CHAPTER 3: PLEADING WITH STEVIE WONDER

Dear Reader:

As I write, Caterpillar just announced that they were laying off 20,000 employees. To be honest, I didn't think that they even had that many total employees. Late last week Microsoft announced 5,000 lay-offs ----and that company was profitable last year! It seems as if the rate of layoffs is beginning to approach warp speed, Mr. Sulu. No joke, this 'thing' has gotten to be scary and I wonder if there is anybody in America other than Oprah who is not at least a little apprehensive about their employment outlook?I am beginning to think that President Obama and the government might need to take really drastic measures to help all of us get jobs..and soon too!

Last night I had this dream that the government had instituted something called job rationing---sorta like how things were done during World War II with the rationing of sugar and rubber, etc. In this dream of mine, each American could, by law, only have one job at a time ----at least until every American who wanted a job had a job. When I awoke from REM Sleep, the dream was still on my mind and I thought abut the the idea of job rationing. Of course, one of the problems is that there a bunch of people who have about ten jobs apiece.

Take that Ryan Seacrest, for example. Last I heard, this guy has a radio show, a restaurant or two, owns several TV programs and he’s the host of that American Idol Show where they make the viewer work by forcing you to call in and vote (at your own expense too!) so the producers can figure out who they should throw off the show next. Seems to me that ought to be the producers job, but I digress.Anyway, I think Seacrest has even won an Emmy for hosting a parade on TV---with Regis for godsakes! C’mon Seacrest, let someone else have some work.

Or take Martha Stewart. Seems like whenever I turn on the TV---day or night----if Ryan Seacrest is not on the TV screen looking back at me, Martha Stewart is. She’s everywhere reader, selling something or showing you how to do some really silly stuff like making doillies or candles. Reader, who really needs to make candles? Probably only the Amish people and they don't even have television so that see Martha. Hasn’t Martha ever heard of Walgreen’s. Personally, I think that if she really wanted to be helpful to the average American, she would be showing people how to fix the transmission on the car, how to make a good cup of coffee at home for less than $4.00 a pop or maybe how to steal your neighbor's cable-TV feed or at least how to glom off of their Internet.

The point is that there are bunch of chronic overachievers and workaholics out there like Seacrest and Stewart who are hogging up all of the jobs. I bet that if they even gave up a couple of their jobs they even wouldn’t miss the dough and they’d probably be able to get some rest. Maybe even take a vacation. They have jobs that you ---or especially me ---could do. (Hell, I could learn to make candles on TV if I just had the opportunity.)

Stevie Wonder and Will Smith are two guys who could also share a little of the wealth----- or at least one of their jobs:

Pleading with Stevie Wonder

Don’t get me wrong, reader. I am a BIG fan of Stevie Wonder----- ever since Fingertips, Part II wayyyyyy back in the Sixties, when he was a kid running around as "Little" Stevie Wonder. I even liked Fingertips, Part I. I own practically every album that Stevie’s ever made:Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness First Finale, Songs in the Key of Life You, etc. etc. You name a Stevie Wonder album, I have it. When I was a kid, I even watched those godawful Beach Movies with (the ex-Mouseketeer) Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon just so that I could see Stevie and hear him play the harmonica.

Remarkably, I even share the same birth day, May 13, with Stevie----a little known fact (known mainly to me). There even a few people who say that Stevie and I look alike though I don’t necessarily buy it.

Anyway, Stevie already has a bunch of jobs---singer, songwriter, harmonica player, record-producer and playing apparently every musical instrument ever invented. He ’s sold scads of records, made a ton of money, and won most of the Grammy’s ever manufactured back in the 70's and 80's. (In those days, it seemed as if every time that Stevie fell out of bed, he must've stayed on the floor and while he was down there, wrote a new album----- and won all of the Grammy’s for that year.

Now Stevie apparently is thinking of dancing---on that program Dancing with the Stars. (At this writing, he reportedly is in serious negotiations with the producers of the show about joining the list of competitors for its upcoming spring season.)

Enough already, Stevie. Back off! I'm pleading with you. Let someone who needs a job be on Dancing with the Stars instead. Like me!

Now, I have no doubt that Stevie can dance and will do well on the show. For one thing, he’s has to be better than Master P, who was on a couple of years ago. He was awful, reader. Just awful. Stevie is probably also a better dancer than Cloris Leachman, who is a great actress but a really lousy ballroom dancer. Last fall, her partner had to drag her old butt all over the floor just to keep her on show for a couple of weeks. In fact, my grandmother would have been better than either Cloris Leachman or Master P…and Nana was in a wheel chair.

Anyway, I think that Stevie will do a better job on the show than most people might think. The reason for this reader is that as much as I admire his creative talent and as much as I admire Stevie himself, I’ve always had the suspicion that maybe his 'visual acuity' might be better than he has been leading us to believe. There are a couple of reasons for this theory of mine:

For one, Otis Williams, the founder and boss of the legendary R&B group, The Temptations has related some stories about Stevie, when he was just a kid. It seems that in the early years of Motown, Stevie was about 12 years old and was ALWAYS hanging around the offices and studios of Motown playing the damn harmonica, playing with all of knobs on the moog-synthesizer and popping his fingers. According to Otis, Stevie loved being around the music studio---just loved it. Just loved being around the Motown offices and studios. They couldn’t make Stevie go home. They'd actually have to call, his mother, Mrs. Wonder, and say "Please come get this kid. He's good but he's getting on everybody's nerves with the finger poppin and all. Please come get him and take him home until tomorrow." Anyway, apparently, Little Stevie was constantly underfoot and according to Otis, when he or one of the other Temptations would silently come into the room (I figure they were trying to sneak up on him and maybe give him a hot foot or something), Stevie knew exactly which one of the Temptations had just walked in. He’d say, “Hello Otis”, or “Hello David”, or “Hello Paul”, “Hello Eddie”, or “Hello Melvin”------and he'd be accurate! For the most part, all of Tempts were more or less about the same height, weight and had similar facial features. Hell, it was kinda hard for a sighted person to tell them apart, sometimes. But Stevie could tell them apart...supposedly by sound of their footfall. Yeah right, Stevie.

The other reason that I figure that maybe Stevie has been skinnin' us is that "back in the day" , there were many visually impaired people who sometimes used their hands to 'feel' other peoples faces ---and if they were really sneaky, sometimes their bodies----- so they could 'sense' or feel how the entire person looked. It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if 'a' 12 year old Little Stevie Wonder used the visual impairment scam to 'cop a feel' on Diana Ross and The Supremes, Mary Wells, Martha and the Vandellas, and a few of the other female stars too. It’s exactly the kind of scam that a young, precocious 14 year old boy pull. I figure that maybe Stevie started this whole thing when he was younger and it just kinda mushroomed.

Another reason that I have my doubts about Stevie is that I myself, “....as a precocious 14 year old boy” carried out a similar caper at All Saints and Sinners Catholic School. For the first month that I attended the school in Philadelphia, I wore sunglasses and made it my business to 'accidentally walk into' a couple of walls about every other day. This whole act helped my social life immeasurably and I got to know a couple of attractive but sympathetic girls in a more', er...biblical' way. This act worked pretty well until Sister Ursula caught me determining just how much a girl named Darlene's chest had developed over the previous summer.

If Stevie wins Dancing with the Stars it will be, at least in my opinion, verification that my inklings about him have been correct for all these years. Of course, being unemployed myself and badly needing a job, I am hoping that he’ll demur (i.e. a fancy word for “ saying no”) and let some one else who really needs the gig---me, for instance---- have it. Come on Stevie, I'm pleasding with you. Don't take the Dancing with the Stars gig. Let me have some work.

Will Smith

Will Smith is another overachiever who has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to jobs. Will has been in a ton of movies over the years. The guy is box office magic and even his bad movies make gazillions of dollars. Seems like he’s always making a movie. His wife, Jada Pinkett, is also a movie star and lately these people have even gotten their kids into the, er "act". In these tough economic times, when we all need to work, I say “Will, baby, let somebody else---- like me---- have some of that work.

A perfect opportunity, had Will been a proponent of job rationing, would have been the movie, The Pursuit of Happiness. In this movie, he and his son played Christopher Gardner and his son. Gardner was a real life guy, mind you, who had been really down on his luck. At one time, he had been a homeless, single parent, living in the bathroom of a subway station. (Through sheer persistence, drive and talent, Gardner "pulled himself by his bootstraps", to become the owner of an investment company and also become "ridiculously" wealthy. (His is a uniquely American story, sort of like Barack’s , except that Chris is extremely wealthy, single, and can go home with a lot of really good looking babes.)

Anyway, it would have been nice if Will Smith had given the job to me. For several reasons:

1. We have the same first name. The movie company would not have needed to buy any additional billboard space for my name than they did for his.

2. I actually met Chris Gardner after he was wealthy and I look a lot more like him than Will Smith ever did.

3. I could have at least played Chris Gardner’s 'down' years and it would not have been acting.

Heck, the producers wouldn't have need to pay for a script for that part.

Anyway reader, call me crazy, but I think that this job rationing thing might have some potential. Maybe I should try and send Barack and e-mail and suggest it to him. It would definitley get him the unemployed vote.

Once again, reader, I gotta run. I can hear the wolves gathering at the door.

Still jobless in Atlanta...but hoping
JustPlainWill