A Brief History of Nausea

So I have this 9am breakfast meeting with a producer pitching me a sci-fi idea. After WOTW I get pitched a lot of sci-fi ideas. Some good, some bad, and one so stupendously stupid I'm silently praying that particular producer gets hit by a truck so I can talk about it without reprisal.

Today's breakfast idea happens to be a good one. It also includes a possible chance to hang out with Stephen Hawking. You read me right. Stephen Hawking. Now understand that this is a common producer trick--dangling the cool "research experience" as some sort of bonus inducement to do the project.

This rarely works on me because I'm a fat lazy fuck.

Furthermore, for some bizarre reason my opportunities seem to revolve around water. And I hate water. People are constantly pitching me what they always call "boat repo movies" but what I call "modern day pirates without Johnny Depp movies". With those projects the "cool opportunity" is always the promise of "hanging out with the boat guys". But I can see the future: me, the producer and some sun-stroked pirate with that white shit on his nose looking like Dennis Connor from America's Cup in 1983. There'll be twenty foot swells (whatever that means) and I'll have so many seasickness patches on my body I look like the Yeti but it won't matter as I vomit so hard I throw up my brain.

But the Terminator teaches us the future is ours to make of it what we will and as we say down in Kentucky: "That Jew don't hunt".

And so I'm always left to tell these boat repo producers that a) I'm not going anywhere near the water or the project and b) there's like, six other boat repo projects and c) none of them are gonna work without Johnny Depp.

So I don't do water meetings anymore.

I also once had a producer promise me a ride in that weightless "Vomit Comet" thing they used for Apollo 13. Here was the conversation with Agent:

Agent: So whattya think of (silly movie idea)?
Me: They want me to go up in that weightless "Vomit Comet" thing they used for Apollo 13.
Agent: Cool! So Whattya think of (silly movie idea)?
Me: You know there's no fucking way I'm going up in that thing.
Agent: I'm sure it's not a requirement for the job.
Me: I think it is. I think there'll be peer pressure.
Agent: So...

Perhaps you're starting to see a pattern here.

My first girlfriend in high school was a closet smoker (and possibly a closet have-sexer with her neighbor while I was taking Driver's Ed). She scared me silly and I often threw up in her presence, sometimes just at the prospect of driving to her house and being alone with her. We went out for a year and by the end I weighed twenty-seven pounds. Ah. Good times.

Which naturally brings us back to Stephen Hawking. Because here's something else you might not know about me: I'm an idiot. A complete moron. I don't know jack shit about jack shit. No writer really does. He may pretend he does. He may have read a book or two, or gone on a "research trip". But honestly, if we really wanted to master a subject we'd make it our life's work.

Just like Stephen Hawking did.

Here's how it's gonna go:

Hawking: Wormhole theory, event horizon, Schroedinger's Cat...
Me: Um hmm...
Hawking: You all right Josh?
Me: Yeah, sure. I'm fine.
Hawking: You seem...pensive.
Me: No. Really. I'm good.
Hawking: You can tell me.
Me: Well. It's just...do I smell cigarettes?

And then I throw up my brain.