My father, Jocko Filipkowski

Wait, I thought I said his name was Dick?? Am I just a liar? Yes. What?

Anyway, this is a sketch from a show I did with my old sketch group, The Animals From the Future.

We are famous enough to get a mention on Wikipedia, but not our own separate entry.

That’s me and SNL’s Bill Hader, playing a father-son sketch team, trying to work out some kinks in our relationship. It also stars the other members of the group, Mel Cowan and Matt Offerman and a bunch of our friends who didn’t mind playing blood-covered children.

It may be hard to see because it’s a camcorder shooting a movie screen for most of it, but I think you get the picture.

It’s kinda weird to watch a video like this, to be honest. It was made a few months before I had massive heart surgery and it captures a moment in time when I was pretty much on top of the world. Plus, I’m a really bad actor, which was semi-intentional, but the reasons for it don’t really come across in the video, I am seeing now. So I just look kinda dumb…

Anyway, enjoy this little slice of my past. And Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Good news! A repost!

[Note: I was re-reading old stories and I kinda realized I'll never write anything this good again. In case you're new to my blog, this is an old classic I wrote right before I had some botched surgery that got me hooked on ativan, which could explain the undercurrent of dread that permeates this piece. I can't stress to you how much I like this story, it's almost like I didn't actually write it, it's so beyond anything I'm capable of today. I would submit it to a contest or a magazine or something, but I don't really know how and I'm also super lazy.]

In defense of child labor

That’s me, with the bird on my head. His name is Peaches.

Standing next to me is my maid, Consuela.

Let me start over. My family was very wealthy. Easily the wealthiest family in all of Connecticut, which is saying something.

I was the youngest of 17 children. My father made his billions as an industrialist in the 30’s. He was an older man and didn’t have much time for his children.

My mother was a socialite and not the most nurturing of women. The care of myself, my brothers and my sisters was largely left up to the substantial support staff in our palatial mansion home.

At birth, we were each given our own maid. They were usually poor Mexican children stolen from their parents by missionaries. A few were bartered for on the black market, usually swapped for trinkets.

Consuela was a few months older than me. My parents’ thinking behind this was that a maid our own age could better relate to us children and our “modern problems” than one who was older. It fostered a strong bond between servant and master, one that I cherish to this day.

As soon as she was able to walk, my dear, sweet Consuela learned the tricks of her trade. I was always so envious that she didn’t have to go school. I would go off and study boring things like math and dodgeball and she got to spend all day around the house, learning to iron my shirts and launder my trousers. What a glorious time she must have had!

Owing to her fiery Latin blood, Consuela could never be trusted to learn English, for fear she would run off and disclose family secrets to the media. So she was taught the sign language and grunts my father had invented for the help to be commanded by. I was able to convey basic emotions to her, like “Get my shoes now!” or “Hey you, it is time for my suppository.”

We had an unspoken thing, akin to love or affection. I never thought of her as my “maid” or my “servant”. To me, she was Consuela, my friend.

Like any good friend, I had Consuela’s best interests at heart. Though she was my elder by a few months, her primitive native brain was far behind mine in terms of intellect. I treated her as one would treat their own child; albeit a child with brain damage who was unfit to be an heir to my tremendous wealth.

I would frequently have to “correct” Consuela’s behavior when she would make mistakes. Again, this was all for her own good, which I put far ahead of my own. I didn’t care if people thought me harsh when I would remove my belt and give her a sound lashing by the soda machine in our neighborhood Burger King, because I knew it was the only way to show her there were consequences when she ordered me a sandwich with pickles on it.

Some would have coddled a girl so innately sweet-natured, but I felt it was my duty to administer tough love to her as often as possible. Even when she had done nothing wrong.

Oh it wasn’t all vicious beatings and nights spent handcuffed to the radiator. As we grew older and our natural urges began to take hold, I began making love to Consuela. Most evenings, from the time I was 9 until I was shipped off to boarding school in England at age 15, we would embrace in coitus under the covers of my race car bed.

Our relationship transcended all boundaries of the physical realm. The love we made was so tender and beautiful, that often Consuela would weep throughout the night when we were done. Even my vicious beatings couldn’t stop her tears. Sometimes, I would simply give up out of exhaustion and collapse on top of my covers, still wearing my pirate costume, her gentle sobs lulling me to sleep like the lapping of waves in the ocean.

I know what you’re thinking, “what the hell kind of English boarding school doesn’t allow its pupils to bring their own servants with them?” But apparently, Father thought it best if I gained some independence from my sweet Consuela.

Since I couldn’t write directly to her, I sent weekly dispatches to my siblings, reminding them to keep her busy with chores and errands. “And don’t forget the lashes!” I would add at the end, as if I had almost forgot! This would always bring a smile to my face and I would chuckle and think about my brother, Stevenson Ranch Filipkowski and his love of terrible, violent beatings. I knew Consuela was in good hands.

Sadly, when I returned home from school, there were no vicious lashings for me to administer to my beloved Consuela. I liked to think she was cleaning toilets up in heaven now, though I knew this couldn’t be true, as her people would never be allowed in such a hallowed place.

It seems that someone had murdered poor Consuela just weeks before I was set to return from the academy. Because she was an undocumented worker and kidnap victim, we couldn’t report this crime to the police and it remains unsolved to this day.

There were all the tell-tale clues of a struggle: a chair knocked over, bruises around her neck. Somehow, the noose which her killer had used to attack her with had become entangled in the rafters of the attic and asphyxiated her.

There were no signs of forced entry and no clues besides my brother’s assurance that “a black guy must have done it.” This was fine for most of my family, but not for me. I dispatched some mercenaries my father had employed to intimidate union organizers to interrogate the entire staff. Though 11 people met their deaths that day in those interviews, no answers ever surfaced.

Perhaps my brother had been right? I tell you, if I ever meet that black guy who murdered Consuela, I am going to have some harsh words for him, believe you me!

In the past, I have relayed this story to some and they have dared to suggest that perhaps Consuela was not murdered, but rather took her own life. This is not only insulting to me, it’s preposterous. Why would someone from such a poor background who was given a second chance at a life amongst some of the grandest people in the country have any reason to do such a thing? She wouldn’t and she didn’t. I will thank you to speak no more on the subject.

In the time that has passed, I have not spent a single five month period without thinking of my dear Consuela at least once. Oh sure, I have had other maids, some much more technically proficient at their work, but none as proficient in the ways of friendship.

Consuela will always have a special place in my heart. Right next to my love of God and Country, behind the shed where I reserve my feelings for my own family, in an old converted outhouse near my left ventricle lives Consuela. Quietly sweeping the floor, waiting for the day her master returns home to fill her life with not just angrily-barked orders and beatings, but love.

My new hero

Is this person or persons who sent out these letters:

(Click picture for link to original story)

As for all the whiny babies at that school who didn’t think it was funny? Burn in hell, narcs.

And the winner of the “Rockstar Video Contest” is…

Since it’s my video, I get the ten grand.

I’m not even going to post the runners-up. They were pathetic. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

I got 37 different videos and they were all awful. I feel mine, the one above, is the only one that really captures the essence of the song.

ANYWAY…

I guess nobody liked my story about being in the ICU. 1 comment. Nice. This is what happens when I try and ‘keep it real’. Well, point taken.

Back to lying all the time!

Tales of hilarity from the ICU!

3 years ago, when I was recovering from aortic arch reconstruction surgery at Cedars-Sinai, I went through what doctors call a “pretty rough time.”

I had what is known as an oxygen emergency, where my lungs weren’t satting at a high enough number. In English, this means I couldn’t breathe.

So they took the tube they had yanked out of my throat during the operation and crammed it back down there.

You really shouldn’t be awake for that kind of thing, so they were nice enough to knock me out.

When you’re going through something like that, your body is subjected to traumas you normally don’t experience. Also, you’re on very powerful drugs; the kind that can make you sleep for days at a time and not wake up even when a bone saw cuts your chest open. This tends to mess with your brain in a big way.

ANYWAY!

So I went on a “fantastical trip” through a “wonderland of my worst nightmares come to life”. I don’t remember what I dreamed about, but even now, every few weeks or so, I’ll get sick to my stomach and one of those visions will come back to me for a few minutes and then it’s gone. It’s like a really powerful deja vu feeling. In those moments, I can’t discern if these events actually happened or not.

What I do remember is that when I finally woke up, I was very disoriented. I wasn’t really sure where I was or how I got there. I knew I was in a hospital but was unclear as to why.

Apparently, at some point I pieced together that I was sharing a room with the actor who played Isaac on The Love Boat.

The thing is, I am not very familiar with the cast of that show, so the guy I imagined was in the room with me was Bernie Kopell, who actually played “Doc”, not “Isaac”, who was, of course, the bartender, played by Ted Lange.

So anyway, Isaac was sharing my room (in reality, I had my own room and wasn’t sharing it with anyone), and it turns out that he had become, like many actors past their prime in Los Angeles, an acting teacher.

Now, I guess Isaac had left instructions with his assistant that when he was on his deathbed, he was to bring the members of the class down to the hospital and they were to observe his death as an acting exercise.

So in my tiny single room, which I somehow saw as a large double room, there was a bed with an unconscious, dying actor from the 70’s in it who had about ten or twelve acting students under a large sheet, huddled around the bed, writing notes about the process of dying by candlelight.

Sometimes, I would talk to these students, but they would never respond. I assumed that was because they had been instructed not to. So I would try and reason with them and tell them things like, “I know you’re not supposed to bother me, but it’s OK, I was just wondering if you could get the nurse?”

Keep in mind, I also hallucinated that I was capable of talking to these invisible people, because I was completely unable to use my voice at this time, my vocal chords having been severely fucked up (the technical term) by a not-so-careful nurse jamming a hose through them, bending them in the process.

Eventually, Isaac was gone. I guess he didn’t make it. The students had their final lesson.

For whatever reason, this memory has stayed with me. As a defense mechanism, you forget a lot of the awful things you have to go through, but not all of them. Most of what happened during those weeks are, thankfully, lost to me. What remains is little sketches in time. Feelings, words, flashes of faces.

I’m not sure why I remember Isaac so vividly. Perhaps he was trying to teach me something about acting?

Maybe what he was saying was that you need to hold on to these moments, to fill in the canvas of your own life with the dark, as well as the light. Or something idiotic like that. That’s always the kind of dumb shit they try to feed you in those things.

But if I had to say what the real lesson from all of this is; it’s that you should never get sick because the hospital is an awful, miserable place that you should avoid at all costs. Am I advocating that you treat your own gunshot wounds instead of calling an ambulance? Yes.

And trust me, that hernia isn’t that bad. I saw a Macgyver where he wrapped a sheet around his stomach or something and it was fine.

Heart attacks come and go. Just walk it off. It will pass.

Also, you should be lucky you weren’t born with a genetic disease like mine that causes you to have these things every ten years or so.

[Ed. note: In light of the James Frey-like accusations leveled at this blog, as of late, I will point out that this story is a 100% true account of my experiences in the intensive care unit of Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, CA, during late May of 2005.]

Expelled Movie Review (3 Thumbs Up!)

Hey, have you ever wondered why they don’t teach the personal religious beliefs of some of the population in science class to explain the origin of the universe? Me too!

Which is why I was really excited when I heard about “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

Hosted by Ben Stein, this movie takes a fair and balanced look at the unquestionable truth behind the fact that there is a conspiracy by scientists to suppress open discourse and allow the beliefs of design theory equal ground in the classroom alongside evolution.

A major theme in the film is the link between the beliefs preached by Darwin and the Holocaust. Which makes a lot of sense, because I actually have heard that the Nazis believed in evolution and used it to justify the things they did to the Jews.

There’s a really gripping part where Ben Stein starts crying at a concentration camp. Ben Stein is Jewish and there were millions of Jews killed in concentration camps. If evolution is even partly responsible for this, as stated in the movie, I think it is time to teach something else, so that it never happens again. I guess science means more to these people than the lives of millions of innocents.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

A good portion is devoted to illustrating that scientists are afraid of the truth and are pushing their own agendas because only popular theories get published.

“Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?”

Nope, no evolution here, just science!

But rather than a boring lecture on the scientific basis of design theory (which is what they call the science of intelligent design), it’s more of a Michael Moore-style ambush of the people actively trying to suppress any attempt to just admit the fact that evolution might be wrong and there is a way better way of explaining all this stuff.

He repeatedly sticks up for the little guys who had their careers ruined, simply because they tried to push a theory thought thoroughly unproven by the “scientific method.” This, in effect, is a tautology, because of course the scientific method is going to prove things that are based on science and thereby disprove anything that has no basis in scientific fact at all.

You really find yourself sympathizing with these poor people. Imagine if you went to your job and were just trying to enlighten people and then you got fired and ridiculed for it. I really found myself getting heated, several times throughout the showing.

The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. If I put forth a theory and people don’t like it and criticize it, I am being suppressed by their arguments against it. It’s a form of censorship. And this film has opened my eyes to the fact that it’s going on all over the country in many famous places that claim to be proponents of free thinking and open discourse.

In the interest of an open discussion, I will disclose that I actually never saw this film, but have read many articles and seen many news programs devoted to it that all felt it was a great and worthwhile project. I feel that I don’t need to see the whole thing to form a valid opinion of whether it speaks the truth.

I haven’t read a book by Shakespeare (who honestly has?) but that doesn’t make him any less great of a writer, right?

So, from what I have seen, I heartily recommend this entertaining and informative film. At the risk of being hyperbolic, I have decided to give it my first ever “three thumbs up” because I feel it is simply too powerful and important to only give 2.

It’s tough to be a bitch

This is a story about one of the funniest things I ever saw. It warms my heart just thinking about it and I wanted to share that with people; to spread some love in this cold, cold world.

I was at California Adventure and me and my “friend,” Pickles, were at “It’s Tough To Be A Bug,” one of those 3D movies that has interactive features like water squirting at you and junk like that.

It’s cool and dark down there and though I’ve seen it 50 times, it’s always a nice change of pace from the hot sun and lack of shade found at California Adventure.

It was a fairly crowded day and the show was packed with kids.

Let me preface what happened with a disclaimer, as I’m gonna sound like a huge dick in a minute.

The Disney park-goer is a tad “conservative” in what they want their rides to be like. There was a great ride at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom called ExtraTERRORestrial Encounter where a monster escapes from its enclosure and stalks the riders in the dark.

It was really cool and genuinely creepy, but from peoples’ reactions to it, you would think Hitler came out and raped a baby kangaroo or something.

Seriously, people would complain and say things like, “I’m never coming back to your park again! You scared my poor child half to death!” Personally, I’d be cool with giving that brat the other half, but that’s just me.

For the record, it’s not that bad. A fake looking monster. Some hot air over your shoulder. That’s about it. It’s Disney. That’s the point: it’s never that scary.

But these people seem to be fantastical pussies when it comes to this shit. Even when there are warnings placed in the line and all that. God forbid anybody take some personal responsibility.

They went and changed the ride to make it about Lilo and Stitch and of course it’s awful now. Even those whiny bitches are like, “Jeez, well this is just fucking lame.”

Back to ITTBAB. So the show is going on and there’s this one part when these giant spiders come out of the ceiling. They kind of appear out of this fog that they shoot out at you. They have glowing green eyes and it is probably what I would call “mildly startling” the first time you experience it.

Well, for some reason (and let me state this is the only time it has ever happened), these kids went APE SHIT.

That was actually much more jarring than the spiders themselves. Everyone was having a good time, laughing and playing along. Oohing and aahing as we got splashed with water or it seemed like a bug was flying right in front of our faces! We could even feel the wind from his wings!

And then suddenly, it was pandemonium!

500 little kids started screaming in terror. You could see them jumping off their seats and trying to hide, putting their hands over their heads to shield themselves.

Well, if you know Pickles at all, he started laughing his ass off. And this, of course, got me laughing too.

Now you might say, “Wow, you’re an ass. Those poor little kids!” But you would be wrong. Trust me. I’ve seen this show 50 times at least. This has never happened. Some of the kids get mildly scared but that’s it.

Let me re-state that it’s really not that scary. It’s Disney, for chrissake! I think it was one of those group mind situations where one person’s actions effect all the other people and they just kinda go along with it.

There was a mad dash as parents grabbed their screaming tots and ran for the door. Tears everywhere.

But the absolute BEST part of all of it was this one kid, maybe 2 or 3 rows over from us, screaming like the rest of them, but mustering enough courage to cry out to his father in his little Martin Prince, high-pitched voice.

“Daddy! Save me!”

We lost it. Through my own tears of joy, I saw his dad glare at us as he shuffled past, clutching little Nancy in his arms.

No offense, I know you’re only six, but fucking grow a pair, bro.

IT’S DISNEYLAND.

You really think they’re gonna let anything happen to you?

You just go along with what everyone else thinks and does? Everyone else is scared and crying. so you do it too? That’s fascism, son. You’re worse than the Nazis. There. I said it.

I’m glad you got scared and pissed your pants. If you were my kid, I would have left you there. You’re a disgrace.

You see those little boys in that picture? They might have Cabbage Patch Kids, but they’d never start crying because of a plastic spider. They were raised with honor.

When my dad left us alone in the woods when I was 8, we didn’t have time to cry because we had to make a campfire and get some food. You’re gonna make fun of my doll? Well guess what, asshole? I used that doll to beat a wolf to death.

That’s called real danger.

So forgive me if I’m a little tough on someone so unashamed to show weakness in public.

When you grow up like I did, you save that for when you’re alone, shivering with your little brother under a freshly-killed wolf carcass, trying not to freeze to death. Thinking about your parents, 300 miles away in your warm house. Knowing they won’t come back to get you for six more days. Constantly reliving the moment when you swung your best friend around by his ankles, hearing his plastic head smash against the skull of that rabid creature, right before it popped off and flew into the partially frozen river where it floated away, never to be seen again.

So I dedicate this blog to you, Ron Adolphe, my adopted son and fallen comrade. I’ll never forget you, buddy.

Cookie Monster has a new vlog!

Unfortunately, you can’t watch it here, because WordPress won’t let me embed videos from funnyordie.com.

But if you click this link, you can go see it and (of course) vote “funny” so that I can feel like my whole life isn’t a huge waste of time.

Thanks!

Video Contest!!!

In case you’ve been living under a rock (not a rock n’ roll rock, btw!), there is a video by one of my favorite bands ever that is simply amazing.

After I was done watching it (for the 4millionth time LOL!) on YouTube, I noticed in the related videos that people have been making their own versions and putting them up.

I thought it would be radical if we did that here.

You all have a week to turn in your best homage to what I consider the greatest music video of all time.

Check out the one above, go on YouTube and look at what other people have done. Maybe it’s just you lip syncing in front of the camera. Perhaps you’re feeling ambitious and recruit the little league team you coach to help you you. I don’t know.

But get out there and start rockin’!

I’m gonna make my own, but obviously it won’t be part of the contest. That wouldn’t be fair.

I’ll post the best entries on my Video Contest Round-Up blog next week and everyone can vote for their favorite.

Just upload your video to YouTube and send the url to my account, www.youtube.com/hollywoodphony.

Good luck, I know you guys are all really creative and will come up with some great ideas, I can’t wait to see them!

Ghost Dad 2

In January of 2003, I sold a script to Focus Features which was a sequel to the Bill Cosby vehicle, Ghost Dad.

When I made this deal, I knew two things:

A. This was a phenomenal script. If it had a flaw, perhaps it was so densely “literary” that it might be hard to translate to the screen, which leads me to …

2.) Due to the political climate at the studios back then, I knew it would never get made.

At that time, I didn’t really care. I had $35,000 in cash and my foot in the door with several Hollywood Bigshots. I was living large and having a hell of a time doing it.

My downfall has been chronicled extensively (see here and here), so I won’t get into that now. But even back then, as coked up as I was, I knew people had to read this script. It’s simply that good.

Not good. Great.

Excellent. Superb. Insert your own superlatives at will. You won’t be over-stating anything. In fact, if you lined up 8 million of them in a row, they still wouldn’t do it justice.

I’m not a boastful person. There are at least five or six writers in the world who are better than me, I freely acknowledge this. But this story, well, I know its excellence is beyond the scope of my talents. It’s a fluke. A bright shining star in a sea of dismal mediocrity. I think it’s trite for people to say that their work has been “touched by the hand of God”, but I see no other way to account for the fact that I’ve created such a masterpiece.

Me, a humble blog writer and purveyor of fart jokes, has equaled or surpassed the life’s work of a Michaelangelo or a Shakespeare. In the realm of mainstream comedy scripts, that is.

I had always planned to release it to the public, somehow, so they could bask in its glory. It seemed selfish that it should be locked up in a vault somewhere, or passed around in manila envelopes to different executives who would whisper in hushed tones about how it was too good for this shitty, undeserving world.

That was their reasoning. They told me that Joe Sixpack simply wasn’t worthy of an experience like this.

The masses want comfort food. Crème brûlée? “No thanks, just ketchup on mine!” they would say.

Anyway, once their option expired, after five years, I was just gonna self-publish it. Put it on the internet. Let people read it, love it. Maybe make their own, home-brewed versions with their camcorders. I basically predicted the whole YouTube phenomenon in its entirety, only I thought it would be structured around my script.

January, 2008 came and went.

A lot had changed for me in those five years. I got married, moved to the suburbs, had some kids of my own.

Suddenly, Ghost Dad’s exploits as an invincible pedophile who could choose when and where to apparate, eluding capture by the authorities and finally finding acceptance in a foreign land, while still uproariously funny, were now subject to certain concerns of morality that I hadn’t been burdened with back then. Plus, the whole Michael Jackson thing basically stole a lot of my thunder.

So, I pussed out. I admit it.

In a way, it kinda makes it all the more special to me. It’s something wonderful that I’ve shared with but a handful of people in the whole world. Like taking a peak at the Ark of the Covenant or something. This way I know it can never be ruined by some greedy corporate fat cats.

There will be no “Ghost Dad 2 Whopper” or Elliot Hopper action figures.

It’s pure and beautiful.

No hacky hired gun is gonna come in to polish it up (as if that were possible) or trim it down from its original 439 pages.

It sits in my desk. Perfect. The way God wrote it.