Cover teasers, those pithy little entreaties above the fold on a newspaper intended to send one ripping through its pages, are something of a parlor game in our newsroom. As one can expect from a roomful of scribes in various shades of jade, the best teasers are unprintable. Needless to say, these ribald reductions never make corners of this publication but an inordinate amount of puns do, and so it was that we went about plugging the upcoming Sunnys Community Awards (astute readers will note that none of the below made the cover).
In an attempt to maintain solar solemnity, we made nods to everyone from Hemingway (“The Sunnys Also Rise,”) to Harrison (“Here Comes the Sunnys”) with a smattering of U2 for good measure (“Sunnys, Bloody Sunnys”). Indeed, the Sun puns will never end. Recently, a pal suggested I start a company called “Daedalus and Son,” so as to play up the triple entendre, part of which he predicated on the SON of my mythical namesake, Icarus, who flew too close to the SUN and perished in a fit of feathers and molten wax. With apologies to our newspaper’s slogan, such an end is rather like “Warmth, Light and Poof.”
When not teasing betwixt covers, I’m prepping for my gig emceeing the Sunnys (again), which is just a fancy way of saying I’m a traffic cop with a handful of one-liners and a suit fresh from the cleaners. Be warned – I may wear an ascot. I know this sounds something like a threat and double-dog-dare tied up in a Windsor knot, but I had a run in with an ascot recently and we seemed to get along.
I was at the Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers Alliance annual poster photo shoot – the theme this year was the 60s (I think). I hadn’t realized I was to arrive in costume, though the fact that my boss, Ms. Dunn, was garbed as a cross between Twiggy and a go-go girl should have tipped me off. I was the only fellow there with real hair down to my shoulders so it wasn’t difficult for the costumer to skew my self-styled 70s rock promoter look (let me have my fantasy) to a 60s peace and love vibe. Apparently, all it takes is a neckerchief and suddenly I appear like an ambassador of harmony and goodwill. Having seen some footage of myself lately (bound to happen when one runs a film department and has little in the way of on-staff actors), I realized that the striped school ties and blazers paired with my head-banging hair results in my looking like a cast reject from the “AC/DC Story.” So, I’ve got that going for me. Anyway, I’m currently on the prowl for ascots with which to ring in the third annual Sunnys, if not wring my own neck.
But enough about what I’m wearing – what are you wearing? A variation of this question I often hear from the
Contessa is “You’re wearing that?” I reply, “Why, does it make me look fat?” Or, as pertains to the ascot,
“Does it make my neck look fat?”
“You’re neck looks fine,” she’ll say, “But you’re head…”
“You think I’ve got a fat head? Well, you know what they say – fat head, big…”
“Ego?” she retorts and then suggests that I can cure my condition by tying the ascot especially tight. “That way your fat head will eventually fall off.”
Cover teaser: Getting ahead by tying one on.
