johnnyhongkong says…

Over the weekend, Mary Milan and I watched the marathon of Bam’s Unholy Union on MTV2.  The show features the hijinx of Bam Margera, his lovely fiancee Missy Rothstein as they plan their wedding, and of course, Bam’s family and crew. 

That’s right, Jackass: The Wedding.

It goes without saying that it was basically three plus hours of Bam skating, hurting himself and others, and generally acting a fool while Missy rolled her eyes and tried to slog through wedding planning.

Why would I insist that Mary Milan and I watch this show?

Well obviously, when I eventually fuck up the planning of our wedding, I can always point to Bam’s Unholy Union and remind Mary Milan that I’m not fucking up that badly.

MM: “JHK, I hate you!  You still haven’t figured out the seating chart.”

Me: “Yeah, but at least I’m not out buying knight’s armour, axes, and swords and shit for my groomsmen to wear during the ceremony.”

MM: “You’re right.  I love you!”

Downward social comparisons rule!  I highly encourage using them often.

(You may be wondering how I got Mary Milan to watch three plus hours of Bam’s Unholy Union.  She loves wedding shows.  Any wedding show.  I used this knowledge on her like judo.)

God has apparently responded to Ernie Chambers – twice – even going so far as to show his might by delivering one of the responses via thin air.  According to the John Friend, the clerk of the Douglas County Court:

“This one miraculously appeared on the counter. It just all of a sudden was here – poof!”

My suspicion is the God had a little helper and it might have involved Friend looking the other way.  Christians are so cute!

Anyway, in the response sent down from heaven, God asserts that he is outside of the jurisdiction of our world and:

It adds that blaming God for human oppression and suffering misses an important point.

“I created man and woman with free will and next to the promise of immortal life, free will is my greatest gift to you,” according to the response, as read by Friend.

There was no contact information on the filing, although St. Michael the Archangel is listed as a witness, Friend said.

Oh, I see.  It’s free will that caused the “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes” and the other disasters that Chambers charged God in his lawsuit.  Yeah, “God’s” free will.  It seems like God might need to retain some counsel.

But wait, he did!  The second response from “God” lists a phone number from a Corpus Christi law office.

Obviously, God needs a better executive assistant to better coordinate his lawsuits.

Friendly Atheist links to Chambers’ actual suit.  Download the PDF here.  You must read it.  It’s short and obviously a work of genius.

This shit is epic.

Like The Iliad.

This is not from The Onion – The Hon. Ernie Chambers, a State Senator in the Nebraska legislature, sued God last week - knowing that many of you are lazy and will not click on the link, I am going to quote liberally because it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever read (emphasis all mine):

Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.

The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is omnipresent.

In the lawsuit, Chambers said he’s tried to contact God numerous times.

“Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon defendant ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ has been unable to do so,’” Chambers said. 

[snip] 

The lawsuit accuses God “of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.” It says God has caused “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.”

The suit also says God has caused “calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.”

Chambers also says God “has manifested neither compassion nor remorse, proclaiming that defendant will laugh” when calamity comes.Chambers asks for the court to grant him a summary judgment. He said as an alternative, he wants the judge to set a date for a hearing as expeditiously as possible and enter a permanent injunction enjoining God from engaging in the types of deleterious actions and the making of terroristic threats described in the lawsuit.

Senator Chambers has obviously done his homework, learning  from the precendent set by Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (1971), wherein Mayo claimed that the Devil and his minions had deprived him on his Constitutional Rights by deliberately placing “obstacles in his path and has caused plaintiff’s downfall.” 

Mayo’s lawsuit was ultimately (and unfortunately) dismissed because Mayo did not provide instructions on how to serve process to Satan.  Chambers deals with the whole “serving process to a diety” issue gracefully:

The suit also requests that the court, given the peculiar circumstances of this case, waive personal service. It said that being omniscient, the plaintiff assumes God will have actual knowledge of the action.

Chambers, known as ”the angriest Black man in Nebraska,” filed the suit to make a point about frivolous lawsuits.

Frivolous?  This is the trial of the century.  Senator Chambers is my hero.

I’ve met our baby girl which is weird because Mary Milan and I don’t have kids and our baby girl is like 18.

When I first saw her, I was deadlifting heavy weights so I thought I was hallucinating. The way she walked in the gym, with her hair tied in a pony tail, wearing basketball shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Mary Milan at the same age.

I did a few double takes and even rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing properly.

When my brain registered that she wasn’t Mary Milan, I began to see why she was so familiar: she has Mary Milan’s long and lean athletic build, hair and my coloring. Our baby girl is 6’2″ and still touched by gawkiness having not yet developed Mary Milan’s grace. She has both of our features but none of our signature ones; she doesn’t have her “mom’s” big, radiant eyes and billowy lips nor her “dad’s” sharp cheekbones (Mary Milan’s first question when I told her about my encounter, “Does she have your cheekbones?”).

I was suddenly filled with this need to protect her. It occurred to me that maybe deadlifting such heavy weight sent me into the future to protect her from whatever dark forces that were looming to harm her, kind of like Quantum Leap meets Journeyman meets The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Though I wanted to make sure that any creepy dudes who were going to try to kick it to her would get knocked the fuck out, I played the “cool dad” and didn’t stalk her. Besides, it would have been really weird if I had to ambush some boy at the gym only to explain that I was her “dad” from the past sent here to protect her. That would have been awkward.

Anyway, trying to keep out of her beeswax, I went to get a drink of water and saw her doing single arm dumbbell cleans and presses and I had a quick flash “remembering” how I taught them to her. I could almost hear her repeat, “keep your hips low, vicious extention against the earth, dip to catch, and drive off the heels to press up” like a mantra as she moved through the exercise. I was so proud that she had learned so well.

I left the gym that day thinking to myself, “We done good.”

Then, an intrusive thought invaded the tranquil of my brain: “If she brings home that asshole boy one more time, I swear to God, I’m going to chop that motherfucker into little pieces and tell the police that Mary Milan did it.”

My brain is a buzzing fleabag motel.

Contrary to what some of you might think, I’m not getting obsessive about the food for our wedding. I’m having trouble committing to a caterer without tasting the food and seeing what our options for service are, but I’m not obsessing.

I am, however, obsessing about hiring our photographer and videographer. I’m actually less worried about the still pictures because I’ve seen wedding albums that I like, so I know good wedding photographers are out there, but I’ve never seen a wedding video that I’ve liked.

I’m not sure if it’s the flat video, cheesy wipes, zooms, bad sound, or what but every wedding video I’ve seen rankles my visual aesthetic.

I brought this up with Mary Milan this morning and she damn near tore my head off.

“I’m not foregoing my wedding video just because they rankle your ‘visual aesthetics’,” she said.

But seriously, this is the movie of you big day. And once memories fade, the only things you have left are pictures and the movie, so the movie has to be good. Forget the fact that I’m OCD, how does a filmmaker hire a wedding videographer?

Luckily, I developed a little test to give to our prospective videographers:

1. Who is your favorite director?
2. Who is your favorite cinematographer?
3. What is your favorite movie?
4. What is your favorite shot in that movie?
5. Zooms and wipes: all good fun or the devil’s tools?
6. Telephoto and wide angle lenses: all good fun or the devil’s tools?
7. Will you watch a few movies with us?
8. Will you have a shot list for us to approve three months out?
9. We want final cut.  Yes or No?
10. And furthermore, and this is not a question: after three edits, you will agree to relinquish your rights to the raw footage so that we may do our own edit.

Rocco di Spirito gave me a written test before he hired me, why can’t I screen applicants with a little quiz?

And yes, there is an answer key.

Oh, and the big news is that after a year and a half in development, we finally have a release date:

Johnny Hong Kong+Mary Milan
Their love was a Flame that Destroyed!
9.27.08

Save the dates to follow

Britney + VMAs = a crazy but not entirely unexpected train wreck.

What’s the over/under in years for Britney Spears to appear in Playboy?  The craziest thing about Brit’s consistent bouts of mental irregularity is that it makes K-Fed seem like the stable parent.

God save those children.

God save all of us.