Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Helen Gurley Brown: Getting more media attention than any traditional feminist did or will

Fun gals always trump good gals.  When Princess Diana died the media attention she received way overshadowed the gravitas respect global reporters paid to Mother Teresa. Anyway, Christopher Hitchens had done a nice job, at least in some circles, tarnishing the MT brand.

So, it's no surprise that Helen Gurley Brown's death at age 90 is receiving so much attention.  She empowered women to operate their lives and their loves strategically.  Cut out the good girl stuff, she told us, because it won't get you far.

No feminist had her mainstream reach.  Therefore no feminist has earned or will receive the kind of send-off Brown is having.  We strategic-minded females can envision Brown in heaven sizing up if she should pursue God the Father or God the Son.  Given her inventiveness, she will probably run a contest asking gals, dead and alive, who would be the better catch. 

Andrew Cuomo, why can't we all be like him, perfect in every way

Andrew Cuomo has had an amazing comeback.  That 180, and the obvious lessons he learned along the way which he applied so brilliantly, has some folks looking at failure in a different - and more judgmental - way.

One angry man writes to the Ethical Guerrilla that the U.S. government should mandate that failures turn themselves around, just like Cuomo did.  If they don't, then measures should be taken.

 
The Ethical Guerrilla, that is Mark Matousek, doesn't buy into the modest proposal of punishing personal and professional failure.  Here you can read his iconic analysis of a society which engineers itself only for success.  Such a society would, like the Inuit culture, put its non-winners on an ice floe, headed toward the ocean.

As we enter the nation's third downturn since the 21st century began, too many of us are feeling bad about ourselves.  We shoulda been wiser.  We shoulda saved more money.  We shoulda majored in business, not English literature.  This invidious pattern, notes Matousek, comes because:

"too much of our lives are spent adjusting our expectations, tweaking our standards, and managing our reputations in light of other's accomplishments."

Instead, like Cuomo, we might just embrace our problems as uniquely our own and solve them in our unique ways.  While we're doing that we become self-protective about letting the angry in who are on a mission to punish us.  We also don't compare the pickle we're in to anyone else's cucumber.

Matousek has published "Ethical Wisdom."  It's available in bookstores.  Or you can purchase it here online.  [Disclosure: After Matousek read my review of "Ethical Wisdom," he asked my firm Download Socialmediamarketing to represent him.]

Hospice

SHORT SHORT FICTION by Jane Genova

"Think of this as the last stop on Metro North - heading home, not to work."  That's what the Manhattan public relations executive said to himself.  He had to say it to himself several times before his hands stopped trembling. 

But stop they did.  His jolly roommate -who joked about the bucket list - did the rest to shift him into this new reality. 

"My daughter brings the meanest chocolate chip walnut cookies you'll ever taste," the roommate gushed. 

"A gusher."  The man took the cookies and didn't dare use the power technique of freezing his face into a disapproving WASP look.  He had worked very hard to insulate himself from gushers like those he had grown up with in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey.  No, they're not good-natured, he had decided years ago.  They're, well, simply gushers.

The next day two colleagues and an intern came to the hospice to visit him.  The gusher siphoned off any awkwardness by sucking up all the oxygen.  "Why not write a book about this," suggested the intern.  "Like Art Buchwald," she added.  He knew she would keep coming back, visiting him, the only one.  Big heart, along with big boobs. 

"Will that cutie take pity on two dying men?" the gusher asked. 

"In college I did one of the those two girls things.  I wonder what it would be be with two guys, one girl?" 

The book was about two action heroes from Planet Neptune who get stranded in a hospice on earth by clerical error.  Only they don't know it was a hospice or why so many pretty young things were putting out.  Whenever they attempted to leave and move on with their planet wanderings some earnest folks would talk them out of it.  Continually they transmitted messages back to Neptune about the unusually high death rate on earth.

The book was and remains a best-seller.  The proceeds keep going to the gusher's daughter, the intern and scholarships for Jersey City residents who want careers in hospice care.   The man's former wives fought the will, unsuccessfully.

The Last Canoli

SHORT SHORT FICTION by Jane Genova

The driver had been a Roman Catholic priest with an advanced degree in theology.  Not much of a demand for either so here he was taking this management consultant from his home in Wilton, Connecticut to his office in Manhattan, to clients and lunches with those clients, and back to the manor. 

Every Thursday, the driver had to make an extra trip to Jersey City, New Jersey.  There was an Italian bakery which sold canoli made with rum, chocolate, pistachios and dried fruits.  The management consultant called the canoli on Thursday "his kind of sex."  Constantly the management consultant ranted about men like Eliot Spitzer who had gone for the real thing and lost it all.

At 5:35 P.M. the driver picked up the management consultant at his Park Avenue office.  The management consultant saw the bulging white box filled with canoli on the back seat, where it always was on Thursday.  His body shifted into over-drive.  That was it.  It was one canoli Thursday too many.  The former priest never liked the guy.  As he waited for the EMT, he gave no last blessing.

Short Short Story - Could replace novel like tweets replaces blogs

The short story is back.  Actually the shorter versions of that genre such as the short short story are what's hot. 

That shouldn't surprise us in this era of short takes.  And, reports A. O. Scott, it could replace the longer form novel just as the 140-character Tweets could replace the any-length weblog.

Stunner:  My very first attempt at fiction - my short short story "Fat Guy From Greenwich" - published on this very blog was taken up around the world - quickly.  Could fame and fortune come to writers who master short-form fiction?

Fat Guy From Greenwich

SHORT SHORT FICTION by Jane Genova

I met the Fat Guy From Greenwich, Connecticut the way everyone else did.  A master chameleon he had read our souls and fed those spirits what they craved.  That meant he had to deal with the universe on a one-to-one basis because his act was so customized for the mark.

For 18 months I schlepped to his home office in Greenwich.  We would work in his massive library.  The beams were enormous.  He wouldn't allow me to ghostwrite his articles on 1950s television sitcoms in my own home office.  The pay was decent, not good.  Each article, when done, went somewhere.  The Fat Guy said The Publisher was reviewing them and I must be prepared for changes.  Before I completed the day's work his wife would come into the library and serve High Tea.  She would join us.  They were a smooth team.  She reinforced giving me what my soul needed.

The 18 months ended when I entered the library and The Fat Guy was hanging from one of those beams.  I assume he chose his most hysterically-prone hostage to find him.  I also assumed that he would have the non-visible security video equipment going in the event that I would try to pilfer something.  He  had in mind for his wife to run the tapes and have me arrested. 

I didn't even glance around to tempt myself.  Instead I called 911.  The Greenwich police observed there had been plenty of suicides, but mostly the passive kind, since the financial crash.  Likely there was never any The Publisher.  The Fat Guy probably just wanted to talk about 1950s sitcoms.