The Ballad of Diablo Cody

In case you've been stranded in a grass shack in Vanu Atu or eschewing Internet access as your toil over your Unibomber-esque crackpot missive from a huddled perch in the back seat of an old Chevy Vega, I need to tell you there's a new she-riff in Tinseltown, and her name is Diablo Cody.

Diablo is her (cheerfully fake) name and Hollyweird is her game. Seriously, the press is going bat-fucking-shit over her, this rompy, slangy Midwestern dairymaid turned stripper turned blogger turned auteur turned screenwriter and industry Wit Girl. (I done stoled that from the fawning Washington Post profile that ran today.)

When you see her crazy-good teeth a-beamin' in a grin and piercing Vivien Leigh-by-way-of-Shannen Dougherty baby blues, you're looking at the face of hope, the member of the Leopard Print Mafia made good. I can't tell you how excited I am by this girly-q being shot out of the fame cannon and into the dazzling sky.

But I can tell you, kidlets, that truly, I knew her when. No, I'm not some early adopter (adapter? adopter? I do not know which. I am not so much with the Gladwell-isms) who found her blog before everyone else. She found me. Long ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, Gawker was just a glimmer in some mean person's eye, and I had this moldering book out called Strip City, I got a tentative-sounding email from some guy. So tentative, I swear, if email could stutter, this one would have. D-d-d-dear Li-li-lily...anyhow, turns out it's this guy whose ladyfriend is a fan of my uptight little book and she's also a dancer and a blogger and, perhaps if I'm not too busy to be inconvenienced, would I maybe look at her blog sometime, this crazy joint called Pussy Ranch? I am pretty much like a polar bear jabbing through five feet of ice to scoop up and gulp a fat baby seal when it comes to stripper blogs, so HECK YEAH, I emailed back, I'll look at her blog. What can I say? It was love at first geekism. I thought, who IS this brainiac exhibitionist dorkazoid with the longity-long giraffe legs and the crazy-ass Minneapolis shopping mall hair extensions? She is wielding the words like a light saber, and I want her to swing that shizzle all over me! Fork me, yoda, this kid's a frigging genius.

Yeah, it's all cool and kwazy to have a blog, and get a book deal off of it--all the kids were doing it back then, not just Diablo C. But her book turned out to be the laugh-out-loud freakshow field report, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. I have to say I gave it the most hearty endorsement I could, short of admitting she kinda whipped me in the stripper memoir game. See, I'm an exhibitionist of sorts, but I only want you to view me from my preferred angles. She, on the other hand, drives it to the net by being like, Apatow-ish in her basic grasp of life's comic humiliations--of which there are many in the sex industry. God, so many. She strapped on her stripper heels and promptly stepped ankle-deep in dog crap and told us all about it. Days after I read the book, I'd find myself remembering a line from it, and find myself laughing out loud like an over-processed hyena.

So flash forward to the red-hot now, and Diablo Cody is pretty much being carried through the town square on a palanquin, thanks to the orange TicTac poppin' genius of "JUNO," which she wrote. In two months. (no pressure, the rest of you screen scribes! none at all!). You know the story: SmartySlacks Juno McGuff finds herself up the pole, decides to have the baby, and sets out to find the perfect adoptive parents for her sprog. Story set-up and...GO! It's off to the races. I donned one of my many leopard-trimmed coats in solidarity and went to NYC to see it, with a friend similarly be-coated in leopard, and we enjoyed the living hell out of ourselves. The supporting cast was so good, I kept clutching my chest in pride and joy, like a Jewish grandmamele. Jennifer Garner made me weep openly. As far as movies go, I am hard-pressed to think of a movie more perfectly packaged/produced/costumed/written/acted. It's right up there with "American Splendor," which I revere as a gold standard in indie beguilement.

Everyone's chanting OSCAR! OSCAR! OSCAR! at Diablo, the little subculture spelunker that could, and by God, I hope she makes it. Not just for the Overnight Success edification, but for the Triumph of the Geeks promise of it all.

So here's to you, my Cody girl, my Deebler Coconut, my blurb-swapping chum and go-go pole alum. Dear galumphing Cyber-Cinderella, the kohl-rimmed eyes of the whoremeat cognoscenti are upon you. We cradle you in our nerdy, intimacy-averse embrace and toast your success with a million dimestore lipstick kisses.