Here is the first chapter of my unfinished novel from which I drew the title of my lil blog...enjoy....

Malcolm Orange’s pudgy, balding older brother scowled at him from the bathroom mirror. Sure, he was an only child, but what other explanation could there be? The gut hanging over the boxers of the poor bastard repulsed him. Tufts of hair shot from the back and shoulders of the reflection, as if to compensate for the thinning scalp. Gray edged apologetically into the hair and goatee. How could anyone let themselves go so badly? Who was this schlubby lump of goo?

Mirrors had become a cruel joke to Malcolm. His world view hadn’t changed. He was a life long Democrat, although he had begun the edging towards the politcal middle that occurs in one’s mid -thirties. Culturally, he thought he was pretty hip, unaware that describing himself that way made him exactly the opposite.

His health was another matter. Malcolm willfully ignored the alarms his body sounded. He had gained about thirty pounds in the past ten years largely through his inclusion of Heineken and Hostess products as major nutrition groups. Whenever he forgot about his added girth, his memory was refreshed when he found himself short of breath after such grueling activities as getting out of his favorite chair or tying a shoe.

All of his maladies conspired to paint the portrait of the stranger in the mirror. A paunch, thinning hair, tired eyes begging for glasses that Malcolm refused to consider all pointed to one inescapable fact. Malcolm was middle - aged. Forty, precisely, and more brutally, forty today.

But was it all an illusion? Some trick of time and space precipitated by, who knows? Stress? Lack of fiber? Cell phones?
Malcolm darted out of the room and hid in the hallway. After a count to “Three Mississippi”, he leaped into the bathroom.

“Ah - ha!”

Sadly, his reflection was not taken by surprise, springing fiercely at him. Startled, Malcolm slipped on the bath mat, Wile E. Coyote - like, treading air as he tumbled backwards. Time slowed. He noticed a rusty - yellow water stain on the ceiling for the first time. As Malcolm made a mental note to call the landlord about the substandard plumbing, his skull caromed off the toilet with a clang that Malcolm vaguely placed as a G sharp. A thousand flashbulbs went off as he landed on the tile and the room faded to black.

For most people the fall would have surely caused severe injury, or worse, but Malcolm was blessed with the most prominent and peculiar of Orange family traits. Oddly, it was twenty - seven years ago, to the day he learned of it.
Malcolm attended his first baseball game on his thirteenth birthday. On an August evening thick with humidity, he sat with his father and his younger brother Maynard ten rows behind the Red Sox dugout, in one of the hallowed halls of the sport, Boston’s Fenway Park. Malcolm and his brother were loaded down with hot dogs, pretzels and sodas watching the Red Sox battle the hated New York Yankees. By the third inning, the Red Sox were losing eight to two and Malcolm was suffering the first of his life long bouts with indigestion.

“Dad, do you have a Tums?”

“What the hell do you need a Tums for?” asked his father, as if there was some sinister motive behind Malcolm’s making a play for the yummy antacid goodness wedged into his hip pocket.

“I ate too much.”

“Good for you, buddy.”

“I feel really sick.”

“Jesus Christ, son. You’re supposed to go to a ball game and eat like a goddamn pig. If you don’t, you’re not really a fan.”

Years later, when his fathers weight, blood pressure and cholesterol all hit two hundred sixty and he dropped dead, Malcolm found comfort in the thought, well, there goes a real fan.

His father reached into his right hip pocket to extract the roll of Tums. Stuffing his sausag - y fingers into Calvin Klein jeans two sizes too small, he grunted and pulled out a couple of crumpled lottery tickets and an unwrapped stick of gum.

As he burrowed deeper into the pocket, his wallet popped into the air.

On the field, Ron Guildry, a left hander with nasty stuff, whipped into his wind - up. Carlton Fisk, Red Sox catcher and future Hall of Fame inductee, awaited the pitch.

The wallet executed two perfect mid air turns.

Guidry kicked high and pushed hard off the rubber, unleashing a fast ball which began in the middle of the plate and as it hummed closer, tailed to the outside corner.

The wallet did another one eighty on the way down.

Fisk rightly anticipated fast ball and strode forward, coiling his bat, leaning in as the pitch moved away from him.

“Shit!” Arthur bent down to retrieve his wallet.

Fisk swung, making contact off the end of his bat, lining a rope into the first base stands, marked for the death of the ticket holder of Section J, Seat 10 -

Who was at the moment, hunched over, unsticking his wallet from a puddle of congealed ball park muck.

Malcolm, the ticket holder of Section J, Seat 12 wondered why his father insisted on wearing such tight jeans. He was too young to recognize his dad’s embarrassing taste for what it was in truth, a desperate attempt to ward off middle - age by suffocating it in denim.

Witnesses later described the sound of the baseball drilling Malcolm’s head as not unlike that of a coconut being cracked open.

Malcolm woke up at Massachusetts General Hospital. The wconcerned face of Carlton Fisk hovered over him like a Thanksgiving Day balloon.

“You’re looking good, pal.”

Why Carlton Fisk had any interest in his well - being puzzled Malcolm, though, not nearly as much as the television lights and the microphones now being shoved in his face. Later, Malcolm learned he was, according to the Boston Herald, “Coma Boy” and that a local television station had begun a “Malcolm’s Miracle” fund for his medical bills which had nearly eight thousand dollars in it’s coffers.

The medical community hummed with discussion of Malcolm’s survival. For a good week afterwards, specialists from across the world made pilgriages to Malcolm’s bedside to fondle, poke and scrutinize his head as if they were checking an exotic fruit for ripeness. During a lull in the showcase, his father pulled a chair up to Malcolm’s bed.

“You got the Orange Skull, son. The skulls of all of the men in the Orange family are anywhere from an eighth of an inch to, in the case of your uncle Stan, nearly two inches thicker than the average human skull.”

There were many traits which Malcolm would have welcomed as a genetic legacy. Musical ability, the skill to run a four minute mile, the rugged good looks of a Russell Crowe, for example. Hallelujah, he had the “Orange Skull”. It was only a matter of time before the carny circuit beckoned.

“Step right up and watch the Amazing Malcolm stop a for - ty five caliber bullet with his Notorious Noggin! Huh - ry! Hurry! Hurry!”

But, as his skull smashed into the tile and brain matter ricocheted within, the three - quarters extra inch of thickness did indeed make a difference, turning a life - threatening concussion into a mere bump on the head. After about fifteen minutes, Malcolm’s eyes opened.

He propped himself on his elbows, trying to piece together what had occurred. All he knew was that his head was pounding and he felt like an asshole. He stood and looked into the mirror. Shit. Still forty.

Malcolm desperately searched for a cliché’ to comfort himself.

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

Uh huh. If today was the poster child for that little bromide, Malcolm figured he should chug his wife Carolyn's Vicodin while chasing it with a Nyquil shooter. Except Malcolm knew he could never commit suicide at home. It seemed to him the ultimate “fuck you” to off yourself where loved ones could find you. Why not go the whole nine yards and pin a note to your corpse, reading “And how was YOUR day?”

Malcolm opened the door of the shower and turned on the water, which sprayed contemptuously,

“Fourrr - teee.”

He calibrated the hot and cold faucets which squealed,

“Fffooouuurrr - tttyyy.”

At precisely eleven and two o’ clock, optimum temperature was achieved. As the steam billowed over the doors, he stepped inside.

He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, letting the water run down his face. In about an hour, he and Carolyn would walk into Harry’s Kung - Pao Pueblo for a birthday dinner. Harry’s was a funky joint which served some of the best Thai - food in Los Angeles. If the only indignity he suffered was the singing of a loud, off - key birthday ditty by the kitchen staff, the evening would be painless. His only goal was to usher his fortieth birthday through the front door and into a dark back room quieckly and quietly, locking it away like some mentally defective relative.

Malcolm shot a squib of Pert Shampoo For Normal Hair into his palm. As he lathered up, he realized that a bottle lasted a lot longer than it did a few years ago, when his hair was longer. He rationalized that styles have changed, it wasn’t a balding thing. He calmed himself by calculating his shampoo savings since 1988.

It wasn’t a bad life, really. He loved movies and was paid to write about them. He was known at the paper as a stylish writer, but it was an ongoing source of amusement that no one could recall the last time he panned anything. It wasn’t unusual to read newspaper ads for the most reviled movie of the year carrying a quote from one of Malcolm’s raves.

“Little Nicky” - “Adam Sandler is a a national comic treasure!” Malcolm Orange - Burbank Times.

“Freddy Got Fingered” - “Tom Green is this generation’s Adam Sandler” - Malcolm Orange - Burbank Times.

“Town and Country” - “Comedy, thy name is Warren Beatty!” - Malcolm Orange - Burbank Times.

Malcolm loved movies. With a capital L. With a “I know he hits me but if you really understood him, you’d see he’s under a lot of stress” devotion. He was the perfect doting parent and each movie was a drooling newborn, flawless, perfect and beautiful in it’s own stumbling, mewling, shitting way.

There were grumblings at the paper that Malcolm gave everything raves simply to see his name in print. He was a “studio whore” in it to suck up to the big guys for the perks.

Malcolm didn’t care. He was well - liked. In fact, at the paper, Malcolm realized he was pretty much universally considered a nice guy. No one had a bad thing to say about him. When push came to shove, no one had anything to say about him.

The water pressure fluctuated briefly and the spray hissed.

“Nniii -sssssseeee.”

Nice. Maybe it was the shampoo seeping into his scalp, but the word resonated. Nice. What did that mean? Memorable? Beloved? impressive? Nice. Unobjectionable. Not bad, not exceptional. Nice. Inconsequential. Liked, maybe, but certainly not loved. Ignored, possibly, but not important enough to be hated. “Have a nice day.” Don’t have too exceptional a day, I don’t want that for you, I just hope your day will be ordinary. No peaks too high, no valleys too low. Nice.

The lather oozed down his forehead and stung his eyes. Malcolm squeezed them shut and held them closed. God, it was true. He was a nice guy who did an unimportant job. Who just turned forty. In Burbank.

Malcolm stopped in mid - shampoo. He had lost track of how many times he had lathered, rinsed and repeated.

Downstairs, Carolyn Orange wondered what Emeril Legase was like in bed. Every time she saw him on The Food Channel, her thoughts drifted from the Crawfish Etoufee he was preparing, tossing dashes of his “essence”, a spice combination known only to him, with cries of “bam” to imagining herself as the recipient of those very same “Bams”.

Her evening with Emeril always followed the same scenario. He would prepare a sumptuous meal like Oysters Canou. Carolyn would listen to Emeril tell the story of Dallas “Canou” Toups, the Louisiana fisherman the dish was named after, as he shucked the two dozen oysters necessary for the dish. She’d prop herself up on an unused section of the granite countertop (her fantasy kitchen) crossing her legs to flash a milky white thigh. (her fantasy complexion).

Laughter, conversation and wine flowed freely through dinner. Then Emeril would surprise her with a special dessert for the occasion. Tonight, it would be a praline pound cake as decadent as the evening promised to become.

The bedroom was warm and dark. A ceiling fan rotated languidly, lending atmosphere, though not any coolness which was fine with her. She reclined nude among the voluminous pillows. A slow Dixieland waltz played in the darkness.

“Carolyn?”

“I’m waiting, Emeril.’

The curtains around the bed parted, Emeril embraced her. Their sweat mingled as he kissed her deeply. Was that an andouile sausage she felt or ---

A voice from upstairs snapped Carolyn back to Burbank.

“Carolyn, where is my cashmere sweater?”

God, where the hell else would his cashmere sweater be?

“On the top shelf of the closet in the cedar box. Where it always is.”

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.”

Carolyn closed her eyes and tried to transport herself back to the French Quarter, but to no avail. Shit. After eight years of marriage, sex with Malcolm held all the fire and spontaneity of well, anything done several hundred times exactly the same damn way. A nice loving way, certainly, but sometimes a girl just needs a “bam”.

Malcolm strode downstairs.

“How do I look?”

He gave a fashion model spin, showing off his black cashmere sweater, which he wore over a navy Brooks Brothers shirt, with gray cords and L.L. Bean loafers. It was a look he hit out of the ballpark.

“You look nice.”

Malcolm stared at her for a very long time.