Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008 )

A partial list of New German Cinema film titles, playing near you soon:

“Disemboweled by Despair”

“Cuckolded by Misery”

“In the Stranglehold of Blight”

“Eaten by Fear and Loss”

“The Soul Dies Last”

“Pestilence is my Bridegroom”

“Fate is a Perfidious Mistress”

“Drinking the Black Sperm of Destiny”

“Sunlight is My Oppressor”

“Gripped by the Black Hand of Iniquity”

“God, I Hope My Suffering Makes You Happy! ”

“The Love Bug And the Turkish Prison”

“The Horror! The Horror! ”

“Bearing a Baby Called Tragedy”

“Driver, Take This Cab to the Depths of the Soul!”

“Call My Taskmaster Pain”

“Donner Party Massacre — the Musical! ”

“Digested by Grief”

“I Can’t Be Mad At Your Perverse Purple Flower”

“Checking in at the Guard Post of Woe”

“Joy Is A One-Eyed Idiot Man-Child”

“Your Paradise is My Hell”

“I Wanted To Cry, But I Could Not”

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(Originally posted Monday, April 14, 2008 )

Eric’s Patented Two-Minute Film School

Hey kids, want to write a screenplay? All you’ve got to know is the structure.

Remember, movies are just a formula, and if you were to cut away the dialogue from “Wayne’s World,” “Citizen Kane,” and “Star Wars,” they would all look alike.

Get ready to quit your job, because after you read this, you’re going to be in Hollywood very soon, snorting coke off Maggie Trudeau’s breasts. Even if you’re a girl. All you need is these simple ingredients:

subject: the protagonist (an anti-hero lead character played by Jack Nicholson / a virginal saint played by Emily Watson / an angel played by Bruno Ganz)

action: goes through a profound life change by (quitting his or her job as a cattle husband / burying his dead foster parents / taking in an alien creature / getting a job as a taxi driver)

reason: because s/he’s got a guilty conscience about (his wife’s death / his dying father / his pregnant girlfriend / her daughter’s sexual precocity / his wounds from the Vietnam War / not cooking the best meal she, Babette, could for the mayor)

object: and s/he desperately wants (sex with Cybill Shepherd / his or her own little coffee shop / a decent public school system / money to drive to Canada / a reunion with her husband, an oil driller named Sven.)

complication: but the powers that be (Cybill’s boyfriend / a scheming mayor / an unregenerate id on two legs named Dolph / two security guards / mad cow disease / the hero’s own social ineptness)

vehicle: keeps the hero from getting (the money for a shop / entry into Cybill’s room / a boat out to the oil derrick / a decent hamburger).

the plan: so the protagonist employs the help of (a gimp named Ratso / a nail file / all his friends in the Rat Pack / Peggy’s Lee’s dress and a wig / his own social charm / the liquid heating ointment that his or her mother uses for her legs / an arsenal of weapons, including a .44, which could destroy a woman’s face)

transference: but, meanwhile, the hero is sublimating those feelings of guilt by (consorting with a teenage hooker / contriving an ill-advised face-off with Darth Vader / having sex with his mother / resisting Babette’s attempts to cook a grand feast / hurting the feelings of his new lover, Susan Anspach / sleeping with everybody in town)

catastrophe: and the character’s lack of self-knowledge drives him or her to the brink of ruin when (s/he contracts Herpes Simplex 10 / his or her close friend dies of a heroin overdose / The Gods begin to destroy Thebes / Lady Macbeth commits suicide / the hero knocks his television over and breaks it while watching “American Bandstand” / he gets sent away to a French boys’ home / Ophelia loses her mind / Darth Vader cuts off his or her hand.)

redemption: But then, the hero sees the light when (he decides to go on the methadone program / he decides to go back and finish his lessons with Yoda / he lets two guys who raped a nun go free because he is no better / she realizes that she could have gone back to Kansas all along / he decides to kill the president / she realizes that Babette’s cooking is pretty good / he jumps off a cliff after having sex with his mother, but doesn’t die / he throws a fight with a biker / he realizes that he’s made his pet elephant cry / he gouges out his eyes with needles.)

empowerment: After achieving self-awareness, the hero is finally able to (play the piano again / destroy the Death Star / get a job as a lathe operator / avoid having sex with his mother in the future / catch the real thief / make love to his girlfriend, the gun moll named Bonnie Parker / kill the heads of the Five Families / turn down Cybill Shepherd’s advances, since she was no good for him in the first place / believe in God and kill the vampires / avoid indictment for murdering a screenwriter).

the irony of bitter existence: But in the end, fate has its way, and we are all diminished, because it’s quite obvious that the hero is going to (abandon his pregnant girlfriend by the side of the road / get shot by accident in a scuffle with a low-level mob functionary / die in a car wreck in Czechoslovakia / continue producing Hollywood crap / become a prophet even though nobody will listen to him or her / always continue to think about having sex with his mother / never call his new French lover again.)

There you go. The mythic structure. All events taken from real movies. OK, mostly. Just mix and match these, and you can probably be finished with your script within an hour. And then it’s time to move to go West, young man!

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(Originally posted Friday, April 11, 2008 )

After more than a week of technical difficulties, MySpace has returned to normal and has allowed me back into the blogging game again in my normal channel. I hope people are still checking in. It was lonely here alone. Lonely and dark and gaseous.

Thanks for being patient. I hope you are still reading.

Again, here is the latest “Retributioners,” in case you haven’t seen it yet:

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(Originally posted Thursday, April 10, 2008 )

Conversations In Mid-Sentence You Wished You Hadn’t Walked In On

–*Of course I ordered the torture. That’s what presidents do.

–*You ate the last soccer player! Now what’s going to happen to me?

–*This isn’t about who drank whose vomit out of a cup while the film was rolling. It’s about respect!

–*I didn’t think we were being lesbians that way. I thought we were being lesbians the other way.

–*We’re in Vegas. This is a dead body. And I’m all out of ideas.

–*I’m not a fluffer on a porn set because I like it, I’m a fluffer on a porn set because nothing I ever did was good enough for you, Dad.

–*”I love you” is not going to pay the triple mortgage this time.

–*He’s just a cat. He doesn’t understand when you do that.

–*Miracle my foot. That baby was an accident.

–*I couldn’t help myself. His testicles were so shiny like silver in the moonlight.

–*I’ve hid all the secret Nazi gold in my backyard, and I’ll kill anybody who finds out about it.

–*Of course I’m going to invade Iran. That’s what presidents do.

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(Originally posted April 1, 2008 )

1. What she said: “I hate people and their drama. I wish they would just get over it.”

What she meant: “I actually like drama quite a bit, otherwise I wouldn’t post this message on numerous bulletin boards so that everybody could ask me questions about what I’m referring to, which is actually something about a minor altercation at a bar that is of absolutely no interest to anyone.”

2. What he said: “I love you and I would never do anything to hurt you.
What he meant: “I cheated with your best friend.”

3. What he said: “I lack discipline and a real sense of mission and purpose in my life.”
What he meant: “I joined the Army, dad.”

4. What she said: “Jim Carrey is a comic force that elevates the material he’s given.”
What she meant: “Jim Carrey hasn’t made a good movie since ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.'”

5. What he said: “I have always thought that the best shot in the arm to the American economy is letting Americans keep more of their money in their own pockets and using it the way they want to, which fosters growth.”

What he meant: “I’m bailing out the biggest banks with a shitload of money, just like Herbert Hoover did.”

6. What she said: “People have a right to wait until June to make the final decision about who their candidate for president is.”

What she meant: “I am sorely lacking in delegates, and my appeal to superdelegates might at this point seem like I’m trying to steal the election and nullify the popular vote, so I ask you all to ride out the clock so we can wait until the big electoral prize of Pennsylvania comes into play, a state which, to many people’s surprise, is chock full of backwater crackers.”

7. What he said: “Michigan voters are divided, and a recount there would not add much to this very heated election.”

What he meant: “I wouldn’t mind disenfranchising voters in Michigan and Florida to keep my lead, even though it’s kind of sleazy that so many people’s votes are going to be tossed out like so much leaching plastic into a landfill.”

8. What she said: “President Bush has acted swiftly to counteract the crises in the financial markets, creating stimulus packages and brokering deals that would keep large financial institutions from melting down.”

What she meant: “We’re rewarding the worst investment banks for their part in the predatory mortgage crisis by bailing out Bear Stearns to the advantage of large rival JPMorgan, who will be able to buy it at a fire-sale price. In effect, we’re rewarding people for bad behavior because that’s what capitalism is all about.”

9. What he said: “A person suffers when he’s too wrapped up in himself and his sorry daily life, and he needs to have a greater goal, an existential purpose, one that forces him to realize what he’s on Earth for.”
What he meant: “I’m going to commit a criminal act and get into the paper to impress Jessica Alba.” *

10. What she said: “I’m just so happy to be on ‘American Idol’ after chasing my dream for so long.”
What she meant: “I’ve already had a $2 million record deal that went nowhere and caused MCA Records to take a bath.”

11. What he said: “I am Osama Bin Laden and I am going to attack within the United States.”
What he meant: “I am Osama Bin Laden and I am going to attack within the United States.”

*Editor’s note:  No. 9 originally used different language and suggested a comical reference to the film “Taxi Driver,” particularly the speaker’s interest in harming a political figure, and of course John Hinckley’s attempted political assassination of Ronald Reagan to impress a celebrity. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I noticed after I originally posted this article on MySpace in April 2008, I started to encounter technical difficulties and couldn’t post new blog entries for a couple of weeks.  Later, this entire post you are reading now was removed from my Myspace blog, not by me. My assumption is that becuase I used a first-person speaker threatening a political assassination in a fictional context and because a reference to Osama Bin Laden appears later, it alerted concerned parties who removed it. I have decided to rephrase No. 9 just because I wouldn’t want to think that this silly little joke had somehow put me on an alert list with the NSA.

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(Originally posted Wednesday, April 09, 2008 )

Duh!: A List of Things in Today’s Headlines That Any Joe-Schmo Could Have Told You Already

–*Princess Diana Killed by Paparazzi, Reckless Driving, Say Authorities

–*The Bible is America’s Most Popular Book

–*Scientists Discover that Stonehenge May Have a Spiritual Meaning

–*Scientists Say Smoking Is Harmful For Pregnant Women

–*Scientists Find That Men May Be Hardwired To Seek Sex With Multiple Women

–*Scientists Find That Gay Men May Be Hardwired To Seek Sex With Multiple Gay Men

–*Sociologists Find That People with More Income Are Better Educated

–*Old water pipes are breaking, say hydrologists

–*Old bridges and levees are falling down and killing people, say engineers

–*The French Like Cheese, Say Anthropologists

–*The Spanish Like Ham, Say Butchers

–* President Says That America’s Blacks May Have Longstanding Resentment Over History of Racial Inequality

–*Nobody Reads The Warning Labels on Beer, Say Researchers

–*… or cigarettes

–* … or rap music

–* People Are Turned Off By Britney Spears’ Erratic Behavior, Says TMZ

–* People Turned Off By TMZ, Reports Sites Other Than TMZ

–* New Study Finds That Richard Nixon Engaged In Criminal Activity

–* … as did Henry Kissinger

–* … as did George W. Bush.

–* Generals Determine That Iraq Has Become a Quagmire

–*Scientists Determine That Eating McDonald’s Food Every Day For A Year Will Make You Fat

–*…and that TV will make you dumb.

–* … and that crime is linked to poverty

–* … and orgasms to pornography

–* … and your head to your neck

–*Scientists say black holes and female orgasms exist, though they are still not sure why

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(Originally posted Friday, April 8, 2008 )

Top 10 Reasons My Regular MySpace Blog Would Not Publish This Week

–*I wrote the funniest blog ever, so funny that it crashed the computer

–*Notorious Myspace moderator Tom went to use the bathroom, leaving the site unattended to blink and stutter like a bunch of balls randomly bouncing around in a TV tennis game

–*It’s a new idiosyncrasy of HTML code that it will fail to publish whenever the text includes the words: “To keep her ankles warm.”

–*Obviously, it’s my fault and I was wrong to blame MySpace. If I were just a better person and had been nicer to children and the homeless, this blog would have easily posted by now. I’m such a fuck up. I want to commit suicide.

–*Technological backlash has long been a topic for great writers and thinkers. For how many steps forward do we take whenever technology plays a greater role in our lives? And how many steps back? What have we done? What … have … we done?

–*It was a “porn-out.” Kind of like a blackout, except it happens when the servers are too jammed with pictures of people doing the reverse cowgirl

–*They were doing “routine maintenance” and other things required by the Patriot Act

–*They were improving their spam blockers so that you would not want to buy my patented, totally reliable and guaranteed “Eric’s Penis Enhancing Cream,” the only penis enhancing cream that comes with a book of ancient Persian ghazal poetry

–*MySpace has to fix its blog counter lest some of us read them and get a big head about how popular or likable we are, like the one guy on here who writes about how much pussy he gets

–*Scientists have made a crucial link between global warming and narcissism, and thus MySpace has joined the global effort called “Other People Exist Day” in which all the blogs go dark and you are forced to live without your preening, navel-gazing masturbation machine

–*I didn’t hit “submit.”

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(Originally posted Wednesday, April 02, 2008 )

I have reposted the song “The Names” at ER Salo Deguierre’s page. The lyrics are included there, if you are interested. I thought I’d mention it because people who don’t like my music sometimes like this one. It’s a bit more somber and less, um, crackly.

I should mention that, like everything else I produce, this song sounds better in headphones, maybe because that’s where I master it. I know that this is a bit of a cop-out, but it will probably be this way with most of the music unless I were to pay for a professional producer and engineer.

Here’s a list of other things that sound better in headphones:

–*Sonic Youth

–*The Firebird by Stravinsky

–*Montagues and Capulets from Suite II of Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev

–*The private conversations of Martin Luther King as recorded by the FBI

–*Any surreptitious surveillance of two cheating lovers in the park

–*”Stairway to Heaven”

–*”May This Be Love” by Jimi Hendrix (so that you can hear the cool drum and bass audio panning back and forth from left to right)

–*”Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service (so you can hear the panning beeps at the beginning)

–*The instructions from Karl Rove

–*Any Kid Rock song, only the song itself should be coming from outside while the headphones nicely protect you from hearing any of it

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(Originally posted Tuesday, April 01, 2008 )

What April Fools’ Day Pranks Are We Pulling?

–*Shaving our pubes for our spouses

–*Telling our spouses we are leaving them for their siblings

–*Devaluing the dollar by lowering interest rates to scare people into thinking they can’t afford anything

–*Making my Second Coming to the faithful flock and calling them back with me to heaven where I will sit at the right hand of God, my father, in a kingdom of the righteous, whence I will then say to my followers: “Gotcha! Fished in!”

–*Declaring jihad

–*Finally admitting that the 2000 election was a hoax, whereupon Al Gore will laughingly take his seat in the Oval Office a mere nine months before he is to leave

–*No. Wait. Sorry. That would not be a hoax at all.

–*Tying together the shoe laces of Officer Krumpsky and watching him fall on his pig face

–*Putting a sock over the cat’s head, even though the poor thing does not know what April Fools’ Day is and would not appreciate it in the least and would run into the wall several times meowing in sheer animal horror

–*Saying “I love you” to somebody who would find it suspect, like your long-suffering wife

–*The old “I’ve got herpes” joke never fails to drive your boyfriend into hysterics

–*Promising Bear Stearns that we will bail it out of bankruptcy to avoid an investment bank meltdown, but only offering them $2 per share, which would wreck the lives of their employees forever. Ha ha! Egg on your face, Bear Stearns!

–*Telling “The New York Times” that you are a 21-year-old good-looking female virgin at Yale, which automatically gets you a profile in their magazine as some sort of bizarre anthropological study

–*Telling your kids that sexual abstinence before marriage is best

–*Saying you’ll pull out

–* … of Iraq

–*Turning in your “Beauty is Imperfection” blog a day late.

Happy April Fools’ Day everybody!

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(Originally posted Sunday, March 30, 2008 )

My good friend and colleague Carol Clouse recently joined MySpace, after I pestered her for months to sign up. I’ve tried to convince her that this spot is one of the best places you can promote your own work, especially if you are unfortunate enough to have literary aspirations, in this world where print is often left for dead.

Carol has written a memoir about time spent being a bad girl in Europe and she is currently showing it to agents. You can get a glance at the first chapter here.

Enjoy! And feel free to leave your comments or add her as a friend if you like scandalous memoirs. I am not getting any commissions off this recommendation, but if you all go to her site and befriend her, then maybe she will buy me coffee.

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