I have an odd rep among folks sentenced to deal with me on a regular basis in the real world: I'm not seen as a "bad" guy, per se, but there seems to be some never-quite-articulated understanding that I'm not eligible for membership on the "good" guy rolls, either. One friend (shaddup—I have friends... so far as you know) described me as "the most likable asshole" he'd ever met.
So I got that going for me.
The thing is, I'm always having to explain to people that I am not especially impressed by people who seem to be nice just for the sake of being nice, as sometimes there's damned good reason to not be nice, and if you're one of those ass-puckered types who drives around with a "MEAN PEOPLE SUCK" sticker on the back window of the medium-beige family OldsmoBuick and feels half-compelled to cover the ears and go LA LA LA LA! every time someone starts the old "There once was a man from Nantucket" line, then chances are you and I just aren't going to have a love connection, cha-cha.
No, I tend to prefer people with a little bit more... zing. A little more snarl and bite, and given that I'm sure we're all pretty damned sick and tired of the italics, I'll just cut to the chase and say it point blank:
I like smart aleck assholes with a touch of a mean streak.
So when I stumbled across these two blog sites, I was a happy little asshole.
Evil Editor
Miss Snark
Both of these fine snarling folks work in the lit biz as agents, and for those who don't understand (or have never had reason to care in the first place), theirs is a world where the sadly desperate come knocking all day long, hoping to find a publisher. And when the desperate squat huddled over a word processor for years, banging away on some mediocre (or much worse) pile of words they truly believe will be The Next Big Thing down at Barnes & Noble, agents often become the first outside eyes (in other words, "not the writer's mom/wife/best friend") to gaze upon the verbal shitstorm.
There's a reason agents and publishing types seem so cynical: they gaze into the maw of Hell itself on a daily basis. They get to read the heartbreakingly inept cries for attention and pleas for approval submitted by folks whose desire is real yet whose ability to pursue those desires seems tragically limited.
Or nonexistent.
Both Evil Editor and Miss Snark post queries and pitches and letters and respond with what some folks will see as hateful sarcastic abuse. I happen to find their comments and criticisms both hilarious and educational. I also find these comments a little bit tragic, since the people who most badly need to see and hear the hard brutal truth are often the least enabled to recognize it for such, preferring instead to ignore such capital-T Truth as just mean-spirited childish sniping, or arrogant insulting abuse abuse.
Life is hard, my pretties, and if you have serious hopes of sailing the wide wondrous seas of cheese out there, sooner or later you will have to let go of Mommy's hand and wander out to Where The Wild Things Are. And when you do, you will find that there are mean folks who care enough to try and help, and then there are mean people who care just enough to point and laugh.
A wise man once screamed "it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll." If you are serious about having your creative output seen and judged by those who might help your career, there will come a time when you reveal yourself as having either sufficiently thick skin or an overly thick skull.
Swing by Evil Editor and Miss Snark to watch some of this sorting happen in real time.
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B
just another online spittoon
06 May 2006
24 April 2006
there might well be something wrong with me
When I am writing on a serious project, there's this pair of voices doing bad vaudeville jokes in the back of my brain.
My conscious mind will be clenched into a fist, trying to squeeze artistic blood from the creative turnip, and meanwhile Shecky and Mo are sniggering from the back row like Beavis and Butthead channeling the The Old Guys in The Muppet Show.
I'm reluctant to even mention this in public, as the three or seven times I've previously described this odd situation to real life friends, I get this look of genuine concern and confusion, like I just happened to say "oh, by the way-- my doc says I have smallpox. Pass the ketchup."
Still, sometimes the annoying bastards say something that makes me laugh (like they did a minute ago, hurling a painfully childish dirty pun at me which I had to write down for possible future use), and at those points I have to turn around inside my head and wave at them to settle down before they get us all into trouble. But still...
Is this strange?
Curious Larger Question: if you were truly and deeply disturbed, would you even be able to notice it? Or would what you call normal only seem odd or abnormal to everyone else and would seem absolutely unremarkable to you?
Talk amongst yourselves. *I* always do.
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yours in good mental hygiene B
My conscious mind will be clenched into a fist, trying to squeeze artistic blood from the creative turnip, and meanwhile Shecky and Mo are sniggering from the back row like Beavis and Butthead channeling the The Old Guys in The Muppet Show.
I'm reluctant to even mention this in public, as the three or seven times I've previously described this odd situation to real life friends, I get this look of genuine concern and confusion, like I just happened to say "oh, by the way-- my doc says I have smallpox. Pass the ketchup."
Still, sometimes the annoying bastards say something that makes me laugh (like they did a minute ago, hurling a painfully childish dirty pun at me which I had to write down for possible future use), and at those points I have to turn around inside my head and wave at them to settle down before they get us all into trouble. But still...
Is this strange?
Curious Larger Question: if you were truly and deeply disturbed, would you even be able to notice it? Or would what you call normal only seem odd or abnormal to everyone else and would seem absolutely unremarkable to you?
Talk amongst yourselves. *I* always do.
.
.
.
yours in good mental hygiene B
23 April 2006
mewling into the abyss
Though it might seem hard to believe based upon the double ass-load of verbiage I have dumped herebouts onto this pockmarked side street of the Information Superhighway (and yes, I absolutely intend to be the last person still abusing that metaphor), I remain ambivalent about this entire "blogging" thing. Yeah, there are some blogs which have somehow found some sort of rhythm, a sense of purpose and raison d'etre, but on the whole, most blogs remains glorified diaries thrown open for potential reading by any random half-interested passer-by.
I likely stand as guilty as anyone on this charge — I know I've made more than a few (ahem) slightly self-absorbed posts on this thing, commenting about what I was watching or eating or thinking or digging from my toenails, as if somehow there are crowds of people pacing nervously wondering about these issues.
But still... in those odd moments when I force myself to look inward with any degree of objectivity — any glimmer of honest detached brutal honesty — I realize that most of these blog posts are little more that sad lonely cries in the darkness. For the most part we humans are just six billion hairless monkeys trapped on a damp rock, doing our best to not utterly humiliate ourselves with every thought, word and deed as we stumble through the daily grind. Our curse and crowning glory is that we have the capacity (or perhaps just audacity) to dream of possibly being more. Cattle suffer no delusions of grandeur: they are cows, and they are content to remain cows.
Humans, on the other hand, understand their own pathetic nature, they recognize their own personal irrelevancy in The Big Picture, and, like prima donnas everywhere, they plot and scheme at ways to claim a bigger better part in the production. Some found software empires, ruthlessly dominate the world market in operating systems en route to becoming the world's richest hairless monkey, and then hire a PR flack to help improve your image in the eyes of the other monkeys (in teh end, 99% of all human behavior seems to stem from a child-like desire to be liked).
Others don't have the opportunity, insight, and dumb luck to fall into such situations, so our stabs at likeability are limited to such sad little projects as congressional runs and blogsites.
I just spent the morning strolling randomly among three dozen blogs — some of them from folks I know, the majority from strangers — and I was struck by one common trait among the vast majority of those sites: there sure are a lot of people out there who seem desperate to have someone — anyone — pat them on the back and say "that's interesting." Because I think most of us realize — in those dark private moments when we have only the ugly self-loathing voices screaming at us — that we're not as endlessly fascinating and amusing and insightful and enlightened and informed and interesting as we like to imagine.
But when we hide behind a keyboard, we don't have to confront that. Instead, we can focus on the one or two commenters who offer some sort of crumb of validation, rather than those other 6 billion hairless monkeys who couldn't possibly care less.
Somehow, I find that both heartbreaking and hilarious at the same time.
And as I said, I absolutely confess to being as guilty as anyone on this charge.
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B
I likely stand as guilty as anyone on this charge — I know I've made more than a few (ahem) slightly self-absorbed posts on this thing, commenting about what I was watching or eating or thinking or digging from my toenails, as if somehow there are crowds of people pacing nervously wondering about these issues.
But still... in those odd moments when I force myself to look inward with any degree of objectivity — any glimmer of honest detached brutal honesty — I realize that most of these blog posts are little more that sad lonely cries in the darkness. For the most part we humans are just six billion hairless monkeys trapped on a damp rock, doing our best to not utterly humiliate ourselves with every thought, word and deed as we stumble through the daily grind. Our curse and crowning glory is that we have the capacity (or perhaps just audacity) to dream of possibly being more. Cattle suffer no delusions of grandeur: they are cows, and they are content to remain cows.
Humans, on the other hand, understand their own pathetic nature, they recognize their own personal irrelevancy in The Big Picture, and, like prima donnas everywhere, they plot and scheme at ways to claim a bigger better part in the production. Some found software empires, ruthlessly dominate the world market in operating systems en route to becoming the world's richest hairless monkey, and then hire a PR flack to help improve your image in the eyes of the other monkeys (in teh end, 99% of all human behavior seems to stem from a child-like desire to be liked).
Others don't have the opportunity, insight, and dumb luck to fall into such situations, so our stabs at likeability are limited to such sad little projects as congressional runs and blogsites.
I just spent the morning strolling randomly among three dozen blogs — some of them from folks I know, the majority from strangers — and I was struck by one common trait among the vast majority of those sites: there sure are a lot of people out there who seem desperate to have someone — anyone — pat them on the back and say "that's interesting." Because I think most of us realize — in those dark private moments when we have only the ugly self-loathing voices screaming at us — that we're not as endlessly fascinating and amusing and insightful and enlightened and informed and interesting as we like to imagine.
But when we hide behind a keyboard, we don't have to confront that. Instead, we can focus on the one or two commenters who offer some sort of crumb of validation, rather than those other 6 billion hairless monkeys who couldn't possibly care less.
Somehow, I find that both heartbreaking and hilarious at the same time.
And as I said, I absolutely confess to being as guilty as anyone on this charge.
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B
21 April 2006
five things that work
Turns out I got meme-tagged again. This time it was by Pooks over at Planet Pooks, who picked me to carry on the Things That Work meme.
Simply put, I'm supposed to list some things -- mundane, largely -- that just work great. Nothing Earth-shakingly epic or impressive here -- just some everyday items I like for their simple unspectacular ability to Do Their Job Well.
So... here's my list of Five Things That Just Work:
Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger)
As amazing as this next statement is going to sound to some people, it's absolute truth: "I have never worked on a Windows computer." My family started buying Macs back in 1985, when we used (ahem) "an educational discount of debatable appropriateness" to purchase a pair of Mac Plus boxes for use in the family business. I started writing and doodling on graphics then, and I've been all-Mac only-Mac ever since. The iMac I am banging on even now is my fourth Mac, and in the house right now we have seven total Macs. And in all my years of working on Macs, I have never -- NEVER -- been as absolutely satisfied and blown away by an OS like I am by "Tiger" (Mac OSX 10.4).
Tiger is stunningly beautiful. Blazing fast. Damned near bulletproof in terms of virus and worm attacks. And, best of all, it's as rock-solid a software product as I can imagine in this day and age. In the year or so I've been running it 24/7, I have had zero system crashes. None. Nada. Zip. In fact, the ONLY crashes of ANY sort I have had in that time have been with MS Exploder. I have since jumped to Apple Safari 2.0 and have been almost as pleased there as with Tiger itself.
Add a new printer? Just plug it into the USB port and start printing. Now drivers, no installation, no thought needed. It's as simple as attaching a hose to a spigot.
Need to find a file? Use Spotlight, the amazing built-in universal search utility, to near-instantly search for anything on your machine using basically any sort of search you can dream up.
Thanks to Tiger, I wake up every day knowing that I'll be able to work WITH my computer without any need to work ON my computer.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Pentel Pilot G2 Gel pens
I love writing on a computer: the ability to save multiple versions of the same file, and then edit and tweak each a little differently to then see which really works best... the ability to cut and paste entire scenes and chapters and acts between different projects... the ability to have somebody (or something) else sweep up the grammatical mess left as my verbal trailride rumbles by... it's all just too "suh-weet", to put it into Napoleonic phraseology (Dynamite -- not Bonaparte). But still, there's nothing quite like the tactile joy of actually putting ink on actual paper.
And for that, this year I have become a huge fan of the G2 gel pens. They're cheap -- around a buck fifty at Target -- but they write smooth as silk and just feel good when writing. I always have packs of both the black and the red laying around: black for scribbling notes in my faux-Moleskine style notepads, and red for marking up hard copy of screenplays ('m one of those twisted farts who feels a sick rush when he opens one of his own drafts to find it splattered in so much crimson that surely a pig was gutted on those pages).
No, the G2 is no Mont Blanc gold-nibbed "Bentley of writing instruments." Rather, it's more like a Honda Civic: inexpensive, not overly trendy or fancy to look at, but good luck in finding a more dependable, better bang for the buck option. Try one -- it won't cost much, and you might wind up with a new favorite cheap pen. I did.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Berol Black Warrior pencils
Yeah, smooth-writing pens are great, but I still have a deep affection for the subtlety and caveman-level simplicity of a good old graphite pencil. At least, so long as that pencil is a Black Warrior. Plain old "yellow pencils" can make lines on paper (usually...), but for my tastes, the Black Warrior flows where other pencils scratch. It's a little larger in the barrel (which suits my none-too-dainty maulers just fine), has a great soft pink rubber eraser (critical must-have feature for any decent pencil), a great soft extra-dark lead (supposedly made using a mixture of carbon black and graphite), and, best of all, is made of honest-to-Georgia Pacific red cedar, which means you can always bring the tip near your nose, inhale deeply, and know that in at least a few far-flung corners of Creation, some things remain Right and True. There are some scents which just make you warm and happy inside, and for me that list includes the smell of a well-oiled ball glove, a home-grown tomato, and a freshly sharpened Black Warrior pencil.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Shiner Dunkleweizen beer
I've been a Shiner man since before I was a man. I'm from a Czech family, which means (among other things) "beer is normal and good." I can clearly recall sipping beer from my parents and grandparents from age 4 and 5. No, I wasn't helping kill off a sixer while in grade school, but beer was as normal a part of everyday life as any other food product. And back in those days Shiner beer ("Premium" and "Bock" both) were still among the cheap beers in Texas. The fact that the stuff tasted like 4-dollar beer but cost like 2-dollar beer was likely a big part of the reason it was always around my tightfisted Granpa's place. So I've been drinking Shiner Bock for several decades.
But in recent years Shiner has expanded and upscaled itself into a premium regional brewery. Basically, that means they sell the same damned good beer but charge 6 bucks for a six pack rather than 3, and smile all the way to the bank. One cool result of this newly-improved profitability has been an expansion of the Shiner line, with lots of very cool beers coming on in limited or regional availability. Among those is Shiner Dunkleweizen (previously known for a while as Shiner WInter Ale). It's a dark wheat beer, but much like Shiner Bock, it doesn't have that heavy feel that dark beer usually does. It's a little bit sweet, but with a nice hoppy bitterness on the finish that keeps the taste from becoming cloying.
I've not yet found it in any restaurants, and I don't venture to serious beer pubs often enough to think about looking for this one beer, but I know I find it at my local market, and I know that I find it in my own fridge whenever I feel like kicking back at the end of a hard week. Are there better beers in the world? Hell, probably. I'm sure there are some tweed-wearing bearded collegiate types who'll explain with patience that that are 17 better beers in the world, or that all true beer fans recognize "Chateau Foofidoo" from Tierra del Bite Me as the world's finest brew. You know what, perfessor? You just go right ahead and go get yourself one of them fancy pants beers. I'm doing just fine with what i got.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Schick Mach III disposable razors
I hate shaving. In a perfect world, my facial hair would snap off at a length of 1/8 inch and I would continually sport a slightly scraggly "I don't care" look without any effort whatsoever. But ours is not a perfect world, and if I don't shave at least once or twice a week I very quickly start looking like member of the traveling cast for The Dan Haggerty Experience. My northern European genes have blessed me with that peculiar follicularity which make my forearms and legs look like an orangutan, enables me to grow a beard in 8 days but which keeps my chest largely smooth and shiny. I have to shave, or I look really ragged.
And I hate shaving. I have very coarse hair and whiskers, so I'm prone to stubble unless I use some serious pressure on the blade, and when I do that I'm prone to razor burn on my neck, as well as ingrown hairs, and it's all just nasty, and why do you people keep doubting that perhaps I have good damned reason for saying how I hate to shave.
But given that I MUST shave, I was pretty thrilled when I got a free trial in the mail one day from Schick: a free Extreme III triple head flexing pivoting razor with lubricating strips. Hell, it might have GPS, built in ice maker, and balloons for the kiddies for all I know. It seems like a serious hunk of technology for something meant just to denude my cheeks.
But damn if the thing doesn't kick serious butt. The blades are sharp, STAY sharp (even after cutting the wiry horsehair that grows from my body), and somehow all that triple blade and lubricating and pivoting and flexing work together to give me a shave that has so far not given me a single nick, burn, or ingrown hair in more than a year's worth of shaving. Yeah, yeah, they cost a bit more than the mega-pack of store brand disposable twin blade razors, but we are talking facial surgery, folks, so perhaps "splurging" an extra buck or two is not so much an expense as it is an investment, or insurance. However you rationalize it, these things work and work well.
But I still hate shaving.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
HP Laserjet 1012 printer
I'm a writer, which means that I need people to read my words. With a computer, that means either I have to send a file to someone, or I have to output to paper. And given that I also much prefer to do my own personal editing of manuscripts in hard copy form rather than on a screen (red ink doesn't stick to my monitor so well, plus it's a pain to drag the iMac around to hotel rooms and campsites and swim practices and such), I like to have a dependable fuss-free black and white printer.
For that, I adore my trusty Hewlet Packard LaserJet model 1012. Now discontinued, this little puppy has never given me a moment of grief. I plugged it in on day one, started printing, and have never consulted the manual even once. When it ran out of toner after 6000 or pages, I popped open the door, lifted out the cartridge, dropped in a new one, closed the door... bingo bango the little beast went back to printing without pause or complaint. Quiet. Fast. Affordable. Dependable. Small. It's easily my favorite ever non-Apple hardware purchase.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
And there ya go. Five Things That Work.
I'm not going to bother formally tagging specific people, because let's be honest: nobody reads this damned blog anyway (my autobiography is tentatively titled "I, Pariah"), but if by some twist of fate or spiteful act of the Almighty you find yourself washed up on my virtual shore and now feel some urge to carry forward this meme, then knock yourself out, cha-cha. But don't expect a cookie or a pat on the head from me.
I'm too busy with more serious work.
Like complaining.
.
.
.
B
Simply put, I'm supposed to list some things -- mundane, largely -- that just work great. Nothing Earth-shakingly epic or impressive here -- just some everyday items I like for their simple unspectacular ability to Do Their Job Well.
So... here's my list of Five Things That Just Work:
Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger)
As amazing as this next statement is going to sound to some people, it's absolute truth: "I have never worked on a Windows computer." My family started buying Macs back in 1985, when we used (ahem) "an educational discount of debatable appropriateness" to purchase a pair of Mac Plus boxes for use in the family business. I started writing and doodling on graphics then, and I've been all-Mac only-Mac ever since. The iMac I am banging on even now is my fourth Mac, and in the house right now we have seven total Macs. And in all my years of working on Macs, I have never -- NEVER -- been as absolutely satisfied and blown away by an OS like I am by "Tiger" (Mac OSX 10.4).
Tiger is stunningly beautiful. Blazing fast. Damned near bulletproof in terms of virus and worm attacks. And, best of all, it's as rock-solid a software product as I can imagine in this day and age. In the year or so I've been running it 24/7, I have had zero system crashes. None. Nada. Zip. In fact, the ONLY crashes of ANY sort I have had in that time have been with MS Exploder. I have since jumped to Apple Safari 2.0 and have been almost as pleased there as with Tiger itself.
Add a new printer? Just plug it into the USB port and start printing. Now drivers, no installation, no thought needed. It's as simple as attaching a hose to a spigot.
Need to find a file? Use Spotlight, the amazing built-in universal search utility, to near-instantly search for anything on your machine using basically any sort of search you can dream up.
Thanks to Tiger, I wake up every day knowing that I'll be able to work WITH my computer without any need to work ON my computer.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Pentel Pilot G2 Gel pens
I love writing on a computer: the ability to save multiple versions of the same file, and then edit and tweak each a little differently to then see which really works best... the ability to cut and paste entire scenes and chapters and acts between different projects... the ability to have somebody (or something) else sweep up the grammatical mess left as my verbal trailride rumbles by... it's all just too "suh-weet", to put it into Napoleonic phraseology (Dynamite -- not Bonaparte). But still, there's nothing quite like the tactile joy of actually putting ink on actual paper.
And for that, this year I have become a huge fan of the G2 gel pens. They're cheap -- around a buck fifty at Target -- but they write smooth as silk and just feel good when writing. I always have packs of both the black and the red laying around: black for scribbling notes in my faux-Moleskine style notepads, and red for marking up hard copy of screenplays ('m one of those twisted farts who feels a sick rush when he opens one of his own drafts to find it splattered in so much crimson that surely a pig was gutted on those pages).
No, the G2 is no Mont Blanc gold-nibbed "Bentley of writing instruments." Rather, it's more like a Honda Civic: inexpensive, not overly trendy or fancy to look at, but good luck in finding a more dependable, better bang for the buck option. Try one -- it won't cost much, and you might wind up with a new favorite cheap pen. I did.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Berol Black Warrior pencils
Yeah, smooth-writing pens are great, but I still have a deep affection for the subtlety and caveman-level simplicity of a good old graphite pencil. At least, so long as that pencil is a Black Warrior. Plain old "yellow pencils" can make lines on paper (usually...), but for my tastes, the Black Warrior flows where other pencils scratch. It's a little larger in the barrel (which suits my none-too-dainty maulers just fine), has a great soft pink rubber eraser (critical must-have feature for any decent pencil), a great soft extra-dark lead (supposedly made using a mixture of carbon black and graphite), and, best of all, is made of honest-to-Georgia Pacific red cedar, which means you can always bring the tip near your nose, inhale deeply, and know that in at least a few far-flung corners of Creation, some things remain Right and True. There are some scents which just make you warm and happy inside, and for me that list includes the smell of a well-oiled ball glove, a home-grown tomato, and a freshly sharpened Black Warrior pencil.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Shiner Dunkleweizen beer
I've been a Shiner man since before I was a man. I'm from a Czech family, which means (among other things) "beer is normal and good." I can clearly recall sipping beer from my parents and grandparents from age 4 and 5. No, I wasn't helping kill off a sixer while in grade school, but beer was as normal a part of everyday life as any other food product. And back in those days Shiner beer ("Premium" and "Bock" both) were still among the cheap beers in Texas. The fact that the stuff tasted like 4-dollar beer but cost like 2-dollar beer was likely a big part of the reason it was always around my tightfisted Granpa's place. So I've been drinking Shiner Bock for several decades.
But in recent years Shiner has expanded and upscaled itself into a premium regional brewery. Basically, that means they sell the same damned good beer but charge 6 bucks for a six pack rather than 3, and smile all the way to the bank. One cool result of this newly-improved profitability has been an expansion of the Shiner line, with lots of very cool beers coming on in limited or regional availability. Among those is Shiner Dunkleweizen (previously known for a while as Shiner WInter Ale). It's a dark wheat beer, but much like Shiner Bock, it doesn't have that heavy feel that dark beer usually does. It's a little bit sweet, but with a nice hoppy bitterness on the finish that keeps the taste from becoming cloying.
I've not yet found it in any restaurants, and I don't venture to serious beer pubs often enough to think about looking for this one beer, but I know I find it at my local market, and I know that I find it in my own fridge whenever I feel like kicking back at the end of a hard week. Are there better beers in the world? Hell, probably. I'm sure there are some tweed-wearing bearded collegiate types who'll explain with patience that that are 17 better beers in the world, or that all true beer fans recognize "Chateau Foofidoo" from Tierra del Bite Me as the world's finest brew. You know what, perfessor? You just go right ahead and go get yourself one of them fancy pants beers. I'm doing just fine with what i got.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Schick Mach III disposable razors
I hate shaving. In a perfect world, my facial hair would snap off at a length of 1/8 inch and I would continually sport a slightly scraggly "I don't care" look without any effort whatsoever. But ours is not a perfect world, and if I don't shave at least once or twice a week I very quickly start looking like member of the traveling cast for The Dan Haggerty Experience. My northern European genes have blessed me with that peculiar follicularity which make my forearms and legs look like an orangutan, enables me to grow a beard in 8 days but which keeps my chest largely smooth and shiny. I have to shave, or I look really ragged.
And I hate shaving. I have very coarse hair and whiskers, so I'm prone to stubble unless I use some serious pressure on the blade, and when I do that I'm prone to razor burn on my neck, as well as ingrown hairs, and it's all just nasty, and why do you people keep doubting that perhaps I have good damned reason for saying how I hate to shave.
But given that I MUST shave, I was pretty thrilled when I got a free trial in the mail one day from Schick: a free Extreme III triple head flexing pivoting razor with lubricating strips. Hell, it might have GPS, built in ice maker, and balloons for the kiddies for all I know. It seems like a serious hunk of technology for something meant just to denude my cheeks.
But damn if the thing doesn't kick serious butt. The blades are sharp, STAY sharp (even after cutting the wiry horsehair that grows from my body), and somehow all that triple blade and lubricating and pivoting and flexing work together to give me a shave that has so far not given me a single nick, burn, or ingrown hair in more than a year's worth of shaving. Yeah, yeah, they cost a bit more than the mega-pack of store brand disposable twin blade razors, but we are talking facial surgery, folks, so perhaps "splurging" an extra buck or two is not so much an expense as it is an investment, or insurance. However you rationalize it, these things work and work well.
But I still hate shaving.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
HP Laserjet 1012 printer
I'm a writer, which means that I need people to read my words. With a computer, that means either I have to send a file to someone, or I have to output to paper. And given that I also much prefer to do my own personal editing of manuscripts in hard copy form rather than on a screen (red ink doesn't stick to my monitor so well, plus it's a pain to drag the iMac around to hotel rooms and campsites and swim practices and such), I like to have a dependable fuss-free black and white printer.
For that, I adore my trusty Hewlet Packard LaserJet model 1012. Now discontinued, this little puppy has never given me a moment of grief. I plugged it in on day one, started printing, and have never consulted the manual even once. When it ran out of toner after 6000 or pages, I popped open the door, lifted out the cartridge, dropped in a new one, closed the door... bingo bango the little beast went back to printing without pause or complaint. Quiet. Fast. Affordable. Dependable. Small. It's easily my favorite ever non-Apple hardware purchase.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
And there ya go. Five Things That Work.
I'm not going to bother formally tagging specific people, because let's be honest: nobody reads this damned blog anyway (my autobiography is tentatively titled "I, Pariah"), but if by some twist of fate or spiteful act of the Almighty you find yourself washed up on my virtual shore and now feel some urge to carry forward this meme, then knock yourself out, cha-cha. But don't expect a cookie or a pat on the head from me.
I'm too busy with more serious work.
Like complaining.
.
.
.
B
19 April 2006
of coffee and canucks
On Tuesday I met Lawrence (aka "Laurie"), aka "Webs," aka "the Guy With that 101 Blog" for almost two hours of face-time. Webs is Canadian but otherwise a decent-enough fellow. Turns out his mom lives approximately next door (10 miles away) here in bee-yootiful westside Houston adjacent, so when he found I was in this neck of the prairie, he dropped me an email and said "so... yawanna?"
Sure. Why not. So Starbucks again hosted my ass as I met an onliner live and in the flesh. It can sometimes be a bit awkward to meet a cyber-aquaintance for the first time -- "what if they aren't as interesting as they seem in text form?" ... "what if he tries to Amway me?"... "what turns out to be some sort of Canadian?"... -- but I'm still riding a nice lucky streak on that count, as Lawrence (or Lawrie or Webs or whatever I'm supposed to call him) seemed completely normal (well, aside from the Canadianism... and the fact that he's a RICE grad and therefore likely collects 9-digit prime numbers as a relaxing hobby... ).
As it turns out, we have a strange bit of synchronicity going: both of us are obsessed with getting some run for our scripts about specific true but obscure tales of WW2 era fighter pilots. So, we're both "plane guys," which likely marks us as a special type of nerd as surely as if we'd shown up in full Maximillian jousting armor or letter-perfect Starfleet uniforms. Still... given that I don't live in LA where hobnobbing with serious screenwriters is a ho-hum "did it twice while picking produce at the market" sort of everyday experience, it's always invigorating to spend a little time talking with anyone who understands what the hell you mean when you groan about "Second Act Difficulties" or "Readers Who Just Don't Get It" or "How Much It Sucks To See Huge Wads Of Cash Going To Everyone Except You." Good times. I'll likely throw my Fighter Pilot Scrript at him, and he'll likely do the same, and we'll both smile and quietly hate the other for doing something better than we thought to do it ourselves.
Such is life
.
.
.
still hoping for some lucky lightnin' to strike B
PS -- edited on 4/20 to fix stuff
Sure. Why not. So Starbucks again hosted my ass as I met an onliner live and in the flesh. It can sometimes be a bit awkward to meet a cyber-aquaintance for the first time -- "what if they aren't as interesting as they seem in text form?" ... "what if he tries to Amway me?"... "what turns out to be some sort of Canadian?"... -- but I'm still riding a nice lucky streak on that count, as Lawrence (or Lawrie or Webs or whatever I'm supposed to call him) seemed completely normal (well, aside from the Canadianism... and the fact that he's a RICE grad and therefore likely collects 9-digit prime numbers as a relaxing hobby... ).
As it turns out, we have a strange bit of synchronicity going: both of us are obsessed with getting some run for our scripts about specific true but obscure tales of WW2 era fighter pilots. So, we're both "plane guys," which likely marks us as a special type of nerd as surely as if we'd shown up in full Maximillian jousting armor or letter-perfect Starfleet uniforms. Still... given that I don't live in LA where hobnobbing with serious screenwriters is a ho-hum "did it twice while picking produce at the market" sort of everyday experience, it's always invigorating to spend a little time talking with anyone who understands what the hell you mean when you groan about "Second Act Difficulties" or "Readers Who Just Don't Get It" or "How Much It Sucks To See Huge Wads Of Cash Going To Everyone Except You." Good times. I'll likely throw my Fighter Pilot Scrript at him, and he'll likely do the same, and we'll both smile and quietly hate the other for doing something better than we thought to do it ourselves.
Such is life
.
.
.
still hoping for some lucky lightnin' to strike B
PS -- edited on 4/20 to fix stuff
13 April 2006
"what type of writer should you be?"
Found a cool link to one of those odd web quiz things where you answer five or seven questions and are then given the answer to "Which Punky Brewster Episode Are You?" or "Which Brand of Upright Freezer Are You?"
Critical need-to-know stuff.
This one (from blogthings.com) is a little less esoteric and more on-point for the sorts likely to be lurking on my site rather than assembling verbiage of their own:
"What Type Of Writer Are You?"
Since I only have about FIVE pressing writing projects looming in incomplete form over my bumpy noggin, with deadlines to the left and deadlines to the right and deadlines right up the middle as well, of course I figured it was a good time to take some online quizzes and then blog about them, cuz, ya know, that's what we writer-types do: we sit around and lament that the world refuses to recognize our brilliance even while we refuse to be brilliant on any sort of regular or commerically useful basis.
Now, I half expected this damned fool quiz to come back and tell me that I was uniquely suited to writing fortune cookies or the little messages printed on Valentine candy hearts ("EAT ME"), but instead, what I got was a nice dash of cold water — a long hard stare from the Universe that left me with no real smart-ass retort to throw out as a smoke-screen.
Damn. Alright, already — I'll get back to work.
.
.
.
rebuked by the gods yet again B
Critical need-to-know stuff.
This one (from blogthings.com) is a little less esoteric and more on-point for the sorts likely to be lurking on my site rather than assembling verbiage of their own:
"What Type Of Writer Are You?"
Since I only have about FIVE pressing writing projects looming in incomplete form over my bumpy noggin, with deadlines to the left and deadlines to the right and deadlines right up the middle as well, of course I figured it was a good time to take some online quizzes and then blog about them, cuz, ya know, that's what we writer-types do: we sit around and lament that the world refuses to recognize our brilliance even while we refuse to be brilliant on any sort of regular or commerically useful basis.
Now, I half expected this damned fool quiz to come back and tell me that I was uniquely suited to writing fortune cookies or the little messages printed on Valentine candy hearts ("EAT ME"), but instead, what I got was a nice dash of cold water — a long hard stare from the Universe that left me with no real smart-ass retort to throw out as a smoke-screen.
| You Should Be a Film Writer |
 You don't just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen! |
Damn. Alright, already — I'll get back to work.
.
.
.
rebuked by the gods yet again B
11 April 2006
weird scenes inside the goldmine
Ya know, at some point it really becomes redundant to keep thinking of every odd week as "odd," as it seems increasingly likely that "odd" is just my particular brand of "normal."
It's Tuesday, and this week truly *is* odd, but not because of anything that is going on, but rather for all that isn't.
Among my many NON-issues this week:
• I am NOT coaching baseball every single night of the week as I was last week. This week the league is on sabbatical for Easter Break (a week? when did this tradition take root?), so I have no baseball. None. Suddenly I feel like Inigo at the end of The Princess Bride — I've been in the coaching game for so long, now that it's on break for a week, I dunno what to do with my life.
• I'm NOT planning, packing, or running a Cub Scout campout for 70 people. This past weekend I was the ring-leader for an ass-grabbingly spectacular sideshow on the gar-strewn shores of Lake Somerville (between Burton and Snook, for those scoring along at home...), and while that went far better than I'd feared it might at one point, it was still a brain-numbingly exhausting exercise.
• I'm NOT working on any PTA-related projects like half-scale Dutch Barn facades for 2nd grade musicals, or 6-lane Matchbox racetracks for the carnival, or 4x14 collage/mural/art things for the hallways, or brochures/flyers/ads/posters/yearbook designs for the publications committee.
• I'm NOT trekking to any friend's house or property to help build a patio or clear land or refinish cabinets or install tile flooring.
Instead, what i am doing — or, what I'm supposed to be doing, ought to be doing, damned well need to be doing — is working in the final tweaks for LILYA my damned war epic screenplay that I hope to send in for contest season.
What I need to be doing is working out the new modified outline for the Still Untitled RomCom that I'd HOPED to have ready for contest season (but almost surely won't) and which I'd HOPED to have ready by Christmas to send to a producer buddy in LA (but surely didn't).
What I need to be doing is finalizing the outline to a weird "spaghetti western-and-[something]" piece which a good friend (a cool and serious director type) has described as a totally cool concept which we hope to develop into something he can possibly shoot this fall as a low-low budget feature.
What I need to be doing is finishing the long-overdue notes I owe a buddy on her new English-styled rom-com thingie which she has already subbed to contests when she got tired of waiting for these damned notes I need to finish.
What I need to do is lock my ass in the chair, my hands on the keyboard, and my nose toward the screen, and write.
So what *am* I doing?
Blogging.
Yeah, that's gonna fuckin' do me a lot of good.
OK. Enough screwing around. Time once again to get frosty and kick copious ass.
.
.
.
B
It's Tuesday, and this week truly *is* odd, but not because of anything that is going on, but rather for all that isn't.
Among my many NON-issues this week:
• I am NOT coaching baseball every single night of the week as I was last week. This week the league is on sabbatical for Easter Break (a week? when did this tradition take root?), so I have no baseball. None. Suddenly I feel like Inigo at the end of The Princess Bride — I've been in the coaching game for so long, now that it's on break for a week, I dunno what to do with my life.
• I'm NOT planning, packing, or running a Cub Scout campout for 70 people. This past weekend I was the ring-leader for an ass-grabbingly spectacular sideshow on the gar-strewn shores of Lake Somerville (between Burton and Snook, for those scoring along at home...), and while that went far better than I'd feared it might at one point, it was still a brain-numbingly exhausting exercise.
• I'm NOT working on any PTA-related projects like half-scale Dutch Barn facades for 2nd grade musicals, or 6-lane Matchbox racetracks for the carnival, or 4x14 collage/mural/art things for the hallways, or brochures/flyers/ads/posters/yearbook designs for the publications committee.
• I'm NOT trekking to any friend's house or property to help build a patio or clear land or refinish cabinets or install tile flooring.
Instead, what i am doing — or, what I'm supposed to be doing, ought to be doing, damned well need to be doing — is working in the final tweaks for LILYA my damned war epic screenplay that I hope to send in for contest season.
What I need to be doing is working out the new modified outline for the Still Untitled RomCom that I'd HOPED to have ready for contest season (but almost surely won't) and which I'd HOPED to have ready by Christmas to send to a producer buddy in LA (but surely didn't).
What I need to be doing is finalizing the outline to a weird "spaghetti western-and-[something]" piece which a good friend (a cool and serious director type) has described as a totally cool concept which we hope to develop into something he can possibly shoot this fall as a low-low budget feature.
What I need to be doing is finishing the long-overdue notes I owe a buddy on her new English-styled rom-com thingie which she has already subbed to contests when she got tired of waiting for these damned notes I need to finish.
What I need to do is lock my ass in the chair, my hands on the keyboard, and my nose toward the screen, and write.
So what *am* I doing?
Blogging.
Yeah, that's gonna fuckin' do me a lot of good.
OK. Enough screwing around. Time once again to get frosty and kick copious ass.
.
.
.
B
05 April 2006
meme: your first ten verbs
Back in college (a point in time which more and more often these days is starting to feel like 'When dinosaurs ruled the Earth...") I took some creative writing courses. Some people hated them—the vicious bloodletting every Monday night as a new pair of people would bring in stories for everyone ELSE in the group to tear apart like sharks in a herd of slow-swimming seals was a bit too intense for some members of the purple prose brigade—but I absolutely loved every soul-crushing moment.
And I also learned some stuff.
One of the cool exercises we tried was simple yet effective: the prof told us to bring in our last submitted piece. Then, in class he had us read the first ten verbs in the piece, and he wrote them down on the board under each of our names. What was amazing was to see—to plainly unmistakably see—just how passive and tentative some people were, and just how much action and power and movement and life other people were putting into their stories.
I was reminded of this exercise by a semi-related post by someone in a private office over at Zoetrope. That writer—a proven pro who knows what he's talking about—was talking about finding a verb to define the scene as a whole, and then checking to see if the scenes were properly active and forceful. While that's a valid and potentially valid exercise, it sounds like work, and I am allergic to work. (Yes, I have a note from a doctor. Bite me.)
So I decided just to start my own damned meme:
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.
My current open project is a period drama about a WW2 flyer over Stalingrad. Here are my first ten verbs from that piece:
Overall, not as bad as I was afraid it might be when I first decided to try this goofy trick.
What about you?
Just for the sake of crass self-promotion, I'm tagging three people to specifically answer this and carry the meme out to the scribosphere:
.
.
.
active voice B
And I also learned some stuff.
One of the cool exercises we tried was simple yet effective: the prof told us to bring in our last submitted piece. Then, in class he had us read the first ten verbs in the piece, and he wrote them down on the board under each of our names. What was amazing was to see—to plainly unmistakably see—just how passive and tentative some people were, and just how much action and power and movement and life other people were putting into their stories.
I was reminded of this exercise by a semi-related post by someone in a private office over at Zoetrope. That writer—a proven pro who knows what he's talking about—was talking about finding a verb to define the scene as a whole, and then checking to see if the scenes were properly active and forceful. While that's a valid and potentially valid exercise, it sounds like work, and I am allergic to work. (Yes, I have a note from a doctor. Bite me.)
So I decided just to start my own damned meme:
MEME: YOUR FIRST TEN VERBS:
What are the first ten verbs in whatever project you are now or were most recently writing?
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.
My current open project is a period drama about a WW2 flyer over Stalingrad. Here are my first ten verbs from that piece:
1. roars
2. rises
3. falls
4. climbs
5. watches
6. strolls
7. studies
8. nods
9. screams
10. stirs
Overall, not as bad as I was afraid it might be when I first decided to try this goofy trick.
What about you?
Just for the sake of crass self-promotion, I'm tagging three people to specifically answer this and carry the meme out to the scribosphere:
Warren ("The Screenwriting Life")
Scott ("Alligators In A Helicopter")
--and--
Adam ("One Slack Martian")
.
.
.
active voice B
02 April 2006
an open letter to the species
Dear humankind:
I’ve just spent a half hour surfing through (well, “past”) a few dozen random blogs, and I’ve come to a few conclusions, most all of which I know are 1) sure to improve the world, and 2) anticipated with great excitement wordwide.
[Yes, kids—that was “irony.” Look for it in writing of every qualitative grade here online. In the online realm, irony is a sign of intelligence. Pre-pubescent sarcasm is the hallmark of world class wit. Bored detachment is evidence of heartfelt concern. Blasé world-weary exhaustion and pompous contempt are proof positive of worldliness and total commitment. “Bite me.”]
Now, I understand and accept the potential hypocrisy of ragging on self-involved blogs by posting on a self-involved blog. I am guilty like you on that score. We all suck, and we all deserve a knee to the groin for our pathetic onanistic auto-fellation here on these blogs. But seriously—what the hell is going on out there?
Are there really that many Portuguese speakers online? When I follow the random link thingy on my blogger page, I’m always surprised at how many Portugueezers I bump onto (and what IS the preferred good naturedly dismissive term for a Portuguese person? “Lis-bunnies”? “Portos”? Help me, people...). Yeah, yeah, I know there are a lot of folks in Brazil, and a lot of them speak Portuguese, but there’s a lot more people in India, and so far I’ve not bumpd into many sites written in Hindi.
Is anyone truly thinking that the world gives half a crap about your political treatises and manifestos? I blame The Daily Show and Dennis Miller for this sad situation. Gravy sucking lumps of inconsequentiality sit at home on reclining sectionals, remote control in one hand and a tube of Pringle’s in the other and guffaw as some smart alecky host busts on some political story while a humorously ill-timed photo of some leader shines over their shoulder. High-larious. And surely the world needs even MORE pillow-sharp commentary from someone who’s crowning political achievement was once coming in a close second in the election for Student Council Sergeant-At-Arms a decade ago at Jethro T. Sumpbucket High School in Pisswater, Kentucky. I’m not suggesting that anyone doesn’t have a right to an opinion, but come on, gang: if you’re going to avail yourself of that right, then it’s just plain old fashioned good manner to not waste our time by serving up the verbal equivalent of warm drool. “George W. Bush is so STUPID!!!!!!” is not exactly up there with Swift’s A Modest Proposal, know what I mean? Linking to Bill O’Reilly’s site and copy-pasting some cute line from William F. Buckley doesn’t exactly mean that you get automatic credit for understanding anything. I’m increasingly of the opinion that anyone who feels a need to post their political notions online ought be barred from doing so. If we as a nation find that we are somehow “one opinion short” of the load of BS needed to form a workable meme, we’ll get in touch with you,. ‘Til then, stick to talking about your cat, or your loneliness, or some stuff you bought at Wal Mart. Thanks.
When did we as a culture jump the shark and become a nation of Reality Show rejects? Lord. When I surf around, I am stunned by how many sluts, hoes, crackheads, food court gangstas and general non-categorized dipshits I see hell-bent on not just exhibiting their stupidity, but absolutely crowing about it at the top of their lungs. Dean Vernon Wormer once told us ”Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” But apparently “buff, drunk and stupid” works just fine. At least, if you swing through MySpace that’s sure the message you’ll hear. Most females looks like they are hoping to land a guest shot on Girls Gone Wild, while most males look like they are at an open casting call for “The Marky Mark Story.” Most confusing. Whenever I go to Target or The Gap, I see lots of pants and shirts being offered for sale, yet if online profiles are to be believed precious little of that clothing is being purchased and worn. And don’t think I’m some pious old fuddy duddy—I like half-naked beautiful hotties as much as any middle-aged father of four needs to (actually, more than he needs to, but it’s not a problem—I can control it. I swear, your honor...)—but gimme a slight freakin’ break... if EVERYONE out there living La Vida Loca and dancing naked in slow motion mosh pits like that god-awful Matrix sequel, then just who exactly is holding the handle on our Hell-bound handbasket? The Spicoli-sounding granola-munching Birkenstockers and/or the Young Republican Hitler Youth WASPs? The blobby gray middle-roaders religiously watching American Idol while munching on a homemade Chex mix of Paxil, Dexatrim, and Viagra? And we wonder why our government seems like a mess? Morons to the left of me, morons to the right....
Look, I know that variety is the spice of life. I accept that people have divergent tastes and opinions and dreams and hopes and fears and fantasies. I celebrate the fact that we live in an age when so many fascinating personalities (again: “irony”) can so easily bump virtual uglies through fat-pipe connections. I’m sure we as a species are tremendously served by the ability of mainstream Americans to use the most amazing communication medium yet developed just to say things like “U L00K HOT” and “ROFLMAO!!!!” Future generations will no doubt look back at this specific moment in time and say “gosh I miss those great old days of yesteryear...”
Uh huh. Sure.
And I’m a little teapot, short and stout.
Sincerely,
.
.
.
confused concerned conflated B
I’ve just spent a half hour surfing through (well, “past”) a few dozen random blogs, and I’ve come to a few conclusions, most all of which I know are 1) sure to improve the world, and 2) anticipated with great excitement wordwide.
[Yes, kids—that was “irony.” Look for it in writing of every qualitative grade here online. In the online realm, irony is a sign of intelligence. Pre-pubescent sarcasm is the hallmark of world class wit. Bored detachment is evidence of heartfelt concern. Blasé world-weary exhaustion and pompous contempt are proof positive of worldliness and total commitment. “Bite me.”]
Now, I understand and accept the potential hypocrisy of ragging on self-involved blogs by posting on a self-involved blog. I am guilty like you on that score. We all suck, and we all deserve a knee to the groin for our pathetic onanistic auto-fellation here on these blogs. But seriously—what the hell is going on out there?
Are there really that many Portuguese speakers online? When I follow the random link thingy on my blogger page, I’m always surprised at how many Portugueezers I bump onto (and what IS the preferred good naturedly dismissive term for a Portuguese person? “Lis-bunnies”? “Portos”? Help me, people...). Yeah, yeah, I know there are a lot of folks in Brazil, and a lot of them speak Portuguese, but there’s a lot more people in India, and so far I’ve not bumpd into many sites written in Hindi.
Is anyone truly thinking that the world gives half a crap about your political treatises and manifestos? I blame The Daily Show and Dennis Miller for this sad situation. Gravy sucking lumps of inconsequentiality sit at home on reclining sectionals, remote control in one hand and a tube of Pringle’s in the other and guffaw as some smart alecky host busts on some political story while a humorously ill-timed photo of some leader shines over their shoulder. High-larious. And surely the world needs even MORE pillow-sharp commentary from someone who’s crowning political achievement was once coming in a close second in the election for Student Council Sergeant-At-Arms a decade ago at Jethro T. Sumpbucket High School in Pisswater, Kentucky. I’m not suggesting that anyone doesn’t have a right to an opinion, but come on, gang: if you’re going to avail yourself of that right, then it’s just plain old fashioned good manner to not waste our time by serving up the verbal equivalent of warm drool. “George W. Bush is so STUPID!!!!!!” is not exactly up there with Swift’s A Modest Proposal, know what I mean? Linking to Bill O’Reilly’s site and copy-pasting some cute line from William F. Buckley doesn’t exactly mean that you get automatic credit for understanding anything. I’m increasingly of the opinion that anyone who feels a need to post their political notions online ought be barred from doing so. If we as a nation find that we are somehow “one opinion short” of the load of BS needed to form a workable meme, we’ll get in touch with you,. ‘Til then, stick to talking about your cat, or your loneliness, or some stuff you bought at Wal Mart. Thanks.
When did we as a culture jump the shark and become a nation of Reality Show rejects? Lord. When I surf around, I am stunned by how many sluts, hoes, crackheads, food court gangstas and general non-categorized dipshits I see hell-bent on not just exhibiting their stupidity, but absolutely crowing about it at the top of their lungs. Dean Vernon Wormer once told us ”Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” But apparently “buff, drunk and stupid” works just fine. At least, if you swing through MySpace that’s sure the message you’ll hear. Most females looks like they are hoping to land a guest shot on Girls Gone Wild, while most males look like they are at an open casting call for “The Marky Mark Story.” Most confusing. Whenever I go to Target or The Gap, I see lots of pants and shirts being offered for sale, yet if online profiles are to be believed precious little of that clothing is being purchased and worn. And don’t think I’m some pious old fuddy duddy—I like half-naked beautiful hotties as much as any middle-aged father of four needs to (actually, more than he needs to, but it’s not a problem—I can control it. I swear, your honor...)—but gimme a slight freakin’ break... if EVERYONE out there living La Vida Loca and dancing naked in slow motion mosh pits like that god-awful Matrix sequel, then just who exactly is holding the handle on our Hell-bound handbasket? The Spicoli-sounding granola-munching Birkenstockers and/or the Young Republican Hitler Youth WASPs? The blobby gray middle-roaders religiously watching American Idol while munching on a homemade Chex mix of Paxil, Dexatrim, and Viagra? And we wonder why our government seems like a mess? Morons to the left of me, morons to the right....
Look, I know that variety is the spice of life. I accept that people have divergent tastes and opinions and dreams and hopes and fears and fantasies. I celebrate the fact that we live in an age when so many fascinating personalities (again: “irony”) can so easily bump virtual uglies through fat-pipe connections. I’m sure we as a species are tremendously served by the ability of mainstream Americans to use the most amazing communication medium yet developed just to say things like “U L00K HOT” and “ROFLMAO!!!!” Future generations will no doubt look back at this specific moment in time and say “gosh I miss those great old days of yesteryear...”
Uh huh. Sure.
And I’m a little teapot, short and stout.
Sincerely,
.
.
.
confused concerned conflated B
31 March 2006
tales of woe and degradation (chapter 213)
[FILE UNDER: “pointless self-absorption,” or “much ado about nothing”]
Something weird is in the water this week, it seems. One friend gets a manager and an option and an assignment and small but not irrelevant bucket of cash. Another friend gets an option and an assignment and surely the promise of a similar non-irrelevant cash-bucket. Another pal emerges from a great face-to-face with the nagging sense that this is the start of a working relationship where (wait for it...) the non-irrelevant bucket again makes its appearance onstage. Other friends are having graphic novels premiere, or are claiming awards for comics which just premiered, or are showing early test shots of the FX the boys at WETA are cranking out for their directorial debut, or are talking about wrap parties for final episodes of major trilogies.
And now, dammit, the Good Luck Fairy has sprinkled Yippee Dust on my oversized head.
Because word has come down that I am a major award winner.
Scr(i)pt Magazine and Final Draft co-sponsor the big Scriptwriters Showcase in a week or so out at Universal Studios. The event is a cool gathering of screenwriting talents and celebs, and features all sorts of great learning and networking opportunities. Tickets to the event normally cost 149 bucks a piece—steep but worth it, given the quality and quantity of top-drawer talent you’ll have access to.
One of the panelists at the event will be Warren Hsu Leonard, aspriring screenwriter and chief bottle washer and content-spewer at the cool blog The Screenwriting Life. As a panelist, Warren had some comp passes to the event, so he came up with a goofy idea to have a 24-hour contest to see who could come up with the “best” (worst) logline for a fictitious movie, with the stipulation that the logline had to include seven specific oddball words:
Well, seeing as how Your Intrepid Narrator has eleventeen go-zillion other more pressing concerns on his plate, of course I set myself to coming up with a logline (I’d be the World Champion Procrastinator if only I could get myself to focus on the task of claiming that title...). It came together pretty quick, so I flung it against Warren’s virtual wall:
Then (yay for me) Warren selected it as one of the five finalists to go into the public voting to choose the winner.
Now, hard as this is to believe, I have friends.
No, really—I’m serious. I have great friends. I have friends so great, in fact, that even a complete ass-tacular moron such as myself still rates support and at least a monthly demonstration of some functional equivalent of respect. So when I mentioned to a group of friends—fellow writers and artists and morons—that my bad logline made the finals of the contest, saying “you guys oughta go see the fun and vote for someone,” apparently many of them did just that. Suddenly my vote tally explodified, and I ran roughshod over my pathetic rivals like some great big rumbling roughshod over-running thing. We’re talking a mandate of Stalinesque proportion. When the smoke had cleared and the steaming gore hosed from the voting booths, I’d claimed almost 50% of the ballots in the 5-way race.
Meaning I’d won a free pass to the aforementioned Seriously Waycool LA Event.
Now, anyone who’s read this far likely has done so just to see the inevitable other shoe drop (or else is completing some sort of court-ordered community service/masochistic reading exercise), as Good News in my universe most always arrives wrapped ‘round a well-thrown fast-flying rock.
This conference is April 7–9.
My son’s Cub Scout pack has their Spring Campout April 7–9.
And guess who is the Camping Coordinator, in charge of making sure the weenies get cooked and the campfires get put out and the nice people at Lake Somerville State Park get their money and whatever apologies are due?
That’s right—the recently crowned Champion Logline Writer.
So I wave at Warren and say “Cool, but I can’t go,” and now the #2 vote-grabber gets the glory while I get a copy of Warren’s book and/or a box of pushpins. And come next Saturday night, as my duly-crushed rival is sipping my watered well-drink cocktails and schmoozing with my hip industry contacts and horking down my niblet-sized cuts of the finest meats at the spectacular gherkin and saltine buffet line, I’ll be a metaphorical million miles away, scrubbing scorched chili from the bottom of an army-surplus pot beneath the magnesium glare of an overhead Coleman lantern.
Which actually suits me better, truth be told. Some folks fit right in with beautiful people and casual convo and terrazzo floors and light jazz on the overhead. Me, I’m content again to be like Maximus in GLADIATOR, denied his rightful glory and forced to toil in abject dumpth for the bemusement of self-anointed gods, but goddammit I’ll still have my honor, my pride, my dignity.
And, if Warren can be trusted, maybe some pushpins in the mail.
”What we do in life echoes in eternity.”
Damned straight, else I’m screwed again (naturally).
Onwards.
.
.
.
B
Something weird is in the water this week, it seems. One friend gets a manager and an option and an assignment and small but not irrelevant bucket of cash. Another friend gets an option and an assignment and surely the promise of a similar non-irrelevant cash-bucket. Another pal emerges from a great face-to-face with the nagging sense that this is the start of a working relationship where (wait for it...) the non-irrelevant bucket again makes its appearance onstage. Other friends are having graphic novels premiere, or are claiming awards for comics which just premiered, or are showing early test shots of the FX the boys at WETA are cranking out for their directorial debut, or are talking about wrap parties for final episodes of major trilogies.
And now, dammit, the Good Luck Fairy has sprinkled Yippee Dust on my oversized head.
Because word has come down that I am a major award winner.
Scr(i)pt Magazine and Final Draft co-sponsor the big Scriptwriters Showcase in a week or so out at Universal Studios. The event is a cool gathering of screenwriting talents and celebs, and features all sorts of great learning and networking opportunities. Tickets to the event normally cost 149 bucks a piece—steep but worth it, given the quality and quantity of top-drawer talent you’ll have access to.
One of the panelists at the event will be Warren Hsu Leonard, aspriring screenwriter and chief bottle washer and content-spewer at the cool blog The Screenwriting Life. As a panelist, Warren had some comp passes to the event, so he came up with a goofy idea to have a 24-hour contest to see who could come up with the “best” (worst) logline for a fictitious movie, with the stipulation that the logline had to include seven specific oddball words:
barcalounger
teddy
struggles
yammer
lodge
galore
mucilaginous
Well, seeing as how Your Intrepid Narrator has eleventeen go-zillion other more pressing concerns on his plate, of course I set myself to coming up with a logline (I’d be the World Champion Procrastinator if only I could get myself to focus on the task of claiming that title...). It came together pretty quick, so I flung it against Warren’s virtual wall:
“STICKY SNOW — (action-romance) When a surprise mid-August blizzard traps world-weary barcalounger repairman Bosco Yammer in a remote Montana fishing lodge with beautiful young teddy bear heiress Plushy Galore, the unlikely couple struggles to overcome personal differences, a lack of seasonally appropriate clothing, and a sleeper cell of mucilaginous Quebecois “bush pirates” trafficking in stolen ornamental shrubbery.”
Then (yay for me) Warren selected it as one of the five finalists to go into the public voting to choose the winner.
Now, hard as this is to believe, I have friends.
No, really—I’m serious. I have great friends. I have friends so great, in fact, that even a complete ass-tacular moron such as myself still rates support and at least a monthly demonstration of some functional equivalent of respect. So when I mentioned to a group of friends—fellow writers and artists and morons—that my bad logline made the finals of the contest, saying “you guys oughta go see the fun and vote for someone,” apparently many of them did just that. Suddenly my vote tally explodified, and I ran roughshod over my pathetic rivals like some great big rumbling roughshod over-running thing. We’re talking a mandate of Stalinesque proportion. When the smoke had cleared and the steaming gore hosed from the voting booths, I’d claimed almost 50% of the ballots in the 5-way race.
Meaning I’d won a free pass to the aforementioned Seriously Waycool LA Event.
Now, anyone who’s read this far likely has done so just to see the inevitable other shoe drop (or else is completing some sort of court-ordered community service/masochistic reading exercise), as Good News in my universe most always arrives wrapped ‘round a well-thrown fast-flying rock.
This conference is April 7–9.
My son’s Cub Scout pack has their Spring Campout April 7–9.
And guess who is the Camping Coordinator, in charge of making sure the weenies get cooked and the campfires get put out and the nice people at Lake Somerville State Park get their money and whatever apologies are due?
That’s right—the recently crowned Champion Logline Writer.
So I wave at Warren and say “Cool, but I can’t go,” and now the #2 vote-grabber gets the glory while I get a copy of Warren’s book and/or a box of pushpins. And come next Saturday night, as my duly-crushed rival is sipping my watered well-drink cocktails and schmoozing with my hip industry contacts and horking down my niblet-sized cuts of the finest meats at the spectacular gherkin and saltine buffet line, I’ll be a metaphorical million miles away, scrubbing scorched chili from the bottom of an army-surplus pot beneath the magnesium glare of an overhead Coleman lantern.
Which actually suits me better, truth be told. Some folks fit right in with beautiful people and casual convo and terrazzo floors and light jazz on the overhead. Me, I’m content again to be like Maximus in GLADIATOR, denied his rightful glory and forced to toil in abject dumpth for the bemusement of self-anointed gods, but goddammit I’ll still have my honor, my pride, my dignity.
And, if Warren can be trusted, maybe some pushpins in the mail.
”What we do in life echoes in eternity.”
Damned straight, else I’m screwed again (naturally).
Onwards.
.
.
.
B
30 March 2006
on the whole, it's been a weird damned week
It's funny how the oddest little thing can become so significant at the oddest moment. An off-the-cuff remark from someone can be exactly what you needed to hear to brighten an otherwise gloomy crapfest of a day, and then someone's poorly phrased remark in e-mail can be enough to set you off down a homicidal raging road for an hour or two until the experiemental meds kick in and all the colors rotate back to their proper place in the spectrum.
Last week I built some rhythm on the RomCom (note to self-- as we enter the homestretch of the first draft, we're getting to the point where a TITLE might be a good idea...). I had a nice run of days where things were quiet hereabouts, so I turned off the phone, cued some mood music, and kicked ass. Something like 14 pages done in four days. No, that's not Paul Schrader writing TAXI DRIVER during a commercial break of MANNIX (whatever), but for a civilian with a life, a wife, four kids, and a double ass-load of duties and obligations elsewhere, I was pretty proud.
This week was the great equalization. Where last week words were falling from the sky, this week it seemed the sky was all that was willing to fall on me. Wrestling with all sorts of non-writing-related stuff sucked all the wind from my sails, and I was floundering hugely. I went more than five days without even OPENING the romcom script document.
And still the dates fell from the calendar. May 1-- Nicholls deadline-- now looms like the light of an oncoming train, and here I sit still putting in survey markers to lay out the possible path out of the Second Act Wilderness.
Earlier today I was fit to be tied, I was so frustrated. A Cub Scout project had mushroomed into a monster timesuck, another kid-related thing was threatening to do the same, we've had dentist appointments and rained out baseball games and this and that, and I was ready to start breaking stuff by mid-morning. I think I was starting to teeter dangerously close to some sort of real breakdown.
And then I get an email. I won’t bore with (many) specific details, but it was a totally unprompted note of support from a parent in one of the kid-related activities that I've been killing myself to perform.
"We just wanted to let you know how thrilled we are to know that you're in charge of (our son’s activity)."
Suddenly, the Suck lessened a little.
An hour later, another parent stopped by to drop off some paperwork-- totally unrelated and unknown to the previous e-mailer-- and that parent gave me another oddly well-timed pat on the back. Again, the Suck lessened.
Meanwhile, at least three friends in the extended scribosphere managed to report some sort of Major Good News this week-- managers, options, assignments, meetings, something-- and in every case, when I caught them and tried to give them congrats, they asked me about my stuff and wished me well. "Hang in there. You'll get where you're headed."
And then, oddest of the odd, The Wife came in, saw my mood this afternoon, and said 'OK, kids-- everyone outside. Dad needs to write." And she kept the monkeys off me for a full two hours. Hell, she even cooked dinner.
Let me repeat that, because I am reasonably sure that none of you truly appreciates the shattering significance of what I just said: The Wife cooked dinner.
This just does not happen. It's not that she's a bad wife (hell, she has lasted with me for fourteen years, which oughta get her a matched set of Nobels at the minimum), but cooking is not her thing, man. So when she volunteers to take that bullet, I know two things:
1) I must REALLY look pathetic and hang-dog
and
2) I had damned sure better do something with the gift of time she is giving me.
So again I cued some music, picked a random point in the unfinished portion of the script, and started banging keys.
90 minutes later, I'd added 9 new pages, including a nice emotional romantic set-up which dovetails right into two other scenes I'd written before but which never seemed to connect to the stuff I had in the first two acts. Suddenly, I see the first clear path from beginning to end of this story, and all I have to do is clean it up, dress it up, edit and punch up the jokes, proofcheck 3 times, sacrifice one perfect ram to the great god of screenwriting, and then hope it all comes together in time to stuff an envelope and send it toward one Mr. Greg Beal before May 1.
Weird. I have the funny feeling that I just might make it work now.
.
.
.
B
Last week I built some rhythm on the RomCom (note to self-- as we enter the homestretch of the first draft, we're getting to the point where a TITLE might be a good idea...). I had a nice run of days where things were quiet hereabouts, so I turned off the phone, cued some mood music, and kicked ass. Something like 14 pages done in four days. No, that's not Paul Schrader writing TAXI DRIVER during a commercial break of MANNIX (whatever), but for a civilian with a life, a wife, four kids, and a double ass-load of duties and obligations elsewhere, I was pretty proud.
This week was the great equalization. Where last week words were falling from the sky, this week it seemed the sky was all that was willing to fall on me. Wrestling with all sorts of non-writing-related stuff sucked all the wind from my sails, and I was floundering hugely. I went more than five days without even OPENING the romcom script document.
And still the dates fell from the calendar. May 1-- Nicholls deadline-- now looms like the light of an oncoming train, and here I sit still putting in survey markers to lay out the possible path out of the Second Act Wilderness.
Earlier today I was fit to be tied, I was so frustrated. A Cub Scout project had mushroomed into a monster timesuck, another kid-related thing was threatening to do the same, we've had dentist appointments and rained out baseball games and this and that, and I was ready to start breaking stuff by mid-morning. I think I was starting to teeter dangerously close to some sort of real breakdown.
And then I get an email. I won’t bore with (many) specific details, but it was a totally unprompted note of support from a parent in one of the kid-related activities that I've been killing myself to perform.
"We just wanted to let you know how thrilled we are to know that you're in charge of (our son’s activity)."
Suddenly, the Suck lessened a little.
An hour later, another parent stopped by to drop off some paperwork-- totally unrelated and unknown to the previous e-mailer-- and that parent gave me another oddly well-timed pat on the back. Again, the Suck lessened.
Meanwhile, at least three friends in the extended scribosphere managed to report some sort of Major Good News this week-- managers, options, assignments, meetings, something-- and in every case, when I caught them and tried to give them congrats, they asked me about my stuff and wished me well. "Hang in there. You'll get where you're headed."
And then, oddest of the odd, The Wife came in, saw my mood this afternoon, and said 'OK, kids-- everyone outside. Dad needs to write." And she kept the monkeys off me for a full two hours. Hell, she even cooked dinner.
Let me repeat that, because I am reasonably sure that none of you truly appreciates the shattering significance of what I just said: The Wife cooked dinner.
This just does not happen. It's not that she's a bad wife (hell, she has lasted with me for fourteen years, which oughta get her a matched set of Nobels at the minimum), but cooking is not her thing, man. So when she volunteers to take that bullet, I know two things:
1) I must REALLY look pathetic and hang-dog
and
2) I had damned sure better do something with the gift of time she is giving me.
So again I cued some music, picked a random point in the unfinished portion of the script, and started banging keys.
90 minutes later, I'd added 9 new pages, including a nice emotional romantic set-up which dovetails right into two other scenes I'd written before but which never seemed to connect to the stuff I had in the first two acts. Suddenly, I see the first clear path from beginning to end of this story, and all I have to do is clean it up, dress it up, edit and punch up the jokes, proofcheck 3 times, sacrifice one perfect ram to the great god of screenwriting, and then hope it all comes together in time to stuff an envelope and send it toward one Mr. Greg Beal before May 1.
Weird. I have the funny feeling that I just might make it work now.
.
.
.
B
28 March 2006
meme: four movies I'd love to re-write
Tom, a relative newcomer to the great blubberring Scribosphere of screenwriters and wannabee screenwriters, posed a cool meme-list over at his site, The One Year Push: Four Films I'd Like To Rewrite For Whatever Reason. I posted my list there, but felt a need to go into typically longwinded detail about the whys and wherefores of the titles listed, so here we go:
FOUR MOVIES I WISH I COULD RE-WRITE
[1] ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES (1991)
Likely as close as I've ever come to demanding my money back for a movie. yeah, yeah-- some folks claim to like this turdfest, but I rate it as one of the dumbest bonehead gaffes in memory. For chrissakes, they are given one of the most enduring and romantic legends in all of storytelling, assemble a cast of folks who have all proven elsewhere that they can be great onscreen, and then... they turn it into some ugly whacked out action fest where rape is played for laugh, where racism is introduced as a sub-plot (huh?), and where Costner seems trapped in no man's land between Errol Flynn and Jeff Spicoli. Wretched.
[2] MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL (1997)
This one stings me to mention, 'cuz i *like* credited writer John Lee Hancock. He's done some great movies and has always always always come across as a truly stand-up decent guy in every story I've ever heard from anyone who's had any dealings with him. The casting in the flick was perfect (Spacey? Cusack? Eastwood at the helm? Rock on.) But for my money this adaptation of John Berendt's bestseller just stinks, IMO. I loved Berendt's book and was among the first in line when the movie came out, yet mere minutes into the movie I already had that queasy "oh shit-- they totally missed it" feeling. Where Berendt described the quaint kooky otherworldliness of Savannah GA with a gentle loving familiarity, the movie reduced it to freak show goofiness. I still sigh in regret every time I glance up at my bookshelf and notice the spine of the book.
[3] WILD WILD WEST (1999)
Again, one that broke my heart on several levels. As a kid, WWW was my favorite show. Period. I watched it EVERY day in syndicated re-runs. I doodled ways to re-create all the cool gadgets Jim and Artie used. I daydreamed about traveling around in a tricked out Pullman car. I wore my Dingo boots (with cut-offs, natch') as a 6 year old pedaling around in my red plastic Krazy Kar. For years I wondered "when will THAT be a movie?" and then, I see that it's under production. Then I read that Maddock & Wilson-- the TREMORS guys!-- are the screenwriters, and I smile hugely, 'cuz I KNOW this is going to be great. Kevin Kline as Artemus Gordon? GREAT! Will "Fresh Prince" Smith as Jim West? GREA-- wait a minute. Will SMITH? Now, I'm not arguing the race thing-- I love Will Smith and think he can do ANYTHING he wants-- but as soon as I saw that bit of stunt casting, I knew in my heart that the race thing was going to be played for laughs, and that just totally screwed the project in my mind. West was never a buffoon or a clown. West was a cross between James Bond and The Man With No Name. Yet with Will Smith I knew we were going to see basically "MEN IN BLACK on horses." And that's what we got. This was a huge huge flop-- the sort of thing that ordinarily sinks careers-- yet Smith emerged relatively unscathed. He's that cool and likable. It's a damned shame that the script didn't give him a chance to DO something besides play the smiling goofing Will Smith Character once again. They didn't need to ruin the WILD WILD WEST franchise just for THAT.
[4] CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954/2006?)
I adore the original CFTBL. For twenty years now, the poster from teh flick has hung over my desk so that it leers down at me as I write. For my money, it ranks as the ultimate cheesy monster movie. It's got some great location shooting, some tremendously under-appreciated cinematography (watch CREATURE and then watch JAWS and see if you don't chuckle at some shots Spielberg clearly (ahem) "borrowed"), and one of the truly iconic movie monsters. Arch 1950's dialog, busty babes in distress, dorky-tough middle-aged white guy hero with chinos hitched up round his navel... it's got it all. I've always been a bit leery that it's only a matter of time until someone summons the stones to try and improve on this Mona Lisa of monster-dom, and now I see that Gary Ross (w/ direct Breck Eisner...) are developing a remake. Now, Ross has done some movies I like, and I have NO idea if they'll do a great or a god-awful job on this project, but damn I wish I could be a part of the team, if only to protect and preserve all the goofy glory that I cherish from the 1954 Jack Arnold original. Peter Jackson had KONG-- I have THE CREATURE. If they trash this baby... I shall be very put out.
-=-=-=-
Tom has a cool site and deserves some love, if you haven't visited already. Pop on over and see what I mean.
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.
B
FOUR MOVIES I WISH I COULD RE-WRITE
[1] ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES (1991)
Likely as close as I've ever come to demanding my money back for a movie. yeah, yeah-- some folks claim to like this turdfest, but I rate it as one of the dumbest bonehead gaffes in memory. For chrissakes, they are given one of the most enduring and romantic legends in all of storytelling, assemble a cast of folks who have all proven elsewhere that they can be great onscreen, and then... they turn it into some ugly whacked out action fest where rape is played for laugh, where racism is introduced as a sub-plot (huh?), and where Costner seems trapped in no man's land between Errol Flynn and Jeff Spicoli. Wretched.
[2] MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL (1997)
This one stings me to mention, 'cuz i *like* credited writer John Lee Hancock. He's done some great movies and has always always always come across as a truly stand-up decent guy in every story I've ever heard from anyone who's had any dealings with him. The casting in the flick was perfect (Spacey? Cusack? Eastwood at the helm? Rock on.) But for my money this adaptation of John Berendt's bestseller just stinks, IMO. I loved Berendt's book and was among the first in line when the movie came out, yet mere minutes into the movie I already had that queasy "oh shit-- they totally missed it" feeling. Where Berendt described the quaint kooky otherworldliness of Savannah GA with a gentle loving familiarity, the movie reduced it to freak show goofiness. I still sigh in regret every time I glance up at my bookshelf and notice the spine of the book.
[3] WILD WILD WEST (1999)
Again, one that broke my heart on several levels. As a kid, WWW was my favorite show. Period. I watched it EVERY day in syndicated re-runs. I doodled ways to re-create all the cool gadgets Jim and Artie used. I daydreamed about traveling around in a tricked out Pullman car. I wore my Dingo boots (with cut-offs, natch') as a 6 year old pedaling around in my red plastic Krazy Kar. For years I wondered "when will THAT be a movie?" and then, I see that it's under production. Then I read that Maddock & Wilson-- the TREMORS guys!-- are the screenwriters, and I smile hugely, 'cuz I KNOW this is going to be great. Kevin Kline as Artemus Gordon? GREAT! Will "Fresh Prince" Smith as Jim West? GREA-- wait a minute. Will SMITH? Now, I'm not arguing the race thing-- I love Will Smith and think he can do ANYTHING he wants-- but as soon as I saw that bit of stunt casting, I knew in my heart that the race thing was going to be played for laughs, and that just totally screwed the project in my mind. West was never a buffoon or a clown. West was a cross between James Bond and The Man With No Name. Yet with Will Smith I knew we were going to see basically "MEN IN BLACK on horses." And that's what we got. This was a huge huge flop-- the sort of thing that ordinarily sinks careers-- yet Smith emerged relatively unscathed. He's that cool and likable. It's a damned shame that the script didn't give him a chance to DO something besides play the smiling goofing Will Smith Character once again. They didn't need to ruin the WILD WILD WEST franchise just for THAT.
[4] CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954/2006?)
I adore the original CFTBL. For twenty years now, the poster from teh flick has hung over my desk so that it leers down at me as I write. For my money, it ranks as the ultimate cheesy monster movie. It's got some great location shooting, some tremendously under-appreciated cinematography (watch CREATURE and then watch JAWS and see if you don't chuckle at some shots Spielberg clearly (ahem) "borrowed"), and one of the truly iconic movie monsters. Arch 1950's dialog, busty babes in distress, dorky-tough middle-aged white guy hero with chinos hitched up round his navel... it's got it all. I've always been a bit leery that it's only a matter of time until someone summons the stones to try and improve on this Mona Lisa of monster-dom, and now I see that Gary Ross (w/ direct Breck Eisner...) are developing a remake. Now, Ross has done some movies I like, and I have NO idea if they'll do a great or a god-awful job on this project, but damn I wish I could be a part of the team, if only to protect and preserve all the goofy glory that I cherish from the 1954 Jack Arnold original. Peter Jackson had KONG-- I have THE CREATURE. If they trash this baby... I shall be very put out.
-=-=-=-
Tom has a cool site and deserves some love, if you haven't visited already. Pop on over and see what I mean.
.
.
.
B
22 March 2006
self-involvement as defiance
Just to continue the completely unappreciated roll I've been of late—FOUR new thrilling blog posts in FOUR days—I figured I'd bore both my readers with yet one more scintillating puddle of dumpth.
Today was an odd day. For the first time in a long long time, I was allowed to sit and write. And I don't mean the pointless "drooling on chat boards" kind of writing which has all the lasting relevance of a fart in a stiff breeze, but actual By God working-from-an-outline, head-down, dander-up focused intentional effort designed to create words you can one day show to your grandkids and say "See? I wasn't always a toothless bitter old fuck!"
And a good day of writing it was. When the dust settled in mid-afternoon (alas, I have found over the years that my peak hours of serious creative usefulness seem to fall between 9 AM and 2 PM), I'd managed TEN new pages on the rom-com spec. I'm now boasting 79 pages in the can, with maybe 25 more to go before I start getting really really concerned that I really ought to be stopping now... but that's another concern for another day. Today I feel stoked to have done a decent job, if I do say myself (and I do, so bite me), banging out three or four scenes which all have some spark and sizzle and charm and wit and rhythm to them. Additionally, I managed a good hour of staring into space and visualizing some major beats on two other projects in my brain which are now starting to gel into visible understandable approachable ideas of actual potential value.
So "yay, me."
I still doubt I'll come close to making the best-case scenario results I'd once hoped to achieve by May 1 of this year—the hope at one point was to have one new spec ready to show, last year's drama polished to a high sheen, and a new project roughed into outline/first assembly form. Right now I'm starting to feel a little better that the romcom spec will at least be completed by May 1, and there's still a slim chance for the drama polish. The third project... well, that's now looking like my focus for June, along with a possible partnering gig, and maybe some overdue attention on one of a pair of goofy comedy concepts I still love after three or four years of squishing them around in my head like Play•Doh.
I'm sure I could force out come complaints if I needed to—so long as there are people, there will be reasons to piss and moan—but overall... not a bad day.
And I'm not entirely sure what to make of that on a Wednesday.
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B
Today was an odd day. For the first time in a long long time, I was allowed to sit and write. And I don't mean the pointless "drooling on chat boards" kind of writing which has all the lasting relevance of a fart in a stiff breeze, but actual By God working-from-an-outline, head-down, dander-up focused intentional effort designed to create words you can one day show to your grandkids and say "See? I wasn't always a toothless bitter old fuck!"
And a good day of writing it was. When the dust settled in mid-afternoon (alas, I have found over the years that my peak hours of serious creative usefulness seem to fall between 9 AM and 2 PM), I'd managed TEN new pages on the rom-com spec. I'm now boasting 79 pages in the can, with maybe 25 more to go before I start getting really really concerned that I really ought to be stopping now... but that's another concern for another day. Today I feel stoked to have done a decent job, if I do say myself (and I do, so bite me), banging out three or four scenes which all have some spark and sizzle and charm and wit and rhythm to them. Additionally, I managed a good hour of staring into space and visualizing some major beats on two other projects in my brain which are now starting to gel into visible understandable approachable ideas of actual potential value.
So "yay, me."
I still doubt I'll come close to making the best-case scenario results I'd once hoped to achieve by May 1 of this year—the hope at one point was to have one new spec ready to show, last year's drama polished to a high sheen, and a new project roughed into outline/first assembly form. Right now I'm starting to feel a little better that the romcom spec will at least be completed by May 1, and there's still a slim chance for the drama polish. The third project... well, that's now looking like my focus for June, along with a possible partnering gig, and maybe some overdue attention on one of a pair of goofy comedy concepts I still love after three or four years of squishing them around in my head like Play•Doh.
I'm sure I could force out come complaints if I needed to—so long as there are people, there will be reasons to piss and moan—but overall... not a bad day.
And I'm not entirely sure what to make of that on a Wednesday.
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B
21 March 2006
rolling a turkey
Three new posts in three days—I envy the excitement my readers (both of you) must feel.
I had a rare and much-enjoyed Good Day Of Writing today, managing to pound enough new words to push the page count to 69 and counting on the new Rom Com spec. I am refusing to look back and previous day's efforts, opting instead to keep wading forward—mainly out of fear that the work has been utter and absolute crap, but if such is the case, who's gonna know anyway?
Nicholls deadline is something like 42 days away, so all I have to do is average one Major Award Winning Page per day over that span and VIOLA I'll have a solid script to fling against their side alley.
Hopefully things will start to improve a bit in terms of writing time: a few nagging taskls and distractions are starting to fall off the task sheet, and what nagging assignments are left should not normally compete directly for my writing time, but as always, we shall see....
-=-=-=-
Meanwhile, weird scenes abound 'round the scribosphere. One very good friend just stunned close observers by landing pro management rather suddenly this week. It's both exciting and mildly depressing to watch. On the one hand I am truly deeply thrilled for my friend, but on the other of course there is that nagging sense of "dammit I want that, too!" Jealousy is an ugly feeling to 'fess to, even if only privately (and yes, the irony of using the word "privately" to describe posting on the open internet is duly noted).
Another good friend is making noise trying to talk me into partnering on an interesting script project. I'm still nipple-deep in stuff I need to complete ASAP, but if I can get past this current passel of hurdles I'd likely be very interested in this partner project for a variety of reasons, most prominently the fact that it sounds like a fun premise with solid commercial appeal. "Money talks," and I'm ready and eager to demonstrate my listening abilities.
And then last night I got tipped to tune in to Letterman just in time to see Diablo Cody make her TV talk show debut, an event which should give warm fuzzy motivation to every aspiring wannabee wordslinger out there. For those not hip to the whole wild Diablo Cody story, she somehow went from ad copywriter to stripper to blogger to book author to screenwriter deal in what appears in hindsight to be a perfectly sensible logical rapid progression. (News flash-- for anyone hoping to duplicate her career arc, it also helps to have wicked writing chops and bigger balls than a PBA equipment supplier.)
Stuff is happening all over, and people—people I know and interact with—are breaking through to real success and professional standing. It's exciting, motivating, and somehow a little nerve-wracking, possibly because it serves as proof that this crazy dream is perhaps not so absolutely farfetched and unattainable after all.
"Find a way, make a way."
Damned straight, skippy.
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tickled pink yet enviously green B
I had a rare and much-enjoyed Good Day Of Writing today, managing to pound enough new words to push the page count to 69 and counting on the new Rom Com spec. I am refusing to look back and previous day's efforts, opting instead to keep wading forward—mainly out of fear that the work has been utter and absolute crap, but if such is the case, who's gonna know anyway?
Nicholls deadline is something like 42 days away, so all I have to do is average one Major Award Winning Page per day over that span and VIOLA I'll have a solid script to fling against their side alley.
Hopefully things will start to improve a bit in terms of writing time: a few nagging taskls and distractions are starting to fall off the task sheet, and what nagging assignments are left should not normally compete directly for my writing time, but as always, we shall see....
-=-=-=-
Meanwhile, weird scenes abound 'round the scribosphere. One very good friend just stunned close observers by landing pro management rather suddenly this week. It's both exciting and mildly depressing to watch. On the one hand I am truly deeply thrilled for my friend, but on the other of course there is that nagging sense of "dammit I want that, too!" Jealousy is an ugly feeling to 'fess to, even if only privately (and yes, the irony of using the word "privately" to describe posting on the open internet is duly noted).
Another good friend is making noise trying to talk me into partnering on an interesting script project. I'm still nipple-deep in stuff I need to complete ASAP, but if I can get past this current passel of hurdles I'd likely be very interested in this partner project for a variety of reasons, most prominently the fact that it sounds like a fun premise with solid commercial appeal. "Money talks," and I'm ready and eager to demonstrate my listening abilities.
And then last night I got tipped to tune in to Letterman just in time to see Diablo Cody make her TV talk show debut, an event which should give warm fuzzy motivation to every aspiring wannabee wordslinger out there. For those not hip to the whole wild Diablo Cody story, she somehow went from ad copywriter to stripper to blogger to book author to screenwriter deal in what appears in hindsight to be a perfectly sensible logical rapid progression. (News flash-- for anyone hoping to duplicate her career arc, it also helps to have wicked writing chops and bigger balls than a PBA equipment supplier.)
Stuff is happening all over, and people—people I know and interact with—are breaking through to real success and professional standing. It's exciting, motivating, and somehow a little nerve-wracking, possibly because it serves as proof that this crazy dream is perhaps not so absolutely farfetched and unattainable after all.
"Find a way, make a way."
Damned straight, skippy.
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tickled pink yet enviously green B
20 March 2006
the brevity ended all too quickly
You had your chance. I posted a small entry, yet there was no tsunami of cheering, no avalanche of encouragement, no mudslide of support, no overflowing ditch of praise, no leaky faucet of appreciation.
So we now return to our more normal long-winded format.
Let that stand as a lesson to you all.
-=-=-=-
UPDATE:
ROM-COM: I've made some recent headway to bring me to 64 pages completed. I still lack a title, and I know full well that a goodly hunk of what pages I have will need to be replaced or destroyed, but hey-- progress is progress, even when it's not especially progressive. We'll see how much time I actually am allowed this week, as The Wife will be around the house tomorrow (she just ended a three-night shift, so she'll now be all itchy and motivated to "get things done," and said things are always HER things rather than MY things, which means I'll be exected to act committed to whatever task she now labels as our Top Priority. This might seem unfairly hostile, but then, I'm both unfair and hostile, so I'm not sure why this sensation should stand as a surprise to anyone.
LILYA: notes scribbled all over margins of the last print copy, and I hope to make a quick run through that script in the next week to make sure the planned mods and tweaks all make sense and have the intended effect of clarifying some motives and such. Hopefully (knock knock) it will be a smooth easy painless process which yields a tighter smoother ore satisfying read. And hopefully I'll win the Powerball drawing and get a fully-functioning anatomically-correct Halle Berry sex-bot for Christmas. Yeah, right.
WESTERN HYBRID PROJCT: it still sits there on teh back burner of my mental EZ-bake over, so who knows when i'll actually have full clearance to chase after this, but I am intrigued by the possibilities there. A cool and serious young director guy wants to see if we can develop this idea into an actual shootable low-budget feature for possible use in teh fall, but I need to geta much firmer grip on teh basic story outline, and then scribble it down on paper (or screen) and then work it out with the director guy, and then... something else, I'm sure.
POSSIBLE NEW CO-WRITING PROJECT: am talking with a cool and semi-established writer to brainstorm an idea she suggested as a possible co-writing project. A dark but funny rom-com thing, it intrigues me, both for story possibilities as well as for the creative opportunities of working with this writer. It *seems* like a cool idea—cool premise, cool characters, cool story, cool setting, cool working partner, possibly very cool rewards if it all comes to fruition— but it's another iron to add to the already well-used fire, so I just hope it works out.
MAGAZINE COLUMN: Need to get busy developing some ideas for a weird column I sorta fell into/created for myself with a local lifestyle magazine. Again, if it all blossoms like it could and like I hope, it will be a cool deal. but if it instead turns into yet one more frustrating timesuck with no upside... well, blogs need topics, too.
In short (ha!), tons of words are due to tons of projects, several of these projects hold the faint glimmer of being The Break which magically transforms me from Bitter Underpaid Writer to Bitter Overpaid Writer, and I know th at all three of you out there reading this hold that hope near and dear to your tiny black three-chambered hearts.
"Huzzah."
Onwards.
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.
.
writing like a really hard-writing thing B
So we now return to our more normal long-winded format.
Let that stand as a lesson to you all.
-=-=-=-
UPDATE:
ROM-COM: I've made some recent headway to bring me to 64 pages completed. I still lack a title, and I know full well that a goodly hunk of what pages I have will need to be replaced or destroyed, but hey-- progress is progress, even when it's not especially progressive. We'll see how much time I actually am allowed this week, as The Wife will be around the house tomorrow (she just ended a three-night shift, so she'll now be all itchy and motivated to "get things done," and said things are always HER things rather than MY things, which means I'll be exected to act committed to whatever task she now labels as our Top Priority. This might seem unfairly hostile, but then, I'm both unfair and hostile, so I'm not sure why this sensation should stand as a surprise to anyone.
LILYA: notes scribbled all over margins of the last print copy, and I hope to make a quick run through that script in the next week to make sure the planned mods and tweaks all make sense and have the intended effect of clarifying some motives and such. Hopefully (knock knock) it will be a smooth easy painless process which yields a tighter smoother ore satisfying read. And hopefully I'll win the Powerball drawing and get a fully-functioning anatomically-correct Halle Berry sex-bot for Christmas. Yeah, right.
WESTERN HYBRID PROJCT: it still sits there on teh back burner of my mental EZ-bake over, so who knows when i'll actually have full clearance to chase after this, but I am intrigued by the possibilities there. A cool and serious young director guy wants to see if we can develop this idea into an actual shootable low-budget feature for possible use in teh fall, but I need to geta much firmer grip on teh basic story outline, and then scribble it down on paper (or screen) and then work it out with the director guy, and then... something else, I'm sure.
POSSIBLE NEW CO-WRITING PROJECT: am talking with a cool and semi-established writer to brainstorm an idea she suggested as a possible co-writing project. A dark but funny rom-com thing, it intrigues me, both for story possibilities as well as for the creative opportunities of working with this writer. It *seems* like a cool idea—cool premise, cool characters, cool story, cool setting, cool working partner, possibly very cool rewards if it all comes to fruition— but it's another iron to add to the already well-used fire, so I just hope it works out.
MAGAZINE COLUMN: Need to get busy developing some ideas for a weird column I sorta fell into/created for myself with a local lifestyle magazine. Again, if it all blossoms like it could and like I hope, it will be a cool deal. but if it instead turns into yet one more frustrating timesuck with no upside... well, blogs need topics, too.
In short (ha!), tons of words are due to tons of projects, several of these projects hold the faint glimmer of being The Break which magically transforms me from Bitter Underpaid Writer to Bitter Overpaid Writer, and I know th at all three of you out there reading this hold that hope near and dear to your tiny black three-chambered hearts.
"Huzzah."
Onwards.
.
.
.
writing like a really hard-writing thing B
19 March 2006
we're number three! we're number three!
From the Department of Own Horn Tooting: This blog is now the #3 rated return for a Google search using the terms [quote]"sudden sinus drainage"[endquote].
So we got dat goin fer us.
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proud (very proud) B
So we got dat goin fer us.
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proud (very proud) B
13 March 2006
a dangerous game
So let’s imagine that you’ve made the leap to calling yourself “a writer.” By that I mean that you have now confessed fully and freely—both to yourself and the world at large—your intent to find some actual tangible financial success as a slinger of words. At this point it seems obvious to presume that you have placed some value upon both your creative time and your creative output.
At least, one would normally think this was obvious.
But what then to make of the all-too-common scenario of the struggling yet “serious” writer who pisses away great heaping gobs of time on pointless pursuits? Who fritters away creative juice by slumming on chat boards and blog sites.
Like here and now.
[Irony remains, alas, a bitch.]
I am a writer. I have been paid to write for many tears. I get paid to write even today. I hope and intend and expect to enjoy a great deal more (and greater) success from my writing in the coming years. Yet here I sit, trying to delude myself into rationalizing the decision to piss away an opportunity for creative progress in favor of toiling away on a blog post to be read by (optimistic estimate) 8 or 9 people. For free.
Screenwriting contest season looms larger and larger on the horizon, yet rather than wrestle the half-formed romantic-comedy out of my brain and onto the page, rather than fine tune the character motivation elements of my war drama, rather than work a final final completed draft of my co-written adventure (one that would allow me and the co-writer to co-exist on co-acceptable terms), I play the dangerously self-indulgent game of whining about that sad kind of person who wastes time with whiny blogsites.
How very “meta” of me.
Maybe I’ll hop onto a chat site and spend 10 or 90 minutes carping about the addictive waste of time which chat sites represent.
Or perhaps I’ll send a self-indulgent longwinded ranting essay to some pal via email, one in which I piss and moan about people who spend so much time pissing and moaning in longwinded emails rather than actually making useful progress on any front, on any project.
A lot of us writers have a bad problem with these seductive alluring waste of time distractions: blogs, chat, email, webrings. Every year some new cool distraction gets added to the mix, making it even a little bit harder to stay focused on filling the one blank page most in need of filling: the unfinished project sitting there on on the front porch of our minds. This, my pretties, is a problem, as that story—that script, that essay, that play, that novel—is not going to finish itself, nor is it going to proof, polish, pimp, market and sell itself. That is a task which falls upon the shoulders of the writer, but far too easily these days the writer is distracted by pretty lights and the siren song of self-absorbed navel-gazing.
“Admitting that you have a problem is the first step in overcoming a problem.” You hear that a lot. What you don’t hear is what the second step is supposed to be.
For a writer, I’m guessing it’s got to be something like “just shut up and write, dummy.”
Physician, heal thyself.
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.
.
fighting to maintain B
At least, one would normally think this was obvious.
But what then to make of the all-too-common scenario of the struggling yet “serious” writer who pisses away great heaping gobs of time on pointless pursuits? Who fritters away creative juice by slumming on chat boards and blog sites.
Like here and now.
[Irony remains, alas, a bitch.]
I am a writer. I have been paid to write for many tears. I get paid to write even today. I hope and intend and expect to enjoy a great deal more (and greater) success from my writing in the coming years. Yet here I sit, trying to delude myself into rationalizing the decision to piss away an opportunity for creative progress in favor of toiling away on a blog post to be read by (optimistic estimate) 8 or 9 people. For free.
Screenwriting contest season looms larger and larger on the horizon, yet rather than wrestle the half-formed romantic-comedy out of my brain and onto the page, rather than fine tune the character motivation elements of my war drama, rather than work a final final completed draft of my co-written adventure (one that would allow me and the co-writer to co-exist on co-acceptable terms), I play the dangerously self-indulgent game of whining about that sad kind of person who wastes time with whiny blogsites.
How very “meta” of me.
Maybe I’ll hop onto a chat site and spend 10 or 90 minutes carping about the addictive waste of time which chat sites represent.
Or perhaps I’ll send a self-indulgent longwinded ranting essay to some pal via email, one in which I piss and moan about people who spend so much time pissing and moaning in longwinded emails rather than actually making useful progress on any front, on any project.
A lot of us writers have a bad problem with these seductive alluring waste of time distractions: blogs, chat, email, webrings. Every year some new cool distraction gets added to the mix, making it even a little bit harder to stay focused on filling the one blank page most in need of filling: the unfinished project sitting there on on the front porch of our minds. This, my pretties, is a problem, as that story—that script, that essay, that play, that novel—is not going to finish itself, nor is it going to proof, polish, pimp, market and sell itself. That is a task which falls upon the shoulders of the writer, but far too easily these days the writer is distracted by pretty lights and the siren song of self-absorbed navel-gazing.
“Admitting that you have a problem is the first step in overcoming a problem.” You hear that a lot. What you don’t hear is what the second step is supposed to be.
For a writer, I’m guessing it’s got to be something like “just shut up and write, dummy.”
Physician, heal thyself.
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.
.
fighting to maintain B
01 March 2006
glacial in the springtime
It's now March 1, and I discover that a realization of this fact has motivated me in a "oh my God, time keeps on slipping...slipping...slipping" sort of way. I've been making progress on a number of fronts, but at such a slow pace that in purely personal terms it seems more a defeat than a victory.
I should be doing more, completing more, accomplishing more.
Nicholls deadline is now only two damned months away, and the Austin contest deadline looms a mere two weeks beyond that, so I had better get my act together and start kicking copius ass if I hope to meet my pre-season goal of having TWO pieces ready for contest runs this year. I managed another 5 pages today on the initial draft of the still untitled rom-com, and I continue to mentally fiddle with tweaks and twiddles to LILYA, my odd war drama (odd in the sense that I'm not normally a war drama kind of writer).
And of course I look up and find that I am nipple-deep in other extraneous obligations and endeavors which all conspire to drag focus away from screenwriting yet which cannot be ignored or dismissed.
In truth, I think I like a faint whiff of impending possible doom, as it makes me focus a bit more, stay a little more heads-up with regard to all the crap I am always trying to juggle. When no deadlines loom, there's no overriding reason to care. But when the lip of the abyss starts to appear as an ever-approaching dark line across the horizon... well then, my pretties, GAME ON.
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loin-girding B
I should be doing more, completing more, accomplishing more.
Nicholls deadline is now only two damned months away, and the Austin contest deadline looms a mere two weeks beyond that, so I had better get my act together and start kicking copius ass if I hope to meet my pre-season goal of having TWO pieces ready for contest runs this year. I managed another 5 pages today on the initial draft of the still untitled rom-com, and I continue to mentally fiddle with tweaks and twiddles to LILYA, my odd war drama (odd in the sense that I'm not normally a war drama kind of writer).
And of course I look up and find that I am nipple-deep in other extraneous obligations and endeavors which all conspire to drag focus away from screenwriting yet which cannot be ignored or dismissed.
In truth, I think I like a faint whiff of impending possible doom, as it makes me focus a bit more, stay a little more heads-up with regard to all the crap I am always trying to juggle. When no deadlines loom, there's no overriding reason to care. But when the lip of the abyss starts to appear as an ever-approaching dark line across the horizon... well then, my pretties, GAME ON.
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.
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loin-girding B
25 February 2006
two twenty five oh six
T'is a gray rainy day.
Drizzle slides down in greasy drips, and the everything seems a shade too dark, a touch too cold.
I just spent an hour staring at the cursor as it blinked steadily, moving nary an inch, defiant in its abject refusal to do one more thing than I told it to do. You’d think that after all this time the damned thing would at least once or twice offer to kick in with a word or two of its own, but instead it just blinks and mocks me.
“You call this ’writing’?”
I feel a need—an aching physical need—to put some sort of words on paper (or phosphor, but let’s not quibble, not yet) on a day like this. I have no other pressing obligations anywhere other than here at this keyboard, where I know I owe tens of thousands of words to a variety of causes, clients, and concerns.
Yet for all that, some part of my conscious brain whines that it’s just not in a mood to write, which of course pisses me off, for I absolutely subscribe to Gurney Halleck (from the book and movie DUNE) when it comes to moods:
“Moods are for cattle and love-play, not for fighting!”
And writing is more akin to fighting than most people would like to believe. Both are martial arts where planning and preparation can often out-perform ability and raw strength, where the unexpected can lay waste to your plans, where creation of victory usually demands the destruction of things won and created by previous victories, and where nobody really likes to talk much about their ignominious defeats and spectacular disasters. (Curiously enough, both are activities which most sane people avoid whenever possible.)
If I were a writer who let my writing happen only when my “mood” was right, I’d probably have a grand total of five or six pages to my credit, lifetime.
‘Cuz writing is hard goddamned work. People who disbelieve or disagree with this have (in my mind at least) never really bothered to try writing. And when I say “writing” I don’t mean scribbling a greeting inside a birthday card, or leaving a note next to the coffeepot where your spouse/kids/cleaning woman can find it later. I mean actual writing, where you start with a pile of blank pages or a raw document, and you end up with a story: an obvious lie that people happily accept and believe even though they know it’s a lie.
It’s hard work because building a Universe from scratch ain’t easy, folks. It’s the sort of thing that’s usually left to gods, delusional psychopaths, and writers. [Supply your own punch line there—I’m busy making something vaguely like a point.]
So here I sit, while the real world just kinda sorta stares off into steely drizzly space, forcing myself to put one word after another. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. At some point you look back and realize that you’ve made some progress.
Because as often as not that’s how writing gets done. You don’t sit around and wait for the “mood” to arrive, wrapped in pretty paper and tied with a satin ribbon. That’s kinda like saying the way to start a family is to sit quietly until a stork lands on your windowsill and leaves a baby. It might have happened once, somewhere, but for the rest of us, it takes work. Labor. Dedicated effort to achieve a defined goal.
And right now all I can seem to do is just stare out the window.
Damn.
.
.
.
B
Drizzle slides down in greasy drips, and the everything seems a shade too dark, a touch too cold.
I just spent an hour staring at the cursor as it blinked steadily, moving nary an inch, defiant in its abject refusal to do one more thing than I told it to do. You’d think that after all this time the damned thing would at least once or twice offer to kick in with a word or two of its own, but instead it just blinks and mocks me.
“You call this ’writing’?”
I feel a need—an aching physical need—to put some sort of words on paper (or phosphor, but let’s not quibble, not yet) on a day like this. I have no other pressing obligations anywhere other than here at this keyboard, where I know I owe tens of thousands of words to a variety of causes, clients, and concerns.
Yet for all that, some part of my conscious brain whines that it’s just not in a mood to write, which of course pisses me off, for I absolutely subscribe to Gurney Halleck (from the book and movie DUNE) when it comes to moods:
“Moods are for cattle and love-play, not for fighting!”
And writing is more akin to fighting than most people would like to believe. Both are martial arts where planning and preparation can often out-perform ability and raw strength, where the unexpected can lay waste to your plans, where creation of victory usually demands the destruction of things won and created by previous victories, and where nobody really likes to talk much about their ignominious defeats and spectacular disasters. (Curiously enough, both are activities which most sane people avoid whenever possible.)
If I were a writer who let my writing happen only when my “mood” was right, I’d probably have a grand total of five or six pages to my credit, lifetime.
‘Cuz writing is hard goddamned work. People who disbelieve or disagree with this have (in my mind at least) never really bothered to try writing. And when I say “writing” I don’t mean scribbling a greeting inside a birthday card, or leaving a note next to the coffeepot where your spouse/kids/cleaning woman can find it later. I mean actual writing, where you start with a pile of blank pages or a raw document, and you end up with a story: an obvious lie that people happily accept and believe even though they know it’s a lie.
It’s hard work because building a Universe from scratch ain’t easy, folks. It’s the sort of thing that’s usually left to gods, delusional psychopaths, and writers. [Supply your own punch line there—I’m busy making something vaguely like a point.]
So here I sit, while the real world just kinda sorta stares off into steely drizzly space, forcing myself to put one word after another. Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. At some point you look back and realize that you’ve made some progress.
Because as often as not that’s how writing gets done. You don’t sit around and wait for the “mood” to arrive, wrapped in pretty paper and tied with a satin ribbon. That’s kinda like saying the way to start a family is to sit quietly until a stork lands on your windowsill and leaves a baby. It might have happened once, somewhere, but for the rest of us, it takes work. Labor. Dedicated effort to achieve a defined goal.
And right now all I can seem to do is just stare out the window.
Damn.
.
.
.
B
Why There’s Never Much Going On Here
Despite the total lack of visible verifiable curiosity on this point, suddenly I felt a need to offer a few words of explanation for the erratic infrequent addition of content to this blog.
The simple truth is "I just don’t much care about this blog.” I tend to post lots of places, often in small smart alecky bits and pieces, and if anyone were ever to know when and where to look to find these little dribs and drabs of intellectual jetsam, the resulting pile would in many ways approximate a traditional blog.
Odd little comments upon daily observations and exasperations. Hurried updates and reports on the current status of various activities and interests. Hyperbolic commentary and criticism about movies and music and politics and fashion and other such pointless concerns. Thoughts and theories about any number of inane topics upon which I have no real expertise or credibility.
You know: a regular blog.
But when I turn to this little page—when I focus my mind upon “OK, let us now bang our little cymbal for what two or three people who might have paused to see the show this month”—I get that weirdly self-conscious feeling which makes me painfully aware of just how much bullshit already is slopped up out there, and then I suddenly feel kinda like I do when I catch myself almost ready to toss a paper napkin out the car window while cruising back from a burger run.
“Don’t add to the mess, you jerk.”
I’ve started probably three times as many posts as have ever actually been posted here. More often than not, I get to some point very near the end of the draft and suddenly I hear myself saying “oh, shut up already!”, at which point I quickly hit {select ALL} then {DELETE}.
And this the word is saved at least one more unneeded stupid uninteresting self-absorbed blog post.
You’re welcome.
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B
The simple truth is "I just don’t much care about this blog.” I tend to post lots of places, often in small smart alecky bits and pieces, and if anyone were ever to know when and where to look to find these little dribs and drabs of intellectual jetsam, the resulting pile would in many ways approximate a traditional blog.
Odd little comments upon daily observations and exasperations. Hurried updates and reports on the current status of various activities and interests. Hyperbolic commentary and criticism about movies and music and politics and fashion and other such pointless concerns. Thoughts and theories about any number of inane topics upon which I have no real expertise or credibility.
You know: a regular blog.
But when I turn to this little page—when I focus my mind upon “OK, let us now bang our little cymbal for what two or three people who might have paused to see the show this month”—I get that weirdly self-conscious feeling which makes me painfully aware of just how much bullshit already is slopped up out there, and then I suddenly feel kinda like I do when I catch myself almost ready to toss a paper napkin out the car window while cruising back from a burger run.
“Don’t add to the mess, you jerk.”
I’ve started probably three times as many posts as have ever actually been posted here. More often than not, I get to some point very near the end of the draft and suddenly I hear myself saying “oh, shut up already!”, at which point I quickly hit {select ALL} then {DELETE}.
And this the word is saved at least one more unneeded stupid uninteresting self-absorbed blog post.
You’re welcome.
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.
.
B
15 February 2006
I Ain’t Got TIME to Bleed
Often I hear other writers make a claim which sounds so bizarrely alien to me that I have trouble understanding exactly what is meant:
“I can’t think of anything to write about.”
Now, I happily lay claim to a healthy-sized bucket of faults, shortcomings and inadequacies, but lacking ideas which interest me has (so far) never been a problem. If anything, my problem is the exact opposite: I usually have a half-dozen cool ideas and writing projects tugging at me like wolves, stretching me in every direction all at once. Right now, f’rinstance, I’m trying to slog through the first draft of a new rom-com, but I am also finger-painting notes and ideas for a rather odd comb-genre project which seems to have attracted the interest of another movie buddy, plus I am still tweaking notes and ideas to further improve last year’s war drama which needs to be polished and sent out to make the marketing rounds, and I also have a pretty damned entertaining partner-written rom-com which needs one more good rewrite if it is ever to be truly worthy of consideration and notice.
That’s just on the screenwriting front. In other writing I have a pair of local columns I need to get busy with, and I have local contact who wants me to com e in to talk about all sorts of writing projects he needs for a pair of startup companies he’s running. And then there’s this silly waste of time and energy. Mind-boggling though it be, I actually get a then but steady flow of emails from folks who claim to wish that I’d put more content onto the web in this blog and in other odd sandboxes where I sometimes cavort.
Meanwhile, Real Life remains as ass-munching beast clearly hell-bent to wrestle me to the ground so that I might more easily hop up and down on my bloody lifeless carcass. A quick run-down of the responsibilities and duties and commitments on the kid-rearing front would sound like some exercise in self-congratulatory hyperbole, so instead I’ll just say “I’m dealing with a lot of shit right now.” Believe that or not—no big whoop.
Yet I read and chat with other writers whose biggest complaint seems to be a lack of things to write about?
And half the time I feel like saying “here, take these ten ideas which I know I’ll never have time to consider or play with.”
Writers block? Christ on a cracker—you might as well talk to me about time travel or anti-gravity. What I need is a 35-hour day so that I might more easily get to all the stuff I need and want to deal with every damned day, but that seems a tad unlikely at this stage of the game.
So instead, I’ll just keep on keepin’ on same as ever, staggering and swaggering forward one clumsy day at a time, trying to balance a twelve foot tall pile of ideas and projects and dreams, trying not to get too pissed if every once in a while one falls off the heap and lands with a crash.
March or die. No sleep 'til Compton. There'll be time for rest in the grave.
Onwards.
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B
“I can’t think of anything to write about.”
Now, I happily lay claim to a healthy-sized bucket of faults, shortcomings and inadequacies, but lacking ideas which interest me has (so far) never been a problem. If anything, my problem is the exact opposite: I usually have a half-dozen cool ideas and writing projects tugging at me like wolves, stretching me in every direction all at once. Right now, f’rinstance, I’m trying to slog through the first draft of a new rom-com, but I am also finger-painting notes and ideas for a rather odd comb-genre project which seems to have attracted the interest of another movie buddy, plus I am still tweaking notes and ideas to further improve last year’s war drama which needs to be polished and sent out to make the marketing rounds, and I also have a pretty damned entertaining partner-written rom-com which needs one more good rewrite if it is ever to be truly worthy of consideration and notice.
That’s just on the screenwriting front. In other writing I have a pair of local columns I need to get busy with, and I have local contact who wants me to com e in to talk about all sorts of writing projects he needs for a pair of startup companies he’s running. And then there’s this silly waste of time and energy. Mind-boggling though it be, I actually get a then but steady flow of emails from folks who claim to wish that I’d put more content onto the web in this blog and in other odd sandboxes where I sometimes cavort.
Meanwhile, Real Life remains as ass-munching beast clearly hell-bent to wrestle me to the ground so that I might more easily hop up and down on my bloody lifeless carcass. A quick run-down of the responsibilities and duties and commitments on the kid-rearing front would sound like some exercise in self-congratulatory hyperbole, so instead I’ll just say “I’m dealing with a lot of shit right now.” Believe that or not—no big whoop.
Yet I read and chat with other writers whose biggest complaint seems to be a lack of things to write about?
And half the time I feel like saying “here, take these ten ideas which I know I’ll never have time to consider or play with.”
Writers block? Christ on a cracker—you might as well talk to me about time travel or anti-gravity. What I need is a 35-hour day so that I might more easily get to all the stuff I need and want to deal with every damned day, but that seems a tad unlikely at this stage of the game.
So instead, I’ll just keep on keepin’ on same as ever, staggering and swaggering forward one clumsy day at a time, trying to balance a twelve foot tall pile of ideas and projects and dreams, trying not to get too pissed if every once in a while one falls off the heap and lands with a crash.
March or die. No sleep 'til Compton. There'll be time for rest in the grave.
Onwards.
.
.
.
B
12 February 2006
The Dragon Returns: another Cluster Headache cycle begins
Today I sit and ponder a curious question: “Who else in my little extended online social circle is blessed (as am I) to suffer the randomly cycling recurring trip through hell known as ‘Cluster Headaches’?”
Don't know what a cluster headache is? Lucky you!
Cluster headaches are a medically recognized group of headaches which (duh) usually occur in clusters — often around the same time every day for days or weeks at a stretch. They are marked by excruciating pain — women who experience them have described them as similar to and often worse than the peak pain of contractions during natural childbirth — centered behind one eye. An episode usually comes on with little or not warning, lasts 30-45 minutes, then disappears as quickly as it came. Common side effects include spiked blood pressure, sensitivity to light, sudden sinus drainage (usually from the side of the face where the pain is centered).
The fun part is this: medical science still has basically zero idea what's going on in these headaches, as yet no medication or treatment has been found which is at all routinely effective, and methods for preventing an attack are as likely as not to have no effect or even increase the likelihood of attacks.
The best part? Once one of these hell-storms on the mind starts screaming behind your eye socket, as you writhe and whimper in total fucking agony you also get to suck on the happy thought that "this shit is going to be happening routinely for the forseeable future."
Want to see what one looks like? Here's a movie (QuickTime, six minutes) showing some poor bastard in the throes of a full blown cluster headache episode.
I watch that movie and get a mildly queasy feeling, as I am all too fucking familiar with what he's feeling. In fact, I had an attack (not quite as bad as his, I think) last night. I was sitting there watching the Olympics, when I got what is (for me, at least) the scary early warning sign that The Shit Is A-Coming: I get a weird fluttering sensation in my right ear-- like a butterfly trying to get out of my ear canal. At that stage I now know to start battening down the hatches— I ran upstairs and made sure the kids were occupied and told them they were NOT to come talk to daddy for the next half hour or so unless they heard bloodcurdling screaming like he as hurt, and then I drank basically as much water as I could stand, I tossed back a handful of Advil (which might as well be Tic-Tacs or marbles for all the good they do—I have never found any medicine which helps at all), put on my shoes and headed into the backyard to pace around.
For 45 minutes I stomped around my backyard in the cold, in the dark, whimpering, tears streaming down my face, fighting the urge to pick up something—anything— and just... smash... destroy... rage. Any woman who's gone through childbirth (or man who's watched it up close and personal) knows the sensation: the pain is just so damned all-consuming that you have this deep-down reptilian instinctual urge to tear into something.
Headache sufferers sometimes use the "Kip Scale" to quantify the pain they are experiencing:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My little funfests seem to cap out at level 9+ but never go all the way to max 10. Cluster headaches are sometimes referred to as “suicide headaches.” I've never been suicidal during or due to one of these attacks, but I am not at all surprised to hear that there are folks who slide just a few ticks further. As seen with people who leap from burning skyscrapers, sometimes in a crazed panic a human will consider ANY damned way out of the pain.
Yeah, it hurts that bad.
I started getting my clusters in my late 20s. The first time was wild—at first I though “wow, so this is a migraine, huh?” (note: cluster headaches and migraines do not seem to be at all related). I just had this sudden unexpected roaring air raid siren of pain behind my left eye, and 40 minutes later it... just... went.. away. Like a hurricane blowing past. What got scary was when the same thing happened again pretty much on regular schedule every day for the next 10 days. And THEN, the cycle stopped. I was to the point by then that I was already starting to plan my daily schedule around the attacks: trying to make sure that I was going to be at home, not in the car, not in a social situation where I would suddenly morph into a fucking werewolf right there in the middle of the scene. But the attacks stopped.
"Yay!" I thought.
Then, about two years later, I get a fluttery feeling in my right ear, and ten minutes later I am curled into a fetal ball on my bed, feeling like I have a 300 pound man balancing atop a golf ball on the backside of my left eye socket as he blows a tugboat horn continuously for a half hour. Again, the cycle of attacks lasted a little more than a week, then just stopped. Again a few years later, here they come again.
And this has been my pattern since then: a week of daily bouts with the Gates of Hell trying to build a toll road through the inside my brain, then 24 or so months of calm and quiet.
Over the years I’ve done some reading and researching, looking for anything which might help reduce the frequency or severity of these episodes.
Diet seems a huge part of the puzzle, at least for me. I notice that I seem less likely to experience a cycle if I try to not routinely over-indulge in caffeine, nitrates, and other weird chemicals which might ramp up the heart rate and BP. A few years ago I switched to decaf iced tea as my daily drink of routine and have noticed a definite lessening of both frequency, length, and intensity of attacks. When the cycles start, I pretty much swear off all alcohol, red wine, sausage and hot dogs, trying to stick to healthy stuff as much as possible., Like many, I’ve found that consuming huge amounts of water during attack cycles seems to help shorten the period and intensity of the attacks. Walking around alone in the dark seems better than laying alone in the dark, but in no situation I have experienced is it all comforting to have anyone with me when I am in the grip of a cluster headache attack—I become genuinely concerned that, blinded by the pain, I am going to throw a punch or attack someone like a frightened animal.
Some people claim that oxygen helps (the man in the movie linked above can be seen sucking on an oxygen bottle), but I’ve never tried that. Cold compresses on the neck and/or forehead sometimes feel good. I’ve found that if I treat it like a birthing experience, I can at least ride the pain and not be totally flattened by it: breathing exercises, mild distracting exercise, understanding that there is a far shore to this ocean, and you will get there if you just hold on and don’t totally surrender to the pain.
What’s wild is that so few people seem to know about these bad boys. Whenever I start describing the experience and sensation, there are a fair number of people who think I am making this up for some reason, or that I am exaggerating, or that I am over-dramatizing some regular more familiar “normal” condition like migraines (interesting fact: migraines seem to affect women in roughly 4 out of 5 cases, whereas cluster headaches seem to affect men in 4 out of 5 cases).
These things are real, and they are no exaggeration, and apparently 0.1% of the population gets to enjoy them.
So I guess I’m just a lucky guy.
So if you encounter me at some point in the next few days and I seem as if I am ready to explode in a homicidal raging fit, it’s nothing personal. Really. And I’ll likely again be right as rain in 45 minutes or less.
‘Til it starts again the next day.
.
.
.
B
Don't know what a cluster headache is? Lucky you!
Cluster headaches are a medically recognized group of headaches which (duh) usually occur in clusters — often around the same time every day for days or weeks at a stretch. They are marked by excruciating pain — women who experience them have described them as similar to and often worse than the peak pain of contractions during natural childbirth — centered behind one eye. An episode usually comes on with little or not warning, lasts 30-45 minutes, then disappears as quickly as it came. Common side effects include spiked blood pressure, sensitivity to light, sudden sinus drainage (usually from the side of the face where the pain is centered).
The fun part is this: medical science still has basically zero idea what's going on in these headaches, as yet no medication or treatment has been found which is at all routinely effective, and methods for preventing an attack are as likely as not to have no effect or even increase the likelihood of attacks.
The best part? Once one of these hell-storms on the mind starts screaming behind your eye socket, as you writhe and whimper in total fucking agony you also get to suck on the happy thought that "this shit is going to be happening routinely for the forseeable future."
Want to see what one looks like? Here's a movie (QuickTime, six minutes) showing some poor bastard in the throes of a full blown cluster headache episode.
I watch that movie and get a mildly queasy feeling, as I am all too fucking familiar with what he's feeling. In fact, I had an attack (not quite as bad as his, I think) last night. I was sitting there watching the Olympics, when I got what is (for me, at least) the scary early warning sign that The Shit Is A-Coming: I get a weird fluttering sensation in my right ear-- like a butterfly trying to get out of my ear canal. At that stage I now know to start battening down the hatches— I ran upstairs and made sure the kids were occupied and told them they were NOT to come talk to daddy for the next half hour or so unless they heard bloodcurdling screaming like he as hurt, and then I drank basically as much water as I could stand, I tossed back a handful of Advil (which might as well be Tic-Tacs or marbles for all the good they do—I have never found any medicine which helps at all), put on my shoes and headed into the backyard to pace around.
For 45 minutes I stomped around my backyard in the cold, in the dark, whimpering, tears streaming down my face, fighting the urge to pick up something—anything— and just... smash... destroy... rage. Any woman who's gone through childbirth (or man who's watched it up close and personal) knows the sensation: the pain is just so damned all-consuming that you have this deep-down reptilian instinctual urge to tear into something.
Headache sufferers sometimes use the "Kip Scale" to quantify the pain they are experiencing:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
KIP SCALE for describing Headache Pain-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Pain level 0
No pain, life is beautiful
Pain level 1
Very minor, shadows come and go. Life is still beautiful
Pain level 2
More persistent shadows
Pain level 3
Shadows are getting constant but can deal with it
Pain level 4
Starting to get bad, want to be left alone
Pain level 5
Still not a "pacer" but need space
Pain level 6
Wake up grumbling, curse a bit, but can get back to sleep with out "dancing"
Pain level 7
Wake up, sleep not an option, take the beast for a walk and finally fall into bed exhausted
Pain level 8
Time to scream, yell, curse, head bang, rock, whatever works
Pain level 9
The "Why me?" syndrome starts to set in
Pain level 10
Major pain, screaming, head banging, ER trip. Depressed. Suicidal.
My little funfests seem to cap out at level 9+ but never go all the way to max 10. Cluster headaches are sometimes referred to as “suicide headaches.” I've never been suicidal during or due to one of these attacks, but I am not at all surprised to hear that there are folks who slide just a few ticks further. As seen with people who leap from burning skyscrapers, sometimes in a crazed panic a human will consider ANY damned way out of the pain.
Yeah, it hurts that bad.
I started getting my clusters in my late 20s. The first time was wild—at first I though “wow, so this is a migraine, huh?” (note: cluster headaches and migraines do not seem to be at all related). I just had this sudden unexpected roaring air raid siren of pain behind my left eye, and 40 minutes later it... just... went.. away. Like a hurricane blowing past. What got scary was when the same thing happened again pretty much on regular schedule every day for the next 10 days. And THEN, the cycle stopped. I was to the point by then that I was already starting to plan my daily schedule around the attacks: trying to make sure that I was going to be at home, not in the car, not in a social situation where I would suddenly morph into a fucking werewolf right there in the middle of the scene. But the attacks stopped.
"Yay!" I thought.
Then, about two years later, I get a fluttery feeling in my right ear, and ten minutes later I am curled into a fetal ball on my bed, feeling like I have a 300 pound man balancing atop a golf ball on the backside of my left eye socket as he blows a tugboat horn continuously for a half hour. Again, the cycle of attacks lasted a little more than a week, then just stopped. Again a few years later, here they come again.
And this has been my pattern since then: a week of daily bouts with the Gates of Hell trying to build a toll road through the inside my brain, then 24 or so months of calm and quiet.
Over the years I’ve done some reading and researching, looking for anything which might help reduce the frequency or severity of these episodes.
Diet seems a huge part of the puzzle, at least for me. I notice that I seem less likely to experience a cycle if I try to not routinely over-indulge in caffeine, nitrates, and other weird chemicals which might ramp up the heart rate and BP. A few years ago I switched to decaf iced tea as my daily drink of routine and have noticed a definite lessening of both frequency, length, and intensity of attacks. When the cycles start, I pretty much swear off all alcohol, red wine, sausage and hot dogs, trying to stick to healthy stuff as much as possible., Like many, I’ve found that consuming huge amounts of water during attack cycles seems to help shorten the period and intensity of the attacks. Walking around alone in the dark seems better than laying alone in the dark, but in no situation I have experienced is it all comforting to have anyone with me when I am in the grip of a cluster headache attack—I become genuinely concerned that, blinded by the pain, I am going to throw a punch or attack someone like a frightened animal.
Some people claim that oxygen helps (the man in the movie linked above can be seen sucking on an oxygen bottle), but I’ve never tried that. Cold compresses on the neck and/or forehead sometimes feel good. I’ve found that if I treat it like a birthing experience, I can at least ride the pain and not be totally flattened by it: breathing exercises, mild distracting exercise, understanding that there is a far shore to this ocean, and you will get there if you just hold on and don’t totally surrender to the pain.
What’s wild is that so few people seem to know about these bad boys. Whenever I start describing the experience and sensation, there are a fair number of people who think I am making this up for some reason, or that I am exaggerating, or that I am over-dramatizing some regular more familiar “normal” condition like migraines (interesting fact: migraines seem to affect women in roughly 4 out of 5 cases, whereas cluster headaches seem to affect men in 4 out of 5 cases).
These things are real, and they are no exaggeration, and apparently 0.1% of the population gets to enjoy them.
So I guess I’m just a lucky guy.
So if you encounter me at some point in the next few days and I seem as if I am ready to explode in a homicidal raging fit, it’s nothing personal. Really. And I’ll likely again be right as rain in 45 minutes or less.
‘Til it starts again the next day.
.
.
.
B
03 February 2006
A Funny Thing Happened...
...On The Way To The Daily Bitchfest
-=-=-=-
I’m not sure how or why, but I seem destined to blunder into odd and sometimes wonderful opportunities.
Last year, for example, I called up a local magazine and talked my way into a writing gig with them. I sent some samples, they seem tickled, and the plan was for me to get my feet wet filling in some articles left for grabs and then start moving into a more specifically-voiced sort of gig—possibly some sort of recurring column sort of thing. The pay was good, the mag looked professionally done, but as time went on it became painfully clear that I was never going to be allowed to cut loose and do anything fun or interesting. As the article assignments started to get duller and more infrequent, I finally just stopped chasing leads there.
Months went by as I chased always elusive screenwriting glory (it’s now “a dull glow over a distant horizon”, improved from “a mystical land known only in legend and song”), and then of course I found myself having weekly slapfights at the Rezoning Committee meetings for the local school district. There I happened to meet the editor of the OTHER local magazine, and I, being the shy unassuming timid little delicate squash blossom of a wallflower that you all know and adore, stopped her in the larking lot one night and said “so why the hell haven’t you ever called to have me write for your little magazine?”
Ten minutes of pleasant convo later, she slips me her card and says "We need to talk. Call me after Christmas.”
So, a few emails and submissions of sample materials later, I am wondering if anything is going to come of it. I try to call, and she’s always on another call. I send emails, but draw no response. I was about to give up much more hope when yesterday my phone rings. Caller ID tells me it’s the magazine.
The OTHER magazine—the first one.
Turns out they are now following through on a story idea I pitched to them last spring—an amusing look at the life of the Stay At Home Dad. I was hoping to write it as a semi-silly first person essay, and while the editor initially agreed that it sounded like fun, as we got closer and closer to the pub date, it started morphing (at her behest) into just one more boring dull lifeless interview with local dullards type of thing—the kind of story which I just hate. So I pulled off the gig, saying it wasn’t what I’d signed on to do, and we went our merry way.
‘Cept NOW that magazine has revived the idea, except this time they’ve assigned some new girl to write the thing, and they gave her MY name as a contact for interview IN the article. So instead of writing a piece wherein I get to be a silly snarling SAHD, they’ve now decided to let some she-hack pen a piece wherein she talks to me as a silly snarling SAHD dad. The big diff, as I see it, is that THEY claim my idea and SHE gets the paycheck.
BUT WAIT—this is all just prelude to the real story.
TWELVE MINUTES LATER I get an email from the magazine.
The second magazine—the one run by the lady from the Rezoning Committee meetings, whom I’d badgered in a parking lot.
“So, are you ready to start writing?”
So I call Editor#2 and she says “loved your samples, and we’re hoping to have you pen a recurring column where you just sorta snarl and spit about whatever you like.”
OK. This sounds like A Cool Thing.
“OH... and we also purchased [a local sports news-monthly], and were thinking it might also be fun to have you do some stuff there, maybe a first-person thing where we send you to try different sports or experiences and then you write about it in a silly fun way.”
OK. This sounds like Another Cool Thing.
After some sputtering and stuttering, we agree to agree and then agree to work out the details ASAP.
So now I’m sitting here jotting down column ideas, and also trying to think of some fair and reasonable number to throw at her for “terms” ($$$) for these paired gigs.
Frankly, I’m too stunned to really think clearly about it just yet, so I am asking folks I know to offer suggestions or advice if they have anything useful or experience-based to offer. What seems a fair and reasonable number to use as payment for a pair of 500-100 word essays every two months?
If you have serious suggestions, drop me a line: brettman(at)consolidated(dot)net.
I’ll be in the backyard, making offerings of thanks to the gods.
.
.
.
stunned but not entirely displeased B
-=-=-=-
I’m not sure how or why, but I seem destined to blunder into odd and sometimes wonderful opportunities.
Last year, for example, I called up a local magazine and talked my way into a writing gig with them. I sent some samples, they seem tickled, and the plan was for me to get my feet wet filling in some articles left for grabs and then start moving into a more specifically-voiced sort of gig—possibly some sort of recurring column sort of thing. The pay was good, the mag looked professionally done, but as time went on it became painfully clear that I was never going to be allowed to cut loose and do anything fun or interesting. As the article assignments started to get duller and more infrequent, I finally just stopped chasing leads there.
Months went by as I chased always elusive screenwriting glory (it’s now “a dull glow over a distant horizon”, improved from “a mystical land known only in legend and song”), and then of course I found myself having weekly slapfights at the Rezoning Committee meetings for the local school district. There I happened to meet the editor of the OTHER local magazine, and I, being the shy unassuming timid little delicate squash blossom of a wallflower that you all know and adore, stopped her in the larking lot one night and said “so why the hell haven’t you ever called to have me write for your little magazine?”
Ten minutes of pleasant convo later, she slips me her card and says "We need to talk. Call me after Christmas.”
So, a few emails and submissions of sample materials later, I am wondering if anything is going to come of it. I try to call, and she’s always on another call. I send emails, but draw no response. I was about to give up much more hope when yesterday my phone rings. Caller ID tells me it’s the magazine.
The OTHER magazine—the first one.
Turns out they are now following through on a story idea I pitched to them last spring—an amusing look at the life of the Stay At Home Dad. I was hoping to write it as a semi-silly first person essay, and while the editor initially agreed that it sounded like fun, as we got closer and closer to the pub date, it started morphing (at her behest) into just one more boring dull lifeless interview with local dullards type of thing—the kind of story which I just hate. So I pulled off the gig, saying it wasn’t what I’d signed on to do, and we went our merry way.
‘Cept NOW that magazine has revived the idea, except this time they’ve assigned some new girl to write the thing, and they gave her MY name as a contact for interview IN the article. So instead of writing a piece wherein I get to be a silly snarling SAHD, they’ve now decided to let some she-hack pen a piece wherein she talks to me as a silly snarling SAHD dad. The big diff, as I see it, is that THEY claim my idea and SHE gets the paycheck.
BUT WAIT—this is all just prelude to the real story.
TWELVE MINUTES LATER I get an email from the magazine.
The second magazine—the one run by the lady from the Rezoning Committee meetings, whom I’d badgered in a parking lot.
“So, are you ready to start writing?”
So I call Editor#2 and she says “loved your samples, and we’re hoping to have you pen a recurring column where you just sorta snarl and spit about whatever you like.”
OK. This sounds like A Cool Thing.
“OH... and we also purchased [a local sports news-monthly], and were thinking it might also be fun to have you do some stuff there, maybe a first-person thing where we send you to try different sports or experiences and then you write about it in a silly fun way.”
OK. This sounds like Another Cool Thing.
After some sputtering and stuttering, we agree to agree and then agree to work out the details ASAP.
So now I’m sitting here jotting down column ideas, and also trying to think of some fair and reasonable number to throw at her for “terms” ($$$) for these paired gigs.
Frankly, I’m too stunned to really think clearly about it just yet, so I am asking folks I know to offer suggestions or advice if they have anything useful or experience-based to offer. What seems a fair and reasonable number to use as payment for a pair of 500-100 word essays every two months?
If you have serious suggestions, drop me a line: brettman(at)consolidated(dot)net.
I’ll be in the backyard, making offerings of thanks to the gods.
.
.
.
stunned but not entirely displeased B
20 January 2006
UPDATE: tagging
Last week I got tagged by Julie O with the task of continuing Fun Joel's movie-related meme-poll. (Those with a lot of curiousity or very little to do can see my responses here.
At the time I didn't tag anyone to continue the thread, assuming (defensibly, IMO) that if a meme had already sunk to me then clearly it has well and fully run its course, but apparently I spoke too soon, as no sooner had I forgotten about this entire topic than Craig Mazin got dragged into the mosh-pit to answer the questions over on his usually-intelligent Artful Writer site, where Thomas Crymes spoke up perhaps a little too clearly wanting to know 'What's this meme thing all about?"
Well, Thomas, now you're tagged, so you can learn by doing.
And Susan, since you apparently have nothing to do, you can play, too.
Onwards.
.
.
.
B
At the time I didn't tag anyone to continue the thread, assuming (defensibly, IMO) that if a meme had already sunk to me then clearly it has well and fully run its course, but apparently I spoke too soon, as no sooner had I forgotten about this entire topic than Craig Mazin got dragged into the mosh-pit to answer the questions over on his usually-intelligent Artful Writer site, where Thomas Crymes spoke up perhaps a little too clearly wanting to know 'What's this meme thing all about?"
Well, Thomas, now you're tagged, so you can learn by doing.
And Susan, since you apparently have nothing to do, you can play, too.
Onwards.
.
.
.
B
18 January 2006
Tagged again: TV Themes
Continuing in the recent "you're it" game of meme-taggery, I've been charged by "friend" Julie.O with naming a list of Ten Greatest American TV Themes, a blog-meme stirred up (I think...) by Michael Starrbury over at Apartment Two.
Now, I'd ALREADY posted these themes on Michael's original blog, but of course news travels slow over the jungles drums of the internet, so I got tagged to post the list on MY blog before Julie realized this post was already posted on Michael's post before she posted about Michael's post and tagged me to post on mine.
Which I already have. Had.
Did.
Whatever.
---
TEN GREAT AMERICAN TV THEMES
HAWAII FIVE-O
Come on—admit it: when this theme cranks, you smile. When the Ventures play it, you smile. When Maynard Ferguson screams it, you smile. I'm pretty sure that this unavoidable reflex reaction has been used as a field test for brain activity. Someone lay injured, and the medic hummed the opening notes to the Five-O theme, and the lips formed a smile, and proof of at least minimal mental function was thus proven.
RAWHIDE
How cool is this one? SO cool that The Blues Brothers -- the Blues Brothers! -- played this theme not once but TWICE in their movie (in the key of A, no less-- a good country key). I think it says something when a show's theme is far more well-known than the show itself (see also: Peter Gunn).
THE MUNSTERS
There was a point in my life when this show was probably my most watched TV product. Not because it was that great (though it was great) but more because it came on at 4 o'clock every day when I walked in from school. That first blatty belch of trombones is still one of the coolest sounds I have ever heard.
GILLIGAN'S ISLAND
Jesus H Christ on a cracker, people -- how can this one NOT be on every damned one of these lists? I was (briefly) enrolled at the Air Force Academy (don't ask -- some things are just too damned weird and complicated to explain via text only), and our squadron (COOOOOOOBRA SQUADRON!) had this wingnut commander who insisted that we "jodey" (that sing song marching thing) to different fare than all the other squadrons, so whenever we marched or double-timed, we'd be barking out TV theme songs. All the othjer squadrons would pass the review stand braying "I WANNA BE AN AIR FORCE PILOT" or "I DON'T KNOW BUT I BEEN TOLD...", and then COOOOOOOOBRA Squadron would bee-bop past whistling the "Bridge Over The River Kwai" theme or singing THE FLINTSTONES or (most often) GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. Oddly, that was one of the few Academy moments in which I felt normal and at-home.
PATRIDGE FAMILY *
Everybody lip-sync along now: "Come On Get Happy!" Yeah, yeah, "I Think I Love You" remains a far cooler song, but dammit we play the cards we get dealt, and they dealt us Come On Get Happy as the theme, so that's what we got. And it's a damned good theme, even today.
DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
Start humming this and tell me that you don't immediately picture Rob Petry either tumbling over the ottoman *or* adroitly side-stepping the ottoman at the last minute as everyone THINKS he's about to go tumbling over the ottoman. And then realize that this theme is from 45 years ago. (ditto the "I Love Lucy" theme, but at this stage Lucy has as many mad props as any TV star ever is likely to get, so let's spread the love over to New Rochelle, alright?).
WILD WILD WEST
Bump-bump... bump-bump... bump-bum dee-dump bump bump, dunt duh duuuuhhh...
For at least a decade, this was my favorite TV show, and to this day the fact that a crew of talented Hollywood professionals could so royally and completely screw up this show as a movie remains one of those mind-boggling facts best not considered for too many consecutive minutes. Instead, just think about the four panels in the animated opening credit sequence, and the coolest cowboy ever to wear ovetight pants and platform boots.
BONANZA
Again, how iconic? "So iconic that it was HUMMED by Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby in a movie made more than twenty years later and nobody had to pause for even a femto-second to understand the why's and wherefore's."
SCOOBY DOO
My three year old daughter sings this song from memory when she's bored. It was written and performed some 35 years before she was conceived. I hope the guys who wrote this thing (and you have Google same as I do -- look it up your own damned self) are living like kings in Patagonia today.
TWILIGHT ZONE
"Nee nee nee nee...." -- is there a more recognizable first four notes in TV theme history? If there are, then you must be boosting mp3s from a place called... The Twilight Zone...
---
Meh. My work here is done. I'm supposed to tag three more people. Maybe I will.
Maybe I won't.
Deal with it.
.
.
.
B
* changed from "Brady Bunch Theme" just to make Michael chuckle
Now, I'd ALREADY posted these themes on Michael's original blog, but of course news travels slow over the jungles drums of the internet, so I got tagged to post the list on MY blog before Julie realized this post was already posted on Michael's post before she posted about Michael's post and tagged me to post on mine.
Which I already have. Had.
Did.
Whatever.
---
TEN GREAT AMERICAN TV THEMES
HAWAII FIVE-O
Come on—admit it: when this theme cranks, you smile. When the Ventures play it, you smile. When Maynard Ferguson screams it, you smile. I'm pretty sure that this unavoidable reflex reaction has been used as a field test for brain activity. Someone lay injured, and the medic hummed the opening notes to the Five-O theme, and the lips formed a smile, and proof of at least minimal mental function was thus proven.
RAWHIDE
How cool is this one? SO cool that The Blues Brothers -- the Blues Brothers! -- played this theme not once but TWICE in their movie (in the key of A, no less-- a good country key). I think it says something when a show's theme is far more well-known than the show itself (see also: Peter Gunn).
THE MUNSTERS
There was a point in my life when this show was probably my most watched TV product. Not because it was that great (though it was great) but more because it came on at 4 o'clock every day when I walked in from school. That first blatty belch of trombones is still one of the coolest sounds I have ever heard.
GILLIGAN'S ISLAND
Jesus H Christ on a cracker, people -- how can this one NOT be on every damned one of these lists? I was (briefly) enrolled at the Air Force Academy (don't ask -- some things are just too damned weird and complicated to explain via text only), and our squadron (COOOOOOOBRA SQUADRON!) had this wingnut commander who insisted that we "jodey" (that sing song marching thing) to different fare than all the other squadrons, so whenever we marched or double-timed, we'd be barking out TV theme songs. All the othjer squadrons would pass the review stand braying "I WANNA BE AN AIR FORCE PILOT" or "I DON'T KNOW BUT I BEEN TOLD...", and then COOOOOOOOBRA Squadron would bee-bop past whistling the "Bridge Over The River Kwai" theme or singing THE FLINTSTONES or (most often) GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. Oddly, that was one of the few Academy moments in which I felt normal and at-home.
PATRIDGE FAMILY *
Everybody lip-sync along now: "Come On Get Happy!" Yeah, yeah, "I Think I Love You" remains a far cooler song, but dammit we play the cards we get dealt, and they dealt us Come On Get Happy as the theme, so that's what we got. And it's a damned good theme, even today.
DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
Start humming this and tell me that you don't immediately picture Rob Petry either tumbling over the ottoman *or* adroitly side-stepping the ottoman at the last minute as everyone THINKS he's about to go tumbling over the ottoman. And then realize that this theme is from 45 years ago. (ditto the "I Love Lucy" theme, but at this stage Lucy has as many mad props as any TV star ever is likely to get, so let's spread the love over to New Rochelle, alright?).
WILD WILD WEST
Bump-bump... bump-bump... bump-bum dee-dump bump bump, dunt duh duuuuhhh...
For at least a decade, this was my favorite TV show, and to this day the fact that a crew of talented Hollywood professionals could so royally and completely screw up this show as a movie remains one of those mind-boggling facts best not considered for too many consecutive minutes. Instead, just think about the four panels in the animated opening credit sequence, and the coolest cowboy ever to wear ovetight pants and platform boots.
BONANZA
Again, how iconic? "So iconic that it was HUMMED by Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby in a movie made more than twenty years later and nobody had to pause for even a femto-second to understand the why's and wherefore's."
SCOOBY DOO
My three year old daughter sings this song from memory when she's bored. It was written and performed some 35 years before she was conceived. I hope the guys who wrote this thing (and you have Google same as I do -- look it up your own damned self) are living like kings in Patagonia today.
TWILIGHT ZONE
"Nee nee nee nee...." -- is there a more recognizable first four notes in TV theme history? If there are, then you must be boosting mp3s from a place called... The Twilight Zone...
---
Meh. My work here is done. I'm supposed to tag three more people. Maybe I will.
Maybe I won't.
Deal with it.
.
.
.
B
* changed from "Brady Bunch Theme" just to make Michael chuckle
16 January 2006
Meme Streets
Proving conclusively that this meme has now well and truly jumped the shark, run its course, shot its wad and bought the farm, Julie.O from Mental Origami tagged me to drag this bloated dead horse of a topic yet a few feet further. Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining (much), but I know enough to know that if blog-meme makes it down to my sad benthic depths, then surely all the pretty fish swimming above in sparkling clear waters have already had their fill. Any day now I expect to have someone tag me to describe "your favorite three new disco moves."
Anywhooo... on with the show:
1. ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
I recall the old threading projector GENERAL CINEMA lead-in, and I recall sitting in a crowded theater to see THE ARISTOCATS (1970). I'm pretty sure I also saw THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN (1969), as I have clear recollection of boith that movie as well as the theatrical trailer for KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA, a movie which I have never heard mentioned anywhere or seen on TV. When I check IMDB, I see that KRAKATOA came out that same summer as BoB, so it makes sense.
2. TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:
-- "Let's play ball." (final words spoken by Roy Hobbs in THE NATURAL)
and
-- "We can't all be lion tamers." (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA)
3. THREE (3) jobs you'd do if you could not work in the "biz":
-- graphic designer
-- home builder/remodeler
-- magazine columnist
4. FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
-- graphic designer
-- construction worker
-- ice cream scooper
-- ditch digger
5. THREE (3) book authors I like:
-- Clive Cussler
-- David Foster Wallace
-- David Brin
6. TWO (2) movies you'd like to remake or properties you'd like to adapt:
remake: THE GREAT RACE-- a ridiculously overblown period comedy by Blake Edwards from the early 60s which re-paired Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, it was always one of my favorite movies to catch when I was a kid, and now on DVD my own kids insist on watching it at least once a month.
adapt: [not gonna say]. Seriously, that's not meant as a joke, but there are three or four biographies I'd love to take a crack at, and I'm not going risk contaminating any of them by sharing them with a pond brimming with hungry screenwriters. I may be stupid, but I ain't dumb.
7. ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:
-- Richard Maibaum (1909-1991)
The man started his career in 1936 with fare like GOLDDIGGERS OF 1937, and his last credit is posthumous for the story for the 1996 Mel Gibson flick RANSOM (Maibaum died in '91). But in the 60 years between those career bookends, he basically defined modern cinema's longest running franchise, penning THIRTEEN of the James Bond movies, including ALL the early Connery Bonds which pretty much defined the franchise:
DR. NO (1962)
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)
GOLDFINGER (1964)
THUNDERBALL (1965)
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 1971)
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971)
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)
THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977)
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981)
OCTOPUSSY (1983)
A VIEW TO A KILL (1985)
THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987)
LICENSE TO KILL (1989)
That's one hellacious run of iconic movies, and loads of memorable scenes and dialog exchanges, yet you never hear Maibaum's name mentioned.
Genius? Perhaps not, but "underrated?" Oh hell yeah.
---
So at this point in the proceedings the tag-ee (me) would normally be expected to tag three other friends to carry on the meme, but seeing as how I have no friends, and as how this meme has already been driven into the ground like a tent stake into soft sand, and how the remaining untagged bloggers available for such a hand-off are of the sort who are far more into Lithuanian death metal, I think I'll just let the meme trail end here.
"And there was much rejoicing..."
.
.
.
B
Anywhooo... on with the show:
1. ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
I recall the old threading projector GENERAL CINEMA lead-in, and I recall sitting in a crowded theater to see THE ARISTOCATS (1970). I'm pretty sure I also saw THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN (1969), as I have clear recollection of boith that movie as well as the theatrical trailer for KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA, a movie which I have never heard mentioned anywhere or seen on TV. When I check IMDB, I see that KRAKATOA came out that same summer as BoB, so it makes sense.
2. TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:
-- "Let's play ball." (final words spoken by Roy Hobbs in THE NATURAL)
and
-- "We can't all be lion tamers." (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA)
3. THREE (3) jobs you'd do if you could not work in the "biz":
-- graphic designer
-- home builder/remodeler
-- magazine columnist
4. FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
-- graphic designer
-- construction worker
-- ice cream scooper
-- ditch digger
5. THREE (3) book authors I like:
-- Clive Cussler
-- David Foster Wallace
-- David Brin
6. TWO (2) movies you'd like to remake or properties you'd like to adapt:
remake: THE GREAT RACE-- a ridiculously overblown period comedy by Blake Edwards from the early 60s which re-paired Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, it was always one of my favorite movies to catch when I was a kid, and now on DVD my own kids insist on watching it at least once a month.
adapt: [not gonna say]. Seriously, that's not meant as a joke, but there are three or four biographies I'd love to take a crack at, and I'm not going risk contaminating any of them by sharing them with a pond brimming with hungry screenwriters. I may be stupid, but I ain't dumb.
7. ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:
-- Richard Maibaum (1909-1991)
The man started his career in 1936 with fare like GOLDDIGGERS OF 1937, and his last credit is posthumous for the story for the 1996 Mel Gibson flick RANSOM (Maibaum died in '91). But in the 60 years between those career bookends, he basically defined modern cinema's longest running franchise, penning THIRTEEN of the James Bond movies, including ALL the early Connery Bonds which pretty much defined the franchise:
DR. NO (1962)
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)
GOLDFINGER (1964)
THUNDERBALL (1965)
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE 1971)
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971)
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)
THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977)
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981)
OCTOPUSSY (1983)
A VIEW TO A KILL (1985)
THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987)
LICENSE TO KILL (1989)
That's one hellacious run of iconic movies, and loads of memorable scenes and dialog exchanges, yet you never hear Maibaum's name mentioned.
Genius? Perhaps not, but "underrated?" Oh hell yeah.
---
So at this point in the proceedings the tag-ee (me) would normally be expected to tag three other friends to carry on the meme, but seeing as how I have no friends, and as how this meme has already been driven into the ground like a tent stake into soft sand, and how the remaining untagged bloggers available for such a hand-off are of the sort who are far more into Lithuanian death metal, I think I'll just let the meme trail end here.
"And there was much rejoicing..."
.
.
.
B
03 January 2006
Meet The New Year... Just The Same As The Old Year...
So this is 2006?
Meh. So far it doesn't look or feel very much different than what came before. Not that that's entirely a bad thing. While a great many people seem to have spent 2005 raising hand-wringing to an art form and an Olympic exhibition sport, for the most part my year sucked far less than it could have.
Yeah, there are still bucketloads of unrealized dreams stacked everywhere in my mental garage, but on the whole, things weren't awful: I and my family emerged intact and in health, no hurricanes flattened our home or neighborhood (though Rita did put one hellacious scare into us...), the kids all had great years, I had some good fun and actually did some good for the species, I had opportunity and permission to pimp-slap the forces of dumpth a few times, and in a bizarre twist, my odd little dream of becoming a pro screenwriter seemed to putter forward with something resembling a purpose.
Over the course of the year I made a bunch of cool contacts, learned a lot about the business and about ways to improve my own writing and work habits, I had a great time (again) in October at the Austin Film festival, and (again) while there I made some cool connections which likely will pay dividends in short order, and cooler than cool I managed to complete not one but TWO screenplays in the year, and be well underway on a third.
When 2005 came around, my private goals were to improve and finish the year with at least TWO screenplays ready to pitch and promote. I made that goal easily, and if I'd really gone ninja-psycho-crazy-loopy-nuts gung-ho motivated, I likely could have had a readable draft of a third ready by close of business on Dec 31.
The goal for this year? More of the same, but just to raise the stakes, this year I want to finish THREE new screenplays, and have at least FOUR scripts out making the rounds. I think I can do that, especially if I dedicate myself to sticking to a fairly regular schedule of "writing no matter what."
WRITE, DAMMIT! DON'T WHINE—WRITE!
I have an outline well in progress, I have a list of more than two dozen cool movie ideas, and I have a strange sense that "everything is right on schedule."
Calm is not my normal mental state, so the lack of anxiety is starting to make me a bit anxious.
Which is, of course, comforting.
Onwards.
.
.
.
B
Meh. So far it doesn't look or feel very much different than what came before. Not that that's entirely a bad thing. While a great many people seem to have spent 2005 raising hand-wringing to an art form and an Olympic exhibition sport, for the most part my year sucked far less than it could have.
Yeah, there are still bucketloads of unrealized dreams stacked everywhere in my mental garage, but on the whole, things weren't awful: I and my family emerged intact and in health, no hurricanes flattened our home or neighborhood (though Rita did put one hellacious scare into us...), the kids all had great years, I had some good fun and actually did some good for the species, I had opportunity and permission to pimp-slap the forces of dumpth a few times, and in a bizarre twist, my odd little dream of becoming a pro screenwriter seemed to putter forward with something resembling a purpose.
Over the course of the year I made a bunch of cool contacts, learned a lot about the business and about ways to improve my own writing and work habits, I had a great time (again) in October at the Austin Film festival, and (again) while there I made some cool connections which likely will pay dividends in short order, and cooler than cool I managed to complete not one but TWO screenplays in the year, and be well underway on a third.
When 2005 came around, my private goals were to improve and finish the year with at least TWO screenplays ready to pitch and promote. I made that goal easily, and if I'd really gone ninja-psycho-crazy-loopy-nuts gung-ho motivated, I likely could have had a readable draft of a third ready by close of business on Dec 31.
The goal for this year? More of the same, but just to raise the stakes, this year I want to finish THREE new screenplays, and have at least FOUR scripts out making the rounds. I think I can do that, especially if I dedicate myself to sticking to a fairly regular schedule of "writing no matter what."
WRITE, DAMMIT! DON'T WHINE—WRITE!
I have an outline well in progress, I have a list of more than two dozen cool movie ideas, and I have a strange sense that "everything is right on schedule."
Calm is not my normal mental state, so the lack of anxiety is starting to make me a bit anxious.
Which is, of course, comforting.
Onwards.
.
.
.
B
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