Why Bob Schneider Isn't an International Superstar

Bob Schneider or Downey Jr.?

Why? Because he hasn't changed his name, that's why. It's an:

[oxymoron |ˌäksəˈmôrˌän|

noun

a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g., faith unfaithful kept him falsely true).]

Okay. Let's look at "Bob Schneider, International Superstar." Or "Bob Schneider, famous singer/songwriter." Oxymoron, right? How can anybody that goes by "Bob Schneider" be an international superstar? 

Bob Schneider, your local State Farm rep.

Bob Schneider, DDS.

Bob Schneider, IRS agent.

Bob Schneider, dairy farmer.

Schneider's Deli

But pop star? Rock star? King of White Boy Funk? I've heard that he's sometimes referred to as B. Schnei on his home turf in Austin, but I'm not sure that'll do it. 

Oh, and there's the Austin factor working against him, too. Everybody knows that Austin cats are

serious players, serious writers, serious poets, seriously eclectic, seriously somewhere in between Nashville, LA and New York: alt indy hanging around their necks like a ball and chain. That's why we love Austin - it's where guys like Bob Schneider can make music and art that's true, honest, unsullied by commercialism. It's probably the only town where a guy could sing a song called "Hanging Out With The Horny Girls" and not get burned at the stake by the political correctors. Bob is certainly doing his part to Keep Austin Weird, as the bumper stickers say.

It seems many of my favorite artists are in the "too good to be famous" category. Years ago I wrote an article for a defunct SF rag about NRBQ and their big label debut release, "Wild Weekend" on Virgin Records. Their's was not an oxymoron problem as much as it was an image problem. Put simply, the boys lacked sex appeal. Same went for Little Feat and Bruce Hornsby, though they were far more popular than either NRBQ or Bob. (I think I just decided to call him Bob. Period.)

Like NRBQ, I couldn't be happier that Bob isn't an international superstar. I just recently (and very thankfully) discovered his seemingly bottomless, 30 year old catalog. He was the same guy behind the Ugly Americans and one of my top-ten fave rave-ups, "Vulcan Death Grip." After a little browsing around I downloaded about 30 of his songs and have been listening to them multiple times daily ever since. He also records every single one of his shows and, before the audience gets away, has CDs burnt and ready for sale. (He calls these live recordings "Frunk." I don't know why.) 

On his home page he discusses his lack of international superstardom as a voiceover accompanying some of his cool artwork. His theory is that the small skinny rockers get all the attention because their packages are outsized in proportion to their gaunt frames. Big bearlike guys like Bob (and myself, not uncoincidentally) have our stuff hidden between our massive, muscular thighs, so it's practically invisible in comparison. And it's common knowledge that a guy can't be an international superstar without the flashy gear. 

Any guy that postulates such profound theories is, as you probably already know, a man after my own

heart. And Bob's songs, his lyrics, his arrangements, his instrumentation (i.e. accordion and trumpet, for example), his sometimes smokey sometimes somber sometimes soulful voice, his sort of subtle vacant, bemused expression – all of it works for me. In fact, it doesn't just work, it moves me. Literally out of my chair and onto my private personal dance floor du jour, whether it's to boogaloo or do the hippie sway. It moves me to sing along with all the fa la las and nah nah nahs that seem to grace every third song or so.

That's just a small slice of what there is to love about Bob. As a critic of my most recent novel, The Healing of Howard Brown, said of the protagonist, "It’s a supple, smart and authentic voice that’s alternately wry, sad, questioning, anxious, hopeful and loving." Bob's songs embrace all that and so much more, with a completely disarming delivery that invites even the most skeptical boomers to cut through their scar tissue and "let the light in."

I hope that Bob becomes the international superstar that he deserves to be, despite his Schneiderness. Meanwhile, I am thankful that, so far, he's been able to make the music he's been making without any commercial pressure, in the true Austin tradition. And I am eternally thankful that the groovy tune I heard back in 1996 – the goddamn coolest groove ever, "Vulcan Death Grip" –has opened the door to this amazing playlist of even groovier tunes. 

Vaya con huevos, Senor Bob. May the bird of paradise fly up your nose and your sweet bippy be forever blessed. 

 

Scientists Finally Disprove the Existence of "Race"

In a landmark discovery, an international team of scientists have determined that humans cannot be accurately classified according to their “race” (referred to as “species” in the animal kingdom), and that human beings are physically, mentally, spiritually and culturally identical. “We mistakenly believed that humans could be classified according to their species, which we believed was related to the location of their forepeople (‘forefathers’ having been recently stricken from the dictionary as ‘sexist’) on the planet,” said Dr. Enrico Maggioletti, a former “italian,” who is now referred to as “a person who descended from people who lived in the area of Europe known as Italy.”

While it is true that people are generally believed to have descended from humans that evolved on different parts of the planet, scientists now refute the idea that these differing environments had anything to do the development of distinct races. “For years, we referred to Asiatic peoples, African peoples, European peoples, Arabic peoples, et cetera,” said Dr. Maggioletti. “Now we have learned that any perceived differences between what we thought of as races of peoples is exactly that: a subjective perception that exists in the mind of the beholder, without any scientific basis whatsoever.”

“As far as science is concerned, a ‘race’ is a contest of speed that may be held between a wide variety of animals, including humans,” Dr. Maggioletti said. His colleague and associate, Dr. Pearl Ng, added, “science has finally caught up with increasingly popular notion that differentiating humans according to shared physical characteristics and cultural practices is simply wrong. The bottom line is that we are all humans, to a degree, and there is no scientific difference in our physical or mental makeups.”

To illustrate the point, Dr. Ng said, “If somebody makes the observation that many people from the area known as Vietnam (formerly known as “vietnamese”) have high cheekbones, and assume that this similarity is a manifestation what we formally thought of ‘racial attributes,’ they would be incorrect in making that assumption. The perception that people from the area of Vietnam share such a trait is purely subjective–a form of ‘othering’ (formerly known as ‘racism’):

“There’s you, and there’s the ‘others,’” said Dr. Ng. “You may think your skin is lighter or darker than ‘others,’ but that is a purely subjective observation, the same way some people believe that certain shades of red are actually orange, and vice versa.”

The discovery means that some groups that have historically claimed superiority in a given field due to what was believed to be genetic predisposition toward a certain physical characteristic–muscle mass, for example, or height–will need to, just like everybody else, attribute such perceived shared characteristics to pure coincidence. The same applies to what some have perceived to be shared mental predispositions based on cultural and environmental differences. For example, people that have descended from the area known as Germany have been mistakenly assumed to have superior engineering abilities, as opposed to people that have descended from the area known as Hawaii. The fact that BMWs weren’t invented in Hawaii is pure coincidence, and observing such is now considered a form of “othering.”

In another example, the scientists wrote that it is now considered “othering” to label certain types of food as Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Mexican or what have you. Instead, the correct way to refer to foods that share similar characteristics based on their location would be “food commonly found in China and traditionally prepared by people from that area and markedly different than food prepared by people from Kansas.” While this distinction may prove difficult to use as an identifier, particularly on a restaurant sign, scientists and sociologists suggest that "Food Traditionally Prepared in China" is far preferable to "Chinese Food."

For those that might observe that this breakthrough discovery is yet another way of saying “we’re not in Kansas anymore,” scientists suggest that it would be better to perceive the discovery as indicating that Kansas, any perceived characteristics shared by the people of that area, are purely subjective figments of the imagination. 

Divining the Armani Man

Sometime it is the simplest of routine activities - a trip to the drug store for some drugs, a trip to the liquor store for some liquor, a trip to the grocery store for some spontaneous nudity in the frozen foods aisle, surrounded by people of like mind on hunting/gathering missions, all of them dreaming of a chance meeting with true love – when you’re randomly selected by the Gods of chaos to have an out-of-body experience with a complete stranger. Today, I was the lucky wiener, the chump of chumps selected from a plethora of hunter/gatherers in Mill Valley on a Friday afternoon, to be pinned by none other than the Armani man.

If you’ve been accosted by the Armani man – read no further: you know how this goes. Or perhaps not. Perhaps Pasquale A., as his business card so identifies him, tells a new story every time. What is amazing, in retrospect, is that he felt compelled to make up a story at all. But I am getting ahead of myself. Here’s what happened.

I drove over the hill from Stinson to pick up a couple of prescriptions, listening to Armando Duran’s subtly accented read of Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera, lost in the author’s renderings of late 19th century Caribbean Colombia (when I think of the Caribbean I rarely consider Colombia, even though it has more coastline on the Caribbean than any of the Central American countries) and the uniquely Spanish variety of heartache lovers suffer there. Mr. Boo howled along with the narrative, feeling the distinct, vibrating lamentations of unrequited love in the back seat. Eventually we parked at Whole Foods on Blithedale and, leaving Boo in the car, I had started to walk the short distance to CVS when a white SUV pulled up alongside me:

“Excooze excooze sir, I ama lost!” the driver shouted through the rolled down passenger window. I walked over to the car. “I ama lost. Can you tella me where is the airport?”

He was young, suave, light-skinned with neatly trimmed short dark hair that was receding even as he spoke and wore a color red striped top like a soccer jersey. I looked at the large screen “phablet” on the passenger seat, wondering the obvious. He read my mind and said something ridiculous like “eet’sa program in Eetaly.” I should have known right then that I was in for some kind of con job. So I told him how to get to the airport. He said his flight left at seven, and, since it was only one, I told him he had plenty of time, opening the door for a more involved, intimate conversation.

“Have you been to Eetaly?”

“Nope, never been.”

“Oh eet eesa very bootiful there, very bootiful. This eesa very bootiful here too, but expensive, yes?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “Almost everybody walks around with at least $500 cash in their wallet. Or with a crisp stack in the money clip.”

Uh…no. I didn’t say that, but that’s what Pasquale…oh, yes, he had introduced himself and even

gave me his Armani business card, explaining that he had been working  a designer show in SF. Anyway I’m sure that’s what Pasquale was thinking, especially when I told him that living in Stinson Beach was no cheaper.

We were still standing in the middle of the parking lot, and since he now knew my name, knew that I was a writer (oh, for movies? he asked. No, books. What books? Uh…uh…I didn’t bother explaining) and that I lived on the Pacific Ocean, he decided to pull into a parking spot under the inexplicable mural of pebbles and stones under water that covers the east wall of CVS facing Blithedale.  

"I want to give you a present," Pasquale said, hopping out of the car and opening the driver's side back seat door. "These jackets, eet costs too much to take them back to Eetaly." On the seat lay a pile of leather jackets. "The taxes, the duty, ees too high. Cost $2500 to take them back," he explained. "I want to give you, as present."

As if I might have suspected something fishy with his desire to lay what appeared to be about $6,000 worth of leather jackets on a complete stranger, he took off his sunglasses for a moment. "But why do you want to give them to me?" I asked.

"Because the duty taxes too high," he explained again.

"But if you brought these jackets with you from Italy to sell at this show, why do you have to pay duty to take them back?"

He played the "what the fuck are you talking about you crazy American" card. "It is a present."

Giorgio gets the "manboob" thing

Meanwhile he had been showing me the jackets in their plastic, the Armani liner, the flameproof leather which he demonstrated with his lighter. I didn't quite get the flameproof feature, but at this point I wasn't really wanting to extend the conversation. The jackets would be excellent protection in a forest fire or on a yacht firebombed by Muslim extremists on the Mediterranean. He showed me the brown suede and two black leathers, but didn't remove them from the plastic, nor did he ask me to try one on. Then he handed me a shopping bag and dumped all three of them in. "$1500 each. You take them."

"Why?" I asked again.

"Are you married?"

"Yes."

"What is your wife's size? Does she have..." he made the universal hand signal for large breasts.

"Uh...no..."

"Okay good, she is normal."

"Well, hardly," I was tempted to say. But I was now very eager to take my bag full of Armani jackets and hightail it outta there.

"My wife, eet is her birthday tomorrow. I want to bring nice gift from America..." he said, lowering his voice. "Perhaps expensive sex toy..." Okay, maybe he didn't say that.

"Can you give me $500? I can get her very nice present."

I should have said, "Wait a minute. How about this beautiful black leather women's jacket that your were just about to give me?" But instead I said "No. I am broke." The truth.

"Okay, you go to ATM, get me $300."

"No. I can't do it. I don't have a debit card." Again, the truth, and if I did I certainly didn't know the PIN.

"You can make purchase, get $300 cash back from credit card!" he insisted. I knew I couldn't just walk into CVS, get my scrips and ask for $300 cash, but instead I said. "I'm a writer! I'm completely broke!" Again, the truth. "I can't do it."

So he took the bag of Armani jackets out of my hand, threw it on the back seat, slammed the door and said: "Okay, have a nice day."

I rushed into CVS, completely flustered and confused, but also grateful that Mr. Armani had chosen me to fuck with. I am fucked with so little out here in paradise that it takes me an increasingly long time to figure out when it is happening, and one of these days when I am flush with dough and have a money clip fat with crisp Franklins I might peel off three or four for a bag full of fake Armani jackets. I never did take one out of the plastic. Perhaps they had no arms, or no backs. Of course I would be the last person to know a fake Armani, but when I showed Holly the business card Pasquale had given me, she knew right away that he was selling knock offs. "Giorgio would never have such a tacky card," she said. But what was worse was had I ran into Pasquale in the city, or in NYC, I would have smelled a scam immediately. But in the CVS parking lot on Blithedale, on a Friday afternoon?

I got my prescription and briefly considered trading some of the drugs for a few jackets. Such drugs had a street value that could easily exceeded the actual price of real Armani jackets, never mind fakes with no arms. I told the pharmacy gal what happened, mostly because I wanted her to be aware that Mr. Armani was working the CVS parking lot. Then I realized in mid-transaction that I had forgotten an item that I had been instructed to purchase, and that forgetting to purchase the item would be further evidence of my deteriorating mental condition and further grounds for abandonment, a fate worse than divorce for 60 year-olds that are trying to conceal their deteriorating mental conditions.

When I exited CVS to walk back to my car I was surprised to see that my new best friend Pasquale was still there, having relocated his vehicle so I would have to walk past. Instead, I turned tail and headed the other direction. Was I afraid? Not so much as I really didn’t feel like getting hustled anymore. But maybe he had changed his mind and just wanted to give me the jackets because I looked so much like a former downtrodden middle-aged family man that had been through the ringer,  trodden into a state of permanent confusion and bewilderment. Maybe he thought that if I could only wear a fake Armani black leather jacket for a few minutes, I would suddenly feel flush with dough. Maybe he hoped I would be back so he could spring Act II on me, where his accomplice, a buxom young Sophia Loren, would see me in the black leather jacket from across the parking lot and come sidling up to me all moist and musky, reeking of garlic and cigarettes. “Take your pants off, Mister Americano,” she might have command me. “But you can leave your coat on.” Even so, I wouldn’t have been able to come up with the $300 bucks.

Why did Pasquale feel it necessary to pretend to want to give me the jackets when he could have simply driven up and said “Hey mister, you wanna buy some fake Armani jackets? $100 bucks each.” It would have saved us both a lot of time. Instead young Pasquale tries to appeal to...to what? The fact that we both have wives? “Oh jeez Pasquale, whatever you do don’t go home empty handed on your wife’s birthday.”

What I should have said was “I was married, but my wife left me for a young Italian fella named...what was his name? Damn. It rhymed with Wally. She said he was an Armani salesman and could barely speak English. Young guy, but goin’ bald. Anyway let me tell ya, if I ever find that fucker I’m gonna dip his naked body in honey and hang him upside down above an ant hill. Or maybe I’ll sew his anus shut, then load him up with ex-lax. Unless, of course, he wants to give me a bag full of fake Armani jackets. Then I just might spare him.”

Good old Pasquale, my best Italian buddy. God bless the slimy little bastard: he made a mundane trip to the pharmacy into a real red letter day.

Before

After

Self-Serve Query Letter & Chap 1 Contemporary Fiction

Greetings!

Learning to Limbo (100K words), is a playful, big hearted tragicomedy in the Russo/Irving mold that chronicles the misadventures of middle-aged Jack Irwin and his family as they bounce across the country in search of gainful employment, domestic tranquility, and a few people they can trust. It is a story that working parents past, present and future will see as part of their own: the triumphs, the tragedies, the innocent mistakes and the not-so-innocent mistakes, and above all the forgiveness that keeps families together to face another challenge. If you know how to limbo, you can get through anything.  

Synopsis

According to the history books, The Limbo Dance originally developed on slave ships as men tried to squeeze under the low beam that separated them from their women below decks. Like those men, Jack Irwin, a middle-aged, 12-month-unemployed family man, finds himself in a 21st century version of that same tight spot.

When Jack’s parental gravy train derails, he is forced to take a low

paying marketing gig in the low cost Midwest, leaving native Norcal behind. A month after settling in Indianapolis, they're moved to New England, the nerve center of BFC (Big Fat Corporation) where Jack is lured into a French-style "stress-relief" relationship with sex-crazed poodle-haired exec. Meanwhile wife Carrie has gotten embroiled in a nasty email scam. Eventually incriminating photos wind up in her husband’s hands.  

The tightest of the tight spots? Not by a mile. Jack gets implicated in a revenue reporting scandal and is terminated. The affairs come to light. Jack gets crabs, Carrie gets paralyzed. Son Robbie flunks out. Only 11-yr old Lulu knows how to save the family with her ownversion of the limbo: the happy hop.

Background

I've been in the business of writing my entire career, both agency and client-side.  My debut novel, Hack, was represented by John Galvis Literary Agency and published by HD Media Press in August 2012. My business and corporate satire is gaining steam on The Huffington Post and other sites, along with a steady stream of quirky humor. I'm looking for a long-term partner that is interested in creating great, timeless fiction in the tradition of the classic storytellers. More on about.me.

Sample below. I think you'll want to read the manuscript - I have a feeling  Learning to Limbo is right up your alley. I look forward to hearing from you.

Jeb Harrison

www.jsh-creative.com

Learning to Limbo

Part 1 – San Anselmo

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

Jack go unda limbo stick

All around the limbo clock

Hey, let's do the limbo rock

Limbo lower now

Limbo lower now

How low can you go?

Chubby Checker – The Limbo Rock

Chapter 1 – In a Tight Spot

[Which describes the condition and profession of our infamous and odoriferous hero John Henry Irwin the III.]

Jack Irwin parked his rustbucket diesel Rabbit as far away from the lobby of Luna Microsystems as he could, hoping the long walk across the parking lot would allow his odor to dissipate. He had driven all the way from San Anselmo north of the Golden Gate through a bone-chilling January mist with all the windows and the sunroof open, down 19th Avenue past San Francisco State University and onto 280, where he floored his rusty bunny in hopes of generating a purifying hurricane that would leave him springtime fresh by the time he checked in for his interview. At age 43, a year on unemployment, with wife, requisite two kids, dog, mortgage, car payments, computer payments, insurance premiums, orthodontist bills, cable bills, bills of every shape and size, and a blossoming addiction to prescription painkillers, Jack was in a very tight spot. The last thing he needed was to asphyxiate his would-be employers.

Just three hours ago body odor worries were far from Jack Irwin’s mind.

His sleep was restless, as it had been since the layoff from the start-up that didn’t start-up a year ago,

and, as usual, wife Carrie had kicked him out of bed for his nocturnal spasms. So he had spread his long, banana-slug frame across the stained, child and dog-worn living room sofa, praying that the monkish one-note hum of the SubZero would quiet the bellicose cacophony of thousands of fast-talking recruiters half his age telling him what to say at tomorrow’s job interview and pulled a misty blue cashmere throw under his chin. The full-body sweats had finally passed, and he had poured nearly a quart of cold vanilla almond milk down his parched, smoke-ravaged throat by the soothing refrigerator light, letting the cool air blow softly over his drenched pajama top. Finally he stretched out on the sofa in the dark living room.

He was just drifting off when the alarm went off upstairs. He threw off the cashmere blanket and jumped up. “Shit,” he growled, rushing for the stairs, then stumbling over their slobbering, spastic yellow Labrador retriever, Barney, named by his 7-year old daughter Lulu after the famous purple dinosaur.

            
"Jesus...fuckin' dog!" growled Irwin, shoving Barney out of the way. He heard Carrie groan in the bed upstairs as the alarm continued to beep, and pictured her pulling the down pillow over her head as she had with reliable consistency all fifteen years of their marriage. Irwin dare not disturb Carrie before her designated wake up time lest she unleash a lethal swarm of killer bees or some other pestilence upon the household.

Alarm squelched, Irwin rushed downstairs and stood aside as the dog raced for the door, then dove into the cold January darkness to terrify whatever remaining nocturnal woodland creatures might be about. He grimaced as the dog squatted over what remained of the lawn, a hopeless patch of anemic fescue that perhaps Robbie, his nine year-old beamish boy, would someday learn to mow. Maybe Carrie would attend to Barney’s morning contribution before he came home and stepped in it.

            Sure enough, Carrie Irwin had her pillow in a death grip over her sleepy, frizzy-haired head. "God, Jack," came her muffled voice from underneath the pillow. "What time is it?"

 "Six AM, Thursday, January 12,” he announced as if to remind himself that it was big interview day.

“I gotta be outta here in 20 minutes." He rushed into the bathroom, quickly ran the electric razor over the graying stubble on his dimpled chin and wide, square jaw, then contemplated trimming his thick, wiry gray-flecked eyebrows, decided against it and jumped into the shower. He vigorously shampooed what was left of his rapidly receding sand-colored hair and whitewalls, resisting the usual urge to linger under the warm stream and soap his itching hemorrhoids. Instead, with a silly little TV jingle phrase gotta go, gotta go racing around in his head, he pulled on the corporate uniform: Nordstrom boxers, Ralph Lauren socks, Polo khaki slacks and Polo oxford blue shirt. He was working on his standard-issue red power tie when he heard the dog gouging another deep groove into the front door; grabbing his penny loafers, he bounded down the stairs and flung it open.

It wasn't until Barney had rushed in, skidded across the hardwood floor, and stood wagging in front of the cabinet that held the dog treats that Irwin smelled it: unmistakable, powerful skunk, so strong it made his eyes water. "Fuckin' A!" he muttered in a hoarse whisper, shutting the door, figuring Barney had chanced upon Mr. and Mrs. Skunk doing the wild thing in the bushes and had received a double shot of skunk lovin’.  He turned, woozy, and stumbled across the living room to the kitchen, expecting the smell from outside to dissipate. Instead, the smell was equally strong if not stronger in the kitchen.

Irwin took one look at the dog and groaned—he could practically see the odor wafting off his golden fur, like the hind end of Pepe Le Pew in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Irwin grabbed the stinking pooch by the collar, dragged him across the floor and shoved him back into the dark, nearly chopping off the tip of his golden tail as he slammed the door behind him. The dog turned and began gouging the door with renewed vigor, peeping like a maligned bird.

"What's that smell?" Carrie Irwin stood at the top of the stairs in her nightie, disheveled but still a distractingly ravishing sight to Irwin, even with his brain burning at five alarms. A few extra pounds had made her curves more pronounced, her luscious lips and cheeks a touch fuller; her almond-shaped hazel eyes more inviting.

"Barney got skunked," he said, marching up the stairs.

"Ugh!" grunted Carrie Irwin, squeezing her nostrils shut, crawling back

in bed and cocooning under the covers. "Disgusting," Irwin could hear her mutter as he walked past to retrieve his standard navy blazer.

Outside Irwin noticed that the skunk smell, though still strong, was not as strong in the chilly morning

air as it seemed to be in the house. He was closing the front gate when Barney came racing up, smashed open the gate and made a run for it. Irwin tackled, wrestled, grabbed the collar. Just when Irwin thought he had the dog, he slipped his head out of the collar and tore down the street. Standing there with the empty collar in his hand, Irwin didn’t even try calling after him.

Now, in the parking lot of Luna Microsystems where he was interviewing for a mid-level managerial position in the academic sector, Irwin checked himself in the rear view mirror, ran his fingers through his silver sidewalls and sighed. There was a new crack in the dashboard - a result of Magic Fingers relentless rattling - and he made a mental note: that was at least 67 cracks that he could count, which he did frequently.

 He heaved his aching 220 lb. six foot frame out of the tiny vehicle and shook himself all over like a wet, freshly skunked dog, his arms shimmying like spaghetti noodles by his side, tongue wagging, gut jiggling like the proverbial bowl-of-jelly in the weak winter sun. After a short time he noticed that a couple of workers had paused to observe his little St. Vitus' dance, so as he walked through the parking lot he threw in a couple of "happy hops", a sort-of Teaberry Shuffle that he and the kids broke into when feeling particularly silly, or in the current context, particularly fed up with the absurdity of being 43 years-old and interviewing for positions that required half his experience.

But the happy hop, for Irwin, wasn’t always mere silliness, rather, just like his St. Vitus warmups, had lately become disguised expressions of existential desperation – a physical manifestation of a psychological Houdini act where he figuratively shed his shackles and wriggled out of, squeezed under or hopped over, a sticky situation; often times to land smack dab in the middle of another, even stickier quagmire. So, just as he was about to enter the lobby of Luna Microsystems he threw in a subtle hop, like an extra sprinkling of Pixie Dust, partly for good luck and partly to ensure he was limber enough to run if things got ugly. Then he straightened his power tie and opened the big glass doors.

Irwin’s purity of purpose was blown to bits when he saw the receptionist falling out of her blouse. He imagined working around women like…like that. Who was harassing whom when the receptionist’s breasts practically jumped out and shook your hand? he thought.

He had just finished signing in when the receptionist gave him a queer look, wrinkling up her nose as if

Irwin had just passed some particularly noxious gas. Irwin attempted a smile and it struck him that perhaps the everlasting odor of Pepe Le Pew still clung to him like a cloud.

"Hi," he said. "I'm here to see Dinesh Singh."

The girl winced, and Irwin hoped that it was because she might have a little gas herself. "Please have a seat. I'll ring him for you."

                        
Then it was: "Hello," said a chocolate-colored Indian fellow with gleaming teeth. If he smelled anything unusual he was gracious enough not to let it show.

Irwin followed the young man through an incomprehensible maze of cubicles, extending almost as far into the distance as his increasingly blurry vision could discern. He was making yet another mental note to make an appointment with an eye doctor when he noticed that most of the cubes were empty. Irwin wondered what had happened to all of the former inhabitants.  Why couldn’t they have filled this job with one of those folks?

“All right then, my friend,” said Singh, clapping his brown hands down on the desk. “Do you have any questions?”

And so Irwin interviewed.

At first with a tall, middle-aged thin turkey buzzard of a man with yellowing skin who thought something was rotting in his trash can.

Then with a compact, broad-shouldered, thick-mustachioed Super Mario Brother who apologized for having too much garlic in his eggs that morning.

And with a very young, pudgy, rosy-cheeked girl with a garter belt collection of all sorts and sized adorning the rim of her cube and photographs of newly married couples on every available inch of desk space. She wondered if one of the garter belts was getting a little ripe.

Then Irwin met Abdul Abaya who had a big round table in the middle of his spacious office at the end of the hall, with a large window overlooking the bay to the north.

"Ah, welcome Mr. Irwin. Please have a seat. I have been so looking forward to meeting you!" Irwin felt flush, surprised by the sudden curiosity in his capabilities.

“Well, it’s another dry day out there, isn’t it?” he said, swiveling around to the wide window overlooking the serene silver water. The winter thermal inversion had turned the air around the Bay Area into thin layers of taupe haze. The “no burn” policy had been in effect all through the Christmas holidays, angering many Bay Area residents who insisted that you couldn’t have Christmas without a fire in the fireplace. “And no rain in the forecast, is that right?” Abaya added.

“Yes,” Irwin said.

Abaya swiveled back around. “I just hope there’s enough water left in July for my tomatoes.” Irwin nodded and was gearing up to talk about gardening when Abaya stood and gestured to the various pieces of marketing literature he had laid out on the table.

“Well,” he pronounced, “As you can see our problem is not tomatoes.” He waved his hand across the

piles of literature that looked as if they might have come from several different companies. “We need someone to get a handle on this mess.”

Then he stopped and sniffed the air like a dog, nose twitching uncontrollably. "Do you smell skunk? I smell skunk. Don't you?"

Before Irwin had a chance to answer he was on the phone to building services complaining that a skunk must have gotten into the ventilation system somehow. Then he dialed each of his direct reports and they all admitted that they smelled something odd and noxious, so he dismissed the team for the day, ended the interview, and started packing up his things.

And thus it was over. 

Irwin took a couple of deep breaths to loosen the growing constriction in his chest, then looked around and realized he had no idea how to find his way back to Dinesh Singh's office, much less find his way out of the building. After several panicky minutes walking up and down the corridors between the cubicles he found an exit sign, made his way to the lobby, took a final look at the receptionist's heroic cleavage, walked across the parking lot without a single happy hop, got in his rusty long-eared bunny buggy, engaged the diesel reverberation engine, and headed home through the hazy city.  

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