Smoke Screen

My father taught me how to drink, gamble, cheat, and tell a lie. There’s not many dads out there who realize the value of good vice.

Dad’s drinks are so strong, I learned not to like liquor. I found I was safe to stick with beer and wine, alcohol that isn’t made stronger than it already comes.

Dad dealt me hands of black jack and lectured me not to take a hit on seventeen. He taught me that the house always wins, and to scream “PAY THE TABLE” when I caught him dealing off the bottom of the deck.

He also taught me how to hide food, how you could flick a morsel of something off a toothpick into a shrubbery, and how much unwanted cuisine you could slip inside a potato skin, then to smile at the host, and say it was all delicious.

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING is a great Father's Day movie, about a dad who doesn't necessarily lie, but he reweights the truth, with his son as a constant witness. The spin cycle runs strongly through the issues he's washing, from ice cream to cigarettes. He is a completely honest character, despite his skills in debate and logic. In the end, he stabs through the whirl of upheaval with pure honesty in a solitary moment that affects himself, his son, and his career. And he becomes more powerful than ever.

This movie is so cleanly put together, you have to believe its makers are deceiving you, but the only deception is the lack of deception, right clean down to the fact that you never see the protagonist smoke. He is reputed to be such a great smoker, that his enormous nicotine tolerance is what saves him when he is captured and overdosed with nicotine patches. The lobbyist for alcohol takes a drink for every second of screen time when she isn't speaking, and the firearms advocate is packing, most definitely packing, but true to tobacco advertising restrictions, we never actually see the protagonist take a puff. Most certainly this film takes heavy swings at political correctness at all levels of social and private habits, but despite its title, it's actually a promotion to do the right thing.

My dad never taught me how to smoke. He quit when I was little, so little, I don’t even remember him ever smoking. He hasn’t smoked in nearly forty years. Me neither.

Elect Shun

I’m running for office. Any office. Any office that’ll pay me to sit in it and do work. In other words, I need a job. More than that, I need money.

Barack Obama has sent me two of the exact same letters. Two of them, twins, about a month apart. Form letters. They’re in response to my letter to him extolling reform for the American publishing industry. I propose we pave the way to peace via an American literature worthy of the United States military. In order to do that, we need to crack open the printing houses entrenched in genre books. Let a new era of words begin!

I’m still not published.

I sent the same letter to Barbara Bush. I figure Obama’s got Oprah, and Mrs. Bush Senior’s got a whole foundation for literacy and education. Besides, anybody who can teach George W. to read has got some merit. So I pit the parties against each other. I’ll see which one can do something for me.

Haven’t heard from Mrs. Bush.

When women got the vote in 1920, my grandmother went down to the precinct to cast her ballot. Turns out she voted exactly opposite what my grandfather had voted for, effectively cancelling out his vote or any part of the democratic sway of their household. That was the first and last time my grandmother voted.

I addressed two hundred envelopes by hand. Call it my contribution to the election process. It’s for a local politician, invitations to his fish fry. My husband had volunteered to do it, but I did it. It’s not even the party I favor. Apparently I’m also going to be issued a tee shirt and serve fried fish at his campaign rally. Maybe I should follow the example of my grandmother and exercise my right NOT to vote.

Funny thing, of those two hundred envelopes addressed to the ’80 section of my zip code, I knew not one single person. Not one. You’d think, out of two hundred people, in my own small town, I’d know somebody. Not nobody. It occurred to me, though, they’re the rich people, that’s why I don’t know them. They’re rich; I’m not. I need money; they’ve got it. The only thing we have in common is that we’re all going to this fish fry. Hey maybe there is something this candidate can do for me after all!

Ading

Ading is better than subtracting, especially when it comes to income. So www.rev2rev.blogspot.com has gone commercial.

I haven’t told Bill Dovany. He doesn’t read this blog, which is why I don’t have to split the profits with him. Truth be known, Bill Dovany is just some guy I met on the Internet. He says he’s incredibly handsome, but when he says “surfer,” I bet he means keyboard rather than surfboard. He tried to visit my house once, but he got lost on MapQuest, so we’ve never actually met.

A prostitute on National Public Radio said that if you didn’t have your own website, you were nobody. So I’ve crawled out from under my rock to participate in this folly of humankind. This is my first website. It’s over a year old now and since August of 2007, it has had a fresh post every Friday for our readers’ weekly delight, or at least something to pass the time until the weekend. The addition of ads is another stage of progression into upright posture presence on the Internet. I’m curious to see what Google will run on this site. Who do they think our demographic is?

Google, of course, is very generous. Despite what their motives may be, right now you are accessing this site free of charge, and with a free Google membership, you can post comments on the posts. Google also hosts the site with no charge to its contributors. And Google gives me a chance to make some money from the site.

There’s an awful lot I’m not allowed to say or I get kicked off Google, which is the modern equivalent to having your white blood cells excommunicated. Besides, the company title says it all: “Go-ogle.”

The Earnest of Being Important

Actor, Colin Renfrew, has a face created to carry mutton chops of a Dickinsonian era. He is to the manner born, in his aspect, and fits nicely with the cast of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. No one, in fact, is earnest. That is the comic point of the movie, based on the play by Oscar Wilde—there is no one named “Ernest” and all the characters are just play-acting.

I walked out on a live production at the local college. It was so boring, the way it was staged with an exaggerated lack of blocking, that there was more head-nodding than applause. I walked across the street to a fashionable coffee shop and had a piece of chocolate cake to put the second act to shame!

I did better with the Colin Renfrew version. I actually stayed awake a lot longer, with only a big nap in the middle, but I was conscious at either end. I came to understand that “Ernest” or “earnest” was a label to aspire to for a couple of young cads toying with the hand of love. As the story progresses, they become earnest, but does Ernest become himself?

Ernest Hemingway has a very true and masculine name. Much like his career. Poor Ernest became a literary superstar before his works were allowed to become great. He was untouchable before he learned the fine art of craft or submitted to the careful skill of editing. He loved his stories the way he loved himself. He imbued his tales with emotion beyond the words on the page. If only the editors had not been so afraid of his aura.

Despite how much I agree with Stephen King's sentiment that the first draft should be viable, my favorite Hemingway books are the ones published posthumously. Ouch. Would that no one says that about my works. True at First Light and Garden of Eden have the necessary craft to solidify the structure, and make the structure bear meaning beyond the flimsy members of the pages. Hem got lucky with Sun Also Rises. Islands in the Stream (of consciousness) could have been a great book. As it is, it's a classic because it's by Ernest Hemingway. Ernest’s novels lack craft, though I’m sure he meant well.