“Hi there, this is Alice Pieszecki on KCRW, and you’re listening to… that’s right, The Chart. Now, as you all know, I took a little break recently, and let me tell you, it was quite an interesting time. First off, Dana died, yes, the Dana, and her parents refused to acknowledge the fact that she was gay even though she was one of the most out people in sports before her death, thanks to Subaru. I hooked up with Dana’s girlfriend. That’s right, I hooked up with Lara the “soup” chef.” Alice wiped a tear from her eye. “Dana… Dana didn’t know what a sous chef was and thought the guy said soup chef when he told her what Lara’s job was. It was so fucking adorable.” She paused,

“But that’s not all. A friend, Carmen, got left at the altar. Yep, that’s right, dear listeners, “Hot Latina” is Carmen, and if you hadn’t figured that out by now, you obviously haven’t talked to anyone in West Hollywood any time in the past year. Anyways, getting back on track, Carmen was left by Shane, or ”Yoda”, who had just met up with her father Gabriel, who found her because his wife Carla read an article written by me. That’s right. I am personally responsible not only for my best friend dying alone, but also for wrecking two of my friend’s lives. If I keep up at this pace, I should be completely alone by next month.” She chuckled a sadistic little chuckle before continuing,

“But seriously, the reason I’m telling you about this is because I want to discuss nature. I know what you’re thinking, ‘How is nature going to relate to Dana?’ well, I’ll get to that eventually, but that’s actually not the whole point of tonight’s show. Actually, I don’t even know if tonight’s show has a point at all, but as I like to say, why start now? All right, well, the other day, those tornadoes happened. You remember them. The ones in the Midwest, they were showing those pictures of cows, cheese, and corn thrown everywhere. Well, forget about those pictures. I want to talk about the pictures of the buildings in the cities that were toppled over. Yes, there are cities in the Midwest.

Shane and I were watching this, and she said something that was very funny to me. She said ‘Isn’t it amazing how God can just destroy anything we as humans can create?’ First of all, that’s funny because I find it hilarious that someone like her believes in God, but it’s also funny because I really thought about it, and the truth is ‘we as humans’” she used her fingers to make quotation marks forgetting that no one could see her, “can destroy anything we can create with much more ease than God can. He… she… it… whatever you want to call God has to get the winds building up and whipping around, he needs to knock down buildings, kill people, and the honest truth is that with one little word, one little action, we
can do so much more than that.

By saying something like, ‘I don’t want to marry you. I’m sorry, this just isn’t who I am,’ Shane knocked the support out from under Carmen, and, coincidently, herself. Now these two are most likely going to be in a deep depression for a few years, Shane will probably start using again, and Carmen will go back to where she was before, and they’ll both start over. Clean slate. So, basically, because of those small little words (Shane doesn’t have much of a vocabulary, you know), the two of them were left to clean up the mess that was made, and start over. But isn’t that exactly what happens when a tornado hits your house? You clean up the mess and build it back up?

The only difference is a house is always rebuildable, people have relatives they can stay with in the meantime, but breaking up with someone, who, in my humble opinion, was meant for you, is the kind of thing that can cause people to kill themselves. I mean, REALLY ruin lives. Not only that, it’s the kind of thing that can end lives. And we all know that’s irreversible.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “OK, moving on to my next example. Bette, or “Art” and Tina, AKA ”Blondie”. Bette ‘borrowed’ her still unadopted daughter without asking and is probably now majorly fucked. In that one action of asking for full custody, she ruined what could have been a happy life with, once again, the woman that was her soul mate.

Next example… Ah, yes. Helena. Yep, “Rich Brit”. She’s devastated. Yes, Helena Peabody is devastated. But, before you dance on her grave, let me tell you all the shit she’s been through this year. She lost Tina, as I told you before. She then fell in love with a woman who used her for a sexual harassment settlement, and then, she was in a philanthropic mood for some reason, and decided to basically pay for everything in Shane and Carmen’s non-existent wedding, got duped by Gabrielle, and then, was cut off by her mother. That’s right! In front of everybody. I’m pretty sure that one isn’t exactly the best example, but that is the definition of irony. Or maybe karma considering she was a mega bitch last year.

But the ultimate one is… You guessed it, loyal listeners, Dana. Dana died. And she left everybody here to deal with it. Because Dana died in some weird twist of fate, everybody is absolutely, positively dying inside. Because nobody knows how to handle it. But the really ironic thing is that maybe this thing that caused the most pain was God. Maybe God gave her breast cancer. Maybe the point I’ve been making in this entire show is that I’m wrong. But I hope it wasn’t God. The cancer thing. Because I like to think that God isn’t some sadistic little fucker sitting up on a cloud and watching all the little people break and crumble, and trying to numb themselves, then later turning around and trying so hard to feel. But maybe that is God. Maybe. I guess we won’t know until we join Dana up in heaven, and I do believe she’s in heaven.

I’m not very religious, but without belief, what do we have? What’s to stop us from killing each other if there’s no punishment for it? So, think about it. I guess what I’m saying is this: ‘we as humans,’ don’t stand a chance. Because not only is God sitting up there destroying what we create, we’re down here destroying it as well by making and breaking connections on the chart. That’s all the time we have for tonight, thank you for listening to Alice Pieszecki’s theory of the shittiness of life on The Chart on KCRW. Goodnight.”