Striking Hollywood Writers Collaborate to Bring You

Groundhog Day After Tomorrow

A weatherman/climatologist travels to Punxsutawney, PA for the annual Groundhog Day appearance of Punxasutawney Phil. Evil omens portend something different this year--Phil's head spins completely around and James Earl Jones' voice bellows forth proclaiming "Six more millenia of winter".

Suddenly an ice age begins, freezing millions to death and forcing the rest into a harrowing battle with the elements. Still, the next morning the weatherman wakes up to find it's still February 2nd and the events of the day repeat. Again and again it happens--always ending in an ice age.

The weatherman begins finding new and clever ways to destroy the demonic prophet of instant climate change, and along the way falls in love with a local police officer who repeatedly drives him handcuffed from the site of gruesome groundhog annihilation.

They eventually live happily ever after in an igloo they build with a kit from Walmart.

Striking Hollywood Writers Collaborate to Bring You

Raging Bull Durham

Robert DeNiro costars with Kevin Costner as a washed up boxer and a washed up baseball player, one who believes he coulda been a contender, and one who believes he coulda played for one. Surviving on a steady diet of cheeseburgers, Jake, the boxer, creates a moderately successful nightclub act: "Jake IS the Fatman".

My Fair Lady and the Tramp

A poor English flower girl and her mangy dog are taken in by a wealthy Rex Harrison and his spoiled dog "Lady". He makes a bet with his friend that he can teach both flower girl and street cur to pass themselves off as royalty. Hilarity ensues as the stuffy uppercrust meets the street naivete of both girl and dog, culminating in a rousing human/canine song and dance number "Get me to the Vet on Time".

Striking Hollywood Writers Collaborate to Bring You

Cider House Rules of Engagement

Samuel L. Jackson stars as a decorated officer who leads a squad of commandos into an orchard where a lone abortionist (Tobey Maguire) is besieged by a militant group of pro-life protesters. Tommy Lee Jones must defend Jackson's character when several trees are uprooted and an angry orchard owner takes the veteran commander to small claims court.


A Few Good Men in Tights

Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Carey Elwes and Dave Chappelle star in this courtroom drama. After Will Scarlet complains about the quality and portions of venison being served to the Merry Men, he is found hanging from an oak tree in Sherwood Forest. Little John and Friar Tuck are accused of silencing Scarlet, and Cruise's enthusiastic performance as a young inquisitor culminates in the famous scene where Robin Hood asks "Canst thou handle the truth?"


Editor's note: Since they're all looking to put food on the table, striking Hollywood writers welcome your ideas for further collaborations. Please feel free to submit them as comments.

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Crime Scene Investigator

Hi--no, I'm glad you called. Yeah, it has been a while. Really? I was wondering how that reconciliation was working out for you. That's too bad. Me? No, I don't have any plans for supper. Oh right, all you can eat shrimp until six--that sounds good. Yeah, I can probably be out of here in five--traffic's a bugger out that way. Okay--see you there.

Oh, hi kids. I was just leaving. What? No, I never make appointments this late? Really--I did--let me check that book. Well, look, could you come back tomorrow or something. No, no--I understand you guys are busy too. Okay--but four of you? Normally I only do one career at a time. Oh, you all want to be CSI's huh?

Hmm--well, I've seen those shows as well. If popular media and our preconceptions are to be trusted, then a career as a crime scene investigator will go something like this:

You'll probably do the police academy or something lab oriented. Then you'll go somewhere where they'll determine if you have the qualifications to work in a crime lab. That means they'll check whether you meet the "hotness" requirements--since most CSI's look like they could be models or something.

You'll start in the lab, which means you'll have to hide the hotness a little by tying your hair in a bun and wearing glasses and a lab coat if you're a girl, and being a bit of a anime or tech geek if you're a guy. One day you'll get your break and there will be an opening out in the field, so you can shed the lab coat and ride in the cool vehicles. Apparently in Miami taxpayers provide Hummers for their civil servants.

Don't gain weight--one thing CSI's have in common is they're all fit. If you're female you'll always wear very low cut tops to go out to crime scenes, no matter that you have to bend over bodies all the time. This holds true even if you're a female forensic pathologist. If you're blonde you'll also wear designer pant suits and stiletto heels and you'll have probably dated every FBI, Treasury or ATF agent you run across at work.

If you're a guy, you'll have a dark secret--gambling, drugs, alcohol or abuse in your past. Actually, this may be true for the girls as well. If you're hispanic, either your sibling or niece or nephew will be mixed up in the cartels or with other bad people and you'll have to pull in favors to save them.

Also, you'll "cross the line" every few months and be investigated by some asshat from the Internal Affairs Bureau. Your boss will break some rules and save you, though. You'll learn to trust your boss, even though he may be kind of creepy and you've never seen him outdoors even at night without dark glasses and the whispered rumors about his personal life are, well, disturbing...

Though you work in a city of millions, your shift--either days, afternoons or nights--will only investigate two crimes at a time. Sometimes only one. Those crimes will involve hot people being killed by other hot people. Usually the body is found at a beach volleyball court, a fashion show, a fetish party or simply a skanky motel.

Also, though the city police force includes thousands of officers, you will always find the same one waiting at your crime scene. It's kind of creepy, actually.

You'll have an uncanny knack for spotting the dead mosquito in the driveway that just happened to bite the perp as he or she was killing the victim, and you'll somehow turn that mosquito into a DNA hit in the computer--a computer which has a crazy holographic projector that responds to waves of your hands rather than something as mundane as a mouse.

You'll use other amazing technology as well--perfume sniffing machines and such. No matter that no other law enforcement agencies have seen them--they exist in crime labs.

You'll never have a family, unless somehow you already have one and are estranged from them by the time you start working as a CSI. Still, your work will be rewarding, since every criminal will actually instantly give a confession once you finally share the questionable evidence your science fiction technology provides.

Have fun--I'm outta here.

Pandering

I understand that times change and I am not adverse to making art more accessible, at least in principle. I don't recoil in horror at the idea that an opera company might make the English translation available on the backs of seats (was it Lincoln Center I saw that?) or on a surtitle or subtitle screen.

I accept that the "Leonardo" Romeo and Juliet with its opening gunplay at a gas station or tabloid news introduction is likely to appeal more to the average adolescent than the BBC recording of a staged performance.

Still, I heard about this on my car radio today:

"Play! A Video Game Symphony"

Click the link, then lament the end of civilization as we know it.

Poetry By Dythandra

For Those Who Follow

I'd just as soon not bother,
As they pass the papers out.

There's a template, you see--
No more than 500 characters,
"Including spaces", we are warned.

I've met maybe a dozen "characters"
Among the denizens of this cesspool of bland conformity.

I am torn--I could just pass it by,
But knowing who is charged with creating the yearbook,
I fear allowing their spoof to be attached
To my picture forever.

Graviora manent
No doubt they'd look it up
And be disappointed
I wasn't threatening mayhem to all.

"Remember, this is your legacy"
A tight-lipped sponsor warns.
No doubt tired of the witticisms
Of nearly-men who think "American Pie" great cinema.

My legacy.
I doubt it.

It I have such, then it may be
A host of websites blocked by the school server.

Perhaps the less than legal herbs
Which poke through soil of the courtyard garden
When spring arrives.

There are always those few pieces of art
Which made the bulletin board,
Until the powers that be
Recognized their own faces
In the grimaces of the gargoyles.

Still, I may leave a darker mark,
There are five months left to go...

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future in

TV & Audio Repair

Hi there--what'll it be? Electronics repair? You mean like TVs, DVD players and stuff like that? Well, if you'd come in here two years ago I'd have sent you off to look for something else, and told you it was a dead 1960s kind of career dream. Things have changed, though, so this career might make a comeback--it won't be a good one, though.

You see with all this environmental craziness that's sweeping the globe people are suddenly thinking that disposable TVs and electronics that wear out in 18 months and get tossed in a landfill aren't really the most green way to go. That's where people like you come in. Most of the old school TV repair guys have been dieing out--there's a big difference between the old 21-inch RCA and the new super flat plasma screens that sell for more than my car set me back. The local guy on the corner hasn't kept up--people go to "authorized service centers" if they need repairs, and once the warranty or the extended warranty is up, it's too expensive to bother.

Now, though, with all these enviro-levies on disposing of this stuff, plus the simple social pressure to conserve, people are wanting to make this crap last longer, so they'll consider shelling out repair fees instead of just running down to the big-box electronics store for a newer model. You will go to a basic technical institute and learn the essentials of the electronics repair business--most of your instructors will be from eastern Europe or Cuba because it's only the lack of available consumer products that has kept their skills alive in the decades when their North American counterparts were becoming extinct.

You'll need to know where to buy replacement chips rather than tubes--a big change from the old days--and you'll work with the same sort of magnifying optical equipment that diamond cutters rely on. Still, once you're out of school you'll find a cheap storefront in the industrial part of town and set up shop. You'll add to your school debt by taking out ads in the local paper, and augment your meagre income the first few months by heading to the dump after work to salvage discarded equipment that you can repair and sell as "refurbished".

Things will pick up when you get some "save your TV--save the planet" t-shirts printed, and give them away at your information booth at a local envirofair. Soon the politically correct are showing up to give your shop a try.

The increased traffic won't all be good, though. It's tough to get parts as manufacturers have been using a business model that relies on disposal rather than repair, and they simply don't make replacement components. Fortunately, you get some help from a variety of environmental groups who begin pressuring the big companies to change their ways.

Still, they've had too many years of building things to break down six months after the warranty expires, and there's no interest in changing things as they long ago farmed out all their manufacturing work to third world sweatshops. Thus, you end up in the incredibly frustrating position of trying to mend things built to break down, and every customer curses you when six weeks after one repair is done they have to return for you to fix something else. You end up doing many jobs for free, even though the new breakdowns have nothing to do with your previous work. It's that or spend most of your days in small claims court.

You don't work the standard 40-hour week--you probably should hire an assistant, but they're hard to find and you can't really afford one--instead you often arrive at work at 9:00 a.m. and don't lock up and leave until close to midnight. It means it's likely you'll enter your 30s still single and lonely.

One day you'll be repairing a particularly crappy combination VCR/DVD recorder and you'll find a tiny note stuck inside. You'll need a magnifying glass to read it, and you're suprised to discover it's a letter from one of the employees at the factory that built the shoddy equipment. She explains that she is a poor young woman stuck in virtual slavery in Bangladesh, and implores whoever finds the note to "say a prayer" for her. Of course she also includes an email address, and you're intrigued enough to send her a short message after work that day.

Long story short, you eventually fly to meet her on your first vacation in years, and you're an instant celebrity in her impoverished town. The two of you develop a romance quickly--your 14 year age difference doesn't seem to bother anyone--and you go home after the two of you promise to marry within six months. After you get home you send your meagre savings to her to help protect her family from the local gangs she told you about while you were visiting.

Eventually you get her out and she moves here where you are quickly married. You put her to work in your shop, but her limited English makes her interactions with customers awkward and some of them are annoyed enough to abandon your shop. Your business takes a further downturn when a number of "authorized" repair centers begin advertising campaigns that suggest people would be foolish to take expensive electronics to those who haven't completed the "special training" by the manufacturers. You considered the week-long course, but it was clearly a scam and you didn't have the 20 grand they charged for the training.

Soon your main customers are old folks and audiophiles who bring you vintage record players and the local ham radio club, who refuse to buy anything manufactured since the advent of transistors since they feel all newer equipment has been bugged by the government as part of some evil conspiracy.

You become desperate--your rent is in arrears and you see no improvements in sight. Meanwhile, your young wife is out clubbing most nights with other girls from the local Bangladeshi community (you didn't even know there was one) and she manages to cajole you into agreeing to sponsor one of her brothers to come over with the promise of employment at your shop--a ridiculous proposition since you can't even support yourself and your wife. The brother quickly connects to some of the less savory members of the community and soon he's bringing cell phones to you and asking you to strip or reprogram cards and codes--he's convinced you're some kind of electronics whiz but you really don't know much about mobile phones; fortunately there are some sketchy websites that explain the process in detail.

He seems to be making decent money from his stolen phone business, but still doesn't manage to give you any rent for the basement suite he occupies in your home. Just as you're about ready to close your doors and declare bankruptcy, a potential solution is dropped in your lap.

Your wife is by herself in the shop near the end of the day, while you're off scrounging through discarded video players at the dump. A man comes in quite agitated, claiming his wife dropped off a broken dvd player for repair earlier in the day, and he must have it back. Your wife barely understands him, and has no idea where the machine might be, so he extracts a promise that he can come pick it up from you first thing in the morning.

When she relays this message to you, you are intrigued, so you go back into work and find the player in question. You quickly open it and find a homemade dvd stuck inside. You take the dvd and pop it into a different machine and are shocked to see a well known "family values" politician taking part in party that would rival anything Caligula might have offered in Roman times. He's featured in some of the more distasteful scenes, where his face is clearly visible, and there's no mistaking his voice, the same one that has so often been heard on television lambasting the depraved morals of the liberal media.

When he shows up the next morning, you return the broken player with the dvd safely stowed back inside. He seems relieved, and you pretend to have no idea what he is trying to hide, even though you've already made several copies of the worst scenes and later that day you lock one in a safety deposit box, and email digitized copies to a variety of accounts to make sure you can access them anywhere.

You tell your wife you're closing the shop for the rest of the day, and she seems unconcerned--she's happy to go off with friends. You suspect she's cheating on you, but you've been so stressed about your financial situation you hardly care what she does any more. You rush across town to a meeting of your ham radio friends--they happily gathered when you called one to say you had something huge to share with them.

They hate and distrust all levels of government, and are thrilled to see the video clip you copied. They help you formulate an blackmail scheme, and the next day a copy of the video is couriered to the politician's office along with a demand that he send a cashier's cheque for 50 thousand dollars to a post office box you rented.

There's no reply for a few days, and then a blustery letter arrives--threatening to use his "connections" to have you all killed, starting with the "video guy". He rightly assumes you're behind the scheme. Then, the next morning immigration officials arrive unexpectedly and accuse you of participating in a sham marriage to help bring criminals into the country. They have surveillance footage that shows your supposed brother in law selling stolen phones, and also pimping for your wife, with whom he also shares a relationship that their surveillance suggests is anything but fraternal. It's probably the politician who is behind this sudden visit.

You explain your side of the story, and they laugh and show you a website for third world workers that has a script for the exact same note you found in the video recorder that led you to Bangladesh. They explain that it's a very old scam which first started with German women working in harsh factory conditions shortly after World War II.

You agree to testify against your wife and the man she claimed was her brother, but he goes into hiding. Your marriage is anulled and your wife is deported, but you keep getting phone calls late at night from her partner, and he always threatens terrible things in broken English.

You assume it is he who throws a molotov cocktail into your shop one night, and the old building's sprinklers don't work and soon the whole enterprise is a smoking melted mess. All records of the repair inventory are gone and suddenly customers appear out of nowhere, claiming you were in possession of all sorts of very expensive electronic toys for which you must now reimburse them. Your insurance company believes you started the fire yourself--their investigators easily find out about your financial situation, and you are forced to settle for a meagre sum that is swallowed by customer claims.

You give up your rental house and begin living in a van in the back yard of a home where your ham radio friends meet to plan the next steps of your extortion scheme. Meanwhile, the politician has begun to have second thoughts about his situation and agrees to pay the 50 grand. His acquiescence makes your friends suspect he could easily pay more, and they insist you up the ante. You arrange a drop for the 50 thousand dollars, but only give him one copy of the video. You later send a message to explain you want 25 thousand more to go away forever.

Evidently he doesn't believe you, and saves 10 grand by paying a hit man 15 thousand to put a bullet through your head. Two or three of your ham radio friends believe you faked your death to escape and are later arrested trying to dig up your coffin to prove their theory. The phony brother in law breaks into the van and finds the 50 grand before the politician can get it back and uses it to set up a very successful drug lab. In recognition of your contribution he puts your intials as his label on every ecstasy tablet.