There’s nothing like a Fall afternoon with brilliant sunshine and the sound of a lawn mower. It’s a hopeful sign. We’re not there yet. Actually, we will never be there; we don’t have to move. There comes to us.
It was cool on Friday night, and wife resisted turning on the fireplace. Too soon. She’s not ready for it. (Which is also there. We do not speak it by name, lest it hasten. Eventually she did, and I looked at that fireplace like it had a meter on it, numbers rolling over. All of a sudden we have to watch the thermostat closely, because the cost of making the house something warmer than the garage is, oh, quintuply-double, or whatever the percentage is.
Saturday came and went without errands or any trip outside the house. Just didn’t feel like it. The world is busy with people running errands, and I’ve no interest in fighting the amateurs at the grocery store. The people who leave their cart in the middle of the aisle while they grapple with the myriad manifestations of pasta. Just sat in the back yard with the dog, occasionally tussling over a rope, enjoying the day.
Why does the dog decide ROPE NOW? He’s splayed in the grass, basking in the waning warmth. He hears, he stirs, bolts up, looks around, sees the rope, and AH HAH, engage. Always the conundrum: please throw it so I can chase it I love to chase it also hell no I’m not letting this go. You look into the face of a dog holding on to his end of the rope, and you see the black pools of madness. Primal strife, to the death. But scritches first.
That was Saturday. In the evening I wrote and tried not to watch something on the streaming services I haven’t seen before. You know the feeling, right? IT's 11:45. You don’t want to commit. On the other hand, here’s a movie you don’t remember anything about, except that I liked it, so let’s watch a bit, and have it end up in the pane of movies where the progress bar is about 17% red. Oh hey anything new on Disney+? Right! Those Pixar shorts about Dug the Dog!
Except they’re not very good, and we all know Carl died. Up was a dream he had before he passed in his sleep. Octogenarian wrangles enough balloons to make his house airborne? C’mon.
Maybe there’s something on Amazon Prime . . . aw, man, there’s too much on Amazon Prime. And so it came to pass that I sat at the kitchen table and watched YouTube videos of unsold 1960s TV pilots, 30% of which had William Schallert.
The failures are more interesting than the famous big shows everyone remembers.
Somewhat related: Daughter wrote a script for a competition at school. The winner gets their short film produced. She texted me Sunday afternoon to ask if I wanted to read it.
Nah I’m good
OF COURSE
But, I said, I was in the middle of a football game, and would get to it right after. It was a good game, even though the coaching staff never listens to me and decides to miss the two-point conversions instead of missing the field goal. Afterwards - and it took a while, there was overtime - I went home to find Wife decorating the yard for Halloween. It’s not that she’s into Halloween; she is slightly less indifferent than I am. It’s for the kids. Which is nice.
Last year’s Halloween seems like a long, long time ago. Wrapping up the candy and putting them in the driveway. All of that seems like a long time ago. Another culture. A good sign, that. It’s not healthy if you’re as anxious today as you were last October. And it wasn’t a good sign if you were as anxious last October as you were in April.
After I finished hanging the bats, which I don’t get to say too often, I read the script. It was, as expected, very good. Of course I’m biased! But dang, I was writing absolute crap at her age, and she is just a natural.
Text, four hours later: her script was chosen to be put into production.
So: the dog got steak, the decorations are up, the Vikings won, I wrote a lot, and did a site on 30s newspaper cheesecake. Now I’m going to watch some TV and sit by the fire, if I can just get the bank to approve this loan.
The popular conception of the useless poet:
"Smoketony Eyewright," one of my favorite movies
Not sure they have enough choices.
But . . . but it's not the last Friday of the week! What's going on? Relax; I have a Halloween entry for next week.
The supply of Starks is rapidly diminishing, but they have enough to last to the end of the serial at this rate.
Hah:
“And the remaining boys.”
Who again?
And of course:
Hi Remaining Boys! Surprise!
Anyway, Tracy wasn’t blown up, just trapped under a weighted net.
WHEW
Once he’s topside, he goes after the Remaining Boys, but they’ve escaped in the torpedo boat.
Back to HQ, where the head man says to keep working on the case. But in the meantime . . .
HEY
AWW, IT'S A CLIP SHOW RECAP
It takes up almost the entire ep, then goes back to the office - Tracy gets a call from someone in the hospital who has news about the torpedo boat. Some guy who was working with the Starks, and got shot. He gives Tracy the location of the boat - it’s in the channel, in “an abandoned ship,” then he dies, having served his purpose.
Tracy finds the stolen boat in no time, and uses his two-way wrist radio to call for reinforcements.
Kidding! Dick Tracy doesn’t have a two-way wrist radio. Why would Dick Tracy have a two-way wrist radio. And so:
Dick's getting good and wet lately. I don't think he's slept, either.
