... to blog. For two years or so.
*sigh*
Well, I think a total of ten people have ever read this, so I really shouldn't be upset. But what's a guy to do?
Oh yeah. Blog.
Thinks have been hectic lately. I continue the ongoing battle over the copyright to the script I wrote, Dead and a Half, which was produced in (of all places) Irian Jaya. It's really quite something. Not "good" in any sense of the word, but daring. The director actually wanted to kill an endangered python for one scene. He was a total nutjob.
Anyway, long story short, copyright is kind of non-existant down there, so basically this weird little movie is playing to sold out shows and I'm not even seeing a dime. I'm trying to see if I can fight it in the State, should they ever try to import it. But I'm doubtful.
In other, less financially depressing news, I met an awesome girl. Well ... not recently. Since my last post, which was two years ago! We actually met quite a while ago, during some Katrina clean-up charity work. We circled each other for a long, long time and finally hooked up early 2009. Things are going well ...
I'll keep you all (whoever you might be) posted on Dead and a Half developments, as well as anything else I get out there (multiple short story submissions and some Hollywood script meetings).
Also, this:
Tuesday
Wednesday
RUETERS: Starbucks Creates Obama Latte
NOVEMBER 5th, 2008, 6:01AM EDT.
In honor of Barrack Obama's landslide victory for the American presidency, Starbucks has announced a new drink to be added to their menu early next year.
The "Mulatte" will hit cafe counters on January 1st, 2009. The drink consists of half organic espresso, half steamed soy milk, and a teaspoon of enriched, fertile American topsoil.
The latte was supposed to launch in mid 2008, at the height of Obama's campaign, but was postponed due to controversial testing by the FDA.
"At first the drink scored record high marks from taste testers," said Starbucks Chief P.R. Manager Glen Roddenburg. "But after the drink settled we received complaints of bloating. Luckily, most were too embarrassed to say anything and we only had to report a few cases."
The Mulatte also created quite a stir at a Starbucks restaurant in Illinois, where patrons were used as a test group for the drink's specialized sizing plan. Patrons were confused when, after ordering a tall Mulatte, Starbucks baristas would poor excess coffee from grande and venti drinks into their cup, causing superheated overflow to burn their hands.
"At first when we asked if they wanted more coffee for no extra charge, they seemed excited," said one Starbucks employee. "But then ... the screams. Oh sweet Christ, those awful, awful screams."
While controversy still caps the latest Starbucks endeavor, the company is hopeful millions of loyal coffee drinkers will brave the long lines in the New Year.
In honor of Barrack Obama's landslide victory for the American presidency, Starbucks has announced a new drink to be added to their menu early next year.
The "Mulatte" will hit cafe counters on January 1st, 2009. The drink consists of half organic espresso, half steamed soy milk, and a teaspoon of enriched, fertile American topsoil.
The latte was supposed to launch in mid 2008, at the height of Obama's campaign, but was postponed due to controversial testing by the FDA.
"At first the drink scored record high marks from taste testers," said Starbucks Chief P.R. Manager Glen Roddenburg. "But after the drink settled we received complaints of bloating. Luckily, most were too embarrassed to say anything and we only had to report a few cases."
The Mulatte also created quite a stir at a Starbucks restaurant in Illinois, where patrons were used as a test group for the drink's specialized sizing plan. Patrons were confused when, after ordering a tall Mulatte, Starbucks baristas would poor excess coffee from grande and venti drinks into their cup, causing superheated overflow to burn their hands.
"At first when we asked if they wanted more coffee for no extra charge, they seemed excited," said one Starbucks employee. "But then ... the screams. Oh sweet Christ, those awful, awful screams."
While controversy still caps the latest Starbucks endeavor, the company is hopeful millions of loyal coffee drinkers will brave the long lines in the New Year.
Saturday
This is the press conference with the two guys that were arrested in Boston for placing harmless LED advertisements around the city.
The advertisements featured a popular character from the Cartoon Network's hit show Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
The Light Bright-looking alien was seen around Boston, flipping people off. A simple contraption powered by four Duracell batteries, the devices were placed in major cities across the country. In every city, law enforcement did not care at all.
Except for Boston.
Watch this video, it is hilarious.
The advertisements featured a popular character from the Cartoon Network's hit show Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
The Light Bright-looking alien was seen around Boston, flipping people off. A simple contraption powered by four Duracell batteries, the devices were placed in major cities across the country. In every city, law enforcement did not care at all.
Except for Boston.
Watch this video, it is hilarious.
Book Review
Dancing After Hours
by Andre Dubus
In the world of Andre Dubus, pain is the center and driving force of love. Pain leaves a beautiful hole in the world; all the elements spiral down into its center, leaving streaks of color. Pain lies buried in the inner lives of Dubus's characters, puppeteering their lives towards happiness or failure (although Dubus usually cuts the story short before his readers have a chance to find out which).
Dancing After Hours is a sublime example of this philosophy. Each gem of a story resonates with a sweet sense of pain, as if death, heartache and betrayal are not the antithesis of happiness, but are actually its cause.
The collection starts strong with The Intruder, the only entry in the series that follows the norm of using character and plot to build a story. Young Kenneth Girard struggles with the angst filled "inbetweeness" of adolescence. Dubus portrays this agonizing time through the boy's forbidden love of fantasy, imagination and story, rather than focusing on sexual awakening like most stories in this vein. Kenneth's powerful and slightly awkward love for his worldly sister pales when compared to his love of imagination, and both forces - the child like wonder and the adult like lust - work together to drive the story to its perfect conclusion.
The rest of Dubus's stories veer slowly away from this structure, dipping further into the realms of deep character development rather than plot.
In Falling in Love, Dubus chronicles the lives of Ted Briggs (a wounded war vet) and Susan Dorsey (a disillusioned actress from Boston). As the title indicates with its present tense, the two fall for each other, struggle, and fall apart with equal passion and no sense of permanence. Dubus writes with an uncomfortable clarity and frankness, willing to sacrifice his characters to fate no matter how loveable they are. But just before the reality becomes unbearable for fiction, the characters unfold themselves and reveal their true thoughts, and it is in these moments the Dubus displays his real talent; weaving human emotion and cold logic into poetry.
Not to say that Dancing After Hours is hopeless . Ted Briggs makes a later appearance in All the Time in the World, this time playing the heroic knight to a working woman with no roots, no passion or agape. Although the fate of this second relationship is unknown, Dubus ends the story positively, in his trademark poetic prose, "She was hungry, and she talked with her friends and waited for her steak, and for all that was coming to her: from her body, from the earth, from radiant angels poised in the air she breathed."
This technique of abrupt endings, of loose ends and unfinished lives, is jarring at first. As a reader you may hop from one tale to the next feeling strangely unsatisfied. But ultimately, this style is essential to Dubus's work. For him to tell you the secrets of love, happiness and pain would ruin the ethereal magic of his work.
by Andre Dubus
In the world of Andre Dubus, pain is the center and driving force of love. Pain leaves a beautiful hole in the world; all the elements spiral down into its center, leaving streaks of color. Pain lies buried in the inner lives of Dubus's characters, puppeteering their lives towards happiness or failure (although Dubus usually cuts the story short before his readers have a chance to find out which).
Dancing After Hours is a sublime example of this philosophy. Each gem of a story resonates with a sweet sense of pain, as if death, heartache and betrayal are not the antithesis of happiness, but are actually its cause.
The collection starts strong with The Intruder, the only entry in the series that follows the norm of using character and plot to build a story. Young Kenneth Girard struggles with the angst filled "inbetweeness" of adolescence. Dubus portrays this agonizing time through the boy's forbidden love of fantasy, imagination and story, rather than focusing on sexual awakening like most stories in this vein. Kenneth's powerful and slightly awkward love for his worldly sister pales when compared to his love of imagination, and both forces - the child like wonder and the adult like lust - work together to drive the story to its perfect conclusion.
The rest of Dubus's stories veer slowly away from this structure, dipping further into the realms of deep character development rather than plot.
In Falling in Love, Dubus chronicles the lives of Ted Briggs (a wounded war vet) and Susan Dorsey (a disillusioned actress from Boston). As the title indicates with its present tense, the two fall for each other, struggle, and fall apart with equal passion and no sense of permanence. Dubus writes with an uncomfortable clarity and frankness, willing to sacrifice his characters to fate no matter how loveable they are. But just before the reality becomes unbearable for fiction, the characters unfold themselves and reveal their true thoughts, and it is in these moments the Dubus displays his real talent; weaving human emotion and cold logic into poetry.
Not to say that Dancing After Hours is hopeless . Ted Briggs makes a later appearance in All the Time in the World, this time playing the heroic knight to a working woman with no roots, no passion or agape. Although the fate of this second relationship is unknown, Dubus ends the story positively, in his trademark poetic prose, "She was hungry, and she talked with her friends and waited for her steak, and for all that was coming to her: from her body, from the earth, from radiant angels poised in the air she breathed."
This technique of abrupt endings, of loose ends and unfinished lives, is jarring at first. As a reader you may hop from one tale to the next feeling strangely unsatisfied. But ultimately, this style is essential to Dubus's work. For him to tell you the secrets of love, happiness and pain would ruin the ethereal magic of his work.
Friday
Emo Angst
Sorry for the delay. I'm getting back into my writing groove and working on a book review. In the meantime, enjoy this painful emo music video that my misguided friend made in college:
Thursday
Escaped from L.A.
Got back from L.A. on the 26th and promptly fell into bed and made long, glorious love to the Flu Virus.
Will post again soon.
Will post again soon.
Friday
Harry Potter and the Sniveling Babies of Bitcherton
I'm right there with you. Waiting and waiting for the new title to be released, only to find that it doesn't meet my expectations: Deathly? Hallows?
These are not words! This is British snobbery! They are not nearly as cool as previous words in the Harry Potter title series, like Goblet and Order . . . and they are certainly more awkward than Azkaban and Half-Blood.
I don't know what I expected - maybe because Rowling keeps surprising me and all her other readers with clever plot twists and character development - but I have to say, this title does not meet my unknown expectations.
I'm going to go write the seventh book myself, then think of the title . . . then masturbate. What can I say? I like to be satisfied.
These are not words! This is British snobbery! They are not nearly as cool as previous words in the Harry Potter title series, like Goblet and Order . . . and they are certainly more awkward than Azkaban and Half-Blood.
I don't know what I expected - maybe because Rowling keeps surprising me and all her other readers with clever plot twists and character development - but I have to say, this title does not meet my unknown expectations.
I'm going to go write the seventh book myself, then think of the title . . . then masturbate. What can I say? I like to be satisfied.
Thursday
RUETERS: International Conflict
December 21st, 2006, 3:31 PM EDT
In a startling political move, the country of
“The irony shortage in
Meanwhile, the attack on
Countless reports indicated hundreds of innocent people are suffering minor scrapes and abrasions after slipping on cranberry sauce. H.E. László Sólyom, president of
“Rice,” H.E. László Sólyom chuckled under his breath before escaping in a catering truck.
President Bush snapped into action, immediately sending troops into the area of conflict and earning immediate criticism from the Democratic Party.
“It’s much colder over there than in the desert,” said Al Gore. “My informants indicate that dozens, no, hundreds of
The U.N. has taken its usual course of action by supporting the aggressor country; a television weatherman named Raine McCloud has flown in from
The outcome of these events is unclear, but experts believe once Hungarian troops have refilled their country’s irony supplies, they will return to their own borders.
“This is an act of terrorism,” said President Bush on vacation in
Tuesday
Young Hot Lesbian Babies
Last night at a Greyhound Bus hub I was sitting and waiting and reading when I heard a duo of giggles erupt below my chair. I found two young girls lying in a "P9" position, fondling each other's hands and each one whispering things that had the other erupting in loud giggles and the resonating "outside voice" that is usually found in trailer trash women.
Both "girls" were dressed in pink pants that hugged their baby-fat butt cheeks and black hooded sweatshirts that bore an effigy of Jack from A Nightmare Before Christmas. One was Caucasian and the other was real Asian. Both shared about three braincells, two vaginas, and one wardrobe. They tickled and poked and sang in a kind of manic daze, high on hormones that had no place to go but to their heads. These were the girls that would never look for or notice a man over five feet eight inches tall. These were the girls that would rather explore each other's nether regions or date smooth bodied emo-boys than spend ten minutes with any sick macho that dared to grow real facial hair.
Along came the mother . . . .
She was blond (faux real) and had spent the better part of an afternoon squeezing into jeans she stole from her daughter's closet; shifting and sucking until they clamped shut and left a circular life preserver of fat around her waist (perfect for rebounding off dank alley walls on a long walk home from the local biker bar).
She gathered the two girls, imploring them to behave, to stop singing, to stop freaking out the world . . . but to no avail. They swaggered onto a bus for Phoenix and I never saw them again . . . until I arrived in Los Angeles for Christmas.
Both "girls" were dressed in pink pants that hugged their baby-fat butt cheeks and black hooded sweatshirts that bore an effigy of Jack from A Nightmare Before Christmas. One was Caucasian and the other was real Asian. Both shared about three braincells, two vaginas, and one wardrobe. They tickled and poked and sang in a kind of manic daze, high on hormones that had no place to go but to their heads. These were the girls that would never look for or notice a man over five feet eight inches tall. These were the girls that would rather explore each other's nether regions or date smooth bodied emo-boys than spend ten minutes with any sick macho that dared to grow real facial hair.
Along came the mother . . . .
She was blond (faux real) and had spent the better part of an afternoon squeezing into jeans she stole from her daughter's closet; shifting and sucking until they clamped shut and left a circular life preserver of fat around her waist (perfect for rebounding off dank alley walls on a long walk home from the local biker bar).
She gathered the two girls, imploring them to behave, to stop singing, to stop freaking out the world . . . but to no avail. They swaggered onto a bus for Phoenix and I never saw them again . . . until I arrived in Los Angeles for Christmas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
