Flight Of The Achilles: Part 3

“Houston, we have a problem.” –Many astronauts, perhaps all of them

I sat in the cockpit of the Achilles waiting for the launch. There were two seats in the front and two in the back. I sat in the back row next to Bryan. Captains Charles Jawline and Vanessa Chastity-Tantrum sat in the front. The seatback in front of me had an issue of Skymall Magazine in it; I picked it up and flipped through it to kill time. They were selling a catcher’s mitt that said “World’s Best Boss” on it. I thought that I would buy it for Elias Ingman-Christos, but when I called to order it, they told me that they didn’t accept college credit as payment.

Charles Jawline craned his head around the back of his seat and looked at me. He smiled. “So,” he said, “you’re the lucky whacko who found the Golden Ticket. Welcome aboard the Achilles. We’re happy to have you.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “My name is James.”

“That’s your Earth name,” said Charles Jawline, “Your space name is Carl The Wino.”

I didn’t really want a space name, but I also didn’t want to give Stunt Magazine a bad reputation by refusing. So I just said, “Yes sir.”

“Say it,” said Charles Jawline, “say you’re Carl The Wino.”

“I’m Carl The Wino,” I said.

“Great. Glad to have you aboard,” said Charles, “Let me introduce you to the rest of the crew. This lovely lady is Captain Vanessa Chastity-Tantrum, and that distinguished gentleman over there is Bryan.”

I waved.

“I’m Carl The Wino,” I said.

No sooner had I been acquainted with the crew than a voice crackled over the shuttle’s intercom. “Achilles, this is Mission Control,” said the voice, “We’re just about ready to start the count down, we just want to make sure everything is in order. The first, most important, and only safety precaution we need to check is does that Golden Ticket dooshball have a space name yet?”

“Roger, Mission Control, it’s Carl The Wino,” said Vanessa.

“Great. Okay, so we’ll go ahead and start the count down for you here. We will be launching in T-minus ten…nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…one!”

Five minutes later the engines ignited and we were hurtling into the sky at the worst speed of all. We were all thrown back into our seats as the Achilles raced toward the cosmos. Bryan reached over in his seat and clutched my hand tightly. I tried to pull it away, but he just gripped it tighter. In the seats in front of us Charles and Vanessa looked out the window and screamed in terror. “What the fuck is happening?” shrieked Charles, tears pouring down his face, “I want to die! I want to die!” Vanessa spit up. Then Charles spit up. Then Bryan spit up. Then Charles spit up. Then Bryan spit up. Then Vanessa spit up. Then Bryan spit up. Then Vanessa spit up. Then Charles spit up. Then Vanessa spit up. Then Bryan said the words “Spit up” but didn’t actually spit up. Then Charles spit up. There was a deafening roar as the clouds disappeared below us and the sky became pale and thin and suddenly everything around us was black and silent. The rush subsided and we were suddenly drifting peacefully across a sprawling tapestry of stars. We had made it to space.

A voice came in over the intercom: “Achilles, this is Mission Control. Congratulations on space. As a reward, you may each kiss the Victory Sphere.”

“Thank you, Mission Control,” said Charles Jawline. He reached over to a glass case in the cockpit wall. The case had a volleyball in it. The volleyball had a frowny face drawn on it in black marker. Next to the case was a sign that said, “In case of victory, break glass.”

Charles Jawline broke the glass and took out the frowning volleyball. He kissed it loudly and passed it to Vanessa, who also kissed it. She passed it to Bryan, and he kissed it as well. Bryan then passed the frowning volleyball to me. I looked into its frowning face and was suddenly gripped by a vague feeling that I was capable of great evil.

“Kiss it,” said Charles Jawline. “Kiss the Victory Sphere.”

Reluctantly, I lifted the frowning volleyball to my face, kissed it quickly, and passed it back to Charles. “It hates you,” Charles informed me. Then he put the frowning volleyball back in the case.

The intercom crackled back to life, and the voice spoke again: “And now, His Majesty Ghouls Arlington the King of NASA has a special message for Carl the Wino.” A video monitor lowered from the ceiling and switched on. On the monitor stood Ghouls Arlington, silent as ever in his spacesuit and crown. He slowly lifted up a picture of my dad and held it in front of the camera. Then he slowly tore the picture in half. Then the screen went black and the monitor retracted back into the ceiling.

“Okay, Achilles, that’s it for now,” said the voice on the intercom, “You are cleared to begin conceiving the Astro-Baby. We wish you the best of luck, and Godspeed.”

“Roger, Mission Control,” said Vanessa, “Thank you. Over and out.”

“Alright, everyone, let’s get started,” said Charles. My three crewmates unstrapped themselves from their seats. They floated gently into the air and hovered above me. I went to unstrap myself and follow them, but Vanessa told me that since I had no astronaut experience, I wasn’t qualified to float around.

“Alright,” said Charles, “we all know how this is going to go down. Captain Chastity-Tantrum and I are in charge of conceiving the Astro-Baby. Bryan, you’re on cleanup duty. Carl The Wino, you’re in charge of guarding us from monsters and tragedies. Everyone ready?”

I wasn’t ready.

“Begin!” Charles shouted. He and Vanessa wriggled out of their spacesuits and into the nude. They grabbed each other and began frantically thrusting into one another. Entwined in the act of child-making, they drifted weightlessly around the space shuttle as a horrifying, undulating mass of screaming, grunting flesh. They crashed into dials and dashboards that shattered on impact. They slammed into the front of the cockpit and snapped the steering wheel. They slammed into the side of the cockpit and sent splintered glass and important-looking gauges spiraling into the ether. They slammed into the ceiling and covered us all in a shower of debris. All the while, they screamed and grunted and screamed and made a child. Meanwhile, Bryan fulfilled his cleanup duties by taking out a mop and swinging it wildly, blindly breaking everything that came across his path. “Bryan!” shrieked Bryan. “Bryan!”

After two terrifying hours, the mission was complete. The crew members clothed themselves and returned to their seats. The cockpit had been reduced to a pile of sparking rubble. Everyone kissed the Victory Sphere. “Mission accomplished, crew,” said Captain Charles Jawline, “Let’s go home.”

At that moment there was a deafening crash and the Achilles jerked violently back and forth. A siren began to blare and warning lights began to flash. An enormous antenna crashed through the Achilles’ hull. The antenna said “Stunt Magazine” on it.

“Dammit, what the hell is this?” shouted Charles, “What is Stunt Magazine and why is their satellite in a restricted airspace?”

“What does a magazine need a satellite for?” Vanessa asked, genuinely bewildered.

The Achilles trembled and began to fall to Earth, dragging the Stunt Magazine satellite down with it. “What the fuck is happening?” shrieked Charles, tears streaming down his face, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! Kill me! Kill me now! I don’t want to die!” Everyone spit up. The Achilles screamed across the sky (Gravity’s Rainbow, pg. 1). Flames fringed its shuddering body as it sank through the atmosphere. Bryan reached out and grabbed my hand. I was too terrified to pull it away.

We crash-landed in the parking lot of the Cape Canaveral Center For Space Adventures And Disasters. We had crashed in a handicapped spot, and a police officer came over to the flaming pile of wreckage and gave it a parking ticket. We crawled out from among the debris, dazed but unharmed.

“How did we survive?” I asked Charles.

“I don’t know, Carl The Wino,” he said, gazing glassy-eyed into the sky, “I suppose it’s just one of the great mysteries of space.”

My storyteller’s instincts told me that there was more to our death-defying escape than met the eye, but I was content to let that riddle unravel itself for me in its own time. I asked Charles if he could give me a ride home. He told me that he would rather die. I shrugged and walked back to the bus station. I had to get started writing my story on the Flight Of The Achilles if I wanted to meet my deadline. I rode home in silence, contemplating my impossible fall from the stars. The life of a journalist is fraught with danger. It was an honor to stare Death in the face for the sake of the craft.

Flight Of The Achilles: Part 2

“I thought that they were angels, but to my surprise,/We climbed aboard their starship, we headed for the skies.” –Anonymous

The next day, I crawled out from beneath my desk ready to fight for my right to cover space shuttle launches. I looked over the list of plans I had devised for ensuring that I would be the one to report on the Achilles:

1. Murder Owen McEwan [crossed out]
2. Murder everybody [crossed out]
3. Don’t murder anything [circled and underlined, but with a question mark after it]
4. Boldly approach Owen McEwan and demand to cover the story, no matter the personal or professional cost [circled and underlined]

So it looked like it was time to make one of my signature James Witt Bold Demands™. I set off to put my plans into action. I walked to Owen McEwan’s office and knocked on the door.

“No! Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes!” called Owen’s voice from behind the closed door.

“Was that a ‘No’ or a ‘Yes’? I called back.

“Neither,” he said.

Confused and defeated, I walked back to my desk. When I got there, Owen was sitting on it. He had thrown a picture of my family in the garbage. I think he brought the picture from home.

“Weren’t you just in your office?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” said Owen. “Listen, Witt, I need you to pay me a kindness. I was supposed to cover that space nightmare today, but I think it’s horrible and also I hate it because it’s shit. Instead, I’m going to go run a story on the effects of sex-loudness on modern abs. It’s gonna blow up. Probably get a couple hundred-thousand Likes. I need you to go cover this cosmic sadness for me. Here’s a bus schedule.” Then he made me carry him back to his office and close the door.

I couldn’t believe it! The Achilles had fallen right into my lap and I didn’t even have to set any schemes in motion! I felt weightless as I left the Stunt offices and ran down to the bus station to catch a ride to Cape Canaveral.

The bus ride took a few hours. I sat next to an old man who told me that he was a secret. Across the aisle, a police officer was kissing a framed photograph of himself and sobbing. The bus driver was texting and driving the entire trip. I know this because I was the one he was texting. He texted me the word “Jailbird” over and over. I don’t know how he got my number. We crashed a thousand times. Finally, the bus arrived in Cape Canaveral and I got off. I asked the man at the bus station if there was any public transit to the space launch. He said that there was not, but he offered to throw me as far as he could in the direction of the launch site. I flew about six feet and then had to walk the rest of the way. After several hours of walking I found myself at the front door of an enormous building. A large sign above the door said “Welcome To The Cape Canaveral Center For Space Adventures And Disasters.” I had reached my destination. I took a deep breath and went inside.

What initially struck me as I entered the center was the facility’s flare for imposing statuary. A 600-foot marble statue of Neil Armstrong greeted me at the entrance. In the statue, he stood proudly on the surface of the Moon. The American flag and the Apollo spacecraft were behind him, and he had his space helmet tucked under one arm as he smiled triumphantly. Inscribed in the statue’s base, in gilded lettering, were the following words:

“Dedicated To The Memory Of Neil Armstrong: A Hero In Space And In The Bedroom, He Gave Multiple Orgasms To His Wife, To Whom He Was Presumably Faithful, And He Walked On The Moon. He’s Dead.”

I stood at the base of this statue, silent in the presence of such a great man’s image. I laid my hand gently on the word “Orgasms” and sighed.

At the foot of the statue, I noticed a small brass gong, with a sign next to it that read “Ring gong for the interactive Neil Armstrong experience.” I picked up the mallet lying on the ground, and rang the gong. The sound echoed around me, and no sooner had it died away than a man in a spacesuit waddled out from behind the statue and spritzed me in the face with a spray bottle full of water. The man then retreated back behind the statue. Wow! It was like I had really gone to space and died there!

I traveled beyond the stone behemoth and through Cape Canaveral’s main gates. I found myself in a massive throne room, overflowing with people eagerly hoping to catch a glimpse the Achilles’ historic launch. At the head of this palatial chamber, set upon a platform that was slightly elevated above the rest of the room, was an enormous, ivory throne with the word “SPACE” carved into it. Nobody sat in the throne, but it was guarded on either side by a knight wearing a suit of armor with a space helmet instead of a knight helmet. The knights held American flags with long poles and were silent and still.

A door at the side of the room opened, and a man carrying a bugle ran into the room. He jumped onto the elevated platform where the throne was, raised the bugle to his lips, and produced a pomp-filled flourish of considerable volume. The throbbing murmur of the crowd crested into a rippling gasp and then died away. Everyone looked at the man who had blown the bugle.

“Listen! Listen! Listen!” the bugle person screamed, “All present fall upon your knees and tremble at the approach of Ghouls Arlington, The King Of NASA.” The crowd around me fell to the floor in a unified bow.  The giant main doors directly behind us flew open. Everyone stood up, turned around, and then bowed facing the other direction. An ornate litter, each of its four corners held aloft by a silent man in a full space suit, was carried into the throne room. The figure atop the litter was hidden inside a massive red-velvet canopy. The astronauts carried it to the throne and set down. The red-velvet curtains of the canopy parted and a man I recognized from the cover of Yes, Space, Of Course Magazine stepped out. It was Ghouls Arlington, the King Of NASA. He also wore a space suit, but balanced on top of his space helmet was a golden crown thoroughly troubled by jewel-business all over. He also carried two identical golden trophies, topped with mini golden astronauts, under the crook of either arm. He moved slowly, in large bounding steps, as if he were walking on the moon. He stood before the crowd and held up both trophies triumphantly over his head and everyone screamed with joy.

Then the man with the bugle spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he bellowed, “Ghouls Arlington, the King Of NASA, welcomes you to the Cape Canaveral Center For Space Adventures And Disasters. Today we will witness history, as the space shuttle Achilles catapults itself into the blackness of the void to carry out Operation Astral Son. Before this momentous occasion, however, His Majesty the King wishes for you all to dine on REAL ASTRONAUT FOOD!” The crowd went berserk. People clapped and whistled and screamed. Women shrieked with delight and tore out clumps of their hair and at least one man started masturbating. A hatch in the ceiling opened up and packages of dehydrated ice cream rained down on us all. The crazed masses tore into them and began choking them down as fast as they could.

I picked up a package that had landed on the ground close to me and opened it up. As I tore it open, I noticed a flash of gold beneath the wrapper. I opened the package all the way and found that, along with my dehydrated ice cream, it also contained a golden ticket. The front of the ticket said, “Hey! Alright! Nice!” with a picture of an astronaut giving me a thumbs-down. On the back it said “MANDATORY.”

“Hey!” a woman screamed, pointing at me, “He’s got the Golden Ticket!” Everyone in the room fell silent and stared at me. Ghouls Arlington threw one of his trophies at me. It hit me in the dick and balls. The bugle guy smiled at me and said, “Congratulations. You have found the Golden Ticket. You, out of all these gathered thousands, have won the honor of joining the crew of the space shuttle Achilles on their journey to the cosmos. You are a part of Operation Astral Son. You’re going to space.”

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“You have to,” he said.

Flight Of The Achilles: Part 1

“You can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want.” –Rolling Stone

The Stunt Magazine offices were swollen with the noise of sound and the air was sticky with the sound of noise. Electricity hung in the air like lightning after the storm. I knew from the second I stepped off the elevator that something was going on.

I didn’t have to ask twice what was happening. I didn’t even have to ask once. I already knew already. Everyone already knew, including me already: Today was the day that NASA was launching the Achilles Space Shuttle. I had been following the story intently over the past several days, and I was convinced that it was the scoop I had been born to cover. Through my ruthless research on the mission I had become something of an idiot savant on the subject and, when pressed, could easily rattle off some brief facts about the Achilles Space Shuttle and its mission.

Some brief facts about the Achilles Space Shuttle and its Mission:

• Mission Name: Operation Astral Son
• Mission Directive: Produce the first human child entirely conceived and delivered in space.
• Duration of Mission: As long as it takes or 3 years, whichever comes first.

The Achilles was to be (wo)manned by the following wo(men):

• Captain Chuck “Charles” Jawline: Chief Commanding Officer of the Shuttle, First In Command, Handsome Astronaut Man, Future Father-to-Be Of The Astro-Baby
• Captain Vanessa Chastity-Tantrum: Chief Commanding Officer of the Shuttle, First In Command, Beautiful Astronaut Lady, Future Mother-to-Be of the Astro-Baby
• Bryan: Maintenance

If I wanted the assignment, I had to act fast: every reporter in the Stunt office, from the Pop-Culture Department to the Television Department, wanted to smear their name all over this story. Without delay, I went straight to Elias Ingman-Christos’s office to express my interest.

I marched right on into Elias’s office and I said, “Sir, I’ve given my heart and soul to this publication and I boldly demand that you allow me to cover the launch of the Achilles.”

“Gargle the sweat of a monster while your boat sinks, you degenerate!” Elias screamed at me, “I already gave that story to the tall, muscular reporter Owen McEwan and I’ll not let you within six thousand miles of it.”

Elias turned to his Roman centurions. “Guards!” he said, “remove this singing tumor from my direct line of sight and from the furthest ranges of my peripheries. His shape reminds me that I will one day die, and he smells like a foul wind carrying sad news.”

The two centurions flanking Elias grabbed me firmly by the arms and dragged me from the office without ceremony.

I was devastated to think that the Launch of the Achilles should slip away from me. I thought, for an unpleasant moment, that the matter had been settled against me.  But then I was reminded of a famous story about Ernest Hemingway when he was an unpaid intern for the New Yorker:

Hemmingway had asked to cover the Kentucky Derby and his editor said, “Eat the dicks of the Dead, Ernie. This one’s not for you.” Hemingway did not like hearing “No” for an answer, so in the night he snuck into the stables and crawled into Seabiscuit’s mouth, down his throat, and nestled deep inside his equine bowels. The next day, Seabiscuit ran the race of his life with Hemingway all secretly jostling around all inside of his belly deep in hiding like a spy.

When Seabiscuit crossed the finish line, Hemingway’s Editor-In-Chief came up to the Champion Horse to interview him. A transcript of the interview is reproduced below:

EIC: Mr. Biscuit, two questions: How does it feel to be a horse, and how does it feel to be a horse who just won the Kentucky Derby? And is sex better for horses than for people?

[Hemingway bursts out of Seabiscuit’s stomach, killing the horse in an eruption of viscera as the horse’s ribcage springs open like a jack-in-the-box.]

Hemingway: Surprise, Mutherfocker! You told me not to be here, but here I am, ya dooshball! [Grabs the microphone out of the EIC’s hands and addresses the crowd.] Ladies and gentlemen! For sale: baby shoes, never worn! [Crowd goes fucking ballistic. EIC dies of a stroke while getting arrested for murder.]

###

The next day, Hemingway got a call from Assgraves Publishing (a Top Company of the Market), and they said “Please write The Sun Also Rises for us.” He did, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I knew that if Ernest Hemingway could do something, then there was no reason why I couldn’t do it too. Hemingway refused to take “No” for an answer, and as a result he became one of the greatest geniuses of our time. I, too, would hear “Yes” where people said “No,” and I, too, would write The Snows of Kilimanjaro. I would cover the launch of the Space Shuttle Achilles, or I would die trying to kill the people who tried to stop me.

But for Elias Ingman-Christos I feigned defeat. I said, “Very well, sir, that sounds reasonable,” and I bowed out of his office with the veneer of respectful deference.

But James Witt is nothing if not a schemer. My friend Justin calls me the Scheme Weaver, because my plots are majestic tapestries. That night, I crawled beneath my desk and set my mind to scheme-weaving a plan to report upon the Departure of the Achilles whether Elias consented or not. The yarn of fancy coursed over the loom of possibility as I spun my tangled plans deep into the evening.

A Moveable Feast: Part 2

“On the road”- Jack Kerouac

The next morning, I sprang out of bed at the nauseous hour of 4:45. I hustled downtown to catch a bus from Port Authority, taking note of the weather and mood of the city before I left the city. As I learned in journalism class, the “setting” of a piece can be what reels in the reader in your first few paragraphs.

The bus ride took a few hours, and an African-American guy kept asking me to scratch his back, but before long we arrived in the small town of Petersburg, New York. Upon arrival, I soon realized that there was no public transportation available, and that cabs didn’t run all that often in the area. I went up to a guy sitting on a bench and asked him for directions, but when I touched his shoulder he slumped forward and kind of rolled onto the ground. His eyes were open and really yellow, and his mouth looked pretty dry. He was wearing a shirt that said “I Came Here To Die” and had a picture of the nerdy guy from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on it. I hope he’s ok 😦

Knowing that I needed to get to the wedding ASAP, I set off on foot and decided to hitchhike. Just like the Beat writers–Kerouac, Ginsburg, Steely Dan–I was living on the edge of society, benefiting from the warmth of nature and the kindness of others. I walked about a half mile or so when I heard a car tearing up the road behind me. I swiveled, stopped, and extended my thumb. The car glimmered in the distance, the heat of the road blurring the black vehicle in a gauzy, pixilated blur. As it drew closer, I saw that it was full of young men. My heart soared as the car steered onto the shoulder and came to a stop.

As the car stopped, one of the young men inside stuck his head out the window. He was wearing a tuxedo, and looked ready for a fancy ceremony. As I approached the car, he yelled “Hurry up! We’re gonna be late!” Suddenly struck by the danger of hitchhiking but desperate to report on my first big story, I walked over to the car. It was a pretty nice Nissan, and the front license plate said “FIENDS”. The guy in the front rolled down his window. He was handsome and disarming.

“Hey guys–you headed up Route 9?”

“You whacko. Of course we are! Now get in and hurry up, we’re gonna be late!”

Excited, I hopped into the back seat. There were 4 other guys in the car, and now I saw that they were all wearing tuxedos. I explained that I worked with Stunt and that I was headed to a wedding in Hoosic Falls.

“You whacko. We are too!” they shouted, smiling.

“No kidding. To the Fujitsu wedding?”

“No, to the other wedding we’ve all been waiting for since we were kids.” Said the driver, whose name was Ronnie (according to a fortune teller I saw recently). Everyone laughed, and I chuckled nervously. It seemed that the wedding was an even bigger deal than I had originally thought. The editors at Stunt must really believe in me.

As we approached the wedding, the sides of the road became more and more crowded with people, all walking in the same direction. When we were about 2 miles away, the foot traffic became so thick that it became hard to drive: People were just walking in the middle of the street, all dressed in their finest suits and gowns. There were no other cars on the road, so people looked startled when they saw us slowly pushing our way through traffic.

At one point, I could just about see the banquet hall up ahead, and the road was so choked with pedestrians that we couldn’t have been going more than 3 or 4 miles per hour. And suddenly one of the bystanders looks into our windows, and they yell “It’s him! It’s him!”. The whole crowd starts to go berserk, all looking into our windows and smiling. We’re basically at a standstill at this point, just inching through this swarm of exuberant wedding-goers. I look around to the other guys in the car, trying to figure out who everyone is looking at, but they just smile at me.

After what felt like a lifetime, we finally arrived at the banquet. It was a beautiful Victorian house, bright white with green shutters, blooming with age and sun spots. Lilacs and daisies led the way to the altar. When I exited the car, I could hardly get my notepad out with all of the attendees swarming our car. I asked Ronnie where to go, holding up my press pass for the event.

“Follow me,” he said. I guessed that Ronnie was press too, maybe one of the guys from the New York Times style section or something. I tried to think of any famous columnists named Ronnie, but I came up blank.

As I pushed through the crowd following Ronnie, I realized that we were getting pretty close to the front. Before long we were on the stage itself, and I was looking out over the sea of people gathered for the wedding. The crowd burst into applause, which scared me. I took a step backwards off the stage, motioning to the audience that I was sorry, I didn’t mean to walk onto the altar. But Ronnie gestured for me to come onstage. I resisted, but the crowd thrust me up onto the altar and cheered like crazy.

I had never felt so appreciated. I turned to Ronnie and started to ask what was going on, but he stopped me short.

“Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Groom. This is the happiest day of your life.”

I started to insist that I was not the groom, that they had the wrong guy, that I was an intern at Stunt Magazine sent to cover the wedding story. But the audience drowned out my pleas, and refused to let me off the stage. I would just have to wait for my bride.

Resigned to my fate, I took the place on the altar alongside my groomsmen, Ronnie and the other guys from the car.

When the crowd parted, I got my first glimpse of the woman I was to marry. And she was beautiful:  a gleaming black, 50” in diameter, plasma flat-screen TV. There was a white veil draped over it, and it was being wheeled by a well-dressed older gentleman. When he reached the front of the church, the older man gave the TV a kiss and pushed it silently towards the altar. Two altar boys grabbed it and put it in my arms. It was kind of heavy, but I propped it up against my stomach for support.

The crowd fell silent as the TV and I exchanged our vows to become man and wife. When I finally said “I do” to the blank plasma screen, the crowd erupted into enormous applause, and I honestly felt like it was meant to be. I was married! I was married to a beautiful Fujitsu flat screen TV!

The rest of the evening was a beautiful whirlwind of champagne, cake, and love. I swear I’ve never been so happy in my life, basking in the adoration of the townspeople and my gorgeous new bride. I probably drank too much, because I kind of forget a lot of the night. The last thing I really remember was being seated in an oversized baby chair, where my legs were free to flail around. A doctor came up to me and diagnosed me with sadness.

When I woke up my bride was gone from the bed, and I couldn’t find her anywhere in the suite. I walked outside and asked the concierge if she had seen her. She said that she hadn’t, and seemed surprised when I said that she was a flat-screen TV. When I went to the hotel lobby, no one seemed to recognize me from the day before. Ronnie ignored me completely, and the Doctor diagnosed me with silliness. All of these people who had worshipped me just hours before seemed to act like they had never seen me before.

Unable to find my bride, and getting antsy to get back to New York, I shrugged and walked back to the bus station. The life of a journalist is full of surprises, and this time, I married a TV 🙂

A Moveable Feast: Part 1

“Take life by the horns.”  -Dodge Motors

The way I see it, there are 2 ways of approaching an internship assignment: a.) begrudgingly, or b.) enthusiastically. When a supervisor hands you an assignment, you can either act like you’re “above it” or you can embrace it, taking the menial work as an opportunity to learn. At Stunt, I constantly remind myself to appreciate each opportunity given to me, no matter how I “feel” about the work. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that I actually get to write for one of my favorite magazines. Even if I’m not paid in actual money, I’m constantly rewarded in infinitely valuable ideas and experience that will guide my career.

So it was to my great pleasure when Elias Ingman-Christos, Stunt’s Editor-in-Chief, called me into his office last Friday. “Witt! Get in here, you dickless troll!” I scurried out from under my desk to Elias’s office. The Roman centurions uncrossed their spears, allowing me to enter.

“Listen, Witt,” he started, carefully selecting a piece of horse jerky from the jar on his desk. “Our resident beefprince Owen McEwan has unexpectedly flown off to the Virgin Islands to report on how the sun glistens on his impeccable jawline. We’ll need the interns to pick up some slack while he’s away. And you’re the lucky replacement, you freckle on an honest dog’s tit.”

“Woah! Thank you, Mr. Ingman-Christos,” I said, feeling like I might keel over. My first big story! But wait—what would I be reporting on? Poverty? War? Racism?

“A reclusive heiress upstate is getting married, and everyone wants to know who the groom is. She’s the heir to the Fujitsu fortune, and all of the social and political perks that come with it. But no one knows who her fiancé is; she stays locked away in her mansion, and has never been seen with him. But he’s a lucky bastard, whoever this guy is.”

“Woah. So this Fujitsu fortune—where did it come from?”

“Hard to say, really. Tech products, mostly: TVs, camcorders, that sort of thing. But why are you asking me? Am I the fount of truth? Am I the Lord? Did I birth the saints? Go to your laptop and do some research, Witt.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, I’m just excited for my first assignment. Any tips?”

“No, but if you’re going to write anything worth a teaspoon of rat spit, you’re not going to do it by telling anyone you’re a journalist. You need to look like you’re just another wedding guest. Now get out of my office, Frasier is coming on in 45 minutes and I’m still wearing my work clothes.”

I sat down to my desk and started to research, but I was quickly derailed. I tried to focus, but the Internet was exploding with accusations of racism and sexism. The previous night, Jimmy Fallon had done a bit called “This b**** won’t shut up” where he invited female audience members onstage to talk about their day, and then booed and screamed at them until they cried or left. The clip was going viral, despite being accused of exploiting old racial stereotypes because ?uestlove and The Roots had to sit there and play their instruments like buffoons.

I read all the video comments and commented “Another example of white privilege that Fallon gets his own show. Sickening. Dear NBC, show some class for once and fire Jimmy Fallon and give the show to ?uestlove. Love, someone who’s actually paying attention.” When I finally submitted the comment, I looked up and realized that it was almost 2 a.m. and the office was completely empty.

I closed my computer and walked around the office, looking at the covers of issues past, blown up to poster size around the walls of the Stunt office. There was the famous “Obama Clowns Around” issue, where then-senator Barack Obama posed as a clown for a photo shoot, and admitted to using steroids to be a better husband. There was the “9/11 Remembered: Russell Brand Tells All” issue. And of course, the incendiary “How Do They Make Candles?” issue. Journalism was a strange science, but these feature articles represented an expert ability to recognize a need in the public consciousness and fill it with information.

I could hardly believe that I would soon contribute to this rich legacy of journalism and integrity. My mind was already picturing the article online, with a witty title and my name just below it. “Fujitsu Fiasco” by James Witt. My friends would post it online, and it would blow up. 50 likes? 100 likes? Jesus Christ, could I get 200 likes?

The excitement reminded me of an old story I had heard about John Lennon when he was just an intern at Nike Footwear and Boiling Water Distributors. One of the guys at Nike asked John to carry a big ol’ pot of boiling water to one of their clients. But John just calmly sat down to his typewriter, typed the words “The horse jumped over the fucking fence”, and stormed out of the office. As legend has it, John wrote every word to “Hey Jude” that day on the elevator ride from the 6th floor to the first.

I was feeling just as bold as John Lennon when I finally crawled under my desk to get a few hours of sleep. But I didn’t quite write a song. No, no–my creative masterpiece was still to come. My friends texted me to ask if I wanted to go to the Finger Lakes, but I warded them off with two sentences that I never thought I’d get to say: “I’m sorry, I can’t. I have to get up early to report on a story.” I slipped under my desk and dozed off, dreaming of Pulitzers.