Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 )

My wife Stephanie landed a role in an independent film last summer that was shot in Long Island. It’s called “The Video Guys,” and follows the exploits of four wedding videographers at four different weddings. Steph got to play a jilted bride. The trailer was just finished, and boy does this look exciting! You can see it here:

The Video Guys – the movie trailer from Dan Brennan on Vimeo.

It’s also available at “The Video Guys” MySpace page here.

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(Originally posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 )

A repertoire of facial expressions worn by American Idol contestants during competition:

The game face

The Jim Morrison “I know what color your underwear is” scowl

The “I’ve got pitch problems” smirk

The Joan of Arc “I’m literally burning to death” mask of pain

The anal penetration eye pop

The “this performance sucks” grimace

The toothy idiot sneer

The “I’m dying over here” grin

The roadkill surprise

The Liz Phair “I’m a naughty little girl” blow job face

The veil of tears

The sooty bronchitis blue mask

The Colombian necktie

The eyeless carapace of death

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(Originally posted Tuesday, February 19, 2008 )

A list of completely nonsensical slang words that are made up by the users of Urban Dictionary.com and that no human being would ever actually use because the site has no kind of fifth-grade filtering device to keep it from being totally illegitimate as a resource:

–*Cranksy: irritable having taken a lot of crank

–*P strut: the way a person walks after just having enjoyed sexual intercourse

–*P Diddy: the result of micturition and defecation at the same time, in other words, both No. 1 and No. 2

–*The O dep: a state of post-coital depression caused by the normal saturation of neurochemicals

–*Viagrimation: the immigration of Latin American peasants to the U.S. seeking erectile dysfunction drugs for recreational use

–*Drag nacious: a person who is … “drag nacious?????”

–*Scumbuncular: a man who has the fo’ shizzle fo’ sho

–*Dracula tea’s service: too disgusting to even write out

–*S on ma D, Coke Tase: something about sucking my dick after using Coca-Cola as a spermicide, though I’m not positive because the person who added this is obviously only age 7 and doesn’t actually understand the concepts

–*ROFLWABLLUMA: rolling on the floor laughing with a big lollapalooza lollipop up my ass

–*PP Ride: a car that attracts the ladies to what is obviously your monetary largesse

–*”I wouldn’t S in his M”: A scatalogical reference whose connotation is, “I shan’t tarry with this gentleman.”

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(Originally posted Monday, February 18, 2008 )

Silly Parochial Arguments Often Heard Among Educated Grown-Ups

–*My psychological profile of Richard Nixon is better than yours, and offers a much better explanation for his obsession with John F. Kennedy. You nincompoop!

–*My explanation for the evolutionary uselessness of the female sexual climax is better than your explanation. You twit.

–*My FEMA rules for housing development in a floodplain are better thought out than yours. You garlic eater!

–*I am a better editorial columnist than Nicholas Kristof because I’m not pretending to save the world from my desk. Silly dolt.

–*My strictly prescriptivist use of the word “irony” is much more exclusive and limited than the promiscuous way you guys use the word over at American Heritage Dictionary. You fuck heads.

–*The professor’s understanding of Shakespeare’s late use of poetic enjambment is something that would only be said out loud by a crank who would fist his own mother.

–*I am the better historian when it comes to Emma Goldman’s true feelings about the Haymarket Riot, not you Mr. Vidal. You raging cunt.

–*I am the one who made Grigori Perelman’s proof about three-dimensional manifolds shrinking down into geometrical submanifolds possible. So he can suck my dick.

–*Your theory about the suppression of auto-reactive T-cells shows no intuitive understanding of T-cell memory and their role in immunological tolerance. So suck on that, ass face!

–*His theories about gyroscopes to preserve the angular momentum during rocket re-entry show that he is a total child-molesting douche bag of the order of the Queen’s Knights of the Douche Bath. Fuck him and his Nobel Prize!

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(Originally posted Monday, February 18, 2008 )

As some of you may know, Stephanie and I got some bad news after the new year: Our building had been bought by one of the most predatory, greedy real estate companies in New York City, and the new company told us to pay a thousand more a month or get out. We’ve been so busy scrambling in our search for a new apartment, we worried that we’d have to put “The Retributioners” on hold for a month or so.

Luckily we had a little bit of time to look, and managed to find a decent apartment nearby with a month to go before our eviction. And with some spare time this weekend, we went ahead and shot Episode 3 of the show, trying to turn our horrible misfortune into a bit of inspiration. Based on actual events, it has what I like to call “the stink of reality.” This is my own personal marketing catch phrase for the “Big Brother” and “Survivor” era. You can watch the new “Retributioners” here on YouTube:

You can also do us a solid by going to vote for the show at Funny Or Die.com. Please stop by and vote “funny” if you like it.

And of course, you can always check in on us and our doings at www.myspace.com/theretributioners.

Editor’s note: Since this posting, “The Retributioners” has also launched its own Web site: TheRetributioners.tv

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(Originally posted Saturday, February 16, 2008 )

A Clutch of New Mind-Bendingly Contrary And Counterintuitive Headlines From Slate.com.

–*Why Humans Don’t Really Need The Sun

–*Are Beautiful People Smarter?

–*Is Hillary the Anti-Hillary?

–*Your Mother Was Right: There Is No Such Thing As a Female Orgasm

–*Only Dumb People Would Buy Food With Money

–*Is George Bush Really A Genius?

–*Was The Iraq War Actually A Brilliant Plan To Go In And Lose On Purpose?

–*Are Serial Killers Actually Friendlier?

–*Did Hillary Plan Her New Hampshire Cry in 1997?

–*Maybe JFK Did Have It Coming

–*Gordon Gekko Was Right: Why Greed Is A Better Long-Term Human Success Trait Than The Sex Drive

–*Are Intelligence, Compassion and Strength Overrated?

–*Are You Stupid If You Use The Dollar To Pay For Things?

–*Are We All Really Just An Illusion in the Mind of Richard Nixon?

–*Do People Become Autistic On Purpose?

–*Is “Hope” Just a Fetish Word For Black People?

–*Are Inbreeding, Banjo-Playing Appalachian Hillbillies Best Fit For Survival?

–*Is Your Depression Just Self-Indulgence?

–*Should We All Try To Be Less Like Einstein and More Like Tyra Banks?

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(Originally posted Friday, February 15, 2008 )

This week we not only celebrate Valentine’s Day but also observe the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller.” How did you celebrate Valentine’s Day and the anniversary of “Thriller”?

–*Took out the garbage.

–*Made stew.

–*Gave the cat her medicine.

–*Orally, too.

–*Washed the car.

–*Scratched armpit.

–*Performed oral sex, though your mind wandered to yard work while it was going on.

–*Killed the hostages.

–*Received $2.86 in class action suit money from a telecom trial that was concluded three years ago and that you knew nothing about.

–*Wondered hopefully if anybody was masturbating to pictures of you.

–*Bought Vicks vapor rub.

–*Gave the cat her medicine again. It’s, like, twice a day you’ve got to do this.

–*Read a fine history of the Ottoman Empire by Lord Kinross.

–*Wondered out loud “Is Hillary really finished?” like the people at News Max want you to do.

–*Gave up hope.

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(Originally posted Friday, February 15, 2008 )

OK. First thing: I hate the show “American Idol” and everything it stands for.

Now that I’ve said that, I’ll admit that a certain Web site called “Vote For The Worst,” which rose to some prominence last year, makes the show a little bit more palatable as a guilty pleasure for me. Every week, the Web site prompts its readers to phone in and pick the most comic, clownish or freakish contestant. It is not merely a ploy to ruin the show, as worthy a goal as that would be. No, the writers on VFTW say that their true aim is to play up the entertainment value–to throw the spotlight on shtick–which serves to illuminate the utter artifice of the whole affair, to illuminate it as prefabricated melodrama, to limn the preconceived nature of the suspense.

The site has recently stumbled upon the past history of one of the show’s new contestants: Carly Smithson, nee Carly Hennessy. This woman has already had a failed career as a teen pop star at MCA, which flushed millions through the glory hole on her debut album, trying to sell her as the new jailbait on the block–Britney Spears from Dublin, or a Gaelic Liz Phair–only to sell fewer than 500 copies and send the girl home packing where she got a tattoo and an attitude. If I were a paranoid person, this would seem like somebody’s still trying to recoup a bad investment by putting her in a reality TV show setting and not telling anybody about it.

The truth is, I don’t give a frog’s fat ass if she wins, fair or unfair. I’m only bringing it up because it’s illuminating to read her story, which you can find in the Wall Street Journal here. If Courtney Love’s similar article in Salon hadn’t already convinced you then the WSJ article certainly will that the music industry in this country is evil and that you’d be better off playing the lotto than ever signing a recording contract with a major label. With few happy exceptions, most people who get to the major labels do so with wildly unrealistic expectations, and for that they are not simply crushed by the overwhelming competition, they are robbed blind by people who exploit youthful narcissism and like to turn a buck off silly dreams. I used to write about bands in Austin, Texas, all of whom sought the brass ring of a label signing, and it’s demoralizing to see talented people, the people you think you want to be, the people whose most important asset is their fecund imaginations–completely lose hope because they were unwise. They sadly came to realize that all the accouterments of this strange lifestyle–the videos, the recording costs, etc.–are costs that they will have to shoulder themselves eventually before they see any real money. The advances and living expense money usually disappear quickly, and when pro rated out over a few years, don’t do you much better than a job at the post office would have. Meanwhile, the most valuable item–the intellectual property known as the songs you write–are robbed from you and become the property of the record company. Adults don’t sign away things that could make them money later. Only kids do.

The good news is that I think this is the best time ever for musicians, because now we have the Internet. We can write, produce and sell (if there’s demand) our own music without middle-men. What we lose sometimes is professional polish and a bit of legal protection (say, if your music was so good it was pirated). But I think the long-awaited goal of creating an artistic middle class is much closer than it used to be, and I’m happy to think that the music industry, buffeted by piracy and declining sales) is close to dying the death of the bloated gorgon that it is. If you need more money than that offered by the life of a middle-class artist, then I would suggest that you are just greedy and also recommend that you get a real job–specifically as a stock broker, where you can make shitloads of money without being terribly bright. If music is your whole life, I would also politely mention that there’s more to life than music, and that learning about something else would probably round you out as a person anyhow.

Since suffering many artistic disappointments in my 20s, I’ve become a lot happier since I stopped looking for approbation from other people to legitimize my creations. My wife and I make a lot of art and put it on this space, and sometimes you don’t know who’s out there rooting for you, if anybody. But at the end of the day, if the work is not making you happy, then maybe you don’t really want to be an artist in the first place. If you want to do it, you just have to do it, and therein lies the key to most spiritual happiness. It’s also nice to patronize those who are doing the same thing. It gives a little power to the masses and offers hope, which is not always a four-letter word.

Holy fuck! This turned into a rant. Something funnier tomorrow, eh?

Currently listening:
Ultimate High
By Carly Hennessy
Release date: 13 November, 2001

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