"Jack, He's The Crazy Guy" to the tune of "Verb: That's What's Happening" (Lines in parenthesis are the backup singers) He does his thing in your place (Jack!) To fall, to drive, to swim, to fly (Jack!) That's what stuntmen do! He puts his fist in your face (Jack!) To hit, to dodge, to punch, to duck (Jack!) (Jack's a stuntman too!) And he does it with such fine grace, yeah! (Yeah!) To perch, to wind, to twist, to shout. (Jack! Punch him out!) Using his regeneration (Jack!) He heals, he mends, he clots, he knits. Turning in towards narration (Jack!) He talks, he walks, he acts, he fights. When he's feeling really stupid (Jack!) He picks a fight with a big guy! Other times when plots are stalling (Aw!) He vamps, he waits, he eats, he dines. (Jack! He's the Crazy Guy!) He can take a goon and bend him. Give him a goon - (Mook, thug, miscreant) Boot to the head will really send him! (Show me how!) Oh, he don't know his own power! (Jack!) He does his thing in your place (Jack!) In falling. (Jack!) In hitting. (Jack!) In hurting. [spoken] Stuntmen do all the action, stupid or dangerous-like. Stuntmen make a living. Yeah, stuntmen really are crazy! [back to singing] (Jack! He's the Crazy Guy!) Jack is right there when it's happenin'. (Tongs, Triad, Superguys) Ooh! Makes a big mess with what's happenin'. (Do it so it makes no sense) He has pissed off who is "happenin'" (Jack, you are so dense!) Every plotline has a villain. (Bad person, place or thing) Find the villain: What's his angle? (Jack can do the spying thing) Take the villain: Who is it? (Who?) What's done to him? (WHAM!) What does he say? (Jack, please stop whappin' me) He can question like: Who did it? (Jack, you're so demanding) He can order like: You stop it! (Jack, you're so commanding) When he hits he needs a target (Jack, hit! Hit that guy!) When he seeks, he sees the target (Do you see that concrete wall?) [spoken] If you can see him there, put the guy into the wall, man! Go ahead. Yeah, all right. What?! Jack hit him! He's going, he's going, he's gone! (Yay!) [resume singing] He does his thing in your place (Jack, he's the Crazy Guy!) To jump. (Jack!) To kick. (Jack!) To drive. (Jack!) To star...! (Jack...!) =========================================================================== CRAZYPL LOTCRA AZYPLOT .|, COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS CRAZYP OTCR ZYPLOT ---X--------------------------------- CRAZYPLOTCRA OTCR LOTCRAZYPLOT '|` CRAZYPLOT LOTCR AZYPLOT CRAZYPLOT LOTCR LO ZYPLOT 36 CRAZY PLOTS CRAZYPLOTCRA OTCR LO ZYPLOT #5 - Second Plot: No One Quits! CRAZYP OTCR LO ZYPLOT by the Dvandroid CRAZYPL LOTCRA AZYPLOT CRAZYPLOTCRAZYPLOTCRAZYPLOTCRAZYPLOT (copyright 1996 by Dave Van Domelen) =========================================================================== KLANG! "Ow!" KRUNCH! "Owie!" WHUNGE! "Hey, stop it! What'd I do?" Jimmy asked. Jack paused in beating the star of the movie with a lighting boom. "Kevin, should I tell him, or do you want to?" "Oh, be my guest," the director replied, testing baseball bats for heft. "You blew the whole plot out of the water, you dummy!" Jack shouted as he finally broke the lighting boom against Jimmy Rip's head. "Hey, that's starting to really sting," Jimmy complained. "Suffer. The way these 'secret Tong past' plots are supposed to go is you deny knowing why people are being sent to kill you or why the Tongs seem to be out to wreck the movie. Then I dig around and find proof you used to be an enforcer, you admit to it, and together we shut down your old boss. Thanks to you not being able to keep to the script, you just shot down the entire MIDDLE of the plot, and all we have left is a fight scene!" Just then, while Jack was eyeing the sound boom for use as a weapon of much pain infliction, Steve came running up from off-shot. Panting for breath, he wheezed, "Guys...the epi...episode started... we're on camera!" Kevin dropped his baseball bat and threw a tarp over Jimmy. "Quick, someone get him to makeup! The rest of you, hide! If it looks like nothing's going to happen, we can probably force a scene break." Everyone scattered. The camera lingered for a moment on a set of peculiar nineteen-toed footprints which suddenly ended in the middle of the set, then cued in a scene break. * * * * Chaos. Multicolored script pages flying everywhere as rewrites try to keep up with the changes in the plot. "Hey, turn off that camera, we're not ready yet!" Sorry. * * * * "Honest, I don't know why the Tongs would be after me," Jimmy said, a look of confused concern on his face. Well, it was probably a look of confused concern...he had on so much makeup it was hard to tell. Anyway. "I was just smallfry, I didn't think they'd even care what happened to me." "Are you sure, Jimmy?" Jack asked. "This isn't a movie...if the next hit doesn't accidentally get the stunt double, you won't just be able to head back to your trailer and wipe off the fake blood." "Hey, it's my life." "Not for much longer it won't be. Kevin," Jack turned to the director. "I think we should shut down filming for a while, take the time to get ahead on post-production and stuff. Jimmy's way too visible here." Kevin nodded. "I agree, but only for a couple of days." "WHAT?" Jimmy protested, hiding a wince as he opened his jaw too much and stretched a bruise. "Look, Jimmy," Kevin said, "The Triads at least were just out to do general mayhem. The Tongs seem to be after you in particular, so until we can figure things out I think you should stay under wraps. We can keep the filming going, cover some scenes without you in them, for a couple of days." Jimmy's eyes smoldered and he started to turn and storm off. He hated being protected like a little kid. "Jimmy, wait," Jack called out. "Who was the big brother for your old Tong?" "Shen. 'Slow Moe' Shen." With that, Jimmy entered his trailer and slammed the door behind him. Jack scooped up a motorcycle helmet and walked over to a motorcycle that was going to be used in Scene 46. "Right. I'm off to San Francisco to see Mr. Shen." Pulling on the helmet, he leapt onto the cycle and roared off. "Wait!" Steve shouted over the engine's din. "It's over 300 miles to San Fran! Oh well, I guess he'll find out for himself." * * * * 350-odd miles and a stop or two for gas and food later, Jack decided that California was going to take a LOT of getting used to. Back in the New Territories, you were never more than a couple of hours from anywhere, and that was assuming hideous traffic. He'd been able to go flat out almost the whole trip, and it still took him most of the day. Following the road signs, he made for Chinatown. An hour later he gave up on the road signs as useless (you try reading a second language while passing it at 60mph) and started asking his way. In the interest of brevity we'll skip over the scenes where he beats in the heads of various mooks while searching for "Slow Moe" Shen [Yeah, right...he really just looked Shen up at the Chamber of Commerce and they told him where to find the guy. - Ed]. Ahem, thanks a lot. Anyway, on to interior, late evening.... * * * * Jack was starting to get worried. He hadn't had to beat up any goons on his way in. There'd been that one secretary he'd REALLY wanted to kick in the head, but no one actually attacking him. All his senses were alert for the possibility of a trap. He entered the tastefully appointed office, a mixture of modern decor and bits and pieces of Chinese painting and other art. A man in a shirt and half-undone tie looked up from his computer screen, took off his glasses and smiled warmly. "Ah, I've been expecting you." "Mr. Shen? You have?" "Yes. Mr. Macon phoned ahead. Apologies for Ms. Ansible, she's a little slow in getting information through. Now, I assume you want to talk about yesterday's attack?" "Yes." Jack tried to look unconcerned. Shen was too confident, too ready to talk. Not to mention, Jack had lost any possible element of surprise...thanks, Kevin. "Well, it wasn't us. We have no reason to interfere in such a violent manner with your film crew." "What about Jimmy Rip? You mean to tell me he quit the Tong and you don't want him dead?" Shen smiled, the sort of smile a parent gives a small child who obviously won't understand or accept an explanation, but should be given the explanation nontheless. "Mister...odd, I don't have a last name for you. Well, Jack, as long as we're being familiar you can use my given name as well: Elmo. Do you know why they call me 'Slow Moe?'" Jack looked a the wiry middle-aged man. "Not for stupidity, that's for certain," Jack replied. "Indeed. It is for caution. I always move slowly and carefully, which is why I'm still around. When Jimmy left, he didn't really know anything that could damage our organization, so I just implemented the standard punishment. I burned his credit rating and blackballed him...he couldn't get work as a toilet cleaner in this town. Being vindictive has never gotten anyone very far, why would I want to go out of my way to kill him just because he's managed to be successful elsewhere?" "Maybe you're moving in on L.A. and decided we'd make a good high- profile target?" Jack ventured. Shen chuckled. "Indeed, you would. And you are. But not in the way you think. I can tell by your bad dubbing that you're a Hong Kong boy. I'm sure you're used to the increasinly vicious Triads back home...but the Tongs are different. We've become almost legit in some areas. We may break a few laws here and there, run a tighter ship than most people are comfortable with, kill when absolutely necessary, but we find it's better overall to use the carrot over the stick. Or hatchet, in this case. You may find this hard to believe, but here in San Francisco's Chinatown, we're far more effective at providing municipal services than the legally elected government. We levy our taxes..." "Protection money," interrupted Jack. "Well, yes. But we do provide protection from crime other than our own. And we know enough to not squeeze so hard we kill the cow we're milking. We give better service for our price than the city government. No pesky red tape to waste money and time on, you see." "Thank you for the civics lesson, Mr. Shen," Jack nearly growled. "But what does this have to do with the attack yesterday? Just another valuable community service being provided?" "Not at all. Until recently, we've mainly left L.A. alone. Too chaotic, too many different factions to be worth the expense of moving in. But now the Hong Kong boys are starting to make a real mess of things with their gang wars. And face it, the Tong looks great by comparison, so we've started to slowly assert our presence there. Li Ning and Pei Man are so busy fighting each other that neither can really afford the resources to get us out of town. My guess is one of them framed us in attacking you, figuring that if you could force them to not attack your friends, you'd make short work of any of us you found. You've been played, boy." The last words were delivered with a coldness previously absent from Shen's voice. "In fact, Jimmy probably wasn't the target at all. You were." It made sense, Jack had to admit to himself. "Mask Principle" or no, it would be hard to mistake the actor for the stuntman when the actor was out delivering lines and the stuntman was hanging out with the stunt coordinator. "Fine. I'll accept that for the moment, Mr. Shen. I'm going to go find a hotel now, I'll be heading back to L.A. in the morning." As Jack turned to leave, Shen put his glasses back on. "You know, Jack, things would be better all around if we worked together to get those Triads out of town...." Jack turned back to face Shen. "Don't press your luck." Then he left. "Good thing I decided not to offer him a job outright," Shen muttered to the air as he went back to his spreadsheets. * * * * Jack popped the kickstand and started the motorcycle up. He had a lot to think about tonight, and the sooner he could get back to a nice bed and have some dinner, the better. Yep. He'd had enough exercise for one day, he definitely could use some time to unwind. Of course, this is why the bomb attached to his motorcycle chose that moment to explode. HOW MUCH IS THAT GONNA HURT? I MEAN, A BOMB BETWEEN YOUR LEGS, OWIE! WHO PLANTED THE BOMB? SHEN? LI? PEI? AN OVERLY-AGGRESSIVE METER MAID? WHY DOES THIS AUTHOR KEEP BLOWING UP OR OTHERWISE ABUSING MOTORCYCLES? SHOULD HE MAYBE START BLOWING UP SCOOTERS INSTEAD? WHY IS THIS PLOT STILL CALLED "NO ONE QUITS!" WHEN IT'S OBVIOUSLY NOT ABOUT THAT ANYMORE? All this and a whole boatload of mercurochrome, on the next...SUPERGUY!