Pulp Fiction in Typography

Dave W. sent me this link, and it's fucking great. I remember when Pulp Fiction came out, and what a huge impact it had on me. Great characters, insane situations and dialogue that was so much better than what was being written at the time.

Here's one of the more famous scenes, done as a type treatment. Enjoy.

I don't know. Bored?

Did you know there is a huge segment of Americans who lack the ability to read and write, think critically, perform basic computation skills and even dress themselves? These humans also tend to have an abnormally strong oral fixation despite having no teeth, are bald and tiny, and they poop when and where they please. In fact, they're so helpless and irresponsible that they sleep in a bed enclosed in wooden gates, often with a simple spinning object above to keep their simple brains occupied.

I'm sure you figured out by now what group of little rascals I'm referring to. That's right, I'm talking about retarded, toothless midgets with male pattern baldness. They're disgusting. And they must be stopped.

Don "No Soul" Simmons

We had a voice-over recording session with an actor whose father wrote and produced some really famous music in the 70s and early 80s. He told us about some of the best and worst songs his father wrote, which led to a discussion about some of the worst songs ever. One of our creative directors mentioned a 45 he had of "Honey," a really maudlin single by Bobby Goldsboro.

For a second, I couldn't place the song. Then I remembered this bit from Amazon Women on the Moon.

Enjoy the skit, and watch for Simmons' even sappier rendition of the inexpicable hit from 1968.

alluc.org: Brilliant while it lasts

Here's a simple idea. Comb all the various major video hosting sites for posted movies, TV shows, sports, cartoons, anime and the like. Aggregate these links and post them in a well organized manner on a single Web site, so you have TV shows by season, movies by genre, etc. Allow members to update the site with fresh, working links. Make all content accessable with a click or two.

Voila, you've got what amounts to an on-demand menu for produced content. Check it out at alluc.org It's like the old program guide channel on cable, only this points to stuff on the Web. By expanding its reach beyond YouTube to several sites, it maximizes the available content. And by limiting its catalog to produced entertainment, it avoids distractions like "boy picks nose."

Is this ethical? I feel a twinge of guilt for posting this. I know if I spent time, effort and lots of cash creating a TV show, I'd be pissed if its DVD or iTunes sales plummeted because of a site like this. On the other hand...well, it's just kinda fucking cool.

Awful things and Vonnegut

I particularly hated the news this week. How about you?

There was the story about an unfunny shock jock saying something dumb and provoking all sorts of mock horror, apologies and professional bullying, proving again that it is still impossible to rationally discuss issues of race in this country.

There was a crazy fuck with a bunch of hollow tip bullets and no playwriting talent who killed people.

There was the constant reminder that Iraq is still the reigning champion of senseless death.

There was Sanjaya.

And somewhere in there we lost Kurt Vonnegut. He just sort of bowed out modestly amidst all the reality-tv histrionics and lunacy that comprises modern culture.

Vonnegut made writing look easy. He wrote simple sentences. Used plain language. He was one of those authors I would read as a kid and think, "I could do this."

But his type of writing is actually the hardest. You have to be dead sure about what you're saying. You can't hide behind fancy language or the endless, slogging asides that cause me to say, "get to the point, fuck!" If you're truly brilliant, you can be simple. And looking again at the headlines that have dominated the news over the past couple weeks, I'm really gonna miss simple.

Wildlife can be disarming.

A Taiwanese veterinarian is crying "what a croc!" after having his arm bitten off by a roughhousing reptile. The zoo doc was simply trying to remove a tranquilizer dart from the beast when the lounging lizard awoke and mistook his arm for breakfast in bed. Zowie! Those weren't crocodile tears our hero was shedding!


Luckily the armless animal expert was escorted to a hospital and had his limb stitched back on. Rock on, doc!

A great opening sequence.

This is one of my favorites.

Lynching advertisers

I can't say I've loved everything David Lynch has made, but I still think Hollywood is a far better place with guys like him around. Here's an example why.

IMDb can be so cruel

You probably don't have to tell Michael Emerson that he's creepy looking. He's making a nice little career in Hollywood out of his "unconventinal look," playing everything from the icky guy on "Saw" to the yucky guy on "Lost." Emerson, who looks a little like Rob Schneider if he got his head caught in an elevator door, is cornering the market on unsavory.

Still, how would like it if you looked yourself up on IMDb (and you know all actors do this), only to find the following headline in the very first post of comments section:

ugliest man ever

You'd click on it, wouldn't you? You'd have to. And this is what you'd find:

"Im sorry to say this but i think this man is soooo hideous. he gave me nightmares after seeing him in SAW. im not kidding either. he looks like he could be some kind of gross pedophile. he also sort of reminds me of steve buscemi!"

I don't care how evolved you are, that would have to hurt.

The comment is a treasure trove of illiterate insults, beginning with a false apology and ending with a added insult against Steve Buscemi. It's a homemade nail-bomb, wounding everything within a 15-foot radius. Terribly written, yet it acheives a sort of brutal perfection. I have to break this down.

"Im sorry to say this"
A bitchy pre-apology that is so overused it's lost its original meaning and now simply announces the coming of an insult.

"but i think this man is sooo hideous."
He doesn't look hideous. He doesn't act hideous. He simply IS hideous.

"he gave me nightmares after seeing him in SAW."
Not because of his brilliant performance, mind you. He's just hideous.

"im not kidding either."
You thought I was being satirical? Ha!

"he looks like he could be some kind of gross pedophile."
The worst kind.

"he also sort of reminds me of steve buscemi!"
Best ending to a comment EVER.

Nick waves goodbye.

Meet Nick Ito. Now you see him. Now you don't.

A week ago or so he up and left this fine DM shop, gathering a few meager possessions and personal effects into a couple cardboard boxes. He's had enough for now, thank you. No more, please.

Ito said Finito.

Now he's preparing to go on an extended trip to Panama/Costa Rica. So when I say he's probably home waxing his surfboard, I am for once not speaking euphemistically.

As many of you thousands of loyal readers know, Ito was my Art Director. He's a very creative fellow, much more serious about work than his dude-ish facade might suggest. He was always very good at steering my unschooled impulses into a direction more resembling actual creative.

We shared many adventures over the years here at this DM wonderland. There were incidents. Shennanigans. Moments of disbelief, flashes of anger, spells of drunkeness and peals of evil laughter snaking through the beige corridors. Ask me about the magic 8-ball concept. Or the time we pitched a commercial to a roomful of ad clichés, who kept barking: "Michel Gondry! Michel Gondry!"

Now the cube next to me is empty. Empty like my heart, you ask? Of course not. Don't be stupid. But it is a bit lonelier around here. There are no more sudden eruptions of hall-filling laughter, for example. On the bright side, there aren't any startling eruptions of cube-filling flatulence either. (He always liked his burritos.)

Anyway, let's all wave goodbye to Mr. Ito as he leaves us for a better place. A warm, happy place filled with waves and sand and weed and cheap beer.

So long, good sir.

And F-U for leaving me with this shit!

Just kidding.


Seriously though.

Chuck

Great pic of Bronson in front of the Brooklyn Bridge, probably shot during the filming of Death Wish -- 1973-74.

I like to think that Vincent Gardenia is standing just off camera, maybe to Chuck's left, eating a hot dog.

There's nothing funny about vomiting.

If Gallup ever polled people about what causes them to vomit, the two most popular culprits would likely be excessive drinking and illness. Somewhere down the list, but certainly not in the top three, would be one of the most embarrassing reasons: overeating. Sadly, this is exactly what caused me to vomit one sultry night in Myrtle Beach a dozen years ago. I puked from overeating.

To clarify: I'm not talking about the Roman version of gluttony-induced regurgitation, where you tickle your epiglottis with a "vomiting feather" before dessert. I mean simply gorging yourself with so much food that your stomach, stretched like overtaxed Hefty Bag, suddenly decides to send everything back from whence it came.

In my case, it happened twenty minutes after feasting at one of South Carolina's more expansive buffets.

First, a quick word about my relationship with the buffet. Back in college, my housemates and I used to breakfast at one of two local eateries: The Ponderosa and China House. Both featured all-you-can eat options on their menus. At Ponderosa, the "salad bar," as it was understatedly called, came for a special price when you ordered one of their low-cost entrees. The trick was to get the entree to go, stuff yourself on the buffet, and then re-heat the entree at home for dinner.

The whole package came to one of the worst six dollars you could spend.

I'd order one of their defrosted sirloin steaks, which often came curled up around the edges like a Shrinky Dink and smelled oddly similar to their fish entree, and go hit the mac and cheese and garlic bread. And I'd wash it all down with a giant plastic cup of Pepsi, which was refilled on demand by one of the most morose waitresses ever to don an apron.

The better bet was China House, where for five bucks or so you gained access to a glistening feast of cheerfully misspelled buffet items. You'd scoop up a serving of "shimps," then help yourself to a syrupy mound of "meatball." And after you were filled to the brim with cornstarch and MSG, you "topped off" with that most ancient of traditional Chinese desserts: vanilla pudding.

All of this is to simply say that I'm no stranger to the buffet. I've had my share of having more than my share. I've lain prostrate on a gloomy couch, paralyzed by a flood of insulin as daylight waxed and waned across the face of a television set. I've felt the paradoxical pangs of hunger that so often vex the buffet enthusiast just hours after the feast. I've even publicly swore off buffets forever, knowing only too well that it was just another damned lie.

But I'd always kept the food down. Which, I suppose, is a point of pride in some counties.

Back to my story. As I already recounted on this blog, I spent the summer of 1994 in Myrtle Beach. One night my friend Paul and I decided to go out to eat. As I recall, we decided on a place called "The Captain's Buffet." This place was the Disney World of food. For volume and variety, it had no rivals. Giant crab legs, chicken wings, egg rolls, salmon, burgers, endless sides, all drenched in butter, and a separate dessert station for the truly obese...or foolhardy.

I was over stimulated, like a six year old on Christmas. Pacing nervously up and down the isles off food, afraid that I might overlook the steamed dumplings or spare ribs, I heaped serving after serving on my plate. I ate so fast my body didn't have time to register the fact that I was full. I must have had four full plates of food and a couple desserts.

And then, I didn't feel so good. I sat back and sort of pursed my lips, hitching my thumbs in the pockets of my acid-washed jeans. All the myriad smells that had tempted me an hour before were now palpably revolting. I felt thick and off balance. Paul, who had exercised more self-control during the meal, was amused at my discomfort. We paid up and left.

The plan was to now go to a bar and have several drinks. We crossed Highway 17 and made our way along a parking lot lined with rows of U-Haul Trucks.

The early stages of nausea are disorienting. You don't quite know what's happening and your expression conveys this bemusement to everyone around you. I kept wincing and crooking my neck as though trying to hear some far away music. My tongue felt fat and I kept swallowing. Paul walked along beside me, asking me if I was OK.

One more thing I should mention: Paul thinks vomiting is the funniest thing ever. Ever.

We kept walking. The bar was a few blocks away. I could smell exhaust from the fleet of trucks to my right.

Suddenly -- and it always happens suddenly -- I felt that awful swirling sensation. My stomach was a washing machine and my head was the dryer. I leaped behind a truck and started vomiting. Copiously. Uncontrollably. I was pitched forward, clutching my arms around my waist, undulating like an untended garden hose as the spray issued forth. I would stop, thinking it was over, only to start vomiting again. It went on and on.

During all of this, I'd lost sight of Paul. It was getting dark now, but I could no longer see his shape by the side of the road.

That's because he was on his back, rolling back and forth in a ditch and laughing as hard as I ever seen him laugh. He laughed longer and more violently than I'd vomited. And he kept laughing, hours and days later, every time he thought of me vomiting. And when he was done, he'd wipe the tears from his eyes and say: "Too funny." And then start laughing again.

We never made it out that night. I was exhausted and Paul couldn't have ended the night on a higher note. But really. There's nothing funny about vomiting.

When not to die

MTV had it all wrong: The real celebrity death match happens when two or more luminaries die within a week of each other and the world sits back to watch which one will get the coverage. Apparently, the hot list continues even when the body is cold.

I first noticed this when Princess Diana died in a car crash, and five days later Mother Theresa slipped away quietly from a prolonged illness. Both women were great, both mourned, but it was the 36-year old Princess who got all the press. Didn't seem fair to me. Mother Theresa set the standard for selflessness. She defined it so completely that people used her name as shorthand for kindly people, the same way we use Einstein to describe brainy people. She was a real Mother Theresa, that Mother Theresa was.

But by the time she died, the Princess Diana media mourning machine was running so hard, Mother Theresa barely graced the cover of the NY Post. If she had just held out for another few weeks, she might have got the sendoff she deserved.

When you're famous, timing is everything, in life and in death.

Which brings me to the current batch of deaths: President Ford, James Brown and Joe Barbera. A president, a musical genius and the guy who drew Huckleberry Hound.

With all respect to Barbera, the real media battle was between Ford and Brown. The former prez got nearly a week of painstaking, 24-hour, blow-by-blow coverage on cable news ("The car holding the casket appears to be coming into view now. Once again, the former Michigan football star and president whose controversial pardoning of Nixon may have helped heal a nation, appears to be in the second car from the front..").

The Godfather of Sould got a slew of musical retrospectives on VH1, preempting their usual line-up of smart-ass B-listers making wisecracks about Modern English and the Rubik's Cube, and histrionic ho's bitch-slapping and defecating their way to Flava Flav's oversized heart.

Winner: Ford, but Jamie Foxx may already be negotiating the rights for a bio pic, which could tip the scales back to James.

As for Barbera, he would have done himself a huge service by hanging in there until all this hoo-ha settles down. After all, most of us have had more exposure to his work than that of Ford or James Brown.

Know what I’m sayin?

"Know what I’m sayin? You know what I’m sayin! Know what I’m sayin? You know.

"Shit.

"Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Hell yeah. Heeaalll yeeaaah. Can I get a hell yeah? No, that ain’t it. I mean a heeeallll yeeeeaah!

"Wait..what happened?

"She did not just say that to me! Oh, hell no! That bitch crazy! I’m about to get all up on that ho. She wanna fuck with this? She wanna fuck with this? No, no, no, no, no! I will mess this bitch up. I will mess her up. That bitch gonna wish her mama’s baby-daddy never met her mama and had that bitch as a baby. Hold me back! Hold me back!"

Evel Knievel cracks me up

Evel Knievel is pissed off at Kanye West for impersonating him in a video in which West dresses up like the stuntman and tries to jump Snake River Canyon in a rocket car. Knievel's suing him for "infringement on his trademark name and likeness," and "damage to his reputation."

But what's funny is Evel's grouchy critique of the video. The 68-year old stuntman said: "That video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I've ever seen in my life, and he uses my image to catapult himself on the public."

That's sooo Knievel.

This is a guy who doesn't suffer fools well. In 1977, a former promoter of Knievel wrote a book in which he claimed that the famous stuntman abused two things: drugs and his wife. To say Knievel didn't take this very well is understating things. Despite having both arms in casts after a motorcycle crash in Chicago, he flew to California and tracked down the author, confronting him in a parking lot. Never one to mince words, Evel pulled out an aluminum baseball bat and beat the holy shit out of the author. He whacked him in the head, shattered bones in his arms and wrists and ultimately knocked him unconscious -- all the time yelling "I'm going to kill you!"

He didn't end up actually killing him, but the author's mother did die of a heart attack upon hearing the news of the attack. And he did kill the author's semi-professional tennis career. For his outburst, Evel was fined and spent a few weeks in jail, but it apparently didn't do anything to soften him.

Note to Kanye: You don't want to piss this guy off, even if he is in failing health and is currently connected to an oxygen tank. If I know Evel, he'll just use that tank as a bludgeoning weapon.

Evel Knievel. Now that's gangsta.

I'm moving up.

Less than two weeks after complaining about my downgraded office digs, I am now somewhat happy to report that I've been somewhat upgraded to a better cube. Just look at it! Much cozier, less noisy and few people walking by and saying things like: "Ah, checking out blogs, huh?"

Like my lava lamp? Cool, huh? I've decorated the cube to showcase my taste and pop culture inspirations, neither of which have moved an inch since 1992. Beer, Simpsons, books about prolonged adolescence. It's all here.

So stop on by cube 14-43 if you get a chance. I'll be here. Looking at blogs.

Chemical refreshment

Do I look refreshed?

A coworker who shall go unnamed gave me a couple of Ambien yesterday. I took one last night and had a pretty good sleep. It would have been a better sleep, but I had to pee the whole night and was too tired to get up. So I woke up a few times and weighed the benefits of getting up to pee, always deciding against it, then drifted back to chemically facilitated sleep.

So how does this little nightime helper work? I learned on the Web site that it works with GABA, a neurotransmitter that "may" be responsible for "dampening" electrical activity in the brain. It "may" help GABA do its job better, which "may" result in a better night sleep.

I'm here to report that it "may" actually work great. I'll have to give it another try tonight.

I also checked out the side effects on the Web site (having already taken the pill last night). It includes the usual list of headaches and dizziness you expect any time your drug trials include hypochondriacs and woosies, and it also added a few of those ironic side effects that are so entertaining -- like how Ambien may cause drowsiness and daytime sleepiness, the very complaints it's supposed to address.

It also can affect coordination, which I can attest to as I dropped not one but TWO cigarettes on my way to the gym this morning. All in all, though, I feel more energetic today. I think. I won't be sure until I take a couple more. It's sort of like a science experiment.

I wonder what Ambien would be like with a snifter of Knob Creek? Mmmmm. Knob Creek.

Greetings from Cubevania

My meteoric rise in direct marketing is officially over. What remains is a sizable hole in the ground and a rapidly cooling rock.

No, I haven't been fired. And I haven't quit either. I've been ousted from my office and forced to work amongst the common folk.

I'm typing this eulogy from my new cube, which is actually more of a cubicle, but is so small that a passing GCD labeled it a "cubiclet." It's little more than a bit of L-shaped desk space situated in the hallway of a darkened corner of floor 14. If I drilled a hole in the floor beneath my feet, I'd have a top-down view of the cubicle where I sat as a freelancer three years ago today.

If only I could drop a message down to that young go-getter, something to the effect of: "Get out now."

I wasn't a freelancer for long. I accepted a full-time position three months after I began, and was relocated in a slightly cozier hallway on 15. Then I joined a new group and was promoted to a small office, which became a larger office and then a larger office still.

Then we got a new creative head who got into his creative head a creative new seating structure that would revitalize creative: put everyone in cubes. A few understandalbe grumbles aside, I had no problem with the idea. But me and my art director were placed in the abolute worst two cubes ever created. The guys who made these cubes had to be laughing when they made them. It's like when a slum lord bisects a closet with a hunk of drywall and advertises a cozy two bedroom apartment.

I feel like a private who worked his way up to captain, only to have his medals and stripes ripped off so they don't get in the way of his new potato-peeling assignment.

Worst of all is that I'm aware of how petty this sort of grumbling is. This is what corporate life does to you, friends: One day you're a semi-idealistic college graduate full of ideas and bullshit, and the next you're a graying copy-monkey, beating your little chest over the injustice of having no door.

I finally get Les Nessman. I hear you, brother.

Mincing toward Gomorrah

Fellow liberals,

Nice job. We managed to convince Americans that we have the moral high ground. Can you believe it? Us! The ones who pee on crucifixes and call it art! We're suddenly the good guys. How awesome is that?

Excuse me while I do some blow.

Now that we're in power, allow me to say a few words to all the disillusioned conservatives and trusting Christians who took a chance on us last Tuesday.

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!

Fools! Do you know what you've done? There's gonna be gay nude wrestling on every channel -- even the Disney Channel! We're instituting a law that illegalizes different-sex marriages, except in the case of human-animal nuptuals.

Marijuana will now be sold next to Blow-Pops in the candy isle of every 7-11.

Needle-weilding doctors will be given full access to hospital nurseries so that they may selectively harvest stem cells.

Effective now, we're cutting off all funding to Iraq and will funnel the money toward a program that teaches Evolution in churches.

That's just a sampling of what you can expect. Let the hedonism begin!

Who voted?

I did, this morning. Did you?