Ten Angry Men

Meet Grantland's New Fabulist

2011-07-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

To believe Barnicle’s latest column on Grantland is to believe Terry Francona actually said the following:

“I used to do these by hand," he says. "Did it before all this math stuff and computers got so big. Did it without knowing it. When I managed the Phillies. Did 'em all by hand then. Would sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper and go through opposing lineups. Took forever. Now it's all on these things, computers.”

But as anyone who’s followed the Red Sox these last few years can tell you, that’s impossible. It’s more likely that what Francona really said was this:

“I used to do this stuff by hand, sure, you better believe I did. Just the other day I was talking to Pedroia. 'Pedey" I said – we talk about this stuff all the time, because I like to think Pedey’d make a great manager some day, because you know what? He’s a good kid, real hard player, but what he brings to the table is that he makes the most of what he was born with. Because of that he’s a real asset to this team and those seem to be the guys who always make great managers, like Lou Piniella, Joe Torre, or Butch Hobson; OK maybe that last one not so much but anyway, now don’t get me wrong Pedey’s a great guy but he’s just one of a great group of guys, helluva a good squad we’ve got this year, so like I told Pedey: way before all this math stuff and computers got so big, before Bill James came on board - although, I gotta tell you, that guy can run some numbers. Good guy, hard worker, makes the most of that big brain of his but if you ask me he’s a little weird - whatever you do, don’t get him started on talking about crime unless you want to spend all day hearing him crunch the numbers on the Lizzie Borden case. But he made me realize that even back in the olden days I was kinda like him in my head - I was crunching numbers without even knowing it, I did it all in my head, going back to when I managed the Phillies - had a helluva a time there, managing that club. Sure we didn’t always do so well but the group of guys in that clubhouse were among some of the best guys I ever played with. Now where was I? Right. The numbers. I did them all by hand then. Before every game the batboy would bring me a pencil and a piece of paper - let me tell you about that batboy, he was a Helluva good kid, Italian kid from one of the neighborhoods, Spider we called him, like in that Goodfellas. This kid was a short guy, not much to look at but he made the most of what he had and he brought it to the park every day. We play Philly now a few times every year and I tell you, he was still there, only now he’s the visiting clubhouse guy. I had to separate him from Manny one time back in ’04, something about Manny stiffing the clubhouse guys for their tip or something but don’t ask me- I keep that stuff inside the clubhouse and besides, Manny was a helluva a guy and one great ballplayer when he was here. Any way I'd take a pencil and paper and I'd go through opposing lineups. It took forever because all of the players in this league have something to offer you know, so anyway, it’s like I was saying, nowadays it's all on these things, computers.”

20 years already?

2009-06-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

We remember watching the Tiananmen Square protests on TV for several days. And, of course, we remember watching this, as it happened (i.e., probably 6 hours after the fact, on the Today show. This was in the time before the Web, after all.) We loved it. This one guy stopped a line of tanks. He was and still is a hero to us.

But 20 years have gone by, and it’s time to ask: Is there a more useless moment in the history of political revolutions?

Isn’t it time we took a step back and admit that China's suppression worked? Its now 20 years later. The same party is still in power, they are successfully censoring the newest technology (thanks, Google), they are emerging as the next Super Power, the whole world just genuflected to them at the recent Olympics, and from all accounts we've read, the young people in China A) never heard of the Tiananmen Square protests, and B) are actually more conservative and nationalistic than their peers 20 years ago. The man who stopped a line of tanks from advancing on a crowd of civilians is now largely forgotten by the sons and daughters of the people he tried to save.

While the Soviet union and other Communists powers took tentative steps toward a peaceful transition to less authoritarian governments during the late 2oth Century , in the end they all fell. So now it's 2009, and the only remaining Communist power? China, also the only one who violently crushed their opposition. On national TV, no less. There's a lesson in there somewhere, and it's not a good one.

Thanks to Kottke for aggregating a lot of great links on the subject.

2009-04-07T10:20:00.001-07:00

Most readers of this blog are familiar with "death by cop," but this is the 1st time we've heard of "death by Air Force. "

Worst. Week. Ever

2009-03-25T16:54:00.001-07:00

Occurred back in 1945, when a Japanese man was on the scene for not one but two atomic explosions.

"Mr. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He returned to Nagasaki, his hometown, before the second attack, officials said." via the NY Times.

Do we detect a pattern here?

2009-03-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

A new President is sworn into office, and not too long after China gets aggressive with a US military asset.

Just like in 2001.

The rye bread is very stale indeed.

2009-03-09T11:43:00.001-07:00

So we've been trying this new Twitter thing that ~~all the kids~~ all the members of the media have been using lately. It's being touted as the Next Big Thing! So it was with some sense of obligation to you people that we decided to give it a whirl.

So what did we find? Here is a typical post on Twitter.

"The rye bread went stale. Time to throw it out for the birds."

Think we'll sit this one out.

2009-03-01T12:44:00.000-08:00

From our friends at the Elf Liberation Front.

"I run the house, and Tommy runs the city"

2009-02-26T14:18:00.001-08:00

Great line by Mrs. Tom Menino, describing the division of labor in the Menino household.

Comes from an article about some contracting scandal involving the mayor, his son, and some contractors, or something that may or may not be unethical - we've seen the headlines for the last few days, and still can't be bothered to read too deeply into the stories.

Ten AM Quiz

2009-02-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

Our readers are a smart bunch, so we figured we'd offer you a challenge to spice up your day. Here goes:

O'Ryan Johnson is a reporter for the Boston Herald. He posted a story today:

Cops vs. EMS in restraint flap
A battle is brewing between police brass and the head of Boston EMS after a deputy police superintendent handcuffed an EMS dispatcher moments after he directed an ambulance to a wounded man in South Boston, claiming he violated a restraining order in the process.

Your challenge: go read the story then come back here and try to tell us what happened. A prize for the 1st person who can actually piece together an order of events.

Johnson is a real reporter, not an intern. He acutally was paid to submit this, and his editors saw fit to publish it. Something to think about next time someone raises the idea of a newspaper bailout.

Marlo Stanfield was right

2009-02-19T16:03:00.000-08:00

Remember the brouhaha back in January when it loked like Obama would have to surrender his BlackBerry? Most of us assumed it was a public records/confidentiality issue - the White House lawyers being afraid of a device that turned simple Presidential conversations into a documented chain of conversations that now need to be archived and made public. Or maybe they were concerned with someone hacking into his private emails.

Turns out there is also a legitimate personal security issue; the BlackBerry-as-homing-device.

"Thus, as long as President Obama keeps his BlackBerry turned on while he is in China, it is likely that the Chinese government will be closely monitoring his location, as reported by the president's phone to the Chinese government-owned phone company. The same sort of security issues will likely arise in many other countries.

Due to these security concerns, this blogger would be extremely surprised if the Secret Service permitted the President to use his BlackBerry when on foreign trips." via CNet.com

Wonderful

2009-02-18T15:27:00.001-08:00

Michael Jackson is holding an auction of some of his crap.

Here's a sampling of what's available. It's spectacular.

17 Great Mindfuck Movies

2009-02-12T15:26:00.000-08:00

We love lists like this.

Some thoughts:

They give much-deserved love to Cube. We find that people who like Cube invariably discovered it by accident (we came across it on pay per view one bleak Sunday in January, only to spend the rest of the day hating our television for not living up to what we just saw), so we won’t hype it at all. Just go out and rent it, and be prepared for a low budget flick w/mediocre acting, and probably just a liiiiiitle too much gore for the genre.

The Game doesn’t hold up. Great concept, well executed, but it falls apart upon repeated viewings. Once you start asking questions, it becomes apparent they relied upon coincidence one too many times. . Such as THE BIG ONE NEAR THE END: how did they know Michael Douglas would pick that.exact.spot to leap off the building? A few too many of these for our taste.

We agree wholeheartedly with their take on Primer, but we recommend it only if you’ve got a place in your heart for time travel stories. This one gets deep. (Genius of this movie is that these guys are the only ones to come up with a viable method of time travel. We figured out another viable method years ago, but have thus far been unable to surround with a compelling story. So deep down in places we don't like to talk about at cocktail parites, we hate these guys)

Enjoy

found via kottke.org

We always vote for the left-handed

2009-01-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

If only because it's fun to watch them write.

Photo via slate.com

Ewwwwwww.

2009-01-19T19:52:00.000-08:00

We sat at that exact booth not 6 months ago.

The place is Figaro, a French bistro not too far from the Hollywood sign. (The shoot is for some ad for leathery Italian bags.)

Gross.

All those hours practicing in front of the mirror paid off.

2009-01-19T11:25:00.000-08:00

Lots of info about last week’s Hudson landing are popping up on the Web.

Our favorite is one of the CNN videos. Best part of the video has nothing to do with the crash, however. It’s the “I am a serious news anchor “ pose the news reader strikes as he comes back from the break.

Gayest. Tie-in. Ever

2009-01-08T13:05:00.001-08:00

Just in time for the inauguration, President Obama visits the pages of Spiderman. via /film.com

Our Fellow Americans

2008-11-23T20:51:00.000-08:00

...are as stupid as the day is long. For proof, check out the photos of some of these disputed ballots in the Al Franken/Some Other Guy recount.

How many ways can you fuck up a vote? Let Minn Public Radio Count the ways...

Way we see it, there is no disputing these ballots . If a voter can't fill out a ballot correctly, their ballot is invalidated and their vote is lost for that election . How much you want to bet these same idiots who can't figure out which oval to fill in could nevertheless be counted upon to fill out a Keno slip completely and accurately?

via Kottke.org

So you wanna be in Obama’s Cabinet

2008-11-17T09:54:00.000-08:00

You’ve got to fill this out first.

Via the NY Times.

By the way, if you answer “No” to #62, then you have no business applying for a cabinet position.

Meanwhile, in the Congo

2008-11-10T22:55:00.000-08:00

According to the NY Times.

"As skirmishes continued to test a shaky cease-fire in eastern Congo on Sunday, southern African leaders agreed to send military advisers to the region immediately, and a peacekeeping force later if necessary."

Here's hoping peace will hold. But we're interested in this story mainly because of the photo, above, which answers a question we've long been asking: "Whatever became of Dumb Donald?"

2008-11-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

“But everything else we tell you is true.”

2008-11-04T18:07:00.000-08:00

We voted today.

Here's what its like to vote in LA: We stood in line with a TV actress and a horror movie actress (we forgot her name, or we'd have linked to her bio too.) Joining us was a sports broadcasting major from USC, who kept hitting on the two tomatoes relentlessly, in spite of the fact both were already engaged. He was regaling us with the tale of how he just filed an in-depth report on one of the CA Ballot Propositions. To which he was asked: "So what's your opinion?" His answer: "I dunno."

We waited in line for about an hour. Not bad. In the word of one of the people in line with us, the election apparatus here in LA was "slow, but not dysfunctional.”

Some closing thoughts on the election:

For you McCain supporters, you're probably asking yourselves why a self-described “maverick” turned his campaign over to Bush acolytes.

For Obama supporters who are high on the possibility for the next four years, we offer you two words of caution: Deval Patrick. Wait, here's two more: Tony Blair.

More odds and ends:
No matter what happens, remember this: the Bradley Effect never existed

Why aren’t these things run on a Saturday? We have no job, so it was easy enuf for us to stand in line for an hour. Other people? Not so much.

Cynthia Mckinney was listed on our ballot as one of the choices for President. Yes, THAT Cynthia Mckinney.

We’re watching the CNN hologram, and it is the most ridiculous thing we’ve ever seen.

Don't let us catch any of you mocking the Electoral College. It's there for a reason.

Red Sox Nation West

2008-10-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

We found ourselves at Angles stadium for game 3 on Friday. So many Sox fans there, it was like we were at a home game:

Got rowdy near the end , tho. A few jackasses who didn’t know how to win gracefully.

Reminded us of the time we went to the Sox-Padres at Petco Field last season. The poor Padres fans had no idea what hit them. As that game wore on, the nicest fans in the world suddenly found themselves confronted with Sox fans who were used to defending themselves at Yankee Stadium.

Boston's a very cold place indeed.

2008-09-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

Here in LA, we hear a lot about how Boston still has a rep for being a racist place, a city that is "unwelcoming" to black folks (and, according to the Boston Globe, Latinos. Some urban legends just never, ever die,). Dig a little deeper, and we usually find that a lot of these stories are either a) more than 30 years old, b) told by people who've never been to Boston or c) are indeed true, but also similar to stories we’ve heard from white folks, too.

We’ve often suggested that maybe it’s not racism, but the simple fact that Boston is a very, very cold city. We don’t hate minorities per se - we just hate everybody*.

So we're interested in this new study reported on in the Wall Street Journal. They posted results of a survey that ranks the personality profiles of all 50 states

"... according to new research on the geography of personality. Based on more than 600,000 questionnaires and published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, the study maps regional clusters of personality traits, then overlays state-by-state data on crime, health and economic development in search of correlations.

Massachusetts? We rank bottom 10 in extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. (But top 4 in Openness, whatever that means. If you've ever tried to get a drink after 1:30 AM, you'll know there's nothing open about Boston)

* We speak from personal experience. 8 years ago a few of the Ten ventured into a bar in South Boston: a crew of lifelong Bostonians, accompanied by the scion of a famous Southie family and, well, this is what happened...

You know you’re from Boston if…

2008-09-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

So we were in a writer’s room the other day. We pitched a joke about General Gao's Chicken. Everyone laughed, but then one of the other writers says:

“Isn’t it General Tso’s chicken?”

To which the other writers agreed, but we dug on our heels: our whole life, it’s always been General Gao.

And then one of the writer’s directed our attention to this

Introducing Our New Recycling Program

2008-09-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

So we're in a sketch writing class. One of our assignments is to come up w/ topical monologue jokes every week So, beginning today, we'll be posting the best of them. Enjoy.

A new poll finds that nearly six in 10 white Southern evangelicals believe torture is justified. And the other 4? Said one evangelist: “We’ll make sure they come around.”

The US military, fearing a strike by Iran, says it won’t be sending Israel any more bombs. Said a Pentagon spokesman: “Great. Now what are we going to do with three million copies of Bangkok dangerous?”

Thousands of people lost their jobs Monday in the biggest financial industry shake-up since the Great Depression. How bad is it? Said one bank CEO - “A couple more weeks of this, and we may have to worry about our bonuses.”

In an effort to skirt government censorship, Google is putting its supercomputers on an offshore ship. This new Data Barge will be about 3 tons, or roughly 1/10th the size of her sister ship, the Google Porn Frigate.

FDA is warning people not to drink powdered milk from China. Seems it’s been tainted by an unknown ingredient. And in other news, still no word on what happened to those missing Chinese Olympians, all of whom disappeared last week after failing to medal at the Olympics.

Thieves broke into the home of Director Michael Bay last week. No arrests were made, but police are on the lookout for two suspects who were seen running away from the home in super slow motion before jumping into a waiting helicopter.

Obama and Bill Clinton had lunch together last week, and we’re told Obama expressed regrets over not picking Hillary. But Bill was able to console him. “Don’t worry about it the former president told Obama. “I picked her, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

A new study found that people will actually crave a hot drink after being given an icy stare by a stranger. This coincides with the results of another poll in which self-described rude people were found to be at a higher risk of having hot liquids thrown in their face.

When asked how the next president can help the CIA keep the US safe, CIA Director Michael Hayden said "He can do nothing.” To which President Bush relied: “No need to wait- I’m already on it. ”

Seven Years On..

2008-09-11T08:17:00.001-07:00

Farvefignugen

2008-09-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

It's opening Weekend, and for those of us living outside New England, it looks like we'll be stuck in Favre Country this weekend, and probably every other friggin weekend.

Meaning we missed watching the end of Tom Brady's season.

Our take? We've often wondered how Belichick would do with a different quarterback. I.e if his system was strong enuff to support a less-than-Bray QB. So we're pumped to see what happens.

And as for the hit that took him down- we didn't see the game, so we have no idea if it was legal or not. So let's turn to the experts for their analysis, the Globe's very own Bob Ryan:

“Whether it was dirty, unnecessary, or extraneous, it happened,”

Thanks for clearing that up for us, Bob.

It's Official

2008-08-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

“She was In remission” replaces “We Were On a Break” as the hot new cheating-on-your girl catchphrase.

Some notes:

What makes this story so interesting for us was the "Nah-nah-nah-we're-not-listening" approach taken by the national media. We were told 18 months ago that Edwards was stepping out with a blonde close to his campaign, and we're nobodies. So what took so long for the reporters to, er, report on it?

We read a long time ago that the National Enquirer was among the most accurate of all the news outlets, if only because they get sued so often. If they say they've got something, odds are it's impeccably sourced.

Mickey Kaus is all over the media blackout.

Best analysis we've heard yet: that by ignoring the story, the media inadvertently threw the nomination to Obama. Edwards finished 2nd in some key races. if he was out, those delegates would have gone to Hillary, and would have diminished Obama's early momentum.

If We've Said it Once, We've Said it a Thousand Times

2008-08-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

Girls just shouldn't try to talk politics.

Gloria Steinem, explaining to some British bird why Hilary Clinton should not accept the position of Vice President:

“It’s not an independent position, to put it mildly. I would rather see her as the president of the Senate.” via Financial Times.

The President of the Senate, of course, is none other than .... the Vice President of the United States.

thanks to Opinion journal.com for pointing this out.

Everything you Know Is Wrong

2008-07-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

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

via the Smoking Gun.

Ten Men and a Movie: The Dark Knight

2008-07-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-17T13:23:00.001-07:00

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

2008-07-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-10T16:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-10T12:32:00.001-07:00

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.

2008-07-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Profiling

2008-06-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

It’s the summer break, and we’ve got a lot of writing to do. So when it comes to a summer job, we’re looking for the most mindless part time job we can get, one that requires absolutely no writing and little thinking. (and, sadly, there is no MA Turnpike here in California.)

So that meant today was spent filling out an application for Borders books. And by 'today', we mean all. Fucking. Day. A 45 minute, extensive online questionnaire that included a personality profile. Included in the personality profile section was a series of statements which asked if we Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree.

Which leads to our first ever Ten Angry Men Pop Quiz:

Which of the following is an actual statement that job applicants are expected to endorse/reject on the Borders job app.

a) I try to read at least 2 books a month.
b) I love helping customers.
c) If I knew that I could get away with it, I would gladly torch my nearest Barnes and Noble retail store.
d) It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free

If you guessed D, you are correct.

Now any idiot knows that to answer STRONGLY AGREE would present a huge red flag to potential employers, especially at a bookstore*. But we’re smart enough to know that in a test like this, all these answers are compared with your answers to earlier questions, to smoke out the bullshit artists. And, previously in the app, we identified ourselves as having been previously embedded in the public safety bureaucracy. Which meant we had to say WE STRONGLY AGREE with This Statement.

Tomorrow, it's on to see if Jamba Juice is hiring.

*We’ve applied a bit of reverse engineering on this one, and we assume this question was meant to evaluate if a potential employee would leap over the counter and beat the shit out of a shoplifter .

Shameless Self Promotion

2008-06-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

Since we're on the subject of Boston-to-NY bus lines, here's a piece we wrote a few years back about the last time we took the Fung Wah.

New show on Adult Swim

2008-06-17T11:19:00.001-07:00

.. that we’ll be checking out this summer. We like it because it says what it does and does what it says.

Fat Guy Stuck in Internet, airing Mondays on the Cartoon Network, in fifteen minute increments beginning at 12:15 AM.

News You Can Use

2008-06-14T16:54:00.000-07:00

When we worked at MassPort many summers ago, we were handed one of these at orientation.

Thanks to the Boston Globe for posting this handy chart. We can vouch for the accuracy of every words, as can all the proud Massport members of Teamsters Local 25.

Damn.

2008-06-13T20:42:00.001-07:00

There goes Sundays. As you've all heard by now, Tim Russert died suddenly today.

We watched Meet the Press almost every weekend, w/out interruption, since we graduated college. While serving as a member of the State Bureaustocracy , prepping our boss for interviews, public hearings and newspaper editorial boards, we always imagined what it would be like to work for a DC pol, and having to prep him (or her) for an appearance on Russert's show. Slate.com even ran a primer once on how to prepare for his show. The man did not fuck around.

He'll be missed. We probly won't be watching Meet the Press much anymore. It was all about Russert.

Photo via NY Times.

So they Think They Can dance?

2008-06-12T12:57:00.001-07:00

We hope they can, because they certainly can’t spell.

Meet the LA contestants who advanced to the final stages of So You Think You Can Dance: Rayven, Kourtni, Kherington, and Katee,

"Basically, the Boston sports scene has turned into a giant college campus"

2008-06-09T11:01:00.001-07:00

A Schill-elagh was spotted among the crowd at last nite's game.

Bill Simmons, in writing about the Celts-Lakers, provides a nice recap of the current Boston sports market.

"So how did that happen? After decades of universally impersonal/enigmatic/unfriendly/anonymous/loathsome Boston sports owners who failed to mine a ravenous sports market, things turned when the Krafts bought the Patriots and proved that a local family could own a Boston-area franchise, interact with the community, listen to fans, build a state-of-the-art stadium and legitimately give a hoot about making everyone happy. A few years later, the Henry/Werner/Lucchino group purchased the Red Sox and shrewdly turned a notoriously fan-unfriendly franchise around, renovating (and even re-inventing) Fenway Park and maximizing every potential penny from that franchise. That was quickly followed by the new Celtics ownership (Wyc Grousbeck, Steve Pagliuca and their minority partners) making a concerted effort to get involved with the community, build relationships with sponsors and heavy hitters and everything else.

Maybe He Was Just Stuck in His Invisible Submarine

2008-06-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

'Wonder Woman' finds body floating in river

"The actress who played Wonder Woman on TV in the 1970s says she didn't do anything extraordinary when she discovered a body this week on the Potomac River in Washington."

Link via House Next Door.

Is This Really All that's Left to Complain About?

2008-06-06T10:08:00.001-07:00

Seems the seats on the new Blue Line trains are too slippery.

Please. It takes about 30 minutes to go from Bowdoin to Wonderland. Suck it up.

Ten Oldest Bars in the US

2008-06-03T19:06:00.003-07:00

The Bell in Hand clocks in at #2, one spot ahead our favorite...

via Instapundit

Calling All Homeland Security Proffesionals

2008-06-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

Enuff with that terrorism nonsense. It's been eleventy years since the last attack and we're already bored with it. There's some real work to be done. To wit:

What are you going to do about this?

Yes, this means you. So put down that coffee, stop arguing with your colleagues over whether its pronounced 'hurricANES' or 'hurriCUNS', and get on this before we have to take some drastic measures of our own, like buying window shades.

Photo and links via Goldenfiddle

There is Some Justice in This World After All

2008-05-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

"American Airlines, bowing to pressure yesterday from some of its lowest-paid workers, agreed to drop a $2-per-bag fee for curbside check-in service at airports throughout the country and to lift a ban on tips for skycaps at Logan International Airport."
American Airlines remains evil, of course, but at least they’ve decided to stop punishing the one part of their operation that still works smoothly and, more important, are courteous to the customers.

Ten Men and a Movie: 1 900 Drinking Buddy

2008-05-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

Laughter is a very serious business. Production photo from the set. Director Ray Lai (center) speaks with his two lead actors Johnny Skourtis , left and Randall Park before shooting a key beer drinking scene .*

Last week was the official screening of 1 900 Drinking Buddy , a short film we wrote last fall. It’s a 12 min short directed by Ray Lai, and produced by Susan Havens and Andrew DeJohns. Drinking Buddy tells the story of Barry, a traveling salesman who, finding himself alone in a strange city, enlists the services of a rather unique service provider.

We were one of 4 shorts screened before a standing room only crowd of a few hundred people, and we are pleased to report the screening went great. People laughed in all the right places, and the 2 leads were outstanding.

It is strange but extremely gratifying thing to hear a room full of people respond to something you’ve written (We’re used to hearing a room break out in laughter at our words, as we were Gov’t speechwriters back in our homeland. But this time the laughter was intentional.)

We were very pleased with how the film came out, and we can say this w/out sounding like shameless self promoters because a lot of people were involved in bringing this from a 12 pp script to a 12 minute film.

The institution we are enrolled in (the exact institution shall go unnamed, as we wish to hide our location from our sworn enemies) prides itself on replicating the studio experience, and the screening was no exception. Of the 4 films that were screened, ours was the only one where the writer was invited to participate in the bows afterwards. One film left the writers name off the credits entirely.

All in all, it was a great experience, and we’ll be sure to send out the DVD as soon as it's available. We cannot post it to to the world wide web yet, because it is still eligible for submission to a number of film festivals.

Postscript
About a week after we wrapped, we came upon this guy. We’ve got the 14 pounds, now if we can just scrape together the airfare…

*Yes, this was shot in LA. It was 63 degrees when the above photo was taken, hence the wool hats and heavy winter jackets.

Remember When?

2008-05-09T01:08:00.000-07:00

The year was 1985. The Pats were on their way to the SuperBowl, the Bruins had just traded All-Star goalie Pete Peeters to Washington for a bag of hockey pucks, and we were happily breaking in our first pair of Girbaud jeans.

1985 was also the year we purchased our first copy of Grand Theft Auto for our NES.

link via Kottke.

Ten Men and a Movie: Iron Man

2008-05-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

We caught Iron Man this weekend. We liked it. one of the better superhero movies. It delivered exactly what we expected.

Which ultimately means it was a disappointment- no Wow moments. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the 1st 2/3rds of the movie. In sequential order. So we were never really amped up during the movie, because we knew what would happen next- we’d already seen it in the preview. So, predictably, the best parts are the parts we did not see coming. Like the comic bits about his helper robots. And there's lots of love shown to the fans of the comic

More observations:

Robert Downey Jr, was born to play this role. And we're sure he does a better job than this guy would have done.
This is a huge plus - Tony Stark who was infinitely more interesting than the Iron Man character.

The effects were outstanding, but then, if you’ve watched TV in the last four month’s you’ve already seen all the effects. The shots of Iron Man in action were believable, unlike the Spiderman movies, where every scene of him swinging thru Manhattan looks like it was animated by a dropout from ITT Tech’s School for Animation.

Overall, this guy sums it up better than we could.

Some absurdities (spoilers below, so cover your ears kids)

Tony stark opens the movie with a team of bodyguards who then disappear. He needs an escort to drive to the airport, but nobody to stay at his house and watch the doors?

Future generations may look back and laugh at the first scene of Iron Man in action. An American flies to the middle east to save villagers from…. Other Arabs? In the middle of a US occupation and ongoing war? Ugh.

You'd think a brilliant inventor like Tony Stark would have an alarm system at his house.

So the villain walks into Stark's house (like we said, he needs to get an alarm system) and goes to all the trouble of stealing the nuclear-thingy generator, yet he doesn’t bother to walk downstairs into the lab? He’s not the least bit curious to see what Stark’s been working on? Its not even a lab, its his freaking garage.

We don’t buy the villain climbing into the suit. Especially after we sat thru a scene where it was explained to us that an unmanned vehicle will never be better than a manned vehicle. We were expecting a proof-of-concept here.

We see problems for future installments – this is a movie where your main character has no discernable eyes or mouth. They handled this pretty well- great mix of believable “cockpit” shots of Downey inside the helmet, but when it came time for Iron Man to speak to someone on the outside, it did not work as well. Almost as if they hadn’t figured it out yet. Sometimes we hear his normal voice, other times it’s a synthesized robotic voice.

Amen, Brother.

2008-05-05T23:05:00.001-07:00

We couldn't agree more.

.

Cant' Wait to see what his Doh!-mar looks like

2008-05-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

If the Wire was animated by the Simpsons animators.

Above, McNulty and the Bunk.

And, for you dorks out there, they also gave Galactica the Simpsons treatment.

via What's Alan Watching.

Incident on Reel #4

2008-04-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

Spent the weekend in the sound lab, watching a crew loop dialog for a short film that we wrote.

Looping (or ADR, Additional Dialog Replacement) consists of bringing the actors in one by one, and having them re-record selected lines of dialog while the scene plays in real time on a giant monitor. (Common reasons we gave to the actors yesterday for needing to recapture their dialog: “We want to try it with a different line;” “We couldn’t hear you on that one;” “Deliver this line again, but try to sound less gay this time.”)

Sounds exciting, but it gets real boring real fast.

Until the editor said: “Hey, what’s that noise?” He hands the headphones over to the director. “Take a look at this scene. Did he just…” The director laughs, then concurs: “I think he did.”

Turns out the lead actor broke wind on camera.

Sure enough, when we play back the tape, this is what we see: A close up of the actor, waiting for the scene to begin. He looks left, looks right, then rises up from his chair and lets it rip.

When confronted, the actor denied it. Adamantly. Then he deflected the blame: “It was the chair. The chair moved.” The sound editors insist it was flatulence. After about twenty four viewings, all of the crew agreed- “dude, you farted on camera.” But the actor stood his ground.

So we asked the other actors. One by one, as they arrived to record their dialog, we sat them down. And each time, the Director says “before we begin, I want you to watch this .” One actor immediately declared "No chair makes that noise.”

The lead actor denied it. Adamantly. But the evidence against him was damming; it was all on tape. “The sound. It's perfect.” “See how it actually lifted him up off the chair?” “He looks around before he let it go.”

When we left, the crew was huddled around the monitor, analyzing the tape frame by frame. “See, watch him lift himself off of his right cheek. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left…”

Hours of Funny

2008-04-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

A list of the 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time.

You Too Can Learn how to Be a Big Wheel Down at the Cracker Factory.

2008-04-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

SLT 543: Cracker Production Technology

"Cookie and cracker manufacturers who understand the basic interaction of ingredients in formulations are better prepared to formulate a cookie with a low amount of trans- fat without sacrificing the qualities of taste, texture, and crispness that customers associate with quality and keep them coming back for more. AIB has assembled a group of cookie and cracker experts who provide a practical, hands-on, real world education about the hows and whys of cookie production that will pay immediate rewards back on the job."

No Shit

2008-04-05T18:26:00.001-07:00

Above: Is this the Mormon Temple of Los Angeles, or a Cylon BaseStar?

At the bottom of Salon’s Galactica primer we found this:

“Oddly enough, the creator of the original "Battlestar Galactica," Glen Larson, was a devout Mormon, and both the original and the reimagined series are a thinly veiled retelling of the Book of Mormon.

In the Book of Mormon, the prophet Lehi manages to escape the destruction of Jerusalem and guide a small group of survivors to America. It's also worth nothing that the name Kobol is a slight derivation from Kolob, the dwelling place of God in Mormonism, and the Quorum of Twelve, one of "Battlestar's" governing bodies, shares a name with a governing council of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Also, for the record: we’ve read all the update and primers, and seems like the big cliffhanger this year will be “Who’s the final Cylon?” We’ll take a stab at it and suggests it's probably Zak Adama, Apollo’s brother and Starbuck's boyfriend who was killed before the mini-series opened.

Photo via Flickr.com

The Internets Will Have a Lot Less Traffic Tonite

2008-04-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

That's because “On Friday, April 4, "Battlestar" returns to Sci Fi after a yearlong hiatus for its fourth and final season.”

Some of the founding members of the Ten turned out to be fans of this show. As for the one who’s writing this site, we loved the 1st 2 seasons, but missed season 3 and could never get caught up.

For those of you who want to watch the show, here’s one of the best primers we've read. Its written by Seth Gitell, a former spokesman for Mayor Menino, of all people.

Photo via flickr.com

The Dumbering of America

2008-03-26T13:09:00.001-07:00

Coming to you live from the lounge of the USC Annenberg School of Communication. A bank of monitors cover the wall, providing us with a live feed from each of the major news outlets. The one closest to us is broadcasting CNN Headline News.

Good Gawd. CNN Headline News is hands down the most inane block of programming we've ever seen. Currently, they are debating whether Tom Hanks or Tori Spelling have enough life experience to be believable if they are cast in the real life Eliot Spitzer movie. ("Tom played a gay guy once" was among the endorsements given by one of the panelists)

Now they’ve moved on, and are showing a clip from the latest edition of those awful movie parodies, (you know, the ones that have supplanted the Wayans brothers as the unfunniest comedy franchise in Hollywood.) The clip includes a scene where they parody the Tom Cruise Scientology video.

As we go to a break, the tomato behind the anchor desk intones, with her eyebrows properly raised in the universally understood symbol for anchor seriousness: “Coming up next, we’ll take a look at the hilarious new must-see movie that attacks Tom Cruise."

To paraphrase David Spade, we can actually hear ourselves becoming dumber.

We love this story

2008-03-24T19:40:00.000-07:00

Because it was Sinbad –SINBAD! – who outed Clinton

“In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, "We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady." Say what? As Sinbad put it: "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'" Via some Washington Post blog.

Yeah, this story is breaking big now, but we originally found a few days ago via Mickey Kaus at Slate.com.

Our Favorite New Site

2008-03-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

Photoshop Disasters. A daily posting of lame photoshops found in mass media.

We can’t stop looking thru it. There’s an Orwellian thrill in watching someone dissect these corporate images and expose them for their blatant fakery.

Meanwhile, Back in Boston ...

2008-03-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

The Hancock Tower slowly advances on Newbury Street, intent on destroying everything in its path.
We still miss being in Boston. Especially this time of year, when the annual Anime Boston fest takes place at the Hynes, right around the corner from our old Ten AM World Headquarters. There's simply no better time to be in the Prudential Center food court than this weekend, when the Panda Express is overrun with costumed anime fans*.

It’s just kicking off now, but here are some photos from last year’s show.

*If you do swing by the Hynes, we recommend you avoid angering the Time Lincoln.

Photo via flickr.com

"Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip"

2008-03-20T16:52:00.000-07:00

Checking out some message board posts from The International Association of Time Travelers: Members' Forum Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War

11/21/2104
At 02:21:30, SneakyPete wrote:
Vienna, 1907: after numerous attempts, have infiltrated the Academy of Fine Arts and facilitated Adolf Hitler's admission to that institution. Goodbye, Hitler the dictator; hello, Hitler the modestly successful landscape artist! Brought back a few of his paintings as well, any buyers?

At 02:29:17, SilverFox316 wrote:
All right; that's it. Having just returned from 1907 Vienna where I secured the expulsion of Hitler from the Academy by means of an elaborate prank involving the Prefect, a goat, and a substantial quantity of olive oil, I now turn my attention to our newer brethren, who, despite rules to the contrary, seem to have no intention of reading Bulletin 1147 (nor its Addendum, Alternate Means of Subverting the Hitlerian Destiny, and here I'm looking at you, SneakyPete). Permit me to sum it up and save you the trouble: no Hitler means no Third Reich, no World War II, no rocketry programs, no electronics, no computers, no time travel. Get the picture?
At 07:55:03, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Amen, SilverFox316. Although, point of order, issues relating to early 1900s Vienna should really go in that forum, not here. This has been a recurring problem on this forum.

Thanks to kottke.org for the link.

All around the world, the same song

2008-03-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

If you've lived in America for more than 10minutes, you've come to the realization that everything is racist. Don't believe it? Then just ask someone. No matter what the subject, there's always someone out there willing to find the racism hidden within.

Oh, to live among the enlightened Europeans...

On Valentine’s Day, a Danish newspaper went so far as to run a front-page headline accusing Ikea, the furniture giant founded by a Swede, which Danes have long loved to hate, of “bullying Denmark” by giving comfy sofas and shiny tables Swedish and Norwegian place names while assigning Danish names to doormats and rugs.

“I don’t think this can be a coincidence,” a Danish professor is quoted as saying on The Local, an English-language Swedish Web site (thelocal.se). He called it “cultural imperialism.” via the NY Times.

Stranger in a Strange Land

2008-03-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

We've added a new site to the Ten AM pantheon of links.

The Big Sand, Musings from 6664 miles due East of Beantown. A blog posted by a smart-assed friend of ours who just moved to Dubai. We're fascinated by Dubai, and are pumped to read what he posts. (We're hoipng when he lands and gets into his first Arabic cab, it's driven by an Irish Catholic guy from NY who doesn't know his way around Dubai.)

We love this kind of stuff; Ten AM.com is a direct descendant of a travelog one of the Ten posted when he attended the 2000 Olympics. *

Also, please note we've updated the links and other items on the right hands side of this page.

*for those of you keeping score, that member of the Ten is still banned from coming within 100 yards of a Wallaby, per order of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Daylight Savings is Here already

2008-03-08T12:23:00.000-08:00

So don't forget to set your clocks ahead.

Here’s the Thing

2008-02-24T13:46:00.000-08:00

We accidentally managed to see all 5 films nominated this year. Two of them have been bugging us since we saw them. So here we go.

No Country For Old Men.

2nd best trailer of the year. One of two films where people actually told us “you should see this movie.” We liked it plenty: great scenes of suspense before every murder, we couldn’t take our eyes of the screen whenever the killer Chigurh was on, and Josh Brolin is on one Hell of a run of great mustaches.

It’s classic Cohen Brothers, and the ankle-high shots of the killer walking toward his quarry, showing us his feet and the muzzles of his weapons, is reminiscent of the scene in Miller’s Crossing. We love that shot.

But the more time went by, the less blown away we were. The ending is what it is. But again we ask - what’s the big deal? It’s just a remake of the Terminator, set in 1980. A relentless, dispassionate killer with a funny accent who just won’t be stopped stalks an unwitting but resourceful prey. For all the fuss over this flick, it's nothing we haven't already seen.

Let’s run down the Terminator checklist, and see how No Country compares.

Idiot roommate: Check.

Killer has a chilling encounter with store clerk early on: Check

Killer retreats to his motel room and repairs his wounds on his own: Check.

Sympathetic police boss who offers to help, but is ultimately powerless to do anything: Check

Arrival of someone who knows the killer, and explains everything to the prey: check.

Scene where this new arrival informs the prey that "the killer can’t be stopped. He can't be negotiated with. He’ll keep coming." Check.

Main character’s death occurs off camera: Ch- oh, wait, that’s just No Country for Old Men.

Ending where character leaves us with his vision for a dark and more violent future: Check.

Next up: Juno

Best script of the year. Hands downs. The dialog was original, funny, and snappy. But…

It just felt like another assembly-line produced indie film. As one reviewer whose name escapes us said:

“The characters weren’t in wardrobes so much as they were in costumes.”

Oh, the irony abounded. People in red and green velvets, a girl talking on a phone shaped like a hamburger (and in case you missed the cuteness, there's even a line where she tells the abortion counselor on the other end of the phone:

"I’m sorry, I’m on my hamburger phone and it’s kind of awkward to talk on. It’s really more of a novelty than a functional appliance.")

As funny as it was, we can count on our left hand the number of times we laughed out loud. Most of the jokes were the kind you smile at. Relied on you to laugh at the fact that the characters referred to some middle-America product in lieu of a punchline.

Indeed, the movie had more name-checking than a P Diddy video. If the idea of a girl drinking a gallon of Sunny D makes you laugh, then this is the movie for you. And if you think a person being hit by a minivan is moderately funny, then hold onto your sides while Juno asks

“Did you hit someone with the Previa?”

The movie begins to fade pretty quickly from our memory once we left the theater. Best screenplay? Absolutely. Great dialog? Absolutely. Best use of language we've seen in a long time? Yup. But best movie of the year? To quote Juno herself, in the end we'd say it's ultimately more of a novelty than a functional appliance.

Clash of Civilizations Update:

2008-02-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

The 6th Century is winning.

"Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries."

This is cowardly. According to the Hudson Institute:

"The number of books published in the Arab world, with more than 250 million people, is less than the titles printed every year in Greek, which is the language of only 16 million people.

Yet we're the one's taking media off our shelves, to accommodate an illiterate group of totalitarians.
Shame on Borders. Looks like we'll be shopping at Barnes and Noble from now on.

Meanwhile, Hitchens puts this whole cartoon foolishness into its proper perspective :

"The object of the (republication of the offending cartons) was to break the largely self-imposed taboo on the criticism of Islam and its various icons. The satire was wildly successful, in that it resulted in hysterical Muslims making public idols out of images they had proclaimed to be unshowable lest they became idols." via Slate.com

Here's a link to the Cartoons.

Writer’s Strike Is Over

2008-02-14T22:06:00.000-08:00

“On the way to yesterday's (WGA East in New York) meeting, the writers passed Broadway theaters whose marquees still prominently display the names of playwrights. The notable exceptions are the theaters showing "The Lion King" and "The Little Mermaid," where in the ultimate expression of the Hollywood ethic only the Disney name is displayed.

At the cinemas, the most prominent names were of course those of the actors, followed by the director and the producer. You often need to squint to find the writer on a movie poster. As a reporter once noted, the rewards of being a screenwriter are money and oblivion.” Via Michael Daley.

After 3 months, the WGA Writer's Strike is finally over, but as the above excerpt indicates, the studio-writer paradigm remains unchanged. Writers now get a slightly bigger piece of the crumbs that fall from the pie. (The settlement just applies to screenwriters, however. The studios are still happily fucking over authors.)

We walked the picket line a couple of times. We’re not Guild members (yet) but we’re in LA, and it was the right thing to do. After all, we’re from Boston, a strong Union town where cops pull in $100K per year and firefighters are literally falling over themselves to cash out.

Each time we picketed our place of choice was Gate 2 at Warner Bros. Located just outside the WB Studio, this location offers wide sidewalks and a wide street that took a long time to traverse. It was an ideal place for a group of writers and SAG actors to walk back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, soliciting honks from passing cars (and the occasional enraged “FUCK YOU” from men in imported luxury cars.)

Keep it Moving
Why so much walking? In LA, only the homeless are allowed to live on the sidewalk. Everyone else, including picketers, must be in constant motion. Stand still, you're eligible to be cited for loitering. Sometimes, the writer in charge of pressing the Walk button forgot to do his job, and we’d stand there helplessly at the walk light, hoping a cop doesn't come by.

That’s it. We’d like to say it was more exciting, but not really.
Among the highlights:

Is that Ken Ober walking with us? It Is!

We met Quinn K. Redeker, one of the credited writers of Deer Hunter. He stopped by and walked with us for over an hour.

There was also a newspaper vendor selling the Revolution newspaper. Of course, she was surrounded by film and TV writers, so the talk came around to what kind of movies she liked. Her pick: “Did you ever see Casualties of War? What a great movie.” To which we replied "Casualties of War? Why the Hell would she like…." Wait for it, wait for it…. She went on to say: “There's this scene in that movie where the American soldiers are raping a Vietnamese villager.” Sigh.

To pass the time, one of the other writing students we were stopping labor with introduced us to a game he likes to play. “What's the one movie that, when you hear someone likes it, makes you hate that person immediately?”

Some responses: Vanilla Sky and Magnolia. When it came to be our turn, we declined to answer on the grounds that the writer of that movie could be standing right next to us. So we moved on to other games.
There’s Got to Be a Morning After
So the Strike's over. What does it mean for you people? Means your shows should be coming back on, starting in about 4 weeks or so.

Well, almost all your shows. There's a rumor that 24 won't be coming back. “Not true” said one writer we walked with who worked at Fox. He told us 24 will be coming back, but in a shortened season. With only 6 hours to fill, they’ll be tackling smaller problems. This season, Jack Bauer investigates an unattended suitcase found at the airport.

In the end, the Strike wasn’t a total wash. It gave us :

Conan O’Brien singing Sabotage. As Edith Bunker.

Sarah Silverman telling Jimmy Kimmell that she's fucking Matt Damon

Mike Huckabee crossing every picket line he could find

* (by the way, our answers: Babel , Bowling for Columbine, and Juno. )

Roy Schieder Dead at 73-ish

2008-02-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

We were always fans of Roy Schieder. Yes, he was in Jaws, as well as French Connection and a bunch of other good films, but we first became a fan based on his performance as Frank Murphy in one of our favorite movies of all time, Blue Thunder.

The LA Times has the best obit on him.

The Only Thing We Hate More Than Urban Legends

2008-02-04T20:56:00.001-08:00

is the talk about peanut allergies. Harpers breaks down the bullshit for us.

Ten Men and a Movie: There Will Be Blood

2008-01-20T11:19:00.001-08:00

If you like movies, then you should go see this. That’s all we really have to say.

Local Boy Makes Good.

2008-01-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

The New York Times profiles Barak Obama's head speechwriter, John Favreau. He's a 26 year old graduate of Holy Cross.

Also gives us a look into the art of speechwriting:

“The trick of speechwriting, if you will, is making the client say your brilliant words while somehow managing to make it sound as though they issued straight from their own soul,” said the writer Christopher Buckley, who was a speechwriter for the first President Bush. “Imagine putting the words ‘Ask not what your country can do for you’ into the mouth of Ron Paul, and you can see the problem.”

One of our biggest problems w/ Bush’s speechwriters is they do exactly what Buckley advises against: they craft intricate, wordy speeches with lofty language, and put it into the hands of a an inarticulate man who’s at his best when he’s in his plain speaking, “aw shucks" good ‘ol boy mode.

Finally

2008-01-17T20:23:00.000-08:00

Rent closes on Broadway in June.

On January 16, 2008 it was announced on the production's website that the musical would end its 12-year-run on June 1st, 2008. [38] An official reason was not given at the time of the announcement, however, according to League of American Theaters and Producers, ticket sales were down and box office figures showed that the production was playing at approximately fifty-percent capacity. Text via Wiki.

We never got the whole Rent phenomenon, or the plight of the squatters depicted n the play. (Maybe because when we were in our 20s we actually paid our fucking rent.)

We finally saw this musical back around 2000- we were shocked at how badly it had aged. Even then, only a few years removed from its heyday, it felt dated. The whole thing with the pagers going off onstage already had some of the younger people scratching their head ("What's that beeping noise?”)

We’re not the only ones who felt this way. To our surprise, someone subbing for Jason Kottke hated the thing too.

If this news makes you weepy, we suggest you drop a virtual Teddy Bear at this online shrine

Our New Favorite Comic Strip.

2008-01-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! by Tim Rickard

John August hates Parade Magazine.

2008-01-07T16:42:00.001-08:00

He really, really hates it. And this week, they came through for him in a big way.

"I don't care that you're a cop , you dyke bitch!

2007-12-20T13:34:00.000-08:00

Another brick falls off the wall of journalistic integrity and objectivity...

December 17, 2007 -- A foxy Philly anchorwoman - who once e-mailed sexy swimsuit snaps to a married TV talking head - became an anger woman yesterday, calling a female NYPD cop a "dyke bitch" and slugging her in the face, law-enforcement sources said. via NYPost.com

Aaaaaaaaand we're back

2007-12-18T12:10:00.000-08:00

On hiatus from grad school, so expect some more posts over the next few weeks.

Like this one which blew us away:
Lost footage, cut from the original Star Wars. Shows Luke Skywalker before he met C 3PO and R2D2. It's the Biggs Darklighter scene that Lucas shot but never showed.

via BlueHarvest.net

Before There Was Global Warming

2007-11-07T14:01:00.000-08:00

We were all scared shitless about the coming nuclear holocaust. Remember those fun times?

Here are some photos from a French nuclear test in 1968. The photos, obviously haunting, are also about 10 times more beautiful than any nuclear explosion we’ve seen depicted in movies.

From a Flicker.com photoset. We found them via kottke.org.

Jimmy Walker and Ann Coulter Walk into a Bar

2007-11-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

That's not the set up for a joke, it's what really happened last nite at a writer's social we attended in an LA bar. Turns out she and Mr. Dyno-Mite are pretty good friends.

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T15:34:00.001-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Your US Secret Service.

2007-10-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

Secret Service agents lock themselves out of their SUV following an appearance by one of the Bush daughters on a CBS talk show.

Here's the video

Another Site Worth Visiting

2007-10-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

One of the original Ten was an English major who, after a career as an officer in the Marine Corps, was finally sent to Iraq a few years ago. We've been waiting a long time for him to start writing about his experiences. Looks like he's begun:

"Deeper Than War. One Marine's View of the War in Iraq, and a Look into the War-Torn Heart."

Worth checking out.

If only the pilots had parachutes.

2007-09-28T21:46:00.001-07:00

One of the Ten is a Marine aviator. One of his more recent assignments was learning to fly the newest plane in the Marine Corp, the V-22 Osprey. Until a few months ago, that is, when he told us he was applying for a land-based gig.

To which we all said to ourselves: “Phew. Maybe he'll get sent to Iraq. He’ll be much safer there.

Photo found via flickr.com

Ahhhhh, Boston

2007-09-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

Just when we've almost given up on you, you come through and make us want to cry....

A naïve bleeding heart encounters his first beggar, and scolds all of Boston. He's promptly put in his place.

Must See TV

2007-09-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

Family guy returns, with a 2 part retelling of Star Wars. Great stuff. It’s a fanboy tribute, too- all the little things are there. They use the original john Williams Score, the wipes between scenes, the sound effects, some of the special effects, even scenes that are restaged exactly as they were shot.

You can probly find Part 1 on Youtube someplace by now, but here’s a 10 min preview. Pt 2 is next Sunday on Fox.

It’s More Than Just the Shoes

2007-09-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

Allow us to paraphrase the entire NFL television coverage from this past Sunday:

"Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah ….

We interrupt our scolding of Bill Belicheat to bring you this paid endorsement of Shawn Merriman.

Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah Bill Belicheat Blah blah …."

That Nike ad is a Great ad, with that great musical hook from Braveheart, with some cool effects - but what an awful choice of an athlete to celebrate.

Ten Men and a Movie: Eastern Promises

2007-09-16T19:00:00.001-07:00

One of the cool things about living in LA is we get to see some movies before the rest of you people do. One of those movies is Eastern Promises, which we saw this past Friday night.

It’s a good movie with a stupid title. “Eastern Promises” sounds like the name of an upstate NY rehab clinic, or a Yugoslavian brand of laxatives. What the movie really is about however, is a story set in London about human trafficking, Russian immigrants, and the Russian version of the mob, the Vor V Zakone. Throw in some of the Departed, and a nice twist (which we figured out about halfway thru) and you've got yourself a good movie.

When we first saw the preview, we weren't sure if it was Viggo Mortenson or Ed Harris, but whoever it was, they had a great head of fucking hair. Like a younger, Russian Paulie walnuts. He's a driver for a Russian godfather who we encounter when a nurse played by Naomi Watts tries to translate a diary left behind by a pregnant Russian sex slave.

It’s violent- any wannabe throat surgeons out here, put down that $100 copy of Gray’s Anatomy and just spend the $7 on this movie instead. There's also a brutal knife fight inside a Russian Steam Room, between a naked Vigo Mortenson and 2 Chechnyans. (So there's something for the ladies too.) Those of you up to date on your world affairs knows what to expect when you hear two Chechnyans are in town.

Come to find out the director consulted with a woman we briefly worked with out here, Alix Lambert. She made a documentary on Russian prison tattoos; one of the biggest elements in this film is the tattoos worn by members of the Russian mob.

Currently playing only in NY and LA, but soon to open across the rest of the Nation. When it does open nationwide, there's a few Cold Warriors we know who should climb out of their bunkers and see this one.

How Can You NOT Want to See this Movie?

2007-09-15T10:56:00.001-07:00

Dragon Wars. Promises to be every bit as ridiculous as it looks.

View trailer here

2007-09-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

Ron Paul made a West Coast swing this past week. This guy’s HUGE among the college set, the 2007 version of Denis Kucinich (who was treated like a rock star when he was walking around Boston during the 2004 Democratic National convention)

There are Ron Paul bumper stickers all over the place, touting the Ron Paul Revolution.

Riiiiiight. A ‘revolution.” A republican congressman who's campaigning to succeed a two term president from his own party.

Ech.

2007-09-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

We wrote many a speech in the years following 9/11 that referred to what happened that Tuesday. Most of them were boring, all of them irrelevant to any lasting understanding of what happened that day. But in none of these speeches do we recall ascribing the 911 attacks to a “failure of human beings to understand each other and to learn to love each other.”

Thanks to Jon Keller for the find. He also links to an outstanding summation of what really happened that day by one of the surviving family members.

Six Years Ago Today

2007-09-11T09:58:00.000-07:00

Ten Years Ago This Weekend

2007-09-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

Diana died, London mourned, and we just prayed the coverage wouldn’t interfere with Tuna Bowl V, Pete Carrol and the Patriots showdown against Bill Parcells and the Jets.

We were actually in London shortly afterward*, and we took some photos of the flowers left at the gates of Buckingham Palace. It was like nothing we’d ever seen. Photos below:

The Gates to the Palace, which tourists can ordinarily walk right up to, were unreachable.

Flowers stretching into infinity.

Yup, it was as high as a man's shoulder.

This is the final destination of those flowers that were so lovingly placed on the grounds - cut up and dumped into trash barrels. Since the Palace was surrounded by an acre of quickly-rotting vegetation, they had to dispose of them while the people were still hanging around the Palace. But they had enuff p.r. sense to do so in a dignified and elaborately staged manner. Note the giant photo of Diana and the care in which the guy is cutting down and disposing of the flowers. Anything less and he probably would have been savaged by an angry crowd.

*We weren’t there FOR her death. Please. People who know us knows there's nothing we hate more than a procession of complete strangers looking to interject themselves into a tragedy, bouquet and teddy bear in hand.

About London: we had such a great time in ’97, we gladly went back a few months ago. Great place, fun time. Expensive, but we recommend the Imperial War Museum, the Churchill Museum, the Changing of the Guard, any of the other London-area museums, and of course any pub that's more than 100 years old.

And for Diana fans out there who are reading this and may be headed to London, put down your High School Musical lunchbox and write this down: be sure to visit the wonderfully garish and absurd statue of Diana and Dodi Fayed reaching into the sky and releasing a dove inside the Harrod's Department store.

Richard Jewel dies

2007-08-29T15:10:00.001-07:00

Dead at age 44. Yeah, he was a buffoon, yeah he was a fat guy, but he was a guy who did exactly what was he was paid to do, then spent the rest of his life getting killed for it.

He's still getting fucked, even in death. The Atlanta Journal Constitution uses the occasion of his passing to reprint it’s closing arguments in his (ultimately dismissed) libel suit against the paper.

We remember where we were the night of the Atlanta Olympic bombing. A few of the Ten were watching the games at the Pour House in Boston, and, after the news flash, one of the Ten said "A bomb? You’d never get me to go to the Olympics, no matter how much you pay me. Bwa ha ha ha " Those of you who have known us for a long time will appreciate how funny that remark is, in hindsight.

“Tribe members worry about Wampanoag image”

2007-08-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

So says the understated headline from Sunday’s globe.

They should worry. We dealt with their now-deposed leader a few years ago. He was demanding, of all things, anti-terrorism funding. He was an absolute, name dropping thug, straight out of The Rascal King. When he didn’t get what he wanted from us, he threatened to go over our heads, then proceeded to drop a bucketful of names on our heads, most of them in DC. Turns out he wasn’t kidding.

After we turned him down we gave out boss a heads up that this guy might be calling again. His response? “He can keep calling as long as he wants. I’m not meeting with that bully again.”

At the time, they were still awaiting federal recognition that they were a tribe. We’re wary of a “tribal recognition process” that a) relies upon recognition provided by a congress that is easily bought and sold on a daily basis, and B) is nothing more than a prerequisite to Casino gambling.

The Wampanoags should be proud of themselves. Under Marshall's leadership, they’ve gone from being an unrecognized tribe to yet another well-connected labor union.

Clash of Civilizations update

2007-08-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

How can you win if your team keeps forfeiting?

Berkely Breathed’s weekly strip mentions Islam, so of course it is pulled by a number of newspapers this weekend, including the Boston Globe.

"At least 25 of the 200 or so "Opus" client newspapers might not run the Sunday-only comic's next two episodes, which feature Islamic references and a sex joke. ..

Berkeley Breathed's Aug. 26 and Sept. 2 strips -- which comprise sort of a two-part series -- show the Lola Granola character wanting to become an Islamic radicalist (and wear traditional Muslim clothing) because it's a "hot new fad on the planet." Content also includes what Shearer described as "a sex joke a little stronger than we normally see."

Wyson said some client papers hesitated to run a sex joke and others won't publish any Muslim-related humor, whether pro or con. "They just don't want to touch that," she said." via Editor and Publisher

Read the illicit strip here.

Thanks to Universal Hub for pointing out the Globe's cowardice.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Hours of Programming

2007-08-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

The below photo sums up every bit of Spanish-language television we've seen since the advent of cable.

From an LA Times profile on Univision's Sabado Gigante.

Yup, We’re in the right place.

2007-08-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

As many of you may already know, the Ten Angry Men relocated our World Wide Web operation to California, following the acceptance of the Webgineer into University of South Carolina. The graduate film school specifically.

Orientation began on Friday, and if there was any doubt as to whether we were in the right place, all questions were answered when we noticed that the kid sitting on front of us was wearing black boots, black pants, black shirt and a black trenchcoat.

Part of Friday's orientation was a mandatory safety seminar for all film school students. Typical presentation by the school fire marshal, facilities managers, etc. on how not to hurt ourselves, other students or, more importantly, the USC cameras and equipment during the course of our education. Two thirds of this seminar consisted of a serious disucssion of how students can avoid being shot by the LAPD while filming in the streets of Los Angeles.

(Not a small problem. About half the questions from the students that day were about the use of weapons and explosives on their films.)

The rest of the time was spent arguing about the finer points of copyright law and, eventually, the use of other copyrighted works in a student film. (If you ever want to drive yourself crazy, look at the laws governing what material you can and cannot use in a movie. Far more restrictive for film than in any other medium. Puffy Coombs and all his compatriots in the rap game can steal entire songs and rap over them with new words, and that’s considered an original work of art. Or some guy can photocopy panels from someone else's comic strip, and be labeled a genius. But if you are shooting a movie and somewhere a car drives by blaring “I’ll Be missing you” on the car radio, the filmmaker needs to get permission from a) the record label, b) Sean Coombs, c) Sting and d) Epstein’s mother, otherwise that scene had to be taken out of the movie. This explains why a lot of old TV shows aren’t out on DVD- it’s too expensive to go out and get permission to re-use all the songs and soundtracks that were used in the original televised version. But we digress..)

This conversation was just about wrapped up when one of the faculty raised his hand and doused a fresh gallon of gasoline on the campfire. It was the Cinematography teacher, a big, gruff guy who had the build, bearing, and attitude of a 1950's high school shop teacher. He blurted out:

“Graffiti too. Graffiti is copyright material too. “

Great. Try finding a wall in LA that does not have graffiti. Now we’re extending copyright protection to taggers?