The Art of R. L. Margolis

The Happy Carrot Period in the art of R. L. Margolis lasted between January 1983 and February 1983. It was a deeply introspective period when the artist lived in the thriving artistic community of San Francisco. The influence of San Francisco permeates the entire work, in terms of the businesses, locations and vegetables mentioned therein.

The original artistic medium was simple pen and paper but only reproductions have survived over the intervening quarter-century. Even so, the sheer expressiveness, power, vigor and complexity of the work is astonishing. We present these works in the most appropriate way possible: as .jpg files on the internet.

Prepare to be touched in a way that you have never been touched before - artistically.

Link to Happy Carrot #1

The Prisoner

"The commercials were good. The PalmPre girl. The Geico gecko. I don’t know what that other stuff was all about. Something about a man running round aimlessly."

- Anonymous fan review of AMC's "The Prisoner".


I've been looking forward to AMC's remake of "The Prisoner" for a long time, and my assessment is "there's 47 minutes of my life I'm never going to get back." I should just be happy with man's infinite capacity for distraction.

In order to explain AMC's "The Prisoner" you almost have to explain the earlier - and much better - version which aired on British Television in the late 1960s. The basic story: a man (who is never named) played by Patrick McGoohan - who might have been a spy of some sort - resigns from his agency, is kidnapped and taken to a weird ass place called "The Village" which looks like a small town but is actually a prison. The Village is some sort of high-technology confinement disguised as a small town with a jarring pseudo-reality of its own. What makes it all the more weird is that no one has a name in the Village - merely a number. The man wakes up to find himself designated as "Number Six".

Six tries to escape, but finds it impossible - the prison, however, is quite comfortable and believe it or not, has a small-town government headed by Number Two. Number Two wants to know why Number Six resigned. Number Six doesn't care to tell him, and furthermore, doesn't care to be addressed as Number Six either (but we have to call him something). For whatever reason, they just can't waterboard Number Six, so Number Two tries some scheme based in either superscience or elementary psychology to discombobulate Six and get him to give up the goodies.

Number Two fails. The next week, Number Two is replaced by a new warden (also called Number Two) with a new approach to cracking Number Six. And so on, through a whole sequence of Number Twos. Will Number Six finally figure a way out, or will (the new) Number Two crack him?

One of the strengths of the old British series is that all the "I'm a spy, I resigned, and now I'm in the Village as a prisoner" was wrapped up very neatly in the minute-long opening titles. Instead, the new AMC series drop their new Number Six (played by Jim Caviezel) right in the middle of the action and just seem to follow him around with a camera.

The biggest problem is that the Patrick McGoohan Number Six was an "individual", in the best sense of the word. He was prickly, and annoying, and didn't have much trust for authority, but also had a heart of gold like a hooker's. The minute the McGoohan Number Six was dropped in The Village, it was like a cat being dropped in a bucket of water. If Number Two wanted to be oblique, the McGoohan Number Six would throw it right back in his face. "Try any bullshit you like. I'm not telling you anything," was the McGoohan Number Six's approach to life.

The Caviezel Number Six, on the other hand, is sort of a non-communciative log. All of the Caviezel Number Six is internal, all of the McGoohan Number Six was external. There's simply no way to identify with Caviezel's mopy non-character, who is about as dynamic as a Swiss Colony Beef Log. His job seems to be:

a) be perplexed,
b) ask stupid questions.

Which means that all the heavy lifting in the series is preformed by Number Two - in this case, Ian McKellen. AMC dropped the idea of having a rotating Number Two, which means that McKellen becomes the de facto star of the series, because he's more interesting - both as an actor and as a character - than Jim Caviezel. And, as the review I read implied, the series should have been called "The Warden". Which means that AMC got something horribly, horribly wrong.

Perhaps its not so much a commentary on the worths of each series as a commentary on society. Caviezel's Number Six wants answers - but McGoohan's Number Six demands answers. If McGoohan had been dropped into the remake, he would have simply stolen from the Village larders and built a tent out there somewhere in The Badlands, where he could have been left alone. Caviezel, like the Character That Made Him Famous, is sort of a passive observer to his own drama, moving forward only when the plot demands that something happen. Maybe the other five episodes handled things better; the reviews that I've read suggested that they didn't.

By extension, the message appears to be that the men and women of McGoohan's era were active heroes. The men and women of our era are passive ones. We just let shit happen to us; our capacity for distraction is almost infinite. At the end of the original "The Prisoner", the series succombs to self-seriousness and incoherence (*); at the end of AMC's "The Prisoner" we get a fifth-rate version of "The Matrix". (Oops! I gave it away! Now AMC will be after me!)

You want to watch "The Prisoner". Go to Barnes and Noble or wherever and pick up the series on DVD. Avoid the AMC remake. Don't be a number, be a free (person)!


___

(*) Sort of like this blog.

The Art of Goofing Off

One of the great things about having the internet at work is that it provides a great substitute for actually working. Right now, my job has decided to count up internet use at work - I assume that they are trying to manage productivity, or more likely, have been sold a bill of goods by someone wishing to sell the company "internet productivity software".

Here's the argument:

* your employees have the internet
* instead of designing widgets, answering calls, or performing whatever it is you want them to perform, they're writing Twilight fan fiction
* they lose x number of minutes a day, which could be spent instead adding x minutes amount of value to your company
* if they didn't have the internet as a distraction, the company adds all of those minutes back to its bottom line

The problem with the argument is that it assumes that employees, deprived of the internet, will spend their time making widgets - you know, the same way your boss is diligently working 40 hours a week, not taking time off for so much as a coffee break.

Before some IT manager is tempted to purchase this software, here's what will happen - people will simply waste their time in they ways they did before the internet was invented:

* long coffee breaks
* reading newspapers or doing puzzles at their desk
* conversations with other cubemates
* long bathroom breaks

The other problem that managers of the "time is money" school fail to see is that this surfing-the-web time might actually help the company's bottom line more than hurt it.

Let's take Bob. Bob was spending 30 hours a week working and 10 hours a week surfing the web. His productivity level was 2 units per hour, since the 25 percent of time he spent goofing off made it possible for him to tolerate his job.

Productivity software was installed. Now, Bob can't surf the web and his bosses are watching him closely. Even though he now works 40 hours a week just like his bosses want him to, his productively level is now just one unit per hour.

Bob's former productivity: 30 hours x 2 = 60 work units per week.
Bob's current productivity: 40 hours x 1 = 40 work units per week.

What happened? Bob's bosses lost money by making Bob work harder.

I suspect that these time-managment type solutions are going to become one more management fad. Look, if you want a employee who will spend all 40 hours a week attending to company business and company business only while never doing anything wrong, you don't need to be in management, you need to be in robotics.

The Truncated Thanksgiving Week

The national holiday known as Thanksgiving takes place this week in the United States on Thursday. How do most businesses handle the holiday? Employees go to work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The holiday takes place on Thursday, and most companies are smart enough to give employees Friday off, since they'd probably leave early, goof off, or use a vacation day to get a four-day weekend. Since many people travel for the "Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner" which is supposed to be a family affair, they wouldn't be there on Friday anyway.

This leaves three days for work - ostensibly. However, I really have to ask how much work gets done. For example, my boss will be out on Wednesday. Another boss from the same department will also be out on Wednesday. That leaves the two remaining employees - us - basically unsupervised on Wednesday. Not that we don't have work to do, but you have to wonder how much the supervisors care about it if they don't even care to show up.

The first three days of the week, in effect, are spent waiting for the other four. It might make more sense to simply declare a Thanksgiving Week. That would mean the addition of three extra holidays to the work schedule and a slight dip in American productivity year-wide, but is it likely that those employees are going to be doing meaningful work anyway? Every suit-wearing douche is pushing a pencil and already plans to be out the door at lunchtime on Wednesday - if not earlier. Furthermore, with the appaling lack of benefits most American employees receive, why not just give them that time off as a Federal holiday?

"But CINCGREEN," you might ask, "why wouldn't people want the extended holiday for Christmas?" I can give a few reasons:

1. Not everyone is a Christian. For people of other religions, there's no special meaning to having this time off other than just enjoying the time off.
2. Thanksgiving always occurs on the final Thursday of November. If Christmas falls on a weekend, do you put the extra time before Christmas or after it?

In addition, you can have Native American Day become a federal holiday. Currently, Native American day rests on the fourth Friday in September, where it is roundly ignored. You could make Native American day the fourth Wednesday in November. That way, not only is there a chance to recognize the Native Americans nationally and associate their holiday with some time off, but it gives the country some time to reflect on the ambiguities of Thanksgiving itself. (You can imagine how the Native Americans might be lacking some of the requisite spirit, despite the presence of pumpkin pie.)

Facebookery and the Art of Being NonGoogleAble

It seems that my wife and I are now targets for Facebook requests. This happened after a good friend of ours friended a prominent person in Daria fandom, who asked for befriendment - or was she passed on as a possible friend? I don't recall. The end result was that I think I now have three "Daria friends" and my wife - who has been out of Daria fandom for at least a half-decade - is now asking me, "who are these people?" Trust me, if you weren't writing fan fiction in 2002 or haven't visited our home since then I guarantee she has no idea who you are.

You might not get friended. As for me, sure, I'll friend you. But then again, I don't post anything on Facebook anymore so if you want to know what's going on with me, you're better off following this poor blog or whatever "Roentgen" posts about on the PPMB.

I'm not much of a fan of Facebook anymore, at least not since my mother found out that I have an account. As a result, I had to friend all of her friends (lest someone be offended) and now my Facebook account is filled with hundreds of gifts, requests, amusing things to read and other widgets that completely clutter the page when I check it out. If there's anything that annoys me on Facebook, it's to be given a widget or asked to fill out a quiz or whatever. I think the gifts are just stacking up on my page, waiting to be opened.

I ended up "friending a friend of a friend" so to speak and I get this e-mail: "Are you in this video lol check it out". The URL is some sort of bizarre conglomeration of consonants and since this person would never use "lol" in a sentence, I recognized it as a deadly spam flower with .exe thorns. Which meant that my Facebook and e-mail got about twenty responses saying "dude, you need to change your password". He probably opened one of those quizzes and the quiz .exe grabbed his personal information and turned his account into a spammer.

If Facebook is bad, MySpace is even worse. I'm not even putting a foot in it. The only social networking site I frequent is Twitter, and even then I only Twitter occasionally. My favorite social networking sites have always been, and will always be blogs. (Well, that and messageboard rants.)

This reminds me of a recent news item that I read. Apparently, someone got fired from their real life job because they had a little fun on Facebook and posted the pictures. I think it was highly unfair of those persons to be fired, because they never expected that they were supposed to be representing the good name of ConGlomoCorp while not flipping burgers or whatever it is that they did. I see it as just another example of the working world, the Great Beast trying to reach its tentacles into your private life. I'm more of the mind of that Dickens character from Great Expectations who almost literally turned his home into his castle, complete with drawbridge and told Pip (I believe) that if you asked him a question at work, he'd give a different answer than at home - the concept being that when he got home he disassociated himself completely from his work self.

A long time ago, I thought that it would be much better for Daria fans et. al. to start using their real names. I felt that anonymity had become too pervasive. Who the hell is that Brother Grimace guy, anyway? Or that MDetector5 fellow? If I met them in real life I certainly wouldn't call them that. For a while, there were quite a few fans that used their real names.

Then The Angst Guy had a need to disassociate himself from his real-life name and he because the figure of dread and penguin lust that we all know and love. An old time Daria fan with a very singularly spelled last name changed his name to Mike Xeno, and stripped me of the point of pride I had in being able to spell that name. (I can't spell it now, it's been too long.) Recently, a now-published author in Daria fandom has asked that all of his fanfiction be retitled without reference to the former real name he was using when wrote his stories. His explanation was that he felt no shame in anything he wrote for Daria fans, but a prospective employer had been Googling his name and wanted to ask a bunch of innocuous questions. He felt that he had no need to repeat the experience.

Face it, if anyone knows your real name they will Google it. And occasionally, you might be tempted to Google yourself, an act illegal in 37 states if your hands aren't above your waist. Thank the heavens that my real name is "semi-non-Googleable". You might get the conservative commentator or the famous singer before you ever find me.

I recently read an article on Wired about someone taking a challenge to remain hidden for one month without hiding out in the desert or the forest. Wired readers got a $5000 bounty if they could find the guy within a month. The man created the alternative identity of James Donald Gatz. "Donald" was the man's real middle name. (A mistake to give himself a middle name linked to his real one, BTW.) However, James Gatz was a name out of the book The Great Gatsby which was Gatsby's real name. The person going into hiding felt secure that anyone trying to look up the name "James Gatz" would simply get a big list of articles from F. Scott Fitzgerald scholarship. The name James Gatz was "non-Googleable".

There have been articles about how giving your child a "unique name" like Orangejello or Winner or whatever is an act which is considered by many child rearing experts to be a mistake. All it does it call unwanted attention to your poor kid, who just ends up getting picked on more than the average kid because of his weird-ass name. In the internet age, it might actually be a good idea to give your kid the most common name possible. We might end up with a bevy of kids in the future named John Smith, simply so that these kids might have the power to hide in the internet among the 10,000 other John Smiths, their online activities virtually hidden from any oversight - and hidden from a future employer.

P. S. A good read is The True Story of How Stacy Rowe Destroyed the Fashion Club, by ticknart.

Wicked

While in San Francisco I had the chance to see "Wicked" playing at the Orpheum. I came in with an advantage in that I hadn't read the book by Gregory Maguire called "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West". I could enjoy the play on its own strengths rather than concluding "The play is much better/much worse than the book".

The play is a revision of L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". The play starts sometime after the Wicked Witch's death by a deadly pail of water wielded by Dorothy Gale (formerly of Kansas). The Good Witch Glinda arrives in the middle of the celebration and Glinda confirms that yes, the Wicked Witch is dead and the Lollipop Guild can now come out of hiding. (/joke) As Glinda is a figure of renown, everyone wants the chance to ask her questions and someone asks what she knows about the Wicked Witch. Glinda gives a non-committal answer to this question, trying to pretend that she never knew her but at the same time, trying to spark sympathy at such level for the green-skinned outcast.

The rest of the play for the most part is Glinda's reminiscences. As it turned out, Glinda - then known as Galinda (emphasis on the "uh") - was a spoiled princess of a girl going to Shiz University and hoping to major in magic - the only practitioner of the art is Madame Morrible and so Galinda is in full Quinn Morgendorffer mode, trying to prove that she's perfect and popular. Like Quinn, everyone falls in love with Galinda when they lay eyes on her.

However, there is another female in the running for Most Important Girl at Shiz. This girl is Nessarose, the daugther of the governor of Munchkinland. Nessarose is confined to a wheelchair and Nessarose's caretaker is her green-skinned older sister Elphaba, playing the Daria role in our drama. We learn that Elphaba's mother was wined and dined by a mysterious stranger with a bottle of green liquor and the woman's first child turned out a green outcast. When it was time for Nessarose to be born, her paranoid father told the doctors to hurry the birth and Nessarose ended up crippled. Elphaba's (de jure) father wants nothing to do with Elphaba, and Elphaba's role at Shiz is to strictly be caretaker to her younger sister.

Madame Morrible, probably wanting to get in good with the Munchkin governor, decides that she will take care of Nessarose's toiletry needs. This leaves Elphaba without a place, and by accident, Galinda inadvertantly offers Elphaba a place in her private suite of rooms at Shiz. The two - spoiled preppy and bitter cynic - are now stuck together as roommates.

This is the time of The Wizard, who is the High Personage of Oz. Everyone wants to see the Wizard, even Elphaba. From here on out, the story of each of the characters is filled out through song. The story of the rivalry, and eventual friendship, between Galinda and Elphaba. The man each fell in love with and whom only one could have. The reason why Elphaba turned against the Wizard. How Nessarose became the Wicked Witch of the East, and why Elphaba wanted those damned ruby (formerly silver) slippers.

The songs were interesting, although I think the only song that's going to be sung in about 20 years from now is "Popular". The clip below has Kristin Chenowith as Galinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba, the actors that popularized the roles on Broadway.



(Since this is for the Today show, I don't think Menzel is quite into character.)

My two conclusions about the play:

1) "Wicked" really turns on the waterworks. Almost every song is one of these heart-wrenching cries - Galinda is left to carry all of the upbeat moments and comedy, but the play is really about Elphaba.

2) The play reminds me strongly of "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town", which tries to fill up the back story of Santa Claus. This forces a comparison between both stories, and sadly enough, "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town" does a better job of it than "Wicked".

Compare the legend of Santa Claus with "The Wizard of Oz". Santa Claus's story is a little vague, and you can fill it up however you want to, with magic explaining all of the difficult parts. If you watch the Rankin-Bass animation, it does a pretty good job even though the music doesn't match up to a Broadway production. "The Wizard of Oz" on the other hand, is oddly specific for a two-hour movie, probably because its source was a book by L. Frank Baum, who expanded the initial story into an entire series of books. Adapting it to a Broadway play is going to force decisions - you're adding in all of this extra information about Elphaba, but what gets cut?

Apparently, nothing. The problem with "Wicked" is that "Wicked" tries to explain everything, and provide a connection for everything. Here's why Elphaba wears that pointy hat! Here's where that horrible tornado came from that dragged Dorothy into the Oz dimension! Here's the origin of the Winged Monkeys! After a while, it seems like all of this information is shoe-horned in to the narrative.

But it gets worse. The play wants to make an accounting of everyone who was in the movie/book. (Except for Dorothy and Toto, who simply "dropped in".) Here's who would become the Scarecrow! Here's how the Cowardly Lion got so cowardly! While you're watching the spectacle and listening to poor Elphaba pour her little green heart out in song, every time something in the play is nailed - without subtlety - to the books/movies, you just groan. For goodness sake, why do you have to "explain" the Tin Woodsman or the Cowardly Lion? There's enough freakish shit going on in Oz already - just read some of those other L. Frank Baum books. For goodness sake, why does everything have to be explained?

Another problem with the play is the character of Fiyero. It probably had to do with the actor playing him than the character itself. He simply isn't very compelling, and I don't see why either Galinda or Elphaba is attracted to him.

Then again, there's the other part of the play which might explain the above. Galinda and Elphaba become close friends, and they're all pouring their feelings out so much that there is a massive amount of hoYAY in this play, probably enough to power a dwarf star. Probably because Fiyero is such a failure as a character, you realize that if there's going to be any honest expression of emotion it's going to be between Galinda and Elphaba. Galinda and Elphaba - even on stage - are sharing little intimate moments all the time. (Look up the word "Gelphie" on the internet. There's an entire subculture devoted to Galinda/Elphaba slashing.)

As a side comment, it also shows why the creation of Tom Sloane wasn't enough to quench all the Daria/Jane slash. Tom just isn't compelling enough of a character for someone to say, "Oh, I know why Daria (or Jane) would be so attracted to him.)

Anyway, if you get the chance to watch the play, take it - just don't play a lot of money for it. As for the book, I've encountered it a few times at the bookstore. It seems to be a tough slog of a read, nothing there in a thirty-second flip-through to grab your attention.

Daria, Batman, Darth Vader and the Braves

I recently read a post on MightyGodKing titled “Mad Men and Rocket Men” which examined the cancellation of two very different TV shows: “Hank” and “Dollhouse”. The author’s point is that there was no kerfluffle over the demise of Hank; there is moaning and gnashing of teeth over the end of Dollhouse. This, of course, is explained by the fact that those who watched “Hank” were passive observers and those who watched Dollhouse were fans with a personal investment in the show.

The author briefly touches upon – but does not explore – the nature of fandom. I found one comment telling, and by coincidence, the unexplained nature of the comment ties so much into what fandom is.

The term “found object” is used in passing. In art, a “found object” is just that – some technological remnant that is repurposed; a teapot becomes a part of sculpture. The author, however, used the term with respect to certain kinds of literature, and I don’t think the term is meant to be used that way. I believe the author wanted to use the term “found object” with regards to certain types of literature/media as “having some sort of real-life property”.

For example, The Wire would not be a “found object” TV show. The goal of The Wire is to plunge you into something that is very much like the real world. In a way, one “stumbles” across The Wire the same way one would stumble across our teapot in the paragraph above. The show is meant to throw up a mirror to nature; the more realistic the presentation the better the reflection.

The author makes the point that certain genres cannot be “found objects” in literature or film or whatever because one is reminded at all times during one’s interaction with these objects that the objects had a human maker. These are the science fiction genres, the superhero/heroic fantasy genres…and of course, the cartoon genres.

Each of the items from these genres tries to present itself as a found object, and each items has a relative degree of success or failure. In the movie Star Wars, for example, a lot is left unexplained – the idea is to immerse a viewer into something that approaches real life but cannot be real life. Likewise for Batman or Daria. If it has to be explained why Kevin wears his uniform all the time or how Robin is able to beat up adults the attempt of immersion fails.

People who are fans – who have a personal investment – decide that the level of detail with which they’ve been presented is not enough. They have to fill in the gaps. A lot of fandoms on the superhero/science-fiction/cartoon scale are devoted to filling in these gaps. What I have found – at least in Daria fandom – is that Daria fans tend to have their thumbs in either the superhero or science-fiction or anime fandoms. If you’re a Daria fan it’s almost an even-money bet that you’re a fan of a genre that is not a “found object”.

(It’s also surprising how genres that wouldn’t be “found objects” have fans that explore the more artificial parts of the genre. There is a community of House fans that supposedly write their own fan fiction. What those fans find artificial are the relationships between the characters, and they work furiously at filling in those perceived gaps.)

Looking at the “found object” theory, a lot of my fandoms makes sense. I’m the kind of person who likes to fill in gaps, that likes to assist in creating the illusion. Which explains why I’m a fan of Daria and superheroes and certain kinds of science fiction.

However, there was one fandom of mine I couldn’t explain using this theorem – sports fandom. Sports is not a literary genre of any kind, and the only meaning it has is the meaning that you care to give it.

As it turned out, another comment on the post above provided clarity. It states that fans invest a lot in their fandom, to the point that fandom becomes a substitute religion. If you think about it, Daria fandom is like a religion in a lot of ways – there is canon, there are saints (among characters and fans), sinners, demons, objects of devotion, holy art, gatherings, etc.

One might argue that as a religion, Daria fandom is a very poor substitute for a real religion. There is no physical community of believers; that community exists only online. There is no overall message from Daria, and if you want to use Daria’s speech in “Is It College Yet?” as Holy Writ, then the meaning is not particularly deep. Which begs the questions, why do so many fans – even few in number – treat Daria with the kind of reverence that the local clergymen in the areas where each fan lives would be begging for?

The answer: because fan religions – “fandoms” – have removed the most unpleasant aspect of real religions – that of self-sacrifice and self-denial. You don’t have to give up too much to become a Daria fan – you just to have to have a sort of genial open-mindedness, and in some places in Daria fandom you don’t need to have that. It would be like a Christian minister saying that the only thing you have to do is love Jesus – you don’t have to treat your neighbors any differently or make any effort whatsoever to change as a person.

Sports can be considered a religion in some places – take Alabama, for instance. (Please.) All that sports fandom asks of you is to love the team above all others and to hate its enemies. And yes, sports does not have fan fiction (*) but it does leave a lot of unanswered questions, and fans love to speculate with various degrees of intensity. You would never dream of rewriting Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” but the Patriots-Colts drama can be rewritten ad infinitum.

Think about it: a religion where not only no changes are demanded of me, but a religion in which I get to write the missing chapters of the Holy Scripture? Sign me up for that.

____

(*) – Don’t ask me about “real person fiction”. Please, don’t.

Country Mouse, City Mouse

I have spent the past three days in San Francisco. This does not make me an expert on San Francisco. This only makes me the observer of the part of San Francisco near Union and Polk. However, this has never stopped me before from offering my unwanted observations.

* San Francisco seems to be like New York, but more clean.
* I have noticed a strange absence of black people. Maybe I’m just in the wrong part of town. However, I don’t see them in the crowds near Union Square, or in the part of San Francisco near Union and Polk, or really, anywhere else. Not as many as you would see in Atlanta.
* What I see is a lot of Asian people, particular on the buses. The average age of an Asian resident of San Francisco must be 65. All seem superannuated but Chinatown takes up several city blocks and in no way seems like a community in decline.
* San Francisco has its share of panhandlers, but we haven’t bumped into anyone really aggressive yet. San Francisco has about as many panhandlers as Atlanta has crazy homeless people in the middle of a psychotic breakdown, which is a lot.
* San Francisco is hilly. Very hilly. You had better be willing and able to walk up hills in San Francisco if you’re going to do any walking. This isn’t New York walking, where everything is semi-flat. San Francisco is a hilly city.
* My wife used to live in San Francisco – Oakland, anyway – but abandoned it. Two reasons. The first was that many of her friends died of AIDS. The second was the 1989 Earthquake, which gave her pause.
* I haven’t seen a lot of outré gay people, but as my wife says, we’re in the wrong part of town for that. We seem to be (temporarily) located in a little whitebread Yuppie part of town. Everyone looks very trendly. -1 Social penalty for being overweight.

What I saw, however, pleased me. Maybe it’s because I’m a fascist at heart (joke) but I like cities to be clean and providing foods that please me. (“How do you find a good restaurant in San Francisco? Open the door.”) I imagined myself relocating here, and all I’d need would be to make a quarter of a million dollars a year to afford it.

This got me thinking about the differences between living in a city – a big city, like say New York, and living in a suburbia. In each of them, you get a tradeoff.

First, big cities stand for excellence. While walking about today I stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall magazine store. Little did I realize that there’d be a cornucopia of magazines and world newspapers. You get off-the-beaten path bookstores. Every meal is delicious. If you wish to live a life that’s at a little bit of a higher level, the city – any big city that’s more that a Columbus, more that just an aggregation of population – is the place to be.

However, there is no convenience to city life. None at all. It’s expensive as hell. There’s no parking; a big city is usually no place for a car. If you want to go somewhere in your car, you’ll spend 20 minutes trying to find a place to park it. Which consigns you on most days to public transportation – which is well run, but you have to wait for it. Most of city life is spent on waiting for transportation. If you have no car, you have to replenish your groceries day by day. Waiting 10 minutes for this bus, 15 minutes for the crosstown, standing up in the bus all the way down because the aisles of the bus are already two abreast.

There are all sorts of aggravations that wear on your brain. The panhandling. The noise and the filth. The expense. It takes a strong physical – and emotional – constitution to live in a city; New York wore me out in about two years. (CINCGREEN was always at his craziest in New York.)

And second, let’s look at life in suburbia or in a well-equipped small town. Convenience is the hallmark. If I want to go and eat Chinese food in Atlanta, I climb in my car, drive around, and eat Chinese food. If I want an ice cream cone afterwards, I just pull through McDonald’s and get one. If I want new pants, I don’t have to walk six blocks – I just go to Wal-Mart which has several pairs of cheap and sturdy new pants. All of the staples of life are easy to obtain.

Unfortunately, there’s a dreary sameness to it all. If you want anything out of the ordinary, you won’t find it in the suburbs, or in the exurbs. It will always be the same movies, the same underpopulated bookstore, the same opinions and the same dull people. The land of fast food and “fast media”. It’s convenient, but it’s bland.

I skip mentioning the small towns, the places that my wife calls “a spot in the middle of the road”. The places that everyone with any ambition at all escapes, the places where it’s a good place to die.

I don’t know if I have any more years of big city life left in me. The big city is a great place to visit, but I don’t know if I would want to live there, even in Toronto. That old Jim Croce song comes to mind.

“I learned a lot of lessons awful quick
And now I’m telling you
That they were not the nice kind.”

The Wire: Kima Greggs

The role of Shakima "Kima" Greggs is that of neophyte. Granted, she was in The Wire for all five seasons but her character is the one used most often as Simon's way of explaining the day-to-day work of the Baltimore Police Department. McNulty's character is the "input" character, used to show the social relationships and structure of the hidden rules and institutions. Greggs's character is the "output" character, used most often to show the actual work of policing.

When she is introduced, she is a member of a trio of detectives in Narcotics - Ellis Carver and Thomas "Herk" Hauk are the other members of the group. Despite being technically the junior detective, she's the most competent of the three in terms of actual policing and using her mind to solve crimes instead of her authority. I believe that the audience would most likely identify with Greggs rather than Carver or Herk; I know I did.

Greggs shows the viewer that in The Wire, policing is not like it is in other cop shows. Like acting, a lot of being a successful policeman is just waiting around until you get the chance to make an arrest. During this waiting around process, you will be on stakeouts, gathering information and not knowing if the information your are gathering is valid or if it will ever be used in a court - or if it is used in a court, if the jury will act on it. One saying about being a soldier is that it is "hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of terror" and Greggs is the clearest example of that.

It is through Greggs that we meet Bubbles, a junkie and street informer whose assistance proves valuable in the Avon Barksdale case. It is also noteworthy that Greggs has built up an informer - McNulty comments in another season, I believe, that part of being an effective cop is cultivating good sources of information - and neither Carver nor Herk have informers. (When Herk tries using an informer, it ends disastrously.)

In Season One, Greggs is wounded in a shootout during an undercover stakeout. Her gun was taped to the bottom of the seat, but she couldn't reach it and Greggs winds up in intensive care. Her colleagues grapple with the consequences of Greggs's near-death, leading McNulty to conclude (temporarily anyway) that the work it is taking to bring down drug kingpin Barksdale might not have been worth it.

Greggs is a rarity among her colleagues - she's an out lesbian. Greggs explained (partially joking) that part of the reason she's out is because it deflects male attention. Like many other policemen, she has to balance the relationship between her job and her personal relationships. She has a long term relationship with Cheryl, her girlfriend, who asks Greggs to transfer to a desk job after Greggs is shot - Cheryl can't stand the thought of Greggs dying somewhere on the street.

Unfortunatley, the call of being in the thick of street work calls to Greggs - a desk job simply isn't satisfying. This endangers Greggs's relationship with Cheryl. Furthermore, Cheryl is very interested in getting pregnant and starting a family with Greggs. However, while a pregnant Cheryl shops with Kima for baby gear the viewer learns that Greggs is disengaged. Clearly, having the baby is Cheryl's idea and not Greggs's.

Greggs is dissatisfied with her relationshp and begins to do what Jimmy McNulty does - cheat. The joke is that it's very easy to cheat on one's spouse as a police officer because you can always call in and claim you're working a case - officers love supplementing their salaries with overtime pay, and sometimes the necessities of police work demand irregular hours. By Season Four, the Greggs/Cheryl relationship is clearly a casualty...but it was already on shaky ground to start.

Cheryl remains with the Major Crimes Unit until Deputy Commissioner William Rawls sabotages the unit by putting Lieutenant Marimow in as the new commander after Daniels is promoted. Marimow's overmanagement and insistence on his units making petty arrests and showing up at meetings (surveillance be damned) lead Greggs to request a transfer. Daniels helps Greggs by helping her get assigned to Homicide.

After some petty hazing, Greggs shows that she too is "real murder police". Her notice of a small detail helps solve a case which is potentially quite embarassing for the police department. Unfortunately, when Greggs learns that one of her colleagues in Season Five has crossed the standards of behavior in a big way, she has to make one of the toughest decision any police officer could make - whether she should "rat out" a close colleague.

Greggs makes it work in the end. She's competent and quick-witted, but it came at a price. She had to blow the whistle on a good friend. She's now just "Aunt Kima", a close friend of Cheryl and her son instead of a partner. I don't know if she's happy about the way her relationship worked out, but I suspect she's satified with her work as murder police. Sometimes, it's strictly an either-or proposition.

The Wire: Jimmy McNulty

If you were hard pressed to name a "star" of The Wire, it would be Jimmy McNulty. McNulty bounces around working in the Homicide Division of the Baltimore Police Department to being a detective on a Major Case Squad to being assigned to the Marine Unit, then back to the Major Case Squad, then choosing to work in the Western District as an ordinary patrolman to back at the Homicide Division.

There's a reason for all of McNulty's moving around - McNulty is a real pain-in-the-ass. To put it bluntly, McNulty's attitude towards authority is one of disdain. In most dramas, this would set up McNulty to be the real hero, a situation in cop dramas which is now even parodied on The Simpsons, the "rebel cop against his stuck-up supervisors", a trope which traces its way all the way about to Dirty Harry and earlier.

However, The Wire makes sure that we do not see McNulty as someone completely admirable. McNulty is a borderline alcoholic (and crosses the border somewhat in Season Five) and he has already burned through one relationship. His wife has divorced him due to his lying, his catting around and his drinking and raises McNulty's two children on her own. McNulty has visitation rights but his wife does not want him to see the kids, which might have been a deliberate choice by David Simon in order to foster some sympathy for McNulty. Whenever McNulty's wife, Elena, makes an appearance it is either to serve McNulty papers, or to deny McNulty visitation on some weekend, or to bump into McNulty while she's at a baseball came with her boyfriend, a successful lawyer.

However, alcohol and sex were only a few of the reasons the relationship crashed. The other reason was McNulty's role as a detective. Simon doesn't make McNulty the noble detective - Simon stated that McNulty is a detective more for the individual thrill of solving a case than for any other higher goal. This is probably true about a lot of our jobs, we do them because they give us personal pleasure or solve some ulterior purpose rather than loving our jobs for some truly altruistic purpose. As a result, McNulty is prepared to chase a case to the ends of the earth, and God helps who gets in his ways.

In the beginning of the season, McNulty has already worn out his welcome with his current supervisor, William Rawls, who is glad to dump McNulty into the Major Case Unit being formed by Cedric Daniels. Daniels needs manpower, and several departments have availed themselves of the opportunity to "dump their humps", i. e. get rid of their least productive detectives. McNulty is dumped into the Unit but proves to be one of its most effective members....

...but at a cost. Lawrence J. Peter proposed that there were two types of competence in this world, "output" and "input". "Output" is simply doing what your job requires - a widget maker who can't make widgets will be out on the street. "Input" is preserving the hierarchy, or the institution - a widget major who makes widgets very well but who keeps his superiors in an uproar will find himself out on the street.

McNulty, simply, cannot make the compromises that one must make in order to get along at one's job. If there's something that needs to be done, he'll do it and he doesn't care what kind of relationship he has to run over to get there. We see this in McNulty's berating of Lieutenant Daniels - his superior - in the first season when Daniels can't move fast enough on something to suit McNulty. Daniels has to juggle several balls to keep the investigation moving and keep the Unit alive, but McNulty frankly doesn't care. His needs have to take precedence over everyone else's, he has a case to solve.

Definitely, McNulty is recognized as being good at what he does. In Season Five, he is recognized by Sergeant Jay Landsman - nobody's "best friend pal" -as "real murder police", the highest compliment that can be given to any officer, an informal accolade which states that McNulty is a true detective in every sense of the word. Despite that, Landsman and McNulty's relationship is largely adversarial. When McNulty begins his work on the Red Ribbon Killer - a serial killer ostensibly killing Baltimore's homeless - Landsman is sick of McNulty's whining for more resources and treats McNulty's requests with apathy.

McNulty, meanwhile, deliberately strikes back. In Season Two, as a Marine Unit officer he creates a file related to a "floater", or dead body in the water, and through painstaking work proves that the body was murdered in the part of the Cheseapeake that is within Baltimore city limits, shoving an unwanted and potentially unsolvable murder onto the Baltimore Police Department, hiking up its uncleared murder rate. There would be 13 more bodies he would add to Baltimore's murder rate simply by showing that they lay within the BPD's jurisdiction, making him no one's friend at the BPD, where the crime rate stats and clearance numbers are worshiped.

In Season Four - where actor Dominic West was unavailable for much of the season - McNulty seems happiest. He has returned to the simple life of a patrolman and is beginning a relationship with Officer Beadie Russell. He has stopped drinking and it looks like he can recreate his former life again, with Russell's two kids partially replacing his own.

But in Season Five, it all falls apart. After a long investigation with Major Crimes that yields no results, the unit is closed down and McNulty is back with homicide. By now, the city is facing a budget crisis that has extended into every department, including the police department and the lack of money makes it very difficult to do effective homicide work. He begins drinking again - even more heavily than before - and his new relationship is in jeopardy. This sets up McNulty's fall as he goes outside of the rules for what would be the final time.

Someone once wrote about saints, and that there is a difference between saints and priests as it were. A priest preserves the hierarchy; the saint defies it. Saints are venerated, but what is forgotten is that in their societies, the saints were actually rebels.

McNulty is the rebel saint. Like real saints, he disrupts the hierarchy and his demands on the institution proved to be those that the institution will not meet - institutions will never dissolve or change themselves on the demands of one person, no matter how persuasive or influential. In the end, he faces the same fate that every other saint in the world faces - persecution. It could be said that saints bring all the trouble on themselves, and if they could just bend a little....!

And McNulty is no saint. To McNulty, the end partially justifies the means. He's not out to become a version of Dirty Harry, and is not the kind of policeman that wants to be judge, jury, and executioner - he just can't see why all these details have to get in the way. At first, you think "well, at least he won't do anything truly dishonest" but in the end he even crosses that final barrier. His ends were the noblest, but they threatened the very heart of the institution he worked for and finally got the attention of powers even McNulty couldn't work his way around.

In the end, despite the fact that he might have been their best detective, the Baltimore Police Department could not compromise itself enough to work with Jimmy McNulty. But McNulty could also not compromise himself, could not "go along to get along". In the end, one institution remains and one detective is out on his ass. Such is the way of the world.

The Wire: The City of Baltimore

"The suspect is most likely a white male in his late twenties to late thirties, who is not a college graduate, but feels superior to those with advanced education, and is likely employed in a bureaucratic entity, possibly civil or public service. He has a problem with authority and a deep-seated resentment for those that have impeded his progress professionally. The sexual nature of the killings is thought to be a secondary motivation and the lack of DNA or saliva in the bite marks suggests possible postmortem staging. He may be struggling with lasting relationships and potentially a high functioning alcoholic with alcohol being used as a trigger in the crimes. The suspect’s apparent resentment of the homeless may indicate a previous personal relationship with a homeless person or the targeting may simply be an opportunity for the killer to assert his superiority and intellectual prowess."

-FBI profile on the (phony) "Red Ribbon Killer"


There are generally two kinds of television shows: those that you like, those that you respect, and both.

For example, I liked Star Trek in its various incarnations. It was enjoyable, and it had an extensive and complex backhistory. However, I never really respected Star Trek. Yes, I loved the show but I realized that Star Trek: Whatever required suspension of disbelief, very much so at times. There were several annoying tropes upon which the episodes rested, namely technobabble and the reset button being the worst of those. It became preachy when the quality of the episodes wasn't high enough to give the franchise the right to be preachy. It was entertaining television, and might have been decent science-fiction in its 1960s incarnation, but by the 2000s it had become a cartoon and was abandoned by its former audience. I used to watch every episode; now I have no use for the franchise.

There are also the shows you respect: most of them can be found on Masterpiece Theatre, usually a BBC production of one of the Jane Austen novels. You know that the show is probably quite good and the acting is superb. Watching shows like that, however, is something like eating the broccoli on your plate. It's good for you, but you realize that the investment you put in is going to be a difficult one. There's not a lot of entertainment to be found, you'll come away impressed with what you see but it's just a hard slog all the way through.

Then there are shows that are both. I'd like to think that Daria is one, although some of the episodes of Daria are quite week. I like Daria because in the late 1990s it was sort of a trope-busting show. Its protagonist was an intelligent female who wasn't at all "girly" but at the same time not a tomboy. Her life not only didn't revolve around the stuff of your typical teenage girl protagonist drama - dates and popularity - but the show's message was that the protagonist rejected the culture as shallow and insufficient. At the same time, the show was not really meant to be an adult show or a serious examination of the issues in teen life. (I think My So-Called Life got closer.) Daria is a show that I think about frequently. Was it one of the great unsung comedy-dramas or is it a massive waste of time?

The other show I want to write about is The Wire. Ostensibly, The Wire is your standard cops-and-robbers drama - the show gets its name from wiretaps on drug dealers. The main character of The Wire, however, isn't any one person but a city, the city of Baltimore. In particular, the main character is the institutions that shape the city and shape every hierarchy in the city, from the police department to the drug game to the unions to the schools to the mayor's office. The theme - if there is one - is that these institutions take on a life of their own, and instead of human beings bending the institutions to serve their purpose, the reverse is true. The institutions warp people to preserve themselves.

I believe Robert Pirsig in Lila wrote that the city might actually be a form of life in the way that a colony of ants is a form of a life - there are the needs of the ant, and then the needs of the colony. People like to believe that they're independent agents but their actions fulfill what the institution needs; if they do not, the institution strikes back to preserve itself. As Pirsig put it, we might believe we can function independently and do what we want in society but that would be like two white cells speaking with each other and one saying, "I can't imagine anything out there more complex than we are."

At the "white cell" level the show is about the many agents who play a role in the life of Baltimore. These agents include:

- the men and women of the Baltimore Police Department, in particular the "murder police" or the Homicide Division
- the chain of command of the BPD from its sergeants to its highest levels
- the Baltimore school system, particularly the inner city schools: both the teachers and the students are examined as agents
- the street, in particular the corner-level drug dealers, hustlers, and other figures
- the drug kingpins, both inside and outside Baltimore
- the mayor's office and the politicians who have power de jure and the ones who have power de facto
- those in the court system
- the union workers on the docks
- the journalists of the Baltimore Sun, from the beat reporters to the editorial staff

I believe it might have been UU who turned Scissors MacGillicutty on to The Wire. Snips, in the meantime, turned me on to it. So as a reward, I'm going to give my random thoughts about various wire characters over the next few months.
Stay tuned.

Our Friend Daria: "The Invitation"

About a month or so later, I picked up the Lawndale Sun-Herald. The previous owner of our home subscribed to it and the shrink-wrapped fodder for recycling showed up faithfully in our driveway every day even though neither of us had interest in it. Bored from studying, I picked up the paper and walked to the dining room table.

As usual, the Sun-Herald's reporting was strong on what I call "local color" - it was fifteen pages of "happy news". Reading the Lawndale entry on city-data.com, many local Lawndale residents were unhappy with the media coverage. The paper was big on local boosterism, reactionary politics and high school football. It reminded me of my hometown's paper...too much.

A bored man, however, will find his diversions wherever he can. I quickly glanced through the first five pages without a single article catching my eye. I finally caught something interesting:

Party Out of Bounds in Crewe Neck Crashed by Police

The writer must have been an old B-52s fan. I knew Crewe Neck quite well because it wasn't far from where we lived. Every time I drove by Crewe Neck I would see this sign.

Crewe Neck Estates

New Homes Available
Luxury Lots
From $750,000

I figured that I would soon be reading a tale of decadence that would rival Berlin in the 1920s. The truth was much more pedestrian:

"Police were called at 10:20 pm to the Crewe Neck Estates on a complaint of public disturbance caused by a raucous party. Three local high school students were charged with disorderly conduct and failure to disperse. Several vehicles at the location were ticketed and the host was cited for violation of the Crewe Neck Estates noise ordinance."

"Security guard Rob Jesperen, who had left his gate station, was found by Lawndale police in attendance at the party. Jesperen claimed that two teenage girls had 'deceived' him into abandoning his post."

Ruth came to the kitchen to look for a snack. I reported my findings to her. "My quiz question: what is missing from this article?"

"Well, the who is missing. And the why. What are you reading?"

"The Lawndale Sun-Herald."

"Oh, it figures. How's Mallard Fillmore doing?"

"Ha ha. So what do you think the 'deceit' was? Blow job?"

"Probably free beer," said Ruth. "Those guys at the gate house don't get paid anything."

"You know," I said, "they bust the poor sap at the gate but I don't read the name of the 'host' or those kids anywhere in this article. I wonder why?"

"Well, it's Crewe Neck. Probably some politician or high school football player."

"Right." I folded the paper.

"Any coupons?" Ruth asked.

"No."

"Then put it in recycling," she said. Grumbling, I complied.

Our Friend Daria: "Esteemsters"

School had started. Whenever I took the subway, I would find myself surrounded by private and public school kids, all dressed alike in the standing-room only circumstances. Both cohorts were dressed identically. The difference was in the dress. Public school kids wore the same maroon-colored pullovers and private school kids wore blazers. You knew it was a Catholic school if all the girls were in skirts.

It didn't mean much to me, except for the fact that I'd have to slow down through school zones. Kids would be coming and going by foot on the little road to our house at approximately 7:30 am and 4 pm. Ruth and I lived a stone's throw away from Lawndale High School, so there was a lot of traffic.

As I was driving home on that first day of the fall semester, I passed Staring Girl. Staring Girl was walking with someone wearing a red jacket. The two chatted as they walked by.

I thought nothing of it. I assumed that the red jacketed girl was Staring Girl's sister. It wasn't worth sharing with Ruth, and Ruth wouldn't have shared it with me. We saw people walk down the street all the time.

(* * *)

That Friday would be Lawndale's version of Dragon Con. It was called "Alien-Con" for some reason - probably to drag in as many attendees as possible who weren't into comic books, collectibles, hard or soft science fiction, role playing games or other general weirdness. I learned from the website that even though there would be gaming tables and a "vendors area" that the speakers were all from UFOlogy. All unknown names.

I looked at the price for a one-day ticket. $10. Cheaper than Dragon Con. My friend Casey from Tennessee and his wife and their friends would be staying over for Labor Day to attend Atlanta's Dragon Con and I would sometimes go with them. A one-day ticket was fifty dollars. It was almost not worth it, but I liked seeing my friends and enjoying the things that they still enjoyed and that I used to enjoy.

Of course, I offered Ruth the chance to go. She skipped it. You couldn't have gotten Ruth into a comic-book convention under threat of death.

Really, Alien Con was nothing special. I simply saw it as a chance to do some shopping for items that I'd normally have to order online. I planned on skipping the speeches from the UFO observers. I had a lot of sympathy for them, and I thought it quite plausible to believe that intelligent life existed elsewhere. However, when the speakers opened their mouths, their credibility diminished with each word. At best they were eccentric; at worst they were downright half-crazy.

The shopping, however, was surprisingly good. I found some old tabletop wargames from a company called Avalon Hill. I loved these games but the games were now out of stock and Avalon Hill has gone bust. There was no sense in pushing paper chits across a printed map when you could just fire up your PC and shoot Nazis.

My goal was to find a nuclear war game called 1979. I had heard it was a great game and if there was some rotting copy somewhere, I wanted to have it as my own.

The games were stacked up in three shelves, forming an incomplete square with one side missing. The shelves were eight feet high and the games were stacked so tightly that no one would ever know you were inside this square unless they were looking from the missing side. It was like being inside a fort.

I continued to look. Was "1979" listed numerically or was it listed by number, like Nineteen Seventy-Nine? Could I find it in the "N"s? The games appeared to be shelved alphabetically, but the take-it-down-put-it-back system had jumbled the order. I called it "semi-betical order".

As I looked, someone entered my fort. I turned around. It was Staring Girl. She wore a green jacket and a black pleated skirt, with boots that almost came up to her knees. The only acknowledgment I got from her was a brief moment of paralysis on her part. Then, she began to search the games. She didn't seem to be looking for anything specific.

Having failed in my quest to find a nuclear war board game that was thirty years old, I began looking elsewhere. I found myself at the graphic novels section. These were shelved on low, four-foot-high shelves, which meant two things. I could stoop, or I could sit on the floor. Given my size and my hip bursitis, I decided the latter was better. The hard, concrete floor wasn't doing my feet any good.

Within five minutes, Staring Girl was back. She had made a bee line to the low shelf, and squatted down behind the barrier. This time, there was no acknowledgment that I was there, not even a brief interruption in her search. She looked at the graphic novels on the shelf with disinterest - they were old 1960s DC comic graphic novels.

This had been my second encounter with Staring Girl in the last ten minutes. This time, I got up almost immediately - not easy for me. I didn't know what was going on, but I found Staring Girl to be rather creepy. I felt like I was being stalked.

This time, I decided to leave the vendors area. The vendors area was being held in ballroom of Lawndale's biggest hotel, and there was a small reception area between where the vendors area began and where the lobby ended. Feeling tired, I sat down and tried to finish reading Journey to the End of the Night.

I had been there for ten minutes, and of course...Staring Girl was back. She walked through the area and looked out into the lobby. Sighing, she sat down in the reception area as well, violating my inner space.

I felt that I at least had to acknowledge her presence, if only to see what she wanted. "Hello," I said.

She had a quick answer. "Mommy taught me not to talk to strangers." Great. I had given off the vibe of the creepy older guy hitting on the younger girl.

The snotty response was too pissy for my tastes. "We're hardly strangers. You've been following me around all day."

"When?" she said, as a challenge.

"Near the games. And the graphic novels. And now, out here."

Staring Girl sighed. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. Actually, I'm trying to hide from someone."

I looked around as people entered and exited the vendor's room about us. "Then this probably isn't the best place."

"Well," Starting Girl said, "I'm looking for someone, too. She's supposed to be here. I told her to meet me at the vendor's room. She has black hair and is wearing a red jacket."

"Oh. That's the girl you were walking home from school with."

"Huh?"

"There's a family that moved in a few blocks away called the Morgendorffers. My wife and I live just a couple of blocks away. You walked past our house on the way to Lawndale High."

"Right. We were going to hook up at Alien Con."

"Are you all right?" I said. "I mean you're trying to avoid someone."

"That's my family," she said.

"What are they here, then?"

"They’re here to improve my self-esteem."

"At $10 a pop?"

"No price is too dear for esteem," Staring Girl answered.

"Well, I'm James. My wife is Ruth. I'm sorry, but I don't know your name." Staring Girl answered that her name was Esmerelda.

"Well, Esmerelda, I'll try to help you out. If I see her at the convention, I'll tell you you were looking for her."

"Thanks." Esmerelda wasn't strong on conversation. I decided to look at the comic books. I'd get more conversation out of a Rob Liefield cover than I'd get out of Esmerelda.

(* * *)

I never saw Staring Girl or her red-jacketed friend. After looking at the vendor's area and checking out some of the exhibits, I went back home and reported to Ruth.

"Sorry the con sucked," Ruth said.

"Well, you know, a town like Lawndale - did you think the con was going to be any good? Now, if it were a high school football convention, it would be packed."

"That reminds me," said Ruth, "I can get Lawndale Leprechauns tickets for five dollars from the Death Star, cheap. Do you want to go?"

Sure. I loved baseball at the time. I mentioned Staring Girl to Ruth and recounted our conversation.

"She sounds weird," Ruth said.

"Yes. Definitely. I think the room with the bars was a good choice."

Our Friend Daria: "Prequel"

I would like to say that my wife and I lived "inside the perimeter" and that the housing market was doing quite well. My wife enjoyed reading the circulars sent by a popular real estate agent. "See how well these houses sold!" Our house, near to those recently sold, certainly had to be worth a lot of money.

I didn't much look forward to living in Lawndale, but my wife was desperate to get out of her telecommunications job in Nashville. At the time, I was a telephone nurse. I pretty much hated the job, hated everything about it, dreaded waking up to do it. My time off would be haunted by a clock which counted down to the time when I had to go back to work again.

In order for my wife to break free of Nashville, she had to promise me that I could go back to school and change careers. We signed the dirty deal, and we were off to Lawndale.

To be blunt, I never liked the inhabitants of Lawndale that much. It was a white-bread middle class community. If some sort of Marxist wanted to condemn the petty-mindedness of the bourgeoisie she couldn't have chosen a better example than Lawndale. Everyone here was keeping up with the Joneses, and Holden Caulfield would have screamed "phony" from the top of the tallest tree until his whiny little lungs caught pneumonia. My wife told some riotous stories about the bozos at her new job, or "bog" as she called it.

There was a media, of sorts. The big three television channels (not four or five, mind you) had Lawndale stations. There were sports - single A-baseball - but the big thing in town was high school football, particularly some charter school called Lawndale High School. (I made a note that it was not the public school, Carter County High.) "No one at the Death Star sends their kids to Carter County if they can afford it," Ruth said. Whenever there was a high school football game, everything in town would turn blue and gold, and every little shop changed color.

There were a couple of big malls. The only interesting place in town was an area called Dega Street, which seemed to be a holdover from the years before 1980s conservatism. "It smells like Otto's jacket," was what Ruth said when we drove by. There were head shops and a bunch of shifty (but interesting) people hanging around. Ruth had visited the thrift shops, but she said that she really didn't find much there. I think her high school days were over.

Oh well. I had the internet and books. I was fine.

However, a problem happened with our change of address. We were getting mail for someone called Helen Morgendorffer. Occasionally, we would get Jake Morgendorffer's mail. We contacted the post office, and stated, "Hey! We keep getting someone else's mail." They swore they would get around to it, sooner or later, but nothing came of it.

When we got our most recent real estate circular, Ruth noted that some nice two-story mini-mansion had just been sold, and we drove by to take a look. There was an SUV parked in the formerly empty driveway, and Ruth noted that whoever it was must have moved in at least a couple of weeks earlier. I happened to notice the name on the mailbox: "MORGENDORFFER".

"And the mystery...is solved," I said.

"I want to go in and let them know that we have their mail," Ruth said.

"You do that." I wasn't the most social person.

So I sat from the car and watched Ruth chat with someone from the Morgendorffer's front door. It was an adult woman that I assumed was Helen Morgendorffer. They chatted for about five minutes while I sat in the car and listened to music. When some Santana song assaulted my years, I got bored and started looking out of the car window.

I looked up. There was that strange half-barred window. We never knew how the window got that way; it had been that way before the Morgendorffers showed up. Now, there was a face looking down from it. Some girl wearing glasses – she was probably a daughter of one of the Morgendorffers.

I broke eye contact to mind my own business. After a safe interval, I looked back up. She was still looking at me. I grumbled.

Finally, Ruth stopped her socializing. "What did you think of the Morgendorffers?"

Ruth dished. "She's a lawyer. He's a consultant. He seemed really nice. I think you'd like him."

"Do tell." I thought not. I never liked it when Ruth tried to set me up on play dates.

"They have two daughters. Both of them are going to start at Lawndale High School. School starts on Monday."

"I'm sure they're screaming with glee. Did you meet either of those girls?"

"No."

"Well, there was one looking up at me from that weird window. You know the one."

"Yeah, I asked her about it. She said the previous owners had a schizophrenic aunt that had tried to escape out the window a few years back. They had the room padded and put bars on the windows. Helen said they were going to renovate the room, but they're feeling the budget crunch."

"I think they moved the weird daughter in there," I said. I told the story of Staring Girl.

"Well, you know, kids are weird. Let me tell you about teaching high school sometime."

"Maybe you could go teach Staring Girl at Lawndale High School."

"Ain't enough money in the world," Ruth said.

Web 2.No

Four things that can kill an interent connection:

1) Low bandwith.
2) Flash and Java bells and whistles that don't do much for content.
3) Ad-blocking software
4) Web 2.0 models that are absolutely determined to load your pages full of gifs of dancing chimpunks tell you about the great deal you can get on your car insurance and determined to fill your hard drive with cookies, even if they have to fight with the ad-blocking software 50 times to do it.

Impeachment Made Easy

Currently, we've been lucky enough not to have to deal with another presidential impeachment proceeding, although we all wonder when it is coming with Barack Obama.

Since Thomas Dewey assumed the presidency in 1945 with the death of President Roosevelt, each opposing party has tried to derail the administration in the hopes of getting their own man from the vice presidency in and the current president out. For foreign readers who don't understand this, they call it "The Sword over the President" due to the unique clause in the American constitution that gives the winner in electoral votes the presidency and the second place finisher the vice presidency.

With the Secretary of State succeeding to the vice-presidency under the old rules, Dewey ran through four vice-presidents- all Democrats - during his eight-year term of office. Having a Republican president and a Democratic vice-president - or vice versa - was considered a good system by the Founding Fathers. It assured that if the president died, his successor could at least lay claim to a mandate, a sizable number of Americans having previously voted for him for president.

Even though Democratic opposition to the Dewey presidency provoked a backlash that kept the Democrats out of power for 16 years, both parties have succumbed to the temptation to fuck with whomever is serving as president. We've been through six impeachment proceedings that have gone to the United States Senate since the Kennedy administration.

The first was after the almighty clusterfuck of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. Even though the Dems never managed to impeach Dewey - simply stonewalling every bit of legislation Dewey proposed made them happy - the Republicans managed to dust off the charge of "malfeasance of office" in Kennedy's case, a charge which basically means you should be fired for incompetency - a charge which technically doesn't mean anything. However, Vice-President Nixon really took the bully pulpit to new heights in 1961 and 1962, with the Chief Executive and the Vice President essentially continuing their 1960 battles.

When President Kennedy was assassinated, Nixon assumed the presidency. The Democrats were never going to let Nixon have any peace due to the way he went after Kennedy, and impeachment proceedings resumed immediately, with some stuff about Nixon fund raising hitting the floor of the Senate. Nixon knew that his chances of running as president in his own right should be put on hold until the heat died down and he sat out the 1964 election. Sure enough, when Landslide Lyndon Johnson won the presidency, the Republicans attempted proceedings under "malfeasance of office" all over again. (At least Vice-President Goldwater kept his hands off of everything.) Johnson had a lot of enemies in his own party - chief among them Robert F. Kennedy - and even though Johnson easily beat the rap, it was never quite certain if the Senate Dems would impeach Johnson using the Vietnam War as an excuse. Johnson's political career was over.

That put Nixon back in again after the 1968 election, this time under his own power. He won this time, but the Democrats came close to impeaching him in 1974. They found out some really nasty stuff about break-ins and illegal fundraising, this time stuff so solid it would stick. Hell, Nixon was even taping his crimes for posterity. The problem was that the Democrats overplayed their hand, and the article about Vice-President McGovern debating with aides about cabinet officers for his post-impeachment-of-Nixon presidential term stuck in the public's craw. The Republicans made the impeachment proceedings not so much about Nixon as about a Presidential "coup d'etat" by the McGovernites. Nixon escaped by the skin of his teeth and wound up completing two entire presidential terms in addition to the year he served from 1963-64.

Of course, when Jimmy Carter was president "malfeasance of office" came back again as an impeachment charge, this time due to the Iran fiasco and the botched hostage rescue. Carter had enough oomph in the Senate to avoid impeachment, but when the people are turning to your own Vice-President - Ronald Reagan - for hope and assurance, Carter knew that his presidency was crippled.

There wasn't another impeachment for almost two decades. The Republicans were popular enough - Reagan and Bush I - to avoid impeachment, although it was always threatened. Bill Clinton was hauled out for a Senate trial for lying in a civil deposition, but everyone really understood it was because of a blowjob. Vice-President Bob Dole could shake his head in disgust and make quotes that the press ate up, but no one was looking forward to a Bob Dole administration. Clinton had no problems.

When George W. Bush won the presidency, the timid Democrats were afraid to try to light an impeachment fire. Vice-President Gore had won the popular vote and they were afraid of "coup d'etat" charges. 9/11 took impeachment off the table, but it found its way back there again after Hurricane Katrina. It was the Democrats turn to use "malfeasance of office" and Bush II barely escaped with his presidency intact, ending his term as one of the most unpopular of presidents.

So the question remains: what kind of impeachment charges will Obama face? They come in every presidency, and I'm sure Vice-President McCain would love to slide into the big chair. No opposition party has ever pulled off a coup by impeachment, but the weird structure of the American Constitution where the second-place finisher in the Electoral College gets the vice-presidency makes the temptation too great to resist. Get the party nomination, finish second in the presidential race, be awarded the vice presidency, and then hope for an impeachment proceeding to give you what the voters didn't give you. Sooner or later, the Senate will actually impeach a president, and the temptation of presidency by impeachment will become overwhelming.

I hear that the Republicans want to start impeachment proceedings of fraud, trying to turn the claim that Obama wasn't born in this country into a legal case. We'll see what comes of it.

Grate Writing Made Eazee

One of the great things about being named what I was is that although there aren't that many Bowmans in the word, my name is still relatively common. Anyone trying to look me up on the internet is likely to find more famous people that have my name instead of finding me. (This is an advantage that Kara Wild doesn't have. The man who is currently known as The Angst Guy, however, has it even sweeter than I do.)

For example, you might find the conservative commentator, or the countertenor, or the head of the non-profit office instead of me. Which makes me wonder why I was named after my father, because the odds are great that neither of us would have become famous enough to need ordinal numerals to tell us apart. We wouldn't have even gotten a lousy "pere" or a "fils".

I'm currently busy writing part-time for a sports website. The great thing about it is that I get to go to games and mingle with the players, and I get to go to these games free to boot. It's a pain in the ass trying to arrange my work life and my sports life, but I've been enjoying it so far.

However, the old mental illness can play tricks on you. (A friend of mine, Rebecca, has a livejournal tag for this problem: "STFU brain".) I recently got a letter from the editor of the website saying, "I'd like to ask you some questions about the article you last posted."

One of my problems is catastrophization. It's part of what they call a cognitive disorder, or what they used to call "stinkin' thinkin'" in the old days. Briefly, it is the belief that all outcomes will be the worst possible ones. Therefore, I attempted to ameliorate the problem - if there was one - before it even presented itself as one. I sent the editor a 17MB .wav file which consisted of my interview. I suspect she's going to love listening to that thing, but hey, it's my anxiety that you're dealing with here.

That isn't the point of the post. The point of the post is that writing fanfiction does not prepare you for a life of journalism. It doesn't even prepare you for a life of pseudo-journalism. In fact, writing fanfiction could get about as close to not preparing you for a professional writing career as you can get while the volume of the words you produce on electric paper increases.

The first problem with fanfiction is that it is very easy to post a first draft as a completed work. I'm sure that guys like The Angst Guy sharpen and resharpen their work. Brother Grimace asks for betareading help - I know because he sends his stuff to me and I try to point out parts that are unclear, or gramatical errors, or the like. I generally don't use a beta-reader, and there's a reason. It's not that I think that my work is so great that it can't be improved; rather, it's that once I get through the painful process of putting words on paper I want the thing to be over and done with.

I think the only work for which I had multiple beta-readers was "Reclamation" and god-damn was it a painful process to have to sit and wait for the editing to get done. "What's wrong with you people? I sent it five minutes ago! Can't I have it back now?" (Whenever I get something to beta-read, I try to remember to send back a message that says, "Hey, I got this, but I can't beta-read it right away. I just wanted you to know that your story wasn't eaten by gremlins.")

However, writing pretend-journalism forces you to adopt new, unfamiliar, and painful ways of life. The first of these is to get used to having your work read by someone else, all the time. Why? Because when it is posted, it will be read by several someone elses, and if you suck as a writer, it means that the organization that is editing you sucks - they were the ones that posted your signed confession of literary incompetence on the web for all to see.

The second is that you must deal with maximum article length. With fanfiction, you can write a never-ending story. (See: Legion of Lawndale Heroes, The.) When writing for "press" you have to write something more than 450 words and less than 800. This forces me to do two things that I don't like doing:

a) getting to the point, and
b) shutting up when I'm done.

This is why people like fanfiction - because it lets you ramble on at will to a (mostly) uncritical audience. (Hell, you're doing the audience a favor for writing about their favorite characters!) In writing for press, the reader is doing you a favor - "interest me now, or I'm going to do crossword puzzles."

(People who write fanfiction tend to start blogs. It lets them indulge in their favorite activity, rambling incessantly about nothing.)

The third is the awful deadline. You can't just finish when you want to finish. You can't wait months between story segments. You can't write an unfinished story. I have to have my articles in within 24 hours of game on weekdays, and within 12 hours on weekends. If you think this is an unreasonable deadline, let me put it this way - I'm just pretending to be press and I receive no pay. The real journalists out there have to go to press the same day and they have to get their work in before the paper goes to press. This means that they're writing the story while they watch the game, sometimes before the game is even over. And if the game goes to overtime, they are doubly screwed, because they might have a grand total of five minutes to rework an article to reflect a different outcome before the paper goes to press. They are getting paid not so much for their literary excellence as they are getting paid to write a workable article within unreasonable time constraints.

Has this made me a better writer? I don't know. I look at my press work and it seems stilted, like my style has been shoved into a straitjacket. My wife says that it's "dry - just details". I'm trying to get more quotes, more human interest, but editors aren't like beta-readers. A beta-reader wants to help you get better; an editor just wants to fix the errors. An editor can improve an article on his own but likely won't have the time or inclination to help you improve it in the future.

In short, all that time I spent writing fanfiction did not help me that much. Although I can definitely say that writing fanfiction made me more comfortable with writing in general, and taught me a few tricks to avoid writer's block. Maybe that's all you need to be a good writer, or at least, to walk the path.

My Dear!

Today, I received an e-mail address with the heading "My Dear!" The author's name was Susan Patrick, which sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn't put a face to the name.

Since it was a message from someone that I didn't know, here were my thoughts:

a) 40 percent chance that Susan wants to sell me Viagra or Ciali$
b) 40 percent chance that Susan wants to enact a business deal with me, and all she needs is my banking information
c) 20 percent chance that there is a real Susan Patrick out there, somewhere.

Unfortunately, the answer was "b", but I have to give "Susan" a thumbs-up. It's not often that a spammer manages to put together the right name and title on an e-mail to get the user to open it. (I moved the mail to Yahoo!'s SpamGuard and let SpamGuard increase its knowledge.)

My Google Mail account absolutely floods with spam. Spammers everywhere try to come up with a title to an e-mail message that will get the recipient to bite:

"I didn't get your e-mail"
"Robert just died"
"Obama has heart attack"
"I need a turnaround on this memo or there's trouble"

In any case, it was a good title for the spammer. "My Dear!" It isn't often that you're called "My Dear!" It made me feel warm inside.

Puppeteering

"Come in."

I entered what appeared to be a little-used room in a vacant Hollywood movie set. It was actually a vacant Toronto movie set, but if Toronto can replace New York on television, its sets can replace Hollywood ones.

The man sitting at the desk wore khaki. He looked half like Jeff Probst of Survivor and half used car salesman. He smiled, as if he were completely and absolutely satisfied with himself.

Sitting on a folding chair next to him was a very large, bald black man. His lips were lined with a thin mustache and something small at the bottom of his lower lip; a Hitler mustache from the bottom and not from the top. His look was the opposite of my host's, one conveying contempt for anything physically weaker than him - and I counted.

"Take a load off," said the man behind the desk. "Have a seat!"

I sat.

"So, Mr. -- uhm -- "

"You can just call me Chris," said the man with a smile. "So, CINCGREEN, I heard that you're interested in the little operation we have up here."

"Where did you hear that?" I replied, not even noticing that he called me by my old internet name. "This invitation was out of the blue. I didn't expect to see either of you here." Now that I had figured out who the two were - the fact that the black guy wasn't wearing his hat threw me - I was starting to enter panic territory.

"Come on! Duuuuuuuuude! I can see what's inside your head! We all can! And after you read 'Where's Mary Sue When You Need Her?' it gave both of us the opportunity to make that connection."

"Uh...okay. Curtiss can handle conversations with fictional characters. I can't. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my real real and my fiction fiction."

"Well," Chris said, "it might work that way where your from, but it doesn't work that way up here. We're go getters up here in the North! We have to take our opportunities when we can!"

"So," I said. "Uh...Chris...I'm willing to listen."

"Coool!" he said, half-skateboard dude. "I gotta tell you, dude. We're really struggling for some good fan fiction here."

"I'm more of a critic than a writer. 'Those that can't do....'"

"Yeah. But you could do a lot better than what I've been reading. We're getting a lot of tweens writing. Don't think I don't like the market share! But everything is what you'd call a 'relationshipper' or just resettings of the show in different circumstances. Or those awful Mary Sues with which I'm sure you're familiar. You know how 13 year olds write!"

"Go on."

"Let me tell you, CINCGREEN, we've got a lot of the stock characters that Daria has, and some more interesting ones. We have the Queen Bee and the Dumb Blonde, and the Daria. We even have the Cool Musician, whose name...get this...happens to be 'Trent'. But we have even more archetypes than Daria. Dude, you don't even have to import them! We have the Rage-a-Holic, we have the Psycho and the Loudmouth, and the Over-Achieving Prep! You'll never get the chance to explore those kinds of personalities as regular Daria characters. And there's virtually no canon for any of these kids. Open page, duuuude!"

"Furthermore," Chris continued. "You're always looking for conflict as a writer. The entire show is about conflict! Everyone wants money, so our characters are at each other's throats. They're split into teams, they compete, they argue, they fall in love. The conflict is always there to drive the narrative."

"Yeah...I tried writing a Daria/Survivor crossover. It sucked. I would rather not repeat that."

"But it doesn't have to be that way. You can put the characters in any situation you want. Look, dude, I know about the whole 'Legion of Lawndale Heroes' thing. You had to call it an 'alternate universe'. But the rules of this universe let me get away with a ton of horse-hockey. We've had our characters fight pirahnas, sharks, bears, and the dreaded purple Sasquatch! I actually revealed that the place they had been living at for weeks was nothing more than a giant movie set despite being surrounded by water for miles in all directions! And they accepted that!"

"How?"

"Because...I'm God. I can do anything I want to to them, and they accept it. If I don't like the parameters of the universe they're in, I just change it at whim. I've even changed the rules, told the characters that I was changing the rules...and no rebellion, just acceptance. If there's anything you want to do to them...just say the word, dude. I can make it happen."

I remained silent.

"He's right," said the Chef, a chef unlike the one from South Park. "He can make it happen. I've seen it."

"Well...I'm tempted," I said. And I was. But looking at Chris's eyes, I began to have second thoughts. He was a master manipulator, a man who had interns in the series, all of whom had died doing his bidding...except for Chef, who was a force of his own. This was a man who could manipulate circumstances easily and better, a man who could hide bodies. Hell, he had manipulated me into coming here. How was I to know that I wasn't just some pawn in a larger game? Some mental-mind-fuck he had planned for his unhappy competitors?"

He called himself "God". I began to suspect that he was someone else.

"I don't know. I've got into legitimate blogging. I don't want to be dragged into that fan fiction business any more. No one's even reading Daria fan fic, who is going to be reading this -- !"

"Come onnnnnn!" Chris was in his salesman persona, his eyes sparkling. "You know you want to. Just a taste!"

I tried not to lick my lips.

"What about the Goth Girl? Isn't she special? Tough, but sweet. Caring, but cynical. All of the best qualities of Daria and Jane in one character. Who could pass up writing a story about her? Dude, it would take a man with a heart of stone to -- "

"-- fine!" I said. "I'll think about it."

"Great! Then you're on board!"

"I said I'll think about it. No more."

"Whatever! Listen...I know you also follow those teens in the mall...."

"Good Lord," I said. "One coffin-nail at a time. What kind of incestuous universe do you have over here?" Even Satan ought to know when not to push it.

Water Over the Bridge

(Exterior: Dark, with small amounts of ambient light. There appears to be an audience assembled, murmuring anxiously to itself.

Suddenly, the house lights come up. We see what appears to the be the interior of Mr. DeMartino's classroom, converted to a stage set. A snippet of Splendora's "You're Standing on My Neck" cues up and the crowd shows its obvious enthusiasm.)


ANNOUNCER: Ladies and Gentlemen, live from the Los Angeles Ampitheatre, it's "Daria"!

(The crowd goes wild and stands up to applaud. When nothing happens on stage, they sit back down again, expectantly.)

Mr. DeMartino (off-stage): Those - DAMNED - students!

(DeMartino enters from the left to the applause of the crowd, which respond like they haven't seen him in years. (They haven't.) DeMartino looks like he's in his 80s, but despite the paunch and the stoop he still gives the crowd what they've been waiting for.)

Mr. DeMartino: Gah! Changing the lunch hour! Now everybody's late!

Kevin: We're not late, Mr. D!

(Kevin and Brittany enter from stage right. They now appear to be in their early 40s. Brittany is about 10 pounds heavier and slightly more heavily made up. Kevin's hair is slightly off - it is worn in straight bangs, but he is wearing his football uniform and still has his six-pack abdomen. The crowd greets their arrival with warm applause.)

Mr. DeMartino: Of COURSE you're not late, Kevin. I have to give you CREDIT for that. And it's the ONLY THING I can give you CREDIT for in this class!

Kevin (breezily): Gee, thanks!

Brittany (squeakily): Mr. D, thanks for the extra credit! I really need it to pull up my grades!

Kevin: Aw, babe. To me, you'll always be a "C" student!

(The two hug to the laughter of the audience.)

Mr. DeMartino: Someone save me before I KILL someone. (Audience laughs.)

Jodie: Sorry, we're late!

(Jodie and Mack arrive. Jodie does not look like a teenage girl anymore: her braids have been replaced with straight hair extensions and she can't convey teenage innocence anymore in her short skirt - she comes off as a hooker, but plays it straight. Mack now has a goatee and his hair is cut very close to his scalp; he looks like some serious adult actor wandered on to the set.)

Mr. DeMartino: I SEE. So...Jodie...what were the two of you DOING?

Mack (sotto voce): Don't tell him. (Jodie smiles and the audience chuckles.)

Mr. DeMartino: Why, during the time of the birds and the bees, must I be covered in BIRD POOP? (Audience laughter.)

Kevin: Surely, Mr. D, you were young once?

(Jodie and Mack shake their heads 'no' furiously, to the laughter of the audience.)

Brittany: Yeah, Mr. D.! Who was your girlfriend in high school?

Mr. DeMartino: Girlfriend? I had SEVERAL of them.

Upchuck: Rrrrrowwwww! Feisty!

(Upchuck enters. Time hasn't been kind to him. He's even thinner than his teenage years and his skin isn't in good condition.)

Mr. DeMartino: Yes, CHARLES? You just HAD to make a COMMENT?

Upchuck (a little throaty): I merely congratulate you, Mr. D. Clearly, we are both birds of a feather! (Upchuck walks over to Brittany.)

Brittany: Stand back, pipsqueak...or I'll pluck your chicken! (Audience does the OOOOOOOOO sound.)

Upchuck: Hmmm....kinky! (Audience laughs.)

Quinn (off-stage): Mr. DeMartino! Mr. Demartino!

(Quinn walks in. She is quite clearly wearing a long wig with straight red hair. She looks Hollywood fifty. The audience is very glad to see her.)

Mr. DeMartino: YOU'RE NOT supposed to be in here!

Quinn: I'm just looking for...Daria! (Quinn milks the pause, and the audience goes wild.)

Mr. DeMartino: I was hoping you wouldn't show up UNTIL FIFTH PERIOD! (Audience laughs.) Where is the rest of your BRAIN DEAD TRIO?

Tiffany: ....KwinnNNNNNNNNNNNNN?

(Tiffany walks in, followed by Stacy. Tiffany looks a lot healthier than her teenage years. Stacy follows behind and when the audience sees her...they go crazy. The show is stopped for about 20 seconds while they applaud this older woman with pigtails that has stepped out of their shared past.)

Stacy: Gee, Quinn....are we going to get in trouble? (Loud audience laughter.)

Quinn: Duh....NO! (Audience laughs.)

Mr. DeMartino: So where is the other one?

Quinn: Oh...Sandi will be here later!

(A pause. Some of the cast bow their heads slightly, sadly, and reverently. The audience is in on the message. They understand.)

Mr. DeMartino: And why, Quinn, have you VIOLATED the SANCTITY of my CLASSROOM!

Quinn: Ooo! Gross! Don't talk about violation!

(Tiffany covers Stacy's ears and the audience laughs. Stacy throws an "I'm puzzled" look for more laughter.)

Jodie: I saw Daria (AUDIENCE APPLAUSE) walking down the hall with Jane (MORE AUDIENCE APPLAUSE) just a few minutes ago. Now Mr. D. - tell us about your girlfriends.

Mr. DeMartino: Well, I had two girlfriends. The first of them was the ARTISTIC type...very FREE SPIRITED....

Jane (from offstage): Hey-OHHHHH!!

(Jane steps on to the stage and the audience is on its feet with a standing ovation. She has wavy, shoulder-length hair and does not possess the "helmet-haircut". She looks quite stylish, even in her red jacket and black hose.)

Jodie: I think your spirit was just invoked.

Jane: Funny. That usually involves a pentagram. (Audience laughter.)

Upchuck: I'm ready to cast a spell...of love! (Chuckles from audience.)

Jane: There was one word of that sentence I liked. Cast. (Jane punches Upchuck in the arm to the joy of the audience.)

Upchuck: Owwwwww! (The actors are taken aback for a second, then move forward.)

Mack: So Mr. D, who was your other girlfriend?

Mr. DeMartino: She was the STUDIOUS TYPE! Very smart...very witty...very OUTSPOKEN!

Daria (off stage): Will someone open this damn door!

(Jane rushes over to open the imaginary stage right door, and Daria walks in carrying about twenty textbooks in a stack. The audience applauds at the sight of Daria, despite the fact that she is not wearing her trademark glasses. The applause goes on as Daria ignores it, carrying the books to Mr. DeMartino's desk and dumping the load.)

Jane: So, Morgendorffer. How are your contacts?

Daria: They don't have enough pull to get me out of class. (Audience laughter.)

Upchuck (Leering at Daria): Daria, your eyes make it quite clear that you are quite attracted to me. Nice to see that you're not hiding behind those glasses anymore.

(Daria looks genuinely disgusted, the most honest display of emotion in this show so far.)

Daria: Right. I need my peripheral vision, so I can get a head start. (Audience laughter.)

Jane: Mr. D was telling us about his romantic exploits.

Daria: I have to sit down for this. And put this in my diary...and possibly, on the internet. (More laughter.)

Brittany: At least Mr. D has an exploit!

Jane: She's got a point.

Daria: One covered by blonde hair. (Audience laughter.)

Stacy: So, Daria...tell us about your romances!

Tom (off stage): Daria! DARIA!

(Tom enters to the applause of the crowd. He must weigh about 300 pounds, but he carries it well and he seems to be a genuininely charming man. He has a mustache.)

Tom: Daria! I need to talk to you.

Daria: Okay, just...wait, I mean. (Silence for eight seconds or more.) What the fuck is this?

(Some confusion among the cast. Stacy rolls her eyes. Everyone else looks unsettled.)

Daria: What the fuck is this? The first time that we get together in twenty years, Sloane, and you can't shave the goddamn mustache? You never had a mustache on the show! What's the audience supposed to think?

Tom (not breaking character): Heh. I...guess you're still mad at me for breaking up with you.

Daria: I mean, Jesus Christ, show some respect for your craft. Everyone else here is at least making a half-assed effort at getting it right. Why can't you?

Tom (finally breaking character, angrily): Oh yeah? Where are those glasses? Everyone here expects you to wear those glasses.

Daria: Tom, the show is called 'Daria', not 'Tom'. When they ever name a show after you, you can dress how you damned well please. And since that's not going to...oh fuck, let's just get on with it.

Mr. DeMartino (quietly): I'm too old for this bullshit. (He walks off the stage. The audience murmurs to itself, unsettled.

Jane (smiling but clearly furious): So...Daria...tell us about your romances.

Daria: Well...oh, forget it. This is going nowhere. So everyone...do you want to know what I've been up to these past couple of decades?

(The audience takes the opportunity to forget what just happened and applauds.)

Daria: Lower the lights a little bit. (The lights dim.) I've not been seen a lot in the last few years, but I want you to know that I'm still active.

(More applause.)

Daria: Not necessarily doing what I did twenty years ago, but I'm more into politics now. Ladies and gentlemen, there's going to be a new referendum on the state ballot, and I'd like you to support it. We're facing what might be the greatest problem in our nation's history. That problem is illegal immigration.

(Tiffany walks off the stage. Jane follows her.)

Daria: The same radical liberal campus speakers who support the child-murderers of radical Islam, who pump state money into hiring professors with clearly radical viewpoints on the survival of Israel - or should I say, rather, the negation of Israel - are attempting to overwhelm this country and bring us to the age of the hijab.

(There are some hisses from the audience. Daria seems unperturbed.)

Daria: The instigators of these anti-American ideas do not come from the United States. The enemy has never been homegrown, but come from the decadent Europeans, the terrorist Middle East, and their newest vanguard, the shiftless and crime-prone Mexicans.

(There is now obvious and loud booing.)

Daria: Mexicans! Who are taking jobs away from real Americans! Who only bring crime and abortion to this inner cities, and who seep into the inner cities currently held captive by the poverty pimps of the Al Sharptons and the -- !

Mack: -- God, you're the most ignorant woman I've ever met.

Daria: Hey, Mack, guess what gay stands for? "Got AIDS Yet?" What's your white cell count today?

(Everyone is shocked. Mack shrivels. Stacy picks up one of the textbooks and throws it at Daria, hitting her right in the head to the applause of some members of the angry crowd. (There are boos.)

In turn, Daria attacks Stacy, and the two grapple on the floor, as amphitheatre staff rush the scene. A shocked crowd watches as the curtain closes, for good.)