Mother, May I Sleep with Treacher?

An apology, and a humble attempt at atonement

In my previous post, I claimed that Micah Wright had altered, nay, deleted a thread on his Delphi forum that I've been linking to for several days now. That was uncharitable of me. Any number of things could have happened to that thread. Technical difficulties... a slip of the keyboard... sabotage by insidious right-wing killbloggers... Who can say? Hell, at this point it looks like his whole forum is down, so obviously something catastrophic has happened. But I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions about it, and for that I apologize.

By way of reconciliation, I present this restored copy of the thread in question, which some enterprising historian has had the forethought to save: Page 1 and Page 2. What was lost is now found! (Or 29 out of the 35 posts in that thread are, anyway.)

Consider this my gift to you, Micah. No need to thank me.

Correction: The forum is fine, apparently. Only that particular thread was affected... curious. Well, my mistake!

Addendum: And here's the very last post to that Delphi thread. The mysterious accident that caused the whole thread to disappear must have occurred right after this was posted. Weird!

A Munt For All Seasons

From Micah Wright's latest dissertation on the subject of my meanness:

I emailed Treacher and asked him to knock it off... he was a munt in response and then posted my email to his blog.

Update: Now the title of the Micah Wright Forum thread I've been linking to for the last few days (see above) has been changed from "Treacher and Parrott are the same guy," or whatever the exact wording was, to "Welcome All Warblog Readers!" And everything in the thread but Wright's first post, which he's now entirely rewritten, has been deleted. How uncharacteristic of him to try to cover his tracks after I've linked to him... At least his original first post, with his hilarious joke that he was obviously just kidding about, has been archived here. (Oh! And now you can check out the whole thing here and here.)

Well, he's definitely not going to like this, then, but I'm left with no choice other than to defend myself using the facts at hand. Please enjoy the following e-mail exchange between us, and judge our relative muntness for yourself. Note the From: and To: lines, dates and times, etc. Okay? Okay...

Conspiracy theories are your best entertainment value

Now I know how Bruce Wayne must feel! (Registration to the Micah Wright Delphi forum required.) Man, Steve Hogan is gonna be so pissed... I'm supposed to be him, not Parrott. I think I was supposed to be the long-lost A. Beam too? Well, I categorically deny being Puce.

Anyway, I've never made it a secret that Parrott is my blog host. Thanks again, Kevin! See "you" later (in the mirror?).

P.S. Oooooh, speaking of Bruce Wayne...

P.P.S. Wait, am I Michele too? I probably am, aren't I? So I'm getting a really nice set out of the bargain, at least.

P.P.P.S. Steven Den Beste has a very interesting addendum. I'm not really sure what to make of the e-mail he received, but I suppose it's flattering in a way.

P.P.P.P.S. Now Wright claims he was just kidding about having incontrovertible proof that Parrott and I are the same person, and therefore we're (I'm?) just as bad as he is, if not worse, and how about an apology for being such a meanie to him, etc. Or at least I think that's what he's trying to say now. If so... whew! Just a bit of lighthearted japery, folks. Move along, nothing to see here. (Oh, and Evan McBillingsley, your check is in the mail! Assuming you're not actually me, in which case... boy, this is confusing.)

P.P.P.P.P.S. That thread got wiped out somehow, but you can check out a copy of it here and here.

Some Big Dickhead That Way Runs

Or, as Ray Bradbury put it when asked about Moore's appropriation of his Fahrenheit 451 title: "Michael Moore is a screwed asshole." (Translated from an interview in a Swedish newspaper, via Timbleah.) Bradbury also claims that Moore dodged him when he wanted to discuss it. Read the whole thing, as they say.

Update: The first hit on a Google search for "fahrenheit moore bradbury" brings up this item from 04/04/03:

Author Ray Bradbury thinks Michael Moore's title will confuse people with his classic sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451 and he wants Moore to change it. "He can't have my title," said Bradbury. "We've got an important film coming out [Fahrenheit 451], the book's having its 50th anniversary in October. If he wants his movie to be an homage to me, why not title it, 'Bradbury, where the hell are you now that we need you?'" (Variety)

Update II: Yes, I do realize how odd it sounds to describe Moore performing physical activities like running and dodging.

As for "layabout..."

Not all of us are getting that Denton money for blogging, anonymous author of Defamer! (A form of address I use not as a criticism, but just because I'm not sure if he or she actually answers to "Defamer." I don't think I'd like somebody addressing me as "Defamer," but in many ways I'm old-fashioned.)

I agree with AAoD's point about David Cross, though. Which segues into the other thing I wanted to blog about today but couldn't think of an excuse for. Check out this message board thread where Patton Oswalt defends himself and Bob Odenkirk against charges that they're "sellouts" for doing commercials. Besides the fact that the person doing the accusing is really dumb, it seems like those guys should get more slack than, say, Cross and his various crappy movies. Odenkirk in particular (he's doing those new "President of Beers" ads for Miller), because he's been trying to get another TV project off the ground ever since Mr. Show, with no luck. He's got like 4 or 5 unaired pilots floating around out there. So if he wants to do some beer ads that are actually pretty clever, I say good for him. It probably wasn't a decision he took lightly, and he's obviously put a lot of thought into the ads. And you know he drinks beer. It does seem kind of backwards when you're fast-forwarding through Andy Dick on the Letterman show and then stop to watch an Odenkirk commercial, but I guess that's show bidness.

Plus, have you seen those embarrassing new Budweiser response ads, where they've brought back those stupid talking lizards from a few years ago to basically call Odenkirk a washed-up hack? They're not mocking the character he's playing, but bashing him as an actor. That's probably a first in the various TV ad wars, isn't it? You never saw Ronald McDonald going, "Clara Peller is a stupid old twat!" At least not in public. Well, I can't wait to see how Odenkirk responds. This could be the best thing to happen to his career since the "Manson" sketch.

Here's a thing I like to do where I sit on my ass and watch online trailers for movies I'll never see and then type up stupid snotty unfair crap about them

Constantine: Keanu Reeves branches out in this tale of a pallid, black-clad loner with supernatural powers who seems to gravitate toward damp, dilapidated, poorly lit buildings. Based on a DC Comics series about a blond-haired British fellow who has a discernible personality.

I, Robot: Asimov, Raped.

Alexander: Colin Farrell plays either Alexander the Great or the lead singer of Warrant. The filming of this motion picture marked the first time an Irishman ever battled an elephant that wasn't flying and pink.

Catwoman: Halle, Halle, Halle! Skin-tight black leather, skin-tight black leather, skin-tight black leather! No white wig or ever-shifting accent this time, though. But then, you'll be too busy rubbing yourself off through your cargo shorts to care, tubbsy.

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle: AKA Dude, Where's My Sarong? or Harf-Bake. For far too long, white folks, black folks, and Mexican-looking folks have been the only ones allowed to humiliate themselves as the leads in dull-witted stoner comedies. This sad chapter of human history finally ends on July 30th!

Anchorman: This trailer is the only thing Will Ferrell has appeared in since the SNL "cowbell" sketch that has actually made me laugh out loud. Might be worth the downloadpaying my own money to buy a ticket. (Whoops, I linked to the wrong trailer. That one kind of sucked. This one is the funny one.)

Baadasssss!: Mario Van Peebles wrote and directed this behind-the-scenes look at his father Melvin's landmark ode to racial harmony, Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song. Mario plays his own dad back in the early '70s, and some kid plays Mario as a child. Budgetary restrictions prevented Van Peebles from filming the original draft of the script, which was populated entirely by various permutations of himself. The third-best use of sustained sibilance in a movie title ever, after the original film and the 1973 Strother Martin/Dirk Benedict joint SSSSSSS.

Napoleon Dynamite: Wes Anderson Ex-Lax.

The Terminal: What am I, made of stone? As if the mere sight of Tom Hanks as a befuddled foreignish man who's somehow forced to live in a major American airport isn't heartwearming enough, go ahead and throw in Catherine Zeta-Dialect-Coach-Jones with the most adorable bangs ever. I am weeping with renewed faith in humanity as I type this.

The Manchurian Candidate: Wait, never mind.

Nothing I can say right now will be of interest to anybody but me

Which I guess is no different than the usual, ha ha. Anyway, thanks for checking in.

A couple more Micah Wright items, since the sun's up and all

Todd Allen has a good recap of the situation in the latest New York Resident, as well as an interesting theory about Wright's recent attempt to "game the system" at Amazon.com. See, one of Wright's series for DC Comics was recently cancelled (in addition to the Vigilante one, which doesn't look good for him either). But for whatever reason, an also-cancelled third trade paperback collection of the series was still available for preorder at Amazon. Wright tried to get his fans to preorder a bunch of copies so DC would go ahead and publish it. That was less than a week before Rangergate. Was he playfully thumbing his nose at The Man? Making one last-ditch effort to squeeze some quick cash out of his teetering comics career? Who can say (who you'd be able to believe)?

Also, Parrott has "the definition of Wright and Wrong."

And I might as well throw this one in.

Update: According to Rich Johnston's latest rumor column, Wright has been fired as the writer of Stormwatch: Team Achilles #24, which is the last issue. For details, scroll down to "Shitstorm II," past the (ahem) humor portion of the column. It doesn't have a blinking traffic light like most of the other items, which probably has something to do with the Conspiracy.

Top 10 Favorite Moments In The Final Angel, In No Particular Order

10. Wesley's death scene. Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker deserve Emmy nominations for their work this season. It'll never happen, of course, but it should.

9. Mercedes McNab in her baby-blue bra and panties. Yeah, yeah, Harmony was the Judas and still skated, just like she always does, blah blah blah. Mercedes McNab in her underwear.

8. "Sebassis! Your manservant has become tangled in my bodily fluids again!!" "Eeeep!"

7. Angel: "I understand jokes! I was at the first taping of The Carol Burnett Show. Tim Conway was on fire. It was special..."

6. When they finally slammed the door on the whole "Shanshu" thing. You know, the ancient prophecy that Angel would someday become human again? The carrot that's been dangled in front of him since the end of the first season? Gone, signed away in a heartbeat (so to speak) as a test of his loyalty to the secret society he'd infiltrated. WHICH WAS AWESOME. It summed up the whole show: You keep going even when there's no hope, no possibility of reward. You just keep going. Hell, the guy is practically a blogger.

5. Lorne quitting. It just makes sense. He's an empath, after all, and he's always been squeamish about the more hands-on aspects of the whole operation. He did that one last thing for the team (big thanks to the WB promo dept. for giving it away!), and then he was out. Look on the bright side, Lorne fans: He's one of the few characters with more than a 50% chance of survival.

4. The "Spike goes into a biker bar looking for a fight" fakeout. Glad his poetry finally got the recognition he always thought it deserved. I mean, come on:

My soul is wrapped in harsh repose
Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes
But soft... behold! A sunlight beam
Cutting a swath of glimmering gleam
My heart expands, 'tis grown a bulge in it
Inspired by your beauty... effulgent

And he had to wait like 130 years for somebody to truly appreciate that. Brings a tear to me eye, it dooz.

3. The scene with Gunn and Anne at the runaway shelter. So what if that woman cannot act, never could act, and never will be able to act. It was kind of nice to see her.

2. The utter Butchcassidyandthesundancekidness of the final scene. That's how you go out, man. The shrieking demon horde might as well have been wearing WB T-shirts, huh? And:

1. They couldn't have given Angel a more perfect last line than, "Well, personally, I kinda wanna slay the dragon. Let's go to work." The Dark Knight Is Forced into Retirement? Fuck that!

Now I almost hope this is really it, no TV movies or any of the other rumored stuff, because I don't see how they can possibly top this last episode. Seven years and over 250 episodes in all? Even the worst of them better than almost anything else on TV that you don't have to pay extra for? Not bad. Not bad at all.

See also Top 10 Favorite Moments In The Final Buffy, In No Particular Order

Angel fans, test your knowledge!

In honor of tonight's series finale, I hope you'll participate in my latest poll.

JOSSVERSE 4-EVAH

P.S. All kidding aside... damn but that was good. It all just felt right. And that last scene felt like the last page of a really good book. Just perfect.

Micah Writes:

Jim,

Please leave me alone. I would really appreciate it if you would stop using your blog to hound me day and night.

Yours,
Micah

The tone here is slightly better than the first few e-mails he sent me, but the hyperbole is obviously still a problem. Nonetheless, I hereby promise to accede to Micah's wishes and limit myself to the daylight hours. Never let it be said that I'm unwilling to compromise!

P.S. Michele is really starting to feel left out.

Maybe I could pitch him a homelessness blog called Panhandler

I don't know what's more depressing about this Business 2.0 story on Nick Denton: The revelation that he only pays his bloggers $1,000 a month, or the realization that this is $1,000 a month more than I will ever get for blogging. Well, that's alright... I wouldn't really have anything to say about Graydon Carter anyway.

Drop and Give Me 20... Paragraphs About Why It's Not Your Fault

Micah "War Is Hell on My Carpal Tunnel" Wright makes a triumphant return to his Delphi forum (registration required), revealing what has given him the strength to carry on:

...someone pointed me to a recent warblogger (their word for themselves, not mine) post where some guy was saying "haw haw haw, this proves that everything Micah ever said is a complete lie, his politics are a lie, haw haw haw, he should never open his mouth about politics again, haw haw haw" (yes, in my head all warbloggers are Chick Tract characters and laugh by saying "haw haw haw").

That was what I needed to snap myself out of my recent funk. Here's what I say to that: FUCK YOU. Yeah, I'm a goddamned liar, but guess what? I never lied about my politics because my feelings about politics are OPINION which by fucking definition can't be a lie because it's how I feel.

So he didn't need to tell great big lies to try to validate his opinions, turns out. Hindsight is 20/20, huh?

Also, he's not as bad as the Abu Ghraib guards, in case you were wondering. Oh, and he lost his DC Comics writing gig not because of anything he might have done wrong, but because of a Corporate Conspiracy™ against him for "pushing the boundaries of the format." His "resume padding" just gave them a convenient excuse to drop him, see. I think that about covers it.

(Link via Fanboy Rampage)

The Wright Advice

Kevin Parrott has it.

The Olsen Twins Countdown... to Early Onset of Osteoporosis

(Via Michele)

Some say the cover-up is worse than the crime

Micah "Blood 'n' Guts" Wright e-mailed me yesterday, wondering what the big deal is. After all, he said he was sorry, didn't he? He also had some choice words about my keen interest in this whole situation.

Plus... (Click the "Continue reading" link if you're still interested in this whole thing.)

Well, we know the "V" doesn't stand for "Veracity"

In this week's edition of Rich Johnston's "Lying in the Gutters" comics rumor column, between plugging his own comic book for Avatar Press (known variously for their violent porno comics and their history of not paying their freelancers) and keeping us apprised of the latest Micronauts news, he has some scoop on DC Comics' upcoming Vigilante series, written by Micah Wright and drawn by Carlos D'Anda:

I understand DC were exploring if they can bring another writer on to redub and regig Carlos' art from Micah's original script, but now it appears they'll be starting again from scratch with a different writer.

Though DC deny any official or even unofficial line on Wright, I have heard from DC freelancers that their editors told them they'd been told not to hire Micah Wright for any project, effectively blacklisting him from the entire company. It's a sensitive time for DC right now - especially with one DC employee joining the National Guard in Iraq. But in a company that has brushed far worse than offensive lies under the carpet, this sticks in the throat somewhat.

(Not sure what the "far worse than offensive lies" were, but they must have been pretty bad!) Rich gives this one a "yellow light," which means it's iffy. Well, more iffy than a "green light," presumably. If it's true, it's just more proof of a witch hunt against Wright, even though he didn't really do anything wrong and his public behavior shouldn't affect what people think of his work and, and, and besides he's not nearly as bad as George Troublesyou Bu$h. Or something like that; I haven't had the necessary lobotomy myself.

We are experiencing technical difficulties

Obviously. Fixed! Thanks to Kevin and Michele for the assist.

Somebody finally voted for "This blog is updated too often" in the latest poll that's been up for over a week

Whoever could it have been?

Apropos of nothing, I've set up a separate page archiving all the Micah Wright stuff. And here's a nice note from comic book creator Billy Tucci (Shi) on the Newsarama message board:

Upon reading your post [to Newsarama], I felt totally compelled to check your website and was so furious reading this guy's responses to those who would disagree with him and then elated by his uncovering.

I guess I just need to offer a very, very big THANK YOU to you and your friends for your eloquence, persistence and quest for the truth.

In my case, it's mostly a quest to keep a guy who attacked my friend from covering his tracks. But the more I find out about the whole situation, the more worthwhile it seems to stay on it. Anyway, just figured I'd pass that along to everybody who's been working on this.

By the way, just to address one of the defenses I keep seeing: "Well, he writes fiction, what do you expect?" If you write a story about Army Rangers, it's fiction. If you claim you were a Ranger when you weren't, it's a lie. If you tell that lie to everybody you meet for years and years to give yourself some sort of false credibility, and you beat your critics over the head with it to shut them up... I don't know if there's even a word for that. At least not one I want to use on a Sunday.

Because people keep sending me stuff, that's why

• If you're tired of reading about Micah Wright lying his ass off, you can actually listen to him being deceitful to the point of gluteal loss in this 5/28/03 Democracy Now interview. I guess nobody noticed at the time that he sounds more like a record-store clerk than a former hardass. The funniest exchange comes right at the end, as he's whining about how he was blacklisted from the animation industry by evil corporations or whatever. The interviewer keeps trying to break in to end the interview, and she finally manages to say, "Well, you're not blacklisted at least in indepdendent bookstores." Which is probably still true, come to think of it.
• Someone claiming to be a former co-worker of Wright's speaks up at his Delphi forum. Well, not so much "speaks up" as "reams him out." (Update: The post has now been deleted, but it referred to him starting off at Nickelodeon as an executive assistant to somebody named Mary Worthington. (Correction: Harrington. The post referred to Mary Harrington. My bad.) Can anybody confirm this? If so, I might feel better about quoting this person.)
• The IMDb awards page for the Angry Beavers cartoon doesn't seem to have anything about Wright winning or being nominated for an Emmy. Maybe they just forgot to add that one?
• You can watch the unaired pilot for a cartoon Wright did called Constant Payne. He claims Nickelodeon didn't pick it up because they didn't want action shows after 9/11, but after watching it, I can think of another reason. It's not terrible or anything, but it's just sort of ehhhhh.
• The only discussion about the whole situation at the Comics Journal message board has been locked down, apparently for unnecessary levity. But TCJ editor Dirk Deppey had a little tiff with Wright last year (here, here, and here) about Wright's appropriation of some Laurie Anderson lyrics in one of his comic book scripts. Which seems like just the sort of thing a reformed babykiller would do, doesn't it? The exchange is also notable for Wright's use of the phrase "punk ass bitches."