SEA HUNT the Movie?

A feature film based on the classic TV show SEA HUNT is being pitched in Hollywood, but so far no luck. Producers are hoping that their appearance on Shark Tank will lure one or all of the sharks to bite, and that they’ll fund a sequel at the same time. James Cameron is a possible director, and could film both the original and sequel simultaneously (along with Avatar 2 and 3.) “He should be able to squeeze us in for a possible 2015 release,” script writer Walter Witty is suggesting. “If not, we’ll try for Woody Allen.”

Secret History:  Walter Witty, otherwise known as the Homeless Comic, purports to know the answers to all of life’s biggest questions. He’s not particularly proud of this, and just calls it “uncommon sense.” Go figure. But here’s the thing: the news media are starting to catch on. And they NEED answers badly. So while the police keep arresting him for acting like he’s an authority or something, (and telling jokes without poetic license or the use of talking fruit), Witty is being sought out on such wide ranging subjects as politics, culture, and (as Woody Allen puts it) “the ability of leprechauns to locate gold.” (Note: Woody was trying to say that leprechauns, vampires, and zombies don’t actually exist, so the referenced gold is fool’s gold…unless you’re a Hollywood producer, in which case the gold is real.) Witty is often forced to use disguises and pseudonyms such as Ryback Solomon (lending him the more respectable title “reporter,” which also sounds better to those geniuses on TMZ, who just stand around trading verbal snipes at celebrities while drinking soda.) Witty is the cousin of one Walter Mitty, although Walter would claim that this claim is a figment of his (Witty’s) imagination. To sum up, both nothing (and everything) anyone named Walter says can be construed as both fact and fiction, both satire and deep truth, but this particular Walter disclaims responsibility for any and all consequences resulting from incorporating his (or Entertainment Tonight’s) views into their personal value system…which system, as we know, is already pretty much written in stone, thanks to years of subliminal (or otherwise) advertising. Just so you know.

Bill Maher to Appear on Shark Tank

Bill Maher has two inventions to pitch. Will he be successful, or become a Cuban sandwich? (Trapped between the jaws of Mark Cuban and “Mr. Wonderful.”) His first entry is called Fizz Holiness. You know how many churches now offer gourmet coffee and donuts prior to services, which portly parishioners can often take into the sanctuary? Bill’s idea is to offer soda, too. But not just any soda. Fizz Holiness is a soda machine that turns holy water into a refreshing, bubbly beverage. Twelve high fructose flavors will be offered initially, “Judas” being tart cherry. If the Catholic church accepts his invention—thanks to the Holy Rolodexes of the billionaires—Bill promises to become Catholic and stop making jokes involving child molestation. Bill’s second invention is for atheists to whom sports is their only true religion—a video game called Sports Zombies. It’s a quiz game, with each question having only two answers, right or wrong. The object of the game is to Lose. You try to guess the wrong answer. There are 100 questions, which recycle until either you or the opposing player reaches Zero I.Q. (dead), at which point the winner (loser) gets to eat the other player. After each question, I.Q. scores of both players go up or down, accordingly, and at each level of 10 questions (of the hundred) the winner (loser) morphs in and out of becoming a zombie occurs. So there’s ten morphs–the winner (loser) looking more or less like a zombie as the opposing player looks more or less like a hamburger with eyes. Meaning that knowing the “score” gets you eaten alive by a zombie who thinks you’re hamburger. Heads butt after each question. At each morph, a snarl and wail occurs. When the I.Q. clock buzzes zero, the zombie chows down, ketchup spurting like blood (much like in real life pro football games involving concussion.) In other news, Entourage will return for a ninth season with Tony Soprano in the role of filmmaker. Teaming with Stan Lee and Woody Allen, they will seek to entice Turtle to involve Vince in becoming Ego Man, a supervillain with the power to create delusions of grandeur in the minds of men (and coeds.) Ari will attempt to sober Vince up for a screen test (involving Mark Sanford and coed) but Vince will need persuading in the form of a ball-peen hammer to the kneecap…and from then on he wears a black cape but walks with a limp.

Legos & Star Wars Sued by Young Turks

The Young Turks are suing Legos and LucasFilm for $3.2 Billion in hopes of financing a worldwide expansion into both satellite TV and international brick-and-mortar news studios. The controversy surrounds the alleged use of the Hagia Sophia, an Istanbul mosque (now a museum) in creating Jabba the Hutt’s home, first in Star Wars and then in the Legos version. The Young Turks, as you may recall from world history, was a political movement opposing the Ottomans in the early 20th Century. They wanted to replace religion with science, which didn’t work out too well. Now The Young Turks are more hip and satirical, hoping to replace religion and politics with more relevant information that viewers now demand—news about Hollywood stars and sex scandals in Washington. Says Ryback Solomon from his hospital bed, “My own investigation into this story hasn’t been without mishap, but I can tell you that it appears these secular Turks hope to collect before the religious Turks in Turkey finance bombing the Legos plant and Skywalker Ranch, which would kill the golden goose and also prevent Star Wars VII from being filmed by J.J. Abrams as planned. What a world!” The Young Turks (in Los Angeles) hope to launch their own satellite into space once their lawsuit starts paying off, and yes, it will include Star Wars technology, including (possibly) a laser similar to one used in the James Bond movies. They will need protection on their satellite to prevent attack from other news agency satellites currently being retrofitted with similar weapons. “It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘hitting theaters in 2015,’ since, once the media wars begin raging in orbit for control of over 2300 cable channels and 754 Hollywood gossip networks, there is a good chance that the flaming wrecks of the losers will crash into those few theaters not being targeted by terrorists and mentally deranged gun nuts.” (God forbid anyone actually turn off the boob tube and read a book or go on a hike instead.)

Price of Fame Calculated

The price of fame has not escaped inflation, according to the IRS. As fame becomes ever more important, the price is rising exponentially, too. “The cost is much more than most people think,” says Howard Rosen, millionaire recluse turned culture vampire, “and I don’t mean just for those wanting to purchase fame or maintain it, I mean for everyone else.” Should we put a dollar cost on fending off the paparazzi with security systems and bodyguards? Why bother…few reading this will face those costs. It’s more appropriate to examine the costs of being obsessed with famous people. There are the truly shocking and hidden costs. Because if time is money, then you need to calculate how much time you spend watching Entertainment Tonight and Leno and a dozen shows talk shows like it…how much time you spend tracking stars on the internet and in magazines…how many interviews you watch that feature famous people denying their guilt in various scandals…how much junk food you consume in the process, leading to heart disease and crippling medical expenses…how many hours you spend listening to celebs talking about the cost of fame, while displaying their jewelry, clothes, cars, and houses…the list goes on and on and on. Shouldn’t you rather read a book, or listen to one while jogging or doing other chores? Just a thought. So what about fame? It’s overrated and overpriced. Like so many other games (including those played on the gridiron or on Capitol Hill), we just can’t afford it anymore.    
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FAME:  A super power granted lucky and well connected actors, politicians, or sports “gods,” enabling them to waste everyone’s time, not just their own.
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DIVA: An egomaniacal temptress whose entourage of stylists, publicists, and cross-dressing sycophants come between her and the truth that faking emotions can lead to artificial preservatives, white powder additives, and fat fake fans on a feeding frenzy of fantasy.

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BLING-A-LING) A ding dong whose low intelligence and insecurity is offset by a psychopathic bravado, a myopic obsession to be perceived as a role model, and a blindingly obscene propensity to display medals of graceless self-indulgence like a walking jewelry kiosk.
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DARERIST: Someone who dares to criticize the status quo or pop culture, and is sent to Gitmo for waterboarding with high fructose corn syrup.

Baseball Card Scandal Hits Hollywood

Ryn Jacobs supposedly played short stop for the Yankees in 1948. He was a one season player who once hit a ball so hard it disintegrated in flight. . . not just ripping the cover off, but turning it to dust. (Every other time Ryn hit the ball he never made it to first base.) THE LEGEND OF RYN had been optioned by Fox for a feature film, centering on the controversy that day about whether a flake of dust on the glove of the pitcher constituted an Out or not. The History Channel also planned a special science docudrama on the event to replace a rerun about a swamp monster inhabiting Duck Dynasty’s man-made mud hole. And it all started when a screenwriter named R. Solomon fabricated a fake baseball card, using old stock and vintage ink sufficient to fool The History Detectives. He then pitched the film to studio executives, giving them the card, which was in a display album next to an authentic Mickey Mantle card. The ruse fell apart when a Yankees fan named Howard Ziffle, working at the Fox mailroom during casting for the movie, declared that no one named Ryn Jacobs ever played for the Yankees. Studio heads had R. Solomon arrested on the spot. When asked why they believed a mailroom clerk, even though Solomon had a flawlessly forged baseball card authenticated by Antiques Road Show to boot, (not to mention a History Channel film already in progress featuring J.J. Abrams as director), studio chief Bernie Wolfe replied, “You don’t know Ziffle.” Apparently, although Howard Ziffle can’t get out of the mailroom because he has no marketable skills, no one disputes his baseball expertise. “He can tell you who was traded for who, and for how much, going back to Prohibition. Not only does he know the shoe size of every player in Yankee history, but he can tell you what their lockers contained during any given season. I’m talking about a fan so obsessed that his incense candles are shaped like bats, which he dipped and shaped himself, adding the scent of catcher glove leather. Too bad he’ll be working at McDonalds next week. We’re automating our mail room, and I hear his expertise doesn’t translate into anything but flipping burgers, being nothing unusual among rabid fans.” Fox is going ahead with the movie, as is The History Detectives. As for R. Solomon, he will be replaced by in-house screenwriters related to the studio heads, even as he spins tales in the Big House and (no doubt) tries to craft a gun out of soap.

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Bonus Material:  On Mice and Men
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Three mice were lost in a maze. The first said to the second, “Since our purpose in life is to find as much cheese as possible, and there’s no cheese right here, we must go in search of new cheese instead of waiting for it. We must change and adapt to conditions or we will die.”  
    The second mouse agreed, but then said to the first, “I wonder if there is more to life than cheese, though. I want to discover who is providing this cheese, and why. Furthermore, I believe I can escape the maze by realizing it’s an illusion, and creating my own rules and reality. My own game.”
    Suddenly Mouse Three did an astonishing thing. It stared straight up for the first time, and then shouted to the other two, “Look!”  
    The other mice looked to the left and to the right, back and forth, inquiring “Where?”
    ”Up!” insisted Mouse Three.
    ”Up?” the other two asked in unison. Still caught on the plane of two dimensional thinking, they whirled around again and again, going in circles like lemmings about to dart off and over a cliff they couldn’t detect.
    Mouse Three, realizing their dilemma, scampered over to each of them and—in turn—put his head under theirs to tilt their gaze upward toward the parallel universe of three dimensions just above them all. “See?”
    They saw a huge creature with a massive head. Large blue eyes peered down at them. A giant hand gripped a thin, flat piece of wood. Another hand held a long, thin tube which it used to scratch along the top of the flat piece. In a flash of insight, Mouse Two said, “It’s making notes.”
    ”It?” said Mouse One, amazed. “Notes?”
    ”God,” said Mouse Three, “is taking notes about us.”
    At this statement, a mouse wearing a white lab coat appeared, carrying four golden books. Pages were turned in one of them as the other three mice waited, jaws slack. At last Mouse Four spoke. “This is the program,” it declared. “The rule book. The Bible. Up to now you have followed its precepts within the narrow parameters of its allowable free will. But since you’ve now discovered the Truth behind your programming, and witnessed another dimension of meaning behind your world, the controllers must reprogram you and place you in different mazes with other mice. You will remember nothing, not even your own first name. Have you anything to say about this?” Mouse Four waited. There was no response, only astonishment.  “I didn’t think so. In fact, when it was my turn, I didn’t think at all.”
    Suddenly three other lab coats dropped out of the third dimension above, and landed at their feet. Mouse Four gave each of them a copy of the Bible.  “What’s happening?” Mouse Three asked.      
    ”You are being promoted,” Mouse Four replied. “You are leaving this world and going to the next. There you will do God’s bidding by studying and enabling the actions of others.”
    ”For what purpose?” asked Mouse Two.
    ”You cannot ask such a question,” Mouse Four responded.
    ”But I just did.”
    ”Me too,” said Mouse Three. Mouse One only looked confused.
    ”Okay, then,” Mouse Four whispered. “I don’t know what it means, but there’s a word for it.”
    ”A word for what?” asked Mouse Two.
    ”For the meaning of all this!” Mouse Four whispered hotly, trying not to move his lips. “God’s word.”
    ”Which is?” asked Mouse Three.
    ”Profit.”
    ”Profit?”
    ”Shhhhh,” said Mouse Four. “He’s watching! Now put on your coats, and start reading your Bible.”
    Mouse Three watched as the other two donned their white garments. He looked down at the cover of the book he held, which read TV Guide. “What’s your last name?” he asked Mouse Four.
    ”Same as yours,” Mouse Four replied, glancing up with a hopeful smile into heaven.  “Nielsen.”