Can you guess the result of attempting to sue the devil? I’ll give you the quick version… you can’t. Here’s the result of someone’s actual attempt: Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (W.D. Penn. 1971).

Plaintiff, alleging jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 241, 28 U.S.C. § 1343, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 prays for leave to file a complaint for violation of his civil rights in forma pauperis. He alleges that Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery and unwarranted threats, against the will of plaintiff, that Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has caused plaintiff’s downfall.

Plaintiff alleges that by reason of these acts Satan has deprived him of his constitutional rights. We feel that the application to file and proceed in forma pauperis must be denied. Even if plaintiff’s complaint reveals a prima facie recital of the infringement of the civil rights of a citizen of the United States, the Court has serious doubts that the complaint reveals a cause of action upon which relief can be granted by the court. We question whether plaintiff may obtain personal jurisdiction over the defendant in this judicial district. The complaint contains no allegation of residence in this district. While the official reports disclose no case where this defendant has appeared as defendant there is an unofficial account of a trial in New Hampshire where this defendant filed an action of mortgage foreclosure as plaintiff. The defendant in that action was represented by the preeminent advocate of that day, and raised the defense that the plaintiff was a foreign prince with no standing to sue in an American Court. This defense was overcome by overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Whether or not this would raise an estoppel in the present case we are unable to determine at this time.

If such action were to be allowed we would also face the question of whether it may be maintained as a class action. It appears to meet the requirements of Fed.R. of Civ.P. 23 that the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable, there are questions of law and fact common to the class, and the claims of the representative party is typical of the claims of the class. We cannot now determine if the representative party will fairly protect the interests of the class.

We note that the plaintiff has failed to include with his complaint the required form of instructions for the United States Marshal for directions as to service of process.

For the foregoing reasons we must exercise our discretion to refuse the prayer of plaintiff to proceed in forma pauperis.

It is ordered that the complaint be given a miscellaneous docket number and leave to proceed in forma pauperis be denied.

Yeah, it wasn’t very hard to anticipate that result, was it?

UPDATE: It’s definitely a hoax, scroll down to the update to see why.

UPDATE 2: Reasonable supposition leads me to think that the ad is for a film called “The Fun Park” to be released in October, 2007. Scroll down to see why.

UPDATE 3: A retraction, though the logic was pretty good, it’s apparently NOT about The Fun Park. Scroll down for more.

UPDATE 4: A reader suggests a viable guess as to the actor that plays Amy Pressman. Scroll down to see more.

UPDATE 5: Suzanne Block, the actress who most likely plays Amy Pressman, has posted new images of herself online and can further analyze her similarity to the iconic Amy Pressman photo. Scroll down to see the new photos.

UPDATE 6: Confirmation that Suzanne “Suzie” Block will be playing the title role in “the independent film Finding Amy Pressman.” Scroll down to see the new photos.

Scattered around L.A. are a series of posters, shown below, asking for help locating Amy Pressman:

Click to big-ify.

At first I assumed it was an ad for a band with a clever name leading to a cleverer advertising campaign. The myspace link just screams some sort of fraud. Out of curiosity, I visited the webpage and was presented with the following story:

Hello All, I am Taylor the cousin of Amy Pressman. As some of you know she went missing. The authorities as usual are “doing all they can”. I have decided to do my part

June 2nd, 2007 The Pressman Family departed from southern California on a road trip in the family R.V. They never returned. A suspicious blog was left on Amy Pressman’s Myspace page days into the trip.

We fear the worst for the Pressman family, but the final blog leads me to believe Amy is still alive and out there.

This page will now be the information center for this case. Any and all information will be Accepted/Posted here.

If you have any Information that could help bring Amy home, please alert us immediately.

It sounds like The Way by Fastball. Anyway, that page provides a link to Amy Pressman’s myspace page. Here’s her “suspicious blog” posting:

There are certain events events in your life that make you reconsider your priorities. You never know where they will come from or when they will happen, but you need to be prepared to adapt to it. These events will shape the rest of your life and allow you to move on from your previous mistakes. If you accept the change you will gain strength and with that strength nothing will be able to stop you. I have spent my entire life trying to find this moment, never knew where to find it and then I remembered what Dylan said;

You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You’ll find God in the church of your choice
You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it’s only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You’ll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown

With that, I left my questions in a big whole in the Earth and will find my answers where I’m going.

Neither the “where is” page, nor the Amy Pressman page, is selling anything. Neither is promoting a band, a film, a club, or anything else. I can’t figure out what the con is here. Everything feels exceedingly suspicious and staged (check out the comments on Amy Pressman’s page), but I can’t figure out what the end-game is. It’s convincing enough that I checked for any news coverage on Amy Pressman and, of course, can’t find any. Checking phone listings for anyone in Agoura Hills, CA named Pressman offers mixed results. I can only assume that this isn’t her. Is this just some sort of a weird art-project? Is there really someone missing?

I’m baffled by this, can someone explain it to me?

UPDATED 08/02/07: Thanks to reader Doctah, it’s becoming more apparent that this is an elaborate, lonelygirl15 style viral marketing hoax for an upcoming film. The web address WhereIsAmyPressman.com has been reserved through GoDaddy. Checking out their whois information provides the following information on the culprits:

Registrant:
Fourth Floor Productions

[Address Redacted]
Sherman Oaks, California 91423
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: WHEREISAMYPRESSMAN.COM
Created on: 13-Jul-07
Expires on: 14-Jul-09
Last Updated on: 13-Jul-07

Administrative Contact:
Grabiner, Dustin [Email Redacted}
Fourth Floor Productions
[Address Redacted]
Sherman Oaks, California 91423
United States
[Phone # Redacted]

Fourth Floor Production’s website says that they are:

The Young Guns of Hollywood are in town and stirring up some trouble. Looking to make the mark in the ever-competitive film industry. This group is comprised of some seriously talented people; creating not just future works of art, but a buzz they seem to call, Controversial Marketing.

Knowing that great films could never be seen without great advertising, Fourth Floor Productions strive to create both New and Fresh media that will be talked about for years.

So, there you have it. It looks like Fourth Floor Productions is working on a movie called Where is Amy Pressman and has attempted to engage in an underground, viral marketing campaign. Well, they’ve now been fully outed.

For those looking to cash in, though, AmyPressman.com is still available.

What kills virii?

UPDATED 08/06/07: Thanks to reader jbg, we can now guess that the “Where is Amy Pressman” campaign is actually an ad for the upcoming film The Fun Park. (UPDATE: This is probably incorrect, scroll down to the next update to see why.)

The reasoning goes as follows: Dustin Grabiner, previously identified as one of the individuals behind the Amy Pressman posters, is listed as being involved in a number of films on IMDB including two that have a character named “Amy.” One is Desert of Blood, on which Dustin Grabiner was the second assistant director, but it came out in 2006 and stars Annika Svedman as Amy. A quick search reveals that Annika Svedman does not look much like the Amy in our pictures.

The second film is The Fun Park, on which Dustin Grabiner was the production designer and stars Vanessa Altshuler as “Amy.” It is scheduled for release in October, 2007, making it a much more likely candidate for a viral marketing campaign. Altschuler is an actress, appearing in an Oklahoma production of Rocky Horror back in 2001, in a University of Central Oklahoma production of “And the World Goes Round” (for which she received an excellent review), and in a small film called Sam & Janet.

There’s a Vanessa Altshuler from Oklahoma on Facebook as well as on MySpace. Facebook provides no information about her unless you’re her friend, but you can see this small pictures. MySpace provides a lot of pictures, but I’m starting to think that she’s possibly not the one featured on the poster. Here’s a picture of her for a headshot, in a chair, in a car, and at the premiere of The Fun Park. These are the pictures that make her look the most like the girl in the Amy Pressman picture, but they still don’t seem quite right.

The plot description of The Fun Park is, according to IMDB,

Late one night in 1980, evidence exists that “Bobo - The Insult Clown” was bludgeoned to death while locking up for the night at the “Family Fun Park.” For the next twenty-six years, the tale of Bobo’s ghost swells into an urban legend, as his remains were never found. Now it’s 2006 and six teens on a mission to refute “the Fun Park” myth, make a deadly discovery…the man known as “Bobo” actually lives in bowels of the abandoned park. The kids are abducted and killed one-by-one after being subjected to a bizarre and grisly ritual. Megan and her boyfriend Justin manage to escape…but only Megan survives. After waking up in a mental hospital, Megan tells Psychologist Marissa Jade her horrific story. The cops search for the five missing kids at the abandoned fun park, but find no bodies or evidence that Megan’s story is true. When the psychologist stumbles upon a tiny clue, she begins to investigate further and discovers that Megan’s chilling ordeal might have actually happened after all.

I think/guess that this is the movie being advertised by the Where is Amy Pressman posters. I may be wrong, another movie may turn up on IMDB with better connections, but for now this is my best guess. I wish the plot of The Fun Park lent itself a little bit more easily to the incorporation of the “missing” story, but for a side character it should fit in alright. I also wish Vanessa Altshuler looked a little bit more like Amy Pressman in the photos, but they may simply have used a different model for the poster. My guess would be that we’re going to find that the girl in the posters is in fact a local LA actress/model/friend of Dustin Grabiner, since Vanessa Altschuler appears to be based out of Oklahoma and New York.

Do people think this is right? Or am I off the mark?

UPDATED 08/09/07: I stopped beating around the bush and simply emailed Dustin Grabiner through his MySpace page and got the following response:

It is in fact, NOT “The Fun Park.” However I’m sure Bladewalker Films is enjoying the free press as much as we are. You should leave it up there, it shows good detective work on your part, even if it’s not the correct movie.

By the way… who said it was a movie?

So, there you go. It’s not The Fun Park and probably not even a movie. I think this is going to be the end of my digging for the time being.

UPDATED 08/29/07: Reader untermeyer suggests that the woman playing Amy Pressman in the photos is an actress named Suzanne Block. Suzanne Block is in her mid to late 20s and has had small roles in a few films and television shows. While there’s nothing about her resume that specifically indicates that she might be involved in the Amy Pressman scheme, her face appears closer to Amy Pressman’s than did my previous guess (see above):

Amy Pressman, in my opinion, looks a little bit younger than Suzanne Block and has looks more freckle-y. Of course, looking young could merely be an artifact of the pose or the photograph, and the lack of freckles could be due to the fact that Suzanne Block is probably wearing makeup in her press photos. Block’s hair certainly looks dead on, and her nose looks more correct than that of my previous guess (again, see above).

For anyone wishing to do their own analysis, here are the two press pictures of Suzanne Block that I used (1 and 2), as well as a third image of her in a magazine ad, all pulled from IMDB. I wish we had a good shot of her making a frowning face; are there more pictures of her out there?.

Anyone think this is Amy Pressman?

On a related note, my previous assertion that AmyPressman.com was available for purchase is no longer correct, an advertising farm appears to have snatched it up two days ago. It looks like the Fourth Floor Productions folks missed an opportunity.

UPDATED 10/11/07: I recently came across Suzanne Block’s blog. In addition to confirming that she lives in Los Angeles and is a working actress, she recently posted a series of pictures of herself. I took the two images that were closest to the standard Amy Pressman photo pose and placed them side-by-side with the Pressman originals for comparison:

Is everyone still happy with Suzanne (Suzie Block) as our Amy Pressman? I think it looks pretty good: the jawline is right, the hair is right, the lips are right, the nose is right, the eyes are right… everything lines up. If you’re interesting in judging for yourself, here are the rest of the new Suzanne Block photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

I tried emailing Suzanne Block about the whole Amy Pressman thing a few weeks ago, but she hasn’t responded. Oh well.

UPDATED 6/16/08: It’s been a while since I updated this page, but I just noticed that the Launch Showcase website features Suzanne “Suziey” Block’s headshot (it’s actually a cropped down version of picture 14 above) and the following blurb:

Suziey Block - Signed with Archetype Management LA and Superior Talent LA. She is currently starring in the soon to be released independent film Finding Amy Pressman. Additionally, Suziey is an accomplished film maker.

Here’s an image of the blurb, in case the Launch Showcase people take it down:

So, I guess that puts an end to this whole caper. Suzanne “Suziey” Block is indeed starring in a film as Amy Pressman. Of course, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything about this, so maybe the whole thing has been shelved? I’d be curious to know if it’s ever actually going to come out.

A good picture.

Aqua’s Barbie Girl never sounded so cello-riffic:

Via Cynical-C.

UPDATE: Upon further research, I’ve added Reefer Madness and Sunset Boulevard to the lists below.

Only three four times in the history of American entertainment has a script been been produced into a movie, then adapted into a Broadway musical, then adapted from a Broadway musical back into a movie-musical.

1. Little Shop of Horrors (Movie: 1960, Musical: 1982, Movie-Musical: 1986)
2. The Producers (Movie: 1968, Musical: 2001, Movie-Musical: 2005)
3. Reefer Madness (Movie: 1936, Musical: 1998, Movie-Musical: 2005)
4. Hairspray (Movie: 1988, Musical: 2002, Movie-Musical: 2007)

Two movies stand a chance of becoming the fifth such movie:

1. ?? Footloose (Movie: 1984, Musical: 1998, Movie-Musical: 2008?) ??
   
2. ?? Sunset Boulevard (Movie: 1950, Musical: 1993, Movie-Musical: 2008?) ??

In 2004 a film adaptation of the stage adaptation of the original Footloose was announced (featuring Britney Spears?), but thus far nothing has come of it. A 2008 version of Sunset Boulevard, starring Glenn Close, is also scheduled for release.

There are a collection of clips from each of the iterations of the three four films, after the jump: Read more »

Lars and the gang hated Napster, I wonder how they feel about Harptallica.

According to Wikipedia, the Northern Mariana Islands “have the highest female to male sex ratio in the world, with an average of 77 men to every 100 women.”

This is part five (previously: part one, part two, part three, part four) in my ongoing investigation into people online who have the same name as I do, but who are not, in fact, me. I will look at them and then consider what my life would be like if I were them. Here’s our fifth participant:

This guy works in the management of communications companies. He was the CEO of IDT Solutions, the CEO of Winstar, the President and CEO of Horizon Global Trading, the Managing Director for Warburg Dillon Read, the Managing Director for UBS Securities, and the Managing Director for Kidder Peabody and Company. Phew… that’s a hell of a long resume. I can’t compete with that. However, if you start trying to check out the webpages that represent some of these company’s, you’ll find that they’re often no longer online or very stale. I wonder how many of these ventures are still up and active?

He received a BA in Economics from Brooklyn College, in which he graduated Magna Cum Laude. Right, well, that’s certainly more impressive than my college career. I am in the midst of another level of education, so maybe when I finish I’ll be ahead of him, but for now he wins.

He’s also, apparently, quite into volunteering for Jewish organizations:

[H]e has volunteered with Ohr Somayach, a yeshiva for newly religious Jews in Monsey, and is currently working with the administration of Nefesh Academy, a girls yeshiva in Brooklyn. The 42-year-old executive serves on the boards of Mesifta Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and the Yeshiva of Spring Valley, where two of his five children are enrolled.

I can safely say that I have not volunteered for any Jewish institutions. It’s not something that I especially aspire to do. This is also true of being CEO of companies that sell services which I don’t understand.

As always, I think I’m going to stick with being myself for the time being and NOT switch places with this guy. Eventually someone with my name’s going to be so awesome that I won’t be able to resist switching lives with them, but for the time being I’m going to be content with who I am, not who I could be.

How zen.

This is a service that seems like it would only exist in LA.  I, of course, was wrong. And not just once, over and over again.  It’s just sad.

Goat passes out from the stress of a quick jog, and sees a disturbing vision of the future (from Episode 9):

David Lynch does daily weather reports for 103.1fm in Los Angeles and posts the daily reports on his webpage. The one that I heard on the radio didn’t quite have that David Lynch panache that I was expecting.

Barzelay dredged up a fantastic case, Washington v. Alaimo, 934 F.Supp 1395 (S.D.Ga. 1996), which has possibly the best introductory paragraph of any court decision:

On April 5, 1996, this Court ordered Plaintiff to show cause why this Court should not impose Rule 11 sanctions upon him for filing a motion for improper purposes. The motion which Plaintiff filed was entitled “Motion to Kiss My Ass” (Doc. 107) in which he moved “all Americans at large and one corrupt Judge Smith [to] kiss my got [sic] damn ass sorry mother fucker you.” This Court gave Plaintiff until April 25, 1996, to respond and specifically warned: “Failure to comply with this Order will result in dismissal of this case.” Plaintiff has appealed the show-cause order to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

And while the “Motion to Kiss My Ass” is clearly the best of Washington’s motions, he’s apparently made himself a little niche industry of filing outlandish motions, such as:

• “Motion to Behoove an Inquisition”
• “Motion for Judex Delegatus”
• “Motion for Restoration of Sanity”
• “Motion for Deinstitutionalization”
• “Motion for Publicity”
• “Extraordinary Motions to Amend”
• “Motion for Change of Venue”
• “Motion for Cesset pro Cessus”
• “Motion for Nunc pro Tunc”
• “Motion for Psychoanalysis”
• “Motion to Impeach Judge Alaimo”
• “Motion to Renounce Citizenship”
• “Motion to Exhume Body of Alex Hodgson”
• “Motion to Invoke and Execute Rule 15–Retroactive Note: The Court’s School Days are Over”.
• “Motion for Skin Change Operation”
• “Motion to Impeach”
• “Motion for Catered Food Services”

I hereby second the Motion for Catered Food Services.

Inside some Los Angeles courthouses there are a series of advertisements encouraging people to show up for jury duty (the efficacy of targeting such ads to people already in the courthouse seems questionable to me, but whatever). The ads feature the text: “Jury Service, with a cast of hundreds of thousands, starring… [celebrity name and picture] performed jury service, have you?” (I would have taken pictures of the ads, but they’ve got no camera signs up everywhere.)

The picture is standard, posed a promo shot of a big name celebrity who has, apparently, done jury duty. Of course, the pictures aren’t actually of the celebrities in a courtroom, so who knows how honest they are.

The claimed celebrities, that I saw, were Camryn Manheim, Harrison Ford, Weird Al Yankovic, and Ed Asner. I particularly liked the photo of Weird Al since you get his standard, goofy-faced press photo and you can just see him giving that look to a questionable witness in some low level drug deal.

I would love to serve on a jury with Weird Al.

PS. apparently I’m not the only one who found the posters odd.

I find religion confusing sometimes:

My fascination with MTV’s Downtown continues with this limo driver’s tale of the praying prostitutes from Episode 8:

Defendant contends the trial court erred in allowing Dr. Jesus Padilla, a clinical psychologist from Atascadero, to testify as a rebuttal expert witness for the People. Dr. Padilla testified that he had reviewed approximately 120 articles on people who had been castrated, including sex offenders, wounded veterans, cancer patients, and male-to-female transsexuals. Based on his review of the literature, Dr. Padilla’s opinion was that castration does not necessarily reduce the likelihood of sexual functioning.

People v. Clotfelter, unreported case in the California Court of Appeals, Third District, 2007.

“You’re a fool, Jesus Christ” - Pontius Pilate, Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

“You’re a fool, Harry Potter” - Voldemort, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

Hmmm…

Was it a gay love affair gone awry, a mentally unbalanced labor dispute, an unfortunate offshoot of the Teapot Dome bribery scandal, or something even more unlikely?  The world may never know the true cause of this 1929 Beverly Hills double murder (or murder suicide) that left behind nearly a century worth of ghost stories.

I don’t know if this picture is real or photoshopped, but it’s fantastic.

Via the OopsList.

When Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 and Gerald Ford became President, his first press secretary was a man named Jerald terHorst.  TerHorst served for exactly one month before himself resigning after Ford’s apparently unexpected pardon of Nixon.  TerHorst found the pardon unconscionable considering Ford’s non-pardon of Vietnam draft-dodgers.

The man’s surname name, terHorst, begins with a lower case ‘t’ unless used at the beginning of a sentence.  There’s a surprisingly embittered and childish fight about the proper capitalization and its noteworthiness on Wikipedia.

Visit and discover Dorking.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, from 1910, depicts a slightly different version of the Oz story:

While I’m on this MTV’s Downtown kick, I wanted to point out that while you can’t buy an official DVD of the show from any actual DVD outlet, the creators of the series (for a nominal shipping fee) are selling the whole series on promotional DVD. Go buy yours so you can be like me.

Alex is concerned that he might be a spineless loser (from MTV’s Downtown Episode 9):

I recently took some pictures of the Los Angeles Superior Court including this intimidating shot (that didn’t scale well, but will look good when you click on it):