"I know you have to live through restraint. I understand how brevity is your moral compass. But why lie to me of all people? Why would you lie to me. Me."
"I'm sorry. You expect too much of me."
"What?"
"You shouldn't place that much faith in me."
"I have more faith in you than anyone."
"That's a mistake. You can trust people... but not entirely. I'm sorry you assumed that you could."
"What is this? Where is this coming from? Tell me... Don't act like nothing's... Bruce, what's happened?"
"I'm not sure... I remember... something."
"What is it?"
"I don't really know. It doesn't... for the purpose of this conversation... the specifics are of no consequence. I'm sorry that I deceived you. But you should know better."
"Bruce... are you... are you telling me that I shouldn't trust you?"
"I'm telling you you shouldn't trust anyone."
- Judd Winick, Outsiders #21

"How to Beat My Greatest Enemy Without Really Trying"
Sorry to leave anybody hanging.

I re-seized my blog a month ago. A task which Blogger's "Forgot Your Password?" function made waaaaaaay too easy.

I would have announced this sooner, but Tuttle and I were going to perpetrate a hoax in order to con you suckers into contributing Clark-like entries of your own to compose an ad hoc tribute to me for the big 2-5-0 entitled "Roasted Duck". But apparantly, she lost interest.

Yeah. I'm not that surprised either.

"Another One of Clark's Pathetic Empty Threats About Quitting His Blog"
Let's skip the cryptic stuff. Let's get literal. Over the last month or so, the act of writing this silly little blog has never seem so empty to me. There's another title change on the offing, and renaming this calamity "Exercise in Futility" is under consideration (but seems a little too "on the nose" -- might as well call it "The Life and Times of Lenar Clark, Loser").

When this mess hasn't seemed to be completely ignored, it's left me open to character assassination or become a huge public embarassment. And my personal life has imploded. Something I never thought possible as what I laughingly refer to as a personal life consists of little more than a tiny collection of long distance friendships held together with email and phone calls. The fact that I've actually managed to turn that into hell on a stick is a testament to my inexcusable inability to relate to the world around me.

But what am I gonna do? It's either bitch about it or finally take decisive action and offer up that handshake with carbon monoxide. But I don't have a garage anymore than I've got a goddamn car, so blog bitchery it is.

There will be no nervous breakdown. What's the point? If Clark freaks out in New Jersey and there's nobody there to see it, did he lose his mind? Nope.

Of course, it's a total catch-22, right? I mean, if you say you're crazy, you're probably not. It's the whacko fucks who think they're totally fine that are in real trouble, right?

Anyhoozle, the show will go on. I'm going to try to do something with my next entry that I haven't done before in quite this way -- which you cynical bastards will surely be quick to label "lame" and "same old same old" -- and will follow that up with a series of posts I've tentatively titled "The Story Before" which should take surprisingly little actual effort on my part, but I'm pretty sure you'll hate that, too. It should crank my posting schedule back up to a reasonable level for a spell to make up for this once-a-month rut I've fallen face first into.

"Not a Hoax! Not a Dream! Not an Imaginary Story!"
I was minding my own business when suddenly and without warning, I became obsessed with Batman and Star Wars. I should be dreaming up Marvel pitches, so of course, DC and Dark Horse properties are taking up my head space.

I'm five pounds and a Wolverine t-shirt away from becoming everything I've always dreaded.

Maybe "suddenly and without warning" overstates it a bit. Fucking Judd's been pushing me on the Batman thing for awhile now. I always knew my ultimate destruction would come at the hand of a Real World cast member, but of course, you all just thought I was crazy.

I can probably beat the Star Wars thing with a fairly intense week or two of playing Battlefront II. It's not like I think I'm brimming with midi-chlorians or anything. I don't want to be a gay robot. I just fucking hate Wookies.

They have these tiny little brains, so scoring a decent head shot on one of these fuckers is impossible. You can shoot them in the face three or four times and they just keep coming at you like you shot them in the ass or something. Jesus.

You know, the first time I ever flew a starfighter was over Kashyyyk... but I don't think I really become a pilot until that dogfight in a TIE bomber in orbit of Yavin 4.

Right now I'm running across the snow blind wastes of Hoth, as laser fire scorches the frozen ground beneath my feet. Rebel transports soar over my head while I'm fire rockets and lob thermal detonators at that goddamn shield generator, blasting at it in vain with my pistol when those run out, with "For the Empire!" on my lips and always hoping against a new hope that one day I'll rotate home from the land of bad things and remember what my life was like before this war amidst the stars.

"What's the Kryptonian Word for Loneliness?"
And while we're talking about the next step in my evolution as an uber-dweeb, it's my unfortunate duty to inform you that I've been teaching myself to read and write in Kryptonese.

I asked Caleb whether or not this was worse than learning Klingon, the same as learning Klingon, or not as bad as learning Klingon, and he came down hard on the side of "worse than". And he's probably right.

Look at it this way. At least I'm a little more likely to send you a letter. And here's the DC approved Krypton-English rosetta stone to make that scenario a little more bearable:



And hey, if you want a little practice, give translating this a shot:



First one to post a correct translation in the comments gets my eternal respect and what I'd consider pretty awesome bragging rights.

So, you know... Nothing of value.

Wow. Nobody's going to do it, are they? My contempt for my readers grows with every entry. I'm never going to make it to #275.

"Motown"
And when I haven't been Forrest Gumping my way through the lowest depths of geek culture, I've been running around the eastern half of the country like a dickhead.

Here were the highlights:

* I returned to Worlds of Fun for the first time since my summer job in the parking lot to visit haunted houses with Kristin and Justin. At the end of the evening, I strained my voice while unnecessarily screaming "Do it! Do it!" while riding a roller coaster because "I gotsta mamba at least three times".

* My Beloved Tin-Tin's mother explaining to me why I shouldn't try dating high school girls, despite my insistence that we're probably at a similar level of maturity and my argument that my ability to buy beer could possibly trump whatever varied shortcomings keep women my own age repulsed by me.

* During a particularly odd stretch of the twenty hour drive back to New Jersey with Brent Jones, Part Two, I conceived of several stop motion animation music videos for Ben Folds songs starring Jack the Bear.

* Brent revealed himself a pawn of the Time-Warner Conspiracy when explaining that a 50-track CD with both The Eels "Friendly Ghost" and Faultline's "Your Love Means Everything Part 2" would "break me". I don't trust any of you dogfuckers.

* Jones and I went to a taping of the Daily Show, where John Stewart ignored my queries as to whether his responsibilities to the Green Lantern Corps were more important to him than Justice League membership.

* Made fun of Brent's digital camera. He said it was unnecessary, but 1.3 megapixels have to be mocked. Have to.

* Brent and I put off our departure from the Garden State for several hours while waiting for the last disc of Firefly I'd netflixed in vain.

* During the return trip, Brent and I conceived a music video for ELO's as yet un-re-discovered for advertising classic "Telephone Line".

* Caleb's beard. Ye gods, I dream of a woolly mammoth that thick.

* Columbia IHOP. Mmm...

* After attending two atypically awful college keggers -- one which was a total sausage fest and another in which I announced to anybody who'd listen that I'd just sloughed off my slavename of Clark and would now only respond to the self-appointed designation of "Master Storyteller" and shortly thereafter became part of a triune godhead with two guys named Charlie and Kyle -- I suffered through one of those unbearable hangovers. You know, one of the ones where you've got nothing left to throw up but what you can only assume are digestive enzymes, bust suspect that it's entirely possible that you're actually pissing out of your throat now.

* After years of defacto estrangement, my sister finally learned my two worst kept secrets.

* My other sister Chelsey was the only person I know willing to go see Chicken Little with me, so she got treated to a special after school trip to the 3-D showing and her own bag of popcorn.

* It started snowing when I left.

The wonders of Missouri. Gotta love 'em.

Of course, the true highlight of the trip was the long awaited reunion between me and 3000 of the best friends a guy could ever have. The totality of my comic book collection has come to rest in my little Spider-Hole. So I'm only completely and utterly alone in the eyes of somebody with a normal life worth living.

Thankfully, that ain't me.

And yes, I find my ability to turn a highly suggestive phrase without really trying somewhat disturbing as well. Resting in my little Spider-Hole? The hell?

"Jesus was a Crossmaker"
Every two or three years or so, I come up with a new pitch for a Jesus story. Either a novel or a short story or a comic book or a screenplay. Something.

Well how does this sound: a WB teen drama entitled Nazareth.

Nazareth tells the story of an angsty young Jewish kid living in the cosy little slice of Americana called Nazareth, Missouri. He seems normal enough, but he's got a mysterious past, harboring a terrible secret. For Josh Devine isn't your average teenager. He's got fantastic powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men. He can heal the sick and you never seem to run out of beer when he's around, and over the course of the first season, we follow Josh as he learns that he is, in fact, the only Son of God.

It's kind of like Smallville, only with Jesus instead of Superman. Actually, it's exactly like Smallville, only with Jesus instead of Superman.

Case in point, I'd cast Tom Wopat as Josh's stepfather Joe. And the moment I finally made peace with myself as a Smallville fan was the episode where Clark finally reads his personal message from his birth father, and the basic gist is "You've got the power to conquer this world, kid. Rule them with strength." You always see Jor-El portrayed as this benevolent scientist who shoots his first born into the cold expanse of space in an untested rocket out of pure love. This was the first time I'd ever seen the Father of the Last Son of Krypton presented as a bit of a dick, and it was a breath of fresh air.

We'd do the same thing with God.

Now, some of your sticky wicket brand bible kids might call that blasphemy, but you know what the Clark calls it? Good fucking television.

Nazareth is all about the transition between fire and brimstone, eye-for-an-eye, plague of locusts, flood the world Old Testament Yahweh and kinder gentler, love thy neighbor New Testament God.

From the creative forces behind Toby & Clark, it's The Greatest Story Ever Told as you've never seen it before. A moody teenage messiah moping over high school chicks to a pop rock soundtrack, delivering heavy handed speeches about how nobody understands what he's going through.

I bet I write the pilot over the weekend.

"The First Comic Book Story by Lenar Clark"
Oh yeah. Marvel's posted the solicitation for my story. Slight glitch with the writing credit, but nothing's taking me down. Nothing.



It'll be in the comic with this cover that should be hitting stands on January 4th or 5th, depending on whether or not New Years futzes with the shipping schedule or not.

And no, I don't know anything about the guy who wrote the other story, but I'm pretty sure he's going to end up becoming the greatest comic book writer of his generation through my whole "let's see how much more of this he can take" relationship with the universe.

"Action's Got A New Name"
So I was bored at work, googling my name, as I'm want to do, when something happened that's never happened before:

There's a screenplay available on the internet that features a rough and tumble SWAT team commander named Lenar Clark... and I have nothing to do with it.

Lenar Clark is a fictional character. Sounds about right, don't it?

There's a rumor going 'round that I'm better on paper anyway...

"Here's to the Happy Couple"
I'm sure you've heard by now that Kate and Hank are getting hitched. Couldn't be happier for them, but I am a little worried by one thing: Is Kate going to take Adam's name? And if that happens, does that mean I can't call her Jeffries anymore?

So just to recap: Worried about a little of my stupid bullshit, but overwhelming pleased for them.

"It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"
All thinly veiled references to paranoid mistrust, suicide, drinking alone, and existential crisis to the contrary, I'm okay.

Is Eli coming? Yes. Fuck. Let's face it. Eli's been sleeping in my woefully uncomfortable IKEA bed for far longer than the three weeks my lease allows for visitors.

But if I know one thing about myself, it's that I can survive just about anything. Betrayal. Disappointment. Specatacular car crashes. Alcohol poisoning. Brent's whining. Low white blood cell count. None of it's killed me yet. Of course, it only takes the one time, but this is the rousing John-McCrea-covers-Gloria-Gaynor-with-a-dash-of-Destiny's-Child speech, so we're not going to dwell on that. No. We're just going to say...

Next time, best bring kryptonite, fool.

Then we're going to move on to the next thing.

So yes, I've progressed very nicely out of Batman and Star Wars back into Superman. Spider-Man's gotta be just around the bend.

"Punch me, I bleed," indeed.

NEXT:
250th and Third