Shortlisted But Ultimately Rejected NBA Development League Team Names

Orlando Bloom
New Jersey Pronouns
Annapolis Anomie
New Orleans Hurricanes
Salt Lake City Spazz
California Kings
New York Vitriol
The Green Bay Fighting Leprechauns
Washington Bullets

Board Games For Married Couples

Monotony
The Game of Wife
Clueless
Hungry Hungry Kiddos
Sorry, But Your Wife Doesn't Love You Anymore
Trivial Lawsuit
Bottle
Jenga, That Bitch Who Keeps Trying to Sleep With Your Husband
Risk

Dunk Report

The problem with getting in shape is all that damn weight. Why can't I be skinny and out of shape? That would be a lot easier. Why is it always that I'm fat and out of shape? So now I'm carrying around 30 more pounds than I should (almost 50 more than I was in high school) and I'm expecting to be able to dunk? Imagine trying to jump with two 25 lb weights hanging off your gut. Not fun, I tell you. And hard to get vertical!

People always say that the beginnings of weight loss usually go pretty quickly and then it tapers off and becomes harder and harder to lose weight past a certain point. My theory, though, is that you're getting lighter and lighter as you are simultaneously getting in better and better shape...so it gets easier and easier to run/swim/dunk/play tennis. The tendency for weight loss to become less and less efficient is canceled out exactly by the increased efficiency of your lightening bod. I see no reason why you couldn't just keep losing weight at the same rate until you evaporated or became a Singularity or something...

In other words, No progress on the court. Playing the worst basketball of my life. Running four days a week and getting better but I'm still a lardass, it's still torturous.

More later.

Rejected Titles of the Forthcoming Horror Movie Midnight Meat Train

Midnight Meat Bus
Midnight Meat Barge
Midnight Meat Tram
Midnight Meat Copter
Midnight Meat Sedan
Midnight Meatro
Midnight Meat the Parents
Please Do Not Bludgeon Me
Ouch!

Myers-Briggs Personality Category or 80s Music Entity?

1. EPMD
2. TSOL
3. UTFO
4. INTJ
5. SNFU
6. KRS1
7. ENFP
8. Ultramagnetic MCs

Personality Category: 4,7
Music Entity: 1,2,3,5,6,8

Taking the Fun Out of Reading

Recently I've been contemplating all of the unread books on my shelf. I expect everybody does this at one time or another. Then they go out and buy new books... with silky covers, with all that promise of newness. Or they visit the library... and all of that interminable freeness...

I expect there is a reason why these books haven't been read (maybe they just aren't that interesting), but it offends my sense of efficiency... and discipline... to see all of these volumes there while I'm out buying magazines and whatnot. I suppose one could argue that the moment all of one's books are read then it ceases to be a working LIBRARY anymore and becomes merely a repository of information and plots, books as furniture...

But that would be rationalizing.

My list is shorter than most, I guess, which makes it short enough to be doable, but long enough to be a major task. What's interesting is that this list of titles really brings back different periods of my life, when the book was purchased or borrowed with the full intent of reading immediately. Never did I (nor the book) figure it would sit on the shelf forever, unglimpsed.

The oldest is probably seven years old and the newest, a couple of months... So without further ado, here's the list of books I have to get through before I'll allow myself to visit the library or buy new books at all.

In no particular order.

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
2. Crazed - Ha Jin
3. The Comedians - Graham Greene
4. Waterfront - Phillip Lopate
5. Los Gusanos - John Sayles
6. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006
7. Personal History - Katherine Graham
8. That Old Ace In the Hole - Annie Proulx
9. Another Country - James Baldwin
10. Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
11. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
12. Midaq Alley - Naguib Mahfouz
13. Malloy - Samuel Becket
14. Paris Review #171 Fall 2004
15. Greasy Lake - T. Coraghessan Boyle
16. The Nimrod Flipout - Etgar Keret
17. Underworld - Dom DeLouise
18. In Fact (Best of Creative Nonfiction)
19. Men and Cartoons - Jonathan Lethem
20. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (longer than all the previous 19 books combined)

Awww, Happier Times

Click [HERE]

Sleepy E In Print (Pixels, Anyway)

Please ignore the questionable visual look of the SITE in question.

Thanks!

Hump the Hostess

The all-emcompassing Movie Hate is not so new anymore. It is difficult to pinpoint when it all started, but think it began around the holidays, when the gf and I went to Casino Royale in Tacoma and were underwhelmed. I do remember enjoying The Prestige in Taipei, and I also remember loving The Squid and the Whale on DVD back in November, but I can't locate a traumatic episode that may have caused my Movie Hate. Some switch somewhere got engaged, that's all.

Last week I saw that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was playing at the Arclight (the best theaters in LA) as a part of AFIFest or something like that. Aha, I thought, this will be a great test and will determine for once and for all: Is it the movies that are the problem or is it me? I actually fantasized about blogging afterwords, how I would declare that cinema had been redeemed and how I'd thrown away all of my DVDs and replaced them with a singular copy of WAOVW that played in a loop.

My expectations rose. A lot was a stake.

I hadn't seen Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf since college and that worried me. One by one my heroes were being cut down to size. What's next? The Coen Brother's pre-Fargo catalogue, no doubt.... But WAOVW was especially important and pivotal filter back in the day: Could one be trusted if they didn't like this movie? Could you ever really be friends with someone if they didn't "get it"? Could you ever really be intimate with someone who didn't think Duck Soup was funny?

Well now.

In the end?...

In the end Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was....pretty good.

But it wasn't amazing.

And the last half of the movie dragged and dragged and dragged. Sure, it dragged like a long night of alcohol-fueled arguing would drag, but why would I subject myself to that punishment???

But I will say that the first 30 minutes were stellar. And I laughed out loud, over and over and over, with a packed audience. And then I just got bored with George and Martha and their schtick...and then it got very very melodramatic, much more so than I remembered...

But it was still pretty good. And that is all we can ask for.

And it was interesting to see it big. With an audience. And it clued me in to how I have changed as a viewer.

My new favorite moment? When Richard Burton gets the shotgun out of the closet and walks into the living room and levels it at Elizabeth Taylor's head and pulls the trigger and eveyone screams and this umbrella comes out of the end of the gun.... Taylor gets up and lunges toward Burton, and she's playing this mixture of utter relief and fear and hilarity and drunkenness and the total BURN of the joke makes her kind of horny too and she starts making out with Richard Burton right there, in front of the guests, because she's actually kind of happy to be alive and with him...

That was great.

Incident at West Hollywood Park's Basketball Courts

This just happened so I thought I'd write it down before it vanished forever.

There will be a test.

Sleepy E goes down to the park at around 11:30 to shoot around by himself. He knows the main game doesn't start until 1:30, but he isn't really interested in running with that crowd--he just wants to shoot around for a half an hour.

There are two full courts. There's the A court and the B court (unofficially labelled so..the A court gets the pick-up games, the B court gets people without skillz).

Each court has a preferred side, closest to the park itself. Which I'm going to call the A-side. So if there are four half-court games going on then the A-side of the A-court gets the best game and the B-side of the B-court gets the worst. The B-side abuts a questionable softball diamond encircled by a chain-link fence.

All four courts are vacant, so E sets up shop on the B-side of the A-court, in order to be the farthest away from other humans. About 15 minutes in E notices a figure walking toward the A-side of the A-court. E turns his back and continues shooting at the B-side.

Suddenly, a whistle. Then another. And another.

E: (to himself): Surely that person isn't trying to get my attention by whistling at my back?

Another whistle.

E decides to keep shooting and not turn. Finally...

Man: Hey!
E: (turning) Yes?

A Man sets a small backpack on a bench and comes out onto the A-side of the A-court. He is empty-handed. He has no basketball. He yells the length of the court.

Man: Shoot down here!
E: (pause) But I'm shooting on this side.

The Man stares in disbelief.
E waits, then decides to be neighborly (even though he wants to shoot by himself).

E: You can come shoot over here with me if you want.

The Man frowns. He shakes his head, disgusted, picks up his pack with an angry swoop, and leaves.

E turns and keeps shooting.

That's it!

Now, the test:

TEST
1. What kind of person whistles at a stranger's back to get his attention?
2. What kind of person doesn't bring a basketball to a basketball court?
3. What kind of person shouts orders at total strangers?
4. What did the Man expect from this interaction?
5. What if the Man had a kid who was playing on the playground and The Man thought could keep a better eye on him from that side of the court, and so wanted to play but on that side and so that was what was going on???
6. If number five is true, why did the Man not say something like this?
7. And why did he exit the park altogether with no children by his side?
8. Why are people such weird assholes?

Hammer Time

Went to the UCLA Hammer Museum tonight to hear Miranda July read from her first book of stories "No One Belongs Here More Than You." July is the writer/director/actor of the similarly titled art film "Me and You and Everyone We Know" which won some awards at Sundance but which I will probably never see.

Dave Eggers says "Fans of Lorrie Moore will want to take Miranda July's 'No One Belongs Here More Than You' and rub it all over themselves." Or something like that. So there.

This is a picture of Ms. July:



I like the idea of Ms. July very much. She grew up in Berkeley, moved to Portland and became a performance artist, then did a movie, then a book of stories, then some kind of artistic interactive website called "Learning To Love You More." I think she put out a record too. It seems like she experiments (and succeeds with) different media because she likes to try new things. What a great reason to do anything.

A Renaissance Girl.

What I do not like is the idea of the Reading Itself. I think I pretty much hate readings. I hate the Appreciative Noises. I hate the Knowing Nods, the audience wanting to participate, VERY MUCH LIKE A JAZZ SHOW, THE JAZZ NODDING, WTF IS THAT??? And by jazz I don't mean the Utah Jazz, of course. I hate the Q & As: "Where do your ideas come from?" I hate the Performance of it all. I hate the Pandering to the Audience by trotting out the Short Funny Stuff. I Hate The Person Who Tries To Show Off By Assuming Familiarity With the Author's Work.

Most of all, I hate sharing the story experience with 150 other people. I want to experience it by myself with no one else in the room clucking their tongues and nodding appreciatively.

July actually commented about this: "Well," she said, "I'll let you go now. I know how it is to be trapped in a reading." Then she laughed. "Readings. Maybe they're actually good for us, or something, otherwise why would we keep going to them?"

I Will Dunk Again

Well, I turned 36 last week and I'm easily in the worst shape of my life. I've been far heavier before (nearly 240 lbs then v. 225 now) but never have a been this physically unfit. I gained about 20 lbs on the Meat Train and didn't exercise once over the course of those eight weeks.

Then I went and played b-ball on Sunday. Whoa. I played decently, considering I had to sit out most of the time to regulate my breathing, but one glaring thing stood out (besides sucking air the whole time): I Should Be Dominating These People.

I Should Score At Will On These Guys.

I'm being beaten down the court by intermural guys, guys who got cut from JV, you know, HOBBYISTS... It's humiliating, really. This got me thinking about another humiliating thing in my life: The fact that I'm 6'5 and I can't dunk anymore. So after watching Baron Davis pack that facial over square-jawed Karilenko last week I got inspired to do something about it. I haven't been able to jam with any regularity since I went to go live abroad in 96. I might have put down some baby dunks in Korea but I didn't really play in Japan and I didn't really get into a real game in LA until 2001.

So I haven't been able to dunk regularly in over ten years.

I'm giving myself three months to put one down with authority, and four months to do it with regularity, and six months to do it in a game off the dribble.

I'm also going to drop 30 lbs. (but not in 3 months).

Am I the Shawn Kemp Comeback of the Chevy Chase Rec Center in Atwater Village? Am I that absurd? Perhaps. Perhaps an almost-40, slow-footed white guy has no business looking cool on the court and I should just work on my set shots and chuck 3s like everyone else.

So these are the goals:
1. Score at Will
2. Lose 30 lbs
3. Dunk

Also, I assure you: I am not using the definite goal of dunking as way of conquering the abstract goal of getting in shape.

I just want to dunk.

Time to strap on the Strength Shoes.

Midnight Beat Down - or - The Glorious Return to Poverty

Back in the summer of 94 my brother spent a few weeks travelling around Mexico, then returned home to Tacoma via a four-day bus journey from Mexico City. I remember him describing the first three days as being relatively painless but obviously quite wearing overall...but then the next six hours contained about the same amount of physical and mental anguish as the first three days, and then, in some strange carbon-dating scheme of half-lifes, so did the next three hours, the following ninety minutes, etc, until the final ten minutes of the journey were just as hellish as all of the torture that came before it.

Rather like being able to hold your bladder for 2 full hours, but having problems getting the key into the front door and struggling across that final threshold, the living room, to make it to the bathroom.

This is how it feels on the Meat Train, where we are to finish this week, but they keep adding days. We always seem to be four days away from finishing. It's like Lewis Carroll's race that cannot be finished, because the distance to the finish line can always be divided in half, ad infinitum....

And this is probably my second blog entry since we began two months ago, so it's definitely getting in the way of that...

No, I do not think I am cut out for feature films.

This makes me feel like a pussy amongst my peers (not really, but I just wanted to use the word pussy once as my 20th high school reunion approaches (okay, it's 2 more years, but STILL))...Okay, yes, I do feel like a little bit of a pussy, truthfully...

Working on the Meat Train has provided a lot of existential clarity, however. This is the Good Thing.

Working 70-hour weeks (80 with the commute, etc) is not my idea of a good time. Yes, the money is decent, but only because so many hours are worked. Is it worth it? Well, if you want to buy a house in Los Angeles you're going to be hard-pressed to find anything non-awful for less than $800,000, so there, so this is what a lot of people do...they sacrifice their lives to working nine months in a row (70 hours a week) on a TV series, year after year, then they buy a house and then they are happy.

What is the role of a human/father/partner? To be present in the lives of others? To take responsibility for one's own happiness? To be a Money Making Machine?

I am not sure.

What if I work 80-hour weeks for the next fifteen years, attempt to retire early, then get hit by a bus my first day on the golf course? What then? Is that a good life?

There was a story on NPR a few months back that talked about the difference between giving raises to employees and giving bonuses and which worked better on their productivity. The bonus system always dangled a prize in front of the employee for completing a short/mid/long-range task and proved to be 50% more effective than the raise system, which made people happy temporarily but did nothing for their productivity. People got used to the new income level almost immediately and saw it as what they deserved. And soon that level became what they Expected, and what they were Dissatisfied with, even though they were doing the exact same thing as they always did.

This is all to say that it is human nature to turn wants into needs. It is easy to get used to a certain lifestyle or standard of living. It is difficult to consider a Return to Poverty when one has crawled their way out of those circumstances...

It is difficult to be the adult student at the back of the class of 23-year old grad students.

And how can one return to entry-level status when he or she is approaching 40? Hmmm. Then again, Pride is a Motherfucker. As they say...

And then there is the concept of Retirement, which was invented during the Depression, I think, to make rooom for a younger work force. Do we slave for 40 years and then stop abruptly and then idle around for 20? Or do we try to intersperse those 20 years of retirement throughout our entire lives, knowing that we'll be working (at something we love, hopefully) past the age of 65?

I don't know about other people, but I'd prefer to live the latter way. Unfortunately, the two-weeks-off-a-year American Work Model doesn't really facilitate this. The European Summer Month Off system might sabotage their economy but what does it do for their happiness? And what about some of these European states with 35 hour work weeks? What about them?

All I know is that the Coen Brothers work ten-hour days and Michael Winterbottom works eight-hour days and their movies come out just fine, under budget every single time. When they show up to work, they work. And the crew makes no overtime, but then they can have dinner with their loved ones.

I know it's not for everybody.

We Are Not Teenagers Anymore

Discussed:

1. 401(k)s
2. Pedagogy
3. House Payments
4. Bran Intake
5. Gastrointestinal Distress

Pick's Disease

1) Pick's disease is the old name for the disorder frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and in particular the behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Certainly a number of patient support groups continue to use the name "Pick's disease" in their titles. This confusion has led many neurologists to suggest other names for FTLD. The most prominent is perhaps Kertesz' suggestion of the term "Pick Complex" to encompass not only the clinical subtypes of FTLD, but also the overlapping syndromes of corticobasal degeneration and progressive supranuclear palsy.

2) Neurologists use the term "Pick's disease" to mean specifically one of the pathological subtypes of FTLD. The pathological hallmark of Pick's disease are Pick bodies. These are spherical cytoplasmic inclusions found within neurons in affected portions of the brain.[1] They cause neurons to swell, taking on a "ballooned" appearance.

Spring Cleaning In Time For Picky's Visit

Not even the gf gets this kind of royal treatment (insert rage-deflecting emoticon here).

I will not reek of batch, I will not...

The Horror, the Horror -- or -- Torture As Entertainment

Working on a slasher film gets existential. It is difficult not to ask big questions of the universe and your role inside of it when a large crew intelligent adults is devoting its time to getting blood to splatter in a certain way or getting a camera to roll just so like a decapitated head.

There is a new production model, championed by Michael Bay, and that is the $10 - $20 million studio horror film remake, usually helmed by music video directors. These include the two new Texas Chainsaw remakes, the two Hills Have Eyes remakes, the Omen remake, the Hitcher remake, the Amityville Horror remake, et al, ad nauseum. There are also remakes to Friday the 13th, the Changeling, Near Dark, and The Birds planned. And of course all of these remakes will spawn sequels.

It seems there is a new thirst for horror movies that we haven't seen since the 80s. It could be that I'm just noticing more horror movies because I work in the industry now and that I remember the horror movies from the 80s because I was the intended audience that consumed them then. It could be that there have always been gobs of horror movies, all through the 90s, but I really don't remember them if they did exist, except for Scream, which seemed to launch this new thirst for teen horror.

It could be that I'm getting old and crotchety, but it seems that the new horror model is particularly sadistic and I have to object to it. I haven't seen Hostel or any of the Saw films or this new movie Captivity coming out, but the new horror films are particularly mean and usually focus on torture as a device to scare audiences. Torture as entertainment. There was an article in the New Yorker a few months ago, I think, focusing on the show "24" and it's stylish torture sequences.

The stuff we grew up with no doubt horrified our parents (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, Happy Birthday to Me, April Fool's Day, Chopping Mall, etc) but seems particularly cartoony and harmless now, especially when juxtaposed with the new Michael Bay model. Even the darkest of dark 80s cinema, the Faces of Death franchise (people getting mauled by bears, fake snuff footage, etc) seems downright quaint when these days any five year old can go on the Internet and watch Saddam Hussein getting brutally hanged.

Will today's teenagers look back on the Hills Have Eyes remakes fondly, like we look back on Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street? Or on April Fool's Day? Will they think about the time they snuck into Saw and got scared shitless?

And what's going to happen 10 years down the road? How will Hollywood movies ratchet up terror to the next level when the next generation is laughing its way through Hostel like a comedy?

Get On That Meat Train and Ride, Choo Choo!

So this is what I'm doing with my life these days. Unexpectedly, I am starting to root for this movie. It will contain buckets of blood, not horrible acting, gorgeously moody cinematography, and quirky J-Horror sensibilities (like a camera attached to an arm as it pummels someone to death). Expectations are so low it could surprise everyone....

Grapefruit Juice

When my brother and I were young men and growing into our 2-meter frames and eating our parents out of house and home, Pops started buying frozen grapefruit juice and keeping it an unmarked plastic pitcher near the back of the fridge. We would pour out glasses of the stuff, thinking it orange juice, or just mouth the pitcher itself and wind up with a blast of sour unexpectedness down the front of our shirts.

Pops discovered that we'd leave the stuff alone..so he cultivated a taste for grapefruit juice so that he could carve out a little corner of the edible world that we wouldn't eat through.

Today the gf (girlfriend, not grapefruit) and I were in Trader Joes. Now I drink grapefruit juice by choice, dammit. I must be a real man. Sour and bitter foods are for adults only.

Then there was the time Pops wrapped some leftover pizza in brown butcher paper and scribbled "Rotten Meat" on the front of it.

Genius, really, and totally effective.

I Hate Movies

Something has happened to me in the last six months. I have begun to hate movies. I thought this would go away but it has not gone away at all. It has worsened. I watched four movies in the new year (all in a theatre, none at home). Tonight I watched Zodiac (for free, at the DGA 3 blox from my house) and thought it underwhelming. Children of Men was a plotless chase scene. Babel was relentlessly humorless. Pan's Labyrinth was okay but all I could think about was reading the Economist. All were way too long. If you can't tell your story in 80 minutes, then what's the point?

In college I could watch Tarkovski and early Wim Wenders and take it like a man, even enjoy it.

The gf says she doesn't know if she can date someone who doesn't appreciate movies. I do appreciate them, I say. I just don't like them. Even the good ones.

And forget about the fact that I'm working on a slasher movie called "Midnight Meat Train" which very well might be the worst of them all....

I do like Team America, however.