Pancake City

I’m halfway done unearthing and organizing my old files. I found a few partially written stories that I have absolutely no recollection of writing. I must have started them many years ago. None of them are close to a recognizable story, but there are a few interesting paragraphs among the mess:

“General Montayo didn’t smoke small cigars. He didn’t smoke large cigars. He smoked medium cigars. Large cigars were a wasteful extravagance, the pleasure never equating with the money. Small cigars were an insult. An insult to flavor, to quiescence, and most of all, to the ambrosia-filled state of mindless pleasure that made time eternal for a few, brief minutes, and let a man’s perturbations explode from the smoldering tip of a modest belvedere into rigid curls of smoke that separated like rivulets from a river and left slowly, softly, finally fading into a dreamlike haze.”

I wrote a skit and later realized that the premise is inherently flawed. The premise is that Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and a helium balloon are competing for the 2005 Gasbag of the Year Award.

Funny idea, right? But it didn’t work, and several drafts and comments from friends later I’ve come to realize that the premise has contradictions in itself that make it almost impossible to convert into a great skit.

I’m still working the contradictions out, but one of several that I thought of so far is that I’m trying to parody two things at the same time: the personalities of Rush Limbaugh/Bill O’Reilly, and right-wing talk radio. Writing skits with more than one subject just doesn’t work.

There is also the choice of the game show format, which requires lots of short responses, and trying to parody Limbaugh and O’Reilly, which I believe requries them to speak for several sentences at a time.

It’s an odd notion to me–that a skit can be flawed just because of a poor structure. I’ve always worked under the idea that in sketch writing, what is important is how the concept is done, not the concept itself. That a truly creative person could find a way to make any premise work. Now I think the premise is at least as important as the writing, possibly more so.

Okay, enough self-absorption. Here’s the skit. You may find it amusing, may not.

HOST: “Welcome to the finals of the 2005 American Gasbag Competition. I’m Chuck Sewer. By the end of this night, one of these three talk show hosts will be America’s Gasbag of the Year. Let’s meet the finalists.”

HOST: “A titan of radio and TV, and guardian of the No-Spin Zone: Bill O’Reilly.”

O’REILLY: “I’m going to lecture you like I’ve never lectured before.”

HOST: “Always right, never wrong, he puts the left where they belong. Rush Limbaugh.”

LIMBAUGH yanks out a bottle of pills and tosses back the whole bottle. As the pills fall, he snaps at them like a mad dog tearing at a piece of meat. Most of the pills miss his face and fall on the floor.

HOST: “And give it up to our returning champion, helium balloon!

BALLOON: “EEE-EEE-EEE.”

O’REILLY: “Hey!”

HOST: [laughing] “No win zone, indeed. First up is the lighting round. You will be given a series of topics. Whoever makes the most outrageous statement about it wins. Hands to the buzzer!

BALLOON: “EEE-EEE-EEE.”

HOST: “Just vibrate then. First topic. ACLU.”

O’REILLY: [buzzer] “Hitler would be a card-carrying ACLU member.”
LIMBAUGH: [buzzer] “Hitler? If Hitler had sex with Satan, their baby would be President of the ACLU.”
BALLOON: “EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE.”

HOST: “Judges? Helium balloon by a nose!”

RIMBAUGH: “Come on! Who are the judges, the New York Times?”

HOST: “Sorry Rush, but two-headed Hitler-Satan baby that pees evil is the winner. Next topic: The Clintons.”

LIMBAUGH: Last week, Hillary Clinton had sex with the two-headed Hitler-Satan baby, “Hitlan”.
O’REILLY: “Then she brought a catapult to Iraq and flung aborted babies at our troops.
HOST: “Wow. Helie is stunned squeak-less. Well, let’s see who the judges [sees Balloon shaking] Yes?
BALLOON: “EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE.”
O’REILLY: [angry] “Mmph!”
HOST: “Ohhhhhh, my! Can you say that about a woman and a water hose? Another one for H.B. Final topic: the torture at Abu Ghraib.”

LIMBAUGH: “It’s amazing to me how outraged the libs are about this “scandal.” I mean, you ever hear of needing to release some steam?
BALLOON: “EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEEE.

O’Reilly thinks for a moment.

O’REILLY: “EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE.”

HOST: “This round: O’Reilly!”
BALLOON: “EEE-EEE-EEE.”
LIMBAUGH: “Yeah, he just repeated what he said!”
HOST: “Welcome to the right-wing echo chamber, guys.”
O’REILLY: [mocking contestants with echo] “You suck…you suck…you suck…”
BALLOON: “EEE-EEE-EEE.”
O’REILLY: [covering his chest] “You smear merchant!”
HOST: [laughing] “Oh, Helie. I’m sure O’Reilly has the same number of nipples as everyone else. Let’s check the leader board. H.B. is on top with 20, O’Reilly has 10 and Rush is dead last with 0.”

HOST: “Next is the all-important skills competition. Your task today is to get our mystery guest to shut up as fast as possible. Let’s bring him out. Coming all the way from a back alley behind the CVS down the street. It’s…a homeless person.”

ELDERLY MAN creeps on stage with cane.

ELDERLY PERSON: “You told me you had food.”
HOST: “That’s hilarious! Bill, you’re first. Go!”
ELDERLY PERSON: “Dear sir, do you have any food?”
O’REILLY: “Who is this joker?”
ELDERLY PERSON: “I’m elderly and cold.”
O’REILLY: “Somebody shut his mike off.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “I’m so hungry. I wish I had a doughnut.”
O’REILLY: ” Listen, buddy. You’re in the No Spin zone. The only thing you’re eating is the truth.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “Can I have gravy with the truth?”
O’REILLY: “That’s it. Cut his mike. This interview is over. I’m not going to dress you down anymore, out of respect for your father.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “My father’s 93. He was a pirate. Where is the food? I’m–(mouths rest of sentence)
HOST: “34 seconds! That might be good enough for first place. The mike cut-off comes through again.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “But my name is Henry.”

HOST: “Isn’t he adorable? Rush, you’re next. You’ll need to be 34 seconds for a chance to win. Go!”
LIMBAUGH: “Woah, woah, woah. Hold on here. What on God’s Earth is a “homeless” person?”
HOST: “It’s a person without a home.”
LIMBAUGH: “Well, what’s he doing here? Tell him to go home.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “Can I have an orange?”
HOST: “He can’t. He’s homeless.”
LIMBAUGH: “Huh?”
HOST: “He’s HOME-less.”
LIMBAUGH: [long pause] “I don’t get it.”
HOST: “Mmm…I’m going to have to disqualify you. Sorry, Rush.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “I have scurvy.”

HOST: “Maybe our reigning champion can help you out. Helie, are you ready?”
BALLOON: “EEE-EEE.”
HOST: “Go!”
ELDERLY PERSON: “My stomach is eating itself.”
BALLOON: ” EEE-EEE.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “Really? You will?
BALLOON: ” EEE-EEE.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “Thank you! He’s going to buy me dinner.”
BALLOON: ” EEE-EEE.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “You love me?
BALLOON: ” EEE-EEE.”
ELDERLY PERSON: “[tears up] Oh! You want to give me a hug! Thank you! It’s been so long.
BALLOON: ” EEE-EEE.”

ELDERLY PERSON shuffles over to balloon. When he grasps the balloon for a hug, it attacks the elderly man, beating him senseless.

ELDERLY PERSON: “AHH! AHH!”

HOST: “[horrified] Helie. You…killed him. In cold blood. You just killed him…and beat out O’Reilly time with 33 sec.! Helium Balloon retains his crown! This has been the 2005 American Gas Bag Competition. Good night!

I feel like I could write every day for the next week or not write at all for a while. I hope to find the will to make it the former. The only thing I have written in the past week is the following: well, the following and everything before the second “the following.” And by “the following,” I mean everything after the second “the following,” which includes the third, fourth, and fifth “the following”s.

I’m not sure how to label what I wrote, or even what title to give it, if any. It’s different from what I usually do. If you enjoy reading it, that is wonderful.

***

A can of Coke was folded into itself like a child punched in the gut. It slumped in the gap between two sections of the concrete barrier erected to keep road drivers as road drivers, and not shoulder drivers. Shoulders are for concrete, and cones, and men who sweat along the ridges of their spines and between their toes. And they’re always men, even if they’re women, because that is what the “Men At Work” sign says.

Traffic moved slowly. In another gap was a bag of barbecue potato chips, Utz. Empty, of course. Construction workers are not elves, or pixies, or any type of whimsical creature that would leave goodies for hungry, slow-moving commuters to grab as they rolled by. I could tell they were barbecue Utz potato chips because of the large strip of orange on the bag. They use the same color for the chips. That makes it natural.

Then traffic decided to stop moving slowly. Why? Because that is bland and traffic is tired of being bland. What the traffic decided to become, without moving any faster or slower, is this: an obese man climbing a broken escalator.

If you think fat people should be mocked, then traffic is stopping every few steps to bite a jelly doughnut and lick the sticky powder off his hands. He is so fat that no one can squeeze past him. A line of impatient commuters are forced to glower at traffic as he ambles up the steps, smacking his fingers and wiping the saliva on the hand rail.

If you shy away from making fun of the frailties of others, then perhaps traffic is not fat. Perhaps he is overweight, and has diabetes, and the jelly doughnut is filled with insulin, and he is looking for an empty spot where he can escape the loud sighs and muttered remarks and fill the air with sobs that only birds and the boy that lives inside every man can hear.

Or perhaps he is like my Dad, whose cane tapped the ground in the rhythm of a clock. My dad was once thin. In old pictures, before the heart medication, his face is smiling and happy. His body grew bloated before I was born. In pictures where he holds me and my sisters, or sits next to his parents, or watching TV on the couch, his mouth is in a frown, the corners of his lips pushed down by the weight of his cheeks. Yes. It is the weight in his cheeks.

So when I say traffic moved slowly, I mean that it moved like a fat man, or a father, or a road clotted with cars. I mean it moved slow enough for me to imagine a construction worker annoyed that all the gaps are filled with trash. And what’s this, a beer bottle? The construction worker glares at Miguel, who is laughing with his friends by bulldozer. Miguel is always happy. And he’s always eating mints.

But these musing will soon end. For traffic will ease and these cars, these cells with four wheels, will flow again. Traffic always clears up in the end. It is why, if you remind yourself of this, you can battle the weight of your cheeks and still smile.

Sometimes when squirrels sing, the acorns go nuts.
Sometimes when the brain rings, our soul asks what.
How can we value one stick over another?
Friend over friend, sister over brother?

(from an unfinished essay I started months ago)

In “Pretty Woman,” Julia Roberts plays a hooker who tells Richard Gere she has one restriction: “No kissing.” Everyone has their “no kissing.” Mine is being injected with radiated dye.

Which is a choice that, during a brief stint as a lab rat for hire (Have Vein, Will Travel), I came across often. The higher pay for these studies reminded me not of a great opportunity but hazard pay, and that’s where I had to draw a courageous line: no radiation or radiation-related products, including “radiated cookies” and “Dr. Spock’s Radiated Fun Time Machine.”

Radiated dye inspired a gruesome fantasy of Al Sharpton protesting outside the hospital I’m incapacitated in, shouting, “If the dye is harmless, why is he armless?” and “This is a nation, not a radiation.” I have eaten more than my share of Twinkies as a child. Enough is enough.

This Wednesday, October 22 is International Stuttering Awareness Day. Or, as an acronym, “I-SAD.”

I’m thinking of doing a 24-hour blogathon next Wednesday (the 29th) to raise money for the National Stuttering Association. I’ll write an entry once an hour for 24 hours, or until my throbbing knuckles induce local rigormortis in my knotted fingers. If there’s enough interest (5-6 people, a few dollars each?), I’ll give it a shot.

(I already know the comment my Mom is going to make: “Why don’t you apply for a JOB every hour?”)

I hate asking people to donate money because when people ask me to donate, I end up giving money out of guilt for some dumb cause like “Cure for Cancer” or rejecting the person in a slightly mean way, like the time I said, “If I wanted a box of overpriced cookies, I’d go to Fresh Fields, you damn, dirty ape. Hey! Stop crying. I don’t care if you’re really a Girl Scout. If you don’t want to be called an ape, listen to mother and improve your posture.”

So if you’re interested, leave a comment and share your generosity with the world. But if you are already are aware enough of stuttering or worry about the effect of a 24-hour writing session on my health, please continue reading 99.44% guilt free. I promise not to change my blog name to “[your name] Is Poop.”

Unless you pay me.

“Suddenly, a leap by those powerful hind limbs as the jaguar bursts through the vegetation, closing the distance between him and the peccary within a blink of an eye. In an instant, the canines clamp the skull, and the large front paws grab and twist the neck sideways at an impossible angle. The peccary is dead before it hits the ground, its skull pulled apart by the motion of the jaguar’s jaws.”

From Jaguar, by Alan Rabinowitz

The light turned red. An ant scurried up my leg, so I flicked it off. It landed in my car’s change holder and tried to crawl away. His body felt like a pebble as I pressed my finger on its frame. It writhed, twitching in a circle. I pressed until I heard a crack. It was still twitching. I ground my finger the way one would extinguish a cigarette with the tip of a boot. It moved slower, flipping in circles.

Many years ago, I wrote a story where I asked, “What if ants could scream?” How different is that person from me? I got a piece of paper and smeared his body away like an eraser over a spare apostrophe. The story I wrote had many mistakes, but my classmates loved it. The light turned green and it was time to go.

I had my annual car wash yesterday. “Ha!” you may be thinking. “You’re exaggerating for comedic effect.” Yeah. Ha ha.

I should have taped myself and sent it to The Game Show Network as a potential show, “What’s That Stain?” The pollen is a no-brainer. It could be the “Are you illiterate or crazy?” question on the applicant questionnaire. The salt stains on the undercarriage would screen out a lot of duds though.

You see, if it were winter, the answer would be obvious but I don’t think a lot of people would expect a memento from a snow storm five months after the fact. I could see a potential contestant hunched over, staring at the salt stains in front of the show’s producers and director. Contestant 142, a mom from Sacramento, CA with four rambunctious kids who bashfully signed up for the audition after seeing a three-line ad in the ‘Ramento Weekly, unconsciously twists the silk blouse she bought the night before. The head producer, Helen…Belen, yeah, Helen Belen, gives a nasty glance to the goateed director tapping his foot. “Do you give up?” she politely asks.

Contestant 142’s dreams of sending her first two kids to college are fading faster than a pee stain on a carpet. “Cla-cla-cla-clunk.” The noise Uncle Harold’s muffler made when pulled up to her house last winter bubbled up from the deep. Harold’s eyes were bloodshot, his clothes were wrinkled, and he held on to the wall to stop teetering. He drove 42 straight hours from Minnesota after stumbling on his wife making love to a teenager he hired yesterday to shovel his snow. He wouldn’t speak about how he got the blood stains on his blue flannel shirt. Why was this memory coming up now?

“Ma’am?” said Helen Belen. Helen hated being mean but there was a long line of contestants. “Okay,” says the contestant, “I–” Winter. Snow shoveling. “I got it!” screams the contestant. “They’re salt stains from the snow. And my name isn’t Contestant 142. It’s Mary, Mary Madision!”

Helen stretched her lips and smiled. “That’s right. Thank you for coming. We’ll get in touch if we need you.” Mary skipped out of the room and Helen shook her head. Another nut.

I have two people on my mailing list. I wonder if either of them wants to leave the list but stays out of guilt. Kind of like if you arrive at a party, and you’re the only one that shows up, so you are the party.

It’s just you and Melvin, the childhood classmate you bumped into at the Courthouse Metro station yesterday. In math class, Melvin would hide his head in his notebook and eat his boogers when he thought no one was looking. Melvin sat in the front of the class and could only process three directions at once, so every day his classmates’ shrieks to the teacher startled him and, depending on where his finger was at the time, caused a nose bleed.

But Melvin had his shirt tucked in, a job, and a warm smile. It was only after he hugged you for saying you’d come to his party that you noticed the dandruff was still there.

As I was leafing through the phone book, I spotted this message from the Hello Answering Service. “Thanks to you, it’s been over 75 years.”

Finally. Validation for my theory that I led two past lives, one as a newspaper boy from 1917-1931, until I was gunned down in the streets of Chicago by pressuring Capone’s righthand man to buy a copy of the Sentinel. ‘Come on, Mister.” I pleaded. “It’s the story of the year!” I yelled the headline: “CAPONE ARRESTED FOR TAX FRAUD! AND HE’S A PUSSY!”

In my second life, 1933-1974 (two-year new life waiting period), I worked as a struggling web page designer. I would gather spiders in the wood, increase their intelligence by dipping them in mercury (pharmacist’s instructions), and wait for them to spin pages of elegant poetry. The plan worked beautifully. One of their poems:

Meat with Wings

Hello, Meat with Wings.
How I would like to meet you
to whisper in your ear,
come near, come near.
Love I will bring,
songs I will sing,
as I massage your wings
and caress you, dear.
You are so much more
than Meat with Wings.
Come near, come near.

I gathered their poems for a collection, “64 poems by 8 spiders and a water insect who looks like a spider, and writes more beautifully than the spiders, at least until they ate him”.

As the 64th poem was being composed, a young bum knocked on my door and asked if I knew of a place he could stay on that rainy night. Before I could answer, he said “Thanks”, walked in with his muddy shoes and fell asleep on my couch.

We chatted when he woke to raid my fridge. He was gone the next day with my spiders and my poems. That bum, Jack Kerouac, stole my life’s work, added some drug references, and became famous. I attended all his readings and gave him the evil eye until his death in 1969. I succumbed five years later to toxic poisoning.

They’re like Hot Pockets, but not scaldingly hot.

“Six slender branches arched away from the trunk of the tree. The branches leaned out like ballerinas, frozen, eyes closed. Far above, the wind came, and the last leaves of fall applauded. “