Daniel O'Brien's Blog, page 5

I want to tell you a story.

noel:

I want to tell you a story.

I’ve been a good kid all my life.
Was an overachiever, was smart. People liked me, I was told.
I had friends. I never really knew that though. Because
I was always in trouble.
With authorities.
Specifically.
MEN.
I didn’t know what the dynamic was. I just knew I was a “fuck up.”
Any time I stood up for myself when I was being wronged, I was punished.
Any activity I loved, they would find a way to take it away.
Any time I was myself, it was bad.

And because of this, I never let myself have the good things.
I never let myself even experience joys, even as I was creating them.

As I climbed greater heights, I was told it was because of XYZ, but never
because I was talented, smart, diligent, thoughtful, kind.
It was because I was being given things.
Because I was cute.
Or a girl, and cause you know, we’re “In” right now.
I worked very very hard.
I work very hard.
But my whole life, I thought, “When will I be good enough. Why am I so bad?”
And I’ve hated myself.

Flash forward to me, at 30, premiering a movie I wrote, directed, starred in.
People really loved it.
Something born in my brain, but mostly my heart, made it a very long way
To be watched by strangers in a beautiful theater.

A man who I grew up with, a man who spear-headed this bad dynamic in my life,
said to a friend of mine, after people left the theater
“You know, Noël never knew how to behave.”
He said it as a joke, I’m sure, as it’s often presented,
When someone wants to tear you down with a smile.

I was very sad to hear this.
That even at the height of my success so far, I’m still not good enough.
I’m a misbehave-er. For valuing myself. And my voice.
For telling a kind story. About fucking up and forgiving people.
I was crushed.

I’ve been very heartbroken.
And I’ve sat in it for a few days.
Like I’ve sat in it my whole life.
But this time, something different happened.
The sadness started to transform.
And with it, some identity started to break down.
This victimhood. Of being told me, my essence,
my being, is wrong.

And in it’s place, a new emotion has started to develop.
I think they call it “RAGE”

This past week,
I feel like an animal.
I am a fury
at every man who has told me
being great is being bad.
Doing what I love, connecting with people, and expressing myself
is wrong.
At every PERSON who has internalized violence, misogyny, or injustice as TRUTH
and locked people up inside of it.
For every person who doesn’t see me for me,
Or who can’t see any CHILD, or WOMAN, or OTHER who sees things as they are.

I am a madness toward anyone who doesn’t recognize how incredibly powerful
I am.
We all are.
AND HOW PRECIOUS we are.
KINDNESS is not a weakness. LEADERSHIP isn’t BADNESS.
And neither is my ANGER.
My anger isn’t bad, it’s the truth.

I am very mad. I will let it pass, but I am allowed to be
enraged by all that has been taken from me.
And all the ways I’ve been told I was wrong,
When I’ve been right all along.

sorenbowie:Webbys, Please Quit Doing This Awful Thing You DoI...

sorenbowie:

Webbys, Please Quit Doing This Awful Thing You Do

I assume this must be true of most award but nowhere is it as egregious as for awards celebrating accomplishments on the Internet. At least with Oscars or Emmys or even MVP, the playing field is fairly equal and the expectations for excellence are the same across the board; professional athletes aren’t competing with a kid in high school who’s still trying to decide if he wants to play basketball or be a biologist. But the Internet is, literally, everyone with Internet access. Even worse, the categories are so nebulous that they can include pretty much everyone on the Internet. Point in case, when the category is Best Writing for Social, and the nominees are four legitimate candidates in their respective social arenas… and then also the entire show of Last Week Tonight, that poisons the whole process.

Four of those nominees above are relegated to one social platform and they are competing against the general idea of one of HBOs most popular shows. How is this a fair fight?
I know why it’s necessary, the Webbys need to court big names to
the award ceremony for the sake of clout to keep the Webbys prestigious,
but now the only way for the other four to win is by campaigning hard enough to overcome the direct or peripheral awareness that John Oliver exists; a man who could casually mention the Webby over the closing credits of his show and win by a landslide. Even if one of the others somehow succeeds, it’s only because the giant didn’t care enough to try and that doesn’t feel particularly earned.

For most people, this won’t matter. This is a silly gripe about an award that barely matters to 98% of the world (I made that percentage up but, ballpark, it feels right). But for people who have built their entire careers on the Internet, who work there every day trying to make something other people will like, the Webbys are a huge deal. Winning a Webby can bring dollars to your business, encourage other great writers to work for you, and make your stupid site better in countless other intangible ways because it is inarguably the most important award for entertainment on the web. When that spring is essentially gifted to any celebrity who might be willing to come to the award show, it cheapens the significance of being nominated at all.

Anyway, Cracked is nominated for Social writing on Facebook. This is a wonderful and very deserved nomination for Anita Serwaki, Chris Pauls, Katie Goldin, Randall Maynard, Dan Duddy and everyone else who writes our posts every single day. They are wonderful and deserve this award.

https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2017/social/features/best-writing

reasons to love harrison ford

extraterrestrial-communist:

livebloggingmydescentintomadness:

estebanwaseaten:

sapphixxx:

an-gremlin:

losethehours:

madlori:

where-are-your-source-citations:

thecarrisonfiles:

james-asslow:

fiyhi:

james-asslow:

1. hates donald trump

2. got his ear pierced at claires because why not

3. legit asks people to beat him up in action scenes EVEN NOW AS AN OLD MAN

4. is arguably one of the most iconic star wars characters yet couldnt give less of a crap abt star wars

5. the universe tried to kill him (or at least permanently incapacitate him) twice in 2015 and it only mildly inconvenienced him

6. flies helicopters in search and rescue missions

7. was in his 40s for the majority of the indiana jones series which is insane when you think about all the stunts involved

8. quote “the director yells cut and harrison cracks open a beer and then builds a fucking shed”

9. arguably sexy

10. points angrily and its super effective

11. is just a really sweet person
12. no really my dad worked with him on firewall as the tech advisor and he was just a really swell guy
13. got my mom’s birth date from my dad and sent her flowers
14. he sent my mom flowers for her birthday
15. he didn’t even know her he just wanted to be sweet

this was a beautiful and necessary edition to this post thank you oh my god

Awwwww

Originally posted by yourreactiongifs

When he was asked to be in Jimmy Kimmel’s “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck” video, in which he pulled up alongside them in a car and gave Jimmy a little wink and an air-kiss, when he showed up at the set he looked kind of put out. Kimmel was afraid he wasn’t down with what they were asking. But he just said, “I don’t know, this wardrobe…don’t you have anything mesh that I could wear?”

When he was filming “Witness” he rented a small farm from a friend of mine. At the end of the filming my friend went and checked out the property as usual. He noticed the barn door had been leveled so it no longer would swing open on it’s own. Went into the house and saw the closets had been redone, in the kitchen the cabinets had been replaced and all the drawers now opened really well. Turns out that there were thousands of dollars of work and materials put into fixing up everything at the place.

My friend called Ford and asked him how much he was asking for the work. Ford told him doing that kind of thing helped him relax and stay sane when he was filming. Would not take a dime. Plus he paid for a new water heater and got the sewage system cleaned out.

And he paid rent to live there the entire time.

Local Carpenter Stumbles Into Stardom, Worries This May Interfere With His Carpentry

My step sister was driving through Wyoming once, near Ford’s ranch. She stops for gas, and as she’s filling up, this huge motorcycle roars in behind her, scared the pants off her. The rider, dressed in all black steps off, and she yells at him “who do you think you are blasting in here like that, you Darth Vader looking motherfucker?”. He takes off the helmet, and it’s Harrison Ford, and without missing a beat he says

“Hey! I’m not Darth Vader, I’m Luke Skywalker”

From the co-production designer on The Force Awakens, Darren Gilford:

“The Millennium Falcon was the first thing we were actually building. I had been in London and I came home back to L.A. for Christmas. So I go to Sports Chalet to do some last-minute shopping; I get there early, run to the back of the store, get what I need. I’m coming back through the store, and I just happen to pass this person holding up a pair of ski pants, and it’s Harrison Ford. I look at him, he looks at me and puts his head right down. I can tell he doesn’t want to be bothered; I’m sure from the look on my face he knew I knew who he was. 

So I walk past him, and after about 10 feet I think, ‘If there’s ever a time to say hello to Harrison Ford, I’m building the Millennium Falcon!’ So I turn around very hesitantly and go, ‘Harrison, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m co-production designer on the new Star Wars, I’m just back from London, and I’ve been building the Falcon.’ A big smile came across his face, he put his hand out, and we had such a great conversation — he couldn’t have been sweeter. 

As I’m walking away, he goes, ‘Darren!’ and calls me back. He goes, ‘The toggle switches.’ I go, ‘Toggle switches.’ He goes, ‘The toggle switches on the Falcon. When they built it the first time, they bought cheap toggle switches without any springs in them. Every time I threw a toggle switch, it fell back; it wouldn’t hold. It drove me crazy. Please, make sure the toggle switches are fixed this time.’ I go, ‘No problem! I’ll take care of it!’ 

So months go by, I’m back in London, we’re getting close [to principal photography], and I get a phone call saying J.J.’s headed down to check out the cockpit, and Harrison’s with him. I run down there and I see J.J. in the passenger seat and Harrison in the pilot seat. They’re just giddy; they’re having so much fun. And then I see Harrison look up, and he just starts throwing all the toggle switches: boom, boom, boom, boom. [Laughs.] And I remember thinking, ‘Phew, minor victory. Take solace in that and move on. Next task.’ That’s my favorite story.”

HARRISON FORD SMILES WHEN MEETING CREW MEMBERS AND IS A NERD FOR FUNCTIONING PRODUCTION DESIGN

Don’t forget about his Halloween costumes

Harrison ford is a chaotic-good-aligned cryptid, confirmed

We’re all going to blow past the fact that someone called Harrison Ford “ARGUABLY sexy”? Where’s the argument here? What’s the argument AGAINST, you fucking sexless tree stump???

Photo

This Daniel O'Brien- The Newsletter

This Daniel O'Brien- The Newsletter:

The 5th issue of my newsletter is out. You should subscribe (it’s free) or you can just check out the full archive at that link.

spiderjewel:The ballad of Sad-Boy Rick

spiderjewel:

The ballad of Sad-Boy Rick

This is the third episode of After the Trump, a timely show that...

This is the third episode of After the Trump, a timely show that we’re incredibly proud of at Cracked. Here are the other episodes. For literally months (November-February, buddies), we struggled with how Video would be commenting on the administration. “What is our point of view,” “How are we different,” “Can we meaningfully contribute to the broader discussion AND still be funny.” Those are the questions we were asking ourselves while we circled the drain of political discourse trying to find our place. I shot down a lot of pitches that were in the spirit of “Let’s just make a video every day talking about the latest terrifying thing that the Trump Administration either did or allegedly did and how everyone needs to call their Congressperson right now” because, as important as that is, it wasn’t new to me and, more than that, it wasn’t fun, and Cracked has comedy in its DNA. As a brand we’ll grow and become more conscious and more progressive and more thoughtful, but that doesn’t mean we need to lose the fun or the funny. That will always be in my gut, bones and balls, and that’s why I turned down a lot of pitches that aimed to just inform and outrage. And we had a lot of those.

We finally settled on a fun idea. What if the Actions of the Trump Administration were Actually Episodes of a Premium Cable TV Show and We Recapped the Events with the Annoyingly Infectious Glee of the Critics who Review Walking Dead, Game of Thrones etc? This core idea allowed us to view real world events with some level of detachment (which has been incredibly therapeutic for everyone involved) while never straying from the (now cliche) idea that what is going on right now is not normal (an episode doesn’t go by where a character doesn’t mention how “this sort of thing could never happen in real life because of checks and balances or, ya know, The Logan Act”). We finally landed on a delivery system (recap shows) to talk about all of the horrible stuff going on in a way that doesn’t feel helpless, or like we’re indulging in outrage porn. Because we didn’t want to do a show that was a bunch of people sitting around talking about how scared and sad they were, but we still wanted to get the sadness-worthy information out there. So we created a false reality wherein we could teach real world things while doing jokes, and real world things + jokes is the Cracked mission statement from way back.

I guess I’m just really excited about this show and the rest of the team is too and everyone who watches it likes it, and I just wish more people watched it. If you haven’t watched it yet because the titles were confusing (it’s a pretty ridiculous premise that is difficult to get across in a short title) or because you’re experiencing President Trump Fatigue and you’re sick of all-things-politics, I’d like to ask you to give it a chance. I think what we’re doing with this show is different and I think you’d like it.

Hug Me

Someone at the YouTube Space who looked familiar waved at me today and I waved back and went in for a hug and then she said “Hello, this is [Her Name]” into her phone and it occurred to me I never met this person and almost hugged a complete stranger and wouldn’t THAT have been interesting and like why even give me arms if I’m gonna be this wrong at hugging.

danagould:Little. Big.

danagould:

Little. Big.

How to Fight Presidents

Just plugging my book about fighting crazy presidents for no particular reason.