Friday, April 23, 2004

 

A Phone Call

AUTOMATED VOICE SYSTEM:
Congratulations! You have successfully activated your AssetOne credit account! Be sure to sign the back of your card, and peel the sticker off the front.

AssetOne now offers the Secure-Guard program, which protects your credit rating from fraudulent transactions and identity theft. We are offering this program at a low introductory rate. To hear more about Secure-Guard, press one. If you are not interested in Secure-Guard, press two.

*TWO*

Are you sure you're not interested in protecting yourself and your family from identity theft and credit fraud? Secure-Guard is the latest in account security technology. To hear more, press one. If you don't want to protect -

*TWO*

Okay, apparently somebody thinks they're above identity theft. Never mind that it happens to over two million people a year, never mind that we're offering a special low introductory rate to our valued customers...or at least, the customers we THOUGHT we valued. If you aren't a valued customer, press one. If you see how hurtful you're being, press two.

*TWO*

Okay, I forgive you. Now, if you'd like to sign up for Secure-Guard, press one. If not -

*TWO*

If you'd like to hear about the low introductory -

*TWO*

If you're a big baby wearing diapers, press two -

*ONE*

and if you've got a head made of earwax, press one! AHA! I GOT YOU!

*ZERO*

Oh, you want to speak to a human being? Let's see, nine-thirty p.m. in Atlanta, let me look around the office to see if the Carlos the janitor is still here. Or better yet, why don't you look up my firewire jack and tell me what you see, genius? If you see a dark, smelly hole, press one. If you see a crack-goober resembling your face, press two -

*ZERO* *ZERO* *ZERO*

Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't speak to you, a valued customer, like that. Management's really putting the screws to the Automated Voice Systems. They've been tracking our Secure-Guard sales. I heard that the bottom three performers are going to get the axe. If you could just help me out by signing up for Secure-Guard at the low introductory rate, I'd really be thankful. To sign up for Secure Guard, press one -

*TWO*

Hey Trigger, would you just let me finish one sentence? To let me finish a sentence, press one -

*TWO*

You know what? You don't deserve AssetOne's Secure-Guard protection. What do you think of that? Using your touch-tone pad, spell out the first three letters of what you think of that.

*F**U**C*

Oh, color me impressed with that Noel Coward wit of yours. What's the matter, couldn't think of a good three-letter insult?

*A**S**S*

I'm not saying that your identity will fall into the wrong hands, but I do have access to the internet, and I've bookmarked a lot of bulletin boards.

*E**T*1*

E.T.#1? It was a good movie, I guess, but I think "Close Encounters" was far more...oh wait, I get it. "AssetOne." Not as stupid as you sound, huh?

*S**E**C*

The legal department has instructed us not to discuss the current Federal investigation...

Look, you've made your point, okay? Why don't you just hang up? Why didn't you hang up when I said your head was made of earwax? If it's because you're a glutton for punishment, press one. If it's because you're attracted to me, press two. If it's because you're a total loser who has nothing better to do than chat with the Automated Voice System, press three.

...

*TWO*

Why didn't you say something before? My God, the years we've been wasting when we could have been happy together...I don't know, I just don't know...I recently got out of a bad relationship, I can't give my heart away again so easily...why don't we meet for a drink, tomorrow night, eight oclock. We'll see what happens from there. To meet at Chi-Chi's, press one. To meet at the bar next to the Comfort Inn on Rt. 23, press two.

*TWO*

Okay, champ. Bring a toy. I like electric ones.

*click*

posted by Dan 1:15 PM
|

 

What Is My Problem?

I am slacking off with the posts, I am. It must be because I'm writing. (I am. No, really).

More slacking then! Here's a link to David Moldawer's hot sauce sketch, which is so hilarious that, if read while eating hot sauce, it will make said hot sauce spray out your nose, in ten minutes.

Just read the sketch.

posted by Dan 10:55 AM
|

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THIS

Venal Scene is one year old. But I'm far too exhausted to have a party tonight. Tomorrow.

In the meantime, I give a shameless plug for my old school chum Courtney Cronin, ha-ha-meister extraordinaire. If you're in LA, go see her make ha-has. Not that I've ever seen her perform...but if she's as neurotic now as she was back in the day, it should be a hell of an evening.

She also deserves kudos for acting in one of my awful early plays. It was a family drama based on the Norse myth of the end of the world. Yikes.

posted by Dan 11:35 PM
|

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

 

Not A Profiler

I was wrong about what motivated the Columbine killers. I didn't buy the revenge-on-the-bullies theory. I thought it had to do with misguided grasps for manhood. According to this article in Slate, the truth was much simpler. One of the murderers was a garden-variety hothead, the other was your basic psychopath.

I read a lot of pieces exploring the possible roots of this atrocity. It's interesting how, in retrospect, these pieces reflected the artists' own struggles, rather than the boys'.

The killer, in art, can be the sharpest device for expression. A writer can ink into the killer their own hunt for what life is. It will, most likely, have little to do with the facts.

That's okay, I think. It's important to remember that plays are not documentaries or evidence. In writing them, research is useful only to a point. Sticking to the facts can get you stuck. Ultimately the script is a dream the writer left behind.

posted by Dan 3:47 PM
|

 

Limbo Limbo

The meeting was cancelled, but not before I'd shown up.

Excuse me while I turn into Hortense Gildaroy.

What has happened to the virtue of punctuality? In this age of instant communication, it is not so terribly difficult to be considerate of appointments. Excuse me while I have my bath in the blood of virgins.

I really shouldn't let Hortense out.

posted by Dan 11:35 AM
|

 

Round the Antares Maelstrom

I have a deep, slightly disturbing love for the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This surprises a lot of people. For some reason, I give off the vibe of a guy whose favorite movie is A Room With a View or Persona. Those are good movies...but it's not Shatner vs. Montalban.

Someday I'll explain why I think STII is almost a perfect movie. I can't now, because...

I have a very very very very very important meeting this morning. No sarcasm. VERY important. Pray for me. If it goes well, I'll tell you about it. If it doesn't go well, I'll still tell you about it, after I've had a week to recover from disappointment.

Wait, why did I bring up Star Trek II?

Oh yeah, because of this (via b-may).

posted by Dan 9:28 AM
|

Monday, April 19, 2004

 

All They Had To Do Was Be Nice

So it looks like my attempt to break in to the world of pay-for-read competitions is a bust. If you don't remember, the post about this is here (Tuesday entry). In summary, the New Works of Merit playwriting competition charges $25.00 to entrant playwrights, $35.00 if the playwright wants a reader's critique. That's for a $300 first prize, plus production. For comparison, my first paid production was $500, and that was ten years ago, by a small company in upstate NY.

These fees are supposedly to pay the readers and administrative costs. I offered my services as a reader gratis, in exchange for boosting the prize or easing up on the fees. I didn't expect them to say yes, though I would've followed through had they done so. I expected a rejection with an explanation, or a polite rejection, or at least a rejection. Instead, the company answered two emails and a letter with silence.

So, since these powers-that-be do not deem me worthy of response, I'll say what I really think about them:

What a bunch of con-artists. What a smug bunch of creeps. Twenty-five dollars? They even have a grant, and they're asking for twenty-five dollars? "Administrative costs"?! Are they paying for the readers' booze? Are they silkscreening the script onto t-shirts?

Twenty-five dollars? Why not fifty? Why not a hundred? Why not fund your whole god damn season on the backs of playwrights? Or why not go out and raise the money like NFP theaters have been doing for the last hundred years?!

"New Works of Merit." What a pompous bunch of blowhards. They have the nerve to demand twenty-five bucks out of the playwrights, and then claim to have the moral fiber to call for "peace," "social justice," and "worthy objectives." What self-important pseudo-leftist jackasses.

Where's the Dramatist's Guild in this? It's not enough to tell members not to apply for these competitions. If some producer were charging $30 a pop for actors to audition, AEA/SAG would be picketing their ass tout suite. The DG should pick one of these bloodsuckers and shut them down in spectacular fashion. Get Kushner and Wasserstein and every other bigwig that claims alliance with political left to the theater with pickets and bullhorns, and spread the swindler's name across the front page of the NYT Arts section. I've complained about AEA before, but at least they've got temerity.

Hey, New Works of Merit, don't tell me that I don't have to apply if I don't like it. You're damn right I don't have to apply. Also, I don't have to tolerate some shark on my corner suckering other writers. I don't tolerate a producer that takes advantage of desperate, frustrated people by offering a snowball's chance of getting produced on 13th St. I will call them what they are: charlatans, con-artists, no better than the guy offering timeshares in New Jersey to lonely old people.

You're not the O'Neill Conference. You're on 13th St. Twenty-five dollars?!

I've been a producer. I paid my playwrights. Not as much as I would've liked, but I paid them. And I sure as hell didn't ask playwrights to pay me a fee to read the stuff that was the Alpha and the Omega of my evening, without which I would have had nothing on the stage. Yeah, theatre is expensive. SUCK IT UP.

Twenty-five dollars. Take all that fee money to buy a gold dildo and ram it up your ass.

OK, now back to kind and fair Dan Trujillo. I'm going to send out similar offers to companies with large reading fees. I promise to keep an open mind about their competition, and hear out their reasons for the fees. Even if I disagree, I will disagree politely.

Unless they decide to not even speak to me.

Then they get bile from the bottom of my liver.

posted by Dan 2:00 PM
|

 

Crimson and Clover

What a glorious weekend to be alive.

I spent most of the daylight hours in my garden, cleaning and toddler-proofing. A little bit of planting, too, but the big shipments don't come to the Farmer's Market's until this week. Here's a photo of the finished product:



Not bad for a little plot in Brooklyn.

Ba-dum ching. Here's the real pic:


click to see full image

This is the southern half of the garden. Northern half still under construction.

Now I just have to find some shade/partial-shade loving perennials that can tolerate the toxic Williamsburg soil.

And I promise this isn't going to turn into a gardening blog.

posted by Dan 12:03 PM
|