GordonHighland.com » humor

Gas Up the Stair Car

Gordon — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:51:06 +0000

I was gonna do this whole post about evolving media distribution, and how I dig the new Netflix model because it allows me to shotgun series the way I prefer. But I already pretty much covered that with my House of Cards write-up over at ManArchy. And really, I’m such an Arrested Development fanboy that this needs no introduction. Pure excitement.

Tobias Fünke clip courtesy of Insert Me Anywhere.

Trite Tropes

Gordon — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:17:00 +0000

Cinema is a language with its own conventions. The audience must be familiar with certain patterns, even unconsciously, for the transfer of visuals to register properly. Establishing a scene with a wide shot to get our bearings, not crossing the 180-degree axis, keeping the flow of action moving in a single screen direction – folks become disoriented when these conventions are broken. However, a number of story-specific shots have become part of our shared language as well, and, effective as they may be, I could happily go the rest of my life without ever seeing any of the following tired compositions on screen again.

• the toilet-cam point of view as an interrogated face is dunked into it

• establishing a crime scene by tracking the unspooling of yellow police tape

• cutting to the defendant flinching as the judge’s gavel cracks. See also: flinching mourners at a 21-gun salute

• bolting upright into camera after coming out of a nightmare

• a train approaching and passing over the camera for no apparent reason

• the final-second resignation on a bad-guy’s face just before a bomb blows him to pieces

• closing a dead compatriot’s eyes with a hand

• the awkward elevator ride with cheesy muzak as a moment of comic relief during an action sequence

• full-screen “access granted” computer terminal graphics

• the (unrealistic) black matte for binoculars point of view. See also: in softcore, the voyeur watching through their video camera will somehow see a scene assembled from coverage of wide, medium, and close shots.

• pan to the fireplace and defocus as the stars make love on the bed. Ironically, this can be called “going soft.”

• macro-focusing to the barrel of a gun pointed at camera

• sliding someone down the length of a bar in a fight, taking out all manners of glassware in their path

• refrigerator point of view as someone rummages through it. See also: medicine cabinets. Guess I just hate POV shots in general unless they represent a person.

• a room whose light level remains nearly the same once the lights are turned out. Now it’s just blue.

Meth Lab for Flutie

Gordon — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:26:00 +0000

Shamelessly pilfered from a variety of sources, here’s another collection of fake band names that made me giggle like a seventh grader. Some of these will turn up on MySpace profiles soon enough. I’d warn you about the offensive content, but I’m sure you’re desensitized by now.

Van Buren
Steamland Cleaver
The Get-Down’s Syndrome
Egregious Philbin
BarbraStreiszende Neubauten
Broughammer
Asperger In Paradise
Afraid of Canadians
The Mars Travolta
The Dixie Chicks With Dicks
Sweaty Jeeves
The Honeymoon Stitches
Crucifiction
Steely Flan
Harry and the Andersons
Tienanmen Squaredance
Assassinine
Lithp
Citronella Holocaust
ASCII/DC
Autistic License
Banjovi
Preparation Heche
Nutbutter
See Thomas Howl
The Jodie Sweetining
Our Band Name is a Complete Sentence.
Fillet Show
Joe Buck Yourself
Fudge Duckling
Goodcop, Buttercup
Testiclops
Bruised Cockles
The Beef Wellingtones
The Ump-Teens
Chuck Chuck Bo-Buck and the Banana-Fanna Four
The Illegitimate Resentments
Purgatori Spelling
Squirrel Practice
Jefferson Slaveship
Snot Faucet
The Soggy Tacos

Promo Copy Cats

Gordon — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:56:00 +0000

Cutting through network promotions clichéd hyperbole. What they say. What they mean.

The show everyone’s talking about.
Everyone being those in our programming department whose jobs are on the line. It’s been a ratings disappointment despite the buzz cash we poured into ads and promotion.

See the show critics are calling “X.”
We doomed it with a bad time slot. Also, I told you, not everything we produce is reality-based.

The surprise hit of the season.
We underestimated audience tastes and only ordered eight episodes.

Presented with limited commercial interruptions by X.
All your favorite characters will be wearing X, driving X, and eating X. Thank your DVR for forcing us to remote-proof our shows.

Catch X at its new time.
The show got its ass kicked by the competition, so now it’s going slumming.

. . . with an ending you have to see to believe.
Horatio will remove his sunglasses and deliver a wry quip before a “to be continued” graphic blueballs you.

Promotional consideration provided by X.
It was very considerate of them to pay us or shower us with free schwag.

The television event of the year.
We’re betting the farm that you can be peer-pressured into watching.

Don’t miss an unforgettable X.
Wrangle the wife, because we’re about to inject some uncharacteristic sentiment.

Truths, Vol. 6

Gordon — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:59:00 +0000

Another installment of original musings:

• Borrowed time and stolen moments are those of which we take the most ownership.

• Dan Brown’s cure for writer’s block is to hang upside down. However, there is no known cure for ingesting his actual writing.

• Speeding up the music in a Cialis commercial creates a porn soundtrack. Porn in which man and woman bathe in separate tubs. Outdoors. What we can’t see is that his is filled with nearly four hours’ worth of ice.

• If Jesus ever does return, no one would even give him a book deal. He’d have better luck resurrecting as Heath Ledger.

• Chinese Democracy will achieve a better global reception than America’s version has.

• Most cameras tell the truth. Context is the lie. Editors distort and manipulate truth for a living.

• Drummers may not get as much tail as singers, yet their rates of venereal disease remain equal.

• Sometimes a loose G-string actually results in a high pitch.

• Reading without suspicion is more dangerous than blogging without authority.

• Judging a band’s quality by their MySpace playlist is like holding a wine-tasting in the restroom.

• An actress’s shelf life requires many more additives and preservatives than her male counterparts’.

• Photoshop dermatology is far more effective than the real thing. And less painful than gastric bypass surgery.

• No one ever really wants to hear a bass solo except for other bass players. And even they’ll deny it.

• Art needn’t be appreciated to meet its definition.

• Twenty-four frames per second, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? Yes.

• No one ever blamed a verbal gaffe on a microphone malfunction.

• Most writers are to social skills what greeting cards are to the illiterate.

Morbid George

Gordon — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:06:00 +0000

A sad, sad day in the kingdom. George Carlin dead at age 71. I had the pleasure of seeing him live (rhymes with dive, not give – but both, really), as did many, thanks to his grueling tour schedule. Especially in later years, he loved to poke fun at Death, and I can only imagine what stipulations his will demanded. Here are a some morbid quotables clipped shamelessly from the man’s books.

“I enjoy watching reruns of Saturday Night Live and counting all the dead people.”

“A graveyard always has to start with a single body. Unless the local people get lucky and there’s a nice big bus accident in town.”

“When I was a kid, I can remember saying ‘cross my heart and hope to die.’ I’d like to confess now that I never really meant that second part.

“After you die, your stuff becomes your ‘personal effects.’”

“I’m always relieved when someone’s delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.”

“If you find some time left on a parking meter, I think you should be able to add it to the end of your life. Minus the time you spent on hold.”

“I made a bargain with the devil. I would get famous, and he would get to fuck my sister.”

“I finally accepted Jesus. Not as my personal savior, but as a man I intend to borrow money from.”

“When a ghostwriter dies, how many people come back?”

“Imagine meeting your maker and finding out it’s Frito-Lay.”

“Heart disease changed my eating habits, but I still cook bacon just for the smell.”

“Life is a near-death experience.”

“If I had my choice of how to die, I would be sitting on the crosstown bus and suddenly burst into flames.”

“The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American just passed each other going in opposite directions.”

“I hope the world ends during the daytime. I want to watch the “film at 11.”

“Live and let live, that’s what I say. Anyone who can’t understand that should be killed. It’s always worked well in my family.”

“Just once I’d like to see a high-speed funeral procession. Maybe someday a race-car driver will put that in his will.”

“I’ve decided to donate only my prostate and my testicles, with the stipulation that they go to a feminist.”

“A great epitaph: I want everyone to know it was great being alive. I especially enjoyed fucking and going to the movies.“

“One nice thing about being dead is that you immediately become eligible to appear on stamps and money.”

“I hope reincarnation is a fact so I can come back and fuck teenagers again.”

Promoted Roadies

Gordon — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:12:00 +0000

I’ve posted before about my fascination with unusual band names, yet I can never seem to pull the trigger on them for my own usage. And even though this is the kind of material that will probably get me in trouble, I thought I’d share a few of the more offensive rejects we considered for my current male/female duo, Winebox.

The Ovaricles
Fraüstein
Jihspot
Alanaldanon
Darth Brooks
Marilyn Hanson
Phil Leisho & The Informant
Acoustocalypse
Cochlea Tease
Narcoplasty
Minstrel Cycle
Grudgefuck
The A-Holes
Robin Peter to PayPal
The Ghetto Libretto
Bedside Manor
Ton Def
Testicle & Receptacle
Clitastrophe
The Douchebags
Freak Quincy
Braillehouse Rock
Jack & Coke & Jill
TazeBro
Homosome
Chronic Fatigue
Suffer the Fluffer
Tickling Uvulas
Sadojo
Her & That Other Guy
Kleenex Dreams
Symphyllis
The Navajomos
Incontinental
Obscene Jester

Sexual Reeling

Gordon — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:59:00 +0000

Not long after The Matrix lit up the big screen, I caught a late-night B-movie on Skinemax called The Sexual Matrix. Twenty minutes and five refractory periods later it dawned upon me that one could bring a whole new level of meaning to traditional favorites simply by adding Sexual to the title. Like so:

The Sexual Color Purple
Sexual Pleasantville
The Last Sexual Boy Scout
My Own Private Sexual Idaho
A Bug’s Sex Life
Sexual Predator
The Sexual Shining
Sexual Platoon
Three Sexual Kings
Sexual Toy Story
ET: The Extra-Sexual Terrestrial
The Fabulous, Sexual Baker Boys
The Sixth Sexual Sense
The Fast and Sexually Furious
Requiem for a Sexual Dream
Close Encounters of the Sexual Kind
The Long, Sexual Kiss Goodnight
Sexual Wonder Boys
El Mariachi Sexual
First Sexual Blood
Sex-Men
All the President’s Sexual Men
Sexual Flubber
Shrek-sual
Sexually Big
Cruel Sexual Intentions
My Sexual Dog Skip
The Sexual Limey
The Sexual Horse Whisperer
I Sexually Shot Andy Warhol
Sexual Rear Window
All the Right Sexual Moves
Sexually Clueless
Sixteen Sexual Candles

Eff Love

Gordon — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:47:00 +0000

This is one of my personal favorite timekillers. Understanding the perverse origins of the term rock ‘n’ roll and also knowing how people are so often afraid to say what they really mean, here’s a little game: simply substitute the word Fuck instead of Love in any song title, and you probably have something much closer to the lyricist’s original vision. Here are a few to get you started:

You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling
Love Me Two Times
Love in an Elevator
Shower Me With Your Love
You Make Loving Fun
Lovin’ You’s a Dirty Job
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
Love of a Lifetime
Love Her Madly
Since I’ve Been Loving You
Endless Love
Love Shack
Can’t Make You Love Me
I Can Love You Better
Love Me Tender
Once You’ve Loved Somebody
Love in the Afternoon
And I Love Her
Love the One You’re With
If You Love Somebody Set Them Free
Love the Way You Love Me Baby
Keep on Loving You
Justify My Love
Can’t Stop Loving You
Love Gun
Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover
No Ordinary Love
Can’t Buy Me Love
Because You Loved Me
Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe
Muskrat Love

Truths, Vol. 5

Gordon — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:14:00 +0000

Another batch of my muttering musings for your transengendered medication.

• Your element is a place you should remain far from when expecting creativity.

• Having YouTube subscribers does not make you a network programming executive. You’re probably overqualified.

• Never let someone review a rough cut who doesn’t understand what one is.

• You pay Ticketmaster for the convenience of . . . paying for a ticket. They’re completely unnecessary unless you live somewhere acres or cattle outnumber humans. (Hint: “box office”)

• Paying fifty bucks to see Scott Weiland fall off a stage is not a badge of honor. It’s gambling. If I show up drunk for work, I get fired.

• If god didn’t intend for us to use soft-focus filters, he wouldn’t have invented Edward James Olmos.

• On Battlestar Galactica, “frak” can be loosely translated as “smurf.”

• Producer and engineer are not the same job. Just like waitress and chef. Don’t be fooled by any overlap, like making drinks or procuring smack.

• Compromise is never an improvement if between more than two directions.

• The Office is not a documentary. It’s miniaturist comedy. (That’s what she said…)

• If you write all your songs in the key of C, just slap any of the white keys and you’re “improvising.” Or any black keys for B. Two gentrified neighborhoods just one note apart: Black, Caucasian.

• He who laughs last should not go out to movie theaters.

• When you’ve run out of ideas, you run into remakes.