always be prepared, gary busey

Gary Busey is on this show about famous people rehab and the helper lady was helping him go through his stuff as soon as he checked in and she opened the suitcase and it was filled with yellow highlighters and loose change. No clothes and no toiletries, just loose change and yellow highlighters.

Evans, Scott and I had never ever seen anything better than this in our whole lives so Evans took a picture of it on his eye-fone. Yay Evans!

I thought it was funny, Mikey Day.

Moma & Dad this has a cuss word in it, so watch out

Today at work, I had to give a tour to 15 marketing executives from Burger King who were visiting the studio because they were interested in getting their products in our movies. One of the things we have to tell our tour groups is not to bother the "talent" (aka: famous people) when we are out and about. Usually that is not a problem because we either (A) never see anybody or (B) don't see anybody that the tour group recognizes. But today, as we were driving past stage 19, where the new NBC show Kath & Kim is filmed, we got to see three of the four main stars outside their trailers. Selma Blair and Molly Shannon were nice enough to wave, smile and say hello (which is pretty unusual in talent vs. tours situations), but as soon as we got about 20 feet away from Mikey Day (Craig on the show, and was also in Totally Awesome and Wild 'n' Out) we heard him scream something at us. I stopped the cart and all my guests turned around just in time to hear Mr. Day yell at us "...You should all suck my dick!!!" Now all 16 of us might have misheard him, or not heard the first part of what he said, or heard it shouted at us out of context, but one thing I sure learned is Burger King execs do NOT like to be told to do anything to any one's genitals, no matter how famous/not at all famous they are. So let that be a lesson to you all. As Mr. Day and I learned, you can't always "have it your way."

Move over L Ron

PATENT PENDING PATENT PENDING

Don't steal this really good idea, it is patented and copyrighted and is the sole property of Dooley, Inc..

Okay, Melinda, here is the basis for our new religion/your first L Ron Hubbard-ish manifesto: time travel.

Hear me out on this because I have just an incredibly great idea. But you have to flesh this out and make it come out coherently. So the Genesis takes place in the distant FUTURE (the year should remain unsaid) and humans have just discovered that there is no God and that the world was created as a fluke of science. We also have the capability of time travel and have been going backwards and forwards in time for leisure and research for a while now. Eventually someone tries to go to far ahead into the future and they realize that there just isn't a future so everyone freaks out. So the scientists get cracking on what is going on and how the world ends and yada yada only to discover that time is a loop and eventually everything resets itself and starts over. And here is the good part, they realize that Adam and Eve were not created by God, but are actually a couple sent from the future to restart humanity. Adam and Eve were selected as the two most perfect beings on Earth to go back in time and start everything up again and their children marry/procreate with various pre-selected time travelers and that's how we get the rest of the Christian, Islamic, Buddist, Jewish, Hindu and every other big religion's characters. So really what I am trying to go for here is a retelling of the bible and other religious texts, but with time traveling inserted into places where appropriate. So Hanukkah could be that instead of the oil miraculously lasting for 8 days, people from the future come back and refill the menorah when no one is looking and Noah could have been helped by technology from the future to load up and build his ark, Joseph Smith found the tablets for the Church of Latter Day Saints because they were placed there by someone from the future, Ganesh was genetically created in the future to have a human body and elephant head etc.. etc. But as I said before, eventually there is an end to Time. And that is when the scientists of the future are unable to send back anymore time traveling biblicans (probably not really a word...) and as the time travelers grow and procreate in our technology free shared past, they eventually forget how one even builds a time machine and humans are doomed to just repeat the past as we already know it. So this is how we turn the idea from story into religion: in the year 2008 two sisters (us) are stopped by someone claiming he is a scientist from the future and he explains everything to us (and ONLY us- that's how we get to be the leaders (Joseph Smith style)) and we write it down. With most religions, the focus is to do as __(insert deity here)____ says and lead a pious life and end up somewhere good as a reward for said piety. Instead, our religion will focus on the importance of science and how everyone should strive to discover the methods and means of time travel as our duty to keeping humanity going. See, that way we make scientists (you and your nerd-alert MIT compadres) the heroes and smart people become revered and admired instead of being thought of as elitist and untrustworthy (as this election is revealing). And we get to be crazyheads who insult everyone else's religious beliefs. We can still throw in something about being good to your neighbors and what not, but I think the thesis should remain time travel. Notes: Back to the Future 1,2 and 3 should be revered as reliogous texts, everyone should have a DeLorean, Doc Brown should be a saint, gay rights should be thrown in there and whatever else we want. Also, I realize that there are continuity errors littered throughout this, so that is your job, Miss. Melinda Science Pants, to write it out and fix it up in a pretty and understandable way. Ready...Go!

What happens in Vegas...

We went to Las Vegas this weekend to meet up with six of Evans' MIT buddies. The six all wanted to go see Ka (some Cirque Du Soleil show) on Saturday night, but Evans and I don't have that kind of money so we declined. On Sunday morning we all met up again for brunch and they told us that after the show, they had all wandered out on to the Strip. Right outside a casino (Planet Hollywood) , they saw broken glass all over the ground, 4 people in handcuffs and a man on the ground in a pool of blood with blood coming out of his mouth and torso. They also said that the sidewalk was so crowded that people were running through the crime scene and slipping on the blood. At brunch, we kind of dismissed it as a horrible fight that the kids saw the tail end of, but today we read that the man died. I think that our friends are more shaken up than they are letting on, I know I would be pretty shaken up. The news article says that a girl stabbed a street worker (which could mean anything from custodian to prostitute flyer hander-outer) after a fight got nasty on the sidewalk. I know that what our friends saw will probably haunt them for a while, they were witness to a man dying a violent death and a young woman throwing her life away. When visiting Las Vegas, it's okay to slip into some of the seven deadly sins (gluttony, avarice, sloth, envy, lust, and a little pride never hurt anybody), but I thought everyone knew to stay away from the big sin, i.e; wrath. Please keep all the witnesses and especially the victim/victim's family in your thoughts.

Giraffe!

I made this giraffe out of colored paper and tape and shellacked it with mod-podge and wanted to show it off, please give me compliments.

What someone should have told me before I moved here

I have been talking back and forth with my friend Kristen up in NYC and we both agree on one thing: Austin, Texas is WAY better than whatever crap this is that we are doing on the two coasts. We both moved to our respective coasts because we wanted to be with our friends and boyfriends after college, but to what avail? The main thing I know is that I want to end up in Austin in the end, but I want to come back a success. I know that once I move back to Austin, that will be IT, nothing will be able to make me move away again (unless I buy an extra house in Sydney) so I have to make my time away from Home count. I want something to show for my time in the trenches and it turns out that it is a lot harder to be successful than I would prefer. I can't get anywhere here! The page program is about to run it's course for me (we only get a year) and I don't have any idea what to do next. I have an email that my friend Rachel sent me with 78 different up and coming productions and I am slowly working my way down said list but I haven't heard anything from anyone! It is impossible to get a job out here unless you know someone and I wish I had been warned about how difficult LA is before I moved here. And that is why I have put together a list of things I wish someone had told me before I moved here:

- Everyone here has a car and drives EVERYWHERE.

- There is absolutely NO dependable public transportation out here. Especially when compared to the East Coast. There is officially a bus/subway/train system here, but it takes WAY too long to ever be a viable option for getting to and from anywhere and the schedule online is ALWAYS wrong when compared to real life, so you can not trust it. Sometimes it stops running as early as 11pm on a weekend night and there are never any timetables listed anywhere so it is extremely easy to get stranded. Also, there are very few taxis any where so you can't trust that either.

-It takes a really fucking long time to get anywhere here. Realtors, craigslist and people who have lived here for a long time will tell you that it takes "twenty minutes to get anywhere" from wherever they are but it is always a LIE. So if you are considering living far from work or school and commuting, you should really think about how much your time is worth to you versus having a more expensive rent. Example: I live in Pasadena and work in Hollywood (17miles apart) and it takes me at the very least one hour to drive to/from work on weekdays (with the terrible terrible traffic here, at night it only takes me 22 minutes ) but the few times i have taken the Metro, it has taken me minimum three hours each way.

- The weather is nice here almost all the time, but compared to Austin, the nights get pretty cold (nothing compared to NYC, tho) so don't give away all of your jackets and sweat shirts if you move here.

- There are a lot of forest fires here so don't live too close to the mountains because that shit is forever on fire and that is scary.

- All the bars and clubs here are strictly for those who want to see and be seen. the cheapest drink you can find in most bars is minimum $11.00. No one here is nice to strangers and girls are especially mean to other girls (but that might just be something that all people outside of Austin do) so that is not fun. Politeness and courtesy are of no value here.

-And most importantly, your college degree and previous work experience mean absolutely NOTHING to any employers here in LA, but especially Hollywood. The only way anybody ever gets a job here, outside of academia, is through a friend or knowing someone. The most worthless & expensive thing one could have out here is a college education.

If you have anything to add to this list, please post it as a comment. Moral of the story: LA = bad, Austin = good.

Booger

This week, I am working at the Burbank satellite location of the movie studio I work for as a space filler. The usual receptionist is making her acting dreams come true and I am here to sit in her seat and answer her phone, all three times it rings per day. Bore. Boring. Bored. But yesterday, with just an hour left to go, the most interesting person I have ever talked to EVER, in the history of Suz called my desk. She called claiming one of the executives at my work was interested in making a movie about her life. Thinking this was just one of the million billion crazies who call the studio everyday, I asked her who I could transfer her to and she said a legitimate person's name (thus making her seem a tiny bit more legit herself). But before I transferred her, she wanted to tell me her story first. It took her close to 45 minutes to tell me everything, and with some simultaneous Google researching, I was able to piece together the craziest hot mess I have ever heard. the following is proof that fact is way stranger than fiction:

Her name was Bernann and she had made world headlines in August 2008 as the first person ever to have her deceased pet cloned commercially.

Booger was a pit bull-mutt that Bernann found on the road one day. She did not want to take him to the pound because, as she says, nobody wants a dangerous dog. Booger was a good dog and a welcome distraction from her normal life, if one could call it that. At that time in Bernann's life, she was constantly being hounded and followed by the Paparazzi for some much alluded to, but never divuldged, past sexual indiscretion (which I will get into in a bit). Poor Bernann had to get a larger, meaner dog, a Bull Mastiff, to scare away the mean old Paparazzi. One day, after the Bull Mastiff had been playing too close to a bee hive and had been stung multiple times, so Bernann carefully applied anti-bee sting ointment to the mastiff. The mastiff had a slight allergy to the medication and responded by shredding open both of Bernann's legs from ankle to thigh, tearing off her left arm at the elbow and ripping open her torso and removing her stomach and large intestine from her body. Needless to say, Bernann was not too happy about this. She screamed for Booger to do something and within minutes, a neighbor came and removed the hungry mastiff and Booger became her saviour.

After the attack, Bernann fell in to a deep depression and the only one who could help her was Booger the pit bull mutt. He did everything for her from changing the channel on the TV, stopping suicide attempts, singing to her and even did her laundry (again, this is her part of the story). She regained her strength and soon after, Booger got cancer. He died soon after that and the only reason Bernann did not end her life was because God spoke to her and said "Booger is a butterfly." And of course, this was God telling her to clone Booger. After a failed attempt at getting her dog cloned in Utah, Bernann found hope in the Koreans. Some scientists in Seoul Korea were starting a business where for the low price of $75,000, you could have your beloved pet cloned and luckily for Bernann, in exchange for a agreeing to a publicity campaign, the Koreans agreed to clone Booger for only $50,000. Luckily again, Bernann had had the forethought to save Booger's ear, just in case an opportunity like this arose. When the Koreans came to get the precious ear, they came in style. They arrived in a black limo with a SWAT team and their own personal security service and swept her away to LAX where she was met with a private jet and hordes of adoring fans and members of the evil Paparazzi. As she watched the Koreans take the ear aboard the jet, she saw that the jet and the Koreans themselves start to glow. They glowed (glew?) so brightly that everyone was blinded and god spoke to the people of LAX. Surprisingly, or not surprising at all if you live in Hollywood, God sounded exactly like Morgan Freeman. He told the masses that "I have taken Booger away from you, but I shall soon return him to you, with a little something extra."

Three months passed and one day the Koreans called Bernann at home. They had a surprise for her and soon after that, the world was blessed with five, count 'em, five baby Boogers. The world fell in love with the Booger clones and a media frenzy surrounded the joyful Bernann and her quint of bouncing baby Boogers.

According to Bernann, that is the end of the story. And I have been promised a ride in the limo and the chance to hold Booger Number 4 at the premiere of this movie. The story above, and that story alone, is what she would like to make a movie of. But, oh, dear reader, there is so much more. How does one get to the point where one makes the decision to clone your dog for $50,000? Easy. You must follow a strict regimen of living life completely outside the realm of rationality and never NEVER doing anything the easy way.

Bernann, born Joyce McKinney, was born in a small town in North Carolina. She moved around quite a bit and eventually wound up in Wyoming where she was crowned Miss Wyoming and represented her state in the Miss America pageant. Soon after, she enrolled in Bringham Young where she fell in love with a devout Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson. They had an brief sexual affair in 1977 and an ashamed Anderson was advised to move far away and sever all ties with McKinney. He moved to England and was leading a pious life when one day a knock came on the door. McKinney had followed Anderson to England and had brought along a male friend. The friend tried to knock Anderson out with chloroform, and when that didn't work, he forced Anderson at gun point into a car. The three drove 200 miles away to a remote cottage that McKinney and the friend had rented. Anderson was handcuffed to the bed and for the next three days, McKinney begged Anderson to marry her. She raped him at least three times and when Anderson finally agreed to marry her, she loosened the handcuffs and Anderson was able to flee. He found a police station and McKinney was arrested soon there after. After a joke of a trial, in which the judge and lawyers basically ridiculed and scoffed at Anderson's testimony (saying "Methinks the Mormon doth protest too much..."), McKinney was locked away for only three months (much less than a man would get for kidnapping and raping a woman, by the way). She then ran way to Canada where she pretended to be a deaf-mute mime for about a year. Alas, the ever persistent press corps eventually found her and she escaped again. This time she disguised herself as a nun and took up residence in a hotel in Atlanta, GA. And then she stopped pretending to be a nun and started posing topless for various magazines. And THEN in 1984, the Salt Lake City police found her in the parking lot of Kirk Anderson's workplace with rope and handcuffs in the car. And then she got sick and no one heard anything about her until now... (If you want to read the details, click here)

And THAT is who pays $50,000 for the cloning of a dog. That is how one gets from point A to point B. And that is who I am now best friends with. A convicted kidnapper/rapist amputee former Miss Wyoming who sometimes pretends to be a deaf mime or a nun and is in leauge with the Korean Cloners. That is the type of person who calls Suz.

Oh, and are you wondering what happened to Boogers 1,2,3,4, and 5? Bernann told me she was unable to pay the $50,000 (wha??? shocked!) to the Koreans and all of the history making clones are sitting in a shelter in Palm Beach, CA waiting to be paid for. What a waste of a perfectly good litter of dog clones.