aspiring TV writer. screenwriter. director. musician. statesman.
Sarah took some awesome photos the other night, and I felt like they belong in the contemporary arts museum. So I stuck them in a slide show with some music to make them extra weird. You can watch it below on Vimeo, or you can also download the Quicktime video for even better quality. Enjoy!
Untitled from Beau Henry on Vimeo.
This is a real episode from the Christian version of Punk’d, called Prank 3:16, in which they fake The Rapture. You can imagine how it turns out. The beginning is a lame-ass rationale for why they pulled this horrible prank on this girl. It really makes me wonder what other pranks they’ve pulled. I’ve got an idea, a fake second coming where Jesus appears only to say, “The Mohammedan’s were right! I’ve been in Hell all this time, it fucking sucks!”
I got a camera. Here’s a picture:
Alright, I’m up for making some movies now.
For those of you who’ve complained about not being able to post comments, the problems have been fixed. Apparently you couldn’t post if you were using Internet Explorer, but now you can. Seriously though, download Firefox, it’s way cooler.
PS, go Tony Romo.
So apparently I signed up for Facebook a long time ago. I sort of remember doing it, but never filling out my profile or anything. I think the site was terribly put together, and I had no time to deal with that, so I left it alone. Then I started hearing the voices…of friends, saying, “Hey, are you on Facebook?” The answer wasn’t so simple.
As you probably know, I’ve kept up a MySpace page for some time now, gone through countless profile pictures, songs, comments, and some Top 8 drama that could fill a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (I’m looking at you, Sean). In other words, I’ve developed an online identity.
So naturally, when someone asked me about Facebook I shunned the whole shoddy operation. Though MySpace has its detractors, Facebook seemed an illegitimate enterprise, an artifact of the Friendster age, with the flash-in-pan cultural impact of Technorati. So I don’t know what it was that made me log back on to Facebook, but once I was there I couldn’t stop.
I updated my profile with zeal, friended everyone I could, joined some clubs, RSS’d my blog, confirmed that I had “hooked up” with all my guy friends. (Boy, did that get old!)
So tonight I sat at my computer and went the through the usual routine: check GMail, check Southwestern Webmail (still have for a few more days), check MySpace, check Facebook, check Probability Fields…
Suddenly the idea of all these pieces of my personality frivilously flung across the Web was a little distubing. It was like a dynamic map of my psyche; superegos, ids, and all. Like any good epiphany, it raised a lot of questions:
Can I maintain these multi-egos in a healthy balance? Or will I become the Internet Norman Bates, shy and friendly on Facebook while cruel and murderous on MySpace? Okay, of course not. But more to the point, what if my music preferences on Faeebook don’t match MySpace? What if I move and forget to change it on Facebook?
There is only one person that I could think would have the answer to these questions: Heidegger. A quick MySpace search proved fruitful and I friended him immediately, and just for good measure I search him on Facebook. But to my horror I found several Heideggers (Heideggeren)! One was on the faculty at Michigan, another at Emory; and I don’t want to piss in anyone’s lemonade at these fine schools, but I’m pretty sure the guy’s dead!
So for now I’ll have to comfort myself with a little tidbit of superficial information about Heidegger that you won’t read in his profile: the guy was a philosophical genius and spawned existentialism, yet he was also a Nazi. How’s that for schizo?
(also he still has Tom in his Top 8…weird.)
…thanks for the beer, Barnesy.
I finally got the Internet at my place in Houston, just in time to tell you about the latest wins in the fight for democratization and dissemination of vital information: the availability of Summer of All Fears films on YouTube. This is all being made possible by Jeff James, and you can find them at cathedralforawhile.com.
If you weren’t there for the Summer of All Fears (2002, SU Campus, Madness), don’t worry, you’ll probably still enjoy these fantastic artifacts of illegitimate cinema. Here are some of the first releases with more to come. Behold the ambitious vision of Tony Bonds and the mad men and women who danced before his camera!
The Mis-Adventures of Ricket-Boy
The Ring of Fire
A Day in the Life of Jagermeister
UPDATE: Jeff James has slaved away at his beautiful iMac all day long to add more movies and a neat layout to cathedralforawhile.com. Check it out!
As I watched the most recent episode of HBO’s Entourage I became incredibly frustrated with Turtle. (Oh, Turtle, when will you ever learn?) Sneakers? A pair of F’in’ sneakers? What kind of person is gonna cry over sneakers? This might as well be an episode of Sex and the City. Four people obsess over shoes and sex, but this time, it’ll be men!
But then I remembered why the show is so F’in’ awesome. It’s satire. You’re supposed to wanna smash the TV every time Turtle almost ruins Vince’s career. People in LA live and behave like this, and one day when the meteors come they’ll pay, but for now let’s all have a laugh at their expense.
I don’t simply love this show for its satire alone though; I love it because it effortlessly walks the line between irony and sincerity, dropping only subtle hints as to which side its leaning. In a recent episode, Vince spends the day browsing a bookstore, picking up a random chick, and having movie star sex with her.
The viewer says, “Awesome, thatago Vinnie!”
Then we find out she’s engaged, and Vince does the honorable thing by feigning regret. But it’s all for naught because luckily she and her fiance have a “celebrity list.” You know, a list of celebrities you’re free to poke.
Okay, let me dissect this. Immediately you’re presented with a dual emotional reaction: identifying with Vince’s sexual prowess, but disappointed with the girl’s choice to be a cheating ho-bag. Guilt, arousal, betrayal, anger–it’s exhilarating. But it doesn’t stop there, because you suddenly realize the absurdity of the situation. LA must be the stupidest place on earth.
Come on, do attractive couples create celebrity lists when they live in LA? Celebrity lists are for people who live in Omaha and are considered attractive-for-someone-who’s-from-Omaha. So you can tell your girlfriend its okay to do Brad Pitt and be comfortable knowing she has no chance in hell with him. But my understanding is that movie stars prowl the streets of LA night and day with the only goal of “scaring up some trim.”
Of course the show couldn’t get by on its absurdity alone. Where it really gets good are the special moments: when you find out Vince may not get his next movie, that Ari (godblessim) may never open his superagency, or when Lloyd misses a period. You cry and cheer for these characters as though this was a sincere drama. And when Vinnie buys those stupid sneakers for Turtle you can’t help but smile. I can’t think of another show that makes fun of itself so much while keeping the characters so damn lovable.
Sex and the City on the other hand just represented that cheap brand of quasifeminism that claimed women who fuck a lot are powerful, yet in every episode you get whiny little girls dealing with the fact that they’ll never be princesses. Sure, any idiot can be entertained by Entourage, but it’s even better if you’re not a moron. And that’s the greatest gift of all.
Lastly, Sex and the City didn’t have the most powerful presence in television today, Jeremy Piven. Christ help me if he doesn’t get an Emmy I swear I’ll…casually mention my disappointment to someone.
Phew! Now, I can check off “vehemently rationalize a guilty pleasure” from my to-do list.
By way of ingenious marketing and adroit opportunism Myspace.com has quickly become the coolest fucking thing ever. I’m on it, and so are 67 people who are contractually bound to call me “friend.” From time to time I enjoy browsing through my “friends’” profiles, looking at their pictures and reading their hilariously clever “About Me” sections that often contain links to entertaining YouTube videos that explain nothing about them whatsoever.
More than anything, Myspace.com is a place to prove to everyone that you are the coolest fucking person ever. And the best way to show everyone that you’re cooler than they are is your “Comments” section. Located at the bottom of your profile, the “Comments” section allows your “friends” to announce to the world exactly how they feel about you.
Recently though, I’ve noticed that the “Comments” section is not being used for comments. I’ve looked up the definition of the word, and no where on dictionary.com did it say anything about pictures of Erik Estrada with a funny caption. That is not a comment.
Even more annoying, kids these days are using the “Comments” section to carry on severely disjointed conversations with their “friends.”
“Did you like the movie?” is not a comment.
And neither is “I thought the dream sequence was a bit derivative of Fellini, lol.”
As if you didn’t have IM or seven email addresses already, MySpace has its own messaging system specifically for these kinds of conversations. So why would people want the whole world to see their conversation?
My theory is that its like having a conversation at a party. You want to be seen chatting it up, usually in a closed circle so outsiders can hear, but not participate. Also, it’s a kind of unspoken agreement that two people will help enlarge each other’s list of “comments.” It’s all part of being the coolest fucking person ever. Well, now that you’ve read this I hope you’ll think about how much of an asshole you are before you initiate a conversation in the “Comments” section.
Haven’t posted in a while, but soon I’ll be posting regularly again. There are a lot of changes going on in my life:
Hopefully these changes will only reveal great opportunities like creative and spiritual growth and pretty girls who want to sleep with me.
Oh, and I realize that the layout is fugly. I’ll be working on that too.