We're on the air!

Okay, I've finally got started. It took me so long to think of a title, now Mabel has woken up from her nap, so I don't know how long I'll be able to write.
I think the new year has been working on me; I finally got this blog set up, I've started on my Mabel book again, and I've signed up for a marathon on June 6th which I've just started training for. We'll see how that goes.

Maybe I'll post some of the Mabel book when I'm a little further along (note to new viewers: my Mabel book predates my daughter Mabel by several years.) I started writing a book about a girl named Mabel from the perspective of her neighbor Benjamin (Benny) from the apartment next door. Mabel is modeled after the screwball blonde types from the 1930's movies. I specifically had Joan Blondell in mind. She was in a bunch of those-- "Hey, let's put on a show! We'll reherse lots of dance numbers and then find out we have no funding, but then the leading lady (played by Ruby Keelor) will meet up with a guy who is young, handsome and rich (played by Dick Powell), and he'll fund the show, which will be chock full of dance numbers that weren't shown in the rehersals!"--movies. Joan Blondell was always the wisecracking second fiddle to Ruby Keelor's character. I can't stand Ruby Keelor, or the crazy dance numbers, or even most of the songs--so, say 3/4 of the movie drove me crazy, but I loved Joan Blondell. They had a ton of these movies back in the thirties, and I've seen at least a dozen of them at least a dozen times. So, I lifted the Blondell character (who is often named Mabel), and I mixed her with a P.G. Wodehouse character named Ukridge. Ukridge's primary characteristic is that he is always running a get-rich-quick sheme, but his second most striking personality trait is that he has no bounderies, and no sense of what is yours and what is his, except that what's yours is his. Sort of like Sam.

So that's Mabel.

Just one more thing that drove me crazy about those movies from the 1930's; they were always choreographed by Busby Berkeley--and even though they were suppose to be stage shows, they would have been impossible on any stage. They have streams of water in a forest glade, and women frolicking and swimming around, and I don't care how big the stage is, it's simply not possible for a stage show. And yet, Busby Berkeley won one oscar after the next for these reality-defying "stage shows."

Look, I'm glad we could talk about this. It's been on my mind. I'll just go ahead and post some pictures now.