Mike Mariano

Before mikemariano dot com breaks for the summer, let me hand in my latest assignment: Zenyatta Piñata.

It’s here, folks. A ten-minute play that combines spousal abuse with a joyous party game to comic effect.

I’ve done something different this time around. Instead providing Zenyatta in both a PDF and TXT format, I have hand-coded an HTML version of the play that serves as the primary download. This was done quickly, but it seems easy enough to read. Let me know if it doesn’t work.

It was a real problem getting this far: there are no good HTML plays on the Internet. Believe me, I’ve looked:

• The W3C recommended definition lists are awful, taking into account only a speaker and his speech, not any stage directions that may come into play.
• Our fellow playwright/blogger Dan Trujillo seems to leave the heavy lifting up to Microsoft Word. His play samples look fine—until you press Open Apple-U. There’s no way I could carry around that kind of code cruft for something like a full-length play.
• Cruft? That goes for you, too, Mr. OpenOffice.org. Your HTML is hideous—even ripping out your content.xml shows dozens of styles in a document that uses only two.

What I want is a Shakespeare Markup Language revival. I want a play format in the spirit of Jon Bosak-approved Shakespeare XML. These examples from years past aren’t perfect—Bosak doesn’t escape Shakespeare’s ampersands, for example—but an XML representation of my plays, transformed through style sheets for your web viewing pleasure, may be the most painless way to present my work on the Internet.

But first I may have to mark it all up by hand. That’s not painless.

PS: The Zenyatta page also features a new design which may spread to the rest of the site. Seeing it in action, though, makes me dislike it already.

I’m seriously horrified by my current HTML and CSS skills. I was never good, but now it’s like Flowers for Algernon. If anyone wants to help me overhaul the site, let me know.

Though I have a dozen words left to write for Zenyatta Piñata, why not shirk responsibility and revise a finished play?

I was thinking of Dodgers great Orel Hershiser today, and regretted naming a sex toy after him in my Menage. After all Orel (even when spelled “Oral”) is an honest name. It’s also a religiously inspired name. Why bother putting it in the service of a dirty joke?

Especially because I had a much better dirty joke I could have used, one I formerly employed as an IM away message. Here it is adapted for the play:

Cody Not in your stocking, dude.

(He throws a toy at JOE.)

Enjoy….

Joe (Inspecting it:) What is this?

Cody Come on; you have to ask? It’s a rubber mouth.

Joe Cody, it has a moustache!

Cody So?

Joe It’s a man’s mouth!

Cody Is that a problem?

Joe Maybe I’m uptight, Cody, but I don’t have any fantasies involving facial hair down there.

Cody Aw, sure you do, Joe. Just close your eyes and think of Tom Selleck.

I finished a draft of Zenyatta Piñata last night. (So we’re keeping score correctly, that makes a draft of Zenyatta Piñata, a first draft of the Platonic Philosopher Kings, and a super-expanded Jack, Wanda, and Ben that I’m holding back from you.) Right now it ends on such an awful note. Like Muggled, it’s a sick joke with the joke removed. I don’t find anything funny in ZP. And I like it that way. It’s right now a ten-minute play. Should I add more to it? I definitely have more material, but I don’t think it would add anything new. You may see it soon.

After subsequent drafts of Zenyatta Piñata and Philosopher Kings, the next play will likely be a one-act Ibsen parody. The Ibsen play, Philosopher Kings, and Menage a Sartre may all fit together as a evening of one-acts.

Does this amalgamation count as the full-length play I promised you in January? No! One-acts are one-acts, no matter how I group them. Yet apart from Now Departing, I have only one modest idea for a full-length play. And the only line of dialogue I have so far is “Tutan-cummin’ on her Nefer-titties.”

Comparatively, I suppose that’s a good start.