"Business"

I know nothing about business. I was in show business for thirty years, but my focus was almost entirely on “show.” I paid no attention to “business.” The checks came on time, that’s the only business I cared about.

The reason I went into show business is because I couldn’t do anything else. The bonus is that show business pays well, and I realized why, which generated to the only insight about business I ever had.

Financially, show business is an enormous pie. A multi-billion dollar industry. Even if your share is a miniscule sliver of that pie, you still end up with an appreciable amount of money. You’re in a business that’s a small pie, you get, proportionally, the same sized sliver, and you can’t make a living.

The one thought I ever had about business: Work for a big pie.

Fundamentally, however, I do not understand how businesses work. I’d go down a street, and I’d see all these restaurants. And then I’d see there’s a new restaurant, displaying an “Opening Soon” banner. I’d look at this and I’d think, “Everybody’s already eating someplace. Where is this new restaurant going to get any customers?”

I just don’t get it. In order to survive, this new restaurant has to get people to stop eating at the restaurant they’re already eating at, and start eating at theirs. How exactly do you pull that off?

Do they sneak into other restaurants and steal some of their chairs, so that less people will be able to eat there?

“What’s going on here? Suddenly, Vincenzo’s is always full. They’re sitting three to a table, but it’s full. We need to find new place to eat.”

The new restaurant may serve better food. But people have their habits. One habit, I suppose, it the habit of trying new restaurants. But most habits involve inertia. That’s pretty much what habits are about.

“You wanna try someplace different?”

“Eh.”

That “eh” can put that new place right into Chapter Eleven.

So the question is, you’re opening a new business – whatever it is – how do you know there aren’t enough of those places already and they really don’t need yours? Sure, sometimes, the decision is easy. You’re walking down a street, and everyone’s going,

“It’s lunchtime, and all we have here are ‘Shoe Repairs.’ Where we gonna eat?”

Bim bam boom – you open a restaurant – and business is through the roof. What you don’t do? Open another “Shoe Repair.” Of course, even there, you have a dream, you take a shot. Hope springs eternal.

“There can never be enough ‘Shoe Repairs.’”

You open yours up – and nobody comes in. In turns out, there were exactly enough “Shoe Repairs.” Yours was the one just after enough. Finding yourself the “one more ‘Shoe Repair’ than was necessary”, you go out of business, and you’re replaced by a nail salon. Apparently, there can never be enough of those.

That’s one thing I don’t understand: How do you know how thinly you can spread the customer base. Another thing I don’t understand is, some businesses seem “Filled to Capacity”, and yet people continue flocking into them. Like the lawyer business. Every year, law schools graduate thousands of attorneys. The surprising thing is, they all seem to have something to do. You never see a person carrying a briefcase, and a sign, saying,

“Will litigate for food.”

They’re all busy, lawyering up a storm. And then, there’s the other end of the spectrum – a business so specialized, I have no idea how people can survive in it.

Kites. That’s all they sell. Maybe balls of twine. Doll repair. How do you stay afloat in such an enterprise? How do you pay for college?

“Princeton tuition. All ‘doll repair’ money.”

Really? You can actually do that?

Just for fun, I tried to think of a product so specialized, it would be impossible to find anyone selling it on the Internet. The product that popped into my mind?

“Matador capes.”

Yes, my mind is quite odd.

I Google “matador capes” on my computer. I click on the little white “x”, and there it is:

Toroshopping.com

Offering everything the fully-equipped matador might require.

Aside from thinking how proud the matador outfitter’s mother must be –

“My Kenny is the biggest man in the business.”

“Which business in that?”

“What does it matter? He’s the biggest!” –

the question that initially comes to mind is,

“How many matadors are there?”

Probably not that many, right? I mean, full time. Still, for those tiny number of matadors just breaking into the business, if they don’t want to fight bulls in khakis and a t-shirt, they will definitely need to visit

Toroshopping.com

“The One-Stop Destination For All Your Matadoring Needs.”

And needs there definitely are. For the working matador, upgrades and replacement gear are ongoing.

“My cape doesn’t scare bulls anymore. They just look at it and go, ‘Yeah, so?’”

“My ‘Suit of Lights’ has a horn hole in it.”

“My matador hat fell off in the ring, and this crazy bull ate it.”

“They lost my beaded sword scabbard at the dry cleaners.”

“I’m out of those things that you stick in their heads.”

Toroshopping.com – They’ve got it all. And regular toroshoppers have to maintain their patronage, because, with its highly limited clientele, it would be easy for toroshopping.com’s business to drop to a level where it would no longer make sense to stay open, they could totally disappear, and then matadors, both active and aspiring, would have no place to go for their matadoring needs.

By the way, do you think there’s an actual venue? A store you could walk into, filled with matadors, browsing and trying things on in the back? Or is it a website without a store, just these people who keep dusty boxes of matador chazzerai (stuff) stacked in their basement, and they just dig it out, when an e-mailing matador orders something on-line?

I am now on a quest. I will not stop, until I find a business so unpopular it is not even on the Internet. When I’m done here, the next business I plan to Google:

“Crocodile Dentist.”

I wonder if there’s a place that does that. And if there isn’t, perhaps I should invest in one.

I mean, those crocodiles have, like, three hundred teeth!

"Payback"

Some raccoons have been chewing up our house. They actually got inside, burrowing their way into the crawlspace between the roof and the ceiling. We had to get professional trappers to come out, and help us get rid of them. To date, we have apprehended five raccoons. Plus, a substantial number of possums who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Once they are extricated from the trap cages, we are informed that the raccoons are driven away, and set free in the wild. We like to believe that to be the case. To believe otherwise would make us sad.

In the past, however, I’ve been skeptical about such comforting assurances. I have always wondered if the idea that one human year equals seven dog years wasn’t just a thing somebody made up, so that the kid whose dog died wouldn’t be so upset.

“‘Rusty’ was only nine years old!”

“Yeah, but in ‘dog years’, that’s sixty-three.”

“Sixty-three? Really? That’s a pretty old dog.”

The dog was sixty-three. The raccoons are set free in the wild. Sure. Let’s believe both of those things.

And yet,

What if it’s not true? What if the trappers just say that so their customers will feel better when, in truth, the raccoons are actually taken away and…turned into collectible Davy Crockett hats?

If the latter is actually the case, I can imagine some Raccoon Post Office, where, tacked to the wall, there’s a prominent poster of Yours Truly, under which are the words:

“Public Enemy Number One – Five Raccoons, and Counting!”

I could be the most hated person in the entire raccoon community, the Timothy McVeigh of raccoon slaughterers. I could be the frightening “Boogey-man” raccoon parents scare their raccoon children with, when they refuse to eat their…whatever raccoon children don’t like to eat.

“Eat it….or we’re calling Earl!”

This is not the first time I’ve felt this way – despised by a group I was deliberately responsible for annihilating. Perhaps that’s why I’m hypersensitive about the matter. The situation has come up before.

While assembling the final version of a script, multiple changes are inevitable, during which process, content, in the form of words of course, will, by necessity, have to be dropped. The script is too long – some material needs to be cut. (In that regard, I was famous for saying, “You don’t need Page 8.” To which, someone would inquire, “Why don’t you need Page 8?” To which I would confidently reply, “You never need Page 8.” It is surprising, with how stupid that sounds, how often it is actually the case.)

You tighten up a line, and some words inevitably have to go. (A writer once asked me, “What do you mean when you say that a joke has too many words in it?” I responded with a mouthal rendition of the opening sequence to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, but supplementing it with one additional note, so it went, “Da-da-da-da-dahhhhhh!!!” You see? That’s not nearly as good.)

Scripts are also cut to accommodate the show’s inflexible time constraints. Joke replacements are inserted, when the originals fail to get a laugh. Even a good joke occasionally gets the axe, cut either “for time”, or because, though it’s funny, in the context of the story or the character delivering it, it isn’t quite right.

There is always the hope verging on “expectation” that these perfectly acceptable – hilarious even – deleted jokes, and sometimes entire runs of dialogue, will be re-instated in some subsequent script. But in my experience – I cannot speak for others – this never, ever happens. When they’re out, they’re out. And they ain’t never comin’ back.

Sometimes, I would think about this when I excised some worthy word, line, phrase or Page 8, in an effort to make the written material marginally “better.” What happens to those words, I wondered. Where did they go?

Is there some specified location where all the deleted verbiage is shipped off to, a collective oblivion for dropped dialogue, where the trimmed-out material from all my scripts get together, and share their pernicious tales of undeserv-ed woe:

“I would have made it to broadcast. If it wasn’t for Earl!”

“Earl? Earl got me too! A harmless connecting word – ‘although.’ Earl changed it to 'though' - one less 'beat', he explained - and I'm banished from the script!”

“I got huge laughs at the table reading. I am “sure-fire funny! So what happens? Earl cuts me, because, “The character wouldn’t say that.”

“I hate Earl!”

“Who doesn’t? Because of Earl, we are forever doomed, exiled for eternity to the tortured Purgatory of Discarded Words.”

There's a payback for that callousness, I am starting to think. Sometimes, when I’m writing this blog, and even when I’m talking, a word I am looking for unexpectedly escapes me. Some simple word, I can't think of what it is. Just today, in conversation, I drew a blank on the word, “commission.” Sometimes, the word comes to me eventually, but sometimes, it doesn’t, and I am relegated to employing an inferior alternative, or, as happened today, I go painfully silent.

Eschewing the obvious answer for why I can’t remember words – I’m old – I consider very seriously whether the words I red-pencilled over the years aren’t getting the last laugh on me, by deliberately withholding the word I am looking for as retribution for their ignominious exits from the final version of the script.

It’s a scary thought. Overly general nouns, slightly off-the-mark verbs, unnecessary adverbs and cluttering adjectives – ganging up on me, ravenous for revenge on the awful man who cast them so cold-heartedly adrift.

I wonder who will do me in first? The words I mistreated,

Or the raccoons?

"The Cowboy Way"

There’s a verse from the song, “Pancho and Lefty” (written by Townes Van Zandt) that goes,

Pancho was a bandit boy

His horse was black as polished steel

He wore his gun outside his pants

For all the honest world to feel.

I know a lot about cowboys. Well, not real cowboys. Movie and television cowboys. I know a little about real cowboys, from here and there research. In some ways, they’re surprisingly the same.

Cowboys in movies and television – and many real cowboys, my research suggests – were fundamentally honorable people. They may have been violent – through necessity, or they just liked to be – but, even in their conflicts, they apparently had rules. (Except for the psychopaths, where all bets were off.)

One rule, as the verse from “Pancho and Lefty” suggests, is that it was somehow disreputable to conceal your weapon.

You wore your gun outside your pants.

For all the honest world to feel.

“I’ve got a gun, and here it is.”

That was entirely the “Cowboy Way.”

Concealed weapons were for cardsharps and four-flushers. They hid them up their sleeves. Under their hats. Inside their boot. The intention was to mislead people.

“Look! No gun.”

Not true.

They had a gun.

Just not outside their pants.

A concealed weapon?

In no way, the “Cowboy Way.”

Which brings me to Fox News.

Really?

Yep.

How?

Fox promotes itself as the “Fair and Balanced” news network. But they carry a concealed weapon, which they use, but are unwilling to acknowledge:

A set-in-stone conservative agenda.

Historically in journalism, this was not always the way of things. Earlier on, it was common for news outlets – which, back then, were newspapers – to trumpet their ideological orientations. It was the Jacksonville Republican or the Muncie Post-Democrat. When the Whig Party was around, there was the Knoxville Whig.

These outlets were honest and open about their political leanings. And proud. They shouted their biases from their mastheads, assuring readers,

“If you’re a believer in all things Whig, the Knoxville Whig is the newspaper for you!”

Agree with their positions or not, the papers unashamedly proclaimed their intentions, announcing loudly and proudly exactly where they stood.

Even opponents respect sincere partisans who stake their claims and stand their ground. Supporters like them even more.

I mean, if you were a passionate right-winger, which banner would you rather march behind:

“Fair and Balanced”?

Or

“The Proud Voice of American Conservatism”.

It seems to me an honorable Fox News organization would drop the subterfuge, and start wearing its gun outside its pants.

Conservatives love cowboys. And that is definitely the “Cowboy Way.”

I wonder why they don’t do it?

And now, for putting up with that, check out this treat.

"'Major Dad' Pilot"

During my career, I made three pilots. One, Island Guy, did not sell. Two, Best of the West and Major Dad, did. The common denominator of all three projects was the same:

Nobody believed in them.

And by "nobody", I mean the networks that had ordered them.

Overcoming serious network reservations, the two pilots that became series succeeded entirely on merit, based on the enormously positive responses of the studio audiences that saw those pilots filmed. Networks may harbor negative preconceptions about a project, but they'd be foolish to ignore evidence.

I know that, ultimately, it doesn't matter why a show sells. It just makes me happy when the explanation is quality. When that happens, the world is, at least momentarily, in sync with how I'd like it to be.

Story of a Writer - Part Twenty, a five-post extravaganza chronicles my Major Dad pilot experience. I can't find it right now, but it's there. Those posts may be worth checking out later.

There are also, apparently, two subsequent "Mop Up" postings on the subject, in case you'd like to be thorough steeped.

Recently somebody told me the pilot episode was on Hulu, and I thought you might be interested in seeing it.

The pilot is twenty-three years old. There are unquestionably too many "formula" moments. But there's also stuff that feels fresh and original, my favorite being the wordless sequence where the little girl just stands there, staring at the Major.

Anyway, here it is. I hope you like it.

"Wedding Toast"

The wedding went off without a hitch. Beautiful. Stylish. Touching. And Fun. I need to process the feelings a little more before I write about it. For now, I will pass along my toast. You will notice a significant lack of direct emotion. That’s not what I do. But I hope you can detect the sincere and heartfelt indirect emotion.

Okay. Here we go.

“Good evening and welcome. Family and friends. From near and far. Especially far. A lot of people made a great effort to be here tonight. We want you to know we are appreciative and grateful. This would not be as special without you.

Okay. So. Check it out. Isn’t it beautiful? What you’re looking at is the product of a team effort. There was Anna and Colby’s imagination. And Myra’s involvement in every detail. I also did my part to spruce up the festivities: I bought a new net for the basketball hoop in the driveway. I’m sure you noticed it. (LOOKING UP) “Boy, they went all out for this party. Look at that net!”

I have to tell you, my head is spinning. I cannot believe that my daughter… is dating. I know she’s married. I still can’t believe she’s dating!

How did that happen?

I mean, it’s what, like a blink of an eye ago, I was holding a newborn baby girl (CROOKING ARM, MIMING HOLDING BABY GIRL) – eight pounds, four ounces – a medium-sized salmon – like I know anything about the size of salmon – and she’s crying her head off, I mean, she is howling. And I didn’t know what to do. So I took her to the room where the newborns hang out, and I dumped…I handed her over. I was very relieved. But Anna cried so hard, the newborns took a vote, and they threw her out of the room. And they handed her back to me. (ANGUISH, THEN, LOOKING DOWN AT HER, LOVE) That was our bonding moment.

The first of many.

Potty training. There’s a bonding moment. I don’t know how her mother missed that honor – she did everything else. But there I am, perched on the edge of the bathtub, and Anna’s up there on the throne. We are both very excited – no more diapers. This is a Milestone Moment. My mind wanders, for just a second. And in that second – whoo – Anna topples off the toilet, and she lands on her head.

My first reaction is, “I broke my kid.” My second reaction is, “And I’m going to get yelled at.” But it turns out, she’s fine. She’s stunned. But, otherwise, okay.

Or so I thought.

Anna’s in Kindergarten. And one day, her teacher calls us in for a parent-teacher conference. The teacher tells us, in this very serious tone, that Anna has fallen behind the rest of her classmates in her ability…to use a scissors. When I heard that, I immediately knew why. (QUICK RAP ON THE HEAD) The fall had irreparably damaged the “Scissors Function” in her brain.

You don’t want to believe it, but she had this file folder, filled with sheets of construction paper with Anna’s name printed in the corner, and all of them had this jagged… (DEMONSTRATE). It was ugly. She’s okay now. We got her a “Scissors Tutor”, and she caught up.

Another bonding moment: Oh yeah. I almost got her killed. It’s not every father that can top a “Brain Damage” story with an “I almost got her killed” story. I am very proud.

One of the places we loved to go when Anna was little was the carousel on the Santa Monica Pier. The out of town guests were there last night. One time, Anna and I were walking to the pier, and I said, “Anna, I think I know a short cut.” We take this turn, and I lead her up this grassy hill, and down the other side. And there we are. The carousel’s right in front of us. And all we have to do to get there is to…um…(A SLOW EXPULSION OF BREATH)…walk across the freeway.

It was not a good short cut. But we had no choice. There’s no way I’m going back up the hill. We walk up to the edge, I take her hand, we look both ways, and we run across the freeway screaming our heads off. It’s a great bonding moment…if you make it. I just hope I haven’t started a tradition. A family rite of passage. “My father dragged me across this freeway. Now, it’s your turn!”

I don’t know if this happens to you, but sometimes, I do things that reveal hidden feelings that I wasn’t aware I had. We were taking Anna to college, on the other side of the country. It was a major adjustment, but I thought I had it under control. Then, on the morning we were flying home, and leaving her there, I did something I had never done before. I stepped on an expensive pair of sunglasses. And I brushed my teeth with Ben-Gay.

That was a big transition. This one is bigger.

It helps if you like the guy.

One night, Anna gives me a “Head’s Up”: “Colby’s coming over.” This is the first time I’m meeting him. And I have the typical Dad’s reaction: “No.” I know it’s serious, because Anna’s never brought anyone over before. I don’t know this guy. I need to take charge. A vigorous vetting process is required. A thorough investigation.

He comes over, and we start to talk. And very quickly, I realize two things about Colby: He listens…and he laughs. And just like that, I’m done. The vetting process is over. I mean, I don’t know about Anna, but – “He listens and he laughs” – that’s all I need.

Oh, and as a bonus – this may mean nothing to you, but I find it remarkable. We’re in the living room one day, somebody’s talking – probably me – and there’s Myra and there’s Anna. And then I see Colby, standing behind the couch, where he is very quietly…

Folding a sweater.

I was Mesmerized. And impressed. I had never seen a man fold a sweater outside of a Department Store. And the way he’s doing it – concentrating so hard, and with engineering precision – the sleeves just … (STANDING BACK TO EXAMINE HIS EFFORT)… the collar exactly in the middle. I don’t even know if it was his sweater. It didn’t seem to matter. He saw a sweater that needed folding…and he folded it. That’s two more things I learned about Colby – he’s responsible, and he’s neat.

And an even bigger bonus – and I mean that literally – at six foot four, Colby is a welcome addition to the Pomerantz gene pool. Six foot four is a Pomerantz standing on a chair.

If I may, I’d like to finish with a snippet of a song. Merle Haggard, a great country singer wrote a song about a daughter’s wedding, and the feelings seem to fit. I adjusted some of the words so it goes like this:

“Tonight there will be candlelight and roses

On that bungalow on Fourth Street

That we all once used to share.

There’ll be tears in this old cowboy’s eyes this evening

As I watch my daughter marry

That Ohio Boy, right there.

His hair’s a little longer than we’re used to

But I know that he’s the one to take her hand

‘Cause he says he really loves the cowboy’s daughter

And I know the cowboy’s daughter loves the man.”

Guests of the wedding, with all the joy in my heart, I give you Colby and Anna Buddelmeyer-Pomerantz.”

"Here We Go"

(To the tune of “Beauty of the Beast”)

Gathered in the park

Doctor M and I

Standing at the spot

Where they tie the knot

Trying not to cry.

Smiles and tears combine

Overflowing pride

Unexpected joy

Welcoming the boy

Father of the Bride.

Once we were a team

Daddy and his girl

Now she's changed her life

Daughter turned to wife

It’s a different world

Time is on the move

Dad must step aside

Still that special bond

Will live on and on

Father of the Bride.

Still that special bond

Will live on and on

Father of…

The Bride.

"Countdown To A Wedding - Random Observations"

For some reason that has never been persuasively explained to me, when company’s coming, we are required to make our house look as if nobody lives in it, a once charmingly cluttered domicile radically transformed into a magazine layout in Architectural Digest.

Magazines, even neatly stacked ones, get piled up in closets. Cell phones sit out of sight, recharging in the dark. A glass penny bank with a boot painted on it – exiled. My piano music – banished. Medicines and supplements, all hidden away leaving guests scratching their heads wondering how we can look this great naturally.

Important papers are summarily stuffed into drawers. A vertical wicker basket housing our few bottles of hard liquor has been relocated out of harm’s way, lest visiting children suddenly decide to eschew chocolate milk and try Scotch.

Our house looks pristine, in the most unnatural sense of the word, all things unnecessary, embarrassing or unworthy of display no longer in view.

The problem is, when the guests go home, and our regular life is returned to us, we have no idea where anything is.

If only medicine could speak.

“We’re in the linen closet.”

But it can’t.

------------------------------------------------------------

I am thinking of this line from Seinfeld, where George is revealing to his therapist his certainty that he will be punished by God the moment something good happens to him. His therapist, recalling an earlier session, says, “George, I thought you didn’t believe it God.” To which George replies,

“I do for the bad stuff.”

To me, this is a resonating line. I know I do this. Maybe you do too. Something wonderful is happening, like, say, your daughter’s wedding, but you immediately adopt the pretense of being miserable, because if you didn’t and acknowledged instead your immeasurable happiness, you fear bringing into play God’s balancing swift sword.

This “avoidance behavior” implies, of course, that God is up there somewhere (we’ll go with the conventional on the “up there”), keeping score, and He doesn’t like things (we’ll go with the traditional pronoun “He”) to get too far out of whack. So he sees a man celebrating a joyful occasion, and He says,

“That guy’s having a lot of fun. I’m giving him polyps.”

“What kind?”

“It doesn’t matter. There are no good polyps.”

The problem with this equalizing, “good stuff – bad stuff” perspective is that it presupposes a number of hypotheticals (not just the “bookkeeping” components, like that God is “up there”, and that God is a “He”), which may not be correct.

The major hypothetical, of course, is that there is a God. Without God, there can still be “good stuff” and “bad stuff.” There’s just Nobody “up there” doling it out.

In that case – the “God does not exist” situation – the “stuff” that happens to people is then totally random. Theoretically, you could get nailed a hundred times in a row. Heart disease. A malfunctioning pancreas. Chronic dandruff. One person could get all of those things, while, for another, it is trouble-free, clear sailing.

There is no logic to it. No explanation. No fair play. No justice. Just – for the person’s who’s repeatedly blighted – bam, bam, bam – “Not again!” – bam!

There is no causal connection. There is no changing your ways and you’re spared. There is no “controlling mechanism.”

“If I sacrifice a ram…”

No.

Who are you sacrificing to?

Your fate is your fate, and there is nothing you can do about it. No way to avert or evade what’s coming your way. Whatever that is – good stuff or bad – is entirely a matter of chance.

Are you getting an inkling of why a lot of people prefer to believe in God?

This is not the time to write about it, but at some point, I’ll go into this more deeply, suggesting that, for non-believers, the replacement comforting device, a paralleling security blanket to religion – and one of an equally questionable nature – is reason.

But that’s for another day. At the moment, I am way too excited.

And I’m willing to accept the consequences.

Just…not too bad, okay?