There is a petition on-line to revoke Tom Cruise's American citizenship. I don't know if they can really do this, but it seems worth a shot. If nothing else, maybe realizing that 50,000 strangers hate him THAT much might knock the crazy right out of him.
by comb be much wop
This morning I had my first dentist appointment in over 3 years. I was really nervous going in because despite not having any mouth pain, a lot can happen in 3 years. Still, I’ve always been pretty lucky with my teeth. They may be yellowed from tea and coffee but I never had to get braces and I’ve only had two cavities in my life. They took 18(!) x-rays of my mouth and scraped the shit out of my gums. They put the fear of Dentist in me by telling me that usually when someone goes that long without a check-up, they will need a “deep-clean” which involves a local anesthetic and an hours worth of extra scraping. They would let me know what the x-rays reveal. THANK YOU TEETH GENES! No deep cleaning for me. I got the usual flossing lecture and they seemed pretty annoyed that I hadn’t been to a dentist in so long (I’ll be damned if I would go to a dentist without insurance. Sorry, guys), but I was outta there, relatively pain-free in under an hour.
Things are very slow at work today. I REALLY miss the internet when it’s slow. This 30-minutes at lunch situation definitely sucks. I am typing this on-the-sly and will upload it at break. However, since I am now in a prison of my own volition, I promise I won’t whinge about work so much. Moving on…
Last night we had a meeting for the upcoming 48-hour film Project for which I am one of the writers. If you aren’t familiar with the project, it goes down thus:
20 or so teams from each city meet on Friday evening at 7 to receive a character, a line of dialog, a prop and a genre. Each team gets a different genre (though there are only 12 options and 24 Seattle teams so we will be doubling up). We then have 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a 4-7 minute film within the given guidelines. The winners receive endless glory and fabulous prizes. There’s not much you can do in a pre-production meeting for a film that you haven’t written yet, but we did our best. We have a general location/group of locations for our arsenal and we can secure some gear. I think it will work out pretty well though. Hell, Faye and I wrote “Retard to Retard” in half an hour after a bottle of wine. Of course, that’s not exactly prize-winning material, but I feel fairly confident. Especially since one of our writers is Jef who wrote the FABULOUS “Future Good” for a previous and similarly-structured contest.
After the meeting, the Troika pondered the premiere of the Stella TV show on Comedy Central. We had gotten free promo DVD’s of the pilot in advance so we decided to just watch that immediately at 8 instead of waiting till 10:30 for the aired version. As we had suspected, Stella feels a little stifled without the rampant comedic use of dildos, dirty jokes and swearing. They also recycled two jokes from their shorts, which is really annoying. But it’s still better than, well, MOST half-hour television that’s on right now. I hope Stella gets a whole new audience and they can move to HBO where they can be all the filthy that they want to be. Later, I found out that some of the more irreverent jokes were actually cut for the aired episode. I hope it was just for time because if not, what gives, Comedy Central?
We also caught the second half of a new hidden camera show that our friend John was on. We missed his part, but luckily, Dom had ghetto tivo’d it so we watched it later in the evening. The show is called “Fire Me…Please!” and the premise is that two “contestants” per half hour get a job for a day and are as annoying and incompetent as possible without doing anything illegal, so that they can get fired as close to 3:00 as possible and win $25,000. Our friend John worked in a smoothie shop and was competing against a guy working in at a dog groomer boutique. The contestants are tipped off about their new “bosses” pet peeves so that they may play against them in order to get fired. It’s an interesting concept and it’s kind of amusing. Obviously, they hired actors to do this so that the show would go according to plan. It’s funny how they still pretend that they AREN’T hiring actors for all these reality shows. They said that our friend was a “waiter from Seattle, WA”. Sure, there’s a partial truth to that. But he moved to L.A. to act. ANYWAY, our friend didn’t win but I think he was infinitely more entertaining that his opponent. He got fired by making evening plans on his cell phone every five minutes and by not memorizing the smoothie ingredients. John was FANTASTIC at being weird and annoying. In the beginning, when his trainer showed him how to make a smoothie, his trainer made scooping noises for emphasis “Bamp [scooping up the berries], Boom [putting berries in blender]”. From that point on, every time John did anything with the ladle, he would say “Bamp, Boom”. At one point, when he was “trying to remember” what went in a smoothie, he drummed loudly on the blender for a good solid MINUTE to jog his memory. Any time he got lectured by his supervisor, he would yawn really big. Those guys wanted him out of there at 10am, but they kept him on till a little after 3, thus costing him the money. I’m not sure if I’d watch the show every week if I didn’t know anyone on it, but it was still fairly entertaining.
his take an cruciform morals
Last night, the Troika went to a book signing by one Mr. Bruce Campbell for his new book “Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way”. We were first treated to a Q & A session wherein Bruce got really annoyed by the usual questions. He even preluded the Q & A by saying he didn’t want anyone to ask about Evil Dead 4 or Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash. Yet ask they did. Also, many questions were prefaced by “I heard a rumor that…”. “Oh, you heard a rumor? Where? On the internet? Then it MUST be true”, snarked Bruce. After a while, when someone began a question with “I heard a rumor” he would just say “Moving on”. He also went on a tirade about Hollywood drivel saying there are no new ideas and Hollywood wonders why box office sales are declining with films like “Herbie the Love Bug” (“It’s been re-made so many damned times, I’VE even been in a version.”), “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (“Gene Wilder was funny. Johnny Depp is just WEIRD.”) and “War of the Worlds” (“I don’t care how many times Tom Cruise jumps up and down on Oprah’s couch, I’m not seeing it.”) coming out. He also cited “Batman Begins” as one of these unnecessary pictures. Disagree as I might, about the quality of that film, he does have a point. It’s certainly not a new idea. There were no juicy tidbits to be leaked to Aint It Cool. Just the man himself being himself. Fun stuff. After his Q & A, we got in line based on the numbers on our signing tickets. Thankfully, we had a relatively low number and were actually out of there shortly after 7. Dom held a “Snow Day” DVD in his hand with all of our names on it. We weren’t allowed to dilly dally. We had to have our names inscribed on a post-it before we got up there. We had to remove the book jacket. He wouldn’t pose for pictures but his assistant would take a picture of him writing in our books with us standing over him with our camera. He wouldn’t sign memorabilia. He wasn’t our little monkey. There were lots of rules and as unromantic as that is, it did keep things pretty damned organized. But we WERE allowed to give him gifts, so Dom got up there with our DVD and told him our movie was playing in the San Diego Comic-Con. I think he asked Dom some technical questions about the movie. Book signed. Picture taken. Hand shook. Moving on. Then Faye got up there and he asked her what she did. She said she made the movie that was sitting to his left. More technical questions. Book signed. Picture taken. Moving on. Then I got up there and he said to me “[Looking at post-it note] Are you Jessica?” “Yes I am.” “You’re all gussied up tonight.” “I came from work” said I. “What do you do?” “I’m an administrative assistant… glorified monkey, really. [pointing to the DVD] But I made that movie.” “Oh really? What did you do on it?” “I co-wrote and co-directed it.” “Well then, I’ll see you at the Comic-Con.” Hand shook. Book Signed. Picture taken. Moving on. The whole whirlwind took approximately an hour. The man knows how to run a show. And I thought it went rather well for what it was. Whether or not Mr. Campbell watches the movie, is another story. But he was polite and professional and accepted the movie. We didn’t expect anything more than that and were just pleased as punch to be standing in front of the guy. So yay for us.
Creepy Album Covers!
These are pretty awesome! My favorites are “Ken, by request only” and the rioting baby seal!
apache
WEEKEND RECAP
FRIDAY
A bunch of us went to see the LONG AWAITED new George Romero zombie film “Land of the Dead”. We knew it was going to be cool because it's the man who INVENTED the genre. Still, I was a little worried about there being name actors in the film. I always liked the anonymity of the actors in the other “of the dead” movies. It made the whole situation seem more real. My fears were assuaged early and often. Simon Baker is dashing and dreamy, Asia Argento is the cutest lil Italian prostitute with a machine gun ever. I want to put her in my pocket. Even John Leguizamo was really good. Dennis Hopper, of COURSE, was tremendously amusing. The violence was creative and delightful. The zombies looked cool as hell, and Romero totally sold the whole “smart” zombie thing. There were two really exciting cameos too. The first was that of the endearing “smart” zombie from “Day of the Dead, Bub. The second was Tom Savini. Tom Savini rules. Supposedly, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are in there as zombies somewhere too but we didn't see them. It was, after all, a LAND of the dead. And it was really quite a perfect film.
After the movie, Faye, Sherrard and I headed over to Queen Anne for Dan's birthday. He was having an “Iron Curtain” themed party. There were people there dressed in whatever they considered to be european 80's club attire. I rifled through my closet to find something acceptable but Dom told me I looked like Brittany Speares and Faye said I looked like a “Madonna Supporter”. I'm not proud of either of those comparisons. Turns out it didn't matter too much anyway. It was a party and everyone was HAMMERED. Only about half the attendees were in costume. Faye and I saw an old college friend who we were actually happy to see. That so rarely happens. Everyone was in a pretty good mood too. Fun party. The only downer that happened was that a particularly snobby Tacoman decided to make fun of my drunken state by quoting one of my less than intellectual sounding utterances in Ahe's book. I was quite heavily intoxicated at this point in the evening and I knew that I would be too hung over to attend the Saturday yoga class. So I commented to Sherrard (I think this is pretty close to what I said) “I am so not making it to yoga tomorrow. I am so fucking serious”. Admittedly, it sounds pretty stupid when taken out of context. The context being the fact that I was drunk and that yoga carries with it a certain stigma that I don't normally subscribe too. Regardless, what she did was cruel and unnecessary. And why she decided to direct her cruelty toward me at that moment is beyond me. I may never have exchanged more than 10 words with this person. Admittedly, what I said sounds pretty stupid when taken out of context. And I make fun of people I don't know all the time. But to do it in such a way that she knew I would see it. It just wasn't nice and it kind of brought me down for a little while. Still, it might help me curb what I say about people I don't know…for a little while at least. After a while, the embarrassment and hurt subsided and I continued to enjoy myself well into the wee hours.
SATURDAY
Ow. I slept well past noon in an attempt to alleviate a very painful hangover. I was in my pajamas till after 4, at which time I showered and prepared myself for the evening's festivities. We started with dinner at the Canterbury where we gorged ourselves on too many fries and milkshakes. Then it was off to a Nimble Productions fundraiser to help the fine fellows earn enough money to buy the festival rights to “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies. They screened the short and made a very good case for why they needed that particular song. It was a very funny and well produced short so I hope they can make it happen. After that we headed back to the Hill for Kayobi's housewarming party. We met Kayobi's three awesome cats (one of whom is the very definition of butter ball) and saw their very cute new apartment . For their gift, I brought them a drinking game called “What the F*ck”. In this game, a person must choose between two undesirable activities and everyone else must guess what the person in question will choose. Those who guess incorrectly must drink. It's pretty simple because, well, it has to be. Complicated drinking games never go over well. This one didn't go over as well as I thought it would, however. A lot of people were disgusted by having to choose between two human secretions to consume (in popsicle form) or deciding what they would rather insert into their various orifices. After a short while, the game trailed off. I, for one, enjoyed myself. But then again, I've proved myself to be rather anti-intellectual this weekend, whatwith brain-busting quotes and high-brow games about boogers. Faye wasn't feeling well, so she left the party early with Borgia. I walked home on my own and had a GREAT time. I had never strolled through the quiet parts of Capitol Hill by myself so late at night. There are so many huge beautiful houses in tucked-away cul-de-sacs. I've been living in the city for so long that I forget how rare it is to have total silence. As I was walking through the neighborhoods, all I could hear were my own footsteps and the occasional backyard fountain. It was creepy and exciting all at the same time.
SUNDAY
Another lazy morning. I woke up around noon to the sound of helicopters overseeing the Gay Pride Parade. Dom and I tooled around the apartment for a few hours, enjoying doing nothing. I wrestled with Tobe a little bit. Then we headed to West Seattle for Dom's sister's baby shower. It was a pretty atypical baby shower. It was really more like a party. They had a keg and people were just hanging out and talking. There were, however, kids everywhere. That many kids around makes me nervous. I'm not sure why. We found out the possible names of Dom's future niece or nephew. If it's a girl, she will be called “Indie” (but that's Dr. Jones to you). If it's a boy, he will be either called “Vann Damon” or “Issac”. We were dismayed that they weren't going with our suggestion: Optimus Prime. It works for either sex!
We had to take our leave to go and record audio commentary for the “Snow Day” special edition DVD. Recording commentary is hard. You want to impart useful information and you also want to be funny. Marrying the two is where it gets tricky. I think next time we definitely need to be drinking. I think it's the key. Everyone knows the best commentary in history is the drunken commentary on “Cannibal, The Musical”. Apparently, there's a drunken commentary on the new “Orgazmo” special edition too. I've yet to hear that one.
And now the weekend comes to a close. We have quite a full week ahead of us, starting with meeting Bruce Campbell tomorrow at his book signing in the U District. We plan to hand him a copy of “Snow Day” but there are all kind of crazy rules printed on the signing ticket so he may tell us primitive screwheads to piss off. Like in the deal. Wish us luck.
money changes everything
In a recent conversation, I revealed that I got my first credit card when I was 16 because my dad wanted to teach me the value of good credit. It had a $600 limit and I had to pay it off each month with the money that I earned from babysitting or whatever other teenage-type job I had at the time. This was called somewhat into question at first because getting a credit card at 16 sounds like a luxury of being a Daddy's girl. However, when compared to this situation, wherein Madonna's 8-year-old rugrat gets a credit card with a $10,000 limit, my experience seems pretty normal and, well, NOT so spoiled. SERIOUSLY, Madonna, it's a good idea in THEORY, but HOW is giving your daughter $10K per month in free money going to teach her anything she doesn't already know? She knows that her momma is retardedly rich. She doesn't need a lesson in it. Even if she's expected to be responsible and pay the thing herself, WHERE is she going to get the money? Last I checked, 8-year-old can't work in the U.S. and they haven't been able to work in Britain since the Dickensian age. And if she gets $10K/month in allowance then she DEFINITELY isn't learning anything valuable about money. Way to go, brainiac. Why don't you stick to POP-ularizing world religions and leave the fiscal lessons to Sesame Street.
i got nothing
So AFI released their “100 Top Movie Quotes”. Now, I'm not sure what “top” means. If it means “most famous” then I guess I can't really take issue with anything on the list. But if it means “best” then I have quite a few issues. My biggest issue is that such a list is exemplary of the kind of mediocrity that Americans seem to love. NO quotes from “Jerry Maguire” or “Forrest Gump” or “When Harry Met Sally” should be on this list. But there they are. And “My Precious” is the best line from Lord of the Rings? “La Dee Da” is the BEST line from Annie Hall? “Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me” is the best line from The Graduate? You can't take films like that which are so rife with fantastic dialog and pick THOSE lines for this list. So I'm thinking it must just be “most famous”. God, I hope so. I definitely delight in seeing the inclusion of “No wire hangers ever!” though.
On an unrelated topic, looks like Courtney Love is back to her Sid and Nancy fighting weight. Pam Anderson has no comment.
Good for Courtney! Maybe she'll get lucky and get cast as Jennifer in a Family Ties reunion movie.
This argument in no
I don’t believe it! It’s moments like this that keep me an agnostic because it really feels like there’s some unseen force that is really enjoying fucking with me. This morning, my boss called me into his office for a “brief chat”. He prefaced the conversation by saying that I was doing a great job and that he was really pleased with all the hard work I was doing. Since he’d mentioned before that he was going to try and get me into some profit sharing, I assumed this was where he was headed. But then he said that he wanted to get me a raise. A VERY SIGNIFICANT raise. In ADDITION to profit sharing AND a larger quarterly bonus. He said he couldn’t guarantee anything but that when the PTB came up next month, (4 days after I had scheduled to put in my notice) he would make a case to get me this raise. This VERY BIG raise. It’s 33% of my current salary. If I were to get such a raise and continue to spend at my current level, I would be able to put over $1000 a month into savings. I know, I know, money isn’t happiness and I’m certainly not happy here. But if I did get this raise and stuck it out for a little while, it would make it easier to quit for less money when we start shooting Plight. It would also allow me more opportunity to travel around the country promoting “Snow Day”. I’m still not sure though. I really do hate it here. But would I hate it less if I was being handsomely compensated for it? I don’t know. Comments? Opinions? Help!
If I DON’T get offered a raise, I am definitely still out of here, though. Of that I am certain.
Keeping iit Like a Rock
WEEKEND RECAP
I know the weekend isn't over yet but a)I have a feeling I will be too bushed to update after yoga today and b)I have many things to gush about and I feel like gushing! Soooooooo…
FRIDAY
After an emotionally harried work day, I was ready to do some drinking. Though, when am I not, these days? That sounds pathetic, but really, I think that once I take care of my work situation, I will be in a much better head space. Earlier that day, I found out Roxy got into the A.D. program (or is it P.M.?) down in L.A. and will be leaving us. She was celebrating at Linda's so we headed over there for dinner and drinks. There were a LOT of people who came and went. I think there is a large chunk of Seattle that is going to sorely miss the Brunswicks. Meep and I used to hang out at Linda's all the time, despite the unoriginal selection on the juke box (Strokes and White Stripes over and over and over again) and the horrible wait staff. But we tired of it (go figure) and hadn't been back in a while. Very little has changed. It's still packed to the brim with hipsters (Meep and I actually invented “Hipster Bingo” back in the day because of Linda's), the juke box was playing The Strokes, and our waitress forgot about every other thing we ordered. She accidentally brought Dom and rum and coke instead of just a coke and he took a sip! So Dom had his first taste of alcohol (and hated it). He's a man now. Around 11:00 we were sick of Linda's but still keen to hang out so the Trio, krk and Borgia went to Bill's. I love that place! Our waitress looked like an older, dark haired Lily Taylor (I thought) and was enjoying herself. They ALWAYS play great music on the juke box (Ive never seen the selection because the music is always so good that I've never been compelled to go and play something) and their food is delicious. Best of all, they have Blackthorns on tap! Since we were the “Retard to Retard” crew, we finalized our game plan for the next day. krk told some more great stories about his metal days and we talked about Anthrax (which was one of my favorite bands in high school. That's right. In 8th, 9th and 10th grade, I was a little metal kid).
As per usual, I checked my email right before bed and lo and behold, I had one from the San Diego Comic Con. My heart stopped as I clicked to open the email. The first words “Congratulations! Your film has been scheduled for the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival!” HOT FUCKING DIGGITY DOG! I had just been telling Meep earlier that I'd resigned myself to the fact that we weren't getting in and that I was ok with that. But we ARE in and let me tell you, I am MUCH MORE ok with THAT! It was kinda hard to go to bed after that.
SATURDAY
Woke up around 10 and immediately started looking for tickets and hotels. ALL of the hotels within walking distance to the con were (not surprisingly) sold out. I am kinda pissed that they waited so long to tell us. They are very generous though. We get FIVE free passes (plus guest) for a short film! We also get our own slot (instead of having it lumped it with a bunch of other shorts) and we get to introduce the film and have a mini Q and A after. There is MUCH to do. We need to get our postcards together, press some more DVD's and Meep and I need new outfits!
Anyway, we didn't have a lot of time to mull things over because we had a stupid movie to make! We met at Dom's sister's house in West Seattle around noon. We got a late start because we were playing with their dogs. They have a HUGE dog named Shackelton who always has these stuffed toys he carries around. They have noise makers inside them. He likes to just chew the hell out of these toys and tear out their stuffing (in the most loving way possible, of course) but because they have noise makers, while he's chewing, they are making noise and the noises get more and more horrifying as he chews. It's funny and sick at the same time. We dove into shooting around 12:30 and were OUT OF THERE by 1:30. That's how retarded it is. But we were laughing the whole time so I think we really have a winner on our hands.
We parted ways so that The Trio could go make some travel arrangements. Jacob is going to meet us down there, but The Trio plus 1BenDur are going to fly down together. Anyone else want to meet us down there? It's going to be a BLAST and we have guest passes! we'll even sneak you into our Ramada hotel rooms (which we are cramming into because all the affordable hotels were booked. It will be like summer camp!).
Once we got the travel stuff out of the way, we headed down to the noc noc (which I love, despite the goth decor and the dodgy patrons…Wait. Who am I kidding? I LOVE dodgy patrons!). They have $1 PBR's and High Life's and cheap food (including tater tots! The perfect bar snack!). We downed as many beers as humanly possible in an hour and a half and then went to Pacific Place to see Batman Begins.
Batman Begins is awesome.
Christian Bale was pitch perfect. Absolutely. Michael Kane was a fantastic kind, gentle and sassy Cockney Alfred (his performance was exactly how I'd always read Alfred…without the Cockney bit). Cillian Murphy was creepy and hot. Liam Neeson was amazingly unirritating. Morgan Freeman was super cool and delivered the sweet burns. GARY OLDMAN IS ALWAYS FLAWLESS. He really is the greatest working actor. It was so great to see him not be evil. And Ahe pointed out that somehow he made that mustache sexy. Amazing. Katie Holmes still sucked but she didn't ruin the movie. (Although Meep and I couldn't help but laugh out loud when she said “I'm a Gotham city District Attorney. Let me pass!”. Is she supposed to be the same age as Bruce Wayne? Because there's no way she can pass for 30). There were some flaws to the movie, it's true. But the cast was so good that you really had to look for them. And Christian Bale sold EVERY WORD he uttered. He was THAT good. Even when he was channeling Patrick Bateman. Which is still a perfect choice because Bruce Wayne IS a borderline psychotic. He just doesn't have the business cards or the affinity for Whitney Houston.
After the movie we had the HARDEST time finding a bar to go to. All of our usual late-night, guaranteed a table establishments were packed to the hilt. We finally ended the Crocodile which would have been fine had there not been a monotonous emo show going on in the next room. Ahe recognized all of Death Cab for Cutie in attendance. (I have seen pictures of them, but am so bored by them that I can't be bothered to remember what they look like). We had a few more beers and gushed about the movie, among other things and then walked home around 1:30.
SUNDAY
It is still Sunday morning. My plans for the day include calling my father, yoga, dishes, possibly buying some milk and watching The Crow. Glamorous.
Live from my bedroom
FUCK YESSSSSSSSSSSSS! WE ARE GOING TO SAN DIEGO!!!!!!!!!!!
Apparently, all it took was a panicked blog entry and a lot of drinking to make it happen.
Effed by the Wind 