Banjo Boy

More Workshops -LA Style

So after I was fired by Beyond Baroque, I was deserted by wife and child and I was single once again. No car, no refrigerator, one pair of shoes that I had to break down and replace. Took the bus all over the city. Had a cooler in the apartment that I bought ice for and kept snacks in. Had a yard sale when it became very apparent that the ex was not coming back. So this TV writer that showed up at my Beyond Baroque Workshop had invited me to this Workshop that met behind the Federal Building in a rec building in the park. He told me it was run by the radical that was in and out of jail on protest arrests. I went.
It was Bobbie, a little lady who was a professional editor and had been an editor of Bachy magazine, a West LA Literary Magazine. (No radical at all, except for the maryjane in her back yard.) Bob, a shrink with CP, who wrote brilliantly and funny. Rod Bradley, who had sold his first novel to a big publisher, but had sold nothing since. Another Bob, a Probation Officer, who was trying to write like Mickey Spillane. There was a Polish or Russian Jewish lady that was writing really good stuff about how her parents hid her in a Catholic School for girls during WWII and how she survived even though all the other girls knew she was Jewish. And another Bobbie and Sandy who wanted to write. And David, the TV writer that had a long list of credits. This became the beginning of my social life after the divorce. We were mostly all mid-thirties and free. The second Bobbie had a Friday night artist party once a month. David and I became good friends and had a mutual respect thing going for a while. I fooled with the ladies. They fooled with us. I went drinking a lot with Sandy's crowd. I developed a better reality awareness of what fiction was and could be and outgrew trying to write like James Joyce. Was it every week? It seems so long ago, but it was great fun- I had come from several years of working seven days a week and having no friends to making a lot of friends and was like a kid in a candy shop- the women were all there.
I was doing open mikes at poetry readings all over Los Angeles too. Met a lot of good people. Thru David I met Marion whose friend had a relationship Paul Kistel, who brought me to the Chamber Pot Society.
I wrote my first real novel out of a conversation with David one night over wine and donuts. These folks were well worth knowing and my writing grew from it.

Forgot about this -its wonderful

Saturday Morning

The routines of our lives. I no longer seem able to sleep past 7:00 am, even if it's a Saturday. Of course the dog helps. She bugs us until we are both up and on the coach reading the morning paper and having coffee. This is what we have done for the last twenty years. Why aren't we in our usual place? Then we shower and eat a bit and I go scoop up her weekly leavings because the gardener comes on Saturday about noon and they won't clean up after your dog, they just mow over it. Usually, these days my buddy and I go off to Long Beach to play music in a big circle in the park for a couple of hours. It's quiet around here. No other bodies snoring in bedrooms.

Went down to Chapman U last night to see the University Choir that my bear sings in. Great music, funny conductor, marvelous voices. If you ever get a chance.

All is calm in this part of the world.

   

Done

The play is the thing. Mine is done -as far as I can take it right now. Going to find a theater company to work on it from here. I found one in Santa Monica that I'm going to visit on the 14th. Its the story of Charlie & Patty- a love story. To be honest the play started as a dream years ago. In the dream the guy was thrown out of the apartment building and the front gate was locked and I was one that had to stand out front and tell him what we had done. The first go through with it had a a guy as the lead, the divorced father of the the 15 year old girl who had moved into the building where his daughter and ex-wife lived to try to reconnect with them. And of course the evil drug lord and pimp that lived upstairs. It never quite worked. When I was taking a Playwriting class at USC 18 years ago, I took the character out completely and started with the 15 year old girl. The first half worked pretty well, but I had no ending. Now I have an ending, and all the rest of it. I think it's pretty good. And a different kind of story. Everyone is gonna think it's my fantasy of getting the young girl even though you are an old fart. We know I don't write like that.

I printed out a couple of copies. It looks good printed.

Singing

Need one of these. Anybody got one? Actually I probably need 4 and a sound system to go with. Running a band is hard work. We have a gig playing for a Boy Scout Pancake Breakfast for an hour. No mics - no sound - a funky keyboard instead of a real piano. We will have to shout I guess. At what point do you decide you have to have this stuff? I'm off tonight for one more open mic night. This will mark the last of my original songs to this venue, so I got to write some more I suppose. Or move on to somewhere else. Los Angeles has lots of places to go. There's a place over by McCabe's and Canter's Deli Bar both have open mic nights. We shall see.

Inspiring

E---------------- - Inspiring Watermedia wih Collage Workshop March 7-9, 2011 (9:30am - 4pm) — The splash and flow of juicy watercolor and acrylic paint coupled with the surprising shapes and textures added by collage you have prepared yourself can add excitement to your life and life to your art! E----- will lead you through techniques and thought processes designed to maximize your creativity and the individuality of your paintings. But, recognizing that a resolved work of art is more than chance and excitement, E---- will help you to complete your work through attention to composition and the principles of design. E------------ is a signature member of N-- and W------, as well as a seasoned teacher and published artist with many awards. $235.00

What I could be doing. The second piece I ever sold was a collage I did in high school. (The first was a pencil drawing of a Frat house when I was in 8th grade- one of the guys that lived in the house bought it) When I was TA for a LAUSD Elementary School, I became the full time art teacher for the magnet 3rd grade. We did meaningful notebooks. The covers were magazines torn up in strips and glued back diagonally with spaces between each strip. Everyone loved them. I was even given the dubious distinction of being put in charge of the Holiday decorations in the auditorium for their big holiday show.                                         In another life, perhaps - after I get one where I'm writing all day.