Movies Lie.

Movies lie. They're lying to you right now. Okay, well, maybe you're not like me and you don't multi-task- so you're not currently listening to the new Extreme Animals albums, watching Suspiria, and typing a blog all at once. Fine. Whatever. But I guarantee your DVD shelf is sitting there just thinking of all the crazy crap it can tell you tomorrow. And you'll believe it.

For example, the movie prostitute. In the movies prostitutes look like Jane Fonda, Mira Sorvino, or Elizabeth Shue, in the real world, not so much.

Luis Buñuel cast Catherine Deneuve as a prostitute... because he was a surrealist.

Great now you're thinking 'this dude just hired a prostitute- and now he's ranting and raving on his blog because she wasn't pretty enough. creepy.' No. That's not what's going on here, but I am ranting and raving because I was mislead by movies.

In the movies, if you go out at night and solve crimes, you're a hero. In the real world, not so much. Well maybe people appreciate it if you're a cop or a detective. But if you're just some dude in a mask with a cape...

You know, I didn't even get a chance to do anything- I was just walking around, just seeing if crime was going on, just looking, hoping I could find it. Stop it. Then go home. See, but movies, and their lies, don't tell you that it's sort of hard to just stumble upon crime (especially in the suburbs), so you've got to look. I'm sure Batman, Spider-man, etc. do this, but, you know... narrative economy- it gets cut out of the movie.

Anyway, after walking around in this mask and cape for a couple hours I got real sweaty and tired- but I decided to dedicate myself to this so I'm going to stop some crime tonight, damn it! I don't want my superhero costume gathering dust in the corner next to my pan flute.

But I needed a new approach. "Where are the local criminals?" I ask some local residents. They just sort of stared and kept walking. Now keep in mind that I wasn't really expecting to talk outside of a few witty one-liners, so I didn't really have my superhero voice down. But I knew I couldn't talk in my regular voice, unfortunately the only "fake" voice I could think of is the one I use when impersonating my ex-girlfriend- it's sort of high-pitched and I pretend to be playing with my hair when I do it, also I sort of stick my ass out and shake it around. Unfortunately all of those aspects carried over to me asking this question. Hence the reason they probably didn't answer.

Anyway, at this point I start thinking about how movies lie. Then I start thinking about prostitutes. Then I remember prostitution is illegal. Bingo.

I see two more citizens. "Where are the prostitutes in this city?" I ask them in my ex-girlfriend's voice. "Aw crap!" I then yell in my own voice. The citizens point to the corner where a gaggle of prostitutes are standing. Of course I hadn't noticed them because of the poor vision I was experiencing due to the combination of a cheap mask and sweaty eyelids.

I approach the prostitutes. I cleared my throat and said "I don't want to sound like my ex-girlfriend, so I'm not going to say anything, but I think you ladies should come with me."

Anyway, this post is already too long. But that's the story of me punching the prostitute. I just didn't want you to hear it from someone else.

Glad I could clear this up,

Dan.

New Show Idea: Rejected by Fox!!

As many of you know, Dan and I occasionally get to pitch movie ideas to Hollywood studios. Sometimes they write us big checks because there is a small faction of entertainment insiders who recognize that with the complex juxtaposition of images, music, and content afforded to today's viewers thanks to the Interwebs, the average content consumer has a greater, more fundamental appreciation for Surrealism than at any time in human history. Our country, for instance, managed to not self-destruct when that kid with the hair on American Idol made it to the finals or whatever. The only possible explanation is that Surrealism has taken root in the mainstream. Therefore, while you haven't seen this movie yet, or this one, rest assured we'll be on somebody's screen somewhere sooner or later. And we're not talking just on YouTube, either.

We thought, this morning, that our first big mainstream conquest would come by way of a TV show, which we pitched over lunch to executives at Fox, called WHEN SURREALISM GOES WRONG!

Here's the idea: We wanted Fox to go back to their roots -- before they were the Reality TV Network, they were the Lamentable Clip Show Network, which aired such bastions of good-ole'-fashioned entertainment as "When Animals Attack," "World's Most Shocking Moments: Caught on Tape," "World's Funniest Party Disasters," and of course "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol." So we're bringing that back, but with a Surreal twist. The twist is, it's Surrealism going wrong, so NOTHING SURREAL ACTUALLY HAPPENS, and then, at the end of each episode, Dan and I run out and go "Dammit! We screwed up again! Crap!"

One episode we pitched, for instance, was thirty minutes of a locked down shot of pedestrians in New York City, and occasionally, a voice would come on and say things like "Ok, now watch the woman in the green blouse...Wait...wait...oh, and...gah. No!" And the woman would walk offscreen without doing anything of note. Another was documentary footage of clowns getting dressed for the circus, and, again, the voice would come on saying something like "Now, this is the part where the gorilla comes in wearing a suit of armor and tells everybody to get the hell out...(nothing happens)...or, wait. Maybe that was on a different tape."

When we told them that the season finale would be an extended episode offering ninety minutes of dead air, they politely told us they weren't interested. And, by "politely told us they weren't interested," I mean they surmised we weren't really janitors, asked us where we got those uniforms, and had us chased from the premises by some of those zombie dogs from I AM LEGEND, which are apparently on loan from Warner Bros. and remembered our scent.

It's too bad. It would've been compelling TV.

Vince out.

New Mariah Carey Video

In response to Oliver Laric's "Touch My Body (Green Screen Version)" we've made our own version of the Mariah Carey video.

Nine Inch Nails Tracks Angst via Google Earth

For those of you who don't know, Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails never had his mother tell him the whole "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free" adage, and he's started giving away his milk for free (and by "milk," of course, we mean Nine Inch Nails songs, not something else entirely...get your mind out of the gutter). He fired his record company, sold some instrumental CDs for cheap, and now he's giving away the new Nine Inch Nails album.

Today, Wired.com ran an article about how Reznor has posted an interactive Google Earth file on the website showing where people have downloaded the album.



Now, as you can see from this geographic data tracking Nine Inch Nails downloads, there's apparently a whole lot of angst east of the Mississippi River. There's a little bit of angst along the West Coast, but not so much in Northern California, where everyone's drunk on vineyard tours all the time. There's a little bit of angst in the Mojave desert, but that's apparently just from people who have air conditioning. The others living there are too damn hot to have time to worry about being angsty. And then, unsurprisingly, there's almost no angst at all in Middle America. Too busy eating mom and apple pie, we assume.


There is that one big spike there in Montana or somewhere, which we assume is maybe the Unabomber's old place.


Remember the Unabomber? That was kind of a long time ago. We feel old.

Vince out.