Lightswitch Rave

Since I don't have a day job here yet, I've had to do something for money.

That's right, chunky-style midwest ass for only $100 gets you a ride around the living room wearing a Viking helmet.

Oh, no, wait...I'm bouncing again.

I work for an agency that primarily works a club called Avalon. I'll be working another club soon, but for now it's just this place.

Avalon is pretty big...much bigger than the venue I originally worked in. And where I usually enjoyed free concerts at Metro, Avalon is more of a nightclub. DJ's, Guidos, obnoxious lightshow, and lots of Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum DOOTALOOTOO! DOOTALOOTOO!

The upside of this is the VIP room. People pay $500 to get a table and bottle service. It's arranged on a case-by-case basis with the VIP level manager. So some people can have 5 wristbands for guests at their table, while others get 20. Basically how famous are you, how important are you in the nightclub industry, or how much are you willing to tip the level manager?
In addition, if they want to bring in a female companion that wasn't an original member of the party (sluts tripping on ecstasy) to the VIP and feed them liquor, they need to give me 20-40 dollars.

This stuff is all so standard I'm surprised I could write about it this long. I was just trying to set the stage for something I (and it turns out, even long-time workers at the club) found fascinating.

The MAJORITY of the club is Asians. That's not so surprising considering the liking that Asians took to electronica, club music and glow sticks. About 40-50% of the customers are Asian, mostly Koreans.

The surprising part; of the 50%, about 40% of them are over 45.

When you go to a club, you're certainly not prepared to see an audience that's almost a quarter Koreans your parent's age with a head full of ecstasy or acid bouncing around like they were teenagers.
I have mixed feelings on the "acting your age" thing. While I find the lone 45 year old guy at the club, pathetically trolling for women (usually in vain), this is a slightly different phenomenon. This is a whole frickin' community of older Koreans who embraced a drug-addled raver lifestyle while their kids are probably in college.

The next time I work a Saturday, I'm going to try and get to the bottom of this.

It's not like there's a huge middle-aged Ukrainian movement in Chicago that embraced speed and the neo-Mod movement, gyrating to hipster garage acts. There isn't a comparable model as far as I know.

Diet Soda Adventures

I'm on Joe's diet.

I've drank diet soda for a while now, but I'm branching out and trying different kinds.
I think this is mostly due to slick marketing. Five or six years ago there were really only about 6 or 7 diet soda choices, give or take.

Now there are millions upon millions of diet pop choices. There are now more diet pop choices than there are species of bugs. And as we all know, that standard of measure is fucking huge.

I was at Ralph's the other day and saw Diet Mountain Dew Code Red 12-packs for $3.33...nice very nice.

I rolled the dice and bought a pack. I got home, cracked open the case and opened my first can.

It tastes like cough syrup BEFORE they made cough syrup taste tolerable.

Stay away from the Diet Mountain Dew Code Red, or as the kids are calling it, DMDCR.

Tee-Hee

http://www.screenhead.com/funny/ass/faggot-cowboys-156261.php

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Oh....oh God...I gotta lay down...

That's funny.

Remember. You cannot judge. Can. Not. Judge.
Different culture = immune to criticism.

I would pay cold hard cash to see a GLAD march in Turkey.

Morphine with a demerol chaser

Last night I saw Martin Landau in the parking lot of Rite-Aid on Sunset.

At first I thought "Wow, that guy could be Martin Landau's twin". Then I remembered that I live in Hollywood. That probably was Mr. Landau.

Then I got confused. Did Martin Landau die? I know Walter Matthau died several years ago because I remember his Oscar clip send-off and sometimes people switch their names even though they look nothing alike.

Sort of like Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman.

At any rate, I had to put calls out to three people before I could get an answer (thanks to Andrew from Orlando). Yes, Martin Landau is alive and well.

So that was definately him last night. He looked well.
He drives a tan Lexus with papers and crap up on the dashboard like an old man's car. I

I have to figure out which celebrities I want to hassle so I'm not at a loss when I see them.

For example, JLo gets "I like tacos and burritos" at the top of my lungs, then I'll run away like a madman screaming "taco taco".

If I see OJ I'll make a stabbing motion then give him a wink and a nod like "Oh yeah, we both got away with a little somthin' somthin', didn't we brother"?

If I see Bill Maher I punch him in the face for all I'm worth and scream semper fidelis.

I'm open to other suggestion for other celebs...

Denial ain't just another way to get knocked the fuck out

Matt Hughes is going to fight Royce Gracie. Even their respective websites tell a tale.

But first, some background.

Royce Gracie did a lot for the sport of mixed martial arts. His family pioneered No-Holds-Barred fights in Brazil and beyond. In the early 1990's, Royce proved that you had to have some ground skills in order to be a complete fighter. Jui-jitsu was largely a mystery. Everyone watched in shock as a 260-lb world class wrestler, Dan Severn, tapped on the mat in confused defeat...Because he didn't know what a triangle choke even was.

Martial arts hit a leap in evolution in the mid-90's that rivals (if not surpasses) anything done by even the deified Bruce Lee . Suddenly, every martial arts school -that was serious about martial arts being useful for fighting- integrated Jui-jitsu in some way or another.

Royce and his family have all become very wealthy from this show of skill. They deserve it.
However.
Royce has sort of been more of a MMA celebrity than an actual fighter. Yes, he's had some fights in Japan at PRIDE. One fight a year, matched up against questionable opponents at best...and he's drawn two of those fights.

In short while Royce was essential to, and sculpted the formation of modern MMA, he hasn't been relevant for many years now.

So why in the world would he fight Matt Hughes; a guy seven years his junior with a 38 and 4 record, the current welterweight champion of the world, and who's had but one loss out of his past 18 fights ?

He certainly doesn't need the money.
That can only mean he actually believes that he can win. That can only mean that either all Brazilians, if not just the Gracie family are completely and fucktastically insane.

Worse yet, other people must catch it somehow. The Gracies give off some sort of scent or pheromone that robs other people of the ability to make quality distinctions, or perhaps see.

Matt Hughes is on the top of his game. He is the modern product of a complete understanding of the most useful elements for the most perfect fighter; Wresting, Muay Thai, Jui-Jitsu and perhaps western boxing. These arts have fused into a hybrid which every successful MMA fighter emulates. There are minor variations and everyone is strongest in their base art, but the hybrid exists...and Royce existed before the hybrid.

There was a short transition period when the horse was still more useful than the steam engine in some instances. However that time was short, and then there was the car. The horse became an anachronism.

Come this May, as sad as it will be to watch, thousands of people will buy a Pay-Per-View to watch a nuclear powered jet pack tear a perfectly good cart horse limb from bloody limb.

The Runaway Bride Meets The Cockshitfuckeringtons

I read a script today.

The formatting was fine. It ran a tad long. There were some clever jokes. They could maintain "voice" for the most part. It had a beginning, middle and end. A welcome, merciful, very looked-forward to ending.

It was a romantic comedy.

Historically, I am not the biggest fan of romantic comedies. I will try to think of the few that I've really liked...SAY ANYTHING, AMALIE, SLIDING DOORS (thus, I'm a homosexual), AS GOOD AS IT GETS, GROUNDHOG DAY, and SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER. If you count these two as RC's, then PRINCESS BRIDE and GROSS POINT BLANKE are my very favorites.
Just last week I saw an amazing romantic comedy done right; YOU AND ME AND EVERYONE WE KNOW. That's about it. I'm sure I'm forgetting some stragglers but there are hundreds and hundreds of romantic comedies. If you count all the one's from the 40's there might be thousands. As a whole genre that's pretty terrible.

To the point;

I realized while I was reading this script why romantic comedies are in general, so terrible. They're all just like The Aristocrats.
That is, the beginning and the end of a romantic comedy are all the same in order to qualify as a romantic comedy. ACT I is any manner of Unrequited Love or Two Lovesick Lost Souls. The end of ACT III? They get together.
The Two Lovesick Lost Souls can be particularly agonizing because everything could be solved by a fucking phone call.
Hello? Wow! You're my soulmate, and I love you forever! El Fin.

However you have to fill that sticky bit called ACT II.

And the middle my friends is where the devil makes his bed.

Any crazy-assed story - that you would never accept in any other genre - can be crammed into that middle part and nobody seems to bat an eye.

Mistaken identity is a big one. I think that's because they can just copy out of Cyrano de Bergerac. Come to think of it, they do. Every time.

Time travel, dead lovers, shape-changing lovers, and alien lovers are all fair game. (Big bonus points if somebody tells me what 4 movies I'm referring to right there).
Engaging in behavior that would normally get you arrested is the bare minimum in stupid crap.

On a closer examination, RC's are sort of a negative image of The Aristocrats when examining the two by merit. The middle of the Aristocrats is all that matters because it's the execution and delivery of that section that makes the joke, not the ending.
In RC's, the middle would be Cool Whip or Blueberry pie filling if the producers thought they could get away with it because all they're really interested in is that last moment. The moment when the two characters admit to, discover, or confess their love for one another. That's the RC's "money shot".

Based on what I've read tonight, (up there with MAID IN MANHATTAN or GIGLI) there is a silent contest amongst RC screenwriters to come up with the most ridiculously retarded bullshit in the history of the universe for that middle part.
I don't know if they win millions of dollars, or get some secret WGA prize for writing the dumbest shit ever concieved by man, but the goal is clearly there.

Party hats and hors d'oeuvres

A week and a day ago, my Los Angeles host threw me and another newcomer a very nice welcome party.

It was held at a friend's house due to the overwhelming response to the e-vite sent out some time ago.
All manner of industry Angelinos either made an appearance or stayed for the long haul. The party started early and the last few stragglers didn't leave until around 3AM.

My hat is off to both the host and the houselenders as it was as fine a welcome anyone could hope for.

The party was a very relaxed, friendly affair with great snacks, lots of booze and even a bit of dancing at the end of the night.
The party ebbed and flowed for a bit from the kitchen to the backyard fire-pit and then back to the kitchen.
The house drink was the Mojito, but I stuck to my tried and true friend, Whiskey.

With Whiskey in my hand and a smile on my face I shook many hands and concentrated on names, something I'm historically bad with (and must change out here).

Since I was in LA and at my welcome mixer I sort of expected some, well...tools. As the whole world knows, Los Angeles is filled with vapid, shallow a-holes who don't know poop about anything outside of themselves.
While there certainly must be some of those in the city, I didn't meet any at the party. While this may be a testament to the taste in friends and acquaintances of the above-mentioned hosts, it made me pause for thought about preconceptions about a whole city. OK, if put to the irons there was a fellow who struck me as rather smarmy. But smarmy is't the same as dumb or shallow.

For a while now, I've been on a low-publicity rejection campaign of many "pomo" and alternative comics that have nothing but contempt and venom for the Midwest and the south. Their condescension for a whole region based on being politically unsophisticated or the deep and unessesary guilt about being from the Midwest is childish.

Which begs the question; How the hell do I know anything about anyone from a city I really don't know anything about?

There were no fewer than four real (read: paid) screenwriters, a composer, a couple producers, several actresses and many non-industry types at the party. Everybody I spoke to for any length of time was either interesting, clever or at the worst, simply very engaging. Where were all the idiot toolbags?
They must've been at some other party.
Maybe in Milwaulkee.