Lines from "The Card Dealer"

What be her cards, you ask? Even these-
The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
Skilled to make the base seem brave;
The club, for smiting in the dark;
The spade, to dig a grave.

And do you ask what game she plays?
With me 'tis lost or won;
With thee it is playing still, with him
It is not well begun;
But 'tis a game she plays with all,
Beneath the sway o' the sun.

Thou seest the card that falls,- she knows
The card that followeth:
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath;
When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue,
And know she calls it Death.

-Dante Gabriel Rossetti-

Famous Romantic One-Liners from Movies Rewritten for the Non-Comital

Don't know if it's good enough for McSweeney's, but here you are:

1. "Here's having you in my peripheral vision, kid."

2. "You had me rationalizing the contingency of possibly returning to you at hello."

3. "Love is never having to say your sorry, depending, of course, on the nature of the offence."

4. "Dito, with caveats."

Classifications of Names to Avoid When Naming Your Child

1. Christian Virtues. (Sobriety, Chastity, etc.) The pilgrims tried it, God love them, but they didn't quite swing it. Plus we all know what girls named Chastity end up like.

2. Pretty Much All Manner of Botanical Phenomena. (Leaf, Flower, Fern) Let's leave the 60s where they wilted.

3. Popes. (Pius, Innocent, Boniface, Clement) Gregory and any permutation of John Paul excepted.

4. If you're an American who has recently converted to Islam, avoid naming your child. Have someone else do it for you.

5. Obscure U.S. presidents. (Rutherford, Millard, Grover) And for fans of Truman, actually make the middle initial stand for something this time, you smarmy bastards.

6. Minor Prophets. (Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Obadiah) Hosea is fair game if you're black.

7. T.S. Eliot poems. (Prufrock, Gidding) If you want your kid to go through life with a "pair of ragged claws" complex, then fine, go for it.

8. Knights of the Round Table. (Gawain, Perceval, Bedevere) Let's dissolve this fellowship once and for all, shall we?

9. Dictators, but not because they tend to commit genocide. Their names just suck. (Slobidan, Pol, Ho)

10. Aloysius.

Special thanks to my brother James for his contributions.

In Which if You Know Me, This Post Will Either Fan the Flames of Your Vanity or Really Insult You

I don't know why I didn't post on this when it actually happened, but about a year ago I had the most vivid dream of my entire life. I dreamt that the people in Hollywood (may their tribe increase!) were making a biopic about me, and I was sitting in a theater watching the trailer. Strangely, I never appeared in the trailer but everyone I know or had ever met did. Most of my friends and family members were played by major actors, some of whom are not actually alive, which anachronism caused me to realize it was a dream and to wake up. A few nights ago, I had a more fragmentary version of the same dream, which was stranger this time, and relied more heavily on the musical theme from "M*A*S*H." Again, I was curiously abscent from my own movie. I like to think that this was only due to the fact that Collin Farrel had scheduling conflicts and could not commit to the role, but I digress.

Anyhoo, this is the casting as I remember it. I have arranged them in order of how apt I think the casting choice is. If you are not flattered by the person who played you, then try to remind my subconcious of somebody else next time.

1. Josh Gibbs- Philip Seymour Hoffman
2. Davis Wilson- Andy Samberg (of SNL "Lazy Sunday" fame)
3. Drew Nicholas- Vince Vaughn.
4. Dana Banks- Played by Winona Ryder, who was pretending to be Audrey Hepburn.
5. Daniel Cornell- James Franco
6. Chad Honsinger-Daniel Craig, sans British accent and Bond Gadgetry.
7. Katie Botkin- Anne Hathaway.
8. James Banks- Al Pacino, c. 1972. This was problematic casting, and Pacino/James kept intersplicing dialogue from the first two Godfather movies and the "Attica, Attica!" line from Dog Day Afternoon into my movie. And for the record the casting director in the dream remarked that this casting only took place because Toby Maguire was busy.
9. Adrian Klingensmith- Hillary Swank. This was the conscious part of my brain acting up, since
I remember commenting on the resemblance before.
10. Ashleigh Hebert- Selma Hayek. Ash, you should be totally flattered.
11. Asher Weinbaum- This was out of left field; as it happened, the actor bold enough to step into this role in live-action form is not yet born, so his likeness was reproduced on screen via motion-capture animation.
12. Marshall Pierce- Jake Gyllenhaal. It's nothing personal.
13. Jeff Moss- Sean Penn. Again, I don't make the rules, I just apply them subconciously.
14. They weren't actually in the movie, but Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper all wandered onto the set at one point. This was cool.

There were about a hundred others, but these were the most eyebrow arching I thought.

A Simultaneous Aphorism

"You know, sex scenes in movies should be banned because they cause global warming."

-D,.T., and J. Banks

Which Would You Rather Have Named After You?

A city or an adjective?

A Movie Note

"Rescue Dawn" with Christian Bale is a really good war drama that's not really big on politics and reminded me of "The Thin Red Line," also a good was flick. Also reminded me of "The New World," if you like that sort of thing.