ALUMNI NOTES

He was doubly obscure, a man with no name from a town with no name. When people wanted to call him, they just said to the operator, “connect me,” and took a chance. Few of the calls reached him. One that did came from a television producer. “We love your whole thing,” the producer said. “We think you’re the perfect subject for a new show.” The man valued his privacy. His obscurity was a form of currency. But now he was being offered a way out, a ladder up. He was being greased for fame. His silence indicated a willingness to listen. The producer went on. “I should describe the show to you, of course. It’s what the boys in the writers’ room call ‘an existential Western.’ I’m guessing they mean a Western with plots that call into question the value of life itself. That’s nearly any Western, no? These eggheads went to places like Princeton and Yale and Klemmerschmidt University and the ol’ U. of Chicago, my alma mater. I’ll tell you, if I hadn’t hired them, I don’t think any of them would ever have felt the touch of another human hand. But we’ve got it worked out good. Andy found himself a guy in a bar. Jerry’s dating an executive. Larry plays the field, switches sides every quarter. His phrase, not mine. He called it a ‘fragrant image.’ Like I say, without me, little chance of the touch of a human hand. Anyway, they started building this Western and then one of them said something about you. I’ll be damned if I know how they heard about you. Weren’t you on the radio briefly for a prize pumpkin or something? They convinced me that yours were the life rights to acquire, and that no price was too high. And because I’m the bigwig around here — there are other wigs, but none bigger — they enlisted me to call.” The nameless man from the nameless town felt a pain at the base of his head. This pain was the realization that other calls of opportunity must have failed to reach him. The one that did, this one, was promising, but was it? It consisted of a garrulous purveyor of pop pap insisting that his story could be productively grafted atop a jejune genre exercise. The nameless man could talk the talk, too. He had gone to Klemmerschmidt, and graduated summa cum laude. He hung up the phone with the producer still gabbling. His hand, which had spent time in the vicinity of his eyes while the man was pitching, streaked tears across the receiver.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas