So I went to the dentist tonight, following a typically long day at school. Nothing dramatic as far as dental appointments go, just a semi-annual cleaning. I get there right on time, as is my way, and after two minutes in the waiting room I'm escorted back to the chair.
As I settle back, I notice the soothing sounds of lite rock filling the office. And I spell it "lite" like that, because they've had WLTE playing at that office for as long as I can remember. Even if you don't live in the Cities, you have a station like this wherever you are: The Whitney Houston / Celine Dion ballads, the best-forgotten Billy Joel pop songs from the mid-seventies, and every woman who ever played an acoustic guitar and/or piano who sounds even a little bit like Carole King. You have this station. And I'm not saying that's bad. I'd rather have that stuff on in the dentist's office instead of something like The Offspring or Sum 41 by a mile.
But as I was listening, I heard a station break, and was surprised to learn I was actually listening to "The Bridge on Sirius FM Satellite Radio." Unexpected. And my immediate thought? "Why did they pony up the cash for satellite when they're only listening to a different version of the exact same station they were getting for free over the airwaves?! What would a year-long satellite subscription even cost, because they are totally throwing that money away."
Then it occurred to me: I'll bet anything that the bill for my root canal last summer would more than cover that subscription.
Somehow, I'm left feeling used.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Bring the Funny
Oddly, out of nowhere, and I literally mean out of nowhere, a writing project that has to potential to park some actual dollars in my pocket may be currently falling out of the sky with its sights targeted on my doormat. Really. This is a case of me sitting here doing nothing and one day, pow, I'm on the verge of being involved in something that I didn't even know existed two weeks ago. If only meeting interesting women worked the same way....
Anyway. The criteria?
(1) Are you familiar with children between the ages of 8-11? This being my nineteenth year in the elementary classroom, I'm going with a yes on this one.
(2) Have you ever written scripts before? I actually have. Two of them. In my freshman year of college, I entered a contest that I think was sponsored by some television production company -- I'd name it if I could remember -- for which I wrote a script for a half-hour sitcom they had on the air. National contest, and I made it to the final round, by the way, so, yay for me and all twenty-five years ago. There was also that little play I had produced back in the 90s, for anyone that was around all that time ago and knows the back story, or even had tickets.
(3) Can you bring the funny? Yeah, you know what? If you read the blog, I'll let you decide this one for yourself. You must be coming back for a reason, and it sure can't be because of my insightful social commentary.
The whole thing isn't locked just yet, and actually feels almost ephemeral popping out of nowhere like it has. So I'm not exactly excited about it. But it would be a professional writing gig, which is kind of cool to think about even if it doesn't go anywhere. But I know as well as anyone how easy it is to be on the verge of something kind of cool only to see it disappear.
Besides. It's April. Testing season and all. There are other things to lose sleep over....
Anyway. The criteria?
(1) Are you familiar with children between the ages of 8-11? This being my nineteenth year in the elementary classroom, I'm going with a yes on this one.
(2) Have you ever written scripts before? I actually have. Two of them. In my freshman year of college, I entered a contest that I think was sponsored by some television production company -- I'd name it if I could remember -- for which I wrote a script for a half-hour sitcom they had on the air. National contest, and I made it to the final round, by the way, so, yay for me and all twenty-five years ago. There was also that little play I had produced back in the 90s, for anyone that was around all that time ago and knows the back story, or even had tickets.
(3) Can you bring the funny? Yeah, you know what? If you read the blog, I'll let you decide this one for yourself. You must be coming back for a reason, and it sure can't be because of my insightful social commentary.
The whole thing isn't locked just yet, and actually feels almost ephemeral popping out of nowhere like it has. So I'm not exactly excited about it. But it would be a professional writing gig, which is kind of cool to think about even if it doesn't go anywhere. But I know as well as anyone how easy it is to be on the verge of something kind of cool only to see it disappear.
Besides. It's April. Testing season and all. There are other things to lose sleep over....
Friday, April 1, 2011
The Story of My Engagement
April Fools Day is almost too easy for me. First of all, I was a compulsive liar when I was a child so I've had a lot of practice in saying things that just aren't true. Second, I'm a writer, which means I'm pretty good at making things up on the spot and doing so with the right amount of detail to make whatever the story is seem believable. Third, I am able to maintain a straight face with such superhuman inscrutability that very few people have ever been able to find a reliable way to tell the difference between when I'm serious and when I'm kidding. You think I exaggerate for effect here. I assure you I do not.
For me to bring these powers into an elementary school setting, where everyone is so warm and fuzzy and friendly and supportive and encouraging and smiley? The results can be devastating. So tonight I will share with you some of the background involved in constructing a perfect April Fools Day joke. Now, I don't mean something as ridiculously easy as a simple prank. "Whoops, sugar for salt! Uh oh, taped down the handle on the sprayer!" Not that I'm above pranks; one year on April Fools Day, I got every single kid in my class with a different prank, and some of them were so weak I was almost embarrassed to claim them. It's worth pointing out, however, that the truly great prank of that day was borrowed from an episode of M*A*S*H, in which I made one kid wait so long for his prank that he was downright twitchy and paranoid by the end of the day... only to discover that my prank was to drive him into that paranoia. (I never said my sense of humor didn't have a dark side.) Even this year I grabbed a spontaneous moment and fell back to a classic prank, when I quietly stepped up behind a friend of mine in an empty computer lab and just asked what she was doing. We didn't quite need to fire up the defibrillator down the hall, but it was close.
No, a true April Fool's Day joke is one where you say something that captures someone's attention to such a degree that when they find out there's no truth to the story, they are absolutely gobsmacked to learn you were making it up. I've had a couple of good ones over the years: There was the day I walked around on crutches with a giant Band-Aid on my forehead, and had most of the kids and half of the staff believing I had slipped on the parking lot ice the night before and hit my head on a car. There was the spiraling lie I still can't believe I got away with today. But one of the all-time classics has to fall back to the year I was engaged to be married. Supposedly. Allow me to explain.
A good friend of mine, someone I've known for nearly 20 years now, made the mistake of scheduling her return from maternity leave on April 1. I won't name her here, because if you know the story already you know who she is, and if you don't she might not want me spreading this around. Plus she's probably tired of hearing the story after all these years.... anyway. The prank was to get her to believe that during the weeks she had been away from school, I had met someone and fallen in love so completely and so quickly that I was already engaged.
Step 1: Play on people's trust. The key to success here was my enlisting a friend of ours as a co-conspirator, someone so perfectly sweet she would never be suspected of being involved in something like this. I told her my plan and she was immediately on board.
Step 2: Diversion. Somehow, either through sincerity or feigned concern or by downplaying the situation, draw attention away from the fact that it's April Fools Day. Don't give them a reason to think it might be.
Step 3: Make the situation normal. You have a better chance of things working if the joke creeps up on the victim and is given room to grow. Our plan was to plant the seed early in the day and let it develop on its own until after school. If we had rushed in with the news early in the morning, that probably would have tipped it off.
Step 4: Choose the right details. I had a college professor tell me that creative writing is like a dot-to-dot drawing; as the writer you offer up a few details and let the reader fill in the rest of the images on their own. If you choose enough good details to make it all seem real, your victim will do the rest.
Okay. So here's what happened. And ________, I hope you won't punch me for writing all of this up if you ever read it....
She shows up at school, her first day back. Focused on being back at work, very likely still thinking about the new baby, so I had diversion built in. My partner catches her in the morning: "I'm not supposed to say anything because he wanted to tell you himself, but I can't help myself! HE GOT ENGAGED!" Now the victim thinks *she* is in on a secret instead of the other way around. We had actually encouraged other people to make passing mentions of my engagement during the day, talking about something that probably would have been big news like they normally would have, but I don't know if anyone else came through for us on this or not. And frankly, we didn't spread it too much because I was worried about someone else blowing it accidentally. But the idea was given the day to grow. I saw her at one point during the day, and we had a "What's new?" kind of small-talk session. I said nothing much, but asked her to come by my room after school ended so we could talk.
She told me later she didn't think much about it during the day -- diversion worked!-- but when we got together and I started hinting at things it began to come back. I broke the news and told her how I met my new imaginary woman met at a staff development session. I told her which school she taught at and which grade, what her name was, no I hadn't met her parents yet, but we were flying out west to meet them in a couple of weekends and I was kind of nervous about it, we hadn't picked a date yet but were thinking October because she enjoyed the fall colors so much, and I went on like this for about ten minutes. This is where the writer part comes in -- I had to make up details and create this off the top of my head, because something in the plan wasn't working. The secretary was supposed to call down over the intercom and say April Fool at a specific time to reveal the joke, but she got caught up doing something, oh, I don't know, job-related... one of those running-the-school types of things secretaries so commonly have to do. So I'm rambling on, trying to keep my victim interested so she doesn't notice the seven people standing in my doorway who were on the verge of laughter listening to all of this. FINALLY we get the call, and she looks at me, unable to reconcile what was happening. "I don't get this. What joke? What April Fools?" And when I explained it was all made up, it just left her head spinning. The doorway people spilled into the room told her how happy they were to have her back while my co-conspirator tried to make a quick getaway.
And even though I occasionally remind her of this story on April Fools Day, commemorating a sort of anniversary, she still likes me. At least I think so.
For me to bring these powers into an elementary school setting, where everyone is so warm and fuzzy and friendly and supportive and encouraging and smiley? The results can be devastating. So tonight I will share with you some of the background involved in constructing a perfect April Fools Day joke. Now, I don't mean something as ridiculously easy as a simple prank. "Whoops, sugar for salt! Uh oh, taped down the handle on the sprayer!" Not that I'm above pranks; one year on April Fools Day, I got every single kid in my class with a different prank, and some of them were so weak I was almost embarrassed to claim them. It's worth pointing out, however, that the truly great prank of that day was borrowed from an episode of M*A*S*H, in which I made one kid wait so long for his prank that he was downright twitchy and paranoid by the end of the day... only to discover that my prank was to drive him into that paranoia. (I never said my sense of humor didn't have a dark side.) Even this year I grabbed a spontaneous moment and fell back to a classic prank, when I quietly stepped up behind a friend of mine in an empty computer lab and just asked what she was doing. We didn't quite need to fire up the defibrillator down the hall, but it was close.
No, a true April Fool's Day joke is one where you say something that captures someone's attention to such a degree that when they find out there's no truth to the story, they are absolutely gobsmacked to learn you were making it up. I've had a couple of good ones over the years: There was the day I walked around on crutches with a giant Band-Aid on my forehead, and had most of the kids and half of the staff believing I had slipped on the parking lot ice the night before and hit my head on a car. There was the spiraling lie I still can't believe I got away with today. But one of the all-time classics has to fall back to the year I was engaged to be married. Supposedly. Allow me to explain.
A good friend of mine, someone I've known for nearly 20 years now, made the mistake of scheduling her return from maternity leave on April 1. I won't name her here, because if you know the story already you know who she is, and if you don't she might not want me spreading this around. Plus she's probably tired of hearing the story after all these years.... anyway. The prank was to get her to believe that during the weeks she had been away from school, I had met someone and fallen in love so completely and so quickly that I was already engaged.
Step 1: Play on people's trust. The key to success here was my enlisting a friend of ours as a co-conspirator, someone so perfectly sweet she would never be suspected of being involved in something like this. I told her my plan and she was immediately on board.
Step 2: Diversion. Somehow, either through sincerity or feigned concern or by downplaying the situation, draw attention away from the fact that it's April Fools Day. Don't give them a reason to think it might be.
Step 3: Make the situation normal. You have a better chance of things working if the joke creeps up on the victim and is given room to grow. Our plan was to plant the seed early in the day and let it develop on its own until after school. If we had rushed in with the news early in the morning, that probably would have tipped it off.
Step 4: Choose the right details. I had a college professor tell me that creative writing is like a dot-to-dot drawing; as the writer you offer up a few details and let the reader fill in the rest of the images on their own. If you choose enough good details to make it all seem real, your victim will do the rest.
Okay. So here's what happened. And ________, I hope you won't punch me for writing all of this up if you ever read it....
She shows up at school, her first day back. Focused on being back at work, very likely still thinking about the new baby, so I had diversion built in. My partner catches her in the morning: "I'm not supposed to say anything because he wanted to tell you himself, but I can't help myself! HE GOT ENGAGED!" Now the victim thinks *she* is in on a secret instead of the other way around. We had actually encouraged other people to make passing mentions of my engagement during the day, talking about something that probably would have been big news like they normally would have, but I don't know if anyone else came through for us on this or not. And frankly, we didn't spread it too much because I was worried about someone else blowing it accidentally. But the idea was given the day to grow. I saw her at one point during the day, and we had a "What's new?" kind of small-talk session. I said nothing much, but asked her to come by my room after school ended so we could talk.
She told me later she didn't think much about it during the day -- diversion worked!-- but when we got together and I started hinting at things it began to come back. I broke the news and told her how I met my new imaginary woman met at a staff development session. I told her which school she taught at and which grade, what her name was, no I hadn't met her parents yet, but we were flying out west to meet them in a couple of weekends and I was kind of nervous about it, we hadn't picked a date yet but were thinking October because she enjoyed the fall colors so much, and I went on like this for about ten minutes. This is where the writer part comes in -- I had to make up details and create this off the top of my head, because something in the plan wasn't working. The secretary was supposed to call down over the intercom and say April Fool at a specific time to reveal the joke, but she got caught up doing something, oh, I don't know, job-related... one of those running-the-school types of things secretaries so commonly have to do. So I'm rambling on, trying to keep my victim interested so she doesn't notice the seven people standing in my doorway who were on the verge of laughter listening to all of this. FINALLY we get the call, and she looks at me, unable to reconcile what was happening. "I don't get this. What joke? What April Fools?" And when I explained it was all made up, it just left her head spinning. The doorway people spilled into the room told her how happy they were to have her back while my co-conspirator tried to make a quick getaway.
And even though I occasionally remind her of this story on April Fools Day, commemorating a sort of anniversary, she still likes me. At least I think so.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)