Halloween: Darkness Falls Across the Land, The Midnite Hour is Close at Hand ...

Darkness Falls Across The Land
The Midnite Hour Is Close At Hand
Creatures Crawl In Search Of Blood
To Terrorize
Y’awl’s Neighbourhood
And Whosoever Shall Be Found
Without The Soul For Getting Down
Must Stand And Face The Hounds Of Hell
And Rot Inside A Corpse’s Shell
The Foulest Stench Is In The Air
The Funk Of Forty Thousand Years
And Grizzy Ghouls From Every Tomb
Are Closing In To Seal Your Doom
And Though You Fight To Stay Alive
Your Body Starts To Shiver
For No Mere Mortal Can Resist
The Evil Of The Thriller

Well hello there boys and ghouls, let me show you into my laboratory. The master will see you now. He's just been conducting experiments into the nature of life ... specifically, the reanimation of corpses. You see, after a Monday of working 11 hours on assignment, otherwise hale and hearty persons can start to exhibit signs of a most grim transformation. Normal, healthy people begin to rot and decay, to be alive yet not alive. They hover on the precipice of hell, for they are ... the UNDEAD! In leyman's terms, the happy-go-lucky boy you once knew as Danny has become a mindless, brain-devouring ZOMBIE~!

And so another Halloween has come and gone. And like Shaun of Shaun of the Dead, I have begun to realize that there isn't always all that much difference between the living and the undead.

But despite my zombie-like exhaustion from another long day at work, things are finally starting to at least kinda sorta come together at my assignment. I mean, no way is it as stressful and anxiety-filled as my first few days. But just when things seem to be calming down ...

... I end up being sent on a freakin' quest across NBC for a freaking hammer / chisel. And do you know why I needed said hammer? No, not to bash my brains in, but so that a certain executive could SMASH HIS GIANT, 9-POUND NESTLE'S CRUNCH CANDY BAR INTO SMALL CHUNKS SO THAT HE COULD EAT IT! Okay, I know I probably shouldn't be talking about stuff like this online. But come on, absurdity of this magnitude deserves to be put into the public forum. I will not elaborate on this any further, suffice to say ... COME ON.

All I know is, if I ever become famous / wealthy / powerful, I will still do all normal things that one normally does for oneself BY MYSELF and FOR MYSELF. Why? Because that's what NORMAL people do!

Otherwise ...

The assignment is going pretty well. I'm starting to pick up on most of the daily / typical tasks that I am expected to carry out, and I am beginning to get a good feel for how the office works. I've gotten to check out a number of in-development scripts that are in the works at NBC, and overall really expanded my understanding of the ins and outs of this industry in only a week's time. I've met some very nice people, and of course I can still communicate with my fellow pages-on-asignment through the AIM-like application known as sametime (I know, I thought it was a sexual reference too when I first heard that term. What, that was just me ...? Hey, come on now ... what is one supposed to think when out of the blue some girl says "so me and Pete were "sametime-ing" for three hours last night?).

Oh yeah, I did get to hear a pretty cool talk today as well from Ted Frank, a veteran of TV programming @ NBC, who had some very interesting insights into the state of the industry and the past, present, and future of communications.

I guess as the weeks go by things will come more naturally and I'll get more used to things. Waking up at 7 every day? Not so much. (I usually hate when ppl use that expression - it's terrible - but oh well I'm a hypocrite).

Oh - one cool thing that happened today - I came across a script for an original sitcom pilot written by JALEEL WHITE HIMSELF! Yep, Steve Urkel wrote a sticom pilot! And it's like Family Matters meets Step by Step, and I really liked what I read! Come on NBC, step up to the plate on this one ... (haha it has no chance of being made, it's an old script fro ma few years back if I didn't salvage it out of curiosity it would have ended up in the trash ...).

LESS TERRIFYING THAN WORK, BUT HAIR-RAISING NONETHELESS:

Anyways ... this weekend saw the continuation of a cherished BU tradition, my annual Halloween horror-movie marathon. This year's NBC page-filled bash was a pretty good success, with a nice turnout and plenty of scariness to go around. I even took an added step and allowed the attendees to vote on much of the movie selection. Of course, things didn't go exactly according to schedule, and we got way behind, thus leaving no time for the evening's intended grand finale presentation of Bruce Campell kicking unholy ass in Sam Raimi's classic, The Evil Dead. But, we did get through a pretty decent lineup of horrifyingly entertaining entertainment, as we blazed through two classic Simpsons Treehouses of Horror (seasons 4 and 5 for the curious), indie British zom-com Shaun of the Dead, Mel Brook's classic Young Frankenstein, and finally the eerie stylings of Roman Polanski's classic tale of the spawn of Satan, Rosemary's Baby.

Now while Shaun of the Dead was a very likable, enjoyable film, I feel that the latter two movies suffered a bit from "Jared Cohen Sleepover Party Syndrome." What the Deuce is that, you may ask. Let me explain. Way back in middle school (Solomon Schechter Jewish Day School, to be precise) sleepover birthday parties were all the rage. A typical party would be highlighted by one or two "forbidden" scary movies, the more gore the better. I remember seeing A Nightmare on Elmstreet, Predator 2, Pet Cemetary, and yes, even Leprauchan at said sleepover parties, for example. Now Jared Cohen, when he had his sleepover party, it was clear that his parents were a bit more strict than most (probably only mine were stricter, hahaha). So unstead of a typical slasher horror flick, Jared's dad tried to hype us up for a special VHS showing of ... Dracula. Yep, the old-school Bela Lugosi version. Suffice to say, the slow pace, black and white cinematography, and old-timey feel was pretty perplexing and/or sleep inducing to just about everyone but me (I thought it was awesome). Unfortuantely, I think the old-time Vaudvillian humor of Mel Brooks and the late 60's-era, slow-building tension and dated dialogue of Rosemary's Baby had a bit of the Jared Cohen effect. Now I get this. Try as I might for example, I just can't get all that into Blazing Saddles, while I find the slightly more modern take on the ol' Mel Brooks formula of Robin Hood: Men In Tights to be hilarious, despite the latter enjoying nowhere near the legendary status of Blazing Saddles. But, come on now people. We are not in middle school anymore. Rosemary's Baby is pretty freaking classic, and at this stage I definitely appreciated its mood-building ambiance and subtle turns of the proverbial screw, a far cry from the cheap thrills and easy scares that many wannabe badass horror movies try today. See, if we could only have stuck to the schedule, we could have closed things off with some Evil Dead, Ash-induced mayhem to shake off the cobwebs, so to speak.

Basically, I can't take responsibility in any case, because it was a DEMOCRATIC VOTE. Same reason Bush is in office, in theory.

Oh well. All in all it was a pretty hardcore marathon, and if you know me you know that I do things hardcore or not at all. I even set up a Wall of Horrors (inspired, I admit, by the similarly themed wall at Page-O-Ween), featuring such icons of horror as Alfred Hitchcock, Rod Serling, Alice Cooper, Kang and Kodos, Elvira, and yes, Count Duckula.

We'll do it (the time warp?) again next year. Bwahahahahaha.

Seriously though, it's Halloween and it was 80 degrees today here in LA. WTF, mate? This place is KRAZY I tell ya.


COMING UP:

- November sweeps means lots of new TV and all kinds of nutty stuff happening. People dying on Lost, for example. Yep, it's that time of year again.

- Working the Tonight Show for old times' sake on Wed. and Th. Yep I'm donning the polyester once again and showin' the newbies how it's done, BLOOMFIELD style.

- May or may not survive Week 2 of the assignment.

- Congrats, Brian, on getting a job with Nielson! Why couldn't you have been working there when Freaks and Geeks was on the air, and fudged those numbers a bit?

- And finally, 5000+ hits as of last week on this here blog! Wow, someone is reading! Or maybe I just hit "reload" a lot ...

AND THAT'S ABOUT IT ...

Wait, what's that howling in the distance?

Werewolves?

There! Wolves!

Gotta love it.

Happy Halloween!