Tease

Today I flirted with a gay landlord so that he would rent to me.

Discuss.

Epic Comedy

The very first assembly of our new screenplay has weighed in at 172 pages. According to the one-page-of-script-per-minute-of-screen-time rule, this would put the movie at two hours and fifty-two minutes. No worries; we believe this rule is flawed. The actual adjusted screen time would be closer three hours and fifteen minutes. Whew.

Of course we do not intend to deliver a three-hour comedy. We'll cut it down to about 100 pages and all of this preliminary length is more about fleshing out characters, writing wildly, nonediting, just like in the Novel Writing Month of yore.

But it got me thinking about how sadistic it would be to film a three-hour comedy. And it got me wondering about long comedies in general and if any actually exist. I can't think of any comedies--actual comedies, not dramas with comedic elements--that roll in over the 2-hour mark. Even the much-maligned Ishtar (very very underrated, quite hilarious actually) is only 1 hr 47 minutes, even though everyone felt it was a two and a half hour stick in the mud.

What is the longest comedy you've seen? Lisa B?

Does something happen to our brains after 90 minutes of laughing?

Nap

I like to nap when I am in writing mode. This gives me two productive sessions in one day: a morning session and an evening session. On these days off I usually get up around 7am, then nap from 4pm to 5pm, then stay up till about 1am before crashing out. This divides the day neatly in half--for what it's worth--into daytime and nighttime.

I've always harbored a lot of guilt about napping, especially when it's calculated (as it is lately) and when it's serious, PJ-wearin'-under-the-covers nappin. My naps do not last twenty minutes. They would last for at least two hours if I abandoned the use of alarms and woke up when my body felt like it.

Does this mean my body is not getting enough sleep? Or does this mean it just digs the nappin? Regardless of whether I sleep four hours a night, or six hours, or eight hours, or ten...an hour never feels like enough in the afternoon.

An old girlfriend used to tell me her favorite thing in the world was sleeping. I remember this vividly, because I recall being quite a dick about it, mocking the notion that the "temporary nonexistence" of sleep could be anyone's favorite activity. I think I said she had a "dormancy fetish" or something like that.

But now I understand. Sleep is sweet, especially in the afternoon, especially when everyone is still toiling in the world.

Of course, all of this means I am becoming my father, but that is another story.

Do Not Be A Fool Who's Pre-ju-dice!

We were filming downtown today and big Buick drove past, blaring Run-DMC's "It's Like That," which was one of the singles off their very first record (1983?). I shocked everyone by reciting most of the lyrics. "It's Like That" was one of the songs preferred for lunchtime breakin' battles with Shawn Cromenant ("The Cosmonaut") and Don George. Cromenant was half-Asian and Don George was Native American and they were both thugs, multicultural breakdancin' thugs. They struck terror into our lily white hearts and I shall never forget the Cosmonaut doing some weird and sinister Pop-Locking, advancing on me slowly while the middle school watched and "It's Like That" blared from his stolen ghetto blaster.

I knew "It's Like That" before I even knew who Run-DMC was. Along with Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock," Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines," and "Jam on It" by Nucleus.

I also know "Sucker MCs" by heart and the entire Public Enemy album "It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back," which I listened to every day for about 2 years (and wore out 3 cassettes in the process).

Sometimes I wish I could delete those memory files and free up some space on the ole gray hard drive (for names, perhaps, or birthdays, or anything C-Span related). I would like to release the PE lyrics into the ether, but the Run-DMC lyrics should stay and stay forever.

Here's another point in life you should not miss
Do not be a fool who's prejudice
Because we're all written down on the same list
It's like that (what?) and that's the way it is
Huh!

Peace to JMJ!

Cooperative Screenwriting

My friend Michael and I are finishing up the first draft of our screenplay, The Secret Unbelievable.

My history with screenwriting (and cooperation itself) is tumultuous. I swore off screenwriting about four years ago. Screenwriting is horrible and pointless. It is not even writing. It is something other than writing. It is making up dialogue and wacky scenes. It is following a formula. And, in the end, your script means nothing unless it gets produced. It cannot stand on its own. It is a non-work. It is a "blueprint," as they like to say. And it requires little mastery of English or Engish grammar, which is probably why there are so many people working on scripts whenever I go to the Insomnia Cafe or the 101 Cafe. Screenwriting is unsatisfying. I have written ten scripts and they are all bad. I wish they were dead.

Cooperation is also kind of a problem, especially on the writing front. I learned by age 20 that writing partnerships never ever work and that one should forge ahead on his own (in writing and in life). Writing partnerships are like fucked-up marriages: In the end nobody gets what they want and everybody is frustrated and resentful and passive aggressive and withdrawn. People expect things from other people when they enter these partnerships. One cannot not expect things. But people by their very nature are flaky. People will let you down in the end. It is written. And so we become victims of our own expectation. Buddha would say that pain is caused by the frustration of desire (or your writing partner flaking out on you). And so on, and so on.

That is why I am startled to report that the current writing project is going like gangbusters. We are producing incredible work at incredible speed. We are geniuses. The script is hilarious and moving and smart and kind of sad too. It is everything. It is Total Script. This sounds completely farfetched, but I have no doubt that Michael and I will be shooting and directing this film in China in the next couple of years.

This is how good it is. And it is so effortless and easy, how strange!

And I hope everyone here understands how much I hate everything I work on so when I say something is actually good, well...

So there you go. Is it this particular writing partnership? Is it the particular story? What is fueling this unexpected productivity? I am still waiting for the meltdown to occur--but so far it hasn't...

Part of me thinks this script could only be written at this particular point in time under these particular circumstances. I am only able to succeed at this project because of the ten awful scripts that came before it. I am only able to enter into a partnership because of the long time off in between. This project could never have happened before now and the window might close soon.

But for now all of the ingredients are in place.

I realize I am tempting fate with all of this gloating. Must hit "publish post" before I have second thoughts...

Taiwan Keywords

High Intensity
No Tourist Infrastructure
Scooters!
Clean Wide-Boulevarded Taipei
Karaoke Miscue!
Kanji Game
Lost Or Just Wandering Around: You Decide
Seafood
Laid Back Locals
Tallest Building In the World
Menu Decoding
Accident-free Traffic Insanity
Genki Cab Drivers
Sidewalk-free Walking
Chinese Medicinal Foods
Jade Shopping
Tea Shopping
Shopping Shopping
Dinner Theater (Evening Storytime)
Train Disembarkation Plan
Train Disembarkation Debacle!
Where Is the Eighth Bag?
Nobody Listens To Me
Safe (and not-so-safe) Walking
Unreliable Travel Books
Bamboo Street: True or False?
Wrong Exit!
Free Umbrella!
Bathroom?
English Menu?
Internet?
Taiwan's 2nd Language: Japanese
See You At the Hotel
Snake Alley!
Afternoon Naps
Temple OD
Here There Are No Taxis! Go There!
Walking walking walking
Starbucks: Grande Hot Coffee, One, Stay Here

One Country, Two Systems: Images From Hong Kong

They say that Bangladesh has the highest population density on Earth, but it probably doesn't get the tourist influx during the holidays that Hong Kong does. Hong Kong isn't even a country or a city-state anymore; I don't know what it is. It was very very dense and very very fun. In certain busier parts of Kowloon police would barricade crosswalks with long ropes, then open the floodgates when the lights turned green and let the mass of humanity spill into the street. It looked like the start of a marathon, repeated every few minutes.

Pictures From Macau

Here are some pictures from the former Portuguese colony of Macau. Macau reverted back to the Chinese back in 1998 (I think), but it still has its own unit of currency (the pataca) and they put a stamp in my passport, so I'm not sure what this means. Macau is vastly underrated; it is most beautiful in the morning when the tourists are asleep and when the quiet, curious blend of Europe and Asia is allowed to surface. It is not just a gambling den.

I am starting work on a collection of linked stories called "Second Cities" and Macau will feature in one called "The Impostor."

Holiday Greetings From the ROK

Hello everyone. I just have a couple of seconds to post these pictures from the Korean portion of holiday travel. It was cool to revisit my old town of Pusan although I didn't manage to connect with any of my old friends. Korea is very cold in the winter. I nearly forgot.

Strange Human Behavior

People who press on an illuminated button (elevator, crosswalk, etc) over and over and over, incessantly, as if that will cause the anticipated event to occur sooner.

People who get visibly and audibly irritated when the person directly in front of them in a long line (at the bank, at the airport) leaves a three- or four-foot gap between them and person in front of them. The actual number in the queue hasn’t changed—there are still the same amount of clicks from the front of the line—but this gap fills the hindmost person with rage. It destroys their illusion of forward movement, and amplifies the non-relationship between physical proximity and one’s position in line. Grrr.

People who think that supermarket parking lots are large square versions of Bourbon Street, where one can loaf around wherever they want, with impunity, while large vehicles with crushing power wait patiently for them to clear out of the way. Parking lots are for pedestrians, these people think, until they get in their cars and swear at the loafers shoving their shopping carts right down the center of things. Somehow they fail to make the connection.

People who eat entire boxes of Dr. Write's homemade cookies in a twelve-hour span. They were lovely and now they are gone. Those caramel chocolate chunk bar things were the devil's business...I love the neat box and the cute packaging too, well done!

Sometimes I Enjoy My Job Very Much

Here are some pictures from the roof of the Bonaventure Hotel downtown (4th between Flower and Fig). We were thirty-six stories up, doing time lapse for a Japanese Mazda commerical. You could see all the way to the Vincent Thomas bridge in San Pedro.

Snow Day

Middlebrow called yesterday morning when I was in the throes of pre-work dread. Although I often hate my job I never really experience pre-work dread like I used to when teaching or working at the video store or working as a waiter or administrative assistant or whatever. There isn’t that whole before-work-winding-up and after-work-cooling-down time to get the resentment up—it’s just a bunch of work from the moment you wake up to the moment you pass out. You learn to accept your fate.

I came out to do two days of B-camera on a Super Bowl car commercial and the director, a typically boorish, buffoonish ass, was operating my camera. He didn’t seem that talented—rumor is that he has a brilliant editor—but he clearly enjoys the role and will bully any and everyone he views as being beneath him. It’s laughable because in a situation like that the high-profile director is actually the most expendable person on the shoot. The client hires the ad agency, the ad agency hires the production company, the production company hires the director, the director hires the cinematographer, and the cinematographer hires much of the crew. The agency has the concept and most of the shots all storyboarded out, so even if the director didn’t exist (particularly this one), the commercial would still make itself. You shoot the product from an infinite number of angles and then the brilliant editor cuts it together and they buy the rights to some Led Zeppelin cue and whammo, you have your commercial. It’s not hard. But this guy was going to be a dick and I had to be next to it and receive some of it, so there you go I was seven years old again and back on the playground.

So I went to work, already prepped for a little abuse, but when I arrived it was discovered that there had been a mixup and I wasn’t supposed to be on for the last day of the commercial. Hooray! Of course Production tried to imply that it was a camera department blunder and didn’t want to pay me, but it was their fault so I worked out a deal with them and they paid me cash and I walked out of the airplane hanger and into the wonderful 80-degree sunshine of my snow day.

There was a rebroadcast of an old This American Life last week about a guy who decides to live his life as though he only has six months to live. Eventually, he becomes convinced that he will cease to exist at that point in the future, so he goes about, making preparations and tying up loose ends. He begins to wonder what he wants to do with his remaining time and is surprised to discover that he doesn’t want to climb Mt. Everest or go scuba diving in Belize. He wants to do the ordinary stuff. He wants to hang with his parents and work on the deck or wash dishes or take out the trash.

This is how I felt yesterday. Every little ordinary thing that I did was charged with life. I went to a café and put on my iPod and drank coffee and studied a little Korean and wrote out some New Years goals. And I had the best time doing this. I went bowling with my friend Jimmy. I did a little reading. I ate some hot and sour soup. I got a bottle of wine and watched Minority Report. I fell asleep on the couch. Ordinarily, this would be an unspectacular day off, but on this—my snow day—it was very very sweet. Delicious almost.

The Humiliation of Home Movies

My friend and I have put together a couple of short films documenting our road trips over the last couple of years. The first was something I did when he drove me from NYC to Boston in March 2004. K just finished the newest, a film about our drive from NYC to New Orleans earlier this year.

As many times as I have seen myself on camera, it always astonishes me how strange I look and behave. I suppose this is natural; people are often faked out by the way they perceive themselves and the way they actually appear on film. I am totally bizarre...I look tired, with big black bags under my eyes, and I have no chin, just a line of flesh from my lower mouth to my clavicle. I mouth breathe a lot and when I talk my two upper incisors feature prominently, like a chipmunk. My lips move strangely and I grimace by default. I punctuate my sentences with "uhhhhhhs" and my voice sounds simultaneously deep and nasal somehow. I come off as someone with an IQ pushing 100.

This is not the way I see myself at all, but film doesn't lie.

It would be interesting to harness modern technology to find out what people think their voices sound like in their heads. It would be fairly easy to record them talking and let them manipulate the pitch and resonance, etc...until it sounds like voice they THINK they have. The same could go for appearances...let people computer modify their photos to show how they think they look. I would love to hear what Mid-B thinks his voice sounds like.

Furthermore, why does everyone get discouraged when they see what they actually look and behave like? why is it always a harrowing experience? Why aren't there some people who have low self-esteem and then they look at pictures of themselves and say, "Whoa, I'm totally attractive!"? Why doesn't it work in this direction?

I guess it does, actually, even though it's very abnormal. These people are called actors, and they have a whole other set of problems.

Post-Noveling Analysis

I wrote 5,000 words today and finished the novel. It was an arduous grind but it is all over. I finished two days late but I wrote long, ending up w/ 64,000 words (228 pages).

There were three goals:
1. To finish
2. To create a literary thriller where no one dies and where no weapons exist
3. To cram all of the story beats into a plotty 50,000 words, so that the expansion to 100,000 would still retain a rigorous plot in spite of digressions, meditation, and writerly wheelie-poppin

The MS steals from a bunch of different things, most notably "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and 'Red Harvest."

It centers around the famous 1940 Narrows Bridge collapse in Tacoma, Washington. The protagonist, an agoraphobic nineteen-year-old man beset by a lifetime of weather-related tragedies, discovers a mystery in it. He must engage with the scary outer world if he is to solve the deal and finally grow up.

It will be called "Strange Weather."

This writing experiment was really awful, but also kind of fun too. Since this was my first time to ever work on a novel (let alone one written at breakneck speed), it was interesting to see how sleep, diet, exercise, caffeine infusions, and scheduling affected productivity and quality. I found that I became superstitious, like a sportsman, to the point where I had a hard time writing at all if I had the wrong kind of coffee or the wrong music on or if I tried to write in the middle of the day.

I never did quite shake that feeling of pointless, though. Like what a waste of time this is. Playing make-believe. Inventing plots and schemes. Why? I mean, it's kind of fun but I have a hard time taking it seriously. It's hard to think that a book could actually make a difference in the world. Especially a novel.

I will come back to this MS later but I don't want to spend more than a couple of months on it. I think about all of the other things I could be doing with my life, like watching good movies or cooking more or going on dates or taking swimming lessons or hiking or resuming study of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish. Anything really seems more important right now.

Tomorrow we shall start the Coffee Reduction Act.

Rejection!

Well, I finally got word from Sundance, who sent me a very nice form rejection over the email. "There were many more worthy entries than we could program" and so forth. "I hope that you will give the festival the same consideration in the future." Slamdance is also not looking so good as I have some friends who have gotten in and were notified a week ago or so. I havent' heard a peep.

Next rejections will be from:

1. South by Southwest
2. San Francisco International Film Festival
3. Tribeca Film Festival

But hey, it's cool, the sun don't rise and set on the Park City Festivals. Fuck those guys. I don't need an excuse to visit the SLC.

Besides, i'm going to use this time to retool the first 20 minutes of the movie (which needs retooling). I must take into account the viewer of the screener casette. I worked for the New Orleans Film Festival one year and I remember what it was like to plow through entries. It isn't fair, but a movie had to grab me in a couple of minutes or I would veg out and eject it after ten. Sorry.

So the opening may change. I am trying to incorporate a chase scene out of stock footage, but hey, I just dunno. Perhaps a fistfight or some lovemaking like the opening scene of Betty Blue. Or monsters. Scary monsters.

100th Blog Posting Celebration (featuring Kicking Bear, Lil Kim, & Ludacris)

To celebrate the 100th blog posting at the Front Porch (you people thought it would never last), I'm starting a new feature: the guest blogger.

My father, Kicking Bear, has no interest in starting a blog, maintaining a blog, then losing interest and quitting said blog. This is a one-off. He wants the high-profile Front Porch webspace. He wants the built-in, highly esteemed Front Porch readership. He wants blogging without commitments. He wants it all.

So without further ado, here is my father, Kicking Bear, and his contribution to the Front Porch on this very special day.


Kicking Bear's Frustrations

Have you ever purchased a piece of clothing (shirts, coats, or anything else) that you really like, and when it wears out three, four, five or more years later, you would like to replace it with the exact same thing? Have you ever been able to do that? I haven't. Not once in 50+ years. You find something you really like and then that's a signal for it to disappear from the universe. Other favorite products that have disappeared or are extremely difficult to find:

1) Sanka Coffee
2) A&W Diet Creme Soda
3) Crispy M&Ms
4) Louis Rich Turkey Salami
5) Care-Free Gum
6) 0.9mm Pentil Pencils
7) Donkey Kong Cereal

There's been several others that have long been forgotten.

Your friend,

Kicking Bear

Big Papa's Thanksgiving

So I made the drive down to Calexico late Wednesday, shelled out $100 to stay at a Holiday Inn Express (urp!) and crossed through the very porous border into Mexicali at 7am Thanksgiving. I love the expression "porous border"; it fits together well, like "hapless congressman" and "unbelievable hubris." When I say porous, I am not kidding: There wasn't anyone there. There was one guy standing around, who may have worked for the border patrol and two of those jailhouse revolving doors thingamabobs made with interlacing metal posts (like in the NYC subway). After that, no immigracion, nothin' baby...I have no tourist card, nothing, nobody knows I'm here....Of course coming back to the US the border presence is larger, but about one-tenth the size of TJ. For anyone who wants to sneak into Mexico (for whatever reason), do it in Mexicali/Calexico.


I turned down Mid-B's offer of Idaho Gluttony and decided to bus down to San Felipe for four days of noveling. San Felipe was probably pretty cool about ten years ago, when it was just a sleepy fishing village w/ a small expat community. Now the shadow of spring break looms large, with high-priced accomodations and clubs with names like "Rockodile" and "Boom Boom."

Mid-B said this trip was Hemingwayesque, but there really is nothing that romantic about it. Ideally, I'd go further into Mexico (mexico is huge, yes!) to the DF or Yucatan or anywhere but here. In a strange inversion, my corner in LA is more authentically Mexican than San Felipe, and San Felipe is more "American" than LA.

No, Big Papa would be disappointed. In a similar vein, one of my favorite quotes is from John Huston, who was lecturing at a film school when queried by a student:

Student: "Wouldn't you say, Mr. Huston, that in the first act you establish your characters, in the second act you develop---"
Huston: "You know what? You need to get yourself down to Mexico and get some whores."

Now all you literal-minded Moms can just chill out b/c E is not getting any whores. Relax. Eric is noveling and watching white trash SoCal folks drink their Coronas at 10 in the morning and say things like, "Lead on, Poncho!"

Here is a quick summary of things:

1. The porous border
2. The Mr.T sticker trimmed perfectly to fit a soap dispenser in some bathroom.
3. Bootleg "charlie & the Chocolate Factory" on the bus, pan and scan dubbed in Spanish, the 3rd major release ruined in Spanish-speaking countries (Spiderman in Lima, X-Men in Guatemala).
4. Dollars preferred over pesos in Baja.
5. Federales.
6. ATVs up the wazoo.
7. Trinkets up the wazoo.
8. Margaritas up the wazoo.
9. Smell of petrol.
10. Dirtyish beach.
11. Cool lighthouse.
12. Dead laptop battery :(
13. ATVs up the wazoo.
14. English everywhere.
15. RV parks.
16. Tents on the beach.
17. Sullen locals.
18. Suave locals.
19. Political say-what-you-want-to-hear locals.
20. ATVs up the wazoo.
21. Find my gourmet coffee place (yippee!)
22. Find my unpopular with tourists taco stand
23. Find my internet cafe.
24. Find my stride.
25. Americans who insist on trying to speak Spanish to waiters and bartenders that are fluent in English: "Dos beef, dos shrimp. Uno milk."
26. Youngish waitress uncomprehendingly wearing a T-shirt with the number 69 on it.
27. ATVs up the wazoo.

In the end I had my Thanksgiving dinner at the taco stand, where I consumed seven carne asada tacos and four Dos Equis. Big Papa would be proud. I had strange dreams. This was definitely a good idea.

The Story of the Bo Tree

Once there was a prince who was confused about the world so he sat under a beautiful bo tree and fasted and had visions and many storms and things came after him but the snake god wrapped itself around the prince and protected him and when it was all over he knew that partying all the time was a nowhere road but so was staying in your apartment all the time and just working on projects. The key to enlightenment was being mediocre and balanced and nonextreme. He also said that life is pain and that pain is caused by the frustration of desire and they key to eliminating pain is to eliminate desire. He was a smart man.

This is a picture of the bo tree in Bodhgaya, India under which he found enlightenment (at least they say it's the same tree). Note the monks doing pushups:



This is a picture of a 27-year-old Sleepy E, back when he did stuff. E is the palefaced, very unenlightened lummox on the left:



This is a random picture of E at the Taj Mahal:



Even though there is a Vietnamese monastery directly across the street from my apartment building, it took me an entire year to discover this fact. Mainly it was because of big beautiful bo tree that concealed the templesque trappings and statues. I think a bo tree is technically a ficus, but I'm not sure what the exact make and model of it is. This is a picture of the monastery around the time Mid-B was here in May. You can see the bo tree encroaching in on the top left of frame:



This is the picture of the bo tree as about a week ago:



I came out one day and two guys were up on ladders chainsawing the thing up. I went over and asked what was going on and they claimed that the monestary called them out to do some "pruning." My guess is that the neighbors were complaining about the reach of the beautiful tree and the city was ordering them to contain it. So they brought in these guys to hack the s*** out of it. But this was delicate pruning, I hate to see the alternative.

"This is terrible!" I said. "Look at it, my God!"

"It'll grow back in about a year."

A few days later I was out taking pictures for the blog and a bald middle-aged monkstress came out to see what I was doing.

"They cut down the bo tree!" I said.

"No," said the woman.

I made furious cutting motions with my index and middle fingers. "The bo tree! They cut it."

"No," she said apologetically.

Maybe she thought I was trying sell her on the idea of some more pruning. I smiled and said goodbye and went back to my apartment to work on a novel with make-believe events in it.

Writing (and Notwriting) in Restaurants

The worst is the Insomnia Cafe on Beverly. Once you enter, two dozen wannabe screenwriter poseurs look up from their laptops to check you out, and to check you out checking them out. I hate this place. I hate the idea of writing in cafes. It is bullshit. Any real writer knows that you can't get anything done writing in a cafe--real work is done in your office or at home where you can hammer down without distraction for hours on end. A writer writes in solitude. A poseur notwrites in a cafe, the Insomnia cafe, where he can observe other stylish wannabees notwriting.

Of course this is all to say that I've been writing in cafes a lot lately. It's productive and not; it seems good for a particular kind of brainstorming or freewriting but not very good for the task of noveling. But I keep getting drawn back to the cafe even though it kills me to be one of the writing-for-show hordes. I never get nothing done (like sometimes at home) and I never get a lot done (like sometimes at home)--it's always a little trickle of good stuff. Plus it's just good to get out of the house sometimes.

But I fear I am becoming one of them. When I was in Cambridge I went into a bar at about midnight, plopped my laptop onto the bar, ordered a black and tan, put my headphones on, and went to work. The old Irish barkeep sniffed at my drink order and sniffed at me, who must of looked like the biggest westcoast poser in all of Massachusetts.

50 Necessary Ingredients For A Rap Video Shoot

1. Blunts
2. Beer
3. Hot pants
4. Hoochie mamas
5. Bling
6. Do-rags
7. Swisher Sweets
8. A humongous posse
9. Security
10. Gang signs
11. Sleazy producers
12. Cutaways of characters counting thousands of dollars of REAL money (not stage money)
13. Gold chains
14. Big flashy rings
15. Sean John apparel
16. Timberlands
17. Pierced navels
18. Pimps n Hoes
19. Self-perpetuating stereotypes
20. Hangers-on who bark at the poor Latino caterers
21. Self-important glam squad
22. Flat irons
23. Grindy stripperish dancing w/ mouths slightly ajar
24. Hustlerish approximations of eroticism
25. The big fat loud guy who thinks he's Cedric the Entertainer
26. Depressed camera crew
27. Absolute disorganization
28. Rappers who think they should be able to direct too
29. Gold teeth
30. Hummers
31. Livin large, livin large, livin large
32. Crotch grabbin
33. Ass spankin
34. Gesturing at a low-and-wide-angled lenses
35. BET camera crew in everyone's face
36. A Catfight: "Listen, bitch..."
37. Profound Lyrics
38. Someone named Trina
39. Fat beats
40. Stolen hooks
41. All the fellas in the house make some noise
42. 2 or 3 Guest appearances (eg Ashanti featuring Method Man & Fat Joe)
43. Straight-fingered arm gesturing
44. Lip licking
45. The baggiest jeans imaginable
46. Remy Martin or Courvesoir back in da traila
47. Lots of overtime
48. Double entendre
49. Picture cars (low riders are out...hummers and sportscars in)
50. Skeezers