Tim Burton's "Weatherweenie"

It is FUCKING COLD in here this morning. 48 degrees, according to my Weather Widget. How the hell cold was it during the night? Did it get all the way down to freezing? I don't even wanna know. Fortunately, I have a big floofy blanket and two small floofy kittens to toast me up in this kind of emergency.

Right now all my non-California friends are going "oh, fuck YOU. I've had to chip a layer of ice off my car every morning since Thanksgiving. I don't remember the last time my snot was liquid. I wear my North Face goosedown full-length to bed, and I wear my shearling booties in the SHOWER. In short, eat me."

My friends are MEAN, y'all!

I know I'm a weather wuss. I've lived in L.A. almost 13 years and have basically forgotten what Midwestern winters are like. I've spent a grand total of one week in the Midwest in winter over the past six years or so, and I'm totally spoiled. But don't judge me, because if you move out here, it'll happen to you. You'll break out the mittens when it drops to 60. You'll open an umbrella when it gets foggy out. When a cloud passes over the sun, you will put snow tires on your Segway.

When I first moved here, I thought I was so cool, putting up with weather that seemed to paralyze everybody else. I thought, "Man was never meant to be so wimpy in the face of the elements." Now I look back at my Midwest winters and think, "Man was never meant to put up with that level of horror." Like a guy realizing he listened to his Walkman throughout the Holocaust. "Why did I never NOTICE this?"

When I was a kid, we used to play "Han searching for Luke on the Ice Planet Hoth" when it snowed. We could do this without using our imaginations very much because every winter there would be a giant blizzard or three, or ten, that would last long enough for us to go out and play games in it. Global warming is bringing that to an end for a generation of kids, not that these kids today understand what Star Wars is all about, with their Narutos and their Avatars: The Last Airbenders and their crystal meths and whatever bullshit takes up their time. It's too bad, because winter is MADE for kids. They don't have to drive anywhere, or deal with heating bills, or buy storm windows. Maybe they have to shovel the walk a few times, but trust me, that's easy to halfass. Mostly, winter is a time when fun falls from the sky, when school could be cancelled at any moment, when lakes become sporting arenas and wet sidewalks become hilarious death traps. As a grownup, I don't miss midwinter, but I do miss KIDwinter. You feel me?



Lastly and off-topic, "Sweeney Todd" was really good. Not everyone is going to like it, but I think it's the tightest, most focused, least shitty movie Tim Burton's made in ten years. Not Best Picture (that's "There Will Be Blood"), but great fun.

My only problem with it is that Sweeney's total romantic disinterest in Mrs. Lovett is a fairly major plot point. That wasn't a problem in the original stage show, where Mrs. Lovett was played by a middle-aged Angela Lansbury. In the movie, she's played by the still-middle-aged-but-OMG-who-cares Helena Bonham Carter, who has not been so utterly five-alarm SMOKIN' since "Fight Club".

You know how, in most horror movies, someone in the audience yells "don't go in there!" to no avail? Every time Depp and Carter were onscreen, I was yelling "GO IN THERE. She's INTO IT. Are you BLIND???"

Anyway, it's a great movie for someone with anger issues who is also a big musical dork. My anti-drugs are Sondheim and rage!

Signing off for now. I have to go to Griffith Park and chop some firewood.

So, What Else Is Goin' On

I had my heart broken recently, and a friend asked me if I'd learned anything from the experience, and I said "I learned I can cry WHILE napping".

Seriously, it's a real time saver. Ever look in your daytimer and discover you've double-booked yourself for mourning AND hiding in bed with your head under five pillows? Just try the ol' Weep-n-Sleep. Instead of thinking about all the mistakes you've made in your life until you burst into tears, just conk out and DREAM about them instead. You'll wake refreshed, if moist.

Yes, I got dumped. So I decided to get a cat. Which is a little like trying to kick heroin by drinking a mug of hot cocoa. With one (1) marshmallow.

Here's something NOT to say at the animal shelter: "Excuse me, where are your available kittens? I don't wanna die alone."

Doesn't matter how nonchalantly you say it, they are gonna notice.

I wanted a cat because I am used to cats, and I couldn't have one while I was dating one allergic person and roommating with another. I am not anti-dog, but I am rigidly pro-cat. Dog people will tell you cats are aloof and impersonal, to which I respond, "yeah, well, dogs shit and then eat it." Also they need attention all the damn time, and are unfailingly and unconditionally in love with you. I'm not about to deal with that. I want my pet to be as emotionally detached, rampantly entitled, and secretly needy as I am.

I was explaining this to a friend, and they said, "Not even a pug?" as if that constituted an argument. No, not even a pug. Pugs are dogs. They do not read the Wall Street Journal aloud to you in the morning, or write poetry. They do not eat sunshine or poop music. They, like all dogs, will occasionally take a dump, look at it, and think, "hey, that tasted pretty good the FIRST time I ate it. Do I dare?"

Also, pugs are cute, with their little folds, but what no one tells you about the little folds is that you have to clean them. You have to get up in there with a moist q-tip and ream those suckers out, or stuff grows in there. STUFF. When selecting a pet, you know what you should never have to consider? Smegma. That should just never be a factor, at all. I don't wanna get a dog and then have to circumcise its face.

So I got kittens. I named them Tango and Sushi, but I'm going to start saying the names in reverse order when I tell people about them, because waaaaaay too many people have asked me why I didn't name them Tango and Cash. Here's why: it would be funny for no minutes, and then I would be stuck with a kitten named Cash. And he doesn't LOOK like a Cash:



He looks like a Sushi, or possibly an Admiral Chubbins. My cats tend to get a lot of nicknames; we may get to that point.

I try not to give pets "funny" names, or names that I've drawn from pop culture; I named my last cat Gir, like Invader Zim's sidekick, but I made up for that name by never calling him by it.

Sometimes, though, I hear a referential cat name I wish I'd had the balls to use. One time in Westwood I ran into a ten-year-old kid who was carrying a jet-black kitten; I asked him what its name was and he said "Suge Knight".

I don't know about you, but I buy that kitten calendar. Seminal figures in hip-hop history, as portrayed by adorable kittens? Why hasn't this already been done, by me? How awesome would it be to have a picture of Suge Knight the kitten dangling Vanilla Ice over a hotel balcony? And the caption would be, of course, "Hang In There".

I'm tryin', kitty. I'm tryin'.

Theatrikal Korner

Today on Impresario Paul's Theatrikal Korner, we take a look at the crockery-throwingest acting style of all:

The Method!

Many people believe the Method to be a technique whereby an actor connects their own emotional experiences to the experience of their character, creating a more believable and powerful performance. This belief is widespread but as erroneous as the sky is blue! The Method is actually a technique whereby gorgeous people pretend to have problems.

You see, the trouble with being an actor is that you are gorgeous. All actors are! But sometimes, the character an actor has to portray has problems, such as alcoholism, a history of being sexually abused, or ugliness. Since existence, for an attractive person, is an effortless oiled slide down a springtime hillside of poseys and money, they have a hard time behaving as if anything bad has ever happened to them. And yet, in countless plays, such as King Lear and Urinetown, the best parts (and therefore the parts most likely to go to gorgeous people; have you ever seen a King Lear you didn't want to fuck? I rest my case) are the parts of people who have horrible problems. What's an actor to do?

The Method has the answer. Aspiring practitioners need only sign up for a course, or a series of courses, designed to achieve the desired effect: a convincing display of any emotion other than blank-faced contentment.

Approaches differ. Some classes focus on trying to dredge up actual painful memories from the actor's past. Once in a while these memories turn out to be genuine, but typically they are invented on the spot in the face of extreme "close talking" by the instructor. Any fairly convincing combination of childhood torment and romantic remorse should placate the typical Method acting teacher. The memory is then worked over and analyzed and loudly discussed until it feels real enough to elicit a genuine-looking reaction.

In other classes, the problems are not created by memories of trauma, but by the instructor himself. Recognizing that the students under his charge are angelic beings of an airy-light temperament -- their graceful minds floating as far above the cares of ordinary men as the stars are above the clouds -- he sets about the breaking of their spirits with the care and craftsmanship of a jeweller disassembling a Cartier watch. Treading the kittens of their self-esteem beneath the bootheel of his mighty art, he interrupts, insults, berates, harangues, and petrifies his luckless students until, driven utterly mad, they run screaming into the streets, waving their headshots and auditioning wildly for the part of "Second Dockworker" on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

And that dockworker is going to have believable dockworker problems, thanks to the Method. Remember all the episodes of L&O: SVU you've seen ruined by nonbelievable dockworkers? Well, take those days and say goodbye to them! That dockworker's going to be depressed, he's going to have a meth problem, he's going to be recently divorced...he's going to be a completely worthless, hopeless human being.

And he's going to be gorgeous.

She Meant "Totalitarians"

Once in a while, in the course of my trawls through the "pets" section of craigslist for mammals even more pathetic than I am, I run across a typo so magnificent it must be shared with the world:

"Anybody that understands animals knows that pet care has numerous fascists."

I'll think of some jokes later. I just wanted everyone to see this.

I Still Love Bacon

I just accidentally saw a video of a bunch of dudes chainsawing the head off a live pig. Thanks, internet!

This kind of thing happens to me because I visit this site: http://fuzzysquid.com/LJ.php

There are pages like this all over the net, compiling the most recent images uploaded to livejournal.com, your source for the blogs of a) teenagers who want everyone to know how awesome/sexy/sad they are and b) adults who don't want anyone to read their blogs. These "feed" pages are like glory holes, with the internet dropping its pants on one side, and you the viewer kneeling open-mouthed on the other side. Who knows what's gonna come through the hole? Could be cake, could be jizz, could be pure terror. I've seen pictures of the aftermaths of car accidents, pictures of kittens playing with flowers, pictures of vaginas, and pictures of everything in between (kittens crashing cars into vaginas).

I swear, the only thing that keeps me coming back to the internet is the likelihood that, within five minutes of seeing the most horrible thing I have ever seen, I will then see something like this: Hamster Who Doesn't Know He Is On A Piano

Oh, internet. Let's never fight again.

Emergency Brain Dump In 5...4...3...

I don't like to admit I'm getting older, but I did once describe a blowjob as "fine and dandy". I'm still a young man. Am I going to be in a BDSM club when I'm 55, mumbling the words "that was some nifty fisting!" through a vinyl mask? And if a total stranger asks me to jerk off on her face, will I say "I believe you have me at a disadvantage, madam"?

***

If anyone is wondering how my out-of-town friend's cats, Milla and Logan, are doing, the answer is "fat and retarded, respectively". They are an odd pair. Neither of them meows. Milla is too fat to meow; the air gets stuck halfway down her throat, so she just opens her mouth and makes a face like she's meowing, but then she just sort of wheezes. She can hiss, though. BOY can she hiss. Logan is too retarded to meow; she thinks she's a pigeon or something, which would kind of explain her fondness for jumping four feet in the air and landing on her head, and would also explain the weird "mrrrrRRRRP?" noise she makes, like a bird trying to purr, or a cat trying to chirp.

They were both hanging out on the bed with me yesterday, and Logan was chirping and Milla was hissing. If they were people instead of cats, their conversation would have gone:

"I'm cute. Love me?"

"PREPARE TO FUCKING DIE!"

Cats are insane assholes. Why do I want one so bad?

***

There's a "new atheism" supposedly sweeping the country. I'm not sure how it's different from the old atheism. Is it possible to ignore religion EVEN HARDER??? A lot more people are willing to publicly identify themselves as atheists than has typically been the case, that's for sure. Most of them are being nice about it, like, "maybe we shouldn't base our moral lives around the stories told by people who believed the cause of schizophrenia was demons living in your skeleton? just a thought?"

Anyhow, the whole situation is making religious people panic and trot out every argument they have for believing in God, but unfortunately these arguments are all from the 2nd century and don't exactly stand up to modern scrutiny in the same way as, say, the screenplay of "Back To The Future". That thing was airtight, I'm just saying. Anyhow again, one argument that gets repeated from the highest echelons of theological "research" all the way down to some of my friends goes like this: I believe in God because life would be meaningless and awful if there was no God and I just can't believe in a world like that.

That's actually their argument. "It would be totally awesome if God existed. Therefore he does!" You'll find it phrased much finer the higher up the academic ladder (and the further into the past) you go, but the basic argument remains the same.

That's a mighty blunt logical tool. Your argument might need some work if it can be used to prove the existence of God and, say, R2-D2. Can anyone deny that the best of all possible worlds, in which we clearly live, would clearly have R2-D2 in it? Therefore it does. See how useful that is? Useful to the point of being useless.

When my car finance company calls me up and asks me why I haven't paid them anything in seven months, I can't say "yeah, I know, but you're in luck, check this out: it's really important to my peace of mind and quality of life to have my car loan paid in full, ERGO I do not in fact owe you eleven thousand dollars. You may cease your collection efforts immediately, my brother. I look forward to buying many more cars from you, and paying for them with my MIND."

***

I recently watched the documentary "You're Gonna Miss Me", about 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson. He is a mentally fragile acid casualty who needs loud noise to relax. He turns on TVs and stereos and amps and shit and just sits in the noise with his sunglasses on.

I don't wanna act like the mentally ill don't have their shit together, but can I make one small suggestion, Roky? HEADPHONES. Getcherself some nice big shiny Bose noise-cancellers and a cable splitter so you can listen to the Powerpuff Girls and Metal Machine Music at the same time. There, I just solved all your problems. Like I do for EVERYONE.

Hey, Science: Take A Break

Two of the headlines on CNN.com today:

"Men want hot women, study confirms"

"Study: Rock stars more likely to die young"


Stories on deck for tomorrow:

"Studies indicate that smoke is frequently associated with fire"

"Shocking study reveals inevitability of death"

"Men, women: different"

"Sky: blue? Yes"