Eat that, Melissa! According to the most advanced research of our time I’ll be the one in leather pants rocking out to fans I don’t really care about and doing mass quantities of coke backstage with Mini-Me. I wasn’t even considering a career in music until I saw this. But why not now? Otherwise I’m wasting my God random universe given talents.
You’re probably all like “Yah, well I’m better than you at SingStar and Guitar Hero”. Maybe so, but re-read that headline. First born has always been where it’s at. Maybe it’s because Mom loves me more.
I wonder if it’s too late to get on American’s Got Talent? Probably win it. I can’t even play chopsticks on a keyboard or find a beat let alone carry a tune, but statiscally it doesn’t matter. Like Laverne & Shirley I’m gonna make my dreams come true (doin’ it my way)!
Don’t let it get you down Melissa. You’re good at other stuff like sewing and laundry, and I’ll definitely need people on tour to take care of those things. Leather pants tear all the time. Especially with girls I’ll be bringing home.
I think one day, possibly tomorrow, mankind is going to look back and say, “Oh, I see. We were busy wondering who could set the Guinness World Record for the Most Items Kicked off People’s Heads in One Minute…and that’s why the ocean is still covered in oil.”
The answer of course is 43.
Maybe instead of seeing who could run the Fastest 100 Metre Hurdles Wearing Swim Fins we could see who can who can get the oil off a duck the fastest?
I bet Germany’s Christopher Irmscher can’t clean that in 14.82 seconds.
I have a litmus test for people who claim they “love” The West Wing. I ask them “Have you watched seasons 5, 6, or 7?” If the answer is “Yes”, it’s obvious they’re a liar. Anyone who continued to watch TWW after season 4 when Aaron Sorkin stopped writing the show never understood what made the show great. TWW was driven by storytelling and dialogue, and nobody writes better dialogue than Aaron Sorkin.
Rewind to October 24, 2003 for the start of season 5 – arguably the worst day of my life. Amazingly I had missed the news that Sorkin had not returned to TWW this year. So, I’m sitting there watching the first episode and I’m slowly getting this feeling something wasn’t right. That something was missing. It didn’t have the same flow. When the show ended I called my Mom and said “Hey did you see that? It wasn’t very good”. And that’s when I found out Sorkin had left the show back in May. I was swirling with emotions. Proud that I was able to detect Sorkin’s signature was missing, relieved he didn’t have writer’s block, and upset the show was over – for me.
I have not, to this day, watched seasons 5, 6, or 7 and I assure nobody appreciated the show more than I did. People have said to me “Don’t you want to know what happens to the characters?” I really don’t.
Yes, I loved the characters. I idolized them and wished that was how government was run. But I didn’t love them because they were great actors, and I’m not taking anything away from them as it’s impossible for me to imagine anyone else in their roles. I loved them because of what they said. The conversations they had, particularly the walk-and-talks were like listening to a symphony.
Still think it was the actors?
Additionally, the cast won 7 Emmy’s for acting while Sorkin was writing the shows and only 2 after he stopped. ZOMG!
I liken being able to write dialogue to hitting a golf ball. Hitting a golf ball isn’t a terribly hard thing to do. Nor is it difficult to jot down a couple names and a few lines of conversation. What is hard is hitting the golf ball 300 yards and landing it on a narrow fairway 8 out of 10 times. What is hard is writing dialogue so powerful it invokes a kid ten years in the future to still be talking about it.
The second reason I wrote this was to share a hidden gem I found on the internetz. If you’re familiar with TWW or Sorkin you should know he also wrote the movie The American President. There is a very powerful speech at the end of the movie (see below).
What I didn’t know was moments before this speech there was a scene in the script that never made it to air. You can read it by clicking here, but you need to have seen The American President to truly appreciate the layering in the writing. I have no idea why this wasn’t filmed and used in the movie. It would’ve been such a great lead in to the speech and a great moment between Lucy and her father.
My name is Jason Parmele, and I am the Supreme Ruler of the World.
I’m your typical American: blonde, blue eyes, arrogant, very good looking stupid. When I heard there was an oil spill last month I just assumed a ship ran aground. “Oh well it happens” I thought. If I saw “oil spill” online or on the news I just tuned out. I don’t care about fish because fish don’t care about me.
I didn’t start paying attention until I saw Kevin Costner on TV promoting Waterworld 2. I was shocked to find out it wasn’t a spill. It was spilling! Al Jazeera explains what happened:
The blogsphere is up in arms, and most are writing about the environmental aftermath, the impact on the fishing industry, or the affect on local businesses. I don’t care about any of that. I don’t even care enough about that sentence to look up if I was supposed to use affect or effect. What bothers me is we lack the human ingenuity to solve this. I’m depressed.
I thought I might live too see time travel or when we break the speed of light. Damn it man! If we can’t fix this pipe Scotty will never beam me up. I had been hoping to be cloned and now that looks like a no-go. At this point I’ll be lucky to see flying cars.
It’s been spilling for more than a month. Really? We can’t fix this? In the last 10 seconds I thought of at least 12 ways to do it (7 of them involve duct tape). The US government only seems to be bothered with finding someone to blame. How about maybe we fix it first you fucking baby.
Where’s Ken Mattingly when we need him? He was the guy who solved the power consumption problem on Apollo 13. He did that in like a day – surely he can fix this.
