Martha Who?

or...who really has it all, while keeping it all together?

Name:
Location: New England, United States

Friday, July 21, 2006

The Rise of Entrepreneurship -- A Short Play

SETTING: The car. On the way back from Home Depot.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
So what did your boss tell you today about your job?

MARTHAWHO:
Dude.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
What's wrong?

MARTHAWHO:
Don't you think if I knew something I'd tell you?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Yes.

MARTHAWHO:
So why do you always ask such stupid questions?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
What?

MARTHAWHO:
I mean, we're only talking about my JOB here. Whether or not I'll be employed after next Friday. A portion of our family's livelihood.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Right. So what's the problem?

MARTHAWHO:
Soooo the problem is you keep asking me every day what my boss is telling me about the imminent layoffs, and don't you think I would just tell you if something was happening?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Sure.

MARTHAWHO:
So why do you keep asking me???? It's not like I'm going to get laid off and then tell you two weeks later.

silence.

MARTHAWHO:
It's just annoying that's all. I don't have anything to report. You know what I know.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Right. So what did he say?

silence.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
They fired Paulie today.

MARTHAWHO:
Paulie who? Paulie Walnuts? Who are you talking about? A little context would be helpful.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Paulie, you know. Three hundred pound scratch golfer. Sales.

MARTHAWHO:
That means nothing to me. I don't know your sales force.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
I just think it was a bad call. I mean, he was a good guy. Just wasn't making his numbers.

MARTHAWHO:
Sorry to hear it then.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
That's OK. He's going to work for my buddy out on the West Coast.

MARTHAWHO:
He's going to relocate?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Geez no ... he's a salesguy. He'll just travel wherever.

MARTHAWHO:
Sounds glamorous. Your company lays off a lot of people. Can we just stop talking about layoffs PLEASE???

silence.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
So here's a funny story. This will mean nothing to you, so it probably won't be funny.

MARTHAWHO:
Then why bring it up?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Because it's hilarious.

MARTHAWHO:
I'm a captive audience.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
So I was talking to this guy at the sales training this week and he was telling me about this time in the really early days of the company. He was in charge of marketing for the product.

MARTHAWHO:
You've been there done that.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Yeah but this was the really early days. Like right after we were spun out of the parent company. Years before I started.

MARTHAWHO:
Anyways.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Anyways. Like I was saying. He was in charge of marketing and he wanted to put an ad in one of the trade magazines promoting the product. So he asked Wally.

MARTHAWWHO:
As in Wally the incompentent Wally that hired you and was your first boss Wally and who got fired after you started Wally?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
One and the same.

MARTHAWWHO:
Oh good. I love a good Wally story.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
I thought you might. Anyway. The ad cost $100, and Wally wouldn't let him run the ad because there wasn't any money in the budget for magazine advertising.

MARTHAWHO:
That's ridiculous! They coudn't come up with $100 for an ad? Stupid stupid.

Mr. MARTHAWHO:
Right -- So listen to what my friend did.

MARTHAWHO:
OK what?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
He had a BAKE SALE.

MARTHAWHO:
What?

MR. MARTHWHO:
He had a bake sale!

MARTHAWHO:
As in, little cookies and whoopie pies and brownies all wrapped up in clingwrap and sold for twenty five cents a pop?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Yes!

MARTHAWHO:
Oh. My. God. You are shitting me.

MR. MARTHWHO:
I'm not even kidding. He made all the treats himself and sold them at work to raise money for the ad!

MARTHAWHO:
Did he tell people why he was selling them? I mean, he was like, buy my snickerdoodles so I can place an ad about the product we're all working on to promote it???

MR. MARTHWHO:
Yep! Right in the employee caf.

MARTHAWHO:
That is fricking brilliant.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
It's hilarious.

MARTHAWHO:
I love it.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
I couldn't believe it when he told me.

MARTHAWHO:
So did it work? Did he raise the money?

MR. MARTHAWHO:
H e raised something like eighty two dollars.

MARTHAWHO:
Wow. That's a lot of snickerdoodles. You'd think someone at that point would have just said here's a $20 -- go place that ad, son.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Well someone did! Wally found out about it and made a visit to the bake sale. He was not impressed.

MARTHAWHO:
What? I mean -- that took a lot of guts and creativity for your friend to find a solution to that problem. He should have been rewarded.

MR. MARTHWHO:
Apparently Wally was like "We don't do this kind of thing around here," and gave him the rest of the money he needed to place the ad.

MARTHAWHO:
Oh that is just so rich. I love it.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
It's a great story isn't it?

MARTHAWHO:
Yeah....

silence.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Whatcha thinking about?

MARTHAWHO:
I was thinking about your friend's bake sale.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Like how to work it into your blog?

MARTHAWHO:
Ha.
Ha.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Seriously.

MARTHAWHO:
Seriously ... I was thinking about driving down to my company's HQ and having a bake sale on my own behalf. You know -- to pre-emptively save my job.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Aw come on...

MARTHAWHO:
No really -- there's a lot of peeps down at the HQ. It would take a lot o' snickerdoodles, but if I could come up with a few tens of thousands of dollars maybe I could make a case.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Uh-huh.

MARTHAWHO:
It does seem like a lot of work ...

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Uh-huh.

MARTHAWHO:
But I'd be a hero. An urban legend. A cross between Rocky and Office Space.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Dare to dream kiddo.

MARTHAWHO:
Food for thought.

MR. MARTHAWHO:
Well let me know before you make any moves that might have you dragged out of your HQ in handcuffs.

MARTHAWHO:
You know I'll keep you posted!

MR. MARTHAWHO:
And seriously -- let me know when you talk to your boss.

MARTHAWHO:
AAAAAAAARGH!

###

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

THE Democratic Strategist.

sending some props over to my cousin Scott -- who is now the voice of the blog on the Democratic Strategist site.

Dig it here and now, or any time on the sidebar.

About time you had a public forum for your views, Scott. Keep 'em coming.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Riffing on a Good Thing

Trolling around on Yo Ambro I saw this funny post and it made me wonder what search words had recently directed people to MarthaWho. Here is a partial list.

1940's Linoleum
Parmesan Encrusted Tilapia
Jenn-Air Non Stop Sparking
Double Amputee Everest Dead
Westbrook ME
Where's Whoopi?
Martha and Don Together Again
Bloodiest Boxing Matches Video Clips

I don't know why, but this list really cracks me up, both in its randomness and at the same time, in its perfect summary of all things MarthaWho? I mean you don't even need to read any of my posts! This sorta sums it up nicely.

Thanks, Jenn!

-MW

Your Lips Move, But I Can't Hear What You're Sayin'

It was with some degree of sadness -- nay, nostalgia more like it -- that I noted the death of Syd Barrett earlier this week. A very un-MarthaWho like topic to say the least, I know. But I believe buried deep in the collective memory of people of a certain age, there exists one or two moments in one's life than can be defined, or at least underscored, by a Pink Floyd refrain.

Mine:


When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

1988. I was 14 and had just become the lead singer (ha!) of a garage hair band called Atrocity -- with all senior boys who had to pledge an oath to my parents that my innocence would be protected during the year I would be playing out with them. I was well taken care of that year, but it was a year of revelation regardless. Comfortably Numb makes me think of the first time I ever saw anyone smoke pot. I did not try it myself at the time, but I remember thinking it felt so illegal and dangerous and crazy to be with these crazy people listening to this whacked out crazy music.

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

1989. A really close friend moved away -- far away -- after sophomore year of high school. This was her favorite Pink Floyd song, and for reasons I did not understand, she would weep like a child every time she heard it. Sometimes we'd sit in my room or her room on a Friday night and just listen to it over and over again. In the last almost 20 years, I've only seen this friend once or twice, and have all but lost contact with her, but every time I hear this song it reminds me of her.

Good morning, Worm Your Honour!
The Crown will plainly show,
The prisoner who now stands before,
Was caught red-handed showing feelings.
Showing feelings of an almost human nature.
This will not do.

1992. Every bus trip for every field trip, school event, sporting event -- anything -- two of my friends in high school, self-nicknamed "Beak" and "Baba" would all but humiliate themselves and anyone within spitting proximity, as they would blast the Trial on a portable tape deck and sing themselves hoarse while acting out the entire thing. In a startlingly conformity-efficient manner, everyone in the class could recite the entire Trial, from to the Judds to the Mollys to the Anthony Michaels to the Emilios to the Allys. Anyway these guys were ruthlessly passionate in their recitation of the Trial, and after a while it left the confines of bus trips and could pop up Tourette's like in any setting from the cafeteria to spanish class. Senior year they sat me down and forced me to watch The Wall (and Tommy and a few other things of the ilk) to broaden my horizons I suppose. And for graduation they made me a "box set" (aptly titled "Beak and Baba's Greatest hits") which included The Wall and a few home made movies on VHS, and a 2 tape audio musical odyssey of Pink Floyd, The Who, and Jethro Tull, so that I would not forget my roots when I went off to college.


There are dozens of other great and memorable Pink Floyd songs (including many many that are not on the Wall albums of course) but these three are the ones that come to mind first for me. It was part of the musical soudtrack of my coming of age and will stay ingrained in my memory as such. Certain songs will always conjure up memories of black lights and lava lamps and dark bedrooms and tie die t-shirts with peace signs and the smell of marijuana and laying in fields under cold night skies and talking about the meaning of life and the endlessness of the universe and wanting to leave town and get away from the suffocation of well, being 14. Feelings of being utterly dangerous, yet somehow still knowing deep down, as I know now, that those were still times of great innocence. None of us really knew what hippies did or what it meant to be bohemian. And certainly we thought nothing of what the song lyrics were really about -- not too many people in my circle of friends at 14 thought much about mental illness and really being at the end of ones rope and not being able to take it anymore and believing that all of the crap in the world that we were getting from THE MAN was some part of a vast global conspiracy targetted at each and every one of us. None of us really shaved our eyebrows off or jumped off hotel balconies into swimming pools or nearly died from overdoses of hallucinagenic drugs. We all went off to college and got degrees and become lawyers and engineers and grossly overpaid consultants and got married and had kids and bought houses in the suburbs.

But I bet that everyone had at least one fleeting memory this week while Pink Floyd was momentarily in the news.

I believe that true true artistic creativity requires a certain amount of legitimate crazyness. That it is something coded deep in one's DNA that allows minds to think a certain way, to see light in a certain way, or understand the way paint moves on a canvas or how to articulate an earth-shattering feeling in two lines of musical verse. Maybe people like Syd Barrett just could not bear the burden of their artistic genius and had to shut down into seclusion for the rest of their lives. Topics for another time.

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older.
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Re-Post: The People You Meet in Heaven: A Short Play About Karma

Sorry ... I attempted to resurrect a dead post from June and it got filed out of order down below the July entries. For anyone who is interested, you can find it here.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

The Name Game

LittleMe has a list of baby names picked out for her sister to be born sometime around Halloween. The top five follow:

1. Maisy (her favorite cartoon character)
2. Mommy
3. LittleMe's own name
4. Baby Nummies (??)
5. Baby B.B.

With options like these, who needs naming dictionaries or advice from well-intentioned friends and family members???

Ten Minutes In the Grill

On Sunday my Father in Law and I got into a huge argument. It was 100 degrees and I'm hormonal and he's, well, he's my FIL, and I don't even remember what the argument was about, something about the benefits of ceramic tile over vinyl or laminate bathroom flooring options (I wish it was something more dramatic than that). Anyway it resulted in a quiet but dramatic day of avoiding each other completely and I mean completely until we were all whisked away to enjoy a dinner in the new dining room of the recently-renovated country club in my in-laws' Vermont summer community.

Half way through dinner, LittleMe decided she had to (HAD TO!) go play with the elevator so Mr. Marthawho took off to chase her around the lobby. Mother in Law decided she couldn't bear to send her son off alone into the world to play with his own child so she left the rest of us at the table. The rest of us being me and FIL.

There is a long silence.


MW:
So this room is a lot brighter than it used to be.

FIL:
Yeah. They did a good job. Lots of windows.

MW:
I remember it being a lot darker before.

FIL:
It was nothing special. Now it's much better. And it was finished on time and under budget.

MW:
Well you can't say that about too many construction projects can you?

FIL:
Nope. There's really only two controversies to speak of, post-renovation. One is the moose. (FIL gestures to the gigantic moose head hanging above the stone fireplace at the end of the room).

MW:
It is a big moose. Was that here before?

FIL:
No. I don't know where it came from. My theory is that it's someone from the community who probably had it hanging on their wall and wanted to get rid of it and made the Club take it. But alot of people really hate it.

MW:
Because of animal cruelty or anti-hunting or something?

FIL:
No, no... nothing like that. It's just ugly. Who wants a big moose watching you eat dinner?

MW:
Huh.
So what's the other controversy?

FIL:
The name of this restaurant is called "The Grille"

MW:
So? That's what it was called before the renovation too.

FIL:
But look around... there's no grill up here. It's just a dining room. They could have called it the "Quechee Room" or something else related to the club or the town.

MW:
I guess.

FIL:
But here's the thing. The casual restaurant downstairs is called "The Deck"

MW:
There's a deck down there, right?

FIL (slapping the table):
Ah-ha! But there's also a GRILL! and...?

MW:
I don't know... and what?

FIL:
There's a DECK up here, too! I mean -- imagine the confusion if I asked someone to meet me at the Grill Deck for lunch? Would they go up here to the deck of the "Grille" restaurant? Or would they go down there to the "Deck" restaurant that also has a grill?

MW:
Ok that could be pretty confusing.

FIL:
But everything else turned out OK I guess.

MARHTAWHO:
I wonder what's taking them so long. She loves playing in that elevator. Glad you didn't get rid of that in the renovation!

FATHER-IN-LAW:
She just gets nervous you know.

MARTHAWHO:
About the elevator?

FATHER-IN-LAW:
You know. She needs to control everything related to the little tyke. It's impossible for her to sit here while they are running around in the lobby without her. It's just her thing. She could have sat here with us, but she would have been constantly staring at the door waiting for them to come back in, and worried as all get-out that something big was happening out in the lobby that she might be missing.

MARTHAWHO:
Uh-huh.

FIL:
She's always been like that for as long as I've known her.

MW:
Controllling?

FIL:
No. Just not wanting to miss anything. If she could split herself into two pieces right now she would. Because now that she's out there, I'm sure she's tortured wondering what is happening in here.

MW:
It doesn't bother me. I'm always happy to let someone else chase LittleMe around, especially in a restaurant.

FIL:
I'm just saying. She's always been that way and she always will be.

MW:
And I'm just saying it only seems to bother you. I was just wondering where they were. I didn't say anything about her leaving.

FIL:
Good. Because she's always going to leave and run after her kids. And now her grandkids. She panics when they're not in the room. What if they're having fun without her etcetera...

MW:
Alrighty.

FIL:
Because you just have to roll with it. I learned that a long time ago. You can't change her so you just have to accept it and move on. Let her do her thing.

MW:
That's all you can do with anyone.

FIL:
Right.

Mr. MW, MIL and LittleMe burst back into the restaruant.

MW:
There they are!

FIL:
It is brighter in here isn't it.
We could really use some sun shades for the windows. Especially at this time of year.





###