Cajun Night

Thirty years ago, I was the Resident Manager at the Flagship Hotel on Galveston Island.  As I have written about before (and even before that), the Flagship was built on top of a pier extending out over the Gulf of Mexico.  You could even make an argument that the hotel was really a ship, since not only was she built entirely over water, but a few years before, a Governor of Texas, seeking reelection, had named the hotel as an official ship in the Texas Navy.   This was a signal honor that the hotel shared only with a couple of ferry boats and a beached submarine that had last tasted sea water during World War II.  Though small, the Texas Navy is far superior to any competing service offered by such states as Nevada, Iowa, or New Mexico.

Though profitable, the hotel changed hands frequently.  Every new owner was convinced that he could quickly double the profits of the inn, yet within six months he would eventually realize that he had overpaid for the property and that the only way to recoup his money was to resell the hotel.  As in many other professions, the only way to amass a small fortune in the hotel business was to start with a larger one.

Our current new owners had decided that what the hotel desperately needed was a first class restaurant--an eatery that would bring people from all over the island to dine in our large restaurant, enjoying the beautiful views of the waves crashing on the beach.  Accordingly, the hotel hired a rather famous Cajun Chef from New Orleans.  While the General Manager and I would continue to run the hotel and the bar, the new chef was to be given a free hand to manage the restaurant as he wished.

Despite the new chef’s reputation, I first realized that the hotel might be in for some trouble when the chef and I had a small disagreement over the keys.  The chef and his crew would arrive at the hotel every morning about 5:00 AM and begin prepping for the new day.  First thing every morning, the chef would come to me and I would give him the large collection of kitchen keys.  There were about two dozen keys for the pantries, liquor cabinets, walk-in freezers and refrigerators, which were all kept locked up at night.  There was a small fortune in that kitchen.

Within the first two weeks, the chef managed to lose this set of keys four times.  If we could not immediately find the missing keys, all the locks had to be changed, each time.  Even the new owners were getting a little annoyed at this cost.  The morning after the fourth set of keys vanished, when the chef arrived for his keys, the key rings were firmly fastened to a large metal ring a foot and a half in diameter.  While the chef was very unhappy with me, he took the key ring.  And within a week, he had managed to lose it, too.  

The chef never lost the next set of keys.  These consisted of a normal ring of keys welded to a six inch length of chain.  The other end of the chain was welded to an eight foot long piece of 2” water pipe.  The pipe had been painted with red and white stripes to resemble a barber pole.  It was heavy, cumbersome, and took two men to carry.    I promised the chef that if he managed not to lose it in the next few months, I might cut the pipe in half.  The chef was furious, but the owners backed me, and the new key ring-pole stayed for months.  As it turned out, that pole outlasted the chef.

The new chef made a lot of changes to the menu.  Shrimp Etouffee, blackened catfish, jambalaya, and gumbo were added to the menu. The restaurant was redecorated in a style that the General Manager and I privately called “Wrought Iron Whorehouse.”  And a small fortune was spent advertising the changes.  Unfortunately, despite the fact that our bartenders could now produce an excellent sazerac cocktail, the business in the restaurant did not dramatically improve--certainly nowhere near enough of an increase to justify the cost of the remodeling or the salary of the new chef.

Now, the summer was almost over.  Beach hotels start an inevitable decline in the fall until business revives with the arrival of Spring Break.  By now, our chef was desperate to prove himself and seized on an idea: an All-You-Can-Eat Cajun Night for the Friday night at the start of the Labor Day weekend.  The general manager and I thought this was a horrible idea, but the chef had been given a free hand.  We were astounded when the trucks began delivering the food for this dinner.  There were mountains of red potatoes, baskets of corn on the cob, and huge amounts of red beans and rice, but none of this compared to the thousands of pounds of live crawdads.  (Or as we say in Texas, “Mud Bugs”.)  Thousands and thousands of them crawling and snapping their miniature claws in large mesh bags that filled every storage place in the kitchen to capacity.

Within hours of the bags’ arrival, those damn crawdads were all over the hotel.  I suspected some complicity from the bellboys, but I couldn’t blame them.  The situation was hilarious to everyone but the chef.   I think the chef boiled about a thousand pounds of the critters as the sun set, in preparation for the horde of anticipated patrons.  Unfortunately, the patrons stayed away in droves.  We may have sold 25 pounds of crawdads that evening.  Maybe, but probably not.

The chef was surprised, but he had a new plan.  The next day, Saturday, he had the kitchen set up banquet tables on the sidewalk fronting the hotel.  He offered Cajun food to the throngs of people roller skating and walking along the seawall.  As it turned out, very few people want heavy Cajun food on an extremely hot day.  Another hundred pounds may have been sold. 

The manager and I pitied the poor chef, but we had other things to worry about.  Chief among these worries was the sign on the roof.  In large fluorescent looping script, the illuminated sign read “Flagship” in blue light.  Or it would have if the damn “L” hadn’t gone out.  We were getting more than a few phone calls along the lines of:  “Hello?  Is this the looovvvee boat?”

Late Saturday afternoon, as we stood there on the roof of the hotel examining that damn sign, the General Manager suddenly pointed at the water seven floors below and asked, “What the hell is that?”

There was a hundred foot long red lumpy oil slick floating out from underneath the hotel.  And there were strange little yellow dots in the red slick.  “I think,” I said, “that is about 2000 pounds of crawdads mixed with a few hundred ears of corn.”

The chef had decided to destroy the evidence of his culinary stupidity by walking out onto the loading dock and dumping the unsold crawdads, both living and boiled, into the bay.  I suspect the chef did not know that the crawdads would float.  Still, he probably would have gotten away with this subterfuge if the tide hadn’t been coming in.  The crawdads began washing up onto the beach below the pier.

Almost immediately, we began receiving phone calls from guests concerned about the strange mess on the beach.  “Don’t worry,” the front desk lied.  “This is a marvelous opportunity for you to observe a rare natural event.  Red tides only occur once or twice a year.”

The General Manager and I were both elated and terrified.  We were elated because the chef was toast.  He had cooked his last meal.  Terrified because at any minute we were going to get a phone call from the Health Department.  You can’t dump a ton of fresh water crustaceans into the bay without somebody noticing. 

Actually, it turned out we could.  Maybe it was because it was Labor Day weekend.  Maybe it was because the sun set only a few hours later and everyone was staring at that damn sign.  Whatever the reason, we got away with it.  By morning, most of the evidence was gone.  What happened to it?  Well, about midnight, I took a flashlight and went down the stairs from the end of the pier and walked out onto the narrow beach under the hotel.

That beach was alive, but not with crawdads.  There was a constant clicking and snapping noise.  As I moved the flashlight back and forth, I could see an army of sea gulls, crabs, and rats devouring everything.  Everywhere I looked, all I could see were teeth and eyes illuminated by my flashlight.  It was a sight that Dante could have used for a new level of Hell.  By morning, the tide going back out removed most of the remaining evidence.

As it turned out, Cajun night was popular after all.

House Arrest by the Rubber Gun Squad

The first hint of trouble was when I almost couldn’t get into the driveway.  Several police cars had set up a barricade in front of my house.  There was just enough space to go to the left of the barricade and turn into my driveway.  As I got out of my car, a man with a rifle ran up my driveway demanding to know if I lived here.  Even after I assured him that I was indeed parked in my own driveway, you could tell that he was unhappy at my having parked in my own driveway without his express permission.

“You can’t fix that kind of stupid,” the cop said.

“No, but the police department can hire it,” I replied.  From there, the evening went downhill.

For the next couple of hours, police cars came from all over the county.  I didn’t know we had so many cop cars.  I finally counted 37 city, county, and state vehicles.  The K-9 corps was called out.  The only people missing were the campus cops from Enema U.   I have never seen so many cops at one time without a tray of donuts.

Despite what the police told us--some wild lie about a disturbance a few blocks away--the police had surrounded a house 4 doors up from us.  We might never have known the truth if we hadn’t accidentally noticed the bright floodlights and the bullhorn that screamed for over 5 hours.  Only a trained observer could have picked up on these tiny details.

“BILLY THE KID, COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!  WE HAVE A WARRANT FOR YOUR ARREST.  YOU WILL BE HANDCUFFED AND TAKEN TO THE STATION.  WE ARE NOT HERE TO HURT YOU.”

Well, I’m lying.  His name wasn’t really Billy the Kid.  And I think the police may have been lying about the part about not hurting him.  Otherwise, why exactly did they call out two separate SWAT teams?  And did I mention the tank?  Why in the hell does this town own a tank?  Hell, we don’t even have a good barbecue restaurant.  Shouldn’t good ribs be a higher priority than a tank?

It was about this time that I walked out to my truck and noticed that there were an equal number of cop cars at the other end of the block.  Does everyone in this town own a cop car but me?  If you wanted to rob this town, this would be the perfect time.  I might have tried it myself but THERE WAS A TANK BLOCKING MY DRIVEWAY.

After five hours, the police finally made their big push.  Covered by a sniper on the roof of my neighbor’s house, and safely crouched behind the tank, the police rushed the house, blew open the front door and deployed a robot.  (If we can have a tank, why quibble about a robot?)   As the robot reconnoitered the house, the police eventually learned….that the house was empty. 

The police shut down a neighborhood, blocked a major thoroughfare, and assaulted a residential area so they could assault an empty house. 

There were dozens of heavily armed men moving up and down the street.  What would have happened if one of these men had accidentally fired his weapon?  The resulting firefight might still be going on.  If a car had backfired, a kid had thrown a firecracker, or that idiot sniper had fallen off the roof of my terrified neighbor’s house, the results could have been tragic.  It doesn’t really matter what crime the guy they were after was accused of.  Unless he was making (and testing) homemade nuclear hand grenades, he was not nearly as dangerous to my neighborhood as the police.

Any small town police department stupid enough to think it needs to own a tank and is stupid enough to use that tank against an empty house, needs to rethink things.  If we can’t get better cops, let’s not allow them to use anything more dangerous than a potato gun.

Several hours into the one-sided standoff, a local cat slowly walked across the boulevard—right through the assembled police, under and past the road block.  The cat was obviously not impressed; he had probably seen a galloping cluster fuck before.  If only the police had taken a clue from the cat—the only sign of intelligence, and the coolest cat, in the street.

Yep. It’s Still There

Many years ago, I took several classes in Archaeology as part of a degree in Anthropology.  One of these was a field school.  In other words, we dug big holes in the desert, mostly looking for things that weren’t there, had never been there, and weren’t likely to ever be there.

The site was chosen based on local rumor and legend, both of which turned out to be wrong.  What we hoped might be the remains of an old train stop turned out to be nothing more than the remains of an old adobe house.  Unfortunately, this took a very long time to prove, and even more unfortunately, the dig was in summer.  I love the desert, I even like the heat, but no one can like digging holes in the desert during the searing heat of summer.  We dug.  And we dug.  And we dug some more.  Eventually, the heat made us a little touchy about it.  “Don’t call us diggers, we prefer “Archaeo-Americans”.

Eventually, everyone on the site knew that we were not going to find anything linking old adobe remains with a train.  In a last ditch effort, the professor leading the dig sent another student and me out to canvass the nearby farms and houses.  Surely, someone must know something about that old house.

Actually, it turned out that no one remembered anything about those old adobe ruins.  The walls had been about three feet tall and, as far back as anyone could remember, the only change had been a slow, gradual erosion after each spring rain.  We must have interviewed two dozen people before finally, in desperation, I asked a farmer, “Didn’t anything interesting ever happen around here?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he answered.  “Unless you mean the train.”

Of course, he had our attention.  “What train?” we asked. 

The farmer led us out of his house and deep into a field of cotton.  About halfway across the field, there was a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing was a large sheet of weathered plywood.  The farmer walked up to the board, lifted it up, and revealed a large hole.  As the three of us stepped up and looked down about four feet, we could clearly see… well, it was a train.  To be precise, we were looking at the right side of a steam-powered locomotive.  Or at least part of one.

The farmer told us the story.  About a century before, the land along the Rio Grande turned into a swamp every time it rained.  Since the train line ran fairly close to the river, in many places the train crossed trestles and bridges over the lowest points.  One night, a flash flood washed out one of the trestles.  The next train--a locomotive, wood car, and three boxcars--simply ran off the track and flipped over onto its side in the mud.  The railroad recovered the freight cars but left the aging locomotive to remain where it lay.

Eventually, the river was dammed by the Army and the water used for irrigation, so that the land along the river became valuable farming property and the fields were carefully leveled.  Somewhere in this process, the train was buried and (mostly) forgotten.

For a little while there, two archaeology students thought they had made the find of the year.  We had a train!  A whole train!  This was going to be a great archaeological site, we would dig up the train and put it into a museum.

Unfortunately, reality set in pretty soon.  It would have cost a fortune to dig up that locomotive.  We would have to pay the farmer for lost crops, set up cranes, somehow fix it so that the cranes didn’t sink down and join that train, then transport the train out, repair it…  Are you starting to understand the enormous costs involved?  Worse, it seems the southwest is just lousy with those old trains.  Nearly every small town has a locomotive sitting in the middle of town surrounded by a chain link fence to keep the children off the attractive nuisance.  Some of those towns would pay a pretty penny to have someone haul away the old eyesore.  No one really wants an old locomotive.

But everyone thinks they do.  Word spread about the train.  It’s been a few decades, and to this day, I get at least one phone call a year from someone who hears the story and has a great idea:  Why not dig it up?

Yes, the train is still there.  If you want a train, don’t call me.  Just go to Deming or Silver City and take down the fence and get theirs. 

The Feral Administrator Program

The campus of Enema U is under assault--we are in danger of being drowned by a tidal wave of administrators.  While they were never rare on campus, it was possible for a few weeks to pass without sighting an administrator on campus.  Occasionally, a vice-president could be spotted gently grazing in a coffee shop, or standing in the shade outside the Alumni Office.  While it was never easy to accurately determine the size of the herd, estimates of the population size were never higher than a few dozen breeding pairs.  

Sadly, those days of benign neglect are over.  Several factors led to the sudden over population. First, and perhaps the worst mistake, was when the university introduced a new major--a Bachelor’s Degree in University Administration.  After the success of the Golf Course Management program, perhaps this was an innocent mistake.  Unfortunately, this new program was not established under the School of Agriculture, where such ideas as selective breeding and culling the herd are widely understood and practiced; the new major was mistakenly also given to the Athletic Program.   

The new program began well, but soon (possibly due to low entrance requirements) there were simply too many majors.  In an attempt to reduce the size of the program (and in keeping with the best hiring practices of Administrators at Enema U) only students from other universities were allowed to apply to the program. 

Sadly, the administration population grew exponentially.  While no one knows exactly what the gestation period is for bureaucrats, according to one professor of Biology, it is entirely possible that administrators are born pregnant.

Today, it is practically impossible to cross the campus without sighting small herds of Executive Vice-Presidents or Assistant Associate Provosts.  At events such as convocations, the lowing of these administrators is deafening.  Worse, the campus is littered with their spoor--memos and reports can be seen everywhere, as ubiquitous as tumbleweeds in the breeze.

As an example of the problem, can you determine which of the following is not a real job title at Enema U?

a.  Senior Vice President of Research Integrity

b.  Dean of Student Articulation

c.  Dean of Student Success

d.  Vice President of Student Affairs

e.  Graduate School Mascot Handler

f.   Senior Vice President of Redundancy

g.  Executive Vice President of Redundancy

h.  None of the above

i.   Before e except after c.  Weird!

Sadly, the answer is h.  The problem is so severe, that it has been turned over to a new Vice President of Special Problems.  An investigation is under way at all levels and a report should reach us shortly.

In the mean time, I have a suggestion.  The university has for years operated a successful program to handle a similar problem: the Feral Cat Program.  Periodically, cats on campus are humanely trapped and taken to veterinarians, who vaccinate and neuter the animals.  Then, so the cats in the program can be recognized, the top of one ear is clipped.  Afterwards, the cat is released back on the campus.

Surely, this program would work equally well with our feral administrators.

Let’s Encourage the Others

Suddenly, with the foundering of the Costa Concordia off the Italian coast, people all over the world are thinking about a similar event 100 years ago this April.  For days, the news agencies interviewed survivors who consistently said, “Did you see the movie Titanic?”

Ignoring the strange fact that people tend to categorize real world events through the distorted prism of Hollywood, it is rather heartening to see so many people striving to find a historical reference to help explain the seemingly impossible loss of an “unsinkable” ship.  While I have no intention of repeating an endless stream of Titanic references—ending with the inevitable reminder that the Italian ship foundered on Friday the thirteenth—I do want to point out a few less obvious historical references.

As I write this, it is exactly one year after the US Airlines 1549 flight that ended with Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landing his Airbus in the Hudson River.  After a miraculous landing, Sully walked up and down the aisle of his aircraft, even as it slowly sank, making absolutely sure that every passenger and crew member had safely evacuated the plane.  There were no casualties.

Almost forgotten today is Pan Am Flight 6.  On October 16, 1956, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was attempting to fly from Hawaii to San Francisco when it lost two of its four engines.  Captain Ogg managed to fly the crippled aircraft, and its 24 passengers and 7 crew members, to the Coast Guard Cutter Pontchartrain, and circle the ship until daylight. The ditching was successful, and Captain Ogg was the last man off his doomed plane.  There were no casualties, excepting the 40 crates of parakeets in the luggage compartment.

When the SS Andrea Doria collided with the MS Stockholm in July 1956, the captain knew immediately that the ship would sink.  Despite the fact that the ship immediately listed so badly that half of the life boats could not be used, the efficiency of the crew, led by Captain Calamai, ensured that the only casualties were a result of the collision, not from the evacuation.  Only after every passenger and crew member was off the ship did Captain Calamai leave his ship.

While the exact cause of the Costa Concordia accident is not (at this time) known, it appears that Captain Schettino deliberately steered his vessel too close to the shore in order to provide his passengers a better view of the coast.   When the ship hit the rocky reef, opening an enormous hole in the ship’s hull, the captain tried to ground his ship on the nearby shore.  Obviously, by this point, the captain fully knew his ship was doomed.

No warning was given to the passengers for an hour, even as the ship began to list.  No orders were given by the Captain to lower the lifeboats.  The passengers, most of whom had not yet been drilled in safety precautions, were left to fend for themselves.  While it is not yet known exactly when the Captain abandoned his passengers, his crew, his ship, and his responsibility, it is an undeniable fact that he was arrested on shore long before the ship was completely evacuated.  Captain Schettino was on shore long before his purser (who broke a leg when the ship rolled onto its side) was rescued by helicopter.

There is one more historical event to consider.  In March 1757, Admiral Sir John Byng was executed for his failure to aggressively engage the French at the Battle of Minorca.  He was court-martialed, found guilty of “failing to do his utmost”, and executed by firing squad on the quarterdeck of the HMS Monarch in the full view of the assembled fleet. 

Byng's failure is referred to in Voltaire’s novel Candide with the line Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres – "In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.”

If Nominated, I Will Not Run

I am very sorry to announce that I am not running for president.  While I have no doubt that most of you will be severely disappointed at this news, I have no choice.  It is my wife’s fault.

Evidently, I will never be able to run for political office.  No matter how much I might want to,  it appears that I do not have the right kind of wife to be a politician.

Herman Cain is just the latest in a very long line of politicians who have cheated on their wives (with partners ranging from chubby file clerks to farm animals) yet they still somehow want the voters to trust them enough to give them the most important job in America.  During the Clinton impeachment fiasco, my eldest son once asked me, “If his wife can’t trust him, why should we?”

Actually, I’m not all that surprised.  I have always taken it for granted that the most powerful man in the world could probably get laid.  All things considered, this is probably a good thing.  I think we can all agree that we don’t want the most powerful man in the world (the man whose finger hovers over the nuclear button) to get… anxious.

I understand the powerful men believing they can ignore social conventions.  I can even understand these men believing that somehow their peccadillos won’t be discovered even as they undergo a very public anal exam by the press.  But where in the world do these politicians   find wives who will allow them to do such nonsense and then still stand by them on a podium, hand in hand, and pretend to smile lovingly at their scumbag husbands.

Herman Cain, after his ten year affair was exposed, somehow stood in public--with his wife--and made a public apology that miraculously managed to make it sound as if it was the press that was at fault.  What was it that Cain said?  "I am at peace with my wife."

Christ on a Popsicle stick!  If my mistress of ten years came forward and outed me in the national press, I would be in pieces with my wife.  The last words I would hear from my wife, as she stood over my bleeding body, would be:  "How do you reload this son of a bitch?"

Even with the use of strong drugs, if my wife stood behind me during such a press conference, it would be so she could keep carving my spinal column into spaghetti-o's with a dull spoon.  I simply do not believe my wife would allow herself to be humiliated that way.

More importantly, why would any man want to subject his wife to such public ridicule?

Perhaps more importantly, why are we far more interested in how a politician treats his mistress than how he treats his wife?

Evidently, to be a good politician, you have to be a lying cheating scumbag.  My wife, the Doc, reminds me frequently that she knows “where the hurty parts are.”  I think I’ll pass.

Profound Discussions

Several years ago, while a student, I had the habit of getting an early cup of coffee before classes started.  As I sat in the cafeteria at Enema U, I would invariably see a trio of my favorite history profs sitting together and having coffee.  I used to wonder what they were talking about.  Some abstract historical point?  A discussion of the latest pedagogical approach?

Move forward a few decades.  I now have coffee with two of the three above professors (the third having retired).  And if you are a student observing us, wondering about our deep thoughts…  We talk about the news, the weather, and our children.  And women.  Our conversations are about as deep as a parking lot puddle after a summer fog.

Our emails are not much different, either.  Professor Grumbles, the German professor, and I have had an ongoing discussion about movies for years.  Here is a recent email exchange:

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:01 AM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: movie proportions

I think we need a new system of rating movies.

Grumble’s Movie Proportions

01%   truly memorable, may withstand test of time = A

05%   thought-provoking, worth seeing = A-

05%   well-made, artistically rewarding = B

20%   entertaining distraction or popcorn thriller = B-

20%   pleasant, easily forgotten  = C

49%   not worth the ticket price = D/F

I probably should include examples.

Note total lack of correlation with Academy Awards or Golden Globes.

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:21 AM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

 I think we need a grading rubric.

The Milliorn System

·         Entertaining and memorable movie with a unique plot.  Possible 1-60 points.

·         Nudity with an attractive female actress.  Possible 1-20 points.

·         Nudity with a male actor.  Negative 10 points.

·         Gratuitous Violence.  Possible 1-15 points.

·         Car Chase.  Possible 1-10 points.

·         Cool airplane.  Possible 1-10 points.

·         Crashing cool airplane.  Negative 50 points.

·         Unique and horribly cruel violence.  Possible 1-5 points.

·         Unique and horribly cruel violence inflicted on anyone named Sheen.  Possible 10-50 points.

·       Horribly idiotic firearms mistake.  Negative 25 points.

·       Presence of Kung Fu or any other Asian martial arts without Jackie Chan.  Negative 25 points.

·       Plot consisting of 2 men discussing their lives and dysfunctional families.  Negative 100 points.

·       Plot consisting of several couples trying to relive college moments.  Negative 100 points.

·       Coming of Age plot with adorable child actors related to some famous star.  Negative 1000 points.

·       Sequels or remakes.  Negative 10 points for each previous occurrence.   At this point, any movie with Rocky in the title can achieve, at the unlikely best, 40 points.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:27 AM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

A bit more subjectively flexible (what elements of a car chase give it more points?) than I would prefer.  But thorough!  I would also have to add: 

·         Clumsy misuse of a foreign language.  Negative 20 points.

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:28 AM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Well, a tank chase, with nude women driving them, would receive MUCH more in points than say… the car chase in Thelma and Louise.   Let me amplify this…  Which would you rather watch?

A.      Thelma and Louise are chased off a cliff.

B.      Angelina Jolie, nude, drives a Sherman Tank after a school bus, full of screaming, naked cheer leaders, that eventually finds safety at a lesbian nudist colony.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:11 PM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Only if B takes place in a warm spring drizzle.  Of vegetable oil.   And Angie should be in an open Jeep.  The screaming doesn’t matter.  I won’t get around to turning on the sound.

So this is some kind of fashion statement?

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:12 PM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Screaming cheerleaders jump up and down.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:15 PM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Again – the screaming is irrelevant.  Jumping, though: excellent.  And slo-mo, please.

From: Mark Milliorn
To: Professor Grumbles
Date Sent: 12/2/2011 12:20:54 PM
Subject: RE: movie proportions

And Sherman tanks are driven by tugging and pulling on long levers.  Obviously, we would not want to deny the director the artistic use of such an obvious phallic symbol.  You’ll just have to settle for interior shots of Angie, sweating profusely, straining as she manhandles (or womanhandles) the steering.

And so it went.  I have consulted with my colleague, and Professor Grumbles and I are willing to discuss a possible movie treatment, but we insist on final say for both script and costumes (or lack thereof).