I LOVE HATE MAIL

In the MAD magazine parody of NETWORK, there is a brilliant exchange that takes place in a panel satirizing Faye Dunaway's character and her bold programming directive:

"We have to make the public angry!"

"We could always bring back 'THE CAPTAIN & TENNILLE.'"

"We don't want to make them that angry!"

Well, my hatchet piece on THE ROOM reached that kind of critical mass.

About a week and a half ago, on a social networking site, I get a friend request from a fellow named Emery Emery, whom I have never met, but I notice that we have some friends in common. I hem and haw for a few days, because I really like to keep my friendlists small and restricted to people that I know well, but I see that he's friends with J. Keith and Blaine from the TV show, he knows Grae and Gariana from Popcorn Mafia...he must be an okay sort of guy, so I accept his friend request.

Weeeeeeell...it turns out that he was in my auditorium during that fateful midnight show, and after reading what I wrote about it all...to say that he took exception to my observation of the experience is a bit like saying that Christian Bale took exception to Shane Hurlbut's observation of the lights. And he wanted to make his point to me abundantly clear. But for some reason, he was unable to post a reply here at this blog to the original entry.
So...the man tracks me down on said networking site and sends me a friend request...without the politesse of, say, adding an honest message like, "Hey, I got a bone to pick with you over that THE ROOM review, and if you're any kind of real man you'll listen to what I have to say." Again, just thinking it's a guy like any other guy, I give him access to my account. And then, he writes this as his first piece of correspondence with me:

"I saw you standing in line, angry and stoic. I saw you sitting in theatre 5 looking down your nose at all the silliness. I saw you trying to look above it all while casting that pompous air you desperately exude.

Your insidious accusations of how the money was raised to make this epic failure are paranoid and laughable. Your interpretation of the audience is wildly inaccurate and your verbose diatribes are as much a train wreck as Wiseau's film making.

Perhaps your washed out career has you angry at the world and causes you to wander into other people's fun with a desire to shit in their mouths. Or is it that your failures and personal misery are waylaid when you demonize anyone who is not as lonely and pathetic as yourself?

I know your thesaurus must be gargantuan. huge, enormous, vast, giant, massive, colossal, mammoth, immense, mighty, monumental, mountainous, titanic, towering, tremendous, elephantine, king-size and/or immense.

I don't really need to go to my little hand held thesaurus to make my point. I can sum this up with the simplest of words, Mr. Heuck.

Don't worry about it."

one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five

Ouch.

Apparently, none other than the editor of THE ARISTOCRATS, one of my favorite movies of the decade, regards me as a pompous, desperate, washed-up, lonely, pathetic failure. That hurt. As my comedy mentor Rod Paulette used to say, "Am I bleeding? I think I've been tagged." And frankly, I am left dumbfounded because I reiterate, I thought this man was just another friend-of-friends who wanted to know me better. So on the one hand, I'm pissed off at this blindside attack and this befriending under false pretenses, because it's the cyberspace equivalent of fucking a person in the ass and not even having the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around. On the other hand, I'm amused that he's gone to such great and determined lengths to make the attack: Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged would be most pleased.

So, I decide to reply directly to him in a dignfied manner. After all, I am a cool, cool, considerate man. Thankfully, we did not degenerate into a flame war, and our hash was thus settled calmly and peacefully. I can't hold a grudge against someone over one stupid movie, especially when they are partly responsible for making a very good one. So I insist that you do not give this man any grief for any reason. He that strikes Cain shall himself be struck: Vengeance Is Mine.

And speaking of vengeance, you didn't honestly think I would just post a malediction like that without getting in my last licks, did you? I am the author, I outrank you!:

Now then, sending a friend request solely for the purpose of slagging me, especially without the benefit of advance warning, is dirty pool. But I can play dirtier. I will not give you the satisfaction of living up to your uninformed opinions of me, or of being able to tell people that I can't deal with harsh criticism. I am most definitely NOT de-friending you; you're stuck with me now.
But to offer my response to your train wreck of an opinion to my train wreck of an essay of Mr. Wiseau's train wreck of a movie, I don't need a thesaurus either: I don't give a fuck.

In conclusion, Mr. Emery gets his rebuttal, I get a few cheap laughs, all is swell. Now let's stop talking about this damned movie, and discuss a much better entertainment. It seems there's this family act...