"Days of Wonder"

Full Disclosure:  This posting is a replacement for a posting I was going to post, but decided instead to delete.  The other one was too gloomy. 

Sometimes, you can’t help that.  Everything you write, or at least everything I write, or at least everything I write in a blog, is a direct reflection of your – my – inner…weather pattern.  You feel gloomy, you write gloomy.  But you duzzn’t has ta publish it.  Who wants to read “gloomy”? 

I choose instead to look out the window, on a mint perfect January day in Southern California.  And to be reminded, of how, on many a similar sparkling January day not that long ago, I could be found, camped out on the steps of the Writers’ Building at The Mary Tyler Moore Company, dressed in a t-shirt, cut-off jeans shorts and sandals, armed with a ballpoint pen, yellow legal pad and a clipboard

…working on a script.

These were truly the most glorious days of them all.  The days of wonder.  (The days of younger.)  The days of illusion.  The days when a just-starting writer could feel blissfully content being exactly where he wanted to be – writing for the best show on television, and getting a tan in January.

The Mary Tyler Moore Company was industry-famous for insulating its “creatives” from the lacerating incursions of network interference, primarily through the crisis-deflecting auspices of company president, Grant Tinker. 

Compounding this feeling of protection were my bosses, who restricted my activities to only what I enjoyed and was good at – writing scripts – free from the stress and messiness of temperamental actors and debilitating late nights. 

No overwhelming pressure, no “crisis of the moment”-inducing stomach aches.  I was the luckiest guy around.  I just wrote, and went home. 

Later, as my duties and my paycheck expanded – the former still unthreatening to my sensibilities, the latter barely noticeable on the budget – I giddily retained my excitement.  On the occasions when I was required to attend runthroughs (rehearsals), while some writers would walk from the office to the (sound)stage, and others climbed into available golf carts, I alone

Would run down to the stage. 

(Or at least as close to running as a non-running person can run.)

I could not wait to get down there.

When asked “How are you doing?”, my inevitable response was an irrepressible,

“Happy to be here.”

One of my bosses, seasoned and battle-scarred, seemed particularly offended by my Gomer Pyle-ish “Gawww-lee” enthusiasm, whining, whenever it flared up, ”Enough with the shitkicker routine!”

But I couldn’t turn it off.  Because it was real.

Later, as a warm-up man, unpolished and entirely lacking in jokes, I faced an audience of strangers coming to see the show with nothing but my “happy to be here” mentality and made them happy to be there too.  It was a powerful experience.  The feeling was infectious.  And the “carrier” was me.

As a chronicler, it is difficult to leave the story there, unturned and incomplete.  But I think I will anyway.

It’s what I need today.  And on this blog, if nowhere else, it’s not Tony Danza, and it’s not Judith Light. 

On this blog, readers and commenters,

I’m the Boss.