probabilityfields

I was watching the Pussycat Dolls reality game show thing (not really) and I came up with a great idea for another reality game show thing: The Next Ghostbusters. This is a solid gold idea! Contestants will have to live together in a decrepit firehouse, drive around in an old ambulance, make toasters dance, and each week they’ll get sent on real ghostbusting missions. One by one they’ll be eliminated, or “slimed,” until we’re left with four new Ghostbusters! The winners of course would go on to star in Ghostbusters 3, which will be a horrible disappointment. Harold Ramis, give me a call.

Tom Brady had sold his soul to the devil, and not in a cool way like Robert Johnson did. God, I hate this chode. Someone has to defeat him. Manning? Roethlisberger? Romo?…Testaverde? Hehe.

Seriously, look at that photo: “Every morning I like to gel up my hair and go hug my goats.”

He and Ryan Seacrest should tan together.

Hmm…I bet that goat is actually what form Bill Belichick takes after each game. It’s his part of the bargain with Satan. That explains why he has to hurry off the field and has no time to shake hands with Tony Dungy. Look at the smirk on that goat’s face.

Wow, that also explains the goat-gnawed sleeves of his trademark sweatshirt!

INT. RESTAURANT - EVENING

JOEL takes a seat in a booth. He uncomfortably eyes the other customers who quietly judge him.
A waitress brings him a menu.

WAITRESS
Just you?

JOEL
No, one more.

WAITRESS
Okie doke.

JOEL
Oh, can I get some onion rings?

WAITRESS
Sure thing.

Joel flips through the menu, but sets it down when he notices the tabletop jukebox.
He finds the perfect song and deposits a quarter.

He looks up to

NICK enters.

Joel’s song selection plays: “Any way you want it, that’s the way you need it, any way you want it…”

Nick takes his seat.

NICK
Sorry I’m late.

JOEL
No problem. I ordered us some onion rings.

NICK
(unsure)
Ooh, fried food?

JOEL
Come on. They’re the best in the state.

The waitress brings two glasses of water and the onion rings. Joel and Nick start eating them.

NICK
So what did you want to discuss?

Joel shifts in his seat, and takes a sip of his water.

JOEL
I really don’t know how to say this.

NICK
Come on, Joel. Just say it.

Joel looks nervously at a customer that walks by on his way to the restroom.

NICK (CONT’D)
Joel, man, you can tell me anything.

Joel sighs. The music continues to play: “Ooh, all night, all night…”

JOEL
Nick.

NICK
Joel.

JOEL
We got canceled.

NICK
Oh, God.

Nick holds his head in his hands.

NICK (CONT’D)
I knew this was coming.

JOEL
Nick, it’s okay.

Joel reaches across to put his hand on Nick’s shoulder.

NICK
How could this be okay?

JOEL
I’ve got good news.

NICK
Good news?

The music swells with the chorus: “Any way you want it, that’s the way you need it…”

JOEL
I just saved a bundle of–

The screen goes black. The sound cuts.

THE END

During my two hours of “break time” at work the other day I found this article that says that swearing in the workplace builds morale and solidarity. Inspired, I wrote this cold opening for The Office. Enjoy!

COLD OPENING

INT. RECEPTION AREA - DAY

PAM is on the phone with a client. The sound of shuffling papers, typing, and phone conversations fills the office. MICHAEL enters.

MICHAEL
(”Good morning!”)
What the fuck is going on, you bunch of assholes?

Pam is shocked.

JIM looks at the camera.

Even DWIGHT’s eyes are wide.

ANGELA puts her hands over her ears and gasps.

PAM
(to client)
I’m sorry, can I call you back?

JIM TALKING HEAD

JIM
Last week everyone was talking about this article on the
internet about a study saying that swearing boosts morale
and solidarity in the workplace. So I immediately
forwarded it Michael.

JIM fakes a cringe: “Whoops.”

INT. RECEPTION AREA - DAY

Michael smiles, holding up his arms. He finishes with…

MICHAEL
Eh, go fuck yourselves.

…and walks into his office.

END COLD OPENING

This was Steve Martin’s first short film from 1977. I know I’ve seen it before but I ran across it again thought some of my readers might enjoy it.

“If you’re studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.” — Steve Martin.

It must have been around the time of the X Files final episode that the hip train left the station without any UFO buffs on board. Hell, there was once a day when you were nothing if you couldn’t drop a name like “the Cigarette Smoking Man” into a pick-up line. But somewhere along the way increasingly complex paranoid delusions became passé. Let’s face it, once the G-Men packed up their antimatter and left Groom Lake we all should have known there and then that the days of The Lone Gunmen spin-off were numbered.

But this week, in a typically out-of-touch move the French government attempted to inject some much needed UFO buzz into mainstream news by releasing all their files (apparently they don’t call them dossiers) on the subject. If you’re like me, the story sparked a long-forgotten chunk of the imagination; unfortunately, mine must have atrophied, because there doesn’t seem to be anything really exciting in these files. The great majority of the 100,000 cases were explained away as swamp gas or bad quiche, and the still unsolved cases are on par with a bad Fox special, only without the creepy soundtrack and the gripping narration of Jonathan Frakes to hold my attention.

I must admit though that I was a little intrigued by the really cool photo of mysterious purple streaking lights in the sky. But instead of being filled with thoughts of other-worldly wonder, my grown-up mind forced on me a much more plausible, down-to-earth explanation for the otherwise resplendent phenomenon: Prince had obviously played an amazing solo on his uber-phallic guitar and spewed forth a purple plasma that scarred the sky.

Nah, not really. But he could play his brother. Don’t you think? And it’d make up for the Super Bowl being so damn boring (aside from the best half-time show I’ve ever scene). Prince should have won MVP for this game.

It’s not the robuts in movies like “The Terminator” or “I, Robut” or “The Matrix” that are evil. Some would say that they can neither be good nor evil because they only do what they’re programmed to do. But I’m inclined to say that when they’re good (bringing us orange juice and saving children) they’re great, and even when they’re bad (destroying the human race) they still serve a purpose.

You see, the robut is the epitome of Enlightenment thinking, the idea that rationality holds the key to peace and happiness on Earth. When Kant said, in not so few and small words, don’t do anything that you wouldn’t hold up as a universal law, he was basically speaking Robut, a language of simple and rational conclusions designed to make the world a better place.

In the aforementioned films a problem usually arises when the robuts come to the impeccably rational conclusion that humans should be destroyed. At this point in the movie we’re forced to face the fact that as a species we pollute, murder, make war and a whole bunch of other stuff that sex, art and religion couldn’t possibly make up for. It’s no accident that the robuts in these movies usually appear as grotesque replications of ourselves. The robut is an extension of human consciousness, pointing out our uselessness, and threatening the quick fix solution.

Had we been able to come to this conclusion ourselves we would have most likely descended into a suicidal orgy. But as attractive as that sounds, it’s simply not an option for most people. So, in spite of this perennial aporia, these movies usually end with a triumph of the human spirit.

But what is the human spirit? Certainly more than the mere will to go on living knowing that your existence is a plague on the world. Against cold rationality, the human spirit welcomes multiplicity and mystery. It suggests that the robut jumped off Kant’s bus too soon, and proudly sports the old cliche that it’s the journey, not the destination.

The evil robut is a mirror in which we first see our vile and corrupt nature, but come to see the beauty of our spirit.