» On 6/14/2025 06:30:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
The Inside Pitch. 

In the summer of 2005, a program description appeared on the Zoetrope.com boards. It was billed as a TV taping of two ICM execs, listening to screenwriter pitches and giving them feedback. I really suck at pitching, but I thought maybe I could learn something, so Anikó and I went to the event, down in Culver City. The execs were very entertaining, and everybody was having lots of fun, so after watching several other writers stumble through their pitches, I worked up the courage to give it a shot. My presentation was as crappy as I expected, but they were nice enough to include a short clip of my stumbling in the DVD credits.

Here's the DVD description: "This Emmy nominated, award winning program is a fast paced, engaging way to learn the art and business of selling a script in Hollywood. An American Idol for screenwriters, this program appeals to anyone interested in the behind the scenes workings of the movie business. The program features ICM executives, Christopher Lockhart and Jack d’Annibale fielding aspiring screenwriter's pitches and giving their honest, sometimes harsh, but often hilarious critiques."

Labels: zoe

 
» On 6/13/2025 01:00:00 PM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
Books 'R' Us. 

In early 2004, a Zoetrope.com member posted a link to a "Librarian For A Day" writing contest on the discussion board. Anikó promptly submitted her essay, a touching paean to libraries in general, and to Glendale's in particular. During July 2004, we moved two hours east, out into the Palm Springs area. Near the end of October 2004, when Woman's Day magazine notified Anikó that her essay had been chosen from 500 submissions to receive one of their two Grand Prizes, they assumed her day as a librarian would be spent at our new local library.

But when my headstrong wife insisted on relocating the event back to our former library—-the place which had inspired her winning essay—-rejoicing broke out in Glendale (pop. 205,300). GPL generously offered to put us up in a fancy Glendale hotel, so we wouldn't have to make the four-hour roundtrip drive in one day. They treated Anikó like a queen, and even lassoed a City Councilman into presenting a Mayor's Commendation plaque.

It was an eye-opening day, full of positive energy that kept sparking more and more good vibes. One small example: the library's collection of Magyar books (which had recently eased Anikó's transition into American culture) had been painstakingly assembled years ago by an employee who hailed from Budapest... and Kati was now able to hear firsthand about the extraordinary impression her efforts had made on a fellow Hungarian.

According to WD's photojournalism crew, their magazine has over 20 million readers. Anikó's two-page layout appeared in their March 8, 2005 issue.

PS: Anikó just told me that she remembers the makeup artist WD hired for her: "The first and only time in my life that I didn't have to do my own face! They even gave me fake eyelashes - Woo-Hoo!!"

More details: http://9TimeZones.com/a/wd.htm

Labels: zoe

 
» On 6/12/2025 04:00:00 PM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
The Hungarian Connection(s). 

(I) Some of you will remember that back in the Second Millennium, the Internet was a curiosity. Lots of journalists were writing about this new medium, and magazines were springing up, specializing in tidbits from The World Wide Web. One such magazine, based in Hungary, was called Internet Kalauz ("Guide"), and Andrea Wesselenyi was one of its top freelance writers. In 1998, Andrea was a member of Francis Ford Coppola's first writing workshop (workshop.lather.com), along with my wife-to-be and me. Anikó and I had not yet met in real life, but we had just finished writing a screenplay+book, and we were searching for ways to promote them. Andrea noticed our postings on the workshop's discussion board, and cleverly saw the possibility for an article about this online collaboration and love story. She exchanged a flurry of eMails with Anikó, and the resulting interview finally appeared in the 12/1999 issue of Internet Kalauz.

(II) During the summer of 2002, my new wife received an eMail from the production staff at Frei Dosszié (Dossier). They had seen her interview in Hungary's leading cyber-issues magazine, and wanted to tape a segment about us for an upcoming broadcast on "Sex & Love." To them, our transatlantic courtship sounded exotic.

I had never heard of Tamás Frei, the host, but Anikó was well-acquainted with his work. He began his career as a traveling reporter, visiting more than 100 countries, and later became Hungary's foremost war correspondent. Frei Dosszié is produced for one of the two commercial TV networks in Hungary, and the program's top episodes have aired in more than 25 countries. Tamás is a two-time Hungarian Pulitzer Prize winner and is one of Hungary's most famous and respected television personalities.

Tamás certainly impressed me: he speaks four languages fluently, and has interviewed Nobel Prize winner Nelson Mandela, Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the Maharaja of Jaipur, computer mogul Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Antonio Banderas, Sharon Stone, Danny DeVito, David Duchovny, David Copperfield, director Oliver Stone, tenor Luciano Pavarotti, and the entire cast of Desperate Housewives... among many others.

So a foreign celebrity was visiting our home. Our interviews didn't take very long to shoot, but we spent the next nine grueling hours with László Balassa, Frei's director of photography. László was in charge of shooting the segment's background footage and went to extraordinary lengths to get it. I vaguely remember him hanging outside the window of our car while taping some roller-coaster views on the hairpin mountain curves up in Angeles Crest. He was grinning madly and shouting, "Faster, faster!"

The segment aired in Hungary on November 4, 2002, and my Budapest in-laws had a *lot* to talk about for the next few months.

Labels: zoe

 
» On 6/11/2025 09:00:00 PM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
Fifteen Seconds - More Or Less. 

In early 2001, I was killing some time on the Zoetrope.com boards, when I noticed that c|net television producer Shirin Etessam had posted a message, requesting a volunteer to be interviewed for a (now-defunct) show called News.com.

So I figured, "What the heck, send her an eMail."

Much to my surprise, she flew me up to Oakland (from L.A.), after a series of phone chats. She even sent a driver across the bridge, to bring me into San Francisco.

Cool. I felt like a V.I.P.

I arrived in the morning, but their taping wasn't scheduled until late afternoon, so I cruised around the city, visiting some old friends from my Haight-Ashbury-urban-commune daze. They were very patient with my blatant attempts to show off.

Later, we shot at least 30 minutes of video down near the Pier 40 Marina. I was a babbling idiot for most of that time, but luckily Shirin only needed about 10 or 15 seconds from me, to plug into a much longer piece about Francis Ford Coppola and his Zoetrope Virtual Studio. So during the mid-February CNBC cable/satellite network broadcast, I actually sounded like a normal human being.

Yup, thanks to Shirin's editing skills, my 29 minutes and 45 seconds of babbling had been left on the cutting-room floor.

Labels: zoe

 
» On 6/06/2025 04:45:00 PM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
ChatWTF Meets The Firesign Theatre. 

After my wife triumphantly told me she won an argument with an AI, I decided to ask ChatGPT.com the famous AI-destroying question created by The Firesign Theatre in "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus" (1971):
"Why does the porridge-bird lay his egg in the air?"
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L8KDJSHibA&t=300s
And this is the inaccurate rubbish that ChatWTF spewed out:

Ah, the question "Why does the porridge-bird lay his egg in the air?" is a surreal, nonsensical phrase famously used by comedian Andy Kaufman, particularly in his character Foreign Man (who later evolved into Latka Gravas on Taxi). It's not meant to make literal sense--it's a deliberate piece of absurdist humor.

The question exemplifies Kaufman's unique brand of comedy, which often blurred the line between performance, confusion, and audience discomfort. By asking something that sounds like it should be profound or metaphorical, but is instead totally illogical, he created a kind of anti-joke that plays with expectations.

So the answer is: It doesn't have a literal answer--it's performance art. The question itself is the joke.

###

Then I asked several other AI's, and I think China's DeepSeek (#3 below) bullsh*ts the best, finishing up with emojis of a tornado, an egg, and a bird.

#1) https://www.meta.ai
That's a curious question! However, I think there might be some confusion. There's no such thing as a "porridge-bird" that lays eggs in the air. It's possible that you might be thinking of a different creature or a fictional reference. Could you provide more context or clarify where you heard about the porridge-bird? I'd love to help you explore this further!

###

#2) https://gemini.google.com
This sounds like a riddle or a line from a folk tale rather than a scientific question about a real bird. No known bird species lays its eggs directly "in the air." Birds require a stable surface for their eggs to develop, typically a nest.

If you're thinking of a specific story or riddle, providing more context might help me understand the "porridge-bird" and why it lays its egg in such an unusual way!

###

#3) https://chat.deepseek.com
The "porridge-bird" is a whimsical creature from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, specifically mentioned in the song "You Are Old, Father William" (though not in the original poem by Robert Southey). The verse goes:

*"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak-
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose-
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"*

However, the porridge-bird itself appears in a parody song from Alice, where it says:

"The porridge-bird lays its eggs in the air,
For the sake of the breeze, I declare!"

Why Does It Lay Eggs in the Air?
Carroll's nonsense verse plays with absurdity and illogical logic, much like the rest of Wonderland. There's no real "reason"--it's a playful inversion of nature, where birds (which normally lay eggs in nests) defy expectations by laying them mid-air, perhaps "for the sake of the breeze."

This mirrors other Wonderland absurdities, like the Pigeon accusing Alice of being a serpent for having a long neck or the Mad Hatter's unsolvable riddle ("Why is a raven like a writing desk?"). The porridge-bird's behavior is just another example of Carroll's love for topsy-turvy logic and fantastical zoology.

Deeper Interpretation?
Some scholars suggest Carroll's nonsense often critiques Victorian rigidity, mocking the need for everything to have a rational explanation. The porridge-bird's airborne eggs might symbolize the futility of over-analyzing nature (or art)--sometimes things just are delightfully nonsensical.

So, in short: because Wonderland! 🌪️🥚🐦

 
» On 6/01/2025 12:05:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
Tyop is an autological word. 

An autological word (or homological word) expresses a property that it also possesses. For example, the word "word" is a word, the word "English" is (in) English, the word "writable" is writable, and the word "pentasyllabic" has five syllables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autological_word

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was an editor on the graveyard shift in a radio-network newsroom. The writers were stringers who wrote and emailed their news stories while seemingly half-asleep... so their radio scripts often contained spelling and/or grammatical errors. After correcting the first twenty or thirty, I began to deal with my frustration by blowing off steam and posting the most interesting "Tyops of the Night" on Facebook. My friends loved them, which shocked the hell out of me. But we all had lots of fun, for nine years or so:

"The escaped inmate was severing 20 years for a knife attack."
"Police say they believe the man was not a seatbelt."
"The mayor is scheduled to undergo open-hurt surgery."
"Police got a call from religious school officials at the Academy of the Holy Angles."
"He succumbed to repertory failure."
"The SUV has damage to the font of the driver's side."
"Fire officials say the grenade was in a resident on South Street."
"The threats were sent from Houston via tex message."

 
» On 5/01/2025 12:05:00 AM Mountain Standard Time, Alan wrote:
La Légion Étrangère - un métier d'homme! 

"The Biz is failing miserably. It's time to join the Foreign Legion." I burped for emphasis.

The Dane shot me a sidelong glance with bloodshot eyes, and smiled ironically. "It's true, our business is not doing too well, but we're having the time of our lives on the Côte d'Azur!" He giggled.

I snorted in disgust. He was quoting that bubbly TV travel ad again. His droll Nordic sense of humor was beginning to try my patience. Here was a man who could pun in four languages, only two of which could I understand. By silently farting at a crucial point during our beerfest last night, he had even made an olfactory pun. That suave multilingual sophistication and wit was getting to be damned irritating.

When we started our teeshirts-to-the-tourists business, we had unwittingly chosen the worst year for vacationers in the last two decades, and hardly anyone was buying. We would roll out of bed at 5:00 a.m., load up our Citroën Deux Chevaux (nicknamed "Blueballs" because of the twin blue globular headlamps protruding from the fenders, which lit our way into the misty Mediterranean morning), and head off to one of the local outdoor markets. Monday found us in Nice, Tuesday in Vallauris, Wednesday in Beaulieu, Thursday in Antibes, Friday in Biot and Saturday in Valbonne - which added up to a solid six days of rejection per week. The French bureaucracy limited us to selling in the local open-air marchés, which were geared more toward the locals, rather than tourists. We invariably set up our portable clothing racks next to someone selling kitchen equipment or house plants, and hoped that a few adventurous vacationers would find us before the market broke up at noon or one o'clock.

We attempted to be sharp "commerçants," but for a couple of supposed businessmen, our French was severely impaired. The main difference between Jørgen and me was that he studied to improve his usage, while I just scrambled around enough to get myself into and out of scrapes. Three months of enduring haughty professeurs at the Université de Nice was as much book learning as I could stomach, thank you. I also entertained a hopelessly romantic dream of falling in love with a mademoiselle and improving my French organically. But the prospects were slim. My English accent in French was not nearly as charming to the local women as their French accents sounded to my American ears. Then there were the rumors from some of my male classmates: after taking French women to bed, these undercover men reported the incessant nagging about marriage, which began almost immediately.

So maybe this wasn't the best language study method after all.

In the jaundiced eyes of France's bureaucracy, I wasn't legally entitled to start the Biz. I had entered their country on a student visa, and the procedural gauntlet for obtaining a Carte de Commerçant, their highly-prized sales permit, was designed to discourage half-baked foreign entrepreneurs. After several weeks of being brushed off by the gendarmes in the Préfecture and the officious city bureaucrats in the Mairie, I struck upon the idea of forming a partnership with my new acquaintance from Århus. The last thing a Mayor's flunky had mentioned, before heaving me out of his office, sounded something like: "Only Common Market citizens can do business here." Those fateful words dredged up many alcohol-blurred memories of my recent introduction to eastern Jutland's nightlife, a Death Tour which featured endless shots of Jägermeister. The drinking spree had sparked a camaraderie of sorts, so, on a whim, I dialed Denmark. A Common Market country.

When Jørgen agreed to this harebrained scheme, it shocked the bejesus out of me.

My new partner acquired a new nickname this morning, during Blueballs' starting ritual. With his limited knowledge of cars, this guy inspects only the spark plugs; whenever anything goes wrong, out they come. So imagine my consternation when Blueballs developed what seemed to be a spark plug problem; I knew the crazy Dane had been keeping them clean as a whistle, because he doesn't know how to do anything else. I finally looked in the engine, and... guess what? He hadn't screwed 'em in tight.

Ol' Sparky will never live this one down.

The jaded, cynical side of our collective sense of humor was coming to the fore, as this poorly-funded and -planned business went down the tubes. When things looked the most futile, we kept up a brave front by talking about the Foreign Legion. Our perception of La Légion had been formed by a multitude of Hollywood movies, where it was portrayed as a last resort: a place to escape an unhappy love affair, or to run from one's sordid past. So we jokingly dared each other to join the Legion and escape our financial woes.

But finally, we decided that today was our date with destiny. Squaring back our shoulders, we marched into the local Foreign Legion garrison to ask for information. We were met by the Adjutant, a mysterious man in dark glasses. He was dressed in the typical Legionnaire costume: khaki fatigues and a kepi, the Corps' trademark sawed-off stovepipe hat, which sported a baseball brim. He spoke French with an exotic accent and lethargic cadence, much like an addict who's just shot up.

He wouldn't reveal his nationality.

The interview was a bizarre experience, marked by waves of panic which washed through every nerve. Our instincts were screaming, "Get the hell out!" But we were very thorough, looking dutifully through a scrapbook which told us in seven languages (with colorful pictures of high adventure) that "no identification papers will be required." The man in the shades described a "faux nom" system, which forces every recruit to accept a new name, corresponding to his registration name only in the same initial letters. The Adjutant gave us all sorts of posters to take home, and we admired the trophy case which offered Legion paraphernalia for sale: tie tacks, money clips, mugs, jugs and teeshirts.

The faux nom system was curious, to put it mildly; it's a dead giveaway about the type of people who would be attracted to the ranks. You aren't allowed to use your real name until three years have passed, and even then, it's not required. Despite the literature which claims Legionnaires are neither mercenaries nor outlaws, what can one think about people who don't want to disclose their identities? Who were these men, looking forward to the Legion's promise of French citizenship under a new name at the end of their five-year enlistment?

So a new method of learning French surfaces (you're not required to know the language, because you'll learn to speak it during the term of your "contract"). Sparky and I stumbled away from the barracks, and drove off in a daze; it was hard to shake those chills which we had received from the man behind the Foster Grants. During most of the ride home, we punctuated our long silences with exclamations of "No identification required!" and "Faux nom!" The clear implication was this: if you can get to the Legion before the pursuing authorities close in, you can literally disappear.

Since 1831, the Legion has been the only organization of its kind in the world: taking in misfits and criminals of any nationality, then putting them through a five-year meat grinder to make them into model French citizens.

The really disturbing part, though, was the milieu which was only half-suggested by that scrapbook. The Adjutant, in his dark glasses and drugged voice, neatly fit the description of what most medical literature calls Brain Death: the body keeps on living, but there's nothing going on upstairs.

I imagined that he appeared to us as the spider looks to the fly.

On our way back from the garrison, we stopped to pick up an older man, hitchhiking beside the road. He acted oddly when we pulled over: checking out the license plate, he then mentioned the trailing "06" upon entering the car. He obviously knew that it indicated a registration in the Riviera département of Alpes-Maritimes. After Blueballs started moving again, he quickly abandoned our halting version of French, in favor of Sparky's fluent German. I was mesmerized by the tone poetry of a language which made no sense to me: the throaty gutturals, and the words which sounded almost, but not quite, like English. Finally, one phrase pushed its way through the comprehension barrier: "Heil Hitler!" My head snapped around to look at this passenger in the back. He smiled broadly at Sparky in the mirror, and casually watched me from the corner of his eye. Sparky grinned nervously in the driver's seat next to me; this conversation obviously made him very uncomfortable. I noticed some sweat beading on his upper lip. Given the loaded connotation of the phrase which our passenger had just spit out, I deduced it would be unwise to question anyone, in any language. Also, Sparky was obviously looking for a place to pull over; I guessed that the man in the back had made a request to get out at the next intersection.

As we drove off after depositing the guy, I was eager to pump some information from Sparky, but he seemed to be in shock. After awhile, he asked me to drive, and haltingly told the story:

Our rider had been in the Foreign Legion for nineteen years, and was discharged in the early sixties. Sparky was naturally curious, and the man related some of his war stories. However, he also mentioned that the Corps hadn't really satisfied his "appetites," and made allusions to dark deeds done during the war. It slowly dawned on me that his appetites had nothing to do with eating, drinking, or sex. And his final defiant exclamation indicated that he wasn't even slightly remorseful about the things he'd done. The Legion meat grinder had cranked out another citoyen modèle.

To us, it seemed typical that the French, with their maze of red tape, tyrannical bureaucracy, and repressive laws, would provide a loophole like La Légion. We retreated from the awful specter of Brain Damage and War Crimes into the bright Riviera sunshine, although one nagging thought still plagued us. Remembering the famous case of that comatose, brain-dead woman, the poor lady who had been maintained on life support for several pointless years, we harbored a nasty sneaking suspicion that she would've made the perfect Legionnaire wife...