Bluff City 36: America's Playground Pt. 0

Overview

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Episode Description

Old Mister, Old Mister

In 1897, the “Twin-Pan” barrel organ was introduced to Bluff City by the Callahan Corporation and took the boardwalk by storm. The ease of use, the smoothness of operation, and purity of tone were a significant step forward from the common “Trout” model used at the time. These new instruments were expensive to source, and as such, many organ grinders found themselves pushed out of business by “Twin-Pan” operators paid for by the boardwalk hotels.

This song, first recorded by Elliott Callahan in 1899, speaks to the mingled pain and opportunity felt on the boardwalks in those days.

Old Mister, Old Mister, I heard from my sister!

The man on the boardwalk is closing up shop,

Oh brother, our mother has heard from another,

A new kind of organ has forced him to stop!

The tunes that it plays are a new kind of sweetness,

Old Mister, Old Mister, my spirits take flight!

Old Mister, with such incomparable neatness,

Its harmonies thrill and its measures delight!

So brother, we’re steeling our hearts for the parting,

The man on the boardwalk’s departure does ache,

But when we attend to the new organ starting…

We’ll find sacrifices are easy to make!

Opening Narration

Do you ever feel that you were born in the wrong time, the wrong place? I was born, I was made, in a world of shit, but just a tunnel away, a few hundred years ago, there was paradise.

Ah, Bluff City. The old Bluff City, before the era of the tri-city agreement, before anyone knew about the blue, before things blended so haphazardly. It was a world of surprise and wonder, a family-friendly dreamland. It was pure and simple and American, not like Atlantic City, not like Bluffington Beach, not like today. There were no walls of smoke, there was no cacophonous drone of the anti-grav walkways, or the bleeding neon holos which advertise the symptoms of a better life to a bunch of unwashed dregs that wouldn't know what to do if they got them.

It wasn't always like this. Even Atlantic City was once America's playground. But Bluff? Bluff was a fantasy, the kind you spell with a 'ph' to emphasize it's beatificy. It was a boardwalk you could eat off of. The waves were bigger and bluer, and the salt was the sort you find in candy, which is to say it was especially edible, and the sand, it never got in your shoes I've heard, or if it did, it did it in the cool way, where it sort of made you nostalgic about the day you had at the beach. Ah, the beach! As if anyone here in Bluffington knows what that means any more.

I'm sure you're wondering: Plu Perfect, how do you know all of this? Have you been there, to the past, to the beautiful past? No, but I've been to the second-closest thing: I'm a VIP member of the upper crust's tri-city history museum, which you should visit at your first opportunity. They named a wing after me, the wing about cars, and so, once a season I visit the museum and I say my hellos and I sign some digi-graphs and I prose with the fans. And it was during my last visit that I-

Yes? I'll be right there. And no, those tigers can not be in the interview.

Music

America's Playground by Jack de Quidt

Cast

• Austin Walker as Elouise Salt
• Art Martinez-Tebbel as Pomp Circumstance
• Janine Hawkins as Caterena "Cattie" Pontacorvo
• Jack de Quidt as Melinda Guppy
• Keith J Carberry as Sank Getlef

Plot

File:America's playground.jpg

Poster art by dancynrew on twitter.

This episode is only character creation.