Jyrki & Neponen dream different things. Wikipedia Story 2

Jyrki (right) and Neponen

Jyrki listens to “…To Be Loved” by Papa Roach, and wonders what it would really feel like to be loved, and he wonders if Neponen, the stuffed rabbit who he shares the stage with nightly really does love him. Sometimes he thinks that Neponen has grown tired of him, and that if Neponen could he would break out on his own. Of course Neponen can’t do this because even in his deepest despair about the lonesomeness of the human condition Jyrki knows that stuffed rabbits are absolutely terrible at managing any of the day to day affairs of running a successful comedy career.

Do stuffed rabbits ever feel so totally unloved and alone in the world Jyrki wonders, tears running down his face, sitting alone in a hotel room, in some town in Finland that seems like every other Finnish town. So utterly alone, not even Neponen to keep him company. His co-star getting his own room. It’s what he wanted, Neponen tells himself. It had nothing to do with me, he adds to his litany of denial and knows he’s lying to himself. Neponen had made a point of staring at Jyrki all night with a disapproving glare, keeping Jyrki awake, expressing his disgust at having to share a room at this stage of their career.

Neponen in his room dreams of celestial fame. About doing a solo show on the asteroid 4393 Dawe, maybe in 2013, on the 25th anniversary of it’s discovery. He knows that his dream may be impossible, but behind his dreaming and fluttering little stuffed bunny eyes his little mind knows that no dream is too big or too impossible to achieve. He just has to get rid of that loser Jyrki first.

Stages Reperatory Theatre and Dentaku: Wikipedia Story 1

Ray’s I-pod was fucked. Maybe it would be better if he could re-sync the thing, but for now all that the thing played was “Dentaku” by Kraftwerk over and over and over again. He didn’t even like Kraftwerk, he had downloaded a greatest hits record to see if maybe they were less annoying to him now then they were when he was younger, but they weren’t. He hated Kraftwerk, and this song especially, and it just kept playing over and over and over and over again.

Ray would turn the song off, and then find the lack of any sounds to be even more grating, so the synch-pop beats of “Dentaku” would begin again. He would listen to something else, but the car only had a tape player that he used to run his I-pod into. The radio was busted, or maybe it worked fine and only the antennae has problems. Ray had never thought to think about why the radio wouldn’t work until he heard “Dentaku” for about the 77th time.

So he drove on through Texas. Driving across a big ass fucking state listening to one Kraftwerk song over and over again all to see his ex-girlfriend perform in some play her new girlfriend had written, and that was being put on at some place called the Stages Repertory Theater. So he continued driving across Texas of all places to see some kind of experimental play he knew nothing about. Texas of all places.

“Why Houston?” he had asked his ex.

“Why anywhere,” she replied.

And like a dutiful moron he got into his car and drove off from Austin, on what should have been a three hour drive, that was now going into it’s sixth hour. He had gotten himself lost first just outside of Giddings, and then later in Industry he again made a wrong turn that he didn’t realize was wrong until he had driven for over a half hour. This was the last time he would rely on his ex for directions, there had to be an easier way to get to Houston from Austin. She said her directions were for a better ride than just riding for a couple of hours on I-90. He get to see more of Texas, something she accused him of not having seen much of since he chose never to leave the confines of his hipster enclave.

As “Dentaku” started playing on yet another repeat as he finally could see the skyline of Houston to the East he had to wonder if the experimental theatre piece he was going to see wasn’t some kind of Beckett knock-off that he was the unwitting star of. Then he started to think if maybe he could score with his ex and her new girlfriend tonight, and he thought maybe that would be pretty cool.