Don't Follow the Money
By FRANK RICH
THE morning the Deep Throat story broke, the voice on my answering machine was as raspy as Hal Holbrook's. "I just want you to remember that I wrote 'Follow the money,' " said my caller. "I want to know if anybody will give me credit. Watch for the accuracy of the media!"
The voice belonged to my friend William Goldman, who wrote the movie "All the President's Men." His words proved more than a little prescient. As if on cue, journalists everywhere - from The New York Times to The Economist to The Washington Post itself - would soon start attributing this classic line of dialogue to the newly unmasked Deep Throat, W. Mark Felt. But the line was not in Woodward and Bernstein's book or in The Post's Watergate reportage or in Bob Woodward's contemporaneous notes. It was the invention of the author of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Marathon Man" and "The Princess Bride."
This confusion of Hollywood's version of history with the genuine article would quickly prove symptomatic of the overall unreality of the Deep Throat coverage. Was Mr. Felt a hero or a villain? Should he "follow the money" into a book deal, and if so, how would a 91-year-old showing signs of dementia either write a book or schmooze about it with Larry King? How did Vanity Fair scoop The Post? How does Robert Redford feel about it all? Such were the questions that killed time for a nation awaiting the much-heralded feature mediathon, the Michael Jackson verdict.
Richard Nixon and Watergate itself, meanwhile, were often reduced to footnotes. Three years ago, on Watergate's 30th anniversary, an ABC News poll found that two-thirds of Americans couldn't explain what the scandal was, and no one was racing to enlighten them this time around. Vanity Fair may have taken the trouble to remind us that Watergate was a web of crime yielding the convictions and guilty pleas of more than 30 White House and Nixon campaign officials, but few others did. Watergate has gone back to being the "third-rate burglary" of Nixon administration spin. It is once again being covered up.
Not without reason. Had the scandal been vividly resuscitated as the long national nightmare it actually was, it would dampen all the Felt fun by casting harsh light on our own present nightmare. "The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before" was how the former Nixon speech writer William Safire put it on this page almost nine months ago. The current administration, a second-term imperial presidency that outstrips Nixon's in hubris by the day, leads the attack, trying to intimidate and snuff out any Woodwards or Bernsteins that might challenge it, any media proprietor like Katharine Graham or editor like Ben Bradlee who might support them and any anonymous source like Deep Throat who might enable them to find what Carl Bernstein calls "the best obtainable version of the truth."
The attacks continue to be so successful that even now, long after many news organizations, including The Times, have been found guilty of failing to puncture the administration's prewar W.M.D. hype, new details on that same story are still being ignored or left uninvestigated. The July 2002 "Downing Street memo," the minutes of a meeting in which Tony Blair and his advisers learned of a White House effort to fix "the intelligence and facts" to justify the war in Iraq, was published by The London Sunday Times on May 1. Yet in the 19 daily Scott McClellan briefings that followed, the memo was the subject of only 2 out of the approximately 940 questions asked by the White House press corps, according to Eric Boehlert of Salon.
This is the kind of lapdog news media the Nixon White House cherished. To foster it, Nixon's special counsel, Charles W. Colson, embarked on a ruthless program of intimidation that included threatening antitrust action against the networks if they didn't run pro-Nixon stories. Watergate tapes and memos make Mr. Colson, who boasted of "destroying the old establishment," sound like the founding father of today's blogging lynch mobs. He exulted in bullying CBS to cut back its Watergate reports before the '72 election. He enlisted NBC in pro-administration propaganda by browbeating it to repackage 10-day-old coverage of Tricia Nixon's wedding as a prime-time special. It was the Colson office as well that compiled a White House enemies list that included journalists who had the audacity to question administration policies.
Such is the equivalently supine state of much of the news media today that Mr. Colson was repeatedly trotted out, without irony, to pass moral judgment on Mr. Felt - and not just on Fox News, the cable channel that is actually run by the former Nixon media maven, Roger Ailes. "I want kids to look up to heroes," Mr. Colson said, oh so sorrowfully, on NBC's "Today" show, condemning Mr. Felt for dishonoring "the confidence of the president of the United States." Never mind that Mr. Colson dishonored the law, proposed bombing the Brookings Institution and went to prison for his role in the break-in to steal the psychiatric records of The Times's Deep Throat on Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg. The "Today" host, Matt Lauer, didn't mention any of this - or even that his guest had done jail time. None of the other TV anchors who interviewed Mr. Colson - and he was ubiquitous - ever specified his criminal actions in the Nixon years. Some identified him onscreen only as a "former White House counsel."
Had anyone been so rude (or professional) as to recount Mr. Colson's sordid past, or to raise the question of whether he was a hero or a traitor, the genealogical line between his Watergate-era machinations and those of his present-day successors would have been all too painfully clear. The main difference is that in the Nixon White House, the president's men plotted behind closed doors. The current administration is now so brazen it does its dirty work in plain sight.
In the most recent example, all the president's men slimed and intimidated Newsweek by accusing it of being an accessory to 17 deaths for its errant Koran story; led by Scott McClellan, they said it was unthinkable that any American guard could be disrespectful of Islam's holy book. These neo-Colsons easily drowned out Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, both of whom said that the riots that led to the 17 deaths were unrelated to Newsweek. Then came the pièce de résistance of Nixon mimicry: a Pentagon report certifying desecrations of the Koran by American guards was released two weeks after the Newsweek imbroglio, at 7:15 p.m. on a Friday, to assure it would miss the evening newscasts and be buried in the Memorial Day weekend's little-read papers.
At other times the new Colsons top the old one. Though Nixon aspired to punish public broadcasting by cutting its funding, he never imagined that his apparatchiks could seize the top executive positions at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Nor did he come up with the brilliant ideas of putting journalists covertly on the administration payroll and of hiring an outside P.R. firm (Ketchum) to codify an enemies list by ranking news organizations and individual reporters on the basis of how favorably they cover a specific administration policy (No Child Left Behind). President Bush has even succeeded in emasculating the post-Watergate reform that was supposed to help curb Nixonian secrecy, the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
THE journalists who do note the resonances of now with then rarely get to connect those dots on the news media's center stage of television. You are more likely to hear instead of how Watergate inspired too much "gotcha" journalism. That's a rather absurd premise given that no "gotcha" journalist got the goods on the biggest story of our time: the false intimations of incipient mushroom clouds peddled by American officials to sell a war that now threatens to match the unpopularity and marathon length of Vietnam.
Only once during the Deep Throat rollout did I see a palpable, if perhaps unconscious, effort to link the White House of 1972 with that of 2005. It occurred at the start, when ABC News, with the first comprehensive report on Vanity Fair's scoop, interrupted President Bush's post-Memorial Day Rose Garden news conference to break the story. Suddenly the image of the current president blathering on about how hunky-dory everything is in Iraq was usurped by repeated showings of the scene in which the newly resigned Nixon walked across the adjacent White House lawn to the helicopter that would carry him into exile.
But in the days that followed, Nixon and his history and the long shadows they cast largely vanished from the TV screen. In their place were constant nostalgic replays of young Redford and flinty Holbrook. Follow the bait-and-switch.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
I've always wanted to know more about this. I am intrigued that they are hiring...
COOKIE MASTER
As a vice-president at Wonton Food, Inc., in Long Island City, Donald Lau manages the company’s accounts payable and receivable, negotiates with insurers, and, somewhat incidentally, composes the fortunes that go inside the fortune cookies, of which Wonton is the world’s largest manufacturer. Each day, Wonton’s factory churns out four million Golden Bowl-brand cookies, which are sold to several hundred venders, who, in turn, sell them to most of the forty thousand Chinese restaurants across the country. Wonton’s primacy in the industry and, for that matter, in the gambler’s imagination is such that when, in March, five of six lucky numbers printed on a fortune happened to coincide with the winning picks for the Powerball lottery, a hundred and ten people, instead of the usual handful, came forward to claim prizes of around a hundred thousand dollars. Lottery officials suspected a scam until they traced the sequence to a fortune printed with the digits “22-28-32-33-39-40” and Donald Lau’s prediction: “All the preparation you’ve done will finally be paying off.”
“We’ve had winners before, but never this many,” Lau said the other day, in his East Williamsburg office, which is furnished with stacks of financial reports and “A Dictionary of American Proverbs.” “A computer picks the numbers, not me. If only a computer could also write the fortunes.” Lau never expected to become a fortune-cookie writer. After graduating from Columbia with degrees in engineering and business, he joined Bank of America, then ran a company that exported logs from the Pacific Northwest to China. In the early eighties, he was hired by a Chinatown noodle manufacturer, which eventually expanded into fortune cookies. The firm bought the Long Island City plant, and it soon became apparent that its antiquated catalogue of fortunes would have to be updated. (“Find someone as gay as you are,” one leftover from the nineteen-forties read.) “We knew we needed to add new sayings,” Lau said. “I was chosen because my English was the best of the group, not because I’m a poet.”
At first, the writing came easily. Finding inspiration in sources ranging from the I Ching to the Post, Lau cranked out three or four maxims a day, between scrutinizing spreadsheets and monitoring the company’s inventory of chow mein. “I’d be on the subway and look up at the signs and think, Hey, that would make a great fortune,” he said. (One such adage: “Beware of odors from unfamiliar sources.”) “I’d keep a small notebook and jot down whatever came to me. I don’t think I ever sat in front of the computer and said, ‘I am going to write ten fortunes right now.’ It has to come naturally.”
Love, riches, power: there is a limited range of experience that can be expressed in one sentence, and, about eleven years into his tenure, Lau began to run out of ideas. He leaned increasingly on traditional Chinese sayings, which offer insight (along the lines of “True gold fears no fire”) but not foresight (“Your income will increase”), and in 1995 he gave up altogether. “I’ve written thousands of fortunes, but the inspiration is gone,” Lau said. “Have you heard of writer’s block? That is what happened to me.”
These days, he cycles selections from his vast oeuvre in and out of circulation. He is worried that readers will notice that the cookies are in reruns, which might result in Wonton’s losing its edge on the competition. (This is unlikely. Although there are about forty fortune-cookie companies in the United States, few have Wonton’s manufacturing capabilities.) So Lau has decided to bring in new blood. The company will soon advertise for a new fortune writer, and Lau will make the transition to editor. “Maybe when I retire I’ll write again—perhaps a book about writing fortunes,” he said. Returning to form, he summarized the thrust of the book with two simple axioms. “Don’t have too complicated a mind,” he said. “Think in ten-word sentences.”
COOKIE MASTER
As a vice-president at Wonton Food, Inc., in Long Island City, Donald Lau manages the company’s accounts payable and receivable, negotiates with insurers, and, somewhat incidentally, composes the fortunes that go inside the fortune cookies, of which Wonton is the world’s largest manufacturer. Each day, Wonton’s factory churns out four million Golden Bowl-brand cookies, which are sold to several hundred venders, who, in turn, sell them to most of the forty thousand Chinese restaurants across the country. Wonton’s primacy in the industry and, for that matter, in the gambler’s imagination is such that when, in March, five of six lucky numbers printed on a fortune happened to coincide with the winning picks for the Powerball lottery, a hundred and ten people, instead of the usual handful, came forward to claim prizes of around a hundred thousand dollars. Lottery officials suspected a scam until they traced the sequence to a fortune printed with the digits “22-28-32-33-39-40” and Donald Lau’s prediction: “All the preparation you’ve done will finally be paying off.”
“We’ve had winners before, but never this many,” Lau said the other day, in his East Williamsburg office, which is furnished with stacks of financial reports and “A Dictionary of American Proverbs.” “A computer picks the numbers, not me. If only a computer could also write the fortunes.” Lau never expected to become a fortune-cookie writer. After graduating from Columbia with degrees in engineering and business, he joined Bank of America, then ran a company that exported logs from the Pacific Northwest to China. In the early eighties, he was hired by a Chinatown noodle manufacturer, which eventually expanded into fortune cookies. The firm bought the Long Island City plant, and it soon became apparent that its antiquated catalogue of fortunes would have to be updated. (“Find someone as gay as you are,” one leftover from the nineteen-forties read.) “We knew we needed to add new sayings,” Lau said. “I was chosen because my English was the best of the group, not because I’m a poet.”
At first, the writing came easily. Finding inspiration in sources ranging from the I Ching to the Post, Lau cranked out three or four maxims a day, between scrutinizing spreadsheets and monitoring the company’s inventory of chow mein. “I’d be on the subway and look up at the signs and think, Hey, that would make a great fortune,” he said. (One such adage: “Beware of odors from unfamiliar sources.”) “I’d keep a small notebook and jot down whatever came to me. I don’t think I ever sat in front of the computer and said, ‘I am going to write ten fortunes right now.’ It has to come naturally.”
Love, riches, power: there is a limited range of experience that can be expressed in one sentence, and, about eleven years into his tenure, Lau began to run out of ideas. He leaned increasingly on traditional Chinese sayings, which offer insight (along the lines of “True gold fears no fire”) but not foresight (“Your income will increase”), and in 1995 he gave up altogether. “I’ve written thousands of fortunes, but the inspiration is gone,” Lau said. “Have you heard of writer’s block? That is what happened to me.”
These days, he cycles selections from his vast oeuvre in and out of circulation. He is worried that readers will notice that the cookies are in reruns, which might result in Wonton’s losing its edge on the competition. (This is unlikely. Although there are about forty fortune-cookie companies in the United States, few have Wonton’s manufacturing capabilities.) So Lau has decided to bring in new blood. The company will soon advertise for a new fortune writer, and Lau will make the transition to editor. “Maybe when I retire I’ll write again—perhaps a book about writing fortunes,” he said. Returning to form, he summarized the thrust of the book with two simple axioms. “Don’t have too complicated a mind,” he said. “Think in ten-word sentences.”
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Thursday, June 02, 2005
SEVEN DAYS IN L.A.
The true story of a writer, a church, a gun, an HBO deal that never existed and a pretty girl with wavering eyes.
Special Guest Blog by David N. Donihue
Tuesday night. Around 10 p.m.
When he handed me the pistol in a parking lot just off Hollywood, I wondered how I was going to give out hugs in the Bible study room without anyone noticing that there was a forty- five in my pocket. His eyes looked unsteady. They always do. Sadly, I know where the guy’s coming from. If things could just slow down, I could get my bearings. But my life is mine, and never really slow. Except when around a few solitary friends.
Justine is one of them. That super cute platonic friend that you can wrestle with and be made fun of by, and you both know exactly where everything stands. No confusion, just straight up love and understanding. She calls me every day just to check in; I dig that shit. I’m lucky to know her. We keep each other in check.
“Take it easy” she said the other night. She reassured me of my talents and good looks and I talked to her about her endless crush on my brilliant space case of a friend Noel, who can’t seem to figure out where he’s coming from or what to do with her. Matters of the heart seem to put more panic in us than matters of guns and finances.
Jumping back to about 8 p.m. I’m at church. Tonight, as part of the young adult Bible study, we’re tested on spiritual gifts. This is an odd one. A series of tests that show what areas you are gifted in and what areas you suck at. I score high on Prophecy, Wisdom and Intercession. Low on Speaking In Tongues and Celibacy. Go figure. Midway through the test, he shows up. I don’t know him well. His name is Eric. He’s good looking, charming, and seems like a bit of a loose cannon. I met him the first time about a month ago. Justine had told me about him, how his brother had passed away recently and she knew he was in need of someone to talk to, but feared spending time with him as he obviously had a thing for her.
“Don’t worry about it. Have dinner with the guy at a public place and just listen to him talk. It’ll be good.”
Well, he had charmed her, and she brought him to my birthday party, I suspect to make Noel jealous. He gave me a cigar and told us all about having to trek across the country to deal with a D.U.I. I wasn’t shocked. Something about the way he moved seemed familiar; not so much “from liquor or drugs,” though that wouldn’t surprise me. More, he seemed to be shifting in his shoes but playing it off as party star energy. Masking his depression and anxiety with an enthusiasm for small talk and sheik brattiness. Respectable. Sad.
That was also the first time I saw Kara again.
Kara is a beautiful girl. She’s tall and rail thin with cool loose dark blonde curls and huge amazing eyes that seem to shift between the sophistication of an ambitious and confident young woman, and that of a “wow – holy shit world” 10-year-old kid. I went to her birthday party not long ago. She looked stunning in a long black dress. I found myself stumbling for words. Cute girls never make me stumble for words.
I know very little of her, but what I do impressive. She’s a flautist. Not always the center of attention, yet gravitates towards the stage. She holds herself at a distance as if she’s consistently careful not to give off any wrong impressions.
She turned her back on the Catholic church as a kid because they wouldn’t let her be an altar boy anymore. She must have looked adorable, the outfit, the hair pulled back.
She’s had started her own summer program for kids. She’s twenty seven, and a take charge of your own destiny type. She’s remarkable.
Her eyes constantly dart off into the distance in thought, and then revert back to pick up wherever the conversation was headed. But her face and eyes can’t hide what her mouth often doesn’t say.
“I’ll bet you’re a shitty liar,” I say.
“Yeah, I’m terrible at it.”
She might not always be forthcoming about her thoughts, but when she is, they are genuine, and I have nothing but respect for that sort of self-preservation-honesty mix.
Thursday 9pm. Kara and I sit down for Indian food.
I’ve been a bit whip lashed lately by life, but par for the course. Money is quickly deteriorating in my world, as the company I work for still hasn’t paid any of us writers.
I’ve lived in LA for two and a half years, have been making my meager living entirely off of my writing, have seen one film produced, a war-type epic I co-wrote, and have been struggling along as a screenwriter for hire, choosing only projects I believe in.
A producer, Wayne, and Jesper, a creative consultant, wanted to meet with me in regard to a mini-series on ancient Rome, knowing my background in writing on topics of politics, war and religion.
I met them at a Starbucks in Encino. Jesper was from Denmark. Looked around forty, blonde hair with a touch of grey. Clean cut. Wayne had a Roman style mustache and goatee, and was apparently a Roman expert. They were blue collar fellows, and it made me trust them more.
In a town like LA, often the real movers and shakers are in jeans in t-shirts, while bullshit middle men take the time to manicure, put on silk and drive small penis automobiles. They were friendly, warm, and spent a good hour and a half drilling me on how I write and work with others, and whether or not I can meet their stringent network deadlines.
I read them some samples, and they hired me on the spot. $3,477 per week for 13 weeks to co-write on a mini-series for HBO. I would be one of a team of six writers who would come together with a staff of researchers to whip out some brilliance, as HBO apparently had a production called ROME that was experiencing delays, and they would need a teaser to quench the audience’s thirst. That’s where we would come in.
THE REAL ROME, you know kinda like Real Sports or Real Sex, would be a docu-drama, three episodes, small budget of 4 mil per. The last few months of my life were filled with family tragedy, death and the ever-present holiday inspired lack of work. I was dead broke, and getting broker. Needless to say, this was the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
The group consisted of quite the talented mix. Anna, a brilliant writer and script consultant, who I was partnered with. She’s fifty, funny, warm, and not afraid to flip you shit. She has a remarkable list of work under her belt, doing script consulting for some major writers and producers. I forgive her hippie nature on account of her kick ass personality.
Jeff K., a former stage and commercial actor slash Roman buff from Toronto with a wife and kids. He’s a straight man who likes Broadway.
Jeff B., an ambitious 23-year-old writer who had moved here with his wife just after his father-in-law’s death, to take on this job and crank their lives into some form of positivity amidst the grief.
Don, an East Coast indie filmmaker with a constant smile and a real life to him. Husky and fresh faced, Don is a real sweetheart. He gets excited when the others pitch stories of Roman castrations and 100,000 people getting impaled.
And there’s Patrick, a talented former sci-fi writer with short silvering hair, good looks and a zest for action stories. He has a very fast paced, high energy personality that could either be brilliance, dementia, or substance abuse, God bless him.
We got passes to eat lunch at the commissary on the CBS lot. We started mapping out the series. We were told Glenn A. Larson, a hot shot TV producer, was partnering on all of Wayne’s projects and he would be joining the gang shortly, as would be Jim Caviezel, on a project with Wayne as well. I had visions of asking him to turn the bottled water into Merlot, but we didn’t have any.
Things were moving fast. A man by the name of John was introduced to us as a producer from HBO, who we told our pitches to. He seemed impressed, thought he was quickly out the door to his next order of business.
Bobbi, a costume designer, apparently recommended by the studio was sent over, along with a director of photography. We took a tour of Western Costumes and saw a room already set up, with HBO / THE REAL ROME on the door and costumes already being made, collected, and ordered for mass production somewhere in India.
Wayne called a meeting. The order for three episodes has been pushed to six. We would now be employed for 26 weeks guaranteed. All of us immediately started making calls, canceling other employment, thanking former Latin instructors, looking at new cars online, etc. There’s only one problem. There’s a three week delay in payroll. Peripheral conversations of borrowing money from family and friends occur.
Justine keeps calling to ask if I’ve met Jesus yet. “No, and I don’t think it’s really him, he just played him on TV…”
The creativity and research goes blasting into high gear. Wayne continues to feed us scenes from his vast knowledge of Rome, much of them involving penises. Wayne is one of those truck driver gay men. The type who get busted hooking up at Park & Rides and Highway Rest Stops. Most of his Roman knowledge seems to center around sexual practice, with the researchers having yet to confirm any of his tidbits.
Synopses are handed to wardrobe and production designers. John the producer, continues to be seen coming and going from Wayne’s office, presumably checking in on our progress.
Nearly two weeks ago, we were told very suddenly we were moving offices from CBS to either Sunset Gower or Universal. That HBO had pulled us from our current location due to a problem with the lease being too short-term.
We’ve spent the last two weeks working from home, and stressing about when we’re going to see a check, as we are continually told that there is just another glitch in payroll.
The costume department has been paid, and now as of Thursday, we’ve been there six weeks and not seen a dime. By contract, we are all already owed an enormous amount of money. Last week, the writers started speaking of going to the guild with this issue. This would bring our employer under scrutiny by HBO, and it’s almost certain that when that happens, some middle management producer from the studio is bound to step in and “save the project from chaos” by replacing the staff with all of his friends. This is what Wayne tells us, in his very calm and gentle nature.
Wayne admits to being new to the producing game. Online, he has no producer credits, but there are some legitimate articles from legitimate press on how he’s donated a million dollars to give fire engines in his home state of Alabama
I tried to keep the other writers from doing anything rash.
This job is everything I have been working towards, and the thought of failure, even if it’s not my fault, sends shivers down my spine like no other. I’m embarrassed to even admit the unsteadiness of the present situation.
My mother keeps floating back to my mind. My grandfather died a week back, and that – combined with my brother’s passing in August – has her in one of those “Was I good mother, was I a good daughter?” sort of states.
My grandfather is still in a freezer somewhere, as no one can find his 35-year-old bitch of a wife who married him several years back, took him for everything he was worth, and is now impossible to reach as a signature from her is needed to complete his request of having his ashes sprinkled along with my grandmother’s over Mt. Rainier.
So I’m sitting across from Kara, Thursday night, and all this is on my mind, and I’m trying to stay engaged in the conversation, not come off to heavy.
Writer’s syndrome. I wonder for a moment if I’ve forgotten how to speak. If I have fallen so far into being human that I’ve left the human fold entirely. The human fold is guarded and jaded and disconnected from anything that is human. Even those white girl eastern philosophy bitches who shift their furniture around to feel more in touch with themselves would condemn me on accounts of emotional instability.
You see, I have nothing to say that isn’t too heavy or too light. Everything you say is a product of your experiences, and if all you are currently seeing is shit, than your just going to say a bunch of shit that seems to bring on more shitty experiences that causes you to say a bunch more of shit.
Everyone that I’ve ever known who has wanted to kill themselves were motivated by the thought that they had nothing left to offer that would be positively received. I find it interesting that some of the people with the most love to give had the most self-hatred because no one wanted to receive it. The purest of emotions can be seen as a threat by those who are conditioned by this jaded little spectacle we call life. I can’t believe I just wrote that dumb ass line. Why does anyone ever pay me for this shit?
Now, obviously, this tangent has drifted away from the autobiographical. I have more people in my life who love me and depend on my love and words of support than I know what to do with. I have a zest for life and a passion for the minutia of all types of personalities that borders on habitual. And I rock it too. I still find massive excuses to laugh and be irreverent and silly and just enjoy the ridiculousness of our little ball o’ dirt, but there are some days, when you can’t force yourself into that mind set.
Something lightens inside of me when I see her shift from her sophisticated stance to her uncomfortable moments of weighing things out in her head. I don’t know why, but I find it really charming. Kara has a boyfriend who recently cruised to somewhere in the middle of the country to do something. I forget what. Work and family I think. She had mentioned possibly cutting it off.
I know she loves him, so I had resigned to being nothing more than a friend to her while still being massively drawn to knowing as much as I possibly could about who she is as a person. Through my thorough study and research of the creature that is her, I came to the scientific conclusion that she fucking rules. So, whatever the nature of our relationship is, I’m cool with it. I think I caught her checking me out in the club lights one night.
For a moment, I showed my hand of cards stretched across my face when she mentioned she was leaving town to go see him. The boyfriend.
I managed to utter “How’s that going?” and the moment became built more on what wasn’t being said than what was.
“It’s going well. I’ll be there for four days.”
“That’s awesome.”
I was actually genuine when I said that. You see, Kara’s cool. I have no desire to bring confusion into her life. I’m just stoked to get to know her.
Monday was her actual birthday, which I am suppose to spend with her. The weekend is spent going out to see a show with them, me working and stressing about the absence of my check and three day pay or vacate notice I got on my door.
Monday. 7pm. East Hollywood.
The writers were up in arms. My mother calling to ask if I wanted my dead grandmother’s bedsheets that were still in the package, the woman still hoarding away mounds of odds and ends ten years after her death. That takes talent. And Wayne, who currently owes me an enormous amount of money, was supposed to at the very least bring petty cash down to appease a few of my bills as he had been promising all weekend to throw me a couple grand until the checks arrived.
Patrick, our beloved hot headed paranoid, allegedly “coke-addicted” writer had suffered a burst appendix a few days prior, his fear of ever never getting paid or the project going bust guiding him through the operation. Now, back on his feet, he had spent the day looking for the new offices that we had yet to move into on Lankershim out of fear he was being fired, going from building to building trying to find Wayne. He can’t even get addiction right. He should be just going into the same building over and over and over. But, in any case, his deranged idiocy delayed my boss in meeting with me and giving me any cash. His writing partner has grown weary of him as well, as Wayne seems to be trying to find a way to let him go without any disturbance, continuing to ask us all if we see any signs of drug use.
Too embarrassed to tell my new friends I am too broke to go out and realizing once again how this unstable career can utterly destroy my best of intentions in my personal life, I am a lame ass. I finally called Kara, telling her I’m going to be able to make it out at all.
My phone is still ringing off the hook as I try to ease everyone’s panic, as I am balancing momentary thoughts of feeling like a total freaking loser. All I feel like doing is buying my friend a birthday drink. Grabbing her some birthday flowers. She had consumed much of my mind over the weekend, wanting to see her, but too broke to go out and to proud to admit it.
My mind is racing with fears of failure. I had recently abandoned those fears. I stopped caring about where my career was heading right before it started soaring full speed ahead. Not financially, but things were falling into place. People were noticing a particular style, I guess.
Seneca said “Cease to hope and you will cease to fear…” There’s some truth in it. The constant string of jobs and pats on the back brought some hope into the mix. The other writers and delayed checks brought the fear.
Monday. 10pm.
I’m pacing back and forth down the street trying to make sense of all the work chaos, as Anna pep talked me, strangely. That’s not her style as much.
“I want the career your friend Robert has,” I say, as I suddenly feel annoyed with my ambitious side taking precedence over the craft itself.
“He was 38 and ready to call it quits when it finally clicked. Now he makes millions. It just took a long time.” She says.
I’m 31 and have written over forty feature scripts and plays. Part of me feels like an old vet while the other part of me still fresh faced inexperienced kid.
“You see David, there is a problem with your work.”
Great. She’s about to add insult to injury.
“Your work has a voice. It’s exactly what you think and feel, which will make it a nightmare at first, but trust me, there will be rewards because of the way you do things in the long run...”
Coming from her, the words settled me. My phone beeped again as I was walking back into my apartment. It was Kara again. Inviting me over. We partook in small talk with her roommate and classical guitarist friend whose masculinity momentarily slipped away when he admitted to liking Titanic. I didn’t ask him what he thought of that Celine Dion song, I couldn’t bear to hear the answer. He’s one of my favorite people I’ve met recently. He’s from Toronto, and has a strange mix of East Coast hard edge and northern “I could give a fuck” passivity. Rather impressive stories to tell as well.
Which brings us back to Tuesday. And the gun. And Justine. And Eric. And the spiritual gifts exercise. Prophecy, Intercession. As I take the quiz, knowing it would be retarded to put much stake into its answers, Eric wanders into the room, looking high as a kite. It’s likely he’s here looking for Justine, who has been avoiding his calls after his romantic persistence made her feel uncomfortable. Damn, he really looks high.
I fucking hate how substances attach themselves to those who are the most sensitive. I only get around to a night of real drinking maybe once a month, so therefore, with my tolerance low but thirst for nothing more than hydration high, it’s easy to stupidly consume to much and find yourself speaking in ways that would have helped me score higher on the “:speaking in tongues” portion of the test.
Eric stammers around, loudly makes fun of the quiz and seems to make most in the room both humored and uncomfortable. I can’t tell if this is a substance or crippling anxiety-prone depression, but something doesn’t seem right, as I sit here with the results of the quiz in fingertips, feeling proud that I scored low on Celibacy. My mind is flying high with work. My family. And strangely, amidst it all, a girl.
Yet, as he shifts all over the room, needing to charm those who seem somewhat concerned about his current mental state, I feel the need to pull him away and find out what this guy is all about. I notice the way his body was working to shut off his mind and heart, and I really feel for him.
“I’m going for a cigarette. Walk with me,” I say.
He follows. He looks paranoid when a cop drives by, and tells me he has a gun across the street in his car, that he had been to the shooting range earlier and was driving on a suspended license due to a D.U.I., so if he got pulled over, they would search and he’d be fucked. I ignore it. And I start hammering him with questions. You can tell me anything. Nothing fazes me.
And he lets’ loose. The stories of his fist fights, heroin and coke addictions of yesteryear, never admitting to even having so much as a beer in the present day, are unsurprisingly followed by stories of an abusive childhood, his brother’s death. And how just after the night I first met him, just as Justine had turned him down, he had to catch a flight back home to see his grandma.
Scared shitless of facing a past that he rarely connects with, he had stalled just before getting in his friend’s car to head to the airport. “I left something upstairs.” He tried to tell them. They wouldn’t accept that and shoved him in the car.
“I was planning on going back upstairs, pulling the gun out of my closet, and blowing my brains out.” He says to me as we sit down on a planter next to church’s entrance, and I ask if I can pray for him. I don’t know if it will do much good. I’m no pastor. I’m no missionary. I’m just a guy who’s seen a bunch of shit and come out the other side as a generally happy camper who really loves people. But we pray. For a long time. Lord, let the sins others have placed on him not turn him to self-destruction. Let him see how his gifts of charm and humor can help the world around him. Let him find a peace through knowing that he doesn’t have to be a product of his environment, his environment can be a product of him. Let him realize that the sick feeling beneath his skin is the result of others, that he isn’t innately born feeling this way, and that you can bring him back to the core of who he is. Lord, this world has really fucked him over, don’t let him fuck himself over as a result. Lord, let him forgive the people who have hurt him, forgive himself for the way he has reacted to it all, and lift that weight.
We hug hard. I have no idea if I’ve reached him, but having just lost a friend to suicide months prior, I was really praying that this would work. I’m sick of people dying who were dealt a shitty hand, people thriving who shit all over everyone else, and me feeling helpless when I get the phone calls after the fact.
It actually takes a bit of work to ask him for it. “I don’t think you are in a state where you should have a gun in your possession.”
He immediately offers it, using reasons of not wanting to get pulled over with it. Thank God. We walk across the street to his car. It isn’t loaded. The clip lies next to it.
“It’s clean,” he says. “Make sure it stays that way.”
If it was clean, he hadn’t been to the shooting range earlier that day. There was a reason it was in his car, and fear swept over me for his safety and others.
I put it in my pocket and we walk back into the church together. The bulge is huge, but luckily, I am wearing my longer green checkered polyester jacket with my black Fubu jeans. The jeans have deep pockets. The jacket covers the majority of the bulge. I suddenly realized how handy this particular combination would be to gangs across America. Visions of Crips, Bloods and L.A. Locos in plaid polyester sweep through my mind, and I feel happier than I’ve been in the last two weeks.
I hug a few friends goodbye and start the long trek home, being careful not to jaywalk and get stopped. I had lost my I.D. a few days back, and being without any identification with a forty-five in your pocket wouldn’t look good to Officer Friendly. It crosses my mind if Kara would return my calls if she were to drive by and see me in handcuffs with a forty-five lying on the front of a cop car. Hey, these things happen.
I suddenly wonder where the gun has been, and I immediately dial Justine, to reaffirm that she is not to answer his calls. I don’t think he’d harm her, he doesn’t seem to be a danger to others. I think with some tight friendships, this kid could come out the other side of it all.
Justine doesn’t answer her phone at first. Ten minutes pass by as I continue home, suddenly getting really scared for her. This girl is one of the best friends you find in this city. We tell each other everything. I’ve never gotten bored talking to Justine. Never waiting for her to finish a sentence so I could start one. She is an example of a nearly perfect, selfless person. I would never forgive this world if it harmed her.
I walk up the steps. Finally the phone rings. It’s Justine. We talk for hours. She needs to know it isn’t her fault he is this way. She did the best she can. He needs guy friends. Not a girl. No girl can save a man from treating himself poopy.
Wednesday Morning.
I woke up early this morning and took a long walk.
I fucking hate guns. I can’t stand the fact that the no-good piece of scrap metal is buried in the back of my closet, even though it has no bullets. I have no intention of giving it back to him anytime soon, and my friend Mason who leads the Bible study kindly declined via phone this morning to take it, even though he loves shooting ranges.
I thought long and hard about Eric. How easy it would be for anyone to get smacked around by life’s circumstances and fall into that frame of mind. About how much he wants to give love right now, and how his instability makes it impossible for someone to want to receive it, which makes it impossible for him to get stable. The viscous circles of life. The fact that he carried a gun. So tragic, his life circumstances inspiring such fear. The desperate need for control. I suddenly feel more tenderness towards Republicans.
As I sit in front of my computer, wondering if work is going to blow up in my face, if I’m going to lose my job, not see a check in time, get evicted, and look like an idiot in front of everyone, all I feel like doing is typing about a pretty girl with wavering eyes.
Wednesday 8:55 p.m.
I have no cell minutes left. Kara calls. I tell her I’d call her back. After nine, cell time is free. It crosses my mind how many relationships have been destroyed due to delays in expressing emotions during anytime minutes.
9 p.m. I call Anna.
“David, I have bad news… As bad as it can get.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t exist. None of it exists. HBO has never heard of our employer. There is no tie between us and them. There is no money.”
I went into denial. I hung up and called Kara back. She told me “I just wanted to thank you for coming out on Monday night…”
She seemed so formal. So calculated. The sophistication had morphed into over-diplomacy. I figured I’d go for broke. Share it all. Let her know I’m a loser and she’s amazing yet guarded and I’m honest, yet my world is falling apart.
So, I read her what you just read. No joke. I read it all to her. I had just found out five minutes prior that I had lost a $90,000 contract, had not a dime to my name, was on the verge of eviction, and now suddenly realizing, that I was destroying a friendship with someone I was really enamored with.
She hung up the phone within sixty seconds of the completion of the reading. Obviously, she wasn’t impressed. My level of honesty isn’t good for anyone. Once again, too human for the human fold.
The truth sets in. My life is fucked. All of my connections know about this job. With my reputation trashed, my crush quite possibly looking into restraining orders, my career over, and my family once again destined to see me as a letdown, I thought about the gun in my closet.
It was as if God took it out of Eric’s hands, and the devil put it into mine. However, for some reason, I still didn’t want to die. The seratonin-dopamine fight or flight phenomena had even failed me a way out.
I got on the phone with Justine. We talked for a long time as I walked back and forth down Hollywood Boulevard. It didn’t matter what she said. Just the sound of her voice. It didn’t just calm me. It made me feel really good. She made me laugh.
“It’s hard to be upset for too long when I’m talking to you… It doesn’t matter what happens, when I talk to you…”
It was so true. Somehow, I related to this girl’s love for others, lack of self-preservation, and irreverent humor amidst the evils of this world. For a second, I felt like an asshole for pursuing Kara, who I couldn’t even talk to, when the person I wanted to share everything with was right there. There was only one problem. It’s not that way between her and I. Both of us, chasing after those we can’t fully talk to. I wish God had never created bodies, just spirits that choose what they project.
The phone rings again. “Dave, we found his house. You’ll never fucking believe it.” Patrick says “We’re gonna make sure these guys don’t try to go anywhere tonight. Do you want to come take turns keeping watch?”
Three of the writers had spent the last couple hours looking for the producer’s assistant’s car, who was rumored to be staying with him somewhere near the CBS lot.
“We’re gonna get these mother fuckers…” Patrick says to me.
Thursday. 10 am.
We are all gathered at a diner near the CBS lot and my mind is already racing with ideas on a script I had put on hold before this all had started. It isn’t over, but my mind is ready to move on.
At the table is John, the supposed HBO producer, all the writers, the costume designer, and the art director that has brought some of the most impressive designs with him that I have ever seen. Incredible really, the minds and talents in the room.
The truth comes out. John isn’t from HBO. We were told he was. He was told that we were. The costume woman wasn’t recommended by HBO, even though her credentials were far beyond needing that. She was referred to Wayne by Western Costume. She hasn’t been paid a dime. Wayne had convinced John that HBO was slow on a wire transfer, and John convinced the line producer he hired to put up about five grand to get things rolling in the art department. Petty cash.
Jesper is here, having known Wayne off and on for 17 years, looking shell shocked, claiming he lost seventy grand of his fiancée’s money to the whole thing, believing Wayne had a deal the whole time fronting the cash.
John relates his end of the story. He finally calls HBO. They’d never heard of Light Force Entertainment, Wayne, or any project called The Real Rome. Why would anyone do this? You would have to be insane. Fucking insane! Wayne probably believed that he could string us along for long enough to get some amazing pages, go into pre-production, get his deal and become unstoppable.
Now, all in all, John and his line producer friend are out the cash. Writers and researchers aren’t going to see any of the money (none of us having worked elsewhere for nine weeks and canceling upcoming gigs), the costume lady is screwed and the art department just plain baffled.
This all on top of Jeff B’s research, finding out the fire stations were required to hire new employees in order to comply with Wayne’s requests, and have yet to see the million dollar vehicles promised by Light Force Entertainment. Jeff B. looks at me and says “Wayne told me his first sexual experience was in a fire station.”
I had thoughts of Rosebud.
I am facing eviction. Have nowhere to go. Jeff B. and his young bride have nothing and a six month lease, wishing they could just go back to Ohio. I hear vague conversations about Bush making it harder to file bankruptcy in the background.
And Patrick, the paranoid coke head, wasn’t paranoid or even on coke. He was right all along. It was a sham..
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “I hate to say I told you so..”
I laughed, holding back my tears. “I’m sorry for you man. I know this hits hard,” he says. He was so genuine. He even turned out to be a damn fine writer.
Now, we just had to find Wayne. And our contracts, w4’s, the researchers’ hundreds of dollars’ worth of library books, you name it.
We got in the car and trekked over to where Wayne, Brent and Jesper were staying. Wayne wasn’t there. We later found out he was in court at the time on Indecent Exposure / Lewd Conduct charges, filed in Pasadena, for crying out loud.
When we got there, the true horror set in. They had been staying in a converted garage out behind a little old ladies house. Wayne and his assistant in one room, Jesper in the other. The poor woman had been giving them free rent, as they had promised she would be working as a production coordinator on the HBO series.
My gawd, how did he pull it all off?
How did this guy, without any cash to his name, get us on the CBS lot, a rented bungalow office, a new lease signed on Lankershim, a costume department employed and put into high gear, an art director, six writers, two researchers and two office assistants all working full-time, and all of this he masterminded out of a little old ladies garage?
I am impressed, to say the least. I get him on the phone. We’re all standing in the woman’s front yard, as she looks traumatized by the news, that this lovely man could do such a thing. “I was counting on that job, since I wasn’t getting any money from them for rent of the back house,” she said, looking as if she was going to cry.
Patrick is yelling “Fuck you Wayne” over and over, flipping off the phone that is currently up to my ear.
“Wayne, we know there is no deal between you and HBO,” I say.
“Well, that’s news to me,” he says.
“Wayne, how could you do this to us? This is sick.”
“So, the writers are going on strike then? Maybe it would help if we showed HBO some of the pages,” he says.
“Wayne, HBO has never heard of you. Sam, the woman at HBO has never heard of you. There is no Light Force Productions. Wayne, you need help. I’m going to pray for you brother. You really need help.”
I believe that Wayne actually believed he had a deal. That to con us, he had conned himself. We were dealing with what seems to be, a total fucking sociopath. God bless America.
It’s been ten minutes, and Patrick is still jumping up and down and cursing the phone in the background, as the rest of the writers sing “Liar, liar pants on fire.” I feel like my heads going to explode as I hand the phone over to someone else, and lament the fact that I’m sure to be homeless in the matter of days.
The little old lady announces that Wayne won’t be staying with her anymore, and that I am more than welcome to the spare room in the garage if I need a place to stay.
I suddenly realized that for me, the worsening of life circumstances had only begun.
While this was happening, my phone ran out of minutes. Shut off. No contact with the outside world. No way to have known that Justine’s mother was in the hospital due to an irregular heart beat. No way to check up on Eric, who I was really worried for, and suddenly felt as if there was no way I could reach out to him while dealing with my own dire needs, and a family to whom I owe money, and have suddenly no way of being supportive of, as my dead grandfather is still hanging out in a freezer somewhere outside of Sumner, Washington.
The ripple affect of this unstable career is showing its instantaneous power. Plus, I still have yet to find a way to get rid of that fucking gun, and I know Eric wants it back.
What’s funny, the biggest lesson from all of this, was how I felt that night that Justine talked to me on the phone. The sound of her voice. The way she didn’t judge my failure. The way she listened and made me laugh.
I still feel so humiliated.
Life comes bashing away at full speed even without the help of something as unbelievable as all this. People die all around you. They kick the shit out of each other and lie to each other. Desire and depression mold some into creatures of compassion and humor, like Justine. Some into bottles of escapism, anxiety and self-destruction, like Eric. Some into guarded diplomacy, like Kara, and some into brilliant sociopaths who run a fraud that leaves over a dozen workers screwed for hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages, not to mention the humiliation and feeling of a career headed towards doom.
Even having tested high on Prophecy, I never saw any of this coming. My test scores on Intercession aren’t seeming to be of much help either.
But I’m still off to pray. Pray for Justine’s mom. Pray for my co-workers. Pray for Eric. Pray for family. Pray for that bitch that is responsible for the fact that my grandfather is still in need of thawing. Pray for Wayne. And pray that I can sell this story overnight and get enough money to keep from getting evicted, losing my mind, and finding myself living in a little old ladies garage near the CBS lot, promising my elderly landlady a job on a project that only exists in my head.
Written by David N. Donihue. ©opyright 2005.
The true story of a writer, a church, a gun, an HBO deal that never existed and a pretty girl with wavering eyes.
Special Guest Blog by David N. Donihue
Tuesday night. Around 10 p.m.
When he handed me the pistol in a parking lot just off Hollywood, I wondered how I was going to give out hugs in the Bible study room without anyone noticing that there was a forty- five in my pocket. His eyes looked unsteady. They always do. Sadly, I know where the guy’s coming from. If things could just slow down, I could get my bearings. But my life is mine, and never really slow. Except when around a few solitary friends.
Justine is one of them. That super cute platonic friend that you can wrestle with and be made fun of by, and you both know exactly where everything stands. No confusion, just straight up love and understanding. She calls me every day just to check in; I dig that shit. I’m lucky to know her. We keep each other in check.
“Take it easy” she said the other night. She reassured me of my talents and good looks and I talked to her about her endless crush on my brilliant space case of a friend Noel, who can’t seem to figure out where he’s coming from or what to do with her. Matters of the heart seem to put more panic in us than matters of guns and finances.
Jumping back to about 8 p.m. I’m at church. Tonight, as part of the young adult Bible study, we’re tested on spiritual gifts. This is an odd one. A series of tests that show what areas you are gifted in and what areas you suck at. I score high on Prophecy, Wisdom and Intercession. Low on Speaking In Tongues and Celibacy. Go figure. Midway through the test, he shows up. I don’t know him well. His name is Eric. He’s good looking, charming, and seems like a bit of a loose cannon. I met him the first time about a month ago. Justine had told me about him, how his brother had passed away recently and she knew he was in need of someone to talk to, but feared spending time with him as he obviously had a thing for her.
“Don’t worry about it. Have dinner with the guy at a public place and just listen to him talk. It’ll be good.”
Well, he had charmed her, and she brought him to my birthday party, I suspect to make Noel jealous. He gave me a cigar and told us all about having to trek across the country to deal with a D.U.I. I wasn’t shocked. Something about the way he moved seemed familiar; not so much “from liquor or drugs,” though that wouldn’t surprise me. More, he seemed to be shifting in his shoes but playing it off as party star energy. Masking his depression and anxiety with an enthusiasm for small talk and sheik brattiness. Respectable. Sad.
That was also the first time I saw Kara again.
Kara is a beautiful girl. She’s tall and rail thin with cool loose dark blonde curls and huge amazing eyes that seem to shift between the sophistication of an ambitious and confident young woman, and that of a “wow – holy shit world” 10-year-old kid. I went to her birthday party not long ago. She looked stunning in a long black dress. I found myself stumbling for words. Cute girls never make me stumble for words.
I know very little of her, but what I do impressive. She’s a flautist. Not always the center of attention, yet gravitates towards the stage. She holds herself at a distance as if she’s consistently careful not to give off any wrong impressions.
She turned her back on the Catholic church as a kid because they wouldn’t let her be an altar boy anymore. She must have looked adorable, the outfit, the hair pulled back.
She’s had started her own summer program for kids. She’s twenty seven, and a take charge of your own destiny type. She’s remarkable.
Her eyes constantly dart off into the distance in thought, and then revert back to pick up wherever the conversation was headed. But her face and eyes can’t hide what her mouth often doesn’t say.
“I’ll bet you’re a shitty liar,” I say.
“Yeah, I’m terrible at it.”
She might not always be forthcoming about her thoughts, but when she is, they are genuine, and I have nothing but respect for that sort of self-preservation-honesty mix.
Thursday 9pm. Kara and I sit down for Indian food.
I’ve been a bit whip lashed lately by life, but par for the course. Money is quickly deteriorating in my world, as the company I work for still hasn’t paid any of us writers.
I’ve lived in LA for two and a half years, have been making my meager living entirely off of my writing, have seen one film produced, a war-type epic I co-wrote, and have been struggling along as a screenwriter for hire, choosing only projects I believe in.
A producer, Wayne, and Jesper, a creative consultant, wanted to meet with me in regard to a mini-series on ancient Rome, knowing my background in writing on topics of politics, war and religion.
I met them at a Starbucks in Encino. Jesper was from Denmark. Looked around forty, blonde hair with a touch of grey. Clean cut. Wayne had a Roman style mustache and goatee, and was apparently a Roman expert. They were blue collar fellows, and it made me trust them more.
In a town like LA, often the real movers and shakers are in jeans in t-shirts, while bullshit middle men take the time to manicure, put on silk and drive small penis automobiles. They were friendly, warm, and spent a good hour and a half drilling me on how I write and work with others, and whether or not I can meet their stringent network deadlines.
I read them some samples, and they hired me on the spot. $3,477 per week for 13 weeks to co-write on a mini-series for HBO. I would be one of a team of six writers who would come together with a staff of researchers to whip out some brilliance, as HBO apparently had a production called ROME that was experiencing delays, and they would need a teaser to quench the audience’s thirst. That’s where we would come in.
THE REAL ROME, you know kinda like Real Sports or Real Sex, would be a docu-drama, three episodes, small budget of 4 mil per. The last few months of my life were filled with family tragedy, death and the ever-present holiday inspired lack of work. I was dead broke, and getting broker. Needless to say, this was the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
The group consisted of quite the talented mix. Anna, a brilliant writer and script consultant, who I was partnered with. She’s fifty, funny, warm, and not afraid to flip you shit. She has a remarkable list of work under her belt, doing script consulting for some major writers and producers. I forgive her hippie nature on account of her kick ass personality.
Jeff K., a former stage and commercial actor slash Roman buff from Toronto with a wife and kids. He’s a straight man who likes Broadway.
Jeff B., an ambitious 23-year-old writer who had moved here with his wife just after his father-in-law’s death, to take on this job and crank their lives into some form of positivity amidst the grief.
Don, an East Coast indie filmmaker with a constant smile and a real life to him. Husky and fresh faced, Don is a real sweetheart. He gets excited when the others pitch stories of Roman castrations and 100,000 people getting impaled.
And there’s Patrick, a talented former sci-fi writer with short silvering hair, good looks and a zest for action stories. He has a very fast paced, high energy personality that could either be brilliance, dementia, or substance abuse, God bless him.
We got passes to eat lunch at the commissary on the CBS lot. We started mapping out the series. We were told Glenn A. Larson, a hot shot TV producer, was partnering on all of Wayne’s projects and he would be joining the gang shortly, as would be Jim Caviezel, on a project with Wayne as well. I had visions of asking him to turn the bottled water into Merlot, but we didn’t have any.
Things were moving fast. A man by the name of John was introduced to us as a producer from HBO, who we told our pitches to. He seemed impressed, thought he was quickly out the door to his next order of business.
Bobbi, a costume designer, apparently recommended by the studio was sent over, along with a director of photography. We took a tour of Western Costumes and saw a room already set up, with HBO / THE REAL ROME on the door and costumes already being made, collected, and ordered for mass production somewhere in India.
Wayne called a meeting. The order for three episodes has been pushed to six. We would now be employed for 26 weeks guaranteed. All of us immediately started making calls, canceling other employment, thanking former Latin instructors, looking at new cars online, etc. There’s only one problem. There’s a three week delay in payroll. Peripheral conversations of borrowing money from family and friends occur.
Justine keeps calling to ask if I’ve met Jesus yet. “No, and I don’t think it’s really him, he just played him on TV…”
The creativity and research goes blasting into high gear. Wayne continues to feed us scenes from his vast knowledge of Rome, much of them involving penises. Wayne is one of those truck driver gay men. The type who get busted hooking up at Park & Rides and Highway Rest Stops. Most of his Roman knowledge seems to center around sexual practice, with the researchers having yet to confirm any of his tidbits.
Synopses are handed to wardrobe and production designers. John the producer, continues to be seen coming and going from Wayne’s office, presumably checking in on our progress.
Nearly two weeks ago, we were told very suddenly we were moving offices from CBS to either Sunset Gower or Universal. That HBO had pulled us from our current location due to a problem with the lease being too short-term.
We’ve spent the last two weeks working from home, and stressing about when we’re going to see a check, as we are continually told that there is just another glitch in payroll.
The costume department has been paid, and now as of Thursday, we’ve been there six weeks and not seen a dime. By contract, we are all already owed an enormous amount of money. Last week, the writers started speaking of going to the guild with this issue. This would bring our employer under scrutiny by HBO, and it’s almost certain that when that happens, some middle management producer from the studio is bound to step in and “save the project from chaos” by replacing the staff with all of his friends. This is what Wayne tells us, in his very calm and gentle nature.
Wayne admits to being new to the producing game. Online, he has no producer credits, but there are some legitimate articles from legitimate press on how he’s donated a million dollars to give fire engines in his home state of Alabama
I tried to keep the other writers from doing anything rash.
This job is everything I have been working towards, and the thought of failure, even if it’s not my fault, sends shivers down my spine like no other. I’m embarrassed to even admit the unsteadiness of the present situation.
My mother keeps floating back to my mind. My grandfather died a week back, and that – combined with my brother’s passing in August – has her in one of those “Was I good mother, was I a good daughter?” sort of states.
My grandfather is still in a freezer somewhere, as no one can find his 35-year-old bitch of a wife who married him several years back, took him for everything he was worth, and is now impossible to reach as a signature from her is needed to complete his request of having his ashes sprinkled along with my grandmother’s over Mt. Rainier.
So I’m sitting across from Kara, Thursday night, and all this is on my mind, and I’m trying to stay engaged in the conversation, not come off to heavy.
Writer’s syndrome. I wonder for a moment if I’ve forgotten how to speak. If I have fallen so far into being human that I’ve left the human fold entirely. The human fold is guarded and jaded and disconnected from anything that is human. Even those white girl eastern philosophy bitches who shift their furniture around to feel more in touch with themselves would condemn me on accounts of emotional instability.
You see, I have nothing to say that isn’t too heavy or too light. Everything you say is a product of your experiences, and if all you are currently seeing is shit, than your just going to say a bunch of shit that seems to bring on more shitty experiences that causes you to say a bunch more of shit.
Everyone that I’ve ever known who has wanted to kill themselves were motivated by the thought that they had nothing left to offer that would be positively received. I find it interesting that some of the people with the most love to give had the most self-hatred because no one wanted to receive it. The purest of emotions can be seen as a threat by those who are conditioned by this jaded little spectacle we call life. I can’t believe I just wrote that dumb ass line. Why does anyone ever pay me for this shit?
Now, obviously, this tangent has drifted away from the autobiographical. I have more people in my life who love me and depend on my love and words of support than I know what to do with. I have a zest for life and a passion for the minutia of all types of personalities that borders on habitual. And I rock it too. I still find massive excuses to laugh and be irreverent and silly and just enjoy the ridiculousness of our little ball o’ dirt, but there are some days, when you can’t force yourself into that mind set.
Something lightens inside of me when I see her shift from her sophisticated stance to her uncomfortable moments of weighing things out in her head. I don’t know why, but I find it really charming. Kara has a boyfriend who recently cruised to somewhere in the middle of the country to do something. I forget what. Work and family I think. She had mentioned possibly cutting it off.
I know she loves him, so I had resigned to being nothing more than a friend to her while still being massively drawn to knowing as much as I possibly could about who she is as a person. Through my thorough study and research of the creature that is her, I came to the scientific conclusion that she fucking rules. So, whatever the nature of our relationship is, I’m cool with it. I think I caught her checking me out in the club lights one night.
For a moment, I showed my hand of cards stretched across my face when she mentioned she was leaving town to go see him. The boyfriend.
I managed to utter “How’s that going?” and the moment became built more on what wasn’t being said than what was.
“It’s going well. I’ll be there for four days.”
“That’s awesome.”
I was actually genuine when I said that. You see, Kara’s cool. I have no desire to bring confusion into her life. I’m just stoked to get to know her.
Monday was her actual birthday, which I am suppose to spend with her. The weekend is spent going out to see a show with them, me working and stressing about the absence of my check and three day pay or vacate notice I got on my door.
Monday. 7pm. East Hollywood.
The writers were up in arms. My mother calling to ask if I wanted my dead grandmother’s bedsheets that were still in the package, the woman still hoarding away mounds of odds and ends ten years after her death. That takes talent. And Wayne, who currently owes me an enormous amount of money, was supposed to at the very least bring petty cash down to appease a few of my bills as he had been promising all weekend to throw me a couple grand until the checks arrived.
Patrick, our beloved hot headed paranoid, allegedly “coke-addicted” writer had suffered a burst appendix a few days prior, his fear of ever never getting paid or the project going bust guiding him through the operation. Now, back on his feet, he had spent the day looking for the new offices that we had yet to move into on Lankershim out of fear he was being fired, going from building to building trying to find Wayne. He can’t even get addiction right. He should be just going into the same building over and over and over. But, in any case, his deranged idiocy delayed my boss in meeting with me and giving me any cash. His writing partner has grown weary of him as well, as Wayne seems to be trying to find a way to let him go without any disturbance, continuing to ask us all if we see any signs of drug use.
Too embarrassed to tell my new friends I am too broke to go out and realizing once again how this unstable career can utterly destroy my best of intentions in my personal life, I am a lame ass. I finally called Kara, telling her I’m going to be able to make it out at all.
My phone is still ringing off the hook as I try to ease everyone’s panic, as I am balancing momentary thoughts of feeling like a total freaking loser. All I feel like doing is buying my friend a birthday drink. Grabbing her some birthday flowers. She had consumed much of my mind over the weekend, wanting to see her, but too broke to go out and to proud to admit it.
My mind is racing with fears of failure. I had recently abandoned those fears. I stopped caring about where my career was heading right before it started soaring full speed ahead. Not financially, but things were falling into place. People were noticing a particular style, I guess.
Seneca said “Cease to hope and you will cease to fear…” There’s some truth in it. The constant string of jobs and pats on the back brought some hope into the mix. The other writers and delayed checks brought the fear.
Monday. 10pm.
I’m pacing back and forth down the street trying to make sense of all the work chaos, as Anna pep talked me, strangely. That’s not her style as much.
“I want the career your friend Robert has,” I say, as I suddenly feel annoyed with my ambitious side taking precedence over the craft itself.
“He was 38 and ready to call it quits when it finally clicked. Now he makes millions. It just took a long time.” She says.
I’m 31 and have written over forty feature scripts and plays. Part of me feels like an old vet while the other part of me still fresh faced inexperienced kid.
“You see David, there is a problem with your work.”
Great. She’s about to add insult to injury.
“Your work has a voice. It’s exactly what you think and feel, which will make it a nightmare at first, but trust me, there will be rewards because of the way you do things in the long run...”
Coming from her, the words settled me. My phone beeped again as I was walking back into my apartment. It was Kara again. Inviting me over. We partook in small talk with her roommate and classical guitarist friend whose masculinity momentarily slipped away when he admitted to liking Titanic. I didn’t ask him what he thought of that Celine Dion song, I couldn’t bear to hear the answer. He’s one of my favorite people I’ve met recently. He’s from Toronto, and has a strange mix of East Coast hard edge and northern “I could give a fuck” passivity. Rather impressive stories to tell as well.
Which brings us back to Tuesday. And the gun. And Justine. And Eric. And the spiritual gifts exercise. Prophecy, Intercession. As I take the quiz, knowing it would be retarded to put much stake into its answers, Eric wanders into the room, looking high as a kite. It’s likely he’s here looking for Justine, who has been avoiding his calls after his romantic persistence made her feel uncomfortable. Damn, he really looks high.
I fucking hate how substances attach themselves to those who are the most sensitive. I only get around to a night of real drinking maybe once a month, so therefore, with my tolerance low but thirst for nothing more than hydration high, it’s easy to stupidly consume to much and find yourself speaking in ways that would have helped me score higher on the “:speaking in tongues” portion of the test.
Eric stammers around, loudly makes fun of the quiz and seems to make most in the room both humored and uncomfortable. I can’t tell if this is a substance or crippling anxiety-prone depression, but something doesn’t seem right, as I sit here with the results of the quiz in fingertips, feeling proud that I scored low on Celibacy. My mind is flying high with work. My family. And strangely, amidst it all, a girl.
Yet, as he shifts all over the room, needing to charm those who seem somewhat concerned about his current mental state, I feel the need to pull him away and find out what this guy is all about. I notice the way his body was working to shut off his mind and heart, and I really feel for him.
“I’m going for a cigarette. Walk with me,” I say.
He follows. He looks paranoid when a cop drives by, and tells me he has a gun across the street in his car, that he had been to the shooting range earlier and was driving on a suspended license due to a D.U.I., so if he got pulled over, they would search and he’d be fucked. I ignore it. And I start hammering him with questions. You can tell me anything. Nothing fazes me.
And he lets’ loose. The stories of his fist fights, heroin and coke addictions of yesteryear, never admitting to even having so much as a beer in the present day, are unsurprisingly followed by stories of an abusive childhood, his brother’s death. And how just after the night I first met him, just as Justine had turned him down, he had to catch a flight back home to see his grandma.
Scared shitless of facing a past that he rarely connects with, he had stalled just before getting in his friend’s car to head to the airport. “I left something upstairs.” He tried to tell them. They wouldn’t accept that and shoved him in the car.
“I was planning on going back upstairs, pulling the gun out of my closet, and blowing my brains out.” He says to me as we sit down on a planter next to church’s entrance, and I ask if I can pray for him. I don’t know if it will do much good. I’m no pastor. I’m no missionary. I’m just a guy who’s seen a bunch of shit and come out the other side as a generally happy camper who really loves people. But we pray. For a long time. Lord, let the sins others have placed on him not turn him to self-destruction. Let him see how his gifts of charm and humor can help the world around him. Let him find a peace through knowing that he doesn’t have to be a product of his environment, his environment can be a product of him. Let him realize that the sick feeling beneath his skin is the result of others, that he isn’t innately born feeling this way, and that you can bring him back to the core of who he is. Lord, this world has really fucked him over, don’t let him fuck himself over as a result. Lord, let him forgive the people who have hurt him, forgive himself for the way he has reacted to it all, and lift that weight.
We hug hard. I have no idea if I’ve reached him, but having just lost a friend to suicide months prior, I was really praying that this would work. I’m sick of people dying who were dealt a shitty hand, people thriving who shit all over everyone else, and me feeling helpless when I get the phone calls after the fact.
It actually takes a bit of work to ask him for it. “I don’t think you are in a state where you should have a gun in your possession.”
He immediately offers it, using reasons of not wanting to get pulled over with it. Thank God. We walk across the street to his car. It isn’t loaded. The clip lies next to it.
“It’s clean,” he says. “Make sure it stays that way.”
If it was clean, he hadn’t been to the shooting range earlier that day. There was a reason it was in his car, and fear swept over me for his safety and others.
I put it in my pocket and we walk back into the church together. The bulge is huge, but luckily, I am wearing my longer green checkered polyester jacket with my black Fubu jeans. The jeans have deep pockets. The jacket covers the majority of the bulge. I suddenly realized how handy this particular combination would be to gangs across America. Visions of Crips, Bloods and L.A. Locos in plaid polyester sweep through my mind, and I feel happier than I’ve been in the last two weeks.
I hug a few friends goodbye and start the long trek home, being careful not to jaywalk and get stopped. I had lost my I.D. a few days back, and being without any identification with a forty-five in your pocket wouldn’t look good to Officer Friendly. It crosses my mind if Kara would return my calls if she were to drive by and see me in handcuffs with a forty-five lying on the front of a cop car. Hey, these things happen.
I suddenly wonder where the gun has been, and I immediately dial Justine, to reaffirm that she is not to answer his calls. I don’t think he’d harm her, he doesn’t seem to be a danger to others. I think with some tight friendships, this kid could come out the other side of it all.
Justine doesn’t answer her phone at first. Ten minutes pass by as I continue home, suddenly getting really scared for her. This girl is one of the best friends you find in this city. We tell each other everything. I’ve never gotten bored talking to Justine. Never waiting for her to finish a sentence so I could start one. She is an example of a nearly perfect, selfless person. I would never forgive this world if it harmed her.
I walk up the steps. Finally the phone rings. It’s Justine. We talk for hours. She needs to know it isn’t her fault he is this way. She did the best she can. He needs guy friends. Not a girl. No girl can save a man from treating himself poopy.
Wednesday Morning.
I woke up early this morning and took a long walk.
I fucking hate guns. I can’t stand the fact that the no-good piece of scrap metal is buried in the back of my closet, even though it has no bullets. I have no intention of giving it back to him anytime soon, and my friend Mason who leads the Bible study kindly declined via phone this morning to take it, even though he loves shooting ranges.
I thought long and hard about Eric. How easy it would be for anyone to get smacked around by life’s circumstances and fall into that frame of mind. About how much he wants to give love right now, and how his instability makes it impossible for someone to want to receive it, which makes it impossible for him to get stable. The viscous circles of life. The fact that he carried a gun. So tragic, his life circumstances inspiring such fear. The desperate need for control. I suddenly feel more tenderness towards Republicans.
As I sit in front of my computer, wondering if work is going to blow up in my face, if I’m going to lose my job, not see a check in time, get evicted, and look like an idiot in front of everyone, all I feel like doing is typing about a pretty girl with wavering eyes.
Wednesday 8:55 p.m.
I have no cell minutes left. Kara calls. I tell her I’d call her back. After nine, cell time is free. It crosses my mind how many relationships have been destroyed due to delays in expressing emotions during anytime minutes.
9 p.m. I call Anna.
“David, I have bad news… As bad as it can get.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t exist. None of it exists. HBO has never heard of our employer. There is no tie between us and them. There is no money.”
I went into denial. I hung up and called Kara back. She told me “I just wanted to thank you for coming out on Monday night…”
She seemed so formal. So calculated. The sophistication had morphed into over-diplomacy. I figured I’d go for broke. Share it all. Let her know I’m a loser and she’s amazing yet guarded and I’m honest, yet my world is falling apart.
So, I read her what you just read. No joke. I read it all to her. I had just found out five minutes prior that I had lost a $90,000 contract, had not a dime to my name, was on the verge of eviction, and now suddenly realizing, that I was destroying a friendship with someone I was really enamored with.
She hung up the phone within sixty seconds of the completion of the reading. Obviously, she wasn’t impressed. My level of honesty isn’t good for anyone. Once again, too human for the human fold.
The truth sets in. My life is fucked. All of my connections know about this job. With my reputation trashed, my crush quite possibly looking into restraining orders, my career over, and my family once again destined to see me as a letdown, I thought about the gun in my closet.
It was as if God took it out of Eric’s hands, and the devil put it into mine. However, for some reason, I still didn’t want to die. The seratonin-dopamine fight or flight phenomena had even failed me a way out.
I got on the phone with Justine. We talked for a long time as I walked back and forth down Hollywood Boulevard. It didn’t matter what she said. Just the sound of her voice. It didn’t just calm me. It made me feel really good. She made me laugh.
“It’s hard to be upset for too long when I’m talking to you… It doesn’t matter what happens, when I talk to you…”
It was so true. Somehow, I related to this girl’s love for others, lack of self-preservation, and irreverent humor amidst the evils of this world. For a second, I felt like an asshole for pursuing Kara, who I couldn’t even talk to, when the person I wanted to share everything with was right there. There was only one problem. It’s not that way between her and I. Both of us, chasing after those we can’t fully talk to. I wish God had never created bodies, just spirits that choose what they project.
The phone rings again. “Dave, we found his house. You’ll never fucking believe it.” Patrick says “We’re gonna make sure these guys don’t try to go anywhere tonight. Do you want to come take turns keeping watch?”
Three of the writers had spent the last couple hours looking for the producer’s assistant’s car, who was rumored to be staying with him somewhere near the CBS lot.
“We’re gonna get these mother fuckers…” Patrick says to me.
Thursday. 10 am.
We are all gathered at a diner near the CBS lot and my mind is already racing with ideas on a script I had put on hold before this all had started. It isn’t over, but my mind is ready to move on.
At the table is John, the supposed HBO producer, all the writers, the costume designer, and the art director that has brought some of the most impressive designs with him that I have ever seen. Incredible really, the minds and talents in the room.
The truth comes out. John isn’t from HBO. We were told he was. He was told that we were. The costume woman wasn’t recommended by HBO, even though her credentials were far beyond needing that. She was referred to Wayne by Western Costume. She hasn’t been paid a dime. Wayne had convinced John that HBO was slow on a wire transfer, and John convinced the line producer he hired to put up about five grand to get things rolling in the art department. Petty cash.
Jesper is here, having known Wayne off and on for 17 years, looking shell shocked, claiming he lost seventy grand of his fiancée’s money to the whole thing, believing Wayne had a deal the whole time fronting the cash.
John relates his end of the story. He finally calls HBO. They’d never heard of Light Force Entertainment, Wayne, or any project called The Real Rome. Why would anyone do this? You would have to be insane. Fucking insane! Wayne probably believed that he could string us along for long enough to get some amazing pages, go into pre-production, get his deal and become unstoppable.
Now, all in all, John and his line producer friend are out the cash. Writers and researchers aren’t going to see any of the money (none of us having worked elsewhere for nine weeks and canceling upcoming gigs), the costume lady is screwed and the art department just plain baffled.
This all on top of Jeff B’s research, finding out the fire stations were required to hire new employees in order to comply with Wayne’s requests, and have yet to see the million dollar vehicles promised by Light Force Entertainment. Jeff B. looks at me and says “Wayne told me his first sexual experience was in a fire station.”
I had thoughts of Rosebud.
I am facing eviction. Have nowhere to go. Jeff B. and his young bride have nothing and a six month lease, wishing they could just go back to Ohio. I hear vague conversations about Bush making it harder to file bankruptcy in the background.
And Patrick, the paranoid coke head, wasn’t paranoid or even on coke. He was right all along. It was a sham..
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “I hate to say I told you so..”
I laughed, holding back my tears. “I’m sorry for you man. I know this hits hard,” he says. He was so genuine. He even turned out to be a damn fine writer.
Now, we just had to find Wayne. And our contracts, w4’s, the researchers’ hundreds of dollars’ worth of library books, you name it.
We got in the car and trekked over to where Wayne, Brent and Jesper were staying. Wayne wasn’t there. We later found out he was in court at the time on Indecent Exposure / Lewd Conduct charges, filed in Pasadena, for crying out loud.
When we got there, the true horror set in. They had been staying in a converted garage out behind a little old ladies house. Wayne and his assistant in one room, Jesper in the other. The poor woman had been giving them free rent, as they had promised she would be working as a production coordinator on the HBO series.
My gawd, how did he pull it all off?
How did this guy, without any cash to his name, get us on the CBS lot, a rented bungalow office, a new lease signed on Lankershim, a costume department employed and put into high gear, an art director, six writers, two researchers and two office assistants all working full-time, and all of this he masterminded out of a little old ladies garage?
I am impressed, to say the least. I get him on the phone. We’re all standing in the woman’s front yard, as she looks traumatized by the news, that this lovely man could do such a thing. “I was counting on that job, since I wasn’t getting any money from them for rent of the back house,” she said, looking as if she was going to cry.
Patrick is yelling “Fuck you Wayne” over and over, flipping off the phone that is currently up to my ear.
“Wayne, we know there is no deal between you and HBO,” I say.
“Well, that’s news to me,” he says.
“Wayne, how could you do this to us? This is sick.”
“So, the writers are going on strike then? Maybe it would help if we showed HBO some of the pages,” he says.
“Wayne, HBO has never heard of you. Sam, the woman at HBO has never heard of you. There is no Light Force Productions. Wayne, you need help. I’m going to pray for you brother. You really need help.”
I believe that Wayne actually believed he had a deal. That to con us, he had conned himself. We were dealing with what seems to be, a total fucking sociopath. God bless America.
It’s been ten minutes, and Patrick is still jumping up and down and cursing the phone in the background, as the rest of the writers sing “Liar, liar pants on fire.” I feel like my heads going to explode as I hand the phone over to someone else, and lament the fact that I’m sure to be homeless in the matter of days.
The little old lady announces that Wayne won’t be staying with her anymore, and that I am more than welcome to the spare room in the garage if I need a place to stay.
I suddenly realized that for me, the worsening of life circumstances had only begun.
While this was happening, my phone ran out of minutes. Shut off. No contact with the outside world. No way to have known that Justine’s mother was in the hospital due to an irregular heart beat. No way to check up on Eric, who I was really worried for, and suddenly felt as if there was no way I could reach out to him while dealing with my own dire needs, and a family to whom I owe money, and have suddenly no way of being supportive of, as my dead grandfather is still hanging out in a freezer somewhere outside of Sumner, Washington.
The ripple affect of this unstable career is showing its instantaneous power. Plus, I still have yet to find a way to get rid of that fucking gun, and I know Eric wants it back.
What’s funny, the biggest lesson from all of this, was how I felt that night that Justine talked to me on the phone. The sound of her voice. The way she didn’t judge my failure. The way she listened and made me laugh.
I still feel so humiliated.
Life comes bashing away at full speed even without the help of something as unbelievable as all this. People die all around you. They kick the shit out of each other and lie to each other. Desire and depression mold some into creatures of compassion and humor, like Justine. Some into bottles of escapism, anxiety and self-destruction, like Eric. Some into guarded diplomacy, like Kara, and some into brilliant sociopaths who run a fraud that leaves over a dozen workers screwed for hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages, not to mention the humiliation and feeling of a career headed towards doom.
Even having tested high on Prophecy, I never saw any of this coming. My test scores on Intercession aren’t seeming to be of much help either.
But I’m still off to pray. Pray for Justine’s mom. Pray for my co-workers. Pray for Eric. Pray for family. Pray for that bitch that is responsible for the fact that my grandfather is still in need of thawing. Pray for Wayne. And pray that I can sell this story overnight and get enough money to keep from getting evicted, losing my mind, and finding myself living in a little old ladies garage near the CBS lot, promising my elderly landlady a job on a project that only exists in my head.
Written by David N. Donihue. ©opyright 2005.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
MCI SUPPORTS HARD-CORE CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
BY JOHN P. AVLON
May 10, 2005
"Faith, Family and Freedom" - I'm in favor of them. And I'd sure be steamed if these American values were hijacked by some special interest in a crass attempt to profit from politics and people's fears. But, lo and behold, little is sacred in an era where the culture wars have graduated from grassroots skirmishes to organized armies. Not even your long-distance calling plan is safe in the ideological crossfire.
For example, a San Francisco-based company called "Working Assets" offers long-distance carrier service that donates a percentage of each customer's bill to groups such as Human Rights Watch, Planned Parenthood, and the ACLU. The company claims to have raised $47 million for these organizations over the past two decades. With so much activist cash available via unorthodox political outreach, it was only a matter of time until conservative organizations used the same strategy. That time has apparently arrived.
It was in late December 2004 when New York-based comedian Eugene Mirman first received a phone-call from a nonprofit organization called "Faith, Family and Freedom," asking if he opposed gay marriage and then offering to switch his long-distance service to a "Christian-based telephone carrier" identified as United American Technologies out of Oklahoma.
It turns out that Mr. Mirman had donated $50 to the presidential campaign of Alan Keyes in 2000. His name was consequently added to a conservative database. Amused and a bit disturbed, he recorded the subsequent solicitations, and added the tapes to his stand-up act. Excerpts of the transcripts speak for themselves.
After the call reaches a person they are prompted to press "1" if they oppose gay marriage. A holding message says "Please do not hang up ... This information will describe how the ACLU and gays are getting gay marriage in every state." The operator then enters the conversation:
Operator: Did you press 1 to oppose same sex marriages?
Mr. Mirman: Oh, I pressed it, yes.
Operator: Okay, that's great to hear. And are you against same sex marriages?
Mr. Mirman: Well, I want to destroy it, yes.
Operator: Okay. That's great to hear... -
Mr. Mirman: Like the fist of God we will smash them!
Operator: Exactly.
In another recorded conversation, the operator describes United American Technologies as "the only carrier that is taking an active stand against same sex marriages and hardcore child pornography."
Mr. Mirman sensibly interjects, "I think all child pornography is hardcore. I don't think there's non-hardcore child pornography." He then asks "AT&T sponsors child pornography?" The operator clarifies by saying "No. No, that's MCI."
Mr. Mirman: MCI has hardcore child pornography?
Operator: Yes, they are. They have a pedophile Web site for men who love boys. It's a Montréal based Web site....
Mr. Mirman: And so MCI basically has a child pornography ring?
Operator: That's correct.
Mr.Mirman: What about the others? What does Verizon do?
Operator: Okay. Verizon, what they do is they train their employees to accept the gay and lesbian lifestyle.
Mr. Mirman: They try to turn their employees gay?
Operator: No, no. They train their employees to accept it.
Mr. Mirman coaxes out the absurdity of the script, but he's no left-wing activist with an axe to grind. Born in Russia, he explains, "My problem isn't with people of faith having certain convictions and wanting their money to support those convictions; it's with a phone company surreptitiously exploiting people's beliefs and fears for revenue. To have a nonprofit call people on your behalf and imply that MCI makes money from the rape of children and that God hates your competitors, I think, is inappropriate."
That's certainly one word for it. A call to United American Technologies shed further light on the fund-raising scheme. I spoke to Carl Thomspon, a senior consultant whose son-in-law Tom Anderson is CEO of the year-old company. He told me that 2,000 people a month were switching as a result of the calls and was forthright in admitting that "our main thing is calling against the gay and lesbian lifestyle." "We're not concerned about offending people who don't agree with us on these issues," he said.
More complicated was the arrangement he described with the "Faith Family and Freedom" 527 organization that had been placing the calls. The fund was created and maintained by the 33-year-old Republican floor leader of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Lance Cargill. The funding arrangement, as both men described it, was that a percentage of the profits from each caller who switched would be directed back into the 527's coffers to pay for conservative political campaigns. This is a hate-speech-fueled food chain between a company professing faith and a political action fund.
Mr. Thompson said that both parties agreed to the script, a charge that Mr. Cargill denies. Mr. Cargill stated that the calls had been recently stopped because of complaints from folks who "didn't appreciate the phone calls," but other organizations continue to place calls on United American Technologies' behalf. This is a rare glimpse into the divide-to-conquer world of grassroots political activists in an age of poisonous partisanship. Some argue that left-wing groups like Working Assets created the environment that right-wing groups are now exploiting. But whatever the genesis, the result is the absurd and ugly state of our domestic politics, where an eye-for-an-eye threatens to leave everyone blind.
+++
Hear the tapes here.
BY JOHN P. AVLON
May 10, 2005
"Faith, Family and Freedom" - I'm in favor of them. And I'd sure be steamed if these American values were hijacked by some special interest in a crass attempt to profit from politics and people's fears. But, lo and behold, little is sacred in an era where the culture wars have graduated from grassroots skirmishes to organized armies. Not even your long-distance calling plan is safe in the ideological crossfire.
For example, a San Francisco-based company called "Working Assets" offers long-distance carrier service that donates a percentage of each customer's bill to groups such as Human Rights Watch, Planned Parenthood, and the ACLU. The company claims to have raised $47 million for these organizations over the past two decades. With so much activist cash available via unorthodox political outreach, it was only a matter of time until conservative organizations used the same strategy. That time has apparently arrived.
It was in late December 2004 when New York-based comedian Eugene Mirman first received a phone-call from a nonprofit organization called "Faith, Family and Freedom," asking if he opposed gay marriage and then offering to switch his long-distance service to a "Christian-based telephone carrier" identified as United American Technologies out of Oklahoma.
It turns out that Mr. Mirman had donated $50 to the presidential campaign of Alan Keyes in 2000. His name was consequently added to a conservative database. Amused and a bit disturbed, he recorded the subsequent solicitations, and added the tapes to his stand-up act. Excerpts of the transcripts speak for themselves.
After the call reaches a person they are prompted to press "1" if they oppose gay marriage. A holding message says "Please do not hang up ... This information will describe how the ACLU and gays are getting gay marriage in every state." The operator then enters the conversation:
Operator: Did you press 1 to oppose same sex marriages?
Mr. Mirman: Oh, I pressed it, yes.
Operator: Okay, that's great to hear. And are you against same sex marriages?
Mr. Mirman: Well, I want to destroy it, yes.
Operator: Okay. That's great to hear... -
Mr. Mirman: Like the fist of God we will smash them!
Operator: Exactly.
In another recorded conversation, the operator describes United American Technologies as "the only carrier that is taking an active stand against same sex marriages and hardcore child pornography."
Mr. Mirman sensibly interjects, "I think all child pornography is hardcore. I don't think there's non-hardcore child pornography." He then asks "AT&T sponsors child pornography?" The operator clarifies by saying "No. No, that's MCI."
Mr. Mirman: MCI has hardcore child pornography?
Operator: Yes, they are. They have a pedophile Web site for men who love boys. It's a Montréal based Web site....
Mr. Mirman: And so MCI basically has a child pornography ring?
Operator: That's correct.
Mr.Mirman: What about the others? What does Verizon do?
Operator: Okay. Verizon, what they do is they train their employees to accept the gay and lesbian lifestyle.
Mr. Mirman: They try to turn their employees gay?
Operator: No, no. They train their employees to accept it.
Mr. Mirman coaxes out the absurdity of the script, but he's no left-wing activist with an axe to grind. Born in Russia, he explains, "My problem isn't with people of faith having certain convictions and wanting their money to support those convictions; it's with a phone company surreptitiously exploiting people's beliefs and fears for revenue. To have a nonprofit call people on your behalf and imply that MCI makes money from the rape of children and that God hates your competitors, I think, is inappropriate."
That's certainly one word for it. A call to United American Technologies shed further light on the fund-raising scheme. I spoke to Carl Thomspon, a senior consultant whose son-in-law Tom Anderson is CEO of the year-old company. He told me that 2,000 people a month were switching as a result of the calls and was forthright in admitting that "our main thing is calling against the gay and lesbian lifestyle." "We're not concerned about offending people who don't agree with us on these issues," he said.
More complicated was the arrangement he described with the "Faith Family and Freedom" 527 organization that had been placing the calls. The fund was created and maintained by the 33-year-old Republican floor leader of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Lance Cargill. The funding arrangement, as both men described it, was that a percentage of the profits from each caller who switched would be directed back into the 527's coffers to pay for conservative political campaigns. This is a hate-speech-fueled food chain between a company professing faith and a political action fund.
Mr. Thompson said that both parties agreed to the script, a charge that Mr. Cargill denies. Mr. Cargill stated that the calls had been recently stopped because of complaints from folks who "didn't appreciate the phone calls," but other organizations continue to place calls on United American Technologies' behalf. This is a rare glimpse into the divide-to-conquer world of grassroots political activists in an age of poisonous partisanship. Some argue that left-wing groups like Working Assets created the environment that right-wing groups are now exploiting. But whatever the genesis, the result is the absurd and ugly state of our domestic politics, where an eye-for-an-eye threatens to leave everyone blind.
+++
Hear the tapes here.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
As a long time conspiracy buff, I feel I should acknowledge Mark Felt's admission that he is the legendary "Deep Throat." Consider it acknowleged. I'm still curious why he'd wait thirty years to reveal himself, considering that the entire world owes him a debt for bringing Nixon down.
It's a shame. I was always partial to the Haig theory. I still think he could suck a good cock.
It's a shame. I was always partial to the Haig theory. I still think he could suck a good cock.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
I don't know why, but I was thinking about Boston's idiotic Holocaust memorial.
Smoke rises from charred embers at the bottom of these chambers. Six million numbers are etched in glass in an orderly pattern, suggesting the infamous tattooed numbers and ghostly ledgers of the Nazi bureaucracy. Evocative and rich in metaphor, the six towers recall the six main death camps, the six million Jews who died, or a menorah of memorial candles.
My problem is this: The number of Jews who died was not exactly six million. This art is retardedly over-literal and simplistic. I bet the designers think exactly six million Jews were killed.
Smoke rises from charred embers at the bottom of these chambers. Six million numbers are etched in glass in an orderly pattern, suggesting the infamous tattooed numbers and ghostly ledgers of the Nazi bureaucracy. Evocative and rich in metaphor, the six towers recall the six main death camps, the six million Jews who died, or a menorah of memorial candles.
My problem is this: The number of Jews who died was not exactly six million. This art is retardedly over-literal and simplistic. I bet the designers think exactly six million Jews were killed.
Monday, May 02, 2005
In an old post from my archives about the Oscars, I introduce a link to the Onion Oscar re-cap by saying: The Onion has a much funnier recap than I am capable of, although I'm a little ashamed to get that joke about Charlize Theron...
The "joke" in question is
3:15 Adrien Brody introduces Best Actress with a dash of breath spray. The new low-angle stage camera makes amazonian beauty Charlize Theron—winner for Most Acting in Monster—look like a sexy Yao Ming. She'll take on Mothra in her next movie.
For the life of me, I have no idea which joke it was i "got." The breath spray? That was an obvious joke? Mothra? That's not oo obscure. I can only assume it was Yao Ming, who is an NBA basketball player. I learned that just now. If I did know it, why would I even be ashamed? I wonder if I meant I was ashamed to not get the joke.
The "joke" in question is
3:15 Adrien Brody introduces Best Actress with a dash of breath spray. The new low-angle stage camera makes amazonian beauty Charlize Theron—winner for Most Acting in Monster—look like a sexy Yao Ming. She'll take on Mothra in her next movie.
For the life of me, I have no idea which joke it was i "got." The breath spray? That was an obvious joke? Mothra? That's not oo obscure. I can only assume it was Yao Ming, who is an NBA basketball player. I learned that just now. If I did know it, why would I even be ashamed? I wonder if I meant I was ashamed to not get the joke.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Up late watching television, after a late night watching clown strippers. My ears perk up during the commercials during ANGEL, for baby products, particularly a cream that soothes the schreeching infant. At first, I thought I was noticing due to the recent births by a couple friends, but then I realized that these commercials are running frequently. I guess they for the new parents, up in the wee hours with an agitated young child. It's nice that a show about a vampire can be a vehicle to speak to a new parent.
Friday, April 22, 2005
For some reasons it will probably take years of therapy to unravel, I find the following lyrics from Einstein on the Beach to be incredibly moving.
Two lovers sat on a park bench, with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight.
There was silence between them. So profound was their love for each other, they needed no words to express it. And so they sat in silence, on a park bench, with their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight.
Finally she spoke. "Do you love me, John?" she asked. "You know I love you, darling," he replied. "I love you more than tongue can tell. You are the light of my life, my sun, moon and stars. You are my everything. Without you I have no reason for being."
Again there was silence as the two lovers sat on a park bench, their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight. Once more she spoke. "How much do you love me, John?" she asked. He answered: "How much do I love you? Count the stars in the sky. Measure the waters of the oceans with a teaspoon. Number the grains of sand on the sea shore. Impossible, you say?"
Two lovers sat on a park bench, with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight.
There was silence between them. So profound was their love for each other, they needed no words to express it. And so they sat in silence, on a park bench, with their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight.
Finally she spoke. "Do you love me, John?" she asked. "You know I love you, darling," he replied. "I love you more than tongue can tell. You are the light of my life, my sun, moon and stars. You are my everything. Without you I have no reason for being."
Again there was silence as the two lovers sat on a park bench, their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight. Once more she spoke. "How much do you love me, John?" she asked. He answered: "How much do I love you? Count the stars in the sky. Measure the waters of the oceans with a teaspoon. Number the grains of sand on the sea shore. Impossible, you say?"
Thursday, April 21, 2005
I'm, waiting by the radio, listening for an interview I pre-taped last week for 98.1 KING-FM in Seattle. I'm talking about PICKUP, and the Artist Trust REEL BIG DEAL, a film program which I'm curating at Northwest Film Forum that shows this Sunday. In front of me was an interview with Lauren McLaren, a 16 year old condutor. It's like the green room at the Ed Sullivan show. Okay, I'm freaking out.
And I don't think the interview is going to air now. I take it all back. Forget it.
Never happened.
And I don't think the interview is going to air now. I take it all back. Forget it.
Never happened.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
NY Press' 50 MOST LOATHSOME NEW YORKERS
25. Steven Pearlman
Plastic Surgeon
Predatory Park Ave. cosmetic surgeon Steven Pearlman likes to give his business a lift by throwing plastic-surgery parties for teenagers at nightclubs, where he helps 13-year-old girls drinking mock cocktails discover how ugly they are. Sounding like a Dutch techie on a Thai sex vacation, Pearlman once told the New York Observer, "I can generally start on girls at 15." Planting the seed for future generations of facelift addicts like Upper East Side socialite and world-famous ghoul Jocelyn Wildenstein, Dr. Pearlman, who is president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, confirms that in the deranged world of Upper Manhattan there's no self-esteem like no self-esteem.
25. Steven Pearlman
Plastic Surgeon
Predatory Park Ave. cosmetic surgeon Steven Pearlman likes to give his business a lift by throwing plastic-surgery parties for teenagers at nightclubs, where he helps 13-year-old girls drinking mock cocktails discover how ugly they are. Sounding like a Dutch techie on a Thai sex vacation, Pearlman once told the New York Observer, "I can generally start on girls at 15." Planting the seed for future generations of facelift addicts like Upper East Side socialite and world-famous ghoul Jocelyn Wildenstein, Dr. Pearlman, who is president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, confirms that in the deranged world of Upper Manhattan there's no self-esteem like no self-esteem.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Today's monkey news. My favorite parts are bolded.
Monkey believed to be world's oldest dies at 53 in Japan
Mon Mar 28, 2:24 PM ET Science - AFP
TOKYO (AFP) - A black spider monkey believed to be the world's oldest monkey other than apes has died at age 53 in Japan, with her friendliness and a late-life love affair with a younger monkey seen as clues to her longevity.
With her affable personality, Buenos was one of the most popular monkeys at Japan Monkey Centre in Aichi, 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of Tokyo. She died of coronary trouble on Saturday.
"Just as we were preparing to apply for the Guinness Book, she passed away peacefully. She was so fond of people. While lying on a bed, she always wanted to hold our hands," said the centre's manager Akira Kato.
On the secrets of her longevity, Kato said: "Her calm and kind personality greatly helped. It made her life stress-free. Also she started living with a young male monkey 10 years ago, which might have excited her."
Black spider monkeys have an average life span of 30-33 years. If Buenos were a human, she could be some 140 to 150 years old, Kato said.
Black spider monkeys have long arms and short legs, which improve their balance while walking. They weigh about seven to nine kilograms (15 to 20 pounds) with a height of 60 to 70 centimeters (24 to 28 inches).
Buenos had a long tail stretching more than 90 centimeters (36 inches) which she used for shaking visitors' hands, Kato said, adding she mostly ate fruit and vegetables.
Larger primates can live much longer than medium-sized monkeys such as Buenos.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest non-human primate is Cheeta the chimpanzee, the star of 1930s and 1940s "Tarzan" films of which he is the only surviving cast member.
Cheeta turns 74 this year in retirement in California. He was brought to the United States from Liberia when he was a few months old.
Monkey believed to be world's oldest dies at 53 in Japan
Mon Mar 28, 2:24 PM ET Science - AFP
TOKYO (AFP) - A black spider monkey believed to be the world's oldest monkey other than apes has died at age 53 in Japan, with her friendliness and a late-life love affair with a younger monkey seen as clues to her longevity.
With her affable personality, Buenos was one of the most popular monkeys at Japan Monkey Centre in Aichi, 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of Tokyo. She died of coronary trouble on Saturday.
"Just as we were preparing to apply for the Guinness Book, she passed away peacefully. She was so fond of people. While lying on a bed, she always wanted to hold our hands," said the centre's manager Akira Kato.
On the secrets of her longevity, Kato said: "Her calm and kind personality greatly helped. It made her life stress-free. Also she started living with a young male monkey 10 years ago, which might have excited her."
Black spider monkeys have an average life span of 30-33 years. If Buenos were a human, she could be some 140 to 150 years old, Kato said.
Black spider monkeys have long arms and short legs, which improve their balance while walking. They weigh about seven to nine kilograms (15 to 20 pounds) with a height of 60 to 70 centimeters (24 to 28 inches).
Buenos had a long tail stretching more than 90 centimeters (36 inches) which she used for shaking visitors' hands, Kato said, adding she mostly ate fruit and vegetables.
Larger primates can live much longer than medium-sized monkeys such as Buenos.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest non-human primate is Cheeta the chimpanzee, the star of 1930s and 1940s "Tarzan" films of which he is the only surviving cast member.
Cheeta turns 74 this year in retirement in California. He was brought to the United States from Liberia when he was a few months old.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Stolen from Wonkette, this week's most fabulous police story. It isn't quite "COPS meets cock" like Wonkette promises, but it's still pretty good. Some great lines. There's a great scene where Brett Parsons, the star of the show, is giving some police training about how to investigate gay crimes, and he asks the cops in the class what signs they would look for in an apartment to suggest a pair of male suspects might be in a relationship. The police answer: pictures of the men on vacation together, pictures of naked men decorating the apartment, and Village People albums. This in a city where arrests are made in one out of three murders.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Tonight on CBS there is a movie called Spring Break Shark Attack. I'm not going to watch, but I'm glad it's on.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
I'm writing my summary of the Michael Jackson trial a little early, in case I lose interest or something before the end. I don't know if he's a demented, self-mutilating child molestor, or a rare magical being we've managed to persecute, but I do think , when all is said and done, that we all got our share of entertainmnet out of Michael Jackson.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Live blogging: the Oscars
6:18 Wow, Sandy Powell is cute.
6:49 Verne Troyer really does lookm like a rotting pumpkin.
6:57 Is Vin Deisel starring in an upcoming courtroom drama directed by Sydney Lumet? Are yoou fucking kidding me?
6:59 Sidney Lumet's daughters are something else.
8:03 I hope Annette Bening loses.
8:05 Go Kate Winslet.
8:06 I can live with Hilary Swank winning, especially now that she's Annette Bening's mortal enemy.
8:09 Is it true that time just stopped?
8:33 Ha ha! Take that, Scorcese!
8:38 When MILLION DOLLAR BABY won Best Picture, I literally vomited. I haven't been feeling too well lately.
6:18 Wow, Sandy Powell is cute.
6:49 Verne Troyer really does lookm like a rotting pumpkin.
6:57 Is Vin Deisel starring in an upcoming courtroom drama directed by Sydney Lumet? Are yoou fucking kidding me?
6:59 Sidney Lumet's daughters are something else.
8:03 I hope Annette Bening loses.
8:05 Go Kate Winslet.
8:06 I can live with Hilary Swank winning, especially now that she's Annette Bening's mortal enemy.
8:09 Is it true that time just stopped?
8:33 Ha ha! Take that, Scorcese!
8:38 When MILLION DOLLAR BABY won Best Picture, I literally vomited. I haven't been feeling too well lately.
Sunday, February 20, 2005
They day we knew must come has come, and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is with us no more. Long may remembrance of the punguent funk of his savage prose wrinkle the noses of corrupt shit-birds. Good Doctor -- Hunter -- tonight I inhale crushed iquana pineal in your honor.
Hunter S. Thompson in his Woody Creek home, February 1997
Hunter Thompson commits suicide
"Fear and Loathing" author dead at 67
By Troy Hooper
Special to The Denver Post
Woody Creek - Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek on Sunday night. He was 67.
Regarded as one of the most legendary writers of the 20th century, Thompson is best known for the 1972 classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." He is also credited with pioneering gonzo journalism - a style of writing that breaks tradition rules of news reporting and is purposefully slanted.
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who is a close personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death. His son, Juan, found him Sunday evening.
Advertisement
"On Feb. 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado. The family will shortly provide more information about memorial service and media contacts. Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.
"Details and interviews may be forthcoming when the family has had the time to recover from the trauma of the tragedy," Braudis said in an interview from Owl Farm, the rural Woody Creek home he moved into in the 1960s.
Thompson grew up in Kentucky. He is married to Anita Thompson, who grew up in Fort Collins. His son Juan lives and works in Denver. His grandson is William Thompson.
Thompson's books include "Hell's Angels," "The Proud Highway" and his most recent effort, "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness."
HST's most recent, and in retrospect, most poignant writing:
Shotgun Golf With Bill Murray
By Hunter S. Thompson
The death of professional hockey in AMERICA is a nasty omen for people with heavy investments in NHL teams. But to me, it meant little or nothing -- and that's why I called Bill Murray with an idea that would change both our lives forever.
It was 3:30 on a dark Tuesday morning when I heard the phone ring on his personal line in New Jersey. "Good thinking," I said to myself as I fired up a thin Cohiba. "He's bound to be wide awake and crackling at this time of day, or at least I can leave a very excited message."
My eerie hunch was right. The crazy bugger picked up on the fourth ring, and I felt my heart racing. "Hot damn!" I thought. "This is how empires are built." Late? I know not late.
Genius round the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
Herman Melville said that in the winter of 1914, and Murray is keenly aware of it. Only a madman would call a legend of Bill Murray's stature at 3:33 a.m. for no good reason at all. It would be a career-ending move, and also profoundly rude.
But my reason was better than good ...
* * * * *
BILL: "Hello?"
HST: "Hi, Bill, it's Hunter."
BILL: "Hi, Hunter."
HST: "Are you ready for a powerful idea? I want to ask you about golf in Japan. I understand they're building vertical driving ranges on top of each other."
BILL (sounding strangely alert): "Yes, they have them outdoors, under roofs ..."
HST: "I've seen pictures. I thought they looked like bowling alleys stacked on top of each other."
BILL: (Laughs.)
HST: "I'm working on a profoundly goofy story here. It's wonderful. I've invented a new sport. It's called Shotgun Golf. We will rule the world with this thing."
BILL: "Mmhmm."
HST: "I've called you for some consulting advice on how to launch it. We've actually already launched it. Last spring, the Sheriff and I played a game outside in the yard here. He had my Ping Beryllium 9-iron, and I had his shotgun, and about 100 yards away, we had a linoleum green and a flag set up. He was pitching toward the green. And I was standing about 10 feet away from him, with the alley-sweeper. And my objective was to blow his ball off course, like a clay pigeon."
BILL: (Laughs.)
HST: "It didn't work at first. The birdshot I was using was too small. But double-aught buck finally worked for sure. And it was fun."
BILL: (Chuckles.)
HST: "OK, I didn't want to wake you up, but I knew you'd want to be in on the ground floor of this thing."
BILL: (Silence.)
HST: "Do you want to discuss this tomorrow?"
BILL: "Sure."
HST: "Excellent."
BILL: "I think I might have a queer dream about it now, but ..." (Laughs.)
HST: "This sport has a HUGE future. Golf in America will soon come to this."
BILL: "It will bring a whole new meaning to the words 'Driving Range'."
HST: "Especially when you stack them on top of each other. I've seen it in Japan."
BILL: "They definitely have multi-level driving ranges. Yes."
HST: (Laughs.) "How does that work? Do they have extremely high ceilings?"
BILL: "No. The roof above your tee only projects out about 10 feet, and they have another range right above you. It's like they took the façade off a building. People would be hanging out of their offices."
HST: "I see. It's like one of those original Hyatt Regency Hotels. Like an atrium. In the middle of the building you could jump straight down into the lobby?"
BILL: "Exactly like that!"
HST: "It's like people driving balls from one balcony to the next."
BILL: (Laughs.) "Yes, they could."
HST: "I could be on the eighth floor and you on the sixth? Or on the fifteenth. And we'd be driving across a lake."
BILL: "They have flags out every 150 yards, every 200 yards, every 250 yards. It's just whether you are hitting it at ground level, or from five stories up."
HST: "I want to find out more about this. This definitely has a future to it."
BILL: "They have one here in the city -- down at Chelsea Pier."
HST: "You must have played a lot of golf in Japan."
BILL: "Not much; I just had one really great day of golf. I worked most of the time. But I did play one beautiful golf course. They have seasonal greens, two different types of grass. It's really beautiful."
HST: "Well, I'm writing a column for ESPN.com and I want to know if you like my new golf idea. A two-man team."
BILL: "Well, with all safety in mind, yes. Two-man team? Yeah! That sounds great. I think it would create a whole new look. It would create a whole new clothing line."
HST: "Absolutely. You'll need a whole new wardrobe for this game."
BILL: "Shooting glasses and everything."
HST: "We'll obviously have to make a movie. This will mushroom or mutate -- either way -- into a real craze. And given the mood of this country, being that a lot of people in the mood to play golf are also in the mood to shoot something, I think it would take off like a gigantic fad."
BILL: "I think the two-man team idea would be wonderful competition and is something the Ryder Cup would pick up on."
HST: "I was talking with the Sheriff about it earlier. But in one-man competition, I'd have to compete against you, say, in both of the arts -- the shooting AND the golfing. But if you do the Ryder Cup, you'd have to have the clothing line first. I'm going to write about this for ESPN tonight. I'm naming you and the Sheriff as the founding consultants."
BILL: "Sounds good."
HST: "OK, I'll call you tomorrow. And by the way, I'll see if I can twist some arms and get you an Oscar. But I want a Nobel Prize in return."
BILL: "Well, we can work together on this. This is definitely a team challenge." (Laughing.)
HST: "OK. We'll talk tomorrow."
BILL: "Good night."
So there it is. Shotgun Golf will soon take America by storm. I see it as the first truly violent leisure sport. Millions will crave it.
* * * * *
Shotgun Golf was invented in the ominous summer of 2004 AD, right here at the Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colo. The first game was played between me and Sheriff Bob Braudis, on the ancient Bomb & Shooting Range of the Woody Creek Rod & Gun Club. It was witnessed by many members and other invited guests, and filmed for historical purposes by Dr. Thompson on Super-Beta videotape.
The game consists of one golfer, one shooter and a field judge. The purpose of the game is to shoot your opponent's high-flying golf ball out of the air with a finely-tuned 12-gauge shotgun, thus preventing him (your opponent) from lofting a 9-iron approach shot onto a distant "green" and making a "hole in one." Points are scored by blasting your opponent's shiny new Titleist out of the air and causing his shot to fail miserably. That earns you two points.
But if you miss and your enemy holes out, he (or she) wins two points when his ball hits and stays on the green.
And after that, you trade places and equipment, and move on to round 2.
My patent is pending, and the train is leaving the station, and Murray is a Founding Consultant, along with the Sheriff, and Keith Richards, etc., etc. Invest now or forever hold your peace.
* * * * *
As for Bill's triumphant finish at Pebble Beach, I am almost insanely proud of him. He is an elegant athlete in the finest Murray tradition. Bill is a dangerous brute with the fastest reflexes in Hollywood, but he is suave, and that is why I trust him even more than I trust all his brothers. Yes, I say Hallelujah, praise Jesus. Where is Brian? I will need him for this golf project, if only to offset Bill's bitchiness. We will march on a road of bones.
OK. Back to business. It was Bill Murray who taught me how to mortify your opponents in any sporting contest, honest or otherwise. He taught me my humiliating PGA fadeaway shot, which has earned me a lot of money ... after that, I taught him how to swim, and then I introduced him to the shooting arts, and now he wins everything he touches. Welcome to the future of America. Welcome to Shotgun Golf.
So long and Mahalo.
Hunter.
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville, Ky. His books include "Hell's Angels," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," "The Great Shark Hunt," "The Curse of Lono," "Generation of Swine," "Songs of the Doomed," "Screwjack," "Better Than Sex," "The Proud Highway," "The Rum Diary," and "Fear and Loathing in America." His latest book, "Kingdom of Fear," has just been released. A regular contributor to various national and international publications, Thompson now lives in a fortified compound near Aspen, Colo. His column, "Hey, Rube," appears regularly on Page 2.
Hunter S. Thompson in his Woody Creek home, February 1997
Hunter Thompson commits suicide
"Fear and Loathing" author dead at 67
By Troy Hooper
Special to The Denver Post
Woody Creek - Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Woody Creek on Sunday night. He was 67.
Regarded as one of the most legendary writers of the 20th century, Thompson is best known for the 1972 classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." He is also credited with pioneering gonzo journalism - a style of writing that breaks tradition rules of news reporting and is purposefully slanted.
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who is a close personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death. His son, Juan, found him Sunday evening.
Advertisement
"On Feb. 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado. The family will shortly provide more information about memorial service and media contacts. Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.
"Details and interviews may be forthcoming when the family has had the time to recover from the trauma of the tragedy," Braudis said in an interview from Owl Farm, the rural Woody Creek home he moved into in the 1960s.
Thompson grew up in Kentucky. He is married to Anita Thompson, who grew up in Fort Collins. His son Juan lives and works in Denver. His grandson is William Thompson.
Thompson's books include "Hell's Angels," "The Proud Highway" and his most recent effort, "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness."
HST's most recent, and in retrospect, most poignant writing:
Shotgun Golf With Bill Murray
By Hunter S. Thompson
The death of professional hockey in AMERICA is a nasty omen for people with heavy investments in NHL teams. But to me, it meant little or nothing -- and that's why I called Bill Murray with an idea that would change both our lives forever.
It was 3:30 on a dark Tuesday morning when I heard the phone ring on his personal line in New Jersey. "Good thinking," I said to myself as I fired up a thin Cohiba. "He's bound to be wide awake and crackling at this time of day, or at least I can leave a very excited message."
My eerie hunch was right. The crazy bugger picked up on the fourth ring, and I felt my heart racing. "Hot damn!" I thought. "This is how empires are built." Late? I know not late.
Genius round the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
Herman Melville said that in the winter of 1914, and Murray is keenly aware of it. Only a madman would call a legend of Bill Murray's stature at 3:33 a.m. for no good reason at all. It would be a career-ending move, and also profoundly rude.
But my reason was better than good ...
* * * * *
BILL: "Hello?"
HST: "Hi, Bill, it's Hunter."
BILL: "Hi, Hunter."
HST: "Are you ready for a powerful idea? I want to ask you about golf in Japan. I understand they're building vertical driving ranges on top of each other."
BILL (sounding strangely alert): "Yes, they have them outdoors, under roofs ..."
HST: "I've seen pictures. I thought they looked like bowling alleys stacked on top of each other."
BILL: (Laughs.)
HST: "I'm working on a profoundly goofy story here. It's wonderful. I've invented a new sport. It's called Shotgun Golf. We will rule the world with this thing."
BILL: "Mmhmm."
HST: "I've called you for some consulting advice on how to launch it. We've actually already launched it. Last spring, the Sheriff and I played a game outside in the yard here. He had my Ping Beryllium 9-iron, and I had his shotgun, and about 100 yards away, we had a linoleum green and a flag set up. He was pitching toward the green. And I was standing about 10 feet away from him, with the alley-sweeper. And my objective was to blow his ball off course, like a clay pigeon."
BILL: (Laughs.)
HST: "It didn't work at first. The birdshot I was using was too small. But double-aught buck finally worked for sure. And it was fun."
BILL: (Chuckles.)
HST: "OK, I didn't want to wake you up, but I knew you'd want to be in on the ground floor of this thing."
BILL: (Silence.)
HST: "Do you want to discuss this tomorrow?"
BILL: "Sure."
HST: "Excellent."
BILL: "I think I might have a queer dream about it now, but ..." (Laughs.)
HST: "This sport has a HUGE future. Golf in America will soon come to this."
BILL: "It will bring a whole new meaning to the words 'Driving Range'."
HST: "Especially when you stack them on top of each other. I've seen it in Japan."
BILL: "They definitely have multi-level driving ranges. Yes."
HST: (Laughs.) "How does that work? Do they have extremely high ceilings?"
BILL: "No. The roof above your tee only projects out about 10 feet, and they have another range right above you. It's like they took the façade off a building. People would be hanging out of their offices."
HST: "I see. It's like one of those original Hyatt Regency Hotels. Like an atrium. In the middle of the building you could jump straight down into the lobby?"
BILL: "Exactly like that!"
HST: "It's like people driving balls from one balcony to the next."
BILL: (Laughs.) "Yes, they could."
HST: "I could be on the eighth floor and you on the sixth? Or on the fifteenth. And we'd be driving across a lake."
BILL: "They have flags out every 150 yards, every 200 yards, every 250 yards. It's just whether you are hitting it at ground level, or from five stories up."
HST: "I want to find out more about this. This definitely has a future to it."
BILL: "They have one here in the city -- down at Chelsea Pier."
HST: "You must have played a lot of golf in Japan."
BILL: "Not much; I just had one really great day of golf. I worked most of the time. But I did play one beautiful golf course. They have seasonal greens, two different types of grass. It's really beautiful."
HST: "Well, I'm writing a column for ESPN.com and I want to know if you like my new golf idea. A two-man team."
BILL: "Well, with all safety in mind, yes. Two-man team? Yeah! That sounds great. I think it would create a whole new look. It would create a whole new clothing line."
HST: "Absolutely. You'll need a whole new wardrobe for this game."
BILL: "Shooting glasses and everything."
HST: "We'll obviously have to make a movie. This will mushroom or mutate -- either way -- into a real craze. And given the mood of this country, being that a lot of people in the mood to play golf are also in the mood to shoot something, I think it would take off like a gigantic fad."
BILL: "I think the two-man team idea would be wonderful competition and is something the Ryder Cup would pick up on."
HST: "I was talking with the Sheriff about it earlier. But in one-man competition, I'd have to compete against you, say, in both of the arts -- the shooting AND the golfing. But if you do the Ryder Cup, you'd have to have the clothing line first. I'm going to write about this for ESPN tonight. I'm naming you and the Sheriff as the founding consultants."
BILL: "Sounds good."
HST: "OK, I'll call you tomorrow. And by the way, I'll see if I can twist some arms and get you an Oscar. But I want a Nobel Prize in return."
BILL: "Well, we can work together on this. This is definitely a team challenge." (Laughing.)
HST: "OK. We'll talk tomorrow."
BILL: "Good night."
So there it is. Shotgun Golf will soon take America by storm. I see it as the first truly violent leisure sport. Millions will crave it.
* * * * *
Shotgun Golf was invented in the ominous summer of 2004 AD, right here at the Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colo. The first game was played between me and Sheriff Bob Braudis, on the ancient Bomb & Shooting Range of the Woody Creek Rod & Gun Club. It was witnessed by many members and other invited guests, and filmed for historical purposes by Dr. Thompson on Super-Beta videotape.
The game consists of one golfer, one shooter and a field judge. The purpose of the game is to shoot your opponent's high-flying golf ball out of the air with a finely-tuned 12-gauge shotgun, thus preventing him (your opponent) from lofting a 9-iron approach shot onto a distant "green" and making a "hole in one." Points are scored by blasting your opponent's shiny new Titleist out of the air and causing his shot to fail miserably. That earns you two points.
But if you miss and your enemy holes out, he (or she) wins two points when his ball hits and stays on the green.
And after that, you trade places and equipment, and move on to round 2.
My patent is pending, and the train is leaving the station, and Murray is a Founding Consultant, along with the Sheriff, and Keith Richards, etc., etc. Invest now or forever hold your peace.
* * * * *
As for Bill's triumphant finish at Pebble Beach, I am almost insanely proud of him. He is an elegant athlete in the finest Murray tradition. Bill is a dangerous brute with the fastest reflexes in Hollywood, but he is suave, and that is why I trust him even more than I trust all his brothers. Yes, I say Hallelujah, praise Jesus. Where is Brian? I will need him for this golf project, if only to offset Bill's bitchiness. We will march on a road of bones.
OK. Back to business. It was Bill Murray who taught me how to mortify your opponents in any sporting contest, honest or otherwise. He taught me my humiliating PGA fadeaway shot, which has earned me a lot of money ... after that, I taught him how to swim, and then I introduced him to the shooting arts, and now he wins everything he touches. Welcome to the future of America. Welcome to Shotgun Golf.
So long and Mahalo.
Hunter.
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville, Ky. His books include "Hell's Angels," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," "The Great Shark Hunt," "The Curse of Lono," "Generation of Swine," "Songs of the Doomed," "Screwjack," "Better Than Sex," "The Proud Highway," "The Rum Diary," and "Fear and Loathing in America." His latest book, "Kingdom of Fear," has just been released. A regular contributor to various national and international publications, Thompson now lives in a fortified compound near Aspen, Colo. His column, "Hey, Rube," appears regularly on Page 2.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
MY SOLE LIVE BLOGGING OF THE STATE OF THE UNION
Okay, not so live. I'm always mystified by the ovation protocol in speeches like this. For example, If you've got children in their 20s, as some of us do, the idea of Social Security collapsing before they retire does not seem like a small matter. And it should not be a small matter to the United States Congress. He then paused for applause. "It should not be a small matter" is not a fucking applause line. It's barely an affirmative statement.
Also, I loved this part: Because one of the deepest values of our country is compassion, we must never turn away from any citizen who feels isolated from the opportunities of America.
Unless you're gay. Or an atheist. Or whatever.
Okay, not so live. I'm always mystified by the ovation protocol in speeches like this. For example, If you've got children in their 20s, as some of us do, the idea of Social Security collapsing before they retire does not seem like a small matter. And it should not be a small matter to the United States Congress. He then paused for applause. "It should not be a small matter" is not a fucking applause line. It's barely an affirmative statement.
Also, I loved this part: Because one of the deepest values of our country is compassion, we must never turn away from any citizen who feels isolated from the opportunities of America.
Unless you're gay. Or an atheist. Or whatever.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
PRESIDENT ASSHOLE
"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person," Mr. Bush said. "I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is."
Bush has been getting flack for saying being religious is a prerequisite for the presidency. But I think he's saying something worse in the above quote: that while he has never said, and would never say outright, that you have to be religious to be patriotic, he does think it is self-evident. Bush is a devotee of the most assholish fringe of Christian faith, so being less patriotic in his eyes is something I guess I'll just have to live with.
I may be wrong, and he's saying that the "attacks" are "the way it is." In which case, I will follow the example of President Bush and his administration, and refuse to admit my mistake and apologise.
I'd like to remind everyone that Bush has the same job as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.
"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person," Mr. Bush said. "I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is."
Bush has been getting flack for saying being religious is a prerequisite for the presidency. But I think he's saying something worse in the above quote: that while he has never said, and would never say outright, that you have to be religious to be patriotic, he does think it is self-evident. Bush is a devotee of the most assholish fringe of Christian faith, so being less patriotic in his eyes is something I guess I'll just have to live with.
I may be wrong, and he's saying that the "attacks" are "the way it is." In which case, I will follow the example of President Bush and his administration, and refuse to admit my mistake and apologise.
I'd like to remind everyone that Bush has the same job as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.
Was the tsunami in Asia the wrath of God? Westboro Baptist Church has the answer at Godhatesfags.com:
What do you think about the Tsunami that hit Asia on December 26, 2004? Was it God's wrath? What about the children who were killed?
The tsunami was an adumbration of the wrath of God, a harbinger of things to come: that Great Day of Judgment. Amos 3:6 "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?" That word translated "evil" there is means distress, misery, injury, calamity. The answer, of course, to the rhetorical question posed in this verse is a resounding "NO!" See also Romans 1:18 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;" And you wonder if this is the wrath of God?
The lands affected by this judgment from God aren’t just full of idolatry; we’re talking about places (think Thailand) that are hot spots where American businessmen travel for the express purpose of fornicating with young Asian children. It is a thriving industry over there; many of these girls are taken into that business when they are seven years old or younger. "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:" Col 3:5-6. And you wonder if this is the wrath of God?
Not to mention the fact that those Asian countries weren’t the only ones affected by the tsunami. Do you realize that among the dead and missing are 20,000 Swedes and over 3,000 Americans? Filthy Swedes went to Thailand - world epicenter of child sex traffic - to rape and sodomize little Thai boys and girls. 20,000 dead Swedes is to Sweden's population of 9 million as 650,000 would be to America's 290 million population. We sincerely hope and pray that all 20,000 Swedes are dead, their bodies bloated on the ground or in mass graves or floating at sea feeding sharks and fishes or in the bellies of thousands of crocodiles washed ashore by tsunamis. These filthy, faggot Swedes have a satanic, draconian law criminalizing Gospel preaching, under which they prosecuted, convicted and sentenced Pastor Ake Green to jail - thereby incurring God's irreversible wrath: "He suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, he reproved kings for their sakes; Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm." Psa. 105:14,15. America, who is awash in diseased fag feces & semen, and is an apostate land of the sodomite damned. Let us pray that God will send a massive Tsunami to totally devastate the North American continent with 1000-foot walls of water doing 500 mph -- even as islands in southern Asia have recently been laid waste, with but a small remnant surviving. And you wonder if this is the wrath of God?
As far as God killing children in His wrath, have you ever heard of the great flood? God destroyed billions of people in His wrath, including billions of children. "And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." Genesis 6:17. Have you ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah? God destroyed all of them in His wrath, including children. "Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground." Genesis 19:24,25. Have you ever heard of the plagues of Egypt? God killed the firstborn child of every family in Egypt in His wrath. "And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." Exodus 12:29,30. Have you ever heard of the Amalekites? God commanded Saul to kill all of them - including infants and sucklings. "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." 1 Samuel 15:3. Have you ever heard of the Babylonian Captivity? God destroyed countless people in His wrath, including children. "Therefore now thus saith the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel; Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling, out of Judah, to leave you none to remain." Jeremiah 44:7. Have you ever heard of September 11, 2001? God destroyed thousands in His wrath, including children. "The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs." Deuteronomy 32:25. Filthy fags and pedophiles have been going to Asia for many, many years to have sex with little children - and suddenly you're worried about children? Shame on you. It is God's prerogative to kill children to punish their evil, Godless, vile, filthy parents and others who were raising them for the devil anyway; they are most certainly better off now than they were in the hands of such evil people. He always has done that, and He always will. Deal with it. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Romans 11:33
And in case you were wondering:
Why do you preach hate?
Because the Bible preaches hate.
What do you think about the Tsunami that hit Asia on December 26, 2004? Was it God's wrath? What about the children who were killed?
The tsunami was an adumbration of the wrath of God, a harbinger of things to come: that Great Day of Judgment. Amos 3:6 "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?" That word translated "evil" there is means distress, misery, injury, calamity. The answer, of course, to the rhetorical question posed in this verse is a resounding "NO!" See also Romans 1:18 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;" And you wonder if this is the wrath of God?
The lands affected by this judgment from God aren’t just full of idolatry; we’re talking about places (think Thailand) that are hot spots where American businessmen travel for the express purpose of fornicating with young Asian children. It is a thriving industry over there; many of these girls are taken into that business when they are seven years old or younger. "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:" Col 3:5-6. And you wonder if this is the wrath of God?
Not to mention the fact that those Asian countries weren’t the only ones affected by the tsunami. Do you realize that among the dead and missing are 20,000 Swedes and over 3,000 Americans? Filthy Swedes went to Thailand - world epicenter of child sex traffic - to rape and sodomize little Thai boys and girls. 20,000 dead Swedes is to Sweden's population of 9 million as 650,000 would be to America's 290 million population. We sincerely hope and pray that all 20,000 Swedes are dead, their bodies bloated on the ground or in mass graves or floating at sea feeding sharks and fishes or in the bellies of thousands of crocodiles washed ashore by tsunamis. These filthy, faggot Swedes have a satanic, draconian law criminalizing Gospel preaching, under which they prosecuted, convicted and sentenced Pastor Ake Green to jail - thereby incurring God's irreversible wrath: "He suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, he reproved kings for their sakes; Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm." Psa. 105:14,15. America, who is awash in diseased fag feces & semen, and is an apostate land of the sodomite damned. Let us pray that God will send a massive Tsunami to totally devastate the North American continent with 1000-foot walls of water doing 500 mph -- even as islands in southern Asia have recently been laid waste, with but a small remnant surviving. And you wonder if this is the wrath of God?
As far as God killing children in His wrath, have you ever heard of the great flood? God destroyed billions of people in His wrath, including billions of children. "And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." Genesis 6:17. Have you ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah? God destroyed all of them in His wrath, including children. "Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground." Genesis 19:24,25. Have you ever heard of the plagues of Egypt? God killed the firstborn child of every family in Egypt in His wrath. "And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." Exodus 12:29,30. Have you ever heard of the Amalekites? God commanded Saul to kill all of them - including infants and sucklings. "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." 1 Samuel 15:3. Have you ever heard of the Babylonian Captivity? God destroyed countless people in His wrath, including children. "Therefore now thus saith the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel; Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling, out of Judah, to leave you none to remain." Jeremiah 44:7. Have you ever heard of September 11, 2001? God destroyed thousands in His wrath, including children. "The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs." Deuteronomy 32:25. Filthy fags and pedophiles have been going to Asia for many, many years to have sex with little children - and suddenly you're worried about children? Shame on you. It is God's prerogative to kill children to punish their evil, Godless, vile, filthy parents and others who were raising them for the devil anyway; they are most certainly better off now than they were in the hands of such evil people. He always has done that, and He always will. Deal with it. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Romans 11:33
And in case you were wondering:
Why do you preach hate?
Because the Bible preaches hate.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Isn't it a bad idea for Mark Levin to invoke McLellen in the context of the Iraq war? I mean, here is a clear historical example of a President acknowledging mistakes, and holding someone accountable for it during wartime. The former isn't seriously expected, because it's implicit in the latter.
Also, I doubt that Grant approved of forcing Rebel prisoners into group masturbation. And if he did, I'm certain that's not the reason the North won.
I hold to the principle that decent, honorable men can reasonably and respectfully disagree about the issues of our time, but reading someone glibly shrug off torture, I wonder if that's possible.
National Review should get their story stright, btw. Currently, they feel that the torture is the result of some out-of-control rednecks, and not the fault of the Bush administration, but also believe that were it policy, that'd be okay too, and maybe it should be policy.
Jackals.
Also, I doubt that Grant approved of forcing Rebel prisoners into group masturbation. And if he did, I'm certain that's not the reason the North won.
I hold to the principle that decent, honorable men can reasonably and respectfully disagree about the issues of our time, but reading someone glibly shrug off torture, I wonder if that's possible.
National Review should get their story stright, btw. Currently, they feel that the torture is the result of some out-of-control rednecks, and not the fault of the Bush administration, but also believe that were it policy, that'd be okay too, and maybe it should be policy.
Jackals.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
HOLIDAY CHEER
Yesterday morning, upon my return from grocery shopping, I was surpised by one of my neighbors. I was unloading my car when he said hi, but I hadn't noticed him, so I started, let out a pathetic squeal, and was like, "Whoa! You scared me. How's it going?"
My neighbor got all snitty. He said, "I saw you driving up, so I thought I'd be polite and say hello. I wasn't trying to scare you." And then he got into his car and drove off.
In my time, I've been startled, and I have startled people. I've never known it to be cause for insult on either side. What a world.
Yesterday morning, upon my return from grocery shopping, I was surpised by one of my neighbors. I was unloading my car when he said hi, but I hadn't noticed him, so I started, let out a pathetic squeal, and was like, "Whoa! You scared me. How's it going?"
My neighbor got all snitty. He said, "I saw you driving up, so I thought I'd be polite and say hello. I wasn't trying to scare you." And then he got into his car and drove off.
In my time, I've been startled, and I have startled people. I've never known it to be cause for insult on either side. What a world.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Couple marry in gibbon wedding
Two animal conservationists have got married in a gibbon-style wedding ceremony in Thailand.
Briton Sam Lake met Israeli Norka Russin while working as a volunteer for the Return Gibbons to the Forest project at Phuket.
Mr Lake, 26, accompanied by a drum band and carrying trays of gifts, summoned his mate by imitating a male gibbon call.
His 28-year-old bride Israel responded with happy monkey calls while swinging down from a treetop into his embrace, reports The Nation.
After the wedding, at a wildlife sanctuary, the groom said: "Once the gibbon has chosen a mate it will not philander."
The couple also exchanged wedding bands, performed a Thai-style water-cleansing ceremony and registered their marriage in the presence of an official
As a wedding gift to the couple, wildlife officials released a gibbon family of four into the wild.
Two animal conservationists have got married in a gibbon-style wedding ceremony in Thailand.
Briton Sam Lake met Israeli Norka Russin while working as a volunteer for the Return Gibbons to the Forest project at Phuket.
Mr Lake, 26, accompanied by a drum band and carrying trays of gifts, summoned his mate by imitating a male gibbon call.
His 28-year-old bride Israel responded with happy monkey calls while swinging down from a treetop into his embrace, reports The Nation.
After the wedding, at a wildlife sanctuary, the groom said: "Once the gibbon has chosen a mate it will not philander."
The couple also exchanged wedding bands, performed a Thai-style water-cleansing ceremony and registered their marriage in the presence of an official
As a wedding gift to the couple, wildlife officials released a gibbon family of four into the wild.
Monday, December 06, 2004
Earlier today, I read a reference to Resident Evil: Apocalypse. It took me a minute, and then I realized that not only did that movie come out, some time ago in fact, but I had seen actually it. I was surprised by this realization.
I'm linking out of a sense of fundamental fairness, but this is really the best one:
The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time
The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time
A Canadian Christmas with David Cronenberg
(1986)
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 2, 2004; Page A01
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.
Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex. But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a critic of the administration who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.
Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since the efforts began in 1999. Waxman's staff reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula -- those used by at least five programs apiece.
The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact.
Among the misconceptions cited by Waxman's investigators:
• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."
• HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.
• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.
One curriculum, called "Me, My World, My Future," teaches that women who have an abortion "are more prone to suicide" and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the Waxman report said.
"I have no objection talking about abstinence as a surefire way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases," Waxman said. "I don't think we ought to lie to our children about science. Something is seriously wrong when federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health facts."
When used properly and consistently, condoms fail to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) less than 3 percent of the time, federal researchers say, and it is not known how many gay teenagers are HIV-positive. The assertion regarding gay teenagers may be a misinterpretation of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that 59 percent of HIV-infected males ages 13 to 19 contracted the virus through homosexual relations.
Joe. S. McIlhaney Jr., who runs the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, which developed much of the material that was surveyed, said he is "saddened" that Waxman chose to "blast" well-intentioned abstinence educators when there is much the two sides could agree on.
McIlhaney acknowledged that his group, which publishes "Sexual Health Today" instruction manuals, made a mistake in describing the relationship between a rare type of infection caused by chlamydia bacteria and heart failure. Chlamydia also causes a common type of sexually transmitted infection, but that is not linked to heart disease. But McIlhaney said Waxman misinterpreted a slide that warns young people about the possibility of pregnancy without intercourse. McIlhaney said the slide accurately describes a real, though small, risk of pregnancy in mutual masturbation.
Congress first allocated money for abstinence-only programs in 1999, setting aside $80 million in grants, which go to a variety of religious, civic and medical organizations. To be eligible, groups must limit discussion of contraception to failure rates.
President Bush has enthusiastically backed the movement, proposing to spend $270 million on abstinence projects in 2005. Congress reduced that to about $168 million, bringing total abstinence funding to nearly $900 million over five years. It does not appear that the abstinence-only curricula are being taught in the Washington area.
Waxman and other liberal sex-education proponents argue that adolescents who take abstinence-only programs are ill-equipped to protect themselves if they become sexually active. According to the latest CDC data, 61 percent of graduating high school seniors have had sex.
Supporters of the abstinence approach, also called abstinence until marriage, counter that teaching young people about "safer sex" is an invitation to have sex.
Alma Golden, deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that Waxman's report is a political document that does a "disservice to our children." Speaking as a pediatrician, Golden said, she knows "abstaining from sex is the most effective means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, STDs and preventing pregnancy."
Nonpartisan researchers have been unable to document measurable benefits of the abstinence-only model. Columbia University researchers found that although teenagers who take "virginity pledges" may wait longer to initiate sexual activity, 88 percent eventually have premarital sex.
Bill Smith, vice president of public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a comprehensive sex education group that also receives federal funding, said the Waxman report underscored the need for closer monitoring of what he called the "shame-based, fear-based, medically inaccurate messages" being disseminated with tax money. He said the danger of abstinence education lies in the omission of useful medical information.
Some course materials cited in Waxman's report present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support." One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 2, 2004; Page A01
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.
Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex. But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a critic of the administration who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.
Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since the efforts began in 1999. Waxman's staff reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula -- those used by at least five programs apiece.
The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact.
Among the misconceptions cited by Waxman's investigators:
• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."
• HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.
• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.
One curriculum, called "Me, My World, My Future," teaches that women who have an abortion "are more prone to suicide" and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the Waxman report said.
"I have no objection talking about abstinence as a surefire way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases," Waxman said. "I don't think we ought to lie to our children about science. Something is seriously wrong when federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health facts."
When used properly and consistently, condoms fail to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) less than 3 percent of the time, federal researchers say, and it is not known how many gay teenagers are HIV-positive. The assertion regarding gay teenagers may be a misinterpretation of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that 59 percent of HIV-infected males ages 13 to 19 contracted the virus through homosexual relations.
Joe. S. McIlhaney Jr., who runs the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, which developed much of the material that was surveyed, said he is "saddened" that Waxman chose to "blast" well-intentioned abstinence educators when there is much the two sides could agree on.
McIlhaney acknowledged that his group, which publishes "Sexual Health Today" instruction manuals, made a mistake in describing the relationship between a rare type of infection caused by chlamydia bacteria and heart failure. Chlamydia also causes a common type of sexually transmitted infection, but that is not linked to heart disease. But McIlhaney said Waxman misinterpreted a slide that warns young people about the possibility of pregnancy without intercourse. McIlhaney said the slide accurately describes a real, though small, risk of pregnancy in mutual masturbation.
Congress first allocated money for abstinence-only programs in 1999, setting aside $80 million in grants, which go to a variety of religious, civic and medical organizations. To be eligible, groups must limit discussion of contraception to failure rates.
President Bush has enthusiastically backed the movement, proposing to spend $270 million on abstinence projects in 2005. Congress reduced that to about $168 million, bringing total abstinence funding to nearly $900 million over five years. It does not appear that the abstinence-only curricula are being taught in the Washington area.
Waxman and other liberal sex-education proponents argue that adolescents who take abstinence-only programs are ill-equipped to protect themselves if they become sexually active. According to the latest CDC data, 61 percent of graduating high school seniors have had sex.
Supporters of the abstinence approach, also called abstinence until marriage, counter that teaching young people about "safer sex" is an invitation to have sex.
Alma Golden, deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that Waxman's report is a political document that does a "disservice to our children." Speaking as a pediatrician, Golden said, she knows "abstaining from sex is the most effective means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, STDs and preventing pregnancy."
Nonpartisan researchers have been unable to document measurable benefits of the abstinence-only model. Columbia University researchers found that although teenagers who take "virginity pledges" may wait longer to initiate sexual activity, 88 percent eventually have premarital sex.
Bill Smith, vice president of public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a comprehensive sex education group that also receives federal funding, said the Waxman report underscored the need for closer monitoring of what he called the "shame-based, fear-based, medically inaccurate messages" being disseminated with tax money. He said the danger of abstinence education lies in the omission of useful medical information.
Some course materials cited in Waxman's report present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support." One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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