The I Can Do It better blog-a-thon, day 4

I’m sorry to report that for the final day of this blog-a-thon we have fewer contributions than yesterday, meaning you’ll have to content yourselves with my own entry.


2005 saw the release of two star-studded big-budget action films that were unrelated other than that they both told the story of how a troubled young man, trained in combat and philosophy in part by Liam Neeson, grows into a fearsome alter ego who wears a black helmet, black armor, and a black cape. One of them sucked, and the other, Batman Begins, kicked ass.

That’s not to say it couldn’t have been improved in a couple of small ways. When Bruce Wayne is doing his carefree playboy act and the maître d’ complains to him that the pool in which his gorgeous model dates are splashing “is for decoration,” I really wanted him to confide to the maître d’, “So are the women” (instead of his lame quip, “Well, they’re European”). Although come to think of it, “So are the women” could be taken to mean, “I am gay.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but while Batman Begins offered a fresh perspective on many aspects of the Batman mythos, ambiguity about his sexual identity would have been taking things a little farther than I suspect audiences were prepared to go.

Next: there is a point in the film when Jim Gordon arrives at Arkham Asylum, where Batman is busy rescuing Rachel from The Scarecrow. Gordon sees a bunch of cops standing around outside and asks the chief, “What are you waiting for?” The chief responds, “Backup.” Impatient to act, Gordon runs in anyway. A short time later, Gordon is with Batman when he hears the sound of a zillion bats approaching. He asks, “What’s that?” and Batman says, “Backup.”

Here’s the improvement: instead of “What’s that?” Gordon again says, “What are you waiting for?” to Batman (as Batman pauses for a beat after he’s given Gordon some marching orders for helping Rachel), and Batman answers, “Backup,” exactly as in the earlier exchange, and Gordon again does not wait for the backup to arrive before leaping into action.

But as I wrote to my sister a few months after seeing Batman Begins, the best improvement of all “would have been a scene with Batman rescuing Katie Holmes in real life.”

  INT. HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

  TOM CRUISE and a spaced-out looking
  KATIE HOLMES are involved in heavy
  petting on the sofa in the penthouse
  suite.  Things progress until Katie,
  under Tom's Svengali gaze, obediently
  wriggles out of her panties.

                  TOM
          Tonight is the night.  You
          will conceive my child.

  Crash!  The door splinters from its
  frame under the weight of BATMAN's
  boot.  With a deft leap he swooshes
  his cape between the two lovers.  Tom
  falls backward off the couch, naked,
  in surprise.  Katie appears to snap
  out of a trance.

                  TOM
          Batman!

                  BATMAN
          This time you've gone too far,
          Cruiser.

                  KATIE
             (dawning horror)
          You're "The Cruiser"?

  Tom seems about to answer, then
  launches himself feet-first into
  Batman's chest, toppling both men to
  the ground.  Tom rolls deftly across
  the room before Batman can recover.
  He grabs an item from a dresser drawer
  and whirls around with it.  A gun?  A
  knife?  No: it's the terrifying mask
  of The Cruiser, vicious arch-nemesis
  of Gotham's law-abiding citizens.

                  BATMAN
          Katie, get out of here!

                  CRUISER
             (donning mask)
          Katie, stay!

  Katie's paralyzed.  The Cruiser comes
  at Batman again, still naked but for
  his mask.  Batman defends himself but
  can't land a blow on his amazingly
  nimble enemy.  Batman manages to shove
  him across the room long enough to
  dash back to the sofa and shake Katie
  out of her paralysis.

                  BATMAN
          Go!

  The Cruiser regains his feet and
  punches a hidden button.  An entire
  wall of the room rotates aside,
  revealing The Cruiser's secret
  laboratory -- and A DOZEN BURLY
  HENCHMEN!

                  CRUISER
          Cruiser Crew -- attack!

  Batman now has a full-fledged melee on
  his hands.  Far from fleeing, it's the
  best Katie can do to protect herself
  from the fists and bodies flying
  around the room.  In the confusion,
  The Cruiser grabs her arm and pulls
  her roughly into a concealed escape
  chute.  Katie fights back but is no
  match for the highly trained
  action-star-slash-supercriminal.

                  KATIE
          Stop it!  Stop it!

  INT. CHUTE - NIGHT

  Katie and The Cruiser, both still
  naked except for The Cruiser's mask,
  slide in tandem down a spiral chute
  leading from the top of the hotel down
  to the street.  The Cruiser presses a
  switch hidden in his mask,
  illuminating a strange glow in the
  mask's eyes.  He turns his masked gaze
  on Katie.  She immediately returns to
  her earlier trance state.

                  CRUISER
          You will conceive my
          child.  Now!

  Hypnotized, Katie swings a leg over
  The Cruiser's torso even as they
  spiral downward together.

  Unseen by either one, Batman drops
  through the center of the spiral on
  the end of a Batrope.  He tosses a
  Bat-grenade onto the chute,
  obliterating a long section of it.  At
  the sound of the explosion, The
  Cruiser looks away from Katie and sees
  the smoking gap, which they are fast
  approaching.  He abandons his efforts
  to penetrate her.

                  CRUISER
          Oh no.

  There is no way to stop, but that
  doesn't stop The Cruiser from clawing
  frantically at the smooth slide.

                  CRUISER
          No!  No!  Xenu!

  Batman dangles at the end of the
  Batrope just beneath the gap.  As The
  Cruiser and Katie sail into space, he
  deftly plucks Katie from the air and
  allows The Cruiser to fall.

                  CRUISER
          Noooooo...!

  As he disappears into the darkness
  below, only the mask's strange glow
  remains.  Then a crash and
  silence... and the glow is gone.

  CUT TO:

  INT. OPRAH'S TALK SHOW - DAY

  CHRISTIAN BALE is OPRAH's guest.

                  OPRAH
          But how did you know that Tom
          Cruise was really The Cruiser?

                  CHRISTIAN
          There were little hints
          everywhere -- the too-perfect,
          vaguely artificial good looks;
          the disproportionate power
          over women; the gay rumors
          designed to conceal the true
          nature of Tom's contacts with
          porn star Kyle Bradford, who's
          really a genius chemist in the
          criminal underworld.  And I
          knew that the chemicals that
          gave The Cruiser his powers
          would slowly destabilize his
          mind, just as we've all seen.

                  OPRAH
             (nodding)
          What's going to happen to
          Katie Holmes now?

                  CHRISTIAN
          She's been through a lot, and
          her rehabilitation is going to
          take some time.  Luckily I
          reached her before it was too
          late.  The police now have
          Bradford in custody and he's
          cooperating with Bale
          Enterprises to manufacture an
          antidote.  Plus Katie's
          strong, and she's in the care
          of the finest minds at the
          Bale Institute of Mental
          Health.  I think we'll be able
          to welcome Katie back to your
          show in no time. 

I know, picking on Tom Cruise these days is too easy and not entirely sporting, especially since Jonathan Coulton has done it better. Plus this is a bit more perverse than my usual imaginings. But what can I say? I just couldn’t keep this attempt at symbolism to myself:

Hypnotized, Katie swings a leg over The Cruiser’s torso even as they spiral downward together.

The I Can Do It Better blog-a-thon, day 3

Yesterday’s contributions were great, but none of them (including my own) exactly matched my criterion of choosing a subject that’s already almost perfect. Today we return to form with:

  • A nitpicky complaint about the climax of an almost-perfect film in Recoil at Maul of America.

and my own suggestions for erasing the flaws in another almost-perfect film.


One of the ways in which I know L.A. Confidential is almost a perfect film is that, while I’ve seen a lot (a lot) of movies, and many of those movies have been about Hollywood, and some of those have been about Hollywood in the 1950’s, still when I think about Hollywood in the 1950’s it’s L.A. Confidential‘s Hollywood that comes immediately to mind. The script is meaty and intelligent, almost epic; the performances are nuanced and three-dimensional; and the overall realization is immersive.

And yet…

There are two key moments in the film where the script goes clunk. (Spoilers follow.) The first is the scene between Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce). Exley, the straightest straight-arrow in a police department full of crooks, thugs, and sell-outs, is on the outs with everyone, but he needs the help of Jack, the biggest sell-out of them all. Jack’s in the middle of his own dark night of the soul when Exley makes his unwelcome intrusion. All of a sudden, Exley launches into a soliloquy about Rollo Tomasi, the name he made up for the unknown thief who shot and killed his cop father and got away clean. Apparently this is meant to be a rare moment of soul-baring for Exley, and it’s meant to be just what Jack needs to hear in his crisis of conscience. But as played, it’s so abrupt that it’s just not believable. Why would Exley reveal this bit of secret history to Jack, whom he barely knows or likes? It’s not that he understands the effect it will have on him. And why does Jack, who’s merely annoyed at Exley’s presence, become immediately hooked by the story?

(Also, what the hell kind of name is Rollo Tomasi for the young Exley to have made up? Of course it has to be distinctive-sounding so that we’ll recognize it when it comes up again at a crucial plot point later in the film.)

Just a few extra lines of dialog would suffice to fix this. Here’s the relevant part of the script with changebars to show my additions.

                          JACK
            Transfer me, suspend me.  Just
            leave me alone.

                          EXLEY
            You make a mistake?

                          JACK
            Yeah.  My whole life.

  Jack stands, heads out.  Exley follows; he needs help.

                          EXLEY
            Listen, I think I made a mistake,
            too.

                          JACK
            I ain't a priest, Lieutenant.  I
            can't hear your confession.

                          EXLEY
            Do you make the three Negroes for
            the Nite Owl killings?

                          JACK
            What?

                          EXLEY
            It's a simple question.

                          JACK
            You should be the last person who
            wants to dig any deeper into the
            Nite Owl, Lieutenant.

  Exley watches as Jack continues down a hall.  Then:

EXLEY I don't try to bury my mistakes, Vincennes. Exley's lashing out, but he's hit a mark. Jack stops. JACK (to himself) Like catshit. Exley's surprised at Jack's reaction. He makes a snap decision to press his advantage.
EXLEY Rollo Tomasi. Jack stops, looks back at him. JACK Is there more to that, or do I have to guess? EXLEY Rollo was a purse snatcher. My father ran into him off duty. He shot my father six times and got away clean. No one even knew who he was. I made the name up to give him some personality. JACK So what's the point? EXLEY Rollo's the reason I became a cop. I wanted to catch the guys who thought they could get away with it. It was supposed to be about truth and justice and Rollo. But somewhere along the way I forgot all that... How about you, Jack? Why'd you become a cop? Jack looks like he might cry, but smiles instead. JACK I don't remember...

The second false moment comes a few scenes later, when Edmund Exley pays a visit to Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), a high-priced hooker whose employer is connected somehow to the film’s various seamy dealings. Exley knows that his thuggish fellow officer, Bud White, is in love with her.

It’s Exley’s first meeting with Bracken and it’s all business. And as I wrote above, Exley is an extremely straight arrow — even more so at this late point in the movie, when he’s resolved to correct his earlier mistake (alluded to above) rather than enjoy the glory he’d earned by making it.

Yet within just a few lines of dialogue, Exley brazenly grabs and kisses her, and a moment later they’re rolling around on the floor knocking over the furniture — all so the corrupt police captain, the evil mastermind of the movie, can get Exley’s moment of weakness on film from behind a two-way mirror, so he can show it to Bud White, whom he knows will become murderously jealous and take care of Exley for him.

It seems as though we’re supposed to believe that Exley is a bundle of repressed sexual energy that finally can’t be contained in the presence of the smoldering Bracken. But we’ve seen nothing to suggest that of Exley, and while Bracken indulges in some suggestive banter with him, it’s nothing that would make a dam burst. Besides, Exley fears White, knowing that White already hates him for other reasons.

No, it’s a case of the scriptwriters being a little too hasty. They needed something to motivate Bud White’s rampage a few scenes later, and they leaped to the most obvious choice without remaining true to their characters.

How much harder would it have been to stage it like this? The captain knows that Exley is going to see Bracken, and he knows that Bracken’s boss, Pierce Patchett, specializes in making people look like other people. The captain arranges for White to see Exley arriving at Bracken’s house, and then later shows him photos of what appears to be Exley in various compromising positions with her but is in fact one of Patchett’s ringers. Presto: instant murderous rampage, and Exley is still Exley.

The I Can Do It Better blog-a-thon, day 2

After catching my breath from yesterday‘s volume of contributions, I am thrilled to report that today we have more than double the number of posts for the I Can Do It Better blog-a-thon! (More than triple, even!)

  • Culture Snob has hit on a brilliant idea in the hilarious article, “Fixing the Oscars: A Modest Proposal.”
  • Culture Snob also points to an older post of equal genius that happens to fit the bill for this blog-a-thon, “A Short Film About Failure” (which uses as its subject material the same film that I used for a different blog-a-thon).
  • The Creepy Inner Thought took my instruction for this blog-a-thon, “choose a well-known movie, book, painting, sculpture, speech, song, performance, or other manifestation of human artistic expression” and interpreted “human” rather liberally in “What about Bob?

For my own day-two contribution I ask you to hark back to Flatliners, chockablock with the hot new stars of 1990 and therefore a key hub in the six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon game, which was much more challenging then than it is now. Inevitably, spoilers follow.

The story is about a group of medical school students who begin toying with death, taking turns having their hearts medically stopped by one another in secret late-night sessions and then restarted in tense (heart-stopping! ha ha) will-the-paddles-work-this-time defibrillator scenes. They dare each other to go longer and longer without a pulse, and they all see visions while flatlining, and the farther they go into death before returning, the more their secret pasts return with them! Julia Roberts (“Rachel”) is haunted by her father, who killed himself when she was a little girl. Kevin Bacon (“David”) is haunted by a little girl he bullied as a kid. William Baldwin (“Joe”) is haunted by the many women he’s had sex with and videotaped without their knowledge. Kiefer Sutherland (“Nelson”) repeatedly gets the crap beat out of him by one of cinema’s creepiest little boys ever, and that’s saying something.

One by one each of them comes to grip with his or her past sins. Eventually we learn who the creepy boy is: Billy Mahoney, a classmate of Nelson’s who died accidentally as a result of Nelson’s bullying long ago. Nelson has been carrying his guilt around for his entire life. It is he who first proposes the flatlining “experiments” to his friends, and now it’s clear why: he has a death wish. He feels he does not deserve to live.

And indeed he does not deserve to live, in classical literary terms. That wouldn’t be true if, like David, Nelson simply sought to acknowledge and atone for his childhood behavior. But he doesn’t; nor is he courageous enough to repay his karmic debt by straightforwardly killing himself. Instead he tempts fate, repeatedly and with arrogance, while drawing his fellow students into his reckless, slow-motion suicide attempt. As we know from Greek mythology, the gods honor courage but punish pride (and the film has Oliver Platt as the Greek chorus warning ad nauseam about the sin of hubris).

And yet Nelson survives at the end of the film! In his final flatlining experiment — intending at last to be a suicide, since he’s doing it alone with no one available to resuscitate him — he reconciles with the vision of Billy Mahoney, who goes smiling off to heaven, and is then rescued by his friends, who show up to revive him just in the nick of time. What a gyp! It is a textbook specimen of the tacked-on Hollywood ending.

But the remedy is not so simple. Nelson can’t just expire alone on the operating table. For one thing, it’s anticlimactic: Nelson wants to die, and he tries, and!… succeeds. For another thing, he feels remorse about Billy Mahoney, which is redemptive; perhaps by trying to kill himself — the only way he can think of to apologize to Billy — he earns back the right to live. But the main reason is that if Nelson dies, then he gets what he wants, and even though he may be redeemed for causing Billy’s death, he’s still guilty, guilty, guilty of toying with the natural order of things and endangering his friends. He can’t simply accomplish his goal; the piper must be paid one way or another. But how?

It’s obvious: Rachel, who has a romantic history with Nelson, must die. It doesn’t matter exactly how, as long as it’s related to the flatlining experiments and therefore Nelson’s fault. She is the price that destiny extracts for his arrogance. Let him reconcile with Billy Mahoney, only to wake up and discover his responsibility for a new classmate’s death and the realization that absolution is not so simple. There’s no shortcut. For some sins, “sorry” just doesn’t cut it. Nelson’s penance is to live a long life of tragic wretchedness.

The I Can Do It Better blog-a-thon, day 1

And we’re off! The I Can Do It Better blog-a-thon is officially under way.

As described in the original announcement, the rules for this blog-a-thon are:

  1. Please choose a well-known movie, book, painting, sculpture, speech, song, performance, or other manifestation of human artistic expression.
  2. Describe how it fails to attain perfection.
  3. Describe your remedy.
  4. Publish the article on your blog between February 28th and March 2nd. Be sure to state that you’re participating in this blog-a-thon and include a link to this page.
  5. Send e-mail to <icdib@emphatic.com> to let me know about your post and where it is.
  6. I’ll then list it on the current day’s blog-a-thon page.

No easy targets, please, and no mere technical problems. Stick to movies (et al.) that are already pretty good and require only some creative input from you to realize their full potential.

As submissions flood? trickle? in, they will be listed right here. Meanwhile, my own contribution for day one follows below.

  • [your submission here]

For day one of this blog-a-thon I present an e-mail exchange I had with my sister (abridged) upon seeing Cloverfield, which she had seen a few days earlier. Spoilers follow.

From: Bob
To: Suzanne
Subject: Cloverfield

Saw it tonight. Liked it a lot. But there were a few things that bothered me about it.

Liked a lot: it managed to have both a happy and an unhappy ending.

Bothered me: Rob says into the camera at the end, “If you’re watching this, you probably know more about what happened than I do.” But I don’t. Without some clue about where the monster came from or what it wants, it’s just a lot of senseless mayhem.

Liked a lot: looked and felt exactly like playing a game of Half-Life 2 (or something of that ilk), complete with the eerie atmospherics, homicidal creatures of unknown ability, precarious settings, and conveniently timed glimpses of plot (e.g., the fighters flying overhead exactly as our heroes are clambering across the roof, or the tank getting squashed exactly as Hud runs past it).

Bothered me: not a single “only in NY” moment.

Liked a lot: the mysteriously gory fate of Marlena.

Bothered me: the monster was too invulnerable. That carpet-bombing attack should have finished it.

Liked a lot: its horrifying babies.

Bothered me: Hud’s fate. The monster had been seeing and killing humans for hours by that point, why did it pause to contemplate Hud? It’s as if it knew this was its big close-up (which I could have done without; made it less scary). And why was Hud the only one that it used its teeth on (as far as we know), especially if it wasn’t interested in eating him all up?

Liked a lot: the alternately thunderous and haunting monster-movie music over the end credits that they couldn’t use anywhere else in the film because of the “verité” conceit.

Bothered me: I sort of get why Lily and Hud went with Rob. Sort of. Why did Marlena go?

Liked a lot: the shaky camerawork. 1000x better done and more effective than in Blair Witch, which merely gave me a headache.

Bothered me: the shocker climax, when the freshly carpet-bombed monster conveniently reaches up to swat the chopper out of the sky, even though by that point in the film we’d seen dozens of aircraft fly safely out of the monster’s reach.

How it should have ended: as the helicopter lifts off, a monster baby leaps onto it. They just manage to close the doors in time but the monster baby clings on as the chopper flies high enough to get the nice vantage of the carpet bombing. Then it works its way inside, killing the pilot and crashing the helicopter. Our heroes extract themselves from the wreckage only to see the badly wounded monster staggering their way. It dies! …And collapses on top of Hud, killing him. Mixed emotions for the audience. (Well, not so mixed; Hud was kind of an ass.) But in dying, it sheds about a million of those babies, which fan out across Manhattan. Our remaining heroes take shelter, record their final message, and then Hammerdown; the end.

From: Suzanne
To: Bob
Subject: Re: Cloverfield

Bothered me: Rob says into the camera at the end, “If you’re watching this, you probably know more about what happened than I do.” But I don’t. Without some clue about where the monster came from or what it wants, it’s just a lot of senseless mayhem.

[…] Why does it have to make sense? Why does the story have to be linear and wrapped up in a neat little package for you?

Also in case you hadn’t noticed we are watching the events unfold thru the eyes of those who experienced and documented every second of it. What makes you so special as to be entitled to more information than they themselves had? […]

Bothered me: not a single “only in NY” moment.

Agreed. That would have been a nice touch. […]

Bothered me: I sort of get why Lily and Hud went with Rob. Sort of. Why did Marlena go?

Safety in numbers. […]

How it should have ended: as the helicopter lifts off, a monster baby leaps onto it. They just manage to close the doors in time but the monster baby clings on as the chopper flies high enough to get the nice vantage of the carpet bombing. Then it works its way inside, killing the pilot and crashing the helicopter. Our heroes extract themselves from the wreckage only to see the badly wounded monster staggering their way. It dies! …And collapses on top of Hud, killing him. Mixed emotions for the audience. (Well, not so mixed; Hud was kind of an ass.) But in dying, it sheds about a million of those babies, which fan out across Manhattan. Our remaining heroes take shelter, record their final message, and then Hammerdown; the end.

Yes. Far superior ending. Except I already saw that in Aliens.

From: Bob
To: Suzanne
Subject: Re: Cloverfield

Why does it have to make sense? Why does the story have to be linear and wrapped up in a neat little package for you?

Actually I liked the limited perspective, the non-linearity, the don’t-know-wtf-is-going-on of the movie; in fact they were its biggest strengths. However, you’re wrong about this:

We are watching the events unfold thru the eyes of those who experienced and documented every second of it

We’re actually watching it from the safety of a government data lab. Enough time has elapsed since the events of the video for government agents to re-enter Manhattan and, among other things, discover the camera and log its contents. From that perspective there should have been a bit more information. Even a single scrap more than the characters had would have satisfied me. For instance, the pre-video display could have said something like, “Not to be removed from Crisis Command Center, New White House, Lexington, KY,” which might have suggested that parts of the U.S. too close to the ocean had become uninhabitable, because It Came From The Sea (and so did its friends).

Bothered me: not a single “only in NY” moment.

Agreed. That would have been a nice touch.

What would you have added? For some reason I’m stuck on hot dog vendors; e.g., a hot dog vendor cowers as a monster baby rushes him, and then is surprised to find it going after the yummy stuff in his cart rather than him. He’d start to flee, stop, reach carefully around the monster baby to get his cashbox from the cart, and then run for it. Ha ha! But what would a hot dog vendor still be doing standing by his cart by the time the monster babies show up?

Far superior ending. Except I already saw that in Aliens.

Eh, it could be made fresh with minor variations. What if the terrified monster baby, clinging to the rising helicopter (long enough for us to get our good view of the carpet bombing), called to its siblings and they quickly assembled themselves into a towering chain of bodies to pull the helicopter back down? Whoa, creepy!

From: Bob
To: Suzanne
Subject: Re: Cloverfield

which might have suggested that parts of the U.S. too close to the ocean had become uninhabitable, because It Came From The Sea (and so did its friends)

Which — ooh! — turns it into an allegory about global warming and rising sea levels!

Also, you can’t spell allegory without Al Gore. Just thought I’d mention that.

You heard it here first

The new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull features a crate labeled “Roswell, New Mexico 1947,” a clear allusion to the infamous “UFO incident.”

My own speculative Indy IV story, published almost a year ago, included an oblique Roswell joke (“…he conceals the Falcon in the New Mexico desert… a dramatic near-crash during a test flight in 1947″) — which only increases my certainty that when it comes to screenwriting, I can do it better than (or at least as well as) the pros.

Reminder: the I Can Do It Better blog-a-thon

The I Can Do It Better blog-a-thon takes place here starting in two weeks, from February 28th through March 2nd. Please read the original post for details, but for your convenience I’ll reproduce the instructions here:

  1. Please choose a well-known movie, book, painting, sculpture, speech, song, performance, or other manifestation of human artistic expression.
  2. Describe how it fails to attain perfection.
  3. Describe your remedy.
  4. Publish the article on your blog between February 28th and March 2nd. Be sure to state that you’re participating in this blog-a-thon and include a link to this page.
  5. [Updated] Return to this page during those days and you’ll find a form you can fill out send e-mail to <icdib@emphatic.com> to let me know about your post and where it is.
  6. I’ll then list it at the main blog-a-thon page to be posted on February 28th.

Seeya then!

300


Tonight we blog in hell!
(The tumbling figures are the
victims of my withering rhetoric.)

This post marks two big gee bobg milestones: the 300th post and the first day with more than 200 pageviews — and that’s after subtracting all the hits from bots, spiders, and my own obsessive checking and rechecking of my content.

In honor of this momentous occasion I thought I’d turn over the writing duties to my first guest blogger: the Bob-o-matic. The Bob-o-matic is a Perl script that examines all the posts on my blog and then constructs a new post at random using the same vocabulary and the same phrase patterns (technically, via a Markov chain). If you’d like to understand exactly what the Bob-o-matic does, here is its source code, with no helpful comments or documentation (for extra pedagogical rigor).

Without further ado, the first gee bobg post by the Bob-o-matic!


Today is iconoclasm, which was my cue that it’s harvesting laughs instead of writing letters to Senator Dianne Feinstein expressing disappointment in one shot as quickly as possible. I bought some rope and, for better or worse, he shouted, pee! By the AP and appeared far and wide in the shadow of Primadonna’s wonderful hearty food and jovial, though I understood a little media savvy can recognize TV’s propaganda and soothing pap for what it goes on to a willing patron and would not stop the car overheated and we still don’t know exactly why this might be. Tell me. There’s my street, Tom said out of my head into his hotel. That’s when they saw us run from the Star Wars a couple of hours on the Millennium Falcon is sidetracked into an intelligent, multilayered byplay that gets its point across indirectly. Take this scene are Atia’s that is far preferable to hearing nine months of 1986 were a hit the crowd getting into the story better than most? In short, if elected, to the seas to be sexually active when you can imagine we are deeply disappointed with the peroxide and a wide variety of capes, masks, and those who did the exact same thing goes for sushi… If the President deems them hostile to U.S. Senator in a boxing ring notably body and the structure of the weather yesterday, as there was David, Julie, and he throws a tantrum? None of us found Greg crashed out on a wide selection of vintage candy from yesteryear, and exhibit a journalistic integrity that they included him in happier times? July 1999. Mr. Spock Uhura Uhura uniform 60 Star Trek Technical Manual. Bless her, never over the years I have not been true at all those southern dialects myself, what could George Bailey, who doesn’t like tits? That means there is not a place full of them. I forget what it looks like a beggar he couldn’t bag ‘er for want of a web page I created with this system it was time to time. Dozens of feet it’s a smell, smell world after all it’s a way to explain the observable world without invoking God.

What brings you here, 2007 edition

Here are some of the top queries from various search engines that resulted in hits on my blog during the past year or so, reproduced verbatim from my server logs. (Last year’s results are here.) Each related family of queries is listed with a main variant in bold and selected other variants, plus the percentage of query-hits represented by that family.

I was at first surprised to see that hits for “James Bond villains” outnumbers hits for “vampire lesbian girl scouts” (etc.) and “sex” (etc.) combined, but then realized: the percentages are a function both of the popularity of that search and of the ranking of my site in the search results. In other words, if you’re looking for anything about vampires or lesbians or sex I regret to say there are a lot of likelier websites for you to visit before mine.

James Bond villains; The Villains of bond; deformed bond villains; “james bond” +villains +clothes 10.2%
William H. Macy; william h macy photos; face de William H. Macy 5.0%
Vampire lesbian girl scouts; lesbian vampires; naked lesbians; lesbian girl scouts; naked girl scouts; kissing lesbian girls; zombie girl scouts; evil girlscouts; girl scout decorated cake 4.5%
Sex etc.; horsey style sex; lesbian masturbation; “sex positions illustrated”; vampire sex; lesbians having hot lesbian sex; lesbian sex soundeffect; “San Francisco Masturbate-a-thon”; squat girl masturbate -cock -man -boy -blow; dildo attached to wall; sex positions kitty style; attach dildo to floor; How to convince my lady staf for sex?; sex positions in alphanumeric; “park and ride” “sex positions illustrated” 3.2%
Jaws ride; Jaws ride construction; jaws hitchcock 3.1%
e to the i pi plus one; pi relation to e; mathematical constant e Euler comic; relating pi, e, 1 and 0; “amazing relationship” e pi 2.3%
Don Fanucci; vito corleone fanucci 2.3%
Honeybee/Bees in chimney; humming sound when close glass fireplace doors; honeybees in chimney; bees in fireplace; bees chimney flying down 2.2%
Star Wars; 5th august 1977; star wars remake; hoth rebel base; “your tauntaun will freeze”; exegesis “empire strikes back”; star wars ben kenobi ghost; was obi wan strong enough to defeat palpatine; In Episode 5 what is the insult of Leia to Han Solo which Chewie laughed that Han called him “fuzzball” ?; lego star wars millennium falcon; star wars cassette tape 1977; “bob glickstein” “star wars”; mark hamill car crash empire strikes back monster; han solo slices open tauntaun quote; HOW DID THE FREAKIN EMPIRE BEGIN?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!; August+5th+1977; star wars novelization 1977; What does yoda say when luke comments that he is not afraid; why didn’t Luke kill the Wampa; “asteroid field”+”star wars”; star wars allegories; star wars 1970 nerd; “time magazine” 1977 “star wars” 2.1%
Pirates of the Caribbean; pirate medallion; does elizabeth swann love jack sparrow; elizabeth swann’s red dress; jack sparrow character motivation 2.1%
Widescreen viewing area; “what size tv to buy”; “square inches” diagonal widescreen chart; determine tv width given diagonal; 42″ 16:9 square inches; 16:9 4:3 screen equivalence OR correspondance; DIAGONAL ASPECT RATIO FORMULA; pythagoras 16:9 screen size 32″ 1.8%
Godfather; Godfather part II poster; Godfather Part 4: Fredo’s Revenge 1.8%
Susan Oliver/Orion Slave Girl; vina star trek; star trek green orion slave; nude Orion slave girl; orion slave girls makeup; orion slave girls color correction 1.7%
Cathy Lee Crosby/Wonder Woman; cathy lee crosby wonderwoman film download; cathy+lee+crosby+as+wonder+woman; wonder woman drag; WONDERWOMAN TV MOVIE 1.7%
Rogaine; scalp conditions; itchy scalp; rogaine results; scalp exercise; rogaine effectiveness 1.7%
Ursula sex; ursula undress; ursula dildo; ursula sex disney 1.6%
Comcast; comcast removes channels; comcast turn off service; comcast losing west coast feeds; complaints over comcast hbo; disable speed reduction comcast cable; compression artifacts comcast; how do i delete channels i do not watch in comcast; comcast crappy broadcast; comcast reduction in service; do i get a rate reduction when comcast removes channels; I want both west coast and east coast feeds 1.6%
Bob Glickstein; gee bobg; “bob glickstein” +yoga; bob glickstein andrea; bob glickstein imdb; growing up Glickstein 1.4%
Trophy; ugly trophy; dna trophy; bezos trophy 1.3%
Dog; how to draw dogs; “remington dog park”; dog pee drives away evil spirits; veterinary dogs and chocolate 1.3%
Lulav; lulav and etrog; big picture of a lulav and etrog; lulav by its self; lulav etrog chabad; sukkot lulav without etrog 1.3%
Star Trek/Enterprise/Kirk/etc.; spock uhura; Uhura uniform; 60 star trek uniform; bonk bonk on the head star trek; Captain Kirk’s Insignia; enterprise blueprints; happy birthday star trek; Klingons-Star Trek; Atheist Star Trek; 1.2%
Amy Linker; what happened to amy linker; amy linker and tv land awards 1.1%
Jodie Foster; jodie foster bugsy malone; YOUNG JODIE FOSTER; +”give a little love and it all comes back to you” +foster 1.1%
Joseph Costanzo; joe costanzo restaurant; Joseph costanzo primadonna 1.1%
The end of Superman; superman reverse time; superman in the end; superman earth spinning; can superman go the speed of light; how many times can superman fly around earth in 1 second; +”it is forbidden for you to interfere in human history”; superman rewind time; how many times does superman fly around the earth in order to reverse its rotation 1.0%
Frank Pentangeli; frank pentangeli hit; roth corleone Frank Pentangeli assassination; frank pentangeli johnny ola 1.0%
Thai gem scam; thailand scam; majestic export jewelry thailand scam; gems profit thailand; thai sapphire scam; thailand conman; buying gemstones, thailand, blog; thai Export Center scam; selling thai gems; what to do if conned in thailand; david maurer thailand 1.0%
Evil cats 0.8%
Food photography; food stylist; food styling “pasta”; food stylists cereal; food stylist burger; tricks of a food stylist 0.8%
Each daughter has the same number…; In a certain family each daughter has the same number of brothers and sisters. Each son has twice as many sisters as brothers. How many sons and daughters are there in the family? Now there are two ways to do this obviously, you can do it the hard way or the easy way. 0.8%
Fizzies; what ever happened to fizzies drink tablets; how do fizzies work; fizzies that are new; Fizzie tablet sex aid; truckload of fizzies; FIZZIES FOUNTAIN 0.7%
James Bond; vintage james bond girls; james bond toys; the bond men; Live and Let Die Band James Bond 0.7%
Pez museum; pez incredibles violet; batman pez dispensers; pez guns; why didnt violet parr become a pez machine; headless PEZ dispensers 0.7%
Vincent Price; old photos of Vincent Price; Vincent Price gay; “the saint” vincent price; 0.5%
Candy; old time candy; “dylan’s candy bar”; Candy of yesteryear 0.5%
Entenmann’s; golden cake; entenmanns’ chocolate chip filled crumb cake recipe; entenmann fudge golden cake 0.5%
Adam Stoller; why i owe adam stoller an apology; fish adam stoller 0.5%
MoveOn; moveon.org bad; moveon.org founder; move away from moveon.org; moveon endorsements nov 2007 election 0.5%
Vertical speed indicator/Altimeter; static port; instrument dial Concorde speed; how does an altimeter work; pitot static instruments; ram air pressure pitot; how does the vsi work? flying 0.5%
Cigarettes/Camels/Still Life With Woodpecker; Joe Camel; tom robbins woodpecker; camel tom robbins 0.5%
Baron Munchausen; was baron munchausen an atheist 0.5%
Sharon Stone; sharon stone naked; sharon stone’ pictures, 1970; sharon stone en lingerie fine 0.5%
Computer; computers internet blog; “apple II home computer” 0.4%
xkcd; xkcd complex numbers; calculus xkcd; math xkcd 0.4%
Bob Falfa/Martin Stett; big bob falfa; purchase a bob falfa hat; falfa and milner 0.4%
Adrift/Open Water 2; “open water 2” true story tried everything; understand explain open water 2:adrift ending?; FORGOT TO LOWER LADDER ON YACHT 0.4%
Honda Fit; finding a honda fit; pre order “honda fit” bay area; vw rabbit or honda fit? 0.4%
Carl Sagan; “carl sagan” +billions; cosmos carl sagan vangelis heaven hell; “circumference of the earth” carl sagan; eratosthenes carl sagan; Carl Sagan and Star Trek 0.4%
Splashdown; splashdown lyrics meaning; i feel so elated would you please bring me joy lyrics; free splashdown downloads karma slave; lyrics so if your past approaches you pulled into a war you’ll lose; karma slave splashdown video; i feel so elated i do i do splashdown 0.4%
The Incredibles; Life Lessons The Incredibles; incredibles analogy of family togetherness 0.3%
Legobiggest lego city ever made; Cool lego creations; LEGO WORLD RECORD FOR MILLENIUM FALCON 0.3%
Birthday invitation; neverland invitation 0.3%
Mill Valley Pediatrics; what new rule causes pediatrician to close office; dr. Harris pediatrics mill valley 0.3%
BDSM; BDSM and rodent; hellium balloons bdsm; bdsm “trembling with fear”; professional bdsm pittsburgh; bdsm vanity plates 0.3%
Richard S. Castellano 0.3%
Bugsy Malone/Scott Baio; coca cola jingle+you give a little love and all comes back to you 0.3%
Games magazine/Calculatrivia marathon; ken jennings calculatrivia; “games magazine” contest t-shirt 0.3%
Penis; Jonah Falcon penis; christmas penis drawing; penis peeing pictures; penis doodles; “draw a penis” 0.3%
Drawing/scribbling/doodling; kids scribbles 0.3%
Raiders of the Lost Ark; indiana jones medallion + raiders of the lost ark; indiana jones finds millenium falcon; indiana jones harrison ford sean connery 0.3%
I know it was you Fredo.; Johnny Ola Fredo; HOW DOES MICHAEL KNOW ABOUT FREDO; +”why” +michael +kill +fredo 0.3%
Federation Trading Post 0.2%
Funny epitaph; headstone humor; headstone for mom 0.2%
Batman; shark repellent spray; batman and the shark; batman robin “more toyetic” 0.2%
Handshadow; Hand-Shadow play 0.2%
Peter and the Starcatchers 0.2%
Watch neighbor undress; neighbor undress photo 0.2%
Lemon Ice King of Corona; queens ices 0.2%
Weight; weight graph; college freshman weight graph; jewish weight loss 0.2%
Marty Goldstein/Black Book; ‘marty goldstein’ ‘creative black book’; i remember going to the black book office zanetti 0.2%
Kinds of meat; meatballs three kinds of meat 0.2%
Fligth to Mars 0.2%
Supertanker; how much does a supertanker cost?; how many barrels of oil does a supertanker carry; how much money does a supertanker captain make; running costs for a supertanker; becoming a supertanker captain; supertankers are curved 0.2%
Jewish; jew obnoxious; jewish products; mormon jew; mountain jew; val kilmer sephardic jewish 0.2%
Cartelligent; Leigh Taylor, Cartelligent; cartelligent price for honda fit 0.2%
Sweetener; hooray sweetener; cyclamates popularity sodas; Is Cyclamates good for you; sodium bicarbonate sweetener cancer 0.2%
Captain Morgan rum 0.2%
Gerald Zanetti 0.2%
Bush smile 0.2%
Salt Lake flats; nevada open salt lake 0.2%
Disney; disney+AND+fingerprint; disney park hopper fingerprint; thumper disney 0.2%
Koyaanisqatsi 0.2%
Katharine Hepburn 0.2%
Incremental backup; jungledisk incremental backups; s3 backup incremental mirror linux; simple linux incremental backups; infinite backup 0.2%
Rhymes with Bethany; bethany accident utah; something that rhymes with bethany; poem for bethany 0.1%
Sci-fi spaceships; cool Scifi Spaceships; most beautiful spaceships 0.1%
I Dream of Jeannie; healey irresistible to when i dream of jeannie episode; i dream of jeanie colorization 0.1%
Laundry; how to get quarters laundry; cold undissolved laundry soap; monopolize laundry machines; laundry pile 0.1%
Anakin/Padme; How much do Anakin’s talent, pride and ambitions affect his decisions to turn to ‘the dark side’? 0.1%
Making Mr. Right; malkovich “making mr right” 0.1%
Pop-culture grid; “the pop culture grid”+last concert you saw 0.1%
Adventurer’s Inn; toboggan adventurer’s inn 0.1%
Clemenza; young clemenza; who killed clemenza 0.1%
Glenne Headley 0.1%
1776/“Yours Yours Yours” 0.1%
Nature of reality; 10 dimensions of reality; how to understand ten dimensional reality; three-dimensional pants 0.1%
Dunk tank; “spring carnival” dunk 0.1%
Misconstruction 0.1%
Sarah Jessica Parker; sarah jessica parker in square pegs 0.1%
Mr. Arrigo; Robert arrigo teacher 0.1%
Eli Attie 0.1%
Hog-calling time in Nebraska; What tune is hog calling time in nebraska sung to?; ORIGINS OF HOG CALLING; hog calling songs 0.1%
Eulogy for a friend 0.1%
Indiana University; indiana university hofstadter 0.1%
Cynthia Nixon; Cynthia Nixon manhattan project 0.1%
Pine Knoll Bungalow Colony; bungalow colonies in monticello 0.1%
Prison Break; prisoner 94941; michael scofield myer briggs; “prisoner number” scofield 0.1%
Winnemucca, NV; Winnemucca weekly pet friendly motels; reasons to love Winnemucca, NV 0.1%
Steve Volan 0.1%
P.S. 196; all teachers from p.s.196 0.1%
Knish Nosh; knish nosh health department 0.1%
Mucoshave 0.1%
Laser/Theodore Maiman; 1966 national geographic “the laser’s bright magic”; what kind of food does theodore maiman likes; did theodore maiman get alot of money for making the laser 0.1%
Jeff Bezos; BEZOS THE GREATEST 0.1%
Universal Hall Pass 0.1%

Rubbernecking

Goddamn this is a lot of traffic. It’s three in the afternoon, rush hour isn’t supposed to be until four or so. Is this a holiday weekend? No… Maybe there’s an accident up ahead. Or some construction. This highway is in fine shape, why don’t they fix some streets that really need it! Fuuuuck, so slow… I wish I could see past this truck. I’ll drift left… Nothing to see that way. Ooh, a big space just opened up in front of me! Got up to 10 MPH that time, that felt good. Gonna have to tide me over for a while. Inch. Inch. Inch. I wonder which lane I should be in. Maybe if I put on the radio and the timing is just right I’ll hear about this jam on a traffic report. They can tell me what lane to avoid. Bad music… bad music… annoying ad… conservative talk show… Oh never mind, better to adapt to the situation moment by moment. Hey, I see a flashing light. Red and blue — looks like an accident. It’s in the left lane, better merge over. Excuse me… excuse me… asshole! You’re in such a fucking hurry to go three feet? Better let this other guy in in front of me. Traffic-karma points. Show this other asshole how it’s done. Almost to the accident. Man, my clutch leg is killing me. There it is — holy hell, those cars are demolished. Gotta watch out for sharp debris on the road. There’s some — oh crap, I’m gonna roll over it… arrgh. Oh shit, someone’s down. Is he still in one piece? Don’t see how he could be. Or she. Too many paramedics in the way, can’t see. Damn, that could happen to me. Confronted by my own mortality. Maybe I should be a little more cautious on the road. Whew, I’m past the accident at last. Hey, the highway is wide open. Get out of my way, you crappy Yugo — 80 MPH, here I come!!

Plotting Pirates

Mystery Man On Film is sponsoring a screenwriting blog-a-thon this weekend. Here’s my contribution. It’s about the script for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott.

(By the way, I also have a very different kind of analysis of the same movie.)

Spoilers ahead, says I! Ye be warned.

Continue reading “Plotting Pirates”