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Posts tagged "LA"
  1. Wednesday, February 22nd 2012 at 1pm  

    EXCERPT FROM THE LOST EPISODE OF “THE BIG BANG THEORY” IN WHICH THE CHARACTERS DISCUSS GLOBAL WARMING

    INT. LEONARD AND SHELDON’S APARTMENT

    Penny enters, struggling with a cooler and surfboard.

    LEONARD
    Let me help you with that.

    SHELDON
    Oh, please. That’s obscene.

    Leonard grabs the cooler.

    LEONARD
    What’s “obscene?”

    SHELDON
    The male of the species using his physical strength to impress the female.  I’ve never seen such a raw and primal sex act flaunted so close to my face.

    PENNY
    Ain’t that the truth.

    Sheldon can’t comprehend the use of the word “ain’t” and is momentarily stunned.

    LEONARD
    (TO PENNY) Don’t you find this a little weird?

    Wolowitz enters the apartment wearing a bright-red wetsuit, a snorkle, mask and floaties.

    PENNY
    No. Not that weird.

    Koothrappali enters, struggling with beach chairs and towels, just like foreigners struggle with English.

    KOOTHRAPPALI
    Happy Presidents Day, everyone!

    LEONARD
    Even though it’s the middle of February?

    Wolowitz spits out his snorkel loudly, just like all ethnic people are all the time.

    WOLOWITZ
    So what?  This is Los Angeles.  We can go to the beach in February if we want.

    Sheldon finishes rebooting and rejoins the conversation.

    SHELDON
    Leonard, if you’re suggesting this unseasonably warm winter is the result of global warming, I’d like to hear you back it up with something other than one of your “gut feelings.”

    WOLOWITZ
    Between his lactose intolerance and his years of wedgie experience, Leonard’s probably an expert on feelings of the gut.

    LEONARD
    Well, this is one of the warmest seasons on record. And global temperatures have risen every year since the mid nineteen seventies.

    SHELDON
    What year were you born, Penny?

    Penny blushes noticeably because she’s a woman over the age of twenty-two. Men find her less attractive with time.

    PENNY
    Sometime after… that. Why?

    SHELDON
    Ancient Christian texts suggest the apocalypse will be ushered in by a devil in disguise, whose very presence would heat the world’s oceans. 

    LEONARD
    Penny is not the devil, Sheldon.

    WOLOWITZ
    Trust me, if the devil is a woman, I know better candidates than Penny. (THEN, FOR MIDDLE AMERICA, [THAT’S COAST-SPEAK FOR “DUMB PEOPLE”])  Like my mother.

    PENNY
    Would the devil really have a frequent spenders card from Forever Twenty-One?

    SHELDON
    Revelations thirteen seventeen: “No one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.”

    WOLOWITZ
    Penny, what’s your number again?

    PENNY
    You have to dial six, six, six, three one two…

    LEONARD
    You know she bought her phone in Thailand. The country code is sixty six. 

    PENNY
    They had really cute pink phones.

    LEONARD
    And that third six is just a coincidence.

    SHELDON
    Don’t worry, Penny.  I don’t really believe in all the religious hocus-pocus.  The Earth won’t be destroyed by some mystical devil. (THEN) It’ll be overridden with trash, like in WALL-E.

    PENNY
    And I suppose you’ll think I’m responsible for that.

    SHELDON
    Well, your sweatpants do say “trashy” on the buttocks.  For once, I suspect the talking coming from your ass is probably be correct.

    LEONARD
    So you don’t believe in global warming?

    SHELDON
    Of course I do.  But there’s no evidence that this unseasonably warm winter is directly related.  So surf’s up.

    LEONARD
    Whether it corresponds with natural weather patterns or not, the Earth is hotter than it should be. Don’t you think we should do something about it, instead of… (THEN, TO CAMERA) fiddling while Rome burns?

    WOLOWITZ
    How about this?  You and Sheldon stay home in protest, and Raj and I will give the devil, I mean, Penny, a ride.

    PENNY
    There are going to be a lot of jokes about me being “horny,” aren’t there?

    WOLOWITZ
    I was going to offer you use of my “hot poker,” but that’s good, too.

    SHELDON
    Why can’t I go to the beach? I want to see the dolphins.

    LEONARD
    You can’t see dolphins, Sheldon.

    SHELDON
    What?  Why not?  Because you want to make some pointless statement about your liberal agenda?

    LEONARD
    No, because the sharks swam up from warmer waters and killed them all.

    Sheldon dies on the inside, but outwardly looks gassy.

    PENNY
    Who wants to go be shark chum?

    Wolowitz and Koothrappali raise their hands like homosexual children.

    WOLOWITZ
    We do!

    PENNY
    Leonard?

    LEONARD
    Oh, fine. But only because none of you drives a hybrid. Thank god the newly-reformed automotive industry is too big to fail.

    Koothrappali licks Wolowitz’s ear with his voice.

    WOLOWITZ
    Raj says that was his nickname in high school.

    Leonard, Wolowtiz, Koothrappali and Penny exit. 

    SHELDON
    Don’t they know today is an Air Quality Action day? (THEN, PICKING UP A GAS MASK) Dolphins have survived five ice ages and a catastrophic comet impact. If they’re not getting out of this one alive, neither are we.

    Sheldon straps on the gas mask. As the audience contemplates their mortality, not for the first or last time this episode, we…

    CUT TO:

    MAIN TITLES

     
  2. Tuesday, February 7th 2012 at 5pm   from sunshinemakesmehigh

    Our culture is marketing, this is what we do, and what is marketing? Trying to get people to do what you want them to. It’s what drives our consumer culture, it’s what drives our politics, it’s what drives our art. Music, movies, books, fine arts, it’s part of every research grant proposal. I don’t want to participate. I don’t want to tell you how to sell a screenplay or tell you how to write a hit, or tell you how to fit into the existing system. I want to tell you that I have a hope that there’s another way to be in this world, and that I believe with courage, vulnerability and honesty that the stuff we put into the world can serve a better purpose.

    The way movies work now, and I’m talking about mainstream industry, the only goal is to get you to buy a product. The only goal. THE only goal. The ONLY goal. THE ONLY GOAL. And this intention creates the movies that we sit through, and the movies that we sit through create us. In government we’ve been reduced to the same game, through trickery, obfuscation, bullying, fear mongering. The goal of marketing a candidate is achieved. I don’t understand many things, I don’t know as much as I’d like about anything, but I’m a human being and I won’t be in competition for the right to be treated decently.

    I won’t play that game. Nor should anybody have to. And in turn I will try not to use whatever access I have to the public sphere to sell things, including myself. The world is very scary now. It always has been. But something grotesque and specific to our time is blanketing us. We need to see that it is not reality, it is a choice we are making or allowing other people to make for us.

    - Charlie Kaufman from his BAFTA Screenwriters Lecture

    (Source: sunshinemakesmehigh)

  3. Tuesday, January 24th 2012 at 5pm   from quote-book (originally from blogut)
    Beethoven, he learned, was a proud man who believed absolutely in his own abilities and never bothered to flatter the nobility. Believing that art itself, and the proper expression of emotions, was the most sublime thing in the world, he thought political power and wealth served only one purpose: to make art possible.

    Haruki Murakami in Kafka on the Shore

    (via blogut)

  4. Monday, January 9th 2012 at 1pm  
    I’ve also had a nice chance to see the inner workings of that Hollywood world… this big storytelling machine, that employs some of the most talented/beautiful/energetic people in the world, and has complicated financial/corporate constraints, but still manages, sometimes, to make something wonderful and yet, on the other hand, is pretty much totally misrepresenting life on earth, except when it isn’t.
    Interview with author George Saunders in The Days of Yore.
  5. Monday, November 21st 2011 at 2:41pm 
    From the Adventures of Pete and Pete reunion at Cinefamily: Above:Toby Huss (Artie - the Strongest Man in the World) Chris Viscardi (Co-Creator)Will McRobb (Co-Creator)Joe Stillman (Writer)Katherine Dieckmann (Director)Danny Tamberelli (Little Pete)Michael Maronna (Big Pete)  Below:Me with Danny Tamberelli and Syd Straw (Miss Fingerwood) This was an amazing event - amazingly cool people on stage and in the audience (including Adventure Time creator Pen Ward.) And it was a great reminder of what a perfect episode “Yellow Fever” is in this “funny, sad, strange, beautiful” series .

    From the Adventures of Pete and Pete reunion at Cinefamily:

    Above:
    Toby Huss (Artie - the Strongest Man in the World)
    Chris Viscardi (Co-Creator)
    Will McRobb (Co-Creator)
    Joe Stillman (Writer)
    Katherine Dieckmann (Director)
    Danny Tamberelli (Little Pete)
    Michael Maronna (Big Pete) 

    Below:
    Me with Danny Tamberelli and Syd Straw (Miss Fingerwood)

    This was an amazing event - amazingly cool people on stage and in the audience (including Adventure Time creator Pen Ward.) And it was a great reminder of what a perfect episode “Yellow Fever” is in this “funny, sad, strange, beautiful” series .

     
  6. Wednesday, November 9th 2011 at 5:06pm 
    Fact: There are more suicide stores than Starbucks in Los Angeles.  The Hanging Co. on Hollywood Blvd makes it easy for you to hang yourself!* *Not actually true, according to their two one-star reviews on Yelp, which are followed by one clearly fake positive review.

    Fact: There are more suicide stores than Starbucks in Los Angeles. 

    The Hanging Co. on Hollywood Blvd makes it easy for you to hang yourself!*

    *Not actually true, according to their two one-star reviews on Yelp, which are followed by one clearly fake positive review.

     
  7. Tuesday, November 1st 2011 at 4pm  

    This episode from the first run of Futurama - “The Cryonic Woman” - contains possibly the best joke ever about Los Angeles.

    Fry: So you’re saying these aren’t the decaying ruins of New York in the year 4000? 

    Professor Farnsworth: You wish. You’re in Los Angeles. 

    Fry: But there was this gang of ten-year-olds with guns. 

    Leela: Exactly. You’re in L.A. 

    Fry: But everyone is driving around in cars shooting at each other. 

    Bender: That’s L.A. for you. 

    Fry: But the air is green and there’s no sign of civilization whatsoever. 

    Bender: He just won’t stop with the social commentary. 

    Fry: And the people are all phonies. No one reads. Everything has cilantro on it…

  8. Tuesday, November 1st 2011 at 11am  

    The Adventures of Pete & Pete tribute & live panel (cast & co-creators in person) - 11/19/11

    Schedules permitting, Danny Tamberelli (“Little Pete”), show co-creators Will McRobb & Chris Viscardi, and other cast/crew will be here at the Cinefamily to celebrate this event!

    I am considering buying every remaining ticket. Pete and Pete is, without exaggeration, the greatest show ever made about childhood, which puts it high in the running for best TV show ever.