Almost 4:00 PM and Still No Jackson Coverage

For me. I just don't get it. Elvis didn't swing this kind of media saturation and neither did John Lennon. Both were higher up the music food chain than Michael Jackson. This was a very troubled man. Pills spilled out of his tummy at the autopsy. (Not that Elvis couldn't swallow a pharmacy in his day.) He built a pretend village and used real people as set dressing. He had sleep overs with little boys and employed a porn director as personal videographer. Yeah, he could sing and dance and was a huge hit back in the early Reagan years. R.I.P.

Let's leave air time for a good police chase, or hill fire or invasion by Nazi dinosaurs.

Go Strykers!

A happy 4th of July to the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Stryker Brigade, 4th Battalion, (23 Infantry Regiment), known as the Tomahawks.

What does all this Army jabbery talk mean?

Let's start with Strykers. Strykers are a relatively new Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) with eight-wheels and more firepower than a South Central LA gang. The Tomahawks ride them into battle. After the troops dismount and deploy, the ICVs provide fire support as the unit manuvers. One of those manuvering will be machine gunner Colin Wells, son of Deanna Oliver, an old Anamaniacs chum.

At 27, Colin is the "old man" of his unit. Deanna used to plunk him down in her office at Warner Brothers where he'd do his homework. He sat with us at our first Emmy Award dinner. (The one in 1994 where the wrong episodes were delivered for consideration.) Colin and his comrades will be in Afghanistan this month, fighting alongside the Marines near the Pakistan border.

So to Colin and the Strykers, thank you for your sacrifice so that I may sleep late, and barbecue and complain about the animation industry and my loud neighbors. Because you choose to give up your freedom and face danger, I have mine. Thank you very much.

I still think we were robbed in '94.

Farewell, Karl Malden

Tom Ruegger sent around more vulture pics and another celebrity passed on.

I really liked Karl Malden in Nevada Smith. He played a ruthless crook who supervised the skinning of Steve McQueen's mom. (Not for real, that was Lee J. Cobb. The legal case drags on.) McQueen hunts Malden all over the west, becoming as callous and hardened as his prey. Malden knows he's being stalked and grows paranoid and jittery, unable to stand the strain of impending retribution. Malden's pleading taunt of "yer yellow, ya haven't got the guts," became a high school catch-phrase we'd fling at each other as a way of pushing someone to do something that would get him in trouble. It usually worked. (SPOILER ALERT!! plus SCANDINAVIAN SUBTITLE ALERT!!)

ht/: frank5400

Death of a Quasi-Famous Grandmother

Back from Pismo Beach (between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.) attending my wife's grandma's funeral service. Virginia reached 98,  once debating Richard Nixon as a sophomore at Whittier High School in, say, 1927? She claimed to have lost a close decision and nursed a grudge against the future president for many decades. Recently declassified White House documents indicate Virginia had, indeed, been robbed as Nixon paid another student to plant evidence with the principal that Virginia was insane. This effected the final tally, throwing the debate Nixon's way and convincing him that winning was more fun than high school.

 In any case, God bless Virginia. She outlived Nixon by fifteen years and certainly got her money's worth from this life. 

Spy Jerks and Animated Scripts

Big squabble between spy chiefs over who gets to pick the top U.S. spy in each country. I guess it's like the swim suit competition. Good thing the intelligence services "reorganized" several years back, increasing efficiency by adding more bureaucrats. You want our guys to do well, but the big dogs arguing in public over turf doesn't inspire confidence.

Back to animation. I finally got the green light on my script - the one where the contract is half as long as the script itself. I'm looking to have fun and maybe get it done by next Monday. I've got that short-story due to go out on June 27 and still need to re-write extensively.

I haven't posted a bad horror movie trailer in days. My hands tremble.

Spies of Tomorrow

On Internet radio, the CIA is running an ad campaign asking for adventurous, patriotic, curious citizens to serve as intelligence agents. Applicants skilled in bureaucratic in-fighting, dodging blame, and document-leaking will be fast-tracked to a supervisory position. Jobs are also available for old school spies, but applicants must provide their own newspaper with cut-out eye holes. Or simply join the State Department, become disgruntled and spy for Cuba. It'll help if you're a zealot with a sweet tooth, because the Cubans only pay in sugar cane.

Big Voice, Big Heart

Joe Leahy's blogging these days. Check out the thoughts of the voice of Freakazoid.

Ditching a Blog and Knee Surgery

I've shut down the running blog and will update here in one place as I've done for the last four years. Starting another blog is a perfect example of pain-avoidance. I have barrels of unfinished projects, yet I begin something new because it's always easier than completing something old.

Be warned. The mind is powerful, the mind is weak, the mind will wake you, when it's time to leak. I'm not sure what that means, but it contains elements of truth here and there.

In any case, I'm calling my orthopedic doc today to inquire about arthroscopic knee surgery. As I understand the recovery process, there's about six weeks immobile, twelve weeks limited use, then twelve weeks mildly busy use before I could think about training again.

Right now, blogging about running has a certain Lives of Others feel, but it'll do until I get going again.

TJ's War in the Central Highlands

I just learned a dear friend died back in Cleveland. TJ's heart, trashed by several massive attacks, finally gave out. His funereal was tonight.

TJ served in Vietnam with the 4th Infantry Division. In 1967 and '68, he fought North Vietnamese in the Central Highlands, moving through jungle so thick that daylight barely dented the gloom. I'd interviewed TJ for a book I was writing on the war. Here's an excerpt from his story. God bless and keep him.


* * * *

Life was a series of brutal routines.
Starting at 5:00 AM every day, TJ and the soldiers of Bravo Company hoisted eighty-pound packs and humped through the jungle for fifteen hours. These broiling, exhausting treks wound through virgin forest. Often Bravo passed beneath dank, triple-canopy jungle, trees squashed so thickly together that a flashless photo would be underexposed.
Had he ever been student council president? A star gymnast? In love with a girl at Ohio State? TJ sloughed off his old life slogging through a fantastic landscape. The Vietnamese Central Highlands were as alien to North Royalton, Ohio as alien could be. Fantastic bugs fell from trees as TJ moved through clouds of coin-sized mosquitoes, awash in malaria. Elephant grass towered over him with razor-sharp blades that sliced open skin, leaving wounds that quickly infected in the tropical air. Once TJ saw a cobra rise out of the elephant grass. As it flared its hood, he hurried off.
Occasionally, he stumbled onto scenes of quiet beauty. TJ was up near the point man one afternoon when Bravo Company entered a clearing. Tall rock formations surrounded a glittering waterfall, plunging past orchids and vines into a small pool. It looked so peaceful. Disneyesque. A moment later, TJ was joined by 19 and 20-year olds, staggering out of the forest, gasping for breath from heat and exhaustion. Wonder had been leeched out of them. They wanted only to rest.
At night, Bravo Company set up a perimeter, cut down trees and made a landing zone for helicopters to evacuate wounded. Ambushes and listening posts crept out into the lightless forest to detect any enemy heading toward the position. Once TJ and two men crouched in terror, stalked by a tiger that circled their listening post, breathing out a thick, raspy “haaaaaaahhh.” They were forbidden to fire rifles because it would reveal their position. (TJ was prepared to riddle the beast and take his chances later with authority.)
Most nights he slept four hours. Sometimes less.
Bravo Company walked in rags, uniforms rotting for wont of resupply. Over time, TJ, who’d once thought of running for congress, lost faith in a government that had seemed to have forgotten him.
And slowly, the war shifted gears.
At first, there was sniper fire, rounds making a high-pitched zeeeeeee as they passed overhead. Then several North Vietnamese would ambush Bravo Company, then dozens. TJ saw men killed and wounded, learning not all wounds were visible. TJ’s platoon medic had once survived a massacre. After his unit had been overrun, the man played dead while the NVA executed his wounded friends. The experience bent the medic in strange ways. A huge man, he would scour the jungle, picking up turtles on the march and stuffing them in his rucksack. At night, TJ and the others watched as the medic sat alone with a bayonet, stabbing turtles.
Once the enemy probed Bravo Company. A wounded North Vietnamese soldier cried out all night. In the morning TJ and several men brought in the NVA. The enemy soldier was wounded in the head, brain exposed. Prisoners were rare, highly valued for intelligence. The Bravo Company commander ordered the turtle-killing medic to treat the prisoner.
“I ain’t helping that gook.”
“I’m giving you a direct order.”
With a shrug, the big man crossed to his medical bag, took out a bottle of iodine, and poured it directly into the prisoner’s brain. The NVA leaped into the air, flopped in disturbing ways like a mad swordfish, then collapsed dead. The medic stared at the Captain.
“Sir, I did what I could.”

Taxing Thoughts

Due to my knee flaring up, I'll miss a fine tax protest today. MDW will represent the family. Taxes are particularly unfair in Hollywood. You may hardly work for years - ahem! - then sell something for a big score. The government taxes you at the highest rate, as if you'd been sweeping in the long green the whole time.

Considering that you're taxed pretty much on every transaction plus state, local and federal taxes, in addition to tax on interest, property, phone/Internet and capital gains taxes, I can only assert we're gagging in taxes. Having worked for the federal government, I can assure you its not being spent wisely. Just spent.

Less, I think, is more. Someone once proposed a simple, understandable, flat tax. And while there's a thicket of special interests determined to keep the tax code byzantine and dense, enough angry Americans, making enough noise, could once again reclaim their hard-earned money.

Greedy? I think not.

Post-Crash Action

A 30-day moratorium on big rigs driving the Angeles Crest Highway. One of my favorite coffee shops sits adjacent to the gutted bookstore, flush in the bulls eye. Let's hope the problem's fixed before a Peterbilt cab crashes into the middle of my BLT.

Sad News

In La Cañada last week, a huge car carrier lost its brakes and crashed through an intersection, squashing cars and passengers, finally halting inside a charming little book store that my wife and I used to frequent. Vehicles crumpled like pop cans, two dead, a dozen injured and three shops destroyed or damaged. 

Alas, something similar happened last September as a truck descending the Angeles Crest Highway lost its brakes, barreling into a coffee shop parking lot next to the doomed bookstore, mangling seven vehicles. No causalities then, but Cal Trans was notified by La Cañada authorities that these big rigs need slowing. Cal Trans jumped right on it and will, no doubt, cook up something within the next geological epoch. 

Our prayers go out to the victims and survivors.

Sit-Com Completed

With the heavy lifting over on the sit-com, I await reader notes over the coming week. Then off it shall go to my agent. In fact, my agent's office left a message for me on my cell phone last Friday. I haven't heard from them in so long, I thought it was a prank call. I'll have to check in Monday, just to be sure. They may actually have work for me, thus throwing off my busy schedule.

See the Astounding Robert Petrella!

I've known Bob many a year, extending back to our L.A. Connection days. This evening, he'll appear on Nightline, in a story showcasing Bob's phenomenal memory. Heavy on sports info, Bob's memory contains so many Pittsburgh Steeler thoughts, the Steelers should pay him for warehousing their past. In any case, I won't forget to watch this evening as Bob puts that heavy duty mind through its paces.

Dogacide

My neighbors have two forms of communication: loud, angry hectoring and unrestrained rage. Mother yells at child who yells at dog: Maslow's aggression displacement. As a result, the dog, a book-sized yappy beast, has become emotionally fragile. I lay down early this evening for a nap, but quit when the dog began a high-pitched, barking jag. Naturally, its neurotic owners weren't home. I considered various forms of quieting the animal: buying a small dog of the opposite sex, poison meat, singing to it. Eventually, the Dysfunctionals returned and the dog clammed up, knowing a drum-load of aggression would soon be emptied onto its wee furry head. It's really not the dog's fault. Mother yells at child who yells at dog who yaps away who upsets neighbor who silences dog with a trench shovel. But they'd just get another. And if I truncheon the neighbors, then I risk prison where I'd sit around all day without meaningful work. Like now. Maybe I'm under house arrest? Maybe this has already happened. Jurassic Park III is on television. Instead of Sam Neil and Tia Leoni, I imagine my neighbors and their dog trapped on an island of hungry prehistoric beasts. Then I imagine all the dinosaurs swimming away exasparated. But neighbors and dog remain on the island. I feel better.

Fun Phrases in Portuguese

Onde posso eu comprar os dentes de madeira?
Where may I buy wooden teeth?

Meu tio comeu um carneiro.
My uncle has eaten a sheep.

Let' visita de s uma prostituta
Let's visit a prostitute.

Para o divertimento, nós amarramos um anão a um avião pequeno.
For fun, we tie a dwarf to a small aircraft.

Meu gado está explodindo
My cattle are exploding.

Spain cheira engraçado.
Spain smells funny.

via: takineko

Paul Rugg Thanks Hollywood for Memories

Froynlaven ponders the divide between a typical Hollywood film and entertainment.

Oscar Report

Didn't watch last night. The only two movies I liked - or saw - were Dark Knight and Gran Torino. Heath Ledger won for playing the Joker, but since he died, he wouldn't be accepting the award. If he had died and accepted the award anyway, that would've been something worth watching.

L.A. Connection Days

Spoke with an old chum, Larry, last night. Back in the early 80s, we worked together at the L.A. Connection Theater. Improvisational comedy was the venue. Based on audience suggestions, actors would preform a scene that was hopefully either funny or brief. Scenes ended when the light guy blacked out the house, again, hopefully, on a laugh line. Rehearsals were on Tuesday nights out in Sherman Oaks. As the cast was hard-drinking even by acting standards, our breaks included a stop down the block at Tony's Liquors for beef jerky, Marlboro cigarettes, quart bottles of Budweiser and Auto Club Cocktails - mixed drinks in a small can. (The second half of rehearsal tended to be more raucous than the first, degenerating into bawdy suggestions and cat-calls that prepared us well for our audiences.)

Belonging to the L.A. Connection was money-out-of-pocket for "dues." Most of us were earning little or no dough, living in Hollywood and Silver Lake. We hung out between shows, talked about this show biz job or that show biz opportunity, and kept on struggling and complaining about the director and paying dues and how the dues were spent.

Eventually, Larry, myself and six or seven others coagulated in a cast that performed Friday nights from 1982 to 1984. Some evenings we sold out. Other nights we played for a half-dozen people. You worked with tension. Audience expectations were generous as they saw improv comedy as high wire walking without a net. Nevertheless, they did expect something. Full house or no, the goal was to get laughs. That's what made performing so sweet - bombing sucked the life out of cast and audience. Nailing a scene on a blackout line to big laughs and applause pumped the actors higher than Ozzy Osbourne in his prime.

(I would give examples but trying to describe old improv sketches is like trying to relate a sexual experience - words fail the deed.)

After the shows, we'd head over to someones house to beer-up and watch SCTV, or over to a local bar, the Chimney Sweep, where a pretty, blonde Canadian waitress served us all the alcohol we could pay for. ('So hey, would you like a chuter with that beer.')

In time, we drifted off to this and that. Back then we were in our mid-20s to early 30s. Now we're all solidly middle-aged.

Larry has been working for a casting director for almost 20 years.

Tina lives out in Arizona, doing something New Age.

Ken Segall writes animation and fed me my last few scripts for an MGM show.

Autumn teaches acting in Orange County.

Ken B. runs a dive company, taking people out to the waters around Catalina.

Elaine trains dogs, sometimes for the movies.

Bob produces segments for History and Discovery channel shows. As far as I know, he was the last to perform on-stage, appearing in a one-man show in 2007.

No one knows what happened to Darrell.

As we were drifting out, a new cast was drifting in, including Marc Drotman, Mitch Watson, and some young punk named Rugg.

From an experience that seemed rather cheap and low-rent, many good things emerged. I still hang with Ken Segall who was best man at my wedding. I met M.D. Sweeney and Sherri Stoner and, through them, went on to work at Acme Comedy Theatre and Warner TV animation. Bob and I acted together at Acme and stay in touch. Rugg is a horrible pain-in-the-ass that I can't seem to shake.

And the L.A. Connection rolls on. I still meet young actors and writers who have gone through the Connection, bitching about the organization and the director. Hopefully, they'll keep a few fellow cast members in their lives. At best, they'll have a lot of laughs.

I mostly remember the laughs.

And the stinking dues!!! Did I tell you about the sign party? We were trying to raise money for a sign this one time, see? And instead . . . .

PAMF

Moving some heavy boxes yesterday and jammed my left middle finger. This morning, it had an interesting new crook. I am now in possession of a passive-aggressive middle finger. I can flip a guy off and use the new bend to indicate that I really meant someone nearby at an oblique angle. (Unwise, but theoretically interesting.) Luckily, I visit the orthopedist tomorrow for my knees. While he's got the x-ray out, he can zap my pamf. Between my knees and finger, I'll have enough radiation pumped in me to light up Pasadena. From there, perhaps work with the Atomic Energy Commission. In time, exile to a Channel Island, where I'll glow and kill goats. Don't move heavy boxes, please. Invest in a home forklift. That was my downfall, playing it cheap. Get the forklift. Your family, government and Channel Island wildlife will thank you.