Why We Love Football!

For those who've given up on Saturday Night Live. (And football!)

Crackhead Malice

Is this funny? No, seriously, I want your honest opinion, check it out, tell me if you think it's funny...

[It *is* funny, isn't it...? Come on, it's hilarious...]

Not for nothing, but crack gets a bad rap in the press. It makes you so much smarter, helps you think clearer, boosts your energy and confidence. Not to mention it just makes you feel great! I mean, it's crack, it gets you really high...

Malice in the Land of Chalk Drawings

A cartoon series I watched as a tyke. (The things he draws come true!)

Just got word through the grapevine -- from someone at Paramount Literary Affairs -- that "The Butcherhouse Chronicles" is the first play in *years* that Paramount's picked up...!

EAT THAT!!!

It doesn't really change anything, of course. I'm still under the onus of crafting a screenplay adaptation that'll get the project greenlit. But this is exactly the type of thing I need to hear right now. A reminder that there's something special about the whole bloody affair. A splash of positive reinforcement.

The script revision's going well. A striking deviation from the play, which is developing nicely. Wouldn't be fun if they were both the same thing, would it? Keeps people guessing...

Mother Green and Her Killing Machine

Upper West Side... shit, I'm still only on the Upper West Side... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

My thoughts drift back to erect nipple wet dreams about Mary Jane Rottencrotch and the Great Homecoming Fuck Fantasy. I am so happy that I am alive and in one piece, in short. I'm in a world of shit -- yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid.

You and What Army?

"A high school girl could do my job!
I wanna get out into the shit...
I wanna get some trigger time..."
Full Metal Jacket

A screenwriting career is an odd path. Just concentrating on it for the past few months has been surreal. It vacillates between being pampered and being desperate.

Writing has never been directly linked with me paying my bills, till now. I'm still trying to acclimate to this new way of working.

At the old day job, I could crank out a project with a tight deadline because it was work. It was day job work. It wasn't personal. You'd just churn it out because it had to be done.

Even during the roughest times, it wasn't hard labor. You weren't digging out coal next to a dead canary. You were just clocking hours in a temperature-controlled office. Collecting a regular paycheck. A decent paycheck, all things considered.

Now, the office is anywhere I can conceivably write a little. It feels infantile, at times. "What should happen NEXT in my imaginary movie?" And yet, my future's riding on this absurd exercise.

I've already beaten the odds, but I need to beat some more and get this fucker greenlit. If I can get it greenlit, things really change. And then maybe I could relax a little and find some perspective. Get out into the shit. Get some trigger time. Actually enjoy some of it.

Altered States

I was just playing that "Alter Ego" game I talked about in my last entry. In the "Young Adult" phase of life, I clicked on a shopping icon and was presented with the option to buy a computer:

You can purchase three computers:

Select an action:

[] A 32K COMPUTER WITH CASSETTE TAPE DRIVE ($225)
[] A 128K COMPUTER (BIG NAME WITH THREE INITIALS) WORK ALIKE WITH DUAL DISK DRIVES ($1500)
[] A SUPER-POWERFUL 512K COMPUTER WITH 10 MEGABYTE HARD DISK ($3499)

Jesus, I do love the old technologies! (My current computer's running a 1,000,000 Megabyte Hard Disk.)

It burns!

That's an entry.

Alter Ego

"Alter Ego" was a computer game I played on the Apple IIC back in the 80s. It was sort of a personality sim, allowing you play to through an entire lifetime -- from birth to death -- by presenting text scenarios that you would respond to via multiple choice. The game would keep track of your character statistics, depending on how you answered along the way, and this would affect what you could accomplish later in the simulated lifetime.

It was created by Dr. Peter J. Favaro, a psychologist who had an interest in gaming and used his psychology background to break out of the pack.

You can play an online version of the game RIGHT HERE! (Since it's text-based, it's perfect for you folks stuck at your desks... YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE...)

Also, I found a picture of my future ex-wife.

Trying to get some of my shit done, which is a chore. Wish I could freeze time like that constipated fellow on HEROES...

Feel the Vibration!

Back in the 90s, CD-ROM technology was heating up and videogame companies were trying to figure out ways to best exploit it. Compact discs cost a lot less to mass-produce than cartridges and they offered a big jump in storage capacity. That meant there was one thing they could offer that cartridges couldn't:

Full Motion Video.

Digital Pictures was a company that dedicated itself exclusively to games that relied on FMV. Including the infamous Dana Plato classic "Night Trap", that sparked up a bunch of stupid videogame censorship debates back in the day. (Incidentally, "Night Trap" was originally designed for a never-released VHS-based game console called Control-Vision.) One thing united all the Digital Pictures FMV "games" -- they were all ridiculously shitty.

No exception was a series they designed called "Make My Video"...

"Marky Mark: Make My Video" featured music and video footage of future Oscar Nominee Mark Robert Michael Wahlberg. As far as I can tell, young Marky didn't shoot any actual footage for the "game". The series was sort of a music-video-editing sim (because all the kids wanted to edit video for fun), forcing you to select video footage on the fly to compose a music video... sort of like a TV director cuing live cameras. I'm pretty sure your video options consisted of a lot of shitty, grainy stock footage.

Those hoping for some juicy footage of the future Oscar Nominee "interacting" with the gamer would be disappointed, as the game employs a bunch of anonymous actors to set up the scenario. It sort of has the feel of an old porno, without any pay-offs.

I write all this to offer some context for the retro-shock of the actual game.

Though I never played this one, I played a bunch of the old Digital Pictures FMV-games. The head of the company used to give interviews claiming that he could never identify with the cartoony graphics of a "Legend of Zelda", and that using real live actors would engage gamers on a deeper level. But all their pseudo-games featured god-awful scripts that usually relied on the actors yelling at the camera, berating the gamer in some way. It was supposed to be fun because it was like the videos were talking back to you. And in the 90s, all the kids enjoyed being reamed out by D-list actors. It was a thing we liked back then. You really had to be there to understand.

The MAKE MY VIDEO series also had entries for C+C Music Factory and INXS -- and if they'd been successful, I hear they were working on "Phish: Make My Video" and "The Afghan Whigs: Make My Video". Because that's what the market would bear.

Times were so much more innocent.

My video-editing abilities are severely clipped at the moment due to major VISTA incompatibilities with the current versions of Adobe Premiere. Don't *I* have egg on my face! Strangely enough, Windows Vista features D-list actors berating you whenever you try to do something that you used to be able to do on Windows XP. I love the new technologies.

First Person Junkie

Caught a documentary called "TV Junkie" on the HBO. One of those things I DVR-ed without knowing anything about. Sounded kind of compelling, I figured it'd be good for a little T&A, maybe.

The documentary concerns Rick Kirkham, a reporter for the tabloid tv-show Inside Edition way back in the 90s. The guy shot film and video footage of nearly his entire life. The doc's got footage of him screwing strange women over the years. Footage of his kids being born. (Why do all newborns look like ghoulies?) In his adult life, he starts shooting video diaries, and he speaks candidly about his drug addiction. We watch him smoking crack. He even talks about getting it at "93rd and Amsterdam", which is like 3 blocks from where I live. (Note to self...)

Like I said, I didn't know anything about him going into it. I assumed this doc was assembled after his death. I think it's best to watch it without knowing anything because it makes it more suspenseful. At times, it feels like a snuff film.

Catch it on the HBO if you've got it. Or save it on your Netflix queue. It's Malice's Weekend Pick^(R)!

I gotta... take a walk around my neighborhood now...

Mii Familia

Ah, the Mii. Nintendont's answer to the question, "Is this videogame machine intended for girls or boys?"

For those too apathetic to click through for a straight explanation, the Nintendo Wii allows you to create little Fisher-Price-like avatars called "Miis". The little Mii characters you create may make cameos in the Wii games you play, such as "Wii Sports" and "Wii Used to Have a Life". (As well as the upcoming "Wii Are Totally Queer".)

I've created Miis to resemble Axl Rose, Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor and Stanley Tucci. You can alter their height and weight, customize with a host of facial features, yet it is a bit of a challenge to really make them stand out. My Jay-Z Mii is nearly indistinguishable from my Kanye West Mii. (Insert racist thoughts here.) It's a Mr. Potato Head sim.

There isn't much substance beneath any of it. The Wii is a fun party gag, but right now it's built on mini-games, 30-second shots of simplified gameplay. Shallow tricks.

Having spent time with all three consoles (gadget slut that I am), I'd have to say the XBOX 360 gives you the best overall system. A great game system. Best DVD player I've got. And even without purchasing the external HD-DVD drive, you can download and watch HD movies. Best online functionality of the three, by a mile. You can download and play free demos of 360 games, as well as a growing list of classic arcade games.

The PS3 is an awkward, overpriced, bulky Frankenstein monster, smashing together elements from the Wii and 360 without the elegance of either. Weighs a ton. It's a essentially a good Blu Ray movie player with some gaming functionality TBD.

All that said, there's something to be admired in the Wii. It's the cheapest next gen system (albeit with the worst graphics by far). And yet, the shift in focus to appeal to "non-gamers" has really done wonders for it. People who don't play videogames want to play with the Wii. In a landscape filled with First Person Shooters and Fantasy Role Playing Games, the Wii is trying to carve out some unique gaming experiences.

Dunno if it'll grow into something meaningful, but it's good for a little jerking around, if you're into that...

OFF TOPIC, I'd like to make animations like this with little effort. I'm sure I can scrounge together the tools to make something like this on my computer, but I don't think there's a program out there that automates it to the degree that my laziness requires.

[[[ Important NickEmma Update ]]]

This just in...

College acquaintance Nick Gaffney just proposed to long-time romantic interest Emma Wunsch -- before going through the trouble of buying her a ring!

(Way to go out on a limb, Nicko! Nothing but class, this guy!)

Despite this, Ms. Wunsch accepted his proposal, and they are now betrothed.

Though we here at Misanthropy Central question Ms. Wunsch's decision to settle at this stage in her life, we fully support the union, wish them the best life (that Brooklyn can offer), and look forward to looking at photos from their wedding at some point after the event. Perhaps it'll even inspire a blog update...

(We've got to hold onto our dreams, don't we?)

Misanthropy on a Plane

Neat thing about flying JetBlue is that you get to watch unedited TV at your seat. Not the usual edited-for-airplanes programming. One of my first flights on JetBlue, I remember watching 9/11 footage on CNN. On an airplane! For some reason, it was comforting. It felt less like I was stuck in a vacuum, forcibly severed from the real world.

If it disturbed you, you could just switch channels.

(But why would you? That footage is DY-NO-MITE! Never gets old, am I right?)

Hate flying, though. I know statistically it's safer than sticking cotton swabs in your ear, but it's just excruciating. Getting to the airport, getting through security, and suffering the claustrophobia as you hurtle precariously through space in a sardine can.

Expensive Stuff That Doesn't Work

I tried plugging in my DV camera to test out a little video editing on my new machine, and the damn thing is having trouble communicating with my camera. Bloody Vista. Tried "a few different things" and gave up the struggle. For today. It's a little exasperating. You break open the piggy bank to purchase something, you hope it'll be able to accomplish the basics.

Similar song with the PS3.

Yeah, I picked one up, primarily to have a Blu Ray player. Yes, this is filed under "irresponsible buy", but what can I say? I love movies!

Anyway, the PS3 has some issues with different HDTVs. Particularly "antiquated" HDTVs that you buy from a guy in Queens who posted an advert on Craigs List a year and a half ago. Issues with resolution. It's a cumbersome explanation, but basically the PS3 fails to do something that the XBOX 360 was able to do from launch. Thankfully, this only affects a game I bought, and not any of the Blu Rays that I've tried out.

All right, who's bored with this entry already? Show of hands? Keep em up... one, two... do you have your hand up?... three, four...

Vista, PS3, it just seems like things that are thrown into the market before they're finished. TBF (to be fixed) at some blurry future date, via systems of patches. Like buying a boat with a series of large holes in it.

Nobody reads the comments!

11:43am, New York City

Back in the comfort zone.

Intermittent shut-eye. Totally zonked.

Find something funny here.

It's not that bad

3:57am, 12:57am.

Airport is a dead place populated with zombies. I am a zombie.

Being on the computer here, among the dead, reminds me of when I worked the graveyard shift somewhere on Wall Street.

The Jet Blue employee manning Gate E3 is using a public announcement device that is just a little too soft to be heard without stepping toward him a few paces.

I am killing time by... ;ziBz$xv/PbveyziyvxzlCav]-jv#/abvm$A/)vlD;z$x888

Gibberish, it's all gibberish at this hour, but it's 4:02am/1:02am and I've still got juice left in this laptop...

The Accidental Traveller

2:42am? 11:42AM? Either way, my red-eye flight back eastward is delayed about 2 hours, so after making my brother-in-law speed me to the airport, I've got a bit of time to kill. It's a small miracle that I got my laptop to access the airport wifi here, so I may as well blog.

It was a nice, zippy trip. My sister's well. Cat allergies gave me a sucker punch @ their place, but it was just a few days. No sales tax on anything up in here, which blew my mind. Buying things helps fill that god-shaped hole.

I'm dreading this red-eye. I don't sleep well on planes. And I should roll into NYC just in time for Monday morning rush hour. That might be an eff-load of rotten.

I like traveling. Not the actual travel, but uprooting and being somewhere else for a patch of time. Helps give perspective. Even on a superficial level, it's helpful. Getting outside your comfort zone.

But along the same lines, I sorta hate traveling. Hate traveling alone. A blip in the sky. Vulnerable to deletion.

American Flyer

Packing off to visit me sis for the weekend. Hope JetBlue has its proverbial shit together this time. Taking the subway to JFK to save a few quid. I do dislike flying and all the details. Arriving in Oregon around 11pm. Returning to NYC red-eyed on Monday morning. Promises to be a laugh!

No parties at the blog while I'm away. List of emergency phone numbers on the fridge. Help yourself to the cobwebs in the pantry. No fighting with your brother.

The New Yorker Subscription

Because one too many persons asked me if I read The New Yorker, I threw down the coin to get a subscription. Hey, I can read! I can read The New Yorker!

What I didn't realize was that when you subscribe to The New Yorker, they keep sending you issues even when you haven't gotten around to reading the last one. I've already got a growing stack of "American Theatre" I've barely cracked.

Don't get me wrong, I *like* The New Yorker. The writing's, like, good and whatnot. It's just quite a lot of WORDS to read, isn't it? I mean, really an excessive lot of words. Maybe if they spiced it up with more pictures of, like, celebrities and such. Less drawings! Some Fun Facts about movies. Would a little videogame coverage kill them? And how bout a one-page column by Stephen King at the back, blathering on about his old coot pop-culture sensibilities.

Maybe I can read a few when I fly out to see me sis this weekend. If I get bored playing "Music Quiz" on my iPod.

SHUFFLED 5 ALERT!!!
1. "The Great Collapse", NIN
2. "Roller Coaster", Blink-182 (hey, it's random)
3. "Lived in Splendour: Died in Chaos", Pop Will Eat Itself
4. "3 The Hard Way", Beastie Boys
5. "Stop Breaking Down", The White Stripes

!!!ACHTUNG BONUS TRACK!!!
"Angel with the Scabbed Wings", Marilyn Manson

Do yourself a favor, check out some Rock+Roll Hall of Fame performances.

Gorno

Downloaded "Saw III" HD on the XBOX 360. I was curious about the movie download functionality of the 360, and it was one of the handful of movies in HD, so I went for the 24-hour rental. I'd been meaning to see it.

I've always liked horror movies, but now it's a matter of seeing what the other guys are doing. The Saw movies are shaped more like gory mystery movies. Kick-starting a new-ish genre catering specifically to gore-hounds, propelling the success of the "Hostel" series.

Saw III is difficult to watch. It's unpleasant. The camera swings too much. You're inundated with flash shots. And there's an emphasis on gore that goes beyond servicing the story. There are extended sequences that actually resemble pornography.

In "regular" pornography, we get extended close-ups of "insertions". It's why you watch pornography. The shots scream, "Hey, look, they're actually fucking!" But these sequences would look out of place in a regular movie. James Bond might have sex with women in movies, but if there were a 20 minute hardcore sex scene in the middle of "Casino Royale"... well, it would be awesome, but it might alter the tone of the movie.

Saw III dwells on the gore like it's hardcore sex. If it were shot in a more matter-of-fact manner, it might be more effective, but it's not. The gore is held in close-ups, the camera jumping right in as if to say, "This is the only thing you want to be looking at." I'm not squeamish, but a movie like this makes me squeamish because it seems to assume that I'm going to be delighted by this imagery.

That said, I respect what the Saw folks have got going. Beyond the gore, there's actually a plot, and the movies probably inspire "What would you do...?" conversations among the hoopleheads afterwards, gob bless them. I'm under specific instruction NOT to write BUTCHERHOUSE into the torture-porn genre, and that's never been my intention.

Hell, we'll be fortunate to get our script greenlit. Most horror movies get crap reviews, and I'm not gonna trash-talk a lucrative franchise. (Coz I'm a pussy.) Actually, maybe I can work some hardcore sex in my script... I'd buy THAT for a dollar! (100 Microsoft Points)

kwyjibo

I've been playing a game of electronic Scrabble against computer A.I., and I'm up to the highest A.I. difficulty.

First off, it's humbling getting my ass kicked by many of the levels. I thought I was kinda good at Scrabble, but I'm really not, even when using internet anagram generators as a cheat. There's a certain element of chance in the specific letter tiles you're dealt -- and I'm always suspicious of computerized games of chance -- but even allowing for that, I've got to admit I'm not that great of a Scrabbler. I've been beaten by many of the lower and middle A.I. levels on this stupid game. The last level of difficulty, I just barely beat.

Which brings me back to the highest level of difficulty. Where the A.I. is rated as "PERFECT".

I'm in the middle of a game that I'm losing to the tune of 159 to 358. Why I'm bothering to keep playing, I don't know. But the goddamn computer just put down the word "opercele", and I'm all, "WTF is *that*?!" Playing electronic Scrabble, you're at the mercy of its programmed dictionary that's supposed to be the official Scrabble Dictionary, but there ain't no definitions. I like to think I've got an above-average vocabulary (better'nan'em hoople-heads, a'least), but this machine regularly throws me the kuh-raziest words I ever done seen.

So, I look up "opercele" and I can't find a definition.

Opercele...

OPERCELE...!!!

If anyone can retrieve a proper definition for this word for me, I will be mildly thankful.

Bonus points for proper definitions for these head-scratchers:

"OKEH"

"DAGGA"

"WORRIT"

"VAHINES"

Dreaming of houri as I feast on vicuna...

A Tender Portrait of Men (by a Lesbian)

I saw an interesting Primetime story on Norah Vincent, a woman who lived as a man for a year and wrote a book about it called "Self-Made Man". Makeup, clothes, voice-lessons, transformed herself into Clive Owen. (The female drag version, at least.) Infiltrated all these male-only organizations. Earned their trust.

I think what's fascinating -- at least in the Primetime interview -- was that she actually came away with a much better sympathy/empathy for men. The premise of a lesbian dressing up as a man and sneaking into all these man-clubs would have you believe it would end up as a big man-hate-palooza, but her expectations were turned. She got to appreciate the difficulties. The separate set of gender rules. How the alignment of power shifts in the realm of heterosexual dating.

I hope one of my friends reads the book so they can tell me more about it without me having to actually read it.

Empire

The accountant who does my taxes has a new office on the 74th floor of the Empire State Building. It's so high up, you can see the weather approaching. We watched this massive wave of snow creep toward us along the horizon. It was biblical.

Which is appropriate, because my accountant is Jesus Christ. Who knew he'd come back as a CPA?

Got a visit from the Paramount fairy yesterday, which gave me an opportunity to check out my lawyer's new offices. It has this astounding, picture-book view of Central Park in full.

And... that's my life. Admiring the views in other people's offices.

That and never-ending revisions...

School for Sex

Where were all the sexy elementary school classes when I was in school?

Indianapolis, apparently.

That's what I get for going to school in Rockland. Absolute bupkes. Thanks, mom and dad!

And that's a blog entry!

Minority Kart

Appy-polly-jesus to BlopittyOp for flake-o-saurusing this weak-end, I've been trying to catch up with work that's been getting away from me.

Got my tax paperwork together, for a meeting I've got with the accountant this afternoon. I pray I don't get royally screwed for my good fortune last year. I'm on the thin ice of a new career, I could plunge into arctic waters at any time.

Stockholm Monsters

Thank god it's Thursday, eh, worker bees? I remember what it's like. I used to be like you. You me same.

March already. Time moves both slowly and rapidly when you're off the 9-5 clock. Day to day, it seems slower because you've got more hours for what you want to do. One week can feel like two. At the same time, I can't believe how many months have gone by...

And I'm still trying to get my life sorted out.

The quiet's good for me. I've never had this much time to meditate on the real work. And the nature of my enemies.

Good news, fat dogs!

Shuffled 5
1. Strayed (Smog)
2. Gutless (Hole)
3. House is Falling (Geraldine Fibbers)
4. Shortly Before the End (OK GO)
5. I Don't Want to See You (Camera Obscura)

Eff the World Bonus
Dope Hat (Marilyn Manson)