So much drama in the LBC

I keep trying to think up some clever way to announce it, but it’s late and I’m tired and I should just get this over with. So:

I am now writing for The District, the new Long Beach paper started by OC Weekly‘s founder, Will Swaim. There have been a lot of staff shakeups at OC Weekly lately and it all got very alarming for a while, but in the end I think it’s all worked out very well. It always bothered me that Long Beach, my hometown, was outside the coverage area of both OC Weekly and LA Weekly and didn’t have a weekly paper of its own. We’ve needed a paper like The District for a long time, and Will is honestly just the guy I’d want at the healm.

Right now I’m basically writing my old OC Weekly column, “Special Screenings”, under a new name: “Film Events”. (I know… Imaginative, huh?) I’ll admit it, I did miss writing blurbs for all those Rocky Horror screenings and surfing documentaries. I’ve been blurbing movies since 19-freakin’-95, and it was tough to go cold turkey! Right now “Film Events” is my only job at The District, but we’ve been talking about some more ambitious things and hopefully I’ll have exciting news to report soon.

(NOTE: That title should not be construed as an endorsement of the odious “Snoop Dog” or the even more odious phrase “LBC,” but was used purely because I suck at coming up with titles and the sun is almost up and I want to go to bed already. Thank you.)

I got blurbed!

A few weeks back I was at the local Fatburger, paging through the latest LA Weekly, when I read the blurb featured at the top of an ad for the new indie picture Ten ’til Noon and damn near spit out my turkeyburger:

“Best movie since Pulp Fiction” – Greg Stacey, OC Weekly.

Talk about mixed feelings. I’ve always wanted to see myself quoted in a movie ad, like I was Roger freaking Ebert or something. But unfortunately that quote was taken completely out of context, giving the impression that I consider Ten ’til Noon to be the very best movie, of any kind, since Pulp Fiction. Well, I absolutely do not. I saw this Tarantino knock-off at the 2006 Newport Beach Film Festival and quite enjoyed it, jokingly suggesting in my review that Tarantino himself secretly directed it and that this was his best film since Pulp Fiction. In other words, I thought Ten ’til Noon was better than, say, Jackie Brown… which is a long way from calling it the best movie made since Pulp Fiction in 1994. The really nutty thing is that there were plenty of legit quotes they could have pulled from my original review, the thing was basically a rave. Whoever put this ad together is a sleaze or an idiot… or maybe both.

Oh, and they spelled my name wrong.