The Instructions (133 page)

“We’re fucked,” someone said. “We’re so fucked now.”

“
Yeah
we’re fucked,” said Vincie Portite, “and that’s why we’re so fucken
dangerous
.”

Brandishing the keyring, I leaned at the Monitor. Which lock what? I said.

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“We’re going to prison!” somebody shouted. “We’re getting expelled!”

Botha stopped twitching and started to enumerate, key by key. White-capped key, Cage door; orange cap, gate…

“We’re so fucken dead!” “What’ll we do? Look what we did!”

“‘What’ll we
do
?’” Benji Nakamook said. “We’ll go to the

gym
. ‘Look what we
did
?’ We haven’t done
fuck
-all. We’ve barely even started.”

“We’re not asking you, Benji!”

Blue was the copy room, purple the teachers lounge…

“We gotta settle scores,” said Ronrico Asparagus.

“No one’s asking you, either!”

“We’re the Side of fucken Damage.”

Red was the C-Hall faculty bathroom, green the front doors.

The rest were all personal.

2-Hall gates? I said.

Botha shook his head.

Side entrance? I said.

He shut his eyes hard and shook his head faster.

I saw that I believed him. I sat up straight.

“We have to get it done,” Jelly Rothstein was saying, “before we get nailed, and before they’re all gone.”

And Ben-Wa Wolf kept saying, “Now or never.”

And “Fucked!” kids were saying. And “Gurion!” they said.

“What can we do?” they said. “Look what we did!”

I said,
You
didn’t do this. I’m the one who did this, and if you 1254

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want to go before I do more than this, a blessing on your head, but we can’t say goodbye before you get armed. I’m not leaving anyone who’s in here unarmed.

And as soon as we tied and locked down the prisoner, I brought the Side of Damage to the teachers lounge. On our way, we stripped C-Hall of all of its pep. Some crumpled streamers, others tore posters, others yet made confetti of flyers. Every last one of us grabbed a balloon.

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April 11, 2007

Dear Mr. Maccabee,

Enclosed, on one DVD encoded in MPEG format, is the second draft of the Video-Sync (VS). I believe this draft will more accurately match your vision than did the first, though I recognize the likelihood that at least one more draft will be in order. Thus, in hopes of getting it right sooner rather than later, I’ve created an annotated transcript of the VS, 390 pages in length. I believe this annotated transcript will allow us to discuss any changes you might like to make with greater economy than we’ve formerly been able. The way I understand it, a large part of the problem we faced last time—though, admittedly, not the largest (see below)—

was that we didn’t have an easy-reference guide to the available alternate footage. Now we do: The transcript not only notes—on a shot-to-shot basis—which of the 9 cameras’ footage is being used in the current draft of the VS, but what other footage is available 1255

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for use in the next draft (i.e. which of the 9 cameras were shooting simultaneously), as well as the general nature of this alternate footage. (A guide to the notation used in the transcript appears at the end of this letter.)

I would like you to know, Mr. Maccabee, that I’m honored to have been given this project, and I hope you’ll accept my apology for the tone of our last conversation: I really
do
understand the importance of keeping the narrative linear and not using the kinds of splicing techniques which you referred to as “Goebbelsian.” It’s just that the technology at my disposal is so much fun to play with, and I guess sometimes I get carried away. In any case, as you’ll see in this draft, I’ve not overlayed any sound onto any imagery that wasn’t occurring simultaneously with that sound (in fact, I’ve avoided all sound-overlays as much as possible, only using them on audience reaction-shots whose accompanying soundtracks don’t, in their original form, pick up the the event or speaker the audience is reacting to), and every moment from the start of the VS til the end is arranged in completely forward-moving temporal order.

Please contact me with any questions, knowing I will do my absolute best to meet your editing needs, whatever they may be.

Sincerely,

Sid Feldman

PS Just to be clear, Mr. Maccabee: I’m sending you this copy of the transcript because you seem to be someone who wants to be aware of as many of his options as possible—a noble desire, to be sure. If you find the code we use confusing, though, or just don’t want to bother reading the transcript, that’s more than fine; please feel free 1256

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to just watch the VS, and if you have a problem with any of the footage, just please go ahead and feel free to call me up or email, and I’LL check the transcript and let you know what other shots are available. I am at your service.

A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE NOTATION USED

IN THE ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPT

The appearance of a timestamp-line indicates that the corresponding footage on the Video-Sync comes from a different camera than the one that was being used the last time a timestamp-line appeared.

After every timestamp on the timestamp-line, one of the 9 camera codes (listed below) appears: this first camera code corresponds to the camera that shot the footage currently in use in the VS.

Following the first code, in parentheses, is a list of other camera codes corresponding to cameras that were shooting different footage simultaneous to that currently in use in the VS. The nature of that footage is indicated by the typeface in which the camera code appears (the meanings to which each of the typefaces correspond are listed below).

CAMERA CODEKEY

TYPEFACE CODEKEY

C1: ABC LOCAL NEWS CAMERA

1. PLAINFACED: SAME SUBJECT AS

C2: NBC LOCAL NEWS CAMERA CAMERA, DIFFERENT ANGLE

C3: CBS LOCAL NEWS CAMERA

C4: FOX LOCAL NEWS CAMERA

C5: BOYSTAR INC. CAMERA A

2.
ITALICIZED: DIFFERENT SUBJECT THAN

C6: BOYSTAR INC. CAMERA B
PRIMARY CAMERA, NONVIOLENT TYPE

C7: BOYSTAR INC. CAMERA C

C8: BOYSTAR INC. CAMERA D

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C9: BOYSTAR INC. CAMERA E

3.
BOLDFACED: DIFFERENT SUBJECT THAN

PRIMARY CAMERA, VIOLENT TYPE

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10:01 AM: C1 (C4;
C3
;
C6
;
C9) PRINCIPAL LEONARD BRODSKY

(SPEAKING INTO HALFCOURT MICROPHONE)

Welcome. Welcome students and teachers, welcome members of The Boystar Incorporated and New Thing Records, welcome news crews.

10:01 AM: C3 (
C1; C4
;
C6; C9
)

BLEACHERS

(STUDENTS AND TEACHERS APPLAUDING)

10:01 AM: C6 (
C1; C4
;
C3; C9
)

SPECIAL GALLERY (PANNING)

(MEMBERS OF THE BOYSTAR INCORPORATED AND

NEWTHING RECORDS APPLAUDING)

FOX CAMERAMAN, CBS CAMERAMAN

(LOOKING INTO THEIR CAMERAS)

10:02 AM: C1 (C4;
C3; C6;
C9)

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PRINCIPAL LEONARD BRODSKY

(SPEAKING INTO HALFCOURT MICROPHONE)

We have quite an exciting pep rally to get through, but before I introduce the first part of the program, I’d like to talk for just a minute about some of the difficulties our school has been facing in the last few days. Graffiti on our walls, our lockers, our floors. The destruction of our brand new scoreboard. An increase in disruptive classroom behavior. An increase in fistfights. You’re all well aware of these difficulties, and most of you are aware that these aren’t normal difficulties; that these difficulties are new to Aptakisic. What many of you might
not
be aware of, however, is that these difficulties are being caused by very few students. Most of you spend your time in class peacefully and quietly. You spend your Lunch-Recess and class-interims being friendly and having fun. Most of you are wonderful students, and I want to emphasize that. I want to emphasize that because, with all these new difficulties cropping up around you, my worry is that you’ll start to think of
yourselves
as the abnormal ones. I worry that if you start to think of yourselves as the abnormal ones, then
you’ll
start causing difficulties, in which case I will have to punish you—with detentions, suspensions, maybe even expulsions… I don’t want to have to do that. I don’t like to punish. Nor do I believe that most of you want to cause difficulties.

I believe that most of you realize how difficulties hurt our community, that when someone acts up in class, the teacher is made less able to teach, and the students are then less able to learn. That a broken scoreboard will detract from the fun of home games. That graffiti on the walls makes us feel unprotected, like we go to a lawless school. That fistfights not only hurt those directly involved, but 1259

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the rest of us—they make us fearful, and fear makes it harder for us to learn, harder for us to trust each other, harder for us to form new friendships. I believe most of you care about your friends, your fellow students, your teachers, and I hope that this pep rally, this coming together to support our team and our school, will give you a greater sense of being a part of something larger than yourselves. A part of something larger than yourselves that cares about you. You are a part of the Aptakisic community, and the Aptakisic community appreciates it. I appreciate it. And it is in the spirit of healing and community and appreciation that I have hired crews to come in next week and clear the school of all graffiti, and it is in that same spirit that, by the end of the month, we will have a camera system up and running throughout the school. Our school will feel safer.

Our school will
be
safer. But I want us to feel safe before all of that happens, despite the graffiti, and without the benefit of security cameras taping everything we do at all times. I want us to feel like a community of people who look out for one another. I want us to feel like that right now. And that is why I have decided to grant amnesty for all offenses committed up until this very moment. That means that everyone gets a clean slate, and no one will be stepped for offenses they have not yet been stepped for. I trust that this will greatly reduce the number of offenses that would otherwise be committed from this moment forward. I trust that in the future you will look out for one another and your school. And I thank you for that. We all thank you. Now, without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce… Mr. Mussel and The Aptakisic Braves Brass Band!

10:05 AM: C6 (
C4
; C3;
C1
;
C9) 1260

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BAND LEADER MARVIN MUSSEL

(RISES FROM BAND SECTION OF BLEACHERS, TURNS TO

FACE THE APTAKISIC BRAVES BRASS BAND)

Braves!

THE APTAKISIC BRAVES BRASS BAND

(STANDS)

BAND LEADER MARVIN MUSSEL

Let’s roll!

THE APTAKISIC BRAVES BRASS BAND

(STRIKES UP APTAKISIC FIGHT SONG)

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Getting the widemouths out was easy. We threw our bodies at the front of the Coke machine and soon its plastic shell was pieces.

We reached inside and took.

Bottles in their hands, the crying kids cried quieter.

I told everyone to set their spare change on the table. The pile they made was sixty coins tops, at least one fifth of which were dimes. While quarters were the best, and nickels were good—better than pennies if you ignored cost-efficiency—dimes were the least effective small currency. They weighed so little they’d tumble end over end when met by the smallest air-disturbance, and even when the tumbling didn’t bance your dime’s trajectory, your target 1261

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got hit flat and round half the time, so unless that target was an open eye, there would be no damage, the shot would be wasted.

We needed to get a lot more ammo.

I pulled the Flunky and Nakamook aside, instructed the rest to unplug their balloons and empty their sodas in the sink. They got in line and started to verbalize.

“Pissbombs,” said the Janitor.

“Bullshit on pissbombs,” said Jesse Ritter. “We’re making truncheons. That’s what the coins are for—to add weight.”

Benji and the Flunky tipped the Coke machine north—the coinbox held.

“There’s barely enough coins there to weight even one of these things,” Mark Dingle said.

“We’ll use pebbles, too,” said Jesse. “And marbles. Coins, pebbles, and marbles.”

Benji and the Flunky tipped the Coke machine west, got it almost horizontal—again it yielded bubkes. Nakamook thought he could pick the coinbox lock. We gave up on tipping. He twisted a paperclip.

The Janitor said, “I’m sticking with piss. Uric acid. Cleanses.

Stinks. Stings.” “Pissbombs or truncheons or macarena cocktails,”

said Cody von Braker, “it’s gonna be all like, ‘Hey there, kiddies, hi there, Boystar: time to bleedalize! Time to fucken
bleed
alize!’”

Christian Yagoda said, “Bleedalize—shit. ‘Hey there, Aptakisic, it’s time to explodalize!’” “We’re gonna fill these balloons,” Mark Dingle announced, “with hostile components. You put the soap 1262

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in the red ones, the orange juice in the white ones, tie em off.

You stick one of each in your bottle so they’re resting on top of each other. You drop a coin in there. Then you stick a pencil in your bottle, point down. Now you’ve got a grenade. Time comes, you pierce both balloons with the pencil, metallic properties of your coin catalyze the reaction, and you got three seconds to toss that badboy, and after that…” He slapped himself in the face.