"Where Am I?"

Do you remember Lost In Space?

They’re on alien terrain.  They are confused how things work. 

Everything’s different.

It’s “Adapt or Die.”

(An alternate name for the series, if you want no one to watch.)

Okay.  (A jarring transition, but it fits.)

Dr. M’s working late; I decide to order food in.  I access Postmates – a “restaurant delivery service” – on my cell phone.  Not my first time, but I am a long way from knowing the ropes.  (Likely a “nautical” term, not a “westerns” one, as I have only seen one rope.)

I have a visce0ral craving for Vito’s Pizza.  (“Jersey-Style”, meaning large and expensive.  And if you don’t pay, they hurt you.)   I “check” on “Caesar Salad”, and a cheese pizza, with mushrooms and broccoli toppings.

Or at least I try to.

Frustratingly, the boxes for “mushrooms” and “broccoli” will not “check.”  Which is a problem.  Who wants an ungarnished cheese pizza? 

After numerous efforts to check “mushrooms” and “broccoli”, I eventually give up, which, since I am trying to be “Gluten Free”, is fine.  (I am wondering, is there a  “blocking” app on my phone set to “No wheat for him” based on telltale oils on my fingertips?  Had I accidentally bought the “Apple 6 – ‘Bossy’”?)

Jettisoning Vito’s, I turn to a substantially healthier “Plan B.”

Sweetgreen, Santa Monica, offering the “Summer BBQ” salad, with blackened chicken thigh slices. 

I “check” the “Summer BBQ” salad.  My order’s accepted.  I am happy.   It’s done.

Moments later, I receive a return phone message:

“The ‘Summer BBQ’ salad is unavailable.”

Hm.  Why didn’t they say that when I originally “checked” it?  Oh well.

I allow my Sweetgreen order to self-cancel.  I like when things do stuff by themselves.  I can just stand there and watch. 

However,

I still have not ordered a dinner.

I return back to Vito’s.  (Deep down, I did not really want salad.)  This time, I successfully check the boxes for “mushrooms” and “broccoli.”  Why it worked the second time and didn’t the first? 

What am I, a computer expert?

I order the pizza from Vito’s.  The charge is thirty-two fifty.  (Versus a dollar-fifty from La Pizza in Toronto in the 50’s, paid with my Chanukah silver dollars I had stored “forever” in my night table.)

Confirming the process, I hear back, my Postmates order has been accepted.  And “available for ‘Pick-up’ in thirty-five minutes.”

Wait, what?

“Available for ‘Pick-up’?”
  

Why are they talking about “Pick-up”? 

On a “restaurant delivery service”?

I immediately call Vito’s.  I tell them “No ‘Pick-up” – “I do not have a car!”  I actually do, but who wants to get into specifics with the guy answering the telephone at Vito’s?

The guy cancels my order.  Unfortunately, he explains, he cannot cancel the charge for that order.  For that, I have to call Postmates directly.

I get a retroactive shiver writing that sentence.  I did not know Postmates was “people.”  Lyft is not “people”; it’s “returned phone messages”, and that’s it.  Amazon, I’d learned previously, is “people.”  Which is confusing.  They should say “Human contact” when you sign up.

Anyway, I get the number for Postmates, and, with trembling fingers, I call.

Postmates’ automated phone service offers me options.  Like,

“If your order is incomplete, Press ‘1’.”

Wow.  You get a cheese pizza with just “mushrooms.”  What do they do, send over a car with a bag full of broccoli?

Pressing “3” takes me to endless, jangly “Hold” music, so annoying, I am tempted to “eat” the thirty-two fifty and hang up but since I know that’s what they want me to do, I don’t.

Finally reaching a person, I get the Vito’s pizza charge cancelled.  However, when I ask how I can keep this “Pick-up”- “Delivery” thing from happening again, I hear, “I never done ‘Pick-up’ so I don’t know.”  Leaving a good chance this will happen again!

I’m tellin’ you, more and more, it’s like Lost In Space.

Except, like in the Planet of the Apes movies,

I am still here on Earth.

"I Can't Hear You"

I don’t know if this is a frequently heard story I casually picked up or if it’s a story someone told me directly.  That’s how it works sometimes.  You hear a story on the news and you eventually think it happened to you.

I am pretty sure a wonderful comedy writer who happens to be female told me this story about her.  Though I have no doubt it happened a lot.

This wonderful comedy writer worked on the staff of a popular television show.  She was not new to the business.  She had admirable credits and professional respect.

Yet here is what happened.

She is participating in a “pitch session”, the show’s writing staff gathering to “punch up” the script under the direction of the show runner who decides what goes into the script and what doesn’t.

Everyone’s pitching ideas, some involving “story” or “character”, but mostly, it’s about jokes, replacing jokes believed to be funny but it turns out they weren’t.

The wonderful comedy writer pitches a joke. 

The joke is summarily shot down.

She pitches another joke.

Her pitch is totally ignored. 

She pitches a third joke.

She is coldly rebuked for the joke’s “missing the point.”

The woman, although naturally gritty, is human.  The cumulative rejection has its inevitable effect.

Her deflated retreat.

The thing is, she wants to contribute, and she is determined to do so.

Which she ultimately does.

When a joke in the script appears “iffy”, there is always the call:

“Can we do better?”

The wonderful comedy writer believes that she can.  Facing a “Brick Wall” of rejection, she devises a subterfuge.

She turns to the male comedy writer sitting beside her, whispering her “joke pitch” into his ear. 

The male comedy writer pitches the joke.  There is a big laugh.  The joke goes into the script.

That’s how it was back then.  (And may, to some degree, still be.)  A guy pitches it – “Great joke!”  A female comedy writer pipes up – “No dice.”

And now a story about me.

Demonstrating I am not only sensitive to injustice but monumentally self-centered.

And also I can identify.

It is my last job in television.  I am a one-day-a-week consultant on According To Jim, an “okay” half-hour comedy I gave the same care and attention to as to the landmark Larry Sanders Show, on which I consulted at the same time.

I swear, I was equally engaged.

According To Jim’s rewrite procedure involved splitting the show’s writing staff in half, each rewriting one act of the two-act episode, then meeting together for the “finishing polish.”  (As opposed to a “finishing Polish”, where they serve borscht.)

Every week, the show runner divided the (not always the same) writers into two separate “rooms”, one supervised by the show runner himself, the other led by the show’s ranking producer, who’s name was Jeffrey.

Long story short – when they put me with Jeffrey, I had the same experience as the wonderful comedy writer in the earlier story.  Though I pitched my heart out, I got nothing into the script.

Whereas…

When I was in the room led by the show runner, my contributions were enthusiastically received, occasionally inducing loud and prolonged laughter.  So long and profound, in fact, someone would race from the other room to find out what was so funny.

That “someone” was invariably Jeffrey.  

(I wanted to ask him, “How come I’m not funny in your room?” but I didn’t.  Nor when he asked, “Who pitched it?” – meaning the “Big Joke” – did I ever say “Me.”) 

(Humble people would never include that.  Less humble ones would, but only in brackets.)

Sometimes, although you objectively deserve to, you just don’t get heard.  Not infrequently, it’s a gender issue.  Sometimes it’s “birth order.”  (See: The hilarious “Stagecoach” sequence in Avalon.)  Sometimes it’s “For some reason, this guy Jeffrey can’t stand me.”)

With such behavior in rewrites, the script inevitably suffers, because great stuff is left out.  Which is a good reason not to do it.

A more important reason is it’s wrong.

Did I ever not hear people myself?

I probably did.

Hopefully, it wasn’t a lot.

And should the opportunity return,

I would definitely do better.

"Hopeful"

“You?”

It happens.

And I need to get it “on record” before this odd sensation wears off.

So here we go.  (With a lighthearted step.)

Heading towards Groundwork Coffee Co., I notice that, lo and behold – “Searching” my thickening oeuvre you will find no other “lo and beholds” so you can count yourself lucky you were present for this one – okay, where was I?  oh yeah – I notice that, lo and behold, a slab of oncoming sidewalk, long in dangerous disrepair, had finally been fixed!

You know, standing on a board balanced precariously on a ball?  That’s how it felt, crossing that raised and rubbly terrain. 

And I mean for years!

Now, although still raised (over intruding tree roots), that one-time invitation to knee sprains and falling is smoothly “blacktopped” and safe. 

Well, Glory be!   (Likely also a ‘”first.”)   

Cut To:  Inside Groundwork Coffee Co., after I arrive.  (Duh.)

Having ordered my habitual Venice Blend “Pour-Over”, while awaiting its filtering “drip”, I head over to a “supply counter”, to secure a napkin and a lid.  (Or, as I grew up saying, “a serviette and a cover.”)

I reach out to the stack of napkins when out of the corner of my imperfect left eye I spot a dark-haired woman reaching as well, arguably sooner than I did. 

Salvaging my faux pas, I respectfully defer.  But the woman insists I go first, so I do.

Due to my lingering guilt at “jumping the queue”, or because I am on dehydrating allergy medicine, or both, I am fumblingly unable to take hold of the napkin, explaining,

“My fingers are dry.”

The woman immediately plucks up two napkins and hands them to me. Embarrassed but unsilent, I accurately observe,

“I beat you to the punch, but you helped me anyway.”

“Yeah-heh-heh-heh-heh?” she warmly chuckles. 

“It’s called ‘community’, right?”

“Community” from a stranger, in these self-serving times.

And I thought the paved sidewalk would be the shining high point of my walk!

Then, on my way home, another ray of humanitarian sunshine.

Two young women, heading my way.   As they pass, I hear one of them say,

“I mean I know he’s not perfect.”

Do you hear that?

She knows he’s not perfect.

And yet she’s giving him a chance!

Life.

It depends what you notice.

And normally,

I notice the other stuff.

Well at least this time, I notice,

I didn’t.