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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

8-27-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #191 (Working Temp in NYC: Typing for the Wrong Man, part 4)


I’m getting a little fed up reading -- and writing -- about this temp job so I’ll recount two little anecdotes about that time and then (thankfully) move on.

Because Joslin was so connected and knew so many interesting people in entertainment and in syndication, one day his lunchtime visitor was a woman who wrote the “Heloise’s Hints” column. Only, the latter-day Heloise was the daughter of the original, who wrote about all kinds of household hints back in the sixties, and was syndicated by King Features (a member of Hearst Entertainment and Syndication Group).

When I met the woman -- a tall, slender, striking looking lady in her early forties who had flowing, straight, mostly white hair -- I got up from my desk and extended my hand: “I’m your biggest fan,” I enthused.

She reacted with mock horror. “I hope not!”

In a split second, I realized she was referencing the Steven King movie, Misery, where the Kathy Bates character tells the writer she idolizes that very same thing and kidnaps him, for starters -- then it all goes downhill from there.

“Uh, okay, well, not THAT big a fan.” We both had a laugh, shook hands, and I knew that this new Heloise was a very cool person. When her mother, the original Heloise, died in 1977, daughter Klah Marchelle Heloise took on the mantle and kept the column going. Now she has a website, of course: http://www.heloise.com/index.html

I was very excited to meet Heloise, just because, I mean, here’s a person who’s kept a very useful brand going for quite some time. . . she’s successful at doing something unusual AND she seems very happy. Hooray for Heloise!

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