Allen's Interests

Tweet Smell of Success

“Son, no one gives a s*** about all the things your cell phone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.”

Slacker turns cranky dad into TV sitcom

New York Post, By MAXINE SHEN, November 11, 2009

Justin Halpern, 29, still lives at home — and he’s just turned his four-month-old Twitter site into a TV series for CBS.
Who says the Internet is a dark, lonley place?
Halpern’s story may soon be the stuff of slacker legend and give Hollywood a whole new path to show-biz success.
Last August, the screenwriter-wannabe was forced to move back with his parents in San Diego after breaking up with his girlfriend.
While living there — saving money while working remotely as a maxim.com editor — he started a Twitter page to chronicle the outrageously funny things that his 73-year-old, retired father said.

image from www.nypost.com — **COUCHED: Justin Halpern at home yesterday. His improbable Twitter feed has been sold to CBS.**

He called the site something unprintable here — “S- – – My Dad Says.”
And it was an overnight, Internet smash, attracting more than 700,000 followers in a month’s time.

Yesterday, CBS announced that they’d signed him to write a family sitcom based on the Tweets. The series will be overseen by “Will & Grace” creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick.
Of course, the key to the whole story is Halpern’s father, Samuel, who is wise, funny and more than a little profane — a digital world Scrooge who says things like: “Son, no one gives a sh*** about all the things your cell phone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.”
Halpern, who majored in TV and film production at San Diego State University, says that his screenwriting background “was actually why I had put those Tweets up. I was thinking that maybe someday, I would use the things my dad said in a script, so I was just trying to keep a record of them” that couldn’t be deleted.
Skeptics might think that the Tweets are a little too polished to be real, but Halpern insists that they are essentially verbatim.

“The most that I’ll do is change a word here or there to make it fit in the 140 [characters allotted by Twitter],” Halpern says. As proof, he says he has “a couple of recordings of my dad leaving messages on my voicemails,” which he’ll put up on a Web site — one of these days.
Meanwhile the elder Halpern — who “worked in nuclear medicine,” says Justin — couldn’t be less interested in his new fame.
“He doesn’t think any of this stuff is interesting,” Justin says. “He’s not a fan; this is not something he thinks [is funny]. He doesn’t care.”
Upon finding out about all the media interest, Sam Halpern laid down two rules. The first was that he didn’t “want to f- – – – – – talk to anybody.” That effectively killed the guest spot on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” they’d been invited to last month.
Rule 2: No online statements that refer to personal things about the family.
“Once, I made the mistake of using my mom’s name in one of [the Tweets] and he was pissed about that. It’s still up there though,” Halpern says.
If his dad ever does object, he say, he’d stop Tweeting right away.
“I had a career before this,” says Justin. “It wasn’t as lucrative, but it’s not worth screwing up [our relationship].
“The man lets me live in his house for free,” he says. “I love my dad, I don’t want to piss him off intentionally.”
New York Post, By MAXINE SHEN, November 11, 2009

Helen and I spent a couple of days in Gaffney, South Carolina. Gaffney is a town in “upstate” South Carolina. That part of the state is in the northwest corner, and only an hour or so from the Smokey Mountains. The rolling hills with their small towns are a refreshing change from the hot and flat lands of Florida.

People who have driven through South Carolina on Interstate 85, remember Gaffney by its landmark peach water tower. The Gaffney area is known for its peaches. We bought some Gaffney peaches from a roadside stand, and they were delicious. Most small towns in the south have water towers. Many of those towers have the town’s name printed on them. Gaffney, on the other hand, decided on a water-tower design that would make it distinctive and memorable. They certainly accomplished that goal. The giant peach is visible for miles. The photo of that peach at the top of this post was taken from the other side of I-85. The water tower just happens to be next to the Fatz Cafe, and is not connected to that restaurant.

The peach water tower in the distance can be a strange sight. I can only imagine what it has been mistaken for by strangers. As we traveled around the Gaffney area, we kept getting different views of the peach.

**Gaffney’s Peachoid as seen Across I-85**

As inscribed on the plate at its base, the Gaffney water tower was selected “Steel Tank of the Year” for 1981, by Steel Plate Fabricators Association. You’ll note that the award calls the Gaffney tank “Peachoid.” What an appropriate name. It struck me very funny that the tank sits on Peachoid Road. Not far from it, you’ll find the Peachview Office Park on Peachview Drive. Peachoid even has its own website. You can visit by clicking If you’re ever driving along I-85 in South Carolina, be sure to stop in Gaffney for the world’s best peaches. If you have time, you can even sit in Peachoid Park in the shade of the Peachoid while you eat a Gaffney peach.

One thing is certain, you can’t drive through this area without thinking about peaches.

Written by Allen W. Forrest, July 04, 2006

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Just call me “Grapefruit”

One of the fondest memories of my career in the United States Navy, was during the early 1970’s when I served aboard the U.S.S. Charles F. Adams (DDG-2.) “DDG” is the Navy’s designation for a guided-missile destroyer. I was the Adams’ Chief Signalman.

The Adams spent several months assigned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization command (N.A.T.O.) During our N.A.T.O. assignment, we traveled and operated with destroyers and frigates from other N.A.T.O. countries including Canada, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Portugal. Our ports of call included Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Dutch Indies island of Curacao, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The Chief Petty Officers of the various ships became very friendly, and (mostly) overcame our language differences during our many social engagements while we were in port together. The British ship, HMS Aurora, crew included a chief whose duties included arranging sports events for those times when the ships were not at sea. In an attempt to create camaraderie among the various country’s chiefs, he set up a day of sports for us in each port of call. Of course, we “Yanks” didn’t know much about cricket, the Brits didn’t know the rules of baseball, the Germans didn’t have a clue about American football, and nobody could figure out what the Portuguese sailors knew because they spoke little English, and none of us spoke Portuguese. However, we all had one language in common. All of us fully understood the sailor’s international language– beer drinking to excess. We became great friends over kegs, bottles, and cans of beer. We even managed to find some time to play some sports.

So, during a hot day in San Juan, what started out to be a softball game, evolved into a game of “beer ball.” Beer ball is a lot like softball but requires base runners to down a bottle of beer at each base before proceeding to the next one. Someone got the idea (I think it was one of the Canadians) that runners could be tackled between bases so that they could be held down while the ball was retrieved to tag them out. I’m not sure anybody kept score. However, it was great fun, and we always looked forward to our next port to play (and drink beer) again. It wasn’t long before many of us earned nicknames.

I remember during one game, when I was at-bat, the “bowler” (in true international spirit, we were calling pitchers “bowlers” and catchers “Wicket Keepers” by this time) threw me three pitches well outside the strike zone, and un-hittable. The next pitch was a slow arching lobbed ball eye-level height right over the plate. I really laid into this fat pitch and smashed it. When I hit it, the object exploded sending pulp, seeds, and grapefruit juice all over me, the catcher, and anyone else within ten feet. Between pitches, the pitcher had switched a peeled grapefruit for the softball. The peeled grapefruit was as white as the softball, and just the right size to look like a softball. What a shock! Of course, everybody roared with laughter. From that day forward, I was known as Al “Grapefruit” Forrest to everyone in the NATO squadron.

Here is one of our softball team rosters. (Note: you can click on THIS to download a .pdf copy that may be a little more readable. However, I scanned an old mimeograph of that roster, so its showing its age.)

**NATO Squadron “Grand Softball Match” 1972**

If any of my old teammates (or opponents) should be reading this, I would love to hear from you.

The chiefs from the Canadian ship, HMCS Skeena, hoped that we would travel to Canada on the cruise. They kept telling us they wanted to teach us how to play broom ball. We never made it to Canada in the winter, so I never learned to play broom ball. I think it is similar to hockey, but played on the ice without skates and with brooms instead of hockey sticks. It probably would have been fun provided there was plenty of beer to keep us warm.

Written on March 31, 2006, by Allen W. Forrest

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