Diablo Cody

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “You can’t squeeze blood out of a deadbeat.” When I look at the apartment complex I live in and the trashy, ignorant, retarded monkey children that are my neighbors I reflect on how incompetence is one of man’s greatest means of rebellion. And while most people associate work with incompetence, some people are just incompetent at life. Incompetence always prevails. And while men have made great arguments against meaningless policy, pointing out their inconsistencies, lack of morality, and even counter-effectiveness, nothing causes authority to change policy faster than a mass of stupid people creating more work through their simple bumbling of trying to obey a law. That is the power of incompetence.

The following are the transgressions of my neighbors which I would like recorded in the halls of incompetence:

1. Using the hallway trash receptacles as personal trash bins because they’re too fucking lazy to walk downstairs to the dumpster.

2. Leaving shopping carts in the hallways (yes, the hallways) after pushing the cart from Albertson’s, down Ridge Route, through the parking lot, and even up the elevator because they’re too stupid and lazy to lift bags. We live on the 2nd floor, people!

3. Stealing light bulbs from the laundry room because hey, fuckit, I guess if it’s just hanging there from a plug that means it’s free.

4. Letting their children use the hallway as some kind of makeshift Crayola canvas.

5. Urinating in the pool… no, not when they’re actually in the pool, but when they’re standing next to it even though there’s a bathroom 15 yards away.

6. Bringing their drunken, sharpie-marker wearing pig women down to the spa without a proper license from animal control.

7. Blaring music I can only describe as oompah being raped by a pack of yelping hyenas.

8. Wearing jeans and flip-flops to the fitness room, then walking on the treadmill as slow as I would push a shopping cart through a grocery store. You aren’t burning any calories you fat idiot, fuck you.

9. Smelling worse than a morgue. Although a morgue would be preferable because at least they’d all be dead.

10. Hooting and hollering in some kind of high-pitched devilspeak that time the fat kid tried to do a backflip into the pool but instead broke his arm when his father should have been watching him but wasn’t because it was Saturday and he was curled in a blanket on a lawn chair asleep and it was mid-August. Mid-fucking-August and he’s curled in a blanket, because he’s probably on drugs but whatever, when that little piggy hit the concrete that shit was hilarious.

11. Putting me on a first name basis with the local law enforcement who pass me in the hallway. “Oh, hey Steve… yep. They’re at it again.”

12. Hanging the Mexican flag on Memorial Day (I don’t think there’s a soccer game or boxing match happening in the parking lot today, but you never know)

13. Knocking on our door to ask for spare change. After all my years living in this rodent’s den, even I was taken aback at that one.

14. Encouraging Jehova’s Witnesses but then tearing down my atheist flyers.

15. Leaving meth pipes in the stairwells.

 It’s funny. I thought this list would make me feel better. I actually feel more inspired to watch Gran Torino and pick my day. Orwell wrote that the future was in the proles. Unless that future is Idiocracy, that guy was as wrong as a Fox Friend. We are leaving our current aubode in search of a cleaner domicile. Will it be Los Angeles, South Orange County, or back to San Berdoo? Only Rent.com knows for sure.

Oh, and on an unrelated note, anybody know what Diablo Cody is up to? Man, she is awesome.

Diablo Cody Nips the Neck Beards

The crops were growing all over Marvin’s Gardens that Spring. Things were in full blossom! And as a happy sun shone over the land, there came a sound so great it shook the thistles from the dandelions…

THUMP-THUMP… THUMP-THUMP… THUMP-THUMP

Why, it was Diablo Cody riding in the pouch of Clopper the Kangaroo!

“Faster, Clopper!” Diablo screamed, “Yippeeeeeee….”

And as they came upon the great old oak tree, Clopper stopped and Diablo jumped from his pouch with great joy.

“Thanks, Clopper!” She said, patting him on the head. “You’re the best!”

And Clopper thumped his feet with happiness and took off with a cloppity-clop!

The great oak tree was Cody’s favorite place in the whole world! It was where she could sit and think and write her movies, which are like books but unjustifiably expensive and with smaller chances of being finished.

And once Diablo climbed the rope ladder made of bacon and knocked three times on the magical branch shaped like her academy award, the great oak tree opened its doorway made of tiramisu cake and Diablo was home!

She climbed into her hammock shaped like a spider’s web and began to write her stories. And when the happy sun had descended beneath the edge of the crop, night fell upon Marvin’s Gardens and Diablo fell asleep.

The next morning, Diablo was awakened to such a clatter that she nearly fell out of her hammock with surprise!

BANG… BANG… BANG…

“What is that noise?” She wondered.

Diablo put on a pair of fashionable yet overly priced jeans from Urban Outfitters and rushed outside to see what was going on.

A furry creature hammered a poster into the side of her tree. Diablo called down to him.

“Scowly? Is that you?”

And when he looked up she recognized him immediately. It was Scowly the Mole!

“Scowly, what are you doing up so early? It’s still morning!” Diablo asked as a butterfly landed upon her shoulder and became a tattoo.

But Scowly just scowled with bitterness.

“Grrrrr…” he said, “I’ve been up all night with the other moles. We held a forum and decided we don’t like you, Diablo Cody!”

Scowly curled his paws around the hammer, his fingers withered from jacking off at internet porn while writing snarky statements about the loglines he read on Zoetrope.

“But for why, Scowly?” Diablo asked, blinking her eyes quite innocently and adorably.

“You don’t deserve to live in that great big oak tree while we live underground!” Scowly growled, being a total cunt. “So we’ll fix you! Look around the garden!”

And Diablo looked around Marvin’s Garden. Everywhere the moles had put up posters of Diablo with words like “whore” and “slut” and “bitch”, which are words that men use to describe women when they can’t get any pussy because it justifies their feeling of rejection.

Diablo looked sad.

“But I never did anything to you. Why would you want to say such horrible things about somebody you don’t even know? What gives you the right to judge me?” Diablo asked, her tears turning into ladybugs which flew away.

Scowly furrowed his neck-beard introspectively.

“Because I was offered a gig to write a straight-to-video Hellraiser sequel.” Scowly answered. “And that makes me king dingaling of screenwriting.”

Pleased with his sense of misappropriated anger, Scowly burrowed his fat useless ass into the dirt and was gone, presumably to work on that Hellraiser script the entire planet was waiting for.

Diablo went back into her tree and laid in her spider web hammock and cried for roughly five seconds. And then inspiration struck!

“I know!” Diablo said.

And with great haste she ran into her closet and retrieved a bag the size of a baby whale. Inside were piles of cash so large you could stack them to the ceiling. Spilling the greenbacks on the floor, Diablo threw off her clothes and proceeded to roll around naked in her money, quickly forgetting what Scowly and the moles had done.

“Suck my dick wit’ yer Hellraiser sequel,” Diablo sang, throwing gobs of cash playfully into the air.

And as another night descended upon Marvin’s Gardens, Diablo lay naked in her money pile while her tattoos came to life so they could put all her money into neat piles.

Meanwhile, Scowly set his Hellraiser sequel in a high school and wrote numerous scenes in which Pinhead was dressed up as a teacher or a janitor in somebody’s nightmare but nobody really gave a shit and it never got made. Two weeks later Scowly hung himself using his belt.

How I Learned to Love Diablo Cody

I’ve developed an infatuation with Diablo Cody. I really have. Call it a celebrity crush, but I found myself searching for interviews with her on Google and reading anything even remotely related to her work. And I was once like you. All grimaced and pouty-faced whenever somebody mentioned her name. Trashing “Juno” and bringing up her dialogue in some vain attempt to seem smarter than everybody. I once let hate dictate my feelings toward Diablo Cody. But then I read this article wherein she described the reaction she received from one unnamed gentleman:

“There are some people out there who think that I’m repulsive, that I’m not even human. This guy said, if he had a choice between having sex with me and cutting his dick off, then he’d cut his own dick off. And I was like, first of all I think you’re lying.”

Repulsive, not even human, and castration-inducing. Geez, some writers have all the luck. As mentioned in my previous post, Diablo Derangement Syndrome is real. But to stir that level of contempt from such a large group of people? That’s WWE “heel” level heat right there. And I think it’s absolutely goddamn adorable.

Let’s face it. America is a country that relishes in other people’s shame. As part of our Judeo-Christian heritage, we’re the only people in the modern world capable of building stigmas so thick they keep rape victims and battered wives from testifying against their attackers. Think about that. We shame victims simply for being in the path of some deranged, dickless asshole. Shame is an interesting concept; it relies upon having a fear of being humiliated. So when I see so many angry neck-beards repeating “a fucking stripper” over and over and over I have to wonder whether they’re angry that she was a stripper and became a writer, or if what truly pisses them off is that she’s not humiliated by it.

What I’ve come to realize is that it’s July of 1991 again. Hair bands light up the top 40 with safe entertainment for mass consumption. Mr. Big? Now that’s a group that everyone can enjoy! And while the music industry suffers trying to find the next big thing, it resorts to spectacle, scale, and excess to produce expensive music videos and multi-million dollar arena rock shows. The artists are vision-less, overpaid dinosaurs revelling on a meal ticket they see as lasting forever. And meanwhile, hip-hop is doing no better. Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer provide the foolish illusion that what people want can be dictated based upon careful market research and clever advertising. They know what people will pay to see, so they’ve just invested a few million in the latest MC Hammer video and let Vanilla Ice go and star in his own film.

And then Nirvana catches airplay with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Dre releases “Nuthin’ But A G’ Thang” and everybody realizes how fucking terrible everything was that came before. And it happens overnight. Literally overnight. Before anybody even knew what happened. The hair bands suddenly looked silly. The arena shows crashed with small attendance. And everybody was caught in a fucking tailspin allowing new artists to barge in and run wreck shop on the asylum.

If people don’t know what to make of you they’ll talk about you. And if people are talking about you they’re pretty much under your thumb. And that’s why I’m infatuated with Diablo Cody. She brings gonzo to an industry that is full of planners and marketers and organizers while curmudgeons BAWWWWW because this isn’t the regiment they’re used to. Unplanned isn’t supposed to happen. It doesn’t work that way. Some stripper isn’t supposed to waltz in and snatch an Oscar on her first try. Who the fuck does she think she is? Some garage band isn’t supposed to just hop on the radio and sell millions of records. We spent a whole year primming Sebastian Bach for a solo tour with Warrant!

I, for one, dream of the day when I could be so lucky as to have breakfast with Diablo Cody. It’s kind of like my morning work daydream, just before my noon lunch daydream with that chick from Roxette and my two o’ clock stint where I stare at my computer screen trying to summon 1989 Stacey Q through a wormhole using my mind.

I imagine we could have breakfast at that place in San Diego that makes those unbelievable walnut pancakes… I would put too much syrup on mine. And then Diablo would have some snappy line about too much syrup… like “you danko your panco“… and I would laugh. Because I love it when she does that. And then we’d go to Sea World. Because I love the Sea Otters. And then that lesbian chick from Roxette and I would start a super group. I would rekindle her career, and when she’s standing at the Grammy’s holding up her award for Best Album she’d mouth “Thank you” to me while I gave her a big, heart-felt thumbs up… wait, where am I?

Diablo Derangement Syndrome

I found this on Just Effing Entertain Me, a post entitled What’s the Deal With Jennifer’s Body? discussing the apparent backlash against Diablo Cody. The consensus in this post, along with what has been posted on Scott’s Go Into The Story blog and a few others is that the majority of writers who share Diablo Derangement Syndrome (coin the phrase) are either jealous of her instant success or possibly resent her because she’s a woman.

I don’t want to start a subjective argument over Juno or Jennifer’s Body, my gripe with the former had to do with the inference that H.G. Lewis was a better horror director than Dario Argento (bull-fucking-shit). But I don’t have any problem stating that I have symptoms of D.D.S. and it’s in this post that I’d like to address what they are and why I feel that way so they can be understood, both for you the reader and for myself because you should never hate on anybody unless they’re in politics or they drive a white Lexus.

There’s no reason any writer should dislike Diablo Cody. What she’s successfully done is brand herself as a writer to the extent that she has a level of control over her career that very few are able to obtain. And more fucking power to her. Why shouldn’t the writer enjoy the spotlight? She’s forging paths that anybody willing to put themselves out there can now use to their advantage. And that’s a great thing. That’s the only thing, I say, because it represents a kind of endgame for writers as a whole. We can take our piece of the spotlight beside musicians, actors, directors, and the rest of the art world. It gives us power that a union never could, and it creates a liquidity within the system whereupon her success could potentially make it easier for the next struggling bastard to step up and do their thing. These are all good things. This is what we should be rejoicing. A new way to push ahead.

So why do I feel deranged? I would say that at least sixty percent of my Diablo Derangement stems from her punk image. I have a personal bias against punk image. I never understood it. I spent my college days in writing classes where guys with black hair and nose rings skated on their outcast / misunderstood artist image in place of actual substance. If I’m at a show waiting for the headliner and the opening group walks out onstage and they have a mohawk, fo-hawks, hair dye, chain wallets, or any other obvious accessory my ass is finding the bar and somewhere I can smoke for 30 minutes. I just don’t like it. That is not to say that artists conscious of their physical image are inferior or not real artists, but I am in many ways the simple son of Christian conservatives. The word “vagina” still causes me to fidget in some dark corner of my brain. Her sexual openness moves in contrast to what was instilled in me since I was three years old. And even though I don’t believe in hell, I know I’ll go there if I succumb to the power of the word “vagina”. (moreso in succumbing to actual vagina, amirite?) So punk is just not my thing. Neither is sex culture.

The second part of my derangement is pure contrarian stubbornness. The fact that Juno-dissent is punishable by labels of jealousy makes me feel compelled to project that onto her. And I’m sure Diablo wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if I told her I didn’t like Juno. She could tell me to make my own goddamn movie and be lucky if I won something out of a Cracker Jack box. Or she could go cry herself silly in a bathtub full of hundred dollar bills. Either way, if you remove her from the equation this argument essentially becomes people bickering over movie preference with one woman’s career being used as leverage. It’s no different than when my coworker claims Dark Knight was only hailed as a triumph because Heath Ledger died.

The last, and probably the most universal, is my feeling that her own particular brand of straight-forwardness lends itself to statements which seem flippant with regards to her success. This can be construed as ungrateful, which is why I feel that a lot of writers have such strong feelings of resentment. Case in point, her recent piece How I Punked The Establishment:

“I said, Screenwriting is not that interesting to me. To be honest, I was enjoying the kind of gonzo sex writing that I was doing. But he said, No, writing a movie is easy. If you can pull this off just once, you won’t really have to work anymore. You can sit outside and write every day. And I thought, that doesn’t sound so bad. I’ll take a crack at this.”

I imagine to a guy who’s spent his last ten years eating Top Ramen in a dingy apartment, struggling with day jobs and having no luck catching a break while laboring over his work, it’s hard not to read that and feel something tighten in the pit of his stomach. It does suggest a certain “ease” with which breaking in can be made, as well as a motivation that seems less than noble. But to be fair, I think many of us like to believe that if we “made it” to the extent that she has we would be driving vans filled with bread loaves to distribute amongst poor hungry writers while clutching the shoulders of our brethren and giving a teary-eyed “I’ll come back for you…all of you,” like some escaped POW.  In truth, most of us would do what we’ve always wanted to do, which is act fucking dumb, nail a couple of women that were previously out-of-our-league, develop a coke habit, and pay Lemmy from Motorhead to sing “Ace of Spades” while eating our breakfast cereal out of a bowl that he’s balancing on his head. Maybe pick a couple fights, flip off a police officer, or even buy your wife a healthy newborn baby on the black market. To each his own.

In short, I think we as writers shouldn’t feel ashamed if we dislike Diablo Cody, and I don’t think it’s any kind of statement about sexism or jealousy. But what we should be doing is studying what she did to make herself such a viable brand and try to figure out a way to use that to our advantage. I personally want to see different flavors of writer “brands”, especially if they’re willing to cross over into different mediums. I want to see drunks, cowboys, rough-and-tumble kids from Jersey, homemakers, burnouts, skeezers, skanks, scollywops and hoolie-who’s, and guys named K.G. with their Motorhead-based breakfast tables. Now isn’t that a beautiful thought?