by Roger White
All right, you caught me. Put the flashlight and rubber-band guns down, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll talk. I tried. I really, truly tried to write this week’s column. Had my topic, had my three main points with some minor diversions, all with clever punchlines and cute little asides. There was even a comic twist and a reversal in there. We in the biz sometimes call this the counter-clockwise swirl, in deference to the great Jerry Seinfeld (played by Jerry Seinfeld). Jocular juxtaposImage may be NSFW.
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ition. Classic formula. I just couldn’t get motivated to finish the darn thing. It was going to be funny this time, too—not like usual. I was going to regale you with tales of my domestic do-it-yourself adventures gone wrong. You know, how clumsy and endearingly goofy I am at trying to fix things around the house. Oh, it was going to be a hoot. Like the time I went up in the attic to bait raccoon traps and fell through the attic floor/bedroom ceiling and caused a massive pink and avocado avalanche of insulation and raccoon droppings all over our master bedroom carpet. At least we had a Sears coupon for flashlights and duct tape–but where does one find rubber band guns anymore? Oh, lordy, it was to be hilarious, and most of it true, too, except for the part about the baby hippopotamus and the peanut butter.
But no. I just couldn’t do it. I am stalled, stagnated. Dulled into a slackjawed stupor by the Venutian heat of a summer from hell and heavy, unrelenting doses of CNN and reruns of “The Waltons” on TV Land. By the way, did you know that in Image may be NSFW.
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the 1971 pilot for “The Waltons” – called “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story” – that the part of Grandpa Walton (later played by Will Geer) was originally played by the famed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, father of Candice Bergen? Bet you didn’t know that.
And as we all know, Candice Bergen and then-boyfriend Terry Melcher (son of Doris Day) once lived in the very house that Sharon Tate was living in when that horrible Manson thing went down. In fact, it was Beach Boys drummer Dennis Image may be NSFW.
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Wilson who introduced Manson to Melcher because Melcher was in the music business and Wilson had been impressed with some of Charlie’s songs. Creepy, huh? Yeah, I know.
You see, it’s developments like this that keep me from staying on task. I am supposed to be telling you about my uproariously amusing attempts at home repair and maintenance, like the time a friend was helping me move my mom’s heavy (and expensive) thick glass coffee table and we turned it upside-down not knowing that the glass table top wasn’t attached to the frame and the slab of beautiful smoked glass fell onto the sidewalk and smashed into a bazillion little smoked shards of dangerous, beautiful rubble. You would have laughed. The way I was going to tell it, oh, how you would have howled. And that yarn would have been factual, as well, if not for the bit about police intervention and the buxom neighbor down the street who was once Steve McQueen’s torrid Image may be NSFW.
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lover. McQueen, by the way, starred in the 1966 film The Sand Pebbles, which also featured one miss Candice Bergen from earlier in this column. Is that fate or what?
Ah, well. Look, I’m sorry. Instead of just standing there staring, you could help me, you know. Think of something funny. How about this? DVD titles you’ll never see. Try this one: Me and My Vivisection. Right, it’s a bit on the morbid side. What’s that? Not bad, not bad. Great French Military Campaigns of WWII. Kinda obvious, though. Hmmmm. Yoko Ono Sings Perry Como. Talking with Your Teenager. No? A Wall Street Guide to Secure Investments. Good one. Now, that’s funny.
You see? If we work together, you and I, we can pull this off. We can create a new genre of participatory journalism. This, in turn, will help usher in the new era of Image may be NSFW.
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peace and enlightenment that is to come as we near the bend to 2012 and the eventual end of the world as we know it. You see, I knew there was a reason I couldn’t finish this week’s column. It’s all about world peace. I’m glad I could help.
But please, be thinking of something for next week. I don’t want to have to do this again.
Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a self-absorbed cat. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
