I'm SOOooooOOOO Funny...

I thought this was really funny.

...and if you think it's heresy, or dead wrong, or mean...go watch some fucking thing on Sci-fi network, you huge nerd. These movies suuuuuuucked!

In other news, I'm pretty certain that I'm going to start my own business. If it looks good, and I move forward with it, I'll give more details by the end of the week.

Also, Joe and Big are scheduled to grease up and have a giant, super-gay man orgy in a few weeks. While I don't want to watch, I feel as if I won't be able to look away either.

Understanding Your Own Story

Today's blog entry is in the form of an open letter to George Lucas, about the most important, and elementary mistake he made in Episode III.

Dear Mr. Lucas,

I know things must be pretty exciting right now. You've set a handful of box office records with you latest installment of the much-beloved STAR WARS franchise. The critics are being very generous, and exercising enormous amounts of self-control in overlooking an avalanche of poor choices, bad acting, contradictions, and just bad storytelling. Things are looking pretty good.
So here's some terrible truth.
While I was quite prepared for most of the train wreck, one thing in particular really surprised me. You *quite obviously* don't understand your own story. Even a little bit.
I paid about thirty dollars spaced out over six years really just to see roughly fifteen minutes worth of story at the end of Episode III. For me, it was all about the transformation of Anakin into Vader.
That transformation was so important, so vital to the series because Vader's redemption is Luke's greatest achievement in JEDI. Kenobi and even Yoda can't tell that there's any good in Vader. Only Luke has enough faith (a word you should probably revisit, rather than midiclorians) to bring back his father.

SO, Anakin becomes Vader by fully embracing the dark side. This much we've been explained in your better movies (well, for what little you had to do with the good ones). The creation of Vader symbolizes the death of Anakin, his selflessness and the last of the good in him. The "birth" of Vader is therefore the rising of an uncaring, evil machine of the dark side. It's the rise of a such a fearful figure of imposing doom, it terrified me as a kid.
So the first words out of Vader's mouth are the continued whinings about Padame. What an un-fucking-believably terrible, obvious mistake.
Naturally, he's supposed to whine about Padame all along. His last words as a burnt husk of a weeble-wobble should have been about her.

However, and this is a big however, once he's in that suit, once he's transformed into that towering figure of fear personified, it was true character assassination to have him still care, and still whine.
If the character of Anakin wasn't ready to let go of everything and turn evil, then he shouldn't have been in that suit.

And since you couldn't see that, it's become crystal clear to the fans that DO understand your mythology that you sir, do not.

Worst Head Wound Ever

I've watched LOTS of fighting.
I watch boxing, UFC, the Pride Championships (the best), K-1 kickboxing championships, and some of the smaller shows like Extreme Fighting, King of the Cage, and Hook and Shoot.
The K-1 European championships were last week. The winner of the eight-man tournament fight again in the end of the summer and those winners go to the K-1 championship in Tokyo.
Jerome Lebanner is one of the biggest names right now in K-1, especially in Europe. He is also now the owner of the BIGGEST FREAK-ASS HEAD WOUND I've ever seen in any fighting match.
Andrew Golota got a cut above his eye about a two years ago that a small family of Mexicans could have lived in. I still say this bump (bloodless and all) is still more terrifying than Golota's cut.
Mostly I wrote this quick post because I managed to find a pic of Lebanner's giant frickin' melon wound.

Lebanner's freak-ass knot 

The Final Revenge On The Fans...

James Verniere of the Boston Globe gave Episode III a very "Luke"-warm review (get it? Haahahahahahaaa!), and Rotten Tomatoes counted it as a Tomato.

Upon skimming the reviews, I've discovered that only about half of the "positive" reviews for the Rotten Tomatoes score are actually fully positive, while the many of the others basically say it doesn't suck quite as terribly as I and II.

While not sucking as much as I and II is about as much praise I think Lucas deserves for the third installment (I'll know for sure after Wednesday night), something dawned on me yesterday.

Lots of people have been invoking EMPIRE when they discuss this third film, because of the "dark" nature of the two movies. However, every reviewer is keen to note that EMPIRE is, and will now for all eternity, be the greatest STAR WARS film by a very, very large margin.

That makes sense, because Lucas had the least to do with EMPIRE.

Irvin Kirshner directed EMPIRE, and it was written by Lawrence Kasdan. To be sure, Lucas gave him broad strokes and Kasdan filled in the details, but one now wonders how many details Kasdan added?

While Kasdan also helped write JEDI, Lucas shares a full screenwriting credit (he does NOT share one on Empire). Meaning, he was there over Kasdan's shoulder for every page, making sure his particular brand of stink (i.e. Ewoks) was represented in the film.

Lucas clearly and undeniably had the least creative input into EMPIRE...And EMPIRE is the undisputed crown jewel of the franchise. That's GOTTA get under Lucas' shorts.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone opens his review with;
"Drink the Kool-Aid. Wear blinders. Cover your ears. Because that's the only way you can totally enjoy Revenge of the Sith -- the final and most futile attempt from skilled producer, clumsy director and tin-eared writer George Lucas to create a prequel trilogy to match the myth-making spirit of the original Star Wars saga he unleashed twenty-eight years ago".

While Lucas is a remarkably skilled producer (look at what he gets on the screen, even in 1977), he manages to turn otherwise moderate to even great actors into pieces of wood. He also writes really, really quite terrible dialogue.

Deep down, he'll always know. Despite surrounding himself with spineless yes-men on the Lucas ranch, despite anything his friends and inner circle tell him, he'll always know.
EMPIRE is the heart and soul of the STAR WARS universe. It gives us the mythology of the Force, and the quotable Yoda lines that give the films a spirituality all their own.
It has the confrontation and the "reveal" that turns the films into space opera, and not just space cowboys.

While Lucas is cashing in his final (and biggest...With Yoda and Vader pitching soda and taco bell) Star Wars checks, he'll always know that the film responsible for the humanity, spirituality, and depth of his franchise, was almost completely not of his making.

Ronny strikes fear into the hearts of commies...

Today I went to an art colony in Los Angeles. You actually go into the artist's living space which they turn into a gallery twice a year for this event.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the work. Sure, there were plenty of very amateurish displays like doll's heads nailed to a canvas with splashes of red paint on them (zzzzzzzzzzzzz) and lots of "my womb is powerful" type art. But plenty of these artists actually made practical art for movies, some were graphic artists (you know, artists that make money), and I think most of the sculptors were really interesting.

When I went today, I consciously wore my Reagan "Che" shirt. I figured if there was anywhere fun to wear my Reagan shirt in LA, it's at an artist's colony. It was indeed fun.

I got four or five comments, about ten double-takes, and dozens (I'm not kidding) of glares. You'd think I had a mass murderer on my chest or something.
However, one guy very sincerely said "nice shirt" to me in such a way that made me feel like I was the Ed Norton character in American History X revealing my Nazi tattoos looking for like-minded individuals in a sea of people who wanted to beat my ass. The guy was clearly making a point that he thought I was "brave" to sport my colors so deep in the crips territory.

incidentally, all the other comments about the shirt were from people who obviously thought I was wearing the shirt to be ironic. This city is so comically single-minded that it wouldn't occur to somebody for a second that I was wearing the shirt because I thought Reagan was a great leader and a champion of freedom.

So I flipped out and totally kicked all the commies right in their communal ass*.

*Sharing one ass made it much easier for me to kick. That many individuals have far too many asses for one fat guy to kick in one day.

People are People so why should it be, I'm so mean in SLC?

A while ago, I was reminded of a game Joe and I used to play. Basically, it was making funny titles/names for people at the club when we were bored.
Today, I was in the airport in SLC, on my way to LA. Oh, in other news, I'm in LA for a bit.
At any rate, I had a 90-minute layover in SLC, where I encountered these people;


My husband is a plastic surgeon
OR
The 465,000-dollar woman

Move it, Fatty

I'm from Portland, FASCIST!

I can't believe I joined the army

Rich, but don't forget I'm black

No hablo ingles (times 100)

1988? BEST HAIRCUTS EVER!!!

I miss my mom

Harry Belefonte's double

The hippest Asian couple in the universe

I hope this trip reconnects me with my daughter

I hope my mother doesn't want to bond this trip

Pregno-tron

God Bless pantsuits

Mid-west regional vice president in charge of promotions and marketing

My mustache is named Pepe

Eyebrowpalooza

Baby-hater

and my favorite...

Safari on the mind, hoagie in my tummy

I also ate at an great Brazillian churrascaria joint. I ate enough meat to choke a horse. Although, I guess horses don't eat that much meat, but you get my point.

Helen of Asshat*

I promised a blog-related post, so here it is.

Many months ago, it got out at work that I had a blog. While I let my boss read it, I didn't think it would be great if the address got out, considering some of the things I was blogging about. If I knew I was getting canned anyway, not only would I have given out the address, I would have blogged about what infantile asshats some of those people are, Troy in particular.

When it did get out that I had a blog, Troy was really, really interested in finding it. I don't know if it was ego (most likely), curiosity, ignorance, or the desire to see his name in print in any capacity...but he was AFTER it.
But as it stood, I really only wrote about him twice. One was simply about how distractible he is and how ineffectual he was at office management.

The second post was more honest. Either way, that post is now well over a month old. While I don't dig being unemployed, I do love being off that sinking ship with the suicidal Captain. So, not so many posts about my old job for about 5 or 6 weeks.

Here's the fun part. Troy still brings it up.

I found out that last week, he brought it up at a manager's meeting. My cool boss hadn't disclosed the location of the secret rebel base to the smug asshat, and I think that got under Troy's milky-white skin (he's very soft!)

So at this manager's meeting is a senior producer, the marketing director (my boss), the VP of marketing for the company that owns the show, and the asshat.
TWO months after I've been fired, my blog comes up at this meeting. With the millions of things that should be getting fixed on that show (like firing several of the...um...pacific Islanders), with a 140K plus a year job, a beautiful wife, two kids, a fat pad of a house, and a cool-sounding job...this asshat is worried about what some tubby dork he fired is writing about him...I fucking rule.

So my old boss tries to tell him that it's not really about work...it's about all sorts of stuff. He tells the group about some of my past post subjects like how Electra got made, and my long suspicious shorts, and so on.

Naturally, this isn't enough for Troy because he only wants to hear about himself. So my boss tells him that I "compared and contrasted various executive producers from the show". This got a giggle from the VP, and a full-on guffaw from the senior producer (who had been cursed to have to closely work with both of these terrible emotional cripples).
Shortly thereafter, Troy got "a little embarrassed" (I’m quoting) and ended the meeting.
It’s things like this that make my life warm and fuzzy at all times.

Plus, if he ever reads this, I know he’ll try to Google asshat.

*I spent way too long trying to make that title work. I gave up, basically.

Long Time, No Blog

I've been busy, but that's no excuse for not blogging.
I really haven't encountered anything this week that I found funny enough to blog about.

I DID promise a double-shot of Kung-Fu goodness so here it is:
KUNG-FU HUSTLE was a huge surprise. I expected the Fu to be good, and after a phone call of recommendation from my super-brain friend Bobbo I expected the comedy to work as well.
I did not think the drama and tear-jerker moments would work. This is Kung Fu for God's sake. I was wrong. The whole Kit-n-Kaboodle worked like crazy. Anyone who likes Kung-Fu flicks, and comedy in line with ARMY OF DARKNESS, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and the like, should rush out to see this.

The other shot is LADY SNOWBLOOD. Since Jami and I are quite fond of the KILL BILL films, we decided to seek out the films that were stated inspirado by Tarantino himself (thankfully, he always credits the movies he borrows from, and it somehow never seems like stealing unlike P.T. Anderson, the biggest cinematic thief of all time).
The movie is beautiful. It's also a bloodbath. And the cutting (editing, not swords) is pretty interesting considering it's 1973.

So I lied at the top of the blog. I DID encounter something that I found pretty amusing. I swear I'll post it tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've got 2 potential jobs that want to see stuff from my days at Wizkids. So I'm digging up the physical games with my marketing copy, downloading old press releases, and trying to remember how I managed the advertising schedules, and stuff I haven't had to do in a while.
I'm also researching a project for myself and Joe, I'm trying to get my t-shirts lined up for Gencon, as well as sending a one-sheet of all my shirts to a list of retailers that I cold-called last week.
I've still got Ebay, daily job searches, and most importantly, a D&D miniatures Qualifier Tournament to prepare for!

While I am joking about the importance of the mini's tournament, if I just place in the top 4, I get free passes to Gencon (a 120 dollar value), which I have to go to for my shirts anyway.

I don't have a job, and somehow I feel busier now than I ever did on the show.

In other news, our younger (girl) bunny tried to hump the older (girl) bunny's head the other day. I guess doin' it (correctly) isn't as instinctual as we'd all like to think.

So tomorrow I'll blog about the one funny thing that I found out this week. It even has to do with the blog, so look out for synergy.