Briefly Changing the Subject

I mentioned earlier that, some years back, Jeff Garlin (co-creator/co-star, "Curb Your Enthusiasm") talked me up to his friend Jon Stewart in hopes Stewart would offer me a writing position on "The Daily Show". In fact, I ran into Stewart at that year's Comedy Central Christmas party and he confirmed that Jeff had praised me to the hilt. He said the show was staffed up for at least the next 13 weeks but that it was always helpful to have good writers in reserve, so he told me to send him some headlines as a sample of what I would do if I got the gig.

I wrote a bunch of great headlines (in my humble opinion) but I made a terrible error. It was late at night (that's my story and I'm sticking to it) and I confusedly combined two different black guys who had been in the news because of mistreatment by New York City cops. (One of them was dead, which constitutes extreme mistreatment.) I was so embarrassed when I realized this that I never got back in touch with Stewart about the job. (Fortunately, as regular readers of this blog know, I'm doing just fine now.)

Flash forward to this year and I've been submitting headlines -- similar to those I submitted to Stewart -- to the satirical newspaper/website, The Onion. (Yes, the same Onion that produced the show I've been going on about lately.) Months have gone by and I've often felt like the exercise is pointless, but -- except for a lengthy break during my UK sojourn -- I've sent in 25 of 'em pretty much every week.

I'd been warned there was little opportunity to actually sell one but I've been so poverty-stricken that I'd have felt a fool if I didn't at least try. And I was pleased with myself last week when, after making another boneheaded error -- I confused disgraced Republican congressman Tom DeLay with semi-rehabilitated/partly-disgraced Republican senator, Trent Lott -- I caught the mistake within an hour or so and sent a correction.

I wouldn't let these guys think I was a dope.

Well, today on the main page of The Onion's website is a story based on one of my headlines. I guess I'm gonna get some money for it -- I think it's $50, but maybe it's $25 if it's just on the website, but then again, I remember reading you get $100 if it's on the front page, but does that mean the front page of the print edition or does the web edition count too? (I don't know.)

I don't deserve that much praise or respect for this accomplishment. I didn't write the story, just the headline it was based on -- and they even changed that. But the most difficult thing I had to deal with when I looked back at my submission to see how it compared to what they actually used is that I got the details wrong again.

I had called the president's dog Buddy when, in fact, his name is Barney. (They fixed it, of course.)

I remember being uncertain about the name when I wrote the headline. I don't know why I didn't do a web search. I'd like to think I was not online when writing it, but I suspect that wasn't the case.

Maybe I'm just sloppy about details.

Oh, well. But somehow there's discomfort for me in the fact that that's the one headline of mine that they chose. It didn't matter that I screwed a detail up -- they got what I meant. Maybe they think I'm a funny dope.

Most discomfiting is that this casts the Jon Stewart thing in a whole new light. Maybe I shouldn't have let embarrassment keep me from following up on that submission. Maybe he/they thought I was a funny dope.

But they would have gotten in touch with me if that were the case.

Wouldn't they?