Integrated Mistress Schedule

A member of our troupe used to be an engineer and Cost Accounting Manager (CAM) for a defense contractor. This sketch was inspired by his adventures in the exciting, rough and tumble world of program management, and shows what we here at CoBaD think might happen when a program manager (PM) decides to get married.

Caption and Voiceover: “This sketch contains intensely suggestive dialogue and strong course language. Engineer discretion is advised.” - A warning that the following sketch contains copious amounts of engineer-related terminology. If you don’t understand this sketch, consider yourself blessed.

Gigi: “How’s your scarf stew, dear?”
Casey: “Oh, good…It’s a bit stringy.”
Gigi: “Yes, it’s my mother Madge’s concoction. An old Scottish favorite. It’s not to everyone’s tastes, but it is a killer recipe. At least that nice Miss Sylphide thought so, God rest her soul... “
Casey: “Whaddya mean, ‘God rest her soul’?!”

Alludes to Act 2 of August Bournonville’s 1836 ballet “La Sylphide.” Many years ago, a member of our troupe played a witch in the scarf scene. It was quite fun. It was rather priceless, as he recalled, to see the dancer who played Madge the witch, all decked out in his hideous costume and makeup, walking from the dressing room down to the stage singing “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story.”

Casey: “I know, and I appreciate that. I told James so at the reception.” – James Ruben is the lead character in “La Sylphide.” In Act 2, Madge tricked James into giving his beloved Sylph a scarf, claiming that if James wrapped the scarf around the sylph, she could not fly away, and would be his forever. When James wrapped the scarf around the Sylph, her wings fell off and she died, leaving James grief-stricken and alone. This line suggest that the heartbroken James later married Madge on the rebound, with the thrifty Scot and the evil witch eventually giving birth to a PM.

Gigi: “Option one; a first child, a boy named Matthew Adam. My parents put together a RFP (Request for Pregnancy) and have asked me to modify the Integrated Master Schedule to include the option. Let me just open up the spreadsheet on my laptop here and I’ll show it to you.” - Family PLANNING (e.g., deciding on the number of children to have, if any, how many years apart they should be, (roughly) the age at which to have them, etc.) is one matter. Family SCHEDULING (e.g., the first child will be born on April 29th after 6 hours and 37 minutes of labor at 7:40pm, he will be a boy, he will be named Matthew Adam, etc.) is just downright creepy. Almost as creepy as a PM. And Mr. Scope.

Casey: “Don’t you remember what Father Rod said? Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!
Gigi: “I’m not taking His name in vain…”
Together: “It’s for a very good reason!”

For more on this gag, see the “Out of Context, Out of Mind” sketch. It is here we learn the first name of Rosie’s father, Rod (as in “Don’t fail to punish your children. The rod of punishment won’t kill them,” Proverbs 23:13, New Living Translation). Incidentally, this isn't Father Rod's first appearance in a CoBaD sketch; he made a cameo appearance in the “Pleasure Doing Business” sketch.

Gigi: “We’re already past do proceed, sh** wad. For the love of Mod, you don’t know the first fu** about contracts, do you?” – “Mod” is short for contract modification. Contract modifications are somewhat of a relief for engineers because it means PMs have something to do besides gathering their minions for weekly Powerpoint-laden, inefficient and badly-run three-hour-long Business Process Review (BPR) and two-hour-long Performance to Plan (PTP) meetings and berating them for not getting their work done.

Voiceover: “For her transformative work that defied both category and comprehension, Atthew became the first person ever to receive both the 'Johnny Cash ‘A Boy Named Sue’ Prize' and the prestigious 'Winston Churchill Enigma Honor' for her outstanding service as a woman trapped with a man’s name outside a woman’s body.”

The line pokes fun at the Kennedy Center Honors selection committees. In 2018, the Special Honors Advisory Committee and the executive committee of the board of trustees felt a sudden whimsical urge to cave in to special interests and shoehorn an honor into its ceremony that is by its very definition supposed to celebrate lifetime achievement. So that year the committees created an honor for "trailblazing creators of a transformative work that defies category." The award went to the creators of the musical “Hamilton:” Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, Andy Blankenbuehler and Alex Lacamoire.

The Johnny Cash reference is self-explanatory. If you don’t know who Johnny Cash is, then it is our unpleasant duty to inform you that we here at CoBaD hereby rescind the blessing we so lovingly bestowed upon you in the second paragraph. But if you just watch the Johnny Cash link below, we’ll give it back.

The “Winston Churchill Enigma Honor” is a reference to a quote from Winston Churchill’s 01 October, 1939 radio address commenting on Russia signing the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (aka the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact): “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

Voiceover: “Gigi suffered dearly for her treatment of Casey and Atthew. Following in the footsteps of Hitler, Stalin, Nixon and Ayatollah Khomeini, Gigi was named Time’s ‘Person of the Year’ for her contributions to program management.” – Specifically, Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (twice: 1939 and 1942), Richard Nixon (twice: 1971 and 1972) and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979). Other (in our opinion) not so nice program managers have also been named Time’s Person of the Year, including our esteemed target of ridicule, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (three times: 1932, 1934 and 1941; four if you include 1933’s Hugh S. Johnson, director of FDR’s unconstitutional National Recovery Administration). We here think at CoBaD think Time’s “honor” seems to be better at encouraging bad behavior than rewarding good behavior.

Voiceover: “’Integrated Mistress Schedule’ has been brought to you by Lion Cheetah Defense Contractors” - A former mentor of our aforementioned CAM once commented on the lack of trust some military customers have with defense contractors; with some military (in his words) calling them “Lyin’, cheatin’ contractors.” This advertisement goes through some of the reasons for the mistrust (e.g., contractors not keeping promises, cost overruns, delivery delays, etc.). Although to be fair, the CAM didn’t work for a company that used its test bombers to take a stock dump over the stock exchange like Lion Cheetah did.

Voiceover: “…Your premier source of overpromising and under delivering products this side of Tesla.” - Tesla, while not a defense contractor, is particularly bad at overpromising and underdelivering, hence the joke; although DeBord (2015) argues that in Tesla’s case, that may not be such a bad thing after all.

ERRATUM: “Vanity Fair did not call the marriage between Casey and Gigi ‘The only convincing love story of our century.’ Rather, they used those words to describe Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. We apologize for our appalling lack of judgement so long as Vanity Fair apologizes for theirs.” – A member of our troupe read Nabokov’s novel and found this very quote on the back cover of a 1997 edition (see below). We here at CoBaD don’t think Vanity Fair actually read the book. But then again what do you expect from a Condé Nasty little rag that’s far more famous for its topless celebrity photos than its articles.

References:

Capriola, P. (15 August 2020). Viewer Discretion is Advised: Meaning and Implications. Strategiesforparents.com. https://strategiesforparents.com/viewer-discretion-is-advised-meaning-and-implications/

DeBord, M. (11 October 2015). This is why Tesla always overpromises and underdelivers. Businessinsider.com. https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tesla-always-overpromises-and-underdelivers-2015-10

International Churchill Society. Churchill on Russia. https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-150/churchill-on-russia/

Jones, C. (22 October 2019). Tesla’s Musk is Overpromising Again on Self-Driving Cars. Forbes.com. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2019/10/22/teslas-musk-is-overpromising-again-on-self-driving-cars/?sh=6b2df14c5e98

Nabokov, V. (1997). Lolita. 50th Anniversary edition. Vintage International. First published in 1955.

Wikipedia. Kennedy Center Honors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Center_Honors

Wikipedia. La Sylphide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Sylphide

Wikipedia. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

Wikipedia. Tesla, Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.

Wikipedia. Time Person of the Year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year

Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue (Live at San Quentin, 1969). YouTube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOHPuY88Ry4

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Convulsions of Birth and Death (CoBaD) is a comedy sketch troupe founded in September, 2022 that posts skits on social media covering varied topics such as music, history, art, science, sports, literature and events encountered in everyday life. The title was inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” (1849), an essay written as a protest against the U.S. government taking his “gift” (i.e., his taxes), and wasting it in ways in which he did not approve (e.g., war and slavery). CoBaD writes sketches in the spirit of Thoreau, but instead of strictly casting its nets outwards towards governments and figures of authority, it projects its protest inwards by taking a humorous, lightheaded look at humanity and specifically those who take the greatest gift of all, life, and senselessly and stupidly waste it on greed, narcissism, self-centeredness, petty-mindedness, arrogance, opportunism, power-grabbing, quid pro quo, the status quo, ulterior motives, and the most horrid waste of all, social media.