#164 Stork Story

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2022/08/164-stork-story.html

#164 Blog Post - Wednesday, 10 August 2022

 

Posted By Denny Hatch

 

News About the World's Richest Family  
Plus Denny's 45-Year-Old Bawdy Novel

Left: 76-year-old Errol Musk surrounded by portraits of his son, Elon. Last month Forbes magazine declared Elon Musk (founder of Tesla and SpaceX) to be the Richest Man in the World. (Net worth: $264.9 Billion.) Right: Denny's third novel published in 1977.

 

Personal Note: This blog post is entirely about laffs. It has nothing to do with making money or how to write great copy.  

These are miserable times — COVID, Ukraine, every woman losing the right to her own body, 53 million Americans (including 12 million children) go to bed hungry and desperate for handouts from food banks, outta sight gas and grocery prices and half the country raging mad the other half. I wake up every morning with a renewed sense of dread. 

 

Hey! Let's pause for a few giggles.

 

Below: Three Unbelievable Headlines and Lede Paragraphs from the Worldwide Media, Mid-July 2022.

 

SEED THE WORLD
Errol Musk says he’s been asked to donate sperm to impregnate high class women in bid to create new generation of Elons
ELON Musk's father has claimed he has been asked to donate sperm to impregnate high-class women and create a new generation of Elons. Errol Musk, 76, previously said in an exclusive interview with The Sun that he welcomed a second child, now three, with his stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout, 34. Errol was married to Jana Bezuidenhout's mother Heide for 18 years. In 2018 it was revealed that he had welcomed now five-year-old son Elliot Rush, nicknamed Rushi, with Jana, who is 42 years his junior and he had raised since she was four. Now the Tesla CEO's father claims he has been offered the chance to donate his sperm by an unnamed South American company.
—Alex Diaz, The Sun (UK). 18 July 2022

 

Elon Musk’s dad, 76, ready to donate sperm to 'high-class’ women: ‘Why not?’
• Errol Musk told The Sun (UK) newspaper that a company has asked him to donate sperm.
• We are on Earth "to reproduce," he said when revealing he had a child with his stepdaughter.
• Insider recently revealed Elon Musk had twins with one of his top executives last year.
The 76-year-old told The Sun: "I've got a company in Colombia who want me to donate sperm to impregnate high-class Colombian women because they say, 'why go to Elon when they can go to the actual person who created Elon?'.
—Andrew Court, The New York Post, July 19, 2022

 

Elon Musk’s Dad Reckons A Company Wants His Jizz To Spawn Even More Elons & Isn’t One Enough?
Greetings to everyone on God’s green Earth except Elon Musk‘s dad. Why? Because he claims a company wants to use his cursed cummies to create a brand spankin’ new generation of Elons. It was only a few days ago we learned Errol Musk had a secret child with his step-daughter and if I’m being honest, that was enough information about the bloke’s reproductive capabilities to last me a lifetime. But no, apparently the spotlight on this man’s sperm has not simmered down because he’s gone and told The Sun that his nut is in high demand in South America.
—Isabella Corbett, Pedestrian Daily, July 19, 2022 
 

A Tale From My Oh-so Checkered Past
In 1977 I wrote and published a dark comedy — The Stork. It was the wackadoodle saga of two young bachelors who started a bank. Not just any bank, but rather a frozen sperm bank for childless couples.

 

This was not the about frozen output of the usual donors — young men in college or starting out in business who need to earn some extra money by selling their sperm.

 

Rather, these donors would be passing along genes guaranteed to have come from descendants of the richest, most powerful, most successful, most charismatic men and women who ever lived in the annals of finance, business, military, politics, sports, theater, film, opera, royalty, the church, arts and sculpture, writers, and scientists. 

 

Average fee for a guaranteed healthy live birth — the purchase price of a distinguished ancestor and those genes: $10,000. 

 

The book was published by William Morrow. It got five marvelous reviews. Just five. No reviews in The New York Times, The New Yorker or The Washington Post. The only large circulation paper that wrote it up was The Los Angeles Times.  (See below for that review, which is funny as hell.) Who knew William Morrow's publicity people were weak piss? 

 

Film rights were optioned by Warner Brothers.

A year later it came out in paperback from Jove/Harcourt Brace and was published in the UK.

Whereupon — alas, with no movie having been made — it died.

Several years ago I gave CPR to The Stork. I self-published it on Amazon.com in Kindle format. Not interested in making money, I priced it dirt-cheap  at $2.99. This was my baby, and I wanted to give it another shot at life.

Okay, the $64,000 Question: Is The Stork Funny?

 

When someone named Denny Hatch writes a spoof called "The Stork (A Novel About Breeding)," the reader is entitled to know eggsactly what's going on. Briefly, this: Tim Smith is 30ish, fed up with playing cupid at his father's Aberdeen-Angus stud farm and eager for a little pocket money—his tax-wise, curmudgeonly sire has all his possessions listed in the name of the farm, and although Tim drives a car and any oil sheikh would admire, he rarely has much more than parking-meter change in his Bill Blass suit. He decides to split, to make it on his own as a consultant on human artificial insemination using a knowledge of genetics gained down on the farm.
 

It's a bummer. All across the country gynecologists are content with the contribution made by their anonymous donors—mostly medical students in need of a few dollars—and unanimously turn him down. Tim's sophisticated computer dating system is designed to produce perfectly matched-up zygote. The whole program is bailed out by an opportune arrival—one Mike O'Shea, leprechaun-of-all trades, who hits upon the supreme finishing touch to Tim's human mating scheme: promising parent that their artificially induced offspring will bear genes of distinguished ancestors.

O'Shea, that elegant elf who claims to know everyone who's anybody, is to supply the donors of pedigreed seed.  Authenticity and effectiveness of the of the donations are guaranteed to each recipient. The service is confidential—only the parents know their little darling is a byproduct—several generations removed, of Napoleon (even Josephine)—and anonymity of recipients is stringently maintained. 

 

With the aid of a gynecologist who supplies professional respectability and plenty of persuasion, whose efforts are abetted by a field sales force that also functions as an acquisitions team, Tim and Mike thrive mightily. The cash rolls in by the tens of millions. Can anything go wrong? Of course it can—everything can, and will. The pace quickens nicely at this point, and the resolution of the book's many threads into one outrageous, coincidence-supported Götterdämmerung is one of the thigh-slappingest scenes I have ever read. It is also gross beyond words. But by this time the reader has either become toughened to the author's raunchiness or put the book down, period. 

 

After all, a story whose central theme involves the onanism of various quadrupeds and bipeds can hardly maintain the tone of Little Women. So let us forgive the author his sins (after all, he's probably willing to forgive us our sins—anybody who'd have his dust-cover picture taken with a parakeet on his head is in no position to cast any first stones) and lean back for some hearty laughs. 

The story is certainly original and even though easy to find Comstockian fault with, it has some wondrously funny scenes. —Benjamin Marble, —L.A. Times

Excerpts from Other Four Reviews
Hatch is described as a direct- response advertising specialist. He writes as though under the influence of Thorne Smith, H. Allen Smith, O. Henry and Bob Hope’s stable of writers. —The Jersey Journal

 

When he isn’t regressing into the sophomoric and the freshmantic (“seed money,” “notary pubic," "El Seed”), Hatch unreels this fantasia with approximately the right mix of slapstick, word-play, and documentary mock seriousness. He also decorates the doing with many irreverent au-courancies that the stork is not one for the ages, or even next year, but for the moment and for those uninterested in real people doing vaguely real things, The Stork makes a lively enough delivery. —Kirkus Reviews

 

The text is larded with atrocious puns and far-fetched headings, but it all makes for enjoyable if sophisticated reading. —Library Journal

 

One definition of “ribald” is possessing rough convivial wit.” That’s Hatch for you. Some readers will find this a riot. Others will not. —Publishers Weekly

 

You Are Invited to Have a FREE Peek at The Stork.
To read the first few chapters of The Stork — FREE — go to the Kindle edition and click on "Send a Free Sample." If you find it amusing, the Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Noble Nook Book edition is available for $2.99. I honestly believe you'll find it to be a hoot.

My wonderful Hollywood agent, Marvin Moss, died a number of years ago. At that point in my life, I quit writing novels and stumbled into the junk mail business in order to pay bills.

 

Dear Readers, The Purpose of This Blog Post:
I Come — Hat in Hand — Asking for Your Advice.

I have not had an agent for years. I have no connections to the literary world or the entertainment industry. I can offer a wild, very funny story based on a premise that has suddenly come alive thanks to the world's richest family. It's a fun read. I honestly believe it would make wildly amusing feature film (or tv series).

Any ideas?

Thank you.

 

Takeaways to Consider

• I'm not asking for free advice.

• Whoever comes up with the connections that enable this eccentric — and, at the moment, very relevant — bagatelle to have a new life is eligible for a hefty part of all royalties. —dennyhatch@gmail.com

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Word Count: 1673