Rickey’s Theater of the Imagination: Featuring Environmentally Conscious Free Climbing Frenchmen

Alain Robert, a French stuntman known for climbing tall buildings, scaled the north face of the New York Times building on Thursday, ascending 52 stories to the roof and clutching a bright green banner, before police officers arrested him around 12:22 p.m. The words on the banner were illegible from the sidewalk, but from office windows inside the tower the slogan on the banner could be clearly read: “Global warming kills more people than 9/11 every week.” –The NY Times

[And now, a running internal monologue from the aforementioned Frenchman as he makes his daring ascent up the building]

2nd Floor: Why do I do this? Much like all other aspects of my life, I am guided by a certain je ne sais quoi. An undeniable joie de vivre. But my ultimate cause is to raise environmental awareness! Zee icecaps aren’t going to stop melting themselves unless Frenchmen everywhere scale large buildings and unfurl banners for all to see. This is my mission, this is my curse. I am condemned to be free. Allez!

8th Floor: For provisions, I have packed a rucksack containing fine baguettes, cheeses, and fruits. Surely the authorities will allow me to enjoy a pleasant scenic picnic when I reach zee summit. The police in this city must be more lenient and friendly than the ones in France, oui?

23rd Floor: Mon dieu, this building is enorme. I would have climbed zee Wall Street Journal headquarters, but only ink dot drawings of people work there, and I am too lazy to have created a hedcut banner for them to read. Aussi, I hear that those swine have built a moat around it and electrified the exterior since Rupert Murdoch took over.

26th Floor: Half way there, let’s see those parkour bastards beat this!

30th Floor: Let me pause and take a peek through zee window. Sacre bleu, is that the famed Arthur Sulzberger I see? Why is he wearing a diaper and dictating a memo to a rubber chicken?

37th Floor: Zeut, the air up here is getting thinner! In retrospect, 25 years of drinking only the finest wines from the Loire River Valley and smoking unfiltered cigarettes may have been a poor decision. But I will persevere—after all, je suis le pied.

45th Floor: Merde, I am fatigued. I will pause momentarily to get my bearings. What floor is this? What zee shit that? Is that Maureen Dowd wearing a dominatrix outfit and whipping Paul Krugman?! Suce ma bite, I’m getting the hell out of here!

49th Floor: To hell with zee melting icecaps and dying polar bears, I am experiencing vertigo up here! When I get down off this building, I will purchase zee largest recreational vehicle I can find and drive through Alaska on a seal clubbing expedition!

52nd Floor: My arms ache and I feel blackness closing in around me: there is no exit here… Who is that beckoning to me? A police officer? I shall go surrender myself to him, toute suite. L'enfer, c'est les autres…