Scene From a Cemetery
(The camera pans to a snow-covered scene, snow falling so heavily that the natural topography of the landscape has become a set of white curves and bumps. We can make out an iron gate topped with mini-snowdrifts on each pointed spire, and the sound of something whirring can be heard in the background.
A tiny, swaddled figure roams into view. Perhaps it is riding a snowplow, but as the camera comes closer, we can see that it some sort of future motorized wheelchair. A woman is covered in protective gear. We can now make out some of the details nearby...she is obviously in some sort of graveyard. The snow obliterates the details of the tombstones.
The woman speaks. The tremor in her voice indicates her greatly advanced age.)
OLD WOMAN : Hello...I was once known as Stacy Rowe...I can't believe that I'm so old, much less that out of all of my classmates and those I knew so long ago...that I am the last survivor. I am the only one left...the rest...are buried here...at Lawndale Cemetary....
(the chair begins to raise and Stacy, supported by a cane, stands up. She walks away from the chair and begins to tour the cemetary, her trembling hands making one wonder if she'll fall and die here herself.)
Over there...those three tombstones....are where Joey, Jeffy, and...(squints)...I can't read the last one. Oh well...they died in an explosion in a nightclub....they could never identify the remaining parts, so they just...mixed them together! I guess, in a way, it's fitting....
And that lonely black tombstone...that's the grave of Andrea, our little goth girl...it was alcohol that killed her (Stacy coughs)...she was crossing the trailer park to pick up her paper...and she was...killed by a Budweiser truck.
That small marker over there belongs to Jodie Landon...after she became 18, she became a revolutionary communist...she managed to kill Bill Gates, at the cost of her own life...damn Microsoft and their "Bill Gates 2.0"!...
But not all of my classmates died unnatural deaths...there's the grave of Michael Jordan MacKenzie...his father bet his own son's limbs that the Clippers would beat the Celtics that year...and when he lost, Michael so much loved his father, he let the bookmakers collect....he was so friendly, always there with a "hello" or "how are you?", despite the fact that the only employment he could find was as a doorstop....He learned to write by holding a pencil with his tongue...oddly enough, he had a lot of girlfriends...I never could figure out why....
And there! There's Charles Ruttheimer III...we called him "Upchuck"....he never did get married, but he had an active social life on the computer, where he was called "ChuckTheLadiesMan"...five hundred of his Internet conquests showed up at his funeral....483 of them were men...we still don't know what the other 17 were...he was assassinated, and no one knows who did it...they said the suspect list fills an entire file cabinet drawer at the Lawndale Police Department....
And there's Kevin...oh, I forgot about his death! His career as a football player failed, so he joined the army! I remember reading about his death...he captured 200 Chinese soldiers, destroyed 7 Chinese air fighter jets and captured a Chinese general...unfortunately, we were at war with Mexico.
Sadly, he died in a military stockade....
...and there's Brittany! Oh, sweet Brittany, how I admired her!! I remember how she got a job on "Baywatch II : The Next Generation"...but they would only hire her if she got a boob job...
she suffered an awful lot from back pain, so I'm sure she's in a better world right now....
(Stacy begins crying) Oh! And behind this little grove of pink bunny-shaped tombstones! Why, it's the Fashion Club! My dearest friends from Lawndale High! Why, there's Tiffany's grave! You know, they say she only weighted thirteen pounds when she died...but she looked so beautiful...I'll always remember her last words...."Stacy...do you think I look fat?"
And Sandi Griffin!! Why she's buried right here, next to Tiffany! You know, she's buried nude?...she said that she never wanted to be buried in anything that would go out of style....
And...right there! That's the grave of Quinn Morgendorffer...she was so cute, and smart!! And such a magnetic personality!! Did you know that she became the *first* holder of the Revlon Chair of Fashion at Oxford University? She looked wonderful in her off-marigold split-seam academic gown with French mortarboard!! Doctor Morgendorffer...to her dying day she worked on her greatest project, to make the English royal family cute and popular...if she had only lived another thirty years!..(sob)....
And over there....in that mausoleum....is Jane Lane, the resident artist of Lawndale...I never understood her work, but the French gave her the Legion of Honor. Some people believe she's buried at the Louvre, but it's not so well known that she had the 'unimportant parts' buried here....
(The camera pans to the top of the mausoleum :
UNFINISHED BURIAL # 1 IN KODACHROME BRICK
by JANE LANE )
And over there....at that small tombstone is where you'll find the grave of the most famous person Lawndale has ever known...Daria Morgendorffer...America's greatest writer, author of a book more important that the Bible, some say....'Diarrhea, Cha Cha Cha'...it's the tragic story of two young men whose brains were eaten away by toxic levels of uranium in the water table of some unknown Texas town. What a sad, sad...*cynical* work. They say she spent the money she earned having annoying people killed. She enjoyed writing, seeing movies, and spending afternoons in a canyon shooting targets with a high-powered, long range rifle. She made the "Melody Powers" movies..."Hi, I'm Melody Powers, and you're dead...."....I still remember watching her death on TV..."Daria Morgendorffer dies...NEXT! On Sick Sad World!!" It was sweeps week....
(Camera pans back to Stacy's tear stained face)
STACY : Yes...they were my friends...and now...they're all dead...and I'm the only one left alive...and sometimes I ask God..."God...why me...why did you let these flowers of Lawndale die, and keep this old, old woman alive....?"
And I think...maybe it's because....I'm a *dancer*!!!
(The camera pans away, as we see Stacy, happily dancing on the graves of her fellow students, as sad violin music plays....)
With apologies to Lorne Michaels and John Belushi.