s
a Full House tale
s
UNSTOPPOLIS
- CHAPTER THE FIRST -
in which,
John Stamos Awakens as Jesse Katsopolis to an Image of the Beach Boys Above Him and Thinks Warmly and Fondly of Them, Before Going Downstairs to Breakfast.
or,
Awakening and a Quickening.
John Stamos awoke as Uncle Jesse nearly immediately as the first peach light of new morning eked through. Flanked on either side of the room's only window: two real (yet un-played) electric guitars-squires-hung, like intended parenthesis. The window was now becoming fully lit, and it gently, yet increasingly, glowed. The two flanking guitars seemed to be suspended as if they were being heled up by a heavenly host or, but could only be perceived by mortals as entering morning light.
Uncle Jesse lain there on his back in his bed: a lavender, billowy combination of plush and down. He stirred, half awake, yet a third still in dreamy sleep. Fuzzy images lingered before his mind of night's imaginations. All quickly fizzled, but some acute details still remained: a large, endless stone wall; a face in the clouds with an ominous warning; a dog who could talk but saying something he could not understand; slowly, he opened his red parched eyes and blinked twice in quick secession and the dream world seemed so absurd, and it simultaneously evaporated. Except, for those eternal pieces of dreams that ultimately mean nothing but never leave us, that we all know and have.
Then, looking straight up directly above him: the Beach Boys. Their image: a poster affixed upon the ceiling above the bed.
Uncle Jesse laid under that poster. Staring up at it. Eyeing it, intently for a while, without moving and hardly breathing. Gazing up at the five ageing Boys: their faces like wetted leather. Their cheeks and necks clumpy and puffed out. And you know what? John Stamos liked that. Looking at those sagging men, John Stamos felt a peculiar percolating excitement, a warm spreading in his loins, that one might argue bordered on arousal.
He knew it was creepy, and way weird, to just love the Beach Boys so much that just looking at a poster of them (or even affixing one directly above his bed so that they were the first thing he saw in the morning and the last thing he saw before falling asleep every night) would stir such feelings, so Uncle Jesse rolled over to his side and made sure that he was no longer looking up at it. Starring now at his jukebox, he could think of nothing but the Beach Boys songs that were in there. That was no good right now. So, with all his might, he force-jammed his mind into thoughts of other things-like chips or various breakfast cereals or seldom used but oft had seasonings (like cumin and thyme) and ointments. But still, stimulating thoughts of the Beach Boys remained. Then, as he used his utmost willpower to do so, he morphed those unacceptable thoughts into fantastically erotic images of one, Rebecca Donaldson. In fact, whenever he was having increasingly titillating thoughts of the Beach Boys, or of Elvis, or of Steve, or of anyone or anything else for that matter, he would always try to replace them with way-more-normal thoughts of Becky-and normal people would concur, knowing that an "90s-ish hot girl" Rebecca Donaldson (with her Vegeta-esque shoulder pads and hipless, shapeless overly-wide pantsuits) was a far-more-normal kind of thing to be turned on about, specially in real life and especially on television.
He sat up. He stretched out his arms: fully and upwards with his head slanted back and slightly sideways-inadvertently imitating a crucifix-and inhaled deeply through his nostrils. He then recoiled every stretched ligament to a relaxed, loosely dangling state, and sighed with the deep satisfaction. He turned ninety-degrees leftward and sat with his hands on his knees and his bare feet flat on the carpeted floor. He looked around the room a bit more. Looking over at his phony plastic jukebox again. It was really stupid. He looked down at his bed. It was stupid, with it's naturally pushy and sexually assertive-yet still, desperate-leopard print sheets and mountains and valleys of black and lavender. Those don't really work, do they? Nobody really likes those. He knew it was all made up. But of course it was! He felt though still, deep down inside, that the story was still good. "It is as good as needs to be, for what it is trying to be." He always said, at least to himself.
Looking around the room some more: his head movements like a zooed panda bear, with an expression just as content, and simultaneously dismayed. Everything he saw was so Jesse Katsopolis it wasn't even funny. Really, it was all a testament to his delusional, faux/ failed egos. Just thin, plastic imitations-broken pieces-examples of what could've been-or once was. An adorable pink bunny, framed and set apart clearly from all the other bric-a-brac, stood out. It was the sole survivor of an earlier time when its kind surrounded the room. The cutesy bunny was by far the least cornball thing on the walls. And John Stamos could barely look at it. Instead, he looked up at his cheap Squire guitars at either side of the now brilliantly alit window. They weren't even good guitars. They were crap that he could barely afford. It was such a beautiful day outside.
At last, his eyes found the black-and-white portrait of himself. Jesse Katsopolis, in all his moussed up, primmed, John Stamos glory, and compacity, however limited or not so. Standing, and without looking, he shuffled into his shippers and left the room. He went downstairs. Soon he was in the kitchen, on the show-the kitchen on Full House. He looked over at the island. It was slightly off center (as nearly all kitchen islands are) and standing over it adjacent, Danny was making breakfast. He had two frying pans going, one on low-heat with beaten, yellow eggs surely forming into fluffy curds, and one high-heat one that crackled loudly with rapidly darkening and curling bacon. He could smell it too. He smelled the bacon. It was hickory bacon. The hickory flavor was in the air, and Jesse wanted to eat that bacon.
" 'Morning, Jess," Danny was in a good mood this morning.
"Good morning, Danny,"
"Yes," Bob Saget said, as he turned the eggs that were quickly solidifying.
Then Comet entered.
- CHAPTER THE SECOND -
in which,
The Family Dog Commandeers the Narrative and We Get a Brief-albeit a peek- Look Into a Dog's Mind.
or,
Barking Me In Rap City
"I'm Comet, the rocking dog!
"Yo!
"The name's Comet D and I'm the fam' dog telly!
"I'm half Ol' Yeller!
"And a third 'Old Nelly!'
" Got to get hip!
"With my man, Uncle Jesse!
"Joey's not funny!
"He's the fool I pity!
"Give it!
"Give, give it to me!
"Give it!
"Give, give it to me!
"Yeah!
"Give it to me!
"Give, give it!
"Give it to me!
"Give, give it!
"Yeah!
\"Give it to me!
"Give give it it! Give it to me!
"Give it! Give it!
"Give, give it!
"Yeah!"
All that happened in Comet the dog's mind as soon as he entered the room. Just like all dogs do. There will be no further comment on the inner thoughts of Comet in this story.
- CHAPTER THE THIRD -
in which,
Two Men Eat Breakfast Together and One Wonders About the Other and the Other Knows It.
or,
A Breakfast Hunch
At the start of Chapter Three, Danny Tanner was just about finishing up cooking breakfast. He took a prearranged diner fork and carefully worked it under the crinkling strip of bacon. He lifted it out of the jittering pan in one careful motion. He bobbed the dripping bacon strip up and down methodically with the sudden acute rhythm of a grandfather-clock. Up and down. Up and down. Drip, drip, drip into the screaming pool of boiling fat, sounding like loud TV static. Carefully, he then moved the now dripless bacon across the counter, not by moving his arm (which he kept perfectly straight at a high and intense position and continence right at a right angle perpendicular with right under his chest), but by turning his whole body in a robotic-yet smooth-motion at the waist. He then draped the bacon delicately on a paper towel-clad serving plate, mingling it with the several other already cooked strips. Coy, he then looked at Jesse and grinned at this display of command, but his smile did not seem natural and seemed to be one that was not set by real happiness, but by an automatic assumption of what would be perceived as appropriate action-or, a following of outside expectation, or programming. Thus, furthering the impression or at least imitation of an automaton.
Jesse sat at the counter in the center stool, like he always did when it was just him and Danny. He looked down at the countertop for a moment. He then looked up, ponderously at Danny. Did he kill my sister? John Stamos had long suspected Bob Saget of being a serial killer. His first inkling of this possibility, had been in the way that Danny obsessively cleaned. Serial killers are often, if not always, obsessive about cleaning. At least, that's what John Stamos thought, or maybe someone had once told him, or maybe he had just read it somewhere. Maybe it wasn't true. But Danny Tanner-the dad on Full House-was a dangerous person, one way or another. Jesse Katsopolis was sure about that.
"Do you want some bacon, Jess?"
Jesse continued to look at Danny and tried to keep his face neutral, as he knew he needed to and, although he knew inside himself that he felt otherwise, he heard himself say out loud. "No, just coffee for me. I've got to get downstairs, into the studio."
"Another session with the Rippers today?"
"Everyday, Danny. Everyday."
Danny's grin grew wider. He nodded, characteristically the way he always does when he knows that You know he is working his way in-or at least trying to.
Jesse nodded, smiling back at Danny he held a paralleled grin, signaling as needed that he meant no challenge. He did strain, a bit, to form at first and hold the reciprocating muscular action. In the end, his smile barely formed, but it was there for Danny to positively react to. Mostly though, he pondered deeply the secrets that Bob Saget kept tucked away, under that small layer of superficial, endlessly congenial facade.
"Even if he did kill my sister," Jesse Katsopolis thought, "He is still letting me live in this nice Full House. He's still letting me live-rent free-in this multi-million dollar quasi-modern Victorian sub-mansion."
By the late 1980s, the cost of loving in megalopolises coast-to-coast had really ballooned to nigh untenable levels. This was especially true in Southern California. San Francisco, due presumedly to a series of economic and political factors and failures, was among, if not, the worst of them all-and this was back then! Housing-all of it absurd looking Seussian curvaceous, rowed monsters-was so inaccessibly expensive, that the unobtainable homes outnumbered the ever growing destitute, but those numbers where close and shrinking fast. Costs were getting so high that people often made jokes like, "soon nobody will be able to afford anything in this town," and everyone agreed. Whatever the reason, Jesse Katsopolis-a no-talent, pretty boy, hack musician, who only sang lame Beach Boys covers-could never, even in a million-and-one years of looking like John Stamos, afford to live on his own, like a man, in San Francisco. No way. Of course, it would have been easy enough to become one of the few billion homeless people wandering around there, but John Stamos knew that nothing easy was ever worth doing. So he was doing this instead.
In loud gulps, Jesse slogged down the bitter black coffee. Finishing off an entire mug's worth in three deep pulls.
"Easy, Jess," cautioned the watching Danny, his thin voice only slightly deceptively domineering and maybe mockful. "Not so fast. Don't choke. The basement's not going anywhere."
"Gotta get down there," Jesse replied, used to Danny's tone and games. Looking down, still into his now empty coffee mug, "I've got so many ideas for what I want to do next! The music I want to create!"
"Another Beach Boys cover?"
"Yes!" Jesse snapped back, getting carried away, as if the question was dumb and obvious and a little insulting and also as if he had a sudden reoccurring realization that he needed to resist the assertive one, and reassert his will. "The music I will create! My ideas! Rerecordings of all the old Beach Boys songs! My music!"
Danny grinned even deeper, almost inhumanly, and nodded some more, equally unsettling and disorientating, closing his eyes not ignoring but forgiving Jesse's burst of flippantness. "Just keep it up, Jess," he said, "You just keep going on that path. Follow your dreams. It's bound to make sense, someday."
Four eyes-two sets of two-stared into each other, acknowledging the tension and the unacceptable struggle for independence. But all in due time.
Finished now with his breakfast of one cup of coffee, Jesse got up and exchanged a few more la-dee-dee la-dee-da pleasantries with Danny, who responded in kind. We can play these little games. Jesse then turned to face the basement steps: the crest of the subterrain suburban submerged stairwell was only perceptible in the limited. Only its peak steps and the highest ends of the severely slanted banisters were able to be seen, nearly all the steps plunged down, unseen into nothingness. For a moment, that seemed like a long time, John Stamos did not move and only looked straight ahead at the top of the stairs. Some more time passed. Then, at last moving towards them, he stepped one foot in front of the other, over, towards the basement. When he got there, he didn't go down right away. He looked back for just a moment, at Danny's creepy, grinning, nodding face. Yeah yeah, I'm going, he thought, and pantomimed with his eyes, as Bob Saget gazed back and mouthed eerily: Get, get down there. Go on. You get down there. Down in the basement. Go on, Get down. Yeah.
- CHAPTER THE FOURTH-
in which,
The Creature Joey Gladstone is Introduced In His Lair Below the House. Also, He and Jesse Katsopolis Write a Song Together For a Client.
or,
The Jingle-Jangle of Joey and Jesse
Down in the basement there was a hatch in the middle of the floor that could be latched locked, but seldom was. Beneath that hatch lived the creature, Joey Gladstone. Joey had lived down in the darkness for so long that his eyes had adapted to seeing in the pitch black perfectly. This transformation happened gradually over time, but quicker than you might think for such a radical metamorphosis: a few weeks. Whenever he opened his eyes in the darkness now, a bright yellow beam of light projected from each eyeball. This of course made no sense at all, since he went upstairs and interacted normally with everyone else in the daylight all the time. Still, when he was down here, in the cellar-really, his lair-his eyes beamed out into the black and murk like two searching spotlights.
Long ago, Joey Gladstone had tunneled the cellar out from its original dimensions and turned the whole space into a slight labyrinth. Joey Gladstone knew it backhandedly. He could, almost certainly, navigate the bizarre and seemingly random, jutting passageways and dead-ends with animalistic ease. Yes, with his glowing eyes, but even if he were suddenly stricken blind and enveloped in ubiquitous darkness. Everyone else would inevitably and invariably find themselves hopelessly, and terrifyingly, lost. It was therefore universly known to all concerned, that one must always bring down with them a blazing torch or, as was much more common, a flashlight (which is ironically what the British call a torch) or else, merely hope to wonder and wander. Joey Gladstone couldn't be more at home. Jesse Katsopolis, who introduced the brilliant pillar of light that now blazed bright open entrance to the pit, lit neither torch, nor flashlight. He didn't bother actually finding his footing and holding onto the rickety ladder that led down into what looked like a blackhole. He merely ducked his mulleted head into the brilliant column and started out into the opaque, subterranean abyss. As he had done many times before. So he felt far more confident in doing so than the average layman.
With a booming voice that echoed in the spacious caverns, Jesse called for Joey.
There was a small lake that Joey Gladstone had discovered, embedded in the underground that he dug out to surprising dimensions, before he found that he could dig no further. Actually, Joey lived on a small craggy island in the middle of that underground lake. This was a unique and totally original living situation that Joey Gladstone enjoyed. Nothing else was like this in any story.
The creature Joey Gladstone was on his island now, laying on his back, nearly naked. Only a tattered Detroit Red Wings jersey that was tied backward by its fraying arms adorned his flabby body and only, barely, covered his loins (a loincloth). When Joey heard Jesse calling out for him in the dark, it made him smile.
"Yo! Jess!" Joey echoed back, "good morning!"
Jesse called out something else, but Joey was already shouting, "Hold on! I'll come over there!" He then crawled across the flat rock like an oversized, overweight waterdog and slinked onto the small raft, resting on the black water. Taking Hold of the raft like someone would take hold of you when you don't want them to, he laid across the raft, belly down, straddling it with his enwrapping limps constricting. He held the raft like this for such a moment, that the inanimate object seemed to spontaneously (as if by necessity) begin to produce a primitive feeling of awareness, that was limited to the very real feeling of being violated, and somehow-infinitesimally, however undeniably-the collected pieces of resisting wood squirmed in repulsiveness. Even inching the raft out into the water, just a little bit by this miraculous action.. Joey restrained and effectively raped the small wooden raft and gained full control of it. With one long, apish arm he paddled himself across the oil colored water. Soon, he reached the other side. His long skinny purple arms grabbed hold of the base of the ladder underneath Jesse's face. The outline of Jesse's mullet was really all that was perceptible, and it was casting a gigantic silhouette upon the cavern wall-like one that would be on the wall of a room of a children's sleepover.
The creature Joey climbed up the ladder then and he emerged in the regular basement. He was fully clothed and combed and standing with his hands on his hips, smiling and nodding at Uncle Jesse.
"Should we get started?"
For the last year or so, Joey Gladstone had collaborated with Jesse Katsopolis on writing advertising jingles. Joey Gladstone, as it turned out, was a surprisingly cromulent lyricist, and just the kind of nominal poet, that Jesse Katsopolis needed for doing this kind of secular work. This afternoon, Uncle Jesse would work on new material (various Beach Boys covers i.e. "I Get Around", "Good Vibrations", "Little Deuce Coup", etc.) with the Rippers, like he did most all afternoons. But the mornings were always reserved for Joey.
"Yes!." Uncle Jesse responded.
"Let's get to work then!"
Within less than a half-hour, they had their latest masterpiece complete and on paper.
When your goose is loose
And you don't know what to do
You've tried every goose trap
And set every geese clamp
To no success
Don't you wonder
What tried your ganders
What makes them wander
What's all the success?
Just get a 'Goose Grab'
The 'Goose Grab'
And go ahead and put 'em
In the 'Goose Bag'
Yeah, the 'Goose Bag'
Get the 'Goose Grab'
With the 'Goose Bag'
'Goose Grab & Bag'!
When it was finished, the two men sat there huddled around the small Toys 'R' Us bought Casio keyboard and just sang their jingle a few times together. Harmonizing imperfectly. The jingle was good. Uncle Jesse thought, it was maybe perhaps the most acute tune he and Joey had ever written. Goose Gates, Gadgets, and More... would surely have no problem moving the Goose Grab 'N' Bag, once it was backed by this ditty. Still, as John Stamos sat there singing the expertly emotive words and banging out what he knew were the right chords. It didn't feel right. He knew the song was as good as it possibly could be and that it was better than any other work he had ever done. Yet he remained unsatisfied. He was unfulfilled within. John Stamos knew he would not find satisfaction and fulfillment down in the basement, writing stupid jingles with Joey Gladstone about things that don't make any sense like the Goose Grab 'N' Bag. No. That won't do for much longer. Instead, he would find "it" in the basement alone. Without Joey. Without anyone else. He, John Stamos, would find it, or his name was not Jesse Katsopolis.
- CHAPTER THE FIFTH -
in which,
Danny's Daughters Arise and Join the Rest of the Family for Breakfast.
or,
The Sisters Tanner
Around this time, the girls upstairs began to rise. The Tanner sisters: three blondes, not non-fond of resolute truth. The three of them looked similar enough, for You to believe they were actually sisters. Of course, they were just three or four blond girls that They found for this purpose. The two older girls-who shared a room-usually awoke around the same time. Except Stephanie (the middle child) actually, sometimes arose slightly earlier. Almost always, as it was, except for today. On this day, D. J.-Donna Jo-woke up first and looked across the room and was surprised to see Stephanie still sleeping.
"Steph! Wake up, it's nearly noon!"
Stephanie grumbled, rolling to-and-froe. Then, laying supine while twisting her small fists in her eye sockets, she yawned deeply, as young children often do when waking.
"Stephanie!" D. J. shouted again, "Come on! We overslept!"
"Stop shouting!" Stephanie growled back. Then, after a few seconds of incoherent morning grumbling, she said, "It's Saturday! You idiot!"
"I don't matter none!" fired back D. J., but in a calm and mature, assertive voice, "Saturday or not, we can't just sleep the day away. Dad'll be yelling for us soon, anyway. Then, he'll be the one shouting!"
I'm getting up! I'm getting up!" Stephanie snarled back.
"Girls!" their father hollered up the stairs. He was shouting.
Stephanie, dismayed when she heard the shouting, exclaimed, "How rude!", uttering the only catchphrase in the work.
D. J: blonde and prettyish, but too wide and too tall to do her angles any justice, got herself out of bed and stood there. Just for a moment. Thinking. She thought, "I am myself, yet, all the others around me are somehow, in a way, me too. All the others cannot be themselves and I cannot be me, except that we are all together and each other. Each is willing to do the opposite. Still, I become myself and never them, and they have never once been myself at all, it's true." She thought all of this, repeating this soliloquy loudly, over and over again but only within herself and only for a mere several seconds in totality. But still, becoming near frantic within her head as the phrase crescendoed-and then repeated itself again and again within her, as a mantra. Then D. J. thought, "I shall go downstairs now, to breakfast with my father."
Kitty-corner to her sisters', the youngest, Michelle, had a room all to herself. Actually, there were two Michelles. You always saw one and one was really the both of them. But really, there were two, two Michelles, but no one could tell, except for America.
Now, Michelle was Uncle Jesse's favorite and no one, not even her two older sisters, seemed to mind. The affection Uncle Jesse and Michelle had for each other was universally seen as endlessly endearing. No one was jealous or irritated by it. Everyone couldn't get enough of the sweetness.
Years ago-back when all this started-the girls all had separate rooms. When the time came that Uncle Jesse was going to move in and needed a room of his own, Michelle's original room was ceded to him. Yet, it was D. J. who really sacrificed. For it was determined that Michelle, still an infant, needed a room all to her own. So, alas, D. J.'s personal space was thus compromised, as Stephanie was brought into what was once, her room alone. This living situation for the girls had-despite occasional great protest from D. J-remained like this, to this very day. Nevertheless, and despite maintaining her own room (albeit moving to the considerably smaller quarters, so that Uncle Jesse could have the somewhat larger living-space) Michelle was a ham, at first, at the change. When the day came to make the transition, the near-toddler Michelle played the part of the displaced expatriate well. She sat for hours in her new room silent and facing the wall. Her small arms crossed in protest. These feelings however soon subsided and things neutralized soon enough. Eventually, everything soon seemed regular and almost as if this was the way things had always been To help matters, at least for Michelle, who Uncle Jesse loved the most, he preserved and framed the lasting relic of the Michelle's former room: the single, cutesy pink bunny rabbit, the last of its kind that once encircled the walls.
Michelle sat up now. She swung her little legs to the side of the bed and dangled her feet over the edge (not even coming close to touching the ground). The blonde spiral of her ribboned back hair sprang too and froe as she moved, but remained in several immaculately tight, compressed circles, and despite having been slept and rolled around on all the night before. She had gone to sleep last night completely in her regular clothes and with her ribbons and such, still done up in her hair. Even still, after a night full of tossing and turning, the toe-headed child looked lovely and adorable, if not still terribly sleepy. She stepped down to the floor and automatically performed a deep pandiculation.
She headed downstairs, and soon she was among them.
"Did you sleep well, Michelle?" her father asked.
Little Michelle looked over at her father. "Why even ask me that, isn't me being her enough?"
Her father glared, but said nothing.
D. J., sitting beside Michelle and eating toast, said next, "One more day; one more hour; one and only one lifetime."
"That's right," said her father, "and one lifetime can be determined-cut short, even-by so many, even a singular, thing."
Danny Tanner was still staring at the impudent D. J., when Michelle said...
"Why would anyone say anything so weird? Why would you not just say normal things, and think normal thoughts? What advantage does anyone gain from being so..." she searched her words carefully, yet ultimately, astutely, "cryptic," she said, aptly, at last.
"Cryptic?" her father challenged, with a laugh, " No," he specified, "I know exactly what she means," still smiling, still staring and smiling at D. J.
They sat. All of them in a moment of speaking silence, only the sound of the ting and clang of them sheepishly working on finishing their breakfast. Except for Stephanie. Stephanie did not come downstairs that morning. Where does Stephanie go when no one is watching?
"Today, I will be me and no one else," D. J. finally said, "Myself. There is no one inside of me but me and me only."
Bob Saget smiled and nodded, "Yes. Yes Deej, that's right. And today you will find exactly what you go out looking for."
The rest of the breakfast went uneventful.
- CHAPTER THE SIXTH -
in which,
John Stamos Laments, and Internalizes His Situation and Remembers His and Danny's Past, Does it Do Any Good? Who Knows...
or,
Tomorrow Never Grows, Tomorrow Never Shows, Tomorrow
Downstairs, Uncle Jesse could hear and was-as usual-disrupted by all this foolishness. It was dumb. What the heck were they even talking about? They were destroying his concentration. John Stamos is easily distracted. Oh! And now they're all just stomping down here. This is great! There's Danny. He's a total frickin' weirdo. Fifteen years ago he meets my sister, Pam, at Gudger College and, the next thing I know, he was just everywhere. Just ruining every event with his outbursts of Tourette's level profanity. He thought he was funny. And some people told him he was funny. But only to see what insane thing he would do next. Danny was totally off the wall in those days. I didn't like him. Not many people back then actually did like him. And Pam hated him. Every other word out of his mouth was either the F word, or the N word, or "your mother _", or something like that. The sound of his voice too and the way he looks-especially the way he looked back then. He's got one of those faces, you know? Like, 'this guy's not a serial killer but-this guy could totally be a serial killer, for sure-faces.' With those little beady, creepy eyes of his. That, Satan's own, crooked nose that seems to have literally given birth to every nasty, wart-covered, jagged hook nose throughout human history. And that ominous, almost demonic, Caligulan smile. He was hiding something. It was hardly not concealed at all. Just under the surface. It was easy to see, to those that were looking, like John Stamos.
Still somehow, despite all this, despite all the warning signs and obvious red flags- before I knew it-Danny had conned his way into a date with Pam. Girls often date guys that they hate, especially if the guy is conning them and it is really obvious. I didn't like it, but I thought that it would just go away on its own, like you always hope stupid things like that do, but it never actually happens. By the time I realized that there was a very real chance that Danny Tanner could become a permanent presence and influence in Pam and subsequently, my own life, it was cliched too late And despite my best efforts-and I made many, desperate and boisterous efforts on this subject in those days-soon, they were, in fact, dating regularly. I kept on telling Pam, "Hey! This guy's a weirdo! You do not want to be involved with this guy! You need to get away!" It was true, but, of course, she just rolled off her back like water beads off a duck's pelt. She kept on telling me, "'s all right, s' all right, It'll be alright. I'll be alright. Hush now. I know what I'm doing."
Now, here's D. J., full-toothed, grinning at me with her serving plate sized moon face. Yes, okay, I see you. I see you. I hear you, D. J.. And Stephanie, stage-right, droning right into my ear.
Uncle Jesse's eyes rolled and, taxingly, rested on each one of them: Danny-D. J.-Michelle-Stephanie-Michelle. "Get out of here!" he groaned to himself, "P-lease!"
However, in that moment of frustration and angst, little Michelle, in all her preciousness and sweetness, climbed up in her Uncle Jesse's lap. "Alright, alright," he capitulated, letting the child on his knee and holding her little hips, endearingly.
"Jess we're just so darn happy to see you and see and be around you every single day." Danny said, and his words could be heard, but hardly accepted with their mixture of erratic tone, exaggerated grinning and inconsistent body language.
"Yes, but...," Jesse began to say, but Danny interrupted.
"Hey!" Bob Saget barked, instantly silencing John Stamos.
Staring right at Jesse, the corners of Danny's mouth pulled back, showing his many sharp teeth. He had big teeth. The teeth seemed like they were too big for his big mouth. "Hey!" He barked again. Leaning in. His gigantic toothed bill just inches away for Jesse's face.
"What? Alright!" Jesse finally snapped back.
"That rhymes!: Danny chortled, nearly choking himself with satisfaction.
"Rh-?"
"Jesse and just! Jesse and just!" Then, Danny suddenly started to sing:
Jesse and just!
Jesse and just!
Whoa, ohh ohh
Jesse and just...
"Just like a song, huh, Jess? You like writing songs, don't you Jess? Write that song! 'Jesse and Just', yeah!" Danny belted, his Cheshire grin never ceasing as he stared, looking like empty glass bottles into Jesse's eyes, but not really into his eyes, more like: just into his wincing face. Danny stared int and past Jesse's eyes.
'Jesse and Just?' that doesn't even make sense! That doesn't even mean anything! That doesn't even rhyme really at all!
When I was a little boy growing up in Greece, I used to have a friend named Nico. Niko lived a few hectares down the road and was always scrapped across the knees, bloodily, yet fearless and ready for tomorrow. That was the old country and that was usually how it was. It wasn't like nest-door neighbors here in America: one top of each other. Every chance I could I would get on my zyrlecycle and pump on down the dirt road with my little weak arms. Niko would usually already be there standing outside waiting for me. "Niko! Niko!" I would yell and he would run to me and although he was only running and I was riding, pumping and huffing as fast and hard as I could, he would always run light and whistling wind and catch up to me long before I would ever reach his yard.
"Don't worry, Jesse. Don't try so hard. Stop yourself now and then and enjoy life!" he would say. I would always just laugh as I flicked another domino down on the table, or flung another stick onto the campfire, or pulled myself to a higher tree branch. Niko always put me at ease with how easy it all seemed to him.
Years later, we came to America. Pam had come over two years earlier with our parents and she met Niko and I at the airport when we first arrived in our new country. Pam was a pretty successful marketing agent in those days and she helped me get my very first job in advertising here in San Francisco. It was a great time: those old days. I had hoped that Pam would marry Niko. But, Niko turned out not to be real. He was just someone I had been imagining this whole time. This was all really random and confusing and really hard to follow. What to remember is, Niko was not real. He was made up the whole time. When Pam found out that I had been making up a whole other person my whole life and not realizing it until now, she really freaked out. For a little while we didn't even talk. She and Danny started having kids and I started getting used to Niko not being real. We saw each other sparingly in those days, and it was really painful for me. I suppose it would've gotten better on it's own with time, but one day, suddenly, Danny killed Pam and hid her body-or so John Stamos thought. Either way, Pam was dead-Niko was not real-and Pam is dead. Danny Tanner is real.
"Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse!" Stephanie blared as she yanked on his shirt sleave.
"What? Uncle Jesse exasperated, pushing her small arms down,
"quit pulling in my shirt! Stretch out the neck."
D. J. postured herself in the most volitional way-bracing her big feet shoulder length apart and her intensified voice sounding like the police through a megaphone. Her hands speaking, like dicing knives. "Steph, please!" she shouted, "Uncle Jesse! I need you drove me to the library, to study with Kimmie, p-lease! And , I need to be there before two. There's a presentation, or a class, or a something going on then and no one will be able to use the computers by then."
"Noo Uncle Jesse!" Stephanie yelled, "I need you to help me collect leaves at the park for my school project! I said you promised!" her abjective, shrill voice all but seizing the attention-achieving its objective.
"Girls, girls!" their father piped in. Then, with an incredible look of darkness and malevolent intensity, his black and white eyes skewered into Jesse, beaming lasers if checkmate and sadism. "You'll take these girls," he took a few steps closer to Jesse, "anywhere they need to go. Won't you, Jess?"
Jesse swallowed hard, like a cartoon character. He responded softly, "yes Danny."
Danny just starred. He never broke his gaze-like a viper. His unblinking eyes, black like street tar. Jesse could feel his unexplained and inconsistent dark power. He felt like a charmed cobra, entranced by a daring magician.
I once walked along a crescent beach at sunset. The sky was like a rare, collectable marble with an unusual pattern of crisscrossing oranges and sizzling, swirling reds and browns. The air was clear and clean, like primordial water, and breathing tasted so so good, I just sat down Indian-style in the warm cushion of golden sand with my eyes closed, breathing. The intoxication of contentment over coming all earthly woes.
There was a group of teenagers some distance away on some rocks out in the water. They were far away and, although they were talking very loudly, I couldn't make out everything that they were saying. I could tell though, that the group was tormenting one of them. I couldn't make out specific words. I could really only sense the usually hurtful teenage words, like "fat ass," and "faggot" being tossed out into the otherwise, peaceful ocean breeze.
The sun was setting quickly. There was no blue left, now. The whole sky had turned to oranges and reds and the sun was a heavy maroon disk that hung low in the far sky and did not hurt to look at. The waves petted the beach sands gently, like how a child pets a baby animal and the soothing roar it made sounded like a dotting mother hushing her child back to sleep.
Glittering streaks of purple, amber and yellow drifted across the beach, linked with the gradually imposing sea breeze. The distant sound of the cutting word "ugly" suddenly shattered the serenity and my attention was drawn back to the far off teenage group. I tried to tune them out and focus on the beautiful place I was and the marvelous sunset, but those kids ruined it. It's not so much people that ruin everything as much as it's young people that do. It was a beautiful moment in the natural world for me and everyone-but they ruined it, as stupid young people often do.
"Sing a song with me, Uncle Jesse," said Michelle, looking up up with her overcoming blue eyes.
Uncle Jesse was immediately responseless, apart from a slight, genial smile that he turn up his cracked, saddened lips. Then he reached out with his creamsicle soft fingertips he began to play some gentle chords on the keyboard. Then Jesse started to sing, and soon, Michelle was singing along to most of the words. Together they sang. Her sisters looked on with somewhat oblivious, feigned admiration. but still seemed immensely bored with hearing that same song that that had heard so many times.
Woke up today
Feeling a certain way
What a different feeling
Feeling happy
Walking out the door
Who could ask for more
And all the people all around can tell
That I'm feeling happy.
Their voices leaked down below and the unseen Joey lifted his slimy head up in the dark and tilted up toward the trickling song. Flaring his large, bestial nostrils, taking in the palpable dak sent. He stayed there-right underneath them-for a little while after the the singing was finished, listening all the while, hearing the perfectness of the adult/ child harmony and taking in the lingering sent and taste un the sung into air that made him very hungry.
-CHAPTER THE SEVENTH-
in which,
The Girls Are Dropped Off at the Surreal San Francisco Public Library, and Nothing is Ever Really the Same Again After That.
or,
An Interesting Escapade of Intellectual Endurance
The San Francisco Public Library was a new building at the brief intersection of Walnut Cherry and Elmer Grand Ave. It was a behemoth, crammed into the space of a little corner of a tiny etched cross-hair on a lens. Just imagine that.
The newly built library overwhelmed and overflowed its location. The far end from the entrance, that overhung the passing highway, was tumored with absurdly sized and stacked, overlapping buttresses that added nothing but perplexity to the structure-like Frank Lloyd Wright run amok. Even during construction, once the incomprehensible and formless contrariety began to take mind-boggling form, people in cars approaching from either direction would gird up in apprehension at the mere sight of the sudden, insane structure that seemed to come out of nowhere and spill out into the street. Noting was sensible and everything seemed awkward, either oversized or undersized or in the wrong place.
Even John Stamos, who had been here several times, had to suppress the rush of anxiety as he squeezed onto the ramp of the never familiar, always terrible, library parking-lot. The ramp was was too narrow and it seemed like it would not be used for both coming and going traffic; but it was. There was always another car coming from the opposite way whenever anyone was trying to enter or leave. This resulted in an impassable, insufferable situation, that repeated itself on the side of this busy highway, time and time again: straddling the ramp nearly motionless, twitching at each other, locked and lost in a seemingly endless and tormenting unendurable agony, that could and should go on forever, but surely only ever ends do to a grand rule of the universe that supersedes all situations and predicaments, specifically to correct uncorrectable stupid things such as this: invariably, after a finite time that however seemed always to be infinite, the coming-and-going cars awkwardly found their way around each other, like rival crocodiles uneasily making their way around each other in the Nile (if there ever even was such a thing). After what was always too long a time for anyone involved, everyone went along, shuddering, but otherwise acting as if a regular thing had happened to them, or had been explained to them.
Today, Jesse Katsopolis in Danny Tanner's burgundy Astro van was no different. A white Honda Accord-perhaps sensing it could sneak past the elongated van due to its acute size-turned suddenly onto the ramp and tried to maneuver its way out, just as Uncle Jesse was attempting to maneuver his was in. The two vehicles equally tried in vain to hug the edge and give the other ample room to get by, but since they were brought together in such limited space-like sand. fighting to get through an hourglass neck-the outcome seemed in that singular, everlasting moment, impossible to achieve. They nearly collided. Both drivers leaned on their horns and together produced a jarring mechanical wailing that sounded like maybe a ship coming too quickly into harbor.
"Look out, Uncle Jesse!" D. J. cried.
John Stamos glanced to her briefly and rolled his eyes, and D. J. understood and felt silly. Then, somehow, as if from a source Divine (it would have to be), the congested ramp parted, and the two cars sailed on their own separate ways and the driver of each exhaled exuberantly in relief. The exiting Honda was free. The carefree open roads of San Francisco awaited them at their driving pleasure. For Uncle Jesse, the challenge of the San Francisco Public Library parking-lot was just beginning. John Stamos was as well-prepared for this as he could be. He had done this several times. Still, looking out over the nonsense and frustration that was this parking-lot made him quiver, if only internally. He strained his mental grip and flexing prowess. Another car was now trying to come in behind him and with just as much if not more frustration and tension, was now blaring on their horn in a primal, animalistic form of desperation, the only act any organism could muster under the infuriating circumstances. Uncle Jesse kept moving forward, but only very cautiously. Like some medieval carnival gauntlet, the parking-lot in front of him was laid out in series of hazards and obstacles. Haphazardly arranged pylons scattered throughout the lot and had to be wrestled with. Sudden, unseen dips into chasms always filled with rainwater where around, what seemed, like every angle.
Such a desperate struggle. You couldn't just drive up to the library entrance. A specified rout was set up (like traffic cones are when simulating a residential area during a driving test). Navigating through bizarre twists and turns, leading one on a safari tour of the entire parking-lot, while the actual building stood and mocked mere yards away.
Finally, he got there. He rolled up to the front of the library and wiped the thickening sweat from his brow. The giant van door slid open and the girls got out.
"You're going to get a ride home with the Gibblers later, right?" he attempted to clarify, but their backs were already turned to him and they were quickly moving away. "Hey!" he shouted.
They stopped. Stephanie turned around and D. J. looked over her shoulder.
"You're going to get a ride home from Kimmy's mom, right?"
"Yes," D. J. answered.
"Okay. Good. Bye."
Uncle Jesse stuck his arm out and lifted his hand to form a wave. The girls reciprocated, but limply. Backing out of here was like death. You had to literally back out. You couldn't just drive straight through. Can You believe that? Once he started-in that whale of a van-Uncle Jesse seemed to have to stay backing up the entire time. The pylons and cones were set up in just the right obnoxious way were he never could position yourself to turn around. You'd be practically thrown out into the road in reverse, never being able to turn around the whole time. The other cars blasting their horns. This kind of thing happened to every single car that tried to get in or out of this postmodern nightmare. As John Stamos struggle backward through all this, the Tanner girls (sans Michelle, neither one was with them) walked forward and the doors to the stupid San Francisco Public Library slid open.
Once inside, the girl's most immediate senses were bombarded by a plethora of stimulation. The walls were adorned with vibrant, esoteric frescoes, not one of which was of any objectively clear theme. Gigantic, mind-bending mobiles hung, and slowly oscillated from the ceiling-each seeming as if they had sprung forth from the minds of Escher or Vasarely. The carpet itself was long and thick, like overdue backyard grass, and when you stepped and walked on it, your feet sunk in and bounded a little bit, a sensation like one might imagine if they were walking on the surface of the moon. Long, individually separated, lights hung down from the ceiling looking like stretched out teardrops, but the amber light coming from them was dim and seemed meant only for aesthetic. Instead, the main floor of the thirteen tier library was lit by six massive rectangular windows-three on each side-and the glass of each was tinted it's own delicate color: pinkish, yellowish, baby blueish, teal-ish, purplish, and magenta, gently painting the room like it had been arranged by Crayola. Off to the far corner, there was a staircase that seemed to float on air. The one sense that was not aroused, was hearing. The library smelt of a mixture of artificial floral scents and old paper. The fact that there was practically no sound was juxtaposed dramatically from one coming in from the bustling San Francisco streets outside.
"Where's Kimmy, is she even here yet?" D. J. wondered out-loud.
"Shhh!" Stephanie chastised. "Be quiet!"
"Shhhh!" the librarian threatened from behind the front counter.
Both D. J, and Stephanie's faces squinched in embarrassment, and D. J. pantomimed, "sor-ry!
The librarian nodded with a stern, unblinking eye.
"Come on," D. J. whispered to her sister.
"You go ahead," a whispering Stephanie responded. "I-I need to just...you go ahead." She began to wonder off, and D.J. just shrugged her shoulders and headed over to the floating staircase.
Kimmy Gibbler was upstairs. Her homely face was buried in a large ominous book that's cover was black, like an abyss, and the stark lettering on it was red, like dried blood.
"Kimmy!" D. J.'s bellow was a failed attempted at sotto voce.
A librarian, desked at the center of the room. responded in kind, "Shhhh!" the old bird squawked.
D. J. responded with that familiar, crooked look.
The old bird bent down her stern, serious eyes..
D. J. stamped a bit closer the the Reading Table. "Kimmy..." D. J. whispered.
"Deej?" Kimmy responded-without looking up, still reading. Engrossed. "This...," her speech: like eyes, struggling to adjust to waking light, "it's...," she looked up now, and her eyes met D. J.'s, epiphanously. "D. J." she closed her eyes; then she turned her face away from D. J. with her eyes still closed and slowly half-smiled while looking at D. J. but past D. J., in the distance-into nothing. She then slowly opened her eyes and after a moment's longer hesitation-a final moment of thinking before she spoke-she dryly asked D. J., "do you fight?"
"What?"
Kimmy snapped her long, ugly-looking face to D. J. like a merekat. "He who would live, D. J., must fight." She spoke attackingly and impassioned, but was still quiet. The old bird did not squawk. Kimmy swallowed hard and started again: "For those who do not wish to fight in this world," she took a deep, self-confirming breath, "has no right to exist."
D. J. looked down, low and off to the side, and said after thinking "yeah..." and then again, after a moment more, "yeah!"
"Shhhhh!" the old bird condemned, and everyone looked up.
Kimmy Gibbler smiled a disturbing grin and motioned over to D. J., "come here."
D. J. sat down, across from her at the table. She was smiling.
Kimmy smiled back, but it was inauthentic, creepy and weird-but of course, D. J. didn't notice anything more than her friend's familiar, Frankensteinian face. She just smiled and nodded back.
"Deej," Kimmy strained, her voice already annoying and sounding like she was about to give last-words. "Deej," she said again, just a pitch louder.
It wasn't loud enough-'you-know-who' didn't say anything-but the old bird did look up and shot Kimmy and D. J. a look that in a certain fantasy realm would mean death.
Kimmy didn't look over at the mean old cuss. But D. J. did for just a moment and she shrugged, trying to seem innocent.
"D. J.!" Kimmy exclaimed. This time it was enough.
"Shhhhh!" the old bird bleated-arousing the whole room again.
Kimmy then whispered in a much, much lower tone. Only D. J. could hear her now: "Obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to. Obstacles are to be broken."
"Right," D. J. responded slowly, while nodding.
Kimmy continued. Her voice rolling with passion. "Become woke and," she paused, gathering her thoughts, "gird yourself in the strength of our great race and wrap yourself in the security of nationalism."
D. J. just starred back.
"Least we fall victim to the plots and ploys by the Jewish people, as expressed in the Protocols of Zion!" Kimmy's excited voice suddenly grew.
"I'll not tell either of you again!"
Both girls looked over and sneered at the squawking bird.
"What are you talking about Kimmy?"
"The extent of the fall of a body is always measured by the distance between its momentary position and the one it originally occupied." Kimmy cleared her throat. "The same, D. J., is true of nations and states-like California: that is a state. That's the state we live in. And in California, a decisive significance must be ascribed to our previous positions, or rather, elevation. Only what is accustomed to rise above the common limit can fall and crash to a manifest low. This is what makes the collapse of the Reich so hard and terrible for every thinking and feeling man, since it brought a crash from heights which today, D. J, today, in view of the depths of our present derogation, are scarcely conceivable."
"Is that in the book you're reading there, Kimmy?"
Gibbler slid over the tome.
D. J, picked it up. She looked at it. It was thick and heavy. The cover was black like a blackhole and the title was printed off-center in all capital letters that were a deep red like dried blood. She couldn't read the title. It was two words, in German, that might as well have been Greek. But the author's name, printed underneath the title was understood immediately: ADOLF HITLER.
D.J. looked around the Room: Tommy Wiseau. "Kimmy, you've been reading this?"
"This makes sense, D.J."
"It does?"
"Be quiet. Or leave!"
D. J. stood up while turning, facing the bird. If looks could wound, the librarian would have been in agony. Instead, the old bird just starred back, answering with an equally savage look.
D. J. put the stupid book down-never breaking eye contact with the old bird. With purpose, she started walking over to the booth.
Kimmy called out-this time she raised her voice-but the old bird said nothing and just stared hateful darts at the approaching D. J.. "Deej! One blood demands one nation! Never will a nation possess the moral right to engage in colonial politics until, at last, it embraces its own sons within a single state! Only when the Reich-" she stopped. There was no shushes from anyone. In fact, all the other patrons met Kimmy's loud declarations with reverence and silence-perhaps respect-or was it...fear?
Back at the house, Uncle Jesse labored over a straining chord progression at his synthesizer. It didn't sound good. He didn't really know how to play. At least, not very well. Truth is, John Stamos really isn't that good at anything, really. He is not a good musician. He knows a few chords-C, A, D-that's about it. You can't do much with just those (or can you?). Still, he tried his best, playing those awkward chords and singing out his latest:
I am slowly leaving
Goodbye kitty evening
I don't know where to go
I know you are waiting
For me so lately
I hope I'll see you soon.
D. J. stood defiantly before the old bird.
"Listen! If you can't keep your voices down!" the librarian-who actually was a literal bird-squawked at D. J., from her perch,
D. J. just rolled her eyes and sighed.
The bird glared with squinting hate.
"Just tell me where the Y. A. section is." D. J. demanded.
"SQUAWK! It's right over there! It's right over there!" the old bird hopped up and down rapidly upon her perch and her feathered wings gestured to the west.
The west wing of the San Francisco Public Library was gained down a long book-less hallway, adorned on both sides\with recreations of mediocre twentieth-century art. That opened into a small enclave of books upon books, selves covering every available space. When she saw the books, D. J. stopped. She looked around. There was no one else. She took a few steps forward and turned to the first aisle, but did not walk down it. She just peered for a few moments and then turned back forward down the aisle way and moved precipitously, as if drawn by some great external force. She turned down the third bookshelf encased corridor to her left, intently facing the columns of books before her. She did not know why. She did not know why she stopped and turned and faced that specific row of books. She only knew it seemed like she should, and so she did.
Outside the lone window on the far wall-in a vacant lot adjacent to the San Francisco Public Library-You could see little Stephanie standing there, in the middle of the field, her arms raised to the sky. What does Stephanie do when no one is watching?
Scanning the volumes before her, D. J. reached out and pulled down a white jacketed, bleakly adorned book from the shelf: UNSTOPPOLIS, the title read on its spine and face. The author was identified as anonymous. A strange trepidation shot through her, from her fingers that held UNSTOPPOLIS, to her thumping chest. She opened the book and read.
JOHN STAMOS AWOKE as Uncle Jesse nearly immediately as the first peach light of new morning eked through. Flanked on either side of the room's only window: two real (yet un-played) electric guitars-squires-hung, like intended parenthesis. The window was now becoming fully lit, and it gently, yet increasingly, glowed. The two flanking guitars seemed to be suspended as if they were being heled up by a heavenly host or, but could only be perceived by mortals as entering morning light.
Uncle Jesse lain there on his back in his bed: a lavender, billowy combination of plush and down. He stirred, half awake, yet a third still in dreamy sleep. Fuzzy images lingered before his mind of night's imaginations. All quickly fizzled, but some acute details still remained: a large, endless stone wall; a face in the clouds with an ominous warning; a dog who could talk but saying something he could not understand; slowly, he opened his red parched eyes and blinked twice in quick secession and the dream world seemed so absurd, and it simultaneously evaporated. Except, for those eternal pieces of dreams that ultimately mean nothing but never leave us, that we all know and have.
Then, looking straight up directly above him: the Beach Boys. Their image: a poster affixed upon the ceiling above the bed.
Uncle Jesse laid under that poster. Staring up at it. Eyeing it, intently for a while, without moving and hardly breathing. Gazing up at the five ageing Boys: their faces like wetted leather. Their cheeks and necks clumpy and puffed out. And you know what? John Stamos liked that. Looking at those sagging men, John Stamos felt a peculiar percolating excitement, a warm spreading in his loins, that one might argue bordered on arousal.
He knew it was creepy, and way weird, to just love the Beach Boys so much that just looking at a poster of them (or even affixing one directly above his bed so that they were the first thing he saw in the morning and the last thing he saw before falling asleep every night) would stir such feelings, so Uncle Jesse rolled over to his side and made sure that he was no longer looking up at it. Starring now at his jukebox, he could think of nothing but the Beach Boys songs that were in there. That was no good right now. So, with all his might, he force-jammed his mind into thoughts of other things-like chips or various breakfast cereals or seldom used but oft had seasonings (like cumin and thyme) and ointments. But still, stimulating thoughts of the Beach Boys remained. Then, as he used his utmost willpower to do so, he morphed those unacceptable thoughts into fantastically erotic images of one, Rebecca Donaldson. In fact, whenever he was having increasingly titillating thoughts of the Beach Boys, or of Elvis, or of Steve, or of anyone or anything else for that matter, he would always try to replace them with way-more-normal thoughts of Becky-and normal people would concur, knowing that an "90s-ish hot girl" Rebecca Donaldson (with her Vegeta-esque shoulder pads and hipless, shapeless overly-wide pantsuits) was a far-more-normal kind of thing to be turned on about, especially in real life and especially on television.
As she read, D. J. felt as if a million-and-a-half unseen eyes were watching her, like she was being broadcast and observed. She didn't like it. She felt the eyes were watching, and laughing and waiting callously for her next move. She read, and she knew what she was reading was impossible. Uncle Jesse? No. It couldn't be. Yet, she knew it was. She read on and knew as she did that she was reading and creating her reality.
He sat up. He stretched out his arms: fully and upwards with his head slanted back and slightly sideways-inadvertently imitating a crucifix-and inhaled deeply through his nostrils. He then recoiled every stretched ligament to a relaxed, loosely dangling state, and sighed with the deep satisfaction. He turned ninety-degrees leftward and sat with his hands on his knees and his bare feet flat on the carpeted floor. He looked around the room a bit more. Looking over at his phony plastic jukebox again. It was really stupid. He looked down at his bed. It was stupid, with it's naturally pushy and sexually assertive-yet still, desperate-leopard print sheets and mountains and valleys of black and lavender. Those don't really work, do they? Nobody really likes those. He knew it was all made up. But of course it was! He felt though still, deep down inside, that the story was still good. "It is as good as needs to be, for what it is trying to be." He always said, at least to himself.
Looking around the room some more: his head movements like a zooed panda bear, with an expression just as content, and simultaneously dismayed. Everything he saw was so Jesse Katsopolis it wasn't even funny. Really, it was all a testament to his delusional, faux/ failed egos. Just thin, plastic imitations-broken pieces-examples of what could've been-or once was. An adorable pink bunny, framed and set apart clearly from all the other bric-a-brac, stood out. It was the sole survivor of an earlier time when its kind surrounded the room. The cutesy bunny was by far the least cornball thing on the walls. And John Stamos could barely look at it. Instead, he looked up at his cheap Squire guitars at either side of the now brilliantly alit window. They weren't even good guitars. They were crap that he could barely afford. It was such a beautiful day outside.
At last, his eyes found the black-and-white portrait of himself. Jesse Katsopolis, in all his moussed up, primmed, John Stamos glory, and compacity, however limited or not so. Standing, and without looking, he shuffled into his shippers and left the room. He went downstairs. Soon he was in the kitchen, on the show-the kitchen on Full House. He looked over at the island. It was slightly off center (as nearly all kitchen islands are) and standing over it adjacent, Danny was making breakfast. He had two frying pans going, one on low-heat with beaten, yellow eggs surely forming into fluffy curds, and one high-heat one that crackled loudly with rapidly darkening and curling bacon. He could smell it too. He smelled the bacon. It was hickory bacon. The hickory flavor was in the air, and Jesse wanted to eat that bacon.
She quickly closed the book. Deep, long breaths with her eyes closed up tight and a slight leaning back, trying with all her might to wipe what she had just experienced from her mind. It wasn't real. It couldn't be. No. This is real. What is happening, now. Her spiderweb eyes strained open and darted frantically around-like as if she could see it, could find it. Whatever "it" was. Whatever it was that seemed to be becoming self-aware all around her, as if the air had eyes. The book was talking about her Uncle Jesse, but how could that be? She couldn't stay back here any longer. She quickly tucked the book under her arm and briskly walked back down the corridor
- CHAPTER THE EIGHTH -
in which,
Jesse and His Band, the Rippers, Rehearse Together and Jesse Grows Frustrated By What Can Only Be Described As a Lack of Fulfillment.
or,
"Am I to Become Like A Clockwork Orange?"
"Nooo!" lamented Uncle Jesse, "that's-that's not it!" Not how I want it!"
"Okay, okay," Alvin-the Ripper-his bass guitar slung down to his waist, said.
Band practice with the Rippers.
"Jess, we're trying, here," said Hyrum, on drums.
John Stamos took a deep, concerted breath, "I know, I know. It's just. Let's try again."
" A-one, two, three, four!" Hyrum counted off, clacking sticks.
Jesse and the Rippers started playing again. Their sound was neither generic, nor could it be said that it was unique. They sounded as crickets: so in sync it seemed natural; yet to the listener it was a drone of the same thing. That sound droned on for a few bland moments and then, without cue, they all came to a stop nearly at the same time, Just a little while longer passed of no one talking.
"Fellas," spoke Ephraim, as he re-tuned his guitar, "we just need to play it straight up."
"You always say things like that," snapped Uncle Jesse. "In fact, you wanted to name the band 'Straight Up' and I had to tell you, and keep telling you, it doesn't mean anything!"
"Jesse..." Sammy, on piano accordion tried to pacify, with his honey silk voice, only he couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Yeah," said Don Carlos, letting his bass guitar hang, "Eph is just trying to keep it positive. We all are"
"*Eph is just tryin' to keep it positive, we all are*," John Stamos mocked.
"Dude, come on! retorted Don Carlos.
."I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's just, when we play, what we play, what we don't play, it's just..."
"Just, what?" Alvin snapped.
"No. Nothing. Let's just go again."
An uneasy silence became the room. Then, Hyrum counted off again. The music started. Only, it was just a charade of engagement and feel. Nobody felt anything. John Stamos Sang:
If every word I said
Could make you laugh
I'd talk forever...
They played the song, "Forever." But it didn't last forever. And thank God for that. The rendition was dull. John Stamos sang it weakly. The Rippers tried their best, but struggled at the 'my my my my's' and the ' na na na nana's'-sounding not at all like the classic Sunflower cut.
The song finished, and Uncle Jesse took another deep, huffing breath. The Rippers looked at him, like desperate dogs. There was another Ripper-Billy, who also played guitar (lead guitar actually) but this one never said anything.
"This,' he began, but he got no further.
Down the basement stairs came the girls, thundering like the march of death. Their voices carried in ceaseless, shrill choruses of, "Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse!" Soon they were right on him. All three of them, but it might as well have been three-hundred of them. Their grabbing and tugging hands, touching and pulling at him, all over and mostly at his face-until it began to feel like a massage, He didn't liked it. But what could he do? Danny would pounce upon any protest and that's exactly what he was waiting for. Danny would love nothing more than for Jesse to resist and protest the intrusion. Although he knew that Jesse knew better by now, and that such an act was almost never to occur, he not-so secretly set-up nearly all of these invasions of Jesse's privacy as an obvious blatant flex at his ability to do so, and his admiration of the clearly mutual unspoken acknowledgement that the submissive one would remain in his place. So, Jesse just sat there clenched up, allowing, and Danny stood, watching adamantly and contently just a few steps below the top of the stairs. Particles and attitude seemed to multiply and maximize all over him and the universe.
Danny Tanner stood like a dictator, gripping the banister powerfully with one hand, as if posed for portrait. He glared down at Jesse with his blank, unreadable eyes.
"Jess," he exclaimed, and gestured to he daughters with his free hand, "they have come to greet you. We have come. Now honor us."
"Danny," Jesse returned, " don't you think this is all kind of dumb?"
"Why is it dumb?"
Jesse looked incredulous, his eyes widowed, his brow sharpened as he looked about the basement with his arms held at his elbows with desperate palms facing up, as if they wanted to grasp at something-maybe sanity-but they remained empty. All around him the room dissolved into a mélange of blonde pigtails, yelling, touching, declarations and demanding (Uncle Jesse Uncle Jesse, Uncle Jesse Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse Uncle Jesse...woah Uncle Jesse-Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse!.) His band slowly disappeared, and his mind gradually augmented and he began to believe there was never ever a band at all. One by one, they vanished all around him, until only the Tanner sisters where there. The Rippers would never return. There never was a Jesse and the Rippers.
"How 'bout me?" cried John Stamos. "Where do I come into all this? Am I like just some animal or dog? Am I just to be like a clockwork orange-?"
The girls stopped spinning around him. Bob Saget was silent and still for a moment. Then, he guffawed up at the ceiling and then returned his look to Jesse with an insidious smile. He took a few, slow, Machiavellian steps towards Jesse and then alighted his hand surreptitiously upon Jesse's shoulder-holding that stare and grin.
Danny spoke: "Jesse," his voice was calm and monitorial. "What is it? Is there something you want from us? Something else I can give you?"
A sesame seed of sweat formed and slide down the Cliffs of Moher forehead of Johan Stamos. He did not look away, despite the stinging. He did not want to. He trepidated under the dark power of Bob Saget's serpentine gaze, but from within him, he could only make himself respond with an unblinking stare back. And the truth.
"I," he began, "I am an artist. I am a musician. The way it's going-the way things are? It's only a matter of time. You only have so much time. I-I need more time. This isn't it."
"Are you not getting enough time? Do you need us to give you more time-for you? What do you mean by, 'this isn't it, Danny?' The last question, you emphasized it especially, the last words: "Danny!-"
"Yes Danny, yes," Jesse answered, his stupid voice now gaining a degree of strength. "All of that!" That's exactly what I'm saying! I need time! I need undisrupted time! I need more time down here in the basement! In my studio! To work on my art-my music! What do I mean by, 'This is not it?' exactly that! It's what I mean! This. Is. Not. It! I'm not doing it! I don't have a chance to do it, because every other moment of ever other day, someone's coming down here! What do I mean by, ' you only have so much time?'" He proceeded to answer that question , even though it hadn't been asked, "I mean, you only have so much time until you're dead. An artist only has so many moments to draw up something beautiful. I'm losing that time. Right now, I'm having those moments taken from me."
The three or four girls looked around the room, examining faces. They only met one another's with what should have been an universal shock and dread at Uncle Jesse's tirade. They were taken aback. But their father-the real danger-seemed unphased; no, even more than that: he seemed understanding.
Nodding, Danny Tanner replied, "alright Jesse, alright, I hear you. I get you. You want your space. You want your peace, You want your time. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with all your new time?"
The direct question hit Jesse Katsopolis hard in the face and it turned slightly twisted in unsure ponderance. This was only for a few very shortpassades of time though, and after that Jesse's face secured that certain look of purpos. Absolute satisfaction. With the determined eyes, staring out before them, never at any one particular person, or thing, but at the next realm after them and the wonderful new future that one is about to create. "I'm going to make an album," he declared, proudly. Everyone else in the room said nothing in response, but each gave that sideways look of perked interest.
"And not just any album," Uncle Jesse proclaimed, "an utterly unstoppable album. I'm going to make the greatest album ever made.
- CHAPTER THE NINTH -
in which,
John Stamos Installs a Red Light Over the Basement Stairwell as an Indicator of When He Is Working Hard Creatively Down the Stairs, and Cannot be Disturbed.
or,
The Red Light
"The red light," Uncle Jesse spoke, with his extended hands bracketing the glowing bulb. "When the red light is on, it means I'm working on Unstoppolis. Believe it." "Because your name is Katsopolis, and that rhythms with Unstoppolis?" "Jesse Katsopolis presents: Unstoppolis. The greatest album ever made." "The greatest album ever made? That's what you think you're doing? That's what you think you are going to make? That greatest album ever made? Who do you think you are, Jimmy Buffet?" "I know I've got this album inside if me. These songs. These sounds. The need that I have to nurture it and them. I need to take care of them-like pets. It's," he paused for a moment, searching for the right word, "and in that way, it's a responsibility." "You have a responsibility to this family too, and to me." Jesse turned around and looked at them. He took two serious steps towards them and though his eyes looked patient and willing, he was not smiling. He put both of his hands on their shoulders. He nodded and spoke in one of those strenuous whispers that really convey energy. "I know. And I know that you-that all of you-will understand and be a system of support for me while I do this." A slight pause.
" 'Jesse Katsopolis presents Unstoppolis?' Just Jess Katsopolis? No Rippers? What about the Rippers?"
"The Rippers," Jesse turned his back and walked a few steps away, "the Rippers stuff is old! It's...really just the Beach Boys, you know? We only play Beach Boys songs."
"...Right."
"What I want to do? The music I've got in my head? It isn't going to sound anything like the Beach Boys at all. It's going to be a whole new kind of music."
"They aren't going to like that."
"They will when they hear the tracks. Everyone is going to love it when they hear Unstoppolis."
"You're serious?"
Jesse turned and faced them with a crooked Smile. "It's the album I was meant to make. The album everyone was meant to hear."
Their face, full of love and nodding, "Okay."
Jesse gave a full-toothed grin.
"Okay," smiling back. Walking forward. Then, reaching out and gently kissing the side of John Stamos' face with their caressing fingers.
The look of love.
All you need is love.
"You can do this, but I expect you to understand: you start up all this, string me and this family along-and fail? I shall be very 'put out,'" and they said it just as darkish and threatening as Prince Humperdinck.
"I won't fail you," Jesse said confidently, but quietly.
Just then, Comet the dog entered. He pressed his furry golden body up against Jesse's body, then the other, and they bent down and ruffled the dog's ears and kissed all over his soft yellow face, which was returned eagerly by sloppy laps of a long wet pink tongue. Two faces pressed together: one long and hairy and rhythmically emitting hot breath; the other, dove-like-silky and smooth like crushed velvet. John Stamos petted the dog. He was a good boy. And all the while as they smiled and nuzzled and kissed the beloved animal. Their eyes stared back as piercing darts into his own-a look that was both a promise and a warning.
- CHAPTER THE TENTH -
in which,
John Stamos Attempts to Conduct a Band Practice with the Rippers, but is Prevented by an Interruption by the Others-Or Does He? Or Do They?
or,
Does This Make Any Sense to Anyone?
As they ate dinner, the sound of Uncle Jesse's Toshion keyboard rang beneath them. Danny sat at the head of the table like always, surrounded by various prepared meats and assorted sides and desserts. Joey was to his right, D. J. and Stephanie and Michelle to his left. They all ate and they all listened to the cycling calling chords coming up from below. The rhythms were complex, but grandiose. The melodies were inventive, but teetering on that thinning hairline of brilliance and contrived. If he could pull it off, then it would be a real masterpiece. But if it was stupid, then it would just be something stupid.
On and on he played, his hands blitzing from octave to octave, his fingers leaping and dancing from key to key to make a music the was more than sound, and sound that was more than music. It was at least clever, he thought, or at least he hoped. He knew deep within himself that he was either losing his mind or he was discovering the most progressive sound ever, that this music would tell and he would be the last to know. He knew it, very deeply deep, but he knew it.
Taking in the world around him with his heading spinning inside an internal symphony of clanking forks and cool chatter. From the inside out he conjured and formed images of parties and dinners-butlers escorting trays of hors d'oeuvres wrapped in paper cut meat and held together by a toothpick adorned with a green olive. His lips sang out, and the words he was singing created all this around him and would do so for anyone else who ever heard this song:
Hors d'oeuvres
Desserts deserved
Reversed, err...
Eat 'em up, eat, eat 'em up
Eat 'em up up!
The best things in life
They are free
So you can go ahead
And serve me
There's nothing good to eat
Now,
Didn't your mother or
Didn't your father
Ever once bother
To tell you
The secret in life
Is pay two less than twice
Wo'oh!
Eat 'em up, eat, eat 'em up
Eat 'em up up!
His voice broke with emption on the last line and his was barely able to continue on, so overcome with feeling-but he did not cry. Instead, he sang out another verse in a cracking voice:
I saw cheese sliced with turkey
Now those foods just work me
Right into a sweat
'Cause you know they're the best
They're served on a salt cracker
And nothing else matters
To me...
When I'm eating for free
As happy as can be
Oh...
Eat 'em up, eat, eat 'em up
Eat 'em up up!
Sucking in great gulps of air, John Stamos filled and expelled his flexing lungs rapidly. He was unnaturally starved for oxygen. He could barely breathe. He had stopped singing and playing but his hands were still shaking. With one more elongated breathe temped with that sound and feeling of regained oxygen satisfaction, Uncle Jesse breathed normally and then he smiled with his lips closed. His eyes were still shut from all the emotional singing and his quivering hands held each other. It was totally silent. And then-!
"Uncle Jesse!"
The pounding. The cascading of 1989 little girls' feet charging down the basement stairs, followed by heavy clops of the feet of grown men.
"Jesse!" Joey boomed as he thudded down the stairs, "I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it! I got it, Jess! Jess, I got it! Jesse! Jesse! Jesse! Jess! Jesse! Jesse, I know how we can make copies of our video jingles for our clients, like Chuck and such. Now, I don't think it's the way they want you to do it. it might not be the way they want us to do it. Now basically, we're going to need another VCR and a lot of tape, masking-no, Scotch tape-that's what I'm going to need.
But it wasn't really them. No one had really pounded down the stairs. It was just in John Stamos' imagination or at least, the fear of them interrupting him and his work. which they had down time and time again, even after he had installed the Red Light. they weren't in the basement with him. H was all alone, but he could clearly see them and hear them interrupting him, even when they weren't. He never knew when the next invasion would commence.
Yes, even with the Red Light on, Uncle Jesse had been bombarded with heinous distraction-mostly by Michelle. Uncle Jesse loved Michelle, probably more than he loved anyone else in the whole world, but even with that abundance of love and spiritual innocence, he still groaned and strained each time the preschooler-or two-waddled down the stairs.
And Joey too, who was in more ways than he should eb like a preschooler. He was always violating the sentinel of the Red Light. He wasn't now. No one was down there with Jesse right now. He saw and heard them all. But it was all in his head. He was maybe going crazy. Maybe You were watching and thought so too.
It was always the same. They would make up some deal with Liz at the yogurt shoppe or chuck at the hardware store. They would get about halfway through the jungle of whatever it was and John Stamos-eager like a beaver-would make one of the usual excuses and shoo Joey away while flicking on his very serious Red Light, to no avail. In reality right now, the Red Light remained on and steady, not a soul was bothering Uncle Jesse, just his head. It was all in his head, still. John Stamos was still alone in the basement with his Casio and four-track, and above him, a conversation directly about him prattled on in the kitchen, but he could not really hear it.
Danny was on his back half submerged under the kitchen sink, his lanky legs sprawled out across the floor, kicking. Standing above him, Joey Gladstone, complete with curly misshapen mullet, rattled out his grievances.
"I told Jess we need another VCR. We need another VCR to make a copy of that tape and give it to Chuck. But he's all like, 'No, uhh I gotta work on Unstoppolus, uhh.''
Bob Saget relied, "Another VCR?"
"Yes man, we need another VCR, so we can make another copy of that video tape of our "Crispy Cringle Shingles," so we can give them to Chuck-"
"A new VCR costs hundreds of dollars, Joe. No one just goes of and buys another VCR. It's too expensive."
"Well, somebody's going to have to do something. We're going to have to do something. We haven't sold a jingle in months, and we-re-I know I'm-running out of money. So let's do what we can do and get another VCR so we can make some more copies-"
"Joe, we're not millionaires. We can't just buy another VCR."
"Well I can't, Danny! I don't have $750. I don't have $25. I'm a terrible stand-up comedian who's not funny at all-at all. I'm frickin' terrible! Nobody's hiring me!"
"Listen to me! Listen to me!" Bob Saget grabbed Joey's shoulders, his eyes like heart attacks. He spoke slowly now. "Nobody. Nobody, just has VCRs. Rich people like us," he paused and focused closer into Joey Gladstone's small eyes, "because I do Wake Up San Francisco -have one VCR, because they cost $750. You don't just get VCRs! You get that from being funny and being on TV. You don't get it from Mr. Woodchuck."
A slight pause, where Joey bowed his head like he was praying, "I know Mr. Woodchuck's not funny," he said sullenly.
" is not funny. No, he is not. You don't have a million dollars, you don't have one hundred dollars, you don't have one dollar. You don't have any money because you and Mr. Woodchuck are both not funny. That's why you don't have $750 to buy another VCR. Get real"
Defeated and dejected, Joey groaned out from below, "I don't have $750..."
Jesse Katsopolis heard none of this stupid conversation above him, and even if he had been there in the same room to hear it, he would still not have been able to really hear it. His mind was indefinitely elsewhere, always firmly on Unstoppolus and its songs. Below the talk of VCRs and money and Mr. Woodchuck, Uncle Jesse played and sang this song:
But now that time is over
And I just got to know her
Some say she's been gone all along
But I swear I just now saw her
I called she came on over
But when she got here, she was gone
And like the world is turning 'round
Everywhere I turn this girl is found
But some say she is just illusion
Got me right now in confusion
It's allusion
Can I just hold on longer
To a love I know is stronger
To love her now even though she's not
Still I can feel her arms around me
Just the way I know they ought be
This I still love for I have fought
He sang out! Loud, but no one upstairs could hear him. Really, no one was listening. Still... still...
And like the world is turning 'round
Ev'rywhere I turn this girl is found
But some say she is just illusion
Git me right now un confusion
It's allusions.
- CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH -
I called out to the bearded men fishing on the other side of the sea. They rose their heads in response, looking at me from across the water.
I raised my arms and frantically waved them above my head and called out to them saying, "I say, ah-hoy there!"
They nodded.
I could see it from the other side of the bay. Then, in flowing silken robes, they glided over and into the small wooden canoe beside them. The vessel and the men started moving to me, thought with no aide nor tide, or wave or wide. The men simply stood me at bow one at stern, and looked out over the glimmering water and at me, who stood at the opposite side of the bay.
"I -" I began and stopped, thinking and starting again, "I know not why I've come, far you see, I have merely just awakened."
The canoe neared the beach and I saw the lead man smiling, though he did not speak at all, even when he made sure and he reached his hand out me, silently inviting me to board.
When I stepped onto the canoe, the sky was afire with purple and amber and the water was colored like marmalade.
"You are the one called Katsopolis," he at last asked.
"I am." I replied, "I am Jesse, son of Nicolas."
"You know why you have come."
"I have only just now awakened. I know not why I come."
"You, Jesse Katsopolis, do know why you've come. You seek become that which is unstoppable."
"All I wanna do is be true to your school. To dance, dance, dance. Please, let me wonder you still believe in me.'
"Those are Beach Boys songs. You wish to do and become that which is unstoppable."
"Unstoppable," I repeated in affirmative awe.
A sly, nodding smile was retorted. "And in order to become unstoppable, you must Unstoppolus. Jesse Unstoppolus. Jesse, the Unstoppable."
I looked around me. We were slipping into a chasm now, rowed on either side by tall cliffs. Atop the unsettling crags were grouped several many people, each one irate and screaming down at us. There were so many and they were all screaming and cursing so loud that at first, I could make no specific swear or insult, and I did assume that the mob was addressing every occupant of the distant, passing canoe. However, after a moment of of carefully focusing my attention, I became aware that their hatred was directed solely at me, and the stones and jagged pieces of wood and metal that they were casting were-despite my ever stoic comrades and myself and the kerplunking into the ginger-ale colored water-really just meant for me and I, unlike my companions, winced and cowered with each direct hit.
"They hate you," the one who had been doing all the talking said.
"I know," I said, echoing in a near yell.
From the cliffs above, I could make out barely a complete statement, but the shouts and jeers were peppered with "Hate you!" "Loser!" "Stamos!" "Sucks!" all raining down on me with sticks and rocks and each one hurt.
What seemed like a small eternity of drifting and enduring was finally supplemented as the unflinching sage standing before me spoke:
"The farther you go down the river, the more progress you make. Those who imagine themselves as above you, will caste stones. They will curse you and damn you. But he who wishes to be unstoppable must never cease. For when you cease your striving, when you give up under the burden of the task and the other's closed-mindedness. Then, the vessel stops and just wades. You make no more progress down the river."
And just then, we stopped. The canoe came to a halt right there in the middle of the river. More and more, the rocks and the sticks and the slander and hatred fell-striking me-cutting me-my bloodied face and my bloodied heart.
"I cannot take it! I would if I could not be upon this river! Take me from this place, oh fates, and let me be free of this terrible plight!"
The older sage, the one who had not yet said anything, looked right at me and said in a resounding intelligent voice, sounding not unlike Leonard Nimoy:
"You wish to leave this river, to be free from the torment?"
"Yes!" I cried, "oh yes, I want no more part of it! I want to be free of this inquisition!"
And suddenly, it was so. No sooner had those words left my mouth, did I find myself no longer in the canoe with two bearded men on a river. with terrifying cliffs towering on either side, upon whose throngs of terrorizing villains pummeled me with sticks, rocks and hate. I was now totally shivering cold. The sky was utter blackness and I stood under it for what seemed like forever-even more so in the blackness of this new realm, where time seems to stop.
But at some point, I started walking, which I wasn't sure I could even still do until I started lifting my legs and moving forward. I stumbled up and down crumbling, powdery dunes and soon, I was crawling and pawing around on my hands and knees, up to my elbows and mouthful of dry, choking grey sand.
I tumbled down the slope of the dune, falling shoulder over shoulder, my eyes burning from embedded dust. I landed. Finally, rather like a meteor-hard, with a crater around me, so high (several feet) above me, but so delicate. The powered walls tall but tumbling at the slightest disturbance, even from a dirty look. As the ocean of sand collapsed all around me, which almost immediately collapsed and buried mt face and hair in sand. I heard gagging, gasping for air or anything to breathe other than sand. My body, flailing and turning over in the sand and rolling over into the palms along the background. There, I hacked and I coughed into my cupped hands-long, powerful convulsions, rattling my entire body.
But just then, when all around me was dust and gray and cold and hurting and pain and wandering and wondering; and all around me was blackness and bleakness and dark, and empty, and pale. I heard a voice. There was no one there that I could see. I was all alone in the windy, billowing pits of sand and nothing above me still, but the splash of black across the sky. But I had heard the voice and I could feel the presence of accompaniment all around me. I was comforted. Then, I heard it again:
"John Stamos, son of Bill, walker in the night, searcher in the sands, take the defeat of the dunes and the empty cold no longer and arise. Hear my words."
Rising up, weakly, I pressed the strength into my wobbling knees. As I did so, I answered in a graveled stammer, "I-I hear you and I rise! But, p-pray tell, w-where are you? I see no one."
"Rest assured, I am here with you."
"Who are you?"
"I am the one who perceives and conceives."
"Oh? You talk in riddles?"
A disembodied chuckle, "no, I peak as only I could speak and tell what could only be my truth. I am the creator. I am the Great Executive, the Show Runner, the one who writes and directs."
"...You?"
"I am Jeff Franklin and it is I who placed you, Jesse Katsopolis, there together with those others in that house of comics. That passed you forward. That took you past the fourth world, toward tomorrow. To more than pain and sorrow."
"My past is always passed. My future always towards where I am going."
"And where are you going, John? Why can't you find what you are looking for?"
John Stamos lapsed in response and the unbroken chain of response was suddenly broken. For a moment, all was silent again and since John Stamos was talking to somebody with no body, all instantly again became an abyss of nothing but nothing and the mind-all cold, black and feeling. In that dreadful moment, of blank thought, Jesse Katsopolis analyzed: gathering his trembling thoughts and at last responded.
"I knew that once, or I thought I did. Now, it's everything. Joey is a creature that loves under the basement. He's not funny. We write jingles. He's great. It's crazy. Danny is crazy. The cleaning and cleaning, and the eyes-where is my sister? Becky is the love of my live, but I have to think twice, or at least, be nice. None of this makes any sense to us! There are two Michelles! D. J. is reading some book about her life, and everything, that we are all trapped in! I must become myself to become out of the Fourth World. Where does Stephanie go when no one is watching? Steve!?"
"I know Steve and I know you, John Stamos. Your mind is one great vision, unstoppable-unstoppolis."
"Unstoppolis, that's all I want. All I need. If I could just get one quantum of my ideas in Unstoppolis..."
"You can. But, you have to do what you know and know that you can."
"I want too, but the others..."
"The others are essential. It's about the others. The others are your life. You are just you. UNSTOPPOLISis your life."
"Unstoppolis is my life."
"UNSTOPPOLIS is your life."
"But I can't work if I can't think. The interruptions-the stairs."
"You have the Red Light."
"The red light."
"The Red Light."
"But will they respect it?"
"Let them. Let them do it. That is the only way they will know how; if you let them. That is the only way they will."
"Let them, then they will show me?"
"If you let them, others will always be exactly as you let them be."
John Stamos smiled, and though it was still cold and dark, he felt warmth and light on the inside.
"Now," Jeff Franklin boomed, "go ye past the last gray dune to the eat, there you will find my associates, Miller and Boyett. Go with them. Follow them, and they will lead you down the river."
John Stamos looked and off, barely visible in the thick darkness, he thought he saw a form in the distance standing and then quickly darting away. The voice continued a bit more but gradually faded out like rolling thunder. He was alone again, in the dark and cold. He was alone again with the bite and wind , but now, unlike before, he had conception. He felt certain. And he felt certified-like crystal. He was confident in where he was going, refined and reinforced exquisitely by the laser of words from Jeff Franklin: inside and out, and endowed with great purpose and direction, John Stamos-more Uncle Jesse than he had ever been-looked to the east and headed to the somewhat distant sandy knoll.
When he got there he looked down and I saw that the curtain of sand descended sharply both my side and opposite, it formed a wedge in the middle, and ran along the expanse, enveloping the slender river at the center. On the bear bank, there was a long wooden canoe. I could see beside it, two fishermen. One of them was bearded.
Then...
- CHAPTER THE TWELFTH -
in which,
A Tale Is Told, But What Really Happened? The Power Goes Out in San Francisco and Uncle Jesse Wanders the Night's Streets and Watches the Sun Rise, Where He Then Has a Pivotal Moment.
or,
The Unstoppable Night, The Impossible Soul - The Last Songs/ Spring Cleaning
There is truth in all warnings
Madness and nonsense enter in
Yet never enough to render full Judgement
The serpent walks upon the desert floor
The eagle swims deep beneath the sea
Triumphant truths correct the error
And the dolphins pardon the violation
While falcons hem and haw
Over infractions of 'what is'
To be explained
Sometimes, the things that should not be are
And sometimes, the things that are are
Not to be.
To be, or not
You'll see, that is
Not another line of word
Is heard, until I have
The proper introduction.
Danny parceled off his beloved household duties one by one. Unknown to all. for they did not want to do any of it, Danny kept "the best" chores for himself. Danny coveted and retained the right and the ability to clean the toilets; to Joey, he assigned the kitchen floor. He would have to scrub and grind it down to the purest and simplest linoleum. Stephanie was given dishes-though Danny was fully knowing that that would not be fully cleaned to his satisfaction, no matter how long she labored or how long it took. Michelle, being the weakest yet most, was put to work in the living room: meticulously restoring configurations if pillow configurations on the sofa, long since memorized in her five years-hammered in by her father's teachings
Michelle was evening a row of magazines on the wiped and shined coffee table. D. J. was upstairs, reading and it was blowing her mind. Danny crotched like a harpy by the porcelain bowl, his hands as machines, pressing and spinning over every inch of the commode.
It was not only Danny Tanner's love of cleaning-and especially, cleaning toilets-that urged him on and wound his enthusiasm, he also wanted to finish very quickly in order to move onto those,holes, in the backyard. He had left a few open from the night before, and they needed to be closed. No one had seen and that was good. What does Stephanie do when no one is watching?
Jesse, however, took no part in the daily spring-cleaning. He had now spent the better part of the last few weeks sequestered in his subterranean subpair homesick studio, hammering piano chords and in hi s finally eased and best applied Bon Jovian voice, he solemnly yet astoundingly sang the new, carefully crafted, melody.
If we were just children
We'd probably fall in love
If we were a bit younger
And had nothing to fear
If our hearts were pilgrims or pioneers
Just fearless, still tearless
The words came to him in a flurry of images and rhyme reflecting and injecting reimages of his childhood in Greece and his falling in love with Becky Donaldson, as if the two things had happened together at the same time. Peanut butter and bacon lingered on his breath from the sandwich he served himself at lunch. He could smell it. He could also hear the words emitting with the hot stinky breath from his mouth, and issuing fast and concrete, spontanious in reality, but seemingly pontificated on and labored about for hour upon hour. Still, without effort, he played and he sang:
If we were still innocent
We'd probably soar above
If only we weren't so afraid
With so much left to know
Just lay back and watch the flowers grow
Pretending, then ending.
The false memories and sensations of he and Becky running hand-in-hand through the open, green fields poured all over his mind. He smiled, but he knew it was not true. Really, he believed that it was probably not totally true for anyone. No one, come on, found love like that so early on. Life is never a real fairytale. He thought, and he sang:
If we were just children
We'd probably hie above
All I can see over my shoulder
T-
The power went out. The keys on the synthe' stopped producing any sound, save for the manual bap of dead plastic. And now it was total darkness. Uncle Jesse found that he was unexpectedly a little afraid at the abrupt advance of oblivion, nevermind the interruption to his work. The blackness of the basement-always the most terrifying room in the house.
The door high above shouted open in the darkness with a beam of piercing white light that blitzed through and destroyed all the dark around the staircase and left it intangible, lighted tunnel, ascending out of the void. Above, a cute little Michelle stood, one tiny hand on her cocked hip and the other gripping an enormous, blazing flashlight. Her little face peered down. Her tiny nose squinting as she searched for something she recognized in the dark. "Uncle Jesse!" she ventured.
John Stamos made his way into the light. Michelle saw him and der face was happy at the top of the stairs and John Stamos could see it in the light and that made him happy. They made each other happy. "The power went off, huh?"
"Uh-huh," she answered as her clog-like feet thumped down the steps, walking fully lit inside the light tunnel, like an angel.
"Stay right there. I'll come to you."
She stopped and held the beam of light right under her chin now, as if she were telling ghost stories.
"Woouuuhhh...," Uncle Jesse feigned as he neared through the darkness, his fingers extended and wriggling playfully like wispy phantom tentacles, tickling her belly.
Michelle responded in a delighted squeal.
"Another-oh!"
The power fluttered back on. A very brief explosion of light and sound and the whole full house was on again. Uncle Jesse's recording equipment whirled into action with the jarring monotonous Ommmm...
"The power's back on!" squealed Michelle, her gleeful face arching the room.
"Power Surge," said Uncle Jesse.
It was no very bright in there, much brighter than normal. The fluorescents that lit the basement room and stairs pulsated with varying brightness and hummed sternly in the brief surge of power. Another brownout.
Although it was only spring, San Francisco was experiencing an incredible heat wave in April of 1989 (which is when all this is taking place, of course). With so many businesses and people and others running air conditioners all day by the millions, consuming gigajoules of energy and rolling blackouts were becoming more and more frequent all over the Bay Area. The lights soon calmed, and it seemed like everything was back to normal again. "Were you working on Unstoppolis?." Michelle asked.
"Yes," replied Uncle Jesse, "of course."
For a moment, Michelle seemed to respond with an explosion of enthusiasm and curiosity. Then she remembered that she was never supposed to bother Uncle Jesse while he was working and she was never supposed to come down here when the red light was on. But, the red light hadn't been on, because the power had gone out; still, she began to feel bad. "I'm sorry Uncle Jesse," she said, "I know you don't want us to bother when you're working down here/"
John Stamos reassured her and said, "come and hear a new song I've just written." He bent down and scooped her up. Then, he carried her the rest of the way down the stair seated on his arm, into the basement-into the studio-anther realm of just the must of John Stamos. "Let me play for you something I wrote this morning." He placed her beside him on the bench at the keyboard, and she sat sideways to face him as he played. "Here," he prefaced, "tell me what you think." He played.
Coffee for breakfast ev'ry mornin'
And with a bit, a sip of you
Cigarette smoke out my balcony
With a morning puff
Blow another kiss to you
Ooo, everything I do
I do a little thing for you
Yes I do
Stop in for luncheon in the city
And muncheon on the thought of you
You know you can always count on me
With the daily rough
My number is always there for you
Ooo, everything I do
I do a little thing for you
Yes it's t-
"Michelle."
The voice, like a lance of instant rebuke, came from the center of the stairs. Danny Tanner stood there. In their merriment, they did not hear him start to come down. He glared down. His mummied eyes looked like vast open sockets. His flaring nostrils and clenched mouth were hardly visible in the flickering spear of blue florescent light. He attacked again, this time without even speaking. His black eyes staring without condemnation, seeking without saying a word.
"Daddy..."
He started to descend the rest of the way. His steadily approaching footsteps, though nothing more than gradual, metamorphosized in Michelle and Uncle Jesse's minds, and each step that dropped Danny lower, filled them with a radiation of apprehension as he drew nearer and nearer.
Soon, he was out of steps and now he was right in front of them. Draining them, with all his said but unspoken distain and judgement, so much so that they had to look away from him as if he were the Sun. "You know you're not supposed to come down ere, especially when Uncle Jesse is working on his Unstoppolis.
"Daddy..."
"You know when the Red Light is on-"
"The power went out! The red light wasn't on!" Michelle screamed.
Danny grinned like a rat about to steal food, and took a few steps forward, nodding. Both Jesse and Michelle recoiled and inhaled sharply. "You wanna make excuses?" Danny challenged, barring down on little Michelle.
"Danny," Jesse timidly interceded, "she is fine. She and I were only singing."
Danny's head slowly clicked over unto his phosphorus eyes met Jess's and transferred their choking toxicity. Jesse gulped. He wanted to lick his lips. they wear as dry as poorly kept leather. Danny's stare disempowered him, and he just starred back, but it wasn't the same. Danny spoke.
"Michelle. Go."
The tyke immediately sped across the basement floor and floor up the thundering staircase, not saying a word and, actually, not even breathing. In an instant she was gone. The very different faces of John Stamos and Bob Saget were all that remained.
It seemed like a century before one of them talked. Throughout that same silent moment, there were unblinking eyes and closed mouths that said so much.
"Jesse," finally, Danny whispered slowly.
Jesse did not respond back with words, his throat could not find any, but his glassed reacted with meager, but yet glowing, self assurance-which the imposing Danny met very readily and confidently, with a sinister smile and nod.
"Jesse, Jesse, Jesse, Jesse..."
"Danny," Jesse choked out.
Danny, wanting to import as much intimidation, trepidation and malignance, curled back his lips, showing his teeth like a chimpanzee and snaked his head forward until his and Jesse's noses were almost touching. Then he spoke through said teeth, his face not moving at all as he breathed words. "You been working on Unstoppolis, Jesse?"
"Yes, I have," Jesse said back so quietly he barely said anything at all.
"Play me a song. Sing me a song."
There was a pause before Jesse responded, as he looked, flickering down into Danny's still, stale eyes. He swallowed hard and then at last, finally, he said, "okay." Trembling slightly, he merely stared back at Danny for a moment longer. Then, without further words, he slid over to the piano bench, sat upon it and-with one more trepidatious look back at Danny-began to play and sing:
Nine A. M.
Awaken eyelids
Accept the hours ahead
Done for them
Your wife and your kids
Do it until you're dead
Five o'clock
Look out the window
See the homeward caravan
Close up shop
See you, tomorrow
Don't you be late, understand?
His voice sounded strong. His voice sounded good. His words were sung clear-just the way that they should. And though Danny was there, his face a burning scathe, Jesse founf courage to bare. In such a heart there could not be a slave.
I walk down Cobble Street
Greet the people thar I meet /
I smile, they wave
It's all the same
He took another hard breath.
We all just pretend
We're not just waiting for the end
They smile, I wave
It's all the same
Anyway.
The final word, Jesse repeated again and again, letting the word resound and carry where had You not been there with them in that basement, You would have believed he was singing out over and into vast, echoing canyons. Danny laughed. He sat there and laughed. Danny laughed and Jesse just sang, and as he Danny laughed, his laughing grew until the tiny, annoyed chuckle became a hard, mocking laughter, wanting to hurt. Jesse stopped the song. It was done anyhow.
"Tell me, you think that's good? Do you think Unstoppolis is actually good?!"
Jesse stammered, but the weak muttering wasn't even words. Danny scorned, imitating the pathetic, bark.
"Bh,ph..bh bh..pi,"
Jesse hung his head.
"Unstoppolis. Get real. You're just sitting in my basement with your writing, in your Wal-Mart notebook, playing on your Toys 'R Us keyboard, yelling out your little songs at night."
Jesse sunk low under the weight of insult and truth. He felt the burning of shame and self-loathing, but as Danny began another round of put-downs at Jesse and his Unstoppolis.
John Stamos felt anger and looked up to locked eyes with Danny Tanner, his brow furrowed in defiance. It was strong. It was brave. It was long overdueand apt, but Danny was hardy phased. After a brief look of surprise, he sneered back and regained the edge. Danny then said, "right, you don't like that. Well, go and write another song about it Jes-"
The power went out, again.
In the dark, Danny spoke again, with such satisfaction, "yeah, now you know the night, Jess-the dark."
Having heard enough and not having anymore, Jesse turned and, knowing the way automatically, he started up the darkened staircase. Danny, of course, could no longer see him but he heard Jesse's stomping in retreat up the stairs and continued his sideways verbal onslaught. "Yeah, maybe you should just go. Go out there and really know the night." He could hear that Jesse had stopped in the darkness and he could sense that he was staring down at him. Danny then sang. He sang a song so haunting and with such depth You could hardly believe that previously, he has only offed up the likes of "Jess and Just". Here, he sang to Jesse Katsopolis to "Know the Night":
When you don't want to go
But you just somehow know
That you can't stay tonight
That's when you know the night
No one say 'goodnight'
When you're kicking out the door
Don't you say a word no more
When you just can't see the light
That's when you know the night
Just can't get it right
And I think that I could get it soon
If I just find out what's in this room
Someone turned out the light
Don't you know the night?
So when you're walking down the street
Don't know a soul to meet
Something just ain't right
So know the nigh
And I think that I can get it still
Even though you can't see no more than you can kill
When you can't tell your left from right
That's when you know the night
Know the night. That's when you know the night, Danny repeated the phrase again and again, losing it's form and becoming just a drone in the black as Jesse crossed the threshold at the top of the stairs and closed the basement door behind him.
Outside it was San Francisco nighttime, but a darker nighttime, a night as God intended it. All the the curved and Suessian San Francisco houses were completely blackened by the most recent attack of rolling power outages. Of course all the streetlights and everything else were out too. There was no light at all. Even the Moon hung new and blank in the night sky.
Danny had followed Jesse outside. Neither man spoke, then Danny did. "Jesse, I-I'm sorry," he was speaking tenderly now, it is confusing, "I'm sorry, I-"
"I know Danny," Jesse responded and, as if just sensing on instinct-since he could not see-reassuringly and affectionately reached back and touched Danny's arm.
"I just get so..."
"I know," Jesse reassured, patting Danny's arm again.
There was then another moment where neither of them said anything.
"Well, come inside will you? I can't see a thing out here."
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"Jess..."
"I'm going to walk around for a while."
"Walk around? It's the middle of the night!"
"I know. I just need to clear my head."
"Jesse, come on! Now I said I was sorry! Come back inside and-"
"I'll be back later."
Jesse was already walking away as he said those last words. Danny could only slightly tell he was moving away from him, by the change in the sound of his voice. Jesse wasn't coming back inside. He was walking away. Jesse wasn't listening to Danny. Danny didn't like it.
"Jesse! Jesse!"
There was no response.
Out here in the night air I breathe deeply and taste the darkness as hibiscus and marigold. The stars above me are as cameras in ultraviolet and topography, scattered and spying all around me. So I duck and hide my face from the stars out at night in vain.
Blackest night will come within my sight. Will you blight or will you sight, find you within mine tonight. A layer of prayer and I stare. Nothing really compares to the dares of the midnight fair. Where? Where am I as the lights turn back on, rolling over the San Francisco hills. Not one-by-one, but as massive clumps of tumorous spheres: oblong orbs of blue and pale yellow light, grouped together, one by one, in increasingly larger and larger formations of luminescence. And just like that, the whole neighborhood was lit up, again-though it was still very clearly night. Along the road I could see rows of emitting lampposts and sparkling pavement.
The immediate are now half illuminated by carefully designed, syncopated groupings: two-by-two, and then four-by-four on each side of the road. The night was bliss with all the street lights now on. Then, they went off again. The void-like darkness was completely and totally for just a few moments. Then, only flickering in a seemingly random pattern, the streetlights behind, to the south of me began to glow on and off. The vast web of light. which, at it's brightest and briefest, began to touch me, from behind again and again. Turning around, the idiocentric, yet homogenous, succession of San Francisco rowhouses (oblong, with erratic bulges of lopsided bay windows and terraces) so unlike human dwellings anywhere else in the world while still-paradoxically-each one looked so much like the other. In their obtusely shaped windows I could see the lights flash and vanish erratically in syncopation and I cannot help but sing:
My home, what happened to my home
That home of mine
Alone, I feel so alone
With empty time
But I know I can go on longer
And my heart will become stronger
In times like these
I go, I go alone along
Too long, I think
And I feel so tired
Thirst love-no drink!
And each night the winds come colder
But my wisdom becomes bolder
In times like these
In times like these!
Li ah ah ah ah oh ohh!
In times like these
Li ah ah ah ah oh ohh
Oh!
So, I think that, with Danny at least, it can't be stopped. It can't be helped. It only does so if he kills me-which he won't do (because of Michelle, if for nothing else). Even if he does, of course that means that I would win the most ultimate victory! You can't stop Unstoppolis. That's the whole point. You can only kill it. Which would make it an immortal martyr and what artist could ask for more than that? When I return, and I will, I will look Bob Saget in the eye and Bob Saget will look back at me, and we will both smile-perhaps-most likely him just sardonically, but I will mean it. I am an artist who lives and breathes on a plane that is perpetually above the ever present opposition-or the "misguided jealous'-which ever qualifier best suits, if there is even a difference.
Eventually, I made my way into a tiny park and sat down on a bench. I sat with my eyes closed, but still awake. It was now just before sunrise and the sky was that certain wash between deep black and subtle indigo. Total peace, total understand all around me and within me. In my wonderful mind, I get an image and a sound of words always heard and never sung: a song that I know has always been there and been a part of me since everything here all started. Words, that without knowing and always knowing, I realized, repeated within my head and sometimes even on my lips, even ever quietly sang these words, again and again, without speaking and with speaking and singing and staying silent:
Everywhere you look
Everywhere you look...
There's a heart
There's a heart...
A hand to hold onto
Getting up and going forward, as the newly glistening orange sun comes over me and San Francisco. I see the Full House ahead of me. I head home.
- EPILOGUE -
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