Blog Title: Words For My Enjoyment

Words About The Inaccuracies In Disney’s Little Einsteins

Having kids changes the things you obsess about.

Still, I had to come out of hiding to address a slew of unrealistic inaccuracies in Disney’s The Little Einsteins; an often-adorable show about a quadfecta of young friends and their sentient robot rocket, Rocket. On a weekly basis they launch off on a variety of missions and tie in music and art while they’re doing it.

I just wish they could pay as much attention to the other small details.

Besides the fact that animals’ voices don’t sound like musical instruments, and that with the price of real estate these days there’d be no way a bunch of pre-elementary school kids could afford to build a huge underground lair down the hill from their parents house, and way beyond the fact that they travel out of the country on a moments notice without passports, approvals or any kind of permission whatsoever…there’s one glaring visual issue I seriously can’t get past.

Look at this picture:

Here you see all the little Einsteins getting ready to take off in their Rocket. Everyone’s buckled in, they’ve got their seats and they’re ready to go. There’s (from L to R) Annie, Quincy, Leo and June. Most importantly, it’s pretty tight in there, everyone’s seats are all pretty much about two feet from each other (I measured). Pay particular attention to Leo and June and then look at the next picture (a close up of Leo as he gears up to take off):

Do you see what’s bugging me? How is it even possible that Leo is sitting there and we don’t see any of the other kids? From looking at the spatial layout in the first picture we should plainly see June on the right side of this second picture. Nothing matches up. June should be there in the background. Or on the side. Or somewhere.

Basically, we’ve been cheated here, and handed an inconsistency and basically it’s assumed that no one will care, speak up about it, or even mention it on Twitter (which I’m about to do right this second). If this was Transformers there’d be a huge discussion about it on some board somewhere. If this was a Presidential commercial, there’d be a post up about it. But because it’s a kids’ cartoon, everyone just seems to let something like this slide.

And we can’t have it.

Not if we want to save the economy.

Words About Crayons, Redux

It’s always nice to see old words repurposed as new words.

Such is the case with this Mental Floss article I wrote about the different crayons that Crayola removed from the world due to political and racial scuttlebuts.

Face It, Cats Don’t Like You

I often liken cats and the general feline species to a cheerleader I once knew in junior high school who often gave you this sarcastic look that either meant she hated you or wanted you to go away.

That’s because, let’s face it, cats don’t like you.

And when I say you it means all of you. Because while we all think the cats we cherish are just funny or quirky or aloof; the reality is they’re just putting up with us until the mother ship arrives and they can finally tell us all what they really think.

Talk to the cat lovers and they will write off what I like to call the catitutde to a bunch of human traits that cats don’t even have. Cats are adorably-egotistical, some will say. Cats are lovable balls of fur and fury, others have said. Cats love their owners, but are very protective in the company of strangers…thus their constant scratching and hissing.

Face it, cats don’t like any of us.

People joke that cats could be from another planet and I’m not altogether convinced they aren’t. Landing here on Earth during Egyptian times, they quickly assimilated themselves and became (what the History books claim) “the most beloved pets of the Egyptian times.” Evidenced, by of course, all those pictographs that prominently featured cats wearing classic Egyptian head garb.

I know people who liken cats in Egypt to Jerry Lewis in France. (KnowwhatImean?)

Dogs are dopey and lovable. They’re also kind of stupid. But, don’t we (as a culture) love dopey stupid people? Don’t we embrace the stupid? Look at the covers of mainstream magazines and tell me who we’re following around (cough, Britney, cough) and then tell me we don’t love our stupid folks. Same goes for the dogs — with a vocabulary that doesn’t exceed that of a two year old child, we can pretty much love our dogs and not worry about them reprogramming the alarm code for our home and then accidentally (ahem) calling the police on us.

Cats? Not so much.

You often hear the stories of cats dialing 911. Of cats saving their owners from an untimely death. Of cats smartly and quickly dealing with tragic and dangerous situations. My dog sleeps in his own poop.

Bring up a list of all the other pets we have, from guinea pigs and mice to birds and fish…and throw a cat in there for good measure. And at the end of the day when you look at the entire list…it’s like looking at a list of countries like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, France, Italy and Iraq. Can you guess which animal is like Iraq?

Cough, cat, cough.

The cat lovers and naysayers will defend cats to the bitter end. They will recount the stories of love and cuddling and scratch posts. They will say, “Well if cats don’t like me then why would they save me in dangerous and life-threatening situations?”

The cat avoiders will respond to that by saying that cats are just keeping us all alive so that someday we can become their slaves, much like the Egyptians. Maybe 2012 is what they’re waiting for.

But I don’t have time for conspiracy theories and alien jokes. I don’t have time for any of it because I have come to accept the fact that cats just don’t like me. Or you. Or anyone. They’re pretending they like us just so they can use us until they no longer need us.

Like that junior high school cheerleader.

A hex on you, m’lady.

Kick-Ass Words About Our Five Year Anniversary

Jennifer Love Hewitt and I would like to remind everyone that August marks five years that Words For My Enjoyment has been bringing you kick-ass words, entertainment and laughter.

Do with that what you will.

Latest Internet Rumors About Barack Obama (That May Make Me Question Voting For Him)

• He’s seen Canonball Run more than ten times.
• He likes asparagus.
• Having grown up in Hawaii, he still isn’t a huge fan of macadamia nuts.
• His wife chose the party favors at their wedding; he didn’t play a part in that decision at all.
• He doesn’t know about the movie Tron (and yet he’s seen Canonball Run more than ten times.
• CB Call Sign: Skeeter
• Never thought those SoniCare Toothbrushes were worth it.
• Found Sting’s ‘Dream of the Blue Turtles’ to be a “silly title.”
• Uses Yahoo for Internet searches
• Thinks more African-Americans like Kevin Clash (the voice of Elmo) should give back to the puppeteering community and help more African-Americans create fuzzy monsters for PBS.

It’s Time To Retire The Oh My Godder

“Oh My God.”

It is a phrase that originally went hand and hand with things like alien spaceship landings, flying superheroes and huge catastrophic flipping ocean liners. But lately, it seems to be a phrase that just about any writer loves to use to apply what I like to call “the amazing” to things that are sort of, kind of, pretty much not amazing at all.

From overflowing sinks to someone seeing their name on the big jumbotron in New York City’s time square, it is a sound byte that is supposed to make us not change the channel because we think something amazing is coming up.

Sad thing is…the “Oh My Godder” isn’t much of any amazing…anymore.

The “Oh My Godder” has always been at the forefront of narrative excitement and wonder. From the film 2001 there was the classic “Oh My God…it’s full of stars,”. From FOX’s classic over-user of the “Oh My God” 24 you could always expect a good “Oh, my God, what did you do? What have you done? [shouts] What have you done!?”

But somewhere along the way, the “Oh My Godder” got taken advantage of.

A simple search on IMDb (The Internet Movie Database) reveals startling results. The phrase “Oh My God” is now as pedestrian as “Oh, hey” and “Did you want fries with that?”

Which only makes me think it’s time to retire the Oh My Godder.

Why not send the amazing phrase to the Cooperstown of classic one-liners in entertainment media? Why not challenge the writers out there to come up with something more original and more entertaining? Why not treat the Oh My Godder with the respect it deserves and retire it like a Hall of Famer, putting it out to pasture in the most respectful of ways?

Oh my God. Why can’t we all just give Oh My God a chance?

Because now, Oh My God has lost its luster. When a show is about to go to commercial and I hear the words “Oh My God” (especially with unscripted reality shows who use the phrase ad nauseam) I am no longer on the edge of my seat wondering what could possibly be coming up after the break. I am no longer freaking out because something amazing must have happened for why else would somebody have uttered the phrase? I am jaded, Mr. Oh My Godder. You do not excite me like you did the first time my ears heard you.

Yeah, yeah Mr. Writer — criticize all you want but what are your solutions? If you’re going to attack the Abraham Lincoln of movie amazement utterings (much like Lincoln freed the slaves, the Oh My Godder freed our imaginations), give us some better alternatives.

Ask and ye shall receive:

• “Well sick a dog on me!”
• “Goo-yah!”
• “Whabajabanoodlepuss!?”
• “Hahaha, noooooooooooooo!”
• “Now there’s something I couldn’t have possibly have expected was going to happen!”
• “Tsk, tsk — now you’re gonna have to really change your underwear!”
• “See my face? Look at it! No. MY face. Yeah! You see it? You know what that means? I’m telling you…you have to see the look on my face!!!”

Enough said, right?

The Comedy Schoolings of Mike Myers

As someone based and working in Hollywood, I run into a lot of celebrities.

As someone working in Hollywood, I try my best not to talk about celebrities I run into or work with simply based on the fact that they’re people just like you and me. In fact, I’ve known many a celebrity to not wash their hands after going to the bathroom (just like you!) or steal a free bite from the pile ‘o apples at the local supermarket…just like you! But sometimes…an event occurs that I cannot keep quiet about.

This time…that event is my attending The Mike Myers Comedy School.

The Mike Myers Comedy School is something you can’t find in the yellow pages or the creative directory. It’s much like Los Angeles’ The Magic Castle — an exclusive locale that you can’t even get into unless you know someone. In the case of The Mike Myers Comedy School, I happened to know a comedian who used to write for SNL during the Mike Myers days who let me know that in preparation of Myers’ new movie The Love Guru he had decided to personally teach a one-day class to friends of friends.

I was desperate to learn from the great one (Myers)…so I got on the list.

There’s been a lot of negative press lately being written about Myers. About his egotistical attitude or his inability to see the forest from the comedy trees. Well, I’m here to tell you that all those people are simply jealous. Myers is a comedy genius who most others are jealous of. I mean, if you had created characters like Wayne & Garth and/or Austin Powers/Dr. Evil and made billions of dollars in the multiplexes, you’d better believe people are going to show up for the Mike Myers Bashing Party.

I spit on those people.

The Mike Myers Comedy School started at 5:45 am on this past Saturday morning. It was hosted in a large conference room at the Writers Guild of America, West offices in Hollywood. Upon walking in, all twelve of the attendees (I was one) are met by Myers-regular Verne Troyer (Mini Me) who (apparently) is responsible for getting everyone’s checks for the event (made out to Myers for $400). Yeah, it’s steep — but for that you don’t just get the class. Troyer hands each attendee a big bag (with The Love Guru logo on it) that included: all three Austin Powers DVDs, both Wayne’s Worlds on DVD, a DVD of So I Married An Axe Murderer and a free trial pass for NetFlix so you can order the rest of the Myers canon of films. In addition, everyone gets a rubber nose kit (sort of a costumey thing to help with creating characters) and a book of rhyming words (mole, pole, toll, hole, goal!). The book, in addition to the DVDs, was a gift the rest of us were laughing over as we waited for “The Great One” (which Troyer informs us we have to call Myers) to arrive.

At 9:15am, Myers walks into the room.

Fortunately, over the three and a half hour wait, the twelve of us got to know each other and talk to Troyer about why we love Myers so much. Myers, who seemed extremely friendly and genial upon his arrival, got up on a mini-stage kind of thing and gave us an intro speech about what comedy is. I happened to bring my iPhone so I was able to type some of it out so I wouldn’t forget. Here’s just a few of the gems Myers threw out to us during his opening “monologue”:

“Comedy isn’t about making people laugh. Comedy is about making people laugh at themselves.”

“There’s no such thing as romance in comedy. There’s comedy in romance, there’s drama in romance…but romance itself is never the main focus of anything…primarily based on the fact that most romances end up destroying and blackening ones’ soul.”

“The basis of all my comedy stems from what I like to call the too-big/too-small coefficient. If you are a giant or a dwarf, that is funny. If you are overly-egotistical or extremely self-conscious…that is funny. If your genitals are elephant-huge or cockroach-small? Hilarious.”

Once Myers was done giving us his speech laying out the basis for his comedy theories, he showed everyone a trailer for The Love Guru. He told us that now he was going to teach us (the friends of his friends) the easiest and most successful way to create our own quirky characters and to create an entire world around said characters…so that we could eventually write a movie starring said quirky characters and sell said movie and quirky character so that a movie would someday be made starring us as that character. The fake nose, said Myers, is the “key to becoming someone else, mostly because deep down everyone’s snot is different.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but I loved the fake nose.

At that point, Myers broke out a chart that I wish I had been able to take a picture of (but Troyer was watching us like a hawk). The chart basically had eighteen squares in three columns. At the top (and it looked like Myers had used this quite a few times for his own work) it was dubbed “The Character Creation Chart.” Myers told us that we were to pick one box for each column and those three boxes would create our quirky character for us. We were to pair up into teams of two and then try our creations out on our partners.

Between 9:30am and 11:30am, we did just that.

For my character, I chose the three boxes that included “Scottish Accent,” “Lives In Parents’ Basement” and “Drinks Nothing But Grape Juice.” The name I chose for my quirky character was “Scotty McJuicer.” My partner (whose name I will keep anonymous) chose the boxes “Angry & Bald,” “1970’s Porn Star” and “Head Too Big For His Body.” His quirky character, “Long John Picard” was pretty damn hilarious — he spoke with a British accent and was always falling over because of his lack of balance due to the huge head. I was a little jealous, but I soldiered on.

After lunch, when Myers had finished all his phone calls (he was doing some radio interviews we suspected for the opening weekend of the movie), we all presented our quirky characters to Myers. Among the group’s presentations we met a eunuch who loved Junior Mints, an Irish sniper with tourette’s syndrome named Misguided Mike, a voluptuous dental hygienist who drank nothing but grape juice, an angry & bald guy with a huge head who lived in his parents basement and plotted world domination and the crowning jewel of the day’s class: a Scottish secret agent whose alter ego is a well-endowed Irish secret agent always fighting with his inner self.

Myers was, needless to say, extremely impressed.

As the afternoon approached, Myers tweaked each of our characters as we presented them. Just a little bit, mind you — just to give the characters the “Myers Mold” he would say. For example, my creation of Scotty McJuicer wasn’t really Scottish after all…his backstory (that Myers gave me) was that he was obsessed with Star Trek’s Scotty! That added a whole new level to my character and a reason for his Scottish accent…and he even gave me a great line for my character to say when he was in dire situations and based on the fact that he lived in his parents always-flooding basement: “Beam me up…stairs!”

Myers went on to explain that every quirky character needs at least two very special sayings. From Austin Powers’ “behave” to Dr. Evil’s “one milllion dollars” to Wayne Campbell’s “party on” — everyone needs one or two. While I had already gotten mine (see above), the rest of the characters got theirs too. The funniest was the tag line for the eunuch who loved Junior Mints character, performed in a high-pitched voice: “Fresh as a testicle…and that ain’t from personal experience!!”

By 4pm, everyone had created a unique character at The Mike Myers’ Comedy School and developed great sayings and quotes for their creations. Myers had imparted upon us his comedic theories and even given us some great schwag to take away from the day. But before he closed us out, he gave us three bits of advice for writing the screenplay for the movie, starring our quirky character. Troyer allowed us to write them down, and so I am reprinting them here word for word:

1. Stealing a funny joke from someone else isn’t plagiarism, it’s flattery.
2. When you find yourself stuck in a hard place without a joke, mentioning testicles can always free you.
3. Funny accents are funny.

For a guy with such a lauded history of successes in the motion picture and television industry, I will embrace his teachings like the Bible. Or more, maybe.

In the end, my Saturday spent in The Mike Myers’ Comedy School was better than my Saturday in Driving School, better than the time I graduated from high school and far better than all those S.A.T. prep classes. At least I got something out of Myers’ Comedy School.

Two words: Scotty McJuicer.

Steve Jobs Is Skinny (And Other Headlines For Upcoming Wall Street Journal Articles)

Did you know that Steve Jobs looked skinny at yesterday’s Apple Developer’s Conference? It was where they unveiled the new iPhone.

But the Wall Street Journal online wanted the world to know that Steve Jobs is skinny.

So here’s a list of future headlines for the Wall Street Journal online so they can keep with the trend of particularly obvious and insignificant news headlines, while instilling the confidence in their readership that no matter what happens in the world (no matter how small), they will be there to shine a light on what’s happening:

• Disney’s Wall-E: Movie About Robot Not Real Life
• Gas Prices Rise, Consumers Pay More
• Barack Obama is Black, McCain White
• U.S. Dollar Not Worth a Dollar
• Dream of the Blue Turtles Not Sting’s Most Well Received CD
• Bird Flu, Not Flu At All
• Larry King Wears Big Glasses, Eyesight Not 20/20
• 4 out of 5 Dentists Prefer Crest

Classic Movie Words

Next to the classic Patton speech, this one is legendary:

“You broke your arm once before, remember? You fell out of our treehouse. Kenneth picked you up. And we carried you twelve blocks to the hospital. We were all friends then, remember? And now you want to end his life because he’s talking to Patty on your side of the cafeteria. Oh man, it’s stupid. I know, cause that’s where I wanted to be — on your side with your crowd, but I messed up. See, I tried to buy my way in. But Kenneth — he’s not trying to buy anybody. He’s trying to make friends, being himself. Cools, nerds, your side, my side…man it’s all bull. It’s just tough enough being yourself.”

Words About Change