OKAY TERRIFIC

On The Road

2006-08-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

I love literature and I also love travelling. Put a map in front of me and I'm immediatley looking up places I've never been to. My wife ceaselessly makes fun of my love of maps. But it's not really maps I love, it's the places they can take you to, and the beckoning of the road, that I love.

So naturally, I'm a big fan of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. It was definitely an influential book in my life. Therefore, I was so intrigued by this blog I found through www.Litkicks.com : http://littourature.blogspot.com/ that I thought I'd share it with you.

Michael Hess has decided to sift through On The Road (and other books in the future, I suppose) and retrace most of the travels and points of interest to modern day observations or vignettes.

What an awesome idea! It's such a good idea, I wish I'd thought of it! I spent the whole morning reading his blog - not difficult because it's well written and breezy and also relatively short - for now. This is not only a good idea for On The Road, but there are plenty other novels that could be approached this way. Cathcer In The Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, Travels With Charley, to mention a few. And, if you want to go international, most of Hemingway's books would work with this template.

Not only does Mr. Hess offer his own personal thoughts on the places as well as the characters in the book, he also offers an interactive Google map of the steps he is tracing.

Littourature has fast become my favorite website. I'm eagerly waiting the next installments.

Okay Terrific,

Steve

NYC or Bust

2006-07-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, our family took a trip into the city - which we very rarely do, considering it costs an arm and a leg - to get our yearly fix of the unique sites and smells of 'the capital of the world'. After taking the ferry over from Weehawkin and being dumped by the NY Waterway bus at Rockefeller Plaza, we split up. The girls had a brunch appointment at the American Girl store with their dolls and us guys sauntered over in the scorching heat to where else but ESPN Zone in Times Square. A couple hundred bucks later we met up and took the subway - with the kids subway surfing the whole ride - downtown to Canal Street. We ate dinner in Little Italy at a place called Novella which, in my opinion, should rewrite its menu 'cause it just was kind of bland and didn't serve enough food. (Loved the name, though!) We did take dessert down the street at Ferrara's where most of us had a scoop of their awesome gelato. After walking a zillion blocks looking in vain for the Waterway bus to take us back to the 38 Street Pier, we finally relented to the heat and tired kiddies and hopped back on the subway up to 34th Street. Needless to say it was a long, hot day and a lot of fun, but we were glad to be back home by evening.

That being said, yesterday my daughter proceeded to read me a poem she had written about the daytrip. (Even though I'm encouraging her to the end that poems don't necessarily have to rhyme, she's still stuck in that mode. Oh well, maybe someday she'll switch! Mark Kuhar over at www.deepcleveland.com teaches a grade school class about this very subject. Maybe I can get him to come to New Jersey?)

Anyway, here's the poem in question:

New York

New York, New York
I love New York because
there's great places to see
and then there's homeless people
that won't let you be

New York, New York
what a crazy place for me
there's too much walking
and too many scary people to see

New York, New York
oh how I love to be
home eating pork
when I'm home from New York!

And so it goes for my daughter's first poem published on the internet. Congratulations Acey.

Okay Terrific,

Steve

Times 2

2006-05-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well, it seems our little Harvard author is stealing headlines again. Associated Press reports that Kaavya Viswanathan is charged with plagiarizing a 2nd novel, Can You Keep a Secret?, by Sophie Kinsella.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. I said in my previous post that fault for this debacle should go more to the publisher than to the author - though she shouldn't be without culpability.

You just can't give a 17 year old kid $500,000 dollars and a deadline and expect to get miracles. She probably felt the pressure to produce big time. I blame the publisher more than anybody. What were they insane? Who was the bungling idiot who greenlighted that project and signed that check?

I read somewhere else that other young authors feel that this will cast them in a bad light. They complain that publishers will view them all with suspicion. That's a valid point, but how many teenage authors are out there? Really. What happened to using life's experiences as fodder for good fiction? What are all these teenage authors writing about anyway- how to suck a pacifier? Granted, occassionally you'll have a standout like Christopher Paolini, who wrote Eragon and Eldest. But you could argue that his storyline is nothing new, taken right from the same swatch as Lord of the Rings etc. But at least Paolini made his way through the trenches, self-publishing and selling thousands of copies of his book on his own before he got discovered. Whatever happened to the mantra 'Write what you know"? My suggestion to all these burgeoning teenage authors is to live a little first, then tell us your story.

In the meantime, maybe, just maybe, the publishing giants will sit up and take notice of their erroneous ways and balance their bottom-line fever with a little bit of integrity!

Okay Terrific,

Steve

Lies, Lies, All Lies

2006-04-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

First there was Norma Khoury, though not many seem to remember her. She was the Jordanian memoirist who basically conned the entire publishing business into believing her book (and entire life) was true when it really wasn't. Then she disappeared. Whatever happened to her anyway?

Second came James Frey who became a much more notoriously popular non-fiction liar than Norma. We all know his story by now. Ugh.

Now comes the half-million dollar teenager, Kaavya Viswanathan. Seems that lieing, cheating, and basically having no moral compass has invaded the fiction realm.

So, another interesting dilemna pops up. Not only is truth fiction, thanks to Norma and James, but now fiction is fiction. The funny thing is, fiction is all about lieing. Fiction is a lie by definition. But that doesn't mean that it's ok to blatantly rip off another writer! If I was Megan McCafferty, I'd be both insulted and flattered. The nerve of this girl ripping off her prose almost word for word and thinking she could get away with it! But in a weird sort of way, it's kind of flattering don't you think? Maybe this will mean bigger sales for MCafferty, whom many people never heard of before last weekend. Hey, I'm not justifying plagiarism for one second, but there's got to be a silver lining to this cloud for McCafferty.

As for the publishers, shame on them for not only letting this happen, but in effect, creating the situation by giving this 17 year old college student such an overwhleming task of producing a book for such a ridiculously large amount of money. She may be smart, but evidently she ain't that smart. And neither are they. When are the publishers going to held accountable for these debacles?

Okay Terrific,

Steve

Throwing Tomatoes

2006-04-13T07:10:00.000-07:00

So I open up my email at work this morning and guess what's first on the list? Someone had sent and email out addressed to 'Everyone' congratulating a fellow worker of mine who was interviewed in The NY Times about his new book, The $64 Tomato! I couldn't believe it!

I didn't even know this guy had written a book, though it actually seems like it's pretty good, if you're into vegetable gardening anyway. But really now, emails addressed to 'Everyone', write-ups in the Times and Life and every gardening journal known to man? Come on! Not that I want to take any success away from him, but how come some people get all the notice and others get totally overlooked? No one sent any emails out about my book when it first came out. In fact, when I posted about my book on our intranet, nobody even took notice. You would think there would be some interest there among co-workers!

I know this sounds jealous... but it should, because it is, and I am! How does a silly gardening book, which the author admitted only working on for 5 years, get so much attention, when my serious literary fiction novel, one that I toiled on for over 10 years, gets absolutely no ink? Geez, I can't even get friends and relatives to buy the dumb thing. Is there like this Great Cosmic Cloud working against me or something?

I'm not asking for a million seller or for Tom Cruise to pick up the movie rights (though he's assured of an Oscar win if he does, in my opinion) but how about some kind of recognition somewhere? My co-worker gets the Times and I get Community Life. Do you see what I'm getting at? Something's amiss in the universe and I wish, just once, the stars and planets would align for me, figuratively speaking, even if only for a short while.

I guess that's the stigma of independent publishing. People think that if you aren't published by a mainstream house, then it's no good. Why don't they feel that way about independent films? It's the same thing when you stop and think about it.

So I've decided on principle not to pick up my co-worker's book. I don't have a green thumb. And I don't even like tomatoes, per say, except when I'm throwing them.

Okay Terrific!

Steve

Baseball, Books and 'Roids

2006-04-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

I love April. April brings spring and spring means baseball. But all I've been hearing about as far as baseball goes is steroids, steroids, steroids.

So I got to thinking, what if my my skinny little book was on steroids? Now I work out at the gym everyday. I've seen guys on steroids so huge that I look about as muscular as Natalie Portman standing next to them. Not natural, no way. And obviously bad for you, not to mention illegal. BUT, the way I figure it, steroids for my book could ONLY be beneficial, no drawbacks or side effects whatsoever! Right?

Imagine A Voice Above The Din on some Testosterone or Dianabol or HGH! Why it would bulk up from a wimpy 287 pages to a muscular, record-breaking 700 or 750. Awesome!

Not only that, it's existing body fat of excessive verbiage would slim down from it's current 21% to a single digit 6 or 7 %. Ripped!

Instead of languishing unnoticed on a (cob)web storefront, it would bound into bookstores all over the country, knocking that Dan Brown wimp off his high horse.

Its current ranking of "0" on AMAZON would sprint to number 1, shocking all other lame duck minor league fictions into google-eyed envy wondering where the heck it came from!

And last but not least, Tom Cruise would buy its movie rights, catapulting it into the Barry-Bonds-You-Can't-Touch-Me-Because-I'm-A-Superstar Oscar hall of fame!

Then I wouldn't have to work anymore and I could sit around watching baseball all day. How cool would that be!

Oaky Terrific,

Steve

Hemingway Audio: Pick Me! Pick Me!

2006-02-16T06:43:00.000-08:00

USA TODAY ran a story yesterday about Simon & Schuster releasing Hemingway's books on audio. I think this is really cool and long overdue!

But what's really important here is who does the reading? S&S is mum, but I checked their website out and noticed that Tommy Lee Jones is reading Islands In The Stream, and Campbell Scott is doing For Whom The Bell Tolls. Two good picks if you ask me. I know Stacy Keach has done Hemingway's short stories in the past, as well as TV documentaries, and they absolutely would be wrong to not get him to do at least one book. You listening Simon? He has the perfect voice for it. But there are still a few openings evidently for some of the books. I have an idea of who they should choose. Someone with a voice like velvet, who has public speaking ability and experience and who is a huge Hemingway fan, but alas, rather unknown.

Me.

That's right. I'm campainging to do one. I sent an email to S&S asking them for the opportunity to 'try out' for reading a Hemingway book on audio.

If you know me, you know that I absolutely love Hemingway. He was there for me during my angst-ridden teenage years, my thoughtful maturing years, and even today, in my down-the-home-stretch years. His books never cease to amaze me. And I've read them all, many more than once.

So this is my official campaign to land a gig reading one of his audio books. Spread the word and help me out. I really want to try this and maybe you can help by sending your emails to:

ssjobs1@simonandschuster.com

Go ahead and do it. Champion up support for an unknown and let's see if we can't get the big boys at Simon & Schuster to take notice and capitulate!

Okay Terrific!

Steve

The Pain of Retraction

2006-01-27T07:38:00.000-08:00

Okay, so Oprah made a retraction and blasted James Frey and that icky publisher of his. (Personally, I think she should've revoked his book as one of her picks, but that's just my opinion and last I checked she didn't give a damn about my opinion.) Boy, she really had an opportunity there to put the screws to the publishing corporati, but unfortunately backed off a little too much for my taste. (I'll let you in on a little secret, those scoundrels hang on every recommendation of hers like a life preserver. Wasted opportunity if you ask me.)

So I guess that means I have to make a retraction about my rant on Oprah. (See below.) But I don't really want to do it to be honest with you. 'Cause it kinda hurts to make a retraction. I don't want to admit I was wrong about her - well, I wasn't really - it's just that now my visceral mudslinging in her general direction makes me look like the bad guy. Thanks alot Oprah, for finding your conscience! Ugh!

Why does life have to be so complicated? Can't we just keep fiction fiction and non-fiction non-fiction? They all have their respective places on the bookshelf. Geez, can't we all just get along?

Anyway, Oprah, if your sorry for allowing yourself to be duped by that narcissistic liar and for -almost - single-handedly destroying an entire genre of the publishing industry, then I'm sorry I outed you. Okay? Friends again? Good, I'll be over tomorrow night for dinner. Know any good reads?

Okay Terrific.

Steve

Oprah and The Power of Genre-Bending

2006-01-18T05:54:00.000-08:00

I have to chime in one more time about this James Frey debacle, particularly in reference to Oprah Winfrey's response to it all.

Now I have nothing against Oprah. Matter of fact, I think she's an amazing entrepeneur. But this time she's gone too far. To sit back and put her stamp of approval on a bunch of lies and deceit... does anyone realize what she's done here?

We all know the power she has over the publishing world. Her golden scepter of approval can turn any book into a bestseller. Those who know this best are the publishing houses who benefit from her knighting of their books. Bottom line is bottom line after all, right?

Oprah must realize her own power as well, wouldn't you think? Did she stop and consider that her standing behind James Frey would literally change the face of publishing? From this point forward, it is no longer necessary to tell the truth in a Memoir. You only have to tell the 'essential truth'. The details are insignificant.

No longer will the reading public be able to rely on the Memoir as a truthful document, especially if the pubs and authors put their little disclaimer on them as Frey is now conveniently doing on his. From this point forward, we will always be second guessing whether we are reading a True Memoir or an Essential Truth Memoir.

Do you understand what has happened here?

By throwing her weight behind this liar with one simple ill-thought out sentence, Oprah has single handedly changed an entire Genre. Memoirs RIP.

It wasn't long ago, in fact the summer of 2004, that Norma Khoury was exposed by The Sydney Herald as a liar and a cheat. What was the response? The publishers pulled her false memoir and actually sought to recoup some of the 6-figures they threw at her.

What a difference a year makes! Have we lost our honesty and integrity so swiftly?

Oprah, have you lost yours completely?

But maybe in the end it’s not about silly things like honesty and truthfulness. Maybe it is all about power and money. If so, Oprah has just upped the ante.

Okay, Terrrific.

Steve

James Frey & Norma Khoury - Not So Strange Bedfellows

2006-01-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I have to weigh in on the whole James Frey thing. Seems like TheSmokingGun.com has got the goods on him, proving him a liar. Some memoir! Reminds me of that Norma Khoury from last summer - she's the one that Sydney Herald (I think that's the paper's name) exposed as a fraud after writing her "memoir" about all the female atrocitites going on in Jordan. That was a pack of lies too, evidently.

It really ticks me off to see the conglomerate publishing geniuses throw literally millions of dollars at these frauds, while hardworking, ethical authors (like myself) go largely unnoticed! Who do they think they are? Look at their incredible stupidity: In their unfettered quest for the next best seller - do the math - they could spread out 1 million dollars among 10 authors, instead of dumping it all on ONE fraud, and give them each a very decent wage and have the possibility of 10 books hitting the bigtime instead of just one. How short-sighted can you get?

The mainstream publishing idiots who allow this free for all to take place truly are their own worst enemy.

Okay Terrific.

Steve

Independent Artist of the Month Award: December

2005-12-19T07:29:00.000-08:00

I know, I kinda skipped November. Okay we'll rename this The Independent Artist of the Month-or-so Award. Sue me.

Anyway, this month's award goes to, as promised, another musician! Fancy that.

The Award goes to: KEATON SIMONS.

Keaton's music is, well, in a word, awesome. It's a mixture of blues and pop and rock and .... you name it. You may not be familiar with his name yet, but perhaps you've heard his most popular song to date, Currently. It's been playing somewhat on the radio and the net. It's an acoustic, breezy, bluesy number and his voice takes on an uncharacteristic baritone a la Leon Redbone. Great song!

I initially heard that song on VH1 radio at work back over the summer (before the cyberpunks in ISD put a Fort Knox lockdown on everything that streams) so I went out and bought the EP CD Currently and thought it was the best new stuff I'd heard in a long time. Since then Keaton's put out a double CD called Exes & Whys. I actually got that CD for free. I had logged onto his website and saw in the forums that they were giving away some free copies. They must've had a bunch of extras from the print run. Anyway, I wrote to them and they sent me back the double CD free of charge. And I gotta say, I absolutely love the first CD. (The second one is ok.) But it's the first CD in the double set that is masterful! A great set of blues, blues tinged rock, and even a couple of winsome ballads. Whoever produced it put together a great combo of some of this young guy's best songs.

(Cool Note: Keaton's mom, a sometime actress according to his website, was Brunella the receptionist at the all girl's school in the classic movie ANIMAL HOUSE. How's that for a cool mom!)

I know alot of people have passed the Dylan mantle on to many wannabies who have come and gone, but I think this time it really fits. This guy is the real deal. Go check him out.

Next month (or so) the award is going to go to someone/something totally different. You won't believe it, I promise it will blow you away!

Steve

Independent Artist of the Month Award

2005-10-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

I'm sick and tired of awesome unsung artists remaining that way. There's nothing worse than a great artist who's never recognized by the masses, (other than the fact that I get to feel like they are all mine because I discovered them when I really didn't). So I've decided that every once in a while I'm going to feature a spotlight on an independent artist, shunned by the mainstream, who deserves a little notice. Not that a mention on my blog will make them a household name, but ... since I've published my book let's just say I have a lot more respect for artists who not only create but then have to market as well. It ain't easy! The artist I nominate may be a musician, an author, or an ... um, artist. Doesn't matter. As long as they are producing some kind of worthwhile art that I enjoy, I will feature them.

So without further ado, my first nomination for Independent Artist of the Month is: MICHAEL MCDERMOTT. Click the link and check out his website. If you go to CD BABY, you can sample his music.

Michael is singer/songwriter out of Chicago who truly deserves more recognition than he's gotten. I can best sum his work up as a cross between Springsteen, Dylan, and a little U2 thrown in. He truly is a lyricist in the tradition of Springsteen and Dylan, even Jakob Dylan. You might remember the splash he made back in 1991 with his debut CD "620 West Surf", which I happen to think is one of the greatest CDs I've ever heard. Funny story, I originally had the album on cassette back when it came out (there's always a little lag time for me when it comes to technology) and a few years later I came upon my baby daughter playing with it and pretty much tearing it to pieces. I was heartbroken 'cause I couldn't find it for sale anywhere. I was ecstatic when I found Michael's website a few years after that and promptly bought the CD for a mere $10. Kudos to Michael McDermott for continueing to pump out great music with fascinating lyrics, while the world doesn't stop to take notice. Maybe now they will.

Come back next month for a new nomination. Hint, it will be another musician.

If you have someone you want to nominate, give me a holler. No guarantees they'll make it on the blog, though.

Steve

THE BOOK HAS LANDED!

2005-10-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

1-4116-5242-8!

There it is! The ISBN number! I'm so excited, finally, A VOICE ABOVE THE DIN is now semi-released. Currently, it's available only through Lulu.com. You can click HERE to order a copy right now, for a paltry $15.99. Once on the site you can preview the first chapter, which I'm sure will hook you right away! You can also order a download for a third of the price if you desire that instead.

Keep in mind that it will be available through major online booksellers and local bookstores (by special order) in about 6-8 weeks, following the standard vetting process by Ingram. The Suggested Retail Price for these booksellers will be slightly higher, at $18.99. (There is an explanation for this but it's pretty complicated so I won't bother you with that right now).

Lastly, be assured that some proceeds from all sales of my book will be donated to charity. Thank you for your kind support in this endeavor. I truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.

Steve Hill

Ophelia Who?

2005-09-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

FYI...We just got back from our vacation to North Carolina and I'm happy to say we didn't get affected by Hurricane Ophelia at all. (Unless you count being glued to the Weather Channel 24/7 or one cloudy day on Thursday when it finally decided to move.) We were just north of it's reach. So not only is everyone ok, we had great weather to boot. Liam and I actually swam in the ocean, on Tuesday and Saturday I believe it was. Otherwise the water was a little too rough to risk it. But we had an inground pool, hot tub, and sauna at our house, so we weren't complaining!

Stay posted, A VOICE ABOVE THE DIN news will be coming shortly. I hope to have it ready for sale by the end of the month.

Thanks for tuning in!

Steve

Inspiration

2005-08-25T06:19:00.000-07:00

This morning I read an entry from a journal of an 8 year old boy in Mexico who has AIDS. He writes about how he was operated on for testicular cancer, how his little brother died recently and he helped dig the grave, he also writes of his relationship w/ his father and older brother. The amazing thing about this boy's writing, to me, is that it is so honest. And as a writer myself I realize that this is probably the single hardest thing to do, not even as just a writer but as a person...a human being. To be honest with oneself and one's feelings is truly a courageous act, let alone doing that while facing death as a little boy. I invite you to read it for yourself HERE.

I hope you are as inspired by this as I was. Maybe this hit me because I just finished reading James Patterson's 'Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas', which put me in a very sentimental mood. Either way, I'm looking forward to reading more of this kid's journal. Evidently he writes an awful lot. Good thing for us, huh?

Steve

So You Need a Job?

2005-08-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

HELP WANTED

CORRUPT CFO
Thoroughly corrupt Chief Financial Officer wanted to cook the books for a large Fortune 50 corporation. Respondents to this position must meet ALL requirements listed below. Must be able to start immediately, before tomorrow’s opening bell.

Requirements:
1. Must possess superior aptitude and finesse at fending off SEC probes and investigations, using diversion and/or bribing techniques.
2. Must have in-depth knowledge of questionable accounting principles and mismanagement of ridiculously large amounts of funds.
3. Must be adept at concealing corporate expenditure reports numbering in the billions.
4. Must have an untraceable track record of white-collar crime directly related to corporate downsizing leading to Chapter 11 declarations.
5. Must be composed enough to swindle and smooth talk into complacency irate shareholders at quarterly board meetings.
6. Must quickly & discreetly notify all fellow executives and important celebrity shareholders of plummeting stock value, BEFORE the action takes place.
7. Must possess enough insider knowledge to convince thousands of worldwide employees to join bogus corporate 401K programs, invest in shady company stock options, and contribute to the annual holiday party.
8. Must be able to soothe the tensions of angry masses of employees who believe the rumors that their entire life savings and retirement funds are being diverted to the tax-free offshore accounts of company executives. (Our experience shows that timely, well-constructed memos, as well as, corporate picnics complete with clowns have helped in this regard, though we are open to fresh ideas and new approaches.)
9. Must employ sufficient supervisory experience to effectively subjugate potential whistleblowers into cowardly impotence, using physical threats to employee and/or family members if necessary.
10. Must be able to surreptitiously use office shredder for potentially harmful docs while coquettishly engaging in 'office water cooler banter'.
11. A Masters Degree in accounting from a snobbish Ivy League institution that specializes in molding fresh-faced recruits into greedy, amoral, conscience-bereft, shark-like individuals is MANDATORY for this position.
12. A horribly shallow home life in an ostentatious yet empty house, including, but not limited to: a bitter, disenchanted debutante wife; neglected lonely children who lack respect for their elders and who will one day spit on your grave; and an incontinent dog that keeps messing on the carpet, is PREFERABLE, though not required.

If you feel you match the above description, then we want to hear from you! Our global, oppressively greedy, monopolistic corporation offers a competitive base salary of seventeen figures, with potential bonuses rivaling that of the gross national product of all the third world countries put together. We also offer full health benefits, (blue-collar employee ONLY contributory), as well as an on-site, executive-members ONLY five-star spa and fitness center. This position comes with a generous travel expense account featuring unlimited use of a fleet of private Gulf Stream jets and limousines, complementary exclusive Augusta National Club memberships (male execs only), and regular jaunts to our corporate-owned resorts in Grand Cayman and Monaco, or our private Bahamian Island, along with periodic rendezvous’ at our luxurious cottage-for-the-mistress in the Tuscan countryside.

If interested, please fax your resume and cv to: 877-CAPITALISMATITSBEST
*This advertisement paid for jointly by the US Labor & Justice Departments

Caribbean Island Getaways, Rum & Electrolux

2005-07-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

See this photo to your right of the dolphins surfing? Pretty cool, huh? I forgot who sent it to me, but kudos to you if you're the one.

Why the pic of big-wave riding mammals that don't have 2 legs and use surfboards? The answer my friend is irrelevant. It's just a cool picture.

You see, lots of things in life are irrelevant. Take my new Google AdSense ads that hopefully you see in the vertical skyscraper to your left. This morning, I logged online to check out the ads and see what they look like and noticed that three of them were for ice melter and one was for radiant heating. Hey Google, this may not be too relevant, but it's the middle of the friggin' summer, a nationwide heatwave no less! How about some ads that are a little more appropriate for the season - like perhaps a book ad, or a movie ad, or heck, I'd even take an ad for Dorney Park and Wild Water Kingdom!

You see, the whole reason why I'm doing the AdSense program is to perhaps make a couple bucks on the side from the huge amounts of web traffic that visit my blog. Google seems to want me to make absolutley nothing by putting adds up that have zero relevancy to anything this side of the Arctic Circle. Who in the world is gonna click on an ad for ice melter in the middle of the summer? Now I'm thinking, did these ads come up because of my last funny ha-ha post about the ice melter being mistaken for diamonds? If that's the case, then wow! Google, I'm impressed. You did a great job of matching words on my blog to words in your ads. How about a nice couple of ads for DIAMOND sellers instead! That would be a nice surprise. Ice melter, you gotta be kidding me!

You realize what this means, don't you? All my future posts will be dictated by the most popular ads I think Google is going to match to them, hence bringing more clicks and more cash into my pocket. From this point forward, I'm going to write about nothing but Caribbean Island vacations, frozen fruity rum drinks, and Electrolux type 'C' vacuum cleaner bags.

I shouldn't be surprised that relevancy has become irrelevant. Lots of things in this world are ridiculously immaterial nowadays. Like trying to buy a starter home in the Northeast, watching Brady Bunch reruns on Nickelodeon with your kids who think it's the greatest show ever, and working 9 to 5 at a job that you really, really can't stand.

So, go ahead Google, jump on the irrelevancy bandwagon. In fact we saved a spot for you right up front riding shotgun! (And I even forgot to mention that lovely 5th ad - the one for Google, believe it or not!)

DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any future ads of questionable or tasteless character placed here by Google. If they get really bad, I will discontinue the program, and instead turn this into a pay site to make up for any lost revenue.

Not Necessarily The News

2005-07-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

BOY MISTAKES ICE MELTER FOR DIAMONDS
3/7/03
Holmdel, NJ

Ten-year-old Kyle Sims thought he’d hit the jackpot. While accompanying his father to a walk-up ATM at the local branch of the Hudson Bank, he bent down and picked up what he believed to be extremely rare, uncut blue diamonds.

“I got all excited,” Kyle recounted. “They looked just like those diamonds we read about in school. I thought somebody dropped them or something.”

Turns out, Kyle’s ‘cache of diamonds’ was just plain rock salt.

“At first, my heart skipped a beat,” said David Sims, Kyle’s father. “But then I noticed the huge pile of snow left by the plows in the parking lot and it dawned on me. I tried to explain to Kyle that it was only rock salt, but he wouldn’t hear it. He kept scrambling along the sidewalk and stuffing his pockets with it. It was actually pretty embarrassing. I pointed to the snow and explained to him that they used rock salt to melt the snow and ice so people wouldn’t trip and fall, but he was oblivious to everything I said. He even ignored me all the way home.”

Kyle wasn’t the only one fooled by Mother Nature. When they arrived home, according to David, Kyle ran right into the house and dumped the contents of his pockets onto the kitchen table.

“Before I knew it,” David said, “my wife ran outside shrieking and jumped into my arms. She started rambling on about finally being able to add on to the house, and all the clothes she wanted to buy, and that a brand new Mercedes would look great in the driveway… You shoulda seen her face when I told her the truth. I’ve been in the doghouse ever since.”

Weeks later, David reports his wife still holds a grudge for his ‘cruel joke’.

“I don’t know why she thinks I was pulling a practical joke on her,” he lamented, “but either way, I still don’t feel it’s a good enough reason to deprive me of my marital due.”

Not to be outdone, David Sims turned around and used the extra time on his hands wisely. As of last notice, his lawyer has filed a civil suit against the manufacturer of the deceptive ice melter, seeking punitive and compensatory damages.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to make that stuff look just like diamonds,” retorts David. “It ain’t right.”

-contributing reporter, Steven H. Hill.

Train already left the station!

2005-07-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

Well, after being encouraged by many well meaning people over the years to publish my stuff online, I've finally gotten around to it! Took awhile but here it is. So far I've posted some old stuff just to get the hang of it. (I'll also spruce it up al a Steve as I learn how.)

In the future look for more current blogs of stories, poems, whatever I feel like writing at the time, as well as some older stuff to. I might even blog a type of family newsletter to really bore you to death. Also, look for blogs about my novel, A VOICE ABOVE THE DIN, because it will finally be published around September. (Yeah!) More on that as it draws closer.

Anyway, you're here, check it out and let me know what you think. Feel free to email this on to anyone whom you feel might like it. Enjoy!

Steve Hill
7/21/05

2005-07-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

Here are a few poems from my litany to satisfy your muse:

pages of time

there was an old second-hand bookstore
down on main street,
just passed the railroad tracks,
that recently went out of business.
(they say the old lady retired).
the store sat empty for months
bemoaning the loss of the written word,
until the other day I drove by and
noticed a clock shop in it’s place…
clocks of all kinds crammed
into the tiny space, vying for exposure,
sort of like noisy books on a shelf.
there was even an old man
sittin’ in the window
hunched over someone’s heirloom,
sporting goggles and a rubber apron,
resurrecting it gear by gear, tick by tock.
i parked and walked in,
the distinctive smell
of moldy worn pages still
clung to the walls.
i guess it’s not such a bad thing after all…
pomes & tomes replaced by metronomes.

© 2003 Steven H. Hill

holding on to pokemon dreams

down on vale road
two boys sat on a rock wall
next to the old general store,
a sore thumb out of time
where the present day
disappears into the past
of grape nehis and twinkies.

maybe they were talking about
mariano in the ninth
or pam anderson under the knife

truth be told
i thought i heard the echo
of dimaggio and marilyn
urging them to hold on
to their pokemon dreams
but nobody else listened 'cept me.

© 2003 Steven H. Hill

sons of men

who notices as they bury
ten million children a year
in graves of mass neglect?

who misses them, their
distended stomachs and
lesion-ridden skin?
bone-thin arms,
sallow faces, and
bulging, jaundiced eyes?

my god! where do they put them all?

be fruitful and become many,
fill the earth and subdue it

it’s not my problem
if they want to spend
their billions on
machine guns, land mines,
and shoulder-launched missiles
of industrialized import.

i’m too busy
stuffing my craw
with mcdonalds
and sueing for obesity.

their god is their belly

the collective wail of
the mothers is smothered
by their own guttural pain

those who suffer the greatest
are the most vulnerable
and the least to blame

they took up twelve baskets full
and all were satisfied

© 2003 Steven H. Hill

TRAVIS, UP THE STREET

2005-07-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a short story I wrote a couple years back, for what it's worth:

TRAVIS, UP THE STREET

“Honey! Come quick. You have to see this.”

Stephen Ward ignored his wife, Nora, hoping whatever it was she wanted wouldn’t be too important so that he could succeed in disregarding it. Putzing around in the basement had become more and more of a solitary ritual for him, a pretension of necessary work that really wasn’t.

“Honey!” She sounded more urgent.

Stephen grimaced up at the rafters, unhooked his tool belt, and plodded up the stairs.

“What is it?” he sighed, poking his head through the basement door.

“You have to come look at this. Hurry or you’ll miss it.”

He walked through the doorway and down the hall, more with the aim of pleasing her than himself. One more shared Oprah inspiration or Martha Stewart tip wouldn’t kill him. He had suffered through thousands of these types of things in 22 years of marriage. It was all part of the game.

“Look,” Nora said, nodding at the small kitchen TV as she wiped minces of diced onion off her hands and into the sink. “Isn’t that Travis Sims?”

Stephen took a few steps closer to the screen. On it was a tall, muscular young black man manacled in handcuffs and leg irons. He was being ushered from a squad car up the steps of a courthouse amidst a gauntlet of cameras and reporters. His head was down, so it was hard to tell for sure who it was.

“Where’s the damn remote?” Stephen snapped, just as he noticed it sitting on the island next to the faucet. He snatched it up and raised the volume. “Why do you always have the volume down? That’s so annoying.”

He didn’t wait for an answer as he turned his attention to the reporter on the screen. He upped the volume a little more just to show his wife he wasn’t really expecting a reply. She made a clicking noise of disapproval with her tongue.

“. . . time will tell, as Travis Sims, the nation’s number one prospect for next week’s NFL draft, is arraigned on charges of murder. This is Shelly Peterson reporting live from Trenton, New Jersey.”

Normally Stephen would’ve been right there in the thick of things covering that story with the rest of them. But with his daughter’s wedding looming, he had taken a much-needed, month long vacation from the paper. It was his first one in ten years, Nora had dutifully pointed out to him.

“Murder?” Stephen was stymied. “That’s crazy! Travis Sims isn’t capable of murder. What the hell is going on?”

“Must be a mistake,” Nora chimed in. “It’ll all work out
I’m sure.” She never lifted her head from the cutting board.

“Your rose-colored glasses are blocking your vision, honey. The poor kid was being led away in leg irons, for Christ’s sake! What if you were young, black, and on the verge of living the American Dream, and suddenly you’re charged with murder? Something doesn’t seem quite right.”

Nora placed her knife on the board, wiped her hands on her periwinkle-flowered apron, and said, “Why don’t you do something about it?”

“You mean help him? You’re not serious are you?”

Nora tossed chunks of tomatoes onto cut lettuce still draining in the colander. “Stephen. It was twelve years ago. You still haven’t let it go, have you?”

Stephen clicked off the TV. “No! I haven’t. We’re talking about our son here. Our son. How am I supposed to let that go? You wanna tell me that?”

“Just because I’ve let go, doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten, Stephen.” Her icy stare pierced him so that he averted her gaze. “Yes, I have moved on. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t—” She paused and dabbed the corner of her eye with the back of the apron. “You have to move on, Stephen. Besides, you’ve helped Travis in the past.”

“That was different,” he protested. “That was a long time ago, right after—”

“How, Stephen? How was it different back then compared to now?”

Stephen picked at the cane webbing on the stool in front of the granite island. He said nothing.

“So why not now?” she pressed. “He has nobody, you know. His adoptive parents are both dead. He has no one to believe in him.”

“Well, what about the wedding?” Stephen offered, hoping the excuse would fall on sympathetic ears.

“You aren’t doing anything to help with that anyway. You’re just signing the checks.” Nora untied her apron, folded it neatly on the counter, and put her hand on Stephen’s shoulder. “Honey, go help him. If he’s guilty, he won’t need you. If he’s innocent, he will. Either way, I think you need to do this, for your own sake.” She moved to touch his hand.

“I don’t know if I can,” Stephen muttered and disappeared back to the basement.

****

The guard ushered him into a cold, damp room outfitted with two chairs that looked as if they were hand-me-downs from a school principal’s office. The chairs sat on either side of a long folding table. He was surprised by the openness of the meeting. He’d expected the typical phone conversation, separated by thick, smoky, bulletproof glass. He wasn’t prepared for a face-to-face.

Stephen sat on the far chair and waited. With nothing better to do, he pulled out his notepad and scribbled. He knew he’d be lucky if he came away with anything to go on. After ten minutes, the door opened and a different guard escorted Travis Sims into the room. The guard motioned Travis toward the chair and stationed himself in front of the door. Dressed in the obligatory orange jumpsuit, Travis was handcuffed with his hands in front of him. He sat down and stared at Stephen blankly.

Stephen sighed and asked, “Do you remember me, Travis?”

“Yes I do, Mr. Ward,” he answered. His voice was thick, as if a doctor’s tongue depressor was pushing down his throat. Travis always had the habit of speaking without moving his lips much. “I read your article. Do you want to do another interview?”

Stephen almost laughed out loud. That article was written a year and a half ago, when, as a junior at Penn State, Travis shattered the all time collegiate pass yardage record. It had been a good article, highlighting the fact that if it wasn’t for his football skills Travis Sims would never have been in college, though the interview was one of the most difficult of his career. “No Travis,” he said. “I’m not here to interview you. I want to help you.”

Travis gazed uncomprehendingly.

Stephen wondered if this kid had any realization, other than surface, of the significance of what he was going through. Did he have any idea that he could be in jail the rest of his life? Did he have any clue that his career was history, that no team would touch him with a ten-foot pole? Did he even care? Or was he just dense enough to go with the flow because he didn’t know any better?

“Travis,” Stephen started, shifting uncomfortably in the hard chair, “do you know why you’re here?”

“Somebody died.”

God, if it were only that simple, Stephen wondered. He leaned forward. “They think you killed that girl.”

Silence.

“They’re going to keep you here for the rest of your life, Travis.”

“I like the food,” he said and smiled daftly.

The guard snickered.

“Travis, listen to me. Do you want to stay here until you die?”

“Do they play football here?” he asked.

God I’d forgotten how dim this kid was, Stephen muttered to himself. “I don’t think so Travis. Do you want to play football again?”

“Yeah, Mr. Ward. You know that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“Then help me get you out of here. You didn’t kill that girl did you?”

“No sir, Mr. Ward. I didn’t kill nobody.”

“Do you know who did?”

He shook his head.

“Do you remember anything, anything at all from that night?”

He shook his head again.

“What about some names? Who was there? What bar was it?”

“Lotsa people was there. I don’t remember their names, but they’re all my friends. They gave me nice drinks.”

“One minute,” the guard barked.

“Travis . . .” Stephen started, and then he put his pad away. He wouldn’t be needing it. “Look, I’ll read the police report and find out what bar it was. You’re not helping me much.”

“Maybe someday, Mr. Ward, we can have a catch again?”

Stephen was stunned. He looked down at the table and fell into an old memory for a moment. “Maybe,” he mumbled.

“I’m sorry about Liam,” Travis said, out of the blue.

“You remember?” Stephen asked, still staring at the table.

“Time’s up,” the guard interrupted. “Let’s go Mr. QB.”

Travis rose from the table and looked longingly at the guard. “Can I get my ice cream now?”

The guard snickered again and shook his head as they walked out, his belt jangling profusely. “Sure thing, sonny.”

Stephen sat and gazed. The kid had apologized; he’d actually said he was sorry.

****

It was a sweltering day, so typical of a New Jersey summer. Stephen Ward sat on the stoop, leaning forward with his forearms against his knees, head cradled in his hands. Sweat beaded steadily down the nape of his neck. He gazed up at the liquid sky, dripping with humidity, and groaned for the millionth time. The pain gnawing away at his stomach had grown increasingly unbearable over the past week. It’s supposed to get better, not worse, he thought. Maybe it’s just too soon.

He felt the sudden awareness of someone’s eyes fixated on him. The hair on the back of his neck spiked, and he looked down to notice Travis Sims standing on the front lawn, hugging the maple tree. This didn’t surprise him at first. Travis had a reputation for showing up at awkward times in the oddest of places. Once, the family was eating dinner in the house when all of the sudden he walked through the front door without the slightest advance notice, no knocking or bell ringing. He just walked right in off the street looking for Liam. Everyone felt uncomfortable, except for Travis that is.

“How long you been standing there, Travis?” Stephen wasn’t the least bit pleased with his presence.

“Can Liam come out and play?” Travis asked, ignoring him.

“Jesus, Travis!” Stephen shouted as he jumped to his feet. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

Travis instinctively recoiled a step and stared into the mid-distance between them, shifting his eyes back and forth.

Remember, Stephen thought, he’s a simpleton. He only looks like he’s ten. Damn crack-addicted welfare mothers. If his mother had any idea of what she produced . . . remember where he came from, Stephen reminded himself. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow.

“No Travis,” Stephen sighed. “He can’t play. You know that.”

“Can you play?”

“No, Travis. No. Go home now.”

Boy, Stephen thought, the nerve of that kid asking him to play! God, how stupid can a kid get? His mother cranks him out between pipe hits, and he ends up adopted by Mister Upper-Middle-Class-White-Gynecologist. That kid hit the lottery and didn’t even know it. Why the hell did he have to end up on my street, make friends with my kid? What were the chances of that happening?

Stephen sat back down on the stoop, picked at the peeling paint on the iron railing, and let the hazy afternoon slip idly by, because he wanted nothing else to do with his time.

****

After a few phone calls and a close inspection of the police report, the meat of the story came together. Travis had been with his college “buddies” partying at some fancy club in Philly. Rumor has it they were celebrating the draft prematurely. Inside information passed on to Travis placed him with the New York Giants on the first pick, though this was a widely held secret from the media. The group had inexplicably moved the party to a dive in Trenton, where Travis had his roots. There was a fight that spilled out to the alley, a young woman was beaten to death, and a handful of witnesses pointed the finger at Travis. Case closed. Or so it seemed, but Stephen Ward couldn’t get it out of his head. Could Travis Sims pummel someone--a woman no less--into an unrecognizable mass of blood and tissue? Granted he was six-two, two hundred ten pounds and not an ounce of fat on him. But to thrash someone like that--even if you’re totally gone--requires more than physical dominance. A switch has to go off in your head, something that turns off all conscience and remorse. Travis Sims didn’t even have that switch to flick. Stephen didn’t want to think about it, but he knew what he had to do.

The bar was on seedy Southard Street, between Warren and Calhoun, not exactly the greatest spot for an almost middle-aged, middle-class white man to be. Stephen Ward parked his Camry across the street from the bar, in front of a row of dilapidated tenement houses. Litter was strewn over the pavement and sidewalks. People walked about, sat on front steps, or generally stood idle on the corners. There wasn’t one white person to be seen.

“Doesn’t anybody work anymore?” Stephen wondered out loud as he turned the ignition off.

He got out of his car and hit the lock button on his remote. The horn honked twice to assure him the car was secured and in the alarm mode. People turned and stared.

That was smart, he thought, and quickly shoved the keys in his pocket.

He self-consciously rubbed the back of his neck and marched across the road into the bar. It was dark and he waited for his eyes to adjust. An elderly black gentleman sat behind the bar smoking a cigar. A few others were gathered at tables in the cramped dim space. A gigantic man sat at the corner of the bar, facing the door. He would’ve given Shaquille O’Neill doubts had they met up in a dark alley. Everyone looked over as Stephen stood in the doorway. The giant man slowly stood up, his head almost touched the low ceiling.

“Uh . . . does anyone here know Travis Sims?” Stephen asked out loud, his voice trailing to a whisper from the sudden tightening of his throat.

No one answered. They all just stared.

“I’m not a cop—”

“What you want, white boy?” the Giant asked, taking a step closer.

Stephen thought hard about what to say. Nothing fantastic came to mind. “I want to help Travis Sims, but I need to know what happened. I’m a reporter.”

“Too many of you people coming around here,” the Giant boomed. “You best git going if you know what’s good for you.”

“Look, I don’t want trouble. I’m an old friend of Travis’. I just want to help him.”

“How you know Travis Sims?” the bartender asked as he stubbed his cigar in an ashtray. Stephen thought he seemed sincere in his query.

“He was friends with my kid. Grew up with him,” Stephen explained, not taking his eyes off the Giant. “Played with him. He lived on my street, a few doors down.”

The bartender suddenly came around from behind the bar and stood in front of the Giant. “You the honkey who taught Travis how to throw?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Stephen said as he looked back and forth between the two men. “How’d you . . .”

“What’s your name?”

“Stephen. Stephen Ward.”

“Damn!” the bartender said looking up at the Giant. “He ain’t lying.”

“You sure?” the Giant asked.

“Sure as you is black on black, sucka. Travis talk about him all the time when he come by. Damn! Said if it wasn’t for him, he not be playing football.” The bartender turned back to Stephen and offered him a seat at the bar and walked back around behind it. The Giant took his seat as well.

“Lemme git you a drink,” the bartender said.

“No thanks,” Stephen said. “Look, I want to help Travis. I know he didn’t kill that woman, but I have nothing to go on. Was anybody here the night of the party that I can talk to?”

“Junior here saw everything,” he said, nodding to the Giant.

“Damn, Callis, shut you up!” Junior roared. “I ain’t helping no white man. They all coming around here ain’t none of them helping us, is they? They not us. They from a different world. That’s what I’m talking ‘bout.”

“Look,” Stephen pleaded, “if you know something, you’d be helping out Travis, not me.”

“Junior,” the bartender said in a fatherly tone. “The man want to help. Tell him about Paul Robeson, now.”

Junior scowled and picked up the straw from his glass and chewed it. It looked like a toothpick in his mouth. “How I know you not lying?”

Stephen Ward was feeling a little bolder now that the bartender was on his side. His reporter self-confidence was coming back to the surface. “Who the hell else is going to help him? Outside of me and you, Travis is going to jail for life. You either want to help him, or not. Who’s this Paul Robeson?”

Junior looked at the bartender. The man nodded again.

“C’mon,” Junior said, and he stood and walked out of the bar. Stephen tagged along. Outside on the curb, Junior said, “You got a car, follow me. I be in that Caddy over there. We ain’t driving together. I gots a reputation to think about.” He spat on the ground.

Stephen followed Junior deeper into the bowels of Trenton, his heart still pounding, but glad to be back in the confines of his car. After about ten minutes, Junior pulled up to a ramshackle dwelling on the edge of a vacant lot on the outskirts of an abandoned industrial complex. He ambled back to Stephen’s car.

“Wait right here,” was all he said.

From his car, Stephen saw Junior barge through the front door of the house, and for a second he wondered if the splintered structure would even hold under the weight of the big man. There was a scream, some loud banging, and in a moment Junior walked back out, dragging behind him a young, black man that was a dead ringer for Travis Sims.

Stephen slowly got out of his car, his mouth wide open. “Oh my God,” he muttered.

Junior threw the young man against Stephen’s car like a rag doll. He bounced off the hood and his head thudded against the pavement producing a nasty cut. His hands were tied behind him with a junkie’s rubber cord as he rolled on the dirty sidewalk.

“That’s Paul Robeson,” Junior bragged, satisfied with his catch.

****

The very next day Travis was back again.

“Can you play with me?” he asked.

“No, Travis,” Stephen seethed. “Get this through your
thick head, I don’t want to play with you! I want to play with my son, not you. Now leave.”

After a minute, Travis turned and walked back to his house. Stephen sat on the stoop and began to weep uncontrollably.

Two minutes later, he heard his name called and looked up through teary eyes in the direction of the voice. As he did, a football smashed hard and square into his chest, almost knocking the wind out of him. It bounced down the steps and onto the front lawn. He grabbed his midriff and gasped. Travis was standing thirty feet away in the street. No one else was around.

Stephen glared at Travis. Who did this kid think he was? He got up and retrieved the ball. He whizzed it right back at Travis, really trying to hit him with it. Travis caught it with ease. Stephen was dumbfounded, he had thrown it pretty hard. He shook his head and turned to walk away, when he noticed out of the corner of his eye Travis rearing back and letting loose once again. Instinctively, he reached out and caught the pass. The ball stung his hands it was thrown so hard. Stephen knitted his brow and looked at Travis standing out in the middle of the street. He was ten years old, stood a good hand’s length shy of five feet, and was skinnier than an alley cat dripping wet.

Stephen looked down at the ball. Surprisingly, it was close to regulation size, but not quite. Probably a junior league from the local Moes or Sports Authority. But still, he wondered, how the hell could the kid throw like that? He decided to test him out.

“Travis,” he said, as he walked out in the street, “have you ever thrown this thing before?”

“Yeah, with Liam,” he said. “But he stunk at catchin’.” He giggled at the thought.

“Here, take the ball,” Stephen said, choking back tears as he walked up to him. “Can you pass it to me while I’m running?”

Travis shrugged.
Stephen jogged down the pavement past the driveway about twenty paces and cut a pattern directly across the street. “Okay,” he huffed. “Throw it.”

From a standstill, Travis effortlessly set back and let loose a torpedo right in Stephen’s numbers. It stung his still- smarting chest. Stephen stopped and shook his head. He jogged back to Travis.

“Who taught you how to throw like that?” Stephen asked. “Your dad, or your older brothers?”

“Nobody. They don’t play with me.”

“Let me see your hands.” He grabbed them as Travis held them out. They were huge for a ten year old. Stephen shook his head again.

I don’t want to do this, he told himself. After what this kid did . . . I just want to smack him upside his head. But Jesus, he had some kind of natural born gift. It’d be a sin not to do anything about it. He rubbed his chin and tossed the ball back to Travis.

“You really want to play, Travis?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Ward. Can we play some more?”

“Only if you play by my rules, okay? You do exactly as I tell you, got it?”

“Okay,” Travis agreed impassively.

Stephen spent the rest of the afternoon running patterns on the street while Travis rocketed pass after pass to him. He knew that audibly telling him when to pass wasn’t going to work for long, but how to get the idea of when to pass into his molasses mess of a brain? Then he had an idea. He sat Travis down on the street and drew Xs and Os with a piece of Liam’s chalk. Travis got a kick out of that. Nothing fancy, just the basics. After each chalk lesson, Stephen would run the pattern, and Travis drilled him every time. Stephen Ward went to bed that evening in wonderment over the little bastard kid with the golden arm.

The next week, Stephen brought Travis into his back yard. He laid a bucket on its side against the fence and placed Travis on the other end of the yard, about seventy-five feet away. Soon there was a hollow tin thwack as the ball bounced out of the pail. He scrounged up three more buckets, put them against the fence at various intervals, and called them by different numbers. Travis nailed every call. Stephen ran and grabbed his screw gun and some screws. He fastened the buckets to the fence at various heights. Travis hit them all. He didn’t miss one. By the middle part of that summer, Stephen had rigged up an intricate, Rube Goldberg type of system of between eight and ten buckets fastened to ropes and pulleys, all moving in motion at the same time when he pulled on them. It had taken him the good part of a day to figure it out on paper, then another week of actually making it work, but it was worth the effort. Travis was in his spiral-glory, laughing out loud every time he hit a bucket.

When school had started that year, Stephen came home after work one day and saw a moving truck up at the end of the street. He went and inquired and sure enough, the Sims’ had moved out. He was a little miffed at not knowing anything ahead of time, but then again Travis wasn’t the kind of kid to put two and two together enough to mention it to him. Stephen strolled into his back yard, picked up the football, and threw it mightily at a bucket, knocking it so hard that it swung around and got entangled with another rope and pulley. Summer was gone, and so was his little experiment with Travis. He decided to leave the buckets up for awhile, after all he had taken down the trampoline a mere two days after Liam was bounced from it, landing right next to him, his body limp from a broken neck. Travis had never said a word about the trampoline or the accident. At times Stephen thought perhaps he didn’t even remember it. It was next spring, a season of new beginnings, before the buckets came down.

****

Texas Stadium loomed large and pretentious above Stephen Ward as he stood on the sidelines a few paces away from the coaches. The big hole in the roof was a magnet for his eyes, that is, until the practice squad took the field. He was in awe at the precision with which spring training camp and tryouts were conducted. Other teams, he knew, were lax about the procedure, being more concerned about straightening out kinks and kneading sore muscles than they were about fixing their eyes on a championship so early in the year. Not so the Cowboys. They were a well-oiled machine, and they meant business, even at this early juncture.

Coach Parcells glanced at his clipboard, called out Travis Sims’ name, and barked orders to his assistants. He turned back to Stephen and raised one eyebrow, as if to say “Okay, let’s see what he’s got.” Stephen smiled in return and nodded toward the field as the athletes formed their squads. On the first play, the receiver ran a post-slant, and Travis hit him with ease. There were a few jeers, and someone called him lucky, but Stephen knew that it had absolutely nothing to do with luck, nothing at all. He decided to take a seat and watch from the bench. The next play was a cross-pattern, and the ball was drilled perfectly. Parcells glanced back at Stephen, then yelled for the defense to step up the pressure. An assistant leaned over and reminded him that it wasn’t a full practice, that the players were only wearing helmets and shoulders pads. But Parcells ignored him. The defensive line grew aggressive, and Travis skirted them with ease. Play after play, he ran circles around his future teammates. The more they tried to pressure him, the more unfazed he became. On the last play, Travis really won them over. It was a wide-out and the ball was so beautifully thrown that by the time the receiver looked up, it had floated into his hands like a down pillow from heaven.

Stephen smiled from ear to ear as he sat on the bench. And he wondered if Liam had been there, would he have done as well as Travis? He was always a natural athlete, with grace and potential that was obvious even as a ten year old. Perhaps he would’ve been a baseball player instead, with that fluid swing of his. Maybe not a great one like Bonds or Rodriguez, but an average one at least, living out his dream just the same. There was no doubt in Stephen’s mind, though, that had Liam been on the field that late spring day in Texas, he never would’ve hit those buckets every time like Travis up the street did.

THE END

©2003 Steven Holbrook Hill

Renaissance Man?

2005-07-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

I’m not one to blow my own horn, but I often secretly fancy myself to be a modern-day Renaissance Man. (While the laughter from My Better Half dies down, allow me to explain.) Note my qualifications. I have a little knowledge about a lot of subjects. I’m a perfect Jack-of-all-trades, expert at none. I can fix most minor--and some major--home repairs. I can cook, if I absolutely have to. I can clean better than most guys, if that makes any sense! I have a respectable job, a nice home in a bucolic Bergen County town, a beautiful more-than-capable-wife, 3.4 well adjusted kids, and a gaggle of pets skittering about on any given day.

More importantly, I’d like to think that I’m still hip. But considering the fact that my demographics put me smack in between the Gen X-ers and the Baby Boomers, the truth is, I’m probably not. So after taking a long and pathetic look in the mirror, I decided to be bold and take matters into my own hands and reclaim my mojo.

A few years ago, I came upon an advertisement scouting for male makeover subjects for a new series to debut on Bravo TV. The Queer Eye For The Straight Guy sounded curious enough, so I shot off an email accompanied by a photo of myself in my usual bland, slightly mismatched attire. They responded with a questionnaire. Tongue in cheek, I filled it out to the best of my ability--though I still have no clue as to what bouillabaisse is! Lo and behold, the producers called me up. They wanted to send a camera crew to my house for a thirty-minute test screening to determine whether or not I fit the bill. Sounded great to me. In the meantime, while I racked my brain to figure out how to break the news to My Better Half that five gay guys were going to invade our house and give me a much needed makeover, the producers called back. Turns out I wasn’t makeover material after all. I only lagged in the Dress and Food & Wine departments. My Grooming, Decorating, and Culture departments were satisfactory. They wanted losers across the board, not partial ones. So now, of course, the show is a big hit, I missed out on a much-needed free wardrobe and what-do-gay-guys-do-with-bouillabaisse tips, and I’m right back where I started. The issue of my hipness was still very much in question.

Shortly thereafter, I came home to a large package on my bed. It was a bag with three shoeboxes in it along with a note signed by My Better Half, that read: “THIS IS THE STRAIGHT GIRL’S EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY.” Now, keep in mind, I’m not one to go shopping. I’ve got no patience for it. In fact, I hadn’t bought new shoes for myself since the Israelites trekked through the wilderness 4,500 years ago. So I tried them on. The first pair were brown Oxfords. Stylish and classic, they fit great. The next pair were black casual slip-ons. Perfect, I love convenience. Who wants to be bothered by that old fashioned shoe-tying ritual anyway? The last pair was black, dressy, and well . . . indescribable. They were really wide at the toe--runway wide. I could just hear Enron’s corporate 737s taxiing up for departure. And because of the fit, I needed a size 12 instead of my requisite 11, which made them look even more like clown shoes.

“Trust me,” My Better Half said soothingly. “They’re ‘in’. All the new styles are like that.”

Ignoring my gut-like reservations about the newly acquired scuba flippers, I donned them the very next weekend for a semi-formal affair. Needless to say, I was both excited and nervous to see if anyone would notice. The first person to say something was my 17-year-old niece. Great, I thought. She’s the living, breathing definition of hip. I’ll take her opinion any day.

“Nice treads Uncle Steve,” she’d said. “Very cool. But what are ya hidin’ under there, Hobbit feet?”

Suddenly, feeling hip was no longer tops on my list. I was more concerned about how to get rid of those flappers to avoid any further embarrassment. Perhaps I could donate them to the local foot fetish club? Or maybe the Queer Guys could use them for re-spackling some sad sack’s apartment on their next show?

In the end, though, I still have the shoes. Actually, they’ve grown on me to the point where I kind of like them. And why not? After all, I am a Renaissance Man, aren’t I?

© 2003 Steven H. Hill

The Waking Awareness of a Guilt-free Worrywart

2005-07-21T08:58:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been much of a morning person. It’s probably because I’m not a heavy sleeper. I’m not sure why this is the case. Perhaps it has something to do with me being a worrywart. Heck, I can’t even eat fat-free Fig Newtons without feeling guilty about it.

Take for example, a recent family vacation trip to North Carolina. The rental house in question was an eight-bedroom mansion right on the beach. A truly stunning home . . . that is if you ignore the plethora of spider nests occupying every corner and the ant colonies selling condos next to week old crumbs on the dining table. The unlikely event that the house survived Hurricane Isabel pretty much unscathed aside, it was a pigsty. It looked as if it hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned since, well . . . since it had been built some five years ago. After getting nowhere complaining to the rental company, My Neo-German Better Half decided to take matters into her own hands. White Tornado that she is, it didn’t take much on her part to corral the rest of our party to help her give the house a once over that would make Mr. Clean look like a Bombay slumlord.

Despite the usual protests of a bad back and an inoperable hairline fracture to my pinky--and an insatiable desire for my head to be supported by a couple of down pillows after ten hours of stop-and-go driving punctuated every fifteen minutes by a bladder bursting crowd of twelve and under kids--I soon found myself vacuuming up spider after spider in our chosen oceanview bedroom. I’m not kidding when I tell you there were a lot of them. Those pesky arachnids had even made homes in all the intricate loops of the four poster wrought-iron bed. After a good thirty minutes of meticulous debugging, I found myself answering the doorbell to a portly black woman who was curiously dressed as a cleaning lady.

"The boss told me you folks had a musty room that needs some fixing," she said. "I got the chemicals right here."

"Um, sure," I replied, glancing over my shoulder at three petite white girls whizzing through the house in the first ever Duck, North Carolina Annual Vacuum Race. "Let me show you the way."

Ever conscious of the fact that this poor woman was basically experiencing a slap in the face to her Herculean cleaning skills, I escorted her directly through The Clean Team gauntlet to the room in question--my bedroom. Without batting an eyelash, she followed me, obediently sprayed her little bottle all over the carpet, and left without a peep.

I began to wonder if she even cared that we were mopping up after her. Being that she probably pulled in a hefty minimum wage for her efforts at tidying up ten or so twenty-room oceanfront manors in the period of about five hours before she retired to her tarpaper shack in the fume-filled shadows of I-95, I figured not.

Satisfied and content, I decided it was time to settle down into my spotless bed for a few hours of guilt-free shuteye. Ironically, for pretty much the first time in my entire life, I slept like a rock. My Better Half told me the next morning that I was screaming in my sleep, but that she herself was too tired to be bothered by it. Though I didn’t recall the screaming part, I do remember a very real nightmare of spiders, plagues of them, swooping down all over me during the night while Aunt Jemima--I say that affectionately--held me pinned down to the bed in a crazed fit of caste system revenge.

After finally awakening to pools of sweat the size of Lake Superior spreading underneath me, my sight fell on the corner post of the wrought-iron bed that was next to my head. A brave lone spider--no doubt sent from the surviving Death Squad Jihad Resistance Force that’d escaped my vacuumous onslaught the previous evening--had strung a single, defiant strand of web through one of the loops. It glistened against the sunlight filtering through the Ralph Lauren blinds. As I rose stiffly from the unfamiliar bed, my small intestine heaved in a Napoleonic coup d’etat against the rest of my digestive system, reminding me that payback is a bitch for any guilt-ridden worrywart, especially when the previous day’s Fig Newtons begin to take effect on your first day of vacation.

©2003 Steven H. Hill

Catnap Fever

2005-07-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve found the solution to the world’s problems. Terrorism? A thing of the past. Wars and conflicts? No more. Domestic problems? Totally done away with. That’s right. Strike up the band and start the parade because my moment of revelation can help all of mankind. And, I owe it all to my cat.

Or, rather, my ex-cat I should say. As luck would have it, my longtime furry feline Scout is now gone, kidnapped--er, catnapped if you will--by a neighbor down the street. Why didn’t I just go take him back, you say? Well, things weren’t quite that simple. You see, Scout was one of those rare cats who thought he was a dog. He made friends everywhere he went, often disappearing for days at a time. He wagged his tail incessantly, ceaselessly rubbed up against you or slept at your feet, and even let you cradle him upside down in your arms like a puppy. He was the antithesis to his twin brother Bucky’s quieter, more lethargic feline presence.

Ultimately, it was Scout’s friendliness that led to his undoing. I’d warned him about this unacceptable behavior, that it only would lead to trouble some day, but he refused to listen. Off he would trot, purring, in search of new friends and experiences. Being sixteen years old and having recently adopted the ever popular emaciated-rib-and-paunch-supermodel-waif-like appearance, he quickly fell into the Florence Nightingale graces of two little girls down the street, who, for some strange reason, mistook him for a hungry stray and appropriated him for themselves. Having ascertained from my kids--who were much more familiar with the layout of our kindergarten laced ‘hood than I was--where Scout had disappeared to, I toyed with the idea of marching right down to the neighbor’s house and giving him a piece of my mind. While I was delaying the cat-confrontation, the neighbor in question actually showed up at my home, and though I didn’t answer the door--lucky him--My Better Half did. The conversation basically went like this:

My daughters found a black cat. We heard it was yours. Can we keep him?
No, you can’t.
They’ve really taken a liking to him. They even named him Midnight.
Let me get this straight. You catnapped our cat, named him even, and now you want to keep him? I don’t think so.
Well, all right, but my girls aren’t going to like it.

The nerve of some people, I thought. Turns out that Scout never did come back because the neighbor kindly helped the situation by putting tuna fish out for him to eat.
Well, now it was time for decisive action on my part. I laid out my options. A frontal assault with a police complaint, catnapping charges, and subsequent jail time for the felonious feline filcher would work just fine for me. Or perhaps a stealth, 101st Airborne-type, surprise reverse-catnapping attack would be in order. Or. . . I could do the loving thing and let the whole incident go. Pretend it never happened. After all, the cat was on his ninth life already. He was eating a hole through my wallet the size of a cannonball. And any day he was bound to start shrieking in pain 24/7, when his old age started to catch up to him.

In the end, I decided to let it go. I risked bearing the brunt of the humiliation of being the only person this side of China to have his cat kidnapped for no good reason other than a meal. But I felt it was the right thing to do. Don’t make waves, don’t blow it out of proportion, just let it go.
It was then that I had this light bulb moment, this crystal clear realization that if everyone in the world did the same thing, lots of problems would be solved. Excitedly, I shared my newfound wisdom with My Better Half, who promptly patted me on the back and gave me her good-thing-you-got-on-the-bus-before-it-left-town look and walked away.

In the following days, I tenaciously clung to my revelation like a book bag on the first day of school, my kids survived the traumatic catnapping of their precious pet, and the world continued to ignore my pleas of love and self-sacrifice.

Personally, I miss that kooky Scout. But then again, I still have Bucky, my lone, reticent, alopecia-stricken cat who looks like he’s ready to audition for Mr. Bigglesworth stunt double in the next Austin Powers movie. What more could a guy ask for? Really.

©2003 Steven H. Hill