Fanning the Flames
oh, i’m in trouble now. he’s gotten an attorney from orinda to write my agents and let them know that i’m unprofessional. i bet that will kill my career even more than it already is. i should never have taken him on. that was a mistake. he is a powerful man with powerful friends and an ATTORNEY ON FUCKING RETAINER!!! and i am totally and utterly fucked. crap. i’m doomed. i’m really doomed. what really sucks is my plans to make millions and millions by stealing a play and calling it my own are now dashed upon the rocks! shit. how can i ever get over this? i’ve crossed one more hollywood superpower mogul and i bet it’s my last because this is going to really drive the dirty old career in to the dirt. i wouldn’t be surprised if the ATTORNEY ON RETAINER managed to get all of my shitty movies pulled out of late night rotation on cable.
how can i get him to forgive me. i can’t. i just can’t. i’m doomed to even more unemployment.
crap. will i ever learn? damn. damn. damn.
I sent the following fax to all the parties involved. unprofessional with a capital u.
dean cameron
16255 ventura blvd 509
encino, ca
91436malpractice attorney
261 holly lane
orinda, california 94653
fax - 925 886 6793“dean cameron’s agents”
10635 santa monica blvd
130/135
los angeles, ca 90025hello everyone,
apparently, the right honorable john pappas was upset that I didn’t return his calls in a timely manner and has gotten a “lawyer acquaintance” to waste your time as well as mine. I apologize for that.
i’d attempted to help the writer get a theater for his “casual” reading but he decided to have it in long beach on a Monday which was inconvenient for me.
the most frightening thing about all of this is that, instead of following my regular procedure and having him send the script to my mailbox, he seemed like a good egg
and i wanted to expedite the proceedings so i gave him my home address. now I’m actually scared for my safety and that of my wife and I’m hopeful that he won’t show up
unannounced, demanding the 5 bucks it cost him to print a script and send it out.to protect his privacy i had edited the call before I put it up on my web site to remove his name. I often post calls and correspondence I get from stalkers and other crazy people.
i’ve gone ahead and posted the unedited version with his name included, as well as the fax with the official looking “attorney letterhead” with the p.o. box. it would seem that he’s hurting for business. maybe the two or three people who visit my site each week could use a malpractice attorney.
below is my reply to the “writer’s” harassing voice mail. make special note of the section where I request him to perform an unnatural act upon my primary sexual characteristic as if another, lower, part of that area is full of air and he is drowning. my choice of words, of course, are a bit more “earthy” and the follow-up is truly vile. (though quite pleasant, truth-be-told.)
regardless, the request remains open-ended. (a pun!)
though, having a vengeful person that close to my little dinky may be a bit more excitement than this old almost-ran can take. perhaps it’s included in the attorney’s retainer. i can dream, right?
yours in abject terror,
dean cameron
Message-Id:
From: dean cameron
To: John Niko
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=Apple-Mail-4–121503500
X-Smtp-Server: smtp.gmail.com:dea ncamero n@gma il.co m
Subject: bail?
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v919.2)
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:14:06 -0700–Apple-Mail-4–121503500
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=US-ASCII;
format=flowed;
delsp=yes
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bitI didn’t bail on you and I really don’t understand what the
condescending message and anger at me is all about? Maybe you’re joking.I tried to get sacred fools for you and when that didn’t work out, I
offered to help you get a theater but you said you were going to have the reading at someone’s house. I asked you if you wanted me to get the info just in case and you said no, you were going to have the reading at someone’s house because you didn’t want to spend any money.Then you called me in the middle of the day saying you were going to go look at the theater and i should meet you there, somehow assuming that I was around or available. I wasn’t. I’m not. I don’t have much of a life, at all, but I’m not able to drop everything and scurry over to east hollywood to hold your hand and look at a theater that I’ve seen a whole bunch.
You don’t need to call and talk to me in a condescending voice like
that. Spend three fucking dollars at kinko’s or print it out like the
rest of us.Maybe you’re joking but it doesn’t sound like it. I tried to help you
and you’re angry at me. Fascinating.Instead of me sending the script back, how about this:
Suck my cock like you’re drowning and my balls are filled with air.
Then I will roll over and you can tongue my shithole.Amazing.
—
dean cameron
www.deancameron.com
The message is here. It’s too much trouble to post the original where he says his name.
Dr. Belknap
Oddly, one of the things that kept me alive growing up in Norman, Oklahoma was the boy scouts. I ended up becoming an eagle scout and then went on and was in an explorer post. the things we did at that time would cause national scandals now, but it was the 70’s and things were different. regardless, it was great fun and i made lasting friends and learned some good stuff and can still recite the trustworthy helpful-friendly-courteous-kind… thing.
One of the “dads” who spent his spare time wrangling a bunch of insane kids was Dr. Hal Belknap. He was insane and a great guy. He was a great man who never forgot what it was like to be a boy. Dr. B. died this week and, you know, that happens, but I’ve been thinking about him a lot more than I thought I might.
When the streets in Norman snowed over, he would tie a big plastic bowl/sled thing to the back of one of their cadillacs with 15 or so feet of rope and drive. I played in a band with his son, Hal, and lived fairly close by so I was one of the lucky ones who got invited to go sledding. Dr. Belknap would drive like a crazy person (which he basically was) around the neighborhood with a kid on the sled, rounding corners until the person on the sled bit it violently into a tree or parked car or something. Then some other fool would jump out of the car, get on the sled and hang on until physics made it impossible to do so any longer.
Down jackets would be ruined, pants ripped, soaked with ice and snow. hands would be so cold you couldn’t close or open them. we would have cuts and bruises and scratches everywhere. you could even lose a shoe or a boot. it was violent insanity with Dr. B. at the wheel and that is exactly what was called for. He was able to provide that on more than one occasion.
For at least 2 years in a row, the explorer post would travel to South Padre Island, Texas, for the pre christmas fishing trip. The trip never materialized because the seas were always too rough, but Dr. Belknap would somehow enlist at least one other poor sucker idiot dad to drive another car full of 15 year old boys for a weekend camping on the deserted sand dunes.
The drive down was stupid insane and, again, would cause a national furor now. you had at least two cars full of kids throwing water baloons, trash, fruit, bags of urine, cups full of tobacco spit (we all “dipped” skoal at the time) at each other. the cars would get trashed.
then, we’d hit the texas/oklahoma border. they sold fireworks year round so we would buy gross upon gross upon gross of bottle rockets and roman candles; literally buying all of the bottle rockets & roman candles a stand had in stock. many of those would be shot at the cars and if you were in Dr. Belknap’s car, you were assured a “victory” as he didn’t mind laying back for a while and then making a 100 mph ambush on another car. Or, he’d exit the freeway and then floor it so he could get back on the freeway ahead of the other cars so we could throw shit at the other kids in the cars who had sane people driving them.
once we hit the dunes of south padre island, Dr. B. would find a spot to camp conveniently far, far, far, far away from us. Us would be 10-15 guys and a couple of the girls in our explorer post. (No, we didn’t do any sexy time with them.) They were cool girls who were in our post. We were insane, not assholes.
The rest of the night was a bottle rocket war. it was beautiful. thousands of bottle rockets being shot at your best buddies in the crisp december air of south padre island, texas. bundled up with layers of clothes, goggles, hats, gloves… the air was cool enough so it wasn’t too hot… the layers protecting us from the few bottle rockets that would hit. the hits were surprisingly few and the injuries were zero. not a one. and, you know, there might have been a 7-11 about a mile away that someone might have been able to buy a case of beer from.
i’m thinking how, in this ultra-safe padded world, if one were to read on the news about an explorer post who drank beer and shot bottle rockets at each other, there would be a national outrage. bill o’reilly’s plastic face would be stretched beyond the breaking point and all the hippies would be shaking their heads at how we were probably gaybashing hitler youth who didn’t have enough love. but dr. b knew that he was taking us to an enormous bounce house for 15 year old boys (and a couple of really cool girls) and knew that we were responsible enough not to do something truly stupid. plus that the dunes were soft and forgiving enough and we were strong enough to take on anything that another 15 year old who had downed two beers, wearing two down jackets, trying to stop laughing long enough to “aim” a bottle rocket over a windy sand dune could dish out.
i am waxing sooo nostalgic, but it was absolutely the perfect definition of ‘innocent fun’.
So yeah. So… dr. belknap is gone. long live dr. belknap. and, you know, he wasn’t just a crazy freak who knew how to drive like an idiot in the snow, he was also a genius doctor who did trailblazing stuff in his field.
the picture of him here should give you an idea about how he was. look at his face. those smile lines. happy. excited to be there. the kind of doctor who would take your temperature, look at the thermometer and say “yep… about a quart low…” the photographer was probably laughing and having a hard time holding the camera steady, right? dr. belknap just told him a joke; said something really funny. maybe not. maybe i’m romanticizing the past. i doubt it.
i was reading his obituary and he had started another boy scout troop. even after his son was long gone. he was just a guy who was part of norman. i’m sure the behavior became “appropriate”. that’s good. we were a rare breed. we knew how to deal with freedom.
back then, both sides had that unspoken agreement about pushing the envelope.
i will manage to not write “these kids today” but i wasn’t able to keep the tears in.
they broke the mold with him. he was a great guy. look at that smile. man.
day care
quick one…
thought that a great name for a daycare center would be:
“The No Place”
That’s all. Next caller.
Amazing World
It’s a great world. Someone I kinda/sorta knew back when I was a young man aksed me to do a reading. The last time I saw him was a few years ago when he was nice enough to come see SpamScam and we’ve kept in touch since then. Tried to help them get a theater for the reading this coming week. “No, I’ll just do it at a friend’s place.” Then, he notified me that it would be in Long Beach at 6:30. “Sorry, can’t make it.” You might be able to figure the rest out from the call.
Never Get Out Of The Boat
make money on the internet, aks me how!
Hippies will tell you that the big bad evil drug companies aka ‘big pharma’ will lie and cheat and use deceptive practices to sell you their evil drugs but don’t understand that the natural medicines aka poppycock aka homeopathy use the most deceptive tactic which is ‘you will probably get better if it’s not serious’.
So, when you ingest their magical water, you get better. And, since it’s magical water, you don’t feel anything like you do with NyQuil which doesn’t make you better, it just makes you wasted so you don’t care how crappy you feel. Since you don’t feel anything you call it ‘non-invasive’. The truth is, it’s so non-invasive that there’s no invasion. There’s not even an army. I just extended that too far. Sorry.
Where was I? I’m talking about Airborne, one of the most recent bits of poppycock to hit the stands.
They just got spanked after being investigated for their claim that it cured colds or if you took it when you feel a cold coming on, you’d feel better within 3 days.
I’ll get to the cool part in a second, but let’s look at the claim, first.
If you feel a cold coming on… a mild cold, you’re going to feel differently in three days. You may feel worse, but if it’s a mild cold, you’ll feel better. Either way, the poppycock is counting on you not remembering the miss; the feeling worse part, but you will most definitely remember feeling better if you’ve taken something. It’s called a confirmation bias which means you will remember the stuff that confirms your beliefs. You’d also probably allow a couple days. If you felt better after 4 days, you’d give Airborne the credit.
Airborne’s claim isn’t that amazing.
If you began to feel sick, came over to my home and I put on a heavy pair of boots with some dull spikes on the top, hauled back and kicked you in the crotch as hard as humanly (not to be confused with humanely) possible, your cold would be gone within a week. Your cold symptoms would begin clearing up within a few days.
Yes, your teeth would still be chattering from the pain and you’d label my brand of medicine as ultra-invasive, but your wussified little cold wouldn’t seem so bad and it would be clearing up, too.
I’ve digressed. And how.
Airborne is currently shelling out over 23 MILLION BUCKS because their claims are misleading. They’re still going to be able to sell their magic nothing but the word COLD is going to be conspicuously absent from the package.
The ballsiest thing they did was say that they did a double blind, placebo controlled study but the company who did the study was a two person organization formed to do the study. The study was on the two guys who did the study. ABC News says “There was no clinic, no scientist and no doctors.”
That, my friends, is award winning ballsiness!
What is maddening is that if Pfizer had done this sort of thing, hippies would be losing their minds, storming the offices of the FDA (who I’m not a fan of, make no mistake) while screaming “YOU KILL CHILDREN! YOU WANT CHILDREN TO DIE!!! YOU HATE CHILDREN! YOU ARE A NAZI PEDOPHILE WHO HATES CHILDREN!!!” or some other statement.
I skimmed over the messages on ABC until I felt my brain turning to mush and apparently, the presence of ‘Big Pharma’ is, by its very nature deceptive and evil, but when a tiny independent company like Airborne actually do something deceptive, it’s okay.
Sure, Airborne brings in 200 million bucks a year, but that’s nothing compared to ‘Big Pharma’.
Well, here’s my ‘two wrongs make a right solution’:
Airborne has been ordered to refund 23 million dollars. If you don’t have a receipt, you can still claim up to 6 boxes @ 10.50 each.
I am. Maybe you’ll lie and cheat with me. I’m embarassed and ashamed but I think an extra 70 bucks will be nice. Actually, I have a couple of addresses, so it’s probably going to be more like 140 bucks. I think the IIG or randi.org might be getting some cash.
It just depends on how long I GET MY SETTLEMENT!!!! I WANT MY SETTLEMENT!!!
oh my
i’m 45. hmmm.
it’s a good thing.
i never thought i’d be 45.
who knew?
What Do I Know
Email to current web client.
Hello young internet moguls..
I would like you two to mull something over. (No, I’m not going to suggest you don’t sell stuff. I think you *should* sell stuff.) Take some time to toss it around before even thinking about a yes or no. Give it a day or so… Discuss… Call me… Write me…
Also, I’m not going to insult you and write “In my opinion” before each sentence as we are adults and should know that OF COURSE IT’S MY OPINION!!!! And another thing. I figure you know everything I’m saying. It’s not meant to be condescending (that means “talk down to”) but just to.. you know… make points or something.
Ado no further - my thoughts:
What I know about The Internets:
Attention spans are short. Everything is free. Quality is rewarded.
And, as evidenced by the three previous sentences: sweeping generalizations are the norm.
1. Quality is rewarded:
Google makes great stuff. Google hires the best people, lets them work the way they want to work yet expect their products to be better than anyone else’s. Even if the general public don’t like or use a product. If you do any thinking about web services (I do quite a bit of it) and you think about google, you know that their stuff is going to be awesome and will only get better. And, if they do happen to make something that sucks ass in the bad way, they’ll cop to it and either remove it or make it better. They’ve created an empire.
I imagine that this is somewhat the way you’re going to operate your site. You’ll be attracting the best and the brightest and let the crap float away or be improved upon. The “brand” will then be ass-ociated with quality. The folks who make crap will then be too intimidated to approach you and the best and brightest will be more inclined to use you as a web distribution channel.
Thinking about google vs. Microsoft, (who I also admire, actually), you see a huge difference. Microsoft seems byzantine, costly, corporate in the worst sense and bureaucratic vs. google’s streamlined, simple, consumer-friendly and generally “nice” image. It’s even reflected on their web sites. Trying to locate something at Microsoft is an exercise in clicking. Google’s home page has their main feature prominently displayed and all of their other stuff readily available. It’s soooo sweet.
2. Everything is free.
Right or wrong, this is the case. Your site is being built in Ruby, a free, open-source programming language. We considered building in PHP, another free, open source language. The cool thing about open source software is that many of the creators do it so you can use their free stuff to make money. What people who pirate software and music (dude, music wants to be free…) don’t seem to get is that it costs money to create something of value. Even more important, quality is rewarded. But, there’s a difficulty in trying to get what you deserve. It’s a tough PR position. Look at Google vs. Microsoft. Metallica vs. Radiohead.
Selling music and film online is tough. No one’s really figured it out. NBC just left iTunes and as peer to peer software gets easier to work, the average person is not going to see the point in paying for premium content.
I acted in a “series” for superdeluxe. They have budgets (small) and attract good talent. Their stuff is, as that annoying mattress guy says “FREE!!!”
YouTube. Revver. MySpace and all those other online video places. Free.
The numbers in Smut, the industry that created the internet, are beginning to drop because of all of the free smut content online. redtube, megarotic, pornotube and at least sixty bazillion other sites all contain free, current naughtiness of the highest caliber.
Waaayyyy back in 1998, you could make a million bucks a year posting 50 shots of a naked chick a month and charge a 49.99/month subscription fee. The market has been glutted so they’re doing daily live chats, blowjob giveaways and more. (or so I hear. as a mormon child of jesus, I shun all pornography and all of satan’s temptations such as women in general)
Which is why premium content has got to be really, really, really premium.
3. Attention spans are short.
The sites that are the most popular are the ones where you get in, get what you want and get out.
Google: “i need all the web addresses of lesbian goth golf clubs in downtown san francisco”
IMDB: “who won the best sound editor oscar the year i was born”
deancameron.com: “when was i born?”
Lots of clicking around and hoop jumping is a turn-off. There is an entire industry now devoted to making it so the user doesn’t have to read instructions or click too many times.
My point… Finally…
I suggest you start out offering a subscription area instead of a per-unit sale model.
There are lots of reasons to do this. And, obviously, I think they outweigh the reasons to use a per-unit model or I wouldn’t have written this stupid-long email.
You can keep a cache of content. It will make your site sticky instead of people being bombarded with an enormous list of the same stuff each and every time they come to you.
Instead of spending hours and hours setting prices, product IDs, remembering how to tag each film etc. you tag something for sale or not for sale.
Same for keeping track of sales. Say the site earns $500 in february, you make your disbursement equally among your content providers. Ass-uming you planned on paying your providers once they hit a certain amount, you won’t have to keep track of 2 dollar pay periods. You end every pay period free and clear with each one of your providers.
If someone’s not selling, you don’t want them stuck on your site with their stale content. You can keep them on the free area or set them a-sea.
Yes, of course it’s easier to program but not that much. The difference in the time you’ll spend maintaining it will be night and day. Hours a month vs. hours per day.
Once the site begins going gangbusters you move to a per-item model. It’s done all the time.
As a matter of fact… tightcircle was a money-making venture because people grew to love the service which wasn’t even understood when it began so much that $36/year was worth it to them. And that trust from the users to the service was one of the things attracting the folks who ended up buying tightcircle (and subsequently not doing a damned thing with it…)
Subscription will also motivate your providers to pimp the site all the time and provide great stuff. You might want to make the numbers available to them. If they see someone getting 1 download to their 20, pressure will be put on the 1 download guy to step it up instead of the 1 download guy saying “aw screw it… i’ll just leave the thing up there. someone’s bound to buy it someday… what do I care?” I know how gossipy the comedy world is. If everyone’s participating in everyone’s profit, everyone will push harder. Reward it.
So that’s that… Make sense? It’s quite late now, so it may have gone off into a miasma of madness.
affect/effect
I shudder inside when people use language incorrectly. I’m sure I use words incorrectly but since I don’t know that I’m using them incorrectly I get a free pass. Sometimes ignorance is the best defense.
Irregardless: my list of words/phrases that make me shudder.
- irregardless
- aks
- less instead of fewer
- hopefully
- effect for affect
- impact for affect
- impact for effect
- shutter for shudder
Let’s discuss…
- irregardless. there’s no such word. fun to use among others who understand that it’s not a word.
- aks. ditto
- less things can’t be counted individually
- “don’t take less than 10 trojans to parumph” is a no-no.
- “you’ll have less fun if you don’t take enough trojans to parumph” is correct (and true)
- fewer things are counted one by one
- “don’t take fewer than 10 trojans to parumph”
- you will go nuts when dealing with money and time
- i have less than 500 dollars is correct
- i have less than 500 dollars is incorrect if you’re speaking of the actual dollar bills.
- i have less than 500 dollar bills is not correct.
- i have fewer than 500 dollars is incorrect
- i have fewer than 500 dollars is correct if you’re speaking of the actual dollar bills.
- i have fewer than 500 dollar bills is correct.
- it’s similar when speaking of time.
- if you’re not sure which to use, apply it to each instance and the one that sounds correcter probably is.
- hopefully is often confused with hopeful or full of hope. most pedants on the internets agree that the battle for hopefully has been lost.
- this is how it’s often used:
- hopefully, google will hit 1000/share within the next couple of months.
- what’s meant is:
- “i’m hopeful that google hits 1000/share…” or “i hope google hits 1000/share…”
- hopefully can be used correctly and incorrectly in the same sentence. consider:
- hopefully, i’m going to the meeting tomorrow.
- one means to say
- “It’s possible i have a meeting tomorrow and i hope it comes through.”
- but one is actually saying
- “i will be going to the meeting tomorrow full of hope that they greenlight ski school 3 through 10″.
- so “hopefully, i’m reading for the part of dysart in the corey haim production of equus’ is correct if you mean you are auditioning for dr. dysart.
- my brain hurts
- affect/effect will rip your brain out. the general, easy method to remember is that
- affect is to do
- not brushing will affect my breath
- effect is to have done
- the effect of not brushing was my crappy breath
- impact in place of affect and effect looks like it’s a lost battle as well. i think it’s because talk show hosts can’t remember the affect/effect difference and impact has replaced them. the verb impact means hit the noun means a collision . an impact does affect what it impacts, but that must means it had an effect, not that it had an impact. make sense? you hear me, cnn?
- a shudder is your reaction when the cat lady upstairs doesn’t close her shutters at night.
by the way, capitalization is for suckers. i capitalize when i feel like it, okay?
pretty coolishnesstein.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNqCSvo1aK8
AND NOW ANOTHER EPISODE OF:
Our favorite THEM SONG is HEARD:
MANNNNNDEEE PATINKIN MANDEEEE PATINKIN MANNDEEEE MANDEEEE MANDEEE PATINKINNNNNNN
BARE STAGE - NIGHT A luminescent black GRAND PIANO. PAUL, the hen-pecked, nervous, wiry, PIANIST, adjusts his impeccably greased COMB-OVER and begins an intro with a dazzling flourish. MANDY PATINKIN, has finished removing the NY Yankees cap worn during his crowd pleasing “Sports Medley” and tosses it, as if unrehearsed, O.S. to ROMAN, his DRESSER, who just happened to be the first man legally married in the United States. The beautiful piano music plays as Patinkin pours himself water from the pitcher on the table next to his stool. He turns a page on his music stand, squeezes two exact squeezes of lemon into the water and holds his right hand up, just as the intro finishes.
Paul… count it in, sir….
