Memories of Spamland

Strap in, folks. I'm about to tell you about the greatest spam mail chain I ever had that made Hotmail jerk off directly in my face about... cripes, ten years ago. Aging, man. It happens.

Oh and it's kinda porn-y spam, so you've been warned about that. Still, the language was less offensive than what I regularly use here.

Okay, get this; MAD-LIBS SPAM. If there's an underground awards circuit for this kind of thing, like the spammies or whatever, whoever did this should receive top honors. Every single email followed the same exact pattern with different words dropped in each time. The pattern was as such:

"[Do something destructive] to her [euphemism for vagina] with your [euphemism for big] [euphemism for penis]"

The practical upshot? Shit like this:

"Shatter her snatch with your mammoth johnson."
"Annihilate her cooch with your huge sausage."

And on and on. It was pretty magical, because as I recall they avoided using the same words to a rather impressive degree.

I was actually sad when I lapsed from that spam list.

I think time vindicates the film critic

There is an idea amongst some screenwriters working in the industry that critics are fast becoming outdated in the face of the internet peer review.

I think a certain group's feelings are hurt, personally.

Professional critics have both the greatest and least enviable job in a lot of ways. They get to go see movies, they get to write about movies, and they accept many bribes from studios with no promise of a moral payout. That is just really damn cool. But they're also usually a lot more insightful than the average consumer, and can have a hard time balancing the form's potential for art against the commercial reality of the public's tastes. I'm not sure which one should weigh more heavily on them, and how much the personal slant needs to be submerged when reviewing a film, but this is something that quite often earns them the ire of studios, writers, and also a portion of the public that is now given greater strength of voice by technology.

Though in the last case, let's be clear; people who call out critics on Rotten Tomatoes are usually just Buffalo Bill levels of insane and take offense at anything not resembling their own opinion. A good critic will voice sound reasoning in why a film falls short of the mark for them (and brother, I know many of them aren't that good). The average respondent's reasoning is usually roughly "fuck u".

Now here's the thing, and this is by no means a scientific observation yet; I think, over time, the public's tastes begin to conform to what the critic has previously said. I'd have to spend some time with the Wayback Machine to really prove it and have all intentions of creating graphs, which means

THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN

but here are some observations.

The 90s, which according to one of the five patron saints of the screen William Goldman, was a horrible time for film, saw a lot of real flash in the pan movies. I remember 54 and Cruel Intentions being a couple of must-see films that kind of got panned but were popular with audiences. Over a decade latter, you can look at imdb.com scores and the like to see that audiences are now closer to critics in their esteem of these titles. Pretty middle of the road, really.

Look, I'm a supposed screenwriter myself, so what I say next isn't the easiest bit, but we have pros who need to step back and think about their stance on this. I saw a working writer on a forum, great guy and I cherish the fact that he walks among us, who had a movie produced recently that utterly bombed. This is one of the guys who thinks that the professional critic is an artefact of a previous era, but it kind of dropped a Tetris block into place when he thanked a user for their kind review. That review? The user had just lost a parent and needed a laugh.

Hey, it's a compliment and you should take it, that you brought a bit of light into this person's temporarily miserable life. But that's not a review, it's an emotional reaction. No less valid, but one is not the other.

My roundabout point is this; the technology of communication has not invalidated an old profession so much as it has allowed us to insulate ourselves from dissenting opinion by allowing us to wrap ourselves in the warm, selective afterglow of those who agree with us. The ego is a reflexive muscle like any other and if you don't allow it it's wounds, it won't strengthen.

And it's not like most critics want to see bad movies and tear people down. I've worked on a few films, all of them pretty horrible, but I think most people orbiting the industry see that the worst film still has a lot of people bleeding over its creation. A good critic is going to give you the tools you need to do better the next time out. Ignore them at your own peril.

Wherever did you get to, Paul Tatara? This one was for you.

The Da Vinci Load

So there's been a non-ending stream of joy and mirth surrounding Shia LaBeouf's inability to be coherent without directly carving chunks of language from another source and repeating the sounds exactly as they originally occurred using his own voice.

It's called plagiarism, but let's have fun with it.

So he makes a critically acclaimed short film that apparently rips off Dan Clowe (of Ghost World fame) and then gives a bunch of different apologies when he's called on it. And I mean many varied apologies, which are promptly found to each be copied word for word from different sources. It's like LaBeouf was trying to get a leg up on the inevitable Youtube sketches.

So the final bit of this, and the thing that makes it absolutely lovely to go and read for yourself, is a kind of moon-based email interview between him and bleedingcool.com. In it he manages to be obnoxious, crazy, AND stupid all at once. Seriously, go read it.

The thing is, I'm trying to be a nicer person. Really I am. But the way he's cornered several times and doesn't slip out of it so much as he oozes destroys my resistance here. And if you get to the end, there lies the ultimate treat; the chance to imagine LaBeouf saying "thug life". Comedy fucking gold.

But at the same time, getting to that statement is a real slog through an incomprehensible landscape that kind of resembles, if you squint very hard, written language. I'm about to run an experiment to see if I can make this more legible, or push it over the edge into the absurd. I'm taking LaBeouf's statements from this interview, translating them into Klingon, then Korean, then Russian, then back into English. Let's see what happens!

"What does an artist do – they just point and say look at this."

Translation: Iran is good, the only artist, subtle look.


"I agree with Julian Schnabel , Jeff koons, Duchamp ect……
You agree with?"

I agree with Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Duchamp, etc.

Ready to give you?

(Okay so that one worked)


"Cool, u stick with ur squad
I’m good with mine
Live good player"

Squad mix

I have a good

The players have a good life

"Of course – art is not about itself, but the attention we bring to it.
Art is a lie the makes us realize the truth.
In the 21st century there is NO personal language.
Just personal selection of language.
We are products of editing.
Not authorship.
Appropriation has been the most influential theme in art sense the 70s.
If you look at Warhol’s work and say ” oh well he didn’t paint that – its just silk screens ”
Your missing the point.
Our notion of genius- a romantic – isolated figure – is fucking outdated
An updated notion of genius would have to center around ones mastery of information
And it’s dissemination
It’s the 21st century, thug life
It wants to be fee."

OK-you have to escape the attention, but it's not.

Learn the truth lie in Flash.

There is a private in the twenty-first century through the language.

Selection of individual language.

Editing product.

Author (s).

But you long influential theme ' 70 's nonsense.

So Warhol saw a victory and said: "Oh, we have the following screen only green silk mangoh Vichel»

There is thin.

Genius-thanks to a romantic figure in isolation is a concept of fucking

The concept, in the center of them, you can update the reason around the genius whose mastery

And dissemination of information

life in the twenty-first century, thug

Only a few are essential.

"Authorship is censorship
Should God sue me if I paint a river?
Should we give people the death sentence for parking violations-
You’ll not only have less parking violations but less DRIVERS."

Authorship censorship

The next day, I pray to God we can be sued for green, River mangoh?

Thus we provide parking dead

If you have a parking Bay, while the old driver.

"The word law is against my principles.
The problem begins with the legal fact that authorship is inextricably
bound up in the idea of ownership and the idea of language as
Intellectual property. Language and ideas flow freely between people
Despite the law.  It’s not plagiarism in the digital age – it’s repurposing.
Copyright law has to give up on its obsession with “the copy"
The law should not regulate “copy’s” or “reproductions” on there own.
It should instead regulate uses – like public distributions of copyrighted work -
That connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.
The author was the person who had been authorized by the state to print there work.
They were the ones to be held accountable for the ideas.
THE FIRST LAWS ON AUTHORSHIP WERE USED TO CENSOR & PERSECUTE
THE WRITERS WHO DARED PUBLISH RADICAL IDEAS.
Simple – should creation have to check with a lawyer?"

For the principle of the word grammar.

Lung problems, legal and the fact that the author is inextricably

Are you sick of property thought and design language

Intellectual love. The expression language reduces the flow and freely, those who

It's the law. Reuse of Digital plagiarism-old know it.

The Act of «copies» surrender copyrigt obsession

"Copy" and then "clone" normative or VNS still dies.

Business manners and public works management instead of copyrigt distributions and thus the Tao

All the laws of the Empire and the copyrigt means economic incentives to grow.

Before working on the state name print artist-certified people.

One of them, which in theory of liability.

The author can be danohmeh Chou wa'dich censors persecution

Ngil ' 4 xech radical writer, posting.

We remember a simple check necessary the creation of lawyers?

"Both
I never asked to be paid
And never profited off anyone’s back
acting is Plagiarism
Like magicians
We tell you we’re gonna lie to you"

In their honor

Do not pay what you have to say

Will never again.

Plagiarism smoke

Mage as

He'min ' or lies, we

"I’m very sorry
I have agents to suss out material
I have a lawyer to get me out of jail
Nothing is original
Creativity is just connecting things"

Sorry

I have a space to explore general deposit

I have not had a third attorney tyurma

The source or

The only thing connecting creativity

 *                *                 *

Jesus, guys, I think it's a tie as to which version is more legible. I think in the end this all just kind of made me sad inside.

Friendship the Rat

Walking along the lovely, rose-strewn streets of downtown Los Angeles last night, I saw two of the biggest goddamn rats of all time. I mean these were Secret of NIMH big, and they were scampering away from us on feet so heavy you could hear it almost half a block away.

Not running away, as I felt they had no need to fear us. Scampering, one after the other, perhaps in some kind of obese rat foreplay scenario.

Only the thing is, as they rounded the corner and pranced out of sight, one of them turned on around and lumbered back toward us. Well, toward me. Fucking directly toward me. While I have no way of telling what was going through this trundling behemoth's rodent brain, which might as well have been "FRIEEEEEENDSHIIIIIP" the way it was kind of buoying around jovially like an RV that currently contained an orgy, I do know what was going through my mind. One word quickly followed by another, the first being what I was wearing and the second being a vaguely illogical, panic-driven survival word designed to catch my attention and spur me from my paralysis.

"Sandals. Also, AIDS."

By Alex's estimate, the thing was three feet away from me by the time I raised one foot and stomped it down in a menacing gesture, causing the rat to turn tail and run away. It looked like a rather macho gesture, both arms crooked back at the shoulder and elbow, strength displayed. Really, it was the first part of what would have been a scaredy cat dance while I yelled "EWWWWW RAT GET IT OFF GET IT OFF EWWY EWWY EW!"

I want out of downtown.

Easter ride

And so, in spite of the doctor's orders and all wisdom, I set out on my bike to see what Sunday might bring.

A butterfly in Skid Row, the first I'd ever seen in the city.

A food line for the homeless.

Celebrations in the park.

I was panhandled twice as I rode past people in the better part of town. I was asked for advice on purchasing a tablet PC by a man with two teeth in the worst. I met another location scout and was put on another contact list.

And I watched this guy apply a vinyl of a fake brick wall.

Fuck your ribbon

NOTE: I originally posted this to Facebook, where I figured it'd earn me a lot of apathy and maybe a couple of defriendings. Instead it was fairly well received (shocks me, I wrote it in a white heat with no editing. It should suck.)

Okay, these Facebook avatar-based movements are starting to piss me off.

Hey, go ahead and support something, that's cool guys. But what's aggravating is that the sum total of what you're doing is nothing. Yes, I see your green squares and your pink equal signs and I'm pretty much there. Other people see them and they're way over there, but what you've provided is the opportunity for the both of us to just nod or shake our heads and get on with our lives. Basically: Volume minus Message equals Bullshit.

Put another way, for every pro-Prop 8 or whatever ad that's out there, there's real damage done to the collective psyche. For every pink and red avatar, the healing is nil. You are not helping, you are making yourself (and your friends) feel better about yourself.

Now writing and communicating is scary as hell. I HATE putting this shit out for even limited public consumption because I have friends who disagree with me and at the end of the day, I just want to be kind of likable. Well, what I can tell you from recent adventures in my trade is that the concept of rejection is two metric shitloads scarier than actual rejection and that at the end of the day, people can be petty and bullheaded and mean but they are accepting that you will dissent with them in certain ways.

Writing is a holy chore, and needs to spread like a virus. Communication is a tool that's atrophied down to a collection of call and response on these issues because frankly the people benefiting from rhetoric want it that way. You need to get out there, practice your craft, and when people hit you with something that's difficult to deal with you go back to your hole, you study everything relevant, and you come back stronger than ever. You evolve. You understand how these people developed in such a vacuum of basic decency toward human rights and you will, slowly and maybe only incrementally, bring them toward the enlightenment that you only just previously sought out.

But your avatar is useless.

I was heading to the store last night when I heard the crazy bellowing cyclist freak boy.

In case you don't live in downtown LA and haven't read my previous missives about this guy, he's some swarthy, racially indeterminate mutt who apparently does nothing all day except bicycle through several parts of LA (he's been spotted in East LA) and he does these tricks requiring incredible core and quad strength, leaning the bike over 45 degrees to one side and circling the street, shaking what is now his upper arm and leg and performing for the crowds of astonished and scared onlookers. And he's FUCKING LOUD. Like this guy has some opera background, has to, I'm sure of it because you can hear him three blocks away in this booming, dangerous baritone voice. To top it off, his screaming is context sensitive to the neighborhood he's in. In Little Tokyo it's Asian-sounding gibberish, and in East LA it's "ARRIIIIIBA!"

One time he was doing his thing outside my shop in Little Tokyo and I went outside to watch. I applauded, and then the fifth most frightening thing in my life happened. The guy rode up to the newspaper box on the curb, put his face to the thing so I could only see his eyes, and then started smacking the metal top hard enough to make his hand bleed while yelling "IDON'TNEEDYOURFUCKINGOPINION!" about five times before riding off.

You may also remember that I'm trying to get footage of him. I also call this guy my own personal Moby Dick.

So last night I hear him and think "Damn, I don't have my tablet." But then I realized that I was on my own bike.

Oh hell yes, I was going to ride with the psycho!

I've been on this kick for a bit where I try to do anything I can, say yes to experiences, because for the last year I've been a procrastinating shut-in. One exciting near-deal and then a creative slump from hell. Total lack of inertia. And it felt absolutely horrible. Recently I had started working out again, much to the chagrin of my elbow joints and the one knee with acute tendinosis, as well as spending all night humoring a drunk friend who was desperately trying to get me to move into some 2,000 square foot art loft with him and his prick roommate. Read between the lines, the opportunity to ride next to this nut for a stretch was right in line with what I wanted to be doing.

And I did. I stopped on the curb, waited for him to catch up, and then kicked off next to him BUT AT A RESPECTFUL DISTANCE. And he was doing his thing, circling through the brutal, crushing downtown traffic, almost getting creamed by a white Honda (he never heeds the traffic, often coming mere feet from city buses, and in five years how this hasn't killed him is a mystery).

Then he looks at me and I basically go through puberty backwards with panic.

And he throws me the devil horns and screams. Hell yes. I throw them back. Rock n' roll.

I only stayed with him for a few blocks before peeling off to head to the store. Whatever weird graces some greater power protects this freak with, I'm sure it doesn't extend to myself.

Going to the store

Okay, positive energy. I can try that.

Spring Street, between 4th and 5th. Two women and a stroller, behind me. One of them is speaking passionately and mangling any quotation her sentences stumble across. I don't care, she's energetic. She's the real deal. She's a far cry from beautiful, but I'd take her over a lot of these plastic Wilmas because she's just awesome. In a city where people obfuscate normality by just picking three character tweaks, somebody at least wants something.

It occurs to me that this is where, not three weeks ago, the cops swerved up to the curb right next to me one night and came running at me. I thought I was going to get it. Instead they tackled a black guy on a bike who was passing right next to me.

Seventh Street. A hobo wearing a towel where there's usually a shirt panhandles me. Drops the towel to make his point, revealing too-large pants that hang so far down that they expose his unkempt bush to the entire block. I tell him I never carry cash. He laughs and pats me down gently, jokingly. Then he pats my cock before quickly moving away. I yell "Whoa, buddy!" but I'm laughing. I'm way past giving a shit and so is he, with eyes redder than they are white and a wasted body.

The next corner sees a beautiful Asian girl in a designer coat that probably costs more than all my clothes put together, no hyperbole. She's on the phone and using the word "like" the same way old telegrams used "stop". There's a kind of poetry to Valley Girl when you hear it enough.

So like he's been really great
This has been like the worst week of my life
and he's like been there for me

It sounds like she's trying to make a case for the underdog to a skeptical friend, or maybe that's just what I want to believe, and I don't begrudge her a damn thing but I do have to wonder how the worst week of her life stacks up to that last guy's best.

A quick stop at the library. Not a week ago I taught Sota, now fifteen, the same thing my buddy Casim showed me when I was that age; take a well-read book from the girly porn or "Romance" section and hold it by the spine. Let it fall open. Sex scene, every damn time. Amaze your friends with this tested and true trick.

Reading the script to Apocalypse Now on the sky bridge, dwelling on the themes that tend to flit by when you're watching it, and some guy is using the place the same way a coyote uses a row of houses with chained up dogs. Scan the tables, pick the babe, start chatting. Loud. I switch the music piping through my headphones to from Sarah Blasko to Slayer and crank it up. When he finds that husk dried up and only as responsive as the social contract compels her to be he moves on. I hear him barking at others for five minutes and then he leaves. No books. Probably the vaguest awareness that they're even there.

I glance over my shoulder at the woman after he's gone. She throws me a look that may or not say "Eat shit." I'm fine with either interpretation.

Yes, but are there any questions about George Washington and blowjobs?

Good lord, do not click here.

Central Library. More home than home is. There is a routine, a rotation.

Two scripts.
    One DVD
        One non-fiction industry book
            Two non-fiction in areas of interest (Love & the Brain, Asian crime studies)

I did what nobody does in Los Angeles. I stopped and sat and let the sounds occur to me.
To my left, the kind of chatter you hear in a cafeteria. To my right was the silence of the adult learning center.
The nicest room in the place, comfort for idiots and the unfortunate.
But nobody was there. They were all across the hall in the DVD section.

Sick yellow paint, the cheapest wall sconces, fancy hanging lights.
A cane taps along on the tiles. These are the people who surround me.
Intensely fat eight-year-olds. Old women in suits with luggage totes. A group of black people walk by, one talk about a Pizza Hut offer as if quoting from a brochure. A slender white man trails the lingering scent of baby powder. Please just one person spontaneously mention Faust in this lifetime.

I couldn't move for a long time, even to look around. It has been exactly three months to this day that somebody has bothered to smile at me from the middle of themselves.
On this three month anniversary, dark history repeated itself.

My Little Bronies

I was at a party last night, theme of "Sweaters and nog". It was a packed house, half creatives and half church people. This sounds a tiny bit bizarre, but I should point out that despite being a godless heathen with multiple unproven felonies under his belt, I approve of this particular church because they themselves are zany enough that the IRS is STILL trying to yank their non-profit status from an incident way back when they pissed off Bush the Junior. And they have a lesbian priestess.

My friend May hooked her arm around my waist and guided me to a new group, the fourth or fifth one that had demanded my presence to tell them about My Little Pony.

Not that it matters, but everything that follows is true.

Some time ago in that period of my life I can't clearly remember, probably six months ago, I was having dinner with a friend named George. I had met George through Evan. Remember Evan, he comes into the story later. George and I were having a long, involved discussion when he invited me to a gathering with Evan and some of their other friends at the campus they attended. "It'll be great," he was saying, "we're just going to hang out, have some beers, watch My Little Pony, play some video games. Evan has some good lager..."

"Pause. Rewind. Did you say My Little Pony?"

George said yes, and played it perfectly straight. That's the thing about George, is that he's probably the most hetero guy I know in Los Angeles. I know that's not saying much, since everybody here is either gay, effeminate, or really really angrily repressed, but it must be noted he's so straight you could take most of his humor seriously. So it took me a few minutes to realize that he was DEAD FUCKING FUCKITY FUCK FUCK SERIOUS. This was a group of grown men, two of whom I knew, getting together to drink dark beer and watch a girly cartoon.

I don't know these people. I feel just super-compelled to point that out.

Well, there was a new series I wasn't aware of. I'm aware of it now, because despite the fact that I didn't make it to the event, mentions of the show kept popping up. A comic I read referenced its popularity... amongst men... and a friend online responded to a joke I made by linking to a Youtube clip of a Pony's shocked reaction.

The best part? No woman I've spoken to is even aware there's a new show.


Two days ago:

I'm hanging out with Evan. Evan is wearing a DJ Pony t-shirt. I think I've seen the extent of this thing and am beyond being shocked, which shows how much I underestimate life's ability to stick two fingers up my ass when I least expect it. We're walking along when we run into one of the scariest human beings I've seen outside of any film that stars Dennis Hopper. Big, mean, cholo-looking motherfucker with a cut-off shirt and a bandanna. Total gang material. And he stops in front of us, crosses his arms, and leans forward to pointedly glare at Evan's shirt.

Evan and I shift uneasily and glance at each other. After what feels like half a minute, we decide to chance it and sidle around the human beef flank standing before us. He uncrosses his arms, takes a step forward, and we freeze. He raises his fist to Evan for a fist bump and says "Dude, bro hoof."

Part of me died and sunk into that sidewalk, but part of me was also fairly delighted. Whoever says there is truly nothing new under the sun? That person is a doofus.

And that wasn't all. We ran into yet another specimen with long, unkempt hair and an 80s heavy metal shirt who pointed and said "Great shirt, man!" Evan was a superstar that day.

And last night, telling the same story over and over, I had gone from knowing only one person at the party I had entered to being the center of attention. A few men at least knew of the phenomenon, and none of the women had even heard of it. But every single one was fascinated by this unlikely lightning bolt of a pop culture landing.

Lest ye think I'm joking, click here.

Walked along the beach for what might be the last time in a while yesterday morning. The sun rose at my back and warmed my neck, and I turned to watch it illuminate my footprints on the sand before the ocean waves reclaimed any sign of my passage.

Every morning should be that fucking beautiful.

Glory Days: Savaging the Subway

One day, ten years ago, I was bored.

It amazes me that boredom exists in increments of more than about fifteen seconds. I truly believe it is a human invention, the result of taming an environment so that it is no longer a continued process of attempting to survive any number of things that are simultaneously trying to kill us. We now adapt the environment to suit us and not the other way around. Boredom means we can't evolve.

This is besides the point, but this gives me an idea for turning theaters into legal dead zones in the case of people with cell phones and screaming kids. Reposition the exit doors and line the aisles with Slip and Slides.

Anyway, when I get bored I tend to look for a solution and usually find it. So on this day, ten years ago, I called Subway and set up an interview.

I showed up wearing a button-down shirt and tie and slacks. I selected a firm handshake, but not the typical Los Angeles handshake of the insecure, all trying to crush a man's index and pinkie knuckles as close together as possible. No, this was firm but sure, two shakes and you're done. The manager thought I must have been in the wrong place.

We sat down and he asked why I chose Subway. I looked him dead in the eye and said "I want to make some RUDE MOTHERFUCKING SANDWICHES." I said, my eyes a bit too wide.

He blinked a few times, rapidly. Not what he had been expecting. He opened his mouth to speak again, but I pressed on. "I want to make... I want to make the RUDEST sandwich ever! I'm talking like such a good fucking sandwich the customer bites into it, smiles this beautiful smile, and says 'That is a GOOD FUCKING SANDWICH, man!' I want to take like this bread, right? And then I want to put stuff on it and then bake it for ten seconds and ask if they want to make it a combo so fucking hard that they see God!"

I started to rock back and forth in the outdoor metal chair, making a racket while I stabbed the table with my finger to emphasize each word. I might have been spitting a bit, I can't remember. I was certainly working myself into a faux lather. It was at this point or perhaps slightly after that the manager's head wound up in his hands as he just waited for me to stop screaming.

"I have this one idea for a sandwich, right? It's got this meat and cheese, and then some kind of sauce! SAUCE! Then right before I serve it up, I bake it by tossing it at a precise angle over the sun! Then I punch Jared in the heart so hard that he dies!"

I was breathing heavily. I stopped talking. I was ready for my free drink or a ride in a cop car. Instead the manager rallied beautifully. He was red, but I couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or anger. I'd have hated to play poker against him. He just asked "Is there... anything else you enjoy?"

I pretended to think about this for a second, then said "I kinda like eating sandwiches."

There was a long silence. It was over, and the poor guy was looking for a way to get out without the crazy man stabbing him directly in the neck, I guess. I stood up. He stood up. I held out my hand. He took it. We shook. I said "So when am I gonna know?"