By Minim Calibre
Written for: Marks in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge. Thanks to Seattle Snowpocalypse for not eating my power before the deadline. And to F7, my best beta in a pinch. And to the Flailsquad. And finally, to bears and the motivation they bring. Originally posted here.
“George Michael, hi. It’s your cousin, Maeby. I’ve got a business proposition for you. Oh, and don’t worry. It has nothing to do with the family. Call me.”
It had been two years, ten months, and four days since George Michael Bluth had spoken to his cousin Maeby when she left the voicemail. In the intervening time, it is safe to say that not very much had changed, except for the gender of the jailed grandparent and some minor technicalities around narrator conventions regarding time and date formatting.
Like his father, Michael Bluth, George Michael was, ultimately, a sucker when it came to family. When he got back to his dorm room two years, ten months, and six days after he’d last spoken to his cousin and heard Maeby’s message, he waffled, remembered everything his father had told him about how they didn’t need the family anymore, waffled some more, remembered how Michael had been forced to leave their two-man New Year’s 2008 celebration at their house in Cabo to bail out both Buster and Gob, and, just like his father would have done in his shoes, returned the call.
Like Maeby, he got voicemail.
“Hi, Maeby. It’s, umm, it’s George Michael, and you probably know that from your caller ID. Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know that I got your message, and I wasn’t ignoring you or blowing you off or anything. So anyhow, call me back. If you want to. I mean, you’ve probably already lined something else up, and it was probably just a courtesy call, and–”
“George Michael?” Maeby sounded as if she were half asleep, which she was, due to the fact that it was three in the morning. As Maeby had a lot riding on this particular business venture, however, that state didn’t last long. “Give me five minutes to get a cappuccino. Hold on.” Five minutes and ten seconds later, she returned to the phone. “One of my bands’ drummers caught on fire at a no-budget video shoot last week. I need you to join the band.”
“You’re in a band?”
“Wow, you and Uncle Michael really have been out of the loop. No, I manage bands. So, can you do it?”
“I can’t really drum.”
“That’s okay, neither could he. It doesn’t matter. Nobody pays attention to the drummers, anyhow. Are you in?”
Maeby’s voice, still slightly rough from sleep and from an epic screaming match she’d had earlier in the evening with the band’s now-fired handler, stirred in George Michael yet again the yearnings he’d been unsuccessfully fighting since he was 13, and in that moment, he’d have done anything his cousin requested.
“Sure, I’m in.”
“Marry me!” There was a long pause as Maeby reconsidered both the words and to whom she was saying them. “Figuratively, of course.”
George Michael gave a nervous laugh. “Not like last time. Hey, did we ever get divorced?”
Maeby pointedly ignored this unwelcome reminder of their accidental nuptials. “I’ll have my assistant call you a car first thing in the morning. I expect to see you in my office at 1:30, sharp.”
And that’s how George Michael Bluth became the third drummer in six months for Moon Half Full, a pop-punk band made up of four carefully chosen nonthreatening yet quirky, or possibly quirky yet nonthreatening, men between the ages of 18 and 23.
“Hey, Dad, guess what? I’ve joined a band!”
“That’s great son. Just great. Hey, did you know it’s three in the morning?”
“Three-thirty, actually. I’m going to be the drummer.”
“George Michael, have you been drinking?”
“I don’t drink, remember? I have to go. Cousin Maeby’s sending a car around for me in the morning.”
“Is she still defining morning the way your Aunt Lindsay does?”
“Anything before two o’clock? Yeah.”
“Wow, this is your office?” George Michael sat in the right hand hand chair, avoiding as most visitors did the one on the left, which was, as a nod to their uncle Buster, shaped like a giant hook.
“I liked the one I had at the studio better, but what are you going to do? Am I right?” Maeby had, in her earlier teens, accidentally found herself working as movie studio executive. The movie version of her story, Maeby I’m Ready, had recently been released to mixed reviews and moderate box office success. Maeby had taken her share of the proceeds, as well as what little was left over from the sale of the Bluth company to Stan Sitwell, and bought herself an executive position at a small record label owned by Lucille Ostero that specialized in original cast recordings of off off Broadway musicals and, to pay for the those, telegenic bands aimed squarely at the Teen People demographic. As Maeby herself fell into the upper reaches of that category, she found herself once again tasked with finding the pulse of the youth market. And once again, she turned to George Michael.
“I saw the movie. Well, downloaded a bootleg copy of it at any rate. I thought Lindsey Lohan did some of her best work as you.” George Michael was a little less certain about his own portrayal by Seth Rogan, but felt it best not to criticize.
“Hey, if this whole Lew Perlman the next generation doesn’t work out, maybe I can sell the sequel.” Maeby pressed call button on the intercom. “Marcie, could you get us a couple of martinis?”
“I don’t really drink. Alcohol, that is. Not since that time we got into the wine at your Sweet Sixteen surprise party.”
It hadn’t been wine, but neither Maeby nor George Michael had ever been made aware of that fact. Which, all things considered, was probably for the best.
“We can work with that. Get some tattoos. We’ll sell you as Straight Edge.” She pressed the call button again to record the change in her drink order. “Marcie, he’s Straight Edge, add that to the press release and cancel the martinis. Get me a couple of Vitamin Waters instead.”
“Do they have to be real tattoos? I’m afraid of needles. We could do temporary tattoos.”
Maeby had tried that with the second drummer, who had also been afraid of needles. Unfortunately, the George Bluth Temporary Tattoo and Instant Toupee Spray they’d used for his body art had proven to be highly flammable, which was why it had in fact been pulled from the market shortly after the Cornballer. “Maybe you can stick with guyliner.”
“Guyliner. I can do guyliner. Aunt Lindsay taught me all about makeup that one time when Dad let her babysit me.”
“That sounds like Mom. So, tattoos no, guyliner yes, and oh, yeah. We’ll have to change your name. Hope you don’t mind.”
He minded. “What’s wrong with George Michael?”
“It’s taken. And it sends the wrong image.” It did, though not for the reasons Maeby suspected. “But if you insist, I guess we can still try to get Steve Holt.”
George Michael minded, but not as much as he minded the idea of being usurped by his illegitimate cousin and erstwhile rival. “No, no. That’s okay. I was just curious. Let’s change it!”
“Great. How about Tobias?”
Rolling Stone called Moon Half Full’s debut album, Queen Mary Breaks Loose, “Trite, contrived, and more than a little derivative.” Spin took things a step further, saying, quote “Couldn’t find a beat with a metronome and a full-length copy of ‘Inna Gadda da Vita'” end quote. Fortunately for Maeby, George Michael (now Tobias) and the rest of Moon Half Full, none of this mattered, given the singer’s somewhat eerie resemblance to the popular young actor Robert Patterson, which Maeby instructed them to use to their full advantage in the video for their second single, “Thru Yr Wndw.”
Queen Mary Breaks Loose went platinum, and George Michael found himself, along with the rest of the band, simultaneously gracing the covers of Rolling Stone, People, and Fortune (as part of an article about Maeby and Today’s Young Powerbrokers). He also found himself with a dedicated MySpace and Buzznet following.
No more than seven months, two weeks, and four days after agreeing to suspend his undergraduate studies in order to join a band out of his Pavlovian desire to impress his cousin, George Michael (now Tobias) Bluth was in the unique position for a Bluth of being famous for something other than criminal conduct or flubbed magic tricks.
“Hey, Dad, Miley Cyrus said she wishes she was old enough to date me!”
Michael Bluth buried his face in his pillow and muttered into the phone, “That’s great son. Just great. Hey, did you know it’s three in the morning?”
Michael took the news of his son’s new-found status as a globally famous sex symbol surprisingly well. Which is to say, he went into complete denial.
“What was the name of that girl you used to go out with? Egg? Pam? Jam?” at this he paused and shook his head, muttering, “That can’t be right,” before smiling broadly at George Michael, who was home visiting during a break in the Moon Half Full Full Moon Tour.
“You mean Ann?”
“Ann! That’s right. Ann. You should call her. She was nice.”
“Dad, you could never remember her name. And she dated Uncle Gob.”
Michael smiled around his grimace. “Nobody’s perfect.”
“And Uncle Buster.”
“Right. So that’s who that New Year’s Eve fight was about.”
“I thought nobody paid attention to the drummers,” George Michael told Maeby on arriving in her office unannounced shortly after the release of their third single. He was so rattled by what he’d found when Googling himself that morning that he sat in the hook chair, narrowly avoiding accidentally castrating himself on the hook’s upward curve.
Maeby shuffled some of the papers in front of her in an effort to look busy. “Oh, that. I leaked that tape of you pretending you had a light saber. The target market really goes for guys with geek cred. You’ve had more Google hits than Pete Wentz’s penis.”
“Is that why everyone thinks that I’m dating Dom?” He meant Dominic Barnes, lead singer and Robert Patterson lookalike.
“Oh, that. I leaked an interview where you and Dom both confessed your bisexual tendencies and mutual admiration society.”
“What… what interview? I don’t remember saying that in an interview.”
“You didn’t. I faked the interview.” By which Maeby meant that she’d faked the parts with George Michael in order to capitalize on the real interview with Dominic. “It’s good for business. Tominic is well on its way to being the new Brangelina.”
“But… I’m not gay.”
“I know. Neither is Dad, according to him.” Maeby smiled, somewhat manically. “Must be something about the name Tobias.” She pressed the intercom button. “Marcie, postpone that interview with Out.”
This marked the beginning of the end.
George Michael responded to the gossip by attempting to grow a mustache, thinking it would make him look more masculine. It didn’t, nor did the photoshoot Maeby arranged with Annie Leibowitz, who convinced George Michael to pose inside a shower wearing just a pair of cutoff jeans and a smile.
On seeing the pictures in Vogue, his uncle, the real Tobias, took it as a sign that his formerly estranged and now fantastically wealthy nephew–who happened to have taken his name–was making further efforts to bond with and perhaps become him, and presented George Michael with a pair of custom embroidered and bedazzled cutoffs bearing the Moon Half Full logo.
That same day, the mustache was gone.
The end of the end came with the ill-fated Moon Half Full Christmas benefit concert. This should have come as a surprise to no one, least of all to George Michael. He’d been dreading it ever since Maeby had told him: “We’re staging a Christmas benefit concert for Gangy so she can afford a new lawyer. It was Poppop’s idea. But don’t worry about the press: we’re giving 5% of the proceeds to Save the Starving or something like that. Gangy falls under administrative costs.”
“That sounds more like Gangy’s idea than Poppop’s.”
It was.
“Anyhow. Wear something festive. Maybe elfish.”
George Michael took this to mean Elvish, and showed up in his Legolas costume.
“I can’t believe he stole my outfit and my hairstyle,” Lindsay complained as Moon Half Full took the stage.
“And I can’t believe he got the fabric to drape so well over cutoffs,” was Tobias’s response.
During the encore, Maeby had arranged the Hot Cops, who had agreed to perform as the Hot Elves, perform an elaborate routine that climaxed in them forming a human staircase that went from Dominic to George Michael while a large disco ball studded with mistletoe lowered over the top of the drumkit.
Fans, critics, paparazzi, and Dominic himself were all in agreement that it was the highlight of the show.
“Dad, you remember how you say that the most important thing is family?”
“Or breakfast. Let me guess: you want out of the band.” Michael didn’t bother telling his son that it was three in the morning. He figured George Michael was already aware of that.
“Something like that. How did you know?”
“Don’t do business with family, Son. It never ends well. Plus, I saw the cover of the Enquirer. It was a good picture of you.” It wasn’t, but it was an excellent picture of Dom. “Don’t worry. I’ve been thinking about this, and I think I’ve found a way out.”
“You have? Well, what is it?”
“We run. Nothing else ever works with this family. I still have at least a couple hundred grand in cash stashed in a safe place. What do you say we go to ground?”
“Somewhere further than Cabo?”
“I was thinking Australia. You’d like Australia, right sport?”
“Australia. I think I’d like Australia. Are we going to tell them we’ve gone?”
“Not this time.” They also were not going to call to see if anyone had noticed they were gone.
“That’s probably for the best.”
“I figure it will buy us six months, depending on how well Gob and Buster are getting along.”
“Okay. Let’s go. Do you think I should leave Maeby a note?”
Michael shook his head slightly, speaking as the voice of experience. “Better not. She’s a smart kid. She’ll figure it out. You’ll want to be gone before she does.”
Which is how, 38 hours and 16 minutes after Michael and George Michael had landed at the terminal in the Sydney Airport, Steve Holt became the fourth drummer of the now-hit band, Moon Half Full, and met his future husband, Dom.
And as for Michael and George Michael, well, the former’s estimate of how long it would take before the family needed them for something was only off by four months.
“George Michael, time to pack up. We’re going back to America.”
“We are? Why?”
“Remember that lawyer Gangy was able to hire with the proceeds from your benefit show? Well, he got her out of jail.”
“But that’s good news, right?”
“Not exactly. See, someone has to save this family from Mom.”
“No matter how far we run, it’s never far enough, is it Dad?”
“It really isn’t, is it Son?” He was right. It never was. Which is bad news if you’re a Bluth, but slightly better news if you narrate them. “Maybe next time, we can try Antarctica.”