Summer Stock

In the late Seventies I spent several summers in a lovely tourist town on the East coast doing summer stock. It was an artist'’s colony that was surrounded almost entirely by a farm community. So on one hand we had all these highly intelligent, feeling, emotional artists of all sexes and genders running around going, "Oh, I can feel the cosmic life forces touching my genitalia! Let'’s do the hustle!!" And at the same time we had a bunch of guys in John Deere hats going, "“Hey, Dwayne, let's throw some faggots in the river."

I find life a curious thing. I find small town life even curiouser. And I find small town summer stock theatre life is...well...as close to a life analogy as you can get. It’s all there. The pleasure and the stress. All the little cliques. The hierarchy and the ...er...lowerarchy. Pecking orders are adhered to strictly. We have the intelligentsia and the stupidly vain. The workers and the privileged few. The leaders in the form of directors and producers and the followers who remain in the chorus the entire season. Once in a while a particular person, an actor or a director, might shoot far past the throng and shine, like Camelot, for one brief shining moment, far surpassing anyone that has come before. Pure genius unleashed. Reaching out to the audience and fellow thespians and catching their souls or sharing his or her own soul with the watching crowd. Magic. But mostly it'’s a mundane existence that the rest of humanity experiences daily.

There was a young man who was on the bottom of that summer stock pecking order one season. He was named Mark and he was an apprentice, which meant that he did all the menial work for no pay and no glory. Just for the opportunity to learn and perfect his chosen trade. In other words he was being taken advantage of by the producer. He seemed to be a carefree fellow. He'd never complain and always did his job with much vigor. One sunny summer day Mark forgot to put on his underwear before leaving his apartment. As a matter of fact he forgot to put on his pants, his shirt, his shoes and his socks as well. In this unclad and highly unMark-like state he danced down the center of Main Street. Like some crazed Pied Piper trying to enthrall the local populace with his bouncing skin flute. He made his happy, flippy-floppy way to the local general store where, in one great whoop of joy, he crouched down and deposited a big old stinking, steaming, corn-encrusted Mark muffin in the middle of the floor. The customers in the store were transfixed. Half thinking that this was the most beautiful, artistic statement made that decade and the other half wondering where they had left their shotguns. Mark, having finished his masterwork, stood and with a little grin and, I imagine, laying a finger aside of his nose, went back down through the streets of town; laughing, bouncing, dancing - never to be seen again.

I suppose what scares me the most is that as we make our way through our existence, we're all just this close to dropping our trousers, squatting and leaving our mark in the middle of general store of our life.

Monster Kid

As a kid I used to love monsters. Fictional monsters. All shapes and sizes. All breed and styles. Frankenstein. Dracula. The Mummy, King Kong, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or Blackie as he was known in the business. The Invisible Man, mad doctors, crazed scientists, evil hunchbacks. Men who led nine lives, who saw with X-ray vision or who meddled with things man was meant to leave alone. I read about them in books, comics, magazines but mostly I watched them on television. In movies. The old black and white classics. Universal Pictures. Karloff, Lugosi, the Lon Chaneys (both senior and junior) John Carradine, Dwight Frye, Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton. I was nuts abut them. “Why," you ask? ‘Cause I was a goober. A misfit. A geek. At least it seemed that way. Growing up I felt gawky and awkward, as I have since found out many of us had. Especially with girls. I could relate to the inhuman creature who only desired love and acceptance from the village beauty but who instead was rebuked and made fun of. I knew that any attempt by me at communication with one of the females I my school would be misconstrued as something unholy and I would be chased by my entire sixth grade class, carrying torches and rulers shouting “Kill the monster” and be forced by baying bloodhounds into the sulfur pit, which was just on the other side of the monkey bars, where I would sink into oblivion cursing the day I was brought to life and crying for my mommy. AARRGGHHH! Mommy! I had an active imagination. But that’s part of kiddom. Making up stories and trying to scare each other’s pants off.

My friends and I were into model building when we were young. Cars, planes and most importantly for me, monster models. You might remember them if you are old enough. Made by Aurora. Long, rectangular boxes with garish works of monster art on the box lids. I remember distinctly opening the box and getting a whiff of the plastic within. Seeing the many parts of the Frankenstein monster that I would soon weave into a single unit just as Dr. Frankenstein did again and again in the movies. The Testors glue my sutures, the tiny glass pots of heady paint my lightning. We then would present our models to each other. Kind of a contest. My friends and I would admire each others handiwork. Then and only then would we play with these monster models. We’d take them in back of my garage late at night and using a flashlight project their shadows up on the wall. Our friendly fiend s would slowly, ever so slowly, start moving toward us. The appropriate growls and grunts would issue from the dark. The beasts would loom larger and larger until finally they would attack, obliterating the light. We’d all scream and run for our miserable little lives, laughing and screeching and jumping about like maniacs on an overdose of Cocoa Puffs. Which of course we were.

As we got older and started to understand fire as a concept, we got the bright idea to destroy all our models. We blew them up or set fire to our once favored models. It wasn’t my idea. I had too much respect for the beasties. But the other kids forced me into it. Peer pressure. They called me a pussy. (On a side note, one time my mother caught me playing with matches as a result of peer pressure. She found out ‘cause I had set fire to my shirt. She was quick that way. “

Why did you do it?”, she inquired.

I lamely responded, “Because Johnny did it.”

“If Johnny jumped off a bridge would you do that, too?”

“If I was on fire, damned right!”

So with the knowledge of fire and the help of the devil in a red container with a fuse, we blew up cherry red Chevys. We baked B-52s, torched Dracula and grilled the Gillman. Finally came the day when struck a match to my most precious of models, The Bride of Frankenstein. Just after dusk we set her up behind the garage. The Bride was lying on a surgical table wrapped in plastic gauze with only her face exposed. We watched as the flames rose above the base and onto her body. And what a body! The shadows danced on the wall as we giggled and made lewd comments. As the fire engulfed the model I stared into it. Was that...? Did I see...? I gasped, pointed and stuttered, “Look!” The laughter subsided. Something was moving. It wasn’t us. Slowly, dramatically, the Bride of Frankenstein, daughter of the dead, started to rise. The heat contorting her plastic body. As if being controlled by some hidden Svengali, the former lump of plastic material came to life. “It’s alive. It’s alive.” I could hear the words of Colin Clive as the monster’s father ringing in my ears. “It’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive!” The re-animated thing was now sitting straight up. I could sense the fear in the air, the sweat running down our backs. In one quick, jerky movement the Bride twisted to the left and looked me right in the eyes. She stared at me; at irises that I’m sure were twice the size of my pupils. “We belong dead”’ I heard her whisper. I felt my scrotum shoot by my groin and leap past my lungs, making a mad dash for my throat and escape. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the Bride. Then, as if to make a final lunge for freedom, she lurched off the operating table and fell to the ground. Her blackened, charred body twisted once again and returned itself to its former prone position. Still. Quiet. At last at peace.

I have found out since then that this particular model, if I had kept it, would be worth several hundred dollars. If I had kept it in its original form that is. However, as a small grey lump of plastic, it aint worth doo-doo.

My Greatest Fear

As I watched Americas Funniest Home Videos (a.k.a. 'Nad Pain Iz Funnee") I watched a clip of a young boy who slipped and fell in his birthday cake. He cried for a bit and everyone laughed at him. Including me. After a while it occurred to me that perhaps the child cried not because it hurt but because he thought that he had ruined something. Something that was a one of a kind happening. I’ve had that feeling several times in my life and it’s one of the worst feelings I can remember. My greatest fear is that I’ll reach the end of my life and realize that I’ve screwed it up beyond redemption. That this special, one of a kind happening was gone forever. That I've fallen into my life's birthday cake. And everyone will be laughing.

Chain Letters

There are not many people I hate in this world. But of those select few I hate the people who send you those ‘good luck’ chain mail letters under a religious guise. They tell you that with love all things are possible. They tell of the great and good deeds the letter has done in the past. And then they mention how the people who have not continued the chain have met with disaster, sickness, bankruptcy or even death. And it’s even signed by St. Jude himself! I hope the people who perpetuate this letter rot in hell. Good luck!

Memory Man

In the mid-80's I lived in NYC. Upper East Side. Really upper. There was a fellow who I thought of as our ‘Memory Man”. He could retain any bit of information no matter how small. You could be watching some old film (his specialty) with him and he’ll say, “See that guy holding the torch in the back there? His first movie was “Tom’s Tough Ride” in 1927 with Betty Murch and Don Chaney in which he played a tree stump. His wife worked with the Disney studios as Walt’s’ two-bit whore.” Also truly amazing is his collection of reference material. Total information center. One night my friend Tim and his girlfriend at that time, a woman who just loved to argue; about anything, were over Michael’s apartment. Amanda, the girlfriend, was relating how in order to graduate sixth grade in Pennsylvania she had to take and pass a hunting test. Unbelievable, right? They had to know how to hunt in order to move into seventh grade. ( Now, I've since traveled some in PA and found, for some areas, this to be a reasonable practice.) Tim found all of this very hard to believe. After listening to the couple bicker for a few minutes, Michael nodded sagely and said, “Wait a minute.” He turned to his supply of ephemera, without moving from his chair I might add, and pulled out a pamphlet that had to do with passing your sixth grade Pennsylvania hunting test. At the sight of which, Amanda totally oblivious to the magnitude of the coincidence, turned to Tim and said, “See.”

My World, You're Welcome to It

Life's a jolly holiday...for Mary Poppins at least. For me, as with every other human treading this world, life is a mixture of jolly holidays, not so jolly work days, blurry TGIFs, not-nearly-long-enough summer vacations, dreary crunch weeks and assorted other moments that will either live forever in the stories we share with family and associates or, more likely, enter the dim recesses of our conscience mind only poking their head out once in awhile, usually at the most inopportune moments. Sometimes these accounts of our jolly lives are willingly shared with others, other times begrudgingly accepted, and many times met with a glazed eye, a half-attempted smile of interest, and an imploring look to any other innocent bystander that says, "Get me the hell out of this conversation before my head pops off!"

It's wonderfully amazing how our lives wrap themselves around certain milestones. Births, deaths, weddings, pizza nights. When I embarked on my adult life little did I realize (nor do any of us really) how many of each of these milestones I would witness or will still witness. During the next few weeks I shall attempt to share some of the minor milestones that have entwined themselves into my small but precious life. I will not belabor the big moments. We all experience those. How many times can we hear how beautiful X and Y's wedding was or how Uncle Z look so lifelike at the viewing. I want to concentrate my limited attention span on the smaller moments. Like today. Shed Day.

When I hit 48 I had a small mid-life crisis. Hardly a crisis really, just a life speed bump. Jarring at first, but hardly anything worth mentioning. It was this small speed bump of a crisis that brought me to the world of scooters. Not the little Vespas seen in countless movies of the 60's but a motorcycle-size scooter. A 400cc. A Suzuki Burgman (apparently the only Jewish-Japanese bike on the market). I had not ridden any sort of motorbike in years. As a teen I rode minbikes with my friends on the back roads and fields of Pennsylvania. Ah, riding the ol' minibike. Crouched on a Tom Thumb sized motorcycle, the vibrations of the tiny engine shooting up and down my spine, the prickly bushes striking my legs and arms leaving red streaks across them, bugs in my teeth...that was fun! Upon reflection, I guess I longed for that innocent, freedom I felt riding those bikes. Something to make me feel young again. As I am happily married so didn't need a young blonde on my arm or in my bed, and didn't want to spend the money on a fast, sleek European car, I brushed up on my knowledge of riding, got myself a learners permit and took some lessons with a Russian woman named Nadia in a parking lot at a local mall. The Burgman came, I practiced and passed both the written and driving test on my first try. "La Chaim! Domo aragato!", I said to the Burgman in it's native language and drove off into the countryside. No vibrations, prickly bush wounds or bugs but the fun was there. I somehow felt young and adult at the same time. Mission accomplished!

My only problem was that I did not have a garage in which to store the Burgman. The salesman suggested a cover for it, but also suggested that having a spot indoors for the winter months would be good. When December came I moved it into the basement. Our very small and cramped basement. And it was a right pain to bring the bike in and out. So I decided on getting Mr. Burgman his own room. A shed. I spent many hours of research on the 'net, on the phone, measuring spaces in the backyard over and over again. Anything for my new Japo-Hebrew friend. A proper shed was found, and purchased. The site prepared. The day circled on the calendar. April 5, 2006. Shed Day. I could hardly sleep the night before, not so much out of excitement for the new 8x12 vinyl clapboard style beauty, but more out of worry of all the things that could go wrong. The truck couldn't get up our small hill, the men wouldn't show up at all and I'd have to reschedule for another day in 2009, or the site would not be to specifications and the shed slip off it's concrete posts and would slide off our hill and into traffic 50 feet below where it would injure several drivers, 2 pedestrians and a prize winning Shiz-tzu. I worry a bit sometimes. However, on the day the men did show up. Two Eastern European men, possibly Russian. One 6'6", and blonde looking like the guy who tried to beat up Indiana Jones in that first flick. He grunted a lot. The other, upon first sight, appeared to be a roady for Travis Tritt. Cowboy hat, country western looking goatee beard thingee. But he also turned out to be Russian. (I wonder if they knew Nadia, the motorcycle instructor?) After a few hours, including a freak April snowstorm that dropped an inch on the ground but disappeared as quickly as it came, the shed was up. The Burgman has a new home. A proud day for both of us. I think I should put a sign above the door saying, "Welcome all who enter this happy place." Anyone know how to say that in Hebrew and Japanese?

A minor milestone. A small window into my life. My world. You're welcome to it.