Laugh at Yourself First: AIN SOPH

Read "AIN SOPH" and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

The Day Job has had me on heavy touring through small towns and motor lodges with spotty Internet service, so there hasn't been much time to keep up on my blogging. I hope I haven't ruined anyone's weekend plans. I'm reposting AIN SOPH for these two weeks because last week, while I was huddled under a plastic tarp with my coworkers trying to shield our campfire from the rain somewhere in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains, I typed the last pages of a sequel before the battery on my laptop expired. We couldn't find Higgins the next morning, but there were bear tracks all around the muddy clearing the company considered "accommodations." I won't even tell you about the continental breakfast. This is the revised version of the story that was in NUGE FOR PREZ.

If you are here with me in Binghamton, I hope you'll join me at the spaghetti dinner to raise money for my brother's scholarship fund. It's going from 1-5pm July 10th at the East Maine Volunteer Fire Department, 847 East Maine Rd. There will be food, music, and prizes donated from local businesses including free golf lessons, oil changes, and KGB fm. The first twenty families through the door receive a copy of my book, Man-In-Sea. If you are not one of them, you can buy your own at lulu.com/tbstarlight. All proceeds from book sales benefit the Matthew Juser Memorial Scholarship. My next novel, the Salvation Shark starts 8/6 at Laugh at Yourself First. Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: Danglehorn

Read "Danglehorn," and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

There probably are acceptable times to beat a seventeen year old girl into submission. Say she's a wanton murder about to perform a ghastly execution on an innocent bystander. Go ahead, action hero, knock her out. Beyond that, I can't see any reason that would make it acceptable to pause to consider the situation, wind up, and jack a teenage girl in the jaw. As the Seattle cop struggled struggled and choked one teenage girl that was resisting arrest, her friend tried to push the officer away. This man armed with a gun and trained in hand-to-hand combat felt so threatened by the situation he needed to take out the second girl fast and effectively, fist-to-jaw style. The cell-phone video is on the net for you to form your own opinion, but the response I received to my outrage was in defense of the officer, who was only doing what he needed to pacify a suspect. After all, it's common knowledge that you don't jaywalk in Seattle.

I'm not saying we can't forgive the guy. He did get hit first, and the girls were resisting arrest, and one or both of the girls probably did do something to instigate or escalate the situation unnecessarily, and the girl's history reveals this is not her first physical confrontation with a police officer. This guy thought he was doing his job. He thought he was doing the right thing. Unfortunately, the officer was wrong. Seventeen-year-old girls rarely look like anything else, other than maybe sixteen-year-old girls, or sometimes eighteen-year-old girls, so I can't imagine the officer mistook her for an adult man, with whom this action may be more explainable, if not acceptable. Punishing a guy that got pissed off and made a mistake is not the important issue. Instead, a precedent needs to be set to deter the next guy who thinks he's doing his job. After all, isn't that the theory our entire justice system is based on? Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: Danglehorn

Read "Danglehorn" and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

I hope you are enjoying Danglehorn. The story has five scenes, and will finish this Friday. As I mentioned last week, this was the last Theatricks by Starlight show. We did three performances before the company finally imploded due to actors unwilling to keep their drama onstage. The cast of this show was the best I ever worked with, and bringing Danglehorn to life was the most fun I ever had doing theatre. If Theatricks had to end, Danglehorn was the show to end it on. You are making a mistake to pass up working with Brett, Jason, Joe, or Kristen. As for the costumes, Anna has moved on to purses. You can find her on Etsy as BirdsintheMirror.

If you're here with me in Binghamton, our shale may no longer be up for sale! Apparently, the pigs are salivating at the possibility of making Utica an even bigger hellhole. than it already is. No offense to any Utica readers. Our second-rate Marcellus may not yield as high-quality methane. For landowners atop both formations, I urge you to watch the film, "Gasland," that debuted this week on HBO. The documentary was begun in Pennsylvania less than an hour from where I live. Water is poisoned, the land is wasted, and more than enough people have been killed to say the mission is a failure. Congratulations to Vera Scroggins, who I found interviewed in an Upstate periodical warning against letting the Frackers in New York. She has seen widespread destruction in her hometown, where the New Year is celebrated with exploding concrete water wells, and water faucets can be ignited. If that sounds delicious to you, don't let me stand in your way. You can drink my share too. Watch me bring it all together. The daughters of Vera Scroggins ran the theater where we did the first "Danglehorn" performance. I got to see my name on a marquee. Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: Danglehorn

Read "Danglehorn" and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

This week starts my kids play, "Danglehorn." It was designed to tour schools, with two or three actors playing three characters wearing elephant and rhinoceros costumes built of wire frame and felt. It was the last play ever performed by Theatricks by Starlight. Very much not for children is "The Vampire of Doom City," which ends June 15th at regularcrazy.blogspot.com

If you're here with me in Binghamton, I hope you can come to the spaghetti dinner I'm organizing July 10th at the East Maine Volunteer Fire Department from 1-5pm. All proceeds go to the Matthew Juser Memorial Scholarship. Cheers and jeers to local businesses for their help in the effort. Cheers first to DataFlow, who knocked off the majority of my bill for the poster. They have done all of my printing for years, and I could not have been treated better as a customer. They also have cookies in the lobby. I recommend the Macadamia.

Jeers to an unnamed Greek restaurant that gave me a hard time about hanging one of those posters. I've been loyal to your potato salad since the week you opened, but no more. Still, it was difficult to eat around Douglas Walter Drazen the Senior, who apparently shared my affinity. He once owned a fur shop in Downtown, and may or may not have been my inspiration for the supervillain, Adradian. The punks made a social outing of protesting his store every Saturday, until Drazen eventually closed shop. None of his customers wanted to walk in past the smelly kids loitering on the sidewalk. It took nearly three decades, but punk rock finally accomplished something. Now Drazen the Junior runs for mayor every few years, intimidating his opponents by giving their home addresses to angry lynch mobs. He loses by less and less each election. Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com