"also known as foxy… makes Ecstasy look like aspirin, and users claim it induces this childlike wonder."

February 23, 2011 6:37 AM

Teddy Wayne and the art of "random similarities." In 2007 Teddy wrote a parody article for Radar about a "clandestine party for students at the Upper East Side private school Dalton called "Sindergarten" ... the attendees act like kindergarteners—some girls sing "Ring-Around-the-Rosie," other teens finger-paint and play children’s games, they all receive gold stars on their foreheads at the end of each party—thanks to a the club drug foxy…a hallucinogen similar to Ecstasy said to facilitate a childlike sense of wonder with the world." In 2008, CSI: NY had a story arc where, "prep schoolers act like little children ... Girls sing “Ring-around-the-Rosie,” teens finger-paint and play other children’s games, Bryce affixes a gold star to the forehead of each attendee at the end of each party, and a lab scientist describes foxy to the detectives as "methoxy diisopropyltryptamine… also known as foxy… makes Ecstasy look like aspirin, and users claim it induces this childlike wonder." But, according to CBS lawyers, these are all "random similarities."
posted by geoff. (52 comments total)

I've been to rich kid parties, they could use some ring around the Rosie and face paint.
posted by The Whelk at 6:39 AM on February 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

Ironically, I had this written in the style of a Law & Order parody, before realizing that this was not Law & Order, but CSI: NY, a rip off of Law & Order. For some reason this pissed me off even more.
posted by geoff. at 6:40 AM on February 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

Also sometimes foxy does induce a childlike state of wonder.
posted by The Whelk at 6:41 AM on February 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

A couple of years ago I sat down to watch some CSI with a friend and remarked "man, you'd think they'd run out of storyline ideas at some point!". We then watched an episode of CSI: The Normal One Before It Became Las Vegas, and an ep of CSI: Miami. They both had the exact same plot - someone faking their own death with blowfish(?) poison. It was pretty funny.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:44 AM on February 23, 2011

*dramatically removes glasses*
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 6:46 AM on February 23, 2011 [11 favorites]

Funny, I was just thinking about this -- a show obviously ripping off a fairly unique and detailed plot....
posted by PsychoTherapist at 6:47 AM on February 23, 2011

Teddy's wrong, the CBS lawyer is right. Sorry, kids.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 6:47 AM on February 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

I wish you'd kept it in the Law and Order style. Because then we could have the "is the sound best described as 'chung chung' or [insert other thing here]?" and that's my favorite derail to have.

See, like CSI producers (and the Law and Order producers before them), I just like to keep ripping off parodies of real life (because seriously, what's a Metafilter derail other than a parody of, you know, an actual discussion...)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:51 AM on February 23, 2011

No no no didn't you read CPB's comment? Nothing to see here, "kids."
related
posted by jtron at 6:57 AM on February 23, 2011

I read this as CBS News had a story like that and I was all whoa they are barely hiding the fact that they make up these drugs scare stories now.
posted by DU at 7:00 AM on February 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's a story about imaginary kids, kid. So, it's sarcasm. I kid you not.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:00 AM on February 23, 2011

That party sounds horrible. Can we go to that one that had the orgy? I forgot which show it was on.
posted by solmyjuice at 7:03 AM on February 23, 2011

Oh, do I have a Law and Order fun fact for you.

I have it on the good authority of my girlfriend, who used to work at the FedEx in Bar Harbor, Maine (where Dick Wolfe of Law and Order has a summer home) that Dick Wolfe is super particular about how his linens get cleaned. So particular, in fact, that he has them FedExed out overnight priority to a dry cleaner in California every day, who then FedExes them back to Maine. Because that laundry is the only one that can do it right.
posted by dunkadunc at 7:05 AM on February 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

See also: N.S. writer sues Warner brothers over Fools Gold.
posted by Brodiggitty at 7:06 AM on February 23, 2011

crap - Link
posted by Brodiggitty at 7:06 AM on February 23, 2011

That party sounds horrible. Can we go to that one that had the orgy? I forgot which show it was on.

This one? ;)
posted by scalefree at 7:07 AM on February 23, 2011

As I owned the rights to any audiovisual “adaptation” of "Sindergarten," I therefore believed I could prosecute anyone I felt was taking too many liberties with random similarities in another medium. Not so; it turned out that I had a conventional "work-for-hire" contract, which meant Radar was the copyright holder and only they could sue.

CSI, CSschmI. As a professional writer for a decade and a half, I can assure you that this is not the conventional writer's contract, which is, instead, only the right to be the first to publish. If a publication were to want the copyright to what I write, they would have to pay me thousand of dollars -- potentially what the piece is worth in reprint, which is how many freelancers make their living, writing a piece for one publication and then revising it to be republished in potentially dozens of other places. If you're really concerned about copyright law, the fact that Radar is passing off a contract in which a writer turns over their copyright to a publisher is a much bigger, and more troubling, issue than the fact that CSI probably stole material from the original article thinking it was an actual news article.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:11 AM on February 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

Putting aside the admission that the "CSI: NY" writing staff had, in fact, read my article, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt about no one’s knowing it was an April Fool’s hoax. But that's irrelevant; a uniquely reported news article like "Sindergarten"—unlike, again, the details of Leona Helmsley and her little dog, too, which were disseminated to everyone—is as protectable as the short story it actually is. Neither form it might take resides within the "public domain"—and accidental appropriation is never a valid defense.

It was solely my fault for not being sophisticated enough to scrutinize my Radar contract more closely and request the copyright. But most freelance writers, happy to get a chance to publish at all in this collapsing industry, do the same. And all writers hope that, if there’s ever an infringement issue, their publisher will defend them. Yet online writing is still a second-class citizen whose protection we guard less zealously. Had my Radar article been in ink, I don’t think any television writers could have deemed it a viable free source for the "concept" and "random similarities"—and, very likely, my contract would have preserved the copyright for me.

The meat, for the tl;dr brigade - they did read his story, they did copy his story, and it's less the facts of the story (made up though they may be) than the lazy, lazy duplication of the way they were expressed that's the violation - and if current Radar ownership would've offered more than 10% of a trial award to the writer, out of which they'd have to give a third or so to their attorney - there might've been more of a legal battle.

The real story here is "work for hire contracts can fuck you."
something something ownership of the means of publication something
posted by jtron at 7:11 AM on February 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Who will rise to defend our favorite proto-fascist cop shows from these baseless accusations?!?
posted by Avenger at 7:12 AM on February 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

Donk-Donk.


..... A donk a donka a tz tz tz donka donka woo woo tz tzt tz techno techno yea woo woo
posted by lalochezia at 7:13 AM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Radar ownership would've offered more than 10% of a trial award to the writer, out of which they'd have to give a third or so to their attorney - there might've been more of a legal battle.

This is what was most confusing for me, why wouldn't Radar pursue this?
posted by geoff. at 7:15 AM on February 23, 2011

This is what was most confusing for me, why wouldn't Radar pursue this?

More work for them, more money to be spent, no guarantee on a return.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:16 AM on February 23, 2011

Since we're talking about "police procedural" drama shows, who the heck would know what that an NCIS officer is part of an actual law enforcement agency?

With that, I smell untapped potential.

"Stand back, ma'am, we're with ... The Defense Logistics Agency. And we're here to repair your weapons."

"Oh no! We've lost the transport truck, and our car was damaged by those make-shift road spikes! Sorry sir, we'll have to confiscate your car. Who are we? We're with the Office of Secure Transportation, and we need to make sure that enriched nuclear material gets to the nuclear reactor and not into the hands of the terrorists!"

"Good job, McGubbins, you just broke that convoluted mess they call an accounting log wide open. You're a real value to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (or FinCEN)!"
posted by filthy light thief at 7:20 AM on February 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

why wouldn't Radar pursue this?

My take is that since Radar was under new management, it wouldn't be worth raising a stink over what happened in the past. And taking on huge corporations is like wrestling with pigs, everyone gets muddy and whatnot.

I'm 100% on the authors side though (as I'm sure most of us are) and hopefully that will ease some of his feelings of being wrongfully treated by a couple of stupid companies.
posted by pwally at 7:21 AM on February 23, 2011

In 2008, CSI: NY had a story arc where, "prep schoolers act like little children"

See, I read this -- twice -- as 'In 2008, CSI: NY had a story arc where, "pre-schoolers act like little children,"' and thought, "Well, yes, I would imagine so."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:24 AM on February 23, 2011 [5 favorites]

With that, I smell untapped potential.

That's it. I'm definitely pitching a pilot for Amtrak Police.
posted by steambadger at 7:27 AM on February 23, 2011

We then watched an episode of CSI: The Normal One Before It Became Las Vegas, and an ep of CSI: Miami. They both had the exact same plot - someone faking their own death with blowfish(?) poison. It was pretty funny.

The original show has even started plagiarizing its earlier seasons for material.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:37 AM on February 23, 2011

Back in the 80s, it often seemed to me like action series (Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon) used the same plot elements (ninjas or whatever) right around the same time; I used to wonder if TV executives had meetings where they would decide these things in advance.
posted by stinkycheese at 7:38 AM on February 23, 2011

"Good job, McGubbins, you just broke that convoluted mess they call an accounting log wide open. You're a real value to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (or FinCEN)!"

I would buy a television to watch this show. And cable.

I have a friend who is in school to become a forensic accountant, and they have the most rocking job in the whole world. She told me a story once about how the IRS caught a pizza place (apparently well-known hubs of crime in the world of forensic accounting) cheating on their taxes because they bought far more flour than they would actually ever use if their reported revenue was correct. How awesome is that?!

But alas the world is such that probably the audience for such a show would be just me and all the accountants, unless they glitzed it up.
posted by winna at 7:44 AM on February 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

What's weird about the original CSI is that it appears to be fully aware that it jumped the shark and has started making its own badness into something of an inside joke. Probably the ultimate expression of this was Morpheus' monologue about surfing Web sites for posts hating on his favorite works, which concludes with, "And then, I sculpt orchids."

At which point, Nick breaks down crying and wails, "Wha happened?! Wha happened?!"

I have a friend who is in school to become a forensic accountant, and they have the most rocking job in the whole world.

A cousin of mine travels the world doing this for the DoJ.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:54 AM on February 23, 2011

But alas the world is such that probably the audience for such a show would be just me and all the accountants, unless they glitzed it up.

FinCEN can get up to some pretty hairy stuff actually. I have a friend who used to work there who consulted with me on finding a satellite phone that worked in Afghanistan, back in the mid 90s. So they can get around.
posted by scalefree at 7:57 AM on February 23, 2011

Basically (and I'm sure Joe Beese will correct if I'm wrong) if you represent your story as truth then people can take whatever elements they want from it because you can't copyright real life, man (just your expression of it). In this case, despite that it was a pretty obvious parody, CBS is already claiming that they read it as a news story and that it was portrayed as a news stor (not surprising, they've been involved in similar case before). So...messy, expensive, and no guarantee of payout. Yeah, I'd probably stay away too if I was the magazine.
posted by cyphill at 7:59 AM on February 23, 2011

If that's the degree of similarity to another protected IP that CBS is now ready to back as random and legally defensible, it seems to me they have a hell of a lot more to lose thereby than Teddy Wayne does.

I've never heard of Teddy Wayne or his parody article in Radar. I am, however, familiar with a number of immensely valuable intellectual properties held by CBS including:

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
CSI: Miami
NCIS
CSI: NY
Criminal Minds
Flashpoint
The Mentalist
NCIS: Los Angeles
CSI: Topeka
The Good Wife
Blue Bloods
The Defenders
Hawaii Five-0
Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour
Two and a Half Men
How I Met Your Mother
The Big Bang Theory
Rules of Engagement
Mike & Molly
Mad Love
And, last and probably least... $#*! My Dad Says

And that's just the stuff they're airing right now that is ripe for exploitation.

(Okay, I'm actually not familiar with Blue Bloods. What the hell is that? And I made up CSI: Topeka.)
posted by Naberius at 8:14 AM on February 23, 2011

MCMikeNamara: "I wish you'd kept it in the Law and Order style. Because then we could have the "is the sound best described as 'chung chung' or [insert other thing here]?" and that's my favorite derail to have."

Yeah, but now we can have a derail about whether that Who song is called "Who Are You?" or (as I've suspected for years) "Whoo Awa".
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:21 AM on February 23, 2011

Astro Zombie: "I can assure you that this is not the conventional writer's contract, which is, instead, only the right to be the first to publish."

FWIW, AZ, any time I have had a web-oriented contract, downstream rights have been clearly stated to reside in perpetuity with the publisher, just as this kid learned here. Some folks will let you swap in print-like expiry rights, some won't. The clause appears to descend from the early days of to-web archive migration and is also intended explicitly to simplify downstream acquisitions, exactly what happened with Radar. Doesn't make it a good contract, but it's by no means exceptional.
posted by mwhybark at 8:47 AM on February 23, 2011

Back in the 80s, it often seemed to me like action series (Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon) used the same plot elements (ninjas or whatever) right around the same time; I used to wonder if TV executives had meetings where they would decide these things in advance.
posted by stinkycheese at 9:38 AM

I know what you mean but it's nothing compared to the brain-bender of Marvel's X-Men and DC's Doom Patrol (both groups of super-powered societal outcasts, gathered and led by a mysterious older fella in a wheelchair) coming out within three months of each other, allegedly with no contact between the creators. Obviously a parallel-world situation of some sort
posted by jtron at 8:49 AM on February 23, 2011

"a hallucinogen similar to Ecstasy"

shurely Ecstasy isn't a hallucinogen? it didn't make me hallucinate, it made it dificult to see properly though.

"and a lab scientist describes foxy to the detectives as "methoxy diisopropyltryptamine… also known as foxy… "

did they just look up drugs and alter the words? dimethyltriptamine (DMT) is a real hallucinogen.
posted by marienbad at 8:51 AM on February 23, 2011

ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME THE MEDIA WOULD GET BASIC FACTS WRONG ABOUT DRUGS?

WELL I NEVER
posted by jtron at 8:56 AM on February 23, 2011

YES I AM - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!! ;)

how hard can it be to look up ecstasy on wiki to check the facts though?
posted by marienbad at 8:58 AM on February 23, 2011

shurely Ecstasy isn't a hallucinogen? it didn't make me hallucinate, it made it dificult to see properly though.

You were only hallucinating that you couldn't see properly.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 9:00 AM on February 23, 2011

ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME THE MEDIA WOULD GET BASIC FACTS WRONG ABOUT DRUGS?

When I was a wee naive freshman, the RA of our dorm had a "Drug Fact Sheet" hanging up on the bulletin board outside his room. This fact sheet claimed that one of the side effects of marijuana was straight up "Telepathy."
posted by muddgirl at 9:26 AM on February 23, 2011 [4 favorites]

how hard can it be to look up ecstasy on wiki to check the facts though?

You're doing it wrong.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:27 AM on February 23, 2011

This fact sheet claimed that one of the side effects of marijuana was straight up "Telepathy."

Was this maybe a list of awesome side effects? Like

Cocaine - Become most important person in room, possibly Earth
Alcohol - vast increase in perceived charm and attraction.
Marijuana - Boredom gone, replaced with in depth study of pillow weaving technology.
Ecstasy - Sudden understanding of house music.
posted by The Whelk at 9:33 AM on February 23, 2011 [14 favorites]

LSD - Trees will, like, sing.
posted by muddgirl at 9:43 AM on February 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Lets see, checking scifinder.... there are 3 molecules that pop up for methoxy diisopropyltryptamine. 1 with 63 references found, the other two with under 10.....

Run a search for Biological, Adverse Effects, Misc and a couple other things....

Going down the list I found:
Neuropsychotoxicity of abused drugs: molecular and neural mechanisms of neuropsychotoxicity induced by methamphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), and 5-methoxy-N,N-diisopropyltryptamine (foxy)
By Nakagawa, Takayuki; Kaneko, Shuji
From Journal of Pharmacological Sciences (Tokyo, Japan) (2008), 106(1), 2-8

So it is a real drug at least, and there have been studies into its effects. It took me a bit of scrolling to find these, so I put up a few more papers below: It sounds like most of the research into it is being done in Japan.

Hey, the get commercial sources button is lit up.... 44 sources. Hey, Sigma-Aldrich sells it for $135CND for 5mg or $541CDN for 25mgs. But the 25mg size is backordered.

Hmmm
"5-MeO-DIPT is a tryptamine derivative. In animal behavioral studies, 5-MeO-DIPT has been shown to produce behavioral effects that are substantially similar to those of LSD, both schedule I hallucinogens." and it is regulated on "USDEA Schedule I"

So yeah, real drug, unlike most of the stories I hear about with toads and crazy stuff...and no, I'm not going to post the synthesis methods for anyone....
posted by Canageek at 9:49 AM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

This fact sheet claimed that one of the side effects of marijuana was straight up "Telepathy."

Wow! I'm gonna go out right now and buy some of this stuff! And then I'll smoke it like a cigarette.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:15 AM on February 23, 2011

marienbad: methoxy diisopropyltryptamine is also a real hallucinogen, better known as 5-MeO-DIPT. I've never tried it but I know people who have, and "makes ecstasy look like aspirin" does not sound like a useful description of its effects.

MDMA is a "hallucinogen" in the broad technical sense including all psychedelics and dissociatives, as contrasted with stimulants or opiates. It doesn't mean it is actually supposed to make you hallucinate.
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:26 AM on February 23, 2011

muddgirl: "This fact sheet claimed that one of the side effects of marijuana was straight up "Telepathy.""

Oh, so that's what was up with Troi's mom. TNG makes so much more sense now!
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 10:26 AM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

This fact sheet claimed that one of the side effects of marijuana was straight up "Telepathy."

Sounds like a Spider Robinson fan
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 1:21 PM on February 23, 2011 [3 favorites]

I don't buy that there's any such thing as a "childlike state of wonder". There's staring at things like a lummox and going "Why? Why? Why?" and then there's crying when dad has had enough of your shit.
posted by tumid dahlia at 1:57 PM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Foxy is definitely a real thing, real people call it that, and it's definitely a psychedelic.

Exactly what goes down when people partake in psychedelics is always a bit hard to predict, so I'm not gonna comment on the likelyhood of parties like that, but "childlike sense of wonder" is not something I've ever heard ascribed to it.
posted by flaterik at 3:06 PM on February 23, 2011

At least they're not using Cake.
posted by clarknova at 3:58 PM on February 23, 2011 [1 favorite]