Stranger than Fiction

Originally published August 12, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1082

The problem with being a fiction writer is that it’s so dámņëd difficult to keep up with the real world.

The way in which the events in the news develop have a staggeringly high factor of “Huh?” So much so that one wonders if one can ever top reality with mere fantasy.

What’s it like out there?

1) I presume you’ve all heard the joke:

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“O.J.”

“O.J. who?”

“Congratulations, you’re on the jury.”

(Me, I’m still waiting for a cartoon labeled “The Simpsons” that features Bart saying to O.J., “Y’know, when you ran away, it made you look even more guilty,” and O.J. saying in chagrin, “D-oh!!”)

There I was, ready to watch the Batman animated series, and instead the local station booted it in order to air whatever was going on that day with the Simpson trial. Given the choice of presenting young viewers with the adventures of a man who dresses like a bat from hëll and fights crime, or the adventures of a man who runs like a bat from hëll and is accused of crimes, the latter was considered more worthy of the time slot. It’s certainly the more surreal.

The newscaster intoned, “The O.J. Trial, Day 3,” and suddenly I was having flashbacks to the hostages in Iran, where broadcasters would say, “America Held Hostage, Day 276.” Settle yourselves in for a new siege, folks. We’re going to be held hostage to the O.J. trial for quite some time. In a perverse way, there’s a very selfish reason to hope he’s found innocent… because if a guilty verdict comes back, then it’s years of appeals. And if, God help us, a superior court reverses the judge’s decision on the admissibility of the evidence found in Simpson’s house, we would be looking at another trial.

It’s truth-stranger-than-fiction. Imagine: You’re watching a television program starring O.J. Simpson playing the hero. His ex-wife is murdered. The cops converge on his house and find blood-smeared evidence. They look at each other, say significantly, “Looks like we got our man.”

Your immediate reaction as a viewer would be, “How stupid! How ridiculous! If he killed the wife, he wouldn’t then be dumb enough or sloppy enough to leave traces around his house! Obviously it’s a frame!”

And if you watched that slow-speed car chase, you’d be laughing. Car chases aren’t like that. We all know that. They go real fast, and the cops block you off, and that’s that. But they don’t do that this time. Why? Because he holds everyone else off by pointing a gun at his head and threatening to kill himself.

How could you do that in a TV movie? Most viewers will easily remember Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles shouting, “Nobody moves or the ņìggër gets it!” with his six shooter against his forehead. The audience would yell at the screen, “You guys are ripping off Mel Brooks!”

(Can you just imagine if Rodney King, lo those many months ago, had endeavored to keep the L.A. cops at bay by pulling the same tactic? How successful would that strategy have been, I wonder. Actually, I don’t wonder at all, and I’m sure you don’t, either.)

Of course, there will be movies about it, now that it’s already happened. And people will accept it because it all occurred right in front of our disbelieving eyes. But if the story hadn’t happened in what we laughingly refer to as “reality,” then the plot would be ripped to shreds by every critic in the land, because it’s absurd and over-the-top and just flat out ridiculous.

2) I now am able to understand first hand what it’s like for black people who are being informed that they must henceforth be called “African Americans.” Why? Because I’ve only recently been informed that the term “Jew” has fallen into disfavor.

Now any longtime readers will know that I sometimes refer to myself as “Your humble Jew.” Yet now I find that I’m politically incorrect, not about someone else’s ethnicity (as I’ve been in the past) but about my very own.

When I inquired as to what the now-acceptable term was (somehow intuiting that “Jewboy,” “Hebe,” “Kike,” and “Christ-Killer” hadn’t made the cut) I learned that either “Jewish person” or “person of the Jewish persuasion” was preferable to the succinct, accurate “Jew.”

“Jewish persuasion.” Now there’s a laugh. “Hi. We want to persuade you to be Jewish. It’s great. First you get to have some skin whacked off the Chairman of your Membership. After that, you get to eat off separate dishes, not get to drive anywhere on Friday night, and, oh yes, cultures all over the world have a centuries-old history of trying to exterminate you.” It’s part of Jewish tradition that we don’t proselytize (“Jews for Jesus” aside). Why should we? Who’d want to drag someone into as persecuted a group as us?

And now the persecution extends to the essence of what we call ourselves. Jews. Can’t be a Jew. Too many negative connotations, one imagines. Well, yeah, I guess entire nations shouting “Kill the Jews!” would tend to diminish the luster just a tad. But the protectors of public sensitivity will have to excuse me if I tell them to take a flying falafel.

By the way, along these lines, I highly recommend Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner. A slim volume, published by MacMillan for $8.95, it’s worth it nevertheless. Typical of the book are moments such as the Big Bad Wolf encountering Little Red Riding Hood: The wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone.”

Red Riding Hood said, “I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop your own, entirely valid worldview.”

3) Rob Liefeld’s letter in CBG #1080. Presuming that he was serious, and unaware of the incredulous guffaws his missive would prompt, I can only find myself tributing Doctor Frasier Crane and ask: “What color is the sky in your world?”

4) When one sees Cyrano de Bergerac, it seems almost quaint that the big-nosed swordsman would be so convinced that his homeliness would forever render him repellant to Roxanne (although one must observe that, just as Cyrano was blinded to his inner attractiveness by dint of his exterior ugliness… so was he likewise blinded by Roxanne’s beauty to the fact that she was, and is, one of the most feeble-minded, shallow, empty-headed ditzes in all literature. What, he wondered, could Roxanne see in him? I say, what in hëll did he see in her?)

The reason it’s quaint is because, in our society, bizarre matches occur all the time. Couplings that make you say, “Huh?” because, on the surface, the two don’t seem to go together. We tend to categorize or ghettoize relationships (as we do with all things), and sometimes there’s a pairing that prompts double-takes.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, for example, were considered such a bizarre duo that the network was resistant to a series starring them since there was concern that the viewing public would never believe these two could be married.

Then there’s Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. Or Stiller and Meara, who plumbed the comic possibilities of the short Jew (oh no!) and the tall Irish Catholic as a couple.

Or how about Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley (and I’m sorry, this will sound chauvinist or something. I mean, I don’t know him or her, I don’t know what he’s like or she’s like. Maybe he’s a creep, maybe she’s a shrew. If Cyrano (or O.J., for that matter) taught us anything, it’s that you shouldn’t judge by the surface. Nevertheless, to me the only thing stranger than the two of them getting married is the two of them getting divorced. All I can think of is, “Billy, for crying out loud, you’re married to Christie Brinkley and you’re letting her go?! What’re you, nuts?! You’re giving her up voluntarily?!” Then again, maybe that was O.J.’s mindset, and look where that led.)

Or Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett. That certainly caused a lot of raised eyebrows and, frankly, a lot of long, hard looks at Lovett as men everywhere said, “What’s he got? And how can I get some?”

Or Bill Clinton and… well… everyone, it seems sometimes.

But nothing… no pairing, no marriage, no June wedding or reported midnight assignation… not Catherine the Great and her horses… not all the peculiar pairings in the world… could have quite prepared us for the rumored marriage of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.

As of this writing, this report has been floating around for about a week now. No spokesman in any camp has denied it. Jackson and Presley are reportedly holed up in the Trump Tower.

Now, I’m sorry. As noted above, there’s lots of off-beat couples in the world. But this one is off in its own reality. It should be no trouble finding out which room they’re staying in. Just look for the one where Rod Serling is standing outside the door.

I dunno. I mean, I guess I should wish them well and everything. Maybe send them a crock pot (never more appropriate). And, in a way, we should all be grateful. This will, at the very least, put an end to the rumors that Elvis might still be alive. Because if he was, then I’m willing to bet that this”ll finish him off.

Of course, in the event that they have a child, I’d wager that instead of having a birth certificate ready, there’ll be a recording contract from Sony instead. Furthermore, toilet training will be quite a chore, what with all that genetic predisposition towards crotch grabbing and hip swiveling that will make it difficult to know when the child actually has to go potty.

As I’ve said, hard times for a fiction writer. You can’t make this stuff up.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)