Oliver's Thanksgiving
“Hi, Oliver Brown speaking,” I said into my iPhone.
“Oliver, Stan wants to see you in his office with something on paper,” said Iren Shmeklestein, longtime sidekick of the powerful and scummy producer, Stan Peters.
“Iren, it’s not that I’m avoiding Stan. And I am truly grateful that he kept me from running off with someone else’s bride-to-be at Lucky Strike the other night, but I don’t have a car.”
“You better be writing, Oliver…”
“Iren, I promise I’ll get down to business on the script…As soon as I get done with the project I’m working on right now.”
“Don’t be a schmuck…”
I hung up the phone and savored the feeling of Misha wrapping herself around me. “Did you just call me a project?”
I kissed the soft skin of her cheek. “I’m glad you decided to ignore your sponsor’s advice and hang out with me again.”
“Me too, but if my dad finds out he’s going to cut me out of his will.”
“So I guess we won’t be doing the family thing for Thanksgiving?”
She whispered in my ear. “I was thinking we could do the Oliver Brown and Misha family thing right now.”
I pulled the covers up over us…
The next morning I was at my Starbucks’ 11th and Grand office working away on an essay that I planned on forwarding on to the President-Elect’s new economic team -- the premise being that the 21st century economy is completely reliant on social network monetization -- when the old phone ringtone of my iPhone interrupted my thought.
“Hi Oliver, it’s Rom Emanuel, Ari’s brother.”
“Hi Rom, I was just writing something for you guys right now.”
“The President-Elect would like to chat with you if you have a moment.”
That’s when I looked up and noticed Iren Shmeklestein staring down at me.
“Hi Oliver,” said the deep voice now on the line.
“Hi…”
“What type of script is this?” cried Iren, looking at my computer screen.
“This isn’t a good time,” I said, to Iren.
“I’m sorry,” said the President Elect, thinking that I was speaking to him.
“No, not a bad time for you. I was talking to someone else,” I said, feeling that this was not a good start.
“Oliver, we as a people and a country are facing challenging times…”
“I don’t even know the name of this project,” said Iren, loudly.
I mouthed the words, “I’m talking to the President-Elect.”
“I thought you were writing something about a writer who hates the pretentious idiots in Hollywood? But I like this idea, very timely.”
“You see Oliver, we need new ideas,” the President went on, “and do to political expedience I’ve had to bring on the same old retreads to pay off my political debts…”
“Do you really not own a car?” asked Iren.
“No!” I said to Iren, irritated that he thought I would lie about something other than getting my work done.
“Yes, unfortunately that’s the way it is,” said the President-Elect, thinking I was shocked that he’d hired the Clinton administration with a Bush Secretary of Defense as a cherry on top of the great banana split of change.
That’s when Iren grabbed the iphone out of my hand. “Listen, I need to talk to Oliver without you distracting him, so chill out for a minute.” Iren pointed out the window at a brand new Mercedes Benz SL 500. “It’s yours,” he said handing me the key. “Stan wants you to have wheels and to be indebted to him.”
“Can you please hand me my phone back?”
He held it away like a kid in grade school. “You’ll be at the studio tomorrow?”
“Okay, but don’t expect too much.” He handed me back the iPhone, walked out of Starbucks, and hopped in the back of one of Stan’s Rolls Royces.
“Hello…”
“Sorry Oliver, I know you’re a busy guy, but I want you to fly back and meet with me and the team. I’m going to create a department of blogging and I think you can play an important role.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“No Oliver I’m not kidding, your piece on feeding homeless crack heads food from Wokcano has really opened a lot of eyes back here. And the way you redefine the rules of bowling in your piece on Lucky Strike quite frankly should be taken into consideration by the BCS, as an impetus of change. Well, what do you say should I send Air Force Two for you?”
I looked out the window at my new Mercedes. “Is it okay if I drive?”
“Good idea. Get a look at the country before we sit down and hash things out. Imagine if the numskulls at the big three automakers had just driven, it’d be a lot easier for me to give them all the money they need. When do you plan on hitting the road?”
“Soon.”
“Good, I’ll have Rom coordinate with you. Have a great Thanksgiving Oliver.”
“You too…”
“The Department of Blogging?” I said out loud. “I just want to be a screen writer.”
But there was no time to blog or write a screenplay because my sister was calling on the iPhone.
“Oliver, did you get the turkey yet?” she asked.
“Yeah, its in the guest bathroom. And it’s making a terrible racket—the neighbors are complaining.”
“Well why didn’t you buy a dead one like a normal person?”
“Dead ones cost money. I got this one for free.”
“Oliver, I have people coming over. You better not screw this up.”
“I just have to wait until Misha’s not around to get dinner ready tomorrow, if you know what I mean? She’s an animal lover.”
“I’m an Oliver lover—also,” said Misha, sitting down at my table.
“I have to go sis.” I hung up. “Are you ditching class again?”
She leaned across the table and kissed me on the lips. “I’m tired. I feel like taking a nap at your place.”
I looked at the unfinished essay and the just started screenplay on my computer screen and suddenly felt very sleepy.
John Crandell on November 27, 2008, at 01:24PM – #1
Ollie, I gots a story much better than any D.C. projection. Drop everything and come on over. It's all about Third and Main, a hundred and forty some years ago.
Stan Lerner on December 01, 2008, at 11:26AM – #2
John, Oiver senses a story. Do tell...
John Crandell on December 01, 2008, at 03:30PM – #3
It's sort of, no, it is L.A.'s pre-Hollywood Hollywood epic. The original story, a myth, was begot in a memoir published by Mark Twain in 1886. It's author had been widowed in February of that year. After her husband's death, she destroyed all of his personal papers. So the myth that she created that year did not extend from the violence of Gettysburg but it became one of the great legends of the Civil War battle. Cinema took root in Los Angeles and it's residents forgot that she and her husband had ever lived at Third and Main Streets, that her husband had been defeated in the 1880 presidential election by what still remains as the narrowest margin ever, that their landlord had built a house for them to live in - an exact duplicate of his own home (the city's first building constructed with bricks, destined to be replaced by the first cinema in California), that in the days following Abraham Lincoln's assassination, her husband would travel to Washington where general pandemonium had taken hold and with the news of his arrival, everyone calmed down and went home to have dinner, that in the year following the end of the Civil War, as military commander in charge of New Orleans her husband had issued General Orders No. 40 upholding inalienable rights of defeated southerners as guaranteed by the Constitution (plus reaffirming civilian control of the U.S. military) and that order has since been hailed by Constitutional scholars and historians, that her husband is commonly known as 'the hero of Gettysburg' for his command of Union troops and his valor not only at that particular battle but several others as well and that her husband had served as the social and military nexus in L.A. in the years before the start of the war and her story of the end of that time in their lives, of one last evening reception, a farewell party for several of her husband's subordinates which has long served as the core of the legend was all so much hogwash. And this same myth became one of the central threads of Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels which was awarded the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for history and was later adapted into a superlative movie by Turner Pictures.
Although the widow's allegation was all hogwash, got swallowed hook, line and sinker, the true story, the record of what actually happened based upon contemporary news accounts, official records, journals, memoirs and George Hansen's civil survey of their houselot at Third and Main is equally as fine and far more finely nuanced than her highly romantic construct rendered into print by publisher Twain.
Yeah, it's the antithesis of L.A. hip. Of course, any of us could visit Ford's Theater or Fort Sumter or the low stone wall at The Angle at Gettysburg (perhaps even Lincoln's bedroom) and not feel anything. The hell with hip. These past twenty years, ever since I began digging into the legend, there hasn't been one time that I could pass by Third and Main, stand before those trees and that small triangle of open space and not feel anything. Interested? message me if so: Publisher@Visions-of-L-A.com
Stan Lerner on December 02, 2008, at 08:45AM – #4
Now it's great stories like this that make blogging worthwhile!!! Bravo John