My narcolepsy scares the crap out of me. But you should SEE how it scares everyone else around me!
Narcolepsy is one of those medical conditions that make no damn sense. You can fall asleep anytime, and often do, no matter where you're at, but yet you're always tired. And it's utterly amazing both to the victim and anyone around them just how easy it is to just conk out at any second's notice.
Anyone can fall asleep in church. I”VE fallen asleep while standing in the middle of a crowded museum. I've added my own special sound effects of snoring to countless movies, often provoking more laughter out of the audience around me than the alleged comedies we're watching. On occasion, i've been told I was scaring children too – which is not what you want to happen during a showing of “Toy Story.” However, I drew some admiring comments for the stereo magic I added to a showing of “Where the Wild Things Are.”
Let's keep going, shall we? I've fallen asleep at numerous jobs, which hasn't helped my employment history. I'm probably the only person in the history of Hollywood to sleep my way OUT of a job. Then of course I fell asleep at the unemployment office too, and on the bus ride over there. I fall asleep on all buses and trains to anywhere, which both protects me from seeing some of the scary people onboard but more distressingly makes me unaware of countless bad scenarios I really should be conscious for.
Tied in with the heavylidded wonderworld of narcolepsy is the even more bizarre practice of sleepwalking. I don't know what causes sleepwalking for most people, but for me it's the fact that I don't sleep right for nights on end when I WANT to crash, and then fighting to stay awake when I truly DO need to stay up. Eventually I think my brain reaches a sort of neurological traffic jam caused by the mixed signals finally jamming up so tight I decide to sleep and run errands both at the same time. Eventually it gets so bad some nights that I wind up freezing in place while standing and by the grace of God manage to reawaken while still upright, which makes me wonder how I wound up with a magazine in one hand and a glass of OJ in the other while standing two inches in front of my TV screen.
That's one upside of narcolepsy: it keeps life unpredictable and exciting! Each time I fall asleep unexpectedly or wake up suddenly in a new location thanks to the magic of conking out on the bus, it's like i've drugged, kidnapped and abandoned myself! One night last week, I was so tired I kept oversleeping and missing my train station on three different runs of the Gold Line! Woke up two stops too far one way, got off to catch the train coming back to my stop, and then woke up THREE stops too far on that one before finally managing to climb off at the right stop.
So what's the most embarrassing place I've fallen asleep, you ask? It has to be anytime I fall asleep while on the toilet. It's bad enough when my pissed-off roommates have had to pound on the door for hours to gain entry for their own desperate usage needs, but it's a particularly ghastly situation when a security guard has to pound the hell out of a stall door and assumes that i've nodded off after shooting too much heroin. I get to live the life of William S. Burroughs without the expense of actually buying the drugs.
So you might guess I don't drive. You're right – fell asleep at the wheel six years ago and crashed! Thats forced me to learn the bus and train system in LA, which is also scary but that's a WHOLE other essay. Thankfully my job as an entertainment reporter enables me to land tickets to a lot of cool events so my friends don't mind driving me around, but my job as an entertainment reporter means I've also fallen asleep while listening to some of the world's most glamorous and allegedly interesting people. Imagine the shock that coursed through OSCAR-winning actress Hilary Swank's veins when she was prattling on last week about her new movie “Amelia” - a real snoozer by the way, no pun intended – and I nearly fell forward out of my chair by an unexpected snooze attack. In front of a roomful of my journalistic brethren who all gasped in horror, she gamely offered the fact that she knew the Heimlich maneuver in case I was dying on her. If she had offered CPR, I might have faked my way through a worse situation, but I pulled it together and said I'd simply taken the wrong allergy meds.
On Saturday night, I went to see filmmaker Kevin Smith offer an audience Q&A and got a little too comfortable, sprawling my feet up on an empty seat or two in front of me until he saw me and, over the microphone and in front of a thousand people, screamed “Hey you! Sleepy guy! Wake the fuck up!” THAT scared me. I sprung awake and wound up nearly hitting the floor as my legs and arms splayed out in every direction.
You might wonder if i'm ever gonna do something about it. My mom's figured a way to scare me into it now. I just inherited some money from my beloved grandma, and she just told me I need to visit a neurologist and figure out just what the hell is going on before she'll let me see a dime of it. So next week I'm getting looked at and possibly even cured – which means i'll have to look at this scary world head-on for the first time in a long long while.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
2000 ICONS AND A FLUFFY WHITE CAT
2000 Icons and a Fluffy White Cat
By Carl Kozlowski
Try as I might, I'll never be able to block out the image of my father standing with a shovel, digging furiously through the rose garden in front of my grandma's house, hoping to act fast enough to keep us from stopping him. He was a man on a mission on that gloriously sunny yet sad morning in January 2004, as family members bustled in and out of the house that my grandma had shared with her brother and housemate for the past 54 years in the San Diego suburb of Santee, California. Her husband, my mom's father, was killed in the Battle of Normandy in WWII and so she packed up with my mom and her brother to start anew in the promised land of California back in 1950.
Meanwhile, inside, my brothers and I scoured under the house's carpeting for yet another mound of money – wrapped clusters of Benjamins stuffed into long-forgotten corners of the house by these two sibling survivors of the Great Depression, in a seemingly foolish (yet presciently sharp, considering the state of the economy these days) attempt to hide it from both the banks and the tax man. We had come across pile after pile of them so far, yet as tempting as it was to take just one little roll of $20s from its hidden perch in a coffee cup that hadn't been used since 1973, we knew in our hearts that that was still stealing.
And worse, it would have been stealing from our beloved grandma and been compounded by being swiped under the now-omniscient eyes of my deceased, beloved uncle. I've always really believed that the moment someone dies, they take on the God-like power to see everything we're doing. Talk about Catholic guilt.
And yet indeed, it was Catholic guilt that not only kept me from grabbing enough greenbacks to look like I'd just won a game show, but also Catholic guilt that was compelling my father to dig away in the front yard just six years after having quintuple-bypass open-heart surgery. For dad was trying to fulfill his cosmic Catholic duty to bury any religious trinkets he had discovered and couldn't find a new home for.
Strangely, we are told to burn American flags when we try to dispose of them, despite the fact most of us would fight to the death to prevent them from being set alight in any other situation. And just as strangely (likely more so), my dad was now attempting to bury the deitized detritus my uncle had somehow secretly acquired throughout his 84 years on God's green earth, traveling coast to coast by car and across the planet to Japan by a troop transport plane in WWII.
Funny thing was, Uncle John didn't seem particularly religious during his time on earth. I remember he would at best drive us grumpily to church on Sunday mornings during our childhood summer visits and sit grousing throughout the hour-long ordeal we called the Mass. And at worst, he'd just keep popping open beers at home on holy days and then tell us to figure out our own way to church if we really felt the need to celebrate Jesus' Ascension on a Tuesday.
My dad, meanwhile, seemed to be Uncle John's polar opposite. Raised amid the draconian, all-powerful influence of the church in Poland – which also spawned the most powerful Pope in the modern age – he had even joined a seminary himself for six months as a young man before his sister Jola stormed the barricades and helped him face down their father and the priests in charge and let them know he really didn't feel the calling to be a priest. But even though he never completed his priestly studies, he often acted like he did – with crucifixes and iconic statues discreetly placed in nearly every room of our house and a daily required Rosary session each night.
So imagine my dad's shock – and frankly, all our shock – when my dad started cleaning out Uncle John's drawers after his death and found a collection of religious statues, pictures, prayer booklets, and crucifixes that could put Pope Benedict's collection to shame. The Legion of Mary could stock up for eternal battle here, and if he really wanted to, my Dad could have called in the Vatican Exorcist team and given them enough good-luck goodies to spare them even a taste of Satan's presence for the next 20 years.
It just went to show that you can't judge a person's spiritual status – their most private internal feelings - by their outward appearance and sometimes even their personality. Uncle John had earned the right to be a crusty, sometimes angry, sometimes hilariously boisterous old man – earned it on the battle fields he fought on in Japan, while working on the post-atomic-bombing cleaning crews that did their best to minimize the damage wrought by the worst bombs ever used by mankind.
He had a severe hip injury that prevented his ability to work throughout the last 54 years of his life, an injury that was always there even as he managed to hide the pain it caused by gritting his teeth while telling a story or by popping another beer open (sometimes doing both), and most of all by disappearing into his camper each day to block out the world for a few hours of rest while listening to the latest baseball games on the radio. Uncle John chose to keep that camper and live in it nearly all year round, perched out on the driveway or on the street in front of his house – as if always ready to roll, hit the road and move on at a moment's notice. Yet he never would move, except on his solitary drives into the desert “for a few days' rest” or to the sleepy and forgotten C-grade gambling town of Laughlin, Nevada, and then every couple years on a long-ass drive across the country to see us in Arkansas while on the way back to visiting the town he was raised in: Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
A man gets to know himself on trips like those, facing only himself and his God, with only his angels and demons to keep him company along the way. So who were we to wonder and judge his relationship with the Lord, to assume it was distant or nonexistent just because he didn't thrust his views and practice of faith out into the world with as much zest as our father? Even as it was odd and embarrassing to see my father turning the dirt and dropping in Ziploc baggie after Ziploc baggie of religious figurines (they were baggied because even though they were to be buried, they also needed to be pristine), it was also strangely satisfying to know that my Uncle John had taught him a lesson from beyond the grave.
But the clearing out of religious nuggets and discoveries of O.G.-quality money stashes were just part of the larger, deeper process of helping – nay, making – my grandma move out of the home she'd lived in for nearly five and a half decades. It was the house where she and her brother, Uncle John, had raised my mom the best they could after grandma's husband and my mom's father was cut down far far short of his time while heroically fighting in the Battle of Normandy. And in summer after summer of nation-spanning treks from Little Rock, Arkansas, to visit them as a child, that house had taken on a life of its own, embodying its own share of the forces of nature that were my grandma and Uncle John.
And now we were picking it apart, readying it for the next family to come along, a family we didn't know and had never met yet which had come into the picture and were ready to move along, move along my grandma in the hopes of launching their own 50 years of dreams and memories there. It wasn't personal, it just was the way things happen. One owner dies, others take over eventually.
My mother was heartbroken over her decision to move her own mom out of her house and tell her she couldn't handle life on her own. Grandma was the kind of tough yet loving woman who had chosen to never remarry after her husband was killed, even though she was beautiful and might have had dozens of suitors lined up at her door. She had known he was her soulmate, and it was enough to have had him even for a short while.
But perhaps in response to having lost that which was most precious to her, Grandma had turned her home into a de facto museum dedicated to every aspect of her daughter, my mom's,life. In her attic, my folks found dozens if not hundreds of boxes, filled with the graded tests and homework papers of seemingly my mom's entire school career. The garage , meanwhile, was Uncle Johnny's turf – and there my dad found thousands of little things, down to screws and nuts and nails , all meticulously organized into drawers . In the backyard was an ugly pile of scrap metal that Uncle Johnny had insisted for years would be worth hundreds of dollars whenever he got around to selling it – he was just letting it “grow in value” even though we warned him it was just an eyesore. Sure enough, it got cleared out and was worth almost nothing.
But that was the thing I learned, time and time again, in the countless little moments that week – and at the times like this when I look back as well. I learned that there is more than one way of determining value in this world, that what might seem to most is junk might be one particular person's stored treasure. That might be sad or eccentric to an outside eye, but if it doesn't hurt anyone else, we should learn to just let the “treasure” be theirs. While they might see some things that are eyesores as beautiful, so too do they often find beauty in the forgotten things that really SHOULD be seen as beautiful: like the school papers and projects and report cards of a child.
One of the things that most concerned my mom about my grandma's mental state at that time, after six weeks of displaced living away from her grown-up home and back in her childhood's, was that grandma kept mentioning seeing a big white cat – on the front windowsill, meowing at the back door, dashing through the garden out back. My mom never saw the cat herself, and kept wondering if my grandma had fully lost it and and was now seeing things that weren't there. Combining that concern with the fact her mom was over 85 and now living on her own with numerous other bad habits including an unbelievable coffee addiction, which doctors eventually figured out was a staggering 17 cups a day.
But as we packed up the last of the moving trucks to move Grandma back to the Deep South with us, I took one last look around the house for my mom – kind of like checking under the beds to make sure you don't leave anything behind in a hotel room, but also for my own emotional closure.
As I wandered under the trees in grandma's backyard, and through the tomato and grape plants lined up in neat rows, I found that it can be easy to see things that others might not – to see memories drift in and out of sight, of days past planting with my grandma or picking the resulting fruit with my uncle, of running through that yard. But I saw one last thing that I cannot ever forget.
I saw a big, fluffy white cat sitting on the back doorstep, meowing and scratching to come in. It seems my grandma really saw that cat after all. That's not to say she could have handled life on her own on any real level; she was getting frail with age regardless. But it did make me realize more than ever that our reality isn't just what we see, and our fantasies sometimes are more real than we could ever imagine.
That cat, like me, wished it could get back into that house.. And like me, it never would again.
By Carl Kozlowski
Try as I might, I'll never be able to block out the image of my father standing with a shovel, digging furiously through the rose garden in front of my grandma's house, hoping to act fast enough to keep us from stopping him. He was a man on a mission on that gloriously sunny yet sad morning in January 2004, as family members bustled in and out of the house that my grandma had shared with her brother and housemate for the past 54 years in the San Diego suburb of Santee, California. Her husband, my mom's father, was killed in the Battle of Normandy in WWII and so she packed up with my mom and her brother to start anew in the promised land of California back in 1950.
Meanwhile, inside, my brothers and I scoured under the house's carpeting for yet another mound of money – wrapped clusters of Benjamins stuffed into long-forgotten corners of the house by these two sibling survivors of the Great Depression, in a seemingly foolish (yet presciently sharp, considering the state of the economy these days) attempt to hide it from both the banks and the tax man. We had come across pile after pile of them so far, yet as tempting as it was to take just one little roll of $20s from its hidden perch in a coffee cup that hadn't been used since 1973, we knew in our hearts that that was still stealing.
And worse, it would have been stealing from our beloved grandma and been compounded by being swiped under the now-omniscient eyes of my deceased, beloved uncle. I've always really believed that the moment someone dies, they take on the God-like power to see everything we're doing. Talk about Catholic guilt.
And yet indeed, it was Catholic guilt that not only kept me from grabbing enough greenbacks to look like I'd just won a game show, but also Catholic guilt that was compelling my father to dig away in the front yard just six years after having quintuple-bypass open-heart surgery. For dad was trying to fulfill his cosmic Catholic duty to bury any religious trinkets he had discovered and couldn't find a new home for.
Strangely, we are told to burn American flags when we try to dispose of them, despite the fact most of us would fight to the death to prevent them from being set alight in any other situation. And just as strangely (likely more so), my dad was now attempting to bury the deitized detritus my uncle had somehow secretly acquired throughout his 84 years on God's green earth, traveling coast to coast by car and across the planet to Japan by a troop transport plane in WWII.
Funny thing was, Uncle John didn't seem particularly religious during his time on earth. I remember he would at best drive us grumpily to church on Sunday mornings during our childhood summer visits and sit grousing throughout the hour-long ordeal we called the Mass. And at worst, he'd just keep popping open beers at home on holy days and then tell us to figure out our own way to church if we really felt the need to celebrate Jesus' Ascension on a Tuesday.
My dad, meanwhile, seemed to be Uncle John's polar opposite. Raised amid the draconian, all-powerful influence of the church in Poland – which also spawned the most powerful Pope in the modern age – he had even joined a seminary himself for six months as a young man before his sister Jola stormed the barricades and helped him face down their father and the priests in charge and let them know he really didn't feel the calling to be a priest. But even though he never completed his priestly studies, he often acted like he did – with crucifixes and iconic statues discreetly placed in nearly every room of our house and a daily required Rosary session each night.
So imagine my dad's shock – and frankly, all our shock – when my dad started cleaning out Uncle John's drawers after his death and found a collection of religious statues, pictures, prayer booklets, and crucifixes that could put Pope Benedict's collection to shame. The Legion of Mary could stock up for eternal battle here, and if he really wanted to, my Dad could have called in the Vatican Exorcist team and given them enough good-luck goodies to spare them even a taste of Satan's presence for the next 20 years.
It just went to show that you can't judge a person's spiritual status – their most private internal feelings - by their outward appearance and sometimes even their personality. Uncle John had earned the right to be a crusty, sometimes angry, sometimes hilariously boisterous old man – earned it on the battle fields he fought on in Japan, while working on the post-atomic-bombing cleaning crews that did their best to minimize the damage wrought by the worst bombs ever used by mankind.
He had a severe hip injury that prevented his ability to work throughout the last 54 years of his life, an injury that was always there even as he managed to hide the pain it caused by gritting his teeth while telling a story or by popping another beer open (sometimes doing both), and most of all by disappearing into his camper each day to block out the world for a few hours of rest while listening to the latest baseball games on the radio. Uncle John chose to keep that camper and live in it nearly all year round, perched out on the driveway or on the street in front of his house – as if always ready to roll, hit the road and move on at a moment's notice. Yet he never would move, except on his solitary drives into the desert “for a few days' rest” or to the sleepy and forgotten C-grade gambling town of Laughlin, Nevada, and then every couple years on a long-ass drive across the country to see us in Arkansas while on the way back to visiting the town he was raised in: Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
A man gets to know himself on trips like those, facing only himself and his God, with only his angels and demons to keep him company along the way. So who were we to wonder and judge his relationship with the Lord, to assume it was distant or nonexistent just because he didn't thrust his views and practice of faith out into the world with as much zest as our father? Even as it was odd and embarrassing to see my father turning the dirt and dropping in Ziploc baggie after Ziploc baggie of religious figurines (they were baggied because even though they were to be buried, they also needed to be pristine), it was also strangely satisfying to know that my Uncle John had taught him a lesson from beyond the grave.
But the clearing out of religious nuggets and discoveries of O.G.-quality money stashes were just part of the larger, deeper process of helping – nay, making – my grandma move out of the home she'd lived in for nearly five and a half decades. It was the house where she and her brother, Uncle John, had raised my mom the best they could after grandma's husband and my mom's father was cut down far far short of his time while heroically fighting in the Battle of Normandy. And in summer after summer of nation-spanning treks from Little Rock, Arkansas, to visit them as a child, that house had taken on a life of its own, embodying its own share of the forces of nature that were my grandma and Uncle John.
And now we were picking it apart, readying it for the next family to come along, a family we didn't know and had never met yet which had come into the picture and were ready to move along, move along my grandma in the hopes of launching their own 50 years of dreams and memories there. It wasn't personal, it just was the way things happen. One owner dies, others take over eventually.
My mother was heartbroken over her decision to move her own mom out of her house and tell her she couldn't handle life on her own. Grandma was the kind of tough yet loving woman who had chosen to never remarry after her husband was killed, even though she was beautiful and might have had dozens of suitors lined up at her door. She had known he was her soulmate, and it was enough to have had him even for a short while.
But perhaps in response to having lost that which was most precious to her, Grandma had turned her home into a de facto museum dedicated to every aspect of her daughter, my mom's,life. In her attic, my folks found dozens if not hundreds of boxes, filled with the graded tests and homework papers of seemingly my mom's entire school career. The garage , meanwhile, was Uncle Johnny's turf – and there my dad found thousands of little things, down to screws and nuts and nails , all meticulously organized into drawers . In the backyard was an ugly pile of scrap metal that Uncle Johnny had insisted for years would be worth hundreds of dollars whenever he got around to selling it – he was just letting it “grow in value” even though we warned him it was just an eyesore. Sure enough, it got cleared out and was worth almost nothing.
But that was the thing I learned, time and time again, in the countless little moments that week – and at the times like this when I look back as well. I learned that there is more than one way of determining value in this world, that what might seem to most is junk might be one particular person's stored treasure. That might be sad or eccentric to an outside eye, but if it doesn't hurt anyone else, we should learn to just let the “treasure” be theirs. While they might see some things that are eyesores as beautiful, so too do they often find beauty in the forgotten things that really SHOULD be seen as beautiful: like the school papers and projects and report cards of a child.
One of the things that most concerned my mom about my grandma's mental state at that time, after six weeks of displaced living away from her grown-up home and back in her childhood's, was that grandma kept mentioning seeing a big white cat – on the front windowsill, meowing at the back door, dashing through the garden out back. My mom never saw the cat herself, and kept wondering if my grandma had fully lost it and and was now seeing things that weren't there. Combining that concern with the fact her mom was over 85 and now living on her own with numerous other bad habits including an unbelievable coffee addiction, which doctors eventually figured out was a staggering 17 cups a day.
But as we packed up the last of the moving trucks to move Grandma back to the Deep South with us, I took one last look around the house for my mom – kind of like checking under the beds to make sure you don't leave anything behind in a hotel room, but also for my own emotional closure.
As I wandered under the trees in grandma's backyard, and through the tomato and grape plants lined up in neat rows, I found that it can be easy to see things that others might not – to see memories drift in and out of sight, of days past planting with my grandma or picking the resulting fruit with my uncle, of running through that yard. But I saw one last thing that I cannot ever forget.
I saw a big, fluffy white cat sitting on the back doorstep, meowing and scratching to come in. It seems my grandma really saw that cat after all. That's not to say she could have handled life on her own on any real level; she was getting frail with age regardless. But it did make me realize more than ever that our reality isn't just what we see, and our fantasies sometimes are more real than we could ever imagine.
That cat, like me, wished it could get back into that house.. And like me, it never would again.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Another One Bites the Dust (another roommate that is)
I don't think I've ever made a smart choice of roommates.
Of course, the very idea of having a roommate in the first place is one that reeks of desperation to begin with. Sharing a room is something that's FORCED upon you in childhood when your parents pop out too many kids for the space they have. It's bad enought when 2 kids are fighting for space - i can't even IMAGINE the overcrowded-prison conditions suffered by the children of Octomom, Jon & Kate or worst of all, the human breeeding farm run by the Duggars, who just announced the impending arrival of their 19TH spawn!
Really?! Are they living in pre-18th century conditions, when you had to fear the CROPS wouldn't get picked in time ahead of th. e big tornado? Are you having to have 19 kids because 15 of them are gonna get scurvy? My sister has 5 kids under 14 and most people think SHE"S crazy. I just want to have ONE kid so i drive in the carpool lane for the next 18 years.
So here I am as an adult, and you'd think if i hated sharing rooms with my brothers so much, I'd certainly steer clear of living with a STRANGER. But no, not only have i done so, but I've picked some of the worst human beings imaginable.
First i lived wiht Jack, a 55 year old guy who looked and talked like late-era, bloated Dan Aykroyd. he shared a house with his mother, which I should have realized was disquietingly like the film "Psycho" since she supposedly lived in the attic and yet i never actually SAW her.
I, meanwhile, rented a room in his basement that i should have realized was disquietingly like ANOTHER movie, "Alien," - because in a basement, just like in space, no one can har you scream.
And so for the sickening allure of cheap rent - $340 a month to be exact - I moved in and stayed in Jack's house for a year, even after I stumbled across his bizarre porn collection -which he offered to let me keep when i was in actuality hoping he would MOVE it. Who wants to know what gets their creepy old landlord off?
He also let me know that if his dog ever got a little TOO old and weak, he'd be dragging it down just outside my room and shooting it there since, and I quote! - "no one could hear the gun go off in here." Before assuring me, of course, that he'd only commit the hideous act while i was at work and that he wouldn't ask me to help clean up - that is, unless I wanted to work a little off the rent next month.
Let's just say I never prayed so hard for a dog's health in my life. I managed to make it out ahead of the dog, but the friends who helped me move back out said they were surprised i was leaving in the pickup instead of the back an ambulance or a hearse.
And so since then, I've spent a year accidentally living in the gayest neighborhood in Chicago - I was from Arkansas, so how was I to know that Boy's Town wasn't another branch of the famed Catholic boys' orphanage?
I've also lived with a friend named Pedro who was kind of a fundamentalist Christian. He frequently picked random moments to whip out his Bible and rail against homsexuality, even as my GIRLFRIEND was sitting on my LAP. Yet I can't count the number of times I came home early to find him watching a sweaty Russell Crowe or Mel gibson grappling with OTHER sweaty guys in shorts, sandals and skirts in "Gladiator" and "Braveheart." Let's just say that when I moved on, Pedro wound up finding a new male roommate - his workout partner from his favorite gym - Bally's in Boys Town. They've been "roomies" for 7 years now and have a couple of poodles they like to dress in cute outfits. I'm not sure if Pedro's still whipping out his Bible as often.
And here in LA, I've harbored an illegal-alien Brit who wound up deported, and a 26 year old Long Island guy named Bobby who looked and acted like Joey from "Friends," complete with a different girl every weekend. And then of cours, there was the guy named Bill who I knew as a "regular" from the Barnes & Noble I worked at and needed a place to stay for a day, then two days, then a week while awaitng assignment to a new halfway house and who revealed on his 4th night that he'd killed a man once. It was just manslaughter - hell, involuntary even! And he'd done all his time, so don't worry!
Most people would have stopped by then, but I'm a weekly newspaper reporter and a standup comic, so I'm always too broke to be discriminating. But this time I've finally learned my lesson. I walked in my apartment earlier than usual one night six weeks ago to hear a whacking noise that sounded like something David Carradine would be involved with. I kept hearing this the next three nights out of the dark and out of my rooommate Sal's closed room. Sal was another fundamentalist - a friend told me he was "cool" and that was the extent of my reference check -
so I kept telling myself he COULDN"T be a perv - completely ignoring the fact that often the biggest weirdos are the biggest judgers. Jimmy Swaggart or Ted Haggard, anyone?
So finally I had a chance to see what happened on that Saturdy morning, when his door drifted open. I tiptoed into the kitchen through the corner of his room, only to find him...clothed, thankfully, but furiously, rapidly whacking his shaved head with the open palm of his hand!
I snuck back out and it kept going: WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! And on the one hand I thought, what do I DO?! And on the other remembered he didn't ever officially sign onto the lease. I had just turned 38 and decided if I wanted to live to 39, or ever convince a girl to come upstairs to my place again, it was time for him to go and for me to live on my own.
So I hid all hte knives, sharp objects, meat mallets, hammers and other tools in the place and asked him to move. And amazingly, he did. Sure it sucks to be paying another $300 a month until my lease runs out, but as Mastercard commercials like to say, Some things - like privacy and peace of mind - are priceless.
Of course, the very idea of having a roommate in the first place is one that reeks of desperation to begin with. Sharing a room is something that's FORCED upon you in childhood when your parents pop out too many kids for the space they have. It's bad enought when 2 kids are fighting for space - i can't even IMAGINE the overcrowded-prison conditions suffered by the children of Octomom, Jon & Kate or worst of all, the human breeeding farm run by the Duggars, who just announced the impending arrival of their 19TH spawn!
Really?! Are they living in pre-18th century conditions, when you had to fear the CROPS wouldn't get picked in time ahead of th. e big tornado? Are you having to have 19 kids because 15 of them are gonna get scurvy? My sister has 5 kids under 14 and most people think SHE"S crazy. I just want to have ONE kid so i drive in the carpool lane for the next 18 years.
So here I am as an adult, and you'd think if i hated sharing rooms with my brothers so much, I'd certainly steer clear of living with a STRANGER. But no, not only have i done so, but I've picked some of the worst human beings imaginable.
First i lived wiht Jack, a 55 year old guy who looked and talked like late-era, bloated Dan Aykroyd. he shared a house with his mother, which I should have realized was disquietingly like the film "Psycho" since she supposedly lived in the attic and yet i never actually SAW her.
I, meanwhile, rented a room in his basement that i should have realized was disquietingly like ANOTHER movie, "Alien," - because in a basement, just like in space, no one can har you scream.
And so for the sickening allure of cheap rent - $340 a month to be exact - I moved in and stayed in Jack's house for a year, even after I stumbled across his bizarre porn collection -which he offered to let me keep when i was in actuality hoping he would MOVE it. Who wants to know what gets their creepy old landlord off?
He also let me know that if his dog ever got a little TOO old and weak, he'd be dragging it down just outside my room and shooting it there since, and I quote! - "no one could hear the gun go off in here." Before assuring me, of course, that he'd only commit the hideous act while i was at work and that he wouldn't ask me to help clean up - that is, unless I wanted to work a little off the rent next month.
Let's just say I never prayed so hard for a dog's health in my life. I managed to make it out ahead of the dog, but the friends who helped me move back out said they were surprised i was leaving in the pickup instead of the back an ambulance or a hearse.
And so since then, I've spent a year accidentally living in the gayest neighborhood in Chicago - I was from Arkansas, so how was I to know that Boy's Town wasn't another branch of the famed Catholic boys' orphanage?
I've also lived with a friend named Pedro who was kind of a fundamentalist Christian. He frequently picked random moments to whip out his Bible and rail against homsexuality, even as my GIRLFRIEND was sitting on my LAP. Yet I can't count the number of times I came home early to find him watching a sweaty Russell Crowe or Mel gibson grappling with OTHER sweaty guys in shorts, sandals and skirts in "Gladiator" and "Braveheart." Let's just say that when I moved on, Pedro wound up finding a new male roommate - his workout partner from his favorite gym - Bally's in Boys Town. They've been "roomies" for 7 years now and have a couple of poodles they like to dress in cute outfits. I'm not sure if Pedro's still whipping out his Bible as often.
And here in LA, I've harbored an illegal-alien Brit who wound up deported, and a 26 year old Long Island guy named Bobby who looked and acted like Joey from "Friends," complete with a different girl every weekend. And then of cours, there was the guy named Bill who I knew as a "regular" from the Barnes & Noble I worked at and needed a place to stay for a day, then two days, then a week while awaitng assignment to a new halfway house and who revealed on his 4th night that he'd killed a man once. It was just manslaughter - hell, involuntary even! And he'd done all his time, so don't worry!
Most people would have stopped by then, but I'm a weekly newspaper reporter and a standup comic, so I'm always too broke to be discriminating. But this time I've finally learned my lesson. I walked in my apartment earlier than usual one night six weeks ago to hear a whacking noise that sounded like something David Carradine would be involved with. I kept hearing this the next three nights out of the dark and out of my rooommate Sal's closed room. Sal was another fundamentalist - a friend told me he was "cool" and that was the extent of my reference check -
so I kept telling myself he COULDN"T be a perv - completely ignoring the fact that often the biggest weirdos are the biggest judgers. Jimmy Swaggart or Ted Haggard, anyone?
So finally I had a chance to see what happened on that Saturdy morning, when his door drifted open. I tiptoed into the kitchen through the corner of his room, only to find him...clothed, thankfully, but furiously, rapidly whacking his shaved head with the open palm of his hand!
I snuck back out and it kept going: WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! And on the one hand I thought, what do I DO?! And on the other remembered he didn't ever officially sign onto the lease. I had just turned 38 and decided if I wanted to live to 39, or ever convince a girl to come upstairs to my place again, it was time for him to go and for me to live on my own.
So I hid all hte knives, sharp objects, meat mallets, hammers and other tools in the place and asked him to move. And amazingly, he did. Sure it sucks to be paying another $300 a month until my lease runs out, but as Mastercard commercials like to say, Some things - like privacy and peace of mind - are priceless.
Friday, September 4, 2009
"EXTRACT"ing Laughs Is Easy
“Extract”-ing laughs is easy
Mike Judge’s new comedy takes a sharp satirical look at middle-class America
By Carl Kozlowski
Joel is just an average guy, a quiet yet well-to-do American living in a small town who happens to own a flavor-extract company. He’d like to sell the plant, retire early and get back to a healthier sex life with his bored, put-upon wife.
But just as he seems prepared to make a deal with food giant General Mills to sell the plant for good, a freak accident occurs inside his plant that lops off one of a long-time employee’s testicles. The other is hanging by a thread, a metaphor that is apt for Joel’s life as it suddenly spirals out of control via a surreal round-robin of relationships that come unhinged and turn his life upside-down in the new comedy film “Extract.”
Written and directed by Mike Judge, who has chronicled the modern everyman’s life in the long-running and brilliant Fox cartoon “King of the Hill” as well as in the short-running yet brilliant 1999 film “Office Space,” “Extract” takes a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued look at middle-class values in Middle America. But once again, Judge proves that he possesses a true love for the common, working-class Joe that translates into comedy that uplifts rather than demeans the lives of its characters.
And what characters they are, with Jason Bateman and Kristin Wiig as the lead couple; the gorgeous Mila Kunis playing Cindy, a con-artist whose ever-shifting false love interests enable her to sleep her way to the top of the bottom of the American ladder of success; Ben Affleck, in a hilarious turn as a mullet-sporting bartender named Dean, who can find a way to make any of his incredibly sleazy schemes sound perfectly moral; and Clifton Collins, Jr. as Step, the slow-witted warehouse worker whose twisted testicular travails drive the plot forward. Add in Dustin Milligan in a star-making performance as an incredibly dense aspiring gigolo named Brad, and you’ve got a cast of fresh faces and actors reinventing their personas, with the resulting effect being that Judge’s best lines aren’t just quotable, but rooted in a strong sense of realism turned askew.
“Extract” marks a welcome return to form for Judge, who spent the decade following “Office Space” immersed in television work and writing-directing the ambitious but highly uneven film satire “Idiocracy” in 2006. After seeing that passion project - in which an average American soldier wakes up 500 years in the future after an experiment goes awry and discovers he’s now the smartest man in the country – trapped on the Fox studio shelf for more than two years before getting literally dumped into a handful of theaters with no ad campaign to support it, Judge has clearly decided to return to the working-class characters that have made him a zillionaire already.
This time, though, Judge has improved his storytelling from the often-sketchy plotting of “Office Space,” making every scene an essential piece in an ever-more-complicated puzzle of riotous shenanigans. The overall effect matches the powerhouse effect of my favorite comedy of 2008, the Coen Brothers’ “Burn After Reading,” due to its whiplash pacing, utterly amoral and unpredictable characters and twisted dialogue.
Usually a film’s release on Labor Day weekend suggests that it’s a forgettable failure, with a merciful death assured amid the fading glow of summer box office expectations. Thankfully, that isn’t the case with “Extract,” which deserves a long life in the theaters before its inevitable union with Judge’s other works as comedy staples to be quoted by generations to come.
Mike Judge’s new comedy takes a sharp satirical look at middle-class America
By Carl Kozlowski
Joel is just an average guy, a quiet yet well-to-do American living in a small town who happens to own a flavor-extract company. He’d like to sell the plant, retire early and get back to a healthier sex life with his bored, put-upon wife.
But just as he seems prepared to make a deal with food giant General Mills to sell the plant for good, a freak accident occurs inside his plant that lops off one of a long-time employee’s testicles. The other is hanging by a thread, a metaphor that is apt for Joel’s life as it suddenly spirals out of control via a surreal round-robin of relationships that come unhinged and turn his life upside-down in the new comedy film “Extract.”
Written and directed by Mike Judge, who has chronicled the modern everyman’s life in the long-running and brilliant Fox cartoon “King of the Hill” as well as in the short-running yet brilliant 1999 film “Office Space,” “Extract” takes a sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued look at middle-class values in Middle America. But once again, Judge proves that he possesses a true love for the common, working-class Joe that translates into comedy that uplifts rather than demeans the lives of its characters.
And what characters they are, with Jason Bateman and Kristin Wiig as the lead couple; the gorgeous Mila Kunis playing Cindy, a con-artist whose ever-shifting false love interests enable her to sleep her way to the top of the bottom of the American ladder of success; Ben Affleck, in a hilarious turn as a mullet-sporting bartender named Dean, who can find a way to make any of his incredibly sleazy schemes sound perfectly moral; and Clifton Collins, Jr. as Step, the slow-witted warehouse worker whose twisted testicular travails drive the plot forward. Add in Dustin Milligan in a star-making performance as an incredibly dense aspiring gigolo named Brad, and you’ve got a cast of fresh faces and actors reinventing their personas, with the resulting effect being that Judge’s best lines aren’t just quotable, but rooted in a strong sense of realism turned askew.
“Extract” marks a welcome return to form for Judge, who spent the decade following “Office Space” immersed in television work and writing-directing the ambitious but highly uneven film satire “Idiocracy” in 2006. After seeing that passion project - in which an average American soldier wakes up 500 years in the future after an experiment goes awry and discovers he’s now the smartest man in the country – trapped on the Fox studio shelf for more than two years before getting literally dumped into a handful of theaters with no ad campaign to support it, Judge has clearly decided to return to the working-class characters that have made him a zillionaire already.
This time, though, Judge has improved his storytelling from the often-sketchy plotting of “Office Space,” making every scene an essential piece in an ever-more-complicated puzzle of riotous shenanigans. The overall effect matches the powerhouse effect of my favorite comedy of 2008, the Coen Brothers’ “Burn After Reading,” due to its whiplash pacing, utterly amoral and unpredictable characters and twisted dialogue.
Usually a film’s release on Labor Day weekend suggests that it’s a forgettable failure, with a merciful death assured amid the fading glow of summer box office expectations. Thankfully, that isn’t the case with “Extract,” which deserves a long life in the theaters before its inevitable union with Judge’s other works as comedy staples to be quoted by generations to come.
HANGIN' WITH MR. CLAYTON
Summer’s ‘Greatest’ movie?
With “World’s Greatest Dad,” Robin Williams turns in one of his career best
By Carl Kozlowski
Some guys never seem to catch a break in life. Lance Clayton is one of them.
In “World’s Greatest Dad,” the recently-released, extremely dark and sometimes perverse new comedy from writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (we know, we’re just as surprised as you), Clayton is the epitome of the put-upon, browbeaten modern middle-class American man. He’s a high-school poetry teacher with hardly any students, a girlfriend who’s afraid to be seen in public with him, and a son named Kyle (played with an amazing level of scorn by Daryl Sabara) who surely must rank as the foulest, most awful teenager in the history of movies.
Lance does have dreams of greatness, however. In fact, he’s in the middle of sending off his fifth novel for agent consideration, even though he’s never been published before. But ** SPOILER ALERT ** one night, after finding his son dead from a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation that occurred while watching porn on this computer, Lance suddenly feels a unique burst of inspiration: in order to cover up the shame of his son’s actual cause of death, he moves Kyle’s body, re-hangs him in his closet and writes the perfect suicide note so that the policeman who finds him will think that it was just another, normal teenage suicide.
But when the note is leaked to his high school newspaper, Kyle is quickly embraced as a misunderstood saint rather than the most misanthropic monster in the building. And with a newfound discovery of his writing’s potential for power, Lance quickly builds lie upon lie, creating an entire book of Kyle’s faux “journals” and watching his words take flight among all of Kyle’s newfound “fans.” ** END SPOILER **
With “Dad,” which caused a sensation last January at the Sundance Film Festival, Goldthwait accomplishes several remarkable feats. He manages to take a detestable subject, death by autoerotic asphyxiation, and still deal with it in a way that won’t drive people from the theater.
He also pulls out a stunning performance from Williams that easily ranks among the Oscar-winner’s career best. Conveying everything from drudgery to wild-eyed glee with a dollop of perfectly placed tragedy in between, Williams shows that when he wants to apply himself, he’s still one of the most daring and unpredictable actors in the business.
Goldthwait manages not only to completely reinvent his image from its prior heyday as a B-grade, one-note comedic weirdo with a screechy voice and claim a spot as an astute observer of modern American life whose best qualities easily fit in the canon of the character-based classic comedies of the late, great writer-director Hal Ashby.
But most important of all, Goldthwait has created a film comedy that offers plenty of fodder for deeper consideration. For even as Lance Clayton manages to deify his son through the falsely glowing tribute of a suicide note, the movie quietly yet firmly points the finger at each and every audience member as well – asking them if they want to laugh or cry, believe or disbelieve in Kyle’s sudden appearance of saintliness.
While “World’s Greatest Dad” was shot last year in Seattle and debuted in January, its amazingly prescient script addresses a question that all of America should be asking in a summer overshadowed by the deaths of two controversial American icons, Michael Jackson and Teddy Kennedy: Just because someone with a vile or highly questionable past dies, does that suddenly mean we have to make them a saint?
Like any great film, “World’s Greatest Dad” doesn’t have all the answers, but at least it’s asking the right questions.
With “World’s Greatest Dad,” Robin Williams turns in one of his career best
By Carl Kozlowski
Some guys never seem to catch a break in life. Lance Clayton is one of them.
In “World’s Greatest Dad,” the recently-released, extremely dark and sometimes perverse new comedy from writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (we know, we’re just as surprised as you), Clayton is the epitome of the put-upon, browbeaten modern middle-class American man. He’s a high-school poetry teacher with hardly any students, a girlfriend who’s afraid to be seen in public with him, and a son named Kyle (played with an amazing level of scorn by Daryl Sabara) who surely must rank as the foulest, most awful teenager in the history of movies.
Lance does have dreams of greatness, however. In fact, he’s in the middle of sending off his fifth novel for agent consideration, even though he’s never been published before. But ** SPOILER ALERT ** one night, after finding his son dead from a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation that occurred while watching porn on this computer, Lance suddenly feels a unique burst of inspiration: in order to cover up the shame of his son’s actual cause of death, he moves Kyle’s body, re-hangs him in his closet and writes the perfect suicide note so that the policeman who finds him will think that it was just another, normal teenage suicide.
But when the note is leaked to his high school newspaper, Kyle is quickly embraced as a misunderstood saint rather than the most misanthropic monster in the building. And with a newfound discovery of his writing’s potential for power, Lance quickly builds lie upon lie, creating an entire book of Kyle’s faux “journals” and watching his words take flight among all of Kyle’s newfound “fans.” ** END SPOILER **
With “Dad,” which caused a sensation last January at the Sundance Film Festival, Goldthwait accomplishes several remarkable feats. He manages to take a detestable subject, death by autoerotic asphyxiation, and still deal with it in a way that won’t drive people from the theater.
He also pulls out a stunning performance from Williams that easily ranks among the Oscar-winner’s career best. Conveying everything from drudgery to wild-eyed glee with a dollop of perfectly placed tragedy in between, Williams shows that when he wants to apply himself, he’s still one of the most daring and unpredictable actors in the business.
Goldthwait manages not only to completely reinvent his image from its prior heyday as a B-grade, one-note comedic weirdo with a screechy voice and claim a spot as an astute observer of modern American life whose best qualities easily fit in the canon of the character-based classic comedies of the late, great writer-director Hal Ashby.
But most important of all, Goldthwait has created a film comedy that offers plenty of fodder for deeper consideration. For even as Lance Clayton manages to deify his son through the falsely glowing tribute of a suicide note, the movie quietly yet firmly points the finger at each and every audience member as well – asking them if they want to laugh or cry, believe or disbelieve in Kyle’s sudden appearance of saintliness.
While “World’s Greatest Dad” was shot last year in Seattle and debuted in January, its amazingly prescient script addresses a question that all of America should be asking in a summer overshadowed by the deaths of two controversial American icons, Michael Jackson and Teddy Kennedy: Just because someone with a vile or highly questionable past dies, does that suddenly mean we have to make them a saint?
Like any great film, “World’s Greatest Dad” doesn’t have all the answers, but at least it’s asking the right questions.
BARACK OBAMA'S SECRET SPEECH TO AMERICA'S SCHOOLKIDS
On Sept. 8, President Barack Obama will attempt to address all the nation’s schoolchildren with an unprecedented address delivered live over CSPAN and on the White House website. No doubt, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC and CNN will all carry it as well. The speech has drawn controversy because concerned parents have noted that no one has explained what the president intends to say to the children.
Yet here, in an exclusive advance coup of epic proportions, Big Hollywood has received an internal, top-secret copy of that speech. It reads as follows:
Hey kids,
What’s up.
I’m speaking to you, the nation’s children, today because nobody else will listen to me anymore. I also have come to realize that you are my only hope, as those of you in kindergarten through the third grades are the only Americans left lacking in the cognitive skills necessary to see through my lies, deceit and trickery.
And don’t complain about having to watch me, either. I know how much you hate turning on the television at home and seeing me on 24/7 with my friends Brian Williams, Keith Olbermann, and especially Chris Matthews, who kinda freaks me out a bit because he says I send chills up his legs whenever I talk. I’m sure some of you in high school know what it’s like to be weirded out by the creepy guy who likes you a little bit more than you like him back. But we’ll save that for my upcoming mandatory sex-ed, contraceptive fitting and free abortions program next month. Right now, just be glad you’re getting to watch me instead of your chemistry teacher. You’re not gonna have to learn a damn thing from me.
You see, I want to talk to you today about hard work and the need to use it in order to achieve your dreams. It’s important to have dreams – I’ve come to realize that in these last few weeks as I found no one believes a word I say and I started losing sleep, wondering what the hell I’m going to do now. So I’m not sleeping enough, my REM counts are low and some people tell me I’m starting to hallucinate – such as when I still claim that I’m going to be able to pass significant health care legislation before Christmas.
A milder form of my delusion comes in the idea that I’m going to accomplish anything at all, now that my approval rating is the lowest of any first-year president we’ve ever had in this country. Wait, that’s a history lesson, but one I want you to forget. (Pause) Who’s running this teleprompter anyway?!
Moving on, I want to share with each of you the lessons I’ve learned in the past eight months as your president.
First, you really can only fool some of the people some of the time. I have no business being your president, or hell, even a senator. But my craven need for ambition meant that I believed -- with my glowing smile, smooth complexion and adorably big ears --that it didn’t matter that I wanted to be leader of the free world while having less relevant job experience than it takes to manage a Circuit City store. And now, Americans have put down the colorful pictures of me – you like colorful pictures, don’t you?! I do!! Just wait for my national coloring contest to help me get the shiny new posters to fool your mommies and daddies with.
Second, you break it, you buy it. I had no idea that after I bought my way into the presidency, I’d actually be expected to accomplish anything of relevance. I thought everything would be a cakewalk, like when you have two weeks’ notice on the next really big test and took the time to prepare. Well, I didn’t prepare. I just came out of nowhere, got elected in Illinois, then jumped into the US Senate when no one was looking, skipped more than 100 votes while I was senator and then said hey look at me! I wanna be president!” even before I finished one-third of my term. It might be fun to soar like an eagle, but it’s not fun when people learn you’re really a turkey.
And finally, I want to say that you should be careful what you want, because you just might get it. I said I wanted to be president, and thanks to GE and NBC and CBS and ABC and CNN – all those friendly-sounding letter combinations from our alphabet! – I got just what I wanted. But now that I see that there’s actual pressure in the job and people don’t like me anymore, I wish I had just wanted to be a cowboy. Or a fireman.
Instead of just a clown.
Thanks for listening, boys and girls. Now let’s all say the new Pledge of Allegiance!
I pledge Allegiance to Barack Obama
Even more than my daddy and momma
And to the earth on which we stand
And to give our enemies whatever concessions we can
One world
Under Barack
Incompetent
With welfare and health care for all
Very good, boys and girls!
Until the next time I have an insecure need for attention, bye-bye!
Yet here, in an exclusive advance coup of epic proportions, Big Hollywood has received an internal, top-secret copy of that speech. It reads as follows:
Hey kids,
What’s up.
I’m speaking to you, the nation’s children, today because nobody else will listen to me anymore. I also have come to realize that you are my only hope, as those of you in kindergarten through the third grades are the only Americans left lacking in the cognitive skills necessary to see through my lies, deceit and trickery.
And don’t complain about having to watch me, either. I know how much you hate turning on the television at home and seeing me on 24/7 with my friends Brian Williams, Keith Olbermann, and especially Chris Matthews, who kinda freaks me out a bit because he says I send chills up his legs whenever I talk. I’m sure some of you in high school know what it’s like to be weirded out by the creepy guy who likes you a little bit more than you like him back. But we’ll save that for my upcoming mandatory sex-ed, contraceptive fitting and free abortions program next month. Right now, just be glad you’re getting to watch me instead of your chemistry teacher. You’re not gonna have to learn a damn thing from me.
You see, I want to talk to you today about hard work and the need to use it in order to achieve your dreams. It’s important to have dreams – I’ve come to realize that in these last few weeks as I found no one believes a word I say and I started losing sleep, wondering what the hell I’m going to do now. So I’m not sleeping enough, my REM counts are low and some people tell me I’m starting to hallucinate – such as when I still claim that I’m going to be able to pass significant health care legislation before Christmas.
A milder form of my delusion comes in the idea that I’m going to accomplish anything at all, now that my approval rating is the lowest of any first-year president we’ve ever had in this country. Wait, that’s a history lesson, but one I want you to forget. (Pause) Who’s running this teleprompter anyway?!
Moving on, I want to share with each of you the lessons I’ve learned in the past eight months as your president.
First, you really can only fool some of the people some of the time. I have no business being your president, or hell, even a senator. But my craven need for ambition meant that I believed -- with my glowing smile, smooth complexion and adorably big ears --that it didn’t matter that I wanted to be leader of the free world while having less relevant job experience than it takes to manage a Circuit City store. And now, Americans have put down the colorful pictures of me – you like colorful pictures, don’t you?! I do!! Just wait for my national coloring contest to help me get the shiny new posters to fool your mommies and daddies with.
Second, you break it, you buy it. I had no idea that after I bought my way into the presidency, I’d actually be expected to accomplish anything of relevance. I thought everything would be a cakewalk, like when you have two weeks’ notice on the next really big test and took the time to prepare. Well, I didn’t prepare. I just came out of nowhere, got elected in Illinois, then jumped into the US Senate when no one was looking, skipped more than 100 votes while I was senator and then said hey look at me! I wanna be president!” even before I finished one-third of my term. It might be fun to soar like an eagle, but it’s not fun when people learn you’re really a turkey.
And finally, I want to say that you should be careful what you want, because you just might get it. I said I wanted to be president, and thanks to GE and NBC and CBS and ABC and CNN – all those friendly-sounding letter combinations from our alphabet! – I got just what I wanted. But now that I see that there’s actual pressure in the job and people don’t like me anymore, I wish I had just wanted to be a cowboy. Or a fireman.
Instead of just a clown.
Thanks for listening, boys and girls. Now let’s all say the new Pledge of Allegiance!
I pledge Allegiance to Barack Obama
Even more than my daddy and momma
And to the earth on which we stand
And to give our enemies whatever concessions we can
One world
Under Barack
Incompetent
With welfare and health care for all
Very good, boys and girls!
Until the next time I have an insecure need for attention, bye-bye!
Sunday, August 16, 2009
DOUBLE DISASTERS PLEASE!!!
In 1978, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John teamed up to make one of the most popular movie musicals of all time, "Grease." Sure, the story was hokey and the film has remained wildly, perpetually popular due to its ridiculously over-the-top performances and dance numbers, but it still at its core at a rambunctious energy that audiences have enjoyed watching for more than three decades.
Seeing how they achieved such great success with that film, Travolta and Newton-John surely thought another trip to the musical well would produce equally great results and sustain their red-hot career momentum. Little did they know that their respective decisions for Newton-John to star in 1980's "Xanadu" and Travolta in 1983's "Saturday Night Fever" sequel "Staying Alive" would instead prove to nearly kill their careers (OK, in Olivia's case it DID). And leave it to the American Cinematheque to preserve these long-lost cinematic lumps of coal for our modern viewing pleasure, long after the stars wished we would just forget the films ever existed.
Friday night, as part of the Cinematheque's "So Bad They're Brilliant" series (a concept that is itself brilliant!), these two films were paired together to provide three hours of toxically, unintentionally funny entertainment. Film journalists Stephen Rebello and Alonzo Duralde were on hand to kick off the evening with a brief history of both troubled films' productions, particularly noting that the decision to fund the big-budget rollerskating musical "Xanadu" was stunning in light of the utter box-office failure of "Roller Boogie" and "Skatetown USA," two prior films that attempted to exploit the late-'70s craze. But these films spoke for themselves!
From ridiculous plots to embarrassing performances, from atrocious dance numbers to godawful tunes that sound like they could have been written by tone-deaf monkeys rather than professional human composers, "Xanadu" and "Staying Alive" (which had a slightly better plot and much better performances, but songs that were far greater offenses against humanity) offered up campy entertainment at its finest. And the rather large crowd of more than 100 didn't disappoint either, loudly guffawing and shrieking throughout both films at the most hilariously inappropriate moments as well as catcalling the screen and even taking over singing en masse when the sound went out briefly during a romantic musical number in "Xanadu."
Saturday marked the fabulous Miss Diana Ross in her landmark epic of egotism, "Mahogany" and Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward acting like they have zero chemistry in "A New Kind of Love". Sunday brings the musical version of "Lost Horizon" (trust us, it's BAAAAAAAAAAD!) and next Wednesday brings the series of bad films to a thunderous conclusion with two of the Internet Movie Database's 100 worst movies of ALL TIME: Mariah Carey's 2001 epic misfire "Glitter" and the so-bad-you'll-wanna-burn-the-print "American Idol" spinoff "From Justin to Kelly." I'll be there hosting that night, so come on out for some outrageous and unintentional laughs!
Seeing how they achieved such great success with that film, Travolta and Newton-John surely thought another trip to the musical well would produce equally great results and sustain their red-hot career momentum. Little did they know that their respective decisions for Newton-John to star in 1980's "Xanadu" and Travolta in 1983's "Saturday Night Fever" sequel "Staying Alive" would instead prove to nearly kill their careers (OK, in Olivia's case it DID). And leave it to the American Cinematheque to preserve these long-lost cinematic lumps of coal for our modern viewing pleasure, long after the stars wished we would just forget the films ever existed.
Friday night, as part of the Cinematheque's "So Bad They're Brilliant" series (a concept that is itself brilliant!), these two films were paired together to provide three hours of toxically, unintentionally funny entertainment. Film journalists Stephen Rebello and Alonzo Duralde were on hand to kick off the evening with a brief history of both troubled films' productions, particularly noting that the decision to fund the big-budget rollerskating musical "Xanadu" was stunning in light of the utter box-office failure of "Roller Boogie" and "Skatetown USA," two prior films that attempted to exploit the late-'70s craze. But these films spoke for themselves!
From ridiculous plots to embarrassing performances, from atrocious dance numbers to godawful tunes that sound like they could have been written by tone-deaf monkeys rather than professional human composers, "Xanadu" and "Staying Alive" (which had a slightly better plot and much better performances, but songs that were far greater offenses against humanity) offered up campy entertainment at its finest. And the rather large crowd of more than 100 didn't disappoint either, loudly guffawing and shrieking throughout both films at the most hilariously inappropriate moments as well as catcalling the screen and even taking over singing en masse when the sound went out briefly during a romantic musical number in "Xanadu."
Saturday marked the fabulous Miss Diana Ross in her landmark epic of egotism, "Mahogany" and Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward acting like they have zero chemistry in "A New Kind of Love". Sunday brings the musical version of "Lost Horizon" (trust us, it's BAAAAAAAAAAD!) and next Wednesday brings the series of bad films to a thunderous conclusion with two of the Internet Movie Database's 100 worst movies of ALL TIME: Mariah Carey's 2001 epic misfire "Glitter" and the so-bad-you'll-wanna-burn-the-print "American Idol" spinoff "From Justin to Kelly." I'll be there hosting that night, so come on out for some outrageous and unintentional laughs!
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