Tuckases?

Plotnik has had a busy week. He wrote two stories for the current issue of the Snowy Valley Voice, a long essay for the next issue, a song about moving to Harlem and actually finished one of his long Thailand-Rabbis of Bangkok Stories.

It always amazes Plottie, as it should every writer, how much crap he puts onto the page. The proof is that no matter how finished he thinks a story is, a month later he can find hundreds of words to remove. Every time a story is shortened it gets better, because if it didn't need tightening he wouldn't be futzing with it.

Songs are different, because every word counts, every rhyming pattern, every melodic phrase. But even a song can be terribly overwritten. No songwriter ever wants to face the truth that the best songs, the ones we sing to ourselves over and over, are the ones with just a few chords, a repeating melody and a chant that goes: "Oooo-woo-woo-woo."

Of course, sometimes you write something perfect and you have to let it be. Like this couplet that describes this coming Saturday when the Plotniks will be joining the Lucas and Monaghan extended families at Kirby Cove to eat corned beef, drink beer and watch the Blue Angels:

Monaghans and Lucases
Sitting on their Tuckases.