Fore Play Station

So Wednesday night I’m on my way to the animation schmooze in Hollywood when I get a call from Warner Brothers about coming in to pitch animated series. Is it pure luck? Godlike intervention? Perhaps my tenth electronic note in two months that put the exec over the edge to finally tell her assistant “Get her in here so we can then block her email?” Don’t know, don’t care. Just happy to be going in. My partner and I attempt to be rejected by someone big at least once a month, so between this meeting and Carsey Warner in a few weeks, we will be ahead of our quota.

In between now and Friday, I must dig into my juvenile self (not that far of a stretch, unfortunately) and come up with "wacky!" and "killer!" ideas for boys between the ages of 7 – 8. (I’m thinking they like things like computers, fast food, Play Stations… oh, wait, that describes my husband. And Slim (My best friend’s husband ‘Formerly known as Bob’ who, on his one week vacation to Hawaii, has so far not surprised his wife with any island jewelry or wooed her with a romantic boat cruise, but has bought a Play Station on sale.) My point: I’m glad that Herb and I know the demographic this time around. Usually when we’re called in to pitch we blast them with a cornucopia of great ideas (and geeky vocabulary in an attempt to sound half way intelligent). The problem is that our variety of ideas are so diverse that we tend to miss the exact audience they're looking for. For example, at our last meeting, an executive loved our preschool pitch about a puppy that wants to be a comedian (“Stan Pup Comic”… This dog don’t want no stinking K to 9 job). Unfortunaley, though, he was really in need of teenage girl cartoons (Though I don’t know why, because most teenage girls I know hate cartoons. Either he was trying to find a new market, or that was his nice way of saying “You are more boring than a Harrison Ford interview”. I choose to believe the first reason.) It’s amazing how pushing the one simple question “What do you need” clears everything up.

If only men and women asked each other this, there’d be a lot less mind games, a lot more sex, and men would never ask their wives again “Honey, do you want to play video games with me?”