Sunday Silliness

I love live TV:

I Will Kill You With My Bare Hands

I have a great affinity for crazy people in general, but crazy famous people?!?! LOVE 'EM! So I'm loving this:


Russell Crowe is set to capture America's heart all over again when Robin Hood hits theaters in two weeks. But let us not forget: Russell Crowe is crazy. Some exclusive excerpts from a new book remind us just how crazy.

The following excerpts are taken from

The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks
 by Nicole Laporte, which will be released May 4. Her chapter on the making of Gladiator contains these tidbits about what it's like to work with Russell Crowe. First, his negotiation style:

"You motherfucker. I will kill you with my bare hands."



"Hello?" Branko Lustig said, confused and barely awake; it was, after all, 3 a.m. in England.


"You motherfucker," the speaker repeated.


"Who's on the phone? Who is this?" Lustig demanded.


When Russell Crowe identified himself, the genuinely terrified Lustig, one of the producers of the about-to-be-filmed Gladiator, hung up and called Steven Spielberg in Los Angeles.


"Steven," he said. "I'm leaving. Russell wants to kill me. I'm leaving."


Having survived a concentration camp, Lustig was not taking any chances.


Crowe, not yet Russell Crowe, but still just another verkakte Australian coming off a sleeper (L.A. Confidential), was sour because he believed DreamWorks was low-balling his assistants on their per diems. Rather than raise this grievance at a mundane daylight hour, Crowe opted for a more dramatic statement, a tactic not unknown in these parts. The actor's recent behavior had been erratic, just like everything else on the project.

Next, a surly and apparently hung over Russell comes to a script meeting at Ridley Scott's production facility one morning. He insults the recent script changes and walks out. Ridley Scott finally tracks Crowe down and gently ushers him back to the meeting:

Finally, Crowe materialized—unrepentant and sans affability. If Scott's pep talk had any effect, it seemed to have lodged deep in the actor's subconscious. Crowe played along, but refused to summon a scintilla of good humor. He didn't so much recite his lines as growl them in a deranged accent that flitted between indeterminate continents of origin. More absurd was Oliver Reed's delivery. Even though his lines were as long as haiku, he filled them with dramatic flourishes. Having recently renounced drinking, he said that the only thing he was chugging was lemonade, but the question was just what he was mixing in the stuff.


"My oold frrriend," he read, puckering his lips and rolling his r's with all the pomp of a 17th century thespian.


Crowe, in turn, chewed up monologues, spitting out each and every poisonous syllable.


Screenwriter John Logan, who has lovingly crafted many of these lines, watched in horror. He scrawled four words on a piece of paper: "Kill me! Kill me!"


A month later, after filming in England, the shoot moved to Ouarzazate, Morocco – a town near the Sahara Desert, where Hollywood has traditionally gone for its sword and sandal needs (Lawrence of Arabia was filmed in the area). Crowe's mood did not improve. Twice, he had walked off the set. Even when he was supposedly having "fun," Crowe was a puffy pain. After challenging members of the crew to a foot race, and losing, he would mutter for days, "I would have won, but I can't run in the sand in sandals."



Heh! And finally, an inside look at the ferocious working style of the world's greatest actor (Russell Crowe):




Never were Crowe's spirits more in flux than when he was to read the climactic, "And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next" scene, in which his character, Maximus, removes his helmet and reveals his identity. It was only the most seminal line in the entire movie, and yet Crowe was convinced that it was ridiculous – overwrought, puffery that no man would ever be caught dead saying, least of all a brawny, sword-carrying killer standing under the unrelenting African sun. Scott was one of the few people who seemed to understand Crowe, that underneath all that volatility was a very scared actor who needed to feel safe. Rather than blow up at him, Scott waited until the tantrum subsided. Then he agreed to shoot the scene the way Crowe preferred.


After doing the take, Crowe still looked dissatisfied. "Let me see the other script again," he said to Scott, referring to the loathed revision. After studying the page stonily, he shrugged. "Well, we might as well try it."


And so, the scene was reshot. Everyone agreed it was brilliant. Everyone, that is, but Crowe. "Russell, what's the problem?" Scott asked, finally showing a hint of exasperation. "It worked."


"It was shit," Crowe repeated, "but I'm the greatest actor in the world and I can make even shit sound good." And with that he marched off.

Pull Harder!!

I work in a nursing home and I'd have to say the worst person to work with there is this one CNA (nurse aide) who thinks she is perfect. I'll call her Sue. She's even worse when there are new people around. No one can put the can liner in better than her, make the beds better than her, brush their teeth better than her and so on.

One day I was training a new CNA when my favorite CNA, Sue, was coming onto shift. Right there is front of the new CNA she chewed me out for improper peri-care (cleaning the "private" areas) on a male resident from the day before.

The new CNA was terrified of cranky Sue as I just stood there and listened to her diatribe of how I didn't clean the resident properly. I didn't pull the foreskin back down after cleaning him and now it is stuck and she had to go report it to the nurse because she couldn't pull his foreskin down over the tip of his penis. She spent about a half hour trying to pull it down and then spent time on each round and I had totally ruined the guy and he would need surgery.

I let her finish and told her sorry, crap happens. Gave report and left.

As we got to the break room I started laughing and explained to the new girl (and the oncoming nurse) that the man is circumcised. He doesn't have any foreskin to pull down. But I'm sure he totally loved the peri-care the night before that he got from Sue.

The new CNA learned quickly that no one is as good as Sue.

Oh my.  The image I have of a nurse's aid yanking on an old guy's non-existent foreskin is just...well....uncomfortable.

Poor guy.

This one was a cut above, whoever you are and didn't leave a name!  Thanks!!

You're So Vain, I Bet You Think This Post Is About You...

I worked with a woman who was so vain it was insane.  (Poetry! Yay!)  She had a large standing mirror at her desk and would watch herself in it as she did her work.  She also touched up her makeup continuously, which would take her a good fifteen minutes for a single retouch session.  And trust me, she must have had to scrape off the stuff with a trowel at night, it was inches thick.  The other women  in the office were always amused when she would offer them makeovers and give unsolicted tips such as "Contouring would really bring out your cheekbones, honey".  Her form of contouring was  painting a brown stripe under each cheek.

One day she brought in all these Glamour Shot portraits she had taken at the mall and hung them all over her cubicle walls.  She referred to them as 'her portfolio'. 

Now I can't stop Carly Simon from singing in my head.  I really hate earworms.

"You're so vain..."

Thanks for making me crazy with this stupid song, MarvinPlata!

I Want A New Drug

My coworker is the Queen of Grammar and Vocabulary.  If you send her a quickly written email that had typos in it, but you figured, 'eh, what's the big deal it's only going to her and I'm in a rush', well, you'd be wrong.  To her it is a BIG DEAL.  She will copy it back to you with all your mistakes highlighted and corrected, but worst of all, she will not reply until it is corrected to her satisfaction.

She also corrects people when they are speaking.  Two of her biggest pet peeves are when people say anyways and alls, to which she will start yelling - "THERE IS NO S ON THE END!! THERE IS NO S!!!".  And once someone used drug as the past tense of drag, and her reply was "Is the past tense of brag, brug?  How about lag? Is it lug?  If I am gagging, did I gug?  NO. THEREFORE, IT'S DRAGGED, NOT DRUG!!".

ome people have complained about her to our boss but he says there is nothing wrong People have complained about her to our boss but he says there is nothing wrong with a little bit of perfectionism.

Well, anyways, alls I have to say is maybe she needs a drug.  And I mean pharmaceutical, not the past tense of drag.

Glad we drug that one outta ya, JellyBeanie!

Burn, Baby, Burn

I worked for a certain person who would drive me completely insane. She used to eat yogurt with a spoon very slowly as she talked for 2 hours. I found myself staring at the spoon and wishing it would spontaneously combust and burn in a hot metal fire. She also was a fanantic about staples. When she found a staple that was not 2 inches from the top of the page and centered she would remove it and place a post-a-note informing you where to staple and circle the area in red marker. So basically you would have to redo everything. She kept me in an office completely by myself. I was not allowed to eat or talk with other staff. The only hope I had was staring out the window waiting for the delivery driver. It is no wonder my favorite color is brown.

I'm not sure she did the wrong thing by separating you from others. I mean you're wishing that people would combust in yogurt related fires.  Sounds a little crazy, ya know?

Don't worry, brown is a cool color, JHSzurpicki.