on being a seat-of-yer-pantser

Don Quinn, the cartoonist who wrote nearly every episode of Fibber McGee & Molly, often wrote each week's script at the very last minute, staying up all night with a big pot of coffee and several cartons of cigarettes.

Douglas Adams was known to finish episodes of the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series on the day of transmission, madly pounding away on a little typewriter in a small room and handing the individual carbon copy sheets over to the cast and crew as soon as he was done with each page.

10 minutes before our first TOMES OF TERROR live radio re-enactment last night, I was sitting in the church office with Renni, going over some last-minute "while we're here" revisions to her host segments, the final draft of which I'd just finished that morning. Renni is playing The Librarian, the only original character in this show. Taking a page or two from the old EC horror comics, I created a host character to introduce the three radio re-enactments, tie things up at the end, announce intermissions, and read the rules involving cellphones and oubliettes.

"Ok. Page 2, line 16. Let's strike that first 'so'. Next, page 3, let's cut lines 43 through 56. The joke's good but we need to tighten this up more."

"How about if I use a different word here to describe the monkey's paw?" Renni asks. "Just something other than innocuous. Something like curious. Or vulgar."

"Oooh, excellent," I says. "Change the line to 'a most curious artifact... a twisted and vulgar souvenir from another land.'"

And then it's go time. ( And I feel great. )

So come see the show tonight. We go "ON AIR" at 7:30 pm, First Congregational Church of Somerville, just a few blocks up College Ave from Davis Square (between Davis and Powderhouse.) Tix are tenbux, seven for younger and older folks. You will love it.