h a l f b a k e r yThe embarrassing drunkard uncle of invention.
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There are a thousand stories in this city, but sometimes it feels like not one of them is yours; you're just a bit-player in someone else's drama, a walk-on with one line, an annotation in the margins. Maybe someone else is bogarting the action; maybe not. But you step outside your Film Noir Home and
you find the streets are mean, the people even meaner. There's a reason that they call this 'downtown'.
So you've spent the night drinking in every gin-joint in town, you've smoked your way through till dawn, and now you're looking for a coffee. Well, actually, you're looking for a whole lot more, but right now you'll settle for a coffee... maybe a chocolate croissant to go with it. There you see it, across the street, the new place just opened: The Canadian McGuffin Company. The menu looks interesting. You got your usual suspects - lattes and the likes, mochaberry, cappucinnos, frappucinnos, de-caff, half-caff, espresso, ristretto, and good, old, plain, black java. But when you ask for a muffin to go with it, Java-Jockey Joe looks at you like you've lost the plot. You don't know it yet, but actually you just found it.
Nossir, he explains. There's no muffins here, just 'McGuffins'. "What's that?", you ask. Well, a McGuffin, he explains, is the term that writers use for (often spurious) plot devices thrown into a story for the action to turn around - a Maltese Falcon or a Canada Goose, a Lost Treasure, a Secret Formula or a groundbreaking invention. Whatever it is you can bet your life it spells 'trouble' with a capital 'T' for anyone that gets mixed up with it. So they got a ready supply of McGuffins, you ask this java-jockey. Freshly baked every day, he says. Just got these here GyroBrolly blueprints in this morning. Guaranteed to get the forces of the Umbrella Industry sending paid hitmen to kill you. Or there's the HalfBakery Popularity Formula. Or the Salt-Dispensing Snow-Shoes. Or the Elvis-Kennedy Tapes. Or the Secret Identity of El Pedanto. Any one of these is bound to make your life a little more interesting - dangerous, maybe, but definitely interesting.
Well, you say, gimme a plain black coffee, medium, and a Flocking Road Cone Schematic to go.
And that's when your life gets interesting...
NB. Originally this was going to be a cafe where hack writers could purchase fresh and tasty - but fictive - plot devices with their java. But I prefer the idea of being able to buy a real-world 'McGuffin' replete with bad guys just to make your own life a little more interesting. Surely not too hard to accomplish with just a teensy bit of albeit illegal espionage and intrigue.
The Game
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0119174
Same plot, different device. [phoenix, Dec 17 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]
Of Mice and McGuffins
http://sc.essortmen...edhitchcoc_rvhd.htm
Hitchcock was Notorious for them [UnaBubba, Dec 19 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]
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Annotation:
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Matches you up with an organised crime kingpin who's your spitting image. Employs groups of women in light, floaty dresses standing in the rain by busy roads at midnight. Mysterious suitcases you must on no account open. Shady conmen asking about the "process". Someone shoots your partner. Fill up my hip flask and scrunch the brim of my hat. Crop-sprayers cost extra. |
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McDonalds will sue you for trademark infringement. (Writers aren't in the food-service business.) |
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Real-life desperados could also offload some of their more exciting problems through the cafe to bored millionaire executives who are after a bit of adrenaline. |
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Because of the word 'McGuffin', [bookworm]? I think the estate of Alfred Hitchcock might have something to say about that. (I believe it was Hitchcock that coined the term; it's certainly been common in writer's parlance for decades.) |
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Also beacause of the word McGuffin, i don't think it will really take off in Scotland, since the word 'guff' means a bad smell, normally associated with flatulance. |
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"You look like you're in trouble."
"Why?"
"Because you don't look like it." |
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"Mccoppins?" queried the puzzled McGuffins clerk, "Oh, you're in the wrong place; we're just off the lane, you see, and they're -- dare I say it -- fairly obvious as you get closer." After I'd plumbed the dupe like a conjugal visit, I made away for Mccoppin's parts. If that coffeehouse hopsing knew what I was about to do he never let on. Fat chance that! A customer that cool wouldn't feel it if he missed his last birthday. |
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Look, I can't talk right now. I think they're on to me. You'll find my vote in the lost property office at the main railway terminus in locker no.42. You'll find an envelope in there addressed to Mr Black. And remember, if anyone asks, you haven't seen me. |
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"Say, what's a nice place like you doin' in a girl like this?" |
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... Continued.
I was standing under a window that I'd never seen open. In fact, the paint on the frame looked as though it was fresh and there was no line to suggest it could be opened. Marnie lived there, but I hadn't seen her since the Saboteur who held her Spellbound had left town in a Frenzy. A drop of rain formed on the brim of my hat, glittering in the dawn light like a Topaz, as I glanced at the pocketwatch my Dad gave me the day he died: 5:00 am exactly. Why is it that I'm always standing in the rain, without an umbrella, waiting for some wiseguy who never shows, at 5:00am? He was a victim of Blackmail, after a sordid little affair with Rebecca. She always said that if you give a man enough Rope, he'll hang himself. The girl was simply Psycho. She could get away with Murder! |
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A cold trickle down the back of my neck and I thought: If it rains any harder I'll need a Lifeboat. |
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The yellow cab came around the corner fast, too fast. I had a Suspicion it was never going to make the corner and I was right. The cab seemed to take flight, ever so slowly, before the rending sound of it scraping along the pavement on its ribs shattered the morning silence. |
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The driver never knew what hit him. At first I suspected Sabotage, but the answer was much simpler than that; He had used his Exploding Cell Phone to call a friend from a moving vehicle, not realising that his death warrant had been signed in that moment, half of his head readressed in an instant... |
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