When I was growing up, they didn’t have Stepdads, so my experience in that department was zero. With my Dad passing on at an early age, I had little experience in the “just plain Dad” department. Plus, having a brother but no sister, I had no “in-house” experience of “girl.”
It is with these deficient qualifications that I was thrown into the role of “Step Guy” to a four year-old girl.
Tomorrow’s Rachel’s birthday. Not only is she magnificent in so many ways – bright, courageous (tomorrow, she leaves on a month-long trip to Africa) and boundlessly compassionate to humankind and small animals alike, but – now I’ll twist this around to be about me – considering my atrocious record with plants and pets that were left in my care – I am happiest to announce:
She’s still alive.
I was always worried about that. Though I once joked, “I had a stepdaughter before I had a biological daughter. Which is good. I got to practice on somebody’s else’s kid.” – that was comedy, and in no way reflected how it really felt. I never thought of Rachel as “practice.” She was always unquestionably “the real thing.”
Example:
When Dr. M (when she was just M) and I would go out, we would drop Rachel off at “babysitting co-op.” (Dr. M has a “progressive” streak.) Later that night, we’d pick her up, and, with Dr. M being the driver of our duo, it fell to me to sit in the passenger seat and hold the, usually, sleeping Rachel till we got home. I experienced my role as the most sacred, and serious, of duties.
There I sat, my arms around Rachel, making every effort to insulate her from sharp turns and sudden braking. Step-parental responsibility, and an awkward sitting position, knotted the muscles in my back. But physical discomfort would not impede me from fulfilling this vital assignment.
I had a job to do.
I struggled to find the appropriate amount of “holding pressure” – tight enough to keep Rachel from bouncing around, gentle enough for her to feel protected but not constricted. Such a delicately calibrated balance can only be determined through trial and error.
If she woke up? I was holding her too tightly.
If she fell on the floor? Not tightly enough.
The responsibility weighed heavily on my shoulders. If the Old Testament has ten Commandments, the Stepdad Testament has only one:
“Thou Shalt Not Kill the Kid.”
Mothers hate it when you kill the kid. It casts a pall on the entire relationship. You’re unlikely to overcome it.
“I promise I’ll do better with the next one”?
No. It’s over.
With “The One Commandment” as context, imagine this tableau: Dr. M shuttling us through the darkened streets of west L.A., and me, sitting beside her, my arms draped firmly but not too firmly around the sleeping Rachel, holding my breath the entire trip.
Was her head too close to the door handle? I shifted her gently to the left, avoiding door handle-brain contact that might trigger learning disabilities down the line, or a small indentation to the skull, harmless in its own right, but requiring imaginative hair styling to conceal the disfigurement from sight.
I’d stroke her head and improvise lullabies:
“Stay asleep, little Rachel
Don’t wake up, and don’t hit your head…”
I’d murmur them quietly, so as not to disturb the driver.
Finally, we were home. Dr. M parked, and came around, lifting my “sleeping bundle” into her enveloping arms.
My job was now completed. The precious cargo had arrived unharmed.
It’s not always easy to know the affect you have on somebody. Sometimes, you can see it; sometimes you can’t. But there’s one accomplishment I will always be certain of.
I got the kid home alive.
Happy Birthday, Wonderful Rachel.
And a memorable journey as well.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
"A Classic Strategy"
I was ten years old and getting ready for braces. But before that delightful experience, some unhappy preparation would be required. It was required for two reasons. One, I had a small jaw, and two, my baby teeth were refusing to fall out on schedule. As a consequence of these conditions, some pre-braces tooth extraction loomed ominously in my future.
Eight teeth would eventually be forcibly evicted from my mouth – four baby teeth and four of the adult variety. It was not a fortuitous introduction to the practice of dentistry.
One day after school, my mother informed me that I had a dentist’s appointment. From overhearing my orthodontist’s conversation with my mother, I was pre-warned as to what that dentist had in store for me. The old Yankeroo. Understandably, in my view, and I believe in any sane person’s, I was not enthusiastic about showing up. My mother said my concerns were unfounded. She assured me the appointment was “just for a cleaning.”
I was certain this was not the case. “He’s going to pull my teeth,” I insisted.
“That’s all in your head,” said my mother, sticking to her guns. “It’s just a cleaning.”
We went back and forth on the matter, me insisting the appointment involved the extraction of teeth, and my mother equally adamant that it was “just a cleaning.” In the midst of this contretemps, there were “Don’t be a baby”-type taunts hurled in my direction, manhood-challenging allegations that would propel me in therapy for decades to come.
I tenaciously held my ground. I would survive my mother’s assaults to my masculinity. I had no choice. Surrender meant a needle jabbed into my jaw, pliers clamped around my tooth, prodigious tugging and bleeding from the gums.
Playing on my mind, however, was the knowledge that I had always had a lively, and often terror-inducing imagination, plus the fact that, as far as I knew, my mother had never lied to me before. If she said it was “just a cleaning”, maybe it was “just a cleaning.” Acknowledging my uncertain “inner storyteller” and my mother’s record for veracity, I abandoned my resistance and went off to the dentist’s.
The dentist pulled two of my teeth.
I came how with gauze in my mouth.
“Ma!” I raged through tears and absorbent cotton. “You told me it was just a cleaning.”
My mother’s reply was as reasonable as it was unsatisfying.
“If I’d told you the truth, would you have gone?”
I was furious. (The fire, as you see, has not totally abated.) A respected authority figure had taken advantage of my trust. And, equally as shamefully, I had fallen for it. Fortunately, recent history has demonstrated that when it comes to succumbing to this insidious type of persuasion, I am not exactly alone.
The “It’s only a cleaning” strategy? It’s the same argument that got us into Iraq. This argument is accompanied by a familiar justification.
If they’d told us the truth, would anybody have gone?
Oh my God. My Mom could have made a bad president.
Eight teeth would eventually be forcibly evicted from my mouth – four baby teeth and four of the adult variety. It was not a fortuitous introduction to the practice of dentistry.
One day after school, my mother informed me that I had a dentist’s appointment. From overhearing my orthodontist’s conversation with my mother, I was pre-warned as to what that dentist had in store for me. The old Yankeroo. Understandably, in my view, and I believe in any sane person’s, I was not enthusiastic about showing up. My mother said my concerns were unfounded. She assured me the appointment was “just for a cleaning.”
I was certain this was not the case. “He’s going to pull my teeth,” I insisted.
“That’s all in your head,” said my mother, sticking to her guns. “It’s just a cleaning.”
We went back and forth on the matter, me insisting the appointment involved the extraction of teeth, and my mother equally adamant that it was “just a cleaning.” In the midst of this contretemps, there were “Don’t be a baby”-type taunts hurled in my direction, manhood-challenging allegations that would propel me in therapy for decades to come.
I tenaciously held my ground. I would survive my mother’s assaults to my masculinity. I had no choice. Surrender meant a needle jabbed into my jaw, pliers clamped around my tooth, prodigious tugging and bleeding from the gums.
Playing on my mind, however, was the knowledge that I had always had a lively, and often terror-inducing imagination, plus the fact that, as far as I knew, my mother had never lied to me before. If she said it was “just a cleaning”, maybe it was “just a cleaning.” Acknowledging my uncertain “inner storyteller” and my mother’s record for veracity, I abandoned my resistance and went off to the dentist’s.
The dentist pulled two of my teeth.
I came how with gauze in my mouth.
“Ma!” I raged through tears and absorbent cotton. “You told me it was just a cleaning.”
My mother’s reply was as reasonable as it was unsatisfying.
“If I’d told you the truth, would you have gone?”
I was furious. (The fire, as you see, has not totally abated.) A respected authority figure had taken advantage of my trust. And, equally as shamefully, I had fallen for it. Fortunately, recent history has demonstrated that when it comes to succumbing to this insidious type of persuasion, I am not exactly alone.
The “It’s only a cleaning” strategy? It’s the same argument that got us into Iraq. This argument is accompanied by a familiar justification.
If they’d told us the truth, would anybody have gone?
Oh my God. My Mom could have made a bad president.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
"Proactive Debilitation"
That’s a “grabby” title, isn’t it? And you wonder why I’m not more commercial. Or maybe you don’t.
“Proactive Debilitation”, a concept I learned about years ago in a psychology class, came to mind yesterday when I was writing about summer camp. I was thinking about badminton and tennis. “Proactive Debilitation” explains why, because I learned to play badminton before I learned to play tennis, it was harder for me to learn to play tennis. (The fact that I wasn’t strong enough to hold up a tennis racket may have also had something to do with it.)
“Proactive Debilitation” basically means that mastering “Task A” first makes it more difficult to master “Task B”. Even though tennis and badminton appear to be similar – stringed rackets, a net and something you hit over it – in essential “mastering of them” ways, they’re not. Badminton involves wrist action; tennis involves the arm. Transferring your badminton-learned wristiness to tennis, it seriously inhibits your progress.
Isn’t that interesting?
What if it was about show business, would that make it any better? Let’s find out.
Consider this observation. Don’t tell me there are exceptions – there are always exceptions – but generally speaking, writers and directors who start out in television rarely have successful careers when they transition into movies.
I’ll stick to comedy, where I know something. I’ll start with directors. Why? Because directors should want to be in the movies. Movie directors are treated like gods. Writers are treated poorly everywhere, so the incentive’s not quite as obvious.
Directors of half-hour comedies – and I’m not talking about second-rate shleppers here, what they call the “traffic cops” – the greatest half-hour comedy directors of all time have had little to no success in movies. Or they’ve stayed away from them entirely.
Examples? Three of the best sitcom directors that ever was:
Jay Sandrich (Soap, The Mary Tyler Moor Show, The Cosby Show) directed hundreds of television episodes.
And two movies.
Jim Burrows (Taxi, Cheers, Friends and almost everything else) directed, according to TV.com, 764 episodes.
And one movie.
Andy Ackerman (Seinfeld) directed 362 television episodes.
And no movies.
How come?
Talent is talent, isn’t it? It should be easily transferable to another medium. And yet…
764 episodes, one movie.
The great sitcom directors claim the pace of movies is not to their liking. Compared with the speed of television production, the movie production process is glacial. (They’re referring to big-budget studio movies, not the low budget “indies”, whose pace, I imagine, is considerably more brisk.)
The “go-go” pace is generally the great sitcom directors’ standard reason for favoring TV work over movie work. I will now add some reasons of my own.
Regular Employment
Successful TV directors can work as often as they want to. With episodes and pilots, they can toil pretty much all year round, season after season. Successful movie directors, on the other hand, because of the pace of movie production, and because they don’t make as many of them, work considerably less often.
Money
I guess, if you’re big, there’s money everywhere. But a successful TV director (say, like Andy Ackerman), if he shares in the profits from a series sold to syndication (say, like Seinfeld), we’re talking the Gross National Product of a mid-sized nation. So there’s that.
Convenience
Sitcom directors work on a soundstage and are generally home for dinner. Movie directors spend months shooting in Namibia.
These are persuasive reasons why sitcom directors would prefer TV to the movies. There’s really only one argument on the other side.
IT’S THE MOVIES!!!
Big budgets, big stars, seventy-foot screens. The movies is Casablanca and Gone With The Wind. It’s Rocky and E.T. Star Wars and The Matrix. People pay money to see them. You have to actually put on clothes and go out of the house. There’s a mystique about movies.
Did you ever hear of “Television Mystique”?
And yet, all these great directors favor TV. You can’t help wondering what’s really going on.
Let me drop the directors at this point, and switch to writers. (My argument applies equally to both.) I know a lot of excellent of television writers, with multiple awards, and credits on the most respected comedies ever broadcast. Still, as with directors, the number of television writers who’ve made the successful jump to movies is remarkably small.
Why should that be? It’s just a script, right? Movie scripts are longer, but so what? You use more paper. Otherwise, it’s the same, isn’t it?
No.
Why not? They’re both writing.
They’re different kinds of writing.
What do you mean?
When TV directors talk about television’s faster pace compared to movies, they’re referring to the production process. But in my view it goes far deeper than that. The main difference between television and the movies is the rhythm and pace of the product itself.
The nature of that difference?
Television doesn’t have time to take its time. The episodes are (now) twenty-one minutes long. Every second counts. TV audiences are also clutching remotes. If the energy of what they’re watching flags, they’re gone.
When you’re sitting in a movie theater, your viewing options are considerably narrowed. There’s only one thing you can watch. (Although you can fall asleep, which I’ve done on numerous occasions.)
With control of the running time and a monopoly on the audience’s attention, movies can proceed at an appropriate – which generally means a more naturalistic – pace. You can take time for “character” moments. You can build a plot or a relationship more gradually. You can have totally, and meaningfully, quiet interludes.
I’m not saying movies can afford to be boring, no entertainment medium can. But they do have the luxury, not available in television, of simulating the recognizable rhythm of actual life.
Television’s not set up to do any of that. So when TV writers switch to the movies, they have to totally recalibrate their timing. In some ways, the more experienced they are, the more difficult that is. Many of them have great difficulty cracking the code.
In comedy, television’s insistent pace requires writers to construct scripts in manner consistent with the demands of the medium, resulting in juiced-up storytelling and a “three laughs per page” joke rhythm. Move this writing approach to the big screen, and the result seems stilted and embarrassingly out of place.
With the emergence of the more cinematic single-camera comedies (30 Rock, The Office, etc.) rather than the live-audience shows that I wrote, the transition of current writers and directors to the movies will likely be smoother, and as result, more common. But in my day, it almost never happened.
The reason in a nutshell?
Proactive Debilitation. *
* There is also Proactive Facilitation – Learning Task A improves your ability to perform Task B.
Retroactive Facilitation – Learning Task B improves your ability to perform Task A.
And Retroactive Debilitation – Learning Task B diminishes your ability to perform Task A.
Congratulations. You now own the entire set.
“Proactive Debilitation”, a concept I learned about years ago in a psychology class, came to mind yesterday when I was writing about summer camp. I was thinking about badminton and tennis. “Proactive Debilitation” explains why, because I learned to play badminton before I learned to play tennis, it was harder for me to learn to play tennis. (The fact that I wasn’t strong enough to hold up a tennis racket may have also had something to do with it.)
“Proactive Debilitation” basically means that mastering “Task A” first makes it more difficult to master “Task B”. Even though tennis and badminton appear to be similar – stringed rackets, a net and something you hit over it – in essential “mastering of them” ways, they’re not. Badminton involves wrist action; tennis involves the arm. Transferring your badminton-learned wristiness to tennis, it seriously inhibits your progress.
Isn’t that interesting?
What if it was about show business, would that make it any better? Let’s find out.
Consider this observation. Don’t tell me there are exceptions – there are always exceptions – but generally speaking, writers and directors who start out in television rarely have successful careers when they transition into movies.
I’ll stick to comedy, where I know something. I’ll start with directors. Why? Because directors should want to be in the movies. Movie directors are treated like gods. Writers are treated poorly everywhere, so the incentive’s not quite as obvious.
Directors of half-hour comedies – and I’m not talking about second-rate shleppers here, what they call the “traffic cops” – the greatest half-hour comedy directors of all time have had little to no success in movies. Or they’ve stayed away from them entirely.
Examples? Three of the best sitcom directors that ever was:
Jay Sandrich (Soap, The Mary Tyler Moor Show, The Cosby Show) directed hundreds of television episodes.
And two movies.
Jim Burrows (Taxi, Cheers, Friends and almost everything else) directed, according to TV.com, 764 episodes.
And one movie.
Andy Ackerman (Seinfeld) directed 362 television episodes.
And no movies.
How come?
Talent is talent, isn’t it? It should be easily transferable to another medium. And yet…
764 episodes, one movie.
The great sitcom directors claim the pace of movies is not to their liking. Compared with the speed of television production, the movie production process is glacial. (They’re referring to big-budget studio movies, not the low budget “indies”, whose pace, I imagine, is considerably more brisk.)
The “go-go” pace is generally the great sitcom directors’ standard reason for favoring TV work over movie work. I will now add some reasons of my own.
Regular Employment
Successful TV directors can work as often as they want to. With episodes and pilots, they can toil pretty much all year round, season after season. Successful movie directors, on the other hand, because of the pace of movie production, and because they don’t make as many of them, work considerably less often.
Money
I guess, if you’re big, there’s money everywhere. But a successful TV director (say, like Andy Ackerman), if he shares in the profits from a series sold to syndication (say, like Seinfeld), we’re talking the Gross National Product of a mid-sized nation. So there’s that.
Convenience
Sitcom directors work on a soundstage and are generally home for dinner. Movie directors spend months shooting in Namibia.
These are persuasive reasons why sitcom directors would prefer TV to the movies. There’s really only one argument on the other side.
IT’S THE MOVIES!!!
Big budgets, big stars, seventy-foot screens. The movies is Casablanca and Gone With The Wind. It’s Rocky and E.T. Star Wars and The Matrix. People pay money to see them. You have to actually put on clothes and go out of the house. There’s a mystique about movies.
Did you ever hear of “Television Mystique”?
And yet, all these great directors favor TV. You can’t help wondering what’s really going on.
Let me drop the directors at this point, and switch to writers. (My argument applies equally to both.) I know a lot of excellent of television writers, with multiple awards, and credits on the most respected comedies ever broadcast. Still, as with directors, the number of television writers who’ve made the successful jump to movies is remarkably small.
Why should that be? It’s just a script, right? Movie scripts are longer, but so what? You use more paper. Otherwise, it’s the same, isn’t it?
No.
Why not? They’re both writing.
They’re different kinds of writing.
What do you mean?
When TV directors talk about television’s faster pace compared to movies, they’re referring to the production process. But in my view it goes far deeper than that. The main difference between television and the movies is the rhythm and pace of the product itself.
The nature of that difference?
Television doesn’t have time to take its time. The episodes are (now) twenty-one minutes long. Every second counts. TV audiences are also clutching remotes. If the energy of what they’re watching flags, they’re gone.
When you’re sitting in a movie theater, your viewing options are considerably narrowed. There’s only one thing you can watch. (Although you can fall asleep, which I’ve done on numerous occasions.)
With control of the running time and a monopoly on the audience’s attention, movies can proceed at an appropriate – which generally means a more naturalistic – pace. You can take time for “character” moments. You can build a plot or a relationship more gradually. You can have totally, and meaningfully, quiet interludes.
I’m not saying movies can afford to be boring, no entertainment medium can. But they do have the luxury, not available in television, of simulating the recognizable rhythm of actual life.
Television’s not set up to do any of that. So when TV writers switch to the movies, they have to totally recalibrate their timing. In some ways, the more experienced they are, the more difficult that is. Many of them have great difficulty cracking the code.
In comedy, television’s insistent pace requires writers to construct scripts in manner consistent with the demands of the medium, resulting in juiced-up storytelling and a “three laughs per page” joke rhythm. Move this writing approach to the big screen, and the result seems stilted and embarrassingly out of place.
With the emergence of the more cinematic single-camera comedies (30 Rock, The Office, etc.) rather than the live-audience shows that I wrote, the transition of current writers and directors to the movies will likely be smoother, and as result, more common. But in my day, it almost never happened.
The reason in a nutshell?
Proactive Debilitation. *
* There is also Proactive Facilitation – Learning Task A improves your ability to perform Task B.
Retroactive Facilitation – Learning Task B improves your ability to perform Task A.
And Retroactive Debilitation – Learning Task B diminishes your ability to perform Task A.
Congratulations. You now own the entire set.
Monday, July 6, 2009
"Summer Times - Earl, the Counselor"
When I stopped being exclusively a writer and started being a show runner, I felt the same way I felt when I stopped being a camper and started being a counselor. If I could put a phrase to the feeling, that phrase would be, “There goes the neighborhood.”
I know I’m paraphrasing Groucho Marx but what kind of a camp is it that would have me as a counselor? My answer? A camp that was going seriously downhill.
As a parent, my brother refused to send his children to sleepover camp. He was concerned for their welfare, and, having gone to camp himself, he was cognizant of the qualification level of the counseloring staff. It was my level. No qualifications whatsoever.
Parents were entrusting me with their children. For two months. Apparently, they had no idea that I had no idea.
The camp tried to prepare us. The staff would arrive three days early for what they called pre-camp. Aside providing the staff a chance to get acquainted and to spruce up their areas of responsibility, pre-camp involved a series of orientation sessions to prepare counselors for the job ahead. I can’t remember one thing they told me at those sessions. Except for this:
“The boys’ side of camp is the boys’ side of camp; the girls’ side of camp is the girls’ side of camp. The boys will remain on the boys’ side of camp, and the girls’ will remain on the girls’ side of camp.”
That’s all I remember.
It’s not ‘cause I’m old that I don’t recall the content of those pseudo-psychological cram sessions. I didn’t remember the stuff when they were telling it to me. First off, the sessions were theoretical and boring. And secondly, I couldn’t focus on what they were saying, because I was in total “panic mode”, nervously counting the hours until helpless little children would arrive who would place their safety, happiness, health and wellbeing in my totally unqualified hands.
Were they out of their minds!? (And by “they” I mean the people who hired me, the parents and the children.)
As the older staff members shared their wisdom on promoting cabin-group harmony and dealing with homesickness, a mantra looped noisily in my brain, blaring a message that’s been with me pretty much my entire life:
“I don’t know how to do this.”
A more accurate representation?
“I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS!!!!!”
Why did I agree to become a counselor? First, let me clear something up. Despite the impression I may have left in last year’s “Summer Times” posts (resulting from writing that failed to signal you to read between the lines), I didn’t hate camp. The stories I related focused on the bumpy parts of the road – like when the swim instructor threw me in the lake, and when my cabin-mates tried to hang me – but that’s what stories do. “I walked around and it was nice” is not a story. “I refused to eat liver, and my counselor made me sleep in the rafters.” That one, you want to hear about. (Or maybe they’re just easier to write.)
I can’t explain why I liked camp. My best shot at it is is that people seemed to notice me there. The thing was, after you turned seventeen, you were too old to be a camper. I became a counselor so I could keep going to camp. During my pre-camp jitters, however, this started to seem like not a good enough reason.
One thing I did learn during pre-camp is that panic is exhausting. As my energy depleted, my feelings of terror inevitably started to subside, replaced by…well, not hope, but something vaguely in that direction.
Who knows, I thought, when I started thinking less like a crazy person, I wasn’t any less qualified than the other first-time counselors. Nobody’d forced them to give me the job. Maybe I could handle this.
Maybe it would be okay.
FLASH FORWARD
It’s seven-fifteen, the first morning. The campers arrived yesterday. I’m the counselor of eleven year-old boys.
The wake-up siren rings. I slowly come awake, and tell the kids to get ready for breakfast.
I look around.
There is nobody else in the cabin.
The cabin door flies open. All my campers, fully dressed and, I’m told later, out for two hours, are filing back in!
Oh, yeah. I could handle this.
I know I’m paraphrasing Groucho Marx but what kind of a camp is it that would have me as a counselor? My answer? A camp that was going seriously downhill.
As a parent, my brother refused to send his children to sleepover camp. He was concerned for their welfare, and, having gone to camp himself, he was cognizant of the qualification level of the counseloring staff. It was my level. No qualifications whatsoever.
Parents were entrusting me with their children. For two months. Apparently, they had no idea that I had no idea.
The camp tried to prepare us. The staff would arrive three days early for what they called pre-camp. Aside providing the staff a chance to get acquainted and to spruce up their areas of responsibility, pre-camp involved a series of orientation sessions to prepare counselors for the job ahead. I can’t remember one thing they told me at those sessions. Except for this:
“The boys’ side of camp is the boys’ side of camp; the girls’ side of camp is the girls’ side of camp. The boys will remain on the boys’ side of camp, and the girls’ will remain on the girls’ side of camp.”
That’s all I remember.
It’s not ‘cause I’m old that I don’t recall the content of those pseudo-psychological cram sessions. I didn’t remember the stuff when they were telling it to me. First off, the sessions were theoretical and boring. And secondly, I couldn’t focus on what they were saying, because I was in total “panic mode”, nervously counting the hours until helpless little children would arrive who would place their safety, happiness, health and wellbeing in my totally unqualified hands.
Were they out of their minds!? (And by “they” I mean the people who hired me, the parents and the children.)
As the older staff members shared their wisdom on promoting cabin-group harmony and dealing with homesickness, a mantra looped noisily in my brain, blaring a message that’s been with me pretty much my entire life:
“I don’t know how to do this.”
A more accurate representation?
“I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS!!!!!”
Why did I agree to become a counselor? First, let me clear something up. Despite the impression I may have left in last year’s “Summer Times” posts (resulting from writing that failed to signal you to read between the lines), I didn’t hate camp. The stories I related focused on the bumpy parts of the road – like when the swim instructor threw me in the lake, and when my cabin-mates tried to hang me – but that’s what stories do. “I walked around and it was nice” is not a story. “I refused to eat liver, and my counselor made me sleep in the rafters.” That one, you want to hear about. (Or maybe they’re just easier to write.)
I can’t explain why I liked camp. My best shot at it is is that people seemed to notice me there. The thing was, after you turned seventeen, you were too old to be a camper. I became a counselor so I could keep going to camp. During my pre-camp jitters, however, this started to seem like not a good enough reason.
One thing I did learn during pre-camp is that panic is exhausting. As my energy depleted, my feelings of terror inevitably started to subside, replaced by…well, not hope, but something vaguely in that direction.
Who knows, I thought, when I started thinking less like a crazy person, I wasn’t any less qualified than the other first-time counselors. Nobody’d forced them to give me the job. Maybe I could handle this.
Maybe it would be okay.
FLASH FORWARD
It’s seven-fifteen, the first morning. The campers arrived yesterday. I’m the counselor of eleven year-old boys.
The wake-up siren rings. I slowly come awake, and tell the kids to get ready for breakfast.
I look around.
There is nobody else in the cabin.
The cabin door flies open. All my campers, fully dressed and, I’m told later, out for two hours, are filing back in!
Oh, yeah. I could handle this.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
"Goin' Out For A Beer"
I’m working on a Canadian television series called Music Machine as the humorous music critic. My routines include music-related jokes like this one:
“Chicago used to be called The Chicago Transit Authority, but they changed their name, because people were buying tickets to their concerts and trying to use them on the bus.”
Okay.
Through Music Machine, I met Anne Murray, at the time the most famous singer in Canada. She’d even made a splash in the States, most notably with the song, “Snowbird.” From a Canadian standpoint, Anne Murray was an enormous star.
I ran into Anne Murray in the Music Machine make-up room. She was getting make-up for the show, and I was doing sit-ups on the floor. This seems to be my way of doing things. When famous people are around, I find odd ways of attracting attention.
Sitting in her make-up chair, Anne Murray informs me that she’d once been a Phys. Ed. teacher. Suddenly, she’s out of her chair and down on the floor, instructing me on the proper form for doing sit-ups.
After the Music Machine taping is over, Anne and the show’s producer head across the street for a celebratory beer. I giddily tag along. I’m not sure I was formally invited, but it was something I was unwilling to miss:
Grabbin’ a beer with “The Canadian Songbird.”
The bar, located in a hotel, had rules, one of which was you needed a jacket to get in. I didn’t have a jacket, so the bar loaned me one they had handy for just such occasions.
The jacket was plaid. Red, green and black checks. Spruced up with gold-colored buttons. It was also four sizes too big.
I put it on.
I wanted to drink with Anne Murray.
You need to know this about me. I can only drink one beer. One beer – I’m relaxed, I’m congenial, I say things, I don’t know where they came from. I’m amazing with one beer. I go anywhere near a second beer, and all bets are off. Sometimes, I get grumpy. Sometimes I get morose. Sometimes I get sleepy. I always get something. And that something is never me at anywhere close to my best.
Well….
Other people were having more than one beer.
So, (somebody stop me)
So did I.
I won’t go into the specifics of my behavior in front of the biggest star in Canada not wearing skates. I don’t remember my behavior, although I vaguely recall being loud and unfunny. What I do remember, and remember crystal clearly, is this.
I’m sitting on the subway on my way home with this goofy smile on my face. I can see people staring at me, and I’m pretty sure what they’re staring at – a happy man who’d gone out for a beer with a beautiful and talented major star.
I’m riding the subway for twenty minutes before I discover what they’re really staring at.
I was still wearing the plaid jacket.
“Chicago used to be called The Chicago Transit Authority, but they changed their name, because people were buying tickets to their concerts and trying to use them on the bus.”
Okay.
Through Music Machine, I met Anne Murray, at the time the most famous singer in Canada. She’d even made a splash in the States, most notably with the song, “Snowbird.” From a Canadian standpoint, Anne Murray was an enormous star.
I ran into Anne Murray in the Music Machine make-up room. She was getting make-up for the show, and I was doing sit-ups on the floor. This seems to be my way of doing things. When famous people are around, I find odd ways of attracting attention.
Sitting in her make-up chair, Anne Murray informs me that she’d once been a Phys. Ed. teacher. Suddenly, she’s out of her chair and down on the floor, instructing me on the proper form for doing sit-ups.
After the Music Machine taping is over, Anne and the show’s producer head across the street for a celebratory beer. I giddily tag along. I’m not sure I was formally invited, but it was something I was unwilling to miss:
Grabbin’ a beer with “The Canadian Songbird.”
The bar, located in a hotel, had rules, one of which was you needed a jacket to get in. I didn’t have a jacket, so the bar loaned me one they had handy for just such occasions.
The jacket was plaid. Red, green and black checks. Spruced up with gold-colored buttons. It was also four sizes too big.
I put it on.
I wanted to drink with Anne Murray.
You need to know this about me. I can only drink one beer. One beer – I’m relaxed, I’m congenial, I say things, I don’t know where they came from. I’m amazing with one beer. I go anywhere near a second beer, and all bets are off. Sometimes, I get grumpy. Sometimes I get morose. Sometimes I get sleepy. I always get something. And that something is never me at anywhere close to my best.
Well….
Other people were having more than one beer.
So, (somebody stop me)
So did I.
I won’t go into the specifics of my behavior in front of the biggest star in Canada not wearing skates. I don’t remember my behavior, although I vaguely recall being loud and unfunny. What I do remember, and remember crystal clearly, is this.
I’m sitting on the subway on my way home with this goofy smile on my face. I can see people staring at me, and I’m pretty sure what they’re staring at – a happy man who’d gone out for a beer with a beautiful and talented major star.
I’m riding the subway for twenty minutes before I discover what they’re really staring at.
I was still wearing the plaid jacket.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
"A Modest Proposal On Healthcare"
We are told that skyrocketing health care costs are sinking our economy. I offer here a suggestion that could, at least slightly, lower those costs.
You know those monitoring machines people get hooked up to in hospitals – the machine beeps repeatedly and you’re alive, an extended “Eeeeeeee” and you’re dead? Those machines have to be expensive, don’t you think?
Well here’s my suggestion. What if you got rid of those high-priced monitoring machines, and replaced them with harmonicas? Hold on. Just listen.
You place a harmonica into every seriously ill patient’s mouth. The patient breathes directly through the harmonica, and as a result of the sounds that come out, we’d be able to know whether or not they were still alive.
A nurse walks by a hospital room, they stop and they listen. If they hear the rhythmic whine of the harmonica, the second note pitched slightly higher than the first – “Ah-hah…Ah-hah…Ah-hah…Ah-hah” – then they know that all is well. No “Ah-hah” and it’s “Code Red.” (You should hear me do that harmonica sound. I’m really good at it.)
Nothing could be more natural. It’s already how harmonicas function. On some notes, you breathe in, and on others, you breathe out. I say, let’s put this natural function to work saving lives.
I see no “down side” to this proposal. When one guy dies, you just wash off the harmonica, and stick it in another guy’s mouth.
A radical proposal? People will try to convince you it is. Which people? The “monitoring machine” lobby for one. But we need to stand up to them and get serious about health care costs.
There’s no question, those harmonicas would save us a whole lot of money.
You know those monitoring machines people get hooked up to in hospitals – the machine beeps repeatedly and you’re alive, an extended “Eeeeeeee” and you’re dead? Those machines have to be expensive, don’t you think?
Well here’s my suggestion. What if you got rid of those high-priced monitoring machines, and replaced them with harmonicas? Hold on. Just listen.
You place a harmonica into every seriously ill patient’s mouth. The patient breathes directly through the harmonica, and as a result of the sounds that come out, we’d be able to know whether or not they were still alive.
A nurse walks by a hospital room, they stop and they listen. If they hear the rhythmic whine of the harmonica, the second note pitched slightly higher than the first – “Ah-hah…Ah-hah…Ah-hah…Ah-hah” – then they know that all is well. No “Ah-hah” and it’s “Code Red.” (You should hear me do that harmonica sound. I’m really good at it.)
Nothing could be more natural. It’s already how harmonicas function. On some notes, you breathe in, and on others, you breathe out. I say, let’s put this natural function to work saving lives.
I see no “down side” to this proposal. When one guy dies, you just wash off the harmonica, and stick it in another guy’s mouth.
A radical proposal? People will try to convince you it is. Which people? The “monitoring machine” lobby for one. But we need to stand up to them and get serious about health care costs.
There’s no question, those harmonicas would save us a whole lot of money.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
"Al Franken Threw A Pencil At Me"
Al Franken is all the things you want a senator to be – smart, caring, hardworking and extremely knowledgeable. Al is an expert on the minutiatic workings of our government. He also knows where all the states are.
Al’s habit, while waiting for food at a restaurant, is to take out a pen and freehandedly sketch a map of the United States on his, hopefully throwaway, placemat. He starts by drawing an outline of the country, and then proceeds, from memory, to fill in each of the forty-eight “continental” states in their precise geographical locations and startlingly close to their actual proportions, leaving no state out, not even the little ones, like Delaware and Rhode Island.
I bet Kay Bailey Hutchison can’t do that.
There was no question that a person with such abilities was destined for a great future.
I first met Al when I visited the production offices of Saturday Night Live during their meteoric first year on the air. Though I’d been invited to move to New York and write for the show, I had rejected the offer, preferring, instead, to remain in Los Angeles.
The word had apparently gotten around. When I introduced myself to Al, the first thing out of his mouth were, “Oh, you’re the guy who won’t work for us.” Apparently, there were hard feelings somewhere.
Nearly a quarter of a century passed before we finally worked together. Al, who lived in New York, and had a series idea for a sitcom version of Nightline, called to find out if I was interested in developing it with him. I thanked him for considering me, but decided to pass. Later, Al partnered with a writer I worked with on The Cosby Show, John Markus – who also lived in New York – and they called me again, soliciting my participation in any way I wanted. This time, I said yes.
I signed on as a full-time consultant, working mostly from L.A., but sometimes commuting to New York and pitching in in person. It was in many ways, the best job I ever had.
Creatively, Al was far bolder than I was, resulting from his less inhibited comedic range nurtured by his many years on SNL, a freewheeling circus that flew by the seat of its pants. I, on the other hand, honed my craft in the more deliberate format of the situation comedy.
My job was to corral Al’s comic inspirations into a viable storytelling structure. It was an exhilarating collaboration. Al’s “let’s try anything” exuberance freed me to take risks I had never allowed myself before. John added his talent, energy and diplomatic skills to the mix, generating a whole that was soaringly better than the sum of its individual parts.
Sometimes, however, due to conflicts in style, dueling temperaments, or workload exhaustion, there was trouble. During one late-night rewrite, Al pitched a joke, the writing staff laughed appreciatively, I said, “Don’t do that”, and Al flicked a pencil at me.
The reason I said “Don’t do that” was because Al’s joke, though unquestionably funny, benefited greatly from its topicality. Riding on SNL’s electric immediacy, it would have played beautifully. But since sitcoms are often broadcast weeks after they’re shot, Al’s joke would have reached the airwaves feeling “done to death” and lame.
You could say we both made mistakes. Al forgot about the delayed broadcast date. I forget what I’d shot down was exactly what made Al Franken who he was.
Now Al’s in the senate. Given our polarized political climate, there’ll be times, I imagine, when he’ll want to throw something. But he won’t be able to. He’ll need another strategy for making his point.
I have no doubt he’ll figure it out. You’d be wrong to underrate a man who can doodle all the states on a placemat.
-----------------------
A belated happy Canada Day. It's not that I forgot, I just forgot to mention it. Canadian reticence. I celebrated in my head.
Al’s habit, while waiting for food at a restaurant, is to take out a pen and freehandedly sketch a map of the United States on his, hopefully throwaway, placemat. He starts by drawing an outline of the country, and then proceeds, from memory, to fill in each of the forty-eight “continental” states in their precise geographical locations and startlingly close to their actual proportions, leaving no state out, not even the little ones, like Delaware and Rhode Island.
I bet Kay Bailey Hutchison can’t do that.
There was no question that a person with such abilities was destined for a great future.
I first met Al when I visited the production offices of Saturday Night Live during their meteoric first year on the air. Though I’d been invited to move to New York and write for the show, I had rejected the offer, preferring, instead, to remain in Los Angeles.
The word had apparently gotten around. When I introduced myself to Al, the first thing out of his mouth were, “Oh, you’re the guy who won’t work for us.” Apparently, there were hard feelings somewhere.
Nearly a quarter of a century passed before we finally worked together. Al, who lived in New York, and had a series idea for a sitcom version of Nightline, called to find out if I was interested in developing it with him. I thanked him for considering me, but decided to pass. Later, Al partnered with a writer I worked with on The Cosby Show, John Markus – who also lived in New York – and they called me again, soliciting my participation in any way I wanted. This time, I said yes.
I signed on as a full-time consultant, working mostly from L.A., but sometimes commuting to New York and pitching in in person. It was in many ways, the best job I ever had.
Creatively, Al was far bolder than I was, resulting from his less inhibited comedic range nurtured by his many years on SNL, a freewheeling circus that flew by the seat of its pants. I, on the other hand, honed my craft in the more deliberate format of the situation comedy.
My job was to corral Al’s comic inspirations into a viable storytelling structure. It was an exhilarating collaboration. Al’s “let’s try anything” exuberance freed me to take risks I had never allowed myself before. John added his talent, energy and diplomatic skills to the mix, generating a whole that was soaringly better than the sum of its individual parts.
Sometimes, however, due to conflicts in style, dueling temperaments, or workload exhaustion, there was trouble. During one late-night rewrite, Al pitched a joke, the writing staff laughed appreciatively, I said, “Don’t do that”, and Al flicked a pencil at me.
The reason I said “Don’t do that” was because Al’s joke, though unquestionably funny, benefited greatly from its topicality. Riding on SNL’s electric immediacy, it would have played beautifully. But since sitcoms are often broadcast weeks after they’re shot, Al’s joke would have reached the airwaves feeling “done to death” and lame.
You could say we both made mistakes. Al forgot about the delayed broadcast date. I forget what I’d shot down was exactly what made Al Franken who he was.
Now Al’s in the senate. Given our polarized political climate, there’ll be times, I imagine, when he’ll want to throw something. But he won’t be able to. He’ll need another strategy for making his point.
I have no doubt he’ll figure it out. You’d be wrong to underrate a man who can doodle all the states on a placemat.
-----------------------
A belated happy Canada Day. It's not that I forgot, I just forgot to mention it. Canadian reticence. I celebrated in my head.
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