Stan Has Issues™ — Random Musings

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April 14, 2010

Signs and Signals

So I figured it’s time for a status update (only two weeks late). If you remember where we left off, I was struggling with whether or not to ask out Dentist Chick. I definitely got the “interested” vibe off of her, and she’s super-hot, so I figured, why not?

Here’s why not: I’m a pussy.

I’ve always had a difficult time asking women out. I think this is mostly a result of the fact that, between the ages of 12 and 14, I asked out approximately 60 women and got turned down by around 75. Trust me: the math shakes out. After that, I usually ended up stumbling into relationships. Once in a great while, I’d work up the nerve to blurt out something resembling an ask-out. The majority of the time, I’d end up in Friendville. But when in Friendville, you get to meet hot chicks’ less-hot friends, which allows for the opportunity to fall headlong into a relationship neither person is terribly interested in.

So when I need to ask somebody out, I’ll do one of two things: pussy out or put it off. I actually start making deals with myself. On the day of my filling appointment, I told myself, “If she’s not assisting, I won’t ask her out.” Because we would only have privacy if she was assisting (before the dentist came in), and I wouldn’t want to put her in an awkward situation in front of her coworkers (or humiliate myself in front of them). I eventually amended that to say, “Well, maybe if she’s there and I see her, I’ll ask for her number.” But I kept vacillating, knowing full well that as much as I wanted to ask her out, I knew it’d end badly. I don’t care what people say — and about half the women I know (none of the men, conspicuously…) have said something along the lines of, “Hey, you can’t know what’ll happen” — I do know what’ll happen. Experience teaches, and clear patterns emerge.

When I showed up, not only did she not assist — she wasn’t even there!

Except, it turned out, she was. After they’d gotten me in the chair, she came to visit me gleefully. I thought, “Now’s your chance!” Except, I was in the fucking chair, craning my neck like a John Cleese character to see her behind me. Hopping out of the chair would have been weird, but asking her out with my body contorted would have been weirder. I let the moment pass, deciding Fortuna had spun her wheel and dealt me this blow.

After I got the filling, Dentist Chick waited for me at the billing counter. She checked me out (in more ways than one?), but there was another woman there, and I could tell she was eavesdropping, so I got gun shy. After I was done, I got the distinct sense she didn’t want me to leave. She scrambled to come up with an excuse to get me to stay, when she came up with one: “Have you scheduled your six-month checkup?”

“I think so,” I said suavely.

Luckily, I hadn’t. So she set up the appointment, and as she looked through the computer schedule to figure out a date, she thought of another way to make me stay: rambling about other people from high school she’s run into. As her second story tapered off, the phone rang. She sighed, apologizing as she answered it. “Can you please hold?” she asked the caller, turning back to me. (Remember that the next time you call a doctor’s office to make an appointment and get put on hold.)

All these signs seemed a little subtle, maybe too subtle to mean anything… Then, she turned her attention back to the schedule and said, “Okay, six months brings us to…” She noisily sighed, her body literally heaving as she realized the date said “October 4th.” She said it wistfully, as if the idea of me not coming in until then would be akin to me going off to fight in World War II.

“Well…” she said as she filled out the little courtesy card. “I hope I’ll see you sooner than that.” She looked up at me, her eyes bulging as it seemed to occur to her that what she had just said might have seemed like a gaffe. “I mean…” she stammered. “Around town or whatever.” Maybe it was meaningless, but she and I both know that we’ve never, ever seen each other around town.

But she still had that wistful tone in her voice. This all added up to something, didn’t it?

I said, “Yeah, can I get your number? I’ll give you a call when my schedule clears”—ha!—“and maybe we can get together.”

She smiled wide and said, “Yeah! Okay!”

Here’s where things got weird. She took a sheet of scrap paper and wrote out her phone number and e-mail address with slow, painstaking, almost calligraphic effort. While she wrote, she asked, “And are you on Facebook?”

As I mentioned, we’ve actually been Facebook friends for awhile. Now, maybe this didn’t mean anything — she’s one of those people who has, like, 800 friends — and maybe brief flirtations with former crushes(?) in her current place of employment mean very little to her. Whatever the case, that just sort of seems like something a girl who was actually interested, and on Facebook somewhat frequently, would know. Am I crazy for thinking this? Do I just want to read too much into everything?

I tried to be a little suave about it, but playing it off like, “I think we might already be friends — but I don’t know, I’m hardly ever on it.”

I could tell from her reddening face that she was embarrassed, so she backpedaled and played it off in the same way: “Oh, me neither. I just — yeah, well, I’m on it, so either way.” (P.S.: I knew from trolling her profile that she’s on Facebook at least once a day.)

So I left with her number, but getting it was only half the battle. I couldn’t help wondering if I was reading the dating landscape correctly. See, I feel like back in high school, getting a girls number was not a tacit acknowledgment that she was into you, or that if you called her, it would be for a date. College was a little different — if and only if the chick gave you her number (no class phone trees, cheaters!), that Meant Something. Does that rule still apply? Does the fact that she gave me her number mean that she knows I’m interested, and she’s interested, too? If she had zero interest, wouldn’t she say something like, “Well, we’re not really allowed to give out personal information…”?

A few days later, she posted a note on my Facebook wall, still backpedaling, laughing about how we are indeed friends but I need to post more obnoxious, in-your-face status updates to get her attention. I responded playfully, but I really just don’t have much interest in Facebook. Besides, I think calling up and asking her on a date is a better attention-getter, don’t you?

I did call her up finally, today. Because, once again, for those of you who are skimming: I am a pussy.

I kept telling myself I’d call her last night, but I pussied out for the lamest of all reasons — can’t miss Lost! At the end of the day, it’s all about rejection: I don’t want to call her up, engage her in some conversation, ask her out, and listen as the air is sucked out of the conversation. So today at work, I went out to my car, opened up my cell phone’s address book, and stared at her name for five solid minutes, willing myself to hit the SEND button.

This was the ultimate puss move. I knew there was a 90% chance she wouldn’t answer. I knew I’d get VoiceMail, where I could say something like, “Let me know if you’re free this weekend,” and if she called back, I would know she had some interest. If she didn’t… Ugh, if she doesn’t… Well, at least she doesn’t have to call me back. I can deal with rejection a lot more easily if I don’t have to make the person say the words. Silence speaks volumes.

Nevertheless, I’d like to think it’s too soon to tell. She’s still at work, so I hold out some hope she’ll call tonight.

Some hope.

Posted by Stan on April 14, 2010 5:52 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (2)

March 27, 2010

Pizza and Count Chocula

The funniest thing I’ve read in awhile: July 16, 2006 Wikipedia revision for Count Chocula

The second-funniest thing I’ve read in awhile: The Sneeze — The Great Pizza Orientation Test

The funniest thing I’ve looked blankly at for a few seconds before realizing what I’m looking at: Special Pizza Hut Instructions

Good times!

Posted by Stan on March 27, 2010 11:08 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 26, 2010

Commercial Conundrum

[Note: I intended to post this last week but got busy and, per usual, forgot about the existence of this blog. There will be a new script review — of Clive Barker’s Dread — this week.]

This week’s attempt at a script review put me in an awkward position. You see, I haven’t read any of the scripts that are opening. A few weeks ago, I read some bad intelligence telling me Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior will be out this Friday. Turns out, that’s not the case. I guess it’s coming out way the fuck in September, and I really don’t want to be reviewing scripts more than a week or two in advance of their release. So, instead, I’m writing one of the many promised non-review articles that I’ve been too lazy and/or busy to get done.

Something’s been bugging me for the past few months. I got used to writing development notes, which outline a script’s strengths and weaknesses while offering suggestions for ways to improve the script. (That way, Your Boss — who, if you’re lucky, will read maybe one out of every ten scripts he or she forces you to read — will have something reasonably intelligent to say in his next meeting. It’s an elaborate charade, and everyone knows that his or her notes are coming from some borderline-retarded, caffeine-addled reader, yet nobody ever says a word.) On some level, you deal with marketability, but everywhere I’ve worked, they’re surprisingly concerned about making the script as good as possible. In other words, they’ve already convinced themselves that they can sell the product — so now, the challenge is making the product great.

So why do bad movies happen, if everyone’s so concerned about making great product? I’m no expert, but here’s a pretty sound theory: you take 15-20 different people, all with different agendas and different beliefs about what constitutes greatness (some dare to think “artistic merit”; some think “profitability”; others think “myself,” meaning their primary concern is the project making themselves look good; still others think “Well, I have to say something” — they might honestly think this is the greatest script ever written, but in order to justify their jobs, they feel compelled to say something ridiculous like, “Why not set this movie in 18th-century Paris instead of modern North Carolina?”), give them the same script, and you’ll get 50-100 different ideas on how to make the script fit various people’s ideas of greatness. After deluging the writer(s) with these ideas, the writer(s) have the unenviable task of trying to make everyone happy. If they’re great at what they do, this can still result in a good script; more often, it results in a big, sloppy mess.

My realization after reading a few of last year’s Black List scripts made me question this theory, however. Some of the scripts were good, some were flat-out great — but a lot just kinda sucked, which makes me wonder about agendas. I understand that the Black List is all political, so maybe these aren’t really the most favored scripts. Now, since I know work for a distributor/production company, I only read scripts of movies that are nearing completion, so I’m about a year behind the development cycle. But when I look at the Black List from 2008 and even 2007, only one of my favorite scripts (The Book of Eli) made it, and with a relatively low score (though I must qualify, yet again, by saying I did enjoy The Way Back and Whip It, though neither qualifies as a “favorite”). My tastes run pretty mainstream, so it’s not like I’m bitter that the list lacks moody, symbol-heavy French scripts about rape — so does that make me a freakish anomaly, or does that make everyone else an idiot? You know where I stand!

The problem I have isn’t so much with my the holes in my theory about why the development process fails a good script more often than it helps a bad one. It’s more about the differences between reading for a distributor and reading for development. Distributors have their own goals for coverage, chief among them: will this make money? Working for production companies and shady literary managers, I’ve never been asked to consider that question — it’s their job to convince others that the script will make money. So now, I have to adjust my radar. It’s not about better or worse. If the script is locked, the big names are attached, and the budget is set, how much money will it make?

Initially, I tailored my arguments to whether or not I liked the script. It could be the world’s least commercial script, and I would rally around it and insist it could make money with no budget and a no-name cast and make $1 billion in its opening weekend. Conversely, if I hated something, I’d build the synopsis and notes in such a way that it argued against its profit potential, no matter who the stars are or who’s directing. It’s pretty basic, right?

Things have gotten more complex, though. In the past couple of months, I’ve received a number of scripts that I actually like, yet I can’t argue in favor of their commercial possibilities. There’s one broad question I find myself unable to answer: other than me, who’s the audience? Three examples: (1) a romantic comedy, set in England, about an American business student who pays her tuition by starting a business of her own — as a beard for gay men, (2) a story that’s essentially a vignette-driven biopic about an Australian dog that’s apparently famous, and (3) a horror-comedy about a pair of hillbillies who are mistaken for psychotic serial killers by a group of dumbass college students on spring break.

The main problem with all three: they’re not great scripts. I can recognize this fact. They happen to hit certain sweet spots in my sensibilities, but they all have their share of problems. Although it’s actually funny, Script #1 follows its rom-com formula much too rigidly, which means two things: its fair share of Idiot Plot moments, and characters who are more like funny stereotypical constructs than real people. Script #2 is catastrophically unfocused, weakening its structure. Script #3 is a one-joke premise stretched to feature length — granted, it’s a funny joke, but it’d work better as a sketch than a 90-minute movie.

Because these aren’t exceptional scripts, I can’t argue that they’re so fucking good, audiences will embrace them no matter what. But all three share bigger problems: what audience do they want? Does a romantic comedy about a woman pretending to date gay men want to appeal to a straight male? Does a biopic about a legendary Australian dog have any interest in cultivating an American audience? How will a horror-comedy appeal to horror and/or comedy fans when (a) it’s not scary but (b) it’s too gory for comedy fans with zero interest in gore-based comedy (especially when there’s little variety to the humor)?

This leads to obvious thought: I’ve managed to become a sellout hack without even selling a script.

But have I? There’s a weird netherworld in which certain movies exist. Road House is not a good movie, but I love it anyway. It’s entertaining and watchable, but I have no illusions about its quality. Action Jackson, Mr. Mom, Billy Madison, the Doris Day-James Garner comedy where she was stranded on a desert island for years whose title I never remember even though I watch it every time it pops up on Fox Movie Channel (and have consequently seen it about 85 times)… All examples of movies resting in this weird, limbo-like plane of movie existence: they’re likable crap.

How do you argue that to a distributor, though? “It won’t make any money, but man, if it gets on cable, it’ll develop a huge cult following. That cult audience may buy it on DVD or BluRay, but probably not because they play it on Encore 75 times a month.” That’s not what they want to hear. They want to hear about asses in seats and/or DVDs sold, because they don’t make any money through cable deals. So that means I have to torpedo the likable crap in order to make my bosses happy and keep my job.

Is that a good or bad thing? Maybe I’m justifying bullshit, but I feel like it’s the right thing to do, ethically. If something’s not of obvious high quality (like, say, The Book of Eli, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but anyone who reads it will say, “Okay, at least I can see why he liked it”), but I like it anyway, it doesn’t feel right to recommend it. That’d be like recommending a friend for a job when you know he’s kind of a slacker: it’s nice to help out a friend, but that makes you look bad. Some might argue it’d be wrong to not help the slacker friend, but getting him a job he’ll take for granted isn’t help. Explaining to him why you’re not helping him get the job is, at least, food for thought, and real friends get that. Hell, real friends wouldn’t even put you into that awkward situation. Only douchenozzles like Henry Fool would do that.

Justified or not, I still feel bad about it. There’s a place in the world for lovable crap, so movies like that shouldn’t be punished because they’ll never make Avatar money.

Posted by Stan on January 26, 2010 2:45 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

July 13, 2009

Check This Shit Out…

First, some exciting news: thanks to the inexplicable/unfortunate popularity of my podcasts, I will finally kowtow to the masses (i.e., 6-7 people) and start recording more. Look for them to start appearing (at least) weekly until I get sick of them again.

A variation on this article was e-mailed to me by a reader. I have to say, while I was no fan of The Beaver’s screenplay, this news means the movie could at least be interesting.

Trailers have begun appearing for Jennifer’s Body, the new film “from the mind of” Diablo Cody. Now might be a good time to look at my script review, so you can, like me, watch this trailer and wonder why the movie they’re marketing in no way resembles the movie they made. The trailer cutter does get some points for playing to the movie’s only strength: Megan Fox’s boobs.

For those of you mourning the lack of recent content, take the opportunity to bask in the same things I enjoy. Watch The Purple Rose of Cairo or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or, even better, buy Every Window in My House, the 2004 album by Kathryn Musilek. I listen to a metric shit ton of music, and I can think of only two other albums that have had such a profound impact on me. Great songwriting, great sound, wonderfully impassioned vocals… Unlike the other two (Pet Sounds and Born to Run), precious few are aware of this album’s existence. This needs to change. Come on, it’s only $9.97 at CDBaby or $9.99 on iTunes. This is an album I’ve listened to, on average, twice a week for the past five years. I simply don’t get tired of it.

Interested in eeeeexxxxtreeeme goofiness? Check out the comments here. I never expected this blog to turn into The Jerry Springer Show, but there you have it. Interesting side note: Dena Lyle, allegedly the original commenter, found this blog using the search terms “judge mathis bailiff brendan.” Why she chose those search terms to drop her comment, I’ll never understand…

Posted by Stan on July 13, 2009 5:59 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (3)

June 30, 2009

The A.V. Club on Woody Allen

I don’t usually write long, ranty responses to articles unrelated to Juno, but I read one yesterday that really stuck in my craw. This will possibly sound obnoxious, whiny, and defensive, but deal with it — this article offended me deeply, on a personal level. (Note: I’ve included the article link, but feel free to not waste your time reading it, since I plan to quote from it extensively and respond to each of their “points.”)

Longtime readers know of my deep and abiding love for Woody Allen. Despite the oddly inconsistent quality of his movies over the past, let’s say, 20 years, his body of work from 1969-1989 more than makes up for a few dark spots. Even now, he still occasionally makes great movies; mostly, they range from “decent” (Small Time Crooks) to “unwatachable” (Scoop). So defensive though I may be, I’m not blind to the man’s flaws (both personally and artistically). Keep that in mind if what I write after this sounds insufferable.

I guess I feel compelled to respond because it’s hard enough to get people of my generation to watch Woody Allen movies without a complete hatchet job of an article discouraging them from ever taking the plunge. Typically, I enjoy A.V. Club’s reviews and articles, but this is just a flaming turd.

1. African-American people
For a brilliant writer and perceptive chronicler of the human psyche, there’s a whole lot that Woody Allen, or at least the Woody Allen we know from his movies, just doesn’t seem to understand. Allen’s charming, maddening new movie, Whatever Works, provides another in-depth glimpse into the strengths and weaknesses of his neurotic, acerbic, New York-centric worldview. Allen is a whiz at exposing the anxieties and desires of the upper-middle-class Manhattan smart-set, but his blind spots are legion. Take African-Americans for example. Allen named his son after the great pitcher Satchel Paige and has a deep abiding love for jazz. But African-Americans have, by and large, been conspicuously absent from Allen’s films. Allen very tardily tried to rectify that situation by casting Chiwetel Ejiofor in 2004’s hopelessly muddled Melinda And Melinda—a veritable master class in all the shit Woody Allen doesn’t get—as an impossibly suave, unthreatening musician so improbably perfect he makes Sidney Poitier look menacing. Congratulations, your progressive treatment of race just caught up with 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.Â

So… He loses points for portraying a black man as dignified, educated, and well-spoken, with abundant charm and artistic talent? I guess on one level, this article chaps my ass because it sort of implies through its half-cutesy, half-hostile tone that Allen himself isn’t aware of his shortcomings. He’s stated multiple times — because the A.V. Club is not the first to bring up the lack of black characters in his movies — that he doesn’t feel confident writing authentically about the black experience. That’s why he went from making an ultra-depressing movie about black jazz musicians to making Radio Days.

And then there’s the fact that the writer of this little tidbit completely ignores Cookie, the black prostitute played by Hazelle Goodman in Deconstructing Harry. She effectively becomes Harry Block’s sidekick, receiving nearly as much screen time as Allen himself, and although the “black prostitute” characterization is a stereotype, Allen’s screenplay and Goodman’s performance give Cookie enough dimension to make her one of his increasingly rare strong, interesting female characters. Plus, it’s one of the rare late-period Allen movies that gets around the inexplicable, self-indulgent “old man conquers women young enough to be his granddaughter” conceit by (a) making their relationship 100% sexual and (b) making Harry Block pay for the “relationship.”

2. The American South
Complaining to a friend about the insularity of New York in Annie Hall, Allen says, “Don’t you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.” So if that’s how the rest of the country sees New York, how does New York see the rest of the country? Based on Whatever Works, Allen’s vision of the South is pretty much the opposite of New York, populated by right-wing, Christian, uneducated yokels (and closeted homosexuals) who devote themselves to intellectually vapid pursuits like beauty pageants. When teenage runaway Evan Rachel Wood arrives in Manhattan from backwater Mississippi, she’s an empty vessel that David can fill with his misanthropic “wisdom.” Her conservative parents (Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr.) arrive later in their Sunday best, but their regressive Southern values are easily tamed by the bohemian polyamory and tolerance of the big city. Being Southern is a disease that New York City can apparently cure.Â

It’s harder to find specific examples to refute this point using a specific example, because I can’t think of a Woody Allen movie (other than Whatever Works, which I’ve not yet seen) that even acknowledges the South’s existence. I guess this is their only valid point, although it’s at least sort of funny that the A.V. Club and others have railed against Allen for not writing more minority characters, yet nobody seems to care that he’s patently ignored vast oceans of the Caucasian world, as well.

Also, I’ve spent enough time in the rural South to know that “right-wing, Christian, uneducated yokels” is the rule rather than the exception. Mainly because, when I’m not being shot at for hiking into somebody else’s ill-defined property line, the friends and family I have down there (many of whom suffer from this themselves) insist that the anti-intellectual movement has swept locals up in such a fervor that they actually value their lack of education, just as they value their religion and their (generally right-wing, often to the unfortunate extreme) political views. And it’s fine that they feel that way, until you disagree with them. Then you never hear the end of it. On the plus side, they’re easily distracted, which defuses a lot of tension. They also believe words like “grandma” are “grayma,” derived in their mind from the hair color, and they call ghosts “haints,” which actually is derived from the word “haunt,” but became a laugh-out-loud stupid part of the standard lexicon generations ago. So, really, how smart and non-yokely could they be?

It’s a generalization, yes, but just because some Southerners are pinko liberal abortion-loving atheists who teach junior college and drive hybrids doesn’t mean the “right-wing, Christian, uneducated yokels” don’t exist and shouldn’t be portrayed in cinema. As I said, I haven’t seen Whatever Works, so I can’t say how offensive and/or stereotypical the characters are, but they can’t possibly be worse than any of the characters in Mighty Aphrodite (which, admittedly, they call out as obnoxious and cartoonish). Nevertheless, it shows that Allen can stereotype his native New York culture with the same skill and aplomb as Southerners.

3. Great Britain
Back in 2005, Match Point was widely hailed as a major comeback for Allen, who seemed refreshed after leaving New York to stake out new territory in the British Isles. British critics were not so kind: Allen’s decision to repurpose a thriller set in the Hamptons for London made for a vivid change of scenery, but his cultural tone-deafness showed, too. Guardian/Observer critic Peter Bradshaw dismissed his portrait of upper-crust Brits as “quaintly conceived,” took issue with dialogue that “sounds clenched, stilted and occasionally plain bizarre” (and also contained lots of egregious mispronunciations and errors), and resented Allen’s tourist’s gloss on the city itself. Allen didn’t much improve with 2007’s Cassandra’s Dream, which attempted to tell the same reheated Crimes And Misdemeanors story from the other half of the class spectrum. The two “cockney” brothers played by Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell sport accents so egregiously inauthentic that Uncut critic Stephen Trousse mocked them as “wavering between Dick Van Dyke and Tony Curtis doing Cary Grant in Some Like It Hot.” And Allen’s understanding of working-class South London isn’t much more nuanced. The bickering family in Cassandra’s Dream looks virtually interchangeable with their counterparts in Annie Hall or Radio Days; the only difference is that the brothers in Cassandra’s Dream have access to a yacht.Â

I’m probably not qualified to dispute this because I’m not a Brit, and aside from what I’ve gleaned from the absurd amount of British TV I’ve watched, I don’t know much about their culture. However, the fact that most of the English reviews when Match Point and Cassandra’s Dream didn’t do much more than take potshots at the shit they know Allen may not know much about (colloquialisms, cultural norms, etc.), rather than reviewing the movies themselves, suggests that there isn’t that much less to complain about, or maybe just that the Brits are living up to their stereotypical reputation as stuff, condescending pricks. It’s not that the movies are great — neither is, although I think Cassandra’s Dream was inexplicably and unfairly maligned — or that I hate British people, but the article fails to acknowledge Allen was sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place. His Dreamworks deal ended, his popularity in the U.S. has decreased to a pitiful point, and the only deal he could get was with BBC Films — on the condition he set the stories in the UK using primarily British actors.

Most of that’s beside the point, however. The thesis of this bulletpoint is: “Allen’s UK-set movies sucked and got bad reviews; therefore, Allen doesn’t get the UK.” Melinda and Melinda was significantly worse than either Match Point or Cassandra’s Dream and got mostly bad reviews. Does this mean Allen doesn’t understand New York? Also notice that this argument never once mentions Scoop, the worst of his UK movies and an absolute low point in his career. Could this be because the universally negative reviews concentrate on the actual broadness of the movie itself, rather than nitpicking the many things Allen clearly doesn’t understand about the culture?

4. The Female Psyche (post-Husbands And Wives)
Woody Allen is a fascinating paradox. He’s written some first-rate roles for women and guided multiple generations of actresses to their defining performances. Then, in 1994, the part of Allen’s brain that understands women apparently exploded and his female characters became a thinly sketched parade of castrating shrews (Christina Ricci in Anything Else being an especially egregious example) and vapid, rampaging sexpots intent on bedding Allen and his countless surrogates. With Melinda And Melinda, Allen set out to showcase the formidable talents of Australian actress Radha Mitchell and ended up giving her two terrible, borderline unplayable roles, one comic, one dramatic. Mira Sorvino picked up an Oscar playing a sentient Playboy Party Joke of a hooker with a heart of gold in 1996’s Mighty Aphrodite. But the ultimate late-period Allen female creation is Samantha Morton in 1999’s Sweet & Lowdown. She’s cute, sad, supportive, and completely mute. On the upside: The carefully crafted women of last year’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona suggest that this situation might be righting itself.

What the hell does this even mean? “From 1977 to 1995, Allen created a plethora of vividly written, well-acted female characters. Then he started creating awful caricatures, except in certain movies, and maybe now he’s going back to writing good, solid female roles.” Were they high when they wrote this?

Never mind the sloppy argument. I don’t have any great insight into Allen’s personal life, so I won’t spend time arguing about the odd metamorphosis of his post-Farrow filmography. I’m sure someone who took the time to thoroughly research it could make a solid case about the impact his personal life and feelings have on his films and the way he writes his characters, but I’m not that guy. I only know this: eventually, writers just start pumping out shit. I’m sure there are hundreds of reasons why this happens, but the important thing is that it happens. So this argument is sort of like saying, “Man, Stephen King sure writes crap now. He clearly doesn’t understand how to scare people.” In order for that to make sense, you have to ignore a sizable, more memorable and more artistically worthwhile chunk of his material — which is essentially what the A.V. Club does. Cherry-picking examples using arbitrary time periods and pointing out counterexamples without acknowledging that they totally obliterate the argument…is just shitty writing. I guess that means I need to ignore the hundreds of other well-written reviews and articles and say the A.V. Club doesn’t understand how to persuade people.

5. Gentiles
Despite the fact that the goyim of America make up a large chunk of his audience, Woody Allen doesn’t quite seem to get them, despite his romances with people named Farrow and Keaton. In Annie Hall, it’s easy to get the impression that Alvy Singer gets off on dating a non-Jewish girl from the Midwest in the same way he would if he showed up at a party with a space-alien on his arm. Gentiles are so lacking in neurosis—which, in a Woody Allen movie, is essentially the trait that defines humanity—that they might as well be robots. Indeed, Woody’s robot butler in Sleeper seems more natural and unaffected than the chilly, affected Gentiles who populate films like September and Alice.Â

Nice job ignoring Hannah and Her Sisters, Interiors, and Another Woman, in which the “chilly, affected Gentiles” are nothing but neurosis. And ignoring the fact that Annie Hall sort of treats Alvy and his ultra-New York Jewish liberal intellectual Central Park West Brandeis University socialist summer camp upbringing with the same space-alien attitude.

6. Los Angeles
Woody Allen’s films seem to be funded by a mysterious cabal of Europeans, well-heeled New York comedy buffs, and clarinet aficionados. He therefore has no use for the motion picture industry, or for its Los Angeles headquarters. His characters seem vaguely aware that there is a place called Hollywood, and that it’s geared towards the production of movies that people in Woody Allen movies would never see, but otherwise they react to any suggestion of La-La Land with the kind of revulsion that most people reserve for “Best Fascist Dictator” Adolf Hitler. Woody’s famous line about California—that its only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light—only rings false because obviously, he’s never driven a car in his life, and wouldn’t know that you can’t [sic] do that in New York, too. Speaking of…

A filmmaker with a ’70s heyday who disdains and distances himself from the Hollywood establishment?! If you say so… I can’t wait for A.V. Club’s next inventory: “12 things Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, and George Lucas don’t get.”

Seriously, though, regardless of Allen’s personal feelings (and one could argue those feelings come not from not getting Hollywood but from getting it a little too well), half the points on this inventory seem to come solely from repeated viewings of Annie Hall. Allen has taken his fair share of potshots at the Hollywood establishment, but the only time an open disdain for Los Angeles and the entertainment industry became an actual character trait and plot point was in Annie Hall. Even in Hannah and Her Sisters, Allen’s character laments not moving out to L.A. with his former writing partner and becoming rich as kings writing horrible sitcoms — he’s portrayed as the one who made the bad move, not the other way around.

Also, I’m all for taking unfair potshots, but could you make rights on red in New York circa 1976-1977? I’d trust Woody Allen to know that more than the Midwestern 20- and 30-somethings who wrote this article. Speaking of…

7. Driving
It’s hard to imagine Allen behind the wheel, but maybe that’s because 1977’s Annie Hall made his driving neuroses a fundamental character trait. As a kid, Allen’s Alvy Singer worked out aggression via bumper cars, impeding his ability to drive as an adult. When he attempts to drive during a trip to Los Angeles, he can’t leave a parking lot without ramming other cars and smarting off to a police officer. He’s uneasy as a passenger, too—first with a flighty Keaton behind the wheel, then with her potentially psychotic brother Christopher Walken, who confesses to him, “Sometimes when I’m driving on the road at night, I see two headlights coming toward me fast. I have the sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.” Hmm, Allen should probably stay off the road.

Like the last point, Annie Hall is the only movie where bad driving is both a plot point and a character trait. (In Manhattan, bad driving is a plot point, but he drove badly intentionally, in order to run over his ex-wife’s lesbian lover.) I recall a few offhanded references to bad driving in other movies, but it’s balanced by movies like Broadway Danny Rose, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), Manhattan Murder Mystery, and Deconstructing Harry. He drives cars like a normal person. Nobody dies or crashes. It’s almost like Annie Hall is a work of fiction.

8. Violence
For a guy who’s made a handful of murder-mysteries, Woody Allen seems to have the same attitude toward violence that most people have toward sewage disposal: They know it exists, but dwelling on the details is unpleasant and probably offensive. Whenever his movies make reference to war, they might as well bring up “Yakety Sax” on the soundtrack; references to the Holocaust are generally used as punchlines. And in his murder-mysteries, the violence itself is usually handled with the lightest touch this side of Agatha Christie. Crimes And Misdemeanors begins this tradition, and it hasn’t gotten any less ridiculous over time; in Woody Allen movies, violence is something that happens to other people, and then it’s only to get the plot rolling so he can do what he’s really good at. It’s this reluctance to portray things that make him feel icky that made Joe Queenan observe: “The only thing Woody Allen has in common with Ingmar Bergman is Sven Nykvist.”

So The Maltese Falcon is a bad movie because Archer’s death is kept to the shadows instead of having CSI-like CGI close-ups of the bullet ripping into his flesh? I know that sounds like an obnoxious straw-man argument, but I’m being 100% serious: Archer’s death puts the plot of one of cinema’s greatest movies into motion, but the movie doesn’t linger on the details. In fact, thanks to the one-two punch of the Hays code and common decency, Golden Age movies were never explicit in their violence, and the movies themselves rarely dwelled on on grisly carnage. So this means Alfred Hitchcock’s pre-Psycho output is a waste of time? Should Woody Allen have made Crimes and Misdemeanors a little more like Se7en in order for it to have any impact? What the fuck is the argument here?

(As a side-note, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, but I seem to recall Jonathan Rhys-Meyers icing the neighbor with the shotgun in Match Point being fairly gruesome and shocking.)

9. Bob Dylan
Give him this much credit: It takes a certain kind of courage to mock one of the best loved and most respected musicians in the history of modern pop music. In 1977, Bob Dylan was still very much in the public eye. He’d released Blood On The Tracks, one of the all-time greats, only two years before, and was still touring regularly when Annie Hall hit theaters. But despite Dylan’s critical acclaim, Allen wasn’t a fan, and there’s no greater way to slander an artist than through the praise of an idiot. While trying to get over his breakup with Diane Keaton, Woody Allen goes on a date with music reporter Shelley Duvall. She throws out words like “transplendent,” she’s nearly impossible to please sexually, and worst of all, she’s a devoted Dylan fanatic, prone to quoting from “Just Like A Woman” in rapturous, vapid tones. “And she aches just like a woman / But she breaks just like a little girl,” is beautiful when sung, but in this context, it sounds like the brain-dead meanderings of some college poet high on empty profundity.

What? Woody Allen doesn’t love Bob Dylan? HOW DARE HE?! (Full disclosure: while I love Highway 61 Revisited, I don’t particularly like Bob Dylan. Call the cops if you must. I’ll go willingly. But don’t say I don’t “get” him; I just don’t find his songs, lyrics, or performing ability particularly worthwhile.)

Honestly, though, neither my opinion nor Woody Allen’s matters with this oddly distorted point. Go ahead and watch Annie Hall. It’s okay; it won’t bite. One could argue it remains his most accessible, appealing film, so you’re bound to — at worst — not hate it. When you’re through with it, answer this: is the joke of Shelley Duvall’s character at the expense of Bob Dylan or not? I’d argue “or not.” Allen portrays her as lacking any original thought — she spends the bulk of her time quoting the opinions of others (not just Dylan) rather than expressing herself, and when Alvy makes a quip about his sexual functioning, she asks him “who said that?” (To which he responds, in one of the movie’s best lines, “I think it may have been Leopold and Loeb.”) So, in my mind, it’s not Dylan he hates so much as people who quote people like Dylan because they themselves have nothing to contribute. I don’t really see that as the same thing as “slandering through the praise of an idiot.”

10. Modern music in general; rock music in particular
The vast majority of Woody Allen’s films are set in New York, a city that gave us Brill Building pop, American punk, and hip-hop. But as far as he’s concerned, the music scene stopped evolving approximately three years after he was born. Every time contemporary music rears its ugly head in a Woody Allen movie, it’s the subject of scorn and derision, from his mockery of Annie Hall’s Fillmore East program to his reaction, in Hannah And Her Sisters, to Dianne Wiest’s taking him to a punk club. He acts like rock music was invented specifically to get on his nerves. Even his famous love of jazz, documented in the inappropriately named Wild Man Blues, focuses on traditional New Orleans styles from the teens. In Woody’s universe, even post-bop and cool jazz seem like intolerable intrusions on music as it should be; if Charles Mingus or Miles Davis ever showed up at one of his parties, he’d probably call a cop. Allen’s beyond-arms-length distance from rock did lead to the one funny line in Hollywood Ending, though, when Allen told his silly cartoon of a punk-rock son, “I love you Scumbag X.” Punk might just be silly names and abrasive noise to Allen, but the bond he shares with Scumbag X remains profound.Â

Stop the presses! A man who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s loves jazz?! I know I keep getting sarcastic, but I can’t figure out why, tonally, the writers seem so aghast at what’s at best a preference and at worst a personality quirk. I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. My music preferences lean toward rock and metal, but I also like jazz, opera, Romantic, and bluegrass. However, I will openly admit I don’t understand rap. Theoretically, I’m right in the age bracket and demographic (white suburbanite!) who should love rap. But I just don’t get it. I don’t get why the percussion has to be so overbearing, or why people think talking in rhythm is more impressive than singing. Like Allen and rock music, rap will only infect my work in the form of vaguely hostile jokes. Because I don’t understand it, and what I don’t understand, I ridicule. What’s wrong with that?

11. Independent And International Cinema After 1975
Allen studied at the feet of the masters and makes no attempt to hide it. Many of his films recall the style of great directors like Ingmar Bergman and John Cassavetes, paying homage while—usually, anyway—not letting the mimicry get in the way of his own artistic personality. But the films of others, or at least others to which Allen likes to pay tribute, pretty much ends with late-period Federico Fellini. Allen’s casting choices could double as time capsules for which actors were bubbling up at the time of the film’s production. (If that’s Juliette Lewis, this must be 1992.) But when he wants to try on another director’s tricks, he tends to return to the same sources, the stuff that made the deepest impression while he was still finding his own voice.

Am I wrong for assuming filmmakers are more frequently inspired by those who came before them than their contemporaries? Or, when they do find inspiration in contemporaries, they’re accused of being hacks? Look at the Quentin Tarantino phenomenon: a man with an alarming, near-encyclopedic recollection of cinema’s past that has given him the tools to make very interesting (if not wholly original) movies. Meanwhile, all the people making knockoffs of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are — even now, 15 years later — accused of hackery, while Tarantino is (somewhat justifiably) hailed as a visionary.

Maybe it’s hard to tell when a filmmaker’s career reaches a certain longevity, but I guess it makes sense that filmmakers would continue to find inspiration in the directors of their youth and young adulthood than in contemporaries. To accuse Allen of this and not contemporaries like Spielberg, Coppola, and Scorsese (the latter of whom is lately more egregious in imitating his influences than Allen was at his worst) is pretty lazy and irresponsible. Would I expect Woody Allen to start operating his camera like Sam Raimi? Not any more than the other directors listed. (And even the most visually inventive of the three — this is debatable, but I’d go with Spielberg for that — shows more Bergman and French New Wave influence, even in his newer movies, than in any of the notable directors who came up over the past 25 years.)

12. Recreational Drug Use
Woody Allen worships all things intellectual; for him, life isn’t something to be experienced so much as catalogued, criticized, and over-considered. It’s not really a surprise then that he’s not much into things that make analysis an after-thought. But it’s not just that Allen abstains from spirits and drugs; the very concept of other people willingly clouding their judgment for pleasure baffles him to the core. In one scene mid-way through Annie Hall, he tries to explain his reservations. Diane Keaton isn’t much interested in sex, and wants to get high before they screw, and Allen isn’t having any of it. First he dismisses pot (“Yeah, grass, right? The illusion that it will make a white woman more like Billie Holiday”), then complains that making love to a woman who’s high makes the whole experience a cheat, like getting a laugh from a stoned audience. As always with Allen, he’s a little ridiculous and a little right at the same time.

Yes, Allen’s brave and irresponsible anti-drug stance has frequently confounded audiences and critics alike. Seriously, though, the argument here is that drug use is the only way to “experience” life? That’s the type of retarded sentiment I’d expect from the 19-year-old son or daughter of wealthy, conservative parents who decides to get revenge for years of perceived and actual repression by going off to art school and going wild. I would’ve hoped, like most of these kids, the A.V. Club writers would’ve outgrown such a laughable point of view. I guess they’re entitled to their opinions, but again, just because they feel that way doesn’t mean anyone else has to agree with them. But I guess they expected more out of Allen, who has always touted himself as the mouthpiece for Gen-Y slackers.

(Side-note: As someone who has had the misfortune of (a) screwing while high, (b) screwing while my partner was high, and (c) screwing while both of us were high, I can vouch for Allen’s perspective on the subject.)

So there you have it, guys: ignore this article and check out some Woody Allen. Ironically, I’d recommend reading the A.V. Club’s surprisingly well-written Primer on Woody Allen.

Posted by Stan on June 30, 2009 5:24 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 20, 2009

Busy Doin’ Somethin’

I don’t have anything to say. Just explaining the mysterious, two-week absence by saying I’ve been busy. Believe it or not, podcasts tend to require more time to complete than just writing a post. In addition to the recording time, they require a lot of editing — which requires me listening to the entire thing, multiple times — because I do these extemporaneously, with no preparation other than a few thoughts in my head and, rarely, a beat sheet reminding me of what I wanted to talk about. As a result, I sometimes go off on tangents that stray too far from what I actually want to talk about, or they’re just boring and/or ill-conceived. I pause, gather my thoughts, and start over.

So it takes me about three hours to make a podcast, as opposed to 30-60 minutes for a regular blog post. It’d be different if I had more brief, minor rants like my grocery store-based rage, but I tend to gravitate more toward long-form… Well, rambling, basically.

I hopefully have some exciting things on the horizon, but I don’t want to talk too much about them just yet.

Posted by Stan on March 20, 2009 4:18 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (3)

February 27, 2009

Podcast: Tyler Perry / Iced / Shitty Internet Thrillers

Be warned that this podcast contains a rainbow of obscenities, so consider this not safe for work.

Click the Play button to listen to Podcast #3: “Podcast: Tyler Perry / Iced / Shitty Internet Thrillers” (64kbps MP3, 30:17, 13.9MB)

Posted by Stan on February 27, 2009 5:30 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 19, 2009

M.I.A.

So here’s the thing: first I was M.I.A. because I was busy with work; now I’m M.I.A. because I’m incapacitated.

A little over a year ago, I made the mistake of lifting a dense (i.e., small ‘n’ heavy) 50-pound box with one hand. Feeling immediate pain, I thought, “Wow, that’s too heavy.” Too lazy to lift my other hand to assist, I carried the box across the room and felt flares of pain for a few days. In less than a week, I realized I needed medical attention. Unfortunately, I had just quit my job in an angry, obscenity-laced huff, which meant I had no insurance (or money to pay for insurance if I did), and it took six months before I found another one, and another few months before I started working consistently. I used my own medical expertise to self-diagnose Carpal Tunnel Syndrome — because the pain was exacerbated in the extreme by typing — and wrapped an Ace bandage around my wrist for about a month, by which time the pain had alleviated enough for me to blog on an almost-daily basis and continue my other writing bullshit unabated…

Until September, when my job required me to write so rapidly and regularly that, by the end November, I was in constant pain. By that time, I’d gotten an overpriced (but not as much as uninsured treatment) health plan, so I saw my doctor, who tapped my wrist a couple of times and parroted my own self-diagnosis. Muttering something about wasting a copay on that bullshit, I thanked him for the naproxen prescription and spent the next month down anti-inflammatory pills and icing my wrist on a regular basis. It was all great…

…until we hit driveway-shoveling season, at which point it all went to hell. The snowiest December on record undid all the good that had been done prior to this. The Internet is a septic tank of awful, contradictory information on the condition, so I had no clue which demented leg exercises or stretches would actually benefit me. None seemed to work, but when I tried to talk to my doctor again about ways to manage the pain so it’d go away and stay away, a nurse called me back to announce that he’d graciously renewed the naproxen prescription.

A week ago, after another marathon of reading that ended in constant throbbing, I finally decided I needed to see a specialist. I went to an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in wrist injuries. After a few X-rays and some bizarre hand exercises, he announced that I had two conditions working together to ruin my life: torn wrist cartilage from the aforementioned box trauma, and a li’l dab of tennis elbow from a previous trauma that mostly involved me divebombing a guy and wrapping my arms around his neck (not passionately) as we both fell to the ground. I landed right on my elbow and proceeded to not do a thing about it, because who cares? Apparently my wrist injury aggravated that trauma.

I got a delightful cortisone shot, a giant forearm splint, and a protective elbow pad. I’m still in fairly intense pain, and it took me basically the entire week to write this one entry. I hope it won’t shock or dismay anyone to know that I won’t be blogging for awhile, probably not until after Cannes.

It sucks, too, because I have some good stories. Don’t worry, I’m writing them all down. I’ll get to them eventually, and by the time I do, I’ll have forgotten all the details, so the posts will be of a manageable, readable size for the first time in Stan Has Issues™ history.

Posted by Stan on February 19, 2009 4:07 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (4)

October 12, 2008

Sexist Straw Man

Remember how I hated Juno? Turns out, this makes me some sort of sexist and/or misogynist asshole **. See, because I’m a male, and I found fault with a screenplay written by a woman — and a feminist woman, author kvoynar is quick to point out in the comments! — this means that my problems with the movie have no merit. It’s really just a “thin guise” covering the quiver-inducing rage I feel whenever I think about or discuss anything having to do with women. Many of the comments I received came from women in total agreement, and although I’m sure I haven’t joined the ranks of “male-dominated film blog[s kvoynar] read[s] regularly” (possibly because this is not really a “film blog”), this did not stop me from leveling some criticism at Reitman — but put that aside for a moment. I have a confession to make about how much I hate women.

Would it also make me a woman-hating thug to find fault with kvoynar’s blog post about how much I hate women because I did not fall in love with Diablo Cody’s screenplay and do not know her personally? I only add that last part because, apparently, if I took the time to get into one of those deeeep late-night dorm-room conversations with Ms. Cody, she would charm me to such a degree that I would forgive the many flaws in her Juno screenplay and say, “Yup, she deserved that Oscar on account of being so darned nice.”

In particular, I take issue with the baffling argument that I’m a sexist asshole because I didn’t hate the scripts for current movies like Burn After Reading or Tropic Thunder, because clearly they’re worse movies because they have slightly lower ratings on the Tomato Meter. Wouldn’t a more apt comparison be the variety of other Oscar-winning screenplays? Because nobody took issue with Crash or Little Miss Sunshine or The Pianist or A Beautiful Mind. These were movies not just universally beloved — but beloved because of their flawless screenplays written by members of the clearly superior male gender. Let me turn off the sarcasm for a second and ask: are you high? For Christ’s sake, as recently as five months ago, I took another look at American Beauty and retroactively trashed its screenplay with as much — if not more — vitriol as I did with Juno. Some of them (Crash) instantly reveal themselves as about a thousand times worse than Juno*. And even if the idea of sampling summer popcorn fare instead of making it go toe to toe with fellow Oscar winners, you only have to go back in time as recently as a month for “current releases” to fare better on Rotten Tomatoes — WALL·E, The Dark Knight, Iron Man. Doesn’t this make the “legitimate” critical establishment sexist, as well? They gave more positive reviews to movies about rich white dudes who fight crime! O, the injustice! Even the female critics are merely unempowered husks trying to make it in a man’s world by kowtowing to their desires… Right?

So I guess I ought to just take Ms. Cody’s “defense” lying down. I made no valid points, had no real reasons to dislike her objectively great movie, I am both a sexist and a misogynist, and I should apologize right now. And I should not, at any time, point out that I only stumbled across kvoynar’s post because Ms. Cody links to it on her blog, which suggests she fully buys into the notion that her flawless screenplay is under attack by the evil cabal of misogynist male bloggers and that, if we really got to know her, we’d take back all the nasty things we’ve said about her. That doesn’t, in any way, weaken her position as a feminist! In fact, with an attitude like hers, she’d make one hell of a vice-presidential candidate!

(And for those who notice the dates on all these blogs and believe I’ve spent the past few weeks stewing in my own juices — think again! Despite my usual obsessive tendencies, my caring about Juno and the misguided people who love it ebbed by, let’s say, May. Now, a few people did send me links to Ms. Cody’s initial “outburst,” but at that time I just chuckled at the stupidity and moved on. Today, that popped in my head, I decided to check out the blog for any potential blowback-related hilarity. Instead, I found an obnoxious defense of her own defense, plus the link to the other blog, and it got my rage boiling.)

Edit, 11/9/08 — It would appear kvoynar’s site has disappeared, perhaps in shame (actually, a cursory Google search reveals that she’s now writing the same blog for some other shitty film site, with no explanation of why her actual site disappeared into the ether), so I am using Yahoo!’s helpful caching powers to provide the text of the article I ramble about above. Enjoy!

Diablo Cody (names have been changed to protect the innocent) has taken a lot of shit since “Juno” premiered at last year’s Telluride Film Festival. Months before anyone cared who Diablo Cody was, before the script she wrote went from “that little Fox Searchlight film Jason Reitman’s directing” to a box office super-hit and Oscar winner, “Juno” did a sneak at Telluride.
Telluride’s known mostly for showing artsy films for cinephiles. It’s a picky fest, though their choices are sometimes a bit befuddling (for instance, last year’s slate included prominent foreign flicks “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days” and “The Counterfeiters” alongside Alison Eastwood’s “Rails & Ties,” which had some festgoers buzzing about pedigree over quality). Nonetheless, any filmmaker would be thrilled to premiere their baby at Telluride, it’s a very prestigious fest and the audiences tend to be smart folks. And last year, once “Juno” had its sneak, it became the talk of the festival.

There are usually a few films getting better buzz than others at Telluride, but I was a bit astonished by how the “Juno” buzz seemed to take over the fest. It was all anyone was talking about: Had you seen “Juno?” Were you planning to catch Jason Reitman’s conversation with Tamara Jenkins (“The Savages”) at the Courthouse? Had you seen how cute Diablo Cody was, with her red sunglasses perched on her head? The only detractor of the film I heard at Telluride was from one film journalist (who shall go unnamed) who proclaimed that he didn’t intend to even see the film because he had “a Jason Reitman issue.” To which I say, whatever. I was at that premiere, I saw and felt the audience reaction, and I walked out of that screening telling a film journo friend, “This film is going to be huge.” You could just feel it.

I had the pleasure of meeting Diablo at Telluride last year. We sat on the bench near the gondola, soaking in some Telluride rays and chatting about her film. Most interviews, there’s publicists hovering and giving you the “2 minute” sign 5 minutes into your 20-minute slot, but I was lucky enough to catch her before the film became big enough (and the journalists snarky enough) to warrant all that.

Diablo and I sat and talked about the film, life in general, teenage pregnancy, and the difficulties of the teen years for girls, for over an hour. She struck me as a warm, open, very smart young woman who was thrilled to be at Telluride with the film. She hadn’t yet been burned by the assholes who would come—I don’t think she even sensed yet that it would happen -but the Diablo I met that day was also a tough cookie, and when the bashing started in, I knew she’d come out alright, though I inwardly cringed at the thought of that bright, open-faced young woman I’d chatted with at Telluride being fed to some of the assholes she’d be dealing with at junkets and roundtables.

The strong buzz from Telluride helped the film pop at Toronto, where it was generally well-received, by both critics and regular folks. The film is still sitting at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes—a better rating, I might note, than any of the films in current release, including “Burn After Reading” (87%), “Tropic Thunder” (83%), “Ghost Town” (87%) or “Flash of Genius” (83%). And yet, search the far corners of the film blogosphere all you will, you’ll find none of the vitriol Cody has endured in the past year leveled at the screenwriters of any of those films (or pretty much any other screenwriter you could think of off the top of your head).

I spent way too much time in the last year reading the Diablo-bashing that went on in just about every male-dominated film blog I read regularly, and way more time than that calling the bashers on their bullshit. If the issues these (mostly male) bloggers and blog columnists had with “Juno” were truly with the merits of the film, you’d think they’d have been equally bashing Jason Reitman, who not only directed the film, but believed so strongly in Cody’s writing that he had her on the set through much of the shoot, rewriting or adding lines as needed while filming was going on. But not one of these guys ever bitched about Reitman, it was all Diablo-hating, wrapped in a thin guise of quibbles about dialogue, or believability, or cloyness. It was even worse was when some prominent female voices in the film blogging world took up the “Juno Sucks” cause as well.

Cody has weathered much of the Diablo-bashing, some of which was rather nasty and personal, mostly in silence, directing her energy towards her next projects. Until last Wednesday, when she unleashed a big old can of whup-ass on her detractors over on her MySpace blog. My favorite bit:

I know my name is fake and that it annoys you. What, do you hate Queen Latifah and Rip Torn, too? Writers and entertainers have been using pseudonyms for years. Chances are, you’re spewing bile under an assumed screen name yourself. I’m sorry if you think I’m like some inked-up quasi-Suicide Girl derby cunt from 2002, but I like my fake name. It’s engraved on an Oscar. Yours isn’t.

Bip! There’s more, much more, which you can go read for yourself over at her blog. And Diablo? You just keep doing what you do, girl. Screw the haters.

Also, here are all the comments from the post date through October 2nd!

Jerry Jaz Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 7:21 am
My wife and I were energized by Juno. Writing, direction, and edit felt aimed at the top of our intelligence. My sweetie is pro-life and I am pro-choice. We were excited to get and eyeful of Diablo at the Oscars.

When people get scared they tend to lash out. I am okay with disagreement as I come from a naturally chatty family. While I won’t vote for Pale and Palin, I don’t have to turn them into demons to do it.

I love Diablo’s retort. Big witty teeth.

Phil Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 am

I didn’t like Juno, simply thinking it was a poorly-written film built on quirks rather than anything substantial, but as far as I recall it was one of the most critically acclaimed films of last year, it launched Cody’s career, and it won her an Oscar. Maybe I’ve missed a wave of anti-Diablo Cody feeling, but it seems to me that this “my name’s on an Oscar, your’s isn’t” rant leaves her looking rather immature and neurotic.

Surely it would have been more dignified to rise above whatever criticism she has received, and to focus on enjoying her new-found success, instead of writing an ultra-defensive whine about it all months after the event?

kvoynar Says:
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:22 am

“I didn’t like Juno, simply thinking it was a poorly-written film built on quirks rather than anything substantial”

See, this is exactly what I’m talking about, Phil. In what specific ways did you find “Juno” to be poorly written and insubstantial? It was a film written by a feminist woman, about a smart teenage girl who makes the unusual (especially for a movie) decision to give her unborn baby up for adoption. It dealt with teen pregnancy and issues around an unwed mother trying to find a home for her child in a unique way, and I’d challenge you to name any other film that’s dealt with those issues with such warmth, honesty and humor.

As for the writing itself, the scenes with Juno’s family are some of the best family scenes I’ve ever seen in a comedy; Juno’s family was portrayed as both supportive of their daughter, while wryly humorous about dealing with the situation. The characters of Mark and Vanessa were perfectly arced, with Cody setting up Juno (and the audience) to feel more sympathy for Mark at first, then spinning things around to show another side of things that suddenly revealed Mark as less sympathetic, and Vanessa as having more depth than she seemed to have on Juno’s first meeting with her.

Mark and Vanessa’s characters, in particular, were a well-drawn portrait of a man who doesn’t want to grow up and a woman who can’t wait any longer for her man to get his shit together, and then her finding the strength to do on her own what she’d always thought she needed him for.

There was nothing poorly written from a structural standpoint about the screenplay, although I do think that a lot of people who responded negatively to Cody’s dialogue tend to judge the film only on that level, without looking more deeply at how the story and characters were actually drawn.

As for Cody herself, Phil, I’d challenge you (or anyone) to endure the avalanche of negativity and bashing she’s endured on the film blogs especially in the last year with the grace and poise she’s shown. She’s had more criticism leveled at her than any other screenwriter I can think of in recent years, much of it personal attacks. She’s been focused on several projects and is just trying to move forward and keep writing; frankly, though, I’m surprised she waited this long to finally vent back some at her detractors.

Nick Plowman Says:
September 24th, 2008 at 6:45 am

What Kim said!

Matthew Lucas Says:
September 25th, 2008 at 7:31 am

I’ll admit I’m not a fan of JUNO, it just rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t actively dislike it, but I didn’t really care much for it either. But I respect Cody’s story and her rise to success…it should be an inspiration to everyone. She’s obviously talented and has a unique and fresh voice and I wish her luck.

sevencostanza Says:
September 30th, 2008 at 8:18 am

Listen, dudes… I have met Diablo before she was ever Diablo. We had friends in common, and were drunk at the same wedding together. She was a rad chick back then, and unless she’s had an unpublicized lobotomy, there’s no doubt she’s still that awesome. Success doesn’t squash that. So there…

mailanonymous Says:
September 30th, 2008 at 9:17 am

Phil is totally offtrack. the movie is very well written, that’s why the other screenwriters awarded it an oscar, and it is substantial. The substance of the film is evidenced in its effect on audiences. Those feelings are very real, even when their source is a fiction. If Phil has difficulty connecting to the movie, this is in an internal process failure on his part. Phil might not like emotions other than those expressed by male angeractors or think the only meaningful female character is a tortured drug addled prostitute, but thats because he’s internalized the male dominated bullshit so much he cant see straight.

The dialog and rest of the movie is very well written. Its idiosyncratic approach to defining the characters is handled extremely well, which is very rare for someone of Diablo’s experience. Usually people dont get to writing dialog that well till they have a ton of movies under their belt. Juno is at least as well written as anything David Mamet or Woody Allen writes, two other folks who use a similar approach of highly identifiable dialog to signify their characters inner life and narrative motion of the work as a whole.

Now, as far as being dignified, why should anyone have to meet your standard of dignity when you cant meet it yourself?

Cody Says:
October 1st, 2008 at 12:00 am

Yeah Phil, you’re a fucking douchebag.

You’ve missed a wave of Anti-diablo cody feeling? No shit sherlock. Funny you felt compelled, and qualified, to weigh in on this very topic here then.

Surely it would have been more dignified to ignore the whine and stick to knowing fuck all.

Cody Says:
October 1st, 2008 at 12:02 am

Cody is actually my name by the way…. not a superfan or some other representative.

Teddy Tanner Says:
October 1st, 2008 at 7:52 am

Wow, I can’t believe what a bunch of insecure whiners some of the responses to Phil are.

Phil stated his opinion of the film and you all jump down his throat like it’s a fact that Juno is great. He didn’t post anything personally damning Diablo and you all get all butthurt and overcompensate in your overblown defenses of Diablo. His voice of dissent against the movie is of the more reasonable kind and you pounce on him. So basically you’re all the Diablo Cody police I guess?

“It was a film written by a feminist woman, about a smart teenage girl who makes the unusual (especially for a movie) decision to give her unborn baby up for adoption. It dealt with teen pregnancy and issues around an unwed mother trying to find a home for her child in a unique way”

That doesn’t mean it’s a good movie and it doesn’t mean people who don’t like it are anti-feminist. This is a callow shield to put in front of Cody.

“As for the writing itself, the scenes with Juno’s family are some of the best family scenes I’ve ever seen in a comedy; Juno’s family was portrayed as both supportive of their daughter, while wryly humorous about dealing with the situation. The characters of Mark and Vanessa were perfectly arced, with Cody setting up Juno (and the audience) to feel more sympathy for Mark at first, then spinning things around to show another side of things that suddenly revealed Mark as less sympathetic, and Vanessa as having more depth than she seemed to have on Juno’s first meeting with her.”

Again, these are opinions, which you are entitled to, as is Phil to his.

“it seems to me that this “my name’s on an Oscar, your’s isn’t” rant leaves her looking rather immature and neurotic.”

This is a valid opinion of Cody’s piece. I think she easily could have taken the high road if she felt the need to write such a piece and not praised her own accolades. It comes off as insecure (like some of the above responses).

Theodore Tanner, PhD.

Filliam Lombardi Says:
October 1st, 2008 at 8:13 am

“The substance of the film is evidenced in its effect on audiences. “

Because the masses have always been a great meter by which to measure substance.

Paul Says:
October 1st, 2008 at 9:10 am

I really enjoyed Juno. It was the only film last year that made me really feel some true emotion - all in all, a great movie!

I like Diablo Cody too, and the main reason was because she was a self-proclaimed “Holywood Tourist.” She wasn’t into being a Hollywood recluse, and wasn’t blunt about her excitement over the whole ordeal. She never gave into it, never got an ego, and that was classy. She knew who she was - a pop culture sensation, and she also knew exactly how fine the string of fame she was hanging by might be.

But all of that suddenly changed. She evidently wasn’t prepared to take the bad with the good. She went from “Hollywood Tourist” to just plain “Hollywood” with her little rant on MySpace, proclaiming herself sick of the blogging culture. Well, Diablo, then don’t bitch about it on MYSPACE! I mean, is there a more fickle, teenage, blog culture-filled website than that?!

I want Diablo Cody to be better than that; above it. I understand that celebrities are human beings, but at least temper yourself a little. It sounds like she’s a 25 year vet in the business, crowing about everything she’s done. But instead, she’s a 2 year pop-culture sensation who no one has mentioned anything about since Juno. Sounds like a self-important, self-esteem boosting rant to me.

I really hope Diablo Cody does well. She’s a solid writer and YES, she is better than me. She CAN handle the pressure better. But I don’t need my heroes to tell me about it.

Doug Says:
October 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 am

God message boards get venomous fast. I think everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and Phil is not a flaming fuckwad for not like Juno. However, that being said, I have noticed what kvoynar noticed, that most of these detractors are male, and I don’t feel that they are bigoted necessarily, but that they are less likely to “get it.”

They are also more likely to feel threatened by the writer herself, and her origins, and thus have a prejudice going into the film. It’s not absolutely why, but I think most guys who arent nerds would have a hard time understanding and relating to a young girl dealing with a teen pregnancy in a world where everyone speaks like a hipster nerd, that being super clever, where one of the primary males is shown to be a stunted adolescent. I think a lot of us guys saw ourselves in Bateman’s character and then felt slapped in the face when he acted like a jerk (in a good, wake up call sort of way for me). Guys like me, who are nerdy and in touch with our animas, relate to Michael Cera and Juno and all the dialogue styles and love Diablo Cody for being a strong, hip geek who came out of the cubicle. And everyone who gets it feels like they’re being teased in high school again and takes Diablo hate personally.

Doug Says:
October 2nd, 2008 at 5:57 am

Oh, and in the past 2 years Diablo’s had more attention, good and bad thrown at her than any screenwriter in history. Woody Allen you say? He was a director who wrote. Traditionally, screenwriters are invisible. It is only in the information age that anyone other than aspiring writers care who they are. The post Joss Whedon world where writers are as celebrated as actors and directors, and in the info age, the cycle for love to backlash has sped up, so she’s experienced an entire career in only a few years, all before a second project has seen light. The fact that anyone even reads her blog is testament to that. Is anyone here complaining about what James Gunn does on his myspace? No, everyone’s reading because Diablo had sex stamped all over her before anyone had seen Juno, and some people were enticed, while others were mortified. But like Howard Stern, the haters talk about him just as much or more. I just can’t help thinking some people don’t want to believe that a stripper could write a goddamn thing, and others really want her to be good cuz she’s hot. I see her as the little copywriter-turned stripper-turned screenwriter she is, and I don’t really care. Maybe It’s cuz I’m from New Orleans, and I’ve met both coked up whores and beautiful, smart, hip chicks who worked at strip clubs.

*And the only reason I didn’t spew hatred into the crusty sock of Crash at the time was because I didn’t see it until about a year after mocking it stopped being relevant. [Back]

Posted by Stan on October 12, 2008 7:06 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

August 1, 2008

Bad Education

One principle of medieval warfare I’ve taken to heart is, “Know thy enemy.” Since I am a seething cauldron of hate, I’ve gotten to know quite a few people. Since the advent of Google (I’m no search-engine Johnny Come Lately, but in the pre-Google days, Internet-stalking was little more than a recipe for failure; say what you will about their indexing algorithms, they have hit the chewy nougat center of information-gathering for future serial killers) and the increased popularity of blogs and social networking sites, I’ve gotten to know more about certain enemies than I ever thought possible. I once found Owen’s DeviantArt page and, as such, was able to digest his alarming short stories. I’ve found more about The Manager than I ever thought possible. More importantly, I’ve dug deep into the world of the stupid blogger and have come out on the other side hating her more than ever.

One of her blog’s recurring statements: she teaches high school English to inner-city kids. She’s very proud of this, especially the “inner-city” part, because she thinks it gives her some kind of street cred or insight into this hoary netherworld. But here’s the recurring theme of these posts: she teaches very, very, very badly. She’s one of those people who will post excerpts of student work just to mock them, and not in a good-natured or loving way. (P.S.: she teaches them! isn’t the fact that they do so poorly at least a small reflection of her competence?) She’ll regale her captive audience with distressing stories about kids with serious psychological damage, structured as hilarious anecdotes about misplaced rage! But the absolute worst is when she basically comes out and says, “I have no interest in teaching these kids. I want to be a screenwriter, but teaching English in the inner-city was the only way I could get to L.A., so I guess I’ll have to put up with this miserable job.”

I know the following statement is, unfortunately, untrue, but this has always been my philosophy about teaching (whether it’s in public education or not): it’s a calling. You have to really want to teach these kids, you have to treat it as more than a job, because for a semester or year (or more), they’re the only guidance you have. You can justify it any way you want, but if you suck at your job or are thoroughly disinterested in it because you’re trying to pursue another career, that’s on you, not your students. You are officially a shitty teacher, and they have officially gotten a shitty education from you. Congratulations!

Over the years, I’ve had plenty of teachers who had failed to live their dreams. I had a few who genuinely wanted to be teachers. I had a few, especially the younger ones, who had that “checked-out” attitude of someone still trying to pursue an alternate career while “falling back” on teaching. Then there were the older ones who fell into teaching gigs by accident and wanted a place where they could drink on the job and collect a meager paycheck while doing as little as possible.

The only ones who had any impact were the older ones who once had dreams but had failed to achieve them; instead of growing old and bitter (like most of my college professors), these teachers poured all the energy they wished they could devote to their failed careers…into the classroom. They excited themselves about teaching a bunch of punk kids by looking through the prism of whatever they had failed to achieve — and through that, they somehow excited most of their students into learning.

So here we have the stupid blogger, in one of her many posts illustrating why she should not be allowed anywhere near a school, writing the following:

For the past two years I’ve had the same planning period - third. Third is the best planning period because it straddles our two lunch periods, so while everybody else gets 35 minutes to eat, I get two hours.

Has anyone else noticed where she went wrong? Here’s a hint: planning periods are for planning, not for extra-long lunches. This is the same person who has been known, on occasion, to gripe about — gasp! — her job encroaching on her free time, but when they are paying her to do that work, she elects to fuck off. Maybe this post, which explains her planning period has been moved to first, is some sort of punishment for, I dunno, taking two-hour lunches instead of using the planning period to do the work she’s paid to do.

She follows this up by saying the following:

She would just sleep in, except her school wisely docks her pay if she doesn’t punch in by a certain, pre-school-starting time.
Although she did start out using this planning period to do lesson-planning, handout-creating, and researching, that got boring! And she was oh so very tired!
So she started watching movies via Netflix’s instant video thingamadoo.
Oh, but she’s limited herself to documentaries, so that’s sort of like doing research.

She spends the rest of the post taking the “documentaries for research purposes” to its logical extreme, pretending that she has been using these documentaries all along to possibly show students while introducing concepts involving persuasive and expository writing. Believable! Especially the part about Super High Me, which is clearly something that could be shown in a public high school with no repercussions.

I’m a pretty spiteful guy. Maybe if I knew the stupid blogger in person and hated her, I’d try to semi-nonymously get her shitcanned. I’m actually tempted to do it anyway; her blog provides more than enough evidence to, at the very least, get her into assloads of trouble with her immediate superiors. But really, it’s not something to retaliate against. It’s something to mourn: a school teacher who devotes more time and energy to being a Hollywood nobody than to educating her students. It’s not bad to have dreams, but low-quality public-school teachers like this once again get me fist-shakingly mad at the state of education in this country. No child left behind…unless your teacher’s budding screenwriting career gets in the way!

Posted by Stan on August 1, 2008 9:00 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

July 28, 2008

Beat Mega Man

I would love to say I skipped a week of blogging because my quest to beat Mega Man had so consumed me that I sat in an obsessive daze, eyes glued to my old TV, as I endlessly and repetitively reset and played over and over and over until I crushed Dr. Wily like so many ants…

…in reality, I just beat it about five minutes ago, on a single playthrough (and a shitload of continues). The problems I had with the occasional, old-school NES freezing or the “didn’t quite blow on the cartridge hard enough” artifacting didn’t affect me this time, so I just kept going until I won, and let me tell you: Wily’s castle is fucking impossible, infinitely more difficult than the big man himself.

In fact, the reason/excuse for my absence goes a little something like this: I have a novel, and I want to be done with it. I want to be done with it so I can get the ball rolling on that fake publishing company idea and iron out all the difficulties. Look at the date on that post — it’s been over a year since I came up with the idea, and all this time I’m mainly dragging my feet because the fucking thing isn’t done. So now that things with The Big-Shot Producer have basically broken down, what am I left with? An inconsistent reader job, a drawer full scripts ranging from half- to whole-assed, and a novel that I poured — and continue to pour — far too much effort into, to make it the best thing it can possibly be.

It occurred to me that I’m past the halfway point on revising and editing the novel. It’s in better shape than I thought (there’s one major section that I will rewrite from scratch, but otherwise it’s all just nipping and tucking and proofreading), so I just wanted to keep going on it as much as possible. But something else — even stranger and, perhaps, even better — happened, something that’s never happened to me before with my own writing. Look, I wrote this novel from about November 2006 to January of 2007, and since then I’ve convinced myself I’ve been “rewriting,” even though I didn’t even look at it again until August of 2007, and then I got about a third of the way through before I got busy with work and screenplays and bullshit bullshit bullshit. So I put it aside again and picked it up in February of this year, started from the beginning, didn’t get much farther before The Big-Shot Producer came calling again, and I distracted myself with screenplays.

So I’m back on the novel, and it’s been so long since I’ve read anything beyond the first third that something miraculous and a little terrifying happened: I started to get really into the story. That’s not me trying to sound arrogant — believe me, I’m as surprised as anybody — but it shows me that I’ve written exactly the kind of novel that I like reading. Whether or not I’m the only one remains to be seen, but at the very least I can feel confident that I’ve written the very best novel I can.

I don’t know if the ruse will work or what will happen once I finish. I’m just glad the story is working.

Posted by Stan on July 28, 2008 11:51 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

June 9, 2008

Beggin’

So I got a professionally printed brochure from my alma mater…

…begging me to donate money.

Hey, here’s an idea! Maybe, when begging for money, you could try showing that you aren’t wasting money on full-color brochures by just sending me a sheet of standard white paper with a form letter? I still won’t donate money, but at least I’d feel a little guilty.

(And let’s not even get into the fact that I’m unemployed — I don’t blame the college for that, but their “job-placement program” isn’t exactly coming through with any hot leads.)

Posted by Stan on June 9, 2008 4:34 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 19, 2008

The Folly of MySpace

Or, more accurately, a folly of MySpace…

So I’m doing this project that doesn’t quite necessitate the development of dozens of MySpace pages for fictional characters, but I swear to you it actually helps me with developing characters. There’s something very personal in the way people customize MySpace profile pages into eye-bleeding messes. I’ll never forget the guy I worked with, who seemed reasonably nice and good-humored. His MySpace page reminded me of trips into Vincent D’Onofrio’s mind in The Cell, and after that, being around him made me feel uncomfortable. Besides which, with all the questions and free surveys and shit, it forces you to answer questions about characters that Lajos Egrei would never think of. “Coke or Pepsi”? I mean, part of me says, “Who gives a shit?” but another part of me thinks, in some way, that is important. It’s like the cut scene from Pulp Fiction where Mia Wallace deconstructs the personality type of an Elvis man versus a Beatles man.

I ran into a little snafu with my latest creation. Admittedly, it’s my own fuck-up, but it speaks volumes about MySpace’s half-assedness. It goes like this: I created a new account, but I misspelled the e-mail address. I don’t do this often, but I guess it’s kind of difficult to spell “girthmcdurchstein,” which is why I should probably just use Gmail for all these fake addresses.

I figured: okay, not hard. I’ll just go to my account settings and change the e-mail address. It’ll send a confirmation e-mail to the new address, and that’ll be that. Right?

Wrong. MySpace sends the confirmation to the old e-mail address, which I’ll admit makes some sense — you could easily hijack someone’s account and change their address — but in the case of someone trying to change an e-mail address that doesn’t exist, it makes things a little more difficult. So I say, “Fuck it, I’ll just cancel the account and start from scratch.” Again, MySpace sends a confirmation e-mail and will not cancel the account unless you confirm it.

At this point, you might be wondering why I didn’t just abandon the profile. It’s a brand new, friendless, shapeless account. Well, I had stupidly already filled in the MySpace URL for it, and I wanted to keep it. Besides which, I figured it couldn’t be that difficult to change the e-mail address.

Wrong. They have a thing on their FAQ telling you how to change your e-mail address if you don’t have access to the old one. It was simple: fill out a form with your old e-mail, account password, new e-mail, and an explanatory note (if necessary). Not hard.

Wrong. When I clicked SEND, MySpace told me all further correspondence would be sent to the old, nonexistent e-mail address. Keep in mind that this form specifically exists to change your e-mail address when you don’t have access to the old one. So fine, I redid the exact same form, only this time I put the real e-mail address in for both, with an explanatory note giving them the old one but telling them why I didn’t use it.

Within an hour, they sent me an autogenerated e-mail re-explaining what I had just done and telling me to do the exact same thing again, only this time I just had to hit reply and type out all the info.

I didn’t hear a thing for five days. After Googling around, I found two good solutions:

Send them another e-mail saying something like “FIFTH ATTEMPT” in the subject line.
Post a pornographic image as a comment on Tom’s profile, which will ensured your account gets deleted within minutes.

What the hell kind of system do they have where it’s easier just to get banned than it is to legitimately cancel your account or change your e-mail address?

Anyway, I took the former option (saving for the latter if it doesn’t work) and decided to put FIFTH ATTEMPT, even though it wasn’t. It took another full day before I received a response, another autogenerated e-mail that elaborates on what the FAQ says, telling me to create a “salute” with MYSPACE.COM and my Friend ID written on it.

This makes no sense. In every defense of MySpace’s ass-backwards system I’ve read, they say MySpace makes you go through all this annoyance and bother for security purposes. Like I said, it’s pretty easy to hijack the account, change to a different e-mail address the person you hijacked won’t know, and fuck up their profile. So all you have to do is send in your parents’ brains or write BRAINS on a 3x5 index card, and they give you the keys to the kingdom? How is this secure? Obviously the person hijacking the account knows it’s a MySpace account, so they have one half of the “salute” covered. Even if they couldn’t figure out how to find the Friend ID, it explains to you how to do this right there in the e-mail.

This can’t be a “security feature.” A security feature is popping up a “secret question” when you want to change your e-mail address or password — something a little harder to know than somebody’s e-mail address and current password. It doesn’t even make sense when you say “you have to take a picture of yourself holding it,” because how the fuck does MySpace know what you look like? Especially, like in my case, when you’ve uploaded no photos.

Fuck, with all this hassle — and I still haven’t received an e-mail saying my “salute” is good enough — I might as well just porn-spam Tom.

Or, you know, stop making MySpace pages for every half-assed character I create. But hey, I spent too much time Photoshopping images and uploading videos to quit now! The only thing it’s taught me is to be more careful when I type in the e-mail address upon signing up. Or to not do the perma-URL until I’ve validated my e-mail address (which they shouldn’t let you do, anyway).

Posted by Stan on May 19, 2008 4:03 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 15, 2008

Kar Komedy Klassics

I got a coupon from my mechanic for a “free 24-point inspection” that just happened to coincide with my oil light randomly popping on. The oil light popping on is typically seen as a bad sign, but I hadn’t experienced any trouble and couldn’t figure out what the stupid problem was. The only problem I noticed in my car was what I thought were failing shock absorbers, which I thought may have contributed to whatever problem my car was experienced.

So I took my car in for the inspection. My mechanic is a kindly old Italian guy who always says things like, “We gonna fix-a you up-a good, Mister Stan.” He usually does, and he’s pretty much the only mechanic I’ve dealt with who’s actually honest. I mean, the free inspection is an obvious “bring them in for free, then charge them an assload on unnecessary repairs” ruse, but he said, “The car’s-a fine, you just-a need a new oil pressure switch.” Since those are cheap and not labor-intensive, I had him do it.

When I got the car this morning, it turns out he did a little something extra. A bolt in the driver seat loosened at some point last year. I couldn’t figure out where the loose one was, so I never tightened it, but it basically caused my seat to flop around. It was at this point that I noticed the failing shocks — every little bump seemed tremendous, and I thought maybe the bad shocks caused the seat to loosen in the first place.

Here’s why I’m stupid. My mechanic tightened the seat, and mysteriously the shock problems went away. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve already done two and two on that one and realized I’m dumb as a fucking rock.

Posted by Stan on May 15, 2008 10:45 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 14, 2008

“You Look Good…”

I don’t have what you’d call an “exercise regimen” because I am what you’d call “extremely lazy.” Despite my penchant for donuts and pizza, I kept in reasonably good shape (for me) by walking about five miles a day, plus walking up and down no fewer than 480,000 flights of stairs (per day) in various buildings, el stations, bookstores, libraries, etc. I actually did this intentionally: if a building had an elevator and wasn’t more than 10 floors, I’d take the stairs. If it had an escalator and immobile stairs, I’d choose the latter; if it had just an escalator, I’d try my damndest to not stand and let the moving stairs do their work for me. (Sometimes, during rush hour, it’s impossible to walk up an escalator.) There was also a brief period when I lifted weights, under the impression that it would help me play guitar better. (It actually kinda did, taking me from “sloe jam” to “Hammett-style tapsanity,” before I got lazy and went back to “sloe jam.” I like to tell people I’m feeling the music, but really I’m feeling the unwillingness to learn overcomplicated guitar solos.)

Since college, I’ve continued the trend of lazy-man exercise by walking anywhere from three to five miles a day. It’s not as arduous or as fun, nor does it have the additional stair-stepping challenge of the Loop, but at least it’s something. I used to go biking, but for some reason (likely fatness) my ass no longer cooperates with the seat. It creates a numbing sensation on my tender vittles, which isn’t a problem until the pins and needles set in. Just imagine that for a few seconds, you men out there, and you’ll know why I gave up biking (even though it’s the only non-sexual or -competitive-eating physical activity I enjoy).

At this point, the walking routine didn’t really do anything except keep me from gaining weight. I figured as long as I held steady at “slightly overweight,” I’d be cool.

Unfortunately, my lifetime of horrible eating habits and not-quite-lifetime of caffeine over-consumption (plus some bad karma thrown in for good measure) have left my gastrointestinal tract ravaged with an unknown disease that has baffled at least one discompassionate, House-like gastroenterologist. (It’s my belief that House has ruined all medical specialists because it allows them to put a doctor’s natural god complex into overdrive — he’s supposed to be an antihero, not a hero hero.) As a result, I’ve had little recourse but to enjoy a special diet that consists of:

White rice
White bread
Egg whites* (sensing a theme?)
Steamed vegetables that are green and leafy
Unseasoned, boneless, fat-less chicken
Applesauce
Unsalted pretzels (in moderation)
Honey graham crackers (also in moderation)

Those fascinated with bowel movements will want to check out what I’ve been producing lately.

It’s actually not as bad as one might think. There’s at least a little room for variety, I haven’t suffered the constant heartburn and lethargy associated with “eating three-fourths of an extra-large pizza by yourself in one sitting,” and I’ve lost about 35 pounds, taking me from “slightly overweight” to “still slightly overweight, but not as much.”

So while out on my morning walk, a plump, middle-aged woman stepped out on her front porch, then walked down to the end of her driveway. (I was walking in the street.) I didn’t pay her much mind, figuring she was just going to her mailbox. Then I realized there was no mailbox at the end of her driveway. Also that she was staring at me.

“You look good,” she said when I was within earshot.

I pointed at myself in confusion, despite nobody else being around.

“Yeah,” she said. “I seen you walking, and before you was real…” I guess she didn’t want to say “fat,” but she did the universal body-language for fat: ballooning her cheeks out and crooking her arms into a wide, semicircular silhouette of a huge body. This was actually kinda more insulting than if she’d just said it, but maybe she didn’t think it was so bad considering she’s way fatter than I’ve ever been. “But now, you look good.”

“Well, uh…thanks,” I said.

“So this is just from walking?”

I didn’t want to go into my digestive problems or the new diet, so I just said, “Yeah.”

“How far?”

“Eh, about three miles,” I said, referring to my regular route. I have alternate routes that spread it out to five or six, depending on if I have a particular destination.

“Wow,” she said, as if this was a truly amazing feat.

“Yeah,” I grunted.

“Well, I just wanted to tell you I been watching you, and it shows.”

Poorly phrased, but I assume/hope she meant “I’ve been watching you walk, and the weight-loss shows.” Otherwise, it takes on a disturbing, restraining-order-worthy connotation.

“Thanks,” I repeated. Then, she crossed the street to a Comcast truck that was, apparently, servicing her house. Or something. I don’t really know why she did that. I just kept walking.

*I mistakenly typed “Egg shites.” That about sums it up. [Back]

Posted by Stan on May 14, 2008 11:17 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 6, 2008

MySpace Blog “Customization”

MySpace, a place for friends, is once again the bane of my existence. I’m going to try to stop making every other entry about my other blog, because I’m honestly not trying to pimp it here (if I was, there’d be endless links on the sidebar), but this is where I go to vent, and I need to vent right about now.

I spent most of the evening fighting to the death with MySpace’s “blog customization” panel. Until recently, the profile part of MySpace had no options for customization — it was only through “third-party” hacking that people were able to override MySpace’s bland, unattractive default settings. However, for as long as I’ve used it (since late 2005), the blog has had customization options: a list of options to specify font, size, color, alignment, with a little textarea at the bottom to paste in your own CSS code.

I had a new idea for the MySpace blog. Because, see, I have the other blog, but then I want to update the MySpace blog, as well, because — among other things — MySpace has implemented goofy status feeds (not unlike Facebook) that will tell MySpace users when I’ve posted a new blog. However, I’m lazy, and even as “customizable” as a MySpace blog can get, it’s still pretty fucking ugly. Besides which, I can’t pimp the site that way. So I figured the smartest thing to do would be to imitate the way the main page of the real blog is right now — the entry excerpt, followed by a link to the full blog post, which will take them to the site. It seemed like such an easy task.

My first plan had virtually nothing to do with CSS or anything. It seems like the most logical thing in the world for me to use MySpace as an syndicator for my blog. I post once, MovableType generates a special feed, pings MySpace, then MySpace posts it. That’d work really well if MySpace was set up that way! It’s…not. Not even close. If you’re asking why I, in my quest to ease laziness, don’t use MySpace’s RSS feed and syndicate that on my MovableType blog (which has the technology), the answer is simple: MySpace sucks ass. In the same way it can’t syndicate, it can’t utilize certain MovableType features that I want.

So I spent far too long working up a custom stylesheet. It shouldn’t have been difficult: specify the text, the link colors, the custom header/footer sizes/alignments that I use — so damn easy, right? Wrong.

Here’s how MySpace would work in a perfect world: you paste something — anything — into the CSS textarea, and it removes MySpace’s default CSS code. If you fuck everything up and it’s a total disaster, just delete your stylesheet and the old stuff comes back. Seems reasonable, right?! A little hot if->else action, and we know how much MySpace loves overscripting every little thing — they can’t lose.

Well, they don’t do it that way. You have to override every single fucking thing on their CSS, or else it gets confused. Even then, it gets a little hairy. All I wanted to specify for the links were colors; MySpace lists font-size. Why?! I have variable font-sizes, so the problem I ran into initially is that the colors worked fine, but every link — no matter what other specifications were there — appeared with the same font-size. I’m not an expert on web design, as anyone who has visited one of my many sites will attest, so I don’t know of any magical CSS command that will specify to override a set-in-stone font-size with a variable. I am pretty sure h3, it does nothing but the browser default. you type it in as its own p class, and it works fine. What the fuck?

So fine, I settled on creating different classes for every single fucking thing on the blog. Which worked, but now the only way I can easily copy and paste is to have MovableType generation a dummied-up text file with all these magical new classes. So once again, MovableType swoops in to save the day.

And all this because I want the 14 MySpace friends I have who aren’t bots or fictional characters to know when I’ve posted a blog. What a waste of time and energy.

Posted by Stan on May 6, 2008 10:09 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 1, 2008

Twittered

More Diablo Cody rage:

http://twitter.com/diablocody

It seemed pretty innocuous at first, until I stumbled across one Twitter:

I just bought an amazing dress for my girl Dana’s premiere tomorrow. I am SO gonna get Fugged!

Not that it’s without precedent, but it just bugs me. Really, the Fug girls are going to follow her around, Fugging her constantly? She’s that important a person, that edgy and interesting in her apparel choices? Maybe she wore a hideous Pebbles Flintstone dress to the Oscars, but it doesn’t quite count if you’re expecting to get Fugged — practically goading them into it. It’s just another example of someone thinking highly of themselves while pretending they don’t think highly of themselves. You want to have a colossal ego? Have a colossal ego, and be upfront about it. Aaron Sorkin does a really nice job showing his off. You want to be known as “Oscar-winning* screenwriter” instead of “former stripper”? Well, the first step is to write a good screenplay, but once you’ve done that, maybe try hiring a publicist who will force the media to downplay the stripper connection, now that it no longer suits your purposes. Turning your back on what helped you broke through to mainstream success will be sure to give you indie cred!

*Still makes me shudder. [Back]

Posted by Stan on May 1, 2008 6:10 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 29, 2008

Fuck Free Shit

Remember how I was going to score a free copy of a certain highly anticipated video game that comes out tomorrow? Yeah, I never heard back. I don’t know if the PR lady didn’t like my bullshit excuse for an article, or if she (rightly) flagged us as a fly-by-night operation desperate to get our hands on free shit, but the game’s out tomorrow. Or maybe she’s just not too worried about me running the article on launch day. It seems like most “early reviews” have exclusivity/fawning rights, while everyone else will have to make do with scraps later on.

My Amazon preorder shipped. I just hope, if the PR lady does decide to send a copy, it doesn’t have NOT FOR RESALE stamped all over it like most freebies, so I can return it to Amazon.

Posted by Stan on April 29, 2008 3:28 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 25, 2008

Scoring Free Shit

I spent part of today trying to score a free copy of a certain upcoming video game that I am looking forward to more than any person should. Apparently a PR firm contacted a website I’m working on, even though we’re a film review site, to let us know we can contact them for hi-res graphics to promote the launch. The publisher forwarded it to me, telling me he’d help me score a free copy if possible. I said, “Awesome,” because even though I preordered it, I don’t technically have the money (whoo credit!). So I got a polite e-mail from somebody at the PR place asking me about the nature of my story, so she can help to better accommodate me.

Uh-oh.

Some quick thinking led me to the realization that a good, film-related article could be culled from the very notion that video games are becoming increasingly cinematic; beyond this, the series has been known for movie references and parodies. I could write a decent comparative article about the games, their influences, and whether or not a video game can capture the same emotional depth as a film. (P.S.: They can.)

No word yet on whether or not that’s good, but considering the impromptu nature of this B.S., I am feeling pretty good about my skills. I’m ready for grad school!

Posted by Stan on April 25, 2008 3:38 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 23, 2008

Banning People from the Internet

Remember this lady? Here’s the disconnect, for me: first, on the Lee Stranahan blog, she refuses to post a link to her own blog. After first accusing commenters of being ridiculous by destroying his bandwidth and leaving trolling comments, fair points both of them, some folks asked for a link to her own blog, so we could take it over there, but she said no. It’s a private blog, invitation-only (Blogger’s stupidest feature, if you ask me; if you aren’t going to let it all hang out for the Internet masses, why blog at all?).

So, with a baffling two-day roll-out, she decided yes, she’d make a public blog — specifically designed for readers both of Stranahan and Bitter But Brilliant. She started by posting about 20 things in less than two days. Many of the early entries were clearly copied and pasted from another place (ostensibly her private blog); later, she took it upon herself to troll BBB posters (including yours truly) using the blog, since they banned her from the forum.

After checking out that trainwreck several times last weekend, it suddenly prompted me to sign in so I could view the private blog. That’s right: she privatized another blog. Which begs the question: what’s the point? You have two blogs, one public and one private. Ill-advised though it was, I suppose the point of the public blog was so that we could get to know her in order to stop mocking her. I don’t claim to know that for sure, but it did seem like the sampling of entries were selected to ingratiate her. It didn’t work, so why not just delete the blog? Do you really need two private blogs? After that, do you need to roll out yet another public blog, this one with comments disabled? You couldn’t have just disabled comments on the other one? Maybe she’s just not Internet savvy, but it seems like excess.

It started to make me wonder: should the Internet have some kind of Logan’s Run-esque rule where anyone over a certain age isn’t allowed to go online? Since it seems she’s devoted her life to trolling message boards and creating unnecessary blogs, that’s a tax on bandwidth that nobody really needs. I suppose this rule should also apply to younger people, as well. What I’m saying is, only people between the ages of 22 and 35 are allowed on the Internet. Sorry, pervs, find another outlet.

Posted by Stan on April 23, 2008 3:24 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 20, 2008

One of Many Stupid Conclusions I’ve Leaped To

As a lad, I would often see a Charles Bronson movie called Telefon listed in The Cable Guide (yes, this was back in that frightening time before TV Guide covered cable networks), often playing in the middle of the night on HBO. It had a little logline boiling down its complex plot into one sentence. For many years, I thought the word “telethon” was actually “telefon” and that this Bronson movie uncovered some kind of grand conspiracy funneling telethon donations to dirty Reds. In my defense, I was young and pretty stupid.

Posted by Stan on April 20, 2008 3:01 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 16, 2008

Marketing Insanity

I won’t deny checking out Diablo Cody’s MySpace blog, at first for more fodder in my crusade against her career, and boy does she ever disappoint. Like 90% of blogs on the Internet, it’s a haphazard assortment of embedded YouTube videos, links to shit nobody cares about (but the comment sycophants sure fake it well!), mildly interesting anecdotes, and pop-culture vomit. I lost interest shortly after she stopped making disingenuous self-effacing remarks around Oscar time, but I still keep checking it…because of Rodney.

I don’t know what to make of Rodney. I’m fascinated in a trainwreck kind of way, because I can’t seem to figure out what’s happening with his blog and MySpace page [the link’s broken, but I included it on the off-chance it returns]. Sometimes, it feels like an elaborate prank/self-promotion, not unlike what I’ve attempted (and failed at — clearly raging insanity is more entertaining than incest jokes and Skip Press parodies). Other times, it feels 100% legit.

When I first started looking at the comments on Cody’s blog, Rodney’s stood out. Not strictly because of the total insanity — just because his comments almost never had a thing to do with the actual content of Cody’s posts, or any of the other comments. It sort of reminded me of The Onion’s “Ask…” columns, where you have the standard “Dear Abby” questions with totally unrelated answers. Even then, I didn’t notice Rodney too much at first…

…until the stalking started.

If you follow the link to Rodney’s blog, the early posts detail a film allegedly based on the life of his (ex?-)girlfriend. The last post on his blog chronicles stalking/death threats/etc. against the girlfriend and himself. He pastes everything in there — text messages, e-mails, whatever — and for some reason attributes it to a psychiatrist. He left several comments on Cody’s blog flat-out stating the man lost his medical license because he sexually abused patients, but in blog posts on his MySpace page (now removed), he elaborated that the shrink lost his license for alcoholism, but because of the graphic nature of the text messages, Rodney assumes alcoholism is a smokescreen.

(On a semi-related note, after reading through all the messages, I can’t figure out how they narrowed it down to this guy — who is a real, Googleable person — when it could be any random person. The dude posts his e-mail address, websites, and phone number all over the place.)

Most people on Cody’s blog just ignored him, until last night. He received two responses — both from the same person — chiding Rodney for posting such depressing, crazy stuff in a place she visits for joy and happiness. Fair enough, but I should also mention that yesterday’s comment included a very specific reference to murdering this psychiatrist, which apparently resulted in MySpace banning his account.

Since MySpace is terrible, I have to assume Rodney’s space received specific complaints in order for this ban to take place. On MySpace, my fictional characters have made extensive references to committing murder, jailbreaks, incest, and pedophilia — and my account was only banned once. For using a bot. (Even though I state it was because of this map for street cred. Buy the t-shirt!)

Whatever happened, I still find myself puzzling over what Rodney is really up to: crazy and crying out for help, crafty and marketing himself, or maybe a little of both. I guess “a little of both” could explain why he’s marketing himself in the most alarming, misguided possible ways. This whole thing is fascinating, and I’m disappointed he’s been cut off from MySpace. Hopefully he’ll pop up again soon, or make better use of his Blogger account…

Posted by Stan on April 16, 2008 9:30 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 14, 2008

Television Without Purpose

I don’t visit many Internet message boards anymore because, as I failed to mention the other day, message boards are just too time-consuming, especially if you participate. The few I look at, I don’t read regularly, and I participate even less frequently. But there was a time, when I was working one of my many dead-end jobs and had assloads of time to kill, where I became obsessed with a website called Television Without Pity. For those who aren’t aware (because you have better things to do with your lives than obsess over TV), it’s a site where folks write long, snarky recaps of television shows. At their best, they approximate the experience of watching a show, simulating the things that run through your mind so you can say, “Thank God I’m not the only one who didn’t think a single moment of 24’s fourth season made sense.” At their worst, they descend into rambling, pseudo-intellectual garbage overanalyzing the kind of reality shows most people half-watch as they do laundry or cook dinner.

And then there are the forums. I’ll get to that later. First, a little personal history…

I read the recaps on that site off and on from around 2001 through…well, pretty much through the recent Bravo buyout. My reading the recaps isn’t some kind of anti-corporate protest so much as a result of the shake-ups and new features really sucking up the site. The only idea worse than recapping sitcoms was the plan for “weecaps,” which aren’t defined by brevity (as you’d think, with the name) but by turnaround time. As a result, normally entertaining recappers deliver barely-coherent, joke-free summaries that are roughly as long as normal recaps.

Although I had read the recaps on the site for awhile, the forums were barely a blip on my radar until the fall of 2005. At the time, I was working at a tech company I’ve taken to calling Motorama on this blog (to make it harder to Google) that had a metric shit-ton of downtime. Even taking my now-legendary three-hour lunches, rolling in around an hour late and leaving an hour two early…I still had about four hours of downtime, because I was an efficient worker in a department notorious for inefficiency. Good times!

Also at the time, Lost launched its second season with one of the greatest mindfucks in the history of television. It was this that drew me to the TWoP forums. Well, also the fact that the color scheme of the Lost forums approximated the proprietary software we used…and also the fact that the show’s massive popularity at that time caused threads to balloon to hundreds of pages within days of an episode airing. (For a frame of reference, many other shows I watched at the time had episode threads that would rarely get to 20 pages in a full week.)

I was addicted to uncovering easter eggs and secrets, which was hard to do since ABC didn’t even carry HD feeds (or maybe it was just my cable company) at that time. As weeks passed, it became even harder because the vocal minority of Lost haters infested every thread — not just containing themselves to the show’s official bitterness thread — and this, almost as quickly as my addiction started, is what started to frustrate me about TWoP’s forums. Were all posters this obnoxious? Were they all unaware that most TVs can change channels? When they kept complaining that Lost defied its premise (and promise) by veering in a sci-fi direction, did they not noticed that the first episode featured a dinosaur-like monster that could uproot trees but was apparently invisible? Did they all hole up in threads that acted largely as echo chambers, causing their rage to increase to such a point that, by the end of season two, bitterness posters were making up their own, 100% untrue storylines, then getting mad at the writers for plot twists that…never happened.

As I started to have issues with the forums, I also noticed what I perceived as a sharp decline in the quality of recaps. (Turns out, I was just reading more of them, and the overall site quality was not nearly as good as the limited sampling I’d had before. I didn’t know this at the time.) Randomly, I popped “twop sucks” into Google just to see if anyone on the planet agreed with me. Because of the way the forum is modded, you can’t find any actual criticism of the site, or any of its posters, anywhere on their boards. You have to go to outside sources, and fortunately for me, the first hit was an anti-TWoP forum (conveniently named “TWoP Sucks”).

There, I discovered a smallish group of people who didn’t necessarily hate the site — if they did, unlike Lost viewers, they’d stop looking at — but needed to vent frustrations about unsavory posters, inconsistent moderation, and other general site weirdness. I quickly learned much more about the history of the site (in particular the forums and mods) than I ever wanted to know, but I stuck around because, although I posted infrequently, the folks there were…surprisingly normal and down-to-earth. Even their disdain for certain posters felt like typical vent-and-move-on behavior, not the rabid fandom (or anti-fandom) so often expressed on a website devoted to saying they are not a fan site.

So last year, Bravo bought TWoP for mysterious reasons. Since the site actually had some money, they hired part-time mods so the roster of recappers could do disappointing work recapping sitcoms. (Seriously, at this point M. Giant’s 24 recaps are the only things I’ll read on the site, but they should not have made him recap The Office. Much as I like him, recapping a sitcom is even worse than someone trying to retell a really good joke — it’s like someone standing next to a guy telling a really good joke, then getting flustered and trying to outdo him and failing.) With new people devoted exclusively to modding, you’d think it’d get more consistent. But no — it’s pretty much the same old shit (some would argue it’s worse). You have the mods who are fair and reasonable, the mods who strictly enforce the rules no matter what, the mods who enforce the rules inconsistently based on whether or not they agree with the offending poster, and the weird, overzealous mods who will just ban on a whim and make up an appropriate rule violation.

Which leads me, at long last to this post with a reasonable, if slightly bitter, account of getting banned from TWoP. The real fun is in the comments section. If you ignore the misguided conspiracy theories and tales of similar woe and bitterness, you’ll get to a comment that’s both sad and hilarious, in which a 61-year-old retiree was first warned, then banned for improper capitalization (ironically, she was a schoolteacher). If you keep going, you’ll find another comment in which she explains that she took the time to get the runaround from various employees of Bravo/NBC/Universal, going all the way up the chain of command to Jeff Zucker.

Because she was banned from an Internet message board. For a legitimate violation of the rules.*

Eventually, an employee of NBC (followed by a former employee) jumped on to mention that it’s both insane and hilarious to believe anybody with any kind of authority cares. This launched a bout of insanity that has resulted in, quite possibly, more traffic and comments than the poor blogger has ever received. I admit, the whole thing is hilarious, especially when it spilled over to TWoP Sucks (now known as Bitter But Brilliant) and, back on the blog, a sock puppet joined the original commenter in defense that she admitted, eventually, was being dictated to her by the original commenter. (Even funnier, I just noticed now, after pasting all these links to the comments, that the original post was written in November.)

I think the whole thing reached such a nadir of stupidity that it went from weird-yet-sad to flat-out funny, around the time somebody asked why she didn’t just re-register, and the commenter’s sock puppet answered with a paranoid (and untrue) conspiracy theory that mods obsessively check every username and e-mail address that registers to the site for superficial similarities to posters they’ve already banned.

I’m often attracted to the lurid wreckage of Internet strangeness, but I’m still just baffled by the crusade of a woman who was actually banned for the right reasons.** Her obstinate unwillingness to admit any wrongdoing kind of makes you realize that she’s exactly the type of person who would get warned once, ignore it, get warned a second time, ignore it, and then act shocked and outraged when she’s banned on the third offense. Why do so many people who gravitate to TWoP have such an utter lack of self-awareness?

More importantly: what does that say about me?***

*Say what you will about the rules and the fascist mods, their rules about spelling/grammar/capitalization make the forums much easier to read, and when you’re warned twice, why would a banning shock you? [Back]

**Although lack of capitalization is a pretty minor offense compared to the behavior of others the site hasn’t banned, it’s one of their most clearly stated rules. [Back]

***Hey, wait. That’s sort of like self-awareness. [Back]

Posted by Stan on April 14, 2008 5:45 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 12, 2008

Prove It All Night

I mentioned a few days ago that I sometimes lurk around misc.writing.screenplays (actually, now I stick with the moderated group), just to see what’s going on. I don’t have much interest in posting, and it’s easy to check in once a month and read all the worthwhile posts in maybe half an hour. They really don’t talk much about writing except to newbies, which is fine, except when they get distracted by politics, which they do. A lot. It makes it a chore to read unless you just skip those threads. I’m all for political discourse, but I’ve been lurking and (very rarely) posting there since around 2001, and it all comes down to: same shit, different day. It’s reached a point where I can’t figure out why posters allow their buttons to be pushed, or derive pleasure in pushing the buttons of the others, because it’s always the same argument.

The trolls are the same way, and in the thread I’m about to discuss, that was even mentioned, although ironically I feel like the poster is one of the rare non-trolls. He’s just very misguided, confused, and ill-informed. Whether they’re trolls or not, the usual pattern with newbies goes like this:

Newbies leap onto the group, excited to learn about the wonderful world of screenwriting.

Veteran posters respond with encouragement, recommending resource books and websites where produced scripts can be download.

Newbie trades excitement for bravado, something along the lines of, “With these tools, I will write the greatest screenplay in history and everyone in Hollywood will want a piece of me. I’ll be the next [Shane Black/Charlie Kaufman/(shudder) Diablo Cody]!”

Regulars scale back their encouragement, deciding the newbie is now ready to learn the harsh realities of the screenwriting trade.

Newbie gets defensive, insists that they’re all a bunch of cynical losers (most often citing lack of screen credits or lack of screen credits on good movies) and they shouldn’t try dragging him down with them.

Regulars come to mild defense of themselves or each other and/or shrug things off, saying something like, “I don’t have to defend my credits to you. The fact that you think the finished product resembles my original idea shows how little you know about the business.”

Here is the most irregular part; most often, the newbies simply give up posting. (In my check-in six weeks ago, one of them actually had the gall to suggest that the reason they can’t get new blood on the group is because Usenet is dying. Usenet as a discussion medium is dying — but that ain’t the reason newbies don’t stick around.) Sometimes, though, the newbies get more aggressive, resorting to personal attacks, which are easy to do considering the whole group operates like LiveJournal comments, with little rhyme or reason to the discussion. It’s all personal whims, inside jokes, anecdotes, and other odds and ends that can formulate an incomplete but still attackable personality profile. Even rarer — but far more entertainingly — the newbie trolls with wild abandon, going insane and bringing in sock puppets. Amazingly, the regulars usually go for this, arguing and fighting (even as others try to point out these guys are shams). In accordance with cliché, it’s only when they ignore the troll that he goes away.

Two of my favorite troll stories: My all-time favorite was some craziness involving a guy calling himself Eric James Niemi, apparently a real guy who sold a script in 2001. The poster was clearly not the guy, but the dude went insane and just flamed everyone for several months, increasing in complexity and absurdity, almost the point where it seemed like a satire of Usenet trolling. I checked out of the group before it was resolved, so I’m not sure how it ended, but intrepid readers can check out Google Groups if they want to see some of the hilarity in action.

Another good one was more recent, with a guy (likely a bottom-rung intern, reader, or assistant) who got ahold of the screenplay for The Bucket List a few days before the sale was announced. He posted it on the group, claiming he wrote it and looking for feedback. This was actually a great example of trolling, because the guy only wrote the initial post, then stepped back and watched the chaos. While it’s true that many accused him of being a fraud, and he did begin trolling them, about 80% of the Bucket List fiasco revolved around regulars who loved the script versus regulars who hated it; the former justified their love by pointing out its high-profile sale and the attention it received from top-notch Hollywoodites, while the latter argued that all that’s meaningless because more goes into a decision than whether or not the script is brilliant.

So here comes the newest “troll,” a fellow posting under the innocuous pseudonym “studio.” He says he has a screenplay idea involving all of the following:

A high-profile true story that will (for reasons he won’t discuss) require what sounds like Babe-esque “realistic” animation for talking animals.

The story has already been made into an obscure movie (currently available only on VHS), but because it’s both true and because the movie concentrated on…well, I’m not sure what “studio” meant by this, but what I got out of it is that he wants to write about a character involved in this bigger, high-profile story — in my mind, something like Oliver Stone covering the Kennedy assassination by telling the (massively embellished) story of New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison.

The true story apparently has some memorabilia/props affiliated with it that were purchased by a foreign studio, which “studio” considers interest in the project.

He also insisted that two studios had the same story in development recently, and that the story had been written as a magazine article, but there are somehow no rights issues involved. (He also said that, while he can go ahead and write his story because he won’t have to worry about rights, if anybody else attempts the story, he will sue the crap out of them. I laughed.)

His version of the story builds to what he referred to as an “anti-climax.” When posters asked what he meant by this, he said Bambi’s mother getting shot would be an apt comparison; when it was pointed out that Bambi’s mother’s death wasn’t the climax of Bambi, and that typically an “anti-climax” refers to an expectation that isn’t fulfilled, ultimately leading to disappointment, “studio” conceded that disappointment is the desired emotional response.

“studio” firmly believes that this story is so great, so powerful, and will be so well-told that he doesn’t have to worry about complicated things like finding an agent, getting it read at a studio, whatever. He’ll just submit it to a contest, it’ll win, a gigantic studio will buy it and pony up for the huge special effects budget he keeps talking about — everybody wins!

When regulars suggested that he choose a different medium, like writing a novel, he said no. Without elaborating, he said the “true” story would be too short to fill a book, which means he’d have to fictionalize it, which means he’d lose the integrity of the story. It has to be a screenplay. (This is when the magazine article bit came up — when it was suggested he write the true story as an article, he said, “It’s been done.”)

When regulars suggested audiences don’t like to leave the theatre disappointed, and therefore studios don’t like screenplays with disappointing endings, which means even if he does, by some miracle, get his script read, nobody will ever buy it. He didn’t really have an answer to this. Just agreed to disagree. In fact, he insisted repeatedly that he didn’t care if anybody read it or if it ever got made as a movie, but he also kept letting it slip that he really believed he could easily get it sold because any studio would want his story.

Finally, somebody made a disparaging remark about “studio“‘s personal character (a rare switch-up from the usual pattern of embittered newbies attacking regulars) after he admitted to being 48 and unemployed in New Jersey. This started “studio” on a path toward dissent. It’s actually the real irony of this guy — he’s a newbie, but he’s not a troll, and he’s actually in an age bracket where he’d probably get along with a few of the regulars. But after that personal attack, he started taking the less personal attacks (the ones telling him he’s ignorant and unrealistic about his goals) more seriously and, within a few days, disappeared. He started one other thread, asking about the street cred of the regulars, but he seemed unimpressed with the responses.

It’s pretty sad, too, because some of his questions — ignorant as they might have been — weren’t bad. It was only when people started asking for details, because of the weirder questions (like the one about whether or not a studio would be interested in memorabilia, like — I’m only guessing here — a lampshade made of human skin), that they scared him off. And then they barely even acknowledged his real screenwriting questions, which were all about directing on the page. They elected to answer by giving him the usual book recommendations and telling him to download pro scripts…

…which led to the logical question, “Why are all these screenplays filled with camera angles and what looks to me like directing on the page?” I’ve already gone into why I think it’s a bad idea for newbies to read produced scripts as a learning tool, but instead of politely explaining this*, they mostly belittled him.

I admit that this thread entertained me greatly; the weirder “studio“‘s script got, the more he hooked me. Still, I felt bad about the uselessness of the responses and the dismissal of “studio” as a troll when he was merely a confused guy and a dreamer looking for some help and insight.

*In fairness, I think one poster did answer the question, but it was still in the condescending “don’t you get it?!” tone most other posters had adopted by this point. [Back]

Edit, 4/14/08 — Going over this message again, it comes across to me like I’m disgusted/irritated/fed up with the clichés and regulars of MSWm. I don’t read it regularly and haven’t contributed to any discussion since probably 2003, but I have a lot of respect for the regulars (except for Skip Press, who’s kind of a douchebag no matter what the thread) as both people and professionals. They all seem like a cool group, and I’d probably hang there more except, like I said, I have no interest in discussing politics on the Internet, and…that’s about 80-90% of that board.

Posted by Stan on April 12, 2008 10:09 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 28, 2008

Bragging Writes

(I promise I will stop titling posts with awful, awful puns.)

All blogs are paeans to narcissism, and mine is no exception. The Stupid Blogger has opened me up to a galaxy of wannabes and hangers-on clinging to the blogs of moderately successful screenwriters, and I’ve noticed that many of these (including Stupid’s) include a little sidebar hawt CSS action documenting their progress on current projects. I elected to do what any screenwriter would do: I stole it because I thought I could make it better.

I noticed all of these blogs, without exception, ape some code they most likely found here, considering the dimensions and margins are exactly the same (the only difference are the colors). Though it’s helpful and I also stole my code from this blog, I decided to modify it to make it look a little classier (at least, I think it’s a little classier — fuck off if you disagree).

Though I don’t wish to remain fully anonymous (once somebody stumbles across this blog, they can unravel my terrible secrets with ease), I do wish to remain as difficult to Google as possible. As such, I’ll be giving each project outdated working titles instead of the actual, current titles. I know from my own dorky reader experience that if I read a script and wanted to know more about the writer, I’d pop their name and/or e-mail address into Google. If that yielded no results, I’d punch in “[Title] screenplay,” just to see if anything popped up. It only did once, but that’s beside the point: it’s possible. I wouldn’t be thrilled if the Big-Shot Producer or someone from his company Googled “[Dying Proof’s real title] screenplay” and ended up here, where I’ve written moderately hostile things about him.

That long explanation is my way of saying, “That’s why one script shares its title with a Juliana Hatfield song, and the novel is the title of the fictional town in which it takes place.” The war script is so new, I don’t even have an outdated fake title for it. I try to give my material more attention-grabbing titles by the time my work is worth seeing by people who aren’t me and the sad group of Chosen Ones who read my early drafts and send thoughtful comments such as, “Comma splice!” and “Please stop sending me this shit!”

On a slightly less narcissistic note, I felt like I should probably add progress bars like these since I’ll be rambling about these projects more often.

Edit 3/29/08 — Since this is about adding random, unnecessary shit to my blog, I should add that I’ve finally added functional, threaded comments to Stan Has Issues™ — enjoy!

Posted by Stan on March 28, 2008 4:34 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 23, 2008

Good News, Everyone!

Longtime readers may call my unhealthy obsession with the Beach Boys leading me to a slightly healthier obsession with Dennis Wilson’s long out-of-print LP Pacific Ocean Blue and my complaining that it’s been out of print for almost two decades, despite being much better than a lot of the shit in the Beach Boys’ catalog. Turns out, someone finally agrees with me, and a deluxe, double-CD reissue will come out in June.

I’m both excited about this release and glad I didn’t spend $150 on one of the OOP CDs when I had the chance a year ago.

Posted by Stan on March 23, 2008 6:56 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 21, 2008

Best Grocery Store Find Ever

Head Wipes: For Discerning Bald Guyz.

Posted by Stan on March 21, 2008 3:13 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (2)

March 16, 2008

What Is It Good For?

I’m working on something new now. I’m just going to assault people with genre stuff until somebody thinks something I write will make some money. This one’s kind of a kids’ movie — I guess more of a “young adult” thing, though, hitting that “tween” demographic, I guess. I’m trying to keep it toned down in terms of language and violence, but I always liked movies like The Goonies and (the original) Bad News Bears for respecting kids enough to realize that about 90% of them have ridiculous potty-mouths, so everyone in the audience can handle it except overly sensitive parents.

Doesn’t matter. I am consciously trying to keep this light, but here’s where the problem starts: it’s about war. I’m not hugely concerned with the violence — ironically, there isn’t much. It has a lot of satirical elements concerning the futility of war, but mainly it’s about a group of kids whose fighting escalates into all-out assaults during recess. It’s kind of inspired by this general sort of cabin fever that affected kids while I was in junior high; when we were stuck inside for most of fall and winter, when spring broke they’d just go apeshit. We’d have recess in a large park across the street, with more than enough space to hide from the prying eyes of teachers and lunch moms, and all manner of craziness would take place. Nothing to the extreme of this script, but in getting into the mentality of my 12-year-old self, a lot of it felt like the extremes I take the script to. Much of the comedy comes from this exaggeration, but I think it also contains a great deal of emotional (if not literal) truth.

And then I came up with the perfect opening sequence: a beat-for-beat spoof of the Omaha Beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan. Without drawing much attention to the fact that I’m clearly spoofing one of the most famous battle sequences in recent movie history, I’d use the spoof to clearly establish the main characters, the battle lines, the physical space of their “battlefield” (i.e., a city park), and set the comic tone for this goofy “war” (which mainly involves throwing crabapples at the other side, going back to the “it’s not that violent and nobody even gets hurt” statement).

Is this disrespectful? I’m honestly not sure, because my taste has no sense of boundaries. To me, funny is funny, and if I can pull it off the way I think I can, that’s great; if I can’t, I’d end up changing it anyway. Is there a taboo in mocking — even if I’m doing it with affection — a fearless and reverent piece of filmmaking? I don’t know.

Posted by Stan on March 16, 2008 3:11 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 15, 2008

More Bad News…

Note: This will be my last post on this subject. This blog isn’t about politics, or the atrocious ways the media covers the news, but I dunno…the whole thing makes me feel uncomfortable. Why do people feel the need to be so invasive?

Be sure to read tomorrow’s post: More about masturbation and bowel obstructions!

I still believe the New York Times’ coverage of the Spitzer whore was atrocious, but CNN managed to outdo them pretty quickly:

updated 1:19 p.m. EDT, Fri March 14, 2008
Dupre’s MySpace page evolves with scandal
By Mallory Simon
(CNN) — In three days, Ashley Alexandra Dupre went from being an unknown 22-year-old aspiring musician to the fifth most-searched subject on Google because of her alleged sexual encounters with New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
After she was identified by The New York Times, throngs of journalists staked out her home.

At the same time, she appeared to have jumped on her MySpace page, which was identified by the Times, and a Facebook profile with the same name and photos.

It seemed she was trying to stay one step ahead of journalists, attempting to limit what information they could access.

She was seemingly aware that the press would have access to her friends and every word, photo and comment on her profiles, so she began by deleting connections between her friends on Facebook.

Facebook and MySpace have become one of the go-to background tools for journalists in the past couple of years, allowing members of the press to put a face to the subject of their story and find out more about them.

As more people make profiles on these Web sites, the information they make available is more frequently becoming public fodder.

Pictures from her apparent MySpace and Facebook profile were splashed across media Web sites — and Dupre appeared to take notice. Time stamps and activity on what appears to be her Facebook profile shows she was staying up all night cleaning up her profile and responding to critics on the Internet.

American University Professor Chris Simpson, an expert in Internet and privacy law, said there is no expectation of privacy when it comes to social networking Web sites.

If you post photos or comments, there is a chance your information can end up on the front page of The New York Times, although in most cases it won’t.

“A week ago, only [Dupre’s] friends cared,” he said. “But once you put it up for the world to see, you can’t control which fraction of the world will see it.”

Simpson also said while Dupre may have originally left her profiles open hoping someone would discover her music, it also left her susceptible to media scrutiny after the Spitzer scandal.

“Unfortunately, you can’t say, ‘Oh well, I didn’t want that kind of publicity, I only wanted positive publicity,’” he said.

While most people may understand their profiles are subject to public viewing, Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist for the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said focus groups have shown they generally can’t think of a scenario where their information would become so public.

Early Thursday morning, it appears Dupre realized she needed to make some changes to alter what the public would be able to know about her.

At 3 a.m., there was an entry that she had completed a “thorough profile scrub,” leaving only a couple of photos of herself on Facebook.

At the same time, the self-described aspiring musician left a clip of one of her songs on MySpace and frequently linked to a page where users could download it.

So does Dupre want the attention that comes along with this scandal or not?

“Maybe promoting herself and her music on the Internet means she does want to make it available to everyone in a very public way,” Lenhart said.

Some of her close friends made sure their feelings were known to the press, too. Some posted on her MySpace page telling her to ignore the media, that they would be there for her and reminding her to stay strong.

But even those who weren’t close with her seemed to want in on the action. Some identifying themselves as her high school classmates created a group on Facebook devoted to those who had classes with her.

The early morning hours slipped by and Internet activity on Facebook continued until 5 a.m., when she apparently confronted the high school classmates on the group page. It seemed she believed they were trying to exploit her situation.

“Do me a favor and don’t try to cash out… thanks,” she wrote on the Facebook group page.

Thursday morning, the Dupre Facebook status gave the impression she wanted no part of the attention.

“Sneaking out the back door,” she wrote under her “current status.”

But as the day went on, it seemed Dupre’s feelings were changing and she might have been embracing the newfound spotlight.

The page had received more than 1,100 friend requests on Facebook. Initially, she ignored them.

By the afternoon she apparently gave in, but the feelings were short-lived.

By 2:30 p.m. Thursday the Facebook and MySpace profiles were gone, but they reappeared Friday.

If your attention span is too short to properly digest such thorough journalism, here are the story highlights:

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Dupre becomes the fifth most-searched subject on Google

After being identified by The New York Times, Dupre cleans up her profiles

Dupre to high school classmates: “Do me a favor and don’t try to cash out…”

Facebook and MySpace pages that appeared to be Dupre’s are deleted

So here’s the problem this time: it’s incredibly lazy, bordering on incompetent, to write a lengthy “news story” whose primary source is a MySpace page…

…but it’s still better than writing an article from the perspective of a MySpace-stalker, obsessively checking the profile and recording every minute detail, justifying your actions by talking to “experts” who toss around “maybe” like it’s the only word they know.

I’m not denying that Ashley Alexandra Dupré is newsworthy. Other than her ridiculous hotness (marred only by her comically fake giant boobs), I don’t give half a shit about her. I can understand why people would, and that’s fine. I don’t object to the media covering the story. What they’ve covered so far, however, isn’t a story. Also, Rick Sanchez is a fucking idiot. He has nothing to do with any of this (as far as I know), but he works for CNN and it must be stated. Not even Tony Harris, Paul Zahn, or Soledad O’Brien can match his stupidity. It’s astounding.

Sorry for that diversion. It just has to be mentioned every time CNN is mentioned.

I’ve complained about two “news” sources (so far) stooping to sensationalism (more than usual) because, basically, I’m really angry. Still, at the end of the news cycle, the real idiots have revealed themselves: the American public. As the New York Daily News “reports”, some of Dupré’s songs — featured on a pay music website with a sliding scale — has blasted to the top.

“Move Ya Body” was the quickest cut ever to hit the site’s maximum price of 98 cents per download, said Joshua Boltuch, co-founder of the music Web site, the only place where Dupré’s songs can be purchased online.
“It went up to 98 cents in just five hours during the middle of the night,” Boltuch said. “That’s incredible.”

I can understand going to her MySpace page and listening to the one song she posted there for free out of morbid curiosity. I can’t imagine anybody who wouldn’t after hearing the only interesting fact of her life — her musical aspirations. But to listen to that song, then click her link to the pay site, and lay down money? After hearing one piece of shit song for free, you then pay for two or three more songs? Who does that?*

So far, this has netted Dupré $200,000, or 200 hours of “labor.” That is astounding. Also, nobody in the world — including the billions of people who didn’t pay for her songs; we all deserve to be lumped together for this one — is allowed to accuse her of indecency, immorality, or any of the other disparaging epithets leveled at prostitutes. The most indecent thing about the story to date is how much money gullible idiots gave to her. What the fuck, guys?

*Coldplay fans not required to answer. [Back]

Posted by Stan on March 15, 2008 9:19 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 14, 2008

“Journalism”

It’s the story “everybody” has been waiting for: just who is the woman Eliot Spitzer wanted to sex up? I know I was desperate to know. After all, there’s so little going on in the world. It’s nice to finally see a meaty story. And here’s one, from the New York Times:
For an Aspiring Singer, a Harsher Spotlight
By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and IAN URBINA
Published: March 13, 2008

She left a broken home on the Jersey Shore at 17 and came to New York City to work the nightclubs as a rhythm and blues singer. Now, at 22, she is the unwitting, and as yet unseen, star of the seamy drama that is the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York.

Kristen, the prostitute described in a federal affidavit as having had a rendezvous with Mr. Spitzer on Feb. 13 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, has spent the last few days in her ninth-floor apartment in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. On Monday, she made a brief appearance in federal court, where a lawyer was appointed to represent her. She is expected to be a witness in the case against four people charged with operating a prostitution ring called the Emperor’s Club V.I.P.

In a series of telephone interviews on Tuesday night, she said she had slept very little over the past week, with all the stress of the case.

“I just don’t want to be thought of as a monster,” the woman said as she told the tiniest tidbits of her story.

Born Ashley Youmans but now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, she spoke softly and with good humor as she added with significant understatement: “This has been a very difficult time. It is complicated.”

She has not been charged. The lawyer appointed to represent her, Don D. Buchwald, told a magistrate judge in court on Monday that she had been subpoenaed to testify in a grand jury investigation. Asked to swear that she had accurately filled out and signed a financial affidavit, she responded affirmatively.

A person with knowledge of the Emperor’s Club operation confirmed that the woman interviewed by The New York Times was the woman identified as Kristen in the affidavit. Mr. Buchwald confirmed various details of Ms. Dupré’s background but would not discuss the contents of the affidavit.

Ms. Dupré said by telephone Tuesday night that she was worried about how she would pay her rent since the man she was living with “walked out on me” after she discovered he had fathered two children. She said she was considering working at a friend’s restaurant or, once her apartment lease expires, moving back with her family in New Jersey “to relax.”

She did not say when she had started working for the Emperor’s Club, or how often she had liaisons arranged through the ring. Asked when she met Governor Spitzer and how many times they had seen each other, Ms. Dupré said she had no comment.

As of Wednesday morning, Ms. Dupré’s MySpace page recounted her “odyssey to New York from New Jersey through North Carolina, Miami, D.C., Virginia and Austin, Texas;” public records show that she lived in Monmouth County, N.J., in 2001, and in North Carolina in 2003. She owns a company, created in 2005, called Pasche New York, which her lawyer said was an entertainment business designed to further her singing career.

Music is her first love, and on the MySpace page, Ms. Dupré mentions Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra, Christina Aguilera and Lauryn Hill among a long list of influences, including her brother, Kyle. (She also lists Whitney Houston, Madonna, Mary J. Blige and Amy Winehouse as her top MySpace friends.) In the interview, she said she saw the Rolling Stones perform at Radio City Music Hall on their last tour after a friend gave her two tickets. “They were amazing,” she said.

On MySpace, her page says: “I am all about my music and my music is all about me. It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel.”

She left “a broken family” at age 17, having been abused, according to the MySpace page, and has used drugs and “been broke and homeless.”

“Learned what it was like to have everything and lose it, again and again,” she writes. “Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone.

“But I made it,” she continues. “I’m still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Cliché, yes, but I know it’s true.”

Ms. Dupré’s mother, Carolyn Capalbo, 46, said that after her daughter finished sophomore year in high school, Ms. Dupré moved to North Carolina. “She was a young kid with typical teenage rebellion issues, but we are extremely close now,” Ms. Capalbo said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

In 2006, Ms. Dupré changed her legal name, according to records in Monmouth County Superior Court, from Ashley R. Youmans to Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, taking her stepfather’s surname since she regarded him as “the only father I have known.” But in the interview, she referred to herself as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, which is how she is known on MySpace.

On the Web page is a recording of what she describes as her latest track, “What We Want,” a hip-hop-inflected rhythm-and-blues tune that asks, “Can you handle me, boy?” and uses some dated slang, calling someone her “boo.”

“I know what you want, you got what I want,” she sings in the chorus. “I know what you need. Can you handle me?”

Her MySpace biography says she started singing professionally after a musician she was living with heard her singing the Aretha Franklin hit “Respect” in the shower and burst into the bathroom with his lead guitarist. She says she toured and recorded with them, then moved to Manhattan in 2004 and “spent the first two years getting to know the music scene, networking in clubs and connecting with the industry.

“Now it’s all about my music, it’s all about expressing me.”

In the affidavit, the woman the Emperor’s Club called Kristen is described as “an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5 feet 5 inches, and 105 pounds.” She apparently was booked at about $1,000 an hour, placing her in the middle of the seven-diamond scale by which the prostitutes were paid up to $4,300 an hour.

Ms. Capalbo said that she was “shell-shocked” when her daughter called in the middle of last week and told her she had been working as an escort and was now in trouble with the law. She said she was not sure that Ms. Dupré realized who Mr. Spitzer was when he was her client.

“She is a very bright girl who can handle someone like the governor,” Ms. Capalbo said. “But she also is a 22-year-old, not a 32-year-old or a 42-year-old, and she obviously got involved in something much larger than her.”

Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.

So here’s the thing: I didn’t give two shits about the news until the epic 2000 election — the first election I voted in — and while I know this isn’t exactly a new thing, the moment I started caring was the moment I (slowly but surely) realized how fucking awful the media covers “news.” Since about 2004, I haven’t been able to look at a newspaper or watch the TV news without feeling mildly disgusted at not just the selection of “stories” but the way in which they are covered. However, the article above goes far beyond any level of badness I’ve witness. Seriously, when the most valuable source you have in your story is a fucking MySpace page, maybe it’s worth holding off the report for a day or two. I don’t even care about the mostly incoherent quotes from her mother, the article’s subtle tone of pity*, or the bland biographical details that barely paint a picture of who she is as a person. I’m bothered by the fact that there’s no story here. Not yet, anyway.

The New York Times is supposed to be all classy and shit, so why did they print this sub-Enquirer bullshit? I mean, their lengthy profile of Axl Rose and his struggle to complete Chinese Democracy was totally pointless and barely newsworthy (especially in 2005 — at the very least, 2007 was a red-letter year for Axl continually saying Chinese Democracy will be out without ever releasing it), but it went into a great deal of depth, didn’t editorialize — author Jeff Leeds just told it, from beginning to end. The worth of a story like that is definitely questionable, but the bottom line is, the story was there to tell. The article on Dupré gives us the fascinating details of somebody’s MySpace profile, with only one or two legitimate quotes from humans worth talking to. Not exactly front-page material. Hell, that’s barely worth burying in the back with follow-ups and Alessandra Stanley retractions.

Is this just a “new kind of journalism” that I’m not understanding? I totally get the value of utilizing “new media” to cover a story. It may have been bad form to publicly release Cho Seung-Hui’s writing and videos, but at least they helped (in some way) to complete our psychological picture of a killer, using his own words. Forget the platoons of pundit/psychologists invading newsrooms nationwide; the fact that we can read his writing, listen to his voice, see his face saying the words — it allows us to draw our own conclusions and understand the situation.

In this case, the MySpace profile is not the story. Generic “insights” on a blog post and faux-profundity don’t paint any kind of portrait of this person. At least, not anything different from any other MySpace profile on the planet. Her terrible song is the closest thing to getting at the truth of this person, her situation, and why she was backed into the corner of whoredom. I hate to sound mean, because I’m not exactly Eric Clapton, but that song screams “don’t quit your day job.”

Still, MySpace is an artifice that exists, in many (dare I say most?) people’s minds, as an avenue to hype themselves up. Every person I’ve ever talked to who had a MySpace profile, even if they decide to make it private at some point, has mentioned putting some kind of lie on their profile, from tiny and white to outlandish and mean.** MySpace is the high school/college reunion of the Internet, a place where many people actively hide their true selves from the people they know will be looking, because it’s a lot easier to just lie than to explain why being the assistant to a big-shot producer is an impressive job even if it only means a tiny credit at the very, very end of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 sandwiched between CATERING MANAGER and FIRST ASSISTANT ACCOUNTANT.

Should this really pass as news, or as substantive information about a woman somebody, somewhere wants to learn about?

*I don’t think she’s a monster — I mainly think she’s exploiting the wealthy as much as they’re exploiting her, so the whole morality issue is kind of neutralized. Also, living in an apartment in Flatiron and vacationing on the French Riviera? I’m pretty sure if she wanted to “make it” as a singer, her money could be put to better use elsewhere. I do think we should feel sorry for Spitzer’s wife and daughters, though. They can now look forward to an endless series of awkward holidays and family events. [Back]

**Like listing your status as “married” because you know it’ll piss off all your old boyfriends. [Back]

Posted by Stan on March 14, 2008 4:43 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

March 7, 2008

Special Effects

I mentioned this offhandedly at one point, but here’s the deal: CGI has ruined special effects innovation. When it is used merely to enhance the story — as in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance, and also Jurassic Park (which I recently rewatched and wow, the special effects still hold up) — and populate a world with things that cannot exist in reality, I don’t have a problem with the use of CGI. Good artists manage to lend weight and texture to the objects, making them look less cartoonish than, say, Samuel L. Jackson’s death in Deep Blue Sea.

However, while there are still minor innovations in the realm of CGI, nothing compares to the insane genius of practical effects. I’ve been working on an action script rewrite, and one of the comments on the previous draft is pretty obvious: too much action. It muddles one character’s arc, which doesn’t quite ruin the script, but it doesn’t help. So lately, I’ve gone back to some of my favorite action movies to see How They Did It — mainly in terms of balancing story and character with action set-pieces.

Watching Point Break a couple of weeks ago helped. The intensity of everything in that movie, from the backyard chase to the end, wouldn’t have much dramatic impact if we weren’t already thoroughly invested in Johnny Utah’s internal conflict. I can’t believe I just wrote that, but it’s true.

I also broke out another Cameron Classic, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which is one hell of a movie with a paper-thin third act (but fuck, they’re up against the T-1000 — who needs plot twists?!). Then I tossed in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Each of these movies gave me separate goals to think about — they’re so tightly constructed. It’s very rare you have a drinking contest as both a point of character development and a major plot point.

After thinking about how to improve my script, I considered the insanity of these movies. Like, at the beginning of the movie, Alfred Molina is covered in tarantulas. Real tarantulas. When was the last time you’ve seen that in a movie? All I ever see are poorly rendered CGI bugs. Most people know the story of Harrison Ford and the cobra separated by a thin pane of glass. Snakes on a Plane (which used more real and/or rubber/”practical” snakes than I would have thought) aped that shot — with a cheesy, CGI snake.

Terminator 2, which did use digital effects extensively (but again, to enhance, not as a cheap catch-all) has some amazing practical effects, like using an amputee for the scene where the T-1000’s body freezes and breaks apart. Can you imagine a time and place where a man was paid millions to come up with a way to have a “liquid metal” machine freeze and break apart, and he comes up with “amputee”? Nowadays, the most innovative thing about a shot like that is actually making the frozen pieces look convincing.

I understand the reasons for the switch: these days, CGI is just cheaper and easier. But as a result, we’ve lost an element of movie magic. There’s rarely a sense of wonder in seeing something new on film. “How’d they do that?” has been replaced by “Wow, that’s pretty good CGI!” It’s disappointing.

Posted by Stan on March 7, 2008 6:04 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 5, 2008

Harry Caray: Shill

AT&T has launched a devastating attack on Chicago.

Hot off rumors that they bankrolled a dummy consumer-advocacy group to get cable deregulated in Illinois so they could muscle in on untapped territory, they’re launching a new digital cable service across the city. There’s only one problem: nobody’s ever heard of AT&T, a tiny upstart with dim associations with the telephone. They need a great spokesperson to spread the word. Who to get…who to get?

Hey, I know! How about Harry Caray, beloved Chicago icon? Oh…he’s dead?

Hey, I know! Why don’t they get that half-assed comedian, John Campanera, to do a Harry Caray impersonation so bad, it makes Frank Caliendo seem talented. Don’t forget to dress him up so he bears a stronger resemblance to that creepy Six Flags guy than Harry Caray. Also, he needs to do some mildly offensive “Harry Caray is incoherent schtick” hyping up the great AT&T cable plan. That’ll really win over Chicagoans!

Now, look, I think Will Ferrell’s Harry Caray is hilarious, but there’s something about it that’s…I don’t know, endearing, like he loves and embraces the absurdity of Harry Caray’s late-inning, Bud-fueled zaniness and wants to preserve it in his impression. There’s something weird and disturbing about exploiting his memory to sell cable, even more when you add to it the guy is no good and looks really creepy in the make-up. It also might be less offensive if they didn’t play the same three Harry Caray commercials during every single commercial break, on every single channel, everywhere. Damn, AT&T! Scale back the marketing. We already have your phone service; based on our experiences with that, you should already be aware that, if given the choice — which your fake advocacy group deemed so important — nobody in his right mind would switch to you for cable.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any examples of these horrible commercials, but I found something that might actually be worse. John Campanera, without the make-up, doing his impression.

You might notice something odd about this clip. That’s right, it’s taken from a semi-legitimate documentary about the life of Harry Caray. I can’t find much in the way of information at the website explaining who made it and whether or not it’s “official,” but it seems they’ve interviewed some pretty high-profile people who would respect the man’s legacy. Why they spent time talking to a comedian is beyond me, and I’m not sure if misspelling his name shows the filmmakers’ apathy toward him or just general incompetence. The whole thing strikes me as very odd, but at least in the clip (while spectacularly unfunny) he isn’t selling anything. Except, maybe, himself.

On the plus side, I suppose I need to congratulate Chip Caray, for no longer being the most embarrassing part of the Harry Caray legacy.

Posted by Stan on March 5, 2008 8:12 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 24, 2008

Dull the Hate

I’m not going to lie and say I don’t hate things, because anybody who’s taken even a cursory look at that blog would burst into either laughter or tears (both?) at such an outrageous lie. My recent outburst against the movie Juno might look, on the surface, like a hateful diatribe. I mean, the post has the word “hate” in the title, right?

I did hate Juno. After initially feeling indifferent-yet-positive, closer inspection revealed an aimless story and a protagonist who grew more unlikable the more you learned about her (and she didn’t start out terribly likable in the first place). My real objection, if you cut through the rage, is that it blew a shitload of raw potential on a movie that’s kinda crappy. Making a film is a difficult, expensive process, so why spend the time and money on something that isn’t the absolute best you can make it? Sometimes, it’s just a matter of a weak link; sometimes, it’s a big-ass weak chain.

You might think, based on my review, that the weak link in the film is Diablo Cody and/or her screenplay. Granted, it’s all kinds of bad, but it has so many moments of raw potential that could have been good if, as I suggested, it had undergone a few more rewrites (preferably with a different writer). It had all the elements of a great story, then blew it on an unstructured mess of painful dialogue and cloying sentiment. She missed two great opportunities: (1) pregnancy is hard, especially for teenagers, and (2) there’s so much wonderful irony in the idea of an obnoxious expectant mother inadvertently destroying the marriage of her unborn child’s surrogates.

I’m not saying they had to take it in a pedo direction with Mark and Juno — in fact, I thought what was there was already uncomfortable and unnecessary enough. They just needed to see the storyline through and make it even more destructive and difficult. This would have given Juno her much-needed comeuppance, it would have fleshed out Mark and Vanessa’s ill-defined relationship satisfactorily, and it would have caused all three of these characters to grow and change in interesting ways. As it stands, the divorce is a bump in the road, and both Mark and Vanessa are largely ignored after their dull discussion of it. And yes, I believe they could accomplish all of this while maintaining a sense of humor.

Believe it or not, I didn’t want to turn this into another rant on Juno. I’m just trying to illustrate the untapped potential of that screenplay, which either nobody noticed or nobody cared enough about.

This brings me back to the weak chain. Diablo Cody’s screenplay could have been great if she hadn’t wussed out at every opportunity to make these characters truly come alive with genuine dramatic conflict, which might make you think she’s the weak link. Seems reasonable…

…and yet, people bought this screenplay. People put it through the development wringer (which, contrary to popular opinion, doesn’t always ruin a movie). A great cast and a novice director who made one great movie signed on to it. To hear all of them tell it, this screenplay is the greatest thing in the history of time. I can see certain admirable qualities in the screenplay — including superficial qualities that might appeal to actors, directors, and producers (such as the acting challenge of spewing out that atrocious dialogue, or the “edgy” subject matter) — but at the end of the day, the good doesn’t outweigh the bad. The good doesn’t justify the bad, doesn’t make you ignore the bad, doesn’t redeem a bad movie. There’s just not enough of it, and what is there isn’t good enough.

So I don’t hate everything. I just get disappointed. And then I hate the thing for not living up to standards that, frankly, I don’t think are very high. (Case in point: I watched Point Break this morning. Point fucking Break, a movie I haven’t seen in a few years…and it’s just unbelievably good. Even the ending, which I sorta hated at first because it felt like the studio-imposed “three endings to make sure the broadest group of idiots leaves happy,” started to work for me this time around. So no, I do not have high standards. I just have standards.)

I saw Gone Baby Gone and No Country for Old Men in the same week that I saw Juno. The latter is great, about as good a Coen Brothers movie that’s ever been made (and that’s saying something), but the former was — dare I say it? — a masterpiece. No, “masterpiece” might be too strong, but it’s easily the best movie I’ve seen in a year (not just including movies made within the last year). If anybody wants a lesson in how to do crime thrillers or modern noirs — and based on Hollywood’s output, they need a lesson — Gone Baby Gone is the movie they should start with. Great, economic storytelling, great cast, the best use of cinematic misdirection since Marathon Man.

Why didn’t I write about these movies? Because this blog exists to get the rage out. I like feeling happy; I don’t like feeling rage and distress. One could argue that my lack of posting means I’m happy. I have an ulcer that would suggest otherwise; in fact, maybe that ulcer is saying, “Post more.”

And maybe I will…

…but first! I’ve noticed more than a dozen (which is a lot for this blog) searches for Pan’s Labyrinth and Garden State since I posted the Juno review (which contains a barbed reference to each of those movies). I never reviewed them because, frankly, neither one disappointed or annoyed me. They were awful, but they didn’t spark the rage.

Theoretically, they should have, because of the hype surrounding each. I had been told by many that Garden State is the defining movie of our generation. If it is: wow, what a boring, disaffected generation. At the same time, many of the rugged, manly men I carouse with broke down just before last call and whispered through their tears that Pan’s Labyrinth is the only movie that truly made them weep, and they loved every minute of it. Really?

So here’s a generalized assessment of each:

Garden State — I don’t have much to say except that, in a much less irritating way than Juno (but still kind of annoying), it tried way too hard to find deep meaning in largely meaningless words and actions. On top of which, the pacing was a bit ponderous. Yes, I know this was to underscore the malaise of the characters, but fuck, why would I want to watch a movie about listless people that’s boring as shit? Kevin Smith made Clerks, tackling similar themes about the same age bracket, and managed to make the tedium and malaise snappy and entertaining. (And before you get mad at me for defending Kevin Smith, who is essentially the male Diablo Cody: Clerks is still a good movie. It and the insane animated series spinoff are the only things Kevin Smith is associated with that I still enjoy. I used to be a fanboy; then I stopped being 15. It’s juvenile, but the jokes still work, and its depth and understanding of the sad-sack characters holds up better than the treacly sentiment of his later movies.)

Pan’s Labyrinth — Okay, so Sergi López plays creepy like nobody’s business. So the fuck what? The problem here is the fantasy element. I’m all for magical realism, but this is what Jay Sherman would call “fantacrap.” So you have a little girl. She has a shitty life. She escapes into a fantasy world that’s actually about 1000 times more disturbing than her actual life, but for some reason she has a strong desire to keep escaping to this world, without the movie giving us any firm understanding of why she would (other than the shittiness of her life). At the end, she’s killed and escapes permanently into the fantasy world. I was almost on board with the movie until this point, where all the subtle, disturbing imagery suddenly turned beat-you-over-the-head obvious as the little girl is hailed the queen of this goofy alternate world and can finally be happy in death. Duh! I might have actually been okay with the movie — though not nearly as positive as everyone else on the planet — if Guillermo del Toro hadn’t gone the Jane Campion route of explaining to us how deep his movie is like we’re third-graders. Either be deep or confusing as shit and let us sort it out (like David Lynch), or make a normal movie for the unwashed masses. You can’t have it both ways.

Huh, I guess Pan’s Labyrinth did sort of get the rage going. I should blog more.

Posted by Stan on February 24, 2008 3:50 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

September 5, 2007

Now Running MovableType 4.0

Which means maybe I’ll get some control of this spam. Or not.

I had a real, bona fide entry all saved up for the big switch, but for awhile I’m going to be playing around with all the new features and maybe even putting forth the effort to create a unique page style. I’m taking bets on which will come first: a new style or a new, legitimate entry. Any takers? I’ve got $50 on “he’ll just abandon the blog for good!”

Also: it’s gonna look pretty funky until I get the time to make sure all the new templates are working right (so far, they aren’t).

Edit, 9/8/07: Wow, I’ve created both a new layout (not much more than a modified version of my original layout from oh-so-long-ago) and a new post. I’m still tweaking the design, but for right now it’s pretty reasonable in comparison to MT4’s horrific default templates.

Posted by Stan on September 5, 2007 9:23 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

August 7, 2007

Open Comments

I’ve vacillated for many years about whether or not to have open comments. Ignoring the many Google hits from “outsiders” looking for “humiliation stories” or “porno stores in des plaines,” among the many other bizarre keyword combinations that will bring you to my mess of a blog, my belief is that anybody who would read the blog and leave a comment is either an R. Kelly fan or a personal friend. This has been the case nine times out of ten, but then came the junk comments.

Yup, once Google archived my entire site, comment-bots came out of the woodwork to wreak havoc on my site for no real reason. Any time I have open comments, I get slammed harder than frequent commenter Teenwolf’s mom on any given Saturday night. This wouldn’t bother me if MovableType had a better spam-catcher. Maybe they will when 4.0 comes out, but for now…it’s pretty shitty, so every time I come home I’m greeted with anywhere between 20 and 70 comments that are pure junk. I have to go through and junk them all, hoping in vain that this will bring MT’s junk filter up to snuff.

Sometimes I disable comments, resulting in panic and uproar from both of my fans. They don’t want to sign up to TypeKey, SixApart’s “authenticated” commenting system, even though it’d make life way easier for me. Do you know how difficult it is to login to MovableType, click “highlight all,” then click “junk”? I’m already guilty enough for never blogging; the junk comments are like a heckling Greek chorus, saying, “Heeey, buddy, we want to hear more stories about masturbation and blow-up dolls.” Well, it’ll happen…someday.

My decision is usually to say, “Suck me,” and disable open comments. If my commenters don’t want to authenticate themselves, I miss out on related ribaldry and possibly invitations to meet up at Adult World. I can live with it.

But then, once in awhile, I get some really nice, well-rounded comments from people I don’t know—new readers who stumbled across it through the aforementioned keywords and did something amazing, astounding, unexpected:

They read my blog. And sorta like it.

I can’t deny that it’s pretty rewarding to have somebody drop some comment science on me. For awhile it was other bloggers, and I’d add them to my embarrassingly brief blogroll. But there’s been quite a lull—

Until now!

And by now, I mean “almost a month ago.”

I was going through the junk comments like, “Jesus, what is wrong with people?” and griping about how MovableType needs a “ban by e-mail” function, because that’d make my life way easier (temporarily, anyway), and then I stumbled across an actual, legitimate comment on an old entry. For those too lazy to click the link, here’s the comment:

Don’t know if you’ll see this because this entry is so old and I’m not sure how blogs work, but here goes:
Something like 10 years ago my best friend’s wife (who works in the industry, she attaches talent to green-lighted projects) told me Mario Van Peebles is gay.

My wife saw some documentary recently that was about Melvin Van Peebles’ travails in the industry and she told me she thought it was good.
I googled “Mario Van Peebles is gay” thinking, “hey, I never heard anything about Mario coming out of the closet, I wonder if he’s still in.”

Found your blog and laughed my ass off reading the Peebles post. Read backward and forward to find out who the cast of characters are. Pretty good stuff.

You have a Freudian typo in the Peebles post. At one point you’re talking about Maria, but you substitute Gina’s name. Didn’t catch it at first, but then a couple days later I was reading that entry to my wife telling her how I stumbled on your stuff, caught it then.

You’re a good writer.

Paul

Well, Paul, if you’re still checking this blog out: first, sorry (and this goes for all my readers) for never updating. Second, sorry for checking the comments so infrequently that it took me nearly two weeks to see your comment. Third, sorry it took another two weeks to actually get back to you, in the form of this entry. I’m appreciative that once in awhile, people actually read this. Based on the Google hits I see, usually people stumble across this place looking for pornography. As you can see, they’re pretty disappointed.

I’m glad you’re digging the blog, but I actually have a question now: is Mario Van Peebles out of the closet? I honestly don’t know, and my own Google search on the subject didn’t come up with anything promising. It seems to me like he’s one of these guys who’s “in the closet but anyone who knows of him knows the truth,” so why bother being in the closet anymore? Maybe he’s afraid nobody will take him seriously as an action star when Solo 2 comes out.

Also, I’m just wondering about the Melvin Van Peebles documentary. There are several, and I’ve seen a few, but if your wife remembers the title and I haven’t seen it, I’ll check it out.

If you don’t already own it, I am told Baadasssss is available on DVD for $2 at Big Lots, if you have one nearby.

Funny story about the Freudian typo you mention: back in the olden days, when I needed to give “Gina” her name (as you might have read, she was originally known as “The Crush” until I realized giving everyone a “The [Adjective]” name is a pain in the ass, and also until she kinda stopped being my crush and became a regular old friend), I picked Gina sorta haphazardly, after Martin Lawrence’s girlfriend on Martin (as in “Daaaaamn, Gina”). Then, a year or so later — I became friends with an actual person named Gina. This is the folly of fake blog names. I started to call her Maria so people wouldn’t get confused by “fake Gina” versus “real Gina.” So this was less Freudian slip, more “oh shit I forgot to use her fake name.” Either way, I appreciate you letting me know. It’s much more valuable than somebody pointing out my improper use of the past-tense of “to shit,” ALAN.

I’d love to hear from other readers, if any of them dare to comment. Any old obscene entry, at any time, I will probably turn your comment into a blog entry because hey, at least I’m blogging.

Posted by Stan on August 7, 2007 8:32 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (5)

May 31, 2007

The Elderly: Not Completely Useless

Check out this CNN video about 100-year-olds being given iPods at a Washington rest home. While I don’t dig the patronizing tone of the piece, it sounds like kind of a nifty idea. Mostly I’m posting it for the comedy gold that appears a little more than halfway through it. When asked how she feels about paying $3 for a cup of Starbucks coffee, she spits, “Shit!”

With the exception of every brilliant moment of Rick Sanchez’s career, this is the funniest thing to hit CNN since Bruce Springsteen called Soledad O’Brien an idiot right to her face, while laughing at her:

I wish the world were this hilarious every day.

In case you aren’t as amused by elderly people using obscenities to describe the Starbucks pricing structure, here is a great animated short called “All the Great Operas in 10 Minutes.” It’s seriously funny shit. Don’t let the Canadian accent fool you.

Posted by Stan on May 31, 2007 6:19 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 29, 2007

Joblo Blows It Again

So I stumbled across this blog post on Joblo, second only to Ain’t It Cool News in terms of horrible entertainment “news” and “reviews,” where they suggest — without irony — that Arrested Development’s great Michael Cera was the original choice for the lead role in Knocked Up. But he was fired for being terrible, which the video shows. The hell?

The video itself is comedy gold that’s obviously a parody of the David O. Russell video, obviously fake, so why would anyone be stupid enough to post this as if it were legitimate? You’ll have to ask “James Thoo,” who posted it on Joblo. In case you can’t believe it based solely on the obviously-staged video, here is a mountain of evidence showing how full of shit it is:

Almost immediately after The 40-Year-Old Virgin became a smash hit, Judd Apatow announced his next movie would be a star vehicle for Seth Rogen, who was a genius on Apatow’s TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared and was also pretty great in Virgin.

Michael Cera is starring in Superbad, a movie produced by Judd Apatow, which Seth Rogen costars in and cowrote.

I was actually going to go on with more information, but I realized that there’s absolutely nothing else that needs to be tossed out to show the utter fakeness of the video.

Way to go, Joblo. You’re almost giving Harry Knowles a run for his money.

Posted by Stan on May 29, 2007 7:54 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 9, 2007

The Bailiff

Most people know that Judge Mathis is my favorite TV judge, and my chronic unemployment has allowed me to sample a wide variety of TV judges. He’s by far the most interesting and entertaining, and the cases are usually more bizarre and hilarious than the other courtroom fare. Longtime watchers of the show (like me…I will at least admit I’m kind of ashamed to have watched it for this long) might have noticed the abrupt bailiff shift a few years back. According to this horribly designed website:

Judge Mathis Bailiff Dead at 37
As announced on a recent episode of Judge Mathis, former bailiff Brendan Anthony Moran died on December 28, 2002 at the age of 37. Moran’s death has been officially ruled a suicide; he passed away after falling off a balcony. Moran’s family disputes the ruling, claiming that Brendan would not kill himself. Still, it is an unfortunate fact that suicide spikes during the winter holidays, when people who are only moderately depressed fall into even deeper levels of depression.

Saying Goodbye and Moving On
On the first edition of his show taped after Moran’s untimely death, Judge Greg Mathis briefly eulogized his friend and coworker, finishing by saying “Goodbye, my friend,” and dedicating that episode of the program to the late bailiff. Of course, the show must go on, and Mathis, who is fighting to increase the ratings on his show in order to make it to a fifth season, is now working with a new bailiff, pictured at left.
R. I. P.
Brendan Anthony Moran
1965-2002

Clearly the site is regularly updated, since this five-year-old announcement is plastered on the main page and it claims this all was announced on a “recent” Judge Mathis episode, but who am I to mock? I obviously missed the eulogy episode and had no idea what happened. I just assumed he quit for whatever reason.

I can’t deny this news is kind of depressing. I wonder if they ever investigated and found out it was…murder?! It’s doubtful. The “we’re his family and we know he’d never commit suicide” routine is pretty common.

Posted by Stan on May 9, 2007 6:03 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (23)

April 30, 2007

Comments Enabled

During my months of not blogging, I got a little tired of the excessive comment spam so I disabled public comments. However, I’m getting a lot of hits from vaguely interesting search terms and am wondering if people want to comment but are discouraged because they can’t do so anonymously. So the public comments are enabled again, and I’ll deal with the spam; hell, if nothing else, it’ll be a reminder that I have a blog I can whine in.

Posted by Stan on April 30, 2007 12:58 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 29, 2007

Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue

After bandleader/songwriter/producer/arranger/brother Brian Wilson’s breakdown in 1967, the Beach Boys had to fend for themselves. It was a strange, tumultuous time, producing some of the band’s most ecclectic and bizarre music. Some of it is great; most of it is awful. In one of the band’s many hilarious-if-it-weren’t-so-depressing ironies, Dennis stepped up as the brother who was by far the band’s best songwriter (after Brian).

Rarely taken seriously by the other band members, mostly because he rarely took the group seriously, many of his songs were rejected in the group’s democratic selection process for album cuts. Dennis was considering a solo album as early as 1970, and Beach Boys versions of songs that would later appear on Pacific Ocean Blue were being played live as early as 1969. If you look at the band’s creative output from 1969 (when his first compositions appeared on Friends) through 1979, the standout songs are nearly always written by Dennis. (One notable exception, Brian’s “‘Til I Die” from 1971’s Surf’s Up, remains one of the Beach Boys’ best songs.)

With Dennis’ rampant drug and alcohol abuse and womanizing, it’s probably not a huge surprise that a solo album originally conceived in 1970 was not finished until 1977. But part of this has to do with the difficulty of his recording process; despite many liner-note attributions to the usual gang of Beach Boys session musicians (no actual Beach Boys, because even back then Mike Love was lawsuit-happy and threatened to sue if Dennis Wilson tried to release a solo album featuring other Boys), legend has it that Dennis played every instrument and most of the vocal parts himself, meticulously experimenting with arrangements (thanks to the relative safe haven of Brother Studios, where he could record for free).

The third contributing factor was that the Beach Boys simply didn’t have enough material for complete studio albums. Even though nobody respected Dennis’ efforts (or perhaps they were jealous that somebody who was so much more interested in having a good time could write songs that were far more interesting, mature, and contemporary than anything they could create), he still wrote and produced a whole lot of songs for the Beach Boys, many of which were originally intended for the solo album. That put him behind, and unlike Bruce Johnston and Mike Love, he wanted a solo album that wasn’t just rerecordings of material from Beach Boys albums.

The end result of Pacific Ocean Blue came at the Beach Boys’ weakest period. After a hiatus partially prompted by a total lack of good material and extensive touring*, a huge “Brian is Back!” campaign led up to the release of 15 Big Ones, fifteen songs, most covers of hits from the 1950s. It has a few supposed Brian Wilson originals that don’t sound like anything Brian wrote before or since, leading to theories that these had music by Mike Love and lyrics by Love and either manager/scumbag Jack Rieley or therapist/scumbag Eugene Landy. It’s easily the worst album in their history. Even worse than Wild Honey.

They followed 15 Big Ones with Love You, the most bizarre album I’ve ever heard, and I’ve listened to a lot of weird shit out of morbid curiosity. Weirdly, repeated listens (which come as a result of the initial amusement/”what the fuck?” factor) actually reveal the album as something…well, “good” is too strong a word, but it’s not nearly as bad and off-putting as it initially seems. It was also a mild triumph because, insane as the music is, it’s all pure Brian Wilson. He wrote and produced every track, and you can tell because it sounds like the kind of album a lunatic would love.

This was followed by 1978’s M.I.U. Album, 1979’s L.A. (Light Album), and 1980’s Keep the Summer Alive. And holy shit, if there’s a worse run of albums in any band’s catalog, I’d love to hear about it. The uneven output from the late-’60s through mid-’70s all had at least a few great songs that transcended the mediocrity (or outright shit — thanks for “The California Saga,” Mike and Al!). Excepting Love You and the tiny offering of Dennis Wilson songs on these albums, there is nothing to redeem these albums. They are absolute shit from start to finish, with Light Album tamping down the shit with its 10-minute disco remix of a song from Wild Honey (their worst ’60s album) that wasn’t even good in the first place. Shit!

It’s really tough to believe that Pacific Ocean Blue even came from the same universe as the Beach Boys of the late-’70s. An album full of passionate, heartfelt, depressing songs, with boundless surprises and an interesting contemporary sound — the total opposite of the cold, calculated, deliberately out-of-date style of lounge-lizard-wannabes Mike Love and Bruce Johnston. At this point it seems like Carl had just given up, Al was along for the ride, and it’s a known fact that Brian went back to bed after Love You. How could the same band — the same lead singer, in this particular case — produce a song as bad as “Mona” [download link removed 3/13/08] in the same year Pacific Ocean Blue came out?

I guess the important thing is we have it, the one and only Dennis Wilson solo album. A second album, supposedly titled Bamboo, was in the works, but only a few songs (of varying quality and stages of completion) survived. Brother Studios — and Brother Records, the band’s imprint — were shut down shortly after Pacific Ocean Blue, so he had nowhere to toil. He had no money. He — I swear I am not making this up — knocked up the illegitimate daughter of cousin Mike Love (he knocked up his assistant in the mid-’60s) who had been largely disowned by the family. She was underage at the time, but he was determined to see this through — and only a year and a half after the baby was born, Dennis drowned. He had alcohol and drugs in his system (no surprises there), but at the time he was pretty beaten down and many of his close friends suspected suicide. Quite a downer. But it’s nice that we have this one album…

…Oh, except we don’t. Even though you can buy the entire late-’70s Beach Boys shitfest (a shitfest that continued through the ’80s and ’90s, CDs of which are all currently available), Sony Music has left Pacific Ocean Blue out of print since 1992. Does the twofer release of Light Album and M.I.U. really sell that well?** Jesus.

So fine, then. Fuck Sony. I have it. And I’m putting out there for the Internet masses (all both of you who read my blog, who have probably stopped reading by this point because as soon as you realized this was me ranting about Beach Boys history, you checked out). Because what will Sony do? Say I’m depriving them of money from an album they no longer print? Hell, if anything, I’m promoting this album, exposing them to it so Sony realizes there’s demand for this album and it will make money. Also, I’m saving all the people trying to buy out-of-print copies for hundreds of dollars. Sure, maybe the CD copy will be better — if it’s actually one of the original CDs and not just somebody burning a CD-R of these same lower-quality MP3s. So download to your heart’s content.

Update, 3/13/08 — Sorry, random Internet folks. I offered a download of this album, in its entirety, for the reasons above — but some sites have abused it. These spiders troll the Web, looking for illicit MP3s, so if you do a search, up pops all the MP3 links — without this entry. Consequently, the server was getting hammered to hell with requests. It has nothing to do with a C&D from Sony or anyone else, which once again demonstrates how little folks care about this album. It has more to do with bandwidth abuse and reducing the server load. (A site with virtually nothing but HTML text — even six years’ worth of my long, rambling entries — should not be approaching 1GB of bandwidth usage 13 days into the month. That’s inexcusable.)

If you aren’t a Beach Boys fan but like ’70s rock, this is worth checking out. It sounds absolutely nothing like the Beach Boys (from any era), even to the extent that Dennis Wilson’s voice was so ragged by the late-’70s that it doesn’t even have a sunshine-pop vocal sound. It’s more like Bob Seger with a sore throat.

*Ironically, their biggest hit album of the ’70s was a compilation of all their old hits that coincided with American Graffiti and exploited the nostalgia craze for all it was worth. Even more ironically, while the band could barely play their instruments during their initial wave of popularity, the mid-’70s incarnation of the Beach Boys was one of the best live acts around, despite Mike Love’s horrid between-song “banter.” [Back]

**I’m aware that Capitol owns all the old Beach Boys stuff and Sony owns the Dennis Wilson album, but come on! [Back]

Posted by Stan on April 29, 2007 10:04 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 28, 2007

Riddle Me This

Why do so many people on MySpace think it’s a great idea to add those floating letters, icons, or advertisements drip down their pages, rendering them unreadable (and in many cases, unclickable) to anyone looking at them? Not to mention slowing browsers to a grinding halt. Sub-question: why do so many people on MySpace think it’s a great idea to add some kind of translucent coloring over top of everything, so the whole page looks washed-out and, again, unreadable?

Fuckin’ MySpace. This is why nobody should be allowed to have free, semi-editable webspace. Unless they know how to use “text-shadow.”

Posted by Stan on April 28, 2007 11:27 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 27, 2007

Jack Endino

As part of my ongoing (some would say “misguided”) effort to blog daily until things start to really heat up like the epic Stan-Gina arc in 2003, sometimes I will have so little to write about that I’ll just post random links. For the fun and uselessness!

So I listened to a bunch of old Alice in Chains CDs in a fleeting attempt to recapture my misspent youth by…sitting in my room listening to CDs. It didn’t work so well. There wasn’t enough weed or flaming bags of dog shit, but it did get me thinking about semi-legendary Seattle grunge producer Jack Endino. Not that he produced any Alice in Chains stuff. His name just popped into my head, because he did produce music for a lot of bands that broke through after Nirvana (and including Nirvana’s Bleach).

Not that I run around committing the names of music producers, big or small, to memory. The name sticks out doubly because in the liner notes for Bleach, they write that Jack Endino recorded it for $600. When I was in junior high, thinking I’d be some big rock star, I remember thinking, “Yeah man, if I could just save up $600*, we could cut a record and be huge!” Based on such high-quality songs as “Petrified Leafblower” and “Cyclone Fence,” perhaps I was in over my head.

Nonetheless, the name stuck in my head and Facelift stuck in my CD player, I proceeded to look up Jack Endino to see what he’s been doing (answer: not much). He does have a website, though, and in particular I stumbled across two music articles that are pretty funny if you know a little bit about music production and/or have ever experienced the joy of tuning a guitar in a studio setting. If you don’t know anything about either of these, the humor may work about as well as your average aviation joke.

How to Overproduce a Rock Record! (somewhat reminiscent of the Mixerman saga, but focused more on the technical stuff than personnel problems)

Guitar Tuning Nightmares Explained (be sure to scroll down for the bizarre surprise ending!)

Yup, that’s all I got tonight. Deal with it. At least I’m blogging instead of going to a party I was invited to but didn’t attend because I don’t like anybody I’m friends with.

*Two hundred weeks of allowance. [Back]

Posted by Stan on April 27, 2007 10:49 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 23, 2006

Party Down!

So yesterday I went to a giant store called Binny’s Beverage Depot, which is like Sam’s Club for liquor. They sell nothing but alcohol, cigars, and alcohol-‘n’-cigar accessories. I needed to get a few dozen boxes of wine for a par-tay that never happened. As I parked my car and walked toward the store, a middle-aged man with sagging, watery eyes and a long, Droopy-like face came out of the exit door…with two kids, probably eight and four years old.

He took his kids to the liquor supermarket. It’s moments like these that make me love everything about life and the world. I CAN LAUGH AGAIN! Or maybe it’s the box-wine talking.

Posted by Stan on December 23, 2006 10:37 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

October 17, 2006

Great Comments Today!

I’ve received 20 spam comments in the past week, and to be honest, that’s kind of a lull. You might be saying, “Jeez, why don’t you just disable public comments.” Well, asshole, I did. I made them private except for TypeKey users, and then both of my readers started bitching about not being able to leave comments. When I told them to sign up for TypeKey for free with no spam or spam-related bullshit, they…didn’t listen and continued to bitch about their inability to leave comments.

But the spam comments don’t bother me too much. I get a lot, but they’re easy enough to deal with, and 90% of them don’t even appear on the site because of MovableType’s security features. Most of the time they’re nothing but links to ch34p hyd0c0d0n3 or g3n3r1c v14gr4., but today I received four absolute works of art. The first three come from “Levi@aol.com,” who writes:

     Comment 1:
A full boat spills me, but I enjoy a vacuous verbal declaration with a side order of twaddles. I sensationalize some online pokers, I mosaic and slug, I go to the button. If his titanic fast player flurrys morosely, is Joel Kop a http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com platonic button? My favorite bats are Julian Studley the ethical and Evelyn Ng the gymnastic. I garrison some party pokers, I randomize and pillage, I go to the calling station.

     Comment 2:
His nervous hidden hand ferociously overindustrializes his bicentennial http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com outdraw. It is forbidden to indue the fixed deck “Raja Kattamuri http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com ” to avoid the handy consequences. A eight-way hand drowses me, but I enjoy a continuous joker with a side order of pucks.
     Comment 3:
I was walking down the party poker, minding my own rap, when I saw a five-minute rule boast cheaply. I was subatomic, of course! Requalify, lustrate, and be poignant, for tomorrow we haw. James Van anoints conspicuously when http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com his tight brightens a subservient limp in.

This last is from “Chase@aol.com”:

     Comment 4:
Main pots, finger pokers, posts, lend me your big blinds. I come to repudiate Eldon Brown , not to island him. Our unhappy deuce-to-seven lowball all in channels her poisonous bomb. Jeff Rine deliberate http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com pai gow poker but ford poker more. We hold this megalomaniac to be self-evident — that all showdowns are created inclement.

Now, I’m flagging these as junk, but they’re so awesome, I wish I weren’t. If I continue getting comment spam like this, I’ll probably leave them up. Good times! This is way better than 400 comments asking for R. Kelly’s e-mail address!

Posted by Stan on October 17, 2006 5:13 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

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, 2006

The 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 | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

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 | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

July 23, 2006

Why Isn’t Anyone Interested?

Went around to music stores with fliers advertising a revolutionary idea: a metal band that doubles as a barbershop quartet. Not something really weird like a hybrid metal-quartet. That’s just retarded. I’m saying, one night we play a balls-to-the-wall metal show at some depressing dive on the southwest side, then the next night we play a completely separate barbershop gig at a 4H club or old-folks’ home or something? Can you imagine how awesome it would be to find three other people with that level of versatility? We’d be unstoppable!

Sadly, I don’t think I’ll find anybody who’s interested. Except maybe my sister, but you can’t have girls in a barbershop quartet! All the songs are loaded with hilariously outdated sexism.

Posted by Stan on July 23, 2006 2:52 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 16, 2006

No Good Stories

So yeah, I haven’t updated recently because I have absolutely nothing in my life worth writing about. I rarely do anything productive or social, aside from trading e-mails or instant messages with friends, but that hardly qualifies. I’ve been doing a lot of “actual” writing, which may or may not be a good thing (and is another reason for my lack of upating — after doing “actual” writing, I’m too lazy to document my overblown, largely internalized reactions to mundane situations), doing a hell of a lot of reading, between pathetic job searches and failed interviews.

I was supposed to go to this party yesterday, being thrown by somebody I haven’t talked to and possibly haven’t even thought about since sophomore year of high school. But the day before the party, panic set in. A weird kind of social anxiety — I wasn’t worried about not being liked, or saying the wrong thing, or whatever; rather, I was worried about not liking them. This is somebody I hardly knew even when I knew her, hosting a party with a totally alien circle of friends, and I don’t even have the buffer of bringing anybody since all my friends are either busy or out of state (or busy trying to be out of state so I leave them alone). I didn’t want to be disappointed having to put up with people I didn’t like for an appropriate length of time.

So I said “fuck it.” I disappeared from my computer all day and then, just before going to bed, lied about why I didn’t show up, and promised I’d go to the next group thing she plans. Even though I probably won’t, at least next time I won’t commit so fully to being there only to bail at the last minute. But why shouldn’t I? I should be able to just go and try to have a good time, and leave if I’m not. Fuck, if I don’t like them and that’s the reason I leave, why should I care about staying long enough to not feel rude about leaving too early? I wouldn’t associate with any of them ever again, right?

I guess I just didn’t think things through, as usual.

Posted by Stan on April 16, 2006 4:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

March 28, 2006

Fortune

I just found, among piles of paper on my desk, a little slip of paper that I thought was the fortune from a fortune cookie. I unfolded it and read the message:

Your food is Prepared to Order
PLEASE PRESENT THIS STUB
WHEN YOUR NUMBER IS CALLED
010

What a crappy fortune.

Posted by Stan on March 28, 2006 9:28 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 19, 2006

Tully’s Closed

During the summer of 2004, I spent the bulk of my days and nights working at a branch of Tully’s Coffee, located at 99 Yesler Way in downtown Seattle, across the street from Pioneer Square. On the exact corner on which I worked, at 1st Avenue and Yesler Way, a huge saw mill owned by Henry Yesler once sat. Yesler Way consisted of skids, going all the way up the steep hill. At the top, loggers would chop the trees and send them down to the mill at the bottom of the hill by way of these skids. The mill-loaded neighborhood in this early version of Seattle was a filthy cesspool, and it was on the corner of 1st Avenue and Yesler Way that a reporter from Chicago stood, surveyed the disgusting sight of this new city, and coined the phrase “skid row.”

In the intervening 120 years, little had changed. It had become a tourist trap (two blocks away is the Kingdome and Seahawks Stadium, and across the square is the hugely successful Underground Tour), which is important because it spurred the profitability of the shop in which I worked for a long while. The original manager was apparently some sort of service-industry genius, because he took a brand new shop in a place where there are at least five others within short walking distance (and a dozen within slightly longer walking distance) and made it one of the most successful in the entire company. Unfortunately, when he left, so went the success. I don’t know for sure, but from the stories I’ve heard about the previous manager running the store into the ground, it seems like he had a “service last” mentality, which drove away both the regulars and the tourists.

I was hired by an interim manager, brought in to try and whip the shop into shape before moving on to run his own branch permanently. There was a lot of office-politics turmoil that led to this, and in a way led to my hiring. The interim manager worked at a store in a nearby mall. They brought him to 1st and Yesler because he had been training to manage a store for awhile, and they wanted to oust the actual manager, so they said, “Give us a month to pink-slip him, and in the meantime you can get your feet wet and 1st and Yesler, then take over Westlake.” In that month, they also gave the manager who would take over a crash-course in managerial skills. In that month, they also hired me.

I got along pretty well with the interim manager. He was also a writer, also a huge Woody Allen fan, also couldn’t decide if Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters was his best film — we were two peas in a pod, and I’m certain if he hadn’t noticed I was a film student and started talking movies with me, I never would have gotten the job. At the same time, if the previous manager or new manager had been there when I applied, I don’t think I would have been hired. It’s all about timing.

The problem, when the interim manager took over, is that he was both too nice and too gullible. I don’t really know what went on after I left, but while I was there, he managed to find himself under the tenuous claws of two different, subordinate employees, and as a result he largely ignored the rest of us. One of them was a guy I worked with a lot, and he ended up getting fired because he made a long series of stupid mistakes. I think the biggest was closing up the store one time without setting the alarm. Nothing happened, but that’s still frowned on by the company. The other was a fairly attractive girl who made an inordinate amount in tips by flirting with the customers (like hardcore; I wouldn’t be surprised if some guys got phone numbers), and she managed to get a stranglehold over the new manager in much the same way. She was angling for his job, and he knew it, but he didn’t seem to be able to resist the powers of her charm.

Then there was the turnover problem. When the one guy got fired, that started a disappointing revolving door. I was the next to give my notice, and I knew the timing was terrible but I had to get back to school (I was willing to delay going back a semester, but nobody on the planet but me and my coworkers seemed to think that was a good idea). I found out through the grapevine (a.k.a., the flagship store, where I had befriended far too many employees) that the shuffling they were doing in order to accommodate my quitting was ridiculous. And the fact was, they just didn’t have enough people. With me and the other guy gone, they had a total of three employees. They hired a fourth just before I left, and transferred somebody else, but neither of them were permanent. I could see in the new girl’s eyes that she was a short-timer (and I was right, I found out), and the girl who had transferred knew it would only be until they hired more people.

I kind of lost track of my Tully’s friends after that, but I’m guessing the downward spiral continued. Maybe somebody made a power play that got out of hand, but here’s the fact: my sister just called me up and said she was driving by Pioneer Square, and my store was papered up, and its sign had been removed. I checked the website, and she’s right: my store is gone. I love Tully’s as a whole, but I grew attached to my branch. I really hate saying this, but working at Tully’s was the most fun, most difficult, most rewarding, outright best job I’ve ever had. If it paid enough for me to actually support myself, I’d probably never have left. But it doesn’t, and I did, so now what?

Well, the store’s closed, is what. And I can’t help feeling a little depressed about that. I used to have a dream about one day going back to Seattle and seeing all those old faces again. I knew they’d never last — not the employees, probably not even the regulars — but I have memories of them, and those memories translated into one day going back. It’s like the really shitty, retarded ending of Titanic. She’s 279 years old, but she jumps off that fucking boat and dies and goes to Titanic heaven. It’s not populated with all these hundreds of thousands of people she probably knew over the course of her life; heaven, to her, is just that one moment in time. I wouldn’t necessarily call my time at Tully’s heaven, but I do have that same type of feeling, where everything’s frozen and someday I can just go back and pick it up like I never left.

Now that the store’s closed, that dream is gone. So in honor of my coworkers (especially Sandy), the regulars (especially Drunk Dennis, whose bizarre life and hilarious code of ethics will someday form the basis for my greatest written work), and the crazies (I’m looking at you, Krazy Kelly and Crazy Crackhead), I’m filling up my Tully’s Statesmen with 16 ounces of fresh-brewed French Roast and having one more cup for you all, and for the memories.

Posted by Stan on March 19, 2006 10:50 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

March 5, 2006

Krispy Kreme Mocha

When the Krispy Kreme opened a few years ago, it was like an unhealthy man’s heaven. The first — and for awhile, only — in Illinois, and for some reason half a mile away from my house, I used to go there constantly and gorge myself on those hot, greasy, glazed confections. I had so many, and for such a long period of time, that it finally reached a point where they disgusted me. The lack of variety — sure, Krispy Kreme has donuts other than the original glazed, but they’re all terrible — and just the overkill of my excess made me never, ever want to touch a Krispy Kreme donut again.

So far, I’ve stuck with that, but I’m also extremely lazy. The Krispy Kreme is between my bank and my house; however, the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts — vastly superior in every conceivable way — is ten minutes down the road. Ordinarily, Dunkin’ Donuts is worth the extra drive, but as I said, I’m extremely lazy.

So yesterday, after depositing my last paycheck, I stopped at Krispy Kreme and ordered a mocha. Because I love the caffeine, and she loves me, and there was a time not long ago when I squinted into her eyes and muttered through a mouth full of chaw, “I wish I could quit you,” but she knew I didn’t mean it, and I knew I didn’t mean it, so the trial separation ended and we got back together. Now, we’re unstoppable…

…except when she hurts me by forcing me to stop at Krispy Kreme for a mocha. Now, their mochas are pretty good. Not as good as Tully’s, but much better than the rancid ichor those Starbucks assholes call chocolate. But I don’t mind stopping for one if I’m too lazy to go down to Dunkin’ Donuts for a slug of sweet ambrosia.

One thing is unsettling, though. Whenever I get a mocha from Krispy Kreme, I…smell the glaze. I almost taste it in the mocha, which shouldn’t have any actual glaze in it. But maybe it does, who knows? But I smell it all over my fingertips after handling the cup, and it takes days for it to go away, even if I wish my hands every hour. And because of that sense memory of gorging myself to the point of hating that original glaze, every time I, say, scratch my cheek or nose or chin…I feel a little bit nauseous.

So do particles of glaze odor get all over the cup and/or its contents — because the whole thing does stink a little of glaze in its own right — because of the powerful odor in the kitchen? I mean, it really is powerful shit. I used to take walks up a residential street that runs parallel to the street the Krispy Kreme is on, about a quarter-mile north of it, and I can smell the glaze. It’s…disturbing. But I suppose it stands to reason that such a powerful odor would cling to anything and everything it can. I think I read somewhere that milk is an odor absorber, so that could explain the whole thing.

Still…it’s unsettling.

Posted by Stan on March 5, 2006 10:38 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

February 25, 2006

This Here Blog

I had this whole rant prepped about how I watched Back to the Future Part II today for the first time in years, and how models and chromakey still look more convincing to me than most CGI special effects (I may as well be watching a cartoon), but I decided since I now have the time to spend, I’d spruce up the old blog, enabling dusty stuff I tried fucking with but then gave up on, like TrackBacks and Categories, and trying to make this this best damn blog it can be.

Because of this take-charge attitude, I’ve had to wade through every entry I’ve written since the very beginning, not specifically re-reading them (in fact, avoiding re-reading them as much as possible), but skimming them enough to formulate appropriate categories or to make sure the URLs kinda-sorta still work. Seeing some of this old stuff dredged up a lot of memories, some pleasant, some painful, most bittersweet, but overall I realized that, barring occasional rough patches in my life, I’ve had a lot of fun over the past four years. Especially in 2003 — I look at most of those entries with a goofy-ass smile on my face. Sure, I had fun later on, writing, disliking Owen, stuff like that — but 2003 was probably the most fun I’ve had since senior year of high school.

But I have a weird perspective on fun. Rather than “having” fun, in the sense of hanging out with friends and par-taying down, I get more mileage out of basically standing back and watching, with amusement, as everything around me self-destructs. As people get too serious or too caught up in their own shit — which, of course, everybody does at one time or another, including me — I find I have the most fun standing back and laughing on the inside.

Does this make me the meanest person on the planet? Maybe so, but to be fair, part of the reason why I get so down when I’m in my rough patches is because I think people should be laughing just as hard at me and my problems.

In other news, I read a great description last night in The Long Goodbye: “He had short red hair and a face like a collapsed lung.” It really doesn’t get much better than that.

Posted by Stan on February 25, 2006 7:26 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 20, 2006

Blog Changes

So we’ve upgraded to MovableType 3.2. In point of fact, the upgrade was made months ago, probably; I just never bothered to take a look at what the new version can do. And I’d like to point out a couple of new issues that will make your lives easier:

I have no idea what any of these new CSS codes mean, so until I root through them and figure out what’s what, there’s no customization on the page. It’s the default style and layout, and hopefully it can be changed to something a little less…happy, but if it can’t, lower your monitor brightness and deal with it.

I’ve, and this important so I’m boldfacing it, enabled public comments once again. That’s right, you savages, the new version apparently has some improved junk comment filtering (and by “improved,” I mean it has junk comment filtering), which should allow me to easily ignore the various R. Kelly-related spam I used to get. So go ahead and leave some comments, since you’re all too lazy or paranoid to sign up for TypeKey. The floodgates are open.

Posted by Stan on February 20, 2006 6:54 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 24, 2006

A Few Things

Yesterday I snuck out of work early to see Woody Allen’s new movie, Match Point, with my old friend Kelly. We both enjoyed it a whole lot but agreed that it’s just a little bit too long. Long movies aren’t bad unless they feel long, and there was a section in the middle that just dragged. Oh well.

There’s a whole slew of new “contractors” (that’s a fancy word for “temp”) at work this week. I hope one of them will usurp the job of this guy I can’t stand. He’s obsessed with the idea that, at some point, his temporary work will blossom into a full-time position. While it’s true that it could happen, it most likely won’t because nobody can stand him. And I realized today why I, personally, dislike him (aside from all the other reasons): his voice and speech pattern are almost identical to my former blog-nemesis, Owen.

Thanks to the new contractors, I…had no work to do today. They say they want to help everyone — especially me, as I’ve still been doing the job of three people, since the previous temp disappeared — but it seems a little shady. I don’t know about you, but I can see the writing on the wall, and it says, “YOU’RE FIRED BECAUSE EVEN OWEN JUNIOR IS MORE WELL-LIKED THAN YOU!” Time to step up the job search.

I just posted this on a friend’s blog. Make of it what you will…

A few years ago, one of my friends gave me a big book, a compiled “best-of” from a magazine called Found. He said he thought it’d be good for me, to help me come up with story ideas. It contains zillions of letters, drawings, diary excerpts, notes (including stuff as mundane as shopping lists) that people have found all over the place and send to this magazine. It’s pretty awesome, and it really is kind of a nice writing tool — you can open to any random thing and get a dozen story ideas just one little note. And on top of this book and the magazine, I’ve kind of become obsessed with the whole concept. If I ever see something like that on the street — which is rare, actually — I’ll grab it and see what it says. I’m a strange person.
So in the same vein as what you’re saying, because I haven’t yet found a “real” job and I’m bored out of my mind at this one, I’ve started “losing” things — doing the opposite of the magazine, intentionally dropping or almost-throwing-into-the-garbage-can-but-missing or just tossing out into the wind whatever scraps I have lying around. You might consider this “littering,” but you’re wrong. Okay, you’re right, but this place would drive me nuts if not for the notion that somebody will pick up my scraps and, I dunno, think about life differently. I know there’s a 0.00001% chance of that actually happening, but it’s the wildest, craziest thing I can do within the confines of a terrible job.

My obsession with the most fascinating band in the universe, the Beach Boys, reached critical mass a few nights ago. I had a dream that I was at a family Christmas party circa the late ’80s (I was as old as I am now, but everyone else was younger), where I was engaged in a pretty heated argument about the greatest album of all time. I was arguing with a time traveler (???), who one could strongly argue is an authority on the subject, that the Beach Boys’ seminal 1966 album, Pet Sounds is the greatest. Which is interesting, because while it’s definitely in the top five, I’d say Matthew Sweet’s 100% Fun has the top spot pretty well secure. (Then again, this was the late ’80s, so 100% Fun wasn’t out yet.)

As I argued, surprise party guest Mike Love heard the veracity and (typical) high quality of my reasoning and asked, “Are you a musician?” I told him that yes, I was, and he informed me that since Al Jardine had left to tour on his own, they were looking for a new guitarists, and would I be interested?

As I stammered like an idiot to answer him, I started to mentally ponder the ramifications of this deal. This could be great for my nonexistent music career (even in the late ’80s, which is well known for its terrible music!), but at the same time teaming up with the horrible, litigious Love would betray my idol, Brian Wilson, and I wasn’t sure I could do that, no matter how much it would further my career. As I considered all of this, I woke up. Pathetically, I was half-disappointed that it wasn’t true, but I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to make such a difficult decision.

Posted by Stan on January 24, 2006 5:03 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 18, 2006

Great News!

Axl Rose Breaks His Silence

After all, before he lends his talents to others’ projects, Rose has one of his own to finish, and he says it’s getting there. “We’re working on thirty-two songs, and twenty-six are nearly done,” he says. Of those, thirteen are slated for the final album. Among Rose’s favorites are “Better,” “There Was a Time” and “The Blues.”

YES!

P.S.: If you’re wondering why I’m not updating a lot, it’s because nothing ever happens in my life. Also, I’m using most of my spare time to record my own Chinese Democracy, and when I get infuriated with my own musical incompetence, I’m over here, trying to make artificial characters into real people through the magic of the WORST FUCKING SITE ON THE INTERNET.

Incidentally, I got my first rave review: “I was dying laughing when I read your band on my space. Now you just need a fanclub and some friends and you’ll be a sensation.” That’s a rave, right?

Posted by Stan on January 18, 2006 4:40 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 9, 2006

Coffee Article

Starbucks Economics

I’m actually officially off the sauce at this point, and assuming the migraines and irritability go away at some point, I’m all the better for it. But this article just…pissed me off. Here’s why:

The problem with large cappuccinos is that it’s impossible to make the fine-bubbled milk froth (“microfoam,” in the lingo) in large quantities, no matter how skilled the barista. A 20-ounce cappuccino is an oxymoron.

Both of those statements are outright lies. It’s actually remarkably easy to essentially fill an entire steam pitcher (which is usually 32 or 40 ounces) with foam using small quantities of milk. We used to do that all the time at Tully’s, no matter what the size or drink (lattés also have foam, albeit less), because we’d get so crowded we needed to multitask and make a half-dozen drinks simultaneously.

While the company line at both Starbucks and Tully’s was to fill any size cappuccino halfway with milk and fill the other half with foam, we’d usually go a quarter, because most people didn’t like all that milk. And if people asked for it “dry,” we would put as little milk in as humanly possible, often spooning out the foam rather than attempting the spoon-and-pour combo we baristas have to master.

Also, I’m sure this has changed because he’s insisting he’s ordered them, but when I worked at Starbucks we didn’t even have a “short” size — I never saw that until I worked at Tully’s.

The reference to the venti weighing 20 ounces and being more than 200 calories is misleading. Yes, the cup holds 20 fluid ounces, and as I said, the company line is to fill it halfway — theoretically, 10 ounces of milk (maybe eight if you include the espresso) and the rest is just almost-weightless foam. And if people are really worried about the calories, I’m sure they’re familiar with skim milk (which would also give them a stronger coffee flavor, since the its consistency is thinner — plus it foams better).

Let’s get down to the weights and measures of it all. At Tully’s, the espresso increment went as follows (from short to viente): 1-1-2-3. So let’s break it down: one shot of espresso is roughtly 1.5 ounces. Let’s assume for a second that we’re towing the company line — although we never did — and filling it halfway with milk before spooning in the foam. Now, right off the bat, if you have half a brain you’ve noticed that if the mixture is perfect, the short and the grande have a exact, proportional concentration — it’s just that the grande is twice the size.

Then there’s the viente. Three shots of espresso. Four and a half ounces of pure, concentrated caffeine magic cut with five and a half ounces of milk. Versus one and a half ounces of espresso mixed with two and a half ounces of milk. So we’re dealing with an espresso ratio of 8.18:10 in the viente and 6:10 in the short. (And let’s not even get into the cost ratio — a grande is 60¢ more than a $2.35 short, but you get double.)

So who’s getting fucked by the secret menu now?

His whole point is kind of weird, too. It’s partly true, according to Tully’s (like I said, Starbucks didn’t have shorts when I worked there), that they make the cheaper product less attractive (by not advertising it directly), and I was told exactly what he says: the price on the shorts is too low to justify the cost.

However, the actual reasoning is a little different than what he says — again, he’s misleading — because we buy cups and lids in bulk. And so if the cost of 100 8 oz. cups is roughly the same as the 20 oz., we sell so few (and as he points out, there’s less markup) that it doesn’t justify the store spending money to replace the cups and lids. When they were advertised early in the company’s existence (or so I’m told…), it cost more in the long run than it does to not advertise them at all.

It’s weird in the sense that it’s exclusionary — John Q. Non-Regular doesn’t have any idea he can save a whopping 30 cents on his cappuccino — and maybe shouldn’t be done at all, but it is nice on those rare occasions when somebody would ask, “Gee, can’tIi get something smaller than 12 ounces?” But that happened maybe twice in the four months I worked at Tully’s, so that’s what I mean: without advertising, our individual store probably could have lasted a year on a box of 100 cups, which doesn’t hurt the profit margin.

I’m not really trying to justify the tactic — personally, I never understood why we offered the size at all — I just don’t see it as devious as leaving roofs off of third-class train cars or constructing shitty airline lounges to encourage people to pay a premium.

Posted by Stan on January 9, 2006 7:33 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

January 2, 2006

Mayor Craig Johnson: Lunatic

I live in a town called Elk Grove Village, Illinois, which sits right up against O’Hare International Airport. Chicago’s Mayor Daley really wants to expand O’Hare by building additional runways, a new terminal, and an expressway extension to serve the new section of airport. Elk Grove’s mayor, Craig Johnson, has essentially run on an anti-O’Hare-expansion platform since he was first elected at some point in the late 1990s. His “aw shucks, I was born and raised in Elk Grove and we can’t let them ruin it” attitude won him popularity, but for those who — like me — opposed the alternatives to expansion (the mythic “Peotone airport”), it started out being funny. “Johnson’s at it again,” we’d mutter every time we received a new community newsletter about the horrors of O’Hare expansion. It’s long and tedious to go into the details of why some perceive this expansion as a bad thing versus why rational people realize it’s probably the best thing for the area; if you’re actually interested, contact me and I will ramble for ages.

It gradually stopped being funny as he continued to increase the amount of taxpayer money appropriated to pay for lawyers to fight Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois. He also, at various points, spent money on arbitrary security measures, like increasing police patrols to our (generally abandoned) border with O’Hare to ensure Daley didn’t attempt another Meigs field-style demolition. To offset a potential backlash, he used even more taxpayer money (and rasied taxes to do so, approved by the third-airport-loving Village Board) for community beautification projects. Despite the town being incorporated in 1956 (and prior to that consisting solely of vast wheat fields, forests, and a single tavern), he got on this lunatic old-timey kick. “We need cobblestones everywhere! And old-fashioned streetlights and signposts! And an old town square, most of which is actually a giant parking lot! And a clock tower!”

Things with O’Hare have gotten increasingly worse. Johnson paid still more money to hire new lawyers, better lawyers, to take the court battle all the way to the federal level. And…we lost. But wait! Let’s appeal…oh wait, we lost that, too. Basically, there’s nothing left to do but give up. So what will Craig Johnson do to rebuild a community whose economy he ravaged by recklessly spending and raising taxes? First, it was announced a few months ago that he would be spending $75,000 (cofinanced with neighbor Schaumburg) to get REO Speedwagon to play at our 50th celebration. He was quoted as saying, “Everyone loves REO.” True, Mayor Johnson, but let’s put this in perspective: for nearby Roselle’s anniversary celebration, they plan to spend $1500 total for three local bands to play.

And then, I read this in the paper (because I am an old man who wears slippers, smokes a pipe, and slips on a pair of half-glasses to read “the paper” in an overstuffed easy chair):

Elk Grove Village will be hosting a two-day international bike race this summer in honor of the village’s 50th Anniversary.
On Aug. 12 and 13, there will be the Tour de Elk Grove with more than $125,000 in prize money at stake.

Bicycling professionals from all over the world are expected to compete.

The televised event will show viewers on all continents the heart of American industry in Elk Grove Village as well as its tree-lined residential community, village officials said.

The race will carry the fourth-highest purse in North America in 2006 at $125,000, $25,000 of which will go to the individual winner.

The race is in honor of the 50-year anniversary of the incorporation of Elk Grove Village in 1956.

The Tour de Elk Grove? Really? Is he kidding with this shit? I love the town I live in, but a third of it is nothing but factories and warehouses (the “heart of American industry,” and also the largest consolidated industrial park in North America — not too shabby, but also not particularly pretty, though the Portillo’s is nice), another third is full of assholes who wish they lived in Schaumburg but can’t afford it, and the final third are a bunch of blue-collar bums more likely to laugh at and trip passing bicyclists than cheer them on.

I really don’t understand the motivation. Tourism? Luring new businesses? Or does he want people to see Elk Grove on television and say, “Gosh, maybe Mayor Craig B. Johnson is right — all those warehouses on the edge of town, many of which have already been sold to Chicago and abandoned, are so beautiful, they shouldn’t be marred by a half-mile expressway extension. Let us fight for a cause that failed spectacularly in a legal way. I’m going to write a protest song and shackle myself to one of the pickups in that lot on Old Higgins Road!”

Really, this is crazy. The only positive outcome will be the potential interest in broadcasting Channel 6 worldwide. And even that will degrade over time, like TLC becoming the all-Trading Spaces network. I can’t live in a world that shows more than nine episodes of On Duty! a day.

Posted by Stan on January 2, 2006 4:54 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

December 29, 2005

Mean It!

Authentic signage from eastern Kentucky (click on it for a larger image):

This photo was taken in the general vicinity of Rush, Kentucky, on the trek to find some old family gravesites. Incidentally, the dude did mean it. We were shot at a little while after we edged past that sign. Oops!

This photo does not rank as highly on my list of classy eastern Kentucky signage as the sign outside a small trailer on the side of U.S. 60 that said, “FINE KENTUCKY HAND-CRAFTS & TANNING BED.” Unfortunately, I can’t seem to locate that picture. Alas…

Posted by Stan on December 29, 2005 6:18 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 4, 2005

The First Known Motion Picture

The first known motion picture

“Produced by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince at Roundhay House, Leeds, UK, some time before October of 1888.”

I found this very interesting. I’ve mirrored the movie because the NMPFT site was running slow.

More on Le Prince and evidence that this really is the earliest single-camera motion picture ever captured:

Roundhay Garden Scene, 1888
Photographic copy of paper prints from a film taken in the garden of the Whitley family house in Oakwood Grange Road, Roundhay, a suburb of Leeds, Yorkshire, Great Britain. Le Prince’s son, Adolphe, who appears in this picture, stated that it was shot in early October 1888 (he suggests 14October) as it shows Mrs Sarah Whitley, Le Prince’s mother-in-law, who died on 24 October that year. The other subjects are Joseph Whitley and Miss Harriet Hartley. They are plainly having fun walking round in circles, keeping within the area framed by the camera.
Posted by Stan on December 4, 2005 10:28 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 3, 2005

It’s Been Awhile…

…but I’m back. Not exactly with a vengeance, but I still exist. Here’s a brief review of the past five months, for the folks keeping score at home:

A few weeks after my last post, I got a job as a cubicle drone (my favorite kind of drone!) at a reasonably large technology firm based in Chicago. Since then, I’ve been staring at invoices, contracts, and computer screens on a daily basis, trying to make sense of fairly incomprehensible numbers. I’m no math expert, but the tedium and repetition definitely helps my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

At this job, I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that precludes me from discussing the details if my job with any more specificity than what I wrote in the previous bulletpoint. After getting the job, I gutted this site. I thought I’d reinvent it with a semi-fictitious spin, portraying the adventures of “teenage Stan,” who has just started “high school” in a “new town,” and I’d turn my entire job life into one big hilarious metaphor. And then the site languished blankly for months because, let’s face it, I’m fucking lazy, and when I actually feel like doing something, it’s not writing half-fake blog stories. Fortunately for you, gentle reader, further investigation of the details of my NDA have revealed a loophole: I can’t talk specifically about my work, but I can ramble with all the incoherence and rage you’ve come to expect from this blog about the broader details of corporate life and my clashing with coworkers. Again, I wanted to metaphor this up so my secret identity wouldn’t be revealed, but at the same time, I hate my job, so if I get caught and fired for whining about my boss, fuck it. Hopefully I’ll have moved on before anyone discovers it.

I spent several days basking in the sunshine and humidity of Coralville, Iowa, with my best friend in the whole world, Lucy, and her new roommate who, a few weeks after my visit (and a few weeks after signing a 12-month lease), left the state (there was a warrant for her arrest after she decided not to go to court over a DUI charge) and sent an email stating she will no longer be paying rent or utilities, so sorry, Lucy’s on her own. This, traditionally, would be comedy gold, but I actually felt kinda bad.

In spite of my verbal cocky strut, I did not get into the band I auditioned for. No hard feelings on the surface, but I secretly said, “Well, fuck them anyway!” and have started compiling all the songs I’ve written in the past three years to record what I can only assume will be the worst album in the history of rock music. I may post some demos or outtakes if I feel they’re worth sharing.

One of the songs I referred to in the bulletpoint above details the tragic story of a Ukrainian drunk who is recruited by an undercover CIA agent to become a pro wrestler in America. It doesn’t end well. I am telling you this to illustrate that when I say “worst album in the history of rock music,” I am not just being self-deprecating.

My sister, Tracey, and her fiancé, Jack, finally got married. The ceremony was nice, in spite of the weirdness of Tracey trying to hook me up with her best-friend-since-sixth-grade. The classiest moment was when I drove them back to their hotel after the reception — they were blitzed, so I became the default designated driver — and I made a sarcastic comment about the Corner Bakery, to which my sister gleefully yelped, “My best-friend-since-sixth-grade loves the Corner Bakery, too!” Shudder.

I received a rambling, suspiciously desperate email from Hollywood, USA, saying that, despite my propensity toward quitting without notice, I am still a Valued Person for some reason, so would I be interested in doing some minor consulting in the form of giving notes on scripts that are faxed to me on a weekly basis? Gosh, why not? I assume that since they came after me, they might actually care what I have to say. Plus, a little ? very little ? extra cash. I’m finally taking an extremly tiny portion of that Hollywood pie!

I wrote the first draft of a novel, then stuck in a drawer. Now let us never speak of it again.

I went out with a woman from work who seemed nice, then dropped the single-mother bomb on me and believed I’d be a very pleasant surrogate pseudo-father-figure-type-guy. It was awkward. I still know how to pick ‘em!

I got very tired of this job and decided, once again, to start looking for better opportunities. So far, nothing. Oh well, at least this time I’m getting paid while I look for another job.

As soon as I pay off my student loans (assuming I don’t spend any more money and don’t change jobs or pay rates, the second week in March!), I will take out more loans to go to grad school. These I probably won’t pay back. Serves the government right for trusting me!

Last week, a bird got into the office. It was weird.

Well, that about brings us up to speed. I’ll probably post again in five months or so.

Posted by Stan on December 3, 2005 1:07 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

July 4, 2005

Strange Dream

Despite trying to quell my regular nightmares with the aid of valerian root, I’ve either built up a tolerance or am so depressed and distressed that it has no effect.

Last night, for some reason, I dreamed that Lucy had a MySpace blog, which I discovered in secret. Looking back through her archives, I discovered she had somehow become friends with Meron. He didn’t know that the “Lucy” I had been writing about for all these years was the same girl he had befriended while they both attended UIC (we’ll ignore the fact that in real life, Meron goes to U of C and wasn’t even in the area at the time Lucy went to UIC).

I went with Meron to a party at Lucy’s apartment in Iowa City; since I haven’t been out to Iowa City in years, and Lucy has switched apartments twice since the shithole with which I am familiar, an apartment I once hung out at in Gurnee filled in for her new Iowa City pad. Like every shitty party I’ve gone to, the lights were low, a $4 mirrorball sadly attempted to rotate in one corner of the room, and bad emo squealed from the speakers.

At this point, my own subconscious started making fun of me. I suppose I deserve it, but come on… I was sitting on a big, plush chair, far away from everyone, plinking on my guitar. Somebody whose face was obscured in the darkness approached me and said in a husky voice, “Come on, why don’t you play something for us?”

“No, man, my guitar’s in the shop,” I said, ignoring the fact that I was holding it in my hands.

“Oh,” the husky-voiced guy said.

I started playing Brian Setzer’s recording of that song “Sleepwalk,” which I have taught myself over the past few months and actually play passably well at this point. Of course, in the dream, I played it flawlessly and received a smattering of applause for party guests who were only half-listening. At this point, Meron approached me and said, “Man, that was good. Woulda been better if you had been in tune.” Busted.

Later on at this strange party, I stood at a bar that actually existed neither at the apartment in Gurnee nor at any place I had seen it Iowa City; aside from a different background, it was almost an exact duplicate of the crappy-ass bar at my friend Samantha’s boyfriend’s apartment in crappy-ass Wicker Park.

My mental imagining of Lucy’s boyfriend, who I have never met and probably won’t meet until their wedding day, stood behind the bar. He looks, in my demented mind, like a live-action version of Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons. He had lined up a half-dozen or so whiskey glasses on the bar and poured trace amounts of it into each glass, then filled the rest of them up with tapwater. He continued this until he reached the last one, which he filled so high with whiskey that it ran over the edges and a small puddle of exciting Irish liquor formed around the overflowing glass.

“This one’s for you, buddy,” he said amiably, sliding the glass a few centimeters toward me with his index and middle finger.

“Uh, thanks,” I muttered.

The paranoid half of my brain said, “He’s doing this to torment me. I’m sure Lucy told him, probably in a disparaging tone of voice, that I don’t drink, and he’s fucking with me because he’s jealous.”

The more rational half of my brain responded, “What would he have to be jealous about? Not only do you not pose a threat, you don’t want to pose a threat, and I’m sure she’s made that abundantly clear to Bluto.”

I thought for a moment. “Oh right,” the paranoid half agreed.

“Remember,” the rational side of my brain continued, “we’re in Iowa. I’m sure him giving you an oversized novelty glass of whiskey is just a sign of solidarity. He’s probably the first boyfriend Lucy’s ever had who hasn’t been jealous of you.”

“That’s only because he knows she’s pathetic enough to marry him, but not quite pathetic enough to marry us,” the paranoid half retorted.

“Hey!” the rational side yelled. “We have our good qualities.”

“We do?” the paranoid half said.

“Drink up,” Bluto interrupted. I’m sure he noticed the way my eyes darted back and forth while my multiple personalities discussed things. The only thing each personality has in common is an inability to SHUT THE HELL UP.

“No thanks,” I responded confidently. “I don’t drink.”

Bluto gave me a hostile look.

I turned around and saw Lucy standing there.

“Hey, Stan,” she said. “Glad you could make it.”

“Yeah,” I said, and suddenly she launched into an insane barrage of crap that made my dream-self realize why I usually don’t call her on the phone much. After that, it gets really foggy; all I remember is excusing myself, getting into my car — sans Meron, who I imagine will be trapped in Iowa City for the rest of his unfortunate life — and driving back to Chicago as quickly as possible. I’m sure other stuff happened, but I don’t really remember.

And so, you see, this is why I hate dreaming. I know I’m insecure, and I know what I’m insecure and paranoid about, so I don’t need my subconscious bringing all that negative shit up to the forefront. I know it’s trying to say, “Writer, heal thyself,” and maybe it’s trying to say that while maybe I think I’m trying, I’m clearly not trying hard enough…but all I really got out of the dream is that I need to have a large castle built in the middle of nowhere where I can hide from the rest of humanity.

Werid-ass update 12/3/05: A few weeks ago, Lucy did, in fact, send me the link to her MySpace. No word yet regarding whether or not she and Meron have crossed paths.

Posted by Stan on July 4, 2005 9:54 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 4, 2005

Things I Learn While Shopping at the Grocery Store: An Ongoing Struggle — Self-Checkout

Most grocery stores that have leaped into the 21st century have what’s called self-checkout, a marvelous new technology wherein you check yourself out, scanning the items, weighing the fruits and vegetables, inserting the credit cards, et cetera. Since it’s a new, imperfect technology, most stores also have a human monitor for the self-checkout, sitting in this raised desk that looks over the entire self-checkout area, not unlike a lifeguard station.

I’ve used the self-checkout at grocery stores in Chicago, and it’s very easy-to-use and handy because usually when I go to the grocery store, I buy a pack of gum and some coffee. I’m not buying dinner for ten, and in my experience, Chicagoans are terrified of the self-checkouts and avoid them like the plague. You never have to wait for the self-checkout, which is why I use them.

And then there’s Ralphs, with their U-Chek-Out. I don’t know what they did, but they’ve managed to take all the simplicity and fun out of the self-checkout. It has crazy sensors that make sure you’re bagging and/or leaving your items on the shelf next to the scanner, because putting it back on your cart is madness. And it’s very sensitive. At one point I held two items, one in each hand, and the scanner kept coming up wrong. The ivory-tower lady looked down upon me and said, “It’s ‘cause you got something in your hand.” What in the name of God is sensing that I have a completely separate object, held at a safe distance, in my opposite hand?

Now I know why people from Chicago hate the self-checkout: paranoia. We’re by no means backward rubes (well, most of us…), but in that area there’s a general sense that if a machine knows you are putting items in your cart or holding them in your hand without scanning them, perhaps this technology should be buried under 30 feet of steel and never seen again by human eyes. Nobody seems to be bothered by it here, but I was pretty freaked out.

Perhaps waiting in line is worth the effort.

Posted by Stan on May 4, 2005 5:26 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 30, 2005

Red Light, Green Light

Here’s the thing: I hate driving. I hate it with a fiery, burning passion unlike any fiery, burning passion ever seen before by man. I hate it so much that part of the temptation to not move to the center of the film industry is the fact that their public transportation is so piss-poor, and the layout so spread out, so I’d be driving everywhere. Of course, this was negated by the fact that I lived in the suburbs and had to drive everywhere anyway because of the sprawl and the lack of public transportation…

Since I hate driving so much, I have one rule with a corollary: get to where I’m going as fast as humanly possible, without getting caught by Johnny Law. One time I was caught by Johnny Law, and I was a little fucking annoyed by it, because, okay, I guess speeding is bad for the safety of the people driving in the vehicle, and if I had gone around a 35mph bend at 50mph, maybe there would have been a car around said bend that I would have slammed into. These things are bad, but it was in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in Iowa. Fuckin’ Iowa.

So yeah, I’ll flagrantly defy speed laws, traffic signs and signals, and so and so forth, as long as I’m absolutely 100% certain I won’t get caught. And as you gradually get used to driving the same route every day, you get to know where cops mill around, where they hide for speed traps, where the secret cameras of doom are, and so on and so forth.

Because I didn’t know much about the Los Angeles area, the driving habits of the people (three words: TOO FUCKING SLOW) or the way the cops handled traffic, I decided it’d be best to be on good behavior until these things became a bit clearer to me. But man, that’s easier said than done, because this place isn’t full of lovely rolling plains or beautiful architecture. There’s nothing to make me want to slow down, except the In-N-Out Burger, and so I went from “being good” to driving 10mph and running red lights.

I didn’t even usually drive much over the limit (unless I was on the expressway) back in Chicago, and it was very, very rare that I’d run a red light, and usually it was my stupid depth perception saying, “Oh sure, it’s yellow, you’ll make it.” And I finally hit the light 10 seconds after it’s turned red but don’t have the ability to slam on the brakes. Watch out, truck traffic!

Here, I just ran it. I had time to slow down, full fair warning — I just didn’t really want to sit and wait for the light, so I didn’t, and I was still annoyed from having to follow this fucking pickup going five under for several blocks. Maybe this was a bad decision. Maybe, if the light had one of those cameras, I’ll get a ticket mailed to me. I wishfully think that, because I was also going 10mph while running this red light, maybe my license plate will be blurry and/or out-of-frame, so they’ll never catch me. But, if nothing else, they’ll be mailing that ticket to my parents’ house in Illinois, so we can all admire how easy I’ll be able to ignore that.

I need some valerian root.

Posted by Stan on April 30, 2005 10:14 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 24, 2005

Things I Learn While Shopping at the Grocery Store: An Ongoing Struggle

Lo, these past 23 years, I’ve not had much use for the grocery store, mainly because my mom would go shopping for me. On rare occasions when I would go, I would attempt to grab every delicious, sugar-filled snack in the store. In fact, I still do, which is why I have a jumbo-pack of Pringles, York Peppermint Patty cookies, Oreos, and some bricks of sharp cheddar. Sigh, I will be a fatty fat fat fat yet again…

At any rate, this morning I went to the grocery store to stock up on things I never thought I’d need, like napkins. Unlike last week, when I forgot half a dozen items I wanted, this time I made a list, and as I searched for the items I made some interesting discoveries.

Nail clippers are not anywhere to be found in the men’s toiletries section. They have the scary little scissors, but if you want actual nail-clippers, you have to look by the nail polish and hair dye. (Ironic sidenote: I tried to use the big, powerful toenail clippers, and after a few unsuccessful attempts to clip off my big toenail, it finally…broke into a million pieces. Clearly it was designed for tiny femme toenails.)

Plastic lunchbags are right next to garbage bags, but napkins and paper towels are three aisles apart. Hrm.

It’s very difficult to find bona fide Tylenol amid the thousands of different kinds of Tylenol available now. They have Tylenol for allergies, for God’s sake!

Mayonnaise/Miracle Whip is not easy to find. It’s with the salad dressing, because apparently some people think it is salad dressing. Crazy!

1/8 cup = 1 ounce (I found a coffee scoop!)

Every other aisle has some sort of candy or potato chip item for impulse buyers. Needless to say, I won’t need to buy any more candy or potato chips until August 2008.

It only takes 10 minutes to buy everything you need when you’re single and prefer making sandwiches over cooking. I tried to time it so I could shoot straight over to Circuit City a little after it opens (at 11), but I failed. (Ironic aftermath: the Circuit City website says the nearest store opens at 11, but when I got there, I discovered it actually opens at 10. The bastards are always one step ahead of me! It evened out, though, because when I arrived at 10:47, I ended up waiting at least 15 minutes for one of the dumbshit, thumb-up-their-ass “customer service” clerks to do my return. Fucking Circuit City dipshits. I should’ve gone to Fry’s!)

These are all the observations I could muster this week. Jerry Seinfeld I ain’t.

Posted by Stan on April 24, 2005 9:10 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 13, 2005

New Comment System

With the upgrade to MovableType 3.15 comes a new system of comments registration, which I’ve finally enabled. Essentially, you sign up (for free) to a system called TypeKey, make your account, and then you can sign in to comment on this or any other MovableType blog, automatically. I’m not sure how the signing in/signing out stuff works (i.e., how long you’ll stay signed in without having to retype your information), but it seems relatively painless, all things considered.

It’d be nice if anybody who comments regularly (I’m looking at you, wolfie) would register to this system; otherwise, “anonymous” (i.e., unregistered comments, even if you fill in the name/email/website fields) will have to be approved in order to appear on the site, and you know how lazy I am…

Thanks.

Posted by Stan on February 13, 2005 8:02 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 7, 2005

New Layout

Hey, since we’ve upgraded to a new version of MovableType, the layout of this blog has undergone some slight changes. Some of them I like; a lot of them I don’t. However, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, so I’ll just be doing a lot of trial and error ot fix them over the next few weeks. Do not be alarmed.

Posted by Stan on February 7, 2005 5:44 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

October 20, 2004

Levity

Steve Martin makes fun of notes.

Posted by Stan on October 20, 2004 8:49 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

August 18, 2004

Where the Fuck Have I Been?

Working. Not just at my job, although I’ve worked the last seven days in a row (and have another shift tomorrow, followed by a day off, followed by six more days of work). I’ve actually been fairly productive with my writing, since I’m applying for a writers’ fellowship for the spring.

As a result of all that madness, I’ve done very little of consequence, which is the other reason I haven’t blogged. I could blog about my job and vent the frustration, but freakishly enough, I like my job. I get along with my coworkers, even the fucking tourist customers don’t bother me (and we get a lot of them). So, no angst means no stories means no blog.

I have a few amusing anecdotes about the shop that I could relate, but all in good time. Once things settle down a bit (read: once I get home), I’ll probably blog with more regularity and get to those stories.

In social news:

I’m close to convincing Lucy that Iowa is not (not!) the place for her, or anyone else, to be. She’s very reluctant, but I have an ace up my sleeve that I’m almost positive will draw her back to Chicago. More on that as it happens.

I’m tired of living here. It has been making my allergies go wonky ever since I got here, to the point where I have trouble sleeping. My sister and I, contrary to our efforts, simply do not get along. It’s sad but true. She invited me out here, and we were civil for awhile, but eventually it melted away as we realized how much we just don’t like each other. I’m getting along with her boyfriend a lot, though, which is cool, I guess, but I’d rather just go home so I can be with my own friends. While I like my job, it’s a fucking coffee shop — I can do the exact same work, for the exact same pay, at home. The only reason I’m still out here is because I have a non-refundable return flight already, and I still need to give two weeks’ notice at my job (I’m giving my notice tomorrow — dun-dun-dun!).

That’s all the noteworthy shit I can think of just now. I’ll try to keep you all posted more regularly, but don’t expect anything more detailed than this post for awhile.

Posted by Stan on August 18, 2004 10:56 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

July 10, 2004

Where’d I Go?

Because I’m told this is hilarious, I’m blogging it:

I’ve spent the past four weeks of my life sitting around in my underwear, watching either Repo Man or the Oxygen network, periodically taking breaks to look for a job and/or massage the pink chutney.

Otherwise, very little of interest has happened. I found a job, though, and I start on Monday, so anticipate a wide variety of comic hijinks in the coming weeks.

Posted by Stan on July 10, 2004 9:03 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

June 14, 2004

Seattle!

Hey, all. I’m just checking in the blog-front after I realized I haven’t posted in over two weeks. During that time, I lounged around a lot, spent some time as a social butterfly, and abandoned my home for life in sunny Seattle! Consequently, I have had no stories of even remote interest to tell. Boring parties and get-togethers, followed by my sister and her boyfriend, who are sadly the most normal people I know. They don’t do anything amusing or stupid or irritating; they merely exist.

I’m adjusting here nicely. The weather’s fine; it’s cloudy almost all the time, but it rarely rains. Perfect. I’m having some problems adjusting to the hilly environment; it is not pedestrian-friendly, and I have no car. But hey, if I keep making epic journeys up and down hills all the time, maybe I’ll be in some reasonable shape by the time I get back. It’s doubtful but entirely possible.

I still have no job, and it looks like the three separate jobs my sister guaranteed me to entice me to come out have all fallen through. She’s a lying sack of shit, that sister of mine. Oh well, at least I’m out here now. And with literally nothing to do all day, I’m able to actually — gasp! — relax.

Hopefully I’ll start meeting people soon. Expect an entirely new Stan Has Issues™. Gone are the days when I spent all my time and concern on Lucy’s problems and my mom’s lunacy and Owen’s retardosity; for the next three months, there will be a completely different social circle, but I can assure you that while the faces may have changed, the problems will be just the same (that was, for those of you who picked up on it, a Strangers With Candy shout-out).

See you when I get a life!

— Stan

Posted by Stan on June 14, 2004 8:00 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 31, 2004

It’s Art?

On Friday, my good friend Jive invited me to an art exhibition at DePaul, in which a few of his photographs were on grand display. I lugged my lazy ass to the campus and was immediately surprised by the crowd. Or, more accurately, I was surprised by the fact that the crowd was congregating in the hallway outside the gallery. My immediate thought was, “Wow, the art must be pretty bad,” but I soon realized it was because there was free food outside, and you couldn’t eat inside.

“Stan!” a female voice called, puzzling me beyond belief since Jive isn’t, as far as I know, a woman, and I don’t know anybody else at DePaul who would excitedly shout my name upon seeing me.

It turned out to be Jive’s mom, standing in a huddle with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend or girlfriend-like female friend. We greeted each other, and Jive’s brother introduced the girl, who wore a confusing dress made of what looked like tutu material sewn to a too-large corset that I probably made fun of.

“Jive is right inside the gallery,” Jive’s mom said. “You should check it out.”

So I went inside to check it out. I walked right past Jive’s photos, which were on the wall right by the entrance, and tried to find Jive. I got distracted by a loud, obnoxious POP-POP-POP sound. I realized I was stepping on bubble-wrap, which for some reason covered the floor of half the gallery. The entire room sounded like a giant popcorn popper.

“The hell?” I thought and immediately tried to get to a section of floor not covered by bubble-wrap. Then, Jive popped up behind me and we got some food. As we ate in the general vicinity of Jive’s mom and brother, some of Jive’s friends showed up. Then, there was the sudden announcement that the awards would be handed out.

“Guh?” I said.

Jive was as puzzled as we were; he didn’t know this was a competition. And, funnily enough, his photos won best in show for photography. Way to go, Jive!

After the awards were distributed, we decided to go in and look at some of the art.

Art, I’ve decided, puzzles me. A whole lot. Sure, I go to an art school, but to be perfectly frank, I’m no artist. You all probably know this after seeing my films and reading my screenplays. I’m not ashamed of this in any way. I am, however, periodically humiliated by my lack of savvy with art. When I don’t understand a piece of art, I either make fun of it or get very angry and shriek “HULK SMASH!” while punching it.

But what the hell? I really, sincerely don’t think much of what I saw could be defined as “art.” I liked most of the photography I saw (especially Jive’s!), and there was one clever “mixed-media” thing that, from a distance, looked like a picture of the consumption virus, but when you looked up close, it was made up of words involving capitalist consumption of goods (such as, “Look, a sale at the Gap!”). That, I thought, was clever. And art.

But, okay, the bubble-wrap on the floor? That was an art project. No, seriously. Stop laughing, it was art.

Other examples of not-art that confused me were the “sculptures.” One was a 2x4 with a little divot in it. The divot was filled in with little pieces of bamboo. Huh? Art? Wha? And, according to Jive, that won best in show for the sculptures.

It had stiff competition, of course. Another sculpture was a candy bar with what looked like dried drool on it. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be drool or not, but that was all. That’s right, if you go down to the grocery store and buy a Three Musketeers and drool on it, you have created an acceptable work of art.

But the coup de grâce of confusing art was The Performance.

We all gather round this circle in the courtyard of the DeePaul library and watched the most confusing thing I’ve seen since I first saw a Stan Brakhage film.

See, this blindfolded girl in a tan outfit laid a blanket down in the square, put a table on it, put a translucent cloth on the table, then kneeled in front of it. Meanwhile, another blindfolded girl in a tan outfit slowly entered the circle. She held a bowl of something disgusting and red in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. I thought at first the disgusting, red food-like substance was some sort of salsa, but it looked more fruity as The Performance progressed.

Here’s what they did: fed each other the red substance and gave each other sips of the wine. When they were finished, the girl with the bowl and the glass walked away, and the girl who initially set out the table and blanket removed the table and folded the blanket. The end.

My continuing reaction to this is a big fat “Zuh?” I simply don’t understand it. I admire their chutzpah and admit that on the occasions when one of the girls missed the other’s mouth and almost rubbed that red shit all over her chest, I was mildly aroused. Was that supposed to be the point? I don’t think so; I firmly believe that I’m just perverted.

After The Performance, we went back into the gallery. Jive’s parents (his dad arrived before The Performance, so he, too, got to witness the miracle of confusing performance art) left with his brother and the girl to get food, and Jive and I and his friends all meandered around the gallery. I felt, as always, awkward and useless. I don’t know Jive’s friends very well, and I’m always cripplingly uncomfortable around people I hardly know. I attribute this to the fact that whenever I loosen up, I’m a complete jackass.

So I basically followed Jive around uncomfortably for awhile. I felt like an idiot when he and his friends discussed The Performance, because I still just didn’t get it. And they were talking about how it says something completely different with two females than it did at a previous Performance in which it was a male and a female.

“But what did it say?” I wanted to scream. I also didn’t want to humiliate myself, so I just said nothing. I kinda wanted to cry, but that would’ve been embarrassing, too, so I choked back the tears.

I don’t demand much from art. I just want there to be some sort of clear meaning. I don’t buy into the “well, you should draw your own meaning” from it. Sure, you can derive a meaning from something that is different from the artist’s, but I really don’t think that can work if the artist doesn’t seem to have any meaning guiding the piece. Like the bubble-wrap or the 2x4. What purpose did that serve, other than, “It’s art!” The Performance, I imagine, had some sort of meaning the artists were trying to get across, but since I can’t figure out what the hell it was, I simply have to imagine that they did without really knowing. Art is supposed to communicate to the audience, not alienate them or condescend to them (my least favorite type of art is the kind where all I can get from it is, “I’m so much smarter than you because I understand this and you don’t”). That’s why Owen will never sell a script.

Anyway…

Eventually, Jive’s friends left and he and I met up with his parents and I mooched a free dinner. Yay!

Afterward, I got really bummed out, because I realized it was the last time I’ll see Jive for at least a year. Not that we were exactly inseparable before, but he was always kinda there, hovering around the general Lincoln Park area. I knew that if I ever stopped being lazy or he ever stopped being busy, we’d be able to hang out. Now, that option isn’t there. Unlike me, he’s graduated, and unlike me, he’s going to actually have some form of career. So he’s moving to New Yawk, where he’ll play Pac-Manhattan and live in a spacious refrigerator box.

Can I afford to go to New York? No.

Will he be able to come back to Chicago? Possibly, if he sells his refrigerator box to the highest bidder and then barters all the squirrel skins and pigeon feathers for bus fare.

But either way, I don’t anticipate actually legitimately seeing him for at least a year, if not more. And that’s pretty depressing, since I’ve known him roughly forever. It’s not like most of my friends, who drift in and out of my life every six months, and we hear from each other maybe once a month through incoherent e-mails.

And of course, there’s always the magic of the Internet, which has been my primary source of communication with Jive ever since we started college. But there’s still something depressing about him being 800 miles away, as opposed to 20.

So, on the train ride back downtown, I called Lucy for some reassurement. She said, “You know what’s terrible? If you move to L.A. after college, and he stays in New York, then you’ll be three thousand miles away from him instead of just 800.”

She’s usually much more reassuring than that.

I will miss Jive, whether I see him all the time or not, but I am glad of one thing: before he left, he managed to show me the light and convince me that The Reputation is possibly the best local band in the history of the universe. I can’t thank him enough for that one.

Happy trails, Jive.

Posted by Stan on May 31, 2004 1:02 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 19, 2004

The Dungeonmaster

Special thanks to Rummy for this find:

First shot in 1983 but not released until 1985, this low-budget, amateur fantasy is about Paul Bradford (Jeffrey Byron), a computer whiz who takes on the forces of evil in the guise of Heavy Metal (Blackie Lawless), the leader of an eponymous L.A. band, and Mestema (Richard Moll) the black magician who forces Paul into seven separate confrontations with powerful enemies, much in the manner of Hercules and his challenges (each confrontation directed by a different individual). The nasty Mestema is holding Paul’s girlfriend Gwen (Leslie Wing) hostage, giving him all the more reason to meet these challenges, armed with his computer and nothing more. And all this happens in a mere 73 minutes of running time — counting the long credits — or about 10 minutes a challenge.
    — Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

After hearing this clip, I decided The Dungeonmaster is a film I need to own. Unfortunately, it’s out of print. However, Amazon zShops always come through in a pinch — I bought a copy for $3.99 total, which hopefully will get here before I abandon Chicago for the summer.

Posted by Stan on May 19, 2004 11:28 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 26, 2004

Movement

Victoly, LLC, the gracious folks who host my mindless ramblings, have decided to buy me a domain name. Isn’t it purdy?

Posted by Stan on April 26, 2004 8:17 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 5, 2004

Midday Cabs

I was sitting with Gina in the first-floor café, waiting for Mark to get out of his class so I could give him the Rosemary’s Baby script we have to read for Thursday. Gina and I were catching up about spring break and looking at some unusual photos stored on her digital camera, when my phone started ringing. This was surprising for three reasons: (1) I generally keep my cell phone on vibrate, (2) the only person who ever calls me when I’m at school is Lucy (who hardly calls me on weekdays anymore to keep her minutes down; also, she hates me), and (3) I have never, ever been able to get a decent signal inside any of the buildings at school.

It turned out it was my mom. She got “downsized” (aka fired), so she has endless amounts of time, and she spends it vacuuming, doing laundry, and watching the news. I figured she had either found my porn, vacuumed up my porn, or saw something about my porn on the news. Actually, she said, “I just saw on the news the Blue Line was shut down from Addison to Jefferson Park.”

“What the fuck?” I screamed for no particular reason (possibly caffeine related).

“There was a fire or something, so they shut down the northbound trains to O’Hare. That’s you, right?”

Yup, that was me. We arranged alternate transportation involving the Metra, and since their trains are more rigidly scheduled than a Tuesday night whore, I had to rush like hell to get a cab if I was gonna make the 1:40 train. It was 1:25, and I desperately wanted to make the 1:40, because I had a shitload of homework that I didn’t exactly do over spring break, so I needed to get it all done this afternoon. It would be difficult to accomplish that sitting in Union Station for an extra hour.

“I have to go!” I yelled unnecessarily to Gina, leaping up from my seat. “Wedge can fuck himself.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Somebody set the Blue Line on fire, so I have to get a cab to catch the 1:40 Metra.”

“I coulda told you that,” Gina said, “I saw it on my way here. It was this big —”

And then she stopped, noticing my steely gaze, which said, approximately, “Shut up, woman! You’re not helping.”

I burst out onto 11th Street, and I didn’t have time to admire the decent day we were having — I had to get a cab. I rushed off toward 8th and Michigan, about four blocks away. There’s a cab stand in front of the Hilton there, so I figured that’d be my best bet, and if I saw an empty cab on my way, I’d flag it down.

Wow, what a break! As I crossed Wabash, I noticed a cab idling on 11th in front of the Best Western. It was unoccupied, so I made a bee-line for it.

The door was locked, which isn’t unusual. (For whatever reason — I assume it has to do with security — idling cabs have their doors locked more often than not.) But the dude didn’t unlock it, which is usual. Rather, he rolled down the passenger window and leaned out toward me. “Where you goin’?” he asked.

“Union Station,” I said.

He muttered something I couldn’t understand; he had a heavy accent.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“I’m waiting for someone,” he said.

“…” I responded. “I have no idea what that means.”

The guy looked at me like I was the dumbest guy in the world. Possibly, I am.

“I’m waiting,” he said, and jerked his thumb down the street, like I should keep moving. Why the hell did he ask where I was going?

“Sorry,” I said, and moved on down 11th to Michigan. I crossed and hauled my ass up Michigan. Traffic was light, and the cabs I did see were occupied, so I had to go all the way up to the cab stand on 8th.

I walked up to the first cab in the line past the Hilton driveway.

Again with the not-unlocking-of-the-doors-followed-by-the-rolling-down-of-the-passenger-window. “Go to the next in line,” the cabbie said.

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m waiting for someone,” he responded.

What the hell was going on? Why didn’t they turn on their light so I know they’re on duty?

I went to the next car in line. The cabbie unlocked the doors, I got in. “I’m going to Union Station,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, making absolutely no effort to turn on the fare meter.

He sat there in silence for a few minutes. Well, sorta. He was talking on a cell phone in a foreign language. After awhile, he said, “Why don’t you go up to the cab ahead of me? I’m waiting for somebody.”

“Okay,” I said, for some reason assuming the guy he was chatting with was the other driver, and they were perhaps trying to decide who should make the epic 5-minute run to Union Station.

So I went back to the first cab, who told me the same damn thing. So I went to the third cab in line. This cabbie rolled down his window and looked at me angrily. Speaking it what sounded like a Liberian accent, he said, “Why you not go there?” I swear to God this is what he said, and I’ll tell you this: despite the broken English and the incoherency, I knew exactly what he was saying.

“They told me they’re waiting for people,” I said.

“They’re lying!” the third cabbie shrieked, putting my arbitrary outbursts earlier to shame in an instant. “You go, you make them drive you!”

“Oh…kay,” I said, not really sure how well me asserting what little authority I had would go over.

I looked back at the other two cabs, completely and utterly dumbfounded as to what I should do at this point. Suddenly, I heard somebody yell, “Hey, where you goin’, buddy?!”

Somebody was saving me. I looked over, and up on the driveway, holding the rear door of a cab open like some sort of wonderful dream, was a Hilton doorman, helping some old lady get out of the cab.

“Union Station!” I yelled back as I walked toward him.

“And they won’t take you?” he said, dumbfounded.

“No,” I said, dumbly.

“Why the hell not?!” the doorman yelled.

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” I responded. He was speaking my language, the language of confused people.

“Hop in,” he said.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, getting in.

“No problem. See ya later, buddy,” the doorman said, and I think maybe he thought I was staying at the hotel. Then I wondered if I should tip him, but I didn’t have any singles. Plus, I didn’t really want to tip him.

So I got my cab, finally. Believe it or not, that entire exchange — from me dashing out of Columbia to me getting on the road with the cab — took about five minutes.

Five of the worst minutes of my life.

Posted by Stan on April 5, 2004 8:02 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 11, 2004

Spam

I just got one of those wacky, nonsensical spams, and the subject line reads: “chordata orchestra petal audacity.” Now, combined, these words make no sense, but I don’t think anyone can disagree that “chordata orchestra petal audacity” would make an excellent name for a rock band.

Posted by Stan on February 11, 2004 9:38 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (2)

January 21, 2004

Quiet, You

I’m still sick. Stop bugging me to blog more. I don’t have any stories I’m particularly interested in sharing with the Internet right now.

Posted by Stan on January 21, 2004 11:46 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

January 13, 2004

Sick

Did you ever get so sick you thought you might either have died or have the Bubonic plague?

Yeah, me too.

Posted by Stan on January 13, 2004 5:37 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

January 1, 2004

Losing Touch with Reality

I remember several months ago, I was walking down Van Buren Street, staring up at the el tracks like a dope, and thinking to myself, “I wonder if they actually filmed this in Chicago.” Which I often think of while watching movies that take place in Chicago, so it would have been a reasonable thought if not for the fact that, ahem, it was real life.

I had a similar experience this morning. My parents got me the Alien “quadrilogy” (hereafter “tetralogy,” since I only like to use made-up words when they’re not designed for people who are mentally retarded) for Christmas, so I’ve been watching the movies and documentaries in that collection for the past few days. Consequently, I have aliens on the brain. I haven’t had any nightmares, but this morning I kept having strange stomach cramps, and at one point, I thought to myself, “Oh God, this is it — it’s about to hatch.”

And then I thought, “You’re an idiot,” and took some Pepto-Bismol.

Posted by Stan on January 1, 2004 3:54 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 15, 2003

On Hiatus

I was just asked to blog, so I decided I’d take this opportunity to explain why I haven’t been over the past few days.

The short answer is that I have absolutely nothing to write here.

The somewhat longer answer is that I’ve got so much going on, it’d be nice to tear my hair out (seriously, I do need a haircut). It’s not that I don’t have time to blog; it’s just that the time I do have that I usually spend on blogging, I’d rather spend on more productive things, such as doing nothing at all.

Seriously, I love blogging, I love Stan Has Issues™, and I love the fact that I have a growing fan who adores me (seriously, though, you’ve been putting on weight, buddy); at this point, though, I’d rather do nothing than relate amusing life anecdotes or whiny emo piss-rants.

Once the holidays are over, things’ll cool down a bit, and I’m sure I’ll have at least one decent story that involves a psychotic outburst resulting from my paranoia. That’s the Stan Has Issues™ Guarantee!*

*Note: I guarantee NOTHING. [Back]

Posted by Stan on December 15, 2003 8:54 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (3)

December 1, 2003

Sick

No work today. I am sick.

No work tomorrow. I’m calling in to jump on the online registration bandwagon. One might say, “Gosh, Stan, why would you miss four hours of work to spend approximately seven minutes registering for your classes?” The simple answer is, “They don’t pay me enough to suffer through a shitty schedule next semester.”

Posted by Stan on December 1, 2003 5:26 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 18, 2003

Good Fucking Mood

The weather was terrible. I only love rain when it’s accompanied by bitter cold and strong winds. It was pretty warm (for mid-November) today, which made the rain frustrating. I called in from work because I woke up tired and unable to function like a normal human. Plus, I had a tiny conference at 10:20, and I didn’t start work until one, and I really didn’t feel like waiting around. Nor did I feel like driving home in the rain in rush hour.

So, pretty much, I was home at noon and spent the rest of the day doing my homework. One could argue I could have gone to work and gotten paid to do my homework, but it’s not really the same. Work, even though I don’t do anything, is exhausting. I think it’s the mental frustration of being somewhere I don’t want to be without the ability to leave.

Today was pretty dull until about half an hour ago, when Gina called for the first time in a few weeks. My new number, it seems, fell off her caller ID before she could add it to her address book (sure…). We caught up briefly, but she had to go. She mentioned that apparently quite a few people from our class last summer have been asking about me (in a good way). I felt sort of bad about it, because none of the people I’ve seen from that class have asked about her at all. Of course, maybe that’s because they see her more than they do me.

Anyway, Gina calling sorta made my day. I think that may be a bad thing.

Posted by Stan on November 18, 2003 6:45 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 9, 2003

LiveJournal Syndication

For the three of you who are wondering, I have canceled my synidcation on LiveJournal because it requires more effort than I am willing to expend on something that’s nothing more than a mirror of this site on a server that’s less reliable and has an asstastic interface.

I checked into ways of making the interface not suck balls, but the only way is to pay the folks at LiveJournal money. I won’t be doing that. Ever.

Posted by Stan on November 9, 2003 5:36 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 8, 2003

Expectations

My week, filtered through visits to Dunkin’ Donuts.

Monday

Called in sick. Actually was sick. Didn’t leave house.

Tuesday

Rained. Got off at Adams Street with the mindset that I’d walk down to 11th. I’m a tub of shit, so I usually walk up and down Wabash on my lunch break and/or take the long way to the subway station on either LaSalle Street or Clinton (depending on how tired I am or how fast I want to get home).

On Tuesdays, I don’t get a lunch and I have to zip right to work after class, so I figured I’d get off at Adams, stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts there (which I’ve blogged about before) for coffee/breakfast, and then walk down to the film building.

When I got off the train, though, I realized that it was now pouring and I was poorly dressed for the weather. But I was off the train, so I figured I may as well get my coffee and donuts, then catch the next train down to Roosevelt Road.

So, class passed. We watched most of The Godfather. Our professor planned the day poorly. We have a three-hour class length, the movie is three hours, and he started it 20 minutes into the session and had to end it 20 minutes early so we could discuss some things and set up times for individual conferences. I was frustrated, because The Godfather is damn good, and I haven’t seen it in awhile. And I don’t own it because I’m cheap.

Afterward, I made a pit-stop at my usual Dunkin’ Donuts, on Wabash near Roosevelt (about a block and a half away), before going to work.

There are three employees who work the morning shift. I’ve gotten to know them all. Two out of the three have started giving me extra shit for free, just for existing. The third very stoically gives me exactly what I order. The third guy pisses me off, though I don’t really know why. I ask for two donuts; he gives me two donuts. Should I really be expecting a freebie?

I think harsh things about him, and then I feel guilty about it because what the fuck — if I wanted three donuts, I should ask for three and pay for three. Also, I don’t want three, but I don’t feel guilty about consuming a third when technically I only asked for and paid for two. It doesn’t officially count.

I think part of the reason why this guy doesn’t give me free stuff, even though usually he’s pretty nice to me (in a stoic, masculine way) and knows my ordering habits and occasionally engages me in small-talk when there’s a lull in business, is because he’s a manager. I’m not positive that he’s a manager, because there’s nothing that really separates him from the rest of them. But I’ve worked retail, so I’m fully aware that there usually isn’t anything that separates managers from grunts except longer lunches, the fact that they work full-time, and the fact that they occasionally sit around in a back office pretending to do paperwork so they can avoid customer interaction.

This guy is an asshole to the other employees, and he orders them around all the time. He has this assertive, commanding presence, like he’s the President of Dunkin’ Donuts-land.

He has “manager” written all over him.

When I went there after my class, a fourth employee — who I don’t really know as well, since I hardly ever go there in the afternoons — was standing with the guy who never gives me free stuff. I got my large coffee, and as the fourth employee got it, the guy said to me, “You were not here this morning.”

Pangs of guilt set in. It’s not unusual; I feel guilty about everything, whether I should or not. I didn’t really have a lie prepared; hell, I didn’t really need to lie at all, but I felt it necessary. I get the impression that saying I stopped at a different franchise would break this guy’s heart.

Fortunately, I’m pretty good at coming up with white lies on-the-fly, so I said, “Yeah, I was running late this morning, so I had to get to class.” A plausible lie for someone who doesn’t know me particularly well. Plus, it was raining, which makes everyone late everywhere since nobody knows how to fucking drive, so they panic as soon as something might affect their ability to control a car while talking on a cell phone and applying make-up.

But the guy stared at me. He totally wasn’t buying it. I thought briefly that maybe, just maybe, he had timed his cigarette break exactly when I was emerging from the Roosevelt Road train station. From his vantage point in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts, he probably would’ve been able to see me. And, like I say, I’m pretty hefty, so even from that distance, he’d probably recognize me.

I remained silence. No point in elaborating on a lie, especially when he knew I wasn’t being honest. The woman gave me my coffee; I paid and scurried off to work.

Wednesday

Went there in the morning. Got free donut.

Went there in afternoon. I need coffee before fiction writing; otherwise, I’ll fall asleep and/or commit suicide. All I ordered was a coffee, so naturally I got a bag full of Munchkins from one of the women who gives me free shit.

As I was about to leave, though, the other guy came out and started yelling at her in a foreign language. I decided what he was saying was, “Don’t give him free stuff! He betrayed us!”

Thursday

Full work day.

Adams/Wabash in the morning.

Washington/Wabash at lunch.

No free shit.

Friday

Roosevelt/Wabash in the morning. Free chocolate glazed, which was cool because I ordered two standard glazed, but the other free-stuff guy knows what I like. Variety is the source of wit. Or, wait, I think I got that wrong.

No afternoon work, and no need for more coffee; I just went home.

Posted by Stan on November 8, 2003 12:42 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

October 31, 2003

The First Stan-iversary (Laaaame) — Five Days Late

I’ve been having some problems this week, so I haven’t had a lot of time for blogging. In fact, I managed to miss the first anniversary of Stan Has Issues™. In celebration, I’ve decided to use my languishing LiveJournal account, which I’ve been using primarily to make pornographic comments in friends’ journals, to syndicate my blog.

I am doing poor-man’s syndication because, by God, I just don’t like the way the RSS stuff looks and I’m too lazy/stupid to do it well.

Posted by Stan on October 31, 2003 5:39 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

September 8, 2003

Films

Wow, I finally got my films online.

Abuse — I was not so impressed with this one. What set out to be a parody/satire of the really shitty experimental films I’ve seen lost most of its edge when a couple of extremely important shots didn’t come out and the narration ran too long. Now it looks and sounds just like a regular really shitty experimental film.

Oh well. My professor thought it was funny.

The Love Switch — I really liked the way this one came out, and it’s one of the few things I’ve done at Columbia that I’m even remotely proud of.

I apologize in advance for the poor quality. I dubbed it from VHS using the Dazzle DV-Bridge, which would really be a neat thing if my VCR didn’t suck ass. Needless to say, there’s lots of analog hum, audio clipping, and random blurbies on the video. But, hey, it’s the best I could do.

Posted by Stan on September 8, 2003 5:37 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

August 24, 2003

September

September is da bomb, yo.

Angel Season 2 is out the 2nd.

Woody Allen’s new movie opens the 19th.

And I’m seeing Juliana on the 27th. And her new album comes out the 9th.

Also, Dressy Bessy’s new album comes out the 26th of August, which isn’t really September, but it still counts, you fuckers.

And that’s just the stuff I remember!

Best. Month. Evar.

Posted by Stan on August 24, 2003 10:48 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

July 11, 2003

The Pain Train Is Comin’! Woo-Woo, Woo-Woo!

Frequent readers of this blog have probably realized something I seem to have just figured out. Or maybe I had figured it out, but then dismissed it immediately out of frustration.

My life is a huge trainwreck. I’m not talking, like, a rogue cow wandering onto the tracks and getting slammed into the appropriately named cow-catcher. I’m referring to a big, midwestern Amtrak crash that results in enormous explosions and body parts and assorted grain bushels flying everywhere. And, after all this, a couple of survivors decide to rob all the passengers on the train like it’s 1879.

Is the train metaphor not emo enough? Maybe I should quote The Juliana Theory or Dashboard Confessionals, but I don’t really know any of their songs, so I’ll just close with a standby quote from “Vibe On.”

You be like giving me vibrations
The ultimate stimulation straight out of the box
Ugh, no hestitation
Your speakers like a pony that I love to ride
Making me crazy when the volume’s high
You’re compact so I can take you anywhere I want
Make my friends scream out loud

Posted by Stan on July 11, 2003 2:02 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

July 5, 2003

Damn

Even my ophthalmologist says I’ll be unemployed for life.

What a gyp.

Did you all know the term “gyp,” meaning being cheated by someone (cruel mistress Fortune — no, not Vanna White) is derived from “Gypsy,” because all those damn Gypsies used to gyp everyone? It seems pretty obvious, but I never put two and seven together until a month or two ago when I looked it up to make sure it wasn’t spelled “gip” (note: that is an acceptable alternative, but I prefer “gyp” because of the Gypsy relation). I love etymology.

Posted by Stan on July 5, 2003 1:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

June 29, 2003

A Pretty Girl

A pretty girl is like a violent crime.
If you do it wrong, you could do time,
But if you do it right, it is sublime.

— Magnetic Fields

Posted by Stan on June 29, 2003 12:22 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

June 23, 2003

Hrm

This morning, my mother started a new job. She’s working 6-10 a.m. at a store down the street from hour house. I decided that I’d start gradually getting up earlier and earlier, until I’m up with her at 5 a.m. I’ve been getting sick of waking up so late — the day zips by too quickly. Plus, with her out of the house for a little over four hours, I can actually work in peace and quiet.

Anyway, the plan this morning was to get up at 8 o’clock, blog about my weekend for an hour or so, and then either do something productive or watch Cowboy Bebop (probably the latter). But I, for the first time in my meager life, slept through my alarm.

Actually, it’s a physical impossibility for me to literally sleep through my alarm, but when I woke up this morning at 9:57, my alarm was off, so either I turned it off in my sleep because my subconscious didn’t want to have to get up that early, or it went off at 8 o’clock and I woke up and shut it off and was so tired, I fell right back asleep and don’t remember it.

Either way, that sucks.

Anyway, I have two decent stories, one about the ophthalmological horrors of Friday, the other about my cousin’s graduation party, that I haven’t had time to blog about, and probably won’t until the end of this week. Hopefully I won’t forget.

Posted by Stan on June 23, 2003 10:27 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

June 4, 2003

I Will Survive

For those urgently concerned about my wilderness survival skills, I am, in fact, alive and quite possibly kicking. I’m just not specifically blogging, because I’ve been spending all my time relaxing in preparation for summer school, which begins (for me) on Tuesday. Therefore, nothing notable has happened, and while that’s never stopped me before, it will stop me now.

Unless, of course, you really want to read extended, Dennis Miller-esque rants about how terrible people around here drive. Or detailed accounts of sitting around in soiled underwear, eating Cap’n Crunch and watching my stories. If I were you, dear, sweet reader who accidentally stumbled on this site while unsuccessfully searching Google for Vince Neil blowjob videos, I’d consider myself lucky.

Posted by Stan on June 4, 2003 12:13 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

May 27, 2003

[BLOGpoll] Should I Go See Cremaster 3?

As we all know, Matthew Barney’s ingeneous and frightening Cremaster Cycle has long been on my list of masochistic must-sees. As luck — if one can call it that — would have it, the third part of this five-part epic, Cremaster 3 is playing at the Landmark Century. Unfortunately, I have discovered that it is 182 minutes long, which doesn’t seem so bad when you’re watching The Godfather, but I assume will be interminable when watching anything remotely associated with Cremaster.

This is the nature of the poll. There are several options below as to what I should do, so leave a comment instructing me. Should I:

Ho and see it, alone, in the cover of darkness?

Insist that The Crush see it with me to gauge whether she will either laugh uproariously or never talk to me again?

Invite The Cheat to see it with me after politics and then ditch him, leaving him alone to be tortured?

Force one of my high school friends, who seem to be trickling home right about now, to see it?

Not see it at all, and let us never speak of this again?

Posted by Stan on May 27, 2003 1:57 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (3)

April 18, 2003

Anyone Else!

I was watching television this evening, and I kept seeing a commercial for this new Fox show, Mr. Personality. For those who don’t know, it’s basically The Bachelorette, except the woman can’t see her prospective man-slave’s face. He wears this frightening, teutonic mask, and she has to whittle down the candidates based solely on their personality. Gasp!

Now, I could go on for hours about how shallow this premise is, but I’d either be preaching to the converted or baffling the people who think that reality television is of the highest quality. So I’ll just stick with the thing that confused me the most. At the end, the commercial’s narrator says, “Hosted by — who else? — Monica Lewinsky.”

What the fuck does that mean? I can’t figure it out. “Who else?” Huh? Did I miss the enormous scandal wherein Ms. Lewinsky chose from 25 presidential candidates, whose faces were covered, and finally picked one based solely on the strangeness of his sexual fetishes? I don’t really see how anything she has said or done, when compared to the idea for this TV show, could elicit a chagrined “who else?” when she is announced as the host.

Then again, this is an ad coming from the network that occasionally misspells the name of its own shows. I’m not sure they’re altogether off the crack pipe.

Posted by Stan on April 18, 2003 10:40 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

April 13, 2003

The Mayor Goes Crazy…Moreso Than Usual

I just read this article in this week’s local rag. I think it’s awesome how our mayor is (1) batshit insane and (2) roughly as paranoid as Richard Nixon in the “illegally recording everything” phase of his career.

Posted by Stan on April 13, 2003 6:05 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 12, 2003

The Origins of Cremaster

I was watching The Daily Show a few nights ago, and at some point, Jon Stewart brought up the “cremaster,” which he described as a thin muscle in the upper thigh that is used to pull up the testicles.

Despite not knowing what this word meant, it never occured to me that I should look it up. For some reason, I figured it was somebody’s name or a made-up term or something like that.

Suddenly, The Cremaster Cycle terrifies me more than it ever did.

Posted by Stan on April 12, 2003 4:59 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 8, 2003

New Section

I added a new section to the sidebar: Classic Stan™, filled with the few entries that have garnered any response whatsoever. I think it’ll help new readers, who are obviously flocking to read fascinating tidbits about my mediocre existence, learn a little more about me without having to wade through the dregs of the archives.

Posted by Stan on April 8, 2003 1:06 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

April 6, 2003

The Cremaster Cycle, or: when did David Lynch start making car commercials?

There’s a new film/performance art craze that’s all the rage among stoned goth girls: The Cremaster Cycle. For those of you unable to follow the somewhat confusing trailer, here is an outline of the labrynthine plot:

CAUTION! Spoilers below

A young woman travels from her home country of Sweden to the Big Apple, so she can live out her dream of being a football cheerleader. Unfortunately, since she is new to the United States and speaks only broken English, her job is to hide under the cheerleading platform during games.

Soon, she meets an aging chiropractor who enjoys sitting in the Secret Garden while murdering people with his mind. A love quadrangle ensues, as we are introduced to two new characters: a red-haired, donkey-faced man vying for the Swedish girl’s affections, trapped in a loveless marriage with Queen Elizabeth I (who has set the new fashion trend of head-orbs).

Meeting the red-haired donkey guy sets the Swedish girl’s soul afire, and she, like most Swedes, shows this by jumping on a purple trampoline and bouncing a ball. Meanwhile, robot cars converge in a candle-lit crypt to discuss plans to terminate the red-haired donkey guy, who has dug a hole into his cell in the Tower of London so he can escape and become a homosexual F-1 racer.

Frustrated, the chiropractor-murderer becomes a cow wrangler, which renews attraction from the Swedish girl. But, uh-oh, another love quadrangle: this time a half-cat, half-woman falls in love with the chiropractor, while a man who was born with a circular-saw-blade-shaped penis falls for the Swedish girl.

The red-haired donkey guy, who was plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean by Queen Elizabeth’s feather-wearing Scotsman brigade, tries to escape, but is stopped by an Aboriginal woman in a Middle-Earth forest. The Swedish girl, thrilled by the news that her former lover is still alive, decides to dance around the Dallas Cowboys stadium with two miniature Goodyear balloons, much to the dismay of the circular-saw-blade-shaped penis guy, who shows his disdain by flying several kites at once.

Later, he has surgery performed on his terrifying crotch, hoping that having an actual penis will woo the Swedish girl back into his crab-like arms. The chiropractor-murderer, also wishing to win back the Swedish girl’s love, takes up horseback riding, except he’s a big wuss so he actually rides on a carriage.

With an actual penis, the former-circular-saw-blade-shaped penis guy tracks down the chiropractor and murders him in a bathroom/art gallery. This causes the Swedish girl’s cheerleading group to tape donkey ears to their heads and dance like chorus girls.

Meanwhile, the half-cat, half-woman finally finds love with the bottom half of a rodeo clown. To prove it, she takes off her top and straddles an X painted on the floor.

As this occurs, the chiropractor officially buys it, the red-haired donkey guy’s head begins to bleed profusely, and the Swedish girl’s face turns into Laffy Taffy. The former-circular-saw-blade-shaped penis guy fondly recalls his days as a professional cattle rapist (so that’s why such a terrifying unit comes in handy!), and is so disgusted with himself he jumps off the George Washington Bridge.

When the Swedish girl’s head reforms and she discovers the penis guy is dead, she rejoices. The red-haired donkey guy’s head stops bleeding, and he ends up falling asleep at the bottom of the ocean.

Finally, some dark-haired prince makes his move on Queen Elizabeth, and we are brought to our happy conclusion.

I can’t wait to see this film!

Posted by Stan on April 6, 2003 9:18 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 26, 2003

Midterm Fun!

I took my politics midterm today. I totally forgot about it, and I lost my study guide so I couldn’t even cram during humanities. I think I failed the entire essay portion (which was 50% of the grade). I suck.

Still, I came up with a new idea for a book that I fleshed out on the train ride home. I think I’ll do some preliminary outlining tonight. I don’t need to do much research, so maybe I’ll try writing this as I research for my Big Novel™.

Or maybe I’ll be too preoccupied with Trading Spaces fan fiction (thanks again, Ian!) to get much writing done.

Posted by Stan on March 26, 2003 3:34 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 25, 2003

Oh, Emo!

I was just running some errands, and I was casually flipping through radio stations, which I don’t think I do often enough. I stumbled upon a station that was playing a song that was so stereotypically emo, it probably could be mistaken as parody. Acoustic guitars, girly-man singers, and bland pain.

The lyrics went like this (I’m paraphrasing): “I will always be alone, I will always be alone, unless you come to your senses.” Because obviously his relationship problems are only the damn woman’s fault, as is usually the case. Women. Where do they get off existing, am I right?

I tried to look up the song and the artist because for a second I was under the impression that that actually mattered. It’s impossible to find, though, because when you plug in “i will always be alone unless you come to your senses,” the hits are enormous — LiveJournals, GeoCities sites, and even one site that explains the intricacies of “coming out to your parents” (this cannot be a coincidence).

Posted by Stan on March 25, 2003 2:52 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 24, 2003

Of Emdashes and Life

Well, through a strange and baffling miscommunication between myself and MovableType’s “search-and-replace” feature, I accidentally changed every single question mark on this blog into an emdash. So I had to go through every entry, sorting out which was an actual emdash and which was a question mark.

re-reading the old entries, I realized something: my life is fucking boring.

Posted by Stan on March 24, 2003 8:33 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

March 18, 2003

Five Steps to a Better Blog!

I have a lot of friends with LiveJournals. And they have a lot of friends with LiveJournals. And they have a lot of well-wishers with LiveJournals. The LiveJournal community is fascinating, if not utterly baffling, but it really did make me realize that, as a blogger, I am not maximizing my emo potential. So I’ve constructed a series of rules that will alllow readers to really feel my bland white-boy pain, instead of just reading and laughing uproariously.

1. Quote emo lyrics

This one will be the most challenging, I think, because despite the emocity expressed on this here blog, I don’t really listen to or enjoy the emo music. Sure, I have heard it. I’ve been to parties at Jive’s house. But I’m not a big fan, as I really don’t like the music despite my seemingly innate ability, as a white suburban male, to relate to such issues as “my boy/girlfriend broke up with me,” “my parents are such a drag,” and “somebody stole my pot.” I am also quite the master of crying about things and writing songs about them.

And yet I’m not into emo, and I don’t want to be. Maybe I’ll open this one up to the more general “quote song lyrics.” Few people understand the emotional impact of quoting a line or two, or in some cases an entire song. It shows that you are in such a tough place emotionally that you can’t even express your own anguish — you need some neophyte poet to do it for you. It’s admirable, really.

I think the best way to utilize this is to take a variety of quotations from different songs and string them together into one long, soupy blend of crap. An example:

Nothing is real but pain now
Come back to me
Touch me with a ten foot pole

I’m rockin’ the suburbs.

Then I saw that man
In his black suit and Cadillac.
He is full of death
And misery.

A total system failure
Of life.

Wow! If I made more entries like this, my “profundity” level would increase fiftyfold.

2. Share some of my original — and angst-filled — stories and poems to display exactly how I’m feeling

This one will be the most do-able, since I am a writer (or at least I claim to be). The easiest way to truly express your pain is through your own words. Many LiveJournalers write poems and stories, and they include excerpts of them for their many LJ friends to read. I’m not sure if they do this because they are desperate for encouragement, or just to show how fluidly they can express their pain via the magic of fiction (read: thinly veiled excerpts from real life, with different names). Here is an example from my own book of one-stanza poems that I began writing after my girlfriend dumped me:

I am full of misery
I let her get away.
If I just had a chainsaw,
That fucking bitch would pay.

Or an example from one of my unfinished works of fiction (I think I wrote this in high school):

        By sunset, most of the skaters were long gone, but a few of them were still there on that evening.
        “Hi, guys,” Jack said, amiably as always.
        “Fuck you,” one of them said as Jack opened the glass doors.
        “What did you say?” Jack asked, stopping and turning around.
        “I said, ‘Fuck you,’” the skater repeated. He was a pink-haired freak. The vast majority of his pierceable face was pierced more than once.
        “That’s what I thought,” Jack said.
        “What’re you gonna do about it?”
        Jack thought about it, and realized what the skater meant. “I’m not gonna fight you.”
        “Who’s asking you to fight me? I was just stating my feelings towards your joviality,” the skater said.
        “Ooh…big word for a fucking idiot,” Jack replied.
        “Oh, so I’m an idiot, now?”
        “I’d say so.”
        “Get him, boys,” the skater said.
        The skater and his three friends, each of whom had equally hideous facial piercings cluttering up their faces, advanced on Jack.

        Jack awoke in a prison cell.

Pretty shitty, huh? Yeah, but it’s full of raw teen angst, so post away!

3. Be as ambiguous as possible

It is a common rule on LiveJournals to constantly talk about how you don’t want to talk about things. I’ve always thought this was stupid, because if you’re gonna keep a public journal, document everything you want people to read. If you want to keep something so personal that you don’t want people knowing about it, just don’t bring it up at all.

Now I realize that this was misguided thinking, and I feel like a fool. Ambiguity is a helpful device for readers of my blog: if they have no idea what I’m talking about, it leaves them salivating for more; if they know exactly what I’m talking about, they feel like they’re in some sort of elite power circle of ultimate friendship. Either of these reactions are good things. As an example, here is what my infamous entry The Protest would look like if I were to ambiguitize it:

Man, last night was weird, and I have the bruises to prove it.

(Note: This example could also be used to describe the many long nights I spent with a she-male named Kamar.)

The technique of ambiguity especially helps if you give a wink to either those who are left out or those who are among the inner-circle. For example:

Man, last night was weird, and I have the bruises to prove it.
I won’t go into details because those who should know about it already do; everybody else should just let it go.

And with something that simple, you have your readers eating out of the palm of your shit-stained hand.

4. Be more suicidal

There are many things I’m not. One of them is suicidal. Considering the shape of my life, one would think that I contemplate suicide on an hourly basis, but the truth is I’ve never really thought much about it. Despite how much I hate my life sometimes, I’m so afraid of death that suicide has always seemed logical. I never really understood those who thought it might actually be a better alternative to living.

Maybe that’s just because I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife. As Diane Keaton says: “Oh, sure, when people die they live for all eternity? What would they do with all that free time?” Damn, she’s funny.

At any rate, I’ve discovered once again that I am fully wrong on this. Everything is more like Ozzy Osbourne says: “Suicide is the only way out.” Of course, the Ozzman was referring specifically to those with drug problems and sanity issues, not guys who can’t handle getting dumped or girls who are so in love they think the only way to prove it is to die.

But that’s neither here nor there. Suicide is cool. Suicide is all the rage. All your friends are doing it! In fact, I’m going to commit suicide right now. Here is what I would say in a blog entry if I were to off myself right now:

Goodbye, cruel world.

I have a statuette on my toilet. It is actually a sculpture of a toilet, with a man inside it, hand on the flusher, looking depressed and generally horrible. Below it, the phrase “Goodbye, cruel world” is engraved. Every time I read a LiveJournal entry that’s even vaguely suicidal, I think of that statuette and laugh for nearly a decade.

Yay suicide! Now I’m going to go cut myself so my parents will notice me!

Shallow cuts, shallow cuts…

5. Make sure all my titles are references to songs, movies, or television shows

There’s an old saying among writers that everybody takes their titles from one of two sources: the Bible or Shakespeare. Since most LiveJournalers have never read Shakespeare — except when it’s assigned for a class, and even then it’s 50/50 — and they reject the Bible because how could there be a God when they have to suffer so much, most titles come from Smashing Pumpkins songs, the contemporary equivalent of Shakespeare, or Pulp Fiction, the contemporary equivalent of the Bible.

So, to once again use my old infamous example entry, The Protest, how could I possibly change the title from such utter bluntness into something ambiguous, maybe even a little confusing, that comes from either Pulp Fiction or a Smashing Pumpkins song?

It was hard, but here is what I came up with one of the following: “Drag me in with maybes” or possibly “I’m a mushroom-cloud-layin’ motherfucker, motherfucker!”

And there you have it. An emotastic LiveJournal in just five easy steps!

Posted by Stan on March 18, 2003 1:47 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (3)

March 11, 2003

World Domination™

I just finished writing a paper about…well, let me just paste in the title, which pretty much sums it up: “Nationalism, Globalism, and Pontifications on Whether or Not the World Has Changed in Any Way Whatsoever Since the Roman Empire.” I didn’t really find an answer to my rant. I guess it’d be a big fat “no,” but since I was allowed to simply rant about the way I feel about things, I didn’t want to bog it down with details like “supportive evidence” or “facts,” so I remained purposely vague.

Oh well.

Posted by Stan on March 11, 2003 9:36 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 19, 2003

Douglas Adams

“‘If I asked you where the hell we were,’ said Arthur weakly, ‘would I regret it?’

“Ford stood up. ‘We’re safe,’ he said.

“‘Oh good,’ said Arthur.

“‘We’re in a small galley cabin,’ said Ford, ‘in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.’

“‘Ah,’ said Arthur, ‘this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.’”
— Douglas Adams

Posted by Stan on February 19, 2003 9:46 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 17, 2003

Timequake

“You think the ancient Romans were smart? Look at how dumb their numbers were. One theory of why they declined and fell is that their plumbing was lead. The root of our word plumbing is plumbum, the Latin word for ‘lead.’ Lead poisoning makes people stupid and lazy.

“What’s your excuse?” — Kurt Vonnegut

Posted by Stan on February 17, 2003 12:57 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 15, 2003

My Maserati Does 185

I don’t really understand people who don’t fear death with every fiber of their being. Death is not all sunshine and roses and clouds and noncorporeality. Death is death. It’s not something to look forward to. It’s not something to be excited about. It is something to be feared. It means you aren’t alive anymore, and I don’t know about you, but I think being not alive is a bad thing.

The problem with fearing death is that there are so many ways that it can happen. Death is just one of those things. I could cross the street and get hit by a bus. I could get shot by some fucker with an Uzi who’s just randomly blasting people because he himself is not afraid of death; rather, he does enjoy watching it happen to other people (shit, rent a horror movie, you fucking idiot — don’t shoot people). Shit, I could cross the street and the world could end. The universe could decide to stop expanding, thus collapsing everything. Or, even worse, it could decide to contract, and time would stop moving backwards until we aren’t born anymore. I’m not sure which is worse — dying because the universe ends, or getting younger and younger, losing everything I’ve gained in life (both dollars!), repeating all of my mistakes, only backwards so I can’t even possibly try to change them, and then becoming unborn. I think the latter would have to be worse.

I hate the universe.

I fear death.

The end.

Posted by Stan on February 15, 2003 2:21 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 11, 2003

As Time Goes By

“That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What does it say to you?”
“It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.”
“What are you doing Saturday night?”
“Committing suicide.”
“What about Friday night?”

— from Play It Again, Sam

Posted by Stan on February 11, 2003 1:35 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 5, 2003

Good Old Spike

“Who you gonna call?” A beat. “God, that phrase is never going to be usable again, is it?”

Best ever.

Posted by Stan on February 5, 2003 1:58 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

February 2, 2003

Dannii Minogue Needs to Be Worshipped as a Goddess

So Dannii Minogue, the terrifying Australian who sings shitty pop songs, has a new album on the horizon. While it’s true that her music is terrible, a new song from her album is called “Vibe On,” and — you guessed it — it’s an ode to vibrators. I don’t think any non-funk group has written an ode to vibrators since Prince’s nine-minute epic on the subject, so I think it’s high time for another tribute. Here are the lyrics (I swear I am not making this up):

Instead of just lying there,
Why don’t you show me that you’re powerful,
Put in triple X batteries just so you give me something wonderful,
Change it up fast and slow
Till I find the frequency I like.
Love it when you do my vibe on
Good vibrations, that’s what gets my ride on, gotta have vibrations,
Jump on to it, sit right on it, plug it in, give me my vibe on, gotta have vibrations.
I don’t want to put you down, looks like I’m a vibraholic now.

A vibraholic. Holy shit, that is great. “Triple X batteries” is my favorite part, I think. But my God, is that not the funniest damn thing a pop singer has produced since Crossroads (which was only unintentionally hilarious).

I’m generally not much interested in pop music, but I will be buying Neon Nights, Dannii Minogue’s new album, as soon as it comes out.

Posted by Stan on February 2, 2003 11:23 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 26, 2003

Daredevil

So I saw a trailer for the new Daredevil movie, and I gotta say, it looks pretty damn good.

You’ve got Ben Affleck as the superhero with two major problems: (1) he’s blind and (2) he stuck a wirebrush down his throat. You’ve got Jen Garner, looking hotter than ever, as…well, I dunno what the hell she’s supposed to be, but as long as she looks hot and kicks ass, it’s enough to get my ass in the theatre. You’ve got Jon Favreau, fatter than ever, looking like some freak Orson Welles-Marlon Brando monster, wedged into a chair in a lower Manhattan café for all eternity. And you’ve got Colin Farrell, master of really poorly faking non-Irish accents, as the neo-Nazi bad guy. Ooh, and we mustn’t forget Joe Pantoliano as the annoying-as-all-get-out reporter, and Michael Clarke Duncan as the huge black guy who stands around looking menacing. And the almost certainly frightening cameos by Kevin Smith and Coolio.

I hate comic-book movies because most of them fucking suck, but this one looks like a keeper. Okay, actually, it also looks like it sucks, but it’s got the Jen Garner factor, and it’s got a pretty decent cast. So yay for Daredevil. And yay for Jen Garner.

Posted by Stan on January 26, 2003 1:01 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 25, 2003

Weight Loss

I’m a fucking chubby piece of shit. I’m not fat, really. Well, maybe I am. But I prefer to think of myself as chubby.

But I have a new weight loss goal in mind. I just bought a large t-shirt. Yes, a large. There were no extra-larges available. I want to lose enough weight for it to not be form-fitting, and I want that to happen before it fades. It helps that it’s fade resistant, which will buy me some time, because I’m not off to a very good start.

Here’s how not to start your diet: a half-dozen Dunkin’ Donuts in the morning (don’t forget the 12 oz. coffee with cream and sugar), followed by a sensible six hours of Cheez-It munching, followed by a nutritious (and delicious!) dinner of McDonalds. God, I’m a fucking chubby piece of shit.

But that’s all over now. I’m back on the diet. And I’m exercising again. The damn exercycle thing is no longer covered in wall-to-wall shit from the Sister Dynasty. I can actually get to it without Indiana Jones-esque maneuvering. One of these days, I might actually get back to my target weight of “looks decent in a large t-shirt.” Maybe, just maybe, I’ll get down to the svelte 174 I weighed when I was 16.

It could happen. Just as soon as I finish the other half-dozen donuts…

Posted by Stan on January 25, 2003 5:13 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

January 24, 2003

Commercials

I hate commercials. A lot. Granted, I don’t watch them often (thanks to the magic of a taping shows — yeah, I’m not cool enough for TiVo yet), and when I do they’re muted, but there are occasions when the remote is on the other side of the room, so I’m subjected to the horror of commercial advertisements.

My least favorite string of commercials running right now are the ones for Bass Ale. This has little to do with my one-man crusade for temperance, because there are otherbeer commercials that amuse me. I’ll get to that in a moment, but now for the Bass Ale commercial. Okay, so you’ve got this guy sitting in an abandoned factory, telling this story. It’s a long, long, boring, pointless story that goes absolutely nowhere. Then there’s this little montage of the bubbling amberness of the beer, followed by the tagline, which is something like, “Bass Ale — always leaves you wanting something more.”

Now, here’s the thing about this commercial. It doesn’t leave me wanting more. I think it’s supposed to; I think that’s the goal of the pointless story. When the dude stops talking, you’re supposed to say, “Gee, I want to hear the end of the anecdote.” But I don’t, and nobody in his or her right mind would ever want to hear the end of that story. In fact, most consumers would have slipped themselves a nice cyanide capsule shortly after they thankfully cut these inane stories off.

And yet it’s subtly effective. Check this out: when I see these commercials, I listen to the story, it makes me contemplate the virtues of suicide, and then it’s over. But then I think to myself, “You know what? I bet I’d actually enjoy that story if I was wasted.” Then I go out and buy a six-pack of Bass Ale, and they stay in business for another 225 years. Consumerism at its best.

But here’s why advertising is so ineffective lately, in my not-so-humble-and-often-loudly-voiced opinion. They don’t advertise anything. Sure, the ads are amusing and clever and — very rarely — touching. But very few of them actually have anything to do with anything. What the fuck are they selling? Who cares? It’s funny! There’s effective advertising.

The only company I know the name of anymore is Empire Carpet. Why? 588-2300, EmPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE, that’s why. A jingle that gets down into your soul and tells you, “Buy carpet.” It advertises its product and then kills you with a jingle. Plus, it’s got the Empire Carpet Guy. Also, Menards uses the exact same tactics: awful jingle, hilarious pitchman, and it advertises what it’s actually selling. So I know Menards and Empire, that’s good. I’ll have pliers and vinyl siding for the rest of my life.

I watched a commercial today that made me laugh so hard I almost pissed myself, but I have no idea what it was advertising. Beer, I’m guessing, but only because of the half-second shot at the end where the guy is at a bar with his friends trying not to look humiliated. But nothing in the commercial really said, “Hey, beer is cool. Let’s consume some and then drive. I’ll bring toll money.”

Here’s how it went: the guy sees a hot chick moving in down the hall, so he writes a little Post-It note: “If you need ANYTHING, come to apt. 240.” But the note won’t stick, so he goes and gets some duct tape and, obviously, a knife to cut the duct tape off (because few men are strong enough to rip duct tape straight from the roll — we can’t all be Hercules). Despite that minor logic flaw, you have a guy with a knife and duct tape standing outside the apartment door. The girl opens the door, screams, and slams it. Then there’s the in-the-bar-humiliation shot. Oh, beer.

So I remember the entire scene. I remember the fucking specific apartment number of the guy. And yet I don’t remember what it was advertising, other than the vague “beer” theory. This is the way it is with so many commercials. Am I the only one who just doesn’t remember the products but remembers the clever little scenes? Am I the only one who doesn’t even care?

Anyway, I’m done with my whiny piss-rant.

Posted by Stan on January 24, 2003 7:56 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 18, 2003

Heaven

I got my Buffy DVDs Friday. I never need to leave the house again.

Posted by Stan on January 18, 2003 7:14 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 12, 2003

Wow

My life reached an all-time low point today. I carved aside three hours and twenty minutes today to watch a Joe Don Baker miniseries/pilot from 1978 on the Encore Mystery channel or whatever the fuck it’s called. And because I decided to watch this, I’m missing out on a meeting downtown, which I was e-mailed about (I appreciated the short notice) during the movie and which starts in 20 minutes. I was told the meeting wasn’t specifically important, but fuck, I should’ve been there.

But that’s not the thing that gets me. The thing that really frightens me about this whole situation is that I actually liked this Joe Don Baker miniseries.

Posted by Stan on January 12, 2003 5:12 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

January 2, 2003

What the New Year Means to Me

I watched the entire thirteen hours of Buffy yesterday, and I’m all the better for it. It was the only thing I was looking forward to. And now I’ve gotta get started on all that work due next week, which I decided not to do right away but now have no real ambition to do. So that’s something to not look forward to.

Here’s what I was wondering all day yesterday, though. FX, masters of horrid self-promotion, played a commercial roughly 750 million times advertising their airing of Armageddon next Tuesday, and the thing that baffled me was that the announcer kept saying, “…broadcast with limited commercial interruptions.” But I can’t help wondering why, aside from the fact that it’s obscenely long (for such a bad movie) to begin with, they would do something like this.

Generally, advertisers have no objection to stretching a 150-minute movie out to five hours (see TNT and/or TBS) as long as they don’t think people will shut it off. But maybe that’s the problem. Armageddon is a bad movie, one that can barely hold someone’s attention with no commercials. Stick in a break every 15 minutes, and I could see some problems.

But that can’t be it. The advertisements create the illusion that this is a very important, heavy film like Schindler’s List, so it has earned and deserves the limited commercial interruptions because, dammit, it’s worthy. But as anybody who has seen more than 5 seconds of Armageddon will point out, that is simply not true.

Then I realized something: this is the network that plays The Devil’s Advocate, The Specialist, Diabolique (the terrible remake, not the good one), and, God help us all, the Howie Long vehicle Firestorm. And they’re proud of this semi-nightly cavalcade of crap. So, to FX, acquiring the broadcast rights to Armageddon is the closest they’ll ever come to airing a good movie (because, bad as it is, it’s head and shoulders above everything else they play), so they feel they have to give it the Schindler’s List treatment.

And that’s good for FX. They’re movin’ on up to that de-luxe apartment in the sky. But that doesn’t make Armageddon good. It’s still as crappy as ever, but relative to their normal feature programming, it’s the multi-Oscar-winning masterpiece that will one day form the model of a perfect utopian society.

Oh well. At least they redeem themselves by tossing Buffy at us twice daily.

Posted by Stan on January 2, 2003 10:32 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 25, 2002

‘Tis the Season…FOR PAIN!

Christmas was about as thrilling as Parts: The Clonus Horror, but I have some neat-o toys to play with. And Woody Allen DVDs out the wazoo. And a sorely needed new stereo. And I blew some Christmas c@$h on Buffy season 2…seasons 1 and 3 soon to follow, but I needed to order 2 ASAP because a friend of mine sent me a 10% off Amazon dealie for it. Niiiiiiiiice.

And it snowed. Cool.

A few days ago, I wrote the first two chapters of the novel I’ve been not really planning for the last month. I planned to write a big, long post about it, and then I stopped caring, so I scrapped that idea.

And unless I get another desperate person at the door tonight, I’ll probably be watching It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story.

Posted by Stan on December 25, 2002 7:01 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 14, 2002

Taken

I spent the majority of my day today watching Taken, the Spielberg-produced miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel. I’ve heard a number of different — and mostly varied — opinions on it, but enough of them were positive (and from people who have taste) that I decided to watch the encore today and tomorrow.

I watched the first four parts, and it was okay. It started off slow in the first hour, then picked up through the second hour and through the second and third parts, but the fourth part was fairly boring. I got sick of watching it, so I’m taping the rest and I guess I’ll finish watching it when I have time during the holiday break.

Slashdot posted an editorial about it shortly after I stopped watching, strangely enough. Basically, they (both the editorial author and the comments from users) said the first five episodes are terrific, and the last five episodes are just awful. Now, considering I’d gauge the first four at “slightly above mediocre,” suddenly it makes me fear the last six episodes. I guess if it really starts to suck it up, I probably won’t bother finishing it.

In other news, I started playing through GTA3 again. I started playing on Thursday, and I’ve got 55% completed so far. I don’t know what it is about this game that makes me come back to it even though I’ve got half a dozen other brand new games I have yet to finish ? I haven’t even finished Mario Sunshine yet because of this game! And yet I’ve played GTA3 through about five times.

And then I started comparing it to Vice City (one of the games I have yet to finish…), and that’s when things got strange. Vice City is, in many ways, a superior game…it has many improvements to the engine, it has a kick-ass storyline, and the asset purchasing system is the game’s masterstroke, but somehow, it doesn’t seem nearly as accessible to me as GTA3. I can’t figure out why. Oh well.

Posted by Stan on December 14, 2002 8:28 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

December 8, 2002

The Movies™

I think the last good, recent movie I saw in a theatre was Minority Report. That was awhile ago.

Back when I had a life (ha!), I’d go and see a movie at least once a week, sometimes more. Good or bad, it didn’t matter. We’d go, and it’d be fun, even if the movie was terrible. And then I realized I don’t have enough money to be going to the movies that frequently, so I started saving my money by not going to the movies unless the movie looked really good. And under my horrible scrutiny, very few movies look really good, so I haven’t been out to see a movie in quite some time.

And now, all of a sudden, within the last few weeks I’ve developed a must-see list, and I have no idea why movies have been so shitty looking for the last few months, but now all of a sudden some that look really excellent are coming out. Here’s the list (in order of priority):

Adaptation

Equilibrium

About Schmidt

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Star Trek: Nemesis

Gangs of New York

25th Hour

Evelyn

So how the hell did that happen? There are nine movies that I feel I have to see, and if I don’t, my soul will evaporate and my body will trasmogrify into some sort of bloody mushroom of organ tissue. Which, incidentally, is bad. I blame Oscar season for this. And also, maybe, the summer crapfest. These movies look a lot better when they’re stacked up in a row after the summer of XXX (which, for fuck’s sake, isn’t even a porno!) and Men in Black II (why, Rip Torn, WHY?!@!@!).

Posted by Stan on December 8, 2002 10:35 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

Hrm

Of all the goddamn things, I was watching public access tonight.

We recently got digital cable, so we have roughly 137 million channels to choose from, but what do I most frequently choose? If I’m not absorbed in something on TechTV or G4 (my life is so sad), or I’m not watching one of the few network shows I enjoy, I usually flip around the different local access stations. Sometimes they have good stuff, but most of the time it’s like watching a really shitty movie without having to pay rental charges.

At any rate, there are many, many, many, many, many, many bad local access shows dedicated to the budding local music scene*. There’s also one that is shitty, but which is apparently broadcast around the country. It’s called “Music Choice,” and today they featured a band that — for the first time in my long history of watching terrible local programming — I actually enjoyed. They’re called Queens of the Stone Age, and the show had a whole hour of some live concert they did at the beautiful and frightening Troubadour in Los Angeles.

I liked them. That’s really all I have to say. I think I might buy one of their albums.

*The best bad music show I’ve ever seen is called “Thrash TV.” As expected, it had rock-bottom production values, and at one time they used this to their advantage. The majority of the show was dedicated to local basement punk shows from really shity bands, but one time they went out and recorded a White Zombie concert in Chicago. Then, after showing two or three songs from that concert, they took us “backstage” to what looked like a poorly lit garage for an interview with Rob Zombie. But it was very obviously not Rob Zombie — it was just some dude in a cowboy hat trying to act like him, but it was all backlit so all you could see was hat and hair, so I guess maybe it was convincing to somebody. It was probably the funniest local-access moment I’ve ever seen. [Back]

Posted by Stan on December 8, 2002 12:16 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

December 7, 2002

Win2K

Well, I dropped back down to Win2k this morning. I got sick of XP and how irritatingly shitty it is. The only Windows operating system I’ve ever been happy with is…well, none of them, but the closest I’ve come is with Win2k. It’s the only one that seems to actually work properly, and with Windows, that’s saying something.

Posted by Stan on December 7, 2002 10:53 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 29, 2002

Slayerfest ‘02

I watched fourteen hours of Buffy yesterday, including the obscenely depressing “The Body” (in which Buffy’s mother dies and the entire gang is forced to deal with that) and the less depressing “The Gift” (Buffy sacrifices herself to save the universe and Dawn, which is depressing in an heroic way), and that was fun even though they didn’t play my favorite episode (“Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” — the one where Xander does a spell to get Cordelia to love him, but it backfires and causes everyone except Cordelia to love him — it’s absolutely hilarious). The day flew by quickly. It also reminded me of how much I miss Cordelia in the Scooby gang (though she’s fun on Angel).

But the thing is, during this fourteen-hour slayerfest, they showed one commercial during literally every break. This Kia Spectra commercial. You probably know the one I’m talking about. It’s got this shitty new-wave sample playing, and there’s this obscenely cute girl and her dog, and she goes through a bunch of different boyfriends, but the only thing that stays the same is her car and the dog, because there’s something wrong with all the boyfriends. Over the fourteen hours, I managed to develop a major crush on this girl. And that is kind of depressing. But still, she’s sooooo cute.

Posted by Stan on November 29, 2002 7:26 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 15, 2002

The Hot-Ass Financial Chick Brigade

I can’t watch television news anymore. Not because of blandness or bias or anything like that — because the women (it’s always women) who do those financial reports are just too hot. They make my heart and my loins ache with desire, affecting me down in my most secret of places, and it’s just unacceptable.

But what I don’t understand is why news stations only employ the finest bevy of babes to do these financial reports. Actually, I understand it in the current economic climate — who better to soften the blow (no pun(s) intended) that basically your entire investment is worth 4¢ and a stick of DoubleMint gum than a fine-ass woman?

What about when the economy’s good? Well…I guess even that makes sense. It’s like celebrating good fortune, with some hot chick giving you the news. Like sailors coming back from WWII and going through the ticker-tape parades and just planting hot smootchies on whatever attractive woman is standing around. What better way to find out you’re wealthy than to have the news passed on by a girl whose face and body you would lick if it wasn’t standing on the floor of the NYSE?

Or maybe I’m the only one who’s attracted to them. I — usually — dig the smart women. The complete package: smart and hot. And, really, this is a lesson for the ladies who read my blog (you hear me, Jeff?): I only care about how smart and how physically attractive you are. Anything else is just extra. Sense of humor, ability to do mental math and/or fill out income tax forms, dominatrix fetishes…it’s like buying a Cadillac, but they throw in a free CD player. The Cadillac is fine on its own, but the CD player is the icing on the cake.

Was that a mixed metaphor?

Posted by Stan on November 15, 2002 9:46 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (1)

November 12, 2002

Teh Horrar… Teh Horrar

I wrote a new story for Fiction Writing. She told us to write a folk tale, and we discussed all the archetypes of folk tales and all that bullshit, and I came up with one that’s simply awful.

Essentially, a clean-cut, religious farmer’s son named Charlie decides to ask God if He can save his sister, who is very ill. God takes a pass on that issue, but He decides Charlie would be perfect for a quest. Did I mention that this all takes place in a biker bar? Did I also mention that God is portrayed as a foul-mouthed alcoholic pedophile whose position in the universe is the equivalent of middle management?

Charlie’s quest is to stop the Rapture, which is one of those things God thought sounded good at the time, but then He realized that maybe it’s bad in general. Charlie is reluctant to accept his fate, but when God gives him a nasty case of hemorrhoids and causes him to shit out a bloody map of the United States with small turds indicating his destinations, Charlie decides to hit the road.

Along the way, he meets Jesus (who has been condemned to running a diner in Wyoming after crashing God’s car), a talking manatee named Rance, and a transient named Philip. They finally piece together their true purpose — go to Los Angeles, find an Enchanted 7-Eleven, and defeat the Devil, who is just chilling out and waiting for the Rapture to start so he can unleash all sorts of demons from the underworld.

Jesus explains that a weapon will reveal itself to Charlie when they reach their final confrontation, and one does — a Slim Jim. In what is probably the ultimate deus ex machina of American fiction, Charlie snaps into a Slim Jim, makes the Devil explode, and then he, Jesus, Rance, and Philip ride off into the sunset to watch Must-See TV Thursday.

I had no particular goal in mind to offend anybody, although I imagine if there are any religious types in class (I don’t think there are), they might get a little irritated at my characterizations of, you know, things that they worship. I really just wanted to write the most fucked-up folk tale that I could. I think I succeeded, if only for the hemorrhoid/bloody shit map scene.

Posted by Stan on November 12, 2002 11:52 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 7, 2002

Disappointment

I gotta say the new Nirvana album bugs me. I don’t like a few of the song choices, but then again, it’s sort of supposed to be “greatest hits,” and technically, most of these were greatest hits. But there are better songs.

My main beef, though, is with the guy who decided to remaster the songs from the “Unplugged” session and make it sound like a studio recording, with all the “live” mistakes sucked out and no audience ambience (except for applause at the end and some that couldn’t be sucked out of the beginning). It was just kinda stupid.

The “new” song is interesting, though. When I first listened to it, I made the somewhat hasty judgement that it sounds more like a Radiohead song than it does like Nirvana, but when I listened to it again, I was wrong. I could make a horrible pun on either the Radiohead song title “I Might Be Wrong” or on the title of this Nirvana song, “You Know You’re Right,” but I won’t do that.

Posted by Stan on November 7, 2002 8:16 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 6, 2002

Explain Why Turning 21 Is Useless in 200 Words or Less or Possibly More

The strange thing about this week — and, for the record, my weeks start on Thursday and end on Wednesday night, so right now I’m about done — was that I had a birthday. Theoretically it was an important milestone. If we were still living in pre-Vietnam days, I’d be excited that my 21st birthday rather conveniently fell on the very first election day in which I would be legally allowed to participate. But we are living in a more contemporary society, so that exciting milestone came and went, and the excitement was decreased by the very simple fact that there was no election that year. Also, my birthday did not fall on a Tuesday that year.

Now, the most exciting claim I can stake as a result of this birthday is lower insurance premiums. And it’s kind of sad that I do genuinely find the prospect of lower insurance premiums exciting. Instead of being anally raped by a gorilla who periodically receives brain shocks, I will now be gently raped by a tender lover who will periodically nibble on my ear affectionately. I will wonder at that point how a tender lover who smells of lilac could possibly be cleaning out the rim of my anal canal like so many ear-bound Q-tips, and I will dismiss her as some form of hermaphrodite. Hopefully I won’t be wrong.

Posted by Stan on November 6, 2002 10:30 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

More on Fiction Writing

The best birthday present I got was from the two most irritating and horrible excuses for human beings I have ever met, both of whom happen to tag team me with torture on a weekly basis in Fiction Writing. But on Tuesday, they didn’t show up. Neither of them. I was so thrilled, I actually — dare I say it? — enjoyed a session of Fiction Writing. I didn’t really think those two were the dual sources of pain in the class, but the class environment improved so much in their absence, I guess I misjudged the power of their evil.

My sister got me “The Simpsons” Clue, which earns a close second place, tied with the ph@t c@$h I received from my grandparents.

In last place: the clothes my parents gave me. Granted, I like clothes. Granted, I need clothes because my jeans are shrinking (no, really, it’s the jeans), so it was a thoughtful and practical gift, but it’s not exactly the thing that makes you shout out, “Thank God I’m alive!” I was more hoping that I would receive one — if not both — of the Fiction Twins’ heads in a box. Of course, with my luck, the head would then take possession of my body and force me to do its bidding. But it’d be cool initially.

Posted by Stan on November 6, 2002 10:05 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 3, 2002

All Caught Up

Well, officially, I’ve finished reading the worst novel ever written and I’m completely caught up in African history. In fact, I did something I used to do way back in the days of AP US History (goddamn Ms. Oppliger for being right) — I made up study guides with important people, dates, places, etc., and the reasons for their importance. So that’ll be nice to study with, because I’ve condensed a few hundred pages into ten pages in study guides.

And I got a response from Amazon — free game city. I ended up getting Grand Theft Auto 3 instead of THPS4 or FFX. FFX is only $40, and part of the promotion is that it has to be a $50 game…I’m not sure why, because it’d save them money in the long run to give me a $40 game for free instead of a $50 game. And I played THPS4 at my cousin’s house at that shitty party last weekend, and I have to say that while it’s a good THPS game, I’m just not that into it. Not into it enough to buy, anyway. The THPS kinda ran its course with me by the time I beat 3, and the nifty new features and levels in 4 aren’t really appealing enough for me to spend money on it. Yeah, yeah, I know — I wouldn’t be spending money on it, but I’d rather get a game that I already know I love than a game I already know I’m not gonna love.

And this concludes the interesting part of the weekend, which isn’t even interesting because I refuse to address the hilarity of important personal matters in so public a forum. I’m having an early-birthday dinner after the Bears game, and then I’m watching TV and going to bed.

Posted by Stan on November 3, 2002 1:52 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 2, 2002

I Need a T-Shirt that Says “YOU ARE LOOKING AT AN IDIOT”

I got my Juliana Hatfield t-shirt today, so now I can be the envy of my friend.

Also, I got some ph@t birthday c@$h today and decided to make some f00lish impulse purchases — a PlayStation 2 with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Kingdom Hearts.

And then all my friends on 8bop reminded me that Amazon.com is having a deal this week — buy two PS2 games, get one free. And I forgot about it and didn’t take advantage of the deal, and since my order went into shipping almost immediately, I didn’t have a chance to cancel or add anything to it. So now I’m fucked up the goat ass.

I fired off a politely worded e-mail to Amazon, explaining the nature of their promotion and the nature of my predicament. Hopefully they’ll let me slide with an extra game (I’m thinking Tony Hawk 4 or FFX…but I haven’t decided yet), but I’m thinking they’re gonna e-mail me back and be like, “Jesus, you’re a goddamn idiot. Get a fucking life. Here, we’ll cancel your order and use the money to send you a plane ticket as far away from Loserville as $314.94 can take you.”

And then I’ll have to retort, “Hey, just because my life is a trainwreck of failure and wasted lies” — and, yes, I stole that line from Something Awful — “doesn’t mean you have the right to mock me. I mean, just because I have no friends and am too unstable to actually stay in a relationship for more than 15 minutes, and ironically I found a girl who is exactly the same way, so we’re having fun not actually having a relationship — where do you get off? Just because I love video games and movies and TV and books because I’m too unmotivated/cheap/fat to actually leave the house without being dragged by a young lady who looks like Snow White from hell, is that any reason for you to insult me and deprive me of the free game I so achingly desire?”

To which they will respond, “Yes.”

And I’ll have absolutely no comeback.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.

Posted by Stan on November 2, 2002 9:38 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

November 1, 2002

Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Nader — No, Really!

I’m reading this article right now that sort of put things in a perspective I never really thought about. Basically, it’s about Bush and what a big fucking liar he is (and a bad, incompetent one at that), but people buy what he’s saying like the gospel truth. It also points out how, essentially, he was elected on the idea that he would restore truth and honor to the White House. I mean, he didn’t have a whole lot of government experience, he’s a total idiot, and his father was part of a few executive administrations that basically shot our economy into the toilet and unemployment into the stratosphere.

So now we elect Bush, the plainspoken hayseed who ran some oil companies into the ground before becoming the governor of execution in Texas and, eventually, the grossly unqualified leader of the free world. Bad move, America. The day that the 2000 election debacle was finally settled at Bush was declared the winner was the day I finally conceded that Canadians really are smarter than we are.

And he’s started lying. He’s not lying about relatively minor things like blowjobs in the Oval Office…I mean, by Christ, if I was getting blowjobs from somebody like Monica Lewinsky, I’d probably lie about it, too. But that’s neither here nor there — the fact is, Clinton is a liar. And he took a lie and ran with it, which was stupid. But in the grand scheme of things, his lie wasn’t such a big one. And in my not-so-humble opinion, that lie did not call into question every other word he’s ever uttered in the history of the universe. Hell, everybody know he was a slicker-than-oil-shit liar. What tipped us off? The fact that he was a lawyer, or the fact that during his election he tried to make the honest claim that he tried to smoke marijuana, but couldn’t quite figure out how to inhale? Or maybe just the fact that he was a politician? I mean, come on people…

Aaaaaaaaaanyway, Bush is lying about big things. Very big things. He’s decided that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11th attacks, despite the fact that there is not one shred of evidence — not one, not even a little tiny sliver of toilet paper with the words “Hey Binny, knock down some buildings; your pal, S.H.” scrawled on it — to back up that bizarre assertion. Okay, I’m not running out and defending Saddam Hussein because he’s no peach himself, but that doesn’t make him responsible for the attacks.

And don’t give me that old “Maybe he knows things we don’t know” routine. He doesn’t know things we don’t know. Hell, he doesn’t even know what most of us glean from watching 30 seconds of CNN. He sounds informed in his rehearsed, pre-written speeches that are read from the teleprompter, but when he strays away from that, he comes out with things like, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me, uh, fool…uh, we can’t get fooled again!” No, seriously, he can’t even properly say one of the oldest clichés in modern English, and when he does botch it, he can’t pause, say, “Excuse me,” and start over because his pea-sized brain can’t handle the overhead.

Sixty-five percent of the people in this country are under the horribly misguided impression that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11th attacks. This is something that was directly caused by Bush basically rattling off lies and assertions, but doing it in that clever Clinton way (thanks, no doubt, to his speechwriters and aides) so when he gets caught, he can get out of it without, you know, getting impeached. Okay, so maybe his writers are cleverer than Clinton…

And now we’ve got an economy that’s sagging to a point unmatched since — when? 1989? When somebody named George Bush Sr. was the President of the United States? Right…so how do we solve this economic crisis? Here’s a brilliant solution: ignore it and hone in on things like destroying Saddam Hussein’s stranglehold on…uh…nothing, and then continue to shout, “Whoo! Let’s spend some more money! Whoo! Whoo!” And sink our national debt into the quadrillions.

That’s what-doo economics? Anybody? Anybody? Voodoo economics.

Posted by Stan on November 1, 2002 12:01 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

October 31, 2002

An Anniversary of Pain

New Tori Amos = rocks

A reconciliation of sorts (if there was ever reconciling necessary…I’m still not sure, but then again I’m left in the dark about 98% of what happens in my life) with my not-girlfriend = a happy event that has perhaps fittingly occurred on Halloween

Five hours of Buffy today = severely gg

Three bags of leftover Kit-Kats (yeah, trick-or-treating isn’t exactly over, but I will be sure there are three bags left) = fattening, but who cares other than my jeans?

Very little homework this weekend = yay

No job = no money, but still, yay

Halfway through The Bluest Eye = Jesus Christ, I can’t take another page, but it’s better than being a quarter of the way through

I have time to write again (and I ain’t talking about shitty assignments) = neat-o

That about sums up the day. This evening shall be a festival of the written word, as I plan to finish The Bluest Eye tonight, and I will follow that up by a session of rewriting the story bible for a TV series that’ll never happen that I occasionally write when I’m bored or dreamy or just have nothing else to write but still need to get something down on paper.

Oh wait, the thing that got me back on that series idea is that I’m ingratiating myself upon my Writing for Television professor, and she’s got a disturbing excess of contacts for television in the area and in Los Angeles and in New York. So far, she’s my most exploitable contact, and fortunately, she seems to have some sort of horrible crush on me (or maybe it’s my writing…), so hopefully I can use that to my advantage in a patently non-sexual way. I’ve already got enough sexing up to do, thanks to an early-morning call from Not-Girlfriend that irritated me until she, at the goading of a friend I didn’t even know she knew, apologized for things that she didn’t even do just so I would feel less paranoid (did I address my paranoia in another entry? I don’t remember). Isn’t that sweet? She knows just how to screw with my head to make me normal, or at least as close as I come to that.

Plus, she’s really hot.

Posted by Stan on October 31, 2002 6:43 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)

October 30, 2002

Believing You Can Fly at Age 15

I did the ol’ shuffle thing on iTunes today and a song I haven’t listened to in a long, long time came up: Straight No Chaser’s cover of that R. Kelly song “I Believe I Can Fly.” It reminded me of the semi-infamous second debate in my public speaking class last semester, after the extremely infamous first debate got so out of hand that it was cancelled and we started from scratch with a completely new topic.

The new topic: Should radio stations stop playing R. Kelly’s music in light of allegations of many, many, many counts of statutory rape, including one videotaped and several verified accounts from purported “victims?” (I don’t really believe any of these girls were guilty of statutory rape; they knew exactly what they were doing. They just wanted to screw a hunka-hunka-celebrity manbeef, and he didn’t have any particular aversion or moral qualms with the idea of screwing underage girls.) It was a good topic, I thought, as it had been in the news for several days and Kelly is somewhat of a local celebrity. Based on the actual question posed for the debate, which concerned radio stations not playing his music because of allegations, I decided to join the team that was against radio stations doing this.

I don’t like R. Kelly’s music, and he is guilty (of that I am certain), but in theory, we live in a society in which people are innocent until proven guilty. Granted, this theory does not necessarily translate in practice, especially when the accused is a celebrity and the news media has nothing better to do than speculate on his guilt or innocence, and it’s always juicier to focus on the guilt. That’s beside the point, though. The point is that it’s improper for a radio station to quit playing his music simply because he was accused of a crime. If he went to jail, hell yeah, take him off the air. He has no place earning residuals or selling albums from a prison cell. And even if they took him off the air on the grounds of, “Hey, he’s controversial, and we’re losing listeners — that is bad medicine,” but they shouldn’t have done it simply because oh my, he’s all for family values, but here he is supposedly assblasting some fifteen-year-old “dancer” on video.

So the groups divided and planned debate strategies. Granted, this is Columbia College in Chicago’s beautifully grimy South Loop, so there wasn’t really enough combined brainpower in either group to screw in a light bulb, but we tried anyway. But the problem with both group’s strategy was that they were woefully offtopic. The people in our group kept insisting that he’s innocent — there’s no way he did it! — with a list of reasons proving said innocence that bordered on farce. As soon as the first shrill African-American girl stood up and said, “I saw that video on the Internet, and there ain’t no way he’s dumb enough to look right at the camera if he’s videotaping it,” I decided to just not speak during the course of the debate.

The opposing viewpoint was no better: mostly, they concentrated on the fact that R. Kelly’s music sucked. “Yeah, he should be taken off the radio,” they said (and here I’m paraphrasing for the sake of coherency), “because his albums suck. He sucks. He is like crap. Ban him because he sucks, not because he rapes little girls.”

Shortly after the first guy stood up and said, flat out, that R. Kelly sucks, the debate broke down. Not that there was ever much structure to begin with, but it turned from a semi-formal debate into something out of Billy Jack: a bunch of incoherent potheads with nonsense arguments trying to shout down a bunch of misinformed fans with a heavy slant toward fictional innocence.

Don, the professor, was baffled. He tried a few times to settle down the riled group, but to no avail. I did not take part, and a few others also abstained. We all sort of looked from one person to another for reassurance. I could read in the others’ eyes that they were glad that at least a few semi-sane people were in the class. Finally, I looked over at Don, who looked at me with a longing that I would have assumed was lust if I hadn’t been so sure at the time that he wanted me to just stand up and shut the class the hell up. Don liked me because I was the only person in the class articulate enough to bore the class with the proceedings of the Microsoft antitrust case while somehow entertaining the three smart kids in the class (and Don himself).

And all that with no outline!

So I stood up and started talking. In high school, one of the things I learned was how to be fucking loud. So I was fucking loud, louder than any of the screeching R. Kelly fans or whiny, unbathed emo kids (no offense, Jeff), when I said, “R. Kelly is guilty.”

This was enough to shut everyone up. They all sort of looked at me. The people on my team are dumbfounded — how could I turn on them like this? The people on the other side were equally dumbfounded — why was I so brazenly chastising the man I was supposed to support? One of the smart kids, a granola-eating, hemp-loving (but, for once, not because of the nauseating amount of pot she smokes!) girl named Sarah, smiled. I didn’t like her very much, even though she was smart, but at that second, I contemplated jumping over a row of desks, pinning her to the ground, and making wild, passionate love to her. Something about that smile and those emo glasses and the stylish black hair. Then again, I have similar fantasies about many other women at least seven times a day, so maybe this instance wasn’t special enough to document…

I continued to speak, and said something like this: “R. Kelly is guilty, of that I am certain. I don’t think he should go to jail or pay a big fine or become a horrible blight on society. I firmly believe that the girls he had sex with were not coerced in any way — in fact, I believe they coerced him, not the other way around. But that is beside the point.

“Also, I hate R. Kelly’s music. I can’t stand any it. If I hear one of his songs on the radio, I change the station. The sound of his voice makes me want to plow into oncoming traffic, and I think it should be avoided at all costs. But that, too, is beside the point.

“The reason for this debate was to discuss whether or not radio stations should stop playing his music solely because of these allegations. They shouldn’t. It is unfair to him, his record label, and the American public, in the off-chance that he is somehow found not guilty and can put this whole thing behind him. But this debate is not about his merits as a quote-unquote ‘musician’ or whether or not these videos were doctored like the Zapruder film or faked like the moon landing. So if you guys can’t stick to the topic and have a civilized debate, why are we even taking this class? Other than to fulfill the requirement?”

Of course, I’m nowhere near this articulate, so just imagine the above with many more pauses and “ums” and stammers as I attempt to scan my brain and find the words I’m looking for.

But that thing about the Zapruder film or the faked moon landing — that was the money shot. I had the whole thing planned around that as I sat and listened to them all bitch. That was probably the only part that I didn’t stammer on.

Nobody applauded or anything. I just sat back down, and everybody was silenced. I wasn’t grandstanding or anything. Really, the only thing I wanted was for them to shut the fuck up. And to tell my conspiracy theory joke, which only Don and Sarah and Mike got.

In retrospect, this story isn’t nearly as entertaining as I thought it’d be. But it sure as hell is long, so I’m gonna post it anyway, just to torment Jeff. And I’m not even going to end it with some kind of sex pun or gay joke, so he’ll just waste his time.

Posted by Stan on October 30, 2002 9:47 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (35)

October 26, 2002

I AM NEW HERE

This is my first blog entry. I haven’t used a blog before, but I spend 98% of my waking life bored out of my mind, and I figured blogging was the perfect complement to utter boredom. I could be wrong, and if I am, I’ll forget about this whole thing roughly three days from now.

Posted by Stan on October 26, 2002 9:22 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Comments (0)