City of Legends

Legendary comic actor and comedian Soupy Sales passed away yesterday.  He was hip, ironic, silly, bold, articulate, intelligent and made me laugh when I was a kid.  Hell, he could still make me laugh.

I was honored to be included in a book with him, the AEI’s "Art & Soul".  Of the 49 other persons besides myself, living and dead, who were honored in that volume saluting outstanding creative artists from the State of West Virginia, he was one of a handful I really got a kick out of being included alongside.

His antics were sometimes the stuff of urban legends (yes, he did do the "green pieces of paper" stunt on television).  He hung with some of the hippest, smartest and trendiest of his time, people like Frank Sinatra guesting on his show, knowing that it would mean at least a pie in the face.  He played with the kids like a kid, and you can see elements of his pioneering work in the works of Pee Wee Herman and others who followed.

His earnest and engaging wit and style has been missed from television as he had been pressed off the airwaves by time, tastes and the clowns who don’t realize they are clowns.  Guys with last names like Beck, Limbaugh and Stern.

Gnight Soupy, we love ya and give ya a big kiss.

It is the first Saturday in February, and the long road of the year still stretches out before me. Miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep.

The year has already taken me by surprise. A year ago I was living two hundred miles from where I am writing this and unattached (a pledge by me to remain faithful to my vows from my second marriage, out of respect for her and to prove to myself that, despite the legends, I can keep it zipped, just became a habit and I found myself promising to make sure I would "take no pretender, again, to my bed").

Now I am where I am, wishing I was 8,132 miles ESE of where I am, blissfully involved with a woman for whom, for years, I felt unworthy to get the attention of. We are making plans. That is a very gentle way to put it. There’s an old saying that love is just your neuroses finding somone else’s neuroses attractive. We both have our frayed edges, dings and cracks, but it seems to have made us both stronger, and more suited for a life with each other than we would have been five, ten years ago.

I have a lot of work ahead of me, having allowed some things to slip over the last few years, but I am making the adjustments…not to be a different person, there’s a world of difference between shining one’s shoes and throwing them out to buy another pair, but to put the edge back on the knife, the shine back on the mirror and recalibrate some things I let slip in the face of my own doubts and penance.

Next month I am the a judge or judge and MC (they are still debating on whether or not to turn me loose on a crowd of high school students, no wonder West Virginia has a bad rap in educational statistics, nationally, they are so afraid of their own shadow they stunt the students by pretending the world is Disneyland) for the West Virginia state finals of the Poetry Out Loud contest. I have a few miracles left…not many (I laughed aloud at the anonymous commentor who accused me of having a Messiah complex or Narcissism, obviously they have been spending too much time with their head up their ass to move beyond such simplistic and misapplied generalities…Salieri lives!) but enough.

Not miracles of divine intervention. But if you take a reasonably well filled brain pan (is it narcisstic to know one’s own IQ score?) and give it a vector and a shove, you can take down mountains and reroute rivers. Then all the people who never got off their fat asses will accuse you of thinking you are better than them, and it gets ugly because, while they are farming the new fields and irrigating with the rerouted river, they are busy trying to hang you as a witch.

I actually find it terribly amusing. C.S. Lewis was very right when he pointed out that Democracies have an issue with excellence (take a look at our President, the triumph of mediocrity. We elected a man I wouldn’t hire to fix my car because of questions of competence and integrity and gave him the power of life and death to send my nephew and thousands of other people’s fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and nephews and nieces into harm’s way).

We need to stop this whole entitlement mindset that hampers and pampers us such that we become a nation of couch potatoes grunting at faux celebrities on television. You know why I might would not vote for Barack Obama for President? Because Oprah Winfrey has so little social conscience that, to make a quick buck, she’d shill her jury consultant, a Dr. Phil McGraw, to the American viewing public as a competent and representative mental health professional, causing untold harm to people and relationships (but she gets her licensing fees from syndication). So I wonder if she’ll put her prestige behind a train wreck of a snake oil salesman like Dr. Phil, do I want to trust her with telling me whom I should have deciding who lives and dies and what Federal programs get funded?

Maybe we should just skip the step and run Dr. Phil. The terrifying thing is, he’d get a lot of votes. Just not from Britney Spears.

Lots going on. Most of it good. It’s in the 40’s here, expected to reach about 60.

Between a nice late evening chat with Jezz and some email words of encouragement from Gina (whose book I am editing and it is incredible) I feel pretty good going into the week.

I’m hoping this week to see the advance pdf for my page from the AEI’s Art&Soul book, coming out next month. Postponed from last fall, it’s a coffee-table size booklet that profiles 50 outstanding creative artists from West Virginia. It is an honor to have been selected, more so as I have always had a distant relation with the Mountain State (WV to the World: William Who?) and the other honorees (you can see the full list at http://www.appalachianeducationinitiative.org/aei04artandsoulARTISTS.htm ) include Don Knotts, Jennifer Garner, Kathy Mattea, Soupy Sales(!), Ann Magnuson(!) and Morgan Spurlock..that is going to make one hell of a party (although, realistically, I never expect all of them to be in one room at one time, but trust me to take a pile of books with me to the reception…)

I’ve been in serious skull session about starting a consulting company…it looks like it is going to come to fruition. Between the business acumen, technical skills and networks of the crew we’re assembling, this could be big. I could get used to that again. Be nice to dig my way out of the financial hard times I put myself into. 99% of my real problems in this life could be resolved by a simple briefcase full of cash…barring some nice philantrophist who’d rather go down in history as the patron who rescued a wounded "romantic poet of the internet" than buy another gold plated dipstick for his Bentley, I have to just keep swinging.

Speaking of swinging, I wonder what Mari is up to?

I was glad to see Tom Westman win Survivor last night. I have never seen such a dominating performance. It is nice to know that sometimes the person who plays the best does win (unlike some years when it is truly just a backstab game, there has to be some consideration for, if it truly was a game of survival, who would win (like a story I worked on a few years ago…if "Gilligan’s Island" had not been a comedy…how would it have gone? I had it come down to the Professor and the Skipper at war, the Howells and Gilligan long gone as collateral casualties, and Ginger and Mary Ann having to decided whether to sit back and await the final victor or throw in with one or the other. Of course, in my universe, the ladies wisely chose the one most likely to keep them alive and in comfort, the Professor. Although the Professor spared the Skipper’s life, it was left with the backthought that eventually the Skipper would wait until the Prof had done all he could to improve the quality of life, then take him out.))

I’m giving two final exams this week, and have a lot of yard work to do, in addition to my newly full dance card (don’t worry, Clemmie, I’m being good, as promised) and my writing and editing duties…I HAVE to put "The Morgantown Suite" to bed by next Sunday.