Friday, November 30, 2007

"I did everything by the seat of my pants."

Evel Knievel died today at the age of 69. Knievel had been in the news recently after ending a feud with rapper Kanye West. Though I wasn't alive during Knievel's heyday as a motorcycle daredevil, the guy always fascinated me. I remember seeing an A&E Biography special on Knievel a number of years ago. While it detailed many of the triumphs and setbacks of his career, the part that always stuck with me was when Knievel took a baseball bat to an author who had written an unflattering book about him. Most people would have sued, Knievel put the guy in the hospital first and then threatened to sue. In the end, I'm not sure if you could accurately describe the man as having been brave or crazy, because it must have taken balls of steel and shit for brains to think jumping over a canyon in a rocket was a good idea.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Give The People What They Want


Royal Flush
A quick note for my fellow poker enthusiasts. I was playing some Texas Hold 'Em this past weekend with some friends when I got a royal flush. Best of all, I was able to pull some money out of my fellow players with it. God only knows if I'll ever get another royal flush, but at least I can say that I got one.

Trailer Park Boys
Good news for Trailer Park Boys fans. It seems as though the gang from Sunnyvale finished filming a special recently and they also have plans to make another movie. This news comes from Mr. Lahey himself, John Dunsworth.

Sesame Street
Recently, the folks behind Sesame Street have been releasing a DVD series called "Sesame Street: Old School." The series features shows and clips from the early years of the program. The funny part is that each DVD comes with a warning sticker suggesting to consumers that the "Old School" DVDs are intended for mature audiences only. Reasons for this apparently include: scenes of the Cookie Monster smoking a pipe and eating cookies, as well as Oscar the Grouch being too grouchy. The New York Times has a decent article about the depravity that was Sesame Street in the 1970s and you can read it here.

Celine Dion
I'd tell you what I think about Celine Dion, but apparently you're not allowed to have any opinion about her in Nova Scotia. From the moment it was announced that Dion was scheduled to play a concert in the Halifax Commons next summer, the general sentiment was that the whole idea was a clusterfuck waiting to happen. So it was no surprise that within a few days Dion's people cancelled the show, citing the venue as being inadequte for their stage needs. With this, many Nova Scotians breathed a hearty sigh of relief. However, the other shoe dropped recently when Dion's husband/manager said in a press conference that the show was cancelled due to the negative comments from the press. Mr. Dion (who creeps the shit out of me) went on to name names. The brunt of the blame went to a columnist for the Halifax Daily News, one Mr. David Rodenhiser, and his column Like her or not, it's good news, which originally ran in the paper on November 8th. Had Mr. Dion bothered to read the piece, he would have seen that while Mr. Rodenhiser does not care for Celine's music, he saw the concert as being of benefit to the city of Halifax. It's unfortunate for Mr. Rodenhiser that he received so much criticism in the beginning for supporting the concert and now he's being scapegoated for its cancellation. Unfortunately this is becoming a trend for the city of Halifax, the populations vocally balks at the announcement of any major event and then they decry its cancellation.

Movies
As some of you might know, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) is currently on strike. This means there will be no new episodes of the Daily Show or the Colbert Report in the near future. The effects of the WGA strike also seem to be making their way into the realm of movies. This means that, should the strike continue long enough, Hollywood will run out of new movie ideas. (Yes, I realize that some people think they ran out of ideas years ago, but let's move on, shall we...)

So I am hereby throwing my hat into the ring, Hollywood. The following are some script ideas that you can buy from me should you run out of scripts. I can write the screenplay to any one of these ideas in a weekend for $100 and some Criterion Collection DVDs. Potential scripts include:

- My Boss is a Werewolf
- The Mustache that Dripped Blood
- The Killer Cubicle, the workplace that gives deadlines a whole new meaning
- Samurai Crossing Guard
- When the Chips are Down, a heart-warming tale of gambling addiction
- The Mop that Killed
- Space Cheese
- William Shatner vs Your Car (90 minutes of Shatner smashing your car with a baseball bat)
- Death Net (it turns out that the internet gives you AIDS)
- Gumby Meets Al Gore
- Night of the Lobster (kinda like Night of the Living Dead but with lobsters)
- Mad Cow Disease: The Musical
- Zombie Lawyer, a comedy
- Clamatto, a documentary (seriously, what the hell were those guys thinking?)
- The Life and Times of John Wilkes Booth, an animated feature
- Monkey vs Shark

All ideas are copyrights of Quammy Inc. The ball's in your court Hollywood.