A Bucket of Love

So You Wanna Call Yourself A "Coach"?

2012-01-19T22:45:00.003-06:00

Then go read THIS.

It's the final send-off from (former) Texas Aggies football coach Mike Sherman to a long list of hundreds of Texas high school football coaches, a sort of combination thank you/so long/keep in mind sermon wherein Sherman defines and delineates several concepts which he feels are paramount to successful coaches.

And what's most cool is how most of the concepts do not really limit themselves to football coaching application.

Sure, advice like "Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Practice Tackling" might be rather specific and limited in non-football application, but when the bulk of the (long) letter addresses such Big Issue concerns as Respect and Truth and Honesty and Love... you know you're not reading a normal piece of football coaching rah-rah.

As a parent (x4!) who has spent a lot of time -- a whooooole lot... (oy) -- coaching youth sports, I have a pathetic familiarity with a lot of the emotions Sherman describes, and I like to think that I've come to share at least some of his values and beliefs. At least I hope so, because when I read Sherman's letter I want to send it to every coach I've ever worked with or against and shout "See!?! THIS is what I've been saying -- THIS is what it's about! THIS is why we're really here -- not for some silly damned plastic and fake marble trophy or some stupid aluminim medal or some bilious scrap of colored ribbon!"

When I read this:

We must never lose sight, however, that with the opportunity to coach these young men and experience victory together, there also comes the huge responsibility to make a difference in their lives. We must never lose sight of the fact: "once their coach always their coach." Where others may have failed them, we as coaches cannot. Where others have created mistrust, we must bring trust. Where others have created disrespect, we must bring respect. Where others have let them down, we must support them. We owe that to them regardless of their talent or ability. We owe that to them regardless of wins and losses.

I want to stand and cheer, as it reminds me that there is Hope and Good out there, and there are people out there fighting to defend these ideas, and there are men and women carrying these notions into the lives of hundreds of thousands of young kids who deserve to know and feel and experience and cherish all that should be most wonderful in Sport.

I have no idea where Coach Sherman will wind up in his next job, but I know these two things: whatever team he inherits will have the rare and wonderful opportunity to be led by a true gentleman, and I will become an immediate fan of whatever team he leads.

Thanks for your time in Aggieland, Coach.

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B

First Ten Verbs 2011

2011-12-06T12:18:00.004-06:00

Back in the halcyon days of 2006 -- when the Internet still seemed interesting and amusing rather than just overrun with howler monkeys and hardcore Miracle Whip addicts -- I posted a meme wherein writer-type folks were asked/encouraged/ordered to post the first ten verbs from whatever project they were then currently working on:

A Bucket Of Love: Your First Ten Verbs (April 2006)

"Why?" you ask in that typically sniveling and mewling nasal tone of yours which sets all right-thinking people's nerves well on edge.

"SHUT UP," I explain.

And then I continue with another ref to that long ago post:

The exercise is intended to help you more clearly notice when your writing is passive and lackluster. In most cases (there are always exceptions) it's usually best to start strong and maintain momentum. If you look up and realize that you have a lot of "is" and "waits" and "sits" and "lays" as opening verbs, you might wanna give your opening a kick in the pants. Maybe.

So here's mine:

1. munch
2. stomp
3. roars
4. slaps
5. begins
6. speaks
7. screams
8. drops
9. scope
10. starts

Your turn, gravy-suckers.
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bored and hostile B

Greatest Song Lyrics Ever, vol 102

2011-12-06T09:10:00.007-06:00

"Stomp & Holler," by Hayes Carll

Oh, Little Johhny Walker caught a bullet last night
Running from the guitar store
He took a left down the alley, guess he should've gone right
Now he ain't taken nothing no more more more
Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' with hate and the greed
Most folks earn what they get for a livin'
Others just steal what they need
Down on the corner, already talkin'
How they're gonna cut that take
I'm out here just workin' for a dollar
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler...

Oh, eighteen years, eighteen years
That's a long-old time to be
Sittin' face down, stoned in the alley
Wonderin' how to get to that shinin' sea
Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' on the minimum wage
Ah, some people just gonna sneak on through
Others gotta rattle that cage
One of these days, I'm gonna find my way
Or else just disappear
I'm out here in the filth and squalor
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler...

Oh, rock and roll, ache and moan
Listen to the young girls scream
Every time I get a little bit lucky
I gotta wake up from a poor man's dream
Heaven only knows how we get there
After all this trouble and strife
From all I've seen, you only get one shot
At what you're gonna do in this life
Ah, what the hell, I guess I might as well
Take a chance and try my way
I'm like James Brown only white and taller
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler....

-----

[beer salute]

puttering through the gutter B

OCTOPI WALL STREET!

2011-11-28T22:37:00.008-06:00

So back on October 7, right after the time this whole "OCCUPY" thing was starting to grab traction online and become an oft-reffed meme in the social media universe, I spent maybe 6.27 minutes cobbling together a really childish pun based upon a favorite shot from the old 1955 Ray Harryhausen classic "IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA", wherein a giant cephalopod was mutated by Atomic Testing and decided to attack San Francisco as a reaction. I posted the silly pic to Facebook on the evening of October 7, 2011.

I guess people liked it, as it kinda sorta took off and ran away from home, playing in the cyber-yards of a whooooole lot more people than I know or have met. On Facebook I can track that it has been "shared" just under 3000 times, but I have no way of knowing how many times it was re-copied and re-posted and re-shared, or linked via Twitter of posted onto blogs or MySpace or Google+ or Arpanet or whatever else is out there this week.

This afternoon I get a request for some info from some magazine guy wanting a copy.

Serious stabs at screenwriting creativity -- those I can't give away. But childish paste-ups of rampaging seafood? That's gold, Jerry! GOLD!
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screwed blue B

AFF 2011: Day 0 -- I Have A Dream

2011-10-26T21:24:00.006-06:00

Before I embark on what might well end up an aborted attempt to blog my way through a replay of my 2011 Austin Film Festival (AFF) experiences, I think I'll share a dream I had the night before the conference opened. It was Wednesday night, I'd already checked in and had my credentials and IDs and invites and such, had already had some beers in the Driskill, had already had multiple way-cool screenwriterly experiences as part of this year's conference, and already had good times catching up with far-flung friends whom I only get to see maybe once a year at this specific event. So by all rights, I was surely "in a good place," mentally speaking, right?

No, fair reader -- with my brain, no such assumption is ever safe or well-founded.

I doze off to cerveza-stoked slumber in the Stephen F Austin hotel, and somewhere between 4:30am and wakeup time around 7am, I had a dream.

I see the main Ballroom of the Driskill Hotel, the room where many of the biggest and most popular panels in the conference always get booked. It usually seats several hundred guests, but in the dream, it's empty, save for one chair set alone, by itself, in the middle of the huge quiet room.

I'm in the chair, in my cargo shorts and t-shirt, backpack hung from one knee, notepad on my other leg, as I wait to take notes.

On the stage... maybe a dozen panelists -- all the usual suspects of name writers who I've met at Austin and in most cases developed some slight relationship with. I recall seeing Dan Petrie, Terry Rossio, John August, Lawrence Kasdan, Craig Mazin, Shane Black, as well as maybe a half dozen other faces which now are just gray shadows in memory. They are all just sitting there in their tall director's chairs, look down at me well back in the huge room. Some have their arms crossed and have that stern not entirely pleased expression I recall from way too many "talks with the professor" in college.

I recall glancing at my watch in the dream, as if I am anxious about starting whatever it is which is supposed to be going on, and then Petrie leans forward to his microphone:


               DAN PETRIE
     So, Brett... WHY are you still out there? Why
     aren't you up here on this side of the mike?

               BRETT
     I... I dunno.

               TERRY ROSSIO
     It's not really a question of not knowing
     something. We've told you -- all of us --
     more than enough for you to figure this out.
     What's the problem?

               BRETT
     I... I dunno.

               SHANE BLACK
     Jesus Christ, man. Just fucking do it,
     already. Look around you!

I recall looking around the room, as instructed, and recall seeing a lot of open space and nobody else.

And then I wake up.

And I rub my eyes, and I mumble something like "thanks a lot, God. Hell of a dream to drop on me the night before the conference kicks off."

I'd offer that perhaps this last lament was perhaps heard, as I feel I was offered a "make up call" later in the conference, but offering details about that here would be *spoilers*.

Still. This dream struck me as a rather harsh and sadistic fantasy to hose into someone's subconscious at such an ostensibly propitious moment.

At the minimum, somebody owes me a damned fruit cup.
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B

AFF 2011: a streaming retrospective overview

2011-10-25T12:37:00.004-06:00

Running late... Thomas!... Driskill! Our home for the next 5 days... "Where are you?" Driskill! ... LORI!... "Those shoes are getting to me..." chicken tacos at El Arroyo... "I think Neil Young's dad is on bass..." ... beer tastes better with second-hand smoke... "I wish I'd worn *my* Porter Waggoner shirt..." ...the Drakes are cool... Driskill!... Kasdan in the hizzy... a beer? Well, if you insist... Lauren, Lisa, Jennie, Deborah, Jolly, Julie, Maya, Jacqueline, Max... Alvaro... Mazin... Turman... TR on the sofa, explaining Disney v. Lone Ranger et al... "Maybe it's a hematoma..."...aaa goodnight, Missus Wiznowitz... Stephen F Austin lobby at 3:30am is kinda quiet... up at 7:12am, 3 minutes ahead of alarm... where's cute triathlete barista girl???... mmmmm...Clif bar.... "where did you find that banana?"... mistaken for a person of relevance... the Isaac Newton Sandwich... Shane and Larry open the conference... talking about COOKIE'S FORTUNE with Anne Rapp before Kasdan comes in... Kasdan smiles, comes over to hug Anne, notices me, says "you're with HIM? Oh shit..." ... Driskill!... Richard! Derek!... beer me... Ramesh!... "Wow, that's a cute girl... that's a VERY cute girl... she's smiling... she's waving... at ME? Is that...? Huh? BLAIR!?! I smell t-r-o-u-b-l-e..." Stage Bar on 6th... very cool blues trio with two kids on bass and guitar and dad on drums... "'Crab puffs'? If you say so, man..." PAMIE!... "Zulauf sounds like a good Texan name..." CHRISTINA!... "are you interested in a u-rangotang movie?" cake shots are better than expected... "Drink beer? Well, on occasion..." ... Brian Anderson and Chuck Fitzpatrick... street pizza... Driskill!... "Well, OK, I'll have a beer..." ... finding a wayward Kasdan somewhere on Lavaca: "Shit -- just follow Brett. He's headed to a party somewhere...." ... Dulce is way too beautiful to be that alone... "Do you ever smile?" ... Max doesn't recognize me... Theresa and Holly and Jojo and Nancy... Howard Rodman might be Ed Wynn in non-disguise... Vivi wants pictures... NATALIE!... walking Congress at 2am... Stephen F Austin lobby at 3am is still kinda quiet.... up at 7:10am, 5 minutes before the alarm... free coffee sometimes is not worth the price... 31 never-noticed incoming messages on Facebook, dating back 18 months? Huh?... Alec Berg and Craig Mazin should tour together... "wrapped in the delicious bacon of failure..." ... Talbott, Brucks, and McCreery... the Big Vito at Jimmy Johns... Kasdan, Mazin, Petrie and Reese, oh my.... Driskill!... boots and jeans for the BBQ... "where did Julie Howe go...?" into the French Legation, and there's a THUNDER SOUL poster front and center.... two ambers, please... Salt Lick! ... nom nom nom nom... James Hart likes his 'Q... Tony!... Eilis! ... Big Red in bottles!... PAMIE!... "It's like riding a bike -- it's even more embarrassing to wipe out in front of friends when they all know you know how to do it...." ... RUM DIARY scene is already a zoo... Johnny Depp in the eye of the meat-storm... I am the dill pickle spear in a club sandwich of way-hawtness... Driskill!... stereo twin Jasons... "Wait-- you're the dead cat tree guy!?!" ... to Ruth's Chris, aka, the worst party venue they always seem to use... clinking drinks with Kasdan... Rick Dugdale sans Petrie... Lauren and Stephen... Dulce!... Max still doesn't recognize me.... "Did I wind up with another of your women?" "S'alright -- I have plenty more..." ... Driskill! Max does a spit take when she recognizes me... John Lasseter eating a cheeseburger underneath Humperdink.... "A beer? Well, alright..." ... elbowing past James Franco in the men's room doorway... Shane reads this stuff? WHO NEEDS MORE PRESSURE? ... last call... banana and decaff in the SFA lobby at 3am, as movie deals get done at the adjacent sofa... up at 7am, 15 minutes before the alarm, and once more into the breach... packed like canned hams into the FIGHT CLUB read-along w/ Palahniuk and Uhls... Buffalo wants a cavity search? We're out... fish tacos at the Irish pub... Ronson? No way... Confirmed -- Ronson... scaring Carl and Bethany... hanging with Blair in the 1886... cash bar? screw that! ... Driskill! ... Ags win! ... hanging with Chuck... talking with Theresa... Rossio slams via praise... are we going? it's time. come on -- let's go!... whoa-- that's the line? No way. Back to base... Driskill!... Arndt and Rossio talk writing for hours -- crazy awesome to watch... Jill!... Last call? Seriously? ... SFA lobby at 3:15am is pretty wild on a Saturday night.... up at 7:15am -- go to hell, alarm... load it up, pack it out... The Secret Garage... breakfast tacos at The Hideout... Dulce is again too beautiful.... lemonade with maple syrup? Wow.... rewrite panel with Rossio, and a pat on the head worth more than all the gold in California... to SFA ballroom with TR, Jolly Lauren, Deb, Lisa, Brian, and T-Crymes for the epic Michael Arndt "Endings" panel... sweet jesus this is good stuff Arndt is giving... Crymes to the shuttle, Lisa to the cab -- the exodus has begun... "And... I think we're all done" ... Driskill! ... Hanging out, shaking hands, swapping hugs ... talking the past, as we finally enter THE SUCK ... "OK, I think it's now officially Last Day..." ... a flurry of texts, a final hug, and we're out the door... long road home, with no music, no sound. Just thoughts... in the driveway, scrawled in huge glow in the dark chalk letters: "WELCOME HOME, DAD!" One last sigh, turn the knob, and then step back into the real world for another 361 days, 8 hours, 4 minutes, and 31... 30... 29... 28....

the tales we tell our children

2011-08-11T09:17:00.003-06:00

So we're at the dinner table, eating dinner. The whole famn damily.

I think it's important to try and have the traditional "dinner 'round the table" thing for a couple of reasons:

1) I'm hungry, dammit

and

2) The Wife tells me that this "family meal time" is important, and I'm just too damned tired to argue another point and fight a war on a seventeenth concurrent front.

So we're all there, picking around the spaghetti or chicken or leftover whatever.

And as I am savoring my whatever and mentally listing the various ways God has hurled angelic balls of poo at me so far today, I hear Son#3 mumble something about "stupid girls."

"What? What's the problem?"

"Girls. They're stupid and icky."

Son #3 is 10 years old at the time, so he's on the early edge of that long vague ill-defined window when males become fascinated by females.

"You don't think they're maybe a little bit interesting?"

"No. Girls are stupid and icky."

"Well, I remember feeling that way, too, when I was young. But here's the thing -- you're growing and getting older, and soon you're gonna start to re-think this."

The Wife is watching me warily, and chewing more slowly. I smile at her.

"One day you're gonna meet a girl who makes you feel different. Some girl who makes you want to be smart and funny and strong, and who makes your heart beat fast, and whose voice makes you feel good just to hear. Some girl you try to spend time with even when there's nothing to do -- who just makes you feel all warm and safe and good inside whenever she's with you. And you'll one day find that girl who does this so much and so often that you decide you can't go on unless you know she's going to be there to make you feel this way every day for the rest of your life, so you'll tell this girl how much she means to you, and how badly you want her as your wife, and how you want to make a family with her."

And at this point I realize The Wife and the brood are all looking at me kinda weird and unfamiliar like.

"And then it's going to suddenly hit you: you really should have trusted that first instinct back when you were ten years old."

Dinner time is quality family time.
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B

On Writing: "Beaumont"

2011-07-31T10:54:00.003-06:00

Real writing -- the kind that gets down into your chest and makes you breathe heavy -- takes place between the lines on the page. Great songwriting does it so effortlessly that it can be terrifying, like realizing someone has been watching you in supposedly private moments for years.

In the little song below, every single line calls to mind a deeper fuller scene not explicitly shared in the words being sung, and you're left at once both aching for more details yet also feeling somewhat ashamed of overhearing someone's deepest thoughts.

Learn to do this for a hundred pages or more, and they'll drive truckloads of cash to your door and hail you as a genius, kids.

Me -- I'm still learning.

BEAUMONT
(by Hayes Carll)

I saw you leanin' on a memory
With your back turned to the crowd
In that little bar on Murphy
Where they play guitar too loud
There were people drinkin' whiskey
There were hearts about to leave
It was cold as hell for Houston
It was almost New Years Eve

All the way from Beaumont
With a white rose in my hand
I could not wait forever babe
I hope you understand

The night was feelin' lucky
So I asked you to dance
And the way you looked up at me
Made me think I had a chance
But when I put my arms around you
I knew you weren't givin' in
I hope it will be different
If I pass this way again

All the way from Beaumont
With a white rose in my hand
I could not wait forever babe
I hope you understand

I walked the road to get here
With a guitar and a case
I'd have stopped in Pasadena
If I'd known about this place
But you looked like forever
Where the water meets the shore
I've been thinkin about you, baby
I can't do that anymore

I saw you leanin' on a memory
With your back turned to the crowd
In that little bar on Murphy
Where they play guitar too loud
There were people drinkin' whiskey
There were hearts about to leave
It was cold as hell for Houston
It was almost New Years Eve

All the way from Beaumont
With a white rose in my hand
I could not wait forever babe
I hope you understand

---

She's Still A Beauty

2011-05-16T20:22:00.004-06:00

Once upon a time the event of humans being hurled into space by a few million pounds of barely contained explosives was the stuff of worldwide breath-holding. Back in the glory days, whenever Mercury or Gemini or Apollo sent our people up for a quick peek at the heavens, we'd all stop what we are doing, gather round a flickering TV screen and smile a deliciously stupid grin at the miracle unfolding before our eyes: "We're sending people into space! Human beings are leaving this planet!"

Sadly, things have changed, and not for the better, in my view -- at least, not when it comes to a launch. In our modern world we're too busy swapping pics of LOLcats to be bothered to notice that on this day -- May 16, 2011 -- a remarkable and terrifying and astoundingly brave phase in the history of exploration drew to a largely overlooked yet still glorious beginning of the end: the final-ever launch of the US Space Shuttle, as USS Endeavour lifted from Cape Canaveral. Endeavour's flight -- STS 134 -- will be the final flight of the Shuttle. The end of the line.

Rather than just watch a video clip and say "OK -- cool. Big rocket. (yawn) What did Jon Stewart do funny on the DAILY SHOW today...", take a few minutes (8 or 9, tops) to read this somewhat lengthy but entirely amazing essay first posted back in 2003 by Bill Whittle on his blog Eject Eject Eject:

"COURAGE"

Go on. It's more than worth it, if only to help you get a full appreciation of exactly what you are looking at when you then click and watch the video below.

-=-=-=-

Now, watch this and see if it doesn't hit you just a little harder:

Godspeed, Endeavour. May your return be blessedly and deceptively unremarkable.
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Aero-Geek B

April 21 -- San Jacinto Day

2011-04-21T09:45:00.002-06:00

"On this field on April 21, 1836 the Army of Texas commanded by General Sam Houston, and accompanied by the Secretary of War, Thomas J. Rusk, attacked the larger invading army of Mexicans under General Santa Anna. The battle line from left to right was formed by Sidney Sherman's regiment, Edward Burleson's regiment, the artillery commanded by George W. Hockley, Henry Millard's infantry and the cavalry under Mirabeau B. Lamar. Sam Houston led the infantry charge.

With the battle cry, "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!" the Texans charged. The enemy taken by surprise, rallied for a few minutes then fled in disorder. The Texans had asked no quarter and gave none. The slaughter was appalling, victory complete, and Texas free! On the following day General Antonio Lopez De Santa Anna, self-styled "Napoleon of the West," received from a generous foe the mercy he had denied Travis at the Alamo and Fannin at Goliad.

Citizens of Texas and immigrant soldiers in the Army of Texas at San Jacinto were natives of Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Austria, Canada, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Scotland.

Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican-American War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American Nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty."

Saaaaaaaaa-lute.

Happy San Jacinto Day, y'all.
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under the "A" in "TEXAS" B

a jug of advil, a bag of crap, and thou

2011-04-14T10:12:00.006-06:00

Just another typical Thursday morning.

The kids had already left for school, The Wife had just pulled in from another night shift, and I was standing in the yard in gym shorts and a ratty T, coffeecup in one hand, hose in the other, as I soak the flowerbeds and the poison just applied to the newest fire ant beds that have sprung up, while mentally sorting through the Top 31 Things I Most Hate at the moment.

The Wife is telling me... something (I find my day goes better when I pay as little mind as possible to the thoughts, comments, requests and concerns of other people...), and she's walking to the curb to put something into the trashcans there waiting for the truck. But as she replaces the lid and steps back, she yelps, throws her purse and cellphone in one direction and her body another, executing what starts as something like a graceful pirouette maneuver but which quickly degrades into full-on pratfall.

I hear a loud "OOOF!", and there's a small poof of leaves puffed away from the impact.

I sip my coffee and shake my head, then sigh.

"Well, that looked painful. Are you OK?"

"errrg... no..." answers a small face-down voice.

"You need to move," I offer as assistance.

"i can't..." the face-down whimper explains.

I sip some more coffee.

"Well, you're laying on a fire ant mound."

At which point we discover that she was mistaken: she can, in fact, move, and does so, though none too gracefully. She log-rolls along the curb and now lies facedown with most of her body in the street. Our housecat strolls over and sits near her prone form, using her body as cover from a mockingbird shrieking and dive-bombing from the oak tree above.

A neighbor drives by, sees the scene, slows and gawks.

I smile and wave the hose in greeting. They drive on.

"I think I broke my ankle."

"Oh, I doubt that. It takes some effort to do that. You probably just rolled it."

I help her up, and she limps into the house and collapses onto the sofa.

"You need to get me some ibuprofen."

"Where is it -- in your bathroom cabinet, or in the kitchen?"

"The store. We're out."

"I think you mean you're out. I have all the ibuprofen I need right now."

"Will you go buy some ibuprofen? I can't move."

So I drive to the local quicky stop and buy some overpriced ibuprofen and an Antone's Super Po Boy (mmmmm... chow chow...) and return to find a small plastic bag of cat poo on the front stoop. I pick it up, glance at it, then drop it back to the stoop and head in to find The Wife on the back porch.

"Somebody left a bag of cat crap on the stoop."

"That was me," she answers from the back yard through the open door in the kitchen. "Pick up the ice -- my ice pack slipped and made a mess."

I notice three dozen ice cubes scattered all over the kitchen table and floor.

"If you were a car, Federal Law says I could return you as defective."

"What?" she asks, re-entering from the back porch.

"I invoke my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination."

"Good. Did you get the ibuprofen?" she asks as she limps past.

"On the counter."

"The window casing looks good. You going to paint it today?"

"Window casing? Oh, you mean, 'the window casing in the upstairs bathroom'? I thought you couldn't move?"

"You need to pick up those tools up there."

"Ah, so apparently you can move only well enough to criticize. Good to see the injury is not slowing you."

"I'm going to bed now."

"Try not to burst into flames between here and there."

"Good night. Don't forget the cat poo on the porch."

I nod "OK" through a mouthful of Super Po-Boy.

"Mmmmm... chow chow....

And so it goes.
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B

Meltdown

2011-03-15T09:23:00.002-06:00

"Do you smell something burning?"

"Huh? Whaa..."

"I smell something. Been smelling it for an hour."

"Mmm-hmmm..."

If it had not been 4:45am when this little scene started, I might have seemed more engaged. More interested. More coherent.

As it stands, I sat up and rubbed my eyes, and then sniffed.

"Hey-- what's that--"

"Smell? Yeah. That's what I was saying."

So we hop out of bed and go padding around. There's a strange semi-familiar burning smell hanging in the air, but it's not a burning wood or paper smell. It's definitely apparent in the bedroom, but not there in the bathroom (behind the closed door).

It's there in the hallway, but not in the utility room (behind another closed door).

Wife goes upstairs, says she smells it plainly in the hallway, yet in none of the rooms where the kids are sleeping (gain, behind closed doors).

I smell it in the den, and in the kitchen as well. It's not the coffeepot, nor the microwave or oven or cooktop. Not the fridge motor.

"No smell in the attic," wife whisper-shouts from upstairs.

"Good," I mumble and yawn. "So what the hell is it?"

I lean down, yawning again, hands on the countertop.

It's hot. Strange abnormal weird hot.

The dishwasher.

I note the "DRY" cycle is still running. I started the washer as I went to bed around midnight-thirty, and here five hours later the DRY cycle is still cranking?

I open the door slightly, and am immediately hit by the smell. It's like crayons melting on the stove and on the verge of igniting.

There's no flame, so I pull the door open. It's like an oven-- likely 250 degrees, maybe more.

I peek in and laugh. Anything made from soft plastic is... well, gone. Perhaps not totally gone from this universe, but surviving now in only a colored shadow on the floor on the washer. Anything made from Type 1 plastic -- which includes the caps to the sport bottles, a snap on lid for the dog food can, a plastic baby spoon, and two cutting boards -- has been liquified. Blobs of colored goo on the floor of the cabinet show where the melted plastic dripped, and the cutting boards have fused onto the floor and lower rack in a molten mess. In the back corner, there's a charred black stain where a heavy blob of cutting board had been dripping down to contact the heater coil.

None of the control buttons respond on the washer, so I reach into the undersink cabinet and yank the power cord, killing the wounded beast. I take the racks of steaming hot dishes into the backyard to cool and air there, spritz some Lysol into the air to slapfight with the melted plastic stink (so now we have a funky "white linen / molten crayola" stink working in the house), and then The Wife and I crawl back into bed for the final 45 minutes of sleep before Yet Another Day In Paradise pounces on us like a perching puma.

The family gets up and heads out to visit sis-in-law and the sideshow at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

Me? I'm now appliance shopping and installing today.

I don't think Billy Wilder done it this-a way...."
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thermoplastic fantastic B

(Cairo)

2010-12-18T01:16:00.004-06:00

                    LAWRENCE
          Michael George Hartley. This is a nasty, 
          dark little room.
          
                    HARTLEY
          That's right.
          
                    LAWRENCE
          We are not happy in it.

the joys of parenting

2010-11-05T08:41:00.003-06:00

After sixteen years and four kids worth of at-home parenting, I have some thoughts.

And right now one of those thoughts concerns the maudlin saccharine nonsense commonly served up as the over-sentimentalized vision of what parenting is like. Sure, there will be those moments where you are sitting around a clean table in a sparkling white designer kitchen as perfect golden light bathes you and your well-groomed child as you both simultaneously and without any rational cause burst into heartfelt laughter as he completes a finger-painting project suitable for entry is a National Idiot's Day competition.

And somewhere along the way you'll likely have a moment where you are in your J Crew finest on an Rockwellian autumn day as your perfect daughter smiles a perfect smile perfectly missing one perfect front tooth as she takes off down your tree-shaded lane on her first ever try on a bike and your perfect wife runs up -- her perfect sweater tied sensibly and perfectly around her shoulders -- and gives you a hug from the side as you both stand there in your perfectness and enjoy a perfect day and she hands you a perfect mug of joe.

Those are the easy days. Those are the 3-inch putts -- the gimme's. To offer such images as examples of Parenthood is an insult, as any parent who can't handle those sorts of infrequent and unexpected moments of blissful ease probably also has trouble with the safe operation of a toothpick, and is likely challenged mightily by such complexities as sandals, doorknobs, or crayons.

The days which matter are the ones you don't see shown on those damned commercials. The moments which somehow never make it into an Allstate ad, and never get commemorated in a school PTA photo collage.

Moments like, "when your kid is vomiting all over the damned place."

You seriously want to take your love out for a test drive and see what it's really like? Then try to act nonchalant and unaffected as you are tasked with cheering up your kid in the middle of the night after already having changed their vomit-soaked bedding twice in the last ten hours. When you enter their room and are greeted with that retchy smell which normally -- rightly -- sends any typical human being diving for an exit or an open window or source of breathable air.

I know this, 'cuz I've been there, man. I've seen things. More times than I care to recall, and certainly more than I care to describe in specific individual case by case detail. And every time I've had such rare and golden opportunities, I grouse and grumble to myself "where are the damned warm and fuzzy ads depicting this perfect moment...".

Because it's these moments which really tell the tale.

As the saying goes, "any jackass can be a father -- are you man enough to be a Dad?" To willfully and unabashedly wade into situations so vile and disgusting that someone from the Geneva Convention really ought to look into things to see if perhaps serious significant violations are being committed. To force a sincere-looking smile on the outside even when on the inside the core reptilian base programming of your brain is screaming "AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGH! FLEE!! RUN AND HIDE!!!" To say -- and not just say, but actually mean and actually believe -- It's OK. Everything's going to be alright..." even when deep down you hear your own vestigial child voice whining "I'm scared and I want this to go away now..."

Those are the moments when your steel will be tested, my pretty -- when there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nobody else to take the bullet but you, that's when your character will be revealed in all its weakness and strength, all its clumsiness and grace, all its enduring shame and glory.

"Oh! I don't know if I want to do that! I'm not sure I'm really cut out for that!" some might lisp. But I tell you what: I bet you'll find more to yourself than you knew was there when such a day finally breaks in your household. When the pompous BS is hosed away and your options are reduced to a clear and simple set of options -- come strong or go home -- clarity abounds.

When you put your hands... into a puddle of goo... that an hour before was your young child's dinner... you'll know what to do.

Now, you sons of bitches... you know how I feel.

I'd say more, but I'm headed back upstairs with a new roll of paper towels and the carpet cleaner.

And a noseclip.
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B

austin film festival 2010 -- Day 0 (Wednesday)

2010-11-02T13:05:00.005-06:00

I wasn't even supposed to be here....

That thought kept coming back to me over and over throughout this year's Screenwriter's Conference at the Austin Film Festival ("the festival"). For reasons which don't rate discussion on a public forum, I'd decided that for the first time in six years I'd simply not be able to justify the effort and expense and time required to make this yearly pilgrimage. No, I was not entirely happy about the decision, but sometimes the right decision is not the happy decision, and this seemed one of those damnable cases.

But a funny thing happened. As has been the case more than a few times throughout this ongoing pursuit of screenwriting glory, something totally unexpected and wonderful falls from the sky to change the specifics of some critical moment. This time, it was a bit of unexpected generosity and encouragement arriving at precisely the critical moment. "Oh, you're going. That's not open for discussion." Again, the specifics are not the stuff for a blog like this, but I'll say this much: if you're very very lucky, you'll have good friends around you who refuse to let you make certain mistakes.

So there I am rolling hard down Highway 71 towards Austin, with some tunes cranking on the stereo, and in another of those improbably perfect moments which reminds me that God might make a decent director if he ever feels an itch to try that game, at precisely the moment when I crest the last major hill south of Austin and see the Capitol Dome haze into view, I find I am singing along to a certain lyric:

"Hey, amigo -- don't just play the part.
Wherever you go -- go with all your heart."
-- "Tucson", L.L. Cooper

One of the things about Austin which has become second nature to me is the way that I refuse to allow myself to feel tired or exhausted, no matter how badly run-down I might be due to the long days and short nights and copious flow of beverages. If the scene demands my presence and involvement until 5am, then that's where I'll be, and I'll be back in the Driskill Lounge by 8:30am the next day no matter what -- showered and awake and ready to charge once more into the breach. I no longer even notice this behavior: it's just The Way Things Are. But others seem to remark on it and marvel.

"Dude, how can you do that? I'd be a wreck."

I explained again this year how I just can't allow myself the lazy luxury of feeling tired and acting exhausted. It's cost too much to get here. Too much effort and sacrifice was required to get me onto this field for me to not give every last bit of effort come game time. Ten or twenty years from now I do not want to look into a mirror and know in my heart of hearts that there was something more I might have done to maybe have made that screenwriting dream happen.

Because regardless of what the t-shirt slogans might say, failure is always an option. If you doubt that, just look around and see how many failed dreamers stand eternally willing to give you their sad personal story full of explanations and excuses and justifications and rationalizations.

Simple choice: go hard or go home.

-=-=-

So I sang along with Coop, swung off to Austin-Bergstrom Airport and picked up Zoe, who'd flown in from Australia just to see if this circus I've sung about for years was really as wildly wonderful as I've been making it out to be. Actually, she'd driven ten hours from the bush to get to Sydney in order to catch a 14 hour flight to LA to then layover for a few hours to then fly another 3 hours to Austin to then spend a whole bunch of money hanging out with strangers, so again I am reminded of just how much I feel riding on me to make this event and this career chase work out.

We cruise into Austin and down Sixth to the Driskill and I stow the car and wander in to find my badges and registration info, and I'm struck as always by the weird sense of ownership: this is my space -- this is where I do the work.

I hook up with Tom, my hotel roommate for the week, and we find Zoe stumbling along with an Olympian case of jet lag, and we head off to grab some dinner at Threadgill's (chicken fried steak, gravy on the side, with mashed potatoes and San Antonio squash casserole).

Halfway through the meal, I see a woman standing at the hostess station, scanning the room, and I run to see Lori, an old high school friend of mine I've not seen in something like 26 years. We'd reconnected via FaceBook this past year, and when she moved to Austin over the summer, we'd agreed to grab a beer when next I came to town.

She joins us for the rest of the evening, and I'm suddenly left feeling an even stronger sense of urgency and commitment for this stupid writing pursuit: if it was that easy to lose touch with a really good friend for a quarter-century, how easy would it be to lose sight of this often-frustrating career chase?

We wind up back at the Driskill, and Lori and I natter and chatter as if 26 years never actually happened... well, except for a whole bunch of kids and some marriages and several relocations and blah blah blah. More festival folks wander through, waving and high-fiving as they pass. At some point we get joined briefly by Franklin Leonard, the dude who started the now mighty Black List. He turns out to be a totally likable self-effacing guy with great attitude about the unexpected prominence and power of the Black List, and again I am reminded of how weird and wonderful these random meetings in Austin can be.

Zoe collapses early (apparently 26 hours of air travel plays havoc on some folks...), Tom wanders off in exhaustion as well, and eventually everyone is being ushed from the room after last call, so I see Lori to her car and we laugh "let's do this again sometime without such a long break in between."

I stroll back to the Stephen F Austin hotel, taking a few extra scenic turns to let things percolate a little longer in my brain, and by 3am I'm back in the room. Tom's sleeping, so I take the laptop into the bathroom and spend a half hour typing up my daily notes and thoughts as I do every day when on the road. It's a weird tradition, I guess -- the nightly recap into .TXT form -- but it helps remind me that this is not a vacation. This is work, dammit -- I have big things I need to accomplish, and dreaming don't get them done.

(to be continued)

farting brilliant

2010-10-31T09:14:00.009-06:00

Found this while googling for an extra soupçon of snark to hurl at a friend who tried to yank my chain over a perceived/alleged/irrelevant breach of linguistic fussiness.

I only wish this was available in a form suitable for delivery via water cannon, as there are a great many ass-puckered armchair grammarians out there who deserve a good soaking.

And yes, I am back. Thoughtclouds are building on the mental horizon, and some verbal rain shall surely fall soon enough.

Better grab a poncho.
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B

Greatest Song Lyrics Ever, vol. 39

2010-07-14T23:15:00.005-06:00

"Placemat Blues," by Slobberbone

Get up from the table and just walk away
There's nothing for me anyway
No reason that I should stay
Where's the place at the table for folks like me?
There's not one that I can see
Not one I can see

Used to be nothing sweeter than the signals it could send
The musical hand it could lend
Could be a lonely man's best friend
Where's the place at the table for folks like them?
Do you not want what they can spend?
Where's your place for them?

Now don't tell me that you don't see these things all sideways
I wish that you might one day see things my way

I know what you say, you say you serve the youth
You serve them Bizkits and Korn with a spoon
But I think you just serve you
Where's the place at the table for folks like us
When there's no one that we can trust?
Where's the place for us?

Now don't tell me that you don't see these things all sideways
I hope that you might one day see these things my way

That's my rant, I bet it don't make a dent
I waste all these little laments
And wait for accidents
So go on buy it all, buy it all and sell it off
The towers, the meters, the speakers, the knobs
Send it back to God

Just don't tell me that you don't see these things all sideways
And don't tell me that I might one day see things your way

We should kick your ass from here to Friday
Then maybe you might one day see these things my way

-----

Defiance is its own reward.
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too dumb to know better B

a great deal remains unreported

2010-07-11T12:13:00.002-06:00

Stuff is going on.

For now it still feels more like leaves swirling in a dust devil -- lots of commotion, fluttering, interesting to watch -- but not a lot of form or purpose.

Maybe stuff will coalesce into stuff worth publicly commenting upon.

Maybe it will continue to not.

Maybe a blimp will fall on me.

Life is funny that way: whatever bad news you think you're prepared for, you get the other kind.

Onwards.
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B

UPDATE: 11 June 2010

2010-06-11T12:20:00.001-06:00

Suckage continues to abound.

That is all.
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B

one more time

2010-05-25T08:09:00.006-06:00

And so it ends again.

Trailing by 3 with two men on, a 9-year old strikes out, an umpire says "BALLGAME!", and we clear the dugout, trudge to meet beneath the big oak tree near the third base field gate, and I again tell the kids "I'm proud of you, you played hard, it was a tough game..."

Blah blah blah.

I'm not minimizing the message or even the delivery, but after a point -- after so many seasons and so many end of the year final post-game speeches -- it all starts to seem... anticlimactic.

We gathered into a circle to call out the team name, as per tradition, and as we all had our hands in the circle, I found myself just pausing. Hesitating. Refusing to pull the trigger on that last gesture which would, officially, end our season.

Some of the guys looked up me, noticing in their own minds the odd delay, the hiccup in the normal sequence and timing of the ceremony. All I could do was force out a half smile.

"OK, guys -- this is the last time we will ever be us. This is the last moment that this team will ever exist. Any of you guys who decide to come back and play again next season, I will do what I can to get you back on my team, but there are no guarantees, and the chances of this same group of twelve ever suiting up as teammates again is basically zero. So if you have any desire to tell the world what team you are on this season, here it is: your one last and final chance. Tell those bums who they just beat."

One, two three... a shout, and we're dissolved.

---

I make a point to go to each player and shake their hands, say "I love you, man" and "thank you for playing for me," and thank the parents for all their time and effort. I pour the equipment bag out onto the grass and do one more final inventory to make sure I have all the proper gear stowed and ready to turn in. I fart around and pick up a few stray pieces of trash -- gum wrappers, a drink cup, an empty bottle of Gatorade -- but then chuckle at myself as I recognize what I am doing: stalling. Delaying that inevitable next step, where I carry the equipment bag back to the storage barn, open the door, and add my team's bag to the pile of other team bags already growing in the corner, bags from teams like mine who have now completed their season and played every game on the schedule and every game allowed by the playoff structure and who have now come to... the end.

I toss the bag onto the pile and look around the room. Dusty old catcher's masks which only a few short months ago were shiny and new and still sporting their tags from the warehouse. Some leftover uniforms from Opening Day which were extras and never issued. A few sponsor and manager "thank you" plaques waiting to be handed out. Racks of trophies which will be distributed to some of the teams whose bags are not yet in this pile, whose seasons have not yet crashed to earth, who still cling to that delicious thing known as Hope.

I sigh, turn and walk out, making sure the door is well secured behind me, and I hear a burst of insane screaming of the sort that I laugh to recognize as unique to parents of 5-year old tee-ballers. I look to the tee-ball field to my right and see what look like large toddlers in oversized uniforms -- the Cubs and the Cardinals, blue versus red -- as a ball rolls somewhere towards a centerfielder who is watching an adjacent field, as a runner waddles as fast as he can manage toward second base. Surely one of the best hit balls of the entire season in that age group, as it actually left the infield. Dugouts are screeching. Parents are going wild. Kids are running around in what seems the earliest onset of panic. Coaches are bellowing "GO! GO GO!" or "THROW THE BALL! THROW THE BALL!"

I laugh and clap for the play, then turn and head back to my wagon full of gear: extra bats and buckets of practice balls and wiffle balls and scorebooks and folder of schedules and waivers and rosters. I pat my son on the head and say "let's get going -- it's a school night" and we walk past the next 9-year old game, already in progress after ours.

Past the 8-year olds where this is the season where they learn just how much anguish a scoreboard can deliver.

Past the Majors field where the 11s and 12s are suddenly starting to look and play like the young men we will see on high school fields, college fields, pro fields. In each case, on every field, one set of fans is always screaming, the other always pleading with uncaring gods to somehow deliver some impossible redemption.

We head to the van, and I notice how we've left the silver-white glare of the vapor lamps and are now heading deeper into the gloom of the parking lot, and how our shadows grow darker and longer out in front of us as the field lights fall farther and farther behind us with each step, and I laugh to myself for noting the drama of "leaving baseball." And I again remember my favorite baseball message:

That is why it breaks my heart, that game--not because [they] they could win because [we] lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to [the other team] of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

-- A. Bartlett Giamatti, "The Green Fields of the Mind"

By that measure, I guess this season was a success, as I find myself heading home, broken hearted yet longing to do it all again, just one more time. Please. Just one more time.
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simple creature B

Happy San Jacinto Day

2010-04-21T07:54:00.002-06:00

"On this field on April 21, 1836 the Army of Texas commanded by General Sam Houston, and accompanied by the Secretary of War, Thomas J. Rusk, attacked the larger invading army of Mexicans under General Santa Anna. The battle line from left to right was formed by Sidney Sherman's regiment, Edward Burleson's regiment, the artillery commanded by George W. Hockley, Henry Millard's infantry and the cavalry under Mirabeau B. Lamar. Sam Houston led the infantry charge.

With the battle cry, "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!" the Texans charged. The enemy taken by surprise, rallied for a few minutes then fled in disorder. The Texans had asked no quarter and gave none. The slaughter was appalling, victory complete, and Texas free! On the following day General Antonio Lopez De Santa Anna, self-styled "Napoleon of the West," received from a generous foe the mercy he had denied Travis at the Alamo and Fannin at Goliad.

Citizens of Texas and immigrant soldiers in the Army of Texas at San Jacinto were natives of Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Austria, Canada, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Scotland.

Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican-American War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American Nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty."

Saaaaaaaaa-lute.

Happy San Jacinto Day, y'all.
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under the "A" in "TEXAS" B

once upon a time at starbucks

2010-04-20T14:40:00.008-06:00

FADE IN


INT. STARBUCKS COUNTER INSIDE TARGET - DAY

BRETT (40-ish, pissy, ruggedly handsome) wanders to the
counter, sighs.

              STARBUCKS LADY
       Good afternoon! How can I help you?

              BRETT
       Medium latté, please.

              STARBUCKS LADY
       Oooooo, I'm sorry! My cash register
       is broken...

Starbucks Lady gestures towards register like some
hostess on The Price Is Right.

              STARBUCKS LADY (cont.)
       ... so I can't make any coffee
       drinks...

Starbucks Lady now gestures towards coffee maker, again
like some hostess on The Price Is Right.

              STARBUCKS LADY (cont.)
       ... but is there anything else I can
       offer you?

Starbucks Lady gives a Stepford smile. Brett glowers.

              BRETT
       You mean, besides this scintillating
       conversation?

Starbucks Lady smiles and tilts her head in confusion,
a la RCA Victor dog.

              BRETT (cont.)
       Ya know, a Starbucks that doesn't offer
       coffee really doesn't require a worker
       in an apron, does it? It would get a lot
       more use from a sign saying CLOSED --
       NO COFFEE.

Starbucks Lady still smiles, head still cocked.

World music soothingly annoys from somewhere.

Brett still glowers, then turns to leave.

              BRETT (cont.)
             (to self)
       I'm surrounded by idiots...

              STARBUCKS LADY
       Thank you! Please come again!

                                             FADE OUT

A Momentary Bout of Clarity

2010-04-19T12:44:00.005-06:00

It happens sometimes that when writing on some project you will find some odd clue or hint of bit of cosmic guidance from nowhere -- a trail of cookie crumbs the Universe seems content to leave every once in a while if only to foll you into thinking that the great slobbering beast called "Reality" gives a fig for your happiness and well-being.

So here I am, contentedly banging my face onto the keyboard in an effort to make beauty fall out my ears and eye sockets and arranges themselves into words on a screen, and iTunes per usual is cranking through a random play of a few thousand songs, when that weird thing happens yet again: some totally random song cues up which not only fits the mood but actually totally describes the entire damned story in a way more perfect than you'd ever manage if you sat there face-banging for a hundred years nonstop.

I -- I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing
nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever
Oh we can be Heroes
just for one day

I -- I will be king
And you -- you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be Heroes, just for one day
We can be Us
just for one day

I -- I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads (over our heads)
And we kissed
So nothing could fall (nothing could fall)
And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes
just for one day

We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
Just for one day
We can be Heroes

No, this doesn't describe any specific story to you, but trust me -- it *is* this story I am working on, totally nailing the emotional core that I was trying to describe to some... well, "persons of surpassing relevance."

And there most surely is joy in Mudville tonight.
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B

Greatest Song Lyrics Ever, vol. 63-A

2010-04-13T21:57:00.002-06:00

"Bubble Gum," from Adam Carroll

Three sixty-five for a can of snuff was money poorly spent
Didn't see a girl or a car around so I threw it on the hot cement
Well I parked the car and I went to school when I came back in haste
There was a big ol' wad of bubble gum that was stuck there in its place

The sticky side of the yin and yang on my shoes cramps my style
Some joker's chompin' on a big league chew with a big fat Buddha smile
Countin' out my change from the I Ching I can't help but hold a grudge
Was it bubble gum or bad karma? Let my guru be the judge
Was it bubble gum or bad karma? Let my guru be the judge

My foot got stuck when I hit the gas and I swerved to miss a skunk
And I ran into a bus load full of ten Tibetan monks
Their bus was wrecked, nobody got hurt, but they cussed me really loud
This had to be the first time that they broke their silence vow

I said please don't call the cops and I offered them some wine
We played chinese checkers and they beat me every single time
They stole the car and they grabbed the wine they said "you were bound to lose"
And I got left on the side of the road with bubble gum on my shoes

The sticky side of the yin and yang on my shoes cramps my style
Some joker's chompin' on a big league chew with a big fat Buddha smile
Countin out my change from the I Ching I can't help but hold a grudge
Was it bubble gum or bad karma? Let my guru be the judge
Was it bubble gum or bad karma? Let my guru be the judge

Stumbled my way back to town and the blues came down on me
I couldn't get back to my humble home cause the monks had took my keys
I sat down on the doormat -- I hung my head and wept
I spent the night trying to meditate out on my front porch steps

The days go by with the sun and the moon, no better or no worse
Bubble gum and bad karma is gonna be my dyin' curse
Well I might come back as the Dalai Lama -- I might come back as a clown
I hope that things are different in my next time around

I might come back as the Dalai Lama -- I might not come back at all
I might come back as a holy cow that's grazin' in Nepal
I think Ho Chi Minh's got herpes but Confucious he was cool
Bubble gum makes you stutter and snuff just makes you drool

Well I might come back as an outlaw rickshaw driver named Omar
But if I had things the way I wanted them...
I'd be picking the hindu blues...
with Keith Richards and Ravi Shankar

The sticky side of the yin and yang on my shoes cramps my style
Some joker's chompin on a big league chew with a big fat Buddha smile
Countin out my change from the I Ching I can't help but hold a grudge
Was it bubble gum or bad karma? Let my guru be the judge
Was it bubble gum or bad karma? Let my guru be the judge

-=-=-

Think about it, darlin....
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B

another dawn breaks foul

2010-03-26T10:39:00.003-06:00

So I'd been told that we -- The Wife and I -- needed to be at the elementary in time for the "televised" morning announcements this morning. She said Daughter was being mentioned in the announcements, and I shrugged and mumbled and said "yeah fine whatever..." as I am wont to do.

We rise, get the kids prepped and loaded and fired out the tubes toward their respective targets, and then The Wife and I then turn our focus to getting into clothes presentable to normal humans.

I'm culling through the t-shirts, looking for one that won't draw *too* many stares of unspoken complaint (but still won't draw *none* -- there is a required balance in such calculations...), and I then grab a favorite (iow, "ratty") faded sweatshirt to pull over that, as it's a "brisk" morning.

"You're not going to wear that, are you? she asks in that way women do when they pose a question in the form of a complaint.

"What -- would that leave me looking not pretty enough to stand against a wall, uninvolved and wishing for coffee?"

"Why not wear this?" she instructs, pulling a nice oxblood sweatshirt that still has the tag it's had since I opened it as a Christmas gift at some point in the past decade.

She hands me the sweatshirt and retreats to finish her own prep. putting on a blouse which seems oddly... nice just for a walk to the school and back.

At that point I groan, as it becomes clear that I am being "handled" -- something is afoot, and I'm the lucky surprise recipient-to-be.

"Crap," grumbles I.

-=-=-

I hate awards and acclaim.

It's all surely tied into a host of bizarre and for-purposes-here-unimportant childhood episodes, but the gist of it is I simply do not trust public shows of acclaim and approval. They make my skin crawl, make me want to dig a hole, drop into it and shudder like a flounder to cover myself with a concealing layer of silt and grit.

Some people seem to not understand that, as I am (admittedly and proudly) the possessor of one of the world's truly great Egos. It's not that I think I'm all that and a bag of chips. It's that I am, baybee, and I don't need no silly damned trophy or certificate or round of applause to give me additional unneeded proof of such. BUT -- and here's where it gets screwy and demented -- I am also sufficiently aware of my own overlooming arrogance and Ego freakitude that I very much dislike feeding that particular monkey. I therefore make great effort to remain detached from my Ego, and I like to yank its leash every once in a while to remind the beast that I remain (mostly) in control.

And so, rather than allow that Ego to further inflate with stupid moments of self-adoring public adoration, I avoid them. Instead, into mine own ear I whisper that old warning, that "all glory is fleeting." Every new victory and elevation just gives me that much more which I will surely soon lose through clumsiness, arrogance, and gross staggering stupefying incompetence.

Yeah, yeah, this whacked-out little internal balance of terror is demented and twisted and surely deserving of professional corrective attention and analysis, but in the mean time it's also just who I am.

Deal with it.

-=-=-

Earlier this school year I once again volunteered (with the usual scowling and complaining) to head up the design and construction of all the stage sets and props for the school musical.

Stagecraft is a goofy and largely unprofitable skill, so of course it's precisely the kind of thing I love and excel at. I started helping with stage stuff when I was maybe 10 years old and my mom was in charge of the local small-town beauty pageant, and we'd be part of a volunteer crew that would be tasked with turning a junior high stage into a fantasy castle or a Ziegfeld visual using nothing but spit, toilet paper cartons, and 73 pounds of duct tape.

I helped there annually for years, and eventually became the defacto stage director. I was in charge of pretty much everything from the curtains on back. (If any wonder WHY I would be interested in this, remember that by that point I was 17 years old and the gig put me solo backstage for a few long nights with 40+ totally nervous totally hot high school girls in low-cut evening gowns -- it was a good gig, guys.)

So I honed (stagecraft and other) skills there, and over the next few decades I'd duplicate that kind of creative silliness in the name of a dozen other similar crafty things like Cub Scouts and PTA and dance class, where I'd be the dad tasked with making a giant teacup or a pirate ship or a Viking longboat or a jungle or Monument valley, all built from chicken wire and whatever I could pull from a dumpster.

And 73 pounds of duct tape.

The local elementary stages two musicals every year -- for the fourth graders in the fall, and for the second graders in the spring. With four kids having passed through the halls there, all spaced just right, it's worked out that I've had a kid in line for a musical pretty much every year for the past decade, so years back when they posted a call for folks interested or experienced with designing stage sets, I said "sure, why not."

And done it again almost every year since.

Thus I've become a sort of annual tradition. I internally giggle at how the PTA ladies seem not totally thrilled to share my air, as I am a grumpy grumbling snarling hissyfit in human form most times when I am compelled to endure the butt-puckering bureacracy of the public school system (where it usually feels that I need to have my ID checked and two forms approved before I even think about bending at the waist or scratching my backside), but by the same token they are always totally stunned and overjoyed by whatever insane construction I ultimately reveal on Opening Night. It's not my Ego talking when I say I'm good at this stuff. Damned good.

And I know that. And I don't need or want anyone else's approval or celebration in order to know that and take pride in it. Making castles from cardboard and jungles from cheesecloth is just one of those totally odd things I am way better at than most normal people.

As he says in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state from a little city." Or a Mother Goose fairy tale land using finger paints and butcher paper.

And 73 pounds of duct tape.

-=-=-

So there I stand in the AV Room "studio" for the CCTV "broadcast" the kids make every school day as part of the morning announcements. I see my daughter standing there, dressed slightly nicer than normal, ostensibly to look good for "her" moment onscreen. And I notice my 4th grader son also there, grinning, and I just roll my eyes at the attempted deception: why would he be here just to see his sister when she is being broadcasted into his classroom? Why did The Wife uncharacteristically give a fig what I wore today? Why were all the front office folks greeting me by name when I did the required handprint, retinal scan and voice analysis to gain entrance to NORAD Elementary?

Come on, guys. Credit me with SOME snap here.

One of the cool little traditions at the elementary is the award of commemorative boomerangs to the "Outbacker of the Month." (The school has a pervasive Aussie/Koala/Outback theme). 'Rangs are awarded to students who do exceptional stuff in volunteer service, or who have some spectacular achievement in academics or service or whatever. They also hand out a boomerang monthly to the parent volunteer of the month.

My kids have long remarked that it seems strange that I've never been awarded one of these Outbacker of the Month boomerangs, given the insane work I've done over the past eight years in building sets and installing props and building stuff for the PTA carnival and building 3D bulletin boards and blah blah blah.

"I don't do that stuff so I can win a silly danged boomerang. I do that so you guys love going to that school and take pride in what you attempt there."

"Yeah, but people need to respect you for your work!"

"I'd rather they just respect the work itself. I'll respect the exhausted fool who did it."

So I am standing there, dressed nicer than I'd like to be dressed (per The Wife's command) and I see both my kids standing there grinning at me like a pair of Wonder Twin Idjits, and I see there are six kids in line to be awarded Outbacker Boomerangs, and I see there are seven boomerangs lined up to be handed out, and I see Daughter covering her mouth like she knows a secret and then pointing to the boomerangs being handed out and then raising her eyebrows as if to say "golly I wonder what's going on today" and the whole damned charade is just so clumsy and pathetic that I am half-tempted to duck out a side door and diminish into the west before I am forced to come up and listen to a bunch of noise and feel Ego writhing around in disgusting appalling self-adoring paroxysms of ecstasy.

But I don't.

'Cuz these silly people all mean well and want to enjoy their little game, and making me squirm and feel totally uncomfortable apparently brings great joy to folks, so I get called onscreen by the Principal and she reads some maudlin overblown and entirely too grandiose bit of niceness to/for/at me, and I accept the silly piece of painted wood (which is not even a real damned boomerang, BTW -- totally useless for throwing or hunting) and we all wave and smile to the camera as the announcements wrap up and we then get photographed for the newsletter or yearbook or whatever and my kids say "were you SURPRISED, daddy?" and I smile and lie and blah blah blah get me the hell outta here NOW.

I understand that I'm supposed to be thrilled and happy about all this, and I guess on some level that's hard for me to access and enjoy like normal people apparently do I am, but on the whole I'd be far far happier with just a casual nudge as we look at the work itself, and maybe one quiet yet sincere "that'll do, pig. That'll do."

And I could really use a new roll of duct tape.

I'm still here

2010-03-20T08:41:00.002-06:00

The itch to post new content to the blog...?

Not so much.

(shrug)

What happens, happens. What don't, doesn't.

Such is life.

sometimes i miss this thing

2010-01-30T00:04:00.005-06:00

The blog.

The feeling usually comes on at some odd moment spurred by some odd impetus or provocation -- some totally random encounter with the name of a long-misplaced friend, some flicker of memory relating to some curiously powerful moment from a decade or three mostly forgotten, some up close and personal encounter with a mouth-breathing dipshit at some local business or office -- and suddenly I feel an instinctive need to blather on about it.

I have no idea if most people understand this urge, or if this is a strange affliction seen in only that verbose and pale minority known as "writers," but for me somehow dissembling a thing and grinding it into mnemonic paste and then mixing the resultant slop back into a meatloaf of memory, spiced with whatever I feel like throwing into the bowl and fluffed up by what breadcumbs I can find and then kinda sorta held together by spit and egg whites.

Drizzled in ketchup.

A hundred odd questions I want to ask myself and then hang around and hope I bother to answer.

Strange connections between stuff I'd forgotten I'd once felt to stuff I didn't know I now was feeling.

Grievances and complaints and grumblings and assorted pissy little blurts and burps which as often as not are a reminder to myself to shut up and laugh off the minor complaint and remain more aware and thankful for the big ticket items which far far more often than not still seem to break in my favor.

Song lyrics that make me laugh, frustrations that make me want to punch a nun, and obscure admissions of things most folks will never even suspect.

I still have no idea what the purpose of a blog is. I still have no clue why anyone reads these things. I still lack any understanding of how to turn this waste of words and bandwidth into anything potentially useful or lucrative.

Yet still I come back, urping up words.

On the bright side, maybe I'll become rich and famous at some point and all the crap smeared about here will then become a lovely ego-crushing embarrassment.

Now *that* would be amusing.
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Ursula K. Leguin resigns Authors Guild

2010-01-10T11:08:00.003-06:00

And the legendary fantasy writer's reasons for doing so should be of extreme interest and urgency to pretty much anyone out there who now or ever has cuddled close to the fast-fading fantasy of making money from the printed word.

This new "Inter-net" thing you may have heard the kids rapping about is a wonder: all the information and text of the world, available 24/7 for free on pretty much any computer anywhere.

Huge companies like Google racing to continue to convert every piece of visual information -- words, drawings, photos -- to digital form which might then be rammed down the wire or radio waves to anyone wanting that info.

Libraries will no longer need to invest in monstrous collections of books and magazines and journals and newspapers and microfiche copies of such, instead now free merely to subscribe to streams of ever-expanding collections of digitized material.

But what about the lowly authors in this? What happens when suddenly there is no incentive for anyone to actually purchase copies of their work -- when any book that previously needed to be "purchased" can now just be downloaded from some online archive? What happens when Google is actually granted free rein to ignore issues of copyright and to start scanning copies of existing books and turn those loose onto the uncontrollable 'net, with no royalties or restitution to the creators?

That's exactly what's already going on, and (like many) Le Guin is rightly upset -- so much so that she's now resigned from the Author's Guild which negotiated with Google on this unprecedented land grab of of intellectual property. Le Guin is not content merely to voice her discontent on her blog -- she's actually collecting "signatures" from other published authors who share her disappointment and anger at the Guild's decision (published authors be sure to add your names on her site).

If you're a published author or wish to be one (or have a scintilla of respect for those poor pathetic souls cursed by such aspirations), this is a truly terrifying development, and you need to understand it -- NOW -- and speak your peace while there's a snowball's chance of it still mattering.
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———

BookViewCafe.com: Le Guin On The Google Settlement

UrsulaKLeGuin.com: "My letter of resignation from the Authors Guild"

(And thanks to Pooks for her post which brought this to my attention: Ursula Is Rallying The Troops!)

the Cult Of Done manifesto

2009-12-30T13:52:00.002-06:00

Oh yeah -- I could use a few bucketfuls more of this.

(from www.brepettis.com)
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"Why?"

2009-12-12T12:38:00.000-06:00

Occasionally the cacophonous riot of voices in my head will for whatever reason all take a breath at the same moment and leave one of those odd semi-awkward quiet moments hanging in my interior monolog, giving one or two of the normally obscured whimpering voices a rare opportunity to be heard (if not heeded).

It happened again this morning (8:47am CST for those scoring along in the home edition) when a lull hit town and I heard this Cindy Lou Who voice in my head ask "Why, Brett, why? Why do you want to make movies?"

And then iTunes randomly provided me the answer, as a certain music cue cranked and reminded me of one of my all-time favorite movie sequences, one of those that allowed me to just smile and point and say "There. That's why. Just once I want to be able to say that I helped make something like that happen on a screen."

I dunno if I'll ever get there. But dammit, at least there's a goal of sorts.

Onwards.
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pimpin ain't easy

2009-12-07T06:25:00.005-06:00

Lisa Gold, a friend of mine I met back in the '07 Nicholl fiasco, is helping put on a cool discussion panel/party as a fundraiser for her short film project, "The Death Of Toys."

If you're in LA, looking for something cool to do on Thursday and interested in hearing and talking to some pretty damned smart and interesting screenwriters (it's called "networking," you weasels-- crawl out of your damned burrows and meet some actual people in the flesh...)

Tales From The Trenches: A Film Panel to support "The Death Of Toys" (Lisa Gold's short film project)

Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Location: CineSpace
Street: 6356 Hollywood Blvd - street parking or valet
City/Town: Los Angeles, CA

View Map

Please come out and support director Lisa Gold's AFI DWW project, THE DEATH OF TOYS (produced by Molly Kasch and Brenda Blair).

Write Brothers Inc. is sponsoring this great event which features a Blockbuster Panel and a Raffle for screenwriting software.

Panel includes:

-- Terry Rossio, screenwriter (Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Shrek)

-- Mark Fergus, screenwriter (Children of Men, Iron Man)

-- John Turman, screenwriter (Hulk, Fantastic Four II: Rise of the Silver Surfer)

-- Karen McCullah Lutz, screenwriter (10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blonde)

-- Allison Rayne, Head of Development 2S, Hilary Swank's production company

Tickets in advance $25
Tickets at the door $30
To purchase tickets, go to:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/91709

== BIOS on PANELISTS ==

Academy Award© nominated for co-writing SHREK, the first ever Oscar© winner for Best Animated Film, TERRY ROSSIO co-wrote the three PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN films, two of which currently rank among the Top 10 all time highest grossing films worldwide. Other credits include ALADDIN (1992’s highest grossing film); THE MASK OF ZORRO; DEJA VU; NATIONAL TREASURE BOOK OF SECRETS; G-FORCE (as an Associate Producer); and SHREK 2 (as a Creative Consultant), currently the highest grossing animated film ever.

MARK FERGUS received an Academy Award© nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for CHILDREN OF MEN; he also co-wrote IRON MAN. He is currently working on the screenplay for COWBOYS AND ALIENS (teaming again with Robert Downey Jr. and director Jon Favreau), and is co-writing the intensely anticipated live-action re-make of Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA.

JOHN TURMAN is a writer for film and television (HULK, FANTASTIC FOUR II: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER). He has created half-hour comedy and one-hour drama pilots and writes and consults on one-hour series television. He wrote “BEN 10: ALIEN SWARM,” which premiered on Cartoon Network last month, and he will soon begin production on an original feature, TICKING CLOCK.

ALLISON RAYNE heads development at 2S, a production company managed by partners Molly Smith (producer, P.S. I LOVE YOU, THE BLIND SIDE) and Academy Award© winning actress and producer Hilary Swank (BOYS DON’T CRY, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, P.S. I LOVE YOU and AMELIA). Previously, Allison worked in marketing and publicity for Miramax Films, then transitioned into feature development and production, working for Stratus Film Company (producers Mark Gordon, Bob Yari and Mark Gill). Later, Allison worked for Warner Independent Pictures for over three years where she played a part in the company’s day-to-day operations.

Moderator JOE FORTE writes original content for both film and TV. Having worked with nearly every major studio, Joe has written scripts for Academy Award© winner Jodie Foster, producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura (Transformers), and Harrison Ford, who starred in Joe's 2006 thriller, FIREWALL. Most recently, Joe adapted the award-winning Japanese novel OUT by Natsuo Kirino for New Line, and is currently under contract with 20th Century Fox where he is developing a one-hour drama for network TV.

Cool event. Good cause. Great networking opp. Stop listening to your punk rock records and talkin' bad about your country and come out of your hole for something useful for a change.
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saaaaalute

2009-11-22T22:33:00.003-06:00

The South Austin Jug Band is no more -- after nine years of making some glorious string-powered noise, they've decided to go their various ways. I wish them all the best, and hope they all continue making their particular brand of magical racket.

Here they are from a year or so ago at McGonigel's Mucky Duck here in Houston, putting their own spin on the Hendrix classic, "Little Wing."

Shut up and learn something, kids.

Damn.
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austin film fest 2009 -- "Saturday"

2009-11-09T15:06:00.010-06:00

I've noticed a funny development in recent trips to AFF: where once I had to set alarm clocks (yes, plural) in order to wake myself for morning panels, now I find that I tend to wake up around 7:30 no matter what time I slimed back into my rack the night previous. Likely as not this is just the pain in the ass habits hammered into my brain as part of parenting -- I've been waking to wrestle kids out of bed and through breakfast and to the bus stop and off to school for so long that it's alien to not have that duty hanging every morning.

So there I am again in the Driskill Lounge by 9am, bushy tailed if not overly bright eyed, and yet again I find there's no one panel really screaming for my attention, so again I'm left to do some actual useful work on the laptop, slurping back coffee and gnawing on a CLIF bar ("blueberry asphalt dryer lint", I think it was...) for breakfast.

Second session found me packed into the always-crowded Maximillian room to hear Shane Black, Billy Brown, Chris McQuarrie, and Dan Petrie hold forth on "Write What You Know; Crime & Suspense." Again I'll point out to any relative newbs that very often the best panels are chosen not so much by topic as by panelist, and I know from experience that every one of these guys "gives good panel." They know their stuff, they love what they do, and they're able to make that love and ability clear and accessible to anyone in the audience. Fun stories, useful insights, some silly banter and self-deprecating humor... good stuff, and it's all over way too soon.

Saturday is "Awards Luncheon" day at AFF, and while I attended the luncheon one year (mainly just to see what it was about), more often nowadays I skip that added expense in order to have just a few more minutes of playtime with my friends. Our Saturday tradition now seems to be a stroll over to Stubb's BBQ 8 or so blocks away, where a dozen or so of us pile around and swap nibbles of meat and soul food veggie.

It's these odd moments that I always end up missing most in those 360-day stretches of desert between festivals, as it's these moments when I look around the table and see all these faces of people who can so easily make me laugh and think and feel happy about this miserable damned impossible pursuit, yet I know that I'll obly have these few minutes with these people all gathered in one place. There's a rush of excitement, but also a melancholy background counter melody of desperation and sadness: the clock is ticking... and this moment is already passing into the past....

Yeah, that's likely a twisted and morbid way to look at things, but then, if we were normal, we'd not be writers. We'd instead be plumbers or CPAs or astronauts or shark wranglers or some simple occupation where you do the job and you don't spend 95% of every experience off alone in the corner doing a vivisection on that still-breathing experience, deconstructing every memory and flicker of happiness into its component molecules (and thereby reduce it to... nothing).

What is it about this damned pursuit that makes me want it so badly -- need it so badly -- that I am content to torture myself in this way even while getting the exact experience I hoped to find? As much as anything, this is what I come to Austin to learn: "how can I better steer this unwieldy contraption known as Me?"

Lunch ends -- it always does, dammit -- and we then wander back towards the festival where I and a few hundred other folks all pack into the main ballroom at the Stephen F Austin Hotel to hear Ron Howard talk about his career and output. Howard is a warm and laid back guy, but he comes across (to me, at least) as so casual and laid-back that there's not a great deal of useful passion or insight to be had. He grew up in the biz, with parents and siblings in the business, and his entire life has been spent in Hollywood, so he lacks any sort of outside experience or perspective to use as contrast to what he's always known.

Great guy, generous honorable gentleman whom I've never heard a single unkind word about, and in the few demo-moments I have any interaction with him he seems a genuinely decent fellow... who somehow lacks any of the pungency and sharp edges and thorns that always seem present in the folks I most closely identify with. I mean, "tortured" is not a word that comes to mind when you meet or listen to Howard, and at this stage of the game I understand that sane well-adjusted people are just not going to have much I can use, advice wise.

I then opt to head over to the gorgeous old Paramount "movie palace" where Howard, Steve Zaillian, and Mitchell Hurwitz share the stage, swapping stories about their careers and projects together. Hurwitz is a nut, so he keeps the proceedings ever from becoming too staid and stuffy, so again the panel flies by way too quickly.

Another swing through the Driskill Bar, another round or two, more old friends and new friends, then off the the Pitch Finale.

Now, while I am a huge fan of and believer in the Austin Film Fest, the pitch contest remains that one part of the weekend which leaves me totally and in all ways unimpressed and uninterested. Some people seem to enjoy it, but for my money it's a near-total waste of time and goodwill, as 1) the environment and experience has nothing whatsoever to do with real pitching, 2) the "judges" are seldom ever actual industry types accustomed to or experienced with taking actual pitches, and 3) no matter how 'well" anyone does, it still means jack squat as nobody is there to listen to a pitch in the hopes of finding one to option, purchase, or pursue in much any form or fashion.

Add in the fact that the finale almost always takes place in a venue with overpriced alcohol coupled limited opportunity for interesting or useful conversation, and it kinda sorta starts to amaze me that I wind up at the event every year... usually just long enough to look around and ask "what the hell were we thinking?"

Luckily, the annoyance was short-lived, as we grabbed some food (double stuffed gyro w/ extra feta), swung back through the Driskill to hobnob til time for the late party, then wandered down to the Belmont for the Conference Wrap Party ("hosted by Shane Black," as if Shane were lugging in kegs and cups from the trunk of his own car...).

First time I can recall The Belmont hosting an AFF event, and I really really hope the venue stays in rotation, as it was a great place and hosted a great shindig. The lower floor was a dark and undersized place with lots of booths for private... whatever... but upstairs was a great rooftop patio under a tent, with a long bar along one side, and a railed overlooked into the neighboring open-air alleyway patio where a decent cover band was still banging out Pixies tunes. Below the rooftop and accessible by two sets of wrought iron stairs was a second hanging balcony stretching the length of that alleyway, giving a cool "special access" sort of space for those daring enough to claim it.

Dos Equis was again flowing free and easy, and by 11:30 the joint was jumpin', with Woody Harrelson proving a great sport by posing near endlessly for party pics with oodles of new friends (most of whom seemed female and attractive, it seems worth noting...). I hung out with Richard and Derek and Rebecca for a bit, swapped smirks with Julie O at several moments, saw Eilis (again) at the bar (again), finally caught up with Matt "I'm a Lil' T-Sip" Summers and swapped updated contact info with him.

At some point I find myself leaning over the balcony, enjoying some surprisingly left-field cover (don't blame me for forgetting which -- people kept handing me beer), and I look down to see Maggie Biggar on the balcony below, chatting it up with Robert "Star Trek/Transformers/Eagle Eye/MI:3" Orci. I lean over to my buddy of the moment (don't blame me for forgetting which -- people kept handing me beer) and say "hey -- isn't that Robert Orci with Maggie Biggar?" to which vague and unnameable buddy says "yeah -- how you gonna swing an invite into THAT conversation?", to which I remember smiling, leaning over the rail and whistling loudly down to the balcony

Maggie looked up, startled.

"Hi, Maggie!" I waved with my best beer-happy idiot smile. She chuckled and waved me down to the balcony.

I smiled at anonymous buddy and said "any other questions?" and trotted off to the stairs.

Orci and Biggar seemed in an actual conversation, so I merely said hi and stood back so as to not impinge, then Orci took a phone call and excused himself, so I nudged in.

"Hey, Brett. Enjoying the party?" Maggie asked, and I said 'Yeah, it's great. So... why are you being so visibly nice to me this weekend? It's great for my ego -- don't get me wrong -- but it's confused me that you've been so familiar and friendly to me throughout this festival when -- and correct me if I am wrong -- this current exchange is far and away our lengthiest conversation ever."

She laughed, we talked, and she said some ridiculously nice stuff that made me want to run around screaming victory (I didn't, cuz I'm cool like dat), and I related the story of how, the day before, I'd been on Sixth Street when Maggie had walked by and made some friendly comment as I was in a phone conversation with The Wife. Wife, hearing some female making some friendly comment and then me making an at least equivalently friendly response to said comment, had asked "OK< and who was THAT?"

"Maggie Biggar. Sandra Bullock's producing partner. We're just being silly."

"You have my permission to give her a baby if it helps get a deal done."

The Wife remains a pragmatic woman.

Maggie laughed at the story -- no deals were done or even proposed, dear readers and friends of The Wife, so fear not -- but it was a very good conversation and one that ranks up there with The Kasdan Incident as personal highlights for this year's festival, but things were not done yet.

As Maggie and I both turned our separate ways to give some love to other folks, I fall into a fun little conversation with another producer whom I know, one who I know and like a lot and who seems to know and like me, but for whom I've never yet managed to find a project to spark major interest (we just have very different passions and interests in movies). Producer mentions a pressing desire to find a specific sort of holiday movie.

I say "Well... as it just so happens that i've had an odd idea for a specific sort of holiday movie, and Producer presses me for details, so I give a totally off-the-cuff and totally unprepared pitch for a project I have at best maybe 75% clear in my head. Producer looks at me for a moment, asks "who else have you pitched that to?" and I laugh "Pitched? Hell, I dunno that I've ever even thought it through as clearly as what I just did in trying to describe the idea to you just now!

"Well, go home. Start writing. I want pages on that as fast as you can deliver. I've had maybe 220 pitches for this project, and that was easily the most interesting and original."

So again I stifle that urge to strip off my shirt and run around doing a full-on Brandy Chastain re-enactment -- "YYEEEEEESSSSSS!!!" -- cuz, ya know, I'm cool like dat.

More beers. More love. More good times. Someone asks "wouldn't it be great if every night was like this?" and for various reasons I understand what they mean, but I say "If every night felt like this, it wouldn't feel like this, cuz what makes this feeling so great is the fact that it never feels like this, so when it does feel this great, you remember how great it felt and hold that memory special."

The party peaks, then ebbs, and then ends, and at some point a crew of us is again doing the Sixth Street Crawl sometime well past last call, and we're wandering in a large happy crowd of strangers, all milling and goofing with friends, all trying to squeeze just a few more drops of juice out of this lovely night, and we wind up buying street pizza at 3 am and sitting on a broken concrete wall, giggling madly and huddling against one another and giving private thanks that we are in this place, in this moment.

It's that kind of moment that makes me love AFF: that moment of total exhaustion and total exuberance and total happiness that comes when you are completely content and totally unthreatened by and unconcerned with any of the usual real world fear and paranoia and inadequacies and doubts. Here, for one glorious flickering and totally fictitious moment, we poor lonely unknown pathetic writers become the god-kings of our little worlds, the heroes of our own absurd little comic dramas, and we find ourselves surrounded by those who understand exactly what we are feeling, what we are wanting and hoping, and we can all dance naked around the bonfire of our crazy screenwriting dreams secure in the understanding that on this night, at least, this crazy dream, this impossible pursuit, is perhaps not so crazy, not so impossible, not so totally insane and demented and isolating.

Our happy little herd wanders back to the Driskill for one last night of pretend relevance, and as we enter the lounge, we find one of those Austin moments that is hard to fully describe: Shane Black, Terry Rossio, Danny Rubin, plus a dozen aspiring writers, all piled around the rawhide sofas and lounge chairs of the deserted lounge. Talking about writing.

Repeat that previous paragraph for a moment and pause to consider how amazing and wonderful and totally bizarre that experience is for most of us. For most of us aspiring nobodies, we spend the vast majority of the year locked in an imaginary world inside our own heads. By day we are housewives and husbands. Paralegals and purchasing officers. Schoolteachers, little league coaches, quiet neighbors next door whose office windows are lit well past that hour nightly when those of other folks on the block go dark.

But suddenly it's 3 am in Austin, Texas in the deserted closed down lounge of a 120-year-old hotel, and suddenly we're talking to peers -- new friends -- who've accounted for a few billion dollars in box office, writers who have actually penned several of those movies that have made you announce even if only to yourself "THAT'S what I want to do....".

And, miracle of miracles, these guys are not at all alien. They are, in fact, staggeringly familiar, describing exactly the same difficulties and obstacles in their own writing as what you know only too well from your own. Their fears are the same as yours. Their thrills are the same as yours. In fact, aside from the fact that some of them have monster credits to their name on IMDB, they are almost disturbingly familiar and recognizable.

And that's when it hits you that "Hollywood" is not some distant imaginary planet which exists only in movies and legends. It's a business, same as any other, and if you can just work your ass off and maybe catch the right kind of luck and have the defiant pugnacious pig-headed tenacity to just stand tough and keep on digging when it all seems the most impossible... then maybe you wake up and find yourself not just writing some impossible fiction, but actually living it.

And it's that idiot spark of hope which sustains your soul for one more year. You walk away that last night swearing private oaths to yourself: "Next year, By God, I will be here not as some nobody, but as one of the chosen few. I will make this happen, and I will not quit until I do."

In terms of "end of conference impressions" to take home and pin to your psychic cork board, that's not an awful one to claim.

(to be continued...)

status: active projects today

2009-11-05T11:37:00.001-06:00

Someone noted the other day that the progress bars on the left sidebar here have changed, and they asked if there was anything worth reporting. Clearly, if I had reason to gloat or complain specifically, I think it's been established by now that By God I would be gloating or complaining.

More likely, both at once.

Short answer is "no, there remains as yet no specific irrefutable reason to gloat."

But rumblings and bubblings continue:

"QUEEN OF THE SKY", the big bio-pic about WW2 Soviet aviatrix Lilya Litvyak, remains very much an impossible dream. Yes, there is (allegedly) a similar/parallel project in development, and yes I have been in contact with the folks behind that project, but for now I'm neither involved nor does there seem a tremendous amount of forward momentum on the competing project. My script, meanwhile and totally unrelated, is somewhere over in Europe with a well-respected prodco who requested it not that long ago. The producer there would be a great fan to have, but we shall see....

[CRITTER-COMEDY THING] I'm still not giving up the title for this one (it's too stupidly childishly delicious), but there seems possible reason for possible excitement. Possibly. SyFy seems to be looking at it, and there's a possible director looking at it, and if those two locii of interest happen to meet and realize their shared interests... who knows....

"AMAZON", the "Romancing The Stone" style action romance comedy thing, has been around to a few folks as a sample, and consensus always seems to be "we like the concept and the writing, but can't see making this movie." (Shrug.) It's been sent to one name director for use as a writing demo/sample for the purpose of maybe getting Yours Truly onto a new project as a hired gun, and maybe something breathtakingly amazing might happen there. Or maybe not....

[HOLIDAY COMEDY THING] is now the new "#1 with a bullet" project in the works, as I have at least one producer clamoring to get this ASAP in order to maybe get it working at a major cable TV network for 2010 holiday season. I have a great concept, a workable outline, and am banging away on pages, but who knows if I'll get it readable in time to actually wow anyone before the 2010 decisions are already made....

[COLLEGE COMEDY THING] is gurgling along at the 80 page mark, and likely needs to get done just so I can finally say "OK-- I wrote it," but for now there is that other project where a producer is excited and motivating, and then there's this one where nobody has yet seemed totally pre-sold, and where the writer just can't seem to get the story clear in his head....

"Twelve Days" [romcom] remains a project which I very much like for a variety of reasons, and I am now gearing up to do a thorough re-work on this one to hopefully get it into a specific actress whom i loe and who would be perfect for the female lead. More news in the weeks to come, hopefully....

[UN-NAMED HISTORICAL ACTION THING] now boasts 40+ pages, but it's slow going mainly as I know the other more commercial projects absolutely deserve my best attention and effort for now. Still, this one gnaws at my soul....

[UN-NAMED SPAGHETTI WESTERN THING] continues to drive me batty, as those who have seen the brief snippets all scream that I need to be working on this ASAP, but for now I tend to suck on it and wonder what would be involved in producing this one as a low-budget effort of our own. I doubt that will happen anytime soon, but a lot of people seem to really really love the core concept.

Everything else is so far on the backburner as to not even really be in the kitchen,
.
.
.
B

a brief pause in the playback

2009-11-01T10:01:00.002-06:00

I've still got more than a few fistfuls of noise to throw regarding the recent conference at AFF2009, but today will be another distraction.

Due to a slew (perhaps even a slew and a half) of events and responsibilities having recently been cleared from the Great Mental Dry Erase List Of "Crap I Somehow Got Myself Into," I find myself in a mood and state conducive to writing. Of course, I'm not yet yet truly free to set all sheets and run before the wind, as I still have one more Major Event looming, one more deadline with responsibility.

Today is our Boy Scout troop's annual recruiting event, the "New Scout Adventure Day!", and yours truly is the organizer and ring leader.

Yes, I will be in full Fred MacMurray mode today, acting G-rated (well... mostly) and Optimistic and Nurturing and Compassionate and Supportive and Friendly and Courteous Kind Oblong Isometric and all those other scoutly things. For some reason that visual always seems to cause my writer friends to pause and then offer a strange little headshake of disbelief, as if they can't quite reconcile what they think they know and understand of me with what they assume and presume about Scouting.

Which is completely fine and harmless, as on the flip side my Scouting peers will spend the day looking at me offering very much the same disbelieving headshake whenever I happen to describe scenes and personalities and events from Hollywood and writing endeavors.

And in both cases, I will have people offer some variation of "wow -- I just can't imagine you fitting in with that scene...."

Thing is, I don't fit in with that scene -- either scene. At least, not entirely. When I am with the Scouts, I'm tremendously proud to see the young guys learning to conduct themselves with honor and integrity and respect and confidence and dependability, and I am tremendously proud to have a chance to work with and for other dads who put their money where their mouth is, who sacrifice time and money and effort from their own petty interests to help teach the next wave of would-be leaders what it is to be a decent and useful Man.

To me, this stuff is real. This stuff is valid. This stuff is Important.

But so is that whole "world of the mind" thing of being a screenwriter. As I've tried to explain to some folks, this idiot quest for screenwriting glory is also real for me. It also is valid. It, too, is Important. We tell our kids things like "follow your dreams" and "go out and make your life something amazing" and "pick something you care about and then commit yourself to achieving excellence in that thing," but how often do we truly heed the advice we give our kids?

What kind of example would I be if I told my kids "go out and change the world" if I reserved the right for my own self to sit on my ass and do little, dream little, dare little?

For me, the whole Scouting thing is almost inseparable from the Screenwriting thing. In both guises I am trying to find some way to lead those I care about closer to a point where they can do what they were born to do, where they are empowered and encouraged and enabled and ennobled to to stand firm in the face of the withering discouragement and cynicism and cowardice our modern society is hell-bent to deliver in the majority of its messages and morals.

So, today I wake and feel the restless urge to write, but first I gear up and commit to yet another day of Scouting activities. And I can smirk happily to myself knowing that the two concerns -- "writing" and "family" -- are just the two different sides of the same coin. In either case, I am willing a better and more satisfying reality into being.

Tiring? Exhausting? Irrelevant. I got things to do, dammit -- miracles to make happen, impossibilities to hammer into existence -- and my own feeble whininess cannot be tolerated.

"You alright, Roy?"

"Let's play ball."

austin film fest 2009 -- "Friday"

2009-10-29T15:02:00.004-06:00

One of my odd points of pride w/r/t the AFF conference is that I have never yet missed a morning panel. Despite all the nights which bled into early pre-dawn mornings, the afterparties and overnighters and whatnot, all the drink and all the fun, I have, for whatever reason, always always always answered the bell and been cleaned up, dressed, caffeinated and able to be a part of that following morning's first panel.

Same this year. Despite Cabernet w/ Kasdan to cap a long hard night of indulging, by 9 AM Friday I was already deep into tapping notes into the laptop and scanning to determine which panel I'd take in. The fact that I finally decided to not do ANY of the 9AM panels had nothing to do with my readiness and everything to do with my familiarity with the panelists in the one or two panels there which seemed interesting: I already know and have relationships with most of the folks I might choose to see, so what would be the real point, especially given that I had some work to do on the laptop.

By the second panel (10:45 AM) I was ready to get cranking again. I opted to not see Kasdan and Turman do their SciFi panel (hey-- they're now old pals, right?...) so instead took in the "Turning Webisodes Into A Film Career" discussion. I did this for a few reasons, not the least of which was that one of teh panelists was Jocelyn "Jolly" Stamat, aka, Rossio's girlfriend and one of my fave females. Jolly is funny and beautiful and romantically linked to a friend which means that I thus have easy means to annoy said friend by continually hitting on said female, plus she's smart (as in "Harvard MD" smart). Plus she's now a panelist here thanks to a great experience this year producing and directing the "Turbo Dates" series of webisodes.

She and very funny Dan French talk about their respective efforts and experiences at finding a way to use this whole inter-webs thingy (you may have read about it...?) as a back/side/basement/cat door into the film biz. Two things become apparent in all the discussion: 1) there's tremendous freedom and opportunity in online filmmaking, and 2) nobody yet has a clue how to squeeze a nickel from it. Still, good fun panel, and a silly thrill to sit on the front row and see Jolly smile at me a few times with an expression that clearly says "Jeezus -- look at me! I'm a PANELIST!"

Afterwards, a bunch of our gang decides to try and scurry off for a group-lunch, and again somehow "Larry" winds up in our midst, but I have no idea what happened at that lunch as The Gods sniggered and denied me a seat at the grownup table this time, instead sending me to the back room with another group. I'll not dwell on this other than to say "Brett has anger issues, and Brett knows this, and on this day Brett managed to deal with these issues in a mature, responsible, and almost totally non-homicidal manner."

(Uh huh. Sure.)

The afternoon panels started (for me) with "The Art of Storytelling", featuring Peter "Gilbert Grape" Hedges, Dan "Dan" Petrie, and Lawrence "Larry" Kasdan. Moderator was one Marcia Nasatir, who clearly had a long relationship to Petrie and Kasdan which apparently predated even the beginnings of their careers, so that was a sweet little touch. Every one of the guys on stage had a slightly different take on things, and each had a different path to success to relate, but there was one consistent repeated thought connecting all of their stories and advice: "just keep writing." No matter what bullshit and insults and insanity this damned business tries to hurl at you, just keep writing. Keep believing in your own particular brand of magic, because in the final analysis, that's all you really have anyway. That surely might not seem like a huge shattering breakthrough wad of advice, but to hear it from these guys, all of whom have managed to sustain a career in a business known for chewing people up and spitting them aside like human bubble gum, it was good advice to note.

Final panel of the day was my scheduled round-table discussion -- "Producers & Executives" -- wherein attendees array themselves around several large tables (yes, they are in fact round...) as a group of lectures work their way from table to table for 15-20 minute close up discussion on whatever topics the people can manage to claim. It's always luck of the draw which of the slated panelists happen to hit your table, but I get lucky and draw some of the folks I most wanted to see: Julianna Farrell, a former lit manager turned indie producer whom I've spoken to on a few occasions and who seems totally tolerant of my bellicosity; Curtis Burch, indie producer based out of Dallas; and Jessica Julius, development exec for Disney Feature Animation. Farrell is her usual to the point smart self, Burch seems like a crusty old pro who's been around the wrong side of town a few times, and Farrell is a delightfully blunt no-bullshit pro who clearly explains what does impress her team and what doesn't. After the panel, I heard some folks at my table mumble that they found Julius a tad brusque or even cranky, but I found her take totally great and respectful, as she clearly spent no time trying to sugarcoat her answers: here's what it is, and here's what it ain't.

Friday evening means "BBQ At The French Legation" if you are a Producer Pass holder, so our crew piles onto shuttle busses and heads over the old French embassy, a gorgeous antebellum mansion inside a 2-acre stonewalled compound. There's a huge tented seating area with tables and chairs, a pair of buffet lines serving adequate though unspectacular BBQ, several drink stations handing out comped sponsor wine or Dos Equis, plus wall to wall Hollywood people. More than maybe any other event at the conference, the BBQ gives you a fighting chance to press the flesh and work it, baybee, with damned near anyone on the conference's roster, so I grab some vittles with my pals, then split off to wander and circulate.

I run into Rossio and Jocelyn, and it still blows my mind a bit to think that Terry is now not some pro that I try to approach for any specific insight or bit of wisdom (I know better... pppfftt), but because... well, because he's just another good friend here. We seldom talk at all about movies, instead playing verbal slap and tickle in that way competitive guys often do, usually because of an in front of and for teh approval of some woman. Jolly remains an eternally good sport about this idiotically reptilian behavior, and tosses me just enough bones and scraps to keep me interested in the game but not so many that I (or Terry) ever has even a moment's pause to wonder if there is in fact some other game afoot. "She gives good flirt," in other words, and that's a talent to be valued and respected in this damned fool gathering, where so many seem incapable of playing that harmless yet lovely game.

[Brett & Terry, Here To Cause No Concern At All. Really. You Can Trust Us.]

I wander around and bump into Greg "Mr. Nicholl" Beal, and he has in tow one of this year's golden show ponies, a 2009 Fellow (whose name escapes me -- mea culpa). He and I swap happy memories of the day the phone starts ringing like crazy with news of the FInalist announcement, and I give him a few quick notes of avice for his pending LA trip ("do not go drinking in Venice with a mad Mason on the afternoon of the big awards banquet...").

Ron "Please Don't Call Me Opie" Howard is led in, my old pal Linnea as his "handler," and I see a crowd of reluctant hesitant folks trailing behind like those tiny fish that follow big sharks, eager for a scrap but wary of becoming a snack themselves. Braced by my cervezas (stay thirsty, my friend) I opt for the frontal assault, so I plot an intercept and scramble.

Linnea sees me, and she gets that look that handlers always get: "Oh, no-- please! Don't approach him! My job is to make sure he has zero direct contact with humans!" She steps in to block me, and I smile, pat her on the shoulder as if to make it seem that I thought she was merely greeting me rather than trying to block me, then I defeat the jam at the line and break for the ball.

"A Yomiuri man? I would not have guessed that!" I say, and suddenly Howard beams widely and nods -- he was wearing a Yomiuri Giants Japan League baseball cap, and suddenly Ron Howard and I are chatting baseball for a few seconds as a crowd of other folks all keep a respectful/terrified distance. I do that thing I learned to do long ago -- I pull out of the convo early, long before it seems that we've now run out of all possible topics to fill the conversational void. I see new guy Marlon munching on a mondo plate of meat, nodding and chewing approvingly as he scopes the scene. I see Julie O making eye contact with me and pointing toward Peter Hedges, who just arrived late. I nod, and we link up in position for a gang intro.

Hedges winds up being a super decent guy. He's chatty and self-deprecating and demonstrative and reactive and exuberant, and more than anything he seems to exude a certain kind of sweetness. That always seems vaguely demeaning or perhaps just condescending, but it is what it is: he has an innocent sort of delight about the fun stuff happening around him, and he makes you feel happy just being close enough to hear him talk. Or, in my case, close enough to wind up holding his pigskin jacket so that he doesn't accidentally drop grease on it as he chows majorly on a huge late of chicken.

Apparently this is his first time back in Austin after a first/only visit a decade ago, and he looks around, shaking his head. "This is so wonderful! Is it always like this?"... "Oh, I am so coming back. I love this. This is all just so fun!"

A few minutes later, as I am standing around talking to some guys I vaguely know via bloggery, I feel a hand drag across my lower back as some woman walks past.

"Hey, Brett!" says Maggie Biggar, the very sweet and very cute but very shy red-head producing partner for Sandra Bullock.

I nod, "hey, Maggie!". She tosses her hair in that way women do that always makes men just shiver a little and smile.

"DUDE... says one of the guys I am with. "That was MAGGIE BIGGAR! How the hell do you know her like that?"

"The judge said we're not really supposed to talk about the details, but the gist of it is we respect each other, and the kids always come first."

The dudes swap weird looks and then just stare at me. Oh, I have fun, sometimes.

Bigtime agent David Boxerbaum continues his long-running disinterest in anything I might choose to say, but producer Dawn Wolfrom seems to counterbalance that with her almost-completely-camouflaged lust for me. Petrie gives me another hug. Rossio, Turman and me stand around playing dueling complainers. Diedrech Bader says hi. Conference director Maya Perez chases her kid around the grounds. Familiar faces abound wherever I turn, and every conversation seems to then fold into a reference to someone else, and the whole scene starts to get a really sweet roll to it just as it's time to shutter the scene and pack up to return to the Driskill for whatever comes next.

Back at HQ there's some interest in the movie PRECIOUS -- some folks are saying "it's this year's SLUMDOG!" -- but I can't quite bring myself to go sit in a dark room when there are friends around to play with, so we opt to set up shop at the Driskill Bar 'til it's time to do something else. We manage to burn the candle til time to head off to the late party at Ruth's Chris (no food -- just booze), and again somehow "Larry" winds up in tow. I decide to wander around and see what else is up, where I meet Mike and then Eilis the Mad Irish Lass and again see Richard and Derek and lots of other fine folk, and then I wander back and find myself chatting up "Larry" again.

"I was asking around about you," he says. "Everyone here seems to have a different Brett story they are fond of -- it's like you're at the center of this entire fiasco. What are you, Keyser fuckin Söze?"

OK, so at that moment all I could do was lean back and smirk with painful happiness -- this isn't really happening... I recall mumbling to myself. Except it just kept on happening. Kasdan and I sneak in some quiet private exchanges about movies and women and fear and passion and women and writing and women (a certain consistency of theme started to develop...) and then again too quickly the lights start to come up and it's time to turn back onto the street, and "Larry" says "OK, Keyser -- now what?", so we wind up doing that laughably adolescent thing where you "sneak" past the suspicious judgmental doorman late at night, trying poorly to not seem well and truly snookered, and then giggle all the way to the elevator as if you really pulled one over. And we find an afterparty in the suite of a friend there in the Driskill, and we hang out for a bit before "Larry" suddenly realizes that he has a 9AM departure back to LA, so he bails "early" (3:15 AM), waving goodbye to the room, and -- glory -- giving me a slight smirk and a wink just as the door closes behind him.

I sit exhausted and bleary-eyed over my PowerBook back in my room a half hour or so later, grinning stupidly, fumbling to tap out some soggy thoughts on what it all felt like. The best I seem able to come up with is "fuckin awesome."

In hindsight here nearly a week later, I think that still pretty much nails it.

(to be continued...)

austin film fest 2009 -- "Thursday"

2009-10-28T13:46:00.005-06:00

Thursday at the conference always feels like Round One of a big fight: you know there's going to be action, but early on it always feels like everyone is sorta gauging things, feeling things out, getting a sense of how it all will fit together this year.

More handshakes. More introductions. More excited happy reunions. Bill True, aka "The Nicest Guy In The World." Shane Black, aka, "Mr Self-Torture."

Some of our crew have been doing this Austin thing together for so long that some odd informal traditions seem to have developed. Among those are "Thursday is Irish Pub Day." I really have no idea how or when we started, but we once went strolling for lunch along Sixth Street and found a convenient and totally decent pub grub place just a block from the Driskill ("ground zero" for all AFF action). Now it's become a standard and accepted part of the routine, so a pile of 8 or so of us head off to grab burgers or shepherd's pie or fish tacos.

Julie O has to bail early, cuz she's no longer civilian like the rest of us, but instead she's now Miz Fancypants Paid Pro, having sold a script and seen it produced into an actual by god movie. In salute of this, she now rates invitation to participate in the festival not as a drooling noob, but instead as a wise old pro. The fact that we all laugh hysterically at how we all know how very little real difference there is between those two groups doesn't detract from our collective pride and happiness for her achievement: one of ours has made it up the mountain, and that's proof that it can be done. She waves and hustles off to get set up on her panel, while the rest of us snigger and brainstorm embarrassingly dumb questions to pose to her from the audience.

Her panel -- "How To Work The Austin Film Festival" -- is actually rather fantastic. She and Karl Williams -- another Austin long-timer whom I've watched grow from innocuous attendee into acclaimed up and comer and then into now hard working new pro -- both do an great job of explaining not just how to take advantage of the insane possibilities of this event, but why. At the risk of rankling the AFF officials, the real draw and value of Austin is not the panels and roundtables -- which are uniformly very good and often brilliant -- but instead in the social networking opportunities afforded as part and parcel.

In this day and age, the answer to pretty much any technical question one might ever have about the craft and business of screenwriting is only a Google search away. What Austin provides is a chance to connect not to just answers, but answerers -- the people behind that information, the personalities that give that information texture and flavor and relevance and specific application. It's the difference between seeing pictures of Yosemite and actually being there to smell the breeze and feel the sun on your skin. It's the difference between printing a recipe versus tasting a well-prepared meal.

Austin gives you recipes, but then turns you loose in a huge well-appointed kitchen staffed with chefs.

-=-=-

After laughing through Julie's try at seeming "expert" (she reads this, so I am allowed these juvenile sorts of stabs...), I catch Dan Petrie and Matt Weiner in "A Shot Of Inspiration." As Weiner, the rather hilarious and talented creator of MAD MEN, explained bits of his work history and experience, Dan -- whom I know and who recognizes me on sight now -- wanders around the room pouring actual shots of "liquid inspiration" ("Canadian Club" for those scoring along at home...). Petrie takes time from the beverage service to spin great tales from his days as a mailroom flunky at ICM, through his start with BEVERLY HILLS COP and THE BIG EASY and on through his time as WGA president.

After that, we head off to a club called Mohawk for the Opening Night Party where we hook up with yet more friends, and grab a few bottles of free Dos Equis, the official beer of the festival, so it's comped at all parties and thus the drink of choice (stay thirsty, my friends). smile to see new crew member Marlon from Atlanta with that "first year smile" as he starts to feel the vibe and realize how cool the opportunities are.

'Course, we were all about to be reminded of that fact when we returned to the Driskill Bar after the party at Mohawk, as we walk in and see James V. Hart and Lawrence Kasdan.

Or, as he is known in my head, "Lawrence FUCKING Kasdan."

It is no exaggeration at all for me to say that Kasdan is *the* guy who made me want to be a screenwriter. I recall coming home from THE BIG CHILL once upon a time way gone by and sitting down to try and write something... something that cool. 'Course, he's also done a few other little movies in there... BODY HEAT... RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK... THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK... SILVERADO... GRAND CANYON... WYATT EARP... IMMEDIATE FAMILY... THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST...

Kasdan is simply The Man.

And he's standing there in front of me.

Now, I've met Kasdan before. In fact, once upon a time I kinda sorta made comically inappropriate comments to his wife (she laughed), and the year after that I think I slobbered on him (literally) as I called him my hero, to which he sorta sighed and said "'K, that's nice." But here he is, in the Driskill Bar, hanging out around and among my class of doofus, so of course we (our group) sorta adopts him as ours, just as if he was a wayward spaniel.

We wind up dragging him across the street to the Late Night Welcome Party, hosted by Dan Petrie at Buffalo Billiards on Sixth St., and then, in a typically weird yet beautiful turn, he just kinda sorta stays with us. "Larry" hangs out and chatters and chuckles and tells tales and laughs at other's tales and in general drops right into formation as "one of the guys." At one point I'm sitting there, wedged in between Petrie and Kasdan, sipping beers and laughing and telling hideous slanderous lies about my friends, and it starts to get weird on me: "I grew up watching the movies these guys wrote, and now I'm sitting here blabbing away like I'm part of their world. And they're treating me like I am. And the weird part is... it doesn't feel weird...."

The party rumbles on, and I circulate around, and am forced to giggle at how many pros I find myself familiar and friendly and on old terms with. Eventually, the lights come up and it's 2 am and the party is shuttering, so we start blundering out into the Sixth St chaos, Kasdan still in tow and still treating us like we're worthy (which we are most certainly not). We're all standing around, swaying in the breeze of alcohol we all feel in our heads, as Lauren, one of my other great and gorgeous Austin pals, waves goodnight and disappears into the madding crowd to find a cab. I had a mouthful of kraut dog at that precise moment, so could not shout after her to come over to the Driskill where the valet might more easily hail her a cab. She disappears, and Kasdan slaps at me, smiling madly:

"What the hell, man? She was in your care! You dropped the ball! Brett, her husband told you to take care of her!"

I smiled through a mouthful of kraut dog. "Hey, he fucked up -- he trusted me!"

"Larry" laughed loudly, said "excellent quote," and I felt really stupid calling him "Larry" as I scribbled jumbo crayon notes in my internal diary.

So "Larry" continues to tag along with us. We decide to go back to the Driskill -- this despite the fact that the bar is now closed, and that the security is annoyingly tight and requires some creative fiction to get everyone past the guards ("writers"), and seven or eight of us -- including "Larry" -- plop down around the fireplace in the darkened deserted bar, and someone produces two bottles of red wine from their room, and we sit around sipping vino with "Larry" 'til 4 am or so.

And that was the day that was, Thursday, 22 October, 2009.

And as I ballroom dance back across 7th Street to the SFA, I can only laugh maniacally at the way the evening went. Sometimes -- just occasionally, and always without warning -- Reality well and truly kicks Fantasy's ass.

(to be continued...)

austin film fest 2009 -- "the return"

2009-10-28T07:59:00.001-06:00

Anyone foolish to be a longtime or repeat visitor to this waste of bandwidth surely knows that I have a certain fondness for the annual screenwriter's conference at the Austin Film Festival. It's strange to try and recall that time before I'd first felt the insane rush of... "finally arriving at a place you were always meant and expected to be...". I'm sure there's some fancy word for that -- very likely something German and complicated. It's not destiny exactly, though that likely comes close to what I am fumbling to describe. It's a palpable feeling I clearly remember washing over me, like deja vu, only far more tangible and enduring and real -- as if I was somehow returning to a place that I'd forgotten due to amnesia, and suddenly a half lifetime of long-buried memory and sensation suddenly snapped back into clear focus.

This year was the same, only more so, and in a new and different and intoxicatingly wondrous way.

There is the moment when you realize what it is that you want to do.

And then there is that moment when you realize that you actually can do that thing you want to do.

And then there's that moment when you realize that the thing you want to do... is now already happening.

That's what Austin felt like this year.

-=-=-

WEDNESDAY

We've been stuck in a totally weird weather pattern here in SE Texas in October this year. Where this month is traditionally among the driest of the year, in 2009 it seems as if we've been stuck under the same stationary puddle of drizzle. Amazingly enough, on Wednesday, aka "departure day," the skies turned a strange color -- "blue" -- and a bright shiny ball appeared in the heavens, and it was a gorgeous drive into Austin.

I swung by the airport to pick up my bestest pal Julie O and then we headed into town, checking into our respective rooms at the Stephen F Austin and then wandering over to pick up registration packages and see what other members of the tribe had already gathered. We grabbed beautiful Shawna, said how-do to a bunch of familiar folks, and then the three of us hopped into the car and rolled down to Threadgill's for dinner (for those scoring along at home: chicken fried steak w/ gravy on the side, mashed potatoes, turnip greens... larrupin')

It's a totally weird and disorienting situation: I love these friends dearly, as much as any friends I have anywhere, yet we get to see each other for only these four or five days annually when we all congregate in Austin. On the one hand you have a near-desparate need to make every single damned moment "count" -- let's do something memorable -- anything -- let's not waste a moment in which we could be celebrating these rapidly dissipating seconds of "us" -- but on the other you understand that there's no real need for such desperation. That just slipping back into a comfortable old friendship is often more than enough. That this... is sufficient.

Given that we were a block away from the Congress Avenue Bridge, home to the huge urban bat colony, we decided to finally make good on a long-standing threat to actually go view the nightly exodus, but as always, "the gods laugh when men make plans," so of course as soon as we got under the bridge, the heavens opened forth and we stood trapped under a highway overpass as rain poured down for an hour, and the bats -- flying rodents with brains the size of a medium cashew -- looked out with amused disdain. "Uh, folks-- it's raining. We're staying home tonight. Go away."

After that moist excitement, we wander back to the Driskill Bar, aka, "the Happiest Place on Earth", plop into a leather sofa and commence the serious business of lounging about, drinks in hand.

I'll not even try to list every single name on the list of folks whose presence brightened the year, as I'll surely forget someone and then catch hell. Suffice to say, it's always a huge thrill to see familiar faces strolling back in, feel a warm handshake, grab a good squeeze of a hug, be surprised by the unexpected but welcome slap on the back from a friend you'd not seen walk in. It's a family reunion, but instead of gathering the family which fate issued you at birth, in this case it's those brothers and sisters you yourself selected from the grand catalog of humanity.

We hook up with some friends -- some old, some new -- and wander off into the Austin night, carousing til long after last call on this last night where there are no officially scheduled events and social imperatives. Silliness abounds, while clear memories become scarcer and harder to grab.

Wednesday night -- first day in. What went down? Nothing much at all, yet it's still one of my favorite moments in the festival experience.

The players are assembled, and the show will now begin.

(to be continued)

back from austin minutes ago

2009-10-25T20:20:00.004-06:00

Another insanely wild and cool and exhilarating and wonderful time. It's not very often that one gets to meet one's greatest hero, and then find not only is he every bit as great as you'd hoped, but he's also now your buddy.

And that was just one of dozens of stupidly beautiful moments, some of which I'll try to mention and describe (within legally acceptable bounds... ahem) in the coming days.

For now... blessed overdue sleep.
.
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quasi-comatose B

twitter remains the emperor's new clothes

2009-10-12T07:18:00.006-06:00

IMO.

Yeah yeah... a lot of people claim to like it and use it, but by the same token I know people who claim that chewing gum relives stress or that copper bracelets repel aliens or that Oreo cookies invented Atlantis.

"People is stoooopid."

Every time I check Twitter I see a huge long scrolling pile of laughably irrelevant inane uninteresting and (often) plainly idiotic blatherings from folks with whom once I had decent online relationships but who now seem to have given up communication in favor of tweets and chirps and farts and whatever.

It's like claiming to communicate via graffiti. The fact that it might work 2% of the time hardly seems like acceptable justification for the popularity of effort wasted in failed attempts.

It's not like BLOGGING which of course is a totally respectable way to complain, and always a surefire indicator of intelligence, charm, and lack of rationalized ironic bullshit.

Ahem.

Meanwhile, here's a schematic of a rear suspension:

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B

"I see great things in baseball..."

2009-09-23T11:27:00.004-06:00

"It's our game--the American game... It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us...."
-- Walt Whitman (as loosely quoted by Annie Savoy in BULL DURHAM)

-=-=-

There are many things about our country which are not all they could be, but there are still some things which remain as perfect now as they ever were.

Chief among such rare isolated examples of a Kind And Loving God is the grand and glorious game of baseball. Football may well be a more true reflection of our nation's violent and militaristic character, and basketball with its flamboyance and impossible feats of high flying athleticism might well be the jazz of our age, but baseball... it remains a pure portrait of where we came from, where we once hoped to see ourselves going, and where we can -- when the mood and winds are just right -- still imagine that we might yet return: that innocent and joyful place under a sky of blue, on a field of green, the smell of grass and horsehide and chalk dust hanging on a warm afternoon breeze, with all our "foes" still smiling friends who will salute our good fortune and buck us up in the aftermath of any inconsequential failure.

What's even more thrilling (again, in my opinion) is the occasional story that comes along which reminds us that perhaps not all such nostalgic golden-toned visions of America lay filed away in memory or fantasy, that instead there are places and moments where this quaint idea of Baseball as the embodiment of the best aspects of the American soul is not only real, but actually confirmed, appreciated and venerated.

We are reminded of this by those beautiful stories where we find baseball taking root in some strange place where its simple clean innocent joys have never before been known.

Like Iraq.

In a pretty wonderful little turn of events, Rachel Maddow of CNBC helped the first-ever Iraqi National Baseball Team find uniforms and equipment so that the Great American Game might have a fighting chance to find purchase in the war-torn sands of the Persian Gulf. Ebbets Field Flannels -- one of the coolest companies out there -- makers of the world's finest reproduction classic baseball jerseys, stepped in to design and manufacture some pretty cool duds for the Iraqi team, and copies of the unis are now on sale through the Ebbets Field website, with proceeds helping veterans of the ongoing hostilities in the region.

Read the the full story HERE and see if you can stifle a smile.

I dunno. Maybe old Walt was righter than he knew.

"Ilaab!" ("Play ball!")
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B

stand and pay respects both right and proper

2009-09-13T09:15:00.004-06:00

A great man has left the stage.

Dr. Norman Borlaug passed away this weekend at his home in Dallas.

There's a good chance you don't know who Norman Borlaug was, or why his name ought be long remembered for accomplishments few humans can ever hope to match.

You see, Dr. Borlaug was a plant scientist, and it was his efforts to develop better hybrid varieties of dwarf grains -- hybrids which would be easier to grow, less prone to damage and drought, higher in yield, and able to sustain larger local populations -- which changed our world. These efforts to feed the growing third-world populations in the 1950s and 60s won Dr. Borlaugh the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, as well as the title-- offered with no hint of exaggeration or embellishment, it should be noted -- of "the man who saved a billion people."

If you want to learn a few details about a largely unknown man who quite literally changed the face of our world, take a few minutes to consider the impact and implications of Dr. Borlaugh's efforts. Just the reminder that there are in fact, good honorable men (and women) out there fighting the good fight, every day in a thousand surprising ways on a thousand unexpected fronts, is often enough to rinse away the stink of the normal everyday political cynicism and pop-cultural triviality we're usually shoveled.

Some people achieve fame for next to nothing, while others just quietly go about the business of actually leaving the world a better place than they found it.

Salute.
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proud of the good guys B

still mostly nothing

2009-09-09T11:26:00.002-06:00

... to report.

There have been some odd rumblings ad grumblings beneath the waves, and there continue to be a few such noises (and some might yet surface and blow steam and become actual official Items Worthy Of Mention...), but for now we're where we've been for a long time now: in a siege, pounding on the walls, and scrambling to find some new tactic or trick to bring to bear to help gain entry into yon Castle Hollywood.

In the meanwhile... real life remains real busy, and might soon get another new wrinkle added to the Pile O' Fun, but (maintaining the theme) I'll not talk abut that until it becomes something worth talking about.

I continue to see lots and lots of blogs continue to be lots and lots boring and non-updated, and it seems clear that Twitter killed the Blogger star, though what seems less clear is how or why Twitter is at all useful for a startling bulk of the people who continue to mass murder electrons via that site. Or technology. Or service.

Or whatever it "is." (And no, that was not a plea for any to offer explanation.)

Austin Film Fest suddenly looms scant weeks away. I mean, I guess "six" counts as "scant," but if not... screw it, who cares anyway.

Austin in October. Football and baseball and Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and PTA and Jr High Band and HS Cross Country and TaeKwonDo and dance and so on and so on until then and after.

Same as it ever was... same as it ever was... same as it ever was... same as it ever was...
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once and future B

Greatest Song Lyrics Ever, vol. 94

2009-08-30T20:57:00.003-06:00

Bright Eyes Darkened
by Slobberbone

You say that love is everything
Then you turn around and sing
About all your painful moments
How in the end she didn't care
For the memories you shared
Despair and inner torment
Yeah, well wait a minute, friend
Stop before you begin
We've heard this one before
So you're on a downward slide
But you've seen the other side
And you can't ask for more

The end of summer's in the air
Do you remember when you cared
About friends and change of season
And a guitar was in your hands
And you played in twenty bands
And you never needed no reason
Yeah, well stop a minute there
Why should anyone else care?
They've all got holes to plug
She's a shovel in your hands
She's a pail of sand
Someone you once dug

You say you gave it all you could
And did everything you should
And you still wound up defeated
And all the efforts in between
Don't amount to anything
Just old mistakes repeated
And it's probably pretty true
But what else you got to do?
We've all got time to kill
She's the TV ad that lied
The drug you hadn't tried
She was a perfect little pill

I've seen your bright eyes darken
Eyes that always shone
So bright I had to close my own

You say you can't live in the past
But you're driving there so fast
Headlights aimed for drinking
You'll sing "I knew it all along"
As the bars they pass along
With the ground below you sinking
Yeah so stop for three or four
They won't card you at the door
They've seen you there before
It's not your favorite place to drink
But a place to stop and think
And you can't ask for more

Sputtering, spent
And wondering where it all went
Your dreams and things you wanted
You built a space for them inside
Where the walls are made with pride
Empty, cold and haunted
Yeah, but who am I to judge
Or negotiate your grudge
I should keep my damn mouth closed
You should call him with the news
Tell him he's the one who's screwed
You just might be right -- who knows?

You should call him with the news
Tell him he's the one who's screwed
You just might be right -- who knows?

---

Yeah, there have been a surprising number of Slobberbone songs making my "Love It" list this past year. I guess something about drunken snarling indifference is starting to get good to me.

My advice: deal with it, bobo.
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B

If there were anything interesting to say...

2009-07-27T23:06:00.002-06:00

...here is one of the places I might try to say it.

Do the math.
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B

SCREENWRITER: the music video

2009-07-08T16:56:00.003-06:00

Somehow this escaped my notice until today? I used to go see Trish & Darin all the damned time back in the days when I was unmarried and unchilded and overpaid... surely dinosaurs walked in that world side by side with me.

This is from Austin Film Fest 2004 (whicvh was probably the last one I MISSED, so that explains that portion of the overlook...)

CRANK THE TUNEAGE, MAN!

(love the wall o' notecards...)

quick thought upon returning to the civilized world

2009-06-28T10:04:00.003-06:00

Living for a week out of a two-man canvas cabin tent during days where the heat index tops 110 degrees with high humidity and no breeze can be a rather non-thrilling ordeal.

God bless return flight tickets and air conditioning.
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B

doldrums

2009-06-19T10:54:00.003-06:00

Been a rough week in terms of useful writing.

Where I seemed to have some momentum and energy (at last) for a few weeks there, now I sit at the keyboard and just... sigh. Every time I put eyes on something I'm trying to write I suddenly feel like mowing the yard or sorting silverware or cleaning the office or driving to sit and stare at traffic driving past the McDonalds.

This is not good.

I leave for Boy Scout summer camp in a few days, which means I'll then have basically zero computer access for a full week. Sure, I'll take some printouts of stuff in progress and I'll lounge around under some trees (I hope there are trees...) and spill red ink all over, and I'll probably wind up scribbling notes and proto-outines to some new ideas that invariably pop up whenever I am supposed to be doing something else, but what will *not* get done is "finishing these scripts."

I've got three scripts in various stages of first-draft hell, and they've all been dragging for... well, too damned long. But it's hard to get motivated much when it feels like it really doesn't matter much anyway -- Hollywood will option a damned FaceBook status update from a Pomeranian and I can't a word read.

"PPPFFTTTTTT" pretty much sums up my feelings about everything right now.

Maybe I'll feel less disgusted by it all tomorrow.

Sure. Why not. Anything could happen.
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dead calm B

Greatest Song Lyrics Ever, vol. 79

2009-05-30T11:58:00.005-06:00

"Pinball Song," from Slobberbone

Six weeks on the road now, I'm feeling kind of spent
There's a few things I need and ones a friend
A few good games of pinball and a double whiskey sour
I'll rinse it with a beer and repeat again

You know I couldn't find you in the place you used to be
I'm a sucker for the old times, that's me
But I asked around the bar and they said you were gone for a couple of days
On a vacation in the drunk tank so they'd say

Seems you were walking down the street, looking for relief
Your bedroom seemed a hundred miles away,
The dark side of a dumpster seemed the perfect place to sleep
Cops woke you up and cuffed you where you lay.

So what's the price of stolen sleep, I guess it's pretty steep,
Two hundred and fifty dollars for your bail,
They tried to raise the money, to get you out of jail,
And I guess they did their damnedest but they failed.

I saw that girl you used to know at the other end of the bar
I never thought she'd ever get that far
She said you two were through, it seemed you were driving for different things
I said I understood, I've wrecked that car

So now there's thirteen empty bottles, a glass or two or four
The lights came on we headed for the door
But the night was adolescent and she said she wanted more
And that's what she kept the Apple Blossom for

So up the stairs to her apartment with the Christmas lights that blink
It's the second week of May but that'd be okay
Except that under those blinking lights we opened a big old can of stink
And you smell it soon enough in one more day

(harmonica rockage)

Saturday, the twelfth of May, the policeman turns the valve
And the first drunk of the weekend dribbles out
Collect all your effects and take a cab straight to the bar
You're wondering what the whisperings all about
Well, I'll tell you:

It's about the easy sheen of alcohol, of better-not-do's done
Of blinking lights and the curse of roomates' tongues
An entire bar's worth holding theirs, but it only takes just one
And then it's pass that can around, it's your turn, son

Because this pinball game I'm playing, you know it's not the same
Times used to be you and me could always match
Yeah and the multiball came easy just like the replay game
And the wagers won and tossed hard down the hatch

So now I nailed a free game and there's a bottle across my head
My table tilts, I'm headed for the floor
Went out to find an old friend but I lost me one instead
I lost it all for just another score
Yeah, I lost it all for just another score

-=-=-

Poetry, people. Poetry.
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fan of the rollick B

[meme] Ten First Verbs (again)

2009-05-07T11:33:00.002-06:00

Here's one for the writers out there:

The task is simple: open your current/newest writing project and then list the FIRST TEN VERBS which appear in that project.

I learned this trick/game back in college when a writing prof was trying to drive home the point of active aggressive forceful writing versus limp and lazy passive writing. If you do this and find yourself listing a bunch of "is" and "are" and "seems" and such, maybe it's time to go back and turn up the heat and add some more sizzle,

I have a new project I just started toying with, and as usual I like to scribble out an opening and closing scene to help me nail the tone and the possible trajectory of the story. I have a handful of opening pages done, and here are the first ten verbs (so far):

shushing

looking

copy

coming

roars

banking

angle

looks

skims

lifting

Not as shabby as it might have been, but I know this will improve as I actually work on this. Still, it's a fun and (often) useful easy trick to use on your own writing.
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B

the greatest song lyrics ever, vol. 39

2009-05-05T09:29:00.004-06:00

Sometimes a song sideswipes your brain and ends up becoming a permanent part of your life's soundtrack. I loved the movie CLERKS (perhaps too much...) from the opening few minutes, and the end credit song from Soul Asylum has been one of my favorite and most-played iTunes tracks since day one.

[File under "primal scream goodness"]

Can't Even Tell
(Soul Asylum, from the CLERKS soundtrack)

I may never get what I want
But I'm happy to just die trying
And I hope I ain't done nobody wrong
But I miss you smiling
And I'm looking for a cure cause I'm bored to tears
And I'm stuck in here, stuck out here, stuck in here

We lived through another day
It's a good excuse to celebrate
Take a number knock on wood
We'll find a reason to feel good

I know you know I wanna know how I feel
I can't even tell
I can't even tell
I can't even tell

No one knows nothing about me
I'm guessing I'll just keep 'em guessing
No one sees what I see
This is my blessing
And I'm looking for a way to get out of here
Get me out of here, out of here, out of here

We lived through another day
It's a good excuse to celebrate
Take a number knock on wood
Find a reason to feel good
I know you know you wanna know how I feel
I can't even tell
I can't even tell
I can't even tell

I'm out of here, out of here, out of here

I know you know I want to know how I feel
I can't tell
I know you know I'll tell you if it's real
It sounded like a bell
I can't even tell
I can't even tell...

Hoowah.
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B

curse you, demon muse

2009-04-29T09:04:00.001-06:00

Maybe other people have this problem and just don't whine about it as much or as loudly as I do, but I swear: the surest and most dependable way I know to come up with an super-cool new story idea I love is to try and put pressure on myself to buckle down and finish some other existing idea (which usually came to me in some previous annoying burst of inspiration as I was on some previous finish line push...).

I am sitting here leg-wrestling a pair of over-pondered projects toward some form of finality when, on schedule and as usual, here comes that half-dressed tart, the Cool Idea Fairy, flouncing her pert little bottom across my field of attention.

"Whatcha doin', sailor-boy? Wanna have some fun...?"

(sigh)

So again I am beset by a cloud of swirling ideas as I succumb to Blazejowski Syndrome -- "I'm an idea man Chuck, I get ideas, sometimes I get so many ideas that I can't even fight them off! " -- and by the end of the day I will look up and realize that I've scribbled pages of notes and ideas and maybe a third of a treatment for a movie idea which nobody will ever probably see or hear about.

I need help. And a beer.

And cash money. Great honking gobs of yankee greenback dollars.

Meanwhile, my mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.

T'ain't right. That's all I gots to say on the matter.

Just t'ain't right, dag-nabbit.
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B (victim)

such is the painful nature of time

2009-04-24T09:54:00.005-06:00

The movie THE SANDLOT did a magnificent job in accurately depicting and describing the feel and mindset of a 10 year old boy in that not so far removed past before video games and cable TV effectively killed baseball as an American boy's first and truest abiding passion. The easy camaraderie of buddies playing ball aimlessly for some stretch of time which seemed as though it surely would stretch into infinity... this is not a joy that often is repeated in a man's life.

I was blessed to be given a second chance to experience this sort of joy and happiness these past few years as I coached my son's baseball teams. Sure, there are minor pressures and exasperations and annoyances, and hell yes there are demands upon one's social calendar and sometimes one's own sanity, but none of that ever mattered when I was on the field, with My Guys.

The team I drafted first as 8 year old players would form the core of a group of kids that I would then redraft again at 9 and 10, and would also spend summers with on a tournament team. By my estimation, I coached and managed somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety games with some of those guys over these last four years, with likely three times as many practices mixed in over that same span, plus maybe half as many extra games where we'd hang out and watch some other team play -- just loving baseball with each other.

And a few of those kids became really close friends of mine.

Perhaps it's odd for a grown man to try and describe that a loose gaggle of kids -- 8, then 9, and then 10 and 11 years old -- might somehow legitimately qualify as "friends," but there's no other way to describe them. There are always a few kids who just "click" with you. You "get" them and they get you, and you find yourself wanting them to succeed for the purely selfish rush of being able to see them made happy by something you helped bring about.

I'd work with a kid to fix a problem in his swing, and maybe he never really did totally correct the mechanical flaw, but over the course of that season or even multiple seasons you could see him understand what his demon was, and see him fighting to fix it, and see him have more and more success as he got better at overcoming that flaw. And then he'd bounce up from second base after sliding in on a hustling double to left center, and he'd allow himself a rare public moment of personal pride expressed in an uncontrollable smile, and he'd shoot you a glance from second to where you stood, coaching at third, and you'd smile and point an index finger at him as if to say 'YOU, my man, ROCK." And he'd smile and point a finger back at you to return that never actually-spoken sentiment, and for a flickering little moment All Was Right And Good in this world, and the sun would shine forever, and the grass would remain forever green.

Which is, of course, an illusion. A lie. A cruel sham we perpetrate on ourselves to obscure the inevitable moment when the pendulum of joy swings back the other way and restores some sense of karmic balance to the Universe.

Over these past few years, more and more of My Guys would drift away. Some would give up ball entirely, favoring other sports. Some of them would move to other neighborhoods or states and remain active in local leagues there. Some would elect to join local select or tournament teams, and play full-time for other coaches. But a few -- a very precious few -- would hang on, and would always be there, at your practice, or stopping by your practice to give some skin and trade some silly joke, or to hang out for a few minutes after or between games and just talk about what they'd been up to, what successes they were enjoying, what challenges they were still facing on or perhaps near the field.

Eventually, that group evaporates down to just a handful of players, maybe two or three, and today I got word that one of these players -- maybe my favorite of the entire bunch, that one kid I adored more than any other, and wished I could duplicate and carry with me onto every team as an example of what a little league ballplayer was supposed to be -- was leaving the league and unlikely to return. He's on a tournament team, and his dad is retiring from all involvement in our league, and it hit me suddenly: "I'll never share a dugout with this kid again."

I don't expect most people to really understand the painful finality of that statement. It's not just about losing a good player, or even an under-sized buddy, or turning a corner and realizing that an entire chapter in my life -- one of the most gloriously joyful and precious ones -- is now closing with a gentle hush. It's more that crushing RE-realization of the inevitability of decay and death. Of re-learning those painful lessons already learned once when I was ten or twelve or eighteen: lessons of mortality and change and time.

Of the ending of all things good.

No, there's been no death, yet that's what this feels like. Never again will we swap that private smile where we knew that we'd managed to do something cool that neither of us had really been sure we could, that we'd managed to pull a great joke on the Universe and steal an extra helping or three of fun from the serving line, where we'd claimed some great and and wonderful memory that only a tiny private group could ever understand, would ever understand. We'd had some good times, and now, the good times are gone.

Where once we cheered, the echoes have now faded, and today they seem all but silent and lost to the breeze of time.

-=-=-=-

For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."
-- final lines from the movie PATTON

a non-comprehensive list of things which I do not understand

2009-04-17T05:53:00.004-06:00

twitter ...

the massive appeal of zombie movies ...

Swahili (not one word) ...

Lindsey Lohan's career decisions ...

train wreck TV ...

disinterested Little League coaches ...

middle-aged male drama queens ...

celery ...

QVC ...

golf ...

ignorance worn with pride ...

Halle Berry's apparent reticence to become my love slave ...

gum ...
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intellectual high ground B

that game which comes in the spring

2009-04-03T10:30:00.007-06:00

There are those who will claim that Christmas is their favorite time of the year. Others favor the summertime for its vacations and long lazy days, while still others lean towards autumn and its first touch of cool breezes and shower of golden leaves.

For me, there's no time like the early days of spring, when the grass is green, the air is shaking loose the stale winter chill, and lines of chalk on a diamond of green define all that is great and glorious with the game we call baseball.

I love football for its precision and tactical formality, for its controlled stylized violence and warm spirit of martial camaraderie. The feel of a perfect pass leaving the fingertips, its inevitable perfect path to a receiver's hands already as clear in your mind's eye as if drawn in glowing laser light... the surge of ancient instinct -- "RUN! NOW! GO!" -- when a cutback lane opens in the edge of your vision in the maelstrom of a play in progress... the animal joy of impact, flesh on flesh, as you connect squarely with that foul bastard who dared suggest that he might encroach on your territory. All of this is capital-G Good.

I love basketball for the free-flowing improvisation and infinite variation it affords: five individuals all swirling and dancing in some impossible non-choreographed ballet no one need explain or think about... the cocky giggle in the back of your mind when you glance into your opponent's eyes and realize that he's scared, that he has no idea what to do to counter you or best you... the insane feeling of connectedness when you stop and pop a 16-foot jumper and know from the millisecond it leaves your hand that you are safe to turn and head back upcourt,' cuz that rock ain't goin' nowhere but the bottom of the bucket, baybee... again, all very Good.

But baseball... never has Man yet designed a better test to reveal a man's weaknesses and strengths, his deepest fears and best attributes. Timid? Unsure? Arrogant? Complacent? Indecisive? Lazy? Baseball will find your faults and make them known. The better and more experienced players understand this, and that's part of what brings them back every season: the determination to stare into the face of that magic all-knowing field of green and say "You bested me before, but today -- right here, right now -- I'm ready, I'm worthy. This day is mine."

To stand and face an entire team of agile defenders whose only goal in life is to deny your claim to safe passage across that tiny slice of ground between home and first base. To step into a square drawn in the dirt, a club in your hand, as an opposing pitcher smirks a literal stone's throw away secure in the knowledge of all those foul tricks he'll use to try and make you look foolish and incompetent. To know that your best efforts to overcome these tricks will be judged -- harshly -- in real time and for all time by a heartless bastard of an umpire who feels no love, brooks no debate, and who is by his own definition both infallible and incontestable.

There's no going back, and no going around, and the only way forward is to live through that hungry moment looming before for you now with bared teeth and naked claws.

"You really think you're ready, little man? Well, let's find out...."

To accept and realize that you are locked in a contest where many times your greater success for your team very often results from your own personal failure, and that sometimes your own success will in fact hurt your team's cause. That you can do everything right yet still fail, or do everything wrong yet still succeed. That here, in this game, "sacrifice" is not just a vague concept but is instead an actual codified and defined play outcome. That no matter how well you play, you will never play as well as you dream, as well as you soon will wish you had in hindsight. Baseball more than any other sport forces you to mentally replay every single moment and realize all you might have done differently, done better.

To breathe deep and know the smell of baseball -- a smell which in my experience has no comparable analog in other sports: the glove leather, the new mown grass, and the dust of sandy clay soil, and acrid sweetness of the lime chalk, the warm horsehide smell of the ball, the distant faint smolder of ozone you can sometimes catch on a still night when the towering vapor lamps first fire up so as to give the gods themselves a clearer view of your impending futile testimony.

To endure the unpredictable spans of relative boredom in the field, when you are required to stand ever-ready, on guard for an attack which might never even come, or, when it does, will not be as you'd anticipated. The split-second decisions required by the various component parts of the defensive team, as you have to know instantly what angle to take on the ball, where to try and receive the catch, what kind of throw to make, what target to choose, and what insanely precise body control is required to make a comically non-areodynamic sphere of leather, string, and cork cut through swirling winds in order to hit a glove sized target half a football field away... and then live in hope that the other members of your team all arrived at the same immediate conclusions and are in proper position to then make use of whatever preliminary try at a play you've offered.

To shudder slightly in terror as you dig in at the plate, a feeling which somehow mixes with an eerie calm as you set your stance and wait for Inevitability to come out and play, because every swing you make (or refuse to make) has in some strange draft model of the Universe already been made, been tried, been long resolved since the beginning of time, and all you can do now is play out your part in this strange little sequence.

To see the pitcher's stretch, the delivery, the hiss of the approaching pitch screaming in at your head OH JESUS AT MY HEAD then you calmly snap your wrists and twist your hips in an explosive move you've practiced hundreds times -- ten thousand times, from days before memory -- and then, if your testimony is clear and pure and the gods deem you potentially worthy, a round stick will connect square with a round ball, and a silent diamond will be punctured by the pistol crack sound of rapturous unadulterated joy AAAAIIEEEEEEEE! and you discover yourself already sailing toward first, and suddenly the crowd reappears in the back of your awareness as you become the living breathing absolute undeniable indisputable Center of Everything, and for a flickering moment you feel what it is to be absolutely in control of every aspect of your reality -- yours is the hand on the tiller, the will at the helm -- and then you arrive at first, and the moment subsides, and you breathe a deep sigh, pleading silently with the Almighty, "Please, God -- let me feel that just one more time before I leave this world. Just once. Please..."

For me, that's Baseball. That's Spring.

And it ain't bad.
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B

Dorkopalooza 2009

2009-04-01T07:57:00.004-06:00

April Fools Day is a total rip-off.

I've carped on this topic before, but here it is April 1 all over (again) and (again) I see the same tired half-hearted stabs at irony and wit and high-larity, and (again) my kids are asking me such questions as "what's your favorite practical joke, dad?" and (again) I find The Wife giving me the same withering disapproving glare when I (again) respond with something like "oh, I dunno... I always think the classic 'beat someone with a baseball bat while they are asleep in the beds at 4:15 am' gag is always a knee-slapper -- why do you ask, children?".

And (again) I tense from a white-knuckled sphincter.

Where did this idiot tradition of April Fool's Day come from, and (more importantly) when did we as a group of hairless monkeys all subscribing to the dubious notion that the tradition was at all worthwhile or amusing in the first damned place THEN decide to collectively shrug and re-task this date on the calendar as "that date upon which any manner of lame unoriginal prank is encouraged"? People who on any other day of the year happily accept their pranking deficiencies now feel morally compelled and honor-bound to try some sort of tomfoolery on April 1, very often after Googling "April Fools pranks". I mean, seriously -- if you are having to Google for practical jokes, that's big blinking sign from the Universe that you're probably not one of the folks Nature chose to be a practical joker.

"A man's got to know his limitations," a great philosopher once explained.

Except on April 1, it seems. When all the normal buffers and safeguards are turned off, and any damned fool idiot is given the green light to swing away and annoy friends, strangers, and livestock with frivolous stabs at malicious fun.

Bah, humbug, says I. On April Fools I wish I could crawl down that burrow and spend the day with Punxsatawney Phil, and come out on April 2 to see if we'll be suffering another six weeks of dumbth.
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no more fun of any kind B

arapaho

2009-03-29T11:17:00.003-06:00

Hey bartender bring me the ticket chopper
Single malt black whiskey and a virgin in the garden
I sail on a boat and my jewel box is broken
Deception and betrayal are ripe for the bargain
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho

Light yer spike with a candle
And a sailor will surely die
Facist vagabonds
Never look you in the eye
Nero fiddled in Rome as the fires burned all around
So I fiddle on the ocean as the stars are falling down
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho

Don't turn yer back on a writer
Don't lay yer hand on a drum
Don't look too long at the smoke on the water
Or the cat might get yer tongue

...

Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho

When in Analog Rome do as the Analog Romans do
Prop yer feet up on a demon and sip that mornin dew
Seven African powers, sawed off double barrel shotgun
Old fashioned crucifixion the kind my grandpappy done
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho

Don't turn yer back on a writer
Don't lay yer hand on a drum
Don't look too long at the smoke on the water
Or the cat might get yer tongue

...

Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho

---
from "Blood Of The Ram" (2004, The Gourds)
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deep in a grinnin groove B

a rising flood of ugly

2009-03-26T11:20:00.003-06:00

The internet is great for spreading information, but it seems truly awful for spreading civility.

I say that based upon an experience just now of skimming through no fewer than a half dozen sites dedicated to pretty serious aspiring screenwriters. On every single one of these discussion sites -- every one, no exception -- I was turned off and chased away by the pervasive ugliness and nastiness I saw being spewed upon other contributors and posters.

I understand that pissy snark is the coin of the realm online. That to make any name for yourself in the seething hive of humanity swirling about in the virtual world you often are encouraged to try to be a bigger badder mofo than the the reigning champ. That you have to come in and challenge the local gunslinger to meet you in the street to pull leather against one another. It's the hyper-juvenile "my dick is bigger than yours" nonsense which at first blush makes the internet seem so charming and "pure" but which eventually winds up ruining the experience you first claimed to enjoy.

Someone praises something? Then shit all over it it. Mock it. Deride it. Spend two weeks hurling ad hominem attacks at the poor boob for having the gall to have a slightly different take on some trivial issue of zero relevance.

Someone disagrees with some arcane point in a discussion of yours? Well, then that paste-eating gaboon deserves to die, and so do his parents, and pets, and the OR staff which helped deliver him into this world, and so do his postman, his neighbors, and anyone sharing more than two common letters of his first name.

Someone manages to succeed at something you claim to have been aspiring to? Well, rather than redouble your own efforts, why not just hide behind an anonymous online handle and launch a slanderous campaign of lies, innuendo, and falsehoods to try and make this other person seem somehow unclean and undeserving.

Yeah, yeah, I enjoy some good natured smart assity as much as anyone. And yes I have on occasion crossed the line and moved from the world of "snark" into the world of "outright meanness" (and more often than anyone here would ever believe have then gone back and personally directly apologized when I've recognized this behavior). I'm not claiming to be without sin here. I'm just wondering if I am alone in wishing that there was less encouragement and reward to so frequently commit the same sin with such childish indifference.

As I said, the end result of all this is a sad and totally needless distancing of people who might well share 97% overlap on most views and interests and opinions and goals. Rather than enjoy the cool things we might share, it's easier and more dramatic to stir up a shit storm over some idiotic minor point of difference ("Lettuce goes OVER the meat!" ... "No, lettuce goes UNDER the meat, you inbred child-molesting jackass!"), especially in an online world where there is basically never any price to be paid or risk to be sweated.

Had a bad day at your unsatisfying real world job? Hey, rather than work to improve that real world situation, why not just hop online and shit on a stranger! It's easy and requires no investment of time or emotional capital! Share the misery! Make someone else tired and annoyed! Tearing up shit is far easier than exerting a few calories to fix shit, right? Sure! Let's all be pissed off little two year olds, throwing a tantrum and hurling our toys! "Make me happy or else I'm going to make you unhappy! Waaaaaah! WAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"

More and more I look around and wonder if maybe there's not a more interesting and noble crowd to play with. I miss that feeling of excitement and hopefulness that I once got when I would hop online -- that flicker of optimism when I realized there were other people out there who were genuinely interested in interesting things, interesting ideas, interesting differences and comparisons and views and dreams and plans and successes and setbacks.

Somehow, a great many of those folks seem to have been replaced by bored chimps, all hell-bent on seeing who can hide in the trees and win the ribbon for hurling down the most or biggest turds at passing strangers.

And, no, that's not "a good thing."
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thoroughly gruntled B

remember this thing? I kinda do...

2009-03-01T11:31:00.002-06:00

Just been a crazy hectic January and February, and blogging about the craziness just seems like it would have been another dollop of craziness atop a pile that was already half-sliding to the floor, so "sacrifices were made."

I've been told (by many people, for many decades) that I am prone to whining. I have no argument with that claim -- I know it's true -- but the funny thing about self-pitiful whining is how often you don't realize that it's happening until it's already been happening for long enough for you to have pissed off and bored those around you who might be useful for getting your backside back on track. At some point these friends look up from their own personal pile of poo and say "DUDE -- stop moaning. FIX something or shut up. You've been whining about this for months now."

Point taken, and apologies to those who are owed.

Time to refocus. Recalibrate. Re-load, recharge, and return the throttle to full combat power.

Once more into the breach, dear friends. Once more....
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B

around is where I's at

2009-02-10T10:04:00.001-06:00

Deal with it.

Stuff simmering and percolating in the background, and new stuff rattling forward on the front burners, too.

Onwards.
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B

do what you do

2009-01-29T07:24:00.000-06:00

I was reminded (again) this week how often the simple truths seem to elude us, or -- worse -- quietly tiptoe away and hide themselves even after we've already learned these truths once or ten times before (usually at the expense of some humiliation or personal pain).

I am a screenwriter. By that I mean "I write screenplays." The fact that I have yet to actually sell a screenplay remains just an annoying detail in this tragicomic opera. The central point is I write.

Except, you'd be amazed at how easy it is to somehow forget that or lose sight of that. To think that somehow the actual, ya know, "writing" part of "screenwriting" just sorta magically happens -- unseen, unnoticed and on its own, kinda like grass growing. Instead of chaining yourself to the keyboard, you fret and fiddle with all the various other semi-related aspects of the game rather than the core critical tasks.

Such behavior is, of course, high-grade idiocy. Self-delusion of the most destructive sort, for you have no real business in expecting to enjoy much success unless you remember to actually DO what you DO.

Eyes on the prize... Focus on the goal... Know your role... Dance with the one that brung ya....

All of these are variations on the same underlying theme: that in any task, there is that simple undeniable part of the task which **is** the task.

Fire fighter.

Lion tamer.

Pole dancer.

Ditch digger.

Screen writer.

We can find ourselves distracted and diluted by all sorts of perfectly sensible-seeming side ventures and secondary tasks -- the classic "vacuuming before finals" behavior where we become almost desperate to find a legitimate justification for not actually doing what it is we most need to be doing. It's a nasty dangerous habit. One that I find myself prone to far too often and too easily.

So it feels good to look up and get back on-task. To resume course and get back to basics, to take care of job one so that even if none of those cute and amusing secondary tasks are addressed, you still can look back at the day's efforts and realize that you did some good.

So today's scripture lesson is simple. "Do what you do."

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Onwards.
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dominus vobiscum B

the majesty of mayhem

2009-01-27T14:02:00.004-06:00

I was reminded earlier this week of how truly jaw-droppingly beautiful scenes of death and combat can be, if done well, and I guess that realization is what sent me back to a script that had rotated to the back of the current crowd of "open" projects -- the challenge of penning a scene filled to near-overflowing with violence and blood and animal brutality committed by humans yet which still possesses a poetry and delicacy akin to romance.

So I spent the day finally putting to paper a cool early story moment wherein our hero and our heroine meet for the first time, and there is no dialog, and no love in any traditional sense, instead only violence and mayhem and gore and terror, yet at the end of teh scene the odd relationship between these two is clear and unshakable, even with no dialog or moments of emotional bonding. We start and end the scene with our hero admiring the peacefulness of gulls circling overhead, but where the image at the outset seems quiet and tranquil, at the end it seems tragic and final.

Of course, it helps to have some cool music swirling around in the periphery, and the magnificent sounds from Crouching Tiger somehow fit this mood and moment even though there is zero connection or similarity between that tale and the one I am spinning, and yet... there's an emotional component common to both: threads of love, and loss, and life, and death, and heartbreak, and honor, and impossible sacrifices.

I hope this thing bears fruit. There's too much of it already clear in my head for me to remain sane if this goes for nothing.

And so I dive back into a ballet of blood, dreaming of brutality and mayhem.

And I feel more than fine.
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old school B

Patron of screenwriting Gee Nicholl dies

2009-01-15T11:48:00.005-06:00

So leads the sad headline in today's Hollywood Reporter.

If you're a screenwriter -- especially an aspiring screenwriter -- then the name "Nicholl" is (or surely should be) instantly familiar to you. The Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting are the ne plus ultra of screenwriting contests. Win a Nicholl, and you are launched, baybee. Hell, even an honorable finish in the Nicholl carries more weight and prestige than most contest wins will ever hope to warrant.

From the story:

After her husband's death in 1980, Gee Nicholl, knowing that Don had long spoken of helping new writers get started, provided funding first for grants for students in the screenwriting program at Stanford University and then for the Academy's Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Program.

In the 24 years since its inception, the Nicholl Fellowships has become one of the world's most prestigious awards for amateur writers. The program has given boosts to the careers of screenwriters such as Susannah Grant ("Erin Brockovich"), Andrew Marlowe ("Air Force One") and Mike Rich ("Finding Forrester") as well as to Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides ("Middlesex").
-- Hollywood Reporter

Mrs. Nicholl was too ill to attend the awards dinner that incredible year when i was lucky enough to be among the ten finalists, so I never had a chance to shake her hand and tell her "on behalf of tens of thousands of dreamers whose names you will never know but whose hopes your generosity buoyed and sustained, thanks." The world could use more folks like her.

Saaaaaaaaa-lute.

Full story here.
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B

not posting don't mean there's nothing worth posting

2009-01-14T17:44:00.003-06:00

Cuz there is.

Cool stuff -- and I mean insanely cool stuff -- is rumbling and grumbling behind the scenes.

I hope there's some good news to post about soon. And if not, I'll at least have a lot of stuff to grouse and complain about.

But this is goooood...
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fingers crossed B

the new Greatest Song Ever

2008-12-30T14:19:00.002-06:00

"El Rey de los Chingones", by Chingon (Robert Rodriguez's mucho-macho soundtrack band).

King of Badasses, indeed.

If this doesn't make you wanna ride into the sunset, then there's something seriously wrong with you.
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B

Doldrumitis

2008-12-28T09:57:00.003-06:00

I gots it.

That mood or state of mind where you metaphysically just sit in a puddle of tepid gutter water and make half-hearted splashing slaps as you blow a long lazy raspberry,

Ppppppppfffffftttttttt...

I have stuff I could be working on -- should be working on -- but right now I am just flat-lining on the old give-a-shit meter.

I'm sufficiently self-aware to understand the seasonal nature of this problem -- I always tend to get the blahs around Christmas time (nothing new there) -- but increasingly there's the issue of the movie biz mostly rolling up the sidewalks from Thanksgiving until Groundhog's Day, the threat of another damned strike, and the inevitable trough between wavepeaks of furious self-motivation and momentum.

On the bright side, I know this dark phase will end, and I have a sneaking suspicion that it will end sooner and more abruptly than some might suspect, as there is... well, "a lurking potentiality" out there which is so absurd that it defies specific mention at this stage. Let's just say "sometimes, a miracle is exactly what the doctor ordered."

So, 'til then, we stay the course, dig deep, and muster what final reserves of strength we have available. Help is possibly on the way. And if not, then to hell with it anyway.

Hopelessness remains our best hope.
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B

FEED me, Seymour!

2008-12-23T11:14:00.001-06:00

Still one of my all-time favorite Christmas movie moments:

Merry Christmas, you weasels.
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B

a new post

2008-12-19T11:07:00.004-06:00

I'm Indian leg-wrestling The Blahs right now. Don't much feel like writing or doing anything, and that's not a useful or productive state in which to be on the last day of quiet before the kids begin a few weeks of Christmas vacation (oh, EXCUSE ME-- "Winter Break," as we'd not want to offend anyone... ).

I have two open scripts on my monitor desktop, and every time I go to work on either, I become acutely aware of the sound of the clock ticking, which would not be that curious except that we don't OWN any ticking clocks, which makes me wonder if perhaps my self-conscious is again childishly mocking me.

The weasely bastard.

It's not helping one bit that as I wander around the Intra-Webs all I see is dumbth and stoopidity in full flower, as the morons are ouy in force and intelligent comment and genuinely amusing observation seems on vacation somewhere for the seventeenth consecutive month online (which equates to something like 11.2 years in non-web/non-dog years).

Like Auda Abu-Tai, I feel anxious -- I must find something of honor..."

I'm wondering if perhaps a round of vomitous inebriation might not help.
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puddle of fun B

a sound worth hearing

2008-12-08T14:09:00.002-06:00

Right at the 3:23 mark, I break into a stupid grin every single time.

At least, I have all twelve times today.

[And for anyone who just doesn't get it, this is a rare fully restored Soviet YAK-3 fighter from WW2, as once upon a time flown by... well, "a girl I know."]
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B

Holy crap! It's DECEMBER?

2008-12-04T08:34:00.000-06:00

I'll happily confess to not minding the calendar as much as I might out, but still, this happens to me every year: a new year rolls around, and plans are made, and expectations set, and then a bunch of stuff happens, and I look up and bingo it's Pearl Harbor Day and I'm wondering "What the hell happened to April? Did we have April this year? WHO THE HELL CANCELLED APRIL AND WHY WASN'T I NOTIFIED!?!".

Criminy. 2008 is damned near in the rearview and I'm still trying to get used to not writing "2007" in the date area of what checks I still write.

It's a funny thing, the way life feels these days. Chalk it up to some sort of Zeno's Paradox of Middle Age, but it feels as if every day -- every week, every month, every year -- is sliding by with ever-increasing rapidity, while at the same time progress seems to be slowing down. Everything takes longer to happen, except disasters and fuck-ups, of course, which always play out at 45rpm in a 33rpm world (that's an old-school shout-out to all you wrinkled bitter farts who remember those sepia-toned times when music was not downloaded and pterodactyls still ruled the skies).

Before I even finish this post, we'll be well into 2009 and wrestling with taxes ("We had income last year? For real? When!?!") and dealing with Spring Break plans and then baseball season and then end of school craziness and then of course summertime is always a sea of craziness, what with kids home for months and plans and camps and swimming and grassfires and satellites raining down and god only knows what other sweet hell gets served up this time around and then my god school is starting and we have to get ready for that and then football and dance and scouts and campouts and AFF09 and Halloween my god we need to find pumpkins and have them carved within the next 85 minutes and this turkey seems drier than last year's and didn't we get your cousin a wine rack LAST year for Christmas and holy crap it's 2010? Really?

What happened to 2009?

I need a nap, except I fear the Van WInkle Effect and waking to find flying cars and domed cities and 14,000 unread emails waiting for my attention.

Oy.

I need a nap. And a beer. And a donut. And a hug. And a lottery win.
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B

Today is a good day to die

2008-11-27T09:52:00.002-06:00

"And I will cut off the horns of all the wicked..."
-- Psalms 75:10
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B

it happened again

2008-11-24T15:33:00.001-06:00

So I ship off the revised totally polished campy monster-comedy to the agents, and I am working on another piece they want to see, and things are fine, and then I see a word that makes me stop, look up and choke with laughter over a really really stupid (yet brilliantly so) idea for yet another really stupid schlocky comedy monster script.

And now I can't NOT think about all these stupid scene ideas that keep popping into my brain.

Oh bother.
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B (whose mind does in fact 24/7 remain a raging torrent flooded with rivulets of thought, cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives, so bite me)

where did the writers go?

2008-11-16T12:37:00.000-06:00

Anyone else notice how it seems as though a great many more blogs have dried up?

The term "blogosphere" used to refer to something relevant and interesting. Now it seems like an archaeological expression to describe a now-extinct group of tenuously connected writers and blogs. Where I used to be able to hop online and find 15 or 20 interesting screenwriting related blogs to look at, now I can count the number of actively updated such critters on the fingers of Albanian hand. IOW, maybe 6 or 7, tops.

Looking at Zoetrope (which takes an effort and a strong stomach...) I see there are now something like 50 scripts up for reads, where two years ago I remember people complaining when there for "just" 150 such options.

The Nicholl Fellowships seem to have peaked at 6400 or so entries three years back, but recent extries topped about around 5200 or so -- 20% drop in three years.

Now, surely this is not all bad news -- there was always a lot of chaff and crap mixed in with the decent writers, and losing some of the weedy undergrowth just gives more room and opportunity to those who remain (or survive) -- but it's a creepy feeling to go online and find so many sites with tumbleweeds where there used to be bustle. Emptiness where there once was excitement.

Who's still going strong out there? Give me some suggestions, people. It might be nice on occasion to see someone else still loin-girded and battle-dressed, ready willing and intent on marching triumphant through the gates at some point.

Cuz right now it's starting to feel really quiet and lonely.
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B

terrifying and brilliant

2008-11-13T13:54:00.002-06:00

Anyone curious to get a better handle on the current and ongoing cataclysmic implosion of the major investment institutions in this (and other) countries would do well to spend 10 or 15 minutes reading The End, Michael Lewis's incredible insider's view of the spectacular rise and more spectacular collapse of the sub-prime lending industry.

Lewis, best known for the now-classic Wall Street exposé Liar's Poker, walks us through the past ten years of staggering naivete, arrogance, hubris, greed, indifference, and (ultimately) stupidity which has damaged the US economy to the tune of a half-trillion dollars.

And counting.

That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them.

Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage.

In fact, there was no mortgage at all. “They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford,” Eisman says. “They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that’s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?”

-- Michael Lewis, on Portfolio.com

Amazing stuff.

(And props to Greber for flagging the article in the first place)
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B

old is the new new

2008-11-12T12:48:00.001-06:00

Sometimes you stumble across a line of a song that just... fits.

Well, when you're sitting there
In your silk upholstered chair
Talking to some rich folks that you know
Well I hope you won't see me
In my ragged company
You know I could never be alone.
--"Dead Flowers," (The Rolling Stones)

Funny how things work out.

Everything which was reviled shall over time become revered.
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obliquely oblique B

odd thoughts upon waking

2008-11-08T10:23:00.001-06:00

So I wake and trudge to the computer after the usual pit stop at the coffeemaker for a mug of liquid sanity.

I plop into my chair and onscreen I see what I left there last night: the final few pages of the goofy monster action-comedy which I will turn in to the agents this week. As I skim some lines, I chuckle at some of the gags, and in the quiet of the early morn before all the kids have crawled from their burrows and begun their daily routine of pot-clanging and whistle-blowing an odd little thought wanders past:

"I'm not bad at this."

Ordinarily I'd grab the lapels of such a thought, pull its shirt over its head to blind and restrain it and then pistol whip the vainglorious notion into a bloody crumpled heap in some back alley, but today... this morning... I find myself in a bizarrely tolerant mood. Instead of going all Sonny Corleone on this compliment, I sip my coffee, snork back the morning snot, and pretend to be mature and tolerant.

And I notice one of a few small Post-It notes I have arrayed around the margins of my monitor:

"Fuck it -- I'm good at this. This is fun."
-- Harvey Weinstein

I sigh a bit. Simple truths are hard to come by, and not always entirely welcomed with open arms.
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B

Greatest. Song. Ever.

2008-11-06T14:33:00.000-06:00

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B

62.5

2008-11-05T21:08:00.000-06:00

That's the percentage turnout of eligible voters I am seeing estimated for this 2008 election, a number which would mark the highest since Nixon-Humphrey in 1968.

So, on the one hand, "yay" -- we seem to have increased our participation tremendously.

On the other hand... 62.5%? Is that really all we can muster?
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B

welcome to the new post

2008-11-05T10:43:00.000-06:00

This is the new post.

It replaces the old post.

The new post is improved.

The new post is filled with good things and wonderfulness. All things are possible with the new post.

Because it is new.

And therefore better.

The new post exists in a plane above and beyond and all around and just a little bit below and to the left of all previous posts.

The new post gives Hope. And warmth. With no CFCs. With no muss, fuss, or significant threat of global thermonuclear annihilation.

All criticism of the new post is based upon fear. And lies. And non-traditional accounting methods.

The new post is both 25% peanuttier, and 100% peanut-free.

The new post creates a paradigm shift through breakthrough synergy. Magic elves might be involved in this revolutionary proprietary process. Or they might not.

The new post does not explain itself.

This is the new post.

-33-
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B

VOTE, you pathetic weasels

2008-11-04T06:52:00.002-06:00

After all the insipid bellicose inane political dipshittery smeared 'cross the web these past few dozen months, you'd think there'd be no need to put foot to ass to remind folks to set aside the Cheezy Poofs and waddle down to the local fire station or elementary or library or wherever to help choose the next leader of the free world. But among the various points we'll see reported as part of Election 2008, we're sure to hear some depressing stat such as "51% of the eligible voters cast ballots this year," which leads me to want to deliver a friendly word of commentary to that other 49%:

"Suck it."

I'm sure there is a handful of folks for whom NOT voting is a legitimate course, some small percentage of voters whose circumstances have conspired to render them truly unable to do their civic duty and help the rest of us decide which charisma-challenged public servant will serve as the whipping boy for the 45-48% of folks who support the "wrong" candidate, but in this day and age, with Early Voting and Mail-In Voting, it seems beyond tragic to look up and see so many people still content to sit at home catching up on Tivo'd QVC highlights rather than thankfully embracing that little slice freedom bought for them by two and a half centuries of men and women standing up to secure and defend the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Even in this modern technoriffic age, money talks and bullshit walks, children, and today the time has come to let the currency of your vote do the talking which our Constitution defines and defends.

If you have voted or will vote today, then I lift a glass to you regardless of your politics or party: "one nation, indivisible."

And if you can't bring yourself to give even that tiny bit of service to your nation -- to your community, to your tribe, to your children and heirs trailing forward into perpetuity -- then to hell with you.

God Bless the United States of America.
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B

dance of the progbars

2008-11-01T08:28:00.000-06:00

There are (apparently) two or possibly three human beings on this planet for whom the left margin progress bars of this site hold fascination and intrigue. A few times a year I will get an email from one or another of these fine (but CLEARLY entertainment starved) people, asking "So what's up? When are you gonna update those progbars!?!"

So, for those folks, as well as to publicly commit and obligate myself and thereby create a scrotum-shriveling amount of personal pressure to produce actual results, I offer this update:

Project: "QUEEN OF THE SKY"
Status: DONE! [BUT RE-POLISHING]
QUEEN, aka "LILYA", is (in the technical sense) "out there" in Hollywood. It's been slipped to a few very specific managers and agents of a few very specific actresses, and was actually requested (!) by one actress I'm pretty sure 98% of your are familiar with (a request which prompted a rushed but small tweak to the script in order to better accommodate this actresses... "specifics," shall we say. No significant response from anyone, but neither have we drawn any "oh good GOD that was awful! Ick! IIICCCKKK!" Which, I guess, is a good thing.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Project: [CRITTER-COMEDY THING]
Status: DONE! [BUT RE-POLISHING]
It's done, trusted readers have given a thumbs up, and the title still totally kicks (I swear -- I'd think this could sell based upon the title and tagline alone, which is why I remain so protective and secretive), but the piece still is just not quite screaming in tune just yet, at least not for me. The reps slipped an early copy to a well-known prodco, and the comments back were overall extremely positive but included one odd story note which (IMO) doesn't even connect to the script, yet it seems enough to have stirred some paranoia loose in the minds of my reps, so they've held back sending it elsewhere until I get them a "new" draft.

Given the comatose business climate for newbs right now as well as the late date on the fiscal calendar, I'm in no huge rush. I've done numerous passes to improve and tighten the piece, and will likely do at least one more in the next few weeks in order to have this thing totally locked down and rocking hard for 2009 shopping.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Project: [AMAZON ADVENTURE]
Status: DONE! [DINKING EVERYWHERE!]
Still do not have a title that makes me pound a tabletop and go "THAT'S IT!", and am still not 100% in love with the piece in its current form. This started as a co-written project for a specific cable TV development weasel, but the weasel disappeared, the co-writer and I drifted in different directions, and then when we negotiated a "divorce settlement" I took the piece even farther from where it had started. I still love a great many aspects and elements of this project, and it's sufficiently readable that it's been entered in a few contests -- Austin, Nicholl -- and actually fared decently in the latter, making the second round and then barely missing another advance, but in all honesty this needs at least one more serious pass before I can start to think of it as ready to show to serious players.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Project: [RETITLED COLLEGE COMEDY]
Status: ACTIVE [36 PAGES AND COUNTING....]
This is the one the agents seem interested in seeing next. The story is commercial, has not been done (well) in a long time but is the clear descendant of a legendary movie, and is far closer to my "sweet spot" than the Nicholl piece ("LILYA") which grabbed me some love in the first place. Rudely and vaguely semi-autobiographical, I currently have enough notes and ideas for at least two and a half movies of this sort, so the problem is picking the best ideas and then forging them into a single perfect blade.

The piece has been bugging the hell out of me all year, as i know it's wanted, but I've been wrestling with getting a firm and proper handle on the tone and control of the story: a pointless recollection of insane offenses and vulgarities might be amusing in a JACKASS context, but it's not a proper narrative. This past week however, I had not one but TWO rather huge breakthroughs: 1) I stumbled over a fun (and annoying!) technique to give me an extra channel in the mix (don;t ask-- I'm babbling), and 2) I found a ridiculously laughably insanely perfect title that suddenly gives the piece a real face and a real tone, even for people who know nothing BUT the title (and, as with other great titles, no I am not the hell sharing...).

I've reworked the opening scene, love what I am seeing, and have started playing with a few other scenes that were already in the can, so this one is probably the one that will (or should...) be getting the major attention and effort right now.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Project: [HISTORICAL ADVENTURE THING]
Status: ACTIVE [18 PAGES AND COUNTING....]
Of course, since I am a very bad boy, I will also be stealing time and steam for this project: a rather large and ambitious epic adventure of the sort not best worked on by un-produced nobodies. This is a period action-adventure thing spinning a fictional (and improbably) story based upon actual historical events and characters, but it has some theme and tone stuff going which gets my blood going like few projects have (aside from LILYA, which stirred a very similar emotional craving). I can see this one more clear in my mind than anything else I am thinking about writing, and I can visualize long sequences of scenes and shots and set-pieces, like I am remembering a movie I've already seen repeated times, so clearly there is something speaking to me here.

On the down side of the ledger, this would be another sprawling period piece requiring major talent support for it to ever take off, and it's tonally an odd balance right now -- somewhere in the no man's land between LAST OF THE MOHICANS and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN (lighter than the former, heavier than the latter). But oh... to perhaps see the opening and closing shots on a huge screen with Dolby Surround... glorious... GLORIOUS!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Project: "TWELVE DAYS"
Status: ACTIVE [PAGE ONE RE-WRITE]
Just got back a week or two ago from the Screenwriters Conference at the 2008 Austin Film Festival, and it was great as ever. Especially great, however, was the weirdly consistent note being sung by a host of disconnected producers and manager types as they all clamored first and loudest for (drumroll...) romantic comedies. The RomCom, for years now sort of an out of style beast, suddenly seems to be making one hell of a comeback in terms of popularity among producers, at least if the half dozen requests for such I received are any indication.

Apparently -- and this angle was repeated to me by at least 4 different Hollywood players -- the whole "gore-nography" craze (SAW, HOSTEL, etc.) seems to be playing itself out, or at least down, and what audiences (and therefore producers) now claim to long for is some nice light uplifting fare. Which is not totally surprising, I guess: if your home is slipping toward foreclosure and your 401 just lost 40% of its value and your son just lost his job as a mortgage securities broker and now lives with you as he works as a WalMart greeter, apparently you're more likely to enjoy a story where two people fall in love and live happily ever after than you are a story where some suburban dude is kidnapped, strapped to a table and dismembered by strangers using meat cleavers. Go figure.

So I am back on the RomCom chain gang, and trying to get this long-stagnant idea (which exists in truly awful first draft form) back to speed and headed toward some form of enjoyable readability.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

And then of course there's the usual oddball assortment of other ideas and pipedreams which slow circle my mind like the Oort Cloud, but those are so remote and irrelevant for now that we'll just leave them for some other ranting update.

Bottom line: 2008 seems a washout in terms of useful selling and marketing, so it's best now to turn attention and effort to having as much firepower available to bring to bear on the start of the 2009 selling season (Mid-February). My hope -- my goal, my quest, my goddamned mission -- is to have a stack of undeniably cool and worthy scripts on the agent's desk by Valentines Day, so that I might then call and say "I am coming to town. Get me some meetings and then stand ready to ink some deals, as by God I'm taking scalps this year."

*spit*

(I mean, what the hell? It beats sitting around wallowing in self pity over the holiday season, right?)
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a sudden slack in the suck

2008-10-31T09:13:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, just as Hope seems a thing which you no longer even have the option of abandoning as it seems increasingly plain that Hope already long ago abandoned you, the shore break of a sea of troubles subsides for a moment and in bobs a corked bottle tossed your way by the Great Uncaring Universe, and inside you find some silly damned note scribbled carelessly in jumbo crayon, and you can only shake your head at the hateful way Dame Inspiration continues to tease and taunt you like that evil hot cheerleader bitch who wears those chartreuse wispy-thin nylon running shorts and always somehow manages to drop her pencil and smile back at you as she bends sloooowly to pick it up right in front of your desk as you are struggling with the final essay on the exam which might yet pull your flatline GPA back to something just barely acceptable.

Oh, and don't even pretend you don't know what I mean, you scabby lying bastards -- you know it only too well.

I am working on some crap and suddenly a metaphoric metamorphic rock flies through the open side window of my mind and a TITLE -- and I mean a really good damned one, the kind so good it makes you laugh and giggle and clap and run around the back yard with your arms out as you make zooming airplane noises perhaps complete with machine gun sounds -- appears before my bleary eyes.

"Oh... My... God...," I moan, shattered by the wonderfulness of the title. "That totally freakin' works."

And I have that flickering demi-moment of totally Naive Joy, and then that sliver of a moment is triple-bitchslapped to the pavement by the sudden impact of Cruel Understanding as I realize how the sheer GREATNESS of this title instantly and inevitably creates an unshakable obligation for me to actually DO something with the title, almost like someone has left a sick kitten on my doorstep.

And instantly the slack has passed and the suck then resumes, full force and extra crunchy.

"Fuuuuuucccckkkkk...."
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make of this what you will

2008-10-28T17:58:00.000-06:00

...but I find myself playing "Woodstock" by CSN over and over and over lately.

Actually, I understand it just fine, and it relates to a long slow simmering mega-post which yet might not see the light of public day.

You, however, remain free floating in cognitive limbo.

And we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden....
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AFF 2009

2008-10-28T11:38:00.000-06:00

Screenwriter's Conference: Thursday 22 October – Sunday 25 October

Get there.
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got passion?

2008-10-28T07:01:00.001-06:00

Was reminded last night -- while coaching a bunch of 8 year olds in fall baseball, of all places -- of what value I place upon "passion."

Not the clichéd overwrought flimsy disposable kind that gets squirted around like squeez cheez on the afternoon soap operas, but the more classical old school poet-warrior sort more akin to the original Latin root of the word, where "passio" meant "righteous suffering."

I'd missed the last two games for my squad -- one as I was out of town for a week for the Austin Film Festival, and then this past week as I was away leading a Cub Scout campout -- and in both games the team was reported to have played "flat." We won the first of those games, but not with the usuall verve and flash. The second of those games we lost 2-1 in a game where we managed 18 strikeouts in 18 at bats. In other words, the opposing team did not once field the ball or make a play -- we simply struck out every time (versus a pitching machine that throws strikes 80-90% of the time!). We rolled over and took a pointless loss against a team we'd easily manhandled earlier this season.

Last night our guys seemed flat again, and the first three innings showed us scoring zero runs, managing only two hits against 8 strikeouts (in 11 at bats).

And thus the team got The Return Of The Loud Guy.

I'm not some gung-ho "winning is the only thing" sorts of coaches, especially not in fall ball which is designed and intended as an instructional league. I rotate my players -- good and bad ones -- every inning, and everybody sits an innings, and everybody plays infield at least an inning or two every game. yes, this often costs us hits allowed and sometimes runs allowed, but my job is not to win imaginary trophies and championships in instructional league. My job is to teach these monkeys how to play baseball better.

And for me, you cannot engage in a sport (or any activity where there is competition and failure and heartbreak and joy and the requirement of focus and work and sweat) without that magical ingredient, passion.

So in the third inning I did something I've not had to do for a season or two: I told all the parents to walk away from the dugout, and then I barked once as my team to get their attention. After a second, they all became very quiet and saw that i was not wearing A Happy Face.

"Don't talk -- just raise your hands to answer me. Who's wearing a Red Sox jersey right now?"

All the hands went up.

"Who's wearing a Red Sox cap?"

All the hands went up.

"Who wants to turn in their jersey and cap and leave this dugout and not come back? 'Cuz that's the way you guys are playing."

Silence.

"We've got maybe one more trip through the order. Those guys over there are laughing and having a great time 'cuz you guys don't seem to care enough to even try. That's not what you've been taught, and that's not how you know to play. If you want to wear that jersey, and wear that cap, and sit in my dugout, you'd better start playing like you care about this team. Do you get it?"

"Yes, coach!"

"When they hit the ball, we catch the ball. When they run, we tag them. When we see a strike, we bang it. When we move, we move fast. Head in the game -- heart in the game. Every pitch, every play, every inning, every game. You got it?"

"We got it!"

"Then show me. Hats and gloves -- hit the field. NOW."

I'd like to say our team rallied for a thrilling comeback win. We didn't. We lost 9-1, but we did win the final inning.

Our post-game talk was calm and positive, and I thanked the guys for remembering how to play the game the way they are supposed to, but I also reminded them that it's waaaay too easy to fall back into the pattern of being lazy and uncaring.

"Here's the thing, guys: I don't care about the score, or who wins or who loses. What I care about -- what makes me come stand out here on a cool October night and scream and yell and stomp around -- is helping you guys understand how much a little effort and a little heart can do."

Afterwards, a few parents snuck over to thank me for tearing into the kids. That always surprises me, as I half-expect some of these parents to say "we don't really like Little Jimmy ever having anyone suggest that he's not perfect as-is." Instead, they seem oddly appreciative that some weird big stranger is (gently) tearing their kid a new one... even while that kid clearly never gets any remotely similar message or treatment at home.

And yes this relates to writing.

Actually, it relates to pretty much everything. Something I've noticed increasingly in recent years is the way that passion -- intense focused effort and desire -- seems more and more rare, especially among younger males. It's as if the very notion of intensity and passion is somehow an ugly thought, and that we were meant to spend our lives in some sort of stuporiffic waking coma, where we smile politely and just let whatever happens happen, with nary a thought, word, or care.

Fuck that.

There are things in this life worth working for. Worth fighting for, and suffering for. In fact, I dare say most all of the truly good and worthwhile things we might ever have opportunity to pursue fall into this class of thing: something worthy of passion.

And I'm to the point where I very much distrust any adult incapable of summoning some real passion for something in their life. Life is too amazingly cool and potentially brief to sleepwalk through your one turn on stage. Find something you care about, and then care 'til it hurts, Throw yourselves into things with gleeful reckless abandon, and stay connected to that delicious child-like joy that comes from a really awesome wipeout. Make a mess. Make a crater. Make some noise. Make a bit of a fool of yourself. Pain don't hurt near as bad as do shame or regret. Go hard or go home.

So, the moral of today's pomposity is "passion: it's a good thing." It will serve you well, and at the very least will scare the hell out of a good chunk of those you find yourselves competing against.

Get some.
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AFF 2008 in stream of subconsciousness replay

2008-10-23T12:08:00.002-06:00

Drizzle on the road into town ... late arrival, early traffic ... Jamie made his flight ... Driskill smells like home ... Shawna Shawna Shawna ... Ryan and Crymes in the lounge ... calling Robyn "Tori" ... Howdy, Mr. Beal ... Lisa and Jude ... calling Tori "Robyn" ... Deborah totes a big bag ... chicken enchiladas at Iron Horse Cantina ... bock me, amadeus ... heinous accusations of snoring ... a line around Starbucks ... a new room again for registration sign-in ... Julie O at the airport ... Tina Richey Swanson Jingleheimer Schmitt.. Jimmie Miller and shepherd's pie ... John Turman ... Mikey exists ... new phone charger ... pear cider and quesadillas at Buffalo's ... loved Hollywood Shuffle, Mr. Townsend ... Driskill Hotel Bar ... opening night party at Mohawk ... what's Vivi smiling about? ... stay thirsty, my friends ... Emerson Max and the Boston Ponytail ... Shane Black and the fine art of reluctantly sincere hetero man-hugging ... another pint of Guinness ... Big Jon from St Louis ... Linnea hates to like me ... Aren't you Mr. Moosecock? ... Maggie Biggar has a cute laugh ... Dawn the cool Philly Producer Babe ... everybody wants a romcom ... Julianna Ferrell ... Mikey is a nappin' machine ... Starbuck me ... Dan Petrie and Terry Rossio flanking Polly "Yukon" Platt ... KASDAN! ... John August knows a lot of stuff ... fish tacos at Marisco Grill ... Mizzou in the hizzy ... telling Terry I'm stealing his woman again ... Brian Anderson appears ... a pint of Fireman's #4 ... what's Vivi smiling about? ... "MUY TAI, MUTHERFUCKER!" ... Turman and Shane and Rossio ... Lauren and Dave! ... the other party sucks ... beer me, Sean ... why, thank you ... be quiet, Tori ... evenin', Mr. Skerritt ... a beer? For me? Well, if you insist ... that'll do, Mr. Cromwell-- that'll do ... another beer? well, OK ... the new circumcision is looking good, man! ... woman are cool ... Moosecockier: this time, it's personal ... gooooodnight, ireeeene ... more throw pillows than square feet ... early sure comes early here ... "is that a banana and a granola bar and a cellphone in your pocket, or are you just really hung?" ... Farrell and Soderstrom do a really good job ... what the hell kind of name for a grown-up is "Kiwi" anyway? ... leading the lunch parade to nowhere ... chicken schwarma and a "Focus" VitaminWater ... the magical mystery room on the second and a half floor ... LAWRENCE FUCKING KASDAN! ... Big Chill and Battletech ... weeping to meet your hero ... Kring and Rossio and Turman and Black oh my ... the French Legation and BBQ ... Jana Kramer is freakin' gorgeous ... gimme a green bottle this time ... what's Vivi smiling about? ... Bever, BBQ, and beer ... howdy, Mr. Weingrod ... Englebert the Bull seems lost in thought ... damned t-sips ... free Dos Equis with half of the Fabulous Benson Sisters ... sure, I'll drink another beer with you ... buried 'neath an avalanche of babes ... waving off attempts to be rescued from being buried 'neath aforementioned avalanche ... closing night at Buffalo Billiards ... "how did you lose FIVE women at the same time?" ... Moosecockiest: The Final Chapter ... Dawn on the sofa, Terry on the windowsill ... bodypainting and windmills and things better left unseen ... "sounds interesting -- you have my contact info, right?" ... last man to leave ... aloha, Max ... damned t-sips ... "sure she's still awake -- it's only 2 am, right?" ... "OK, so maybe that was not the best idea of the night..." ... did anyone ever figure out who that dude with us was? ... "it's 5:30 am? for real? oh shit..." ... falling into bed exactly as Mikey is getting up ... the goodbyes begin ... a three and a half wheeled cab ride to the Hair Of The Dog ... bailing on the Hair Of The Dog and walking back ... best secret brunch buffet in town ... Turman and Thorne give really good panel ... Seth and a lukewarm veggieburger ... hugging foreheads over a babygrand ... winding down at the pita place ... Shane Black preaches and we all sing HALLELUJAH ... "you, sir, are a fuckin' rock star" ... "when are you coming to LA?..." ... "And now it's time to say goodbye... to the summer..." vs "this is the end... my only friend, the end..." ... "you're MARRIED?!!!..." ... some good friends hugged, some makeup smeared, some sleeves schmutzed ... "time to turn back into a pumpkin for another 361 days..." ... "we gotta find a place to meet this year..." ... some friends into cabs, some friends to the airport, some more weepy goodbyes ... a long drive home in silence, wanting to burn every second into hard long term memory ... total and complete exhaustion ... what were those dates for 2009?....

-=-=-

AFF 2008. Yeah, I was very there.
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and then... darkness

2008-10-22T21:17:00.001-06:00

I am so tired I can hardly believe it.

It's not surprising or unusual or unprecedented: I routinely go to Austin (Film Fest) and switch on to some sort of nitro boost where I can rage for the entire event on 2 or 3 hours of sleep per day, but as soon as the final gun sounds I complete that drive home... Bretty needs a recuperative coma.

So the blog posts post-Austin are slow in coming this week. Apologies, except, I'm not really sorry. None of you pissants is putting even the thinnest sliver of coin into my Super Dennis jeans, so you can just sit there and wait.

Heh.
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slumber luvin' B

Austin: notice of safe return

2008-10-20T10:00:00.000-06:00

Oy.

Well, the Austin Film Festival -- or, more properly, the Screenwriter's Conference portion of the AFF -- has again come and gone, and I am back at home on the real world.

The conference was, as it has always been, a bizarre and surprisingly affecting experience. I know some folks -- even some of my friends who were there and experiencing the very same moments -- will scrunch their eyebrows and wonder "what the hell is he on about THIS time...", but for me, the AFF conference truly is a miraculous ride. It's never so much about the technical learning as it is about the revelation and self-discovery and re-dedication that goes on during and as a result. To hear people whose work and career and dedication you respect and admire and envy and stand in slack-jawed awe for... and realize that they are nothing at all very different than you are, and that they have many of the very same demons and dreams as you do... is a wildly affirming and inspiring thing.

At least it is for me.

I'll not launch into an overlong review and babble-fest of all the arcane minutiae and miscellania of this year's conference -- that will come soon enough -- but I will say this: I love that event, and I will keep coming back so long as there is any possibility for me to make such happen.
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the choice is clear

2008-10-09T10:40:00.000-06:00

After due consideration, the editorial board of a bucket of love now stands ready to endorse a candidate in the looming Presidential debacle:

[this message paid for by CREAP -- the Committee to RE-Animate the President]
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sick of politics B

juggling 17 balls... in a stiff wind

2008-10-03T10:31:00.000-06:00

That's how it feels right now.

Fall baseball is underway, and after the confusion and rescheduling caused by Hurricane Ike, we're forced to have 3 games in four days to start the season, with no time for review or learning after the first game or two -- hardly the best or preferred way to run 'instructional" league baseball.

Scouts is also scrambling to make up for missed and jumbled time in the unexpected week-long "hurri-cation," so suddenly all sorts of events have been compressed and rescheduled, adding more confusion.

School is fumbling to make up the lost week, with homework and assignments seemingly running at 25% overdrive right now.

And then last weekend one of our two family vehicles died on the side of the road, and despite a great factory warranty and an expensive extended warranty, it took four days (not at the selling dealership) to basically find that we needed to RE-tow the car back to the selling dealership if we were going to get ANY sort of attention to the relatively minor issues, so here we are on DAY FIVE of trying to coordinate insane daily and nightly logistics for a family of six.

Meanwhile, the expected and repeatedly promised return phone call from The Agent has yet to materialize, the director/producer who claimed to want to hire me for a gig is not responding to phone or email, SAG-AFTRA seem eager to have a strike of their own (and thereby deny me yet a few more months in which I might maybe finally be allowed the privilege of being ignored by major studios and producers...).

The mower is acting up. Weeds are creeping into the backyard. Fire ants are mounting an autumn offensive. Garage and home are a disaster area. And I need to get back into shape.

Oh, and Austin Film Fest is coming up in less than two weeks, and now even THEY are starting to annoy me with their uncharacteristically shabby treatment of pro writer pals of mine.

I had a beer the other night, and I didn;t even enjoy it.

Yes -- things are that bad.

wrestling the rubber croc

2008-09-24T13:58:00.000-06:00

For reasons which are simultaneously exhilarating and exasperating, I am forcing myself — at psychic spearpoint — to get back into the routine of regular serious useful writing. It's been a weird and frustrating year so far, and a lot of stuff seems to have not so much stalled as just hung up, as if it's in need of Force Quit and Restart ("Is it doing something? Or is it just sitting there frozen? What's the real difference?").

But now I am back well and truly Into The Shit, and as I try to get this goofy campy monster project back up to speed I had this weird image to visually analogize what this feels like: wrestling a rubber crocodile in a low-budget movie shoot.

I'm exhausted from fighting this large and ridiculous thing. To make anything look or seem right I have to keep a straight face as I do what in any other moment or context would be a series of really overly broad and ridiculous actions. I have to make it seem totally real and sincere, yet do so with the knowledge and understanding that everyone who ever sees it will understand that it is NOT totally real and sincere, but is in fact totally ridiculous. And after every take, every pass, I get to re-set and prep myself for another run at this ungainly inflatable bad boy.

"Great, great -- now, once more... THIS TIME WITH FEELING!"

Oy.
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rubber reptile rangler B

misery loves company

2008-09-21T11:23:00.001-06:00

McSweeneys.com hosts DFW remembrances and thoughts.

It's a strange sort of grief I am wrestling with here. I never met David Foster Wallace nor can I claim that he ever read a word or note from me, nor can I claim that he somehow saved me from myself. But I do know that for most of the past 20 years his work had served as a sort of beacon, a light in the darkness which gave direction and showed that there is some order out there, some purpose and point to slogging forward -- somebody else made it through to the other side, therefore so might you.

The best line I can think of to describe how it feels to think of DFW right now actually comes from a movie:

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend. "
-- "Red," in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

Reading through those notes of and to Dave, I realize how I am not alone in hating the word "goodbye."
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where an odd circle completes itself

2008-09-19T14:06:00.001-06:00

Pardon the double posting today, but I stumbled into a rather propitious moment of synchronicity and feel honor-bound to acknowledge it.

The earlier post today was about online bloviation and the sad comfort most all of us feel about braying our thoughts out to the world.

A previous post this week noted the tragic (IMO) passing of writer David Foster Wallace, a man most folks universally hailed as one of the modern geniuses in American literature.

As luck would have it, I ran across a full text of DFW's epic brilliant commencement address to Kenyon College, where he grabbed the graduates by the lapels and demanded that they stay ever-vigilant against intellectual and emotional laziness and self-absorption; that human tendency to always presume happily that whatever we believe is of course correct and proper.

When I read the address (cited in its entirety below), I find myself almost cheering at numerous points as Wallace repeats ideas and concepts and philosophies I have long held near and dear, ideas and notions I arrived at through the course of bizarre decades of self-analysis and recrimination and abuse.

I find address to be one of the more brilliant and beautiful things I have ever read.

Commencement Address to Kenyon College
from David Foster Wallace
(given May 21, 2005)

If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

Amen, hallelujah, and damn you for leaving early, Dave.

too much noise

2008-09-19T12:00:00.000-06:00

I s'pose it's the other side of the coin.

I was just watching a cool little vid over on MySpace (and no, I'm not posting the link-- if you can't find MySpace without me having to hand-code a damned convoluted link into HTML code, then what business do you have with a modem any damned way?) where Diablo Cody was interviewing John Cusack in an odd little 4 minute tete-a-tete shot over someone's rustic dining room harvest table, and Cody (it just sounds too strange to refer to a funny woman as "Diablo") was remarking on how cool it is that with the blog culture you can just sidestep "The Man" and say what you need to say.

And that all sounds great, and of course in my half-distracted state some portion of my brain is doing like Cusack was, just sorta absent-mindedly nodding passive agreement out of politeness, until a few minutes later when I poked my head into one of the (too) many discussion boards I lurk on and found a bewilderingly active series of arguments about... utter bullshit.

Now, I'm not going to describe which board I am referring to. Nor will I describe the debate itself, as that would only help to specify which circle of erstwhile "friends" (and that's the online kind, and not the real kind) has the strongest cause to feel insulted and slighted. Instead, I'll keep it vague enough that pretty much ALL of my discussion board "posses" (yes, I am phat with a P-H) will now glare at me, abso-damned sure that I was talking about THEM.

My point -- and, again, I do have one -- is that this ability to sidestep The Man (as Cody described it) is a double-edged sword. Yes, with the internet we ALL now get to express our opinion without first having to gain support and approval. But is that really so all-fired wonderful?

I'm not so sure.

I think a strong case could be made for the value of gatekeepers and doormen and judges of all stripe, those folks who stand as the intellectual equivalent to the amusement park clown painting telling us "you must be THIS TALL to ride this coaster!". In the old days, when dinosaurs walked the earth and journalists still worked on that quaint substance once known as "paper," the opinions which managed to make it into print for dissemination had all been first vetted by someone whose vocation it was to, ya know, write and shit.

Nowadays online we get flubbering blubbering 4 pound essays on foreign policy from people who in real life are not qualified to cut their own meat.

Don't call me a fascist (or, if you do, at least have some specific factual support or a solid claim on being understood as joking friend) -- I am not saying that people do not have a right to an opinion on any bit of philosophical tinfoil or intellectual twine which grabs their fancy for any span of seconds. Instead, I am saying that just because someone has an opinion does not mean that anyone else should have to suffer listening to it.

There is so much absolutely worthless drivel posted online these days -- almost always under the protective cover of "opinion" -- that it truly boggles the mind when you pause to consider it. Think about how self-absorbed and lazy we have become that we feel greater need to spend three days arguing about Lindsey Lohan's latest oddness than we do in helping people in our community affected by some natural disaster. More drive to slapfight over who is the best BATMAN than we can summon to actually improve our own lives or those of anyone we know or see. More fire in the belly to argue Coke vs Pepsi than we have to achieve some long-hidden dream.

There is so much we could do.

But instead of actually doing it, we blog about it.

Hell yes, irony noted.
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warning: you are now reading an UN-verified blog

2008-09-18T15:28:00.001-06:00

So says FaceBook.

For reasons which totally escape me, I am listed in their Blog Network (no, I do not know what that means), but even after verifying that yes I am the author of this here bloggish thing, and even after some folks agreed that yes I am the author of this here bloggish type thing, and even after sending out the requisite emails and invites and twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, apparently I am still not full and totally verified (and no, I do not know what that means, either), so I am putting it to you fine folks to rescue me from this possibly unfortunate state of affairs by going over to FaceBook and operating the various foot pedals and hand levers and oral appliances and nasal inserts in whatever particular manner is required to finally completely amazingly verify me so that I might commence to enjoyifying the rare and glorious benefits, rights, benefits and honors attendant with such shimmering gold-framed status (and no, I do not know what that means, either).

Still -- thanks.

I think.
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r.i.p.: david foster wallace

2008-09-14T22:58:00.002-06:00

It's hard to explain how sad his (apparent) suicide makes me feel.

I've read a lot of DFWs work, but I will not try and describe him in terms of his place in the hall of American letters -- there are others of far more secure academic standing who can (and surely will) do that far better than I'd ever manage. Just glancing at the names most often mentioned in comparison says all one needs to know about the man's stature and standing: you don't get compared to Joyce, Pynchon, or Coover lightly or without hellacious cause.

Instead of trying to explain Wallace by what he was everywhere else, I'll instead say what he as for me: easily the most volcanic and thrilling wordsmith I have ever had the pleasure to read.

While I can't claim to have loved his every work -- his epic modern classic INFINITE FEST, for example, seemed like it was defiantly in need of a tough editor, and Wallace was just curious to see if anyone had the balls to say so -- I can state this much with conviction: never did I read anything from David Foster Wallace where I didn't (at least a few times and usually very many) just smile and shake my head in jealous marvel at the way the man could make words dance on the wind; where I didn't say to myself "man, I really need to sharpen my A-game unless I wanna look like a dyslexic chimp by comparison"; where I didn't want to just stand and scream "NOW THAT'S HOW YOU MOTHERFUCKING SLING THE LANGUAGE AROUND!"

The guy was a walking bag of contradictions: raised in "Normal, Illinois," he became the Next Great American Literary Legend, yet he seemed absolutely dedicated to shooting holes in his own legend as often as possible. He'd pen travel articles for magazines even as he was working on epic literary works. He could make make a totally average member of the pro tennis tour somehow seem heroic and tragic, then pen a piece of literary criticism where he made all modern fiction seem like the most flimsy and useless waste of ink ever attempted. He was the hermit king who avoided all acclaim and notoriety, opting for a horsehair shirt teaching post in Pomona -- Pomona! -- rather than a comfy endowed chair at some storied ivy draped "name" institution.

And this past week, at age 46, for reasons not yet clear, he decided to hang himself and deny us any more of his wild brilliance.

All I know is that it will be a long long time before we're likely to have anyone with his rare skill -- his ability to somehow seem both sacred and profane, profound and mundane, romantic yet nihilistic, all even in the same sentence -- pass our way again.

God, how I will miss the chance to see what else he might ever have written. It surely would have dazzled, that much I know for absolute certain.
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Hurricane Ike: The Aftermath

2008-09-14T12:21:00.000-06:00

Well, we came through pretty much unscathed. Some slight trivial amount of water on the floor (the backdoor was apparently unable to totally hold back 8 hours of rain driven by 80 mph winds), but nothing else.

Some neighbors had some wall planking torn away, exposing the attic and the interior ceiling of the kitchen, but a bunch of us jumped in to staple up tarps and boards to seal it as best could be managed. Some fences down, and across the road the ext neighborhood over had some houses lose their shingling.

Lots of trees toppled. Lots of signage and awnings are laying in parking lots or in streets or in yards. Lots of fences shattered and splintered. Streets choked with debris and leaves, but truly horrific damage locally (we're 30 miles due west of downtown, and caught a less ugly portion of the storm). Schools are closed on Monday at least, and advisements coming for possible extended closures.

In Houston, 2 million people are without power. We lost ours for about 20 hours -- as the storm came on, then through the night and into the day after -- but now have lights and working refrigerators and blessed sweet heavenly air conditioning.

Roads are dangerous due to glass and nails everywhere, so sightseeing is dangerous, gasoline is in short supply, power lines are down all over, cars are stalled out, water remains over key sections of highways (especially through downtown and to the E and S), phone and cell service is erratic. Stores report problems with supplies, refrigerating, and lighting. Ice is a commodity some people will physically fight over (I had to help calm down two gents about to get physical over the last 5 pound bag of ice at Target).

Galveston looks to be a total mess, but since I still have no satellite service for the TV (winds apparently knocked the dish out of whack), I'm not seeing the live local coverage that might give a full picture.

What's wild is to look on the internet and see that for most of the country, life goes on as normal. What seems like an "end of the world" event for us in the Houston area is largely a regional concern. Some of us were talking over beers in the driveway yesterday, worried that Sean Penn and his rescue boat were having trouble getting to town, as nobody has yet seen the actor attempting to again render aid in his outboard-powered U-boat.

But hope springs eternal.
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Not the post I had started

2008-09-11T08:15:00.000-06:00

I actually had another post started when I realized I'd rather just mention this stupid damned 'Hurricane Ike" thing.

As I write this (Thursday afternoon, 11 Sept 08), there's a Category 2 storm out there bearing down with a projected path right over the top of my house (seriously: we might get to take the kids outside to look up through the eye and then scurry back for cover-- fun!). By the time this beast makes landfall, she'll likely be bringing sustained winds of 115 mph or so, which means by the time the storm covers the roughly 90 miles from the shore to my house, we'll likely still be having 70 mph sustained for 8-15 hours, along with the usual insane torrential rains -- somewhere between 6 and 30 inches worth.

Unlike Rita, which, coming as it did on the immediate heels of the Katrina debacle, scared a few million Houston area folks to panic onto the freeways, creating a nightmare of jammed up traffic which thankfully was spared all but a tiny bit of the storm, this time, this storm seems to be getting a nice steely eyed calm and level headed degree of proportionate fear. People are prepping, but there's none of the wide-eyed panic seen with Rita.

Hardware stores have long lines of people stocking up on plywood and sheetgoods to protect windows, but there's no mad crush.

Gas stations are running low and sometimes out, but resupply is happeneing. I was just at the neighborhood Shell station, for example, where I'd seen a line of cars getting their tanks topped off (always a good idea in such situations, in case you HAVE to go and go now...), but when I pulled in all the pumps were empty-- sold out. I bought a drink, and as I started my car I saw a tanker truck-- followed by a half dozen expectant cars and vans following him to wherever he was delivering -- so I quickly slid in to a pump and waited the 7 minutes til he was offloading to the tanks. I got the car filled and by the time I left, there were 50 cars lined up out into the streets.

As I was paying, I asked the manager how much they'd sold.

"We took 8000 gallons this morning, and it was gone by lunchtime. That's another 9000 gallons he's giving us, and it will probably be gone before dark."

We've stored everything that could be lifted by the wind and sent flying through a windshield or window.

We have food. Flashlights. Water. Ice and meat in the freezer. Canned goods, extra bread and crackers. A radio that works.

Beer.

School is cancelled tomorrow and all events cancelled through the weekend. I hope we wind up bored out of our minds, but I worry that we'll have more than enough excitement.

So for now, we pretty much sit here, kinda marveling at how normal and calm things are -- beautiful sky, light breeze, a little warmer than normal -- and watch the radar updates as a huge roaring bastard of a storm chugs right at us from somewhere just over the southeastern horizon.
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change is what's comin'

2008-09-05T09:50:00.001-06:00

Sometimes our external climate mirrors what winds blow within.

Yesterday morning we had our first cool front of the year. I awoke to find blue skies, a nice breeze, and temperatures hanging around 70 degrees -- a radical departure for the oppressive mildew-matic stuff we get in Houston from late April until... well, October, usually: temps in the mid 90s, humidity fluctuating damply between 50% and infinity, with a two MPH breeze straight up (I am often reminded of the line about Vietnam: "the wind doesn't blow -- it sucks."). 30% chance of mostly afternoon thunderstorms, some possibly severe, with the possibility of localized street flooding.

I love Texas and I actually like that oppressive summer weather in the same perverse way that Green Bay fans love the Antarctic conditions at Lambeau on a frozen January evening. It's a test, where the weather gods cull the righteous from the wimpious.

But heroic endurance can get a tad tiresome after months of just standing there, sweat spraying off you like a sprinkler, as your scalp crackles and cooks like bacon and your eyes slowly dry up into raisins rattling in your eye sockets and every breath feels as though you had to wrestle it through a barber's towel pulled fresh from the steamer basket. I mean, I can take it -- no problem no complaints -- but sometimes it's nice to be reminded that all things change, turn turn turn, etc.

My point -- and, per usual, I have one, though it's slow in coming and obscured to the point of invisibility -- is that regardless of how well you can adapt and endure, it's important to not become so blasé and jaded and detached from things that you lose all track of time, of the need to adapt and evolve and move forward.

Yes, this is analogy, kids. Or allegory. Perhaps metaphor with a light drizzle of allusion.

I was reading a great -- and I do mean fantastic -- piece in Harvard Business Review (hey-- I'm classy and shit!) where Ed Catmull, one of the co-founders of PiXAR Pictures, discusses "How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity". (Seriously-- go read it. Now. Take notes.)

One of the (numerous) brilliant strengths PiXAR boasts is a now-fully-ingrained institutional wariness of complacency -- the tendency to start feeling proud of how great and smart and wonderful you are and to then lower your guard against stupid mistakes and clumsy blindness to important advances, improvements, and changes:

"[W]hen continual change, or reinvention, is the norm in an organization and technology and art are together, magical things happen."

-- Ed Catmull, founder, PiXAR Pictures, in Harvard Business Review

Catmull is speaking about companies and organizations, but what's so brilliant about his essay is that the concepts and advice are every bit as sound and efficacious for use by individuals. Just as companies and organizations (and governments) can become prone to hubris and dangerous belief in their eternal infallibility, so can people. Me. You. Them.

I coach a lot of youth sports (and no that's not a non sequitor. One of the things I most love about coaching kids is their malleability, their openness to change and improvement. Sure, they often think they know how to do something, but they also are young enough to still be very attuned to the concept of education and change. You can still teach kids new things, and they still are largely ego-free in their willingness to accept these lessons and bits of advice and suggestion.

One of the hallmarks of "maturity" is that day when your brain starts to close off the gates to new ideas and starts to say "OK-- we've learned enough. Stop sending us new ideas. We don;t want or even need any more of them. We're perfectly content to sit here and run using the system and software we have in place."

Now, if you imagine someone sitting there using an Apple IIe computer, running software from floppy disks and looking at a monochrome monitor, you easily understand how this refusal to adapt any further can lead to real problems and even potential dangerous inability to function.

Yet most people seem incapable of looking at their own actions and attitudes and patterns of behavior with that same degree of objective detachment. They don't want to recognize that they've become complacent, or lazy, or that they have strayed badly from the course they intended to follow.

So lately I've been getting that itchy feeling in the pit of my soul. I've often described it as that restlessness that a wild goose must feel when that first cool breeze hits and some part of their brain starts signaling "time to think about heading south."

Time for change.

And not all change has to be Earth-shattering or so dramatic that anyone else even notices. Sometimes even tiny mid-course twitches to the helm are enough to affect a course change that makes a huge long term difference.

But you have to remain open and aware to the possible needfulness of such changes, major or minor. You have to stand willing to give your precious damned Ego a timeout and send it to its room for fifteen minutes so the adults can have A Serious Conversation. Sometimes we have to take stock of where we are, what we are doing, what we are pursuing, and honestly -- objectively, with cold-hearted ruthless detachment -- say "here's an area where we can do better."

It's been an interesting year for me. But nothing is "done" or "over" or even "achieved." Life is, as ever, what comes next, and I either keep chugging relentlessly towards constant improvement and progress, or I become a freezeframe in the ongoing movie of my own life. Work habits need a hard analysis and review. Dedication needs a review. Commitment needs to have its tank topped off. "What am I doing, and why? What is the goal, and what is the plan to achieve that goal? What am I doing which might be impeding me from achieving these goals? How can I do better -- BE better?"

Tough questions, mostly because corrections require change, and change is scary and takes work, and as a general class of beings, humans are lazy, cowardly, and self-deluding.

Change. Either you embrace it, pursue it, long for it and demand it and chase it down with voracious tenacity, or you stand at very real risk of becoming a sad and static cliché, incapable of adapting to the world as it exists around you and slowly moves forward without you.

Onwards, my pretties.
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blah -- never mind

2008-09-01T10:24:00.000-06:00

I had another post almost ready.

About writing. And websites. And politics. And people (mostly the stupid kind). And hurricanes and New Orleans and complaint and hindsight and dedication and respect and music and kids and love and chili and beer and the end of hope and the beginning of same and regret and pride and toenails and Yo Yo Ma and two-cycle engines and at least three other holistically connected topics, and my god it was a thing of rare beauty and wonder, and it might well have changed not only your political view but your personal grooming habits and choice of beverages as well.

It was just that good.

But, I decided to delete it and post this instead.

Yes, I have my reasons.

No, you may not have those reasons.

You may instead just marvel at the wonder and spectacle of all which might -- maybe -- have been.

Time to make PBnJs x5.
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