Believe it or not, a lot of thought goes into The Washburn Expedition.
The world’s first Facebook novel began when friends nagged me to join the social media site. I did. And then I rapidly decided that my life was not interesting enough to make constant updates.
So I created a fictitious life.
As a result, I “lead” an expedition sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Washburn Observatory (which is real) and Museum of Natural History (which is fictitious). It’s a serial novel updated twice each weekday, set sometime between 1890 and 1947 – we’re never quite sure when.
Part of it is based on the adventure novels of Zane Grey. Part of it is pure Indiana Jones (who has made several unrecognized appearances in the expedition, as has his ingénue, Marion Ravenwood). Part of it is based on Bernard Heuvelmans’ On the Track of Unknown Animals. Most of it is a direct lift from Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad; our party similarly consists of arrogant Americans who are viewing the world through parochial eyes.
Early on, we established that the expedition was underwritten by the father of Rita Rennebohm. She began as merely Rita, and she was meant to be Rita Hayworth. Somehow I have yet to get around to using Hayworth’s images. But blame Rita herself; she’s grown to be an even worldlier character, usually portrayed with images of Anita Loos.
Poor, naïve boobs that we are, we never recognize Rita’s true, lusty character. Her exclamations of “Um! Ow! O!” are taken from the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberand; Nemo always woke from his fantastic dreams with those comments.
Rita’s last name is drawn from the late Wisconsin governor and drug store magnate, Oscar Rennebohm. In the context of the expedition, her father is Lord Rennebohm, always portrayed by robber baron J.P Morgan. At last report, he was fleeing police. He’s emerged as our arch enemy.
Rita took over the estate after a brief stay at home, during which Lord Rennebohm “fell on a knife, several times.”
Dr. Allenby, the expedition’s secondary leader, is based on British Brigadier General Edmund Allenby. We often hear about the doctor’s “wretched pet,” Jocko. When Jocko rarely appears, we see that he is a stork – Gen. Allenby’s actual pet, and the photos of the two of them together are real.
Young Reggie is our naïf, a university student that we’ve taken along. Contrary to the belief of many readers, he is not British. He’s merely a New England kid who desperately wants to pretend that he’s Ivy League. Constantly trying to impress, he begins his entries with “toujers,” and closes with real Latin phrases. In between, he always refers to something as “rummy old” – another attempt of his to sound upper crust.
Reggie’s fraternity, Omega Lambda Chi, has the same name as the hoax fraternity created by American composer Charles Ives, when he was a student at Yale. Ives even created a marching song for it. Speaking of Yale, in the novel I sometimes recall my student days there, during which I met our last cast member, Billie the Cowboy. Barely literate, it’s never explained how Billie was able to enter Yale. Still, my college roommate is an accomplished pilot who has saved the lives of all in the expedition many times.
When portrayed as a cowboy pilot, Billie is portrayed by images from Sky King, a radio and early TV adventure series. Otherwise, he is almost always portrayed by Broncho Billy Anderson, silent film’s first star. Anderson was a producer/actor/director, today too-seldom remembered. Interestingly, our first filmed hero of the Old West was a Jew. Once in awhile, Billie the Cowboy is also portrayed by a youthful Will Rogers.
Before The Washburn Expedition settled into a permanent format, color photos were sometimes featured. That will never happen again. We are stuck in the age of black and white photography. When I can’t find a good black and white image, I have to manipulate a color one to make it appear that way. The only exceptions are the early red telegrams, or “Marconigrams,” by which we receive new orders from headquarters.
My own portrait is that of Harold Lloyd, from Professor Beware, an early talkie of the silent film star’s. The curator of the Washburn Observatory and Museum of Natural History is Prof. James Watson, and in fact he was an early and real director of the actual Washburn Observatory. He was famous in his day as one of the discoverers of the planet Vulcan, which supposedly existed between the sun and the orbit of Mercury.
There are lots of hidden jokes throughout. Somehow, no one ever figured out that our visit to Howell Island and its benevolent host, Thurston, was a reference to Gilligan’s Island. Edgar Allen Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was also an early allusion.
Writing the expedition began as a lark. More than 1,200 posts later, it sometimes is a chore. We’ve visited every continent and even inner earth!
But so far we remain on the trail, encountering new, “savage” natives and marveling at the last unmapped spots on the globe. We “discovered” the Nile, claimed it, and named it “New Potomac.” We took a V-2 to Paris, and mistook its residents as strange Moon creatures. Soon we’ll go to London, to take part in an unspecified royal wedding. (Definitely not in 2011 – but who knows when?)
Welcome to The Washburn Expedition of the University of Wisconsin Washburn Observatory and Museum of Natural History.
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