inherently different

I have to admit one of my guilty pleasures lately is watching Animal Planet’s King of the Jungle II. Unlike the first season in which naturalists and animal experts competed, in the second season regular joes get an opportunity to compete for the title of King of the Jungle. The idea set forth for this season is that the contestants are all members of a jungle pride, you know, the name a family group of lions is known by.

In the real world, the leadership of a pride is the strongest member of the pride. If a lion cannot contribute to the health, protection and livelyhood of a pride, that lion is usually kicked out or killed.

In the reality tv world though, it is a bit different and it just pisses me off. The contestants get sentimental, forge friendships, develop emotional alliances, and turn a beautiful survival of the fittest competition into a virtual orgy of touchy feely crap.

From the get go, the contestants refuse to get rid of the weakest members of the pride, choosing instead to send the strongest members of the pride into the “Lion Pit,” or the place where they are either retained as members or sent out of the game. One of the most annoyingly weak players, who in the real world would have been eaten in the first few minutes of introduction into the pride, stayed in the game for WAY TOO long.

If I was in the game, the first two people in the lion’s pit would have been the two weakest members, which coincidently, would have removed 90% of the drama.

I watched a few segments of the VMAs tonight. I can now easily see how, forty or fifty years ago, our parents found rock and roll a bit of a mystery. I look at some of the popular music these days and I’m in awe. Not of their talent, because that is suspect, but of their ridiculous attempts to create music. A few random thoughts:

Lil John isn’t really original. In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say that he’s just a weak imitation of Flavor Flav… he should change his name to Flavor Lite.

Rap artists should be counted among the industries that generate the most jobs. I think every rapper who hits it big employs every fucking moron he has ever come in contact with to help him rap. I think I recognized my pizza delivery guy on stage with the Terror Squad.

The VMAs are less about honoring the best, brightest and beautiful among the musicians who capture our eyes, ears and hearts than they were in the beginning.

Alicia Keys takes pretty heavy doses of prescription drugs. At least that is the only conclusion I can come to after seeing her react (or lack thereof) when they announced her name as the winner of the best r&b video. A team of horny high school football players could have gang raped her and she wouldn’t have noticed.

Overall it’s 60 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

Some of you who visit regularly might be aware that I’m entering a screenplay competition in just a few days. I’ve worked on this particular script for months and have been getting decent feedback from my regular screenwriting group. Over the next few days, I’ll post sections here as the mood strikes me.

It has been said that the success of a screenplay, in this case success being the actual production of a screenplay, depends on two things. One, an engaging title and two, a decent opening. A script’s opening 10-20 pages should draw you, as the reader, so deeply into the story, that you can’t put it down. If you can get a reader, producer or actor to read your script beyond the first 20 pages, you’re doing pretty good. This is because most first time screenwriters make so many mistakes in format and pacing that readers usually round file their work in less time than it takes to write “FADE IN:” on a blank sheet of paper.

So, without further preamble… The first 15 pages of “The Hard Side of Nothing.”

Anyone want a GMAIL account? I’ve got five to give… anyone, anyone?

I was about sixteen the first time I came face to face with my own mortality. Okay, well maybe it happened before that day, but I’ll be damned if I remember that experience half as well as I remember the day we crashed into another car while getting high. Read the rest of this entry »