From the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library, here in the wilds of Connecticut, this is obscure

season two, Frankenstein.

And I am your host, your friend, your lover, your literary mansplainer in chief and soon

to be Georgianologist, mid-afternoon, ready for something I don't think I've ever done

here on the podcast, but you'll know what it is instantaneously.

Crack and open a diet coke.

We had a graduation party for the daughter, and there's some soda pops left over.

We normally keep soda pop in the house, but crisp, cool diet coke sitting out there in

the cooler, decided to get myself one of them as I headed into the Jill Schwartz Memorial

Library for some Frankenstein reading, and you know, it's got caffeine, it's just like

some tea, it's getting to be mid-afternoon, and normally this is when I take a nap, but

then after this I've got a Zoom pitch for a TV show that I'm trying to develop.

So far no takers, that's just the way it is, with TV shows, you know, you got to be a hot

property.

I'm not a hot property, tepid property at best, you know, or maybe about as cool, I'm

about as cool in this business as this icy diet coke, which is to say, not hot.

It's one of the Midgey cans, you know, when they're a little Midgey cans of a diet coke.

I like, I kind of like those little Midgey cans when it comes to the full sugar ones, because

you're like, all right, I'm not drinking as many calories, but then with the diet ones

where there's no calories, I'll take a full can.

I don't care, you know, I'm 50 years old, I'll drink a full can of soda pop.

I like that burn.

...