The Elevator at UCLA medical center

One can only imagine the things said that caused this sign to be created.

an underrated gem

Sometime in the mid 1980s, my partner Mike and I wrote a well-crafted comedy for Columbia about a juror who falls in love with a defendant. But Hollywood doesn't want well-crafted comedies from arrogant twenty-four year-olds. And Mike got into a relationship with the development executive, then broke up with her just before we turned in the script. It landed back in our laps.

Through a sequence of events I'm hoping Mike will fill us in on (which is the only reason I'm not bashing him more for the madness with the development executive, I'm just saying I don't think it helped us), the script captured the interest of Peter Bogdanovich, who gave it to Rob Lowe. It was hurriedly translated into Italian for Dino DeLaurentiis, and he agreed to finance the film.

It was a highpoint of my career. And it began a series of increasingly macabre meetings at Bogdanovich's imposing home in Bel Air, featuring his children's songs, his indistinguishable impressions of John Ford and James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock, and the butchering of our script. When Mike and I would complain to friends that he was crazy, the dream had gone bad, they would nod knowingly--the typical writer's lament--but this was not a crazy director, it was a crazed man. Still in a cloud of grief and debt and God knows what after the death of Dorothy Stratten, he badgered us to write in a part for her fifteen year old sister Louise, while she got cosmetic surgery to look more like Dorothy. We were happily fired.

The script was completely rewritten, and Bogdanovich set out to capture the glory of What's Up, Doc?, a movie I thought was terrible when it first came out. He put a pair of glasses on Rob Lowe and coached him to say his lines like Ryan O'Neal, who sounded suspiciously like John Ford. An aging Colleen Camp was cast as the object of Rob Lowe's desire. It was a grave error. And why you only see her legs in the ad.

Mike and I received sole credit, but immediately put pseudonyms on the project. The movie was a new kind of bad. As if they'd forgotten that the draft in Italian was for fundraising purposes, translated it back into English and shot it word for word.

It received scathing reviews, bombed at the box office and disappeared onto the home video shelf. And then the home video shelf disappeared. Which should be the end of the story.

Except someone is gaming the system. Either as a joke or an actual attempt to change perceptions, everywhere you look, Illegally Yours is referred to as a forgotten gem, an underrated classic, an unjustly neglected jewel. Watch the movie. See how terrible it is. Then go to Amazon, go to Wikipedia, read the glowing comments sprinkled all over the internet. And tell me there's no such thing as conspiracies.

Buy American

The Cadillac dealership near me is having a huge sale on Escalades. They're like driving your living room around (if you have a large comfortable living room with a lazy boy and every electronic device you need within reach).

Decree

Citigroup, the ailing US financial giant, shocked the market yesterday by announcing that it would cut 52,000 jobs by the second half of next year. Vikram Pandit, the bank's under-pressure chief executive, said yesterday that the total number of employees would shrink to about 300,000 by the end of June. Mr Pandit announced the cost-cutting measures at a "town hall" meeting for staff designed to set out a clear direction for the financial conglomerate, which has suffered big losses from exposures to debt securities and rising bad debts.

I let it pass with John McCain, but henceforth, town hall meetings shall only refer to those meetings which occur in town halls.

Cone Dracula

This week on True Blood: The gang learns you can kill a vampire by driving a wooden traffic cone through its heart.

No one cares

When I googled "I haven't been blogging," yes, in quotes, I got 162,000 hits. There is an exploding genre of people apologizing for not blogging and a sub-genre of elaborate explanations for why they haven't been blogging.

What I'm saying is I'm sorry and I'll try to do better.

Hypocritical Oath

As a past contributor, I received a mailing from the fine organization Doctors Without Borders, which included a free world map:


There was only problem: There are borders ALL OVER THIS MAP!


I just don't know who to trust anymore.

Where does salt come from?

I typed in "where does..." this morning, and got this interesting list. This confirms yet again that there is a lot of interest in salt out there.

Dixie Cup

On Sunday I took Isa to a birthday party of her friend. The dad and step-mother happen to live in the Hollywood Hills. The expansive, modernist house has all the trappings one would think a house like this would have: a gorgeous view (see the ocean on a clear day!), palm trees, celebrity neighbors, a pool, and so on.

A bottle of red wine was opened and I was handed a cup with a "taste this!" so I took a sip. I examined the cup; it was what I would call a Dixie bathroom paper cup. It brought back memories of my humble background with the Dixie cup factory (above photo) in Easton, PA, being a place I drove by often (I assume it's still 'being converted to luxury lofts' as I write this).

My mom used to buy them for the bathroom. My brothers and I were constantly assailing each other with the trite riddles on special 'Riddle Cups' (with no internet research, I'm assuming these went by the wayside years ago, had some sort of resurgence recently which hasn't really gone anywhere).

Along with the rest of the partygoers, it was clear after a few refills that my Dixie cup was to be my cup for the party.

And after cake, I felt it only wise to refuse coffee.

How not to play Pokemon

My 11-year old son recently asked me to sell his "rare" Pokemon cards on ebay, including one that he has four copies of. I tried to explain that nothing that is available at Target could really be considered rare, but to no avail. The cards weren't worthless, though: after a little research, I determined that they would fetch 50 cents to a dollar, on average. Since about half the cards had creases and bent corners, and considering how tedious it is to listing multiple items on ebay, Micaela and I agreed that the 18 cards netted $15.52. We then mailed them to the 7-year old son of an out-of-state friend.

A few days later, Keenan asked how the sale went. "Twenty dollars," I replied, already backpedaling. In fact, he had been hoping for a lot more. Skeptically, he walked over to the computer to review the bidding statistics. That's when I realized we had reached a new life stage. Too old for transparent parental ruses, but still too young to understand economies of scale.

I felt like a loser. Like Blaziken after getting hit with an Electron Crush. But I was able to recover the cards - they had been delivered, but not yet opened. "We sent you the rare cards by mistake!" I told our friend. "We meant to sent you common cards." Very technically, this was not a lie. Now they are scattered on the dining room table, awaiting further action.

Postscript: When I was about my son's age I had an ancient 1959 baseball card that had to be worth a fortune. It was Gene Conley, a Phillies pitcher whose lifetime record - I just looked it up - was 91-96. Despite being a very rational kid, for years I persisted in the belief that Phillies cards were more valuable than those of other teams, especially the Angels, Indians and Astros that seemed to dominate every pack. I still remember my shock when the guy at the baseball card shop offered me a quarter. I was so offended, I've kept Gene Conley to this day.

Beware the Graven Image :)

(x(x_(X_x(O_o)x_x)_X)x)

Not That We East-Coast Liberal Elite Are Rubbing It In or Anything

A little light reading this morning, woman across from me on the train? What have you got there? Oh... Bill Ayers!

No on Prop 8

In case you don't know, Prop 8 in California, is what voters will vote on tomorrow and is a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I told Isa about it weeks ago, but today we got to see democracy in action. She and I took the bus to the orthodontist and at our intersection, the 'no on Prop 8' folks were out in full force. People were beeping and cheering.
Then we saw this in the sky:



At our transfer stop, a phalanx of "Yes on Prop 8" were positioned on the corner of the intersection. Isa was booing loudly and I was looking at them thinking, "what kind of people are going to take the time to be against gay marriage?" Well, there was a large red F150 pickup there with an equally as large emotionless woman sitting there with her sign. A few men (all of them white) hung about the truck with their signs.

A few hours later, we returned to the intersection, but this time the Yes on Prop 8 were dominating. There were more of them, they were of all ages and colors. They were dancing. One of the sign holders (a cute young gal) kept crossing all ways of the intersection, strutting with her sign as if she were showing us boxing scores. People were beeping madly. I looked at the honkers, most were young, of all different ethnicities. Now and again a blonde in an Expedition would glare at the protesters, but the overall effect was that No on Prop 8 has this in the bag. (Hope).

An old black man came up to us and asked me, "Did you hear about Obama's grandmother?" I'd been out all day, so I had not. "She passed away knowing the good day that will come tomorrow," I said.
He agreed.
"We must think about the good day that will come tomorrow."

Obama Was Right About The Tires

In a campaign where every day there is a new slam, a new poll, and a new controversy, the little details can get lost. Well, I don't know if anyone recalls this, but about three months ago Barack Obama had mentioned in a speech that one way to save energy was to check to make sure your tires were properly inflated. Thus, giving you better gas mileage and cutting down on fossil fuel usage. Now, I have known about this on some level for years, but to be honest I never really put it all together into a cohesive thought like "Hey if I check my tires to make sure they're inflated to a proper number, I could save energy!" No sir, I just kind of didn't worry about tires unless they had holes in them or were falling off as I assume many people do. Of course, per the usual right wing scenario, Obama was lambasted and roundly mocked for his "inflate your tires" call to arms by the usual suspects: Hannity, Limbaugh, and of course McCain. They all ripped on him and screamed "drill here, drill now" which was the mantra before Palin sexed it up with "drill baby, drill!"

Well, I am here to proudly announce that Mr. Obama's call to arms works. And it works DAMN WELL. See, for the last three or four months I've been perplexed as to why my Prius went from getting 45 miles to the gallon to 36. I even asked the dealership to check it when I took it in for it's 5,000 mile check up. Nothing. Nothing they said. The guys who are supposedly experts on this car (or at least formally trained by Toyota to service them) had no explanation as to why this was happening. I felt like I had gotten the one hybrid lemon per 1 million that surely must come out of the factory once a year. I read some hypermiler websites to find out how these guys were maxing out their mileage just so I could claw and drag myself back up to 40 mpg, but it was no use. Coasting, turning off the AC, occasionally jumping out of the car on the freeway and pushing it for a quarter mile here and there... all proved utterly useless. Then I remembered Barack's words, and they echoed in my head like a character from a movie remembering some wise thing a now dead character had said somewhere in the second act (or maybe the first... John, help me here, you're good on structure) "Luke... check your tires... " And there it sat in my brain bouncing around for the next couple of months. I kept meaning to get to it, and then finally something happened to get my butt in gear... I drove over a sidewalk entering my hardware store parking lot and blew out my front tire. No other damage, just a flat. Nothing like one's own idiocy and bad depth perception to spur one to action. So, I got a new tire and did what Barack said. I supplemented his advice by going online and typing in "Prius tire psi" just to get a sense if there was something better than what the manufacturer recommends. And there was. Instead of 36 in front and 32 in back as Toyota recommends, I found that 42 in front and 40 in back were the optimal pressure numbers for maxing your gas mileage.

Super long story now made mercifully short... Barack was right. I have now driven 100 miles on the new tires and am getting BETTER mileage than I did during my original glory days of early Prius ownership this year. 48 fucking miles to the gallon bitch! So, to Hannity, Limbaugh, McCain, OPEC, Olivia Newton John, Cardinal Mahoney, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, George Blanda, Milton Katselas, Phineas J. Whoopee, my whole family, and the Supreme Commander Of The Allied Forces... you can all kiss my black Prius bumper. I'm voting for the guy who helped put money directly in my pocket with just one little "he wasn't even tryin' and still hit it out of the park" suggestion. Thanks Barry. I owe you.