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robinrunsfiction · 4 years

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A Long Way Back - Part 1 of 2

Pairing: Gerard Way x Female Reader

Rating: General

Requested By: Anon

Word Count: ~7,900 total, ~3400 in part 1

Author’s Note: This request asked for current Gerard with a singer who is younger and to be honest, I started this request immediately when I got it, but I’ve been picking it up and putting it down on and off since then. I was inspired by His Smile Will Keep You Safe by @xxfanfiction-emo-trinityxx and I Know I’ll Lose by @sunsetinmyvein and while this story is nowhere near as long as their stories, I hope that you guys enjoy it regardless. I’ve also thrown together a playlist if you’re interested as well

“We are Garden of Woe and don’t you ever forget it! Thank you Milwaukee!” (YN) shouted as the band hit their final notes and the lights went out. The crowd was cheering and (YN) felt that addicting mix of adrenaline and exhaustion that she always felt after an amazing show.

“That show was sick!” Liam the guitarist raved and (YN) nodded enthusiastically as she took a swig from her water bottle on the way backstage.

“Hey guys, great show as usual,” their manager Clark grinned when they walked in the dressing room. “Can I get your attention for a second?”

(YN) looked at her bandmates, a look of confusion shared amongst them. “What’s going on?”

“I didn’t wanna tell you guys before the show and have yall be in your heads, but” he paused. “You’ve been asked to open for My Chemical Romance on their US reunion tour.”

(YN) thought she was about to either faint, puke, or die on the spot. “Clark don’t fuck with us.”

“I’m not fucking with you.”

“Oh my god, this is, oh my god,” Jake the drummer muttered, a far away look in his eyes as Rebecca the bass player just stood there with a shocked look on her face.

(YN) sunk down on the couch, legs unable to support her anymore. “I had just hoped to get tickets to one of those shows,” she said with an astonished laugh, holding her head in her hands.

“Well if you accept, you’re gonna be going to every show, getting paid to be there, and getting more exposure than you ever could dream of,” Clark replied.

“I think I speak for everyone when I say hell yes!” Liam exclaimed, the rest of the band agreeing instantly.

“Then it’s settled, I’ll get in touch with their management tomorrow morning and you better get ready because you’re about to go on a wild ride.”

To (YN) it felt like an instant and an eternity at the same time before Garden of Woe departed for the first stop of the MCR reunion tour. A lot of buzz had been building around their band since it was announced that they, along with Taking Back Sunday for the first half of the tour and Crystal Lake Cemetery for the second half, would be opening the shows.

“Are you so stoked Becs? Are you? Are you?!” Liam shouted, shaking Rebecca’s shoulders excitedly as their bus rolled down the highway.

“If you keep doing that I’m going to barf on you,” Rebecca snapped back.

Everyone’s nerves had been on edge since Clark had told them the news and arguments had been erupting about things like the setlist, or what their merch would look like, and the tension only seemed to grow the closer they got to the start of the tour. Rebecca wouldn't even return (YN)'s calls for a week over a debate about what they should be wearing on stage.

“Oh my god Liam, I say this with all the love in the world, but please shut the fuck up,” (YN) muttered.

Liam, with his endless energy, bounced across the tour bus to where (YN) was sitting and climbed onto her lap. “You! This is literally what you’ve been talking about since you were 16 years old! This is why we formed Garden of Woe, why we’ve been struggling and starving for a decade!”

“I know, but you’re never gonna see the stage if you keep bugging everyone like this,” (YN) retorted to her friend in her lap.

“What are you gonna say when you finally meet them?”

“Will we even meet them?” (YN) asked, trying to sound aloof. She had been trying not to think about actually meeting the band that she had been obsessed with and saved her life when she was a depressed teenager back in 2004. When she and Liam founded Garden of Woe, she modeled her stage presence on Gerard’s after watching hours of live performance videos. When My Chem announced they were getting back together back on Halloween 2019, (YN) cried tears of joy for hours and they did an extra encore of just MCR covers at their show that night.

“We’re gonna be on the road with them for two months, of course we are,” Jake replied.

(YN) groaned. “I can’t deal with this right now,” she grumbled, pushing Liam off her before climbing into her bunk.

A while later Clark was calling her name to come out as they had arrived at the first venue. “Alright, here is the itinerary: you guys have soundcheck at 5:30, doors are at 6:30, you’re on at 7:30. After your set, you should get to the main merch booth to sign things for the fans, but you can watch Taking Back Sunday and My Chem if you’d prefer. Then two hours after My Chem finishes, we load back in and it’s on to the next stop.”

(YN) glanced at her phone, it was just before 2 PM, which meant they had hours before their soundcheck. Hours to build up more nervous energy, to possibly run into My Chem or Taking Back Sunday, another band she’d looked up to for just as long.

The bus rolled to a stop and they grabbed the things they’d need for the show that night and headed inside. There were other big black busses already parked outside and roadies moving things around.

“This is real, this is really real. This is the biggest thing we’ve ever done and we’re really here,” Rebecca said, totally astonished as (YN) linked arms with her.

“I’m really trying not to think about it,” (YN) replied. Even from the back of the stadium they could hear the crowd already waiting out front. When they got to the door, they flashed their badges and were escorted to their dressing room.

“Do we just wait here? Can we go walk around? I wanna go check everything out,” Liam babbled excitedly.

“How much coffee did you drink today, dude?” (YN) asked, trying to keep the nerves out of her voice.

“None. Come on, let’s get out there and meet our tourmates! Who is with me? (YN), Jake, Becs?”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “I’m gonna try to calm down and center myself and not piss off the people who are employing us.”

“I’ll go,” Jake replied.

“Yea me too, get it over with,” (YN) mumbled. She’d met so many people touring and opening for bands she looked up to that it shouldn’t make her nervous, but Gerard, Mikey, Ray and Frank were legendary. The three bandmates started to wander the halls, peeking in doors until they heard people talking.

“Is this happening? Are we about to meet them?” (YN) looked at Liam, her heart hammering.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing her elbow and leading the way. “‘Scuse me, sorry to interrupt, but we wanted to introduce ourselves. We are Garden of Woe.”

“Hey, nice to finally meet you guys, I’m Gerard,” Gerard said, getting up to shake their hands. Jake and Liam introduced themselves like normal humans, but (YN) was screaming internally.

“I’m (YN),” she squeaked, and Gerard gave her an amused smile and she was certain her brain melted. Then all the sudden she was introducing herself to Mikey, Frank, and Ray as well and it was as if she had transcended to another plane of existence. She listened as they easily made conversation with Jake and Liam, but she couldn’t put together a coherent thought to join in.

“Are you ok?” she heard someone asking. Shaking her head to pull herself out of her thoughts, she realized it was Gerard.

“Yea, yea, thanks, just kinda overwhelmed by everything that’s going on,” she admitted.

Gerard nodded. “Yea, being back in the tour life has been kinda weird. Overwhelming, like you said.”

“For sure. And I don’t wanna seem like, I dunno, a crazed fan, but I have to tell you, I’ve been listening to you guys since I was 16 when Three Cheers came out. It got me through so much and your performance style inspired me so much and how I perform and yea. Sorry to ramble, I just had to get that off my chest, I won’t bug you about it again,” (YN) said with another shake of her head as she put her hands over her face. She didn’t know why, but tears were stinging at her eyes. “So sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he replied and he reached out and rubbed her arm. “We saw you guys performing and that’s why we asked you to come out with us. You have a lot of talent.”

“Well thank you, this is literally a dream come true,” (YN) blushed. Receiving a compliment like that from Gerard Way himself was mind blowing.

“My Chem, you’re up for soundcheck,” someone with a headset called from the doorway.

“We’ll see you around,” Gerard waved as they made their way out the door. After the band was gone (YN), Jake, and Liam stood alone in the dressing room silently for a moment.

“Holy fucking hell we just met My Chemical Romance!” Liam shrieked.

“I know!” (YN) shouted in reply, throwing her arms around her friends in a celebratory hug.

"(YN). Earth to (YN)," Liam said, pulling her from her thoughts. "You ready?"

"No, not at all," she replied and Liam could see the fear in her face. It had been a long time since he had seen her that nervous before a performance.

"You got this," he said to (YN). "We all got this, come on!"

Just then the stage lights dimmed and the crowd roared like she'd never heard before. The other three took their places on stage. "Fuck it," she muttered to herself and ran out on stage.

45 minutes later Garden of Woe was taking their bow and hurrying off stage so the roadies could switch out their equipment for Taking Back Sunday’s. The four bandmates were wrapping each other in sweaty hugs and jumping up and down, as the set had gone better than they ever could have hoped. After cleaning themselves up a bit, they went to the merch booth and signed autographs and took photos for a while, but the line cleared out again once Taking Back Sunday went on. After they finished, there wasn't much time before MCR were going to take the stage, so (YN) hurried backstage and found a crate to sit on and watch while the greatest band of their generation took the stage.

The show was absolutely awe inspiring; to watch the way Ray shredded on his guitar, the way Frank and Mikey moved around the stage, but most of all watching Gerard. He was a natural on stage, even after all this time away from it. While she had watched enough interviews on youtube to know that he was soft spoken, the way he turned that off and started to just command the stage and the crowd was incredible. What she couldn’t believe was that no one else was with her watching the show. Did they not realize what an opportunity they were missing she wondered.

"Enjoying the show?" Gerard asked when they came off stage before the encore.

"So much! You're kicking so much ass out there!" She beamed and the guys all laughed in appreciation.

Once the show was over and everyone was cleaned up, the bands all came together to celebrate a little before it was time to reboard the busses. The drinks were flowing for everyone that partook as people talked happily, but (YN) found herself without a place to sit until she decided to crash on Liam's lap.

Ray smiled as he walked over to them. “Hey, how’d the first show go?”

“Amazing!” Liam grinned.

“So amazing, but you guys, holy shit!” (YN) gushed. “I suppose when you’ve played together for so long you don’t just lose that, even after a break.”

"That’s true,” Ray nodded. “How long have you been a band?”

“About ten years,” (YN) replied. “We talked about it in high school, but neither of us could play an instrument, and life was so hard back then. We couldn’t get our shit together until after he graduated from college. It's only really been in the last few years we've been able to find some success with it.”

“So are you two together?" Ray asked, looking between the pair.

"Oh nooo," (YN) laughed. "Liam's practically my brother."

"And I'm gay," Liam interjected.

"And there's that," (YN) nodded.

“Well you guys have a real dynamic that works,” Ray shrugged. The way he treated them as if they were equals to everyone else on the tour was exactly the confidence boost (YN) needed as the tour got started.

The next few days of the tour were very much the same. Rolling into town, hurry up and wait, getting to know the guys in the other bands, and then finally getting on stage. After signing for fans, (YN) would rush backstage to watch MCR perform, and after that everyone would gather again until it was time to load back into the busses to the next town.

Each day was a little less nerve-wracking than the last and (YN) finally felt like she was coming out of her shell. She’d hoped that Rebecca would be her right-hand woman, since there were so few other women out on the tour, but Rebecca had been heading straight to the busses after the shows, instead of hanging out with everyone else.

“Do you have any idea what’s up with Becs?” (YN) asked the other two members of the band after their soundcheck.

“Nope,” Jake replied quickly before heading back behind his kit again.

“Just go talk to her,” Liam suggested.

(YN) grumbled before nodding and heading back to the dressing room. “Hey Becs!” (YN) said as chipperly as she could muster. “Are you gonna hang with us after the show tonight? I miss hanging out with you, and the guys are all super fun to talk to.”

“I dunno, maybe,” she replied, but (YN) couldn’t get a read on her mood.

“What are you gonna wear tonight? I was thinking my Mikey Fuckin Way shirt that I cropped,” (YN) said turning to their wardrobe rack.

“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” Rebecca said before quickly turning and almost running out of the room. Moments later Liam came in.

“What the hell was that about?”

“I have no idea dude, I tried though, I really did.”

Despite the weirdness between Rebecca and the rest of the band, the show went well. (YN) again ducked out early from their signing to catch the MCR show from her favorite spot at the side of the stage. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was imagining things, but it seemed like whenever Gerard looked her way, he’d always smile just at her.

“Still enjoying the show?” Gerard asked when he came off stage before their encore.

“I’ve got years of not seeing you guys live to catch up on, I’m never gonna get sick of it,” she laughed.

Gerard nodded. “I caught your show tonight, you guys are really killin it.”

(YN) could have sworn her soul left her body for a moment. “R-really?”

“Yea, I really-”

“Gee, we’re back on,” Ray said tapping him on the shoulder.

(YN) waved him off as he went back on stage and the crowd roared again. She tried to keep from screaming herself, but for an entirely different reason.

At the end of the show, everyone convened as usual for the post-show celebration. (YN) was glad to find that Rebecca had joined the group, even if she was mostly just talking to Jake. She had meant to talk to her, but got pulled into a conversation with Adam instead.

“Ok, but can you teach me to swing the mic like you do and not kill someone?” (YN) asked with a laugh.

“Sure thing, how ‘bout after your sound check tomorrow?” Adam offered.

“Perfect, can’t wait!” (YN) grinned, but in the corner Rebecca was rolling her eyes.

From the other side of the room Mikey was trying to talk to Gerard, but he was noticeably distracted. Following his brother’s line of sight, realized Gerard was watching (YN)’s animated conversation with Adam. He bumped his shoulder into Gerard’s.

“You really are into (YN) aren’t you?” Mikey asked with a knowing smile and Gerard just shrugged dejectedly. “Why don’t you just ask her out or something?”

“I can’t,” Gerard replied.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why? Why? What good reason do you have?” Mikey argued.

“Because I’m older than her, because I don’t want her to feel obligated to spend time with me just because we’re on this tour together. Because I’m not… I’m not the Gerard Way I used to be.”

"What the fuck does that mean?" Mikey asked sternly.

"I know I'm not a sexy rock star anymore, I'm a divorced dad with grey in his hair and," he sighed. "You know what I mean."

"Gee, you know you're in a better place now in so many ways than you were before. Stop talking yourself out of it.”

Gerard just grumbled in response. He knew his brother was right, he was better off now than he was ten years ago, worlds better than he was even longer ago than that. But he couldn’t help but worry that (YN) wouldn’t be interested in him. At least not the current version of him.

But that didn’t change how he felt about her

The next stop on the tour was Riot Fest, but Garden of Woe would not actually be opening for My Chem and Taking Back Sunday. They had been relegated to one of the smaller side stages earlier in the day. (YN) and Liam were hanging out on the curb outside their bus in the warm, mid September Chicago air when Frank and Gerard came by.

“Hey, when are you guys on today?” Frank asked.

“At 4:30, why?” Liam answered

Frank climbed in between the two and pulled out his phone. “Gerard is always talking about how awesome your show is, so I was gonna promote you guys.”

(YN) looked up at Gerard who smiled shyly. “Well Gerard, why don’t you get in on this too then,” she smiled.

“Sure,” he nodded and sat down next to her as Liam took Frank’s phone and held it out so he could get everyone in the shot.

“Hey guys, we’re at Riot Fest, and before we play tonight, you gotta go check out our friends Garden of Woe," Frank said to the camera.

“4:30 on the Riot Stage,” (YN) added, flashing a peace sign before Liam finished recording. “Thanks guys, we really appreciate it. I don’t know how many people would be stopping by our set without the promo.”

“Well they should be, like I said before, you’re amazing,” Gerard replied as (YN) looked over at him with a soft smile. Over (YN)’s shoulder, Liam and Frank were exchanging knowing looks.

Hours later the band was waiting off stage, a few minutes before they were due to go on for their set.

“Holy shit, I didn’t expect the crowd this big,” Jake said after peaking out.

“I guess Frank’s post worked,” Liam shrugged.

“What post?” Rebecca asked.

“This one,” (YN) replied, pulling out her phone and pulling up the post she’d bookmarked. She let the video play, smiling happily at the four of them on the screen.

“Look at you all cozy with My Chem, what a surprise,” Rebecca deadpanned.

(YN) shot her a confused look and was about to open her mouth when Liam interjected.

“Ha, look at these comments,” Liam said, snatching the phone away. “People are totally shipping you and Gerard, (YN).”

“Shut up, no they aren’t,” she replied, but could feel her cheeks burning red.

“Yea they are, look!” He said pointing them out. (YN) scrolled through and couldn’t help but feel honored that people would think that she and Gerard made a cute couple. She could only imagine what it’d really be like.

“Don’t we have a show to play?” Rebecca asked snidely, snapping her from her thoughts.

“Becs is right, come on let’s get ready.” (YN) nodded, putting her phone away.

The energy of the crowd was great, and the fans that were up front were actually singing along, which brought a smile to (YN)’s face. An even bigger smile crossed her face when she glanced at the side of the stage and saw Gerard and Frank were there watching the show too.

Part 2

#gerard way x reader #gerard way fan fic #gerard way fan fiction #gerard way imagine #my chemical romance fan fic #my chemical romance fan fiction

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rahenning · 4 years

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Examining Youth Culture

Hello Media & Society class! On this post we are going to be examining youth culture in in film. Over the past month we watched great film references on this topic such as “The Breakfast Club” by John Hughes, “KIDS” by Larry Clark and “Mid90’s” by Jonah Hill. Another masterpiece in reference to youth culture is the 2019 HBO original series “Euphoria”. Starring Zendaya as “Rue”, the teen series amazes the audience from beginning to end with crucial topics of the generation Z. The show dives deep into discussions that mostly all teenagers can relate with on their high school and young adult years. One of the topics of the show is incredibly exposed by the strong character Kat Hernandez.

Kat is the character that I could relate a lot due to her struggles with body image and fat shaming. Such as her I was, and still am, a fat young person. Through out the episodes we learn more about her history dealing with her body and how it influenced on her self-image. From a very young age Kat learns how society sees and expects different from her because of her weigh. At first, we see Kat as a self-conscious, shy and modest looking girl. But on the following episodes Kat begin to change her personality due to understanding the power that she has in her hand (online) and body. On episode 5 she stated, “There is nothing more powerful than a fat girl who does not give a fuck”. Kat began to show off a stronger, empowered, confident girl changing the stigma of a quiet and modest fat girl in high school. Her outfit changed along with her attitude. She created a careless attitude for herself. However, the truth is that she cares. Deep inside and under all that make up and strong image that she created just like in her novels, Kat begins to realize that she does not need to be mean to her friends to be more confident and well-resolved with her sexuality, image and reputation. Excluding Kat’s choice of being an online sex worker, I can relate to her issues on building her own personality and acceptance. As a fat woman I struggled with the same problems and took me years to find the beauty and confidence in myself. Many people felt disappointed with the character once she began to have a mean attitude and how she mistreated her friends. But I can see how this is relatable to her own journey on finding herself as a plus size woman and taking up the space that society sometimes rather either mute or shame it. The character is brought to life by the awesome female actor and plus size model Barbie Ferreira. When talking about body positivism and all issues on accepting yourself, it is all about representation. Barbie Ferreira in this show and in her model, career helps individuals who are often unseen by society to have a voice and work in their own journey of acceptance. Personally, this character really touched me, but on more extensive researches about the female actor I also found out she is half Brazilian! It was a big “A HA!”. It made sense why I was relating so much to her, even on the looks. The thick eyebrows tell it all!

In addition, according to PubMed “any type of fat shaming causes overweight people to become stressed, eat more calories, and gain more weight.”. To learn more about the “harmful effects of fat shaming” click on the link below to read the article.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fat-shaming-makes-things-worse

To conclude this matter, I will share with you a great 2016 interview of Barbie Ferreira for “Glamour” about body shaming and her path as a plus size model.

youtube

Adding up with the tittles mentioned before, we have “Mean Girls” and “Saved by the Bell” to enrich our references on youth culture. These films bring an important discussion on the issues and life of a teenage in their high school years. Drug abuse, sexuality and “bro culture” along with a seek of belonging to a social group are common topics presented in these stories. As any other adolescent we all need to fit in a social group. Either the popular in school, the nerds or the skateboarders of the neighborhood. The movies are spot on in representing the initiation in these groups and the aspirations of an adolescent to become someone like them. Sex will always be the crucial part of its times. Either the initiation, the doubts, speculations, fantasies and finally the experience. From the first kiss to sex. Also extending to gender identification. The films show the adolescents sharing their experiences and curiosity with their friends on this topic. Does not matter what generation it is, drugs will appear in front of them at some point. As shown in the films and I believe everyone have experienced or seeing their friends trying a cigarette, weed, beer or whatever for the first time and how you are almost obligated to try to otherwise you will be picked on.

The times may have changed, but all kids will encounter these topics in their path. Most of these movies are portrayed in a time before internet and all the information about these topics would come from their friends, from the streets and their social interactions. What your friend did and said how it happens would be your guide when your time comes.

The films/series selected open this discussion about youth culture and all portrays the youth of its time. All of them, even being filmed in different generation, shows young adults dealing with issues such as sexuality, acceptance, drugs and personal relations. The young men in these films mostly have masculinity issues, struggle with anger management and social interactions in society. “Bro culture” is a topic in all the movies and is very well dramatized on the character Nate Jacobs from “Euphoria”. Nate is a popular student, a football player, with good looks and status. Nate deals with anger and a fragile masculinity which results in toxic interactions within his relations. These traits are used to cover up his emotions as a result to his confusing upbringing and sexual insecurities. Jacobs discovers in a very young age videos of this father having sex or interest in young men and transwomen. For this reason, he becomes someone aggressive and has a bent perception of sex. He ends up having a controversial attitude towards the female figure. Bender from “The Breakfast Club” has a lot of similarities with Nate. Also, in result of a dysfunctional family upbringing. Such as Nate, Bender has anger management issues, a controversial personality and the need of constantly reaffirm himself in front of the others. All the main male characters in these films are a result of how society build them. How we raise our boys to be this alpha type of men. The one who will solve their problems by fighting, being aggressive and being toxic in his personal relations. The dramatization of these men can be stereotyped but reflects our society. And shows the even with the change of generations certain aspects and traits never goes away. Masculinity will always be negatively dramatized if society keeps allowing this type of conduct. The “Bro Culture” can be summarized as guys in groups interacting with each other suppressing their fragile masculinity by being tough, insensible and degrading women to better their self-image. It is the fraternity culture in and out of college. These young age men have their “frat” attitude extended to their workspace. An example of bro culture in a workspace was revealed by the author of the book “Brotopia” Emily Chang.

Here you can read and find reviews about the book. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36288143-brotopia

The author uncovers the reality inside big tech companies in Silicon Valley and how unfair and sexist is its environment. After over 300 interviews of employees in those companies, the author breaks the boys club and tells us about how women are asked to be in a bikini in a jacuzzi for a meeting. Or how a Trans woman who for years worked as an engineer for Uber, once she started to present herself as a woman people started to interrupt her in meetings. This exemplifies what most woman goes through in a workspace and in society. Bro culture is simply a sexism social norm. I do not even believe that there is a need to create another expression as “bro culture”. The word is sexism.If you are a “bro” and is wondering if you are part of this “culture”; or if you just want to check if you are in a “bro culture free workspace” I suggest you to read this:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/300514

The soundtrack of these films could not be put on a side for this discussion. Have you ever watched a film in mute sound? Well, if you did you noticed that the narrative fully depends on the sound to keep their meaning. What would be a horror movie without a spooky soundtrack? The soundtrack of a movie creates the mood, gives emotion, emphasizes a crucial moment and acts as a big factor on continuity. If you ever watched “Euphoria” I am pretty sure you noticed its amazing soundtrack. Their music choices are already impeccable, but I took the challenge and recreated their soundtrack. I choose to add representativity and a bit of my culture to it. By representativity I mean giving voices to transgender, women, fat and black artists. However, the soundtrack is diverse. For the character Kat I used music’s such as “Boys” and “scuse me” by Lizzo, “Tombei” by Karol Comka, “Sugar Daddy” by Qveen Herby, “Bola Rebola” by Anitta and “Bury a friend” by Billie Eilish. These songs would match her scenes and add to the narrative. Rue has moments that goes from emotional dramatic scenes to hyped times in parties over substances. For her I would like to use songs such as “Put a spell on you” by Iza, “Howling for you” by The Black Keys, “The dope show” and “I don’t like the drugs” by Marilyn Mason. Jules can be very well represented by songs such as “The ocean” by the transwoman lead singer from Against Me and “That’s not my name” from The Ting Tings. For continuity and momentum frames I would use “Crybaby” by Lizzo, “You will never find me” by Korn, “Parasite Eve” by Bring me the horizon and “The art of losing” by American Hi-Fi. The beginning of “Baba O’Riley”- The Who, could be a good alternative intro for the show. My new soundtrack for this show became extensive and you are welcome to check it out on my Spotify playlist named “Euphoria Soundtrack”. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ztvGt1Geg1p2zvrXycroH?si=0m7z8pnyTWWKugwoFBPL4Q

I doubt you don’t know about these series/film, but to continue this youth culture discussion I suggest you watch the UK version of “Skins, “13 reasons why” and “Elephant”. I found “13 reasons why” very similar to “Euphoria” from the topics debated and even the way the directors chose to portray the characters. Both series also have an explanation of the characters and topics followed by the episodes. I would recommend caution on watching this series if you suffer from depression and anxiety.

This way I close this chapter of “Youth Culture” and I can’t wait for our next topic.

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spynotebook · 7 years

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From Ramon Gil:

For decades, writer Elliot S. Maggin and I have had a rather one-sided relationship. Not only was he responsible for most of my childhood reading consumption, Superman comics in the ’70s, but he was also the author of the first two novels I ever read as a kid. Years later, as I was starting out as a comic book illustrator, it turned out that the husband of one of my best friends was acquainted with his cousin-in-law…or something like that. But before introductions could be made, the industry tanked in 1994 and I went into advertising. Twenty-plus years later, I decided to give comics another shot and managed to “Friend” Elliot on Facebook — and now here we are.

Elliot was the definitive Superman writer for over 15 years, pens novels and even ran for political office. My questions for him are endless but I managed to cut it down to a few. Here are his answers:

Ramon Gil: Can you tell us about how you broke into comics? You were 17. What was it like back in the ’70s?

Elliot S. Maggin: I was 19, actually, a junior in college. I had dropped scripts or ideas for scripts on comics editors here and there, but nothing seemed to stick. I had written op-ed pieces that The New York Times wasn’t interested in, but I had written some stuff for a few other newspapers and I had one piece of published fiction — so I knew it was possible. That was what I did when I was 17, got my first prose story published.

I was expecting to follow up college with law school. I had this famous professor send a hot recommendation for me to NYU Law and they’re still waiting for the application. If I decided to go into law now, I don’t suppose that recommendation would hold any water anymore. So in my junior year I was taking an American history class with this guy who actually won a Pulitzer a couple of years later, and this guy was kind of a pompous pedagogic sort. I asked the graduate assistant doing the grading if I could include a comic book script in a term paper on the history of media. He said sure, so I wrote a paper illustrating that comics were a viable political tool, and part of the paper was the script for an original Green Arrow story called “What Can One Man Do?”

I got a B-plus on the damn thing, and I asked the grad assistant why. He said he understood that I was going to illustrate the story too. So I got cranky and sent the thing to Carmine Infantino, who was publisher at DC Comics – National Periodical Publications in those days, actually (it wasn’t just pedagogues who were a little full of themselves in the ’70s, I guess) — and next thing I knew, I had an effusive letter from Julie Schwartz telling me he’d like me to try writing some of his other characters. At Julie’s request, I shortened my Green Arrow script from 20 to 13 pages and he bought it. That’s how it started. I’m told it hasn’t happened that way before or since.

RG: I’ve heard it said that once someone finds a “new way” to break into comics, they quickly shut that way down. So when Julie bought your script, was there any excitement about “breaking in” or did you just take it in stride?

ESM: It was a big deal. I was still an undergraduate living in a dorm, for heaven’s sakes. The sociology and American studies departments were all over it. I was second-ranking guy on the Brandeis campus newspaper editorial board, so I had a reputation as a good writer – although my editor-in-chief at the time, Richie Galant later of Newsday, has a Pulitzer hanging on the wall in his den these days. I think I’ve just got too damn many friends with Pulitzer Prizes for anything short of that to be much of a big deal.

RG: At what point were you freelancing and at what point were you on staff? Can you describe the progression?

ESM: As a writer I was never on staff. It was always month to month, meeting to meeting, for something like 20 years on-and-off. It was a bitch trying to buy a house. I never had, nor was I offered, what they called a “freelance contract,” which seemed like a contradiction in terms anyway. When I was an editor briefly from late 1988 to mid-1990 that was a staff position, but by then I was used to being my own boss. It was kind of a zoo. Nice health care coverage, though.

RG: Was this something you always wanted to do? How did you get into reading comic books?

ESM: I suspect I learned to read through street signs and comic books. I had a barber and a dentist in Brooklyn when I was a kid both of whom had loads and loads of comic books for people waiting to get a haircut or get their teeth drilled. I would pick up a comic book, and distract myself with it through my haircut or my dentist visit and generally they’d tell me to take them home with me. I guess I was about five or six when I realized that if you actually read the panel captions — instead of ignoring them like the introduction to The Scarlet Letter — you found out interesting and somewhat vital information. I didn’t realize Superman and Clark were the same guy, for example, until I found that information in the captions.

I didn’t really see myself writing comics, though, until the writing got lots better. With Denny O’Neil’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories 12 or 15 years later, for example, I started noticing that comics scripts could be the source of some really good storytelling. I didn’t so much notice, with those stories, that comics were a thing I might be able to do, but rather something I’d like to be able to do.

RG: At the time, did you feel you had taken the medium as far as it could go or did you feel that there was even more potential in terms of storytelling?

ESM: I certainly never felt I had taken the medium as far as it would go. I hadn’t even taken it as far as I could have pushed it with some lighter oversight. I wanted to get out there and work in other media, certainly, but storytelling in comics is still nowhere near where it could be. I’ve done academic papers on it.

RG: Oh man, I would love to read those papers! You obviously had an affinity for Superman, having penned him for as long as you did. How did you get that plum assignment?

ESM: I swear, it seemed no one but Cary Bates and I really wanted to write Superman stories. The character seemed passé, I think, even to people writing comics for a living. Denny (O’Neil) wrote Superman for more than a year before I showed up, and Len Wein did a bit too. But Denny just never much liked the character. He did some of the best work with the character I had ever seen, but he seemed to think it was just too unrealistic. He wanted grit. He wanted real life. So he decided he’d rather do stories about a bored, pissed-off billionaire who put on a costume and went around beating up bad guys every night. Realistic, he insisted. Go figure. It always seemed to me that a transplanted alien baby with super-powers was much more likely than that.

RG: Speaking of Cary Bates, how on Earth-Prime did he wrangle you into being part of the story in JLA #123-124? As a 9-year old boy, that really confused me as to whether or not superheroes were real! Did you guys fight over who got to be a villain and did Schwartz really call you “Magoon?”

ESM: Okay, Cary and I set a record for writing a full 24-page script on JLA #124. We started from scratch between 10 and 10:30 in the morning and we handed in the finished script as Julie was getting back from lunch at 1:00. And that included an hour-long subway ride. It confused a few of the grownups at the office as to whether or not superheroes were real too. I suspect there are guys still looking for the cosmic treadmill in hidden closets up there. We didn’t take that one seriously at all. It was like the Laffer Curve in economics. It was a joke that everyone else was taking seriously — except after a while even Arthur Laffer started to claim the crazy-ass theory he scribbled on a napkin as a grad student is for real, despite the fact that it’s been proved demonstrably wrong over and over.

Ryan and McConnell and the gang are still trotting it out for every budget debate. Cary and I figured the idea was to go so far over the top writing ourselves into a story that no one would ever do it again. And then — ka-POW! — along comes Grant Morrison making himself pivotal as a god figure in Animal Man and dozens of other people climb aboard over the years. I guess what our story really did was make it safe for writers like Grant to appear intelligent in fiction. Cary won a coin toss so he got to wear a costume and be the villain. And yes, Julie called me “Magoon” every chance he got. He found it amusing, although he was the only one.

RG: Were there any other books or characters you enjoyed working on?

ESM: All of them. I loved Green Arrow, because even with his overarching sense of self-importance I could make the guy funny. I even liked Batman a lot because it seemed to me the plots had to be pretty intricate and once you did the advance work figuring out where everything had to fit they pretty much wrote themselves. I liked writing stories about the girl characters: Supergirl, Bat-Girl, Wonder Woman. Always had a mad crush on Wonder Woman. Still do.

RG: Who doesn’t? I thought Lynda Carter was hot, but Gal Gadot is badass AND smoking! Any thoughts on the new Superman movies?

ESM: Nope. None. ‘Scuse me I’ve got to go write some more notes in my copy of Atlas Shrugged…

RG: Okay…any books or characters that you didn’t get to write that you wish you had? If so, why those?

ESM: Among DC characters, I always wanted to do Green Lantern — and Denny, who was writing GL, was always partial to Green Arrow — but Julie insisted the assignments were more properly placed where he put them. I wrote some for Marvel too over the years, but I always wanted to write Kull the Conqueror and Doctor Strange (LOVE Doctor Strange) but I never got the chance. If there’s anyone paying attention out there who’d like to commission a wild, weird-as-shit Doctor Strange novel, please call. You know where to find me.

RG: Ah yes, Dr. Strange. When I got your two books as a Christmas gift, the third book was a Doctor Strange paperback. Have you seen the movie?

ESM: I thought it was the best movie Marvel has ever released. Just so cool. I’ve been to Kathmandu, too. I think all those scenes were from a part of town called the Durbur District. I bought turmeric from a girl on the street there whose family have been selling spices in that street market for over a thousand years. Maybe sold turmeric to Marco Polo. I think even people who think Logan was the best Marvel movie think Doctor Strange was at least the second best one.

RG: My only problem was that it seemed to have more “martial arts” than “mystic arts”

ESM: Quibble quibble. Doesn’t it qualify as mystic arts if you drop-kick someone into the spirit dimension, no matter how perfect your kicking form is?

RG: In 1978 you came out with Superman: Last Son of Krypton, First in Warner’s New Series of Superman Novels and later on Superman: Miracle Monday. Were the novels your idea that you pushed for or where you tapped?

ESM: It was my idea. I told pretty much everyone I knew that what I wanted to do was write books. When I wrote a film treatment for a Superman movie and first Alfred Bester and then Mario Puzo showed up at the office to talk about writing Superman I decided my treatment and I were in over our head. But I went upstairs to Warner Books and managed to sell my treatment as an outline for a novel. The original plan was for it to come out midway between the releases of the first and second Superman movies to keep excitement up. I understood they were going to publish a novelization of the movie – which my book was decidedly not – but Mario Puzo had snagged the rights to produce a book (my brother tells me that Mario’s son Gene was supposed to write it; turned out they were high school pals) but soon it became clear that the producers’ plan all along was to use Mario’s name to sell the movie and get someone else to write the real script. Mario’s original script – except for the ending – was damn good, by the way, and Mario was pissed. I’ve read that the powers that be just didn’t want to pay the price of a book Mario oversaw, but I don’t think that was the issue. I think he blocked a novelization of the script from happening – so my book, Last Son of Krypton, was released as though it was the same story as the movie. Lots of people were disappointed when they found out it wasn’t, but people read it, and a lot of them liked it. The thing sold off the hook.

RG: “Last Son of Krypton” and “Miracle Monday” were the first novels I ever read as a kid. The depth of detail, the richness of the characters and the integration of historical figures really opened my eyes as to what fiction writing could be. Were these things that you’d been wanting to do for a long time or were these “exercises” that were forced upon you by the medium.

ESM: So I was how you learned what you can do with novels? Hah!

RG: Oh yeah, I think that was the year I wrote a story in class and the principal had to have a talk with my folks about how good it was!

ESM: You must’ve had the same principal I did, the ignoramus.

RG: I grew up in a country where English wasn’t the primary language. Metaphors were a big deal!

ESM: One of the cool things about writing novels is that there isn’t much forced on you by the medium. Structurally, they’re pretty freewheeling, and when literary talent scouts like literary journals and small magazines and look for unknown talent, what they’re often looking for are people who are willing to try new things with the language and the prose. You can write a novel that’s a string of correspondence and responses. You can put a novel into first-, third- or even second-person narrative, or set the tense however you think best tells the story. Generally novels are not at all visual, and you can use that characteristic to withhold information from readers – or characters – until a crucial moment; mystery and thriller writers do that a lot.

I didn’t do much that was innovative in terms of structure or storytelling with those two books, but because I had been working primarily in comics for years when I wrote them – in a medium that depends on artists to convey visual information – I was very spare in my visual descriptions. Instead of describing the way a person looks, I tended to let the character’s actions or manner fill in that information. The process of storytelling in novels, very often, is about choices, about what to hold back. Because of my experience in comics, I think in my novels I have been able to concentrate on metaphor and example when otherwise I might have gone a little overboard trying to make up for the medium’s limitations where that wasn’t really necessary.

RG: Any influences as far as other authors or writing styles?

ESM: Contemporary or modern writers I like are Vonnegut, William Goldman, Orwell, Ellison, Isaac Singer, Asimov and others. Love Bradbury too, but I can’t see that his work was influential in my work, as opposed to stuff I just wanted to read. As far as the people who pretty much invented the medium, I’ve always thought Mark Twain was head-and-shoulders above anyone else. Hemingway is up there and so is Steinbeck. The thing about Steinbeck is you can hear the gravel in his voice through his narrative. I’ve got no idea how he does that. Stephen King (the world’s most under-rated novelist) has this habit of evoking a reader’s proximity by picking metaphors that slide into the narrative subject matter – if he’s talking about food something will be as white as cream cheese; if he’s talking about mortal danger the same thing will be as white as a corpse’s eyelids. Steinbeck didn’t do that; someday maybe I’ll study Winter of Our Discontent and Grapes of Wrath enough to figure out how he does it.

RG: What kind of reaction did you get from comic readers and the industry in general when these were released?

ESM: Seriously, I don’t think I met anyone who read Last Son of Krypton until eight or ten years after I wrote it. I always had this fantasy of seeing all these secretaries in the subway who crowded on the train in Jackson Heights sitting in a row across from me all buried in copies of my book. Never happened. I know for a fact that no one (NO ONE!) at DC read the first book before it came out because the business about the stolen Xerox copiers – the reason the Xerox book club ordered 50-thousand copies – would never have made it into the final manuscript. They were so paranoid up there that you couldn’t mention any commercial product or property, even if it was arguably to that product’s benefit. Sometime in the late Eighties I got a call from Mark Waid who wanted to talk about the books. Mark was writing for fan publications back then and he treated me to a really good lunch at a Chinese restaurant for which I’ll be eternally grateful.

RG: I owe you lunch at a Chinese restaurant then.

ESM: I did get some terrific fan mail through Warner Books on both novels, and Last Son sold something like 450-thousand copies to someone or other, so I guess the response of the world in general was lots more significant than that of the industry.

RG: Was there any desire or attempts to do novelizations of other DC characters?

ESM: I don’t know. I wasn’t in that loop, and no one asked me to do any more books like that until I did the Kingdom Come novel fifteen years later. Paul Levitz slipped me a script for Superman III, wondering if I’d like to do an actual novelization. When I read it I didn’t even want to go see the movie (and I haven’t). By the time I got involved with Kingdom Come, people were adapting comics series into novels pretty routinely, and DC, Marvel and Dark Horse had developed a set of contractual standards for novel adaptations that were far more restrictive than those I had negotiated earlier. Around the time I wrote my Superman books Len Wein and Marv Wolfman wrote a Spider-Man novel together that was pretty good, but there was not much else as far as I can recall.

RG: Up until the 70s and early 80s, comic books were being written mostly for kids and teens. And for decades, most of these readers would just outgrow comics. But then in the 90s the stories became more serious, more complex, sometimes darker. You could say they “matured.” Can you share your thoughts on this trend in the comic industry and how you took part, if at all?

ESM: Julie Schwartz used to tell me that his old buddy who preceded him as Superman editor, Mort Weisinger, always said that he was doing fairy tales for children. “Once upon a time in the offices of the Daily Planet …” If in Julie’s judgment the kid audience couldn’t really grok a story I’d have to come up with something else altogether. But then again, my first Superman story, “Must There Be a Superman?” was about space opera and bad guys and distinctive visuals, but what it was really about was the sociological implications of having an omnipotent being around to bail us out of disasters. I think kids can understand all that stuff. The trick is making it simple enough for editors to understand too.

RG: Are you reading comics now? Any favourites?

ESM: I’m not really. I read The March trilogy by Lewis, Aydin and Powell not long ago. Thought that was terrific stuff.

RG: You eventually left monthly comics. Would you mind telling us about that and what it was like to move to a new career/industry?

ESM: Comics was never really what I wanted to do forever. But writing was. At one time, law and politics were my real long-term interests, but it occurred to me I wasn’t really much good at either. Right now, I spend most of my time working with a big string of hospitals teaching doctors and nurses how to use their software. A doctor said the other day that my job is basically my hobby. I said yeah, pretty much, but what the job is really about is a scheme to get my kids through college. Now they’re both grown and suitably degreed and my daughter told me a few years ago I was allowed to go out and play now – which I’ve been doing more and more the past few years. I think what I’d like to do for a career when I leave my current job is collect third-world countries and off-the-beaten-path experiences.

RG: The road less traveled! So getting back to Kingdom Come. How did your involvement come about?

ESM: So Mark calls me up and says he wants me to do a novel based on Kingdom Come and have I seen the comics series. I hadn’t, but how would I feel about doing the book. I said I really didn’t want to do it. I had just written a book based on a comics series and it wasn’t so much fun. Mark said he’d send me what he had so far: two published issues of Kingdom Come, lettered pencils of a third one and the script of the fourth. I said I always liked his sensibilities about this stuff, but unless DC was going to offer me the same deal they’d given me years earlier for Miracle Monday I didn’t see how I could do it. So he sent me the stuff, I read it, and when I got to the end of the script of the last book I saw he dedicated the damn thing to me. So I called him back and said he’d put me in a lousy bargaining position by doing that. Now I had to write it.

They have a really horrendous licensing agreement with novels now; nothing like what I had negotiated years earlier for Miracle Monday, and they are pretty rigid about it. So I told them I’d go along with their appalling royalty arrangement if at long last they’d reprint Last Son and Miracle Monday. They said sure, yeah, whatever, but that was a separate negotiation and we’d have to do it after we nailed down Kingdom Come. So I wrote Kingdom Come and after that no one was interested in talking any more about what else I wanted to publish.

Negotiate first and do the work later. Live and learn.

RG: What about Generation X? I think that was your first Marvel novel, can you tell us a little about that?

ESM: It was my only Marvel novel. I did it because Scott Lobdell is a friend and I wanted to get my feet wet doing novels again. It got cut up to fit the word count they wanted so I didn’t think it made as much narrative sense as I liked, but I did a comic book adaptation of it later (Does that qualify as a graphic novel?) that was a bunch of fun. I decided probably it was time I stopped looking to do licensed material and do my own. So besides exercising my reprint agreement on Miracle Monday, that’s what I’m doing now.

RG: From the 90s to the early 2000s, you also worked on a few films. I’d love to hear more about some of them. Were these your own projects or where you brought in primarily to write?

ESM: Nothing ever got out the door, but that’s generally the way it works. I did a script called Junior Sheriff based on an idea from a producer who never got the script into production. I did a couple of scripts for films based on Norse mythology – one on spec and the other on assignment. I spent years doing film and television scripts on spec or for early stages of projects that didn’t go the distance. I found I wasn’t writing for an audience so much as I was selling options. You can make a pretty good living that way, but you might as well be working on Wall Street. I always said I’d rather be read than paid, and I would. So now every minute I can, I sit in a room and make shit up. That’s what I love to do. I got an ebook out on Amazon last year called Not My Closet – all original stuff and very rarely does any character fly under his own power or wear Spandex. I’m currently working on getting a print version out.

RG: Ha ha! I love that! “said I’d rather be read than paid.” I’d use it as a pull-quote but future publishers might use it against you when negotiating.

ESM: Hey be my guest. Please. Listen: anytime anyone negotiates his way out of a work-for-hire contract an angel gets his wings.

RG: Did you ever direct or have any desire to?

ESM: Nope. Never got that bug.

RG: Let’s talk more about “Not My Closet.” was this a book you’d been wanting to tell for a long time? What was your personal stake in this story?

ESM: It’s a story for which I put aside some other projects and to which I’ve since gone back. It was one of the more difficult things I’ve ever written, and my first book about apparently real people. Some of it is based on real stuff from my life, most of it is made-up. The version out there is my fifth draft. I mean like a full-blown novel written five times. I never took more than four months to write anything before – a book, a story, a script, anything – and this took more like five or six years. Really. Putting it out there taught me one important thing: it seems I don’t know a damn thing about marketing. I’m working on that. Thanks for asking.

RG: That’s ok. I’ve spent the last 20 years in advertising and I’m still having a hell of a time marketing my own work.

ESM: Let me know if you come up with any good tricks. Like maybe making people believe a book is a movie tie-in when it isn’t. Stuff like that.

RG: Brilliant move on your part. Not sure if you could do it twice, though! So now we have this reissue and audio book of Miracle Monday. Why that instead of Last Son of Krypton which came out first?

ESM: Contractual reasons. I put a clause in the original Miracle Monday contract that provides for reissuing the book if it’s been out of print for five years. It’s been about 35. The journalist A.J. Liebling used to say “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” It occurred to me that now that we live in the twenty-first century we all pretty much own one. So I put together a publishing corporation, applied some of my programming skills and got the book out the door. As I write this, the audiobook is unfinished – mostly because I’ve been nursing a virus for the past few weeks and my voice hasn’t been up to completing the last two chapters of Miracle Monday. I’m doing the reading myself not because I’m too cheap to hire an actor – which I guess I am too – but because I want there to be no doubt as to where Metropolis is. You’ll be able to hear it in my voice.

We’ll get working on Last Son of Krypton when we see how this shakes down.

RG: I hope so. Last Son is actually my favorite of the two. I mean Einstein!

ESM: I like Einstein. He’s in Not My Closet too.

RG: You’ve always been a very active in politics. You even ran for office at one point. Has there ever been a desire to write political fiction? Inject your own views heavily into your comics or novels?

ESM: I think when I was interviewing for colleges – when I was 16 or 17 – I really wanted to write that stuff and I told interviewers so. They always wanted to know about what I was reading, and my recreational reading at the time was pretty eclectic. So I’d talk about Fletcher Knebel or Irving Wallace and then I’d bring up McLuhan or Orwell or Huxley, who were all fascinating to me. My interviewers seemed much more interested in talking about the latter. I still like stories about political intrigue, and I’m doing a trilogy of those types of novels now, but they also involve time travel so I don’t know what kind of category they’d fit into.

RG: I love writing about the political aspect of stories! What’s NotFakeNews.org?

ESM: NotFakeNews.org is a website I came up with one weekend afternoon when I was sitting in Starbucks writing and a couple of friends showed up and I insisted they hang around and rescue me from being productive. It was when Donald Trump was president-elect, I think, and somebody – maybe I did – said we should publish material that was specifically labeled “Not Fake News.” We thought this was uproariously funny, and before the afternoon was over we set up both a website at NotFakeNews.org and a Facebook page of the same name. Whenever I come across an article somewhere that ought to be made up stuff but isn’t – scientists stashing climate data on a Canadian server so it can’t be trashed by the climate-deniers who run the EPA at the moment; speculations about the eleven-dimensional universe and the nature of reality; a lot of the stuff Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone; like that – I try to upload it and cite its source.. Not many people have noticed it, as far as I can tell, but it’s a lot of fun. I’m especially proud of the way I set it up to display in four columns feeding from a database. I’m a programming geek; wrote the interface mostly in ColdFusion.

RG: I think you just need to add some social media links so people can “share” the site. What were some of the hurdles (political, logistical, legal) you had to deal with in getting Miracle Monday out again?

ESM: It helps to know how to program. It also helps to have a good lawyer. Hi Phil.

RG: It just occurred to me…what did you write the Superman novels on? A word processor? Did you have to have Miracle Monday transcribed for the ebook?

ESM: I wrote those two novels on a manual Olympia typewriter. It used to follow me around wherever I went. I had some transcribing help this time around.

RG: Was there any temptation to tweak or rewrite?

ESM: No rewriting, and I managed to keep any tweaking to a minimum – mostly grammar and usage. The story is kind of suspended in time with Eighties expressions and cultural references, and I like it that way.

RG: So what’s next for Elliot S. Maggin? Any thoughts to going back to doing monthly books? You mentioned you want to do creator-owned.

ESM: Times have changed since the last quarter of the last century and so have I. Owning your own stuff and getting it out in the wind is much more possible than it was a thousand years ago. Again, I’m trying to learn something about marketing. Turns out that’s a real discipline a guy needs to master. Who knew?

RG: Do you have a preference between prose and comics? What would you say the appeal is for each medium?

ESM: I like prose a bit more these days, only because the product is something that comes from just me. No collaborators necessary. But comics are the people’s medium. I think any given comic book we produce today has a better shot at immortality than any given chunk of prose, all things being equal.

RG: If you could do whatever you want, what would be your ultimate dream project?

ESM: At the moment, it’s my political time travel trilogy. To make it my dream project I think I want to get on a train in St Petersburg and take my laptop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, write like a demon, watch the snow settle on the steppes and drink vodka with leggy Russian babes all the way to Beijing.

Ramon Gil is a comic book writer and the creator of The Hard Code, The Men from DARPA and Senturies, now on Kickstarter.

A Conversation With Elliot S. Maggin: “Anytime Anyone Negotiates His Way Out Of A Work-For-Hire Contract, An Angel Gets His Wings”

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vicandsade · 7 years

Text

1941-11-20 - A Miserable Object of Public Ridicule (Rush Humiliated On Thanksgiving)

[See additional commentary at The Crazy World of Vic and Sade]

File too big for tumblr – get the episode at the above link or HERE.

Nicer Scott is at it again. He has discovered a dirty secret about Rush and is spreading it all over town.

I love what this episode says about families, and the way that each family has its own unique quirks that no one ever mentions because they’ve always done something a certain way. It can be either eye-opening or embarrassing to have the outside world come into your private family sphere and look with fresh eyes at the way you do things. It never even occurred to Rush that his little knife and fork were unusual, until someone else called attention to it.

What did you find out was weird about your family later in life? I learned that most families don’t put weird-tasting dead bacteria on their popcorn, that animal skulls are not as widely-used in home decor as I thought, and that cars that don’t work anymore usually go to the junkyard, not just the backyard.

Transcript

———–

ANNOUNCER: Well sir, it's a few minutes past eight o'clock as we enter the small house halfway up in the next block now, and here in the living room we find Mr. and Mrs. Victor Gook spending a quiet evening at home. Vic lounges in the davenport and gazes dreamily at his shoes. Sade is seated in her husband's easy chair beneath the floor lamp, reading aloud from the newspaper. Listen.

SADE: "The bride, leaning heavily upon the arm of her father, was radiant in a goin'-away costume of off-apricot, with stockings and pumps to match, with burnt-caramel accessories and a small cloche hat. She carried a bouquet of mixed garden flowers. Out-of-town guests were Cyrus L. Freech of Kansas City, Missouri, a former employer of the groom; Ed and Will Fulper, Lexington, Illinois; Mr. and Mrs. U.O. Dimp and son Walrab of Red Wing, Minnesota; Harry K. Montgomery of West Pittston, Pennsylvania; Mr. and Mrs. Clark Dunlap of Cleveland, Ohio; Mr. and Mrs. Bill Lacey of Toronto, Ontario; Cadwalder--"

[telephone rings]

VIC: Uh, telephone is ringin'.

SADE: Wanna answer it?

VIC: Prob'ly Ruthie Stembottom.

SADE: No, I'm sure not.

VIC: Then let me hazard a guess it's good old, dependable, down-at-the-heels, solid concrete foundation trustworthy Bluetooth Johnson!

SADE: [laughs] Yes.

VIC: [answers phone] Hello? [pause] Yes. [pause] Why, no, he isn't. Who is this? [pause] Oh. Uh-huh. [to SADE] Sadie...

SADE: Yeah?

VIC: [joyously] Bluetooth Johnson!

SADE: [giggles] Oh, really.

VIC: Good old, sweeter than the flowers of May, it matters not who won or lost but how you played the game, reliable Bluetooth Johnson!

SADE: You'd better talk to him, hadn't ya? Otherwise, he'll hang up.

VIC: [on phone] Uh, Bluetooth? [pause] How are ya, Bluetooth? [pause] Glad to hear it. [pause] No, Rush ducked out someplace right after supper. Any message I can give him? [pause] Oh? [pause] Vernon Peggles is out in the lead? [pause] Okay. [pause] I see. Tomorrow he's gonna buy his second United States Defense Bond, huh? And that puts him way ahead of the rest of you guys. [pause] Uh-huh. Okay, Bluetooth. [pause] You bet. Goodbye. [hangs up] Where is Buttonhook, by the way?

SADE: I haven't any idea. He walked out the kitchen door as soon as he finished wipin' the dishes. He can't have gone very far or planned to stay away very long; otherwise he'd have said something.

VIC: Mmm.

SADE: [continuing to read] Uh, "Cadwallder J. Urquhart of Twillman, Oklahoma--"

VIC: What's this?

SADE: Still readin' what the paper states about the wedding.

VIC: Oh.

SADE: [reading] Uh, "Cadwallder J. Urquhart of Twillman, Oklahoma; Mazda, Esther, James, Donald, Arnold, and Eugene Yeeble of Indianapolis, Ohio; Mr. and Mrs. R.E. Greep of Cincinnati, Indiana; Mrs. William Yonker and infant daughter Rudolfina Margaret Annabelle Beulah of Fishley, Michigan; and J.U. Ebsen of O'Brian, Texas, a college classmate of the groom." Quite a turnout! Hmm?

VIC: Yeah.

SADE: "Immediately after the ceremony, the guests--"

VIC: Oh, here's Stone Bruise. [calls] Hi!

RUSH: [off] Hi.

SADE: "Immediately after the ceremony, the guests were served dainty refreshments at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John H. Wheeper, 917 South Center Street. Fun-lovin' friends of the happy couple painted humorous signs on their motorcycle and decorated the handlebars with old shoes. Since the motorcycle has no sidecar, the newlyweds rode away one seated behind the other."

RUSH: 'Scuse me, people.

VIC: Hey, hey.

RUSH: Kindly forgive the intrusion.

VIC: Think no more about it. You live here in the house and are entitled to come and go as you please.

RUSH: Uh.

VIC: Good old true-blue, heart bigger than all outdoors, reliable old Bluetooth Johnson just phoned.

RUSH: Yeah?

VIC: He said Vernon Peggles is gonna buy his second United States Defense Bond tomorrow.

RUSH: Oh? That puts him out ahead of everybody.

VIC: So Bluetooth allowed.

RUSH: I thought I'd better drop in and tell you somethin', Mom.

SADE: What's that?

RUSH: Nicer Scott is sittin' on his front porch steps.

SADE: Pretty cold to be doin' that, isn't it?

RUSH: I'm goin' over and paste him one upside the snoot.

SADE: [sternly] What's this, now?

RUSH: [dramatically] Once more, Nicer has goaded the human body to the point where civilized flesh and blood can't stand it!

SADE: Has he?

RUSH: He has. And I'm goin' over next door and wang him one upside the bean. Thought I'd better notify you first.

SADE: Maybe you'd better sit down.

RUSH: I can't spare the time! Can't take any chances on lettin' him escape! Any second he might go in the house!

SADE: Sit down.

RUSH: Human flesh and blood refuses--

SADE: Listen, Willie, I'm good and tired of every little while havin' to go over this business with you and--

RUSH: Remember tonight at supper? Nicer comin' in our kitchen and bein' nice as pie and obligin' as a horse?

SADE: I remember--

RUSH: Axlegrease wouldn't melt in his mouth, would it? He was the fine gentleman with the slick manners, wasn't he?

SADE: He was certainly poli--

RUSH: Well, every second he was in our house, he was castin' around his eyes.

SADE: What do you mean by that?

RUSH: He was lookin' for stuff!

SADE: [perplexed] Lookin' for stuff?!

RUSH: Lookin' for stuff to pin on me!

SADE: I haven't the slightest notion what--

RUSH: Well...he found some stuff to pin on me. What time did we eat supper?

SADE: Rush, would you kindly--

RUSH: Six o'clock, wasn't it? Six o'clock or a few minutes past? Okay. Well, by seven thirty, he'd been all over town with his meanness.

SADE: I think maybe--

RUSH: Strolled up to the corner of Kelsey and Virginia. Smelly Clark, Willis Rohrback, and Leland Richards were sittin' under the street light. When they saw me, they let out a screech! Mom, in less than an hour and a half, Nicer Scott had made me an object of ridicule before the human race.

SADE: [to VIC] You ask him what he's talkin' about.

VIC: Whatcha talkin' about?

RUSH: [sighs] It's my knife and fork.

VIC: [confused] Knife and fork?!

RUSH: Yeah.

SADE: I think the weather's done something to the child.

VIC: What ABOUT your knife and fork?

RUSH: When Nicer was in the kitchen tonight during supper he SPOTTED my knife and fork.

VIC: Vinegar Cruet, old Saddle Soap, papa's completely in the dark--

SADE: [realization dawning] Oh! Your little knife and fork?

RUSH: My little knife and fork.

VIC: You have the key to this mystery?

SADE: [laughing] You know his little knife and fork he eats with!

RUSH: I eat with 'em because you put 'em beside my plate!

SADE: I always put 'em beside your plate. Never heard ya complain.

RUSH: I never complained because it never occurred to me a snake-in-the-grass like Nicer Scott'd use 'em against me.

SADE: What did Nicer tell the boys?

RUSH: He told 'em, "Rush Gook eats with a knife and fork a third the size of regular knives and forks. Rush Gook eats with a knife and fork where there's angels engraved all over and 'Darlin' Baby' printed on the back."

SADE: [laughing] Why, that little dickens!

RUSH: He spread it all over town! I'm the miserable object of public ridicule.

SADE: [laughing] Why -- Bess give him that knife and fork. When he was three years old.

VIC: Mmm.

SADE: They aren't REALLY baby things. They're smaller than regular knives and forks, but not any two-thirds smaller. Person'd hafta look twice to tell the difference.

RUSH: Nicer Scott looked twice. In fact, he musta stood there STUDYIN' the halfwit knife and fork. He told the guys about the angels engraved all over. Told 'em about "Darlin' Baby" printed on the back.

SADE: [giggles] Well, I expect he did make it sound funny to the kids. A monstrous great big grown-up high school gentleman fourteen years old usin' sweet dainty little knives and forks...

RUSH: He's made it sound funny, and he's had his fun. Now I'm goin' over and smash his head.

SADE: Oh, no you're not.

RUSH: You suggest I leave him get away with this?!

SADE: I suggest you sit still.

RUSH: Right this minute he's seated on his bottom front porch step. Wouldn't take me four seconds to step over and paste him one upside the snoot.

SADE: Well, you're not gonna do it.

RUSH: Imagine! Come over to our house this evenin' while we were eatin' supper. Was all friendship and soft talk and high-class manners. "Been a warm day, Mis' Gook! You're lookin' well, Mr. Gook! I see ya enjoy jelly on your bread, Rush!" And all the time, his eye was rovin' around. He spotted my little knife and fork with the angels on it and "Darlin' Baby" printed on the back. He got the details well in mind, then he excused himself and went outdoors and run like the dickens all over town to spread the news. You shoulda heard the screamin' and yellin' when I showed up at the corner of Kelsey and Virginia. On account of Nicer Scott's polite visit this evenin', I am now a miserable object of public ridicule.

SADE: Oh, I doubt it's that bad.

RUSH: It IS that bad. I'm goin' over and punch his dimwitted jaw.

SADE: I say you're not. Now, listen, Rush, we've been through this business again and again and again and you oughta understand by now I don't intend--

[telephone rings]

VIC: Telephone is ringin'.

SADE: --to take chances on bein' on the outs with next-door neighbors. Kids' quarrels is one thing and grown-up quarrels is another and I--

VIC: Telephone is ringin', telephone is ringin'.

SADE: Answer it, Rush.

RUSH: Probably somebody callin' up to josh me.

SADE: Well, answer it; you're right there.

VIC: Gee, wouldn't it be wonderful if it was good old, trustworthy, "love me love my dog," Mary is a grand old name, reliable Bluetooth Johnson again?

RUSH: [answers phone] Hello? [pause] Oh, hello, LeRoy. [to VIC and SADE] LeRoy Snow.

VIC & SADE: Hmm.

RUSH: [on phone] What is your business, LeRoy? [pause] Will you repeat your question, please? [pause] No, LeRoy, I do not wear a baby bonnet when I go to bed. No, and I don't wear bibs or booties, either. [pause] Was that all, LeRoy? [pause] Very well, LeRoy. [pause] Not at all, LeRoy. Anytime, LeRoy. [pause] Only too happy, LeRoy. [pause] Certainly, LeRoy. [pause] Depend upon it, LeRoy. [pause] Now allow me to bid you goodbye, LeRoy. [pause] Goodbye, LeRoy. [hangs up] See?!

VIC: [chuckling] They're just havin' a little fun at your expense.

RUSH: I'll smash Nicer Scott's chin.

SADE: Of course you'll do nothin' of the kind.

VIC: Pete, allow me to tell ya a little story about Benjamin Franklin and what he said to his manservant while flyin' a kite near the city of Philadelphia early in the year 1820. It just so happened this manservant's name was Charlie, and there was nothin' he liked better than bread with sugar on it. Well sir, accordin' to history, Benjamin Franklin --

[telephone rings]

RUSH: Telephone is ringin'.

VIC: Oh, so it is, by George! If it could only be good old, brown as a berry, even steven, dependable Bluetooth Johnson!

RUSH: [answers phone] Hello? [pause] Oh yes, Milton. [to VIC and SADE] Milton Welch.

SADE: Ah.

VIC: Hm.

RUSH: [on phone] What brings you to the telephone, Milton? [pause] Hope you didn't disturb me while I was sittin' on my father's knee while he sung me to sleep, huh? [pause] Not at all, Milton. I assure you I wasn't sittin' on my father's knee bein' sung sleep. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. [pause] You bet. [pause] Well, just AWFUL nice of ya to call. [pause] Yes, indeed. [pause] Uh, call again sometime, won't ya? [pause] Okay, Milton. You bet. Sure thing, Milton. Goodbye, Milton. [hangs up] Wonderful stuff, huh?!

SADE & VIC: [chuckle sympathetically]

RUSH: I will step next door and fix Nicer Scott good!

SADE: No, you won't! Goodness, talk about makin' a camel's back out of a molehill. Now, what do you care? It IS kinda halfway comical, a big fourteen-year-old high school gentleman usin' a dainty little knife and fork with "Darlin' Baby" on it to eat his supper with.

RUSH: Is it kinda halfway comical that a BABOON like Nicer Scott'd enter my private home like a wolf in sheep's clothing--

SADE: Why, sure! You'd probably have done the same thing. I bet if you caught Heinie Call across the street eatin' his supper with a little knife and fork like yours you'd--

[telephone rings]

VIC: The telephone is ringin'.

RUSH: I'll get it.

SADE: [low voice] Always something, huh?

VIC: [chuckles] Yeah.

RUSH: [on phone] Hello? [pause] Yes. [pause] Who? [pause] I seem to recognize the voice, but I can't quite place it. [pause] Mildred? Mildred who, please? [pause] Risdel? [pause] Fizdel? [pause] Bisdel? [pause] T like in 'Tomahaw--' Oh, Tisdel! Oh, sure, I recollect ya now. Uh, Mildred Tisdel, isn't it?

VIC: Hey, hey.

SADE: Hey, hey is right.

RUSH: What is your business, Hildred? I mean, Mildred? [pause] Do I feed myself with my little knife and fork or do my parents do it? Uh-huh. Why, I feed myself, Mildred! [pause] Yes! [pause] Not at all, and thanks for calling. [pause] Certainly. [pause] Certainly...goodbye, Mis'...Risedale, or whatever it is. [pause] Ah, yes, Gisdel! Goodbye, Mis' Gisdel. [hangs up] See?! Even the girls!

SADE: Oh, you lead a miserable life.

RUSH: I'll go next door and lop Nicer Scott's ears down around his chin.

SADE: I don't think you will. Listen, you can explain to your friends it was your mother's fault. [giggles] It is, too.

VIC: Uh?

SADE: I've always thought of that little engraved knife and fork just bein' what Rush uses to eat with. Year after year, ever since he started eatin' with knives and forks, I've put 'em beside his plate. And like I say, they're not actually baby things. They're almost as big as regular knives and forks. When I set the table I invariably get 'em outta the drawer and put 'em beside Willie's plate. Never crossed my mind I had a grown-up fourteen-year-old man for a son, and was givin' him knives and forks covered over with angels and marked "Darlin' Baby."

VIC: [chuckles]

SADE: [chuckles] Silly, huh?

VIC: [chuckles] Yeah.

SADE: Oh, forgive me, ashtray.

[pause]

RUSH: Oh...it's okay, I guess.

SADE: Is it?

RUSH: [chuckle] Sure.

SADE: Begin to see the comical side, huh?

RUSH: [chuckles] Yeah.

SADE: Where ya goin'?

RUSH: Upstairs.

SADE: Read a nice book?

RUSH: [down] Uh-huh.

SADE: Well, that's fine.

RUSH: [down] Uh.

SADE: I'll put your little knife and fork away in the buffet someplace.

RUSH: [off] Okay.

SADE: Stuff happens, don't it?

VIC: [chuckles] Yeah.

SADE: Stuff happens. [pause] Where was I here in my newspaper piece?

VIC: Uhhh.

SADE: Why, say, I left out a whole paragraph!

VIC: Did you?

SADE: List of names.

VIC: Hm.

SADE: Out-of-towners.

VIC: Hm.

SADE: "Mr. and Mrs. David Yasher and sons Chauncey and Beef of Pittsburgh, Iowa; Ed K. Frapp, Junior, Mulish, Vermont; Sidney, Lila, Hobert, Gus, Vivian, Grace, Howard, and Stungle Houch, Dismal Seepage, Ohio; and Miller Y. Miller of Itcher, Montana." A real turnout, hmm?

VIC: Uhh.

#vic and sade #vic & sade #victor gook #sade gook #rush gook #nicer scott #leroy snow #leland richards #smelly clark #bluetooth johnson #milton welch #heinie call #willis rohrback #vernon peggles #u.s. war bonds #bess and walter

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