Colorful writing.

I have a brilliant idea for a one-act play, a drama of romance with four characters. I have only gotten to the notes stage of fleshing out the idea, but I hoped you'd be interested. Maybe you have a billion dollars hanging around and have always dreamed of producing a great play. Well, dream no more! 

This one's got it all -- drama, pathos, comedy, and babes. You couldn't ask for more colorful characters. I call it...

Toner: A Love Story 

Curtain up, and we meet our four players:

🖶 Black, tall, dark, and handsome

🖶 Cyan, a young man with sky-high optimism

🖶 Yellow, pretty but shy and retiring

🖶 Magenta, one hot chick

Cyan and Magenta have been dating for a while, but Magenta is trouble. They met at a Deep Purple concert, and seemed to hit it off. But now she's always running out. He doesn't want to try to control her, and knows he can't, but she doesn't seem to care about his needs. Meanwhile, Black (called Big K) is a little tired of his girl Yellow, who dotes on him but is not exciting. They've gone so far as to ink a prenup, but no wedding date is in sight.  

As the play progresses, we see they are all in one jam or other. Big K is having trouble at work; Cyan is blue because he thinks Magenta is cheating. 

One day Big K meets Magenta and is totally imprinted. "Hey, baby, I'd love to get your portrait," he says. 

"I think you want me in landscape, big boy," she teases.

"Yeah, girl, once you've had Black you never go back." 

“Ooh, baby, you can drive my cartridge.”

Yellow is scared that her boyfriend might be straying, especially when she gets a call from her friend Dot that Big K was seen collating with some floozie. 

Cyan, meanwhile, goes looking for Magenta with laser-focused intensity. He hears about Big K, and goes to the man's apartment, only to find Yellow all alone. 

Cyan and Yellow talk, and realize their romantic partners are probably cheating on both of them. They are green with jealousy. Suddenly Big K arrives. Cyan accuses him of stealing his girl. Big K tries to throw him out. Black and Cyan fight until they are black and blue. 

Suddenly Magenta shows up. She says she's had it with both of these men, and runs off. Yellow scoffs: “Who shot her out of a cannon?” Big K calls after her, saying "Black loves matter!" Cyan storms away in anger and Yellow follows him. 

Cyan and Yellow cool off in the park. She says he should get some Epsom salts on his bruises. He says maybe they should hook up to spite the cheaters. They go back to his apartment. He makes some food (steak with HP sauce), but she's a vegetarian. She turns on some romantic music -- but it's Michael Bolton (Cyan: "I hate that guy!"). Nothing works -- they just have no chemistry. 

Meanwhile Big K finds Magenta, drowning her sorrows at the Copycat Lounge. She confesses that she really loves Cyan, but she knows she's no good for him. She's a bloody mess. He sees there's no future with her, so he leaves. Everybody is low. 

The next day, Big K goes to Yellow's place, begging her to take him back. She agrees, but she's more bold now and demands respect. Meanwhile, Magenta goes to Cyan's place to tell him she loves him, but it can never come out right. They have nothing in common. He points out that they're both in love, both enjoy classic rock, and both people of color, and he believes they can make it work, even if the margins are slim. 

At the end, in a real Kodak moment, everyone embraces. Curtain! 

Pretty awesome, right? I think we can get some backing and a theater to give this a go. And if not, see how long Playbill lasts with only blank pages. Mwah ah ah!

Aisle be passing by.

I would like to thank Gloriam Marketing, a Catholic PR firm, for the following chart.

A better explanation of Catholicsthenics I have not seen. It would apply, of course to any Christian church that has kneeling, and to a lesser degree to anyplace humans congregate that involves the dreaded aisles. 

Getting past seated people is no fun in movie theaters, which is why people often like to sit on the end of a row (as in Mass as well). It is better to be put upon than to be embarrassed as the put-uponer. This is complicated by people carrying enormous buckets of popcorn and a soda large enough to hydrate a derby winner, either of which may be worn by the put-uponee if things go sideways (literally). At least that's one peril one hopes to not see in church. Church can have its entertainment value, but please -- no snacking. 

Aisle passings are even worse at live theater or sporting events. The immediacy of the performance makes everything more dramatic. You don't want a view of some guy's butt as he passes by to cause you to miss Hamlet stabbing Polonius (oops, spoiler!) or a thrilling game-tying steal of home plate. You can't get those moments back. 

The worst has to be the airplane, though. Crammed into a seat not on the aisle -- perhaps at the window or, God love you, the center -- you had better be able to contain your bodily fluids for the length of the trip. Otherwise I promise the aisle seat will be occupied by a large human who does not want to get up to let people in or out and will definitely make that opinion known. With almost zero headroom, you couldn't even leap over him. It makes for a travel experience packed with grumbling, recriminations, and discomfort. 

I usually think of people who enjoyed the COVID lockdowns as being kind of loony, but when I think of aisles, it makes more sense. 

Anyway, I showed the illustration above to my wife, and she thought it would be great to incorporate such workout techniques into Mass officially. She thought the choir could start with something cheery for stretching and warmups, then sing a dirge at the end for cooldowns. You'd shower after church rather than before. I think I'll mention it to the Cardinal; like me, he could stand to take off a few pounds.  

Pate.

Alas, poor Yorick, fellow of jest

For joshing, no doubt was the best

Now for sure his skull is shiny

As mine old scalp, or baby heinie

I drive the car and mirror glance

To see one tailgate there perchance

And lo! My hairless head is seen

Within the glass of my machine

The mirror taunts my fuzzless pate

As hairless as a china plate

My father, his hairline did bequeath 

His will did list no hair beneath

My follicles failed, all tired, old

Before their time and left me cold

Now hats, beneath which I must hide

For warmth that nature won't provide

A collection of caps that grew in size

As hairline crept north from my eyes

The sand trap in the rear grew vast

Sahara size, I found, at last

So, cover up that scalp with cloth

To hide the skin that nature's sloth

Has left me high and dry and bare

With just a stray hair here and there

Alas! Poor hair! I knew you when

But now is now, and that was then

At least by one fear am not haunted

Could not grow man bun if I wanted. 

Seasonal song.

Long-time readers of this blog (who are all smart and good-looking) may recall that I have a penchant for amusing myself with making up songs when under duress. And surely one of those times is while standing in the frigid blasts of February on the ice, waiting for not one but two dogs to find a place to weewee. They're good boys, but I think there are two issues at play here:

1) When things are suddenly covered with ice or snow, their sense of what makes a good spot is compromised; and 

2) They're both built for cold and/or rainy weather by nature and they like being outside, and they're not above dawdling to stay there.

So I started singing them a little song. In my mind it goes like a jaunty little number from a musical, maybe mid-sixties, the kind of piece that hits the audience before they get restless, and maybe becomes a standalone hit if the rest of the production bombs. And it goes like this:

🐕🐶🐕🐶🐕🐶

Let's go

Let's go out in the snow

Let's go out and go pee

It's good for you and it's good for me

We'll go

And yes, we won't be slow

What a happy chap you will be

Once you're relieved of all that pee

[bridge]

Call it urinate or micturate  

But don't you dawdle or diddle

It's freezing cold and I'm feeling old  

So buckle down, boys, and piddle

And you

You might even go poo

You might even go prance

Over the yard with a song and dance

[bridge]

A winterscape that you must escape 

But you're a most lucky fellow

The gals go marking their names in dark ink  

But you write 'em in yellow

And then

You'll be finished and when

You and I go inside

I'll warm my hide by the fireside

Then how happy we'll be

'Cause you'll have gone and gone pee. 

🚽🚽🚽🚽🚽🚽

Hey, if this thing could have a good run in New York, why not?

Fred's Book Club: The Family Kerr.

Wednesday is Hump Day, and it's time for the Humpback Writers, our book feature that generally has writers that do not have humped backs, but maybe some do. I don't like to ask. However, I am certain that today's writer did not, because she was portrayed by both the lovely Doris Day and the lovely Pat Crowley, and never by Charles Laughton.  

"We are very careful with our children," Jean Kerr writes in the opening essay of the book Please Don't Eat the Daisies. "They'll never have to pay a psychiatrist twenty-five dollars an hour to find out why we rejected them. We'll tell them why we rejected them. Because they're impossible, that's why."

Thus begins the titular piece in this famous collection of suburban humor. Jean Kerr and her husband, the Pulitzer-winning drama critic Walter Kerr, raised six children, so as you might imagine she had a lot of material. Some of her pieces in the book ran in magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post. The collection was first published in 1957. My beat-up paperback was a 1959 edition acquired cheap from a used-book store many years after that.   

Walter was a playwright in his own right, but is best remembered as a sharp critic of the theater, and the only critic I know of who has a theatre named for him. Like his wife, he had a terrific sense of humor; his review of I Am a Camera in 1951 concluded "Me no Leica." Jean too would write plays; she wrote the Tony-award winning King of Hearts and the long-running Mary, Mary. If that were not enough, she wrote three more collections following Daisies (two of which I have -- somewhere). 

And no wonder -- she has a wonderful touch. On shopping for a home, she introduces "Kerr's law, which states in essence: all the houses you can afford to buy are depressing. For months and months we followed happy, burbling real estate agents through a succession of ruins which, as the agents modestly concluded, 'needed a little paint and paper to make them happy.' These houses invariably had two small dark living rooms and one large turn-of-the-century kitchen -- and I don't mean the nineteenth century."

Of course, many of the jokes are dated; there are any number of references to slogans of the day, and Davy Crockett and Jackie Gleason don't conjure now the way they did in the fifties. 

But take this from a story on dogs, as fine an example of visual comedy as one can expect in a book: 

It's not just our own dogs that bother me. The dogs I meet at parties are even worse. I don't know what I've got that attracts them; it just doesn't bear thought. My husband swears I rub chopped meat on my ankles. But at every party it's the same thing. I am sitting in happy conviviality with a group in front of the fire when all of a sudden the large mutt of mine host appears in the archway. Then, without a single bark of warning, he hurls himself upon me. It always makes me think of that line from A Streetcar Named Desire -- "Baby, we've had this date right from the beginning." My martini flies into space and my stockings are torn before he finally settles down peacefully in the lap of my new black faille. I blow out such quantities of hair as I haven't swallowed and glance at my host, expecting to be rescued. He murmurs, "Isn't that wonderful? You know, Brucie is usually so distant with strangers."

As the wife of a major theater critic, though, she has some pieces specific to her lifestyle, such as:

In my short and merry life in the theatre, I have discovered that there are two sharply contrasting opinions about the place of the drama critic. While in some quarters it is felt that the critic is just a necessary evil, most serious-minded, decent, talented theatre people agree that the critic is an unnecessary evil. However, if there is some room for argument about the value of the critic, there is none whatever about the value of the critic's wife. To the producer, in particular, it is painful enough that the reviewer must bring his own glum presence to the theatre, but the thought that he must bring his wife and that she, too, will occupy a free seat is enough to cool the cockles of his heart and send him back on a soft diet.

Jean Kerr is still funny, and I am certain that the success of her writing opened doors for many other women to write humor, such as Erma Bombeck. And, as I said at the beginning, this book was adapted into a film starring Doris Day as Jean Kerr (under the nom de filme of "Kate Mackay") and a TV show with Pat Crowley (as "Joan Nash"). Though Jean Kerr died in 2003, the family continues on. 

And if you're wondering where Jean got the terrific title for the essay (and thus the book, the film, and the TV series), it all comes from this: 

My real problem with children is that I haven't any imagination. I'm always warning them against the commonplace defections while they are planning the bizarre and unusual. Christopher gets up ahead of the rest of us on Sunday mornings and he has long since been given a list of clear directives: "Don't wake the baby," "Don't go outside in your pajamas," "Don't eat cookies before breakfast." But I never told him, "Don't make flour paste and glue together all the pages of the magazine section of the Sunday Times." Now I tell him, of course.

     And then last week I had a dinner party and told the twins and Christopher not to go in the living room, not to use the guest towels in the bathroom, and not to leave the bicycles on the front steps. However, I neglected to tell them not to eat the daisies on the dining room table. This was a serious omission, as I discovered when I came upon my centerpiece -- a charming three-point arrangement of green stems. 

Rest in peace, Jean Kerr.  

Leap day!

Merriam-Webster's says that the term leap year comes from the 14th century. I suppose "leap day" is a newer construction. The idea that it's a day for the calendar to leap forward seems like an odd construction. I would have expected something like Bonus Day or Correction Day.

The word leap itself seems to have sprung into the language as a verb sometime before the 12th century. It's traced back to Middle English lepen, from Old English hleapan, akin to Old High German hlouffan, meaning "to run."  If you have to go back further than hlouffan, then I feel sorry for you.

But it is Leap Day! Leaping and jumping is fun!

Whee!

So let's have some jumpy thoughts on leaping from my copy of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

"With the help of God I shall leap over the wall." (Prayer Book, 1662)

Yay!

"Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert." (Bible, Isaiah 35:6)

Hooray!

"Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen!
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties!" (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

Hacha!

"A little before you made a leap into the dark." (Thomas Brown, Letters from the Dead)

Uh...

"By heaven methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks." (William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1)

Well, okay...

"With rue my heart is laden
  For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
  And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
  The lightfoot lads are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
  In fields where roses fade." (A. E. Housman, "With Rue My Heart Is Laden")

Sad!

"My mother groan'd, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud." (William Blake, "Infant Sorrow")

Whuh...!

"I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark." (Thomas Hobbes, final words)

Umm... not so sure leaping is as much fun as I originally thought. Let's stop the leaping. Maybe it's best to keep your feet on the ground after all.

And don't trust agents.

Why can't a man be more like a woman?

I had an idea to do a modern update of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, the beloved musical based on grumpy ol' George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion.

In my modern version, manly and rugged fishmonger Eric Doolittle one day self-identifies as the dainty Eliza, upon which he (with full beard) stomps around London's West End in high heels and a bad wig. Etiquette expert Henry "Hank" Higgins makes fun of this Doolittle character's gruff voice and poor dressing skills. Shortly thereafter, Eric shows up at Higgins's office, demanding his help.

ERIC: I'm come to 'ave lessons, I 'ave, and pay for 'em too no mistake.

HANK: Well!!!! What shall we do with this baggage, Dickering?

ERIC: I want to be a lady in a flower shop 'stead of selling smelly fish in a rubber apron. But no one believes I'm a lady 'cause I ain't genteel-like. You said you could pass me off as a duchess, you did!

HANK: Oh, well, why didn't you say so? To the shaving mirror, my lad! We'll make a lady of you yet!

Following are various scenes of Hank teaching "Eliza" how to dress like a lady, including sashaying in high heels without looking like stilt-walking gorilla on training day; how to talk like a lady and not drop F-bombs all over the scenery; how to be genteel at tea and clever at conversation; all the sorts of thing Eliza wants to know.

Mind you, this is not a comedy. It's a deadly serious drama. What, are you crazy? This isn't Benny Hill or Milton Berle, you know! There's nothing funny about a burly man in a dress! NOTHING! Please don't burn down my theater!

The big twist comes in Act Two, where Eliza is exposed to society and finds out that these days all the wealthy toffs go swanning around in ripped-up jeans and trackies, like a glossy magazine image of working-class heroes, swearing like, well, fishmongers, acting like the oiks that they still despise. Crushed, Eliza returns to Higgins, who takes him in.

Now, I must confess that this story just seems to be sitting there for the grabbing, and for all I know it's the plot of every musical currently running on Broadway and the West End that is not based on the work of a Boomer band or a movie. I wouldn't know; I gave up on theater years ago. If not, and someone wants to pay me a million dollars for the rights, I would not put up a fight.

I think Shaw would like this idea, though. Like a lot of modern love stories, it has a ton of hate, and Shaw seemed to hate nearly everybody.