Things are looking up this week as the sun is shining, 'Lost' is back on and we finally finished entering our first script, "Last Train to Amsterdam," into 3 contests that I'm sure will bring us fame and fortune beyond our wildest dreams.
My wildest dreams typically have a Roman theme with wine and Eunuchs and scantily-clad females feeding me grapes as I lounge around with one hand grasping a turkey leg and the other on the firm buttocks of a vestal virgin.
But it doesn't pay to live in a fantasy, and we'll soon see if anyone outside of our small circle of friends will think that the script is any good.
I did receive feedback this week from a client, who said that she enjoyed reading the thing, but that I had a "twisted sense of humor," a sentiment which seems about right.
Let's hope that the upcoming contest screeners will feel the same way, and that they can see past the uplifting dramas about leprosy or the deranged character studies about obscure South American priests and know that what the public really needs is a movie about boy bands, degenerate train conductors and polar bears.
The decisions won't be handed down until the summer, however, and my brother and I (with our respected paramours) have made the necessary reservations and should be sitting poolside at our villa in St. John's when the announcements are made.
I can think of no better place to be than a Caribbean island getaway when we get the news - And I'm going to call ahead to make sure that the Villa is stocked with alcohol, grapes and maybe a few Eunuchs if they can get their hands on some.
-BDS
Much like using public restrooms or watching Steven Seagal movies, I rarely read the personals in my local Dallas Oberver - but occassionally shit happens and you have to use a 7-11 toilet or it's impossible to keep yourself from watching "Under Siege."
This past weekend I also found myself perplexed by an ad placed on the back page of the Observer and it's meaning has been plaguing me ever since. Perhaps I'm too dense or simply not hip enough to catch the hidden subtext, but here it is:
Hot And Willing Oven
Burning for change. If I see another spaghetti dish, I will die. If you're raw, looking to get baked, and fancy yourself a break from the same old same old, then you're the dish for me. Especially interested in simple but delectable creations involving The Other White Meat. Call me at 515-223-2770. I'm already preheating.
For me, this post raises more questions than it provides answers, but maybe that's the point. The message is intriguing and leaves itself open for many interpretations that might pique the interest of prospective suitors.
The only thing I took from the post was that the writer wants to get high with whomever she (he?) dates. I assume the author is female, but even that is not certain.
And what's with the other white meat? Is that simply an "Austin Powers" reference or is she seeking a different racial preference? And is this oven talk a hint that she wants someone to knock her up?
Riddles in the dark . . .
Whoever the author is, she's obviously a sexual creature full of mystery with an appetite to match. Regardless, I would be very careful before dating her because if she's been eating that much spaghetti then she's probably fat as a cat or carrying enough disease to stop a charging rhino at 50 paces.
But maybe I'm missing the point entirely, and if that's the case, then someone please explain it to me.
-BDS
Good Friday is here again and once more I have to wonder why we feel the need to throw an adjective in front of the day.
In my book, every Friday is a Good Friday. It's not like we ever designate something as Shit Monday or Worthless Tuesday (Fat Tuesday sure), but Good Friday has always been known as such, and although I believe there's some religious significance attached to the name, it escapes me at the moment.
I have always loved Fridays.
Some people might argue that Saturday is the best day of the week, but those people are dingbats and can't be trusted. The believers claim that Saturday night is the one for mystery and partying and romance.
All of this might be true, but the great thing about Friday is that you still have Saturday in reserve. You can still get wild on a Friday and know that you have Saturday just waiting for you to use in any way you see fit. If you blow Friday off, however, and try to shoot your load on Saturday night it will end badly because sometime during the night you realize that Sunday is right around the corner (or has already arrived) and that just sucks.
Sunday is the antithesis of Friday. According to Kris Kristofferson, it's a day for soul-sucking lonliness and your horrid condition can only be averted by getting stoned and maybe eating some fried chicken.
Fair advice, but that also brings us back to why Fridays are usually so good because that's the day that new movies are released. Unfortunately, the parade of cinematic garbage is still being served up and the only way to sit through any of the recent fare would be to get so incredibly stoned that you don't realize that Ashton Kutcher has replaced Sidney Poitier in a remake of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."
I shudder to think what might be next on the remake list if anyone thought this new Kutcher vehicle seemed like a good investment. I know I've been longing to see Wilmer Valderra in "Scarface" for what feels like an eternity.
On second thought, maybe all Fridays aren't good Fridays, but on days when at least one good movie debuts, there's simply no comparison.
-BDS
"A thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I,"
- Sam Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Few things in the world are worse than a raging hangover.
Having your toenails ripped off by a pair of rusty pliers or being strapped to a chair and forced to listen to Clay Aiken on a constant loop come to mind immediately, but most things are mere child's play compared to a hangover that beats you like a gong for the better part of a day and only lets you go when it gets bored.
I can't count the number of mornings I have gotten out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom muttering "never again" under my stank breath. Never again will I poison my body with booze and end up at Jack N The Box at 2:30 am and order the Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger combo.
These are all lies, however, because hangovers are like bad luggage or herpes - you can never rid yourself of them.
The best you can hope for is to find ways to cope with an enemy that fights dirty and one that will put your head in a vice faster than a Mafia Don. If you expect a fair fight from a hangover you've lost before you ever started and can expect a day of misery, despair and pain.
The only sensible solution is to go on the offensive.
So, with that in mind here's a recent battleplan that turned into a rousing success for me in the lifelong battle that rages on and on.
8:30 am - Rise and stumble into a hot bathtub with a full glass of water. You might think that sleeping later is smart, but I think the real key is to face the hangover head-on and conquer it.
9 am - Shower and brush your teeth for 17 minutes
9:17 am - Breakfast - This must be undertaken with some skill and you need 1 large pot of strong coffee, 1 glass of O.J., 32 oz. of water, 4 pieces of bacon, 4 scrambled eggs with onion and cheese, side of hash browns, 2 pieces of whole wheat toast, 1 grapefruit, 1 glass of milk and a slice of pie. In addition, take a multi-vitamin, 2 C's, 2 aspirin, and some Ginseng.
11 am - Leave your residence immediately and start moving or you will fall in a heap on your couch and never recover.
11:15 am - As long as it isn't raining, drop the top on your car and put Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" on repeat as you drive to your local Best Buy or wherever you buy your DVDs.
11:30 am - Buy a good DVD or two to watch in the afternoon while stretched out on your couch. My recent additions of "Raging Bull," "Sex, Lies and Videotape," and "Wonder Boys" were an immense help.
12:15 pm - Visit KFC for 5 of their new '99 cent snacker sandwiches.
12:30 pm - Head to Sonic for a Butterfinger Blast and then go back to your place and shower off the nasty alcohol sweats that are ALWAYS around the next day.
1:15 - pm - Bring 2 good pillows and your DVDs and your Snackers and put your Blast in the freezer as you find the couch and throw the first movie into the player.
The rest of the afternoon should be spent guzzling water, eating Snackers and watching movies. After the first film, make sure you eat the Blast before you start the next one and then drift in and out of sleep as the new one plays in the background.
If you follow this system you should be feeling human again by mid-afternoon and ready to strap another one on for the evening. A hangover is an adaptable enemy, however, so I would recommend changing this routine almost immediately, although the best solution I can fathom would be to stay 18 years old forever.
I never remember having a hangover when I was that age.
-BDS
Everybody is Irish on St. Patty's Day.
The actual amount of Irish blood flowing through your body can be minimal or even nonexistent, but on this day, it doesn't matter as millions of Americans will use the holiday and their "Irish roots" to justify a large indulgence of green beer, Jameson whiskey and all things related to cabbage.
The population of Ireland is a mere 3.9 million people, yet nearly 34 million Americans claim to have Irish ancestory, according to a recent newspaper survey.
I'm not a numbers cruncher, but something seems amiss with those statistics or the more likely scenario is that many people are simply lying to cover their predilection for public drunkeness.
Regardless, I have always loved St. Patty's Day and have fond remembrances of drinking Black and Tans until morning and then watching other people throw up a horrible green liquid into their hands and onto their shoes as I made my way to Denny's for a nice greasy breakfast.
I have never had an ounce of symphathy for these animals, however, as anyone stupid enough to drink green beer gets what they deserve. The beer distributors who came up with this idea must chuckle to themselves every time they pass a puddle of green vomit on the morning after St. Patty's Day.
So, my advice would be to stick with normal beer colors like black (Guinness) or gold (Harp) or amber (whiskey) and leave the green beer for freshmen college students, hopeless dorks from your office or those with 1/100 Irish in them who only claim the ancestory to rid themselves of the shame of wearing stupid green hats and talking about how much they love Bennigans.
-BDS
I picked up the newspaper today and it was filled with sex.
Sex stretched from the front page to the editorials and finished with a flourish in the religion section. It was hard to miss the writing on the wall, and the message wasn't pretty - America seems to be turning into a sex factory full of lust-crazed degenerates who are poised to give the French a run for their money when it comes to perversion.
I missed out on the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s by not having the good sense to be born yet, but the onset of AIDS in the 80s combined with the stern warnings that sex equaled death effectively squashed the libidos of many young Americans.
But this is no longer the case, and the playing field of high school sex has altered so dramatically in the 10 years since I left it that what was considered hitting a triple in my day wouldn't get you out of the dugout now.
From the sound of things, kids are merely killing time in history class before getting blowjobs at lunch and setting up orgies for the weekend. A 16-year-old student at a Richardson High School wrote an editorial urging parents to face reality, and the reality is that "It's an orgy out there; casual sex is growing like weeds."
Her summation of the current state of high school sex affairs was succinct and informative.
"Here are the facts in our terms: Friends-with-benefits are trendy, trains are becoming more popular, orgies are more accepted than ever, and oral sex is more casual than denim."
I might have enjoyed high school a little bit more had this kind of behavior been more rampant. Besides, I wore jeans to class almost every day, and that's a lot of denim and hummers in any given week.
Maybe Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia saw this all coming when he decried the 2003 court ruling which struck down the Texas sodomy law. Scalia warned that the ruling would have dire and far-reaching effects and unleash a "massive disruption of the current social order."
I was all for striking down the sodomy law, which always seemed asinine because anyone who wants the government to legislate what goes on in my bedroom is almost certainly some far-right religious lunatic.
Scalia was all for peeking his head in, however, and wrote in his dissent that "this effectively decrees the end of all morals legislation."
Could it be that Scalia was onto something?
Maybe the pendulum has swung and a new moral code has sprung up when nobody was looking. It's possible that a new sexual revolution is taking place and starting in the high schools before taking to the streets for public orgies, flogging and perversion on a scale that would make Caligula blush.
It's hard to say for sure, but don't be surprised if your neighbor starts coming home with sacks of whips and people start shopping for groceries dressed like the Gimp from "Pulp Fiction."
The "train" is coming to the station, and you better be prepared to climb aboard or you will be left in the dust.
-BDS
I don't watch nearly as much MTV as I did when I was a teenager.
I lived through the "I want my MTV" salad days of the network, but after "Jackass" left the air, I catch only occasional glimpses of the channel and I feel fine with this arrangement. The other day, however, I managed to find some actual music videos as I was surfing and noticed that rapper 50 Cent had the number one slot with "Candy Shop."
Although I can't argue with the video, which features 50 and a group of sleazy sex madams holed up in some kind of mansion where chocolate sauce, whips and oversized bathtubs are the norm, I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdly juvenile lyrics that were pouring from his mouth and that he appeared to be taking them seriously.
"I'll take you to the candy shop, and let you lick my lollipop, oh girl don't you stop . . .
I'll melt in your mouth not in your hand," - excerpts from "Candy Shop"
I wrote something similar but far more clever during my middle school years, but nobobdy was waving a recording contract at me and telling me how they would rent out a giant house full of girls for my amusement.
Instead, Mrs. Chapman took up my piece of scribbled paper and sent me to in-school suspension, thus proving once again that life is often unfair. On the flip side, 50 did get shot 9 times before making it big so I suppose everything balances out in the end.
It won't be balancing out much longer for Sandra Bullock, however, if she keeps turning down film roles like the character that Hillary Swank ultimately played in "Million Dollar Baby." I just read that Bullock was originally approached to play the white trash boxer in the movie, but after demanding too much money she was told to take a walk.
It's hard to imagine any actress doing a better job than Swank, but Bullock could have used the opportunity to stretch herself and give it the old college try. Eventually, she came around and agreed to work for less money, but by that point the producers and Eastwood had decided to go with Swank and Bullock was left out in the cold with only "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous" to keep her warm.
I didn't see the original "Miss Congeniality," but I'm willing to bet at least 50 cents that the film didn't leave many unanswered questions that demanded a sequel, and I would bet a whole dollar that the forthcoming sequel is anything but fabulous.
-BDS
I know that everyone has their own personal list of things or acts that they absolutely will not, cannot or shall not do under any circumstances.
My own personal list includes things like never owning a mini-van or Taurus, never being seen in public with a little Paris Hilton-like terrier, never referring to myself in the third person, refusing to watch home makeover shows, etc.
I also thought wearing a Speedo fit somewhere on this list, but after my photo shoot on Sunday, I realize now that my list must be revised.
First off, I don't own a Speedo, and I think this matters when you consider the circumstances that dictated my wearing one - But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I got to the shoot on a brisk Sunday morning to find the photographer (gay of course, not that there's anything wrong with that), and his assistant (also gay, not that there's anything wrong with that) unloading the camera equipment out of their Ford Explorer.
He had chosen a park near Oak Lawn in Dallas to shoot me. It came furnished with some nice graffiti-laden concrete walls, a small cold creek running through it, plenty of green grass and as a bonus some lucky kid was kicking a soccer ball against the wall while this all occurred.
After mussing my hair with styling product, I put on jeans and a white "wife-beater." I also got to wear my old beat-to-hell Red Wing boots, which reminded me of college and beer and managed to put me a little bit at ease.
Unfortunately, that was the last time I wore a shirt for the next two hours and it was definitely chilly while roaming the park in early March when you're only wearing your white Jockey boxers for warmth. Selah.
Anyway, I quickly progressed (or regressed) from my jeans/beater ensemble to workout shorts sans shirt before moving into my white cotton Jockey boxers. It was at this point that the oil and lip balm appeared out of the assistant's bag, and he wielded them like a crazed transvestite hopped up on speed.
In no time at all I was greased like a pig with lips that shined like new state quarters.
After the boxers were finished, the flesh-colored Speedo was next and I faced the moment of truth. I was bumping up against my own idealogy, but I thought of Tom Cruise in "Risky Business" and remembered how he said sometimes "you have to say what the fuck and make your move."
So I did.
In this case, however, that move was up against a concrete wall with my leg cocked at such an angle that it will appear to all the world that I was naked when he shot me from the side. The photographer said something about "being sexy" and loving "the lines in my legs," but I didn't hear much as I kindly let my mind wander.
When the shoot was over, I felt strangely good as I drove back to my apartment with top down and Steve Earle playing loudly. Sometimes it's good to break your own rules as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else or involve animals.
Rules were of course made to broken, but we'll see if that cliche holds firm in a few short weeks when the proofs come back from the shoot.
In the meantime, the Bryan is going to enjoy chucking his diet out the window, tossing pack a few pints and maybe getting some work done on our next screenplay.
But I'm not buying a Speedo.
-BDS
About a month ago I posted a blog detailing a rather bizarre offer involving my participation in a shirtless modeling gig that is due to be featured in a coffee table book.
I had spoken with the photographer, and we both agreed that it was something I would pursue if for no other reason than it sounded like a good story. He talked in generalities about a March/April shoot that he described as typical Abercrombie & Fitch stuff with guys running around outdoors with no shirts.
After I got off the phone, I immediately started a diet/workout routine which consisted of 5 days a week of weight training, 3 weekly cardio sessions, low carbs, no sugar, no alcohol, no drugs, high protein and I have been following this regime for the past month.
It has not been fun and I would not recommend it for anyone.
During this time, I have been easily irritated, boasted consistently low energy and the food is flat-out boring. It also doesn't help matters when your sex drive could be accurately compared to a mortally wounded tree sloth.
But the wait is over and the photo shoot is supposedly on for this Sunday in Oak Lawn. For those of you unfamiliar with the Dallas scene, let's just say that the area isn't a bastion for heterosexual males if you catch my drift.
So, I'm basically riding this thing out on a wing and a prayer and I just hope that nothing goes sideways when I show up in a few short days.
All I do know is that I don't care how much alcohol they ply me with at the location, my pants are staying firmly affixed to my torso. And before anyone calls me a prude, just consider that my grandparents will almost certainly have this thing sitting on their coffee table for the world to see someday.
A shirtless grandson is an interesting and vaguely risque picture to show their neighbors, but a full frontal shot turns you into the black sheep pervert of the family who doesn't get spoken about during the holidays.
-BDS
I am sick of my TV, and am making the decree that I will refuse to watch it until some decent shows start again or Joe Rogan is forced off the air (does this clown really deserve to host TWO television shows).
Typically, I can escape to the movies to re-charge my creative engine, but there has been no respite at my local Tinseltown since the beginning of 2005. This is due with the fact that the usual slate of movies which open in January and February are almost universally deplorable and should be avoided like the plague; witness "Son of the Mask," "Boogeyman," "The Wedding Date," "Man of the House," and "Cursed."
You know you're in trouble when "Hitch" seems like the only lifeline you have available.
To fill this celluoid void, I have been watching a lot of TV, but with the exception of "Arrested Development" and "Lost" there's just not much that has caught my attention. I stopped watching reality shows a year ago (with the exception of "The Bachelorette" this year and that was a tremendously bad decision) and most sitcoms are so awful that even the laugh track sounds embarrassed.
There appears to be hope on the horizon, however, as "The Shield" and "Deadwood" are scheduled to kick off their respective seasons during March. Besides, there's always the NCAA tournament to drain your time, your wallet and to lose the respect of any female who wanders into your general vicinity.
When I was traveling through Europe last year I seemed to remember that the TV programming had a different feel to it. My best friend in Ireland confirmed this to me over the phone recently, but qualified his statement with the warning that different "did not necessarily mean better."
It might not have been better per se, but I thought it had less rigid standards than our programming since Janet Jackson's nipple came out to say hello during the Super Bowl.
But it seems that Europeans can be angered over indencency just as much as a group of Baptists from the Deep South. Recently, Rebecca Loos (David Beckham's ex-assistant who was rumored to have slept with him) appeared on a reality show called "The Farm" and sparked an outrage after she masturbated a pig and collected its semen.
Several viewers complained that her antics were akin to bestiality, but in the end, cooler heads prevailed as the regulatory body decided that her actions had not been "degrading or harmful to the boar."
Personally, I think the ruling is a victory for both viewers AND boars throughout the world.
-BDS
