How I Get My Ideas
Something tells me that there’s a stage play in here somewhere: The King of Cars
She’s cute but she’s a plagiarist, and for that she should be beaten with a bag of oranges. Plagiarists are worse lower on the chain of fecality than people who steal babies’ diapers for crack money, because doing that actually takes effort and planning.
My Children Will Be My Slaves
I have decided that when I reproduce (perhaps through binary fission) I will have exactly six children. I have already determined their future occupations:
- One will be a lawyer in order to provide free legal advice to me at all times.
- One will be a doctor in order to provide free health care. The only time I will see another doctor is for prostate exams because otherwise that would be way too weird.
- One will be an accountant so that I can just throw a snowstorm of receipts at him or her in April and then go watch Matlock.
- One will be an auto mechanic and engineer, responsible for repairing and maintaining all the mechanical devices I own.
- Since I started watching Top Chef, I have decided that one will be a chef. He or she will be responsible for preparing wild bacchanalian feasts every day of the week.
- The last child will be a total layabout slacker that does nothing else except smoke weed and sponge off of me and his other five siblings. Every family has to have one, so we might as well designate his role at birth.
We don’t need someone to fix computers because I can already do that. The day I can’t fix a computer will be the day that satan’s pointy goatee freezes solid.
My children will be like a superhero team. As a family, we will save hundreds of thousands of dollars in professional fees.
I am a genius.
My film viewing schedule for next week, if anyone’s interested in catching a movie with me:
- Shoot the Messenger, Apr 30 9:30pm (AMC/Loews Lincoln Square 1)
- Colour Me Kubrick, May 01 6:00pm (Tribeca Performing Arts 1)
- Love for Share, May 03 7:30pm (AMC/Loews Lincoln Square 6)
- Just Like the Son, May 04 5:15pm (AMC/Loews 34th Street 13)
- Just So You Know, May 05 4:00pm (AMC/Loews Village VII 1)
I might have to miss “Just So You Know” because I have a reception at 6pm and I might have to be there early. But I really want to see that since it’s the short film series about “coming of age”. And my voice just started changing, so I want to see what’s in store for my pubic region.
Grab your friends and meet me at the movies! I may even have some spare vouchers!
Says here that the new Nintendo console will be called the “Wii”, pronounced “wee”.
I’m not sure this is such a good idea.
When the Student is Ready, the Master Will Appear
Frank Gehry is being tapped to revitalize downtown L.A.; I like his crazy metal-skinned architecture that fries sidewalks and looks all wafty and cool. I wonder if the new Guggenheim will ever become a reality.
For a long time I thought that if L.A. was granted a wide-ranging, high-speed subway it would become the greatest city in the world. Imagine taking the subway to the beach or to work. You could live anywhere and work anywhere.
But recently I remembered that in an earthquake, the subway would pretty much be the worst place to be. True, San Francisco has BART, but the vast majority of BART exists above ground.
Have you ever read Flatland, the classic 19th century novella about geometry?
In it (if I remember correctly) a sentient square exists in a two-dimensional world and is visited by a sphere from the third dimension. The visit is surprising and magical, like the appearance of a wizard. The square is astounded by the sphere’s ability to move in and out of his two dimensional plane, becoming a smaller then larger circle (by moving up and down in the z-axis, which the square can’t quite comprehend), and sometimes disappearing.
If I recall properly, by the end of the encounter with the sphere, the square “gets it” and understands the existence of a third dimension. Until this encounter, the square was happy to go on with his regular life, not at all aware that other dimensions even existed.
I think that along the long path of my development, I was never even aware of each new level until I grew enough to make sense of it. When I was, the next level automatically presented itself. Some person or some event appeared, seemingly in just the nick of time, to induct me into it. All I ever had to do was get better at what I do.
What Chaps My Hide
…Is buying the wrong type of cartridge for my razor. That really sucks. I use a Mach 3 and I bought the wrong cartridges for it. Now I have to use my old Sensor razor.
The package branding of both cartridges looks fairly similar — they don’t make a huge effort to differentiate them. This makes me think that it’s all part of an evil scheme to trick the consumer into accidentally buying the wrong cartridge. Because you never know the cartridge won’t fit until you tear open the package. And that’s when you scream.
I think I’m going to go back to scraping my face with a saw blade.
Folks At Home) on it.
My new business cards are arriving on Wednesday, which means that I gotta scramble to find myself a new Business Card Holder — one of those little cases to carry your own cards in.
I’m hoping to find a plastic one because a metal one would scratch up all the other stuff in my bag. CB2 carries a perfect one but my teleportation device is broken so I can’t make it to Chicago in the next four days.
Actually, in general I’ve been consuming a lot lately. I bought a bunch of new shirts this weekend in an effort to look more like Hieu. People keep throwing bricks at my head so apparently I’m succeeding.
I also went to the Clinique counter for the first time in my life. I’m upscaling this mother!!
Also Hieu asked me to spread the word about this Project By Project / Asian Cinevision event tonight in New York City:
Where Dragon of Love (see top right) will be playing. It’s tonight at 6:30 – 9:30 EST, click here for more information.
Unphotogenic, Inappropriateness and Other Words That May Not Exist
I read Portal of Evil News sporadically during the day. But on Saturday every time I clicked on it, I was greeted with this:
The snarling visage of Condoleezza Rice.
Now, I applaud Condi and how far she has come on her own merits, but why is she so damn unphotogenic? She’s not a bad looking person when she’s in motion. But whenever I see a picture of her she always looks angry and dessicated.
I just don’t get it.
From Christ Centered Video Game Reviews, an Appropriateness Review of my current favorite videogame Elder Scrolls: Oblivion:
(Each negative number is a point deduction from the Appropriateness score –Ed.)
“This game is rated Teen and I don’t know why it was not awarded a Mature rating.
There’s violence (-4), and blood (but it can be disabled +1) when you’re slashing things with a weapon. There’s swearing (-5) and blaspheming (-5) too.
There are nine gods in this world so I’m not sure if they’re blaspheming their gods or our God.
There are sexual references as in live in couples (-3) and there’s an NPC who asks you about a fine for necrophilia.
Magic is used heavily (-5), it’s optional to use it but it will be used on you regardless. On a positive note the Mages guild (for the most part) is against necromancy.
With the different races there is prejudice in this game and many of the races hate each other (-1.5).
Some characters tend to sleep in their underwear, I have noticed this with female characters. (-3.5)
Finally, I was happy to see no occult symbols in this game but there is an occult type religion/worship.”
I think if this person reviewed the real world, he or she would give it a score of negative nine billion. At least you can disable the blood in Oblivion.
Trailer
By the way, the Achievers trailer is now online if you want to be an early birdie and check it out.
We haven’t tested the site on PCs yet so it may be erratic. Just a fore-warning!
This is a Dramatization
From The Great Quake, a National Geographic documentary on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake:
Narrator: “Mayor Schmitz’s corrupt past, his lack of investment in the city, and his rejection of prudent advice are catching up with him. Now, with no plan to fight the fire and no water, San Francisco is paying the price.”
Meanwhile, we see an actor portraying the historical mayor cowering in his makeshift underground command center, realizing that the narrator’s words ring true. He fucked up bigtime.
Army Colonel Morris.
I like these dramatic re-creations that are becoming more and more commonplace in History Channel and National Geographic Channel documentaries. Just this past week I’ve seen dramatic recreations of the Scopes trial and the McKinley assassination.
I wonder if, a hundred years from now, documentaries will still carry out these dramatic recreations.
Will there be a documentary about Hurricane Katrina with a doughy actor portraying former FEMA director Michael Brown? Will a narrator soberly chastise him for his lack of experience and his inaction, then call attention to the fact that an ill-informed President inappropriately referred to him by the pet name “Brownie” as bodies floated past street corners?
I can just see the scene now: An actor portraying the President and another portraying Michael Brown; the President clapping him on the back as the camera closes in on Brown’s false attempt at a smug smile… And then the shot fades to black… And then fades in on real footage of the people of Louisiana clamoring for help of any kind.
If I were Michael Brown I’d be doing my best to become a champion hot dog eater or a full-time builder for Habitat for Humanity or something, anything that could give my historical legacy an uptick at the end.
I’d be looking for some kind of historical redemption so that the very last dramatically recreated scene of my past would be something wonderful and noble.
Narrator: “Despite all his failings as the head of FEMA, Michael Brown went on to surprise everyone by becoming a world champion ping pong player.”
Then you see the actor portraying Brown playing ping pong. That would be awesome.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
