Awards Season

When I'd awakened, all I remembered from my dream about this year's Oscars was the deafening applause and the awards themselves:

Best Film: Hawmps! (1976)
Best Director: Joe Camp, for Hawmps! (1976)
Best Supporting Actor: Slim Pickens, for Hawmps! (1976)
Best Original Score: Euel Box, for Hawmps! (1976).
Best Costume Design: Tom Bronson, for Hawmps! (1976)

It went on. "Hawmps!" swept the Oscars, 44 years after the fact. 

I made breakfast and returned to the dream, still a bit fazed. When I reviewed what fragments were still reachable, I realized something else: no one was in attendance at this awards ceremony, just John Denver at the podium reading the results in a stolid monotone.

I threw back an entire pot of coffee before finding the courage to open the paper to read the results (I still read the paper). I lost all interest in the dream to focus on the report that every attendee at last night's Oscars stood in line for the sole purpose of being punched to death by Ric Flair. Bodies were tossed onto a slagheap and burned. This kind of crap didn't happen in the 70s. What the hell? I used to make documentaries. I made documentaries that mattered and this kind of anarchy deserves a sternly worded letter.

Attention, Attention

Stand by for an announcement.
Will the following students please report to the principal’s office:
Lawrence Braden, Carla Hayden, Nathan Hayden-Braden,
Caiden Troyden Jaedenden,
Brothfraithe Templeton,
Etchwarth Icthiabroyden Fulchcrath McThiabathroyth Horse,
Windwarth Tunce-Fath Testiculoyth-Proyce aka “El Diablito,”
and Chuckie Devine.

Don’t make us wait.
Don’t make us caterwaul.
Don’t make us wail over this loudspeaker again,
Wail over this loudspeaker, again, that blare
We wince at the thought of it
Of course we’re partial to summoning you,
You’re ready to apologize, to acquiesce, or in some cases to argue
Those weak arguments, like “He made me do it,” and “It wasn’t me.”

But when you verge upon the principal’s office
You must understand that you’re entering the domain of the
Orb of Contentment.
Principal Dennis has created an empyreal Orb of Contentment
That hovers over the mimeograph machine exhibiting an impenetrable light.
It’s a light that would make the most truant of adolescents
Fall prostrate in slack-jawed supplication.
Principal Ronnie Dennis has created a shimmering portal to enlightenment,
And it’s time to make the local newspapers aware.
Get them on the phone. Get Jerry on the phone. Get Carla and Gary on the phone.
Get them on the phone.

Long Distance

The third day of my road trip and I hadn’t yet showered. It relentlessly poured rain, so I’d reeked of sweat, socks, and body odor so much that whenever I’d pull into a sandwich shop after gassing up the Nissan, the clerks would gather in a circle wearing orange HazMat suits, point hoses at me, and spray me with perfumed chemicals. I’d be pushed into a dance, moving against their violent punch, singing when they sprayed me, swallowing a few cups of those toxins each time. I’d race back to the car only to throw up all over its interior for 15 minutes – that kind of heaving, screaming retch that’s practiced only by the dead drunk. So, you see, their attempts to get me to smell better never worked, those assholes. I was continually covered in puked ham sandwich chunks laced with industrial meat packing gel, all of which became fetid in the humidity.

Yet, I’d say those were the glorious days of youth, swerving through lanes with the determined ease of a Canada goose flying north. This was when I was doing nothing but delivering boxes of word-finds and crossword puzzle books to local drugstores. One after another they greeted me, brooms in hand, smiling in their small town aprons smeared with newsprint. And like a vomit-covered seraph, I’d deliver dozens of distractions, share anecdotes, and waltz away with nothing more than a wet pack of cigarettes (my brand was Vantage). I’d jam another cassette into the tape deck, and race down the highway with such brazen fearlessness that I could shuck and eat a bushel of whelks without ever touching the brakes.

In retrospect, that is what defines freedom, like rolling in freshly mown grass on a late afternoon. I delivered crossword puzzles for six years until the whole business was taken over by a craven conglomerate run by a publisher bent on cutting corners and eliminating local drivers. I showered, moved to New York City, and began a new life as the ad man at a surprisingly lucrative poultry slaughterhouse.

Looking for New Opportunities

“Yeah, this message is for Dan Tracey. This is Jerry Baxter over at Glendale Subaru. I just wanted to let you know that we received your goddamn messages and your resume. And there’s a pretty gigantic discrepancy between what you’re claiming is your work history and what your references told me. I took the liberty of calling your boss Kevin Daly over at Van Nuys Nissan. He said you were fired for force-feeding a client two gallons of motor oil in order to get them to sign for a 2007 Xterra. And he also said...let’s see…lemme look at my notes…he said that you picked up each one of the sales team with an industrial crane and dropped them one by one into a leeching pit? You dumped a Caesar salad down your secretary’s pants? And you apparently would refuse your actual salary - said something about ripping up every check you received. I don’t know what the hell that’s about Tracey, but for Christ's sake you’re not wanted here, so thanks for the resume and good luck to you.”

Asleep at the Dredge

If I hear my Dad scream "Phyllis, I'm gonna shave my nuts!" one more time, I'm going to leave this home, this town, this state.
We spend another evening with the TV blaring another pre-code black and white film from the early 30s recorded on VHS in SLP-mode. The toilet is broken so the family and visitors do their business on the floor. The kids clamber inside from the snow without taking off their boots, tracking waste and snow through the house.
I can't live like this. No one likes me, I can't get my feta cheese business off the ground, I've lost all feeling in my extremities. I think it's these filth-ridden conditions. I lay awake at night imagining the Kool-Aid man bursting through the wall, lashing us together, and reading us his book of automatic poetry until our flesh becomes necrotic.

Character Backstory

Brent Kinnecom, THAT was that guy's name! He was that guy who would always approach you at an office party and wrap both of his legs around you like some kind of insect gymnast dragging an ant into its clutches. You'd have to push him into a table full of half-empty wine glasses and paper plates smeared with beige leftovers or cake crumbs, and he'd generally split open his head and wail a high-pitched howl, get hauled off to the emergency room for stitches or to monitor a concussion, and he'd reappear a few days later in the break room at work, acting as if nothing had happened, eating one of those terrible microwave soups in those styrofoam containers, something like bacon and broccoli which would stink up the entire break room causing everyone to quietly leave, heads cast downward.

Coincidence

"Trip on this shit," Travis began to say, before actually tripping on an extraordinary pile of dog shit.

A skywriter saw this incident, mused, turned up his nose and instantly began composing a sestina in flight, yet when he reached line 38, writer's block commenced, and he was forced to land his aircraft in the center of a local dog park, skidding on precisely 38 piles of dog shit.

Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the San Fernando Valley, Scott Baio threw down a script in disgust, shouting "This is total dog shit!" Then he tripped.

Precisely at that moment, Roy, another skywriter, in the midst of spelling "Scott Baio Eats Dog Shit" over the indisputably clear skies of the San Fernando Valley, thought of his friend Travis, and how he used to say "Trip on this shit" before actually tripping on shit.

Coincidentally, Travis became a skywriter. Scott Baio later hired Roy the skywriter to read a script. Baio, in turn, became a poet and wrote sestinas, the first of which began with "Trip on this shit." Then everyone went to the zoo.