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As established Rockula is perfect. What would they have to talk about?

Actually he doesn’t play The Game until three years later.

I actually thought that phone call was going to play a key role in the mediation hearing. Part of Demi Moore’s testimony to prove that Douglas harassed her was that she was so angry and upset after he left her office. I figured Douglas’ lawyer would question why she would bother calling his house and tell him about the meeting time if she was so affected by what he had supposedly done to her.

According to Wikipedia, it was a three part web series that they combined to make a feature length movie. It was released in theaters, but as I said on Letterboxd, it only made something like $1750 (seriously). It is currently the second lowest grossing film in history. I would recommend it for HDTGM, but if they’re going to do a vampire Musical, then I want them to do Rockula.

Thanks to everyone who shared and everyone who supported. Also, I have to say @DanEngler,that was a fucking awesome Spike Jonze video! Since I’m a big fan of his, thought I’d add to the lighter side of things again and create a mini playlist. Here’s Bjork dancing:

I’m pretty convinced this wasn’t a scripted line and rather something Miller added himself. I happened to be watching Bordello of Blood recently and he delivers a very similar line. After a quick Google search I found countless references to Prozac in his stand-up and books. It was the 90’s... I’m sure he thought it was a very topical and didn’t mind retreading the same material.

Jason got it right on the Prozac gaffe. You need to take that shit daily for 4 to 6 weeks before it takes full effect, and popping a single Prozac would have negligible effect. But the really crazy thing about that mistake being in this particular movie is that Michael Crichton is a fucking doctor. If that's how he thinks Prozac works, I'm glad his books kept him away from the hospitals.

Hedgehogs forever!!!

They should be available everywhere. I'm honestly torn between wanting to use the hedgehog for its intended purpose and ONLY using hedgehogs from now on.

here's my prediction: white rich guys keep getting richer and keep spanking their secretaries, nothing changes

Abuse is a cycle. People who are abused often copy the behavior. That is why we have to talk about it and get therapy and be better. I didn't know this about Kirk Douglas but it explains a lot, actually. (Possibly, if the rumors are true, why he would rape Natalie Wood who was also a teenager because he wouldn't see her as under any age of consent.) Anyway, thanks to those who shared their stories. I was sexually assaulted by a maintence man who came to fix a carbon monoxide detector in my apartment. I've often wondered if society (see: porn) might have put a bug in his brain that it's okay to climb into a woman's bed if she's invited you into her bedroom (because the goddamn CO2 monitor has been going off since 4 am!). I do think the messages we send in media are important.

In the corporate world there can essentially be an unlimited number of VPs within the company. At my old job the head of our office was a VP but the only people under him in the corporate structure were in our office. The VPs have control of their own little kingdoms but not necessarily company-wide authority. It was odd that they chose the Seattle office for the merger and not wherever the corporate headquarters were but I guess you could say it makes since if Corridor was their crown jewel and they wanted to show that off as part of the merger. As for the future of Michael Douglas at DigiCom after he survived the ouster attempt and got passed over for the promotion again he can go into a mode known as "resting and vesting". He has his stock options which presumably will be very valuable from the merger. He just has to hang on at the company long enough for those options to mature then he cashes in and he is out the door.

I'm glad Jason brought up the daughter's line about never believing what was said. To me that was the truly the most bonkers thing in the movie because if all this is going on why would you tell your kids and if you do tell them why not sugar coat it a little. They did not. How do we know? The email she sends him at the very end of the movie. The email, which is sent from his own email so I guess his family doesn't have a personal email, reads " Daddy we miss you A Family." Lack of proper punctuation aside does that not seem strange to anyone? Why would your young daughter sign something "A Family" and not "Your Family"? Well she was obviously making reference to the cryptic "A Friend" emails he was receiving. This means at some he told his kids about the emails or he told his wife and she told the kids. Why would you tell them that much information? They are like 5 and 7! They aren't going to understand any of this and yet you tell them about weird cryptic emails and your ex-lovers? What kind of bonkers family is this? Also, why does she miss him? He's been going home every night. Granted he had three late nights that week but I assume he was still having breakfast with them in the morning and taking them to school. They clearly had time to sit down and tell the kids the play by play of the sexual harassment claims. So when exactly was he away enough for his daughter to think, "You know what I miss daddy being around."? Unless of course she means she misses having her cool guy tieless Mikey Dougs daddy around because this week he's been gloomy serious tie wearing Michael Douglas. If that's the case, I guess she's mature enough to handle all the details of the case.

What's even more shocking to me is does he not see the plan was always to blame him and he just kinda happened into the harassment? The top brass knew Demi was making cuts and changes. They were cool with it because it saves them money. Therefore she gets the promotion. However, before any of the sexual harassment stuff starts they are already plotting against him in anticipation of their changes ruining the project. The plan was always to get Michael Douglas somehow to take the blame or the fall for the Alkamax stuff. The sexual harassment was just a convenient cover to set him up. They were going to send him to Tuscon or where ever because they needed him around as a scapegoat for the upper brass. However, Michael Douglass even after puts this all together doesn't really seem to see the forest through the trees. He gets his revenge on Demi, but fails to see the plan was never for him to get promoted and for him to always take the fall. Why on Earth would you want to work for a company that toyed with you and only kept you around to shift blame upon you when things hit the fan. Sure, A Friend is VP now, but he also thought the boss and the lawyer were his friends as well and they played him like a fiddle. Is he so dumb, he thinks she'll always have his back and this company won't hang him out to dry ever? Based on the fact he doesn't see all this and quits after the press conference combined with his carefree ignorance in assuming he had a promotion, I'm going to say he continued going to work thinking everything was back to normal. Suddenly more and more cuts are made to his department. Promotions among his staff to new created positions that out ranked him. Slow moves like that that slowly turn the heat up on the water the frog is in. Until one day it comes all crashing down on him and everybody is left dumbfounded and asking "How did you not see this coming?"

I mean this is classic cool non-tie guy Mikey Dougs behavior right there. Now, Michael Crichton wrote Disclosure on the heels of the slightly problematic Rising Sun and might have had Japanese business practices on the mind in which seniority a vast majority of the time out weighs cause for advancement. Therefore Mikey Dougs being the most senior member of stuff just assumes the position is going to him because he's been there the longest. Also in all of this what is A Friend's position? Is she the head of a different department? Is the manufacturing division Mikey Dougs cool guy leads the most important or highest performing department? I mean the position is Vice President and I assume that's the whole company, don't you think your competition would be the other heads of all the other departments across all the other branches? Again, Mikey Dougs doesn't wear a tie! He doesn't close his office door, he's your pal and mine. He likes to joke and have a good time but at the end of the day he's a business man. Nah, the balls on that guy means he assumes everything is coming to him. He's also the same kind of guy that puts on a tie before brushing his teeth. Brazen all around.

I still don’t understand why they would lead him on that he was going to get this huge promotion, only to pull the rug out from under his feet. How does professionally and mentally fucking with Douglas benefit the company at all? Also, what kind of company would announce the promotion of an employee to an executive level position without first formally offering the job to that person in private? It drives me fucking crazy that Douglas just drove into work like a cocky sonuvabitch and nary a contract had been signed.

So, what do you all think happens after the credits roll? The movie frames it as a happy ending, and I suppose there is some measure of vindication at the end for Douglas’ character, but ultimately he still works for a company whose Machiavellian CEO and corporate toady sidekicks were more than willing to frame and fire him for incompetence over an allegation that they knew to be false. They clearly preferred Demi for the job, who wasn’t fired so much for what she did, but because she was publicly caught. Why should Douglas think for even a second that there won’t be further retaliation? And even if he made such a good impression at the shareholders’ meeting that he’s effectively proved his worth and saved his job, why would he want to stay there? Fuck that place.

That’s what’s crazy to me too. I was under the impression that Demi was an outside asset or something. Otherwise, I don’t understand how his girlfriend from nearly a decade ago could not only be working at the same company as Douglas but also up for the same position, and he has absolutely no idea about it. Again, Douglas seems to be pretty shitty at his job. Like, the kind of unprofessional, mediocre guy who gets passed over for the position he just sort of assumed he’d get, so he calls a staff meeting so he can throw a temper tantrum in front of all of them like a toddler. I mean, why does he think that he’s such a shoe in for a promotion that he ties it up for work that day, but is also somehow in a scenario that he could feasibly be fired or transferred from his job, and he’s not really all that surprised. Did he not interview for the VP position? They clearly never told him that the job was 100% his. And honestly, unless he had the job absolutely locked, he really should have been on time for work that day. That’s cocky as shit.

According to Wikipedia it is the Seattle International Film Festival. (Update: The film showed there in 2010.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Kissed_a_Vampire

While I have my own relatively mundane story about the choir director at my church (who later served a lengthy jail sentence for plying other teenage boys with alcohol and smut), I was thankfully old enough and cynical enough to see the writing on the wall and extricate myself from that nightmare-in-the-making. But I wanted to take a moment to say I'm glad all of you are here and able to turn this terrible movie into a net positive. And, if we're talking Spike Jonze dance videos, to share the greatest perfume ad of all time:

And fart bats

@Smigg. & @GrahamS. I want to honestly thank the both of you for opening up to us all. I know personally how hard it is to even talk about this, but y'all are doing a good thing (much better than this fucking movie) and we're all here with y'all. My experiences with sexual assault and harassment started when I was just 11 years old, and has continued well into my 20s, so I seriously want to thank y'all for sharing today. To make an incredibly dark subject light again because I'm sure none of us can deal without trying to make each other laugh I present this.

I’ve debated whether to share this story or not, but fuck it, it’s been over 20 years. Smigg’s post this morning (and other posts previous) reminded me of it. I’m not sharing it to be all “boo hoo, woe is me,” but to shed some light on it, if only for myself. When I worked at a movie theater in high school and college I was sexually harassed. The cultural environment at the theater was pretty much like Clerks (which seemed like a documentary when it came out)—bored minimum-wage twenty-somethings talking about sex for most of the shift. The theater I worked at was close to my childhood home and I loved movies, so I went to get a job there the summer before my senior year. The theater was on Capitol Hill in Seattle, on Broadway, which was an area that was the hub of gay culture in the city. To give some context about me, I was a white, male, middle class seventeen year old. I was average looking and had some acne. I had a reclusive and somewhat shitty high school existence where I was occasionally bullied. Sexually, I was straight but asexual. So my clueless unsexual ass took a job in a highly sexualized environment (this was 1992, to give more context). One of the positives of the job was that I got to broaden my worldview. Some of my friends at the time were homophobic and that had been my filter although I wasn’t 100% sold on it. Working in an environment where the majority of my co-workers were gay wiped away any ill-informed prejudice that I had. But I also got hit on. A lot. By customers, and one co-worker (who was 35) who constantly liked to comment on how my ass looked in my jeans (whether it looked that great or not, who am I to judge). It did make me feel like a piece of meat when I simply was trying to be professional and polite. Since I was a shy guy, a lot of the staff got their kicks from making me embarrassed over sexual stuff. The worst offender was a 23–year-old newly out lesbian who insisted—whenever she embarrassed me—that she was “doing it for my own good.” I still don’t know what the fuck she meant by that. She would frequently grab me and jam her tits in my face, while yelling “oh Yeah!” There was one time where I was eating lunch and she yelled out “Hey Graham, wanna see my tits?” i said “Sure,” because I was tired of her shit and wanted to be left alone. Plus, the theater was in the upper level of a fucking mall and I was sitting near the ticket stand. How was she gonna flash me? she laughed, came over, walked behind me (in the middle of me eating a burrito or pizza or some fucking mall food) and shoved her T-shirt over my head while she was still wearing it. I could feel her boobs on top of my head. She pulled it off and laughed and the guy behind the concession stand laughed like it was a hilarious joke. I think she legitimately thought it was funny and that I thought it was funny. She referenced it a few more times during later shifts. So I realize, while writing this down that this all sounds super fucked-up and I’m probably over sharing. I’m not trying to turn this into therapy (and by the way, the more aggressive harassment stuff didn’t happen until after I was 18 btw, not that that makes it any more excusable). This shit doesn’t dominate my life now and I’m reasonably happy. But these memories were triggered by earlier posts and I figured I’d share it as an example of how guys can get harassed. I’m ok with people reading it. i’m Ok if Paul does or doesn’t read it. I’m actually in a better mood now that I’ve written it. Hopefully I didn’t trigger anybody with it.

You know something, far be it from me to tell personal stories, I'm just here to make stupid jokes and factoids. However, this struck a chord with me. I was walking to get a bus, and I happened upon a group of drunk older women on a hen party. I got groped, had them try to take my jacket off, requesting that I get various body parts out, and various other things, and as I'm trying to walk off, they're trying to stop me. People saw this and laughed and said "Go on, you're in there!" like I'd be interested in a gaggle of drunk older women. I didn't feel threatened or harassed at the time, mainly because I'm 6' and I was 240lbs of pretty solid muscle, so no one's making me do anything I don't want to do. However, in retrospect, if they'd have done that to someone a less physically developed for want of a better term, or someone who maybe had social issues or anxieties etc. It might have had a much worse effect on them, and what are they gonna be greeted with?

Ok so let's get to the nitty gritty here. Men can be and are sexually harassed. Much like domestic violence it's 100% something that does happen to men but is not talked about nearly as much as what happens to women. Nearly 1 in 5 ( roughly 17%) complaints to the EEOC are by men. A survey by Quinnipiac University found 20 percent of men surveyed had been harassed. While they government does not track the gender of perpetrators researchers say that men are more likely to harass other men then women ( though women can be perpetrators). The number of men who have reported harassment has stayed pretty steady for the past decade. The movie is correct in the idea that a lot of sexual harassment is about power. It's also a way to punish people who do not meet the ideal gender norms and for men in particular, those who are not sufficiently like the idealized version of their (perceived) gender. Many men do not report their harassment much like many male victims of sexual and domestic assault. they feel they will not be believed because we live in a society that thinks only women can be victims. A 2014 study found that Canadian woman were twice as likely to report harassment Han their male counterparts( 20% vs just 9 %) To quote a survivor who told his story in this really great article from the Washington Post : "Funk, 53, said he was at first hesitant to talk about what he said he was experiencing at work. “ ‘You are a man. You should be able to protect yourself,’ ” he recalled thinking to himself." But even incredibly "masculine" men can be subject to harassment. In 2016 Terry Cruz says he was groped by Adam Venit at a party. Venit is a very well known executive who works at William Morris Endeavor. He's not alone. Brandon Fraser claims in 2003 former HFPA president Philip Berk groped him. These are both famous men, powerful in their own right yet they both have stories about harassment. While this movie is 100% the panicking of rich straight white men in the wake of the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas testimony ( yet here we are in 2019 with another sexual predator on the bench. I'm not going off on that rant) there is a germ of truth in it. Sexual harassment can happen to anyone https://www.canadianwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Facts-About-Sexual-Assault-and-Harassment.pdf https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2502 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/men-account-for-nearly-1-in-5-complaints-of-workplace-sexual-harassment-with-the-eeoc/2018/04/08/4f7a2572-3372-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/sexual_harassment_new.cfm