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do -they call it Loriter S block? Do 4"rash collectors %et Arbaae block?
J cj.o to Sdkool in a dassroon* wkere evercptkincj. is laminated ■ Tke si<*ns are laminated . T ke posters are laminated. oar work -Polders are la/vnnated. oar teadker is a do/npatsive lanmnator. . . .
Max was in his room at Chateau East, Mom and Mario's house, hunched over his comedy notebook. Whenever he was tense, or worried, or unhappy, it helped him feel better to work on new material for his act. Some of his funniest jokes came out of his worst moods. And right now he was feeling pretty low.
I always wonder wkat ker koctse looks like.
Tke roo-P doesn s t leak bedaa.se it's laminated .
TnSide are laminated dkairs and laminated plants. . . .
No, he thought. Not funny enough.
j
it's so kard to drink out ot a laminated water disk. . . .
Better, but . . .
He didn't need this new bit. He had plenty of material. What he needed was a good tape to send in to the contest. Why was it so impossible to find an audience? People should be grateful someone wanted to entertain them!
Calm down, he told himself. If worse came to worst, he could always send in the first tape, the one with no audience at all. That was the freshest, before he'd done the same jokes twenty-five times in one week. But deep down he knew that if he wasn't picked for the contest, he would never forgive himself for not finding a way to get it exactly right.
T kere's a laminated poodle wonder in
He forced his mind to concentrate on the notebook.
Tf iVn ever walking aroand town, and I ran into a wan ivko's dowpleteh^ endased in ^>1 as fid ,
17/ , 1 V\i t Mr. Sones. Y ou.r wife S s a ^reat
feadker . 8^ /ike tv^., ofo ^oa /u2/e /o ^>o/re airko/es m fkxif 7 ’
A burst of high-pitched giggles reached him from the next room. That was Olivia and her friends, playing in her bedroom. Didn't it figure? They were too young to understand Max's humor. But let one of them accidentally rip off Barbie's head, and they were rolling on the floor.
It was too bad, he reflected wanly. That laugh had come right at the end of his laminating joke. The timing had been so perfect he almost felt like taking a bow. If only there were laughs like that on his audition tape!
When the solution came to him, it was the simplest thing in the world. He didn't have to do his act in front of an audience for this tape! All he needed was laughter —any laughter! Then, after every joke, he'd edit in the audience reaction, and it would sound just like the people were respond-
ing to his routine. TV shows did it all the time. When the studio audience didn't laugh enough, the engineers used a computer to add in some canned laughs. Well, this was exactly the same thing.
He grabbed his pocket cassette recorder, and headed downstairs to the den. For the next half hour, he channel-surfed from sitcom to sitcom, taping snickers, giggles, belly laughs, and outright screams.
Listening to it was a real disappointment. The problem was, since all these snippets came from real shows, it was impossible to get rid of little bits of talking and music amid the laughter. It would be a dead giveaway if, on his audition tape, the judges suddenly heard a split second of dialogue or theme music from Friends or Everybody Loves Raymond. If they found out he'd used fake laughter, no way would he get picked as a contestant!
No, he was going to have to record some real people laughing. But where could he find enough of them, all in one place, to sound like an audience?
The telephone rang. Sydni. The stress of the upcoming student council/PTA joint session was clearly evident in her voice. "Okay, okay. Maude says she'll buy the drinks and pick up the cookies
from the bakery. And Big's volunteered to help me set up the tables and chairs. I think I've got it under control, but I need one more helper to make sure everything's perfect. Come on, Max, what do you say?"
Max's eyes narrowed. "How many people are you expecting?"
"About fifty."
For the first time since his troubles with the videotape had begun, Max allowed himself the luxury of a smile.
"Count me in, Syd," he promised. "What are friends for?"