Go ahead mum, treat yourself

an observation

2006-04-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

If human beings started reproducing asexually, that would FUCK the advertising industry.

Don't mind me, I'm just full of bad poster concepts

2006-04-14T00:18:00.000-07:00

Here are some fake movie/play poster ideas:

Movie: A hardened looking man in a Catholic priest outfit has blood on his face and points a giant magnum gun at the camera. The title: "Critical Mass"

Play: In a fancy game-room in an elegant mansion, a man in a tux and top hat and a woman in an elegant party dress look at each other coyly as they hold pool cues over a pool table. Title: Noel Coward's "Social Cues"

Movie: A dog wearing sunglasses on a longboard surfboard with a guy behind him holding the Ark of the covenant.
Title: "Bark of the Covenant"

"The Dramatization Killer"

2006-04-02T03:10:00.000-07:00

On a true crime show a la Unsolved Mysteries or FBI's most wanted:

A dramatization about a serial killer who only kills people on the sets of dramatizations of murders.

y'know the path to upbeatness, chum?

2006-03-15T21:34:00.001-08:00

Myth: Identity Theft is the growingmost crime in America.

Fact: Growingmost is NOT a word.

RECENT READ: "Let Us Now Raze Famous Hens: A Sociological Study of Cockfighting in the Rural South."

Good Read. Learned a Lot.

Q: How many chinese people does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: First off, it's impossible to screw someone inside a lightbulb - it's too cramped - and second, why would I need chinese people to screw?

We Are All Winners

2006-03-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

Even the biggest loser started his life as a winner. He was once the fastest sperm. He won THE race.

When you are depressed think about this concept and I say it will make you feel better.

And especially if you are depressed that you never have won a race.

yours,

M.I. Neandours

cliche's lounge

2006-01-31T08:33:00.001-08:00

why do we use the expression "it's like stealing candy from a baby" to denote that something is remarkably easy.

Have you ever stolen candy from a baby?

Well I have. They scream like fucking banshees as soon as you've taken the candy.

Then everyone in the room looks at you. And there you are holding the candy that the baby just had and was enjoying.

Is that phrase supposed to be ironic. Boy, I'll say it is.

-m

A Dream Come False

2006-01-02T03:03:00.000-08:00

Possible t-shirt slogans for screenings:

Damn, that's poetic
Brian Cox is the man
Give Me Anything But Math!
Marriage is Gay

Sketch: Commercial: For bank. Asking customers why they use American Eagle Bank. They all say "I love their advertising." "The ads really made me want to bank here." Cut back to sketch at AD agency.

Divorce Ceremony.

Sketch: An artist at a press conference, all the old-timey reporters just ask things like "Mr. ---, what is art?" and "Is something art because you hang it on a wall?"

Pac-Man Hustler.

Just a thought

2005-12-26T18:48:00.000-08:00

Of all the paintings by Magritte, and Dali, and Escher, there is nothing in the world so surreal as the past.

Salemo morf yawa klaw ohw seno eht

2005-12-21T23:09:00.000-08:00

Today I was out hunting for Silvie, the Silver Lake monster. He's a lot like the Loch Ness monster except he wears a giant vintage Journey t-shirt and a Von Dutch cap. Oh, and he's always talking about how he hangs out with Ahmet Zappa.
He was spotted this morning when he emerged from the water to ask a passerby for an American Spirit. When the man said no, Silvie just said "That's cool..." and poked his head back down.

Oh, I believe in fairies, but if you tell me clapping's gonna bring them back to life, you've got another thing coming, brother.

I'm an expert at reading body language. If a woman's shoulders rise up when I'm talking to her. She's saying: hey stud, buy me shoulder pads. Whooolesale. mmmhhm.

AMERIDADIDEER

2005-12-20T20:35:00.000-08:00

Stan becomes Eurotrash.

After Roger has a moment of clarity, not only does he give up booze, but he reignites the Temperance movement.

Stan gets an advice column at the paper. WIth his method of Tough love, he becomes an overnight success. The competing paper tries to find someone to be their new advice columnist. They hire Roger. A Dear Abby/Ann Landers rivalry heats up. To sell more papers both try to "out-advise" each by giving more extreme advice until they realize they are destroying the lives of everyone in Langley falls.

B-story: We basically do The girl next door but with Roger. Steve's friends accidentally walk in on Roger in the attic as he's trying on a dress to go outside. Steve covers by saying she's a boarder. Then Snot comes over one day with a porno tape of Roger aka in James Throbber's The Secret Life of Altered Titties. Roger: "I was young I needed the money!" Steve: "This movie was made three months ago!"

mise en scene

2005-12-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

INT. BAR. NIGHT

Guy: So McFadden, right? You're Irish?
Girl: Yeah, on both my mom and dad's side.
Guy: So how would you like a little more Irish in ya?
Girl: Gross.
Guy: Oh, no! I don't mean that. I have merely devised a solution which will increase your levels of Irishness by up to ten percent.
Guy hands girl card. INSERT SHOT: The card reads Billy Jorgenson, Eugenecist.
Girl: Well, aren't you the sweetest?

I'm a master of reading body language. If a woman crosses her arms while talking to me, I know immediately that I can't see her breasts as well.

I'm a master of reading body language. If a politician is giving a speech and keeps blinking his eyes, what he's really saying is "I like to pretend the lights are going on and off." I'm a master of reading body language.

From the bottom heart of my Cockels

2005-12-20T17:17:00.000-08:00

I'm a master of reading body language. A master! For instance, I can tell with one movement of a woman's eye, that she doesn't want to look at me.

Station To Station

2005-11-21T00:57:00.000-08:00

If the dog is Man's best friend then the cat is Man's worst fuck buddy. Like, THE worst.

Blacking out at a party is great if you're a science fiction fan because the next day it's like you're in a Philip K. Dick story. You can't trust ANY of your memories.

I've never really understood the simile for hypocrisy "it's like the pot calling the kettle black." How do we know the pot and the kettle are both black? We don't. It's only implied. For all we know the pot could just be this racist asshole. "Hey Kettle, you fuckin' nigger. You're bringing down the value of my row of burners."

Do you think Superman ever gets neurotic about how he's kind of a secularized Christ figure?

The unseen joke blog lives another day...

2005-11-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

BITS:

I'm very funny comedian. I'll have you know that after I graduated Comedy college I clerked for Carlos Mencia.

If you love hip hop dancing and droll British comedy, you'll love ARE YOU GETTING SERVED?

WHISTLING DIXIE IN HARLEM: A MEMOIR OF MY RACISM.

People think I'm an anti-semite because I believe the Jews run the world. Yeah, I think the Jews run the world, but I'm really happy for them! They fucking made it! I mean hats off to the Jews! I can't even balance my checkbook and they are running everything. EVERYTHING. THE WORLD. The Jews fuckin won! They won! I say Protocols of the elders of Awesome!

Impression of Orson Welles directing act two scene one from the 1936 Federal Theatre project production's all black version of Macbeth....(details to come)

Young Supple Night

2005-07-11T20:53:00.000-07:00

"If love is the answer, can you rephrase the question?"

What does this saying mean? Nothing. It's too clever by half....

It's like Poe's qoute before "The Purloined Letter": There is nothing more equinamical to true knowledge than an abundance of cleverness...That's right. I've read Poe.

From now on my blog will MOSTLY be jokes/devastating witticisms:

Who's kidding who? Tomatoes are a vegetable. Always have been always will be.

What's the only fruit that's also a vegetable? Harvey firestein!
- Overheard by the watercooler in an alterate reality where Harvey Firestein is in a coma.

Like some McDonalds, The Coffee Bean is installing jungle gyms. Y'know, for kid actors.

Seeing how George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, Isn't it ironic that the inventor of Jelly despised blacks.

The Return: My joke blog

2005-07-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

Can I say something? When a guy makes a t-shirt showing a wire-hanger with a red slash through it, it doesn't mean he's pro-abortion. It just means he's a big Joan Crawford fan. Ok, people, enough kudos already.

A sitcom of Heloise and Abelard starring Pamela Andersen: "Racked with Guilt." (It should be noted that in this show Abelard's name has been changed to "Father Guilt")

Did you know Eskimos have over over three-hundred words for "je ne se qous?"

Don't you think we'd be getting more done if we stopped tackling issues. Why tackle them? "There's stem-cell research!" "KNOCK IT TO THE GROUND!" Can't we approach issues first reasonably without resorting to violence? Can't we just catch up with issues and pull off the red flag from their waist?

Why do fools fall in love? The Jews.

How many times has this happened to you? You're having sex with a woman and you competely forget that her family wanted a donations to her favorite charity in lieu of flowers? Awkwaaard.

How many licks does it take to get to the bottom of a tootsie-pop? As many as it takes, you fucking impatient Owl. If you're so fucking wise, Owl, why don't slow down and enjoy your tootsie-pop? You're a fucking joke. Face it.

Is it me? or are the summer Frappacinos this year not living up to the hype?

Well, Y'know what I always say: Why buy the cow when you can rape the milk for two bits at the fair?

Heard on the news: "And Is slavery making a comeback? We'll find out after the break."

Bad Idea Jeans

2005-01-13T20:42:00.000-08:00

La Fran Nikita Or Anyone You Can Kill I Can Kill Better

To earn some extra money, Stan agrees to assassinate a few agitators and dictators in South America. He takes Francine and the kids along under cover of a vacation. Stan is never around the family as he has assassinations to do. This annoys Francince. We soon learn that Stan, is also really bad at assassinations. Maybe killing the wrong guy or something. Francine finds this out and to get Stan back to the family takes it upon herself to do the assassinations. We learn that Francine is a NATURAL at this sort of thing: Killing. Stan feels inadequete as he is reduced to merely being the cleaner.

My Booty Guard

Stan is assigned to guard a diplomat, whom he can't stand. Stan cannot hurt him in any way because of Diplomatic immunity, even when the Diplomat keeps trying to get in Francine's pants.

Will Smith

We set up that both Francine and Stan are exhausted and that they're desparate to get away somehow. Stan gets a raise at work and to celebrate, Stan and Francine decide to take a spur of the moment trip to club med. But before they go, they need to meet with their accountant to refinance due to Stan's raise and to draw up a new will.

Francine finds out that when Stan dies he is giving the overwhelming majority of his money to the republican party. Francine is furious. They get into a huge fight. Francine says that Stan should care about the family. Stan: "That's why I'm doing this! For the family! The Family, not just Our Family. Look at the big picture, Francine!" Francine, to teach Stan a lesson, changes her life insurance policy so that it goes to Father Donovan and the church. Francine comes home and shows Stan her policy change. Stan: "now that's just silly!" They can't refund the tickets. they decide to still take the trip but to live in separate cabins. Francine says "what if something happens to us?" Stan: "What are the chances?"

Cut to: A plane crashing the ocean. We pull back, Stan and Francine scream as they watch a movie on the plane. The plane shakes, oxygen masks are down, and everyone screams. The plane crashes into the ocean. End Act One.

Act 2: Both are presumed dead and Steve and Hayley are left penniless. A la Lost, Francine and Stan get stranded on a desert island with a handful of other survivors. Father Donovan, with the money he got from Francine buys a building and makes it an orphanage. Mostly for wayward, buxom teenage girls. Both Steve, and Roger (disguised as said buxom girl) apply, Steve gets in but Roger is refered to a foster home. A foster home of upper class sophisticate yuppies who don't drink, revile television, and read to their children at night from Walter Scott. Hayley needs a job, and after being turned down over and over she finally takes a job in for a corporation, but hating herself, finds herself loving it. Klaus does not appear in this episode.

"Are you the Keysmaster? or Alan Alan Sexy-n-Free

We open with Francine playing golf with a recently divorced friend. The friend is very weepy and cries at not making a birdy. She tells Francine that there's tells Francine that her marriage broke up due to her husband's midlife crisis. The signs to look for are him not paying attention and telling you he's too busy with something else, wanting a new car, and wanting to sexually experiment. She wishes that she would have been more open, because now she's lost her husband forever. Both Francine and the friend come up on the course on the friends ex-husband who is with two bimbo women. The woman asks Francine if Stan has been ignoring her, or putting off her needs and blaming it on work or something he's busy with.

Francine comes home, says something to Stan. Stan ignores her, and tells her to be quiet as he is planning planning a reception party for Alan Keyes. Stan, as sub-co-vice chairman of the Langley Falls republican party, he has immersed himself in every detai of the planning. Francine gets nervous that his disinterest is one of the first signs of a pending mid-life crisis.

The neighbors next door get a new state of the art Super-Hummer that Stan could never afford. all Stan can do is think about driving it. And think about how great the Keyes party is going to be. Stan drags Francine along to test-drive one, but they're not out on the market yet. Francine gets incredibly nervous. Stan asks his neighbor if he can give his prototype a spin, but the neighbor emphatically says no. Stan goes through various kiss-ass routines to make it happen but no dice and Stan only wants to drive the Super-hummer more. Stan is so pre-occupied that Francine thinks shes definitely losing him.

Stan's neighbor with the Super Hummer gets wind of the party and asks Stan, confidentially, "I heard you're having a Keys party." Stan: "That's right." Neighbor: "Could I come? And could some of my couples friends come" Stan: "Well...are you going to let me drive the Super-Hummer?" The neighbore says no. Stan says...well, then you can't come. Stan walks to the house where Hayley has been arriving home, and she's seen the interaction. She laughs. S: What are you laughing about? Hayley: Dad, the Thompsons are full out swingers. He thought you were having a keys party. "That's a type of swingers party where couple come in and put their car keys in a bowl and then they choose a car key at the end of the party and go home with that person." Stan thinks this is utterly revolting, and then JACKPOT! he gets an idea. S: Hayley, you're saying that were I to have one of these Key parties, Thompson CAR keys would be in my possession in some sort of container to be established at a later date...H: Yeah. Stan looks at the Super-hummer with desire. STAN: THEN I AM HAVING A KEYS PARTY.

Stan tells his neighbors with the hummer to come. They ask if they can bring friends. Stan says sure. Stan devises a master plan. The swingers will arrive at six, Stan will grab his neighbors car keys, drive the super-hummer for about half-an hour, come back, break up the hanky panky. Get everyone out, so that the republicans and Alan Keyes can arrive at 7. Since the plan involves obstensibly stealing a car, Stan decides not to tell Francine what's really going on. So he tells her about what a keys party is and how is throwing one no matter what. Francine is hurt and doesn't want to do it. She then remembers what her friend said about not being more experimental. She begrudgingly accepts. Francine, does not want to do this at all, but gets the idea in her head that this might be the only way to keep Stan. She finally agrees.

Stan takes the keys, takes the car, and after fifteen minutes of joy-riding, crashes and totals it. Francine notices that Stan left early, probably couldn’t wait to sleep with some floozy, so she bitterly and angrily leaves with some dude.

ACT 3: Stan comes home and finds out. And has goes off to Stop Francine Has to Stop Francine before she sleeps with dude. In the third act we intercut bewtween Stan chasing down Francine and the sleazy swinger a la Ice Storm and Alan Keyes arriving at an unchecked swingers party at the smith household.

octaroo!

2005-01-10T23:55:00.000-08:00

Did you know that in Stan Lee's original Spiderman comic Doc Oc did not have tentacles but was in fact an octaroon?
It's a fact.

ohh...

2005-01-08T18:36:00.000-08:00

I have a dog that can't sense earthquakes but can sense when the comic Earthquake is about to perform. My dog spins in circles and yelps because he knows something terrible is about to happen.

longshoreman do it better

2005-01-08T17:57:00.000-08:00

Idea: A guy reads some book, let's say "War and Peace," and compares everything in his life to it. "How was your coffee?" "It was ok. I liked War and Peace better." After sex: "How was it for you?" "It was ok...War and Peace was way better." After his son's little league game: "Billy, you got to give it your all right now, you're not half as good as War and Peace."

Dialogue from Dr. Hiberius Thinkingsteen's Fantabulastical Flying contraption:

Garland: "So why do you like Frank Mancuso so much?"
Porter: (somewhat surly) "I don't know. Why are there so many Jews in showbiz? Why do women love cheese?"

American Dad has a running gag every episode akin to Bart Simpson writing something new on the chalkboard every week. Stan, THE American Dad, steps out of his house and looks at the headline on the morning paper. Here were some of mine I was proud of:

"Hooker Killed For Heart of Gold"

"Stuff Happens as Ambiguity Wave sweeps Nation"

"Company makes car that runs on liquid dinosaur bones.
Company doesn't know what oil is."

Vebber said that last one was very "Army Man."

Off to Steve Hely's party!

Ideas For "American Dad"

2005-01-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

For some reason I didn't get the email I sent me so this is all for my own cut and paste pleasure tomorrow at work....NU friends...Notice where I came up with the first idea?

Infernal Sunshine of the Spotless Mime:

Stan, feeling lonely and without many friends is elated to learn that Stan's portly old Grenada buddy "Bud" is coming to visit after years with his wife. Stan finds out that Bud is now a mime. Stan takes this to mean that Bud is gay. Stan, feeling sorry for his wife, tells her that Bud is gay. Bud's wife leaves him, assuming that Stan and he were lovers in the army. After Bud gives Stan a rigorous re-education where Stan finally disassociates the idea of mime and homosexuality, he realizes the error of his ways and tries to patch things up.

Stan-Fran-Disco

Stan unwittingly opens Langly Fall's first gay disco.

Stan by Me

When threats are recieved against an important diplomat's family, Stan is called upon by Bullock to guard the diplomat's son in junior high. The kid goes to Steve's school but is also Steve's bully tormentor. A rift erupts between Steve and Stan when Stan hits it off with the kid and even starts becoming somewhat of a bully toward Steve and others.

Who Tamed Roger's Habit?

After Roger burns down the house from smoking in bed the family moves into a cheap motel while the house is being rebuilt. Stan tells Roger that before they move into the new house, Roger has to agree to stop smoking. Roger then leaves a cigarette out and burns down the motel, leaving the family homeless with Roger handcuffed to the steering wheel of Stan's car as he goes through nicotine withdrawl. The family stays in Stan's SUV while Roger goes through nicotine withdrawl. And nicotine withdrawl is severely ugly, far far worse than heroin withdrawl.

Mid-day thoughts

2005-01-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

Is it underage sex if you screw a 12 year old with progeria?

Scene: Someone has an idea bubble pop above their head showing a lightbulb going on. Then the guy makes a "eureka" face and says "Hey! Why don't we turn on a lightbulb!"

So we beat on, boats against the current...

2005-01-03T22:49:00.000-08:00

Saw "The Night Porter" last night. Wow. Bad. Charlotte Rampling was hot though and now I have a fetish for Weimar era sexual decadence.

Started a workout schedule: By this time next year I'll be 160 pounds. Wow. I must never stop exercising before work. I feel so much better.

Lame: People who are way too into Jean-Luc Godard.
Game: People who are way too into Jean-Luc Picard.

Lame: Crippled kids.
Game: Crips.

Lame: Hatred.
Game: Love.

Frank Smith: Vigilante!

2004-12-31T01:00:00.000-08:00

I saw The Aviator at The Grove and then dined for the first time at that lovlely Italian restaurnant there. The Grove is so lovely this time of year. I pointed out to Frank how sad it was that the Chinese restaurant is already gone with a Cheesecake factory coming to replace it. Frank pointed out that soon there's going to be a "The Grove..Remember When" exhibit about all the closed attractions over the years. I laughed because Frank speaks "Truth."

This was one of the more outstanding moviegoing experiences of my life. The film was really good- we'll touch upon that in a jiff- but I'm refering to the actual experience of being in the movie theatre. This is second only to the time I saw Contact with Chris and Chris told the drunk black guys behind us to shut up. (I only mention they were black not because I'm racist but because they were being loud and obnoxious in the way black people are loud and obnoxious). They said fuck you. Chris told the management. The management kicked them out, and on the way out they leaned over and said "We'll be waiting for you after the show, fuckers."

This experience though did not have any terrifying moments.

I met Frank outside. Goldman was there with a friend. We went in and it was almost full with scattered seats so we got seats high up. As the trailers were starting this cute petite young Asian woman (I only mention she is Asian because I have a fetish for cute petite young asian women) asks if I'm saving the seats to the left of me. I say no. She sits down and starts calling her friends who are supposed to find her. She talks with several people describing where she is in the theatre in detail.

The movie starts and her friends never show. But she's sitting next to me, and she starts responding verbally to what's happening on-screen. UHOH-SPOILERS AHEAD! When Kate Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) appeared she started whispering approvals of Hepburn's bon mots, and her generally strong feminine demeanor. Things were said like "Yeah" and "You go." During Hughes' literal dowsnpiral into Beverly Hills while testing a plane, she got significantly louder, continually uttering words like "Damn" or "This is bad. This is bad." We find out a few scenes later that Hughes' heart has now shifted to the other side of his chest cavity due to the impact of the crash. To this, I heard "Oh my God, no." When Hughes starts urinating into milk bottles, I hear "He's crazy...he's just crazy." When the crooked Senator that's in bed with Pan-Am (Alan Alda) says he works for the United States government, she indignantly says "Yeah, right!" And I'm sure you can imagine her thoughts when Hughes began one-upping the senator at the Senatorial commitee hearing.

Why didn't I tell her to shut up? Yes, it was annoying but it's also endearing. Rarely do I come across anyone who has such little psychic distance to a movie, or any work of entertainment or art. I look upon those people with a combination of pity and envy. It's refreshing to me that in an age of entertainment saturation, ironic distance, and the current trend of entertainment deconstruction with DVDs putting as much emphasis on the process as the product, that someone's disbelief is truly suspended while watching a story. And suspended quite high. I wish I still had that, to a certain extent. It's like my mom. When we saw Edward Scissorhands when I was a kid, she nearly leapt out of her chair when Edward pushes the kid out of the way of Anthony Michael Hall's van, yelling "Nooooo!" And my Grandma in Montana in the early days of television would write long letters to soap opera characters. Not stars, characters.

Okay. That was my left flank. On my right flank was Frank, and sitting a few seats down from him were these teenagers, around fifteen or sixteen. They were loud too, but through about midway through the film, they were obviously getting bored and they began to mock every scene in the movie. I think Frank asked them to be quiet, I'm not sure. When the Spruce Goose took off they started howling and clapping their hands above their head. That was the worst. Then as the movie ends after Hughes keeps repeating "It's the Future", this one kid shouts "It is the future!" and Frank just chucks his drink, ice and all, at the kid, hitting him in the face, and the kid goes "Hey! What the fuck!" And Frank, sitting two seats away, immediately denies it. Then, venting my own frustration and deflecting some attention off Frank, I say "You fucking had it coming! You were being completely fucking obnoxious throughout the entire film!" Then the kid yelled something else, and some people in front of us told the kid that they were being annoying and we shuffled out in different directions.

We left the theatre and went to the bathroom. When I came out they were waiting and the one kid who was the loudest and who frank hit with his cup was looking at me with this combination of woundedness and anger. He demanded an apology. He demanded satisfaction. One friend was playing the peacemaker and the other was chiding me, and kind of holding this kid back. They thought I threw it. I told him I didn't. Frank came out of the bathroom and tried to play dumb again. Finally Frank apologized and then the kid looked at me for an apology. I said "Fuck you. I only heard you acting like a choad throughout the movie and, really, how can I apologize for that?"

"Ah, immaturity, art thou the only means of conquering immaturity?"
- Sir Walter Scott, "The Bledsoe Whip"

So that was that! Oh, and the Aviator is really good. Details to follow.

COMING UP: How my Mom described the relationship between Hughes and Catherine Hepburn to me. Hint: It wasn't right!

It's so crazy...

2004-12-30T03:06:00.000-08:00

It just might work!

I was just zoning out and not working on the screenplay I'm trying to finish by Monday. I'm coming to the realization that, who the fuck was I kidding; I'm not going to make that silly deadline. Any way, I'm just sitting here, drinking my soda, staring at my screen, when I come up with how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Okay, this either came from a screenplay I wrote in high school, Independence day, or Harry Turtledove.

Here it is: Nothing unites like a common enemy, right? Right. America funds and executes and elaborate high-tech UFO hoax over the Holy Land, making both Israel and Palestine think they're being invaded. Israelis and Palestinians will have no choice but to team up and fight the Aliens! Then we duck out...easy peasy, one two threesy.....There's plausible deniablity all up in dat!

GLOOORY DAYS! I was looking for my one column I wrote for the Daily, the one about the Gone withe the Wind Casino, but the bastards took it off the interweb.

Instead I posted the only other article I could find in the "Matt McKenna" "Daily Northwestern" google search.

GLOOORY DAYS!!!

From November 2001: Serious business in fairy land.

Executives attempt their hostile takeover of an enchanted realm.

By Colleen Crone
nyou

Get ready for a bizarre journey to a fairy kingdom with giant mushrooms and free love — no drugs required.

"Pixie Dust" follows the comic adventures of five bumbling corporate executives who suddenly find themselves in an enchanted realm. The businessmen soon wow the realm's creatures with ordinary objects like cameras and playing cards and scheme to take over the magical land.

"We realize the lucrative possibilities it presents us," said Eric Svendsen, a Speech senior who plays an executive.

Despite the Disney-esque beginning, bright costumes and mystical setting, the play quickly reveals a dark side as the humans bring death to an immortal land. The show takes a tragic turn when the businessmen use brainwashing and propaganda to force the fairies out of their kingdom.

Writer and director Matt McKenna said he used his own comic influences to explore the thin line between comedy and tragedy.

"What I wanted to do is take the things that really influenced me, like 'Kids in the Hall' and 'Mr. Show,' especially, and use that as a basis," said McKenna, a Speech senior.

Other influences included surrealist imagery and the work of writers Nathaneal West and S.J. Perlman. McKenna said he tried to combine West's dark, grotesque imagery with Perlman's witty one-liners.

"It's tragedy blended with comic moments," he said.

"Pixie Dust's" simplistic plot is strengthened by the play's sardonic undercurrents, most notably a running satire of Disney. The play also draws on the Judeo-Christian parables of the fall of man and a tongue-in-cheek Christ betrayal.

McKenna wrote the play over the summer but cut a large portion of the original script and urged the actors to add their own material to better develop characters.

"I did leave a lot of room up for the actors to do a lot of improvising," McKenna said.

Actor Evan Silverman, a Speech sophomore, agreed that McKenna encouraged input from his cast.

"Matt was wonderful in letting people bring in their own stuff," Silverman said. "While he had a vision, it was a collaborative effort."

Ya hear that? I'm wonderful.

I was going to post an article about the writing of the Pixie Dust screenplay, but I couldn't access CrazyGazette.com. Why did I cut and paste this again. Oh, right, because I'm feeling desperate and tired at three in the morning coming to the realization that I cannot possibly finish any screenplay by Monday. Maybe my outline. But The screenplay, no.

Godel, Escher, Orbach

2004-12-29T21:21:00.000-08:00

Willie Wildcat weeps tonight:

JERRY ORBACH DEAD AT 69.

I watched Wizard of Oz today and a subtle, beautiful line in it seems appropriate: "Get me those Ruby slippers!"
No, rather, "People come and go so quickly here." A beautiful line that's just thrown in there. What a wonderful movie, I hadn't seen that since I watched it in Steph's basement in high school. The Cowardly Lion is so funny. Why did I watch it? Well, one viewing a year is mandatory in West Hollywood. Oh, gay jokes, when will you ever get old?

Idea for a movie: A comic spy caper set amidst the chaos of wild midget parties during the filming of "Under the Rainbow."

According to IMDB:

A newspaper once ran a television listing of Wizard Of Oz in a morbid note: "A young girl awakens in an alien landscape to discover she has accidentally killed a woman. She later conspires with three strangers to kill again."

Meinhardt Raabe, who played the Coroner of Munchkinland, was, at one time, the shortest licensed pilot in the U.S. During WWII, he volunteered for military service and was turned down. He was accepted as a volunteer instructor in the Civil Air Patrol. I smell a bio-pic!

GETTING BACK TO JERRY...

Goodbye Mr. Orbach. I had honestly been looking forward to meeting you at an NUEA function and making small talk about the appetizers before letting you continue the conversation you were in that I interupted. Well, now that's never gonna happen.

First Sontag, now Jerry. This is almost as bad as when Jim Henson and Sammy Davis Jr. died on the same day. Almost. But death comes in threes y'know. Maybe the 80,000 people killed by that Tsunami is the third. Or Mickey Dolenz. What's sadder is that by dying in the last week of the year, those two miss out on all the year-end dead people retrospectives.

I don't usually get too sad when celebrities die. When Brando kicked the bucket, I thought it was funny. He missed the bucket competely and fell on his ass. And all with Bob Saget's hilarious voice-over. I was sad when Ronald Reagan died. More so, at the end of "Nute Rockney: All American." I was sad when Spalding Gray died, but that had more to do with me seeing his tragic death as symbolic of the disintigration of a personal relationship, more than sadness at his actual demise. I'm not kidding-that's a long story. But today I was...a little, well, angry at God for making a universe so indifferent. And sad too. I'm usually angry at God for something or other. I heard about that Bad News Bears remake and I was like "No you didn't!" I have a personal relationship with God. A lot like my relationship with my Dad. Distant.

Here's something weird. Today I was thinking about A Fan's Notes, perhaps my favorite discovery when I worked at the Strand. I was thinking about how you would go about adapting it into a movie. And who would be right to play Frederick Exley. Well, lo and behold, as I was looking at Jerry's credits on IMDB, he starred as Fred in a 1972 adaptation directed by Eric Till that I've never heard of. Check it out for yourself: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068571/-I'm guessing it was bad.

As for Susan Sontag, I was never much moved by her. I've read some of her stuff. Her thoughts on photography are good. I've read some of those essays. She pissed me off with that thing she wrote in the New Yorker just days after 9/11. I remember reading "Against Interpretation," for Mary Poole's class Freshman year. I remember hating it and arguing with Mary about it. And hating Mary for assigning it. And hating myself for being so fat. Sontag's thesis is interesting but given human nature, somewhat implausible. We like to interpret, we like to make symbols. We like to be detectives.

As I went on in my academic career, hearing many bullshit theories about the purported meaning behind books, I have to say I had more respect for the notion of her Against Interpretation essay. I have more respect this week after researching the Wizard of Oz on the Internet. There are so many, SO MANY, theories for what everything in Wizard of Oz means or is a symbol for. Countless. That whole Gold standard/silver standard theory that came out in '68, the one that says it was all an allegory about the switch to the gold standard is ludicrous. Yes, the scarecrow is the poor farmers. And the cowardly Lion is William Jennsing Bryant! Yes, L. Frank Baum sat in his study in 1899, smiling coyly as he devised a searing political allegory disguised as a simple children's book. "Oh, I am so frightfully clever! Who will pick up the clues!"

Baum never made any mention of it, and no one at the time made any connection between the story and the political climate. That's someone trying to get published. That's someone losing funding. There are also these other theories that it's a Theosophical allegory. There are a million of them. Sometimes a simple story about a girl who goes to a magic land and meets a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion on the way to a wizard is simply a story about a girl who awakens in an alien landscape to discover she has accidentally killed a woman and later conspires with three strangers to kill again.

That's one thing bad that came out of Freud. Everybody thinking that's there's a hidden meaning in texts. I grant sometimes there are hidden meanings in texts, but usually they lead to buried treasure. Also, bad lay Freudianism: people saying something but thinking they really meant suchandsuch. Walker Percy has a whole thing about that in Lost in the Cosmos.

"I feel like a million dollars!"
"Wouldn't a million dollars be mired in the malaise of the rich?"
"Why must you always sour everything?"
- From Maxin Gorky's only comedy "The Bottle-Washer"

I talked to Ange Villapiano for a long time for the first time in long time. She's coming out to LA for New Year's because...Sari's friend from High school's cousin is Marisa Tomei's assistant and she might be able to get her into Gwen Stefani's New Year's party. How many degrees of separation to get into a party where you won't know anyone except the celebrities you think you know, but don't? But it will be awesome to see Ange. I miss her so much. So many great college memories involve being with her - especially Willard, sophomore year. Ange is also trying to become a professional rapper. She goes to rap-offs all the time just like 8 MILE! And she's winning too. She is legitimately building a name for herself in rap clubs. That doesn't pay the bills though.

This does: www.rapagram.com. Too bad this is only in NY. If this were in LA, I would send dissagrams to so many people. MAYBE EVEN YOU!

I also watched "Garden State" finally after talking shit about it for half a year. I'm glad I talked shit about it. Wow. I honestly, no joke, nearly turned it off in the first scene when everyone is screaming on the plane and Zach Braff is just sitting there still and staring ahead looking as precious as can be. Natalie Portman is the only reason to watch that movie, her performance made all the better by the fact that she supposedly had a crush on Steve Hely. Long live Natalie Portman and death to Zach Braff. Like that scene in Stand By Me at John Cusack's funeral, I'm just picturing the Northwestern alumni head looking at the grave of jerry Orbach and then turning to zach braff and saying "Why couldn't it have been you, Zach?"

Wow, I'm procrastinating.

2004-12-29T01:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a character from the screenplay "Dr. Hiberius Thinkingsteen's Fantabulastical Flying Contraption":

Porter S. Tinneswoot: a midget organ courier who is obsessed with Jack Mancuso, a little-known disciple of Ayn Rand. He is in search of the heart that was stolen from him along with his car.

Kooky enough for ya?!!! Doubtful that the script will be done by Monday but I forge ahead.

Reading about nathaniel West on the Internet today for inspiration/procrastination. Apparently F. Scott Fitzgerald gave glowing reviews about West's writing when most critics never really got his sensibility.
In a letter to Fitzgerald, West wrote "I go on . . . making what one critic called `private and unfunny jokes." "[You] made me feel that they weren't completely private and maybe not even entirely jokes." Wow, even made more bittersweet by the fact that West was racing home from a hunting trip in Mexico to make it to Fitzgerald's funeral when he sped through a stop sign and was fatally side-swiped.

I've always wondered if there was any connection whatsoever between Homer Simpson and Day of the Locust's Homer Simpson. They're not entirely dissimilar. Probably not though. Probably just a coinkydink.

Saturday morning cartoon: The Coinkydinks. Like the smurfs, the coinkydinks are small creatures that live in the forest. Except they're all french and do nothing but ponder the strange nature of chance.

Oh, Global Village, have I ever told you that it's a dream of mine to write and direct a quiet bio-pic of Nathaniel West. Well, now I have.

Here's a scene toward the end:

West: I can't write a letter. Nothing comes any more. I've been blocked for six months. God damn it.
SJ Perelman: Try taking a walk. Are you getting your vitamins?
West: I don't know what's happened to me.
SJ Perelman: I know what has.
(a beat, they exchange a look)
SJ Perelman:...You got happy.

Rainy days and cinematic synapses peeling forth

2004-12-28T01:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a new movie idea:

ENOCH GARVEY’S UNFORTUNATE DECISION
A man dying of typhoid converts from Methodist to Presbyterian on his deathbed causing a scandal in town. Thing of it is, he kept on living so now he’s stuck with being Presbyterian! Set in 1904 Illinois.

You know who I really feel sorry for during the Christmas season? Jews? No. Atheists? No. Red-Green color blinds. I think there should be a holiday for them. The feast of St. Orangeblue.

It rained nearly all day today. I like rain but today was kind of depressing. I ate really awful leftovers. Cold Hawaiin pizza and leftover Christmas cookies. You think that's sad, just wait 'till I'm a widower/divorced!

Watched two entertaining movies I'd never seen. Thirteen Days and Lovely and Amazing. The latter recomended to me by Susanna. I really liked them both. In Thirteen Days, McNamara was quite likeable. Funny anecdote: During the 80s when my Dad's company Allied-Signal was doing well, my parents went to Europe many times. During one stay in Vienna they were staying at this fancy hotel and they got to their room and there were baskets of fruit everywhere and choclates and goodies of all sorts. They ate some and relaxed. And later as they were changing to go out, these maids burst into the room hysterical and angry. My dad who was pretty much naked leaped behind a curtain and my mom, I think, only had a slip on. The maids started yelling at my parents for eating the food. Apparently, Robert McNamara was also staying in the hotel and the baskets were for him. The maids had mixed up McNamara and McKenna and were angry at my parents because of it.

OOOH! Before I forget there is a synopis of a HARRY TURTLEDOVE book on somethingawful.com. The one where the aliens invade during WW2. There is an awesome graphic of Stalin, Hitler, and some Chinese guy (Chaing-hi-chek???) arguing strategy over a map. I also was then inspired to find my other big discovery at THE STRAND, Mel Keegan "The king of Gay sci-fi Thrillers." Go on google and just read a synopsis of "Aquamarine."

On this rainy day, I procastinated like a sonofabitch on both my individual writing products. I really should just write a stream of conciousness rough pass on Dr. Hiberius. Just for my mental health. I had my day I have once a month, sometimes more, where my uteral walls b...where I think of my ex, and miss her and think how sad it is that it ended so disastrously. When I feel deep sadness or any pain really, I also feel alone, like I am the only one who is experiencing these emotions and the only one who ever has. I remember having a long talk one night at Debuy's apartment with Sam Roberts about that curious sense of aloneness that comes with depression. It reminded me of one of my favorite lines:

“There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.”

-Jorge Luis Borges
The Garden of Forking Paths

And something else:
"There should be a home for failed American futurists. A place where all the loser dreamers of Tommorow eek out existence, drawing schematics of space stations never-to-be-built, highways for cars too impractical. A thinktank and a retirement home all in one for eccentric losers with beautifully ridiculous visions of tommorrow. Ludicrous minds with patently false ideas should be funded. In a world where the tyranny of utility is gone, it could happen. But then again, as things stand in our current reality, all things must make themselves useful."

- Prof. Richard Rellig
excerpted from
"Thoughts on the Strange Beauty of Failure"

Perhaps the beginning of a short story???:

"Adrienne Quackenboss, a girl I’ve known since the sixth grade, gave her kidney to this Mexican girl dying of renal failure and now she’s shoe-in for Yale. She wrote her essay about the experience. She’s in. She gave it to me to proof-read and don’t get me wrong, I’m not being paranoid, but she did it to spite me; as if to say “I’ve got a lock!”

I wrote that a couple of months ago. Any ideas for a plot to a short story...leave a comment.

Here's a personal essay I wrote my senior year for Reginald Gibbons' "Writery talk and media stuff seminar" Gibbons, hyper-realist that he is, never liked my fiction but loved my non-fiction. Here is one I always liked.

"Where Does it Come From?"

I was rehearsing a scene about a year ago for my acting class and since I’m horrible with memorization I did my usual trick of recording my lines on a tape and then listening to it repeatedly until every word was solidified in my mind like cement. I was listening to the tapes, not paying attention to my lines but rather marveling at how strange my voice sounded. My voice is so grating. I sound like a baritone tuba. How come I don’t notice it when I’m talking? The curious thing: I have not had this experience alone. People hearing their voices recorded and incredulously thinking the voice not their own is, I think, so common it borders on cliché. But in this cliché there is something profoundly mysterious. Why are we strangers to our own voices?

Allow me to make the comparison that you’ve probably suspected I would make. The same sense of estrangement to my speaking voice occurs when I look over my writing samples. I am a stranger to my voice as a writer as well. I do realize that the air out of my throat and the themes, form, and content of my writing are only linked by the signifier they share, specifically the word “voice”, but the analogy is still valid. Where does my voice as a writer come from? Is this how I see the world? Do I really see humanity as this tragio-comic cavalcade of grotesques, minor and major? Many people read my work and regard me afterwards as some bizarre despair-ridden eccentric. I actually have a perception of myself as being thoughtful, given to malaise, but also quite goofy. I have no control over the words on the page and “I” stand in amazement when I read my own work on paper.

There is nothing I can do about my speaking voice. Genetics, I suppose. But logically, I should have some control over the way I write and what I write about. What we put on the page comes from our psyche, or as Lionel Trilling asserts “our neuroses.” We do not have much say in the forming of our psyche. It is shaped by environment. One of the biggest influences on a writer’s voice is not so much what books he read but where he came of age, his environment. I myself am a Californian and it’s obvious to anyone who has read my work. In my work, just as in the Southern Californian novel The Crying of Lot 49, simulacrum abounds. I really didn’t even know what that was until someone read my work and said “You’re pretty obsessed with Simulacrum, eh?” I just wrote what I knew and I knew about images meaning more than reality because I grew up in San Diego and Los Angeles. Every time I wrote about Los Angeles I wrote in a sort of surreal grotesque voice, and it was only later I discovered Nathaniel West. Places and the spirit of the people in those places shape us, brand us. A writer’s place of origin serves as their metaphysical zip code. The best line about California I have ever heard by a modern writer belongs to Joan Didion, one of my favorite authors from my Golden State. She said “California is a place where a boom mentality and a sense of Chekovian loss meet in uneasy suspension.”

I was rehearsing a scene from The Cherry Orchard when I made the recording of my lines. I was playing the part of Lopahkin, the uncooth former peasant who buys the orchard and divides the land so that he can turn a large profit. In the scene, I am determined to ask Varya, the selfless daughter, to be my wife. Varya and I stand there making awkward small talk and she knows I’m going to ask her. I know that she knows. I lean over to her, trying to find the right words, then a voice from offstage calls my name and not missing a beat I turn away and rush out of the room. Varya stands there devastated.
Strangely, when we performed the scene my hurried exit sparked uproarious laughter from the audience. “Why are they laughing?” I thought. This is the most painful scene for both characters, for Varya because her hopes of a better life are dashed in a second and for Lopahkin because he will always be emotionally paralyzed. My acting teacher said “Now you see why he called it a comedy?” I sure as hell didn’t know but I wanted to find out what Didion meant and I wanted to know why Chekhov moved me so, and why I connected to his beautiful plays where one was laughing one moment and the next feeling a knot in their throat. I went home for a break, Thanksgiving I think. I had my Chekhov plays and my copy of The Crying of Lot 49. During the week I had a series of epiphanies that would boggle the mind of Joyce.

I began to understand my homeland and see how Didion was right. I passed development after development sprouting out of the ground like the iceplant on the hills around them. Many of these sprawling suburbs had the name Manchester Development on a placard beside them. Lophakin, and for that matter Pynchon’s Pierce Invararity was to me, Doug Manchester - the poor San Diego native son who is now the most powerful developer in San Diego county and one of the biggest in the West. Everyone says that Horatio Alger stories are bullshit and were always bullshit but my oh my they are true, few and far between, but true. Doug Manchester is proof of that. So is Lopahkin. And so is Mr. Invararity. Boom mentality. I got it. Chekhovian loss was the next step…

I watched my family. My father, the 80 year old man who, tells the same story over and over like so many who inhabit the world of Chekhov. My mother is Varya; the selfless one who can’t help but devote her life to anyone but her. I saw the missed beats, the miscommunication, the miles of distance between thought and expression. I saw my family in fleeting instances through the eyes of a Russian Doctor who lived a hundred years ago. I saw the dashed dreams of my siblings. I realized that comedy and tragedy work on the same device of incongruity, and it is only the slightest absence of empathy that makes us laugh at the pain of others and the slightest presence of pity that makes us feel their pain as well. Chekhovian loss.
Anton Chekhov made me see my homeland and made me understand why my voice sounds the way it does. He made me a better writer and a better person and until the day I die I will write about what I think it means to be a Californian.

Just Riffin...

2004-12-26T21:21:00.000-08:00

FADE IN

ON THE MOON. We look up at it through a rainy night sky. THE CAMERA TILTS DOWN TO REVEAL THE LOS ANGELES RIVER GUSHING LIKE THE MIGHTY MISSISSIP.

CUT TO:

BENEATH A HIGHWAY OVERPASS.
Two teenagers, one in a red slicker and the other in a soggy sweathshirt throw stones into the gushing water beneath them.
KID #1: This storm is pretty nasty, dude.
KID #2: Yeah, we should probably call it a night. You know, I’ve seen bums sleeping here when it rains before.
KID #1 kicks a beer bottle WITH A CLANK. A hoarse, booming comes from somewhere in the darkness.
VOICE: Hey!
The kids, startled, turn around. They can see nothing in the darkness.
VOICE (cont’d): Got any change?
The kids stammer. They shake their heads “No”
VOICE (cont’d): Aw, C’MON, I’m sure you have something...
KID 1: Stop bothering us. Let’s get outta here.
LIGHTING FLASHES AS A SHARP RUSTY CLAW shoots out of the darkness and into the gut of kid #1. The teen screams in pain. The hand rustles around in his gut and finally pulls out with a wallet in his pincer.
KID #1, his gut gushing blood, feels his blood-soaked back pocket. It’s empty.
KID #1: Hey! My Wallet!!

- From the unfinished screenplay "The Homeless Vietnam Veteran Monster" by Greg Hudson and Matt McKenna.

PEOPLE, I AM GOING TO ATTEMPT THE IMPOSSIBLE IN THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS! I AM GOING TO ATTEMPT A ROUGH PASS AT "DOCTOR HIBERIUS THINKINGSTEEN'S FANTABULASTICAL FLYING CONTRAPTION." IT WILL BE SHIT! INDEED! BUT I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN!

I want a beer commercial that has a guy going to bed. Cut to his interior where his liver checks to see if he’s all asleep. Then the liver sneaks out, goes to a bar, orders a Miller light. The liver wakes up between two beautiful women. Then the tagline is “C’mon, listen to your insides.”

I don’t so much remember what I learned at school so much as the elaborate pneumonic devices I came up with to remember the them. Okay, Sean Connery is watching Blake Edwards "10" and Harrison Ford is nailing 95 Theses to a church door. Ok...Is Harrison Ford Martin Luther...The refromation is like a replicant...Hmmm....Okay, they were both in Last Crusade. Oh! The first Crusade was 1095! Yeah! Yeah. Ok. Good. Ok. ... Let's see. I'm backstage after a production of Porgy and Bess. There's a big teeter totter with black people on one side and white people on the other. It's completely balanced out. And Fergie is on one side dressed in a Judge's robe..Ok...hm..Batlle of Britain? No. League of Nations disintigrating? OH, I know Plessy Vs. Ferguson! The separate but equal statute. THAT"S RIGHT! These are just two excerpts from the book "Matt McKenna's Convoluted Pneumonic Devices For Learning History!" I have a whole line for every subject!

I grew up in San Diego. Now if you grow up in San Diego, you know that San Diego’s big Native Son is Jim "Bigger" Croce, the folksinger. And he’s honored by having Jim Croce-themed, or inspired restaurants taking up like an entire block of the gaslamp district downtown. His widow is a restraunteur.
Croce’s barbeque.
Croce’s at night.
CockCroces – this avante-garde male strip joint.

Forgotten lines from Jim Croce song “You don’t mess around with Jim”:
“You don’t fart in the general direction of Buster Keaton”
“You don’t wipe your semen on King Kong’s Ascot”
“You don’t put sand in Batman’s pennicilin.”
“You don’t put liquid nitrogen anywhere near Dabney Coleman’s sense of purpose.”
“You don’t bring up Little Orphan Annie on Rape Charges”
and the original line wasn’t
“And you don’t mess around with Jim” it was “you don’t mess around with Jim Crow laws.”
Jim Croce: RACIST!

Things that amuse me:

The fact that my Mom, my sweet, right-leaning, religious Mom LOVES Ali G. I could not have forseen that. This Christmas Maria put on the first season for her and she was laughing hysterically. She especially liked the interview with C. Everett Coop.
In Michael Herr's book about Kubrick, Kubrick told Herr that Godfather was a perfect film. Herr said Rumblefish is quite good too. Kubrick said "Michael, you're so...loyal."
Drew Callander calling me Christmas day and telling me a story about Mahoney stealing money from The Striking Viking Story Pirates account and denying it until Overtree said they had videotape of the ATM from the McDonalds across the street.
Charles Grodin. More like Charles Golden.
Strangers With Candy...
Will Forte
Brian Boyle
Bad asiatic translations. A couple days ago when I was driving up Crescent Heights there was an NPR story about KFC's mistranslated slogans in China. "Finger lickin good" became "You will eat your fingers." Patch Adams was translated as "Hospital Foodfight of the Walking Dead Children."
People who don't need a translator, but someone to better articulate what they're saying. I think Bunuel had one. Called him The explicator.
The way Alison McDonald says literally, not "lit-er-al-ly" but LIT-trilly.
The way Audra McDonald says "literally" the right way.
Chapter 18 of Charles Portis' Masters of Atlantis. "I suppose they called Danny "The Professor?"
Severe alcoholics not giving change to the homeless thinking they'll just spend it on booze.
Superstitious Atheists
People below the poverty line who adore Ayn Rand.
The U.N. (Yeah, that's right)

If I were President, I would make a day where Disk jockeys everywhere Had to spend a week naked in the forest rumaging for food and trying to survive. There would be dead air across America. Wouldn’t that be great?

People come up to me and they say “Matt, how can you be so fucking good at Air Guitar?” And I say “Air practice.”

New reality show: You are the victim of the sex crime. You will be raped and murdered. Channeler John Edwards will summon your spirit from Vallhalla to solve your crime.

What if pot made you feel the opposite of paranoia - that everybody was out to help you?

A psychic told me that heaven is 100 years behind us, technology-wise. It’s like a third world nation. The psychic told me that although Hell is not so great either, at least it has running water. And fewer death squads.

My friend Bobby is from the Future. I mean he’s a good guy but he’s alluding to shit that hasn’t happened yet. Other night my friends are all out at a bar and somebody says something and Bobby says “Wow, that reminds me of the great Scare of 37.” And everybody rolls their eyes and say “Gee, bobby, what’s the great scare of 37.” And he’ll be all like “Oh..umm.. I can’t tell…the space time continuum and stuff…” I’m like “why the fuck did you even bring it up?”

White people drive pretty uptight but black people drive magical chariots and shit cherry juice that heals ailments.

Reality show: Kids with progeria, y’know that disease that makes kids age ten times as fast so they look like geriatrics at 12, wander around the offices at MTV. Just track them as they go around and disturb execs. There’s no joke really. That’s just what I want to see.

Perhaps Funny scene in a movie: A guy gives a eulogy but just ends up talking about himself and some petty problem.

Character called Clark Van Grebler. Sci-fi dork who is also into heavy drugs: "I was a writer for StarLog Magazine back in the eighties. Everyone there was coked to gills, and I was noooo exception, Man. Opening those press kits for Star Trek five. Here’s the press kit for Star Trek 5. Barrett! We need the captions for the Wil Wheaton photos. New ones. Cause the old ones didn’t work. NONSTOP 24 7. Those were fuckin wild days. I tried to sell my story around when uh, Permanent midnight, and Boogie Nights came out. No dice. Then I went back to Michigan State to get my medieval studies degree."

Sex isn’t that enjoyable when all you think about are images to stave off orgasm. Which is what sex is for me. Sex to me is the time when I put my penis in a woman and think of Ned Beatty shitting ground beef. That’s sex. The physical act ismeans nothing. I hear the word sex a lot in the culture and never do I hear anyone talking about Ned beatty shitting ground beef. This confuses me. I watch Sex in the City and never does Ned Beatty co-star shitting ground beef. I just think - how is that show about sex? And I also mean Ned Beatty Sr. Every time I think of Ned Beatty Jr. shitting ground beef I come instantaneously. And buckets full. It's a problem. I consulted my therapist but he just keeps getting me to buy these magic beans.

New show: Prodigy 8 year old becomes world's youngest sex therapist. Or lead singer of Prodigy becomes sex therapist to 8 year olds. Either way.

My dad is the most racist person I know. But my dad is a politically correct racist. He’ll say things like “African-Americans are dangerous. We ought to ship em all back to Africa" and “Asian-Americans are going to take over the world.”
If you’re going to be Racist, just say nigger, just say chink. Outright racists who use PC monikers are funny and abundant.

The Private Pennies of His Merry Dobbs

2004-12-25T01:39:00.000-08:00

For some reason I'm feeling generous tonight...Perhaps it's the fact that it's early Christmas morning. But, to you, my adorable audience, I give you another entry. No, no, you've earned it. Consider it a gift of love.

"A penny for your thoughts."
"But my thoughts are private."
(a beat)
"So are my pennies."

- from Sean Guinan's masterpiece "The Private Pennies of His Merry Dobbs."

For some reason I just thought of "The Private Pennies of His Merry Dobbs." This film is best known to Brad Akin, Julie Benner, myself, and a few other lucky viewers. Perhaps Frank Meegan. This was some random tape that I think Michaela Hester brought home from a job cataloging entries for some Chicago film festival or something like that. It's an hour+ experimental film shot on a shoestring budget, mostly in B&W. Everyone is either in clown or mime makeup. A lot of it is in French. Midway through it starts involving gangsters with half white/half black faces. Oh, and I just remembered a part where a woman in a catsuit is making feline come hither gestures. The main character is "His Merry Dobbs," a vaudvillian mime dressed in old-timey clothes who thinks a lot and speaks to the camera. This part, I believe, is played by Sean Guinan, the writer, producer, and director. "Yep. There's me and there's Orson Welles!" I think the tape is lost, along with the Hester sisters (if you have any info on Michaela or Hathaway, please leave a comment!)

Call in the National Guard because this film is a riot. Discovering this film with Brad is one of my favorite college memories. It so atrociously bad. Every second. I didn't even mention that it has these awful color swipes, the kind they had in early rock videos. If memory serves Benner coincidentally ran in to the director in his apartment building and perhaps got another tape of it. Note to self, call Benner and ask her about this. Then wish her Merry Christmas.

Title: Shlogan's Run. Premise: A time traveler from our age goes into the future 1000 years to find that civilization is now ruled by children and than anyone over 12 is executed. Tagline: Children Are The Future.

Premise: A memory play about a first love narrated by a man who has Alzheimers. Genre: Cyberpunk/Family

I want to name a child Untitled Britney Spears Nascar Project. Then I want a child to name me something hip and clever.

I noticed in my last entry I said the phrase "prominent extra." If you're a "prominent" extra, do you brag about it? Or play status games with other extras as to the degree of your "prominence?"

I wonder if any well-endowed Jonathan Swift scholars have ever refered to their penis as "Brogdignagian."

"How did you like the play?"
"It was heady."
"Heggy?"
"Heady."
(a beat)
"Heggy?"

- From the conversation between Drew Callander and Egan's Dad after a production of Heroin For the Mayflies.

I would be a pedophile, but I hear you have to register. Haaaastle.

Do you think with sexual mores breaking down by a ratio of four an hour, that pedophilia will be accepted at a greater degree by 2050? I mean...just curious...Campbell once jokingly said that to me at a party. But with Campbell, what are jokes but things that get in the way of Anime. She said since fifty years ago homosexuality was still considered deviancy, and even a disease, perhaps a current sexual taboo of pedophilia would be more greatly accepted just like in oldtimey Socrates time. I trust Campbell more on these issues since she is a massive lesbian. And smart to boot, just read her thoughts on royal lineage at www.livejournal.com/users/velveteencat. Although the lineage theory is scatterbrained ala my hunter gatherer theory.

There's Jews for Jesus. What about Jews for Allah? I smell unfunny/offensive mockumentary! MadTV, this is my Christmas gift. Jews for Sidartha Gautama? Jews for L. Ron Hubbard? You go nuts!

Twas the night before...

2004-12-24T17:08:00.000-08:00

Why the fuck am I still posting on this? Nobody reads it except me. In the new year, I promise this blog is going to be all the rage. And I don't mean like the old expression, I mean I'm going to harness the political and cultural anger into one timely manifestation of rage. I'm just going to let it all out. Like FUCK KERRY, that sack of liberal shit! And BUSH IS SO GREAT, I'M SO MAD AT HOW HARD IT IS TO MAKE FUN OF SOMEONE SO GREAT! AAAGGGGGH! Stuff like that! The world is so fucking stupid and America is so incredible! Ah, I hate the world! Really capturing the zeitgeist!

Here's a character for a new movie: An autistic hitman who is obsessed with "guided by voices." Here is dialoge from movie:

Hitman: (no eye contact, plays with hair) You think you can get away with stealing from Mr. Big like Robert Pollard gets away with four albums a year...
Guy: Huh? Who's Robert Pollard?
Hitman shoots, then walks away humming "Tractor Rape Chain"

Why do retarded people in movies always have like an endearing personal obsession, like Sean Penn and the Beatles in I AM SAM? Or juliette Lewis and dioramas depicting scenes from Silas Marner in "The Other Retarded Sister."

Hot, sassy women who are also retarded should be called " Hot Little Retarts." CASE CLOOOSED!

Why don't I see any horror movies about Goblins? That well is just not tapped. Goblins are the new zombies. Nostalgia is the new fascism. Or a horror-film about a Christian woman aborting her child and then having to deal with a haunted Uterus. Woman: Doctor, something's not right! The walls are bleeeeeding! Scene: kids daring themselves to run across the driveway to her vagina.

Why does Larry King always emulate me? With his dapper good looks and cosmopoitan charm and hatred of the rainforests. What? oh, I'm sorry. Larry King just hates Rain Pryor.

I invented a new car that doesn't run on gas, it runs on centuries old arabic anti-semitism. The good news: We don't have to depend on the middle-east!

The good thing about paris Hilton being a star is that we have proof that America is heading in the right direction. Do we deserve Ishmael's scorn? I put it to you, collapsing American civilization!

Blaxploitation/History film: During the Napoleonic wars, in Egypt, French soldiers stumble upon a tough streetwise mama who is the only one who can translate Hieroglyphics into Greek. Her name? Rosetta Stone! (insert funk riff here.)

"Even a stinker like Hitler didn't pick on them for no reason" - Roald Dahl, commenting on his dislike of Jews. Sad, no? Well, at least Tim Burton's new Willy Wonka will stick to him good. The internet also told me this week that Philo Farnsworth spent the last years of his life lamenting his invention of television, thinking that he had made a device for people to waste their lives. Also funny that a mormon invented Television. New Year's Resolution: To call Television "The Farnsworther." Here's a new phrase you'll hear from me this year: Fire up the Farnsworther, I demand electro-amusement!" To which Steve Hely will reply, "Shut the fuck up...(mumble)....you say simulacrum too much."

I really have a love/hate relationship with my bi-polar disorder.

"Do you believe in God?"
"I think God exists, but I don't believe in him."
"That's not possible."
"I know you exist, but I don't believe in you."
- from the novel "Restelbett" by James W. Greely.

"Always the Bridesmaid, never the Brideshead revisited!"
- overheard at a tony Manhattan wedding.

"Wait. What does that mean?"
- Also overheard at a tony Manhattan wedding.

"Shut up, will you. He thinks he's witty."
-Again, also overheard at a tony Manhattan wedding.

"Yo. Fuggedaboutit!"
-Overheard at Tony and Tina's Italian Wedding in Manhattan.

My father lost it all. Apparently he put the family fortune into hologram stickers. Now no one can find the stickers.

Just a thought: On this Christmas eve, I wish that Jesus jokes go away. Not because they offend me. Just because it is the easiest well of comedy to go to and my generation just does not seem to get tired of beating clammy Jesus jokes into the ground. I'm guilty myself and I resolve to stop. Unless it is a very absurd and somehow clever Jesus joke.

I saw Shaun of the Dead today. I really enjoyed it and the two girls in it were hot, one of which was the secretary from the office, lucy davis. It also made me think of how my ex, who went to Oxford, looks like a hot british girl like the ones in the movie and this is why brit dudes went gaga for her. Ah, honesty. Ah, HUMANITY! It makes me really happy to see actors from "The Office" If I ever get clout I will cast them in everything. Especially Lucy Davis so I can have relations with her. I also saw Maria full of Grace which is also good, and this girl from NU, Jade, is a prominent extra in an airport scene.

I want to do a short film about a caprapheliac (someone who is sexually stimulated by shit) moving to a new town and trying to find others who share his forbidden love of fecal matter. Every attempt to find an outlet for his fetish is thwarted. For instance, he gets invited to a scat party and he's all excited and he shows up to find everyone scatting like "sqweep dap da fweep dap tappy dap swippy soo..." You just see a single tear running down his cheek as people joyously scat in the background. Then he sees a sign on a billboard that says "CAPRAPHELIA!" he goes into the theatre only to find a Frank Capra film festival going on. Then he leaves the theatre, sad again, and misses the scene from "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" where Gary Cooper shits on Jean Arthur's face.

I've been outlining BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER but since I got stuck on a story point I went back to working on Dr. Hiberius Thinginsteen's Fantabulastical Flying Contraption. And yes, I think subconciously I got that title from an old Troy McClure line on the simpsons. I may just try to finish outlining it and write a shitty rough draft by the time I go back to American Dad. Here's the Chesterton qoute I'm starting it off with: "A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed but or too good to be believed, but it cannot be too absurd to be believed on this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttlefish." It's a kooky riff on the wizard of oz involving a runaway girl, her grandfather - an insane air traffic controller, an inept con-man, and a hitch-hiking organ courier. Kooky much? And any NU friends reading this, I also started Pixie Dust off with that qoute. I know.

I think John Lennon's "Imagine" is a beautiful song and if we all put those lyrics into practice the world would be paradise. Although, I heard it once sung by a black dude and black people just don't get that song.

Here's another awesome Chesteron qoute: "the way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost."

the truth lies with charlotte

2004-12-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

I saw the life aquatic today. I liked it...to a point. Every Wes Andersen film, to me, is more or less comfort food. Blintzes. That's my comfort food. But Life Aquatic I have to say is probably, right now, my least favorite film in the Andersen oevre. I LOVED the first act, laughed outloud many times, and I thought that Bill Murray's performance was really good, brimming with more pathos than his performance in Lost in Translation. In a way I prefer this performance partly because bill Murray is attempting to play a characer here and not just being a Bill Murrayish actor. Cate blanchett's performance is really good as well, strange and affected, but appropriate. The bowie songs are wonderful.

But the story was a lot more muddled than in any Adersen film before. It has tedious doldrums unlike any Andersen movie before. I've seen Owen Wilson's character is more of a stale emotional device than a character and when the "story" between he and Bill Murray comes to a conclusion there's really no emotional resonance. There were no true close relationships in this film like there were to some degree in his past films. Perhaps a certain verve was lost when Wes Andersen switched to having noah baumbach as a writing partner as opposed to Owen Wilson. I think Wes Andersen should make a few low-budget films again to get him back to his roots. And he should NEVER direct action sequences. EVER. There are two main action sequences in the movie and both are terribly directed. Wes Andersen's too precious a film-maker ever to portray violence well. I don't mean violence as the occasional fistfight or slap, I mean like explosions and gunfights.

But he really should scale back. Life Aquatic cost over fifty mill. I was just reading the Kenneth Turan review of Bottle Rocket in a new book of his, and it's true what he says: Wes has never surpassed it in terms of cohesive story. Rushmore I love, and is my favorite because I went to a high school somewhat similar and also love the relationships-they were all SO particular and freshly detailed. The relationships in following Wes movies have seemed to be somewhat cliche with particular artifices or ordamentation to make them not look cliche. Royal Tannenbaums I liked but thought this was somewhat the case and a tad too precious. The mice? Okay. Sure. I appreciate it somewhat. That's taken to the next level in this movie, with stop-animation sea creatures. Which I didn't really mind but at a certain point sacrificing character and interesting relationships for claymation is a bad choice. He needs to do a Noah baumbauch type of film: small, three to five main characters, instead of these wide multi-character ensemble pieces that that just don't have the same punch as his first two movies.

After all that, it is Wes Andersen and he is a breath of fresh air no matter what...Speaking of fresh air that I breathed! I also saw national Treasure. national treasure is a shitty but entertaining entertainshit. A treaure hunt can't NOT be entertaining. Look it up. It's true. From the treasure hunt's inception in "goonies" to its followers in "treasure of the sierra madre" and "holes" it's always been true. I saw it with Chris, Brian, and Malin. Then brian, Malin and I got dinner at cobras and matadors, a place I've never been but will definetely take dates there when I get my shit together and start actively pursuing women in 2005! Look out, ladies! No, seriously! Behind you!

2004-12-20T16:14:00.000-08:00

I've dissapointed you all...

2004-12-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't written in a week. I think I'm going to be a bad blogger. Things to tell. Got blotto like I have not gotten in a long time at the birthday suaree Thursday night. Have vague recollection of calling Matt Rice a big gay over and over again. Left before Frank, Jeff, Alex, and Mayer got there. Oficially started on BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER and have been working on it for about a week. Have already had to slaughter many darlings. And after rough draft is in, will probably have to slay remaining darlings. Got a sandwich at Joan's yesterday. There was a middle-aged retarded man buying cupcakes who then proceeded to copiously rub and fondle a pretty girl in a workout outfit who said hi to him. They knew each other. Ummmm.....wow...I'm really stuck on a story point in my script. I'll put more effort into my next entry. Promise.

Hunters and Gatherers

2004-11-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

You know when you have little theories you've come up with that float around in your head until they just have to get out there? Like the one you might have about the Knights Templar. But I began to think a bit ago of directors, film directors, having to be categorized as either "hunters" or "gatherers." A hunter would be an auteur that is attempting with the form to a work out a question, or a problem, or, really, essentially, a neurosis. The hunter is out to GET something. To say something about humanity, or existence, or fill in the blank. They have influences but they forge their own path. Polanski is a hunter. Polanski-why do his films always involve people going gradually insane in apartment rooms? He sort of is the master of the person going crazy in an apartment motif. Bunuel-working out his Catholic issues. Bergman-working out his Prodestant issues. Terry Gilliam is a hunter. Tim Burton is a hunter. Kubrick of course, goes without saying, should have been the first to come to mind but I'm stupid. Maybe Spielberg. Working out issues with his dad.

A gatherer takes elements of other sources and stitches them into something new. A gatherer is a collage artist.
I think Tarantino is a HYPER-Gatherer. I LOVE Pulp Fiction, but that entire film is pieced together from different sources. It's Hemingway's the Killers told non-linearlly. Lucas is a BIG gatherer. Every element of Star Wars comes from somewhere else.
Kevin Smith is the shittiest fuck who ever got behind a camera, but he is also a gatherer. If there is a god then there's a special place in hell for the people who think Dogma is good. And a special place in heaven for the ones who killed to save the lives of unborn children. We'll get to my virulenty right wing views on abortion in a moment. Back to Kevin Smith. Uh...he is suck. "he is suck" is how a malaprop prone immigrant might say "He sucks." That was today's "Factoid"! Melville is a gatherer. Orson Welles is a gatherer...maybe...haven't decided yet. So there's my bullshit categorization scheme! Cha cha!

I think in the next few months I'll choose one of the 10 or so original screenplay ideas I have in my head and write as much as possible. I was expecting a couple months off since no one had heard yet about American Dad but uh seeee belooow. The one I seem to be focused on now is "Untitled Modern Art Conman Project." Story about a a con man. (I'm not giving to much away, because you'll steal my ideas! - Greg Daniels, when I was an intern on King of the Hill, in one of our brief yet awkward conversations, told me about a sitcom class he took when he first got to LA and how one thing he learned was to stay shy of the ones who are worried about people stealing ideas. Anyway, it's a conman in NYC and it becomes kind of a cat and mouse game with his old partner. And involves the Modern Art scene as a background. This one has elements of Gatsby, The Third Man. It has a lot of ragging on Vanity Fair-the magazine not the Reese Witherspoon movie. Was it a book before? I can't remember. I'm essentially envisioning it cast by NU acting friends. Harrison is the lead, I'm the villian, Egan has a part. A small one.

Or I could dig up the unfinished BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER. I was looking at the almost two-year old notes I wrote to Frank about it when we were thinking about writing it together. I have talked about that concept so much to friends that murphy's law dictates I'll hear about that concept selling on script sales Just as I finish my first draft. But I think that's somewhat commercial unlike the con man story. That's more of a arty sevenies movie typie deal. The bounty hunter idea I have is very commercial but that would involve research and reading Janet Evanovich novels. No time for that! Yesteryear is on hold, although that will be awesome. Tinsel, the novella I wrote in college should have been a screenplay and I'm working on making it just that. That's the one about the former child star and his mother. One thing I won't work on though is PIXIE DUST: the movie.

AMERICAN DAD GOT PICKED UP FOR SIX MORE EPISODES AND EIGHT MORE SCRIPTS. Praise Hosanna (sic)! Hooray! Yippee! Mike called me a couple hours ago and he was totally pumped and said that Chris and I were the best writers he has ever seen, better than he and Matt, and that we were going to be millionaires! He was excited. I'm very blessed to know such solid guys, and also having them as my bosses. And hopefully they're reading this. I'm just glad Mike and Matt will have good Thanksgivings. But what do I know? They've probably got shitty relatives. Not like mine.

The one I just wrote with Chris will be produced.

Going over to the Emory, Jeff, Lesly apartment for pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Christ. I hate Emory. That clicking sound he does with his teeth.

So this is the global village? I think I'm gonna like it here

2004-11-24T01:24:00.000-08:00

Did you know that according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "blog" first appeared in 1354 and was a verb meaning "to foist unwanted opinions." Things have changed all right. Over the ages it's come to mean different things: "to lift slowly", "a lump", "a ribald story". Of course all, lifting meant something else then, lump meant arrowhead for most of western history, and ribald stories didn't come about until the invention of the steam engine. Toot toot indeed, my fair global chums, for tonight marks the occasion of my first (and preferably not the last) emulation of Jeff Stone. His blog was so grand in stature, so daring in imagination that it inspired me to start one just like his. I start it to post thoughts, happening,, minutes of my roustabouts, and witty banter from the likes of my associates. This is also now a contest. Jeff Stone, I demand satisfaction! May the best blogger win....oh yeah....THAT'S ME.

I can't wait until USA network makes a movie about the early bloggers fighting a system that believes diaries should be kept somewhat private. Music swells. Directed by Aaron Sorkin. By the way, saw MALICE last week. Aaron Sorkin wrote it-that's not why I watched it-and it really was not good. The score....was...unreal.

Tonight was Bix Skahill and Emily Skahill's going away party at the farmer's market. Off to Witonka Minnesota. A bit of a sad occasion. Bix cracks me up and I wish that his sensibility flourished more in this town. I still remember reading Shiny New Enemies aka Chain of Fools ("great title. what? Did someone wake up a retard and ask him what to call the movie"- David Cross) in the library at Bishops with Taylor and Steph there and trying to keep from laughing loudly at every other line. By the way, that movie is like five years old and it is yet to be released...anywhere? Has anyone seen it? I think maybe they released it in Australia. If you're from Australia and have seen it then chime in, mate!

Elijah Wood was there! Smoking a cigarette! Celebrities are just like us!!! Celebrities are just like us...I don't know about you...but I take comfort in that fact.