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Some of this stuff was chosen as one of Yahoo's! original Cool Sites, "The Backyard Archaeologist". WGAw Registered, so read on...
“Eat Dirt!”(Adventures of High School Archaeologists)A screenplay by Jack Littleton
Synopsis:
“Excavation is destruction. Total excavation is total destruction. We are completing the total excavation.” - Dr. Heinrich Schuller on the use of high explosives on Pesco Island
This is the story of one girl and her rock band, ‘Hilary’s Hammer’. Once, they were the hottest band at Wakefield High, featuring the incredible vocals of local teen idol, Hilary. Then, one day, a strange new archaeology teacher totally inspired them to lay down their “axes” and pick up their shovels in a quest for the true history of their county. Their goal is nothing less than the complete and total excavation of the entire county! This teacher is no ordinary man. In fact, he is none other than Dr. Heinrich Schuller, whose controversial techniques on Pesco Island are responsible for everything we know about what we now call "The Bronze Age”. Hilary and her band are trying to emulate his techniques with each new excavation. Yet such strikingly original methods often generate as much controversy as they do incredible findings, which is to say they are damned effective. As this escalates, the local authorities call in the FBI’s Archaeo-Terrorist Unit. Their expert, Fred Bates, recognizes that the excavation stylings employed by Hilary and her band are uncannily similar to that of his old arch-rival, Dr. Schuller.
“You should never glorify the work of a man who is banned from the practice of archaeology in 47 countries!” - Fred Bates. Founder, ACAD1
1. ACAD. American Congress for Archaeological Decency. Quoted from “ACAD Watchdog: What They’re Really Digging”. Vol. XIV. pgs 371-387. Mr. Bates is a three-time Bastinchury nominee.
“Eat Dirt!”by Jack Littleton WGAw Registration Number: 1105388 About Dr. Heinrich Schuller FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE! For those unfamiliar with his work, Dr. Schuller is perhaps the most renowned archaeologist of the 20th century. Creator of the so-called "Schullerian Approach" to archive analysis and antiquities authentications. As an excavator, he is known for what would today be described as "Gonzo" or even "guerilla" archaeological tactics. His famous quote justifying the use of dynamite in what many considered an unconscionable situation was responsible for virtually everything we know today about Pescan culture and what subsequently became known as the Bronze Age. While his critics have been many, his digs are the stuff of legend: Kittsberg, Wadi ben-uda (check out the article by Conrad Bettmann), Scirrocco, Pesco Island... the list goes on. The "Schullerian Approach" indeed! Outrageous. Incomparable.
Inimitable.
"Potato Worship at Wadi ben-uda"by Conrad Bettmann
While visiting West Germany's Kittsberg Monastery last April I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of the controversial archive analyst, Dr. Heinrich Schuller. Called in by the Kittsberg Monastic Foundation on a matter of great archaeological significance, Dr. Schuller stunned the scientific community when he proved that hairs within coprolites found at the site belonged to a variety of bison that could not have existed south of 52 degrees latitude at that time. It was then a simple matter of dividing the alien food supply among the known population of the culture in question to estimate the duration of outside influence upon that culture (and save the day). After meeting him I realized that this was typical of the mans style. Dr. Schuller indicated that coprolites - the solid remains of human and animal waste - were not high on his list of interesting topics for discussion. He was momentarily between archaeological gigs and a friend had asked him to look into it on his way back to Heidelberg. Being a great fan of his for many years I knew that his methods often received more attention than the findings themselves - certainly this was true in the case of the Kittsberg coprolites. But when he mentioned that he would soon be going into his second season of excavations in the Wadi ben-uda region of the Jirm Valley east of the Jordan River, my curiosity was aroused. Anyone familiar with the work of Smith and Wedley knows that Wadi ben-uda is thought to be the birthplace of the sweet potato. Schuller was quite impressed with my ability to quote the great British potato historians, and we were soon lost in a spirited discussion of potato cultures in general, and Wadi ben-uda in particular. Anthropologists tell us that potato-based societies are typically slow to accept new vegetables. Dr. Schuller, who has often and publicly categorized cultural anthropologists as "a 1 on Darwin's scale of 10", more than satisfied any doubts I had that the yam made its debut in just such a setting. After hearing that a yam had been unearthed in one of the lowest strata of Locus 87 I knew that yams were an integral facet of that society. Potato burial, a custom thought to have ended with the advent of the Bronze Age in the second millennium B.C., can be a strong indicator of social change. In this case, finding a yam so prominently interred by known regular potato people deviated drastically from the uni-veg model proposed by many anthropologists. I found Dr. Schuller to be quite emphatic in his denial of uni-veg theories, but when he suggested that the interment of potatoes has the added significance of "corpus surrogatus" I was blown away by the beauty of his logic. It was several months later that I received a letter informing me that the second season of excavations was under way at Wadi ben-uda. Schuller could now definitely assign the culture to the pre-Chalcolithic era, previously known to archaeologists only through the occasional debris found between Hellenistic and Iron Age occupation levels. This is the so-called "pre-Chalcolithic slop layer" so often encountered at other excavations in the region. Pre-chalcolithic stratification. The words fairly leapt off the page at me and I began to put it all together. "...similarities to feudalism...farmers toiling in voluntary bondage to rural overlords...serfs abundant under noblemen of the four basic food groups..." Though couched in the jargon of archaeology, I knew that Schuller was trying to tell me something. Then I remembered our earlier conversation. Potatoes were buried in place of human remains. Once again, the cultural anthropologists were wrong, and Dr. Schuller had found the ultimate smoking gun to prove it! excerpted from "Archive Analysis Review". Copyright 1998. All rights reserved."Club Panama, The Hottest Joint in Havana" Fiction by Jack Littleton So, we're sitting at Club Panama - the hottest little joint on Canal Street in Havana - when this gorgeous champagne-blonde comes into the room. She strolls across the joint slowly, knowing that she's got everybody's eyes. Then settles into a seat next to me at the end of the bar. "So, what's your game, sis?" I asks. "No game," she says. "And, the name's 'Vanity'." I take a puff off a Cohiba. "Cuban cigars don't impress me much," she says. "Is that so?" Just then, a '58 Impala convert. pulls up and four zoot-suiters blow into the joint. Trouble. "Don't waste your time. That penthouse is mine," I says. The all-girl house band stops playing. Time stands still... So they stood there. They couldn't take me - not here. The leader pointed his finger, and they were gone. I looked over at the blonde and the music started back up. "Friends of yours?" she asked. "Doll, you don't have 'friends' where I come from." She iced me with a look as she got up. In the red dress, she was Garbo in "Wild Orchids". But I wasn't buying it. I've played this game before. Sure, I took a second look as she walked to the door. Everybody did. "Save my seat," I told the bartender. "This won't take long." As I followed her out of Club Panama, the man in the white linen suit followed me... Vanity walked quickly past a dozen jumpin' jazz joints. Then she stopped. It was the zoot-suiters. She slowly opened her purse and pulled out a Luger. She moaned at the touch of it. "I'm with Lansky," she said coolly. Nervous glances pass through the group. "I told ya she was a Mob Doll." "Miss. Our sincerest of apologies. All our best wishes to Mr. Lansky, and to his fine organization." Then, they disappeared like wharf rats into the sewer. Vanity took out a spritzer of Chanel. To get rid of the stench. And then she saw me. "Oh, you're that guy from Club Panama." She looked at me like I wasn't much, but what did you expect? This was Canal Street. Just then, a man in a white suit rushed me from behind and I crumpled onto the dirty wet stone...
Only a blackjack in the hands of
an Irish cop could make my head feel like this. Or so I thought. "...a
fast motor yacht to Miami...", someone said. What the hell? I was on the
floor of my own penthouse over Club Panama. She was there too. The broad in
the red dress, uh - Vanity? Yeah, that was it, 'Vanity', the uptown
dame. And, that G-man. "He's no cop -- he's a Fed," I told her. "You
call this dump a 'penthouse'?" she replied. "Welcome to Canal Street,
Molly," I shot back. "Enough!" said the man in the white suit. "My boys
are outside. We're headin' to the docks." I got up and poured some rum.
For the headache. "I ain't headin' nowhere." They both gave me a look
that would melt the grill of a Packard into chrome soup. (Or, it could
have been just a casual and massively disinterested look of dismissal. I
always get those two looks mixed up.) And then they were gone... Copyright 2001 by Jack Littleton. All Rights Reserved.
(A Unique Corporate Music Gig) Published Fiction by Jack Littleton
Hootenanny Systems was the world's largest manufacturer of dongles, small devices that stop people from stealing things on their computers. Hootenanny had made billions of dollars off of it. Billions of dollars. Not only that, the company was privately-owned. No stock holders. The company’s CFO spent his entire day taking care of two guys' money. They had gone from living in their van to being the Kings of Flatberg, a nice city in Southern California. The company was named after a beloved cartoon horse and his frontier pals, The Hootenanny Trio, who sang songs on the range. Why not, the company founders thought, start their own band? Then they, too, would be beloved, if they weren’t already. It wasn’t a new idea, and other CEOs had done it, but theirs would be even bigger. They would hire at least 30 professional musicians, sound people, an arranger and a designer, and rehearse every week. If nothing else, they could invite their friends over and use the band as a giant karaoke machine. The CEO and his childhood friend would grab a couple of instruments and have fun. The professionals would settle for an envelope full of cash. For this, and many other reasons, the Hootenanny gig would become legendary among Southern California musicians. Ace Turley was the band's thirteenth sound man, although the count was unofficial. “Whatever happened to the other sound people?” he asked once. "You're starting a fire, man," said Conga-EST, the band's human potential percussionist. “Big time,” agreed Mr. Knock Knock Joke, who had a job only because he was reputed to know The World’s Greatest Knock Knock joke. Hootenanny could afford to keep someone like that on staff just in case the rumor was true. They had that kind of money. Ace had only two goals in life: to drag his trailer out to Lizard Gulch in the Morongo Basin, and to mix just one perfect show for Hootenanny. You would think the odds would be in his favor having done more Hootenanny shows than any other sound man. You would be wrong. The venue choices were rougher than the alien landing at Roswell. “No other sound man has ever lasted this long in this gig,” Ace bragged to Catjuice Armstrong, one of the band’s jazz cats. “It’s because my mixes sound like the record.” “It’s because you’re the corporate yes-man of sound people.” “Right,” agreed Ace. “That’s what I meant to say,” All the musicians in the band were the best. They were the best and they were used to playing with the best. They cared about the music being good and this was at odds with Hootenanny’s playing-for-fun-and-if-it-doesn’t-work-it’s-no-biggie attitude. Some adjusted; some didn’t and fell by the wayside. Luckily Ace didn’t play an instrument. Hootenanny rehearsals featured full-blown concert sound, both front-of-house (for an audience of two or three people) and monitors (for the band). Ace was usually in back next to the band’s designer, Platinum Thimble, who also worked for The Fab and The Virgin. She was the ultimate in professionalism. Boy, she must have some stories. Ace had some stories, too. The thing is, he had come up in the business before all of that celebrity etiquette stuff had been ironed out. That’s what he told himself. Blame it on the corporatization of rock. They must have been the ones who invented that rule that you don’t approach the celebrities unless they approach you first. What about his Stephen Stills story? Or that thing that had happened in Jackson Brown’s bathroom? Ace’s stories spelled career suicide, if you were using the New School dictionary. As perilous as the Hootenanny gig was for the musicians and sound people, it was truly a terror for those corporate officers that had duties during the day and then had to join the CEO at band practice at night. For them, everything was about looking good in front of the billionaire. The CFO of Hootenanny Systems was a Chinese man, with a heavy accent, who liked to say his name a lot. His name was You Should Pay Us, but it was pronounced You Should Pay Us. The musicians in the band were like bugs to You Should Pay Us. He couldn't believe he had to give them money. For what? Music not a real job. Music a hobby. "Hello, You Should Pay Us," said Ace, coming into rehearsal one day. "You Should Pay Us," corrected You Should Pay Us, smiling. “How you been? What you been doing?” He seemed genuinely interested. Stunned, Ace gathered his thoughts and decided to tell a little story. “…so, we did the show in Orlando and then we thought, hey, let’s go down to The Keys…” Then the CEO, standing across the room, turned away. You Should Pay Us promptly turned and walked out the door. Ace was standing in the middle of the room, talking to himself. A full sentence and a half came out of his mouth for no reason. He looked around to see if anyone noticed. Marco Mixalot, the monitor guy, was smiling. “I love it,” he said. Ace realized that you only existed to these people when it would make them look good to be pretending to talk to you. They wanted to appear to be being friendly to the little people. It was an alternate reality in which, if a tree fell in the forest, it made no sound at all unless the CEO was there to hear it. You didn’t really exist in their world, but you still got an envelope full of cash. Everyone was okay with that. He remembered how the whole thing had been described to him when he had started at Hootenanny. Catjuice had described it as ‘Bowling Night’. “Yeah, man,” he had said. “And we ain’t the ball.” Now it was nearly show time; it was the annual company party. It would be a huge affair in a giant party tent. Every employee would attend and receive their annual bonus checks. But first a three hour show! Ace was already hyperventilating and dreaming of the desert. Sound would go slower at 3500 feet than it did here at sea level, therefore his reaction times would seem quicker if he could ever get there. Out there, science would be on his side. Or was it the other way around? But he knew what he was in for in Flatberg. The sound in the tent would make the music sound like a space ship landing in a bathroom at the Coliseum. Ace had a Zen-like philosophy of mixing that could be easily summed up in two words: Don’t Think. He took his position at front-of-house. This could be the one. He would stand his ground. He would stop thinking. Still, he knew that his trailer was packed. “Knock knock,” said a high, falsetto voice. It was Mr. Knock Knock Joke. “Who’s there?” said Ace. The lights went down…
Copyright 1998 - 2007 by Jack Littleton. All rights reserved.
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