Appy Polly Logies

I did a dick move the other day. By which I mean I acted in a rude, selfish manner to a friend. Not that I managed to make my wang jiggle. (It does that on it's own).

Here's the situation: A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away...) I borrowed my friend Rob's copy of "Story", the screenwriting tome carried by many professionals and amateurs alike in this town. It was also prominently featured in the motion picture Adaptation, where the wonderful Brian Cox portrayed the real life author Robert McKee. (Cox would a few months later surprise us all, and kick a fair amount of ass in X2: X-Men United. There's no point in mentioning that aside from pointing out how much ass X2 kicks. Seriously).


Where was I? Oh yeah, so Rob lends me his copy of the book, and then he moves back to New York. I naturally never gave him the book back. I began reading it, when Rob began calling me to ask for it back. Because I'm a lazy man, this takes me a supremely long time. Because I am a poor man, I send it the cheapest, slowest way possible, when I finally DID get around to sending it.

Now, here's the thing, Rob and I have a long tradition of inscribing messages to one another in books, you know, for the ages. And his copy of Story was to be no exception to this rule. However, I decided to write it in the voice of Robert McKee, letting Rob know that he is a no-talent hack and will never make it anywhere in this business. It was pretty funny, if I remember it correctly. (I wrote it awhile ago, and then the mail did take an awfully long time).

To properly ensnare Rob, and thus the prank, I was planning on an elaborate set-up telling him how I attended one of McKee's screenwriting seminars and had managed to get him to sign the book. It was a reasonable set-up, and the payoff, while not immaculate on the level of one being "punk'd", was still fairly humorous.

What I didn't count on, was how touched by this gesture Rob would be. That I would actually get his copy signed for him and then send it is foreign, and he found that to be noble and cool. I sensed actual human emotion in his voice, so different from the robotic monotone he often affects. So now, Rob is looking forward to a signed copy of Story. But alas, it was signed by me. Being a dick. A funny dick, but still.

Naturally, I waited until after he's received the book (because it's still pretty funny) to apologize. And even that I'm only doing on my blog. With pictures of Wolverine.