The Alexander Hamilton Service Plaza
We are privy to an interoffice memo between Boris Fornhenge, Director of Design and Engineering for Hyper-Citation, Inc. and Noreen Crimpanfortis, Vice President of Business Affairs. Mr. Fornhenge heads up the engineering department that executes flawless designs incorporating the wild dreams that Hyper-Citation comes up with into operational spectacles for the whole world to enjoy. In this confidential and potentially explosive memo, Mr. Fornhenge warns his exuberant superior about the perils...
Lawn Mowing at the Speed of Mulch
Things are heating up on the advertising front for Hyper-Citation, Inc. Noreen Crimpanfortis authorizes a press release announcing a spectacular new outdoor advertising display for Kentucky Power Glide, manufacturers of state-of-the-art lawn mowers for over three centuries. Morris remains aloof, and tries not to appear overly impressed with all the hoopla. Unbeknownst to him, he is being considered for a position with the stunt team on the massive grass suspension bridge spanning the New...
The Shirt Heiress Tucks Me In
It is going on 2:30 in the morning. Morris Crimpanfortis has had a positively horrendous day in this little backwater coal town that time has long since forgotten. At least he is able to square things away with the electric company and get the TV station back on the air. It is pretty embarrassing though, going dark at the start of your local midnight newscast because you didn’t pay your electric bill. Who is to blame for that? Morris realizes that there is going to be one of those calls to...
Riding Shotgun on the Rollercoaster to Ruin
As mayhem breaks out on the set of the Silt Ridge Midnight News, Morris has a gut-wrenching flashback to the pandemonium that erupted on the set of the infomercial in Burbank. This was the last show he produced for Daddy’s network, and the repercussions are still being felt. Fast-forward from that fiasco to tonight: the way people are screaming at Morris and pounding his back reminds him of the confusion in the Burbank soundstage when his contest featuring the powerful herbal cleanse went...
Disastrous Oboe Recital in Brooklyn
We meet the anchor, Buster Monroe Madison, in the middle of a rant on the set of the Silt Ridge Midnight News. Buster is having a profane cow over the fact he was stood up today by a drywall supplier. This took place at a construction site where he was doing his regular job, or his “day job.” Another way to look at it is his “paying job.” In any event, the day job allows him to pursue his dream as a newscaster on the Silt Ridge Midnight News. Morris Crimpanfortis V is manning the switcher in...
Batting Averages vs. Area Codes
Morris has been denied entrance to the stage door by a member of the security detail that he himself had hired. Undeterred, Morris lets himself in through the will call office of the Graphite County Opera House. Shuffling through the littered confines of his office, he whiffs the feint aftermath of another of Verona Kendermants’ patchouli soap masterpieces. He checks the fax for anything vital that had come in since he’d been at the Anthracite Tonite preproduction meeting. Morris recalls a...
WXX Newscast: Bare Wires and Bloody Fists
We meet some of the hardworking on-camera personnel who make up the tough-as-nails WXX Silt Ridge Midnight News broadcasts: It starts with a sprawling tailgate party with haddock tacos off a food truck as personalities gear up for another big night. Belinda Bessemer arrives in a late-model Mercedes limo, fresh from her first set at the Grilled Canary Gentlemen’s Club. Mindy Pentagee springs from the back of an ambulance, ready to deliver the latest weathercast, and Jerry Runcklastor rattles...
Game Shows with a Gut Punch
Morris Crimpanfortis is in a bad way, a bad, bad way. He had a less-than-fruitful production meeting for Anthracite Tonite this evening. People are starting to get restless about him continually shoving off the start date. He doesn’t even have a credible co-host on board yet. Now he’s swerving down the snow-packed side streets of this long forgotten coal burg, on his way to another gruesome taping of the Silt Ridge Midnight News. In anticipation of this gut-wrenching experience, Morris loses...
Our Very Own Little “Sauna of Doom”
Morris restores order at the overwrought production meeting for the Anthracite Tonite talk show. People have just been delivered a gut-punch by Honus Kryburn, who takes the opportunity to get up on his high horse and tell everyone that one day they will pay exorbitant tolls on everyday roads, including roads you take to the corner grocery store. Vick Banzler then gets into it with Wendy Tavares over the toxicity of certain species of reptiles. Wendy wonders why the production can’t employ...
You Have a Problem with Moose Hunting?
Production personnel for the upcoming nightly TV talk show Anthracite Tonite are in a festive mood on this dreary, windswept and snowy evening, proving how much we need the company of each other – particularly in the uncertain times brought about by the sporadic solar flare outbursts. Morris Crimpanfortis looks on happily as valued members of the production staff order freely off the menu. The tab for this evening will accumulate on the running total of the reciprocal trade agreement that...