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JUST ANOTHER ROADSIDE PULITZER

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 5-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/m3DRw3ggYuA

or read on…

This story happened a long time ago, but I re-visit it every few years

because it tells me so many things about life, about paying attention…

JUST ANOTHER ROADSIDE PULITZER

Why did I ever go into retail?

Well, you know the answer to that—if you, too, are in retail.

I did it because I couldn’t think of any other way to be my own boss and actually provide food and shelter for the family, outside the corporate world. I couldn’t think of any other way to have the freedom to write what I needed to write, free of the Dilbert shackles of the corporate world.

So, a couple of decades later, here I am, the Christmas season upon me, at 4:50pm on a Friday, just ten minutes till closing time, digging through computer-numbered boxes for a 1962 Esquire Magazine featuring Hemingway, a 1956 BBC Listener magazine containing a Salinger review, a first printing of Asimov’s The Martian Way, and a first edition copy of Salinger’s Raise High the Roofbeams…got to get these things overnighted for an anxious customer and then make it to a bookshop across town to conduct a reading, all by 6pm.

The front door chimes go off, so that means somebody has entered the store, 150 feet up the hall and up a steep flight of red stairs. As a retailer, you know the mixed feelings you get: Damn! Now I’ve got to wait on somebody and still get my tasks done…if it weren’t for these pesky customers, I could make a living (!).

I head up the hall to see who’s there, passing the glowing lava lamps and glistening Santas that line the path, giving a fairyland glow to the gathering dusk. When I get to the front, I see a small, pointy-haired big-rimmed eyeglass man, standing and staring at me as if I’m about to hit him. I do my usual “Hello, how can I help you today?” customer-friendly voice thing, since I have never seen this guy before.

“Well, do you buy stuff?” he asks. I’m in a hurry, so this means my thoughts are going to be negative—I’m thinking he’s got the usual dog-eared Reader’s Digest Condensed books and Stephen King paperbacks that we see a lot of around here.

“Well, it depends on what it is,” I say, thinking this does not look like a millionaire about to donate his Gutenberg Bible to me. “We have just about everything, but we’re always looking for what we don’t have,” I say, motioning down the hallway.

“What about this?” he says, pulling a rusty three-inch-tall miniature replica of a Sprite cola bottle from his pocket. It’s cute, just the thing I have all over the store for decoration, along with the life-sized Leg Lamp from Jean Shepherd, the seven-foot-tall Piggly Wiggly statue and the Pee-Wee Herman Playhouse suitcase, interspersed with books galore.

The next negative thought is that he will, like most people, have watched the Antiques Roadshow and determined that this is worth $32,000, of which I should pay him half for re-sale. I brace myself and say, “That’s neat. How much do you want for it?” He says in a small and meek voice, “What about a dollar?”

I am relieved and brighten up instantly, I pull a dollar from the cash tray, give it to him and he walks happily toward the stairs.

He bends to pick up two large and obviously heavy satchels he’s lugged up the stairs—I’m just now noticing them. Then, he turns and asks, “Can you tell me how to get to Jimmie Hale?”

The Jimmie Hale mission is for homeless people, and it’s a long walking distance away. I give him instructions, he thanks me, then begins his painful descent. I wait in the foyer, hoping he doesn’t stumble, and hoping I can get the door locked behind him so I can head to the post office on my way to being an unknown author reading my stuff aloud.

I can tell he’s about halfway down the stairs when I hear his meek voice, “I read everything you write.” I freeze in place to hear more. “And I see your columns in the paper. You are a natural-born writer.”

I can only yell thanks! as he closes the door behind him and disappears from hearing. I rush down the stairs to lock up, look up and down the street, and see nothing. No trace of this fellow and his heavy luggage and his mild temperament.

I lock the door, take down the OPEN sign, and start up the stair, turning out lights as I go.

Back at my counter, I reach into my pocket for keys and find the tiny Sprite bottle.

I hold it up to the lava lights and note its special green glow. And I wonder what a Pulitzer Prize looks like. This may be as close to one as I’ll ever get, so I’m going to adopt it and keep it around to remind me that now and then—just every once in a while—a writer can get a good review, a good award, at an unexpected time from an unlikely source…and then wonder later whether it was all imagination.

Later, at the reading, I tell the story of the little man and his Sprite bottle to Joey Kennedy, who is a genuine Pulitzer Prize winner. He grins ear to ear, because he knows all about fate and how things come to you only if you don’t look at them straight on

THE BOY WHO ALWAYS KNEW WHAT HE WANTED TO BE

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/dw4TbsBgOJs

or read his tale below…

THE BOY WHO ALWAYS KNEW WHAT HE WANTED TO BE

Lenny is chasing Jimbo in circles down on 15th Street, in sight of two bemused policemen who are chatting inside their parked patrol car. The officers listen for radio instructions as to what they should do next during this Saturday evening shift. Jimbo and Lenny are just having fun, all excited that they are playing close to their uniformed heroes.

All Jimbo can think is, “Maybe the policemen will see how fast and nimble I am. Maybe they will call me over and recommend that I attend police academy when I grow up, since I obviously have what it takes to do their job.”

The officers eventually shut driver and passenger doors and cruise on up 15th toward their next assignment. Jimbo and Lenny go on playing till it’s dark and their mamas start calling them for supper.

After supping, then doing his chores, Jimbo sits alone atop the front steps of his home, thinking about being a policeman. Or maybe an astronomer.

He gazes up at the darkened sky and tries to count stars and planets, and thinks, “Maybe I can become an astronomer. Yeah, that’s it—I can calculate the heavens for a living.” He tallies his talents, “Well, I’m smart. I read astronomy books. I even own a star chart. I know the names of lots of constellations. What else is required?”

Law enforcement fades away in his mind as Jimbo contemplates comets and meteors and novae.

Next day, neighbor Lenny and gang show up to play softball in the vacant lot across the street. One kid has a chipped wooden bat, another produces a frayed ball, and among them there are at least two old mitts to share.

Since nobody is trained or little-leagued yet, the tattered players kind of make up their own rules as the game progresses. Jimbo suddenly has the idea that he could maybe become a famous baseball player. Lenny underhands the ball, Jimbo hits it hard, and there’s a sudden CRACK! as it hits the asbestos shingles on the side of a nearby house. The owner is not amused and exits her back door to dress down the delinquents-to-be.

Jimbo realizes that maybe sports is not his thing, unless of course he can be a celebrity who is beyond criticism.

After seeing the new film, Destination Moon, Jimbo is so excited about becoming a space man that he rushes home and creates an entire comic strip based on the story. He considers his options.

After much contemplation and consternation, Jimbo makes a list and checks it twice.

1. No way I’ll ever be brave enough to be a policeman. Heroes of the movies know how to dodge bullets, but with my luck…

2. Being a sports hero would require effort and athleticism. Jimbo is smart enough to know he’s not into physical strength and endurance.

3. Jimbo learns after a bit of study that astronomy would entail being a natural math and physics wizard. He still has trouble with his math tables. Cross that off the list.

4. Being a spaceman might mean becoming an obsessive scholar and trainer and explorer. Jimbo has explored the red-clay ditch down the road from his home and found it to be buggy and snakey and kind of scary.

Eventually, after years scratching potential careers off his list, Jimbo grows older, maybe wiser, and falls into what he actually CAN do, as opposed to what he wishes he could do.

Jimbo owns the fact that he is dreamer. What things can a dreamer do?

Looking back, he comes to understand that dreamers can write poems and books, dreamers can tell stories, dreamers can entertain and read books. Dreamers can even find a way to make a living being around the engines of his dreams day and night—the engines called books.

These days, Jimbo ekes out a living by returning to his default setting. He now knows that dreamers can experience all the careers you can possibly imagine…just by dreaming about them, writing them, telling them, selling other dreamers’ dreams in his bookstore.

Jimbo gets to live a thousand different lives and still make it home in time for supper and moment by moment security in his home that is fifty miles away from his original front steps.

His special secret is the sure knowledge that instantly, at will, he can still sit on that 15th Street stoop and imagine the stars in a universe that is contained safely within his dreaming mind

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JERRY MUSKRAT HITS A SPEED BUMP

Posted on March 17, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/M5wk-15MRq4

or read his memoir below:

JERRY MUSKRAT HITS A SPEED BUMP

Chapter V of the pulpy-papered book I hold open begins, “If in all the great world there is any one pleasanter than Reddy Fox when he tries to be pleasant, I don’t know who it is. Of course, in that handsome red coat…”

“Jim!”

I jump two inches vertically when I hear this call “Jim!” and the book snaps shut and I am torn from the multi-textured world of Jerry Muskrat and Reddy Fox, into the reality of my mother’s voice.

“Jim!”

“Coming!” I respond, scrambling to my bare feet on the hardwood floor of our tiny asbestos-shingled home on Eastwood Avenue in 1950 Tuscaloosa.

I trot into the kitchen where Mother stands holding an overflowing metal trash can. She has a no-nonsense look that I dare not challenge.

The meaning of her stance is clear.

It is my chore to “take the garbage out” and transfer its contents to a much larger receptacle in time for city workers to rumble by and transfer its innards to a large and noisy truck.

I have failed to perform my duty in a timely fashion, but back in 1950, there is no whining or complaining about daily responsibilities.

I can read all I want to read—indeed, it is encouraged and expected of me—so long as I take care of the daily deeds assigned to me.

Each of us kids has a list of responsibilities. Mine includes clearing the dining table after meals, disposing of trash, making up my bunk bed, mowing the lawn and so on.

The chores are part of life, but so are other things. It is also my responsibility to read books and comics, play in the yard with local buddies, engage in all sorts of indoor games when it rains…

But there is always that moment of shock whenever anyone interrupts my reading. After all, to me, reading is like a vacation trip or an exploration adventure. As soon as a chapter begins, I am inexorably caught up inside another world, another time. I am a captive of the author and the artist. I am suddenly not the Jim of Eastwood Avenue, but the Jim of wherever the book takes me.

I sneak back to the book that has fallen to the floor. I search for the page that took me to Smiling Pool, where Jerry Muskrat and his pals live and thrive and go adventuring.

Thornton W. Burgess’ book continues revealing things about Reddy Fox I could not have imagined, “Only when he forgets and grins a little too broadly, so that he shows all his long teeth, does his face lose its pleasant look.”

Uh-oh, Reddy Fox may not always be nice and polite. Watch out, Jerry Muskrat!

Seven decades after Jerry and Reddy disappear, I find them again this morning. There, on a lower shelf of dusty books in my writing room…there is the book itself, still awaiting my touch, still sporting my fingerprints, “Jerry Muskrat at Home.” The book’s dust jacket front panel is marked with my penciled name.

Just inside the book, on the first blank page, is this hand-inked inscription, “Presented to James Reed 1950 for studying Sunday School lessons well. Mrs. Mills, Forest Lake Baptist Church.”

The jacket is tattered but bright, some pages are held together by cellophane tape, but the stories within are still there. The stories of all the critters that Burgess invented during a career that boasted 15,000 tales.

Hmm. Thornton W. Burgess was prolific! I wonder if he was one of my influencers?

Here I am all this much further along in my terrestrial journey, having written more than 2,000 stories. I’ll never catch up with TWB. But to this day I continue to weave my true tales, because they never end.

And I continue to this day to be annoyed and jarred whenever anyone anywhere interferes with my literary immersions, my fabulous journeys to anyplace but Here

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HUNKERING DOWN WITHIN THE SAFE ROOM

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/tIWhKwFiE3E

or read his tale below…

HUNKERING DOWN WITHIN THE SAFE ROOM

You need a password in order to enter my Safe Room.

Being of sound mind and unsound body, I retain this password for my eyes only.

The Safe Room is the only place where I can retreat from the media gnats and surly siegers that constantly pound away at what attention span I can muster at any moment.

Even though I can cocoon myself when the world overbears itself, there is one point of vulnerability. My Safe Room has a large shadeless window.

The gnats and trolls and snarkies and stormers and pesties anxiously await my exit from safe haven to the world outside, ready to pounce the moment I show myself. I keep them at bay as much as inhumanly possible.

How do I know these annoying, sometimes mean-spirited critters are anxious to derail me? Well, I can see them outside that danged picture-window.

Within my Safe Room, I can examine and digest and prepare whatever shape I would like to present to the world. I can try my best to tamp down and control those unlikable primal irrational hair-trigger responses that seem to be built into me. I can remind myself that, seeing as how I am ensnared by the reality of being human, being on Earth, being surrounded by people who are also concurrently ensnared, I can at least spend my remaining time doing worthwhile things.

I have this deep-seated and frustrating desire to Be Worthwhile.

The sign that floats above me in plain view would make a good bumper sticker. The sign says:

BE WORTHWHILE

So, how do I protect myself from the thousand and one distractions designed to manipulate me, exploit me, win me over, alienate me—those thousand and one attempts to empty my wallet or capture my vote or tamp down my resistance to becoming part of a lemming posse?

How do I make up my own mind? How do I behave like the independent entity I know myself to be?

A glance outside the Safe Room window provides all the motivation I require.

I don my protective Safe Garb, focus on the floating bumper sticker, take a deep breath, and exit the room, ready to wend my own way, ready to avoid all speed bumps and barriers and attackers, ready to seek the company of people who are kind and unselfish, ready to dismiss the exploiters, ready to assist the meek.

Ready to become worthwhile

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HOW TO BECOME A HUMAN BEING

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 4-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/JMA-BIVSriU

or read his tale…

HOW TO BECOME A HUMAN BEING

I’m way Back There right now. Having re-calibrated a memory bank, I can be Back There anytime I wish. This is one of those times.

What is going on?

Back There I am fifteen years old. It is summertime. I am lolling about, jobless, confused about the present and clueless about the future.

Longtime neighborhood playmates have disappeared into adolescence, making tracks through puberty, no longer eager to run amok in the backyards and vacant lots of childhood.

Junior high and high school attendance distracts me from just plain having fun. Activities of daily living slam me with social structure and class division and the proprieties of being a properly acceptable teenager. Peers pressure me to be one of them. Outsiders still engage me.

I don’t know where I fit, so I am somewhere between the Ins and the Outs.

School will begin anew in a few days. Sixteenth birthday will interfere with my need to remain just plain Me.

I retreat into my books, I hide within my writings, I find occasional joy in participating in local theatre productions. I am a born actor and am most at ease with life when on stage, being someone else for ninety minutes.

Outside my books and journals, offstage, I am uncomfortable and clumsy and directionless.

I feel like a Martian. A goulash of hormones and growth spurts, always seeming on the edge, on the ledge.

As a Martian, I find a way to dialogue with myself.

“Self,” I say, “I don’t really care for being one of these humans. How did I become ensnared within this particular body in this particular family in this particular village on this particular planet? Why can’t I go back to Mars and feel real again?”

Self replies, “Well, you just have to adjust to what’s what. I do not know how you are going to escape this fine mess.”

I ruminate and retort, “As a human, I am so subject to having primal irrational hair-trigger responses to every thing, every primal feeling. This seems to be built into me.”

Self says, “Welcome to Earth. What’s the problem?”

“I just don’t care for this…this bumper car existence that shuffles me about and taxes me and challenges me and makes me feel as if I have no control over anything…”

Self grimaces, “That’s just the way it is going to be from now on. All you have to do is decide which it is going to be—the ledge or the leap?”

I know Self is right, but I need someone to talk to, so I continue, “The leap would solve my problems.”

Something within me—maybe a shard of intelligence attempting to get my attention—immediately identifies this sentiment as irrational and not quite accurate. I’ve studied Hamlet and I know that the leap in no way guarantees the end of my troubles. Things might be much worse Over There.

“OK, Self. I see where you are leading me.” I pause to find the right words. “You can take a break now. I know what I have to do. I basically have to dig myself out of this quagmire, stop whining, and just get on with doing what I can do.”

“Attaboy,” self mutters as he fades into the cobwebbed niches of memory.

I get up, wash my face, comb my hair, and grab a pencil to write a poem that just popped into view.

Someday I’ll share it with you. Maybe a few decades from now.

Meanwhile, allow me to be your Self for a moment, just in case you are not in touch with this imaginary but very real friend.

Follow instructions carefully:

Take the good from my stories. Look for the good. Use it to your advantage. Remain on the ledge.

Be a better person or at least a better purveyor of good than you were ten minutes ago. People are watching. The Ins and the Outs are looking for guidance and inspiration.

Whether or not I am always conscious of it, others do look to others, only more secretively than they did in the vacant lots of childhood.

They still want to know whether it is acceptable to have the same desire as you…to yearn to run guileless through good memories

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SENTENCED TO LIFE

Posted on February 24, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/thCThWNlxyU

or read his words below:

SENTENCED TO LIFE

I’m shivering on the twilight streets of the big city, waiting in cool dampness for designated driver to appear.

The semi-darkness alters colors and textures just enough to make me re-examine my after-work surroundings.

To my left is the tall vertically-striped Watts tower glowing and glowering at the unstoppable passage of time.

Straight across the way is the large furniture store with forgotten neon OPEN sign defiantly staring back despite the fact that employees have locked up and headed home.

A large municipal bus pulls up, occluding the OPEN sign, awaiting permission of a traffic light. I gaze into the large windows where passengers move about under the eerie bluish hue of interior lights. It looks as if i’m gazing into an aquarium. The occupants tread air and brace for the journey.

Music of the asphalt accompanies all. Horns make horn sounds, tires screech, parkers try to park parallel in multiple back-and-forth wriggling patterns, cars with right-blinkers ablaze turn left anyhow, courier services idle their vehicles. Other drivers weave around them. Incredibly loud music vibrates the windows of one car, a sirened ambulance forces me to stop ears with fingers, pedestrians poop-pause their yappers, plastic bags at the ready.

Chattering teens stroll by on their way to an Alabama Theatre concert. A crestfallen shopper pulls the overtime shopping penalty ticket off his windshield and mutters sadly. One panhandler puts a hand out, a power-tailored attorney hustles ’round the corner, hugging leather briefcase.

I suddenly realize that I have been sentenced to life.

Life on the streets, life among strangers and friends and passers-by.

A life sentence is what I am privileged to serve, here in the tiny wonderland that is my ‘hood, my livelihood, my worldly world of pavement and people and creatures of the twilight

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CAPTURING THAT HIGH HEEL ATTITUDE MOMENT

Posted on February 17, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/xSDLsbfA3uE

or read his story…

CAPTURING THAT HIGH HEEL ATTITUDE MOMENT

At day’s end I find myself emptying pockets filled with detritus earlier stuffed into them in haste.

The predictables include loose change, wadded tissue, somebody’s business card, sticky notes, plastic toothpick, a polished stone, a lone dollar bill…

And the inevitable extended strip of CVS coupons.

How many miles of CVS paper have passed through hands and pockets on the way to trash receptacles this year?

Anyhow, I do spot one revelatory coupon that tickles memory and fancy:

GET $2.00 OFF YOUR NEXT EYE-SHADOW PURCHASE.

Can’t remember when I made my last purchase of eye shadow. Probably because it never happened.

But sweet remembrance kicks in and this snapshot of a phrase appears, SHE’S ALL LONG EYELASHES AND HIGH HEELS AND LEGS.

I wrote something about this beautiful and purposeful high heel person a long time ago, just after she breezed past me in hallways at City Hall.

Oh, here is part of the note. It’s called ATTITUDE HEELS.

She’s walking the walk

She’s jutting her chin

Her eyes are half-closed

She’s suppressing a grin.

Attitude heels

Gotta get a pair of those attitude heels

Gotta stay cool

Gotta keep the beat

Strutting those spikes

And building up heat

Clicking and clacking

Staying on cue

She looks like she’s

Got lots to do

Attitude heels

Must have must have attitude heels

You can’t be meek

You gotta be real

You must hang tough

And NEVER kneel!

You march right in

You strut straight through

You rule the wind

And the world follows you

Attitude heels

Gotta get some of those attitude heels

Well, what more can I say about this apparition at City Hall? She speaks for herself. She remains a remarkable icon of efficiency and purpose and will and confidence. Wish I could find all that along with my other pocket stuffings.

Maybe I just did

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PUTTING SILLY STUFF IN ITS PLACE

Posted on February 10, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute vocal podcast: https://youtu.be/X7Cj-J6EScM

or read on…

PUTTING SILLY STUFF IN ITS PLACE

“Well, how is your week going?” someone asks me.

I pause before speaking. There are two ways to answer the question.

I try to decide which reply is worth the effort.

Want to hear the two alternatives?

I could say, “What a week! I totaled my car, traversed the intricacies of replacing it, the icemaker in my brand-new six-week-old refrigerator broke, our home furnace exploded and died and a replacement is in place and beginning to work, my bookstore rent will increase enormously in a few weeks, new tag and insurance and warranty activities suck up all our time…” I could say all that, feel appropriately sorry for myself and just come off as a self-centered whiner.

Or, I could say, “It’s a glorious week. Business is bustling, one old friend brought Asian food to the house for an evening chat fest, my best friend from Second Grade sent me a lovely handwritten note from far away, I am traveling East this afternoon to inspire and energize a meeting of booklovers, my lovely wife smiled and held my hand and began her fifth decade of keeping me balanced, and I am about to write yet another story about life love and confusion in my Deep South life.

Which of these confessions will do more to make the listener chuckle? Which will force me to appreciate and re-appreciate the wonderful life that awaits my order to resume full speed ahead?

And which true tale will make me drop the disparities and despair that seem so petty, compared to what other people are experiencing throughout the world right now?

Tumbling together in a merry melange of Life Happenings and Unexpecteds, stuff just seems to happen lately. I always hope the Law of Averages will catch up with me at a later date, but that date is just plain happening anyhow…without my permission, of course.

I think I’ll choose Door Number Two and add other pleasantries for the listener’s enjoyment.

Better still, at some point I’ll shut my mouth and listen raptly to what’s happening in the listener’s life

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NOTE TO SELF: MAKE NOTE TO SELF

Posted on February 3, 2019 by Jim

Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: https://youtu.be/EIZ1_pQYRqI

or read his comments below…

NOTE TO SELF: MAKE NOTE TO SELF

Note to self:

MACARINA MUTING is a possible title of a story about my propensity for obsessively muting every commercial message that intrudes upon my life.

Yep, among my many tics and habits and compulsions is the need to sound-filter all unwanted sales pitches. Out of ear, out of mind.

It’s its own form of entertainment, this quashing of audio. Once the MUTE button is pushed, I can pursue other endeavors until the original program content resumes. Or I can watch the muted performance and make up my own story lines.

I get my jollies by watching the commercials never intended for silence. You too can play this game. When the superbly pumped-up and unnaturally-friendly spokesperson begins her sales pitch, watch her silent hands. What in the world do those repetitive gestures and body movements mean? Does she learn them in Macarina Messaging School?

Watch a lawyer pound his silent sales presentation into the camera. Where did he get the idea that his dramatically splayed waving arms would induce me to buy any product or service he could possibly imagine? Did he attend Commercial Shadow Boxing classes? Bless his muted mouth.

Unsolicited sales calls are also muted by the minute. PLEASE DON’T HANG UP. THIS IS AN IMPOR…just instructs me that hanging up is my only defense. CLICK. Muted!

Another call, MAY I SPEAK TO THE OWNER…”No, you may not, but thanks for calling.” CLICK. I do try to be polite and dismissive simultaneously.

One more phone pick-up—someone is trying to sell me something that would never be appropriate for a bookshop. “Have you ever visited my shop to see what we sell here?” I ask. UH, NO. “Well, come and talk to me face to face, allow me to give you a brief tour of the store, then we can have a nice face-to-face chat.” OK, I’LL DO THAT. CLICK. Quoth the marketer, NEVERMORE.

Oh, and there is another wise-guy retort I employ now and then, according to mood. IS THIS THE OWNER, MISTER JEEM? “What are you selling?” I ask, hoping to get to the point quickly and resume my day. OH, I AM NOT SELLING ANYTHING, MISTER JEEM. I know this to be untrue, since this is the dozenth call from this particular company. Nobody ever admits to wanting to sell something to me until the Pitch is completed—then, Surprise, Surprise! My smart remark, “Oh, that’s too bad that you are not selling anything. I just came into some money and was prepared to buy whatever you are offering. Thanks for calling!” CLICK.

Actually, I don’t enjoy making these quips, but something comes over me.

I’m much happier watching the silent-movie screen presentations of actors pretending to be just like me, hoping they can charm me into rolling out some moolah. Or lawyers reminding me that, like congressmen, bad hair or enhanced hair or preternatural comb overs are common characteristics of this species. Pretty funny stuff.

The Macarina continues until the Time of Unmuting resumes.

I enjoy these cheap thrills. They are actually much more fun than the programs themselves