WikiPalooza

I certainly link to Wikipedia enough up in here, may as well take a closer look at it.

A New Yorker article on the curious experiment.

A Slate article on the subject of "notability" in the Wikiverse.

I grew up on Britannica. That was my go-to for most of the crappy reports I wrote up through high school. I don't know if Wikipedia's a rock solid source for the kids growing up writing their crappy reports nowadays, but for a writer of crappy Hollywood fiction -- it's a fuckin GOLDMINE.

Research? Yeah, I done my damn research!

NOW GIMME SOME CANDY!!!

I need dis guy in my crew...

Evil lurks within...

D$jv]vezayv]vyDjvbymvFzjm/v/nvzbvb/v#DabPlEDbmvb/888

The life I covet...

This kid's going down...

Your God is Dead

If those wacky Jesus freaks won't buy into evolution, why would they believe in James Cameron's box of Jesus bones?

Hey, "The Lost Tomb of Christ", I'll DVR that shit. Ain no "god" out there, people.

REVENGE!!!

At last, Martin Scorsese gets a gold one. With Ford, Lucas and Spielberg presenting the award, they had to have known ahead of time. Bastards.

You figure every nominee writes their own acceptance speech notes, just in case. Wonder if the trash bins at the Kodak Theatre are just filled with crumpled up speech notes from the losers.

Hey, who needs awards? Isn't it enough to get paid...??

(Will be for me, for damn sure...)

Today's laundry day. I save a lot doing my own laundry in the basement, but I always cheap out on the dryer so my clothes aren't completely dry when I take them out. The rest of the day, I've got an apartment with damp clothes and sheets. It's totally glamorous.

Is February ending this week?

A Fatal Exception

I didn't know that Windows Vista would reunite me with an old friend:

The Blue Screen of Death!

Seriously, I've gotten it about half a dozen times since I started setting up my new desktop 2 days ago. What the funk?

Good news is, after hiccups and barriers, I'm almost done transferring all the files I need from the old desktop. Who wants ice cream? Have a few scoops on me:

Tea for the Tillerman

I still feel woozy from the phone conference I had with Paramount earlier this afternoon. The upside is they continue to be excited about the Butcherhouse script. The tough part was fielding the avalanche of notes that were plowed onto me over the span of an hour. The notes were actually very helpful, on the whole -- it was just a lot to sort through without getting lost. I'm going to have to map it out a little this weekend. More conference calls next week.

I'm not really a COLDPLAY fan, but Chris Martin performs a nice cover of "Tea for the Tillerman" over the end credits of his cameo episode of EXTRAS:

Even his duet with Ricky Gervais at the very end has an air of melancholy...

Upgrades

Blogging from my new desktop. I'd muster up a little excitement for you people, but I'm still in the midst of trying to transfer the important shit from my old desktop, adequately setting up the new desktop, and dealing with the guilt associated with taking on more debt.

But it's all right coz I'm gonna have money coming out of my freakin ears soon, right?!? RIGHT?!???

Windows Vista is... going to take a little getting used to. If I can get all my programs transferred/installed/working, all my important files. If, when. Setting up a new computer is always an uphill hike. Not made easier when you're trying to acclimate to a brand new OS.

I've got a conference call with TWO Paramounties tomorrow afternoon, originally scheduled for tonight. These things get postponed easily. In any case, they're going to give me the what for, tell me what I gotta do to my screenplay to make everybody richer. HOLLA!

[Note to Weird Al Yankovic: Where's the "Challah Bread Girl" that we all know you've got in you...?]

"Yeah, we need some backup here, we've got a couple of clowns..."

Daydream Believer

Steven Adler is starting to sound like Milhouse in his overly optimistic prediction that the original lineup of GNR will reunite.

@}--`---,----

I bought a new DELL computer that should arrive this week. Can't quite afford it but my old PC is over 6 years old, and I'm not that good at major internal upgrades (on so many levels, really), and I really just need something I can depend on for a good stretch. Just got a laptop a few months ago and I've been on the fence about replacing my desktop, but it's ultimately just a needful thing. The hope is that I'll be able to exchange information between the laptop and desktop a little easier, and that neither will suffer a sudden death syndrome.

@}--`---,----

I hate worrying about money. I know some people LOVE worrying about money, but for me, personally, I don't much care for it. No sir. Not my cup of tea.

It's okay, though, because everything is going work out just fine...!

Fat of the Land

That new Burger King "Texas Double Whopper" looks pretty gross, eh? [I am no friend of mustard, but it's comforting to know how much is inside a bottle.]

Burger King adverts can be a bit dodgy.

This is a good critique of the latest "I Am Man" advert. [I'm so thankful that other bloggers save me the trouble of writing my own entries; my next screenplay is just going to be a series of hyperlinks to other people's screenplays.]

At least Burger King's new sandwich offers fresh material for Dane Cook. He's the Sinbad for a new generation.

Year of the Pig

Happy Lunar New Year, The Chinese. All the pigs are all lined up. I gave you all that you want. Take the skin and peel it back: now, doesn't that make you feel better...?

The pigs have won tonight.

Now they can all sleep soundly.

Sad Woman, Take it Slow

A flash created from 40 male and 40 female walkers captured by a motion-capture system.

Max out the sadness and play your Johnny Cash.

Tales from the Darkside

Man lives in a sunlit world of what he believes to be reality...

But...

There is -- unseen by most -- an underworld...

A place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit...

A DARKSIDE...!

It was a horror anthology in the mid-80s. Similar to The Twilight Zone, except focusing exclusively on horror subject matter. Like The Twilight Zone, most episodes are fairly crap now, but they were good enough to scare the fecal out of me when I was 10. The opening credit sequence is still enough to give the creeps, though. Especially the subtle voice-acting. They had a marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel the other day (yesterday?), and I half-watched.

Had some bad dreams last night. Woke up before 6am, tried to scribble it down but my handwriting's fairly illegible when I'm half-asleep. Robert Duvall was in the dream. My old childhood house. A dead cat. Some strange elements I won't record here. Some things are best left not dealt with till it's too late.

This holiday weekend, I'm arm-wrestling some demons and trying to get some work down. It's what I do. It's a riot.

The darkside is always there...
Waiting for us to enter...
Waiting to enter us...
Until next time...
... try to enjoy the daylight.

Hell is Blue

JetBlue used to be good. I've flown with them several times and they've been great. Economical. User-friendly.

I don't know what the hell happened yesterday. Have they never dealt with bad weather before? They were a complete mess. I swear they had Wendy the Retard making announcements at the terminal.

Long story short, my trip to visit my sister's postponed to next month.

Use Your Fist, Not Your Mouth

Another reason to hate Valentines Day. We get bupkis for snowfall all winter, and suddenly we get our first major storm on the day I'm supposed to travel. This is the first time I've had a flight get cancelled on me.

Yes, I checked the airline before I headed out. I'm waiting by the gate a good stretch in advance and everything's "On Time" till about half an hour before go-time. Then my flight's outright canned.

The airport was a madhouse. I waited on a line for hours that didn't budge. Nothing was getting done, no one could help anyone. Finally, I just headed back home to try to deal with it from another angle. Spent over $100 just traveling to and from the airport today. What horseshit.

At least I'm home. Gotta wake up tomorrow and try to deal with rebooking, coz their phone lines are slammed. [Duh-duuh-duuh, duh-duuh-duuh, let the boys be boys.] Outlook is bleak, but doesn't that apply to everything?

Year Zero

A really interesting article about the vile Joel Surnow & his "24" franchise, in The New Yorker. (Those New Yorker articles certainly clock a lot of words, don't they...?) I think it raises some very valid points about the use of torture throughout "24". It's sad and damning that Surnow refuses to listen to those points, even when confronted with military people who are trying to infuse the popular show with some realism. You could argue it's just entertainment, but when you're reaching so many people it becomes something larger. Especially the idea that it's influencing soldiers.

I don't think the world will be a better place with armies of Jack Bauers and Vic Mackeys going on torture-sprees. It makes for exciting TV, but maybe some of these soldiers should watch some "Homicide" to balance it out.

I am trying to believe.

Another version of the truth.

105th Airborne Crusaders.

Consolidated Mail Systems.

Be the hammer.

Church of Plano.

Valentine's Day is a sick, ridiculous farce.

I'm on a plane today. Tonight, I'm in the sky across America.

The Blogging Iceberg

I found this great article about abandoned blogs. Kinda makes you think. (I guess *some* people have better things to do with their lives... well, lah-dee-dah!)

I'd always suspected that dogs are merely social parasites, but this confirms it. Now I don't feel so bad about putting my childhood dog to sleep a few years back. That motherfucker was scamming me for YEARS...!

(Just kidding, Lucky. I know you're the only one who ever truly cared about me.)

New Technologies

Check out the next generation of movie posters.

Went to the Writers Guild Awards last night, it was... an experience. Pretty close to what I was expecting. When does the entertainment industry get fun?

Writing's a thankless little bitch. Best get to it, then, eh?

The Agony of JMZ

I know I've been going at it hard against the Crooklynites, but attention must be paid! Had to hitch the J-M-Z to a Brook-Land party earlier this evening and it was a bleeding nightmare. On paper, it's fine -- I can get there from here. But on a weekend night, all the trains are out of whack. And some of those stations are so horribly signed. I ended up taking the A to the F to the 5 to the J. That's pretty fucked up right there, dude.

I live a few blocks from the parents of a friend of mine. Lived here for over a year, have never run into them on the street. Until today. Walking along Central Park West. I passed them walking north as they walked south. I slowed down as I recognized them, but they didn't take notice of me and walked right by. But please let the record show -- I ran into them on the street.

Origins of Dungeons & Dragons (tv series).

Zork Dork

You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

Text-Adventuring not your happy...?

How about a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure...?

Did you hear that? It sounded like a generation of pre-adolescent boys in the 80s throwing away their childhoods... like a Big Bang echo...

This is Madness...

THIS IS SPARTA ! ! !

Don't know how the movie will play out, but what I love about the trailers is it looks like a kid creating an epic battle with his action figures. While rocking out to Nine Inch Nails.

Speaking of NIN, I'm not sure if Trent Reznor is an actual vegetarian or just an anti-fur spokesman for PETA.

I've always seen PETA as extremist. I hesitate to go on a rant on vegetarianism -- I'm not some militant carnivore. But I think there are extremes on both ends. Meat bullies and veggie bullies. Black or white, on or off, you can't argue with a binary worldview. Still, I admit there's something a little exciting about those crazy PETA girls who'll do anything for the cause. Some of their adverts don't even make much sense.

Anna Nicole Smith is dead, by the way.

Imaginazism

Let's set the record straight: Walt Disney was NOT a Nazi. (Though Donald Duck was. Hey, what's the big deal?)

Eatertainment died a long time ago. Which I find baffling because I like to be annoyed during a meal.

Such a Shame Our Friendship Had to End

Prince kicked some ass at the halftime show on Sunday...

THIS is a fucklot of bullshit I hope gets aborted quick-like...

And that's my half-assed entry for today!

POLE POSITION!!!

You look like a real JERK!

In Defense of Brain Candy

Excerpt from the Kids in the Hall movie , "BRAIN CANDY":

Tell us what you've been working on...

Well... I've invented a pill that gives worms to ex-girlfriends!

Right... and... what's positive about that...?

(befuddled)
Well... it's a pill... that gives worms... to ex-girlfriends!

Well, could it also give worms to ex-boyfriends...?

(more frustrated)
This is a drug -- for the world -- to give worms to ex-girlfriends...!

Right, thanks for stopping by...

(stands up, looks at everyone as if they're laughably thick-headed)
You just don't GET it here... huh-HOO!!!

I seem to spend a lot of entries on this blog praising unpopular things. I just know that my work's going to get shredded eventually -- and when that day arrives, I'd like to imagine someone will come to my defense to appreciate the good and not just the suck.

I've a great fondness for The Kids in the Hall. I remember discovering them on HBO way back in junior high school and thinking they were the coolest thing ever. Comedy Central aired episodes for a while, and they had a short-lived run on CBS. And yes, at the risk of being "one of those fans", the latter seasons weren't as funny/inspired. But how often can you really expect to catch comedy-troupe-lightning in a television-bottle??

Originally called "The Drug", Paramount encouraged them to rename their big feature debut the more marketable "Brain Candy".

There's a tradition of comedy troupes making big feature film debuts. Monty Python & The Holy Grail. Mr. Show & Run Ronnie Run. Tenacious D @ the Pick of Destiny.

And then there was Brain Candy.

I DVR-ed it off of HBO HD last night because, honestly, how the hell else am I going to get to watch "Brain Candy" in high-definition?

It's a very peculiar movie. The Kids were experimenting with more surreal filmed segments in its later seasons. In interviews, they talk about how the earlier seasons came more from their live theater shows, whereas later seasons exploited the filmed medium to a greater extent. So the movie acts as a progression of that. But of course, the major pitfall of any sketch comedy show expanding into a feature is shaking off the episodic nature of sketch comedy. Brain Candy suffers from this, just like all the sketch comedy films suffer from this.

It's stranger still because many of their characters were honed for live audiences. In the context of a movie, they sometimes seem a bit too silly. A lot of the humor in the show was seeing the Kids dress up in frocks and wigs, and it works in a live theater context because it's an absurd make-believe that the audience participates in, but there's less of an excuse for the Kids to play ALL the characters in the movie. For a fan, it may not be much of a leap, but the movie ought to work for everybody... and clearly it didn't.

All that said, there are some great things to be found in Brain Candy. The drug company premise is strong. There are some hilarious sequences. Mark McKinney does a great impression of Dr. Evil. It gains momentum and falters toward the finish line, sadly -- but there's too much good to dismiss. I won't hold my breath for The Criterion Collection: Brain Candy Blu-Ray, but it's worth a reconsideration.

Malice gives it 3.5 crushed heads.

Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams...

There's a light in my room that I rarely turn off. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and it looks like the room's on fire -- but it's just this light. A splash of orange reflecting off a white patch of wall. When the waking world is blurry, it shimmers.

I'm enjoying the second (final?) series of Gervais's EXTRAS. I find that THE OFFICE UK and EXTRAS share a similar air of self-contempt and melancholy. (THE AMERICAN OFFICE retains the air of melancholy.) However, Gervais seems particularly brutal on himself in EXTRAS. It's the source of the comedy -- the level of humiliation his character must endure. But it's sometimes more sad than funny.

[Like my life!]

An excerpt from the Onion A.V. Ricky Gervais interview that, I think, perfectly explains the appeal a lot of modern comedy:

In a safe Western world where we're not being shot at and we're not starving, the worst thing that happens to us most days is someone's rude to us, or we accidentally insult someone. Social faux pas is the worst thing that happens to most people, most days, so we've got to concentrate on that, really. You don't need a high incident. The minutiae of human behavior is really the most interesting thing you can explore. You don't need people being taken out by snipers for something to be interesting, 'cause it's not what most of us relate to.

+++

An excerpt from a really old Twilight Zone episode:

BARTENDER talks to a DRUNK SANTA (Art Carney),

"You've had six drinks and a sandwich, now that's $3.80 you owe me."

Man, if I could just get my time machine working, I could zap myself into the past and buy a nice brownstone for $300.

Visions of the Future

There's a new Discovery Channel docu(-drama?) series entitled 2057 that I've been combing through. It's essentially a futurist showcase, speculating what technologies we'll have 50 years from now.

One of the problems I have with many visions of the future is a total disconnect with the present. "2057" is very well-made, but the world it shows us is too clean. It doesn't look lived in. The common household technologies it offers would only be accessible to the very wealthy, living in spacious luxury apartments without a spot of dirt. I'm nitpicking a bit because the point of the show is obviously to titillate with the best gee-whiz gadgetry they can come up with, but the way they draw the world makes it feel far more like science fantasy than something that I'll be enjoying when I'm 81. (Like I'm really gonna live to see 60...)

The most curious aspect of the series, however, is how each hour-long episode actually weaves a dramatic story into the future-speculation. Between talking heads blathering on about what will be, we see footage of present technologies that will form the basis of future technologies, plus we get a scripted narrative:

A schoolboy accidentally unleashes an antiquated computer virus into a city's wired infrastructure... and his crotchety old grandfather has to save the day.

A man loses his health insurance just as he's about to have his mechanical heart replaced with a freshly-grown organic heart... so a doctor switches his identity with that of an insured patient who just passed away.

The scenarios are made more peculiar because each story develops beyond a simple illustration of technologies. There are plot twists and character developments that aren't really necessary if you're looking for a show that just offers a catalog of tomorrow's gadgets. (Hammacher Schlemmer from the future's junk pile.) All the actors are pretty committed, too. At least as committed as most of the actors on "24"... take that however you want.

Worth checking out, if it's the sort of subject that interests you. Some of the techs seem more far-fetched than others. I doubt it's the face of the world 50 years from now, but 50 years is a lot of time to kill so who knows...

Have You Ever Made a Really Big Mistake?

Would SOMEBODY explain the poster for this new Eddie Murphy movie to me? Why does it list Murphy's name twice? I'd assume it was a lone printing error but this is how it appears all over the place. I don't get it. They don't even offer a credit for the plus-size Afro-American woman who clearly shares screentime with Mr. Murphy...

Unless...

It couldn't be that the woman is actually Eddie Murphy under mounds of prosthetics, could it? But she's far too convincing! And how could he be playing both parts simultaneously? Why, he'd have to be some kind of acting genius!

This is an internet advert I just came across. (I've taken care to blot out the company information.) A fairly crass shill for life insurance. It's a bit conspicuous that the little girl refers to her mother as "mommy", yet addresses her father with a slightly more formal "Dad".

The ellipsis almost renders the question into a veiled threat.

In fact, the little girl's head is turned downward as she poses the theoretical. Arguably implying that her father is in fact already lying on the ground. Gasping for breath. Grasping for the bottle of pills he desperately needs. And mother and daughter hold hands and stare solemnly down at him. Prescription pills within reach. Waiting for his answer...

"... but what's in it for us...?"

Gleaming the Cube

Been a while since I've watched The Player, but I adored it back when. A little eulogy for Robert Altman, by Michael Tolkin. I find these stories fascinating.

Of course, Tolkin's first (produced) screenplay was a little gem called "Gleaming the Cube". From the IMDB message boards:

"It means the place where you skate when you let go. Just skating by your self in total zen."

"I think it means stepping up, rising above yourself and doing the impossible. The point is that you should not be able to skate a cube. Cubes have flat sides and 90 degree angles. So when you are totally in the zone, zen like, you can do the impossible and skate anything including a cube. Likewise, this "punk" kid shouldn't be able to step up and push toward his goal of finding out the truth about his brother. Everyone looked at him like he was a waste of time and life, but he rose above it all and, doing the impossible, he solved the case of his brothers murder."

"The phrase used as the title of this movie did not exist in skateboard vocabulary.

"I did, however, read about the origin of the title, in an article by the great skateboard magazine editor Dave Carnie.

"Apparently the son of one of the movie's producers was an avid skateboarder. At some point, the son was joking around, making up ridiculous phrases to describe his skating to friends. At one point he said 'Yeah, I was really gleaming the cube.' It was a nonsense expression, meant as a joke.

"However, the producer overheard the conversation and took the phrase to be a real skateboarding term. Somehow, the phase got worked into the project and made it all the way to release."

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saw a doc on Stephen Hawking on The Science Channel. He's 65 (shares a birthday with me), his body progressively degenerating due to Lou Gehrig's Disease. He's long outlived the 2-3 year prognosis he was handed when he was 21, but he requires a team of nurses -- in addition to his wife -- to keep him alive.

He uses a muscle below his right eye to communicate.

The doc showed footage of him working with an assistant, writing another book. He was having trouble selecting the words he wanted to speak, so the assistant struggled to anticipate the words he was trying form. An arduous process.

It struck me as a rough fate. A lucid mind imprisoned in a body that will not cooperate. I have no mouth, and i must scream.

Not that it's held him back. He's got two new books coming out, a children's book and a big peoples book. And he's about to become a space cadet. He's got a wife and a litter of kids.

So, you know what? Fuck Stephen Hawking. I hope he chokes up in space. Good riddance!