quick thought upon returning to the civilized world

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

God bless return flight tickets and air conditioning.
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B

doldrums

Been a rough week in terms of useful writing.

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

This is not good.

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

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

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

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

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

Greatest Song Lyrics Ever, vol. 79

"Pinball Song," from Slobberbone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(harmonica rockage)

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

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

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

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

-=-=-

Poetry, people. Poetry.
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fan of the rollick B

[meme] Ten First Verbs (again)

Here's one for the writers out there:

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

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

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

shushing

looking

copy

coming

roars

banking

angle

looks

skims

lifting

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

the greatest song lyrics ever, vol. 39

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

[File under "primal scream goodness"]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoowah.
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B

curse you, demon muse

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

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

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

(sigh)

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

I need help. And a beer.

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

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

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

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

such is the painful nature of time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of the ending of all things good.

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

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

-=-=-=-

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

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

twitter ...

the massive appeal of zombie movies ...

Swahili (not one word) ...

Lindsey Lohan's career decisions ...

train wreck TV ...

disinterested Little League coaches ...

middle-aged male drama queens ...

celery ...



QVC ...

golf ...

ignorance worn with pride ...

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

gum ...
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intellectual high ground B

that game which comes in the spring

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it ain't bad.
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B

Dorkopalooza 2009

April Fools Day is a total rip-off.

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

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



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

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

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

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

arapaho

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



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

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

...

Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho

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

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

...

Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho
Arapaho

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

a rising flood of ugly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

remember this thing? I kinda do...

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

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

Point taken, and apologies to those who are owed.

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

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

around is where I's at

Deal with it.

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

Onwards.
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B

do what you do

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fire fighter.

Lion tamer.

Pole dancer.

Ditch digger.

Screen writer.

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

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

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

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Onwards.
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dominus vobiscum B

the majesty of mayhem

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



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

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

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

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

And I feel more than fine.
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old school B

Patron of screenwriting Gee Nicholl dies

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

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

From the story:

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

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

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

Saaaaaaaaa-lute.

Full story here.
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B

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

Cuz there is.

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

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

But this is goooood...
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fingers crossed B

the new Greatest Song Ever

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

King of Badasses, indeed.

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

Doldrumitis

I gots it.

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

Ppppppppfffffftttttttt...

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

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

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

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

Hopelessness remains our best hope.
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B