Bold, Audacious, He’ll Spill the Beans : The Real (and Smarmy) Truth About Your Calendar Section!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Five shots ripped into my groin and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life!

--Max Shulman, “Sleep Till Noon”

I’ve decided to give up the Good Life, pass Go, collect $200,000 in advances and head directly to the Better Life.

I’ve decided to spill all the beans. I’ve decided to write a kiss-and-tell-all book about Calendar, all the straight poop on the secret life styles and loves of the writers and editors and copy messengers who bring you this section.

It will be an inside look at the backside of the paper. Little known facts about little known people. Who can’t spell very well. Which ones split infinitives and dangle participles and use prepositions to end sentences with. I’ll expose your favorite critics and relate in vivid detail their mysterious juxtapositions and their horribly twisted syntaxes.

Yes, it may be messy and ugly, but the truth must out. That’s the way it is with history.

I’m gonna take myself to the American Booksellers (and book makers) conclave next weekend in the Anaheim Convention Center and ink a pact. All the wheelers and dealers will be there. I’ll ask for cash up front and then either buy some land in Bev Hills or pay off my Bullock’s bill.

In my meetings with the publishers, I’ll emphasize that the operative word for this astounding tale will be scorching.

I’ll tell them that this book will tear the lid off this town. My facts will be pure and unadulterated, hard to believe, impossible to comprehend and difficult to swallow.

I will pull no punches, mince no words, spare no parts, take no prisoners!

We’ll need a great title. We’ll take a page from Donald Regan, who’s having current success telling all. His book is “For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington.”

Mine will cover a tighter territory: “Not for the Record: From Broadway to Spring Street, bounded by 1st and 2nd Streets.”

We’ll need a bold cover. Something shocking, passionate, thrilling.

In the book, I’ll have plenty of audacious details on arguments we’ve had over the years over punctuation and properly constructed sentences. Plus the heated byplay over the new type face for our listings. I’ll be punctilious, for sure.

As for The Sleaze Factor that has proven so helpful to book sales in these times, I’m a little short. As far as I can tell, life around the office is short on adventure and romances. I may have to develop and interpose a few tawdry and smarmy things.

These are always good reading and we writers have permission at interposing, via the First Amendment. Makes for a livelier reading of history. In fact, I’d say it’s an obligation and a burden that we writers must bear. It’s referred to as artistic license.

Likewise, I suppose, publishers have some sort of commercial license.

I recall Mort Sahl once relating how he was touring his favorite bookstore and noticed this enormous energy emitting from the paperback stall. He saw a great cover, with a dashing Genghis Khan ripping along on horseback, fending off these naked maidens trying to clamber aboard and get to him.

The title was “Here, Take My Flesh.”

Subtitled, “Or, Introduction to Accounting.”

Of course, I’ll sell my rights to the movies. I’ll offer them to several studios, which then can commence bidding. I’ll hold out for casting rights, “final cut” and gross points. Plus sound-track albums, the concession on T-shirts, battery-powered dolls and glow-in-the-dark neckties with the Calendar logo.

I’m mulling over Steven Spielberg to direct.

For casting our Calendar staff, I’m kicking around Greta Scacchi, Anne Archer, Jennifer Beals, Susan Sarandon, Theresa Russell and Kim Basinger. With Jacqueline Bisset as honorable mention.

For the guys, I’m tossing out names like Patrick Swayze, Pierce Brosnan, Bruce Willis, John Lone, Sidney Poitier, Mel Gibson and Eddie Murphy. I can visualize Dabney Coleman as the critic with the heart of gold. Rutger Hauer would play the killer.

(It just came to me that having some people killed will enhance the scenario, although not many people are actually killed during our normal workweek.)

As for my role, maybe if I lost 12-15 pounds, I could be mistaken for Rob Lowe. We’re very similar in many ways. We could be taken for one another under the right lighting conditions.

Well, never mind.

Forget the stuff aforementioned. I just read my horoscope and this isn’t a good day to handle business affairs.

But I may go out and make a friend of a Capricorn. Their astrological conjunction figures that “something very profitable could happen today if you use tact and diplomacy.”

We could double on the book and share a byline. I’m not sure how many books you can sell using tact and diplomacy, but the First Amendment can cut a wide swath.