Magical Realism and Me. Or Gabriel García leaves his Márquez on me

 

Happy Birthday Nancy!

I had never heard of Gabriel García Márquez until my senior year of college. I don't think I'd heard the term magical realism until then either. My public school education, in a very good school system might I add, leaned heavily towards old, dead American white men.  Except in February.  In February we would get an old dead American black man.  Whoops! and my privilege is showing because when I say American I mean United States. Contiguous United States I think. Man, contiguous is a great word isn't it? Even if you didn't know what it meant you could kind of figure it out don't you think?

In college I studied business and I was all business about studying business.  I took my electives based on the following criteria:

1. Did they start after 10 am?

2. Did they seem like they would be pretty easy?

3. What about 10:30? Anything start after 10:30?

I think at least one semester I was able to finagle a 4 day a week schedule.  Maybe more than one semester. I needed as much time as possible to be sleeping in my dorm room, eating buffalo wings and watching and rewatching the 5 movies we had on VHS.  These movies were:

1. The Blues Brothers

2. About Last Night

3. Saint Elmo's Fire

4. From The Hip*

5. Stripes

This list was also the rotation. Although we watched the Blues Brothers everyday.  One time we had a, "Battle of the Bands" at the Student Union.  They needed something to keep the crowd entertained while they tallied the votes. They asked me if I would do my stand-up material. We had previously had the Doritos Comedy New Talent Search or something like that and I had written a tight 5** which was probably more of a loose 5 with a tight 1.  Fortunately I had the good sense to demure.  In its place my roommate Chuck and I  reenacted the scene where The Blues Brothers perform, "Stand By Your Man" complete with all the moves and hand motions.  If you knew Chuck you would be really shocked to hear that he did this. He was not drunk. That's the power of the Blues. 

Man, I wasted a lot of time and energy in college. Anyways, in my Senior year I finally took a creative writing class with a wonderful teacher named Daniel... something. That's unfortunate. I know I have his name somewhere.  Papers at my sister-in-law's house in her basement. Fun aside, in this class everyone's work was numbered and read blind.  And each class we would choose 3-4 to discuss. After a class or two of mine not getting picked, I started to suggest my own work: every week.  Daniel must have caught on. Because I always suggested mine, and only mine.  But he never talked to me about it.  Probably, because mine were so good. Honestly, some of the other ones were garbage. 

So, we always read interesting stories in that class.  And one of them was the Márquez classic, "The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings".  That story blew me away.  Because other than a very old man with enormous wings showing up one day, everything else in the story was normal and everyday.  Magical realism is not the same as fantasy, or urban fantasy and honestly I wish someone would explain that to the person categorizing books on Amazon.  Magical realism everything is real, but some things are more real than others. The fantastic elements are treated as real.You question reality. 

One of our assignments was to write a follow up to one of the stories we had read in class. I wrote a follow up to, "The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings".  It was called, "The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Returns!" (Genius, right?).  This is also at my sister-in-law's house. Hopefully.  I only remember 2 things from the story. One was a throwaway joke about him being accompanied by a very young woman with enormous boobs (it was slightly more subtle than that but not much.) And that a miracle is performed where Folgers crystals can not be distinguished from fresh ground coffee. ***

Márquez really opened my eyes to a different kind of story and a different kind of storytelling. If you liked my book, I'm sure you'll enjoy, "Leaf Storm and Other Stories" That's not an affiliate link just a good book. 

*From The Hip is a great Judd Nelson movie where he plays a wacky lawyer.  

**The idea of a, "tight" set is an often discussed idea among comedians. Your goal is to develop an hour. That way you can have the lucrative Netflix special. On the way to developing your hour you might start with a tight five or a tight ten.  You perform for a half hour but it's not all fully developed. You're still writing and working stuff out on stage.  But that, "tight" portion? All thriller no filler. For more on this read "Moses and the Tight Ten Commandments" available now in my book, "My Sexy Date with Bigfoot".

***This is the Folgers commercial. It was a big deal at the time. Although this commercial is from 1983 and the class was in 1989. Already a dated reference. 

And this is the Budweiser Whassup Commercial. Because it rules. 

Stand By Your Man