Harold Ramis interview

Here's an interview I did with Harold Ramis for the WGAw. He's a personal hero of mine, so this was really exciting. He turned out to be every bit as cool as I thought he'd be. Super insightful and humble.

As a little bonus for you regular readers, here's a little except that I cut out because I didn't think it fit the rest of the interview. Enjoy.

I noticed Groundhog Day was remade in Italy. How’d it feel to be on the other side of the Euro-remake coin?

That was weird. I don’t know if they rewrote it or translated the script.

So you weren’t involved?

No, I just heard that someone had license the property. I kind of understand why it was Italy. Our comedies don’t play well, particularly in Italy. I once asked an Italian costume designer working on a movie I was acting in. She said, for one thing, the Italians don’t like subtitles, so you’re sort of at the mercy of who dubs the movie and the Italians might not like the voice doing your principals and you’re at the mercy of translation – and comedy doesn’t translate well because it’s so idiomatic, the rhythm of a joke is so based on language – and so many jokes are based on culture. So clearly, some saw enough in that movie to do it, but clearly they couldn’t have directly translated the funny bit.

Have you seen it?

No, I haven’t.

The French Toast Party

Today, my daughter and I hosted a French toast party. She invited a friend from school and I invited my friend Steph.

We gorged ourselves on French toast, maple syrup and strawberries. I've taken a week off of coffee, so I had a well-earned cup of joe. We then went to the beach. We made a drip castle that Steph announced looked more like a funnel cake. My daughter and her friend simultaneously got nailed by a big wave and I had to prevent two flopping, screaming 5-year-olds from washing out to sea, which is no easy task. I expected my daughter to freak out, but instead she laughed.

We went back the beach shack. Steph chuckled as both of the little girls pulled aside the bottoms of their bathing suits and demanded that I brush the sand off their private parts. She then declined when I offered to do the same for her.

We all went out for yogurt.

Later, after our guests had left, our neighbor, Nick gave us a big bowl of vegetarian spaghetti that we shared for dinner. Then we played an improvised game with poker chips and playing cards. Out of nowhere, my daughter looked up from the game and announced, "Daddy, today with a really fun day."

She liked making the funnel cake best. My heart nearly exploded.

By no stretch of the imagination am I out of the shit storm this divorce created, but those of you who have been following the process through this blog can stop worrying. We're doing just fine.

My divorce envelope has a broken clasp

My divorce is final at the end of July. I received the papers telling me this last week. Our mediator's cover letter opened with the word "Congratulations," which I felt was an odd choice, but I suppose any judgment that ends with only minor blood loss is a cause for celebration in the eyes of a divorce mediator.

I have a big, manila envelope that I shove all my divorce crap into, the idea being that once this is done, I can seal the bastard, shove it to the back of my file box and put it out of my mind, forever. Thinking that this final "Stipulated Judgment" would be the end of it, I stuffed it onto my big folder and folded the clasp down.

It broke.

For some reason, I was much more pissed off than I should be. It's not like the envelope exploded or all the mind-numbing paperwork within suddenly flew out and consumed me like Robert De Niro in Brazil. I mean, I can still just tape it shut.

I suppose I was annoyed because I realized that, just as I can no longer properly seal this divorce envelope, I'll never be able to seal the divorce envelope in my head either. I'd love to focus exclusively on the feelings of liberation and self awareness I've been experiencing in the last few weeks, but the fact is, this beautiful, flawed and failed experiment of a marriage, as well as the twisted end it came to are part of my psyche until the day I die. That envelope will never close, so what I do now is accept that and move on.

Good news is, I'm getting damn close.

So I suppose Harley or Mercedes are out.

I bumped into my neighbor James today while walking Bruce the Dog along the beach. After the customary surfer small talk, we scoped the waves until James pointed out a friend surfing on an alaia, a reproduction of an ancient wooden Hawaiian surfboard. I commented that, briefly, I wanted to name my daughter Alaia, but that didn't pan out for reasons I need not mention here.

James gave me a weird look. We watched the surf for a minute. Bruce growled at a husky.

Then James looked back at me and, speaking with the utmost importance, said, "Dude, never name your daughter after something that can be ridden."

Words to live by.

We Got The Party

The kid and I spent the weekend in Palm Desert with a bunch of friends. It was the first time since the split that I genuinely felt my social life and my paternal life converge. It was kind of awesome.

I picked her up early from preschool on Friday. It was about a three-hour drive, during which we either kept the Subaru thumpin' to some serious Hannah Montana or discussed our favorite moments from the show. (I'm partial to the time Jackson ran through the fake door and fell into the chocolate pudding. She liked it when Jackson's dad moved his bed into the beach when he was sleeping.)

As we drove down the 91 and rocked out to "We Got The Party," it felt like one of those movie moments, the opening to some college road movie, only, you know, with a 39-year-old guy and his 4-year-old kid.

She's reaching an age where we're becoming pals and, at times, it seems like she's starting to fill a friendship gap vacated by my now-ex-wife. I know it'll never last and I'm cool with that, but for now, like I said, it's kind of awesome.

The Wisdom of Major Athletic Apparel Companies.

Here's a cool Nike ad about "reincarnating" yourself. Maybe I should take up jogging...

The Evisceration of Stretch Armstrong

I just heard that Brian Glazer is producing a Stretch Armstrong movie.

Provided this isn't a hoax, I'm happy beyond belief. I got a Stretch Armstrong for Christmas as a child and made the mistake of taking him to the outdoor ice-skating rink across the street from my South Dakota home.

For those of you not familiar with Stretch, he's made of rubber and filled with jelly. For those of you not familiar with rubber, the warmer it gets, the more it stretches.

Twenty degrees in the dead of a Midwest winter is not warm, so when a couple of my friends grabbed Stretch's legs and started skating in circles, trying to use their centrifugal force to stretch him out, he split in two and, for reasons I will never, ever understand, Hasbro decided to make his jelly innards red. Needless to say, as a nine-year-old, watching my Stretch Armstrong's crimson guts ooze out across the ice had a lasting (negative) impact.

I'm hoping this movie will grant me closure.