🚀 go-pugleaf

(thom's letter)

L,
Someone should've given the guy a copy of How to Write an Effective Business
Letter.  I recently bought a copy of the Dharna Bums.  I read a good half of it
before realizing he was never going to get to the f**king point!  I skipped
ahead and concluded the only thing that contained him was the book ran out of
pages.  I'm sure Scribner or someone did a time/motion study and found the
breast pocket of a Levi's jean jacket could accommodate a paperback book of no
more that 173 pages.  Otherwise the man would still be writing that damn book.

Dude!  The Atlantic Monthly.  Now that's what I call "leisure time."  I don't
think I've ever cracked the cover of that particular periodical.  I'll have to
give it a trial.  By all reports it stands alone, defending the rationality of
the 19th century against the cellular hordes of post modern something-or-other.

It's 4 AM.  I've given up on getting anything done after sundown.  It's in the
40's here, once the sun goes down, and I'm loathe to turn on the heat.  In the
winter our average heating bill hits $200 and it just breaks my heart to spend
money on something so basic as keeping warm.  Result--I'm in bed by 6 PM.  I'm
trying rising early and getting something done before rather than after work (I
leave at 10 AM.) 

Kate sounds good.  She's enjoying work and learning to composite.  I'm going to
join her for two weeks around Christmas.  Should be fun.

Well, you've got the first week under your belt.  Mending, mending, mending....
TR


(my reply)

well yes, i must admit, i dont subscribe to Atlantic Monthly.  My father takes
it and I used to read it at home, getting my Republican training early (not
that it's stuck).  It has that New Yorker thing where the writing is so good
you'll read any damn thing therein.  My mother-in-law (whom i dig, contrary to
all TV stereotypes) sent it along last week along with the New Yorker,  a
really fun espionage novel by Jeffrey Archer and an issue of Commentary
(Jewish�themed news and opinion magazine) which I haven't had the heart to
open.  Boy, talk about the generational split with the periodicals. if it had
been you or I sending magazines to a convalescing friend we wouldn't have sent
anything first of all (except of course these tired old Emails!!) and if we
were ass-bolutely backed up against the wall by our wives or other well-meaning
familial interlopers we would have sent.... hmmm, Vanity Fair if there was a
good murder story, Spy (which is sort of like Life was for the post-war
generation),  and we would trail off into things like In Style pretty quickly,
unsure of anyone's interests beyond celebrity necklines anymore...
(hmm, someone must have learned the underlining keystroke...)

  No heat eh? sounds exactly like how I would spend a little forced
bachelorhood - digging myself for economizing there, then blowing far more on
long distance calls.  Whenever I ask Roberta how much something costs I'm given
that look that she must have learned from Audrey Meadows (you'd begrudge me
THIS?) or even Betty Rubble.

  So Its 3AM here, and I got up so I could--- well, its like this (FADEUP:
Randy Newman "I Love LA"):  2 months ago (when I was still walking)  a friend
of mine hired me to engineer and sequence for a commercial director making a
demo for his reel.  Evidently this director has all kinds of business doing
commercials for Chinese markets being a hip, goateed Caucasian who is fluent in
Mandarin (which I'll have to hear to believe). (FADEOUT)

So he hires us to do a lounge knockoff of Dead Kennedy's "Holiday In Cambodia".
 30 seconds of course.  so we do that (upright bass, horn stabs and snapping
fingers), he takes an instrumental mix and goes away.   this morning my friend
calls to tell me the director has called from Vancouver (in which, come to
"Runionize" on it, your wife is now  blissfully dreaming of sugar plums) to ask
if I can send a DA-88 ("no, a DAT, no I'm not sure which, it depends which
studio we use, I might have this Hollywood studio mix it if we cant get studio
time up here this week-- ok, listen can you make one of each and I'll have a
courier come by in the morning?").  So I got up tonight to redub the ah,
30�second�lounge�version�of�Holiday�In�Cambodia, yerss... so that he can add
the Grand Canyon reverb to the horns because I suppose, the gesture was not
BHHIIIGG ENNOOuGGGHH....  I'm sure his demo reel is looking pretty lovely at
this point.. .. also he got one of the singers from the 4 lads ("authentic" 50s
lounge group of whom I havent heard) to sing ...
  It was really pretty fun, but I do have to smirk...

You'll have to begrudge me the lack of any denouement (ooh, french! does that
mean I'm writing in the Lettric system?),  I think it's time to cut your
biographer's losses and bring this ah, screed to a close.  

All the best to you and the expatriate missus ("able I was ere I saw Elba?"
"Revuocnav I was ere I saw Vancouver?").

Love, L