Top Ten Last Minute Costume Ideas

Happy Halloween everybody. I’m sure your thinking, “what the hell am I going to do? I have to go out tonight but I have no Halloween costume. I’m going to look like the only one who forgot about the holiday!” But don’t fret my pet, good ol’ Wrong is here to show you a top ten list of costumes you can put together from items in your own home.

10- Tin Foil Guy- First, grab that box of tin foil. Second, wrap your entire body with tin foil. Third, cut out holes for your eyes and mouth, be sure to not cut your eye ball out (although that might make a great costume also…) When some asks you if you’re supposed to be a robot, tell ‘em, “Hell no, I’m the Tin Foil guy!”

9- Crazy Pickle Mustache- I don’t know if you ever saw the old Saturday Night Live skit where Adam Sandler goes trick or treating with a bunch of costumes he made on the fly but he has one where he holds a pickle under his nose and says, “I’m crazy pickle mustache, gimme some candy…” You could go as that guy, just get a pickle. Easy and it’s a reference to the 90’s. Rad.

8- Sports player- Do you own a sports jersey? Put it on and say you are a sports player (which ever jersey you are wearing, you’re that guy). That’s what I did for work today, easy costume and comfortable. Bonus points if you have a Michael Vick jersey and a dead dog to drag with you.

7- Grunge Rocker- Take out that flannel shirt, those ripped jeans, put on some girl sunglasses, grow out your hair and don’t wash it, shoot up some smack and BOOM, you’re Kurt Cobain.

6- Hip Hop MC- Take out a baseball cap, tilt it to the side, put on your biggest baggiest clothes, grab your Air Force Ones, tuck your gun in your waist, smoke some pot, BOOM, you’re every wack ass MC out there.

5- 30’s Gangster- Put on your pin stripe suit, break out a big cigar, wear a fedora and everytime you speak, talk like James Cagney or Dave Chappell from his stand up comedy routine where he ends every sentence with “seeeee”. “You’ll never take me alive copper see. Let’s go dance the Charleston see.”

4- Cardboard box- This one is easy. Take a large cardboard box, cut holes for your head, arms and legs, climb into it. This one is a bitch to get in and out of the car and doorways, but you’ve got a costume now, stop your bitching.

3- Tighty whitey guy- Put on your ugliest underwear. That’s all. Now walk into the party proud to show your shit off.

2- Fat Guy- Put on your biggest clothes (see hip hop MC) and then stuff them with every single piece of clothing that will fit in there. Instant fat guy! Unless you are already fat, which makes you super fat guy, without super powers I suppose. Unless you count being able to break someone’s bones by sitting on them a super power.

1- Your roommate, friend, wife, partner or someone you know- Borrow all of the clothing items of someone you know. It help if that person has a distinct style that is easily identifiable. It helps also if you set this up with the person that you borrow them from so that they can dress up like you. When someone asks you who you are supposed to be, you point to the other person.

Hopefully this helps you get out to your party in style. Happy Halloween nerds.

Suns Preview

I got punched in the stomach last summer. A couple times. It hurt harder than any other punches I’d taken before, like the Hulk and Superman both nailed me in the gut at the same time.

No, I wasn’t in a fight, not in the literal way. I was punched in the stomach by the NBA.

My Phoenix Suns were cheated…no no cheated isn’t a strong enough word. They were fucked out of the chance at a title by a series of unfortunate events, and Limney Snickets wasn’t involved.

If you don’t know what I am referring to, hate the NBA or don’t give a crap, here’s a recap- the Suns played the eventual NBA champion San Antonio Spurs in the second round of the NBA playoffs and lost 4 games to 2 in a best of 7 series. Again, lose is probably the wrong word, they were fucked 4 games to 2 by bad ref-ing, dirty play and down right cheating.

In the first game Bruce Bowen cheap-shot-kicked Amare Stoudemire in the Achilles, which pissed me off so much I threw a remote at my TV. Steve Nash, the best point guard to grace the game since Magic Johnson, was head butted by Tony Parker and was forced out of the end of that game, causing the Suns to lose the home opener.

In the second game, Bowen kneed Nash in the nuts. This is nothing new for Bowen, just a fucking lifeless, gutless play by the worst excuse for a football player wearing a basketball player’s uniform.

In game four, Robert Horry threw Nash into the scorer’s table by the Suns bench for no fucking reason besides to piss off the Suns and try to get some to come off the bench. Well, of course Amare and Boris Diaw jumped up and tried to protect their leader.

The result, Amare and Diaw were suspended for game five, in which the Suns put in a nice performance but still lost. Thanks NBA for the dumbest rule of all time! If Amare and Boris were suspended for a game for standing up, then Horry should be thrown out of the league for being a pussy basket.

After the Suns lost the series in game 6, I was permanently sick to my stomach. It only got worse when the NBA was hit with the Tim Donaghy gambling scandal. The same Tim Donaghy who ref-ed game three, where the Suns were given bad call after bad call and eventually lost by 7 points, the Spurs covered the four point spread. Coincidence?

I could go into the hundred of terrible calls from this game and the entire series and how the Suns were screwed but that would make this article 55 pages long.

Needless to say, I was pissed off all summer about this. Imagine how the Suns felt…

That’s why I am picking the Suns to win the championship this year. They might not have the biggest, baddest team but damn it, they are pissed off.

On paper, the Suns don’t look like they are a much better team than last year. They added Grant Hill and subtracted their only competent low post defender Kurt Thomas. Not the grandest trade off, Hill should help the team when Steve Nash has to hit the bench for a breather, he is a former superstar who knows how to play with his teammates well. No Kurt Thomas facing off against the Spurs and Tim Duncan in the post should make things even harder this year. Well, harder if they didn’t have a really super pissed off team.

The rest of the team is pretty much the same except for two rookies who probably won’t see the light of day from the end of the bench. But there are some hold-over players that are expected to make more on an impact than last year.

First, Boris Diaw, one year removed from the most improved player of the year award, should make some strides to becoming the player he once was (or better). With Amare coming back into the lineup last year after being hurt the season before, Diaw retreated and played hesitant and didn’t try very hard. All reports from training camp is that Diaw is in great shape (which he wasn’t last year after spending training camp eating nothing but French pastries) and playing aggressively, which has always been his weakest suit. If he tries harder, he can be the difference on the floor for the Suns. If not, he fades into the background.

Second, Marcus Banks has a look in his eyes this training camp. He’s starting to get it. After signing a big free agent contract, he sat on pine all year due to his shoot first attitude and not running the offense. But Steve Nash has taken him under his wing, as well as coaches, to try to get him more involved in the team plan and work on getting him minutes. In the preseason he looked golden, getting 22 minutes of playing time per game and a nice 9 ppg. He needs to get his assists up and keep up his tough defense and he’ll help out a ton.

The rest of the team is still amazing. Amare is a beast after his first All NBA selection coming off of microfracture surgery. He might be the best young big man since… I don’t know… Karl Malone? Moses Malone? Shawn Marion seems to be with it after asking for a trade this summer, he hasn’t made a peep since the Suns sat him down for a stern talking to. Nash is still Nash, he might just sneak out his third MVP trophy this season. Leandro Barbosa is a spark plug who provides speed and instant offense to this team. Raja Bell gives gritty heart, tough defense (should be on the NBA All Defensive team at the end of the year) and a good three point shot.

If the Suns play the Spurs in the playoffs, I expect the Suns to try a very cheap shot against Tim Duncan early on to show them that they mean business and won’t back down. I would send our biggest scrub Sean Marks to punch him in the face and then hit him with an ax in the leg, before the game starts. Just to let the Spurs know; you guys play dirty, we can play dirty too.

Hopefully the Suns will play through the adversity, say the hell with the Spurs, tell the NBA and commish David Stern to suck it and grind out a championship.

If they don’t, they will get punched by the Spurs yet again. I don’t want to get punched in the stomach again, please Suns. Give ‘em hell!

My First Movie Memories

My first memories of childhood are pretty much based around movies. No wonder I ended up here in Hollywood working on… movies.

One of my very first memories was going with my then pregnant mother to see E.T. We walked into the theatre late, the previews were already starting.

At the little one-theatre movie house, they played previews for all movies, regardless of whether you were taking your kid to see ET. Fucking stupid if you ask me. Anyway, they were showing a preview for the movie HOUSE, which if you don’t remember it, was about a haunted house. The poster was this skeleton hand holding a key, it still gives me the creeps.

Anyway, as we walked in, the preview of this haunted house was on the screen. I yelled and screamed at the top of my lungs, I wasn’t going in there. Everyone turned around and stared down my mom with evil eyes. In the little town theatre I was at, everyone knew everyone else, so my mom was immediately an identifiable villain. But she wasn’t about to walk out. She dragged me in and wouldn’t let me go, even if I was crying and making a scene.

After the movie started, I remember holding my Mom’s hand. She looked at me and smiled. What came on the screen was movie magic at its finest. I was so happy at the end of the movie. I still thank my mom for dragging me inside the theatre that day.

My first memory of my father (and one of only a few memories of my father when I was young) was when he brought my brother and me to see “Return of the Jedi” the night it came out. My father was a huge Star Wars nerd, so he put so much hype into this movie before we got there. I was excited as we drove to the theatre, I wondered what I was about to see that my father was dying to watch. Who was this Han Solo and why was he maybe, kind of, dead?

We went to this huge theatre in Detroit and got there late (apparently my parents don’t like to go to movies early), we were the last people to sit down. The only problem, there were no seats to sit down. We stood at the top of theatre, my dad propping my brother and me up on a ledge, with the perfect view of the theatre. I felt like I was special, having the greatest seat in the house, sitting where I wasn’t supposed to, next to my Dad. As the 20th Century Fox orchestra came on, it sent chills down my spine. I loved the movie, the Ewoks were the cutest things on the planet... I was a little kid, give me a break!

The other thing I remember most about this night, my one year old baby brother dropped a DOT candy in the lil’ kids urinal, picked it up and ate it. Man, that was gross.

Those two memories hold such a high place in my life, they will always remind me of why I do what I do, and why I love films.

The Kite Runner- Or How i learned to stop crying and hate the Oprah

Oprah needs to stop recommending books. For real. Quit. You can hold the freaking world in your hands, make every single chick in the world do what you say, but STOP TELLING PEOPLE WHAT GOOD BOOKS ARE!

She recommended the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and suddenly, you were an ass clown if you hadn’t read it. ‘What are you, dumb? You haven’t read the Kite Runner?!?!?! It’s the greatest book of all time, Oprah said so!”

“Read this book. It’ll change your life.” Yeah, change your life by making you want to cut your wrists.

I’ve tried to read this hunk of dog poopies 5 times. I would get 15 pages in, yawn, put it back on the shelf.

But this last time, I decided I was going to just get through it. Maybe it’s slow. Maybe I don’t know enough or care enough about Afghanistan to get into, but I will learn some things. Maybe I’m just being lame, wanting something entertaining instead of a cut your balls off slow mess of a start.

I had a bunch of free time at work, so I sat down and just powered through it. Man, what a fucking downer this piece of shit is!

After I finally broke through the stranglehold that was the first 15 pages, I figured out the entire book. Before it happened. I predicted every fucking twist, every plot device, every single possible thing that would go down.

SPOILERS ewwww ahhhhh (I hate when web shits do this warning but anyway)

I figured this author guy was going to have to try to right the wrongs by coming back to Afghanistan to find out that his buddy was dead, on page two.

I knew Hassan was Baba’s kid, that was so freaking obvious, it made me pissed off that they tried to make it the BIG reveal at page 300.

I knew that the Hassan kid was going to get raped. How? I just had a feeling. My feeling was right again.

And I knew that the author was going to have to adopt Hassan’s kid. And when they said that they were going to look for a guy in sunglasses to get Hassan’s kid, I knew that guy had to be the guy who raped Hassan and was raping Hassan’s kid now. And I knew the kid was going to try to commit suicide.

END SPOILERS (God I hate that Spoiler shit!)

So what if it was predictable? It’s still a good book right?

Hardly. It felt manipulative and super melancholy on purpose. I understand the world sucks and Afghanistan and its people went through a ton of unnecessary hardships and pain. But really, do you have to punch me in the face with it?

Did I like it? Not really. I don’t like feeling sad for no reason and guilty for living in the US. It’s not that I want a super happy book either. I’ve read ton of sad books that didn’t piss me off after I read them.

Everyone just raves over this book, but it feels like a first time writer sat down, figured out what plot twists would have people crapping their pants over, killed the shit out of every plot point and made it so that you HAD to feel sad. LAME.

Fuck you Oprah and your stupid book club.

David Lynch- My hero!

“Color me see through, and tickle my favorite inch, turn the ringer off and thank God for David Lynch…” – Buck 65 “BSc”

David Lynch is my hero. Deep down, I wish I could be him, or at least be like him. He makes his own movies and art, does his own thing, doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. His ‘work’ is his own distinct style that no one could copy without someone saying, “Wait a second, that’s very Lynch right there!”

Who is David Lynch? If you’ve never seen any of his movies, you’re missing out. If you’ve have and still don’t know who he is, I don’t know who is either. Deep down, who is this crazy genius? I don’t know.

He’s vague in interviews, doesn’t really reveal what his works mean. Shit he doesn’t do a ton of interviews in the first place.

He’s like the crazy kid in your third grade class who would eat glue, draw bloody pictures of kids getting their heads cut off, where nothing but black and no one talked to. He grew up and figured out how to get money to make motion pictures of those pictures he drew. Not that Lynch’s style is horror, or over the top bloodiness either. But the feeling you get while watching, the sinking feeling of uneasiness and confusion, is like those drawings.

His movies are completely utterly hard to explain. Trust me I’ve tried.

I had a film class in college at ASU where we had this enormous 30 page paper and presentation due at the end of the semester about a film, its meanings, its parables, and the importance of the movie.

I chose to do my project on the Lynch film Lost Highway; one of the most complex, intricate, moving films I have ever seen. I set out from the start of the semester to make this paper my greatest thing I accomplished in college (besides the time when I drank 190 shots of beer in 190 minutes).

The first time I saw Lost Highway with my ex girlfriend, I was scared shitless. More scared than the first time I saw ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, when I was 9. Why? It wasn’t that it was some big hack’em slash’em picture, or that it was meant to be particularly scary. It was weird. I didn’t understand it. And because I didn’t understand it, that was more scary. Plus Robert Blake fucking freaked me out… still does.

That’s probably what drew me to it, the fear and the uncertainty. I was going to conquer this picture, even if it took me all semester. I started that first week, watching the film, taking extensive notes of each scene. By the time I sat down to write my paper and presentation, I knew the movie like I wrote it. I had all the dialog memorized. I could tell you when Fred Madison was going to play a certain note on his saxophone.

I walked into class armed with a stacked paper, a well-organized presentation and confidence in my subject. I was scheduled to go next to last, so I had to wait patiently as the losers in my class presented us with topics like “Jurassic Park- Political Allegory” and “Titanic- A Love Story”. I was a shoe in to rock these kids faces off with my potent and important musings.

My turn finally came, I got up and cleared my throat. “With a show of hands, how many of you have watched The Lost Highway?” No one raised their hands, not even my teacher. I then asked how many of them had heard of the Lost Highway.

“I have the soundtrack…” one kid said.

Great. I was going to have to explain this movie that I barely understand after watching it 150 times to a group that have no fucking idea what the lost highway is; let alone its various metaphors for hell, circular damnation and lust.

I started into my presentation. Minutes later, I noticed that the class looked confused, everyone’s eyes were glossed over, including my teacher.

My professor said, “Justin, just go ahead and sit down.”

Wow. How fucking rude!

I got an A on my paper and presentation, mainly because the prof could tell I spent a lot of time on it and he was so confused, he didn’t want to have to watch the movie to see if I was right.

I felt somewhat pissed that my brilliant points were wasted on such idiots. Probably the same way David Lynch feels whenever critics, studio execs and average assholes watch his films. Maybe not though, he’s probably completely happy that they don’t understand him. Man, I wish I could be like that!

David Lynch, my hero.

Parker, the new old dog

Parker, the new family dog!

I’m getting a new dog. Well, I’m not, my girlfriend is. And it’s not really a ‘new’ dog, she’s four years old. But still, I’m getting a new dog!

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. I’ve never had a dog for myself. I’ve had family dogs. I’ve even had cats on my own. But I’ve never a owned a dog, on my own, in my apartment.

I’m nervous… a little. It’s a little bit of a bigger dog then I expected to get. But she’s really sweet and kind, doesn’t bark and is just chill.

She’s been at the pound for two months, most people look for puppies or small energetic dogs. Parker is more of a 'chill, don’t bark, smile and be polite dog,' one that doesn’t jump out at you when you go to the pound to find a dog. She was only about a week away from being put down. We saved her!

I can’t wait to have long walks in the park with Parker, hike up Runyon canyon with her, take her to the beach, take her to my friends house, and run to Target with her.

If you see me with a huge smile on my face, its because of this new little 25 pound bundle of joy in life.

House

When I was a kid; my brother, my best friend growing up Monica and I would play house often.

You know the game ‘house’; you pretend to go to work, come home and then climb in bed with the girl you are playing with. Fun times, I wish adults played house. I guess they do, they just call it ‘real life’.

Anyone, on that fateful day, Monica propositioned to my brother, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

My jaw hit the floor, that’s a great idea. Why didn’t I think of that on my own!?!?! Finally I would get to see what I was confused about since the first time I accidentally walked in on my mom getting dressed for work. Why didn’t girls have a stick thingy, where was it? Did they tuck it away? Was it smaller or something?

My brother didn’t want to do it but I used a device kids sometimes employ called peer pressure. He hesitatingly pulled down his pants and showed his little wiener to her.

Formalities out of the way, onto step two! The anticipation was building. Monica took one look at my brother’s penis, gave a little “Ehh” and walked away.

“Wait!” I begged her. “Where are you going? You have to hold up your end of the bargain!”

“Nope, it wasn’t worth it,” she replied.

Ouch. Burn. My brother has never lived this story down and never will.