An extraordinary storyteller....

For my storytelling example, I chose the beginning of a short story by Harlan Ellison, Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish:

"It's not only that Pink's has the best hot dogs in what we have come to accept in the civilized world (and that includes Nathan's, the original stand out at Coney Island, not those fast-shuffle mickey-mouse surrogates they've opened up from time to time all the way from Broadway to the San Fernando Valley, which, in a less enlightened era, I thought was the dispenser of the ne plus ultra of franfurters), it is also that Michael, who works at Pink's, is one of the best conversationalists on the subject of Dostoevsky in what we have come to accept as the civilized world (and that includes the academic-turned-screenwriter from New York who did a sorta kinda Dostoevskian film about an academic-turned-gambler, back in 1974).

"Which double incentive explains why I was down there at 711 N. La Brea Avenue, almost at the corner of Melrose, at Pink's, founded in 1939 by Paul Pink with a pushcart at that very same location where a heavensent hot dog cost a decent 10 cents, what now sets one back a hefty dollar-and-a-quarter punch under the heart, even if the quality of dog has not dimished one iota, or even a random scintilla...quality and Michael Bernstein who knows what there is to know about the Fabulous Fyodor were the double incentives to drag me out of bed at dead midnight."

From this point you know the story will be about hot dogs and Dostoevsky...can it get any weirder? Oh yes, it does. Even the cover of the Ellison Anthology has a story to tell....