"Action Men with Silly Putty": The Soundtrack, Part 1

For some reason, this book ended up having a kind of soundtrack. In most of the fiction I have done, music has served some sort of inspirational purpose, but it was sometimes "behind the scenes," not something that came out in the actual writing. There might be songs that I would play over and over again during some stage of the creative process, because it inspired me to write about a particular character or scene, but the song itself was not part of the story. With "Action Men with Silly Putty," I found that quite a few song titles actually got mentioned within the context of the story and that this trend continued throughout. Thus, my book ended up with a soundtrack.

I want to share that with you. In some places, I can share some lines of context and some places not in case it should prove to be a spoiler.

It's also a fairly eclectic soundtrack with songs from jazz, rock, country, Broadway, even opera and classical.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

In the beginning, we meet a suspect with two differently colored eyes, heterochromia iridum.

"I started to whistle 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.' It wasn’t my favorite song in the world as I’m not too fond of getting looped up and seeing pink elephants or walruses with egg men or whatever it is you’re supposed to see while under the influence, but it was that line 'the girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.' It seemed fitting." From this point on, this suspect comes to be known as Kaleidoscope Eyes.

"Rubber Ball"

Jack Donegal is a toy inventer and the owner of his own toy business, Out of the Box Toys. His buddy Andy Westin is his marketing manager. The "Rubber Ball" song comes out in the context of a musical ball in their toy line.

"Are You Going To San Francisco?"

Although my sleuths, Jack Donegal and Andy Westin, are New Jersey natives, the opening scenes take place in California and San Francisco.

At some point, Jack persuades Andy to don a disguise in the chapter "We Become Spies At the Expense of My Dignity." Jack picks out a loud rainbow tie-dye T-shirt -- a beaded one -- for Andy at a Salvation Army thrift store.

"'Are you sure this is men’s wear?' I asked. 

I actually took the hanger from him and sniffed at the shirt cautiously, expecting to detect traces of a five-leafed plant. I inspected the tag, but there was nothing to indicate how gender neutral it was … or not. “Don’t worry,” said Jack. “You’ll fit right in with the culture.” I’d fit right in with the culture, all right, providing it was a subculture of hippie Indian chiefs. I remembered that ‘60s song about the gentle people you’d meet in San Francisco, you know, the ones with flowers in their hair. I would have to draw a line at flowers in the hair. I eyed Jack with caution, almost as if he could read my mind. I ran a hand through my summer crew cut, relieved that my hair would not hold a flower even if I tried it."  

"Mission Impossible Theme"

The next few songs are mentioned in the context of a chapter titled "Music as Psychological Warfare and the Most Esoteric Security Code Imaginable"

"Soul Bossa Nova"

"I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General"

"Bad Boys"

These two songs "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" and "One Way or Another" were actually listed separately but close together in this chapter. While I was writing though, I did a lot of listening to this Glee medley of both songs.

"Hit Me with Your Best Shot/One Way or Another"

There's actually quite a few more, and it makes a long list, so I think I will leave some for a new installment. 

The Conversation

I stood in the kitchen peeling and cutting carrots when I turned around and saw a stranger standing there. I jumped a little and dropped some carrot peels on the floor. No, he wasn't a stranger, not quite ... well, not at all. I had seen him many, many times before, just not in my kitchen. "Andy?" I said.

"I'm sorry to startle you," he said. He looked about the kitchen casually like he felt quite at home. I almost expected him to raid the refrigerator. He turned to me again. "You look a little stunned."

I nodded. "How did you get here?"

"How did I get here?" he said. "I'm always here, aren't I?"

"Well, in a way, yes," I said. "This seems different somehow."

"I know. It's a lot to take in," he said without offering another explanation for his sudden manifestation in my kitchen. He turned his attention to the lemon plaque hanging on the side of the cabinet.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" I asked.

"No thanks," he said. "I've had about 20 cups already."

Surely, he exaggerated. Andy was prone to exaggeration. He seemed amazingly composed for someone who had admittedly imbibed so much caffeine.

"Carrots?" I said, handing him a small carrot stick.

"Do I look like a bunny to you?" he said. He then shook his head and wrinkled up his nose in a way that, in spite of his words, was slightly suggestive of a bunny.

"No," I said. "You look quite wonderful actually." I looked him over. "The blue shirt brings out your eyes and, well ... " I was delving into a sensitive area. "Contrasts with your hair, you know, (ahem,) cool and warm colors being opposite on the color wheel." I refrained from saying "red," or worse yet, "orange."

He ran his fingers through his hair, a little self-consciously I thought. "Well, you picked out the outfit, so ..." He paused and rolled his eyes. "You ought to like it." He sighed and fiddled with his hair. "And now I know why you offer me carrots."

"Really, I didn't mean ... " I said. "I just happened to be cutting some. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"That's funny, Susan. Real funny. Experience would have me believe otherwise."

This was beginning to feel awkward, and I hate to admit that he had somewhat of a legitimate point. I looked away from his gaze and noticed a speck of lint on his shoulder which I plucked off. "Funny," I said. "I don't remember writing in that piece of lint."

"I think you just did," he said.

I turned my back and continued my job of cutting carrots.

"So, are we going to do this?" Andy asked me.

"What?"

"Are we going to have this conversation?"

I turned to face him. "What conversation?"

"About my little problem."

"What kind of a problem are we talking about?" I said. "Like a girl problem?"

"Well, that too ... thank you very much. My problem is that I'm bored. This is what you do now? Eat bunny food, cook and dance reggae in the basement?"

I blushed a little bit. "You know about that?"

He waved his hand back and forth between us. "We have no secrets from each other."

That made sense. Or did it? "Well, I know everything about you. I guess I never thought it was true in reverse," I said. Then, thinking about his earlier comment, I said, "I'm just trying to be healthy."

"I know. I know. It's wonderful, really, but could you please be healthy and spend a little time thinking about my problem at the same time? I mean, all I do is sit there at the Salvador Deli, drinking coffee, waiting for you to write the next scene. I mean how many cups of coffee can a man drink? Give me some adventure. Let me be the hero. Let me chase some bad guys and, you know, show off my mad kung fu skillz." He aimed a roundhouse kick in the general direction of the fridge.

I raised an eyebrow. "You have mad kung fu skillz?"

"Well, (ahem,)" he said. "I've been meaning to talk to you about that. Could you add that in there? And, while you're at it, could you give me abs of steel?"

This was truly surreal. I had meant for Andy to be a relatable average guy. "I'll ... I'll think about it." I paused. "Just hang in there a little longer," I said. "Flirt with Janie Duveau." Janie is the waitress/barista girl at the Salvador Deli. "You know, turn on the charm and the witty remarks."

"Right," said Andy. "There's just one little problem."

"What?"

He spread his arms out wide. "You write my lines!"

"Yeah," I said. "I guess that is a problem." I was hardly thinking how this current conversation was happening, and thinking about it gave me a headache.

"You used to think about me all the time, you know, and now, it's just cook, cook, cook, dance, dance, dance, work, work, work ... "

"I know," I said. "I don't like it any more than you do. You're still important to me, you know. I can't even begin to tell you how much you mean to me." Was this getting a bit weird? Well, for Pete's sake, it had gotten weird a long time before now.

"Come here," he said. He held his arms out. I came, and he gave me a squeeze and a couple of pats on the back. This was definitely getting weirder by the minute. I felt like there ought to be a soundtrack, dramatic music, perhaps comically dramatic music, swelling in the background, but what? "I Will Always Love You?"

"Well, I'm glad we had this little talk," he said, pulling away. "Now, get on that computer and write my story. No Youtube ... "

"But," I said. "It's research." It really was research ... some of it.

He shook his head at me. I found myself walking him to the front door, but where he was going from there and by what means was not perfectly clear. I suppose he was going back to Mapleville, the New Jersey town that only exists in my stories.

"I promise I won't let anything too terrible happen to you," I said. "Well, maybe a little bit terrible, but, you know, no Sherlock Holmes waterfall scenes or that sort of thing."

He sighed, perhaps with relief. He was on my doorstep now, pointing his finger at me pistol-style. "Write."

"Right," I said, not thinking about how much that seemed like an echo. "I'll try."

"Do or do not. There is no try," he said.

It's funny, but I didn't, before that moment, know he was so conversant with "Star Wars."

"Right," I said.

And then he was gone, although not truly gone. He never was.

The Creative Life: Sparking Ideas for the New Year

As the new year rolls in, people reflect on goals. I'm always thinking about goals, although I hesitate to call them "New Year's resolutions." A resolution, to me, seems like something that can be broken. I never consider a goal to be broken, in those terms. A project can be shifted to the back burner. You can get off course with a particular goal, but you can always get back on it again, particularly a long-term goal that does not have an absolute deadline.

I am on vacation from my job for this week leading up to New Year's Day. During this "staycation" time, I plan to work towards several goals. Already, there seems to be too many projects for me to give equal attention. I guess you could say I have my fingers in many pies ...

Or a lot of irons in the fire ...

Or a lot of balls in the air.

I think you get the idea by now. :)

My birthday is quickly approaching, January 9th. For the past few years, I have planned a mystery dinner party for friends to celebrate my birthday.

The photo below is from my mystery party in 2013, a body outline my father made on the balcony. I had several members of my family involved in different ways.

Yes, you can buy mystery dinner party kits. I have considered this option in the past.

Here's a site that seems to be a good source for these, although I went a different route.

Perhaps, because I'm a bit creatively insane, I thought it would be fun to create my own version of the game. I believe mine works differently than most you would buy. The usual pattern seems to be that the guests act in the role of different suspects. In my game, the guests are all detectives, and I enlisted members of my family to be the suspects. I modeled mine on the English manor mystery. My brother Tim acted as the butler. My sister-in-law Melody acted as a maid one year and an opera singer, a guest at the manor, another year. My father played a professor, a manor guest, at one of these dinners. I even had my oldest nephew, Bill, involved one year.

I admit that my family are extremely good sports. Not only did my mother and Melody help me serve a multi-course meal Downton Abbey style, they also ate in the servants' quarters, aka the next room, instead of with the aristocracy and their detective guests.

This is a pre-dinner photo from 2013.

I'll give you the basic idea. I put my friends on teams of detectives. The first year, friends were assigned to teams according to famous mystery writers and given fictional detective identities and name tags. For instance, the Agatha Christie Team had an Hercule Poirot, a Miss Marple and a Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. The next year, I did something similar with detective TV shows and fictional TV detectives.

Teams were supplied with evidence folders. When the game started, teams drew cards which I had typed up ahead of time. The cards would either instruct them to go into a certain room of the house in search of a clue or into a certain room of the house to interrogate a particular suspect. Clues were labeled by number in the different rooms, objects with cards offering an explanation of the clue as to what evidence was found connected to this object. There was a card left for each team at that location which they could collect into their evidence folder. The interrogation of suspects was all scripted, both the questions that detectives could ask of a certain suspect and the suspect's answer to the question. These answers were also on cards that detective teams could collect into their evidence folders. Other bonus cards gave options like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Of course, I had to throw in some red herrings.

As I type this, I wonder if I could make a little joke with some more literal red herrings, some Swedish fish candies. I'm not really sure where this idea is going yet, if it is a workable idea or just a bit of goofiness.

Does this sound complicated? It was quite complicated to create but also very rewarding, as my guests had a blast. The game concept did not have to recreated, but each year, a different mystery was created. It's also a bit tricky that my birthday follows so closely after Christmas. I should be glad I have this week off to make progress in my planning.

While looking at a photo of my guests at the table from a previous year's party, I noticed a candy jar in the center of the table. For some inexplicable reason, this triggered a thought of fortune cookies and the idea of a clue tucked inside of a fortune cookie. I really don't know how the candy jar got my mind working along that track. I remembered there are ways to order custom fortune cookies with your own messages inside.

Then, my brain started thinking, "And aren't there such things as Chinese puzzle boxes?" An Internet search did not turn up Chinese puzzle boxes, but it did turn up Japanese puzzle boxes.

So now, my brain is dreaming up something along this line, and, of course, with this sort of theme, a Chinese meal. I will update you on my progress.

In church life, I am known as "the puppet lady." I lead a puppet ministry team and write my own material. We have performed for various functions in the church to provide an uplifting Bible message in a fun and, often, funny way. I have been working on a script on a "fruit of the spirit" theme from Galatians 5:22-23. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

My puppet presentation, which, at this point, is just a concept and a partial script, is inspired by old variety shows. Some of the confused puppet characters want to demonstrate literal fruits and pop in with little bits of various fruit referencing well-known songs: "The Lime in the Coconut", "I Heard It Through the Grape Vine", "The Banana Boat Song", etc.  I thought it would be fun to have a puppet dressed as Carmen Miranda.

Aside from some association with this lady and some crazy fruity turban, I did not know much about her until I began to look up old movie clips on Youtube.  What an interesting, colorful vision, a kind of entertainment that is now passe.

I mention this loony idea to my creative partner, Betty, my interim pastor's wife. I suppose she is as loony as I am, because some days later, she sends me the photo below. I have sometimes called Betty the Edith Head of Puppetry.

In addition to these ideas, I still want to work on the next "Action Men" novel and also do some other less fun but necessary tasks.

I once read a description of my personality type, INFP in the Myers Brigg system, that says my type tends to take on too much but somehow gets it done. This seems to be fairly accurate.

So, these are some of the things I intend to make progress on this week. I once worked in a child care program the director described as "loosely structured." I suppose that could also describe my organization style. I am making plans but flexible plans.

Creative types, do you find yourself juggling several projects at once?