You're not getting scene one.

Oh, medical humor.

1: So, what branch of medicine are you involved in?
2: I'm an oncologist.
1: Oh, tumors and stuff, huh?
2: No, I work in an ER, it just seems like I spend my life ON CALL.

You may use this title, but only for something really good.

Adjust a gigolo.

Thresholds.

Meeting a celebrity is exciting.
Lower your concept of celebrity and meeting people can be exciting, too.

Bugs.

"Bugs" is actually a totally sweet name.

Tubach

Someone should get on this:
Write all tuba arrangements of some Bach pieces (might I recommend quartets as a place to start), get them recorded, and then remix the result with all Tupac vocals and some beats. Gold. It's all gold.

sad family issues vs. all-out rumpus

The Hollywood film industry is like a friend of your dad's who seemed super awesome when you were growing up, but that you're old enough to really understand people you can see that he's a misinformed lecherous mess and you don't really want to deal with him most of the time, but also sometimes when he comes to Thanksgiving he gets drunk and hits on your aunt and then punches a cousin and passes out in gravy and that can be (though it doesn't have to be) pretty funny.

Right now we're having a feud, the film industry and I, where it has decided to go through my childhood and ruin everything I loved, one by one. A few examples: Transformers, Indiana Jones, Willy Wonka, Rocky and Bullwinkle, GI Joe, and the Wild Things.

It is my hope that perhaps we can push this trend to the extreme and start making things that are clearly based on my (and our collective) beloved childhood, but are not even a little bit trying to recapture it. Let's own that we're ruining things and push it as far as we can. Here then is my pitch for the next film I would like to see come out of this:


Gummi Bears: the (live action) Movie

The gummi bears should be portrayed by people in foam suits, a la Teletubbies, but with the actors' faces uncovered. All sets should be scaled up to make these people look small, and anyone portraying a person should be green-screened in to seem huge. The ogres should be a muppet/cgi combo.

The plot will focus around Duke Igthorn trying to become invincible and immortal and it should include the Barbic Gummis, Lady Bane, and a wizard. Things should blow up, and there should be battles that feel like they belong in the Lord of the Rings. Also Cavin should come of age. There should be some really uncomfortable sexual tension.

Cast -
Cavin: Michael Cera
Igthorn: Christopher Guest
Gruffi: Dean Stockwell
Zummi: Dustin Hoffman
Grammi: Kathy Bates
Tummi: Zach Galifianakis
Sunni: Ellen Page
Cubbi: Emile Hirsch

A sad sad story

I went to a flea market today. A man was selling some old cameras including a nineteen-forty-something 8mm motion film camera that so small I could palm it and you would not know it was in my hand. The lens (and by lens I mean the entire mechanism, not just the glass) had a diameter of about two thirds of a dime. It was amazing. And adorable. I was admiring it and the man came over and first told me that it was too old to be used to take pictures, and then told me that he wanted twenty-five dollars for it. I had been thinking more along the lines of fifteen (though, of course, at this point in my life money has a pretty inflated meaning for me, so even fifteen is a lot), so I did not purchase the camera. I got to thinking later, though, that it must be sad for a thing like a camera to become something that is worth more to a person operating as a collector as an unwanted collectible than to a person operating as an artist as a tool for creation.

I hope, of course, that someone who wants to shoot 8mm finds it and buys it and loves it. I don't want it to spend any part of its productive life not living up to its potential.

a flash mob?

Here is a fun game to play with friends:

You will need a place where people are at. I like tourists. Anywhere with a crowd (but it is nice if that crowd might have some cameras). You will need, also, several friends. You and your friends will go to the place with your own cameras (also you need cameras) and you will take pictures of each other taking pictures. The goal is to get as many pictures of the other players taking pictures as possible without being noticed by the people you are photographing. The secondary goal is to notice anyone who is taking a picture of you and make sure they do not get a shot of you taking a shot.

Go. Play.

On compliments.

If a person is one in a million, wouldn't that mean that there are almost seven thousand other people exactly like them?

patron of the everlovin' arts

Someone should make a website in the social networking style wherein artists may sign up for a page and show off what they do. They could maybe sell their work from there, in the name of strict capitalism, but that is not what it is really about. Also people may find work they like and make direct contributions, which would be really nice, but also is not the meat of the site. The meat is where rich people who love art can find artists they want to date and try to woo them on the internet.


This is a really good idea. If anyone wants to make it but wants help with figuring out details, I'm all over giving you a hand.

Which side are you on?

Kettle corn vs. unicorn.

A line of dialogue for you to use.

"He's a real dick in wolf's clothing."

It has taken me a long time to get here.

I have, for as long as I can remember, been the unwilling recipient of a few specific adjectives (or descriptive phrases): unique, full of potential, strange, idiotic, and a few others in a similar vein. I reject (and have forever rejected) them all.

However, I have, in the last few days, while watching videos that film students have made and placed on the internet (presumably because they were proud of them) come to accept that I do have a different aesthetic than many (perhaps even the majority of) other people.

Sadly, it is impossible.

You know what would make an amazing film?
An early-career Bill Murray obliviously following and irritating a depressed late-career Bill Murray.

I wish I had the attention span and literary chops to throw down a manifesto proper.

When making a film (or video for the internet, even), it is not important to show life as it is. We all know it. Show life as it happens post-processing; after the brain has finished considering and tainting it. That is what makes the film a necessary step in the storytelling.

True story.

I drove past a playground today and a bunch of little girls were waving at all the cars, so I honked and waved and they were totally pumped. Yesterday I was messing around on youtube, as one sometimes does, and I discovered the appallingly boring world of tween girls making "the and show". There are a TON of them, and not one of them knows what they're doing. One of the videos I watched a bit of (I could not make it all the way through any of them) featured two girls on a front lawn, presumably to do a half-thought out bit when they are distracted by tenuous and fleeting interlocution with a passing clutch of golf players.

It is stunning how much merely making contact with other people is exciting for young people. Where does that go? How can we harness that? There's so much art to be had in working with strangers.

A bit of dialogue for you to (fix up and) put in something:

1: So, the marathon you're running is three days long?
2: Not quite. It's three marathons on sequential days. They're a tournament.
1: Won't everyone be too exhausted to run in the second and third race?
2: Sure, yeah. That's part of what makes it hard. The first day we have four marathons with anyone who enters. The top fifty in each race compete on the second day in two marathons of a hundred people, and the top twenty-five in each of those run in the Master Race on the third day.
1: You're calling the final marathon the "Master Race"?
2: Yeah.
1: You might want to rethink that.

A play with elderly puppets:

Paunch and Droopy.

I said this one time and I stand behind it.

Science: the Religion of Magic.

I have always thought I was prepared.

I assumed that no matter where or when I would be ready to take on a creationist who wants to make arguments against evolution based in "science". If they resorted to faith, I know, I would not be able to argue, as they'd be in an arena I am unequipped to enter. But fake science I am all over.

Joining a gym has provided a few new opportunities for me. For instance, last week I was hit on while naked for the first time ever. A guy ogled me in the shower, and then tried to take me home (while still in the shower, and then again in the locker room). It's an ego-boost to have someone interested in you for your fully exposed body, but also it's a little weird.

Tonight went a tiny step further when, while I was sitting in the steam room the only other guy in there started talking to me and masturbating a little. I looked away to indicate my lack of interest. I think steam rooms are a pretty legit place to pick someone up, so I assumed he was just seeing if I was interested, because he stopped when I didn't respond favorably. There are pretty basic rules of conduct. No reason to get offended unless you indicate lack of interest and a guy persists in automanipulation. After all, if there were naked girls in the steam room and I were in any way comfortable propositioning a strange girl, I'm sure I'd try to pick people up in the steam room, too. There's something tantalizing about being hot and wet and not able to see very far. Maybe not if you're myopic and lost in the everglades.

When I didn't go for the flesh, he switched over to congenial conversation mode, which I am pretty much a sucker for, so we talked about what exercises we do, and then he told me about how if you don't use your leg muscles your body starts to die, which I countered by talking about this totally fantastic article I read the other night about how monkeys have way long toes and we don't and there are a bunch of scientists who think that the only reason our toes would have evolved shorter is so that we can run extreme distances. I think that's great, that we evolved to run all day, and to chase down animals to eat. He sat up and told me that they haven't proven evolution and that's why it's "just a theory".

What? Really? You were just masturbating to see if I was interested in anonymous gay sex and you're a conservative christian? How does that even happen? In my confusion, and also due to my wanting to relax after some exercise (hence the steam room), I didn't jump to my defenses and correct his swapping of the vernacular bastardization of "theory" (which we probably should put an end to) for the much more stringent scientific actual definition of "theory". "Just a theory" doesn't make a thing unproven. "Just a hypothesis" does.

I learned today that I am not always ready to take on the confused. Because sometimes I, myself, am confused.

That sounds like the beginning of a secular sermon. Are there science churches? There ought to be. Where really charismatic people talk about dealing with issues and coping with the world and also science. Neal Degrasse Tyson would be a great minister of science.

Mondays and Thursdays are a dollar a string.

I have been bowling sidearm for years. It's the only way I know how. I'm not a very good bowler. Sometimes my father tries to show me how it's normal to bowl and I can't seem to do it. No matter what I think I do he says I'm still swinging way out to the side.

Last night, between the two strings we bowled, he said to me, "Jim, when you only have a few pins left you seem to have more control." That is because when there're only one or two standing I throw underhand instead of sidearm. I told him this. "Then why don't you just throw underhand all the time?"

My second score was more than twice my first.

Things I learned in college:

If you are going to be a mess, you might as well be a hot mess.

Voicemail I left for myself on a fifteen mile walk the other night: 2.

Voicemail I left for myself on a fifteen mile walk the other night: 1.

I would like to apologize.

My mind has mostly stopped bursting of late.
I promise it will be back someday.

In which I am a dick about people spelling things wrong, and also I put no effort into drawing a wolf.

I totally forgot to integrate the joke into this in any way and it is this: "warewolf".

Tower of Gower

I can not sleep at all tonight.

The thunderstorms are incredible.


It is the kind of a night that makes a man want to make big changes in his life.

Merely an observation.

Everyone who is in a Wendy's at eleven at night on a Wednesday is in some kind of a situation.

Men who have written one song I enjoy and have a vast catalogue of music I find unlistenable.

1. Rob Thomas
2. Rod Stewart

Terrifying speculative statistics.

I can pretty confidently assert a hypothesis that nearly every police officer in the country has watched Bruce Willis fire a gun.

I have discussed this with a few people before, I don't believe it's fully in the public consciousness yet.

Mix cds are fully as romantic (and take the same mantle) as bouquets of flowers.

Of course, mixtapes were even moreso. But nobody has the required equipment for them anymore.

The cereal is pretty good, though.

"Life" is the most depressing board game.

Tower of Gower

I know this can't be done, because it's been done from all angles already.

I was just wandering around this evening, my mind doing the same, when I stumbled into fantasy territory that would best be described as a meeting of Shaolin Soccer and dodgeball. I mean, it started as a life-fantasy, but then I had a fleeting moment of "it should be a movie", when clearly it can't.

It could have that beautiful moment, though, when the main protagonist finally busts out his chi for the first time and he's about to lose and he's totally freaking out and then he puts on his big determined angry face and all the balls float up off the floor and hover around him before he starts sending them careening across the court.

Businesses I would start if I came into a huge extra lot of money,

And how profitable/successful I think they would be:

1. A vegetarian fast food restaurant that will focus on the sloppy vibe of fast food rather than being the most healthy. Also it will serve local sodas and use local ice cream in milkshakes. The menu will be limited, in the style of an In 'n Out or a Five Guys. I think it will be called "Monster Food Monster".
2. A soda company that will have flavors such as cucumber rose and sesame seed. Flavors from actual mashed-up plants. We will sweeten with stevia and xylitol exclusively.
3. An advertising agency named initially "'Mild' Wayne Toothfairy's Wild Maine Blueberries", which will soon thereafter be shortened to "Mild Wayne's". It should seem as much like a lounge-bar as an advertising agency can. It will mostly be focused around television commercials, but will be all up into total rebranding if the opportunity arises.
4. A production company, which ought to make features, but will also ideally involve a compound somewhere that will focus on the revitalization of television serials and to that end will have a team of house actors and pump out one eight or ten episode piece every year. Also I am still interested in running weekly soap operas in movie theaters.
5. A museum which has science and art and confusion all mashed up against one another. It should also feature an attached movie theater that is running something all the time (but certainly not first run anything) that you can pay five dollars to get into and stay as long as you please.
6. A gymnasium called "Brollic" that will focus on marital arts and running with weights and doing yoga with weighted straps while listening to metal songs slowed way down. Also classes in doing pull-ups.

1. Moderate in most places, but slammin' in places like Portland and San Francisco.
2. Probably not that well at all.
3. Slow start, but a big bang.
4. We would burn the charts.
5. Very few people would even notice, but the ones who did would be happy.
6. So awesome.

Things I would obtain if I had expendable money:

An El Camino.
Darkroom equipment/chemicals.
Materials for making paint.
Wood.
A pull-up bar.
Film.
A video camera.
Extension of flickr pro account.
The science of rockets.
A ukulele.

It is a new television show.

"Kids Tell the Worst Stories".

the Zombievore's Dilemma

I know that "zombievore" is not a word, so shut up about that.


What is the purpose of a zombie? They're a strange species, if you can call them that. We have no definitive answer as to whether they are a symbiotic monstrosity (like Voltron!) or merely a reanimated body. Regardless, their two primary goals seem to be those same first two goals all species have: to eat food (self-preservation), and to propagate.

The issue, of course, with zombies, is that their means of reproduction is accomplishable only by failing to thoroughly feed. Given that they are essentially brainless creatures, devoid of thought processes higher than instinct, and the fact that they tend to travel in large ravenous packs, how do they regulate? And each person they only take one bite out of then becomes one more hungry set of rotting teeth in the pack. There must be some rule as to how many people can be turned and how many must just be eaten.

Assuming that people are nutritionally comparable to pork (about 137 calories per 113 grams of flesh), and also assuming that the average zombie needs as many calories to keep going as a person who spends his or her days roaming around and tackling food (in the range of 2800 calories), a zombie needs in the neighborhood of 2300 grams (or five pounds) of human flesh per day.

That stated, if the average American is 191 lbs. in men and 164 lbs. in women (as it was in 2002), and if a zombie needs to be at least 3/4 present to remain functional after conversion, the average American could feed eight or nine zombies for a full day and still become a zombie him or herself. That's actually a lot better than I would have imagined. So then the only concern becomes what to do when there are only zombies left. Because cannibalism is uncivilized.


Also, I ought to acknowledge that I am talking, here, about Romero zombies, not voodoo zombies. I imagine voodoo zombies just ate (eat?) normal people foods and were (are?) not concerned with making new zombies.

Tower of Gower

Things that (at least from the standpoint of a man) are more beautiful than art can be:

A functional old mechanical watch that was owned by a grandfather who did good things.
A pocketknife with a worn-down handle.
Unflinching work in unpleasant weather.
A hot meal.
Sitting together in silence.

I strongly believe...

I strongly believe that a man should be allowed to urinate anywhere on his property that he chooses.

This is actually maybe a really good idea.

A book for kids about a housecat who covets his owner's food so much that he wishes to be as tall as his owner and have fingers like his owner so that he can gain access to it. His wish is granted, and he becomes a sasquatch.

Films with no target audience: part two.

A homophobic guy in a gym locker room thinks he sees another guy making eyes at him. He decides to beat him up, but wants to be duplicitous, so he posts on missed connections. The other man responds, and they arrange to meet in a motel. The homophobic guy gets the room and hides friends in the closet to help him beat up the other guy, but when the other guy arrives he has a posse too, because he is also homophobic and intending to commit a hate crime. The two guys become fast friends and make out.

This film is a short.

Films with no target audience: part one.

George W. Bush is in office and he realizes his advisers and cabinet are using him as a patsy and doing terrible things. He fights back against them, silently sabotaging so they will not notice.

It is time now for Lincoln...

TO ROCK.

You can not have this one because I am going to use it.

Carl Stopwatch and the Topless Carwash.



(I just laughed for probably fifteen minutes about Carl Stopwatch.)

Leaving a life.

Leaving a life that is satisfactory to do a short-term thing that is great makes returning unsatisfactory.

New Film: the Importance of Being Ernest

A fictionalized biography (only slightly in the vein of Being John Malkovich) of Jim Varney.

Tower of Gower

Difficult things to photograph attractively, round nine:

White men in black suits in direct midday sunlight.

Money, apparently, is no longer enough.

Money, apparently, is no longer enough. Oh, the tragedies of the average 26 year old.

Itinerary.

Waking up in four hours to fly out in seven hours to blitz through Lincolnfest Ultra.
Now would be a good time to sleep.

Title for a short story.

"the Plight of the Bumblebee".

It could also be for an essay on dying honeybees, but I heard that's over now.

Observations on the behaviours of men in gymnasium shower rooms.

Given a tiny towel to use in a steam room, most guys would prefer to cover their genitalia and sit on the tainted tiles than sit on the towel in the name of sanitation.

When any man encounters a naked other man, the eyes go straight to the penis. He could have one arm and a face the size of his torso: straight to the penis.


A fun game to play in the locker rooms:
Try to figure out why each guy is ashamed of his body (it's a pretty safe assumption that most of them are).

Weight at Bedtime:

166 Lbs.

Entire genres of dude whom I do not trust:

Big face/jowly.

Because it is like being inside of my head.

But much much slower.

Entire genres of girl on whom I have crushes:

Really crazy (in a non-violent way).
Has a cute voice.
Is really talented at something I don't understand.
Banters transcendentally.
Strange or asymmetrical eyes/eyebrow scar.

Solving social issues.

Is there a way we can harness the power of earthquakes to create electricity?

Midnight snack:

Cottage cheese, raisins, dill pickle, soymilk.

I need a partner.

Someone needs to start a rap group with me. We'll affect Jamaican accents and call ourselves "Tornado Pete" and "Torpedo Nate". We will sample Harry Belafonte, Lee "Scratch" Perry, and Eek-a-Mouse in every song.

Tower of Gower

Weight at bedtime:

170 Lbs.

Actors who played one role so long and so hard that they will never be known by their proper names (even if they want to be).

the Rock
Marky Mark
Screech/Urkel
Bill Cosby

I met a man named Needles.

Always wanted to write a play but needed a writing prompt?

"Who's Afraid of Lenny Echtenstein?"

That should be the title, and he should call himself Lenny, but everyone else should call him Leonard.

Let's get so rich.

Cocaine can't be that much different from caffeine, can it? Why don't people snort a ton of powdered caffeine? Is this a legal drug ring someone wants to start with me?

The male donkey is a "Jack", and the female is a "Jenny".

Weight at Bedtime:

170 lbs.

I donate to society.

A title to use for something: Lost in TransBatman.

Need a sequel? The Batman Suicides.

Weight at Bedtime:

168 lbs.

New life goal.

I want to do something (anything) that will cause Dr. John to call me (preferably to my face) a "jive sucka".

Maturity, Achieving

I have made it to a point in my life where I can admit that building a pinball machine would be pretty hard.

However, there are entirely software jukeboxes now, and it would be super-simple to make an entirely digital jukebox that just played noise, Mastodon, and Prince.

Weight at Bedtime:

168.5 lbs.

The time is ripe.

Who wants to start writing a sitcom with me?
It is called "Cosmetic ER".

I can't make money in real life

I have decided that maybe I can make money on the internet.

I have just discovered that not only can I try to sell people pictures to put on shirts, but you can propose just words that maybe they'll pay you to use. I am now (since clever has never been my primary trade) suggesting the dumbest things I can think of.

Bears
Krunk

Also Lincoln:

This is real, actual, contemporary web design.

Hopefully the rest of the internet will catch up with Lincoln Graphics soon.

There are few things as obnoxious as blogs.

I will be traveling to DC soon to take pictures of a whole mob of Abraham Lincolns.

I just wanted to state that so that it would be what my first post was about. Also: probably pictures.