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| Torque, Beemer & Tower |
It was called “the first radio show dedicated to the Baby Boomer generation” which was utter nonsense. Since 1946 absolutely everything that exists has been dedicated to the Baby Boomer generation.
However, they were pretty fun guys. Imagine Car Talk except with Cleveland accents and the topic was, well, themselves. Lots of camaraderie, self-effacing humor and laughing at their own jokes.
Just after we opened The Taming of the Shrew, Guerrilla was invited to participate. Bruce Bogart met Beemer while she was working at Dillard’s at Westgate and asked about her Guerrilla pin. He was truly interested in our theater company, even more so when he learned that Boomers were often the focus of our abuse.
However, they were pretty fun guys. Imagine Car Talk except with Cleveland accents and the topic was, well, themselves. Lots of camaraderie, self-effacing humor and laughing at their own jokes.
Just after we opened The Taming of the Shrew, Guerrilla was invited to participate. Bruce Bogart met Beemer while she was working at Dillard’s at Westgate and asked about her Guerrilla pin. He was truly interested in our theater company, even more so when he learned that Boomers were often the focus of our abuse.
Bruce: Well we’re lucky this evening, we’ve got in our studio Torque —
Torque: Hi.
Bruce: — Tower —
Tower: Hello.
Bruce: — and Beemer —
Beemer: Hello.
Bruce: — of the Guerrilla Theater Company. These guys have a theater company — where is it located?
Torque: It’s located downtown, in funky up-and-coming Tremont — it’s right next to The Flats.
Bruce: And it’s a safe neighborhood, right?
Torque: Uh no.
Beemer: It’s getting there.
Bruce: It’s getting there, and one of the reasons it’s getting there is because of the Guerrilla Theater. What they do is, they have this show, and what Torque told me is that they poke fun at our generation with their theatrical productions.
Torque: That’s right.
Bruce: For those of you at home, these people are 24 years old, they’re not exactly Baby Boomers, and they have the audacity to poke fun at our generation.
Tower: Sometimes all you Boomer folks act as though we don’t have any brains at all. You use tactics like the “Just Say No” campaign. Rather than explaining a problem and how it might affect us, you just tell us not to do it. Political correctness is another example.
Torque: You come up with no solutions, just knee-jerk decisions and you want everyone to abide by the decision that you make.
Beemer: You know what you want the end product to be but you don’t want to take the time to reach it so you just think up a catch phrase like “Just Say No” and that’s supposed to take care of it.
Bob: Do you think there are any Baby Boomers like me who “live for today” instead of people like Stuart who like to plan their life?
Torque: Yes, I do, and I respect them, and most of them come to see Guerrilla Theater Company, which brings up another subject which is that we are currently putting up our production of "The Taming of the Shrew" and that runs every Friday and Saturday night sat 8 o’clock and Sundays at 3 o’clock.
Bruce: Okay, you guys come here, you put down my generation, you put down our basic listening audience, I wanna know what you guys would do to make this a better world.
Torque: You mean, as opposed to “making love, not war”?
Bruce: Whatever.
Bob: That slogan I like, forget the “just say no to drugs.”
Bruce: “Make love, not war,” that’s not your generation’s slogan.
Tower: No, our generation says “Make love, not divorce.”
(General groans from the Boomer Boys.)
Bob: That’s a touchy subject for our generation.
Bruce: But I’m not hearing any solutions, I’m hearing slogans from you, too.
Torque: That’s the point, instead of the quick solutions, like divorce, we’re talking about working things out, about working our problems out, not the sound bite kind of answers you get on radio, but going ahead and taking some responsibility.
Bob: Are you married?
Torque: Me? No.
Bob: Then how can you talk like that?
Tower: I’m married.
Stuart: Tower is married, he said before the show he’s been married for six months, and you call yourself a househusband, right?
Tower: Right.
Stuart: Your wife supports you, makes the money, you take care of the house — how long is that going to last?
Tower: How long is that going to last?
Bob: Househusband, isn’t that a Baby Boomer idea anyway?
Tower: Oh you wish.
Bob: Thanks to the Baby Boomers, Tower, someone like you can let their wife go out to work —
Tower: I don’t have to let her do anything, we have this wonderful relationship, it’s not what I give her permission to do.
Bruce: What does she do?
Tower: She’s a systems designer.
Bruce: What’s that in English?
Tower: She makes computer programs.
Bob: Computers, another thing the Boomers created.
Tower: Shyeah, but you don’t understand them.
Stuart: My turn, to talk about sex, with Beemer.
Torque: You want to talk about sex with Beemer?
Stuart: What about sex in your plays, do you talk about the Sexual Revolution?
Beemer: Do you mean gender issues?
Stuart: I mean about how Baby Boomers made sex free, and accessible to all people, and how it’s looked about differently now.
Beemer: You mean “Free Love” and “Expressing Yourself”?
Tower: Done that.
Stuart: Aren’t you glad the Baby Boomers opened that up for you?
Beemer: Yeah, but there’s a difference between free love and having a hundred million different partners and having free love with your own personal sexuality.
Torque: We’ve got diseases now, you gave us Free Love, thanks, now we’ve got all these things to worry about, we’re trying to figure out how to come up with one partner when all of our role models say hey, it’s okay to have as many partners as you want, there’s no need to be anything but promiscuous.
Stuart: Woo!
Bruce: You guys are really down on us!
Tower: We’re getting the big thumbs up from the slackers in the control booth.
Bruce: You people are fascinating to me because I see in you a lot of my thoughts twenty years ago when I looked at my father’s generation. And I wonder what makes you think that twenty years from now someone isn’t gonna laugh at you and say, you people think you have all the answers, you don’t.
Torque: I hope they do laugh at us.
Beemer: I think that’s the difference between our generations — you had the same thoughts that we do now, but we have the drive to carry them on as we grow and do the work, so that our children will be even more motivated to continue that.
Bruce: You think we didn’t have the same determination twenty years ago?
Beemer: Doesn’t show now.
(Hoot and groans.)
Bob: Who got these guests tonight?
- scene -
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