A Strange and Disturbing Story of an Old Man Competing in a Poorly Rated American TV Talent Show
Writer 1, or 2 [or 4], but not 3: Gramps
It was one of those talent shows on TV. There were many of them now showing in America. It wasn’t the best-known one, but one of the lesser ones – perhaps the least-known and watched one of them all.
And one of the acts put forward on the stage for this particular small-time low-ratings talent show – as just a big joke it seemed, as if the show knew it’d be going off the air due to its low ratings and the people behind it just said, ‘Ah, what the hell’ – was this old man.
Now, this old man, people just looked at him as he walked out, sort of hobbling bowlegged from side to side toward center stage. He was dressed in one of those thick lumberjack shirts and overall jeans. He wore granny glasses. He was just short of medium height, made more bowed in his legs and squat and rounded in his middle by the gravity of age. He was bald with a fringe of white hair garnishing the perimeter of his round head. He had a wrinkled neck with a prominent turkey chin and sagging jowls that shook when he moved his head from side to side. The front of his face was scrunched permanently into an expression approximating a one-sided snarl. He was an old man. He was introduced merely as Gramps.
Even before Gramps did anything – and everybody was wondering just what he was proposing to do – the audience was already holding in an inner-building laughter, basing their reaction on his appearance alone, never mind his yet unrevealed actions. Before the lights dimmed, you could already hear some people laughing out loud, unable to contain themselves.
A brief hush that is natural to such moments fell over the crowd when the stage darkened and then everyone’s breath caught when the big lights suddenly blazed on, centered on Gramps.
Gramps stood there, his head down and his hands hanging by his sides squeezed into fists. He was bent forward, just like an old man might be expected to be bent, and his bowed legs were planted somewhat widely apart on the stage and also bent, in that determined way old men have when they insist on standing, as though making a point of it.
When Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” began to play, Gramps suddenly looked up at the audience through his glasses and it was only then that you realized he had not been looking at them before. And then, with each beat of the song, one arm would shoot out and then the other. As each fist struck out at around a 45-degree angle, it remained clenched and turned on its side, with the thumb on top.
And that’s all he did – the entire song; with every beat, first one arm out, and then the other; one arm, other arm, one arm, other arm; legs bent, in a near crouching pose, sagging wrinkled flesh shaking off his face and neck.
Gramps looked like he was trying to keep up with a 1980s exercise video, or maybe entertaining his grand kids on the porch, mocking the music they were listening to in a friendly, playful way – to make them laugh.
And they did laugh. Boy did they laugh.
At first the people didn’t know what to make of it. They were shocked at the spectacle. And then they waited for what was to follow – but nothing did. After around the first 2 minutes of the 8½-minute song, everyone began to realize that the failing national TV talent show had led them into a big joke, that this was what they were going to get – all the way to the end of the act – and they started laughing, and they couldn’t stop.
People were in fits wiping the tears from their eyes and holding on to their sides, rocking in their seats, their feet going up and down, and some even fell out on the floor to roll in the aisles. It was too funny; it was too funny; they just couldn’t take it. Some lost bladder control. After it was over, most would swear they’d never seen anything like it in their lives. Nor would they be able to explain what exactly had been so funny about what they had seen. It was just funny – that’s all; it was just really, really funny. Watch next time. What’s there to explain?
Part of it must have been that while they were hysterical with laughter, through the whole thing Gramps didn’t laugh at all. The blank expression on his face was etched in stone – it never changed. Through the whole thing; through the whole damn thing. It never changed. Maybe that was it.
Maybe.
And when the song was over, Gramps’s arms came back to his sides, he looked down again, turned, and hobbled bowlegged from side to side off the stage.
Of the four contestants featured on the one-hour show that night, Gramps won.
It was probably unfair that night to the other contestants, each of whom was clearly far more talented than Gramps, one being a jazz saxophonist, the other two being really good singers. Yes, it was unfair; very unfair. But somehow, the outcome couldn’t be helped.
Because at the same time, one might ask, and not be unreasonable in the asking: How could you not give the prize to Gramps? Anyway, the people from the show said, it would all correct itself. Those contestants who lost to Gramps would be given a chance to come back when the field was normalized and Gramps will have been eliminated – probably in the next round of the competition. The people from the talent show were almost apologetic about the joke they had played – but also somewhat defiant, seeing as how they knew that with season’s end, they’d be canceled, replaced by a cardboard cutout reality show, most likely, or by yet another nighttime talk show hosted by some loser, a recovering drug addict, trying to claw his way back to smalltime stardom out of a jaded past.
But when Gramps returned the following week, he won again, this time performing the same act to 6½ minutes of Clint Mansell’s “Lux Aeterna”.
People laughed just as hard, although their laughter had changed somehow. No, it wasn’t anything like – ‘Okay, it was funny the first time, but now it’s gotten a little old.’ No, it was nothing like that. It was as if, because he was doing it again, the laughter carried a ring of respect in it.
Nor did the other contestants appear to begrudge Gramps the win, nor was the show in any way apologetic, or defiant.
People also noticed that after the show was over – and the next one, which he also won – Gramps could not be found for the big interviews that the gossip TV shows and magazines now wanted – he would just disappear. In fact, he couldn’t be found anywhere. The talent show was being honest when they said they didn’t know where he was, where he came from, or where he might be found. And while they somehow vaguely remembered hearing about this Gramps from somewhere and somehow agreeing to get him on the show in the first place, they couldn’t quite remember how all that happened either.
The third win, by the way, was Gramps’s same act to 7 minutes of “Mars” from Gustav Holst’s “Planets Suite”. That had been the semifinals.
That time, there was no laughter, but outbursts that were something closer to awe. People also noticed that while he did his number, as he peered at the audience through his glasses, he seemed to be looking directly at anyone who looked directly at him. Everyone who had noticed it said the same thing. It didn’t matter where they’d been sitting – front, back, or either side – he had been looking right at them. Funny, but the people watching the show on TV all said the same thing too.
By now, the talent show that had been the loser among all the talent shows being shown on national TV in the United States was becoming the most-watched show in the country.
The last show of the season, the finals, would break all the records – thanks to Gramps.
Continued in next frame, April 29, 2014