PO I NT/L ESS_SP ACE.

Made another. No life.

How about a nice ROUND-UP?

Here is a quick round-up of what my 23 heroes are currently hard at work on. You may be interested in some of them. I’m excited, of course, for their projects to come to light. It’s what I live for, people!

• Thom Yorke is touring Europe with Atoms For Peace.
• Steve Carell is promoting THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE, out this Friday, and he is filming ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND CONTINUES.
• John Steinbeck, unfortunately, is no longer doing anything.
• Bill Maher is busy hosting and writing for his weekly political program on HBO, Real Time, usually doing stand-up on weekends.
• Sarah Silverman is working on a new comedy web series called Jash.
• David Lynch is currently working on a script for a new feature film that will star Laura Dern.
• Amy Goodman is busy reporting the news five days a week for Democracy Now!.
• Tom Waits is doing god-knows-what, hopefully writing new songs, possibly preparing for Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming animation, PINOCCHIO.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, too, I’m afraid, is long dead; Walt Disney, William Faulkner, George Carlin, and James Joyce, are no longer with us either.
• Ricky Gervais is working on the new Muppet movie, called THE MUPPETS…AGAIN!, which is set to premiere March 21, 2014, in just over a year.
• Jerry Seinfeld is touring occasionally (I’m seeing him on Friday!) and working on the second series of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which is set to premiere in the next couple months.
• Stephen Colbert is working on the Colbert Report, which he hosts four nights a week.
• Will Ferrell is hard at work filming ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND CONTINUES and will begin work on his new television series The Spoils of Babylon in the coming weeks.
• Rainn Wilson is currently filming the one-hour series finale of The Office, which airs May 16, 2013.
• Christopher Nolan is putting the finishing touches with Zack Snyder on MAN OF STEEL, which he produced and which premieres June 14, 2013. He is likely already at work on his new film, INTERSTELLAR, which just got an official release date of November 7, 2014.
• J. K. Rowling is working with the BBC to bring her latest novel, The Casual Vacancy, to the small screen; she is likely at work on writing a second adult novel.
• George R. R. Martin is very hard at work, among other things, writing his upcoming epic, The Winds of Winter, volume six of his medieval saga A Song of Ice and Fire.
• Kristen Wiig is filming ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND CONTINUES with Carell and Ferrell.
• Paul Thomas Anderson is working on his next film, an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, set for release in 2014.

There you have it!

There they are again! In case you didn’t notice, I enjoy making these collages.

"Something else I’m a little tired of hearing about, the Baby Boomers—whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: “Gimme it, it’s mine!” “Gimme that, it’s mine!” These people were given everything. Everything was handed to them, and they took it all, took it all—sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—and they stayed loaded for twenty years and had a free ride. But now they’re staring down the barrel of middle-age burnout, and they don’t like it. They don’t like it, so they’ve turned self-righteous, and they wanna make things hard on younger people. They tell ‘em abstain from sex, say no to drugs. As for the rock ‘n’ roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago so they can buy pasta machines and StairMasters and soybean futures. Soybean futures. You know something? They’re cold, bloodless people. It’s in their slogans, it’s in their rhetoric: “No pain, no gain.” “Just do it.” “Life is short, play hard.” “Shit happens, deal with it” “Get a life.” These people went from “do your own thing” to “just say no!” They went from “love is all you need” to “whoever winds up with the most toys wins”, and they went from cocaine to Rogaine. And you know something? They’re still counting grams, only now it’s fat grams. And the worst of it is, the rest of us have to watch these commercials on TV for Levi’s loose-fitting jeans and fat-ass Docker pants because these degenerate, yuppie, Boomer cocksuckers couldn’t keep their hands off the croissants and the Häagen-Dasz, and their big fat asses have spread all over and they have to wear fat-ass Docker pants. Fuck these Boomers, fuck these yuppies … and fuck everybody, now that I think of it."

George Carlin

"What I always do is I meet people individually whom I’ve castigated as a group. I always just tell them, ‘well, I’ll give you special dispensation.’ Because I honestly love and enjoy people one-by-one, and I see the universe in their eyes. When I look at each person, I can see something I’ve never seen before. It’s when they begin to clot, into groups, that I begin to take offense."

George Carlin, C-SPAN’s National Press Club, 1999

"You don’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. The owners of this country went to the same universities and fraternities, they’re on the same boards of directors, they belong to the same country clubs, they have like interests, they don’t need to call a meeting because they know what’s good for them, and they’re getting it."

George Carlin, Politically Incorrect, (This is why “dark money” is so dangerous.)

I can’t even begin to express the awe I have for the man in this video. Anyone who watches this and does not find George Carlin’s words to be the most in tune with truth is either deaf, dumb, blind, or all three.

"Men are terrified that their pricks are inadequate and so they have to compete with one another to feel better about themselves, and since war is the ultimate competition, basically men are killing each other in order to improve their self-esteem. You do not have to be a historian or political scientist to see the bigger dick foreign policy theory at work. It sounds like this: “What? They have bigger dicks?! Bomb them!” And off course the bombs and the rockets and the bullets are all shaped like dicks. It is a subconscious need to project the penis into other peoples’ affairs. It is called FUCKING WITH PEOPLE!"

George Carlin

George Carlin on ‘Baby Boomers’.

"The arrogant nature of golf is evident in the design and scale of the game. Think of how big a golf course is. It’s huge; you can’t see one end of it from the other. But the ball is only an inch and a half in diameter. So will someone please explain to me what these pinheaded pricks need with all that land? America has over 17,000 golf courses. They average over 150 acres apiece. That’s three million-plus acres. Four thousand, eight hundred and twenty square miles. We could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware’s worth of housing for the homeless on the land currently wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, racist game."

George Carlin,

A comprehensive interview with the iconic comedian George Carlin. He recounts his early career from childhood dreams of becoming an actor like Danny Kaye all the way up to his 1960’s transformation into a leading voice of the counterculture and then he details the evolution of his writing and finding his true voice on stage in the 1990’s. For Carlin fans (if you’re not what’s wrong with you and why are you watching this?) the final ten minutes is remarkably touching as he chokes up discussing plans he was forming to star in a one man Broadway show which never came to be and then reflects over his successful career and how wonderfully fulfilling his life has been.

He was such a brilliant, unique mind.

Hero № 16: George Carlin

Wiki Bio: George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, actor and writer/author, who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums. Carlin was noted for his black humor as well as his thoughts on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and various taboo subjects.

Accolades:

—Mark Twain Prize for American Humor winner

—five-time Emmy award nominee

—two-time American Comedy award winner, two-time nominee; Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy recipient

Best Work:

Video Interview:

Live Stand Up Performance:

Best Words:

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

I guess I can’t say “Happy Birthday” to a dead man, but today George Carlin would have turned 75 years old. I wish he was here to provide us with more of his wit, more of his truth, and more of his no-nonsense hilarity in these even crazier times.

One of his favorite things to say:

“When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.”

He got that right.

Congratulations, George! {and other “po i nt/l ess” indulgences}

Hello! I’d like to share with the poor followers of this blog that I have decided to rethink a few things. You all know I have personal heroes—and these are people whose works or beliefs have had HUGE influence over me—because they have changed me for the better, because they have opened my eyes in one form or another and to one degree or another.

Why does this matter? And why haven’t you yet mentioned this lucky “George” person from the title? Well, based on the above “criteria” to be one of my heroes, if you will, I have decided to make the great comedic genius George Carlin one of my heroes, replacing Orson Welles (who was sort of a filler in the first place). Actually, Carlin replaces James Joyce, and Joyce will now replace Welles.

Carlin, in the last week and a half, has had an explosive impact on me. What a fucking joke, you must thinking. What kind of a psycho comes across a comedian and within a week makes him a hero of his? I know, I know. But like I said, I had some deep thinking. And my deep thinking, thanks to Carlin himself actually, has provided me with a brand new lens, or perspective, on life. Carlin has shown me, through his comedy, that the world is a fucked-up place with fucked-up people and that people, including me, are just full of bullshit.

Thank you, Carlin. You’ve become a personal, albeit minor, hero of mine. Thanks for your positive, albeit cynical, influence on me.