TAPE 13 - “Been Around Pizza with Matlock"

This tape opens, inexplicably, with a commercial for explosion protection—a service that suggests either Bootstuck has a blast radius problem, or someone got a little too ambitious with a microwave.

Our unnamed slow-talking friend returns shortly after, pondering the mystery of why pizzas are round, boxes are square, and leads to pitch of his latest business venture: a pizza place called Been Around.

Hat Guy arrives just in time to derail it with a fist fight and another unsolicited monologue about hat ownership. Somewhere in the chaos, we learn of a regional pastime: watching stacks of discarded VHS tapes featuring partial TV broadcasts, static, and Who's The Boss. This is followed by a German man yelling about Brand X in what may be a hijacked frequency or possibly just the neighbor’s HAM radio again.

I’m thirteen tapes deep and still have no concrete information, but I’m absolutely convinced someone’s having a laugh—and unfortunately, it might be me.

www.bootstuck.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Now, just as this invisible shield helped protect me, like this.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

I went to the store, and I was sitting around the store asking people, what is it that I should really be doing with my life? And they looked at me up and down, and they said, well, one, I'd get the fuck out of my store. So I did that, and I said to them, well, tell me about your large pizza. And they said, well, it's 12 slices. I, for the sake, can cut it into ten, because there ain't no way I can eat twelve. Did that, and I got a ginger ale.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Well, you know, it depends. You could cut a pizza into four pieces, or you could cut it into forty pieces. It's still the same amount of pizza.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

I don't understand. Anywho, the pizza's round, and they cut it into triangles, and they put it in a square box. Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

That's a fair point.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

I stay awake most afternoons thinking about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

Perhaps they should be in round boxes. But then they're not a box. They're a round.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

They're a round. Well, that's what you can say. You can say, we're the pizza company. You know, we've been around. It's pretty good, actually. A good idea. I'm going to open a pizza store. Bootstuck getting the pizza store.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

That would be the first pizza store in Bootstuck. What are you going to call it?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

We're going to call it, we've been around. We're having a meeting. Hat guy is coming back from the washroom shortly. Hang on now. Hey,

SPEAKER_02 2:04

hat guy.

UNKNOWN 2:12

Hello.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

How you doing?

SPEAKER_03 2:15

Oh, God. Hey, how are

SPEAKER_02 2:19

you? Hey, how you doing? I'm doing great. I had a great day. Went outside. Went outside with my hat on top. Wind blew it around. Not too fast, though. Turned it around. Fights on. Hang on. I got one thing. What

SPEAKER_03 2:36

is that noise?

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Sorry about that. What's happening?

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Oh, my God. Your hat turned around?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Yeah, it got windy outside. Wind goes... I put my hat, or cap, technically, on dot number five. You know when you got the zip, zip, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap? Five for me. Click, click, click, click, click. Some people go the whole band. I knew one guy had a lot of hair. He used it on the last one. Anywho... Mine is on five. And when it gets windy, if I got too much grease in my hair, my hat will spin like that. I don't know that much.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

That's true. Uh-huh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

You can just adjust it to what you need.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

What about an auto-adjusting hat?

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Yeah. As a prototype, it's like shrink wrap. Yeah. If you reverse engineer a balloon, hasn't been done, haven't tried, maybe I'll try tonight after Matlock.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Matlock?

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Matlock. Matlock ain't on anymore, but I got VHS cassette tapes rerun to Matlock. So you watch

SPEAKER_03 3:41

other people's television on VHS?

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Yeah, we got old television show programs on the VHS and cassette tape. Then what you do, put it up in the light and look at it, and then go like this. Move that tape real quick, quick, quick, quick. and you can watch the whole program.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

What?

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Tomorrow we're watching Who the Boss. The tapes are a bit dusty. We're going to wipe them down with a damp cloth.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Dusty? I

SPEAKER_02 4:08

got long lines. Start at your butt crack, finish at your feet. Oh my God.