Fishing for Snowflakes in Tropical Turquoise
Morris grows more excited by the minute as he guns the engine of his classic Monza Spyder while freewheeling through the snowy streets of downtown Silt Ridge. Morris has good reason to be excited: number-one on his list of priorities is this evening’s preproduction meeting for Anthracite Tonite, a one-hour nightly talk show scheduled to launch within the year. If everything goes according to plan – and why wouldn’t it – the gabfest will air on Daddy’s TV stations all across the country, while...
Pitch #3: “The DC Film Commission”
Morris dodges sizzling snowballs that splatter so hard against the side of the Graphite County Opera House that granite chips. He crawls on his belly up the curvature of the sweeping marble staircase. Sopping wet, he stumbles into the warmth of the cheery office. Verona looks up from her manual typewriter as she prepares the station log for this evening’s midnight news report. She congratulates him on not getting killed. Morris wades through a crumpled sea of unopened mail, magazines and trade...
The Bionics Arms Race – BOGO Anyone?
The violent snowball fight continues to rage around Morris. He doesn’t know if he’s going to live long enough to make another pitch to his sister Noreen in the Windy City. He yearns to flood the market with new product and knows that he is a veritable fire hose of creativity - if only he gets the proper reception for his pitches. As snowballs whiz perilously close to Morris at death-defying speeds, he has a revelation: could the throwers be using bionic arms? This technology was finally and...
Snowballs at the Speed of Sapphires
Morris takes a break from his pitching to get caught in the crossfire of a death-defying snowball fight. The perpetrators are a group of merchants known as the “Downtown Contingent.” This mysterious group of retailers occupies the rundown shops and boutiques in Town Square, and is constrained to some rather bizarre sales practices – not the least of which is being allowed to sell only one item at a time. Morris has never built a sufficient level of trust with any of these people since arriving...
Pitch #2: “The Weather Report Over/Under”
Morris falls flat on his face with his first pitch to Noreen in over a year. Venting his frustration, he shovels snow like a banshee in front of the opera house. He pauses long enough to pull a block of Verona’s exotic soap from the pocket of his damp overcoat. As he takes a deep and satisfying whiff of the peanut butter and garlic essence, he gets rejuvenated, and becomes like a racehorse chomping at the bit. He’s got to pitch a fit, and nothing is going to hold him back. Dripping snow, he...
Sideline Sycophants
Morris needs to cool down. That pitch is his first in over a year, and he shows that he’s more than a little rusty. He also has forgotten how debilitating a pitch can be; particularly when you’re ill-prepared. That’s okay, spontaneity has to count for something. In order to quiet his nerves, he switches on the antique analog radio on the shelf above his desk. There, the comforting voice of Hadley Codfaldt can be heard, broadcasting from the state-of-the-art studio just up the block, reaching...
Pitch #1: “Runway Reality”
Morris psyches himself up for his first pitch in over a year. Taking a deep breath, fighting back anxiety, he takes the plunge and punches up Noreen’s number. But no matter what level of self-motivation, the results stay largely the same. Nearly getting his head bit off the moment his sister picks up – what else is new? – Morris continues to distinguish himself in less-than-glowing terms. He haltingly pitches the lamest thing that Noreen has heard since probably the last time he pitched her....
Second Thoughts about First Impressions
Morris Crimpanfortis figures it’s high time to get back in the saddle and start pitching up a storm again. Realizing it’s been over a year since he last pitched Noreen, he contemplates some allowance for rust. He thinks about one of the shows he pitched in Burbank that featured camel races at Las Alamitos. He wonders if he can dust off this pitch and substitute ostriches for camels. They, by the way, were the camels with one hump, not two. He wonders if the hemorrhoid cream company that agreed...
Like Riding a Bicycle – with One Training Wheel
Morris Crimpanfotis V is getting all worked up about the first pitch he’s going to make in over a year. He figures it’s just like riding a bicycle. Once you get the hang of it, you never forget. But if his pitches were anything like riding a bicycle, he’d be pretty much scraped and bloodied and the bicycle would have bent tire rims from him falling over so much. His sister Noreen is the gatekeeper for all the pitches, and she rules with an iron fist. Morris will not be denied, though. His...
Show Running through Snowflakes
It has been a long winter, in more ways than one. For me, Morris Crimpanfortis V, my long winter started in the heaving vortex of terror that was the Burbank studio where my ill-timed infomercial misfired. You know . . . the one where contestants came clean with their brutal organic cleanse. On-camera of course. Don’t remind me, I should have cleared the product with the FDA first. Come to think of it, that should have included the EPA. So I spent the last 12-plus months in this woebegone...