The Daily News

 

1   Amazing.

2   They're just amazing.

3   They're just beginning to see things better.The top pic of little Maren was about an eighth-of-a second, but I caught it just by chance, and lo! She looks like she just saw a bubble pop. I love that split-second of disbelief in her eyes. 

4   The bottom one is little Isla just after glancing prettily at something more interesting than I. She looks like she's tilting an invisible straw hat and holding an invisible cane. Pure show biz.

5   In between we took a bunch of iPhone pictures that showed them dozing, and then not dozing. It looked a bit like a late afternoon in the Senate.

6   Sooo fun! It just is. 

7   Moving On, Part One:  It's funny, because each time I sit down to throw this stuff around, I stare at a blank tablet. 

8   Tempus fugit.

9    

11

12   <Someone whispering in my ear> Whaaah?

13   I'll just leave it. It still works. No one will know.

14   We former/current Catholic boys don't wrangle too good with Latin.

15  English translation: We Catholic boys don't do very well with Latin. 

16   I'm beginning to think speaking in the country vernacular sounds better than all things British.

17  But then, I'm a 'Murican.

18  Oh, God!

19  Did I just sound like Kelsey Grammer? Ehew. The country vernacular indeed.

19   Bleh. Gad. I almost channeled the guy, but he's not dead.

20  Goodness. My first inkling when I thought of Kelsey Grammer, by the way, was this: why did he spell "Grammar" incorrectly?

21  Because that is how his real last name is spelled. Something wrong with the distaff side on that one, and it probably dates back centuries. 

22  Don't you assume that every famous actor or actress walking around has an altered name?

23  Show biz. 

24  You gotta love it. Or hate it. Or both.

25  Moving On, Part Two: It remains funny to me how the past few weeks I have followed life's leads in order to get the next day's DN into the hands of those unfortunate enough to read and enjoy it. 

26  Sometimes the ideas float past like bubbles, and then they pop, splashing soap into my eye.

27  I'll blink several times 'til a tear runs out, sniff it back in, and hop back on the keyboard.

28  Artificial tears. 

29  That just happened. Metaphorically speaking. I got an idea for a writing gag, researched it, saw it was way too long, and set it aside. 

30  What's fun is that it vanished, but immediately following its childlike departure, music came up in my mind. 

31  It was a Tango.

32  Sometimes in the midst of doing this I I'm half asleep. If I'm writing it at night, I'll find myself dozing, and wake up an hour later. I'll blink, and then resume writing. 

33  So I'm not really sure how the Tango music showed up in my brain like a Cars' ride, but I decided to accept the challenge. 

34

35  Anybody lookin'?

36  

37   Look. If you have read this for any period of time in the past twenty years, you will see that I write horrible analogies. Why? Because I've seen so many. Might be a learning moment. <sound of revving cars up, followed by sound of screeching wheels and Disney goofball music> 

CARS LAND!!!!!!!

YEAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

38  I like to hide behind the that-was-so bad-it-was good school of modern artistic mediocrity. 

39  It goes back to my favorite musical of all time, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Rising to the top of the corporate world after starting out as a window washer, J. Peirpont Finch lets hubris take over, eventually leading to a complete crash of all his dreams, including those of his boss, J.B. Biggley, and even worse, Biggley's boss, Chairman-of-the-Board Wally Womper, who takes the stage in the final act, looking over all the ruination, and begins asking questions and firing anybody who dares to speak. 

Here is a scene-by-scene synopsis of H2$ from a wonderful website called Masterworksbroadway.com. Hit the link, not the pic:

Brotherhood of Man, Robert Morse
as J. Pierpont Finch, Rudy Vallee as 
J.B. Biggley, and Sammy Smith as 
Wally Womper

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying-Masterworksbroadway.com

40  It's a long story, and not enough time to give a full synopsis, but this becomes Finch's cue to put out the fire. He begins a song called Brotherhood of Man, and addresses Wally Womper directly:

Finch:

...So, Wally, before you consider firing everybody, remember this:

One man may seem incompetent,

Another make no sense,

While others look like quite a waste 

Of company expense.

They need a brother's leadership,

So please don't do them in.

Remember mediocrity

Is not a mortal sin...

40  The theme of the song, of course, is that we all rise to our own level of incompetence, and in so doing, join that ancient Brotherhood. It's a Bible-banging hoot-and-holler, immature, stupid, honest, and always hilarious.

41  Biting satire, and a rollicking number that rivals Frank Loesser's Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat from Guys and Dolls. Same people.

42   And realize that my own idiotic analogies remain really bad. 

43  Am I really that bad, or am I creating satire? That thought depressed me this morning, so much so I took a longer shower, extra hot. I KNOW. I KNOW. It's just that it gave me self a steam. 

44  Ha! 

45  I promise I won't overdo. In fact, I'll never do that again. NEV-er <silently mouthing the words, "never" and "ev-er">.

46 DISCLAIMER: Okay, okay, so I have said that before, not gonna lie, but I couldn't lay off the Cars' ride analogy, because that's the moment everything changes on that ride. You're cruising along minding your own nevermind, when suddenly a car pulls up next to you and it is ON.

47  You have no control over where you're going, nor how fast you're going, or even when your car will take flight.

48  You certainly have an idea you might win, but that stuff gets tricky.

49  In the end, it's a helluva ride, either way. But winning still feels like you own it. High fives and tens, maybe even twenty with your friends. 

50  And as you walk off that ride, a few bubbles fly by. The origin of those bubbles is a little kid walking in front of you, with her arm up like a fluid Statue of Liberty, and a small plastic bottle of soap bubbles in her other hand, her own Declaration of Independence. 

51  'Murica.

52  Gottago.

53   See you again.

54   Peace.

fin.