Dustin Drennen

Wormy things and sea monsters, cold water dreams on a windy cove in Mass.

When we lived in Idaho, we had a projector screen in our living room. It was surrounded by an awful green couch we’d found on Craigslist. Add it to the list of awful couches! There is no such thing as a good couch, and I’ve spent many a night on many a couch. I digress. Our satellite internet had a download limit during the day and wanted for speed regardless of the time. So, I loaded a hard drive with pirated shows and movies. The kids used to watch the content of that drive on repeat. One of the movies that got a lot of play was the original W***y Wonka. This movie depressed me when I was a kid. I don’t know why. As an adult, especially sitting somewhere in the house listening to it play again and again, I picked up on the genius of Wonka. I credit that to Gene Wilder, whether valid or not. The kids and I started quoting our favorite lines from the movie to one another. One day I decided to write down every gem. I entitled the list: Wonkaisms. This is that list printed over a filtered image of the original and incomparable Wonka, Gene Wilder. RIP. Credit goes, and not surprisingly, to one of my favorite authors and playwrites, Oscar Wilde, whom I later realized was responsible for the line: “The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last.”