Excerpts from My Day Planner:
12pm-1pm: Cry
1pm-2pm: Masturbate
2pm-4pm: Cry while Masturbating
4pm-5pm: Golden Girls on Lifetime
5pm-6pm: Watch Golden Girls on Lifetime, cry, masturbate
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Bar-hack Obama
Why do I love Barack Obama?
I was just watching him on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart". All throughout Stewart's semi-amusing Harpo Marx-esque mugging, Obama kept his sheepish grin. Do I actually believe Obama thought everything Stewart said was funny? That would be a no. Did Obama's sheepish smile seem genuine? Most definitely.
This is basically what I've been looking for since I've been voting (Yes, my first vote was for Nader in 2000. My hands and heart are still black); a candidate who can SMILE like they mean it. I think you can tell a lot about yourself based on your candidate's smile.
Let's take a look:
John McCain:
He's got that; "oh, I'll pretend your joke is funny, even though I'm old, my prostate's swollen to the size of a watermelon and I'm waiting to collect my social security check; what is this newfangled internot of which you speak? I watch the tube-you!" look about him.
If you vote for him, your sense of humor hovers around that "TV Land at four in the morning, either really old or extremely unemployable loner" category.
Hillary Rodham-Clinton:
Now this is the smile of a woman who's been pretending her husband hasn't been "dipping his pen in the company ink" for the past 25 years. This is the "smile at all costs, even though I'm dead inside" smile. "Oh, my life is going to hell? Well that's just swell because your joke is HILARIOUS! Now get me some single-malt whiskey".
You'd vote for her if you were: a scorned woman; a porn star (this smile reminds me of the "wow, that 12 inch cock will sure feel great in my arse!" porn star look), or Bill Clinton; although who the hell knows who he really voted for in the primary; after all, he was the first black president. Ba-dum-bump.
Finally, here's my man:
OK, so I'm a heterosexual, but I sure would love to nibble on those pearly whites. This is the smile of a man who, if does not genuinely find you funny, CARES about whether of not you think he finds you funny; he's the guy who you buy a beer for at the bar because he laughed at your genuinely unfunny quip about modern life, the kind of guy who is gregarious and nods and smirks and takes his shirt off when you rub his chest and...oh wait, I'm confusing my homosexual fantasy with this blog post. Oh well.
You vote for him if: you're me. Or, according to the media, you're a liberal elitist who wants to raise taxes, cuddle up with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and kill all the Jews with your buddy Jeremiah Wright. I always knew I was a self-hating Jew!
I was just watching him on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart". All throughout Stewart's semi-amusing Harpo Marx-esque mugging, Obama kept his sheepish grin. Do I actually believe Obama thought everything Stewart said was funny? That would be a no. Did Obama's sheepish smile seem genuine? Most definitely.
This is basically what I've been looking for since I've been voting (Yes, my first vote was for Nader in 2000. My hands and heart are still black); a candidate who can SMILE like they mean it. I think you can tell a lot about yourself based on your candidate's smile.
Let's take a look:
John McCain:
He's got that; "oh, I'll pretend your joke is funny, even though I'm old, my prostate's swollen to the size of a watermelon and I'm waiting to collect my social security check; what is this newfangled internot of which you speak? I watch the tube-you!" look about him.If you vote for him, your sense of humor hovers around that "TV Land at four in the morning, either really old or extremely unemployable loner" category.
Hillary Rodham-Clinton:
Now this is the smile of a woman who's been pretending her husband hasn't been "dipping his pen in the company ink" for the past 25 years. This is the "smile at all costs, even though I'm dead inside" smile. "Oh, my life is going to hell? Well that's just swell because your joke is HILARIOUS! Now get me some single-malt whiskey".You'd vote for her if you were: a scorned woman; a porn star (this smile reminds me of the "wow, that 12 inch cock will sure feel great in my arse!" porn star look), or Bill Clinton; although who the hell knows who he really voted for in the primary; after all, he was the first black president. Ba-dum-bump.
Finally, here's my man:
OK, so I'm a heterosexual, but I sure would love to nibble on those pearly whites. This is the smile of a man who, if does not genuinely find you funny, CARES about whether of not you think he finds you funny; he's the guy who you buy a beer for at the bar because he laughed at your genuinely unfunny quip about modern life, the kind of guy who is gregarious and nods and smirks and takes his shirt off when you rub his chest and...oh wait, I'm confusing my homosexual fantasy with this blog post. Oh well.
You vote for him if: you're me. Or, according to the media, you're a liberal elitist who wants to raise taxes, cuddle up with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and kill all the Jews with your buddy Jeremiah Wright. I always knew I was a self-hating Jew!
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
15 Years Of Desert Island Discs
My 5 Desert Island Discs.
by me, age 12, 17, 22, 27
Discs by Matt, Age 12:
1) Stone Temple Pilots - "Core" : Because even though they were poseurs absolute, they wrote the kickass music that any 12 year old would love.
2) Guns N Roses - "Use Your Illusion II": Even though I was about 2 years late to the GnR fad, any angry 12 year old is going to love songs like "You Could Be Mine". I remember getting to 8th Grade so happy to have finally gotten into the music that everyone else loved...only to find every kid was a gangsta rapper.
3) Wu-Tang Clan - "Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)": To this day, I can recite almost every lyric of every track from this album. I saw them on "The Box" before they got big and immediately fell in love with ODB. Who could resist?
4) Porno For Pyros - "Porno For Pyros": This is actually the one album that I have not bothered listening to since I was 12. It was among the first tapes that I got, and there were some remarkable tracks; "Pets", "Cursed Female", and the like. I don't know why I never picked this up again, but I just haven't.
5) Spin Doctors - "Pocket Full of Kryptonite": A reasonably awesome album with some really amazing tracks. The blend of blues, Greatful Dead jamming and whistle-licisious melodies have made these songs stick with me longer than perhaps they should have.
After this, I really got into Mudhoney for about 2 years. I was obsessed! I got every single one of their albums, as well as about 10 bootlegs (who would have thought Mudhoney had bootlegs!).
Matt, age 17, lists his Desert Island Discs:
1) David Bowie - "Diamond Dogs": This and "Scary Monsters" were probably my favorite Bowie albums at the time. The "Candidate/Sweet Thing/Candidate (reprise)" suite is a-mind-blowin'!
2) Frank Zappa - "Apostrophe *": I dare anyone reading this (OK, that would just be me) to list a better commercial Zappa album. It's got great musicianship, catchy suites and funny lyrics. Plus all the Yellow Snow any 17 year old boy could want.
3) T. Rex - "The Slider": Simple, whistlable guitar lines with simple, whistlable vocal melodies really combine to make one...whistlable album. Even if I'm not in the T. Rex mood, I can always play a track or two from this "joint" and jam on my air guitar. Also love the space-age, vaguely gay lyrics, and the fact that Marc Bolan was Jewish. Oh, and he named his kid "Rolan": Rolan Bolan. Good times.
4) The Rolling Stones - "Some Girls": Probably the best latter-day Stones album (IE, the best album they've released since "Exile On Main Street"). Pretty diverse too. What other album at the time would have the country honk of "Far Away Eyes" placed next to the new wave of "Shattered" and the disco of "Miss You"? A precursor of today's "iPod-shuffle" albums from the Gorrilaz and N.E.R.D. Good stuff.
5) Syd Barrett - "Barrett": I think his first album's better now, but back then I couldn't resist "Gigolo Aunt" and the "Effervescing Elephant". Looking back, I think people are obsessed with him because what MIGHT have been, rather then what was. Both of his solo albums are really a hit or miss affair.
OK, then I went to college and people started downloading music and albums became worthless relics of an earlier age. Those who still listened to CDs were dragged out into the street, beaten with a Zune and cast into a river tied to a rock to see if they were witches.
I still managed to get an album or two here, but like it was for everyone else, it was about the song, rather then the delectable whole of a well-sequenced record.
Matt, age 22:
1) The Psychedelic Furs - "Forever Now": This is by far and away their best album. I should add an "IMHO", but screw Internet initialisms. Almost every track is bursting with energy; mostly because of the subtle synths and the blistering lead guitar work. Have you heard "President Gas"? Listen to that lead line: it makes me want to punch a transient.
2) The Teardrop Explodes - "Kilimanjaro": Wow, here's another eye opener. Disco bass, super-charged Philly soul brass, angular guitar lines and weird-ass lyrics truly make this sucker a golden remnant of a long-gone era. That was a shitty way to end a sentence, but there you go.
3) Julian Cope - "Interpreter": Again, this is not my favorite Cope Album (that award would probably go to "World Shut Your Mouth"; I just didn't get that one until I was 23), but there are three or four tracks on this album that would blow a deaf person's mind. "S.P.A.C.E.R.O.C.K. With Me" and "I Come From Another Planet, Baby" are slickly sweet camp amazingness and "Cheap New-Age Fix" has an instrumental coda which would melt the wax of any record player you dare put the album on.
4) The Smiths - "The Queen Is Dead": That's one fine album. I think it's probably their best, especially as Morrissey is at his morbid poetess peak and the chugging pop riffs are as catchy as humanly possible. The depressive 12 year old girl smoking cigarettes by the graveyard and cutting initials into her arm inside me totally has a favorite album.
5) Adult. - "Resuscitation": Hey, it's Dance Punk! Remember how Electro got big in the early-naughts? No? Well @$!% you, then! This is actually a pretty good album and I burnt a hole in the CD because I listened to it so much my senior year of college. No one else liked it for some reason! I would play it for almost everyone and I would generally get rolled eyes and one time, someone projectile vomited at me. I remember I thought I would impress a bunch of stoned filmies at my house party by playing this for them, and they walked out! Getting stoned film students out of your house is a pretty tough task, so I guess Adult. was good for something. I suppose people weren't ready for their Nintendo-y drum beats and dissonant female vocals. They were pretty shitty live though; just two people: a singer, bass player and a whole lotta sequenced drums.
OK, Matt, age 27, what do you think?
OK, third person narrator; my ALL TIME TOP FIVE DESERT ISLAND DISCS*
*subject to change on a daily basis.
1) The Beatles - "White Album" - I mean, come on. Sure, there are a few tracks here and there which aren't up to Beatles standard ("Wild Honey Pie" or "Good Night", for example), and it's not as good as "Revolver" or "Abbey Road", but it's got more Beatles songs then any other of their albums and includes 2 of my favorite George Harrison compositions ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Savoy Truffle").
2) David Bowie - "Ziggy Stardust" - This is a close one, because I would almost rather choose "Scary Monsters", but this album gets the nod because it is so perfectly arranged; I could listen to it a million times and find something new each time. Thanks, Mick Ronson.
3) Frank Zappa - "We're Only In It For The Money" - It's a close race between this one, "You Are What You Is", and "Apostrophe *", but this one wins because of the sheer volume of different music on it. I love the 30 second song-snippets, but I just wish Zappa had fleshed some of them out a little more and made them into legit songs. Zappa gets the last laugh because he writes way better pop music then the pop music he's lampooning.
4) The Teardrop Explodes - "Kilimanjaro"- Unlike all the other albums on this list, this has been my desert Island choice since I got it. I don't think it's been demoted or overtaken by another Teardrops disc in the past 8 years.
5) The Rolling Stones - "Exile On Main Street" - This is one album I don't come back to all that often (maybe once every 2 years or so), but I consistently acknowledge that it's an amazing collection of songs that the Stones never really equaled. I could imagine laying back in the hot sun, popping open a cocoanut, snuggling next to my favorite Monkey, and falling asleep while listening to its' melodic hard rock and bluesy interludes.
Good times on Desert Island.
by me, age 12, 17, 22, 27
Discs by Matt, Age 12:
1) Stone Temple Pilots - "Core" : Because even though they were poseurs absolute, they wrote the kickass music that any 12 year old would love.
2) Guns N Roses - "Use Your Illusion II": Even though I was about 2 years late to the GnR fad, any angry 12 year old is going to love songs like "You Could Be Mine". I remember getting to 8th Grade so happy to have finally gotten into the music that everyone else loved...only to find every kid was a gangsta rapper.
3) Wu-Tang Clan - "Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)": To this day, I can recite almost every lyric of every track from this album. I saw them on "The Box" before they got big and immediately fell in love with ODB. Who could resist?
4) Porno For Pyros - "Porno For Pyros": This is actually the one album that I have not bothered listening to since I was 12. It was among the first tapes that I got, and there were some remarkable tracks; "Pets", "Cursed Female", and the like. I don't know why I never picked this up again, but I just haven't.
5) Spin Doctors - "Pocket Full of Kryptonite": A reasonably awesome album with some really amazing tracks. The blend of blues, Greatful Dead jamming and whistle-licisious melodies have made these songs stick with me longer than perhaps they should have.
After this, I really got into Mudhoney for about 2 years. I was obsessed! I got every single one of their albums, as well as about 10 bootlegs (who would have thought Mudhoney had bootlegs!).
Matt, age 17, lists his Desert Island Discs:
1) David Bowie - "Diamond Dogs": This and "Scary Monsters" were probably my favorite Bowie albums at the time. The "Candidate/Sweet Thing/Candidate (reprise)" suite is a-mind-blowin'!
2) Frank Zappa - "Apostrophe *": I dare anyone reading this (OK, that would just be me) to list a better commercial Zappa album. It's got great musicianship, catchy suites and funny lyrics. Plus all the Yellow Snow any 17 year old boy could want.
3) T. Rex - "The Slider": Simple, whistlable guitar lines with simple, whistlable vocal melodies really combine to make one...whistlable album. Even if I'm not in the T. Rex mood, I can always play a track or two from this "joint" and jam on my air guitar. Also love the space-age, vaguely gay lyrics, and the fact that Marc Bolan was Jewish. Oh, and he named his kid "Rolan": Rolan Bolan. Good times.
4) The Rolling Stones - "Some Girls": Probably the best latter-day Stones album (IE, the best album they've released since "Exile On Main Street"). Pretty diverse too. What other album at the time would have the country honk of "Far Away Eyes" placed next to the new wave of "Shattered" and the disco of "Miss You"? A precursor of today's "iPod-shuffle" albums from the Gorrilaz and N.E.R.D. Good stuff.
5) Syd Barrett - "Barrett": I think his first album's better now, but back then I couldn't resist "Gigolo Aunt" and the "Effervescing Elephant". Looking back, I think people are obsessed with him because what MIGHT have been, rather then what was. Both of his solo albums are really a hit or miss affair.
OK, then I went to college and people started downloading music and albums became worthless relics of an earlier age. Those who still listened to CDs were dragged out into the street, beaten with a Zune and cast into a river tied to a rock to see if they were witches.
I still managed to get an album or two here, but like it was for everyone else, it was about the song, rather then the delectable whole of a well-sequenced record.
Matt, age 22:
1) The Psychedelic Furs - "Forever Now": This is by far and away their best album. I should add an "IMHO", but screw Internet initialisms. Almost every track is bursting with energy; mostly because of the subtle synths and the blistering lead guitar work. Have you heard "President Gas"? Listen to that lead line: it makes me want to punch a transient.
2) The Teardrop Explodes - "Kilimanjaro": Wow, here's another eye opener. Disco bass, super-charged Philly soul brass, angular guitar lines and weird-ass lyrics truly make this sucker a golden remnant of a long-gone era. That was a shitty way to end a sentence, but there you go.
3) Julian Cope - "Interpreter": Again, this is not my favorite Cope Album (that award would probably go to "World Shut Your Mouth"; I just didn't get that one until I was 23), but there are three or four tracks on this album that would blow a deaf person's mind. "S.P.A.C.E.R.O.C.K. With Me" and "I Come From Another Planet, Baby" are slickly sweet camp amazingness and "Cheap New-Age Fix" has an instrumental coda which would melt the wax of any record player you dare put the album on.
4) The Smiths - "The Queen Is Dead": That's one fine album. I think it's probably their best, especially as Morrissey is at his morbid poetess peak and the chugging pop riffs are as catchy as humanly possible. The depressive 12 year old girl smoking cigarettes by the graveyard and cutting initials into her arm inside me totally has a favorite album.
5) Adult. - "Resuscitation": Hey, it's Dance Punk! Remember how Electro got big in the early-naughts? No? Well @$!% you, then! This is actually a pretty good album and I burnt a hole in the CD because I listened to it so much my senior year of college. No one else liked it for some reason! I would play it for almost everyone and I would generally get rolled eyes and one time, someone projectile vomited at me. I remember I thought I would impress a bunch of stoned filmies at my house party by playing this for them, and they walked out! Getting stoned film students out of your house is a pretty tough task, so I guess Adult. was good for something. I suppose people weren't ready for their Nintendo-y drum beats and dissonant female vocals. They were pretty shitty live though; just two people: a singer, bass player and a whole lotta sequenced drums.
OK, Matt, age 27, what do you think?
OK, third person narrator; my ALL TIME TOP FIVE DESERT ISLAND DISCS*
*subject to change on a daily basis.
1) The Beatles - "White Album" - I mean, come on. Sure, there are a few tracks here and there which aren't up to Beatles standard ("Wild Honey Pie" or "Good Night", for example), and it's not as good as "Revolver" or "Abbey Road", but it's got more Beatles songs then any other of their albums and includes 2 of my favorite George Harrison compositions ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Savoy Truffle").
2) David Bowie - "Ziggy Stardust" - This is a close one, because I would almost rather choose "Scary Monsters", but this album gets the nod because it is so perfectly arranged; I could listen to it a million times and find something new each time. Thanks, Mick Ronson.
3) Frank Zappa - "We're Only In It For The Money" - It's a close race between this one, "You Are What You Is", and "Apostrophe *", but this one wins because of the sheer volume of different music on it. I love the 30 second song-snippets, but I just wish Zappa had fleshed some of them out a little more and made them into legit songs. Zappa gets the last laugh because he writes way better pop music then the pop music he's lampooning.
4) The Teardrop Explodes - "Kilimanjaro"- Unlike all the other albums on this list, this has been my desert Island choice since I got it. I don't think it's been demoted or overtaken by another Teardrops disc in the past 8 years.
5) The Rolling Stones - "Exile On Main Street" - This is one album I don't come back to all that often (maybe once every 2 years or so), but I consistently acknowledge that it's an amazing collection of songs that the Stones never really equaled. I could imagine laying back in the hot sun, popping open a cocoanut, snuggling next to my favorite Monkey, and falling asleep while listening to its' melodic hard rock and bluesy interludes.
Good times on Desert Island.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Walking In LA
I sip uncomfortably on my Styrofoam water cup. It's free and not soda, so I frequently indulge in its watery deliciousness. As I take stock of the situation, four things come to mind. They are (in no particular order):
Ol' Fish Lip McRyan looks like the last stripper at the club circa 4am. The kind that offers coupons because of the plainly obvious ravages years of unchecked venereal disease and drug abuse have taken on her once merely unattractive body.
1) People in LA have much larger lips then anywhere else in the world: I don't know which consortium of plastic surgeons were responsible for perpetuating the myth that somehow bigger lips equate to "foxy time sexiness", but I'd sure like to beat them about the head with a surgically enhanced wang. And while I was beating them so little globs of Botox mixed seamlessly with the large pools of blood that flowed freely from all of their orifices, I'd ask:
"Why, prey tell, did you make Meg Ryan so nasty looking? I mean, she was hot, no HAUT, before, but now?
Ol' Fish Lip McRyan looks like the last stripper at the club circa 4am. The kind that offers coupons because of the plainly obvious ravages years of unchecked venereal disease and drug abuse have taken on her once merely unattractive body.
2) A Dream Deferred Is A Dream Denied, But If You're Living In LA, It's Reasonable To Deny That Dream If You're 40 And Still Trying To Network And Write Spec Scripts For "The Suite Life Of Zack and Cody":
LA is the land of the broken; long haired 55 year olds producing sequels to horror movies you never heard about in the first place, handing out business cards to 20-somethings hungry for fame while writing scripts about "A Cop On The Edge" or "A CIA Agent Who Must Go Undercover With A Nerdy High School Student", and who, undoubtedly, will be handing out their business cards to the next generation of shitty writers when they're 55. It's the cycle of life; the snake eating its' tail. Vomit.
3) Literally Nobody Walks in LA:
Sure, that might be a catchy New Wave song by three hit wonder MISSING PERSONS, but it's also a poignant aphorism. I think I am the only person who dares walk more then the distance from the restaurant to the valet here. Valet means "personal man-servant" and I believe that pretty much sums up Angelenos attitude towards a lot of things. People here need everything done for them to such an extent that they will pay a "man-servant" 5 dollars to park their car, rather then waste one to two minutes of their precious time finding parking around the corner.
I have literally seen cars go around and around looking for a parking space right in front of a restaurant instead of simply parking around the corner. Perhaps people frightened of walking. Maybe mothers tell their children bedtime stories of the evil "Walk Monster" who eats your soul and rapes your first born if you dare "park around the corner, like a sodomite!"
Now, I admit, after two years of living here, I have adopted some of the lazier habits of the native Angeleno (lardass erectus). I drive places I could easily walk to, I eat hamburgers (I have never seen so many burger joints!), and dip my french fries in Mayo. My legs have become a wobbly gelatinous mess and I can barely make it more then a mile without running out of breath. Occasionally, I sweat when I eat and more often then not I cry while I breathe.
But I still like to go for a nice hour long walk daily; if the air wasn't so polluted, it would be a refreshing jaunt down barren, lifeless streets. I stare at the people in their cars who stare back, their faces saying "what is wrong with that guy? Is he homeless? Mentally deranged? Did his car break down?" A cop pulled me over and made me wear a scarlet W on my chest. W FOR WALKER! Sigh. What's a Northeasterner to do?
4) Frienemies! Or, How to Make Friends and Influence Hollywood!
Everyone is "frienemies" in this town. You're friends with someone (friends meaning a "coffee meeting" twice a year), provided they can get you somewhere in the film industry. The second that person is successful, you're their BEST FRIEND, because after all; you've been friends for so long that you've met for coffee at least twice. The second you realize that person ISN'T successful, emails don't get answered, calls don't get returned, and scripts are dismissed without being read.
Take, for example, a former teacher of mine. I frequently discussed my career path with him, but after a year or so past graduation (and a year or so of me doing PA work), he didn't return my phone calls, answer my emails or talk about me in polite company.
Now, at some point, my film got accepted into the very prestigious Tribeca Film Festival, and figured that I would give him a ring and let him know. I knew he didn't want to talk to me (I had called him two weeks prior and never heard back) and I didn't want to be in an uncomfortable conversation, so I called him on a Saturday afternoon on his office phone, figuring he wouldn't pick up. I figured wrong.
He picked up after two rings.
Teacher: Hello?
Matt: Hey, it's Matt Manson.
Teacher (extremely disappointed): Oh, hi Matt. What do you want?
Matt: I just wanted to let you know that my film got accepted into the Tribeca Film Festival.
Teacher: What?
Matt: My film got into Tribeca!
Teacher: Oh My GOD! Matt's that's terrific news! Did you get my e-mail?!? I didn't have your number and that's why haven't called you! But I e-mailed! Did you get it?
Matt: No.
Teacher: That's strange, because I sent it! I always knew your movie would be a success!!!
There were a few laughable things about that exchange:
1) He was obviously lying, knew I knew he was lying, but just assumed that he could get away with it, because he was saying something nice.
2) Specifically, he lied about sending an email and was lying about knowing my movie "would be a success". He had told me after a screening a few months before that, "if you worked really hard on reediting your film, you might end up with an OK short".
But, there you go. LA! People come out of the woodworks the second they sniff the rancid, putrid stank of success.
After I won an award at Tribeca and was signing a contract with my then-manager, I had a friend I hadn't spoken to in 5 years call me up and ask to grab a drink at a bar. I told him to meet me at 7pm.
He showed up at 8:45pm and may have been wearing his clothes from the night before. This is literally how the conversation went:
Him: Yo! Sorry I was so late, I've been on a coke bender all day. I haven't slept in a week.
Me: Uhm, that's OK. How are you doing?
Him: Yeah, I'm fine. So, can you get me a job or what?
Needless to say, that guy ended up directing a feature film before me. I would hasten to say that has more to do with the "friendship building" power of cocaine in Hollywood than anything else.
So I finish my free water (the concept of PAYING for water is still pretty ridiculous) and throw the cup away. I pass a group of mustachioed hipsters "taking a meeting" in a Starbucks, discussing film and their upcoming projects; one had a script called "Miss Matched" about someone with the last named Matched.
I vomited in my mouth a little, took a deep sigh and headed back to my apartment, which I pretended was in New York City.
LA is the land of the broken; long haired 55 year olds producing sequels to horror movies you never heard about in the first place, handing out business cards to 20-somethings hungry for fame while writing scripts about "A Cop On The Edge" or "A CIA Agent Who Must Go Undercover With A Nerdy High School Student", and who, undoubtedly, will be handing out their business cards to the next generation of shitty writers when they're 55. It's the cycle of life; the snake eating its' tail. Vomit.
3) Literally Nobody Walks in LA:
Sure, that might be a catchy New Wave song by three hit wonder MISSING PERSONS, but it's also a poignant aphorism. I think I am the only person who dares walk more then the distance from the restaurant to the valet here. Valet means "personal man-servant" and I believe that pretty much sums up Angelenos attitude towards a lot of things. People here need everything done for them to such an extent that they will pay a "man-servant" 5 dollars to park their car, rather then waste one to two minutes of their precious time finding parking around the corner.
I have literally seen cars go around and around looking for a parking space right in front of a restaurant instead of simply parking around the corner. Perhaps people frightened of walking. Maybe mothers tell their children bedtime stories of the evil "Walk Monster" who eats your soul and rapes your first born if you dare "park around the corner, like a sodomite!"
Now, I admit, after two years of living here, I have adopted some of the lazier habits of the native Angeleno (lardass erectus). I drive places I could easily walk to, I eat hamburgers (I have never seen so many burger joints!), and dip my french fries in Mayo. My legs have become a wobbly gelatinous mess and I can barely make it more then a mile without running out of breath. Occasionally, I sweat when I eat and more often then not I cry while I breathe.
But I still like to go for a nice hour long walk daily; if the air wasn't so polluted, it would be a refreshing jaunt down barren, lifeless streets. I stare at the people in their cars who stare back, their faces saying "what is wrong with that guy? Is he homeless? Mentally deranged? Did his car break down?" A cop pulled me over and made me wear a scarlet W on my chest. W FOR WALKER! Sigh. What's a Northeasterner to do?
4) Frienemies! Or, How to Make Friends and Influence Hollywood!
Everyone is "frienemies" in this town. You're friends with someone (friends meaning a "coffee meeting" twice a year), provided they can get you somewhere in the film industry. The second that person is successful, you're their BEST FRIEND, because after all; you've been friends for so long that you've met for coffee at least twice. The second you realize that person ISN'T successful, emails don't get answered, calls don't get returned, and scripts are dismissed without being read.
Take, for example, a former teacher of mine. I frequently discussed my career path with him, but after a year or so past graduation (and a year or so of me doing PA work), he didn't return my phone calls, answer my emails or talk about me in polite company.
Now, at some point, my film got accepted into the very prestigious Tribeca Film Festival, and figured that I would give him a ring and let him know. I knew he didn't want to talk to me (I had called him two weeks prior and never heard back) and I didn't want to be in an uncomfortable conversation, so I called him on a Saturday afternoon on his office phone, figuring he wouldn't pick up. I figured wrong.
He picked up after two rings.
Teacher: Hello?
Matt: Hey, it's Matt Manson.
Teacher (extremely disappointed): Oh, hi Matt. What do you want?
Matt: I just wanted to let you know that my film got accepted into the Tribeca Film Festival.
Teacher: What?
Matt: My film got into Tribeca!
Teacher: Oh My GOD! Matt's that's terrific news! Did you get my e-mail?!? I didn't have your number and that's why haven't called you! But I e-mailed! Did you get it?
Matt: No.
Teacher: That's strange, because I sent it! I always knew your movie would be a success!!!
There were a few laughable things about that exchange:
1) He was obviously lying, knew I knew he was lying, but just assumed that he could get away with it, because he was saying something nice.
2) Specifically, he lied about sending an email and was lying about knowing my movie "would be a success". He had told me after a screening a few months before that, "if you worked really hard on reediting your film, you might end up with an OK short".
But, there you go. LA! People come out of the woodworks the second they sniff the rancid, putrid stank of success.
After I won an award at Tribeca and was signing a contract with my then-manager, I had a friend I hadn't spoken to in 5 years call me up and ask to grab a drink at a bar. I told him to meet me at 7pm.
He showed up at 8:45pm and may have been wearing his clothes from the night before. This is literally how the conversation went:
Him: Yo! Sorry I was so late, I've been on a coke bender all day. I haven't slept in a week.
Me: Uhm, that's OK. How are you doing?
Him: Yeah, I'm fine. So, can you get me a job or what?
Needless to say, that guy ended up directing a feature film before me. I would hasten to say that has more to do with the "friendship building" power of cocaine in Hollywood than anything else.
So I finish my free water (the concept of PAYING for water is still pretty ridiculous) and throw the cup away. I pass a group of mustachioed hipsters "taking a meeting" in a Starbucks, discussing film and their upcoming projects; one had a script called "Miss Matched" about someone with the last named Matched.
I vomited in my mouth a little, took a deep sigh and headed back to my apartment, which I pretended was in New York City.
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