Opening Monologues for BEARS! The Blessing of the Obelisk Parts 1 & 2

Below are the opening monologues for BEARS! The Blessing of the Obelisk Parts 1 & 2.

PART ONE

Thank you, Grave Freaker. 

My name is Tim Platt and I’d like to talk to you about 300.

Ah, 300. What is 300?
It’s half 600, and twice…30, I think?

But 300 is more abstract than that. 300 could be anything. 

To me, 300 is a guess; the only guess I ever make when it comes to gumball in glass jar challenges.

To some, 300 could be…a movie. A movie I saw in college in a room packed with exclusively 19 year old boys except for my Islamic Ethics Professor who sat right in front of me and laughed the whole time.

To others, 300 is a prelude, a prelude to 301, which are the first three digits to one of the more “Tim Platt coded” phone numbers. 

To you, the listener, 300 is the number of years since God punished the bees by taking away their ability to make honey…in exchange for the ability to spin at dizzying speeds. The tale of how all this occurred can be found on an obscure piece of audio called Tim Platt’s Honey Heist, a tale so tragic it can only be referred to as “paywalled.”

But that was the past and now, like tickle me Elmo in 1996, it is THE present. 

And much has changed in the last 300 years. 

It won’t surprise you that bees never needed honey to thrive. They “spun” straw into gold and redirected all their hives’ industry towards…ballet. That’s right: Ballet! The bee’s new spins became pirouettes, and their old wings became “leap helpers”, catapulting ballet into the most socially relevant art form the world has ever seen!

But in this strange futuristic world where, speculatively, ballet is huge, there is also a dark truth. Honey is no more. 

The first 50 years after the fall, honey was a dwindling resource, stockpiled by the most economical bees and the most indulgent of bears, like Papa! For the next 150, honey was an archaeological novelty, like dinosaurs bones or the double jump fruit. For the past 100 years, honey is myth. Those who have said they have tried it have most likely tried artificial sweeteners, which are FINE. 

But still, there are those who dream. I’m not going to joke about that. I wouldn’t dare. Dreamers have been through enough. Dreamers deserve to be thrilled without ridicule. 

Which was exactly the attitude taken by The Museum of Non-Ballet Arts (or MONBA) when they programmed the new exhibit, Art and Archaeology of the Honey Era. Paintings, artifacts, and sculptures from a time when Honey was as common the dodo, who are still around, or double jump fruit alternatives, which are fine. The main selling point of the exhibit was, of course, The Obelisk. An ancient obelisk invented by pre-colonial bees that was said to guide bees back to their hives. If any honey on this planet remained, the unmockable dreamers thought, the Obelisk would know. 

…which is why, I assume, five strange bears loiter in the Museum Cafe. 

PART TWO

Thank you, Grave Freaker. 

In the beginning, God gave each animal a special ability in exchange for not suing Him. 

How else can you explain the skunk, with it’s charming white highlight, or the novel (an animal) with it’s God-Given-Gift of A SPINE, which was a concept God would retroactively add to mammals, who began their existence disgusting.  The bees saw this was good and waited patiently for their gift…until they saw that God considered EVERY fish an animal AND distinguished more varieties of sparrows than, some GMs would say, is fair…so the bees realized they had time to kill. 

In the original audio Tim Platt’s Honey Heist, which was paywalled years ago in order to pay my rent, it was suggested that the bees ultimately rejected God’s gift in exchange for the honey they had spent their time inventing, to which God said either, depending on the translation, “Oh Embrace Affirmative!” or “oh HUG yah!” 

But what that paywalled audio DIDN’T tell you, was that the bees, like a tug-of-war champion challenging a track star, had pulled a fast one.

Honey wasn’t their invention. Honey was a byproduct. A byproduct of the bee’s true innovation: The Throne.

With nothing to do but wait, the bees absent-mindedly jammed all kinds of nonsense under the ass of their Queen. Innately they knew that she (and ALL women, Mama!!!) deserved a seat of prominence. Through trial and error they found that the BEST thing for her to sit on was POLLEN and then it was only a matter of time before that Pollen became Honeycomb, the Honeycomb became a chair, and the chair, by adding a little nonsense to its back, became a throne. 

Ah, The Throne. The printing press of pre-literate inventions. This discovery was too powerful to risk God’s disapproval. But that sticky shit dripping off the honeycomb’s weird openings? Yah that felt like a God Distractor for SURE. 

The Throne remained in use for generations until the death of the First Queen who had been kept alive long past her natural life with technology so magic it might as well be magic. In reverence to her they placed the throne, with all its honey intact, in a tomb never to be seen again. 

The last honey on earth is in the honeycomb that makes up a throne in a lost tomb. 

And so it has remained, unfindable to all…except the obelisk…upon whose back you now fly!!!