Myself: Where did we come from? How did we end up so far ahead of the animals? Are we an experiment? While I can only guess the answers to such questions, Dr Constance Stonewell has been rigorously researching the origin of our species. And here she is! (Applause. Enter Stonewell, holding hands with a small chimp. I show them to their seats.) Tell us a little about your work.
Stonewell: We're trying to communicate with our simian cousins directly through sign language.
Myself: You mean, you can converse with chimps?
Stonewell: In a manner of speaking.
Myself: Brilliant. I've often wondered what a chimp would have to tell me if he only could. And this must be one of your contacts.
Stonewell: That's right. Plato has so far learned over a hundred words.
Myself: Amazing! What does he know how to say?
Stonewell: He knows how to ask for a banana.
Myself: That's great! What else?
Stonewell: He knows how to ask for a watermelon.
Myself: Yes, but what else can he talk about besides food?
Stonewell: He knows how to say he's hungry.
Myself: I see. Well, it sounds like he's off to a practical start. Nice work, Plato. May I shake his hand, Doctor?
Stonewell: Certainly. (I extend my hand and the chimp bites it.)
Myself: Ow! Doctor, you said it was safe!
Smuthers: You can get infected with HIV like that.
Myself: Oh, dear God!
Stonewell: Relax! I've been bitten before. It's nothing. You must have scared him.
Myself: I just smiled and held out my hand.
Stonewell: Chimps can be unpredictable.
Myself: And irrational.
Stonewell: I wouldn't call Plato that.
Myself: Well, I would. Ask him why he bit me.
Stonewell: Chimps don't understand the question, why.
Myself: How convenient.
Stonewell: But I can answer your question. Plato bit you because he doesn't like you.
Myself: And you don't think that's irrational?
Stonewell: No.
Myself: Why?
Stonewell: Because I don't like you.
COMMERCIAL: The Muffler Sinus Filter
(A bedroom. Desperate to silence her snoring husband, a woman presses her pillow over his face and tries to smother him. His snoring wakes her up for real, and she shudders from the memory of her violent dream.)
Are you afraid your spouse's blood curdling snore will drive you to homicide? Nine out of ten instances of nocturnal domestic violence arise involuntarily, as an act of sleepwalking. That's why you need the Muffler sinus filter.
(She fastens a plastic cone over her snoring husband's nose. Silence ensues.)
Just pop it on, close your eyes, and forget he's even there!
(She removes the filter in the morning and sees that his nose has been pinched into a cone. He awakens, draws a tissue, and blows his nose into it, muffling the surprise blast of a police whistle from his nostrils.)
You'll soon think you're living with a whole new person. Hey, it's better than waking up behind bars! The Muffler: Join the Quiet Revolution.
Myself: He has stumbled on the ruins of a mysterious civilization which dates all the way back to the Ice Age. Would you kindly welcome Cecil Quinn! (Applause. Enter Quinn. I greet him awkwardly with a bandaged hand.) So this city is more than ten thousand years old?
Quinn: With a mysteriously advanced level of technology for the period.
Myself: Astounding. Perhaps it will prove the existence of Atlantis.
Quinn: That's out of the question.
Myself: Oh? Wrong time?
Quinn: Wrong location. Yet they could quarry enormous granite blocks and stack them with precision.
Myself: They must have had some kind of forgotten technology.
Quinn: Preposterous.
Myself: You think so?
Quinn: The closer I examine these ruins, the less they appear to be the work of humans.
Myself: Parallel hominids?
Quinn: Don't be silly.
Myself: Who do you think built it?
Quinn: Well, it's looking more and more to us like the work of cyclopses. (Silence.)
Smuthers: You mean those one eyed giants from the Sinbad movies? I thought they were only a myth!
Quinn: All myths are based in truth.
Myself: Cyclopses! And you think I'm preposterous?
Quinn: I understand your hesitation in believing me. I, too, was skeptical at first. Then I saw the giant petrified hoof prints. They were definitely bipedal. And murals from the site clearly depict cyclopses collaborating in the construction of a wall.
Myself: But there's no fossil record of such a creature.
Quinn: Didn't you hear? We've recently unearthed a huge skull, dating to the period, which has only one central eye socket. It's skeleton is as tall as a dinosaur and conforms to the basic frame of a cyclops.
Myself: I didn't know you had so much evidence.
Quinn: It's all rather new.
Smuthers: Wow. I wonder if they built the pyramids, too.
Quinn: Actually, that was the sphinxes.
COMMERCIAL
Myself: From his mountaintop observatory, he possesses a commanding view of the universe. Please join me in welcoming astronomer Irwin Winthrop! (Applause. Enter Winthrop in blazer and turtleneck.)
Smuthers: I'm a Pisces.
Myself: No, Janie, you're confusing astronomy with astrology. It's a common mistake. This man is a serious scientist.
Winthrop: Thank you.
Myself: You're welcome, sir. And as a serious scientist, do you think aliens played a role in our evolution?
Winthrop: I think it's a compelling theory.
Myself: What do your observations tell you?
Winthrop: My study of the planets supports it.
Myself: That sounds like solid evidence.
Winthrop: It is.
Myself: What planets are you studying?
Winthrop: Mars and Jupiter.
Myself: And do you think we may have somehow originated on one of these worlds?
Winthrop: How did you get that idea?
Myself: You said your study supports it.
Winthrop: Supports the theory of extraterrestrial involvement in our evolution, yes.
Myself: Well, what did Mars and Jupiter have to do with it?
Winthrop: They indicated visitors from faraway.
Myself: Incredible! Were they marked by landings?
Winthrop: No, they were in a very unusual alignment in the fourth house.
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