Episode 20 - Finding my voice
I wrote and performed a “To Tell the Truth” game show episode as Howard Cosell
Either despite or because of all the social changes I went through in the sixth grade, I found my voice. It wasn’t stoic, measured, or insightful. It was funny. I liked funny. Especially parody. That school year I co-wrote lyrics for a song titled, “I write the speeches” which was a parody of the very popular Barry Manilow hit, “I write the songs” sung from the point of view of ex-president Nixon. I wrote and performed a “To Tell the Truth” game show episode as Howard Cosell where he questioned three people, two of which were only pretending to be George Washington. (Bicentennial fever!) And published a parody of an article for a race car magazine where the driver of a new, six-wheeled Indy-type race car was complaining that while the car was engineeringly innovative and visually beautiful, and asking ‘why Mattel hadn’t yet made a Hot Wheel of it yet?’
None of these were well received, but this neither deterred or stopped me. Like all setbacks at that age, each failure simply made me try harder the next time.
When me and my choir buddies performed “I write the speeches” for Mrs. Schultz, she vehemently stopped us before we even got to the second verse. Angered either by the fact that we never spent this much time or effort learning the songs we were supposed to, or it was three minutes since her last cigarette, she made sure we clearly understood that we had wasted our time (and hers), and it wasn’t clever or funny at all. I’ll admit, we would have benefitted from knowing about the Dr. Demento radio show, and maybe, just maybe, we could have beaten Weird Al Yankovich to the punch. Instead, our creativity was dismissed as an irrelevant waste of time. Apparently, those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach critique. Ain’t that right Mrs. Schultz?
My “To Tell the Truth” game show parody was cleverly conceived since two of the three George Washington’s were indeed lying. (Oh, the irony!) Well written for the sixth grade, and I seriously did a spot-on Howard Cosell. I had the voice, tone and timing down. My fatal flaw was putting this up in front of my humorless sixth-grade homeroom teacher. Yes, the very same one that tore into us about the bell on our first day.
She wedged our performance between the last lesson of the morning and lunch. Giving us just enough time to get through it before the lunch bell would go off and everyone in class would leave like the room was on fire. We had the complete attention of no one. And when the skit ended with the enraged real George Washington railing against the lies the impostures were saying in his name, the teacher managed to just beat the lunch bell with, “that’s enough Marty.” Talk about not giving time for a bit to land.
Undeterred from the red hot stove begging to be touched again, it was the grade on my magazine article parody that hurt the worst. The song and skit were ensemble efforts. The magazine article was 100% me. Conceived, created, and executed. I did article research to find the right voice for it. I bought two copies of the magazine I found the picture of the race car in, in case I mangled one cutting it out. I wrote and rewrote the article until it matched the real article’s length. Truthfully, I put more work into this assignment than all my other homework that year. I had to have all the hallmarks of a flawless parody.
The day came to turn it in, and I was very proud of my work. Sure I would get a laugh, appreciation for this level of artistic creativity at my young age, and an ‘A’. Two days later, the same teacher who had screamed at us for daring to stand up, and doomed my skit with a terrible time-slot, handed me back my masterpiece with with a large, red C- emblazoned across it. And ‘not very funny or appreciated’ scrawled in hurried, large letters beneath it. I should have known better or expected as much, but ouch. Ouch a lot. If I’d have known any bible verse, I would have spouted the line about ‘pearls before swine.’ Which I’m sure would have set her off, and doomed me for the rest of the year. But once again, I saved myself with ignorance! It was a strategy I would employ with great success for years to come.
Three swings and three misses. Yet I remained optimistic in my comic abilities. I wouldn’t make this connection until later in college as a liberal arts major, but if you want to be a chemical engineer, and you flunk your first chemistry classes, you’re not going to be a chemical engineer. If you’re creative, and your first three attempts fall flat, that just makes you want to try even harder the next time. There is no end to failure in a life in the arts, only penury and delusion.