Nightmare Before Thanksgiving

Why do we need to push up the Christmas holiday season before giving Thanksgiving its proper due? It is only after the hustle and bustle of Thanksgiving that I can begin to think about shopping and unwind enough to enjoy Christmas music. It is a pet peeve to hear radio stations playing Christmas music before the arrival of Thanksgiving. Bing Crosby's voice confuses me on what Americans need to be next thankful for on Thanksgiving and Christianity has got nothing to do with my November holiday meal. The last time I checked Rudolph the Rednosed Reindoor flew only one night in late December and there isn’t even venison in a turducken! Yet the gaudy department store displays of Christmas holiday decorations seem to want to trump Thanksgiving. If only Thanksgiving had a commercial upside, retailers would be traditionalizing us into decorating our front lawns with glow-in-the-dark strung turkeys.

Am I missing something here? Do farmers need to lull turkeys into a false sense of security by piping Christmas music into the farm pens? The stupid dodo bird turkeys hear the cheery rump pa pa pum music and think they got a stay of execution then the mercenary farmers sneakily yell off with their heads. Remembering the pilgrims and the birth of Jesus should be separate and not equal. I don’t hear anyone setting off firecrackers on Easter morning so don’t go playing Little Drummer Boy in my ear until Black Friday cometh. Celebrating gifting before fowling seems like a misgiving.

When Drinkability Becomes Marketability

For weeks, it felt like our refurbished screen house needed a finishing touch of decorum. Call it equal parts inspiration and donation but I ran electric to professionally hang this secondhand Budweiser neon sign behind the bar. Home projects like these often take my wretched hands and the wrong tools way too long to complete. When persistence pays off, I relish sitting back to admire my work.

So I reclined at my new outdoor bar in my new porcelain tiled screen house having what else, a nightcap celebratory beer. As the new Budweiser neon sign casted strange ambient lighting on not only my dark wooded lot but also my Coors Light can, I chuckled about the dueling incongruence…celebrating King of Beers advertising with Silver Bullet liquidity. The Budweiser sign may have to come down on principle. Even stranger but true, I got hired as an actor to be in a Coors Light Crasher commercial. Life has always been a strange brew for me.

Almost Making a Killing

Before my recent vacation in Atlantic City, New Jersey, I did not know anything about horseracing. Maybe it should have stayed that way. Why people call them ponies I have no idea because through the snowy picture of the casino simulcasts they looked all grown up to me. When I asked a patron why domesticated animals like donkeys or llamas do not competitively race the way humans force horses and dogs, he knew I had never been to a racetrack. He pushed up his Johnny Olson glasses like a crack reporter then returned to some filler newspaper devoted to nothing but assigning numbers to silly horse names. Without him saying a word proved the beginning and end of our relationship.

After placing a first bet, a track announcer on the simulcast reported that the next race is for horses who have never won a single race. My wife and I giggled at the contradiction. I now felt foolish holding my tendered ticket like it was some unclaimed prize pack for dopes. I held onto my foolish thoughts this time though but cannot get past the notion that these loser horses should be fired as racehorses and sent out to pasture. The race saw none of the horses we bet even finish in the middle of the pack.

For an entire afternoon, my wife and I randomly bet horses whimsically called Coy Cat, Red Delicious, Bold Ocean, etc after extrapolating their odd names to some insignificant meaning in our lives. I pickup the jargon of win, place, show and learn about trifecta but my lackluster horses want none of the winner’s circle.

While attempting to simply wager on a horse to show, the casino worker agreed that it was a good bet but he would not allow me to gamble.

I asked, “Why not?”

“Eight horses scratched on the sloppy track….there are only three horses left. Blame it on the hurricane!”

I walked back to my video monitor with disappointment hanging on my face. I explained to my wife that the odds were too much in our favor for the house to accept my bet because of inclement weather. Wouldn’t you know it? Emerging from the rears of the thin field kicking up brown muck, my horse predictably finished dead last. I curse the casino that had refused to turn my bad luck around.

So I gathered my wits and looked for a favorite. I searched the whites of my pockets and found three crumbled dollars and four quarters. I am all in as they say on a number five horse called Libor Lady to win. My horse won first place in a photo finish. From my comfortable perch inside the casino, I had won my first horserace, the next to the last race at the famed Churchill Downs. High fives go around the booth. By our hooting and hollering, the other grumpy betters must have thought we won a 99-1 long shot betting the mortgage.

I pocketed my gross winnings…$6.80 cents, a full $2.40 more than I actually gambled on Lady Libor. Feeling like lady luck was with us, we left horse and buggy for the self-park garage. From this paddock, I jockeyed my car into an ungodly Nor’easter formerly known as Hurricane Ida. The sideways rain and sixty miles per hour winds did not deter me. I had a coupon for a little out of the way Italian restaurant and nothing was going to stop me from saving a few bucks. I grabbed the reigns of my steering wheel as the wind moved my car side to side. Low-lying streets were flooded and visibility was nil but the endless sloppy track was wide open. I shoot to the inside lane never looking behind. After getting into a car accident with another moving vehicle, I realized that I should have scratched myself from this last race. This coming from the horse's mouth, I almost made a costly killing on the track.

Without Bread You're Texas Toast

While sitting in the doctor’s office going out of my mind in the sprawling waiting room, a developing story came across the TV news desk. The channel interrupted regular programming and went to a live video feed for what I hoped would be a newsworthy story. Since my life was on hold at the time waiting for medical treatment, over the next hour I watched a single camera high in the sky film multiple police officers engaging in a ho-hum high-speed chase of a heavy-footed motorist across Texas. After I started to wonder how much gasoline this person was wasting trying to get away without incident, a reporter mentioned stolen gas from a pumping station actually put the situation into motion.

I don’t like paying for food on a credit card because it is gone by the time the bill comes in. This derelect soul used up exactly the commodity he stole before he was even arrested.

Bazookas on the Big Screen

BAZOOKAS: The Movie will be playing theatrically in Maplewood, NJ for two consecutive weeks beginning November 8, 2009. Show times and tickets are available online at http://maplewoodtheatre.com/ and moviefone.com.

Do not go see this movie on account of me. Although I have a credited part in the movie as a bartender, the drive to the theatre will be exceedingly longer than my small part. I am inviting patronage because the movie has enough chuckles in it that makes it worth watching on the big screen.

A Parting Gift

Anthony Gregory "T" Tornatore

1966-2009

Prior to my brother Anthony’s removal from life support to allow him to die naturally, the immediate family gathered at the hospital to pay our final respects. We positioned ourselves in the waiting room and drug our feet to his hospital bed to say our individualized fateful final goodbyes.

The sympathetic doctor in charge entered the waiting room. Using a soft low-key voice, she addressed a huddled family, whose collective emotions seemed already in mourning. "Is everyone here?" Yes, we answered like drones. "Is there anybody else coming to the hospital?" No, we fretted. "Has everyone been afforded sufficient time to say goodbye?" Yes, we muttered with heavy hearts. "Okay, I need a verbal consent from his daughter, to remove the life support." Between his daughter and my mother looking at one another, neither materialized an audible answer but both approximated reluctant head nods. The doctor accepted their mutual decision to proceed then informed the family the inevitability of what was expected to happen next. The doctor promised notification of the exact time of his passing.

Like victims of stolen love, our solemn sobbing and prayer monopolized the waiting room. The first minute of vigil felt like a wrecking ball hitting my heart. Everyone seemed to breathe heavier as if we were projecting our oxygen as a scarce commodity for my brother’s time off the ventilator. When the next few minutes produced no news, a vacuous blanket of silence filled the air. Concluding that my brother must be struggling to breath on his own, I prayed for mercy. I did not want his final moments spent in pain. After about twenty minutes, various family members began to mingle outside the waiting room doing the things people do when they do not know what to do….incoherent muttering, needless bathroom stops, mindless cell phone texts and unproductive pacing in looping circles.

As I personally prayed to a God largely unfamiliar to me, I enlivened my last moments with my brother there by his deathbed….stroking through the warm-blooded flesh of his arm, watching the white linen on his hospital bed my tears over his hospital bed absorb my transparent moisture. I recalled kissing him goodbye. I saw the final reflection of both of us in the hospital glass while I turned away for the final time. I canonized the last time I saw my brother alive.

All of a sudden, my brother’s ex-wife runs into the waiting room and shouts, "There is a woman in bed with T and nobody knows who it is. Help!" I knew then that my loving memorial of my brother’s last moments was about to be disturbed. Finding my brother unhooked to a vent and struggling to breath seemed a footnote subtlety to the shock of seeing a hysterical woman straddling him up on his bed. I witnessed her slapping his face side to side like a Three Stooges act performed with gallows humor. She was trying to resurrect a dying man with the insensibility of denial. The woman screamed now or never instructions. "Don't listen to the doctors! You can do this. Come on. Wake-up!”

After pulling her down from his bed and escorting her out of the area, we all began to breathe a sigh of relief. I was not the only one who found ironic meaning in what had just happened. My dying brother would have found this moment not only comical but a suitable parting gift. Although we had compassionately tried to define our final moments with him, it was typical of his personality to say goodbye to us…with the last laugh.

Lady Emma Blooms

My cousin from Texas wrote this article for her community newspaper The Rose Online.

Lady Emma Blooms For Anthony Gregory Tornatore by C.G. Spainhouer Wllis, Oct 19, 2009

Life imitates nature in its simplest forms sometimes.

A good old friend from church, Doris Wilkinson, is a certified judge for the American Iris Society. Doris was interested in irises much of her life, and after retiring from decades of working in the field of education, she pursued her flower hobby with avid tenacity.

Last week I drove out to Doris's place in the country to take a look at how she tends her Iris garden in the fall. It was a nice break to get outside in the cool autumn sunshine after weeks of rainy weather and gray skies. As I toured her raised up flower beds, each Iris was labeled and trimmed and ready for the colder months coming.

She said that iris bulbs are really tubers called rhizomes. They are not planted completely in the ground, but about ½ to ¾ way up with some exposed to the light and air. The odd thing about iris rhizomes, or the flower roots, is that they bloom once and then make baby rhizomes attached.

Doris pointed to one Iris that was the “mother with four babies.” Sure enough, there was a cluster of “bulb” looking like roots, one in the center, with four new ones surrounding it.

Then Doris pointed again and said. “Look. I think it’s gonna bloom soon. That’s rare for this time of year. Really rare.”

“What’s this flower’s name?” I asked.

“Lady Emma” Doris said, “It’s a special flower, a hybrid.”

I was speechless as the sun shined down on the bud and green blades of nature’s beauty.

“What is it?” Doris asked.

“I was thinking and saying a prayer for my cousin T, who was struggling for life after a heart attack just days before. He has three brothers,” I said, “and their mom’s name is Emma. The same name as this flower with four babies.”

We both looked down at the Iris plant, with one rhizome in the middle, four attached babies, and one stemming bud.

A few days passed and Doris stopped by with some more Iris pictures to add to our web site on Monday. She said Lady Emma had started blooming Friday October 16. “Look at these blooms! There’s three of them blooming. But there's a fourth bud may not make it, and I’m afraid the freeze will get it.”

Again, piercing irony. “T died on Friday, one day after his forty-third birthday. I thank you for these pictures. The blooms are so beautiful, so bright and yellow. Such precious a gift.”

Doris said, “I didn’t know, and am sorry for your loss. When I took the pictures, that’s the only part of the garden, the only flowers that had sun shining on them were Lady Emma and her blooms.”

Life imitate nature in its simplest forms ... sometimes.

Oh Darling, my niece

My niece, Jennifer Fritz, won a talent contest in the 8-18 years old range. The contest was featured in South Jersy magazine. She wound up on television appearing on the 10! Show. Here is a link to her singing Oh Darling by The Beatles.

Life Between the Alpha and Omega

Eulogy for Anthony Gregory “T” Tornatore 1966-2009.

I previewed thousands of pictures and countless home movie clips in order to make the audio/visual tribute shown here tonight. Although that consumed my emotions, it crystallized how to eulogize my brother. T, as he was affectionately known, had reoccurring themes in his life. He had a knack for humor, a regard for animals, a love of good food and passion for sports. If he wanted me to say only three words tonight about these four subjects it would be, “Let’s Go Flyers!”

My fondest earliest memories of T was watching him play superhero or dressing up as his favorite TV characters. Usually with T wearing costumes, he would often spend his free time roughhousing with his brothers.

Along with this irreplaceable male bonding, T developed a competitive nature and displayed a strong interest in sports. He lived to see a good fight whether it was a boxing match, mixed martial arts event or two toothless hockey goons dropping their gloves on ice. He rooted for the home team but would take timeout to cheer drunken spectators fighting in the stands at a ball game.

As a young man, T’s outgoing personality could make you laugh to delirium. An entertainer, he often wore the proverbial lampshade in the room and children gravitated towards his antics. T’s commentary spoofed outtakes that covered every slice of life. He had the overwhelming ability to make you laugh about nothing…or everything. His quick wit came with the complete assurance of a built-in laugh track. I admit just this once that his comedic timing made me envious.

Faced with hearing the familiar sound of crickets after I told a stale joke, T invariably took center stage. After he once whipped what I considered a tough crowd into knee-slapping laughter, he barked “Take that, bro.” T intentionally told better second rate jokes around me to add sadistic amusement to our sibling rivalry.

In his lifetime, T was a brother, son, uncle, cousin, husband and a father but T genuinely loved animals more than anyone I have ever met. After watching me discipline my weak-bladder cocker spaniel, T graded my obedience training. Lacking compassion in his voice, he swore that if he ever saw me do that again he would take me out back and go prehistoric on me. He left my company that day saying goodbye to only my dog. I concluded that T must have loved animals as much as people…at least more than me on that pissy day.

With the exception being his loving daughter Nichole, T rarely found a comfortable forum to talk with people about personal matters. He maintained a private and guarded front that was tough for everyone to penetrate. I remember once confiding to him that I started going steady with a girl. He smirked. Although I was smitten in love, T saw a man ungracefully approaching forty years old. He replied, “Steady? If the girl is still in eighth grade, I’m calling the cops! What did I tell you about watching those Happy Days reruns? Did you tell Fonzie, Ralph Malph or Potsey? Who goes steady these days? Get away from me!”

Regrettably, T’s ongoing medical problems began to affect his spunk and outlook on life. He distanced himself. In October 2008, he survived a heart attack. He came out of induced hypothermia and a coma with a quality of life. His family told him what he did not know and what he needed to hear, that the Philadelphia Phillies had won the World Series! What we didn’t know about his recovery is that we had T on loan for only another year. What a year it was. During this span, I witnessed his personality strangely revert back to his former self, a younger man full of vitality. Other people shared similar experiences with T before his second heart attack. I believe these moments of clarity were present day reminders as to how T defined living in terms of autonomy. In the end, his final prognosis vanquished him further away from his essence, a point of no return from the dignified way he might have wanted to live and probably how he wished to be remembered.

T’s lingering in a coma proved to be the fight of his life. It took me a trail of tears to come to terms with his irreversible condition. It is difficult to presume about another’s will to live but again T was not someone who freely talked about matters of the heart. Incapacitated, he left this legal decision to his family. We the reluctant spectators to his final battle became collaborative advocates on his unspoken wishes. Nobody wanted him to suffer.

As I look around this packed room, I can feel the power of his love. Anecdotally, I am also reminded that his banter often made me giggle inappropriately at funerals. So here I am at his funeral stricken with profound sadness and in no joking mood. Still the little twinkle in my moist eyes suggests that T would desire this occasion to be an upbeat celebration of his life.

In closing, I hold confident that T would not have opted for a comatose existence. If I dare frame my brother’s life, it ended more on the day his laughter stopped then when his heart actually stopped beating. The day of his passing was a day after his birthday, an abbreviated forty-three years between the alpha and the omega. God bless. Rest in peace. Anthony Gregory Tornatore.

-Joseph Tornatore

Going Ballistic for Kurbaan

Kurbaan is a highly anticipated Bollywood thriller about terrorism that reaches United States soil. The movie stars Saif Ali Khan, Vivek Oberoi and sizzling Karenna Kapor who is rumored to be seen topless. Its cinematic release date is November 27, 2009 so mark your calendars. The film represents the directorial debut for Rensil D’Silva, arguably the top screenplay writer in Hindi cinema.

The movie is advertised to be both visually entertaining and inwardly thought provoking about the notion of personal safety while living in the emotionally charged era of terrorism. In fact, the 2008 Mumbai, India terrorist attacks that left over one hundred people dead occurred while the movie was in the middle of its production.

My fourth Bollywood movie, I was hired to do some featured background work in what looks to be a pivotally violent scene. An overnight shoot, my set location occurred on a moving train that ran all night and only stopped for bathroom breaks. Glimpses of this scene are included in the beginning seconds and ending before the fade to black of this theatrical trailer. Although I do not know if I made the final cut as a running train passenger in or out of focus, I was close enough to the gunman’s actions in the signature scene for the props department to issue me earplugs to buffer the noise. I am still going ballistic for this movie.

Hotties For Sale!

I still haven't figured out all the facets of Facebook. I don't want to grab a Tommy gun and join a mafia. I don't want to put on hip boots and raise a farm. I don't want to be poked or farukled or tagged unless I'm it. I don't care enough to score high on obscure trivia contests that Cheers' Cliff Claven would wrap his head around.

Now a dear Facebook friend from a continent away has added me to a photo collage implying that I am not only desirable but for sale as a Hottie? I harken back to the time when only social blogs existed because they seem like simpler times right now. Hold on. I'm getting a text message on my cell phone...something about 700 rubles for an hour of my time. Will travel.

The PH Factor in Grass and Lovemaking

It all started when my lawn care service recommended that I lay a blanket of limestone down to improve the PH balance on my Kentucky bluegrass. On the sun-filled weekend that I earmarked doing the recommended yard work, I still had not bought my first bag of lime. That is when the situation took a strange metaphorical seedy twist of fate for the better.

A white powder coat appeared on my front grass. My initial hair-scratching inspection concluded that it looked just like lime. Alas, I found an overturned open container of Vagisil vagina deodorant in my driveway. I learned that the vagina deodorant had been a checklist item on my teenage stepson’s scavenger hunt the night before. How and why its contents spread across my lawn remains not only a mystery but also a question I refused to spend too much time on as a parent.

Two weeks following the outpouring of vagina deodorant on wilting summer-ending grass and no limestone application, I wish to report that my lawn has never looked more lush and fertile. I half-expected my grass blades to curl symptomatically but they are standing tall. The PH balance also seems to be in a state of self-correction and I have no presiding need to add pounds of backbreaking lime.

I am now scouring pharmacies for the unlikely RX score of vaginal deodorant in ultra concentrate bulk sizes for the freshest smelling lawn in the neighborhood. I may just switch from the professional advice of a lawn doctor to a down-to-earth gynecologist. I am even considering penning an article to Home and Garden magazine about my rare find. For the curious passerbys carrying blankets, I may need to stake a sign in my lawn saying NO LOVEMAKING ALLOWED.

Weighing in On Disabling Diets

Janine Donohue walks into the kitchen and stands next to her social worker as if she has never heard of awarding personal space. She bows, curtsies then handshakes. Janine flips her long hair then introduces herself with a short unexpected biography.

“Glad to meet you. I’m 37 years old, I can’t have children and I weigh almost 200 pounds.”

In her introduction to me, she disclosed the three things I think a woman would be least likely to share to a man. I tilt my head at the critical information overload trying to make sense of it all. She leaves the room as quickly as she came. I start to think to myself when is the next time this oddity will happen? I did not have long to wait.

Janine returns carrying belongings. “I’ll prove it.” She flashes her laminated identification card. “See, I was born in 1972.” She puts the bathroom scale down in the middle of the kitchen. She rolls up a blouse sleeve to reveal a fresh band-aid. “It’s my Depro Provera shot. Mom doesn’t want me to have children.” Her balance is a little shaky as she steps onto the scale. The dial points exceedingly right before it steadies. “What 225 pounds, wow!”

Janine steps down from the scale looking discouraged. She talks closely once more. “I can’t get any younger and I can’t have children but I would like to lose weight. I thought I lost five pounds on my diet. Darn. I ate only a watermelon and a granola bar for lunch. Well, not the whole watermelon, you know what I mean.”

Janine goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a fruit yogurt. She adds loose raisins from the cupboard. After a couple of spoonfuls, she talks about her diet with yogurt lining her upper lip.

I encourage, “That’s a healthy snack. Why don’t you get back on the scale?”

“Already?”

“Yes, I think the yogurt may have done you some good.”

Janine’s compliance rewards her with a weight of 194 pounds. “Now that’s more like it. I’m loving it but that cannot be. That’s a difference of, that’s a difference of, humm, that’s a big difference.”

I ask, “Do you know what the biggest difference is?”

“No, you tell me.”

“I used my foot to step on the back of the scale the first time you weighed yourself. It made you seem heavier.”

She shifted her weight and gave me a cold stare. “Don’t you male social workers know anything about a woman?"

The Dermatologist's Fleshy Escort for a Barmitzva

I thought this recent posting on a website for actors sounded a little fishy but the gefilte may not be a joke...I found this doctor actually listed with licensure on the internet.

Hello to all lovely Actresses and Models in the Baltimore area!!! Are you between the ages of 35 and 50? A wonderful gentleman, Dr. #$%$#&^ needs a beautiful companion to his nephew's Barmitzva. This is a simple but fun job! Well paying, too! He is paying $150.00 per hour to accompany him to this grand soiree'.On the evening of October 22nd, all you have to do is dress up, look your best and have a wonderful time experiencing a religious traditional ceremony.No, there will be no flirting, no touching or kissing. Just smile, eat and dance.... enjoy collecting your $600.00 at the end of the evening. Sound simple? Well, it is.Dr. @#^$% will pay you the promised six hundred dollars, even if the evening lasts only an hour or two...You still get your $600.00 dollars. Though the evening should not be more that 4 hours max, it could go over just a bit, but doubtful. The good Doctor will pick you up at your home, office or designated place, then will drop youoff at this same local.This distinguished, well known Doctor of Dermatology is highly respected and trusted...Nothing funny or fishy here. Except the gefilte! I too, am a well-known Actress in the region and I do trust this man...after all, he is my Doctor and I have known him for many years.So, if you want a quick bunch of cash....E-mail Dr. @#$&^* at @#$%#% Please, if interested, put Barmitzva in the subject line,Place your jpeg head shot in the body of the email. NOT as an attachment. If you don't follow the directions, your emails may possibly not be acknowledged. Once agreed to do this, absolutely no cancellations!!!Thank you and have a great time!!!

The Garden State of Mind

Perhaps the thought came to me because the arrival of the Labor Day weekend officially marks the end of summer and the ushering in of cooler weather. Maybe the thought came to me because I am psychic. Maybe the thought came to me because deadpan irony follows me. Maybe what I was thinking was led by a subconscious linkage to the matrix. Maybe nothing has to do with the other.

What I do know is that I found myself walking and not driving my vehicle to my next work appointment. After slinging my briefcase in between two buildings, I entered an alley way. For whatever reason, I began to think of my limp lackluster crop-less tomato garden back at the homestead. My tomato plants hunkered in fresh tilled black soil, regularly watered and sprayed with Miracle Grow have failed to thrive all summer. As I longed for my own ripe tomatoes to make fresh salsa, spaghetti gravy and lush salads, I spotted something familiar ahead of me. Growing in between harsh curb and hot blacktop and somehow missing lawnmower haircuts lived a healthy tomato plant stalked with two little promises.

I'm just a paint brush and craft paint shy of a green thumb.

Beasts of Burden

I stood at the copy machine multiplying duplicates of her dysfunctional upbringing on super white paper. This churnng background history would be for the psychiatrist I arranged for her to see.

Her birth was without complication and her parents took her home to their cattle ranch in lonesome Nevada. By the time she was seven years old her biological father was vaginally raping her with atrocious regularity. Her own mother conspired in the silence of denial and cover-up. Nobody lived in earshot to hear her cries. By the time she was a pre-pubescent eleven year old, her body had been sold to many of her father’s so called friends in what she referred to as sleepovers.

She had been sexually abused so many times that when I got her on my caseload as a disturbed adult, this mildly mentally retarded woman still suffering from the sexual shockwaves of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, tried to put her childhood into words that a social worker might understand.

“Growing up, the moo cows were at least slaughtered. I have to live with this pain.”

My moist eyes twittered at the notion. I fought to catch my client’s name off the top of each document that I copied. The name that I read coming off the clanking turnstiles of the copier appeared like a children’s picture book hand-flipped.

What I read literally sickened my stomach because I had never made the absurd connection before. You see, when it was time to give the hospital of her birth an official name, the parents decided on Promise. While everyone hopes his or her child turns out right, these parents gave their daughter promise in name only and they took like beasts almost everything else.

Fire...Come and Get It

The 9-volt battery that recently died in my smoke detector triggered a repressed social work memory.

A long time ago in a rural area of Salem County, New Jersey lived a hard-of-hearing uneducated elderly caretaker and a mildly retarded deaf mute named Little Jeanie. Upon completing an inspection of this quaint and tidy 1950’s built home, I found the caretaker to be almost as limited as the client. If not for the communication deficits of my client, Little Jeanie might be mistaken for Head of Household.

Long before I purchased smoke detectors with a red strobe visual alarm, I questioned their procedure for conducting mandatory fire drills on a monthly basis.

The elderly caretaker, who would die of cancer two years later, expected my question so much that she admitted to formulating a prepared statement for me ahead of my initial arrival.

“I know what you’re gonna say. Little Jeanie can’t hear no smoke detector signal on account of her deafness. What do you think I do? I do the only natural thing left to do. I turn on the oven.” She pointed. “When I open that oven door, bake or broil, Little Jeanie runs for the hills. We got it all worked out.”

“Humm…well that must create another problem when you cook dinner. I’m going to look into assistive device technology for the hearing impaired but in the meantime Little Jeanie has got to be confused big time.”

She agreed, “You got a point. Sometimes I find her standing out by the country road waiting to come in after I put a pot roast in the oven.”

The Spice of Autumn

An unempirical definition of mental retardation is the inability to pick up on social clues that form the basis of and thereby bridge learning experiences.

Outside the looking glass of our meeting room one October day in 1999, a gentle breeze carried the first wave of crisp falling autumn leaves across the chilly sky. For some reason, their fall to Earth reminded me of the feather floating down in the opening scene of the movie Forrest Gump. I looked over at my mildly mentally retarded client who was still dressed as if it were rabid summer. She sat anxiously waiting for others to lead the meeting.

I invited her gaze out the window. “Charmine, look at those leaves falling.”

Not knowing where I was headed with the leading conversation, an esteemed co-worker commented with a frown. “The summer is over. It’s definitely autumn.”

In an attempt to better understand Charmine's wardrobe selection, I asked my client her favorite season.

Charmine raised and pointed a finger at me. “That’s an easy one, Mr. Joe. Give me a harder question next time. My favorite season is paprika.”

During the same meeting, I learned that Charmine suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder. That's when I felt like I needed a spice rack to further discussion.

The Lovely Bones In Deed and Misdeed

In December 11, 2007, I stood dumbfounded in a drab convenience store in Holmes, Pennsylvania staring at the front page of The Daily News. The innocent headshot of a murdered teenage girl headlined the cover. Its starkness struck me as profoundly odd. Ebony Dorsey’s magnetic smile seemed to jump off the pages at me like a haunting poster child to the violent society in which we live. It also spoke to me in an unexpected way because I was en route to work as an actor on the production of The Lovely Bones.

An elderly black woman grabbed a copy from the newsstand and literally shook its pages trying to make sense out of it all. “You can never be too cautious. You just never know from one minute to the next!”

The stranger’s words rang true. Flipping through my own copy now for somewhat different reasons, I turned to the interior pages to check the victim’s age. Ebony Dorsey was a spry fourteen years old when she was tragically murdered by someone she knew. That meant Ebony was the same age as Susie Salmon, the girl snuffed out by a serial killer who lived as her bone-chilling next-door neighbor in The Lovely Bones.

Like a portable tomb, I took my all too real newspaper hardcopy with me in my travels. Not one mile down the road, I walked on to the make-believe set of The Lovely Bones, a mall refurbished and time date stamped as a 1973 movie backdrop. I heard light-footed heel clicks. The young bubbly starlet actress Saoirse Ronan walked by me in white hose around tall boots below an outdated tight purple skirt.

Indeed, Susie Salmon was alive and well but you just never know from one minute to the next. The Lovely Bones will be released on...December 11, 2009.

Deadliest Catchy TV Show

I have never owned a boat.

I have never been deep-sea fishing.

I am disinterested in the subject matter.

With those disclaimers being said, the television show Deadliest Catch has such superb camera lines and top shelf post-production work by way of editing and sound mixing...well it caught me too. I now watch this show whenever I can. It is no wonder this show won an Emmy hook, line and sinker.