This Is Why You Need Hyphens

This morning's perusal of the headlines on my My Yahoo! homepage brought this item from Reuters' Sports:

Bonds set to resign with San Francisco Giants

I clicked on the headline expecting to read about Barry Bonds's retirement, although the use of the preposition "with" rather than "from" was puzzling. It turns out that he wasn't resigning from the Giants, he was re-signing with them.

For want of a hyphen, the headline was lost....

The Revolution's Here

I was just killing some time at work by skimming the headlines on my My Yahoo homepage, when I caught this one, courtesy of the AP:

"Temps rise in storm-stricken Midwest"

I didn't even need to read the story. It is clear to me that the temporary workers of the Midwest, finally fed up with being treated somewhat like Bartleby the Scrivener, have taken up arms against the oppressor. As a temporary worker, all I have to say is, "Fight the power!"

Alice's Restaurant on XM

For those of you who are interested in listening to "Alice's Restaurant" and reliving the Thanksgiving Massacree, it will be played on The Sixties on Six on XM Radio at about 2pm this afternoon. If you don't subscribe to XM, you can still join in the fun by signing up for a free trial.

Don't miss out!

Happy Holidays--Beware!

Well, I just received my first holiday crime memos, so it seems that it's time to post the one set of Christmas carol lyrics I've ever written. They are as follows:

(To the tune of "Deck the Halls")

Christmas is the time for stealing.
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Take it if it seems appealing.
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Pick it up; it's in your pocket.
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Leave your desk, you've got to lock it.
Fa la la la la la la la la.

Happy holidays to all and don't forget the pepper spray!

The Vision Thing

A couple of months ago, back when I was down in the dumps and also in the basement, I wrote a post in which I said something about being addicted to grandiose schemes. Now, the first thing to keep in mind when considering this post is that it was written by a middle-aged guy who had just started working in a mailroom. Regardless of one's choice of careers, winding up in a mailroom as you approach your 47th birthday is a bit depressing. After all, the mailroom is traditionally the place where one starts one's work life, not finishes it. And if you don't believe me, just consult the collected works of Horatio Alger or the agent roster at CAA.

Now, however, from the Parnassus of the English Department, I am looking at life a little differently. It seems to me that I am not a person addicted to grandiose schemes, but a visionary. I have the habit of thinking--as the saying goes--outside the box, and as a result, can see possibilities that remain hidden to most people.

As a creative type, this can come in handy, especially when I find myself knee-deep in a story or script and there are clumps of bad writing, plotting, and characterization hiding behind the bushes just ahead. It can also be of use in real life, since I can often come up with creative solutions that never occur to most others.

However, the downside to this ability is that most people have a hard time understanding my vision, including--perhaps especially--the people who dole out the money. Money people, with exceptions, tend to look about a foot ahead of themselves and a foot behind at all times and confuse walking in circles with dancing a minuet.

That doesn't mean, though, that you give up, that you stop trolling the waters. You never know when the person you need to meet is right around the next corner.

According to Len

I am a TV snob. There have been many shows that have been popular and critical favorites that I have turned up my nose at. I didn't care for Cheers. ER left me cold. I didn't watch The Sopranos, and I don't watch House.

There have been shows that critics raved about that I couldn't stomach. However, there is currently one show that I love that makes all critics wretch. And that's According to Jim.

I'm sorry. I like this show. It makes me laugh. Out loud. Numerous times during each half hour. Larry Joe Campbell, who plays Jim's brother-in-law, is an enormously gifted comic actor. Courtney Thorne-Smith is very good as Jim's wife, and Kimberley Williams-Paisley gives a sly and winning performance week-in-and-week-out. Even the kids are good, which is quite unusual. There are funny jokes, and true ones, too. For example, in one episode, Andy--the brother-in-law--reveals that he has concocted a dessert in which he rolls sticks of butter in white sugar. He tells, with a wonderful mixture of shame, self-loathing, and pride, that he calls the "Shame Sticks."

We refer to Shame Sticks around our house the same way that we quote Felix Unger saying, "You're my eyes, Gloria!" It's part of our private code.

I'm always astounded at the amount of hostility that this show engenders, but I think I know the cause. It's Jim Belushi. And it's not because of the value of his performance, because he's really very good in it. There have been moments--and I'm talking as a fellow actor here--in which he has been about as good as an actor can be. And yet, he gets scorn instead of praise.

Why? Well, I would guess it's because nobody has ever forgiven him for being John's brother. He was always seen as being a hanger-on and a no-talent, and neither of those judgments is true.

Now, I liked John Belushi. I must've. I even went to see Continental Divide. However, Jim is not his imitator. His performance style is more controlled and more crafted. He's gotten a bad rap--partially because of the movie with the police dog--and he has not deserved it.

And one thing I know for sure: Both he and his show make me laugh.

Even My Hindsight Has an Astigmatism

As I was running around like a nut while trying to get some things done during my lunch break today, I had a realization about myself as a writer.

As I've posted on this blog before, I have considered myself a writer ever since a powerful--dare I say it?--metaphysical experience I had when I was 14. From that point on, writing was my foremost concern outside of keeping myself clothed and fed. It did not come naturally to me; I had to work and learn in order to attain even the moderate amount of skill I currently possess.

However, I don't think I truly became a writer until I started work on the scripts for this series.

I did some decent things before this, and the first few scripts I wrote (all revisions of leftovers from another time) are not quite up-to-snuff, but something happened, something changed as my work on the series progressed. It started with the second Jerry & George script, The Tale of the Weekend Upcoming, and really blossomed in the third Jerry & George script, The Road to Hell.

In these scripts, I started moving away from my sketch-comedy and sitcom roots and started delineating believable stories about believable people. The writing of those two scripts and Phil's Deli and the Xmas episode, Looking for Christmas, was more like writing short stories than writing radio scripts.

Of course, I have a several versions of extended fragments of some TV scripts I wrote some years back called Such Is Life that share these same qualities. Maybe I'm just rediscovering a path once trod.

Whatever it is, it's good.

None of any of these scripts appears on the demo. That may have been a mistake, in hindsight.

TiVo for a Better Politics

It occurred to me this morning while reading a story in The New York Times about the current Republican strategy to hold their majorities in the House and Senate that the whole way modern politics is approached could be changed if more people had TiVo. You see, with Tivo, the viewer can easily fast-forward past commercials, and I know that in our house the political commercials are sped through the quickest.

Politicians advertising on TV--a commercial activity--run ads that have degenerated to the lowest possible level:

Announcer: Bill Johnson is a stinkyhead who let his grass grow too long. We're not outright saying that he's a drug-abusing, mother-violating Sodomite, but you get the drift. Wink, wink.

And they always end just as The Firesign Theatre had it 36 years ago: "And you can believe me because I'm always right and I never lie."

That nonsense isn't worth having your brain washed over. And if everyone got XM Satellite Radio, they wouldn't be able to run local ads over the radio either. I'm sure they'd still find a way, but it just might make somebody somewhere talk about something of substance rather than merely slandering whoever is representing "the other side."

So, friends, do your part in the struggle to regain democracy here in the good, old US of A: Get TiVo.

This Is What I Get for Hitting the "Translate This Page" Link

A selection from a page that was originally in German:

First the caption under the photo:

“The number of applications for the theory to the Kauffrau or to the buyer decreased last strongly”: Daniel Alig, apprentice responsible person of the bank Linth with training daughter Sarah Gämperli in the branch Rapperswil.

Next, the first paragraph of the story:

Still Daniel Alig applications for a KV-training place in the coming summer receives. Alig is apprentice responsible person with the bank Linth at the head office in Uznach. Numerous training places are however already assigned for 2006. The district bank received approximately 60 applications in the past months, first in July. Those are clearly less than in the years before; a fact also the different banks determined. To occupy the bank Linth has eight training places, ever two in the four regions Linthgebiet, Zurich lake, Ausserschwyz and Sarganserland. “Past year had we approximately 60 applications alone for the region Linthgebiet”, says Alig. It can only courage-measure reasons for this salient decrease: “On the one hand resuming schools might have been made tasty for the school leaver. On the other hand I can also imagine that the attractiveness of this teachings suffered, because numerous Lehrabgänger finds no more place.” A further reason could be the 2002 imported KV-reform. It should the training enterprises revaluations. In addition, thus of them and the expenditure of the apprentices in the school teaching rose. To the defiance; with the quality of the applications Alig constituted an increase.

You can't make this up.

News Item

I wasn't planning on publishing anything here today--all my blogging energy will be directed at Shooting Off My Fat Trap, my political blog, which might be pretty busy in coming days--but I heard something on XM this morning that I just had to share. The easiest way to explain it is to quote from this version of the story as it appears on contactmusic.com:

LATEST: Songwriter PAUL VANCE has blasted reports he's dead, insisting it was an imposter who passed away earlier this month (06SEP06). Vance, best known for co-writing the 1960 novelty song ITSY BITSY TEENIE WEENIE YELLOW POLKA DOT BIKINI, has been inundated with concerned calls after news broke yesterday (27SEP06) that he'd died of lung cancer. However, the irate musician insists the victim, 68-year-old PAUL VAN VALKENBURGH of Ormond Beach, Florida, was an imposter who claimed to have written the hit himself under the name of Paul Vance. The real Vance admits he was astonished to read his obituary in newspapers, and see two of his horses dropped from races yesterday (27SEP06) because people believed he had died. He says, "Do you know what it's like to have grandchildren calling you and say, 'Grandpa, you're still alive?' "This is not a game. I am who I am and I'm proud of who I am. But these phones don't stop with people calling thinking I'm dead." Van Valkenburgh's widow ROSE LEROUX, who claims never to have known her late husband was lying about the song, says, "To have it come out now, I'm kind of devastated. "If this other man says he did it then my husband's a liar, or he's a liar."

There's great story in here somewhere about a lady who finds out that her now-dead husband of 40 years had done nothing but lie to her the entire time. I'm claiming it, although there's nothing to do about it if somebody else beats me to it. I'd just have to write my own version anyway. Changing the names and facts, of course.

Yesterday's Why I Like XM Moment

So, I'm driving along yesterday, going to get the boy from school, when what should come on the XM Satellite Radio but Alice's Restaurant. Now there's something you won't hear on Oldies 97.

UPDATE: Alice's Restaurant on XM on Thanksgiving! Check out the post.

Up from Under

My time in the mailroom has ended, as a suitable alternative was found and hired. Such is the lot of the temp: Today's necessity is tomorrow's dross.

But, fear not, I'm doing some bookkeeping for one guy and some research for another, so we should be able to get by for the time being.

On the plus side, I've got more time available for writing. At tleast I hope that's a plus.

In fact, I've posted a piece on Shooting Off My Fat Trap that I'm considering sending to a newspaper in the distant northeast. (Not the Times.--ed.) If anyone wants to, they're welcome to peruse said piece and comment on its suitablility for publication. Don't worry; it's okay to advise that it should be buried out back. Silence, however, will be construed as consent. That's what you call a legal warning.

In other news, I'm preparing to send a proposal for Next in the Series to somebody at the company I just temped at. First, I just have to confirm that I've got the right somebody.

And, finally, wouldn't you just love to see me have a column in some paper or something? I know I would. And not an obituary. Wise guy.

The Demo CD

I've been meaning to post about this for the last couple of weeks, but have been too busy being a man-about-town to remember to. The CD is basically finished and the early reviews are encouraging. I did make a small mistake, though. I forgot to record a small bit of song near the end in which the love interests plight their troth. I'll record that in the next few days to make it complete. It will be my first bonus track. Ahh, they grow up so fast.

However, that being said, I'd like to announce that the demo CD for Plant Your Wagon is now available to interested parties. If you'd like one, just let me know, and I'll get one in the mail to you.

Also, I have finished putting the radio script into play format, so if you know any producers who would like to perhaps inflict a world premier on an unsuspecting public just let me know. To the unimaginative, it would be kind of heavy on sets, but, as an admirer of Thornton Wilder, I would actually prefer as simpler production.

Anyway, this is just some proof that there's more to my life than just the mailroom.

Still Underground

The assignment underground continues to hang on, and dwelling in the belly of the beast has had a profound effect on me. When discussing alcoholics and other drug addicts, it has become a commonplace to mention that the person in question has to have bottomed out before redemption can become possible. Well, apparently, the mailroom was a low as I could go without disintegrating, because I am now ready to say the following: "Hi. My name is Len, and I'm addicted to grandiose schemes."

It has been my habit since youth to shoot--however fitfully--for the stars. I have done this because of a combination of self confidence, delusion, and fear of success.

I pledge, henceforth, to renounce this approach and to adopt a new, more practical one.

This does not mean that I am giving up on the radio show. They are going to have to reject me to get rid of me. It just means that, while that pipedream is playing itself out, I am going to concentrate on writing and submitting prose pieces. And not to The New Yorker, either. Not yet. I'll start with smaller, more reasonable outlets. In fact, if anybody knows of a publication that they think would just swoon over my kind of writing, feel free to let me know. Places that pay are preferred, but publishing credits count for something at this point as well.

I've got a number of essays I've culled from this blog that I'm refining and elongating with an eye to publication. The Drayton short story is coming along pretty well, and I figure Ellery Queen magazine isn't too mighty a publication for the likes of me.

Notaries from Underground

Zombie notaries rise from the undead in N. Noon Mismailian's $150 billion epic. Beware of Notaries from Underground. This time your fate is sealed.

Actually, I wanted to write a little bit about the advantages of being underground, advantages, at least, if you are a writer.

While mailroom workers get little if any respect from those whose lives they make easier, they also have--as a result of that lack of respect--access to offices and areas that other employees don't get. When you work in the mailroom, pushing your cart from floor to floor, you get exposed to all the backstairs gossip and petty rivalries and machinations, the triumphs and disappointments. It's akin to being a domestic in a Victorian household. You get to see everyone unclothed because they don't completely recognize your humanity.

And so, I''ve been gathering material.

Also, the class war gets thrown in your face several times a day, and so ideas for essays percolate and develop.

Finally, working underground has helped me add an element to a story I've been trying to write for the last 20 years or so. The story is called "Timon," and it is a loose updating of Shakespeare's retelling of the legend of Timon of Athens. I've tried writing it as a play and as a short story, but it hasn't turned out quite right yet. But working underground has had its effect.

In shakespeare's telling, Timon flees his financial woes by taking refuge in a cave. It took me all this time to realize that working in a mailroom could be the analogue to that. Yes. I think I'll have my modern, corporate Timon wind up in a mailroom plotting revenge.

And that has been the most salutary effect that the mailroom has had on me: The daemon has returned and I long to write. Fate is currently engineering another turn of events for me, one that might allow me to add to the family treasure while giving me time in which to write. At least, that is the hope. It means emerging from underground, but still going undercover.

One step at a time.

Further Underground

It isn't all fun and games underground. There is also a lot of hard work that gets done. For example, I have written almost 3000 words of a Drayton short story while waiting out my sentence. Yesterday, after having written myself out, I returned to one of my earliest loves, cartooning.

This kind of started the other day when my seven-year-old son was telling me about the superhero project he is working on. (It's actually almost freakishly good.) And I was telling him about how I used draw cartoons all the time, particularly when I was in junior high school. And I told him how I stopped doing it because I didn't think I drew well enough, and I explained to him how stupid I had been in stopping.

That led me to reminisce about a time in my life about 20 years ago when I had a job with a group that was part of a much larger project. About 95% of the work my group had to do was finished within two weeks of my coming aboard, but instead of the group being dibanded, we were kept on. It developed quickly into an entertainment/social group, and we spent our days jawing amongst ourselves and generally entertaining the troops. (There were about another hundred employees working on the same project in one huge room.) As part of my effort to get through each day without completely losing my mind, I started doddling on the blotter that lay on my desk.

When I finally left to enter indentured servitude as a legal assistant, my bosses boss, a guy named Wayne, asked me for those blotter sheets. I've always taken that as a compliment.

And speaking of compliments, here's the first cartoon I drew yesterday:



Having muddled my way through that, I tried another:



That went well enough where I thought I'd see if I could still draw one of the great characters from the blotter days, The Loch Ness Monster:



Finally, I couldn't resist another of Nessie, a character who seems to dwell somewhere in the world of celebrity and is probably more likely to be found in Hollywood than Scotland.



So, Wayne, wherever you are, enjoy.

More Notes from Underground

The mailroom job threatens to continue for another three or four weeks, but that's not so bad. In some ways it's good. It's good to do physical work and this job, on occasion, gives me an opportunity to put the belly fat to good use. There's also a modicum of downtime, and I have been using the odd spare moment to draft a Drayton short story longhand. It's coming along pretty well for a first, very rough draft. I like it. Eventually, it might be worth sending out somewhere.

I've been keeping active creatively in other ways as well. I've decided to turn both "The Quality of Marcy" and "Plant Your Wagon" into stage plays, which I am accomplishing by changing them from radio script format to playscript format. Other than that, changes have been minimal. It's easy work, for the most part, something I can do a bit of before bed at night. "Marcy" is now done, and the two episodes of radio script have been combined into one short, intermission-free play.

"Plant Your Wagon" is about halfway done, each episode falling conveniently into a corresponding act. I'm also almost done with a demo of the songs in it featuring me croaking out the lyrics to the accompaniment of my equally wretched guitar playing. Copies will be available on request, but not on compunction.

Underground

I'm sorry about the radio silence as of late, but my blog time has been infringed upon by other duties as of late, most specifically by a job.

Yes, that is right. You're humble servant has had to rejoin the laboring classes just so that his family can keep its collective head above the waves for the time being.

As a writer, I am thinking of it as being something of a spy mission. I go out into the world masking my true vocation behind a facade of craven sophistication and collect impressions for projects yet to be thought of. Over the last several weeks I have temped as a glorified file clerk (one day), a glorified data entry maven (one day), and my current position, about which more later.

The first assignment was supposed to last for three months but came to a screeching halt after the lady in charge realized that I was a middle-aged white guy and not a 20-something girl suitable for bullying. The official reason given for my dismissal was that I wasn't outgoing enough, although, in my defense, there really aren't many chances for extended conversation with a filing cabinet. And, to make matters worse, I had been told by the rep at the temp agency to wear a suit, which turned out to be overkill. I think between the suit, the grey in my hair, and the overwhelming presence of my personality, my days were numbered as soon as I shook hands with the insecure bat who runs the place. Life's like that sometimes.

My next venture into the life of a double agent came a couple of mornings afterward when I got a desperate call at 8:30 in the morning asking me to fill in for someone who had called in sick, which is temp code for "I've got an interview for a real job today." The company involved researches jury behavior so that trial lawyers can better manipulate 12 citizens, loyal and true. I spent most of the day transcribing questionnaires completed by people who participated in a study for a pretty good fee. A decent experience, nice people and all, but this is a company that does something that is an abomination to our legal system. Nothing erodes our liberties quite as efficiently as the cynical pursuit of a dollar.

For my current assignment, I have had to go deep underground. Literally. I am working in a mailroom. I hand-deliver parcels and pick up outgoing mail. I may be called upon, at any time, to move furniture or help the founder's son park his boat. The air is dank and the light fluorescent in this man-made cave, and there are times when I could swear that I am developing moss on my northern side. Still it is honest work and my supervisor couldn't be nicer, and I get to spy on the cube moles and the blowfish in the offices and even get to glance at the executives on the top floor. Yes, even a cat can look at a king.

Meanwhile, especially since mailroom workers are not deemed responsible enough to have Internet access, there is little time for blogging. I have been working on a short story featuring Michael Drayton called "Something to Remember Her By" in my spare moments with pen and paper. Wednesday was a good day for it, but the others not so much. Who knows what the coming week will bring?

And in the meantime, it's all research. Sometimes it's good to go underground.

Proof

The Boyo one Xmas morning.

Spaghettios

I had originally intended to write something on my political blog about the American Democratic experiment, which seems to be in its death throes as we speak, but a far more interesting subject came to mind while preparing my son's lunch. Spaghettios.

The boy could eat this stuff seven-days-a-week, and I can't blame him. I well remember being a big Spaghettios fan when I was his age. I think most kids, given the opportunity, feel the same. He actually got them for breakfast once, courtesy of his grandmother, and such an experience can forge a real bond between boy and G'maw. And, after all, she's the one who started it by asking him what it was he wanted for breakfast, anyway.

For those who equate nutrition with morality, I will gladly lie and say that these are a special kind of Spaghettios whose pasta is made from organic whole grains. The sauce has an organic tomato base that has been spiced with only the freshest, most natural spices, and the meatballs are made either from hard tofu curdled from only organic soybeans or carefully contrived from the remains of free range cattle. I am a specialist at keeping a straight face and can tell you this as calmly as I can discuss the weather.

That is not what fascinates me about Spaghettios, though. There are certain thermal qualities about them that I find enthralling. For example, they never take more than three minutes to heat, regardless of how they are heated. In the microwave, they can be served piping hot in one-and-one-half to two minutes. However--and this is the enthralling part--they can be heated on the stove in less than three minutes at almost any heat. No matter where I set the dial, the heat proves sufficient to have the Spaghettios bubbling in three minutes.

Now, sometimes, I get distracted and come back to the stove to find them scorching and burning in the pan. No problem. Just scrape what you can into the nearest bowl for serving and put the pan in the sink with a modicum of water. And, c'est voila, the scorched Spaghettios wipe away from the the bottom of the pan quicker than you can say "chemical additive." I don't know whether they're made from Teflon or what, but if they are, it is Teflon fortified with calcium and Vitamin D.

Strong bones and clean pans. What more could a parent ask for?

And now you'll have to excuse me. I need to prepare my lunch, the special Kraft Macaroni and Cheese made from organic whole-grain pasta and farm-fresh Wenslydale.