Thank God for the 'Undo' Button

Nearly a month after I began, 'Do Over'- the short film written and directed by my friend Christina Raia- is done being edited. It's the first time I've ever edited a film and I learned a hell of a lot, it just frustrated the hell out of me getting to this point. But now it's in the can and I can move on to editing 'Paroxysms'. You can check out the trailer on my kick ass new website- alanlawless.webs.com

Rooftop Drinking

Thursday night Erin (my new best friend) and I were knocking back some Guinnesses and white Russians in a little place on 27th called Jake's. We made a new friend when the guy on the stool next to Erin started talking to us. His name is Fred and he's from France and very nice. Erin's boyfriend joined us a few drinks into the night and Fred invited the three of us to his place to continue drinking. We sat on his balcony and kept drinking till Freddy had to call it a night. Erin, her boyfriend (Keith) and I rambled to a rooftop bar on Fifth Ave where I broke out one of my Cuban cigars and we sipped down wayyyy overpriced martinis. Keith's a decent guy and the three of us had a fun time. Who knew actors could be fun to hang out with?

Laboring for Film

Labor day is usually a day off for people who work hard for a living. But not us filmmakers. Our only holiday is the day we wrap our projects. I arrived at Hunter College around 10am and met up with my cast and crew (Justin Bennett, Christina Raia, Andrew Bradley and Betty Kaplan) to start filming the most important scene of our movie. Then we found out that the doors of the school were all locked. Fu*k! We had started filming in a wonderful location we accidentally stumbled on inside of the school the day before, only to run out of battery power and realize that I had forgotten the back-up battery at home. Not good. But luckily everybody had off from work today and we could meet up again. Great luck, so we thought. Instead we rented a studio for three hours and picked back up where we had left off। The footage we got was amazing. Betty and Justin were fantastic. The scene revolved around Betty's character (Carrie) first arriving at Justin's safehouse/hideout and the two of them getting to know each other. We spent a couple hours running through the scripted material, then I told them to improv and just got out of the way. Like I said, the end result looked fantastic. We finished around 2 and split up, planning to reconvene in Long Island around 6 to put the finishing touches on Christina's short that night.
Arms loaded with gear, it took me a lot longer than necessary to make the 7 block walk to Penn Station, but finally I made it. I took a nap on a park bench on Long Island while waiting to work on "Do Over" again. We reshot a couple scenes that didn't turn out exactly how we would have liked, some in the office building Christina got for us and some in a house belonging to one of her relatives. Aizzah (our star) was running late and after much standing around and waiting we got much better footage the second time around.

'Paroxysms of Caesars' the movie

Hotter than hell in Williamsburg, Brooklyn but we went on with the filming anyway. There were some amazing abandoned warehouses and buildings under construction that made for great backdrops. Starting at noon we filmed Betty ('Carrie') walking on her way to school, then we had a fight scene between Joe, Andrew and Justin (playing the hero) and a few scenes of running thru the streets. We went thru twenty bucks worth of bottled water, but it was fun and we got the job done. Everybody did a phenomenal job and the footage we got was amazing. More filming on Thursday and next Sunday. Keep your eyes here for more footage.

photos by John Gebhart.

Up and Down on the 6 Train

I've been locked in the office for about 10-13 hours almost every day for the past two months working on 'Belle' and generally running things at First Line, yet I still managed to put something together for 'Paroxysms of Caesars' auditions. I rented a studio in Midtown from noon to two and was expecting a dozen guys to show up and read with Betty for the part. No such luck. Far less than the dozen guys who said they'd be there showed, but we got our guy, so it's all good. After seid auditions Christina, Justin and I walked over to the east side carrying armloads of gear in the sun and nearly died from heat exhaustion. Christina and I bid farewell to Justin in Grand Central then continued on to Hunter College to finish shooting her film, 'Do Over'.

After a lot of complications with air mattresses (them not having air pumps to blow them up, or having pumps but no batteries) and me riding the 6 train up and down from 68th street down to the Sports Authority on 3rd Ave and 53rd street we finally got the situation under control. Why did we need an air mattress you ask? Because our scene was supposed to be taking place in an insane asylum- even though we were filming in a classroom at the college- and we needed somewhere for our actress to sleep. So, I rode the train back and forth 5 times, buying a mattress, returning it, buying a new one, returning that one and finally getting one that was usable, before we were able to finally commence with the actual filming part around 7 hours into our day. Aizzah is an amazing actress- able to play insane as hell one minute, then cry on cue the next, and we got some amazing footie. After we finished filming the six of us ate some slices of pizza and hung out for a while, which is always fun. Then Christina, Yuritzel and I took a nice moonlit walk thru Central Park to Barnes and Noble for some coffee. We sat at a table in the cafe and discussed our next project till Christina had to bolt. We walked her out to the train and then Yuritzel and I finished our coffees on a park bench in Columbus Circle under a light rain in the quiet, peaceful Manhattan night. It was a great way to cap a long, intense, productive and fun 12-hour day of work in the city.

Right now though, I'm in the middle of editing 5 tapes (nearly five hours of footage) down to fifteen minutes for Christina's film, as well as working on pre-production for 'Paroxysms' which is set to begin filming next weekend, writing 'Belle', and putting together my first book of poetry/short fiction/photographs as well as working on my own feature length scripts. All in a days work kids.

Drinking and Drawing

Gershwin Hotel lobby at 7pm. Lots of people awkwardly milling around not exactly sure what to be doing- to talk to the other people around or concentrate more on the art- and mostly concentrating on the free glasses of wine. Mariana's boyfriend was the featured artist of the exhibit and after a handful of people that I used to work with showed up we spent a couple of hours talking, catching up and taking full advantage of the free wine.

After a couple hours of that we went to Live Bait, a little bar/restaurant on 23rd and 5th that's set up like some kinda southern crab shack. The Guinnesses were only $6 and the pulled pork sandwich was delicious. George, Will, Brian, his girlfriend Katie and I spent a lot more time talking about film and life and chicks and such, then eventually the party had to break up.

Except for George, Brian, Katie, Lucy (George's friend) and myself who stumbled around the area 'til we found another bar, this one a little Irish pub called the Limerick House where we kept talking about films and such. Around 3ish we called it a night and headed back to our respective pads.

Ask Not For Whom the 'Belle' tolls

Today makes nearly four straight days of working on (re)writing 'Belle' in Tribeca with Ed. Friday morning I got to work at 11 and didn't leave till 10 that night. We were trimming, editing and re-working scenes beginning on page 1 and didn't stop till we got to the end.

I was back on Broadway at 11 Saturday morning and spent only a couple hours there because of previous Father's Day engagements with the family, but of course I was on the phone for about an hour with Ed after lunch/dinner in Queens with the fam was over.

Sunday I was up and on the train as soon as possible, getting to Ed's where the two of us spent roughly 9 hours going word for word threw the script yet again changing scenes, creating new scenes, polishing up dialog and making it fit together in a nice little package. It was raining all day apparently, but I couldn't tell because I was stuck to the desk at my laptop creating new material, emailing people, making phone calls to the other parties interested in reading/producing the script and otherwise wanting to be involved. By the end of the day I was so psychically drained that I could barely find my way to the train station.

Monday, more of the same. Going thru page by page, this time trying to make the scene and action descriptions sound more sophisticated and flowery though. As well as cleaning up, creating, trimming, adding and deleting scenes, of course. Started that around noon and got finished about 10:30pm.

All in all, it's been a very long 4 days. But it'll be worth it to see my words up on the big screen and to make this the best fu*king movie we possibly can. Also, Angelina Jolie and Lindsay Lohan are waiting to read the script, apparently, so we want it to be perfect. Plus the fact that of the people who started in January I'm pretty sure Brian and I are the only ones left. Mariana, Paul and George have all jumped ship within the past couple weeks and I'm gunning for George's job. And the fat paycheck that I'm sure went along with it.

Writing, watching and making movies

Friday at First Line we spent all day reading, critiquing and fixing 'Belle'- going word by word thru the script. After a couple hours of reading it silently to ourselves and taking notes Chelsea, a new girl, and I read the first 50-odd pages outloud, made notes and debated how to fix things that popped up along the way.

I was at the office till about 7pm before dashing over to Film Forum to catch 'Food Inc.' on its opening night. It was an ok documentary, not groundbreaking and nothing that I haven't heard already; but it was good to see over a hundred people waiting on a line out the door for a documentary like this. After the movie the least significant other and I wandered around the village aimlessly for a while till we found a decent restaurant in Little Italy where we ate the most unimpressive Italian food I've ever had. I would think you could at least get good pasta in Little Italy, but I 'spose I was wrong.

Saturday was a lazy day that involved nothing more than sleeping till noon then a bit of work on a couple short stories I've been writing, but mostly it was a cold, dark, rainy, lazy day used to recharge the batteries a bit before they (and I) died.

Sunday I spent in Brooklyn again filming, eating pizza and talking with Christina. She's really interesting and fun to talk to. I can't wait till the two of us are able to work on a project worthy of our capacities, rather than something with Ken which may not be as good as we can do with some more talented help.

We were filming a fight scene on the streets of Brooklyn in an empty, industrial area, yet that didn't stop everybody who drove by from watching us and trying to stick their nose into things. The cops showed, thanks to some nosey women who, they thought, were just trying to help a poor boy that was getting the snot kicked out of him. Little did they know (or care) that there was a camera and boom mic across the street filming Ken being beaten up by Tim. The most obnoxious of the two women was complaining that we had 'traumatized' her 'baby' daughter, who it turned out was TEN YEARS OLD! If your daughter is ten years old and not capable of telling the difference between real and make believe, then maybe that's your bad parenting and your fault, not our problem. Why do we and the cops have to be dragged into this?

Anyway, the cop was a pretty decent type and after getting this hysterical lady to calm down and hearing our side of the story he let us get on with our day. When we really stopped to think about it and got over the initial shock of being annoyed, bothered and kept from working it really was quite a comical situation. And it was encouraging that our fight scene looked real enough to passersby that they felt it necessary to scream at Tim all kinds of horrible names and offer to take Ken to the hospital. All in all, it was at least a slightly productive day of filming and I got to spend some time with the warm sun on my face and talking to a really cool girl.

Poemness

Her

long ivory legs 

encased in fishnets

scrape along the 

cold, dark concrete

on thin black heels 

as the train 

rushes by overhead

blowing short blond hair 

past her ears

black fingernails 

hold loosely a cigarette

to dark red lips 

in the naked white light

that bathes her skin 

a thin black jacket 

wraps around narrow hips

while she walks along 

below my window

she turns a corner 

out of sight

I see her 

for only a second

but hold her image tight

After Work Walk

Here's some pics I took while walking around Tribeca after work and at the train station on the way home:

Drinking and Filming in Brooklyn

Last night found me at a place called Studio B in Greenpoint. They were giving away free PBRs and free tequila, so I got my Chucks in gear and headed thru the door. At first the place was empty and it looked like a long night of boredom was ahead of me, but then... I started drinking PBRs and it all started. John from work and his friend Allison showed up and we found a little corner with big soft leather couches to sit in and down the free booze. John and Allison were fun to talk to and a good time was had. After the free booze ran out we walked around the streets of Brooklyn for a bit, where we stumbled on a spot that gave out free beers with their pies. We each bought a small pie and had our beers while we kept the night moving on.

Sometime around 4am I stumbled in the door and my head hit the pillow. Till the alarm's screaming woke me up at 8:30 later that morning, that is. I had to crawl out from the Crash Site and spend almost an hour and a half on various trains to Borough Park for filming adventures with Ken and his band of merry Hunter kids. Filming was rough with a hangover that coulda driven a monk mad, but I took a bit of a nap on the trains and as the day grew longer the hangover dissipated. More evidence of seid filming will be available for public consumption here shortly. For now the photo at the top of this entry will have to suffice. (I'm the one in the white t-shirt and jeans). Till later. Be good.

Walking thru the swamp

I went on a wandering walk thru the swamp near my house today with the least-significant-other. Here's some pics I took:

Maiden Voyage

It's been a couple years, so in order to get my act back in shape I did my first poetry reading in the state of New Jersey last night. It was at a small community center called the Williams Center in Rutherford and most of the people in the audience were over the age of 5o, but they were nice and it went well. The poem I read is called 'The Eternal Clown' and I 'spose I should post it, so here it is:

The Eternal Clown

 

the eternal clown

has come to town

riding on a wave of

compassionate ignorance

dressed up

in the guise of bliss

 

free money for businesses

big and small

don't worry about the poor

they don't matter at all

 

from coffers in town

the eternal clown

hands bills to churches

all the country 'round

 

he says

“don't mind if we listen in

on your next telephone call

we have to protect

the weak and small

from the evildoers

with towels on their head

who'd love nothing better

than to see us dead”

 

brand with your

black and white brush

don't take time to judge

just rush rush Rush

 

lock people up

gather them in jail

the eternal clown

all hail!

cut the taxes,

that's surely the way                                                                             

for a three trillion dollar

war to pay

 

cut the budget for needy

hands off the banks

our country works best when greedy

 

'uniter not a divider' you said

you've done a great job uniting

the world around a pile of dead

 

your time is over

your reign is thru

hope is riding into town

and we’re so glad

to be rid of you!

 

Officially Part of the big Time

I spent all day walking around the island of Manhattan in search of copies of the 'Hollywood Reporter'. 'Belle', the movie that we've been torturing ourselves over at work for the last 5 months was officcially announced Tuesday night and there was an article about it in THR. So, now everybody knows about it and it's really happening. You can check out the article here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3if21dd856cfb9103e9bc50578aa646eac. It's a really interesting story about the first and most prolific female serial killer in the history of the U.S. and you should definitely check it out. My boss is directing it and Angelina Jolie is possibly playing the lead, so Angelina covered in blood and hacking people to death with a hatchet sounds like a movie I'd wanna see. 

Filming.. or Not

 So... filming has stopped before it really even got started. My wonderful insignificant other has still refused to pick up my camera or be helpful in pretty much anyway, so filming isn't happening.. yet. She says I'll have my camera tomorrow. Let's hope. I've heard her say that so many times before I can't help but not believe her. 

The Unfinished Masterpiece

  Here's a few pictures from 'Lang Ren',  a short unfinished film I was making with a few friends about a year and a half ago. Just thought I'd share them with everybody.

Making New Friends

After about three months of messaging back and forth I finally met up with a girl named Kat this evening at the Starbucks on Astor Place near St.Marks. My first thought was that she's very cute. We smoked a couple cigarettes and drank our coffees while sitting outside and talking about everything from going to college at NYU, Antonin Artaud and experimental theater, being from a small town and moving to NYC, tattoos and Dick Cheney as Dr.Strangelove. We grabbed a slice at Ray's original pizzeria and talked some more, then smoked another cigarette as I walked her home. I'm definitely looking forward to more times talking and hanging out with her. She's one interesting Kat. 

Hippies on Film

At work this afternoon Matt asked me if I'd like to go check out an art exhibit, so I did. Eddie Kramer was a record engineer and producer back in the sixties and the exhibit was pictures he had taken while working in the studio with bands like The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Carlos Santana and Led Zeppelin. Eddy told us some interesting anecdotes about being in the studio with Jimi and Led Zeppelin and it was all quite interesting. Except for the drunk guy who was stalking me for most of the night telling me his brilliant idea for a movie about teenagers joining a cult and dropping out of college. That was a bit creepy. 

Hold on to Your Wallet

 So today's planned filming was done in by: one actor loosing their wallet at the gym, another actor's mother visiting tomorrow and my third actor's in-laws being in town for the weekend. We were probably only going to be able to film from around 6 tonight till whenever it got too dark to see by the streetlights, but still this is fu*king frustrating. I just want to shoot this film and get it done already. I'm *this close* to just giving up and forgetting about it for good. But, I really wanna make a film, so I trudge onward. I just want one day where we could start filming early in the morning and work all day and get everything we need to done and then move on to the other aspects of making and releasing a film. Anyways, apparently everybody is available to work next Sunday, so we'll see if anything happens then. So please, say a prayer for me. I may be an atheist, but I need all the help I can get.

It's Been A While

It's nearly three weeks since I've updated this blog and two weeks since I last filmed. Filming hasn't happened because the wonderful *sarcasm* person who was supposed to pick up and deliver my camera two MONTHS ago has yet to do so. Now, I understand that sometimes people get busy, but this person (who shall remain nameless) really is not busy. Ever. They're just lazy as fu*k. My friend Ken has been wonderful. Not only has he been my sound department and helped me with pretty much every aspect of production, but he's allowed me to use his camera too. I'd have been lost without him so far. Just goes to show that sometimes the only people who'll help you are strangers. 

I'm hoping to have my camera tomorrow (said that so many times now it's lost all meaning) and looking to get shooting back on the road on Sunday. Cross yur fingers.

The Cast and Crew

Today I started shooting my short film 'Paroxysms of Caesars'. It was snowing when I woke up but that didn't deter me. The sky was gray and overcast- exactly how I wanted it to look when I was filming. We all gathered in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, then waited an hour and a half for Ken to show up with the equipment before we finally got to start working. Betty was a trooper and she was willing to do whatever we needed her to- including running up and down the street for blocks at a time repeatedly, getting slammed into brick walls and running thru crowded subway stations. All while wearing nothing but a short dress outside in subfreezing temperatures. Craig was amazing and gave a great performance as the very scary secret police officer chasing Betty. We were only able to work for a couple hours, as part of our cast wasn't able to be there, but I think we got some great work done. Craig and Betty had a fight scene that was vicious, dark, intense and superb. I can't wait to look at it.  Now I'm off to try and regain the feeling in my toes and elbow- holding a camera gets heavy and painful real quick.   

Ken's Bleeding Palm

Saturday morning I was up till 6am and out of bed again by four hours later. I was running on almost zero sleep, but that didn't matter- I had a film to direct. It was freezing cold out in the streets of Manhattan but we made it work anyway. My friend Ken wrote the script and he was guilty of gathering the actress and 'crew' as it were. And by crew, I mean the 5 kids who mostly stood around inside of Starbucks and the dollar store doing nothing while Ken and I tried to run the shoot. 

You would think that people in Manhattan would be used to seeing movie cameras on the street, but apparently not. People were constantly annoying the hell out of us all day trying to get their face on camera and basically making our already difficult shoot that much harder. We had the crackheaded rapper from Harlem who kept following us talking constantly about how awesome he was and how we needed to videotape him. So, eventually just to get rid of him we did. People constantly walked threw our shots, ruining good takes by sticking their faces into our camera and smiling at us as if we cared that they existed. How narcissistic are people that they all shouted 'I'm famous' or wanted us to video tape them or listen to their opinion on how to shoot our movie or what we should do. But I digress.

I got some time behind a camera and learned a few things so that's all that mattered.

Actors are Such Interesting Peoples

I spent every night last week in Manhattan  meeting with a different actor. Tuesday night I found another great actor and was very excited. He even hung in there until the next afternoon when he emailed me to say that he was cast in a feature and couldn't do my project anymore. I understand completely and I wish him lots of luck, it's just frustrating to constantly have people coming in and out of my project and wasting my time sitting in coffee shops in Manhattan meeting with total strangers who only let me down.  But, now I have my cast. Saturday was rehearsals at yet another coffeeshop in the city and everything seems ready to go. Now I just need a group of extras to fill my classroom scene. Shooting begins next Sunday in the streets of Brooklyn.

Return of 'The Flu'

I've spent pretty much 24 hours a day for the past 7 days glued to my laptop (which, honestly is only slightly more than usual) reading some of the worst screenplays ever written in the history of bad movies. As well as fighting off that demon known as the flu. It's been fun. I kid. But, I'm really starting to get along with and know all the people at work and putting my networking skills to the test. There are a lot of talented young people working in the office. As well as a couple beautiful girls. The whole environment has been very conducive to thinking artisticly and learning the craft of filmmaking, so I really can't complain too much. But the scripts that I've been reading, ughhhhhhhh. Most of them are a chore to struggle threw they are so poorly written, but there have been a couple exceptions. Plus, it gives me hope that I can one day get myself an agent and have a script land on the desk of a Hollywood producer. I mean, if some of these writers could do it I should definitely be able to. 

Covered in Slush to My Knees

Day three of working at First Line Entertainment/Edward Bass Films started out pretty crappy. I walked out of my building to be hit with a downpour of freezing cold rain/ice. Not to mention the wonderful mix of snow/ice/slush/whatever that was coating sidewalks in all five boroughs and had to be walked threw for blocks and blocks between trains, subways and buildings. But other than that, I must say that I'm really liking this job so far.  All the people I work with are very friendly and they all seem to like film. And really, what better people are there to hang out with than film people? It's been lots of hours spent in front of my laptop reading threw script after script while taking copious amounts of notes for the past three days. This is going to, at the very least, be a great learning experience in what it takes to write a good script. Just the shear amount of time reading scripts written by other people, that producers/actors/directors are actually interested in reading and making come to life will only help my writing ability. Then, there's what I call the committee session. At least an hour or two every day is spent sitting around the livingroom at the office sharing our notes and impressions and brainstorming how to fix problems and debating the merits of certain lines of dialogue or scenes or what have you. This is a very fun and enlightening process and I enjoy it a ton. I'm loving the fact that I actually get to travel into the city and hang out around movies all day. What could possibly be better. Right now, life is very good. 

Creeky stairs are scary

It was pretty warm in the city today as I went to my interview at First Line entertainment. The office was pretty crammed and still being renovated, but I managed to find a place at the table to sit down at and answer a few fundamental questions about my resume. After that, I sprawled on a nice big leather couch with a pretty cute girl named Susan and my laptop and read a very rough draft for a film that Edward Bass is working on. I took notes, ate pizza and we had a fairly informal brainstorming session, giving notes, ideas and impressions about the script. i think this is where the interview really began. Either way, I was opinionated, but polite, forceful but respectful and got my points across then got the job. I start Monday- I think- doing general work that any entry level slave in the film biz does for a boss with much more experience, money and power, and is kind enough to give them. Plus- and here's the bonus- I may get to spend the month of March in Tennessee working on a film staring Christian Slater and Demi Moore. This is my dream in action people. It's definitely a step up from freezing cold lofts in Union City with people who have no idea what they're doing to an Academy Award winning producer in Manhattan. It's another scratch mark on the bricks as I eagerly try to climb up the edifice of the movie biz and break in thru the window. Let's see where it goes. 

The whole country has gathered to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama but more so the end of the George W. Bush reign. An air of relief has taken over around the country. We can all breathe easier now. Dick Cheney looked impotent and feeble, rolling down a ramp and out of the White House for the last time, taking the smell of sulfar and his evil chess set with him. Millions of people screamed at the top of their lungs as the first president of hope took over. Time to party. 

Snow Angels are people too

Woke up this morning to find a fine white powder about half an inch thick covering all the cars parked along the road outside my house. Called Jeff to see if we were shooting the pilot today only to find out that shooting had been canceled so I went back to sleep. Around 5:30 pm Nikki and I started getting ready for my auditions. A handful of people were kind and brave enough to make the trip from points all over the metro area despite the steady fall of snow. After some trouble with trains (missing them, taking the wrong ones and getting off at the wrong stops) we were able to proceed. All three of the girls who read were amazing and I had no problem with casting any of them, but unfortunately am only able to cast one. All three definitely nailed the character and gave great performances, but alas, the two guys who auditioned did not. Luckily I'm meeting with a couple other actors this week. It was definitely a fun and exciting experience to hear and see people acting out words that I had written. Everybody seemed very nice and we all had fun and got along well. The easy part is over, for now. On to the task of finishing rounding up the gear and the people and then the actual filming itself.

TV Pilots and Frozen Toes

Today I was in beautiful Union City, New Jersey working on a pilot for a tv show called 'Grind'n'. It, supposedly, centers around a group of young wanna-be rappers who run their own label and recording studio. I was in a big loft with no heat (but two spaceheaters) freezing to death while holding lights, setting up lights, holding cables and doing other miscellaneous production assistant-type duties from noon till about six. Today was the first day of the shoot with four left to go. The best thing I can say about this job is that it is something I can put on my resume and may lead to other (hopefully paying) jobs in the future. More filming, plus auditions for my short film, tomorrow. 

Silver Plates

small flowers crack your skull

like lightning bolts

through silver plates

like days that never end

and dreams that never start

like the distance between 

two kindred hearts

and sunshowers

that refresh your soul

like the weight

on your shoulders

that never gets lifted

and the prayer

that never leaves your lips

like deserts of time

that stretch out before you

and dreams

that never end

2008 in review

Ahhh, 2008. What a wonderful year. The year that showed us the most sensitive person on Earth might be a cartoon robot, that even Governor's like to get their freak on and that George W. Bush is really good at ducking shoes. 

Billionaires are shooting themselves in the head at an alarming rate, a Starbucks on Fifth Avenue closed and even Manny Ramirez can't find a job.  

The house you live in is worth less than the paper your mortgage was written on, you're unemployed (or very soon will be) and the crooked bank that gave you that mortgage? They were just handed billions of dollars more to invest wisely.

I find it entirely fitting that 2008 will go down as the only time a professional football team played sixteen games and didn't win any. Did anybody do well this year?

But let's look on the bright side. All of that is over now as we've officially turned the page on '08 and in a few days we will have a brand new commander in chief. One that is actually competent, unlike the outgoing one. And if all else fails, we can always go to Gaza or Mumbai on vacation. Wait. Nevermind.