Smorgasbord

Hello out there! Hope everyone is good, safe, balanced and staying on their meds… ha! Today will be basically a stew of this and that…random things I have picked up along the way. To turn the old adage on its head: I am, therefore I think…well, we’ll see.

First, some welcome and very good news!

The third volume of the Eddie Terrell Trilogy called, SLIM AND NONE, is in our hands!! We are proofing it one last time as carefully as we can. The cover has been selected, our wonderful formatter has laid it out in handsome and very readable print and style. As I bang away, a copy of it is on the way to our Pre-Release Readers and other pre-game resources and we will, I think, soon have their comments  and then it will be time to light the candle and get it out there for y’all to enjoy.

My Daddy often said, “It’s a damn poor dog that won’t wag his own tail.”

So, in keeping with that sentiment, I’ll venture to say: I’m really pleased with the book. I think it’s my best work yet (and I truly think the first two in the trilogy are pretty damn good in their own right). It reads well, has plenty of humor tucked away and there is suspense and deceit  and more than a few big finishes.

I need to get lined up to read it in studio and give y’all the third audio book as well.

Hmmm…should I be thinking boxed set…?

And I truly hope y’all will tell me what you think. Feel free to shoot me an email here. I’m starting the next one. It is titled, OK I’VE SEEN ENOUGH. It will be lightly dusted with some Eddie but I’m wandering off, I think, in a new direction. It’s developing as I go. After being in self-imposed hiatus and slowed by the circumstance of life for a while, I’m feeling good and feisty and I’m going to put it all to good use.

And the rain does indeed fall from time to time so some sad news as well.

Very early in tomorrow’s morning, I will fly to New York City to pay homage to one of my dearest friends who after a good and hard wrestle with cancer, has thankfully and blessedly leapt off this mortal coil.

He leaves a magnificent wife and two solid adult children.

He and I have known one another since 1964. We were classmates and fraternity brothers at Chapel Hill. We have kept up with one another.

There will be a funeral service and a reception after. I expect there will be a good crowd. People loved him. He was good and fun and funny and and charming and smart. There was always a sense of F. Scott Fitzgerald about him-a throwback, old school, a timeless touch.

Folks will come from all over. I expect I’ll see more than a few old friends.

Then, some of us will converge somewhere and hoist a few in his memory and honor and the night will draw down and that will be that.

I fly out of LaGuardia early the next morning. Two bookend flights and a funeral. And too, I’ll never forget him.

Now, some news and notes excavated from a pile of newspaper clippings-stories that catch my eye which I then set aside and then drag around in my writing bag until I am motivated to use them.

To some degree, that time has now come. Last autumn, the body of a 63 year old Belk’s janitor was found, after having been missing for four days, in the family restroom of the Belk’s store at Columbiana Centre.

I’ve never seen a follow-up report on this morbid situation. But it does make me wonder: In those four days that the lady was missing, didn’t at least some people go into that family restroom? Were they all olfactory compromised? (I’m trying to be delicate here…)

Didn’t anyone go looking for this lady?

A little weird, I’d say…

This next one I love. To quote the New York Times, “The new chief executive of Adidas has $1.3 Billion in Yeezy sneakers he doesn’t know what to do with.” This doesn’t include the sportwear that always is packaged with the shoes.

It appears Adidas stayed at the table too long with and bet too much on the notorious Kanye West whose inflammatory anti-Semitic comments torched the deal and left big corporate holding the bag (of shoes) while Kanye got kicked to the curb.

The whole picture just makes me laugh. And not only do they have all those shoes, a very, long-time profit center account is gone, putting a bigger hole in their earnings forecast. And today’s Wall Street Journal brings more Adidas news.

The company has cut ties with Beyonce after her failing for years clothing line, Ivy Park, just did not live up to its promise (What ‘promise’? The only ‘promise’ is that Beyonce was getting 20 Million a year… Looks to me like Adidas is cutting a lot of fat from its budgets and forecasts…It happens.

It all calls to mind the great quote I saw the other day that was addressing the failing Silicon Valley Banks (and there are plenty left to go down and many will…): “Remember, there are always more than one or two cockroaches…always…”

(Living in the Low Country, these are things we know: Indeed, There are always more than one or two Palmetto Bugs! Ain’t it the truth!) Oh, y’all know where all those ‘useless’ sneakers are going? …For a couple of pennies on the dollar…just like the T-shirts printed for both teams in the Super Bowl or the World Series…

The Winners get worn, the Losers go to India and South America and Malaysia; they’ll get snapped up too at well below the water line prices. Adidas gets nothing after they factored them out.

Lesson: Never fall in love with Big Glitter…it will bite you, no matter what, sooner or later-but it will bite you.

Wonder what this set of genius whiz-kids that lined these messes up are going to be doing next. These stories are not resume enhancers.

Next one leaves little room for serious commentary.

From a recent New York Times article (A Big Article too) in their Style Section. Get this: The always Politically Correct, surging to Heavy Woke with afterburners always on, NY Times, the guardian of the poor and struggling and denied, The Dignified rag of the Progressive Left…

Gives us this headline tease and feature. No, I’m not making this up…

‘$20,000 Pants…And Other Adventures In Men’s Luxury Resale’.

‘Guys raised on hip-hop are graduating to high-end labels bought secondhand.’

Say what ?!

Do any of them have no shame?

Apparently not and the idea of ‘disconnect’ seems to have left the building…Unreal. Surreal.

Typical.

 So that’s almost enough for now. And I found this wonderful quote from James Baldwin that was in the Paris Review. It’s on Writing, thus a good place to leave the lesson and thoughts.

 “Write. Find a way to keep alive and write. There is nothing else to say. If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you. If you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you.”

And there follows Baldwin’s recipe for a career:

“Discipline, love, luck but most of all, endurance.”

Discipline, love, luck can all be boiled down to endurance. They’re just motivations for endurance. Persevere. I leave you now. Write and write some more and watch this world wiggle about. Be safe.

My very best to you all,

Vernon