Monthly Archives: February 2022

Thanks, ‘Carissa’, for the Ventura Shout-out

by Woody

I remember watching “Little Miss Sunshine” in a downtown Ventura movie theater a number of years ago and the audience erupted with applause and cheers at the dramatic pageant arrival scene when Steve Carell’s dad character, driving the family in a bright yellow VW Microbus, misses the freeway exit and has to take an overpass to turn around…

…and the brief on-screen “star” is our 101 California Street exit – only four blocks away from the movie theater we were watching in – with the high-rise Crowne Plaza beach hotel in the background.

If you are at all like me you feel a similar thrill whenever you see Ventura in a Hollywood role. For example, our downtown in “Swordfish” or several local spots in “Two Jakes” or our beloved pier in “God Bless America” to name three more.

I imagine it’s how Monterey’s “Cannery Row” neighborhood must have felt to be immortalized in John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name. Less famously, the fictional coastal town of Cabrillo hints strongly of Ventura – and the old Star-Free Press – in my predecessor Chuck Thomas’ novel “Getting Off The Map.”

Well, a new book has me smiling and cheering for featuring Ventura in its pages. Actually, the fictional beach town is named Buena Vista, but make no mistake it is Buenaventura. From the beach and pier to Main Street and the foothills, its author – Dallas Woodburn – pays homage to her dear hometown through and through.

My daughter’s second novel, “Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life” from Immortal Works, has just been published and – Boasting Dad Warning – instantly soared to No. 1 on Amazon’s list of Young Adult New Releases.

The story centers around two teenagers, Rose and Brad, who travel parallel journeys of self-discovery, empowerment, and acceptance after popular “queen bee” Carissa tears apart their lives. In Hollywood parlance, it’s “Brittany Runs a Marathon” meets “Some Kind of Wonderful.”

A wonderful kind of thing some writers like to do is scatter “Easter eggs” that only certain readers will find and recognize. “Carissa” has a basketful of such hidden treasures. For example, Tony’s Taco Shop is obviously Snapper Jack’s; Nature’s Grill makes a cameo as Nature’s Café; and in a role encompassing its own storyline is the Buena Vista radio station WAVE-104.3 that is, clear as a Santa Ana wind-blown summer day, Ventura’s KVTA-1590 where Dallas has been a guest on esteemed radio personality Tom Spence’s morning show. The observant reader will find more brightly dyed local gems.

Books are time machines and while “Carissa” will surely transport most readers back to high school, it carries me to when Dallas was only 6 or 7 and already dreaming of becoming an author. In my mind’s eye I can still see her, sitting tall on her knees, in a chair at the kitchen table and typing on her great-grandfather’s restored Underwood No. 5 typewriter. Punching the QWERTY keys, firmly with only her right index finger, she let her imagination soar.

There was modern magic in that 1911 heirloom: in second grade, Dallas had a poem – “Peanut Butter Surprise” about a PB&J sandwich made with a jellyfish because the grape jelly ran out – published in The Star’s “Kids Corner” feature and in fifth grade self-published a book of short stories and poems that sold 2,000 copies.

The little girl’s big dreams kept coming true with a play produced off-Broadway, a John Steinbeck Creative Writing Fellowship, and a handful of awards for her debut novel “The Best Week That Never Happened” two years ago.

Thanks to “Carissa” her writing life remains charmed, not ruined.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Lovely ‘Poem’ Becomes Woodchips

by Woody

One hundred nine rings in an oak stump ago, Joyce Kilmer penned “Trees” with one of the most widely familiar opening couplets in America poetry:

I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.

I thought of these words as I looked out my window and across the street as a lovely “poem” got sawed down, cut up, turned into woodchips and trucked away.

It was like seeing a theatrical street version of Shel Silverstein’s classic children’s book “The Giving Tree” starring two workmen in white hardhats and optic-yellow vests. Actually, this story was even sadder for this tree’s limbs would not be used to build a house for the grown boy; its trunk not crafted into a boat to sail the seas; when the workmen’s work was finished, there was not even a stump left to sit and rest upon.

Majestically tall, its trunk too thick to reach one’s arms around, the tree had become a botanical Leaning Tower of Pisa that was in danger of being toppled by a strong wind.

And so, beginning at 9 o’clock, a loud-crying chainsaw turned morning into mourning as a workman in a gargantuan cherry-picker amputated the branches one by one by one, thicker to smaller, as he hydraulically rose higher, higher, higher.

The felled branches were next cut into manageable lengths and fed into a woodchipper. The lines of a “poem” went in, mulch came out.

Lastly, the towering barren trunk came down. Instead of being made into long lumber for a home or boat, it was sawed into short logs to be burned in fireplaces. This was not a heartwarming thought.

It was not my tree, not in my yard, and yet all the same it was mine, and yours too, because trees are for all of us to enjoy. From start to finish, what took many decades to become living poetry was erased in less than four hours. It was tree-mendously sad.

Kilmer again: A tree that may in summer wear / A nest of robins in her hair.

            No more birds will nest in the lovely tree I used to see out my east-facing kitchen window, the rising sun climbing its branches each day.

The melancholy event gave me pause thinking about a handful of memorable trees in my life: The evergreen beside the driveway of my first boyhood home that my two older brothers and I attempted blind shots over during games of H-O-R-S-E. The sturdy buckeye we swung Tarzan-style from a rope near a pond. The apple tree I picked snacks off of on a shortcut home from grade school. The orange tree my two kids helped me plant when they were in grade school. The giant redwoods we saw, in awe, as a family. And on and on.

I think “poems” fill all our lives more than we generally realize. We draw trees in kindergarten and climb trees as older kids and hopefully at least once plant a tree, for as the Greek proverb states: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” Old women, too.

Kilmer once more: Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree.

Afterwards, this fool walked over to determine how old the tree had been by counting its rings, but the stump was cut off below ground and covered with dirt. I may be overestimating its age by half, but I like to think it sprouted in 1913 – the same year “Trees” came into being.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Rooting for “Howaboutthat!” Super Bowl

by Woody

Who are you rooting for in Super Bowl LVI/56?

It is a coin toss for me, not of indifference but rather different reasons of passion for the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals.

Let me begin with the Bengals because my rooting roots to them reach back to their very beginning as an expansion franchise in the American Football League in 1968. They were crummy that first season, losing 11 of 14 games, but something really “Crummy” happened the next year that made me pull for them nearly as dearly as I did my beloved Cleveland Browns.

Jimmy Crum, affectionately called Jim Crummy by us school kids, was a popular local TV news sportscaster famous for his trademark plaid sports coats and one-word catchphrase “Howaboutthat!”

As good luck would have it – mine, not Crum’s – he suffered a gallbladder attack or appendicitis or something else that required surgery and my dad performed it. As a thank you, Crum arranged for Pops to bring my two older brothers and me – ages 14, 12 and 9 – to the Bengals training camp at Wilmington College about 70 miles from our home in Columbus.

It was a “howaboutthat!” kind of day. Not only did we get to watch practice from the sidelines, we also ate lunch shoulder-to-hulking-shoulders with the players. Our seatmates included hotshot rookie quarterback Greg Cook; star running back Paul Robinson, who the previous season finished second in the MVP voting to Joe Namath; and menacing middle linebacker Bill Bergey.

While I remain a die-hard disappointed Browns fan, the Bengals were always my second-favorite team…

… until the Rams leapfrogged them two decades later.

While “no cheering in the press box” is an unwritten rule for sportswriters, I nonetheless rooted silently for the Rams while covering them from 1987 to 1994. After all, a winning team is a lot more fun to write about than a bungling one.

My favorite memory from those days happened during the 1989 season, during halftime of a game against the Atlanta Falcons, when legendary columnist Jim Murray asked me if he could sit next to me at lunch in the Anaheim Stadium press box.

“Y-y-yes, of course, M-M-Mr. Murray,” I stammered.

“Please, call me Jim,” my writing idol said and a friendship was born, although I never could bring myself to call him Jim.

Rams quarterback Jim Everett, who had thrown 31 touchdown passes the previous season and had not slowed down now, threw two TD spirals in the first half against the Falcons. In response to my gushing comments about Everett, Murray smiled wryly and knowingly and said in a don’t-get-carried-way tone: “He’s not Bob Waterfield yet.”

Waterfield, it should be noted, led the Rams to two NFL championships on his way to the Hall of Fame. Everett, it shortly turned out, was on his way to being a flash in the pan. It was a lesson, one of many from Murray, I have never forgotten.

Indeed, this season I have said more than once of the Bengals’ young star quarterback Joe Burrow: “He’s not Ken Anderson yet.” Anderson was the league MVP while leading the Bengals to their first Super Bowl victory in 1981.

Since I will not be in the press box at SoFi Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, I will be openly rooting for the Rams…

…but, in my heart of hearts, I think I will be rooting a little louder for the Bengals; rooting like a 9-year-old kid; rooting for a “howaboutthat!” game where Joe Burrow may not be Bob Waterfield yet, but is Ken Anderson already.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

 

Ode To The Junk Drawer

by Woody

The other day, after a minor mishap slicing a bagel, you might I think I cursed all the way to the bathroom medicine cabinet to get a Band-Aid.

Nope. I simply took two steps and opened the kitchen’s junk drawer.

Perhaps you call yours the “everything drawer” or “stuff drawer,” but by any name every household has one. It’s usually the drawer nearest the phone and for good reason.

Indeed, it is a little known fact that moments after Alexander Graham Bell completed his historic first telephone call – “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” – on March 10, 1876, he invented the junk drawer knowing he now needed a handy place to keep dozens of pencils (most with broken lead tips) and pens (good luck finding one that is not dried up) and paper (countless pads from realtors and plumbers) for taking down phone messages.

This junk drawer is even more packed than mine!

Likely, Mr. Bell also foresaw the black-hole-of-a-drawer storing a world tour of menus (Italian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican, Irish Pub…) for ordering takeout. Menus and pens, however, are only the tip of the iceberg.

A good junk drawer – even Martha Stewart’s or Felix Unger’s, I am certain – looks like a small town after a tornado strike. It is the Swiss Army Knife of drawers and in all likelihood has such a knife buried beneath the haphazard takeout menus. Suffice to say, with the contents of a junk drawer McGyver could escape any calamity.

Imagine a rabbit being pulled out of a magician’s hat and you get an idea of a junk drawer. Indeed, I actually found a rabbit’s foot in mine, dyed blue, probably a prize one of my kids won at the Ventura County Fair eons ago.

Actually, a good junk drawer is more like Mary Poppins’ magic carpetbag from which she miraculously unpacks a mirror, apron, packet of hairpins, throat lozenges, bottle of scent, larger bottle of medicine, heeled shoes, seven flannel nightgowns, measuring tape (for “taking measure” of one’s character), small folding armchair, large potted plant, tall floor lamp and taller hat stand.

For fun, lets look inside my own magic carpetbag. Take a deep breath, for commas are about the only thing I did not find although there were two children’s brightly colored (red and yellow) alphabet letters (Q and S) refrigerator magnets. The rest of the inventory includes…

…rubber bands paper clips three spools of thread blue white green sewing needles loose buttons loose postage stamps loose Band-Aids loose batteries (AA 9-volt AAA D – it’s a lottery if they still have juice or are dead) a handful of postcards received two scissors one shoelace nail clippers deck of playing cards one red checker loose birthday candles loose balloons Scotch tape packing tape near-empty roll of duct tape Elmer’s glue sunglasses old reading glasses ear buds iPod shuffle (thought to be lost) calculator (dead) James Taylor CD extra charger cord for cellphone…

…myriad single-serve packets of ketchup Sweet’N Low taco sauce soy sauce one set of takeout plastic cutlery jackknife for opening mail and packages enough pens to stock a shelf at Staples staples stapler pencils pencil sharpener with the plastic bulb fallen off and wood-and-lead shavings everywhere a few loose crayons countless expired coupons one Phillips head screwdriver two slotted head screwdrivers hammer pliers 12-inch ruler four keys to who knows what tape measure combination lock with unknown combo small flashlight and enough loose change to have a large pizza delivered.

I’ll wager all of those coins, with bank coin wrappers to roll them in, that your own junk drawer is a similarly supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com