He's Back, and This Time He's Exactly the Same

Last night, I got out the script for Episode Three of "Plant Your Wagon" and started transcribing and redrafting it on the ol' PC. I'm back thinking about radio. The month off did me some good, I think.

In fact, yesterday was a good day for me in thinking-about-radio terms. You see, once I finish off "Plant Your Wagon," I've got a searing political drama (actually a searing political comedy) called "The Political Thing" to write. That, when done, will get me up to eleven episodes of a projected thirteen for the first series. Now, I've been bouncing around different ideas for the last two, and now I think I'm halfway there.

A few years ago, my wife and I were stuck in traffic and happened to notice a house by the wayside that had a sophisticated model sailing ship in the window and a rainbow flag over the door. Out of that justaposition of images, an idea was born.

So, I've been dragging this idea around with me for several years now, never quite being able to get it to jell into an actual story. And the bus I ride in the evening goes right past that house, although neither the ship nor the flag are there anymore. But still, it makes you think. So, anyway, yesterday, I'm riding past there, and I think, "You know, I should make this a story about the Bitlle and Bettle Joinsoin characters from 'Bitlle Joinsoin's Adventure Through the Watching Glass.'" (See, it's a story about an older couple who buy a rainbow flag without understanding its greater cultural significance.) Yeah! That felt right, felt good.

And then I thought, "As long as I'm cribbing characters from one of the existing scripts, why not crib Mel from 'The Anniversary Schmaltz' and his wife and his friend and make them the neighbors who extrapolate the wrong information from the rainbow flag? Brilliant! I love it!"

So, that's what I'm going to do. That will tie these three stories together, which is a feature I like, and allow me to do more with characters whose potential has not been tapped entirely yet. It's going to require a small amount of rewriting of "The Anniversary Schmaltz," but that's okay. It'll be worth it. And there were a couple of parts of that that I wanted to revisit anyway.

So, I guess it's "Once more into the breach, my friends!"