Too Many Mornings

Dear Readers,

I’d sincerely like to thank you for helping me make it to the championship round of Blogger Idol, hosted by Knucklehead! I honestly did not expect to get this far, and I’m grateful for your support.

Please read the following post, then visit Knucklehead! to read my competitor’s entry and vote for the story you like best. You’ll find a voting block on the right-hand side of the page. Just click Too Many Mornings or Life According to Candice, then click “Vote,” and you’ll be done. My competitor, Candice, has hinted that she will post naked photos of herself if she wins. But I’ll do something even better: I guarantee I won’t post naked pictures of myself if I win.

Thank you kindly,

Michael Whiteman-Jones

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Some things that happen in Vegas also leave Vegas.

Turn off your computer, and take a walk instead. Go visit your grandmother and enjoy a glass of iced lemonade while you reminisce about old times. Give your children an ice cream cone. Read the leather-bound book of prayers your pastor loaned you. Do anything—anything else at all—that seems wholesome, pure and good, and never, ever visit this site again.

I issue this warning because what I’m about to tell you is not only true, it’s so horrific that I’ve unsuccessfully tried to suppress the memory of it for nearly 30 years. And I’m only sharing it with you today because I hope that by finally bringing this secret into the open, I will be able to expunge it from my mind.

I want to be healed.

I want to watch the sun rise on a new day and not see only shadows.

I want to laugh, and not think about crying.

My sad story begins in the spring of 1982. That was the year my wife and I travelled to Las Vegas, Nev., for a weekend of rest and relaxation. We booked a room the legendary Stardust Resort.

The Stardust is gone today, a victim of the modernization that has transformed Las Vegas into an adult-oriented amusement park. But when it opened in 1958, the resort instantly became a national sensation.

It boasted the city’s largest casino, swimming pool and hotel. It had a drive-in movie theater, a convention center and an international race track that attracted star drivers like Mario Andretti. Magicians Siegfried & Roy began their careers there. Wayne Newton once earned $25 million a year singing on the resort’s main stage, making him the highest-paid performer in Vegas. The great comic George Carlin also was a frequent headliner.

In short, the Stardust was a premier resort. It was classy. And although my wife and I aren’t big gambling fans, we expected to have a great time dining, swimming and catching a big show.

And we did have fun.

Until the final day.

My memory of exactly what went wrong is a blurry now. Grainy. Dimly lit. Choppy. A B-rate horror movie in a run-down theater in a seedy area of town.

But I can tell you that one minute we were standing together in the main game room drinking Long Island Iced Teas, feeding quarters into the slot machines and laughing because we were winning. The next minute I was standing alone in the men’s room staring blankly at the largest pair of tighty-whities I’d ever seen. They were…well, elephantine. Elephantine is the only word that adequately describes the peculiar enormity of this particular pair of underpants. What I’m trying to say is that an elephant could’ve worn them. Perhaps not a full-grown African elephant, but certainly one of their smaller cousins, an Asian elephant. The underwear was that large.

But it wasn’t the size of the underpants that caused me to gasp.

It was their condition.

The briefs were soaked in shit.

In fact, everything in the stall was covered in shit. Not firm chunks of shit, either. That would have been almost palatable compared to what I saw, which was—I’m so sorry, but I can’t put this gently—liquid shit.

Shit was smeared on the floor. Shit had filled the toilet and spilled over the sides. There was shit on the seat, the handle and the plumbing. There was shit running down the walls of the stall. Shit had splashed—and I swear I’m not making this up—onto the ceiling.

The ceiling!

I fell into a state of shock. I was dizzy, and had trouble breathing. The stench was unbearable, and I was unable to muster the strength to think clearly. But I recall asking myself, “How does shit get on the ceiling? How?”

I didn’t have an answer. It was as if a 600-pound, desperately diarrheal man had exploded in the bathroom. His bloated corpulence burst like a rotten melon on a hot summer day and passed into another dimension, leaving gallons of medium-brown excrement as the only evidence of its miserable existence.

Medium-brown liquid excrement.

I retched. (I’m retching now.)

My mind screamed, “Close your eyes! Don’t breathe! Run!” (My mind is screaming now.)

But you know how you instinctively slow down and study the aftermath of a car accident even though someone might be badly hurt and you might see something you’ll regret? (Yes, you do, don’t deny it.)

I had entered the same prurient state. (I’m still there now.)

So I stood and stared, absorbing every detail. And when I’d finally seen it all—when the basest, most perversely curious regions of my mind were satiated at last—I walked out of that tainted restroom like I was still a normal person and I stepped back into the noise and light and everyday ordinary activity of the casino. I didn’t think to mention what I’d seen to the hotel staff. I didn’t even tell my wife about it until days later, and she pleaded with me not to repeat the story ever again.

And I haven’t, until today.

A lot of time has passed since then, and yet I still can’t think of Las Vegas without seeing those grossly soiled shorts in my mind’s eye. To me, they have effectively polluted a city that proudly flaunts its pollution, and that’s no small feat. It is, in effect, an abomination of abominations.

It bothers me that I can’t shake that hideous image from my mind. But I have slowly come to accept that I’ll never solve the mystery of what happened that day in a restroom deep inside the grand, old Stardust.

I do have a theory, though.

I believe a seriously overweight, overworked assistant marketing executive named George flew into Las Vegas from New York City that weekend with $5,000 cash in his pocket. His plan was to let off some steam by blowing his bankroll on blackjack, booze, bimbos and buffets—plus indulge in a seemingly endless stream of 99-cent shrimp cocktails.

And George’s weekend of debauchery was going perfectly until his poor stomach rebelled and started rumbling. He rushed to the bathroom, but burst forth before he could fully drop his pants and properly seat himself. Panicked, he started flailing his arms wildly, then stepped into the effulence of his bowels and slipped and fell, throwing fountains of shit into the air.

Covered head-to-toe in his own filth, George did the only thing he could reasonably be expected to do: He stepped out of his soiled underpants, washed up as best as he could, re-dressed himself, checked out, bought a family-sized bottle of Pepto-Bismal at the nearest 7-Eleven and took the first available flight back to New York City.

Once he was safely home, George realized the folly of his ways and started attending church—twice on Sundays, and once on Wednesday nights. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous to quit drinking, and Jenny Craig to lose weight. Eventually, he met a woman at a fund-raising  spaghetti dinner sponsored by the church. They fell in love, got married and had two kids.

And one day, many years after his intestinal supernova at the Stardust, fate dictated that the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce would hire the marketing firm George worked for to help it boost tourism.

Sitting in his cubicle at work and remembering his tragic visit to Vegas and the shameful event that had fueled the positive changes in his life, George immediately coined the phrase, “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” And as we all know now, those seven simple words became the cornerstone of one of the most successful ad campaigns in marketing history.

But George and I both know his catch phrase is a lie.

Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

George took the awful memory of that offal day home with him, and so I did I.

And it lingers. It lingers bitterly.

God help us both.

High atop a mountain spot,
Far above the town of Bloggity-Blog,
There lived a Grinchity-Grinch
Who was the Grinchiest Grinch by at least an inch.
Or maybe two.
Now please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be he had a cat in his hat.
Or perhaps his feet were flat.
Maybe he was in a snitter, waiting for a Twitter,
Or a Facebook friend without end.
But I think the most likely reason of all,
Was that his bandwidth was three times too small, and slow.

Whatever the cause, his head or his heart,
He hated the Bloggity-Bloggers and their chit-chat art.
“One blog, two blogs, good blogs, bad blogs,” he snarled
With a snippety, snarky snear
The Bloggity-Bloggers couldn’t hear.
Staring down from his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown,
At the warm, lighted windows in their town,
The Grinch could see their monitors glowing,
And hear the tippity-tap tapping of their typing.
Then he growled, his Grinchy fingers nervously drumming,
“I must stop this bloggity-blogging, I must!
I’ll do it with electricity! I’ll do it with dust!
I’ll do it with rust and dried-out chunks of crusty pizza crust!”

Then that mean old Grinch had an idea. A wonderful, awful idea!
It was a Grinchy sort of thought–overwrought, twisted and filled with fear.
“I know just what to do,” the Grinch laughed in his throat.
“I’ll use this cheap cloth to make a workman’s coat.”
He snipped and he sewed, and snapped and stitched.
Then he tried it on, and made it fit.
“What a great Grinchy trick!” he clucked and chuckled.
With this blue service jacket,
They’ll think I’m in the computer racket!
I’ll sneak into town and steal their Yahoo and Gmail,
Their Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon.
I’ll shut it all down, down for the count.
I’ll take their AOL and Comcast, their EarthLink and Qwest!
But I won’t stop there! I’ll take all the rest!”

Then the Grinch loaded up his ramshackle van
With his worst Grinchy tools and his pet dog, Dan.
“Let’s go dog, go!” he barked. “Don’t be slow!”
They lurched down the hill, the Grinch beside Dan.
The ride was bumpy. It was lumpy. It was positively glafrumpy.
And the Grinch grumbled.
And moaned.
And griped.
“Blogging,” he spat. “It’s nothing, just rubbish, nonsense and tripe!”
But inside their homes, the Bloggity-Bloggers were writing away,
Posting the stuff and nonsense of their day.
They had no clue what was about to go down.
They knew nothing about the theft, the hatred, the frown.
Then they heard a voice. A Grinchy sort of voice.
“Come out, come out, come out right now!” the Grinch hissed and screeched.
“There’s an emergency, a crisis!
I must see you now!
Everyone!
Each!”

Then the Grinch put on his best Grinchy face.
He smiled, and said he’d done a deep trace.
“The problem is undesirous. Without my help, you’ll catch a virus.
Bring me your computers, and bring them now.
I need your PCs and laptops, and even your Macs.
I’ll fix them up. I’ve got your back.
To save blogging, and save it now, don’t hesitate, just act!”
So one by one, the Bloggity-Bloggers carried out their gear.
They gave the Grinch their monitors and keyboards,
Plus all their boxes and cables and such.
And when they were done, the Grinch, that louse,
Climbed into his van, leaving them nothing,
Not a hard drive,
Not even a mouse.

But before he could go, the Grinch heard a small sound, a coo.
And there at his feet stood little Cindy-Lou, a Bloggity-Blogger who was only two.
She stared at the Grinch and said, “Why, Grinchy Tech, why?”
But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick,
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
“I’m taking them to my workshop, dear. I’ll fix them up there,
Then I’ll bring them back here.”
And his fib fooled the child. He patted her head, and sent her away,
Then ordered Dan to steer the Garmin for the cave.
And as they pulled out, the Grinch howled and hooted,
“Boohoo and floggity-flog. Now there’ll be no more bloggity blogs.
While they worry about spam,
I’ll be eating green eggs and ham,
Laughing about my scam!”

Up the hill they went. Dan the dog pulled the van
Until he was dog-tired, and nearly spent.
And when they reached the top at last, that mean old Grinch
Cupped a Grinchy hand to his Grinchy ear, and listened fast.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow.
But it wasn’t sad. It was merry. Very merry.
The Grinch stared down at Bloggity-Blog.
He stared down as if through a fog.
The Grinch popped his eyes! Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!

He hadn’t stopped the blogging, he hadn’t stopped it at all.
Because the Bloggity-Bloggers had Textity-texters.
Blackberrys, iPhones, Droids and the like.
Wireless blogging devices all!
And the Grinch, with his Grinchy feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling, until his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
“Maybe blogging,” he thought, “can’t be stopped anymore.
Maybe blogging…perhaps…means a little bit more!”
And what happened then?
Well, in Bloggity-Blog, they say it was a miracle.
A real Internet tech showed up at the Grinch’s cave
Two days and two years too late.
But he installed a high-speed modem and other stuff that was great.
And the Bloggity-Bloggers say the Grinch’s bandwidth grew three sizes that day.
And the minute his computer didn’t seem so slow,
The second he could download movie clips on YouTube and all,
The Grinch whizzed downhill and straight back to town.
He brought back the desktops, the laptops, and all the Macs,
Including a pink and purple one for little Cindy-Lou from Radio Shack.
“I know what was the matter,” he told the bitsy blogger.
“I felt like a fish out of water.”
And then he…HE HIMSELF…started blogging, and did it very well.
And he grinned with Grinchy glee, as his readership swelled.

With apologies to Theodore Geisel, who was a genius.

We were approaching Amarillo, Texas when I first noticed that my butt was twitching.

It felt odd, but I wasn’t worried because I knew exactly what was happening: After driving 7 hours without a break, my ass was rebelling.

Actually, it was rebelling again. My family’s spent nearly 100 hours behind the wheel of a car in less than a month, driving more than 5,000 miles as we escort our 15-year-old son to hockey tournaments across the Midwest.  During that time, we’ve crossed through nine states, stopped at dozens of rest stops and eaten more fast-food hamburgers and tacos than I thought possible.

And my hind quarters don’t appreciate it.

Although the gluteus maximus seems to be perfectly designed for sitting, it apparently wasn’t intended to be sat upon for 10 to 18 hours at a time without a break. As a result, I’ve learned that it goes through a predictable boom-and-bust cycle on long trips.

When it first goes to work as the body’s cushion, the butt seems perfectly happy—even excited—to shoulder the burden of supporting the body’s weight. It’s as if it looks down to the feet and up to the back, and says, “Hey, guys, you’ve been standing for a long time. I’m just hanging out here in the middle with nothing to do but embarrass myself. Take a load off and let me handle things for a while.”

Terrific attitude!

But it turns out the butt isn’t a steady worker. In the corporeal world, it’s more of a sales rep than an accountant, which means it performs best when it’s given short-term goals with quick rewards. Long-term goals and repetitive tasks such as cross-country road trips drive it crazy.

So, after just a few hours of hard labor in the mine shaft, the butt gets pooped and develops a foul attitude. A few hours more, and it’s basically pissed off—belly aching about being forced to work in what amounts to a cramped, windowless office filled with stale air.

That’s when the twitching starts. One cheek flexes. Then the other. And back to the first, and again to the second, and so on, in increasingly heated succession.

Pretty soon, the angry cheeks are hammering away at the seat cushion underneath them like a hot-blooded flamenco dancer trying to impress the King of Spain. And when the show reaches its passionate crescendo, the butt cheeks squeeze together in unison, thrusting the body upwards in a feverish break for freedom from sitting.

This is a decisive moment—perhaps the decisive moment—for long-distance drivers. Either they take control of their butts, forcing them back into their seats so they can motor on, or they surrender the battle and pull into the nearest Motel 6 for the night.

On this particular trip, I treated my butt like a wild Mustang that needed to be saddle broken. Maybe that had something to do with being in Texas, which is cowboy country. Or perhaps it was because I was tired and couldn’t think of a better butt-related metaphor at the time.

Whatever the reason, I subdued my butt. I clung to the back of that bucking butt-bronco like a maniacal cowboy until my butt was ready to bend to my will instead of heeding its own wild impulses. Then I took control of the reins and steered us toward Dallas, our final destination.

And that’s when I experienced the final stage in the butt’s long-distance odyssey, the same stage I’d reached in several previous trips. Once the butt’s spirit is broken and enough additional time passes, it completely relaxes, flattening out and totally conforming to the seat upon which it rests. In essence, it becomes one with the seat.

In my case, as I later learned, that means I now have a perfect, permanent reverse imprint of a Hyundai Sonata’s cloth seat on my ass. I call it the Shroud of Tourin’, and I’m so proud of it, I plan to have it taxidermied after I die so that I can donate it to the Vatican.

I think my mystical-looking butt would look amazing hanging near the picture of the naked guys that Michelangelo painted on the Sistene Chapel in Rome. Tourists would love it. Some people might even flock to it seeking healing for hemorrhoids, chafing, rashes and other butt-related diseases.

But I can’t recommend that they drive long distances to see it.

They should fly instead.

Although flying isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, it’s much quicker than driving, and can help travelers avoid unpleasant conflict with their angry butts. I don’t believe anybody should be forced to butt heads with a butthead when they’re on the road. Because even if you win the fight, I know from sad experience that it still leaves you feeling really wiped out.

And that’s just shitty.

Scene: It’s fall, 2006. Two middle-aged men are seated at a small dining table in a back room at Spago of Beverly Hills, one of Los Angeles’ finest restaurants. One of them is James Cameron, the well-known Canadian director of blockbuster movies like Titanic, The Terminator and Alien. The other man is Greg Coote, the Australian chairman and CEO of Dune Entertainment, one of Hollywood’s most powerful film production studios. As they eat, they also talk. Their conversation is focused and passionate, but also guarded because they don’t want to be overheard by nearby waiters and diners.

 “Jim, thanks for inviting me to dinner. You know I love Spago. Nobody knows his way around a chanterelle better than Wolfgang. But I haven’t seen you since Titantic came out on DVD, and that was, what, a decade ago? You’ve been pretty quiet for a guy who’s supposed to be the world’s most successful director. So what’s the special occasion?”

“I’ve got something really big for you, Cooter. Really big. But I should order another bottle of wine. I want you good and drunk when I spring this on you.”

“Sounds like my wedding night.”

“You’re a funny guy. Look, I’m ready to start my next film.”

“Terminator vs. Alien? The Sinking of the Lusitania?”

“Don’t be a smartass, Cooter. I make blockbusters, not B-rates. It’s Cameron, not Corman you’re having dinner with.”

“What? Don’t knock Corman. Did you see Grand Theft Auto? Very entertaining! Cheap to make, and he made millions on that one. And I’m serious about those ideas. Don’t think we haven’t thought about approaching you with a script, Jim. People loved Alien vs. Predator. Made millions. Maybe we could do Terminator vs. Alien vs. Predator. The climactic scene could be a three-way gun fight, like the Mexican standoff in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. But with aliens and robots fighting on a spaceship with phasers instead of in the desert with pistols. It could be bigger than Star Wars. It’d probably make millions, too.”

“Don’t bring Lucas into this. He doesn’t know shit. Remember The Phantom Menace? Total shit. Jar-Jar Binks my ass. A blot on movie making. Fucking Lucas. The whole Star Wars series read like it was written by a junior high school kid with a bad case of acne and nothing to do on weekends but write. He should’ve stopped at American Graffiti.”

“Whoa, calm down, boy! You directors are competitive. So what’s your big idea?”

“It’s an environmental action film.”

“A what?”

“A science-fiction environmental action film. I’ve been working on the script since 1994, before I’d even started Titanic. It’s set in the year 2154 on a moon in the Alpha Centauri system called Pandora.”

“Pandora? Like the box?”

“Sort of, but not like you’re thinking, Cooter. The indigenous people there—the Native Pandorians, if you will—are a peace-loving people who are mystically connected to the plants and animals of their planet. To their very ecosystem itself. I call them the Na’vi.”

“What do these tree-hugging Na’vi people look like?”

“Basically human, but with the features of monkeys and cats. And they’re 9 feet tall.”

“9 feet tall? Are fucking kidding me? Do these monkey-cats play basketball?”

“No. No basketball. This is science fiction.”

“So was Space Jam. I don’t know whose idea it was to put Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny together in a movie, but that was some funny shit. Made millions, too. Anyway, can you imagine a 9-foot-tall basketball player? That’d screw the NBA over good. A 9-foot-tall basketball player could cover the court in three strides and just drop the ball into the net. Make Jordan look like a midget. If your aliens are 9 feet tall, maybe you ought to add some basketball scenes to your script. You know, for basketball fans. There’s a lot of basketball fans in America.”

“This film’s bigger than that, Cooter.”

“Bigger than a 9-foot-tall Michael Jordan? I can’t imagine anything bigger than that. Except maybe a 9-foot-tall Shaquille O’Neal. O’Neal weighs, what, 325 pounds? How much do think he’d weigh if he was 9 feet tall? Like 700 pounds? Imagine guarding a 700-pound, 9-foot-tall Shaquille O’Neal. Impossible.”

“You’re missing my point.”

“So get to it, already. I’m all ears.”

“The Na’vi live in paradise, and they respect—actually, worship—nature. They live in trees, and they’re in total harmony with their surroundings.”

“So they’re, what, Wiccans? Witches don’t play well with the public, Jim. I can’t think of a single witch movie that’s made a dime.”

“Ever hear of a little film called The Wizard of Oz?”

“OK. Sure. I forgot that one. The flying monkeys scared the shit out of me when I was kid. But, look, Oz had an evil witch in it, and she got melted. Your witches sound like they’re supposed to be good witches who worship Mother Earth. Or Pandora, whatever. The Vatican’s not going to like it, and Catholics buy a lot of tickets.”

“Fuck the Pope, Cooter. The Pope hates Hollywood. He’s got a golden stick up his butt. Thinks everything we do is decadent. If he does like something, it’s boring, a documentary about the history of chewing gum or some Jane Austin piece of crap made for stuffy English professors who think colonial Britain is delightful. But the Pope’s not exactly Roger Ebert. Catholics go to movies whether the Pope gives them a thumbs up or thumbs down. Protestants, Muslims and Jews, too. Everybody loves the movies, and they’ll love this one.”

“I still think we have to consider the Pope if we’re making a movie about witches. And I’m not hearing a plot yet. I thought this was an action film.”

“It’s not about witches, Cooter. It’s about a race of simple, peace-loving people who live in harmony with their planet. But their way of life is jeopardized by greedy imperialists. I’d say that’s extremely topical right now.”

“You know the first three rules of movie making? Plot, plot and plot. And action. Action’s the fourth rule. So is there a plot here, or do these Na’vi just sit around all day trying to keep Pandora’s box from getting opened?”

“Despite your snarcasm, you’re closer than you think. Turns out the Na’vi are sitting on the galaxy’s largest source of a precious mineral wanted by the U.S. military. And the army’s willing to destroy the Na’vi’s way of life to get it.”

“What’s this rock called?”

“Unobtanium.”

“Sounds stupid.”

“I know. I kept getting stuck on uranium and kryptonite when I was writing the script, and couldn’t think of anything better. Unobtanium’s just a place holder. I’ll have it fixed in re-writes.”

“So what’s so special about—and I’m desperately trying not to laugh out loud when I say this—unobtanium?”

“It floats.”

“Like pumice? Big deal.”

“No, I mean floats, as in levitates. It can lift entire mountains into the sky.”

“So how do they mine it? Wouldn’t it just float away?”

“I don’t know. They use technology to neutralize it. Who gives a shit? The point is, it’s a clean source of power, and it’s worth about $20 million a pound. That’s why the army is anxious to get it.”

“Hmmm. So let me ask you question: If you ground some of this unobtanium up and put it into Kobe Bryant’s shoes, would it improve his jump shot? Could we give a jar of unobtanium dust to the Lakers and obtain them a championship?”

“I’m not making a basketball movie, Cooter. Enough with the basketball.”

“Hey, I’m just sayin’, you’ve got a race of 9-foot-tall monkey-cats and they’ve got access to magic floating rocks. This could change the NBA forever. Don’t underestimate the importance of basketball in our culture.”

“The film’s about the environment. About people who are willing to destroy the environment for profit, and people who are willing to die to save it.”

“The environment. Hmm. Well, Al Gore will like it. That’s one ticket sold. A hundred million more, and we’ve got a hit on our hands.”

“I’m not an idiot, Cooter. There’s more to it.”

“Do tell.”

“A team of scientists creates avatars, Na’vi clones. Using advanced technology, they transfer their consciousness into the avatars’ bodies so they can live with the Na’vi, try to understand them.”

“Consciousness. Great. It’s a thought film. Zen and the Art of 9-Foot-Tall Monkey-Cats. Let’s put this proposal on a level real people can relate to–construction workers and secretaries, you know, people who actually go to the movies to eat popcorn and escape their shitty lives for a couple of hours. Do the Na’vi get it on?”

“Sex? Sure. With their tails.”

“Tails?”

“The Na’vi intertwine tails when they want to communicate on a deeper level. They do it when they’re making love, when they’re talking to their ancestors, and when they ride horses or dragons.”

“OK, now I know what you’ve been doing since Titanic! You’ve been smoking crack. Lots of crack. You’re a crazy fucking crack addict. This is sad.”

“It’s not like what you think, Cooter.”

“I don’t think anything except you just wrote a script about 9-foot-tall humanoid monkey-cats who have sex with their tails. When they’re not using their tails to talk to dead people or ride dragons, of course. I get it. Really, I do, because I use my own cock all the time to discuss politics with my dead Aunt Myrtle. I just plug it into the nearest electrical socket and I’m totally hooked up to the ethereal grid. But I don’t think regular people are going to understand this film, Jim.”

“Pandora’s actually quite beautiful. Sensual, even. Pandora’s filled with luminescent plants. And the Na’vi have deep-blue skin.”

“Oh, of course they do. They’re environmentalists and live in trees, so they ought to have green skin. But they’re blue. Who’s your crack dealer, anyway? Are you sure you’re getting the good stuff?”

“No crack, Cooter. I’m dead serious here. Look, forget about the sex for now. We want a PG-13 rating for the theatrical release anyway. We want parents to let their teenagers see this film three, maybe four, times. I’ll put the sex scene on the DVD. The director’s cut. Let’s talk about the battle between the army and Na’vi. You’ll love this part.”

“Fight scenes, I get. War sells tickets.”

“OK. It’s complicated, so stay with me for a minute. Concentrate. The army wants to callously bomb the spiritual heart of Pandora. But one of the army’s soldiers inhabits an avatar. And he falls in love with a Na’vi woman. He becomes one of them, starts seeing life from their point of view, and decides to help defend Pandora from the army. The Na’vi ride into battle on their dragons, and with help from the planet’s other animals and their ancestors, the Na’vi use simple arrows and spears to bring down the army’s helicopters and save Pandora.”

“Lord of the Rings.”

“What?”

“It sounds like Lord of the Rings, only with monkey-cats in place of hobbits, dragons in place of eagles and Pandora in place of the Shire. Good versus evil with a stronger environmental message.”

“Whatever. There’s no ring. No comparison at all. My film’s original. Groundbreaking. Revolutionary. It’ll change movies forever.”

“To be honest, it sounds complicated. And long. Longer, because you’re James Cameron. You’re dictatorial, argumentative—a perfectionist. A true pain in the ass. Everybody hates you by the time you’re done—the crew, the actors, the studio, marketing, everybody. That means you’re expensive. This story of yours will make it even worse. I don’t know what it will cost to get the CGI people to create 9-foot-tall blue monkey-cats who ride dragons and live in trees. And the promotion. My god, the marketing! What do you think you’ll need, $200 million?”

“I want to film it in 3D, so I was thinking $350 million.”

“Plus marketing? That’s, like, $500 million! No way! Nobody finances a half-a-billion-dollar film and makes any money. Did you see Michael Cimeno’s Heaven’s Gate or Costner’s Waterworld?”

“No.”

“My point, exactly. Nobody saw them. They were long, they cost hundreds of millions, and they flopped. Flopped. Careers ruined.”

“Oh, fuck that, Cooter! I’m not Cimino or Costner. I’m fucking James Cameron, and I make blockbusters. That’s what I do. I make epic summer films that the public likes. No, likes isn’t strong enough. Loves. They love my movies like their own children. Better than their own children, in some cases. You know how much money my films have made? Me, either. They’ve made so many fucking billions and billions of dollars, I’ve lost count myself. And you know what the biggest film of all time is? Titantic. $1.8 billion and counting. That’s my doing. That was a James Cameron film. And JC’s new film’s got a huge advantage over Titanic: merchandising. T-shirts. Toys. Books. Video games. Spin-offs. It’s going to be a fucking, fire-breathing monster hit, Cooter. It’s the fucking Godzilla of films, and either you’re along for the ride or you’re going to get crushed when it rolls through town.”

“OK, you’re fucking James Cameron. I get that, big boy. You’ve got a big head, but I’ll concede that maybe you deserve a big head. Tell you what, though, I do like the merchandising angle. There’s more profit in merchandising than in the movie. Nobody could figure out a way to merchandise Titanic. I can understand why nobody was interested in a Dicaprio action figure. That kid’s a pipsqueak. But I thought the Titanic ship toy was cool. Float it your tub, bump it into the iceberg, it cracks in half and sinks, leaving a few lifeboats behind. And we might’ve had a better chance at merchandising if Wal-Mart hadn’t shot down our topless Kate Winslet action figure. We thought it was artsy, forward-thinking, progressive. But the Walton family thought it was dirty. Fucking billionaire prudes. Once they were out, we knew the merchandising was sunk, pun intended. But with good merchandising, this thing could work. Lord of the Rings worked, and you’ve sure as shit proven you’re at least as good as Tolkien at writing film scripts.”

“Now you’re thinking like a studio executive, Cooter. No risk, no reward.”

“Tell you what, Jim. You’ve got a track record that’s hard to argue with, especially four bottles of wine into the night. I’ll convince my people at Dune to throw some financial support behind your little project—what’s it called, by the way?”

“Avatar.”

“Avatar. I like that. Quick, enigmatic. Perfect. I’m in, but with three conditions. First, you throw in 25 percent of your own money. You need to have something at risk here, too.”

“You do know I have a wife and four ex-wives plus three kids to support? Linda’s a total bitch when it comes to alimony payments, too. She hasn’t had to work a single day since the final Terminator.”

“Don’t cry on my shoulder. Your fucking James Cameron, remember? The director who has so much money he can’t count it? I think you can afford 25 percent, Scrooge McDuck.”

“Twenty percent.”

“OK, 20 percent. But my second condition is that you throw in a basketball scene. I won’t back a movie about 9-foot-tall monkey-cats that doesn’t include at least one basketball scene.”

“What is with you and basketball?”

“I love basketball. America loves basketball. The world loves basketball. If you can’t support that, pick somebody else’s pocket.”

“Fine, I’ll throw in a basketball scene. But it won’t be long. I need to protect the integrity of the script. So what’s your third condition?”

“Dessert.”

“Dessert?”

“You buy dessert. Wolfy makes a crispy, souffléed crêpe called the Chocolate Purse. It’ll make you forget all your worries.”

“I don’t worry; I’m James Cameron. But it’s sounds good. Dessert’s on me. So done, and done. We’re making a movie.”

“We’ll probably lose our damn shirts on this crazy idea of yours and be forced to leave town with our tails between our legs, but, yes, we are. Avatar, or bust!”

1. Pistachios

2. Bulbous

3. Matriculate

4. Obsequious

5. Kumquat

6. Panty

7. Hornswoggle

8. Scallywag

9. Cockamamie

10. Orifice