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Showing posts from 2007

The Denizens of Daytime (Part 1)

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Who exactly is out in the middle of the day? Students? The jobless? The aimless? Service staff? Hospital staff? Midnight tollbooth workers? Noon. The Tea Lounge. Off work; personal day. I sit at the bar. At this hour I have to summon someone to play bartender. Good. I need to be alone, away from inquisitive eyes branding my actions bizarre. Which they are, but my motives are legitimate. Sometimes though, the explanation is more of an endeavor than the operation. I am doing a photo shoot for Fisherman’s Friend lozenges for my advertising portfolio. Fisherman’s Friend are cough drops from North England. They are popular in Scandinavia and Asia, but no so much in the States. They should be. Fisherman’s Friend are the strongest on the shelf. My target audience is smokers. I feel a campaign cast with booze will be a good way to reach them. The line for the first ad: “Other cough drops make good chasers.” Fisherman’s Friend tastes like it works. I line up a salt shaker, Fisherman’s Friend i

Stitch 'N Bitch

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My mother is a knitter. The closest I’ve come is hand spooling the yarn for my scarf at the yarn shop. It burns more calories than one would think. Lunch time at the Starbucks on 57th Street. I sit next to two women who are surveying their yarn purchases from the yarn show at the Holiday Inn two blocks away. We start talking. Soon enough two other women walk in, obviously from out of town, encumbered with garbage bags. I’m thinking, couldn’t they afford suitcases? Or, if you’re going that route at least use Hefty garbage bags. The two women I’m talking to recognize the cheap garbage bags and call out to the women whose sacks I learn are holding their yarn purchases. Now there are five of us, occupying three tables talking about knitting. As far as knitting goes, I have two topics I can riff from: My mother knits me a handsome cobalt blue scarf with the yarn I spooled. She knits one for my father too and presents it to him last Christmas in a nice box, where it remains. This ensures he

A Texan Walks into an Irish Bar

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