Uncover the Buried Treasure

If I was a famous actor and James Lipton interviewed me for ITAS when he asked me what my favourite curse word is I think I’d say “Motherfucker”

These are the thoughts that meander through my *I’m-too-tired-to-think-of-an-appropriate-adjective* brain when it’s almost 4AM and I’m not even close to falling asleep. It’s not that I’m not tired, I’m exhausted, I just can’t stop being awake.

It’s not uncommon for me to anthropomorphize inanimate objects or even vague abstract concepts. I give them names and personalities of their own. Right now my insomnia has evolved from the feeling of restlessness and the inability to sleep into a pudgy little cartoon demon who speaks with a Kiwi accent and keeps flicking my earlobe or tugs at my eyelids when they try to close. His name is Brett Clement and he’s an incompetent shepherd from New Zealand. He’s lost all his sheep so there’s nothing for me to count.

This was supposed to be a picture of some sheep, but I’m CLEARLY delirious

I don’t know why I’ve been having trouble sleeping. For the last month or so I’ve either passed out as soon as I get home from work and sleep the whole night through or I’m up til 3AM and end up only sleeping 2 or 3 hours.

I’ve been told it’s stress, anxiety, bad eating habits, depression and loneliness but today wasn’t stressful at all. And I wasn’t alone or anxious and miraculously didn’t have any caffeine. It’s as if the off switch for my brain is malfunctioning.

Usually when this happens the results are not good. I end up agonizing over recent history, replaying events over and over in my head thinking what might have been if I said this or done that and I inevitably spiral into fantasies of building a time machine and going back to change things, but then my brain shifts into the crazy gear and I tell myself that if I had a time machine it would be irresponsible to waste that power to just go back and hit someone with a clever-er zinger instead of going back and killing Hitler, BUT THEN I start philosophizing on the morality of killing someone BEFORE they’ve done anything wrong, like are they technically innocent if I travel back to a time when they haven’t yet committed any crime? THEN I start thinking about how Minority Report was so shitty but I just can’t help loving Tom Cruise no matter how much of a crazy bastard he is, I mean, have you SEEN Mission Impossible 3? That movie was crazy good, especially Simon Pegg, Maybe I should pop in my copy of Shaun of the De-WHY THE FUCK AREN’T YOU SLEEPING YOU EASILY DISTRACTED OCD IDIOT?!?!?!?!?!

That’s literally what’s happening in my brain every 10 minutes or so on an endless loop.

I’m usually not a fan of the three piece suit but Joe Gordon-Levitt makes it work

So when it gets to the point where I just can’t take it any more, I usually turn on the lights and start reading. I’m in the middle of Scott Snyder’s Night of Owl’s but I’m having too much fun reading it that I don’t want it to be over so instead I started reading this blog but when that started feeling too self referential and “Meta-Inception-y” I decided to clear out my email inbox and get rid of any junk and old stuff

It’s been a bit of a laugh reading through some of the old emails. Messages to people who used to be my friends that I haven’t thought about in years. Job applications with old resumes and cover letters. Cute little love notes from my ex-girlfriend that make me feel a weird sort of happiness instead of the pain or regret that I would have expected.

But the strangest blast from the past, the email that I had completely forgotten about and drove me to write this entry was a creative collaboration from FIVE YEARS AGO!

It was a guy I knew, not really a friend, more of an acquaintance who wanted to create a superhero comic book/animated series. He was (maybe he still is, who knows?) something of an artist but wasn’t much of an idea or story guy. He asked me to help him develop the project. He didn’t give me any guidelines other than “It’s gotta be groundbreaking, something that has never been done before.”

I didn’t really have faith in his ambition, I thought his enthusiasm for the project would eventually fizzle out so I didn’t put a whole lot of effort into the ideas I sent him. I pretty much halfassed it and shot him some stuff off the top of my head just to shut him up and get him off my back.

I had totally forgotten about all of this and when I read what I had written 5 years ago I started laughing uncontrollably and now I’m completely wide awake.

22 year old Josh was living in Windsor with his girlfriend and a cat who’s dead now. He was the manager of a Bell Canada retail store and his middle aged employees hated him. He rented movies from Rogers Video at the corner of McDougall and Tecumseh and the cute video store clerk had the BIGGEST crush on him. He tried, unsuccessfully, to grow a full beard, realized he’d never be able to and finally settled for a scraggly patch of hair on his chin.

What was his idea for a groundbreaking Superhero Story?

I’m gonna copy and paste the conversation, the guy’s name has been changed to protect his identity and spare him the indignity of having so many people read his bad spelling and grammar:

Rick James

the beginning of the rest of your life

hey josh… i decided yesterday that i am an entrepenuer, i work at a swimming school. and i have my own home music school.. and now for the third venture of entrepenurial career… to make a cartoon for adult swim on teletoon

2 weeks ago i told my boss how there are no good superhero cartoons on anymore.
and he said…. so make one… and it got me thinking.. i could totally do that. but i would need help “sidekicks” if you will.. i found my buddy greg… and now you. and i think the three of us can bring a pilot episode to teleltoon that will make them piss their finely trimmed guchi underpants.

i have already found a way to animate by speaking to an animation prof at OCAD. we just need to spend some serious time writing up a few episodes.. and comeing up with an idea for the show..

one of the ones I came up with but realzied we cant use because we might get sueed, was a sitcom about ricky martins younger brother and his family… and the yourger martine cant live up to his older brother whos alwasy getting laid.. and getting spanish televison music awards. so ricky moves back home and tries to show his younger geeky brother the ropes

lol so im gona stop rambling… get back to me qand let me know if you want in on this adventure of a lifetime!!!

J Alex Alferez

RE:the beginning of the rest of your life 

How about a gay superhero? Not like a guy who is a hero but gay but like a regular straight guy who gets super powers but whenever he activates the powers he becomes a homosexual! Remember Captain Marvel? Shazam? He was just this little kid but when he says “SHAZAM!” he turns into this big buff super dude who flys and shoots lightning. It would be like that but when he says the magic word (Shiraz or something, i’m open to ideas) he turns into a gay superhero. Super fast. Super strong. Super gay!

Shiraz is the superpowered alter ego. The Clark Kent version of the guy is just an everyday average dude but he transforms into Shiraz whenever there’s danger. He’s got all the standard superhero powers, strength, speed, flight, invulnerability. The only catch is that when he’s in this form he’s SUPER GAY!
There’s also a Lois Lane type character and when he’s in his regular form he’s in love with her but she barely pays any attention to him and when he’s Shiraz, she’s all hot for his body and totally wants to bang him but he’s not even a little interested cuz he’s gay.

Batman has a ton of awesome villians. They’re commonly referred to as The Rogues Gallery by comic fans cuz there’s so many, they’re all cool and they often work together to fight Batman.

I think shiraz should have a ton of funny/creative villians and like batmans enemies they should all have a “theme”

Straight Shooter: he turns gays straight so when gay marriage is legalized he uses his power to break up the first gay couple that gets married so that the media storm causes the law to change back to making it illegal. Shiraz has to save the day

The Feminazi: she’s an ultra extreme feminist who is also a Nazi. She believes that all men must die and plans to send all the men to concentration camps and exterminate them. Instead of the Holocaust its the Holococks. Shiraz has to defeat her and her lesbian henchwomen to save the world.

Lust-er:  a gay international jewel thief. He loves anything that shines. His name is a play on words. Luster is what you call the shine that comes off of diamonds but he’s just a manwhore full of lust. He roofies and rapes the security guards who protect valuable jewels. They wake up with a sore bottom and that’s his calling card. That’s how they know they were robbed by Lust-er.

Father Figure: a catholic priest with a rockin’ hot bod who molests little boys. He tries to get shiraz drunk off Jesus Juice.

In one story Shiraz will have to plays Dick-tective and try to solve the mystery of a string of strange suicides happening all across town. His investigation leads him to The Dragon, the leader of a gang of Drag Queens who terrorize the city. They trick guys into thinking that they’re real female hookers and when the unsuspecting Johns find out they got BJ’d by a dude they kill themselves from the shame and horror

Green Piece: An environmentalist who chained himself to a tree to protest the dumping of toxic waste in the forest. The evil industrialist dumped it anyway and the chemicals mutated him with the tree. Now his cock is made of moss and he can control plants. His goal it to make everyone In the world vegan.

Holy shit! If I didn’t know that I had written all that I would TOTALLY be a fan of that comic book. Now I’m kinda bummed out that this kid was a lazy stoner and never did anything with this project.

I could’ve been Scott Snyder BEFORE Scott Snyder was Scott Snyder.

It’s 4:11 and I have to go to work in a few hours. There’s less than 2 weeks left until the RSP deadline and its crunch time. I have to be responsible for people’s personal finances, I can’t afford to be delirious from sleep deprivation when setting up RSP GICs or refinancing mortgages.

I guess I’ll go read some more of Night of Owls until I fall asleep and dream about what might’ve been.