July in New Orleans

Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Jewel Eye
Or
Isle Of Views
Well, here we are in another July with another set of a thousand words to amaze, entrance, mystify and amuse you………or not. And as we sit, looking for any breeze at all, watching the weather channel and hopefully sipping on a cool one, our thoughts harmonically converge on ways to pay our bills, preferably without breaking a sweat.
How about we write the Great American Novel? That’s great! That’s novel and that’s American, huh? Well, hold on Pilgrim; it’s not as easy as all that. Pretty much in these economic times, getting a first book published is called fat chance. Getting any other books published is possible if you have already published or if you are somebody; add to the blah blah blah that you cannot become somebody until you’ve been published and you’ve got your predicament and mine: you’re not a recognized author until you’ve been published and you, in this economy, cannot get published until you are a recognized author or have shagged a celebrity out of wedlock (fat chance).
Or, unless you have a plan; I’ve got a plan. We, hit the lottery, steal a couple of horses, jump a twenty foot fence and make it to Mexico, riding hard, by morning. Noooo, that’s my escape plan. My ‘getting a book published’ plan is simply this: start small.
By starting small I mean, write a short story, enter it in a contest, win the contest and BAM! publishers will be breaking down your door to get you to accept a book deal and give you a bazillion dollars just because that’s what publishers do. Are you up to running off eighteen pages double spaced in the font of times new roman?
We think that we are ready (using second person here); besides that, we’re ready to set four circumstances, antagonists, protagonists or pains in the asses into motion if that’s what it takes to get a story moving. Advice that they have been receiving (slick switch to third person) had them being aware that more than a four cornered (for example: the Cook, the Thief, the Wife and Her Lover) manuscript was daunting to all those readers other than the wise guys that can fathom Shakespeare, Virginia Wolff or the first chapter of Genesis; no wonder our lives seem so complicated. If we only had to concern ourselves with three challenges (persons, places, things) at a time…
Speaking of which, writing should be relatively easy for them/you/us because all it really takes is for the suspension of reality as we/me/y’all know it. Simply do not believe what is happening in everyday life and it friggin flows. i.e. “I don’t believe I left my driver’s side window down in that rain storm, got a ticket, there’s a Tomahawk Missile in my back seat, I can’t find my cat, a cop car just pulled up, I gained ten pounds just standing here in my pajamas and boy, do I gotta pee.” translates to the writer’s mind as: ‘Well, what wouldja believe?’
1. It’s not really your car; your car is still at the nightclub and you were too drunk to drive last night.
2. Somebody laced your morning coffee with LSD and you’re hallucinating everything except your bursting bladder.
3. You’re being set up by aliens from a fraternity on a distant planet who think that it’s one big funny flummoxing inferior bipeds.
4. It’s your cat’s fault for leaving the window open when she put the missile in the car and you’re really still asleep in your bed and about to wet it.
Orrrrr: “It was a dark and stormy night, somewhere in the distance a dog barked; three men sat around a camp fire. One of the men, the good looking one, asked the returning veteran to tell the blind one about his tone deaf daughter with the wooden leg playing for tips at the smokehouse with her little dog who was worrying towels with vowel usage and syntax.
Sudden storm warnings appeared on the horizon; they were in a category all of their own, fighting a burning oil spill while the governments of four states formed committees to study the subject of the missing cat, who had stolen heavy artillery in her attempt to fight fire with fire only to blow out the window of the sleeping crime fighter’s car window. Very little was revealed except that a note was left on the windshield disguised as a Christmas card of a pleasing and very attractive design, especially appealing to officials who mistook them for dinner invitations or sliced luncheon meat, “dressed or undressed?” I asked.
The sun came up, the phone rang, the waters rose and Dondi was packing his batteries in a carry on bag that he hoped to store in the overhead compartment without an additional charge; the Goodyear blimp glided over depositing weight everywhere and discouraging forecasters who only predicted rain from open windows of squad cars equipped with radar detection. “Sorry” said the elephant in my nightclothes, “I don’t do windows; you’ll have to ask the midget posing as a little wolf in sleep’s clothing.”
“PJ’s? Sorry, no coffee for you; it’s bound to stunt your growth” I replied with candor, alacrity and a Hubig’s humble pie.
“Well, cry me a river” said the person surveying the broken window on the driver’s side eyeing the Tomahawk Missile in the back seat as the cop car pulled up to examine the ticket on the windshield. The missing cat stuck her head out from under the vehicle, trading oil, with Olive the other reindeer, and replied: “I hope not The Yellow Stream by I. P. Freely!”
The End.
Now wasn’t that simple, minds? Was that such a dill, Emma? Just suspend your bee, Lief!
I do it all the time and look where it’s gotten me; a one way ticket to Palooka-ville, is where. I could’ve been a contender and still can. I’m writing a short story about a soldier that comes back from……… sorry……. they also told us at the class to never tell anyone what your writing because you cannot trust other writers not to steal. Shame shame. It’s on my blog but don’t tell anyone that I told you, okay? Me? I gotta pee.