Will Hines Dot Net

You all seem to be able to sing, on cue, “You’re the Best — Around!” from the finale of Karate Kid.

Why can’t you all do that with “Win in the End” — the song from the finale of Teen Wolf. Snarky irony aside, it’s a better song and better movie.

I am assuming, based on how this man’s visage has been plastered on every other subway poster in Manhattan, that I am supposed to both a) know who he is and b) care.

I posit that this man Bello is not actually famous but simply has remarkable looking hair. Barnum and Bailey’s circus present him as an already-famous person in their advertising posters and we humans assume that they are correct. And after enough of us have seen these posters, then he IS famous. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

Like all clowns, Bello creeps me out.

The members of my family — and perhaps many of you — enjoy overstatement. Kevin put “The Fellowship of the Ring” on his top ten movies for 2001 — in December of 2000, after seeing the trailer for it. “This is my favorite movie of all time” he said of this film which was not yet in post-production.

Along those lines, I love finding gushing reviews on allmusic.com. The interface is annoying, but you can’t beat the breadth of information available.

Like the last line of its review of Van Halen’s first album: “Everyone on the planet should own a copy of this landmark release.” Love it.

Or the opening of its biography of The Beatles: “To start with the obvious, they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, and introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century. Moreover, they were among the few artists of any discipline that were simultaneously the best at what they did and the most popular at what they did.”

I think they’re right on both counts!

Separately, this picture:

Oldest to youngest: Will, Kevin, Brian.

I read a blog written by two economists called Marginal Revolution. The authors post often with short, smart thoughts that contain bold opinions. The one small downside is that I never understand anything they’re talking about. I don’t know or understand anything about economics. But I’m still addicted, because the posts SOUND smart. Like this one about parking lot prices in New York City. I don’t totally get it, but I devoured it. It’s weird. They talk a lot about libertarianism. I’m not even sure if the authors are libertarian or what that is. I think libertarians don’t want there to be speed limits and maybe hate things like the gold standard, or maybe all money or maybe just coupons. I don’t really know. I would be scared to open my mouth if I was in a conversation with these guys. But I can’t stop reading it!

Someone recommended me for an audition but said I needed a reel. Overextended as always, I made one last night between the hilariously nonproductive hours of 1am and 4am. Since I’m not a great editor, I simply took 10 clips that were about a minute each and set them up as chapters on a DVD. Each one starts with a title screen describing what the clip is from. It’s more like a visual resume.

Usually a ‘reel’ is a slick montage of 10-15 second clips, from what I can tell. The upside of my method is that someone gets to see more than 1 line of me doing something. A few clips are longer than a minute, but I figure people could just skip to the next track.

I’m not sure how much slickness matters. I once spent $300 on headshots but have gotten far more attention from my UCBT profile page, which features a photo taken in 3 seconds by Dyna Moe before an improv show.

I’m wondering what the best strategy is for these things.

I’ve become enamored, big-time, with Sunrise Earth. This might be my favorite television show of all time. For the uninitiated, it’s just quiet footage of a selected location in the very early hours of the morning. Sample titles: Stonehenge Dawn. Foothills of Turkey. Scandinavian Waterfall. I first saw it last week, when I stumbled into work early and found it playing on my office’s HD television (yes, we have one). I was mesmerized for a good thirty-five minutes by Asian fishing villagers cleaning their nets. No narrator; no explanation, no dialogue — just crickets, birds chirping, water lapping and the morning sun.

Could I write a spec script for Sunrise Earth? Here it is: Scene I – Icebergs float by. End of show.

Ridiculous mornings: After I graduated college in 1992 I moved home and shared bunk beds with my youngest brother Brian for a few months. It was a nice reality check for both of us — he was learning that even turning 15 would not get him his own room, and I learned that a college degree did not mean you could escape your Empire Strikes Back sheets (I could have changed them, but I was indulging the silliness). We got on all right, though. We were both heavily into the Beatles so we’d program the alarm function of the stereo to play Blackbird or something. Once we set it to play “Good Day Sunshine,” since it sounded like an appropriate song for the morning. We forgot it begins with a very loud ominous drum march into a cymbal crash. Morning arrived, and I yelped and leapt out of bed full of fear. Morning!

You’ve known for a long time that “Ghostbusters” sounds a lot like Huey Lewis and the News’ “I Want A New Drug.” I mean, there was a court case.

You also might have known that Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” sounds a lot like John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane.”

But did you know that Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” sounds like Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf?” It DOES! It DOES!

This message brought to you by “Manadatory New Blog Posts Inc.”

Mitch Magee and I will be performing at Rob Lathan’s “Get Psyched for St. Patrick’s Day” at UCBT tonight at 7pm. Come out for it, won’t you? Details here!

The Journalista blog from The Comics Journal is outstanding. Tidbits linked in just today’s entry:

• A review of the new Gilbert Hernandez Paolmar story.
• Hilariously over-large breast drawings in super-hero comics here and here.
• Adam Koford’s 700 drawings of hobos.

Can’t beat that! In other linked goodness, Pete Rose admits he bet on the Reds (to win) every night he managed. He also bet while playing. This guy is a jerk, but I still think he belongs on the Hall of Fame. 4,000 hits is 4,000 hits.

And here’s something about a redesigned alphabet.

Come out and see me do the stand-up at Rob Lathan and Adira Amram’s “Get Psyched” show. Also appearing: Sean Conroy, Jackie Clarke and Julie Klausner, Harry Terjanian, Richard Jones! Get Psyched! at RiFiFi. 332 East 11st street (btwn 1st and 2nd ave). Five measly bucks. 8pm

In honor of Rob Lathan, here’s a true story about the time Rob and I pitched sketch ideas to Richard Belzer. A few years ago, National Lampoon was (or maybe still is) putting together a radio show and solicited sketch ideas from the UCBT. Rob submitted some sketches he and I had put together. The editor didn’t read the material, but was impressed Rob had emailed and phoned to follow up so he invited us to their next pitch meeting — held inauspiciously at the Cosi sandwich shop next to Grand Central Station. Rob and I arrived to see the editor, a few writers and… Richard Belzer! Belzer was apparently representing the Old Guard of National Lampoon. The Belz! Munch! It was pretty exciting.

We read through about 15 ideas and no one liked any of them. Well, the editor liked one that had telemarketers disguising their advertisements as pornographic prank calls since telemarketing by phone was getting banned by the do-not-call list. Belzer preferred someone else’s idea for a singing nymphomaniac. Or was it a nymphomaniac dentist? I can’t remember. “THAT I like,” he said.

Even though we didn’t like the sketch ideas he was responding to, what I really was impressed by was how nice Belzer was. Say what you want about how far National Lampoon has often and maybe permanently fallen, it was cool to see someone from the salad days still giving a shit. And even though he didn’t like any of our ideas, he took pains to thank us for coming and to keep trying, assuring us how hard it was to come up with stuff that goes over at meetings. He was the big dog in that room, and was remarkably gracious about it. I liked him, even if I think a nymphomaniac dentist singing telegram is a not-good idea.

I hope Rob corrects me if I’m leaving anything major out.