks at you and just shrugs his shoulders.
In the next scene Woody is cleaning while marching like a cadet, with a smile on his face.
"From now I'll be happy with what I have. And be a nice woodpecker. No more will I be mean to anyone. Although, it is tempting…"
The last part he says when he spots Buzz again.
"Ha! Those morons really think I'm a rich guy! Just because I stole my ticket from that guy I killed!" He says this while making a finger gun. "How stupid can they get?"
"Oh, who am I kidding? I can't stay a nice woodpecker forever. I have to be mean to him!"
Woody walks up to Buzz and acts like a nice woodpecker. "Excuse me sir, is there anything I can do make your journey more comfortable? Perhaps pulling your seat back?"
"Sure."
Woody adjusts his seat by pulling the lever at the side of chair. This does not pull his seat back, but instead it upsets one of the springs in the chair, sending him flying with force overboard, splashing down in the seawater.
"HELP! HELP!" Buzz screams while waving his arms around in the water.
"Aw, isn't that cute? He's waving goodbye at us." Woody being a nice woodpecker, he of course waves back, just before laughing.
"Ha ha ha HA ha, ha ha ha HA ha, ha ha ha HA ha, hehehehehehehe!"
And now a shark appears, Buzz screams and swims away as fast a he can.
Iris out
THE END