“Yo mama’s so skanky, she’s the mayor of the STD clinic on FourSquare!”
Yes, this was tweeted by a white guy. How do I know? Well, for starters, it’s not even remotely funny.
Let’s see… “The STD Clinic.” Yeah, they have a clinic just for that. They provide no other services. It’s a franchise, actually. They now have them in Alabama, Alaska and North Carolina. I was thinking of buying into one, because I guess it’s a steady business even in this down economy. And they tier their services – people with money get the modern drugs, people with little money get the old-timey treatments.
For example, low-income syphilis patients are placed in a box, head sticking out, and then nurses start some mercury on fire under the box so that it vaporizes.
I’m sure while these patients are lying there, they like to take out their smart phones and let everyone know, “I’m at The STD Clinic on 321 Northland Avenue!”
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because I do nothing. There is little prep work or anxiety beyond going to the grocery store and buying a bunch of food with which to construct a feast. I don’t have to worry about seeing old friends, relatives I don’t enjoy, etc. I take a complete misanthrope’s approach to the entire thing – I want to watch movies, read books, eat good food and, essentially, hide in my house. This plan of inaction continues into Black Friday, when I watch the action from afar.
This morning, approximately seven hours after the shopping frenzy began, I was sitting on my couch in my pajamas, drinking tea and watching The View. It seemed like an odd luxury to sit there on a weekday and watch TV, or so I thought. I saw Whoopi come out in her usual “leggings-and -oversized shirt” uniform and I thought, “I’m going to sit here and see what they have to offer up.”
“Mark Wahlberg admits The Happening Was a Bad Movie.’”
Screw you, Mark Wahlberg. The Happening is a great movie. I’ve not laughed that hard at the theater in a long time. I found the idea of killer wind to be inspiring. I greatly enjoyed the acting, as well, and the fact that Zoe Deschanel blinked exactly once in the entire movie.
I was hoping for a sequel. It would have been called It’s Happening Again. Or maybe, Is It Happening Again?
Here is a clip from the movie given the special Rifftrax treatment:
Saturday night was the second night of a two-night gig for Tommy Wiseau (and faithful sidekick Greg Sestero, who plays Mark in the film), writer, producer, director and star of The Room, at the midnight screening of the film at the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis. I bought my tix for Saturday in advance, not knowing that Horrendous Ice Storm was bearing down on the city. How do you like that drama?
Yes, so, Horrendous Ice Storm hits city at about 10 p.m or so. Every surface coated with ice, the likes of which I haven’t seen since my adolescence in Wisconsin, when we really knew what it was like to battle black ice. Not like this trifling weather we have today. No, sirree!
But Keith convinced me that we still needed to go because if you are superfan of The Room and you don’t go see Tommy Wiseau when he’s in town then… well… you’re lame. However, I was soon to discover that I am by no means the superfan of all superfans of The Room. The Room seems to ignite passions in people in quite unexpected ways.
When we last left our hero, he was in the Lavender Room at the Edmont Hotel. The three ugly ladies from Seattle who he’d been dancing and drinking with got up to leave because they wanted to get up early to catch the first show at Radio City Music Hall, which depressed Holden to no end.
INT. HOTEL LOBBY – NIGHT
Holden sits on a worn, “vomity-looking” chair in the hotel lobby. He’s loosened his tie, undone some shirt buttons and stares out into space, one leg thrown over the arm of the chair.
Next to him, a JANITOR vacuums the lobby rug, standing in one place and only getting what he can reach at arm’s length.
EXT. FRONT YARD – DAY (FLASHBACK)
A Doberman pinscher squats to pee on an immaculate green lawn in front of a well-kept house.
MRS. CAULFIELD, 43, slender with dark hair, opens the front door of the house and steps onto the porch.
MRS. CAULFIELD: Shoo! Get out of here! Go on!
The dog runs off. Mrs. Caulfield comes down the front walk and stands, hands on her hips, staring at the house next door.
My favorite Minnesota wacko is up to some new shenanigans – apparently Denny Hecker (Timeline Part I and Part II if you’re not familiar) tried to get married this week while out of jail for a meeting with his attorneys at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. When he was leaving the jail, he demanded to take a Bible with him (but was denied). Yes, Denny, you are a “man of faith.” I suspect that Bible’s spine has never been cracked.
Then, he’s at the meeting with his lawyers and who shows up but Christi Rowan (girlfriend/thief), a pastor and her attorney.
Suddenly, the U.S. Marshalls’ said, “Woah, wait a minute, do we have a wedding on our hands here?”
A tree branch breaking off and falling into our yard, taking our cable/Internet line with it during Saturday’s *STORM*, has majorly been cramping my style this week and also putting me horribly behind on my Catcher In The Rye project. God, I hope my agent doesn’t get pissed at me. Har har har. All I’ve really had time for is making fun of other people’s tweets, which is a sick hobby.
Another thing that’s been happening as I work on this is that I find myself caring about it quite a bit and actually… laboring over it. I guess that’s just me and my pesky work ethic. But seriously, folks… I kind of want to see this movie someday. Not MY script just… if someone who knew what they were doing adapted Catcher, I would see it. I mean, if it was taken on as a labor of love and someone really spent the time and then the studio didn’t cast Justin Beiber or Bieber or whatever that moppet’s name is.
So here is the first part of Act II, which will be broken into several parts because Act II, obviously, is long and there is only so much time one can spend at the neighborhood cafe, nursing a tea, wishing to hell Comcast would get out and fix the cable.
“I’m never asking for help again. Whomever I ask, they huff & puff, get pissed about it. I thought there was no such thing as a dumb question.”
Oh, yeah… about that whole “no dumb question” thing. We met and decided that there are dumb questions. Did you get the e-mail? Maybe it went into your spam filter? We decided that the world was getting super cluttered with dumb questions so we said that, from now on, every human would huff and puff and hiss and maybe piss every time they were asked a dumb question. I mean, you can join in, too. Just please no more of your dumb questions.
“most companies don’t have cultures, they have cults. culture is about making sense of the world–not making war on it. which do you have?”
Well… I’m not sure. I’ve never thought about it. There’s not much time to think around here because we’re so busy growing our own food, taking mind-expanding drugs, having sex with our leader, The One True & Righteous CEO, and making bombs. Just tiny bombs, mind you. The one thing we do have here is capital letters, also known as “majuscules,” if you’re super smart. Do you have capital letters at your company? It doesn’t seem like it.
I’m getting started with the adaptation. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please read this first.
Opening scene: Arguably the most important scene in a film. Sets the mood, the tone, first impression. I’m a big believer in not having the first scene of a film be a “throwaway” scene. You know what bugs me? Movies that open with someone waking up to an alarm clock going off and then going through their morning routine, making the kids breakfast, getting the newspaper and all that jazz. YAWN. But I’m already digressing.
Here is the opening sequence, starting on Thomsen Hill at Pencey Prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because I do nothing. There is little prep work or anxiety beyond going to the grocery store and buying a bunch of food with which to construct a feast. I don’t have to worry about seeing old friends, relatives I don’t enjoy, etc. I take a complete misanthrope’s approach to the entire thing – I want to watch movies, read books, eat good food and, essentially, hide in my house. This plan of inaction continues into Black Friday, when I watch the action from afar.
Saturday night was the second night of a two-night gig for Tommy Wiseau (and faithful sidekick Greg Sestero, who plays Mark in the film), writer, producer, director and star of The Room, at the midnight screening of the film at the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis. I bought my tix for Saturday in advance, not knowing that Horrendous Ice Storm was bearing down on the city. How do you like that drama?
My favorite Minnesota wacko is up to some new shenanigans – apparently Denny Hecker (Timeline Part I and Part II if you’re not familiar) tried to get married this week while out of jail for a meeting with his attorneys at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. When he was leaving the jail, he demanded to take a Bible with him (but was denied). Yes, Denny, you are a “man of faith.” I suspect that Bible’s spine has never been cracked.
