Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

Just watched the LeBron commercial. Almost makes ya wanna like him.
—the Official Roommate of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun. Cleveland native, Cavaliers fan, former Witness.

As we all probably could have expected, Nike has a LeBron James–centered commercial to kick off the NBA season and the start of the next era in King James’s career. It’s called “Rise.” Here it is.

Let’s get a few things out of the way. The Decision was a dick move. But it wasn’t a dick move because of the spectacle, or because it represents everything wrong about sports in the ESPN era, or because LeBron James is an egomaniac. It was a dick move because it prevented the Cleveland front office from pursuing alternate free agent strategies, and because it ripped the hearts out of Cavaliers fans’ chests. But it didn’t rip fans’ hearts out because LeBron James owed them his loyalty; he just just owed them the courtesy of not being an asshole. So yeah, I wasn’t a big fan of The Decision. I wasn’t a big fan of last week’s “Hater Day,” either, when LeBron re-posted some of the more vitriolic and nasty Twitter messages he’s gotten. LeBron may have some unpleasant stuff cross his path on a daily basis, but a multi-millionaire that plays a kids’ game for a living is going to have a hard time gaining sympathy from a nation of plebs already predisposed to dislike him. It’s just a losing strategy.

One of the more resonant critiques of LeBron has been that he just doesn’t get it. How could he not have known that The Decision would be poorly received? How could he possibly expect us to feel bad for him that he gets some nasty messages on Twitter? Why doesn’t he get it? This attitude is pervasive, especially among the sports commentariat, so it’s no surprise that some writers (like NESN’s Mike Cole) would think that the new Nike commercial is just part of a pattern. Writers like Cole would have you believe that everything you think about LeBron James is valid, and he’s coming after you again. Simple as that.

Problem is, that’s not what this commercial is doing. LeBron’s not settling any scores here. He’s not trying to portray how betrayed he feels. He’s saying “Look in the mirror.”

(A caveat: Cleveland fans need not look in the mirror. Their hatred is justified. If Cleveland wants to hate LeBron forever, they should. I would never begrudge a fan base a valid uh, grudge. I mean, Cliff Lee didn’t treat New York nearly as bad as LeBron treated Cleveland, but I still hate that guy’s guts!)

As Lisa Simpson said, you can’t create a monster and then whine when it stomps on a few buildings. We’re all complicit in the LeBron James hype machine. We can complain about The Decision, but I certainly watched. So did a lot of people. We can complain about ESPN’s non-stop coverage of LeBron James’s free agency over the past two years, but we all watched. And every time there was a Michael Jordan comparison, every time LeBron was referred to as the savior of a star-crossed city, more of our own expectations and projections were heaped onto him. LeBron James looked like a good guy, so he became a good guy. We wanted LeBron James to lift Cleveland out of sports purgatory, so he became the guy that would lift Cleveland out of sports purgatory. The franchise down the road from his hometown was awful enough to win the draft lottery the season before he entered the NBA, so LeBron became the hometown hero.

LeBron James isn’t a hero. LeBron James isn’t a villain. And, like he says in the ad, LeBron James isn’t a role model. I’ve gotten into this a tad before on the blog. I just don’t think we should be holding athletes up as role models. Of course, it’s nice when star athletes are also great people. And of course, we shouldn’t tolerate star athletes behaving like savages. But we also shouldn’t hold them to standards of morality and goodness that we would have a hard time living up to ourselves, simply because they’re on TV more. These are guys that are just like us, except better at sports.

The Decision was a mistake. We all make mistakes. LeBron has a large ego. It’s exceedingly difficult to get ahead in the world of professional sports without one. LeBron appears to have turned his back on his hometown team. I’m sorry that Cleveland’s teams haven’t won a title in half a century. I’m sorry that for seven seasons, the best the Cavaliers could do to play with LeBron were guys like Mo Williams and Anderson Varejao. I’m sorry that the Browns have had some heartbreaking seasons, and have seen teams like the Rams, the Buccaneers, and the Saints win Super Bowls. I’m sorry that Jose Mesa couldn’t close out Game 7. Had any of a number of things far outside of LeBron’s control occurred over the years, it wouldn’t be such a big deal that LeBron left Cleveland, let alone the manner that he left.

I guess all of this is to say, I’m over being mad at LeBron. The most effective image in that whole ad, and one that I think should be the main takeaway for all of us, is LeBron tearing up the gym with a front loader. I think we should clear the decks and start over. I don’t mean looking past The Decision; that’s part of LeBron’s legacy forever. I mean start over in terms of our expectations and perceptions. LeBron James isn’t a savior. He isn’t a hero, and he isn’t a villain. He’s neither a goat nor the GOAT. He’s just a basketball player.

There's a Santa hat on the top shelf. No books, though.

I’ll spare you all the very top shelf of my bookcase, which doesn’t actually have any books on it, but has plenty of hats, toy helicopters, and jugs of loose change (and one of my prized possessions, a box of fun-sized Rice Krispies signed by Something Corporate frontman Andrew McMahon. A gift from the Official Philadelphia Correspondent of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun). If you’re not familiar with the project, refresh yourself here.

The New York Public Library Science Desk Reference
Roget’s Thesaurus of Phrases
Dictionary of Word Origins
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition
Can you remember the last time you used a reference book? And I don’t mean some obscure text you needed for some esoteric term paper back in college. I mean like an honest to goodness dictionary, for the purpose of looking up the definition of a word. It’s actually kind of sad. I looked through all of these books at various points when I got them (the Science Desk Reference was a good one), but nowadays, there’s no excuse; anything you need to find out, you’re probably going to find online. Hell, they’re going to stop printing the effing Oxford English Dictionary! I think I inherited the Webster’s and Chicago Manual from the garbage heap at my office. (And, of course, Chicago is in its 16th edition, so, you know, it’s a paper book, and it’s superannuated. And heavy. Dunno if I’ll be carrying it with me next time I move.)

What Are We? An Introduction to Boston College and Its Jesuit and Catholic Tradition (two copies)
They give these things away like candy at BC.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer and Real Food by Garrett Oliver
I’m ambivalent about the whole concept of food-and-X pairing, which is what a hefty chunk of this book is about. But in the process of pointing out what beers go best with what foods, Oliver, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, walks the reader through a history of beer and all the various beer styles, as well as his own journey toward beer connoisseurdom. I loved reading this book, cover to cover. The prose is whimsical, the presentation is interesting, and the subject matter is treated with joy and reverence. If you only even kind of like beer, I would still recommend it!

The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie
This book actually isn’t even mine. Please remind me to give it back eventually. So you don’t have to look it up, it’s a combination biography/literary critique of four American Catholic writers: Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy.

Modernism: The Lure of Heresy by Peter Gay
I picked this book up on a whim after reading this back and forth with the author. It seemed interesting enough, but to be honest, I wanted to be seen as a guy that was reading art history books. I haven’t quite started yet. But I will, eventually. I think.

Criticism: Major Statements edited by Charles Kaplan and William Anderson
I guess there’s one thing you can tell from someone’s bookshelf. If this particular tome is on it, you’re dealing with an English major.

Guide to Beer by David Kenning and Robert Jackson
A recent gift from my little brother. I’ve become one of those people that’s really easy to buy gifts for. When in doubt, grab a beer book. I say, keep ‘em coming!

Reading Myself and Others by Philip Roth
One of the many books I bought for my thesis, Brick City Renaissance? The Decline of the City of Newark in the Novels of Philip Roth. And the only one I didn’t actually read!

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
Excellently delightful read about the writing of the aforementioned Oxford English Dictionary. This was a gift from my friend Michelle, if I recall.

On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt

Penguin Dictionary of Symbols
This was a Secret Santa gift from my boss’s boss, at the Christmas party a few months after I started my job. He said there’s two things every writer that’s worth a damn has, and they were in the package he got for me. In it were this dictionary of symbols, and a couple nips of bourbon. He’s a very smart guy.

Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition: Complete Course
I forget if it was right after I graduated high school, or while I was actually in college, but at some point I thought to myself “I want to start diagramming sentences again.” So I went back to my sophomore year English teacher, Mrs. Forgione, and asked if she had a spare grammar textbook that I could possibly have. She was more than happy to hand off this volume. It’s old (copyright like, 1951, I think), but I don’t think there’s been many innovations in the field of sentence diagramming in the past 60 years. Right?

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Junior year, I took a class called “Junior Honors Seminar.” It was designed to help junior English majors discern a thesis topic and simultaneously serve as an advanced survey of literary theory. The idea was, at the start of the semester, you would pick a text (a story, a book, a movie, a song), and you’d carry it with you throughout the term. Every week, we’d learn about a new critical theory, and every week, we had to apply that theory to an analysis of our chosen text.

It’s a good enough idea, and it certainly required me to perform some pretty wild critical gymnastics. Because, you know, I picked “A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” out of this book. It was a story I’d never even read, and I was responsible for analyzing it through a half dozen critical lenses that I didn’t even know. Who knows if the papers were any good, but I did learn something of the most vital importance: the center is a function, not a locus.

Underworld by Don DeLillo
This was on the bargain table at Brookline Booksmith. Look at how thick it is! Five bucks is a real value!

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Culture by Jacques Barzun
My Goodreads profile pic is me reading this book. You know, because it kinda makes me look like erudite. You’ll hear this a lot in these posts, but I promise I’ll get around to actually reading this book someday. For real! In the meantime, read this profile of Barzun.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
This is not a book I liked. People make fun of me for saying this, but it’s just too written. You know what I mean.

My roommate just closed the windows because it was too chilly in the living room. And then I sorta smelled that old, warm, familiar smell. The heat had turned on. Which means it’s that time of year, precious readers: the nights are getting cooler, and the first completely absurd subplot of the Gossip Girl season is starting to materialize. On with the diary!

:01 Oh fucking great. The C-Dub is doing that thing again, where the music soundtrack is way louder than the speaking soundtrack. So now I have the volume all jacked up just to get the faintest hint of dialogue. What gives!

Also, Serena, choosing between Dan and Nate is not like choosing between a napoleon and an éclair. You pick the éclair! And the éclair is Dan!

:03 My friend makes a good point. Chuck is writing the Empire checks himself? Can’t he hire like, a business manager? Isn’t that what bosses do?

“The life of Serena van der Woodsen is like the most complicated Jane Austen novel ever.” That’s the kind of talk that would tip off a non-idiot that this woman is up to something. Good thing for the plot that Nate is a moron.

:06 ZOMG! LOOK AT THE HAT LITTLE MILO IS WEARING! I JUST GOT DIABETES!

:08 Dan, w/r/t to Serena going to Columbia: “I’m just surprised she didn’t say anything to me about it.” Why does this surprise him? I know it would require different plots, but would it kill these characters to act like this isn’t still season 1, episode 1?

I feel like a broken record. Nate doesn’t even KNOW this “Juliet Sharp” woman, but he’s gonna let her drive a wedge between him and Dan? I hope the writers aren’t expecting us to think that “Juliet” is some master manipulator along the lines of Jack Bass or something. Look at who she’s dealing with!

:14 Serena: I went to the morgue today. Blair: What is that, a sex club? Pwned!

:16 Chuck’s blonde friend has been in something. Wait, wait, don’t tell me . . .

:17 Lily has a good point here. Dan has been over there in Brooklyn raising this child, while she and Rufus have been loafing about the UES. What a buncha peaches, eh?

:21 Hmm . . . Chuck’s, I mean Henry’s, friend has been in the Harry Potter movies? Shrug?

:26 I mean, it wouldn’t be HORRIBLE for Dan and V to get back together. But still! Not because of some scheme from some rando!

:28 Eew, did Dan and Vanessa do it with the baby in the next room? Is that what like, people with babies do?

:31 I know Blair leaving her Blackberry at the apartment, so she doesn’t have to deal with texts from Serena, is supposed to be a symbolic gesture, but of all the things that have happened in this episode, that was the thing that required the most tenacious suspension of belief. How can you not have your phone on you! My phone is only a room and a half away, and I’m kinda getting the willies with it being that far from me.

:34 Did you see this Accuvue commercial? With the girl who’s trying to work up the courage to ask out a cute boy? And the whole point of the commercial is that she has to get rid of her glasses in order to do it? This is an attitude that must be fought! Enough of this “boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses” garbage. Wear your glasses, ladies! Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun promises to make a pass at you

:37 Nate: “Oh man, my web of deception blew up in my face again. Well, lesson learned. I’ll never stab my friends in the back ever again!” What, he didn’t say that when Dan discovered the text from Serena he never saw because Nate was snooping around? My bad.

:43 This is the life, eh? Drinking some cold brew dogs on the roof while your stepmom takes care of your bastard child.

:45 Has Serena really been wearing this absurd sparkle jacket the entire episode?

:47 I haven’t really thought about it, but they would never take Chuck away from us, right? Like, this isn’t even an option?

:48 Chuck: Your world would be easier if I didn’t come back. B: That’s true. But it wouldn’t be my world without you in it. Hold on. I got a piece of dust in my eye. Both eyes.

:54 You know, watching Serena see all of these people, and the baby, show up in Rufus’s living room really drives home how absurd this series of plots has been.

:56 The closest thing Rufus has to medical training is Lincoln Hawk getting a song on Chicago Hope! The 90s!

:57 Ok, guys, who is “Juliet” working for? Georgina? Poppy Lifton? Jack?

Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun keeps its finger on the pulse of the left-leaning, literary-minded blogosphere so you don’t have to. The topic blowing up the tubes last month was a dustup that came to be known (”illogically,” as Slate’s Meghan O’Rourke put it) as “Franzenfreude.” This NPR piece explains it well enough, but here’s the Readers’ Digest version: critically acclaimed white male author gets near-universal adoration for latest novel, prolific though less critically acclaimed female authors call bullshit on the entire literary establishment for unspoken gender bias. Discuss.

As you can see from that Google search, the whole thing generated quite a bit of discussion and soul-searching. I mean, what if Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner are right? What if publishers, editors, and critics are just treating female writers, as a whole, less seriously than their male counterparts? Only the most paranoid conspiracy theorist would presume that there was some systematic conspiracy against female writers, but that only makes the problem more insidious. If there’s no boogeyman to vanquish, if there’s actually just something ingrained and unconscious at work, what are we, the reading public, to do about it?

Guest-writing at Ta-Nehisi Coates’s blog back in August, Chris Jackson, an editor at the publishing house Spiegel and Grau, wrote what I thought was a very honest and pragmatic piece about his reaction to being confronted with this unconscious prejudice. (And was treated to what I thought was a nit-picky and sort of unfair rebuttal from Alyss Dixson. I wanted to reach into the Internets, grab everyone, and say “Same team, guys! Same team!”)

Basically, the pragmatic endeavor that Jackson decided to try out was to balance his reading: for every piece of fiction he read written by a man, he would read a piece of fiction by a woman. Now, Jackson is an actual book editor, so he can have a proactive role in alleviating any injustices he sees in the publishing world. But for a regular, white, male reader hoping to stay on the straight and narrow path to enlightenment, consciously making the effort to read more female authors seems like a good idea (in addition to, you know, doing my best to treat folks equitably, being mindful of history, and putting myself in other people’s [especially women's] shoes). Once I finished Jackson’s piece, I thought of my own reading. And while I think I do better than a lot of guys when it comes to reading female authors (not looking for a pat on the back here, but two of my three favorite books ever were written by women, ahem), my ratio is certainly not 50-50. I knew that off the top of my head.

All of this thinking about the books I’ve read made me want to actually like, look closer at the books I’ve read. Since I’ve always been a shameless self-promoter, I decided to do it in the most evocative way possible and turn it into a blog-related activity. So in addition to making a concerted effort to alternate my male-written and female-written reading (I just picked up White Teeth by Zadie Smith), I’m going to take a look at my own literary history by examining the contents of my bookshelf.

I don’t necessarily believe that you can tell a lot about a person from their bookshelf. (Although I am guilty of often scanning the shelves wherever I go. It’s a reflex!) For example, here’s a caveat about my bookshelf: I moved back to Jersey briefly after college. When I moved back up to Boston, I decided that I would bring some books with me. Not my favorite books, though. Instead, I brought up all the books that I half-read or didn’t bother reading in college. The reasoning being, if those were the only books I had in my possession, I would actually get around to reading them. You can imagine how that worked out. I just wound up buying new books or taking books out of the library that I actually wanted to read. The result is four shelves of a melange of books that I ignored in college, or read cover-to-cover, or received as gifts, or scanned briefly, or picked up at used bookshops. You can’t learn a ton about someone based on his bookshelf, but I bet you can learn something. Let’s find out what.

In the coming days, I’ll post a photo of one of my bookshelves, along with an annotated listing of all the books on it. I’ll try to say as much as I can, even about the books I haven’t read. And here’s where you come in, precious reader. If you want to join the fun and go through your own bookshelves, trying to paint a self-portrait of a reader, I’ll post your photos and notes here on the blog. It should be a good time!

There’s a chill in the air. You leave work, and the sun is more or less down. Any day now, you’ll look out the window and see a skosh of orange on those green leaves. The summer, sad to say, is over, dearest reader. New Englanders are preparing to hunker down for another long, cold, lonely winter, unboxing their gloves and down coats. And yet, in a way, life is just blossoming back to, well, life. You know what I’m talking about. Gossip Girl is back. And consequently, the Gossip Girl running diary is back. Did you miss it? Actually, don’t answer. I already know what you’re going to say.

In the interest of helping you all out a little, I’m going to do my best to make the time stamps match up to where events happen in the show, instead of whatever time it is when I happen to write something down. And maybe I’ll try to add in a little more context so these things have a little more shelf life than the 18 hours after any given GG ep. We’ll see how that goes.

When last we left our protagonists, an exasperated and depressed Blair dragged her taller, prettier, more statuesque friend with her to Paris to suck up all the male attention; the hated Georgina Sparks showed up at Dan’s door, ostensibly with his love child in tow; and Chuck lay bleeding to death in a dark alley.

:00 zomgg
:02 Seriously, how does Gossip Girl have correspondents in Paris? Is Blair feeding her information?
:03 “The only guy that’s been in my pants is the tailor at [inaudible].” I missed you desperately, Blair. I’m also extremely disappointed that your first slam-dunk line of the season was ruined by the fact that the speaking soundtrack is being drowned out by the music soundtrack on my TV. And sorry, treasured readers, but there are two Monday Night Football games on, so I can’t go back to the DVR.
:04 Also, let’s talk about Serena’s tin foil cargo net dress. What is that thing?
:06 That package is a course catalogue? If Serena actually goes through with going to Brown, I’ll eat my hat.
:07 If Chuck is really not paying the mortgage on the Empire, and it’s really going to go into foreclosure, why wouldn’t Lily just use some of her billions to keep him afloat until he resurfaces?
:08 Oh, Serena got into Columbia. That envelope she got in the mail must have been filled with deus ex machina. Good thing I didn’t start marinating that hat . . .
:09 It’s like the Gossip Girl writers have set up quarters in my head. “Timmy loves Gossip Girl so much, but how can we make him love it more? How about a baby?” I’ll tell you, readers, I don’t even care that it’s Georgina’s spawn. I love that baby!

:14 If Nate had his bangs down, he would be completely able to pick up a girl in Norma’s after ditching some floozy right in front of her face. He’s like Samson, with a comb.
:17 This Paris shopping montage is some SERIOUSLY obnoxious product placement.
:18 serena: “Before I lose you to another shoe coma, there’s something I want to talk to you about.” That was pretty clever, S!
:19 Vanessa to Dan: “Do not mention her Georgina. Hahaha!
:20 V: “We’re talking about Georgina Sparks! Her hair lies!” Someone came back from the summer with a sassmouth!
:21 I’m clearly rusty after a whole summer of not watching GG. That driver/prince double-date switchola actually caught me off guard! B: “Oh, I’ve never sat up here before.”

:27 Eleanor, wrt Lily’s nametag reading “Bass”: “I was afraid no one would know who she is!” Eleanor Waldorf, stirring up class resentment!
:29 Ok, ok, ok, here we go: This driver-asking-Blair-out thing is like, some kind of prince and the pauper situation. Where the driver actually IS the prince, but he wants to test Blair to see if she’s unshallow enough to be interested in a lowly chauffer. Watch.
:32 I’m confused. Is Dan’s web of deception coming back to bite him in the ass? That’s never the case.

:37 Georgina to Lily: “I wasn’t expecting this introduction either.” Yes you were! You orchestrated it! Also, we’ve heard Georgina’s “I’ve changed, I’m not a pathological liar anymore” shtick a half a dozen times already. It’s one of Gossip Girl’s most enduring tropes!
:39 Let me get this straight. Blair wants to be on her own, outside of Serena’s shadow, but the year she actually spent out of Serena’s shadow was the worst year of her life?

:44 I’m calling bullshit. This baby plotline is beyond a reasonable suspension of belief. “The dates match,” Dan goes? Dan, this is Georgina Sparks! The closest thing that television has to the platonic archetype of pure evil! She comes waltzing in with a couple of phony documents, and you’re going to let a calendar persuade you? You’re lucky you’re pretty, Dan Humphrey.
:48 Welp, precious readers, your favorite blogger thought he lost a step. But he’s just as sharp as ever! The old prince-posing-as-a-lackey deception! I saw it a mile away!

:55 Juliet Sharp, eh? That’s a pretty good fictional name.
:56 This nutty bulletin board only serves as a bitter reminder that I put a whole season into Flash Forward, only to see it cruelly cancelled. Also, what ARE you up to, Juliet sharp, if that is your real name?

These are bleak times, precious readers. Every week brings news of another abridgment of what used to be ironclad, fundamental Constitutional rights. Tomorrow, if you walk around the block and pass ten people, at least two of them will be morons so dangerously stupid that they shouldn’t be allowed to cross the street without adult supervision. Collectively, we’re a bunch of ignorant, racist fools, all too willing to be demagogued to by craven, mendacious, hucksters. Meanwhile, our elected leaders, even the ones who promised to take action, feel the best response to the most profound threat to humanity’s long-term existence on this planet is political posturing and triangulation. Speaking of political posturing, the party taking best advantage of our collective dumbassery, which is poised to take control of at least one of the houses of Congress after this fall’s elections, is more concerned with revisiting a demonstrable failure of a political gambit in order to dismantle the most important piece of progressive legislation since Johnson’s Great Society than actually, you know, leading. If you were feeling even the most minuscule measure of hope that our most visible media watchdogs would illuminate all of this chicanery and treat it with the gravity it deserves, you should probably abandon it; they’re in thrall to the very establishment powers that we trust them to investigate and expose.

On the other hand, there’s this.

See that hed up there? That’s right, precious readers (and by precious readers, I mean the three of you that ever actually leave comments), your favorite blog needs your help!

As you’re all probably aware, the new season of Jersey Shore starts on Thursday. You all know I loved the first season, and I actually put some critical thought into it! In the interest of becoming a ‘relevant’ pop culture ‘commentator’ who gets ‘mad hits’ on his blog, I’d like to do a regular feature coinciding with each episode, sort of reminiscent of my way-popular Gossip Girl diaries, but with a more original gimmick.

This is where you all come in. Do you all have any ideas for a fresh take on a show that everyone and their grandmother will be yapping about on the Internet? Put your thoughts down there in the comments. If I pick your idea, you’ll be rewarded with a mention in the tags of each week’s Yet-to-Be-Determined-Jersey-Shore-Running-Feature.

If there were a zombie apocalypse, what would you do? What if you just happened to be a huge zombie movie fan, itching for the opportunity to prove your mettle under the most zombierific circumstances? My old Bayonne High School buddy, Sam Platizky, is the writer, producer, and star of Blaming George Romero, a feature length horror dramedy that will attempt to answer these questions and many more. I interviewed Sam during the first week of shooting.

Timmy: So give me the Readers’ Digest version of what Blaming George Romero is.

The official movie poster!

Sam: Story-wise, Blaming George Romero is a movie about four pop culture junkie friends who would prefer a zombie apocalypse to their present lives. So when it looks like there’s been a “zombacalypse,” if you will, they jump at the chance to do what it takes to survive, and on the way they learn that there’s more to living than just surviving

Timmy: We can talk a little more about the content and the zombie genre later, but I’m actually really interested in the process of film making. How are you getting this done?

Sam: I am getting this done because I must be one of the luckiest people on the planet. The camera, I bought, but everything else is coming from some fantastic people. Doug Youmans is our lighting guy, and he has a wealth of his own equipment that he is willing to share with us along with his knowledge and experience. Joey Mosca is our sound guy who came to us with his equipment (boom mic, recorder/mixer, lav mics, etc.) Without them, I would be lost, and the best thing is we all get along really well and we all share a passion for the project.

Timmy: Where did this idea come from?

Sam: Without getting too deep into the twists and turns of the movie, the idea came to me in two parts.

Timmy: No spoilers, please.

Sam: First, I love the zombie genre, but I was getting tired of movies where it seemed like the protagonist had no idea what a zombie even was. They would go through the movie with people dying and becoming zombies and it wouldn’t be until the end that they figured out what the deal was. To me, it seemed crazy. I mean, they must have at least heard of zombie movies, but no, people get bit and are turning into zombies in front of them and nothing. No recognition, no survival instinct. So i wanted to create a zombie movie where the protagonists knew what they were doing. Enter the pop culture junkies

Timmy: That’s funny. As a viewer, you can suspend your disbelief to accept the walking dead, but some chump that doesn’t realize he’s in the middle of a zombie infestation? It takes you right out of the narrative!

Sam: Yeah. I guess, on some level, I have just taken the whole notion of zombies for granted. It’s like, “Oh, ok, zombies. Let’s go,” and my characters express that same sentiment, to extremes at times.

The second reason I wrote it was, I had just written a massive WWII horror screenplay that I would never have the budget to shoot, and I wanted to write something reasonable.

Timmy: Wolfenstein 3D: The Motion Picture?

Sam: Haha. Not quite. Its called Langsomer Tod. I’d love to get back to it some day, but right now, it isn’t feasible.

Also, i should mention that I’d just found this website, Indiegogo, for crowd funding, and figured i could potentially use it to help fund the project. Once that was in the equation, the project came much closer to reality.

Timmy: Yeah, I was going to ask about that. I’m on Facebook, and I can’t scroll two inches without seeing the Blaming George Romero logo. How successful have you been in leveraging social media to get this project going?

Sam: Well, “successful” can have a lot of meanings. We haven’t reached our funding goal yet, but I’d say we have been very successful. The word is out there, and we’ve raised one-third of our goal amount. People seem to be interested,

Timmy: This is a good time to mention that i’ll definitely be linking to the Facebook and Indiegogo pages.

Sam: And i thank you for that, sir. We also have our website www.BlameRomero.com, currently being worked on by Brad Resnick and a mutual friend of ours, Jason Goldstein.

Timmy: What do you want to be the end result for this film? Will you be entering into festivals?

Sam: Yessir, that is the goal. Once we are out of post production, we’ll be entering film festivals and trying our luck there. From there it’s a matter of seeing what happens, you know? Whether people take to it, if someone wants to distribute it, or even if it just gets our names out there. In a lot of ways just finishing this project will have been a huge undertaking.

It’s funny, going back to the idea of social networking. We had people interested while we were in pre-production, but I think there may have been the notion in the backs of some peoples’ minds that this wouldn’t get done, but once the first production stills were out after the first day of filming, it was like people realized that this was happening.

Timmy: Sometimes all it takes is a slick-looking headshot.

Sam: Yep.

Timmy: Why a zombie movie? You said you love the genre, but is there anything else to it, in terms of telling the type of story you wanted to tell?

Sam: That is an interesting question. I think its part of the zeitgeist right now. There’ve always been movies, but now there are books like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z. I actually heard a high school had Pride & Prejudice & Zombies on their curriculum! I think it’s definitely something that’s very prevalent right now.

As for why, beyond the fact that its entertaining, I think there is an aspect of zombies that is terrifying, more so than most movie monsters.

Timmy: We could all be zombies, if it came down to it.

Sam: Yeah, and to an extent, we are. Not to get too philosophical, but beyond the basic zombies craving flesh, they’re like a dark mirror to us.

Timmy: Get as philosophical as you want, pal.

Sam: They wander aimlessly, all they do is consume, they aren’t really alive, and I think to some extent, there is a part of that in many people. We shamble through our day to day and never really live. I think that’s pretty scary.

Timmy: Movie zombies, especially in George Romero flicks, are notorious for representing some sort of dark aspect of our own nature.

Sam: Yeah, Romero was great with that. He wanted to tell a story about racism, or society, and he did it with zombies. So much subtext. It’s like a spoonful of sugar: you get the message, but here, have some zombies to go with it. Which is one of the reasons i loved P & P & Z. It’s a classic piece of literature, not changed at all, except there are zombies in it. What a way to get people interested in reading classics.

Timmy: I actually didn’t mind the regular Pride and Prejudice. But I’m an English major. It’s my job to not mind it.

Sam: Haha. I hear you, but for those people who mind it just because they’re intimidated by the year it was written, it’s ingenious.

Timmy: My understanding is that there aren’t any zombies in the movie at all?

Sam: I will say this, without spoiling too much, there are zombies in the movie in one form or the other. However, a good deal of the conflict is trying to figure out whether or not there is in fact a zombacalypse going on.

Timmy: And you’re calling it a dramedy? Or am i making that up?

Sam: Ha, no, you aren’t making it up. I hate labels, sometimes, especially for this movie, but there are aspects of drama and comedy in it. For that matter there are some horror aspects as well. But yeah, dramedy, because some parts I think are downright hilarious, while others are really deep, and (I hope) will make people think.

Timmy: A lot of zombie movies are like that.

Sam: Yeah, I think they are unique in that respect. It’s another reason to utilize the zombie.

Timmy: Tell me about the cast. I know these folks, but my readers don’t.

Sam: They are a great bunch of people. The four leads are myself, Robert Lise, Loarina Gonzalez, and Dan Gregory. I have worked with Bobby for about 11 years now. He’s one of my closest and most trusted acting friends. Within the last two years, he actually started gravitating towards directing, so while i wrote the part of “Bobby” for him, when it came time to find a director, Bobby became that as well.

Loarina is his girlfriend, who we both met acting in college. She is really terrific. Very subtle in her delivery, but very powerful too. And Dan only recently started acting, although I’ve known him since high school. After working with him on a film last year, I wanted to write him a role in this movie.

The rest of the cast is rounded out by my brother, Isaac, who is an amazing actor; some of my former teachers from college, Anderson Johnson and Adria Firestone; and some other wonderful actors I have had the pleasure of working with before: Chris Lucas, Christina Garced, Ramy Shedid, John Trigonis, Eva Visco, and a few more. I just filmed a scene with Christina yesterday, and watched it tonight. Every take was hilarious. I love working with these people, and I love watching the results.

Timmy: I’m a writer, and I’m constantly entrusting my stuff to editors who are responsible for the finished product. How much easier does it make your job when your director is a trusted friend

Sam: It’s very relaxing. I can take a step back and just trust him, you know? And at the same time, if we disagree, we can go from screaming at each other over the smallest thing to actually getting a better product because of the argument. And no hard feelings, because we’ve just been doing this for so long.

Timmy: It’s a beautiful thing.

Sam: It really is.

Timmy: Day of the Dead is my favorite of George Romero’s movies. Explain to me why I’m not crazy.

Sam: Haha. I cannot do that. Night of the Living Dead is my favorite. Followed closely by Dawn. Day is good, but it always struck me as the black sheep of the Dead family. I think the setting being so drastic is what does it for me. Why is it your favorite?

Timmy: That drastic-ness, I think, is the key. It explores a logical extreme of what would happen if the zombies inherited the earth. It’s more a big picture movie than Night or Dawn.

Sam: Hmmm. I see where you’re at with that. I just don’t agree. However, if you want logical extremes and big pictures, I can’t recommend Max Brooks’s World War Z enough.

Timmy: What’s that about?

Sam: It is about a guy interviewing survivors in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, and their stories from all over the world and all different people at various stages of the apocalypse. It’s so well thought out.

Timmy: I’m putting it on the list. You’re in the middle of filming. How is it going?

Sam: We are two days in. It’s going really well. We all work well together. The first two days were fairly simple shoots, though. We have some more difficult ones up ahead.

Timmy: Where are you shooting?

Sam: Bayonne, NJ mostly, but also Blairstown, Stewartsville, Weehawken, Jersey City. All in NJ.

On the set.

Timmy: Blairstown. Home of Camp Crystal Lake, no?

Sam: You are absolutely correct! I went there with some friends a year ago, and we found this great area. We’re going to use it next week.

Timmy: If I was going to film a horror movie, it’s one of the first places I’d think of.

It might be time to wrap up. I’m giving you free rein for plugs, promotions, boastful claims, acknowledgments, whatever you want.

Sam: I have to say I couldn’t do this without a terrific cast and crew, our amazing supporters who have donated to www.indiegogo.com/Blame_Romero, and even our fans on Facebook and Twitter who help spread the word. They are the best of the best. I hope people stay with us throughout the production because it’s going to be one hell of a ride. And I want to thank you, for the opportunity to spread the word to more people.

Timmy: We Bayonnaise have to stick together.

Sam: Hell yeah we do!

Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun knows which side its bread is buttered on. You’re not here for the trenchant political commentary. You’re not here for the feeble displays of passive aggression. You’re here for Gossip Girl.

Regular readers of DD&U know that Gossip Girl is my favorite show on TV right now. It’s not even a contest. It’s the reason I’m able to make it through my weeks in the fall and winter. And considering how fortuitous the circumstances that led to me watching the show were, I thank my lucky stars that I have Gossip Girl in my life in the first place.

See, I knew that Gossip Girl was coming. I knew that it was from the creator of the OC. I knew there was an OC-shaped hole in my heart, but I had no idea if Gossip Girl would be able to fill it. I didn’t really have feelings about the show one way or the other.

My friend Meg and I were already fans of America’s Next Top Model, which was on Wednesdays on the CW. Even though I was committed to the show, I was sort of put off by Cycle 8, which saw Jaslene, who I thought looked like a garment bag filled with bones, win the contest. But like I said, I was committed, and when I commit to a show, I commit. I watched Cavemen, people. Every episode.

Cycle 9 premiered on September 19, 2007. I should have known the night was going my way, because I was introduced to my precious love, Heather, the prettiest girl to ever appear on ANTM, whose eventual ouster from that show led me to initiate a lifelong boycott. Because it might be true that when I watch a show, I commit to that show. But don’t ever cross me, or else I’ll move on to a show that rewards my loyalty more.

So that season premiere of ANTM ends, and we start seeing promos for this new show, Gossip Girl. I was at Meg’s place, and we were both a half a bottle of Chuck deep at that point, as was our weekly tradition. We decided, what the hell, let’s check this out.

The rest is history.

I wasn’t the only one watching Gossip Girl. The show immediately captivated Jessica Pressler and Chris Rovzar, writers for New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer blog. Pressler and Rovzar are famous for their weekly Gossip Girl reality index, but I’d like to direct your attention to a New York mag cover story they wrote called “The Genius of Gossip Girl.” Read it, and you’ll begin to understand why I love this show so damn much. (I also stole the “Greatest Show of Our Time” moniker from them. It’s an homage!)

I’m a regular reader of the Daily Intel GG reality indices, in which the authors go through every episode, adding and subtracting points from based on how authentically “New York” it is. A clever gimmick! I wish I had the cleverness or the capability to go through with something like that myself. But alas, I had to steal a bit from Bill Simmons (who stole it from, I dunno, Norm Chad?), and do the whole running diary thing. I think this is the first one, although I forget if I did one on the old .mac site. Irregardless, it’s become one of my favorite parts of DD&U. Forces me to watch the show more critically, come up with the wittiest (one-way) repartee I can. I’ll be honest with you, precious readers: the diaries aren’t a service to you. They’re a service to Gossip Girl watchers. If my dear readers and Gossip Girl watchers are one and the same, then great! If not, they should be! Just start watching, and you can stop skipping the weekly diaries.

For those of you interested in a little inside baseball w/r/t your favorite blog, Gossip Girl is responsible for the most random hits to Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun. Since July 15, 2009, when I started tracking statistics using Google Analytics, a search for “omgbse”, or some iteration thereof, has been responsible for at least 186 unique visits to dangerousdirtyunfun.com. (I’m not counting the sundry versions of a search for “dangerous dirty unfun,” because those are, obviously, obvious.) “Omgbse,” of course, is something one of Blair’s minions uttered in a Season 3 episode, which is translated “Oh my god, best sleepover ever.” (You’ll also recall the clarifying update post I wrote.) Thing is, it’s the middle of June, and the top search term sending people to Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun is STILL “omgbse.” So either there are a ton of people still watching old Gossip Girl eps and wondering what the hell is going on, or there are a ton of vegans who are just shocked at the idea of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Either way, if you’re shopping for your favorite blogger, this wouldn’t be a bad choice.

Welp, treasured readers, this is it. The last Gossip Girl running diary of the season. All of our lives are about to lose just a little bit of substance. I hope all of you have planned ahead accordingly. Personally, I’m hoping a combination of beer, cornhole, and comic books holds me over until Providence hands down a fresh season of GG. As usual, disregard the timestamps.

10:10 Remember how all the action happened last week? What’s supposed to happen in this ep? Also, remember when Serena decided not to go to college? And had that affair with Trip? Also, what a badass Eric has turned into.

10:11 Thanks for “listening” to me last night, Jenny says. Is that what they call it these days?

10:13 Do maids actually wear maid outfits like Dorota does?

“I defriend Meester Chuck on facebook and in life.” What am I gonna do all summer without Dorota. She’s a shining beacon

10:15 Is it too much to ask for a Superman v. Doomsday–esque last stand between Jenny and Georgina? I know. It is too much to ask.

So what we’re witnessing here is Jenny screwing her brother’s relationship with her own friend strictly to get vengeance against her half-sister. Is she not history’s greatest monster? She makes the mad Titan Thanos look like Moon Boy. Miles, I hope you’re reading.

10:19 Is that my Lincoln Hawk t-shirt Serena was wearing, Rufus asks. Shouldn’t Rufus have like, a thousand such t-shirts? Like how Homer had all that Be-Sharps memorabilia.

10:21 This is so typical, Nate keeping a straight face and being pissed at Serena for falling asleep talking to an old flame. Guys do this, ladies!

10:25 Hey, remember Rufus’s ex wife? Also, I’m swearing to you right now, precious readers, that whatever reformation Jenny undergoes, when she comes back on the show, this blog will still shun her. Don’t ever cross DD&U. Let that be a lesson.

What the HELL is Serena wearing to Dorota’s baby’s birth?

10:27 Dan DOES know that Nate is right. He loves Serena! Theirs is a love that transcends reality.

10:30 Remember when Chuck tried to date rape Jenny in season 1? Let’s see how this plays out.

“I don’t play video games, so if you want to hang out with me, you do what I do,” Chuck says. My new number 2 ambition in life is to be able to credibly use a line like that. Not in like, a creepy Chuck Bass way. Just, you know, credibly.

“The hard way is the only way,” Chuck goes. He’s the closest thing we’ve got to Plato, guys.

The ORODD&U echoes my own thoughts w/r/t Blair: just take a picture with the peonies, send it to Chuck, and explain that you were sidetracked by effing Dorota giving birth. His little Empire State Building stunt is just that, a stunt. It’s not a contract signed in Christ’s own blood.

10:33 Dan, calling out Serena’s daddy issues. Very astute!

Seriously, I would like Serena’s outfit to be addressed by someone at some point.

Ignorance is bliss. “Is that why it was so easy with us,” Serena asks. No, S. it’s because you and Dan were made for each other. Someone listen to me!

10:39 Yes, J. Everyone hates you. Your tears are futile against me. And I’m not swayed by the fact that you probably put more makeup on only to cry it off.

“It’s not breaking up, it’s taking a break,” S goes. Girls say things like this! Don’t deny it!

10:42 So what did Jenny tell Dan to compel him to slug Chuck? Because can Dan really get THAT pissed if he found out that Chuck and his sister just had consensual sex? We all agree that there’s some sort of deception here, right? (Also, the ORODD&U and the GFOTORODD&U were both convinced that j had stolen the engagement ring. Great theory!) Also, one thing that prevents Dan from ascending into the Seth Cohen Echelon of beloved TV characters, is that he’s forced to do things like stick up for Jenny. It’s not his fault, but it is a tragic flaw.

10:44 “Hey, who’s hungry,” Rufus goes as he walks in on the climactic scene of the season. Remind me to tell you guys about the Christmas tree story.

10:46 “I really am going to change,” S goes. What an idiot.

10:49 I’m actually really pleased with the fact that Nate and Lonely Boy are pals. They have like, a real dudes’ relationship.

Dan! Booking the flight to Paris! What a baller move!

10:50 This is most definitely not Dan’s kid. Don’t get sucked in, people!

10:52 Umm . . . what?