I rarely post my Cracked columns because, shit, I just forget. But not this time. Oooh, no. This time I surely will post a link to my latest column, “5 Bizarre Inspirations Behind Famous Movie Scenes.” Yup, I’ll totally do that…after I get some lunch.
…
Okay, back from lunch. Where was I? Oh, yeah! The column. Let me find the link…
A few days ago, almost nobody read my latest column. I love it, but I understand. The subject matter is, well, less than compelling: Golf. Boring, I know; but in spite of that, I and many of the commenters seem to really like it. I’m proud of it. Give it a read here:
Now, I’m not writing this (only) to beg you to read a column I’m proud of. I’m writing this to give a small update on my golf game.
Just a few hours ago, my friends and I took our first golf lesson from an instructor. I did quite well. It was a great learning experience. Our lesson was conducted on the driving range of a local fancy golf course my friends and I will never be able to afford to play on. (We usually play of a dirt cheap public course that’s mostly made up of dirt with patches of grass sprinkled throughout).
I was shooting well, until my final shot of the day. I swung, and the club slipped out of my grasp. It flew above my friend’s head, smashed into a fluorescent light bulb over his head. Shards of broken glass and plastic rained down on my friend like snow made of tiny knives.
Here’s the damage:
Every person lined up on the range stopped and stared at my wonderful disaster. From that moment on, my friends dubbed me “Luis, The Light Breaker,” which I think is far too badass a title than I can ever live up too again, unless I somehow manage to explode the sun.
So, yeah. What I’m trying to say is, you guys should all start calling me Light Breaker now.
I’ve got a new Quick Fix article up on Cracked! In this one, I impart on to you knowledge about the silly things that go on in Brazil when election season rolls around. Give it a read and share it. Please.
EDIT: I’ve updated the link. It should link you to the article now, instead of the Cracked main page.
My latest Cracked column went up yesterday (Saturday, August 12th)! It’s about the Tour de France. I watched the whole thing because I’ve got a girlfriend who loves it and, well, I like having sex. So, I sat there and watched every second of that damn thing.
At times, I was infuriated by the whole thing. It’s an event that requires a lot of patience, like most European sports (coughcough soccer coughcough). I’m used to American sports where the actions lasts about 8 seconds before a whistle is called and everyone stops doing things 2 minutes.
Anyway, read it. If you like it, share it on Facebook and Twitter. Enjoy.
My named graced the front page of Cracked this weekend not once, but twice. The first, titled 5 Horrific Injuries People Didn’t Realize They Had was originally pitched as a regular length article, but worked better in a shorter form. The second one, and my favorite of the two, Al-Qaida’s No. 2: The Easiest Kill in Terrorism, is more along the lines of what I got used to writing at Funny Crave and Holy Taco over the past few years.
I’m a Cracked columnist now! I should have mentioned that earlier. I forgot. As you can see if you scroll through some of my posts here, I tend to forget I have this Tumblr. But, yeah, I’m a columnist! Here’s my first column:
My second column went up this past Saturday. I like it a lot, as do an overwhelming number of the people who took the time to leave a comment. While it’s received the best reviews I’ve ever gotten for anything I’ve ever written, It has an awfully low number of views. So, if you read it and you like it, please share it. Here it is…
I wrote it, Winston Rowntree did the incredible art on it. Without Winston, this article would have been terrible.
I’m already working on my next one. I hope to get it done soon, which is proving to be difficult given the fact that since the last time I updated this Tumblr, I’ve landed myself a full-time editor job at a small web start up. When the site fully goes live, I’ll link it.
Hi Dan, I really liked your book and the Cracked videos you've been writing/creating lately, but I miss your Friday columns. Are you ever going to go back to being a regular Cracked columnist or are you just too busy with other projects? P.S. You are awesome.
Thanks for the kind words! Unfortunately, my other responsibilities at Cracked make it impossible to keep up a weekly column-writing schedule. That column was a fun little playground for me and I loved having a regular spot, but I won’t say that it was the BEST thing for my general anxiety. I miss it, but if I still had to do a weekly column on top of all other responsibilities I’m pretty sure my brain would leak out of my butt.
The BEST thing about me not having a weekly column is that we’ve been able to bring a bunch new columnists into the fold and I’m super stoked to watch them all grow and challenge themselves. There’s an energy and hunger inherent to being a new columnist (Kathy Benjamin, Cezary Jan Struciewiscz, JF Sargent, Winston Rowntree, Pauli Poisuo, C. Coville, Luis Prada and an even larger list of roving columnists like Jason Iannone and Mark Hill) that’s really exciting to me. Keep an eye on ‘em, because they’re all doing some pretty cool stuff.
The version I originally pitched is the one that was eventually published on Cracked; the one you can read at the link above. A couple days after I pitched it, the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy happened, and there was a consensus between me, Cracked editor Adam Brown, and Cracked Editor-in-Chief Jack O'Brien, that we should delay the article for a little bit because of the subject matter. We originally wanted the article go up just before the Homeland season finale.
In an effort to save the article from being about a subject people (myself most certainly included) were too depressed to think about in any way, Jack suggested I re-write the whole thing with a new angle centered around how TV writers have no idea how to write child characters.
I wrote it up, liked it a lot, and I submitted it. About a week later I got an IM from Adam. He tells me he finally started watching Homeland and that I’m absolutely right about how shitty that kid is. Neither he nor Jack had ever seen the show, so they didn’t understand the profound uselessness of that kid. So, Adam ran the original version of the article.
And now I present to you the second version. Read'em both and compare!
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Writers for TV dramas are all people who understand a character’s failing marriage better than they understand their own. If a character isn’t experiencing some profound level of adult-centric pain, sometimes it’s obvious they have no clue what to do with them. It’s apparent on a lot of dramas, but none moreso than on Homeland, which features one of the most poorly written kids on TV, Chris Brody, the son of the Marine-turned-terrorist Nick Brody.
As inept as he is, Carl from The Walking Dead has potential. He might do something interesting. Maybe he’ll do a backflip or something? Chris Brody’s thing is being so oblivious to all of the horrible shit his horrible family goes through (rampant infidelity, terrorism, dirty politics, murder, conspiracy, etc.) that he comes off as a delusional secret psycho who’s so good at repressing his emotions that he might one day transition into a different Showtime series.
Homeland’s writers have no idea how a 12-year old boy would react to troubling news, so they brush him aside. Sometimes by literally telling him to leave the room, or with Mike, the guy Chris’ mom is banging on the side. Here’s Mike running interference when mom and big sis need some privacy to talk about a homicide.
And here are the writers again throwing Mike at Chris like a towel over a vibrator when Grandma drops by. This time it’s when the Brody’s – who are all scared shitless – are placed in a lavish CIA safehouse.
The writers for The Walking Dead clearly had no idea what to do with Carl for a while, so they had him occasionally wander off so they didn’t have to make him do things. In Dexter, Dexter’s kids were an integral part of the show for years, until the writers realized they were getting in the way of all the ritual murdering; so they were shipped off to live with their grandparents. On Lost, Walt looked like he was going to be important, and then he was promptly kidnapped by smoke numbers and was rarely heard of again.
Writing children can be difficult, especially if most of your writing sessions involve talking about new ways the characters can fuck and murder this week. Writers often confuse innocence with stupidity, so they either write kids as oblivious or they over-compensate and make them borderline evil child geniuses.
There’s an incredible chance that some of Homeland’s writers have kids, just like the writers of The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Dexter. Yet kids might as well be dogs the writers tie to a bike rack while the adults grab a latte, or worse, used as props to raise the stakes for the adults.
In the penultimate episode in Homeland’s second season, the Brody family reaches a boiling point. In one scene, all of their anxieties spill out and it’s impossible for any of them to escape from the truth anymore – they suck.
So Chris immediately storms away and starts playing video games.
You’ve probably turned to video games as a distraction from the harshness of life, but Chris’ version of it is so goddamn ridiculous you have to wonder if the writers gained their understanding of pre-teens by asking old people what they think of kids today.
If today’s TV drama writers made a show specifically about kids and how they deal with life, by the third episode we’d see all the kids evaporate into clouds and float away as an engine revved up in the background and the writers fled the scene.
Hi, just read your thing on Cracked about Steven Seagal. I enjoyed it, as I think he's a complete douche bag. But I can add to the story. He visited the Air Force base that I was stationed at. Let me know.
Hey! Sorry! I just saw your message now. I don’t check Tumblr too often. It’s too late to add anything to the column, but I’d love love love to hear your Seagal story.
I’ve written a lot of stuff for a lot of outlets. Here are my favorites; the ones that really show off what I’m capable of. I’ve added some context for a few of them. I’m looking for a full-time writing job. Does your video game need a writer? Hire me! Does your TV series writer’s room need a new writer? Hire me! Want to give me a book deal? Sign me up! Does your website need an editor/writer in a full-time salaried position? Hire me! You can DM me here, or find me on Twitter @Luis_Prada. My email is Luisrafaelprada@gmail.com.
Cracked - I wrote for Cracked on and off for over 15 years. Eventually, I became a columnist and a member of the columns editorial team. I wrote hundreds of articles and wrote a few video scripts.
3 Recipes For The Perfect Last Minute Mother’s Day Brunch - Don’t let the title mislead you. This was the first time Cracked let me write an article that was pure fiction disguised as a helpful, fact-based recipe article. If you like this, I have a whole podcast that’s basically this article in audio form. Links at the bottom of this post!
Bunny Ears - The site, which was owned and operated by actor Macaulay Culkin, gave me the chance to do something I’d wanted to do for years: get paid to write the silliest stuff I could imagine. The site was a satire of celebrity lifestyle sites like Goop but started sprinkling in some broader pop-cultural stuff toward the end.
The Inaudible Podcast Network - My time at Bunny Ears led to the development of a short recurring segment on the official Bunny Ears podcast called “Meditation Minute with Luis Prada”, a parody of guided meditation
podcasts and Youtube channels. When Bunny Ears closed down, I was able to keep Meditation Minute. I spun it into my own podcast. The Inaudible Podcast Network is an audio sketch comedy series about four podcasts on a fake podcast network. Those shows are Meditation Minute, Truest Crime (a true crime podcast hosted by two serial killers), The Feed (a food culture podcast), and Three Indistinguishable Guys Talking About Movies (a movie podcast). I’ve completed two seasons so far, totaling 80 episodes, 20 of each podcast. Here are direct links to my favorite episodes so far. But first, here’s a link to the Patreon!
I know 2017 was a rough year for many people across the world. That makes me all the more grateful that it was overall kind to me. I got engaged to the love of my life, finally started law school (after nearly seven years talking about it), and got to travel to almost a dozen new places. I made a lot of great news friends while fortunately still remaining with the same tried but true ones. I…
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