Turn of the Century by Kurt Andersen Page A

only the
name
Mose doesn’t like.
    “No, that’s just fabulous. I mean it. It’s superb,” George says. Emily looks at George; she figures it’s the adrenaline talking. “Don’t you think so, Emily?”
    “Real Time
could be perfect,” she says.
    “Yessss!” Featherstone says, clenching a fist, pumping his arm. “Out of the park! Homer alert!”
    “And besides, Timothy,” Mose says, “aren’t we calling that other project RealityVision? The Reality Network? The Reality Channel?”
    “Reality Channel. No ‘The.’ ” Keeping his body facing Mose, he turns his head a good 120 degrees toward George and Emily. “Possible concept shift for the Winter Channel. A New Age cable channel, although ‘New Age’ is a no-no. Demi, Deepak, Marianne Williamson, Mars and Venus, Mayans and the Sphinx, gyroscopes, high colonics, homeopathics, chiropractic, yoga, Enya, John Tesh, Dr. Weil, Kenny G, vitamin E, herbs, Travolta, Cruise, lifestyle, feng shui, ginseng, ginkgo, tofu, emu oil, psychics, ESP, E.T., et cetera, et cetera. Aromatherapy. VH1 meets Lifetime meets the PBS fund-raising specials meets those good-looking morning-show doctors meets QVC meets the Food Network. You know? And in the late-night daypart, tantric sex.”
    “I do know,” George says to Featherstone, who has already turned toward Mose, grinning, preparing himself to appreciate the imminent bon mot.
    “Or, as I like to call it,” Mose says, “the Lunatic Network—all credulity, all the time.” Everyone smiles. He stands. “I’m not completely convinced it’s scalable. I don’t know how it will scale.” Mose salutes the room—“Gentlemen. Lady.”—and starts out, Featherstone at his heels. But Mose stops. “George,” he says, “I was terribly sorry to hear aboutyour mother. Anything we can do. Do you understand? Anything you need, ask Dora.” Then, to Featherstone—“We’ve got to lance the boil now, Timothy. I want both versions of the broadband presentation in Redmond, in case they have some idea that they can”—and then they’re gone. In the conference room, it’s as if a violent afternoon storm has suddenly passed. George and Emily are drenched, but now the sun is shining.
    “ ‘Scalable’?” Emily asks. “Canadian union-buster talk?”
    “No. The internet. It means, can the thing be rolled out wide? So I guess we have a show, Em.” George hasn’t felt quite so jazzed, so supremely confident, in months.
    “I guess,” she says, nodding. “
A
show. It’s do-and-die time now.” Of the two ideas they were here to pitch,
My People, Your People
is the series Emily has been most eager to make.
Real Time
will be difficult to produce. And while she likes imagining the seriousness it will confer on her in Los Angeles, the prospect of actually doing it—
news?
—is frightening.
    “I actually do think the name
Real Time
works,” George says. “It’s good.”
    “Only
good?
Not”—she takes a sharp breath, and squeals—
“fabulously superb?”
    “Fuck you. Did you notice our New Age joke has been stolen? The channel we invented that night at Nobu?”
    “I did. Fine. Let Timothy know we know it’s ours. Let Harold know we know. It’s leverage on series ownership. Plus we may not have to go to hell.”
    George smiles, and stands to leave. “Really? Passive beneficiaries of evil ideas are hell-exempt?”
    “Well,
you’ll
probably be going to hell, anyway. Journalist hell. On account of
Reality
.”
    “
Real Time
.”

5
    Lizzie left the office a few minutes after five. It’s the first time this winter she’s left before dark. Entirely apart from Edith Hope’s death, it’s been a lousy day, ten hours at work without even a whiff of science. The whiffs of science are what draw her into this business, real business, in the first place. But today she has accomplished nothing. She signed expense accounts, extended supplier contracts, agreed to pay $940 a month extra to insure her employees against carpal