Mulberry Panda 96
Internationally broadcast scratch paper.
Saturday, August 26, 2023
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
"Get it right the first time" isn't my motto when I interpret song lyrics.
Perhaps a bottle of rosé instead …
Who can forget the opening lines of Billy Joel's classic 1977 song "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant," the tale of a singing waiter who also happens to play piano—which must be why it takes him an eternity of seven and a half minutes to deliver two bottles of wine that aren't rosé to a couple who probably weren't all that interested in the first place in hearing his sob story about some other couple named Brenda and Eddie.
Piano Man, you may have a heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack when you read your restaurant's latest Yelp reviews and realize your customers don't love you just the way you are.
Friday, March 24, 2023
There are multiple Hellboys, but there's only one Ron Perlman.
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Sing to the Lord a semi-new psalm ...
sing to the Lord, all the whole earth.
Sing to the Lord and bless His name;
proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day.
Declare His glory among the nations
and His wonders among all peoples.
For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised;
He is more to be feared than all gods.
But we can tell you're not in awe;
it's obvious you couldn't care less.
You think it's easy being God?
Then why don't you climb up to heaven and do the job yourself?
There's so much paperwork involved;
you'd start losing your mind in 60 seconds flat.
You try keeping up with eight billion people
while trying to solve the population-control crisis with "natural" disasters.
All He wants is a little respect,
Tuesday, August 2, 2022
pitches for new James Cameron documentaries
Starting with Piranha II: The Spawning in 1982 and ending with True Lies in '94, James Cameron directed six feature films in a dozen years. His follow-up to True Lies, 1997's Titanic, broke box-office records and won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. But over the next dozen years, Cameron directed only one other feature film, 2009's Avatar, which ended up breaking Titanic's box-office records.
He did, however, direct two deep-sea documentaries in the meantime: Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) and Aliens of the Deep (2005). Both nonfiction films' titles echo those of previous fiction films of Cameron's: respectively, 1989's The Abyss and 1986's Aliens, the first of many sequels and prequels to, and spin-offs of, 1979's Alien.But Cameron still has two titles from his pre-Titanic days that haven't been exploited yet. I think the following documentary would be an excellent addition to the Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" event next year:
The Terminator of Other Fish and Sometimes People
Has Cameron ever thought about making a film that can be shown in sex-education classes? Here's a water-based idea:
'You Can’t Get Pregnant If You Do It in a Pool' ... and Other True Lies
Unlike the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, I don't remember the Montara oil spill off the coast of western Australia in '09 getting a ton of press coverage in this part of the Northern Hemisphere. But I think at least one documentary-title pitch for Cameron should acknowledge the post-True Lies phase of his career, so how about ...
'Ave a Tar Fish, Mate: The Untold Story of the Gusher Down Under
It doesn't hurt that Tar Fish also happen to be piranha-like creatures in the video game Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, recalling the low-budget roots of Cameron's filmography. But I'm hoping "'Ave a Tar Fish, Mate" will cost upwards of $200 million for no reason whatsoever. You can't go home again.
Avatar: The Way of Water, the first of four planned sequels to the 2009 original—actually, I guess you can go home again (and again and again and again)—is set to be released this December, eight years after it was originally announced to hit theaters, because it takes a lot of expensive, state-of-the-art computer animation to make water look wet.
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
pride (in the name of dumb)
Fine, Proud Boys—you're the proudest, gayest boys in all the land. But somehow I doubt my proclamation will make you live happily ever after.