Track 1.
I'm Rich Mr. Fish, The Catch Of The Day.
A "songtalk" in which an irresistibly lovely woman attempts to lure "a king of the sea, a god of the sea to his destruction."
"No creature on land, no creature in the sea
Could resist the spell that was cast by me."
Track 2.
It's So Hard To Keep Your Pecker In Your Pants.
A songtalk ranging in time from the Theatre of Dionysus and its satyr plays to the rock concerts and rock stars of the present. "Pan of the Panpipes" of ancient Greece and "Pan, Superstar" of our own time compete "for male supremacy onstage tonight" before a crowd of "10,000 screaming, swaying, arm-waving, ecstatic female devotees" and "10,000 shouting, applauding, foot-stamping males."
Further developments involve a President, a Senator, a Governor, a Judge, "and ordinary males like me and like you" as we struggle with the imperatives of male sexuality and the prohibitions of civilized society in a conflict that will never end.
I'M RICH MR. FISH, THE CATCH OF THE DAY.
Origin: I am often asked in regard to this songtalk, and the question is often peculiarly phrased, "Where did THAT come from?"---as though it had struck the listener as some strange catch from the bottom of the sea. Here is the answer, no less peculiarly phrased than the question.
A local restaurant announced grandly on its blackboard:
Blue Marlin, Catch Of The Day.
"Blue Marlin?"
In my innocence I had imagined that this magnificent game fish is captured only after the most strenuous personal combat and that it is then stuffed and mounted as testimony to the prowess of its proud conqueror---and never ends its mighty sea journey listed as a seafood item sandwiched between farm-raised salmon and fried catfish in a restaurant a thousand miles inland from the scene of capture---nor that it ever suffers the ultimate indignity of having its life and heroic death given a final valuation of: "Today's Market Price." How can you set a price on the heads, or even the heads and tails, of great sea creatures tragically fallen in the everlasting struggle for survival? There sit the customers, knives and forks at the ready, inquiring,
"But is it really fresh, or is it frozen?"
"Fresh, I assure you, Sir, caught this morning, packed in ice, shipped by air, arrived in our kitchen this afternoon" etc. etc.
It took no more than the sight of the words, "Blue Marlin, Catch Of The Day," for the songtalk to begin forming of itself, born out of the incongruity, the nightmare image, of the noble blue marlin being served up on the table of a local restaurant, not even a Fish Restaurant, not even a Major Gourmet Establishment, just a local restaurant, quiet, ordinary, everyday. What a comedown, what a truly tragic fall for this splendid creature, once lord of its domain, now conquered by this detestable, swarming land creature, to be filleted, grilled, baked, sauteed, all to the customer's taste.
"Fish sauce? Yes, Sir."
"Lemon butter? Yes, Madam.""
"Ketchup? Whatever you like, young man."
Is there a predator on this planet with appetite equal to ours? None. From the perspective of a fish, if such a perspective were possible, and luckily for them and for us they lack the imaginative capacity, or they would surely be frantically digging holes in the bottom of every ocean floor, sea, bay, lake, river, and stream to escape capture by the voracious, the insatiable masters of land, sea, and air who are now fish-farming on land and who will soon enough be ocean-farming-
You interrupt my harangue......
My reply: Yes, of course, I grant you: perspectiveless fish prey upon each other from top to bottom of the food chain, primitively, open-jawed; yes, but they do not domesticate for slaughter every species of animal life capable of being domesticated. It's as if a mammalian species, Blue Whales, let's say, had developed an intellectual capacity far superior to our own, and carnivorous tastes surpassing even our own limitless appetites, and were now land-farming our species, keeping us, as we do fish, fresh or frozen, for hungry, cheerful, singing families of whales.
Would we land creatures not be making every effort to hide in mountains, to dig out caves, to find some refuge on the planet, or to seek to escape the planet altogether, to find some friendlier home in the universe, some haven where we were not forced by the struggle for survival to flee from hungry monsters even mightier than ourselves?
And would not our conquerors, the Blue Whales, would they not inevitably mimic our present civilized habits, would they not bargain, haggle, and finally arrive at Today's Market Price, would they not compete for Catch of the Day, Catch of the Year? Would they not pose triumphantly with the six-footers among us, and with great good luck in the Catch of the Day, the prized seven-footers? Of course.
In such a world young, undersized humans and fortunate puny adults would be tossed back on land for possible free-range development, or, more probably, be caged and fed antibiotics and growth hormones. Only smaller and smaller humans, living finally in tiny holes in the desert, would preserve the ever-receding memory of our once-glorious five-foot, six-foot, and even seven-foot past, reciting in feeble whispers mythic tales of our gigantic past to their tiny, wide-eyed progeny.
And so to this songtalk:
I'M RICH MR. FISH, THE CATCH OF THE DAY.
Are there mythic elements here? Inevitably. They cannot be kept out; they are bound up so intimately with thousands of years of human experience and imagination, with our deepest desires and deepest fears.
Is there an irresistibly lovely woman in it, as lovely as a goddess? Yes, of course. You can't keep her out. Call this a fish story, call this a fish tale: if this Rich Mr. Fish strikes you as your kind of fish, then he's yours for the playing.
IT'S SO HARD TO KEEP YOUR PECKER IN YOUR PANTS.
Origin:
My wife and I were awaiting with some impatience a television report on a matter of international significance when to our annoyance the tube suddenly filled with the chagrined face of a high government official who had been caught with his pants down. His name?---: forget it: your choice: no shortage of candidates, political and otherwise. For his particular constituency it meant that his political career had fallen to earth as rapidly as his trousers and could not be hitched even halfway up in time for the next election.
We gazed in astonishment as this usurper of the evening news explained, explained, explained, appealing to the loving, forgiving natures of all the good old souls now, for all we knew, tearfully sympathizing with his trouser-slippage---not one slip, mind you, but multiple slippages over many months. At length, at length he removed his mournful visage from the tube, and I heard myself sing out to my wife, "It's So Hard To Keep Your Pecker In Your Pants, Uh-huh!" She laughed, I laughed, and that was the end of it.
The line would never have been recalled, and the songtalk would never have been written---if not that the very next night---there he was again, like the plague, almost but not quite blubbering, a drowning man calling out feebly, "Lifeguard! Lifeguard!" to an empty chair.
Suddenly the second line of the songtalk arrived out of nowhere with such absolute certainty and urgency that I knew it was here to stay. Yet it was a line that I disliked because it was so awkward, so unbeauteous; yet the more I tried to lend it some grace, the more it insisted on being itself---until I began to understand that the line was of necessity as gross as the event itself and could not be "beautified"---just as all the television makeup experts in the world could not possibly have "beautified" this particular political specimen despite his conventionally handsome political face.
No, the second line had to be "mismatched and crude and raw and raucous," and no less so all of the following lines; there was no way to refuse them as the story unrolled before me on what became truly a magic carpet. I raced to keep up with it; every development appeared of itself and was succeeded so logically by the next development that it often seemed to me that no other sequence was possible. When finally the carpet had unrolled completely, I stared, exhausted, and said, "The end. It's The End. Thank God. Now I can collapse."
You ask: But how is it that this songtalk begins in Classical Greece in the Theatre of Dionysus? How?---I can only respond: how can it be otherwise? Consider the intrusion by this pants-down office-holder into the unbearably tragic events of our time with his pathetic little satyr play. Is this not the very comic relief offered by the satyr plays and comedies that followed the performances of high tragedy in the great age of Classical Greece? And is there not, as we pass down through the ages, a perfectly logical progression or, if you please, retrogression, to the satyr plays of our own time, the satyr rock concerts in which strutting rock stars caper, and cavort, and leap, and stamp, and turn, exactly like the satyrs, the costumed goat-gods of the past, lacking only the hooves and horns and one other prominent feature not to be named here but sufficiently identified in the drama?
And, further: in the midst of these howling fertility rites of our time, consider the plight of all the confused, conflicted adolescent males as they are solemnly urged to practice, yes, perfect self-control: postponement, ah, yes, of the keenest physical pleasure awaiting the male animal; total abstinence, no less, until safely bound tight in holiest monogamy with their Chosen Mates, chosen, of course, by a most kindly Fate, or by their very own anxious, hovering Guardian Angels, also known as parents, relatives, and Wisest Counselors.
And is not this confusing small scene in the foreground of every American life played out against a larger background scene: the great stage on which Presidents, Governors, Senators, and Judges offer themselves as role models to the sweetly impressionable young while simultaneously indulging their sexual appetites in the grossest, but in their own myopic views, most discreet manners, until caught, literally or figuratively, pants-down?
Out of all these tragicomic contradictions of our time there have emerged, inevitably, many works of fiction and non-fiction and now also a songtalk:
IT'S SO HARD TO KEEP YOUR PECKER IN YOUR PANTS!
Leo Goldman's audiodramas have been translated into many languages and have been broadcast in the United States, England, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria. They have received awards and honors. Their titles suggest their variety.
Enemy-Go-Round
Story: Yesterday's Enemies are today's Allies, are tomorrow's Enemies, are the day after tomorrow's Allies, are the day after the day after the day after.........
Germany: Dreht Euch Nicht Rum, Der Feind Geht Um
(Don't Turn Around, The Enemy's Behind You)
Italy: Il Nemico Sulla Giostra
Netherlands: Operatie Mallemollen
Slovenia: Sovraznik Vsepovsod
A Good Used Heart
An aging thief, Fingers, provides for his Social Security by setting up a black market operation in "good, used hearts" ingeniously pilfered from worthless fellow thieves.
London, BBC.
Germany: Ein Gutes Herz
Belgium: Tweedehards Hart In Perfecte Staat
London, BBC: A sequel: The Brain Part, The Heart Part
The Underground Golf Course
A young caddy, a future poet, soon to be drafted into the army during the Second World War, serves a rough, hustling golfer in a game that for the young poet becomes a nightmare: a game played underground with golf balls rebounding and exploding in all directions like bombs.
AWARD: Best U.S. Public Radio Play of the Year. National Association of Community Broadcasters, Washington, DC.
Germany: Golf
The Midnight Mocker
The Midnight Mocker dominates radio after midnight, mocking everything in American life that he considers to be phony, to the delight of millions of red-eyed listeners. He takes on Marjorie Friend, ex-beauty queen, sweet voice of the morning, as she celebrates American goodness and virtue. Their radio war becomes, to the fascination of listeners, a battle to the death, alternately grim and comic.
HONOR: German production featured in Amerikanische Woche, American Week: Best and most characteristic work of American radio playwrights.
The Point Of Explosion
A husband searches nightly in newspaper stories and obituary notices for reports of his own death. He is convinced that the names and the stories refer to him. His wife does her best to save him and herself.
Melange Explosif. Production: Paris-Culture. France and French-speaking countries.
The Soul In Hiding
A woman in hiding in Europe during the Second World War. All that remains of her is a wristwatch held by an old watchmaker who is the last person alive to tell her story.
France: Une Si Jolie Petite Montre (Such A Pretty Little Watch).
Production: Paris-Culture. France and French-speaking countries.
Belgium: Aan Een Onbekende Vrouw. (To An Unknown Woman)
Also staged in Belgium under the title of Schuilen (Hiding).
Der Schein Trugt (The Light That Misleads)
A Good Samaritan finds himself in deep trouble. Rebroadcast in Germany and German-speaking countries for twenty years. Adapted for radio by Leo Goldman from his CBS-television play.
The Night Bathers
Two men and a beautiful woman find themselves afloat in a bathtub---at sea. One man is certain that he is dreaming. The other man states that they are, in fact, surviving in the Captain's bathtub, the heroic Captain having gone down with his ship. The beautiful woman has a quite different explanation of their predicament.
Typhoon
National prizewinner in Ford Foundation's contest for one-hour television dramas.
Story: Four African-American sailors are assigned to a Navy ship following President Truman's order desegregating the Armed Forces. The Chief Petty Officer in charge, an old-line Regular Navy man, attempts, by subtle and not so subtle means, to re-segregate them. He himself experiences an inner conflict in his grudging admiration for one African-American sailor whose talents, including his seamanship, match and surpass those of the regular crew. Conflicts, inner and outer, come to a head during a typhoon in which life-and-death choices are made, made not by considered thought--there is no time for choosing who shall live, who shall die--but by reflex responses to a crisis in which the ship seems to be going under.
Never produced even though a national prizewinner. Networks would not then telecast material considered to be "controversial", and the subject of desegregation in those years was, in the judgment of networks and sponsors, "untouchable."
The Night Bathers
London, BBC.
Germany: Nachtschwimmer.
Italy: Bagnanti Notturni.
Still Small Softsell
London, BBC.
Netherlands: De Reclame Patient
A Little Conscience Money
Netherlands: Gewetensgeld
The Ship In The Milky Way
Belgium: Het Schip Van Barmhartigheid
And a variety of others.
Six new audiodramas on three compact discs are scheduled for release in 2004 and 2005.
To order:
I'm Rich Mr. Fish, The Catch Of The Day
&
It's So Hard To Keep Your Pecker In Your Pants
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