yustyoking

Presidential Speechwriter?

  

            There’s an old adage about cursing the darkness or lighting a candle. Since I’m so disappointed in the current administration, last week, on May 15, I volunteered for the Blackie Diamond reelection campaign. As a speechwriter.

            Who knows, maybe my Maryland ideas can influence policy in the right direction.

            “My parents dreamed the impossible dream,” I have the candidate declare, arms spread wide, addressing the Class of 2012 on some pristine college campus. “It didn’t turn out so good. They found their goal was, in fact, IMPOSSIBLE. They did, however, do some other stuff— “ Yada, yada, yada, Diamond can tell what he and his parents had / have for their vision of America.

            “”New technology, new energy sources will transform our way of life!” I wrote. “Instead of fracturing the bedrock of the planet to release natural gas, we should utilize the natural gases on hand! Let us find a way to harness the enormous quantities of methane gas produced hourly by this country’s dairy cattle! By 2020, our slogan will be, ‘America runs on bovine gases!’ Cow farts and cow pies are natural sources of energy already readily available! New technology will allow us to tap into this previously untapped energy resource. It’s out there for the taking! Go to my website and click on the Jezebel the Cow icon to learn more.

            “There’s an obesity epidemic among our young people, while Latino day laborers mow our lawns, wash our cars, sweep our porches, wash our windows and paint our houses. What’s wrong with this picture? Re-institute child labor! Let our children have the same childhood we had! All that smelly, gunky, gooey, buggy, itchy, sweaty physical exertion has made us who we are today! Plunging toilets has made us strong! If I see a child watching TV, I send him into the backyard to sweep the redwood deck and pluck up fallen twigs. There’s always something more to do around the house! That’s the nature of living. ‘Vacuum the carpets, kid! ‘

            Seriously, folks, we have to separate business and medicine. Health care shouldn’t be an economic issue. Like national defense or universal primary school education, it should be a basic requirement of this nation. The richest, most powerful nation in the world, and we can’t provide basic health care for our citizenry? Shame on us! Shame on our politicians for making health care a political football!

            “Other nations are like New Yorkers: Their only concern is ‘What have you done for me today?’ We should enter every foreign entanglement with our baseball caps securely fastened on our heads, ready to get up and walk out at a moment’s notice. The Afghans don’t like us? Bye-bye! ‘Solve your own damn problems with the Taliban, you ass-holes! Don’t forget to turn out the lights on your way out.’

            “The bullshit has gone on for too long. Cut to the chase! Economically, politically, militarily, and in every other way! It is time to stop squabbling and making speeches while nothing gets accomplished. I know! Speeches are all I do.

            “It’s time for this country to GET REAL!”

                                                        *  

            Speechwriter for the president! Turns out I was dreaming the impossible dream. The FBI vetted me, testing the paper, the ink and my PC to be sure I wasn’t cutting and pasting someone else’s brainchilds, but I didn’t get the job.

            “With your background,” suggested my White House contact helpfully, “you should consider becoming an AID worker in Afghanistan.”

            “People are getting… killed doing that,” I remarked over the phone, barely restraining myself from dropping the F bomb.

            “You should consider becoming an AID worker in Afghanistan,” he repeated.                                

                                                          *

My Sozl Media

  

            Thank God for Mark Zuckerberg’s IPO. There is now room for more social media on the Net. Billion-dollar bank account, here I come!

Fazebook – Same photos, same content, but slightly out of focus.

Kidder – Algorithmic software converts all your tweets into Jay Leno-style monologues.

BooTube – Videos divided into categories, “most innocuous,” “totally atrocious,” R-rated,” “X,” “Family.”

Drivr – Takes you, at high speed, to websites you don’t wish to visit.

Obamr – Search engine congratulates you on your choice of topic, but does not connect you.

Amadeus.com – Order things on-line! (Religious articles only)

Yikes! – On-line visual telecommunications link, but everyone looks really ugly.

Wangr – Converts screen to gray. All text resembles green diodes.

Flicker – Content actually flickers. Interesting first impression, total eyestrain after 5 seconds.

Posr – Be whatever you want! Strike a pose! I, Kevin Feingold, am King of Mexico! OMG, didn’t you know that?!

T-zy – Confuses my friends into thinking I care about them, when, really, I’m like, totally self-absorbed. (How do you like this sweater?)

Angry Pols  – Same as Angry Birds, but with faces of politicians superimposed. Interesting use of filibuster.

PayBak – Uses PayPal to order things on-line that will annoy the designated recipient.

Dyslxing – Algorithmic software unscrambles all acronyms, abbreviations and misspellings. Changes wording into full-length, Oxford English. (Requires Windows 7 Professional or above.)

PinkedIn – The pissy part of professional relationships.

Filmfukd – Movie trailers for Indian, African and Iranian films not available in USA! Only movie trailers for these films.

Netflics – French Internet Police watch your every move. 

Sulu – All your favorite programs dubbed into Japanese!

Spredr – Accesses all your most secret, intimate thoughts and broadcasts them far and wide.

                                                         *

            Check Nasdaq for these IPO announcements.

                                                         *

Robocall

  

            Ring!

            “Hello?”

            “Hello! This is your candidate for Town Council, Barry Abramowitz!

            “I’m asking for your support in the upcoming election against incumbent Johnson T. Johnson. After two decades in office, Johnson has failed to provide the most basic of services. Where are the things they promised us!? Things like scented phonebooks, glow-in-the-dark sewers and traffic cameras sensitive enough to identify the nationality of the vehicle’s driver, check the license plate against a national database and automatically notify the police of illegal aliens.

            “Now that’s what I call technology!

            “What’s Johnson been doing the last 20 years?! Why don’t we have that stuff?

            “Click on the devil icon for more oppositional research about my opponent!

            “Here’s a brain-teaser. X plus three equals Y divided by 2. What is the value of voting for Obama?

            “Oh, I know what you’re thinking! ‘That clever Barry Abramowitz has found a NEW way of contacting the electorate.’ What’s my point? YOU are special! Only owners of BlackBerries, iPhones, Zonks, Coots, Bloops and Farts are receiving this message. It’s not going out as an email. This call is not available on landlines! It’s specifically for YOU, smartphone smartie!

            “You know how important it is to vote! You know how important it is to stay connected! Whether walking home from school, your place of employment or shopping, you know to tell classmate, coworker or soul mate, ‘I’m now crossing South 2^nd Street at the crosswalk with The 1812 Highway. Now I’m walking on the sidewalk adjacent to Walgreen’s.’ Important stuff! You know how important it is to text people, ‘Eating dinner @ Pauley’s. Soft shell crab excellent but expensive. U’ll never guess who sitting next table!’ You know to include a photo of your meal. You know to tweet your followers, ‘Tired. GTB. More tomorrow.’

            “Naturally, this message has both an auditory and a visual component. Please peruse my collection of pet photos, childhood photos, oh! That’s Christmas 1981! I know you, also, share fond memories of your youth.

             “Ignore Obama and his ‘compelling personal narrative.’ We had a life, too, y’know! Let’s get those good times back again, people!

             “The way things used to be before Johnson T. Johnson and the current gang took over the Town Council! Back when Our Gang ran local government. Our way! The American way! You know! Us! White folk!

            “Now, I’m not a racist, nothing could be farther from my heart! I just pine for a different set of values. A time when there was an abundance of produce on the shelves of our grocery stores, an abundance of faith in the pews of our synagogues and churches, an abundance of gasoline, an abundance of jobs, an abundance of alcohol in the bloodstream of America’s business community.

             “When bouffant hair-do’s meant something!

             “When a Rotarian was a highly respected member of the community.

            “Those values!

            “1950’s America! When this country stood tall, and didn’t find it necessary to apologize to anyone, be they hairless refugees dying of radiation sickness in Nagasaki or what have you. A proud nation! Indivisible! With liberty and justice for all!

            “Really, like Obama, my views don’t matter. What’s important is that I am a good person.

            “If elected, I will champion making Ramallah in the West Bank our Sister City. We can provide them with fiber optics and dollars. They can provide us with wooden matchsticks and hummus. Long live international peace, Patty Hearst, and the Symbionese Liberation Rhythm and Go-Go Band, in that order!

            “Thank you! Vote for me in the Democratic primary! You’ll find my name under the B’s, unfortunately. I wanted the A’s. You know, aleph, first letter of the alphabet. Abramowitz. But my opponent’s cronies have classified me as a bigot, so my name is listed under the B’s… B for Barry.

            “Never-the-less, we the voters, won’t be fooled again! Don’t make me throw myself off a roof, like that schlemiel Lieberman! Vote for Barry!

            “Unlike my opponent, this call has NOT been paid for with your hard-earned tax dollars.

             “Paid for by Friends of Fair Government, a Political Action Committee. Send your contributions by clicking on the dollar icon displayed on your screen!

             “Thank you!”

                                                        *

 

Lawn Care

  

            Mom’s lawn service is called MYGG, LLC, an acronym for Make Your Garden Grow. In Swedish, mygg means mosquito. I see similarities. “This is Franklin O’Rourke with MYGG,” the droning voice says on our answering machine. I have never, in 12 years, spoken with him on the phone. He always leaves a message. “We’ll be in your neighborhood to do [check appropriate box] Fall lawn treatment, Winter fertilization, Spring lawn care, Summer spraying.” Either he’s wired our house to see when we’re not home or he makes his calls at 3 a.m. In the Spring, Summer and Fall, he drives me nuts by adding, “Please have your lawn freshly mowed or between mowings.” In the Fall, Franklin adds, “Please rake up and remove all leaves from your lawn, as well as other debris, for our treatment to be most effective.”

            And he gives me the day and date I can expect them.

            We’re getting the treatment, all right. Has Frank ever considered that his proposal might in some way be inconvenient?

            Nope.

            So I have to arrange my life to prepare for the mysterioso visit of MYGG, LLC. Once I actually saw two enormously obese individuals spreading fertilizer pellets with plastic hurdy-gurdies belted to their chests. Once. Otherwise, they and their white truck (“Mommy! I saw it! I saw it! I saw it! ”) come and go as quietly as a soft breeze, leaving behind an odor, 20,000 fertilizer pellets and a yellow invoice in a plastic bag hung on the front door knob of our house.

            They know their stuff, I admit. Our lawn and shrubs are flourishing. I just wish I didn’t need to spend an hour of my time— literally, 60 minutes— meticulously sweeping miniature white and blue crunchy pellets off the front landing, the front walk, the public sidewalk, our paver driveway (hoo-ha!), the back walk, the carport and the basement stairs. Left untouched, these pellets deposit a chemical stain on the pavement. Worse, I can’t stand the crunch, crunch, crunch of tramping on them.

            So I sweep up, cussing a blue streak and wishing MYGG would get a leaf blower and clear my concrete surfaces before spiriting themselves away in their golden (okay, white) chariot.

            In order to get the lawn fertilized, I’m at their beck and call. It’s stressful and I don’t like it. George, across the street, has actually spoken with them. “Utter and total contempt for us all,” he says.

            Come again?

            “I was thinking of using them, until Franklin went into a harangue about how his customers are ‘office matrons too pre-occupied with their own lives to be bothered with fertilizing their own lawns.’ That’s a direct quote.”

            “But… they’re in business!” I protest.

            “Exactly,” says George. “Maybe Franklin wanted to be something else in life. Maybe he’s frustrated. Who knows?”

            I know that my dad Bernie treated his own lawn. “Farmer Brown,” it was a religious experience: The Spring Fertilization. The Fall Treatment. The Winter Service. Best of all, he never had to lift a finger, using the three pickaninnies living on the property— his children— as plantation labor. Band leader, he waved his hands and in a hectoring voice called out, “You lazy jerks! Use the paring knife to slit open the bag. That’s right! Pour the fertilizer into the spreader, you shiftless bums. Kevin, be careful !  Tim, hold the spreader still! Okay, you worthless dolts, roll it out onto the grass— DON’T TOUCH THAT HANDLE! Roll it out onto the grass, you ungrateful clods, before you pull the handle that opens the vent and starts the spreader. Carol… CAROL! Get the rake and walk behind Kevin, raking the grass to more evenly spread the pellets. Gently, Carol, we’re not trying to pull the grass out by its roots! You hopeless ingrates! Tim, what are you standing around for? Get a bucket and wash my car!”

            So there are alternatives to using a lawn care service.

                                                         *

 

Ships In the Night

 

                            “Push the button when you hear this beep!”

               – instruction on the View-Master recording of Sleeping Beauty

                                                          *

          My momma likes to go on cruises. Walking with a cane at 90 years of age, the luxury of a cruise ship and her limited mobility = a good time. We sail on, gulp! Yes, you guessed it, The Scotch-Irish Line. Recently, we took a cruise to Baja, California. Cheap fares and top food sure beats top fares and cheap food. Some Brits say it’s the downside, some say it’s the up, but you also rub shoulders with a lot of Scotsmen and Irishmen. I can toss a bit of the old blarney, so I enjoy their horrendous rants. I do a lot of ranting myself.

           The itineraries are good: At every stop, they offer excursions, through local vendors. At every stop, I go scuba diving.

          At one of those Polideportivo sport centers that the Mexicans are so good at carving out of the jungle, I finish my dive, use the Men’s Room and walk down among the thatched huts. I load a paper plate with barbecued chicken, charbroiled squash, mango, locally grown potatoes, boiled cabbage and some concoctions whose identity remains a mystery to me. Lunch is included in the price of the dive.

         “May I sit here?” I ask nervously at a small, wooden table. I’m nervous because the thrilling blond goddess sitting alone at this table for four is just about the most beautiful creature I have ever seen in my life. Vov! as we say in Swedish. Wow!

         “Sure! Sit down,” she drawls, an enormous smirk on her gorgeous, young face.

          “There are other… you have other…” I’m stammering, nodding at the glossy handbags adorning the other two chairs.

          “Yeah, they’re my friends. They’re in the loo,” she replies with that ABBA Swenglish we’ve all come to enjoy listening to on iTunes.

          “You’re Swedish!”— I’m not asking, I’m stating a fact.

          So what else is new? telegraphs her dour frown.

          After that, we speak Swedish.

          Her name is Filippa Vingård, which— if you know Swedish— is quite a stretch. A very unusual first name. “I call myself Phyllis Weingarten,” she explains, that toothy white smile of hers outshining the sun. “Why does everyone think I’m Jewish?”

         Uh-h-h-h, how to explain?

         I am VERY MUCH in love with this girl: I experience a decided dizziness, as 90% of my blood flows into my nether organs. I have a burning in my throat, acute indigestion before eating a bite, the sweats. “It’s just an American thing,” I reply. “There are so many nationalities, people always try to pigeonhole one another in some category. You can call yourself Felicia Roussos. Then everyone will think you’re Greek.”

         She has me write it on a napkin with her trusty ballpoint, practices saying it a few times. “But I’d have to get a new driver’s license,” she remarks.

         “But you’d have to get a new driver’s license,” I agree.

          Her girlfriends join us and, God help me, my cup runneth over! Already, they’ve zeroed in on my swimsuit. Under the table, I’m as erect as a sheik’s tent. Laughing openly, they introduce themselves, Anna-Karin and Sussi.

         “Okay, I get it,” I tell them. “It’s a photo shoot. The swimsuit issue of a Swedish sport magazine.”

         “No, no,” they laugh. “It’s just a vacation, ‘though the beach snakes are fearsome around these parts. Mexican beach snakes.”

         “Caballeros,” I guess. Men.

         “Caballeros,” they giggle, their cute little hands— with phenomenally painted nails— held shyly over their mouths.

          They keep talking about Washington, D.C., Arizona, California and Mexico. Filippa is here specifically to purchase a taco-making machine. “We have all the ingredients locally in Arizona,” she explains. “All we need is the machine for making the tacos. I have people doing it by hand, but a machine would be a lot faster.”

           “You run a restaurant?”

           “A food service.” En matleverantör.

           “You’re a caterer?”

           “So they tell me!” she chortles, poking me in the side playfully. “How do you like the food here? Typical Mexican cuisine!”

           “I love it! Hot and spicy.”

           “Kevin here was in the army,” Filippa tells Anna-Karin and Sussi. 

          We finish lunch and they want to climb a mountain trail.

            ???

           Mountain trail = Sex orgy? My hormones must be doing a number on me, I think.

          “We heard about this really great trail!” they insist earnestly.

          “Sure! But our boat goes in 20 minutes,” I point out. “Come on! Let’s do our thing!” It’s such a small island, you could cross it twice in 20 minutes.

          The hang-bridge at the head of the trail is out, all that remains are the ropes and hand-holds. The ropes are an inch thick. There’s a ravine 15 feet below, but it’s all sand and water, so I waddle across on the ropes, feet splayed like Charlie Chaplin. “Okay,” I call to them. “It’ll hold your weight!” Following my lead, they come over, one after the other.

           Cool!

           We march up the trail, a series of switchbacks that obviously have fallen on hard times. “This probably looked nice when they first built it,” I remark, balancing precariously on crumbling bricks.

          As agile as billy goats, my companions sashay past me up the hill, their tight little rear ends a wonder to behold.

           From the top of the hill, we can see our water taxi pulling into the bay. All too soon, I have to turn us around and head back to the beach. They each put $5 in the island tip jar. I’ve already tipped my dive instructor and the team leader $5 apiece, but I fish out my wallet from my backpack and add my cinco to the mix.

           As we churn for the mainland, they sit up front, on the deck, drawing hungry stares from every adult male on board. Minimal bikinis, acres of tanned skin, sun-drenched hair, wraparound sunglasses, pug noses and voluptuous bodies will have that effect under the baking Mexican sun! The blaring disco music is too much for my tender ears. I abandon them and take refuge in the wheelhouse, where the burly, bearded pilot is steering with one hand and plying the space between a señorita’s legs with the other. She seems to enjoy it, all smiles. Not wanting any trouble, I sip a cup of guava juice provided by the staff and watch the skyline coming nearer over the water.

            My destination is the cruise ship. The ladies have flown in and are staying at a beachfront hotel.

            “When does your boat leave?” Filippa asks.

            “Actually, it leaves in about an hour,” I ruefully reply.

            “That’s too bad,” she says in English, sounding like Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

            “For that,” I say, “I have to be allowed to kiss you!”

            It’s a Swedish thing. She’s vamping. I appreciate the effort.

            We smooch a little there on the quay, surrounded by tourists, a brilliantly sunny day in Mexico. We exchange business cards.  

             Amazingly, her card says, “Washington, D.C.”

             “I’m right there in Maryland!” I tell her excitedly. “I mean, this is incredible! We’re neighbors.”

            “That’s the headquarters,” she explains. “I’m hardly ever there. But you can email me.”

           “Sure. Yes! Wow! I mean, okay!”

            With a final tug at our heartstrings and a final, innocent kiss, we part.

                                                        *

           I receive an email from CharlizeWatson3045@ gmail.com: “Your 90-year-old mom should join an NGO and make the desert bloom!!!”

           It doesn’t make any sense. I ignore it.

           A week later, I receive another email from the same address. “We did meet, it’s your old buddy Filippa from the Sport Island. We ate lunch and hiked a freaky tail.”

           I immediately write back in Swedish: “Sure! Yes! GREAT to hear from you. How’s your life getting on?”

            “I just visited old friends in Alberta, Canada. They have a two year old who is sooooooooooooooo cute!” she writes me in English, showing off her virtuosity.

          “That’s very good! That’s very nice,” I write back. I bring her up to date on what’s happening here in Maryland. Politics inside the Beltway. Obama. All that good shit.

           A week later, I get a breathless email from… I’m getting a little alarmed! Filippa is kind of a dreamer and hard to pin down, but I don’t even know where she lives! “Sorry you haven’t heard from me, I been visiting my sister and her adorable little baby boy in San Antonio. Hot, hot was the Texas weather, but we always have so good a time and they have air conditioning. Very modern. Her husband Roland we call Roly Poly and he is very kind. So it was a great trip. Now I’m home again, unpacking and washing clothes.”

           Swedish ladies of a certain age have babies on the brain. We call them “heifers.” Their biological clocks are ticking. They want to procreate. If I didn’t know this from personal experience, Elin Nordegren Woods and the other golf wives are living examples of this urge.

           So, yes, great, I’m glad Filippa likes children, but it doesn’t exactly bring my penis to attention.

          She also invites me to join Linked–In, the social media site for professionals. Like Facebook, that is the last thing I would ever consider! I am not a joiner. Social media, my ass.

         Writing her, I mention in passing the wry fact that I don’t actually have email at home. I have a grand old PC in my bedroom (I’m hammering away on it as I write this), a monster from 1995 whose CMOS battery has died. It still functions as a word processor, Microsoft Word 97 and all. I save everything on a thumb drive and upload onto the Net at the public library, where they have 40 Dell PC’s in a clean, well lighted place.

Subject: Re: PC’s at library

Kevin, I certainly hope this is not an economic issue with you because my last boyfriend Pelle was forever saying “Oh, this restaurant is too expensive” and “Oh, that airline ticket cost too much” and going on all the time about money!!!!!! Is that you, some kind of miser????? A snåljåp. Because, if so, this friendship is, like, so very much over and done with, goodbye!!!!!!! Filippa 

          ¡Ay, caramba! This fire and brimstone reaction I never expected. I immediately write back and assure Filippa that this is just a peculiarity that amuses me, a modest quirk. It has nothing to do with the economics of it, I don’t consider $35 a month for Internet in the home such an onerous burden. “If you ever catch me penny-pinching, Filippa, call me on it and I will stand corrected.”

          At the same time, I don’t claim to be independently wealthy. I’m certainly not stepping into that trap.

Subject: What is your sweet spot?

Hola, Kevin! I wanted to kidnap you from Sport Island. Did you know that? I did! Don’t be so hard on yourself, baby! Where shall you and I travel together? Do you want to take me to Aruba? Whisk me off my feet! Or do you prefer Cabo san Lucas? Belize would be nice! I have always wanted to see the jungle in Belize. Let me know where you want us to go together and I’ll book with the travel agent. Your amiga, Filippa

            Mi amiga, my lady friend.

            Beautiful women the world over, heads held high, can be hard to please. High maintenance. I mean, I know that. But what is with all this traveling? Is she traveling on business? She keeps telling me about all the friends and family she stays with: “The Custers and I met on a cruise and have been bosom buddies ever since. They were so delighted to have me! I stayed a week… 

           “I met Tim and Roberta Hudson last year in Las Vegas. I love their seven year old and I’m her favorite person in the whole wide world!…

            “Margaret and Stan have known me since we shared adjacent motel rooms in Albuquerque, New Mexico in a hail storm. That experience cemented the friendship. I have made it a point to visit them regularly ever since…

            “Bob and Sally Davis are among my very favorite people. I use their log cabin whenever I am in Maine.”

            I don’t know Filippa well enough to judge. I do know that I have cousins, two sisters, Judy and Lauren, who constantly correspond snail mail with my mom, their Aunt Rose. “I will be visiting the Nation’s Capital to see college chums Patty and Derek on July 19^th. We can go to dinner, Aunt Rosa, on the 21^st, 22^nd or 23^rd. Let me know which is most convenient,” writes Judy. Mom and I have taken her to dinner at least twice a year for as long as I can recall. That means we’ve been doing it twelve years! She has yet to pick up the check. “My late husband Ronald spoiled me rotten,” she gushes. “I found I liked it!”

            Her younger sister Lauren is even more forthcoming. “Hiya, Aunt Rosa!” she writes. “I’m staying at the Dolley Madison for a horticultural conference on March 21^st. Have Kevin pick me up at Reagan National Airport on March 21 at 2:35 p.m. I’ll be available for a late dinner on all three nights, March 22-23-24, as the conference only occupies the daylight hours. We’re at the forefront of the green revolution, learning housetop gardening techniques. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. Kevin can take me back to Reagan National at 9:30 a.m. on March 25. I’m so glad I can fit you guys into my schedule. I miss you so much!”

            Lauren has never been known to pick up a check either. In the midst of flamboyant talk and wild reminiscences, she all too often lets drop the none too subtle hint that her economic situation isn’t all that she could currently desire. Hint, hint, hint, hint…

            We call them J.A.P.’s, Jewish American Princesses.

             Where do the girls get it from? My parents couldn’t winter in Florida without Aunt Gertie and Uncle Max inviting themselves to join them. Uncle Max could afford to drive a Mercedes, since someone else always paid for their vacations. So much for the Straub family! Yes, we’re Jewish, but the Swedes, too, have family and farm traditions ripe with the communal spirit:

                               “What’s yours is mine and

                                    what’s mine is mine!”

            Thus, I grow slightly perturbed, a bit queasy, basically unsure, when I cannot place Filippa’s behavior in the best possible light.

Subject: Soft start

Hi, Filippa! If you’re going to be on the East Coast anytime soon, let’s do something more local to begin with. Grand travel plans can wait. Thanks! K

Subject: Maine, New York, New Jersey

So, Kevin, my friend, my travel plans are as follows. Maine with Bob and Sally Davis from May 12 – 17, New York City with Carl and Louise Jeffers and their darling children May 18 – 24. I will be staying in Atlantic City, New Jersey with my best friends in the whole world Sven and Maria Jakobsson from May 25 to May 29. Come ON, Kevin, one of these dates must fit your schedule????

            Are all these people really dying to see her or is Filippa the perpetual guest?

Subject: Let’s do Atlantic City!

Hi, Filippa! Atlantic City will be truly excellent. I’ll drive up. I know the place. What’s their address, so I can book a motel on the correct side of town? Yours, K

Subject: R U a planner?

You sound like a planner, Kevin. You know, that weekend is American holiday Memorial Day Weekend. I’m thinking how crowded the Atlantic City hotels will be on big holiday weekend. I shall talk with Sven and Maria now, this Saturday or Sunday. It would be better if you flew out to Arizona and join me in camp. I’m delighted you are being flexible about this.

           Jesus Christ! With Filippa, things keep getting more and more complicated! Camp? What camp?

          In sociology, they talk about making an “emotional investment.” The more arduous the journey, the deeper your commitment. A pilgrimage to Mecca tests the depth of a Believer’s faith. Right up front, in the first inning of this new ballgame, Filippa wants me to travel straight across the country, testing not only my endurance, but the extent of my emotional involvement. We hardly know each other! I just find it a little early in the relationship for her to put up Challenges which I must overcome to win the hand of Faire Maiden.

          I feel like I’m on board the Titanic.

          I don’t like mind games!

           I know! I know! I have no sense of romance. Servicing the hydraulics on vehicles in the U.S. Army Tank Corps brings you down to Earth very fast. The smell alone is an education.

           My Swedish wife Eva read the teen romance magazine Mitt livs novell (“My Life Story”). Valiant suitors chased pretty damsels across its pages. “Should I abandon Kalle, who has always been so loyal to me, for the dashing Sven? Is Sven just toying with me or could this be true love?” At the end, someone collapses into someone else’s arms. (I’d have Kalle and Sven pair up, but that’s not Mitt livs novell ‘s demographic.)  Very young, Eva and I drained the cup of happiness in that marriage down to the bitter dregs.

           Carried away, I email Filippa, “Okay, let’s do camp!”

           I joke about being “a soldier, once again under canvas.” I adopt an adventurous spirit, telling myself that it’s time to live a little.  

           What the hell kind of camp and why Arizona? She’s a caterer. I don’t get it. The pieces don’t add up. In politics, they call it Bait & Switch. Arizona isn’t what I signed up for. It’s a Friday night, and as the evening wears on, my impetuous behavior begins to annoy me. I wanted to meet her in Atlantic City to avoid getting on an airplane, renting a car, all that vacation palaver. Here I am, back in the soup again.

            Saturday morning, I rush to the library and email her, “Don’t cancel your Atlantic City plans on my account! I don’t think I can make a weekend trip to Arizona fit into my schedule at this point. I’ll arrive exhausted and be horrendous company. The equation doesn’t add up. Stick to Atlantic City. That’s far better for all concerned!”                

            Afraid I’m messing up her plans, I even call the 1-800 number on her business card. I punch in her extension and get a message: “This is an automated voice messaging system. Your call is being forwarded to the voice mail of… [her voice] Phyllis Weingarten…[the robot] Please leave a message. When you’re finished, you may hang up or press ‘1’ for more options.”

            “I don’t want your weekend plans to depend on me,” I explain in immaculate Swedish. “Let me hang with you guys in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and we’ll take it from there. Call me! Don’ t cancel Atlantic City on my account, please! “

                                                        *

            “I don’t see what your problem is regarding Arizona,” Filippa writes back. I get the email on Sunday. Now I’m traipsing to the library daily, meaning an extra three-mile schlepp to Central Library on Sunday. “I really want to show you the camp. The countryside is breath-taking and everyone who sees it falls in love with it. You’ll have your own cot. I don’t expect you to sleep with me. So come on out and we’ll have a ball! Yours affectionately, Filippa.”

            When reciting my phone number on her voice mail, I have enunciated super-clearly. It’s the same number as on my business card. She does not telephone me.

                                                          *

            My mom had a bridge partner named Richard Dexter, a retired naval rear admiral. His wife had a live-in Filipina maid named Brandy Wine. Not only was her name a hoot, she was a character straight out of a Rogers & Hammerstein musical. When the Dexters would leave town on longer trips, Brandy brought home washing, through her church, and ran a 24-hour-a-day laundry. For cash. I only found out about it because Brandy telephoned me with a problem: The constant vibration of both washer and drier had the machines dancing across the utility room floor. Brandy called to ask me to secure the máquinas. Taking wooden blocks, bolts and assorted tools to the Dexters’ house, I discovered mounds of laundry in every room.

            “What’s this, Brandy?” I asked.

            “Oh, is laundry I do for my church. The Dexters, they want I should do this!” she insisted.

            Not being a squealer, I never told the Dexters. I did tell my mom.

            “This damn county,” Dex would complain over dinner at one of the finer restaurants. “Our water bill is reaching catastrophic proportions!”

            Mom and I look at each other, but don’t comment.

            Their washer and dryer never last ten years.

            “We must have gotten a lemon,” says Maria Dexter. “We don’t run washes that often for our equipment to keep breaking down on us like this!”

            Mom kicks me under the table. At home she counsels me, “Brandy is their maid. It’s their business! You keep your nose out of it, you hear?”

            Good advice.

            I see it as a case of conflicting agendas.

                                                        *

Date: Sunday, May 6, 2012

Subject: Mem Weekend Out

Hi, Filippa! Air travel on Memorial Day Weekend will be among the WORST of the year. If there’s one time the industry tells us to avoid, it’s that weekend. Take it from an old hand, I worked for Vasco da Gama Airline. Big holidays are Hell! It’s simply not do-able. Flight delays may be endless. A 5-hour trip could take 12 hours. It’s a crap shoot. You never know. People get stuck at airports overnight. Even if I reach Arizona, I’ll be so exhausted, I’ll need to spend 24 hours just recuperating. Resting and sleeping. Not exactly your boon companion. So let’s get together some other time. K

            “You know,” mom tells me over dinner, “when she made that fuss about her previous boyfriend, and how you shouldn’t be a tightwad, that lost me right there! If she was a mensch, she would have let you show your true colors, not made generosity a stipulation of your friendship.”

            I have just brought my mom up to date on where everything stands. I’d intended to use her car to drive to Atlantic City. My bird’s egg blue Honda Accord is fun to drive, but it’s too old to make that long a trip.

            Half the charities my mom contributes to are graded “F” by the rating agency. Less than 15% of their revenue gets used for the advertised purpose of the organization. Everything else goes to salaries, travel expenses and overhead. The remaining charities on her list pay their CEO’s a salary in excess of $500,000 a year. “We can’t get top notch help for less,” they bleat. And these are charities. Mom gives anyway, but we share a cynical attitude toward Tikkun olam, repairing the world. We’re not fools. Human nature being what it is, we don’t expect greed, avarice and selfishness to evaporate anytime soon.

             A Cobra gunship flies over the house. This doesn’t even begin to make sense. Either it’s a time warp or a collector’s item. I know I’m not hallucinating, but… what’s the answer?

             In 1969, my personal heart-throb, my high school sweetheart Peggy Sue Cockburn, was home from college on Spring Break. I was finished with the Army and Vietnam, although there was a gentlemen’s agreement that I would re-up after college. I was studying Communications at Moosegrave and living at home in Oxburg, Maryland, in the house where I grew up. My dad and I did not get along, but that was “too fucking bad “ because I was seeing a psychiatrist four times a week. The Old Man could like it or lump it! I was so dangerous to myself and others, the only way for me to get discharged from the Army was for my parents to sign me up for psychiatric care. After a few months of therapy, that plainly wasn’t going to cut it. I ended up undergoing psychoanalysis with a brilliant clinician named Dr. Milton Rothstein. Together, he and I created the psychological tools I would need to navigate my way through life’s little stresses.

             It’s April. Bearded, long hair, a badass pot smoker, I’m driving by the Cockburn residence on my way to an evening class in Kantian Philosophy. Every damn light is on at their house. “Peggy Sue’s home!” I think, my heart pounding. Forget school! I pull my little red sports car (bought used for $1,000) into their driveway. I ring the bell.

             “Oh, hi-i-i-i-i !” she chants, standing in the door, giggling. Black slacks, a blood-red blouse, lo-o-ong blond hair, flashing blue eyes, a startlingly thick purple band of rouge rising up from each eyelid. She turns on her heels and leads me to the kitchen. We sit smoking cigarettes at the kitchen table. She tells me about school— the University of Oklahoma, in her case. She’s just turned 21. She’s in her prime: cute as a pin, a gorgeous figure, fulsome little breasts, a stupendous face, an ass sweet enough to die for.

             “Jamie Reese and I go pan-handling in town when we don’t have any money,” she says in that incredibly whiny voice of hers, wrinkling her nose and chuckling.

            Jag sitter som förstenad, I sit there, paralyzed, gazing into her eyes. “Y-Y-You must be wonderful a-at…p-pan-handling, Peggy Sue. I… don’t… know… how anyone c-could… refuse you anything!” I gasp.

            “Gosh, if somebody would just loan me $250, I can fly back to school and I won’t have to take that long drive with Mike Haskins in his pick-up truck!” she informs me, widening her eyes. She takes a drag on her cigarette and holds her hand out over the ashtray, ostensibly to knock off ash. I reach… out… and touch her hand.

           “G-Gosh, P-Peggy Sue! I… I could do that!” I sigh.

           “Peggy Sue! Peggy Sue! Come see Kevin’s cute little red sports car!” Mrs. Cockburn shouts from the living room. Whatever Peggy Sue has, she got it from her mom. A dominatrix par excellence, Mrs. C wears the pants, bossing her poor husband around to beat the band. The Colonel’s refuge is Vietnam. On his third tour, he’s hardly ever home.

            “I’ve already seen it!” drawls Peggy Sue, still riveting me with her stare.

             “Are you going to loan me the $250?” she asks, making the amount sound like it’s three sentences long.

            I own exactly $248 to my name. That’s what I have in my bank account at Gramercy Bank. Miserable, I tell her, “I don’t have the money!”

            “Shit!” she replies. “You always let me down, Kevvy! You always have and you always will!”

            “My psychiatrist says I shouldn’t see you anymore,” I blurt out. “He thinks… you’re just stringing me along!” Hey, I’m 20 years old, totally fucked up after Vietnam, piecing my life back together.

            “I think psychiatrists cause more problems than they solve,” says my Vixen Savior, the Light of My Life, my One True Love. “You should come out to Oklahoma! We can live together, silly!”

            Whenever she calls me “silly,” my dog whistle, I melt. Since ninth grade.

            You choose! A 21-year-old coed who is heart-stoppingly beautiful, poignant, but not yet mature or a 42-year-old psychiatrist who has professional credits— and knowledge— as long as your arm.

            Peggy Sue pulls a pendant on a silver chain out of her blouse, balances it on her fingertips and begins swinging it back and forth. “You’d better… not… stare… too long… at this… pen..dant,” she chants in a sing-song voice, “or… you’ll… get… really… sleep-y!” And she laughs and laughs and laughs.

            My head is spinning. I get the hell out of there, that scathing laughter of hers ringing in my ears.

            This was one of life’s turning points. I could have gone the one way or the other. I chose to go with the intellectual alternative, coldly suppressing my inclination to give in to my emotions. I just couldn’t trust Peggy Sue and me, myself and I to provide any kind of a life for the two of us. I suspect everything would have ended up a mess, with us hating one another.

            It’s one of those moments I think about when contemplating the road less traveled.

            Yeah, I’m a control freak. I like to know where my next meal is coming from. Nor do I think this requires any apologies on my part.        

Date: Monday, May 7, 2012

Subject: Re: Mem Weekend Out

Okay, Kevin. I thought you were more of a man than that. No biggie. You can’t stand the hustle and bustle of a busy airport. Life goes on. Maybe we’ll stay in touch. I can not go to Atlantic City, I already told Maria and Sven “no” and they have made other plans. Ho hum. I see them another time! Meanwhile, I am in Arizona. I serve meals to, like, 400 illegals who all got to eat. That’s what I do, baby! While you enjoy yourself, I am working! Diligently, Filippa

         It’s definitely starting to piss me off that Filippa won’t admit that Maria and Sven Jakobsson bailed on her. It’s obvious they told her not to come. They have other plans. Instead of forthrightly admitting this, even to herself, Filippa emails me, claiming to be concerned about the crowds on the boardwalk and in the hotels. So it becomes my fault that Atlantic City fell through. I promised to join her in camp! So she cancelled Atlantic City. It says here. In the small print. And I ought to be held to my promise. It says here.

          I don’t think so. And I definitely don’t like being put in the wrong.

Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Subject: Ships Passing In the Night

Hello, Filippa! I finally GET it. You are running a refugee camp for Mexican illegals caught crossing the border into Arizona. You feed them, that is what your food provider business does. You get paid by the NGO running the show. When you’re not in camp working, you travel. This is all news to me! Sorry it took me so long to fit the pieces together. K

         Yowl ! This time I really stamped on the cat’s tail! “If you wanted to know about my business, why didn’t you open my invitation to Linked–In,” she writes back, furious. “Are you an idiot? My business description very succinctly tells you everything you might want to know. Linked–In. That’s why I sent you invitation!!!!!! Cretin!!!!!”

          Shit! That stings! Anyone who’s spent a few years soldiering through war zones feels a little trepidation over having their face and/or curriculum vitae on-line for all to see. Facebook. Twitter. The social media. Not too bright a prospect. The world wide web. My face. My particulars. There are perfectly justified, angry refugees who can swear that U.S. Army Field Officer Kevin should have

                                 a)    saved their village

                                 b)    gotten the wounded onto a medevac

                                 c)    negotiated a truce with the rebels

                                 d)    all of the above.

          Broadcast my existence? No thanks!

          “Why do I have to subscribe to a website to get a simple, one-sentence description of what you do?” I write back. “Just asking and all.”

Subject: Take yourself in your backside!

Du gör mig så förbannad, din jävla typ! Glöm det! Dig vill jag aldrig mera höra talas om!

Hejdå! Filippa

( “You make me so angry, you fucker! Forget it! You, I never want to hear about, ever again!

Goodbye! Filippa” )

           So, I fucked it up! If I had signed up for Linked–In, we would not have been ships passing one another in the night.

           Different strokes for different folks, I never have this problem with my little bro’ Timothy. We’re super-careful to stay on the same page, and if we get out of kilter, we make damn sure to straighten things out. My mom and I have had some humongous misunderstandings. We’ve had shouting matches that left us both hoarse for a week. I apologize and we get over it. Or she doesn’t and we let time heal the wound. But we’ve known each other all my life.

           Filippa and I spent an hour together on an island beach and have exchanged 24 emails— a dozen apiece— over an eight week period of time.

           “Okay, don’t get excited, man,” I’m thinking. “Just because I’m sure, I know.”

            Monkee-speak.

             Davy Jones says this at the beginning of the pop song “Daydream Believer,” The Monkees’ second biggest hit. This 1967 smash did something else, as well. It introduced into the vernacular the expression “7A.” Some squads in Vietnam began to use this as a synonym for “Excellent!” If something was conspicuously better than anticipated, you marveled, “7A, man, 7A! ” As far as I can tell, the expression evolved from the pop song. We had “receiving you five by five” on the radio— five points of amplification, five points of modulation. That put the needle in the dead center of the grid = max reception. So we added a bit of slang of our own. Happens all the time. In 1980’s Germany, a prostitute who actually enjoyed sex was called “an REO Speedwagon.” Soldiers need to make up their own definitions to explain their existence.

           In this situation, the “don’t get excited” part just seems to fit. An earworm.

           “Okay, don’t get excited, man. Just because I’m sure, I know.”

                                                        *

Live from Palookastan

 

            “Hello and good evening, my fellow Americans. This is my 134^th television address. I know it’s becoming a daily occurrence, but I am the president of the most powerful nation in the world and that should give me some prerogatives. I’ve seen how the Russkies look at us with a combo of envy and enmity. It gives me great pleasure to be able to look ‘em in the eye and say, ‘Go fluff yourself, Ivan!’

            “But I’m not in Russia tonight. Nor is Russia the topic of my speech. No, I’m in the small, war-torn nation of Palookastan, here ostensibly to sign a treaty with President Baniak Plotzi. President Plotzi is a wonderful man! I knew him when he still lived in Bethesda, Maryland and ran a car dealership. ‘Don’t buy from Plotzi if you’re worried about the legitimacy of your paperwork,’ people said. Ha! Ha! Funny! ‘Never buy a used car from Plotzi, he’ll trick you every time,’ my neighbors pointed out. Good old Baniak! What a wily character! Naturally, I was delighted when an earlier administration installed him as president of this little, war-torn country. I figured a wheeler-dealer like Plotzi would make quick work of the Muslim insurrectionists. Little did I know what a whiner and complainer he’d become.

            “So, here we are, ten years later, still bogged down in the shitty little country of Palookastan.

            “On Sunday— that is, two days ago— I was in the Situation Room using, you know, Skype, to teleconference with President Plotzi. Our server went down for a few minutes— nothing major— and, sitting there, I thought, ‘I’m president of the United States! Why should I, Blackie Diamond, need to sit here, stewing in my juices, waiting on faulty equipment?’ That’s when I told my staff to get out the old chariot and wind up the rubber band. We’d fly, instead of cogitating, to Palookastan and rally the troops! Best decision I’ve made in awhile!

            “Firstly, it gets me out of Washington, D.C. Don’t take it personally, but that burg is one hot kettle of fish.

            “Secondly, and more importantly, I get to emphasize my role as Commander In Chief. I mean, thank God George Washington wore two hats! Commander of the Continental Army and, you know, president. Now, anyone who gets elected Prez automatically becomes— you don’t even have to go to Staff College!— not a captain, not a rear admiral, not a vice admiral or even an admiral. Not even a fleet admiral in time of war… Oh, no! ‘Mastah Flash! ‘ Top dog! Commander In Chief!

            “Suck on them apples, Ivan!

            “Actually, my staff was, like, ‘Whoa! Is that a good idea? Traipsing halfway around the world?’

            “Every decision between now and November is viewed, naturally, in the context of re-election. Man gotta get re-elected.

            “So when I points out the po-tential for a flashy, campaign-style visit with the troops, and then this here bully pulpit Sermon On the Mount from the Plotzi Palace, my rod and my staff, they comfort me!

            “I love meeting the troops! I have never served a day in my life, and these young people will courageously ride into the Valley of the Shadow of Death for me. Now that’s power! Mind over matter. Patriotism. Aromatic charisma. Aromatic miasma. Catnip for the soul.

            “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this war, it is this: If you want to freak out a German, urinate while standing up! We stand, they sit.

            “No, seriously, the Paloos are totally self-absorbed. That’s what I wanted to say! We give ‘em all this money and equipment, and they don’t even show us a particularly good time. Charlie Wilson knew how to throw a party! This palace is… I don’t want to say ‘dreary,’ but… it ain’t The Playboy Club. ‘Keyholders only!’ Bunnies! Tha’s what I’m talkin’ about! Bunny tails.

            “Listen. Here’s the nuts and bolts of my speech: I’ve signed a treaty with President Plotzi that SPECIFICALLY STATES that we are pulling American Armed Forces out of this pretty little country. And I mean, sooner rather than later!

            “Real soon.

            “Soon.

            “Soon enough.

            “A written treaty. I know, because my rod, my staff and I wrote it. I mean, I didn’t use my rod to write it, but… Whatever!

            “This is a really important treaty that fully justifies flying over here.

            “The G.A.O.— that’s the General Accounting Office— has very kindly pointed out to my staff that Air Force One costs $179,750 an hour to operate. Now, Palookastan is kinda a longish type flight, 14 hours and 30 minutes. Since I intend to come back home, this little… trip… cost a cool $5,212,750.

            “See! I have nothing to hide, you Republicans! I’m not ashamed to let it all hang out there when I am acting in service to the American people. Just fixing the cracks in the Washington Monument after the Mineral, Virginia earthquake is gonna cost $24 million. So my five mil is, like, chicken feed. Lots o’ school lunches you could buy fo’ five mil, but that’s not the point! We’re trying to shore up a sniveling, whiny ally whose got problems! Serious problems !

            “Peace, brothers!

            “As I was saying, I had already talked with Baniak on Skype. The doctor in me decided it was time for a house call. Think of this as an episode on ‘E.R.’ We want the patient to survive, don’t we?

            “So here I be! We killed our arch-enemy Salami bin Lahtis, and that’s a good thing. Never liked that guy! He gave the field of general aviation a bad rep. Flying airplanes into buildings will do that. He gone! I here! Who’s laughing now, Salami?!

             “I do resent those who claim I am turning a treaty-signing ceremony into a campaign rally. Nothing could be further from the truth. That said, I want to give a shout-out to Stan Gillepsie and all you voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Go, blue state, go!  To you Virginians, I say, ‘Hooray for Sir Walter Raleigh!’ Special thanks, also, to Jack and Jill Hill of Oxburg, Maryland, who have carried a lot of water for this campaign.

               “Salutations to animal lovers everywhere! I need your vote.

               “Really, the kind of dog you own often defines who you are. Here at Plotsi Palace, the dogs are all Pekinese. In Palookastan, the tail all too often wags the dog.

               “My family in the White House has, of course, an Alsatian Lapdog. That’s me! ‘Is there a dog in the house?’

               “As it says in the Bible, each of us gets the dog he or she deserves— or words to that effect!

               “To my critics, carping on the stagnant economy, I say, there IS an easy answer: ‘The dog ate my homework!’

               “Naw, now I’m just funnin’ ya! But to quote stand-up comedian Ortego Williams, ‘There’s a lot of truth in humor, Señor. Your wallet, please!’

               “Every dog has its day. Vota por mí. Yo quiero Taco Bell!

              “That ought to get me the Hispanic vote!

              “In English: Vote for me and I’ll throw you a bone!

              “Sometimes I think we’ve gone from the White House to the doghouse. Help! Help! My administration is going to the dogs!

              “All you need to do to make me happy is rub my tummy and re-elect me president. In that order.

             “Standing here in the Heartbreak Hotel, the only possible conclusion is: ‘Well, I’ll be doggone!’

            “Look, you can’t insult the Paloos, they don’t get any of this lingo!

            “To my Indonesian brothers, I say, ‘A Salaam Aleikum.’ I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I know what it feels like to be a minority of one. At least in D.C., I can hang wid de home boys. Y’hear? I is real! Not like some latte-complexioned niggahs who forgets who they is!

            “See, here, y’all! Not bein’ in Wash, D.C., I can finally say this stuff!

            “Gotcha!

            “No worries. I’ll blame the crazy stuff on jet-lag.

            “We may not have won here in Palookaville, but we don’t intend to lose. ‘Graveyard of empires,’ my ass!

            “See y’all back in Washington! Be well! G’night!”

                                                            – an excerpt from the up-coming novel

                                                            *

Barf for Obama

 

            A wonderful feature of Barack Obama’s being the incarnation of Jesus Christ is that each of us can now have his very own Obama. Just as each of us sees God in his own way, Obama has also attained this universal, exalted state.

            I mention this because of the Pet Lovers for Obama Facebook page and the micro-targeting on-line of dog lovers by the Obama campaign. They are invited to contribute money to the re-election effort and “Bark for Barack.”

            The Obama folks already offer a “Cats for Obama” collar. What’s next?

            Bulimics encouraged to “Barf for Obama”?

            Paraplegics offered the chance to “Crawl for Barack”?

            Computer nerds can “Hack for Barack”?

            They’re all voters.

            Micro-targeting. Will the campaign encourage hardened criminals to “Rob for Obama”? Politicians in Washington— and Wall Street brokers— may have some experience to contribute in how best to rob America blind. We’ve been at war for over a decade, have a national debt in the trillions of dollars, and no one in Washington makes the connection???

            I don’t even want to think about the slogans the Obama campaign might offer soldiers: “Kill for Obama”? “Die for Obama”? “Get your ass shot off for Obama”? When dysentery decimates the ranks, we can all trot to the latrine and “Dump for Obama! “

            Aerobics people can “Stretch for Obama.”

            Artists can “Draw for Obama.”

            Babies (NOTE: this demographic is not yet of voting age) can “Poop for Barack.”

            In fact, when we’re talking about dogs barking, what other canine activity readily comes to mind?

            Woof, woof!

                                                         *

 

DMV Blues

            Hier bist die Reisen af der Raumschiffs Enterprise. Das fümf-jahrishe Auftrag, die neues Welten erforschen und die unberührte Gebiete besteigen, die nie ein Mensch zuvor gesehen hat.

                                                       *                                              

            The goddam Department of Motor Vehicles !

            The DMV is living up to its reputation.

            Mom has a blue handicap sticker. Since she’s always afraid she’ll forget to hang it in the windshield, it would be 1,000 times more convenient to have a handicap license plate.

            Stephanie Rosenthal, who lived next door, got a handicap plate. Steph’ died ten years ago, but her hubby Roger still uses handicap parking. He’s a wowzer, nobody can tell Roger anything.

            It’s not like we’re re-inventing the wheel here.

            I call the DMV at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. “We are experiencing unusually high call volume. Our wait times are in excess of 20 minutes. We are not taking more calls at this time. Try calling on Wednesday or Thursday morning for faster service.”

            Why does this set my teeth on edge? Because the angry DMV fines everyone $5 if they insist on driving down to the office. “Save $5! Use the handy DMV website, the U.S. mail or telephone the DMV at…” say all their announcements.

            Yeah. Right.

            Bastards.

            So I get up at 8 a.m. on Wednesday and call. Once I connect, the first thing I hear— the first recording— is the automated woman’s voice telling me, “We at the DMV can only discuss your record with you over the phone. If you’re calling for someone else, we will not be able to access that person’s record or discuss that person’s record with you… Your wait time is 13 minutes.”

            Followed by a recording of Tchaikovsky’s The 1812 Overture.

            I’m supposed to be grateful? They’re slamming the door in my face! It’s too early in the morning for Tchaikovsky. I hang up.

            The goddam DMV!

                                                       *

            I drive to the DMV. Police officers in immaculate white shirts, holstered guns riding their hips, eye me suspiciously. Their gold badges shine brightly. I, like, totally ignore them. A hundred customers, Latinos and Asians, sit on gray plastic chairs, clutching number slips.  A sign stipulates “No cell phone use,” but a dozen people are on their phones, all imparting the same message: “I’m on line at the DMV!”

            My wait time is six minutes. The room is enormous, the length of the building. The ceiling track lights give off a subtle buzz that jangles everyone’s nerves. School days, I have to bring a note from my momma authorizing me to get her new plates. 

            To their credit, the ladies are extremely helpful and fix me right up!

            “Does she still drive?” Ms. Spaulding, the attractive black employee behind the counter at “window number four” asks me.

            “Oh yes,” I blurt.

            “Did she sign this authorization herself?”

            “Oh yes,” I say, feeling like a broken record.   

            I still have to pay the $5 surcharge to renew the vehicle registration, although I don’t see how I could have gotten handicap plates and changed the registration on-line, over the phone or through the mail. Rules is rules, but some things don’t make sense.

                                                         *

A Titanic Catastrophe, Pt. 1

                        “The Hunger Games isn’t as good as the original:

                          The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

                                                                      –         Steven Simon on Facebook

                                                       *

           Yahoo! News tells me the cruise ship MS Balmoral left Southampton, England on April 8, 2012 with relatives of some of the 1,500 passengers who perished 100 years ago on the RMS Titanic. Leaving port on the exact same day and retracing the original route, the souls on board hope to have better luck this time. Some even wear period costumes. The cruise line expects they will reach the site of the wreck on April 14 and hold a memorial service. Landfall in New York is scheduled for April 18. We’ll wait with baited breath to hear from them via wireless.

                                                        * 

             As a movie, Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20^th Century Fox. The film Ishtar (1978), with Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty— a hilariously bad movie— almost broke Columbia Pictures. Both the director and Martin Sheen, the leading male actor, experienced nervous breakdowns during the production of Francis Ford Coppala’s Apocalypse Now (1979). These last two movies have something else in common, the same cinematographer. It’s enough to say that when the director was going bananas, Vittorio Storaro did not exactly function as a calming influence! Kevin Costner’s Waterworld (1995) almost drowned Universal Pictures. For a dream factory, Hollywood has been cranking out nightmarish productions almost from its inception. Erich von Stroheim’s The Wedding March (1928) included orgies on the set. (His real name was Erich Oswald Stroheim, born 1885 in Austria. He grew up poor as a church mouse in Vienna.) D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) …

             Enough! There is no excuse for what we did.

             Hired by the Sidney Bamf Film Company to originate a screenplay for The Trollop Molly Brown, my partner at Montevideo Films [Marca Registrada] Bruce “Boopsie” Davis and I did our usual exemplary research: We looked up “Molly Brown” on the Web. “The unsinkable Molly Brown” was, of course, a great, charismatic historical figure, best known for insisting her lifeboat mates turn back to the stricken luxury liner Titanic and pluck up more survivors. The ship’s crew rowing the boat demurred, afraid the frantic passengers floundering in the icy water would overwhelm their small boat or that the suction from the sinking Titanic might pull them under.

             (I try not to dwell on my professional failures. I guess the little accident with the cruise ship Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy has been ringing my bell.)

             On-line, Boopsie and I found quite a list of previous productions: two TV documentaries— one from as late as 2005— a TV movie, a TV miniseries, a 1960’s Broadway musical starring Tammy Grimes, and no less than six motion pictures, going back to Thelma Ritter in Titanic from 1953. (Originally called Nearer, My God, to Thee, the studio changed the title. Go figure.) This was a wonderful gold mine, laying the groundwork for an easy $25,000 or a lawsuit for plagiarism.

             Also, Kathy Bates in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) nailed the personality of Molly Brown for all eternity. Her dialogue (kudos to the screenwriters!!!), her delivery (kudos to Ms. Bates), her scenes (thank you, Mr. Cameron!) provide a textbook lesson in how to deliver a narrative through the development of a single character. And hers was but one of half a dozen sub-plots! The captain, the chief steward, even the heroine’s mother all experience character development.

              Cameron’s Titanic (now released in 3-D) deserves every Academy Award it garnered and then some!

             This set the bar unusually high, but British director Reginald “Reggie” Sweeterman assured Boopsie and me not to worry. “You come up with the proverbial sow’s ear,” he drawled in his Belgravia accent— his one true claim to fame— “and I’ll turn it into the old silk purse, eh, chaps?!”

            “Why does he keep calling us ‘chaps’ ?” asked Boopsie, a child of Montgomery County, Maryland. “ ’Chaps’ is a brand name of the Ralph Lauren Company.”

            “Boopsie, pul-lease,” I begged, “focus on the plot.” The last thing I needed in 2008 was for our one-year-old joint writing venture to founder through inattention. “This is our big break! Let’s not blow it.”

              Up until then, we had been script-doctoring, rewriting drafts of other people’s creations, jumping in and dreaming up individual scenes and dialog on demand. Whatever bones Boopsie’s erstwhile classmates from UCLA Film School chose to throw us. I often felt like a 1920’s gag writer, extemporizing visual puns and writing them in pencil on the celluloid arms of my shirts, the origin of the coinage “off the cuff.”

             “Get in here!” Sidney Bamf (né Barnofsky) barked from the door of his office on Sepulveda. He had the rep of “meanest man in Hollywood.” The very fact that we were so far from Maryland, that Sidney had beckoned us to rush across the Continental Divide to adhere to his side, so impressed us, we overlooked the fact that his location, location, location lay many miles south of Hollywood. His office was, in fact, suspiciously near ARF, the American Rights Federation, a choleric lobby organization representing the Republican side of the industry, but I failed to make the connection at the time.

             Gruff to the point of rudeness, portly Sidney never-the-less sported an immaculate three-piece suit and Italian shoes that made my mouth water. His bald pate and prominent eyebrows gave him the sought-after Yul Brynner look. The understated elegance, his Cal tan, high-end manicure and aviator sunglasses impressed the hell out of me. Anyone who could throw that much money at trifles, I thought, must be loaded.

             Vanity, thy name is foolishness.

            “Sit down!” he commanded. “I don’t know what kind of crap that poofter Reggie Sweeterman has been feeding you, but this company isn’t in the business of floating free-loading dreamers, cretins or schemers. So just forget everything Sweeterman said. Forget it! If you don’t know screenwriting, consider yourselves fired. If you can’t keep to a deadline, you’re dead meat. If you screw up, I’ll see you never get a day’s pay in the industry again. Ever. Those are the terms.

             “Don’t tell me your good intentions. Give me the facts on Molly Brown.”

             His furious expression should have sent us packing, but newbies, we tried to please.

            “Margaret Brown was born Margaret Tobin in 1867 in Hannibal, Missouri. A prairie town,” I explained. “During her lifetime, she was called ‘Maggie.’ The Molly Brown thing didn’t develop until after she died. At the time the Titanic went down, she was 44 years old. She married James Joseph Brown, nicknamed ‘J.J.’ A self-educated engineer, he made his fortune mining silver in Colorado. He opened up an ore seam at the Little Jonny Mine belonging to the Ibex Mining Company. For this achievement, he was awarded 12,500 shares of stock and got a seat on the board of directors.

             “Molly and J.J.’s children were born in 1887 and 1889. The family moved to Denver, Colorado in 1894. Engaging in society functions and the trappings of a lady, Maggie applied herself to philanthropy and higher education for women. She picked up French, German and Russian. She ran for the U.S. Senate in 1909.”

            “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” suggested Sidney Bamf.

            “I can’t find any indication that she ever got elected. Which is why she could be in Cherbourg, France and aboard the Titanic in 1912.”

            “Touché,” growled Sidney Bamf from behind his fine mahogany desk. He chewed on a cigar, but mercifully, he never lit it.

            “The ship hits an iceberg— “

            “No! Really?” Sidney grunts sarcastically.

            “And Maggie’s in a lifeboat and tries to get them to— “

            “I know! I know!”

           “Afterwards, she and J.J. separate. They remain friends. She also gets a settlement that keeps her comfortably within high society. She does charity work in France during World War I. In 1914, she again runs for the U. S. Senate, but her sister Helen marries a German baron and that puts the scotch on Maggie’s campaign— “

            “Does what?”

            “Puts the skids on Maggie’s campaign.”

            “Sinks the campaign?”

            “Yes.”

            “Go on.”

             “In 1922, J.J. dies and, without a will, Maggie and the kids fight a five-year court battle over what’s left of the fortune.”

             “Courtroom drama. That’s good!”

             “She died during the Great Depression.”

             “Find me a beginning, a middle and an ending,” says Sidney.

             “I think we can write and deliver a very adequate screenplay based on this,” I end dryly, purposely playing the self-deprecating card to avoid butting heads with my new boss.

             Wrong move.

             “You don’t sound very enthusiastic,” Bamf complains, looking more and more like a bulldog, crouched behind his desk. He rolls the soggy cigar between his stubby fingers, apparently a nervous tic.

            “Oh, we’re rip-roaring ready to go!” I yelp like a fresh-faced office boy in a 1940’s musical.

            “How many pages?”

            “As many as you need!” replies Boopsie who, after all, went to film school in sunny Cal.

            Wrong answer.

            “You gentlemen haven’t ever written a screenplay,” Bamf exclaims, his voice like sandpaper scratching stone.

            Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

            Babbling, we name other producers who have used us, directors to whose work we have contributed, references. Even to my ears, we sound like rank amateurs.

            “Considering,” says Bamf, “I’ll pay you scale.”

            “That’s chump change! That’s lunch money!” Boopsie wails.

            Now’s the time we should have run from Bamf’s office like a five-alarm fire.

           “A $10,000 retainer and first rights on whatever we provide,” I suggest. “Otherwise, we’re outta here.”

          “It’s business,” Sidney counters. “Don’t get sore.”

           Behold, he scribbles a contract. He has his secretary transcribe it on her PC while he regales us with tales of other unmitigated disasters. He writes us a check for $5,000 and… we sign.

           “Where are you staying?” he growls.

           Ah, the hospitality of Hollywood producers! I think. They fly you across the country, put you up in their homes. They see you have every convenience. They lend you their ear, their input, their thoughts at the end of every day.

           “We came straight from the airport,” I tell him hopefully.

           “Sounds lame. Find a place,” he belches.

           “We usually work from our office,” Boopsie interjects.

           “Where’s your office?”

            “On Rockville Pike.”

             “Never heard of it.”

             “It’s in Maryland,” I reply sheepishly.

             Gales of laughter! His face going red, Sidney fights to catch his breath. “That’s priceless!” he marvels. “Where’s your office? It’s in Maryland. I’ll remember that one! Now get the hell out of here and write me a screenplay!”

            Checking the cost of motel rooms, we say “To hell with it” and fly home to Maryland. We’ll work out of our office. We write. We edit. We write some more. I email fresh drafts to Sidney every few days. It’s not like he doesn’t have other projects on his schedule.

            We divide Molly’s story into three distinct chapters: her life prior to the Titanic, the voyage, and her life afterwards. I love the fact that she was out West. We have a sod hut on the prairie, a silver mine in the hills, scenes in an old-fashion saloon, gunfights, people cracking whips, people cracking wise, pistol-whippings and lots of Old West dialog. Every three sentences, J.J. either says “Git along, little dogie” or “Ain’t that all get-out?”

            (“The more I read this script,” Reggie Sweeterman will comment, “the more I envision J.J. as the tall, silent type.”)

            The good news is, I am able to salvage a lot of odds and ends that never previously made it onto celluloid. Introducing J.J., for instance, I use this gem left over from a cowpoke picture:

            Wide shot, stock footage of some dude riding a horse across the prairie.

           NARRATOR: (Texas accent) “He was ridin’! Ridin’ across the West! His face was the color of money, honey!… A little green. He’d fried up some prairie chicken eggs and they didn’ agree with him… Next stop, Eldorado! The Colorado silver mines! Fortunes to be made in the mining of precious metals.”

            I don’t want to say we created a masterpiece, but… I’m satisfied.

            Not all of the info I pull from the Net is certifiably accurate.

            LIST OF PASSENGERS (of doubtful authenticity)

            Cedric von Kampf

            Thomas “Piggy” Bankes

            Margaret “Molly” Maguire

            Aston C. Martin

            When evaluating this data, it helps to know that Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, the Molly Maguires were a band of violent Irish-American coal miners who fought the big mining trusts in Pennsylvania in the 1800’s, and that an Aston Martin is a British-manufactured automobile.

           Wikipedia rates a B – . At least they subject their factoids to peer review.

           “What about her later years?!” Sidney demands over the phone. “High society dame forever scarred by the shock of that one night. Amnesia from trying to suppress the horrid truth. Write that.”

          “It’s not… really… historically accurate,” I counter.

          “We’re not making a doc for the History Channel. Write it!”

          As aware of dramatic hooks as the next hack, I stop arguing and complete the assignment.

          “Do either of you boys know anything about Blacksburg, Virginia?” Sidney asks from the West Coast. “I got a good deal on a tax break, but we have to film in Blacksburg.”

          “I don’t… think… there’s an… ocean anywhere near Blacksburg,” I point out.

          “Always the bellyacher!” Bamf bitches. “Find it on a map and scout the damned location!”

                                                        *

          There are many historical buildings in Blacksburg. I particularly like the Courthouse on South Main Street, dreaming up antebellum scenes of melodrama in its spooky corridors.

          “How’s it look?” asks Bamf when I call him on my cellphone.

          “It looks good! I still don’t see any water.”

           “You need a bath? We float a model of the Titanic in a tank. Forget the ocean.”

           “Blacksburg was an area of great Civil War activity,” I offer.

           “There you go again! What a titanic pain in the ass you are!” Bamf howls. “Do you want this job or don’cha?”

           “I like Blacksburg. It’s very convenient. Saves me coming out west.”

           “Yeah, yeah!”

           So, eventually, our trailers are set up in Blacksburg. This, naturally, attracts the law. The sheriff, his deputies, state law enforcement all come sniffing around. “We can provide private security,” they propose, “in addition to upholding the law. Also, we’ll enforce your permits: Hold up traffic. Direct traffic. Hold back the crowds. You need us!”

           They make their pitches to me. Since I scouted the location, I’m a familiar face. I, in turn, direct them to Sidney Bamf’s production assistant Marty Markham, point man on this shoot. Marty cuts some deals and doles out cash incentives.

           We’re in business!

           Cinematographer Vilgot Frölund and I bond over unloading his equipment. We both speak Swedish. “Six different tripods?” I ask.

           “One for every occasion,” he explains. “Ett för varje tillfälle.” Tall, dressed in jeans, brown leather boots and a flannel shirt, a fiery red beard, a full head of hair, squinty eyes, he’s your typical Viking.

            We spend all evening driving around town admiring the light. “I can film here!” Vilgot announces enthusiastically. “Find us a Chinese take-out and we are fit for fight,” he adds, reciting the last three words in English.

             Day Two, the cast drops out of the sky from the West Coast. A small crew, we all help out: I spend my time shuttling new arrivals from the Roanoke Regional Airport, “The gateway to the Blue Ridge” according to the travel brochure.

            “Who are you?” asks Janice Bulova, the blond, showgirlish ingenue, fastening me with her baby blues. Jesus! We’re standing by the baggage carousel and I’m already salivating. “You’re not local,” she surmises. “I don’t hear a Virginia accent.”

           Lugging her suitcases to the van on a cart, I say, “I’m the screenwriter.”

           “You… write?” she asks excitedly, clutching my arm in a vice-like grip. Method actress. I can feel the drama! She widens her eyes. Widens her eyes. WIDENS HER…

            “I-I-I wr-r-rite,” I stammer, leaning against the van to keep from falling over. It’s a perfect day, 80 degrees and sunny.

             “I always wanted to write,” she exclaims, sucking her pointer finger between ruby-red lips and running her wet hand down the side of my face. “You can teach me SO MUCH!” She presses against me, all but raping me with her long legs.

             “Uh, uh…” I gulp, unprepared for dry humping in the parking lot of the Roanoke Regional Airport.

             Her arms around my neck, she whispers in my ear, “You and I are going to be such good friends! “

            “Why don’t I… why don’t I… drive us, you know, to the film set,” I suggest, my pecker tearing a hole in my trousers.

            “Oh! Right!” she replies, jumping nimbly into the van, the view of her tight little derrière forever imprinted on my memory.

           While I drive, we talk shop. If you want to know what she looks like, that’s easy, she’s a dead ringer for Leelee Sobieski, very blond hair, extremely intense blue eyes, a narrow face and a cute nose like a bump on a log. Her beauty is a little too fragile for me, but she lists a long line of credits as a “featured player” in major productions: You get your name scrolled at the end of the film, but you’re nowhere to be found on the movie poster. More than an extra but less than a star.

            I don’t need to tell her that this is her big break, the breakout perf that’ll put her on the radar screen.

            “It’s make or break,” she laughs. “I live on diet cola and vitamin pills. At home, I eat all I want. When I’m in training for a film, I’m hungry all the time.”

             I take her to the trailer she’s sharing with Martha Lloyd, the middle-age character actress who plays Molly after the Titanic. Martha has yet to arrive. I pile the suitcases on Martha’s bed, shrug my shoulders, give Janice a crooked smile and say, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place as sterile, smelly and empty as a location trailer.”

            “If it was a hotel, I would give the bellhop a tip,” Janice smirks, walking up to me and planting a magnificent French kiss squarely on my mouth. Her muscular tongue investigates my teeth, wrestles with my tongue. Her hands clasp my head, as she massages my scalp. She pulls away with a grin.

            “Very nice,” I murmur thickly. “I’m amazed at the softness of your skin.”

           “Oh,” she chuckles, “about 10,000 gallons of cold cream when I was growing up.”

           “Growing up? You look about 17.”

           “Well,” she smiles ruefully, “I’m 30, wrinkles and all.”

           “You don’t have any wrinkles,” I say, my hands around her waist. “You make me wish I’d gotten into the movie business sooner. You taste good!”

           “That’s a great slogan for my mouthwash,” she teases. “Use PureBreath, you’ll taste goo-o-ood!”

            I take her around and introduce her to the crew. She’s a cooler, more distant presence, quietly checking everyone out from behind designer sunglasses. “And this is what’s-his-face, the writer,” I hear her gamely telling Marty Markham. “He was nice enough to pick me up at the airport.” I find myself wondering if I misinterpreted our steamy embraces.

            “I sent him over there to do it,” Markham grins, taking most of the credit.

            I stomp back to my trailer, muttering darkly about Californians. Boopsie’s holding down the fort at Montevideo Films [Marca Registrada]. I’m on my own down here in the wilds of Virginia.

            Soon enough, I have to drive back to the airport and pick up the next gang of actors and actresses. Molly’s husband J.J. will be played by “Hugo Block,” an Italian male lead with a striking resemblance to Valentino. That’s the plus side. The oily skin and perpetual smell of garlic we can live with. Mercifully, we’re not filming in Smellovision. Every word out of his mouth, however, will have to be dubbed by an English-speaker in a studio recording booth.

          “Why are we using this person?” I ask Marty.

          He gives me a withering glance.

          I crawl meekly back into my trailer. 

                                                        *

          “Where’ll I get my extras?” Reggie asks me that evening over pizza at a local eatery.

           Ah! I’d forgotten. I’m considered the local authority! “Virginia Tech has 28,000 students,” I suggest.

            “Lovely! College birds. Must get into the Colonial spirit. Maybe Molly Brown has some nieces,” Reggie enthuses, drawing a dark stare from Janice Bulova.

            Day 3: We’re using the university swimming pool, at night, to float our plastic model of the Titanic.

            We almost electrocute our grip Eddie Johnson. “It looks very good,” Vilgot insists blithely. He has so many filters over the lens, I’m surprised he can see anything through the viewfinder. “It’s only an establishing shot. ‘See, we’re on a boat.’ We can film the interiors anywhere. As long as there’s gilt, of course. Lots of gilding.”

          I assure him I’ve found some rooms with turn-of-the-century furnishings.

          The Sidney Bamf Film Company has sprung for Airstream trailers. I’ve been assigned a trailer with Vilgot. We play musical trailers: Janice Bulova shares hers with Martha Lloyd, but since Martha is held up working on another picture, I move in with Janice. Vilgot cohabits with Monica Hart, our scriptgirl, affectionately dubbed “Money Heart” by the crew. When I ask Vilgot what he thinks he’s doing with an airhead like Monica, he replies, “She is what we in Sweden call a Pia Pudding. Soft and warm in all the right places but not a lot of cranial activity.”

            Which, I have to say, is the exact opposite of my situation: Not only do I have to coach Janice in her lines during bouts of adolescent sex, she wants to learn all there is to know about Judaism while standing on one foot.

           “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” I suggest, quoting Hillel.

           “What about tacos? Tacos can’t be kosher. You’ve got meat and cheese together in the same dish,” she complains. “What about pizza? Pepperoni pizza!”

           “I never said tacos were kosher!” I bleat like a wounded sheep.

          “Oh, am I too rough?” she asks, full of solicitous concern for my poor cock. “Did mommy pull too hard? We don’t want William to get a back ache and quit on us!”

          Endearments, she has taken to calling my schlong “William.”

           “He’s fine,” I gulp, filled with doubt.

            Janice really keeps me on my toes.

           Every morning, the windows are totally steamed up, from the inside. The cops, hired by Marty to include us on their rounds, feel that we’re setting a bad example. “We screw around, too,” a genial officer comments at 7 a.m. one morning as, bleary-eyed, I march to the showers. “But we’re discreet, y’ know? We don’t make a public spectacle of ourselves.”

           Well, duh.

           No one is having sexual relations with our costume designer cum wardrobe mistress, a butch dike named Patty Waggoner. I like her. She has unbridled enthusiasm and isn’t averse to sitting up all night at her sewing machine. There’s a reason why it’s called a “low budget production.” Everyone wears at least two hats.  

           “Marty tells me you haven’t accomplished a damn thing,” Sidney Bamf berates me over the phone. “Don’t make me come out there!”

          “I’m the screenwriter! How is the production schedule my problem?” I bitch, but Sid and I both understand that, in his absence, I am the adult at the party. No one else is 60 years old! “I’ll get right on it,” I promise.

                                                         *

             Our movie begins with an aphorism: “A shadow that starts in the darkest part of the roof often ends on the brightest side.”

            “What does that mean?” asks Vilgot, the Swede.

            “Look on the bright side?” I suggest.

            “It means our fucking screenwriter is trying to go high-brow,” Marty declares. No one contradicts this assessment. 

             We start filming at 8 a.m. every morning, as soon as the sun rises sufficiently to give Vilgot some semblance of color. He keeps his own scorecard: Prairie scenes— 8 to 11 a.m.— are monochromatic and gray. City scenes—12 noon to 3 p.m.— are bathed in stark yellow sunlight, from almost directly overhead. This produces inky black shadows that add visual tension to the screen. Vilgot uses late afternoon and evening light— 4 to 7 p.m.— for scenes “on board the Titanic,” everything cast in an orange glow.

           “I try to maintain color balance and the same overall lighting for each chapter,” he tells Marty and me. “It won’t do to have too great a shift from one scene to another, that only draws attention to how artificial the film process is.”

           At the beginning of every day, coffee in hand, Reggie is as keyed up, keen and on an even keel as the rest of us. Somewhere around 10 a.m., however, he invariably visits the Porta-Potty out back. When he returns to the set— whether at the university, a mountain cabin standing in for the great open prairie or the fancy interior of a downtown ballroom— Reggie snivels. His nose is running.

           “Do you have a cold?” each of us asks solicitously. He’s the boss, we worry about him.

           “NO, I DON’T HAVE A COLD!” he rants and from then until almost 4 p.m., we get very little work done. Storming around the set, interrupting takes, Reggie complains bitterly, at great length, about the costumes, the background, the smell of the furniture, my poorly written dialog and weak structure. Critique delivered motor-mouth fashion, a mile a minute. “Don’t have her say ‘I see the exploitation of women as unacceptable.’ Have her say, ‘Times are changing and revolutionary Marxism is the only conceivable answer.’”

           “I don’t think we can do that. She’s not Emma Goldman. England and America at this point in time remain wedded to the concept of Empire— “

            “DAMN YOU! STOP ARGUING AND REWRITE THE SCENE!”

            Starts and stops, changes upon changes, disruptions, nothing seems to appease our director.

            “He’s a crackhead,” Janice breathes into my ear over lunch on, like, Day 6.

            “Well, that’s not fair,” I counter. “He may be full of himself and indecisive, but I wouldn’t cast aspersions— “

            “I tripped over him snorting a noseful,” she answers. “That’s why he goes into these prolonged tirades.”

            I sit quietly eyeing my bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, digesting this unwelcome intelligence. “What should we do?” I ask. “You know Sidney Bamf better than I do.”

            “Well, don’t tell Sidney!” Janice counsels me, one hand inside my shirt, the other down my pants. By now, our coworkers expect us to display outrageous expressions of affection. It’s become standard behavior, everyone agrees that  Kevin and Janice can’t keep their hands off one another. “If you tell Sidney, he’ll shut us down!”

            Janice uses her tongue to carwash my earlobe.

            “So we— “

            “We eat lunch. Then we band together as a team. We make allowances, and work with Vilgot and Marty to get this production in the can.” Her breakout op, Janice isn’t about to let something as mundane as a cokehead get in her way.

            “Gulp and double gulp,” I say, but that’s what we do.

            It doesn’t take many days to discover that Marty is as addicted to coke as Reggie. We call them “the flyboys” and try to keep them distracted and off the set, so Vilgot and the rest of us can get our work done. It’s cumbersome and a slow, annoying process. I have better things to do than nurse two drug addicts.

            I also try varying degrees of counseling and intervention, but these dudes have been married to cocaine too long for a newbie, proselytizing novice screenwriter like me to have an impact.

            “I know EXACTLY what I’m DOING!” Reggie insists. “I’ve been making films a damn sight longer than you have! So shut yer pie-hole, chappy!”

            Ugh. I never do get any control over the pharmaceutical aspect of the situation. Eddie Johnson, head grip, and I beat the shit out of Reggie’s local pusher, but the only effect is someone new showing up to take his place. “Supply and demand, have you ever thought about having yourself committed?” I ask Reggie at one point. “If Robert Downey Jr. can go through rehab and stay clean, so can you!” (Yes, I sound like an Army recruiting poster.)

            “That’s under the assumption I got a problem,” he drawls. “I ain’t got no problem!” He then launches into a poor imitation of The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

            Marty isn’t much better. I like Marty, but he’s a cokehead with a voracious sexual appetite. The rest of the cast and I feel we can work around it. Still, there is something innately dishonest in his character. He comes on shamelessly to the coeds at Virginia Tech, proffering screen tests and movie roles that don’t even exist on paper. He cuts, in fact, such a wide swath among the female student body, the University Provost feels compelled to step in and have a serious talk.

            “We’ve been banned from the campus,” I guess sourly upon seeing Marty’s crestfallen demeanor.

            “Doesn’t matter,” he slurs unconvincingly. “There are plenty of other places around town where we can meet students.”

            I have Janice and Monica troll for likely extras. Successful, we get underway again. Most 20-year-olds are perfectly happy to sit on their duffs in period costume studying math, applied science or English Lit. for $10 an hour, between short, intense bouts of acting. We have more applicants than we can suit up.

            Still, I never know when there’s going to be a massive shouting match either on the set or in the trailer park. Angry voices and slamming aluminum doors no longer keep me up at night. The Romans had an appropriate curse: “May you live in exciting times.”

            “What a shame,” laments Boopsie long-distance from Maryland, always happy to cash the checks and commiserate verbally over the phone. “What a mess. Do we have to return the money???”

            “Not yet. Production continues, only not quite on schedule.”

                                                            *

A Titanic Catastrophe, Pt. 2

         Synopsis: Screenwriter on a film shoot for the Sidney Bamf Film Company, I discover that both the on-site producer and the film’s director have an insatiable fondness for cocaine. Hopelessly behind schedule on this “low budget” vehicle, located in Virginia for tax reasons, I try my best to hold things together amidst a sea of conflicting agendas.

                                                      *

            In order to flesh out our story with superfluous scenes at the cheapest possible price, Bamf orders me to “layer” the script. Thus, our movie opens with Molly sitting in a lifeboat, lost in thought, ostensibly gazing at the foundering Titanic. (Filmed in the middle of the day, on dry land, in a Boston Whaler courtesy of the Old Coast Guard Station on the Boardwalk in Virginia Beach. I’ve always loved this little museum. Marty Markham loves using it for every conceivable setting.)

            The next “layer” comes partway into the film when it transpires that a modern researcher is actually the narrator. Confusingly, a lot of different voices take turns narrating. The more, the merrier, it seems. Usually with a peculiar accent or a crusty / perky / exhausted / resolute / resigned tone of voice (Pick One) to provide depth. Without further explanation.

            “I mean, who is this person?” I keep asking Marty, who keeps ordering up additional narration. “These disembodied voices don’t bode well for our movie.”

            “THAT’S IT!” he shouts excitedly, his aviators all but jumping off his tanned, handsome face. “Disembodied voices! Write that down. ‘Lost souls of the Titanic speak to us from beyond the grave!’ Wonderful. Wunderbar !”

            “I know what ‘wonderful’ means,” I sulk.

            “You’ll narrate!”

            “I don’t have a Texas accent.”

            “Fake it, for Christ’s sake.”

            “I’m a writer.”

            “Congrats! You’ve just acquired another arrow to your quiver.”

            “Analogies— “

            “Set up a scene on deck where an artisan is teaching archery to aristocrats.”

            “A crew member?”

            “Well, duh! Where else would an archery instructor come from?”

            “Are you serious?”

            “Just do it!” Marty commands imperiously in a slave-driver tone that all too often enters our conversations. “That’s where you can plug in the explanatory dialog about…”

            “About too few lifeboats! I get it.”

            “Good boy!”

            Yes, this creative process bulks up the script to feature length, but our movie seems to be metamorphosing into an astronomical number of scenes.

            “I want Charley, the modern-day researcher, to be playing tennis with a sexy young lady whose Great Great Grandfather was aboard the Californian when that steamship saw the flares from the stricken Titanic and blithely kept on sailing,” explains Marty. “Charley drops his racket in mid-swing when she mentions that ‘Family lore has Great Great Grandpa always bitching that Captain Stanley Lord saw the distress flares from the Titanic and didn’t stop to pick up survivors.’ That saves us the expense of filming still another scene in period costume on the deck of a ship!”

            Shrewd bubbe, I think.

            It also gives Marty the op to ogle an endless series of leggy coeds who audition for the part of the great great granddaughter in skimpy white tennis outfits. I don’t complain. I like cheesecake as much as the next guy, but I feel the tennis sequence is a cheap shot that diminishes the quality of the film.

            “Everybody has heard the goddam story a hundred times,” rumbles Bamf from the West Coast. “So the real draw is how you tell it, cinematically. If you’re gonna be a screenwriter, you should know that. Layering!— P.O.V.— I want as many points of view as I can get.”

            “Hey, you’re the producer. You tell me what to write, I’ll crank out the scenes!” I pant.

            “You have my every confidence,” he grumbles in a voice filled with concern.

            Because by now, we’re already rapidly nearing the 21 days of principal photography that Bamf has assigned this vehicle. Whatever dreams Marty had of going back in the script and filming the prairie scenes in a real sod hut in North Dakota, they have by now evaporated with most of the travel budget. We can tool up and down the Virginia coast in our caravan of vehicles, but gas prices keep skyrocketing, killing our mobility. Fortunately, Virginia has a lot of state parks and coastline to choose from. Equipped with generators, purchased locally, and arena spotlights developed to film Olympic events, Vilgot uses the cover of darkness to fake scene after scene portraying the North Atlantic. The Chesapeake Bay never looked so cold and ominous!

            “Half this movie is being filmed in the dark,” I complain. “I feel like we’re filming a sequel to Pitch Black.”

            “THAT’S IT!” Marty enthuses. “Put that in your notes! ‘Tone: A sequel to Vin Diesel in Pitch Black.’ Kevin, you’re a genius!”

            No, I think. You, my friend, are a snowbird.

            So, our two raving cokeheads— the on-site producer and the film’s director— egg each other on, as the storyline grows in complexity and expense.

In a striking example of group cowardice, the actors, technicians and writer are all struck dumb by our communal fear that Sidney Bamf will shut down production. So none of us admit to him over the phone that his chosen representatives are totally out of control.

                                                      *        

            Notified of a controlled burn up in the hills of the Blue Ridge, Vilgot and I grab some pages of dialog, Janice, Hugo, tripods, cameras, battery packs, Wayne the soundman and his trusty Nagra, and assorted reflectors. We drive up there. Jesus, what an effect! A forest fire! We film Molly and J.J. arguing in the foreground. Behind them, a fiery inferno. The wind shifts and we’re enveloped in smoke. “A lucky accident!” chuckles Vilgot, as we trudge back down the mountain, gritty with sweat, our clothes reeking of smoke. “I just took a deep breath and kept filming, filming, filming. Very unusual! The screen fades to white.”

                                                        *

               Scene 34: At dinner on the Titanic, Molly rises from the table, glass in hand, and says

              MOLLY: “Here, here. A toast to Hippocrates and his hypocritical oath. We’re all familiar with that! A toast to the Socratic oath, which is SO cratic. And to Mr. Lincoln, who— although he freed the slaves— knew better than to legislate the ways of the business community.”

              LORD BAXTON: “Alas, Molly, I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink, my dear. The bubbly seems to have gone straight to your head.”

              MOLLY: “Said like a true gentleman!” (With utter contempt, she toasts them all.)

                                                       *

            Because Wayne, our soundman, requires water lapping on the shore, we agree to spend a day at Virginia Beach. We stay two weeks! Yes, there are navy jets constantly flying overhead, but somehow we convince ourselves that dubbing afterwards in a studio is worth the effort if we can grab some good footage. Tom Hanks had to dub all his island dialog in the film Cast Away. Most of our water scenes get shot in or adjacent to the Old Coast Guard Station just off the Boardwalk. We use their side walls as a backdrop. Their Boston Whaler masquerades as a lifeboat. Hanging a black curtain behind it, Vilgot plays tricks with filters in a process called “day for night,” a true throwback in this digital age. “When in doubt,” he tells us authoritatively, “have the women take off their clothes.”

            This advice is directed at Reggie, but since he looks and acts like a zombie 90% of the time, we don’t expect him to respond. “Naw,” he suddenly drawls, his old self, “it ain’t that kind of pitcher.”

            “Picture,” I murmur, glad to see Reginald back among the living.

            “Whassat?” he queries.

            “Nothing! I’m just mumbling to myself!”

            “It would be nice,” Wayne the soundman adds, “if everybody could just shut up so I can get a clean recording of the dialog here!”

            – – –

            “Thank you!” he sighs and Scene 46, Take 3, is officially in the can.

            We bring the Airstreams over to Virginia Beach and set up camp at a trailer park outside of town. Janice and I sort of have a problem. I’m as addicted to her body as she is to mine. Not good. I understand the equation: Since we don’t really have a director, Janice feels insecure in her role as the young Molly Brown. She compensates by doing something she is really good at— fucking the be-Jesus out of Uncle Kevin. This goes on night after night, her hot box a ready refuge for my lonely dick.

            We have a ghost in the trailer. Some alcoholic character actor who passed away one dark, lonely night. We see him all the time, evenings, midnight, mornings. Lying athwart my lovely lady, I look up and meet his ethereal gaze. “Hey!” I shout. “You can haunt the trailer! But don’t come in here when I’m having sex!”

            He gives me such a look! But he respects my wishes. I never see him again while I’m in a clutch.

            Day 27: Word has come down the pipeline. The missing Martha Lloyd is tied up on another project. Replacement: Hot-house flower Edith Colson. Yeah, the opera star. Shee-it. It’ll be interesting to see if we ever get to the post-Titanic footage.

            Under orders from Bamf to include at least one blatant anachronism, I write a ballroom scene where dancers do the Charleston. The jazzy, lush orchestral music fades, replaced by wailing girls’ voices singing

                               Do the hippy, hippy shake!

                               Do the hippy, hippy shake!

                                                                                          © 1959, Chan Romero

            This segues into a modern discotheque where our researcher Charley dances with Janice, who is dressed in a chic black shift. The choreography is also an old favorite: The Hitchhike. Swinging their hips, licking their thumbs, they “do the hitchhike, baby!”

            “The more things change,” a crusty narrator intones, “the more they remain the same.”

            Cut back to the Titanic where Molly stands by the rail gazing at the starry night while a ship’s officer beseeches her, “Madam, don’t be sad. The voyage is still young. A wealth of experience awaits us!”

            Everybody agrees that’s a great line.

            Truer words, rarely spoken? What looks like the ship’s railing is actually a section of wood fencing adjacent to one of the restaurants on the Boardwalk. We also use the outdoor pavilion at The Cavalier Hotel, properly decorated, for both indoor and outdoor scenes. In ballroom mode, it’s not as regal as James Cameron’s, obviously, but it’s functional and all we can afford.

            In our film, at the end of the dance, the passengers stand solemnly together and sing “God Save the King.” Sometimes, historical accuracy corresponds with a satisfying visual and auditory experience.

            Thank God for Virginia Beach!

            This goes on and on. The authorities think we’re nut jobs. When not writing, I accompany Marty— shooting schedule in hand— to Town Hall to apply for another batch of permits. We pay by check. I assure the lady cashier behind the counter that we have funds to cover our expenses.

            “Well, I should hope so!” she replies starchily. 

            In Cameron’s version, the phantom iceberg comes floating out of an inky night like a single ice cube in a sea of cherry cola. Reality wasn’t like that: The ocean was covered with ice floes, thousands of broken pieces of ice forming a jigsaw puzzle in white. And atop all this broken ice loomed a mountain of white that came afloating straight at the ship, inexorably, unstoppable. The ice floes were so bad, the Carpathia had difficulty picking out the lifeboats, small slivers among a thousand jagged shapes.

            “Thank God for CGI,” says Marty Markham. “It was positively made for shit like sea ice. So let’s film our ocean sequences as cleanly as we can. Bamf can dressy-uppy in post-production.”

            What can I say? Having lost all respect for Marty, we ignore him entirely.               

            A relatively complicated scene with a lot of extras, filmed at The Cavalier Hotel’s outdoor pavilion: As the ship sinks, the Irish are on deck singing Auld Lang Syne while the British do Rule, Britannia! The Americans, standing as a group at the back of the ship, are more pragmatic. They call on The Lord for Divine intervention.

                                “…So thank you, God,

                                Please send us the help.

                                 The others need it, too,

                                 But that ain’t your yelp.”

            (Janice looks absolutely enchanting— angelic face, glistening white teeth, golden hair, shining blue eyes— as she sings this last line. “Ah! Good show!” comments Reggie, the Englishman. The historical implication is totally lost on him.)

            Up until now, the Titanic has always been exhibited as an example of income inequality— rich versus poor. There were 370 first-class cabins and only 297 third-class ones down in steerage. We don’t ignore the obvious, but in the melee, in the darkness of an icy night, when women and children are going into the boats, this class-consciousness breaks down.

            Who can blame a Texan for siding with a Texan, a Yank with a Yank, a Brit with a Brit? “Tha’s all ahm sayin’,” says a burly Irishman, his brogue thick as soup, as he helps an Irish lass and her two darling children to clamber over the rail. “Man got t’ think o’ flag an’ country.”

            “Here, there! Wha’ are you doing?” sneers an English officer, pulling a truncheon from his belt. “You have them come back on board!”

            “Not bloody likely!” insists our burly Irishman.

            “Oh, all right! But come up front and help some of the first class passengers for a spell,” orders the officer, pulling the man by his collar. Raised in the British Empire, the officer exerts his authority and the rebellious Irish obeys. Until the next big revolt.

            “Ah, I say,” comments a tipsy British “topper” in greatcoat and top hat, stumbling about the deck. (Keenly played by our very own Reggie in a cameo.) “You officers do know how t’ put on a good show, jolly what?!”

            “Clausss has its priv-e-leges,” answers the officer.

            This is degenerating into a very Marxist movie.

            There are also a lot of little yapping dogs, to heighten the tension and add verisimilitude. “Throw ‘em o’board,” suggests a Chief Mate.

            “Why, I never!” answers another officer. “Some o’ my best friends are toys!”

            “Is a bit o’ a chukka is all ahm saying! Not a lot o’ time for dilly-dallying.”

            The term “chukka” comes from polo, signifying a 7-minute period, kept short in order to replace tired horses.

            “Make haste!” cries a voice in the darkness.

            “Look who’s talking!” comes the reply.

            “That’s my toe you’re standing on,” shrieks a damsel in distress.

            “Beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am!” 

            Our storyline allows us to do something James Cameron could not: We can get ourselves off the damn ship.

            We hire members of a barbershop quartet to impersonate newspapermen. They sport luxuriant facial hair and striped suspenders. We stick them in a broom closet of an office with a bit of old-fashion ticker-tape. We have one rush up to the other and say

            NEWSPAPERMAN: “Ollie! The Titanic is sinking.”

            (Background noise of teletype machines, hustle and bustle of an office.)

            OLLIE: “The whosis is whatsis?”

            NEWSPAPERMAN: “The Titanic. It’s an ocean liner. A floating casket, I tell you. By tomorrow morning, it’ll be the lead in every rag across the country.”

            OLLIE: “I have a good story on the Widows and Orphans Pension Fund.”

            NEWSPAPERMAN: (exasperated) “Ollie! You’re not listening!”

            (Cut back to ship.)                      

            A squiggly line of shiny vehicles, we return to Blacksburg.

            What’s going on? I find myself wondering, adrift in a fever dream of lust in the back of our trailer. It’s 98 degrees, the humidity is 100%. It’s pitch dark outside. The croaking of frogs and buzzing of mosquitoes populates the night. “It’s not like we’re Humphrey Bogart filming The African Queen,” I moan aloud.

             Indeed, helplessly sucking on Janice’s yummy nipples, my hands clutching every accessible inch of her body, bathed in sweat, I’m not sure how much of this experience has a direct bearing on the Hollywood film industry.

             Following our portrayal of the Titanic disaster, we super-impose one of those “Ten Years Later” subtitles to explain why we’re using a considerably older actress. We show Molly doing philanthropy, raising ungrateful children, running for Congress. We get a lot of mileage out of her sister marrying a German baron, a real no-no during the First World War. These scenes have a strident, melodramatic quality not previously encountered, but then, Edith is a very different actress than Janice. Reggie actually stops snorting cocaine in an effort to get her to tone down her perf. “It’s not the Ring Cycle by Wagner,” he pleads. “Please, Edith! We’ve put in too much time and effort to settle for caricature. I know you can do it, darling!”

             The next take is even more hyper.

            “Reg!”

            “What?” he asks. “Camille I don’t mind. It’s the Miss Piggy impersonations I find rather unacceptable.”

            “Just tell her to be herself. She’s trying too hard. Molly Brown isn’t special. She’s an ordinary human being who finds herself in special circumstances.”

            “Right! Tell her that,” he barks.

            Gingerly approaching Edith, I crouch at her feet and make my spiel. “…Besides, you are an interesting person, Edith. You, yourself. People like to see you in films because you interest them. You, Edith Colson.”

            After that, she’s still pedantic, but her presentation is no longer over-the-top certifiable.

            Off-camera, she’s a pussycat, a friend to all the world. On camera, she chews the scenery to beat the band.

             “Oh, well,” sighs Reggie. “It certainly makes for an interesting cinematic experience.”

             Day 35: Boopsie comes down by car from Md. He complains about traffic, worries himself silly about cost overruns, other shit I have no control over. If he can’t help me do the writing, I’ll kick his sorry butt off the set.   

             “No wonder the ship sank!” Boopsie bitches, handing me a print-out. “It’s 1912 and they’re carrying 20,000 bottles of beer on board, 15,000 bottles of mineral water, 40 tons of potatoes, 40,000 eggs— 40,000 eggs! — 1,750 quarts of ice cream, 6,000 pounds of butter and 7,000 head of lettuce.”

            “You’re just hungry,” I admonish him. “Let’s go get pizza.”

            Everybody on the set finds it very amusing that we are filming the last third of the movie last. No modern director would dream of shooting a script chronologically, from first page to last, but Martha Lloyd wasn’t available, we got delayed, and now we’re using the understudy, Edith Colson.

            As soon as we wrap her final set-up and concluding take, Janice Bulova disappears from our movie set and my life. Poof! She’s gone. I mean, I knew we’d part company eventually. I’d heard how tenuous film location liaisons are. We never claimed we were in love. But like any other drug addict, I find myself deep in the pain of withdrawal. Call me an idiot, but I had never given my body so freely to another person to share. We spent literally hundreds of hours, naked, flesh pressed against flesh, all night, every night, mixing our sweat, our saliva and our bodily juices. Not even my marriages— chaste by comparison— were this intensely physical. That’s what you get when you cohabit with a Method actress.

            I come back from scouting a location and find she has left— without scribbling so much as a note. This shocks me grievously. I am shocked that I am shocked! I guess one reason it hurts so much is that I’m a wordsmith. She could have written me something…?

             Janice has flown the coup. I mourn my loss.  

             Day 48: Tomorrow is the last day of shooting. We’re totally over budget. May sink the studio. Saved the best for laughs, the kick-ass bedroom scene. For whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee! I wish Janice was still here.

             Our epic concludes by having the camera slowly, slowly pan right and zoom in on Molly— portrayed by Edith Colson, grande dame of the opera. She is propped up in bed, surrounded by fluffy pillows, meant to symbolize a quick ascent into the clouds, on her way to heaven. She stares blindly into space. Church bells ring sonorously in the background. Lots of echo, a death knell.

             MOLLY: (breathlessly) ”Yes, I see it now! Each of us is a lifeboat, endlessly tacking among the ice floes of our existence. Nothing more, nothing less.”

             The tolling of bells swells in volume as we… fade to black.

            However schlocky the rest of the production— and we’ve had our moments— this creepy ending, based on old-fashioned cinematic techniques, sends a shiver down the spine of the viewer. Yeah, I wrote it. Yeah, that hop-head Reggie directed and Vilgot filmed it. Wayne the soundman did his magic with the playback of the bells. “Heavy on the reverb” he claims. Edith’s acting, however, simply blows away the cobwebs, the junkiness of our production values, the fake Edwardian wallpaper, overriding our combined effort at mediocrity. Her performance is nothing short of brilliant.

            With the addition of several weeks’ worth of CGI at a studio in Santa Barbara, The Trollop Molly Brown all but bankrupts the Sidney Bamf Film Co. Too many set-ups, too many days spent on principal photography, too many takes, too many additional scenes hastily constructed to add weight to a story that never really jells, never comes into its own.

            I’m so frustrated, I am sorely tempted to take up smoking again.

            Instead, a privilege rarely accorded the writer, I am invited out to California to sit with Sidney and his editor, Sam Hall, in the cutting room and piece together the disparate parts.

            “You can do narration,” grunts Bamf accusingly, pointing to the recording booth with a hand clutching yet another unlit cigar.

            “What, again?!” I groan.

            “Fake it.”

            Ugh. Again. That’s how we glue together our screenplay, a disembodied narrator providing expository continuity.

            “You’re a born storyteller,” Bamf counsels me, sounding almost kindly. “Feel free to tell Molly’s story.”

            Sam Hall and I do just that, equally mystified every time one scene effortlessly melds with another. “Your cinematographer really knows his stuff!” says Sam. “We’ll need to make some color corrections in the final print and clean up some of the imagery, but on balance, he grouped his sequences very nicely, indeed. Good continuity. Compliments to the scriptgirl.”

            “Money.”

            “Pardon?”

            “We called her ‘Money.’ We thought she was an airhead,” I admit, embarrassed.

                                                        *      

            “GAAAAAH! That’s some last scene!” Bamf explodes in the screening room as the lights come up. “You write that? You’re a killer!”

            “Yeah,” I say, feeling myself blush.

            “Still, there’s no excuse for using up every dollar in my bank account.”

            “I feel really bad about that, Mr. Bamf— “

            “Marty and Reggie no longer work for this studio.”

            “Please don’t blame the girls,” I tell him, the only thing I can come up with.

            “You dumb schlub, you made me a hell of a movie!” he marvels. “Fucking Molly. Jesus Christ!” He stands in the hallway outside his office, chomping on an unlit cigar, antsy. “I gotta take a meeting,” he says abruptly and presses an envelope into my hands. “Go back home and write me another story!”

            “I was thinking a screenplay about this snake oil salesman Blackie Diamond.”

            “The black guy running for president? In the Democratic primaries? He’s a demagogue. I don’t see how you can write it— it’s way too early.”

            “I’m thinking of calling it The Sorrow Tomorrow.”

            Sidney kind of backs away from me. He gives me an inscrutable look. “Sonofabitch, what a mamzer you are,” he says. “When you’re ready, pitch it to me. Meanwhile, pshol von!  G’bye!”

            I know this last phrase, it’s colloquial Russian for “Shoo! “ What you say to chase away a stray mutt. M.O.T.— Members Of the Tribe— we carry our heritage with us wherever we go.

            I watch him walk into his office. He slams the door in my face. I open the envelope. I find a one-way plane ticket to BWI and… a check that guarantees the life of our screenwriting venture for at least another year!

            Shamefacedly ecstatic, I draw a last cup of water from the office water cooler. Then, I walk out of the building, a goofy grin plastered across my face.

            Nothing beats success.

                                                      *