Infinite Jest (173 page)

M
R.
V
EALS
: It’s previewable but rough. Not really quite there yet. The first Phil’s digitals
had a bug.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: Phil?

M
R.
V
EALS
: A small bug, but nasty. Dregs of a turbovirus in the graphic encoder. Phil’s head
kept detaching and floating off to the upper right. Not a good effect at all, given
the message we want to send.

M
R.
Y
EE
: Like orange blossoms, but with a kind of sick sweetness.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Oh dear.

M
R.
V
EALS
: [Sneezes.] And debugging put us behind on some of the fonts, so you’re going to
have to use some imagination here. Has this 210 unit been downloaded for schematic
matteing?

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: Excuse me. Phil?

M
R.
V
EALS
: Introducing Fully Functional Phil, the prancing ass.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: More like a mule, a burro. A burro.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: [Tapping like mad.] An ass?

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Horse-characters were copyrighted by ChildSearch. Their ‘Patch the Pony Who Says
Nay to Strangers’ spots.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: A prancing ass?

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: The perception of naïveté and clumsiness about a mule-icon provoked a kind of empathy
in the response groups. Phil’s not coming off as an authority-figure-joy-killer type.
More like a peer. So the cartridge he warns against gets none of the forbidden-fruit-type
boost of being warned against by an authority figure.

M
R.
V
EALS
: Plus the kid market’s a frigging horror show. Near every species was copyrighted.
Garfield. McGruff the freaking crime dog. Toucan Sam. The O.N.A.N. bird of prey. Let’s
not even get into the bears or bunnies. It was basically either an ass or a cockroach.
Never again the kid’s market as God is my witness. [Sneezes.]

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Once we went with the burro, Tom opted to accentuate the clumsy-incompetence factor.
To almost ironize the icon. Buck teeth, crossed eyes—

M
R.
V
EALS
: Extravagantly crossed. Like he’s just been whacked with a sock full of nickels.
Eye-response was through the roof.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Ears that won’t stay upright. Legs keep getting all rubbery and tangled when he
tries to prance.

M
R.
V
EALS
: But prance he does.

M
R.
Y
EE
: But surely it doesn’t present itself as an ass. Surely it doesn’t prance out and
say, ‘Take it from me, an ass.’

M
R.
V
EALS
: A
fully functional
ass.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Tom’s rather ingeniously played up the functionality angle. The energy and verve
versus passivity angle. He’s never just Phil. He’s Fully Functional Phil. He’s a blur
of kid-type activity—school, playing, teleputer-interfacing, prancing. Tom’s got him
storyboarded for a number of thirty-second activity-packed little adventures. He’s
a goof, an iconic child, but he’s
active
. He stands for the attraction of capacity, agency, choice. As versus the spot’s animated
adult who we see in a recliner ostensibly watching the Canadian cartridge, little
spirals going around and around in his eyes as his body sort of melts and his head
starts growing and distending until the passive watching adult’s image is just a huge
five-o’clock-shadowed head in the recliner, his eyeballs huge and whirling.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: [Taps his ruler against the edge of the tabletop.]

M
R.
V
EALS
: Let’s just roll the thing for them, Mo.

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: I’ve got to say I foresee trouble selling a certain Commander in Chief on a prancing
ass as an improvement over a singing Kleenex.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Phil’s message is that not every entertainment cartridge out there is necessarily
a good old safe pre-approved InterLace TelEntertainment product. He says word’s reached
him during his fun-filled fully functional daily activities of a certain very wicked
and sneaky cartridge that even has a little smiling face on the case and when you
first start watching it looks like it promises to be more fun to watch than anything
you’ve ever wished on a star or blown out a birthday-cake candle for. In a thought-bubble
that becomes visible when Phil’s ears flop down again—

M
R.
V
EALS
: [Sneezes.] Not yet matted in all the way—

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: You know how he is about Kleenex.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
:—will be an image of an iconic cartridge case with a friendly smile and pudgy little
harmless Pillsbury Doughboy arms and legs.

M
R.
Y
EE
: [Loosening his collar.] Not the actual copyrighted Pillsbury iconic-limb animation-codes,
though.

M
R.
V
EALS
: Relax. More like a reference. An allusion to plumpness, cuteness. Pudgy and harmless-looking
limbs, is the thing.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: [Tapping edge of tabletop with ruler.]

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: [Pointing at tapping ruler with weatherman’s pointer.] You’re close to losing that
hand, bucko.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: [Referring to notes.] Then Phil looks up and pops the thought-bubble with a needle
and says But it’s a liar, this smiling cartridge is, a wicked thing, lying, like the
stranger who leans out of his car and offers you a ride home to your Mommy and Daddy
but really wants to grab you and put his sweaty hand over your mouth and lock you
in the car and take you far away with him to where you’ll never see your Mommy, Daddy,
or Mr. Bouncety-Bounce ever again.

M
R.
V
EALS
: Which and here’s the traumatic graphic at fourteen, a dark-bordered new thought-bubble
over Phil in which now the cartridge’s limbs are like a dockworker’s, it’s a swart
leering cartridge with yellow fangs and long nails in a plaid cap and overalls driving
off with an animated kid splayed all screaming and horrified against the car’s rear
window, spirals starting to roll in the kid’s eyes. Wait’ll you see it.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: It’s so scary it’s positively riveting.

M
R.
V
EALS
: [Sneezes twice.] Stuff of fucking nightmares.

M
R.
Y
EE
: Urgle. Urgle urgle. Splarg.
Kaa
. [Falls from chair.]

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: Holy mackerel.

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: Buster? Buster?

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Mr. Yee’s epileptic. Severe. Untreatable. Happened twice on the chopper in. Stress
or embarrassment brings it on. He’ll be back up in a minute. Just act natural when
he comes back up.

M
R.
Y
EE
: [Heels drumming on terrazzo State House Annex floor tile.] Ack. Kaa.

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: Jesus.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: [Tapping ruler on tabletop’s edge.] Jesus W. Christ.

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: [Rising, indicating tapping ruler with extended weatherman’s pointer.] All right,
God damn it. Give me that thing. Give it here.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: But Chief—

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: You heard me God damn it. You know it drives me bats. You’ll get it back when we’re
done. Drives me up the wall. Always has. What is it with you and that ruler.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Be up and back in the game in a jiff. He won’t remember the fit. Just don’t mention
it. The embarrassment of mentioning it’ll set it off again. That’s why twice on the
chopper. I learned the hard way.

M
R.
Y
EE
: Splar. Kak.

M
R.
V
EALS
: [Hawking.] For Christ’s sake.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: [Referring to notes.] As the cartridge in the car in the thought-bubble drives the
splayed kid away, Phil prances a bit and warns that we don’t even know for sure what
the cartridge to watch out for is even about. He warns that the police only know that
it’s something that looks like you’d
really
want to watch it. He says all we know is it
looks
really entertaining. But that it
really
just wants to take away your functionality. He says we know it’s…
Canadian
.

M
R.
V
EALS
: That’s why the plaid cap in the traumatic graphic. Response data indicates a plaid
cap with earflaps signifies the Big C to over 70% of the spot’s target. The overalls
drive the association home.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: At nineteen seconds, Fully Functional Phil then dances his Warning Dance, a Native-American-cum-Breakdance-type
dance we’re hoping will catch on among younger dancers. His rhetorical thrust is to
play it functional and safe and make sure and check with Mommy and/or Daddy before
watching
any
entertainment you haven’t seen before. I.e. to accept no Spontaneous Dissemination
and play no post-delivered entertainment without checking with an authority figure.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: But as a peer. More like, ‘I’m thinking this is what
I
better do, if I want to stay fully functional.’

M
R.
Y
EE
: [Back upright in chair.] Somebody’s mentioned the floppy-ear and plastic-buck-teeth
product tie-ins.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: Jesus Mr. Yee, are you sure you’re OK?

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Ixnay on the entionmay.

M
R.
Y
EE
: [Sweat-soaked, looking around.] What did he mean? He didn’t mean…?

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: God damn it, Rodney.

M
R.
Y
EE
: Urg. Splarg. [Falls from chair.]

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: [Clears throat.] And finally, direly—can I say direly?

M
R.
V
EALS
: This is at 25.35 seconds.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Emphatically warns that if Mommy and/or Daddy have been observed sitting in one
position in front of the home’s viewer for an unusually long period of time—

M
R.
V
EALS
:—Without speaking. Without responding to stimuli.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
:—or acting in any way unusual or distracted or creepy or spooky with respect to an
entertainment on the viewer—

M
R.
V
EALS
: We cut
spooky
on the last pass.

M
R.
Y
EE
: Sklah. Nnngg.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
:—that the fully functional kid’ll
never
attempt to rouse them himself, and Fully Functional Phil leans way in in a kind of
fisheye-lens close-up and says ‘No-ho-ho-ho
way
’ would he ever be so dumb as to even for a second plunk himself passively down and
have a look at what it is his parents are so silently, creepily engrossed by, but
to vacate the premises and prance as fast as he can to get a policeman, who’ll know
just how to cut the premises’ power and help Mum and Dad.

M
R.
V
EALS
: His trademark expression is ‘No-ho-ho-ho
way
.’ He works it in whenever possible.

M
R.
T
INE
J
R.
: His equivalent to the Kleenex’s ‘No-Thankee.’

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: We’re ready to view, I think.

M
R.
Y
EE
: [Back in seat, necktie now wrapped all the way around neck like aviator’s scarf.]
Still hashing out the tie-ins with Hasbro et al.

M
R.
V
EALS
: We’re all cued and ready.

M
R.
T
INE
S
R.
: Let’s have a look at the sucker.

M
S.
H
OOLEY
: Since Tom’s too modest to say so, I should say that Tom’s already storyboarded an
extremely exciting adolescent-targeted version of Fully Functional Phil, for music-video
and soft-core disseminations, where Phil engages in a great deal more ironic self-parody,
and in this version his trademark expression becomes ‘It’s
your
ass, ace.’