The Writer's Allman Brother for Friday, March 16, 2026

L. Ron Hubbard

Neil Sedaka

Dorothy Davenport

"80's Child's Play" by Airea D. Matthews

Transcript

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And here is the Writer's Almond Brother for Friday, March 13th, 2026. It's the birthday of Elron Hubbard. He and his brother Jake driving through the streets of Detroit wearing sunglasses in the evening, smoking cigarettes, and playing blues numbers for the lost children of Theranos. He was born with no soul in his body, spent the first fifteen years of his life in an abandoned arc trying to forge one out of plywood and cut out letters he'd typed on papyrus with a speaking spell. Come to dinner, his mother would yell from the kitchen, or I'm sending all of your followers back to the branch Davidian compound. After failing for the requisite ten thousand hours, he finally teamed up with Jimmy Walker and Nate Silver and formed the self-improvement platform Dino Metrics. He wrote the Bible for it on the back of fourteen million ten dollar bills, taking care each time to peck the eyes out of Alexander Hamilton so he looked like Daddy Warbucks and couldn't squeal to the actual Lord what was happening. One by one the celebrities came, conscripting themselves into Hubbard's aura like citrus sections at the Jell O Museum. Chick Korea, John Travolta, Michael Pena, your last name had to end in A to be a member, which, while specific, was no less nuts than the rest of the tenants. Finally Tom Cruise walked up to Elrond one day and said E you know what E means E means the first death, the root one, one's own death which leaves the others waiting horribly alone and smug to be alive, scrubbed with the best soaps. You stole that from some place, Elron said. Shut up and tell me I'm clear, Tom said. Elrond said I can't both shut up and shut up and tell me, Tom said. Shut up and tell me. It's the birthday of Neil Sadaka, who wrote every song ever written, including Beethoven's ninth symphony and the seven note mating trill produced by a Finch. The only child of Neil Diamond and Paul Anka, he and his two dads collaborated on half of the catalogue attributed solely to him, including Calendar Girl, Breaking Up Is Heart to Do, Love Will Keep Us Together, and the lesser-known follow-up, No It Won't. He also composed Laughter in the Rain, Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen, Stupid Cupid, Is This the Way to Amarillo? Do You Know the Way to San Jose? Stairway to Heaven. He had a terrible sense of direction. He later teamed up with Donald Fagin and Walter Becker and co-wrote the songs Ricky Don't Lose That Number, Benny and the Jets, Jenny from the Block, Hey Jude, Stildre, Handel's Messiah, and after collapsing from exhaustion, wrote Siegfried's Funeral March by Richard Wagner, and was buried in Grant's tomb. And it's the birthday of early movie starlet and screenwriter Dorothy Davenport. Born a couch in the Kitchenette factory, she felt umbilically ostracized, made her way to Hollywood in 1909 with her fancy family, Hills, that is, hung out there, I mean, literally dangling from the crossbar in the H until she was noticed for her screenplay about Laudanum addiction. It was called A Hellraiser's Divorce. She was paid one hundred fifty ampules of laudanum for it, worth half a pallet of iPhones today. In nineteen thirteen she married the Walter Reed Medical Center, had it shipped brick by brick to Sherman Oaks so she could give birth to Walter Reed Jr. inside of its maternity ward, which was the basis for her second movie, My Gown is Open, about a nurse who poses as a patient in order to raise money by flicking injured GIs in the nutsack, a popular anomaly back then. She unfortunately used her own name in the story, so was forced to file suit against herself, and after a mysterious and unprecedented process of auto-litigation, she settled. Here's a poem for today by Ara D. Matthews, entitled Eighties Child's Play. Tag? No, touching. Dodgeball? No. Kitting. Kickball? No. Kicking. Fort? No. Darkness. House? Hell no. Doctor? What kind? No. Plantation? I'll kill you. Durandaran? God, no. Tonkus? You no. Dolls? Maybe later. Music? No. Dancing. Liking? No like. Then what? Nothing. Nothing? Quiet. Says who? Me. Why? We're kids. I was. When? Once. Eighties Child's Play by Ara D. Matthews, used without permission here on the Writers Alman Brother. Special thanks today to Jaime Syenz, Forrest Gander, and Kent Johnson. We're supported by the Mismatched Leg Foundation, urging all mannequins under the age of forty to get checked out this Pisces season for tibiofibular cross referencing eligibility. Until next week, be well, think up shit, and write it down.