That's some damn fine coffee

I am secretly in love with Kyle MacLachlan. I didn't mean to but between Dune and the Hidden I've watched a fair number of movies with him lately. And yeah, its shameful but its true. In. Love.

Roommate Jesse was priceless this evening.

Two Choice Quotes:

Jesse: Beowulf in 3D Wednesday night?
Me: Maybe. I don’t really want to spend 11 dollars on it though.
Jesse: But its a deal. You're only spending three dollars per dimension.

Jesse: Someday I want to get shot.
Me: Are you fucking kidding me?
Jesse: yeah. It’s on the list. Right after putting a slinky on an up escalator.

Hot Mess

In one of my classes the other day we had a discussion about the phrase "Hot Mess" and whether or not it was a good thing. Even though its used to describe Britney Spears I think its a good thing. I mean, its saying that even though your life's a mess you're still hot? Right? Oh god, like I actually know how to speak my own language.
Anyway, when I say hot mess I think of "Romance and Cigarettes."

It is such a mess (A HOT ONE). But its also incredible. Its a musical in which everyone is singing covers of rock songs. Except, well, they're not covers, its more like the original song. And people are singing along to it. Not lip sinking, you can hear their voices. But sort of like singing along to the radio.
ANYWAY its a musical about Tony Soprano having an affair with Kate Winslet and his wife Susan Sarandon finds out. Theres also Mandy Moore and Mary Louise Parker as their punked out daughters. Steve Bushemi as well, the character Steve Bushemi always plays. And Kate Winslet is so hot.
Thats about it. Except its awesome. It takes the conventions of the big hollywood musicals and grungifys them. It sort of peters out at the end and none of it really makes any sense. But it = awesome.
Speaking of Susan Sarandon: she just gets hotter. Seriously. And shes an amazing actress (wow. understatement of the year right there). Take for example this piece of writer propaganda for the strike:


The propaganda actually fails because she so damn good at emoting the blah blah blah.

Ads I hate.

I'm introducing a new slant to this blog that has been up until this point slantless. This slant will be "ads I hate." I watch waaaay too much television yet I don't have a tivo and as a result have a passionate hatred for many of the 30 second spots designed to get me to buy things. And so I will talk about my hatred, here on this blog. No other point. We wouldn't want this blog to have meaning now would we?
The very first ad we (I) shall rant about is actually a seres of ads I have hated for over a year now. Any one who has been in a room with me when one of these ads played is aware of how much I. Hate. These. Ads.

They're for Charles Schwabs brokerage firm. Which perhaps is problem number one. I don't have a broker as I am 1) a student and b) poor so I find it very very hard to sympathized with these yuppies.
The ads are animated using roboscoping which is a technique in which the scene is filmed using live actors and then the film is drawn over by hand (though probs now its done by computer). It was most famously used by Richard Linklater in waking life were it served a trippy dream like affect.
Obviously Charles Schwab wanted a way to differentiate themselves from the pack of other brokerage ads, though come to think of it I can't think of a single other broker ad. I can only imagine how the pitch went for this.
Ad guy: so... money is sexy.
Chuck Schwab guy: Yes money = sexy.
AG: but talking about money is boring.
CS: Agreed.
AG: so what we're going to do is film people talking about money.
CS: boring.
AG: But they we will ANIMATE THEM.
CS: HURRAY!
And then I image they drank a lot of kettle one* or what ever it is that expensive brokers and ad people drink these days.
What drives me so crazy about these ads is the potential for craziness just under the surface. I look at that animation and I'm just waiting for some one's skin to split open and out pour butterflies.
But no such luck. Because its boring yuppies. Talking about money. I mean jeeze they could at lease sing.

*I also hate the kettle one ads. Be prepaired.

Your sweater looks like thanksgiving

So I recently discovered that the computer at work can take pictures. This of course turned me into a giant goof ball. (I think I look a little like Amelie in that one.) BUT it also really made my happy because I want to show off my new sweater dress which is totally my new favorite peice of clothing.


Isn't it pretty? Someone told me today that it looks like thanksgiving which I am totally cool with because I LOVE thanksgiving. Look at how much I love it. I'm giving thanksgiving a giant hug.

I present the most annoying movie trailer of all time.

Brian De Palma's "Redacted."

I have not seen this movie, the reviews are mixed though everyone agrees that it is hell to sit through. Regardless of how it is as a "Film" this trailer makes me want to stab someone.

Will Tim Gunn be my Friend?

Tim Gunns's guide to style totally made me cry. Tim is so sweet and doesn't have an inch of cattiness.
LOVE. HIM.

Dragons of the Subway

Rob’s mother leaned out over the tracks and peered down the subway tunnel.
“It should be here any minute.” Rob ignored her. She was too busy naming the rats. There was Leopold and Stanley and Dr. Livingstone. Dr. Livingstone was inspecting a candy wrapper.
“Damn MTA,” Rob’s mother was saying, “they should run more trains on this line. It’s ridiculous that we should wait this long.”
“Blah blah blah,” was all Rob heard. Dr. Livingstone picked up the candy wrapper and ducked under the third rail. The wrapper covered him and it looked as though there was a candy bar running along the floor. Leopold and Stanley, who had been fighting stopped and stood on their hind legs. Then they too scurried away. A breeze began to blow on Rob’s face.
The train was coming.
With the rats gone, Rob joined her mother leaning over the tracks. There was only blackness in the distance. The tracks made a curve right before the station so you couldn’t see the trains coming until the last second.
“Step back from the edge,” Rob’s mom said, but Rob was staring into the blackness. The breeze felt warmer than usual. In the distance something sounded like a growl.
Rob’s ears were listening for the sound of metal against metal, the screeching of an oncoming subway, but there was only another growl.
Then around the corner, Rob and her mother saw the beginning of light.
“Here it comes,” her mom said. The light grew steadily brighter and brighter as what they thought was a train grew closer. The growling grew louder.
But just when the train should have poked its head around the corner, shining two headlights into the station, there was a rumble and the lights in the station went out. Rob fell against her mother and together they stumbled back from the track. Their lungs were filling with soot and their ears filled with a low reverberation.
Rob squinted through the soot and blackness, something darker than the dark was passing by on the tracks. At its front was a cold fire. She thought she saw eyes in the fire but before she could focus had to blink away the tears of the burning soot. When she opened her eyes again she saw only dark.
Slowly, the lights of the station flickered on. Rob expected to find herself covered in a black dust but she was clean as ever. No one else in the subway station seemed to have noticed what happened.
“That was weird,” Rob said.
“Must have been a service train.” Her mother said, as she resumed her post leaning out over the tracks. In the distance Rob could hear the screeching of the in coming train. It sounded weirdly comforting. Rob looked down the tracks away from her mother in the direction the thing had gone. But she saw only black.
“Step back from the tracks dear,” said her mother, as the train pulled into the station.
Rob hurried to a window on the train and peered out. All she saw was graffiti and power cables as the train pulled out of the station. The train gathered speed as it rushed uptown. There, on the express track, was that a form? It looked like a darkened train but was it? Rob pressed her nose to the window.
“That’s not sanitary,” her mother said and pulled her back into the seat.
But before she had been pulled down, Rob could have sworn she saw eyes of fire staring back at her.

In case you were wondering

chelsea: you have been a busy little blogger lately
larke: I KNOW
larke: its because I hate my play
larke: so Ive been procrastinating hard core

Read this piece by Chuck Isherwood and then this response by Jon Robin Baitz.
There are a lot of things that are slowly driving me away from the theatre. Chuck Isherwoods self rightiousness is definitly on that list.

Two articles about people who love (too much) animals.

People want to kill pigeons or cats, and other people are very very very offended by this. Offended to the point of calling it a Holocaust or fascism. I'm all for pigeons and cats but really? Holocaust? really?

French Tampax Ad

I normally hate the french but I have to give them props for this one. You win this round france.

Dinosaur Comics sums up the way I react every time someone asks me for change.

go here for the original.

(is that really the way you spell dinosaur? really?)

VICTORY

Today I:
Finished refiling the Alumni Files at work.
Finished a draft of my battlestar galactica spec.

Have I mentioned that I hate people?

There have now been not one but two fluff pieces in the New York Times about how hard it is on the poor tourists who can't spend $800 on the little mermaid anymore due to the strike and now have to find alternative ways of entertaining themselves.
To which I say: go to an off broadway show motherfuckers!

Who do you like better? David Cronenberg or John Waters?

So I rented “Crash” (NOT the Paul Haggis Crash) because I recently watched “eXistenZ” which is also directed by David Cronenberg, and loved it, and “A History of Violence” is seriously one of my all time favorite movies.
Crash is about people who are turned on my car crashes. It won the 1996 Porn award for best alternative feature so that should tell you something. Pretty much everyone has sex with everyone (a world without STDs!) and there is little to no plot. What plot there is goes something like this: James Spader gets in a car wreck and kills Holly Hunter’s husband. Later, they have sex in a car park. Then they watch a recreation of James Dean’s crash. They meet Vaughn, a guy obsessed with car wrecks. Vaughn may be a homicidal maniac but James Spader lets him fuck his wife in the backseat of his car while the three of them go through a carwash.
The movie tries to explore the connection between death and eroticism which is in itself interesting. But the lack of a plot means the movie is basically sex scene, car crash, awkward conversation, sex scene, sex scene, car crash, etc. “Crash” was a book first and I feel like it probably worked better. As it is, it really works best as porn. And porn is boring.
The idea that we feel most alive when we are closest to death is interesting (they don’t call it le petit mort for nothing) but is probably not a theme that works in film. The movie’s titillation with disfiguration give the movie a cinematic spark. But over all my vote is: meh.
Which brings me to John Waters. John Waters’ movies also explore eroticism and his characters are bizarre and grotesque. But there is such a humor to his movies that you can’t help but love them even when they’re dealing with serious(ish) topics. I recently watched Cecil B. Demented which is John Waters’ fuck-you-hollywood-i-don’t-wanna-sell-out movie. Again, everyone has sex with everyone, but at the end Melanie Griffith lights her hair on fire. And who doesn’t love that?

stolen from slaney: the history of the lolcat.

The History of LOLCats - Watch more free videos

Yet more evidence that I may be a terrorist.

Using this evidence it's possible.

Oh thank the lord

Back when I worked at Saks I used to walk through Rockefeller center, past radio city music hall every single time I went to work. It is a part of new york I really passionately hate. Once the ice rink opened it became impossible to walk through and tourists would yell at me for walking in front of their cameras (which I would sometimes do on purpose. Much as I try to not be a spiteful person I really do hate the people who shop at Saks and the people who put Rockefeller center as their number one priority when visiting new york. That part of NYC is like the Disneyland/ Vegas version of New York. It just feeds into the perception that New York is a playground for the rich. Which, I mean, it is, and working at Saks pounded into my brain again and again that I don't belong here in any respect other than being the "help.") ANYWAY wow, did not anticipate going on that rant but what really brought it up was this picture.

I am so glad I don't have to walk by that goddamn tree every day. When Saks put up its Christmas decorations in the last week of September it killed any and all Christmas feeling I had. Welcome. I'm more grinchy than usual.

Nothing can break us, no one can make us give our rights away!

Arise and seize the day!

More strike news but this time its not writer related. I am supposed to go to a show on Broadway this evening but the Broadway stagehands union may or may not vote to strike sometime this afternoon. Which means I will have no idea what to do for fun if both tv AND Broadway is taken away from me.
What should I do with my time once the tv is gone?
1) Learn to play the violin.
2) Take up a sport.
3) Work more/ make more money.
4) Abuse drugs/alcohol.
5) Save the whales.
6) Write more.
VOTE NOW!

Open the gates and seize the day.

So there’s this little writers strike on. It’s kinda a big deal. It making life difficult for a lot of people I love, people who should be getting paid but aren’t. And don’t get me wrong, I am 100% behind the strike and what the guild gains today will help me tomorrow.
Which means when not one but two people called me about a screenplay of mine my response was “YAAAAAAAAAAYcrap.” I went to go ask my advisor about it and before I could even open my mouth he said “It’s not a coincidence that they are calling you now.”
Me: how did you know? Did George [another writing teacher] talk to you?
Advisor: No. You’re just the 10th person to come to me with this question today. It’s never a coincidence.
So I was feeling all crummy and used and I called my mom. Who’s response was priceless:
Mom: well isn’t it nice to know that they think you’re worth asking to scab?
And I felt much better.

Debbie Harry just gets hotter

Like seriously. I hope I age that awesomely.
And now because I'm in the mood lets all listen to heart of glass together.

Catholicisim for Dummies.

My father, in his infinite sweetness, bought me Catholicism for Dummies. The note accompanying it said "whether or not God exists, this book certainly does."

This is what my TV teacher had to say to me:

“As some of you may know, it looks like the Writers Guild is going to strike. You might think that this will be a good opportunity for your career. It is. If you never want to work again. If you cross picket lines it is scabbing and the guild will find out. You might think that no one will find out but they will. And you will never be able to join. Ever.”
...
Not that I would scab anyway but now I am totally terrified. The guild knows all.

One of these things is not like the others:

Three things, two of which I am meh about one which I am SO EXCITED ABOUT:
1. X-files 2 movie is a go.
2. Harold (of "and Kumar") will be playing Sulu in the impending J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.
3. Joss has a new series.
Can you guess?