The Writer's Poke

Pretty amazing statement by 19 year-old Iowa native Zach Wahls. And oh yeah, he was raised by two women. Lesbians.

Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Hundred-Dollar Kisses," available in the While Mortals Sleep collection, makes an interesting observation. In the story, Henry George Lovell has been arrested for assaulting Verne Petrie with a telephone. I don't want to give away the full details of the story, but Lovell's motive is this: "Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to the things themselves." So, think about that. Lovell was so upset with Petrie that he wanted to do him bodily harm. The reason: Petrie didn't pay attention to "the things themselves." This story reminds me of what's currently going on in Egypt. After a couple of weeks of protest, the Egyptian leader has finally decided to resign. We watch the celebration of the Egyptian people on our televisions, but all we see is "the picture of things" and not "the things themselves." Isn't that interesting? For most of us, we have no i...

A recent Cracked article ( http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-great-artists-who-make-it-really-hard-not-to-hate-them/ ) listed Kevin Smith and Quentin Taratino as great artists that have horrible real-life personalities. Personally, I'm not sure why this should matter to the average film goer. It's unlikely that I will ever meet either one of these guys, and I doubt that we'll ever go out to dinner together. If we did, then maybe it would matter. Maybe I would learn first hand what arrogant, full-of-themselves pricks they really are. Until then, however, my only real interaction with them is through their work, and their work is more than solid; it's exceptional. I'm sure part of the reason I like their films so much is because they care about dialogue. Modern films don't generally pay much attention to dialogue. These days, people go to films for CGI and 3D effects. I, on the other hand, like films that pay attention to language. Smith and Taratino both brand the...