Tag: LosAngeles

Margerumalia – Wander Indiana

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – May 9, 2025

PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Healy/Indianapolis Star

Fresh out of college and soon relocating to Los Angeles for grad school I got my first credit card. A Shell Oil Credit Card, my first dive into high finance. Debt.

“You’ll need to establish a credit record,” my college roommate had assured me. “I have three gas cards already. And a card for Sears & Roebuck!”

If I ever wanted to get a swing at the big leagues—Bank Americard and Master Charge*—I’d have to spend some time in the minor leagues.

Okay: grown-up life. I’m in it to win it.

I pulled into a Shell station on the outskirts of Los Angeles and filled the tank of my VW Rabbit with unleaded gasoline, careful not to ruin my transmission with the regular leaded kind. 

The attendant came out to my car after I finished pumping and I handed him my Shell Oil Credit Card, just like I’d seen Dad do over the years. Within a few minutes the attendant was back with a little plastic tray that held my card upright in a slot behind the receipt baring the imprint of my name and card number.

Before handing me the little plastic tray, though, he went to the back of the car to write down the license plate number. He was several years younger than me and sounded like he spoke more Spanish than English, so I figured he was being careful to do everything correctly, and by the book. 

I watched him in my rearview mirror look carefully at my Indiana license plate and write something down, only to look at the plate again and write something more, and then look at the plate again and write something more, repeating that process several times over. He seemed to be writing one number, or one letter, at a time. And he didn’t look confident that he was getting it right. 

When he finally brought the little plastic tray to my driver’s window, I saw what had happened. He got the license number written accurately but in the little box for the two letters of the state, he had written in careful bold capitals WANDER, with the letters spilling over into the box beside it. 

Indiana had launched a bid for more tourism called “Wander Indiana,” and the new license plates had the word WANDER in brighter, bolder letters than the name of the state. I figured this guy’s hesitation was because he had never heard of a state called Wander. 

Hey, I’d lived in a couple of foreign countries where I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. Even on my first day of Primary School in England, I was mocked by my schoolmates when I asked where to find the bathroom. 

“You want ta take a bath?” 

“No…” I fumbled figuring I had used a gross Americanism. “The…the restroom.” Yes, that’s what they would call it! 

“You want ta rest?” 

Now I was blushing furiously, trying not to say that I had to pee. They took pity on me. 

“You want ta use the loo?”

I had forgotten that word. “Yes. Yes, please!”

I looked at the word WANDER on the onion skin receipt and decided not to say anything. I signed the box at the bottom, took my Shell Oil Credit Card and handed over the tray, thanking him with a smile and a nod. 

I wondered if he would wonder about that state called Wander.

TTFN

(*They’re now called Visa and Master Card.)

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – High Rollers

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – April 25, 2025

PHOTO CREDIT: forums.wdwmagic.com

What does a starving actor do to earn money in LA? Work at a coffee shop? Did that. Paint houses? Did that. Tend bar? Did that… Hey, ever been on a game show? It’s easy money! Just learn the game, answer trivia, and roll the dice. 

I did that, too. On HIGH ROLLERS. 

My game show host was Wink Martindale who passed away recently at 91 years old, may he rest in peace. He’s in the picture holding the game dice. The other picture is also him from when he hosted TIC TAC DOUGH.

(Side note: Alex Trebek was the HIGH ROLLERS host before moving on to host JEOPARDY.)

The essence of the game is to eliminate the numbers 1 through 9 without “crapping out.” That means if the remaining number is a 9, you have to roll a 4 and 5, or a 3 and 6 to win.

That’s the luck part of the game and you get to yell “Good numbers!” when you throw the dice down the length of the red felt table.

But the game is a combination of luck and skill. First, you must be quick on the buzzer and successfully answer trivia questions before your opponent. If you answer right, the dice are yours. If you answer wrong, the dice go to your opponent.

The second part of the skill set is strategy. When you eliminate numbers from the board you earn a slew of good prizes, but only if you win. By answering the trivia question correctly you get control of the dice. Now, do you roll, or do you force your opponent to roll? 

The game show contestant coordinators were very good about explaining that almost every game is won by forcing your opponent to crap out. If they roll snake eyes when there’s only a 9 left on the board, they lose. You win! 

You want to roll the dice yourself when there are plenty of numbers on the board, and hand off the dice when there aren’t many winning combinations left. You choose.

I was buzzing in on trivia questions right and left on my first game and I played the strategy. When I took over as reigning champion I defeated my next opponent with several quick answers and good rolls before he crapped out. The strategy worked!

My reward for defeating my first challenger was an opportunity to roll for the Big Numbers! That bonus round involved rolling the gold dice and eliminating as many numbers as possible on the Big Board. I scored a decent amount of cash to add to my prizes, but crapped out before I could earn the big $10,000 prize.

“That’s okay,” Wink assured me, “you’re doing great with the questions and I’m sure you’ll get another shot at the big numbers.” Thanks, Wink.

The next challenger was a cute blond I had seen in the contestant holding room. She gave me a fetching smile and stepped up to the table. I knew I would feel bad about preventing her from earning any cash or prizes, but I had bills to pay.

I dominated the quiz portion and even buzzed in before Wink finished reading the questions. That could have been dangerous because he stopped reading whenever a contestant pressed the buzzer. But I got them right one after the other. 

I eliminated my share of the numbers and then passed the dice to the cute blond for the rest of the game. 

Damn, if she didn’t eliminate every last number! Even the producers backstage were shaking their heads as I signed the paperwork to collect my cash and prizes. 

“You answered every question right!” 

“We were sure you were going to win that one.”

Easy money, huh? Only if the dice roll your way. 

Oh, I did get one more prize. I got the cute blonde’s phone number.

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – The Star Trek Consultant 

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – April 11, 2025

PHOTO CREDIT: paramountplus.com

I was working the early morning shift at a coffeehouse in Los Angeles called The Blue Parrot (named after the bar in Casablanca). It was sort of a tropical-themed Starbuck’s where I learned how to froth milk—whole and skim—make croissant sandwiches, and wipe down each and every table on the patio with steaming soapy water before we opened at seven.

A morning regular who struck up daily conversations with me when I brought him his latte and English Muffin told me he was a science consultant for “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” I enjoyed asking him questions about the series and he indulged me because I was a bit of a fan as well as an aspiring actor.

When “Star Trek III” came out I told him I had seen it and really enjoyed the story about the “Search for Spock.” He eyed me for a few seconds and asked me if I noticed anything else about the movie. 

I knew he wasn’t consulting for any of the movies so he wouldn’t be offended if I pointed out a discrepancy. 

“Well, there was one thing…” I said. 

“Yes?” he leaned into the question, obviously keen to hear my answer. 

“When the Klingons used the cloaking device, the Enterprise couldn’t fire on them because they couldn’t tell where they were. But then Sulu came up with a solution to launch a photon torpedo that followed the ion trail of the Klingon ship.” 

“And the problem with that…?” 

“Well, the cloaking device was introduced back in the original series. If a photon torpedo could track an ion trail they would have done that a long time ago.” 

“Thank You!” he said, practically leaping out of his chair in righteous victory. “If YOU could see that, why didn’t any of the science types see that?”

He wasn’t insulting my intelligence but he did seem to have a bone to pick with the folk making the movies.

“Do you think they didn’t catch it?” I asked. 

“No,” he said firmly, “I think the producers wanted an easy solution and told the consultants to ignore the problem because no one would notice.”

I learned something that day about storytelling: integrity. I’m not talking about moral principles, I’m talking about the integrity of a dam that successfully holds back the floodwaters. Whether it’s a science fiction story, a whodunnit, or a romance, there is an internal logic that has to be followed, the integrity of the story. Otherwise you lose the audience and they won’t trust you the next time. 

By the way, my wife and I figured out that she had been coming to The Blue Parrot for months before we met but she always arrived after my morning shift. I picture a romantic comedy in which the couple keep missing each other until the inevitable meet-cute. 

Live Long and Prosper 

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – A Dick Van Dyke Story

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – February 7, 2025

Photo: Vera Anderson/WireImage via Getty Images

One of my favorite celebrity encounters was with Dick Van Dyke, and he didn’t even hear how it turned out.

From Mary Poppins to “The Dick Van Dyke Show” to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and so much more, I wanted to grow up to be him. Okay, I still do. Do you know he’ll be turning 100 this year?! What a treasure. 

This story goes back to when I was in my twenties and living in Los Angeles. My grandparents had moved to Phoenix for retirement and I visited them several times a year. Van Dyke also lived in Phoenix and I happened to see him at the airport. 

I would’ve loved nothing more than to tell him how much he meant to me and how much I wanted to emulate his career, but he was in a deep discussion with a woman wearing an airline uniform and I didn’t want to interrupt. 

The middle-aged woman waiting for a plane with her husband had no such compunctions. She saw Van Dyke and leaped from her seat to approach him. 

“George!” she cried happily, waving as she stopped the conversation. (The name wasn’t actually “George,” but it sure wasn’t “Dick.”) 

Van Dyke looked up at the woman as she marched up to him enthusiastically. 

“George, it’s me, Marge!” She got a blank look from Van Dyke. 

“Remember, when we worked together at Acme?” (It wasn’t Acme, either.) Van Dyke shook his head with a bemused smile on his face. 

“Oh, sure you do, George. Remember how we used to tease you about how much you looked like Dick Van…” 

Here, she trailed off as realization set in. 

“Oh, you’re not George!” 

Van Dyke admitted that he wasn’t and she turned tail in embarrassment, returning to her seat across from me. Her husband was reading a magazine and had missed the whole thing. 

She yanked on his sleeve and asked him if he remembered George from Acme. He did and she pointed across the waiting area. “Look!”

“Is that him?” he asked, mildly interested. 

“No,” she exploded with enthusiasm, “that’s Dick Van Dyke!” 

It took everything I had not to burst out laughing at the confusion on the man’s face! 

I so wish I could tell that story to Dick Van Dyke in person, because he never heard the final tag of the story. I think we would both have a good laugh. 

Happy 100th, Dick! 

TTFN 

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If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com. A free story awaits you there.

Margerumalia – The Professor’s Stories

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – August 23, 2024

That’s my Dad raising a glass to family and friends. My brother shared this photo last week in commemoration of his passing five years ago. It goes by so fast! In honor of his life and his work, I’m sharing something about stories that I learned from him. 

Dad was a Professor of Chemistry for 54 years. That’s not a typo. Fifty-four years! He loved teaching and really loved research because it generated endless questions to be answered and problems to be solved. He even worked with a Nobel Prize winning chemist, taking the whole family on two sabbaticals to Germany to be able to work with him.

But let’s rewind his story to the 1940’s when he was a teen in Missouri and got a job with his Local Parks & Recreation telling stories to the kids. The future chemistry professor was hired to make up stories that would keep the children engaged and interested on a hot summer afternoon. (I always pictured them sitting under a shady oak tree.)

Later, when he had his own family Dad treated my brothers and I to stories he invented for us around the campfire. They were serialized stories that continued throughout the camping trips and he had us rapt with attention. He often added aspects of the trip to the stories: hiking the Grand Canyon, canoeing the Boundary Waters, searching for stones and fossils… Such adventures!

When I moved to Los Angeles I toured with a children’s improv group and would later teach a course in improvisation as a theatre professor, but doing a solo story-telling gig would’ve been another level all together. 

It was when I was teaching at Carthage College in Wisconsin that I had a revelation about his story telling. Dad was often invited to colleges and universities to give a lecture about his research and he offered to do the same at Carthage. They took him up on it and my wife and I sat in on a talk that opened a window in my understanding.

Dad wasn’t just taking about chemistry, he was telling a story about his research group. They began by trying to solve a problem, researched the issue, set up an experiment to answer some questions, and pushed forward to make new discoveries with new experiments to see if they could solve the original problem. I sure didn’t understand the nitty gritty of the science, but I was rapt once again by his story of the process. 

It’s classic story structure! I had been primed for storytelling from an early age. (I must also credit Mom for reading us countless books during long drives. I still enjoy audiobooks and have even recorded a few.) 

So I’ll be raising a glass to Dad’s storytelling skills and his contribution to my creative urges in theatre and in writing. 

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Another MAMLA review! Nice! Thanks for lending me a hand. 

If you received this email because it was forwarded to you by a subscriber, welcome. You can subscribe as well by following the link on my website: ericmargerum.com 

The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available as both a physical book and an ebook at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles