INTERVIEW WITH CORTRIGHT MCMEEL, AUTHOR OF "SHORT"

Hi folks,

I’ve got a treat for you today. An interview with Cortright McMeel with his thoughts on writing and on the subject of his first novel, Short, which is burning up the sales charts and is in serious consideration to be made into a flick.

“Cort” and I became friends several years ago when he emailed me and asked if I had any stories I could submit to his new noir magazine, Murdaland. I ended up sending him three short stories and he ended up taking all three and combining them into one story, which appeared in the inaugural issue. He titled the story, “Felon.” It was about… well, take a guess… That alone made him my friend… but when he paid me for all three, he became my best friend. More than one editor, under like circumstances, would have claimed that since it became one story, they’d only pay for one, but not Cort. He’s a writer’s editor all the way!

Since that day, our friendship has only grown. We began to correspond on a regular basis, and I was fortunate to have him send me an early copy of his novel. It absolutely floored me with its brilliance. In return, over time, I sent him copies of my own novels, and his response to them amazed and gratified me.  He loved them! In fact, he recommended them to both his editor at St. Martin’s and his former editor who is now at Little, Brown.

We both share a love of the same books and writers. It’s not a love of “safe” authors at all, but of writers who took chances, challenged the status quo, who wrote the kinds of books that are banned and even vilified by many. You know… real writers with a set of balls (and I mean, men and women). Who are concerned with only one thing. Truth.

I am proud to call Cort my friend. I think you’ll soon see his particular brand of genius in the following interview and I hope you’ll glom onto a copy of his wonderful novel, Short.

And, without further ado, here’s Cort and me chinnin’…

LES: Let’s not beat around the bush. This is a web site about the writing process. What was the biggest challenge for you in writing your debut novel, SHORT?

CORT: Without a doubt constructing a tight plot that made sense and moved quickly.

LES: In your novel there has to be about a hundred characters, from traders, brokers, executives, lawyers, “beancounters” to strippers, Russian gangsters & sea captains. Did you ever find it overwhelming to fill your novel with such a wide array of characters?

CORT: Short answer, no, but my editor did. I like to write on a large canvas. Just sort of let the whole circus run rampant into one big chaotic drunken carnival, as it were. It makes the writing and creating part more fun because there are more options. The characters just interact like so many electrons jammed in a jar bouncing off each other and the potential for humor is greater. 

LES: You say your editor was overwhelmed. Explain.

CORT: Well, John Schoenfelder at St. Martin’s had his work cut out for him. But he’s a brilliant guy and he’s like a master bio-medical engineer who inserted a narrative spine into the book. I helped him some too, of course. But he gave me a “tight plot 101” tutorial which helped immensely.

LES: Which was?

CORT: He told me to read B. Traven’s GENERAL FROM THE JUNGLE and Castle Friedman’s tight, excellent Swamp Yankee noir called GO WITH ME. I studied those books and busted out outlines of them. Both those books are perfectly plotted. They never veer off-course, the heart of the action propels the book, driving it toward the inevitable finish. 

LES: I read in The Washington Post review of SHORT that there is a noir element to your book, but when I read it I saw in your hard-drinking, carousing, battling characters more Charles Bukowski than Jim Thompson?

CORT: The trading plot may drive the narrative, but I think you make a great point. The spirit of Bukowski definitely looms here. If I was writing about garbage men or ophthalmologists, I’m sure the scurrilous poets and drunken dreamers would come out within the characters of those professions. It’s hard for me to write a book and not have some character who’s howling at the moon and spouting Coleridge or the 7 Principles of BUSHIDO. By that I mean when you write a book, you can’t help but have your spirit infect certain characters. I remember reading somewhere that Dostoyevsky said all three of the Brothers Karamazov were based on different aspects of himself.

LES: What about writing characters that your “spirit doesn’t infect”?

CORT: I think characters that you are discovering for the first time is like a journalist doing an in-depth interview. They tend be easier to write because there is less danger of going too far. With these characters the writer is less tempted to celebrate or crush them and for me these characters usually come out clean and real. It’s like Yeats said that the artist should “cast a cold eye.” With that cold eye you can fully realize a character’s being. My weakness is that I always like to have at least one or two characters infused with my madness for life.

LES: Why is that a weakness? You say Dostoyevsky did it.

CORT: First of all, I’m no Fyodor. But I’ll tell you about the weakness. It has an actual name. One of my great friends, Michael Langnas, edited the novel throughout and there were parts where I created certain characters who went off the deep end writing-wise. I was too consumed with their story and their back story and their drunken antics and they were derailing the novel. Langnas called them “Leprechauns.” He came in like the Executioner and just annihilated all these scenes where the Leprechauns were working their evil, drunken magic. It’s good to have a friend like Langnas. He, indeed, possesses Yeats “colder eye.”

It was Langnas who when Short was finally done, kindly described it to someone as Bukowski meets Balzac, which I took to mean you get the personal demons and black comedy of personal disintegration you find in Bukow with maybe the wider social arc and look into institutions you find in Balzac. He might’ve just been being nice, but it's a cool thing to at least aspire to.

LES: What would you say to a writer writing their first novel? Any words of advice?

CORT: Since I can’t seem to shut up about Bukowski, I’d say: First off, read his excellent poem “How to be a Great Writer.” I’ve got that taped to my wall and it helped me through 15 years of rejections. Read that poem and if it doesn’t do it for you, find some set of lines or phrases or something that will cheer you up and make you smile while you type the keys in obscurity wondering if you’re embarking on a fool’s errand. That poem and good friends are what saved me from giving up. My friend, Eddie Vega, ex-marine and a tug boat second mate, as well as an award-winning, published poet and a rum-swilling, cigar-smoking Cuban came to my attic like ten years ago. I was really really down in the dumps. My career right out of Columbia MFA Writing Program in 1996 seemed on its way, I published a story called “Fullback Glory” and it was runner up in the Playboy Fiction Contest. I was riding high and I wrote a novel and then… nothing. I wrote a bunch more short stories, not giving up and like 100’s of rejections followed. Eddie called me and I told him I was going to burn down my library and forget about the whole thing. He came down from New York to Baltimore and said: Cort, look. I’m going to come down and read your shit with you in the room. If your stuff sucks I’ll help you burn down your library. I’ll bring the fucking matches myself.

So he came down and I drank tequila and kind of watched him read like ten or twelve stories. It was like five hours so by the end I was pretty drunk. At the end of it he looked up at me and passed me a cigar. Without saying a word he lit mine and lit his. Then he said these words:

Mr. McMeel. You have one good story.

I was so fucking drunk, and had no faith in myself and was so depressed and deranged that all I remember was laughing hysterically like a madman. I was so deranged that my wife knocked on the door and wondered if everything was okay.

LES: And was it? What happened?

CORT: The long and short of it was the story Eddie liked called “Mahler’s Ninth” got picked up for publication by Peter Stitt at the Gettysburg Review within four weeks of me sending it.

LES: And?

CORT: And fuck it. That story was all I needed. I was back, man. 

LES: And what now?

CORT: Well, they tell me you got to worry about sales and reviews and all that stuff. What I worry about is getting down to the honest guts of my next novel like I did with Short. I’m proud of Short, but I know my best is yet to come. And there will be no giving up again, not ever. I’ve thrown away all my matches.

WHY NEWSPAPERS AREN'T DYING: THEY'RE DEAD (Some proof...)

Hi Folks,

Sorry it’s been awhile, but had a busy week with my class and my own writing and… to be honest, they come first. I love you guys, but most of you are writers so I know you understand.

Anyway, today I was glancing at my local newspaper while in the “reading room” (yeah, you’re right—that room) and trying to figure out why I still pay for the local newspaper. Just about everything I read in it I read a day or two before on the Internet. For in-depth articles the Internet doesn’t give me? Sorry, the majority are the same articles from the same sources. In fact, most of the time I get more depth from the Internet articles—the local paper usually doesn’t run the full articles. Most of the other articles are from The Washington Post so I try to avoid those...

The local color? Please. I live in Ft. Wayne. We just had our first national news-worthy story yesterday when it was reported that the city fathers (or is it mothers? Midwives?) were debating if they wanted to name a downtown erection after a former mayor named… ready?... Harry Baals. (You can’t make this stuff up…) Even better, it turns out his first wife’s name was… ready?... Minnie. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’…

Anyway, it wasn’t any of those items that justify paying for this rag. In fact, I heard about the Harry Baals thing from my friend Tom in Phoenix who read about it while taking a break from watching for illegal aliens who keep ruining his yard by running through it. Tom's from this area originally and burns a candle every day in thanks for not having to shovel snow... (which happens to be the subject of this--it all comes 'round.)

I thought perhaps the value of a newspaper might be justified from local writers with their unique take on things. I picked up one of the main sections, the one labeled “Living” and the feature article caught my eye instantly. It had a photo of a woman dressed all in black and wearing a fedora (or, witch’s hat, I’m not sure…) shoveling a mound of snow and on the shovel’s handle she had tied what looked like a pillow case to look like a flag of surrender. Not sure what that was all about—it looked like it was there in case she fell into a snowdrift and could perhaps hoist it as a distress signal.

The headline read: “If you can’t beat it, use it.” It was about… snow. Hey, good stuff, I figured. We’ve been dumped on for the past week or so and about all we do is shovel it ad nauseum.

Her essay question and theme was: “So what do you do with all that snow?” Well, personally, I hadn’t thought much about it. Having a somewhat limited imagination inasfar as piles of snow go—look at it when you’re forced to and hope it goes away—is about the extent of any thought I’d given the subject, but by golly, this person had actually come up with some uses for the stuff. She even got a byline for the article and it was on the front page of the section, so I assumed this would be some pretty scintillating stuff. Kind of thing you’re not likely to get on the Internet and probably why I keep shelling out bucks for this rag.

So, I read on. Her illuminating first answer to her own question was: “Sure, you could wait for it to melt, but what fun would that be?” Well, she had me there. That had been about all I’d ever come up with on the (very) few times I’d considered the question.

Now, I was excited! This intrepid reporter had actual uses for the piles of snow that were everywhere. Fun things. At least, that was the implication… By golly, maybe I’d underestimated the content of newspapers. At this point, I was ready to pick up the phone and renew my subscription for another three years. But… something told me to read further. Be cautious.

Her first fun suggestion:

Make some yard art. (Her words, not mine.)

Now that your lawn ornaments and multi-colored, solar-powered mushrooms are underneath a large blanket of snow, you can make some new ones. Be creative. You could make a deer, or some other woodland creature, or how about an army of mini-snowmen to protect your fortress?

When I read her first fun-filled activity suggestion, I began to suspect it was a good thing that I hadn’t renewed that subscription just yet. First, we don’t have any lawn ornaments except for that politically-incorrect statue they’re always circulating petitions in the 'hood about, and I’m not quite sure what “solar-powered mushrooms” are, and I’m reasonably sure we don’t have any, covered by snow or not. Is that an Al Gore thing? It’s minus 7 degrees outside with the wind chill, so crawling around in snowdrifts sculpting deer or other “woodland creatures” (whatever those are… skunks and feral cats?) doesn’t really match up with other potential activities that might rival that for fun… such as watching a basketball game in a warmer place with a brew in hand. How long does it take to sculpt a deer (and what do you use? your hands? a chain saw?) or a woodland creature? Even a skunk would take some modicum of skill, especially from fingers numb from frostbite. I’m afraid I’d be exhausted just doing the deer and don’t know if I could last long enough to mold an “army of mini-snowmen.” How many are in an army, anyway? Fifty? Two hundred? Even a couple of hundred doesn’t sound like much of an army—sounds more like the local PTA meeting. And, I don’t really see my house as a “fortress” to be honest. It’s more like a… house. That’s about to get repossessed. Maybe I do need an army of mini-snowmen. To help me fight off the bank and the guy who’s trying to repo my car. The more I think about it, that army of mini-snowmen sounds like a good idea. Give ‘em M-16s. Wait. Those are outlawed now, aren’t they? Well, are pea shooters still legal? This is gonna be some sorry army…

Her second suggestion:

A natural outdoor freezer.

Take some of your frozen goods and set them outside to be kept cold by nature. Cold beer, anyone? What better way to chill a brewski or pop than  than shoving it in the snow. Just be careful that you don’t set something outside that can attract wildlife.

I wish I could make stuff like this up! On the surface, this sounds doable. It’s for sure cold enough to use “nature’s refrigerator.” On the other hand, with unemployment over 10% for this area, I’m not too sure I should be sticking foodstuffs outside. I can see the lines already—this would look like the food pantry the Salvation Army runs for the indigenous. Although, I suspect the teenagers on the block will be ecstatic if I start sticking my brewskies outside. Maybe that’s what she means about not putting something out that can attract “wildlife.” Are teenagers considered wildlife? Perhaps so… I’m going to have to think more about the brewski thing as well. How long does it take beer to freeze solid at 7 below? Another drawback to this—I’d have to go outside in this stuff both to stick it in the snow and then retrieve it. Maybe I could time it for halftime.

Third fun activity:

Save on water usage.

Melt snow and use it for things around the house that may take a lot of water, such as flushing the toilet, watering the plants, cleaning, etc. On average, about 10 inches of snow is equal to one inch of water.

Or, the way I figure it, one sculpted deer equals one flushing of the stool. Or, six and a half mini-snowmen from my army. (Or, “white and yellow infantrymen” as I refer to them… we have a lot of dogs on our block) Is it just me, or does it sound as if you need to haul an awful lot of snow in for a tiny bit of water? And, where do you put all this snow when you’re melting it? For a bath, I figure I’ll need to fill up the spare bedroom. And then, how do you warm it to bath temperature? Also, if you’re using this much snow, aren’t you going to be exposing your “solar-powered mushrooms?” Is that wise? I need to call her up and ask her if these are legal mushrooms or the kind we used to call “schrooms” and paid a lot of money for and threw out the window when the cop car red light went on...

Next up…

Help for ouchies. (I swear I wish I could make this stuff up!)

Fill a plastic sandwich bag with snow, zip it up and use it as a homemade ice pack. Great for injuries, icing down knees or for headaches.

Mary! Make me a sandwich bag snow pack! I have a raging headache! Make one for yourself, too, for later on when we go to bed and I want to get frisky. My knees are pretty banged up as well, from crawling around outside in the snow, sculpting woodland creatures, but I can’t stop shivering so maybe a sandwich ice pack isn’t what I really want to be holding on them right now…

Are you ready? Hold on. Here’s the next one:

Wax remover.

Use some snow on freshly spilled candle wax. Freezing wax can help get it out of carpets or off tablecloths easier.

I don’t know about you, but I’m having more fun just thinking about all these fun activities than I’ve had in months. Why is there “freshly-spilled candle wax” on the carpet anyway? Oh… yeah. From the six hundred candles we had to light to help warm the house from the spare bedroom full of my developing bath water…

You’d think the quality of these suggestions would begin to flag, but you’d be wrong.

Eat it. (The reporter’s words, not mine. I’m too polite to say something like this to you.)

Grab some clean snow (the cleanest you can find) and make some ice cream. A simple recipe includes getting 1 gallon of snow, one (14-ounce) can of sweetened condensed milk and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mix the ingredients together and eat up.

This really works and is fun to do! I made lemon ice cream! Mary’s calling a lawyer—I wonder why. She only had a spoonful and then I revealed the recipe. The dog liked it. He even took his bowl and made it even more lemony… I confess I'm a bit worried about the cleanliness of this snow. Don't we have an acid rain thing going on?

Two more to go. You guys taking notes?

Make snow cones.

Get an ice cream scooper and scoop up some snow into a bowl. Use juice, Kool-Aid or flavored drinks and pour on top. Grab a spoon or just dig in face first.

I have a tip. I just used some more of that yellow snow I used for the ice cream for this. And, I ended up “digging in face first” as per our intrepid reporter’s advice, but it wasn’t exactly my choice. Mary kind of did that for me. That hurt, Mary! Well, she’s gone. Up to bed with her sandwich bag ice pack. Looks like I might have to use the spare bedroom tonight. Oh, wait! My bath water’s only about half finished making.

And the last one.

Snowballs.

Make some snowballs and freeze them for later for the ultimate summer snowball fight. They’ll never know what hit ‘em. Now that’s using the snow.

At last! A fun activity I already know how to do! I have a twist on mine, though. I put rocks in them. Just imagine my neighbor’s surprise when he gets whapped up alongside the head in July with one of these puppies! Some fun!

Well, I’ve completely changed my mind on the value of newspapers. I’m calling the delivery lady up right now and renewing my subscription for the next ten years. You can’t get this kind of article on the Internet, no way! Well, I would call her but I can’t find my phone. I think it’s in the spare bedroom at the bottom of my bath.

First thing tomorrow though. Right now, I’m going to go out and see what those teenagers are doing in my yard. They better not be after my brewskies in “nature’s fridge.” I might have to break out my snowballs early.

If you’re interested in getting a copy, this was in today’s (Thursday’s) Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the publicity and extra sales. For some reason, I’ve heard receipts were kind of down… It’s just heart-warming to know our journalism schools are still turning out outstanding reporters and editors. Not to mention Ft. Wayne is keeping up the standards of the town. This is the place that gave the world the “Potato Chip Lady” for those of you old enough to remember her. She worked at a potato chip factory here in town for years and collected chips off the line that looked like famous people. True story. Johnny Carson heard of her and flew her out to his show. Had to pay for two tickets, because she had to have a seat for her favorite chip, who was a lookalike for (I think) Richard Millhouse Nixon. While on the show, she was pointing out all the famous people her chips looked like and Johnny reached over and grabbed Tricky Dicky and ate him! It was hilarious. I understand she had a bit of a mental breakdown because of the trauma, but she recovered. Not sure Ft. Wayne has…

I wonder if she had a chip that looked like Harry Baals… I'd like to see that one.

I hope my mini-snowmen army look threatening enough if the locals read this and head back down with their pitchforks and torches again…

Y’all come back, heah?

Blue skies,

Les

TALKING ABOUT THE NOVEL YOU'RE WORKING ON

Hi folks!

Sometimes, the obvious is so much in plain sight—right in front of our eyes, so close that we can reach out and touch it—that we fail to see it. That’s happened to me more times than I can count, and I’ll bet it’s happened to you as well.

One of those times this happened to me was the day I realized I was “talking” my novel and not writing it. It happened when I was sick with the flu and had to take a couple of days off work. Best illness I ever had!

At the time, I was a hair designer. Had a very successful salon called “Bold Strokes” that my wife Mary and I owned. We were booked solid weeks in advance. Each day, I saw an average of fifteen clients. I was writing at the time and it was a topic of conversation with just about every person who sat in my chair. I loved talking about my writing and they at least claimed they loved hearing about it.

“What’re you working on now, Les?” was a familiar question. Or, “How’s the novel going? What’s happened since the last time (she was in)?”

And, off I’d go. I’d regale my captive audience with what my characters were doing, what I planned to have them do. Watch their faces as I described the twist I was planning. Seeing their surprise and hearing their words of praise just felt good. Better than being hit in the eye with a short stick, anyway.

And discovered that more and more, my daily output was diminishing. And not by a little. By a lot.

I thought maybe it was all over. That the well had run dry. That it was probably a good thing that I had a trade and was good at it.

Actually, I’m glossing over what I actually felt. What I actually felt was… suicidal. If I couldn’t write any longer, what was the point? It was my life—the important part, anyway. My wife sensed my despair and began cutting up my meat before she served it and hid all the sharp instruments.

And, then, I got sick. Really sick, hurling chunks sick.

Had to go home. For two days.

Best thing that ever happened to me.

Why?

Well, because during that first midmorning, I felt good enough to get up and sit down in front of my typewriter. (For those of you too young to remember, a “typewriter” was a medieval machine used to create letters and stuff like that. Novels. Kidnap notes. It looked something like a computer keyboard does, but without the screen and the Internet. No porn available with it. If you ever get to a museum, chances are they’ll have one on display back with the arrowheads from the Nez Pierce. Look at it carefully and try to imagine writing on something without a Delete key… Now you know why it’s okay to laugh whenever somebody talks about the “good old days.”)

For months before my illness, I’d struggle mightily to write a page or two of my novel each night. This particular morning, I ripped off ten pages before I even had my first cup of coffee. Ended up with over twenty pages for the day. The next day, I did even better. Wrote almost thirty pages. For you non-writers, that’s a lot. Got fifty pages written in two days! I was back! I was a writer again!

I went back to work the next day and couldn’t wait to get back to my typewriter at the end of the day. And didn’t end up with as much as a single page, even though I’d sat in front of it for over two hours. Two stinkin’ paragraphs. Lousy paragraphs that I would have crumpled up and thrown away if it wasn’t all I had to show for my time.

WTF! (Translated, that means, “What the heck!”)

What was happening? Were the previous two days some kind of evil trick God was playing on me? Had those two Jehovah Witnesses who had stopped by placed a curse on me for telling them I believed in reincarnation and was coming back as Cheryl Tiegs' favorite bra? (I’m dating myself here, aren’t I…)

I have to tell you I honestly felt despair. It was like watching someone going crazy and then realizing you were looking into a mirror.

What’d I do? What any intelligent person does when they face a problem of this magnitude. I went home and opened a bottle of Jack and began knocking it back. What? You thought I was going to say I went to church and a minister talked to me and I had my “come to Jesus” moment? Nah… Just cracked open some Jack and tried to think. For those who say alcohol never solves any problems, well… all I can say is he’s never been to my church and heard my preacher…

It probably wasn’t the Jack, to be honest, but I did some serious thinking and realized something. What was different about the days off. The difference was I hadn’t talked about my novel to a single person.

That was it! I had my eureka moment. (Thank you, Mr. Daniels…) The lightbulb went off and I saw clearly what my almost nonexistent writing output was all about.

I was talking it all out before I got to the typewriter. I’d actually been “writing” all day when I was regaling my clients. By the time I got home in the evening, I’d already been “writing” for 12 hours. There was just nothing left. I was simply spent by the time I got home.

Do you supposed I quit talking to my clients about whatever I was working on and began to produce prodigious quantities of pages nightly? Well, as a matter of fact, I did. That’s exactly what happened. And I haven’t stopped. I mean, jeez, I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but this was pretty obvious, even to me.

Like I said at the beginning of this—sometimes the obvious is in plain sight. Once you see it, it’s probably a good idea not to forget it. And I haven’t. These days, I don’t talk much about whatever I’m working on at all. I may talk about something I’ve already written, but there’s no way I’m going to talk to anyone about the work I’m planning on doing. I do that and it’s already written. Only it’s not yet on paper. I don’t see any advantage in that at all.

I don’t even tell my wife Mary what I’m working on any more. To her credit (or perhaps good sense or good taste), she doesn’t ask or care. She knows she’ll get to read it once it’s published. That’s good enough for her. I’m not even sure she reads it then, although she’s got the good grace to pay for her own copy and I can’t ask for more than that.

If you find yourself at the coffee shop or at work or wherever and talking to friends about what you’re working on, ask yourself if you’re not doing what I did—writing it before you get to your typewriter. Although… you probably have a computer…

If you think you are, there’s a simple solution.

Quit doing that.

The fee for this priceless information should you feel morally obligated to remit it is the price of a bottle of Jack.

Next week, I’ll talk about how laying on the couch and staring into space is the writer working. This one will be aimed at spouses…

Blue skies,

me

 Talking philosophy here, not novels... Seriously...

Post my agent just sent me that I'm reposting here-Caveat-Strong (and funny) language

(Just click on the link below)
No, Seriously, I’m Not Fucking Around, You Really Don’t Want To Be A Writer

A bit of my own writing...

Hi folks,

Thought I’d post some writing stuff today. The following is an excerpt from one of the two memoirs I’m working on. It covers about a three-year period and is focused on the baseball adventures my son Mike and I enjoyed. These were some of the best years of my life.

Hope you like it!

FOUR-SEAM GRIP

(From an as-yet unpublished memoir, working title: MIKE AND ME)

            I look out over the ball diamond at the Country Estates Mobile Home Park at the six boys lined up on the third-base line and another row of six along the first-to-second basepath as they toss baseballs to their partners and I see another ballfield in my past. A diamond nestled in the corner of the recreation yard at Pendleton Reformatory, eighty-seven miles south of where I am today. And thirty years in the distance.

            I'd been required to take a 2-5 year timeout from life for various crimes against society, mostly burglaries. Eighty-two of them, to be precise. Eighty-two second-degree burglaries were the "official" ones, the ones the authorities were aware of. There were possibly more…

            There are no fourteen-foot-thick gray walls around this field. Just the mobile homes behind us, a community center to our right and a woods where left and center field end. Beyond right field is the access road to the park, which leads in from the highway.

            The bubble-gum-chewing eleven- and twelve-year-olds hurling the horsehide before me on this day are the members of my Wallen youth baseball team. I am their coach. We're an AABC team. This is my first year at Wallen. For the past five years I coached in Little League at St. Joe, over in the northeast part of town where I lived. None of these boys know my past, nor do their parents. If they did, I'd be their ex-coach, I think. I'm pretty sure at least some of the moms and dads would be demanding my resignation should they learn I served two years in prison for burglary once upon a time.

            Although, one boy does know. My son, Mike. He's the tall one on the end, throwing lasers to the tough little guy who usually catches him in games, Steve Tipton, the son of my assistant coach, Steve, Sr. I know I can trust Mike not to divulge the information he has about his dad to his teammates. I can trust Mike with anything. We're best friends and we talked about his father's past a long time ago in one of our nightly "guy talks" we have each evening just before he shuts his eyes and drifts off to sleep. It's our secret. We have a couple-three secrets, us two guys.

            Sometimes, after he falls asleep, I sit on the edge of his bed and simply stare at him. Sometimes, we hold hands as we talk and he falls asleep that way. I don't want to take my hand away, so I'll sit there until his unclenches and then I'll leave. Not before I bend over and kiss his slightly damp forehead, the sweet smell of his little-boy hair filling my nostrils. And my heart.

            "Four-seam grips!" I shout at my team. "Remember. Always four-seam grips."

            Our first drill at each practice begins the same. We warm up in these lines and work on our receiving and throwing mechanics. Once they're warmed up, we'll hold the competition they're all waiting for. Keep extending the distance between the lines until there's only one pair left who haven't dropped the ball or underthrown it.

They know to be in an athletic, "linebacker" position, glove extended, knees, waist and elbows bent, withdraw the glove slightly as the ball arrives. Use both hands to catch the ball. Get the ball out of the glove fast, get the four-seam grip and pivot, glove extended in front, throwing arm back, knees bent, fingers on top of the ball, hand slightly above the shoulder. The wrist is also bent. Every possible joint on the body is bent except the neck and the neck is turned toward the left if the thrower is right-handed, to the right if he's a southpaw. Bring the glove hand to your heart as you pivot toward your target and throw.

            Give a good target, I say. I say this quite often. Hands up. Chest-high. Get the ball out quick.

            Expect a bad throw, I repeat.

            This is like life, I tell them, my attempt to weave a bit of philosophy into what we're doing. Give folks a good target and expect a bad throw. Be happy when you get a good throw and prepared if you don't.

            How do you catch the ball? I ask.

            With your feet, they yell out, in unison. Move to the ball. Don't "arm" it. They're well-rehearsed. Good kids, these. They pay attention.

            Coach Steve and I stop the kids occasionally and walk up and down the lines, checking on their grips. I'm a preacher and the four-seam grip is my sermon topic.

            I quiz 'em.

            "Why do we always want to use a four-seam grip?" I want to know.

            By this, the second week of practice, twelve hands shoot up. They all know by now.

            "Because," says the other Mike on our team, diminutive Mike Rish, when I point to him. His dad sponsors the team. Rish Construction. "If you use another grip, the ball may sail or curve or sink." It's important Rish knows this. He's going to be our second baseman. I don't think "sail" was a word in his vocabulary before joining this team, but it is now. Probably "sink" wasn't either, at least not in this context. Mike Rish wants to be a pitcher - ten of the twelve players on this team do - so curve was a word familiar to him. They all want to throw curves but we don't let 'em. They throw 'em anyway.

            You can only do so much and then you have to realize they have minds of their own.

            I point to another boy who still waves his hand frantically. He has knowledge to share. They all have the same knowledge, but Ian Tipton is anxious to show his coach he's been paying attention. Coach Tipton and I have Ian slotted for third base and maybe do some catching. He's a hard-nosed kid, lives here in the trailer park. It's Jeff, his dad, who arranged for us to use their field for practice. Ian is Coach Steve's nephew. Jeff helps us coach.

            "The ball may slip and you'll get a wild throw," Ian says, in a voice that's already changing, hitting those high and low tones during the same sentence, sometimes in the same word. "You gotta use the seams." Ian knows this now, but during the season, during a bang-bang play, he'll forget. I'll get ticked off for a second and then remember he's only twelve. I'm in my fifties and I forget lots more than that and most times my own memory lapses don't come during the pressure of bang-bang plays.

            Bang-bang plays are kind of what got me into trouble all those years back. I was kind of a bang-bang guy. Guy with a million-dollar arm and a ten-cent head, kind of like the character Ebby Calvin (Nuke) LaLoosh in the movie Bull Durham…but with more serious consequences than Nuke suffered. Instead of nearly getting cut from a baseball team, I ended up close to getting cut by life. Like Nuke, I got lucky and was able to make a comeback.

            To a large degree because of that kid out there.        

            "Four-seam grips!" I yell out at the boys.

            It's my mantra.

 Mike playing first base at a Perfect Game Showcase when he was a freshman.

 And, here he is for his eighth-grade basketball team.

Here, Mike's pitching for his Snider H.S. team. 

Not baseball! Mike's sitting on his Uncle Neil's bike and begging him to give the bike to him!

And last... Mike and I getting our "makeup" before our appearance (twice!) on MSNBC-News for the book we co-authored, a spoof on Little League baseball titled "Surviving Little League."

Which is this book. We had a wonderful time writing it together and the best thing was we got to go on TV and were also interviewed on over 40 radio shows from all over the country from Pittsburgh to San Francisco. Best experience of my life was writing this book with Mike (it was his idea) and appearing on all the shows. (He was 12 when we wrote it.)

HUCKLEBERRY FINN AND SILLY-ASS PCISM

I was going to post a lengthy rant on the insidiousness of PCism and how it is nothing but outright censorship and does nothing but deteriorate our rights to free speech, but ran across this cartoon and I couldn't have expressed it any better.

Sometimes humor is the best way to fight bullies and other forms of morons... Although, it's not certain that PC advocates are capable of seeing themselves for what they are...

Blue skies,
Les

SNOW IN INDIANA!

Hi folks, My mother lives an hour north of me in South Bend, Indiana. She just called me a few minutes ago to give me the weather report. She's 88, so I get almost daily weather reports. She doesn't realize there's an invention called "television" that also reports on the weather fairly regularly. I don't tell her because what else would we talk about? Electricity? Even though South Bend is only an hour north of us here in Ft. Wayne, they get an entirely different kind of weather. Lying just south of Lake Michigan, they get the full brunt of the "lake effect" where snow comes over Lake Michigan from Canada and waits until the snow clouds sight land and then dumps it. On South Bend and the general area from Michigan City over. By the time the clouds reach Ft. Wayne, they're pretty much depleted and that's the way I like it. She had a great report today. She said they already had 24 inches of snow and it was still snowing and was supposed to all day. It made me feel so good! Why? Because we had half an inch and it's pretty well melted off... I laughed so hard at her news that I had to hang up. I called her back and gave her one of those "little white lies" you give your mother. I told her there was this hysterically funny show on TV that I was watching and that's why I broke up laughing. She asked me what a TV was and I had to explain that and then  we hung up. I await an update tomorrow. Did I mention I hate snow? I didn't see any until I was 12 years old, growing up in Freeport, Texas which isn't noted much for its blizzards. Once I saw some, I was over it. Never wanted to see any ever again. In fact, I don't like that "changing of the seasons" people go fruity over. In my perfect world, it would always be 95 degrees with 100% humidity for 364 days of the year. On one day a year, we would have winter, which would be a day when the temp went down to 75 and the tips of the palm tree fronds would turn brown. But, for only one day! A few minutes after talking to Mom, I received an email from some good friends of mine, John and Angie Felabom, and they sent me the following. I wish I knew the author so I could give him or her proper credit and if I find out who it was, I'll include it. John and Angie live in South Bend, so they were experiencing the same weather as Mom. I wish them the best...               Diary of a Demented INDIANA-ER   December 8 - 6:00 PM It started to snow. The first snow of the season and the wife and I took our cocktails and sat for hours by the window watching the huge soft flakes drift down from heaven. It looked like a Grandma Moses print. So romantic we felt like newlyweds again. I love snow! December 9     We woke to a beautiful blanket of crystal white snow covering every inch of the landscape. What a fantastic sight! Can there be a more lovely place in the whole world? Moving here was the best idea I've ever had!  Shoveled for the first time in years and felt like a boy again. I did both our driveway and the sidewalks. This afternoon the snowplow came along and covered up the sidewalks and closed in the driveway, so I got to shovel again. What a perfect life! December 12 The sun has melted all our lovely snow. Such a disappointment! My neighbor tells me not to worry- we'll definitely have a white Christmas.  No snow on Christmas would be awful! Bob says we'll have so much snow by the end of winter, that I'll never want to see snow again. I don't think that's possible. Bob is such a nice man, I'm glad he's our neighbor. December 14 Snow, lovely snow! 8 inches last night. The temperature dropped to -20.  The cold makes everything sparkle so. The wind took my breath away, but I warmed up by shoveling the driveway and sidewalks. This is the life!   The snowplow came back this afternoon and buried everything again. I didn't realize I would have to do quite this much shoveling, but I'll certainly get back in shape this way. I wish I wouldn't huff and puff so. December 15 20 inches forecast. Sold my van and bought a 4x4 Blazer. Bought snow tires for the wife's car and 2 extra shovels. Stocked the freezer. The wife wants a wood stove in case the electricity goes out. I think that's silly. We aren't in Alaska, after all. December 16 Ice storm this morning. Fell on my ass on the ice in the driveway putting down salt. Hurt like hell. The wife laughed for an hour, which I think was very cruel. December 17 Still below freezing. Roads are too icy to go anywhere. Electricity was off for 5 hours. I had to pile the blankets on to stay warm. Nothing to do but stare at the wife and try not to irritate her. Guess I should've bought a wood stove, but won't admit it to her. God I hate it when she's right. I can't believe I'm freezing to death in my own living room. December 20 Electricity is back on, but had another 14 inches of the damn stuff last night. More shoveling! Took all day. The damn snowplow came by twice. Tried to find a neighbor kid to shovel, but they said they're too busy playing hockey. I think they're lying. Called the only hardware store around to see about buying a snow blower and they're out. Might have another shipment in March. I think they're lying. Bob says I have to shovel or the city will have it done and bill me. I think he's lying. December 22 Bob was right about a white Christmas because 13 more inches of the white shit fell today, and it's so cold, it probably won't melt till August. Took me 45 minutes to get all dressed up to go out to shovel and then I had to piss. By the time I got undressed, pissed and dressed again. I was too tired to shovel. Tried to hire Bob who has a plow on his truck for the rest of the winter, but he says he's too busy. I think the asshole is lying. December 23 Only 2 inches of snow today. And it warmed up to 0. The wife wanted me to decorate the front of the house this morning. What is she, nuts?!!  Why didn't she tell me to do that a month ago? She says she did but I think she's lying. December 24 6 inches - Snow packed so hard by snowplow, I broke the shovel. Thought I was having a heart attack. If I ever catch the son of a bitch who drives that snow plow, I'll drag him through the snow by his balls and beat him to death with my broken shovel. I know he hides around the corner and waits for me to finish shoveling and then he comes down the street at a 100 miles an hour and throws snow all over where I've just been! Tonight the wife wanted me to sing Christmas carols with her and open our presents, but I was too busy watching for the damn snowplow. December 25 Merry Christmas! 20 more inches of the damn slop tonight - Snowed in. The idea of shoveling makes my blood boil. God, I hate the snow! Then the snowplow driver came by asking for a donation and I hit him over the head with my shovel. The wife says I have a bad attitude. I think she's a  fricking idiot. If I have to watch "It's A Wonderful Life" one more time, I'm going to stuff her into the microwave. December 26 Still snowed in. Why the hell did I ever move here? It was all HER idea. She's really getting on my nerves. December 27 Temperature dropped to -30 and the pipes froze; plumber came after 14 hours of waiting for him, he only charged me $1,400 to replace all my pipes. December 28 Warmed up to above -20. Still snowed in. The BITCH is driving me crazy!!! December 29 Snowed again. Bob says I have to shovel the roof or it could cave in. That's the silliest thing I ever heard. How dumb does he think I am? December 30 Roof caved in. I beat up the snow plow driver, and now he is suing me for a million dollars, not only for the beating I gave him, but also for trying to shove the broken snow shovel up his ass.  The wife went home to her mother. Nine more inches predicted. December 31 I set fire to what's left of the house. No more shoveling. January 8 Feel so good. I just love those little white pills they keep giving me. Why am I tied to the bed?

 South Bend just after they dug out from the last snow...

Perfect weather and the perfect Christmas tree!