(Not the usual) Father's Day Movie List

Probably most people's list of favorite Father's Day movies has some version of Father of the Bride on it. I never even saw the Spencer Tracy/Elizabeth Taylor version until a few months ago, and I'm all like, Whatever, dude. Better Spencer Tracy Father's Day choices, to me, are Boys Town and Captains Courageous.

But the best Father's Day movies simply do a good job of explaining fatherhood to me.

The World According to Garp gives us a memorable, controlled Robin Williams performance as a man who adores being a father. Whenever things go wrong in his marriage, all is made well by going in and looking at the kids in their innocent sleep. Garp, a writer, says he will never create anything as lovely as that.

Little Miss Sunshine offers a good case study of the father first getting it wrong about what fatherhood means. Providing for the family and teaching children how to be successful? Um, not really. Let's start with seeing the kids for who they really are, loving them, and always having their back. Lesson learned for the father played by Greg Kinnear.

That's also what Dustin Hoffman discovers in Kramer vs. Kramer, who learns, among other things, that patience is a big part of the parental skill set.

There are also more heartbreaking Father's Day movies on my list, like Ordinary People, and the movie's end with Donald Sutherland breaking down in tears, embracing his surviving son.

The father's missing embrace is precisely what made Love Story the heartbreaking Father's Day tragedy about which I have written previously. The book version got it right: Barretts old and young finally embrace, literally and figuratively. Somehow Ray Milland and Ryan O'Neal were too macho to make the attempt, damn it. On the other hand, John Marley and Ali MacGraw give a crazy sweet father-daughter turn as Phil and Jenny.

Great moments in movie fatherhood are also found in Roberto Begnini's heartbreaking Life Is Beautiful, with the dad's diversionary tactics to conceal from his young son the horrific reality of their concentration camp imprisonment.

In the opposite way, the greatest-father-of-all-time, To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), reveals harsh reality to his children in the gentlest but most effective way possible: the lessons of empathy.

Okay, for dudes reading this blog, I'll give you Field of Dreams. No one can avoid tears when "he" at last appears at the magical field Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) has unknowingly built for his father in the heaven that is Iowa.

More great moments in fatherhood include the revelations of love in Mary Poppins and Sound of Music--those heart-swelling moments when fathers seem to recognize their love for their own flesh and blood for the very first time.

And don't miss Brian Keith's recognition of his new-found twin daughter, Haley Mills as Sharon, in The Parent Trap. (For Mother's Day, you can focus on that same scene played by Maureen O'Hara with Haley's Susan character.)

Then there is the heartbreaking moment when a son realizes his father's pride in him will be more than disappointed, as Ralph Fiennes must confess to Paul Scofield that the Van Doren name will be dragged through the mud on a Quiz Show.

(l-r) Gérard Depardieu, Stéphane Bierry, Pierre Richard, in Les Compères

Those are just a few of my favorite movie moments in fatherhood. But if I only watch one movie for Father's Day, it will be Les Compères, the story of two very different bachelors commissioned to retrieve the runaway teenage son of a woman each had had a fling with in their youth. Thinking he's escaping his own unreasonable father, the boy winds up with two more would-be parents who have no clue what fatherhood is all about. Through their adventures in the underworld of Nice gambling and narcotics rings and police corruption, they all find a way to figure out what the father-son relationship is all about.

There are also probably too many father-figure movies to go into, but I do love Fagin in Oliver! Really, why is that character described as evil? He took in orphans and fed them by whatever means he could. Anyway, Ron Moody begging his young charges to "Be Back Soon" is just one of that musical's many delights.

The list:

Les Compères
To Kill a Mockingbird
The World According to Garp
Kramer vs. Kramer
Little Miss Sunshine
Mary Poppins
Sound of Music
Field of Dreams
Life Is Beautiful
Ordinary People
The Parent Trap
Quiz Show
Love Story (though truthfully I usually watch this at Christmas time. I love the scenes in the snow and where Jenny is leading the boys choir in church).

love, hosaa
missing dad (1920-2007)

Edward Duke, Author

For Edward Duke (1953-1994)

Edward Duke as Bertie Wooster, 'Jeeves Takes Charge'

Thank you for the gift of authoring a very unexpected chapter in my life.

Love, hosaa
remembering joy

Levon, Taylor Hicks 4 -23-2016

A fun evening at Easton, Maryland's, historic Avalon Theatre last night, courtesy of the Claritin-D enabled (or disabled?) Taylor Hicks. He joked that Spring (and allergy season) was over in the South, but had only just sprung here in Maryland. "Trees, 1; Taylor, 0."

As a consequence, the soulfully growly voice was more strained than perhaps is usual, but Taylor and his accompanist Brian Less did a leisurely paced story-filled 90 minute set that ended with an encore, what became a signature cover of "Levon" during Taylor's American Idol career.





Standouts for me were the lonely-angsty love songs like "Six Strings Are Hard on Diamond Rings," "What's Right Is Right" ("what's wrong with you is what's wrong with me, and what's right is right"), and Taylor's own "Maybe You Should" ("If you can leave here tonight, baby maybe you should").

love, hosaa
a little angsty

Visions of Grace at Ford's (The Glass Menagerie)

Dear Edward Duke,

It's been 30 years since I first saw you at Ford's Theatre in your "cheap little show"--then as today the Sunday matinee closer. I still disagree with you that Sunday matinees are the worst houses, for we gave a heartfelt standing ovation to the cast of The Glass Menagerie: Tom Story as Tom Wingfield, Madeleine Potter as Amanda, Jenna Sokolowski as Laura, and Thomas Keegan as Jim O'Connor (aka the gentleman caller).

As proof of this cast's worth (and a concession to your insistence that Sunday audiences are bad), when a cell phone went off twice (yes, the caller called the same phone twice) during a particularly poignant speech of Laura's near the end of the show, Sokolowski held her breath and held the moment and the magic until it was safe for her to continue her speech. GoodNESS! I imagine they all--as you and I would have--wanted to go all Patti LuPone on that "I'm too important to turn my cell phone off" audience member's ass, but they didn't.

Tom, was that one of the tricks up your sleeve? The magic act that actors and poets and playwrights and other dear things rely on to keep us on the edges of our seats, breathless?

Edward, you would have loved Tom Story. Edward, meet Tom; Tom, Edward. As much as I love Tom's comedic roles, there is power in his drama. I'll confess I was tempted to wiggle my way backstage to gush, but my Laura side demurred.

I also wanted to tell Laura that it gets better. I cried when they danced: The gentleman caller sweeps the "crippled" girl up in a sweet waltz and she is suddenly transformed. He gives her a vision of herself as graceful and alive. I want her (and me) to not let disappointment turn into discouragement. It's a delicate balance (oh, wait--that's Albee).

And even if my happy memories of Edward Duke are no more substantial than a glass unicorn, they are a treasure of infinite worth for the joy they brought--and bring.

Happy Anniversary, dear old thing.
love,
hosaa

An Unheroic Return

Back from the Round House Theatre production of Suzan-Lori Parks's epic Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, and 3) (and hoping that parts 4, 5, and 6 aren't all prequels). What a great production--certainly among the best offerings from RHT.

This Civil War recasting of the Ulysses tale humanizes the myth through characters that are flawed, loyal to (or betraying) all the wrong people, with the hero of the story, Hero (JaBen Early), carrying the weight of the most flaws and weaknesses.

The second part of the play deals most directly with the racial issues we still confront today, as Hero follows his master (Tim Getman) into battle on the promise that "boss-master" will free him for his service. It's pretty clear the despicable boss-master won't do it, so Hero's hope and loyalty--and ever-present Hamlet-like indecision about running away--are incomprehensible (at least until Part 3).

In this section Getman delivers a speech that made the largely white suburban audience (her own self included) very uncomfortable--it's the Southern Colonel slave-owner's confession to his Union captain prisoner (Michael Kevin Darnall) that he's thankful he is white. On the surface, it is clearly an assertion of superiority. But Parks's language and Getman's delivery of it is more nuanced: The reason he is thankful, boss-master says without irony, is that the black man's life is so miserable. Well, duh. Who wants to be miserable? He of course takes no responsibility for being the cause of that misery.

(From left) Michael Kevin Darnall, Tim Getman, JaBen Early, in Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3). Image: Round House Theatre via Facebook.

Also in Part 2, the Union captain prisoner tries to convince his Confederate, slave-owning captor that he cannot even imagine owning other humans. But [SPOILER ALERT] the fact that this Yankee is not actually white, but passing as white (and also passing as a captain rather than a private) leaves no opportunity for white redemption. That's a bit disappointing, I'll confess.

Part 3 makes some of Hero's (now Ulysses's) decisions clear, but not all of them. He's a flawed human. To lighten things up, and in true Shakespearean manner, Parks's provides us with a "funny bit with a dog," who turns out to be the story's moral touchstone. Maybe true unquestioning loyalty really is just a dog thing.

And I'll give a shout out to one of the best voices in Washington, Craig Wallace as "Oldest Old Man," Hero's father-figure in Part 1 (and taking a surprising second role in Part 3 I won't spoil).

Craig Wallace. Image: Round House Theatre via Facebook.

Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)
Written by Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Timothy Douglas
Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland, through Feb. 21, 2016.

Cast
Hero: JaBen Early 
Penny: Valeka J. Holt
Oldest Old Man, Odysseus: Craig Wallace
Homer: Kenyatta Rogers 
Colonel in the Rebel Army: Tim Getman
Smith, a captive Union soldier: Michael Kevin Darnall
slaves: Jefferson A. Russell, Jon Hudson Odom, Stori Ayers, Ian Anthony Coleman
Musician: Memphis Gold

2015 in Brief

The paucity of posts this past year means on the whole it's probably best left mostly forgotten. The good news was a new career direction for her own self and good connections retained, all of which has left me running to keep caught up.

For the arts interests I normally report on here, I'll keep it brief and start with the closest event in the rear-view mirror. Thanks to the New Year's Eve afternoon off, I stumbled off to the National Gallery of Art to treat myself to a ladylike buffet in the Garden Cafe and a serendipitous wander through the halls and special exhibitions.

The gallery that caught me by surprise was the Hellenistic bronzes in an exhibit titled Power and Pathos. The bronzes from about the age of Alexander the Great are rare, the wall captions explain, because through the ages the pieces became more valued for their scrap prices and were melted down or lost at sea on their way to being exported and then melted down.

The walls further explained the aesthetic choices the lightweight bronze material made possible (as opposed to heavier materials such as marble) for capturing realistic, lifelike human emotions, gestures, and features rather than idealized portraits that connected leading figures of the day to their godly ideals. I like that.

One piece (rather, two seabed-recovered reconstructed pieces) caught my attention. It was called simply "Statue of a Man." I couldn't keep my eyes off its startling familiar face. It was the hairline, the jawline, the noble (if broken) posture. It was John F. Kennedy, no mistake.

Another woman gazing at the piece had what I imagine my same mesmerized expression, so I shared my thoughts with her. She smiled and said she thought it was just her! No, we confirmed each other's impression and chatted momentarily. A nice connection, but we moved on.

I came back to that room; I couldn't help myself. JFK drew me back. On a somewhat crowded New Year's Eve afternoon, there were a couple of artists wandering among the tourists and office-escapees, so I watched another mesmerized viewer sketching my JFK statue. I peered over his shoulder at his sketch, which was quite taking shape. He nervously peered back over his shoulder at me, so I apologized for peeking.

"How'm I doing?" he asked. I assured him I loved his drawing. Then he asked me if the statue reminded me of anyone. "JFK" I said immediately. He smiled and said he thought it was just him! "It's the hairline," I said. And we chatted momentarily. Another nice connection, but I moved on.

I ducked into the video room to watch the documentary, but if they showed our JFK statue, I missed it. Then I went to the exhibit's mini gift shop, but none of the postcards, T-shirts, or other gewgaws featured our JFK. There's a very expensive exhibition book, though, which includes the statue, but I swore off buying exhibition books a year ago until I got on firmer financial footing (and create more space on my bookshelves). I went back to find my sketch artist to see if I could get him to send me a scan of his sketch when he was done, but I couldn't find him again.

Nor could I find, this morning, any photos of our JFK statue online--not even in the NGA press images for the exhibit. So I may be making another trip back to NGA's gift shop, where I already took advantage of the post-Christmas discounts to pick up next year's "season's greetings" cards.

[Edited to add: Found it! From this page]

Male figure,The 2nd century BCE, bronze, cm 127 x 75 x 49, Brindisi, Museo Archeologico Provinciale "F. Ribezzo” | via Zest Today

On the way out, I got to speak briefly with the chief of retail operations, and I mentioned my "Kennedy" statue. He smiled and said they usually got Edward, not John, comments on the Kennedy resemblance. Too funny. I guess that ages me.

2015 year in review

January
7 - American Art Museum, gallery talk on Richard Estes
12 - Shakespeare Theatre Company, Lansburgh, ReDiscovery Reading: "Big Night"
28 - Round House Theatre, "Rapture, Blister, Burn"

February
15 - Synetic Theatre, "Much Ado About Nothing"

March
8 - Bethesda Christ Lutheran church, free concert
16 - Round House Theatre, reception and new season announcement
21 - U.S. Navy Memorial Heritage Center, U.S.S. Emmons plaque dedication

April
8 - Round House Theatre, "Uncle Vanya"
14 - Ford's Theatre, Lincoln Tribute
23 - Birchmere, Marshall Tucker Band
24 - Carnegie Institution, Earth Policy Institute book release party, The Great Transition

May
7 - Kennedy Center, NSO working rehearsal (Mahler's Fifth Symphony and the ballet that ensued)

May
17 - Synetic Theatre, "Tale of Two Cities"
27 - Round House Theatre, "NSFW"

June
25 - Brookings Institution, book release event, The China Challenge 

July
28 - Round House Theatre, One-Minute Play Festival
31 - Round House Theatre/Adventure Theatre, "Oliver!"

August
23 - Landmark Theatre, Bethesda Row, "Merchant of Venice"

September
9 - Art Institute, Chicago (volunteers handed out postcards of some of the pictures exhibited)
25-26 - National Inclusion Project, Founders Reception and Champions Gala

October
6 - Kennedy Center, members annual meeting
15 - Mazza Gallery, RSC "Hamlet" with Benedict Cumerbatch
19 - Shakespeare Theatre Company, Lansburgh, ReDiscovery Reading, "Bingo"
25 - Round House Theatre, "The Night Alive"
29 - Brookings Institution, book release event, America's Political Dynasties

November
1 - Kennedy Center, Suzanne Farrell Ballet
16 - Shakespeare Theatre Company, Lansburgh, ReDiscovery Reading, "Desdemona"

December
6 - Round House Theatre, "Stage Kiss"
7 - Ford's Theatre, members holiday party

I also saw Ironbound and The Guard, at Round House and Ford's, respectively, but didn't record the dates. Recaps at "Where Is Love" and "The Touch of Art." Good stuff, 2015!

Love, hosaa
looking forward to whatever I'll see...

Saving Mr. Sawyer

Another Christmas adventure for Clarence the Wonderful Life angel. (See also Saving Mr. Potter and Christmas Belle, or: Saving Miss Fezziwig.)

In a dim and foggy corner of almost Heaven, we see a hardworking, earnest agent of goodness bent over his desk. His office space is crowded with filing cabinets and bulging boxes of who knows what, obscured by puffy foggy clouds. His phone rings [Ringtone: Clay Aiken sings "Don't Save It All for Christmas Day"] and he picks up:

"Marley the Ghost! What's your favorite color?" Marley jots down the information cheerfully. "Ooo, good one. 'Rainbow.' Ha! Well, thank you. Got it. And Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Season's Greetings and all to you, etc., etc." Marley rips the note from the pad and goes to the array of overstuffed boxes and file cabinets, cramming the new information into a folder and shoving it back into a drawer. He struggles to get the drawer shut again. Through the clouds, he spies two familiar figures leaning in the doorway watching him.

"You're gonna need a bigger metaphor, Mr. Jordan!"

"You may be right, darling Marley," Jordan says with a twinkle in his eye. "These security questions for cloud storage are tedious and overwhelming, but your fellow Earthlings are just trying to protect themselves. We're working on shifting paradigms."

Marley blinks vacantly and notices Angel Clarence by Jordan's side. "Oh, Mr. Clarence, I didn't recognize you!"

Clarence steps into the less-cluttered center of Marley's office. He is no longer garbed in his usual white AngelWear gown with the ruched bodice and sweetheart neckline. Instead, he is wearing a natty charcoal suit with subtle pinstripes, lengthening his lithe figure. "Howdy doody, Marley! It's meeeee!" Clarence twirls, Jordan twinkles, and Marley blinks.

"Our sweet Clarence has earned a promotion," Jordan says proudly. "He is to be your mentor as we send you on your first salvation!"

Marley blinks again. "But I thought I already saved old Ebenezer. That whole time-traveling three-ghost thing was my idea--"

"Now, Biff," Jordan chides. "Don't start taking credit for the work of the powers that Be. Mr. Dickens, as you well know, was the author of that tale. Editors are not authors."

"Yes, Mr. Jordan. I'm sorry, Mr. Jordan. I only meant-- Yes, Chief! At your service!"

"That's better." Jordan shimmers between his two direct reports and angelically wraps his arms around their shoulders. "Now, sweet Clarence, please brief our darling Marley on his rescue mission."

Clarence retrieves a device from his vest pocket, enters his password, and begins scrolling through his apps--Bullies and Belligerents. Egos and Eccentrics. Hubris and Chutzpah. He taps on Misers and Misfits.

"This time of year, it's awfully hard to choose. So many souls left behind," Clarence says with a wan sigh. "I thought this one might interest you, Mr. Jordan. See the similarities with Mr. Marley's old pal Ebenezer?"

"Miss Van Pelt clearly demonstrates an unhealthy love of nickels, nickels, nickels that jingle jangle."

Mr. Jordan reviews the case file uploaded in the surrounding clouds, using a gestural interface activated by the sweep of his grand angelic wing. "Indeed, love of money does have a motivating but not terribly influential pull on this subject," Jordan scrutinizes. "I believe she did have another dearer wish, however." Jordan sweeps his wing so that both Clarence and Marley could see:

"Ah, love!" Clarence exclaims.

"Right, love!" Marley exclaims. "Everyone wants love. Did she ever capture that boy she was so sweet on? What was his name--Schroeder, right?"

Mr. Jordan smiles. "Yes, there was our friend Schroeder. Artistic type, you know." Clarence and Marley blink. "Musician... loves Beethoven." Clarence and Marley blink at each other. "He was the catcher on Charlie Brown's team."

Marley clears his throat. "I'm never sure when you're being literal."

"Not important," Mr. Jordan replies kindly. "Actually, Miss Van Pelt said herself what she always wanted: Real estate. But more than that, her endeavors to attract young Schroeder, to appoint herself the Christmas Queen, to taunt good ol' Charlie Brown with a perpetually thwarted placekick--all these actions demonstrate that she also desired not love, but attention."

"And didn't she get what she wanted? I mean the real estate and the attention?" Clarence asks, sweeping his own wing grandly across the cloudy interface. "I see big buildings, skyscrapers, casinos, and--oh, my, is that the White House? Good-NESS! Our little Lucy became quite the Trump!"

Jordan laughs mirthlessly. "Are you kidding? Lucy sends Trump out for cigarettes."

Marley points at a troubling scene in the Lucy case cloud. "Could I see this part again, please, Sir?"

Jordan embraces Marley proudly. "Yes, yes, my dear soul. Your instincts about human nature are much improved. There is such an overlap in belligerence and hubris, we really need to reorganize our files. Tell me, dear Marley. What made you stop on this episode?"

Marley fishes for his own insights. "Well, it had to do with Clarence's new suit. Vintage Forties. Black and white. Christmas time, too, but with friend Kris involved somehow."

Clarence brightens up and sweeps his wings across the clouds in the room to reveal another tinkerer in the psychiatric arts:

"Sawyer!" Clarence exclaims. "I remember him. Tom Sawyer's great-great grandson. He did have a mischievous streak. Look at him now--a bundle of nerves."

Marley can barely contain his excitement. "Can I help him, please Mr. Jordan? And can I ... can I have a nice suit like Clarence's?"

Jordan smiles and twinkles and waves his grand angelic wings. Clarence and Marley are black-and-whited down to Christmas on 34th Street, nattily attired as befitting businessmen of the day. Marley struggles with an unexpected burden, as he still must bear the chains he forged in life. Thanks to his prior puttings right of things once gone wrong, however, his chains are fewer and lighter than during his Scrooge redemption episode.

As Marley and Clarence enter Mr. Sawyer's office in the famed Macy's department store, Marley's remaining chains clink and clang loudly, startling the mortal.

"Who rang that bell?" Sawyer snarls petulantly. "Can't you read the sign? 'Bell Out of Order. Please Knock.'" Clarence and Marley look at each other in wonder.

"He can't hear us, can he?" Marley asks. Clarence shakes his head. Sawyer continues examining the employee records on his desk, his eyes wandering suspiciously around the room to see where that chain-rattling noise keeps coming from. "Should we appear to him now? I hate all this sneaking around, just showing up in door knockers and what-not."

"You might be right, Mr. Marley. It's your call." Marley nods, and Clarence grandly sweeps his wings to effect the revelation, knocking poor Sawyer in the head. He recovers quickly and squeals with childlike delight upon seeing Marley's chains.

"Oooo!" Sawyer exclaims. "Looky! Well-forged, my good man. Well-forged!" Sawyer hesitantly fingers the chains. "May I? Oh, lovely work. Good stainless, superior nickel content, if I'm not mistaken. Where did you get it?"

"This is the chain I forged in life," Marley intones ghostily. "I'm pretty sure you've got one going yourself."

"Awesome! Well, now, please have a seat. We'll get started with your tests."

Watching from above, Jordan presses pause on the scene. "You need a little more backstory here, dear ones," Jordan whispers. "Observe, if you please, that nervous gesture. What does it tell you?"

"He really needs something to do with his hands," Marley offers insightfully.

"That's IT!" Clarence cheers.

"Yes, indeed," Jordan confirms. He sweeps his wings to change the scene once again to Sawyer's childhood after-school job at the local junk yard.

"That's SCRAP yard," Sawyer corrects. "Wait a minute, who said that?"

Together, Jordan, Marley, and Clarence watch as young Sawyer happily wanders through a large warehouse full of junk-- er, scrap: stuff discarded by a populace flawed by their failure of imagination. "Ferrous, nonferrous, alloys, and fibers! E-scrap and baling straps, and mixed bulky rigids!"

Sawyer reaches into a box of Christmas tree lights, his eyes aglow (behind his protective goggles) with visions of copper cuttings dancing in his head. "Ooo, I know I can make something special out of this. The kitchen for a doll's house, maybe, or the control console on a rocket ship to Mars! Someday, Mr. Macy will buy my repurposed materials-for-toys idea. It's the only sustainable way to future Christmases."

Marley peers over at Jordan's CloudVision screen to peek ahead in the story. "What happened to the young man's dreams?"

"He should have gone to dental school," Clarence mumbles.

Jordan smiles patiently as he angel-wing-swipes the scene again. A cloudy mist obscures a blank slate. "Mr. Marley, my dear, where do we take poor Mr. Sawyer's story from here? No help, Clarence!"

Clarence shuffles his feet in embarrassment, a feeling of helpless incompetence that dissipates as he examines his smartly polished Oxfords with aesthetic appreciation. "There's always cobbling. Or, shoe making, they call it now."

Ignoring Clarence's distracted remarks, Marley thinks a moment. He reviews Sawyer's psychological profile: nervous, fidgety, needing to be correct in the face of strong opposing opinions. And yet, also demonstrating a strong desire to help people, to fix their problems. "The problem with that, though," Marley explains slowly so Clarence, too, could follow, "is he keeps trying to fix things--people--who aren't broken."

"That's right," Jordan says with a sigh. "Mr. Macy saw potential in him, despite rejecting dear Mr. Sawyer's recycled toy idea, and placed him--misplaced him, rather--in HR. This history must be altered."

Marley thinks a little harder. Clarence's offhanded remark about dentistry calls another Christmas story to mind. There was that elf, Hermey, who also felt misplaced in his role, a misunderstood misfit in the toy world.

Misfit. Toys. Misfit. Toys. "Misfit Toys!" Marley, Clarence, and Jordan exclaim as one. "Even Kris would approve of that idea," Jordan confirms.

With a group swipe of the CloudVision monitor, the merry gang envision a new future for misguided misfit Mr. Sawyer. He is brought to the Island of Misfit Toys, where the citizens--recognizing his natural gift for materials identification and impulse to fix broken things--name him their Wizard of Refurbished Toys, Deluxe. Times being what they are, he accepts the job.

As the thunderous cheers subside, Jordan returns with his direct reports to Marley's cloudy office, pondering their next mission. As Clarence has noted, there are so many souls left behind in this special time of year. Whom shall we save next?

A face begins to take form in the CloudVision screen. Clarence and Marley anxiously wait to see who it might be... The face is youthful, freckled, and oddly vicious looking.

Clarence gasps. "He has yellow eyes! So help me God, yellow eyes!"

Marley laughs. "Tag, Scut Farcas! You're it."

The End.

Love, hosaa
Repurposing plots