FIRST, we're delighted to welcome our new sponsor, FIDO J. BARKIE'S SKOOL-4-DOGS, whose banner ad festoons our home page. FIDO J. BARKIE'S earned WIT MEMO'S unqualified endorsement courtesy of the bang-up job they did with WIT MEMO dog JASPER, a formerly high-strung Lab mix whose friskiness compelled him to chew a prized leather jacket and bark annoyingly at any person or (especially!) dog that happened by the entrance to WIT MEMO headquarters. At the end of our rope, other dog trainers and books no use, we shipped Jasper off to FIDO J. BARKIE'S for a brief stay, and now, he won't even go into a room where there's a leather jacket, or where a leather jacket has been in the last few weeks! And instead of barking and capering about, he mostly sits huddled in a corner, perfectly quiet except for the occasional whimper! What a difference! FIDO J. BARKIE'S, "welcome" to the WIT MEMO team!
SECOND,
we're pleased-as-punch-proud to be the official op-ed column for new hipster
monthly music rag SNAP POP!, which debuted this month. Look
for SNAP POP! at cool bars and clubs; you can't beat the price -it's
free!
1. OUR NEW HERO!!
A
heartfelt WIT MEMO "Thanx and a
tip o' the hat rack" goes out to the unknown, valiant highway planners
who presciently designed the 14TH STREET BRIDGE just SEVERAL
INCHES TOO LOW to permit the entrance into East Potomac Park
and Haines Point of one of those hideous BILLBOARD TRUCKS
that WIT MEMO observed wedged beneath
it several Sundays ago, thus sparing the pleasant scenery from visual
pollution by the most fiendish application of the internal combustion engine 
yet
conceived in the twisted minds of evil men. If those ad-agency
jackanapes can't erect actual billboards at Haines Point, they shouldn't
be permitted to spirit them in surreptitiously.
2. A WIT MEMO EXCLUSIVE! REDSKINS RENAMED!!!
WIT MEMO hears that new REDSKINS
owner DANIEL M. SNYDER has bowed to longtime criticism of the
Redskins name as culturally offensive.
Beginning next season, Washington, D.C.'s NFL football franchise will be
known as "THE WASHINGTON INJUNS." And, in keeping with the
change of ownership, newly purchased team home JACK KENT COOKE STADIUM
will henceforth be referred to as "HEAP BIG PIGSKIN TEPEE,"
mercifully bringing down the curtain on TONY KORNHEISER'S hectoring
campaign to call it "The Big Jack."
3. WIT MEMO PRESENTS:
ADVICE FROM THE WORLD'S GREATEST WRITER!!
The respect and recognition that this famous author's name commands
is instant and universal, and would, if that name were revealed, cement
WIT
MEMO'S place as the toast of the literary town. This author's
vast body of work under several names comprises our age's foremost contribution
to world literature and has won its creator universal acclaim as THE
WORLD'S GREATEST WRITER, on top of fortunes earned as "writing consultant"
to corporations, universities, and esteemed journals. Weary of the
spotlight, the WORLD'S GREATEST WRITER had long sought an unobtrusive,
non-commercial forum to connect anonymously with his -or her- reading public, out
of the spotlight's glare, and recently approached WIT
MEMO clear out of the blue. You coulda knocked us over
with a feather! And so now, here and only here, is-
THIS WRITING LIFE-By 'M.' No, 'S'. I mean, 'Q.' No, wait a minute . . . 'B'. . . . Yeah, that's it -- 'B.'
QUESTION: I've always wanted write a novel, but I can't seem to get started. Any suggestions? -J.H., White Plains, New York.WGW: Have all the basic parts: introduction, development, climax, and denouement. Stick to happy endings, folks like 'em. Base your characters on people you know in real life. Your funny old uncle Carl, for example. If you get stuck with the plot, start at the end and work backwards. Keep it simple; don't go mucking about with flashbacks and different voices until you've got the basics down pat. If you get bogged down, take a break. Go for a walk, take in a movie. Good luck, and welcome to This Writing Life!
QUESTION: How do I write a proper letter? -N.C., Bondurant, Wyoming.
WORLD'S GREATEST WRITER: That depends on whether you're writing a formal business letter, or a casual letter to a friend. (cont'd on page 162)
4. WIT
MEMO AT THE MOVIES -- A NEW LOOK AT THE NEW
'STAR WARS' FLICK!
It's been done to death, the complaints registered and the disappointment
duly noted, but the long lines long gone so WIT
MEMO finally did its part and caught the NEW STAR WARS MOVIE,
the most anxiously awaited biggest big budget se-prequel of all time.
And so now here, at last, is the REAL STORY of THE PHANTOM MENACE:
As in REAL ESTATE, the three most important things in a STAR WARS movie are effects, effects, and effects. You'll go for the effects, but you'll stay for the effects; there's so many visually fascinating and entertaining images busily competing for attention in unprecedented quantities that you can't help but be entertained and distracted. You'll marvel at arresting vistas of different city/worlds, unique creatures, sentient machinery and whizzing spaceships of all shapes and sizes. As you take it all in rest assured that the dull interludes -i.e., those featuring any form of human interraction- will shortly be followed by still more painstakingly modeled whiz-bang eye candy. So follow the WIT MEMO plan: Select a theatre with as big a screen as possible, arrive early, and stop in at a local tavern for a few quick Stiff Ones -WIT MEMO likes draft pilsner beer and MAKER'S MARK chasers - to put you in the right frame of mind for a coupla escapist hours that a bathroom break or two won't ruin.
Sporting your properly manicured buzz, you'll be less apt to care that the flesh-and-blood characters are uniformly somber and subdued, as if cowed by the spectacular effects whirling all around them that weren't even there when they spoke their lines. To a person, the cast sleepwalk through the flick, as if in homage to JABBA THE HUTT, who actually nods off during the entertaining Ben-Hur-homage POD RACE on Tatooine. The JEDI KNIGHTS in particular are as laid back as a bunch of California stoner-surfers, like they've been lulled into blasé slacking from centuries of having "The Force" to fall back on. I could have sworn that LIAM NEESON greeted several crises with "whatever," and the young OBI WAN KENOBI constantly reminds us that an anagram of ALEC GUINNESS is "Genuine Class." Even young ANAKIN SKYWALKER -who seems awfully well manicured for a slave- utters lines that you'd never hear mouthed by a real kid in any galaxy no matter how far, far away, and, strangely, never chafes at his girl nickname "Annie." The only thing close to a lump-in-the-throat moment happens when we're reunited with R2D2. With the proper level of blood in your alcohol stream it won't matter that the dialogue falls far short of the original's script, which says a lot, since, let's face it, CARRIE FISHER'S "I could smell your foul stench from here, Lord Vader" wasn't exactly the stuff of CARY GRANT and ROSALIND RUSSELL. Sufficiently lubricated, you won't miss knowing anything about chief villain DARTH MAUL, in marked contrast to antecedent DARTH VADER, whose evil was carefully delineated through something called "character development." Maul shows up out of nowhere, briefly swashes light saber buckles with Liam Neeson and Obi Wan, including some wonderfully derivative samurai /chop-socky moments, and then boom, he's gone. He may be an artist with a light saber but next to Darth Vader he's all technical skill and no personality, it's like asking MICHAEL FLATLEY to step in for SAMMY DAVIS, JR. Mr. Maul, we knew Darth Vader, we watched Darth Vader, and you, sir, are no Darth Vader. We were stunned at the end of the movie to see a credit for "Voice of Darth Maul" since we couldn't remember him speaking two words. If Darth Maul and Liam Neeson both seem so morose, it's probably 'cause they already know they've been deemed Not Sequel Worthy . . . if you're killed off in what's billed as the VERY FIRST episode it's a safe bet you won't be back, unless there's an Episode Negative One in the works. Other aliens portrayed by human actors in makeup come off wooden; if the two poor fellows playing the evil Trade Federation representatives talk like they're dubbing a Kung Fu flick it's probably because they can barely move their mouths with all that crap on their heads. And if you're a SAMUEL L. JACKSON fan hoping for Ezekiel 25:17 with death rays, you'd best content yourself with that special effects TV special he hosted, 'cause he's in the movie for like two seconds.
But who cares? If the beer was good, it matters not that the human actors are consistently outacted, outclassed, and upstaged by their digitally-created counterparts, who steal every scene they're in, like ALFRED MOLINA in "BOOGIE NIGHTS." At scenery chewing they leave the mortal cast in the dust and turn in the only worthwhile performances in whole schmear. Foremost is WATTO, a blue, winged, elephant seal-snouted, hard-nosed spaceship garage owner who reminds us that galaxies might come and go, but business is still business. If anyone comes close to walking away with the picture, it's him. Nearly as notable is JAR JAR BINKS, a slapstick Gungan who labors desperately to inject some life into the proceedings. We just can't agree with the friend who says Jar Jar speaks with a Caribbean accent, which, if it was true, would have been a good idea -nothing brings a smile to anyone's face faster than thoughts of "Da Islands, Mon". . . remember how funny that Jamaican Bobsled Team was? But we can usually understand the Caribbean accent, whereas we couldn't decipher half of what Jar Jar was supposedly saying. The only thing we can say for sure is that instead of "me" he says "me-sah," as in, "me-sah tired of being the only one putting some effort into making this scene work." But his dialect doesn't matter 'cause physical comedy is his shtick; in one of the flick's more referential comic moments he even gets to reprise the STOOGES' classic beer-barrels- careening- down- the-steep-street routine. If Jar Jar seems frantic to the point of grating, it's only because he's knocking himself out trying to save the flick by dragging a little bit of life out of his comatose human castmates. Even the spear-carriers in the visually appealing DROID ARMY get funnier lines than any of the humans.
So go, but don't dare stray from WIT MEMO'S
get-hammered-first prescription. Otherwise, you might find yourself
wondering if the whole thing couldn't just be some sort of right-wing
religious parable, with all of the cosmos' problems owing to the corrupt,
inert, bureaucratic government, and the future's only hope lying with a
small band of quasi-religious zealots awaiting the arrival of their Messiah.
Don't even get WIT MEMO started on
that one!
5. ROME BEFORE THE FALL, INC.
We're proud to present the WINNER of the WIT MEMO Grand Prize for GREATEST QUOTE in the category "Most Succinct Evidence Of and Explanation For the Sad Decline of American Culture, the Universally Recognized Sorry State of Higher Education, the Failure of A Liberal Arts Degree These Days to be Worth the Paper it's Printed On, and, the Fact That Most Movies That Get Turned Out Just Plain SUCK" --
"I wrote papers on 'Porky's' in college,"
- "American Pie" screenwriter ADAM HERZ, CNN.com, July 7,
1999
6. TWO MORE WIT MEMO AWARDS:
-THE CAPTAIN QUEEG-FRED C. DOBBS MENTAL HYGIENE AWARD
-Goes to the unnamed teacher's aide at DC's Hearst Elementary School who, according to the Washington Post, carried a briefcase with him at all times, even on the playground, and complained to parents of students at the tiny kindergarten-through-third grade school that their children "were conspiring against him."
-THE LAME PARENT OF THE YEAR AWARD
-Goes to the lame-ass Mom who according to CNN publicly complained about her 11-year-old's encounter with an AUSTIN POWERS TALKING DOLL that asked, in that inescapable phony English accent, "Do I make you horny, baby?" prompting the child to ask what "horny" means, much to Mom's chagrin.That Mom isn't even trying. Quick no-brainer answers that occurred to WIT MEMO include "It's when a girl and boy want to kiss, Ewww, cooties!" and "Less talk, more homework!" Cheese and crackers, the more WIT MEMO hears about this parenting gig, the easier it sounds!
COMING SOON: FROM THE PRODUCERS
OF BROADWAY'S "THE TITANIC" . . . COLUMBINE: THE MUSICAL.