The main thing that bothers me about this video is Jim Belushi's outfit. I cannot stop thinking about the poor, troubled soul who is the costume designer for this show. He/She has probably put a good 20 years of his life into the industry, working his way up, and the big payoff is getting paid to pick out ugly flannel shirts with mismatching ties to go with pants from Old Navy.
(side note - I was going to post about how I finally understand all the subtextual elements of the new promos that announce According To Jim's syndication, but I couldn't find a clip of it on YouTube. If I do, you alls are gonna have to deal with me calling Jim Balushi a "huge, and hugely latent, faggot.")
I've decided to pretty much stop personal blogging. From now on, if I post on here, it will probably only be a post about Pop Culture ... thus this blog shal now be known as "Pop Blog (By Ted!)." To end one era and begin another, I will now make one final peronablog post (and despite the fact that I'm in a great, happy place right now, I've decided to sad-boy this one up, for for satire's sake) following this sentence.
Subject: Wow, look at me a year ago! Music: some unlistenable new song from The Who
Body: Wow, guys, check out what I just found on the Facebook Rubberneck Group's Discussion Board!: (begin quote)
September 3, 2005 So, it's been awhile. Better late than never, right? Or does that phrase only apply when you've actually completed something? Whatever, there will probably be a new issue out in the next month or so. Shane's working 40-hour weeks and I'm signed up for 19 hours of class. And getting ready to apply to grad school. And we're writing a series of young adult books. And I'm writing a story. And we're both working on screenplays and stageplays. And I got a piano. And the weather is awesome out. And I miss my kitties. And I miss my copy of the 80s version of "The Blob" starring Kevin Dillon. Has anybody seen my copy of it? It's on VHS.
(end quote)
My oh my! New Rubberneck? That sounds awesome, guys! When's it gonna happen? Oh, never? Sounds good to me! Less work! Books for young adults? How's that coming along? Oh, don't wanna talk about it? Sure thing! Load off my mind! What grad schools did you apply to? None? Well what about this fall? No probably not? Ever? Yeah? Alright! Putting things off now just means you'll get more work done later, so good decision! At least you still have that piano. Oh, what? For free? Eeesh. Well, I heard you got a kitty since then. What's that? Your brother, huh? Oh. Well did you ever find that copy - what? Oh. Sorry I asked.
I realized that I need to do something with my piano. Neither my parents, nor my brother really have any space for me to store it, so I think I'm just going to sell it. I bought it for a hundred and fifty bucks, so it's not that big of a loss. Anyway, I made a craigslist.org post, advertising it for $100. The purchaser needs to have it moved, or move it him/herself. If any of you out there know of anybody interested in buying/storing an upright piano, please let me know. It's a nice piano, in pretty good shape, and I'm going to miss it, but it must go. By August 14th.
So, the evening really began with Project Runway, as any Wednesday evening should. Jenna and Shane and Jenn and I ate it up, as usual, and decided to drink to a number of different rules:
drink every time that Tim Gunn says "carry on" or "make it work"
drink every time that somebody says something bitchy, or uses the word "fabulous!"
drink every time the words "in" or "out" are used
and, as an episode-specific rule, we drank every time somebody said "accessory"
Making a drinking game to a totally gay show is very satisfying; it seems to appropriately corrupt a frattitude tradition. So we continued it, with the other Ultimate Gay Evening event, which was a screening of the movie On the Line. This is the ill-conceived 2001 romantic comedy starring then-slightly-famous N*Sync members Lance Bass and Joey Fatone. For those of you who do not follow celebrity gossip (or mainstream news media, who prioritized this story over the civilians who died in Lebanon today), former N*Sync member Lance Bass came out today to People "magazine." Therefore, we decided to rent On the Line (on VHS!) and drink every time that Lance Bass strained to feign interest in women. It was wonderful, and tough, and made me drink a lot. It was a truly wonderful awful film. Seriously, though, even though he is quite possibly the lamest/blandest/most-irrelevant person in the nation, I did feel quite a bit of joy/sympathy for the neutered, frosty-haired Bass today. In a time when even the state of New York totally backs out on queer-rights issues, we can absolutely use the most useless, flavorless, idiotic former-pseudo-crooners we can get.
Wanna know why I fucking love The Price Is Right? Because it's full of really really happy old people, and really happy old people make me really fucking happy for life. I don't care that the show fetishizes consuming habits, or that it's a wee bit sexist. I don't. You know what I do care about? Seventy-year-old women jumping up and down in a pantsuit because they just won a purple pickup truck, and a French-inspired area rug. I really want a job that let's me watch The Price Is Right every day. I am maybe getting a freelance gig, so who knows? If Bob Barker ever dies, I am not going to be happy.
So, as part of a new project Shane came up with, I made a song for the fictional town of Riopelle, the place that our currently-unfinished children's book series takes place. It's an old Civil War fort in the hills of Tennessee, owned by a bunch of writers and artists who live and work there. It's like a commune. Anyway they have a bunch of kids and stuff. But even though they hate outsiders, the parents have to run the fort as a tourist trap for part of the year to recieve federal funding for their projects. So this song is like their enticement to "come on down." ANYWAY, this is an extremely rough demo, with pitchy Ted vocals and spare instrumentation and a shitty mix, but I like it nonetheless and wanted to share. Find it RIGHT HERE. I'll post the lyrics after the "jump," in case they're hard to understand. Feedback welcome/preferred.
We didn't make the final 20 in the FX contest. But 20 low-brow fratboy short films did. And almost zero of them are pitches for shows. Most of them are obviously trimmed versions of longer short films, with concepts that couldn't work episodically. And zero of them are funny. Honestly. This isn't a sour grapes situation. It's just a matter of differing tastes. Why am I surprised? This was a promotion for "It's Always Sunny In Philledelphia," a show that I really, really hate. I can't be surprised.
Anyway, I can't be angry, because this contest got me off of my ass and made me make something. Thanks again to all parties involved. For those of you who haven't seen it, or would like to spread the word around now, go watch it on my Myspace page, or Shane's, or RIGHT HERE.
On to other projects. I need to finish my section of the children's book I'm writing with Shane, and get to work on a few screenplays. Oh, and Katz and I are going to write a short one-act stage play called "The Miserables," which is about the American Revolution, and baseball, and Steve McQueen.
I cannot bless Shane's & Katz's souls enough. I don't even bless things. But still, I bless them. With them and some amazing, amazing actors who agreed to perform a day before we needed them and rearranged their schedules for us, we have (almost) finished a pretty fantastic little short-film-tv-show-pitch-thing. So many things came together perfect, and I cannot possibly describe them all right now. Thus, stream-of-consciousness rambling:
Tatum. My mom. My stunt-skateboarding cousin. My father's amazing patience and understanding. My cousin's funeral home. Cassi's wonderful single-line performance. Everything about Jerry Frye. Jenna Frye and her three terrific voices. Jordan Kling's sadly cut performance. East meets Chilli Dog. Oatmeal bars. Handheld camera work. Villa Grove and its brilliantly offensive anti-abortion billboard.
I haven't really slept much, and I've been absent to all of my friends, but the fruits of our labors are worth it all. I'll be back to life soon. But these last five days have contained more pain, joy, excitment, dissapointment, and accomplishment than any other time in my life. I cannot thank everybody enough. Especially Shane & Katz.
I desperately need a few actors for an urgent, impromptu film project. I need people who would be willing to give me a sizable chunk of their weekend - THIS WEEKEND. I'm that asshole. If anybody out there knows of anyone who would be interested in any of the following roles, please let me know IMMEDIATELY.
I need:
A 40-45 year-old man who would be playing the lead role, essentially, and a 40-45 year-old woman to play his wife.
A woman who could look like she's about 55, and also in another scene look like she's about 75.
An 18-or-so-year-old girl who needs to kind-of look like the 40-45 year old woman.
Three or four hipster-looking people (ages 18-35), only one of whom has to speak a line. This is for a single scene and would take only an hour or so of your time.
IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED, all the filming will be done in the Villa Grove/Tuscola area, starting in the next few days and through the weekend, and I can arrange schedules as needed. Some scenes will only require one or two people, so scheduling will be based on availability. MESSAGE, EMAIL, OR CALL ME ASAP IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOW WOULD LIKE TO HELP OUT.
Thanks, everybody. I love you all.
Oh, also, sorry if you read this as a MySpace bulletin or Facebook message already.
1. Paris Hilton is the most photographed barn in America from Don DeLillo's White Noise. She is the most photographed barn, but exactly.
3. We are, for sure, going ahead with the scripting & filming of a series of short films about the fabulous Countess Barbra Debby and her close friend, Folk Hero Crispy Waters. Details to come soon. Kitties are involved.
2. We cleanly, clearly deduced why/how we live in a postironic state of existance.
So, be sure to stay skeptical, critical, and analytical, kids. Sometimes, you'll catch things. Important things. I refused to take my Taco Bell Large Diet Pepsi cup at face value, and discovered a footnote to the claim that I could "become El Presidente of Taco Bell" in a new contest. That footnote? "El Presidente assumes no official duties." But I could win a million pesos (Taco Bell estimates the value as $93,000). How about that?
Hate him. He's the Fratty mcFratson Duder who made Cabin Fever and Hostel. If you have iTunes, find the podcast "KCRW's The Treatment" with Elvis Mitchell, and download the most recent one. It's an interview with Eli Roth. Also, if you're following my instructions, you need to watch Hostel. It's really, really, misguided/misogynist/homophobic/agorophobic/nationalistic/dumb. Yet somehow, in this interview, Mitchell and Roth can't stop patting Roth on the back for making a film that really comments upon modern American culture, men wanting power over women, American attitudes towards foreign countries, pleasure industries, and pretty much everything else that a Bostonian Chowderhead could imagine himself making a statement about. But Hostel achieves none of those things, and Roth can't even begin to understand that. The only speaking women in the film are evil wenches who use their sex to lure you into a deadly trap. The only motivation given to a torturous killer to make him a torturing killer is that he's a latent homosexual. And the power-abusing, pleasure seeking, nationalistic American asshole that Roth claims to be skewering wins in the end by aggresively, violently killing everybody in his path. Whatever. I hate people. Especially when they're Eli Roth. I'm going to write a horror film this summer (actually, maybe two*), and now I'm thinking that one of the characters might be named Eli Roth.
*or maybe three**
**well, maybe four, because I want to write the following spec. scripts: a sequel to the Final Destination films, a reimagining of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and a bizzare sequel/reimagining/commentary film for the Friday the 13th series. Does anybody want to be my secretary? For free?
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