Kirsten "Kiwi" Smith peeled her face off of the waterproof cushion of her poolside deck chair, and squinted at the early morning sun steadily rising over her sprawling backyard. She hadn't meant to pass out here next to her pool/office/super-fun, girls-night-in-atorium, but she learned a long time ago not to fight her muse, and right now Kiwi's muse was pounding the inside of her head like a mechanic hammering out the chassis of a badly dented car. Only the best ideas come from hangovers. Kiwi and her writing partner Karen even had a name for them: Ow-deas. Cute, right? Sooo cute. Last week, Kiwi and Karen sold an animated series to the Disney Channel called "Ow-deas" based on that word alone.
In the pool, Karen was still sleeping on the raft she'd passed out on several hours earlier, her arms folded tightly around a yellow legal pad with a few notes ("Hitch but 4 girlz," "lady-training," "shock jock") for their next script The Ugly Truth scribbled on it. At least six empty bottles of woo bobbed lazily around the raft, remnants of the previous night's totally awesome fiesta writing sesh. "Yooo-wooo!" Kiwi called across the pool, "Wakey Wakey."
Karen opened her eyes. "I fell asleep on the raft again?" she asked.
"Duh," Kiwi laughed. "You're lucky we're women, cause a dude would have woken you up by tipping your raft over."
"OMG. I know!" Karen said, "Men and women are really different. It's like men do things one way, and women do things a totally different way."
"Yeah. Especially dating. Women are all, 'I want to date a surgeon,'" Kiwi said, "But men are all, 'I am a visual creature.'"
"For reals," Karen said, attempting to sit up on the raft. "Wait a minute. I just got a killer ow-dea!"
And thus The Ugly Truth was born: