The Canadian Story In a Nutshell

You might not get this if you’re not Canadian. But if you are, it will instantly ring true.

I’m attending a gathering at L.A.’s Four Seasons Hotel, an event honoring Canadian accomplishments. Yes, there have been some.

Maybe the event was celebrating Canada Day – July the First, remember the date. All I know is the ballroom’s brimming with expatriates Canadians, five hundred of us, maybe more.

Drinks are served, people are socializing. Overhead, a huge screen offers a montage of recent achievements by celebrated Canadians. (I’m telling you, there’ve been some.) I’m standing in a group with three or four former Canucks, one of whom is Aubrey Tadman, a talented and sweet-natured variety show writer.

At one point, I glance up at the screen and I see this female figure skater, twirling around the ice, the clip chronicling her performance at the most recent Winter Olympics. Her name eluded me, but I was aware she had done well.

“I know her,” I exclaimed. “She came in second.”

To which Tadman immediately shot back,

“Who in this room didn’t?”

The English Story In A Nutshell

At least, it was the “English Story” in the sixties. It may have changed.

Cricket is a game I only partially understand. But when I lived in London, I’d watch cricket matches on television. I’ll pretty much watch anything on television. Though, growing up in Canada, I drew the line at French Canadian bowling.

This is a cricket story. I’ll try and keep it simple. It won’t be easy.

Playing some other country, the English team was way behind, with the match rapidly nearing its end. It would take a monumental last-minute rally for the English squad to prevail

Now here’s the thing.

The traditional way of scoring runs in cricket is through safely played increments of one or two runs at a time. You could go for the “home run”, which, depending on where the ball was hit, could itself count for four or six runs. But, by hitting the ball in the air – home runs being uncatchable fly balls – you ran a greater risk of making an “out.”

Well, as I mentioned, England was seriously behind. An English batter comes up, and, instead of “dinking” the ball for a “one” or a “two”, the batter starts lofting these prodigious fly balls. The guy’s knockin’ ‘em out of the park, home run after home run – or at least the cricket equivalent of a home run – his “fours” and “sixes” cutting deeply into the other country’s lead.

England is catching up.

Before you know it, they’re ahead.

And in the end, they win!

The next day, the batter who’d spearheaded the miraculous English comeback is unceremoniously dropped from the team.

Why?

Because, the way he’d played the game…

It wasn’t “cricket.”

Foreign Models

Back in the seventies, my roommate was looking to buy a used car. He found one that suited his pocketbook, and arranged for the owner to bring it over, so my roommate could check it out.

The car turned out to have been manufactured in the owner’s country of origin, the former country of Czechoslovakia.

It was called a Skoda.

Since I have no aptitude in areas concerning how cars work, I set my mind to other issues. Issues that don’t matter. Like the car’s name.

“Over here,” I begin, “we often associate cars with speed and sleekness. We give them speedy animal names, like Mustang, Cougar, Jaguar. What does Skoda mean?”

Not entirely fluent in English, the Skoda owner explained by example.

“You know, when your friends’ boat sinks. Or his dog runs away. You say to your friend, ‘Skoda.’ You’re saying to him, ‘Too bad’, or ‘I’m sorry it happened.’”

“That’s what Skoda means? ‘I’m sorry it happened’?”

The owner nodded “yes.”

"And that's what they named the car?"

It was.

My roommate passes on the Skoda.

You may not need your car named after an animal that runs fast. But who needs a car named for an unfortunate turn of events?

Report From Hell- One of a Series

This time, it’s Bank of America.

They call them Versateller. Instant banking machines. I go to B of A to make a deposit. I occasionally get residual checks for reruns of shows I wrote a while back. I recently received one for sixteen cents. Some checks are for larger amounts.

B of A’s Santa Monica branch has four Instant Teller machines, two situated in the lobby at the front of the building, and two in the entranceway at the back. I go to the machines in the front.

The first machine says “Out of Service.” The second machine’s “deposit” bar is colored gray, indicating that that machine won’t take deposits either.

I exit the front of the building and walk to the back of the building, where the other two Instant Teller machines are located. The first machine accepts deposits, but it won’t process my checks. They sit there in the “deposit slot.” The machine won’t take them in.

The fourth machine works fine.

Two questions.

One: How does a bank allow three of its four Instant Teller machines not to function?

Two: Why is it always the last one that works?

"Summer Home Surprises"

Two years ago, we arrived at our little log cabin in Indiana at about eleven o’clock at night. Our arrival followed a “no leg room” flight from Los Angeles, and a torturous drive from Chicago, where our plane comes in. The drive to the cabin can take less than an hour and a half, with luck and good traffic. On that trip, we had neither.

We’ve been going to this cabin for almost twenty years. You get there by taking the Indiana Toll Road. For as long as we’ve been taking it, the Indiana Toll Roll has been under construction. It’s never finished. Not once could you use all the lanes. At least one of them is always shut down. Usually more.

What exactly are they doing to that road? And why can’t they finish it? If we paid bigger tolls, would they finish it faster? If we stopped paying the tolls, would the construction workers go home and let us, for once, drive on the entire highway? You have time to ponder these things, when the Indiana Toll Road’s a parking lot, and your lane’s ending in a hundred yards.

Okay.

The flight’s behind us. We’ve done our four hour drive from Chicago. It’s over. There’s the cabin.

We have arrived.

We pull onto the rutted, grassy area that serves as our driveway. We get out of the car, heading towards our beloved retreat. We’re tired but we’re happy.

She slides the key it the lock, and turns the key.

The door will not open.

She tries again, and again. Nothing. We sigh. It’s possible we curse.

We later learn that for the past two weeks, the Michigan City area had been deluged with record rains. The downpour swelled up our doorframe, causing the components of our lock to get out of alignment. That’s why the key didn’t work. Of course, we knew none of this at the time. What did we know?

We wait a whole year to come to this cabin.

And we can’t get in!

We get back in the car, and we drive off, looking for someplace that’s open at eleven at night, so we can use their phone. (Our cell phone has spotty service out there, and besides, we don’t know who to call. ) We see lights on at a gas station that’s also a convenience store. We drive onto the gravelly area in front, and park.

We ask if we can borrow their phone book. They immediately hand us one. I feel grateful for their hospitality, and consider buying some beef jerky as a “Thank you”, but I don’t. We scan the Yellow Pages, searching for a locksmith. It’s late, but we figure we’ll give it a try. If they won’t come, we’ll spend the night at “Judy’s Motor Lodge.”

(We’d been driving by “Judy’s” for years. I’d always wondered what it was like. And who stayed there. You can’t make a living from just people who are locked out of their cabins. Though judging by the paltry number of cars we’d see out front, it seemed like that’s all “Judy’s” ever got.)

The signs are encouraging. The locksmith ad in the Yellow Pages says “24-hour Service.”

(I may have told this one already. Steven Wright has this joke. “There’s a store near my house that says, ‘Open 24 Hours.’ I go down there, and the guy’s closing up. I say to him, ‘I thought you were open twenty-four hours.’ He says, ‘Not in a row.’”)

The “24-hour” locksmith says he’s in his pajamas. But he finally agrees to come out. We drive back to our cabin, and wait. The locksmith arrives. An hour and a half later. You can see his pajamas under his clothes.

The locksmith gets us in. We’ll be seeing a lot of him over the next few days, as he installs a new lock and does some carpentry work on the doorframe he destroyed. At that point, we don’t care about anything. Three hours after arriving, we are finally inside the cabin.

Dr. M’s nestled cozily in bed, reading a book. I sit down on the other side, and just as I’m about to swing my legs around, there’s this splintering “Crack!”, the bed’s nearest leg plunges directly through the floor. The bed’s downward angle causes me to fall out of it.

The plumber – who we call the next day – explains to us that, over the winter, the pipes from the nearby bathroom leaked, and the water had seeped under the bedroom floor, rotting the wood, such that when a person got into that side of the bed… they wound up on the floor.

That was two years ago. Last year’s visit offered no such difficulties. We just didn’t have hot water. As a result, Dr. M and I took turns pouring water, heated on the stove, over each other through a metal colander, the shower-ee sitting on a wooden stool in the middle of the shower stall.

One more, and I’m done. I bought an electric keyboard, so I could practice the piano while on vacation. The keyboard came packed in a long, cardboard box. I store the piano in it between visits. Recently, upon our arrival, I reached into the box to slide out the keyboard and

A mouse jumped out.

There was an audible “Eek!” From the mouse. Men don’t scream “Eek!” Well, we do, but we keep it inside our in heads.

Come on! It was a mouse!

Well, our next adventure starts tomorrow. Two weeks on Chickadee Trail.

Wish us luck.
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As is my habit when I leave town, I have left some little stories, which I Yiddishize as shticklach, for your daily consumption. Since the blog’s “scheduling” function is still on the fritz, I have enlisted Anna to publish the stories manually. She may even contribute something herself. I hope so. The kid can write.

I’ll be back shortly.

"The 'Lovin' Spoonful' Play Hammond, Indiana"

I can feel our annual trip to Indiana coming on. Stories of earlier trips are rushing to my mind. They’re disasters, of course. But what other stories do I tell?

Every summer, or so, Dr. M and I, and sometimes our kids, leave the fantasy world of Hollywood and travel to a place where they grow corn. Our vacation home is a tiny log cabin on Chickadee Trail. Nearest municipality: Michigan City, Indiana, about sixty-five miles south and east of Chicago. Michigan City is the proud home of the Indiana State prison, where John Dillinger was a nine-year guest, and out of which three prisoners recently escaped. Our hope is that they’re recaptured before we arrive.

(Dr. M informs me that when she was a child – the cabin has been in her family her entire life – there was a sign outside Indiana State Prison that read: “Please do not pick up hitchhikers.”)

Tomorrow, I’ll regale you with a medley of “arrival surprises”, unexpected challenges that have greeted us over the years when we showed up. The cabin is unoccupied fifty weeks of the year (Vandals: Please Ignore), so we never know what condition we’ll find it in. In our experience, the least likely condition for us to find it in is perfect.

Maybe this time.

Oh, yeah.

Whenever we’re in Indiana, we like to scour the area’s newspapers for interesting things to do. (I also enjoy reading the local Crime Report column. Big headline: “Missing Ladder.”)

Sometimes there’s a county fair in the vicinity, where you can eat “elephant ears” and see miniature horses. (I have no idea why those things even exist. It’s like geneticists are just fooling around.) Sometimes, there’s a small circus playing, where a girl leaves the crowds breathless by twirling two-dozen Hula Hoops at the same time.

Sometimes, we run into an encampment of re-enactors. Last summer, we not only enjoyed Civil War re-enactors, we also met a guy impersonating obscure president, Benjamin Harrison, and another guy who not only dressed as, but who boastfully claimed, “I am Farragut!”

We’ve seen Tall Ships. Well, not really tall, but Medium Height Ships. We visited a “fur trappers’ encampment”, where men were decked out like Nineteenth Century courreurs du bois (runners of the woods). Indiana people, I don’t know, they seem to have time on their hands for some serious obsessions.

Anyway, on one trip, as we neared the end of our stay, we read this:

“'Lovin’ Spoonful' To Play At Hammond Fairgrounds”

That was big news! Not only are we fans of The Lovin’ Spoonful (“Daydream”, “Summer In The City”, “Do You Believe In Magic?”), but I once worked with the band’s original leader, John Sebastian. When I was casting the lead role for a sitcom I created called Family Man, Sebastian was one of the two finalists for the part. (The role ultimately went to Richard Libertini.)

I remember John Sebastian being friendly and easygoing and kind. (Even after I didn’t give him the job.) He’d frequently call me when he was in town, and we and our spouses would go out for dinner. It seemed as if like Sebastian, I don’t know, actually wanted to hang out. Rock ‘n roll icons don’t call me that often. So I’m a little goofy about writing about it.

Anyway, the guy’s in the neighborhood – Hammond, Indiana – which is something like, twenty miles from Chicago. It seemed like a fated arrangement. We were scheduled to drive into Chicago that night. We could stop off at Hammond and take in the show. Maybe go backstage and say hello. Have a late dinner together at one of Hammond’s finer eateries.

This was really exciting!

The Hammond Fairgrounds? We had no idea. It could be some vast open field, a gathering place for some massive outdoor concert. Who knows? We could be walking into another Woodstock.

We load up the car, lock up the cabin and we take to the road. It’s raining. But nothing can dampen our spirits. (Or at least mine.) We’re catchin’ The Lovin’ Spoonful in Hammond, Indiana. Maybe there’ll be commemorative t-shirts!

The drive to Hammond is about forty-five minutes. The rain’s coming down harder. We have considerable trouble finding the fairgrounds. Younger family members lobby for ditching the concert and going straight to Chicago. They are gently overruled. Finally, we spot an illuminated Ferris wheel in the storm-darkened sky.

Hammond Fairgrounds, here we come!

We park on the road across the street, and we get out of the car. By now, the rain’s pelting down in sheets. We’re soaked to the skin in thirty seconds. I find this hilarious. (Though no one else does.) I’m certain John Sebastian thinks it’s funny too.

A concert in a downpour. Rain-soaked memories. Maybe it would inspire another hit.

"I’m soaked to the skin

Singin’ to you

Raindrops drippin’ off my nose

And fallin’ on my shoe…"

Okay, maybe not that, but adversity often spawns creativity. The downpour triggers talk of getting back in the car, but I say we have to stay. We owe it to John Sebastian. Hey, I didn’t hire him, and he was still nice to me. That’s worthy of some loyalty, isn’t it?

The fairgrounds are instantly disheartening. Cheesy games and rickety rides. And there’s nobody there. It all seems a little sad. Big star performing at a place like this. Hopefully, the concert venue would be more impressive.

We slosh through the monsoon, heading towards the mellow strains of, “Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind?”, with its steady rhythm and its signature harmonies. The recognized song rekindles my enthusiasm. This is gonna be fun.

We arrive at the concert area. I look around. Maybe five hundred seats. Less than twenty people in the audience. Sure, it’s raining, but this is pathetic.

The bleak turnout makes it even more vital to offer moral support. We wipe off the seats, and we sit down. We won’t stay long, I assure my rain-soaked family. We can barely see the stage through the deluge.

“…Make Up Your Mind” ends to scattered but, at least from me, enthusiastic applause. The lead singer steps up to introduce the next number, and as he’s speaking, I think I hear him say, “When I was the Lighting Director for The Lovin’ Spoonful…”

At which point, I immediately suspect that the band we are being entertained by is The Lovin’ Spoonful

in name only.

I pick up a waterlogged program off the ground. I start to read. Yup. It was just as I thought. Some of the players had connections to the original Lovin’ Spoonful, though not necessarily musical ones. Lighting Director. Back-up drummer. Ticket manager. Now they were the band.

There was not one original members of The Lovin’ Spoonful on that stage.

John Sebastian was nowhere in the vicinity.

The drive to Chicago was quiet that night. Silent recriminations, and a dripping from the hair.

A torrential rainfall. No John Sebastian. And a band of no-name replacements. You just have to laugh, I told my family.

But they weren’t in the mood.

"It Seemed Like A Good Idea"

Recently, I got so many post ideas at bedtime, I started thinking I was a “Night Person” but I never knew it ‘cause I was always asleep.

When I get these ideas, I have to immediately write them down, because when I don’t, they disappear. You know how, on the computer, when you transfer a file from one place to another place, there’s this icon showing the file floating from Point A to Point B? It’s like that with these ideas.

They float in from the place they come from, flutter across my “radar screen”, and if I don’t capture them en route, they float out to the place where they go. Which, for all I know, is the same place. Although it does seem to be on the other side.

It appears to be a three-step process. The idea’s not there, then it’s there, and then it’s gone. Maddeningly often, forever.

Ideas are precious. They need to be preserved.

That’s why I bought The Pen.

I saw it in a stationery store next to our favorite restaurant, Pizzicotto. What is it? It’s a kind of sturdy silver, metal pen, at the top of which is this flexible bendy thing, (similar to the setup on a goose-necked lamp), and at the top of the flexible bendy thing, there’s a little light.

You see what they’re going for? A pen with a light on it, so you can write in the dark. How could you not buy that?

FLASH FORWARD

It’s bedtime. I’m about to fall asleep. Suddenly, a brilliant idea flutters into my consciousness. I mean, it’s a doozy. Original. Insightful. Impeccably worded. And funny as heck.

I sit up in bed. I grab The Pen, strategically positioned on my night table. I click on the little light. I adjust the flexible bendy thing over my notepad.

And…

It’s totally useless.

No matter how I position the flexible bendy thing, the only thing the little light illuminates is the back of my hand. I adjust the flexible bendy thing in another position. It illuminates a different part of the back of my hand.

What it doesn’t illuminate is the notepad. Why? Because as a result of The Pen’s design, my hand always ends up between the light and the paper. I can’t see where I want to write. I can only see knuckles and veins.

There is the possibility, as Randy Newman sings, that “Maybe I’m doing it wrong.”

Or…

Somebody had this breakthrough idea as they were about to fall asleep, and they didn’t write it down. When they woke up the next morning, they forgot how to make it, but they were so stubborn, they went ahead with it anyway. And they ended up with this.

A pen that’s supposed to illuminate what you’re writing on but instead lights up the back of your hand.

A failure for recording nocturnal insights.
Helpful, I imagine, if you’re searching for warts.