My Theatrical Legerdemain and Other Hyperbole.

Actors at the Jewel Box Theatre in Seattle adore me.

Artists and writers are among the most insecure of people. It always helps when people besides ourselves believe in our talents. And if not in our talents, then in what we have produced. Exhibit A.) The universe has for some unknown reason decided my scripts are worthy of being performed to rave reviews in Seattle. So, I pause now to reflect on this small success. I forget to celebrate my small victories, but now I will try.

Thomas Brophy, the director/actor of the Seattle Readers, a theater group with  a cast of ever changing proportions,  wrote a month ago to tell me my play, "The Accordion," was the 'hit of the night!" The group, which performs works at the Jewel Box Theatre (Rendezvous Theatre) in the 'Bell-town' area north of downtown Seattle, is always on the lookout for new material. They accepted three excerpts from my comedy screenplays: The Accordion, How To Shear A Sheep, and Forget You?! http://www.theatrereaders.com/

The Accordion has to do with a young man (Manuel Landau Lopez) who is separated from his parents during the French invasion of Mexico, and the end of a curse that has affected the Landau family for over two thousand years. Manuel, separated from his parents at age six, and raised by coyotes, is not used to the ways of human beings. Since his childhood he has worn a locket with the image of a carriage and a Star of David incised upon it, which is a clue to his name and heritage. Unbeknownst to Manuel, his parents, after he was separated from them during their escape from French cavalry (they were gun runners), have become pirates. His mother, an imposing woman named Francesca, has become the captain of a pirate ship she has renamed 'The Chutzpah.'  Manuel's father, a small man named Emilio who has a lexicon-like vocabulary, is Francesca's second in command. Francesca, owing to her small vocabulary, often snaps her fingers to have Emilio provide her with the most fitting word to express herself.

Manuel leaves his adoptive coyote parents when he is a teenager, and shortly thereafter he falls in love with Lucretia, a beautiful Gypsy girl, entranced by her wonderful accordion song. Her accordion has been passed down for a number of years, and the song  she plays is the one she learned from her parents and they before them, all the way back to Germany, when an ancestor of Manuel seduced his housekeeper and got her pregnant. Because of that ancestor's rejection of Lucretia's ancestor, and the death of the child, there is a curse upon the Landau family that can only be righted by a marriage of the two families. Otherwise, the curse goes on forever, and like Manuel's ancient family member - King David, the first born child will die. Manuel and Lucretia, directed by a fortune teller in Mexico, go to the coast and are kidnapped by Manuel's parents. They are forced to scrub the decks despite Lucretia being two months pregnant with Manuel's child. Francesca decides to sell "Manny" and Lucretia to Pirate Bruce, but after they are sold she sees the locket Emilio has taken from Manuel. Francesca, Emilio, and the crew of the Chutzpah pursue Pirate Bruce to rescue Manuel and Lucretia. On an island where Pirate Bruce and his crew are trying to locate Red Beard's treasure, Manuel and his parents are reunited.

How To Shear A Sheep is the story of Willis Sweets, Laura Lee Boggs, and Charlie Settler's journey west from Key West, Florida, to return a peridot engagement ring to Lester McDougal (Curly), the largest sheep rancher in the state of Wyoming. The ring was given to Willis's aunt, Ginnie, by the rancher when she was young. On her deathbed Ginnie makes Willis swear he will return the ring. Willis, after her death receives an inheritance Ginnie has kept from him that once belonged to his father: a sheep shear, a cowboy hat, and a useless antique Colt pistol. Willis is informed by the lawyer he is being evicted from his aunt's trailer, and his cash inheritance after back taxes, lawyer fees, his aunt's funeral expenses, and late trailer rental fees - amounts to less than fifty dollars.

Willis and Laura Lee are fired from a Walmart store due to their ongoing trysts while they are supposed to be working. Willis, seeing his management trainee career is gone, and having no recourse, decides he must rob a bank to stay afloat. He talks Laura Lee into giving him a ride to the bank, without telling her of his plan. Escaping in Laura Lee's Nova, they fishtail into an alley to elude a police car. Laura Lee, wracked with guilt and horror at being a fugitive, tosses the bulk of the stolen money out the window. It lands in the lap of Charlie Settler, a homeless Harvard educated Native American. Charlie, thinking his prayers have been answered, heads to a bar to celebrate.

Willis and Laura Lee find Charlie in the bar and the threesome strike a deal to head west to Wyoming. The following day, Willis trades in the Nova for a used Jeep Wagoneer. They begin a hilarious trip across America, with opposing and poignant comments from Willis and Charlie, mechanical breakdowns, robberies, and Laura Lee serving as the peace maker.  They stop at a bar and Willis and Charlie are offered jobs on a seismograph crew. The news elates Laura Lee, but Willis isn't sold on the idea of taking the job. As they argue about it while driving in downtown Farson, Wyoming Willis is distracted and runs down the town drunk. When the police show up, Laura Lee takes the blame. The drunk is none other than Lester McDougal, Willis's aunt's former beau, the richest sheep rancher in Wyoming. Due to his being so inebriated, Lester only sustains a broken leg, and when Laura Lee takes the blame for running Lester down, he does not press charges and insists she come to help him recover and live at his ranch. Seeing Laura Lee's good fortune, Willis suggests she extort cash from Lester, but she is uncooperative. Willis and Charlie accept the seismograph crew jobs, and begin blasting with dynamite to find oil and gas deposits. They fail in this job within a few days, and come to Lester's ranch to beg for jobs shearing sheep. Because of Laura Lee, Lester allows them to learn the trade from a ranch hand.

During the time Laura Lee works as Lester's nurse, Lester notices the peridot ring she is wearing. She tells him she is Aunt Ginnie's niece, and that Ginny has died in Key West, Florida. Lester refuses to take the peridot ring back, confesses his love for her, and asks her to marry him. Laura Lee agrees, and tells Willis, who is livid about the development when he learns she means to go through with it. He is also angry about his ineptness at shearing sheep, and he enlists Charlie's help in kidnapping Laura Lee on the eve of her wedding. They take her to the Killpecker Dunes, and hide out until Lester brings the money. During the night, Laura Lee tries to escape, and she blows up the Wagoneer with dynamite.

On the agreed day, Lester has his men camouflage themselves with sagebrush, and lets Willis and Charlie know he has the three million dollar ransom money. Willis and Charlie arrive and are captured by Lester and his ranch hands, but before Lester and his men can hang them, the truth comes out that Willis is Aunt Ginnie's nephew, not Laura Lee. Lester says it doesn't matter, and that the wedding is still on. Willis and Charlie are released, on the condition they agree to clean up the metal shards of the Wagoneer that litters Lester's property. Willis finds a bundle of dynamite from their first job in Wyoming, and blows a hole looking for water. He and Charlie find themselves in a shower of oil, and, thinking they are rich, they dance in celebration. But they have simply ruptured an oil pipeline, and they must hightail it back to Florida to avoid the law.

Forget You?! is the story of David Honeyman reconciling with Jack, his Alzheimer's diseased father during a long Easter weekend. David, a neurotic sports writer, is sure his father hates him, and yet he realizes this is his last chance to make the emotional connection he's never had. When David, and his wife, Lisa, and their young daughter, Kristin, arrive at David's parent's house, David learns that his father's truck needs a battery. He decides this is a perfect opportunity to make the emotional segue, and he takes Jack to an auto parts store. Jack has to pee, and despite David trying to prevent his father from peeing in the aisle of the store, Jack pees in an empty gas can. David buys the gas can, and the battery, and Jack insists on driving home, though it is David's car. They narrowly avoid getting in an accident, but they eventually arrive back at Jack and Barbara Honeyman's home.

David' mother, Barbara, takes Lisa and Kristin shopping. Barbara buys Kristin a kitten. Later that night, David puts the kitten's cage by a back door. Barbara trips over the cage and cuts her head. They take Barbara to a hospital and she spends the night. Lisa insists that David sleep with Jack to keep him company. Wigged out by this experience, David decides he will tough it out despite Jack's illness. Encouraged by the progress he is making with his father, David decides to take a few days off. During this time they all go to a mall; Lisa, Barbara, and Kristen go shopping, while David and Jack go to a movie.

While at the movie theater, David goes to the concession stand, and leaves Jack alone in the theater. When he returns, Jack has wandered away, hoping to find his girlfriend, (Barbara). Jack boards a bus and the driver drops him off at the hospital. Jack wanders into a room that has recently been occupied, and goes to sleep. The staff mistakes Jack for another  patient and prepares him for surgery. When David, Lisa, and Kristen go the hospital, hoping to find Jack and pick up Barbara, they find Jack being wheeled down an hallway en route to the surgery.

 As David and his family prepare to leave the following day, Jack tells David he loves him.

I'm apparently Bruce Willis's cousin.

The lab tests confirm I will be a survivor of the end of the world. 

The Department of Veteran’s Affairs lab report has arrived. I opened their thin letter with a good deal of trepidation. When you are over fifty, and your grandfather died of a heart attack it is normal to expect the worst. The nurse at the veteran’s clinic was efficient; she drew and labeled four test tubes of blood in two minutes. She does this all the time. I am not a blood donor but I should be. I have Type O Positive, a universal donor blood type that is valuable as gold when it comes to transfusions. The blood tests were divided into forty-two categories, with neat columns showing the results, including the Normal Reference Range on the far right column. I was supposed to fast before the tests, but I forgot and ate a sesame butter sandwich. That probably explains the slightly elevated cholesterol. But they had no column that read “Traces of organic bread and sesame butter.” The bread, "Dave's Killer Bread," is chock full of sunflower and sesame seeds. You could live to be 200 if you ate Dave's 'Robust Raisin' bread every day. So I do. I'll be so old I'll have wrinkles on my wrinkles. On the back of the two sided report, after the results lists, was a short note from the doctor I’d seen. It read, “Your lab work looks great Mr. Mortenson, please call if you have any questions.” What questions would I have? Like, "Hey Doc, did you see how my stomach bulges on that one side? Do you suppose I have a toy embedded there from my childhood?" Or, "Couldn't you at least slice me open to take a look around?" The last VA doctor told me I should be in a display case.  I expected a terse note stapled to the lab report to the effect of: "P.S. It’s guys like you that will put the VA out of business! I have a mortgage, mister!”

My last big visit to the VA was for a colonoscopy. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in a hospital. I have only been in a hospital three times in my life. Once was to see my ex wife. The second time was to take my father to the urgent care wing. (He had injured his left arm while trying to fell one of my trees with his chain saw. The tree won.) I wrote a blog about my third experience, which was not unlike a Vonnegut novel. Or maybe it was a modern day rendition of Alice In Wonderland. I did, after all, see a floating head appear several times on a curtain, and both the floating head and I spoke nonsensical things.

A visit to a Veteran’s clinic or hospital is an effective remedy for the over fifty-years-old blues. The likelihood of catching a disease or virus while walking the labyrinth of Seattle’s VA hospital was high but I did it. But it is nice to know there are lots of skilled people in the VA’s hospitals. They get really good at treating wounds. Probably much better than the average staff. So if I ever get shot, I know where I’ll go for treatment. In Seattle’s VA hospital you’ll get a cardiovascular workout walking from one department to the next, even if you take the elevators, which I did. It seems bigger than the one in Atlanta, where I went to see about getting a job, not for treatment of anything. But I suppose I could claim PTSD from applying to jobs the last three years, or carpal tunnel from reworking cover letters and resumes to fit particular jobs.

Not that it makes much difference now that I am apparently the bionic man. I haven’t been really sick for twenty years, and I was only sick then because my ex put something in my cereal. Probably. How else does a person get E-Coli? I mean, extra E-Coli? Okay, maybe it was all the c***, er, I mean - the shenanigans - I was dealing with at the time. Bad marriages kill people all the time. But not me, so I must be Bruce Willis, as in the film, “Unbreakable.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_f1uCWKZQs  But I have broken one bone in my life, so maybe that isn't it either. Maybe I'm just too stubborn to get sick. A person has to have goals, and mine is to live to 101. I am already decrepit; imagine me in another fifty-years. I am depending on medical science to make some major breakthroughs by 2015, at the latest. I feel bad about the blog I wrote about December 21, 2012 being the end of life as we know it. There will probably be survivors, and I intend to be one of them. I am made to live in the Stone Age.

Type O Positive people can digest bicycles. It is a scientific fact. Or so I read somewhere. The reason is they have more robust stomach acid than average human beings. They are cave people. I know this because I also have my tonsils, appendix, and wisdom teeth. My arms are longer than most people’s arms. I am not saying I am a knuckle dragger, but if I had a sloping forehead I could be in a proto-human exhibit at a museum, aiming a spear at a wooly mammoth, while my cave woman cooked a leg of something on a fake fire, and my dirty little man-child, the one with the strange long hair smiled like a bad manikin in Macy’s, showing his big pointed canine teeth.

I am glad I am not sick. No cancer, yet. But you just wait. Yeah. I tried my best to convince the doctor, when he first met me at the clinic, that I was certain I was dying. I did my best Woody Allen impression. I acted neurotic. As neurotic as men with Danish ancestry can act, which is admittedly about as calm as any human being could look. But inside I was nervous. Yes. Finally, in desperation, I said I had a feeling my moles were misbehaving. I insisted on taking off my shirt to show the doctor. He reluctantly agreed to look. After thirty seconds he pronounced all my moles and freckles were not only benign but rather attractive and artistically arrayed. I told him to look again, and he did, but then he looked at his watch and said he had a golf date. So I gave him permission to leave. Because I had harassed him, he agreed that I should have a lab test to be sure I was Bruce Willis’s cousin. It turns out I am. Now if Bruce can just introduce me to M. Night Shyamalan. I have way too many screenplays sitting in boxes. They’re all Type O Positive scripts. ‘O’ stands for 'outstanding.'

Pomplamoose: The quirky success story of one couple's social media.

Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte of Pomplamoose.

You wouldn't think that naming your group after a grapefruit, (French: pamplemousse), would lead to anything, but apparently grapefruit has powerful properties that go beyond thoughts of breakfast. I first learned of Pomplamoose in 2010, by which time they had already had over 100,000 songs downloaded online. Now they have 3 million views per month on YouTube, and make a good living via iTunes. Though when Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn (Natalie Dawn Knutsen) hooked up in the summer of 2008, their goals were much smaller, and their equipment and recording spaces were a lot less tech, and of lesser quality than they are today. They had no inkling they would one day be on a lot of people's minds; they simply wanted to share their love of music online, and make enough money to keep doing music for a living. Here's their take on how they do what they do: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/17/keen-on-pomplamoose-how-nataly-and-jack-are-reinventing-the-music-business-tctv/

Pomplamoose first made a big splash in the musical pond with their Hyundai holiday TV spots. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g947151eKQo Hyundai remodeled the couple's garage into a recording studio to shoot the spots. Today, corporate sponsorships and contracts have added a hefty chunk to Pomplamoose's income.

Their choreography and video edits are similar in style to the old Monkey's videos, (who weren't in Pomplamoose's league as musicians),  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfuBREMXxts  and this is right in line with their style of music, which is Pop with a capital 'P.' But not the usual pop. (I would not be surprised if they redo "Valerie," "Pleasant Valley Sunday," and "I'm a Believer" in the near future). This kind of fresh off the grill type of musical entertainment has been seen before, but not in this way. They aren't Sonny and Cher, but they are as entertaining. Pomplamoose adds the special ingredient of love and romance to doing music. A phrase to describe Pomplamoose? A loving and humorous spontaneity, and inventive musical chemistry. Their musical and romantic chemistry are fresh and genuine, as romantic as when Adam Sandler sang to Drew Barrymore, in "The Wedding Singer," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPsW2FYprfI It is this love connection, and love of music, that make Pomplamoose work as a band, and as a couple, and why millions of fans love them. They're the real deal, even though some have been put off by Dawn's eye shifting antics. It's just part of style of the musical act. Dawn's delivery of deadpan lines is simply an expression of her quirky personality. She's young, give her time.

Pomplamoose http://www.youtube.com/user/PomplamooseMusic  has made a perfect marriage of the old music, that of the pre-Depression era, the 1960s, and the offbeat Indie songs of the 21st Century, however, Conte and Dawn describe their work as falling into the pop genre. Dawn's sweet retro voice, though, is right out of the 1920s and 1930s, and Conte's manic and joyful instrumentals and goofy expressions are uniquely his own. Together, they make world class entertainment, in an industry where Lady Gaga, Madonna, and rock band theatrics - with light shows and "smoke and mirrors" are the norm. Their musical approach falls somewhere in the honest realm of watching a group of bluegrass musicians in someone's living room, and hanging out with Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash one sunny afternoon in the 1960s.

Their work is split between cover songs and originals. Nataly has her own channel on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/natalydawn where you can hear covers such as "Superman's Song." Pomplamoose has done fabulous covers of "Mr. Sandman," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xMCNmUaGko Beyonce's "Single Ladies, (Put A Ring On It)," and many others. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIr8-f2OWhs&feature=player_embedded But cover songs aren't Pomplanoose's most memorable music. Their originals are as lyrically good as any folk songs, which is no small feat. They are not as sappy or saccharine as the Pee Wee Herman era band named Aqua, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyhrYis509A yet they have the same fun attitude without the electronica or the "Let's make fun of Southern California" style lyrics. No, with Pomplamoose its all natural talent. They don't dress up, it's a come as you are Pomplamoose party. Sweatshirts and jeans are the norm.

Their covers and originals have wit, charm, and inventiveness. Even the old Moody Blues members should take note of Conte's and Nataly's multi-instrumental virtuosity. Anything that can be used to make music is used, and used well. Nataly spent a good deal of her early life in France and Belgium, so the French have a particular fondness for her. So look for a European tour at some point. Here is an early French song of hers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJuKoPaSpOU&feature=relmfu  In 2011, Pomplamoose toured with another YouTube friendly band, OK GO http://okgo.net/ whose zany videos are even more like the Monkey's than Pomplamoose.

Pomplamoose are not the first, nor will they be the last to use social media as an effective detour around the old school way to get from Point A to Point B in the music business. At this moment there are probably a lot of music producers talking about them in the boardrooms of the major music labels. I suspect those high rollers of the music business are speaking with voices that are a bit shaky, because Pomplamoose's way is the way of the future, and a large proportion of future musical artists are going to follow in their footsteps.

Fans of Pomplamoose can reach them via:

Pomplamoose
PO Box 1323
Rohnert Park, CA 94927
pomplamoosemusic@gmail.com 

Creating latte art is a swirl of new expression in my coffee.

I am learning to make hearts in my lattes. You haven't lived until you try it. 

My parents were big fans of coffee. My father drank a cup of Joe every morning before he went to work, though the coffee brands he and my mother drank were thin and cheap generic store brands that pale in comparison to the coffees now available in stores, and the plethora of drive through coffee stands that have become commonplace in every city in America, if not the world.

My parents liked freeze dried Sanka. It was perfect for camping trips. No camping trips were complete without the adults holding cups of coffee in their hands as they sat around the camp fires. Every one of my parent's friends were coffee drinkers. And many were smokers. I always equated smoking with drinking coffee, which is why, until fifteen years ago, I hadn't had much interest in coffee. When I was a kid, coffee ads were regularly aired on the TV. The first one I recall was shown on the Lucille Ball show. Desi and Lucy were gaga for Sanka, and money was greasing the track of their endorsement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOSIcmk27rM&NR=1&feature=endscreen


Freeze drying was the hip thing in the 1960s. This was when Tang, the powdered orange drink, was in everybody's kitchens, right next to the box of Wheaties. If it was good enough for the astronauts, it was good enough for me! At that time, Tang was mostly sugar and fake orange flavor. In 2007, Kraft Foods replaced half the sugar with really awful sugar replacements, like sucralose, acesulfame potassium, and neotame. They used to use some truly horrible things to decaffeinate coffee beans, such as benzene, chloroform, and trichloroethylene (TCE).Dichloromethane, and CH₂Cl_{2, most of which of have been shown to be carcinogenic. Which means that Sanka and Maxwell House and other "decaffeinated" coffees had some pretty nasty stuff in them. Coffee is predominantly decaffeinated with more benign things now, like hot water, and the fluid version of CO2. In the future there may be no need for decaffeinated coffee. In 2003 the caffeine "switch" was found in tea and coffee plants, so now it is a matter of simply turning off the switch so the plants don't make caffeine. Can you spell GMO, people? One day they will turn off or turn on the switches in you or your children to make them office workers or to grow bigger boobs or other enhancements. I hope the caffeine has killed me by then.}


There have been many lawsuits against cigarette companies, but there should have been a few against coffee companies, and other food companies, who knew darn well the ingredients and the solvents they were using were toxic to human beings.  The American public still thought corporations cared about them back them, thanks to advertising which used trusted spokespeople to sell products. Even the Andy of Mayberry show had endorsements for Sanka that were precursors to infomercials. Did Sheriff Andy Taylor know he was selling cancerous coffee crystals? No. Neither did Opie, or Aunt Bee, who were so wholesome they could sell radioactive waste as if it were a natural part of a nutritious breakfast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxbcQ6lV00s&feature=related  Even Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble advertised Winston cigarettes. The viewing audiences were naive, and the products were lousy and cheap. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYvOgnabABU 

Coffee companies quickly used TV advertising successfully, just as cigarette, liquor, and a lot of other companies had for many years. When I think of the 1960s I cannot get the slogans out of my head. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is! Ad men at this time in history were enjoying the golden era of writing pithy sales copy for everything. The coffee brands had memorable slogans, and many had distinctive music tracks to support their brands. The brands aligned themselves with TV shows and personalities, such as Danny Thomas and Dick Van Dyke. Maxwell House had a memorable perky music track that sounded like coffee being brewed. The music alone could have sold their coffee. In the 1980s, Maxwell House hired Ricardo Montalban to endorse it, and Montalban went on to sell a half dozen other products, including rich Corinthian leather. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxbcQ6lV00s&feature=related

I had never tasted more than a half cup of coffee before I turned eighteen, though my siblings and I occasionally mixed coffee with on our vanilla ice cream. We didn't know this was like a latte. I had my first cup of coffee in Europe in 1973. I was hitch hiking in Italy after my high school graduation, when a man in a small red Italian car gave me a lift. In the back seat of the car there was a green parrot in a tall wooden cage. The cage jostled back and forth as the driver, a fifty-something year old man who sported a pencil thin mustache and an odd hat, steered the tiny car through the curvy streets of Bologna. He spoke little English, and I spoke no Italian, but he said we had to stop for an espresso. It was early afternoon, and easily ninety degrees that day. I had heard of espresso, but I'd never tried it. We stopped at a small cafe and he bought me an espresso that came in a tiny white china cup, which sat on an equally tiny saucer. The espresso was thick, greasy, and sweet. It was nice, and a great introduction to freshly brewed quality coffee. And I was wired for hours.

My father drank coffee every morning for as long as I can remember, and mom filled his metal thermos with coffee to wash down his bologna sandwiches and chips. He was perked up most of the day, which was what an auto body repair shop owner needed to get the work done. Drinking coffee was a tradition that my parents practiced into old age. Naturally, with this indoctrination, I married a woman who was enamored with coffee. She had an flame red  espresso machine that made truly terrifying sounds as it got going. She was skilled in the workings of the machine's knobs and buttons, and assured me it would not explode and embed shrapnel into the walls and our bodies. I did not know coffee's health benefits at that time, for if I had I would have been on the cutting edge in the 1990s when a lot of forward thinking entrepreneurs got into the coffee drive through business in the little college town where we lived.

I am dating a woman who owns three coffee stands. So when I think of coffee, I think of relationships. Nothing gets people in a talkative, sociable mood like a good cup of coffee. I'm not immune to its caffeine, and I'm not good at measuring how many scoops to put in my French press. I was jittery for most of yesterday morning due to bad measuring. I never cared for the generic coffees, but I'm a big fan of organic coffees. My prostate is too. I'm drinking several cups of coffee per week to help that old organ. I like my coffee thick and creamy, like the espresso I had in Italy years ago. I've even begun dabbling in making designs in my lattes. I'm not sure I'll drink my creations, but I'll certainly photograph them.

The health benefits of coffee have been confirmed by modern science. I like the idea of a drink that can save me from getting prostate cancer.  I want to live to be 100, and coffee seems to be the ticket. But it also raises blood pressure, so it may be the drink that ultimately kills me. They will find me slumped over a keyboard, a latte on the table beside me.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43065205/ns/health-cancer/t/swilling-coffee-may-protect-men-against-prostate-cancer/#.T0pOl2WbWHI  


Too much caffeine isn't so great for pregnant women either. Researchers from California's Kaiser Permanente Division of Research report that women who consumed 200 mg or more of caffeine per day (about two cups of coffee), doubled their miscarriage risk. But on the other hand, it helps the cognitive powers of women over 65 , eases constipation, stops eye spasms, and makes you sexier. Well, I made up that last one. Too much of anything is not good, and coffee is no exception. Too much of it can decrease bone density. So if you're a woman your brain will be firing on all cylinders from the caffeine in the coffee, but you'll have bones as brittle as a sparrow's. Your teeth, or your dentures, will turn the color of yellowed wallpaper, but you'll be a stellar Scrabble player.

So drink up you old men, save your prostate . My brew is ready now. Mmm, and it's good to the last drop. I'll have a second cup! Here are some video links about how to make swirly art with your coffee, darling. Make mine with lots of milk and sugar, baby. If I'm gonna go, I want to go with a smile on my face.

How to make a heart in your coffee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY2nncqKGjQ&feature=related

How to make many shapes with chocolate syrup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDZs__m5iAI

How to pour the milk like a pro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si-wsNVh7qI&feature=related

Going with the flow. Being thankful. Watching for signs and wonders.

Life is a crazy proposition. The challenge is to always be thankful.

In January of 2010 I went to Nashville. I wasn't looking for Buck Owens, or Taylor Swift. My buddy, Dan Wilkins, of Legacy Films (www.legacy.tv) in Eugene, who is also a client, said, "Yeah, go to Nashville. You'll love it. They have a 20 foot tall golden statue to the goddess Athena. Maybe you'll want to live there."

He had said the same thing regarding my going to Key West, which was another project I worked on for Legacy Films. Wilkins, and Portland director Erich Lyttle, had traveled much of America ten years ago in making the Indie film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0359389/) "Have You Seen Clem." The film is based on Wilkins' experience in having lost millions of dollars due to over-expansion of Duff's, his buffet-style restaurant chain that once had twenty-six restaurants in Tennessee and California. They had spent some time in Nashville, and filmed a number of Nashville "cats."

Lyttle's claims to fame were his work for Red Bull, and ESPN (www.erich.tv). I had hired Lyttle in the 1990s to shoot a TV spot. He had in turn introduced me to Wilkins. Lyttle thought Wilkins was a little bit crazy, but never boring. And, he enough money left over to pay Lyttle to film a movie as they drove around America in an RV for four months. Wilkins' plan was to film the homeless of America, and to eventually lead his crew to Knoxville, TN where he would exact revenge on the banker who'd nearly bankrupted him. He didn't share this information with Lyttle or the crew. Wilkins was also the star of the film, and wore the disguise of a homeless man named Clem, complete with grotesque fake teeth. In Clem's odd hat was what was referred to as "Jame-O-vision," created by a young skateboarder-turned-cinematographer from Portland, Kris Jamieson. But in meeting and filming the homeless, including many talented street musicians, and seeing what was really going on in America, Wilkins had a change of heart and decided to forgive the banker. So it goes.

Life is funny that way. You set out to do one thing, and somewhere down the highway, sometimes literally while you are on a highway, you change your mind, and your world expands just a little bit.

I have noted that everything is interconnected. I do not know why this is, but I know it to be true. For example, my meeting Dan Wilkins. Wilkins is a quirky character, even when he isn't wearing a disguise in an Indie movie. He knows people because he is a people person. He lined me up to do work to promote his film, and introduced me to John Herklotz the executive producer of another film, "Giant of Thunder Mountain." Herklotz wanted to rebrand the never-released film so he could get it into Walmart. That was in 2007. Wilkins also arranged for me to write a biography of Herklotz. Both Wilkins phone numbers and Herklotz's phone numbers had numbers similar to my birth date. I do not know why this is, but this is a perfect example of the synchronicity of the universe. I notice such things.

In Nashville, where I'd gone to see if I could sell some of my songs (I had done an EP and sold it on CDBaby) to a hot shot Nashville producer. This is how crazy I am. I went to Nashville not knowing anything about how to do this. I had heard of Music Row, but I didn't know what it was. Wilkins said, "I know this guy there who runs an Italian restaurant. He used to work for the mafia, but I don't think he does now. You could stay with him!"

I won't tell you all the things I did in Nashville, but suffice to say, it would be a comedy film. Here are the highlights: 1. I did go to Music Row and became an ASCAP writer. (I admit I ogled the huge naked dancer bronze sculptures there). 2. I stood in the room where Billy Ray Cyrus recorded, "Achy Breaky Heart" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byQIPdHMpjc). 3. I stumbled across Hatch Show Print on Broadway Street www.hatchshowprint.com and fell in love with letterpress. 4. I sneaked into the Roy Orbison  recording studio's top floor and wasn't arrested. 5. I auditioned after too many glasses of merlot, for a former Columbia recording producer from NYC, who was a friend of the Wilkins' restaurant owner (Mario). 


Sometimes I wonder if my life is my own anymore, or I am simply the puppet of a master puppeteer. Maybe I am a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard. I am thinking of Nashville and my experience there, and the people we meet that change the courses of our lives. I do not claim to understand what any of it means. We simply have to be willing and life will direct and drive us places that expand our world view. It has mine. How about you?

My life as a clown. Or: Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh.

Actual unretouched image of my father.

Most people, when they graduate high school, pursue further schooling at colleges, or trade schools. And then they go on to mostly unhappy careers doing jobs they would rather not be doing and they serve their time and then they are paroled for ten years or so and then they die. No one told me how this works when I was young or I would have run away the first time a carnival rolled through my town. At least these people seemed to know that life was all about having fun. This was before I understood that carnival people are the scariest people on Earth, and to live with them was a step away from a padded room.

There are, of course, no hard and fast rules about finding a new career, or being happy. Some people are perfectly content to do jobs that give them ulcers, heart attacks, and too many unhappy marriages. We all went into this with our eyes wide open; we just were maybe hoping for something a little more fun to do with our lives. The lucky few figure this out way earlier and they only do the things that make them happy. These are the people we should be voting for, not the unhappy double-talking politicians. A clown would make a wonderful president. Imagine the big red floppy clown shoes of our comic leader slapping the Lincoln Bedroom floor at night, as he paces back and forth. Picture the First Lady clown wife in bed,  her strange orange hued hair up in giant clown curlers, while her clown husband, Mr. President, paces back and forth saying, "I don't know...Muffy...I gave them the funniest speech today about the state of the economy and nobody laughed! What is wrong with this country anyways?" Meanwhile, Muffy is blowing up balloons with helium and sucking down the gas. She says, in a high pitched tone, "Oh Fuzzy, baby, I wouldn't let it worry you. Wear a flower with a water squirter in it. That will get one of those serious-as-a heart-attack generals to laugh!"

In the real world, where frowns are commonplace, we don't have time for levity unless it is in prime time, on our flat TV screens. We always make time for the world of make-believe - the world of films and TV sitcoms. Comedies and drama's are full of modern clowns. Sometimes when I am contemplative, I become deeply delusional about what everyone should be doing in life. Being happy seems to be the only important thing to do. In my world, random acts of kindness are way up there in importance, and making people smile in a grocery store is much more important than whatever is on my shopping list. I am living life of Peter Sellers in 'Being There.' I believe that after a person has tried their hand at, say, being a gardener, they should try being something else, like being an advisor to the President. You only have so many years and then you'll be six feet under. So like, you will go to Heaven and God will say to you, "Um, were you aware you spent over 20,000 days with a frown on your face? You were only happy in fourth grade. Your punishment is to watch the video."

There are no rules that say an accountant cannot have an epiphany in their gray old office cubicle and say aloud, “I am going to be a clown!” Admittedly, this doesn't happen often enough to make more people comfortable throwing away an MBA for a MCBA (Masters of Clown Business Administration). We are on a treadmill, like rats, or the gerbils my son used to raise. Let me tell something about gerbils. After my son abandoned them, I was the one to take care of them. After five generations, those rodents went insane. I tried to make them happy. I built elaborate tunnels that stretched halfway across the kitchen. But eventually, the mom gerbil started eating her children. If this is our future, as a species, count me out. I'm just sayin'.  Ahem. well, no, we aren't gerbils, but we do need more happiness, or, like gerbils we will simply lose ourselves. I mean the crayon toting, joyful us that used to be when all was happy and sunny for most of the day regardless of the weather. 

I threw off conventions some time ago. I simply threw up my hands and said, "That's it; I'm a writer, and it doesn't matter that I don't have a degree in English from an Ivy League school." I simply have to be who I am! And naturally, this meant something less than a financial windfall. I woke up one day, looked in the mirror, and said, with a simple moronic smile on my face, "Okay, you win, God. I will be your court jester."  And God, who was holding all the cards anyway, said, through the honk and rumble of a nearby train, "Yeah, I knew you would come around eventually. Now go find your bliss."

We all have to make a living somehow. We can't all be clowns, regardless of Stephen Sondheim's song. Think what it would do to the oil crisis. All that oil going into clown makeup. Well, maybe it would work out; we'd all be driving strangely festooned bicycles anyway. With parasols. No, not everyone can be a clown. Some have to settle for standup comedy, or weekend gigs juggling, or distracting bulls at rodeos. I envy clowns. I also fear them. Some clowns scare the b'Jesus out of me. Can you really trust someone who covers up their face? Banks feel the same way, why shouldn't I? But some people know early on what they are good at. Mostly they are the children of clowns, or rabbi's. Their daughters want to grow up and marry someone like their fathers. Preferably, someone who keeps kosher and who graduated clown college, and whose idea of fashion is to wear pantaloons. http://www.ringling.com/TextContent.aspx?id=17084&parentID=390&assetFolderID=708

My daughter is afraid of clowns. Perhaps she first began fearing them when she saw a Chinese waiter for the first time, at age three. She had only seen white people up until that point. We said, "Honey, what's wrong?" And she said, "Was that a clown?" I think that was the beginning of her fears for people who looked different. But after living in NYC and Paris, she has developed an immunity to clowns and their first cousins, the mimes. So blame the French for that one.

I was raised by a man who aspired to be a clown. He did not know this, but his behavior suggested it was true. He had the perfect clown physique: long arms, a bit of a belly, very short legs, and comical expressions. All he needed was the outfit. It is no big surprise to me that he settled into square dancing, which requires strange outfits that only a clown could appreciate. My mother used to make clown-like square dance dresses. Her hair was a well coiffed as any clown's. In square dancing the women wear bouncy things to support their dresses. It was not meant as a joke, but it is a joke that goes way back in clown mythology, (probably back to ancient Greece). Women square dancers swing their hips so violently you have to be especially agile or you will be knocked on you back side onto the sawdust covered floor.  Dosey doe-ing (do si do?), refers to 'dosado,' a basic dance step where the man artfully dodges the clown-like dress of his partner, while holding her momentarily to keep her from knocking him down. Square dancing was supposed to be slap-stick, and dosey-doe's ruin what could be a Vaudeville routine. All the moves of square dance can be traced back to circus clown choreography developed in Jolly Olde England. You've got to do something when you have the Plague. Or maybe the women are the  'doe's' and the men are hunting them with their bolo ties. It is a mystery, lost to time.

Anthropological evidence does show a clear connection between clown dresses and square dance dresses. They are both spring loaded. The men's bolo ties are simply poor excuses for their predecessors: the cheap plastic brightly colored flowers that squirted water on innocent bystanders. Male square dancers have settled for cowboy boots (where, I might remind you depend on clowns to distract the bulls, people), when they wanted to wear big floppy red boots. Their huge belt buckles are identical to clown's belt buckles.

When you had a father like mine, you grew up a natural comedian. You tried to be unfunny, but you had to eventually go back to your roots in clown-dom. This is why I only get pleasure anymore out of making people smile. Send in the clowns. As Paul McCartney sang, "I want to build a world with silly love songs. What's wrong with that, I'd like to know...so here I go...again. I love you...."

Why are there so many Jewish comedians? If you can't beat 'em with guns, you beat 'em with jokes. Even the gentiles got into the act. Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW02c5UNGl0

So, I guess what I am saying is: I was raised by clowns, and I'm okay with that. Like all of us. And if you really love humanity, you will find a way to entertain the people you meet. Out of love, and silliness.

Writing with the blinds closed and the door shut.

Where characters are born and die.

Writing is a lonely art, and every writer has their favorite sanctuary, and ritual, for productive writing. Some prefer being holed up in a hotel room, preferably during a snowstorm. Others need neutral views: office buildings, a slit of sky, a glade, the sea. J.K. Rowling prefers a private table in a café. I prefer writing in the wee hours, in bed, or at a desk, when it is quiet. I love libraries with private quiet rooms where no talking is allowed. I used to write a lot in the main library in downtown Eugene, Oregon. You simply had to sign up for one of their two private rooms. Each had everything I needed: a long wide table to spread out reference material, plenty of outlets, no telephones, a view of a row of books, and silence. I found that the library itself inspired me. I noted the conditions of the chairs, the patrons, the  weary and alert faces of the library staff. I noted the library was the haven of the homeless during inclement weather. I recorded my observation in my amusing and poignant novel, "The Frogs are the First to Go." In the novel, my protagonist, Fran Stefel, is on a journey of self-discovery, much as I was in the declining years of my marriage. She was undergoing metamorphosis akin to a certain frog species that once was commonplace in the Willamette Valley of Oregon (the Oregon Spotted Frog). Fran is led, by a voice in her head, to save the frog in her backyard pond, that herpetologists believed had gone extinct decades earlier. She believes the voice is due to a chip in her head, placed there at an early age by an advanced race of amphibians, the Vargoolians, who regularly abduct her to enlighten, probe, and instruct her. I have felt this way about my life many times, and I could not resist putting myself into the characters, and also from people I have met. I like tangents in writing. They call this style of writing "literary writing." I do not know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It is simply the way I am and there is only a slight chance I will ever change, Probably slim to none, and never as much as the characters I create.  I wrote in my novel:

Listen; the Eugene Public Library in downtown is a sanctuary for the homeless.  Outside, standing on the front sidewalk, a hysterical teenage girl with meth sores on her face was screaming to no one in particular: “I just miscarried!”  Inside, on its three floors, homeless men and women sit in soft orange chairs.  Except for obvious things, like rolled sleeping bags, it isn’t easy to tell who is homeless.  Many of the homeless once had homes and careers.  Some had jobs as engineers and journalists.  The terrible economy, addictions, and bad choices brought them down.  Most are middle-aged; some are teenagers.  They are the lucky ones who can still walk and talk, but the things they say are frequently full of anger and frustration.  A few appear to be wearing clothing mostly composed of dirt.  When they fall asleep in the orange chairs they often snore and people from the library staff come and knock on the arms of those chairs and say things like, “You can’t sleep in here.  This is a library, people come here to read.”  The homeless know this of course, but they depend on human charity.  But charity in Eugene and most cities is in short supply, so the homeless have learned to hold paperbacks in their hands while they sleep to avoid being hassled.  This ruse works well because the library staff knows there are many books in the library that can put people to sleep.  The library’s janitorial staff copes with the problem by disinfecting the chairs each day.  But the smell never goes away entirely.  Nothing can be done about that because the smell is one of the most powerful pheromones on Earth.  It’s a unique scent, the odor of primal man, and smells like apple cider vinegar, mushrooms, fermented cotton, and damp earth.  It’s an organic scent: Mother Earth’s perfume.  Homeless men and women find each other in the night, like moths, with its help.  To the homeless the scent whispers: I am like you; I am lost, forgotten, and unloved.  It says, I won’t judge you.

I like to write in the hours before dawn because I am a morning person. Others are night owls. Sometimes, if I am really cooking, I write until noon and then I take a nap. I wrote most of one novel in a tiny bedroom that had no phone. The room isn't important; for most novels the room goes away once I get into the narrative. On one I was no longer in the room; I was on an undiscovered island in the Caribbean, on Santa Isabella Island, seeing the aqua blue and azure waters of its reef, the Spanish style buildings, the peculiar characters.  This phenomenon is not unusual. Teleportation is required to be a good writer. The fictional characters become as real as actual human beings. They do not age or die unless I say they do. They are immortal until I kill them. In a sequel, usually. Or the next chapter, or when I rewrite the book because it would be a better story if the character dies. Or kills someone. But I am not a big fan of murder. I did write a film noir where a duplicitous woman named Nora kills several people and tries to pin the murders on her ex-husband, Alden, who is a career postal worker with a penchant for making small films in his spare time.  She was the perfect femme fatale, and he was the perfect foil.  These people are out there, and I have met some of them. Writers, good writers, must get out into the real world. I have been a carpenter, commercial fisherman, ditch digger, newspaper reporter, artist, a sports nut, a culinary aficionado, a songwriter, a pole-vaulter, runner, an extra on a TV show, a husband, a mail processor, an advertising copywriter, an art director, a father, a liar, a good deed doer, a devout Christian, a lover, a film buff, a tango dancer, a rock hound, a cross-country driver, and a soldier. I have lived in Texas, Georgia, Washington, Oregon, Virginia, California, and London. And these experiences inevitably influence my stories. Where you live is where the story might gestate. Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" had this sense of place. Her childhood friend and collaborator, Truman Capote, had a talent for making multidimensional characters, and the knack for good journalism, as evidenced in the novel, "In Cold Blood." In the title of his anthology, "Music for Chameleons," (1980), he sums up what writers are: chameleons. We blend in to get information. We are the flies on the wall.

My world record for the number of pages written in one day, stands at around twenty-one, and was set in July of 2011. I did what a writer should never do: I sent a query to a publisher with three chapters of an uncompleted novel. I didn't mention the novel was only three-quarters of the way done; it is a faux pas to submit without the manuscript being completed. Mea culpa. I just never figured the publisher would go for it. A year and a half had gone by and one day I received an email that read: "I love your novel! It has been occupying corners of several editor's offices for a year and a half. Can you please send the entire manuscript?" So I wrote back that I certainly could, but I had some things to do over the weekend and I'd get it to her on Monday morning. And then I went to work. The story and the characters were already in my head, and I had done a rough outline, but once I got into it I tossed out the outline and went with my gut about what would be a better story. And voila! I sent it on Monday, (80 pages longer than it had been the previous Friday).  Don't do that. EVER.

I do not know how writers who write novels with manuscripts over a thousand pages did it in the days before desktop computers. Like Michener, for example, or most of the Russian writers of note. Or Dickens, or Steinbeck. Most of the great ones. They did it the hard way: they earned it. But the constant thread, regardless of the advances of technology, is that all writers must venture out into the real world and mingle, and eavesdrop on real people's conversation to write authentically. Most people with even the smallest amount of writing talent can become writers if their lives are complicated and colorful. It has worked for Ernest Hemingway,  Sylvia Plath, Phillip K. Dick, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Laura Ingells Wilder, Sherman Alexie, and Hunter S. Thompson, and probably every writer in the history of the human race. The maxim I have heard often is "Write what you know." A boring life is not good compost for a bountiful harvest of stories. The caveat is that if a writer uses a thinly veiled retelling of their own life's experiences, they must be careful to avoid libelous narrative. Which makes the aforementioned authors especially good fibbers. The better a writer obfuscates  the less chance they'll be sued for libel. This autobiographical method is referred to as roman à clef. What do we know more than ourselves? We simply change a few names and the point of view and stretch the facts here and there and voila! it can be done. I once met a pretty thirty-something year old woman at a writers group, who was attempting to write a romance novel about a failed TV weather woman living in Salem, Oregon. She described the novel's details with enthusiasm. When she finished speaking I asked if any of the events had happened to her, and she replied, "All of it!" 


Birds have no teeth, and thus in order to digest their food they swallow pebbles. In the gizzards of birds, pebbles do the chewing. Eventually, the pebbles are polished and lose their effectiveness. Then they are regurgitated, or they pass out the other end of the birds. In this way, birds are like writers, and story ideas are like pebbles. Writers, whether they are writing fiction or nonfiction, are adept at swallowing these idea pebbles from their experiences in life. Writing is a grinding process that requires rough ideas. I have several folders dedicated to rough ideas. Most of the ideas  will never amount to anything. They are like mental calisthenics. Eventually they may end up in the trash. Sometimes they come back, like characters. I give them new names, new wardrobes, and new careers. A lovely take on this God-like control writers have was depicted in the film, "Stranger Than Fiction," (2006).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7OIm2wz8iQ . This comedy-drama-fantasy film, directed by Marc Forster, and written by Zach Helm, stars Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, and Emma Thompson. It is essentially a romantic comedy with a twist. A famous chain-smoking author, Karen Eiffel, (Emma Thompson), is having a hard time finishing her latest novel. The publisher sends a representative named Penny, (Queen Latifah), to help her finish the novel. She is unsure if she should kill her protagonist, an IRS agent (and auditor) named Harold Crick. When she writes, “Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death," Crick, fearing he has schizophrenia, sees a psychiatrist, Jules Hilbert (Hoffmann), who realizes after a time that Crick's life is being narrated by Eiffel, one of his favorite authors. Crick's life does a one-eighty when he falls for Ana Pascal,(Glyllenhaal), the tax delinquent owner of a bakery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MsmVJyHg0s&feature=related .  Similar to the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, "Breakfast of Champions," where Vonnegut, on his fiftieth birthday, decided to clear the junk in his head but assembling his other characters in one novel. Like "Stranger Than Fictiion," Vonnegut introduces himself to one of his characters, Kilgore Trout, a hack sci-fi writer.  In "Stranger Than Fiction," Eiffel realizes Crick is a real person and she cannot kill him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdriF9RlwZU

I imagine this idea struck a chord with many writers, who have felt this wondrous power, this power to create people out of thin air, like God. I have, and I wouldn't want God's job to save my life. Good writing is like cooking. You must choose the best ingredient, in this case, the best word or phrase that is character with the tone of the work. I always have to ask myself, "Would this character say this or that, and how would they say it? What is their point of view?" The characters of a story live and breath just as we do, whether they are living on a distant world and breath with gills, or they live in the Midwest and are used car salesmen. But ultimately, they are people we have briefly met, known well, or heard of. They are ideally people we have spoken to, and ultimately, they are us.