c:f fiction

"All she wants," producer Jay was saying while I poured him a kabbalah water, neat, "is somebody who doesn't mind getting his ass pinched on camera." Yessing eagerly, the junior producers thrust their goatees into a large box of headshots, determined to find an on-air Webmaster for the moribund Francine Show.

As the show's green-room bartender, I tended to listen more than speak. But when producer Jay vowed that selecting the right person to answer viewer email would guarantee higher ratings and better contracts, I couldn't resist asking how this approach differed from his previous plan to incorporate Jewish mysticism into the show. "Easy," he said. "The kabbalah's a fad and the Internet's not."

He even suggested the Webmaster could resuscitate the kabbalah idea-spiritual merchandising, he called it, selling sacred water, online. It occurred to me that there wasn't much difference between anything anymore. Used to be Heaven was just Heaven; now they were calling it the Internet.

Despite my unsolicited plugs for Lee Majors or Lou Ferrigno, the producers settled on a guy named Yorick, who was, they agreed, just the right pinchable, sportscaster type to generate viewer response. Besides, he was the only smile in the box with an Internet start-up to his credit.

The first taping went smoothly enough except for one glitch: Yorick didn't get any viewer e-mail. There were calls about Francine's favorite diets and chocolates, but the only e-mail sent in was coerced from the lone production assistant who wasn't out scouring L.A. for the sole Pokémon missing from
Francine's collection. Luckily Yorick had improv experience and was able to invent most of the e-mail he read on air, but his make-up blistered so badly that the director demanded countless retakes.

Not the least discouraged, producer Jay requested freelance e-mailers from the agency that hired studio audience members. Once people heard they could earn almost as much money sitting home pressing "Send," Yorick was inundated with e-mail, and a Spring-like optimism swept over the lot. Instead of résumés, now the fax machines were stuffed with press releases announcing the "overwhelming" response to Francine's "pioneering" new show. Francine herself was so excited she had a computer installed in her zebra-upholstered golf cart and, to everyone's surprise, started coming to rehearsals.