ScreedMe.com

wHO WANTS TO MARRY A SCREEDEr?

mARCH, 2000 - i WAS as shocked as I'm sure all of you were to learn last month that Fox Television was canceling its tasteful short run success, "Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire?" Amid questions over the "millionaire" status of TV groom Rick Rockwell - is that really a name - and talk that he might be a girl basher, Fox executives bowed to their tradition of good manners and yanked the program. Disappointing, isn't it, to think that the sorts of people who would buy and sell their marriage on nationwide TV might then turn out to be no-goodnicks. To me, the cancellation marked the moment when Fox lost its innocence.

As the nation mourned the sudden emptiness and people everywhere asked "where were you when you heard about the cancellation?" I turned in my grief to my friends asking plaintively what I, a lowly on-line editor, could do to fill the void. Their answer was swift and my calling was plain.

Today I'm pleased to designate March as, "Who Wants To Marry A Screeder?" month. Just click-on and hook-up. As newly named Justice-of-the-Screed, it's the least I could do. Read another way, TV bride Darva "you'll never be bored" Conger still has a chance to sell herself off to the highest bidder.

Just in case you're wondering, we're not naive enough here at ScreedMe to imagine anyone would take us seriously without some hefty commercial tie-in. As a mere citizen in our brave new world of cross-corporate, cross-branded, chain-name individualism, ScreedMe clearly needed to cross-pollinate with a strategic partner, and there was only one logical candidate ... GAP. Beyond currently available GAP clothing, make-up, bathroom products, and most anything else a person might need to fit-in, March marks the debut of the GAP marriage.

Here's the deal. Anyone who marries a Screeder in March will become eligible to exchange GAP supplied authentic DeBeers diamonds, take vows in a GAP church, temple, mosque, or mall, don needlessly expensive and often ridiculous looking GAP wedding attire, ride in a silly GAP limousine, and hear even sillier GAP supplied speeches - carefully written with the characteristic ribald humor and inside jokes that make wedding ceremonies so clever and memorable - topped off with trite wedding band cover tunes from the 70s, also supplied by GAP.

But that's not all. Our lucky couple will speed off to an all-GAP honeymoon at some predictable tourist spot, then receive the really big prize: their own GAP SUV, dog, mortgage, set of kids, and lifelong GAP supplied excuses for growing fat while complaining about taxes and government in general, all in the comfort of GAPVille #1. Yes, our lucky couple will live out their days in the habitat of the future; the first of numerous GAPVilles set to self-proliferate nationwide, guaranteeing every front-lawn, picket-fence, and tryst with the next door neighbor is officially designed by the Deciders-That-Be, high atop GAP headquarters in beautiful downtown San Francisco.

For those of us who've long dreamed of selling our most precious personal moments - and who among us can honestly claim to have dreamt otherwise - March marks what historians (hired by ScreedMe/GAP Inc.) are already calling "the moment of the millennium."

Before closing, might I mention that were my gravestone to be marked with nothing else, I hope it would note that the dreams of Fox Television found life after cancellation on the keyboards of Screeders, their fingers hovering just clicks away from cross-promoted corporate matrimony and all the name-brand happiness it will surely bring. So - who's our first lucky bride and groom?

Yours Truly,

Xandor
Copy Boy In-Chief

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