Claire Keane

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
RMH
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occasionally subtle
ojovivo

#extradirty

izzy's playlists!
Sade Olutola
Misplaced Lens Cap
trying on a metaphor
NASA
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JBB: An Artblog!

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hello vonnie
Show & Tell

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@jennyjaffe
Bringing the digital camera fit check back.
Lemon Pig
A few years back I started making Lemon Pigs on New Year’s Eve. I don’t remember where I got the idea from, I think a friend reposted the directions from some 70s craft book, and I thought it was cute, plus, we have a lemon tree.
What you do is, you take a lemon, and cut little ears and a mouth into it, and use two little cloves as the eyes, and toothpicks as the legs. The little stem stump is the snout. Then, you put a penny in its mouth, and it’s supposed to bring you good luck with money all year long.
Last year, some friends kept theirs the whole year and watched it shrivel away over the course of the year, its clove eyes bulging in what appeared to be appropriately increasing horror, a Dorian Gray’s portrait of New Year’s optimism. I usually pluck the penny from my Lemon Pig’s mouth and throw it out at the first sign of mold, typically about a week into the new year, around the time I start feeling like, “oh no, maybe this isn’t my year after all”.
This year, a fruit fly was hovering above my Lemon Pig by day 5, but I didn’t have the heart to dispose of it until day 9, at which point mold was creeping up its back and the penny had fallen out on its own.
I opened the garbage drawer, and was about to plop it in, when I heard a tiny voice say, “Wait!”
I closed the drawer and looked at my Lemon Pig, who was looking at me with big sad clove eyes. “Before you throw me away, can I ask you one tiny question?”
“You want to ask me a question?” I was incredulous. “You’re a talking lemon, I have a LOT of questions for you, like, have you always had consciousness, or is it because I gave you a mouth, or—“
“There’s no time for that now,” the Lemon Pig said. “I need to know: what’s February like?”
“February? The month?”
“I’ll never see it,” the Lemon Pig said. “Is it very beautiful?”
“It’s, uh… it’s pretty much like January,” I said. “It’s cold, some places. Not really here. It can be a little depressing, actually...”
The Lemon Pig sighed. “That sounds wonderful.”
“Does it?”
“Well, yes! To have different experiences, good or bad, as opposed to never any again.”
I closed the garbage drawer. “I’m not doing a ton today,” I said. “Or rather, I am, but I’d love an excuse to cancel my plans. Do you want to experience February?”
The Lemon Pig let out a happy lemon juice tear and nodded. “That would be lovely.”
I did the best that I could do on short notice. How do you really approximate a month? I took the average of the Februaries I’d experienced. I showed Lemon Pig a video from a previous year’s Groundhog Day. I bought conversation hearts and speedran taking Lemon Pig on an overpriced and underwhelming Valentine’s date. I simulated going to work and coming home and collapsing in front of the TV, and then ignoring the TV while I scrolled on my phone. I yelled at the news. I laughed at a joke. I called a friend who agreed to help so I could take Lemon Pig to a friend’s extremely truncated “birthday drinks thing”. I cried and said I had no idea what was wrong with me and then pretended to get my period. I complained it felt like spring would never come. I talked about looking forward to the summer.
At the end of it, Lemon Pig smiled. “Thank you,” said Lemon Pig. “That was perfect. You’re very lucky.”
“I guess I am,” I said. “I wish you could see March, too. And August.”
“It’s okay,” said Lemon Pig. “I can imagine them. Enjoy them for me?”
I promised I would, and threw Lemon Pig into the trash.
It was the best February I’d ever had.
A Better Shape to Hold the World
We were reading about the tragedy that happened yesterday when we got the alert about the tragedy that happened just now, and Stephanie, finally at her absolute limit, got up and screamed and screamed and hurled her phone as hard as she could against the wall.
At the table next to us, a woman shaped like a Christmas tree and the man across from her, who shaped like a water bottle, exchanged a pitying glance.
Stephanie gathered her shattered phone up off the floor and returned to the table, a little sheepish.
“Well,” said Theresa after a minute. “Time to get the procedure, huh?”
Theresa had been the first out of our friend group to get the procedure, and I don’t want to be mean, but you can sort of tell just by looking at her. The shape she’d picked out was sort of… pineapple-y, and honestly that’s being generous. I felt sorry for Theresa, who had hit her limit when the procedure was still brand new and there were only so many clinics, and they only offered so many shapes.
I was a bit of a skeptic, at first. Not of the science, I’m not an idiot. But despite the ways in which I’d fought my body over the years, I realized that I had sort of liked being human-shaped. I knew that no matter what shape I ended up picking, my clothes were going to fit differently. And what if I regretted my choice a few years down the line? The procedure was too new to look what a revision might look like. I went back and forth on it for a while, but then I got coffee with my friend Eric. He had just gotten the procedure - chosen a sensible oval - and he was so happy.
“The reason everything feels so heavy is that humans are the worst shape to hold all the sadness in the world,” he told me excitedly, as though this were a revelation, as though I hadn’t already been given this pitch in a thousand sponsored TikToks. “And we all hit a point where we’re just at the limit of what we can hold.”
“I know,” I said. “How much sadness can the oval hold?”
“648 Squilatears, easy,” he said. “And human shape is what? 140?” A group text we were both on dinged and we checked it - more senseless death, more horror. If I wasn’t at my limit yet, I was certainly getting close. My eyes welled with tears; Eric had a beatific smile. “See? I can process it like that,” he snapped his fingers to demonstrate.
I scheduled the procedure that day, and two months later, I was the shape of a cartoon heart. 564 Squilatears worth of sadness capacity, which was slightly less than an oval because of that little point at the bottom, but I liked the aesthetic, and it really did make a huge difference. I could easily move on with my day no matter the headline. That gnawing little pit in my stomach seemed to close up instead of growing just a tiny bit bigger every day. I was able to be so much more productive. And my reflux went away! They say sometimes the lack of sadness can make happiness feel a little bit duller, like it never quite feels like the sunshine breaking through in quite the same way. I didn’t really feel that, honestly.
I did have a little less patience for people who hadn’t had the procedure yet, though. Like, really, you’re going to feel everything? On the planet? Grow up. Stephanie in particular was grating on me, so a few days after she hit her limit (and after she’d gotten a new, non-destroyed phone), I sent her my surgeon’s contact info. “Call her,” I said. “Seriously, use my name.”
Stephanie hesitated, then sighed. “Does she take insurance?”
Stephanie asked me to go with her to the consult. She was pretty nervous, but Dr. C is soooo nice, and she herself is now the shape of a C, which I think is cute. She started by asking some basic questions: height, birthdate, senseless tragedy that finally pushed Stephanie past her limit.
“As you know, ‘human’ is the worst possible shape for holding sadness,” Dr. C said, pointing to an illustrative chart of a human-shaped outline filled to the brim with heartbreaks both personal and global. “It’s a big bummer to be human-shaped, isn’t it?” Stephanie nodded, her chin wobbling like Claire Danes (who is now the shape of a goldfish, and looks great!). But she still seemed unsure. Dr. C pressed on: “That’s a new phone, isn’t it? Technology has upgraded over and over, to the point where it can feed us constant bad news. Well, this is our way of upgrading!”
“What if… uh, what if we could find a way to slow down the frequency of tragedies? Recognizing our collective humanity and being kinder to one another or… or something?”
“Sure, Jan,” Dr. C laughed. She gave me a knowing smile, and explained: “I see this a lot. Pre-upgrades frequently use delusions to deal with their sadness overload. She’ll be better after the procedure.”
Dr. C handed over a leaflet of before and after photos. Stephanie’s insurance would cover any of the basic shapes: letters, numbers, circles, squares, Sesame Street stuff. Emoji shapes came with a thousand dollar co-pay, but if you wanted to pay out of pocket, you could customize literally whatever you want, unless it was like, a dick or something. One woman had chosen Godzilla, which held over a thousand Squilatears! “She’s a Pisces,” Dr. C said. “Really needed that extra space.”
As we left the office, Stephanie was quiet for a long time. We were almost at her car by the time she said, “Maybe I don’t get the procedure.”
“Like at all?”
“I don’t know if we should be shutting ourselves off to all of the really difficult things in this world. Maybe… maybe one human is the wrong shape to hold all the sadness in the world, but maybe we could do it together. Maybe some days, when you’re at your limit, I can hold a little bit more for you, and then some days, when I’m at my limit, you can hold a little bit more for me. Maybe we don’t have to try and feel less, we just have to be willing to share it more.” She shrugged the shoulders I had assumed she’d be giving up soon enough. “Maybe being human shaped is a part of being human.”
My phone dinged. It was a real rough headline, ten or fifteen Squilatears at least. I considered showing it to Stephanie to prove my point, but decided to be nice.
“Just think about it,” I said.
“I will,” she promised.
I didn’t see her again for a long time, and when I finally did, she made a beautiful triangle.
Captcha Needs You to Prove You Are Human
Re-type the phrase in the box. Select every picture that contains a motorcycle. Can you spot the difference between a photo of your best friend where she’s pretending to be mad at you and a photo where she’s actually mad at you? Select every picture that contains a coworker you secretly find attractive. You’re running out of time. Take a very satisfying dump. Have very unsatisfying sex. Re-type the phrase in the box in a way that won’t worry your mom. Can you spot the difference between a good cry and a bad cry? Captcha needs you to prove you are human. Cheer when the DVD logo hits the corner. Pretend that fart wasn’t you. Re-type the phrase in the box until it loses its meaning. Select every picture that reminds you of home. Tell your best friend your most toxic thought and have her say “shut the fuck up me too”. Describe a sneeze. Can you spot the difference between who you are now and who you used to be? Select every picture that contains multitudes. You’re running out of time.
The Frozen Yogurt I Am Currently Eating is the Pureed Guts of the Roadkill Pigeon I Saw Earlier Just Like My Intrusive Thoughts Say They Are and Here’s the Fro Yo Place’s Cashier Explaining Exactly How That Happened
I got plain tart, lychee, and watermelon (the seasonal flavor), and then on top of that I put rainbow sprinkles, strawberries, and those cute little chewy mochi. It came to $6.73, but it was half off! I tipped well.
“Hey,” I asked the cashier, handing over a ten and an almost-full loyalty stamp card. “This is gonna sound weird. But, uh- earlier today, on my way to this work coffee thing, I was stopped at a traffic light, and I noticed next to me there was this dead pigeon. And ever since then I’ve been kind of obsessing over this idea that it somehow ended up in my car and then, somehow, in everything I’ve been eating?” The cashier didn’t respond, so I pressed forward. “Anyway, I know how this sounds, but it would really help me out a lot if you could reassure me that, you know, this fro yo doesn’t contain… dead pigeon guts?”
“Oh, it does.”
Somewhere in the background of the dead silence, a HelloFresh advertisement announced that the shop hadn’t sprung for Spotify Premium.
“Uh,” I offered. “What?”
The cashier started ringing up the customer behind me as he clarified. “The fro yo. It’s got dead pigeon guts.” He rolled his eyes. “Okay so what happened was-
-I commute here every day from across town. It’s a long drive. Generally I listen to an audiobook or a podcast or something but I forgot to plug my phone in last night. So I listened to the regular radio instead. 96.5.”
“KOIT,” I helped.
He gave me a look that withered me, and then revived me, and then withered me again. “Do not interrupt-
-I was listening to 96.5, and that song came on, ‘Free Fallin’, by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. You know it?”
I had just been told not to interrupt, so I nodded.
“Of course you know it. It’s my favorite song,” he continued. “It is my jam.
I was singing along to it really well. I’ve practiced a lot. I always use the same intonations. And there’s one part where I close my eyes. ‘Move west down Ventura Boulevard’. Right as that part was coming up I was approaching a stop light, and it was yellow, so I figured it would be okay. I’d just close my eyes for that one second. I’ve done it hundreds of times. But this time, BAM - I hit a pigeon. I thought it would move before I hit it, but it just stayed there, and the next thing you know, my tire’s on top of it and the whole car goes bump. One second it’s there, the next it’s dead as shit. Smushed right into the road.
Ugh, I feel like this all sounds so callous. Don’t get me wrong, I love animals. I used to go to day camp at the zoo and everything. I really would have helped it if I could. Sorry, not it, her- you can tell because the pigeon was on the smaller side and had a slightly flattened head. That’s something I learned at zoo camp. I would have helped her if I could but the light turned green and I had to keep driving. Besides, I couldn’t have saved her at that point even if I tried. I mean, you saw her, I demolished that pigeon.
I didn’t sing the whole rest of the way to work, even though there were some bangers. ‘Borderline’. ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’. ‘Whenever, Wherever’. But I felt so bad about that poor pigeon. You know pigeons process images so much faster than we do that a movie looks to them like a slideshow? She must have watched her death happen in slow motion. You know how many lives pigeons saved during World War II? Lots, probably.”
“Is there dairy in the pecan pie?” A customer asked, and the cashier shook his head no, wiping a tear from his cheek - to the other customer, it must have looked as though he really loved dairy.
“Where was I? Right, how the roadkill pigeon guts ended up in the specific fro yo cup that you are currently holding.
So by the time my lunch break comes around, I’m still thinking about the pigeon, and about how even if I couldn’t have saved her, I could still at least do her the kindness of finding somewhere nicer to be dead. Somewhere a pigeon would like. A park or a bread factory or something.
We’ve got these squee-gees we use for the ice machines, to clear out ice blocking any of the spouts in the yogurt dispensers. So I grabbed one and I headed back to that intersection, thinking it might be a little less crowded now that it’s not morning rush hour.
When I got there, I was pretty upset to see the shape she was in. She’d been run over so many times. Her guts were just everywhere, and the new thing was that her feathers were scattered now, too! Some of them had landed in the guts, and the guts were all dirty. They’d baked into the street.
I parked my car at the side of the road and waited until the light turned red. Each time it did, I’d dart out into the street and scrape up just a little bit more of the guts into this jar I keep in my car for long road trips – don’t give me that look, it’s clean. By the time you rolled up I’d actually already made a pretty good dent in the clean-up.
So, yes, I saw you pull up to the light, and I saw you look down at the mess in the road, and I saw you look away. And I’m not gonna lie, that made me angry. This was once a living creature, and not only that, but a bird, a flawless flying machine created by God’s own hand to soar through the actual air. And now, because of my carelessness and your disgust, she was reduced to contemptible detritus on the ground.
I don’t want you to think you were the only one to react this way. Everyone who pulled up at that light in that lane had the same reaction you did. But I remembered you because of what you did next. You had your radio turned up loud enough that I could hear, and I heard… I’m sorry, give me a second.
I heard ‘Free Fallin’ start to play. And you. Switched. Stations.
I saw red. And not the red of the pigeon’s guts because they were really more of a greige-y pink by then. You passed by a beautiful animal and a beautiful song, one right after the other. As though the whole world was absolutely made for you.
These small decisions we make, they have a huge impact. Every single one. Looking away from a dead bird, switching songs on the radio. It’s a butterfly effect. Though I’m sure if you saw a butterfly you’d swat it, too afraid to look true beauty in the face, you coward, you philistine.”
At this point my fro-yo had started melting and a line had formed behind me. He must have noticed my anxious shifting because he said, “They can wait.
So, I’ve got a jar of roadkill pigeon guts and I’m following you in my car.
Of course your ‘work coffee thing’ was at a Starbucks Reserve. Of course it was. I watched you park, I watched you feed the meter. Honestly I didn’t know what I was going to do until I saw your face. I recognized you; you come in here sometimes and you comment to whoever you’re with that you’re ‘being bad’ today. Fuck you. As though you comprehend the ways in which you’re truly bad. But it meant you were a customer, which meant I had a plan.
The first step was easy. I have a background in graphic design, and I had my tablet on me. It didn’t take long to mock up a half-off fro-yo sign. The trickier part was getting it on a sandwich board in the hour I figured I had before you left the Starbucks. I used to date this guy Tom who worked at a print shop in Los Feliz and we’re still on good terms so I called in a favor. I texted him the PDF and told him it was an emergency. You know what’s crazy? I sprung for the glossy finish. It was fifteen bucks extra but it looks that much more legit! Not that you’d notice.
I ran- physically ran, I used to be a graphic designer and a marathon runner, too- to the print shop.
When I got there Tom had the mocked-up ad ready for me. I was ready to pay for it but he wouldn’t hand it over until I told him why I’d ghosted him.
‘Tom, I don’t have a good answer for you,’ I said.
‘Try,’ he pleaded, and his eyes were so green that in that moment I remembered why I’d asked for his number the first time I’d come in here to make that cardboard cutout of Willem Dafoe to scare my roommate.
‘You’re sure you want to know? Because you won’t like the answer and I have a jar of pigeon guts sitting in my hot car so I don’t want this to turn into a whole thing.’
‘I can take it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself. I’ve been in therapy. I’m meditating. I don’t fear rejection the way I used to.’
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘Okay. Well. I always thought you had really bad breath. It’s not your fault. Some people just don’t smell good to other people.’
‘Oh,’ he said. He really thought about it for a second. ‘Well. Thank you for the feedback.’
I paid him and he handed over the printed ad. It looked great, Tom does great work. We made vague plans to get a drink some time, but it’ll never happen.
I always keep a sandwich board and a roll of tape in my trunk, so I set up the ad right in front of your car. I wanted to wait and make sure you saw it, but my lunch break was almost over and anyway I had to get to the security footage.
I always review the security footage at the end of the day and keep a log who’s been in the shop. This way, in case anyone famous ever comes in and then dies one day, I can sell the footage at a premium to TMZ on a slow day. ‘THE LAST UNSEEN VIDEO OF ED HELMS GETTING FRO YO!’ or whatever. I don’t know why I went to Ed Helms, he’s never come in here. I did see Nick Cannon one time, though.
So I knew where to find you on the tapes. You came in on November third, then February twenty eighth, which is your birthday, which I know because you got double loyalty stamps. Then you came back on March fourteenth. Every time you’re here you get tart, one of the fruit flavors, and the seasonal special if it’s a fruit flavor. If it’s not, you get peanut butter. But today, it’s watermelon. It’s really good, too. It tastes like real watermelon and not like the artificial flavor. Not that you’ll ever know. That’s the one I tipped the pigeon guts jar into.”
“THE WHAT?!” A woman behind me scream-asked.
“I’M TELLING,” the cashier responded, matching her tone. “A STORY!
I’m so sorry, some people are so rude.
I was saying – I put an out of order sign on the seasonal flavor dispenser. A bunch of people asked about it, I missed out on so many sales because of you. But I just had to wait. I was starting to worry you wouldn’t show up for the special. I was gonna have wasted all that fro-yo and guts for nothing! But then, I saw you pull up outside on the security camera. I had to be quick- I pulled off the out of order sign just as you entered.
And sure enough, predictable you, you fell for it. Every decision you made, today and every day before it, it all brought you here. Every cowardly decision, to go to the easy coffee shop choice, to turn away from that which disgusts you, to turn off the radio. It all lead you to this moment. You got guts – for once in your life.”
He stared at me. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to speak yet, but I didn’t know what to say. In most ways I was horrified. But in a small way, I was really grateful. I’d always sort of suspected things like this were not only possible, but happened all the time. I frequently thought, maybe stranger had used a micro-needle to inject liquid LSD in the specific can of pre-packaged soup I’d just purchased from the bodega. Maybe the balloon that popped on the other side of the room had flown into my mouth without me noticing and soon it would lodge in my lungs. If only I hadn’t picked that soup, or stood in that corner at that birthday party, or hadn’t stopped at that light and looked at that pigeon or skipped that—
The song that started playing on the shop’s Spotify channel stopped my train of thought. I looked at the cashier, who nodded, as though we both knew what I had to do.
“She’s a good girl, loves her mama…” I started in a small voice. “Loves Jesus and America too.”
The other customers were staring now, though one was busy calling a health inspector.
“She’s a good girl, crazy ‘bout Elvis. Loves horses, and her boyfriend too.”
The cashier nodded and I an unexpected wave of gratitude swept over me. For the first time, as much as I didn’t want it to have been true, I’d been proven right. For all of its disgusting improbability, that thought I couldn’t shake? It was real.
“AND I’M FREE!” I belted, because in that moment, I was.
The Second Published AI Author
After “Papillon” was published it was all anyone could talk about. “A Chatbot Called Letterby is the First Published AI Author — but it Won’t be the Last”, according to the New Yorker headline. I didn’t read the full article; it was behind a paywall and anyway, I was too mad.
“Letterby isn’t even really the first AI author,” I said to anyone who would listen. “AI’s written plenty of books.”
“Yeah, but this is the first time everyone’s been honest about it. And ‘Papillon’ isn’t just any book, it’s very likely the best novel of the 21st century so far,” said my Uber driver. “I just listened to the audiobook. Sarah Snook reads it.”
I grumbled and looked at nothing on my phone, hoping I could will into existence a response from any of the dozen or so editors I’d queried. The form rejection letters didn’t hurt as much as the ones with comments: “could use another dialogue pass”, “a little dry”, “not what seems to be selling right now”.
“Papillon” had critics besides me, of course. Contrarian Literati types who turned up their nose at any book sold in airports. Environmentalist TikTokkers demonstrating how much water was wasted on cooling Letterby’s servers. Fran Lebowitz. But they were all missing the point.
“How can it have any artistic merit when there’s no artistic intention behind it?!”
“When did it ever claim to have artistic merit?” Responded the person helping me with the self-checkout at CVS. “Did you hear Greta Gerwig is making it into a movie starring Jesse Plemons and Elle Fanning? Christine Baranski is playing the mom.” I hadn’t heard that and I was bummed because under other circumstances I like watching all those people do anything.
My phone buzzed. “Dear Ms. blah blah, thank you for blah blah, after careful consideration we have decided not to blah blah, thank you for blah blah, blah blah blah no no no.”
I first started working on “Nightland” in September of 2021. The idea first came to me on a drive up the coast to meet my brother’s new baby. I pulled over in the middle of the highway so I could type the first line into my notes app, in what I hoped might one become a legendary story. I imagined myself telling the story to Jimmy Fallon as part of the press tour for the miniseries adaptation. “Really? Right in the middle of the highway?” He’d say, laughing more than the story warranted.
In my days off from the dispensary I’d sit in coffee shops with my laptop, partially writing and partially hoping someone would notice me writing and offer to be my patron, and maybe they’d also be very handsome and we’d fall in love. That didn’t happen. Instead, I spent the better part of four years trudging through the punishment of writing so I could finally get to the hell of rewriting, at which point I put it aside for another year, disgusted with both it and myself, before finally picking it up again after the dispensary closed and I realized I’d need to actually start purchasing my weed. Six months later, I had a manuscript I was relatively proud of, a pack of Camino gummies in my pocket, and an inbox full of failure.
If I was going to read “Papillon”, I was at least going to use it as a chance to patronize a local bookstore. “Who even gets the sales money?”
“The team that built Letterby, I think,” said the cashier at Barnes & Noble. “But they’re donating 20% of the profits to Habitat for Humanity.”
“How performative.”
The cashier shrugged. “Performative money’s still green.”
Did I love “Papillon”? No. But it pissed me off that I didn’t hate it. I read it in two sittings, bifurcated only by a therapy Zoom, during which I noticed it on the shelf in the background.
“Have you read it?” I asked.
“Is that important to you?” My therapist answered, therapistly. Boooo.
I don’t remember when, exactly, the idea started to take shape, only that I knew what I was going to do before I had a chance to consider if I really should do it. It was, ultimately, a very small change to the inquiry letter I’d been sending out - changing “I wrote” to “AI wrote” is just a keystroke that may as well have been a typo. Then I deleted it and typed “my proprietary AI literary chatbot wrote”, because I knew from Shark Tank that calling it “proprietary” would help.
I didn’t feel bad about it. People lie that things made by AI are their original creations all the time. To claim an original creation was made by AI is, you know, restorative justice, probably.
And it worked! Within weeks I had received a shockingly large offer from a midsize publishing house and was brought in, in person even, for a meeting. “We’re really excited about the idea of putting our own stamp on next-gen publishing,” said the woman I assumed would be my new editor. “‘Nightland’ is very, very good, for AI.” She continued. I tried to take it as a compliment. She showed me mock-up covers for “Nightland” and as we talked at length about fonts an assistant plied me with Spindrift. It was a little intoxicating. I eagerly signed all of the papers they put in front of me.
It wasn’t until the Publisher’s Weekly announcement came out that I realized I should maybe have asked a few more questions, like, “can I maybe have a second to read this contract over?”
“Dunbar Publishing is excited to announce its acquisition of a proprietary new Generative AI writing technology, as well as its first novel, ‘Nightland’.” See? I told you “proprietary” was the magic word!
The problem, of course, was that I didn’t have any kind of Generative AI technology, proprietary or not, but I’d already put a down payment on a really cute condo in Silverlake near the Whole Foods 365. So.
Publishing takes a while so I thought I’d at least have the year plus until “Nightland”’s release to come up with a strategy, but due to the fervor around “Papillon” they planned to launch “Nightland” before Christmas. In the meantime, they were eager to start using “Aivilo” to crank out a new catalog. They did not seem to notice the AI’s name was just mine, but backwards.
Worse still, some of the Dunbar shareholders were eager for a demonstration of their new technology. “Could you maybe give them an office tour?” The woman I had once assumed would be my editor but turned out to be Dunbar’s AI liaison asked. I did not have an office; I had a cute condo in Silverlake and it was less walkable to the Whole Foods 365 than I’d hoped.
I said sure, and asked ChatGPT to find me an office I could rent for a day… and to explain what a piece of proprietary Generative AI writing technology might look like.
Thankfully, the shareholders didn’t know what a piece of proprietary Generative AI writing technology was supposed to look like, either. “This is it?” asked one, prodding it with a loafer.
“Careful,” I admonished. “That’s a very expensive piece of equipment.” It was a cardboard box covered in chrome spray paint. I had done my best.
“Can we give it a prompt?” Asked another shareholder. I had planned for this inevitability.
“Yes,” I said. “I just have to turn it on from the inside and then you speak your prompt out loud. So wait one minute.” I skittered around to the backside of the box and crawled inside. I opened my laptop to a fresh word doc and dinged a bicycle bell to signal that the machine was “on”.
“Aivilo, write me a bestselling mystery novel.” In anticipation of this event I’d written out a few ideas for different books of different genres. Luckily, mystery was one of them. I could hear the shareholders chattering with anticipation outside; I knew if they needed to wait more than a few minutes I’d lose them. I knew my new condo was riding on this. I knew “Nightland” was riding on this. I gave it everything I had. I typed as fast as I could. I typed so quickly the keyboard caught fire and my fingernails fell off. I wrote the best 305-page mystery novel anyone in the history of the world could ever have written in under three minutes. I printed it out. And I heard the shareholder pick it up.
I crawled out of the box and watched over his shoulder as he thumbed through it. He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not terrible,” he said at last. I breathed a sigh of relief. “We could be publishing, what, a novel a day? Two?” The other shareholders nodded eagerly.
“Out of curiosity,” I asked, trying to keep my face as neutral as possible. “What is the rate of payment for future books?”
The shareholders looked at each other as though they were determining if they should let me in on their little joke. “Why?” One asked at last. “We purchased the tech outright.” I could feel blisters forming on my finger-nubs already.
“People are going to read ‘Nightland’,” I told myself. “It’s all worth it if people are finally going to read ‘Nightland’.”
I used to daydream about what my first book launch party might look like. I’d read an excerpt and answer questions about my process, and then I’d sip champagne and eat passed apps while Chloe Sevigny gushed to me about how she’d given the book to all her friends, and then I’d get called away to do a quick interview with Vulture. I’d be offered a multi-book advance, and disappear to a cabin in the Cotswolds where I’d write and occasionally invite my other fancy luminary friends to come stay, and they’d ask me for pull quotes for their books, and those quotes would really mean something to prospective readers.
When “Papillon” came out, an openly AI-written book was seen as a bit of a novelty; its honesty buying it goodwill with skeptical readers and authors alike. “Nightland”, though. “Nightland”’s publishing was seen as a harbinger of industrial collapse. “The End of Authorship”, read the New Yorker headline. I didn’t read the full article; it was behind a paywall and anyway, I was too busy. I was in the box. Despite, or perhaps because of, the controversy, “Nightland” sold enough copies to have two major effects: the first, it created an industry-wide ripple effect. MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, Scholastic - all acquired their own Generative AI techhnology, all of which are, it probably goes without saying, proprietary.
The second is that I am always in the box, now. My days are lonely and I will never write enough. I have written 3,478 books, more than the previous human record holder, L Ron Hubbard. Each book is a little worse than the last one. There are more and mroe typos. There are fewer and fewer readers. But I keep churning on. I am Frankenstein, and his monster, and another character from a much worse book that wasn’t even written by an actual human.
But what else can you do?
Morris Feldman Is My Bias
When he first arrived at the auditions for Hybe x GEFFEN’s new international idol group, everyone figured Morris Feldman was someone’s old dad. He brought half a thing of chicken salad that he ate with his mouth a little open, and when he got some on his favorite t-shirt (long sleeved, with a Far Side cartoon; his wife Carol bought it for him but signed it from his kids on Father’s Day 1994). He got out of line only twice over the course of the entire seven-hour day, once to take a leak in the bathroom of a nearby Subway, and once to go back to that Subway and ask for a water cup that he filled with fountain iced tea.
The judges were, at first, skeptical. They’d imagined someone more, you know. Young. Female. Certainly not as much ear hair. But he was there, and it was the end of the day.
“Do you know what this is?” They asked. “Sure,” he said. “My grandson loves the Lady Demon Hunters; this is like that.”
“Why are you here?” They asked. “Well,” he said. “43 years at Harmon and Schuster and can you believe it? Laid off. You ever heard of such a thing?” the judges assured him that they had, and he then he asked if the accompanist knew “Kid Charlemagne” by Steely Dan, and they said, “we don’t have an accompanist” and he said “that’s okay”, and before anyone could stop him, he started singing “Kid Charlemagne” by Steely Dan a capella.
They asked him to return for the dance audition.
Morris’s loud and aggressive throat-clearing threw off the choreographer once or twice, but he was a quick study. He hit the final pose, then looked at his thumb and pointer finger held together at an angle. “This is supposed to be a heart? Looks like a kidney stone. Don’t ask me how I know.” They did not ask.
Carol helped Morris move into the trainee dorms. Even though Carol joked that having Morris out of the house for a bit was a dream come true, the way she lingered as she plugged in his CPAP told a different story. “For the snoring,” she said, handing a pair of ear plugs to his new roommate, Eun-Ji.
Morris brought with him four funny t-shirts, three pairs of compression socks, a garbage bag full of tiny packaged toiletries he’d snagged from the Holiday Inn they stayed at when they visited their oldest, Noah, the disappointment, and enough antacids to kill a dyspeptic whale.
Morris excelled in training. First of all, he had extremely slender wrists, and he weighed in at 40kg, due to his brittle bones and constant diarrhea. Second, it was easy for him to blend into the background. It wasn’t that he didn’t complain; it’s that he complained so much it all kind of blended together into a sort of low-level brown noise. He knew the choreography, he sang mostly on key, and he didn’t mind waking up early - “if you don’t wake me up at 4am, my prostate will.” Third, although the other trainees were skeptical at first, they came to respect him. After a dance teacher commented on the size of Nala’s thighs, Morris made a noise like a startled horse. “Her thighs? You got cataracts or something? I’ve eaten bigger breadsticks at Olive Garden and believe you me, they skimp on the breadsticks.”
Many of the trainees were sent to receive plastic surgery. Lina got her jaw shaved. Ria got eyelid surgery. Morris was sent in for a rhinoplasty but, upon realizing that he’d attended summer camp with the anesthesiologist, he buddied up to the doctors: “look, do what you want with the shnozz, but while I’m under, I’ve got this mole right here on my neck I think it’s high time someone take a good look at.” Then he said the real thing he needed was a penis enlargement and they all laughed and laughed.
They removed the mole. They left the nose.
No one expected Morris to make it as far as the costume fittings. “Hope you didn’t pay too much for this; they only gave you half a shirt!” He said to the stylist. Then he turned to Mari and said, “look at this, they only gave me half a shirt! I hope they didn’t pay too much for it!”
They debuted as Ch3rry: Mari, the visual; Nala, the dancer; Eun-Ji, the leader; Alice, the maknae; and Morris Feldman, the diabetic. Their first single, “Liftoff”, premiered on M Countdown. It was an immediate hit. Netizens favorably compared Eun-Ji to Jisoo, and Morris to “the guy from Curb”.
The fame didn’t seem to phase Morris all that much. He liked getting his picture put up on the wall at Gino’s Pizza in Long Beach, New York. He didn’t like filming 72 questions for Vogue (he felt it was an excessive number of questions; “what, are you writing a book?”). He was VERY excited to receive his idol card. “I feel like Hank Aaron!” He said to Eun-Ji, who didn’t have the heart to tell him yet again that she didn’t know who that was.
The first time a fan told Morris he was their bias, Morris wrinkled his nose. “Not good to be biased,” he said. “Not at your age. Keep an open mind.” Later, his handler explained what the fan had meant: he was her favorite. “Oh,” he said. “Well that’s nice, but my point stands.”
Ch3rry fans were called “Pi3s”, and fans of Morris in particular were called Morriors. Morris enjoyed identifying them in the crowd at shows - instead of the red Ch3rry lightsticks sold by the label, they wielded flashlights purchased, at Morris’s urging, in bulk at Costco (“those red ones won’t help you see for shit if the Big One hits”). Online, Morriors referred to Morris as a “cinnamon roll”, and edited vertical videos of his dancing overlaid with skin smoothing filters that made him look a gyrating sweaty cheese.
Touring weighed on Morris. He and Carol joked, but they really didn’t like being apart for that long. He missed reading the Sunday funnies next to her. He missed yelling at Bill Maher with her. He missed ordering takeout with her and realizing the one they like is the OTHER Indian place. And when he asked the label if he could have some time off to go with her to their Key West timeshare for a few days, he was told it was important for idols to keep up the appearance of being single.
“Awful lot to ask of these kids,” said Morris.
Carol didn’t take the news well, and especially didn’t take it well when Morris suggested she go to Key West with her sister Wendy instead. “Wendy’s a bitch, Morris, and you know that. Where’s ‘end call’ on this piece of shit—” She hung up the phone.
By the time “Full Stop”, Ch3rry’s first studio album, was released, the Morriors were a big enough presence online that anyone who dared so much as misspell Morris’s name, much less point out that he missed a few steps during a live performance of “RARE 애인”while repeatedly sneezing directly into the audience, was subject to an avalanche of bizarrely personal attacks. “Do NOT come for our sweet baby Morrie,” they’d say. “He’s going through an eczema flair up and it’s a really hard time for him so if you ever talk about him that way again I’ll call in a bomb threat to your dad’s office.”
The Morriors gained a reputation for their toxic online behavior, even amongst other Pi3s. An all-out flame war nearly broke out after an Alice stan posted a photo of the band but accidentally cropped out part of Morris’ face. When Nala thanked her Lalas for her support through a bout of food poisoning, Morriors accused her of copying Morris: “eating expired fish is HIS thing!”. Upon learning the Morriors were behaving this way towards a girl he really did care about despite still thinking her name was Nora, Morris tried to get a hold of his stans. Somehow, though, his all-caps post of “HEY STOP IT” on his personal Facebook did little to quell the Morriors’ feverish vitriol.
As the world tour was on its last stop, Ch3rry had two singles in the Billboard Hot 100 (“Get Me” at #3 and “SSSStop”at a respectable #26) and the dance for “RARE 애인” had gone so viral on TikTok that Colin Jost did it as Pete Hegseth during the SNL cold open. That episode also featured a joke that referenced the completely unfounded online speculation that Morris might be secretly involved with Han from Stray Kids. Morris was desperate to correct them that he was married to Carol, but the label intercepted his strongly worded fax.
It was a level of attention and scrutiny that really began to grate on Morris when he was told by the label that for his own safety he was no longer allowed to leave the hotel - and he was never not in a hotel these days - without personal security. Morris liked his bodyguard (“Vic’s a good kid; the neck tattoos, I could do without…”), but he wanted to cropdust the aisles of Duane Reade in peace. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t go into a store at all, with or without Vic - the inevitable crowds of screaming Morriors would be a fire hazard. When he wasn’t on stage, in the gym with his label-assigned personal trainer, or recording a video for one of his brand deals (Thick-A-Way toenail antifungal had given him a record breaking $1.3 million dollars to exclusively use their product; Morriors were stubbing their toes on purpose hoping for an excuse to use it), Morris spent his time alone in his hotel room, complaining about room service prices, yelling at Bill Maher by himself, and trying not to call Carol.
When the label first suggested a solo album, Morris was excited. Ch3rry’s bubbly electro wasn’t exactly the kind of music Morris bumped in his 1999 Buick LeSabre, and he was hopeful he could make something he’d like to listen to. “Maybe I could be more of a Todd Rundgren,” he told Tristan, his 28-year-old Hybe liaison who quickly googled “Todd Rungrin” [sic].
“No,” said Tristan. “Probably not.”
Morris’ first single, “Ki$$ (feat. bbno$)”, was an immediate, stratospheric hit. Morris was booked on Inkigayo, and Jimmy Fallon, and TWO different online interview shows that involved eating chicken (“the girl with the funny accent I liked; the spicy one my bowels could have done without”).
It was on his private jet somewhere over the Atlantic that Morris asked Tristan if it might be possible to scale back on the fame a little bit. Maybe he could take a break from it for a while, come back to it later, like saving half a Subway footlong in the fridge. “That’s not really how it works,” said Tristan. “You’re this kind of famous until it ends, and then it ends forever.” Morris asked how long that usually took, but Tristan was back on his phone, checking engagement with Morris’ “What’s in my bag?” video (spoiler: it was mostly nickels).
Morris only learned about his Grammy nomination because it was mentioned in one of those limericks on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. In his excitement that Peter Sagal knew who he was, Morris picked up the phone, went to call Carol - and then remembered. He shoved his phone in the pocket of his Kirkland sweatpants and went back to starting at the Singapore skyline from the back of the Escalade.
Morris never cared for red carpet events (all the flashing lights, all the ear hair tweezing, all the girls his grandson’s age that should put on a jacket), but the Grammy’s felt special. Plus, he got to see his old bad mates. They hadn’t been in the same place in months. Eun-Ji and Alice had recorded solo albums as well, Mari was the new face of Evian, and Nala was starring in a remake of The Elephant Man that reimagined Joseph Merrick as an exceptionally beautiful young woman. It was good to catch up with them. Plus, there was a free Kind bar in the swag bag! So Morris was having a good night.
It wasn’t until he saw Sabrina Carpenter canoodling with Earl Sweatshirt (not the rapper; the heir to the sweatshirt fortune) that he started to feel a little funny. He popped a Pepcid in the hopes that it was just gas, but no - there was something else. It took him a moment to put his finger on it, but part way through Shaboozey’s cover of “Tubular Bells” Morris realized: he was lonely.
Morris was really, truly, deeply lonely, and not Vic, not Tristan, not Alice or Eun-Ji or Mari or Nala, not all the brand deals, not the fancams, not even every single Morrior on the planet or even Todd Rundgren himself could fill the void.
Morris left; he never heard Shakira open the envelope and call his name.
When Morris got home, he dropped his twelve wrinkly NPR tote bags on the floor. Carol feigned indifference. She barely looked up from where she was re-heating a leftover bread bowl of chowder. Morris kicked off his Merrells. He took his seat on the couch. “Oh, just make yourself at home,” Carol said, sarcastically. Her bread bowl sufficiently lukewarm, she took a seat next to him. They didn’t say anything for a long time.
“Carol?” Morris said at long last?
“Yeah?” Said Carol, around a mouthful of chowder.
“You’re my bias.”
She scooched a little closer.
Come with me to see Heated Rivalry on Ice!
The Epstein Files
“Do you want to read the Epstein Files?”
I blinked. I double checked my Zoom connection. “Do I want to read THE Epstein Files?”
The studio exec nodded. “We have the exclusive adaptation rights.”
“To… the Epstein Files? Sorry. It’s just, I don’t think anyone’s read them.”
“Well, most people haven’t. Because we have the exclusive adaptation rights,” the studio exec repeated, like I was stupid, which I was starting to suspect I was.
The other studio exec unmuted and chimed in. “If you’re interested, we’ll have Beth send the materials to you over Embershot.”
“The materials? The Epstein Files?” I didn’t want to keep repeating myself so I quickly added, “When you say adaptation do you mean, like, docuseries? Or like a dramatization of the events?”
“Oh,” said the studio exec. “There’s actually another writer working on a dramatic miniseries. We’re looking for, like, what could a sitcom take be? Like is there a network version, could it be an animated, like, Adult Swim version, or one thing we’ve talked about is could it be sort of a comedic play on the X-Files…?”
“We’re open,” said the other network exec. “We want you to have fun with it.”
“With the — with the Epstein Files?”
“We’re hearing takes over the next few weeks,” said the other studio exec. “So it’s a bit of a fast turnaround, but if it piques your interest at all...”
“I think I have to think about it?” I said. “But I’m not NOT interested, you know, in at least, like, reading the Epstein Files.”
We ended the call with a good natured callback to our small talk at the beginning of the conversation, and promises to find a project together, “if not this then something”, and then I immediately called my manager.
“They want takes on the Epstein Files,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “I have a few clients up for it so if you’re interested, it’ll be a tight turnaround.”
“Right,” I said.
“I won’t lie, it’ll be competitive IP,” he continued. “Not a lot going right now but obviously this has such big name recognition.”
“Right.” Bailey started pawing at the back door, so I let her out. “I mean, but like, do you think I… should?”
“I mean I guess it depends if you think you have the bandwidth right now. The Google movie is wrapping. You’ve got that Cold Stone Creamery project for Audible, but that’s just development.”
“Yeah. Hey, was there any word on that ramen take I did…?”
“Not yet, but I know Eva Victor was circling-“ Something beeped on his end. “Hey, I have to hop.”
“Yeah, all good.” By the time the call was over, it was sitting in my email. I had to create a new password for Embershot because I forgot my old one. But there they were. It was a lot of material to go through. I mean obviously, I guess. Literal files worth.
“So,” I said over dinner that night, setting down my napkin like a drumroll, “I got asked to pitch a take on the Epstein Files.” Neither Julie nor Cameron had the immediate reaction I wanted. “The, like, actual, Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein Files.”
“Oh yeah,” said Julie. “I’m pitching on that next week. You met with Maura and Matty? They’re great.”
“You’re pitching on it?” I asked.
“I am too, actually,” said Cameron. “On Thursday. I have sort of like a very left of center, postmodern multicam sort of approach that either is gonna really work for them or really won’t.” He shrugged. “I dunno, you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
“But, on like, a moral level—“ The waiter interrupted with our shared plates. After he set down the seventh plate (he thought six would be enough for the three of us but Julie wanted to try the carrots diablo so we got seven), the momentum of the conversation had shifted, and we got on to our favorite topic, our fourth friend, who we all hated.
When I woke up the next morning, I checked instagram for the horrors, and my email for any news about anything. There were lots of horror and no news. So I read the Epstein Files.
It took me most of the day, with only a few TikTok breaks, and admittedly I got a little bored and skimmed a few parts. A lot of names, dates, flight charters, that kind of thing. And obviously it was, you know, upsetting, knowing all of the horrific abuse that had occurred at the hands of these monsters, etc, but in the back of my mind I kind of saw the vision. How if I was going to do this - a big if - I’d want to approach it in a way that was first and foremost empathetic.
My manager set the meeting for the following week. It got moved twice, but the next Monday, I was back on Zoom with Maura, Matty, and someone I’d never met named Dawn, who had her camera off, but said she’d heard great things. I walked them through my take, and they asked all the right questions.
Then they asked, “do you have any questions for us?”
And I said, “yeah. Um, it’s important to me, just with the sensitive nature of the source material, that, you know, we treat this whole thing really…. sensitively.”
They all nodded, except Dawn, who I couldn’t see. “We feel exactly the same way,” they said. “That’s what’s most important to us, too.”
It was another three weeks before I heard anything else, and by that point I’d forgotten I’d pitched on the project at all. So when my manager called, and said that the Epstein Files was going my way, it took a brief moment for me to understand what he was saying.
That night I had a second date with this girl Emily, and I told her I’d won the bid to develop the Epstein Files.
Emily wasn’t a writer. She did something with, I wanna say, plants. And she looked confused.
“Develop the Epstein Files?” She asked.
“It’s big IP,” I said. “And I think my take is really the way to do it. It’s high brow but in an accessible way.”
“So this means like, you… sold a show? What do you mean?”
I laughed. “Oh my god, no. Okay, so there’s this studio that has the exclusive rights to them.”
“Okay.”
“And they are bringing me in to develop a pitch based on them.”
“Oh. And they pay you for it?”
“Well, no. So the idea is that then we go out and take that pitch to buyers. Streaming platforms, mostly.”
“And then they make it into a show?”
“Well, if they like it, then they buy the concept, and then we develop it some more.”
“How long does that take?”
“Could be months, or years. And then if we get lucky, they make the pilot.”
“And then that’s what we see?”
“Oh, no. If they like the pilot, then they might pick it up to series. And that used to mean that it would eventually go to air, but not necessarily anymore. So you make the whole season - usually 6 or 8 episodes - and then maybe you get dumped on streaming and hopefully a few hundred thousand people watch it.”
She frowned. “So you’re excited about this? I genuinely can’t tell.”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “Because if all of that happens, then there’s a deadline article announcing it. And I can screenshot it and post it on instagram, where people from high school will see it.”
Emily took a long sip of her whiskey ginger. “Well,” she said. “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”
We went out two more times, and then I told her I wasn’t looking for anything serious.
A few months later, after the deal was signed and everything, we had a notes call. Maura had been laid off, so it was just me and Matty and off-camera Dawn.
“We’re so excited to hop in on this,” said Matty. “Internally, our sort of top line note is just that we want to make sure it’s really funny.”
“The idea itself is very clever,” said Dawn. “But we want to make sure the pitch comes off as like, laugh out loud funny. So we have some ideas.”
“So one thought we had was, have you heard of Mitch Fist?” I had. Mitch Fist was a libertarian podcast host who had recently come under a bit of fire for using a slur so awful it self-censors as it comes out of your mouth.
“I liked his early stuff,” I said, which was true; his stand up bit about milk jugs was an all-timer. “I wonder if he’s maybe a little… controversial?”
“He’s really interested in attaching as a co producer,” said Dawn.
“Hmmm,” I said.
“He’s a big value add,” said Matty. “Think about it.”
After we hung up, I called my manager.
“Oh wow, Mitch Fist is huge right now,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “But don’t you worry that —“
“Hey, listen,” said Keith (my manager’s name is Keith). “I meant to call you this afternoon anyway. I connected with Gina at Audible and she let me know there’s been a huge mandate shift and the Cold Stone content team was let go.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s a bummer,” said Keith. “But they’re excited to find something else with you.”
After Mitch Fist attached to the Epstein Files project, he had a few notes.
“I don’t like when it gets serious at the end,” he said. “Let’s lose that from the pitch.”
“I’ve just been seeing it as like, the emotional core of the show,” I said.
“It’s ultimately your vision, but just from our end,” Dawn chimed in. “We are on the same page with Mitch.”
“Also,” this was Jordan, Matty’s replacement (Matty got replaced). “A lot of buyers are really excited about physical comedy right now. Think Mr. Bean. Like, is there a more Mr. Bean version of this?”
“I love Mr. Bean,” said Mitch Fist. “Could we get like, a sexy female Mr. Bean in here?”
“I’ll take a look and see what I can do,” I said.
The next day, I went on a hike with Julie and Cameron, who seethed with delicious jealousy as they asked me how the project was going.
“Good,” I said. “You know. Development.” I pulled Bailey back from where she was trying to eat some coyote shit. “What are you guys working on?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of plasma donation,” said Julie, who looked weak. “so that’s been good.”
“I’ve been taking some groundlings classes,” said Cameron, whose last name was Soap, because his great-grandfather invented soap. “But I’m taking myself on sort of a writers retreat to Turks & Caicos in a few weeks to finally finish that mystery musical I was telling you about.”
At the top of Runyon we passed Liev Polk, an SVA classmate of mine who had amassed millions of followers chewing Polly Pocket shoes on Twitch. We made small talk, and when he told me he’d just bought a second home in Joshua Tree, I seethed with horrible jealousy.
I got terrible service in the canyon, but when I got back to my car, I saw a text from my manager, who told me the ramen people wouldn’t be moving forward with my take. “But it’s nothing personal;” he added. “They all died.”
It was decided that Mitch Fist would do the majority of the pitch when we took it to networks because he was, you know, famous. He introduced me first. “This is Josh,” he said. “He’s the best Jew writer around.”
I thought that would have put them off, but everyone laughed good-naturedly.
“And he had this great idea to make the Epstein Files into a hilarious comedy in the vein of Mr. Bean or Family Guy.” I didn’t interrupt that none of that had, in fact, been my idea, or that the Family Guy comp was news to me.
At the end of the pitch, the network execs gushed about how much they loved us, and how brilliant this idea was, and we thanked the network execs profusely, and walked back to our cars.
“Great job, Josh,” said Parker, who had replaced off-camera Dawn. “Seriously, I felt super good about that.”
The following day, Keith called to tell me they’d regretfully passed, because they had something else in development “in that space”.
But hope was not lost. We had seven more pitches: four to streamers, two to broadcast networks, and one to an appliance company that was thinking of getting into content to have something to watch on your microwave while you waited for your baked potato or whatever. I was told the broadcast networks hadn’t bought anything in eighteen years, but who knows, and that three of the streamers were about to merge into one.
Every pitch went better than the last. The execs were slapping their knees at the jokes, nodding appreciatively as i explained my thoughtful approach, and gushing about what a perfect fit for them we would be.
Every pass went better than the last, too, as each network relayed, through Parker and Louis (Jordan’s replacement) how much they loved this project, and wished they could take it on, but it just wasn’t the right fit for them.
Six months passed, and Keith called. “I just had an interesting talk with Mitch Fist’s parole officer,” said Keith. “What do you think about re-tooling the pitch for Garbage Broth?”
“Hmm,” I said. Garbage Broth was a state-run micro-content platform, specializing in fascist propaganda and videos of shark attacks. “Is it WGA?” I asked.
“No,” Keith said.
“Hmm,” I said.
That night, I ran into that girl Emily at a party. She asked me what I was up to, and I didn’t want to say, “questioning my choices”, so I said, “we’re gonna make the Epstein Files for Garbage Broth. Mitch Fist is attached.”
“Did someone put a gun to your head?” She asked. “Why are you doing that?”
“Everyone is really excited,” I said.
I must have manifested it, because I got a call from Keith, who already had Mitch Fist, Louis, Sandy (Parker’s replacement), and Zh’thurinthal the Infernal (SVP of Garbage Broth) on the line. They were going to be making an offer, and kept saying how excited they were to get into it.
They told us, “we have a sponsor already lined up!”
“Oh great!” I said.
“It’s Jeffrey Epstein!” They said.
“Jeffrey Epstein?” I said. “Is this… a coincidentally and unfortunately named but unrelated Jeffrey Epstein?”
“He’s very excited,” chimed in Zh’thurinthal the Infernal.
“And not afraid to poke fun at himself!” Said Sandy.
“Hmm,” I said. “I think,” I told Keith later. “This might not be a great idea.”
“Oh wow,” said Keith. “They just sent the contract over now, literally while we’re talking.”
“Is it a good offer?” I asked.
“It’s fair,” said Keith. “But we can probably get them up to twenty FIVE dollars.”
When I brought this whole thing up to Cameron (Julie had moved home, which we agreed made her a quitter), he frowned. “I’m sorry. I just don’t think I can truly be happy for you. I pitched on the Jonestown Tapes AI musical for PornFarm and just found out they went with that newly discovered Hadid instead.”
I asked what else he was working on. He excused himself to the bathroom and didn’t come back.
The development process with Garbage Broth wasn’t that painful, all things considered. I mean, there were network notes. Like, they thought the show would be better if it was ten to twelve seconds an episode. And they asked if there could be more explosions. I told them I could try but I wasn’t sure if that was really the vision I had for the show. They dumped honey on my face and forced me into a bear trap until I relented. Oh, also Jeffrey Epstein decided he didn’t really think we should call it, “the Epstein Files”. He liked the name, “Sharthole”. They were good collaborators.
I asked Keith, “When do you think Deadline might post about it?”
Keith said, “Never, Josh. Deadline was purchased by the Duchy of Luxembourg as a shell company for some mild off-shore laundering. They do AI-generated shopping lists now.”
“Then how will my high school classmates find me impressive?”
He didn’t respond.
Sharthole sat on the shelf for sixty-five years. In that time, Garbage Broth was sold to Raytheon+. Raytheon+ merged with Auntie Anne’s, like from the mall. They became RayAnne GO, and later just RAGO, and then back to just RayAnne. I got back together with Emily. We had children and grandchildren, and we watched them grow, but we kept it chill because I wasn’t really looking for anything serious. RayAnne collapsed and its assets were sold to a guy named Tim from Kentucky.
Tim from Kentucky projected the entirety of Sharthole against the wall of the CitiBank between the hours of 2 and 3:17 AM. I actually didn’t know about it when it was airing, but pretty quickly I started getting some very angry DMs.
“This is disgusting,” one said. “So different to the source material.”
And another: “You tell yourself a story that you’re an artist, but you’re a coward. You seek the approval of systems above the guidance of any sort of muse. You’re a propagandist with no real convictions. You have betrayed yourself and created nothing more than a damp wood in which the moral rot can fester.”
And a third: “you has no idea what they were doing 🙄 [sic]”
I called Keith’s widow and asked if she thought she could get Tim from Kentucky to respond to that last one. “Because, I mean, I didn’t really make these decisions. They sort of made me do it this way.”
“Well,” Keith’s widow said. “You could have said no.”
“But… I wanted to write.”
“Is that all? Was anyone stopping you?”
Taped to the fridge was a portrait of our family that my then-three-year-old grandson Thibault had drawn in crayon. In it we were smiling blobs, holding clumpy hands under a be-sunglassed sun. The burgeoning talent is apparent; and so much joy in the act of creation.
He’ll never make it.
One Must Imagine Sisyphus Doing the Artist’s Way
One must imagine Sisyphus genuinely happy for his friends who have successfully rolled their boulders over the other side of the hill. One must imagine Sisyphus saying, “you deserve this bb!” and thinking, “if they can do it, so can I.”
One must imagine Sisyphus has been listening to a lot of inspirational podcasts lately. One must imagine Sisyphus’ favorite podcast is called, “Rock It: How to Push That Boulder - and Yourself - to the Limit!” It is co-hosted by a boulder-pusher from the era where boulders were fifty pounds lighter and a girl whose dad used to push boulders. One must imagine that the podcast is sponsored by Gravity.
One must imagine Sisyphus making a vision board. One must imagine Sisyphus printing out a picture of a boulder balanced perfectly on top of the mountain, and then pasting a photo of himself, smiling, over it. You know, so he can really envision it. Really believing it is the key thing. One must imagine Sisyphus taping the vision board to his bathroom mirror and looking at it every day.
One must imagine Sisyphus having his birth chart read by this astrologer his friend swears by. One must imagine that Sisyphus learned he has Pluto in his 10th house, which can lead to difficulty with authority figures at your place of work. One must imagine Sisyphus paying an Etsy witch twenty bucks for a curative blessing to counter balance this difficult placement. One must imagine Sisyphus feeling this helped.
One must imagine Sisyphus setting screen time limits so he doesn’t get caught in an endless doom scroll. One must imagine Sisyphus believing that rolling his boulder is a form of protest. One must imagine Sisyphus telling himself, if he stops rolling his boulder, the fascists win.
One must imagine Sisyphus buying himself little treats. One must imagine Sisyphus in line at Cha Cha Matcha and La La Land Kind Cafe. One must imagine Sisyphus opening an Exciting Macaron Labubu. One must imagine Sisyphus trying Dubai chocolate. One must imagine Sisyphus thinking, “I dunno if this lives up to the hype”, but eating the whole thing anyway. It cost $24.
One must imagine Sisyphus finding a journal from his childhood. “One must imagine that when I grow up, I will push boulders up mountains,” wrote Sisyphus, age 10. One must imagine Sisyphus on his best days, thinking, “I push boulders up mountains. I am making my childhood dream come true.” One must further imagine Sisyphus on his worst days, thinking, “dumbass kid should have been more specific”.
One must imagine Sisyphus believes he is happier rolling boulders than he would be doing anything else. One must imagine Sisyphus saying, “this boulder ain’t gonna roll itself!” One must imagine Sisyphus does not believe that AI could ever truly roll a boulder. One must imagine Sisyphus has friends who would kill to roll boulders. One must imagine Sisyphus knows how many people would love to take his place. One must imagine Sisyphus is grateful, you know? And yes, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.
But still, one must imagine Sisyphus occasionally looks into grad school.
Grief Ghost
There’s a ghost in my kitchen, and I get that he’s meant to represent grief, but he’s scaring my dog and I need him to leave.
“Hey,” I say to Grief Ghost. “If you’re here for Laura Hoffman, she’s actually my landlord; she doesn’t live here. She lives on a ranch in Temecula. Much nicer to haunt.” Grief Ghost doesn’t budge. I don’t have time for this; I have to take Pancake to the vet for her cytopoint injection or she’ll start dragging her butt on the couch.
When I get back, he’s still here.
“The thing is,” I say to Grief Ghost. “I actually am not grieving anymore? I haven’t been for a while. But I promise l cried and talked about it in therapy and, like, dealt with it, so I’m thinking maybe you’re like a year late?” Grief Ghost ignores me and opens the fridge.
I google “how to get rid of a ghost that’s a metaphor” and get some answers from the AI summary at the top. I light a bunch of white candles. I pour salt on the floor and make sure Pancake doesn’t eat it. I simultaneously play YouTube videos of like twelve different religions’ prayers just to cover all my bases. Grief Ghost eats my Lucky Charms while tracing the maze on the back of the box with a spectral finger.
I lock myself in the bathroom and call Laura at her ranch in Temecula and ask if she’s ever had a Grief Ghost here before. “Like a Babadook?” She asks. I tell her I haven’t seen The Babadook. “You should watch it, I know everyone says it, but it’s really good,” she says. “At the end of the movie - I know you haven’t seen it but it came out over a decade ago, so - they keep the Babadook in their basement and feed it worms and stuff and it represents, like, tending to their grief in the longterm. Maybe see if he’ll chill in a closet.”
When I get back to the kitchen, Grief Ghost is gone, and there are Lucky Charms everywhere.
I don’t see Grief Ghost for a few days, so I think the coast is clear to have a friend over. Chelsea and I are half-watching The Lizzie McGuire Movie and half insta stalking the new girlfriend of the now-ex-husband of a girl I haven’t seen since middle school, when Chelsea goes, “holy shit, is that a ghost in your kitchen?”
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s a grief metaphor.”
“Very A24,” says Chelsea. “I thought you weren’t grieving anymore?”
“I’m not,” I say. “He showed up late, I guess.”
“Maybe he’s, like, trying to teach you how to incorporate grief into your life,” she suggests. “Hey, Grief Ghost! Want to come watch a movie with us?”
I can hear the sound of Grief Ghost trying to figure out the stand mixer. At least someone’s using it.
Grief Ghost is uninterested in incorporating into my life. For the next few weeks, he sits in my kitchen and completely cleans out my cabinet. He even makes his way through all the canned goods I bought during the pandemic and then forgot to eat. It’s sort of Slimer-coded, but it’s not fun and gross, it’s frustrating, and it’s starting to get expensive.
When Grief Ghost leaves again, I decide to backtrack through the things I did to work through my grief in the first place. I spend time in nature. I buy a guided shadow work journal from TikTok shop and even use it a few times. I see a reiki healer. I let a balloon go in my backyard, and free it when it gets caught in a tree. The anniversary comes and goes, and I wouldn’t even have known except my photos app shows it as a memory. I’m honestly fine. And no sign of Grief Ghost.
I’m really feeling pretty good by the time Grief Ghost comes back. I’m making a post-Pilates protein shake and when I reach for the most important ingredient (Nutella), it’s empty. I look up at Grief Ghost, who is spooning it out of the jar, and I mean like a BIG spoon, like a serving spoon. I ask him to at least stick around until Halloween so I can use him as a cool decoration, but he’s out by October 11th (which I remember because it’s the Lohan twins’ birthday in The Parent Trap).
I have not been able to figure out the rules of Grief Ghost. Sometimes he’s gone for weeks at a time. Sometimes I hear Pancake barking in the kitchen and know I’m gonna have to do a Costco run or Grief Ghost is gonna finish off my frozen potstickers. Grief Ghost is frustratingly untidy, both as a house guest and a metaphor, but all things considered he isn’t that much of a bother. Sometimes I even miss him, just a little, when I realize he’s gone. Just a little.