Ms. HOOLEY: Phil’s message is that not every entertainment cartridge out there is necessarily a good old safe pre-approved InterLace TelEnter-tainment product. He says word’s reached him during his fun-filled fully functional daily activities of a certain very wicked and sneaky cartridge that even has a little smiling face on the case and when you first start watching it looks like it promises to be more fun to watch than anything you’ve ever wished on a star or blown out a birthday-cake candle for. In a thought-bubble that becomes visible when Phil’s ears flop down again —
MR. VEALS: [Sneezes.] Not yet matted in all the way —
MR. TINE SR.: You know how he is about Kleenex.
Ms. HOOLEY: — will be an image of an iconic cartridge case with a friendly smile and pudgy little harmless Pillsbury Doughboy arms and legs.
MR. YEE: [Loosening his collar.] Not the actual copyrighted Pillsbury iconic-limb animation-codes, though.
MR. VEALS: Relax. More like a reference. An allusion to plumpness, cute-ness. Pudgy and harmless-looking limbs, is the thing.
MR. TINE JR.: [Tapping edge of tabletop with ruler.]
MR. TINE SR.: [Pointing at tapping ruler with weatherman’s pointer.] You’re close to losing that hand, bucko.
Ms. HOOLEY: [Referring to notes.] Then Phil looks up and pops the thought-bubble with a needle and says But it’s a liar, this smiling cartridge is, a wicked thing, lying, like the stranger who leans out of his car and offers you a ride home to your Mommy and Daddy but really wants to grab you and put his sweaty hand over your mouth and lock you in the car and take you far away with him to where you’ll never see your Mommy, Daddy, or Mr. Bouncety-Bounce ever again.
MR. VEALS: Which and here’s the traumatic graphic at fourteen, a dark-bordered new thought-bubble over Phil in which now the cartridge’s limbs are like a dockworker’s, it’s a swart leering cartridge with yellow fangs and long nails in a plaid cap and overalls driving off with an animated kid splayed all screaming and horrified against the car’s rear window, spirals starting to roll in the kid’s eyes. Wait’ll you see it.
Ms. HOOLEY: It’s so scary it’s positively riveting.
MR. VEALS: [Sneezes twice.] Stuff of fucking nightmares.
MR. YEE: Urgle. Urgle urgle. Splarg. Kaa. [Falls from chair.]
MR. TINE JR.: Holy mackerel.
MR. TINE SR.: Buster? Buster?
Ms. HOOLEY: Mr. Yee’s epileptic. Severe. Untreatable. Happened twice on the chopper in. Stress or embarrassment brings it on. He’ll be back up in a minute. Just act natural when he comes back up.
MR. YEE: [Heels drumming on terrazzo State House Annex floor tile.] Ack. Kaa.
MR. TINE SR.: Jesus.
MR. TINE JR.: [Tapping ruler on tabletop’s edge.] Jesus W. Christ.
MR. TINE SR.: [Rising, indicating tapping ruler with extended weatherman’s pointer.] All right, God damn it. Give me that thing. Give it here.
MR. TINE JR.: But Chief-
MR. TINE SR.: You heard me God damn it. You know it drives me bats. You’ll get it back when we’re done. Drives me up the wall. Always has. What is it with you and that ruler.
Ms. HOOLEY: Be up and back in the game in a jiff. He won’t remember the fit. Just don’t mention it. The embarrassment of mentioning it’ll set it off again. That’s why twice on the chopper. I learned the hard way.
MR. YEE: Splar. Kak.
MR. VEALS: [Hawking.] For Christ’s sake.
Ms. HOOLEY: [Referring to notes.] As the cartridge in the car in the thought-bubble drives the splayed kid away, Phil prances a bit and warns that we don’t even know for sure what the cartridge to watch out for is even about. He warns that the police only know that it’s something that looks like you’d really want to watch it. He says all we know is it looks really entertaining. But that it really just wants to take away your functionality. He says we know it’s … Canadian.
MR. VEALS: That’s why the plaid cap in the traumatic graphic. Response data indicates a plaid cap with earflaps signifies the Big C to over 70 % of the spot’s target. The overalls drive the association home.
Ms. HOOLEY: At nineteen seconds, Fully Functional Phil then dances his Warning Dance, a Native-American-cum-Breakdance-type dance we’re hoping will catch on among younger dancers. His rhetorical thrust is to play it functional and safe and make sure and check with Mommy and/ or Daddy before watching any entertainment you haven’t seen before. I.e. to accept no Spontaneous Dissemination and play no post-delivered entertainment without checking with an authority figure.
MR. TINE JR.: But as a peer. More like, ‘I’m thinking this is what / better do, if I want to stay fully functional.’
MR. YEE: [Back upright in chair.] Somebody’s mentioned the floppy-ear and plastic-buck-teeth product tie-ins.
MR. TINE JR.: Jesus Mr. Yee, are you sure you’re OK?
Ms. HOOLEY: Ixnay on the entionmay.
MR. YEE: [Sweat-soaked, looking around.] What did he mean? He didn’t mean …?
MR. TINE SR.: God damn it, Rodney.
MR. YEE: Urg. Splarg. [Falls from chair.]
Ms. HOOLEY: [Clears throat.] And finally, direly — can I say direly?
MR. VEALS: This is at 25.35 seconds.
Ms. HOOLEY: Emphatically warns that if Mommy and/or Daddy have been observed sitting in one position in front of the home’s viewer for an unusually long period of time —
MR. VEALS: — Without speaking. Without responding to stimuli.
Ms. HOOLEY: — or acting in any way unusual or distracted or creepy or spooky with respect to an entertainment on the viewer —
MR. VEALS: We cut spooky on the last pass.
MR. YEE: Sklah. Nnngg.
Ms. HOOLEY: — that the fully functional kid’ll never attempt to rouse them himself, and Fully Functional Phil leans way in in a kind of fish-eye-lens close-up and says ‘No-ho-ho-ho way’ would he ever be so dumb as to even for a second plunk himself passively down and have a look at what it is his parents are so silently, creepily engrossed by, but to vacate the premises and prance as fast as he can to get a policeman, who’ll know just how to cut the premises’ power and help Mum and Dad.
MR. VEALS: His trademark expression is ‘No-ho-ho-ho way.’ He works it in whenever possible.
MR. TINE JR.: His equivalent to the Kleenex’s ‘No-Thankee.’
MR. TINE SR.: We’re ready to view, I think.
MR. YEE: [Back in seat, necktie now wrapped all the way around neck like aviator’s scarf.] Still hashing out the tie-ins with Hasbro et al.
MR. VEALS: We’re all cued and ready.
MR. TINE SR.: Let’s have a look at the sucker.
Ms. HOOLEY: Since Tom’s too modest to say so, I should say that Tom’s already storyboarded an extremely exciting adolescent-targeted version of Fully Functional Phil, for music-video and soft-core disseminations, where Phil engages in a great deal more ironic self-parody, and in this version his trademark expression becomes ‘It’s your ass, ace.’
MR. TINE JR.: So let’s have a look at the bastard.
MR. TINE SR.: Kid, your job here from here on out is to pipe down, now do you —?
MR. YEE: I’ve been asked to say for transcription how pleased the Glad Flaccid Receptacle Corporation is, during this potentially grave interval, to be a proud —
MR. VEALS: [At the Infernatron 210 Viewer.] Hit those lights over behind you, kid.
MR. TINE JR.: This’ll make it difficult for the transcriber to transcribe, can I say.
MR. YEE: This spot doesn’t happen to in any way optically pulse or strobe, does it?
MR. VEALS: Are we all set?