Author Archives: Chris

News Headlines

  • American Airlines and U.S. Air have been approved to merge. The merger was halted by the government until American explained that it doesn’t plan to use U.S. Air’s fleet, it’s just going to cram all the additional seats onto their own planes.
  • American citizen Merrill Newman was released from North Korea because he was able to prove that he was in fact only a tourist. Upon his return to U.S. soil, Newman said, “that Rick Steves is full of crap.”
  • CNN is offering seven tips for successful solo travel. Tip #1 is “Don’t go to North Korea.” Tip #2 is “DON’T GO TO NORTH KOREA!” 
  • American singer Jennifer Grout was eliminated from the TV show Arabs Got Talent. Fans expressed outrage until they realized that she was simply being peacefully sent home from the competition and not the usual  Middle East version of ‘eliminated’ that involves death.
  • Here is a list of recommendations for setting up your Christmas tree. #1: Pointy side up.

News Headlines

  • For the first time in almost 20 years, 160 countries agreed on a trade agreement that is estimated to boost the world economy by 1 trillion dollars. To give you an idea of how much money 1 trillion dollars really is, imagine if an apple was worth one hundred billion dollars. Then you’d have ten apples.
  • The current blast of winter weather has chilled cities as typically warm as Las Vegas, where people are struggling with the fact that all the women are all modestly bundled in clothing.
  • Prince Harry is trekking with a group of wounded war veterans in an attempt to reach the South Pole. The Prince is trying to bring attention to the wounded veterans, but really we all know it’s just another pathetic attempt for the Prince to try and finally get a girl to like him.
  • CNN reporters were granted access inside Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant. They’re reports of progress, and their eyes, were glowing.
  • 85-year old U.S. citizen Merrill Newton was recently deported from North Korea and returned home. He said the thing he missed the most about the U.S. is the food. When reporters asked him which foods, he replied, “no, I missed the existence of actual food.”

News Headlines

  • 23-year old Jennifer Grout may win this season’s competition of Arab’s Got Talent. Her fans in the U.S., for the sake of her health and safety, are really hoping she suffers a crushing and public defeat by a man.
  • International authorities suspect a political shake-up in North Korea. Evidence of a restructuring that is typical for that nation is being reported, as leaders who have voiced disapproval of the current political system are being found without their heads.
  • Famed adventurer Bear Grylls is expanding his Survival Academy training courses to now include Africa. The new course is surprisingly quick and inexpensive given the vast political, military, cultural and natural dangers ever-present throughout the continent. You pay your money and then you get an email from Bear Grylls that says “do not, under any circumstances, ever go to Africa, ever.”
  • GM announced that it will discontinue its Chevy brand sales in Europe. Europeans responded by saying, “we could buy a Chevy in Europe?”
  • There is evidence that smoking marijuana can cause man boobs. There is also evidence that smoking marijuana while reading the news article about man boobs can cause hours of uncontrolled giggling.
  • Senator Rand Paul has outlined his plan to help the city of Detroit to recover. He wants everyone there to just work like he did to become successful – be born to a wealthy family, become a physician, and then get elected to the Senate where the pay and benefits are awesome.

News Headlines

  • Dennis Rodman has returned to North Korea. Stay tuned for the upcoming film of inspiration about a fledgling Olympic basketball team from an obscure little nation that comes in last but inspires anyway before returning home to shame and execution.
  • Vice President Joe Biden arrived in China amid tensions over China’s increase in military airspace that now overlaps with Japan’s. Biden said there should be no tension because, “Japan is a city in China, so what’s the problem?”
  • Biden visited a U.S. travel visa office in China to thank the people waiting in line for wanting to visit the U.S. He also told them to ‘challenge their government,’ because by the time they’ve been imprisoned, he’ll be back in the U.S. playing skee ball at Dave and Busters.
  • A truck in Mexico carrying radioactive Cobalt-60 to a hospital Tijuana for use in medical treatments was hijacked. Mexican authorities expressed satisfaction that this was the closest this truck shipment has ever gotten to its destination before being hijacked.
  • Also in Mexico, the Michoacana Cartel has threatened to harm Catholic priests unless the Archdiocese pays protection money. The Archbishop of Mexico City said that they would not pay, because the church answers to a higher power, The Sinaloa Cartel.
  • Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2013 is the word ‘science,’ beating out the more expected word ‘selfie,’ which was Britan’s Oxford Dictionary word of the year. Webster said that ‘science’ was the most searched word on the internet this year in the U.S. because now more than ever, American children do not know what science is.
  • Also in the U.S., an activist group has gone to court in an attempt to give chimpanzees the same rights to ‘bodily liberty’ as a human. They argue that chimps should have the same rights as a ‘human person’ because it can now be proven that chimps are equal to American school children in their knowledge of science.

Waiting for a Tornado

I’m staring at the basement ceiling, waiting for the wind

to twist off my house like a frayed sun hat,

She gasps and chases it across a French cobblestone bridge,

holding her skirt down, giggling.

 

Or, I’m squatting down to umpire the preschool tee-ball game

as a twister toddles, off balance and mouth breathing,

toward my whiffleball house, dragging the bat

and smearing the chalk line behind him.

 

Maybe I’m sitting under the table as the novice magician

pulls the tablecloth too slow, sending my fake fine china house

bouncing off the convention carpet square lawns.

The neighbors, embarrassed for me, order another scotch.

 

I could be sitting in the basement bathroom when she walks

right in, wanting to redecorate everything, and I remember

all my friends saying, “don’t move in with Kansas,”

and I wonder why she can’t understand the word “occupied!”

 

Or, I’m hiding in the wine cellar of the Ottoman Empire,

bracing for invasion, hoping I’m dressed appropriately

for when I’m found impaled on a spike, my collapse

the only event worthy of a history book.

 

Or, I’m the dandelion seed stuck between the toes

of the panic-frozen marmot, as the Winnebago wobbles

through Yellowstone, leaving behind it a path of diesel smoke,

skid marks, and splattered marmots,

 

and all the unwritten stories and other sins of sloth,

gluttony and greed that have accumulated in my closets

seemed nicely tucked away when the rain started,

but started spilling out when the wind picked up,

 

and in the darkness I could only think about my punishment

massing in the clouds above me, but due to influences

too many and too subtle to hear in the static of my dying radio,

there was too much else before me to destroy,

 

and the storm spun out too soon, and the parting sky revealed

nothing more to me than that I am, for now, forgiven.

 

I Was Featured In The Boston Herald

Boston Herald, Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Their futures are in the cards

By Jerry Kronenberg

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Americans will give their sweethearts an estimated 190 million Valentine’s Day cards today.

The nationally recognized entrepreneur is just a small part of the answer for those who might be asking: “Who writes this stuff, anyway?”

“Valentine’s Day is actually the day when I can be most creative,” says Joanna Alberti — owner of Hub startup philoSophie’s, one of about two-dozen small Massachusetts greeting card companies. “There are people who are in love, there are people who are single and there are people who are saying, “I’m not sure if we’re using the ‘L word’ just yet.” That’s why cards are creative. They don’t just all say: ‘I’ll Love You Forever.’ ”

Alberti, whom Business Week Online recently named one of the nation’s “Five Best Entrepreneurs Under 25,” sells her cards at 24 boutiques across the country.

Arlington native Chris Conti, a humor writer in the Shoebox studio at industry leader Hallmark Cards, said his work aims to “help someone be funny and more expressive than they would be on their own.”

Conti writes captions for about 300 Hallmark cards per year, although he got into the business in a roundabout way.

After earning a degree in literature and Economic Theory from the University of Rochester, Conti took the first job offer he got: salesman at Boston gift maker International Silver Co.

One of his clients: Hallmark.

Conti befriended (and ultimately married) a Hallmark buyer named Kaki Cummings, who helped him get an editor’s job at the company’s Kansas City headquarters.

Today, Conti drafts about 15 jokes a day, 10 t0 20% of which his bosses usually “accept,” or find good enough for publication.

If an accepted joke fits in with business needs — say Hallmark wants some Valentine’s cards for newlyweds — Conti’s work shows up in stores about a year later.

The writer said he often draws inspiration from things in his own life. Conti also watches lots of TV and movies to “absorb the situations and language, so that I can describe the underlying emotions that are universal to all of us. And be funnier and more clever about it than an average person could be on their own.”

“What’s fun for me is when I’m shopping and I see someone read my card and laugh,” he said. “If something sounds quick and easy — and sounds like it’s the sender speaking, and not me — then I’ve done my job.”

(property of the Boston Herald)

I Was Featured In the Los Angeles Times

Sunday, June 9, 2002

Who’s Responsible for the Verses that Announce Every Holiday Imaginable? If You’re Thinking Blue-Haired Ladies, Think Again.

By HOWARD ROSENBERG (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

As I’m often reminded at home, cards can be their own therapy. Take Fresh Ink, the relatively new Hallmark line whose passionate editorial director is 33-year-old Conti, a goateed poet in T-shirt and blue jeans who was inspired to write by the verses of Robert Frost.

Fresh Ink sells especially well at college bookstores. The typical buyer is female, age 18 to 39, well-educated and turned off by traditional cards. A card catches my eye; the front is a period photo of one elderly woman speaking to another on a park bench. The caption reads: “Is it ‘butt naked’ or ‘buck naked’?” Inside it continues: “These are the kinds of questions I come to you for.”

Speaking the obscure tongue of card marketing, Conti talks about “emotional sharability,” envisioning how “butt naked” vs. “buck naked” may seduce a potential Fresh Ink buyer. “She’s a young woman standing at the rack and looking at those cards. She picks up this one. She sees these two old women. She thinks to herself, ‘This will be my friend and me in 50 years.’ ”

(Property of the L.A. Times)

Waiting For Inspiration

Spigot wide open.

Clockwise all the way.

A lefty loosy ink hydrant to extinguish this burn at any moment now.

 

Five thousand pound press.

My palm the definition of flat,

primed to stamp out metaphors one and then one and then one.

 

Whorish woman

blows on the dice.

I want to win at crap so bad, and God I hope she’s really a whore.

 

Straight-jacketed lunatic

who hasn’t seen the moon in years

hears “you can go now” and awaits the grand unbuckling.

 

Veteran brick layer,

trowel scraped to a satin finish,

ready to work off the morning chill and make another good neighbor.

 

I’ve stopped by woods,

and my pine rash is flaring.

I contort to reach my midspine to scratch till I bleed, eyes rolling.

 

Preacher with the diamond watch

and diamond church and diamond eyes

that promise ten thousand shivering hopefuls their diamond blanket.

 

My eyes have seen the glory

of all the various distances,

seeking the angle that triggers memory, or even lie would do.

 

I’ve walked through the Valley

of the Shadow of Doubt

and was scared shitless, cried for my mommy, for Thou art a mystery to me.

 

But I’m in a full-body cast

and can’t reach the remote.

I’ve got nothing to do but this.  And I’ve got all day.

News Story

Pakistan Launches Test Nuke,

Destroys Swath of Own Capital

 

“Actually went better than expected,”

said surviving scientist.

 

The Pakistani weapons testing program reached a new pinnacle of achievement over the weekend with the successful launch and detonation of a surface-to-surface, low-yield nuclear missile.

“The guidance system needs work, obviously,” said Zudwah Hamfir, lead scientist of Pakistan’s nuclear testing program, and supervisor of the weekend’s test. “Fortunately, we had the good sense to evacuate Kabul beforehand. After all the towns we went through in the development of our conventional weapons arsenal, it just made sense.”

The Pakistani missile defense program has it’s origins in the early ‘90’s, when that nation’s top scientists capitalized on the opportunity to study the wide range of unexploded ordinances that had flown off target from U. S. war ships during the first Gulf War. In order to land on Pakistani soil, a missile launched from a ship in the Persian Gulf had to veer off of its 700-mile course to Iraq by a minimum of 1300 miles.

When asked to comment on the high rate of these near misses, an official U.S. military press release stated, “if we’d missed by any less than that, we would have hit Iran. Think of the diplomatic headache we’d be dealing with then. You know, you press guys never look at the bright side of anything, GOD!”

Hamfir remembers those days in the in the ‘90’s well. “We learned so much back then,” he said, sounding wistful. “People like farmers and such would bring us unexploded bombs for money, and we’d try to dismantle them. We were like kids at the playground, with a couple of hammers and crowbars, not knowing what kind of trouble we were going to get ourselves into each day.”

Hamfir continued, “we have to take our jobs a lot more seriously these days. The Americans are providing less research material, so we have to rely much more on our own test builds, so progress has slowed.  Also, it’s not quite the glamour job it used to be. I mean, it’s not even considered a risky job anymore,” referring to the fact that all Pakistani state run industries have roughly a 25 to 40% mortality rate, from weapons testing to pharmaceuticals to waste management.

Hamfir continued, “but the Americans have remained very supportive. They promised to rebuild everything they’ve destroyed so far in the fight against terrorism, and we’re confident they will aid us in the rebuilding of our great capital city.  That neighborhood was pretty run-down anyway.”

To Hamfir, Pakistan’s close ties to the U.S. make sense. “Many of us were educated in the United States, go Huskers! …and a few of us have decided we don’t want to go work for The Man,” he said, making quote marks in the air, and referring to the many local, high-paying terrorist groups. “We take great pride in our work.  We want to send a message that is heard by the world, that if we had to we could turn our destructive power outward. I just hope I’m not alive to see such a terrible day.”

Hamfir has little to worry about on this matter, as statistically, he won’t be.

 

 

French Kiss

I have never been the kind of citizen who feels compelled to wear a stars and stripes tee shirt, or pities the people of another country because they can’t get his hands on a double-bacon burger at three o’clock in the morning, and also have entire superstores devoted to their pets. I’ve often longed to live in a place where grown men ride bicycles over cobblestone, or where a family garden is almost a matter of necessity. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate my freedom, but simply that I know the difference between a voting booth and a drive-through window.

I have in my life, however, been guilty of the kind of patriotism that amounts to nothing more than the view that people from other places are somehow less fortunate, rude, and generally off-putting, and to assume their unavoidable envy at my uniquely American-made happiness. I can, however, during my more lucid moments, see this as the real, though lesser of my flaws that it is, and can even suppose a set of causes.

The earliest cause I remember was my first viewing of The French Connection, with Popeye Doyle so ill-tempered, amoral, and awesome, and the Frenchman, the nemesis, so benign looking, and so bad.  And soon after that, a grade school French exchange student. He showed up in class one day and was suddenly dating a girl who was surely mere days away from dating me until he come along. I had been sitting behind her, breathing in her flowery hair, staring at the occasionally exposed bra strap. Then he showed up with his thin French lips pressing his thin French cigarettes, and she was immediately under his thin French benign looking but evil French arm.

Years later, with this memory moved to the part of my brain that requires triggers to shoot forward, I was visiting a magazine publisher in New York with some colleagues, and at the end of our first day, we were asked to dinner by that magazine’s fashion director. She welcomed us through the door of her penthouse apartment in Soho after we had opened the only other door on the top floor and inadvertently set off the roof alarm, and she poured drinks while we waited for the building manager to drive in from Brooklyn to turn the siren off. It was during this wait that I met this woman’s boyfriend, a man as French as the black turtle neck shirt he was wearing and the goose liver pate he was insisting I put in my mouth. It was difficult to hold a conversation with his accent so strong and under the roof alarm still whining in the background, so after many long minutes, we set off for dinner. If the building manager did not trust his tenants enough to give them the alarm code, then he could deal with the police by himself, who had not arrived yet either.

We walked up a wet city street to a restaurant. Walking on a wet narrow side street with close building walls in New York can be like trekking across the lowest bin of an old refrigerator, and I was feeling the need to watch my step. Along the way the Frenchman and I, the only men of the group, paired off in conversation. He seemed to have a fine command of English vocabulary, but the words themselves through the thickness of his accent were their own foreign language. I was able to glean that he dabbled in many projects for a living and was in the process of buying a small, stone cottage somewhere in the hills of southern France. How he had the time and money for this never even came up, as far as I could tell. Or maybe he told me in detail exactly how he had become so wealthy and how I could, too, and I was just missing a massive opportunity here. I resorted to nodding, and furrowing my brow in thoughtful agreement while constantly darting my eyes to the ground in front of me, and hoping he was not asking me if I was the idiot who opened the door that said Roof Access Only.  Alarm Will Sound.

The restaurant was French, and reminded me of the other problem I had with France. The food. I spent my childhood with my stomach solidly tamped with Italian food, and was taught that most other forms of cooking were derivative of, and lesser to this. This was especially true of French food, to my Italian family, with France being so near to Italy geographically. It also explained quite clearly why Chinese food was so different. The people of every other culture of the world simply suffered from the realities of their respective environments, like the people of Iceland who eat strips of jerked walrus blubber for breakfast, and so forth.

With no English translation, because it was a “real” French restaurant, I understood nothing on the menu, and after failing to have a conversation with the French-only speaking waitress, I resorted to pointing to some shrimp on a pile of rice at a nearby table that looked fantastic, and she nodded in purse-lipped agreement, the universal signal for “a fine choice, sir.” The Frenchman lit a cigarette, and was casually told by the waitress in French that he was no longer allowed to smoke in the dining area. Her statement lacked the shock and command that would have come form an American server nowadays, and she even let him enjoy his first lingering drag before speaking up.  But rather than stamp it out and get on with his evening, he sighed his disgust in a second spray of smoke, stood up, and meandered to the bar.

We were just settling into our meals when he strode back and announced he was leaving. He had run into a friend at the bar, and they were setting off to find a restaurant that would allow them to smoke with their meals.  He chose to ignore, as we all did, the look of annoyance on his girlfriend’s face. And then, rather than simply exiting, he grandly circled the table and kissed everyone good-bye once on each cheek.

He moved from woman to woman, cupping a hand in both of his, giving each a gentle smile well within their personal space, and then the kisses, as if they had been dear European friends for a lifetime and he was now leaving for some great journey. Each of my colleagues leaned into his affection, smiled into his eyes, and nodded that she was sincerely sorry to see him go, but understood completely. And all I could do was sit, knowing this man was at some point going to kiss me. I tried to formulate a plan for when he did, to relax, to appear at ease, to be just another lifelong Euro- friend, but was left with neither the time nor the skill to deal with such a thing, like when I was in grade school gym class, bracing for a dodge ball coming too fast that I had no hope of avoiding. And so, like grade school gym class, I would just try to hold still and not whimper too audibly.

I couldn’t help but think that if this French man had been a French woman, I would have brought to life the very definition of charm. I would have lingered and gazed with my farewell.  Shrugged my shoulders and squeezed her hand in reverent affection. The waitress was very attractive, and I would have gladly kissed her goodbye, at least twice. I knew her as well as I knew this guy, and she had been nice enough to bring me food. But the fact that she was French did not allow me to kiss her any more than I could expect to kiss any of my colleagues. I was American, and just like in grade school, the Frenchman got the girl.

As he rounded the corner, I was forced to ask myself what sort of message I might communicate if I allowed our departure to become awkward. This was a professional meeting after all, and I was there as a professional communicator. I simply had to allow myself to be kissed, by a man, gently on the fact, twice. It was no big deal, really. And I did realize that. And so, fine then. So, how do I proceed on my end? Should I pucker?  What if I lean the wrong way and meet him square on the lips? What if I succumb to my penchant for inappropriate giggling, like when the school nurse used to check me for a hernia?

As he approached, I stood, and hoped to let him lead. But then I was met with his outstretched hand, which he was presenting to me for a good, ol’ American handshake. I quickly gave him my hand, which he grabbed with an overzealous squeeze that told me he was as uncomfortable with this as I would have been with his kisses. He leaned in, widened his stance, lifted his elbow straight out sideways, and shook my hand so hard it made me nod, and after kind of a long while, I finally had to push my arm down to indicate that he should really stop now.

 

Back at the hotel, I remembered a French girl I met while traveling in college. I was sitting on the Spanish Steps in Rome, and she sat down beside me. She was beautiful and friendly, and wore a tiny black dress that revealed the sun-lit fuzz of unshaven legs. I found this remarkable, and not in the way most hairy Italian women were remarkable. The middle-aged Italian women holding a ceiling strap on a crowded bus in their sleeveless dresses, some of them looked like actual bad people, but this French girl, she was as beautiful as she was untouched by cosmetics.  She spoke only French, and I spoke broken Italian, but through a few similar word bases, I learned that she was from France, and meeting friends for lunch. I also learned that I was not clever enough in any language to get this girl to want to see me again. If only I had known she would have welcomed a kiss good-bye.

 

The evening in New York had bothered me.  Had I really not matured to even such a basic level? But then, I supposed, the difference between my discomfort and his. In fact, I had not blundered a French farewell at all. This Frenchman had blundered an American one. One he had initiated. And in America.

I understand that where in the world someone is born may determine which species of mollusks he is willing to eat, and what his choices for roofing material might be, but it does not allow him to be socially irresponsible. I had supposed the French to be masters of social graces, but the few Frenchmen I had encountered were unable to compensate for my very American lack of social graces.  The difference is subtle, I realize. It’s not as obvious as the cultural difference between a tiny naked man rowing a boat on the Amazon versus a tiny naked man rowing a boat in Central Park. Still, I do hope to one day figure this out. I hope to possess the social skill to kiss a new acquaintance on the cheek, woman or man. And for that matter, I hope to one day be able to spot the difference between an apartment door and a roof access door. And who knows what that then could lead to. Maybe one day I could dabble in many projects for a living, or possibly even buy a small, stone cottage somewhere in the hills of southern France.

 

 

Conti