Adam Dorsey.com

E3 Press Conferences Should Be Better

Fri, 24 May 2013 20:46:01 -0700

With the PS4 and X-Box One reveals now in the rearview, and as we gear up for a week of similar showcases at E3 in June, I want to take a moment to talk about the state of video game press conferences/events/reveals. The abbreviated version is this: They’re not any good. More specifically, most of them are awful, even the good ones aren’t very good, and there’s zero reason why these things can’t be great.

These events should be breathtaking. They should be carefully workshopped, meticulously practiced stage shows. They should give the audience more than they were expecting. They should be genuinely funny, with jaw-dropping reveals and guest appearances. They should be filled with surprises. Instead, they’re boring, painfully awkward presentations by executives. I feel like I’m watching a high school student wearing his dad’s suit as he performs the public speaking section of his English final. Only this high school student is bringing home a multi-million-dollar salary, and—it turns out—this high school student isn’t really a high school student at all, but instead an old man in a suit pretending to be young and hip by using words like “social,” “millennial,” and “remix.”

Remember as a kid when you got the special issue of EGM or GamePro or Nintendo Power that talked about the new video game machine coming out? Remember how you flipped through those four pages over and over again, reading over every detail, staring at every badly printed image? Remember how you felt about the future of video games? The future of the world? The future of you? Video game announcements/events need to be stage-shows of that emotion.

People say these events aren’t for hardcore gamers, and so they need only appeal to casual gamers and Call of Duty-ers and people who read USA Today. They say that the hardcore gamers are too cynical to like them anyway. Both of these things are wrong. These gaming machines are being built to make everyone happy, there’s no reason these events can’t make everyone happy too. The Steve Jobs led Apple events are the templates all of these companies are adhering to, but they’re all falling short. And let’s not pretend the Apple events can’t be multitudes better too. It’s time to re-imagine what these things can be.

The mainstream stuff like TV integration, multitasking, and social sharing? All of that stuff should be pre-taped. That’s the stuff that will be boring, even if it’s actually super neat. Pre-taping it means you can massage it until you get it right.

There should be awesomely cut together video game trailers that lead into choreographed live gameplay demos that lead into celebrities playing the game. Things should never be awkward or forced. You see on twitter that Celebrity A loves your game? Let Celebrity A play your game for three days beforehand, then let them come out on stage and talk about why your game is cool. No teleprompter. No staged conversations with executives. If that celebrity doesn’t honestly care about your game, get them the fuck off the stage.

The presentations should be simple, but exciting. The people involved should know the product they’re introducing so well, that it just feels like they’re sharing this cool thing with you, their friends. The informative sections shouldn’t feel like Powerpoint presentations, they should feel like live Sandwich Video ads.

All of your questions about how something works, when it comes out, and how much it costs should be answered at the announcement. It’s the story and gameplay you can keep teasing. If you’re afraid to announce the price or the release date, then your product isn’t ready to announce yet. Wait until you’re confident that this presentation, along with all of the relevant facts and information, will have me preordering your box that day. Otherwise, you’re not ready.

Most of what I’m reading about the new Xbox One is rumors and speculation about how it will handle used sales. Microsoft has admitted they haven’t figured out all the details yet. They have released several press statements about it after the event, one of which is this:

Xbox One is designed to support the trade in and resale of games. Reports about our policies for trade in and resale are inaccurate and incomplete. We will disclose more information in the near future.

The articles and questions about the X Box One should be “HOW AWESOME IS THIS NEW MACHINE GOING TO BE?” or “HOW AMAZING ARE THESE NEW GAMES?” but instead everyone is writing and reading about used games. It’s a shame, and the surest signal that this event could have been better.

There is a confidence missing from the current events. The announcements should be written by Aaron Sorkin. The taped segments should be done by Adam Lisagor and The Lonely Island. If by the end of the show, a hardcore gamer doesn’t want to try out your new multimedia functions and motion-controlled games, then you fucked up. If by the end of the show, the casual gamer doesn’t want to see more about that new AAA core game, then you fucked up. If USA Today doesn’t put you on the front page tomorrow morning, then you fucked up.

No more pandering. No more buzzwords. No more bullshot-filled trailers. No more celebrities who don’t play video games talking about how excited they are for video games. Just give us the most exciting stories, features, and gameplay. Lots of different people like lots of different things, but everyone likes good stuff. Show the good stuff. Work on this event until it’s a tight, funny, exciting, honest presentation that tells the story of your product and how it will change the story of the world. Hone your presentation until it tells the story of how your box will change the story of the person who is going to buy it.

In conclusion: videogame companies, you’re being Pete Campbell, and I need you to be Don Draper.

The Daily Dot - The true and overlooked origins of Tumblr

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:10:34 -0700

The Daily Dot - The true and overlooked origins of Tumblr:

This is an interesting article on the beginnings of Tumblr. I’ve had similar experience with the origins of a startup being glossed-over and simplified as investor money came in, and I always found it super interesting/heartbreaking. A good thing to constantly remind yourself in life is that if something is a good story, it’s probably just a story.

playstationthree: tyler the creator discovers memes in almost...

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:08:47 -0700

playstationthree:

tyler the creator discovers memes in almost the middle of 2013

No comment.

The Me Who Isn't Me

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:33:00 -0700

When I’m visiting family, it’s usually nicer if my girlfriend is here with me. I used to think that was the real-life manifestation of some sort of romantic comedy trope, i.e.: family is so ridiculous, but they’re family and we love them, and we love each other, so let’s enjoy how we’re all family, merry christmas, the end. Now, I think there might be a little more to it.

When my girlfriend comes with me on a visit home, then I am modern-day me visiting my family. I revert slightly into being more like them and less like me, we occasionally take our individual Dorsey Power Ranger suits and mighty morph into one giant Dorsey Family Mech™, but mostly it’s just me visiting my family, and all the regular-style stress that comes along with that.

When I go visit home alone, though, well, that’s a different transformers beast war altogether. Try as I might to remain modern-day me, it is only a matter of days before I existential crisis crash into a me-multiverse. Suddenly, I am haunted by the shadows of hundreds of parallel me’s. I am surrounded by the me who never moved away from home, the me who made a different choice in colleges, the me who had more (any) sex in high school. There’s a me for every girl I stopped dating, the me who instead kept dating that girl. There are me’s for every job I ever had and a me for every job I never got. All of these different versions of me look at me and I look at them. We are all looking into each other for answers, but we are coming back with nothing but questions.

Somewhere in this crowd of good looking gentlemen is a me who has some sort of powerful realization about the world and the self while he’s on vacation at his childhood home. Unfortunately, that me isn’t me.

Flustered Boy Trying to Pump Gas Like a Man

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:39:58 -0700

I’m in my hometown of Shelton, WA for the next week. Kind of a mini-vacation before I have to go back to L.A. and figure out some way to pay rent. I’ve been here for a few days already, and so far I’ve shot a short film, seen some old friends, and hung out with my folks. I’m hoping to continue to enjoy nature, my family, get some writing done, and maybe play some videogames.

Today I borrowed my mom’s Jeep and drove into town to pick up some barbecue briquettes and beer for later this afternoon. As I navigated my way through the self-checkout line, an old friend popped up and said hello. It was awesome to see her, but I was surprised to find myself flustered. I ran my credit card three times before it took, while I awkwardly tried to catch up with this friend.

The same thing had happened to me fifteen or so years ago, with the same friend. It was high school, and I had been hanging out with her and a few others at the local Dennys, because there was nowhere else to hang out. We stopped at the nearby Chevron to fill my parents’ car up with gas. I was suddenly flustered in that same way as I was today. Very self-conscious as I tried to pump gas and look cool doing it. There was a lightning storm starting, and I remember thinking that holding this gas pump probably wasn’t the best idea. I remember messing up somehow with the card or the nozzle, and I remember her saying, “Wow, I’ve never seen anyone mess up while pumping gas.” I was not happy to be her first.

I don’t know what these two things mean. Probably nothing. As I get older, it becomes clearer that nothing means anything, and that’s actually more comforting than it sounds. It might be that I am still just as weird and nervous around girls as I was when I was seventeen, but I’d like to think that’s not the case. It might be that no matter how much I mature, no matter how successful I am in my personal life and my career, I’ll always be a flustered boy trying to pump gas like a man when I come back to my hometown.

It made me wonder if it’s even possible to be cool in this small logging town that I’m from. In my normal life, I like to think that I’m a pretty interesting, pretty chill, pretty hip guy, even if I do wear cargo shorts too much. But here there’s no gauge. Or the gauge is simply “You look like us, we’re going to ignore you” versus “You look different than us, you must be a gay.” I think that transfers to everything here. There’s no upward mobility and so there’s no momentum in life. There’s a hard ceiling in the careers, in the lifestyle, in the social ladder. It’s Twin Peaks, but without the fun soundtrack and supernatural funny business.

Maybe I should find it comforting: Come home twice a year, take a break from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the world, spend a few days being super uncool.

NOTE: Want to make it clear that the friend I ran into (and all of my friends in this town) are awesome, and nothing I say about this town is about them, and like how do you guys even live here, there’s like only two strip malls and that’s the whole town, I’m so in awe that you make this work, let’s all meet for coffee at that one cool coffee shop in town that’s ran by all those Christian girls, okay? Cool.

Q&A: Meltdown Poster Artist Dave Kloc - Features - Los Angeles magazine

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:18:26 -0700

Q&A: Meltdown Poster Artist Dave Kloc - Features - Los Angeles magazine:

Check out this great interview with my friend and amazing artist Dave Kloc.

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:28:46 -0700

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut:

Take a few minutes and read this short story, if you never have.

Not-Advice for Past-Me about bad relationships

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:22:08 -0700

Last night I tried to give a friend some advice, because he seemed to be going through some stuff that was similar to some stuff I went through earlier in life. My friend didn’t know how to get over a girl. I told him that it takes time. It takes working on you. It takes doin’ it with other people. I stand by that answer. Unfortunately, I know that if anyone had given me that advice at the time, I wouldn’t have taken it. I mean, plenty of people did give me advice at the time, and I didn’t take it. There are some things in life you sort of have to learn on your own, I guess. So, instead of giving advice, I’m just going to share on here a bit of what happened to me, and what I learned from it, and maybe it’ll make some other people learn it on their own just a little bit faster.

Off and on for about seven years, I had a very unhealthy relationship with a girl I knew from high school. It started just after graduation, and lasted a couple of years past college. It was long-distance and—because of the age of the internet at the time—manifested itself mostly as AOL Instant Messenger conversations and e-mails. At its best, it was a co-dependent friendship, at its worst it was adultery. Dramatic highlights include sending emails urging her not to marry her fiancé, her calling off her wedding at the last minute, and me writing a screenplay about her. The drama culminated in tears and confessions of love over the phone as she drunkenly drove back to the husband, our phone call interrupted as I heard her crash her car into a semi-truck on I-5.

Looking back, I barely recognize the person I was then, this Past-Me. He was a young man forged by bad romantic comedies, insecurity, and loneliness. I couldn’t shake the—very wrong in retrospect—feeling that THIS GIRL JUST UNDERSTANDS ME, MAN. We were meant to be together because we had a class together in high school or something. It was much easier for me to believe that I’d found the perfect girl for me and she was just unattainable, than it was to consider the other possibilities: that I hadn’t found the perfect girl yet, or that there are many perfect people out there for everyone.

Now that I’ve been in other—healthy—relationships, not only do I not understand how I could have let this girl be a part of my life for so long, I don’t understand how any of her other relationships were possible. We spent so many hours a week chatting on instant messenger while she was dating, engaged, and married. How did she have three hours every night to chat with me? How did those poor dudes feel? It turns out I was just one of many horrible relationships she left her in wake.

It seems so silly now, but I needed to tell her everything that happened in my day, or it wasn’t real. If a tree falls in the woods and you can’t IM someone about it does it really—It didn’t feel like it happened unless she knew. Past-Me thought that meant we were meant to be together, but now I know it meant a lot more than that. It meant I was unhappy. It meant I needed to live my life in a different way, a way where I was living it for me instead of other people. I needed to have more healthy friends in my life, more people to hang out with and talk to. Only after having those other two things should a relationship even factor in, and it definitely shouldn’t factor in with someone who has a fiancé or is married.

It went on for seven years, but there were several long breaks in there, lasting several months or a year. We always somehow convinced ourselves that the friendship was worth it. Sometimes we talked like we were friends, sometimes we talked like we were in a relationship, but now I can see that we were always very far away from both of those things.

If I could tell my friend one—fuck my friend—okay—if I could go back in time and give Past-Me one piece of advice, it would be that life is too fucking short. I was using my twisted friendship with her to not put myself out there for real with better friends and other girls. I’m pretty sure it was a defense mechanism to protect me from experiencing anything real, which worked out pretty well, except I didn’t experience anything real.

I would tell Past-Me that there is no “The One.” There are a lot of experiences out there with a lot of great people, and every day you’re spending chatting on the internet with “The One” is a day you could get out there and experience something real. I would tell Past-Me that no one who stays in a relationship with someone else is worth pining over.

Even now, reading over what I just wrote, I see I’m still blaming myself for so much of what happened. Not that I shouldn’t take some responsibility—I mean, I was there—but there wasn’t a moment in our friendship or our relationship that she wasn’t using me. A straight up affair is easier to see, it’s easier to see that someone is using someone else to fill out what is lacking in their real relationship. This was harder to see, that our unhealthy friendship was filling the holes in herself and the holes in her relationships.

Because of the nature of the internet, I wasn’t able to get the full picture of her. Like an airbrushed swimsuit model made entirely of text messages, all the negative gaps filled over smooth—she was able to hide her mental illness, and I was able to have my perfect woman from afar. Only, well, not really, of course. The same thing happens on first dates, as you build up that person in your mind before you know anything about them. The difference here is that the first date lasted seven years.

My friends thought I loved the drama of it, but I didn’t. I loved the story. Everything meant more because we were kept apart by circumstance. I met her in a poetry class in the sixth grade, for fuck’s sake, I wrote a screenplay about a fictionalized version of us. I wasn’t in love with her, I was in love with the idea of dramatic love. I was in love with the arc of our characters, the storytelling of it. It took me another decade to learn that I needed to fulfill those desires on the page and not in my personal life.

Real love doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t lie. It doesn’t stay in other relationships. Real love makes you happy. It’s honest and real. It’s a partnership. The hardest thing to convince Past-Me would be that it wasn’t love. But it wasn’t. Not even close.

Not that love isn’t complicated. Sometimes you fall for someone who isn’t right for you. Sometimes you find someone who is right for you, but one of you isn’t in the right time in their lives to make it work (and usually that person is me). The most important thing I’ve learned in life is to just keep moving. Spend a moment to mourn the outcomes of fate, and then keep on living your life. Every day you feel sorry for yourself is a day you aren’t living.

Your brain and your heart and your genitals might say otherwise. They might argue with you and nag at you. Another thing I’ve learned is that sometimes your brain or your heart or your genitals can’t be reasoned with. Sometimes your brain, your heart, or your genitals are stubborn, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still wrong. And that’s not something that stops because you get in a healthy relationship or you find love. Your brain and your heart and your genitals are still going to fuck with you on the daily. You’re gonna smell a thing that reminds you of a past lover who was no good for you. You’re gonna want to call or text or email people that you know you shouldn’t. The most important thing to learn about this stuff is that it doesn’t mean shit. Your brain is gonna be wrong, your heart is going to be wrong, and your genitals are going to be wrong. FOREVER. It doesn’t mean that the unattainable girl is perfect for you and it doesn’t mean that the healthy relationship you’re in now is wrong for you.

I’ve gotten sidetracked a little. My friend didn’t know how to get over a girl. I used to have a similar problem. Doesn’t matter if you know the girl isn’t right, the human brain can be a beezy. I used to think I would never get over her or the things she did to me. Now I think about her only two or three times a year, and never in a fond way, and only in passing. I wish I had listened to my friends’ advice then, but c’mon, I probably wouldn’t even have listened to a time-traveling Future-Me (Yo, Past-Me! Buy some Apple stock! Don’t eat so much Jack in the Box! Skip those Matrix sequels!).

You’ll get over it. You’ll get over her. But you need to stop talking to her. You need to stop thinking about her. You need to stop worrying about thinking about her. We live in the future now, and in the future it’s hard, because in the future it’s easy. It’s hard because it’s easy to text someone or e-mail someone or chat with them on Facebook. It’s hard because it’s easy to obsessively check someone’s social media presence over and over again. In the past, you could run away from your past and start new. Technology brings us all together, even with people we shouldn’t be together with anymore. It’s hard, but not impossible.

It feels like you’re never gonna be right again. You will. It feels like there are no other girls out there for you. There are, there are so many, they’re an unlimited resource and they’re making new ones every day. So relax, and live your life, and grow as a person, and keep yourself open to the new possibilities that are like all around you, man, dig? But you’ve got to stop talking to her, because it’ll freeze everything in your life except for your life, and that’s the only limited resource you got.

Bah, I said I wasn’t going to give advice, and now I did. Look. I told my friend that it takes time. It takes working on you. It takes doin’ it with other people. I stand by that answer.

My Problems with Zach Braff's Kickstarter

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:40:40 -0700

I was really into Garden State when it came out. I think it was a great first film and showed real promise for new writer/director Zach Braff. I saw the movie several times in theaters, I bought the soundtrack, I modeled several early relationships with women after Natalie Portman’s character, and I made really cheesy mixtapes for my own screenplays. I was really excited to see what this new director brought us next.

That said, I hate that he’s running a Kickstarter for his new film, and that he’s going to get the money.

In the above video for the Kickstarter, Braff talks about all the things that he wouldn’t be able to do with the film if he went with traditional Hollywood financing. He jokes about the casting changes they would demand, the changes in plot they would insist on. This boils down to sexing up nerds, turning the guy from the Big Bang Theory into Justin Bieber, turning comic-con geeks into Las Vegas “whores.” He says he hasn’t already made the movie because they won’t give him final cut. He wants to be able to make every decision.

Don’t get me wrong, I can really get behind some auteur theory. I think there is no greater filmmaking than when a director has a clear vision, and he is able to execute on that vision. But can’t we agree that an auteur should earn that freedom? Tarantino gets to make the movies he wants to make, with complete creative control, because he has a proven track record. His work is solid, it has a clear vision, and it gets butts in seats.

Filmmaking isn’t just an art form, it’s a business. If Braff wants to make this movie with his friends, as he purports in his Kickstarter video, then no one is stopping him. He doesn’t need $2 million dollars. He needs to set aside some of his Scrubs residuals, buy a camera, and spend a few weekends with his friends shooting a movie. Braff wants to be an auteur? Fucking grab a camera and make the movie and earn that cred. Don’t rope your fans into a cult where they support your uncompromised vision. Because guess what? The reason he won’t just grab a camera and shoot it with his friends on his own dollar is because he would still have to make compromises.

FILMMAKING IS COMPROMISES. Filmmaking is changing a location because you can’t afford to shoot at the one that would “be perfect.” It’s changing the end of a scene because you’re losing sun. Maybe it’s not shooting at Comic-Con because Comic-Con would be too expensive, and using your creativity to come up with an even more appropriate—less cliche—location for your characters to spend the third act. Your favorite films, YOUR FAVORITE ART, was born out of compromises. Outsmarting financiers and executives and actors and lighting rigs is how your favorite directors made your favorite movies.

Ultimately, I think the Kickstarter route of financing has the potential to be just as detrimental to an auteur’s vision as the traditional Hollywood model. I think that if you’re going to be making art that requires multi-million-dollar investments, then you have an obligation to put butts in seats. I think there is a place for artistic films that are made by a single auteur and have a limited audience, but I think those films should be made with more modest budgets, and not on the backs of fans.

I am terrified that fans are putting their money on the line, becoming investors, and then seeing no return on that investment except MAYBE a film. I think a film director needs to grow as an artist within the constraints of this business. I think this makes them strong. I think Kevin Smith is the first auteur who fell victim to the Kickstarter model, even before Kickstarter existed. He made films just for his fans, and instead of taking the obscene promise found in his first few films and growing as an artist, instead of taking chances to find a wider audience, he pandered to the devoted fans he already had.

I think Kickstarter is a great business model for unknown artists. I hope it delivers to us brand new visions from brand new artists who we wouldn’t get to see otherwise. But I hate it when an established celebrity uses it.

We’re not going to forge the next generation of auteurs by letting them make whatever they want to make with unlimited resources and zero accountability. At best, this is how we’re going to Frankenstein the next collection of George Lucases, Kevin Smiths, and Robert Rodriguezes. These artists had amazing starts, showed great promise, and then locked themselves away in the safety of their egos, their fans, and their piles of money.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m probably going to go against everything I just said here and pledge some money to Zach Braff because hey, Garden State was pretty cool at the time, I guess.

So my ex-coworker Austin has an awesome journal comic called...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:51:31 -0700

So my ex-coworker Austin has an awesome journal comic called Austin Was Alive and you should go read it right now. I highly recommend going to the last page and working your way backwards, therefore reading them in chronological order. They follow the mundane and profound moments of his life, as he works at a popular internet startup before moving onto a job transporting dead bodies. It’s really good, and has probably inspired me to keep some kind of comic journal that will be infinitely worse.

This video from The Onion is great, and so true. The funny part...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:32:00 -0700

This video from The Onion is great, and so true. The funny part is, now that I’m unemployed, this shit happens even more often. Sometimes while I’m still in bed, I can decide to just give up for the day.

Right now I’ve got a bad foot injury from hiking yesterday, and that new Poker Night at the Inventory 2 came out, I’m thinking that as soon as noon rolls around I can just open a beer and take some pain medication and play some videogame poker. Fuck it.

On days like today, social media is both wonderful and terrible....

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:59:00 -0700

On days like today, social media is both wonderful and terrible. Tragedy brings out the best and worst in people, and social networks are no different. Today my twitter feed is filled with news, love, and support. It is also filled with disinformation, fear, and bad jokes.

I quickly got to a point where I couldn’t take anymore of any of it. I unplugged to walk my dog, and while I was out, I thought about what I would like to see the negative part of my feed replaced with. So I came home and made these.

If you’re feeling the same way as me, every time you read a tweet you wish you hadn’t read, imagine a couple of these in its place. Make your own in your head, or use Fake Tweet Builder and make them real and share them under the tag #SurpriseGoodTweets

My thoughts are with everyone in Boston today.

Power Glove

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:47:57 -0700

Power Glove:

So this guy did some of the tracks on the upcoming Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon soundtrack (which looks awesome). This is his Soundcloud page and you just have to check it out. I’m specifically fond of “Fantastic Lover (Johnny Moog Remix).

Free Comic Book Day is May 4th! In celebration, I’m happy...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:34:00 -0700

Free Comic Book Day is May 4th! In celebration, I’m happy to share these previously unreleased interviews with Guillermo del Toro and Grant Morrison that I produced for Meltdown Comics on last year’s Free Comic Book Day.

These were a blast to make, and everyone was so friendly and great to work with. After the Grant Morrison interview, I took a moment to explain to him that my roommate was a huge fan. I then told him, “Stop me if this is weird—like please, if this is weird, just say no—but I was wondering if I could record you saying ‘Wake up, Katherine’ so that she can use it as her alarm clock.” He thought it was hilarious and did it immediately and it was great.

Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to come out on May 4th (and every Wednesday afterward) to your local comic book shop to support COMICS.

"Good SF supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort..."

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:22:16 -0700

“Good SF supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. It has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to a scientist or engineer, and provides them with a template that they and their colleagues can use to organize their work. Examples include Asimovian robots, Heinleinian rocket ships, Clarke towers, and Gibsonian cyberspace. As Jim Karkanias of Microsoft Research put it, when I was discussing this with him later, such icons serve as hieroglyphs—simple, recognizable symbols on the significance of which everyone agrees.”

- Thinking Big: Greetings from Neal Stephenson | The Hieroglyph Project

This is a cool project and definitely worth a read. Let’s do whatever we can to make the future more future-y.

It Was a Bad Day. I Had to Eulogize My KDAY. - Hollywood Prospectus Blog - Grantland

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:25:45 -0700

It Was a Bad Day. I Had to Eulogize My KDAY. - Hollywood Prospectus Blog - Grantland:

So I found out yesterday that my favorite radio station in L.A. is being sold and turned into a Mandarin language station. I am devastated. It plays the best old school hip hop, and I don’t know how I will continue discovering these lost gems with KDAY. As I tweeted yesterday, KDAY is the only good thing about driving in Los Angeles.

Got this in my e-mail today. It’s clearly going to change...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:48:28 -0700

Got this in my e-mail today. It’s clearly going to change my life. Can’t wait to apply “Better than Sex” to my screenplays.

Rookie » A Mind of My Own

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:58:28 -0700

Rookie » A Mind of My Own:

Really interesting and well written article on how your life is affected when you’re hit with a big illness.

Thinking about this, I couldn’t help but feel like writing the screenplay I’m working on right now is my debilitating illness. I’ve had to quit my job, I stay at home so I can work on it, and I have cut off most social activities so I can focus on it. Obviously it’s different because it’s A CHOICE, but the similarities made me wonder if I’m doing the right thing.

Mason Jars

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:05:43 -0700

Man, drinking out of a Mason jar is good times. Pour some crisp water in there, keep it at your desk at work. Makes you look like you’re too busy to get a real glass. Makes you look like Don Draper back when he was Dick Whitman. Makes your boss give you that promotion over Stanley, because Stanley drinks out of a fucking Nalgene. Who’s Stanley trying to impress? No one, evidently.

Fucking the only way to drink a beer at home that isn’t in a bottle is out of a Mason jar. Hard day at the office, pop open two bottles and pour them into that Mason jar. No one will be the wiser, except the guy who empties out your recycling, but you know that motherfucker drinks out of a Mason jar, because a garbage man is the Walker Texas Ranger of the 21st century, minus all the Republican tendencies.

The only fucking way to get fucked up at the office is out of a Mason jar. Your boss already thinks you just love staying hydrated, I mean, that’s why you got the VP gig in the first place. So tomorrow, just fill that shit up with straight vodka. Once again, no one will be the wiser, except for you, who will be the fucked-upped-er. Just remember to pass out over a spreadsheet or whatever, and if anyone asks about it, you’re just burning the midnight oil, picking up the slack because Stanley can’t carry his weight. Throw in a joke about Stanley’s weight there, if you feel up to it, I mean, that’s the kind of camaraderie you can forge while sipping from a Mason jar.

Let people wonder if you’re really into canning preserves. I mean, don’t say anything outright, keep the mystery alive, but leave that shit to the imaginations. Maybe during that two weeks you took off to go to rehab, you were really just in the woods somewhere, tending to some spectacular raspberry patches. They don’t know.

Maybe one day, bring an extra Mason jar into work and fill it with M&Ms. That dick over in accounts receivable can make as many jokes as he wants to about your breath smelling like a Bukowski poem, but Bukowski never wrote shit about drinking whipped cream vodka out of a Mason jar while taking a quarterly earnings call while cramming a bunch of M&Ms in his mouth. Or did he? I don’t know, I’m not completely familiar with his oeuvre.

No one ever called a man drinking out of a Mason jar a shitty father.

Most of the time 7-11 is pretty cool with you filling your Mason jar with Slurpee as long as you ask them beforehand and pay the full refill price.

Only once did a stripclub bouncer not let me into the fucking Seventh Veil even though I clearly wasn’t that intoxicated and I mean what did he want me to do just leave the Mason jar on the street, I mean fuck you, Gary, I’m here every week, just go get Missy, she’ll vouch for me.

This is why we’re a nation in decline, because I saw a man drinking out of a hose in his backpack the other day like some sort of low-rent camel. Nothing beats the cold condensation you get when partaking in a delicious beverage from a Mason jar. After you break all your real glasses and you can’t drive back to IKEA because your car is being a piece of shit right now and even if you could you wouldn’t want to because it would just remind you of when you went there with her and bought all those glasses to begin with and how she kept talking about how she was going to get into canning. But she’s fucking gone now, man, and she can take the cat and she can take the couch and she can take the kid, but she can’t take the Mason jars. Or at least, I mean, she forgot to.

Mason jar up, America.

cinephilearchive: ‘Lost’ Rod Serling video interview, 1970. ...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:42:00 -0700

cinephilearchive:

‘Lost’ Rod Serling video interview, 1970.

Dangerous Minds:

These “lost” interviews with Serling are a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of television’s few visionaries. From the Youtube description:

“In 1970 University of Kansas professor James Gunn interviewed a series of science fiction authors for his Centron film series “Science Fiction in Literature”. This footage from an unreleased film in that series featuring an interview with Rod Serling, which wasn’t finished due to problems with obtaining rights to show footage from Serling’s work in television. This reconstruction is based on the original workprint footage that was saved on two separate analog sources since the audio track was separate. Re-syncing the footage was a long involved process as the audio track didn’t match the film and there was substantial sync drift. While not perfect, there’s a lot of interesting information on writing for television in the dialogue with Serling as well as a prophetic statement about his health at the beginning.”

You’re traveling through another dimension—a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Twilight Zone!

Super interesting watch. So much of what he says now about television sci-fi still rings true.