Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

Between my screeds about Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and my critically acclaimed novel , people sometimes forget that I am quite an accomplished comedy writer. I mean, it takes a certain level of talent to create public access television for literal years (let's not speculate on specifically what level that is). In addition to chortle-inducing articles for this blog and my hilarious off-off-Broadway musical comedy Oh, Bridget! , I once wrote a screenplay for a sitcom pilot that my father described as "kind of funny, in places." Why am I telling you all this? Well, you see, I have recently taken it upon myself to begin another intensive comedy proyecto , and I have come to realize in the course of working on it that I could get a twofer going and turn it into a lesson for you, my loyal and enraptured audience. A real master class in comedy, if you will. Allow me to explain. Comedy, much like open heart surgery, is quite difficult. But you know what they say: spl

         Recently, I was inspired to write a comedic post about Conjure , a Magic: The Gathering magazine from 1994. Conjure is a charmingly incompetent relic seemingly published by a team of guys killing time before the refill date for their anti-psychotic meds. As I wrote this post, though, I found myself with a problem: in order to write the sort of article I wanted to write, the piece was turning out to be pretty insider-y. That is to say, an audience without some understanding of the game of Magic would probably be fairly lost. As such, it didn't seem to be a great fit with the rest of my site (no mean feat for a blog combining lunchmeat reviews with an exhaustive analysis of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ). Rather than dilute the article, or scrap it entirely, I decided to see if a site dedicated to Magic content might be interested in it. I contacted noted Magic rabble-rouser Dr. Jeebus, proprietor of just such a site, mtgbrodeals.com , and after a bit of back an

There was a time when all I wanted to do was write for television. Not local access television (I checked that off the list long ago, and wrote a four part series of articles on this very blog about it), but actual commercial television. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember-I have crudely illustrated stories about Godzilla from when I was eight years old to prove it-and being able to create something that would air nationwide, and having a budget with which to produce this, was an extremely tantalizing prospect. I even went so far as to write an official “Steel & Marsilio” pilot in case I managed to make some inroads with Comedy Central or some such thing. In order to progress with this goal, I moved to Los Angeles, one of the great epicenters of television production. This move was ill-fated from the beginning. I had been unemployed for a few months before I moved, and assumed I would be able to find a job in L.A. before my money ran out. Not a television jo

A few weeks ago, my roommate was watching the film John Q on cable and, in between staring at my reflection longingly, I watched most of it too. It was a decent movie; Denzel Washington was great as usual, and the plot was pretty interesting. However, there was one glaring flaw about the film: the script. It was so heavy-handed, the screenwriter must have been wearing gauntlets. I'm all for using major motion pictures to spread useful information, but several parts of John Q were like listening to people reciting from a textbook. I went to IMDB to find some quotes, since you can't honestly expect me to remember this stuff, but they didn't have many relevant to what I'm talking about. The closest one was this: Mitch : This country man, can't go anywhere without getting' mugged, or murdered or stabbed. Kids killin' their classmates, drivebys, ya know, I won't even go into a post office any more. Steve Maguire : Shut up, Mitch. Dr. Turner : No, you