Richard Grayson's "I Love Scrushy" at YANKEE POT ROAST

Richard Grayson's "I Love Scrushy" appears today (January 23, 2004) at Yankee Pot Roast:

This unforgettable sitcom lasted six seasons, during which the wacky, dictatorial but lovable star, HealthSouth CEO Richard M. (“Red”) Scrushy, stole millions and delighted millions more with his corporate shenanigans and auditing antics. The shows featured Scrushy’s zany attempts to satisfy his dreams of being a country music star, to meet celebrities, to make himself look important to the people of Birmingham, Alabama, and to surround himself with as much luxury as possible.

The four major players employed brilliant comic timing in plots involving the screwball Scrushy, founder and head of a chain of rehabilitative hospitals; his shopaholic third wife, Leslie; Scrushy’s best pal, former child star Jason Hervey (Wayne on “The Wonder Years”), HealthSouth’s inept vice president of communications; and Jason’s ditzy spouse, Shannon.

Classic shows include:

Episode 7: “Scrushy’s Band”
Leslie and Shannon are annoyed that Scrushy keeps hogging the spotlight at work-related functions by performing with his new band, which he’s named “Proxy.” They disguise themselves and convince Jason to hire them as musicians to play alongside Scrushy’s band at the annual shareholders’ meeting. The resulting “battle of the bands” creates such chaos that Scrushy’s plan to fill the board of directors with his stooges almost fails to pass.

Episode 19: “The Accountants’ Party”
Leslie’s correspondence course in hypnosis seems like an utter waste to Scrushy until Jason tells him they need a new ploy to inflate the company’s earnings. Scrushy arranges a party for HealthSouth’s outside accountants and hires Leslie to be the entertainment – in the guise of “Marcella the Mesmerizer,” who will hypnotize the audience and order the auditors to cook the books. Unfortunately, the Ernst & Young employees take that command a little too literally and Scrushy must work fast to prevent his private library from going up in flames.

Episode 26: “The Museum”
After Leslie waxes enthusiastic after a trip to Atlanta’s Coca-Cola Museum, Scrushy decides that she will be impressed if he creates his own museum – dedicated to the creation of the HealthSouth Corporation – just beyond the main elevator bank in the company’s headquarters. But when Jason is busy schmoozing Wall Street analysts, Shannon misreads the message on Jason’s BlackBerry and assumes that the Scrushy wants them to start an art museum and use corporate funds to buy pricey paintings by Picasso. Unaware of the switch, Scrushy calls a press conference and unveils what he says is a picture of himself at the opening of HealthSouth’s 1,000th rehabilitation center – only to discover that it is a Cubist painting of a woman with three breasts.

Episode 35: “Scrushy’s Highway”
When he finds out that a stretch of highway near Birmingham is being named for “Gomer Pyle” star Jim Nabors, a jealous Scrushy schemes to have another part of the highway named for himself. After plying local politicians with food, drink, and campaign contributions, Scrushy gets his highway. Jason relishes the positive publicity, but the plan backfires when Leslie thinks the road named for Scrushy is a private drive like the one he uses to get to his offices at HealthSouth. Scrushy and Jason end up in a mad rush to stop Leslie from racing her Lamborghini against Shannon in Scrushy’s Rolls Royce Corniche.

Episode 47: “Scrushy’s Bathroom Adventure”
Delighted by his successful plan to tap the phone of a female executive and blackmail her into faking invoices, Scrushy celebrates by building a 14-by-8-foot bathroom in his executive office. But when a claustrophobic Scrushy finds himself locked in the loo, Leslie is too busy with a fashion show for her pajama company, Uppseedaisees, to get him out. So Leslie gives scatterbrained Shannon the special elevator pass to the fifth floor of the HealthSouth HQ. Unfortunately, Shannon loses the pass in the building’s lobby, where it’s found by the very employee who’s mad at Scrushy for making her a white-collar criminal.

Episode 54: “Copter Caper”
The girls want to use “Bonus One,” HealthSouth’s corporate helicopter – bought in a year in which the company stopped paying bonuses – for a spur-of-the-moment shopping spree in Atlanta. But Scrushy and Jason want to take the chopper to Scrushy’s luxury family compound on the shore of Lake Martin so they can speed on Scrushy’s 38-foot cigarette boat and enrage the locals in their tiny vessels. When Scrushy and Leslie give the spaced-out copter pilot (guest star Cheech Marin) conflicting flight plans, pandemonium ensues.

Episode 69: “Scrushy Meets Bo Jackson”
Scrushy uses some of the millions he’s pocketed in stock options to build a statue of himself in front of Birmingham’s HealthSouth Medical Center. When Jason gets native Alabaman Bo Jackson to help dedicate the sculpture, Scrushy’s bragging to the superstar about his own athletic prowess leads to a bet that forces Scrushy to put his beloved 22-carat diamond-and-platinum ring in jeopardy. This episode features a song by “3rd Faze,” a girl band of Britney Spears look-alikes that Scrushy created for his “Go For It” corporate roadshow.

Episode 80: “The Scrushy Network”
Scrushy orders Jason to start an in-hospital TV channel for HealthSouth that will deliver programming to patients at HealthSouth outlets. Jason assumes that the network will feature shows related to medical care and rehabilitative therapy – only to learn that Scrushy is more interested in appearing in his own music video, “Honk If You Love to Honky Tonk,” from a CD that Scrushy made with his former band, “Dallas County Line.” Furious with her CEO husband for refusing to buy her a fourth home, Leslie tricks Jason into letting her put the lyrics on cue cards. When an unwitting Scrushy sings the words Leslie has written, he finds himself rapping about the adultery, embezzlement and suicide of his chief financial officer.

Episode 88: “Bad News Bear”
Jason and Shannon fret over how to tell Scrushy the bad news that eleven former HealthSouth finance and accounting executives have pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to inflate the company’s earnings over many years. The Herveys concoct a plan to take Scrushy and Leslie on a rugged camping trip and fake an attack by a vicious bear (really Jason’s former “Wonder Years” co-star Fred Savage in an animal costume), after which Scrushy will be so grateful to be saved from death that his imminent indictment on won’t seem so bad. Unbeknownst to Jason, his old cast-mate never shows up, and the bear he’s about to “rescue” Scrushy from is very real.

Episode 95: “Scrushy in Court”
Because Scrushy is so nervous about his next day’s appearance at a hearing in federal court, Leslie gives her husband a double dose of Xanax. Unaware of this prior medication, Jason gives Scrushy some Valium, and then Leslie gives the embattled ex-CEO a few of her Klonopin pills. When the judge orders Scrushy to answer questions about HealthSouth’s accounting scandal and his lavish lifestyle, Scrushy is so calm that instead of pleading the Fifth Amendment, he pleads the Twenty-First – the amendment that repealed Prohibition – and declines to testify on rounds that he might “incinerate” himself. Look for Leslie’s “Slowly I Turned” burlesque comedy routine when the judge refuses Scrushy’s request to unfreeze his assets and get $10 million in emergency living expenses.

Episode 119: “The Comeback Attempt”
Despite Scrushy’s indictment and dismissal, his madcap lawyer (Donald Watkins) announces a plan to line up financing to buy HealthSouth, using Scrushy as an adviser. When Leslie reads in USA Today that this just adds to a “circus-like atmosphere” surrounding Scrushy’s battles, she decides to get even with the press by hiring a posse of clowns with seltzer bottles to spray lye on reporters. But Leslie’s scheme goes awry when a bad cell phone connection causes Jason to think she wants the clowns to “spread lies” instead.

Richard Grayson's "Girl With Pearl Drops Toothpaste" at YANKEE POT ROAST

Richard Grayson's "Girl With Pearl Drops Toothpaste" appears today (January 12, 2004) at Yankee Pot Roast:

Girl with Pearl Drops Toothpaste (1978)

One of the finest of Ed Kligenstein’s commercials for Doyle Dane Bernbach, this sixty-second spot creates a mood defined by the radiant, all-American glow of the girl as she turns toward the viewer to hawk the tooth-whitening product. Her ash-blonde hair and the blue blouse that clings to her ample teenage bosom enhance her completely disarming row of glistening teeth.

In a departure from the time-honored practice of TV toothpaste ads, Klingenstein has eschewed the usual white background, instead placing the girl in front of a plain black wall that suggests the blackboard of a high school classroom. Instead of the traditional headshot (as in the classic Close-Up commercial featuring a young John Travolta), the money shot here presents a bust-length portrait of the girl, her body accentuated by the three-dimensional effect of the receding dark background.

In its immediacy and image, “Girl With Pearl Drops Toothpaste” demonstrates how different Klingenstein’s approach was from other commercial directors’ of the period. Avoiding an extreme close-up, the camera relies on the actress’s subtle gaze to suggest an altogether fresh but somewhat bratty demeanor that could indicate that we are in the presence of a girl who would not be caught dead with Marlboro-stained teeth.

Also evident is the patient manner Klingenstein must have employed doing the shoot; here, the TV does not merely delineate the forms of youthful bleached incisors but instead embodies and defines them.

Klingenstein’s lines are even more freely executed, as when the girl asks the viewer, “How do your teeth feel?” and, barely waiting for the reply, suggestively flicks her tongue over the top row of her spotless teeth and intones the timeless Pearl Drops slogan, “Mmmm... It’s a great feeling.” The composition of these five words, coming immediately after the flitting tongue movement, creates an unforgettable icon, complete with fresh breath, a sparkling smile, and an invitation to a kiss.

While the girl’s pose suggest a portrait, the features here are purified so that the viewer does not think the actress represents a specific female; instead she is presented as an idealized version of the American teenage girl. This refined figure of Klingenstein’s mature work for DDB stands as an eternal reminder of his place in 20th Century advertising.

Richard Grayson letter in The New York Times Magazine on Dale Peck

Richard Grayson has a letter in The New York Times Magazine today (Sunday, November 16, 2003), responding to James Atlas's article on Dale Peck.

New York Post interviews Richard Grayson, Chairman of Martha Stewart Legal Defense Fund

The New York Post today (Friday, June 6, 2003) has an interview with Richard Grayson, chairman of the Martha Stewart Legal Defense Fund.

Richard Grayson article in Broadly Speaking: "Conquering the Florida Bar Exam"

Richard Grayson has an article in the March 2003 issue of Broadly Speaking at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, "Conquering the Florida Bar Exam."

Richard Grayson letter in The New York Times: "When College Breaks the Bank"

Richard Grayson has a letter in the New York Times today (January 31, 2003): "When College Breaks the Bank":

To the Editor:

It is unfortunate that some college graduates, burdened by student loan repayments, feel that they must delay or forgo additional education (front page, Jan. 28).

But loan payments can be deferred while attending graduate or professional school or even going back for a second bachelor's degree in an additional field.

Indeed, I know many adults who have become perennial students, taking six credits a semester in various graduate programs, so that they can keep deferring payments. One friend has collected one master's degree after another, joking that she will probably end up as the most educated resident of an assisted living facility, paying her loans out of her pension and Social Security checks.

RICHARD GRAYSON
Davie, Fla., Jan. 28, 2003

Richard Grayson letter in The New York Times: "When Families Call a Jail Their Home"

Richard Grayson has a letter in the New York Times today (August 31, 2002), "When Families Call a Jail Their Home," about Mayor Bloomberg's policy of keeping homeless families in the Bronx House of Detention for Men.

The Express: Florida's Leading Gay & Lesbian Community Newspaper on "An Evening With Richard Grayson" at Stonewall Library

Fort Lauderdale Eastsider reports on Richard Grayson's Appearance in Stonewall Authors Series

Eastsider, greater Fort Lauderdale's arts & entertainment weekly this week (April 25, 2002) reports on Richard Grayson's appearance in the Stonewall Authors Series on May 10 at 7 p.m. at the Stonewall Library inside the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, 1717 N. Andrews Avenue in Fort Lauderdale.

Richard Grayson to be Featured Reader at Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow's "Poetluck"

Richard Grayson will be the September 2001 featured reader at Poetluck, the monthly literary salon at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Richard Kostelanetz's DICTIONARY OF THE AVANT-GARDES features entry on Richard Grayson

An entry about Richard Grayson appears in the second edition of A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes by Richard Kostelanetz, published on August 15, 2001.

In the late 1970s, Grayson was the most prolific and interesting young fiction writer in America. . .

Richard Grayson & John Domini reading at Quimby's Bookstore

John Domini and Richard Grayson will be reading on Saturday, June 22, 2001 at 7:30 at Quimby’s.

John Domini is the author of Highway Trade: Short Stories and a Novella (Red Hen Press). “Streetwise and pain-acquainted, John Domini’s new short-collection is a good rich read indeed.” - John Barth

Richard Grayson is the author of The Silicon Valley Diet and Other Stories (Red Hen Press). “Where avant-garde fiction goes when it turns into stand-up comedy.” - Rolling Stone

Quimby's Bookstore
1854 W. North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
tel. 773/342-0910

Graduate Coursework at Arizona State University

Richard Grayson earned 9 graduate credits in theater and media law at Arizona State University in the fall 2000 and spring 2001.

American Book Review reviews Richard Grayson's THE SILICON VALLEY DIET

The March-April 2001 issue of American Book Review has a review of Richard Grayson's The Silicon Valley Diet:


American Book Review
March-April 2001

Defiant on Thin Ice
Henry Grinberg

The Silicon Valley Diet. Richard Grayson.
Red Hen Press, PO Box 902582, Palmdale, CA 93590.
182 pages; paper, $14.95.

Richard Grayson’s ninth collection of short stories achieves many goals, and he is clearly a master of the genre. It it equally clear throughout the twelve tales that, although the characters have different names, they are essentially the same – without strenuous attempts at disguise. They are young gay men trying to survive in a hostile or marginally accepting world. They conduct themselves with manic cheer. They possess a grace and courage that have to substitute for the acceptance and love that most people look for. Their successes in this sphere are meager; their disappointments, many.

Yet, despite a seeming similarity in their drives – and palpable coincidences of character and action – Grayson rarely palls. His young men are imbued with a sweet, endearing nuttiness that serves both to energize and individualize. He depicts our cyberspace and e-mail age, so convenient for rapidly dissolving and re-forming associations, invariably against a backdrop of the search for sincere love and the deaths that ravage gay men and their partners.

There’s more. Wherever Grayson casts his gaze, he manages to isolate panoramas of city and small town life in America from the 60s to the present, detailing not only the particular rebelliousness of these “outsiders,” but also the general collapse in the national fiber, of which they are part. These are connected to public events, such as the uncertain outcome in Korea and defeat in Vietnam, and are reflected in a spate of fragmented families, step-siblings galore, and a never-ending specter of impending divorces and split-ups. You get a picture of a psychologically maimed, dysfunctional society, some of whose members don’t give up trying for happiness.

Four of the stories employ a similar, interesting technique, that of alternating narrative with what at first seem like droningly dull passages from textbooks – a political-economic history of part of the former Soviet Union; a treatise on how to write; another on the invasion of ruinous, alien vegetation onto prairie land; and an excruciatingly obsessional description of a diet. These particular stories, “Boniatos Are Not Boring,” “Moon Over Moldova,” “Mysteries of Range Management,” and “The Silicon Valley Diet” (the title story of the collection, perversely presented last), are unusually effective.

But the effect is quite different from story to story, despite the shared technique. “Boniatos” achieves a wonderful sense of humanity, hovering brilliantly between the tragic and the wildly funny, by wickedly employing a deadpan, soulless mock-treatise on how to write that manages to crush the life out of the ostensibly creative act. “Moldova” is a little masterpiece, told by indirection. It tells of young gay man attracted to both partners of a homosexual relationship. Interspersed by chunks of a history of the former Soviet republic, the action is magically reinforced by what appears to be nothing other than a tedious narration. But that history manages to reflect, by means of the author’s plays of subtle implication, the pathos of a man absurdly drawn to both members of a couple, neither one of whom he may claim.

“Mysteries of Range Management” takes place in the wide open spaces of Wyoming, where we learn a gay life is possible too – not only in big cities. As with “Moldova,” we have another story together with interpolated extracts from a textbook. This time it is one describing the relentless spoliation of the cattle ranges by a non-native vegetation called “leafy spurge.” Again, the text interacts with the human story in richly ironic and half-crazy ways. More somberly than he did in “Moldova,” Grayson makes leafy spurge – the pest-plant, an insidious encroacher – symbolic of the workings of both anti-gay social contagion and the action of AIDS itself. He makes specific references to the recent murder in Wyoming of Matthew Shepard. This provides tangible menace in an outwardly tranquil tale.

“The Silicon Valley Diet” is yet another story that builds its effects by means of interspersed tutelaries – this time instructions for a weight-loss diet, so humorless and condescending in presentation as to be maddening if the effects were not so – I say again – wildly funny and compelling. And, again, it is another tale of the kinds of startling partners that gay relationships can involve. At times, it seems there’s nothing too grungy when one’s in love or in lust, as in many a straight relationship.

The remaining stories here are accomplished and make their points with enviable skill. They don’t come off with quite the same impact, in my judgment, as those I have described. They present similar explorations into the bittersweet frustrations of life, missed chances for meaningful connection, and the perceived necessity for choking off one’s real feelings. But they are very good, nevertheless.

In these and the other stories in the collection, Grayson makes one aware of how vulnerable his characters are. Beset by mortality, even as they seek affirmation, they truly remind us of those flying summer insects that extinguish themselves in a brief act of love. Everything is poignant. Much hurt is to be sensed beneath the wise-guy, tough-cookie exteriors. It’s Grayson’s way, moreover, that many of the pieces in the book are preceded by what you may think are charmingly bizarre preludes that anticipate the main action, but which turn out, slyly, to be the main show itself.

There are many layers to this detailing of the techno-ridden superficialities of our contemporary life, with its bar codes, microwave ovens, and cyberspeak. These are truly sagas of man versus machine. The fact that these are gay men serves to render them even more poignant because one senses that these characters may have hoped for some protection from the brutalities of modern life, through technology. Perhaps, even redemption.

Richard Grayson column in Arizona Republic: "Bronzes Are 'White' Only"

Richard Grayson has a column in the Arizona Republic today (: "Bronzes Are 'White' Only," about the lack of racial diversity in J. Seward Johnson's statues on display in downtown Mesa.