Glad you enjoyed, Ann.
Why the phone book? Combination of two things, actually.
One was an old episode of
Batman: The Animated Series . The Joker takes over an auditorium with gas grenades. His girlfriend/assistant assures him that she can keep them occupied easily enough; with Joker's "high octane laughing gas" in their systems, they'll laugh at the phone book! She pulls out an actual phone book and starts reading the listings in a bland monotone. The audience cracks up.
That scene made an impression on me. "Phone book tired" became a new benchmark for me. It describes the state of being so loopy from lack of sleep that you might just laugh at the phone book.
The other thing that came into play was a throwaway line from one of my favorite silly/"guilty pleasures" movies,
Hudson Hawk . There are two very bored security guards sitting in the monitor room. Having nothing better to do, one of them has taken to perusing the phone book.
"673 Wongs in the phone book," he tells his partner.
The other hmms thoughtfully. "Helluva lotta Wong numbers."
It's stupid, but it's fun.
Anyway, when I tried to come up with something boring yet strangely amusing, the two scenes popped to mind and kind of naturally went together. So, that's why Clark is reading the phone book, and why he's looking through all of the listings for Wong. All of which took much much longer to explain than it did to write the original thing which, really, was just a throwaway tag-on to a confused post.
As for Angelus... I see Lab managed to cover that while I was writing the rest of this (that preview window is so helpful sometimes), so I'll leave it at that.
Anyway, thanks again for the FDK, even if it was just for a stupid gag I'd all but forgotten. It's always good to know I've made someone laugh.
Paul
