August 2006 Archives
August 21, 2006
New Song
Click here to download a song I recorded last week. You will not be disappointed. It is the greatest song ever to tackle the subject of the vaguely homoerotic relationship between a Ukrainian drunk and the undercover CIA agent who thinks he’ll make a good professional wrestler.
Posted by Stan on August 21, 2006 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Creative Works!
August 14, 2006
Fuckin’ Mayor
I’ve hated our mayor’s insane vendetta against O’Hare expansion, Mayor Daley, and the city of Chicago ever since he was elected. That’s okay, though. He lost, he’s an asshole, and with any luck he’ll finally be ousted once his anti-O’Hare fans realized he’s totally let them down. But not before he distracts everyone with yet another baffling attempt to show how much better our town is than any other suburb in the Chicagoland area. His mastermind: the Tour d’Elk Grove, which I’ve bitched about before but have mostly ignored and forgotten about…until last weekend when, with very little in the way of warning (sure, we’d all heard about it, but did anyone actually remember it was last weekend?), all the major thoroughfares in town were blocked off for our exciting international bike race. The big draw was supposed to be recent Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, but what with his recent problems, he’s been disqualified from the race.
In honor of a stupid, transparent, and ultimately failed attempt to obscure the failure of his political platform with pointless razzle-dazzle, I’ll now quote an article from August 6th’s Daily Herald (no longer available on the website):
>Elk Grove tour will pedal on in spite of Landis’ absence
BY TARA MALONE
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Sunday, August 06, 2006The inaugural Tour of Elk Grove will cycle on, without Floyd Landis and his yellow jersey.
The Tour de France winner was fired by his team and stripped of his champion title Saturday after a backup doping sample corroborated what an earlier test revealed - suspiciously high levels of testosterone.
The 30-year-old cyclist who battled a degenerating hip to launch a historic comeback and clinch the title pledged to fight the charges and clear his name.
Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson, for one, stood by Landis Saturday, undaunted that he now is ineligible to race this weekend’s international cycling event.
“He would have been a perfect fit for this community and the race,” Johnson said, citing Landis’ professionalism and humble roots. “We move on. Our hope is he comes back next year as the two-time Tour de France champion.”
The two-day Alexian Brothers International Cycling Classic Tour of Elk Grove would have been his first American race since winning cycling’s premier title.
Landis’ absence clears the way for a competitive slate of riders to battle for the $25,000 prize in the 100-kilometer criterium race. The combined purse for all 16 races tops $150,000, one of the largest offered in any U.S. cycling event.
“There may be some riders who come out now because it wouldn’t be easy beating a Tour de France champion,” Johnson said.
Leading the pack is 30-year-old Lemont native Christian Vandevelde, who finished 35th in last month’s Tour de France. Another veteran of the 2,272-mile road race, David Zabriskie, 26, of Salt Lake City also plans to compete in Elk Grove.
Members of the Danish, Swiss and New Zealand national teams will compete as well.
In fact, Johnson - who shed 15 pounds since buying his first bike in April - will play host to two members of the Danish national team. Nearly 20 other Elk Grove families plan to take in international cyclists.
“I’ve got to get ready for the mayor’s challenge,” Johnson joked.
Johnson said village residents routinely pepper him with questions about this weekend’s event, asking for updates on racers and ideal viewing spots.
Elk Grove’s event follows another suburban race today with the 2nd annual Elgin Cycling Classic.
The Elk Grove race initially was conceived as a one-time event to mark the village’s 50th anniversary. Excitement coupled with strong support from sponsors - which include the Daily Herald - quickly persuaded village officials to make the Tour of Elk Grove an annual contest.
Next year’s race already is listed on the 2007 international cycling calendar.
“When they’re riding Tour de France and talking, they will be talking about the Tour of Elk Grove,” Johnson said. “Our race is definitely on the map. We are a legitimate, top notch event.”
My favorite part? The mayor bought his first bike in April (which explains why his “challenge” is a paltry seven miles, which I — an out-of-shape lump of crap — could do standing on my head). My second-favorite part? “We are a legitimate, top notch event.”
I almost hope the mayor is reelected for the sake of comedy.
Unfortunately, I missed this and forgot to post about it. REO Speedwagon recently lit up our 50th anniversary bash with their power-ballad-driven sonic creations. I’m sure it was awesome, but I was too busy wondering why Johnson spent $150,000 in taxpayer money to lure REO Speedwagon when Roselle spent $1200 to get three local bands. Johnson’s explanation, “Who doesn’t love REO?” leaves a lot to be desired. I guess it evens out since the winner of the recent home giveaway, has to pay between $150K and $180K on property taxes for their “free” house.
Posted by Stan on August 14, 2006 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
August 13, 2006
The World Is Way Too Small
One of my reasons for not liking The Manager’s script: it read like propaganda for an actual, real-world dance contest he sponsors. It creates a bizarre, goofy mythology for the competition and beyond that has no real reason for existing. That was one of my main sources of disappointment, but I felt like I couldn’t use that as a criticism because The Manager didn’t know that I’ve spent enough time Googling him to find loads of information about him, his hopes and dreams, and this particular dance contest.
Yesterday my sister called me up. I haven’t talked to her in a long time, mostly because every time she calls my mom puts it on speaker phone so the whole family can enjoy scintillating conversation about University of Illinois sports and other things I don’t give a shit about. Also, she’s a total motor-mouth, and the speaker phone makes us hard to hear, so it’s impossible to get a word in edgewise. We mostly just sit and listen while she rambles, interjecting once in awhile when she pauses for a deep breath. It’s amazing to me that a severe asthmatic can talk for so long without breathing.
It’s easier to hold a conversation on an even keel when we aren’t on speaker phone. The only way to take part in the conversation is to flat-out interrupt her (which she does to me as much as I do to her), although when it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken she does usually ask questions about what I’ve been up to. So I explained to her the entire saga of what’s happened over the past week, everything about Mark, The Manager, the script, et cetera. I finally told her a few reasons why I didn’t like the script — chief among them, that it’s propaganda for a real dance contest he’s sponsored in a major city near Seattle.
“Wait a minute,” she said, recalling the title and making note of the city, “I think I’ve heard of that.”
“No shit.” It probably won’t surprise you that I was flabbergasted.
“Yeah,” she said, “I think they play that on public access, on the same channel where they show all those weird Japanese game shows.”
I couldn’t believe it. A lot of the advertisements and shit I had seen while Googling had mentioned the competition was also a “hit TV show,” but I figured that was bullshit.
“I didn’t realize it wasn’t based in Seattle,” she continued, “but I’m sure I’ve seen it before.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “So it’s like, people dancing in what looks like a big boxing ring —”
“Yeah, and the winner is picked based on the scream-o-meter!” Both of us were getting excited at this bizarre, amazing coincidence. She was thrilled and amused I’d heard of this stupid public-access show; I was shocked and amused that she’d heard of it.
I agreed with her on the scream-o-meter; while there’s no reference to that in the script, it’s definitely made clear that the winner is chosen based on audience reaction.
“I’m not kidding, Stan, everybody around here has heard of this stupid thing,” she said. “We’ve all seen it, to the point where I’ve actually had a long conversation with the girls at work about just what the fuck it’s supposed to be. It’s even weirder than the Japanese game shows.”
I couldn’t believe it. Not only did it strike another blow to my waning fear that The Manager is a some kind of small-time con artist, I was once again amazed that The Manager really does have this amazing passion for what he does. I’m not a dance fan, so I’m not exactly leaping on board the lovefest with him, but his intensity and passion for it — so much so that he wants to make a movie about it to make the contest even more popular — goes a long way toward making me more comfortable with him as a Manager.
Mark e-mailed me the other day saying sometimes he doesn’t bother writing coverage on a script that’s truly awful, but if The Manager is hyping it up, he’ll do the coverage no matter what. We both see that passion, and even if something has a bunch of problems it not only makes us want to do the coverage instead of just saying “This is a waste of time” — it actually inspires us to try harder to solve the problems and make it good enough that we’re passionate about it. The Manager is just starting out, maybe he’s not totally sure what he’s doing, but if he could be as passionate about mine (or Mark’s) scripts as he is about these other projects, that’s a desirable element to have: our advocate, always rooting for us and wanting us to get better. That’s what makes a good manager.
Well, that and business sense. He’ll get there someday.
Posted by Stan on August 13, 2006 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Family: The Horror…, The Manager Chronicles
August 12, 2006
Dough
To my surprise, last night The Manager actually sent the money he offered to cover that script. I figured losing out on that would be (deserved) punishment for talking shit, but he came through. I’m impressed.
Posted by Stan on August 12, 2006 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Money Troubles, The Manager Chronicles
August 11, 2006
Old-Timey Racism
Click for larger image
This was an advertisement at the bottom of a piece of sheet music from 1923.
Posted by Stan on August 11, 2006 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
August 10, 2006
I’ve Made a Huge Mistake
It’s been a pleasant month, interning for The Manager, reading some of the worst screenplays in the history of mankind for no money. For me, it’s actually kind of nice. You learn similar things from bad screenplays that you do from bad movies. It’s nice to read a script and say, “Jeez, this was bad — but why, and do I have the same problems in one of my screenplays?” Even better, it makes me say, “Good God, this is a piece of shit — I can do better.”
This happened to me recently; reading an awful adventure script, I said, “Fuck, I can do this better,” so I dusted off an extremely old and awful script I wrote, gutted it, and rewrote it from top to bottom. I sent it to my friend Mark — the guy who told me about The Manager in the first place — who loved it. He said it “could be an Adult Swim series,” which insulted me but it was meant as a high compliment. It’s nice when something inspires me to do better, even if it’s “Adult Swim series” better. What would happen if the flow of bad-to-slightly-above-mediocre scripts dissipated?
This week, I almost found out.
Exactly one week ago, The Manager e-mailed me a new batch of scripts, one of which was — to my surprise — co-authored by The Manager himself. At first I wondered if this was a conflict of interest; would he really expect that I’d give a totally honest response to the guy who might very well make or break my career? Maybe he would, but I knew if I hated it I’d never tell him that. I’d give the feedback a sugar-coating so thick it would even repulse Krispy Kreme.
I read it almost immediately, and I didn’t like it very much. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever sent me — not by a long shot — but it had a lot of problems. Was it that it was bad, or was it not just my cup of tea? I decided it was a combination; the poor execution of what could have been a decent story really sunk it, writing-wise. Even if it was well-told, I’d be able to respect the writing without actually enjoying the script. Considering it’s about dance, there’s no way I’d enjoy it. I hate watching dancers in general, I especially hate hip-hop dancing, and there are few things less exciting than reading a bunch of pages that say, “He wows them with his great dancing.”
I told Mark that The Manager had sent me his own script, and over the weekend he asked how it was. I wrote him back, bluntly and honestly, “The Manager’s script sucked.” That’s an actual quote from my e-mail, and I can’t say it gets more direct than that. I went into details, explaining my specific issues with it, but that was how I opened the paragraph and that was my bottom line. I actually felt I had my work cut out for me trying to find something to latch onto to improve it. If I were being completely honest, I’d say to fly out a safe distance and nuke the script from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
I spent the weekend thinking about the script, wondering about its quality. Eventually I settled back on the characters, who I even admitted in my e-mail to Mark were interesting. They just weren’t developed as well as they could have been, and they suffered from typical commercial-character illogic that frustrated me. “This person, as established, wouldn’t react like this.” I felt I had some stuff to work with approaching it from that angle, so on Sunday night I decided I’d read another of the scripts he’d sent. I hoped it’d be worse (and holy shit was it ever) to soften the blow of feedback that tried to be positive but still didn’t work around the fact that it needs a lot of work, then I’d send the coverage for both on Monday.
There’s another layer to this story. Shortly after sending the scripts last week, The Manager sent another in an “urgent” e-mail, saying there’d be an opportunity to make money to cover a script. I’m hard up for cash, so I did it first thing Friday morning. I called The Manager, who was surprised at my promptness; he asked me to e-mail my address so he could cut a check and sent it out. He called back a few hours later and left a VoiceMail suggesting I e-mail him my bank account number so he could direct-deposit it. What the fuck? I sent him my PayPal address and figured if he didn’t like that, I’d be done with him. Until this setback, I had been very close to trusting him. My investigative work (i.e., calling production companies) was overwhelmingly positive. He’s as legit as somebody just starting out can be, so I was happy to hear that. But this worried me, and I sent a semi-annoyed, semi-paranoid diatribe about this to Mark.
Monday rolled around, and I awakened to an e-mail from Mark in my inbox:
Subject: I screwed up…
Uhh…okay? I opened it up to see what that was all about and found a rude awakening: Mark had written a reply to my e-mail in which he wrote some of the following:
- He was sorry but not surprised to hear The Manager’s script wasn’t very good.
- I should try trusting The Manager but if I have a problem, maybe I should set up a dummy savings account for him to deposit cash, then transfer it immediately to my real account.
Unfortunately, instead of sending this reply to me, he had accidentally sent it to The Manager. He didn’t even realize his mistake until receiving a response from The Manager asking him to call, with Mark’s original e-mail pasted below it. Mark asked for advice on how to spin it so he came out well. Him?! What about me?!
There was no way this could end well, I thought. At first I was terrified that maybe Mark had my original e-mail in his response. Had this been the case, damage control and spin doctoring would have been impossible. It’s very difficult to spin “Your script sucks,” stated so plainly. I sent a response to Mark with a few choice suggestions for spin, but I told him I couldn’t do anything without knowing exactly what he had written to “me” — he needed to forward me his message so I could see what he wrote, how he had phrased it, et cetera, to construct a plausible deniability scenario.
I dismissed the idea that my original e-mail had been in his response — if he had done that, he would have had to actively work hard to accidentally send it to The Manager. I figured he wrote a new message, with no original at the bottom, and just sent it to the wrong person. Otherwise, he would have realized his mistake right off the bat. Relieved by that, I suggested that Mark tell The Manager that he was just abbreviating things. In my coverage, I intended to state that it wasn’t the best thing since sliced bread, but certainly not terrible. Mark should just say he was exaggerating to paraphrase; saying “I’m not surprised his script wasn’t very good” is plainer than “I’m not surprised his script has a few bright spots, some interesting characters, but needs a lot of story work.” Aside from my “sucks” comment, this is close to the truth.
As for the banking stuff — fuck, he could pin that on me all he wanted to. I have no problem calling the man and saying to his face that I am immediately distrustful of a guy who’s asking me to give him banking information. Of course, by that time he’d gotten back to me to say PayPal was fine, so I was sort of embarrassed for even flying off the handle, but I figured that could be explained away easily enough.
Once I sent this off to Mark, I started immediately on the coverage for both of the scripts I’d read. I hoped that, at least, would buy some goodwill. I was actually more honest than I probably would have been otherwise, since I needed to go in-depth on its problems to justify Mark’s phrasing. I hoped he at least appreciated the honesty; secondly, I hoped he appreciated the fact that the other script I read was a total dog of a piece of shit*, thus brightening any negative impressions on his own script. As I went back over the script to write the synopsis, I felt kind of guilty about even saying it “sucks” to begin with. It really wasn’t all that bad — all the character and story beats are there; they just need to be stronger.
Shortly after I sent this coverage to him, I got a text message. This was a first from The Manager. “Hi. Did you read my script? If so, what r your thoughts”
Clearly he hadn’t received my coverage, but I knew he had received Mark’s reply to me. Either he didn’t know Mark had written it to me (perhaps he had sent his script to several readers?), or he was trying to set some kind of trap. Well, two can play at that game. I’d already sent the coverage, so there wasn’t exactly an elaborate series of lies to wriggle out of (at least, not yet…), so I wrote back honestly, “Sent coverage 1hr ago. Good characters, story needs work.”
Two minutes later: “thanks. ya, i read the e-mail mark sent you.”
The trap is sprung! Except, wait, what? I had no idea what he was getting at. Was he saying, “This jibes with what Mark wrote you”? Was he saying, “Ha-HA! I’ve caught you in a rare instance of truth-telling. You can’t pull anything over on me”? I had no idea, and without Mark’s e-mail to make sure our stories were straight, I did the only thing I could think of: I completely ignored it. I shut off my cell phone for the rest of the day, didn’t read that last script The Manager had sent me (if I was going to be “fired” over this, why bother?), checked my e-mail obsessively with the hope Mark would get back to me…
More than 12 hours later, Mark finally got back to me, not with a forwarded message but with a new e-mail subjected “Sigh of relief.” He explained he had had a long phone conversation with The Manager in which he explained away everything, convinced The Manager that he had phrased the comment about the script in his own words, and now The Manager was only interested in moving forward. He told Mark, “All is forgiven,” his way of saying things are okay but Mark is still a dick, and he liked both of our work enough to keep us on. However, I felt like this resolved things for Mark but not for me. I figured if The Manager didn’t get back to me by morning, I’d send him a note explaining my side of the story.
I didn’t hear from him, so I decided to read that final script as yet another peace offering. I also attached a note that was an elaborate series of lies — I didn’t get his text message until late the night before, by that time I already had explanatory e-mails from Mark (otherwise I wouldn’t have known what The Manager was talking about) that also said he resolved it, but I figured I should explain that I never said anything negative and I didn’t know where Mark was getting that. I did own up to the banking paranoia and explained I had just flown off the handle a bit and Mark was trying to calm me down, but by that time I was already calm because PayPal was fine.
The next morning, I had two scripts waiting for me in my inbox, along with a note: “No worries. I could have been a lot angrier than I was.” Again, his way of saying things are okay but I’m a dick. I’ll take it; I deserve it. My big regret is that I doubt I’ll ever see that money for the coverage, but things worked out all right for now. As Mark said initially, hopefully the worst thing that’ll happen is The Manager will realize we know each other (we’d kept that a secret because we both planned to send The Manager our scripts and thought it would be mutually beneficial if we were sent copies of each others’ work to cover). Mark explained that away by saying he assumed The Manager knew we knew each other.
Mark and I also made a pact: in the future, on top of triple-checking who we’re sending e-mails to (something I always do anyway), if we have any gripes about The Manager in particular, we’ll call each other. That way, if we accidentally call The Manager (doubtful), we’ll at least know right away and not say anything stupid. We decided we can still gripe all we want about the quality of the scripts we’ve both read, so long as they aren’t written by The Manager.
The main thing that disappoints me about this incident is that I feel like now The Manager has something to hold over our heads, and he’ll use it to fuck us around. “Hey man, I didn’t fire you and I could have, so you’ll clean my pool.” But hey, we’re struggling and we’re foolishly adamant about being 2000 miles away from where we need to be to succeed in our chosen industry. I guess we deserve to get fucked around.
*The blandest of bland romantic comedies, loaded with dumb clichés and what Roger Ebert aptly calls the Idiot Plot (i.e., the characters have to become total idiots for the machinations of the plot to work; if anybody was reasonably intelligent, the story would end on page five) with this painful running gag about “nuts” being synonymous with “legumes,” which might have been funny and in-character (the main characters are portrayed as idiots) if not for the fact that a supposedly intelligent surgeon explains that he’s allergic to legumes, which he says are nuts. Here’s the thing: they’re not, with the exception of the peanut. And I fucking hate scripts that make me look shit up in the fucking dictionary to make sure I’m right because they were too lazy to do the research. How hard is it to make sure that “legume” actually means the same thing as “nuts”? The “you got kicked in the legumes” stuff just falls flat because every time the author mentions it, he keeps reminding me that he’s as borderline retarded as his characters. This culminates in the characters scraping walnut shavings into the surgeon’s salad, provoking an allergic reaction.
Here’s how to fix this fucking joke and actually make it laugh-out-loud funny (at least, I laughed out loud when I thought of it, and I usually don’t find anything I say, do, or think very funny): the characters are fucking idiots, right? So the surgeon says, “I’m allergic to legumes.” He doesn’t say, “They’re nuts.” The idiots pretend they know what it means. Soon as he walks away: “What the fuck does that mean?” Retard debate on the definition, resulting in them agreeing it means “nuts.” It means all those stupid “kicked in the legumes”-type nut jokes could work because it’s showing how fucking stupid the characters are. It still peaks with them coming up with this elaborate, supposedly clever plan to scrape walnut into the guys salad, except this time — nothing happens. No reaction, and they can’t figure out why. I’d laugh, especially if they change the plan to something really simple like trying to kick the shit out of him (and failing at that, too).
Posted by Stan on August 10, 2006 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em, The Manager Chronicles
