"I'd give up sex for kreative kontrol!"
-Hot Snakes
Jim Halpert and the Infinite Sadness
The way Michael bolted with Free Pretzel Day energy out of his office, Pam could tell right away he'd been on YouTube, which could only mean the worst.
"Pam," Michael began, looking hideously jubilant, "could you call Jan for me. And put it on speaker."
And although she knew it would only bring pain and suffering to everyone involved, Pam complied.
As the phone rang, Michael bit his lower lip in a school boyish attempt to stave off the giggles.
"Hello?" Jan finally picked up.
"Jan," Michael struggled to say, "this is Michael."
Pause. "Hello, Michael," she sighed in exasperation.
"I'm just calling to tell you," and here he had to physically clamp his mouth shut to avoid laughing.
"Yes?" Jan asked, annoyed.
"I just wanted to tell you... I'm fucking Matt Damon," he snorted rapidly before bursting out laughing.
Jan rightly saw this as a good time to angrily hang up the phone, which in turn caused Michael to laugh hysterically. Pam looked directly into the camera and rolled her eyes.
--
Pam: I think most people know that jokes have an expiration date when they just stop being funny...
Pause.
Pam: That's usually when Michael starts hearing them for the first time.
--
"Hey, Jim," Michael shouted across the room, "I'm fucking Matt Damon!"
"Congratulations," Jim replied casually.
"Stanley!" Michael called.
"Hmm?" Stanley stirred in his fitful sleep.
"I'm fucking Matt Damon!" Michael informed him.
"Mm-hm," Stanley mumbled.
"Hey, Creed! I'm fucking Matt Damon!" Michael screamed between fits of chuckling.
"Well, uh, I'm fucking Ben Affleck," Andy chimed in.
Michael eyed the other man uncomfortably. "Andy, if you're going to do a bit, you should at least try to do it right. It's Matt Damon."
"But, I..."
Michael shh'ed him. "Don't."
--
Angela, quietly furious: Sometimes I really wonder if Michael understands the boundaries of taste.
--
Michael, using an implacable accent: Hello, I'm Samuel L. Jackson. You all know me as an actor, but I'd like to take a moment now to speak to you as a mother.
Pause.
Michael: ...Fucker.
part one.
It was a fresh, dewy morning in Scranton when the film crew arrived on the scene. As had a tendency to happen, by the time they got to the building, their work was already presenting itself before them like a horny panda.
Creed was staring in rapt fascination at a seemingly-derelict vintage automobile; tapping on the glass as though the sole occupant were a goldfish he bore an inexplicable grudge towards (which of course it wasn't) and not the corpse of a fellow human being (which of course it was). He then proceeded to cock his head to side, as if though trying to recognize the body.
When he became aware that he was being filmed, Creed abruptly (and angrily) stopped what he was doing and tried to make his way into the building as discretely as possible.
--
Creed: No, I'm not going to report finding the dead kid to the police.
He shrugs.
Creed: I'm sorry, but there are only so many bodies a guy can find before it starts getting suspicious.
--
"Dwight," Andy called as he walked through the door.
Dwight turned to face the other salesman, and was rewarded for his trouble with a punch to his face; a punch which Pam or Angela would have had no trouble shrugging off, but nonetheless managed to send Dwight staggering backwards out of his chair.
"Thou art a villain!" Andy shouted, somehow completely straight-faced.
As was tradition, a crowd formed out of nowhere to observe the brutal spectacle.
"You okay, buddy?" Jim asked as he helped Dwight off the ground.
"As if he could hurt me," Dwight attempted to give the whole thing a derisive snort, but it mixed with blood and terror, he nearly ended up choking.
"What's this all about, Andy?" Jim asked gently.
"Dwight is making fuck with my woman!" Andy roared angrily.
Dwight froze, Angela somehow went even paler and stiffer, animals bared their fangs. As one, the whole of the office internally debated whether their morbid curiosity and need for gossip outweighed their deep-seated desire to never ever ever have to so much as contemplate the idea of any of those three people even having genitals, much less using them.
"That's ridiculous," Dwight said in the single least believable tone ever employed by a man or a woman. "Angela and I barely know each other."
"Hotel!" Andy shouted, slapping a photo on the table that was as incriminating as it was horrific. "Motel!" Andy bellowed, adding an even more damning piece of photographic evidence. "Holiday Inn!" Andy concluded, adding a final nail so unquestionable that even Creed and Kevin started to feel nauseous at the sight of it.
Angela and Dwight couldn't help exchange a guilty look... then promptly turn away from each other shamefully.
Andy brought his eyes to Angela's for the first time, and amid all the pain and anger, there was a plea.
Jim was suddenly torn. Part of him wanted to do something to defuse of all of this as safely as possible for everyone concerned... but another, more cynically playful part of wanted to really stir the pot and see how far all this could really go, as he'd done with Dwight and Andy since he'd met them. It was a moral stumper, all right, and one without an easy solution.
So he decided to split the difference. "Guys, there's only one way we can settle this."
Both men turned to look at him seriously.
And then Jim said the two words he instinctively knew they would both respect and abide by: "trivia quiz."
To the surprise of no one, Dwight and Andy immediately agreed, while Angela seemed incredibly pleased with the idea of being treated like a prize to be won.
"Okay," Jim said, trying maintain a respectfully funeral tone despite clearly being incredibly amused, "each of you go to your isolation booths... Dwight to the hallway, Andy to the annex, I guess... and I'm going to ask Angela some questions."
As much as she loved him, there were times when Pam was fairly certain that Jim's childish pranks were going to murder everyone in the office at some point.
In fact, she was almost relieved when Michael popped into the room and called "Pam, can I see you in my office?"
--
Michael, shocked: Two salesmen were fighting over Angela?
Pause.
Michael: From accounting?
He pauses to grapple with this idea.
Michael: Are you sure?
--
Michael ushered Pam into a chair and closed the door behind them. "Pam," Michael began slowly, as though he were saying something terribly poignant, "you probably know that I've been trying to start a family for a while now."
"Yes," Pam nodded, hesitantly. She wished she could hope it was ungrounded, but she couldn't shake the fear that Michael was about to ask her for a couple of eggs... at the very least.
Michael returned the nod with added gravitas. "Now, a while ago I revised my NetFlicks queue to include every movie Kristen Bell ever made and..."
"Um," Pam interjected sheepishly, "are you sure this is something you want to tell me?"
"...yes," Michael said hesitantly.
Pam nodded. "And you're sure you want to make a major life decision based on a movie made by the Lifetime channel?" she asked, eying the DVD still cued up on Michael's computer.
"It's worked out for me so far," Michael replied simply.
To which Pam could only offer a jim-nod.
"Anyway, I just got this movie from NetFlicks, and it changed the way I look at the world," Michael said in hushed awe. "Kristen is a seventeen year old girl... not really, she always plays younger," Michael inserted defensively.
"Of course," Pam agreed, somehow wiggling uncomfortably while standing completely still.
Michael, however, was reassured and continued. "Anne Heche is her mother, and she is a heroin addict..."
"In the movie?" Pam asked.
Michael seemed unsure of this point. "...Yes. And in the movie, Kristen sues her mother and actually adopts all of her little brothers." At this point, Michael smiled beatifically. "And... when I saw that I realized 'I have the perfect family waiting for me, too.'"
Pam's eyes widened in abject horror. "Oh, no..."
"And they're right on the other side of that wall," Michael concluded with soft warmth.
"You want to adopt the entire office?" Pam asked, still not grappling with the reality of it.
Michael merely nodded in a manner he deemed "Christ-like, but not to a degree that would upset anyone."
"Michael, they're all legal adults," Pam argued sanely.
Michael shrugged it off. "So, adults don't have parents? There was a box for it on the employment application, Pam. These people have to have someone to call on Thanksgiving."
Despite knowing better, Pam gave one more shot at sanity. "I just don't know if we could get everyone to divorce their parents."
"They will if we have them declared unfit," Michael said certainly. "Now, this is the name of the private detective Andy recommended," Michael said, thrusting a business card in her hand. "Tell him to make sure he finds something that will look good in the courts. At least as good as heroin addiction."
Pam looked from the card to Michael in disbelief. "Are you sure this isn't something you want to handle yourself?"
Michael shook his head. "Pam, I can only keep this movie for so long before I start getting late fees from NetFlicks," he said as though it were obvious. "And if I'm going to be raising all of you, I need to learn everything I can."
Pam nodded softly and walked out the door, knowing she would find sanity on the other side.
"Okay," Jim said, tapping a pile of index cards (which were actually blank, but that didn't matter), "who... is Angela's favorite private detective?" he asked in properly pointed game show host fashion. "Is it Mannix? Barnaby Jones? Somebody say Columbo..."
Andy complied, shouting "Columbo" as loud as he could... then sheepishly shrunk into himself when all eyes turned to him.
"You don't know me at all," Angela muttered in pure, distilled hatred.
"Is it Batman?" Jim continued, undaunted.
--
Pam's eyes dart from the right side of the screen...
...to the left...
...and finally to center.
She says nothing, but there's clearly a cry for help in there.
--
The first thing Phyllis noticed on her way back from her trip to the dentist was the young man slumped over in his car with his head on the steering wheel.
The second thing she noticed was that vandals seemed to have absconded with the lower half of his face.
Her first instinctive reaction (after the fear and trembling and revulsion were out of her system) was to run to the security desk and call the police; that's just what good people did when faced with dead boys in their day-to-day life: call the police.
And she was on her way to do just that...
...When she noticed the young man's car was parked in a spot marked "Reserved for Vance Refrigeration Customers Only."
And so, for the first time in her life, Phyllis to resolved quietly forget what she'd seen, sit back down at her desk, and tell no one about what she had seen.
Ever.