It wouldn't be make believe if you believed in me...
Hi, everybody. Adam here, from some old bands like Adam Selzer and his Revolving Door All-Stars. I haven't done music much lately, and there are a couple of OTHER Adam Selzers in music who I think are more popular than I am. So when I started writing songs again lately I started calling myself 82nd Street.
A few years ago I started work on a book called I BEAT UP CHARLES DICKENS. My publisher ended up going with another project of mine instead, a novel about a ghost tour guide who makes places more haunted by murdering people there. That one's called JUST KILL ME, and it'll be out in Fall, 2016.
But the story of I BEAT UP CHARLES DICKENS stuck with me. Last winter my sometime collaborator Michael Glover Smith and I came up with a screenplay of it. The movie didn't get off the ground (yet) but there'll probably be a radio play version soon on my new radio show, THE DERELICT THEATER. Last spring I got the idea for the song "Young Adult Novel" while I was holed up outside of Cleveland. I wrote and recorded a demo on my phone, and liked it so much that I started writing songs about my OTHER books, too. And pretty soon I had enough songs based on I BEAT UP CHARLES DICKENS to do a whole concept album. These songs mostly tell the story (though NAME TAGS OF THE DAMNED is based on PLAY ME BACKWARDS, a previous book in which Jake has a cameo). Here's a summary of the plot.
EVERY MAN HAS HIS PRICE AND MINE IS $300 or: I BEAT UP CHARLES DICKENS: THE MIXTAPE
Jake Wells, alias Big Jake, quit his job at a d-list ice cream place to get a job that would pay better - his girlfriend, Jenny, was moving to Chicago for graduate school, and he had it in is head to improve himself. Jake lived in Preston, which was a small town in the outskirts when he was a kid, but has been absorbed into suburbia now. The only thing left in town that remained from his childhood was Yurkovich's Pizza, which was absolutely terrible. Rather than work for them, Jake commuted into downtown to work for Mantolini's, where he could deliver a product he was proud of. And he loved it. As a pizza man, he got to probe the dark secrets that lurked behind the closed doors of the Des Moines metro area).
But off in Chicago, Jenny was getting so wrapped up in a role-playing game that she was in character more than she was herself, and was using her character voice when she broke up with Jake over the phone shortly after Christmas. He was still invited to come to her New Year's party and show off his prowess making deep fried Little Debbie cakes (a skill he hoped to turn into a career if he could ever afford a food truck), but it was over between them....
Jake calculates that he needed at least a hundred bucks in tips on the night before New Year's if he's going to make it to Chicago. After peeing the words "no tip" into the snow outside of an insurance place that stiffed him, Jake gets a mysterious phone call from Andrew North, a friend he hasn't seen in years.
"You working tonight?" asks Andrew. "Still living with your mom, right? And I saw on Facebook that you're heading to Chicago tomorrow. Perfect. See ya."
Jake hangs up without a clue what Andrew was on about, but doesn't really think much about it. A strange phone call is about the LEAST weird thing that can happen in a night of delivering pizza.
When his boss gets a call from the insurance place, he sentences Jake to take an order of ten pizzas to a church in Colfax, a town outside the rim or suburbia that Jake has never even heard of. It's going to take him half the rest of his shift to make the run, and seriously endangers his chances of making enough cash to go to Chicago - unless they tipped through the nose. They've asked for him specifically - that's usually a good sign. But who does he know in Colfax? They don't normally deliver anywhere near there.
But there's no one at the chuch except for a bald man with a mustache who explains that he didn't order any pizza - in fact, he'd just eaten some ham salad. Jake tromps back to his car, shouting "Son of a bitch's ball sack!" and cursing the world. There's no way he's getting to Chicago now. He tries to pee out a curse word in THIS parking lot, too, but only manages one letter.
However, when he gets back into his car, he hears a voice saying, "You should be careful. Public urination is a sex crime in some states."
In his back seat is a girl in a Victorian dress, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that smells like Jake's grandfather's pipe tobacco. After some back-and-forth arguing, she introduces herself as Violet Annie Moss, and explains that she's been stranded in Colfax. She called Andrew North, a co-worker, because she knew he grew up in Iowa, and he'd found out that Jake was heading to Chicago the next day. Hiding out with him would work out well, because she's sort of on the run, anyway. She can pay him $300.
Jake apologizes if she'd seen too much, and she waves him off, saying "Every guy pees on everything where i live." She also mentions that she can't get pizza where she lives. "Where do you live," Jake asks, "that you can't get pizza and everyone pees on everything?"
"New York," says Violet.
"You can't get pizza in New York?"
"Not OUR New York. 1867. Didn't Andrew tell you anything?" ("YOUNG ADULT NOVEL")
Violet explains that some decades ago, scientists found a tweak in physics that will open a "hole" that takes you back exactly 150 years in time (only dorks like Andrew call it "time travel," though). Just about everything anyone who goes back there does will just be erased - people they talk to forget them after a while, windows they break get put back together, etc. But if you REALLY mess things up, it can cause changes. So she and her co-workers are sent back to keep an eye on things and make sure no one IS messing it up. There used to be a "hole' in Colfax, but it was broken, and now only works one way, from the "past" New York head office to the parking lot where the Colfax hole used to be. She went through the wrong door after breaking a pretty big rule and running away.
"What did you do?" Jake asked.
"About an hour ago, I beat the shit out of Charles Dickens."
Jake groaned. "I get it," he said. "This is a role playing game, right?"
Violet just laughed.
The two of them argue constantly ("THE KID WHO ONLY LISTENED TO MEGADETH"), but Jake found that he enjoyed arguing with her, and, anyway, he needed the money, so he decided to just play along. It would be good practice for if Jenny took him back and kept talking about game nonstop.
"So, you don't LIKE Charles Dickens, I take it?" he asked.
"Are you kidding? I love him. I've been waiting for his US reading tour to be exactly 150 years ago since I was a kid."
"But you beat him up?"
"Hey, man. I don't tell you how to do YOUR job. Watch out for that car."
As he drives along, Jake notices that Jenny's profile picture has changed "PROFILE PICTURE." And and Violet talk and argue ("INSTEAD I GOT YOU," "BASEMENTS")
After a night of work, Violet followed Jake to dinner at a diner with Harlan and Chrissie, two old friends from Preston who were now engaged, and they made plans to attend the demolition of Yurkovich's Pizza. Jake learns that a girl he once mooned in a truth or dare game has died and reflects that everyone he ever mooned his dead now - perhaps his ass is cursed. While poking around on his phone, casually fact-checking Violet, he finds a record of a Violet Annie Moss who died in Chicago in 1892. "Shit," says Violet. "If that's me, I missed the World's Fair!" Jake just rolls his eyes and assumes that that record is where she got the name for her role-playing character.
Back at Jake's place, he and Violet play a card game and Jake gets an idea: what if they at least PRETEND Violet is just a "time-hopping insurance investigator" in a roleplaying game, say that they're gamer couple at Jenny's party, and see if she gets jealous?
Violet thinks it's an awful idea, but comes up with a character for Jake to play: August Mewes, a Civil War vet and would-be inventor. She then explains HOW she beat up Charles Dickens (if you tell George Dolby, the tour manager, that you have a message from Nell Ternan, Dickens's secret girlfriend that no one will know about for decades, he'll take you RIGHT to Mr. Dickens)That night, while Violet sleeps on the couch, Jake fact-checks her online. Her story about Dickens being on tour in New York exactly 150 years ago checks out, but when Jake goes to ask her a question, he finds her crying on the couch and leaves her alone. He may not believe her story, but her pain is clearly real.
In the morning, after watching Yurkovich's being torn down, making a few lunchtime deliveries and picking up supplies to make sherry cobblers (a Dickensian drink) at the party, Violet and Jake head out for Chicago - but not before Violet thinks someone is following them and makes Jake drive off the road into a snow ditch, leading to a big falling-out ("GOING TO HELL").
As they drive through Illinois, Violet uses Jake's phone to check the NEW YORK HERALD from 150 years ago, and finds that Dickens went onstage on December 30th, showing no effects of a beat-down. Her attack has been erased from history. This means she's not fired, but it also means that August is still going to die. But he'll probably never remember her, anyway. ("PEOPLE FORGET ABOUT LOVE").
At the New Year's Party, Jake finds that things didn't go well with Jenny's plan to hook up with Bryce, whose character is Jenny's character's boyfriend (Bryce isn't into girls in real life). Jake figures he has a good chance, but now he finds himself more interested in Violet. If he patches things up with Jenny now, she'll just break up with him again and break his heart all over. So, as midnight approaches, he tells Violet he thinks he's falling in love with her.
But Violet just laughs, and kisses a gamer with a stuffed raven on his shoulder. Jake moons the party and storms off to find a slice of pizza someplace and sulk. (IDIOT OUT WANDERING AROUND)
Jake and Violet patch things up in the morning, and shake hands as she disappears into her own suburban Chicago home, near the office that she declines to show him. Jake feels like crap, but at least he's over Jenny, and assumes he can get over Violet, too (THIS IS MY WORLD NOW).
Six weeks later, on Valentine's Day, Jake is back at work, still thinking of Violet and hoping he finds her again someday (VALENTINE'S DAY AND GARBAGE NIGHT, VALENTINE'S DAY, FUNNEL CAKE).
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