The Legend-News
“All the filler that fits.”
This Is Not The April Fools Edition
Seriously, every item in this issue is real. Don’t blame me for your paranoid imagination.
Some of this information is a few months old, but in the eternal scheme of the universe that’s just a minute fraction of a second. Fresh is in the nose of the besmeller.
Ed.itorial: Reimagination
I swear, one of these days I will get my life back to normal, and start meeting my obligations to humanity.
The absence from your mailbox of The Legend-News was not truly intentional; as I may have said before, reality keeps interfering with my life. In the past year I’ve lost a couple of relatives, one full-time job, and the respect of the American people.
Uh, scratch that last item on the list; that applies to G.W. Bush, not I.
Anyway, my new motto is “Part Time, All The Time!” I am vowing to never again work at another 40-hours-plus-per-week job for a company which isn’t me. They’re unreliable; I can never know when some bean counter is going to decide that my contribution to the corporation is a liability to the shareholders. So from now on, I’m going to part-time my way through life, even though I expect that the cumulative part-times will probably sum to more than a single full-time. I’m setting the hours now, and you’re not, Big Business. Take that!
My Current List of Things To Do:
- Clear out my e-mail inbox. There are too many messages in there which I haven’t read and probably never will. I’m subscribed to too many mailing lists which churn out, on a daily basis, the electronic equivalent of a small tree. And if the list maintainers won’t accept my cancellations, well, there goes another address into the spam filter.
- Get back on a daily schedule. Up at dawn, and in bed before Letterman. I’ll tape The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and watch them in the morning while trying to ingest a cup or two of coffee. I might as well do that, because for the first hour after I drag my sorry butt out of bed I’m hopeless — just ask my wife, who probably got up at 4:30 and is already out of the house and pumping iron at the local fitness center.
- Reduce my bodily mass. I was going to say ‘lose weight’, but anyone who’s read P.G. Wodehouse will realize the stupidity of doing that. I’m at 105 kilograms now (that’s about 230 pounds, in ancient measurements), and I’m aiming for 85 kg (or about 187 pounds). I haven’t grown any taller since high school, and back then I weighed 77 kg (170 pounds).
-
Publish
The Legend-News
in a timely manner; which leads to the real subject of this column, “Reimagination”.
C.W. McCall: An American Legend (the web site) and The Legend-News (the electronic rag) were alledgedly responsible for a brief resurgence in the popularity of C.W. McCall. Unfortunately, news about the world of C.W. McCall has become more difficult to find, and a newsletter that contains nought but C.W.-related items is doomed to becoming either (a) shorter with every issue, or (b) published every blue moon. Result (a) wouldn’t be very interesting, and (b) would occur about once every thirty-three months (your mileage may vary, depending upon your location on the planet).
So I’m looking into adding features to The Legend-News which are, at least, related to its founding purpose of publicizing a country music singer/group/ficticious-character-in-bread-commercials. Music, humor, opinions, puzzles, something like that. If you have any suggestions, send them to legend-news@cw-mccall.com.
Who knows? Maybe this li’l ’ol bit-pub can make a go at profitability. And then, maybe into real newsprint! (But it’ll never replace The Trout Wrapper.)
Now to read up on the new bankruptcy laws. Always got to be prepared.
— Ed. (a.k.a. The Space Cadet)
C.W. Sightings
Alan ‘Skywalker’ Chafin noticed a few mentions of C.W. McCall out there.
- Sort of like Smokey and the Bandit, in the large economy size.
- How music was sold before CDs. [Page is 404 on 2012-04-26 — Future Ed.]
- Someone who obviously saw the movie CONVOY.
Bad Idea Of The Moment
The main page of CW-McCall.com, Gizooglefied.
Riding Shotgun With C.W.
From Scotty Hartman:
We Done Been Googled
You may have noticed a page on the site, in the “Detours” section, about the information and advice that you can find on a White Castle hamburger box.
Seems that Joe Fago, who works for JWT, White Castle’s advertising agency, stumbled across that page and complimented me on it (and the rest of the American Legend site). But lest you think that I’m just patting myself on the back, I did perform a valuable service: said Joe, “I was completely unaware of the C.W. McCall story. Interesting to learn that Bill Fries is a former ad guy, as well.”
I am now anticipating the White Castle commercials featuring truck driver W.C. Slyder hauling a load of five-holed patties. “…at the White Castle steam-’em-up and keep-on a-slidin’ cafe.”
Old Home Café
by Ed. Floden
Today’s Episode: “The One About The History Eraser Button”
Midnight Mike burst into the Old Home Café. “The reset button! He’s pressing the reset button!” he yelled loudly.
Carol, who was still conversing with the movie producer, asked “Who’s pressing what button?”
Mike plopped onto a stool. He was still breathing hard. “The author! He’s pressing it!”
“Author? Author of what? And what’s a reset button?” asked Carol. “Why is he pressing it?”
“A reset button is a literary device that’s used to set a storyline back to a point in the past, ignoring any events which may have occurred after the ’new’ starting point,” said Mike. “Y’know, like what happened to season seven of Dallas, when Pam found Bobby in the shower at the end of the first episode of Season Eight, or in evey episode of Gilligan’s Island. And Ed.’s pressing it.”
“Ed.? Who’s Ed.? The author?” asked Carol. “And the author of what?”
“Yep,” said Mike. “He’s the guy that created this whole thing: you, me, the Café, the producer… Well, not really. He did adapt the basic concept from a combination of sources, those being some television commercials, some record albums and a real-life visit to Pisgah, Iowa. He calls it ’creative extension’.”
“Ed. is God?” asked Carol. “That’s either impossible or blasphemous!”
“In way, he’s a god,” explained Mike. “But he’s not that God.”
“Then how can he do this? Press a reset button?” Carol was horrified. “Events which have transpired will have never happened? What events? How far back are we being reset?”
“All the way, as far as I know,” said Mike. “You, me, the movie guy over there, we won’t have ever existed.”
The movie guy was still seated in a booth by the window, waiting for Jon Bach to arrive. Everyone in the Café was ignoring him, as he wasn’t contributing to the present discussion.
“What about Avis and Harry and the others?” Carol wondered about the other characters, who were currently off-stage.
“Them, too. All of us. Gone. No trace will remain, except for backup files on an optical disk and maybe some cached pages from Google.”
“But why?” asked Carol. She was almost in tears. “What did we do?”
“We became inconvenient. The author decided that this plot wasn’t progressing well, and he wanted to drop it,” said Mike. “That, and he thinks that he can rewrite the ‘origin’ story that he wrote a three-and-a-half years ago. It did sorta suck.”
“But if Ed.’s a god, will he bring us back?”
“Maybe,” said Mike, “If we’re needed. I’m pretty sure that Avis will return. Not sure about anyone else.”
Carol looked out of the front window. Dawn was approaching, and the twilight was dimly illuminating the parking lot. A half-dozen rigs were parked out there. She turned to Mike. “When will the reset happen?” she asked. “What should we do to prepare?”
“There’s nothing to do,” said Mike. “When it happens, it happens. Can I get a cup of coffee? I’d like my final moments to be pleasant.”
“Sure thing,” said Carol, pouring a cup for Mike. “How about you, Mr. Producer? Would you like another
*poink*
The Legend-News is published randomly by TechRen Enterprises, a last-ditch resort. Copyright 2006 TechRen Enterprises, except for the stuff that we borrowed from elsewhere. Send complaints, kudos, suggestions, news and other contributions to legend-news@cw-mccall.com. “Steer One-Seven-Five-Zero-Green.”