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I’m not so sure about this story.  But in a different way.  For the first time since the start of this project I really feel the need for more space.  As I mentioned earlier, this is my attempt at a comedy, and the only comedy I know how to do is smart-ass comedy.  A couple of guys getting drunk and making fun of each other.  And one of them is probably fat.  That’s all I got.  What I’m finding is that the basic idea behind this story isn’t so bad.  There are a lot of interesting places to hang scenes, only, I don’t have the room.  I think with a fuller medium this would be better.  Short stories aren’t exactly the easiest things to squeeze zany fun into.   Of course every single one of you out there reading this right now is going, “Yes.  No shit, you moron.”  I’m not sure how I got it into my head to squeeze “Old School” into the art form that was used to write “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” but here I am.

Oh well.

Onwards.

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I think I know what I’m going to write for next week.  A friend of mine had an idea for a story that he told me about so I’m going to steal that.  He’ll never write it, that’s for certain.  He’s in finance.  And, as an added bit of trivia, he once got so drunk at a holiday office party that later that night he tried to walk through the Holland Tunnel.  The theory is he thought it was a subway station.  Good times.

It’s a lighter story than I usually write.  I could almost dub it a comedy, except I don’t write comedies.  I sometimes sit down and try and write a comedy but the next thing I know I’ve got some huge heartache going on or something.  The best I can muster is comedic characters…and by “comedic” I mean “smart-ass.”

But really right now it’s hard to worry about all this.  Spring is here.  I can get home, get my writing done, head out for a bite or a drink and there will still be daylight left.  Sidewalk tables are in front of restaurants for good now.  And, after a long dark season of bulky winter coats, the opposite sex suddenly has a physical form again.

I love spring. I love National Skirt Day (or as it’s known in the south, National Sundress Day).

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This is the story of the radio station I have my alarm clock set to.

A few years ago the oldies radio station here in New York switched over to what was called Jack FM.  This was met with a very large public outcry as the move was made without any warning and a number of famous DJ’s were fired.  Plus, the oldies station in New York has been on the air since, I don’t know, the Paleolithic Era, so a lot of people were pissed.  Jack FM is an odd format.  Basically they were trying to emulate the I-pod experience by playing a very random mix of popular songs that weren’t able to fit into any one genre.  I remember hearing Tom Jones, followed by Steve Martin’s “King Tut” and then Alanis Morissette.  It was neat…for awhile.

At around this same time, all the classic rock stations in the area slowly changed their formats one by one until New York, for the first time ever, was without a radio station playing classic rock.  It was weird.

So, time went on and Jack FM started not doing so well and it kind of began to backslide on it’s promise of always playing an eclectic mix of music.  It began to play classic rock and roll songs from big name bands in a repetitive fashion.  You’d hear the same songs day after day and they’d all be hits from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

Years passed.  Then one of the stations that had previously played classic rock, with huge fanfare, declared that it would be returning to a classic rock format playing all the great rock from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.  Then the oldies station, now Jack FM, declared that it would be returning to the oldies format, only it would modernize a bit and move forward to embrace a newer decade into it’s format.

You see where this is going?  One station returned to the airwaves promising to deliver the classic hits of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, while Jack FM, which had basically been playing the classic hits of the 60′, 70′ and 80’s, was replaced by an oldies format…which would be playing the classic hits of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.

This is why I listen to Pandora.

Although recently that’s been playing the same ten songs over and over again.

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On my computer desktop I’ve got all of my stories lined up. Whatever I’m writing I put on my desktop.  It’s best to make it as hard as possible to avoid writing and when my current story is sitting there looking at me it’s hard to ignore.  Whenever possible I leave the Word document open as well, although that has caused some problems in the past because I tend to forget to hit save and if there’s  a crash or a power flicker I can lose stuff.  But I’ve gotten better with that.

What was my point?

Oh, I’ve left all the past stories from this project on my desktop as well and let them slowly line up and accumulate.  It’s pretty neat looking now, two rows of ten with that last one sitting on top in a new third row.  Looking at it like that it’s very easy to see that I have written a ridiculous amount of fiction this year.   What’s astounding to me is that most of it is good.  It’s stuff I can stand behind.  I thought I’d produce, at most, five stories that would be worth anything during this project.  I’ve been happily proven wrong.  And here is my point.  It’s often a very good idea to push yourself outside of your normal limits.

Nobody knows what their own best is.

And, yes, I got that from a fortune cookie.

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