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Borderline Genius

Hesh was 92. He’d signed a young Paul Anka to his first appearances contract back when that meant something. Namely it meant black and white TV. Then a dry spell. For 70 years. You might say he was behind in his work. He was due. Hesh wasn’t much for current events even in his chosen field. He considered Cher to be a fresh face in the business.   But his great granddaughter was another story. She wouldn’t shut up about a new boyband she’d seen online. KimPop they were called. A Korean quintet cut from the same cloth you’ve seen before but with fresh hooks and looks beyond the usual tired fare.  Somehow miraculously they had not been discovered widely or commercialized in the West. Maddie confirmed as such and her knowledge of influencers foreign and domestic was encyclopedic.

Hesh Ubered into the office for his first in-person pitch in decades. He was hungry to impress the young upstarts with a fresh new act of devastating recency. To say it did not go well would be to say the Hindenburg experienced some chop on approach.

Maddie was disconsolate. And that was in fact the problem. The consulate. Due to the vagaries of the American system of education, her command of geopolitics was on a slightly lower plane than her grasp of content producers. She’d failed to register, or inform her beloved PapPap, that the boys she’d discovered hailed from Pyongyang not Seoul. I.e., the land of Dear Leader. Off limits for American soil. Hence their availability. “Have mercy on me, Gramps, I should have known. My bad.”

But it was on Hesh. At least to have asked.  As behind as he was on news of the day, there was no excuse. Even in Paul Anka’s time there were two Koreas.