No better way to spend the next 4 minutes

Pet Shop Boys Liberation

And why stop there?

Pet Shop Boys Yesterday When I was Mad – The setting is appropriate.

Pet Shop Boys Can You Forgive Her? – They might be asking the wrong question.

Pet Shop Boys Go West – By now this should all be looking perfectly normal to you.

Pet Shop Boys I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing – Watch for a Mortal Kombat segment in the middle!

I’m writing the screenplay for a Park Chan-wook film

I’m writing the screenplay for a Park Chan-wook film. The name of the film will be Sympathy for Korean Audiences. Here’s what I got so far.

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A man and a woman side by side are staring directly ahead at the camera. Their faces are without expression. Hold the shot for a full minute.

With the camera farther away, show the man and woman sitting on a bench. Hold the shot for a full minute.

The woman turns slowly to the man. She says, “Just one. It’s what you said, right?” (or some such line which explains nothing) The man does not reply.

Let’s go on to a game called “Narrate”

Just some pics on my hard drive

Some cute, some creepy. (click to enlarge)

Dr. Strangelove

One of the benefits of age is that you know what the good movies are and can pass on your wisdom to the younger generation, which includes me.

Dr. Strangelove or : How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was my type of film. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this film? Do you think I have the time and eyepower to sift through the acres of grubby dunghills Hollywood excretes to find nuggets like these? No! That’s your job.

Don’t give me the excuse that it has a popular ranking of blah blah blah on some film website blah blah blah. I may lack wisdom and experience, but if experience has granted me any wisdom, it is that popular rankings on film websites are as likely as not to turn up false positives. (That I downloaded and sat all the way through the high-ranking tour de tedium American Beauty without receiving any monetary compensation from the people who made it goes down as one of my life’s greatest regrets)

If anyone else out there who calls himself a friend is withholding movie recommendations, let’s have them out.

A fun fact about how this hamburger was made:

George C. Scott had some really difficult experiences with the director. George was headstrong by nature. It is what fueled his particular talent. Stanley was very much the same kind of man.The irresistible force met the immovable object when Stanley asked George to do over-the-top performances of his lines. He said it would help George to warm up for his satiric takes. George hated this idea. He said it was unprofessional and made him feel silly. George eventually agreed to do his scenes over-the-top when Stanley promised that his performance would never be seen by anyone but himself and the cast and crew. But Kubrick ultimately used many of these “warm-ups” in the final cut. George felt used and manipulated by Stanley and swore he would never work with him again.

Willingness to throw out traditional standards of ethics for the sake of the art is a sure sign of genius.

Malice Mizer

Wishes you “Happy New Year” in their own special way.

Now I find the following ‘interpretation’ totally hilarious, although that could be because I’m familiar with the song and know what he’s actually saying–which doesn’t matter any more. From now on I’ll never be able to hear anything but “bean sprout”.

Christmas movie plots

It’s time for Hollywood to get jealous that an ordinary doof like myself came up with these and doesn’t intend to share them, at least not for free:

The Santa Connection

Comedy. A secret agent must disguise himself as Santa and win over the kids in a suburban home in order to diffuse a bomb and foil terrorists. A typical gag will be how he tries to keep the kids from hurting themselves with laser-emitting candy cane gadgets they playfully pull from his bag. Robin Williams will be the secret agent.

Jesus Project X

Action. Having unraveled the science behind the miracles performed by Jesus, scientists develop a device that can heal blindness, deafness, and leprosy. But a certain dark organization calling themselves ‘The Pharisees” steals the device and kidnaps the chief scientist. It’s up to a single retired law enforcement officer to solve the mystery. Not sure yet who I want to star in this, but I think I want him to be black.

It Happened Beneath the Mistletoe

Romance. It will star Sandra Bullock and it will last a full two hours, which will be two hours longer than most male viewers will like. Since they’ll all be coerced into watching with their girlfriends I’m not worried in the slightest that profits might not outstrip production costs.

The Wreath

Horror. Teenagers pass around a Christmas music box with a curse–anyone who listens to the music box will die in exactly 12 days of Christmas.

Disney’s The Last Reindeer

Animation. It will totally suck compared to Bambi (and that’s compared to Bambi!), but nobody can remember Bambi so I’m sure it will do just fine.

While Shepherds Watch

A crime murder drama thing or something. Haven’t worked out more than that but I’m sure it will be a box office smash if I can just get the right cast.

The Nutcracker

No idea what happens in this one, but I want Eddie Murphy to star in it.

Well that should be enough to get Hollywood lapping at my tail. They may beg me, bribe me, intimidate me, conspire not to nominate me for Oscars, but I won’t let them have these gems. NEVER! Ohohohoho!

Jennifer Lopez hates the environment

Scientific research has revealed that divorce is harmful to the environment (in more than one way):

“A married household actually uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household,” said Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University whose analysis of the environmental impact of divorce appears in this week’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More households means more use of land, water and energy, three critical resources, Liu explained in a telephone interview.

What can we do about this? The first step is to recognize the problem.

“People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered,” Liu said.

How about assembling an international panel to draft a protocol to regulate divorce rates in each country? Of course we’ll go easy on less-developed countries that may just be getting around to discovering how annoying it can be to live with the same spouse for over a year.

By the way, gay marriage is good for the environment!

 

 

Braveheart blows

The first time I saw Braveheart I was for the three hour span, like everyone else, mostly entranced by Mel Gibson’s legs. Recently, when I watched the movie again my attention was allowed to wander enough to grasp the message it was trying to send. Shame on you, Mel, for producing this piece of propagandistic putridity.

The story begins with the English King Edwards the Longshanks restoring a much-needed peace between the English and the Scots. A short while later, when he instituted the ‘Prima Nocta’ (English lords may party down with Scottish brides) I thought, “Finally, somebody who gets free love!” We may never know if this daring policy would have been but one in a series of enlightened reforms that would have led the country peacefully out of the Dark Ages and into the warm progressive light of progress because William Wallace (Gibson) bull-headedly used a single murder as an excuse to preemptively launch a campaign of organized murder that would claim countless lives throughout its duration.

The most heartbreaking scene in the movie occurs before the big Battle of Stirling. Wallace had recruited from the poorest percent of the population a herd of mindless sheeple to bleed and die for him in the senseless slaughter soon to come–a kind of ‘troop surge’ to pointlessly prolong the conflict. But two of these men turned out to be true heroes. Stepping forth from personal puddles of urine they courageously refused to participate in the carnage, and even attempted to persuade their fellows to tuck their tails between their legs with them! As they told the military establishment to f*** off I stood and applauded. This was true bravery. But it was all for naught. Wallace turned his propaganda machine on full throttle to silence the protesters and the killing commenced as scheduled.

Wallace next laid plans for a unilateral invasion of the sovereign nation of England. As his army moved onto English soil without a timetable for withdrawal it was like watching the next victim open the basement door in a slasher flick. It may be true that Edward the Longshanks had done some bad things in the past, but he was getting old and wasn’t a threat to anybody! Every move on the part of the King towards peace and reconciliation was shot down and spat on by the Scots, making it increasingly clear that Wallace had wanted to go to war all along. Perhaps he harbored a ulterior motive? A desire perhaps to finish what his father, who appeared in the movie’s opening scenes, had started?

Of course the official casus belli was for ‘freedom’. The accursed word cropped up over and over in the film. Every time I heard it I winced not unlike a Knight who says Ni at the sound of the word ‘it’. How much blood has been shed throughout history in the service of that demon!

But the climax revealed that it was Gibson’s intent to glorify the lie. The arrest of the infamous war criminal at last brought an end to the tragic cycle of violence. While his sentence was carried out he bellowed that word at the top of his lungs, instantly killing all Knights who say Ni within an 80-mile radius. Thankfully, I was able to hold onto my wits long enough to stumble close to the VCR and pop in a Michael Moore tape before I passed out.

Haiku-writing

9/11 Linked
To Iraq, in Politics
If Not in Fact

Inspired by the above almost-Haiku identified by James Taranto as masquerading as a Washington Post headline, I thought I’d try listening to my own poetry muse for a change. Here are a few I came up with. I hope you find them pleasing to your mental ear and soothing to your soul.

Jews, Christians, Muslims
Why can’t we all get along?
The Jews most of all

Bush and bin Laden
A cycle of violence
A cycle of pain

Match made in heaven
Our love will last forever
Al Gore and the tree

Why do they hate us?
Don’t they know hate is a crime?
Live, love, and abort

Serene emptiness
Snowy field of silent white
The page will not load

Caged bird cannot fly
All men desire freedom
OJ Simpson too

Falling autumn leaves
Who will pick them up? Someone?!
Suffocating, help!

Waking in cold sweat
Nightmare of nations come true
Results in, Jeb won

So who else likes to write Haiku?