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Connections: No Rookies

Connections: No Rookies

“It’s a Yogi Berra thing,”
By
Helen S. Rattray

    Let’s hear it for longevity. I’ve been at The Star for more than 50 years. Yikes. At least I haven’t been at the same desk or even in the same room in the building all these years. And, of course, we work differently now.

    In the old days stories were typed on yellow paper rolled into manual typewriters, and we edited with pencils, although they weren’t necessarily blue. We cut and pasted, and it meant exactly that. Blades were involved. I probably cut and pasted more than others, because I’ve always been the sort of editor that juggles thoughts — paragraphs, quotes.

    (Although they aren’t needed any longer during the paste-up process, I still keep handy the Hoffritz scissors I bought in the 1960s at White’s Pharmacy in East Hampton, and worry when they go missing. No one misses rubber cement, which we all gave up a long time ago.)

    Longevity was in the air when Larry Cantwell, who will be elected supervisor of East Hampton Town on Tuesday, dropped in last week —  even though he is running unopposed — to talk about his vision for the town. A handful of staff members were sitting in an informal semicircle when he looked in my direction and laughed softly, almost to himself.

    “It’s a Yogi Berra thing,” he said.

    I didn’t know what he was referring to, exactly, but I knew just what he meant: We have both been there and done that before. What came to Larry’s mind, he told me later, was one of Yogi’s tortured statements that has become part of the American lexicon: “It’s deju vu all over again.”

    Although Larry’s career and mine have followed different paths, parallel rather than intersecting, we both could certainly be considered veterans. I’m still toiling away in the name of independent journalism while Larry, who was elected an East Hampton bay constable in 1975 (at the age of 25), has never stopped being a public servant: He was a town councilman from 1976 to 1982, and the East Hampton Village administrator from 1982 until recently; he also has served on the town’s housing authority and planning board.

    One of the attributes that Larry will bring to his new office in January is his knowledge of what went before. I am confident that having been witness to past controversies, and knowing whether and how they were resolved, will serve him well. He will have archival, and institutional, memories to call upon.

    “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is an aphorism often heard when government officials are criticized. It wasn’t Yogi Berra, to be sure, who said it, but George Santayana, an American philosopher who lived for almost 100 years from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries — gathering wisdom along the way, no doubt.

    That Larry remembers the history of this place will be an asset for all of us. He is not likely to make the rookie mistake of replicating the actions of previous administrations, if those actions didn’t work out the last time around, for one thing. However, taking a cue again from Yogi Berra, he might — like many of us who have observed the overwhelming changes of the past few decades —  come up hard against the reality that  “the future ain’t what it used to be.”

 

Loathsome Sores

Loathsome Sores

This latest attack ranks high on the scale of torturous annoyance
By
Jack Graves

    Did Job ever get chiggers?     

    Let’s go to the book, Jerome. . . .

    Yes! In fact, it’s the first plague to have been visited upon him by the Lord.

    “. . . So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot [check] to the crown of his head [check — well, shoulder in my case]. Job took a potsherd [there being no cortisone cream in those days] with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.”

    Well, there you have it. My case doesn’t quite measure up; there is shit and then there is deep doo-doo, as I said last week. But, whether chiggers or tick larvae, this latest attack ranks high on the scale of torturous annoyance.

    I was prescribed a dermatologic cream and a low short-term dose of prednisone, which had Mary scouring health Web sites for the side effects, which, in some cases, she reported, were dire.

    When, in reviewing that long list she mentioned “unwarranted happiness,” I said that didn’t sound so bad to me. And, as for skin easily subject to bruises, I already knew I was thin-skinned.

    A subsequent, albeit unscientific, poll I conducted, however, tended to support her view, and I resolved to stay off the prednisone if I could.

    Meanwhile, a co-worker, alarmed at my announcement, advised an application of Rid to be followed 10 minutes later (once it was washed off) with an application of clear nail polish over each bite. As we talked, the infernal itching rose to such a high level that I leaped up from my seat and, barely excusing myself, ran the 440-some yards from the office to White’s pharmacy in what I think was record time for a 73-year-old.

    Last night, at around 12:30, when the itching around my ankles became so insistent that I knew I — a heavy sleeper normally — wouldn’t sleep otherwise, I downed half a pill with a banana and went back to bed, hoping that I wouldn’t find myself blind on awakening.

    It’s morning, and as far as I can tell I’m on the mend and inclining in the general direction of unwarranted happiness. So, for now, I’ll spare the Lord a remonstration.

Calls From Town Hall

Calls From Town Hall

By
David E. Rattray

    Getting a call back from East Hampton Town Hall is a hit-or-miss proposition for the news media these days, which is why a flurry of responses to an editorial that appeared on this page last week was a surprise.

    We had said the public interest would be better served if town board meeting agendas, as well as those of several other boards, were available with more lead time. Among the responses this engendered was an e-mail from Richard Myers, a member of the architectural review board, who mused, wrongly, that I did not consult The Star’s government calendar. As it turns out, I am the one who prepares that particular set of weekly listings, and as such, have been intimately aware of the deficit.

    A.R.B. agendas are posted on Thursdays, a week before its meetings take place, which is too late for them to be included in East Hampton Town’s official newspaper until the day of the meeting itself. This is clearly too late for all but the die-hard government watchers, and utterly useless for our many subscribers who get their papers in New York City or beyond, and who learn of the agenda only after the meeting is over.

    The reply from town officials, when I broached this in previous years, was that setting agendas any earlier would be unfair to applicants. Of course, the net effect is to shut the public out of the process, but that apparently does not matter. (I am loathe to say it may be something they prefer.)

     To his credit, Fred Overton, the town clerk, who is running for a seat on the town board, was the first to phone, making the point that we incorrectly blamed him for the town board’s logjam. He then wrote a letter to the editor explaining how, from his perspective, things could be better. His ideas, which can be read in the pages that follow, can be summed up this way: The supervisor and members of the town board should have everything to the town clerk by the Friday before the following Thursday’s formal meeting so agendas can be posted on the town’s townclerk.com Web page.

    From where I sit, the schedule Mr. Overton supports is a huge improvement on the status-quo information blackout. But it still makes it tough for the town’s print publications to announce what is to be under consideration with enough time for residents to be part of the process.

 

Connections: Can You Spare a Dime?

Connections: Can You Spare a Dime?

I’d love to know how $3 became the ubiquitous “ask,” rather than $2 or $4
By
Helen S. Rattray

    Ever since the 2004 presidential election, when I went to Florida to try to help legitimate voters avoid being turned away from the polls, it feels like every progressive organization in the country has had me on its radar. Perhaps one gave another its database; I certainly haven’t been signing up myself.

    It’s no secret that the groups targeting me as a potential donor or at least someone who might sign a petition are on the Democratic side of the aisle. I haven’t spent a lot of time pondering the fiasco of the 2004 election, but I can’t help noting today that if Secretary of State John Kerry had won, John Edwards would have been vice president. (Now that s something to set your mind whirling.)

    Although I haven’t contributed anything at all to a political campaign since Barack Obama first ran for the presidency in 2008, the number of groups seeking me out has continued to grow. The good result, although it is rather funny, is that I am now familiar with the names of elected officials from states which I rarely if ever have even visited: There’s Senator Jon Tester of Montana, Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Representative Dave Loebsack of Iowa. . . . 

    Recently, I’ve been asked over and over to chip in $3 to various campaigns.  Yes, exactly $3. The idea seems to be that more people will contribute if they are asked for a small amount rather than a large one, and that this will produce a broad base that will lift the organization to its fund-raising goal on the wings of a million butterflies.

    I’d love to know how $3 became the ubiquitous “ask,” rather than $2 or $4. Has an odd number been proven to appeal in some way to our subconscious? Who started this trend for micro-appeals?

    The number of e-mail asks flooding my in-box was over the  top last week, as the Sept. 30 Federal Election Commission cutoff for quarterly reports from various political committees approached. The appeals all warned that there was a looming fund-raising deadline; on Monday, I kept being told, over and over, that the deadline was midnight. Perhaps someone will explain to me what difference it would make if these organizations received someone’s $3 on Oct. 1 rather than Sept 30. Isn’t it all dedicated to the same end?

    Then — and this really did pique my curiosity — a number of senators suddenly upped the ante. Senators Dick Durbin and Harry Reid each asked for $5. Rob Zerban of Wisconsin, who may run against Paul Ryan for the House of Representatives in 2014, asked for $7. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut asked for $10. Senator Charles Schumer asked for $25. Before I knew it, Vice President Joe Biden and Michelle Obama each asked for $75, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wanted a whopping $80. And so on. . . .

    You may wonder — I know I do — why I spend so much time reading and dissecting these e-mails. Why don’t I just ditch them into the trash?

    I guess I keep combing through them because they are everyday evidence of how the Internet has changed political campaigning. I hope this is evidence of a new grassroots. Is the $3 donation the answer to the Super PAC?

 

Relay: Phish Bowl

Relay: Phish Bowl

How to spot an Internet “phishing” scam
By
Irene Silverman

    There were maybe 30 of us at GeekHampton in Sag Harbor the other night, watching a PowerPoint presentation on how to spot an Internet “phishing” scam.

    Not a virus, not a bug, not a worm, not even the so-called “Nigerian 419” shakedown (419 is the number of the Nigerian Criminal Code section dealing with fraud — thank you, Wikipedia), where somebody in Lagos urgently desires to give you a big chunk of his rich uncle’s money in exchange for a little of yours to bribe it out of the country.

    No, the scams we were learning about are far less obvious and infinitely more devious, and their numbers are exploding.

    Phishermen, we learned, create Web pages that look almost exactly like they come from a real place — PayPal.com, eBay.com, T.J. Maxx, U.P.S., Verizon, iTunes, the state lottery, any and all banks, anything at all, really — hoping to entice us into giving away key personal information: passwords, credit card numbers, bank account details, and the like.

    Did you, for example, get a warning from your “bank” last week about a bounced check? Did it maybe look like this (an actual scam, subject line: Insufficient Funds Notice)?

    

    Date: September 25, 2013

    Insufficient Funds Notice

    

    Unfortunately, on 9/25/2013 your available balance in your Wells Fargo account XXXXXX4653 was insufficient to cover one or more of your checks, Debit Card purchases, or other transactions.

    An important notice regarding one or more of your payments is now in your Messages & Alerts inbox. To read the message, click HERE, and first confirm your identity.

    Please make deposits to cover your payments, fees, and any other withdrawals or transactions you have initiated. If you have already taken care of this, please disregard this notice.

    We appreciate your business and thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

    If you have questions after reading the notice in your inbox, please refer to the contact information in the notice. Please do not reply to this automated email.

    Sincerely.

    Wells Fargo Online Customer Service

    wellsfargo.com | Fraud Information Center

    4f57e44c-5d00-4673-8eae-9123909604b6

    “Always look at the return email address,” instructed our friendly geek, Eliot. “If the address looks weird, you may be in the wrong place.”

    wellsfargo.com/za, for example, would mean the e-mail originated in Zambia. Would your bank be writing to you from Zambia? Definitely a wrong place. If the last part of the name makes no sense, he said, read no further, hit the delete button.

    

    Speaking of look no further:

    From: Internal Revenue Sevice

    Reply-To: [email protected]

    Subject: Refund Notification

    “sevice.com”? Not just one weirdness there. The misspelling is easy to spot; the “com” needs common sense. The e-mail address of the I.R.S. ends in .gov, like all federal government department addresses, not .com.

    Bad spelling, and especially bad English, are dead giveaways that a phisherman is casting out a line. So is a warning of dire consequences. This next one makes it on all three counts:

    UNITED STATES OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY

    MG Timothy J. Lowenberg, Adjutant General and Director State Military Department

    Washington Military Dept., Bldg 1 Camp Murry, Wash 98430-5000

    Attn,

    It has come to our notice that your ATM card to you is still in Georgia because you have refused to comply with the US Customs and Boarder Protection. I wish to remind you the consequences if you fail to comply. With the power invested in me as the Secretary General of the Homeland Security I advise you to comply with the Custom immediately to avoid having your ATM card confiscated and charging you for money laundry.

    However i the agent Mr. Paul Smith will advice you to immediately respond back to my E=mail so that he will help you to obtain the needed certificate the only fees required is $480 after that your ATM card will be released to you unless you have decided to loose your ATM card. Contact information is listed below. . . .

    

    With, of course, a helpful link.

    How anybody could fall for that one is hard to fathom, but it happens every minute. Unemployed people looking for work are taken in by lottery scams, elderly people put their trust in “Your Social Security Refund,” even supposedly savvy teens click on that treacherous link that promises a free iPod just for submitting a review. Global losses from phishing in 2012 were estimated at $1.5 billion.

    “It’s going to get harder to figure out who’s going to screw you over, so just trust your gut,” Eliot concluded. “Common sense is the best way to stay safe, in the real world and on the Internet.”

    We were getting our stuff together, ready to leave, when someone’s cellphone rang, and rang, and didn’t stop ringing.

    “Could you help me?” came a voice from the back. “I don’t know how to turn this off.”

    Better never turn it on, or your computer either, is my advice.

    Irene Silverman is The Star’s editor-at-large. She is at large in East Hampton at the moment.

Talk of War

Talk of War

By
Helen S. Rattray

    We were gathered on a backyard deck. The light was failing and a chill was coming on. We had been asked to share something we had written, preferably poetry, with a small group of friends, a “read-in,” if you will. There were only a few poets among us, however. After listening to several short and sassy poems, we were treated to an unfinished memoir that the group agreed was a novel waiting to happen. Then, a United States District Court judge and law professor took out a manuscript and read what might be called a playlet. It went like this:

    The year is 2014. Netanyahu and Obama are in conversation. Iran has dropped a nuclear bomb on Israel, and the country is largely destroyed. Netanyahu tells Obama that Israel is going to retaliate. Obama argues against it. Netanyahu says Israel has no choice. Obama begs him not to do so. He suggests that a place can be found where the Jewish people can be resettled. Netanyahu stands his ground. There is nothing Obama can do.

    We were silent when the reading was over. Eagerly, the assembled, a dozen and a half of us, moved indoors, as much, I am sure, to avoid commenting on what we had just heard as for warmth and light.

    Two days later, I was brought up short by another dark work of the imagination. A friend sent a link to a YouTube video: “Help Kickstart World War III.” Created by the Second City Network, which produces all kinds of satiric, and supposedly funny, videos — which I guess are modeled on the skits on “Saturday Night Live” — the World War III video stars a series of young adults who announce that they are supporting President Obama because they promised to do so in 2008 and he is “right all the time.” They ask viewers to contribute to the $1.6 trillion needed for World War III, which will be “social-media focused,” using “organic, grass-fed bombs,” and fought on “99 percent of the world.” Maybe it’s because I have already lived through a world war, but I wasn’t laughing. Could the video really have been viewed 2,472,204 times? Or is that part of the joke?

    My copy of the latest New Yorker magazine, with a Louis Menand book review calculated to cause alarm, arrived the same day. Mr. Menand, a Harvard English professor who is a brilliant contributor to The New Yorker, praises Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control,” calling it a “miracle of information management . . . covering more than 50 years of scientific and political change.”

    In detail after detail, the book proves, Mr. Menand writes, that “most of the danger that human beings faced from nuclear weapons after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to do with inadvertence, with bombs dropped by mistake, bombers catching on fire or crashing, missiles exploding, computers miscalculating, and people jumping to the wrong conclusion.” The title of the article, “Nukes of Hazard,” playing on the television series “Dukes of Hazzard,” was the only thing slightly amusing about the review.

    Given the terrorist attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi this week and the continuing Syrian war, there hasn’t been much to smile about in the news. Although we didn’t hear much poetry on the deck the other night, I couldn’t help remembering the poem “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold: “[W]e are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night.” Written almost 150 years ago, it still strikes home.

Marvelous Silence

Marvelous Silence

By
Jack Graves

    Things are quiet now, the racket is over, and silence, marvelous silence, is about to gather us in. I feel it in the air, I see it in the light that glistens on the honeysuckle leaf in the outdoor shower, and, as happens every fall, the feeling is delightful.

    Of course the world remains with us, and we with it, though to be spared the hyperactivity of summer — and each succeeding summer does seem to be more frenetic than the one past — is a blessing. We can think now, if we’d like, stand outside ourselves a bit, and breathe.

    “At least the air is still free,” I said to Valerie in the I.G.A. as I put a two-gallon bottle of water down on the counter yesterday.

    Yes, something’s in the air here. In the air the world’s leaders are breathing too, it seems. Syria may get rid of its chemical weapons, Iran may not pursue Armageddon, a president has agreed to consult Congress — after all these many years.

    All of a sudden, sanity seems to be on the upswing. Maybe it is the crisp air, the clearer light. Of course you never know about tomorrow, but that’s my weather report for today.

    “As for Grenada, Panama, Iraq, and Haiti, my main peeve,” I wrote in a letter home in the fall of 1994 — almost 20 years ago — “is that presidents act unilaterally in such cases, without consulting Congress, and by extension the citizenry. We are more often than not presented with a fait accompli. . . .”

    We weren’t this time, and that’s to Obama’s — and Putin’s — credit, though I’m not sure saber rattling ought to be touted, as it has been, as a guarantor of peace. Still, Obama is to be commended for having withstood, at least for the moment, the cries of the bombastic bomber crowd.

    But enough of this, enough of this cacophony, confusion, and suffering; I was talking of fall and how tranquil it is here.

    Can we not take a cue from the sun, as Socrates did, and posit that life tends toward the good, that that should be our concern?

 

Can’t You Feel The Sunshine?

Can’t You Feel The Sunshine?

By
Carrie Ann Salvi

    This is my last issue as a staff reporter for The East Hampton Star and I will leave on amicable terms with those I admire and respect there. Before you ask what’s next, the answer is “I don’t know.” According to my perpetual spiritual calendar based on “A Course in Miracles,” that is how it should be. “When we go into a situation not knowing, there is something inside us that does,” it read on Sept. 18. “We step back in order that a higher power within us can step forward and lead the way.”

    Guidance and messages, for me, often arrive when I least expect them, and when I am unable to write them down, like when I am in the shower or driving a car. A case in point was about a year ago, when I called in to a psychic radio show and got through while driving home to Shelter Island. Through a medium whose name I do not recall, my dad came through from the “other side.” That was not my first experience. I also feel, as I have written in this column before, that I receive messages through song lyrics, too.

    My dad was not especially lyrical in his radio-broadcast message, but was brutally frank, as he was known to be. “Your financial situation sucks,” he said via the medium. He then told her to tell me that I should move down to Florida where it would be easier for me to live comfortably, where he purchased a now little-used snowbird haven with my mother a few years before his passing on a canal with access to the Gulf.

    I had forgotten about his message until it came to me when I was vacuuming a few weeks ago, after I had already told the editors of this newspaper that I was planning to leave. Off-season sunshine and water seemed to make sense, or a good place to wait for the next message, anyway. My stroke of insight was predicted that day in my daily astrological report, and when it arrived I termed it a “duh moment,” the clarity that I had requested from the higher-ups just a few minutes earlier.

    Further confirmation came from Christiana McMahon, my trusted East End psychic, who was in Greece for a large part of my uncertainty-filled transitional time. She told me, for the third time, that I will write a book. She also confirmed that I would move and that I should not worry, because someone is going to help me “stack some cash.”

    Initially my sights were set on Atlanta, where I have lived comfortably and happily before and where I was recently offered a job. My therapist/energy-healing friend, Adriana Barone, saw the bigger picture, too. “Why limit yourself to one place? You are a writer. You can work anywhere,” she said.

     I am now leaning toward a coastal tour on the way down South, to capture with my pen and camera everything I find interesting (which should not be a problem, because, according to Peter Boody, my first print newspaper editor, I am too friendly, enthusiastic, and interested in everything).

    Despite all that I do not know, there is a lot that I do. “What a tale your thoughts could tell. Just like a paperback novel, the kind the drugstores sell,” as Gordon Lightfoot sang.

    I will continue to “write the book of love . . . and have faith in God above,” as Don McLean sang, with crazy romantic experiences too entertaining to keep to myself. My dating life before and after my 15-year stint as a tree-hugging military wife has included emotions expressed dramatically with cars, trucks, boats, and even a helicopter, along with other “can’t make this shit up” moments that my last therapist said could be a major motion picture. I also “believe in rock ’n’ roll,” as McLean sang, and that “music can save your mortal soul” and wherever I land on this American Pie, I hope to be surrounded by and helping to support live music.

     Whether in print or on the Web, radio, television, or big screen, I look forward to expressing my opinions on a variety of subjects. I want to capture moments and scenes with my camera that make me lose my breath and bring me joy and laughter and share that with others.

    I want to tell the world about those who are doing good, whether individually or in a larger-business sense, too.

    Like Holly Golightly in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” doing things I’ve never done before will be a guiding principle in my new ventures. I think one of my callings is also summed up in a question posed by Chris Martin in a Cold Play song, relating to health issues. I want to be part of the cure, not the dis-ease. I want to counteract the medical industry that benefits from sickness and help to calm the fear so many doctors put into their patients.

    I want to write about how I saved the lives of both of my feline “children” by defying doctors’ orders and how I plan to do the same with regard to my own health. I will no longer promote medical and pharmaceutical industry-benefiting races, such as those for breast cancer awareness that give away sugar, coffee, and water in hot plastic bottles and encourage mammograms, all of which can make the situation worse.

    Although it is sad to leave those I have become close with, regular returns are already being planned, and there is potential for me to be a summer writer here at The East Hampton Star, if the stars align in that direction. I am ever so grateful for my time with the team here, and I have learned so much by writing stories for all sections of this newspaper. For those who may have missed some, I will be posting my favorites, along with a lot of pictures, on my blog, Living Out East, before “Going to Carolina in my mind” or in my car. In response to James Taylor’s question, Yes, I can see the sunshine.

    Carrie Ann Salvi was a staff reporter at The Star and is now on to new adventures.

 

Point of View: Only the Second Circle

Point of View: Only the Second Circle

Of course, one can be forgiven for not even picking up the phone when the pollsters call
By
Jack Graves

   “I’ve only gotten to the second circle of Hell,” I said to my daughter Johnna in an e-mail the other day, “but I like it.”

    My father, who used to teach humanities, said Dante had to be taught, though I’ve found an edition that has plenty of explanatory notes. Somebody ought to try a modern version of “The Inferno.” It would probably sell like hotcakes.

    The fence-sitters, by the way, weren’t even allowed into Hell, being neither sinners nor virtuous.

    “Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out / but even Hell itself would not receive them / for fear the damned might glory over them. . . . The world will not record their having been there; Heaven’s mercy and its justice turn from them / Let’s not discuss them; look and pass them by.”

    So much for those who said, when my late Franco-American stepbrother during a cross-country trip asked for their opinions, “Well, the polls say. . . .”

    He did not care what the polls said, he said. He wasn’t interested in phlegmatic hemming and hawing. What was it they thought, he wanted to know — so he could refute them!

    Of course, one can be forgiven for not even picking up the phone when the pollsters call. One such did the other night, five or six times between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m., which usually is after my bedtime (even when the Steelers are playing these days, alas), and when that last call came Mary picked up the receiver and gave Key Research, or whoever it was, a piece of her mind, her opinion being that they had been goddamned annoying.

    Knowing now the bitter lamentations that await should I not take stands has had a salutary effect: I’ll stick to my last and bear it out even to the edge of doom, as does Mary, who wrote a number of e-mails to the president in recent weeks, urging him to hold off on the bombing of Syria. Cynically, I said there was no need since the N.S.A. already knew the gist of her thinking, but, to her credit, she persisted.

    As we all must.   

Milk Duds: The Trailer

Milk Duds: The Trailer

By Bruce Buschel

ACT ONE: Boy Meets Candy

fade in: Popcorn, large

cut to: Milk Duds, box

slo-mo: misshapen spheres

cascade onto buttery maize

intimations of endless bounty

hand disappears into bag (MOS)

scoops up a lovely melange

dark balls and white fluff

sweet chocolate and salty corn

match made in casting kitchen

VO: “The journey has begun —

as American as Shinnecocks

as rich as Milton Hershey

as suspenseful as a Damon

and/or Affleck spy thriller.”

ergo: born to be a cash cow

open wide and say moo-lahhh

ACT TWO: Boy Loses Candy

rack focus: one odd Milk Dud

neither caramel nor gooey

but hard and malty and round

freeze frame: it’s a Whopper!

guest cameo or McGuffin?

 

halfway through the bag

inciting insight is cited:

you are halfway through the bag!

VO: “Nothing lasts forever.”

tears appear in blue eyes

one tear breaks loose, rolls

ECU: price tag — $2.50

reverse angle: bottle of water

Clint squint foreshadows violence

swish pan: dream sequence

Chekhov’s gun in Bunuel’s eye

man on iPhone shot thru head

 

ACT THREE: Boy Gets Candy

angle on: a fistful of Popcorn

cue Ennio Morricone sound track

VO: “In a world of salt and

unpopped kernels, every man

searches for the last Milk Dud.”

montage: paper bag. beating heart.

great plains. German shepherd.

cymbals crash as the last Milk Dud

is found in the bag’s darkest corner

EXT: dissolve to mouth.

INT: dissolve in mouth. le fin.

closing credits roll:

special thanks to Hershey, PepsiCo

Syd Field, Anton Chekhov, Malpaso

Ennio Morricone, George Wallace

Hitch, Luis Bunuel, 2 Weinsteins

Voice-over by Don LaFontaine

    Written on location, Bridgehampton, New York.

    No candy was harmed during the making of this poem.