(Some names have been changed to protect the innocent; disclaimer: any similarities between persons mentioned in this blog and actual real persons from real life is purely coincidental)

I'd had some intellectual property absconded with.  There was no way around it.  What to do?  I was a poor artist.  I couldn't afford a lawyer.  Someone suggested to me that I get in touch with The California Lawyers for the Arts; a coalition of lawyers who were there for just such a purpose: to protect artists whose work had been--ah, let's not use the word "stolen", shall we not?  It's such a harsh word.  Let's use borrowed, as in, unethically, immorally and perhaps illegally borrowed. And certainly not purchased.

I was put in contact with a counselor over the phone.  I forget his name and what firm he worked for; but let me tell ya, he had one authoritative voice.  Like, authoritative in the bedroom kinda voice.  It was all I could do to concentrate on what he was saying; I felt like I was on a mid-90's phone sex line again, imagining him really being there. Fantasizing  Peter Onorati, in an Armani pin-stripe suit, man-spread, katty-corner on his desk. Loosening his tie. Imagining--
Oh, where was I?  Anyways, he was telling me that the BIG ENTERTAINMENT CONGLOMERATE that I had sent a script to (their "Young Writers Mentorship Program" program, no less) was well known in show business for borrowing whatever work they wanted with impunity​.  "Impunity" means doing something wrong with no fear of being caught or punished or having to pay fines.  So that's why there was a form stating that I wouldn't pursue legal action if I felt they'd borrowed my work!  Sign and have notarized please.  "Even if nearly every word was word for word," he said, "if you can't show they had access to your script, you have zero chance of winning."  "I have a rejection letter!" (I didn't though, I'd balled it in frustration and tossed it (the only time I ever did that, right?).  "But you signed that agreement and had it notarized, yes?"  "Yes."  So, in other words, forget it.  "What are you wearing?" I asked him.  Click.

​And it happened again.  This time, Lawyers for the Arts put me through to an "IP" lawyer in Los Angeles.  This one involved my first novel.  This guy worked for a hoity-toity law firm in Los Angeles and he was interested in taking on my case, he told me, in a phone call from Denver International.  He was between flights.  He was also clearly tanked and kept me on the phone for an hour, rambling and slurring his words.  This three-plus martini lunch call did not instill confidence.  When he asked for a $30,000.00 retainer I told him I'd have to think it over.  Although, if I had a layover at Denver International I'd get drunk too.  That place is friggin' scary.

So, I sent him an email and said I just couldn't swing that retainer.  I didn't hear a word.  I mean, if these cases are so notoriously hard to win, why bother?

And then it happened again.  This time a big novel from a big publishing house with all the PR behind it that not even Stephen King could muster.  I mean, I was either paranoid or deluded or both; but I was certain that my book had been the inspiration for the author's borrowing of my lead character.  In fact, it was as though she had kidnapped him and forced him to narrate her book.  So, I needed another lawyer, right?  One that specialized in Intellectual Property (IP).  I did some research on the web and found a firm in New York.  Horwitz and Feinberg.  I called and spoke with the receptionist.  "Why yes," she assured me, "one of the Misters Horwitz would be happy to speak with you about possible representation..."  "How many are there?" I asked.  "Three," she said, "and of course Mr. Feinberg; however, he's indisposed at the moment--"  In the background I heard sounds, like renovations or something were going on.  "Could you call back at three please?" 
​"Sure," I said, wondering why her "please" came out "puh-lee-uhz."

So I called back at three and was connected to Mr. Samuel Horwitz.  After I explained my situation, he proceeded to regale me with expert legalese.  His voice was decidedly not authoritative; in the bedroom or anywhere else.  I can't, however, say I didn't find it sexy on some level.  He had an intriguing vocal tic. But I digress. His legal jargon was so complex I asked him if I could just come to his office in hopes we could overcome my layman's inability to grasp it all.  "Of course," he said, "I'll put you back to Miss Cheefe and she'll show you in..."
"In where?" I asked. 
"My office, of course."
"But I'm in Virginia."
"Oh, you naughty boy!" he replied.
Miss Cheefe got back on the line and we made an appointment to meet at his office where I would consult with him and the rest of his "consultantating consultants."  Wondering if Mr. Horwitz was one of those "eccentric" lawyers (you know the ones; the ones with the gimmicks; like a trademark hat or a ponytail) I asked the receptionist if he was.  "Oh, no," she assured me, "he's actively centric."

So I took the train up to New York the next week.  The building was hard to find.  It wasn't exactly a building, either.  It was more of a storefront.  What looked to be an old dry cleaners.  "Gentrification," I nodded to myself and opened the door. A bell tinkled. The receptionist looked up from her compact where she was powdering her nose. I approached her desk.  "Ticket puh-lee-uhz..."  
"Ticket?" I shrugged, "I don't have a ticket--"
"No ticket no laundry bub..." She put down her powder puff on a coffee tray and picked up her nail file.  I could hear the whine of a table saw and hammering coming from beyond a makeshift plywood wall behind her.  There was a sign above her head that said, "Zero Days With No Accidents."  And another: "We Are Not Responsible For Items That Are Folded, Spindled or Murderlated"  And: "CASH ONLY! (That Means You Pal!)"
She looked up at me.  "Well?"
"This is the law offices of Horwitz and Feinberg, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes.  Did you want to see Mr. Horwitz, Mr. Horwitz or Mr. Horwitz?"
"Mr. Horwitz..."
"Mr. Feinberg will be with you in a moment.  Who shall I say is calling?"
"Mr. Reidy.  I have an appointment."
"Have a seat puh-lee-uhz."
I sat down in a thread bare chair, being careful to skirt an exposed spring.  The receptionist picked up the phone and dialed.  "Oh, Mr. Feinberg, your one o'clock is here..."
"Two o'clock," I corrected.  It was now twenty 'til.
"He's late."  She pursed her lips at me.
After a moment, the hammering stopped.  "Where are you going, porcupine?" I heard a gruff male voice exclaim.  Then the sounds of what I can only describe as someone playing a saw.  Then some bonks.  A groan and then a wet slapping sound.  Shortly, a door in the plywood wall flew open and somebody covered in wet plaster made a beeline for me, hand extended.

Before the plastered man could reach me, he slipped on a piece of soap, which gave me time to get out of the way.  Then two more men, one with a severe bowl hair-cut and the other a rather portly fellow with a shaved head dashed over and got the first man to his feet.  "You chowder head," the bowl-cut man barked, "can't you see we have a client?"  They proceeded to slap one another and bark.  Then the big guy (whose name was Jerome) sat in the chair I had vacated and picked up a magazine.  Bowl cut, whose name was Moses, slapped him. "Where are your manners you knuckle-head?  That seat's for our guests!"  And he proceeded to drag Jerome out of the chair with the claw end of a hammer in Jerome's nostrils.  "Oh! Oh! Oh!"  At which point the first man (who I determined was Louis Feinberg) had found himself trapped in the quick drying plaster.  "Get me outta here!" he bellowed and then Moses hit him over the head with the hammer and the plaster shattered.  Meanwhile, Jerome was attempting to exit the room; but the spring from the chair had caught in his pants and kept pulling him backwards.  Finally, after several attempts to extricate himself, the spring flew across the room and hit a fourth man--who had just opened an office door--in his face.  He yelped in pain.
Miss Cheefe leapt up.  "Oh, you poor thing!" she cried and proceeded to cover the man's face with kisses.  He pushed her away.  "Miss Cheefe, please bring Mr. Reidy into my office and bring in a tray of coffee, pronto!"
"Gentlemen," I started.  They looked around the room, not realizing I was addressing them.  "Perhaps this isn't a good time?  I could come back..."
"Oh no!" Moses said, "we wouldn't hear of it!  Just give us a moment to powder our noses and we'll be right with you!"  At which point they disappeared and I was escorted into an office.  For some reason there was a piano in there.  
Shortly, the foursome reappeared wearing academic robes.  After fighting for the desk chair for some minutes; Moses banged a gavel on the heads of the other three.  "Now, Mr. Reidy," he asked, "what seems to be the problem?"  I removed my novel from my briefcase and the other book that I felt had "borrowed" from me.  I placed them on the desk.  "I think the authoress of that book used a character from my book--"  He picked up the books and flipped through them both.  "Ah," he said, "Yes.  Yes, yes.  Yes, yes, yes! It appears you've been flim-flammed!"
"Bamboozled!" Samuel said (he was the one who got the spring to the face).
"Hornswoggled!" Louis cried.
"Bam-swoggle-flammed!" Jerome exclaimed; at which point Moses shot some ink from a fountain pen in his eye.
Miss Cheefe entered with a tray of coffee; on which, I noticed, she'd left her powder puff.  She barked at Samuel and left.
"Well, what can I do?" I asked.
Jerome reached for the powder puff.  "Oh!  Cream puffs!  Don't mind if I do!"
"Pipe down knuckle-head!" Moses said.
And we all stopped for coffee as Jerome proceeded to eat the powder puff.  He started choking and Louis slapped him on the back; which produced a great cloud of face-powder.
"Well," Samuel said, "what you need is a law suit!"
And then a stool was produced and a full-length mirror and a tape measure and tailor's chalk.
"A suit?" I asked, "like, you mean an actual suit?"
"Oh sure kid," Moses assured me, "if you want to win your case you gotta look sharp!  We're gonna fix you up right!"
But before they could start, Miss Cheefe reentered.  "Oh boys," she said, "those law students are here for their lecture...

So, long story short, I ended up with a successful law suit.  "C" as seen above.  And it only cost $13.45!  And they threw in the mandolin!
When it came time to go to court and go after that "gold-diggin' dame"; the boys told me that they were really going to press my law-suit to the fullest extent.  Which was when they stripped me of said suit and went after it with a steam press.  The steam press was malfunctioning, so someone decided to connect a propane tank to it.  And then Louis found a spot and tried to get it out with nitroglycerine (why they had a bottle of nitroglycerine is anyone's guess).  Needless to say there were fireworks.  And that was before we even got to a courtroom!
So, if you want an outside the box-car legal approach, I highly recommend the firm of Horwitz, Horwitz, Horwitz and Feinberg.  They'll even throw in a fluff and fold for free.

The New York Times has published an article about the legendary meanness of Hollywood "luminary" Scott Rudin.  Talk about too little too late.  All the PTSD he's instilled in hapless underlings can never be undone.  When I worked at Paramount, Rudin had an office there.  I steered very clear of it.  At the time EVERYONE knew of his Olympian levels of dickishness.  The vibes from the building his office was housed in were not just palpable; they were visible.  A sort of ghastly greenish-gray gas hovered over that building (was it the Mae West building?  All the buildings at Paramount were named after Hollywood stars and/or executives).  I doubt now that there will ever be a Scott Rudin building.  As pages on the lot, we were encouraged to spread our wings and seek employment in the other branches of the studio.  Someone suggested I seek employment at Rudin's office.  I had heard the legends.  I already had adjustment problems with the lackey mentality of Hollywood.  Even I knew that that was a temptation of fate that was best left untempted.  

I suppose it's a good thing that Rudin finally has to answer for some of his past behavior.  I suspect that he was mean for meanness' sake.  It was a creepy power trip for him, I'm sure: turning people into puppets.  He got off on it. And now he's getting old and nobody is immune to the pitfalls of getting old in America.  Karma is indeed a bitch, isn't it?  I did know someone who worked for him and then didn't work for him.  "Kevin"* had been an office assistant.  An early version of texting, some of the higher tech phones back in the 90's had text screens.  Kevin told me a story that I have never forgotten.  Rudin would use the text screens rather than alert people with a phone ring.  So, you had to keep your eyes glued to the screens.  Rudin, apparently, was heavy into string cheese (at one time a popular food fad).  Kevin lost his job when he had the nerve to go to the bathroom.  Thus, he missed the message: STRING CHEESE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess in showbiz it really all comes down to the string cheese.  What surprises me is that Rudin seems to be caving in.  Twenty years ago I'm sure the NYTimes would get the double bird and a hearty FUCK OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!! from Mr. R.  Today, he's apologizing and promising he's going to change.  I doubt he's going to pay restitution to all the people he abused.  Cripes, I have PTSD from just having had to walk past his office.  In a way, it's kind of sad.  Scott Rudin's office was also a legendary crucible where people who were truly ready to put up with anything Hollywood could throw at them (in many cases, literally) to make it in that business; sought out employment.  I don't think even the most masochistic of them expected they'd get what they got.  But many of them survived, male and female, with the cajones (and cojones) to scale the scaffold to the top of Mount Lee.  And maybe many of those survivors realized that you don't have to be demon-spawn to get things done.  I mean, in life, ultimately you really do catch more flies with honey, as opposed to say...string cheese.

​I was just looking over Rudin's string of credits.  He produced a lot of stuff. Forty years worth. Much of it great; some of it schlock; some of it meh.  But all of it top-tier Hollywood.  A-list all the way; above and below the line.  Broadway too. So now they're trying to put Rudin out to pasture.  But all those true Hollywood luminaries (One Degree of Scott Rudin) who willingly worked with him, knowing full well he was a monster.  What will they say now?  How do they feel?  Would I have worked with him if he'd bought one of my scripts?  I don't know.  I avoided that office like the plague.  But that office held the Arkenstone, too...didn't it?

*(I just read about the suicide of Rudin's associate Kevin Graham-Caso and his battle with PTSD.  The Kevin mentioned in this article was not him.  My use of the name was a completely random coincidence.  And I see now that I may have minimized the psychological damage Rudin may have done to certain people.  Apparently, it's even worse than I thought).  4/30/21

Dear Fox Television: Please issue a line of young "Quilloughby" merch ASAP.  If you don't I shall draw myself a bath and hope to drown.

Trigger warnings: examination of metaphor comparing the whale to the male member.  Frank discussion of spermaceti, cetaceous and otherwise.  

​Have you ever read Moby-Dick; or, The Whale?  That's one title, not two.  Or is it two titles; as the novel was originally published in three parts as The Whale?  To avoid confusion, let's just use "Moby-Dick" (and I don't want to have to keep italicizing it, so just Moby-Dick, capisce?).  I've read it. One and a half times. It was first assigned to me in high school, tenth-grade, I think.  I didn’t have to read it all though.  My English teacher gave us a list of chapters we could skip.  They were all the chapters (and there were a lot of them) that dealt with the logistics and hard information about the whaling industry.  Apparently, he felt they were extraneous and had no bearing on the plot; a plot which can be summed up in a sentence or two: (Spoilers ahead, matey):
A guy named Ishmael gets a job on a whaling ship, the Pequod and the gang head out to sea.  The captain of the ship, Mr. Ahab, has a peg-leg and he wants revenge on the “great white whale” that had it for an appetizer.  One day, they see the white whale, “Moby-Dick”; and Ahab launches the entire crew to make filet ‘o fish out of him.  Moby is having none of it; and destroys the ship and kills most of the crew.  Ishmael floats away in a coffin with his new boyfriend, a noble savage named Queequeg.  The end.
I may be off on a few points (that boyfriend thing may not have happened); but that’s basically it.  Unfortunately, the author, Herman Melville takes (depending on the version) around 700ish pages to tell this simple story.  But is it unfortunate?  Moby-Dick is often found on lists of books (often in the top five) that people say they’ve read; but haven’t.  Or started to read but couldn’t finish.  Or the most boring or overrated.  I can’t say I disagree.  It’s all those things.  But it’s also a challenge of the most interesting kind.  An intellectual challenge.  I doubt many people in the 19th century actually finished it. 

About twenty years ago or so, The Easton Press, purveyors of deluxe volumes of literary classics, was advertising heavily in magazines.  It was pretty much a book-of-the-month-club for high-end editions of books like Moby-Dick.  In fact, to lure you in to their subscription service, they waved Moby-Dick under your nose.  Sign up and get this gorgeous edition of Moby-Dick.  You can cancel at any time; but keep Moby as our gift.  You only had to buy one other book.  I figured, hey, why not?  I wanted to read it again to see if my thirty-something brain had something new to see in it (as opposed to my sixteen-something brain).  And I was going to read  all of it.  Every single word of it!

And I did read every word of it.  It took me about a year (I’m a slow reader, even with the shortest of books); but I did it.  So, what did I learn?  Well, I learned that the chapters that my English teacher had let us off the hook for, actually had a lot of the most interesting material in the book.  Most of the deep metaphorical stuff happens in chapters like A Squeeze of the Hand where Melville takes a really deep-dive into whale blubber.  Or rather, spermaceti.  And it’s a bizarre kind of Victorian erotic fantasia about…well, let’s be honest…ejaculate.  Ejaculate, you say?  Come now Chris, let’s not be silly.  But seriously; when you start looking at Moby-Dick from the viewpoint of Melville having a homoerotic opium dream about whaling; it all starts to make sense.  And it all adds up to the inescapable conclusion (at least for me), that Moby-Dick is actually a massive 700-page dirty joke.  It's not just that, of course.  It's still an amazing kaleidoscope of the scope of the mind of man who was waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of his time.
Allow me to spin my theory further.  Melville was “good friends” with this gentleman:

In fact, it was Nathaniel Hawthorne who had inspired Melville to write Moby-Dick.  Melville had read Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse and believed the collection of short stories to be a compendium of Hawthorne’s genius.  He dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne.  Why?  Well, I suspect that Melville was madly in love with Hawthorne; and deeply in lust.  I think Melville wanted to harpoon Hawthorne with his entire being.  I think he was obsessed.  Obsessed, you ask?  Who else is obsessed?  Well, Captain Ahab.  He’s literally consumed by his pursuit of the great white whale.  What does a great white whale resemble?  Well, what would Freud say?  I think he’d say: “Za vale ees an extweemly wahge penis.”  Did Nathaniel Hawthorne have a trouser whale?  The pants of his day were rather revealing...
In other words, Moby-Dick is about sexual addiction.  In particular, the preoccupation of some gay males with extremely large members.  In the gay parlance: a "size queen."  The name of the whale, Moby-Dick was actually based on the name of a real whale named “Mocha Dick” (I’m not making this up).  Mocha was an island that the whale was often sighted near.  Mocha, of course, conjures up the color of chocolate.  So why did Melville make such a point of the whale being white?  It raises a whole other set of questions.
Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand, which I’ve previously mentioned, contains the line “Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm forever!”  It’s literally a chapter about playing with a load of spunk.  The book is loaded (so to speak) with such things.  Melville isn’t even really trying to cage it in metaphor.  Moby-Dick is literally a gargantuan novel about chasing gargantuan Dick.  Chasing that Dick even if it’s gonna end up killing you.  It's right there in the title!  Melville dedicated the book to Hawthorne.  He presented a copy to the silver lit-dilf and it wasn’t long after that, that Hawthorne drew away from their friendship.  He must’ve seen some stalker red flags.  Did the pair ever cross their quills?  We’ll probably never know for sure.  But they did spend a lot of weekends together out in the woods, away from the wives, to drink brandy and “smoke cigars.”
I too have a dear friend who is a writer.  We both hail from Hawthorne’s neck of the woods.  Joe wrote a novel entitled A Map of the Harbor Islands which was published in 2006:

​It is a fantastic novel.  I urge you to procure and read it at once.  It was Joe’s first novel.  He also has several collections of short stories.  His first, This Thing Called Courage contains one of the best short stories I’ve ever read: The Rain.  It’s amazing.  It should be a movie.
Like my novel, 83 in the Shade, A Map of the Harbor Islands is about two young men, both gay, who are best friends.  Both books are set in the Boston area.  That’s pretty much where the similarities end.  But I’m realizing now just how influenced I was by Joe’s book in writing my book (I self-published my book in 2015).  I was also heavily influenced, I’ve discovered in some re-reading, by The Catcher in the Rye (which I was conscious of); and A Separate Peace, even more so (which I was not conscious of).  Joe’s book had really great chapter titles, which inspired me.  I think chapter titles in a novel are important.  I don’t know why; but they somehow infuse things with more, oh, I don’t know…immediacy?  Significance?  Portent?  Comedy?
Joe and I both have our own mutual obsessions.  Things we share through “in-jokes” that have gone on over the years and spiraled into “in-tales”.  Things like the movie Aliens and The Parent Trap (the original).  Yard ornaments. The song “I Love the Nightlife”.  Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Any combination of the preceding.  Yes, we’re kind of obsessed with Hawthorne (I mean, just look at him!).  We’re kind of Hawthorne groupies.  We have not only mad crushes on his writing; but the man himself.  We also enjoy making fun of him and his writing.  Satirizing it. Infantilizationing it.  Etc.  We get a boot out of it.  You can’t take everything so seriously. I’m pretty certain that Melville was a joker of the highest order.  Old Nathaniel seems like he had a subtle sense of humor.  We need to poke fun at  things like high American Literature and the men (and women) who wrote it; lest we become snobs.

One of my favorite novels is The Scarlet Letter.  Yeah, right, I hear you saying.  But it is!  Sure, Hawthorne uses ten more words than is probably necessary to construct a sentence; but then, he was being paid by the word.  Once you get into the flow of his idiosyncratic—by way of the 19th century—style; he actually becomes a pretty fast read. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne never explicitly names what the scarlet “A” stands for.  We assume it’s “adultery.”  But what if it was something more banal.  Like, “Antagonistic”? Or, “Apathetic”?  Or maybe just that Hester Prynne was an asshole.  What if her Puritan judges pointed their collective finger at poor Hester as she stood on the scaffold and said (a la John Waters) “Hester Prynne, you stand accused of…(in a heavy Baltimore accent): ASSHOLEISM!” 

One of Joe’s favorite books is Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables.  The two leads of the story are the put-upon Pynchon siblings: elderly Hepzibah and Clifford.  At one point in the story, Joe tells me (the would-be climax, no less); Clifford and Hepzibah take flight from the house and board a train.  They are let off in the middle of nowhere.  Then the book returns to a sub-plot.  When next we see the brother and sister, no explanation of what happened to them when they got off the train is forthcoming.  They simply reappear and then the book wraps things up.  One day, during one of our Hawthorne-over-the-phone coffee klatch/book club meetings (we’re currently reading Legends of the Province House, which, if you ask me, sounds like the title of a gay porno) Joe suggested that we write the missing pieces of the story.  I gave him a hearty Yes! And this is what I came up with.  I think I did a pretty good job of aping Mr. Hawthorne.  And it was surprisingly easy.  Having been recently “aped” myself; I’m sure now that it is.  Anyways…Joe, this one is for you.

Chapter ?:
 
The Dark Nocturne of Two Gloomy Night Owls
 
Hepzibah continued to gaze at the firmament, but could not see past the gathering iron hued clouds that seemed to be growing rather than regressing; an apt atmospheric representation of our own erstwhile spinsters’ clouded judgment.  Had the Almighty Father deserted his two children, Hepzibah wondered to herself?  Had the brother and sister’s failure to pay the proper respect to their cousin, the Judge (undoubtedly now laughing from the silence of his makeshift sepulcher) resulted in this mocking indifference from His domain; a domain that though not Earthbound, was indeed a courtroom of sorts?  Was the greatest Judge of all withholding his sentence as he weighed his decision?  Giving grave consideration to the punishment or reward he would deliver to two naïve fugitives?  Was God, Hepzibah wondered, mulling over two of his children’s fates; basing the outcome on the rubric that ignorance was no excuse for guilt?   
She glanced at Clifford who had sunk to the sole wooden bench on the platform and whose head was now hung and his gaze, if his eyes had been open, directed at a line of ants who were marching across the stone platform.  A slight tremor, an echo of his earlier excitation or a simple palsy—Hepzibah did not know—caused her brother to intermittently emit a muffled cry.  Or perhaps the chill in the air imparted by the drizzling rain had permeated his top coat and Clifford was suffering from some form of chilblains.  Hepzibah watched the ants as they unswervingly approached their goal: a grounded butterfly that was soon overcome by the swarming mass of crimson insects.  The color of Hellfire, surely!  When she could no longer watch this cruel display of nature’s indifference she once again turned her creased and troubled face to the sky and cried: “Dearest Father…would you leave us to the ants?  Would you cruelly pluck our wings and leave us to die here, we, two of your butterflies?  Or do we deserve this fate?  The freedom of our will revoked?”  The skies only answered with a low rumble of thunder and a more pronounced darkening of the stratosphere.  The rain grew stronger still and ran down Hepzibah’s face like a mourning veil.
Clifford once more put forth a cry; louder than the preceding and possessed of an alarming rattle that Hepzibah feared could be the start of some dire respiratory malady.  Not knowing when, or even if a train would ever return to this God-forsaken locale, the cowering woman realized that the pair would have to seek shelter somewhere and that the lone wooden bench was certainly not up to (or designed for) the task.  Her gaze left the sky and settled on the dark farmhouse.  She grasped her brother’s knee and drew up her gaunt frame to its full height.  Clifford became somewhat more animated by this sudden burst of activity and raised his head to meet his sister’s eyes where he saw there the glint of some newly forming motivation.  Yes, the farmhouse!  It’s roof still intact and the entire edifice apparently uninhabited—if not abandoned altogether—the structure offered the only option for passing the night which seemed to be approaching hand-in-hand with the darkness of the rain clouds:  another pair of siblings cast from the Garden!
Hepzibah seized Clifford’s trembling hand and assisted him as he stood.  Yes they would make haste to the farmhouse Hepzibah thought, and perhaps the Heavenly Farther would bless that place and watch over them; but just as she was sighing her weary relief, something caught her eye.  A dark figure, quick as a wink, Hepzibah was certain she saw slip through the foreboding farmhouse door!  She was overcome with a feeling of dread.  For the figure was too tall to have been a fellow citizen of the Earth.  Hepzibah was certain she had just seen Old Scratch himself slink into that dire and dreary place: one she was certain she and her brother’s footsteps must avoid!

I was first hired as a Paramount page in the summer of 1993.  We had “page class” and there was about twenty of us. One of the most thrilling and exciting times of my life. I’m pretty sure Linda was in the “class” right after me.  I first met her when she and I were assigned a job (remember those little jobs they used to give us when we weren’t giving tours or doing shows?).  Our job was to do inventory of the Paramount Employee’s Store stockroom.  So, of course, after about five minutes of counting things, I started clowning around.  I pretended to fall off a shelf and accidentally drop a chocolate bar into a jar of peanut butter (the old Reese’s Peanut butter cups commercial…like really old) Linda found this humorous.  She was torn between working (what she was doing) and goofing off (what I was doing).  You see, Linda was a “good girl” but she wasn’t that good.  I mean, I knew she thought the job was as boring as I did; but she’d never admit it.  So, I continued to try to get her to laugh.  And I was quite successful.  Not that I had to try that much.  She had a great sense of humor.  Linda enjoyed having fun and breaking rules in her own way.  She was the kind of person who would slip in the back door of an event because, well, why not?  She loved adventure.
I think adventure was what drew most of us to Paramount and the Page Program.  I mean, I’m guessing we all had Hollywood aspirations and dream-factory dreams.  I remember telling Linda about my fantasies of making it in Hollywood before I got there.  One involved working for Randal Kleiser, mostly because I thought he was good looking.  So, we bonded over Randal Kleiser and John Travolta and Grease.  Grease was Linda’s favorite movie.  I suspect it was what drew her to Paramount.  She’d been to so many screenings and revivals and re-releases she had met Randal on many occasions.  Not only him; but the entire cast.  In fact, the last time I spoke to her (about a year ago) she had just gone to yet another Grease screening.  There was always a story.  At that screening, I guess they were displaying costumes from the film and the actress who played Patty Simcox was apprehended after trying to steal her cheerleader outfit by changing into it in the bathroom and then attempting an escape.  You can’t make stuff like this up.  And there was Linda, right in the middle of it!  She was like the lady Zelig of Hollywood.  She was constantly on the go, doing things, attending events, crashing red carpets, casually chatting up celebrities…  I think she should’ve been Paramount Studio’s Ambassador of Good Will instead of A.C. Lyles. Oh yes, she knew him too!
I remember one time myself, my now husband, Louis Gonzalez and Linda all went to Disneyland.  She was eager to visit the Haunted Mansion.  “Do you scream when the lights go out at the bottom of the elevator?” she asked.  “Uh, no…not that I’ve been to the Haunted Mansion enough times to know that it was a thing.  Is it a thing?”  “Oh,” she assured us, “it’s a thing…”  So, we go on the ride and the room begins to descend.  “Are you going to scream?” I asked.  She just had a sheepish grin.  The elevator descended, the lights went out, the lightning flashed and the body in the rafters was swinging.  Silence.  Then Linda let out one of the loudest, most blood-curdling screams I’d ever heard. And then, of course, she laughed. My husband still talks about it.  On Space Mountain she got us all to scream.  I realize now they were primal screams of joy.
She had absolutely no qualms about breaking on to movie sets; which was supposedly the worst thing an unauthorized employee could do.  One night, after some event, it was decided that we should go visit the Brady house, as they were making the movie sequel at the time.  I’m certain it was Linda’s idea.  So, a small “bunch” of us commandeered a golf cart, drove to the soundstage and just walked right in.  Pictures were taken on the famous stairway (if anyone has copies of those, please post!).  We hung out in the girls’ bedroom.  There was a bulletin board on the wall.  Somebody decided we needed to draw a happy face and pin it up (I’m pretty certain it was Linda).  A sticky note was found.  A happy face was drawn and pinned to the board.  And it made it into the final cut of the movie!  I remember her at the screening nudging me, laughing and pointing it out.  So, if you watch A Very Brady Sequel, look for the happy face and think of Linda.
I think my very favorite (and the ultimate) Linda memory is the TV Land launch party on the New York Street backlot.  The channel was premiering and Paramount threw a huge, lavish party on the backlot for all the studio execs.  Invitation only.  Underlings like Linda and myself (no longer pages but certainly not executives!) were decidedly not invited.  This was towards the end of my tenure at the studio.  I was in the midst of my own frustration and nervous breakdown; so, I kind of didn’t care anymore.  We were going to that effin’ party!
I illegally parked my car on the lot and met up with Linda.  We staked out the party.  The backlot was cordoned off with only one means of entrance and exit.  Security was everywhere.  But we figured out a plan.  One of the buildings on the lot had its back wall facing the New York street and was covered with a façade.  I think it was a generator building or something.  So, you could enter that building from the lot side and then come out through the façade onto the street like you were walking onto a yacht.   We noticed a lot of party-goers had I.D. tags, so we secured dummy ones.  We rounded up some friends and then we did it.  We just moseyed out into the party like we belonged there (and we did).  The celebrities present were mostly old-school TV stars, like Ruth Buzzi and Dr. Bombay from Bewitched.  Kind of Z list; but for me and Linda it was a thrill!  We’d grown up watching these people on Prime Time and then in endless reruns.
The musical guests performing live that night were K.C. and the Sunshine band.  Their heyday had been in the 70’s.  Now it was twenty years on and the audience was decidedly snotty.  Some people were doing little to hide their derision.  They took it as a joke and an insult: why is the entertainment a bunch of has-beens?  Then they started to play and they were amazing.  I turned to Linda.  “Why are people just standing here, throwing shade?” I asked her.  “This band is amazing!”  She looked at me, sensing the snobby injustice of it all.  “Let’s dance,” she said, “I bet if we start dancing, everybody else will too!”  So, we did.  And then everyone else started dancing.  Soon, we were leading a Conga line around the dance floor.  We, the uninvited, made that party happen. That was the kind of magic she was able to conjure.
Someone once asked me if I thought Linda was “uptight”; as in prudish.  I mean, she certainly did have that “good girl” persona—a lot like Sandy from Grease.  She was kind of unbelievably good. She was undeniably saintly; but never holier-than-though. However, she was very private.  There were certain things we just didn’t talk about. “Uptight?” I replied.  “Uhh, no.  I mean she loves Quentin Tarantino movies.  How could she be uptight?”  In fact, the last thing she sent me was an LP of Marilyn Monroe singing.  It’s a vinyl picture disk.  The image is of Marilyn’s famous fully-topless calendar shot.  I’m sure Linda will meet Marilyn (another favorite) somewhere and the two will hang-out together.  And I’m sure Linda will kindly offer Marilyn a robe…
My Hollywood fantasies remain.  I’m going to sell the rights to my novel to Paramount and they’re going to give me a three-picture deal.  I’m going to have my own production offices right where Robert Evans’ were. We’re going to do a reboot of Love Story.  Working title: Love Means Never Having to Say Goodbye. And Linda Correa is going to be my Head of Production.  But now that last part isn’t going to happen. 
That last part that would’ve been the best part.   

So, I think I finally figured out how to upload my first book as an "ebook."  If I have done so successfully (and Amazon tells me I have); it should be available in 72 hours from now (9:37 p.m. EST / April 5th, 2021).  Fingers crossed!

The concept of the "spec script" is a futile one.  Writing an unsanctioned script for a television show already on the air is a losing proposition.  The show already has a writing staff.  Why waste your time sending them a script?  Okay, maybe if you're that invested in a show; but it amounts to little more than fan-fiction.  So, I've come up with the concept (Registered, TM, Pat. Pend.) of the "Spec Joke."  You see, you don't write the entire script.  You just write a scene, out of any sort of context, with just the funny bit!  Pop it in the mail and get your check ($100.00 per word sounds reasonable...).  Here's my first Spec Joke for The Goldbergs (although it could work for most any sitcom that has a grand-parent or maid living with the family):

FADE IN ON:
The Goldberg's kitchen.  Murray and Pops are sitting at the kitchen table as Beverly tosses a salad at the counter.
The front door flies open and Adam comes rushing in, excited and out of breath.

ADAM:  Hey everybody, guess what?
BEVERLY: What schmoopy?
ADAM: I've got a new girlfriend! And she just won the school's award for Most Accomplished Philatelist!
MURRAY: They give awards for that now?
BEVERLY: No son of mine is going to date a girl who does that!
MURRAY: Collect stamps?
BEVERLY: Oh.  Right.
Adam turns to Pops and shakes his head.
POPS: Is she a cunning linguist too?
Everyone but Adam laughs.  Freeze frame.  Cut to commercial.

And that'll be $5000.00 please.