5th excerpt from my two-man play REMOTE CONTROL. Did you ever feel like your life was interrupting the television commercials?
Los Angeles 1980′s. Harold & Fred watch television: they become the characters they watch.
HAROLD AND FRED’S APARTMENT – LATE AFTERNOON
Harold and Fred on the couch. Harold is transfixed by the TV; Fred is distracted trying to remember something with no luck.
FRED: …Don’t you hate it when you try to remember someone’s name and it’s gone right out of your head.
HAROLD: (quickly) Who were you trying to think of…?
Fred strains to remember.
HAROLD: That’s a trick. Sometimes if you do that it might pop back in.
FRED: No. Shhh! Wait a minute! It’s right on the tip of my tongue…What was his name? The one who died?
HAROLD: I don’t know who you’re talking about.
(pause)
Anyway, that’s the first thing to go.
FRED: Shhh!
Fred struggles to remember the name.
HAROLD: (needling) Short term memory.
(pause)
Short term memory is the first to go. It’s all over.
You’re as good as dead.
(pause)
Did you know, there’s a small fish – what was it called?
(pause)
I only read about it last week.
(pause)
Anyway, this small fish has a very short memory. It’s swimming about in this small tank up and down and around and every time this fish turns the same corner, it’s a brand new experience for it!
(pause)
So! There’s something good to be said for the loss.
FRED: What are you rattling on about?
HAROLD: Short term memory. It’s the first to go. There’s one other consolation though, isn’t there?
FRED: What’s that?
HAROLD: Well, your long term memory supposedly improves with age. When you get even older and more senile, you’ll remember everything from years ago as if were yesterday.
(pause)
Unless you’re too busy trying to remember where you put the tubes that go up your nose.
(pause)
In twenty years from now you’ll remember your dead friend’s name clear as crystal. It’ll take it’s place in a shining list with hundreds of other little things you forgot or misplaced. Things you didn’t even want to remember will pop up: like the manufacturer’s tag on a lost sock…
FRED: I was just thinking: if your short term memory fails when you’re young, how can your long term memory possibly improve? There’s obviously nothing to inform it. How does that work?
HAROLD: I don’t know, it’s probably.
FRED: (lights up) Henry Bringham!
HAROLD: What!
FRED: That’s the guy who died! Henry Bringham…or Bingham.
HAROLD: Well? What about him?
FRED: (lost) I don’t know, I can’t remember what I wanted to say about him now.
BLACKOUT:
REMOTE CONTROL is available as an audio drama on iTunes, Amazon & Audible.com (US & UK) and recently aired on radio across Canada.
The Round Table 
“The Battle of Little Sayler’s Creek” In PopMatters
Posted: June 27, 2012 in Commentary, Documentary, FilmTags: American History, Appomattox, Civil-War, Cynthia Fuchs, David George, History, Lee, Lisa Arden, living Historians, PopMatters, reenactors, Sailor's Creek, Sayler's Creek, Slavery, Slaves, The North, The South, US History
Look for “The Battle of Little Sayler’s Creek” – Next air date on The Documentary Channel Dec 20th at 3:00am (ET) Check local times or set DVR to record. Follow #BLSC on Twitter.
Here’s an excerpt from Cynthia Fuchs’ review on The Documentary Channel’s Memorial Day Marathon – Read full article here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/159112-documentaries-for-memorial-day/
“…Battle of Little Sayler’s Creek offers a series of interviews with re-enactors, dressed in Confederate and Union costumes, describing both the historical figures’ experiences and their own, how they endure physical hardships an imagine psychological ones. Sometimes these difficulties have to do with philosophy (“I have a few times portrayed a Confederate soldier,” notes one player, “And I just didn’t feel comfortable doing it”) and sometimes with some very basic logistics, as when Surgeon Major James Mills explains the rudimentary nature of medicine at the time, the lack of instruments, and yes, the prevalence of amputation: the film doesn’t linger on these disturbing aspects of reenactments, but Mills makes sure you’re aware of the pain endured.
The documentary does include some observations regarding the politics of the war, including both sides of the argument over what the South was fighting for (state’s rights or slavery), a young woman playing a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to fight (“As long as I keep my mouth shut, they cant tell”), a first-time black re-enactor’s self-description (“I think its gonna be fun because I get to ride horses, which is a thing I love to do”) and an admittedly subjective overview offered by Wendy Lee Oliver, the president of the Sayler’s Creek Reenactment and Preservation Committee. The event regularly brings tears to her eyes, she says: “I know how General Lee felt,” she adds, concerning what “we down here in the South call… the war of Northern Aggression.”
As Battle of Little Sayler’s Creek cuts from interviews to battle scenes, it suggests both the participants’ investments and how they might look from another perspective, not exactly skeptical, but not wholly devoted to the war as a cause, either, whether as a fixed history or as a political identity marker…”
Cynthia Fuchs is director of Film & Media Studies and Associate Professor of English, Film & Video Studies, African and African American Studies, Sport & American Culture, at George Mason University.