Category: The Hero’s Gurnal

Here we are at the end, on my birthday of all days. I had written just a weird, light, out-of-continuity stinger. Or was it out-of-continuity? This could just be the opening of the second episode. Marty has drifted off to sleep at the sandwich counter and this is his dream. Maybe Chip is about to give him a rude awakening.

If there was ever going to be more, there would need to be a fleshing out of Chip’s backstory. I’d like to think that Marty has gotten him fired from countless jobs over the years. While Marty views all puppets as an inconvenience and a problem for him, Chip has been feeling that same way about Marty for some time.

This is the end of the first feature in The Hero’s Gurnal. My intention next is to start doing Cold Justice, which was an attempt I had made at writing a graphic novel some nine years prior to No Strings Attached. That one will need a little brushing up ahead of time. I’m planning to launch that on December 5th, which means it will be updating well past the end of Flatliner’s run. It might be the main god damned attraction of this site, unless I come up with something, and then choose to act on that. Terrifying.

The setup is complete. Or rather, phase one of the setup is complete. Marty and Chip are doomed to work (and soon, live) together. What Perfect Strangers accomplished in one scene in the mid 1980’s it took me 33 pages. Arguably in 2014 I was ahead of my time as most TV shows these days waste an entire season before getting down to business.

There is one more page. The thumbnail preview looks like there’s some dialog, so we’ll assume I wrote a stinger or something and it’s not a lame copyright page or something. Even if it was, that would be kind of a hilarious payoff for everyone but me.

Marty tries to undo all the damage he did the day before, by way of wreaking deliberate havoc in the five minutes he has to get from bed to business. The perceived good karma that he’s building up is somehow an obstacle to him.

It’s at this point that he gets a new inconvenience, and even though this one is actually to his benefit, we get to see his utter frustration. Also, we know approximately what time of year it is. Purely coincidentally, FOR YOU, clocks have just gone back. I’d like to say this was all deliberate planning but NOPE it just happened.

We’re building up to the end here. Two pages left, I think? There had better be. I need two more subject lines. Also, that would put the final post of this script- in another fantastic coincidence- on my birthday, which again- coincidentally- is the date the final chapter of the classic Flatliner run begins. Gimme.

Okay, it stayed PG-13 in Marty’s fantasy. That’s nice. Glad I did that.

Marty’s dream to create the perfect sandwich is titled his Holy Quest. I really don’t remember thinking that he cared at all, that the sandwich gig was just something he fell into- possibly after complaining about a sandwich. You know what? Never mind. It makes sense. He had a sandwich that he disliked so much that it changed the course of his entire life. I genuinely like that.

Everything about this fantasy is just building on the previous fantasy that Marty had–and needlessly described to Todd– earlier. Why Todd is continuously a victim when Marty imagines success I don’t know. It’s not rooted in racism. Marty’s prejudice is supposed to lie only against puppets.

I think his only interpretation of success includes that it exclusively happens to him when it does? He’s not supposed to be a good person.

I’m actually a little disappointed in myself with this page. If we rearrange the lines, we can actually get a better idea of how rampant Marty’s alcoholism was getting. It should go more like this:

Mandy: Well, first we will be having your favorite for breakfast! Whiskey!
Marty: Two of them?
Mandy: Of course, you big goof!

Then we go back up to the what-to-drink and garbage water lines and skip back down to the skeeball stuff. Two whiskeys, one beer is the breakfast of the day here.

Anyway, hope I’m not breaking blue with the “and finally–“

As I said, I haven’t been re-reading ahead on this one. The next one will certainly require edits and planning ahead, as I have nine less years of my barely-developed maturity in that story.

Anyway, it’s Halloween. For you. For me it’s August. And I didn’t mention Halloween on the Flatliner post that went up 30 minutes ago when it was June or July. Enjoy the day- it’s the only holiday of the year that brings people closer together.

I think “Mrs. Ass. Man.” might be the closest thing to an actual dirty joke I included anywhere in this script. It’s just a minor note in a relatively colorful fantasy of Marty’s. Was I deliberately making a talking heads reference using the phrase “beautiful wife?” Probably not.

Before we get to that, we have Marty arguing with his own mirror image. That mirror image is a lot smarter and more grounded in reality than he is, and he throws its advice away immediately in favor of the instant gratification of drinking himself into oblivion.

Is Marty a manifestation of who I was in 2014 clawing its way to the surface?
Yes. Am I going to do exactly what Marty does here and gloss over that, telling myself that my own unrelated struggles years down the line are not the same thing?
Also yes. Double yes. To the moon and back.

Todd starts this off level-headed. He probably shouldn’t. He has for the countless-th time so far squeaked by physically unscathed by Marty’s recklessness and general disregard for other people. The emotional abuse Marty continuously puts him through he must have numbed to years ago. He doesn’t exactly stay level-headed, here. Chip doesn’t need to be thrown into a dumpster to de-escalate the situation.

Next, we move on to Marty getting home after well, probably a somewhat run-of-the-mill day for him (plus or minus a few head injuries.) I’m vaguely remembering the next portion being kind of a breakdown showing us how damaged he is, though keeping it vaguely triumphant, as the scenes where Marty is by himself are skewed in his perspective quite a bit.

Marty is in full-on psychotic white-man mode. Todd has given up, and Chip is resisting the situation immediately. Marty crashes a taxi almost immediately after getting in as a passenger. The consequences for him for this are real, but they are not quite so direct. He won’t find himself personally liable for the damage he does (at least not in this script, I don’t think.)

Had I kept going, the general conceit of the entire thing was that Marty was going to be forced to live and work with Chip by way of an abnormal court decision. Chip would sue Marty and neither would get what they wanted. Well-meaning, straight-laced sentient puppet and a wacky alcoholic sandwich boy put together, just trying to make it in the world. It’s a shame that my ideas go here or to places where they are even less likely to be noticed or appreciated. This could have been great.

Marty and Chip finally cross paths again, but Marty is in the heat of the moment of being wildly problematic. Marty was not written to be a person who sees reason, but his unhealthy infatuation sends him barreling across a line. Todd wants off. This has to lead to Marty getting Chip fired from a second job, right? Right.

As I said, I genuinely don’t remember how the third act plays out. This whole thing is the setup to a format, though not one that is on display here. The story has to do the sitcom thing of rapidly setting up a new status quo, then experimenting with breaking that format down the road.

I’m having vague recollections of scenes- ones that may or not have ever been written for these characters. If they don’t show up in the next handful of pages, they most assuredly were not. Maybe I should flesh them out as some kind of bonus feature? Would that matter to you, no one?

Mandy takes everyone at their word, so Marty is actually a mailbox as far as she’s concerned. In this reality, it’s not super far-fetched since every puppet has Pinocchio syndrome. Who is to say that someone hadn’t vandalized a mailbox or two with googly eyes, qualifying them as puppets? I played fast and loose with the rules on this because an opportunity to do something completely off the wall might happen at any time.

Todd needs something to him as more than a straight man to Marty’s chaotic vibe. Not right away, this was written as a TV show. It’s far more important to ask why I thought I needed to write this. I know the answer- and that is that without a creative outlet, I would die. That’s the whole purpose of this site, honestly. I know that absolutely no one reads it, but making it quells the urge just a little bit. We can count playing Smash Bros as creative output, right?

Well, it’s October for you. I’m so far ahead on this thing that it’s August for me. Maybe I’ll find some kind of audience before then. Hah!