TQR Confidential

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Dep proceeds to the porthole with IT TAKES TWO

[DeP has pulled up her shirt to reveal the pale skin of her torso. With a pair of silver pincers, she takes up a bit of skin and pulls. They say....you've heard of infamous 'they'...the omni-present, all-knowing, egocentric THEY who watch us...they say that a person can calculate the flubber-fat ratio by pinching a bit of skin here and there. DeP's read that but she is not convinced. The cap she's just finished, Ms Mim's offering this quarter, has reminded her of the follies of fitness, how fickle it can be, how in a few short months a svelte and pliable physique can become bulbous and saggish but how the opposite is not so true. She tosses the pincers away. They've given her no new knowledge, no insight into her state of being. What they've given her are two small, pinkish bite marks.]

And so the cap with the little shiney shortpants lays expectant before me. It's got some good points, easy flow, grammatical efficiency. Some humour. People struggling for a place, you know?

[she rolls the brown egg across the top of her desk, depositing it in its handpainted cup before straightening the little muscle shirt over the organized sheets of the cap just read.]

What is it? What is it? Its features flow well enough, as these linear familiar paths chosen are known to do. Yes, there's trouble. Maybe a will for solution. Movement. Hope, even. But...

It Takes Two resolves too easily, je pense. This road has been travelled before, true...relationships that teeter, reputations that fall, life-isn't-always-what-we-expected melancholy. All that. It's not a crime to venture down this path..it's just, it's just...we need a few more potholes to shake us up, to gather momentum. We need our hearts to pound in anticipation or elation or sorrow or expectation or surprise! Oui, take us to the edge of falling off. Push! Pull back! Fall! Take us to breathlessness...

You can't go from slovenly to svelte in six months hardly ever really probably not. I don't believe it, anyway. And other stuff that stalls, Ms. Mims.

[DeP rises, rubs absently at the lipstick smudge on the shiney little shorts, then escorts the cap to the porthole and deposits it to the cacaphony of the deluge. There are a few screams, the beginnings of a cheerleading chant, then a HUThutHUuuutttt! She pulls the door closed so that silence returns to The Floor. Almost silence. There's the squeaky squawk of the mirror ball in slowmotion rotation. And there's the whine of the pulley within the walls from which the Boss is suspended... DeP steps to the window where she's left her gitanes, lights one, then watches as the smoke curls up and dissipates across the ancient piss stains of the ceiling..]

Soon enough, the moon. La lune sera bientôt disponible..

[She smiles, then turns toward her desk and the pile of waiting caps. Work to be done.]

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Jesus portholes Divya Dubey's untitled work

[Jesus slaps the last page of the the tome down on the desktop atop the Jenga-ing tower of pages he'd slapped down prior. He'd removed his glasses earlier, and now he rubs his red-rimmed eyes. The Java cigar rests on the edge of the humungoid ashtray stage left of the the desktop. Jesus grabs the combat sunglasses and shoves them onto his face, and then he grabs the cigar and shoves it into his mouth. He rises]

Could not pay me enough to do this for a living.

[He grabs up the freshly examined cap/tome and shoves it into...oh, nevermind. What with all the grabbing and shoving, well, sorry. Jesus takes steps, oily smoke like silk wrapping around his nasty beard and tailing assward]

Ms. Dubey, I've examined the cap you sent, which, strangely, doesn't seem to have a name, and I have decided it doesn't meet up with our standards.

[His heavy, dirt-crusted combat boots transport him to the opened, whistling Porthole. He tosses the cap out into the deluge]

I won't go into it, but, I mean, really. Come on, now. What we want is action in the plot. We want to be suprised, you know what I mean? We want "Oh wow, I did not see that coming!" Or, maybe I'm trying to say that we want more of those things than I found in the unnamed cap. More and less. Hah ha ha. See...

[He walks back to the cherrywood]

Less, as in it was to gosh-darn long, mame.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Jesus, sitting in for Boli, portholes Lowther's piece

[...and the crazy happenings on the Floor cranked the planet's rotation a tiny degree to the-

Yeah, um, no. Dealing with this crew, as I have for the last, what's it been, sweetums? ten years? you need to ride a horse named Well-maybe, and that's short for Well-maybe-they'll-show-up-tomorrow-and-if-not-then-its-no-skin-off-my-back-cause-I-got-better-shit- to-do-with-my-time-then-sit-around-waiting-for-these-bastards-to-chime-in, which. hey, I've got to admit, is a very long name for a race horse. Hah. Though, tell the truth, if a horse by that name wandered up to the gate when I was attending the races? I'd bet on him]

So, this one Canadian piece.

[Jesus stands up and walks a few walks from the cherrywood]

It's typed up good and all, but...

[He slaps his fingers over his lips]

I'm letting my Chicago show, aren't I. Shoot.

[The droid, once again, rumbles and vibrates itself across the the desktop of the cherrywood. Christ lets it ride]

The Canadian piece, Mario Lowther's Burrard View Park, lacks any sort of spark. It's Christmas Carol without Christmas.<

[Jesus watches the droid skip across the desktop]

Like I said, the piece was typed up well, and the idea wasn't the worst, but there's nothing there, Mario. Nothing. It ends flat. Like a hopeful at the London Olympics flying off the tip off her mark and landing on her face instead of on her feet. Read Thom Jones. Read other shorts. But, as Doomey would say, don't waste our time. Of course, when Doomey tells that to VCs they usually type back with some silly recompense that means nothing and wastes even more time, but...anywho. Mario, I am going to shove your cap out the Porthole.

[He walks over to the Porthole, and he squeeks it open, the deluge raging outside]

Please don't type back at me telling me what a bad person I am because I am merely a standin, okay? The fellow that should be here is not here because of some, some weird happening, an event, okay?

[Jesus tosses the cap out the window]

Don't push my buttons, Mario.

[He climbs over some debre and reseats himself behind the cherrywood. He watches as the phone slowly comes to a standstill, vibrations and rumblings and hummings finished...for the moment. Jesus frowns]

Friday, July 20, 2012

Return VC stakes his claim. Expounds upon the vicissitude of TIME

Last quarter I almost made it. My story, “Time Out of Tune,” a western set in 1886 in These Parts and Those Parts, went all the way to the top floor, the executive suite, but, sigh, didn’t make the cut, and the anvil of rejection was dropped and splattered my good fortune.

But, instead of my good fortune sinking into the sand, as all good fortune must do when anvilized, and despite my inherent and integral depressive spleen where I like to think I’m merely a malignant tumor in the prostate of the world, the good wishes and reviews from Gabrielle and Lafloor and Lalo did make me want to blot my splattered fortune. Fortunately there was a blotter nearby, and I am willing to plunge ahead, sand be damned.

So, I present to you another story, this one also set in 1886 but in the very real place of Chicago. It’s called “Ed, Norton, Ralph, Kramden.”

To reiterate my reiteration, I'll write what I wrote before but with a different accent: Been through the sixties (a college paper on Moby Dick was one sentence), copyeditor, managing editor, and now freelance copyeditor and writer. I blinked, sneezed, yawned, and now I’m 60, and all flamboyantly interrupted by searching for my keys and wallet and eyeglasses.

Thanks for reading.

Mike