The secret of the non-existent secret lives of dorks who want secret lives.

I have been having this urge to dork-out and write a fan letter to the writing teams of Pushing Daisies and Chuck because, well, they make me smile on a regular basis and not a lot of things make me smile on a regular basis. This is not to say that I am not a happy guy, but I am certainly not a happy-go-lucky guy and hopefully the distinction is clear because I have no idea how I would explain the difference in less than 3000 words and 20 hours of research in the Newberry's collections on philosophy and etymology.

Pushing Daisies is easily the "better" of the two shows: beautiful, fun, witty...great. It has been flawless except one moment in the second or third episode that only someone who wore an eye-patch for a year and a half of his life would notice...I had a lazy eye...the school nurse caught it...I'm not blind in my left eye because of her...they called me pirate boy...

I cannot conceive how anyone could not be addicted to Pushing Daisies and so I don't really see a need to defend it. Check it out. It is its own defense. Because it is brilliant. It is brilliant. It makes me want to write for television.

If you are reading this writing team of Pushing Daisies, I want in...Please...please.
Chuck, on the other hand, probably could use some friends. The basic story of Chuck is ridiculous: a very-smart-but-basically-regular-Joe gets a whole system of government secrets downloaded into his brain through some shaky hypnosis thingy that is sent to him through his email by his ex-best-friend-turned-CIA agent. So he is now a walking computer that the NSA and CIA have to protect and use on missions, which are all conveniently local. Sounds pretty stupid right? But the characters are, again, brilliant and whoever cast the show should probably be given a medal. F-ing hilarious with just enough action to make it somewhat thrilling. And all the actors are really pretty. I mean REALLY pretty.


But more than the eye-candy and unapologetic-no holds barred-we-are-going-to-entertain-the- shit-out-of-you-attitude, Chuck is tapping into the secret dream of every single dork, pseudo-dork, and semi-dork: to have a secret power, or a secret life, or a secret. Do we all want to be spies? No. Because dork fantasies maintain a certain degree of logic and being a spy would be pretty lame. Chuck knows this. He's not thrilled about having a super-computer inside his head. Who would? I already get migraines.

But we do all want to be heroes. Superheroes wouldn't be bad either. Depending on the power of course: there is a lot of literature out there right now about how being a superhero would probably suck too. And, likewise, Chuck is tapping into an interesting angle of the escapism of the hero-fantasy: we can all become heroes overnight if we just receive the right email or we just get bitten by the radioactive spider or get doused in the right combination of crime-lab chemicals during an electrical storm.

But when that happens, we are not going to stop being dorks. We are just going to be dorks with super-powers.

I am searching for a day job, and finding a day job is kind of like searching for the right secret identity: you probably won't love it, but you should at least try to find one that doesn't make you miserable. And if you are really lucky, your day job will be helpful to your secret life. The Flash: Barry Allen, police detective; probably hated the paperwork, but he was always in the know. Spiderman, Superman: work for news organizations. Do they like taking photos and writing articles, maybe. But it's probably not as interesting as soaring through the air.

Batman runs with the social elite. Do you think the brooding obsessive Batman, enjoys brushing elbows with those boring suits? Of course not. He would rather be down in his cave eating the souls of all the weirdos running around Gotham as he feverishly pushes his super-computer to figure out who the hell killed his parents and psychologically scarred him for life, but instead he has to sip champaign and hear about how Eleanor's poodles just won nationals and about Simpson's dissatisfaction with his new caddy. No wonder he is so irritable.

Ideally we could all be like Mr. Fantastic or Aquaman: merge our two lives into one. Not have a need for a secret identity. But I don't think that is going to happen for me anytime soon. So I need to find a kick ass cover. Because I don't want to be irritable. And I get irritable...

Writing for Pushing Daisies would be nice. Please...please.