Sunday, October 28, 2007

50 on 50

A little comic gem coming from Ray Richmond at Past Deadline:

"In preparation for turning age 50 on Friday (10/19), I share the following 50 things taught me by Hollywood:

1. When the going gets tough, the tough get a lawyer.
2. If you're an actor who isn't lying about his age, you're probably unemployed.
3. Biggest Lie in Showbiz: "I haven't had any work done."
4. 2nd Biggest Lie: "It's not about the money."
5. 3rd Biggest Lie: "It's an honor just to be nominated."
6. 4th Biggest Lie: "We'll call you when we're staffing up."
7. 5th Biggest Lie: "I would never do that to a friend."
8. Seating is always limited.
9. They aren't laughing with you but at you.
10. 40 is the old 40.
11. People who say they watch no TV watch the most.
12. The most sexually-charged workplaces on Earth are hospitals and law offices.
13. Sex sells. Money talks. Religion divides. And everybody loves Pixar.
14. A lot of people believe that Oprah Winfrey is God, seemingly including Oprah.
15. But it's Jerry Bruckheimer who rules the world, of course.
16. Overrated: Conan O'Brien, Rachael Ray, "Grey's Anatomy," the 18-49 Demographic, TiVo
17. Underrated: Rainn Wilson, Keith Olbermann, "Rescue Me," Susie Essman, TV Downloads
18. It's not what you know, it's whose ass you have to kiss.
19. You're only as popular as your job. Lose it and watch your "friends" disappear.
20. An agent, however, is a true friend who will stick by you always.
21. All Ben Stiller comedies are exactly the same.
22. Writers deserve far more credit than they ever get.
23. Reality TV isn't.
24. When someone leaves a job to "spend more time with my family" or "explore other opportunities," they've been fired.
25. If they leave to take a post with an Internet start-up, they soon WILL be fired.
26. If you're a celebrity, it's far easier to adopt kids from Africa.
27. People who make a lousy movie or TV show are always the last to know.
28. Being rich means never having to say you're sorry.
29. The heftier the marketing/promo budget, the less interest I have in seeing it.
30. Most big hits happen by accident.
31. Having one hit will buy a producer four flops.
32. If you're British, your chances of winning a Golden Globe increase tenfold.
33. Anything worth creating is worth stealing.
34. If you're an actress on a TV series, you're expected never to eat again.
35. Great acting can't save a bad script, but bad acting can undo a great one.
36. There's far more quality to be found on television than at the movies.
37. If you want your book to sell, be sure it has a character named "Harry" or "Potter" (or both).
38. If you crave respect, try dying.
39. Critics care far less about enlightening consumers than they do impressing other critics.
40. It's all right to make fun of white guys but nobody else.
41. Michael Jackson is a white guy.
42. People can be made to say and do (and sign) anything if there's a camera nearby.
43. The cost of free speech keeps rising.
44. Multiplex Law #1: If you attend a slasher film, at least one mother will have brought along her baby.
45. Multiplex Law #2: The person sitting behind you always has Restless Leg Syndrome.
46. Multiplex Law #3: And ADD.
47. Multiplex Law #4: And just ate a massive bean burrito.
48. Multiplex Law #5: Popcorn tastes much better in the dark.
49. Hollywood thinks people care far more about its inner workings than they actually do.
50. Confessing to being 50 is truly idiotic."

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Not funny.

Los Angeles county is beseiged by the worst wildfires in it's history currently. They won't stop until Friday, it seems. Luckily, there are fires to the North, to the South, and to the West of Burbank/downtown LA. So we're surrounded (glass half empty) but more importantly not on fire (glass half full). This area, currently, is all right, but the magnitude of the fire threat is still terrifying. The sky hasn't been too clear and glowed a deep, deep orange as the sun set. Yesterday night my lips parched and chapped and I thought nothing of it until I realized that it was happening to everyone... it's because the fire is sucking all the moisture out of the air. Dry skin, dry lips, dry hair. And San Diego is in flames.

Black Widows, Bronchitis, and Wildfires all within the first month of arrival... I'm almost expecting an earthquake to happen by the end of the week.

As a matter of fact, in all seriousness, I'm going to buy an emergency relief kit and safebox tomorrow. Scary, I know, but a necessary measure.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Broken Taillight

No, it hasn't happened yet thank god, because my Prius is barely two months old, but such a thing repeatedly appears as one of my biggest fears. Since buying the new car, I've developed a terror that there are controls on it I am forgetting about or don't understand. Sometimes the futuristic thing gets confusing; the car has no key start, for example, but a power button. Like a vaccum cleaner or an electric toothbrush. The wipers have four settings all on the same handle but none are pictured, they are implied. When I first drove it from the dealership with my mother I was driving at 30 miles an hour on the highway because I accidently had the digital display on kilometers (it took a few miles before I felt there was something horribly wrong and pulled over to proceed pressing every button on the dash to get it to get it back to American settings). The worst, though, is the lights. Although simple, there's three settings and none are automatic. When I first drove in the dark, nearly every car I passed was signaling me, but I didn't gather that my high beams were on until later. Until I finally figured out the headlights, I'd become completely paranoid about the lights as a whole, unsure if my automatic starting of the car turns the signals or the parking lights on, too. Lately, I've been driving and get hypersensitive towards fellow drivers. I play my electronic music very loudly through closed windows, and if I do anything wrong, it isn't likely that I'm going to quickly hear other people spewing road rages at me. I shrug it off when some asshole of a driver seems particularly bent on focusing his evil stares through my windows, but every time it happens, with my car in the pristine shape it is, I can't help wondering if it's me. Did I do something wrong? Because most of the time I probably wouldn't know.

Sometimes driving through LA is like walking in public with toilet paper stuck to your shoe. Except the toilet paper can cost you hundreds, everybody's hatred, and you know, even maybe your life.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Financial Security!

Congratulations to Lou, blog-filiate and friend, for securing a permanent job at a certain awesome studio (that made the moderate successes "Finding Nemo" and "Toy Story" and et cetera) before even graduating college. Yeah baby, tell me all your industry secrets.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Stop the Presses


powered by ODEO
Yes! I'm back!

Restart the Remix!!!

Sincere apologies to the readers of this blog (of which there are three!) for my deserting you. Now I probably have half a reader left, and will have to win the masses back because, you know, it will make me feel good inside.

I worked a film two weeks ago that I had to quit because my housing situation was too pressing. The movers brought in everything in the middle of the shoot and the living room was a sea of cardboard for a week before enough was enough. It took me over a week to finally unpack and organize things to my liking. Moving is an exciting yet hellish experience, especially when every day you're shopping and ringing up prices that make your eyes roll into the back of your head. I rearranged my room three times, pushing a desk, dresser, and full size bed around a 15x15 carpeted room in some sort of horrific act of zen-achieving masochism.

Things have calmed down recently. The walls are still bare around the building for I have yet to risk my life hanging posters framed with glass. My closet still has no door, and I missed yesterday's episode of "Heroes" (DON'T TELL ME!). But still, things are calm.

Lacking the Jaded gene has been fun as of late. I drive around and actually enjoy my surroundings, knowing that it'll only be a (very) short time before I ignore all of it, a New Yorker who's never ridden the red bus. I drove by Mulholland Drive. I went to see a movie in a Hollywood cinema and there was a separate VIP ticket line I wasn't allowed in. I saw the 30 Days of Night Premiere maddness outside of the Grauman's Chinese and spotted Sam Raimi. I had a job that took me driving to Beverly Hills, where I parked outside a Bentley dealership. I've never seen a Bentley dealership before, hell, if I knew anything about cars, I might know whether I've even seen a Bentley before. I even saw the LAPD arrest someone.

Before long such starry-eyed images will surely fade into the grim silly putty that is a diluted and corrupted future. A future of movies. How does one survive such a future? By laughing at it of course. Laugh. Have fun with it. Point and stare, pick out the inconsistencies, take it all in stride and never seriously. The funniest thing about Hollywood is the obvious two-faced philosophy of its existence. Thus, the key to survival Hell-A. That's probably why I somehow, in someway, even having come from the tightass of New York, I'm having plenty of fun here.

Did I mention that I have a Prius Hybrid Car? That helps me have fun, too.

I discoverd some amazing Techno that was playing over the loudspeaker at Virgin. The artist is Digitalism and the album is "Idealistic". It makes for amazing diving music. The sample above is a Digitalism remix.