I'm the Goddamn Moses

I'm not sure who Obama looks like more: Storm's older, similarly powered brother; or frakking Moses.

Either way, he gets my vote.

We knew it was coming, but still...

Damnit all the same.



As becomes incredibly evident with each passing year—and each passing movie season—they really don't make them like this anymore.

Aaron Sorkin, Back in the Saddle

The Studio 60 survivor writes a fictional meeting between West Wing aspirant Barack Obama and West Wing president Jed Bartlet:

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OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well ... let me think. ...We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know ... I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

OBAMA Good to get that off your chest?

BARTLET Am I keeping you from something?

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I didn't realize how much I'd missed dear old Josiah...

We won, bitches!

Okay, we co-won. But that totally counts!

I Need My Own Help

I've got a Blackberry. I didn't think I wanted one, but when work made it both easy and free—two things all but guaranteed to elicit a positive reaction—I agreed. I don't mind it, except for the crazy addiction to checking it all the damned time.

Anyway, I was in a restaurant, and the person I was dining with excused herself to hit the head (Why don't women ever refer to the bathroom as the head? For that matter, why the hell am I?). When I checked my email, the one at the top of the queue made me think I was in the middle of some crazy time-travel adventure.

The sender was "Bernardin" and the subject was "Help."

Of course, when I opened the message, it was from my mother, looking for advice on buying my wife a birthday present. But for the briefest of moments, I actually thought I was sending myself messages from the future...and I desperately needed my own assistance.

I read too many comic books.

The Smartest Thing I've Ever Done

In the course of the three years I've been running this blog, I've gotten more than 31,000 visits. And I've always thought that, by and large, people kept coming back because they vibed with what I'm putting out there. Sure, some entries have gotten more play than others—the "What Went Wrong With The Highwaymen" series was a gangbuster—but I always thought that it was the words that struck a chord with readers.

I was wrong.

See, about a year ago, I wrote a post about potential casting for The Highwaymen movie, and when musing about who'd be good for Grace—our third lead, a young redhead who learns she's more than meets the eye—I ran the following picture of That '70s Show's Laura Prepon:


And that's what drives about 80 percent of my traffic: people Google-searching for pictures of Laura Prepon. (Rhinoplastique shows up right at the top of the second page of the image search.) Nice pic, to be sure. I've got a pretty good eye—maybe I missed my calling as a soft-core photo editor. Or I should turn this blog into a comic-book-adaptation-casting-think-tank, replete with lots of pitchers of well-endowed young women.

So, hey, welcome to the party, redheaded-ex-sitcom-babe fetishists. Hope you stick around to, you know, read. After all, you only need the one hand to scroll.

RIP David Foster Wallace

Damnit.


I can't say that I was a huge fan. I only ever read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, but I loved it. I can say this with conviction: There are stories in that book that changed the way I look at life. Albeit in small ways, but still.

Damnit.

And if it was, it'd make $100 million...

No wonder there's so much fucking of the Matt Damon.

ROBIN BANKS: The Proposal (Finally)

Okay, after a good long while, I've finally knocked this thing out. This is the same kind of one-sheet we used to sell The Highwaymen and Genius (and a couple of other things I can't talk about yet), so it's worked for me in the past. So, let's see what happens, shall we?

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ROBIN BANKS AND THE LIBERATORS
A proposal for a six-issue mini-series
Written by Marc Bernardin

“They say that a person is trapped by their name. That what a man or a woman is called has a quantifiable impact on the future he, or she, can make for himself. My name is Robin Banks. Guess what I do for a living?”

It's hard goddamn work being an independent woman in 1960s America. A mere 40 years after being granted the right to vote, many women are still seen as second-class citizens. A career that doesn't involve an apron is rare, and equal pay in the workplace is a mirage on the horizon. For all of its mod, retro-futuristic hipster-Vogue cool; for all of its free love, Civil Rights fervor; the '60s could feel like a prison for a forward-thinking female. A prison that Robin Banks wants to break out of.

Robinson Banks—named for her father's favorite literary character—is a safecracker. There's not a lock she can't get through; she's got the tools and the talent. But she's fed up working in a field dominated by men…men who, more often than not, spend more time looking at her ass than keeping an eye out for the cops. Her last straw: She's hired by a two-bit meathead for a safe job. She does her thing and gets into a super-tough old safe. Problem: The damned thing is empty. Turns out, they weren’t hired to break into the safe…they were hired to steal it. The contractor is a collector, and this safe is a lovingly restored safe once blown by Butch and Sundance. Can't put a scratch on it. Such is her life: surrounded by idiots who don't pay attention to what matters.

After some quick thinking—a little plastique and a laundry cart does the trick—she gets her payload out, safe and sound. But that's it. Robin tells Manson—the criminal-world version of an executive recruiter—that she's out. She's going out on her own: finding her own jobs and working them with her own crew. A crew made up entirely of women who all share her “slippery morals.” A driver. A pistolera. A demolitionist. And a heartbreaker—who breaks bones pretty good, too.

Of course, her success—she pulls off the Great Train Robbery (by stealing the train) and stealing the Monaco Grand Prix trophy (by winning the race)—doesn't go unpunished for long. Manson puts together a very special crew designed to put Robin and her Liberators out of business. Permanently.

ROBIN BANKS AND THE LIBERATORS is a high-fashion, high-tension, high-camp swinging-'60s book about very pretty girls doing very bad things.

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So, there it is. Let's see what happens next.

RIP Bill Melendez

Damnit.

Warren Likes It

Are you still not voting for Genius? If Internet Jesus says you should, well, then, you should.

Kirk = Awesome

I'm sure this has been lying around the internets for evuh, but I just found it and it made me titter.