Welcome to the bungle
A blog dedicated to the artistic pursuits and blatant self-promotion of Kansas City-based (as of now) writer, photographer, and filmmaker James A. Carter.
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Please, for the love of all that is holy and good in the world… stop saying or writing the following things around me, and everyone ever.
- “I know, right?” I guess? Are you asking me? Then I don’t know. So no, you don’t know. You don’t know how to speak with any intelligence, at least.
- “OMG” or “zOMG” Hey, guess who wishes they were still in high school?
- “ya” What are you, a Swede? Say “yes,” “yeah,” or “affirmative.”
- “teh” versus “the” Okay, every site has a built-in spellcheck. Come on, now.
- “Fail” This isn’t the internet. And if it is, it should be a better one.
- “Win” or “winning” Two weeks after the Charlie Sheen interview, when the frat bros of America got wind of his terminology, this should have all been retired. Once college guys stomp something into the ground, it ceases to be cool. They kill what they love.
- “omnomnom” America should probably put a hold on all the omnomnoming we’re doing to avoid hearing the weeoweeoweeoing of ambulance sirens as our arteries fill with lard.
- “sammies” It’s sandwiches you moron.
- “fran,” “best frans,” or “boyfran” The irony of these statements is that anyone who makes them deserves to die alone.
- “I miss your face” Just the face? So if you had a picture, or a caricature of the person riding a go-kart you’d be good?
Look, I know that every generation has their phrasing and buzzwords… but these are beyond dumb. Let’s try to have some standards, at least.
“All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.”- Gilbert K. Chesterton
“I know, right?”- some idiot
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Photo reblogged from SLAUGHTERHOUSE 90210
“He was always expecting his real life to begin in a year or two. He hadn’t worked out the details, but he vaguely hoped that suddenly he’d be doing different, better work and living in another city far away with new, superior people, even a perfect lover.”
—Edmund White, Jack Holmes & his FriendFirst, a special shout out to both Safari and Tumblr for conspiring to make sure I wrote this twice. Thanks!
Words cannot describe how much I dig Slaughterhouse90210’s work. I have no idea of her process, of whether or not she has read all of the works cited and seen all of the shows pictured, whether there’s a familiarity with one or the other and then a Google search to fulfill the rest… but it works. I’ve never seen a bad one. They’ve all been scarily accurate.
This one caught my eye especially. I’ve long been thinking of how Ryan Howard from The Office is one of my favorite characters on television. He started out in a similar vein to his counterpart on the British series. Basically an audience surrogate, nothing more than a POV. But seeing as how American shows run generally ten years longer than their UK counterparts, he couldn’t stay bland and inoffensive forever. So he became a dick.
Jim and Pam were always the romantic ideal of the show. Girls could pretend to be Pam, a sensitive artist who longed for more than just being a receptionist engaged to a lunk from high school, and guys could pretend to be Jim, a cool, laidback and funny flirt who had eyes for Pam. And they could pretend that somewhere out there within the small confines of their own cubicles was their perfect match. But I never allowed myself to fall for that trivial garbage. Ryan was always my man. The most realistic character on that show.
Ryan longed to leave his company, stating once that it would take ten seconds to clean his desk out and then everyone, including him, would forget that he worked there. But he rose quickly, and as soon as he gained a position in corporate, dumped his humble girlfriend and jetted off to New York for fraud and drug addiction. Arrested and embarrassed, he went back to Scranton, and has been dick-ing it up ever since. Some highlights of his douchebagginess can be found here, here, here, and here.
I find that Ryan is a more honest character than Jim and Pam. For years now those two have been smug and insufferable, convinced of their own superiority to everyone that they work with. Ryan’s flawed, damaged, real. Ryan is us, and we are him.
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Don't ever stop writing. The World needs more honest words like yours. What kind of film/photography projects do you prefer to work on?
Asked by Anonymous
Hey, thanks for writing, but I’m just curious how you came across my blog. Do I know you in real life or through the internet somehow?
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Great Quotes
“My father never went to college, so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said ‘now what?’ My dad didn’t know, so he said ‘get a job.’ When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long-distance, I said ‘now what?’ My dad didn’t know, so he said, ‘get married.’ I’m a thirty-year-old boy, and I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer I need.”- Narrator, FIght Club by Chuck Palahniuk
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Am I an under-appreciated prodigy virtually guaranteed to go onto greater things? According to this man… yes. Yes I am.
Two years ago, in the early winter of 2010 I was feeling a little down in the dumps. Little did I know that once spring would come I would be on top of the world. Then I would feel worse. Then better. Then… regular. But nevertheless I was depressed. Having recently discovered the wonderful website Channel101, I decided to express myself creatively, by writing a short series entitled The World Versus Martin Beverly.
The World Versus Martin Beverly was a black comedy about a 27-year-old sadsack named Martin Beverly who was arrested, fired, kicked out of his band and otherwise had his life completely ruined after being selected to be destroyed seemingly at random by the most powerful man in the world, who at the time had just gotten done ruining Conan O’Brien. In 2010 this was very timely.
Seeing as how I’m a lazy hypocrite, despite me railing upon others to get off their ass and do something, after I wrote this I carried on sitting on my ass and not doing anything. Sure, I never really directed anything before and two principal cast members moved away, but if I was really determined to do something… I could have done it.
Cut to: late last week when I was reading the series finale of the BBC David Cross series The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. Apparently all of his troubles were caused by the actions of a petty, jealous rich kid. SPOILER ALERT And after all is said and done Margaret flees to North Korea and accidentally blows up the entire world.
Now, the similarities didn’t really strike me until the second and final season had been completed. Here we have the story of two losers who get themselves into trouble, at first by their own choices but later revealed to be exacerbated by powerful forces behind the scenes. Both series end on a down note with innocent people killed. Oh, and both protagonists have female first names as their last names. That final tidbit is fucking eerie.
Call me the Invisible Man because I want to be perfectly clear: there’s no way in Hell that David Cross saw what I wrote. I emailed it to several people shortly after I wrote it, but that is all. And had I gotten off my ass and filmed the damn thing in 2010, there’s little chance that he would have come across it. My intentions in all of this was to not make money with this idea, but to throw it up onto Channel101 and hopefully get enough votes to put the whole five-episode series on. Maybe best case scenario is to get noticed by some exec somewhere and have me pitch a pilot to Adult Swim or FX.
I think I’ll still make it, somehow. I’ve actually got another idea I’ll probably do first, which would be a lot easier to film with the exception of finding four sane actresses in their early twenties in a midwestern city. That part might be kind of difficult. But why not? I’m always so paranoid of being accused of plagiarism, despite the fact that Hollywood sees fit to release Volcano and Dante’s Peak within months of each other, along with a more recent example like No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits. If anyone tries to give me any lip, my email history can back me up. Thanks, Google Overlords!
I, and anyone else who might give a damn or one day be in the same position as me, should take a lesson from this. Get an idea. Produce the idea. Enjoy the results from that idea. My writing professor was right. No one is going to knock on your door with a sack full of cash and a suitcase full of blow asking if anyone inside has any scripts they’re not going to use.
“All men of action are dreamers.”- James Huneker
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What price, your soul?
So I had a discussion last week with someone about feeling like i was “selling out,” seeing as how I was applying for full-time positions in fields not especially related to my major. She replied that I was only selling out to my ability to pay rent. Touche.
There has to be a line, though, right? Look, we all need to make a living. Food has to be bought and eaten. Roofs have to be paid for and lived under. Clothes are to be purchased and worn, and all of these things need to be done immediately if not sooner. But at what point does care become comfort and then conformity? Do dreams ever not come true? What’s the line? Is it when you just give up? I’ve read and viewed numerous interviews with successful people in creative fields, and they’ve all stated that talent, connections and other positive or fortunate traits all pale in comparison to perseverance. That’s encouraging… right?
The Onion had a pretty good article about this found here. Maybe it’s churlish in these days of high unemployment, low wages, and 99 percenters to worry about whether or not your dreams are going to come true… but that’s all we have. My dream is not to be another pastel-shirt wearing wage slave, I can tell you that right now. But within two months I read two separate articles from real magazines (not the Onion) detailing the modern futility of many college degrees, and how $120,000 spent getting a degree in religious studies or documentary filmmaking can’t even guarantee you employment as a hotel receptionist. Our generation might be screwed.
I think I need a drink. Let me count the change in my soccer ball shaped bank to see if I can afford one.
“If I advance any higher this would be my career. And if this were my career, I’d have to throw myself in front of a train.”- Jim Halpert
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You’re only human after all…
I’ve known about Marc Maron for a lot longer than probably a good deal of his current fanbase. I swear to you that’s not a hipsterbrag. I just remember seeing him on Comedy Central’s once more-frequent standup related programs and his numerous appearances on Conan O’Brien. In fact, I once did a casting call for fun for the employees and regulars at my high school comic shop, and somewhere on a sheet of notebook paper, Marc Maron has been cast in the role of the similarly slightly built and acerbic Brad Grant of Smyrna, Georgia.
I think I was drawn to Maron because he was angry and cynical, and funny. I remember a bit he did about how the troubles of the Middle East could all be traced back to one guy cutting off another guy in traffic somewhere in New Jersey. I always kept an eye out for him, albeit life gets in the way and he moved to a morning show on AirAmerica, and if there’s one thing I wasn’t feeling in the early ’00s, it was political talk radio.
When I first started exploring the wide and wooly world of podcasts, I looked up Maron. I believe he had done some crossover with a show I was already listening to, probably involving Adam Carolla. Maron’s show, WTF, was about comedy, but not comedic itself, necessarily. He focused on largely one-on-one interviews with comedians and actors, getting in deep with them.
A large part of Maron’s personal appeal to me is that in a lot of ways, young Marc is present me. Some of the people he interviews are fresh faces, or unknown to him. Many, however, share a history with him. He’s been doing stand-up for over two decades, so of course he’s run across many of the famous names touring now. And in those two decades, he’s seen fire and he’s seen rain. Two divorces, booze, coke, food, body issues, sex, self-loathing, suicidal tendencies, depression, money problems… if it’s an issue, Maron’s probably read it if not written it.
Just before he started his podcast was likely his lowest point. Almost broke, recently divorced, unemployed and contemplating retirement and/or suicide, he started his podcast with nothing to lose. And he gained an audience, money, recognition and a degree of inner peace. A lot of his interviews are him wincing away the memories of being a dick to so, so many people. Of admitting feelings of pettiness, jealousy, anger. And I can relate to that. That’s real to me. That’s human. He’s not some jolly Jerry Seinfeld with a billion dollar fortune and a younger wife. He’s incredibly flawed, but trying to be better. Just like you and me.
“The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel.”- Horace Walpole
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Great Quotes
“Once you stop caring, nothing can stop you. Your problem is you give a shit. Trust me.”- CM Punk
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You know, it’s weird. As I type this out on a Thursday morning, things are… okay. Just like Jack Nicholson and Homer Simpson, I’m… feelin’ fine. I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m feeling as groovy as Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel, but you know. Baby steps.
I’m getting along and hanging out with someone I haven’t spoken to in a long time. That should be pretty cryptic because that could apply to a lot of people. I’m also hanging out with another fortunate individual, one of the foxy female four, actually, and I’ve got a request to do some shots for a potential modeling portfolio. I find that I can do things for other people more so than I can do things for myself, so this is also helping me take initiative and get more into this photography kick I’d like to explore. I’m into anything creative and artistic, and while traditionally it’s been more writing based, far be it from me to turn down an opportunity to take photographs of beautiful women and be applauded for it. My birthday is coming up, and I’m actually making plans. I’ve got a job interview tomorrow, and I’m talking to my out-of-state guy friends more often. Things are strangely going better.
And I don’t know how long that’ll last, and that’s okay. I just want to capture this for posterity, even if it’s to look back a week from now and wonder just what the Hell happened.
“If you’re feeling good, don’t worry… you’ll get over it.”- Bad Street Brawler
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“And then the newfound bisexual turned away from me, angst slumping her shoulders…”
Wouldn’t you know it, right after my series of posts about the desolation found within my soul and society, I have an actually decent weekend with not one, but two social activities! Huh. Kinda takes the fire out from under me on that little theme. Plus, I haven’t had a chance to score any interviews yet. In due time.
It was actually on Friday night as I sat down for some vegan dessert that I ran into an old friend of mine, someone whom I’ve vaguely referenced on this blog before (as I’ll always reference people at least when it’s not 100% flattering, or, you know… truthful). I’d met this person in a composition class that we both struggled in, although I’ve come to learn that my eventual B+ in there was a triumph the equivalent of so many other classes As. We had a ton in common, from procrastinating all night for no reason other than anxiety, to being late (likely due to exhaustion from said procrastinating). We both wanted to succeed in elusive fields in order to “stick it” to our “haters.”
We hung out for, I don’t know, a few months. Then gradually less and less. Then not at all. It was weird. She had a boyfriend, I had a girlfriend, there was no romantic awkwardness to cause a rift. No one borrowed money from anyone else. It was just… strange. And while strange and weird and angsty are words that have been used to describe her, why do those things preclude being nice and polite and good-natured? I like to think I have elements of all six.
Upon entering the trendy vegan restaurant, we were greeted with a smile full of hate. And after the thirty seconds of catching up, a second waitress appeared, causing the first and familiar one to rapidly disappear, to have her back turned while slurping down something leafy and moist, in order to gain the strength to turn hearts to ice and ears to deaf as offers to gather in group settings fell like so many vaseline covered plates.
Did she walk out of my life? Permanently? Exchanging a world of writing for a land of leeks and latkes?
Eh, who cares? I got a new mix-CD out of the deal. Score!
“I’ve always believed the greater danger is not aiming too high, but too low, settling for a bogey rather than shooting for an eagle.”- Peter Scott
