As if I really needed another reason to hate republicans.

Washington Interns Gone Bad cast members Elizabeth Croydon and Adam Eidinger get mentioned in the pages of neocon propaganda rag The Weekly Standard. "Journalist" Matt Labash fails to mention Washington Interns Gone Bad.

I scream, you scream, we all scream at (these flavors of Japanese) Ice Cream!

DO NOT ATTEND THIS CONCERT! STOP LISTENING TO BAD MUSIC! You Have Bad Taste in Music is one of the funniest sites I've seen in a while. Take one soapbox, a guy with an army helmet and a bullhorn, put him outside a really bad concert, and watch the hilarity. (via monkeyfilter)

You would think that with all the exploitation of 9/11 by the republicans in NYC this week, there would be nothing left for them to shamelessly exploit. You would expect them to try to milk Reagan's death for all it's worth, but Johnny Cash? If you are in NY and are looking for something to protest, consider this one. Today's republican party could not be any further from what the Man in Black was all about.

Picture of the day from NYC: This picture is from Newsday - they have a whole bunch more. Watching yesterday's protest on CSPAN yesterday, one of the highlights was as people passed by the Fox News Channel's cameras, they all started chanting "Fox News Sucks!" But it hasn't all been big protests in NYC. Here are several accounts of smaller groups going out of their way to harass the republican delegates and make their stay in NYC a little less enjoyable. I SO wish I was there!

What a weekend! We started off on Friday night with another Balboa Theater double feature... Control Room and The Corporation. Nothing like a good 4 hours of getting pissed off about the state of our country and the world. Yesterday we took a beautiful drive down the coast a bit south of Half Moon Bay to hang out and try our new propane camp stove at some state beach down there. My parents-in-law got me a really nice self-igniting Coleman with a grill and a burner for my birthday to help in our attempt to amass enough camping gear to actually go on a campout. It was beautiful in spots and very foggy in spots down the coast, but the drive down Rt 1 past Pacifica is just gorgeous in a scary sort of way. This morning I woke up and turned on the big anti-Bush protests in NYC on CSPAN. It's great to see hundreds of thoudsands taking to the streets against this vile administration and their agenda. But I took a nice long break from watching democracy in the streets to pick up a free Avid box! Anne found it on craigslist. These people were moving or just cleaning house and they put a G3 Avid box with a media tower, 2 removable 9gb Avid drives, and all the cables and connectors on the sidewalk and they are now MINE! Of course, I don't know what to do with a Mac computer let alone a full Avid system, but I sure look forward to learning, and maybe also installing Final Cut on there as well. If anybody reading this knows something about this kind of gear and lives in the Bay Area, any help would be greatly appreciated. As for the NYC protests, there is great coverage on the NYC Indymedia site, though their servers are getting slammed but there's lots of good photos, video and commentary.

Silent Bob is no dummy. Kevin Smith only made one film after supposedly retiring his Jersey universe and characters forver, The Passion of the Clerks is in pre-production! Snooch to the nooch. We have Bennifer (and Gigli) to thank for this.

I got an email last night from somebody last night with the subject of "Shameless Promotion" and of course I automatically assumed that it was going to be somebody complaining about my tagging the Washington Interns Gone Bad URL onto every one of my posts in the political news message boards on yahoo. But it was actually a woman named Katey asking me to plug her website: www.electees.com - a t-shirt store that is raising money for democratic candidates. Check it out, but don't forget my t-shirt shop. It's raising money for me to pay the rent.

What kind of dumbass sends racist hatemail from their work email? Kenneth Gillespie, Supplier Quality Engineer at Ford's Cleveland Engine Plant 1, that's who. Many entertainers who have spoken out against the Bush administration have been the target of hate from the freak republic types, and Margaret Cho is no exeption. But Margaret, being the badass that she is, posts these letters along with the email addresses of the people sending them, making it so much easier for people to go and complain to corporate America about their employees using company networks to send their hatefilled screeds. Here's a letter I just sent to the board of directors of Ford: Dear members of the board of Directors of the Ford Motorcar Company, I was not sure to whom to address this email as the Ford website is lacking in a general email contact address. I hope that this email reaches whomever it needs to reach. It has come to my attention that K.C. Gillespie, Supplier Quality Engineer at your Cleveland Engine Plant 1 has been using his company email account to send politically charged racist hatemail to comedienne Margaret Cho. The details of his email are pasted below: ----- Original Message ----- From: Gillespie, Kenneth (K.C.) To: margaret Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 10:22 AM Subject: Bush Your are a scumbag bitch whore! I hope you rot in Hell! Go back to Asia slant eyes! Bush in a landslide!!!!!!!!!!!!!YEAAAAAHHHHHH! K.C. Gillespie Supplier Quality Engineer Cleveland Engine Plant 1 (216) 676-7844 I understand that misusing company networks for this kind of thing are grounds for dismissal from many companies. I hope that some appropriate action is taken with Mr. Gillespie. I feel that people have a right to their political beliefs, but I find the racist and hostile tone and foul language used in his email to be highly offensive. I understand that email address headers can be forged, but I am certain that somebody in your Information Technology department would be quickly able to verify this. I will consider any inaction by the Ford Motorcar Company on this matter as an endorsement of his email and will keep that in mind when purchasing a car or advising others on a car purchase. Thank you. Sincerely, Jason Buckley I promise to keep my dear readers updated on this as it unfolds.

The republicans are about to occupy NYC to exploit 9/11, re-annoint George W. Bush as their clown prince, and if there's time they'll take in some of New York's legendary entertainment. Of course, there are many plays on and off Broadway that would offend such good conservative sensibilities. The latest play to be removed from suggested republican entertainment is Naked Boys Singing. And in other convention news, the right wing noise machine is already labelling the people who will be in NYC to excersize their first amendment rights to peacably assemble to redress our grievances with this party as terrorists, Marxists and otherwise marginalizing the protestors. In the midst of all this hoopla, the big wedge issue amongst the republican delegats themselves is whether or not Britney Spears should be at the convention. And remember, if you're planning on protesting against the republicans in NYC, you still have time to get one of these t-shirts.

Student arrested because he took a big dump.

Exit Stage Left has some excellent comentary on Max Cleland's attempt at delivering a letter to Dubya asking him to denounce the Swift Boat Ads at his ranch. "I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. This is our President. The man who is too chicken shit to face a triple amputee veteran armed with a letter and has to send the local good ole' boy to do it for him." - no working permalink as of yet. It's the top post right now.

Dick Cheney finally mentions his gay daughter and goes against the official administration line to say that he does not support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Needless to say, the more rabid of the right wing base goes postal over it. Here's my favorite quote, from Family Research Council's Tony Perkins: "I find it hard to believe the vice president would stray from the administration's position on defense policy or tax policy. For many pro-family voters, protecting traditional marriage ranks ahead of the economy and job creation as a campaign issue." So let me get this straight... dictating who can marry whom is more important than whether people have decent paying jobs? Pardon my French but what the fuck is wrong with these people??? I seriously hope a whole bunch of these self righteous jerks spontaneously combust when they hear about this.

Cool blog alert: Quentin muthafukkin Tarantino has a blog! Please don't let this be a hoax. (via Rachel and the City) UPDATE: it very well might be a hoax.

Alice Cooper, welcome to your irrelevance. I think you're gonna like it. I think you're gonna feel right at home.

Who knew that George W. Bush earned a bunch of medals?

Hey all you wizards and witches out there, are you ready to rock? I said ARE YOU READY TO ROCK? Ladies, gentlemen, bats and ghouls, I give you, Harry and the Potters, rocking wizardly diddies from Diagon Alley to Hogwarts.

Man heckles Bush, gets fired. "All I thought was it's not the time or place to be disrespectful of the president of the United States." I couldn't think of a more appropriate time to ask Bush the tough questions that this guy asked.

I love playing around with classic album covers. Sometimes they inspire me to do stuff like this.

A couple of days ago, Anne found the following ad on craigslist: "Calling ALL Creative WEB DESIGNERS This is an invitation to play. Nothing more. www.webnonsense.org" I checked it out, and even posted about it. It's an open web space where people can create whatever they want. Being a blog dork, I created a blog. I want to make it a group blog where people can post about anything they want to. If anybody is interested in participating, just contact me and I'll sign you up. I'm using blogger for it, so if you already have a blogger account, great, and if not, it's quick and easy enough to set up.

NYC to GOP: Drop Dead, A great piece by Ted Rall... "The Republican delegates here to coronate George W. Bush are unwelcome members of a hostile invading army. Like the hapless saps whose blood they sent to be spilled into Middle Eastern sands, they will be given intentionally incorrect directions to nonexistent places. Objects will be thrown in their direction. Children will call them obscene names. They will not be greeted as liberators."

Calling all Hot Women of the LORD!!! "Not only can we date cute guys, but hopefully we can lead them to God and save them from the burning fires of Hell. I've outlined a few tips to help you date cute heathen guys, step-by-step." (via metafilter)

Back when the right wingers were all in a tizzy over the thought that Michael Moore was realeasing a movie that they didn't like, I would often comment that instead of whining about his film, they should make their own. Well, Michael Moore Hates America wasn't exactly the smash hit that they expected it to be, playing only at partisan events. But now there's a bigger budget pro-Bush documentary coming out called The Big Picture, and from the sound of it in the linked article, it could be the funniest science fiction movie since Flesh Gordon, and not exactly help make the case for Bush. Despite the fact that right wing documentaries are worse box office poison than Stephen Seagal, I'm glad that they're at least getting proactive and trying to create something rather than just trying to destroy something that they don't agree with. Some future projects I can see coming out of the right would be remakes of classic conservative cinema such as Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will.

Hey fellow web geeks, check this out, fire up your favorite web design tools, and have some fun!

Iraqi olympic soccer team to Bush: "'Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign,' Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. 'He can find another way to advertise himself.'"

Gotta love the Sunshine State! Cops pull a guy out of his minivan and taser him in front of his wife and kids (and a video camera). His crime? Trying to get back to his hurricane ravaged home. (via monkeyfilter)

More on Dungeons & Dragons' 30th birthday, you can listen to an actual D&D game on NPR's website.

A republican congressmen broke ranks and admitted that the Iraq war is not justified. "I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action." Karl Rove is probably trying to figure out how to get this guy whacked right now. (via political wire)

Happy Birthday Dungeons & Dragons. Anne thinks I'm an extreme dork for (amongst other things) having played this game well into my twenties. Dork or not, my 8th level drunken fighter character kicked ass and took names with his +3 magic sword and enchanted armor. Double damage, baby!

Kerry does what to who??? (via Wonkette)

I'm a pretty hairy guy, but at least I'm not like this guy! (via freakgirl)

Did he or didn't he? Take this quiz to see if you can tell if a statement is a true Bushism, or just some random dumbass statement. Remember not to misunderestimate our brilliant commander in cheif.

Well what do you know? Looks like old Jebby Bush is up to even more electoral shenanigans in Florida. Vote absentee, people! (via metafilter)

Another Washington Intern Staffer Gone Bad. I've heard mention of the Washingtonienne scandal, but didn't really know anything about it (I'm so out of the Washington loop these days) until reading this article (via metafilter). About a month ago, I was contacted by a freelance writer doing a story for People asking if I had ever had any trouble in my professional life because of somebody at work finding out about my blog or if I knew anyone who had. Apparently it was part of the aftermath of the Washingtonienne scandal. The only trouble my site got me into was before I was blogging (an incident where I was told that I would be fired from my job at the DNC as a web geek if I posted an MP3 of clips of Bush sounding like an idiot over some beats that I had put together). Of course, since I post under my own name, I tend to keep that in mind when posting. I'll be the first to admit that blogging for me can sometimes be a bit of a self-absorbed activity, so the idea of blogging anonymously has never even crossed my mind. But the point of this is that once again, life in Washington is imitating art in Washington Interns Gone Bad. Remember this guy? In the case of Washingtonienne, there's a female junior staffer to a congressman who uses sex as a way of gaining more power. This is a major theme of Washington Interns Gone Bad, both with Chief of Staff Elizabeth who has love/hate sex with her boss, as well as Becky the intern who uses the allure of sex to bring down a corrupt congressman. When I read stories like this, it makes me realize just how plugged in to life on the Hill I was when writing my screenplay, even if it was on more of a subconscious level. While I never actually encountered anything like these stories in my time working in national politics, the behavior and attitudes of people working in and around situations of power always seem to reinforce the truth that manages to come through in my silly little comedy. Edited to add: all the gory details about Washingtonienne, including info on who the men were that she wrote about as well as links to her entire blog archived.

There's a novel that just came out called Checkpoint. It's about a guy who is so fed up with how things have been going the last few years that he's all set up to assassinate George W. Bush. Interesting concept, but Salon says that it misses the point: "it can't face the real, justifiable rage that can drive rational people to think the unthinkable."

Last night we screened the first 30 minutes of Washington Interns Gone Bad at the Rough Cut Film Festival. It was a pretty small crowd, but they seemed enthusiastic and they laughed at most of the right places. I didn't sell any DVDs, but I met a guy from undergroundfilm.org who urged me to submit it to them. That won't make any money, but could put the film in front of a lot more people. Some of the other films were incredible. There were a couple of trailers that looked promising. There was one film which I saw as part of the first 48 Hour Film Project that I did last year which they had since put a great deal of work into. I heard a few chuckles in the crowd when the line "I was lied to and very much deceived" came up. There was a documentary on prop rock which was pretty fun. All in all, it was a good time. I think this film would do pretty well in San Francisco. Though the more I watch it alongside other films that were made better, the more I wish that I had known a thing or two about what I was doing before I made it. I think part of the reason that it got made was that nobody involved really knew how difficult it would be to actually make a film. If I had waited around for everything to fall into place in order to do it right-- things like better cameras, better sound gear, real lighting, storyboards, more rehearsal, more experience, etc-- I don't think it would have ever even gotten made. In fact, now that I've learned how to make a film by learning how NOT to make a film, the desire for doing it right without having the means of doing it right has been holding me back from trying to tackle another project of that magnitude since. The new project is definitely in the works, and this time I've surrounded myself with a group of highly creative and experienced people, bringing them in at the very start of the creative process to make this a colaborative effort from the getgo. I think we'll be able to create something just as entertaining and subversive as Interns, but with higher production values.

Things like this are why I love the internet.

Hey college kids: never pass out at a party! (NSFW)

Every now and then I get an email from somebody objecting to something I've said on this site. I got this one today: Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by (mcat7@charter.net) on Friday, August 13, 2004 at 04:36:50 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- name: Bruce Shannon message: You seem very misguided. Please do a bit of honest research so you can understand that when Muslims have declaired war on all Non-Muslims and are persistant in conducting terroristic acts against all logic. They are happy to have submissive victims. You choose weather you are a submissive victim or someone that will defend the United states against Terrorism. Chose wisely and intellegency lest you be swallowed up in the Muslim created war against all Christians, Jews, Hindus, Budists, and any one else who in not Muslim. I celebrate you right to speak your opinion in freedom and will defend it. I only hope that you use logic instead of retoric in making your dicisions