And a HUGE shout out to SHEILA CALLAGHAN who just gave birth to her SON - picture at the link previous! Wahoo! Fun with baby!
Sheila’s good people, folks, awesome playwright and funny as hell person . . . and I couldn’t be more pleased she’s about to go on that wild adventure known as First New baby. Heh-heh.
It’s like being high without the drugs or dealers. For real.
I mean, at least for me. Ahem.
Congrats, Sheila . . . you RAWWWK!
Who is now Married, with Cats & a Dog and, if you click on the link, packing heat to boot.
Barefoot and armed on the back of a pickup, I find that hot, totally hot.
But seriously, a tremendous shout of yahoo for Laura, a blogger friend I admire very much . . . congrats you guys!
Can’t really talk right now, I am saaaawwaaamped! But lemme just tell ya that Death Race 2000 (1975) is an unheralded cool movie you should know about.
A race where you get points for killing pedestrians. Doesn’t that say it all?
David Carradine. Sylvester Stallone as the bad guy (he’s great). Martin Kove. Fred Grandy, before he became Gopher on the Love Boat and well before he sold his soul to the Republican Party of Evil. Lots o’ nudity and violence and a scathing condemnation of America’s reality sports fetish well before reality TeeVee became, well, a reality.
Directed by Paul Bartel, produced by Roger Corman, it’s a satire with more than a bite to the grill.
it’s awesome, so watch it now before they remake, which is looks like they’re about to do, watch it fresh and real, babe, okay?
Thus endeth Monday Movie Madness.
Go here for previous selections of Daily Dojo Unheralded Cool Movies You Should Know About.
H/T to Don Hall.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Rapping on Writing, but I promise to get back on track with it.
And here’s a doozy for you dojo-monkeys -
The Man Who Would Be King pointed me to this talk on Ted.com (which is a great site for many things, BTW) where Richard St. John breaks down the keys to success in 8 words.
Eight (8) Words.
It’s awesome - the whole talk is here: Richard St. John’s 8 secrets of success
It’s only a few minutes to watch the whole thing, but worth it. I’m gonna recap, but I recommend you also watch him.
Success in 8 words. I’m gonna apply it to writing in my descriptions, but it can apply to anything. Here they are.
1 - Passion. You must have passion for what you do. Stephen King has famously said, “if you don’t like to read, you have no business being a writer,” and that applies. If you don’t like to write, if you don’t have a passion for it, you’re not going to succeed.
2 - Work. You must WORK at it. It’s all hard work. It takes hard work to succeed.
3 - Good. Be good at what you do. If you are not good, you won’t make it. If you don’t know what good writing is or isn’t, you’re failing in one aspect and you need to recognize the difference between good work and work that’s not so good.
4 - Focus. Must focus on what you want and how you want to get there. If you’re planning to be a writer and also a professional volleyball player, in addition to the sax lessons so you can have a band that makes a load of dough, you’re someone unfocused. Not that one cannot be accomplished at different things, you can, but that it takes focus to know exactly where you wanna go, what it takes and how long it takes to get there.
5 - Push. Push through fear, push through doubt, push through resistance.
6 - Serve. Very important when it comes to writing. Serve others something of value. Whatever it is your offering, it must have value to those you’re offering it to. It must serve them, in that regard.
7 - Ideas. You need ideas.
8 - Persist. Persist through CRAP, which Richard helpfully breaks down as follows:
Criticism
Rejection
Assholes
Pressure
Persist through CRAP with Passion, Hard Work, Focus, push your ideas until they’re good and it serves others something of value, and you will have success in your writing life.
That’s Richard St. Johns Secrets to Success in 8 Words.
Thus endeth today’s Rapping On Writing nugget. Don’t thank me, however. Thank Ted.com.
A production company is casting a film, based on a screenplay I wrote some time ago - if you’re interested in auditioning for it, information on the link below.
See: 0802 The Uprising
It’s a non-Sag feature, but it’s a fun movie with space marines and monsters and explosions on a prison planet. And lesbians. Heh-heh. Script available at the link.
For those keeping track, Kai turned ten months old today.
Happy 10 month birthday, little man!
Today’s unheralded cool movie:
Cadillac Man (1990), starring Robin Williams and Tim Robbins, among others.
It’s about a car salesman who will literally try and sell anybody, anywhere (at one point he pitches people at a funeral procession) and who is not only good at his job, loves it, and loves the many women still in his life.
And he and a few other sales guys are about to be canned unless they can unload a whole lotta cadillacs.
Their day goes from bad to worse when an unemployed mechanic (Robbins) married to their receptionist crashes into their sales floor and takes everyone hostage, determined to find out at gunpoint which one of those guys is banging his wife.
Cops are called, guns are waved, hilarity ensues. Williams finds himself negotiating between the cops and Robbins and the scared hostages, thinking fast on his feet as his ex-wife and ALL his girlfriends show up for the drama.
I love this film, and it’s even more of a treat now that I actually know what New York is like (it’s very New York) and it breaks some rules (Robbins doesn’t crash into the building until about a half hour into the movie) and didn’t do as well as hoped when originally released, but it’s a classic cool movie that I highly recommend.
So watch you some Cadillac Man today.
Thus endeth Monday Movie Madness.
Go here for previous selections of Daily Dojo Unheralded Cool Movies You Should Know About.
This has been making the rounds, via Huffpost.
It’s an interview from 2004, Bush interviewed by an Irish journalist who basically just didn’t put up with his bullshit.
It’s amazing how much an idiot he under rational questioning.
If only our media had balls like this journalist and cared about the truth rather than propaganda or spin.
Evidently I’m the last person on earth who saw this video, but I gotta say, the wait was worth it.
There’s a whole series of them, but this one is my favorite. Very awesome.
Post-script: I’m at least the third from last to have seen it, as that the Samurai Lady and The Man Who Would Be King weren’t aware of it until I pointed to it. Pass it on to anyone else, everybody, this series is awesome.
