I was in Greensboro, North Carolina when I noticed the man wearing a Waffle House camouflage tee shirt.
I asked, ?Is that from the Waffle House that makes waffles? Or is this a new code word for AK47s.?
The Waffle man laughed, put his gun down, and said, ?yernot from roundhere, ryoo??
All the hundreds of fans who packed the Philadelphia streets Saturday for an open casting call for extras for the new Rocky movie needed was a picture, a resume and a simple message that would have made the fictional ex-champ proud: “Yo, pick me!” Fifteen years after starring in Rocky V, Sylvester Stallone is reprising his role as the boxing champ from South Philadelphia in the upcoming movie “Rocky Balboa.”
I didn’t know Rocky was getting back into the ring, did you? I thought Rocky V showed an aging, brain-damaged puncher who was headed for an early demise. How can this character perform a comeback?
Does Balboa move around the ring with a cane? A walker? Does he wear Depends?
If he was finished in 1991, how does the 2006 version fight anyone with a pulse? Maybe that’s it: Rocky fights Max Schmelling. With one hand behind his back. No problem, because one good kick and Schmelling’s bones will role off the canvas.
I’d pay to see Rocky kick Max Schmelling’s bones. I’d also pay to see Rocky fight in one of those motorized wheelchairs that run over your toes. That hasn’t happened to you? Just wait.
Rocky was a great series that jumped the shark after Mr. T’s Clubber Lang. I wish they wouldn’t keep these things going on and on forever like they did with Planet of the Apes.
First came the great Charlton Heston movie. Then came the the great sequel where the world blew up. Then the next one where the Apes went back in time….well, that was pretty bad. Then the fourth one where the apes stated a small boutique in Bloomington, Indiana which grew and grew until it was able to take on WalMart…I thought the whole premise was unrealistic. Apes hate Indiana.
I hope Rocky fights Dr. Zais. I’d pay to see that. The could both trip over Max Schmelling’s bones, and then the Ape could throw a bone up in the air like one did in 2001: A Space Odyssey. A great monolith could rise from the center of the ring, and Sylvester Stallone could be shown as a space baby, sucking his thumb.
I’d pay to see that.
I thought that once you publish a book, the next order of business is to propel yourself into the life of the touring author: parties, book signings, adulation and groupies (with teeth, preferably).
What has surprised me about the launch of Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools (St. Martins Press) is the complete lack of sock-em, rock-em excitement. Yes, you conduct interviews, but they are by telephone, which you can do in your underwear while your dog farts next to you (a picture of this very thing is on page 63 of Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools, St. Martins Press).
And yes, you do sign autographs in stores, which the publisher encourages you to do. But unless you are a BIG author, no one shows up to your book signings, and you end up sucking on Cheese Doodles with very bored looking cashiers who want you to stop telling them what?s on page 63 of Stooples: Office Tools for Hopeless Fools (St. Martins Press).
So what?s the upside? Well, when you go to your class reunion, you can say ?I?m a writer?, to which the reply might be, ?great, did you bang Cameron Diaz?? Always say yes, except when talking to Cameron Diaz?s father.
Good news! Now you can help advance the cause of medical science, even after you’re dead!:
A biological anthropology professor at the University of Northern Iowa, Tyler O’Brien, envisions turning some prime pasture in the Midwestern state into a body farm, where human bodies — buried, stuffed in car trunks or exposed to the elements — can provide scholars and criminalists with new benchmark data on human decay.
“This idea has strong scientific value,” O’Brien said. “To answer the question of how long a body has been dead, how long a person has been missing, is critical to criminal investigations.”
O’Brien is seeking a grant of $400,000 to $500,000 from the National Institute of Justice and other organizations to obtain the land and set up the project.
This is big! And it brings up a number of valid concerns:
Ever eat a lemon?
Picture a series of lemon-eating, funky-lip faces, a wonderful Andy Warhol montage. I would pay $400 Zlotys to see it at New York’s Whitney Museum. I would pay $280 Zlotys to see it at the San Antonio Museum for the Arts. In Burkina Faso you might have to pay me to see it, as there is no direct flight and the rebels have captured all the artists.
I once read that Texas dentists were trying to get children to stop eating lemons. There is a tradition of Southwest lemon eating that goes back generations: cut a hole in a lemon, shove in some dried, salted piece of fruit called “Chinese candy,” and then squeeze the tangy, salty juice all over your tounge and your fringed rodeo shirt and your alligator boots and everything else you?ve got on.
Well it seems lemon eating plays hell with your tooth enamel, and Texans have been urged by their dentists to cease and desist and watch Lemony Snicket movies instead. Which is not to say that Jim Carey is a favorite of Lone Star dentists either, but at least he doesn?t promote tooth decay. They think.
On the other hand, a chat room poster I know named Green Hell reminds us that ?lemons rock, brilliant when your slamming tequila and you just eat one! Gobble…?
