Handbill Handout

The January morning was icy cold. The air felt almost like liquid in Carl’s lungs. It was, he thought, the sort of cold that robs you of bits of your life. Still, he could not resist stopping in front of the gallery that morning the same way he had every morning for weeks since the painting was hung in the window. The painting that was vexing Carl because he couldn ’t figure out what it was. The picture wasn ’t anything remarkable in subject matter or execution. It wasn ’t an abstraction that lent itself to interpretation. It was, in fact a pretty straightforward painting until you tried to figure out what the narrative was behind it; that is what moment in time was the painting trying to capture? The painting was a picture of a man that Carl had initially presumed to be a fisherman because he appeared to be standing at the rail of a boat except you couldn ’t see the boat you could only see the man, the rail and the water and another man further in the background. The men were position...

(plinking banjo music) Dear Margaret- I fear the center of our line is about to crumble, and I may not return to our fair home. BRAINS!!! The seargent-major is a fair man, he knows we may not ever return to our loved ones again so he has given us each a promotion and MORE BRAINS SENT MORE BRAINS GRRRRWWAAAHHH. This may be the last time I write to you so please kiss baby Tim for me and tell my mother I to remember me dear...GIVE ME YOUR BRAINS, BRAINS, MORE BRAINS BRRRRUAAAAAAHHHHHGGGGH! Yours, Corporal Agarn

Carl was on page five of the ten page diner menu when he gave up. “How the hell do they expect us to believe that they can cook everything in this novella safely, never mind well?” he said to his Aunt Ellen who had invited him for brunch. Ellen continued perusing the lengthy document even though Carl knew damn well she was going to order scrambled eggs, sausage, toast and coffee just as she probably knew he was going to order a turkey club and a diet Coke. She insisted on going through the motions despite the fact that the final resolution was already known and immutable which made her not unlike 99% of the other human beings on the planet. Ellen closed the menu and said “You’re at a diner, most of this stuff is cooked the same way and whatever isn’t safe is probably just here for show and they’ll tell you they’re out of it if you order it. Anyway, why does it matter?” Carl looked across at his aunt. She was in her mid sixties, only about ten years older than Carl was owing to the fact...

Carl was in the bar in his usual spot with his usual drink doing his usual staring at the screen behind the bar wondering what to do next. Besides ordering another drink, of course. The bar was an old one without a sign out front but it was well known to the locals. It did not require any effort toward advertising to stay in business. It offered exactly what its target market required: a dimly lit room, somewhat but not terribly noisy, alcohol, and a television with cable to occasionally distract a person from their thoughts. The bartenders didn’t ask many questions, didn’t give you their name unless you asked and generally left you the hell alone except for when you glass was empty. It was a good bar. A dying breed. A man could be comfortable alone there. For the first time in several years Carl’s old acquaintance Sam walked in the front door. He knew exactly where to look for Carl. He came over and sat down. “I heard from Al” he said. Carl didn’t blink. “You hear me?” he said. “Yeah”...

One of my old bosses used to sit at his desk and organize M&Ms by color while he talked on the phone. No, I’m not making that up. I mean you couldn’t make that up. Well, I guess you could make it up, hypothetically, if you thought about it. And if I was a writer of style, of nuance, of "protect the innocent" and created characters based on reality instead of using reality itself I’d say he organized Skittles by color or maybe organized pretzels by size or maybe stacked Pringles or maybe, or maybe, or maybe that’s the best I can do. The best ideas I can come up with. So you choose one. Which one? So now you’ve chosen and I can write about the man who (blanked blanks) while talking on the phone. Why not change “talked on the phone” to “held meetings”? Or “worked on spreadsheets”? Or “Surfed the Internet”? No, no, the last two won’t do. Won’t do a bit. And even “held meetings” doesn’t really work because really, who would believe that? So we have to have him bla...

So I’m sure you’re just like me and you’ve asked yourself: What would happen if today’s entertainment sensibility had existed at the time of cave paintings? Well I think it would go a little something like this… Caveman Investor: Hey Urgwag, we just reviewed your latest series of paintings in the south cave. Really great stuff. Caveman Artist: Thanks, I’m really trying to collaborate with your integration people. Caveman Investor: (not really paying attention) Yeah, really great, really great. We love what you’ve done with the buffalo in the second act, really great stuff the way the spears stick out of him at different angles and how he falls over in the next panel and the spears are still at the same angles. CA: Uh-huh, well it’s not realism but really an interpretation of our linear intersection with the creature’s life. CI: Right, right, say listen (looks down at stone tablet) about those spears, the integration people aren’t happy. CA: Why not? CI: Well, Argwajug’s spea...

Glen wandered east up the block across from the building toward a bar he frequented in years past hoping to grab a nice steam-table sandwich and a pint before hopping the bus back home. Would it still be there? What do you think? No, it was gone. Replaced by a Starbucks, of all things. How typical. Disappointed Glen headed back toward the building and as he walked he noticed how much the street had changed. There wasn’t a single deli or coffee shop or dollar store or drugstore or Hallmark shop or anything, anything at all where he remembered it. He had just been in the office for the initial meet and greet a few weeks before, was it possible things had been different then and he hadn’t noticed? Glen hadn’t worked in this neighborhood at the job he held the previous five years so he thought it was possible things had changed that much and he just hadn’t noticed a few weeks earlier. Not getting any younger, Glen thought. Well, our man Glen was right on with that observation. H...

Into the lobby through the revolving door he went and he headed toward the elevator. Odd, Glen thought, there were security gates here last time and I had to swipe a company-issued ID card. Now they’re gone. The thought stuck in his head roughly as long as it took Glen to board the elevator and punch the “39” button. The doors closed and Glen was suspended in that timeless time that we all must spend in elevators sooner or later. That dead time where there isn’t quite enough time to have a full conversation with anyone you might be acquainted with or read a page of a book or do much of anything. Elevator time is like time spent at traffic lights, a totally unproductive time that we should all get a reimbursement for at the end of our lives. As Glen (or what it Glen’s narrator?) reflected on this true to form the doors slid open again and interrupted the thought. Glen turned right off the elevator and noticed an attractive receptionist at the front desk. Was there a receptionist...

It was a dark and stormy night. Wait, no it wasn’t. It was a dull and rainy morning, not a dark and stormy night. Sorry, I always wanted to start a story with that little Snoopy tribute line there. And now I have. And now I will remove myself so that the story can begin. It was a dull and rainy morning and Glen was annoyed that he had been called in to the office unexpectedly. He’d only been doing consulting work for this company for a couple of weeks and other than an initial meet and greet he had never had to darken the door of the office. All of his work was done from home, or had been done from home until today. So there Glen was ambling from the park and ride lot toward route 13 when he noticed the red hand that replaced “Don’t Walk” on the traffic lights of his youth start to blink. “Shit” he muttered and started hustling to make the light. Route 13 was a six-lane highway with intermittent pedestrian crossings and if you missed the light you were waiting for a while, a “wh...

Carl felt badly for Pat’s family. Did Pat even have a family? Carl had no idea. Pat never talked about one. No way to find out now, Carl figured, unless somebody showed up to claim the store. But who would? The newsstand stayed closed for about a week after Pat died and Carl figured this was it, the place would be sold and converted into yet another chain drugstore or a bank branch. Carl wondered how they could open a bank branch in a place that small that lacked a vault. They always found a way though, whoever “they” were. Meanwhile Carl spent the time he had spent at the newsstand at home, still reading the papers (he picked them up at a deli around the corner). After a week Carl walked past the stand and saw the gate up and the door opened. He stuck his head inside and saw that the place had been gutted to the bare walls. Everything was gone. No more coffee machine, no more paneling, no more stool. Carl was hit with a wave of nausea as he looked around the place. Desp...

The robbing bastards never did turn up, at least not in the remainder of Pat’s lifetime which, as it turns out didn’t have a whole lot left when he showed Carl the gun. One fine Tuesday morning Carl was getting more than his usual allotment of entertainment from old Pat. Seems the kids had the day off from school, one of those clerical days that they have from time to time and they were infesting the store in large quantities buying junk food, comic books and sugary beverages. Pat was in full force barking “C’mon, hurry up!” at one kid who was having a particularly difficult time excavating sufficient coin for his candy from the various pockets on his pants and jacket and almost simultaneously charging from behind the counter to confiscate a comic book from a kid who had the temerity to look at it for more than 30 seconds without reporting to the register to pay up. “I ain’t running a library in here!” echoed off the walls of the shop for the 463,283rd time as Pat snatched the book...

The newsstand had been sitting on the square for as long as anyone could remember, which isn’t really saying much since in these brave early days of the new century “as long as anyone could remember” usually means a month. So let’s try a different way to communicate the age of the place. The newsstand had been sitting on the square since 1923. To complicate matters further, it had been decades since it was just a newsstand. Within a decade or so after it opened the owners had built on a lunch counter, then sometime in the 1950’s they began running a car service out of the back parking lot. That was the heyday of the place: the bland and optimistic mid 20th century. By the time Carl took up residence on the end stool at the lunch counter with his back resting against the faux-pine paneled wall next to a tied stack of last Sunday’s papers the lunch counter had stopped serving lunch and instead sold pre-wrapped cakes and middling-quality coffee poured into paper cups from a Bunn-o-m...

I think I finally have the breakthrough idea that will put me on easy street. No, it’s not an invention that could’ve been pitched by the late, great Billy Mays. It’s not anything useful at all really. What it is is an idea. An idea for a movie. A film perfect for our times. I want to write a movie about zombies. In supermarkets. But not human zombies. I want to write a movie where all the meat and fish in the meat cases and fish cases in supermarkets become undead and attack unwary shoppers. It has something for everyone. It has zombies, which after vampires are everyone’s favorite undead (and really I could make some of the critters vampires, maybe the fish?). It is a timely story. It has a “ripped from the headlines” feel based on all the terrible stories about our industrialized food system. The film (film is what serious movie types call movies, you know) is set in supermarkets. Supermarkets are somewhere almost everyone goes which just adds to the TRUE HORROR of it al...

He went back to the musty stacks of vinyl and found the “Best Of” collection that had “Better Things” on it. The next chore was to actually play the damn thing. Dan remembered that his older brother had some vinyl and when he was quite small he fiddled with an old record player that had pennies taped to the tone arm to prevent skipping. Dan had never used the vintage late ‘80s Technics models that the station still had for those who played vinyl but it seemed easy enough. He put the album on the table, clicked the turntable channel into “Cue” on the board and hit the big square button on the lower left of the turntable. The machine sprang to life but began playing the wrong song. That’s right, Dan thought, on these old things there were thick bands that separated the songs and you had to put the needle on the thick band before the song you wanted to cue it. Dan found “Better Days” and put the needle on the thick band. Cueing it exactly was another problem; since he had only be...

A few weeks went by with no calls. Then, on a particularly bitter February evening the studio line blinked again. Dan picked it up. “I need you to play “Better Things” by the Kinks.” “No more folkie Dylan crap huh?” “I’m past that.” Dan scrolled through the library on his laptop. “I’m not sure we have that one. How about “Waterloo Sunset”?” “You have it. Go in the record library” “I’ve got in on screen right now” “Not the goddamn computer thing. The record library. It’s a room. With records. In the back of the station behind the lounge.” Dan had rarely ventured in there. Who needed physical artifacts when you could download anything you wanted to here? Some of the DJ’s who had shows that specialized in older recordings or wanted to do some old-style DJ scratching and mixing used the stuff in the library but most of the staff just played audio files. You could put together a whole set, click once and not have to worry about doing a damn thing for an hour. Made it easy to ge...

Before we return to our story, I just wanted to note that Pete Townshend turned 63 today. I was going to post some blather about how his music was (and is) very important to me, the influence it had on many aspects of my life etc etc but that would be more of a snooze fest than the normal drivel that's sprayed here and that piece has been written a hundred thousand times by people who can express those sentiments better than I can. Besides, PT doesn't need any more acclaim least of all from a blog seen by maybe 20 people or so. Instead, I'll stick with our regularly scheduled programming. And now, back to the show. Part 1 here if you missed it. The next week Dan was back in the basement studio with its 1970s tan faux marble floor tiling and 1980s grey walls. A holiday-themed show was assembled on the laptop. It was actually January, but Dan thought it was clever to play Christmas and Hanukkah themed records when everyone was completely sick of them already. It was another...

Dan had just given the legal ID and clicked on the next set of music on his laptop when the studio phone rang. He looked up at it in surprise. He always gave out the number when he did the station ID at the top of the hour but nobody had called in all the years he’d been at the station. It was more of a joke he told himself every week when he did his show on the 5-7pm shift, second to last shift of the day since building security closed the station at 9pm. The station was a 10 watter which in an urban environment meant that it only reached a few blocks and few people ever bothered to click on the internet stream. Friends and relatives mostly, and they never called. Dan picked up the phone and it said “I need you to play “Not Dark Yet” by Bob Dylan” “Who is this?” “Tom from the newsstand around the corner” “Yeah, listen Tom I already have my show laid out on the computer and so I don’t really have room for requests” “Why’d you give out the number?” He had Dan there. Besides, Dan h...