George Washington’s Extreme Makeover
Dentures owned and worn by George Washington.
Even when you take a holiday from technology, technology doesn’t take a break from you. On vacation three years back, I chose to read a long and worthy biography of George Washington. I chose it because I was at someone’s guest house and it was the one book on their shelves that I could be sure contained no technology: no email, smartphones, discount airlines, smoking-hot Wi-Fi—no anything. The book delivered, and for a week I had a dreamlike brain holiday, one that I now look back on and see almost as a form of ecotourism—visiting a place where there was a guarantee of relief from my technologized daily brain ecology.
From the book I learned that Washington was a worthy fellow and a competent human being in an era when life was short and most people were a mess—an era when healthy people caught a cold one afternoon and were dead by morning.
Importantly, I learned that, were it not for Washington, there would most definitely never have been a United States. The man’s historical worthiness is undeniable, and the guy was basically one of those people who changed the world.
Washington also had appallingly bad teeth and spent much of his time, when visiting new cities, inquiring after local dentists and new procedures that might allow him to not live in near-perpetual dental pain and discomfort. One reason there’s no image of Washington smiling is that the man never smiled; he didn’t want his teeth, or lack thereof, to show. And although he was graced by general good health—he died in 1799, at the age of sixty-seven, an accomplishment for the era—he was not blessed with bodily comfort. As with anybody of his era, he endured his share of slow-healing wounds, fungal infections, GI distress and many things that can these days be nipped in the bud by a quick trip to a drugstore.
When reading about Washington’s chronic discomfort, I began to have a fantasy, one in which George, at the age of forty-five, utterly sick of being sick, covered in lice and exhausted from having to rescue his inept countrymen from peril after peril, is teleported from atop his horse somewhere in the scenic Virginia countryside to a Class 1 clean room five hundred feet beneath that exact same spot 240 years later. Once there, he is given a big hit of Valium and told by a gentle off-screen woman’s voice that he has been whisked away by angels to heal his body and prepare him fully for the task of creating and leading a new nation. At this point, a crew of doctors, dentists and exodontists wearing hazmat suits descend on Washington and begin futzing about with his body, identifying rashes, cysts, abscesses, growths, aches, pains and every other form of malady, and then go about fixing everything. Washington—I’m going to start calling him George here—is totally okay with this invasion because these are angels! No, they’re not necessarily winged, but a sterile, pure-white twenty-first-century environment could definitely read as a form of heaven to someone from 1776.
A big part of this makeover and healing fantasy is to ensure that George doesn’t catch any twenty-first-century bugs—hence the hazmat outfits. Over the ensuing few weeks, George undergoes a rigid antibiotic regimen to remove any transmittable blood cooties he may be harbouring. This allows for the safe implantation of thirty-two dazzling new teeth using steel-post implantation, and along the way George’s skin is moisturized, defungicized, deloused and gently kissed with a nice honey-bronze colour by tanning rays—but, as Washington is a redhead (true), his makeover team needs to go easy on the UV. George needs to look like he spent a week poolside in Tampa; a cocoa-brown tan would look odd in 1776, and instead of making George look like a member of the ruling elite, it would make him resemble a day labourer.
Moving forward: George’s rogue ear and nose hairs are trimmed. His dandruff is Selsun’d into oblivion, and his signature Warhol-in-drag hairstyle is fluffed and primped into Sassoon-like perfection. He has become almost borderline hot, and just before leaving the Class 1 containment area, George is given LASIK treatment to correct his vision, as well as small hits of Botox to loan him a slightly more youthful appearance. The garments he was wearing when he was abducted have been dry-cleaned and stored for forty-eight hours at minus 204 degrees Celsius and then thawed, dried and restitched together. Basically, when George is returned onto his horse back in Virginia, he’s a new man. This new man is one super-healthy stud and totally ready to kick some British ass.
The only thing that might complicate this makeover scenario would be if George were to fall in love with one of his hazmat angels—a twist that would please the heart of any Hollywood producer. George would be back in 1759 pining to reunite with, say, the lithe and sinewy Dr. Jennifer Crandall, a parasitologist with a chip on her shoulder and a quivering lower lip (to be played by Charlize Theron). So Dr. Crandall hops into the time travel machine, goes back in time and finds George, but brings with her some ghastly twenty-first century flu, wiping out 98 percent of the American colony’s population and wrecking history forever.
The point here is that even when you try avoiding technology, it still drives the imagination. I just wanted a book without smartphones! I’m going to try it again this year…on an e-reader.
“GEORGE WASHINGTON’S EXTREME MAKEOVER”
By Douglas Coupland
Pilot script S01 E01
©2014 Douglas Coupland
1 - ORNELLE CAMERON’S LIVING ROOM
It’s an obviously rich person’s living room. Beautiful lighting. From behind we see a woman sitting in a chair. She turns around and it’s an elegant black woman, sixty-ish. She smiles.
ORNELLE CAMERON
Hello. I’m Ornelle Cameron, heir to the renowned Cameron Laser Hair Removal fortune.
(New camera angle)
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
If you’re like me, you passionately enjoy history. Me, I like to take my passion further and make history a slightly better place for those people who helped create it.
(New camera angle)
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
That’s why I founded Fab Lab.
We see photos of Ornelle walking through a generic lab environment…
ORNELLE CAMERON (V.O.)
Welcome to Fab Lab. Fab Lab is a time-travel portal facility located fifty feet beneath the surface of Culver City, California.
We see people (who we will soon meet) doing their jobs and looking up and smiling as the camera comes near…
ORNELLE CAMERON (V.O.)
In Fab Lab, a small team of workers extracts an important historical figure using an expensive ceiling-mounted portal that pulls them onto foam blocks and into the present.
Wow! We get to see a body fall through a blue glowing ring on the ceiling. It’s a Roman warrior making a “what-the-heck” face. Back to Ornelle…
ORNELLE CAMERON (V.O.)
Once in the lab our historic visitors undergo a remarkable Fab Lab makeover.
We see a before-and-after centurion montage.
ORNELLE CAMERON (V.O.)
After being made over, temporal visitors are returned to their correct time and place.
We see the centurion landing back in Rome, shaking the dust off and then…turning on his Blue Steel…Then back to Ornelle…
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
Fab Lab’s historical figures are never given makeovers to alter the course of history. Rather, they’re simply able to return to their time looking and feeling much…
(New camera angle)…hotter.
Back to Ornelle in her living room.
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
These people gave us history — we owe them the basic human kindness of being made over. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s visit. I’m Ornelle Cameron.
End of clip. BLEEP.
Suddenly we’re back in the same living room, but the lighting is crap and Ornelle is in a housecoat at a piano, drinking highballs and playing “Everybody Hurts.”
She looks down and spots something beneath a piano leg. She leans over, wheezingly lifts the leg up a bit and finds a folded-up one-dollar
bill that had been propping up a leg. She opens it and looks at it.
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
Paper money. I remember paper money.
She looks at George Washington’s face on the bill.
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
George Washington. That poor man. He never smiled, did he?
(beat)
That’s not right. We need to do something to give that noble man more confidence.
(beat)
This is a perfect mission for my lab team.
2 - FAB LAB MAIN AREA
We see three men sitting on chairs. AIDEN HOLT is looking at his iPhone of the future. DIEGO DELGADO is trimming his toenails. DR. EUGENE HEADWATER is touching a screen, online shopping for clothes. Eugene looks up as SARAH DENT, a bossy-type woman, forty-ish, strides in.
SARAH
Guys. Ornelle’s here. Snap to it. Diego, Jesus, put some shoes on.
The three men become attentive. Ornelle enters, once again dressed elegantly. She’s with an insanely hot twenty-four-year-old blond woman, KRYSTAL BENTLEY. The guys are very curious and happy to see her. Sarah rolls her eyes.
SARAH (CONT’D)
Ornelle, we can’t wait to find out who our next time traveller is going to be.
ORNELLE CAMERON
Yes, yes. We’ll get to that. Team, I’d like you to meet your new member.
The men all stand and come over to shake hands.
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
This is my granddaughter, Krystal. Krystal is a Level Six Cosmetologist. Go on, Krystal, shake hands.
Hellos all around…
EUGENE
Dr. Eugene Headwater. A pleasure to meet you.
ORNELLE CAMERON
Eugene runs the time machine. Be nice to him.
Eugene and Krystal shake hands.
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
This here is Diego (makes air quotes) “Corn Field” Delgado. He does wardrobe as well as any dirty work that needs doing.
Krystal isn’t sure how to react.
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
Seriously. He’s our problem fixer.
They shake hands.
ORNELLE CAMERON (CONT’D)
And this is Aiden Holt, the former six-pack model who…
KRYSTAL
…The former six-pack model who rose to global viral fame helping Madonna prepare for her one-hundredth birthday anniversary show! This is so exciting! How cool to meet you!
AIDEN
The pleasure is mine, Krystal.
Sarah makes a “watch it” face at Aiden.
SARAH
Aiden, stop making your sexy face at Krystal.
ORNELLE CAMERON
Aiden is our Time Ambassador, a role I’d like to prepare you for too, granddaughter.
KRYSTAL
Aiden, I have to ask you, what’s Madonna really like?
ORNELLE CAMERON
Krystal! Where are your manners! Everybody knows that we’ll never know what Madonna’s really like.
KRYSTAL
Sorry, Grandma. I’m nervous — it’s so exciting to help you bring people from the past here into the future for makeovers they so desperately need. When can we begin, Grandma?
ORNELLE CAMERON
Well, no time like the present. All of you take your seats. Eugene, you have the slide show ready?
EUGENE
All set, Ornelle.
ORNELLE CAMERON
Right then. Start ’er up.
On the screen we see a US dollar bill on a white background with the word MONEY written below it.
EUGENE
This, people, is George Washington, first president of the United States.
Silence.
AIDEN
With all due respect, was Washington a drag queen? I mean, dig the wig. Was he known to have experienced gender dysphoria?
KRYSTAL
Aiden, we need to accept George’s right to wear a woman’s wig. Maybe he was born with two sets of genitalia.
DIEGO
And then he funnelled his gender confusion into inventing money and saving the world.
EUGENE
Excellent theories, children, but no. It’s how men actually wore their hair in 1776.
Aiden and Krystal look at each other and make “wow, I didn’t know that” faces. The screen image changes to one of a tobacco field brimming with slaves.
EUGENE (CONT’D)
George Washington was born into a rich tobacco-growing family in Virginia, but after growing disenchanted with English domination, a young George mounted several highly successful anti-English campaigns…
We see clip art of ye olde battles.
EUGENE (CONT’D)
…but in the summer of 1776, he lost an attempt to capture New York City. George was downhearted, to say the least.
KRYSTAL
I hope they gave him a medal anyway. I mean, he tried really hard, right?
EUGENE
No, Krystal. Back then people didn’t get medals for losing.
On screen we see Washington Crossing the Delaware.
EUGENE (CONT’D)
But on a cold Christmas Day in 1776, Washington and his troops crossed the frozen Delaware River and captured New Jersey, which sparked a chain of events that ultimately created the United States of America. But unfortunately…
AIDEN
But what?
EUGENE
But unfortunately, George Washington couldn’t smile, Aiden. He had only one tooth.
Blank stares all around.
KRYSTAL
You mean he wore fake Halloween blackout teeth?
EUGENE
No, Krystal. He didn’t. To be clear, George Washington only had one organic natural tooth of his own…and here are his dentures…
Gasps of astonishment. Suddenly we see a photo of his dentures, and the gasps grow. Even Sarah squeaks in horror.
EUGENE (CONT’D)
Cruel as it sounds, the creator of the one-dollar bill had just one solitary genuine tooth of his own. His “denture” was a mix of random bits of wood cobbled together by fraudulent small-town dentists.
KRYSTAL
That poor, poor man. We have to help him now.
ORNELLE CAMERON
My feeling exactly. Now listen up, all of you.
SARAH
Shush! Everyone be quiet.
EUGENE
In a moment we’re bringing George Washington here into the lab, but we all need to remember that he’s been very busy preparing his troops for his Christmas Day invasion. Expect him to be nervous, defensive…and in need of the best makeover we can provide, not just teeth, but everything.
TOGETHER
You bet!…Count me in!…You’ve got it!
EUGENE
Okay then, together let’s all gather round and make the Fab Lab Hot signal!
KRYSTAL
What’s that?
AIDEN
You’ll see.
EUGENE
Fingers, make the sign of the “H.”
Everyone makes the sign of the “H” (see photo). They put their H’s into a circle and…
TOGETHER
(loudly chant)
H…H…H…H…HOT!
(followed by…)
EUGENE
Let the makeover begin!
3 – FAB LAB TIME TRAVEL AREA
Eugene and Aiden stand by a screen like the one Eugene was shopping on. They type in the words George Washington and the date, December 24, 1776. Finding people in the past is as simple as Google.
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