The Weird Day When the Sky Went Brown

This is a chapter from my book, The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck. The book came out years after September 11th happened  and I felt the words “September 11th” had been overused, so I wrote the entire chapter without using the words at all. And here it is:
The Weird Day When the Sky Went Brown

I’ve seen the sky in many colors, various shades of blue, gray, black, purple, but up to that day, I had never seen the sky the color of brown. It kind of made me feel sick in a weird, Twilight Zone William-Shatner-see-a-monster-on-the-airplane’s wing-kind of way. And it was a grotesque brown color; it looked like Satan had vomited a stomach full of Yoo-Hoo all over the Manhattan  skyline. After a couple of minutes of staring at this stomach-turning mess of a sky, I turned around and looked uptown and the sky was blue. Then I turned back around, looked downtown and the sky was still brown. It was really weird. Like some kind of a whacked-out nursery rhyme: Downtown brown / uptown blue /  knick knack paddywhack / give the dog some glue.

 The day started weird and just got weirder and more sickening as the minutes turned into hours and the brown day careened into a purple-black night. The day had started with a strange series of clicks emanating from my phone.
   
 I work nights so I have a schedule that’s opposite of most people—I keep Elvis hours, I sleep in the day and wake up in the afternoon—so I always keep the ringer on my phone off and turn the volume on my phone answering machine all the way down. So while I never hear the phone ring or the messages people leave, you can hear a click when someone calls. On this day, just as I was falling off to dreamland, I heard my first click.

 “Weird,” I thought, “I wonder who’s calling me at this hour?” Then I started to drift off to slumberland once again.

Then another click.

Then another.

And another. Another one. Anotheranotheranotheranotheranotheranother. Click. Click. Clickclickclickclickclick. Click. Clickityclickclickclick. Clickclickclickclickclick. Clickclick. Clickclickclickityclickclickclickclick. Clickclickclick. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

This went on for a while. I’d just about be asleep and then another series of clicks would rattle off like a hyperactive machine gun spraying wake up dust all over my kingdom of sleep. Finally, even though I was dreary-eyed tired, I got up, scaled down the ladder attached to my loft bed, and stumbled over to the phone answering machine. The little red light on the grey and silver rectangular machine was blinking in a hyperactive fashion. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon.

“Who the fuck is calling me,” I said to myself as I turned the volume up on the answering machine and hit "Play."

Now this is where the weirdness really kicks in to a nerve-rattling gear. I’ve never had so many messages on my phone machine in my life and I didn’t understand a single one of them.

BEEEEP—“Hey, Marty, this is Tom, just calling to make sure you’re okay, call me when you get a chance.”—BEEEEP.

Tom is my older brother, who lives in New Jersey. 

“Why in the fuck is he calling to see if I’m okay at this hour?” I wondered. Then:

BEEEEP—“Dude, it’s Alex, I rode my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw the people jumping out of the buildings, call me when you can. I’m drinking already.”—BEEEEP

“Huh?” Alex is one of my best friends, who used to live in Brooklyn.

“People jumping out of buildings?” I thought to myself. I was starting to feel like you do when you’ve smoked too much pot and start jumping out of your skin as paranoia strikes deep. And with every message, I was feeling more and more creeped out.

There were messages from everybody in my family, almost everybody I know in New York, and messages from old friends from my hometown of Peoria, Illinois. And they all were pretty much the same: “Are you okay?...call when you get a chance...are you all right?...we want to make sure you’re okay....”

Nobody said what had happened. Everybody sounded weird and more than one person was crying. I was starting to imagine apocalypse. Now.

Finally, after I listened to all of them, I looked at my window and wondered what in the fucking hell was lurking out there. I keep black construction paper taped over the two small windows in my apartment to keep the sunlight out (Elvis hours and all) and for a couple of sickening minutes I just stared at my black windows and trying to imagine the horror that was happening on the other side. Finally I walked over to the door that leads to the roof overhang and slowly and carefully opened it up and poked my head out like a turtle coming out of his shell. When I looked outside, I was shocked.

Everything looked normal.

I looked outside and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Sure, I heard some sirens, but that’s standard operating procedure for New York City. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was bright blue and was dotted with white fluffy clouds. A bird flew overhead and a warm breeze hit my face. Maybe Hell wasn’t hiccuping after all.

Then  I shut the door and turned on the TV.

I can’t remember which station it was, but I remember looking at the screen, seeing planes flying into buildings and people with horrific zombielike faces running away in big crowds from giant dust clouds. My jaw dropped and I grabbed my stomach. It kind of looked like New York and I instinctively and quickly turned the channel, somehow hoping that would make this go away.

 It didn’t.

After I watched the TV and figured out what happened I went outside to the street, looked downtown and saw the brown sky. I should’ve walked away from it, but I wasn’t thinking clearly and started to walk towards it.

Throngs of people were walking like zombies towards the brown sky. Before I knew  it, I had joined this lemminglike parade. Regular traffic was shut off after 14th Street, so it got increasingly surreal the closer I got. No cars except cop cars, helicopters buzzing overhead, a brown sky, people walking willy-nilly in every direction, everybody with a dazed how-could-this-happen look plastered on their puss. Some people were openly weeping. Army men with guns dotted every street. Cops were all over the place. TV cameras and the talking heads from all of the news channels were blithering and blathering on every other corner. It was chaos. I got pretty close and then decided I really didn’t want to be down there anymore. What I wanted was a beer, so I turned around and started walking towards the blue side of the city. It probably wasn’t normal anymore either, but it had to beat the brown side of town.

I wandered to many bars that afternoon and evening. The atmosphere in the bars was weird. They were all filled with people drinking in almost total silence while staring obsessively at CNN on the television sets. I finished the night off at a bar called the Stoned Crow drinking beer after silent beer while watching the TV people endlessly replay the tape of the planes flying into the buildings. On my way home, I bought a six-pack from a Korean deli. The little fiftysomething Korean man behind the counter took my money and put the beer in a paper bag. After he gave me my change, he touched my arm as I grabbed the bag and said, “You be safe, okay?” I looked at him and nodded, I couldn't talk because I felt like I was going to start crying. I remember wondering if I was going nuts.

When I got back to my studio apartment on 16th Street, I opened a can of beer and looked at the round plastic clock hanging on my wall. It was 12:24. The day was officially over. I felt a small speck of relief washing over me. I took a long gulp from the 16-ounce can of Budweiser and thought to myself, “Jesus, what a weird fucking day.”

My Good Friend Mr. Booze

Two things were happening for me on September 11th, 2001. First, the week before I had done my “research” for my 99 Beers Off The Wall book (copies are still left and if you think it’s tacky to be plugging my shit in a September 11th memory, then the terrorists have truly won!) and I was starting to write the book, I had just finished the introduction and was going to start in on Chapter One. I was also writing a weekly humor column for a website called Toast. My editor, the super cool Hap Mansfield got hold of me and said if I didn’t feel like writing something I didn’t have to. I think I was in shock the for a day or two after it happened and I couldn’t think of anything to write. Then I went to my refrigerator and saw a bunch of beer and it hit me. The one thing that I did all through the day and night on September 11th was drink beer, within seconds I was at my keyboard typing out my tribute to my good friend Mr. Booze. I remember showing this to a friend of mine and she laughed and said, “Yeah, everybody else in this town is depressed over this and you’re writing a fucking humor column about it!” And then we started laughing and shortly after that I started writing my book. Here’s my tribute to my good friend Mr. Booze, cheers!

My Good Friend Mr. Booze

When a bunch of maniacs brutally hijacked and then flew two planeloads of innocent people suicide-style into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11th the news hit us all hard. And if you live in New York City, it really hit you in a most horrible and furious manner. I live about a mile away and shortly after I saw the horrific images on my TV, I found myself walking towards the rubble that was once the World Trade Center. It was a strange feeling to walk from my neighborhood, which was untouched, into a surreal, third world-like war zone. Traffic was all sealed off, but the streets were full of people who had wandered down to witness the carnage firsthand. As I looked around and saw the giant brown mushroom cloud in the sky, people crying, a dazed looking woman in her early twenties wondering, “Why?” out loud to no one in particular, policemen trying to keep order in the midst of chaos, buzzing helicopters, news reporters on every corner jabbering in front of hand-held cameras, sirens and dust and debris everywhere, I felt as though I had just walked into a real-life nightmare. And there was a smell in the air. Not just the smoke and dust, but a foul, acrid odor. “Jesus,” I said to a man who had white powder flecking his dark blue suit coat standing next to me, “what’s that smell?” With a face stupid with shock he replied in a tired voice, “It’s burning flesh and hair. I heard there could be 10,000 people buried over there.”

All of a sudden I wished I hadn’t walked down there and found myself shuffling away as my mind started processing too many grim thoughts per minute. I wandered aimlessly and ended up in a deli about a half a mile away. The deli was full of people, but nobody was speaking. The TV in the corner was tuned to CNN and everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen watching the never-ending updates, the rising body count and the gut-wrenching footage of those two planes crashing into the World Trade Center. As I stood there and looked slowly around the deli, it was then that I saw him. Housed behind a glass door in a cooler, was my good friend Mr. Booze.

Mr. Booze stayed with me throughout a two hour stretch in the deli. Without regard for his own feelings or well-being he comforted not only myself, but most everyone else sitting around. After a couple hours I felt the need to take a walk. Thoughtlessly I abandoned Mr. Booze and walked the streets of downtown Manhattan and watched a shocked city trying to cope with a situation that was beyond even the most fertile imagination. I was tired, but I didn’t want to go home and sit alone. I took refuge in a neighborhood bar called the Stoned Crow and as I sat down at the bar, once again I spied my good friend Mr. Booze. I was afraid he’d be mad at me for ditching him at the deli, but Mr. Booze harbored no ill will. In fact he was even more comforting than before. Hours passed and Mr. Booze tirelessly soothed my shattered nerves. He never left my side until I decided it was time to go home and try and get some sleep. Once inside my apartment I turned on the TV and watched for the umpteenth time the nauseating film clip of the World Trade Center collapsing. My head felt like it was caving in as I opened my refrigerator door to get some water to chase down four Advil tablets. I swung the door open and much to my amazement, there he was: my good friend Mr. Booze.

With the help of Mr. Booze I settled down and tried to get some much-needed sleep. It was to be a fitful night of waking up from nightmares, but like a doctor on an unending house call, Mr. Booze was there every time I woke up in a pool of sweat. He’d help me back to sleep and then an hour later he’d repeat the process, never complaining, never thinking of himself.

I finally drifted off for a few hours straight, but a loud noise outside my apartment caused me to awaken at 9:05 in the morning.  I bolted out of my bed and looked out the window and saw that no bomb’s were bursting outside. Feeling both a sense of relief and embarrassment I rubbed my aching head and thought that maybe Mr. Booze had finally left. But as I opened my refrigerator door I found I was wrong. There standing guard at his usual spot, was my good friend Mr. Booze.

Mr. Booze stayed with me through the day and managed to lift my spirits just a little. That evening a few friends came over. We all shared stories of where we were when it happened, talked about the photos in the paper of the people who jumped from the buildings and how the once lively and circus-like atmosphere of Manhattan had turned into one giant miserable wake. The mood in the room was depressing to say the least. Until Mr. Booze showed up. In typical Mr. Booze fashion, he livened up the party and reminded us that even in the most tragic of times you have to keep living. Mr. Booze even got all of us relaxed enough to where we started laughing at jokes and each other for the first time since Tuesday morning. Mr. Booze accompanied us to the Stoned Crow bar and then to another, which for some reason the name escapes me. When it was time to go home, Mr. Booze helped me find the way and once again his calming company helped me get to sleep.

A few weeks have passed since the tragedy and with the help of Mr. Booze I felt like I was back on track. I even decided to sit down and write my column for Toast. It was then that I encountered the worst case of writer’s block in my life. I couldn’t think of anything to write about. I was petrified. I thought maybe all the grotesque images I had seen in the past few weeks had stripped my ability to do what I love most. Hours passed as I stared at my blank computer screen as depression set in. Just when I was ready to call it quits, I happened to look to the right of my keyboard. And there he was. My good friend Mr. Booze. I knew then and there what the subject matter for this column would be.

And so ladies and gentlemen, in closing I would like to ask...no, beg you to join me as I stand up and salute my good friend...Mr. Booze!

September 11th

Hard to believe it’s been eight years since the September 11th shit went down. This town really turned into a shitty place to be for awhile. Thankfully it’s gotten better. I remember TV got sickening, because it was all news about September 11th. Anyway, it was a weird time and I’m posting two stories today that I wrote in the past about September 11th. The first I’m posting was a piece I wrote the week it happened for a website called Toast and it’s called “My Good Friend Mr. Booze.” The second is a chapter from my book, The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck.

“Boris” did a great job with today’s Home Page art. Nice and subtle, plain and simple. Great job Daddio! And “Boris” is available for freelance work for your website, CD or book cover, custom logos, retouching and anything you can imagine. Just send me an email from the Home Page form and I’ll send it to him directly.

I remember that David Letterman was one of the first people to go back on the air on TV after September 11th. I think he summed the whole fucking thing up with this statement: “As I understand it...we’re told the they were zealots, fueled by religious fervor. And if you live to be 1,000 years old will that make any sense to you? Will that make any goddamn sense?”

Well, it’s eight years later and it still doesn’t. Here’s Dave from that fateful night:



The Daily Photo is up soon and then the Daily Stories. Stay tuned or check back often.

Closing Credits

Produced, directed and written by Marty Wombacher

Theme song and announcer: Slim Volume

Resident artist: “Boris”

Contributing Writers (Comments section, listed in order of comment):
Big Green Head
a crab on Blondie's snatch
biff
Gene1
michael hennessey
Professor Dungpie, Fountainhead of Enlightenment!

Thanks for tuning in and contributing everyone, we’ll see you tomorrow at THE MARTY WOMBACHER SHOW!

 

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Daily Story—Category: Writing

Adventures in Writing
How I traveled from Peoria to New York on a freight train of vowels, consonants, verbs, adjectives and the odd non sequitur. (Part two in a series of many.)

POP Goes A Writer.

After Gone With The Burp (see yesterday’s post), Greg and I tried a few more projects and I got more intrigued by writing with every one. We did two more books, one was a parody of those “How To Pick Up Women” books called, “How To Pick Up Women Even If You’re A Pencil Neck Geek and Your Breath Smells Like Attila the Hun’s Armpits and the second was a parody of “tell-all” books, entitled, “I Was Elvis Presley’s Sheep.” Both books were written in a jokey, loose style and looking back at them now, they’re not very well written, but I was learning and really getting into the art of writing. Greg and I did one more project together which was a throwback to the Idiot Trivia game, except this one was a trivia game for dogs called Grrrrivia Trivia.

By now I was a pro at getting local press. Since there aren’t a lot of people writing joke books and games in Peoria, it was easy to get in the newspaper, on the radio and on the local news. National press was a lot tougher and every year I learned how lucky we had been to get the Today Show episode thrown in our laps when we did the Idiot Trivia game. I continued to send them every project we did, but had no luck. I also started sending our projects to newspapers and magazines. I even got to know a writer at People magazine, who’s name is Mike Neill. Mike wrote a lot of the one page human interest stories in People, so I sent him all our stuff. It got to be where I’d call him at his office in New York and he’d respond with, “Oh shit, what have you done now?” So I sent him a copy of Grrrivia Trivia and he thought it was a hoot and pitched as an article idea. And his editor gave it the green light and they sent a stringer (a freelance writer) from Chicago to interview us in Peoria. This was great news, because we had been in touch with a pet store chain and they had told us that if we got in People magazine, they would order thousands! Who knows what else would come of being in People magazine? I started thinking that maybe it would be like the Idiot Trivia time all over again.

I had a new girlfriend by now and her name was Lynda. Lynda put up with these projects of mine, but more than anything she wanted to get married. I had been married years earlier and that didn’t turn out too well, so I had no intention of making that mistake again. But I kept telling Lynda, “Okay, if this project doesn’t hit the big time, then I’ll settle down and forget all of it.” And now it looked like it was going to happen and I was really excited. Lynda wasn’t quite so thrilled and I think she kind of dreaded it going big time and wondered what would happen to me then.

Well I was all ready for national exposure once again and days seemed to go on forever. Finally the day that Mike said was their deadline day came and I called him at his New York office in the Time/Life Building.

“Mike, it’s Marty, what page are we on?” I excitedly asked as visions of fame danced in my head.

“Hang on, I’ve got the blueline copy here,” Mike told me as I heard him flipping through pages. “Hmm...something’s, weird, let me call you back,” He said hanging up.

This was not good news. My stomach started a slow free fall as I paced in my little kitchen in my apartment like a psycho lion in a cage too small. Finally after what seemed like eternity, the phone rang. I rang and picked it up on the first ring.

“Hello?” I shouted in the receiver, hoping it was Mike with good news.

It was Mike, however the news was less than stellar. In fact it stunk.

“Hey, it’s Mike,” Mike said to me, he sounded funny, I started to feel sick.

“So what’s going on, we’re in there, right?” I asked still grasping onto straws that weren’t there that we were still featured in that issue.

“I will never tell someone in advance that they’re going to be in,” Mike said in a bummed out voice.

The elevator in my stomach continued it’s ride down to the basement with the pace quickening.

“What’s going on?” I questioned as my head was spinning and I was pacing back and forth as far as the telephone cord would allow me.

“No one came to take your picture, did they?” Mike asked.

“No, I thought that was weird, but figured they were just using the game,” I told him.

“The geniuses in the art department worked up a velvet painting of dogs playing your game,” Mike told me.

All of the sudden my hopes were lifted and the elevator in my stomach stopped.

“That’s great! So we’re in it!” I shouted upon hearing this news.

“No, I just went to my editor and asked what was going on and he said, ‘The name of this magazine is People, not Dog World. We should’ve gotten pictures of the guys who invented the game.’ Sorry, but they killed the story,” Mike begrudgingly told me.

“No, no no, wait, we’ll send you a photo, we’ll fly out there to have one taken,” I shouted into the phone in desperation.

“Sorry, Wombacher, but when they kill something, that’s it, they move on,” Mike told me blankly.

“Shit,” was all I could say back.

“Sorry, Wombacher, call me with your next project,” Mike told me and hung up.

I hung up the phone and went and sat on my couch and stared at the wall and said, “Fuck,” over and over and over.

Later on I called Lynda and she almost seemed glad.

“See the disappointment you set yourself up for?” She asked.

I was too numb to argue so I just agreed. I called the buyer from the pet store and she told me without the People article the deal was off. When it rains it pours.

I went and laid on the couch and tried to think of other publicity angles. We were already in the local paper, so that shot the local press. I thought to  myself that it was too bad Peoria didn’t have its own local People magazine. After all, there were lots of local bands, cool record stores, comedians and Peoria had a rich history. Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison and Dan Fogelberg were all hometown boys made good. All of a sudden it hit me, Greg and I could put out a magazine! I could write it and he could design it. It could be huge! I ran to the phone and called Greg at work.

Things had changed since Greg and I first did the Trivial Trivia game. He now managed the department we worked in and I was working the third shift. We kind of were going in different angles at work as he was now a boss and I cared even less about the job. I just wanted the paycheck and I didn’t mind working nights because it allowed me to do my projects in the day. When I called him and told him my magazine idea, he didn’t say much and the next day he told me he just wouldn’t have time to do it.

I was a little disappointed, but Greg and I had drifted apart somewhat, I got more and more in to putting together projects and he was more concerned about work. I called my brother Jim, who had just started working at a graphic arts company that mainly computerized. This was in 1989 and computers were just being started to be used somewhat in the workplace. I called and asked him if I could do a magazine using a computer. He told me to talk to a guy named Jim Kelton who he worked with. He told me Kelton was really into computers.

So I called Kelton and he seemed excited about the idea and we decided to meet and talk about it. A couple days later, I met Kelton and my brother and Kelton was excited about the project. My brother said he’d contribute some artwork. Both of them wondered how I was going to put together the editorial end. I held up a copy of People magazine and said, “How tough can it be to put something like this together?” They both laughed and I think they thought I was out of my fucking mind.

I didn’t tell Lynda anything about this project for a couple weeks. I made a list of things I would need and so far I needed a logo, a prototype of the magazine that I could output at work, leads for ads, I needed to figure out how to do subscriptions, I needed to learn how to write a feature article, I needed to find other writers who would work on this, I needed to find a printer, I needed photographers...and it went on and on. I looked at the list and felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown, so I put it aside and called Lynda and we made plans to go out to eat that evening. I decided I would tell her about the magazine.

We went to dinner at a local hotel called Jumer’s that we liked to go to. It was kind of fancy and something different from our usual routine. I started talking about how we just missed getting in People magazine and Lynda looked like she was getting two teeth pulled by an amateur dentist. Using my perfect sense of timing, I decided that now was the time to break the news about the magazine.

“You know what this town needs?” I asked in between bites of my salad.

“What?” Lynda countered and looking like she was dreading to hear my answer.

“It’s own People magazine. You know, a People of Peoria magazine. Hey, that would be a good name for it, wouldn’t it?” I said laughing.

Lynda dropped her fork on the plate and said, “What are you planning now?”

“My own magazine, wouldn’t it be great?” I said with a big toothy smile.

“What?” Lynda asked in an incredulous tone.

“My own magazine!” I spit out excitedly. “It could be funny, there could be feature articles about cool stuff around town the paper won’t cover...it can be anything I want it to be!”

“Is Greg doing this with you?” Lynda questioned with narrowing eyes.

“Nah, he’s too wrapped up at work. Jim and one of his friends said they’d work on it though. And Jim’s friend Kelton is going to show me how to lay it all out on a computer and...” Now Lynda cut in.

“Are you nuts? You don’t have a computer, you don’t know how to use one? And you’re going to be the editor? You’ve only written those joke books and games. And what about ads and subscriptions and...” Now I cut in.

“I’m just going to take it one step at a time. I’m going to put together a prototype and see if I can sell ads and go from there.” I told her. Lynda just shook her head. Not much else was said that night and after dinner I took her back to her apartment and she bolted out of the car. Part of me felt like chasing after her, but the other part wanted to do a magazine. I put the car in drive and laid a patch out of her parking lot and went home and got batshit drunk.

Lynda came by the nest day and we talked a little and then she gave me an ultimatum. I either forget about writing and all these crazy projects or forget about her. I gave her the “maybe we should just be friends” line and she left the apartment crying.

We actually did manage to stay friends and I started working on my prototype. Kelton had worked up a logo and a rough version of what the pages would look like and my brother Jim did some artwork for it. I output the pages at night at work and when it was done I called the Pere Marquette Hotel and got an appointment with the person who bought the ads. I was moving so fast I didn’t have time to think of the big picture, which in hindsight, I think was a good thing, because the big picture would’ve scared the everloving shit out of me.

I went to the appointment and met with the ad buyer, an attractive woman in a smart business suit a couple years older than me. I had never tried to sell advertising and was bumbling through the whole thing. In fact it started with me tripping and falling into a chair. I remember the woman laughing at me and helping me up. She asked me what I thought the demographics would be and I really wasn’t quite sure what the word, “demographics” meant at the time. I looked at her, shrugged and said, “Look, I’m not an ad salesman, and probably the audience who would read what I want to put together couldn’t afford to stay here. I just saw that you did a lot of local advertising, so I thought I’d start with you,” I said as I started to put the prototype into the briefcase I had borrowed from my dad.

The woman looked at me and just laughed and said, “You know I appreciate your honesty. I know who you are and I’ve bought some of your stuff. I remember when you were on the Today Show and I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with this magazine idea. I think it’ll be good for this town. I’ll take a quarter page ad in the first issue and we’ll go from there,” She told me with a smile.

“You really will pay for an ad?” I asked incredulously.

“The first thing you need to learn, Marty, is not to look shocked when someone says they want to advertise in your magazine, okay?” She said laughing while walking me to the door of her office.

“Right,” I said laughing too, “thanks for the tip. And for the ad! I’ll send you a contract this week, I still need to make them up,” I confessed.

“You’re too much,” she said laughing, “drop them by when you can, good luck!”

I thanked her profusely and she went back to her desk and I walked to my car which was parked on the third tier of the parking garage. I threw the briefcase in the back seat, got in and just sat there. Then slowly, fear started to creep up from my toes all the way to my brain and I said to myself, “Fuck...now I’ve got to do this!”

(Stay tuned for the next installment which will run on Monday. I’m running a September 11th thingy tomorrow and over the weekend will just be loosey goosey stuff.)

-----------------------------

And Now...Thursday!

Alright, it’s Thursday which means we’re almost through this week, which kind of sucks for me, because I’ve been on vacation and now it’s coming to a close. Oh well, there’s always Mega-Million’s tomorrow, even if it is only up to a paltry 18 or 20 million.

I hope everyone is enjoying the new streamlined version of TMWS. I’m enjoying writing the longer stories and I appreciate those of you who read them, because I know not everyone is into reading these days. Today’s story is a continuation of tomorrow’s where I’m tracing the crazy path of my writing career. Today I tell the story of how I started publishing my own magazine, People of Peoria.

“Boris’” Home Page Art is very cool today! It reminds me of the bumpers they used to put up in between commercials on the old Tonight Show. Great work as always, Daddio! If you’ve got a website and need some custom artwork or a logo, “Boris” is available for freelance work. He also designs CD and book covers and does retouching and basically anything you need. And you can get hold of him easily, just send me an email via the Home Page and I will forward it to our resident artist, “Boris.”

Okay, let’s get this motherfucking show on the road, next up is the Daily Photo and then the story of the day. And later, the fake ad. Stay tuned or check the Home Page for current updates.

Blah, blah, blah.

Closing Credits

Produced, directed and written by Marty Wombacher

Theme song and announcer: Slim Volume

Resident artist: “Boris”

Contributing Writers (Comments section, listed in order of comment):
Zioum Zioum the Chainsaw
sexy arches
grompf
AssToMouth King
biff
"Boris"
Chilelem
Gene1
meleah rebeccah
Marty (Louisville)

Thanks for tuning in and contributing everyone, we’ll see you tomorrow at THE MARTY WOMBACHER SHOW!

 

And Now For A Word From Our (Fake) Sponsor

Daily Story—Category: Writing

Adventures in Writing
How I traveled from Peoria to New York on a freight train of vowels, consonants, verbs, adjectives and the odd non sequitur. (Part One in a Series of Many.)

I remember the exact moment I became a writer. It’s when some chunky, drunken floozebag told me that I was one. Let me explain.

In 1985 I created a kooky game with a guy I worked with, Greg Owens. The game was a satire of Trivial Pursuit which was red-hot at the time. Greg and I used to trade cartoons at work for our own amusement and I had made one called “Trivial Pursuit, The Idiot Edition.” It was basically a guy asking questions like, “What’s Burt Reynold’s first name? Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb? How many members were in the Jackson Five?” And a few more. Greg thought it was a funny idea and asked if I could write a bunch more. I told him yeah and soon we were plotting to put together our own game. Greg designed a logo and created the package and I wrote all the copy. We found a printer, printed up 300 boxes and shortly our lives went berserk for a couple months (this is all told in greater detail in my book, The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck.)

Basically what happened was we got on a local radio show and the game started selling big in Peoria. We got in the local  paper and it started selling even more. Then we got on the local TV news, did more radio and it started taking on a life of it’s own. We got the game into a few stores in the neighboring town of Bloomington and they did a front page story on the game. Then things got really nuts. A writer who lived in Washington and wrote for the U.P.I Wire Service saw the Bloomington story and called us up at work and asked us a few questions. After he was done I asked him what paper this would be in and he told me it was going on the national wire and he hung up on me. I had no idea at the time how this would change my life.

The next day the story appeared in hundreds of newspapers and we were being interviewed by disc jockeys all over the country because the story told where we worked. I found out that the national wire gets pumped to every news, TV and radio station in the country. I was shocked when someone at work said they had mentioned it on Good Morning America and was even more stunned when a producer from the Today Show called us and asked if we’d like to appear on the show. We thought about two seconds before saying yes.

So we were flown to New York, got interviewed by Jane Pauley, K Mart and Osco stocked the game, we became little hometown celebrities and about three months later after the dust had cleared we had sold over 100,000 games. Pure fucking insanity. Then as quickly as it started, it stopped. I remember when it was all over I wanted this to happen again. I had a taste of a little bit of fame, and as shallow as it may sound to some, I liked it and wanted more.

The first time I was ever “recognized,” was when the game had come out and we had been on radio, in the newspaper and on the local news. I was at the mall with my girlfriend at the time, Michelle and we were flipping though albums (remember, this was 1985, when they still had albums) Michelle grabbed my arm and said, “That kid is staring at us.”

I looked up and some gangly, pimply faced kid with a really bad hair cut in beat up blue jeans was staring at the two of us. I put my head down and said, “Aw, he’s probably just looking at you, ignore him.”

A second later Michelle whispered in my ear, “He’s coming over here.”

I looked up and he slowly walked over to the other side of the record bin and he was staring at me with his mouth hanging open. I wondered if he was retarded and I said, “Is there something I can do for you?”

He pointed at me and said excitedly, “You’re one of the Trivia guys, aren’t you?”

I looked at him, then at Michelle and then back at the goony kid and said, “Uh, yeah...if you’re talking about the Idiot Trivia game.” I still wondered what he wanted.

“I bought that game and I saw you on TV!” he said with the level of his voice rising.

“Oh, thanks,” I shot back.

“My sister bought it too!” He told me. I noticed he hadn’t blinked the whole time and it was a weird feeling.

“Oh, tell her I said thanks,” I retorted.

“I’m going to buy a game for my cousin who lives in Florida and send it to him for Christmas. I can’t wait to tell him I met the guy who invented it.” He said while still staring at me unblinkingly.

I grabbed Michelle by the arm and said, “That’s great, listen thanks a lot, we have to be going now.”

“Oh, would you wait, I’m meeting my sister here and she should be here any minute, she would like to meet you too. She’s the one who showed me the article in the paper. Could you just wait a couple minutes?” He pleaded.

“Listen, we’re already late,” I said while leading Michelle out of the store, “thanks for buying the game and have a good holiday.”

“Do you come to this store often?” He shouted as we quickly walked away.

“How weird was that?” Michelle said as we made our way out of the mall and into the parking lot.

We got in the car and she was staring at me and laughing.

“What?” I said as I put the key in the ignition.

“You liked that,” she said laughing.

“Liked what?” I fired back as I put the car in reverse.

“You liked that creepy kid recognizing you, and fawning all over you, admit it,” she said still laughing.

“You’re out of your fucking mind, I don’t want to talk about it,” I said as we pulled out of the parking lot.

But you know what? Michelle was wrong, I didn’t like it, I fucking loved it! It was weird, but it also was a complete boost to the ego. After we were on the Today Show we were in the paper again and on the radio and pretty much everywhere I went, people knew who I was. Not too many people from Peoria, Illinois ends up as a guest on the Today Show, so pretty much everyone watched it and soon we were known as, “Those Trivia Guys.” At times it was weird and could be aggravating when a complete stranger is showering you with compliments, but when the dust finally settled that spring, I knew I wanted more of this.

So I started wracking my brain trying to figure out something we could put out for the next holiday season. After a couple weeks I was reading People magazine and they had a roundup of different cookbooks featured in an article. I thought it might be fun to do a joke cookbook and started to think of goofy recipes for the book. I also thought it might be a good idea if the book was “written” by a ficticious blundering chef, so I thought of the name Chef Bob. And then the title for the cookbook hit me: “Gone With The Burp.” Beautiful! I told Greg the idea and he liked it and went to work drawing Chef Bob and designing the book while I created the goofy recipes. All in all I had over fifty ridiculous recipes including: Munster Cheese, Ingredients: 5 Slices of Cheese, 1 TV set. Sit in front of TV and wait for a rerun of the Munsters to come on. Eat cheese during the commercials. And, Texas Toast, Ingredients: I Loaf of Bread (Toasted), 1 Six Pack of Lone Star Beer. Soak Toast in beer until spongelike. Drink toast. Like I said, ridiculous!

We put together a rough version of it, but it seemed to be lacking something. And then it hit me. We had this character Chef Bob, but we knew nothing about him. That night after work I went home, got a pen and a pad of paper (I didn’t have a typewriter and this was way before computers, so I wrote it out longhand) and proceeded to write “The History of Chef Bob.” I worked on that for hours changing things until I had it just the way I wanted it and I was kind of proud of the fact I could create a history of someone right out of thin air. I was a little reluctant to show it to anyone, because I was afraid that maybe it wasn’t any good. Despite these second thoughts I went to work and gave Greg the copy. He took it home and called me and said he loved it. I remember him laughingly saying, “You ought to think about becoming a writer.”

I laughed too, but in the back of my mind I liked the sound of that. Marty Wombacher...writer! And then I had another beer and promptly forgot all about it.

So we put the book together and that fall we got hit in the face with a reality sandbag right between our collective eyes.

We had assumed that the mania that happened with the Idiot Trivia game would start all over again, so we hit some of the local radio shows and that got a little buzz going, although this time around I started learning you had to play your own publicist and call people, you don’t always get as lucky with publicity as we did with the Idiot Trivia game. We got an article in the local paper, but only after I called a writer. We got on the local news, but only after I called a producer. I called the U.P.I. writer and while he was amused we had done another project, but this time his story only went out on the state wire and was picked up by just a handful of papers. But I had one number to call that I was saving after we had garnered some local publicity, the phone number of the producer who booked us on the Today Show. Surely Jane Pauley would love to interview us again, in fact she was probably waiting to see what we were up to since our last interview. I called the producer and much to my horror, she said she didn’t know who I was. I tried explaining that she had booked us on the show last year, but about halfway into my explanation, she said she was busy and hung up on me. The hard cold reality then set in that you don’t get on national TV every time you create something.

The book didn’t do nearly what the Idiot Trivia game, it didn’t go national, but we still sold a lot in Peoria and we made the rounds of all the local radio and TV stations, so once again the hometown fame factor kicked in.

One Friday shortly after the book came out we had done a couple morning radio shows. I learned that more people would hear your interview if you were booked between seven and eight in the a.m., so that would be the only time I would say we would be available. I was learning the tricks of the publicity trade and how to milk it. That night I was at a bar in downtown Peoria and I was pretty plastered. Plastered enough to be flirting with a woman who was dumb as a box of rocks and about 20 pounds overweight. Of course I’m thinking with my plastered memory, so sober she was probably closer to 40 pounds overweight. Anyway, I bought her a beer and she asked what my name was. I told her and she said, “I think we’ve met or went to school together, that name sounds really familiar.”

“I was on a couple radio shows today,” I matter-of-factly spit out, “maybe you heard me on one of them.”

Her eyes got wide and she said, “Are you one of those guys who did that Trivia game and some sort of a cookbook?”

I told her I was and she was all impressed. She asked me about being on the Today Show and then she asked how we did the projects.

“Well, I think of the idea write the stuff down and Greg designs it and pretty much handles the business end,” I told her as she got a funny look on her face.

“Wow, so you’re a writer, huh?” She asked with wide eyes and a crooked smile.

“What?” I asked her.

“You’re a writer, that is so cool!” She said, all impressed.

I stood there and let it soak in. Outside of Greg jokingly suggesting I should think about becoming a writer, no one had ever called me a writer before. After all, I barely got out of high school and flunked out of my first year of college. But I realized she was right. I wrote that cookbook and it was selling fairly well, in Peoria at least. People were reading words I had written. And they were paying money to do so. Without knowing it, I had become a writer. Look out Ernest Hemmingway, there’s a new writer in town. See, Motherfucker?

“Listen, it was great meeting you,” I said to little miss chunky as a moment of clarity hit me and I knew I’d be sorry if I woke up with her the next day, “but I gotta get up early tomorrow, see you around.”

“Wait, let me buy you a beer, I’ve never met a real writer before,” she said as I was already making tracks for the door. I waved her goodbye, got in my car and drove home.

Once inside my apartment, I picked up a copy of “Gone With The Burp,” and read the “History of Chef Bob,” and thought to myself, “Fuckin’ A! I’m a writer!”

I’ve always believed that everyone was meant to do something. But the problem is, sometimes people get busy with being married, having kids, working a shithole job and it’s all you can do to keep your head above water, much less search for something that you truly have a passion for. And ever since that fateful night my passion has been for writing and it’s taken me down lots of strange and weird roads and led me into meeting people I never would’ve met, had I not decided to travel down this path scattered with nouns and adjectives and adverbs, oh my! And it’s not all been great times either. For me, my years of writing have been real “ridin’ high in April, shot down in May” kind of years. Some projects and stories have gone great, while others I’ve busted my ass on only to see it die the death for one reason or another. That can be really depressing. But I’ve always managed to pick myself up, dust off my jeans and try something else. I think it takes equal parts of belief in one’s own self and talents, determination and blatant stupidity to be an independent writer.

Anyway, I thought one fun topic to write about here at the Daily Story would be my years as a writer and the different adventures it’s brought my way, so for the next week or two or maybe even three, this is going to be the theme of the Daily Story. I hope you enjoy the tales and enjoy the ride with me.

And I guess I should thank that fat, drunken woman who clued me in to the fact I was a writer!

TO THAT FAT DRUNKEN WOMAN!

Cheers!

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