This is the opening to the first novel I ever wrote, which I’m in a constant state of revising. I thought you might be curious about the non-ScreenCrush part of my life, and I’m open to any feedback you might have. Enjoy!

American Paradise

Prologue: Where Wings Take Dream

There was a sea of balloons on the playground, waiting to touch the sky. An entire elementary school huddled together for warmth against the cold winds of March. Most of the children wore coats made by the same label, called American Paradise, and most of the coats were purchased at the All-Mart just outside town.

The children were cold and bored, but the teachers said they had to endure this misery. The children did not understand. It was cold, far too cold to stand around. And even though they were on the playground, this was not recess. They were not allowed to play. The slide and swingset and jungle gym were right there, but whenever a child ventured too close Ms Sweeney would bellow, “NO TOUCHING!” and the kids would huddle closer, like male penguins weathering a south pole winter.

“Ms. Sweeney how come we can’t go inside or have normal recess?

“Because,” teacher said, “We’re having fun.”

Every child was holding their very own balloon, and tied to each balloon was a laminated letter they wrote to a possible pen pal who might–someday–find this letter. The project would teach children about the postal service, about geography, community--and that was all very nice, but it was still cold enough to freeze the tits off a frog.

Ten year-old Adam Duty stood to the side, wrapped in a corduroy coat. The coat, from far away, looked like a potato sack. He had a sad face that other kids didn’t want to look at. After six years in school, no one ever talked to him on the playground.

However: in his greasy hand he gripped a letter to the first friend he would ever have.

He wrote the letter, that morning, on the school bus. His handwriting was never neat, but this letter was barely legible. All across the page, his pencil marks would dart up and down, recording every pothole on his lonely country road, like a machine recording brain waves. And, even though the letter was pressed neatly inside his Spelling book, it sported crinkled edges and a mysterious brown stain at its center.

It read like this:

Deer Sumone,

I am Adam Duty and Im in fif grad. Im gong to put this noat ona buloon and let it go two day. I think you shuld cum stae at my hows if you reed this noat. I will sleep on the floor and you can haf my bed.

Your Friend,

aDam Duty

Though he couldn’t know it, this was the first time in his life that Adam spelled “friend” correctly.

There was an adult taking pictures and moving across the playground.

He was the kind of man you can’t help spotting around town. He looked like a Sears catalog Santa Claus, with a wide white beard sprouting above his temples and branching outwards to meet his shoulders. His mouth only emerged from the beard to shout, smile, or sing hymns. Though, after going bald in his mid twenties, he hadn’t had much use for God or His songs.

His name was Tilden Dellow. T. Dellow in print, T to his friends, Bubby to his dead mother. For thirty years he’d ridden the white-knuckled life of a small town newspaper editor. He had the same thought at least once a day: Don’t die from Alzheimer’s like Mom and Dad. In his dreams he met death with clenched fists, socking the reaper in the jaw before surrendering artfully to the mat like a prizefighter on the take.

His life’s work was chronicling spelling bees, police dogs with bulletproof vests, and balloon pen pal sendoffs. He needed a quote from one of the kids and a shot of balloons flying through the air. If he didn’t get that photo, it was no big deal. They had stockpiles of balloon sendoff photos from years past.

He dreaded weaving through the tangle of youngsters. He ached for a real story, intelligent interview subjects. If only the terrorists would attack the school, create some carnage, spill some blood...he wanted to write a novel.

He spotted Adam Duty, standing without friends, alone inside his overcoat. “Hey there young man, can I talk to you?”

Adam said nothing. He wondered if he were in trouble.

“What’s your name?”

“Adam Duty,” the boy cast down his eyes, ready for the man to make chuckles at his last name. Everyone made chuckles at his last name. Even grown ups.

“Well Adam, what did you write in your balloon letter?”

The boy was silent. T. Dellow couldn’t decide if he was rude, shy, or considering. His fingernails cut into his palm, staining the plastic balloon string with blood.

“Reckon this balloon will find my friend.”

Tilden’s inner journalist compelled him to ask the young man about his hopes and dreams. There was something big happening with this boy. He could feel it—but when the teacher called everyone together, the strange boy was forgotten.

Adam had a plan for the sendoff. He was not bright, so ideas—let alone plans—seldom came to him. The night before he pictured his balloon getting lost in the jumble, one letter among hundreds. The poor balloon would feel lost and scared. Then his letter wouldn’t find anyone. His clever scheme was to release his balloon string seconds before everyone else. If his letter had a head start, it was sure to find his friend.

Adam didn’t have the imagination for his balloon’s failure.

The other kids began counting down with the teachers. Adam didn’t join in because he had trouble counting forward, much less in reverse. When the chorus rang out “5” he released his bloodstained balloon string.

It shot into the stratosphere like a happy tadpole, and Adam Duty smiled.

Five seconds later the other balloons were flying into the air, a rubber rainbow smearing the sky. For one sweet moment, one hundred and ninety-seven children watched in silence as the wind carried their secret messages to the heavens.

The teacher explained that most of the letters would be lost and that, of those found, only a small number would actually receive returns. Less than a week later, they had their first reply. Tatum Tibbs brought in a letter sent to her from Brighton, two towns over. The person writing back to her was a librarian, who moved there from the city.

Mrs. Garry hung up three maps: one of the county, one of the state, and of the entire United States. A pushpin was placed in Brighton. As time went by and school bells rang, the maps filled up with pushpins. There were more replies than they expected. As winter vanished and summer vacation neared, two-thirds of the kids had return letters.

Adam stayed inside during every recess to glide his fingers along the map, wondering where his pushpin would land. Maybe in another country, he dreamed. It must have found a friend someplace far away, because his letter was taking such a long time.

One day, the last bell rang and Mrs. Garry told everyone to have a good summer. No more school. The last thing Adam saw before he left the classroom was Mrs. Garry removing the pushpins and folding up the map. No one seemed to care. They had forgotten.

That’s when it occurred to Adam that his balloon wasn’t found. The wind worked against him. Stupid letter. He worked so hard to keep his handwriting neat, but now he would never get a pushpin.

On the bus ride home he kept his face in his book bag and wept, quiet as he could.

That June was one of the hottest on record. Fields of crops wilted in the heat and wild animals were scarce. Adam’s days were spent doing farm chores, and during clear nights he slept in a sleeping bag under the sky. Maybe the balloon is still rising. Could have gone to the stars, or the moon. I bet it rises high enough to touch heaven, and an angel is gonna read it. These ideas comforted Adam as the crickets chirped him to sleep, and the cool grass tickled his ears.

It stormed on the Fourth of July.

Every year, the Duty family invited friends and relatives to celebrate Independence Day with food, fireworks, and firewater (the latter two brought over from Tennessee). Rick Duty, Adam’s dad, amassed enough fireworks to destroy his farm and half the neighbor’s too.

But today was a tragedy. Tunderheads filled the sky instead of explosions. The elder Duty squeezed his face against a window, staring between the raindrops. There was an arsenal leaning against his wall. Bottle rockets and Roman Candles, Cairo Blasters and 36 shot aerial repeaters, 500-gram pyrotechnic delights lovingly packed by small Chinese hands into tight cardboard missile casings, the power of a sun, able to set the sky on fire like Judgment Day a-coming early: all wrapped in their original plastic, dead. Bored.

The guests tried to put a good face on things. Some played horseshoes in the barn, others pounded coozies of Bud Light around card tables. There was also fried Lake Erie cod, which was rated to be excellent. Adam was the youngest of his cousins by five years. While they played video games and grown up card games, he stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at his shoes.

There was a knock at the door. No grownups around, so Adam answered it. The man on the porch was wearing a dripping wet suit, and a duck sat between his shoes. Adam asked, “You wanna come in?” He assumed this was a relative, because relatives had been showing up all day and he didn’t know any of them.

The man produced a badge, “My name is Roman Lawhorn, Environmental Protection Agency.”

Adam thought the man had an awful long name. “Are you my uncle, Mr. Agency?”

“No.” He nodded to the duck. “And this is Pryma, of the Pribble Flock.”

“Howdy-do,” said the boy.

“We’re looking for the person who wrote this,” the man pulled a Ziploc bag from his breast pocket. Adam nearly jumped out of his britches when he saw his balloon letter inside.

“Well sir, that’s my letter!” the boy said. Finally his Friend had come (a little older than he expected) and he brought his pet duck, too.

The man held out a white envelope, and Adam took it. “Young man, this is a subpoena. You’ll need to show it to your parents.”

And then, it was the duck who spoke to Adam: “Lord Farmer King, I am finally here. I beg you, please: may I have my feathers back?”

In every Toy Story installment, the characters face some existential threat that comes with being a toy. The first movie’s climax centers around a toy’s greatest fear, “what if the kids didn’t love them…and in fact, were mean to their toys?” We see Sid tear his toys apart, Frankenstein them together, and even blow them up–but does this make him a bad kid?

Let’s look closer at Sid’s life. His house and backyard are in disarray. We only ever hear his mom, so we can assume this is a single-parent household, and the poor woman likely struggled to make ends meet, so she can’t be attentive to her son. Hell, they even have the same ugly 70s carpet from The Shining.

Sid doesn’t have the luxury of owning all the best toys, like his well-off neighbor Andy. So, he has to get creative–he takes his toys apart and mixes them back together. He even turned this toy into a hook-er, get it? He’s got a warped, mature sense of humor.

When he finds Buzz, he’s so excited and says, “A Buzz Lightyear, no way”--because this poor kid just scored the hottest toy in America. This is the best day of his little life.

And sure, Sid bullied his younger sister a little. But I’m sure those of you with siblings have endured a lot worse. He takes her doll away to do an operation on her–a double bypass brain surgery. The kid just invented double bypass brain surgery–think what he could have achieved if Woody didn’t drive him to a life of hard drugs.

See, Sid has no idea that the toys are alive–to him, they are objects, and outlets to express his creativity. He doesn’t have a dad around to help him through these complex emotions of puberty, and his mom is stretched thin.

Now Sid also likes to blow stuff up… which doesn’t make him evil–he’s just like every other boy in America–we all like to blow stuff up. I used to gnaw on my action figures–but that doesn’t make me a cannibal.

When he gets the idea to blow up Buzz Lightyear, it’s because he wants to make him fly. Which, by the way, works–that’s how Buzz and Woody fall with style to meet up with Andy on moving day.

So then Woody devises a plan to absolutely traumatize this kid for life–he breaks the number one Toy Law and speaks to the human.

Sid is freaked out–and for the rest of his life, genuinely believes that objects come alive–he believes that toys are sentient beings. Think of the long-term consequences here.

This kind of psychiatric damage was probably treated with medication–the heavy stuff that sedates a child to kill their sense of whimsy and wonder. And adult Sid makes a cameo in Toy Story 3 here–he’s a garbage man. Now there’s nothing wrong with being a garbage man–it was my dream job when I was a kid.

But Sid’s type of play indicates a child with career objectives in mind–he pretends to be a doctor, and an astronaut.

A study commissioned by Genius of Play concluded that 32% of adults claimed the toys they played with as children affected their career choices. Unless, that is, their emotional growth is stunted by a talking psychotic toy.

But instead, we see our final look of Sid here, in Pixar’s Coco. Now this is unconfirmed, but there are some sites describing how the Pixar movies can all take place in the same universe. And this one is not a stretch–Coco and Ty Story are both about people in the real world–not talking Cars or something

This is the land of the dead–and that is a skeleton wearing a skull tee shirt–implying that Sid died an early death. I think that the prescription drug use in his early years, coupled with his low economic upbringing and lack of parental guidance, really set Sid down the wrong path.

For his entire life, he would have been haunted by the memory of a talking toy, a toy that told him that they can see everything, and there are people watching him everywhere.

Sid would tell his parents, his teachers, doctors–but no one would believe him. The kid is crazy, give him Meds. So this poor child would gladly accept the meds–anything to block out the sound of Tom Hanks’s voice. So, he overdosed and died young.

Justice for Sid.

There is an incredibly ridiculous Stranger Things conspiracy theory–and why I think it’s the perfect example of internet privilege and why AI can eventually destroy–or rebuild–Hollywood.

So in case you haven’t heard about it, there is a growing movement on the internet of Stranger Things fans who didn’t like the finale–and they are claiming that the ending of the show isn’t real, because it was an illusion that Vecna created in Mike’s mind. The reasoning behind this is that the ending is SO happy that it couldn’t possibly be how the series ends—it has to be a trick. These fans believe that the Brothers Duffer are secretly pulling a bait-and-switch, and the real ending is coming soon.

So they have found numerous clues–even looking at the dice rolls in the D and D game–they’re trying to turn Stranger Things into Twin Peaks, when it’s not.

The Brothers Duffer (I’m sticking to that) have refuted this—as have the cast—and they have even clarified that there are almost no deleted scenes from the season. And yet, stubborn fans have doubled down. Ironically, the Duffers created this sitaiton by landing on an ambiguous note—is Eleven alive? Is it the Lady or the Tiger? The ambiguity is a metaphor for the magic of childhood—she’s alive if you believe that she is alive.

Now conformity gate is another fad conspiracy. Like how people genuinely beieved, for decades, that Elvis faked his death. So the actual conspiracy will fade away with time—but I’m scared of what this conspiracy represents. These are fans who simply did not like the ending of the show, so they have convinced themselves that there is a real, secret, better ending that is tailored to them.

Only the internet can produce a generation of people who think this way–because the internet is always there, to give us exactly what we want. If you don’t like how game of thrones ended, you can go read fan fiction, or watch YouTube videos about how it could have been better. I make these videos for a living—they’re a lot of fun, but they’re also ridiculous. We can sit back, with no worries over cast scheduling, production budgets, and nitpicking actual art created by actual artists. Did I like the ending of Game of Thrones? Not really, but I know I could have done any better.

I think the next step of this entitlement will be people making their own episodes of Stranger Things with generative AI. This is leading to a world like the Oasis in Ready Player One. In that book (and movie), most of the action takes place ina. virtual reality called The Oasis. In this reality, every IP you can think of is walking around. You can fight beside Gundams, and Ferris Bueller can be your neighbor. Fans can move art around, but they don’t create anything new.

This is where the internet is headed—anyone will be able to take the work of others and remix it into whatever they want. In this kind of landscape, it’s going to be impossible for artists to create anything new, because a million people on the internet will immediately change it to “the fan’s version.”

But let me throw out this idea–what if these AI remakes are actually good? There could be a generation of young filmmakers who use generative AI as a tool to realize great stories. When I was a kid, I didn’t even have access to a VHS camera—I had to borrow one from a relative to make school projects. I’d like to think I would have made something pretty kick-ass with generative AI—but I probably would have just made crap.

But what about the young Spielbergs or Tarantinos? Will tools like this empower them or create a crutch for them to lean on that limits their creativity?

I know that AI is stealing source art from across the internet—so you’re essentially always copying. But isnt that how all art works? Yo start off copying the handwriting as the teacher has it on the board, then you develop your own signature?

That would suck even worse, right? If Skynet was right? What do you think?

This had lasting implications for Hollywood. Afterwards, producers could no longer use the likeness of actors without their permission. This ruling came just in time for the rise of CGI and digital media. Fred Astaire was digitally resurrected to sell vacuum cleaners in a commercial. And of course, legacy franchises like Tron and Star Wars will keep bringing actors back until they pass into myth and legend. Future kids will be surpised to learn that Luke Skywalker was once played by a real human boy—this will be one of those fun facts you tell people on whatever platform replaces human interaction in a hundred years.

But I also think that Glover’s lawsuit hurt the BTTF trilogy. The original plan was for Crispin Glover to star in Back to the Future 3 as Seamus McFly, the great-great grandfather of Marty McFly. In that movie, Seamus teaches Marty that it’s okay to back down from a fight. This would have brought the trilogy full circle, as Marty taught Crispin Glover’s George how to fight in the first film.

Instead, we had to settle for Michael J. Fox playing his own ancestor, with the most godawful OY-resh accent ever put to film. And weirdly, Lea Thompson plays his great-great-grandmother, confirming that there is definitely a history of incest in Marty’s family tree.

Sorry to ruin these movies for you.