NDA / Give the Audience What They Want
NDA
The network’s lawyer sharpens his sword. I see nothing through this black hood. Hands bound behind my back, bent on my knees.
Two dozen witnesses surround me in the conference room: the showrunners, department heads, the rest of the cast.
At a restaurant last night, I told my wife I won the part of Cherry-Dingle in the upcoming television adaptation of the Realms of the Withertop Dragon Guild novels. I whispered to her the names of the actors cast to play Turkle-Dink the Grim and Lady Snorcrungle. Convinced no one could hear, I told her the series was making some changes from the source material, including the addition of a new swine-goblin character named Porky-Winkle the Stout, and that the battle between Lundle-Bink the Brown and Wise Witch Goofenpiss would now take place in the Trundle-Nutt Forest. I told her that I was most excited for the climactic reveal that Old Wizard Bingle-Smoke is not, in fact, a member of the Bibble-Dee-Gum-Gum Order, but is secretly working for Skimcrug Brandysnot of the Crumdungle Brigade.
My wife told me the show sounded like an unbearable embarrassment and I should try to back out. But before I knew it, the network’s men were on me, punching my ribs and tying my hands and taping my mouth shut.
The lawyer raises his blade over my neck. My wife, in the room, wails. “Shame on you. Shame on you all.”
In a neat blow, the lawyer severs my head.
The witnesses gasp. They have learned their lesson. Cherry-Dingle will be recast, and they will not speak the news. For you can never be certain who among the cast and crew of the Realms of the Withertop Dragon Guild may be secretly working for Skimcrug Brandysnot of the Crumdungle Brigade.
Give the Audience What They Want
“Thank you all for coming out and supporting live music and joining us on this beautiful night to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our debut album. We’re going to play that one straight through, and then we’ll dig into the hits from the other records, alright? No new songs on this tour, just the classics. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, we could just do the first album top-to-bottom and wrap it up there. The other albums sound different and I figure if you came here for the original, then you don’t necessarily like the later iterations of the band. So let’s just do the album and let you all head home. Or, you know what? We hadn’t played a lot of the album cuts from this record since we recorded them, and going back into those, there’s definitely some fat on the bone with this one. There’s a reason most of the tracks weren’t singles. I’d bet most of you only came out tonight for the three singles. So let’s cut to the chase and do those and then maybe we see how everyone’s feeling about any others? Might be best to call it a night there. Although, you’ve all heard the three singles so many times. You know what they sound like. You can think of those songs and I bet what plays in your head is damn-near identical to what we’d do up here tonight. What if we just let you all out now? Head home early, still have time to watch something before bed? We’ll refund your tickets, just make it like this show never happened at all. I’ll have our manager go ahead and remove our catalog from the music streaming services, delete our Wikipedia page. Ask that you all destroy any CDs or posters or t-shirts you may have from us, just kind of go ahead and wipe ourselves out entirely. We’ll shred our social security cards, then have our bus driver take us to the hospitals where everyone in the band was born and pay a nurse to destroy our birth certificates. Just a nice, clean delete. How does that sound?”
The sold-out amphitheater crowd rises to its feet and cheers thunderously.