The Harry Situation

With this post, I hereby fulfill my obligation to create content for distribution as described in my contract.

I’ve also fulfilled my desire to speak truth to power, and to get revenge on all of you who have turned me from this:

Before The Harry Situation…

to this:

After The Harry Situation…

I’ve told you about how I was going to make art on television, and how Garnier Fructis stepped in to ’save us’ by making my show into a commercial for Bold It!.

I’ve shared the secrets my success at being in a dying marriage:

…And the affair that broke its back:

I told you about poor Harry Johnson, and how he expected to be naked with Dawn Spangler, but was instead naked with Officer Friendly.

I told you about the one of a kind Dawn Spangler and her need for attention.

I told you of Carrie Harrison, the simple local girl who went from PA to lead actress when a light fixture mysteriously fell on the actress I was having an affair with.

Now that some time has passed, I’m starting to gain some perspective on the whole thing. And a lot of you have emailed questions. I’m going to ignore them all. Except the most pressing question:

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Carrie can’t get cast in anything because she’s awaiting a Grand Jury investigation into her role in Teri’s attempted murder.

Dawn has been cast as the lead in another pilot called, “Barbra Q.” (I hear they’re having problems).

Floyd Bellman is alive and well, and living in Paris.

He has been working with the French Government on a very sexy calendar highlighting the problems of alcohol abuse.

Nancy is dating the props guy from the show. Way to rebound, gorgeous.

And Garnier Fructis Style Bold It! Endurance Gel and Power Putty are now flying off the shelves at your local whatever.

If anyone knows the whereabouts of Harry Johnson. Please let me know (mybestfriendTodd@gmail.com). Or don’t. I don’t really care anymore. It’s just that my readers deserve closure.

I just got another gag order, this one from my soon-to-be-ex-wife, Nancy. She has asked me not to cause further irreparable damage to her reputation, and warns me that what I say in this blog will be used in our divorce proceedings as a demonstration of my mental competence.

But guess what…

I’ve gotten over 1,433,900 unique visitors since I turned this URL into a euphoric revenge ride. So on balance, this is a pretty great day.

First, I’d like to share credit with Garnier Fructis for the huge spike in traffic.

Thank you, Garnier Fructis for promoting and advertising this site as per our binding contract.

And I’m sure some visitors are trying to get to the previous site.

But for you newcomers:

I’m Todd, and I’m using this space to get back at the people that destroyed the only thing I ever cared about.

Here’s a quick catch-up for all you newcomers:

My wife Nancy and I were co-producing a groundbreaking single-camera series about adult sexual relationships. It was going to be smart and funny and have real nudity. It was going to be on a prestigious cable network…

We were dropped by the network, but then picked up by a sponsor, Garnier Fructis Style Bold It! Power Putty and Endurance Gel.

They funded the production and agreed not to interfere.

But they did, quickly corrupting the original show and turning it into a one-note hack sitcom that was really just a one-note hack product advertisement for their hair putty.

But their plan backfired. Focus groups who saw the show thought the hair product was actually a sexual lubricant or sex enhancement cream.

I enjoyed this misunderstanding, but it caused massive distress for the sponsor.

Meanwhile, the lead actor, Harry Johnson, was distracted by his obsession with our lead wacktress, Dawn Spangler.

She was disgusted by him and publicly insulted him every chance she got.

In the meantime, the talented and lovely Floyd Bellman came out of the closet in a big way, which somehow lead to rumors that he and Harry were in a serious gay relationship.

Harry was worried that his fans would think he really was in a relationship with Floyd, which would ruin his chances of sleeping with Dawn or any other woman.

Making matters worse, focus groups (who continued to think the sponsor’s product was some sort of sex lube and not a new hair geland not a new hair gel) now also thought that Harry and Floyd’s characters were lovers in the show.

At this point it was clear the show would never air, and that my career was in terrible jeopardy. However, I still believed that my life might still be worth living.

So in response to the focus group thinking Harry’s character is supposed to be in a sexual relationship with Floyd, and that Power Putty is a sexual performance enhancer, the sponsor demanded to record a very special public service message.

At this point it was clear that life was no longer worth living. However, I was still under a contract, and getting paid.

The next week, the sponsor forced Harry to strap-on a camera to highlight his hairstyle during the show.

At this point I didn’t care about the contract or the money. I was just in it for the omelet station every Thursday. Hi Rosa!

Harry was at the end of his rope, and he had one thing that he was desperately looking forward to: the highly sexual nude scenes we were getting ready to shoot. That’s right. We were finally going to get to the nude stuff…

(Heading out now, I’m too excited about my future and must continue with my daily exercise regime.

Oopsie. Am I allowed to tell you that?

So I guess someone important must be reading his, eh? Hello, “someone important.” Your gag order can kiss a character named Harry Ball.

It says I am not permitted to share certain pieces of information. Let’s see how close I can get, shall we?

I’ll start at the beginning and tell you how the hell I sold a show in the first place.

I was teaching creative writing when one of my students came to a play I co-wrote with my wife. That student happened to be the daughter of an executive at XXX (GAG ORDER!), a very prominent cable television network. He saw the play, met with us, drank two bottles of expensive vodka, and sexually harassed my wife. Three meetings with our attorneys later, we agreed that he should produce our show.

GAG ORDER says I can’t tell you the name of the network executive, but his name rhymes with Vermon Grundle. I also cannot tell you the name of his daughter and my former student but her name rhymes with Malice Grundle.

I can also tell you that when they greenlit our pilot, I could not have been happier.

I had a ‘beautiful’ wife named Nancy and we had just sold a show together. We did all the dumb Hollywood things like buying two new cars.

We even started sleeping with each other again, which wasn’t as awful as I expected.

I even started exercising and lost a small (but unrecognizable) amount of weight. All of these things are symptoms of a disease I had contracted called “Hope.”

I was soon to be cured.

We got busy with production and things moved quickly. Then a bomb dropped on us.

It should have been over that moment, but it wasn’t. We were told the “good news”, and then we were introduced to our new best friend:

The Conferbot 2000- A multi-functioned, multimedia, full resolution, digital video, super surround sound conferencing cam.

I would come to hate this little black machine. I dreamed of fighting it with a laser-powered sword (but feared it might also be my father). It became the symbol of all that is dark in the world. It worked really well though. I’ll give it that.

Through this device, we would communicate with our new sponsor from the dark side.

So the show was still alive, but would move to another network and would be sponsored by a “great brand.”

I couldn’t really fight it. I had stumbled into my dream due to the wandering hands of Vermon Grundle, and I wasn’t going to kill myself just because we had a sponsor. But I should have.

And I even tried their product. I was only embarrassed and self-conscious about my ‘asymmetrical’ hairdo with a ‘matte finish’ for a little while. Because I looked pretty damn good - like I actually cared about my appearance or something. And it lasted for a freakishly long time.

Dare I say that my life was going all right, even with the sponsor news?

Looking back now, would it have been better if the show just died that day before the sponsor entered the picture? Do I regret that I allowed any of this to happen? Has this experience destroyed my ability to trust another human being? Have I showered the past two weeks? Yes, yes, yes, and no.

I hate myself for believing in something and will never believe in anything again. Maybe unicorns.

I should have seen the warning signs. They were everywhere.