Oh Mickie, you're so fine ...

Ok, faithful blog reader(s), here is the 5 min. video I’m sending off to the good people at On The Lot, a new reality series from Mark Burnett (Survivor, The Apprentice) and Steven Spielberg (some Jewish guy). This video is a scaled down version of the 12 min. preview of my upcoming feature film, "Love: A Documentary", with a few new clips added to the mix. The required 45-second intro was directed by my precocious new filmmaking colleague--the lovely and talented Voix. If you happen to know this hyper-talented but shy and reserved newcomer, please give her some props for her great work on a tight ($0) budget.



Alright, time to come clean. Voix is my gal pal, and she happily agreed to spend last Sunday, a very rare full day together, shooting video of me wearing silly clothes and making even sillier faces for the above latest vanity project. After that, she engaged in even more ridiculous, unwarranted grown-up behavior by spending a good part of the afternoon walking around a depressing and typically soulless gigantic Walmart in my neighborhood helping me surreptitiously videotape nearly ever corner of the store to be used as a green-screened backdrop for my over-budget and under-produced Walmart-TV film project. The fact that she spent her day off helping me, not with a "Well, you owe me one now" or "When can we do what I want?" attitude, but rather seemed to fully enjoy the whole ordeal simply because she could help me with something that was important to me and only me--well, if there's a better definition of real love I haven't found it.

I truly hope y'all have found someone just as special on this Valentine's Day.

"Annus Horibilis"

Which is a term that was famously coined by Queen Elizabeth II and is Latin for “What a bad fucking year that was”.

Not to be confused with Anus Horibilis, which is currently playing on The Spice Channel, and has it’s moments.

Anyway, this term can be used to describe the last year, which sucked ass, in my opinion.

In April of last year, I stepped on a broken glass and nearly passed out and bled to death before I could crawl to a phone. I spent the next two weeks bed-ridden, then was on crutches for a month, and then walked with a cane for another month. When I wasn’t drugged up, it usually hurt like a motherfucker.

Also, my wife and mother of my children left me, which was unpleasant.

Yes, that year was a piece of crap.

Apparently, not a great annus for most of my friends and family either, I’m finding. Just found out that my cousin, who, like myself, is 38 years-old and has two young children, is divorcing her husband, primarily because she is not a fan of his banging their live-in Russian au pair.

Word of this latest marital dissolution brings to NINE (9!) the running total of friends of mine who, like me, have gotten divorced in the last twelve months. This accounts for roughly half of my friends on the planet.

Seriously, what are the odds?

Well, having taken four courses of advanced statistics during my collegiate years, I can say with confidence that that just seems like a lot.

As with the discovery this year that the majority of my friends are in therapy, I’m starting to take this personally. So, I’m led to believe a statistically causal relationship is at play here on the order of one or more of the following:

1) Being embarrassingly inept at human relationships, I’m naturally drawn to as well as attract others with the same interpersonal affliction.

2) Just knowing me causes enough emotional and psychological upheaval that one’s very concept of long-lasting love and commitment is shaken to the core, causing one to doubt the viability of any and all sustaining human bonds.

3) Most of my friends are in their mid-thirties and it is often around this time that, following the initial excitement and novelty of getting together, then getting married, then finding a career, then maybe having kids … that we are forced to take a hard look at the reality of the rest of our lives and who we really are and what we want to be, and, well … the other person ain’t always in that picture (apologies, as I think this was once every episode of thirtysomething).

4) Long-term relationships aren’t really natural, or even sensible, and exist only when either or both parties delude themselves into buying into some romanticized ideal of “True Love” or some crap.

Ok, I’m gonna take #1 & #2 as givens.

#3: I think there’s a lot to this social construct.

#4: I don't believe this, but I've noticed that there are a new breed of books out now that all have this concept as a central thesis. Saw a television program the other day in which Kurt Vonnegut, world-renowned authority on anthropology studies, stated that marriage and coupling is unnatural--that the human specie thrives best in “packs”. Maybe there's something to his theory on some level, but have you seen Kurt Vonnegut lately? Seems like a bitter old man that probably hasn’t gotten laid in ages.

Anyway.

Discuss.

Rosebud ...