Right around 5:00, I got an Email titled, “Dude! You made Slate!!!!” I followed the link in the message, and found an article on the online magazine Slate by Justin Peters called “$#*! @SenJeffMerkley Says“.
The gist of the article was to take tweets that people posted on the Twitter and use them as the basis for primetime television show concepts. Creative writing at its finest. The second one used my Twitter feed, of all things, and here’s what they said:
The @SchuminWeb Files
Office manager. Transit enthusiast. World-class detective. Ben Schumin is the man to call when something’s amiss with your D.C.-area morning commute. In this fall’s hottest new suspense drama, the plodding, methodical Schumin will tackle unsolved mysteries (“No underground cell service from Glenmont station to halfway to Wheaton. What’s wrong? #wmata”), investigate horrible crimes (“@FixWMATA Who do you think the thieves are? #wmata”), maintain the peace (“A kid is screaming on the train. Get this little noisemaker OFF MY TRAIN! #wmata”), and generally remain alert (“Note to self: Get off at Metro Center this morning. #wmata”). Co-starring William Shatner as X, the villainous head of the mysterious “#wmata” organization.
I thought it was hilarious. I especially loved it how they played on the #wmata hashtag trend. After all, when discussing the DC Metro system, people normally put #wmata in their tweets.
By the way, for those not familiar with the Twitter, hashtags are used to group tweets with other, similar tweets sharing the same hashtag term. Thus if one puts in, say, #cheese, one will see all the tweets where people have tagged their message with “#cheese”. Now whether these #cheese-tagged tweets are actually about cheese is a whole different story.
I do have to say, The @SchuminWeb Files would be an interesting program to see. You would have to cast someone like John Goodman (but younger) to play me, coming out of my Dupont Circle office and into the Metro tunnels where anything can and will go wrong, all the while taking on X (played by William Shatner), the evil General Manager of Metro who, with his minions on the Board of Directors, will raise fares and cut service, making commuters pay $10.00 during peak-of-the-peak, and running six-car trains only once every 15 minutes (oh, wait, they’re doing that now).
Of course, the question remains, could William Shatner run #wmata, or even the real WMATA, better than the current Metro management? Maybe. Perhaps the Board of Directors would swoon over star power in Metro’s hot seat…
Of course, that assumes that Shatner would not behave as the evil “X” might. Big “if” there.