Everything you Know Is Wrong

Reading the Boston Globe Ideas section yesterday when we came across this:

"And then there's the example of Bogota, Colombia, where, since the mid-1990s, residents have, to a striking degree, stopped breaking traffic laws, thanks to a small army of mimes who mock scofflaws at street corners."

Here's more.

Yup, This is Our college

Enjoy some photo highlights from one of our many social events.

Of course we were nowhere near this event when it went off. We're in the graduate writing program, so our events look more like this.

Bwa Ha Ha Ha

"Despite denials, records show rap star worked as corrections officer."

via the Smoking Gun.

Ten Men and a Movie: The Dark Knight

More, Please.


Saw the Dark Knight last night. We went to one of the midnight showings at the Arclight, a great movie theater where they post props from the film during the premier week. We’ve written about this place in the past.

It was a full house. Not sure what it’s like back east, but here in LA people are scalping opening weekend tickets on Craigslist.

We love being at big premieres like this. The reasons:

The crowd. We were in our seats 20 minutes early so we could watch the people coming in. There was a high fanboy content, but a wonderful shortage of people in costume. (LA just isn’t that kind of a town – people care too deeply about their $100 Doucheneck to want to cover it with a costume.) This was no Star Wars premiere.

The 20-something fat guy with sweaty hair seated in front of us was some kind of nerd royalty. He was in the front row, and throughout the come-in other fat pasty kids stopped by and paid their respects. At the end, when the house lights came up, he got a shout out from some lanky nerd in the back, to which he replied “I didn’t know you were here. Who you rollin' with?” Ah, the Arclight on Hollywood, where all the cool nerds go to roll.

The Previews. Typically, the big summer movies come loaded with previews for next year's big summer movies. So after everyone was seated, the crowd settled in and roared with approval to the same previews that they breathlessly downloaded from the Web earlier that day.

The moments of spontaneous magic that surprise us all. At last, at 12:38 AM, the house lights went down. A hush fell over the crowd. And the silence was immediately broken by a small burp of a fart from somewhere in the back. Laughter all around. Well played, sir, wherever you are. Well played.

The movie itself. So what did we think? Wow. We loved it, plan to see it again. One of the best films we’ve seen in years, even accounting for the afterglow. Good story, great action, impressive stunts, great villains. Even better, no stunt casting, no annoying cameos, and it featured Michael Cane’s Alfred as the President we wish we had. When a self-doubting Batman wonders what to do about the Joker’s reign of terror, Alfred says, simply “You endure.”

(Were there negatives? Sure. The 1st half was much better than the second, and it felt a little long by the time the 3rd act kicks in.)

Simply put, this was the highlight of the week. And this was a week in which we went to the Espys.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a screenplay to write.

Funny

AND, if you watch it, you'll be up to date on what all the kids are talking about.


Dr. Horrible's Sing along blog with Neal Patrick Harris.

Created by Joss Wheedon Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and his brothers.

More info

The Onion's AV club interviews the latest flavor of the month, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. He comes across as a smug bastard on Bill Maher, but we like him because he stands up to the 911 Truth movement lunatics.

"AVC: You'd think a movement devoted to seeking truth would encourage debate as a way to arrive at the truth, rather than trying to suppress whatever doesn't already align with their own views.

MT: Absolutely. I make this point with Truthers all the time, that the whole direction of everything they do is the opposite of what finding out the truth is. They approach the subject matter in much the same way a defense attorney does. A defense attorney takes a case and he sees six pieces of evidence that are going to convict his client, and he sets out to destroy those six pieces of evidence, irrelevant to the actual truth of the situation. That's not to denigrate defense attorneys, but that's what they do. It's exactly the same thing that Truthers do." via the AV Club.

LA in a nutshell

Photo via catbird

We're coming back east in August. We see any of you people in one of these fucking things, you're dead to us.

We Feel His Pain

If you can’t say something nice…

Jesse Jackson said something he shouldn’t the other day, and it was heard by all the wrong people.

We’ve been there. One of the reasons we let this Web site do the talking for us is because, if left to our own devices, we have the uncanny ability to say the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. We’ve ruined surprise parties, anniversaries, … you name it, we’ve put our foot in our mouth talking about it.

Here are two of the worst examples:

Fenway Park, 2003. We were fortunate enuff to be in THE luxury box of all luxury boxes. Luis Freaking Tiant was assigned to our box as our personal ambassador. John Henry himself came by halfway thru the game. So now it’s gametime. Carl Beane began the introductions which led to a discussion of Leslie Sterling, the female public address announcer who worked Fenway for a few years. Nobody liked her. “A girl cant do it” someone said. Our reply?

“No matter how bad she is, she cant be any worse than the Okely-Dokely Ned Flanders, Ed Brickley. God, that guy was awful.”

Standing behind us was none other than Ed Brickley and his daughter. Seems he had tickets to the same suite that we did. Longest nine inning game we ever attended.

New York City, 1994. We're in New york, interviewing for jobs in the exciting world of video production. At one of our stops, we're introduced to Michael Daly, an authentic new York columnist and author. We were young and full of ourselves. so when we met this grizzled, veteran newshound, we were anxious to impress him with how much we knew. When he told us what he did for a living, we lifted our nose in the air and said:

"The printed word is dead.”

Something we probably read in the NY Times or some fucking place. He just smiled and walked away. 16 years later, he’s still writing, still being paid by the printed word, and we're dashing this stuff off for you people, free of charge.

Borat still isn’t funny.

Sacha Baron Cohen tries to mine more ambush comedy gold, this time as an Austrian named Bruno:

"Sacha Baron Cohen – famous for hilarious characters Ali G and Borat – was disguised as Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion presenter. He told Yossi Alpher – a former top spy with Israeli secret service Mossad – and Palestinian academic Ghassam Khalib they were filming a youth documentary. Cohen – dressed in black leather and studs – barked out daft questions in a loud Austrian accent.

The comedian ridiculed militant group Hamas, saying: “What’s the connection between a political movement and food. Why hummus?” One of the guests politely explained: “Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist political movement. Hummus is a food.” via the Sun

Wow. A hummus joke. AWESOME.

We wrote about the Borat movie a few years back. It was funny, but as we wrote at the time we had some problems with it, and the genre of ambush comedy specifically. Once you start stacking the deck against the subject of the interview, it becomes less and less funny.

When the Daily Show came to Boston for the DNC in 2004, they asked to interview our boss for one of their segments. They were apparently up front with who they were. “Do you watch our show” was one of the questions asked by the person arranging the interview. our guy was well prepared for what was coming. And still they had a funny segment.

As for the Borat style- ambushing someone who gives you their time and is too polite to tell you get the fuck out of their office is not funny. It’s just lazy.