Actor, Author, Playwright
Strange Aeons & Free Hot Dogs

Strange Aeons & Free Hot Dogs

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Happy Birthday H.P. Lovecraft!

Here’s a short play about Cthulhu. Or about politics. Or about Hot dogs.

STRANGE AEONS AND FREE HOT DOGS
By John Weagly

(Lights up. A neighborhood block party. PHILIPA sits behind a table covered with pamphlets and other handouts. HESTER enters.)

PHILIPA: Have you decided who you want to elect as Alderman of the 14th Ward?

HESTER: I just came to the block party for the free hot dogs.

PHILIPA: Have you considered Cthulhu?

HESTER: What, for Alderman?

PHILIPA: Yes. Of the 14th Ward.

HESTER: Isn’t Cthulhu that monster thing that H. P. Lovecraft wrote about?

PHILIPA: Are you familiar with his work?

HESTER: I read a couple of Lovecraft stories in college when I was dating a guy that was into him. I think I read “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “The Outsider” and “Pickman’s Music.”

PHILIPA: “Pickman’s Model.” But I didn’t mean Lovecraft’s work, I meant Cthulhu’s.

HESTER: Cthulhu’s just a made up monster.

PHILIPA: That’s what they want you to believe.

HESTER: I just came for free hot dogs.

(HESTER tries to move on.)

PHILIPA: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a cosmic-entity looking over our roads, water, sewers and zoning laws?

HESTER: Why would Cthulhu want to be an Alderman?

PHILIPA: What do you mean?

HESTER: Doesn’t Cthulhu want to rule mankind? Why would he want to be just an Alderman?

PHILIPA: A fair question. Great Cthulhu wants to start at the bottom and work his way up. He wants to pay his dues. He doesn’t want to be in power and have his helpless subjects say, “He doesn’t have any experience governing” or “He has no civic education.” He wants to nip all that nay-saying in the bud. As is printed in “The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan” – “Experience makes the man.”

HESTER: But… see… Cthulhu is fiction.

PHILIPA: No… see… Cthulhu is fact!

HESTER: I just came for free hot dogs.

(HESTER tries to move on.)

PHILIPA: Don’t you want to know what Cthulhu can do for you?

HESTER: Okay. Tell me. What can Cthulhu do for me?

PHILIPA: He can bring you agony and despair… Wait, that’s not one of his finer points. He’ll usher in madness and an end to civilization… no, hold on… His platform includes a gnawing, undying, eldritch sense of dread… no, wait…

HESTER: So far you could be describing any politician. Not just a monster from silly stories.

PHILIPA: A monster from scripture!

HESTER: I just came for free hot dogs.

(HESTER tries to move on.)

PHILIPA: Cthulhu invented hot dogs.

HESTER: What?

PHILIPA: Cthulhu invented hot dogs.

HESTER: I find that hard to believe.

PHILIPA: The original recipe can be found in the crumbling pages of the “Necronomicon.” The first hot dogs were made from only the finest Shoggoth meat. They were later mass produced from pork and beef, but each hot dog still contains a few pustules of genuine Shoggoth protoplasmic ectoplasm.

HESTER: I find that very hard to believe.

PHILIPA: The Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred wrote about hot dogs extensively in “De Frankfurt Weiners Mysteriis.”

HESTER: If you say so.

PHILIPA: So, you want to know what Cthulhu can do for you, that’s it. Everlasting hot dogs.

HESTER: Everlasting hot dogs would be nice.

PHILIPA: Just on that one promise, even if you aren’t sure if Cthulhu is right for you, will you at least sign this petition to get him on the Alderman ticket?

HESTER: I do like hot dogs. Grilled onion and relish and a little mustard. My dad use to make them on this little, round grill we would take on picnics. Just the idea makes me think of summer and the beach.

PHILIPA: And you’ll have as many as the mind can hold.

HESTER: Okay, what the Hell.

(HESTER signs the petition.)

PHILIPA: Thank you. And hopefully in November the Great Old One can count on your vote.

HESTER: We’ll see.

PHILIPA: By the way, they ran out of the free hot dogs an hour ago.

(Lights down.)
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