I want my Saturday mornings back!

I turned on the TV early this morning and saw the same thing I see every Saturday morning: news. Depressing, repetitive, salacious, brain-cell-killing news. As I sat there, watching a report about the bacterial dangers of imported fruits and vegetables (wonderful viewing as I’m eating a giant bowl of Chilean grapes), I couldn’t help but lament the loss of our once sacred Saturday morning.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am forty-years-old, which means that some of you younger readers may not relate at all to what I am about to write. But for those of you my age and older, you know exactly what Saturday morning used to mean. It meant getting up at 6 a.m., sometimes earlier, rushing to the kitchen to get your bowl of Trix or Lucky Charms (for me it was Apple Jacks with no milk), and parking in front of the television for a morning chalk-full of cartoon goodness.

Some of my best memories of childhood include those Saturdays with Captain Caveman, Tarzan, and Fat Albert, while Schoolhouse Rock taught me about conjunctions and congressional bills. Back then, even the commercials were must-see television, because they almost always featured the latest Stars Wars action figure or Hot Wheels racetrack that the brilliant advertisers knew I would beg my mother to buy.

I know this is probably nothing more than nostalgia on my part, but I miss the innocence of it all. I think about my three-year-old son, and wonder what, if any, equivalent memories he will have? I know that every generation has its own version of Scooby-Doo and Spider-Man. But it just doesn’t feel the same as it used to. And his current obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine and Calliou will only take him so far!!!

“I hanker fer a hunka cheese!”

When I say that I want my Saturday mornings back, I’m not talking about a weekly trip down memory lane with The Legion of Doom. I’m talking about a return to a much simpler time when cartoons actually fueled children’s imaginations. I remember after my Saturday morning marathon had ended, wanting nothing more than to go outside with my friends to act out our favorite scenes from the GI Joe we had all seen. I want that for my son and his friends too. I’m just not sure they’ll ever get it.

Oh well, lucky for Logan that his father is a nerd who has every Superfriends episode on DVD!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go watch some more depressing news.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SATURDAY MORNING MEMORIES? I’M SURE I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO ATE THOSE DRY APPLE JACKS!!

THE TWO-SPORT ARTIST

I’ve recently taken up the guitar. There are no formal lessons involved, no designs on mastering Jimmy Paige’s ‘Stairway to Heaven‘ solo. It’s just me, a cheap acoustic guitar, and a book of basic chords. They say you only need to master three chords to write a quality song. So far I’ve mastered ‘B’, D’, ‘E’ and ‘A’. But I can say without reservation that there is nothing quality about the songs I am creating.

I’m perfectly okay with that. I didn’t pick up the instrument to fulfill some guitar-god, rock-n-roll fantasy. I picked it up because I have an innate need to express myself artistically (even if the sound of that expression would make the average person’s ears bleed).

Of course, the main means through which I express my creativity is writing. But the two acts draw from the same artistic well. Success in one area (finishing a short story or novel) can replenish the well for success in the other (playing a competent chord progression).

Read the biography of any successful artist and you’ll find, in many cases, that their artistic talent extends far beyond the craft for which they’re actually known.

Brad Pitt designs houses. Stephen King plays guitar in a rock band (a band consisting solely of bestselling writers). Tony Bennett is a painter. Ethan Hawke is a novelist. Kim Kardashian is a… uh…

Anyway…

My guess is that these examples are the rule rather than the exception, or at least they could be if we as artists open ourselves to the full potential of our talents.

Many of you reading this post are novelists, poets, sculptors, violinists, or any number of things that put you squarely into the category of ‘artist’. But I’m willing to bet that you have another talent in the arsenal – one you may have always known about but chose not to pursue, one that’s still undiscovered, or one that you’re dying to share with the world. Whatever the case, I encourage you to pursue it, even if it’s to a limited degree. You may not think that writing a haiku will have a positive impact on your piano playing, but it will.

Since I’ve taken up music, I’ve found that my writing lulls aren’t as long or as severe as they once were. That’s because music allows me to exercise a set of creative skills that I may not have been able to access through writing alone. Because I now have an artistic ‘fall-back’, I rarely find myself in a total creative rut.

So while my fledgling musical skills won’t bring me to a stage near you anytime soon, they just might help bring me to your bookshelf.

And now that I finally finished this post, I think I’ll go tackle ‘Stairway to Heaven’ again. Seriously, who doesn’t  fantasize being a guitar god?

THE PERFECT GIRL?? A short story

Paul Ferris noticed the woman the moment he walked through the bank door. She was standing two places ahead of him in line, sandwiched in between a bike messenger whose tattered clothes and scraped up knees indicated he had taken one too many spills onto the hot asphalt, and a blue-haired little old lady holding a plastic grocery bag full of pennies. Ahead of the old lady were six other miscreants of one stripe or another, all waiting impatiently to be serviced by one of the two tellers who actually bothered to show up for work.

Paul would have cursed his bad timing, perhaps even walked out of the bank altogether, were it not for the woman. She was quite simply the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her smooth, tight skin shimmered with the light brown edges of a fresh tan. Her pink cotton halter top and Capri-length blue jeans were tailored perfectly to her lean, gym-hardened body. And, as he noticed the first time she turned to look at him, her emerald green eyes were positively arresting in their bright intensity. What Paul saw standing just a few feet away from him wasn’t merely a woman; it was the absolute embodiment of perfection. 

In an instant, he knew that he had finally found the person he was destined to spend the rest of his natural born life with.

Paul had a simple checklist of qualities that he looked for in the women he worshipped. They had to be slim, they had to be blond, and they had to notice him, not just with a polite smile or dismissive glare, but really truly notice him. The vast majority of women he came across fell depressingly short in the latter category.

But with her second glance, this one accompanied by a soft smile, this woman was an astonishing three for three.  

At first he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He instinctively looked around for the better looking man who surely must have walked in behind him. But there was no one else. That smile, as hard as it was to believe, was meant for him. It was a smile that melted him like warm butter; a smile that touched a place in his heart he never knew existed; a smile that said ‘I see you. I like you. I could really go for a guy like you.  

But why? he thought to himself, instantly killing his own buzz. Why in God’s name would a woman like this even give me a first glace let alone a second?

By his own admission, Paul Ferris was no prize in the looks department. He was thirty-nine going on fifty-two, balding and had a midsection the color and consistency of a marshmallow. And at a whopping five feet three inches tall, most women he came into contact with, most of the perfect ones anyway, towered over him. It was easy to look past a man when all you could see was the top of his head. Paul had been looked past quite a bit in his life.

But not today. Not by this woman. As unlikely as it seemed, her attention to him was not accidental. She actually seemed to like him. Her third glance back all but confirmed it.

This time Paul summoned the courage to smile back. His lips quivered, portraying a nervousness he could only hope she would find endearing, even cute. A woman like that was probably used to making men like him nervous. His hopes were realized when he saw the corner of her pink mouth curl into a tight smile as she tucked a lock of curly blond hair behind her ear and shyly cast her glance away. Paul felt a surge of excitement rising in him that he could barely contain.

As the teller motioned her to the counter, Paul plotted his next move. Would he somehow try to get her attention as she walked out? Maybe he would step out of line and wait for her by the front door. Maybe he would walk up to the counter right now, tap her on the shoulder and… wait, wait, wait! That would be coming on way too strong! Damn it man, think straight for a minute would you?

The painful truth was that Paul didn’t have the first clue of what he was going to do. He didn’t exactly have a wealth of experience to draw from. Actually, he didn’t have any experience to draw from. Everything in his life up until now had told him that women hated him; women pitied him; women laughed at him. He was a five foot three inch version of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. Why wouldn’t they laugh?

But this woman was different. That smile, that glance given to him too many times to be accidental. She was the real thing. And she was absolutely perfect.

He longingly watched as she approached the teller with the fluid, purposeful stride of a ballet dancer. He allowed his mind to briefly indulge in the image of her wearing knee-high leg warmers, pink ballet shoes, and nothing else. The thought alone made him gasp.  

Before she reached the counter she glanced back one more time and smiled. His heart jumped to the other side of his chest. If there was even the slightest bit of doubt in his mind before, it all but vanished in that moment.

But there was still the matter of actually talking to her. He had never closed a deal this big before. Hell, he had never even been invited to sit down at the negotiating table.

It’s doesn’t matter what you say to her you idiot! Just say SOMETHING!  

As Paul inched closer to the front of the line he could see her reach into her purse and pull out a small envelope, which she promptly handed to the teller. He couldn’t see her face, but he was positive the smile was still there. 

Then something made him look at the teller. Maybe it was the sudden expression of shock in his eyes as he opened the envelope, or the fact that all of the color instantaneously drained from his brown face as he read the note inside.

Paul’s eyes shifted back to the woman. He barely recognized her.

Her face was no longer soft and inviting. It had suddenly become something that frightened him; something he wanted to run away from as fast as he possibly could. But he was frozen where he stood, horrified by what he was seeing, yet unable to turn his eyes away from it.

A second before the gun appeared she spoke the first and last words that he would he would ever hear come out of her mouth.

“Reach for the alarm again and I swear to Christ I’ll shoot you!”

Her voice sounded nothing like Paul imagined it would. The voice he imagined had a quiet, almost sheepish tone. In the fantasy reel that had been running continuously in his mind, he would finally summon the nerve to ask her out for coffee, and she in turn would graciously accept his invitation with the demure uncertainty, yet unmistakable excitement of a teenager being asked out on a date for the first time.

“I would love to have coffee with you,” she would say. “I wanted to ask you myself, but I’m usually not brave enough to approach guys like you.”  

Paul let the reel play in his mind over and over again, allowing it to drown out the real and terrifying scene playing out in front of him.

He could see the woman mouthing something, her full pink lips curling up not with a smile, but with blood-chilling rage, as she held the gun up to the teller’s face. Though the increasing volume of the fantasy reel had prevented him from hearing what she was actually saying, he knew there was nothing at all gracious or demure about it.

Paul could feel the growing chaos and panic around him; could see the horror burned on people’s faces as they held their purses and wallets high in the air. Still, it didn’t seem real. He thought for a moment that it had to be some kind of sick joke; a twisted, sadistic version of Candid Camera. He began scanning the bank for hidden cameramen, waiting impatiently for everyone to stop screaming and break out into spontaneous laughter after realizing the prank had finally gone far enough.

But no such laughter would come.

Instead he saw the love of his life, the woman he was convinced was perfect in every way imaginable, approaching him – gun extended, pointing directly at his pasty, perspiring forehead. This time when their eyes met, she was not smiling. In the brief seconds before the end finally came, Paul had time for one last thought:

Why are the perfect ones always so fucking difficult??   

Monday Muse-ings – WHERE IS SHE HIDING?

Every writer dreams of her. Every writer covets her. Every writer flirts with her. And the really fortunate ones have spent significant time with her. She takes on a different form for each of us, yet her beauty is universally recognized. She is the muse – the infinite source of creativity trough which all magical things are possible. For many she is a myth, like the Tooth Fairy or Sasquatch. But for us true believers – the ones who toil in front of the keyboard day after day with oftentimes little more to show for it than a blinking cursor – we know she is out there, waiting until we reach our breaking point, waiting until we believe that we have no other course of action but to give up on this silly notion of writing. It’s then that she suddenly makes herself known. Sometimes it’s a whisper or a tap on the shoulder – a single idea or line of dialogue that seemingly comes out of nowhere but puts us completely back on track. Sometimes, when we’re really lucky, she shouts at us – bringing us a character or storyline or the simple confidence to know that sitting in front of that keyboard is not the colossal waste of time we imagined it to be.

I sometimes go months without a visit from her. It’s during those times of longing that I stop and wonder: “Where the hell is she? And why does she come to me only so sparingly when her impact is so powerful?” I get to the point where I think I can’t write without her. So I stop trying. I wait and I wait and I wait. I re-arrange the icons on my iPad, I take an extra trip to the Kuerig, I reply to my spam emails – anything to pass the time until she graces me with her presence once again. Before I know it, weeks pass. I turn on my computer and still see only that blinking cursor.

The ever-elusive Muse

Then I have the epiphany that I’ve had dozens of times over: “She comes only on her terms, dude! There’s nothing you can do to make her appear, no matter how much you need her! So instead of wasting away, pining after her, get your ass in a chair, turn on the computer, and WRITE! Write anything, even if it’s your name 500 times. Just write!!‘”Usually that’s all that’s all it takes to reclaim my focus. Suddenly the thoughts crystallize, the ideas come and the confidence returns. I’m a writer once again and it feels damn good.

But then something happens – I feel that familiar feeling: a slight gust of wind, a nudge on my shoulder or that tickle on my ear. And I know she’s there.

Funny thing is, she never really left.

Your thoughts on ‘The Muse’ may be completely different from mine. For you ‘she’ may be a ‘he’. For some the concept is idiotic and completely without merit. “It’s about sitting down and doing the work, not getting sprinkled with friggin’ fairy dust!”. Some are not sure either way.

I’d love to know you think. And Muse or no Muse, for God sake keep writing!