I really meant to write about my bathroom renovation this week – offering witty insights and wise advice to anyone brave and foolish enough to trust an Israeli contractor with their money and a wet saw. Something other home owners could read, relate to and maybe even learn a little something from. But then I figured, fuck it, I’ll just write about Sharknado which, I think we all agree, is the finest LA movie since Chinatown. Maybe even better – as we can see from the comparison below:   Sharknado Chinatown Flying Sharks Yes No Ian Ziering Yes No Chainsaw Yes No Complex and thought provoking noir tale of rapacious greed, boundless   ambition and unthinkable depravity set against the fictionalized backdrop of   LA’s Water Wars. No Yes IAN ZIERING FIGHTING A MOTHERFUCKING FLYING SHARK WITH A GODDAMN   CHAINSAW!!! Hell yeah Not so much.   I mean, it’s kind of a no brainer. Maybe if Roman Polanski had been just a little bit more imaginative – like, let’s say – instead of finding a dead hobo in the dried up LA river bed the cops found a blond in a bikini with HUGE BAZOOMMBAS (clinical term) who’d been bitten in half by a flying shark with one or possibly TWO HEADS.  Or maybe instead of cutting Jack Nicholson’s nose with an itty-bitty knife, Roman Polanski could have CHOPPED IT OFF WITH A CHAINSAW and as all the blood gushed into the LA River, there would be a close up on a super-intelligent CGI shark in the water smelling the blood and turning its head as if to say “Oooooh, something suddenly smells simply delectable. Is that a hint of Private Detective nose I’m getting? I simply must go investigate” ‘cause you know that’s a real fucking thing sharks do, and then the shark could jump out of the water and BITE ROMAN POLANSKI’S NOSE AND WHOLE FACE OFF, cause that’s what qualifies as “irony” in these movies, as well as DEVOURING the blond in a bikini with the HUGE GAZONGAS (technical term) who inexplicably accompanies Polanski to all of his important nose cutting jobs – which is particularly surprising since she’s over 14.  So, yeah, maybe if Polanksi had just been a little bit more imaginative or tried just a little bitharder he could have made a movie as awesome as Sharknado – but he didn’t – so forget it Roman, L.A’s Sharknado’s town. Which is appropriate, because Sharknado’s got every bit as much to say about LA as Chinatown. The asshole New Yorker on the freeway who gets eaten alive by a shark on the 405 right after complaining about stupid Californians who freak out when it rains; the substitute teacher from Wyoming who came out to LA to be an actor and was killed by a flying letter from the Hollywood sign; a shark crashing into the cement outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre and leaving it’s own “footprint”; the Ferris Wheel on the Santa Monica pier coming loose and crashing right through the iconic sign on the pier – thereby destroying all future “hey, look, moron, if you didn’t fucking realize it already, we’re in LA” montages during Laker game broadcasts. I mean, who needs some boring old incredibly brilliant and thought provoking social commentary about water rights in the San Fernando Valley directed by a borderline child molester when you’ve got sharks devouring New Yorkers stuck in traffic on the freeway, which, let’s face it, we’ve all fantasized about a little on the 405 during rush hour (IDEA FOR A SEQUEL: Sharknado vs Carmageddon – Seriously, We Mean It – Stay Off The Roads This Weekend). Of course, you could argue that none of this shark biting stuff is truly necessary for quality filmmaking and may, in fact, be detrimental to art of cinema. And, of course, you’d be absolutely right. Well done! Nicely argued...

Oh, to be Vin Diesel! Oh, to be a Big, Bald, American Male who Drives FAST, Kicks ASS and Speaks only in APH…orisms. OK, so, sure if you take my BMI, Passport and Genitalia’s word for it – I am, strictly speaking, a Big American Male. Incidentally – any connection between the words “Big” and “my genitalia” is strictly coincidental or intended for entertainment purposes only.  I mean, come on – a big hairy Jew with an itty-bitty pecker – now that’s comedy! It’s like an angry purple mushroom poking out of the undergrowth or a Smurf’s house in Gargamel’s forest.  You may not know this, by the way, but Gargamel and Azrael were not the original names of the characters – they were changed from Filthy Jew and Kikey after the first episode “Let’s capture Brainy Smurf and Drink his Blood for Passover Wine” did not test well. Paula Deen had similar problems, which is why she changed her show’s name to “Paula’s Home Cooking” from  “N— N—- Chicken Dinner” partially because it’s extremely offensive and racist and partially because that name was already taken by Quentin Tarantino for his cooking show. Oh Paula, if only you’d just shot a black person instead of insulting them, you’d have totally gotten away with it! So – sure, I’ve got Big American Male covered – and as far as Bald, well, my hairline has been engaged in brutal trench warfare with my forehead for over a decade and is now retreating one brutal millimeter at a time as my follicles die tragically trying to grow over the top of my scalp. But it’s not the good kind of baldness – the archetypal , uber-manly, Diesel/Willis/Rock-Johnson/Savalis “rogue cop who does what he has to do to get results even if it means bending the rules a little” baldness. No, I’m just balding in the middle-aged, nebbishy, “captain who’s pulling his hair out because the Commissioner tore me a new one when he heard about Detective Bald Manly’s latest shenanigans on the streets” kind of way. Sigh. The greatest tragedy of my working life is that I’m not the devil-may-care, wisecracking, bend the rules renegade artist but the arts administrator pulling his hair out when the Managing Director tears me a new one over the spike in utility costs resulting from Artsy McFartsy Pants latest shenanigans on stage. I knew we shouldn’t have produced “1000 Incandescent Bulbs Burning at Once While I Flush All the Toilets and Run the A/C at Full Blast For Six Hours”. Worst. Robert Wilson production of a Phillip Glass Opera. Ever. (BTW- that was just named as Reference of the Year by PretentiousTwits.com – narrowly beating out “Not since the Titan Cronus devoured his children has a parent treated an infant as cruelly as Kim Kardashian did when she named her daughter North West.” Good thing that kid’s rich cause she’ll never be happy. And the comparisons between me and Vin just get worse. He Kicks Ass whereas I Kick Ass at Excel (I live my life one Pivot Table at a time. For those six AGONIZINGLY PAINFUL FUCKING HOURS or less, I’m free). His motto is “Ride or Die” my motto is “Can I please get a ride? I’m dyin here!” He speaks only in aphorisms and I use words like “aphorism” when I speak in order to impress people. After all, you know what they say about the size of a man’s vocabulary- Don’tcha? Eh? Nothing. Absolutely Nothing. There is no demonstrable correlation between the extent of a man’s vocabulary and the dimensions of his genitals. Oh fiddlesticks. Of course, I hope you realize that I don’t aspire to be Vin Diesel the actor – star of such movies as Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick…uhm…Riddick, Riddick Saves Christmas, Riddick Goes to Camp, the obligatory asinine comedy about a big strong man who faces his...

Look, if you’re a fairly intelligent person, it’s not that impressive to be an A student. I mean, big deal, all you’ve got to do is study all the time and work really, really hard. Easy. I’ve never been all that impressed by A students. In fact, there’s a name for those poor saps who studied all the time in college while I was out having the time of my life. It starts with SUC and I bet you can guess what the rest is. That’s right – SUCcessful doctors and lawyers. CRAP! I ruined my life. Alright, so, aside from the substantially improved likelihood of wealth, success, prestige, respectability and the sort of job where, when you wear a suit everyone doesn’t just automatically assume you’re interviewing for another job or fighting a DUI conviction, working hard all the time to be an A student is just not that impressive. It’s way more impressive be a B+ student and do absolutely no work at all – like me! I mean, sure, I could have stayed up all night for three days in a row writing an exhaustively researched 30 page term paper on Media Strategies in the 1988 Presidential Election filled with well thought out opinions substantiated by hard facts and data. If I was LAME. No, I chose to take the “road more awesome” (to quote Robert Frost) and throw down ten pages of triple spaced 13 point Arial yumminess chock full of wild speculation about Kitty Dukakis’ hairspray addiction based on an article in Newsweek, a couple of book jackets and half a Larry King Live with Olympia Dukakis (I fell asleep). BOOM. Plug in the Nintendo, fire up the bong and drop the mic. Peace Out.  I mean, there’s an important life lesson here. It’s not What You Know or Who You Know that counts in life, it’s How Well You Can Bullshit and How Little Effort You Can Get Away With Putting In that matters and the sooner you learn that, the more frustration you’ll save yourself in the working world when you work your ass off in anonymity and still get laid off while some lazy idiot rich kid with cooler hair and a higher Klout score than you could ever dream of gets promoted to VP of Marketing cause he can use the word “viral” in a sentence correctly when not referring to the spread of disease. The key to successful bullshit is confidence. Remember, what you lack in “information” you can make up for with “volume”. Just use the Fox News Ignorance to Assertiveness Ratio to figure out how loud you need to be (there’s an app on their website). Plus, by not living up to my potential, I cultivated this great aura of mystery. Everybody always wondered just what I could accomplish if I ever truly applied myself but, HA! The joke’s on them, cause I never truly applied myself and I accomplished nothing! So…ha ha? CRAP! I wasted my life. And, not for nothing, but it was a lot harder for me to squander my academic potential than it is for kids today. We live in a golden age for lazy students. Just think about how much incorrect information they have at their fingertips. Why come up with your own poorly researched wild speculation when you can just steal someone else’s? It’s my 19-year-old self’s dream come true! Hell, I could write a whole term paper just from Facebook memes. As Martin Luther King said: “Have you noticed that you can put any random series of words next to my face in a jpg and post it on Facebook and everyone will think it’s like a real quote and they should take it seriously? Just try it! Put “purple grapefruit frog tomato” next to that black and white picture of me looking all visionary and shit and everyone’ll start...

The rantings of a non-driving theatre professional living in altogether the wrong city. I’ve been reading Raymond Chandler recently and he’s inspired me to try and better describe L.A. This is much better than what happened when I first read Raymond Chandler in Middle School and he inspired me to become a Private Detective. And by, “become a Private Detective” what I really mean is open up my own Encyclopedia Brown-style detective agency in the backyard of my parents’ house. Turns out, though, that much like Free to Be You and Me and the Bible, the Encyclopedia Brown books had some very misleading ideas about life and the backyard of a suburban home on a quiet street in upstate New York. It’s a terrible location for a Private Detective Agency that depends entirely on walk up business. I mean, sure there was the Case of What the Hell Are My Sister’s Friends Smoking in the Garage and Will They Let Me Have Any, the Mystery of God and Why is My Sister Such a Bitch Once a Month, but aside from those brief investigations – not a lot of action. So after a couple of lonely days sitting at the picnic table behind our house, with a handwritten sign illegibly advertising my services, wearing a deerstalker cap in 90 degree weather (yes, I know I’m sort of mixing my literary detective metaphors but it was left over from a past Halloween costume and I WAS 12 YEARS OLD WHAT THE HELL DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME, BLOOD? I didn’t have the pipe, though cause my sister’s friends were using it in the garage). I closed down the Agency for good. It was all very disappointing. Not a single dame walked into my office with eyes as blue as a mountain lake, hair the color of honey and gold and a set of gams that starts at the ground and ends with a lump at my throat (my sister doesn’t count and her gams usually ended with a foot up my ass). Not a single flashy hood walked in with slicked back hair and cream colored pigskin driving gloves to call me “cheapie” and “shamus” and threaten me to keep my nose clean or he’d cut it off and feed it to his goldfish. Hell, I didn’t even get to foil one of Bugs Meany and the Tigers’ stupid schemes. What a gyp. Then again, it’s probably for the best that I never had any clients, because the truth is – I would make a terrible Private Detective. I mean – let’s face it: I forget stuff all the time I’m easily distracted I never pay attention to details What the hell were we talking about again? I was thinking about monkeys. Oh, monkeys.  I like monkeys. Cute little guys. They’ll rip your face off, though, so watch out! And they love bananas which is weird cause I hate bananas. Nasty vile things. Wait, I’m sorry – what were we talking about again? Which is fine, actually, cause I didn’t really want to be a Private Detective so that I could solve crime or “detect” stuff – except maybe the faint trace of sweet, sweet smoke seeping out from under the garage door or the carelessly tossed instructions from a box of tampons on the bathroom floor which warned women of the dangers of Toxic Shock Syndrome and warned me to get THE HELL OUT OF THE HOUSE for 3-5 days or maybe just hide in my room until the lambs stopped screaming. No, I wanted to be a Private Detective or Dick, as they were once called much to the schoolgirlish giggling delight of 12-year-old Eric (OK, and 40-year-old Eric. Tee-hee-hee. Dick) so that I could talk tough and crack wise, wear a trenchcoat and fedora and a cynical smirk, take belts from the office bottle when the...

So, last week I left the comfy, drought-ridden, hazy and slightly scorched confines of my Los Angeles home for the moist, green landscape and bright clean air of Seattle and other random bits of Washington State. Now, you probably think I heart Seattle. Or looove it. Or lurve it. Lurve – is that a thing? Do the kids say “lurve”? Are the kids that dumb? I mean, I know they’re dumb cause they’re The Kids and the whole purpose of the next generation is for them to be dumber than we were so we don’t feel so bad about ourselves for getting old and not understanding their music or clothes or YouTube videos or the Instagram GET OFF MY LAWN! So, yeah. They’re dumb. But dumb enough to say “lurve”? Discuss. Anyhow, like I was saying, you probably think I have a certain fondness for Seattle. And I can’t blame you for thinking that – I mean, I am a card carrying member of Generation X (the card says “card”) and I went to college during the height of the Grunge Era in the early 90s. And Seattle during the early 90s – well, hell, that was the epicenter of cool – like San Francisco in the 60s, though instead of LSD and enlightenment, we had heroin and crippling depression and instead of the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, we had Alice in Chains and Soundgarden and instead of The Graduate and Harold and Maude, we had Singles and Reality Bites. Wow. The early 90s were TERRIBLE! What a fucking horrible time to come of age. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was a great time for fashion. For me, anyhow. After all, a broken clock tells the right time twice a day and an unkempt, slovenly, unshowered dude is fashionable twice a millennium (the early 90s and THE ENTIRE DARK AND MIDDLE AGES). And then there was the dancing – which, during the Grunge Era was outstanding! Jumping around, slamming into each other, screaming at the top of our lungs – hell, that’s what I do when I’m taking the bus – I was a goddamn moshing natural! What a fantastic time to come of age! And then the stupid Swing Dancing craze came along and everyone started learning dances with actual steps and caring about their appearance and showering like every motherfucking day. Thanks John Favreau! Thanks Vince Vaughn! Thanks Big Bad Voodoo Daddy! Thanks for ruining everything with your suits and hats and your hair product and your dancing that requires a modicum of coordination. I’m glad you’ve all turned in to a bunch of total washouts. I hope you had fun playing the Snoqualmie Casino, Big Bad Loser Daddy. It’s right outside Seattle (CALLBACK, BITCHEZ!)! And speaking of Seattle you still probably think I like Seattle. Well, you’re wrong. Totally wrong. So wrong, in fact, that it should call into question all the other decisions you’ve made in your life. Like going to grad school for playwriting, or buying your 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom, 3 story Dream Forever Home in Las Vegas in 2006 (Interest only ARM loan? No problem! Values are just gonna go up, up, up!), or trying that thing you saw on TV where you put a full glass of wine on the mattress and then jump up and down next to it, or getting bangs (they don’t work with your face, sorry), or using your position with the IRS to go after Tea Party organizations applying for tax exempt status – that was particularly wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME but so very wrong. But awesome. Totally awesome. I mean, I have a total bureaucrat crush on the IRS right now (shhhh, don’t tell the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the ATF. They get, like, super jealous). For me, Seattle is like Mad Men – it’s beautiful to look at,...

Real Grown-Ups watch the news in the morning. They eat their bran cereal and take their multivitamins and shake their heads gravely as blandly attractive idiots on TV tell them with a smile that the world is a violent horrible mess, but the weather at the beach will be great this weekend! (the UV Index will be high in the Valley, though, so parents, keep you kids inside! Protect them from the dangers of sunlight, peanuts, germs and human contact, and make sure they grow up to be safe, healthy sociopaths. I shouldn’t single out parents, though. We’re all responsible for the next generation; it takes a village to alienate a school shooter.) However, I can’t watch the news. It’s just one more way I fail as a Grown-Up. It’s not that I don’t want to know what’s going on in the world or that I want to wallow in ignorance like a Republican Senator in his own excrement, it’s just that, well, this may shock and surprise you, but watching the news just makes me too angry. I know- shocking, right? Right? DON’T GIVE ME ANY OF YOUR PATRONIZING SARCASM! OOOOOOHHHH THAT MAKES ME SOOOOO MAD!!!! But not as mad as watching the news. Seriously, I don’t know how people do it? I mean, I wish I was one of those level headed Grown-Ups that could hear a story like “Congress rejects common sense gun legislation supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans because a few chicken-shit Senators are too scared of losing their bribes, oh, sorry, I mean campaign contributions from big money gun lobbyists” or “Congress votes to end Sequestration,but, oh, only the part that might actually affect them when they try to fly home, not the parts that deprive millions of much needed government services or threaten to cost thousands their jobs–no that would be FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE, because, it’s just so fucking fiscally responsible to throw the economy into chaos and screw over the American people because you’re too much of a wuss to make rich people and corporations pay their fucking taxes like the rest of us schnooks” or “Congress wakes up in the morning and RUINS AMERICA AGAIN.” and just be like “Ho hum. Fiddle-dee-dee. Looks like those rapscallions in Washington have sure bungled things once more. I can’t wait to chat amiably about this at the racquetball club with my fellow tax preparers or loan underwriters or whatever the fudge we Real Grown-Ups do for a living. Claim adjustors? Is that a thing?” I can’t do it, though. Just the word “sequestration” makes me fly into a blind rage. I mean, come on, it’s like Tofurkey or Personhood, just a dumb fucking idea with a dumb fucking name. What’s not to hate? Seriously, Congress, it’s not bad enough that you keep coming up with all these arbitrary deadlines to wreak havoc with the economy, you’ve got to start making up nonsense words just to point out what a pathetic joke the whole situation is?  I’m sorry, is Dr. Seuss the Speaker of the House now? I mean, why would I want to watch the news anyhow? How many times can I hear them say that if we don’t cut a flugnillion Quadrools from the Federal Budget before the twenteenth of Snazuary then the Big Money Boogedieboo Bird is going to take all our Pickleberries away? And the worst part is we have a 24 hour news cycle, but we don’t have 24 hours worth of news to cover, so instead of reporting what DID happen each day they  pontificate endlessly about what MIGHT happen: Will the Scumpublicans agree to cutting just a smizillion Quadrools? Can the Limpocrats raise taxes on Pickleberries? Can they reach a compromise before the twenteenth of Snazuary? Will they delay the deadline to the thirty-twelfth of Blarch? Is now the time to invest is Pickleberry futures? How will...