The way I passed my lunch hour today reminded me of this recent exchange between Joel and Ethan Coen, discussing a scene with Josh Brolin in their new movie:

E.C. The trainer had this little neon-orange toy that he would show to the dog, and the dog would start slavering and get unbelievably agitated and would do anything to get the toy. So the dog would be restrained, and Josh, before each take, would show the dog that he had the toy, he’d put it in his pants and jump into the river …

J.C. … without having any idea of how fast this dog could swim. So the dog was then coming after him …

E.C. … so Josh came out of the river sopping wet and pulled the thing out of his crotch and said–he was talking to himself–he said, “What do you do?” “Oh, I’m an actor.”

“And how did this children’s writer spend his lunch hour?” you may cautiously, nervously be asking. Not by visiting a school or trying to pare away each word not absolutely vital to the bunny’s character development, but rather with a small pile of binder clips and a big stack of Xeroxes from the Library of Congress and the Center for American History, arranging the papers into thinner, thematic stacks for Chapter 4 of my Alan Lomax manuscript.

Which is not as exciting as swimming down a river with a dog pursuing a toy tucked into my pants, but which does strike me as being nearly as far flung from what most folks must think my line of work is like.

Now, I must get back to my little stacks…