“Hi, I am a reality show producer looking for an assistant for a Real Superman Show.” Simple, yes? No. This is “high concept” metaphysical stuff, and you, potential assistant, need to grasp the tenuous connection between phenomenal celebreality and literary fiction, so please bear with this producer for 5,500 words.

“This is a very long job ad,” the New York Craigslist-trawling TV wunderkind acknowledges, several times in several successive paragraphs, “because this is an extremely high concept show and I need someone who can handle very high concept material and can take this all in in one ad because this is the level of complexity that this show is going to be operating on.” So high. Concept. Incredibly high. Concept.

The basic premise of this show is that Clark Kent/Superman and all the characters in the DC Universe are all fictional portrayals of actual real people in our world and I believe that by determining who they are in reality it is possible to create a Superman Reality Show that is basically like a reality show version of the DC Universe in many ways.

Like for example, I believe that the real Lex Luthor is Rupert Murdoch while the real LexCorps is News Corps and so in the show Rupert Murdoch is just Lex Luthor and News Corps is LexCorps.

And then like the real Lois Lane is Ashley Arenson while the real Lana Lang is Gillian Zinser from Beverly Hills 90210, while the real Bruce Wayne is Kanye West, the real Vicki Vale is Kim Kardashian, and the real Alfred Pennyworth is actually Kris Jenner because sometimes in fictional comics a woman may be portrayed as a man so while Bruce Wayne is a white billionaire and Alfred is his butler in the comic, in the real life DC Universe Bruce Wayne is Kanye West, a black superstar rapper, and Alfred is actually his mother-in-law Kris Jenner.

Okay, we’re in a crazy place, but a more or less conventionally crazy one so far. Tell me something I couldn’t make up from reading Defamer, sport.

Sometimes the genders also switch from male to female, so for example with Perry White who’s the editor in chief of The Daily Planet, I determined that the real Perry White is actual a black girl named Lufi Paris who currently works at Facebook, and with that it’s like when the original Perry White character was created it was a long time ago before women had acquired a lot of power in the working world so the real Perry White can easily be a black woman instead of a man because the core essence of Perry White’s character in Superman is not gender dependent. Like Perry White was originally a white man, then in the recent Man of Steel Perry was a black man played by Laurence Fishburne, and then in Real Superman Perry White is actual a black woman named Lufi Paris who’s from Facebook because that’s how things evolve from the comic book to the real DC Universe in real life.

Then with The Daily Planet the real life Daily Planet is actually a film production company called Red Line Studios which is in downtown Manhattan...

I mean, I might like to interrupt at this point and ask how the editor of the Daily Planet can work at Facebook but the Daily Planet is a movie studio on the other coast, but clearly you’re rolling downhill and I won’t get in the way—

Now the key here is that I’ve determined the way to do this kind of show is kind of like you just have to build it and they will come like in Field of Dreams as in I believe that you need Lex Luthor actually in the show and Lex is Rupert Murdoch who is this really high status guy in New York City and we can’t waste time actually trying to contact Rupert Murdoch’s people to ask them if he wants to be in the show, we just have to create the show and put Rupert in the basic show’s mythology as the real Lex Luthor and that will cause him to show up in the actual show rather than the old fashioned way of asking him if he wants to be in the show because that isn’t the way we do things with this kind of thing.

Rupert Murdoch is not a guy that you can call him up and ask him if he wants to be in a reality show, you just have to figure out that he’s the real Lex Luthor and that News Corps is LexCorps and figure out who Superman is and then just do the show as a Real Superman Reality Show and this will cause Rupert Murdoch to appear in the show as the real Lex Luthor, like I believe Rupert will actually show up and be a main figure in the show but we can’t worry about getting his confirmation in a real way before the show is already being made.

Um—

...a main character in Superman is Mercy Graves who is Lex Luthor’s personal bodyguard and I have determined that the real Mercy Graves is Wendi Murdoch who is Rupert’s ex-wife...

But—

...so like Wendi Murdoch is always hanging out with Ivanka Trump and based on that I figured out that Ivanka Trump is a character from the Superman animated series called Volcana who’s like this pyrokinetic character who can fly and manipulate fire and our theory is that there is some real psychological mechanism that causes the people to end up in the reality show such as like Wendi Murdoch wants to be famous and Mercy Graves is a major cool character...

Whoa whoa whoa uh before we get ahead of ourselves... this seems a little free-form for a TV show pitch. I mean granted I’m only a quarter of the way in, but... where’d you come up with this?

Now it’s important for my personal assistant to understand who I am that I am able to figure this stuff out and do this: I actually developed the ability to figure out who the real characters are in real life after I made the discovery that I myself am a real version of a fictional character and that’s that I am actually the real Harry Potter. I basically one day just figured out that Harry Potter was a fictional version of me and that Hogwart’s was a fictional version of my old boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy when I realized all the signs were there: like I have an actual lightning scar on my forehead that’s the same as Harry Potter’s lightning scar in the book which I got under mysterious circumstances and all the characters in Harry Potter are real people from Phillips Exeter such as the fact my old dorm head Townley Chisholm who was real uptight and always busting me for everything is the real Severus Snape and then the school’s current principal Thomas Hassan is actually the real Albus Dumbledore and Mr. Chisholm and Principal Hassan really are just the real life versions of Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter because Phillips Exeter is actually the real life Hogwart’s.

Ah. Oh, geez. Um—

It’s actually something I’ve discovered that pretty much most fictional characters have some real life version in our world who is usually alive today, so like if you take Ivanka Trump who is Volcana in Superman, she’s married to Jared Kushner who owns the New York Observer and I determined that Jared is actually the real Charles Foster Kane from Orson Welles’ classic Citizen Kane. Like the way it works is that Orson had some prophetic vision of Jared Kushner many, many years ago and Orson basically created a mythic portrayal of Jared Kushner as Charles Foster Kane a long time ago but in real life Jared Kushner just is the real Citizen Kane and he’s exactly like Orson’s Charles Foster Kane character in real life.

And sometimes characters are more than one person because they have multiple mythic portrayals, so with Ivanka Trump who is Volcana in Superman she’s also the main character of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged because Ivanka Trump is actually the real Dagny Taggart, so if you have someone who’s a major figure like Ivanka who’s Volcana they will often have more than one mythic form and in Ivanka’s case she’s both Volcana in Superman and also the main character of Atlas Shrugged as Dagny Taggart and The Trump Organization is actually the real Taggart Transcontinental. So in Atlas Shrugged Taggart Transcontinental is a transcontinental railroad and in real life it’s The Trump Organization which is a transcontinental real estate development company which is a real life version of Taggart Transcontinental and Ivanka is a Vice President at The Trump Organization just like how Dagny Taggart is a Vice President at her family’s Taggart Transcontinental business in Atlas Shrugged. And then there’s just the whole Superman tie-in where Dagny is also Volcana and she runs with Wendi Murdoch who’s Mercy Graves and Rupert who’s Lex Luthor so it all comes together where Atlas Shrugged now has a cross character tie-in to The DC Universe and then Dagny is marred to the real Citizen Kane who’s Jared Kushner so Citizen Kane, Atlas Shrugged, and Superman are all connected in real life.

Then there’s always an answer to the obvious questions, so with this the obvious question is: wait, so who is Donald Trump in Superman? And the answer is that Donald Trump is the real Gorilla Grodd...

Let me pause to help you, reader, take stock of where we are and why: 3,000 words into the 5,500-word alleged solicitation for a production assistant for an alleged reality show idea penned by an alleged Phillips Exeter alum (that part I believe), and the reason I am writing this is because I got farther into this ad than any other employee of Gawker dot com, and my punishment was blogging about it.

But just as one last spoiler: the real Ganondorf is Jimmy Fallon. The real Legend of Zelda is like Jimmy Fallon kidnapping Zelda Williams in some way to take over the real Triforce, and it’s an absurd story, but Legend of Zelda is an absurd game.And before anyone asks: there is also a real Star Wars, Han Solo is a Hollywood talent agent from The Kohner Agency named John Coffey and Chewbacca is his pet Bichon dog. So Chewbacca in real life is actually a real dog and it’s the dog of John Coffey from The Kohner Agency who’s the real Han Solo. And the real Yoda is the philosopher Saul Kripke who actually sounds just like Yoda in real life.

Anyway, maybe you can do better. Maybe you’re interested in the job! Beyond content, here are some HR points for you to keep in mind:

And mainly I need an assistant who can handle the task of finding and acquiring backers and funding for the production...

I need someone chill who just goes with the flow and doesn’t take things too seriously as well.

I like to run a laid back production and not have people being overworked or exploited in any way.

Also:

Also, while you’re not being exploited, you should bear in mind that “I sometimes just quickly write movie pitches that are 200 pages long so I just need an assistant who isn’t overwhelmed by 200 page movie pitches”:

I might just write a synopsis for a story arc that I don’t have time to edit or spell check that may just be 150 pages so I just need someone who can just you know take a 150 page synopsis email and digest it without me having to edit it because I don’t have time for that.

I honestly do tend to write like 30 page long emails on a regular basis.

This job ad is just me writing a rough job ad quickly in the way that I operate, it’s meant that to know if you’re right for this job you would have to be someone who can read this job ad and be like, “Oh cool, this sounds like a really fun cool project,” and not feel like, “OH MY GOD, this is the most overwhelming and insane thing ever!”

It’s not insane to me, it’s just normal and regular.

This is the usual level my brain operates on, this is a reflection of the level I’m thinking on pretty much all the time actually.

So basically in a nutshell I just need someone who can keep up.

And who has, uh, connections.

[Photo credit: Shutterstock/marianbirdy; h/t John Leavitt]

Contact the author at adam@gawker.com.
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