Clarification

I recently made the following statement in a post on this blog:

“I find it interesting that people will, with some regularity, kill in honor of their religion, but never, to my knowledge, has a group of people decided to kill in honor of their favorite artist or movement.”

It has occurred to me that, given the current fog of war and the most recent version of “Code Phrases for Bigots: A Compendium,” this statement could be misconstrued as some sort of slander against Islam in particular and all people of a religious bent in general. That was not my intent.

First, let us consider Islam. I make no claims to expertise when it comes to Islam. Ignorance of Islam is more my claim to fame, and it is an ignorance I hope to one day remedy. However, that day will come when I have a proper amount of time on my hands to delve into it. I’ve read some about the various (or should I say “numerous”) interpretations of the text in the Quran concerning the number of virgins that a martyr is supposed to come into possession of in Paradise, most of which dispense with the entire notion of virgins, and have come to realize that this is not a pursuit to be undertaken lightly.

Of course, that could apply to any sacred text. None are what they seem. I’m sorry, my fundamentalist friends, but I think it is a mistake to read any sacred text in the same way that one would read a profane one, such as Time Magazine or a newspaper. Since they are intended to get at ideas that are beyond ordinary comprehension, they must be written in a way that is poetic. And it is my belief that if God can make the heavens and the earth, then he can also make a metaphor. Or five.

Second, the correlation between religious belief and violence is an ancient one and is hardly limited to any particular sect or group. I keep thinking of a line from “The Simpsons” in which Roger Meyers, Jr., the producer of the “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoons defends cartoon violence. He says (and I’m paraphrasing here), “I’ve been doing some research and it turns out that there’s always been violence. Take the Crusades, for example. Darn thing went on for 20 years. Extremely violent. Many people dead.” I think that one man’s jihad is another man’s crusade, just as one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. What doesn’t change is the killing.

Of course, the jihadists and the crusaders are always members of a fringe and should not be taken as representatives of the main body of believers. And yet, we do, attaching labels and stereotypes to Christians, Muslims, Jews, and anybody else we can in an attempt to make this ever more complicated world somehow understandable.

As for me, I was raised Catholic but ascribe to no particular religion. I tried the Catholic thing again a few years ago and had to spend a great deal of time deconstructing the teachings and reinterpreting every utterance in the light of mythology. It was a great deal of work to go through in order to be surrounded mostly by hypocrites and sleepwalkers. And so I have come back toward my father’s main religious tenet, which went thusly: “If God is everywhere, then he’s on this couch.”

Whatever anybody else wants to do, however, is their business, and I wish them well.

Brush With Greatness, Once Removed

Okay, so here’s a strange thing. I was reading this morning about the new Pope (Benedict XVI to you), and it turns out that he’s from a town in Bavaria called Traunstein. Well, it just so happens that Traunstein is the town that my father was stationed at after World War II. And then it turns out that the Benedict XVI’s home was used by the US Army as their headquarters. So, there is a very real chance that my father met the once and future pope back when he was grading parts of southern Germany with an Army-issue bulldozer. I have photos him that I will post once we get moved and get the scanner set up next week.

And did I mention that we were moving this weekend? Just down the road to a bigger, nicer apartment in nicer, more affluent complex.

But my Dad had a brush with greatness back in 1945 and ’46. They would have been close in age, my Dad being about a year older. Here they were, one yearning for a career in the priesthood, the other hoping to avoid being shipped out to the Pacific Theater of Operations. My Dad learned a little German while he was there, and loved the town.

It’s a small world when there are so few degrees of separation between a louse like me and the Pope. At least it will give us some small talk to make if I ever meet him at a cocktail party.

This Test Don't Know Nuttin'

I got this from my wife's blog, and she got it from another blog. Since nobody who has a blog reads mine, I guess the buck stops here.

Your Linguistic Profile:

45% General American English

40% Yankee

15% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Telecommutitunity

One of my favorite moments in the history of "The Simpsons" is the following exchange:

Lisa: Cheer up, Dad. Did you know the Chinese use the same word for "crisis" as they do for "opportunity"?

Homer: Yes! Crisitunity!

Well, I've found myself with a bit of a telecommutitunity. Due to a series of developments at work, I've been able to engineer it so that I can telecommute starting today. I was actually going to wait to start until after we move in eight days, but I realized that I could take some of the strain off my dear wife by starting in sooner.

Will working from home help me in building my radio empire? In the words of the police officer in the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs is being held captive by Rocky and Mugsy, "It might, rabbit, it might." I'm not saying that I would take time away from my regular job while I was being paid in order to work on scripts, but I'm not exactly not saying that either. And Federal law does mandate two breaks a day.

I think that not having to commute uphill both ways will help in that I will have more free time and will be less frazzled day-in and day-out. Commuting in Atlanta has become the thing of legend, and I figure that I'm legendary enough without having fight my way from one side of the city to the other twice a day.

I think I'm going to have my proposal ready for XM Satellite radio by the time we move. The new apartment feels propitious. And I'm ready to move on to the next adventure. Having my office at home is the first step.

It's in the Stars

Okay, one of my identifying features is that I tend to zig right about when most everybody figures I'm going to zag. Quite often, I will have told everyone about my intention to zag right up until the moment when I zig. You see, it's not that I'm intentionally dishonest or misleading. It's just that while my brain has said all along that zagging was the smart thing to do, my instincts weren't quite as certain, and so I stalled. Few, if any, preparations for zagging were made, and things just dragged on for weeks on end.

And then some new piece of information comes along, and I say, "Aha!" and zig. It happens almost every time.

Which brings me to the radio show. The other day, I read this article in the New York Times. And trying to get on satellite radio, an idea that has floated in the back of mind for some time, started to seem like a good idea. So, I've started pondering it. I have to revise my business plan, put together a presentation package, and find out who I can send it to. I'm still keeping the business plan I reworked for NPR, just in case, but I think I'll try to squeeze a few dollars out of the good folks at XM first.

If Howard Stern can do it.......

The Creeping Dark

It really hasn't been my intention to turn this into one of those political blogs, but sometimes politics seep in, much like the contents of a poorly maintained septic system. Well, I wasn't really going to post anything political until I got a gander at this editorial in the New York Times today. I then went around the Internet checking on quotes from different perspectives, and they all read the same.

So, I went to Senator Cornyn's website and sent the following email:

Dear Sen. Cornyn,

I've read reports from several different sources representing varied points of view concerning your recent remarks about the courthouse shooting here in Atlanta and the murder of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother in Chicago. Your remarks were inappropriate, thoughtless, politicized, and foolish.

On top of that, they were plain wrong.

Let me remind you that neither of these crimes was committed out of the frustration of which you speak. The murder of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother was motivated by her throwing out a lawsuit that is precisely the kind of lawsuit you and your Republican cohorts would like to do away with entirely. Her decision was correct and non-political.

Brian Nichols, the shooter here in Atlanta, has been quoted as saying that Judge Barnes was providing him with as fair a trial as possible. And, if the act were political in any way, it was as a reaction against the disproportionate incarceration of black men in this country, an imbalance that is exacerbated by a series of draconian laws promoted and pushed into law by the Republican Party.

Finally, even if these crimes had been committed as a result of the motivations that you ascribe to them, the people who would stand guilty of inciting those crimes would not be the judges, but the politicians, such as yourself, who speak recklessly and who wallow endlessly in a puddle of low cant.

At the very least, you owe an apology to Judge Lefkow and the family of Judge Barnes. To do that is the minimum; to do less is to push us one step closer to the dark.

Barry Goldwater is famous for having said that "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," however, he was wrong. Extremists are like the crazy people who would kill their families in order to save them. And this is the right-wing approach to liberty. They seek to preserve it by destroying it because they secretly fear and loathe it.

Should anyone wish to contact Senator Cornyn himself, the page where the his contact information can be found is http://www.cornyn.senate.gov/contact/index.html.

Time Is a Tricky Little Bastard

Every April and October, we enter into and exit from a collective deception we call Daylight Savings Time. (Apparently, the middle word of that is supposed to be singular, that is, “Saving,” but the will of the People is a difficult thing to fight in matters of the word, and “Savings” is what we get in real life.) I dread it, each year, and spend slightly more than six months at a time feeling logy and unfulfilled.

The experts talk about energy savings, which may be true, but in a society that vibrates like a quartz crystal 24/7, one must wonder whether those savings aren’t squandered like the Federal surplus was. As a nation, we are not savers, but compulsive wasters. To me, however, Daylight Savings Time is a symbol for how we delude ourselves into thinking that we can manipulate and control time.

Time and its passing has been on my mind of late, thanks in part to the Schiavo case and the death of the Pope. I was raised Catholic and have had my brush with adherence in adulthood, but I am, I guess officially, a lapsed Papist, although I prefer to think of myself, in Woody Allen’s phrase, to be “the loyal opposition.” I find things to admire in it, and its use of ritual—the reenactment of the myth—makes it the one Christian faith I can go steady with. However, the habit of people to reduce the sacred to the level of the profane and the hypocrisy of those who swarm closest to the center of any church (and I’m excluding those who have taken Holy Orders in that statement) have served to keep me at a distance from the Church, interested observer but no longer active participant.

The death of the Pope—which, by the logic the parents and their supporters in the Schiavo case, was suicide—has been dominating the headlines the last couple of days. At one point, a Cardinal was quoted as saying that Jesus had opened the door for him to step through. However, it seems that Jesus actually just looked through the peephole and asked for the password. (“Swordfish,” I’ll bet.) The Pope lingered a while longer.

The previous three weeks worth of news had been dominated by the Schiavo case, in which the remains of a young woman were dangled before the public in a way that was once reserved for relics like the shard of a bone of St. Stephen. And while a few seconds of videotape selected from hundreds of hours worth were played in continuous loops on a few cable news channels as proof of Terri Schiavo’s sentience, examinations of CAT scans and a flat EEG prove that the opposite is true.

It interests me that the people who were trying to keep Ms. Schiavo alive were religious believers. If I understand their beliefs correctly, their stated aim was to keep Ms. Schiavo from the arms of her Redeemer and the blessings of heaven for as long as possible. If I recall my Dante correctly, Purgatory is not much of an improvement from Hell, since we are still denied the ecstasy of experiencing the Glory of God unfiltered.

And why did they wish to do this? Let us consult Mark Twain. (Twain is a wonderful authority on these matters. He had a wisdom forged in sorrow and tempered with laughter.) In “Puddinhead Wilson,”he said, “Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved."

It seems to me that the real culprit here is not Michael Schiavo or his in-laws, but a medical culture that has the tools at its disposal to keep the carcass going even after the spirit has returned from whence it came. It is an American culture that fears death and that has concocted an absurdist sitcom in which to live based on the tenets of the worship of youth and the denial of death.

At one point, after the feeding tube was removed, Ms. Schiavo’s father was quoted as saying that this wouldn’t happen to an animal. And he was right. An animal would have been euthanized long before. To have kept an animal in the condition in which we found Terri Schiavo would have been considered inhumane. Of course, as John says in A Hard Day’s Night, “We usually reckon dogs more than people in England.” Sometimes that is true in the U.S. as well.

Finally, I'd like to leave you with this pearl of wisdom gleaned from today's entry on the Three Stooges page-a-day calendar I use at work. This is what met my eyes as I tore the page today: "Curly says: 'We're toys of fate. It's Kismet!'" That Curly was a real smart guy.

What Do You Think?

And just for the record, the title to this entry is not meant to be read in a sarcastic growl.

Here's the situation: I've come to realize that there are two possible ways of marketing this show. First, as half-hour episodes. I'm figuring that I can come up with 12, which would mean that those 12 would get four plays during the course of one year.

The second approach is to group them into four bundles of three. The set of scripts I've just finished (Plant Your Wagon) and the one I've just started work on (The Political Thing) are both three-episodes sets in themselves. Further, there are three scripts related to the characters of Jerry and George. I've written two other scripts that are related by the use of TV parodies that interrelate to the main story. The 12th script will use characters from both those earlier scripts, which will really tie that group together.

My thought is to try to market them as quarterly specials--perhaps in conjunction with pledge weeks. Does this make sense to anyone besides me and the Mrs? I figure that the stations would have two opportunities to insert pledge breaks, which I have to figure is a selling point, right?

On a related note, I think I'm going to change the name of the series to "Theater in a Box."

Unlike the General Election, each vote counts here. Let me know what you think. I'm interested.

All Right, So I Lied

I know that I said that I was going to put "Plant Your Wagon" on hold, but over the weekend, I decided to forge ahead with it. The end result is a bouncing baby script. I ended up just trying to fit everything onto the end of episode three. I haven't timed it yet, but it is probably a little long, a problem with which I will deal once there's some money on the line.

But it is done. Eight half-hour scripts down, four to go.

"Plant Your Wagon" Update

I finished the third episode of "Plant Your Wagon" over the weekend. At least, I think I did. The problem is that the script is about five minutes short for public radio standards. It was theoretically possible to finish the whole shebang off in one scene, but I already have the final song written, which would take up about two minutes, leaving me only three minutes to wrap up the whole story. That, to me, seems to be shortchanging the work as a whole, and I'd rather be right than on schedule.

And I closed the last scene on the perfect note for the end of an episode. So, end it short I will.

Right now, I think I'll just fill in the time with a conversation with a couple of members of the cast, just get a couple of people around a table with microphones and talk about whatever for however long and then edit it down to the best five minutes.

At this point, I don't know that the fourth episode will turn out to be a full 26 minutes of dialogue either, so I might round that out with a one-act or maybe more conversation. I'm in a mood to buck the system, so why not?

Since "Plant Your Wagon" is going longer than I expected, I'm going to have to write at least one more song and think through the whole sequence of events before I start trying to write it, so I think I'm going to concentrate on Drayton for a while and try to get that draft finished so that I can add to my collection of rejection slips before I'm too old to appreciate them.

And, of course, I'll keep blogging.

Drayton Reborn

As you may or may not not know or remember, I have been slowly writing a novel and posting the accumulation on a blog called Michael Drayton, Detective Guy. The problem for the average reader, though, was that, in true blog style, it was coming out in bits and pieces and each new bit would displace the bit before it and the only way to read the damn thing was backwards.

I have fixed that. I have created a new blog called Michael Drayton, Detective Guy that has an index as the first page. Each chapter is listed and linked in correct order, so all the reader has to do is click on the link to Chapter One and go from there.

Please feel free to check it out and tell your friends, especially those friends who are editors at prestigious publishing houses. It is a work in progress, so only the first nine chapters are currently posted. However, I have started Chapter Ten and will continue posting completed chapters as they occur. And I'm hoping to give this some serious attention again very soon.

And thanks to those who have kept with me through this.

St. Patrick's Day

I am half Irish by heritage, a fact that I end up contemplating every March 17th. Actually, I’m not quite half Irish; to claim so would be a falsehood. My mother was the Irish-American descendent of Irish-American parents. Her father was the first member of his family to be born in the United States, his older brother and sister having been brought to fruition in the Old Sod. Her mother’s family had been in the U.S. since before the Revolution, apparently (and I mean the American Revolution, not the one the Irish call The ‘17), and a small amount of miscegenation had allegedly occurred along the way. My great-grandmother is quoted as saying, “I have some English blood in me, and if I knew which vein it was in, I’d open it up and let it out.”

Also, judging from the jet-black hair my mother had in her youth, we are what you call “Black Irish.” That means that one of the Spanish survivors of the defeated and destroyed Armada who washed up on the Irish side of the Irish Sea wound up falling for some fair Colleen among whose descendents I count myself.

You don’t have to be Irish to write a sentence like that last, but it doesn’t hurt.

My grandfather’s family came from a town called Arva in County Cavan. Cavan is in the Republic despite being part of the Province of Ulster, due to it having a Catholic majority of its population back when the partition was made in the ‘20s. I am an Ulsterman, no doubt descended on a line from Cúchulainn himself, and proud of it, despite The Troubles, despite the IRA, despite their Protestant counterparts. Were an Orangeman to approach me, I would gladly offer my hand in friendship, not a fist in anger. It’s the only answer.

For many years, I refused to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. When someone would inevitably come up to me and ask, “Where’s your green?” I’d point to the veins in my wrist and say, “In there.”

I do not drink green beer, although there might be a Guinness in my future. I have been known to occasionally taste Irish whiskey, whiskey being an Irish word meaning, I think, “waters of life.” My grandmother cooked with an Irish flair, which means that everything was cooked into submission and served hot and inedible. The Army used to use her pork chops to line armored vehicles and her vegetables looked like they had been on the Bataan Death March. This is why you rarely hear people say, “Let’s get Irish tonight.”

It is a grand culture, and one about which I know too little. I’ve picked up bits here and there and spent some wonderful times in the company of the Rhode Island Irish Drama Society. And that’s one thing you have to say about them Micks. They know how to throw a great party. And so, on this St. Patrick’s Day, let me offer you the Irish toast: Sláinte!

Passing the Stick (Better Than Passing the Stone)

Taking the stick from Stephanie:

1. You're stuck inside Farenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

In Fahrenheit 451, individuals memorize one book apiece in order to preserve them. (I was reminded of this by another blogger who did this survey.) Therefore, the question is, which book would I like to memorize. Given the current state of my memory, I better choose The Cat in the Hat.

2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Maybe the whore who beguiles Yossarian in Catch-22. You want ficky-fick? Oh, wait. Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web. Thirty-eight years later and still going strong.

3. The last book you bought was...?

My wife and I tend to buy collectively, but, I’d say it was The Skin of Our Teeth.

4. The last book you read was...?

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. A biography of Shakespeare. Interesting reading, but closer to speculative fiction than biography. And I’m a confirmed Stratfordian.

5. What are you currently reading?

Franklin and Winston by Jon Meacham. As in Roosevelt and Churchill. Interesting and well-written histoical study of the realtionship between the two.

6. Five books you would take to a desert island...

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
Much Ado About Me by Fred Allen
Six Plays by Kaufman and Hart by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
The Wisdom of Laotse by Lin Yutang

What three people are you passing this stick on to and why?

Phil -- because it could fall anywhere in the cultural spectrum from SpongeBob to James Joyce.
Mark – who doesn’t have a blog, because I don’t know what to expect. (He can use my blog, if he’d like.)
Robert – who also doesn’t have a blog, because he cares about literature and what it can do. (He’s also welcome to use my blog, if he’d like.)

My 'Net Worth Increases

Last Friday night, I was sitting in front of the TV letting the narcotizing effect of cathode ray help me readjust after a surreal day, when I heard the chime come from the PC indicating that an email had arrived.

Being a compulsive consumer of mail both electronic and postal, I got up to see what it was. It turned out to be from one of the webmasters of The Firesign Theatre website. He was seeking to link to this here Blog in order to give the folks on their mailing list (some 1300) the chance to inflict my tale of going west on themselves.

In reply, I offered him the manuscript of the entire thing if he wanted it. He did. As a result, I am now represented on the web not only by this Blog, but also by this tiny corner of the Firesign website.

What does all this mean? Probably not much, although it is nice to get published by somebody who isn’t me.

Post Script

Apparently the ending on the recently concluded series of posts, "The Adventure," was a bit sudden for the typical reader. The reason it stopped so suddenly is because that day is a blank to me. After I gassed up the Chevy Airbag, I kind of lost consciousness. However, my wife has pledged to help me reconstruct the events of that day so that I can write one more installment, one that will give America (or the most infinitesimal fraction thereof) the ending it craves.

The Adventure, Part IX: Hello, I Must Be Going

We applied our time-tested method of getting lost in order to find anything to the search for a restaurant. Rounding a bend, we came upon a Chili’s. Unfortunately, we didn’t notice it quickly enough and couldn’t get to it without becoming the kindling in a two-car ball of fire. A mall loomed ahead on the left and, although the mall itself was closed, there seemed to be a restaurant still functioning. On closer inspection, it turned out to be an Applebee’s. It was after 11:00 and the rest of the city seemed to be dark.

We pulled into the mall parking lot and got to a convenient parking spot in front of Applebee’s just in time to see the last employees drifting out into the night. It had just closed.

Having the can-do spirit that made this nation great, we regrouped and decided to go back to the Chili’s. Having learned circumspection, we approached cautiously. There were encouraging signs: For example, the lights were on and there were cars in the parking lot. We strode to the door insouciant and fancy-free. That is, we were until were got a gander at the hours of operation. They closed at 11:30. It was now 11:25. We entered the vestibule wondering if we would be welcomed or ejected as latecomers and ne’er-do-wells. A young lady greeted us at the door. “Is it too late to eat?” Mark asked.

“Of course not!” she said and showed us to a booth.

We ate, we drank, we talked, we laughed. The two—uh—robust gentlemen who had sat to my right during the first act of the show were seated a couple of booths away. For an hour or so, we pelted each other with our thoughts and observations. We couldn’t be certain, but the waitress—the same young lady who had seated us—seemed to be favoring our table over the other ones she was tethered to.

She gave us simple directions for getting back to the motel, directions that we came close to screwing up, but didn’t. Back at Fun Central, a bottle of scotch was cracked, but the party was breaking up. Bernie went to his room. I realized that I had been awake for 24-hours straight, and Mark and I drank a toast to this accomplishment.

I was going to have to get up at 5:30 in order to get to the airport in time get properly searched, so I stumbled off to my room and bed. The party was over.

* * * * *

My old friend adrenalin kicked into gear as soon as my alarm rang. Before you could say, “hospitalized for exhaustion,” I was showered, shaved, and dressed and on my way to drop off my key card.

The lobby was closed and a sign directed me to the night window. I pressed the bell and a sullen youth appeared at the window. I slid my key card into the tray, and he took it, looked off to his right and said something that didn’t quite make it as far as my side of the bulletproof glass. It sounded like he had said, “Stay there,” so that’s what I did. After a minute or two, the sullen youth reappeared at the window and said, quite audibly, “I said, ‘You’re all set.’” His demeanor and the edge to his voice made it clear to me that I was no longer welcome at that window, so I adjourned to the Chevy Airbag.

Traffic was almost nonexistent as I glided along the One-O-One toward the bridge. It being the Bay Area, fog clung to the contours of the road and hills, and everything was beautiful and serene and quiet. I crossed the bridge, and the towers disappeared into the fog and clouds.

Everything was going smoothly until I was faced with a fork not far past the tollbooths. The sign was no help, so I just stayed with what seemed to be the main route. This turned out to be the wrong way since, within moments, I was spit out on Lombard Street headed in some direction I might have known in 1969, but was clueless about now. I saw Lyon Street, which intersected with the street my boyhood home was located on at a distance of one house. I went further. I saw what appeared to be a drug deal going down on a street corner. The two young men may have been swapping recipes or waiting to donate vital organs to those less fortunate, but I didn’t care. Inside my now-fevered brain, they were drug dealers. Having been lost for much of the preceding twelve hours, I decided to cut my losses and just turn around. Maybe I could zip up Lyon Street and take a gander at the place I regarded as my true home.

I’ve since calculated that I was about one-half mile from the intersection of Washington and Lyon, from my childhood and a cargo load of memories, however, that path was blocked. Lyon Street was egress-only at Lombard.

I continued and was almost immediately greeted by a sign for Route 1. Within moments, I was back on track and retracing my steps to the airport. This time, there were no delays, no rerouting. The flights were less densely packed, and I could stretch out a bit. My calling card refused to work, so I bought some long distance so that I could keep in contact on my way. And none of it mattered. As the fifth flight I had taken in about thirty-six hours landed, the only thing that mattered was that I had finally gotten home.

The End

The Adventure, Part VIII: Show Me

I found my seat between a—how shall I say?--rather robust middle-aged gentlemen and a teenager who was there with his father and brother. Having spent the better part of my day scrunched into a series of airplanes, I instinctively assumed the position, shoulders rounded and hands in lap. I could see Mark and Bernie a ways off, seated with the upper crust. Still, I’m sure my seatmates would’ve turned out to be the salt of the earth had I spoken anything more meaningful than “excuse me” or “sorry about that” to either of them. Meanwhile, Mark and Bernie joked with each other and commiserated with the king, queen, and crown prince. Fortunately, I don’t have a jealous bone in my body, and I applied my excess energy into seeing if my program could be converted into a serviceable peashooter.

At length, the house lights went down and the show began. The Firesign Theatre came onstage, all in their sixties and looking much younger, to thunderous applause. Instead of going the route of being a nostalgia act, they kept the pieces from their classic period of the ‘70s to a minimum and concentrated on newer material—much of which came from “Boom Dot Bust.”

The four—Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman, and Philip Proctor—were in great form, and the audience went with them joyously. In the past couple of years, I had made the Internet acquaintance of one of the four, Phil Austin, and I was particularly pleased with how well two of his monologues, “The Book of Me” and “Art of the Insane” went over. And they went over for the very good reason that they were both achingly funny. Messrs Bergman, Ossman, and Proctor all also had glorious moments in the sun, and all four worked together with precision and grace.

During the intermission, I relocated myself to the row behind where I had been sitting, putting my closest lateral neighbor about 15 seats away. For the first time all day, I really spread myself out and bellowed my approval throughout the second act. From what I could tell, a good time was had by all.

I had found out on the Internet that the Firesigns were going to autograph stuff after the show and had arranged with Mark and Bernie to meet them by the signing table after the show. It quickly became apparent that the former souvenir table was about to be transformed into the autograph area with the addition of one more table and some chairs for the performers. With my usual adeptness in crowds, I allowed a number of people to get in front of me and took up my position well behind both Mark and Bernie.

For some reason, in my pre-show fantasies of this moment, I had assumed that Phil Austin would be the first of the four that I would encounter. This would allow him to introduce me to the other members of the group, and they could toast me with champagne and pull my carriage through the streets as 19th Century New Yorkers did with Jenny Lind.

In real life, however, Bergman was first, with Proctor next to him and then Ossman and Austin acting as the anchor. I tried to readjust my psyche, but the line wasn’t quite long enough, and when I reached Peter Bergman I was overtaken with a case of Celebrity-itis, an ailment that reduces normal grey matter to the consistency of overcooked summer squash.

I laid the CD covers I had brought for inscription in front of him, and, instead of leading with the interesting and human fact that I’d flown in from Atlanta, G-A, just for this show, I blurted out something about how much he’d gotten out me in royalties since I’d bought these albums in different formats over the years. In my dementia, I thought this was humorous. Bergman, for his part, grunted something at me, signed my stuff and pushed the covers on to Proctor. A radio guy who had interviewed Proctor and Bergman started barking at him before I could come up with any way of saying, “Please let me apologize. I’m suffering from short-term dementia.” I moved on.

(In defense of Bergman, I have to say that not two minutes earlier I had seen him grab a flyer from the table for someone who hadn’t brought anything to sign and say, “We can sign this for you.” It was a genuinely nice gesture from one stranger to another. In our tête-à-tête, he was put at the distinct disadvantage of having to deal with a dope.—ed.)

The radio guy also horned his way in with Proctor and Ossman, so I moved along gathering only their signatures and not their approval of my existence. That left only Austin.

As Phil started to sign my stuff, I leaned forward a bit and quietly said, “Phil, I’m Len Cassamas.” Well, before I could get out my Internet alias, he was on his feet and shaking my hand, a big grin on his face. He tugged on the sleeve of a pretty blonde on the stairs next to him. “This is Len Cassamas,” he said. “And this is Bernie Splim.” It was at that moment that I realized that Bernie was now beside me. “This is my wife, Oona,” Phil said to both of us.

My Celebrity-itis disappeared as someone I had encountered as an object became wonderfully, warmly human. The four of us chatted for a minute or two and then Mark joined in. (Fortunately, the radio guy was clogging up the works pretty good behind me.—ed.)

Oona slipped off to another part of the hall, and we said our goodbyes, not as Internet wraiths and celebrity, but as flesh-and-blood human beings. Mark had gone on ahead toward the exit, and Bernie and I sauntered through the nearly empty lobby comparing notes on the evening. We found Mark just outside the front doors, standing with Oona and a couple of her acquaintance. He was petting one of the Austins’ dogs, The Molimo. Bernie and I joined the conversation and laughter and the petting of The Molimo. The woman member of the couple insisted that I move my family to the greater San Rafael area.

We laughed some more and chatted and Phil came up to the group and took charge of the dog and led him away toward their SUV. We said our goodnights and drifted off toward Mark’s car, which turned out to be parked two spaces behind Phil’s. I thought about going to say a final goodnight, but he had an SUV full of dogs, and I doubted he needed any further complications.

We drove away pleased with our evening and finally hungry and looking for food. There had to be a restaurant somewhere in the greater San Rafael area, and we were just the ginks to find it.

Tomorrow, Part IX: What Goes Out, Must Come Back

The Adventure, Part VII: CD or Not CD

The Marin Memorial Veterans Auditorium is a growth of concrete situated on the shore of a lagoon. Lit up like a concrete growth, its image shimmered in the waters around it. Being extremely early, we found a great parking spot and were prowling around the lobby in a matter of moments.

There was the inevitable bar, a good forty-footer, whose management had demonstrated a fundamental grasp of planning and logistics by running low on premium items before the audience actually showed up. I thought about getting a beer, but they were down to Sludge, Sludge Lite, and Sludge Draft. Strangely, Sludge Draft was in bottles and plain old Sludge was on tap. Having an allergy to chemical-induced brewing techniques, I sauntered on to the next area, where, it turned out the souvenirs were being hawked.

The items for sale were laid out on a plain folding table--t-shirts, mainly, and a couple of license plate holders, and a few signed CDs. Since I had been looking to buy one of The Firesign Theatre’s more recent albums, “Boom Dot Bust,” for a while, this seemed like it would be as good an opportunity as any. There was one copy, festooned with the autographs of each of the four. “How much?” I asked the young lady who was picking through boxes behind the table.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m not sure. They haven’t set the price yet.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Boy, I’ve been looking to buy one of these. Sure would like to buy this.”

“They should tell us pretty soon,” she replied.

Perhaps someone was waiting for an E-Bay auction to expire or trying to get a fix on the day’s trends on the Nikkei. I couldn’t be sure, but market forces are mysterious things, and loathe am I to mess with forces of any kind. I put the CD back on the table and made a silent appointment with it for later.

Mark and Bernie were also picking through the merchandise by this point, but their browsing came to naught as well. We wandered back out toward the bar, where quite the crowd had gathered, mostly middle-aged and white, the kind of folks who had thought of property as a crime until they started getting mortgages on some.

Now, I don’t want to paint myself as being some kind of pioneer or something, but I was suffering from mild agoraphobia long before it became the TV disease of the week. Milling in the midst of a crowd of strangers quickly turns into a scene from a surrealist film with the sound of my pulse beating in my throat and ears as the score. Therefore, it didn’t take more than two minutes before I had to beat a hasty retreat back to the souvenir room.

Fortunately, this neurotic outbreak paid nice dividends when I returned to the table to find that the CDs were now priced, and that the autographed “Boom Dot Bust” in question was only 25 simoleons. Before anyone else could bid on it, I whipped out my check card. “I’m sorry,” the young woman said. “We’re only taking cash.”

“I can do that,” I said, and thrust the money I had originally set aside for the bridge toll at her. She took it. I took my CD.

“So, you got it?” Bernie was beside me.

“Yeah. I was going to buy it anyway, so why not?” Then I thought. “How much is the toll across the bridge?”

“Five dollars.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m going to have to stop and get some cash tomorrow.”

His wallet was out. “Here,” he said, thrusting a bill my way.

“No, I’ll be fine. I’ll just stop.”

The negotiations continued for a moment or two. I won’t reveal what the result was, although I don’t remember having to stop for cash on my way out.

Mark joined us, and we decided that it was time to go ahead and claim our seats. Since they had reserved theirs a mere months before I had bought mine, they were sitting somewhat closer to the stage. They made their way to the orchestra, and I climbed the stairs to a section called something like “Orchestra Plus.”

Tomorrow, Part VII: The Voodoo That They Do

The Adventure, Part VI: I Left My Cell Phone in San Francisco

Having said, “He’s here!” and having greeted me warmly, Mark disappeared like the pantsless Internet wraith that he was. I collected my meager belongings and climbed the stairs to the second level.

Mark’s room was directly at the top of the stairway. The door was slightly ajar, and I could see the dim motel room light reflecting off the bedspread. Feeling a bit like Philip Marlowe, I tapped at the door. A shadow moved about on the other side. Before apprehension could replace exhaustion, the door swung open, and I was confronted with Bernie, the other Internet wraith.

He was about my height, trim, curly-haired, and wearing pants. He smiled warmly and offered his hand, greeted me and invited me in. Mark emerged from an alcove-cum-dressing area, properly dressed. “Sorry about that, but I wasn’t wearing any pants,” he said. He was approximately 11 feet tall.

We exchanged pleasantries, and Bernie offered me a plastic cup of wine. I demurred because I was still on East Coast time and was afraid of falling asleep during the show or of being removed from the audience when the combination of alcohol and jet lag led me to shout out, “We love you, Phil!” during an inconvenient moment of the performance.

After a quick confab, we determined our plan. I would go and call my wife and shower (this last, curiously, Mark’s suggestion), then we would reconvene and do something—maybe get dinner or overlook the bridge. Bernie took refuge in his room, and I dragged myself down to mine.

As I unpacked my show shirt and my deodorant, I discovered that my cell phone wasn’t in my bag. I checked my pockets and rummaged through the pile of debris I had accumulated on my trip. I went down to the car and searched it. Nothing. Fortunately, the airline had recompensed me with a five-minute phone card for the inconvenience of being shuttled around the country willy-nilly, and my wife and I were able to communicate long enough to determine that the cell phone hadn’t been used and wasn’t being answered. We were out one phone, but still hoped that it would turn up at the car rental agency or the airport. (It didn’t. My wife made the sacrifice and got a camera-cell phone, and I got hers. Perhaps the old phone grew despondent and threw its troubles off the Golden Gate Bridge. Nobody knows.—ed.)

I showered and put on my going-to-see-a-show shirt, and the three of us reconvened in Mark’s room, which was quickly becoming our nerve center. Within minutes, we were able to determine that Mark wasn’t hungry, Bernie would eat if I did, and that my stomach thought it was after 9:00 p.m. and was expecting to be parked in front of the TV at home. We compromised by deciding to go straight to the venue.

Mark volunteered to drive, Bernie volunteered to navigate, and I volunteered to criticize from the back. We piled into Mark’s car and inserted ourselves into the bustle of San Rafael’s social whirl.

Despite having at least two sets of directions and three nominally intelligent people to decipher them, we managed to get lost not once, but twice. This was on a trip that covered all of about a mile-and-a-quarter. We were working together as a team; unfortunately, it was a really crummy team, one that always finished last. Despite our collective incompetence, we arrived at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium with something over an hour to spare.

Tomorrow, Part VII: In the Presence

The Adventure, Part V: It's Easy to Go Home Again If You Go Fast Enough

Nostalgia (which is preferable to neuralgia) swept over me as I took in the sight of the trees and houses on the hills of South San Francisco and San Bruno. Traffic, by Atlanta standards, was nonexistent, the freeway was wide and pothole-free, and I approached the southern edge of The City with both trepidation and glee.

As the freeway gets to San Francisco, it changes suddenly, like a jump cut in a dream, to being just a city street with parked cars and homes and streetcar tracks. A horde of commuters waited on a train platform built in a faux-Chinese style. Teenagers meandered across the street in a small pack. Traffic moved easily from red light to red light.

In a few minutes, I was entering Golden Gate Park. I thought of Spreckles Lake, which was really more like Spreckles Puddle, a mile or two to the west. My model ship had sunk there in its ill-fated maiden voyage during the one year we lived on 36th Avenue, and George Harrison had led a crowd of sycophants, fans, and Hell’s Angels past there while I was wallowing in my ignorance of this great event some half-a-block away.

And then, the street signs. Balboa, the street one of my schools was on; Geary, the street on which we sat in a pizzeria and watched the smoke from the Cliff House fire drift overhead; California Street, the thoroughfare from which my brother and I would run like maniacs to catch our connecting bus on Geary on school mornings.

I only caught fleeting glimpses of the Presidio as I sped under it and through it, but I had already come to a decision. I had to come back and bring my wife and son with me.

My driver’s ed teacher, many years ago, had instilled in me the notion that drivers should always plan ahead. Just think of how proud he would have been had he seen me, in the airport parking garage, place a wad of cash on the front passenger seat in anticipation of paying a toll to cross the Golden Gate Bridge some 20 miles away. Okay, maybe the word isn’t “proud”; maybe it’s “concerned.” But that is neither here nor there because I was prepared.

Well, imagine my surprise when I rounded the bend to get on the bridge and saw a sign reading, “No Toll Northbound Lanes.” The northbound tollbooths of my youth were empty, forlorn. It’s a good thing my boyhood ambition to be a toll-taker on the Golden Gate Bridge went unfulfilled. I’d probably be out of a job now.

The bridge itself was The Bridge, stately, magnificent, and thrilling. I envied the tourists who walked along it, even the guy who was testing the tensile strength of the cables by tugging on one. I stole a quick glance out toward the endless Pacific and imbibed its beauty.

My next challenge involved finding the right exit off the freeway Californians call “The One-O-One.” Dividing my attention between driving and consulting the directions I had printed off Yahoo!, I was able to determine that I was supposed to take the exit for the Richmond Bridge and I-580. I saw a sign that said something about the Richmond Bridge. I took the exit. There didn’t appear to be any I-580 at the bottom of the ramp, so when the light turned green, I just went straight ahead to the on-ramp and got back on “The One-O-One.” The correct exit was a mile or so further along.

I got lost at first, and had my suspicion concerning this confirmed for me when I got to a dead end in a subdivision, Stepford Village or something like that. I retraced my steps and found the motel, after having been forced onto a couple of side streets because of a strange local custom involving terminating lanes for no apparent reason. I checked in, got my key card, and was informed that my Internet associates, Mark and Bernie, had been asking for me.

I parked the car and removed myself and my things from it. As I closed the car door, I heard a voice from above. It was Mark, standing at the rail of the walkway on the second floor. He didn’t seem to be wearing any pants.

Tomorrow, Part VI: The Show