Tales to Astonish!

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I’ve got a project in the works…

This is a pretty image-intensive post, so dial-uppers beware. It’s all after the jump…

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Long Island, early 1997:

JAN MICHAEL FRIEDMAN is in his office, sitting quietly in front of a computer, the high-stacked library shelves towering over his desk. He’s holding a mug of steaming coffee in front of his face, breathing in the smell. There are STACKS of hand-written notes scattered all around him, taped to the monitor, on the floor, sticking out of books — everywhere. He stares at the word processor on the screen just as…

…a phone rings. FRIEDMAN brushes away a tower of papers to reveal the phone, and answers.

FRIEDMAN:
Hello?

LITERARY AGENT:
Hey! It’s me! And have I got a great job for you! It’ll be quick, and all the plotting’s done already — you interested in doing the novelization for that new Batman movie that’s coming out? The one with Clooney? I know you love Batman. Tell me YES!

FRIEDMAN:
Uh, sure! Why not? I could never turn down a Batman project.

AGENT:
Great! I’ll have the script sent over.

—-

THREE DAYS LATER:

FRIEDMAN sits at his desk, a large brad-bound script in his lap. He thumbs through it, fanning the pages as he dials a phone number with his other hand. As he fans the pages, we can see that the first twenty or so are plastered with highlighter-marks, circles, and post-it notes, and TONS of big question marks — but after that, the pages appear to be clean.

FRIEDMAN:
Hey, it’s Jan. Listen, I got the script you sent over, and I’ll tell ya — you really had me going there for a while. When’s the real one get here?

AGENT:
What do you mean? That is the real one.

FRIEDMAN:
No, seriously, listen. If you actually want me to write the novelization, I need to get started right now — get me the real script.

AGENT:
What? I just said, that IS the real script.

FRIEDMAN:
Oh God.

AGENT:
You already signed. Better get started.

FRIEDMAN:
Oh God.

—

TWO WEEKS LATER:

FRIEDMAN is sitting cross-legged on the floor of his office. If we thought the place was a mess before, now it looks like something FEMA fucked up. The room is filled with crinkled up McDonald’s wrappers, torn up notes, tipped-over ashtrays, empty tequila bottles and the like — but there in the middle of the room, in front of Friedman, sits THE SCRIPT, a clean path circling it as if it’s actually repelling all the other garbage.

FRIEDMAN tears the phone off his desk.

AGENT:
Y’ello!

FRIEDMAN:
I can’t. I just can’t.

AGENT:
You have to.

FRIEDMAN (pulling the phone from his ear and shouting into the receiver like it was a microphone):
BUT IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DRILL CONCENTRIC HOLES INTO ANYTHING, MUCH LESS A SKULL!

AGENT:
I told you, they really want to keep that line. Makes it sound “sciency.”

FRIEDMAN:
And the credit card thing? “Batman — expiration date: Forever”? WHAT THE FUCK!?

AGENT:
Promotion with Visa.

FRIEDMAN:
CHILL!! CHIIIIIILLLL!! CHIIIIIILLLLLLLL!!

—

ONE MONTH LATER:

FRIEDMAN’s office appears empty. The computer is turned off, the monitor tipped on its side with the power cord clearly GNAWED off. The garbage has built up so much that it forms a sort of mountain range of crap, with its own peaks and valleys. We hear shuffling coming from behind the desk, and we move around it to see FRIEDMAN curled up into a near-fetal position. He’s gone totally FERAL — he’s decked out in a burlap sack, held up by a chain of power cords and computer mice. There is a stack of bones next to him, but we can’t tell if they’re animal or human. His eyes dart around the room warily as he rocks back and forth. FRIEDMAN cocks his head to one side and sniffs the air.

The phone rings, but FRIEDMAN pays no attention. The answering machine picks up after a few rings.

AGENT:
Hey, Jan, it’s me! All right, listen. The studio was pretty happy with the manuscript, even though the last fifteen pages had nothing but the word “chill” handwritten on them. They really like how you fleshed out Mister Freeze with the backstory about being raised by polar bears — not canon, but whatever! Fuck canon! But what they REALLY loved was how Poison Ivy kept talking about using living vines to destroy the screenwriter’s guild — you know how execs get when they read about writers dying! Now get this: Mattel is making a new Batman variant where — you pull a little lever on his back — his bat-nipples shoot rainbow lasers just like you wrote–

The message is cut off with a loud BEEP. A few seconds later, the phone rings again.

AGENT:
Okay, just one more thing. Studio wants more puns. At least six per page, in addition to the eight per from the script.

—

LATER THAT NIGHT:

A wolf-like scream rings out above a cold, grey Long Island.

The best part of blogging isn’t the constant companionship of supermodels, the fame, nor the fortune. (Those are good, though. Some of them are very good. Some of them are so good that I’m reconsidering this opening paragraph.) No, the best part of blogging is:

ANONYMITY!

That’s right! The most useful part of relating to people via the blogosphere is that — for the most part — no one knows who we are, where we are, or what we look like. (Unless you’re the type of blogger that ruins my thesis statements by being open and up-front.) Blogging is a great equalizer for all things social, bringing together people of all age groups, professions, and genders — often because this information simply goes unpublished. You can usually identify the blogger’s gender fairly easily, but the rest of the information is either revealed slowly, or inferred via subtle contextual clues. Age can be difficult to pinpoint, except for a general range; I’ve figured out that I’m actually younger than 71% of the people on my blogroll, and only the elder to 14%. The remaining 15% are either unknown or Dick Clark.

Skimming through blogs this morning, I was trying to think about how much I really don’t know about the people that I spend blog-time with each day. For instance, I have absolutely no idea how old Treespotter is, or how tall Miss Syl is, or whether Andy realizes that I watch him fall asleep every night. What does Dorkafork do for a living? Where is the Alien Intelligencer? Does Fizzle and Pop?

At first, this stuff seems pretty inconsequential, but it’s this kind of stuff that really makes up an awful lot of the conversations that I have with people I know in real life. Without this kind of information, we end up becoming interesting representations of ourselves, even if we still blog openly and honestly and without using a ‘character.’ I remember being surprised to finally hear the sound of the Real Sam Johnson‘s voice, because I’d built up such a complete idea of him in my mind that reality clashed with it. Expectations are strange and powerful things!

With a couple years of blogging under my belt now — knowing that a lot of people missed the opening days when I was speaking more freely — I wonder what kind of assumptions people have made about me. Out of my entire blogroll, eight people know my real name, but I went to school with four of them; out of those eight, three know what I do for a living, but only one knows where I hide the drugs. Blog selves are at least partially like blank slates for readers to project upon, and overall I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing; maybe so many of our daily real conversations shouldn’t be about essentially trivial facets of ourselves or our lives. I’m not sure you’d come back here if you could see the giant stack of dirty dishes in my kitchen sink, or those suitcases filled with unmarked bills that I stash underneath my bed.

Also, lack of information is also what makes blog crushes possible.

This just in on my wristwatch communicator:

Tess and Dick are still confused.

I expect them to be confused for several weeks to come. Again, see third panel in my version of the strip.

There. Dick Tracy, August 28 – November 28.