My Schadenfreude Moment

Remember James Frey?
The man who fooled Oprah and emotionally scarred a whole nation?
Remember how so many people were betrayed and outraged when his supposed "100% true confessional" turned out to contain huge chunks of fabrication, above and beyond the expected name changes and amalgamations needed to make a memoir publishable?
I have to confess, I derived no small measure of rather mean-spirited satisfaction from the whole thing.
Not directed at Frey himself; I could care less one way or the other. And before you write me off as a complete dick (though you may still consider me a bit of one after reading this), it wasn't directed at those who've had horrific episodes with addiction etc. in their own lives and may have found some level of legitimate catharsis in his story. Though I would maintain that a work of fiction can have just as much meaning in that sense, I'm not incapable of some level of sympathy for that segment of his audience.

No, I'm talking about people with a pathological aversion to fiction. Those people who, upon learning about Frey's book, took the bait because it wasn't that icky made-up stuff! After all, it was like, real, man, and therefore not a waste of their oh-so-valuable-not-to-be-frittered-away-on-made-up-silliness time.

You know how we all have that judgemental side of us, that looks at the items in a person's home, and makes that snap decision as to whether we're ever going to really relate to them or not? Heading my "there's always going to be a massive gulf between us" list is finding the only damn bookshelf in the entire place mostly stocked with nicknacks save for six-or-less books, almost all of which are from the "Chicken Soup" or "7 Habits" series. Maybe it seems petty of me to pick on people who might just be trying to improve their lives, but I just feel plain alienated from anyone who hasn't touched a story since the last English class they were forced to take, and whose sole interaction with text is with the documents they have to deal with at work.
Related to this, and probably second on the aforementioned list, is when one's host says "feel free to put some music on" and you're confronted with, again, six-or-less discs in one corner of the shelf, all of which are gruesome compilations of the "Big Shitty Tunes" ("Now That's What I Call Shitty Music" to you Americans) variety, all of which are apparently disposed of and replaced annually (none of that "music evoking memories" messiness for them...).
But I digress.
I remember once, as quite a young child, finding myself in the old "forced to hang out with the kids of your parent's friends" situation. Already a book-loving kid, I immediately zeroed in on the bookshelf in the kid's room. I saw books on nature, a set of kid's encyclopedias, Big Golden Books of Science and the like...
But hey! Where were the stories? No Narnia? No Henry Huggins, Freddy the Pig, Homer Price, Danny Dunn, or even Hardy Boys? Not so much as a single leftover-from-infancy Dr.-fricking-Seuss?? How was I going to get a handle on who these kids were, how was I going to talk to them, how were we going to play without some common ground derived from stories we both knew?
When I asked about this gap, this gaping chasm, in their library, the reply was basically "Oh, that kind of stuff's all made up. Why would anybody want to read that?"
I could hardly wait till it was time to go home.

So anyway...
When I heard the whole Frey story, all I could think of was those people who, upon finding out that they'd been tricked into reading that "pointless made up stuff" responded in a way I just had to imagine as "Eww!! I got some of it on me! Ick!!!"

And I just couldn't resist indulging myself with an evil little laugh...

Lame Placeholder-style first post!

Now that I've started commenting in other blogs, I feel like I really should post something, if only to avoid looking like a troll who just posts from a blank, empty blog.
If you recognize the character I've named my blog after, then the era in which I first started reading comics should be obvious. If not, put your latter-day Claremont collections aside, and at least pick up a copy of Essential Defenders, Vol. 2.
(Is it true it cuts off just before the climactic annual? That is just messed up!)
Somehow, I got myself into commiting to covering the "Nebulon/Headmen/Bozos" arc for PLOK's "Seven Soldiers of Steve" challenge, which I will get to Real Soon Now...
(In which, among other things, I will bore you with the contention that my love for Grant Morrison's work years later can be traced directly back to this storyline...)
I started off reading comics at around 7 or 8 years old in the early 70s, for which PLOK is more or less to blame...
(Hey! Maybe I can blame him for being a Marvel Zombie for so long too! That'd be sweet! Heh-heh...)
I was the one other kid in the neighborhood that he managed to get addicted to the damned things, and somehow, over 30 years later, we're still talking about them. It's kind of embarassing that he's managed to get so far ahead of me in terms of posting, seeing as I've had net access for a few years longer than him, so, now, I feel I've got to start posting properly.
So, watch this space for more...
Real Soon Now...