Make Mine Mike

How did I become such a pack rat? I used to move around so much, I never accumulated anything. Possessions are fleeting, I used to say. Now, my motto seems to be, "gotta save these, I might need 'em later."

Thing is, I've been living in the same place for a while, but the rest of my family was in transit, and all my stuff I stored with them came back to me. So my home has become a warehouse for... CRAP!

Why did I keep this old term paper I wrote at 3 in the morning on a typewriter (not a word-processor, mind you, a typewriter, so I couldn't make too many mistakes or move paragraphs around) about books I never entirely read... and got a 100 on it?! To prove I can bullshit a pretentious professor who raved about my work? Or to show that I was robbed of an education? (Actually, my mom -- a PhD on the subject -- got annoyed that I got away with that, and graded the paper herself... begrudgingly gave me an A-. Ha.) INTO THE TRASH!

What's with this -- every version of a screenplay I rewrote over and over because the producer attached had no idea what he wanted from the project but promised we'd get Bruce Willis and Antonio Banderas to star if I just tweaked that scene in the second act... again? ADIOS MUCHACHOS!

These notes on my gangster script, with biographies of everyone in this mob family, going back to the old country? ARRIVERDECI ROMA!

The list goes on and on. Folders of e-mail exchanges, magazines and articles, pages and pages of research about earthquakes, horse racing, assault weapons, baseball legends, Governor's Island, hurricane formations... trust me, this would make a great movie... BYE-BYE AND BUY BONDS!

And what about these old notebooks from high school and college and grad school? Like I need to keep all the details about Thaddeus Stevens or Planck's Constant, or Preston Sturges? Of course, every other page is filled with cartoons I drew when bored in class. Hey, some of these aren't half bad... hmm...

Better save these, I might need 'em later.