Over at the alley, Phil's stacking boxes full of food on the snack-bar counter, and asks Ed to be a dear and load the boxes into Phil's car. Ed asks what's going on, and Phil says that he's holding a jazz brunch at his room at Motel 6, and that Ed's invited, but that he should keep the invite on the hush-hush because Motel 6 doesn't like him hosting guests in his room. Ed says, "You're living at Motel 6?" Phil sneers, "Temporarily." Ed says that Phil can't take all this food with him to his brunch, because it's not Phil's food. Phil reminds Ed of his policy that employees can eat as much food as they want, and Ed clarifies, "Eat all you want while you WORK." Phil gets mad and says that you can't change the rules while you're in the middle of the game. That's what they did on "Survivors," and President Bush cancelled the show. Ed tells him to put the food away, and starts walking away while correcting Phil that the show he's thinking of is pronounced Survivor. Phil is furious and yells at Ed, "When did you stop being my man and start being THE man?" I crawl to the utility room for some spackle because that Phil...he just cracks my ass up.

Carol walks into the lobby of the Stuckeyville Progress and asks for Mr. Dobbs. Dobbs, the newspaper's editor, hears her and ushers her into his office. The guy is a dead ringer for my old newspaper editor, except he's carrying papers around instead of half-empty bottles of scotch and gin. Carol says she's an English teacher at the high school and wants to write some stories for the newspaper. Hey, Carol, I played a tree in a first-grade production of The Wizard Of Oz. I think it's high time Ron Howard put me in his next flick. But life doesn't work that way. Dobbs says that he used to have the creative bug himself at one point. He went so far as to write the story for an entire Captain Marvel comic that got rejected because he used the word "Shazam!" too many times. He asks Carol if she has any samples to show him; she doesn't. So he pulls out a stack of papers and tells her there's a bunch of different human-interest stories in there. If she can piece one together for him -- say, something about the town nympho or something -- then he could give her some freelance work. A side note here: I was a journalist/reporter for a weekly newspaper for the ten years. If Carol Vessey ever walked into our office with no samples and just a heart full of spunk, we'd use her as a human piñata. We didn't take that kind of crap from no high-falutin' English teachers at my newspaper. I mean, I wouldn't walk up to her and ask to teach her class Sex Ed. She needs to stay far away from my newspaper desk. Fer chrissakes, I bite, dammit. I'm like a rabid racoon when people threaten my livelihood.