COLD OPEN
FADE IN:
EXT. MASON AVENUE – CAPE CHARLES – MORNING
A quaint coastal town with historic buildings lining a charming main street. It’s the off-season – streets nearly empty except for a small gathering of PROTESTERS (50s-70s) setting up a coffee station with an excessive number of urns and cups.
TITLE CARD: “Cape Charles, Virginia – Population 1,009… minus those who fled back home for the winter”
ORGANIZER KAREN (60s, sensible haircut, wearing multiple political buttons): Make sure everyone gets coffee! Hydration is key to a successful protest!
ORGANIZER BOB (70s, retired professor type): I brought three thermoses of my special dark roast. It’ll really energize the crowd!
Camera pans to show the “crowd” – twelve people total, all sipping from large travel mugs.
WAYNE, REPORTER FOR THE MIRROR (Sexy, handsome, witty, intelligent, notebook in hand, bemused expression): So what brings the Cape Charles Resistance together today?
KAREN: (passionately) We’re here to protest the Trump administration’s assault on democracy! The lack of transparency! The—
BOB: (interrupting, waving protest sign) Tax cuts for billionaires! Musk is a menace! Down with—
Bob suddenly freezes mid-sentence, a look of concern washing over his face.
BOB: (quietly to KAREN) Where’s the nearest restroom?
KAREN: (dismissively) Focus, Bob. We’re making history here.
TITLE SEQUENCE: “BLADDER POLITICS” with protest signs and port-a-potties in the background
ACT ONE
EXT. MASON AVENUE – ONE HOUR LATER
The protesters are marching in a small circle, but their pace has slowed considerably. Several are walking with peculiar, tight-legged gaits.
RETIRED TEACHER CAROL (60s, constantly adjusting her stance): When do we want change? NOW! When do we need bathrooms? (under breath) Immediately…
NEW YORK TRANSPLANT GARY (60s, still wearing his “I ♥ NY” hat): This town needs more infrastructure! How can we have democracy without proper facilities in the off season?
MIRROR approaches, still taking notes.
MIRROR: How would you say the protest is going so far?
GARY: (legs crossed tightly) We had some really clever signs. Very clever. The best signs. (grimaces) Excuse me for just a moment.
Gary hurries off behind a decorative shrub.
KAREN: (notices) Gary! That’s the historic district shrubbery! You can’t—
Sound of rustling leaves
GARY: (from behind bush, relieved voice) Too late! Liberty waits for no bladder!
Other protesters look on with envy.
ACT TWO
EXT. CORNER OF MASON AND PINE – 30 MINUTES LATER
Several protesters are eyeing the local businesses desperately.
CAROL: (to shopkeeper locking door) Please! Just a quick bathroom break? I bought a coffee mug here last summer!
SHOPKEEPER: Sorry, ma’am. Off-season hours. We’re closed on Mondays, and besides, our restrooms are only for tourists.
BOB: (attempting to lead a chant) What do we want?
REMAINING PROTESTERS: (weakly) Trump Out! Musk Out…and…Bathroom access…
BOB: When do we want it?
PROTESTERS: (urgently) NOW!
A new chant begins to emerge
GARY: (returning from bushes) PPSR! PPSR!
MIRROR: (approaching) What exactly does PPSR stand for?
GARY: A Pee Pee Social Revolt! (passionately) We shall fight Trump to the last drop! We will fight his attempt to save taxpayers money, his evil goal of promoting a more open and transparent government. He is a dictator, you know, the way he tries to show us just how our money is being spent. We don’t want to know!
MIRROR: (confused) Okay—
GARY: (interrupting) That’s the problem with the Mirror and why you suck… you think Liberals are all stupid and gay.
MIRROR: We do not think you’re gay, and if you were, nobody cares. There’s nothing wrong with it.
A PROTESTER runs back from behind bushes, adjusting clothing
PROTESTER: I was in the middle of chanting about Elon Muskrat when I just had to leave. (sighs with relief) Got to admit, it really took the edge off. (suddenly energized) JAIL TRUMP! ARREST TRUMP!! CAGE THE MUSKRAT!!!
ACT THREE
EXT. MASON AVENUE – LATE AFTERNOON
Protesters are scattered, many having disappeared behind various landscape features.
KAREN: (trying to maintain control) People! Focus! Hold your bladders! We need to stay united!
CAROL: (emerging from behind a parked car) The Mirror is a lie! Wayne Creed must die! Don’t let him have any of our blueberry pie!
MIRROR: (genuinely confused) What?
CAROL: You think all Liberals are dumb and gay! And you will never get a slice of our blueberry pie, which is delicious.
MIRROR: We don’t think you’re gay?? Your sex pref is fine with us… and, I don’t like blueberry. Do you have cinnamon apple?
BOB: (clutching stomach) The Mirror is a disgrace; it’s… uh… oh… oh… my IBS is kicking in. See what you did! MUSK!!!!
Bob begins walking away with tiny, careful steps, but then stops.
MIRROR: Oh, no. Please, don’t do a Biden…not in street..
BOB: (crumbling into a heap) Oh No!!!…ahhhhaoe! I STAND WITH UKRAINE….uhhhahoooooh…
MIRROR: Oh…my…
LOCAL OFFICER approaches MIRROR
OFFICER: (deadpan) Just so you know, we’re reporting this a “mostly peaceful” protest, though we’ve had to issue several citations for “excessive sprinkle-like spillage” in the Historic District.
ACT FOUR
EXT. MASON AVENUE – SUNSET
The protesters spot a porta-potty in the distance.
KAREN: (with renewed vigor) Look! A porta-potty! If we form a human chain, we can secure it and stick it to DOGE!
GARY: Don’t you mean MAGA?
KAREN: Whatever! Just hold hands and don’t let go!
They form a human chain and shuffle toward the porta-potty
As they reach it, GARY tries the door – it’s locked/broken
GARY: (rattling handle) It’s… it’s non-functioning.
A moment of devastating silence
KAREN: (suddenly businesslike) Well, I think we’ve made our point today. Is it at the same time next month?
CAROL: Maybe we can protest at my house next time? I have three bathrooms.
The protesters disperse with remarkable speed, despite their previously limited mobility
MIRROR watches them go.
MIRROR: (to camera) And thus concludes the Great Cape Charles Pee Pee Social Revolt of 2025, defeated not by political opposition… but by basic human plumbing.
As Wayne walks away, the camera pans to show the protest signs abandoned on the ground, one reading “NO TAXATION WITHOUT URINATION”
FADE TO BLACK
TAG
INT. KAREN’S BATHROOM – THAT EVENING
KAREN sits on her toilet, phone to ear
KAREN: Yes, Congressman, I’d like to discuss infrastructure funding for public restrooms in Cape Charles… No, this isn’t a joke… Well, yes, there is a serious political dimension to this issue…we must stop Trump!
She looks directly at the camera.
KAREN: This isn’t over.
FLUSH
CREDITS ROLL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Another piece of useless so called journalism. Full of meaningless crap. Even when this country is slipping into the abyss of mass chaos, you still can get it right. I will slow clap when this POS rag is censored.
No offense, dude, but this post of yours was full of meaningless crap, and in fact, would epitomize the termj “meaningless crap.”
Consider, for example, this poor sentence structure on your part which very much seems to undercut and refute your position that this is a “POS rag”: to wit: “Even when this country is slipping into the abyss of mass chaos, you still can get it right.”
Logically and rationally speaking here, dude, if in the face of this country slipping into the abyss of mass chaos, a truly gut-wrenching thought, indeed, and that is thanks to four long years of BIDEN/HARRIS, the CCM can still get it right, then how is it a POS rag?
Because it gets it right?
But that is just plain stupid!
So you got your logic twisted here, dude, and when your logic is twisted like that in public, out the window goes your credibility!
You shot yourself in your dick as that saying goes by not paying attention to your logic.
And who is going to censor this POS rag?
The DEMOCRAT thought police?
And as to NEW YORK TRANSPLANT GARY, it is said that when he left New York for the sunny, sultry climate of Cape Charles, Virginia, the IQ of the state jumped a few points, while the tears fell like pouring rain from the eyes of DEMOCRAT governor Kathy Hochul because he was one of her greatest supporters!
“Censored”
Boy, you lefty fascists never stop, do you?
Democracy is going down the toilet and this rag thinks it’s “cute” to make fun of actual patriots.
Pointing out the obvious? Professional? The Onion is professional satire. What you have written lacks not only professional integrity, but any sense of originality.
Democracy is going down the toilet?
That’s horsecrap!
Since democracy is nothing more than a concept, an idea, a word with many meanings, none of them concrete, and North Korea is a good example of a democracy, as is Russia, not a physical actuality, how can it possibly go down the toilet?
With a claim like that, you are exposing yourself to the world as someone who suffers from BDS – BIDEN DELUSION SYNDROME!
Is it curable?
Can it be cured?
Questions with no answers.
Try prayer.
Good thing we live in a representational republic then….
But the ol’ smoke filled room in which the Party selects the Candidate IS democracy to you lefty fascists, right?
This was funny. Sad, but funny.
Infrastructure is oriented to tourists, not residents.
Sad Middle to Late Aged Person dyes another barely hanging in there hair green or purple, while simultaneously piercing another orifice of his desperate old face. Why? He is trying to find relevance. He is trying to get attention. He is a theatre guy! And yet his last contribution to the local theatre scene was a terrible rip off of “Basketball Diaries “ that left everyone uncomfortable and many people left the theatre during his “performance”. His input about what is happening locally is not only dishonest, it’s biased and angry and I personally would love for him to return to the cave in which he came from. Peace out ✌️ signed f’ng Karen 🖕
Editor’s Note: Why so serious??? But hey, thanks for the ad hominem attack (which is apropos of nothing), but you know he’s right, which is why you are so upset. By the way, the terrible rip off that left you come-heres so uncomfortable was a piece from a book that was sold and will be out next fall, so you’ll get to read it again, Karen (we have seen you “act”, so you probably shouldn’t be throwing stones). The Mirror has been operating out of this (Plato’s) cave for 10 years (way longer than you have been here), and the mockery will continue after you are gone. You’re gonna love the next installment. Thanks for reading!
Someone’s feelings were hurt, not mine. You stir it and cry when it comes back on you. If you were a real journalist you might write about the concerns the people marching have for our community that are very real as they are in the passed resolution budget…slashing Head Start, School lunch programs, ending the Department of Education which provides much needed federal funding for our schools…the SNAP program which hurts our neighbors and our farmers.
Note: So, I was in DC at a meeting, and I get a text that there’s a Trump protest in CC. One of those ‘dumber than true’ things, so, I’m thinking, what would a protest in Cape Charles look like? So, I just wrote one. I started with a satirical news story, but then felt like a screenplay would be better (screenplays, if done right, are Socratic dialogs). It wasn’t a serious piece, I mean, how many times can you cover the Planning Commission without wanting to have a little fun once in a while. I didn’t think anyone would even read it, but when the libbys started tweaking, I knew…nailed it! Even you seemed to relate to the character Karen (which really sums things up). The cool thing is, I now have a new set of characters to work with—fictional voices have much to say, and they will. As far as ‘real journalism’, that moronic trope is long gone dead—the web and the bazaar of ideas cracked the monolith, leaving a bloody trail of MSM carnage. As a note, the Mirror doesn’t care about your concerns—it’s not the 1960s anymore. The revolution left you behind long ago, but the machine is now bringing it all into focus. Have a nice day!
you are kinda wimpy wayne. you have censored me you thin skinned snowflake. are the piercings referred to above a shield of some sort?
Note: Hey man, I’ve had piercings, tats, shot, cuts, et al. for 45 years. If you want, I can show you how wimpy they are. By the way, barely 2/3 or all comments get approved. You were not censored, you were rejected for being generally apropos of nothing.
Like, people with piercings are scary and tough and should be listened to? It doesnt work that way Wayne.
Note: Body art is beauty, toughness comes from something else, that’s the part that makes them listen. My mind may be scary, but my body is gorgeous.
You’re not real bright, are you? Kind of dim, huh?
i have news for you – dumb people say that things like that.
How were schools funded before 1976?
It’s how the rest of Virginia’s looks at Cape Charles. A JOKE!
I enjoyed the funny article. Now I know why the historical landscape is changing!
Thanks Wayne for the laughts
I can’t stop laughing. Agree with the politics or not, some of yall need to learn to laugh at yourselves. Keep these coming!
Just disgusting. Your so called newspaper is for the trash bins.
Editor’s Note: And yet, here we are! Thanks for reading!
The Wonderful Woke natives are restless tonight, and I expect for the next four years. Oh, the Horror…
Bravo Wayne!
Chip