THE TALENTED TULI #4

BY JUANITA CLAUDETTE

 #4

Tuli waited backstage drinking Hennessy with her sister, Pinky, and taking sporadic peeks at the audience.  Rodney walked in smiling ear-to-ear.  He stopped in the main entrance door frame and removed his big, leather coat–Tuli could smell it now…

“Fucking shit, man!” 

“What?!” Pinky asked between selfies.

“This mumble-mouth-muthafucka Rodney came! HIT ME AGAIN, BARTENDER!”  Pinky poured up with a confused smirk on her face.

“But that’s your lil’ tenderoni, right? Isn’t this a good thing?” She plopped in a maraschino cherry for good measure.  Tuli sipped and thought a bit before answering. 

“It’s a thing.” She swigged the brown liquid. “It’s a thing that interferes with the way I do my thang.” 

Pinky rolled her eyes and shook her head.  “Oh, brother.” Tuli grunted out of her seat and peaked back through the curtain.  

“Dammit, and he’s in V.I.P.! Why the hell would he spend that much money to sit alone?! The bar is perfectly empty…critical thinking skills are at an all-time low…” she murmured nervously.  

“Critical thinking’s been done.  Critical drinking is the future!”  Pinky jumped up and down clapping. Tuli laughed.  They took another shot.  

Seconds later, Tuli pulled a cherry stem she’d tied from her mouth–Pinky held up a stem just like it.  

“Still got it, bitch!” Pinky and Tuli cackled.  

“Fuck it”, Tuli said then.  “His funeral, not mine.”  

*******

Tuli went on stage with a freshly poured shot in hand.  When the lights came up she was uncustomarily already on stage, seated on a stool and sipping from the glass.  The audience went into a laughing and applauding roar as soon as they realized she was there.  She waved them off with her hand as she finished her sip.

“How nice of you mothafuckas to join me”, Tuli had them at hello.  Pinky laughed from side-stage, then went to join the audience. 

“Before we get into the jokes and shit, are there any ladies in the house?”  The ladies hooted.  “Let me rephrase: are there any grown ass women in the house?” The hoots got louder and were peppered with some hell-yeahs.  “Yeah I thought so.  I was drinking Hennessy backstage with my sister and I could feel the estrogen radiating from my dressing room.”  (Laughs)  “No seriously, it’s big adult slumber-party vibes in here, and I love it. Who in here came with their friends?” The audience roars. “Who in here came with friends they met before social media? They give Tuli the same big response.  “Oh good there’s other old bitches in here I can finally complain to.” Tuli gulped down the rest of her Hennessey before she started telling the audience about an incident that occurred between Rodney and her just the afternoon before.  

Rodney–ten years Tuli’s junior, but her favorite lover by far–had sent the comedian a text: “I just read this book and you need it! You will love it, I promise.” Tuli, excited by the banner excerpt, opened the message right away.  Before she could tap the heart response–Rodney panicked and typed back “Well maybe IDK”, Tuli frowned. “But I think so”, she rolled her eyes at the third text and locked her phone, exhausted.  

“…it’s like, you can tell which relationships formed after SM, right?  The longer you know the muhfucka, the less familiar they act.” The audience laughed.  “Is this nigga the Benjamin Button of communication?! No, for real.  I’m like wait baby, where are you going?  Is he texting me from a vortex?!”  Rodney squirmed uncomfortably in his chair as his parents laughed loudly at yesterday’s uneasiness with the rest of Tuli’s crowd.  

“…that’s too self-conscious dawg.  The pussy can’t pop after that, can it?  Not truly, right? That’s what I get for dipping into the new millennial pool. The new cats is sensitive, man.  Like dating a land-mine–you canNOT press too hard.”  Rodney whispered something to his mother who stopped laughing on the spot.  He got up from his chair in a huff, struggling to get his leather jacket off the chair he’d slung it over.

“Here you go, sweetie”, an old woman at the bar near VIP helped.   Rodney grabbed the jacket in a bundle and stormed out…

“BOOM!” Tuli said as his back disappeared beyond the doors.  “Another one bites the dust.” The audience laughed and applauded, Tuli dropped the mic and walked out.  She was going to miss the smell of that leather jacket.

This is a juicy one! Advice for Teenage Dreez:

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

  • Start hiking now—you’ll love it!
  • Keep your journals on a bookshelf—Vono is gonna flood the house with hot water when you move to Boston.
  • Get an external hard drive as soon as you get your first Macbook; back up all your stories.
  • Don’t get rid of your tongue ring just because Phil doesn’t like it, you’ll miss it at first—and Phil won’t be there forever.
  • Go out solo after you get into a relationship—you don’t like him that much.
  • The music you sneak into the club to dance to will be the music you wake up Sunday morning and clean the house to. And just as you suspected—Usher ft. Lil Jon and Ludacris will knock FOREVER. YEAH!
  • Start yoga now. It’ll change everything.
  • Everything else you did…was wild, but actually ends up being exactly what you need right now, so STAY BOLD. Keep being loud and (sometimes) wrong—you’ll never get tired of being scrutinized.
  • OH WAIT! Take vitamins and drink water now…those good genes start acting brand new as you face forty.

I’ll hold it down till you get here. 💕

Dreezy Loves You ❤️🖤💚

A picture of 18 year old me sent by my cousin Emmy a few weeks ago.

I wrote a poem. FLUID (021924)

FLUID by Sondria

If I belong to you,

You’ve been mine for millennia.

Millennial…love affair.

Hyper aware of being unaware,

Under aware of reality

We self-medicate—wait.

Hyper aware of being unaware,

Under aware of what to do about it

We multi-task—stop.

Hyper aware of being only aware,

Lotus position in thin underwear

We make…better decisions when we hydrate. 💦

~Dreezy Loves You ❤️🖤💚

Days Til Funeral: 11

My grandmother transitioned off of this plane in the first few days of 2024 and it shifted my desire to be seen while propelling my artistic output.

My social media is gone, but not my desire to share moments of my existence.

So let’s start (or continue) here. 🧑🏿‍💻✨

Pitzer College and Ontario Museum
of History and Art
2/17/24

Here is the funeral program I made for my Mom & Auntie Moe in honor of my Grandmother’s Funeral. I tweaked a Canva template (a lot) and collected words and pics from the fam. I didn’t write much—my aunt Melzina in Chicago sent the poem, my mom wrote the obituary. My cousins Kim, Shanti, and Audria spoke for themselves. My grandmother’s name is CLAUDETTE CAIN.

Write you soon!

~Dreezy Loves You ❤️🖤💚

That one time my mama taught me to read and write…

Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.

The best gifts I’ve ever received—my art and my life—were from the same radiant being. My mama taught me to write first…my alphabet in print, upper and lowercase. With this knowledge, I’d combine random letters all day and ask her if they were words—for a long time they never were—then I wrote “fire”.

The first book I ever read happened in the same year I wrote my first word, it was THE LITTLE RED HEN. A golden book that would come to be the foundation of how I relate to other humans. I was three years old.

So yeah…moms just casually gifted me with my imagination and the ability to apply it.

Then I started kindergarten…but we’ll have to dig into that another time. Haha!

Dreezy Loves You ❤️🖤💚

The Little Red Hen, the first book I ever read.

ARCHER, INTO THE DARK: A Fine Farewell

By Sondria

First of all, I LOVE ARCHER SO HARD (phrasing), and I would follow H. Jon Benjamin’s voice to the ends of the earth. If you have had the opportunity to indulge in either series, you know that Sterling Archer (Archer) and Bob Belcher (Bob’s Burgers) are voiced by the same human: H. Jon Benjamin. However, my infatuation with the voice began when I was a high school pup–some, twenty-odd years ago–with a little four-season series called HOME MOVIES.

H. Jon Benjamin

Bob Belcher, Bob’s Burgers

Home Movies was about a kid named Brendan Smalls who was a filmmaker. He constantly makes movies on an old-school camcorder with his two besties Jason Penopolis (voiced by Benjamin) and Melissa Robbins. My favorite character in this cartoon is an obvious standout: Coach John McGuirk (Brendan Small’s soccer coach and P.E. teacher, who even does a brief stint dating Brendan’s mother…but moving on–). McGuirk was most dazzling for many of the same reasons I would later come to love Archer for. And with the exception of the ornery soccer coach’s occupation and blockheaded unattractiveness–he and Sterling could be energetic twins: both mainly motivated by booze and booty. You wanna talk about “inappropes”?! John McGuirk wrote the book on INAPPROPES!

Coach John McGuirk, Home Movies

On December 17, 2023 (the 18th on HULU), FXX presented an hour-long Archer special “Into the Cold”.  It was a fine farewell that evoked many tears out of your dogmatic editor’s eyes–so I have written this piece–to analyze the notes I took during my first time watching the finale.  These notes were originally taken to help me remember which points to bring up to my brother (UncleVono) during our post-screening re-cap.

NOAH: Do you even know what an idiom is?

ARCHER: Colloquial metaphor.

Heart of Archness, S.3/E.2

***READER BEWARE: IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN “INTO THE COLD” THE ARCHER FINALE YET–THERE WILL BE SEVERAL SPOILERS GOING FORWARD–ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.***

Phrasing montage. 🥹

ANALYZING MY 1ST-SCREENING NOTES

  • So off top, I’m happy to see Archer in bed with two ladies–I know (and love) him to be “Mr. Bitches”, and it was really weird and slightly depressing to see his mojo failing him all last season.
  • Barry’s energy is trapped in a fridge–is this a play on the finale’s title “Into the Cold”? 
  • Lana berates Cyril like in the good old days and mentioned his peen! She went on a Malory rant…THAT is what she was missing last season–angry boss! She was too busy trying not to be Malory–but she’s been training for this ever since she quit college and followed the O.G. to her future in espionage.
  • In season 1 of Archer, Lana Kane is introduced as a fellow spy, Archer’s ex, and the main squeeze of ISIS (the spy agency and main setting of the series) accountant, Cyril Figgis.  Before the odd couple’s eventual breakup, Cyril has to suffer frequent Archer comparisons and Lana’s busting of his (implicitly gargantuan) balls. 
  • “Malory” is Malory Archer, the head of ISIS and Sterling Archer’s mother (voiced by the late, great Jessica Walter). She often went on rants of exquisitely lethal employee beratement. The character was dissolved elegantly when the actress passed away in 2021, Lana Kane (voiced by Aisha Tyler) replaced Mallory as head of ISIS after 2021.
ARCHER, Malory Archer (voice: Jessica Walter) in ‘Archer Vice: A Debt Of Honor’ (Season 5, Episode 3, aired January 27, 2014). ©FX Networks/courtesy Everett Collection
ARCHER — “London Time”— Season 12, Episode 3 (Airs Wednesday, September 1st) — Pictured: (l-r) Sterling Archer (voice of H. Jon Benjamin) and Malory Archer (voice of Jessica Walter). CR: FXX
The Malory Gallery. 🥲🤍🥃✨

!!! Slater shows up right before the commercial break!

  • Slater, voiced by (and identical to) Christian Slater is a former CIA agent, and notorious enemy of ISIS–he and Archer particularly don’t get along–this point is emphasized in the finale. 

***this section of notes stops 14 minutes, 46 seconds into the finale when there is the first commercial break.***

Episode 1

  • When we come back from the break Archer flies into an airplane butt naked to attack Slater–and it’s EPIC. 
  • THEN PLOT TWIST #2: KATYA RETURNS ON SLATERS TEAM! She shoots Archer in the arm, then confirms her pussy still vibrates all after the fact.  (Archer had asked earlier.)  This bit of answering once the question’s pertinence has subsided is CLASSIC KATYA. *Sterling Archer voice*
  • There is a reference to the very first scene of Archer here–which is also the point at which I first shed tears during the finale.
  • Is Cheryl back on heavy psychedelics? She’s acting like it!
    • When we first meet Cheryl Tunt, she has been stood up repeatedly by Archer.  She’s been sodomized, belittled, extorted, and even had her name changed to Carol when he couldn’t remember.  In what is possibly the most outrageous character arc of all time (another blog post worth considering), we see Cheryl become addicted to glue, LSD, and other hallucinogens, we learn she is an heiress, pyromaniac, with a choking kink as well! In the finale–she is back to being trippy, and they even let her arson-freak flag fly by having her help with an explosion. 
  • In the first episode of Archer we enter with Archer chained to a wall being tortured by someone with a Russian accent, with cables hooked to a car battery. After Archer’s many critical quips about the battery being a golf cart battery, and the torturers accent being terrible–Mallory Acher’s voice shuts the torture session down from beyond a double mirror–sightin that the agent has failed his test–this is our introduction to Sterling and Malory and the series as a whole in its pilot episode.
  • The scene is alluded to in the finale when the KGB’s flunky–equipped with a real russian accent and the proper amount of electricity to pose a threat–has Archer hemmed up in exactly the same way.  I cried immediately because it made me feel like the writers cared about me–and all the people like me who have been rocking loyally–the finale is full of references like this which makes it one of my favorite finales of all time–right in line with the finale from THE OFFICE (maybe I’ll talk about that series in the future).  

KRIEGER: Do you not know what rent is?

CHERYL: I wanna say…some kind of poor people food? Like kibble?

Into The Cold, Final Episode
  • At 24 minutes, 11 seconds, Lana rounds up the troops for one last hurrah before ISIS is declared illegal by the UN. Pam hit us with a “SPLOOSH” at the end of Lana’s speech, 🥹 another first season reference to Pam crushing on (and smashing) Lana.  
  • Barry is transferred into Krieger’s ex-harajuku hologram bride-to-be—yeah, you read all that correctly!
    • Algernop Krieger is ISIS’ in-house scientist and likely a clone of Hitler (Um…you’re just going to have to watch for more info on that 😂). Some of his pet projects include splicing animals with humans (ahhh, Pigly), cloning his co-workers, reanimating dead folks (Like Barry and Katya), replacing severed limbs with mechanics (a la Ray Gillette and Conway Stern), souping up his van, and the aforementioned hologram fiancee–Mitsuko Miyazumi (voiced by Juday Greer, who voices Cheryl Tunt)  Mitsuko always appears in a wedding gown, and often hassles Kreiger about setting a wedding date.  After years of failed attempts to get the marriage approved/legalized, Krieger shuts Mitsuko down–but she is remembered in our “Into the Cold” finale when Barry’s energy is transferred from the fridge into the hologram.  He looks like Barry–only as a hologram, in Mitsuko’s wedding gown. 
  • Archer gets separated from the team and the planned plan starts to crumble–as it usually tends to.  When team and Archer cannot seem to get in contact with one another, Archer sends several shit-talking faxes about saving himself and not needing anyone–his last fax is assurance that the previous faxes were just hoaxes, and he finally gives the rest of team-ISIS his coordinates.
    • CLASSIC ARCHER!! An amazing way to give us Archer’s voicemail prank, one last time for the road. 
  • At about 30 minutes into the show, it’s one of my favorite Archer heartthrobs and former Mallory Archer boy-toy: CHET MANLEY!!
    • We first meet Chet Manley during season 3’s “Heart of Archness”, as the old-timey, badass of a pilot, who is former ISIS and who Malory taps to find Sterling when he goes missing for three months following Katya’s death.
      • Barry killed Katya right after she and Archer got engaged.  This was payback for Archer sodomizing Barry’s fiance, and repeatedly injuring him. Kreiger eventually reanimates Katya and she and Barry link up and have crazy android sex and stay together for a while.  
  • Katya versus Barry in a final showdown and I think it’s about to be amazing–but Barry ends up being tiny! Hahahahahaha…it’s hilarious.
    • The Archer/Barry/Katya love triangle is another thing you have to see to grasp–but in the FINALE–the trio’s discrepancies are solved by a threesome: Barry’s energy is finally transferred into Katya’s body and Archer hits it!!!
ARCHER — Pictured: Pam Poovey. CR. FX
PAMPAAAAGE!!!!

Sensational! So in conclusion…I had things I wanted to happen before I saw the actual finale…I wanted Archer’s father to be revealed as either Chet Manley or Burt Reynolds. I wanted Archer and Pam to end up together…etc. But nothing I wanted was better than what the Archer-makers created, and that’s all a gyal could ask for. Many of my old favorites have had bitter/abrupt/unplanned ends, or they stick around longer than they are good–Archer went out with the dignity of a slightly blacker turtleneck.

Farewell, my animated friends–and LONG LIVE MALORY ARCHER!

LANA: Can you finally admit I’m good at my job?ARCHER: No. But it’s a soft no.

Everything is paper.

Happy Writing ✍🏿✨

~Sondria

THE TALENTED TULI #3

By Juanita Claudette

#3

“Well, you know you have to let potato chips breathe—just like fine wine. When you first open the bag they smell like…well shit, they smell like feet.” The table rolled in laughter.

“Mom, can you please not do bits during dinner.”

“Hey, in my line of work–you HOPE to be a bit during dinner”, Tuli said waving her carrot around like a Marx Brother.  Rupi giggled.  The classic was lost on Deli. 

“Oh my god”, the sixteen year old sighed, and threw her head back, exasperated. 

“I’m just having conversation, you fucking cunt.” 

“Jesus.”

“Jesus Christ,Tuli.”

“Yeah..right: Jesus Tuli… no–you know what? I’m sorry. That’s my fault. Babygirl—mommy’s bad, OK?. I’m gonna go for a smoke.  Calm my crazy ass down…acclimate from the stage to some  more dinner appropriate content  How’s that?. Be right back! Fresh as a daisy and sweeter n’ sugar. I’m sorry.” 

     It felt inappropriate to smile, but Tuli smiled anyway. Then she tipped her ex-husband’s “best dad” cap at her family on her way to her mother’s porch. 

     Tuli’s younger brother, Rupi, followed his sister in his slippers, carrying a half-glass of whiskey.

“Shakespeare would say all the WORLD’S a stage, and all the little spoiled bitches are just players in it.  All the world includes dinner tables Rup’.   

“You not wrong.” 

     “Traitor! Fucking Delilah! Why the hell did I name her that?!” Tulli sat down and put her face in her hands dramatically. Rupi laughed and sat next to her on a swinging bench. She breathed. 

     “You were always the best audience.”

    “I don’t know why you act like that child ain’t your carbon copy.” Rupi swung his big legs out and Tuli joined him. “Yooo!! You remember the speech you gave when ma got you a Barbie dreamhouse instead of that Home Alone talkback recorder thingy you wanted?!” The siblings laughed. 

     “She still regrets ruining my lil’ eight-year-old journalism career, you know? I can see it in her eyes, lingering after every set.” 

     “Ahh–who cares…you almost weren’t born, remember?” They laugh.  

     “Hey—I’ll do the bits.”

     “You’ve been banned.”

     “Deli is a cute name, though, right? I named her Deliliah because when I was pregnant, I wanted to call her Deli.” Tuli and Rupi locked eyes. 

“I was there, foo”.

“Yeah you were”, Tuli took a long pull on the ja,y and passed it to her baby brother.

“That would fucking suck”, Rupi looked down at the ground. His legs stopped swinging.

“What would fucking suck?”

If you were never born.

Meh…I don’t know, dude–you’re like the only cool one here, anyway.  .Everyone else I can take or leave.  

Then they swung their feet again.

     

Writing Prompt #3: Mention Your Intentions

  Happy last full moon of 2023! We normally drop our weekly prompts on WRITER WEDNESDAY–and there will be another tomorrow–but we wanted to maximize on this lunar energy right quick and plan out some 2024 writing goals!:

  • First, separate your paper into fourths. (Columns or quadrants are perfect.)
  • Next, assign each section a season (1,2,3,4 or winter, spring, summer, fall)
  • Write down a writing goal for each of the four sections–these will be your “mentioned intentions”. (example–winter: finish first draft of my book, spring: hire editor, copyright and self-publish book, summer: meet with bookstores/vendors for readings and product placement, fall: draft next book during NaNoWriMo)
  • BONUS: Each season has 3 months in it. For some bonus intention setting–write down some steps you’ll take monthly/weekly/daily to ensure you reach your seasonal goals!!

Io Scrivo* Wants to See Somethin’!

  Do you need/want a writing accountability partner? We are here for you! 

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Everything is paper, so HAPPY WRITING!

  ~SONDRIA