Category Archives: Uncategorized

Here’s something you may not realize: I started this site as a means to act as my professional calling card as a screenwriter. Ha. Kind of dropped the ball a bit on that, right? It turns out, I really like blogging and have a lot of shit to say. Because of this, it kind of tends to take the focus off the screenwriting stuff, you know, the whole reason I ever even started a website. So now I only post things that I think are funny. This is good, but it means that regular screenwriting tales and updates get left out. This is a bit of a dilemma, but there is a solution: my friend Chris suggested I start a separate website dedicated exclusively to blogging. I realized (after much prodding and explanation of very basic concepts) that this was a good idea. That’s what I’m going to do. Because I’m lazy and easily distracted by things (shiny things mostly) this is currently only a half-assed reality. The site has been established and I transferred all my former blog posts, but that’s it. I’ve added no links nor prettied it up for the reader. I intend to remedy that soon meaning that this will be the final post of this kind on this site. This is the address for the new blogging-only site:

rantecdotes.com

See what I did there? I made a portmanteau out of “rants” and “anecdotes.” Clever, right? Yeah, it’s not that clever. Anyway, I’ll also put the link to my new site under my Contact and About tabs. Still with me? Okay, good. I’ll see you on the other site! Oh, and here’s a quick post based on a recent conversation. Enjoy!

Someone recently told me that I use a lot of “50 cent words.” For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, a 50 cent word is one that is atypical for a casual conversation, a big word if you will; one that is often used to prove that you have a vocabulary beyond 11 or so words. (Incidentally, the word I used that prompted someone to claim that I was essentially talking over that person’s head was “disperse.” I don’t know many verbose people.) It occurred to me that “50 cent word” isn’t really an appropriate choice to describe big words for two reasons:

1. The economics – 50 cents really isn’t very much money these days. We need a dollar amount that is more representative of the economic times in which we live.
2. “50 cent word” sounds like slang invented by legendary rappist, 50 Cent. Use it in a sentence? No problem: “Shorty” is a 50 Cent word that means “fly-ass bitch.”

I suggest, no, demand that “50 cent word” be expunged from the lexicon. Henceforth, we shall refer to big words as 5-Dollar Words™. This eliminates the confusion with the rap artist and is a better representative value of modern times. The irony is that because I trademarked 5-Dollar Words™, you owe me 50 cents every time you use it.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post was copied and pasted from my soon to be defunct Posterous account. If you already read it there, there’s nothing new to see here, but you should totally read it again anyway.

“Nothing gold can stay.”

-Robert Frost

“Game over, man, game over.”

-Private William Hudson

Well, here we are – the end of the road. This will be my final blog post… on Posterous. Hard to believe I’ve been blogging here since all the way back in June 2012 – that’s ¾ of an entire YEAR. The world seemed so much purer then, so much more innocent. When I started blogging (Listen to me – “blogging.” I sound like an Apple Store genius!) back in June, the Mayan Apocalypse hadn’t yet occurred, “binders full of women” were things only possessed by serial killers, and Peter Jackson’s I Will Put You to Sleep and Lay Waste to Your Bladder was still known by its original title, The Hobbit. If you had decided to mark the date of my very first blog entry by getting pregnant, you’d have a brand new, shiny kid right now. Did anyone do that? I’m going to assume that at least one of you out there did, and I thank you. Would it be too much to ask for me to pick your baby’s first name? How about MichaelPBrennan? It rolls right off the tongue and it’s perfect for a boy or a girl. Again, I thank you. Oh, and you’re welcome.

So why am I leaving Posterous? Is it because I’m a word whore doling out sentences and paragraphs to any site that will let me shoot up in their bathroom? Well, yeah. It’s more than that though. See, as of April 30, Posterous is shutting down. For good. All this, these words, this whole place, everything, it’s gone… just gone. (Sorry, turned into Kyle Reese for a second.) Twitter bought Posterous last year and, instead of using it as a platform to integrate and promote their brand, they decided it would be much more fun to go ahead and shut the fucker right down. I’m not a marketing guy, so I can’t speak to the effectiveness of spite as a marketing tool, but it comes off as some Charles Montgomery Burns-level pettiness. I can envision the CEO of Twitter (Gary Twitter? Twitter McGoogle? Fuck it, I’m not looking it up.) rubbing his hands together with glee as he imagines all the innocent bloggers he turned into virtual Grapes of Wrath Okies, driven from our land and scouring the hardscrabble internet for a new home. What an evil bastard that guy I just imagined is.

So why did I even join Posterous instead of a more well-known site like WordPress or… all right, you got me – I don’t know the names of any other blog sites. Feel good about yourself for making me look stupid? Feel like a big man/woman? Is my attempt to shame you working? Anyway, I joined Posterous for the same reason everyone does anything: peer pressure. A couple of friends of mine were on there and they suggested I sign up as well. They said if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be cool. Even though my mom insisted that I would be cool no matter what and a really cool guy doesn’t cave to peer pressure, I just couldn’t take that chance. It’s the same reason I begged my parents to buy me a pair of parachute pants back in the ‘80s. [Quick aside: in case you haven’t figured it out, I have a serious case of self-diagnosed ADHD. As I sit here typing this, I’m watching Restaurant: Impossible, listening to my Christopher Cross Pandora channel, streaming an episode of Walking Dead on Hulu, playing Plants vs. Zombies, oh, and juggling. My mind is all over the fucking place. In fact, where was I? Oh right, parachute pants for some reason.] If you’re too young to remember parachute pants, stop reading now and know that I hate you. I will petition a wizard to grant me the power to steal your life force, not a Washington Wizard, a for real wizard. Besides, I already tried asking Gilbert Arenas when I ran into him in a Bethesda Target and all he did was threaten to shoot me in the face. I can only assume he gets asked that a lot.

Parachute pants were great. We seriously need to bring them back. [How does “bringing something back” work anyway? Are the Illuminati that run the world really just a bunch of ironic hipster douchebags selecting passé fashions to reintroduce for shits and giggles? That’s it, isn’t it? I knew it]. They had so many pockets. You could literally carry all of your earthly possessions and still have room for bus fare. No need to let loose change clang around in a single pocket – you could simply slip individual coins into each of the 73 parachute pockets and zip them closed. Voila: whisper quiet. Well, maybe they did emit a gentle swooshing noise when you walked that kind of sounded like a ghostly moan. And I guess those zippers did jangle a little. Wait… were my parachute pants haunted? Hold on – is Haunted Parachute Pants a reality show yet? If not, I call dibs. Please don’t steal that idea. You know, if I ever get around to writing that reimagining of A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Marley won’t be lugging rattling chains around, he’ll just moonwalk into Scrooge’s room in a sweet-ass pair of whooshing, jangling parachute pants.

What the hell? Did I seriously just spend two paragraphs talking about parachute pants? I swear to God I’m not high. Well, as far as I know. Maybe my work is secretly slipping us LSD through the drinking fountains (it would explain A LOT). Or maybe I just had a stroke last night or something. Regardless, I got way off the point of this post. Here is the pertinent fact: Posterous is shutting down and I am now set up at WordPress. I haven’t moved everything over there yet, but all the bloggy goodness is there and all my future posts, news, etc. will be there as well.

My new web presence can be found here:

http://www.mikepbrennan.com

It’s less clunky than my current web address, but not quite what I wanted. Just about every permutation of my name has already been registered by a bunch of tax-dodging, Neo-Nazis… probably. Admittedly, I’m making generalizations about people I’ve never met, seen, nor heard of. I’m right though.

So that’s it. I’m done. Come visit me on the new site and sign up for email alerts for when I post another one of these stream-of-consciousness ramblings. Until then…

Good night, sweet Posterous. I hardly knew ye.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I realize it’s been a very long time since my last post. No, I haven’t been seeing anyone else and no you may not check me for hickies. That crosses a line, Gentle Reader. If we can’t trust each other, what do we have? In any event, you’re looking well. You finally ditched the perm I see – good call. And you say you’ve stopped biting your toenails? I know that had to have been hard.

Anyway, I’ve been away because I’ve actually been working on a screenplay. What? Actual writing updates on my blog? I’m just as surprised as you are. This rewrite has consumed a great deal of my time. It’s going well and it’s almost finished. I hope to have more to say about it later, you know, assuming someone wants to purchase it and stuff. Jeah, that would be sweet. Sorry, I turned into Ryan Lochte for a moment there.

So just so you know I haven’t forgotten about you, I thought I’d write a quick blog post. I appreciate your enthusiasm. You are SO welcome.

In case you were unaware (or simply are too cynical to give even a single fuck – no one blames you), there’s a rather significant election coming up here in a couple weeks. I hope you’re going to vote even if your ballot will be cast for Harry Ballz, Haywood Jablowme, Ben Dover, Hugh Jass, or Phil McCracken; at least you’re part of the political process. Politicians are an interesting lot. I always get nervous when they want to discuss the Big Picture. Is it important to see the forest? Absolutely, but sometimes you need to look at a goddamned tree once in a while. Let’s look at it through something relatable: sandwiches. Let’s suppose when Candidate A talks about sandwiches, he’s referring to Miracle Whip and olive loaf on Wonder bread. That’s something the devil can’t even serve in hell due to all the HR complaints. When Candidate B talks about sandwiches, he’s referring to Nutella and marshmallow fluff on cinnamon raisin bread – a sandwich so delicious you would get dehydrated from the tears of joy you would weep from simply taking a single bite. In short, details matter. Before casting a ballot, find out if your candidate supports hell-wiches or the literal food of the gods… or just vote for Dixon Buttz – his economic policy is sound. This is about as political as I get.

And here are a couple of political things I posted on Facebook recently. If you haven’t read them, this will hopefully give you a chuckle. If you have, this will be an exercise in redundancy. Either way I’m excited for you:

“One issue that keeps getting ignored during these debates: sea monsters. What do these candidates plan to do about the Godzillas, Cloverfields, Krakens, Cthulus, and other leviathans of the deep that threaten our ships at sea and coastal cities? Until this issue is addressed, I shall remain an undecided voter.”

My Ideal Presidential Candidate:

•Smells like Skittles

•Has a pants-melting moustache

•Wants to invade Canada to tap their vast denim reserves

•Has been to at least one Whitesnake concert

•Often wears scuba gear, but has never been scuba diving

•Drinks Capri Sun out of a glass

•Thinks we should photobomb Iran

•Wants to criminalize country music

•Wants to legalize pineapples

•Favorite movie is The Beastmaster

•Believes pants are always optional

•Has jumped a motorcycle over something at least 15 feet long and 8 feet high

•Refers to people who say “a whole nother” or use LOL & exclamation points excessively as the “real Axis of Evil”

•Makes his own underwear from plastic grocery bags

•Thinks chocolate lava cakes are made by wizards

•Thinks the Supreme Court is a reality show featuring Diana Ross as a small claims court judge

•Loves the movie Grease, but hates the musical

•Refers to his/her genitals as “The Commander in Chief”

•Has high-fived a walrus or sea lion

•Roller skates everywhere

•Doesn’t blindly trust the Gorton’s fisherman

For those of you who have no doubt been eagerly awaiting my next blog post with bated breath, allow me to disappoint you. See, though this may look like a blog post, it’s not quite what you may be expecting. It was my plan to post something (hopefully) funny weekly. That would’ve meant I should’ve posted something on Monday. However, I’ve been busy working on a number or materials that I needed to submit by yesterday for a mentorship I’m hoping to get. It’s a hell of an opportunity and I already made the first cut. Today I was working on a 2-page screenplay for this contest:

http://www.londonscreenwritersfestival.com/50-kisses/

I tell you all this to put your mind at ease: there will be a new post next week and it will be funny. At least that’s the plan.

Well, here it is: my very first blog post. Considering that blogging has been around for 15 years or so, you could say I’m a bit late to this party. I’m like the asshole that shows up just as all the other guests are leaving but stays anyway because I don’t understand the meaning of social cues. Why did it take me so long? I can’t really say. There’s something creepily narcissistic about posting what essentially amounts to a personal diary for the entire planet’s reading pleasure. This suits me like a glove because I’m nothing if not creepy and narcissistic. In fact, those are two of my better qualities (I know, ladies, I know – stop crowding me so I can breathe).

Okay, so I want to talk about my unfulfilling job. “You mean your place of employment doesn’t cause rainbows to shoot out of your ass because of the sheer joy it brings you? Why don’t you act like a man and join the rest of us at the bar. I hope you lick an envelope and get a paper cut on your tongue,” you say. “Easy,” I retort back because I have such zingers nocked like arrows ready to loose on you at a moment’s provocation. “Let me finish my argument before you get all defensive. Also, please get out of my head.”

So, I’m a cubicle jockey. Much like the rest of you who work in cubicle farms, I spend most of the day crying silent tears of infinite sadness as I ponder what horrible deeds I committed in my past life to lead me here. I mean, you all do that too, right? If not, I’m totally joking. Ha, good one, right? *Ahem.* Moving on.

So anyway, today I took a brief break from my sobbing and looked around. It occurred to me that Michael circa ages five through ten would love this shit! What is a cubicle if not a sweet-ass fort? That alone would be enough, but  there’s lots of awesome stuff in there: plenty of paper and pens for making “NO GIRLS ALLOWED” signs (that’s actually cuter if you picture the “S” in girls written backwards and “GIRLS” spelled “GURLS”); tons of paper clips waiting to be bent and twisted into amaze-balls ninja weapons for a myriad of G.I. Joe or He-Man figures; highlighters for, um, highlighting stuff; and, oh, did I mention a computer? The computer alone would be enough to melt young me’s brain what with all the videogame processing power it possesses. Young me was busy playing Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 and trying to pretend that it didn’t suck total balls. Let me clarify: Pac-Man the arcade game remains a transcendent glory to play some 30 years after its release. Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 is a soul-shattering shit sandwich. It’s like the fever dream of an extra-terrestrial that glimpsed the actual game for a split second, then took a shitload of LSD and tried to recreate it on a computer with less processing power than it takes to view a LOLcats jpeg…but I digress.

My point: I should be thrilled to death to be working in a box and I’m going to start trying to appreciate it more. So if you should ever walk past my cubicle and I’m wearing a paper hat, a rubber band and a Post-It as an eye patch, and having an invisible sword fight with my Cross pen, please don’t call security. I haven’t lost my mind; I’m just taking a moment to hang out with my inner child. Join us if you like.

That said, one of these days, I’m going to get paid for this writing thing. Until then, YAR!! Walk the plank, ya’ scurvy bastard!!