Dispatch from Hollywood Land

Funny the people you run into out in LA. Like Snoop Dog, rolling in his Snoop Deville.

We also bumped into Paris Hilton, but our new digital camera did not react in time to get a good enuff photo. Maybe we'll post it later.

Dispatch from Hollywood Land

Sunday nite, we attended the re-opening of the Griffith Observatory. We ate and drank under the stars, and surrounded by stars: Among the people we mingled with during the private reception were Leonard Nimoy, Peter Bart, Lucy Lawless, and Ed Begely Jr. That's right: THE Ed Begely Jr.

Going Back to Cali

No posting this week. We’re off to Los Angeles.

We’ll be sure to fill you in on what we did whence we return. As of this writing, our plans call for a Laker game on Halloween, and dinner (hopefully) with a cast member of The Departed. (and yes, damn right we're going to ask him about the rat at the end of the film..)

That’s not a seatbelt, it’s the strap for my Driver’s-side feedbag

When we were young, we set some pretty high goals for ourselves. We won’t reveal what they were, but let’s just say they involved a private jet and at least three invitations to a Playboy Mansion Party.

Now, as we plunge deeper into our 30s and the years cling to us like trans-fat molecules to a Dorito, we find that our goals have become more pragmatic, more modest, more - dare we say - attainable. Where once we imagined ourselves to be the eventual rulers of a global multi-media empire (or at least the Overlords of a moderately successful line of velour hip hop sweatsuits), now we consider ourselves a success if we can navigate an entire day without being unwittingly used to illustrate one of those daily “Americans are too fat” news stories.

Having said that, what a stupid story that broke today.

Expanding waistlines add to pain at the pump
"U.S. obesity linked to extra gasoline consumption, researchers say. Want to spend less at the pump? Lose some weight. That’s the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines. Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage.”

More weight in the car = less gas mileage? Really? It took a researcher to figure that out? And of all the stupid things people carry in their car, it’s reducing your body weight that’s offered as the solution. Brilliant. So if we want to save gas money, all we have to do is enter into a weight loss program that will gradually reduce our weight at the safe rate of 2 pounds per week. Here’s a better idea: don’t keep so much shit in your car.

Or buy a lighter car. Or, if you’re really serious about increasing your car’s mileage, then do what we suggest: don’t have any fat kids. Think of how much gas you’d save over the course of their lifetimes: 2 kids at approx. 50 lbs each? Why, that’s over 100 extra pounds in your car and gaining, every year for the next 18 years, weighing you down, decreasing your gas mileage, and helping the terrorists win. So do the planet a favor - next time you see a fat kid, slap one of these across his forehead.

Sure, everyone loves to poke fun at fat people. But we’ll see if you’re still laughing when the obesity police come for your dog.

Quite the Resume

Call us fundamentalists, but we believe the Treehouse of Horror episodes should be excluded from these types of lists. The Treehouse episodes are clearly intended to exist outside the canon of Simpsons lore. (link via Kottke.org)

On a related subject, one of our favorites links ever: A detailed map of Springfield. Man, we wish someone would update this with a Google map. If they can Google map Mars, then they can map the freaking Springfield tire yard fire.

I say –I say, we’re headed down to South Carolina for a few days.

Two of the Ten and thier consorts are headed down South this wekeend to reconnect with one of our founding members who relocated there a few years ago. So yes, after a week in which we had no postings, we’re about to take another weekend off. Deal with it.

Last time we were in South Carolina was 2002. The first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks had just passed, the Department of Homeland Security was officially established, and Lance Armstrong had not yet met Matthew McConaughey.

Now, four years later, we’re going back. Look for a recap when we return sometime next week. In the meantime, here’s everything we learned about S. Carolina during our last trip down South:

1. Its’ located somewhere between Washington DC, and Venezuela.

2.
Has a sense of humor about the Civil War the way we had a sense of humor
about Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.

3. The "Famous Synagogues
of the South" tour takes 7 minutes.

4. Southern girls are
as nice as Eastern girls are mean.

5. They love
Vittles.

6. 80% of the population hears the name "Starbucks"
and thinks it is a character from Battlestar Galactica

7. Southerners are real stu -

Hold on, turns out we’re headed to NORTH Carolina, Not South Carolina. Specifically, Morrisville NC, only about 68 miles below South Boston

Never been to North Carolina before, but we’re told its just like SC only there aren’t as many plantations and it’s filled with expatriates from Massachusetts.

In the meantime, some links below to keep you occupied…

Those bastards. Cell phone companies getting more evil. (via Kottke.org)

Why we love The Wire on HBO: He sums it up in just one word

We Hate New York. Again

Relapse number 1,374 comes courtesy of this review of the Departed in the Observer.

"In Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong hit Infernal Affairs, the dull waters of Boston Harbor take the place of the spectacular Victoria Harbor; the barren avenues of South Boston fill in for the glittering, seedy roads of Kowloon. Boston, unsurprisingly, makes a rinky-dink substitute for Hong Kong. The new movie is forced to use an abandoned six-story building where the original had an occupied 23-story tower. " via the NY Observer

We’ll refrain from pointing out that in one of the better Irish Mob movies, it takes a cop from Boston to come in and clean up Hells Kitchen and kill Ed Harris. Oh, wait, we just pointed it out.

Regular readers will recall we saw the Departed this weekend

Diary of a Colbert Report Intern

A first hand recap of a summer internship with one of the best writing staffs on television.

"But for all the ridiculous prop runs and tedious daily chores, the interns here are also given incredible access to the inner-workings of an Emmy-nominated television program. Aside from what we absorbed through sharing the same room as these people, each intern was allowed to choose a staff member to shadow for an entire day, to really see what makes the show tick. I chose Laura Krafft, one of the writers, and trailed her like an idiot at some sort of thousand-dollar-a-day fantasy camp." via Boston Phoenix

We hate this kid immensely.

Because Polish is the international language of love, after all

The Weekly Dig fills us in on David Lynch’s next movie, a film about relationships that departs from English at some crucial points.

“The other is a piece on David Lynch's upcoming film, "Inland Empire," which critics are saying makes "Lost Highway" look like a fucking Mr. Rogers episode. Here's a telling quote: "Each plotline deals with issues of betrayal in relationships, but the film soon veers off those tracks as it showcases musical dance sequences and dramatic episodes with actors speaking Polish.” Via the Weekly Dig

This comes as no surprise to some of our viewers. We’re reminded of the classic line from classical Polish romanticism.

“Ty brał panowanie nad mój serce i zasypany mój zakazy”

Translated, it means: “You took command of my heart and overwhelmed my inhibitions.” At least, we think it does. Its either that or “Your tank just ran over my infantry Major.”

Wicked GoodFellas

We saw The Departed this weekend. Where to begin?

It lived up to the hype. Which is saying something, because The Departed's trailer was one of the best ones we’ve seen in a long time. And this made us nervous, because it wasn’t the first time we led a crew into the movie theater totally amped by a great movie trailer, only to be bitterly disappointed.

It's a great Boston movie. The Departed immediately gets ranked as one of the great Boston movies. (Among the others: Friends of Eddie Coyle, the bar scene from Goodwill Hunting, and , well, that’s about it.) Sure, its got lots of cool shots of the city and the neighborhoods, but it does a good job of establishing the mood of Boston without embarassing itself with a lot of over the top fake accents.

It's Violent. Well, duh. It's Scorsese, not Sesame Street.

It's funny. One of the funniest bloodbaths we’ve seen in a long time. The Departed has a wicked (we're referring to the proper usage of the word here) sense of humor. Two good examples are Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg, who are only in a few scenes but who steal the movie. Baldwin is a slob of a CO who likes to sweat thru his shirts on stakeouts, and Wahlberg is Staff Sgt. Dignam, an asshole of a supervisor. (Dignam’s name is too close to Diggler for our tastes. By the way, Wahlberg’s phallus prop from Boogie Nights makes a cameo appearance in the movie. Not sure how we felt that scene either, but we quibble.)

“Do you really want to come to work every day dressed like your about to invade Poland?” Matt Damon to a fellow State Trooper in the Departed

We saw an episode of Dinner for Five once where John Favreau, in between mouthfuls of pasta and dinner rolls, asked Dennis Farina, an ex cop, what he thought the best cop show was. His answer was immediate: Barney Miller, because it showed the cops making fun of each other. The Departed was written by a Bostonian, and he threw in a lot of local jokes just for the Boston folks. Jokes that people outside the City won’t get, but caused our audience to laugh their asses off.

The accents. They were OK. Damon and Wahlberg were naturals, obviously. DiCaprio, Sheen, and everyone else did well enuff that it didn’t grate on your nerves, and that’s about all you can ask for in a movie about Boston (Hollywood never understood the Boston accent. Which is understandable- as anyone who’s lived here long enough knows, there’s more than one type of Boston accent. There's the Irish version, the South Shore version, the North Shore version, and, worst of all, the Medford version. Most actors succeed in achieving little more than a broad stereotype. In this regard, we’ve got a lot in common with the English.)

Tough to really get into any more detail without giving anything away. Trust us – there’s a LOT going on here. So we’ll just say that this movie is not like any other Scorsese movie we've seen. Not like Goodfellas or Casino (with no narrator, the scenes are longer, allowing the actors to really take their time and serve up some very intense one-on–one exchanges.) Not like Raging Bull, or Cape Fear, or even Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. If we had to compare it to any one movie, it would be Reservoir dogs, but with a lot more locations.

Oh yeah, that guy. We deliberately avoided discussing the Whitey Bulger issue. As everyone knows by now, The Departed has shades of Whitey Bulger, but it’s a remake of Infernal Affairs, a Hong Kong movie from a few years ago. This is the saving grace- the connection to the Infernal Affairs movie relieves Boston-area audiences of the need to compare it too closely to the Whitey story. Well, almost everyone.

We are sooo getting one of these if we ever build a house

According to the New York Times, there's a boom in the construction of homes with secret doors and hidden rooms.

"ON a recent Saturday morning Cami Beghou, 13, pushed the right side of the tall, white bookcase that is built into one of the powder-pink walls in her bedroom. The bookcase, holding rows of books, a stuffed dachshund and a volleyball, silently swung outward, revealing a tiny, well-lighted room. Containing a desk, a chair and a laptop computer, it serves as her study area….

Although hard data is not available, architects report an increase over the last five years in the number of clients installing concealed rooms" via Kottke.

This guy’s no relation to us either.

A sure sign that a Bostonian is successful:

Another Bostonian comes along to say he sucks because he isn’t as good as he used to be.

Yup, the site linked to above is called Angry Bostonian. No relation to us. For the record, we were angrier long before he was. Ten Angry Men launched in 2001, and has been running more or less since. (Here's our site circa 2001. While you're at it, just for kicks here's a circa 2001 item in which we took a look ahead to the year 2005. Back in the year 2001, the 2005 seemed so far away. It's easy to forget we live in the future.)

So why did we call ourselves the Ten Angry Men, and not Five, or even Three? Because back then, it took Ten men to run a web site, and the angrier the better. Nothing powers a team of anonymous posters like spite, bile and unredressed grievances.

And boy, were we angry. With good reason. Back in our day, we didn’t have your fancy automated Blogger.com or your Movable Type software, with your Youtube embedded videos and your Flckr online photo galleries. We had to hand code everything in HTML, and if we were in a hurry we used software like Hot Dog Pro and Claris Home Page, and we liked it, because we didn’t know any better. Youtube videos? Please. We swapped links to Simpsons sound boards, dancing babies, and grainy screen captures from the first season of South Park painstakingly obtained by manually recording the show on our analog cable systems then pausing the VCR in playback modes and connecting a computer motherboard to the back of the VCR (making sure the White Audio In connected to the White Audio Out and the red Video In connected to the Red Video Out) then playing back the tape onto our PC and dumping the recorded image into our Paint Shop Pro freeware downloaded from Shareware.com, and editing it once more before converting to a Compuserve .GIF image in our L View Pro image editor grabbed from the New Stuff page on the PC Computing Magazine web site.

Sigh. We'll step back while the rest of the Ten peruse the old site. Right now, a handful of 34 year-olds scattered across this nation are growing weepy eyed over their lost youth and the halcyon days before 2001.

As someone way more talented than us put it a few years ago, “I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday.”

Clash of Civilizations Update

We’re still losing.

From "An Homage to Mexican American Laborers"

“Juventino Rosas from the State of México works cleaning fish in New York sends home $400 per week.”

We’d say Juventino also has a strong sense of irony.

J! …E!...T!... DOH!

The Jets and the Colts played one great game today, one of the best games we’ve seen all year. At the game today was one our own, Frankie, a die-hard Jets fan and a man who seems to have a knack for being at the scene of some cool happenings. (He stopped returning our calls midway thru the 4th quarter.) The game was closer than it had to be- the Colts had a mediocre kicking game, incl. a short kickoff and a missed tackle by their kicker. Their kickers? Adam Vinatieri (who was out injured, again) and Martin Grammatica. Two kickers the Pats let go in the last 6 months.

So yeah, we still drink the Belicheck Kool Aid around here. (We tried that Theo Epstein Kool Aid, but it just gave us too much heartburn)

South Park 10 Anniversary DVD is out Tuesday

A collection of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s favorite episodes. They didn’t include any episodes from the 1st four seasons in the DVD. Why? Because they feel that, beginning with season 5, South Park became an entirely different show. In describing the epiphany that came about after they finished making their movie:

“We also knew, we’ve got to take this to a whole other level,” Mr. Parker said. “We can’t just be doing Cheesy Poofs and Kenny dies and the black chef singing his soul songs. We can’t just be about jokes. And we learned, ‘Wow, look what happens when you take a real craft, a movie, and you apply that to these characters and you really give them the kind of character arcs that are so tried and true.’

…In the early years, Mr. Parker explained, network executives and others encouraged them to think of the show as a situation comedy. “They wanted the sitcom style, where you had an A story and B story that had nothing to do with each other,” he said. “Then you figure out a couple of places where the stories can cross or you shoehorn them into each other because you need more going on.” Via the NY Times.

South Park is the anti-Simpsons, in that the later seasons are better than the earlier ones. The new season starts Wednesday.

Also check out an interview with Parker and Stone in this month’s Cracked magazine.

And, check out what happens when a Japanese artist gives South Park the anime treatment.