Still alive
Worry not, I’m still alive. I’ve just been crushed by the weight of the calendar. I knew it was coming, and considered posting the famous can of soup that shows you’re going to be absent from your blog, but then figured no, instead I’d go into deep silence like a submarine.
But now I’m resurfacing.
So, what has demanded even more of my time than before?
- End of semester at USC. Which in my case meant reading something like 1600 pages of script in less than a week. What was truly amazing was that, even after all that marathon reading, one of my students’ plays had me laughing all the way through. (And that was a good thing.)
- Directly related: planning for next semester. New course descriptions, paperwork, errata. New syllabi still to be written.
- Finishing the first draft of my new full-length play, “Safehouse,” to meet a deadline. Is it any good? I don’t know — but you can find out right along with me in late January when Moving Arts gives it a reading at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood. More to come on that. And now I can return to my other play, “Duck Blind,” which I had thought all along would be the one I’d finish and submit.
- Traveling to New Jersey (where I am now). Why? Well, to visit 81-year-old mom, but also to replenish the stock of ShopRite Iced Tea Mix, which my family and I have been quaffing all our lives. We had run out! More about this potent elixir another time, but let me note this: Its mystic powers are so protected and exclusive that one cannot even find a photo of it on the web to post here! Someone who could navigate the trade byways to export it directly to the west coast could retire like a pasha. It is so cherished that in 1994 Joe Stafford stuffed something like 126 cannisters of it into his hearse and drove it across the country to us. In return, we let him stay with us for a month. Rent free!
- And, of course, wrapping up all sorts of things so that I could actually take this trip. That meant compacting two weeks’ scheduled work into one.
- Plus, let’s not forget, the ongoing new-car saga, which took me to the LA Auto Show, where I actually got to see the phantasmagoric Mustang that Lisa emailed me about.
- There’ve also been the usual recent things: working on my book, leading my workshops, writing for clients, reading funny books, daily ablutions, and so forth.
But now I’m back. Not physically. But virtually. And I have something to say in the next post about the book I’m reading.
December 15th, 2006 at 8:22 am
I think about how many of those cannisters of SHOP-RITE ICED TEA MIX (spoken in reverence if actually voiced) and how in making a trip cross country in a HUGE vehicle that I owned in 1993, that my brother still uses to make a 3 mile trip to his favorite kyacking venue; well parts of my ‘today self’ sort of cringe. WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!?!
In the age of nationwide ‘eyes and ears’ of various and sundry kinds (mostly in the person of the denizens of Wal-Mart) that keep watch on our Homeland’s Insecurity, I think that maybe such a trip would no longer be very well advised. Imagine me, ever the slightly animated east-coast effete-ist being stopped ‘trans-Arkansas or Oklahoma’ as it were, and explaining my boastful Station Wagon, the kind of which is seldom seen in those parts, at least in top running condition as it was – CHOCK FULL of some kind of beverage mix in these huge wrought-paper cans. And then explaining myself in my usually verbose light-shorted manner. Well wow, the outcome might not be good. The contents could be the nefarious formula of some COMMUNIST afterall! Set about to destroy the National Landscape! Or, cater to a picnic of my like kind (!).
After all, outside of cable television, these folks have not ever SEEN the likes of little old me that close on.
I just loved those trips, and now, imagine, freewheeling American Travel a’la “See the USA in your Chevrolet” is now all but a museum piece to be looked upon as the WAY LONG PAST. From 1960 on my mommy and sister made such trips, and that’s the way I was taught that a penny saved was properly spent for vacationing purposes. It still will be, sometime soon, when cars are powered by sour milk and stale saltines and carrots. I’m waiting the revolution that takes us back to those wonderful freewheeled days. Until then my memory is VIVID.
Till then, I’ll pay for my visits to Burbank by sending “The Mix” by Fed-UPS.
Nes Pas?
Joey Stafford