THE LAST SUPPER

Afterwards, I went upstairs to my room, and looked at the mess left behind.

Pieces of cloths in different colors, shards of plastic ping pong balls, scissors, old trousers cut up in various shapes, paper note books with sketches and scribblings, and Marbles's video camera, forgotten by its owner.

All kinds of rubbish such as: two apple cores (Svenn), seven empty Hershey's candy bar wrappings (Marbles), a wasted volume of Penthouse Magazine (Mary), one piece of paper with Math calculations on them (Svenn), and a number of living snails on some lettuce in a tin can (Mary).

And in the upper right corner of the room, an empty orange wicker basket which I used for storing wool.

It was one of the most beautiful sights in the world, and one I would never forget. If I would have painted this particular scene in the details it supplied, or captured its very soul in a photograph, the resulted work of art would have been the perfect modern sublimation of a boy's interpretation of Leonardo's Last Supper. But I would have called it "The Dream."

On the other hand, I wondered if our chaotic way of handling the schedule was a good or a bad thing. I certainly realized that bringing the whole plan to a good end would become more tedious than the rest of the gang suspected. And I also realized that days such as this had to be "multiplied" by a huge factor in order to lead to some definite "product." Perhaps I worried too much at the time, but something told me that we were far far away from what we all dreamed about.

(Much later it would appear that despite all the work we put into the project, the only actual video recording we ever made was on that magical day.)

That night, I slipped into my bed, very late as usual, and listened to the rain drops dripping on the roof window. The room was bathing in the most subtle variation between light and darkness because of the moon rays creeping in. Outside I heard the faint sounds of some night animal that was about to start hunting. I stared at the poster on the wall. Then I heard those sounds again.

I took one more look at the rubbish before finally falling asleep. I hadn't cleaned up the tiniest bit.

[ A (VERY SMALL) SCRIPT EXCERPT

"Hey." (A man talks. He is fat. Like Marbles's mom. But a man. He has no hair. Like Marbles's dad. But even less.)

"Hi there." (Randy The Rat. He is way cool. Wears a leather jacket. And purple shoes. Size 5. And no, they are NOT baby shoes. They just look like baby shoes. But they aren't.)

"What are you doing ?" (The fat dude again. Not cool. He also wears a jacket, by the way. British tweed. Velvet collar. Vintage but kind of classy. His nose is bulbous and reddish. Like Marbles's uncle's nose. Marbles says it is called "rhino-something," according to his father.

And he would know, wouldn't he ?)

"You mean here ?" (Randy rocks. He knows perfectly well what the man means, but he fools around. That is what he does. Everything is cool about Randy. The way he looks, his hair, the things he says. Even his shoes.)

[Mental note: Svenn wants to remark that we have to be careful not to make Randy arrogant. This is not the rodent version of Grease. It is serious.]

[Mental note 2: Mary suggests to let Randy smoke a cigarette.]

[Mental note 3: Svenn strongly disagrees. He notes that the school's money cannot be used for such matter.]

[Mental note 4: Mary was kidding.]

BREAK ]

[SCRIPT EXCERPT: SEQUEL

THEY SING A SONG. ABOUT A RAT.

SITTING THERE.

"Yes, in my trash can." (The man is being specific now but not very sharp. He thinks he has a point to make.)

"I am a rat, man. A RAT." (And that is what he does.)

IMPORTANT SONG. "I AM JUST A RAT."

(By the way — his shoes are really cool, so no baby shoes. He wouldn't do that. Not

Randy.)

END OF SCRIPT EXCERPT]

LATER

"The Movie" became a mythical beast, a common memory which often occurred to the surface when we met as students at university, or whenever. And after some beers, we were scribbling down new ideas and making puppet sketches for the "final version," much to the horror of our then-girlfriends. I guess a bunch of twenty-plus year old guys who were fantasizing about a movie in which the main characters were (their) hands stuffed in muppet-like dolls rolling on a childish script wasn't their original fantasy of what being a true man was all about.

But we didn't care of course.

By then, Mary had left our club, but that was no surprise. He needed friends back in high school, and the club had been perfect for that need. But he never really was into the puppet world as we were: being part of something … friendly, was the most important thing, far away from the congregation and its tyranny.

He simply grew out of it.

To keep the roots of The Movie alive, and to keep the crew together in a way, we also had created a new tradition.

JIM HENSON MOVIE NIGHT

Every year, we teamed up for the legendary "Jim Henson night." Originally a concept of Svenn and myself, the idea was to rent some, well, Jim Henson movies (according to some hard core rules), and watch them (according again to other rules) on a Friday or Saturday night chosen well in advance, with loads of Belgian beer (the real deal) and a history of admiration. To enlighten spirits, sometimes other substances would be present, depending on the creativity of the host (me). Typically this could be some plain old marijuana, or sweet hashis crumbles.

Contrary to what one might expect, Svenn participated eagerly in such experiments, and he seemed to have no problem at all to lose control by chemical infliction. His only worry was that nobody could know.

(As for Marbles, he loved to be intoxicated, but by now I have the distinct feeling that this will not come as a surprise to you, dear reader.)

Another all-time favorite was dried fly agaric (only the thin white-spotted red upper layer of the hat) which I gathered from the woods, near silver birches — remember the green passes. We ate them as chips in very small amounts, and sometimes it gave nothing, while on other times you got directly connected with ancient times, visited by the mists of antiquity and its inhabitants. Which could be very small or very large animals. With strange colors.

I guess weather circumstances, such as amount of precipitation and quality of sunlight, influenced the concentration of the active substances in the hat, which made this particular game highly unpredictable, and even quite dangerous.

It happened on several occasions that somebody got nauseous and started to vomit.

And another time, in one of the very few editions where a girlfriend was present at a JHM night, she eventually woke up in the wrong bed, sided by two members of the club. But since nobody actually remembered the details (although the forensic evidence was certainly there, as well as some faint memory flashes), the people involved wisely kept their mouths shut for the time being. An unpleasant side-effect of this little party was the fact that after that night the girlfriend who was caught in the middle — so to speak — refused to turn up at parties and the like where other members of the club (except her boyfriend) would be present. Being men, the other accomplices didn't really mind as much as she did.

And on yet one other occasion, a member of the club claimed to feel no pain anymore, and in a cloud of euphoria tried to prove this to us in a rather unusual way which I won't describe here.

But let's say he had a hard time urinating in the next couple of weeks.

So I do not recommend it to you, dear reader.

We were Vikings at the time.

THE RULES

Great Muppet Caper, or The Muppets Take Manhattan, with slight preference for TMM.

Tremens (9%) , Duvel (8.5%), Lucifer (8%),

Westmalle Tripple (9.3%). Budd (light) for the pussies.

Rule #3 was mainly inspired by a bad experience in which two (now ex-) girlfriends ruined an entire Jim Henson night by letting us know about every other second of the featured program how silly and childish we all were. We did not agree. (The other reason was the accidental threesome, which had surfaced eventually.)

Rule #4 arose only after a couple of years of experimenting with various beers of various strengths of various countries. But we should have known the outcome before we started the trials. Heineken of The Netherlands ? Could this really be called beer if you knew the Belgian "ordinary table beers" such as Jupiler (which we called "U-pi-luhh") or the slightly less bitter Stella Artois ("Arth-whurm") ? The Danish Carlsberg was O.K. I guess, but very expensive — even in comparison with what the other foreign beers cost us in the try-outs — and it was certainly no match for the Belgian stuff, and even a bit dull.

But this was just the starting material. The real Belgian flagships were hard core beers such as Duvel, which literally meant "Devil"; apparently after World War I, a Flemish brewer had named its main beer "Victory beer," but after an avid drinker in the 1920s had described it as "a real devil," the new name quickly replaced the old one. The substance called "Duvel" indeed defied you (a real man) and lured you into drinking some more — perhaps three, four or five of its brothers. And then it got you really sick, laughed at you when you were throwing up in some bathroom, and started over the next time when Belgian beers were around and you needed to show yet again that you are a man. (Do remember: this is Belgians we are talking about. Belgians.)

After we finally had decided on the definite list, acquiring the beer was a task carried out by Svenn (who else ?). In one way or the other, he always succeeded. He even found the appropriate glasses.

JEN

A top moment — perhaps the top moment — of a Jim Henson night, was the unforgettable scene in "The Dark Crystal" in which Jen (a Gelfling — a gentle faery-like creature) escapes Aughra's place (she is a witch with eyes she can take freely out of her head) that has been brutally attacked and destroyed by the Garthim (lobster-like soldiers).

Watching Aughra's place burn, he realizes he must go on, through the forest, while he carefully thinks about what to do with the shard …

Now I've got the shard ... but what do I do with it ?

What is it ? Am I supposed to take it somewhere ?

What's so special about this shard ?

(There seem to be images appearing in the heart of the shard.)

It doesn't look like ...

(He keeps hearing strange forest noises, as if someone else is there, and looks around, worried.)

I don't like this.

Then Jen looks right into the camera, right into the eyes of the spectator, for only a split second, and all of a sudden you forgot that this was a doll.

For me, this moment was always one of the true powers of the crystal.

The moment in which mysticism takes over.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE — OF MICE AND MEN

The last Jim Henson night, almost ten years ago, happened a couple of months after Marbles's father had died, and was cremated in a widely attended ceremony. Marbles was still in the country — I guess he had to deal with all kinds of nasty documents before returning to Vancouver Tech. His mother was flirting with symptoms which much resembled severe depression, and that must have kept him from leaving the country as well.

(As I write this, I am trying to recall what happened to her after her husband's death, but I think I never knew. Contact with Marbles became too scarce, and news about his family stopped coming through at some point.)

Deep into the night, and long after the second screening of The Dark Crystal had ended — yes, we did "encores" — Svenn, Marbles and I sat on an old rug, near the enormous Christmas tree I bought one week earlier, while enjoying beers that only Belgians could have brewed. Very strong and bitter pale ale, with a rich and deep taste combining hop and alcohol. (Bacchus would have been oh-so-proud.)

The rug was stained by sand that in one way or the other had managed its way out of the pot in which the Christmas tree was planted. (There were also mice in the old house, and they were of no help either.) Marbles lit yet another cigarette, and suddenly I burst out in one of my "gentle rages" — Lucifer speaking instead of me, due to the diabolic nature of the beer I had all night long. I just couldn't understand that someone who had barely buried his father, thrust by tobacco in an extremely painful process of descent on the cancer stairs, could (still) be smoking. I knew it sounded cruel, but I was sure, and still am, that a father wouldn't want his children to undergo the SAME torture in the long run, and if he ever got the chance of passing one, and only one message to his only son, it would be:

"Stop smoking son. Please."

Marbles started crying, mostly in drunkenness at first, whispering that finally someone dared to speak about his father, and pull him back into existence, if only by the power of words. He also almost managed to set the house on fire, as he dropped his cigarette on the carpet, which caught fire right away. It took three very expensive Belgian beers to put it out, and two full bladders.

Erroneously, the rag was about the only thing in the house which was mine — my parents had bought it ages ago in a shop located in Colorado called Sheepskin Factory, and given it to me when I moved into the house. The fire and the rather alternative way of putting it out ruined it alright, but I took it with me anyway when I moved back out some years later. I still have it.

After that, we got much more drunk, talked about his father, laughed and cried all night, and realized in silence that this might well be the very last Jim Henson movie night.

I am also convinced to this day that we honored his father in a much more suitable manner than any funeral could do. There was no stiff obligation to follow any kind of social tradition. There were no suits. No sandwiches and coffee. No priests reading from a book. There wasn't even a drunk uncle.

AND THEN IT CHANGED

In that period, and during that night, I also realized how big the difference really was between Marbles and Svenn.

Although Marbles always seemed to be a man of emotion and intuition, and Svenn appeared to be quite the contrary, time had proven me wrong in the end.

Marbles didn't care about people. In general. After he left us for Vancouver, we never heard from him, simply because he met other people, and his life continued on a new blank page. He didn't care about The Jim Henson movie night. The old friends. Memories. He lived in his own world, and it traveled with him to Vancouver. He didn't need other people. If you'd accidentally meet him on the street, you would go to a local brewery, have drinks, laugh and have a great time. You would say goodbye and make a deal to stay in touch. And you would never hear from him afterwards.

And that is how, later, he just stepped out of our lives. We stopped calling him. He never called anyhow.

Svenn, on the other hand, tried to keep us together, send emails, organize reunions, always with the same vigor, and never insulted when people didn't show up without a warning. He had this analytical, dry appearance, yes. But he was quite different if you knew him.

He understood The Movie much better than Marbles. And much more importantly, he understood friendship.

Six weeks later, an eighty year old man drove his 1981 Lincoln Town Car through a red light, and hit Svenn at fifty miles per hour. Although voices whisper that he was still alive when people gathered around his broken body on the curb his gashing blood painted so intensely, I am not sure he ever heard the ambulance arriving forty minutes later, "slightly" slowed down by traffic. There was not much the medics could do anyhow — the heavy internal bleeding wiped out any chance of future existence, and even if the emergency unit would have made it through traffic without losing so much as a single second, his crushed spine and head injuries would have turned him into the saddest plant, any life unworthy.

I cannot give you any more details about the funeral, the way the accident destroyed his parents and orphaned his brother soon after, dear reader.

Even after ten years, the pain is still too great.

NOW

A couple of days ago, I went to a quilt store, and bought a number of grey, brown and red cloths, ten square feet each, just like that. I have needles, thread, ping pong balls, old baby shoes, you name it. And I have some puppets in mind which my baby daughter might like a lot. I am not sure a movie will come out of it, but who knows.

It all depends on the script.