Tuesday, January 30, 2007

SINGLE, MARRIED & DIVORCED - First Cartoon

Comedian and ex-beauty queen Leslie Norris and I toured the US with a group we created called Single, Married & Divorced. At one point, we were asked by a publisher to come up with a cartoon book which p.s. never got made. We worked with cartoonist Andre Noel, who did these wonderful illustrations, and the jokes are from our show.


"I'm glad I have one man who can give me everything I want. My girlfriend has to go out with two men. One is rich and handsome and has a great job and a fancy car, and the other one is straight."

© Single, Married & Divorced

Jokes from the show Single, Married & Divorced starring Suzy Soro and Leslie Norris. Written by Leslie Norris.
Illustration by Andre Noel

Monday, January 29, 2007

I Wonder

I wonder why Sodoku is so popular.
I wonder why most people are terrible at math.
I wonder why no one reads anymore.
I wonder why more books are being published than ever before.
I wonder why my parents made me eat lima beans.
I wonder why you never see anyone eat lima beans.
I wonder why Donald Trump thinks his hair looks good.
I wonder how much he pays his wife to agree with him.
I wonder why 82% of the population can’t find Wyoming on a map.
I wonder if that’s why only 493,782 people live there.
I wonder why women are obsessed with shoes.
I wonder why men aren’t.
I wonder why we’re on the planet Earth.
I wonder if anyone from Neptune knows we’re here.
I wonder why all of my ex-boyfriends are idiots.
I wonder if that makes me an idiot for going out with them.
I wonder if Woody Allen knows his therapy didn’t work.
I wonder if any of the therapy I had worked.
I wonder how I’m going to meet kinder women and smarter men.
I wonder how I’m going to meet smarter women and kinder men.
I wonder if Conan O’Brien knows he’s not funny.
I wonder if David Letterman knows he is.
I wonder why Jay Leno is still on the air.
I wonder why we elected the dumber of the two Bushes twice.
I wonder why we elected either of them once.
I wonder why we’re still in Iraq.
I wonder if this is the End of chat.

Monday, January 22, 2007

AQUARIUS

© 2006 Clayboys

Best with: Libra, Aquarius, Gemini, Aries and Sagittarius
Fair with: Virgo, Taurus, Pisces and Capricorn
Difficult with: Cancer, Leo and Scorpio

Happy Birthday Paris Hilton, Yoko Ono and Jerry Springer.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Top 10 Movies of 2006


My friend Ann Abeyta is not as crazy as she looks in this picture and of course I’m lying. And yes, that is the fat Elvis. I knew he was still alive.

Every year Abeyta sends out her list of Must See Movies so I’m posting it on the day of the Golden Globes. This standup comic, Hollywood projectionist and Genius Film Girl knows her cinema. So as she said in the email accompanying her list, “Set your Netflix to Stun!”

1. Half Nelson – I caught this at a Screen Actor’s Guild screening way late into the hype… actually WAY, WAY late into the hype. I was pretty convinced that the film had no chance of meeting the expectations that I had built up for it. But Ryan Gosling just smiled his gentle little smile, stroked my hair and gently whispered into my ear, "Shhhhhhhhhh, I got this baby. Just relax and let Daddy do all the work." Then he ripped my heart out and held it towards the heavens so Shareeka Epps could dance and giggle in the ribbons of blood. I didn’t stand a chance. You have heard all about the film at this point, so I will just say that I thought it was fearless, beautifully acted and I still can’t shake it.

2. Pan’s Labyrinth – I love me some Guillermo Del Toro! I am one of probably six people who thought "Hellboy" was genius. This however, is his masterpiece. A beautiful and very dark fairy tale.

3. The Departed – Hi Marty! Welcome back to everybody’s top ten lists! We missed you. Did you miss us? I bet you have hairy ears. Mark Walberg and Alec Baldwin (the only Baldwin who has managed not to become an embarrassment) alone are worth the price of admission. Leo will get nominated for an Oscar, as will Jack Nicholson, but in my heart I would love to see Alec or Marky Mark get one. This is an excellent film, violent, smart, and the editing is insanely brilliant.

4. The Proposition – The beating to death of our lord and savior from "The Passion of the Christ" has nothing on this tale of brother against brother, and quite frankly, westerns haven’t been this good since Sam Peckinpah was making them. It’s dark, bloody, and incredibly good. Nick Cave wrote it and set it in the outback of Australia. If you’re unfamiliar with Nick’s work download the songs off "Murder Ballads." Who better to write a film about having to kill your brother to save your own life than an ex-punk rocker?

5. The Descent – Every year I try to include a film that reminds me of why exactly we love movies. Seeing this in a jam-packed theater on opening night was film geek nirvana. I loved everything about this one, from the total chick empowerment to the blood-soaked thrill kills that left me crumpled in a sweaty heap. (If you get the chance you should see it with my coworker Amar, he surrenders to a great film with the genuine eagerness of an eleven year old. It’s an infectious and beautiful thing.)

6. Letters From Iwo Jima – I didn’t like "Flags of Our Fathers" and as a result I had totally written this one off. Christ, was I wrong. Clint has done it yet again. The greatest antiwar film I have ever seen. The tone, the acting, the dysentery, no detail was too small or overlooked. It breaks your heart and never turns its face away from the horror of the costs of war. They will probably sell this and "Flags" as a DVD boxed-set and my suggestion for a title is: "Everyone Loses a War."

7. United 93 – Not too soon!

8. Notes On A Scandal – Wow. Made me more uncomfortable than having dinner with white people. **** I am positive that this will receive at least two Oscar nods, but probably deserves way more. Such a great script and perfect note casting. Cate is amazing, but the film belongs to Dame Judi Dench, who once again is so good it’s almost criminal. I will also give a major shout out to Bill Nighy, he proves what an amazing actor he is once again doing so much with so little screen time. (I felt totally dirty watching Cate Blanchett make out with a fourteen year old boy.)

9. Children Of Men – What would happen if the entire world lost hope? I can’t believe how scary this film is, how utterly frightening the thought of the end of the world coming right at you, but at a snails pace, would be. You’re helpless to stop or change it, you just have to watch as the planet ages and dies off. It’s done so realistically here that you just get pulled in completely. Stellar work from Clive Owen, and we can now officially put to rest the question, "Is Clive Owen God’s greatest gift to man?" The answer is "Yes." I knew it a long fucking time ago by the way.

10. The Queen – I thought seeing this would be like having to do homework. I was more than pleasantly surprised. Helen Mirren will storm the Oscars like David Spade trying to get backstage passes to a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. My favorite moment in a film this year was the way she joyfully cries out "Tea!" Mirren manages to convey more with a simple glance than most actors or actresses can throttle out of a whole career. She pulls off something I would have thought absolutely impossible; she carries the weight of the monarchy, she is the Queen.

Honorable Mentions:
Borat, Dreamgirls, Babel, Hostile, The Hills Have Eyes, This Film Not Yet Rated, V For Vendetta, Jackass 2, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Volver, Hard Candy

****Editor’s note – I didn’t know Ann wasn’t white. I emailed her and asked her to check off one of these options:
A. Mexican
B. Octoroon
C. Chinese with an eye job
D. She wrote me back a not very nice email
E. End of chat.

Monday, January 08, 2007

The Envelope Please

Illustration by Sean McCabe
















The People’s Choice Awards are tomorrow night. The Golden Globe and SAG nominations are in. The Hollywood awards season has officially begun. Let the schadenfreude commence.

There’s really nothing more entertaining than watching actors who work a hundred times more than you lose in front of millions of people. And then pretend they’re not upset.

Sidebar: Except for the Tony Awards because A. Who cares and B. One day they’ll move out here and try and steal jobs from those of us who’ve been slogging it out in the trenches with the 22 year-olds for ten years. Don’t think you can parade your forty-seven octave range and Shakespearean talent around and come swanning into some dumb sitcom just like that. You can’t Kristin Chenoweth, you just can’t.

When the camera is on an Oscar nominee and the award goes to the other guy, the nominee puts on the I’m Okay With That face, like he had already pre-paid his ticket for the Loser Train to Loserville. He cheerfully talks to the press as he enters his limo. (Oh my God, are his eyes watering?) He goes to the Vanity Fair party and congratulates the winners. (Is that a shredded Kleenex in his hand?) He’ll go to all the parties; he’ll drink all the Cristal and then he’ll go home, call his mother and burst into tears.

And in keeping with this sentiment, is there anything more satisfying than watching a beauty pageant contestant bite the dust? When it’s down to the final two, one of those girls knows that coming in second is just not going to cut it back in her hometown of Gee Whiz, Georgia. No one at the drycleaners is going to say, “Oh great, here comes the first runner-up!” Instead they’re saying, “Uh-oh, here comes the first runner-up, hide.” The handlers who magically hustle those runners-up out of camera range are probably consultants to Osama bin Laden.

I like to watch how losers react because I’m a sore loser. I’m the asshole that tips the board over and yells “You people SUCK!” Remember how Monica always had to win on Friends? Hi, I’m Monica. Activities I can’t participate in because my friends won’t do them with me anymore: running, horseback riding, skiing, tennis, charades or cards. They’ve also banned me from any game that involves a board because I’ve figured out how to cheat at every one of them except chess. And that’s only because it requires the ability to see into the future. And if I had that skill I would own the stock market and buy new friends.

My lowest point came when a neighbor’s six-year old asked me to play Chutes and Ladders with her and I cheated and won. She started to cry because she had never lost before. She threatened to get her mother and I said, “Go ahead, I’ll kick her ass too.”

“Hi, my name is Suzy and I have to win at everything.”
“Hi Suzy!”

And when there’s no variable for cheating, I’m even worse. Back in the late 80’s I was entered into a Most Beautiful Legs of New York contest by a delusional/high/retarded/blind/yougetthepicture boyfriend, and I lost to a tower of giraffe supermodels, and yes, ‘tower’ is what a group of giraffes is called. In my defense I don’t think I should have worn those panty hose that stopped at a line across the tops of my thighs. As I was being escorted out yelling obscenities and kicking the security guards I still managed to threaten a lawsuit.

After that fiasco, I appeared on Star Search. They rated performers with a 4 star system and the more stars you got, the better you did. Only they broke it down into fractions, like I paid attention to that day in school. So they announced that I had 3 and one quarter stars and the other guy had 3 and three quarters stars and when the camera is on my face, you can see the beginning of a dark cloud forming. I wondered if Ed McMahon could take a punch. Someone from the sidelines hissed at me to get off stage and probably not a minute too soon. Needless to say, I haven’t competed in anything since.

And while we’re on the topic of winning, can you please show me the person who really believes that it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game? World Cup 2006, France versus Italy in the final and Zinedine Zidane of France head-butts Marco Materazzi of Italy. Zidane is tossed from the game and voted Most Valuable Player of the World Cup by journalists. Somewhere Mike Tyson is crying into a pair of his gym shorts.

End of chat.