"Interview with Bruce Graham, Playwright" by Alan Gerstle

O.K., you just sold your 120-page screenplay masterpiece to Hollywood. You deserve it. You rewrote it ten times. Now, you’re hanging out with Johnny Depp on location as production begins. At night, you’re dining on Wilshire Boulevard at L.A.’s famous Continental Restaurant, a favorite of Matt Damon’s and Ben Affleck’s. 

Could this be real? 

Well, hold that thought. 

An Interview with Mike Reiss: Writer and Producer of The Simpsons by Alan Gerstle

"Cultural Icon Creator Comes to the Commonwealth" DOH!!!! An Interview with Mike Reiss

DOJ recently had an opportunity to sit down with one of America’s most influential minds: a man who has his pulse on America’s zeitgeist as well as its major social and political concerns, and then translates them for a huge popular audience. No, it wasn’t Bill Bennett stopping by for a secret game of seven-card stud on his way back from Atlantic City, or Homeland Security Director (and former PA governor) Tom Ridge, showing off his new designer pack of color-coded terrorist-threat greeting cards just in time for the Holidays. And since Hahnemann Medical Center didn’t offer Rush Limbaugh a freebie consultation in appreciation for his speech before the National Association of Broadcasters held in Center City, we lost the opportunity to pick the mind of the talk show guru’s expert views on such topics as professional sports or the evils of drug abuse.

Far more significantly, however, we did have the pleasure of meeting Mike Reiss, producer and writer for “The Simpsons.” Mike (you’d feel very weird calling him Mr. Reiss—he’s that kind of guy) doesn’t just write funny. He is funny. That’s what DOJ found out when we sat down with him for a little Q & A prior to a recent guest lecture he presented before several hundred Simpsonites.

Working in Hollywood on “The Johnny Carson Show,” “Alf,” “The Gary Shandling Show,” and a few others best left unmentioned, has not spoiled Mike’s innate, easy-going sense of humor and quick-on-the-draw wit. In fact, even more impressive is that after a couple of decades in Hollywood, Mike Reiss is a great guy! After being informed that DOJ was not the Department of Justice and this was not an interrogation, Mike relaxed into an armchair in a lounge at Drexel University in the heart of Philadelphia, and thus our conversation with the brains behind Homer, Marge, and the rest of the Springfield community began, with a few editorial comments along the way. (Please note: This interview has been slightly modified to fit the format of your computer monitor).

Shadow Boxer by Alan J. Gerstle

My father was 30 years old when I was born. The fact meant nothing to me for most of my young life, but took on a special meaning one day when I was fourteen. It was the day he decided to teach me to box.

You might think that transmitting this skill was evidence my father and I had a close relationship, but our bond was distant, ephemeral, and joined together by a single if resilient thread. My parents had divorced when I was a kid, and my father had “visitation rights.” He’d show up at our front door every other Sunday and take me out with him. Our destination might be the zoo, a park, a baseball game or, more usually, his house in Far Rockaway, a half-hour drive from my mother’s place in Brooklyn. But it wasn’t where we ended up that elated me. It was getting there that made it a thrill.

Two's Company, Three's A Shroud: What the Bush Administration Could Learn From a Fish - Alan Gerstle

Rap Sheet (First published in DOJ, 2004) 

“Two’s Company, Three’s a Shroud” or “What the Bush Administration Could Learn from a Fish”

by Alan J. Gerstle

This all started on a fluke. It was simply a matter of adopting a fish. Little did I know it would lead me into the treacherous and enigmatic waters of life, death, the complexities of evolution, and the hazards of competing ideologies. The fish in question was a Betta Splendens, or as nearly every school kid knows this species: the Siamese Fighting Fish. It was bequeathed to me by the daughter of an acquaintance—a pleading twelve-year-old girl. The family was moving from a gritty tenement just off of Broad Street to a land I mentally associated with tobacco, moonshine, Davy Crockett, and Al Gore: the State of Tennessee.

This particular specimen was housed in a small bowl atop a dresser in the young lady’s room. It was provided by her sixth-grade class: the objective being a science experiment. Aja (the girl) was required to keep a log of the fish’s behavior and provide a written report at the end of the term. But now she was changing schools and residences midstream. So the fish needed an adopted home. I volunteered to be the stepfather. When I was Aja’s age, my own room was a menagerie of fish, reptiles, and amphibians. So I saw this opportunity as a means to connect to my youth. That was the initial blunder in what was to become a comedy of terrors.