Mysteries of Tar-Tar Revealed

I made some fish for dinner this evening.
While the yummy fishbodies were warming in my not-so-easybake oven, I realized that I didn't have anything to dip my fish in.

Since I was being so healthy and eating fish, I wanted to balance it out with some nice, tasty fat. But my fridge was barren of fatty radish sauce.

BUT, I did have some reduced calorie miracle whip and sliced pickles. Not radish in a jar, but PICKLES!!!

But how, HOW in God's name did you transform the pickles into a substance that would lend itself to being mixed with the aforementioned reduced calorie miracle whip? I used a knife, a very good, very sharp kitchen knife.
I sliced and I sliced those pickles until they were fine particles. One might even say I "diced" the pickle slices. "Dicing the pickle slices" sounds kinda naughty, but I'll leave that to barbarians like the giant homosexual Big.

When I mixed the diced pickles and the reduced calorie miracle whip, it turned into a mixture that would pass not only for a distant cousin of tartar sauce, but I daresay it could pass as a brother, or even the offspring of tartar sauce.

I used the newly-born mixture to further flavor my fish dinner.

It was delicious.

So now...PLEASE stop all the emails asking if I've ever made my own tartar sauce.

Who Are We Kidding?

The murderer of Theo Van Gogh is getting life in prison.

While I don't know much about the legal system in the Netherlands, I suppose this is the best anyone could hope for.

What I'm really interested in lately is the world, Hollywood, the Right, the Left, and just about everyone else ignoring what's going on in the Netherlands.

Putting aside Iraq, 9/11, 7/7/05, the bombing of the USS Cole, the first attack on the World Trade Center, and all sorts of other attacks from Islam on the West, the Netherlands fascinates me the most.

The Muslim population of the Netherlands has skyrocketed over the past few years. Coincidentally, rape, gay-bashing, and other violent attacks on just about everyone not Muslim has gone up anywhere from 100 to 1000% depending on who you listen to and trust.

Regardless, it's undeniable by any rational person from any political leaning that the influx of Muslims into one of the most laid-back, socialist, hippie-friendly places on planet Earth has resulted in a DRASTIC increase in violence and intolerance.

Yet, the Left says nothing. Hollywood says nothing. And for that matter, much of the Right says nothing as well. The Emperor is wearing new clothes, but they're drenched in the blood of innocents .

It's only a few places where I've seen people write about the horrors of fundamentalist Muslims raping and murdering their merry way across the Netherlands. Ideologically, the Netherlands is a prime playground. It's remarkably liberal. It doesn't have a death penalty. It's absolutely PLUMP for the picking.

But for some residual PC reason, we can't talk about how fundamentalist Islam is a murderous sickness on the planet.

We can't talk about how it poisons every society it drives, or infects through immigration.

It seems to me that Muslims that are more interested in prosperity and progress move to America, and are counted as heretics.

These Muslims basically become more or less indistinguishable from any other fundamentalists here in the US; they support certain ideals. They'll politic for them, they'll sign petitions, but they don't blow people up.

I'm simply disturbed that we are incapable of even acknowledging the horrors that are occurring in plain site. If we can't even address these events in the media, how are we going to actually combat them at a cultural level?

Bizarro Ghetto 7-11

Last night I stopped at a 7-11.
This particular 7-11 is located in an area of south Orlando dominated by "the parks". Disney, Universal, Sea World and all the smaller parks are about 25 minutes south of downtown. Five minutes north of the parks there is a wonderland of tourist attractions and restaurants.

The strip has things stuff like a Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, a giant Nascar-themed store, some outlet malls, and very nearly 2300 tattoo shops.

While I know lots of sorority girls get a flower, dolphin, Yin-Yang, or a smiling hippie Sun tattoo when they come to spring break...Orlando is not the spring break capitol. It's the family tourist place. I see rich families, European families, black families, white families, and poor families. Lots and lots of poor families.

I'm ignoring the obvious "white trash family tattoo joke" in this part of the blog.

But in THIS part of the blog, I'm wondering...Seriously, why does Orlando need a million zillion tattoo places? Unless the state makes people get "I drive like a total asshole" tattooed their forehead when they get their Florida license, I don't see the need for so many shops.

So this 7-11 is next to a tattoo shop.

I walk into the 7-11 and the first thing I hear is retching. The combined sounds of somebody violently hurling and the sickening noise of it hitting a bucket are SECOND loudest things going on in the store.
That's right...SECOND.
The loudest thing going on is two skinny black guys loudly yelling at/confusing/playing with/robbing the clerk.

One of the skinny black guys didn't have any shoes on. Even with all this racket and chaos, my first instinct was "hey, aren't you not allowed in here?" Because everybody knows black people aren't allowed into 7-11's.

The two guys were loudly demanding THAT pack of cigars, no...not that one...Those over there...and so on. The clerk, a young Caribbean-looking black girl was smiling through the whole thing. At one point, the guys were so violent about whatever it was they were communicating to her (I could not make out a single word) that I thought they were going to jump over the counter.

I had to look over my shoulder at the street that this 7-11 is on. Yup, tourist t-shirt shops, family-themed stores, smiling balloons and cupcake fairies on every corner. I had clearly walked through a teleporter when I walked into the store.

Eventually, the mini-riot in front of me in like broke up and the loud skinny black guys left the store. At no point during their reign of the 7-11 did they or the clerk give any acknowledgement to the person tossing their cookies with Niagara Falls force.

I risked a glance to the back of the store (that tiny hallway that all those stores have that lead to the coffin-sized back room) while I approached the clerk. All I could make out was the back of a hunched-over female figure. She was holding her hair out of the way with one hand, and the bucket with the other.

I asked the clerk "Is she OK?"

"I don't know...her boyfriend left to get their car so she didn't have to walk back to the hotel."

Finally, some answers. That was something that made sense. How sweet of her boyfriend...."BING!"

The 7-11 door opened while I finished my purchase and out of the darkness emerged a thin, six foot-five inch albino guy wearing an enormous black cowboy hat.

I tell the guy "she's in the back."

He just nodded his head in that quick, up-nod fashion that I think means "thanks man" or something like that.

I now have an honest to goodness official "weirdest bottle of water purchase ever" story.

Boogidy boogedy boo!

So Bob Geldolf and Bono think that their no-money raising, narcissistic, megomaniacal vanity project Live8 INFLUENCED the leaders of the God-damned world to give more debt relief to Africa.


This, in my opinion, is every bit as crazy as somebody claiming to know the reincarnation of Vishnu is made of pudding and living in his cat's pants.

OK...in the sake of fairness...I think I'm all cool and stuff. I think I'm soooo clever, smarter than some of my bosses, creative, and I think I kick a little ass. I dwell on my strong points because I'm also a paranoid, nerdy, tubby guy.

Even taking into consideration how wicked awesome I think I am...I would never, ever, not even if super-smart, time-traveling, ruler monkeys from the future came and told me it was true, ever think the leaders of the world were taking my advice on foreign policy. I don't think they would take my advice on a good restaurant, much less how to run the freakin' world.

Yet, writing The Joshua Tree is apparently such a delusion-inducing experience that Bono believes Bush, Blair, Putin or any other world leader gives a rat's ass what he has to say. He and Geldolf are absolutely convinced that their concert influenced proposals at the G8 summit to raise debt relieve to Africa by fifty billion by 2010 or some other shit that's not going to happen.

First of all, it shouldn't happen. At least not until we get some bloody-ass revolutions throughout most of Africa and about 20 or 30 murderous regimes are no longer starving people to death in order to feed a few thousand mercenaries.

Secondly, it just won't happen. There's ALWAYS some sort of summit, peace accords, environmental policy meeting, or some other crap that world leaders get together and decide should happen....and it rarely does (which is probably about a wash as far as the state of the world is concerned...some of the ideas may have worked, and a lot of them, well a lot of them are like Oslo).

But NEVERTHELESS, dear readers....what, in the name of anything that's considered Holy, did Bob Geldolf and Bono do that would influence world leaders? They had a CONCERT! The money didn't even go to Africa, they weren't allowed!

I think I'm going to have a dance party to raise awareness for the administration to try and get conservatives into the newly freed up Supreme Court seats.
Then, when that happens I can say my dance party magically had something to do with it! Wheeeee!! I'm a fairlyland Kingmaker! They put me in magazines, and that means I'm important in every way possible!

Bwoo-hoooty hoooooo!!!

A tiny light brings Hope in the Darkest of hours

I've been pretty irritable lately. But then again, things have been really shitty, so it's not without cause.

Since I've moved to Florida, nothing but misery and misfortune have befallen me and the people I love.

In particular, getting fired in this state, with a fraction of the film/television production work that was here four years ago...I was really fucked. I will not lie and say I've never been closer to swift and blinding violence as I've been the past few weeks.

Jami and I relocated here for the simple reason that we thought the show was going to "become something". That may or may not be true, but it's 1)happening too slowly and 2)happening without me. So in either case I really don't give a crap.

Incidentally, (since absolutely nothing reminded me of it) I read a great article on a mobster website about pistol whipping. It was a very articulate scientific/medical explanation about why it' so terrible.

As some of you may or may not know, when you hit something with your first, or even a nice knee or elbow, you're still bashing something with relatively the same density against something else...bone against bone. Granted, jaw and cheek bones are more fragile, so they typically loose.

The article points out that gun metal is particularly dense. It's specifically made dense enough to withstand lots of heat and repeated actions without wearing down at all. This means a really, really dense atomic structure.

The article describes how wood, or even an aluminum bat will "give" a little and this reduced the kinetic energy transferred to the skull or jaw. They did point out that short lead pipes react in the same way as guns.

At any rate, the mob used good ol' fashioned pistol whipping because it caused massive amounts of trauma to the head and face in very little time. It got into some medical stats that I didn't understand, but what I was able to take away from it was this; a good crack from a pistol in the face can be better than several repeated blows to the mug from a closed fist. So in the future, if you find time is of the essence...

NOW, as far as the light goes...I have an interview this week and I got a response from a production company about my resume. They're waiting for my reel, and then setting up an interview as well.

Also Jami has already had two interviews, and has another tomorrow. It looks like financial ruin will have to wait.

If the job pays anything more than what I made on the show, we should have enough money to move to LA by the end of our lease in November.

I apologize that I don't have anything funny to post about...I just wanted to post in general. I figured SOMEBODY should post something.

Homo...homo caprice....this means you two guys.

You Make Me Feel So Loved...

WOW! You guys are sweeties. Big, fat, gay-sounding sweeties.
I've never felt so missed in all my days.

I did take a mini vacation to visit some friends. 90% of the trip ruled. Good times. About 10% of the trip sucked beyond belief. While I won't go into details, lets just say my wedding guest list just got shorter.

IN OTHER NEWS:

It's Jami's birthday today. She turned a mighty 28. She is old as mother nature herself.

For her B-day, besides lots of attention, a zombie movie and cake, Jami asked for one other thing; she thought we should get high.

It had been quite a long time for both of us and it sounded really fun.

So with highness and some burnt brain cells in our sights, we set out to find some pot. I have a neighbor in a band, as mentioned below in "The Shotgun Approach". As we all know, "in a band" is code for "guy who gets high or knows people who get high". OK, that may not be what that means, but it's certainly true.

As it turns out, our first guess was our best guess and we "scored". We went about our zombie-watching, irresponsible, drug-addled birthday celebration.

For the most part I enjoyed the pot. As some of you may or may not know, it gets you high and that feels good.

The downside was surprising. Even while high, LAND OF THE DEAD was really bad.

The movie had some really awkward war criticisms. Don't get me wrong, Romero's first two zombie films certainly had anti-corporate, anti-homogenization and other anti-messages at its core. This worked very well because zombies are a great metaphor for a consumer-based society. The middle of the road tends to like all the same stuff, dress the same way, and shop at the same stores because it's really convenient, not because they're mindless automatons.
But implying they're (read: us) mindless automatons is exactly the type of fruity artistic statement that filmmakers generally think is deep. But on the surface, we (read: nerds) just want to see zombies eat people, and desperate people on the run shooting zombies in the head. That's all that's necessary for a good zombie movie...or so I thought.

It turns out a good zombie movie also has to actually be about people getting eaten, or the threat of being eaten by zombies.
This movie was about class struggles, corporate fat cats that would run the post-zombie apocalypse city and dangerous rebels that always question authority and do the right thing.

Those things might be fine and dandy in, oh, I don't know...not a zombie movie.
I discovered that while subtextually a zombie movie can be about all sorts of societal quirks and guilt-ridden capitalist grimacing, at the end of the day you really just want to see undead heads explode in the wake of the protagonists trying to shoot thier way to freedom...and likely fail.

While this movie had some gore and some zombies chewin' people, its anti-war agenda (note; this was not subtext...it was an agenda) was so forced and clunky, it felt like somebody trying to use an episode of Friends to tell people about the dangers of landmines in North Africa. It just isn't the platform for that message.

Even worse, this message aside, the movie was still quite bad. Nothing made a lick of sense. If I sat down to imagine the post-zombie apocalypse holdout city, I would try to figure out what would make sense, and what I would need for the sake of good narrative and pacing.

In this movie, neither was a concern. For one, the cell phone infrastructure was unaffected by the zombie apocalypse. As was what's needed to support GPS technology.

In the other direction, bullets are a problem. On the realism side, one would imagine that conserving ammo would be crucial while on the other side, spraying lots of bullets into zombies is important for production values in a zombie movie. While they went with the slightly less attractive "spray lots of bullets" route (a choice I would make as well) the look and the technique of Romero's bullet ballet hasn't matured since the 70's. It was uninteresting. It had no dynamics, it didn't have energy, it was boring.
The remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD figured out how to make the drama before the shootings of zombies carry some weight. It had a sense of urgency and gave the audience the impression that the person would have certainly been eaten if they hadn't shot that zombie.
In LAND, there was no urgency. People clumbsily shot their guns like they've nevereven held a bb gun at zombies that weren't close enough to pose a threat.

THAT would be because if a zombie is close enough to you to pose a threat, it's already chewing on you. With only one or two exceptions, when a zombie is close enough to somebody to be scary, they're already a goner.

Finally, there were just too many plot, pacing, acting, script, and technical (within the movie technical, not filmically technical) problems for the fim to succeed.

Jami pointed out the most crucial missing element (which I hadn't noticed), a climax. When the movie ended she asked "why did it end there, and not just anywhere else?" She was very right...nothing really happened.

SPOILER!!! ZOMBIE MOVIE FORM BROKEN AND REVEALED BELOW!

There was a loose plan laid out in the first act to get away from the city. In the end of the movie, they drive away from the city. However, there was no coherent dramatic cusp to precede the driving away...it just eventually happened.

So even though zombie movies are in my not-so-famous "trio of must-see movie plots"*, this one was a real let-down.

*Mike's Trio of must-see Movie Plots:
I will see any movie, and I do mean any movie, which is essentially about one of these three things;
1) People in the past killing each other. (Usually sword and sandal epics, but can also be about historic "rebels", but westerns and mob movies also fall into this category)

2) People or things with weird powers or abilities blowing crap up. (This covers super-hero movies, alien movies, fantasy movies and GOOD kung-fu movies.)

3)Undead things eating people and getting shot in the head (otherwise known as zombie movies)

Obviously, Kung-Fu movies fulfill both 1 and 2, so they totally rule.