Applebee's
Bridgenspirit, NY
2018 CE
A jig is playing on the speakers. It's someone's birthday. A child's. You can see where they're sitting in the crowd and the attention their friends and family subtly give to the birthday child. "For he's a jolly good fellow" has been bowdlerized, removed of gender, and made into a jig, which the employees perform specifically for that child, who smiles at the employees. The whole crowd gives the child a decent cheer. The stand-up comedian stands up from his seat on the stage at the conclusion of this final cheer.
"Hello, folks. I'm a stand-up, but you could probably have already told me that, given that you're all sitting down, and I'm..."
The comedian puts the brakes on this last word with perfect timing. Perfect timing to let the audient void process and respond to the joke. And they do; they seem to like the joke. The quiet laughs are sincere, and more than polite. The comedian sits down on the provided stool, both as a quick topper and to rest his haunches.
"Anyway, I'm probably the first stand-up you've ever seen in an Applebee's."
The comedian is playing on the fact that Applebee's is insensibly and universally popular in the town of Bridgenspirit in the year 2018, and the fact that Applebee's hosts stand-ups (or at least an open mic) virtually every night. The crowd delights in the recognition with an immediate roar of laughs.
"So, isn't it weird that - of all places - Applebee's is the home for the most subversive comedians of this whole damn period after the War? Of everywhere comedians could come together? But it's Applebee's, a chain restaurant for families. Who'd'a thunk it! Seriously - it's the most branded, commodified experience on the face of the earth. You know what I'm saying? I mean, those employees back there can't even breathe unless it's to the rhythm of a non-copyrighted birthday song!"
Some scattered laughs. Meanwhile, the employees in the back of the audience nervously avert their eyes from the comedian and look at one another with a bit of rage. Silently and imperceptibly, they time their sighs to the jig, still playing quietly on the loudspeaker.
"I mean, and I've been thinking about it. Because why did it have to be Applebee's? All the other chain restaurants it coulda been. All the other places and things and venues of protest it coulda been. At Applebee's, you don't get an air of collective improvisation. There aren't any cutting contests at Applebee's. There aren't any bandstands. There aren't any political rallies. There isn't a Summer of Love at the Applebee's. There isn't much economic dissatisfaction at Applebee's. There aren't any salons, nor smoky bars, nor fields and cabins on the edges of rivers, nor journeys of discovery. There is not a powerful selection mechanism at Applebee's to weed out the best and worst jokes and comedians. All there is is you and me, folks. And these wonderful servers. Let's hear it for them. Give 'em a hand, folks."
The audience applauds the servers.
"They'll appreciate that, folks. Make sure you tip your servers real nice."
The audience laughed really hard at that joke for two reasons:
1. Money had been abolished.
2. The comedian therefore seemed to be hinting at a more unseemly reward in the barter economy of 2018.
The servers continued timing their breaths with the aforementioned jig, and averted their eyes as well as they could, staying barely within regulations.
"What does it really mean to go to Applebee's, folks? Besides, obviously, that it's a fine restaurant with wonderful food-"
"THE FOOD SUCKS HERE!" A heckler exclaimed. The audience, comedian, and servers all laughed.
"Haha, well, I was trying to be polite! But yeah. It's a fine restaurant-"
"THE RESTAURANT SUCKS!" The heckler again interrupted. Once again, the laughs were universal.
"Haha, fine, you win. Applebee's kind of sucks and so does its food. I was trying to be polite, but it's a small step up from McDonald's. It's basically McDonald's, but where they sometimes bake potatoes and where you can feel like it's a little better than McDonald's. And you can go there with your family-"
"THE INSTITUTION OF FAMILY SUCKS!" The heckler interrupted a third time. For a third time, the laughs so overwhelmed the comedian as he stood on stage and, for a third time, he joined in merrily.
"Okay, Mr. Heckler, I'll make you a deal - you've been right three out of three times, but can you stop interrupting? I'm getting to the punchline here. Alright?"
"OKAY, MR. STAND-UP!" and this time the universal laughs were directed at the drunkenness of the heckler's expression.
The comedian waited for a pause. "Everything sucks, and always has. You see, you were only half right, Mr. Heckler!"
The audience, for the first time, didn't even really think to laugh. They had a few subversive taste buds, but they weren't utterly nihilistic.
"Now, bear with me on this, folks. Not everything sucks. But everything has to kind of suck for you to decide to go to Applebee's. It's at best an alternative to a good time - it's usually the alternative to your first alternative. Look at your damn onion rings and tell me you're happy. I'm not. I wanted to play Carnegie Hall. I'm playing Applebee's."
The crowd laughed a little bit - but in an utterly promising way. The comedian's seasoned ears picked it up immediately.
"Look," and the comedian pointed to the birthday child, "you probably wanted to go to a waterpark, didn't you? A theme park? A laser-tag party! How about it?"
The child looked around a bit and - with some trepidation, as she looked at her embarrassed family - she nodded.
"You're at Applebee's. What will it be, a shake and some bullshit onion rings that you could have made for a buck at home?"
The child giggled, as did her table.
"How about we sing a jig that isn't even a real song? Birthday day birthday day; birthday day it's your day. 12/8, A flat major. What the fuck are they trying to prove to you?"
The crowd belly-laughed at this.
"Not much! I mean, just think of the name. Ap-ple-beez. I just want a fucking apple, you fucks!"
The crowd laughed with anticipation and enthusiasm, starting to form the second half of that perfect comedian-audience dialect of joke and laughs that the comedian had always striven for and only occasionally achieved. The comedian focused on maintaining that energy.
• • •
Of course, the creative freedom the comedian felt was the real reason comedy had taken off in this specific chain restaurant of all places - everywhere else in the country, people at jobs and schools and at their homes had to censor themselves for fear of reprisal by the omniscient central government that had risen in the post-chemical-weapons hellscape of the New United States. There were no restrictions on the form, language, or subject matter for a stand-up routine at Applebee's. This rare freedom offered to both audiences and performers was a matter of corporate policy, down to the letter, and was jealously guarded with the chain restaurant's surprising amount of political leverage. The one requirement that Applebee's made in exchange for this vast creative freedom, other than obeying basic etiquette, was a savvy piece of marketing: Every stand-up routine, from an open-mic novice or a seasoned performer, had to end with the same corporate slogan, absolutely without exception.
• • •
The comedian continued.
"I just want a fucking apple, you fucks! It promises you an apple. You know, that simplest American fruit. Johnny Appleseed. The guileless wax of the skin, the complexly-flavored meat, the useless core. A story. Beginning, middle, end. The satisfying experience. The health, the vitality, the love, the family, the relationships. Mom, apple pie, and Old Glory. Truth, attainment, achievement. That's an apple..."
The crowd was silent for a moment.
"...AND THEY GO AND STICK SOME FUCKING BEES AT THE END OF IT ALL!"
Uproarious chuckles.
"I don't think they really want us to think of this place as, you know, a giant apple, rotten to its core, ourselves the busy bees fucking and stinging and dying outside the apple, but having found some cheap fruit-meat without competition and digging in. I don't think they want that metaphor in your head when you're eating a ham fucking frittata with imitation crab meat, pizza-dough tortillas, and dog-shit filling."
The comedian - if you'd ever asked him - would tell you that 'fucking frittata' kills at any comedy show if you can put some trimmings around it and deliver it right. Tonight, an eruption of accidental jetsam from wild knee-slappings ensued from the phrase. A lot of people ordering the frittata, the comedian noted with a smirk, as he let the wave ride.
"I think it's more like 'Apple? No. Plan B.' I'll show you what I mean. I travel a lot, but I was raised here in Bridgenspirit. When I was in seventh grade, our team lost in the tournament and no one but me gave a single shit.... So I worked my ass off and for a solid year, I became the best damn player I could be. I did. I was the fastest, the best-conditioned, and I knew the playbook inside out. And no one else tried. No one else even goddamn tried. You feel me? But I was such a stud then that my little 14-year-old self guaranteed victory for Bridgenspirit Junior High, and for that last week before the tourney, even the lowliest straggler worked his ass off, just because of my sheer energy. And I knew we had it. That was my Apple."
A few folks started to get the gist and nodded with a smile. Everyone was rapt in attention.
"Plan B was our whole team going to Applebee's after the tournament. There I was, holding the 7th-place junior high lacrosse trophy..."
Good laughs on this phrase, the comedian noted.
"... and it was just the smallest trophy in the world. And the coach pretended to the staff here that it was my birthday to make me feel better. They sang that non-copyrighted jig and and I pretended to like it. Later on, they let me keep the trophy, so that whenever someone wanted to see it, they could ask me and I'd fetch it out of the garage. No, sorry, you can't see it, folks!"
A few people sympathetically awww'd him, but he shoo'd them away.
"Look, my point is, that's Applebee's to me. It was the worst night of my life thus far. 14 and I was the star of the 7th best junior high lacrosse team in this little county in upstate New York, with maybe 9 teams. And I don't think 8 and 9 even showed up. And... yet, honestly? It was alright. It was just fine. I'd been eating protein shakes all year and kale reductions and prune juice. So all the shitty, greasy onion rings were like nectar. The chocolate shake from the machine that they probably hadn't washed in 20 years was like ambrosia. I think I had three shakes. I was a warrior in Valhalla, compared to how much it sucked to lose every single lacrosse match I'd been waiting a year to compete in. But it was perfectly comfortable disappointment. It was like you're 5 and you're dropped into a ball pit and left alone to play in a ball pit for an hour. Any other place and you'd honestly scream and moan at the unfairness of being caged in a room and forced to do one thing. But, like, you just get lost throwing the balls at the cage and separating the balls by color. You just adapt. And it's actually pretty fun. Or at least it's not as shitty as it should be. That's Applebee's to me. I wanted an Apple but I settled for Applebee's, and it was alright."
The crowd wasn't laughing, but the comedian had done enough public speaking to know they weren't even close to lost.
"If your family wanted status or money or a good time? Sorry, we're fresh out of that, Joe! Maybe they just wanted to be a real family that ate together? They found it was impossible. No time for that. They didn't have the time to make a meal. You didn't have the time to sit around for an hour and eat it every night. They couldn't give you an Apple..."
The crowd waited. The comedian delivered.
"... so you went to Applebee's. And it was fine."
First laughs in awhile.
"You know, Applebee's is funny because it offers you an apple and breaks your heart in that third syllable, and we all know it's coming. People that you'd wish would eat healthier, people you want to genuinely connect with in a quiet setting, people you want to think of as family and just address your damn family issues on the level for once - and they want the same of you. And they offer that disappointment in the third-syllable because no matter how shitty those onion rings are, no matter how bad they are for your heart, no matter how obnoxious they make the branding or the music or the forced, artificial culture of "family/friendship" they push on you when you're sitting with people you've known for decades, no matter how awful and disappointed you feel about going to Applebee's... you'll always feel better than you should at the end of the meal. You're supposed to feel like shit when you can't achieve what you're supposed to or eat how you should. But... hey, those onion rings are pretty distracting, and pretending to like that birthday jig is at least something to do."
No jokes, no laughs. Ironclad rule of comedy. The comedian tried to will the audience into patience. Just hold on, folks, I'll get there.
"And they sell this disappointment back to you. It's their whole business model, ya see? Comforting you while simultaneously disappointing you - it's brilliant. You'll pay 20 bucks for a steak. Do I want it rare or well done? How about the kind that tastes better than clinical depression and the feeling that I'm going to divorce my wife in six months? Can you make that steak? Of course you can. I don't have any standards at that point, but I'm willing to pay 20 bucks just to eat a steak that meets those standards. They could put dog food fucking frittatas on my plate and I'd at least humor them with a bite if they'd do the birthday jig and if they meant it more than my kids mean it when they say they love me. Christ, I'd hate to wonder what AppleCee's is like. Is that just a dumpster fire with some leftovers from McDonald's?"
The audience loves this construction and even cheers a few times.
"Look, folks, the American Dream is dead; the chemical weapons have killed it for at least a few decades. And no one can be trusted anymore. Everyone's a damn thief these days. No one has any integrity anymore. Even the employees behind you are carefully monitoring your loose white slacks for the hint of a theft. Because we're all poor as shit. We all know this, and we all know that we all know. It's a shitty fucking world, and there's nothing any of us can do about it. I just want a damn factory-owner or politician to tell the truth about what goes on beyond our borders, because the media is corrupt to the core and the government doesn't give a shit about us as people in the year 2018-"
Some cheers started to interrupt him (for he spoke the fearless truth), but the comedian hushed everyone with all his stage presence and rhetorical might.
"Look, I'm not trying to advocate anything. I don't know how to solve any of this shit, but let's just admit something. We can build and build for the rest of our lives, all of us, try to rebuild in the ashes of all the major cities. But we're not going to have a New York City again. NYC is gone forever, at least as I'll remember it."
Mournful silence.
"Folks, it's not just New York City. For the rest of our lives, folks... "
The comedian had been smiling up until this last monologue. But this was deadly-serious stuff, and he intended to honor the gravity of the recent tragedies that had afflicted all of the people in the building, himself included. The comedian - for all his stage presence and experience - even stumbled over his words a few times. Danger zone time; he sweated like Nixon.
"L-Look, this is hard to even say. But, for the rest of our lives, folks, I don't think we can ever hope to have even a fraction of that majestic city that once stood not seventy miles southeast of this very establishment."
The crowd was utterly somber. For as well as the act had gone so far, the comedian was going to lose them fast if he didn't save the act right now.
"Face it, folks, we have to move on. And, you know what? Even if we're not gonna get that Big Apple back..."
Even the comedian was surprised at the turn his sentence took, much less the crowd. But they all got it, and loved it. Breathing in with relish the stale light beer, onion-ring afterthoughts, and the simultaneously fresh and stale stench of cynicism, the comedian took a bow, smirked at the audience, and finished his routine as required:
"...we can always count on Applebee's!"
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