Product Placement

“Everybody loves romance on a tropical beach under swaying palm trees, don't they?” 

It was my publisher on the phone. 

“You like to travel,” she added. “You were in Hawaii for a month last year, remember?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I like Hawaii. Who doesn’t?” 

“Exactly!” said my publisher. “Travel! Get it?”

She calls every week reminding me if I’m working to work harder and if I’m not working to get started. Then she reminds me that writing for her is the luckiest break I’ve ever had in my entire life.

Which is true to some extent. She’s a terrific publisher. Half my age but twice as smart.

“Huh?” I said.

(Which ain’t so hard to do, sometimes, be smarter than me.)

“Travel’d be perfect for you!” she went on. “Maybe that’s a subject your readers will enjoy… instead of your usual stuff about the animation business and how many cartoon rabbits you drew way back before computers were invented.” 

“Okay,” I answered, winching in silent pain at her accurate remarks. “Maybe a change will do me some good.”

“Right!” she agreed. “And would it kill you to work-in a little product placement this time? Travel offers us a chance to finally monetize this thing! Just think! Airlines, hotels, restaurants, automobiles. Vodka brands!”

I perked up.

“C’mon Rusty!” she said. “Vodka! Can’t you see the potential?!”

She’s very persuasive, my publisher. That’s probably one of the reasons she’s so successful. 

That, and her great white shark approach to life. With her as the shark, of course. I knew that whatever resistance I managed to put up today, I would be writing a travel blog tomorrow.

And trying to work-in something about General Motors or Apple Computers or Rolex wristwatches without looking like I’d sold out.

Because goddammit Bob Dylan! You wrote Mr. Tambourine Man, man! You gave us Blowin' in the Wind, and Foot of Pride and Mississippi and Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. And a hundred others, you magnificent bastard! But you broke my heart in 2013 during Super Bowl halftime when you tried to sell me a stinking motorcar!

“You’re a writer, aren’t you?” my publisher reminded me. 

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Well, write!”  

It was that easy, according to her. You just sat down and wrote it.

Just like Bob sat down and wrote Mr. Tambourine Man, I suppose.

“Try it, will ya?” she pleaded. “Travel. For me? Just one.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try.”

“Good! And don’t forget a Ferrari or something! Something cute!”

“Right. Sure. Bye!”

“In Paris maybe,” she added. “Or Bangkok. You know, somewhere nice.”

“Yeah. Well. We’ll see.” 

“In a ritzy hotel! With a casino and a spa and a big pool and …”

“Okay. Will do. Bye!”

“And for god’s sake, no swear words this time. Please?”

“You’re fucking kidding, right?” 

“Travel is a family thing, Rusty. C’mon.”

“How about if I travel to some fantastic brothel in the fucking Arabian Casbah and report on the fellatio, anal, and ménage à trois technique of the local harlots?” I answered. “Would that be family friendly enough for you?”

“Please Rusty!” she said. “No fellatio!”

“Women, men, AND camels!” I added for good measure.

“Not again!” she exclaimed. “Please!”

“Well. Okay then,” I said, being agreeable in my magnanimity. “As long as we’ve got that straight.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “No camels, please! Thanks.” 

I laughed to myself to hear the relief in her voice.

(I was relieved too, for on a personal level camels are beasts of things.)

“Talk to you Tuesday,” said my publisher. “Please work on the travel thing. And Rusty, no brothels. Okay?”

“Okay. No brothels. Cross my heart.”

She couldn’t see me not crossing my heart, so what did it matter?

“Well,” I said. “Talk to you later. I’ll send in my expenses. Bye!”

“Your what?”

“Yeah. Great. Shouldn’t be much. Ferrari or two. Gotta go. Bye!”

“Your expenses? We don’t pay …”

“Got a plane to catch!” I interrupted. “First class all the way! I’ll call you from the Ritz! Bye!” 

“Hey! Rusty! You can’t …”

I hung up and started looking for my passport.

Doctor’s Orders

   There are many reasons for a writer to write. 

   I write because I enjoy entertaining people and as a way to deal with the world around me. To try to understand and have a laugh at things that to me are incomprehensible and somewhat sad. Of course, it might be said that cooping myself up in a room for days at a time writing is not dealing with the world at all, as my wife often suggests, but is it any different than practicing yoga or working in the garden or playing golf or the millions of other things people do to deal with, or escape from, life? 

   Anyway, whatever the reason, a writer’s first responsibility is to write!

   The reason I’m writing this particular blog today is because I’m under orders, after a stay in hospital, from my doctor. 

   Don’t worry though, I’m okay now. Except for these damned doctor’s orders. 

   Yes, doctor’s orders. He got a court order, him and his lawyers, with a lien on my house and a garnish on my income, demanding that I pay my overdue hospital bills. There’s a restraining order in there too, somewhere. And let’s not forget alphabetical order and the Franciscan Order, I think he’s got them lined up against me also. 

   But the joke’s on him. Ha! Ha! 

   You see, being a writer, I don’t have any income.

   He wasn’t much of a doctor, as it turned out. 

   I could go on and on, listing his defects and having fun with that (fact is, I’ve spent the entire morning doing so with much hilarity on my part, but alas, to little purpose, they being so mean-spirited as to be completely unusable here) but let us just agree to say that his idea of overdue, and mine, are two very different things. 

   I have every intention of attending to his bill, by the way, but I have a strict rule of paying my bills in the order they arrive. It’s only fair. Dr. X (my publisher forbids my using his real name) is way down on the who-gets-paid-when list, and if he keeps on having these ‘agencies’ calling me, demanding money and threatening me in the middle of the night, he’s going to drop further down the list. Or maybe I’ll take him off it entirely. 

   That’ll show him! 

   I don’t know why I should even be paying him anything. After all, it wasn’t me that left his gold Rolex wristwatch inside the patient at the hospital in Orlando, next to the pancreas.

   I mean the Rolex watch was next to the pancreas, by the way. 

   Not the hospital. 

   That’s on Lakemont Ave. 

   

   May I take a moment and encourage the reader to admire my deft use of product placement in that last group of paragraphs? Smooth, huh? It’s a new thing we’re trying. Please watch (no pun intended) for further subtle placements like this, dotted throughout my blogs. 

   My publisher suggested it when she read my latest manuscript. 

   She insisted, really.

   “It’s good business,” she said. “You need the money, don’t you?”

   “Yeah, sure. But what about my art?” I whined. “Won’t people think I’m selling out?” I always end up whining when I’m in her office. 

   Whining, or crying. 

   “Remember my rule?” she said sweetly but somehow threateningly. “People will think what I tell them to think!”

   “Yes, ma’am.” I also become timid and meek in her office. I think it’s something they put in the coffee, because the coffee is truly horrible. Or pump in with the air conditioning in the freezing-cold reception area, where she always keeps me waiting before she sees me.

   “So, you want to be an artist, do you?” she asked me.  

   “Yes, ma’am.”

   “You’re such a hotshot writer, work in some goddamned Ferraris then!”

   She shook my manuscript in my face. Three year’s work, flapping angrily at the end of her arm. 

   “I have to stay true to my art, don’t I?” I asked.

   “Art, schmart! What about GM, the NFL or the Food Network? How about some freakin’ Nike, Apple or American Express?”

   “Okay, ma’am, if I can.”

   “And would it kill you to mention the new Honda? My daughter’s sixteenth birthday is coming up!” 

   “Yes, ma’am.”

   She glared at me.  

   “I mean no, ma’am.”

   I didn’t know what I meant. Confused and flustered, I looked up at the ceiling, then down into the half-empty coffee cup in my hands. It’s something they pump in with the air conditioning, I decided. The coffee can’t taste this bad and be doctored. That would be too obvious and they’re much too smart for that.

   But if that's the case, why wasn't she affected?

   Was she immune? Or taking an antidote? Or, and this is my favorite, was she some sort of alien? 

   “Here!” She tossed my MS into my lap. Three year’s work, crushing my testicles. “There’d better be some goddamned Ferraris in there next time my freakin’ assistant reads this!”

   “Yes, ma’am.”

   “Anything else on your mind?” she asked.

   I shook my head no.

   “Then hadn’t you better be getting back to work?”

   "Yes. ma'am." 

   With the briefest of adieus, I was dismissed.

   I was so happy to be out of there, I stopped for tree martoonis on the play to the scubway station where, feeling as flight as a leather and possessed by love for my mellow fan, I handed an incredulous panhandler a twenty-dollar-bill for good luck!

   “Hey!” he said. “That’s a twenty, Mack! You crazy or something?” 

   “Take it, my friend!” I told him. “Consider this an offering to the gods.”

   “Huh?” he asked.

   “It went much better with my publisher than usual today!”