SSC Weekend Words Prompt: “All My Children”

Continued from StoryStudio Chicago’s webzine Cooler By The Lake.

“All My Baby Mommas”

–Teaser–

INT. Apartment in the South Side of Chicago – Night

Jack sits on ratty couch, eating Cheetos, watching Comedy Central, laughing hysterically.

Door bell rings.

Grunting, struggling to get up, bits of food dropping off of him, Jack stumbles to intercom.

Jack: Who is it?

Intercom: Beatrice.

Jack’s eyes blow-wide–Uh, oh.

Jack: Wait.  I thought you were in a coma?

Beatrice (through intercom): I was.  I woke up.

Jack (looks panicked then becomes smooth): Well, heey, baby–how yah doing?

Beatrice: Ooh, don’t you–heey, baby, me, Jack.  Where’s my child support checks for all three years I was in a coma?

Jack looks around his apartment.  Uh, oh.

–End Teaser–

Roll Opening Credits.

Narrator (v.o.): There once was a man, who was just a man, but found himself a hit with the ladies, which was sweet and good times for a while…

…until they got pregnant…

…this is Jack…

…these are Jack’s Baby Mamas…

…and these are THEIR stories…

“All My Baby Mamas”

Debuting this winter on Fox…

When not satirizing day-time TV, Michael James Greenwald (Sleep Sunshine) is a student at Story Studio Chicago, applying for a Ragdale Residency in the fall, and waffling daily (sometimes hourly) on To-MFA or To-Not-To-MFA, that is the question.

His debut novel The Rainbow Child and short story collection Celebratory Gunfire are W.I.P (better than RIP).

His personal blog site is sleepsunshine. Feel free to venture to his Facebook page or feel free to email him with any comments or suggestions for further topics, or if you had any interest in being a guest blogger on either one of his sites.

SSC Weekend Words Prompt: “So This One Time, At BilBo’s Tavern”

This flash-fiction excerpt is continued from a blog post at StoryStudio Chicago’s “Cooler By the Lake” blog.

“So This One Time, At BilBo’s Tavern”

By: Michael J. Greenwald

The Tuesday night shift at BillBo’s Tavern had been the reason I’d been hired as the new bartender; even though I walked-in that one Sunday morning carrying a print-out of a Craig’s List ad which sought a dishwasher (“Hole-in-Every-Wall-Bar Seeks Creative Individual that Fears Not Soap and Suds”).

“Can you bartend on Tuesday night?”

I had only just stepped inside the dingy space, senses momentarily blitzed by the rancid smell of puke and BO which would offend a career homeless’s sensibilities.  I hadn’t spoken and had no idea where the voice had come from, due to my eyes reacting to the dimly-lit space as though I’d been staring at the sun before running directly into a mine-shaft.

Finally, my pupils compressed enough for me to discern the lone human in the bar: a man whose body would garner snowman-envy squeezed into a spotty-white T-shirt; which might have been too small for his girlfriend, if he had a girlfriend, and if she were on a liquid-diet.

“Huh,” I said.

“Can you bartend Tuesday nights?”

I held up the print-out; the paper shook.

“Can you bartend on Tuesday night?” the man repeated.

I turned the paper around, double-checking I’d printed the correct ad.  “No. I’m the creative individual who fears-not soap and suds.”

The fat man shrugged.  “I can’t do nothing for you.”  He turned, twisted a knob of an old Zenith TV propped on the bar-top.  A black-and-white image came to the screen, fuzzy lightning bolts shooting across the picture, like the cheesy original Batman show.  Bam!  Pow!  Poof!

“But I’m here about the dishwasher position.  Please, sir.  I’ve applied all over the city and I’ll do anything you need.”

The fat man didn’t turn for a long minute.  I’d already headed for the door.

“Can you work the Tuesday bartending shift?” he asked for a third time.

I stopped, turned.  “Sure.  Whatever.”  He had the Zenith’s taped-antenna’s in his grubby hands, moving them like one of those airport crew guys with the highlighter sticks.  “But I’ve never bartended before.”

“You ever worked at the zoo?”

“Sir?”

His head swiveled.  I noticed a red birth-mark the shape of Africa splotched on his skin from left cheek to the top of his head.  “The zoo.”

“No…yes!  No.  Yes.”

Suddenly the Zenith’s picture cleared and WGN news appeared.  The man lowered his hands, grunted as he situated himself on a beer cooler, eyes on the screen.

“That’s good, real good,” he responded, nodding agreeably–the birth mark in the shape of Africa had disappeared.

So like I said at the front; I was not supposed to be bartending at BillBo’s on Tuesday night.  But here I am.

“Cooler By The Lake” Blog: “I’m Mad About…Jonathan Franzen – Doing Work”

SS Discussing Something of Literary Merit with Brother Man

Hello, loyal, Sleep Sunshine followers. My anxiously-awaited debut blog on StoryStudio Chicago’s “Cooler By the Lake” blog has landed!

The weekly segment is called, “I’m Mad About…” and this week I discussed Jonathan Franzen’s use of language and syntax to elevate the art of his literature. I also discovered where Oprah and I share common ground! Please check it out and please, please, please, if you can, comment (so those folks at “Cooler” realize I bring something to the table) on the blog. Thanks so much!!

Please click on the link below to zip over there!!!

LINK

Thanks for hanging.

–SS

When not drooling over the capability in Jonathan Franzen’s typing-pinkie, Michael James Greenwald (Sleep Sunshine) is a student at Story Studio Chicago, applying for a Ragdale Residency in the fall, and waffling daily (sometimes hourly) on To-MFA or To-Not-To-MFA, that is the question.

His debut novel The Rainbow Child and short story collection Celebratory Gunfire are W.I.P (better than RIP).

His personal blog site is sleepsunshine. Feel free to venture to his Facebook page or feel free to email him with any comments or suggestions for further topics, or if you had any interest in being a guest blogger on either one of his sites.

PLC Presents: 500 Club (5/27/10)

“Run!”

By: Sleep Sunshine

Your pratfalls sound on the wet pavement.

Slap, splash.  Slap, splash.  Slap.

Surrounded by trees you inhale a pine scent air-freshener with each breath.

Suck, suck…blow.  Suck, suck…blow.  Slap, splash.  Suck, suck…blow.  Slap, splash.  Suck, suck…blow.

Your calves burn, but you don’t stop, can’t stop, can never stop…moving.  Sweat drenches your U of I ball cap, adding to the chalky-residue of dried sweat from days, weeks, a month ago.  Soaked is your sweat-resistant (so it said on the tag when you bought it) shirt, shorts, socks.  Your New Balance cross-trainers spit water from the wet pavement into the air behind you.

Slap, splash.  Slap, splash.  Slap.

Suck, suck…blow.  Suck, suck…blow.

Slap, splash.  Suck, suck…blow.

Where are you going?  What are you doing?  What are you running from?

It’s your birthday.  Today’s your birthday.  May 27, 2010.  Thirty-one years old.  Today.

“Hi, Mrs. Robinson!”

The old woman pauses, mail partially-birthed from mailbox.  “Damn, Christopher, boy; ain’t you just the runnin’ fool.”

Is that what you are?  That all you’ve become?  In thirty-one years of life?

A runnin’ fool.

School’s out, say a prayer, say a prayer; Jeff Watkins has become someone else’s headache now, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus; your Summer stretches out before your eyes; you can do anything, be anybody in the next three months, anything at all.

Listless days toward the end of the semester when your juvenile delinquents (many of them already, the rest of them on their way to the coronation) goofed their state-mandated tests (many of the ones who bother to answer the questions at all subscribe to the Jeff Watkins’s conspiracy theory that the government, the White Man–you included or excluded, you’re not sure–tries to “make them a fool” by making every answer B) you lounged at your desk, shoes on the aluminum, staring out the window at Mr. Johnson clipping the bushes and struggling the school’s relic mower across the grass, making a mental to-do list for your Summer.

1) Write that novel you’ve always talked about

2) Take gramma to a Cub’s game (but she won’t go, she’ll never go, too many steps)

3) Open that E-Trade account and begin investing that money your dad left you, ‘stead of leaving it in a 1.6% savings account

4) Read one book a week from the library

5) Build that spice garden you’ve promised Nancy you’d build, now three summers in a row

6) Take the CPR class at the fire station

7) Make a baby

The list of possibilities stretch as long as Tila Fredericks eye-lashes, long as Milton Swinger’s corn-rows, long as Dunta Henderson’s political aspirations, long as Mark Nelson’s rap sheet, limitless as Phil Robbins earning potential.

So far, you’re accomplishments are as meager as Sam Daviduke’s future unemployment check, meager as Sylina Gutierez’s chances not to have three babies before turning eighteen, meager as the White Man‘s shot to keep Edgar Martinez down.

So far all you’ve managed is:

9) Become a runnin’ fool

You take a left onto Fell Boulevard, punching your fists into the air, lifting your knees to climb, climb Fell Hill.  Sweats a sheen on your skin, a exo-exo-dermis, telling the world, like Mrs. Robinson right away realized.  Damn, Christopher, boy; ain’t you just the runnin’ fool!

Your heart rate is up.  Your heart rate is up.  You check the monitor around your wrist.  165.  You’re okay.  You are…moving.

Back at home Nancy’s sedentary, probably making herself a ham-and-cheese, pouring a glass of lemonade, settling on your back patio, with the Times and her summer text books and spiral notebook–she’s started another Master’s program–sprinkler spitting on the grass, bees buzzing into and out-of her rose bushes.

“What are you going to do this summer?” she’d asked you, just last week.

“Haven’t thought about it, really,” you answered.  “Just enjoying not having to deal with those fucking kids.”

You’d, of course, meant it as a joke, just funnin‘ you, Mrs. O; but she hadn’t taken it that way–you can see that plain as Darius Green’s drug-addled gaze.

10) Have sex with my wife

“What?” you asked, biting into your ham-and-Havarti, though you’d decided, as you chewed in fact, that you’re going to:

11) Become a vegetarian

“Nothing, Chris.”  Nothing never means nothing; nothing always means something.  “It’s just; you talk all second semester about how much you can’t wait for summer to come, when you’ll have all this time to accomplish all these things, but then you spend the summer doing nothing, sitting around here, watching TV, napping, until about halfway through the summer you start bitching about having nothing to do and how you can’t wait for the school-year to start.”

You put your ham-and-Havarti on it’s bed of chips, determined to not pick it, or the sour cream and cheddar chips below it, up:

12)  Lose 25 pounds

“I do not.”

Nancy rolls her eyes.  “We do this every summer, too.”

“What?”

“Fight.”

13) Avoid fighting with Nancy

You pick up the ham-and-Havarti, take, into your mouth, a huge chunk of bread and pig.  You love the grainy, taste of the ham; the biting Havarti.  It’s a great combination, especially with mayo and mustard.

14) Eat whatever the fuck you want

Nancy gets up and strides down the patio stairs, avoiding the one step where the wood has rotted…

15) Fix the step where the wood has rotted

…and strides across the spotty grass…

16) Seed and irrigate the lawn, water it regularly, and mow it once a week, depending on the precipitation.

…to the bird-shaped sprinkler.  She lifts the sprinkler from behind, with the caution one might afford to a rattlesnake, and carries it across the lawn, the sprinkler head squirting and jerking in her hand, water spraying her taunt, tan calves.

17) Finally take Nancy to Rome, for the honeymoon you owe her, from six years ago

18) Get a nice base-tan on your pasty-white skin before going to Rome

19) Buy a bunch of Aloe and stick it in the fridge

Nancy returns to her seat, wipes the water and mud off her fingers and takes another bite of her sandwich, sip of her lemonade.  “In order to accomplish things, Chris, you have to make lists.”

“I do make lists.”

Long as Stephen Jackson’s fingers, Monica Potter’s stories, Brent Bryants touchdown throws.

“Not in your head.  Write them down.”

20) Write down Summer to-do list

You stare out at your backyard; she stares at her textbook, molars cracking a sour cream and cheddar chip into submission.  She’s taking notes as a hummingbird flits in front of the table, flies up to the hummingbird feeder, where it squats for a second, then flies over your hedge to Mr. Riley’s patio.

21) Put hummingbird food in the hummingbird feeder

22) Clip back the hedges that look like unkept green Afros

“Maybe I’ll start running.”

Nancy looks up dubiously, pen poised over paper.  Her eyes flit over your body, at your ” big frame”, then back to her textbook, grimacing at your cloying presence.

9) Become a runnin’ fool

“That’s what I’ll do.”  You toss the remains of your ham-and-Havarti on the plate, scattering those sour cream and cheddar chips onto the table.

23) Clean up after yourself

9) Run two miles everyday.

You jog in place, feel your heart spike into gear (what? uh, what…are…you…doing…Chris?) sweat bead at your receding hair line.

25) Go to that Boseley consultation

“I’m gonna train for a 5K.”

Nancy just stares.  She’s got a dollop of mayo on her lip.  Her eyes follow you as you job around the table, pumping your arms, thrusting your knees up; quad-fat burning you march down the stairs, so exhilarated you forget all about that rotted step.  It groans and gives out and you clip your shin on the next stair, tumble forward onto your grass, now lying sedately amongst the dandelions.

26) Weed the grass

You lay sprawled on your back, staring up at the hot sun, panting, sweating–feeling magnanimous.  Nancy leans over you, bulbous head like an eclipse-moon blocking out the sun.

“Are you all right?” she asks, amusement more than concern playing on her face.

You reach up and snag the pen behind her ear.

“Chris!”

You yank up your shirt, and on your pasty-white, hairy paunch scrawl:

9) Participate and finish the Alan High “Run for the Cheers,” 9/13.

Then you hand back her pen.  She stares at it, as though not recognizing it as a pen.

“What is wrong with you?” she asks the pen.

Slap, splash.  Slap, splash.  Suck, suck…blow.

You lock your hands behind your head and tighten your stomach muscles, perform five consecutive crunches.

“Nothing” you tell her, grunting like some cave-man warrior.  “It’s gonna be a hell of a summer!”

Sleep Sunshine Reads “I Am Lane” @ 42 Degrees N. Latitude

Hello Loyal Guests!

Today, I have something special for you.  A video.  Of me.  Reading.  My. Poetry.

Thursday, May 20th 2010, Story Studio Chicago hosted a “Writers Read Showcase” at 42 Degrees N. Latitude in Chicago.  I read my poem, “I Am Lane.”  Here it is, in all its twisted, blurry glory.  Thanks for watching.

PLC’s 500 Club Presents: “Chocolate Birds”

Each Thursday, Parking Lot Confessional hosts a writing workshop, of sorts.  Once a week, we encourage our dedicated readers to get off their asses and write!  We present two distinct writing prompts, and urge readers/writers to create 500 word shotgun stories based on one of our prompts.  Put the story on your blog and link it to our blog and there you have it.  This week, I led the workshop.  I presented fans of PLC  with these two prompts…

1.

OR

2. Music Video Link

Below you will find my 500 words…

“Chocolate Birds”

By: Sleep Sunshine

“But Mummy, I want one, I want one!”

“Hush now, Charlotte,” I say, my five-year-old’s face swollen to a point where I know, any second now, she’ll fling herself on the ground and throw a atom-bomb of tantrums, her specialty.  I lean my face to within inches of hers, smelling the tears on her cheeks, the sour milky smell of her breath.  “We talked about this.  Remember?If you get all upset like you’re doing, you won’t get anything.”

We stand in a crowd of twenty to fifty people, on the shore, absorbing a frigid crosswind, air a mix of salt and brine and oil–even the air saturated with the chemical.  Off in the distance, over the Gulf, a billow of smoke covers the water as though storm clouds had rolled in, those these clouds contained no rain.  Oil rigs, like iron sentries, stand, miles off in the water.  The rig in the middle listing to the side, Coast Guard powerboats surrounding it, two Coast Guard helicopters in the air above.

I watch my husband in a tiny rowboat, our next-door neighbor Bob Ardsman with him, rowing out from the bank to the island townsfolk called Bird Island.  The ends of Al’s beard flap in the gusts of crosswind, as though his face had wings.  I watch him row, strong muscles in his arms and back ripping his oars through the water, along the channel he’s navigated ever since he’d been a boy.

“I want one, Mummy, I want one,” Charlotte reiterates, and I know my focus should have been on Al’s orders as he was untying his rowboat, Bob coming down from his house, next door to ours, Bridgette, his wife, in tow, to help.  Get her back in the house, Al had said.  Now, remembering that, I know he was right and I take my daughter’s hand and try to lead her back up the hill to our home, but she squats on the ground and the wails begin.  “I WANT A YUMMY CHOCOLATE BIRD,” she screams.  “I WANT ONE NOW!”

Heads of our neighbor’s turn, eyes cast upon us, eyes that have always conveyed inner feelings of disapproval, at me, at Charlotte, at Mia, at Russ–all evidently contaminated by British origin.

A fog hangs over the channel.  As my daughter grabs clouts of dirt, soiling her pudgy arms and white Sunday church dress, I lift binoculars on a rope around my neck to my eyes and see Al about twenty meters from the tiny island; dark, lined face from fifty-hours-a-week on an oil rig furrowed in desperation.

Beyond Al I see the birds.  Pelicans, egrets, swans.  All slick and black, like, as my daughter thought, they’d been dipped in chocolate.  As I watch an egret standing in the shoals takes flight; giant wings flapping, black ooze dripping off of him into the water.

“Look!”

“There he goes!”

“Oh, Jesus, I can’t watch!”

The egret rises maybe fifteen feet off of the water.  Al quits rowing, throws up his arm; his mouth open, shouting.  Then the great bird’s right wing dips; his head jerks to the right, as though not understanding the sudden shift.  Then the bird dives sideways, angling, flapping his wings desperately, kicking his feet.  He smacks side-ways into the black water, disappearing below.  We all wait for him to buoy to the surface, but after a couple minutes a crest of water laps onto the tiny pebbles of our shoreline, staining them black.

Al and Bob have their arms out, as if still waiting to catch the bird.  Then they both lower hands to oars and begin again to row.

In the huddled crowd on the shore, people sob.  Women.  Their husbands.  All tied to the oil rigs that stand miles out in the gulf.  I man lifts his bifocals to his bald head, brings a kerchief to his face.

“Mummy!  I’m hungry!  I want a chocolate birdy!”

A lady from down the way lifts her face from her husband’s shoulder.  “I’m sorry, but would you shut her up,” she hisses.

“Come on, hunny,” I say, grabbing her under her arms, lifting her, carrying her like Al used to when she’d have a poopie diaper.  “I think we have chocolate in the house.”

Behind me my husband rows to save the birds, as I carry our petulant child back to our home.

<The End>

On Therapy and Artistic Immortality…On a Tuesday, At That

As posted Tuesday on the Parking Lot Confession.  Make-up work for missing my regular Sunday post.  Thanks for reading…

SS, in full Blackhawk "Playoff Beard" Regalia

Good morning, Confession-ees! I’m confessing today from strange places and times. Tuesday morning. Not my usual day.

You might be thinking: WTF, him again, we know to avoid PLC on Sundays as to not subject our eyes to his ridiculous blabber, and now he’s tricked us; posting on a Tuesday! Look away, Eyes! Look away! WTF! WTF!

As am I. As am I.

(Or…you might not be thinking that at all. Who knows what we think, right?)

Yesterday, I attended my very first therapy session, with a therapist who one of my best friend’s recommended. To be truthful, the decision to try therapy (again) wasn’t a shot from the hip, I’ve gone back and forth for a while now on it’s necessity. I settled down many a night on my mother’s verandah, sucking on a bottle of Knob (“Knob Creek, the only bourbon Sleep Sunshine will pass-out from“…still waiting for that check, Knob Creek; remember Cheyenne Drive is spelled with 2 N‘s), staring out into a Chicago rainstorm, going back and forth:

To Therapy, or Not-To Therapy; the question.

During this debate, I recall an instance, another of my best friend’s likes to retell, about a time when I was in college, and one buddy, lets call him Goro, and another of my best friend’s, let’s call her Silvanopolis…yeah, that’s what I said: Silvanopolis. She’s part Russian, part lost city at the bottom of the ocean. A Russo-opolis mix. Very sexy.

Here’s the interplay:

INT. Living Room–College Apartment–Day

Beer bottles and fast-food containers and passed-out individuals lying around on a beer-stained carpet, top-less girl sprawled on an adjacent couch. GORO and SILVANOPOLIS sitting next to one another engaged in a heated DOOM battle, smoking four-foot glass bong between them.

Goro: Yo, Sil, what shall we get Mike for his birthday?

Silvanopolis: I don’t know. A psychiatrist.

GORO nods his head.

Fade to black.

My College Yearbook Photo: Gosh, I looked so much younger then!

Harkening back, I question if I’ve always been sorta crazy, and come to the conclusion I guess I have.

But now I’m doing something about it. Kudos to me.

Really, what I seek out of therapy, what I expressed to my therapist, lets call her Fredreicka Goldenfarb (what is with me and Russian names this morning), was my desire to have the ability to de-clutter my brain to a point where I can make some Big Choices in my life. At the moment I feel so buried, mentally, so over-extended, that it’s hard for me even to decide on what to have for lunch, much less figure out what career I want to do for the next ten years, what state I need to live (as in geographical area; not mental, IE–catatonic), who I will marry and have children with, etc.

The only part of my life which has remained relatively constant is my work, my writing, and I wonder if the roller-coaster of productivity I’ve experienced–weeks of 70,000-word-production coupled with weeks of struggling-to-write-a-decent-page-of-prose–can be aided by this de-cluttering of brain.

For her part, Fredreicka stated her confidence that we’d get there, that she’d do all the heavy-lifting (then proceeded to ask me how much I’d pay for her services; to which I wrote down the secret password to my trust fund on a slip of paper and handed it to her. Then she mentioned how it would get worse before it got better and I snagged back the slip of paper and emptied the change out my pockets onto her nice therapy table, instead).

One of the touchstones for me has always been, can I be “normal” and still hold onto my artistic edge?

Fredreicka again seemed confident. She said, not only would my artistic edge not be affected, but I’d be a happier person, which would allow my creatively to flow more freely, and I’d have more control over it, eliminating, or at least tempering, the frustration of never knowing which Sleep Sunshine will settle down to the keys–the Manic-uberProductive-SS, where the sentences flow like I’ve possessed Jonathan Lethem’s fingers; or the Depressive-NearIlliterate-Nicholas-Sparks-clone.

We hang onto this creativity like it’s something that will hold us to the earth when the tornado of our lives rages around us. It’s what we have. It’s what keeps us sane. It’s who we are, isn’t it? Non-artists don’t get that, do they?

Yet, our creative endeavors won’t feed us (literally and figuratively), won’t cloth us, won’t hold us when tragedy strikes, won’t love us back (not in the way our human-ness needs), won’t grab a beer with us, won’t provide us children (real children), won’t allow us to feel the great stimulations living, real living, has to offer: eternal love, friendship, family, orgasm…

Often I think of some of the greatest artists of Time, and note how many of them, outside their art, lived miserable existences–failed marriages, estranged children, friend-less, penniless, drug and alcohol addictions, shotgun chokings–and I wonder, I do, if that is the price we must pay for greatness.

And if it is, will I make this sacrifice? Can I? Should I?

Fredreicka seems to think not.

Me? I hope not. I want the love, the marriage, the baby-carriage. I want all the gifts I bestow on my characters and with them all the pain they bring. I want to feel, in real-life, viscerally, not just on the page, through my creations. But mostly, I want artistic immortality. And if I can’t have both–if we all really must choose Red Pill or Blue–I remain unsure of what choice to make.

My hope is Fredreicka will help me de-clutter my brain enough to make the best decision I can.

Thank you for reading.

As always, I wish you great words!

-SS

For those of you in the Chicago-land area, Sleep Sunshine (Michael James Greenwald) will be reading his poem “I Am Lane” at 42 Degrees North Latitude on Thursday, May 20th, at 7PM. (I’ll have two, no three, therapy sessions under my belt by that point, so the chance you’ll witness some on-stage weeping is really good!)

Click here for more details.

Thanks for supporting your local Chicago artists!

You Mean I Have to Sell T-Shirts? Richard Nash, the Candide of Publishing, and the Glorious Future Ahead

My Sunday confession at PLC is a profile of Richard Nash, the former publisher of the indie house Soft Skull and currently the Che Guevara of the publishing industry.

Check it out here.

Wishing good words to y’all.

–MJG

Ray Bradbury. You’re a Weird Guy, Man.

And he looks so normal too...

Good morning, World-People!

Unearthed an interesting quote that I wanted to convey to you all.

Lo!  The Great Ray Bradbury speaks:

“You must write every single day of your life…you must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads…may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days.  And out of that love, remake the world.”

Wear books like hats upon your crazy heads…

Amen, Ray.  Amen.

(Author Note: I, in fact did this, wearing my book like a hat upon my crazy head, and wish to point out the most important word–well, the second most important word besides crazy–would be my, as in, my book.  In my experience plucking a library book off of the shelf and prancing around the public library with it splayed on your head will effectively get one (me) banned from Palos Heights Public Library.  And to think, I hadn’t even began to climb the stacks, smelling books like perfumes!).

Good words, Peeps.  Good words.

–MJG

When not joining a National Terrorist Watch List, Michael James Greenwald deals with a daily dose of depression by being a Border’s Book Sniffer. He’s a student at Story Studio Chicago, applying for a Ragdale Residency in the fall, and considering allowing UT, Austin a second chance at deliverance (Corporate-sponsored education institutions here I come!!!), by accepting him into their MFA program for 2011 (HOOK ‘EM HORNS!!).

For now, he works in his family business of owning and operating bowling alleys in the South Suburbs of Chicago. He is also a fiction writer, with a short story collection Stories from a Bowling Alley and a novel The Rainbow Child due to be published in the next several years. You can read his blogs at sleepsunshine and his confessions every Sunday on his group blog at parkinglotconfessional.com. Venture to his Facebook page or feel free to email him with any comments or suggestions for further topics, or if you had any interest in being a guest blogger on either one of his sites.

Something Blue, Something New…At PLC: Round Robin Fiction Story “Parlour Games”

FIRE...GOOD! FIRE...BAD! FIRE...GOOD!

Hello All!

I’m just writing you this evening to make EVERYONE and their MOTHERS aware of a new idea we had over at my group site, parkinglotconfessional.com.

This week, we performed a Round Robin Fiction Story, with all four of us taking a section, and trying to write a complete short story, in 3,000 words or less.

What we came up with? Well, lets say it kind of looks like what would happen if a giraffe mated with a tadpole.

Ouch? Yeah, probably.

But…interesting.

Here’s the link for PART ONE of “Parlour Games” by the Parking Lot Confessional.

Enjoy!

–MJG