The Pirates of Grammar Island---Arggh!

John and I have been sending emails back forth, working on developing the structure for this play that we'll be writing really, really soon. I thought you might enjoy John's reply to my latest theories of what pirates could possibly have to do with grammar:

Ron,
I did not nix your vision. I tweaked your mission statement.

These are pirates. They take stuff. Stuff. They scour the seas and rape, pillage, and plunder. It's fun for the whole family.

Pirates don't track down librarians unless the librarian has some treasure they can haul onboard, put in a chest, and bury someplace. That's just what pirates do. Don't ask me why. Personally, I'd invest some of it in a good mutual fund. But pirates have their own code. It's called the Pirate Code. It's topsecret and has something to do with scurvy.

It's just more dramatic to have pirates shouting about finding punctuation than about some guy who knows a lot about punctuation. You have convinced me, however, that they will find people who are keepers of the grammatical treasure. I hope you're proud of yourself. So maybe your ridiculous idea about grammar books is just ridiculous enoughto pass muster. (No, put that back--I said "muster", not "mustard." Where's your head today?)

They gather books about grammar scattered throughout the Caribbean. (And how do YOU pronounce Caribbean? I'll wait to see what I need it to rhyme with.)

Maybe they are HOARDING. Pirates hoard. (I know that because I once knew a pirate who hoarded fruit. Especially pears. I tried to explain that it would just rot, but would he listen? Stupid pirate.)

They are out to capture all the grammar, and that is represented by the big, glorious golden grammar books. Wait a minute. Maybe they aren't hoarding. Maybe OTHERS are hoarding. Do we need a hero to free all the grammar for us common folk? Or are these in fact GOOD pirates out to free grammar from the evil hoarders? I kind of like that--good pirates, robin hoodesque pirates, taking grammar from the evil hoarders of grammar and bringing it to the people. They are from grammar island, after all.

Or if we stay with evil grammar-hoarding pirates, we need some way to free grammar from them (we don't want to end the show with grammar in the hands of evil pirates, do we?). Or maybe they just dump all the grammar in their pot at the end of the rainbow. Good thing I know so much about pirates.
John

It's me, Ron, again. I'll quickly mull over whether these are good pirates or bad pirates and whether pears actually rot when buried in a treasure chest and get back to John. As you can see, we're hard at work, building curriculum for the children of America.

The Internal Organ Hall of Fame

The big news is that the play is done, and should begin mailing on Monday, October 16. That's two weeks late, and I'm sorry.

But I think you'll be really pleased with the show. It hits the science standards pretty hard and at the same time it's quite funny.

John and I spent hours arguing fine points such as whether the Internal Organ Hall of Fame is located in Cooperstown, NY (near the baseball hall of fame) or whether it's in some other location. Hours were spent debating whether the play would be at the annual induction ceremony or merely a tour of the exhibits. And what body parts counted? Was it internal organs only, or systems, such as the digestive system, the cardiovascular system and so forth?

Most grown men don't debate these questions.

Do internal organs actually sing and dance? (This is kind of like asking how many angels can sit on the edge of a pin, but our answers will be reflected in the play we write. Very, very weird.)

We long ago concluded that we have one the strangest jobs in the country. What we do is take information that students are SUPPOSED to learn and find some way of making it stick in their brains. Catchy music, rhymes, and humor usually do the trick.

John and I went to high school together, and when we were seniors, we had a little booth at a school arts fair. We would write a song about any topic within five minutes. I can't remember the price---probably a couple of dollars. John had a manual typewriter and I brought my guitar and we bashed out a bunch of songs that day for students, teachers and parents.

It's just very hard to believe that we're still doing that, and the goofy stuff we write has been done in at least 40 countries.

We've flown completely under the education establishment radar. We've never been mentioned in any teaching magazine, no state department of education has ever talked to us, no education foundation has ever heard of us. And yet we estimate there have been 80,00 productions of Bad Wolf Plays over the last eleven years.

It's been an interesting ride. What's next? Well, the play Pirates of Grammar Island is due about December 1st, and I guess we better get busy and start writing. But first John and I will have to discuss how this play will work. You should be able to imagine the arguments. However strange you think they'll be, they'll actually be even weirder.

Another day in BadWolfLand.

Help! My Internal Organs Are Late!

I'm writing this on Sunday, October 8, and the new Bad Wolf play about the human body was supposed to have been published on September 30th. It wasn't, but it'll be out on Tuesday, October 17.

You probably don't want to hear the list of reasons for the delay, so let me tell you about the show. It takes place at the annual induction ceremony for the Internal Organ Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, NY. (Right across the street from that other hall of fame.) Who will be picked this year? What will the winners (and losers!) say? America wants to know.

I've had a whole bunch of music teachers tell me that their students cannot pick up melodies from an adult male voice, so I sing on just two of the numbers. Brenda Tzipori returns to sing three of the songs. Not only does Brenda have a beautiful voice, she always finds the right attitude for whichever character is singing. This was the 21st show we asked Brenda to record, and John and I absolutely love the way she sings our material.

Last spring we engaged singer/actress Dana Shaw for the first time to sing one and a half songs on Life Cycles. She did really well, and fortunately was in town for a couple of weeks before going back to performing at the Sonora Musical Theater in the Sierra foothills. So she sang three songs on the new show. It's really amazing to hear the contrast in her voice between songs---on the Radio Disneyish "It Takes Our Breath Away" she sounds like a twelve year-old. Incredible.

Mike Fishell came by one afternoon and spent a few hours adding electric guitar parts to a variety of songs. Mike (who is pictured on page 29 of this year's catalog) managed to play rock, bluesy slide-guitar, country, plus a few things I don't know how to describe.

Here's one of John's lyrics for you to check out. The song is sung by the Heart, who has just been selected for the hall of fame. The Heart has a very Hollywood attitude:

I'd like to thank the arteries to start
They carry all the blood to ev'ry part
And I thank the mouth for stallin'
All that high cholesterollin'
I love you dude, I mean it from the heart.

I'd like to thank the veins for hangin' in
They bring all of the blood back here again
Thank my valves for poppin' open
And I thank the hemoglobin
For giving limo rides to oxygen.

Without these supporters
There's not much more that I could achieve
Just heartache and heartbreak
Heartache and heartbreak
And wearin' myself on my sleeve.

I'd like to thank my chambers left and right
I'd like to thank the blood cells red and white
Thank the chest for helping win it
You can tell my heart is in it
I'm so pumped I might skip a beat tonight---
(spoken) Just joking
I'd like to thank you all you're out of sight.
(copyright 2006 Ron Fink and John Heath)

The first third of the script as well as four sample songs will be online at www.badwolfpress.com/internal_organs.htm within a few days. Check it out, I think you'll really enjoy it.