paushu_ruslan: переводы

→Ignore your ignorance and make yourself irreplaceable. Work harder than everyone else. If it helps you get through the night, con yourself into thinking that your My Little Pony script will actually impart life lessons to some snot-nosed, lead paint licking kid somewhere.

→Walk in the first door that opens. It doesn't matter if it's the door you want. Someone wants you to write shitty Saturday morning cartoons in order to sell a bunch of shitty toys? What do you care? You left your last shred of personal dignity in the teaching hospital. And your kids still don't have medical insurance. Write the damn thing and see if the check bounces. If it doesn't, write as many as you can before they find out you don't have a fucking clue what you're doing.

→Have a kid when you're poor and uninsured. Convincing an OB-GYN and an anesthesiologist to perform a caesarean section on credit is invaluable training for really tense pitch meetings. In fact this is such a helpful exercise, have another kid so you can do it twice.

→Marry a woman who is beautiful, kind and loving and encourages you to drink.

→Join a religious cult. Any cult will do. Just make sure they promise you the one thing you desperately need: power over people, places and things. When, after many years and thousands of dollars you still don't have power over your ulcerative colon, become a bitter door-to-door greeting card salesman and patiently await the day when you can sell your cult accessories on eBay.

→Don't cheat yourself out of being a colitis patient in a rundown teaching hospital. Dealing with psychotic sitcom divas is a snap for someone who's had an anesthetic-free colonoscopy in front of twenty giggling med students.

→Don't be afraid to experiment with soul-crushing poverty. You'll find yourself ahead of the pack when it comes time to write that warm, family sitcom because you know what it means to enjoy a big bowl of ketchup soup.

→Don't start as a sitcom writer. Find something you love more than life itself and then fail at it. Once the reason God put you here has been revealed to be a cruel hoax, you'll be a better team player. Thoroughly defeated people are more inclined to take those tough network notes.

→Nurture your fear of women. Long for them. Ache for them. But always keep in mind that you don't deserve them. If you should happen to get involved with one, always remember: If she loves you there is something fundamentally wrong with her. You just can't see it yet.

→Fail to become a member of any group worth joining. Once again, this is something you need to get an early start on. Whether it be athletics, academics or crime, make sure you don't measure up. Social rejection combined with the hard-wired damage done by your folks creates the insecurity and self-loathing necessary for a writer to "know where the funny is."

→Your ability to make the big bucks as a sitcom writer is directly tied to the sickness of your parents. Stop whining to your therapist and send mom and dad a thank you note for royally fucking you up.

→Start drinking early. I don't mean early in the day. I mean early in life. Eight years old oughta do the trick. Heavy drinking isn't necessary. All you need is enough hooch to get through a Cub Scout meeting without tearing your skin off.

→by Chuck Lorre
© April 2004

→A simple, step-by-step guide to prime time success.

→Belarus is a small, land-locked country next door to Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. According to Wikipedia, one of its major exports is cattle by-products. Which begs the question, what horrible shape are the cattle in, if all they're good for is felt hats and wallpaper paste? But Belarus does have a bustling TV production industry. One of their most recent hits is a sitcom about four nerdy scientists who live next door to a beautiful blonde waitress. The characters are named Sheldon, Leo, Hovard, Raj and Natasha, and the show is entitled, The Theorists. Each episode begins with a rapid-fire montage of images which takes us from the dawn of time to the present moment. Keeping with that theme, the montage is scored with what is probably the worst piece of recorded pop music since the dawn of time. And finally, each episode appears to be a Russian translation of a Big Bang Theory episode. When we brought this to the attention of the Warner Brothers legal department, we were told that it's next to impossible to sue for copyright infringement in Belarus because the TV production company that is ripping us off is owned and operated by the government of Belarus. Having no other recourse, I'm hoping that this vanity card will be read by the fine folks making The Theorists, and, wracked with guilt, they break down and send us some felt hats. The Kyrgyzstan version of Dharma & Greg already sent me some wallpaper paste.