These fluctuations persist as Robbie turns back to the camera and says:
“So, there you have what I hope you will find to be an extremely eloquent demonstration of how the observer affects the phenomenon that is being studied just by observing it because after all I am the observer, and these Curios here are the phenomenon, and the phenomenon changed when I observed it, and it changed in two different ways: the crazy enthusiastic way when it came to Micky Double-M’s cures, and the supermegacrazy enthusiastic way when it came to my cures. And that distinction is an important one to take note of and realize because it proves that it’s being observed that changes the enthusiasm phenomenons with Curios, and not just being observed by someone who previously observed them, or even someone who previously popsicled them because if that’s how it was then there would have been three different enthusiasm phenomenons instead of two. So that means I could have been any observer except for Micky Double-M, and his cures would have acted the same way when I observed them, whether or not I popsicled them or never even met them before. And it means that if I was anyone but me, my cures would have acted like Micky Double-M’s cures acted when I observed them. This was a discovery I was not expecting. I thought the Observer Effect would be different between a cure you never met before and a cure that wasn’t yours but you popsicled, but it turns out: No. The only thing that matters is who owns them.
“Which is deep.
“I think so at least.
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Martin, and for giving me the opportunity to hopefully earn some extra credit for class so that this my fifth year will be my last year here at the university that I love so much but I realize it is time to move on from and forward into my life as a wage-earning citizen and adult of this great country that you and I live in together and hope to improve even though it is already the best in the world and which that is why it is the best in the world because of how citizens like the two of us won’t settle for good enough even when good enough equals best. We won’t settle.
“And now I think I’ll change into some more casual sportswear and enjoy for myself what I believe to be a pretty well-deserved overload session.”
Robbie salutes the camera, bows, and again salutes the camera.
Charity Party III: Tree of Charity
A Yachts Joint
June 15, 2013, Wheelatine USA
[11 minutes, 1 second]
Slow, steady pan around a schoolyard swingset with occasional close-ups. Scores of cures, many of them painsinging, are variously affixed to it by rubber band, zip-tie, dental floss, string, and what, by its color, would appear to be citrus-flavored bubblegum.
CUT.
Twenty minutes later. The faint ringing of a muffled bell from the school behind the swingset is heard.
CUT.
Three minutes later. A large group of laughing, shrieking grade-school children—perhaps a hundred—are exiting the school, heading toward the swingset.
CUT.
Thirty seconds later. Four Yachts are standing, shoulder to shoulder, between the swingset and the horde of children. The children are shouting, mostly incomprehensibly, though the phrases “I wanna smash ’em!” “I wanna eat ’em!” “I wanna tear off their heads and stick ’em into each other!” all come through.
Triple-J shows the children his palms and steps forward, and they quiet down a little.
“Me and these guys here, we’re the Yachts,” he says. “And you know what today is?”
“Last day of school!” shout the children.
“That’s right!” Triple-J says. “This is your last day of school, your last recess of the year, and we Yachts remember how happy it was to be in first grade on our last recess of the year, and so we wanted to come down here and see how happy you were, because we knew it would make us happy again, and it has, it does, we’re so happy to see you so happy! So we made this party for some of you, maybe even all of you. It’s called a charity party. All you have to do to smash and eat and stick these cures into each other, or whatever you want to do with them—all you have to do is repeat after me. Does that sound good?”
The children cheer and applaud.
“Alright,” Triple-J says. “Now repeat after me. This charity party…”
“This charity party!” the children shout.
“Comes compliments of the Yachts…”
“Comes compliments of the Yachts!”
“Now one more time, with the two parts together. This charity party…”
But a number of children, having already gone into overload, are rushing past Triple-J to get to the swingset, knocking two of the Yachts—Chaz and Lyle—onto their backs.
The first boy to make it there, his hands at his sides, bites off the head of an upside-down cure that’s bound by an ankle to a rubber trapeze ring, turns to his left, spits the head at a friend, and as the spat head achieves the pinnacle of its arc, so begins a ten-minute slow-mo montage of the overloading children dacting all the cures, soundtracked by classical organ music (Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in F Major).
And Now, For What You Thought Was the Second Time Ever
Security Footage from Chicago Kim’s Liquor Food, originally aired* on 60 Minutes
February 28, 1988, CBS Network, USA
[2 minutes, 57 seconds]
*but with censor boxes covering the juveniles’ eyes and noses
Fixed overhead shot, black-and-white, silent. The checkout counter of a corner bodega. The cashier, a slight, middle-aged woman, waves at someone offscreen. A moment later, a morbidly obese, pubescent boy in a light-colored parka and dark-colored watchcap appears before her, clutching a can of New Coke.
The boy sets the can beside a cardboard carton of King Size Chick-o-Sticks next to the register. He extracts from the carton three fistfuls of Chick-o-Sticks and piles them by the can of New Coke. Once the cashier has rung the New Coke up, she counts out the Chick-o-Sticks—seventeen in all—and rings those up, and says something to the boy (presumably the price).
The boy hands her a bill.
Her hand remains open.
She says something to him.
He digs in his pockets, comes up with three coins, puts them on the bill in the cashier’s hand.
She says something to him.
He digs in his pockets, comes up with nothing.