“I saw a happy man, whose cherished dream had so obviously come true, who had attained his goal in life, had gotten what he wanted, who was content with his fate and with himself. For some reason there had always been something sad mixed with my thoughts about human happiness, but now, at the sight of a happy man, I was overcome by an oppressive feeling close to despair…Just look at this life; the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, impossible poverty all around us, overcrowding, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lies…Yet in all the houses and streets it’s quiet, peaceful; of the fifty thousand people who live in town there is not one who would cry out or become loudly indignant. We see those who go to the market to buy food, eat during the day, sleep during the night, who talk their nonsense, get married, grow old, complacently drag their dead to the cemetery; but we don’t see or hear those who suffer, and the horrors of life go on somewhere behind the scenes…And this order is necessary; obviously the happy man feels good only because the unhappy bear their burden silently, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. It’s a general hypnosis. At the door of every contended, happy man somebody should stand with a little hammer, constantly tapping, to remind him that unhappy people exist, that however happy he may be, sooner or later life will show him its claws, some calamity will befall him—illness, poverty, loss—and nobody will hear or see, just as he doesn’t hear or see others now. But there is nobody with a little hammer, the happy man lives on, and the petty cares of life stir him only slightly, as wind stirs an aspen—and everything is fine.”
-Anton Chekov, Gooseberries

I realize that’s a rather bleak quote, and I imagine that from reading it one might come away with the impression that I’m in some way depressed. You needn’t worry. I was just rereading that story, and I was suddenly reminded how much I love that passage. It was written in 1898, and with the advent of the internet and 24-hour news channels its message doesn’t seem quite as ubiquitous as it probably once was. But on some level it’s still, even more than 100 years later, tragically relevant. And that, to me, is what makes it great.


I AM A STAR. I’M A STAR, I’M A STAR, I’M A STAR. I AM A BIG, BRIGHT, SHINING STAR

I’m not the smartest guy in the world, and I’m certainly not cursed with an overabundance of self-awareness. I am smart enough to realize, however, that my current career goals are exceedingly lofty and the odds are, to put it mildly, against me. Thus, I have developed a pretty solid backup plan. If at some point within the next five years, give or take a year, I don’t make it as a screenwriter—whatever that means—I will throw in the towel and pursue a career in the porn industry.

I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’m not looking to get into porn because I like sex. First of all, if everybody who liked sex got into porn, then the industry would be grossly oversaturated and, it seems to me at least, that most menial labor jobs would become vacant and society as we know it would fall apart. That just doesn’t seem practical. Secondly, no matter how fun a job is, it can’t remain fun forever; anything you’re forced to do on a daily basis sort of loses its luster after awhile. Similarly, I like ice cream quite a bit. But if I had ice cream after, before, or during every meal, I wouldn’t like ice cream too much anymore. I’m sure you see my point.

No, I want to get into porn for one very simple reason—I want a legitimate reason to self-apply a cool, vaguely clever porn name. So far I’ve got it narrowed down to Gregory Pecker or Hugh Mungus. I haven’t done any investigating whatsoever to determine whether or not these names are already taken, but let’s just assume that they’re not. I think that, regardless of the fact that I have questionable bedroom skills, the name alone would lead to a rather long and prosperous career in the porn industry. Who wouldn’t hire a guy named Gregory Pecker? How could you not watch a movie starring Hugh Mungus? And who knows, in five years maybe I’ll come up with an even better name.

I don’t know, on some level I’m kind of hoping the whole screenwriting thing falls through. I think the porn world needs me.


A NOT SO STRONGLY WORDED LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY WHICH I’M SURE AT LEAST SIX PEOPLE WILL READ

Dear America,

Please, for the love of god, stop watching shitty television shows. I know you’ve just had a long day at work--maybe the guy who sits in the cubicle next to yours did something exceedingly annoying today or your boss came down on you for something that wasn’t your fault--and you’re simply looking for a way to pass the time, to let your brain rest from the various stresses of your work day, but let’s aim a little higher than Don’t Forget the Lyrics or The Moment of Truth. These shows are horrible, the people who make them are not on your side, and you should have more respect for yourself. Let me explain…

Reality TV is one thing. Who doesn’t enjoy a good reality show once in a while? Whether it’s Top Chef or That’s Amore, your only reason for watching, let’s admit it, is that you have nothing better to do, and as the season wears on week after week you invariably develop a certain affinity for some contestants and a natural dislike or distrust for others. To a certain degree, that’s understandable; you’re not actually friends with these people, you don’t know them, but you’ve spent enough time with them that you feel as though you do. The problem with shows like Don’t Forget the Lyrics and The Moment of Truth is that they’re largely filler, drawn out to give us seemingly candid moments with the contestants, during which time we’re supposed to develop some kind of relationship with them. But these shows are only an hour long. Except for rare, special circumstances, who and the hell can you truly connect with after only knowing them for an hour? This is assuming, of course, that you haven’t recorded the show and fast forward through the commercials, effectively cutting the length of your relationship by roughly 25%.

Do you really give a shit whether or not Dwight knows the lyrics to Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head? Or whether Cindy harbors secret feelings for her next-door neighbor? No, you don’t. I’ll give you an example which I’m sure you can relate to. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you have a friend named Bob, and one day Bob starts telling a long, in-depth story about Fred and Kiki, a married couple that he knows. Now, you’ve never met Fred or Kiki, and before today you’d never even heard of them. After about, oh, 42 seconds the story holds no interest for you whatsoever because it has no real personal connection. If Bob were talking about a mutual friend, on the other hand, the odds would be better that it would.

My point is that you don’t know the people on these shows, and their successes and failures have no impact on your life whatsoever. Now, why do I care what television shows you watch in the privacy of your own home? Strictly speaking, I don’t. But somewhere between The Real World and Survivor, television producers became convinced that the American television viewing audience would watch any show, no matter how disgustingly melodramatic and overly hyped, so long as the people depicted displayed qualities of some easily relatable and immediately identifiable stereotype. And the more you watch these shows, the more the producers become convinced they’re right, prompting them to continue to churn out drivel as opposed to taking the time to develop intelligent, thought-provoking television.

So please, I beg you--particularly those of you with Nielsen boxes—to knock it the fuck off. You’re not only hurting yourselves, but you’re making me hate America a little bit. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Will

THE AWE-INSPIRING BEAUTY OF MICHAEL CHABON, HOPEFULLY TYPO-FREE

Later, after the world had been torn in half, and the Amazing Cavalieri and his blue tuxedo were to be found only in the gilt-edged pages of deluxe photo albums on the coffee tables of the Upper West Side, Joe would sometimes find himself thinking about the pale-blue envelope from Prague. He would try to imagine its contents, wondering what news or sentiments or instructions it might have contained. It was at these times that he began to understand, after all those years of study and performance, of feats and wonders and surprises, the nature of magic. The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.
-The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay


“I doubt very much,” the old man said, “if we shall ever learn what significance, if any, those numbers may hold.”

It was not, heaven knew, a familiar or comfortable admission for the old man to make. The application of creative intelligence to a problem, the finding of a solution at once dogged, elegant, and wild, this had always seemed to him to be the essential business of human beings—the discovery of sense and causality amid the false leads, the noise, the trackless brambles of life. And yet he had always been haunted—had he not?—by the knowledge that there were men, lunatic cryptographers, mad detectives, who squandered their brilliance and sanity decoding and interpreting the messages in cloud formations, in the letters of the Bible recombined, in the spots on butterflies’ wings. One might, perhaps, conclude from the existence of such men that meaning dwelled solely in the mind of the analyst. That it was the insoluble problems—the false leads and the cold cases—that reflected the true nature of things. That all the apparent significance and pattern had no more intrinsic sense than the chatter of an African gray parrot. One might so conclude; really, he thought, one might.
-The Final Solution


I say that Albert Vetch was the first real writer I knew not because he was, for a while, able to sell his work to magazines, but because he was the first one to have the midnight disease; to have the rocking chair and the faithful bottle of bourbon and the staring eye, lucid with insomnia even in the daytime. In any case he was, now that I consider it, the first writer of any sort to cross my path, real or otherwise, in a life that has on the whole been a little too crowded with representatives of that sour and squirrelly race. He set a kind of example that, as a writer, I’ve been living up to ever since. I only hope that I haven’t invented him.
-Wonder Boys

More to come tomorrow...

"It rained all morning, and then it cleared up in the afternoon. And that's it. I almost remembered something else, but it's gone."

I don't think my brain works anymore, assuming that it ever really worked to begin with. I distinctly remember thinking about things and holding opinions on various matters, and even when all else failed I could talk endlessly about popular culture. But now, I've got nothing. I reach back and I try to find things to blog about, and I come up empty, time and time again.

To be fair, I guess the tank isn't entirely empty; I've still got a couple things. I wonder how virtually every episode of Gilmore Girls has a "special appearance" by Edward Herrmann when there's really nothing "special" about it. He's a regular cast member for God's sake. Who are they trying to fool?

I also like to imagine that Hayden Panettiere was invincible in Bring It On: All or Nothing, and that the climactic scene involved her falling off the top of the pyramid, healing herself, and then finishing the routine with a flourish. And while we're on that topic, how come every single character on Heroes has to say "Save the cheerleader, save the world" no less than half a dozen times? It was, at one point, a great line. Now it's essentially used as a segue between topics.

And am I the only one who can't watch House without imagining the astronomical hospital bills that these patients must have?

Other than that though, I've got nothing. Three months, and that's it. I think I'm broken.

Maybe I'll do better in the next three months.

Janice, I apologize to you if I don't seem real eager to jump into a forced awkward intimate situation that people like to call dating. I don't like the feeling. You're sitting there, you're wondering do I have food on my face, am I eating, am I talking too much, are they talking enough, am I interested I'm not really interested, should I play like I'm interested but I'm not that interested but I think she might be interested but do I want to be interested but now she's not interested? So all of the sudden I'm getting, I'm starting to get interested--And when am I supposed to kiss her? Do I have to wait for the door cause then it's awkward, it's like well goodnight. Do you do like that ass-out hug? Where you like, you hug each other like this and your ass sticks out cause you're trying not to get too close or do you just go right in and kiss them on the lips or don't kiss them at all? It's very difficult trying to read the situation. And all the while you're just really wondering are we gonna get hopped up enough to make some bad decisions? Perhaps play a little game called "just the tip." Just for a second, just to see how it feels. Or, ouch, ouch you're on my hair.


JUST A COUPLE OF KIDS WHO LIKE TO FUCK TRYING TO MAKE IT HONEST, I GET THAT...

My cousin got an engagement ring for Christmas. The two of us have never been all that close, either because we're nothing alike or because she lives in another state, but whatever the reason I can't for the life of me recall a single conversation we've ever had that lasted longer than two minutes. Regardless, she lives in a small town where, within a year of graduating high school, most girls get married and knocked up--ideally in that order--so I'm actually surprised she lasted this long. She's about the year older than me, so lord knows she's of appropriate age to get married, but what bothers me about the whole thing is that she's only been with the guy for about three months.

Now, I'm not too big on rules. This might seem strange given my raging hard-on for consistency, but my desire for regularity is trumped by my love of freedom. There are only a small handful of rules that I live by; none of them are all that life changing or difficult. For example, I believe in never using one word when I could use ten, and I always, always make it to the movie theater before the trailers start. And when I heard about my cousin's impromptu engagement, I added one more to the list.

When I heard about it, my first thought was that I've got stuff in my refrigerator that's been there for longer than three months, and I don't think you should marry someone when you have a longer relationship with a carton of eggs. I started thinking about it and even though this pseudo-rule is, at best, moderately funny, there are a couple of problems with it. First of all, I'm pretty sure I stole it from somewhere--I want to say something akin to it was mentioned in an episode of Sex and the City, but I'm not entirely sure. Secondly, it's almost too arbitrary to be considered a rule. The more tidy among you might clear out the fridge every two weeks, leaving you free to marry someone after fifteen days and that's just a terrible fucking idea.

So I gave it a good, long think and came up with a new rule: that you shouldn't be allowed to marry someone until you've been together for at least a year.

Granted, a year doesn't sound like that long either, and I can't envision a situation where I personally would propose to someone after such a short duration, but there is a logical reason behind that time frame. The way I see it, if you've been with someone for a full year, then you've seen all there is to see. Not that it necessarily takes that long to get to know someone. You can probably get to know someone well enough after only six months or so, but there still might be some mysteries.

For example, maybe every year on the anniversary of their cat's death they lie around all day, sobbing incoherently and pounding down tub after tub of Cherry Garcia. Or maybe, come February, their blind racism is revealed as, for 28 straight days, they make continual references to "the good ole days when those fuckers weren't allowed to vote or read." Or maybe they celebrate Labor Day by shitting themselves and then they just sit in it while watching Titanic on a continuous loop.

You might think all that sounds crazy, but none of those are, like, outside the realm of possibility. And if you married someone at the six month mark, you'd be entirely unprepared.

So as of right now, "the year rule" as I'm calling it is in full effect.

Looks like the absolute earliest I'm getting married is February of 08.


I WANT TO PISS ON YOU

Now that I live in L.A. I see homeless people every day. Believe it or not, you become desensitized to it after a while and honestly, I don't really notice them all that much anymore, which may or may not say something negative about me. Anyway, I've seen guys rooting through garbage, guys talking to themselves, and even guys beating themselves in the chest. And usually you can rationalize it. He's going through the garbage because he's hungry, he's talking to himself because he just needs someone to talk to, or he's hitting himself in the chest because he's just straight crazy.

But the other day, I saw something crazier than all of these things put together, and I'm yet to come up with any sort of explanation for it.

I was driving home from work at about 8:30 in the morning, and I saw a guy walking along La Brea Boulevard with a quilt slung over his shoulder. For a second I figured he was homeless, but then I realized he was dressed nicer than me, which isn't saying all that much, but he had a swagger totally uncharacteristic of folks who are without homes.

So I watched him for a second, and damned if he didn't throw that quilt down on the sidewalk and commence to pissing all over it. He gave himself a quick shake, picked the quilt back up, and then walked back down the street like he'd just come to the corner to pick up a newspaper.

As I just said, I have no explanation at all for this. The best I can come up with is that the quilt belonged to his girlfriend who had recently cheated on him and he was exacting some revenge before the breakup. But beyond that, I've got nothing.

I guess, my point is, you kind of expect homeless people to do some crazy shit. They live hard lives and, in a way, they've earned the right to act a little schizo. But when a regular Joe goes onesy on a quilt on the side of a major street, well, it sort of catches you off guard.


DAD, HE'S FUCKING FAMOUS

Being in L.A. I feel it is my duty to pass on little bits of information I hear about celebrities. Now, I'm not talking about the recent Cameron Diaz-Justin Timberlake split and, honest to God, I'd be hard pressed to come up with three things I care about less than the recent Donald-Rosie spat.

No, really all I care about is what celebrities are like in real life. So, here's what I hear from trustworthy sources:

Apparently, Edward Norton is a huge, arrogant fucking prick. Conversely, Steve Carrell is incredibly humble and nice. As is Will Smith.

Yeah, that's all I got for now. Sorry...in my mind it sounded grander, but oh well.

That's usually how things go.

Two mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse, wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out. Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse.

JIMMY'S TOY BOX

For the last few weeks I've been working at Citibank processing checks, and as dull as that sounds I guarantee you that, in practice, it is infinitely more boring. So boring, in fact, that I'm not even going to attempt to describe the process. Not only would this inevitably bore you to tears, which there wouldn't be much point in doing, but it would also force me to think about the horrors of work while I'm sitting comfortably in my apartment.

And I'm not too keen on doing that, as one of the few benefits of this job is that I don't have to take it home with me.

Once one gets used to the mechanics of processing checks, one's mind tends to wander. As some of you may have guessed, movie quotes tend to just randomly pop into my head and given the nature of what I do at work, these quotes tend to be from Big and Catch Me If You Can. For a while the other day, I kept replaying the "two mice feel in a bucket of cream" story. Thus, I was sitting there grinning like an idiot, and I'm sure to any onlooker it must have appeared as though I really enjoy processing checks.

One of the vaguely cool things is that, over the past few weeks, I've developed a Frank Abagnale-like knowledge of checks. For instance, I can tell you what all those little numbers at the bottom of checks mean. And...okay that's really about it, but if this were the 60s and I was good looking and ballsy, I could steal millions of dollars writing fraudulent checks.

But it's not and I can't and I don't think I've ever hated anything more than this job...

So thank God that I got a new one. As soon as the powers that be free me from Citibank, I'll start work as a caption editor at Captionmax. No doubt you've never heard of them, but, apart from other things, they do the captions for NBC primetime. Which in and of itself would make the job incredibly interesting, but from what I understand, one of those "other things" that they do is captions for soft core porn.

My immediate reaction to this news was, "Who would watch porn with the captions on?" It seems counterproductive. The very next thought I had, however, was that, semantics aside, in the near future there's a strong possibility that I'll be getting paid to watch porn. Not that I'm a porn hound or anything, but I've been paid to do much shittier work.

Like processing checks...


SAVE THE CHEERLEADER, SAVE THE WORLD

Like most people, I've developed a certain fondness for the show Heroes. For those of you who haven't seen it, first of all...what's wrong with you? And secondly, all you need to know, at least as it relates to what I'm about to talk about, is that it's essentially X-Men the tv show...certain people have evolved to the point where they now have super powers. It's worth noting, however, that the show is so good that I'm yet to hear one person complain that it is a rip-off of the X-men.

What suddenly struck me today, as I was sitting there processing checks, is that, as far I know, nobody from the Christian right has spoken out against Heroes for promoting the theory of evolution. Maybe I'm over-thinking things a bit, and God knows it wouldn't be the first time, but it seems to me that those crazy Christians typically argue against anything in television and movies that disagrees with their point of view. Just a couple of examples include Dogma and The Book of Daniel, and the more popular the program, the worse the attacks seem to get.

So why, when one of television's top shows is essentially arguing week after week that there is no God, do they just let it go? There probably is no answer and, truth be told, I don't really want an answer. I'm not legitimately curious...

It was just a funny thought that I had.

And now I feel as though I've wasted your time. Sorry.

I called a temp agency once and they were like "Well, do you have any phone skills?" I was like "um...I called you didn't I?"

-Zach Galifianakis

LOST ANGELES

For sometime I'd been planning on writing something about how crazy life in Los Angeles is compared to life in the Midwest. And while it certainly is, I don't think that news is going to come as a galloping shock to anyone. Yeah, there's a metric-shit ton of people here, and yes many of them speak a language that, I swear to God, sounds identical to gibberish. And sure, the traffic is atrocious, but unless you've seen it with your own eyes there's really no way to describe the feeling you get whenever the car in front of you pulls a u-turn in the middle of a busy street.

The one quasi-fun fact I have about driving in LA is that motorcycles, for whatever reason, are permitted to drive in between traffic. So, whenever you're stopped at a red light, a couple of motorcycles will usually come speeding down the center line and push their way to the front of the pack. I can't even begin to tell you how strong the urge is to simply open your door whenever you see them coming.

But for the most part there's nothing overwhelmingly interesting about living in a big city, at least nothing that people wouldn't naturally expect. And while I will say that in my short time here I've seen a few things that I'd never seen before, I think it's best to keep those things to myself. Because let's face it, something is lost in the translation. Nothing is ever quite as strange or disgusting or befuddling secondhand. It's just not. So I'm not even going to try to relay to you any crazy LA stories. Sure, if I happen upon a particularly juicy one, I'll give it a shot. But there's no substitute for seeing this place first hand.

Trust me...

I DON'T WANT TO SELL ANYTHING, BUY ANYTHING, OR PROCESS ANYTHING AS A CAREER

If you haven't been to a temp agency I highly recommend you go. Even if you have a job, take a day off from that job and make a trip on down to the nearest temp agency. I've been to two now and believe me, you won't regret it.

Whether you'll openly admit it or not, I think we can all agree that there is something rewarding about seeing people who are worse off then we are. And I'm talking about a little worse off than us. Nobody sees a homeless person and feels good about themselves, because that's just sick.

And if you think I'm wrong about this, imagine for a second that you're playing baseball. You're up at the plate, and you strike out. The next guy up hits a homerun and now you feel kind of shitty because he's much better than you. But the guy after him strikes out, and not only does he strike out, but it's bad. I mean, he's swinging at pitches after they've already hit the catcher's mitt. Now you feel pretty good, cause compared to this guy you don't suck quite as much. But then the guy after him comes up and this guy has Down Syndrome and he's trying to eat the bat. Seeing this doesn't make you feel good. Even though you're clearly a better player than him, it's just too fucking sad.

It's the same thing with temp agencies and jobs and homeless people. I'll leave you to connect the dots.

And if a refreshed sense pride isn't reason enough to pay a visit to the local temp agency, then how about priceless entertainment? Sure you have to take boring typing tests and talk to someone who, despite what their job description says, really couldn't care less about whether or not you find a job, but in the end it's all worth it...because you get to watch The Safety Video.

Admittedly, the safety video at the first temp agency wasn't anything to write home about. It just showed the right way and the wrong way to go about doing various duties around the office. For example, a guy would come on and say "Do not open more than one drawer of the file cabinet at a time. If you do, it might fall over." And then some hapless employee would do the wrong thing and the damn cabinet would fall over. Yawn.

But the video at the second temp agency was priceless. It had all the same safety tips, but they were laid out for you in the guise of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. I forget the title of the actual movie, but it was something along the lines of "Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Perilous Office." In this one, a man dressed impeccably like Sherlock Holmes, complete with pipe, would wander around an office, stumble upon some kind of accident, and try to deduce how the accident occurred. After putting the clues together, he'd tell Watson what should be done to avoid such an accident in the future.

For example, in the first video they simply said "Do not attempt to repair office equipment yourself. Call someone from maintenance to do it for you." But in the Holmes video, the clever detective came upon a woman who had been electrocuted and was passed out on the floor. After finding a pair of scissors inside a nearby copy machine, he deduced that she had tried to repair the broken machine herself and gotten electrocuted.

Which video would you rather watch?

And just in case you're wondering why I went to two temp agencies...shouldn't one have been enough? Believe me when I say that that part of the story is much less interesting.

ISN'T EVERYTHING WE DO IN LIFE A WAY TO BE LOVED A LITTLE MORE?

For the first time in roughly ten years I'm not thinking about the opposite sex. I'm not really sure when it happened, but I know that I used to think about women quite a bit and now I don't. And no, my thoughts of women haven't been replaced with thoughts of men. I'm just not concerned with relationships right now.

I'm applying to jobs, taking a class, writing two screenplays, trying to get used to a new city, and I guess in the middle of all of this my head just pushed out the ladies. As if somehow my brain intuitively knows that even if I did find a girl I wouldn't have any time to spend with her. Now, I've heard about this happening to other people and I always dismissed it as an excuse made by those who didn't get whomever they were after. But I have to say that it does actually happen.

But even though I have no desire to pursue any kind of relationship right now, either serious or casual, I am still hopelessly in love with Julie Delpy.

I'm sure most of you have no idea who Julie Delpy is and that's perfectly fine. She's the French girl in An American Werewolf in Paris. But for our purposes here you only need to know that she's the woman in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. And before we go any further I should tell you that, even though I am completely in love with her, I'm not at all attracted to her.

First of all, she doesn't really do it for me physically. Sure, she's kind of cute in a mousy sort of way, and even though I have no problem with mousy, there's just something about her appearance that rubs me the wrong way. Secondly, I can't stand French accents. I know a lot of guys go crazy over them, but for me they rank somewhere between German accents and Brooklyn accents. Third, she's an actress, and even though I have nothing against thespians in general they do have a tendency to be overwhelming. And all of this is to say nothing of the fact that she's fifteen years older than me.

So how can I be in love with her? The answer is surprisingly simple.

A couple of months ago I was watching Before Sunrise, and it just hit me...I love this woman. Not so much Julie Delpy (for all of the aforementioned reasons), but I love her character, which in a roundabout way means that I'm in love with Richard Linklater, but we'll ignore that. I was listening to her have these endless discussions with Ethan Hawke about all manner subjects, and it occured to me that that's what I want...someone who I can talk to about how everyone's parents set them up for disappointment and how people nowadays are so scattered because they only have a fraction of a soul and how the politics involved in breaking up with someone are strangely complicated. I'm not saying that I would want to do all that in Paris over the course of one night. But yeah, that's what I want.

Or at least it's what I would want if I had time to want anything.

How do these things get so complicated?

Thanks for coming. My name's Harry Lockhart, I'll be your narrator. Welcome to L.A. Welcome to the party. Now that I'm in L.A. I go to parties--the kind where if a girl is named Jill she spells it J-Y-L-L-E, that bullshit. By now you may wonder how I wound up here...or maybe not, maybe you wonder how Silly Putty picks shit up from comic books. Point is, I don't see another Goddamn narrator, so pipe down. How'd I get here? See for yourself.

-Shane Black


WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS

In two days I'm moving to L.A. Despite what you may expect, I'm not scared. I'm also not worried or anxious. But I'm not really excited either. In truth I'm not really feeling anything, which I think is strange. I should be feeling something. After all, I'm moving halfway across the country, to a place where I know next to nobody and have no job. To say nothing of the fact that if I say "I want to be a screenwriter" in Missouri the typical response contains at least some amount of awe. This will never happen in L.A. In fact, a majority of people would probably be more surprised if I said I didn't want to be a screenwriter. This is a somewhat disconcerting thought.

And while, as of this moment, I have little to no emotional response whenever I think about the upcoming trip, I can tell you that I'm not at all looking forward to the various things that I'm going to have to do over the next few days. I'm referring here to the driving and the moving all of my earthly possessions and the setting up of the cable and the electricity and the obtaining of insurance and all of that other bullshit that comes with relocating. I know all of this is small and none of it is in any way difficult but it all still has to get done, real life's equivalent of all that busy work you have to do in school.

I'd prefer to just go to sleep and wake up in a few weeks when it's all done, when I'm settled and there's nothing to do but go to work, go to school, and write. I don't think that's gonna happen though. I can sleep with the best of them, but that's a little unreasonable.

Anyway, I'm moving to Los Angeles. And you're all invited.

Seriously, whoever reads this is totally invited. Open invitation. I don't care who you are.

Which could get interesting.

WILD AND CRAZY KIDS

Despite living in Los Angeles for three months last summer I never really ran into any celebrities. The one almost exception being that one day, as I was walking through the lobby at Lionsgate, I saw Griffin Dunne. Now, I'm sure almost none of you know who this is off the top of your head and rightfully so...he's not that big of a celebrity (so much so that the word celebrity might be a stretch and, in fact, he's so insignificant that I'm not even going to bother checking to see if I spelled his name right). You probably know him best as Veda's vaguely attractive teacher in My Girl or one of the many befuddled adults in Big Girls Don't Cry, They Get Even. Or, for those of you who watch Alias, he's the Russian guy who worked for the Covenant and then defected to work for the CIA in a couple of episodes of season 3.

Anyway, seeing him didn't exactly blow my skirt up. Unlike my second celebrity sighting...

This weekend I was in Vegas and I found this table poker game that was pretty easy to win money on. (It was texas hold 'em and the only person you had to beat was the dealer). Anyway, I came down to my table on Friday night and there were a number of African American gentlemen there, one of whom kept spilling his beer all over the table. After a few minutes the table clears and its just me, the beer spilling guy, and this couple in there thirties.

We're playing this game and everything's going grand and then I happen to look over at the guy who keeps spilling his beer everywhere and he looks vaguely familiar. And then I think I know who it is, but I was like "no," that can't be it.

And, for the record, you can't just ask someone if they're a celebrity. One of the perks of being a celebrity is that people automatically recognize you; If I asked and was wrong I didn't want to sound weird and if I was right I didn't want to be insulting. So I just sat there, perfectly content not to think about it.

Until the woman sitting next to me pulled out her checkbook, handed it to the beer spilling guy and said "could I have your autograph...just sign the back of my checkbook there." And the guy did. And a few seconds later he got up and moved to another table.

So I'm sitting there thinking, okay, that was him. Wow. How fucking sweet was that. I played poker with a genuine celebrity...almost.

And who was the guy you ask...

None other than Omar Gooding. That's right ladies and gentlemen, Cuba Gooding Jr's younger brother and the former co-host of Wild and Crazy Kids.

And sitting with him for a few minutes would have been good enough for me, but he came back an hour later and it was just the two of us for almost half an hour. Do you have any idea how much self restraint to took to keep myself from asking if he'd seen Donnie Jeffcoat lately or to not hum the Wild and Crazy Kids theme song? I thought I was going to pop.

But me and Omar had some good times. We lost some money. We chatted about how mean the dealers were for taking said money. We quoted Rounders and we even did a duet of the "She's Your Queen to Be" song from Coming to America. Of course, neither of us knew any of the words after the opening five, which cut the duet a little short, but it was still fun none the less.

Anyway, I'm not one for telling hero stories. And I'm not bragging or anything.

It was just kind of a surreal experience.

After all, I was a wild and crazy kid.

God I loved that show.

“Water’s wet. The sky’s blue. Women have secrets. Who gives a fuck?”
-Shane Black

Whenever I write I like to have something on in the background. Movie. Music. Whatever. I don’t know why. Some people might find it distracting. Personally, I like to think that it helps me concentrate. In reality, I could probably get a lot more done if I didn’t have to look up every few seconds to see which part of the movie I was at or take a pause to sing along with whatever song was playing. But I don’t usually concern myself with reality.

Anyway, today I decided to watch The Last Boy Scout. So I put it into my computer and I’m waiting for it to load when I decide to take a gander at the back of the dvd case. At first I didn’t notice anything atypical about it. There’s a couple of screen shots and a blurb from a positive review. But then I made the mistake of reading the little mini-synopsis (or what have you). I don’t know what I was hoping to find, but here’s what it says:

Written by Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) and directed by Tony Scott (Top Gun), The Last Boy Scout is the Super Bowl of action movies, a flat-out blitz of excitement, blow-you-away special effects and hilarious gimme-five humor set against the world of pro football.

Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans star as a seedy detective and a disgraced quarterback, teaming to dodge ambushes, fire off one-lines and bust chops. When the going gets tough, they get tougher. And funnier. They came to play. And to settle a score in this raging fireball where bigger is better, hits are harder and bad guys end up deader.

Okay...so where should I begin? First of all, the entire first section is one sentence and I’m not entirely sure its grammatically correct. (Not that everything I write is grammatically correct. In fact I’m terrible with grammar. But the things I write aren’t read by more than half a dozen people...if that.) I’m almost positive you need another verb in that sentence somewhere, right? To say nothing of getting bogged down in the laundry list of descriptions in the latter half of the sentence. It’s like you get to the end and you have to go back to the beginning in order to make it coherent.

And don’t even get me started on the second paragraph. I’m actually almost okay with that first sentence there, although I have to admit that I’ve seen the movie no less than a dozen times and there’s nary an ambush to be found. I’m even okay with the “going gets tough” thing. Sure it’s a cliché, but originality is the least of our concerns here. My problem begins with the sentence “And funnier.” Does this have to be its own sentence? And could we not begin two out of three sentences with the word “and.” Just a thought. Plus, who in the history of cinema has ever described a movie as a “raging fireball?” It’s a movie for Christ’s sake.

Then, finally we come to my favorite part, wherein whoever wrote this claims that the bad guys in this film end up “deader.” Deader than what, I can’t say. Deader than bad guys in other movies? Deader than if people other than our heroes had killed them? Now I know what you’re thinking, and yes, “deader” is actually a word. I checked. But I don’t really see what use we have for it. Death, as I understand it, is a binary state. You’re either dead or your alive. It’s impossible to be more dead than something else that’s also dead.

So...why did I bring this up? I don’t know. I’m just amazed that not only did somebody write this (and undoubtedly get paid for it) but someone else thought that it would be a good idea to stick it on the back of a dvd case for the whole world to see. I’m not saying that I was expecting Shakespeare when I flipped the dvd case over. I didn’t even really have any expectations. I just can’t believe that someone got paid for writing that. In my humble opinion they shouldn’t be allowed to use writing utensils anymore.


LORD OF THE RINGS LUCAS STYLE

It recently occurred to me that Willow is nothing more than a mediocre reworking of Lord of the Rings. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this, and I’m sure that Rings fans have been incensed by this for nearly twenty years, but it usually takes me longer to catch onto things than it does most people. Personally, I’m not upset that Ron Howard and George Lucas bastardized The Lord of the Rings. I haven’t read the books and I only genuinely liked one of the movies, so I’m not upset that the integrity of some supposed literary classic was compromised. I’m just disturbed, and mildly at that, at their lack of originality.

For those of you who need convincing...here are just a few parallels between the two stories (and no, I‘m not going to make any effort to spell any of these made up words properly). Most noticeably we have a race of little people (Dikinis/Hobbits) who suddenly find themselves responsible for the safety of the world as they know it. Willow is clearly Frodo and if you say the names aloud you’ll notice that they rhyme…for the most part. In Rings, the little people get...well...a ring, while in Willow the ring is a baby girl. Aragorn becomes Madmartigan. Gandalf becomes Fin Raziel. Merry and Pippin essentially become the brownies. Sam is Meegosh. Sauron is Bavmorda. And so on and so forth...

I don’t know how I never heard about this before. It’s so obvious. Painfully, painfully obvious. How did they get away with this? It’s not like its an homage or anything. We’re not talking Casablanca/Out Cold here...actually nobody ever talks about Out Cold, in fact I think most people like to think that it never happened.

But I should try this. I should find some classic and just take out all the parts I like, change the names around, turn an inanimate object into a baby girl and I’d be good to go.

This is better than that time I wanted to change my name to “Steven King.”


I THOUGHT I KNEW, BUT I IN FACT HAD NO IDEA

If you believe Bill and Ted, which I personally do, then Socrates said that “True wisdom consists of knowing that you know nothing.” In truth he probably said something much more elaborate, but this version will do for our purposes.

I’ve always thought that this was kind of a cool idea. Knowing that you, in fact, know nothing makes you wise. It’s an interesting notion. And ever since I heard it, I’ve had a pretty good idea what it means. Admittedly I don’t know that much, so imagining that I know nothing isn’t too much of a stretch.

Anyway, long story short, I realized tonight that it’s not that I don’t know all that much. I actually know nothing. I thought I knew some stuff, I really did. But as it turns out I was wrong.

I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about, and that’s fine. So, suffice it to say that something happened and I’m not entirely sure what it was or how it happened and I guess it goes without saying that I don’t know why. So I’m in this head space right now where I’m going to assume that everything I know is wrong. Therefore, I know nothing and, according to Socrates (who’s a pretty smart guy from what I understand) this makes me wise.

So now, armed with the knowledge that I am wise, I'm making a command decision...

...I just don't know what it is yet.