Open Letter To The Guy Who Kept Looking At Me On The El

Dude, what are you looking at? It's creepy. You get two looks, maybe three. I appear on the train, you get one look to determine if I'm black or not. Sufficiently white, go back to your book. But wait, a second look, that's fine, I could, in the previous brief moment look like someone you know, in fact, the chances are high, as I know a lot of people. Third look, allright, now what's going on? I'm seeing you preipherally, so you don't know I know, but if you do it again, I'm looking and calling you out. Fourth look, now I look, at first just looking up to see where the blue emergency light is located, then noticing that you, again, are looking! Now I am "giving" you a look. You look away first, good made my point. Fifth look, allright now you should just know better, I just gave you a look! I check myself for open wounds, scars, and pustules, none, stop it. And then finally the look as I leave, which is included in the 1 to 3 looks you get, long exhausted buddy.

Is it a gay thing? It's a gay thing isn't it?

Steve Carrell is famous, like really famous.

On Friday night I had Lesbian Wondertwins Judy Fabjance and Heather Elam over at the house. Heather who I knew in High School, and Judy who signed me up on my first day at Second City.

They now date and are in a comedy troupe called GayCo, which was formed with the help of Andy Eninger, who I met in college in the improv troupe Tower Players completely seperate from Judy & Heather. It boggles the mind. They are all submitting talent reels to Rosie O'Donnell's production company. Apparently she is producing a sketch comedy show with gay & lesbian themes, even though nobody in Bush America approves of that except that most do. The marginalization of the majority, try it, it's fun!

Taking full advantage of that fact that I didn't know how to make a reel we made a hell of a reel for Judy. The best ideas come not from the experts, but the talented who are willing to admit they don't know shit. I hope it turns some heads. I employed the style I developed when making all the episode shorts for the radio run, using a lot blinking images in and out of black and giving image teases and payoffs. Like in the short called "riff" with Zoe from episode whatever.

In the midst of various breaks we started talking about Steve Carrell. I think I was talking about casting one of the movies I'm writing and I said "You don't need a big star like Tom Cruise or Steve Carrell..." Judy stopped me and pointed out how interesting that phrase was. Judy has been working for Second City since she was in High School where she struck up a friendship with the Northwest Cast members at the time, Carrell, Colbert, Sidaris, Dinello, Rouse, etc. In fact they all took the Second City van and went to Judy's High School graduation. I only know Carrell because I am a mega comedy fanboy and slobbered all over him after a show I saw in 1992 and he told me he wished he had already been in a comedy troupe at my age and to keep it up and stop slobbering.

In the last six months Carrell has logged one of the biggest box office hits of 2005 made for a fraction of Wedding Crashers money, one of the top shows based on the best show of all time, won a Golden Globe and had his indy film bought for $10mil at Sundance. 14 years to become an overnight success, hey that's ahead of schedule. And my co-workers are talking about him, as they would any tv star, having no knowledge of Second City or his rise or how he got there or anything. Just watercooler convo that used to be reserved for Friends is now about this famous guy Steve Carrell. Anybody could've gotten him in any movie a year ago. Which begs the question, why isn't Scott Adsit famous?

Sabotage!

Justin found some baseball cards in his dryer. Those would be the cards I put in his flannell shirt. HAHAHAH! That's probably not the end of it J. There's a Jose Rijo floating around. And a Bob Boone. And a Carney Lansford. Maybe a Bip Roberts

Thank you for reading Sandy's blog

Filibuster Alito

Vote for No Cloture. Sign John Kerry's petition. It's your Democratic duty.

There's a debate raging, and the Republicans would prefer it not take place right now. They would prefer it take place after Alito is on the court, so that it doesn't matter what the out come of the debate is, they win anyway. The debate is over whether we have a king or not. Or, in the fake parlance of their fake judicial speak "Unitary Executive Powers (copyright 2005 Rover Enterprises) They can't win the argument. The structure of the constitution is proof that no such thing should exist. Would you prefer to start the debate on how much power the president should have with Alito on the court, or with somone else?

And to replace Sandra day O'Conner of all people.

And Sigourney Weaver is hot.

Short-Haired Chick Friday

So last night's Schadenfreude meeting sucked. We just argued about Iraq. I lost. All truth is first conspiracy. Nobody knows the truth. The burden of proof is on me, Bush is assumed innocent, my thoughts on deliberate wrongdoing is conspiracy. I can't prove any of it.



Nobody argues anymore whether George Bush lied us into war, we now argue whether it was justified that we be lied to. Until it can be proven that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell invaded Iraq for anything other than altruistic purposes, they are, by default, telling the truth.



All I know is I believe in human weakness. There are weak humans. This is a fact. Greedy humans have existed. Humans have sought power to the exception of accepted social standards. Domination and Power are intoxicating to a certain demographic. Humans have existed of flawed perception and defective judgement whether in nature or nurture. Therefore the acknoledgement that such weakness exists allows for possibility that the above mentioned people have those flaws.



So fuck them and fuck Alito. Call your Sentator. 888-355-3588 or 888-818-6641. Tell them to vote for no cloture (filibuster) on Alito. Durbin and Obama may vote No on Alito and Yes on Cloture. We can't have this.



For extra credit call Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, or John Kerry - and tell them to either LEAD THE FILIBUSTER or FORGET ABOUT YOUR SUPPORT for their 2008 Presidential Bid. You can also send that message to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (202-224-2447) and the Democratic National Committee (202-863-8000). Do it.

It's time to bring all the facets of this slowly revealed ideology brought to the stage for debate, quit hiding it. Tell the citizens of the US what you stand for and quit hiding behind blatant lies, obfuscation of debate, tricky reframing of discourse, and marginalization of opposition opinion in what is supposed to be the standard-bearer of Democracy. Enough. There has to be a turning point, it's time for the Dems to declare this is where they finally stand their ground or fuck them too. If this isn't a turning point I don't know what is. Which road does the country go down?



I can't prove that Alito will trade objective judgement for loyalty to a democratically unpopular ideology. But I allow for the fact that such a flaw may exist in this man.

I don't know a Visitor Q from a Gozu, but Dead or Alive and Fudoh are balls awesome.

I just reread my last post and that line popped out at me, that might be the most ridiculous line I've ever written.

I don't know shiite about Miike

Got in a convo with Roberto in the talkback on Hostel, which he compared to Audition, one of Takashi Miike's masterpieces. It completely makes sense that Roth would pull heavily from Miike, who even has a cameo in the film. I've been hearing about Miike for years. He's part of the last decade of Tokyo Shock Cinema which includes Kinji Fukusaku (Battle Royal), Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus, Godzilla Final Wars), Katsuhito Ishii (Shark Skin Man & Peach Hip Girl) and for all I know also includes Beat Takeshi and Chan-Wook Park (Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and 2005's Fuck You, That's My Name Award Winner - Oldboy (to anybody who's seen it, I mean, holy shit, right?)), and I'll shut up there because I only kind of know what I'm talking about and Chan-Wook Park would be surprised to find he's part of the Tokyo Shock movement because he's from Korea.



Anyway, point is, like most things in life, I know enough to strike up a conversation.

So I started hearing rumblings about this Miike guy, and how he made 14 films between 2001 and 2002 and how Ichi the Killer is the most fucked movie on earth. So I decide to track down and finally watch some Miike. But I figure I gotta do this right, I'll start with his early shit. Like Woody Allen, start with Tiger Lily. Earliest shit I could find (at the time) was Fudoh: The Next Generation and Dead or Alive. And that's where the filmfest stopped. Somehow I got derailed two unconsequential films into his huge huge career. But while those two may be obscure, holy shit are they enjoyable. I don't know a Visitor Q from a Gozu, but Dead or Alive and Fudoh are balls awesome.



Fudoh is about a High School kid who's head of the Yakuza or next in line I think, so he's a High Schooler but he's putting all these hits out on people who fuck with him at High School, like the principal. I'm probably butchering the plot but here's what's important, the hitmen are little Asian Schoolgirls who go to Fudoh's High School and also strip in his club. The little Asian Schoolgirls kill Fudoh's opponents by sticking blowguns in their coochies and firing darts out of them.



And then there's Dead or Alive which has THE GREATEST FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF ANY MOVIE EVER.

It begins with a five minute montage to this rocking screaming guitar over a concert images: a body falling out of a building, and having a bag of coke stripped from it's hand, a dude fucking another dude, only to have someone stab the fuckers neck spraying a paint-sprayer amount of blood all over the fuckee who turns to try and catch some blood in his mouth as he comes. This Yakuza guy doing a line of coke that is a ridiculous 35 yards long in this warehouse, and some Fat Yakuza who eats 40 bowls of noodles, then gets shot in the stomach splattering the noodles out and over the camera lens, blacking the whole sequence out.

So no, I haven't seen Audition, Ichi, or Visitor Q, but I have a feeling I'm starting to get a grasp of Takeshi Miike.

I'll end on a spoiler, so bow out if you don't want to know the ending to Dead or Alive, I assume most of you could give a toss. So at then end of the movie, all of a sudden the main good guy and bad guy meet in a desert and face off. And after an entire movie that (crazy as it might be) is real-world based, one of the guys creates some total sci-fi space laser ball in his hands and fires it at the other guy (and you're like, "what?") Then the other guy has his robot back open up and a missile launcher Tranformers out of his back and lands on this shoulder. He fires a missile and the entire country blows up in a giant explosion seen from space.

Ridiculous.

It's not a movie, it's an experience

I can't tell you about Hostel . If you've thought of going to see it, don't read what it's about, just go. It's not a movie, it's an experience. One of those Last House On The Left, original Chainsaw Massacre type get-me-THE-FUCK-out-of-this theatre experiences. You can't leave, you're stuck in the movie.



Hostel is made by Eli Roth, who made Cabin Fever. I liked Cabin Fever, but wasn't sure what to make of it. It was funny in an odd way. There's that moment in the beginning when the kids are all hanging out and the chick asks if the Jock has cigarettes, and the jock says "no" and then shows his friends that he DOES have cigarettes and snickers because he has cigarettes. I was like, that is the lamest joke, and then started laughing really hard because, yes, that's a lame joke, but it's awesome that the character thinks that's funny. It's like the soap in the coffee joke in SuperTroopers. IT is not a joke, the character is the joke.

And then there's:
-Why do you want to kill squirrels? Because they're gay.
-Those are for the niggers.
and
-Pancakes! PANCAKES!!

After the off-putting comedy, Cabin Fever slides into a horror film, which is just as askew as the comedy. I wasn't sure whether to trust it or like it though, after all, kids stuck in a cabin, yeah, I saw Evil Dead as well, it was good, sure, rip that off, why not? But that attitude changed with the SPOT ON ripoff of the Yard-swing-Butt-shot from the original Chainsaw Massacre.

Anybody remember this? It's one of the best shots ever. The guy and the girl first go to the farmhouse, she sits on the yard swing, he goes inside, quiet, he looks around, hears some squealing, walks to the back... And then Leatherface appears, smacks him on the head with a mallet, the guy starts convulsing as Leatherface drags the guy into the back room and slams the metal door shut. Boommmmmmm. And then quiet. We're now outside with the girl. As she gets up to to go inside the camera dollies under the yard swing inches from the ground. Sky blue, grass green, her tall in the frame, the farmhouse looming in the background, it's so well shot it looks 3D on todays hidef tv's.

Point is, Eli Roth, I got it, this wasn't rip-off, this is homage. You don't rip-off the yard-swing-butt-shot unless you love the yard-swing-butt-shot. I doubt Uwe Boll rips it off in Bloodrayne.

After his THREE commentary tracks, I knew I was an Eli Roth fan. I put his commentary up with my favorites, top three.
#1: Robert Rodriguez, Spy Kids 2 (yes, if you're a filmmaker, rent it, you don't even need to watch the movie, just listen to the commentary, he doesn't even talk about the movie anyway)
#2: Quentin Tarantino, True Romance
#3: Eli Roth, Cabin Fever

This is all to say I inherently trusted Eli, and didn't read a word about Hostel. And it's best that way, not knowing what's coming puts you with these kids as they act like kids on summer break in Amsterdam, doing drugs, meeting hot chicks, and then shit goes wrong. Real wrong. If you like good horror, or a good urban legend, or giallo, or like having an unsettling filmic experience (not a movie), go see Hostel.

I was just haunted by the movie afterwards. It really shuts you up. You walk out of the theatre with your friend and you're both just silent. I find that such a compliment, a movie that can shut you up.

The movie tested with audiences, it scored the lowest score in Lion's Gate history. Only 20% would recommend the movie to a friend. Then Eli made them ask a follow up. How many would recommend it to a horror fan. 100%.

This reminds me of David Fincher's story of the test screening for Se7en, and the inherent flaw in screening stats. Actually let me back up further than that.

David Fincher gets a screenplay called Se7en. He reads it. Flips. Calls the producer and says "Holy shit, I was riveted, amazing, who do I have to blow just to PA on this movie, I loved it, head in the box..." the producer stopped him. "Whoa, you got the wrong draft, we took the head in the box out." It turns out that there had been a series of drafts while Denzel was set to play the lead in which the movies final sequence was an action sequence with Denzel trying to get to the girl before the killer does, and at the last minute, saves her and kills the killer. Fincher told them to fuck off and put the head in the box back in. The Producer said "as long as I'm President of this company, there will be no head in no box."

David said "I envision a day twenty years from now when nobody remembers you or I, and they're sitting around in their dorm and they start talking about this movie they saw once, an in trying to describe it they say 'you know it's the movie with the head in the box.' and all the kids remember the head in the box movie. YOU CAN'T THE HEAD IN THE BOX OUT OF THE HEAD IN THE BOX MOVIE!"

A year later.

Nobody liked the ending of Se7en, you know, the ending you love, one of the most classic endings you've ever seen? The ending that's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Se7en? The Head In The Box Movie. David Fincher said, who the fuck would say they like the ending? Doesn't liking the ending mean you're pro-killing Gwyneth Paltrow? Is it the right ending? Yes. But you shouldn't like it.

#4: David Fincher, Se7en.

I changed my Brita.

Once a year. That's my rule. I know you're supposed to do it every two months, but I firmly believe in the placebo effect of pouring water through an old Brita. It's got to be better than not, right?

Can you hear me now?

I hate that that's a catchphrase. So when you say it legitimately you feel like you're saying "where's the beef?" It's like having "Hello." Be At&T's catchphrase or "do you think it'll warm up?" being the catchphrase for North Face, or "I've got the shits" be Burger Kings catchphrase. I just hate that because it's something you say. I suppose that's the cleverness of it. I only say that because it's time I announce the catchphrase for "That's What They Want You To Think." Our new catchphrase is "what time is it?", either that or "what's your favorite color?" or "does anyone give a shit about this superbowl?" Something like that.

It's a very special Retro Short-Haired Chick Friday!

Sigh. Just look at her.



I was young and impressionable, it was a John Hughes movie. I had never fallen in love, but I was so desperate to. I was not a popular child, so having a girl like me was not likely, having one love me was kind of inconceiveable, and having a girl who looked like Mary Stuart Masterson like me? Well that's just crazy Science Fiction.



Nastassja Kinski may have made me realize I liked short hair on chicks, but Mary Stuart Masterston sealed the deal. Because unlike the supervictim Nastassja in Cat People, Mary Stuart Masterson was a confident, boyish, ballsy drummer chick. Fuck you, this is who I am. This was no Barbie Doll, it was so cool to see a woman presented that way. It was a rare type of woman in pop culture, it was sexy.



I completely fell in love with her. That short hair, all those boyish traits, she was more than a hot chick in jeans, she was a pal, a girl you could really just hang out with. My heart melted. That's a weird phrase, heart melting, yet I know that feeling when you fall in love instantly and all the blood flushes from your face and goes into your chest and then your heart start beating real fast because you didn't realize until this moment that someone could be that beautiful. Melty, I suppose.




Anyway. And then Eric Stoltz would blow her off for the fake hot chick that you can get anytime, you'd pass up the unique boyish pal drummer gal for a chick you could throw a dart at a Cheetah Gym and find. COME ON! Mary-Elizabeth - OVER HERE! I'll date you!!! OVER HERE!! I know I'm just a 13 year old nerd in Lewisburg Ohio with crisis level heating problems, but just give me a chance!!!



I know it all worked out for the best, but the idea that for a moment he wouldn't see the quality of this babe, I still don't like Eric Stoltz. Fuck Eric Stoltz, Mask sucks too. This is what blue feels like? This is what my boot up your Mary-Elizabeth denying ass feels like. Your ugly and Cher dresses you funny. Go be in Anaconda.



She's so damn cute. It hurts.

A Tale of Two Beds

I love my roommate, Steve. Besides the inimitable Jim McWilliams, Steve is my oldest friend. And since living with him since last May I've realized why we get along so well, he's ridiculously eclectic and so am I. Odd sleeping hours, sometimes going to bed at 4pm and waking up at midnight, or staying up all night, out at all odd hours. If either one of us is kidnapped the other would assume for a full week that the other was just simply busy. We're both walking imdb's with the most obscure expertise in dumb bullshit and can quote The Cable Guy verbatim amongst other unmarketable skills.

And we both have a messy bed.


Mine

Steve's

Now everyone's got a messy bed, except those that don't. But Steve and I have exactly the same kind of messy bed, the messy bed doubling as a desk filled with current projects. The messy bed filing system. As Steve and I began to realize that we both had the same type of messy bed we conferred and found that we also treat our messy bed's in the same way. Rather than clearing the bed to sleep, we simply push the mess to the place where some wife or girlfriend ought to be and sleep with our mess as our mistress.





So now you know a little bit more about me. Like anybody needs that.

Oh man.

So excited. I'm not sure if I've been this excited about a movie in long time. Episode 1 type excitement (remember before Episode 1 was Episode 1 it was EPISODE 1!!!!)



I'm definitely doing the 24 hours of Superhero movies for the opening weekend of this one. Who's in?





It's in your head right now isn't it? Thank you John Williams.

George Clooney makes Jackoff joke at Golden Globes

Jack...off.

You ever...

Ever reach for the remote control and make a jedi motion to try and suck it into your hand? Of course you have.

What's on my clipboard right now.

When you control+c it puts a batch of text into onto my clipboard. The clipboard is a snapshot of what's being moved or removed from the script at this exact moment.


It’s about relaxing your hole...body. "A bad experience on recumbet bicycle robbed me of my taint." Now I came out of a vagina and I spent my whole life trying to get back in. I don’t have a dick due to a Northern Pike fishing trip gone awry. Finds it in a Jewel, a bichy woman gets it before him and he tails her around the story telling her the story of how he got his dick cut off.

Writing Retreat Days 1, 2, 3

4:41 Sunday

You ever write for 13 hours and get that writing euphoria? Feeling like your brain is stuffed with endorphins? No? I'm pretty lucky to have done it many many times. Friday - 6 hours. Saturday - 13. Today 6 so far. We just been incredibly creative the entire time. Euphorically creative. Inventing, challenging, problem solving, moving on, creating, expanding, laughing, acting out...repeat for 13 hours. I feel I've expanded my brain.

In the writing retreat in august we wrote a synopsis of "Alderman" - 12 pages. Very much a skeleton. All motivations and events layed our in very broad terms. Over the last few weeks we've been taking those broad terms and explaining them to each other and questioning and arguing whether each event fits into the overall event and how, in addition to adding new ideas and kicking out some concepts that don't fit. It padded the synopsis aout to 40 pages. And when we got here we went through it all again, adding muscles to the organs coming up with more ideas within the slowly hardening overall concept, making sure it's safe to hand off to someone else in the group. Now we're at 73 pages and it's time for the flesh. The dialogue. But we have just been massively creative, we ought to be we've trained like that Bears over the last two years to be good at this. The be able to trust our instincts and flesh a new idea out at the drop of a hat.

We just finished the most recent push-through, we knocked out the last beat, after the election, throwing in a Return of the Jedi reference on top of a Revenge of The Nerds reference and took it home. We all sat in a second silence and then Sandy said said "holy shit, we just wrote a screenplay."

I owe the readers a shot by shot of what takes place at the writing retreat, but after writing for 13 hours in a day, you really don't feel like writing more. No TV watching has ever been justified than last nights and the previous nights. No football game felt better than the one that broke up last nights writing session and definitely the Bears today.

Jim Zulevic has overshadowed the writing retreat, and not in a bad way. But it is superodd and puts my life way in perspective. How lucky am I to spend an entire weekend writing a script that draws on eight years of sketches I wrote with a group I formed out of Second City, which I'd wanted to go to my whole life, while mourning a relationship I formed with someone prominent from that institution that I forged by being a part of it. Heady stuff.

We attended Jim's wake on Thursday, and attended the reception for the funeral at The Second City. Sandy said sadness over a death never feels quite so real as when you're in a group of people who are usually laughing all the time.

In some ways this screenplay is dedicated to Jim Zulevic, we were very inspired by driving through his South Side and meeting all his friends who were real South Siders. Ed Bus is that kind of guy, a Grabowski. This script got a hefty infusion of Grabowski starting with the opening scene which takes place at Mike Ditka Elementary "where every kid's a winner goddammit". The bit of the weekend started early when Justin suggested we blow of the writing retreat and go get lapdances at V.I.P., backing it up by saying "Jim would've wanted it that way." Now every self-indulgent thing we do is backed up with "Jim would've wanted it that way." Funny.

The first night here, after the Second City reception, we talked Jim a lot, I keep forgetting all the crazy stories. Saturday afternoon we listened to Ed Fuhrman & Company's tribute to Jim on WCKG. We also ran into former Schadenfreuder John Bolger at the services at Second City. John used to play Joey Bus, so that was kind of a good intro to the weekend too.

Funny observation from last night:
Joey Bus always has a plan for Ed and it goes "Okay, so we create a tv show and it goes awesome and then we throw a party at VIP, and you've got a VIP table and I've got a VIP table..." Not really a plan. Justin pointed out that that's us. "Let's put on a show and it goes awesome then we throw a party with strippers." That's Schadenfreude, just doing a show to justify a Pudding Wresting Party.

You Want Your Assed Kicked? It's Short-Haired Chick Friday

Today we present a short-haired chick that could kick your ass, not because she played someone that could kick your ass or because she was paid to train martial arts for years, but because she's just one kickass chick.



Actually I don't know if Carrie-Anne Moss is a true badass, but I have a feeling that she's someone you don't push around. I like tough chicks, chicks who won't take any shit, who can hold their own in a man's world. I have the feeling Carrie-Anne. The great thing about tough chicks is that they're still chicks. A girl who shaves her head, rides Harleys and gets in barfights still has painted toenails under those jackboots. Not that Carrie-Anne's necessarily any of that.



But she portrays that. In fact THAT is the character of Trinity, warrior, fighter, tough-gal...lover. She doesn't smile, keeps the hair short takes and gives punches in The Matrix.



But in the real world, the toes are painted.



So in summation, Carrie-Anne Moss is everything I love about short-haired chicks.

Kudos to the Wachowksi Brothers for this casting choice. There's nothing more annoying than trying to push off some buxom flowing blonde haired chick as Ms. Kickass.



I don't buy Angelina Jolie, or obviously Drew Barrymore (though that's kind of the joke of Charlie's Angels and Charlie's Angels 2: Shit Sandwich) and it's too easy to cast that person. Carrie-Anne Moss is the unpopular choice for fear that the audience will not find her sexy. And the audience doesn't...but they do.

I've spent too much time of my life in film classes debating that it's unfeminist to dress a woman like a man so that she may do action, that she must become a man and sacrifice her femininity to be strong, that it shows there's a subliminal message that there's no strength in being a woman.



As I've said in all those classes, fuck that and fuck you, those toenails beneath the jackboots are painted.



And doubly fuck you when it comes to Trinity, that masculine/feminine dichotomy is firmly in place on the screen as Matrix/Real World, and just for a little extra fuck you she also gets to be mother of the future like the very masculine Sarah Conner (which spurred the age-old debate when I was in film school. By the way, if Mindy Peiper's reading this, sorry, I think I was a little hard on you). Then again Larry Wachowski is having a sex change so maybe that muddles this topic.



Oooh! A politically charged short-haired chick Friday.

What the average American heard about the Alito hearings from the military industrial newstainment complex

nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing.
THE MEAN DEMOCRATS MADE HIS WIFE CRY BY ASKING HIM MEAN QUESTIONS!!!
nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing. nothing.

Chicago Warming Trend Attributed to Christmas Gift of Electric Blanket

Boy is it nice out.

I grew up in the coldest house in my latitude. It was an old schoolhouse originally built in 1904. I took a picture of it on my way through Ohio at Thanksgiving.

Huge, impossible to heat, built before there was insulation. The inside bricks were the same as the outside bricks. I could often see my breath as I went to sleep. It was absolutely the coldest thing to slip your legs into at night. Often when I'd wake up in the morning during the winter ice would have formed on my goldfish bowl in the morning. I'm not kidding at all. And then after I'd spent 8 hours of sleep getting the bed to just the right body temperatrue I'd have to get up and walk around this cold-ass house to get ready for school which I dreaded as well. There was one heating vent, a giant Jabba's Palace-like iron grate in the center of the house that spewed out petroleum smelling heat. I spent a lot of time just laying on that.

Ohio being too cold, I moved to Chicago. So in 33 years I never went to bed in the winter without freezing my ass off for the first half-hour of being in bed. It's always been unbearable. Until this last Christmas in which I was the recipient of the best Christmas gift ever, an electric blanket. Holy shit. What an amazing invention, what I wouldn't give to go back in time and have one of these at the schoolhouse. Every night I slip into the warmest goddamn bed in the history of mankind. It's amazing, it's like cheating, like you shouldn't be allowed to do it. It's beyond my life's lexicon that there can be such an experience of being warm the moment I get into bed. Everytime I go to bed now is a major event. I may never quite get used to it and may always think the government will show up to take it away.

I know it's been unusually warm since Christmas, but I still turn it on every night and may do it all summer.

Beyond all the obvious shit gone wrong...

Disruptors? It's illegal to be a disruptor? A little vague for a crime isn't it? It would probably be so vague it would need to come before the Supreme Court in the future. How about "poopie-pants" can we make it illegal to be a poopie pants? Disruption? It's illegal to interrupt something in process? Like an administration, a war, a wiretap program, a judicial nominee, torture, an assault on the UN, the process of eliminating checks and balances?

I see where you're going with this and stop it. Unless you want to make it retroactive because I think the election of 2000 might fall under "disrupted." What about the budget surplus? That was disrupted? The securing of Afghanistan? Our good standing in the global community?

And might I add It's a bit of an odd announcement coming a day after Bush declared that anyone who criticises them for their awful decisions is disrupted.. If you can't criticize THESE people and THESE decisions, then who the fuck can you? Maybe you should do less stuff to be critical of if it's making you all hurty. Pussies.

Who warrants being put in a secret prison when we get this vague with the enemies of the United States. Remember on 9/11 when this line was far less blurred. Looked like a crime to me. Looked justifiable of retribution to me. Looked like Al-Quada to me. Now we're always being attacked always, always at war always, in order to have that, and the definition of our enemy can't be seen in spectacular images and obvious wrongs, now the wrongs and enemies are created in the parsing of words. Remember how they connected Iraq to Al-Quada, now they're connecting Al-Quada to speaking. Scary stuff. Science-Fiction Dystopian 1984 scary stuff. And you're living it.

But this is probably the last radical step they'll take. They're probably done. I'm sure we've invaded our last country, I'm sure our last freedom has been attacked. Cool.

Finally The Republicans are deciding to not just tow the party line and actually speak out about a Bush impeachment.

Rep. JC Watts - (R-OK)

[T]here is no joy sometimes in upholding the law. It is so unpleasant sometimes that we hire other people to do it for us. Ask the police or judges -- it is tiring and thankless, but we know it must be done. Because if we do not point at lawlessness, our children cannot see it.

If we do not label lawlessness, our children cannot recognize it. And if we do not punish lawlessness, our children will not believe it. So if someone were to ask me, "J.C., why do you vote for, why did you vote for the articles of impeachment?" I would say, "I did it for our children."

Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)

I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law. Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.

Shall we follow the rule of law and do our constitutional duty no matter unpleasant, or shall we follow the path of least resistance, close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking, forgive and forget, move on and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system? No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country.

Rep Dick Armey (R-TX)

Freedom depends upon something. The rule of law. And that's why this solemn occasion is so important. For today we are here to defend the rule of law. . . .

If we ignore this evidence, I believe we undermine the rule of law that is so important that all America is. Mr. Speaker, a nation of laws cannot be ruled by a person who breaks the law.

Otherwise, it would be as if we had one set of rules for the leaders and another for the governed. We would have one standard for the powerful, the popular and the wealthy, and another for everyone else. This would belie our ideal that we have equal justice under the law. That would weaken the rule of law and leave our children and grandchildren with a very poor legacy.

I don't know what challenges they will face in their time, but I do know they need to face those challenges with the greatest constitutional security and the soundest rule of fair and equal law available in the history of the world. And I don't want us to risk their losing that. . . .

Christopher Cox - (R-CA)

Every single man and woman in Operation Desert Fox at this very moment is held to a higher standard than their commander in chief. Let us raise the standard of our American leader to the level of his troops. Let us once again respect the institution of the presidency. Let us see to it indeed what the censure resolution says merely in words, that no man is above the law. Let us not fail in our duty. Let us restore honor to our country. . . .

House Impeachment Manager Stephen Bryer (R-IN)

Our President, who is our chief executive and chief law enforcement officer and who alone is delegated the task under our Constitution to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," cannot and must not be permitted to engage in such an assault on the administration of justice. The Articles of Impeachment adopted by the House of Representatives establish an abuse of the public trust and betrayal of the social contract in that the President is alleged to have repeatedly placed his personal interests above the public interest and violated his Constitutional duty.

For if he is allowed to escape conviction by the Senate, we would allow our President to set the example for lawlessness and corruption. We would allow our President to serve as an example of the erosion of the concept of the social contract embraced and embodied by our Constitution. I don't believe this Senate will allow that to happen. . .

In The Imperial Presidency, Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. states: "The continuation of a lawbreaker as chief magistrate would be a strange way to exemplify law and order at home or to demonstrate American probity before the world." By a conviction, the Senate will be upholding the high calling of law enforcement in protecting the rule of law and equal justice under the law. . . . .

We are seeking to defend the rule of law. America is a "government of laws, and not of men." What protects us from the knock on the door in the middle of the night? The law. What ensures the rights of the weak and the powerless against the powerful? The law. What provides rights to the poor against the rich? The law. What upholds the rightness of the minority view against the popular, but wrong? The law.


Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-CA)

If we truly respect the presidency, we cannot allow the president to be above the law. . . .

I have heard from many constituents who are deeply concerned that action be taken in this matter, and I appreciate them sharing their thoughts. One of those constituents is a 12-year- old sixth grade student from Linkhorn (sp) Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia named Paul Inge (sp).

He recently wrote, "I am a Boy Scout who is concerned about the leadership of the president of the United States of America. It is my understanding that other ordinary citizens who lie under oath are prosecuted. The president should not be any different. He should also have to obey the laws. As a Boy Scout, I have learned that persons of good character are trustworthy and obedient. I feel that the character of the president should be at least as good as the leaders that I follow in my local troop and community. Is this too much to ask of our country's leaders?"

The precious legacy entrusted to us by our founders and our constituents is a nation dedicated to the ideal of freedom and equality for all her people. This committee must decide whether we will maintain our commitment to the rule of law and pass this precious legacy to our children and grandchildren, or whether we will bow to the political pressure for the sake of convenience or expediency.

Much of our hopes and dreams for our children, like Paul Inge, and for the integrity of our nation, depends on the answer to that question. Our Founding Fathers established this nationon a fundamental yet at the time untested idea that a nation should be governednot by the whims of any man but by the rule of law. Implicit in that idea is the principle that no one is above the law, including the chief executive.



I think it's especially brave for Republicans to say in the shadow of the NSA wiretaps and a Supreme Court nominee that believes in unlimited Presidential power that NO the President doesn't have unlimited power. That he's subject to the same laws as the rest of us. It's true Republican, the rule of law must prevail.

...You got me, they were talking about Clinton. I'm such a fooler!

They talk a lot don't they?

For your reference here's a list of Newspapers that urged President of The United States Bill Clinton to quit:

National:
USA Today

Alabama:
The Mobile Register
Montgomery Advertiser

Arizona:
Tucson Citizen

California:
San Jose Mercury News
The Orange County Register
The North (San Diego) County Times
The Record, Stockton

Colorado:
The Denver Post

Connecticut:
The Day of New London
Norwich Bulletin

District of Columbia:
The Washington Times

Flordia:
The Orlando Sentinel
The Tampa Tribune

Georgia:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Augusta Chronicle

Illinois:
Chicago Tribune

Indiana:
The Indianapolis Star
Chronicle-Tribune of Marion
South Bend Tribune
The Times of Northwest Indiana

Iowa:
The Des Moines Register

Kansas:
The Topeka Capital-Journal

Louisiana:
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans
The News-Star, Monroe

Michigan:
The Grand Rapids Press
Detroit Free Press

Minnesto:
Post-Bulletin of Rochester

Mississippi:
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo

Missouri:
Jefferson City News-Tribune

Nebraska:
Lincoln Journal Star

Nevada:
Reno Gazette-Journal

New Jersey
The Trentonian, Trenton

New Mexico:
Albuquerque Journal
The Santa Fe New Mexican

New York:
Sunday Freeman of Kingston
Utica Observer-Dispatch

North Carolina:
The Herald-Sun of Durham
Winston-Salem Journal

Ohio:
The Repository, Canton
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Cincinnati Post

Oklahoma:
The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City
Tulsa World

Oregon:
Statesman Journal, Salem

Pennsylvania:
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

South Carolina:
The State, Columbia

South Dakota:
Argus Leader, Sioux Falls

Texas:
San Antonio Express-News
El Paso Times

Utah:
Standard-Examiner, Ogden
The Spectrum, St. George
The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City
Deseret News, Salt Lake City

Virginia:
Daily Press of Newport News

Washington:
The Seattle Times

Wisconsin:
The Post-Crescent, Appleton
The Journal Times, Racine

And here's a list of Newspapers that have urged Bush to quit.










Fuckin' liberal media huh? Destroyin' this town like they were Jews in Berlin. If they keep pushing it, somebody's gonna have some exterminatin' to do. Let's start by killing those with glasses. It worked for Pol Pot.

Vincent, We Happy?

Oh yes, we happy.

Albinos

You're never quite prepared to see one are you?

Bye Jim.

Impossible to comprehend.



Jim Zulevic, 40, will no longer make me laugh. Jim Zulevic will no longer direct my long-time friends from GayCo or Steve Scholz or pull a random stopby at the Schadenfreude office. I will no longer be able to make Jim laugh with an obscure reference to a Batman villain from the 60's tv show or, in the case of the last time I made him laugh out loud, a reference to an obscure porn actor.

When we were all working our way through Second City, you could always catch the last twenty minutes of the mainstage show Paradigm Lost after class ended. We'd all sneak up to the mainstage and take up the last couple seats in the back to see Tina Fey, Scott Adsit, Jenna Jolovitz, Rachel Dratch, Kevin Dorff, and Jim perform the same last few sketches of the show every week. The last sketch of this night, "Granpa's Records", will live on forever in the Second City archives was pure Jim, We must have seen it 100 times. I feel a particular affinity for the crew that was on mainstage while we went through the system doing a show I had watched be put together through many many late night walks down Clark street to catch the only show I could afford at the time, the free improv set. I also feel an affinity for the first person from that cast who ever talked to me, Jim.

The first sketch that I ever saw Jim in never made it to Paradigm. It was worked many times in the free sets and had Jim and Jenna in a car riding through the "it's a small world" ride at Disneyland with the annoying song played over and over while a geeky Jim recounts infinite details about the creation of the ride in detail to a bored co-worker Jenna who's trying to have an intevention. Fed up with his yammering Jenna screams out loud, "Nobody likes you Jim!" And then they sit silent for a full minute while "it's a small world" plays. I always found that funny.

Later Jim would help us craft our 2002 show at the Wing & Groove, the closest this group of control-freaks ever came to having a director. If anyone who never had the pleasure is curious of what it was like being around Jim, I have hours of documentary footage from putting that show together, laughing til our guts hurt while talking about local car pitchmen and Jonathan Brandmeier. Later than that he would just be a great guy to grab a beer with at Carol's on Clark.

The last time we drank with Jim it was just me and Sandy and we did something we hadn't done in all the time we'd known him, we told him how much Paradigm meant to us as students at the time. I'm glad we got to say that.

I couldn't claim to be a good friend of Jim's, those slots belong to many many others, and I think that speaks the most of Jim, that those slots belong to many many many others.



In a final note, as a superhero fan on a blog that frequently talks about live action superhero events, I realize there's one I've overlooked all this time. Before the Spideman's and X-Men's there was The Specials (2000) about a group of fuckup Superheroes with soap-opera-like inner struggles. In it he plays Mr. Smart, the world' smartest man. He's great. Rent it. And listen to the praise they lavish on Jim in the commentary track.

Bye Jim. Thanks for everything. You take care.

A Very Sexy And Contemptuous Short-Haired Chick Friday

Welcome back from lunch, put the kids to bed, strap yourselves in, put your seatbacks and boners in their upright and locked position.

It's MILLA!
I think like most people I noticed that Milla was bonerific when she broke onto the scene in The Fifth Element.
And she stars in two of my favorite comic book movie guilty pleasures Resident Evil 1 & 2.

But she made it into the Short-Haired chick category when she got the Skip Ross bowlcut in Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
A movie I'm not allowed to like since I followed the politics of the production from day one. Day one which began with a very passionate and legitimately ballsy chick (as opposed to a fake ballsy chick like Milla) Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, Strange Days, Point Break) wanting to make her dream project. But unfortunately in Hollywood the passion of a woman who's truly proved herself in that man's world is subservient to an actual man and flavor of the day Luc Besson and his girlfriend of the moment, Milla Jovovich. So yes, look at her, love her, but in some ways fuck her (and not in the good way).

Does she look too manly with the bowl cut? No way, I think that haircut has to come back. Any girls out there up for the task? Coooooome on.

So thinking of featuring Jeanne D'Arc today I did a search and it turns out that she has been a short haired chick at other times. Other...sexy times. If you're at work you miiiiiight want to bow out at this point.


Damn!


Excelsior!


Feminism!

Milla, the one short-haired chick featured so far that I am positive would never talk to me and might even pay to have me beat up.

By Request of Sandy

Anus.

Short-Haired Chick Classic!

You just can't beat a classic. If you were to take all the perfect features that made up the perfect short-haired chick and then Weird Scienced them all together, the sum would be Winona.



I'm of two minds looking at Winona. On the basic level where I don't think too much, she's gorgeous, I mean, It's Winona Ryder look at her! Then, for me, and I'm pretty sure for you too, the innocent ga-ga affection record scratches. Oh yeah, she's batshit crazy and shoplifted and is on enough pills to make Hunter S. Thompson puke.



That's too bad because there's so much innocent beauty going on there. In fact I think it's a testament to her innocent, natural beauty that the batshit crazy image of her comes so secondary, because a millionaire shoplifting is batshit crazy.



I don't want to belabor the point, but now that I'm typing about it...what the fuck was up with the shoplifting? I mean where does that come into the picture? Is it a thrill thing? A "so blitzed on happy/sads that she didn't even know she was doing it" thing? And then to be so ghetto about it? Who cuts the shirt to remove the tags, in the store, on camera?

Check this out.

How much would I have been into Winona in the 6th grade?


Or High School?

Actually, I guess I was into Winona when she was in High School, wasn't she in Edward Scissorhands when I was in High School? Actually that's a good memory, I saw Edward Scissorhands with my High School sweetheart. She had a big crush on 21 Jumpstreet's Johnny Depp.



Remember Winona in Lucas, love at first sight when I saw that film. I always empathized with Corey Haim, felt like I was in a similar spot, nerdwise. But I didn't date anyone that looked like Winona Ryder in grade school, and now I realize that Corey Haim was fighting the women off with a rake at that time. I feel a little betrayed. I bet that movie sucks now.

You haven't forgotten about the shoplifting have you? Me neither. I tried to get off the topic. I hate when movie stars let me into their personal lives. I just don't need to know, can't I just think of you as the sweet sweet Man Without A Face?



What do you think she's doing right now? She doesn't do movies any more, what was the last movie she was in? Part of the problem is that she basically ruled the Earth if you wanted to cast someone to play an innocent girl from 1986-2003.



Daaaaaaaaaamn. You can't beat the big doey anime eyes, can you? This is a very recent picture. Is it just me or has Winona shrunk? She's really thin now, probably another problem Matt Damon narrowly avoided dealing with.



Remember when he and Ben Affleck got famous real quick and started dating the girls that, like me, they'd had crushes on as fans? How cool would that be? Like if I got to do Nastassja Kinski? I guess Matt dodged a bullet, though.


You just want to kiss all over that don't you?


I found this on a fansite. That's her tummy allright.


SO CUTE!!!


Those last couple were so cute I actually forgot. Did you? It takes real beauty to make you forget something that batshit crazy.