P.S. A Column On Things

Start of December 6 Column

St. Peter Changes Headline In Big Book

Guardian of the Holy Gates Finds Redemption Story Touching

By Reginald A. Stuart-Smythe

HEAVEN (UPI) – St. Peter today changed the headline on the page in the Book of Life for Paul E. Schindler, Jr. of Orinda, Calif. from “He Hated Her For 40 Years,” to “Man Spreads Loving Kindness, Stops Drinking Poison.”

The keeper of the heavenly gates said, “Likely, he’d have gotten in anyway, having led a relatively sin-free life. But until Christmas 2019, there was that giant stain on his soul: he regularly imbibed from the chalice of hatred, a major sin because it denies charity. And, of course, as earthly psychotherapists put it, ‘hatred is drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.’”

St. Peter beamed as he described Schindler’s decision, after re-reading half-century old journal entries, to end the hatred, since she was only doing what was best for both of them. As a result, Schindler sincerely asked for the forgiveness of his last fiancé prior to his four-decade marriage to Victoria Marlow. She granted it.

In what God called “just another example of my grace, which surpasseth all understanding,” Schindler stopped feeding the wrong wolf, and lost 25 pounds without any special effort, improving his health. His heart also grew three sizes, his heart chakra opened and he found himself dispensing loving kindness to himself, his family and total strangers.

Schindler suggested another possible explanation for the weight loss, albeit more heavily metaphorical, would be that all the rotten unresolved matter from his last affair, removed by facing it with her compassionate assistance, had weighed a literal 25 pounds. And of course, since the term “broken heart” is both figurative and literal, his heart health improved.

With the change in his headline in the Book of Life, Schindler’s karma has been thoroughly cleaned, and his odds of another joyful incarnation after this one are now greatly improved, according to heavenly sources.

Additional reporting by Gene Paul, Paul St. John, Gary S. Paul and P.E. Schindler, Jr.

Christmas Concert

After a year’s hiatus, the Danville Community Band Christmas Concert is Back.

Paul’s Poetry Corner: Love is an Amazement

Link To: Love is an Amazement
I’ve come to accept
That being loved by one person
Is an amazement.
It took me a while…

Inspiration Depleted

I have written about how I got started writing poetry at age 67. During 2020, I wrote 100 poems. This year so far: a dozen. What happened? I suspect it’s the same thing that Paul McCartney and George Harrison discovered after the Beatles broke up. They had a good album or two of pent-up personal material, then tapered off in terms of quantity and rapid output. I’m not saying I’m as good as a Beatle, but clearly there were pent-up thoughts and emotions I needed to express, at the urging of my muse. She no longer haunts me daily; instead, she drops in now and then to rough me up, then departs.

Right Column Redux: Larry King Letters

The column to the right on this blog contains permanent content, most of which has appeared at one time or another in the main body. I’ve decided to include a reminder of said content each week.

Larry King: Letters From Europe

Larry King: British Journalists

Movie Shorts: Tick, Tick… Boom!, Belfast

Belfast *****
Judging from this autobiographical film, Kenneth Branagh had an exciting and harrowing childhood in Belfast. He wrote and directed this picture and convinced Judi Dench and Ciran hand to lend their star power to a bleak and scary portrait of the time of troubles. The most remarkable aspect of the movie is the fact that it sticks mostly with the point of view of young Branagh, a rare and interesting decision.

Tick, Tick… Boom! ****
This is a Jonathan Larson biopic showing on Netflix. In case you’ve forgotten, he was the author of the musical Rent, who died before the first performance. I remember the rumor at the time that he was gay and died of AIDS; this film makes it clear that he was straight and died of a heart abnormality. The movie is an adaptation of his second musical, the one he wrote before he completed Rent. Great artists dying young are always tragic, But his life up to the moment of his posthumous triumph is extra piquant. Among other things, his unsuccessful first musical was seen by Stephen Sondheim, who complimented him on aspects of it: something which Larson says “was enough to keep me going for two years.”

I don’t know how true the adaptation is to the original material, but the music is lively, the pathos is palpable, and the performances are solid. The two-hour running time is 30 minutes too long, but otherwise this is a nearly flawless film. (lost one star for too long)

This and That

Now On Spotify
It didn’t cost much, so I took the plunge. My album, Lyrics by Paul and my single If Offered A Choice are now on Spotify. I don’t care if I ever make a dime; I just hope the Spotify algorithm allows people to hear them when they ask for love songs. There are two Paul Schindlers on the service; I’m the one who looks like me.
...
Kind Words
A neighbor I haven’t seen in a half century wrote to me this week, remembering me in this incident: “I remember the 5-year-old, sitting on his back porch reading the Oregonian.... thinking Mari and Paul Sr. have a budding genius on their hands...”
…
Digital Story Telling (from May 10, 1999)
Digital Story Telling is a 90s concept that hasn’t yet died, unlike one of its major practitioners.

End of December 6 Column (No. 802)

Start of November 29 Column

Meeting Stan Freberg

In 1980 or 1981, AdWeek  magazine contributing editor Edwin Diamond assigned Gary S. Paul (me) to profile Stan Freberg. We spent a lovely afternoon chatting. He gave me a signed copy of the sheet music of Take An Indian To  Lunch as a souvenir. I mentioned what an amazing coincidence it was, on his album Pay Radio, that Capitol Records had an attorney whose name rhymed with the word attorney: Mr. Irving P. Laverny. “Paul, to tell you the truth, I made that name up,” Freberg told me. Perhaps it should not have been a surprise.

That same year, I interviewed the substantially less well-known Dick Orkin and Bert Berdis, beloved radio commercial voice talent.

Book: American Dirt *****

As I enter my 65^th year as a reader (I started young), I look back on hundreds of novels (most of them sci-fi and humor) and can’t think of one that was more moving and compelling than Jeanine Cummins' American Dirt, the story of a woman’s desperate attempt to reach the United States after she gets crosswise with a Mexican cartel. I was literally in tears by the time I read the epilogue. It is compelling, well-written and moving. I had difficulty putting it down. In a way, it reminds me of one of the earliest novels I read, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, about conditions in the meat-packing business (of which he famously said, “I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”) Sinclair’s social problem novel resulted in regulation of the food business. Novels, by personalizing social problems, are, I suspect, more effective than treatises. Let’s hope that Mexican immigrants received better treatment from government and citizens alike as a result of this dramatic tale, just as Cummins intended.

Paul’s Poetry Corner: Happiness is wanting what you have

 

Link To: Happiness is wanting what you have
First line:
Definitions of happiness abound,
But here’s one that I just found.
It makes perfect sense to me.
Does it to you? Let’s look and see.

Right Column Redux: Journalism Movies, Books and Quotes

The column to the right on this blog contains permanent content, most of which has appeared at one time or another in the main body. I’ve decided to include a reminder of said content each week.

Journalism Movies

Journalism Quotes

Journalism Books

This and That

Thanksgiving
In the all-new PSACOT, less detail; just wanted to let you all know a wonderful thanksgiving was had at my older daughter’s house, with both daughters, both spouses, me and my lady fair and our 3-year-old grandson. Turkey for the carnivores.
Sign Humor
A friend tipped me to some very funny signs.
Someone else’s poetry
Brian Bilston: America is a Gun.
Starts like this:
Brazil is a football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.
RIP Dave Frishberg, 88, songwriter , singer/pianist
An appreciation of Frishberg (My Attorney Bernie, I'm Just A Bill)by my friend Daniel Dern.
Keillor On Love
“Falling in love is an exquisite State of stupidity and to have made such a wise choice in one’s stupor is excellent good luck.”
―Garrison Keillor from Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80: Why you should keep on getting older