Month / January 2006

by Edward Champion

Too Bad Sheckley Didn’t Live to See This

Variety: “A designated operative — the ‘runner’ — has to elude capture by average folks as he or she travels across the country. Game will take place in both the real world and online, with audience members competing to snag a cash bounty by ‘capturing’ the runner. Grand prize is expected to be several million dollars, a value that exceeds the sum offered up by most TV reality shows. Other, smaller prizes could be offered throughout the event.”

All that’s missing here are the guns and the homicidal maniacs.

by Edward Champion

Do Not Adjust Your Set

Okay, I’ve updated to Word Press 2.0 (many thanks to Matt Mullenweg & Co. for extremely clear and detailed instructions; something I never really experienced from the Six Apart people) and the place hasn’t exploded.  If anyone experiences any additional problems, please let me know.  For those who have written in, I’m still working on the Segundo/iTunes issue and hope to get it resolved in a few days.

by Edward Champion

Friday Night Perversions

In lieu of content (we wrote a 3,000 word post in which we were entirely honest and candid about ourselves in a way that we aren’t normally here and lost it today, so we’re a bit bummed because it was a very good post), here are some WTF and certainly NSFW links for your perusal:

by Edward Champion

Sneak Preview of “24′

Seattle Post-Intelligence: “The first 15 minutes of the four-hour season opener…are stuffed with a number of unexpected brutalities that suggest this may be Jack’s worst day ever.”

Here is a sneak preview of 24‘s first 15 minutes.

7:00 AM: Jack Bauer makes coffee. Terrorists have designed Jack Bauer’s coffee pot to break, causing Jack Bauer’s left hand to be scalded with third-degree burns. Jack screams and then squints into the morning sun.

7:02 AM: Jack Bauer scowls, in that uncanny Kiefer-like way. But he is unfazed. He’s seen it all.

7:03 AM: Somehow, Jack Bauer’s omelet has been replaced with C4 plastic explosive. With 30 seconds to spare, Bauer runs out the door. His house explodes in a giant conflagration that can be seen by CTU’s satellites. His lover is dead. The poor sap renting out the guest room is dead. The adopted puppy he brought from an animal shelter yesterday is dead. This time, it’s personal. But isn’t it always.

7:04 AM: Jack Bauer tries to call CTU to track the terrorists down. But he forgot to pay his cell phone bill this month. Jack Bauer growls and grabs the cell phone of a conveniently adjacent 12 year old kid, accidentally dislocating the kid’s shoulder in the process. He calls CTU and reports that there’s been “an incident.” The kid’s father is angered and proceeds to shoot Jack Bauer in the face with his bolt-action hunting rifle. It is revealed that Jack Bauer will require plastic surgery because Kiefer’s paycheck is now too high.

7:06 AM: Jack Bauer steps on chewing gum and cannot get it out of his shoe. Jack Bauer hacks off the sole with the Bowie knife he has hidden up his anus. It is all by instinct.

7:08 AM: The paramedics arrive to take the injured Jack Bauer to the hospital. While speeding on the Los Angeles freeways at 95mph, the ambulance is hijacked. The paramedics are killed, leaving Jack Bauer to take on fifteen terrorists single-handedly in hand-to-hand combat.

7:09 AM: The gurney wheels out the back of the ambulance at 95 mph with Jack Bauer and one of the terrorists fighting. Jack Bauer is stabbed fifty-three times, but the terrorist is somehow thrown off by Jack Bauer at the last minute and run over by a yellow Toyota Tercel.

7:11 AM: Jack Bauer’s right eyeball falls onto the 110.

7:12 AM: The terrorists plant a nuclear bomb in the ambulance and fly away in the helicopter.

7:14 AM: The nuclear bomb explodes, killing thousands of Angelenos. Amazingly, despite being at the explosion’s epicenter, Jack Bauer walks away with limbs still intact and, through the miracle of hack screenwriting, without radiation sickness.

7:15 AM: President Palmer arrives on the scene and gets Jack Bauer hooked up with a special White House surgeon. Jack Bauer says, “I’ll kill the bastards if it’s the last thing I do.”

by Edward Champion

Transcript from “Larry King Live”

The Larry King Live James Frey transcript is now up and features the following exchange:

KING: Do you ever worry, Lynne, that your son’s blatant fabrication might be part of some pathological impulse? I mean, the kid’s clearly sold his soul and lied to the world. That can’t exactly be the mark of a healthy human being.

L. FREY: I never worry, Larry. You see, I’m getting some of that money too. That’s why I showed up tonight. I, or rather the woman I’ve been hired to fill in for, have a vested financial interest in my son’s career. And, well…between you and me, Larry, I’ve got a fabricated memoir in me too.

KING: Do you worry that your son might hole up in his $2 million apartment and start writing an angry book with strangely capitalized nouns about Neal Pollack?

FREY: Allow me to jump in here, Larry. Pollack is clearly a hopeless case. I’ll never be able to live his kind of life. Understand that I hate nobody here and I’m not about to confess to you and the people watching that it’s amused me greatly that you all believed the lies. Even though that notion is wrong. The fact that Oprah was duped and is too proud to confess this has me seriously considering a return to the high life of drugs. But I won’t. Because for all my lies and deceit, I’m a reformed man. And why shouldn’t they believe me? They believed Nixon when he gave his Checkers speech.

KING: You know, Jerzy Kosinski killed himself.

L. FREY: So did Hemingway.

FREY: Greatness, Larry. Isn’t that what we’re really talking about? I’m the greatest writer of my generation. That’s why Oprah picked me. I’m a walking inspiration for hoodlums everywhere. Fabricate your lives and feel the soothing sting of easy cash and liberation.