{"id":5383,"date":"2010-12-12T21:29:55","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T02:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5383"},"modified":"2010-12-12T21:33:34","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T02:33:34","slug":"sunday-pancakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5383","title":{"rendered":"Sunday pancakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

An uneventful and rainy day here in New York, punctuated only by a trip out to Huntington for my semi-regular writing group. My prompt this week, such as it was, was a recipe for a high-rising pancake in GQ<\/i>. This wasn’t exactly my choice, but we draw inspiration where we can. Not so sure about this piece — I had fun writing it, and I think these exercises are good crafting skills regardless, but it’s not something I see much hope for developing. It’s a silly little disposable semi-story, and as such I have no problem posting it here:<\/p>\n

“The High-Rise Pancake”<\/p>\n

So this was it. They were kicking Jerry out of the architectural program, and he would be lucky if he didn’t lose his scholarship and get booted from State altogether.<\/p>\n

Designing an apartment complex that resembled a pancake, complete with a light, fluffy interior to a butter- and syrup-coated exterior, probably hadn’t been his smartest move ever. But was it really his fault that the griddle had malfunctioned, then exploded, in class? It was just a short circuit and a splash or two of buttermilk batter; no permanent damage had been done. Imagine if he had followed his original model’s design specs and included blueberries!<\/p>\n

But according to his professor, Jerry didn’t take his studies seriously, and this was just the final straw in a long line of…well, many other straws. Enough straw, perhaps, to build that cabana shaped like a giant straw hat that Jerry had designed for the first midterm. His professor had called that<\/em> impractical, too, however, and she certainly hadn’t appreciated the coconut rum and orchid leis he had unsuccessfully tried to distribute in class.<\/p>\n

“It’s all about setting a mood!” he had insisted.<\/p>\n

“You can’t drink in class and your building has no doors,” his professor countered.<\/p>\n

And so that was that. No one in the degree program had any appreciation of art, of whimsy, of the avant-garde. You couldn’t make a building look like a pancake, or a hat, or even a eighteen-foot-tall Scarlett Johansson — both for anatomical and legal reasons, apparently. The only thing the dean and his subordinates cared about was practicality, efficiency — dull, dry buildings no better or different than the dull, dry buildings already all over campus.<\/p>\n

“Maybe you should move into the art department or something,” his advisor suggested.<\/p>\n

“My scholarship won’t pay for that,” Jerry said.<\/p>\n

“Son, you convinced the scholarship board you had some talent for architecture. Either they like you a lot or they’re clinically insane. Convincing them their money and your time are better applied somewhere else should be easy by comparison.”<\/p>\n

“So you’re saying you wouldn’t<\/i> want to live in a giant pancake?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The “ending” is more than a little rushed — enough that it deserves those air-quotes — but again, I had fun. Oh, and yeah, Scarlett Johansson was on the GQ<\/i> cover. Again, we just go where the muse decides to lead us.<\/p>\n

Do you think there are Marvel vs. DC arguments in the Johansson\/Reynolds household, with the former playing Black Widow in Iron Man 2<\/i> and the latter soon to be Green Lantern on screen? I’m sure there must be, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An uneventful and rainy day here in New York, punctuated only by a trip out to Huntington for my semi-regular writing group. My prompt this week, such as it was, was a recipe for a high-rising pancake in GQ. This wasn’t exactly my choice, but we draw inspiration where we can. Not so sure about … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[171,20,28,12],"class_list":["post-5383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-celebrity","tag-comics","tag-personal","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}