Town On the Verge of Existence
[How did Sarah "The Jobber Slayer" come to be? Fair question. If you care, the BOBRP Channel (known affectionately as the 'Burp' channel) is going to be showing Sarah, from the beginning. All the great promos (including the early Buffy "The Jobber Slayer" promos, before the whole lawsuit thing) that made Sarah into a cult phenomenon and led her to BOB. Tonight, we begin with RP 1. The pilot RP is called "Town On The Verge of Existence."]
Cloudydale High School. September, 1996.
Buffy Anne Summers arrived at high school. She wanted go home to bed, lay down and never get up again when she saw the teenage strangers around her in the hallways, smoking in front of the school, snorting coke in the parking lot, blabbing on and on about who was doing who, who was wearing what and who was wearing what while they were doing who. It was a big gossip fest. And Buffy wasn’t in on any of it. She felt lonely. She was just 16, you know what I mean? So very sweet and innocent. And hot.
Backstory: Buffy’s mother is a funeral director. Buffy’s parents are divorced. Before she came to this miserable little town nobody has ever heard of, not even the people at Rand McNally, she did time in Greenwich. There, she was a shallow, petty, spoiled, popular girl. She loved it. Now, she was down at the bottom of the food chain, forced to pay her dues and get noticed by the other kids so she get be in the “in-crowd” and be accepted.
She needed an “in.”
Then she saw it. The cafeteria. A beautiful raven-haired beauty in a baby-blue outfit that emphasized her long legs. The kind of legs that could wrap around a man’s head two or three times, eventually suffocating him, but the process would be worth it. She was gabbing at a vending machine with some fashion victims, who were wearing atrociously bright and slobby looking outfits. She put in some coinage and pressed a soda, only half paying attention to the mindless conversation. And with all she was doing at this point, her mind was pretty well stretched if ya dig what I’m saying.
The raven-haired beauty pressed the Pepsi button.
That wasn’t diet!
The girl picked up the soda, never glancing down to make sure what kind of soda she had bought. She cracked the top.
Buffy reacted instinctively. She ran toward the girl and went into a leap of sorts, eventually kicking the can, in some sort of slow-motion super high kicky motion, out of the girl’s hand. The can hit the ceiling, bringing down a bunch of tiles and dirt on the girl’s fashion victim friends, and then fell to the floor, and the soda began to slowly burn a hole in the floor.
“Hey bitch!” the girl said. “You owe me a soda.”
“Look at the can,” Buffy said. “I just saved you.”
The girl looks down at the can. Her jaw drops. “That isn’t diet. Wow. Sorry, I guess you don’t owe me a soda. Wait, yes you do! Wait. Who in the blue hell are you?”
“My name’s Buffy. Buffy Summers.”
“I’m Connie. Connie Kuntz. I’m the resident most popular sarcastic bitch of CHS. Buffy is a strange name. Don’t you think?”
“Pot: kettle: black.”
“Wit? I like that.” Connie looks around at her fallen friends and the ceiling. “Shame about them. Looks like I need a new friend. Guess that can be you.”
“Lucky me.”
“Consider yourself in. And believe me, unless you’re in with Kuntz, you ain’t in.”
************************************************
Richard Hurtz looked on as the new girl and Connie chatted. He was already in love. But she didn’t even know he existed. How could she know? They hadn’t met, after all.
************************************************
“I’ve heard you can help me,” Buffy told the awkward-looking redhead.
“Wha?” the redhead said, looking up from her book. Her breakfast eating also halted. The redhead wore small purple (Hippie-style) sunglasses and her hair was tied into a ponytail. She was wearing a long black skirt, combat boots and an Ani DiFranco T-Shirt. “Do what?”
“Study and junk. I hear you’re smart. Got a boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend, *pfffft*, boys don’t even know I exist. Connie, your new friend, hasn’t even given me permission to share the hallways with her.”
“Tell you what. We’ll make a deal. You help me study, I’ll help you reach your potential.” Buffy lightly brushed the redhead’s face with the back of her hand. “Such a pretty face.”
The redhead blushed. “My name is Kay. Kay Fabe.”
Buffy stopped caressing Kay’s face. Kay noticed the sudden chill in the air. Then, a couple of guys walked by with a refrigerator on a cart. Buffy and Kay looked at them.
“How you doin’?” one of the guys asked.
“We’ll be better once you get to steppin’,” Buffy told him.
They get to steppin’.
“Did I say something?” Kay asks Buffy. “I kind of liked-”
The bell rings.
“I gotta go. Let’s meet tonight at the Little Brown Ring. I hear it’s the place to be. Actually, I hear it’s the ONLY place to be in Cloudydale.”
“Okey-dokey.”
************************************************
Buffy couldn’t find the class. Then she did. It was really scary there for a second. Once in class, she found out she’d need to take out a book for a research paper. Topic of her choice, within reason. She waited to research the myth of vampires. No doubt, she could find a book about vampires in a school library, right?
The name Kay Fabe still haunted her. But why?
“Oh my God!” The head librarian hung up the phone and seemed quite calm after that bizarre shout. She looked around at all the aisles of books. Stairs? More books upstairs? Yeah, whatever. She went to the librarian. “Can I help you?” he asked quite pleasantly with a hint of a British accent.
“Yeah. I’m kind of new here and, well, it’s my first time. In a library. And my first day here at school. I guess you could say I’m just losing all kinds of virginity today.”
The librarian takes off his glasses and wipes them with his tie. He shakes his head nervously. “New are you? Well, hmm, what can I, I, help you with….”
“A book.”
“Sorry, I wanted to know your name there.”
“What, at the pause?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you should have said help you with, Miss….”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“No biggie. It’s Miss Summers.”
“Buffy?”
“Yeah,” she says puzzled. “How’d you know my name?”
The librarian walks out from behind the counter and heads toward the stairs. Buffy, after a pause, follows him.
“I want to write a paper on vampires.”
“Vampires? Isn’t that rather……” he trails off while they walk upstairs. “Odd?”
“Why?”
“Watch many movies?”
“No. My mom says movies are evil. We only get basic cable.”
“You poor girl,” he says stopping at the top of the staircase.
“I’m dealing. Chill. What’s your name anyway?”
“Mr. Styles.”
“Nice name. Very, stylish.”
“Yes, well.” They walk again. They go to the far wall, past aisle after aisle of dusty works. Buffy stops and turns around quick. “What is it?” Mr. Styles asks.
“Ever have the feeling you were being watched? I’ve felt that way all day. I didn’t feel that way yesterday.”
“You best get used to it.” He walks down an aisle.
************************************************
Richard saw Buffy go into the library. But there was nobody around when he went inside. Empty much? Then he heard something upstairs, like a big book falling. He quickly ran, no, slowly ran, to the stairs and went up them, as opposed to going down the up staircase. When Richard realized how poorly grammatical his brain was, we switched scenes. Poorly grammatical, sheesh.
************************************************
Mr. Styles picked up the thick tome and brought it to Buffy. She looked at it. The title: Jobbers.
“I hope Jobbers is Latin for vampires.”
“Sorry, no. Buffy, you’re the chosen one.”
“Are you trying to pick me up?”
“No. You are the Jobber Slayer. You were called by the Federation to end the era of bad gimmicks and take the sport in a more entertaining direction. The Federation is still very upset Disco Inferno has a job. He defeated the last Slayer.”
“But you digress,” Buffy said. “Look I know all about jobbers. To become a jobber you have to suck. Jobbers are a lot like vampires. Vampires want to suck, jobbers want to suck. It’s a big suck fest here in Cloudydale, isn’t it?”
“Right. It may take a year or two, but we believe wrestling is due for a big boom. With the new millennium coming and all, and wrestling gets big near the end of every decade, so with the millennium, it should be huge. That’s why you’re needed. Jobbers are everywhere. And for some unknown, mysterious reason, there is a high concentration of jobbers in this area. There’s a theory that industrial waste from Stamford is responsible for the outbreak. Stamford is where the World Wrestling Federation is based out of.”
“Damn McMahon. He sure has got an attitude, doesn’t he? If I ever see him, I’m gonna stick my foot straight up his ass. And that’s the bottom line, because Buffy Summers said so. So, we work for the WWF?”
“No, we work for The Federation. Completely different thing,” he says winking.
“Gotcha.”
“Oh my God, no, no. I have a twitch. That wasn’t a lie wink,” he says winking again.
“Yeah, sure. Well, I’ll go read this book I guess. But I still need my vampire book. Don’t want to resurrect them demons of non-studiology.”
************************************************
Lunch. Buffy didn’t go to the cafeteria. Instead, she sat alone outside at a picnic table. She began to read of the TV eyesores, such as Shockmaster, the Gobbledegooker, Koko B. Ware, Iron Mike Sharpe and the Yeti. So many bad gimmicks. The horror!
Then, somebody tripped over the table.
“Hi,” he said, looking at the book. “Can I lay down with you, I mean, for you? Or would you hurt me too badly?”
She closes the book and puts it in her backpack. “What?”
“I heard about you being the Slayer and all. Can I join your group?”
“There is no group.”
“Well, let’s get one then. C’mon, I’m a huge wrestling fan. Have you heard the ‘boring’ chants lately? It’s brutal. I want to help. And this way, I can not get mega-obsessed with you and cause you more problems by stalking you at inopportune times and being a generally major distraction.”
“As if. Fine, just, meet me later tonight.”
“Little Brown Ring? I know it well. See you there.”
************************************************
“It’s an omen. It all makes sense.”
Back at the library.
“Styles, it’s just a student. How can you tell he stayed home because of a jobber on TV?”
“If the plague of apathy spreads, Cloudydale will exist. For real. Listen again.”
Styles plays the tape again for the reluctant Slayer.
“This is Ms. Kool. J.D. won’t be in today. He’s vomiting and extremely ill. Today is Tuesday. Thank you.”
Raw strikes again.
“Look at these numbers. The lower the ratings go, the day after, the more sick students there are.” He passes her the attendance records and Nielsen ratings from the last six months.
“Wait. These numbers are low. And then there are huge absences. Does that mean, wrestling helps people?”
“Yes, exactly. Especially teenagers.”
“So, if more people were entertained by wrestling, there would be less sickness and despair, and maybe, this would be a better world?”
“That’s why The Federation called you.”
Buffy thought to herself about all the good she could do. She could change the world. She could make people care about wrestling again by eliminating the problems. The bad gimmicks. The untalented performers. Those who lack charisma and just don’t have “it.”
“What would happen if Cloudydale existed?”
“I don’t know. The best way I could explain it would be to imagine somebody trying to compete with the NFL. In other words, it would be an EXTREME mistake, not to mention an EXTREME eyesore.
They both grab their bellies and laugh heartily at that preposterous thought.
“I don’t know,” Styles says, cleaning his glasses again. “But we could have a new promotion of embarrassing proportions or a never-ending supply of jobbers. Tough to say.”
“Guess we’ll have to save the world then.”