Monet – Under The Table

“Japanese psychologists claim they have taught pigeons how to tell a Picasso from a Monet with 90 per cent accuracy. However, the birds were not able to tell a Cezanne from a Renoir.” Ivan Weiss and Lynn Mucken

If I ever regain the energy and ambition of my youth, I will create a competitive game show to air on YouTube called Everyone Has A Little Bit Of Talent. The show will feature people I know and people I don’t know who have no desire to become famous for doing anything, but who have little bits of talent, even possibly talents they don’t consider talents.

Contestants on Everyone Has A Little Bit Of Talent, or EHALBOT as the wildly popular show will come to be known, are their own judges. A contestant—there is only one per episode—will join me in my living room or at the beach or in a café or in a clearing in the forest. Here I will pepper the person with intriguing questions to discover their little bit of talent, something they won’t mind sharing with our tens of millions of viewers.

The hypothesis of EHALBOT is that everyone has talent, not only people who sing versions of pop songs just as well or maybe even a little better than the people who made those pop songs popular. Nor will the contestants on EHALBOT dance provocatively with uncanny flexibility to loud pulsating music. Nor are we looking for cynical holier-than-thou sexually crude comedians.

On EHALBOT we showcase more subtle and nuanced forms of talent, the kinds of talent everyone has a little bit of. What do I mean? Well, a contestant might whistle pleasantly, not in a jaw-dropping oh-my-God-he-sounds-just-like-a-saxophone kind of way, but quietly and mostly on key. He or she might whistle some catchy old tune he or she learned from a grandparent, and he or she might punctuate the pleasant whistling with equally pleasant humming of the tune.

Or a contestant might make neato doodles while talking about the weather or about something funny their cat did or about anything that strikes their fancy—doodles that are fun to watch appear on a piece of paper as the contestant draws them.

Or a contestant might skip along the beach in a way that makes viewers laugh with pleasure, or at least smile a little, remembering when they were kids and would just out-of-the-blue start skipping around, or if not skipping then jumping and running, simply because we all went through a time of being children because we were born and that’s what happens.

Or maybe the contestant has a knack for making mushroom and green onion omelets in a cast iron frying pan, omelets that turn out pretty well, and he or she makes one during the episode and then we sit on the deck outside my kitchen eating the omelet and making yummy sounds.

At the end of a first-round episode of EHALBOT, the contestant stands in front of a big mirror, and while one camera films the person, a second camera films the person’s reflection, and we see both the person and the reflection on a split screen. The person speaks to her reflection and talks about her little bit of talent, and when the person is done expressing herself to her reflection, the person asks her reflection if she wants to move on to the next round of the competition. If the reflection gives thumbs up, the person moves on to the next round. If the reflection gives thumbs down, the contestant is presented with an Everyone Has A Little Bit of Talent T-shirt available in a variety of colors, and thanked profusely for coming on the show.

How do you like the concept so far? I love it.

So…after thirty people get thumbs up from their reflections, those thirty are randomly paired up, which gives us fifteen dyads with little bits of talent, and these dyads are asked to give a performance combining their talents. For instance, the humming whistler might whistle and hum pleasantly to accompany the omelet maker as he makes an omelet, and then I and that dyad will share the omelet out on the deck, along with coffee and toast, and make yummy sounds, or not, depending on how well the omelet and coffee and toast turn out.

The person who skips on the beach might skip in a big circle around the doodler on the beach who is making big doodles in the sand with a stick, the doodles inspired by the roaring waves and the person skipping around.

Or maybe the whistling hummer is paired with the skipping person, and the doodler is paired with the omelet maker. Anything is possible on EHALBOT.

At the end of each of those fifteen dyadic performances, the dyads stand side-by-side in front of a large mirror and speak to their reflections, each person telling the other person’s reflection how the collaboration made them feel. These second-round mirror sessions tend to last a bit longer than the first-round mirror sessions and are often revelatory of surprising aspects of the contestants’ lives.

To move on to the next round of EHALBOT, a contestant’s reflection must again give thumbs up. If the thumbs go down, the contestant receives an EHALBOT T-shirt and profuse thanks. In some cases, one member of the dyad will give thumbs up and the other member will give thumbs down because that’s just how it goes sometimes.

In the next and penultimate round, the remaining contestants gather in my living room in the early evening for drinks and hors d’oeuvres—about twenty contestants, four videographers, yours truly, and several people who are always good to have at parties. During the drinking and eating and socializing, I will casually ask each contestant how he or she feels about the experience of being on Everyone Has A Little Bit Of Talent.

Those who admit to enjoying the experience are invited to the final round of the competition, while those contestants who imply through unpleasant tones of voice, hostile body language, or slurs and insults suggesting they feel their experience of coming on the show has been a waste of time, are presented with an EHALBOT T-shirt, which they may or may not want, and asked to leave.

The final round of Everyone Has A Little Bit Of Talent takes place the next day in my living room or on the deck if the weather is nice. The finalists and I gather in a circle with our shoulders just touching the shoulders of the persons to our rights and the shoulders of the persons to our lefts. This collective just-touchingness never fails to create a comfortable group intimacy, and when a sense of completion overcomes me, I announce, “Congratulations, you are the winners of Everyone Has A Little Bit Of Talent.”

Each contestant is presented with a check for a large sum of money, depending on what EHALBOT’s share of YouTube ad revenue is for the year, along with a red or black or pearly white EHALBOT kimono, an EHALBOT baseball cap, an EHALBOT omelet pan, a large sketchpad of acid-free paper, and a collection of fine-tipped pens excellent for doodling.

T-shirts courtesy of Max

(This article first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 2011)

“Youth is wasted on the young.” George Bernard Shaw

When I and my middle-aged and elderly Mendocino Elk Albion Fort Bragg peers convene, talk often turns to the paucity of younger people coming along to fill the local ranks of actors and musicians and writers and artists and activists. The excellent Symphony of the Redwoods plays to audiences of mostly white-haired elders and is itself fast becoming an ensemble of elders, ditto the local theater companies, ditto the legions of Mendocino artists and social activists. People under fifty in audiences and at art openings hereabouts stand out as rare youngsters; and the question is frequently asked with touching plaintiveness, “Will it all end with us?”

“The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.” Robert Graves

A few days ago I was waiting my turn at the one and only cash dispensing machine in the picturesque and economically distressed village of Mendocino, my home town, and I couldn’t help noticing that the woman using the machine was young (under forty), expensively dressed, and pushing the appropriate buttons with an ambitious energy that made me tired.

When it was my turn to stand before the cash dispensary, I noticed that the young woman had declined to take her receipt, which hung like a punch line from the slot of the robot. Being a hopeless snoop, I took possession of the little piece of paper, affixed my reading glasses, and imbibed the data. Did my eyes deceive me? No. This young woman had a cash balance in her Savings Bank of Mendocino checking account of…are you sitting down?…377,789 dollars.

In a panic—dollar amounts over four figures terrify me—I turned to see if her highness was still in sight, and there she was climbing into a brand new midnight blue six-wheel pickup truck the size of a small house, her seven-year-old companion, a movie-star pretty girl, strapped into the passenger seat.

“Did you want this?” I cried, wildly waving the receipt.

She of great wealth slowly shook her head and smiled slyly as if to say, “That’s nothing. You should see the diamonds in my safety deposit box.”

Staggered by my encounter with this local femme Croesus, I wandered toward Corners of the Mouth hoping to find my eensy teensy rusty old pickup parked there, and further hoping a little overpriced chocolate would calm me down. My truck was not there, but I didn’t panic. I only park in one of four places when I drive into the village, so I was confident I would eventually find my truck: somewhere near the Presbyterian church or adjacent to the vacant lot with the towering eucalypti where I gather kindling or in front of Zo, the greatest little copy shop in town (the only one, actually, and not open on weekends.)

In Corners, the cozy former church, I came upon three young (under forty) women, each in jeans and sweatshirt, each possessed of one to three exuberant latter day hippie children. These lovely gals were gathered near the shelves of fabulous fruit comparing notes on diet, marriage, motherhood, and who knows what. Beyond this trio of young moms, and partially blocking my access to the chocolate bars, were two of the aforementioned latter day hippie children, a very cute snot-nosed four-year-old redheaded girl wearing a bright blue dress, and an equally cute roly-poly snot-nosed five-year-old blond boy wearing black coveralls and red running shoes.

The boy, I couldn’t help but overhear, was trying to convince the girl to secure some candy for him because his mother wouldn’t buy candy for him, but the girl’s mother would buy the candy because, according to the boy, “Your mom let’s you have anything you want, and my mom won’t,” which, the boy indignantly pointed out, was not fair.

“But my mom will know it’s for you,” said the girl so loudly that everyone in the store could hear her, “because I don’t like that kind.”

I reached over their innocent little heads and secured a chunk of 85% pure chocolate bliss flown around the globe from England, and feeling only slightly immoral to be supporting the highly unecological international trafficking of a gateway drug (chocolate is definitely a gateway drug, don’t you think?) I headed for the checkout counter where two of the aforementioned young moms were purchasing great mounds of nutritious goodies.

Remember, I was still reeling from my encounter with she of the massive blue truck who had enough money in her checking account for my wife and I to live luxuriously (by our Spartan standards) for the rest of our lives, should we live so long, when Young Mom #1 took from the front pocket of her form-fitting fashionably faded blue jeans a wad of hundred-dollar bills that would have made a mafia chieftain proud, and peeled off three bills to pay for six bulging bags of vittles.

The clerk didn’t bat an eye, ceremoniously held each bill up to some sort of validating light, and made small change.

Meanwhile, Young Mom #2 had stepped up to the other checkout counter and proceeded to pay for her several sacks of groceries from a vast collection of fifty-dollar bills which she pulled from her pockets like a comedic magician pulling so many handkerchiefs from her coat that it seemed impossible she could have crammed so much stuff into such a small space.

“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.” Bo Derek

Further frazzled by the sight of so much filthy lucre, I stumbled to the post office to buy stamps and see if Sheila wanted to talk a little Giants baseball. Ahead of me at the counter stood a beautiful young (under forty) mom with one of her cute little kids sitting on the counter picking his nose, her other slightly larger cute little kid standing on the floor, embracing his mother’s leg while sucking his thumb. The beautiful young mom placed a pile of brand new hundred-dollar bills on the counter, a pile as thick as a five-hundred-page novel, and proceeded to buy a dozen money orders, each order (I couldn’t help but overhear) for many thousands of dollars, and each order duly noted in a leather-bound notebook.

The thumb-sucking lad clinging to his mother’s leg looked up at me and I made a funny face at him. He removed his thumb and half-imitated my funny face. So I made another funny face. He laughed and patted his mother’s leg. “Mama,” he gurgled. “He funny.”

“Not now Jacarandaji,” she said, keeping her focus on money matters. “We’ll go to Frankie’s in just a little while.”

Jacarandaji smiled at me, daring me to make another funny face, which I did. Jacarandaji laughed uproariously, which caused his nose-picking brother to stop picking and ask, “Why you laughing?”

“He funny,” said Jacarandaji, pointing at me.

At which moment, the beautiful young mom turned to me, smiled sweetly (ironically?) and said, “You want’em? You can have’em.” And then she gave each of her boys a hug, saying, “Just kidding. Mama’s only kidding.”

“Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic.” Norman Cousins

Who are these young (under forty) moms? They are pot moms, their wealth accrued from the quasi-legal and/or illegal growing of marijuana and the almost surely illegal sale of their crop to feed the insatiable appetite for dope that defines a robust sector of the collective American psyche. Many of these moms have husbands. Many of these moms have college degrees. And all of these moms have decided that it makes much more emotional and economic sense to grow and sell pot than to work at some meaningless low-paying job.

And let them grow pot, say I, so long as they don’t carry guns and shoot at people, and so long as they don’t have dangerous crop-guarding dogs that might escape and attack me or my friends as we’re riding by on our bicycles or walking by minding our own business. What I care about is this: will their children grow up to fill the ranks of the aging musicians and actors and artists and writers and activists who define the culture of our far-flung enclave? Or will those snot-nosed cuties grow up spoiled and arrogant and not much good for anything except growing dope, which will almost surely be legal by the time they’re old enough to join those aforementioned ranks, so then what will they do to make easy money?

Hear me, ye young pot moms. The lives you are leading and this place where you are leading those lives are rare and precious beyond measure. Thus it is your sacred duty to strictly limit the garbage your children watch on television and on computers. It is your sacred duty to give your children plenty of Mendelssohn and Stevie Wonder and Mozart and Joni Mitchell and Brahms and Cole Porter and Eva Cassidy and Richard Rogers and Ella Fitzgerald and Ray Charles and Nina Simone and Gershwin, to name a few. And beyond Harry Potter and the corporate guck that passes for children’s literature, at least give them Twain and Steinbeck and Kipling. Beyond today’s execrable animated movie propaganda, give them O’Keefe and Chagall and Picasso and Ver Meer and Monet and Van Gogh. Use your pot money to give your children not what the corporate monsters want to force them to want, but great art that will engender in them the feeling and the knowing that they were born into this life and into their bodies to do something wonderful and special and good.

Yay verily, I say unto you young pot moms, every last one of you beautiful and smart and good women, your children, and you, too, have come unto this bucolic place far from the madding crowd so they and you will have the chance to fully blossom. Feed your family well. Yes. Excellent organic food is good for their bodies, but do not neglect their precious minds and their generous hearts, for we oldsters desperately need them to fill our ranks when we are gone.

Todd’s web site is UnderTheTableBooks.com