It's not like balancing two jobs... It's more like managing two girlfriends. One, the childhood sweetheart you love with everything you have. Familiar, wonderful -- the one you marry. The other one... Heat. New heat. Exploration and sweat and that feeling of falling all the time. Two lives, yin and yang, and while no one's asking you to choose yet... you know it in your heart -- that the time for choice is barreling at you like a freight train. One way or the other, you're headed for a disaster.
- Joe Kelly, "Same Coin"

"I Can Hear You, Just Barely Hear You..."
I've spent about two weeks trying to write a blog entry based around this They Might Be Giants song called "I Can Hear You," which is this really grainy track recorded at the Edison Laboratory (located in the Garden State) where all the lyrics are things you'd hear out of bad speakers, like "What is your order? I can supersize that, please bring your car around," or "Guess where I am? I'm calling from the plane. I'll call you when I get there."

As you can tell, it didn't go well. It wasn't until I tried to make an entry based on the band's song "Fingertips" -- which is basically a collection of chorus lines from 20 unfinished songs -- that I realized I was going to a bad place.

Oh well. Win some, lose some.

"Lenar / Clark"
Some of my co-workers have taken to calling me "Lenny". In all my born days, I've never been Lenny. (Actually, now that I think about it, that smokin' hot Cardona girl used to call me Lenny, but that doesn't count. The affairs of the truly hot get filed other ethereal as far as I'm concerned...)

Someone was telling me the other day that they couldn't imagine calling me anything but Clark. Which makes sense, until I think about the fact that I spent eighteen years as Lenar, and I'm basically Lenar in Kansas City and Clark in Columbia... or Lenar in the Barrio and Clark at FARC. Jeffries called me Lenar once and I felt so totally skeeved. And when Brent calls me Clark I get confused on the whom he's referring to. (Prewitt calls me both without phasing me, because, let's face it, Prewitt does whatever he wants.)

So who am I? In the next life (or "Jersey" to the uninitiated) which is it going to be? Maybe it's time to let my middle name out to stretch his legs.

I could be a Francois. Shut up. You don't know.

"Everyday I Check the Mail for My No-Prize..."
No, I haven't heard from Marvel re: my original writing sample. Yes, I've written back to them. It goes a little something like this:

Dear Stan Lee,

I sent you a story seven weeks ago, and I was wondering when you was gonna come to my house so we could talk about my new job writing Uncanny X-Men.

Love forever,
Lenny Clark

Should be any day now.

"Idiot Box Spring"
I cannot explain to you how much I love watching Justice League Unlimited. What they did with Booster Gold in "The Greatest Story Never Told" was nothing short of marvelous. And you haven't lived until you've seen that scene in "Fearful Symmetry" where The Question sings prepackaged corporate pop while throwing a potted plant through the front door of a secret military base. Well, you've lived, but it's not a life that I'd want to lead. I'm sorry.

"Oops, I did it. Told you how I feel. Just hope this time that our love is real..."

Priceless.

Of course, it's Smallville that keeps the old blood pump bumping. When it all starts to get to be too much -- like it hits me that my idiot high school class voted me "Most Likely to Succeed," but I'm clearly going no where -- I just keep telling myself: Lois is coming... Lois is coming...

I repeat this simple mantra, and it seems like everything's going to be just fine.

"Do Germaphobes Give BJ's?"
I only ask 'cause there's this girl at work who refused to blow up our inflatable Kernel Corn guy because of all the people who'd put their mouth on his little plastic blowhole, so I had to do it, because the way I see it, once you've had your tongue in someone else's mouth, you figure a little spit ain't gonna kill you...

"Dumb Clark Comics"
I'm applying for an ass. editor job at DC Comics, and I'm wondering if I've got to worry about a google search of my name diligently churning up this pile of downright copyright infringement and that delightfully candid link that uses the words "crisis of infinite suckage."

Aw, who am I kidding? I don't care.

"Poker? I Hardly Know Her!"
I like to imagine that a lot of the cut footage from the West Wing Celebrity Poker Showdown was a lot of Martin Sheen and Richard Schiff telling a bunch of stories that all started "Remember that time Sorkin was hopped up on 'shrooms and..."

So I run. It's all I can do. At the same time, I pray a little that my mind doesn't split in two before this is over... And I promise myself... "never again." And "never again" again...! And in that moment, my decision is made... because it's decided by destiny. This isn't two girlfriends. It isn't two jobs. It isn't even two me's. It's two sides of the same coin...