"* Shut up!" "*" "CHRIS:" "The week before finals was the most pressure-packed time of the year." "Kids reacted to the pressure in lots of different ways." "Some kids took it out on themselves." "Some kids took it out on others." "When I got stressed out, only one thing ever worked for me:" "cracking jokes." "I saw your mama standing outside the free clinic reading a bottle of aspirin." "I asked her what she was doing." "She says, "Studying for my drug test."" "( laughs ) That's good." "( chuckles )" "Very good, very good, very good." "Very funny." "You got a way with words." "Which would be a good thing if this was... you-got-a-way-with-word-ology!" "But is this that?" "No." "You're right." "Do you know William Henry Harrison?" "Yeah, wasn't he that guy who cleaned up that woman in My Fair Lady?" "No, that was RexHarrison." "Oh." "William Henry Harrison was the ninth President of the United States, and he gave the longest inaugural address in history." "And guess what?" "What?" "Since you like to talk so much, you are gonna memorize that speech!" "But I have to study for finals." "Not if you don't get that speech memorized-- because if you don't, you're gonna get suspended!" "And then you won't be here to take final exams!" "You got a mama joke for that?" "CHRIS:" "If I tell it, I'll get suspended right now." "* Ah, make it funky now*" "CHRIS:" "In 1987, there was no Internet." "If you wanted information, you actually had to walk out of your house and get it." "William Henry Harrison's inaugural speech." "There you go." "Thanks." "Uh, which page is it on?" "All of 'em." "I can't memorize all this." "Memorize?" "Harrison couldn't memorize that, and he wrote it." "Well, I guess I'm gonna need to take it home." "Can't." "It's a reference book." "Can I make a copy?" "Sure." "Don't we have a copy machine?" "We did, but it turned out to be a fake." "It was a copy of a copy machine." "The Xerox police confiscated it." "If your hand starts to cramp up, use the other one." "CHRIS:" "I was quite familiar with that principle." "Your battery's dead." "Dead?" "Tattoo, that doesn't make sense." "I gave my wife money to buy a new one two months ago." "I don't know, man, I never seen anything like this before." "It look like this battery been in here three or four years." "( sighs ) How much to replace it?" "Sixty dollars." "But that don't include the spare tires, the shocks or the brake pads." "What?" "When did all that happen?" "I don't know." "CHRIS:" "Just now." "It's your car." "( whimpers )" "( tapping counter )" "( Jamaican accent ) My name is Tallulah LaFitte." "I came in here the other day to get my hair dyed honey brown, and it come out like this." "Well, did you have color in your hair before you came in?" "So, what if I did?" "I didn't want my hair to be orange." "I look like Ronald Blackdonald." "Well... hair is like crayons, you know?" "You mix colors, you get new colors." "If you don't know what you're mixing, then you don't know what you're gonna get." "I don't care about no mixing colors, miss." "You need to give me a refund." "CHRIS:" "Youneedto put those fingers away." "Um, we don't give refunds." "That's our policy." "Didn't you read the sign?" "Then I need to speak to the manager." "She's just gonna tell you the same thing I just said." "How do you know that?" "Because she is me!" "So I'm sorry, but no." "Whatever happened to that head of yours is not our fault." "CHRIS:" "That's what the president of Hollywood said to Britney Spears." "Ah-ah, this is not over, miss." "Until you give me back my money," "I'm putting a mojo on you and yours, a hex... on everything you touch and everything you do." "So it is said, so it shall be done." "( grunts quietly, clicks tongue )" "( speaking foreign language )" "( continues in foreign language )" "( grunting foreign language )" "CHRIS:" "That was Barack Obama's middle name." "And Obama-lu to you, too!" "Back home, my father thought someone put a hex on his dinner." "We're having soup for dinner?" "Yeah." "Drew and Tonya are sick-- they got a touch of the flu." "The flu?" "They were fine last night." "They aren't faking, are they?" "CHRIS:" "If she thought that, she'd have made fake soup." "No." "I took their temperature with a rectal thermometer." "Just one?" "Either they got the flu, or they're going a long way for a joke." "How about Chris?" "He's upstairs studying." "He's trying to memorize a speech for his history class." "Where you been?" "Tattoo down at the garage." "The battery's dead." "What?" "I know-- it's a brand-new battery." "I told him you bought a new one two months ago, and he said it looked like it was four years old." "I don't get it." "He said it looked like it was four years old?" "That's crazy." "Yeah, it's been a crazy day." "One bad thing happening right after the other." "I found out I had a hole in my pocket, and I lost 89 cents." "Aw!" "Hey, are you okay?" "CHRIS:" "No, she's mad she can't slap soup." "Yeah." "If that woman wasn't so ridiculous," "I swear I might really believe she put a mojo on me for real." "What woman?" "What mojo?" "What makes you think you got a mojo?" "Oh, it was nothing." "Some crazy woman came in the shop, talking about she didn't like the way we did her hair, she wanted her money back, and I told her no, and she got mad and said, oh, well," "I'm gonna put a hex on, mojo or something on you." "Well, did this happen today?" "Yeah." "Maybe we still have time." "I'll stop by Aunt Mousey's tomorrow on the way home from work and get her mojo remedy." "In the meantime, I'll just get the kids some 'Tussin." "No, no." "You can feed 'em, but don't give 'em medicine until you treat the mojo." "Anything you do might make it worse." "Fine." "Drew, Tanya, Chris, get down here and eat this soup!" "( grunting )" "Ow!" "I just bit my tongue." "Mojo." "Do we have to drink this?" "You don't have to do anything but stay ugly and die." "Yeah." "We need to be on the safe side." "It looks like Clay-Dough and grits." "Ugh!" "It tasteslike Clay-Dough and grits." "It isClay-Dough and grits." "If you treat the mojo in the first 24 hours, you can stop it from taking hold." "Julius, can I, um, talk to you for a minute?" "Yeah." "Drink that." "Why can't we just give the kids some cough medicine?" "They have the flu, not the mojo." "Well, let's be on the safe side." "This cures the flu andthe mojo." "If there's no mojo, then they won't get it." "You're not making my kids drink Clay-Dough and grits." "CHRIS:" "Too late." "* Watch out!" "*" "JULIUS:" "Good job." "If they throw it up, you clean it up." "* I... *" "* Can't stand... *" "( rattling )" "CHRIS:" "While Drew and Tanya were trying not to throw up," "I was trying to get my speech down." ""...in the early period..."" ""...that a most striking contrast was observable in the conduct of..."" "After three days of studying," "I was a lot like William Henry Harrison:dead." "Um..." "Come on, man, you can do this." "This is too much pressure." "If I had, like, one more day, maybe I'd have a shot at it." "Well, I can't help you-- I've run out of ideas." "It's, like, you're cursed or something." "So what am I gonna do?" "This is a disaster." "Dude, pull yourself together." "Everything's gonna be all right." "Really?" "No." "You're totally gonna fail the tenth grade." "That reminds me of a funny story." "My life is hanging by a thread, and you're gonna tell me a funny story?" "( chuckling ) Yeah, yeah." "So, this one time, my cousin Benny, he didn't study for a test, either, right?" "( laughs ) So... he picks up a phone, and he calls in a bomb threat, and they cancelled school." "Right." "Like, I'm gonna call in a bomb threat." "( deep voice ) Hello." "I have planted a bomb at Tattaglia High." "Unless everybody's out of that building in the next 40 minutes... everybody will be out of that building in the next 40 minutes." "In the '80s, making a bomb threat was nowhere near as easy as it is now." "Sir, unless the bomb is committing a crime, there's nothing we can do." "Unless the bomb is up a tree and can't get down, there's nothing we can do." "CHRIS:" "I thought I finally got the right people on the phone, but I still couldn't figure out why the school wasn't being evacuated." "Bomb." "School. 40 minutes." "Okay, you have a nice day." "I'm going to lunch." "Tell the Bomb Squad they got a message." "( grumbles quietly )" "Back home, my dad's mojo recipes were laying eggs." "Honey, I've done everything I can, and things just keep getting worse." "They've had over four glasses of the remedy each, and their temperature just keeps going up." "Maybe that's because Clay-Dough is not the stuffy-nose, runny-eyes, scratchy-throat and knock-you- out-so-you-can-sleep medicine." "Well, can you check the kitchen drain?" "It's stopped up." "Since when?" "I don't know-- it was slow a couple of days ago, and now it's totally clogged." "You know, this would all be over if you just go apologize to that woman." "Well, I guess it's not gonna be over, because I'm not gonna apologize for being right." "CHRIS:" "Men do it all the time." "( chicken clucking ) Breathe." "If the Bomb Squad didn't get the word soon, there was still gonna be an explosion in my heart." "Well, look who's here." "We've all been waiting for you." "You have?" "Yeah." "Why don't you start off with a few of those "Yo, mama" jokes, just to get the crowd going?" "( bell rings )" "All right, everybody, don't panic!" "It's just a fire." "Line up single file by the door." "You know the drill." "Dude, come on." "Snap out of it." "My plan was working." "Yes!" "While the fire alarm rang, Drew and Tonya were burning up." "So you just gonna go to work and leave us like this?" "There is no mojo, Julius." "The children are sick." "You refuse to give them real medicine." "CHRIS:" "Just like the government." "( knocking )" "Ah, Ms. Rochelle," "Mr. Julius, I just want to tell you" "I might be a little late on the rent." "The mortuary had a run of bad luck, and tragically, we lost three customers." "CHRIS:" "That means they lived." "You see there, Rochelle?" "The mojo's spreading all over the building." "Mojo?" "What mojo?" "You got a mojo on you?" "Oh, don't tell me you believe in that nonsense too." "I believe it because it's not nonsense." "I'm sorry, if you got a mojo on you," "I got to move the hell up out of here now." "What for?" "'Cause you got a mojo on you, and I'm in this house, I got a mojo on me." "And if people keep surviving around here, y'all gonna run me out of business." "So do what you need to do, and let me know when it's done." "CHRIS:" "That's what my wife says." "JULIUS:" "See that?" "Now we're losing a tenant." "What else has to go wrong before you take this seriously?" "Hey, Ma, Chris's school." "TV REPORTER:" "Tattaglia High School in Queens where just a short while ago, the Bomb Center received a call threatening to blow up the school." "( sirens wailing )" "So far, the school is still there." "So we'll be here with live, up-to-the-minute reporting." "( sirens wailing)" "Now do you believe it?" "( sighs )" "Where you been?" "I've been at the emergency triage area with heart palpitations." "Don't worry." "Everything's gonna be fine." "How do you know?" "This whole place could blow." "Metal chairs flying like shrapnel everywhere." "Greg, I called in the bomb threat." "What?" "!" "Where would you get such a crazy idea?" "From you, with that story about your cousin Benny." "Oh." "I may have exaggerated a bit." "What's wrong with you?" "Why would you make up a story like that?" "I have a penchant for hyperbole to aggrandize myself." "I've been working it out with my shrink." "Look, bottom line is, the school is not gonna blow up." "They're gonna send us all home for the day, and I won't have to recite that stupid speech." "( over bullhorn ) Attention, everyone." "I'm Captain Tyrone Williams of the Bomb Squad." "The school has been cleared and the bomb threat is over." "Thank you for your cooperation." "CHRIS:" "I've never seen a black man onthatside of a megaphone." "We would send you all home, but with finals next week, it's best if you go back to your classes." "So, we'll resume with fifth period, and Tyrone will resume searching my office any my person." "Hey, yo, mama, I'll see you back in class, huh?" "Maybe if I start you off, you'll remember the speech." "All right, it starts like this." ""Called from a retirement in which I had supposed..."" "I don't know the speech, and I cannot go back into that class!" "What are you gonna do?" "CHRIS:" "Panic!" "( screams )" "( continues screaming )" "No, no, no!" "CHRIS:" "I didn't freak out like that again until Big Puddin' died." "There, there, Chris." "It's perfectly natural for you to freak out after a bomb scare." "It's called Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome." "But being from the ghetto, it never occurred to me that your stress would ever end." "Miss Morello, I'm flippin' out." "I think you should send me home." "I tell you what, go back to your class, and if you're still feeling shaky after that, then you can go home." "Thanks." "CHRIS:" "That was as helpful as a bookshelf at Paris Hilton's house." "Ooh!" "( gasps )" "Okay, um..." "I think we got off on the wrong foot." "Now, you would think that." "Look, I was wrong, okay?" "Mm-hmm." "And I just wanted to... ( coughs ) ...apologize for my attitude." "Thank you so much for coming by." "Wait, wait, wait, now!" "I need you take off this whammy, you know?" "The mojo hojo stuff." "I thought you said you didn't believe in all this stuff." "I don't, but, you know, everybody else around me does, so would you do that voodoo that you do so well?" "Hmm." "Well, I can fix you, but it gonna cost you." "Okay, you know, I knew that, and here's your refund." "All right." "Tunde baba ashayokay." "That's it?" "Uh-huh." "CHRIS:" "That means" ""Thanks for the refund, sucker."" "And put me on your book for next Tuesday, 10:00." "Well... hello, Chris." "Nice of you to join us." "Oh, no, you don't!" "The front of the class, please." "Now, class, if you recall the other day," "Chris ran his mouth off." "Chris, did you learn the speech?" "CHRIS:" "No." "Yeah." "No!" "Good." "Now take a seat." "And don't ever talk in my class again." "CHRIS:" "Huh?" "Huh?" "You don't want me to recite it?" "Recite it?" "Did I say you had to recite it?" "No!" "I said for you to memorize it!" "Maybe if you spent more time listening and less time talking, you might have heard me correctly." "But I worked my butt off learning this speech." "CHRIS:" "What are you doing, fool?" "Sit down!" "You know, it's interesting, isn't it?" "Sometimes, to get people to do things, we have to threaten to do something, we really have no intention of doing." "CHRIS:" "Later on, North Korea would follow the same advice and get billions of dollars in foreign aid." "Look, I memorized it, I'm gonna recite it, and you're gonna listen to it." "Is that a fact?" "Sit down." ""Called from a retirement which I had supposed would continue for the residue of my life...."" "That's enough." "You know it." "Take your seat." ""to fill the chief executive office of this great and free nation." "( bell rings ) Talk." ""which will govern me in the duties of these discharge which I had to perform."" "Enjoy." "Good-bye." ""I fear that a strict examination of the annals" ""of some of the modern elective governments would develop similar instances of violated confidence."" ""I, too, well understand the dangerous temptations to which I shall be exposed" ""from the magnitude of the power, which it has been the pleasure..."" "CHRIS ( over phone ) "If parties in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance sufficient to keep..."" "All right, all right!" "I get it." "Now leave me alone." "You know the speech." "I'm sorry." "Thank you." "* We're not gonna take it... *" "Chris, bring Vanessa a plate!" "Thank you." "And something to drink too." "So, what's going on?" "Oh, I had to check with you." "I was going over my receipts, and my register keeps coming up short about $40." "CHRIS:" "My mom could have been the mayor of Detroit." "Oh..." "I meant to tell you about that." "About what?" "Um, you know Miss Tallulah?" "Yeah." "What about her?" "Well, she was unhappy with her hair color, so she seemed pretty upset, so I just gave her a refund." "Refund?" "What'd you do that for?" "I have a strict no-refund policy, you know that." "Well, Vanessa, she put a hex on me." "A mojo!" "VANESSA:" "A mojo?" "You let that woman come in and scam you for $40 because she threatened you with a mojo?" "She's been doing that ever since she came in, 'Chelle." "She's crazy!" "She's the reason I put the sign up there." "VANESSA:" "Oh, ooh, I got to watch TV when I eat." "I can't believe you had me go all the way down there and apologize to that crazy woman for nothing!" "It wasn't for nothing." "Drew and Tonya had a fever." "It was getting worse." "That's because we didn't drink that nasty mojo remedy." "DREW:" "Yeah, we poured that down the drain." "I really don't think it's safe to drink Clay-Dough." "What about that battery?" "I mean, it was brand-new." "He said it looked like it was four years old." "Oh, th-the battery?" "Yeah." "Yeah, I used that money to buy a new outfit." "What about the bomb threat at Chris's school?" "Oh, um, it turned out to be a hoax." "It happens so much that, you know," "I think that's the reason why they call it a "bomb threat."" "Because nobody really calls in bombs." "Oh, look, a school just blew up!" "TV REPORTER:" "I'm here at Bardini High with Captain Tyrone Williams of the Bomb Squad." "Can you tell us what happened?" "Well, apparently, there was a bomb inside the building and before we were able to defuse it, it blew up and destroyed the school." "Okay." "Can you tell us, does this have anything to do with the bomb threat earlier at Tattaglia?" "Oh, absolutely." "Because there was no bomb over there, we figured there was no bomb over here, so we ignored the call." "Fortunately, it was after hours so no students were destroyed in the blast." "But whoever called in that Tattaglia threat, we're holding you personally responsible." "Wherever you are, we will hunt you down and blow you up." "And that's not a threat, that's a promise." "* Everybody hates Chris. *"