what a revolting development

One of the glories of being me (and trust me, the list of said glories is as long as it is strange) is the ability to dismiss pretty much any setback as trivial and irrelevant. In some ways I'm like a Weeble toy (OK, more than a few ways) in that I can get bumped and knocked around and still I'll wobble and right myself and maintain the same stupid expression. (I am, by the way, also safe for ages 3 and up, and I am dishwasher safe).

Part of this ability is likely due to flawed wiring between the ears: some people look at failure as a sign of failure, while I often look at it as an inspiration for amusing comment. So few succeed in life, after all, while most fail, so why not find a way to get some use out of the more common stuff of humiliating defeat than to hang your hopes on a harvest of success which likely will never come anyway?

I don't mind falling face down, as I'm experienced and accustomed.

What utterly confuses me is success. Knowing as I do the position and motion of every molecule in the Universe gives me the secure understanding that we are all doomed to lonely ignominious soul-crushing defeat and despair, yet sometimes the Universe will play truly dirty pool and throw the foulest jape of all: success.

Like today. I sort through the mail, toss out the 3 pounds of assorted useless crap, and at the bottom of the stack I find that thin one-page note from the Nicholl Fellowship folks, surely that same "thank you for playing *DING!* next?" note Greg Beal sends out to 95% of us suckers, er, I mean entrants into the Nicholl lottery.

"Dear Mr. Nicholson,

Congratulations! You have advanced into the Quarterfinal Round of the 2007 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. In doing so, yours is one of only 254 entries to survive the First Round."

Well there's a new kick in the old wedding tackle.

How the hell is a card-carrying Gold Circle Member of the Piss and Moan Club supposed to handle such an announcement?

For now I'll likely stay the course and just carry on: "scratch butt, look vaguely annoyed, find something pointless to waste time upon."

But I gotta tell ya: these be strange waters we now sail.
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"hope" is a four-letter word B

california squirmin' -- the early bit of the tale

It's odd to contemplate, but for a guy who genuinely feels a million miles removed from Hollywood, I seem to be reporting from there more and more frequently.

PART 1 — IN A DESERT ON THE SEA

As we did last summer, my oldest son and I spent a week in California for Boy Scout summer camp. Last year was at Camp Whitsett in the Kern River Valley of the Sierras (gorgeous), and while there, most all the other CA troops remarked "oh, then next year you've got to go to Camp Emerald bay, right? Right?"

"Uhh... right. Sure."

Camp Emerald Bay, as it turned out, is a camp on Catalina Island, a camp for which there is a long and imposing waiting list.

Unless you have attended another Western Los Angeles Council camp the year before.

Such as Camp Whitsett.

So our little Boy Scout troop again loaded up and headed west. Some 52 scouts and leaders in full geek dress left home in far west-side Houston at 4:30 am, met at IAH at 6 am, then loaded onto a Continental 757 and headed into LAX on 15 July, where we hopped on a charter bus, slid south down the Harbor Freeway and loaded onto a huge hydrofoil ferry to Emerald Bay along with some 500 other scouts and leaders.

Catalina was a truly bizarre yet beautiful place. The approach was almost exactly like the arrival to Skull Island: a dark sea draped in mist, and then a looming rocky coast materializes out of the gloom, and suddenly you see an island, with primitive structures and strange sounds.

Our troop's assigned campsite was 25 surplus cabin tents set under a grove of towering (and condemned) eucalyptus trees in a dusty ravine immediately behind the camp's main compound. For a week we slept on creaky failing military cots and dusty thin mattresses, with just a fluttering flap of musty canvas to protect us from the elements (quiet still clear nights in the low-60s—damned near Arctic conditions to us Texans used to 80 degrees and hordes of mosquitos).

We swam (damn but that water is cold!) and hiked and ate uniformly bad food (hey—it's a Boy Scout camp. You were expecting haute cuisine?) and snorkeled (seriously—this water is fucking cold!) and hiked some more and snorkeled some more (Christ Almighty—I can't feel my testicles! Seriously!) and had a truly wonderful week of camp. We canoed 7 mils around the island in huge war canoes, landed on a rugged rocky coast in something far too much like the landing in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, slept on the sand under the stars, canoed back the next morning as the sun peeked over the horizon, mountain biked over hills and around seaside cliffs overlooking bays filled with gorgeous sailing ships... a great time.

Meanwhile, the camp also had four free email terminals, meaning I had at least some sporadic communication with an entirely different world waiting almost over the horizon. In the evenings, I could climb the small rise behind our camp and look northeast to see the long low line of orange lights which glowed in Los Angeles....

PART 2 — A RETURN INTO THE MAELSTROM

The final day of camp was insane. We rose at 6 am to get all scouts packed and loaded for the return ferry trip. Due to our tight air travel demands, our troops bags had to be handled differently than the rest of the camp's. so I and another leader from our troop had to be on an advance party to the ferry by 10 am, where we were the end of the loading snake: I had the dubious honor of handling every single fucking dufflebag and backpack loaded onto the ferry that day, stacking them in a teetering reeking dusty wall of unwashed glory. Toward the end of the process, I was on my belly atop the 7 foot tall stack, dragging bags into the last little bit of space between the stack at the ceiling, working myself into a nasty sweat which totally soaked my canvas scoutleader uniform and then caked it with dust and sweat-salt.

We arrived at San Pedro, were marched off the ferry first—"would love to hang around and off-load, but we got a plane to catch, snookums..."—marched onto our waiting charter bus, hauled ass 20 minutes north to LAX, dumped off onto the sidewalk, and I then ensured that every last one of the campers was checked in and through security, and then, in a repeat of last year's camp experience, I waved "so long, suckers!" and split off from the group to morph from Scoutleader Man into Screenwriter Man. As I smiled and waved to the last adult to disappear through the security checkpoint, I sighed and then sprinted into the nearest restroom to swap costumes.

[For those curious about such things: yes, you do get some curious and not entirely welcome stares if you enter an airport restroom in full-on Scoutleader dress and start stripping off your clothes like a man on fire. I claimed one corner of the restroom as my change area, and proceeded to take a sink-bath in my gym shorts in an LAX men's room. In ten minutes I came out wearing tattered cargo shorts, flip flops, and a t-shirt reading "i'm really excited to be here."]

Hopped the shuttle to the Enterprise rental counter. Picked up my pre-reserved Chevy Cobalt suckwagon. Turned onto the 405, cranked KROQ to catch the final three or four orgasmic minutes of "Three Days" by Jane's Addiction (and warmed at the welcome irony) then cracked a window and sucked in another heady snootful of that glorious LA air tinged by eucalyptus, jacaranda, and monoxide.

A twisted grin danced around my face. "I'm BAAAAAAA-AAAACK...!"

PART 3 — DAY 1

Believe it or not, my fellow Scout leaders look at me with some concern and confusion.

No, it's true.

In the west-Houston area where I normally operate, the world is nipple-deep in engineers and financial analysts and various other decent educated and wholly dependable such folk. What we ain't got is screenwriters. In fact, when word got out to the rest of the leaders that I am, in fact, an actual serious screenwriter, the guys would stroll past my tent slowly and peek in at me with an odd curiosity: "wow... so that's what one looks like? That's wild...

They were all very interested and supportive and encouraging (in their way), but there is still an odd sort of distance. if I were an exchange student from Helsinki or Tonga I think I'd get some similar treatment. On teh one hand they recognize that I am humanoid and familiar, yet on the other they suddenly are left sorting though a long list of questions they are burning to ask yet somehow just a little to unsure to actually pose. ("So is it true that all screenwriters are godless Commie man-lovers?").

Among my "normal" peers, I am The Odd One 'cuz my prayers are directed not toward Texaco or Exxon or BP, but towards Hollywood.

Yet here's the fun part: among my Hollywood peers, I am... (wait for it...) The Odd One due to the fact that I live in some faraway foreign land called "not Hollywood" yet seem absolutely serious about this screenwriting career. If I were a blue whale who lived in a wheat field outside Omaha I doubt I could seem much more odd and unfathomable to these people.

So when I start working the cellphone to alert The Usual Suspects that the giant enormous B again plods in their midst, there is always a strange slightly surprised and unsure tone in the back of the conversation. Perhaps that curiosity is part of what little charm I can claim to have over those jaded seen-it-all bastards who dwell in the City of the Angels: I'm always just alien and strange enough to rate some tiny splash of attention and notice.

So I wasn't entirely surprised that dinner plans were quickly set up to meet a bunch of LA pals that night down in West Hollywood. It wound up being a group which looks much more impressive in hyperlink form: "bucket of love" Brett, big bad Bill "sex in a submarine" Martell, longtime pal Susan "blah blah blogging along" Bays, impending book star Deb "everybody I shot is dead" Chesher, and even the sixty-dollar story notes man his own self, Scott the Reader.

I was crashing at Deb's place for a few days (though now a longtime Angeleno, she's Canadian by birth and therefore cursed with a nasty streak of niceness and generosity. Trust me: she's making great strides in overcoming this flaw.), so we swung by one of Martell's secret roosts, picked up The Big Man (and His Big Bag) and blasted down into Hollywood to hook up with the others at Lucy's El Adobe, a cool legendary Hollywood Mexican dive which seems to have become my home away from home. I think I've been to Lucy's at least as often as LAX now, as all my LA pals insist on "introducing" me to this cool old school dive they just know I will love.

We whine and dine on the patio and have a grand old time of it, talking about the writing biz and breaking in and horror stories we've heard and observed and endured, and then giggle at the bizarre and ill-advised actions and strategies. I badly want a t-shirt which reads "schadenfreude rocks". Beers and 'ritas and stories flow merrily 'til we look up and realize the restaurant is largely empty save for the waitstaff sitting around, yawning and glancing at their watches, so we settle our tab, say what various goodbyes we need to, and then wander our separate ways.

My day had begun in a tent in a dusty island campsite on a Pacific island, and was ending with me grinning at the faintest hint of beer buzz beneath the humming neon and the midnight moon in a Hollywood parking lot.

It was a very good day.
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navel of the universe B

back on the chain gang

The weird ten day ride through SoCal is now complete, with only a few mild bumps and rattles along the way.

Overall, an excellent trip, but more on that later.

For now, tons of emails to send...
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somewhere under the "S" in Texas B

gone again... skip to my lou...

Off again on another wild-assed adventure.

This one skates past LA, spends a week on a Pacific island, then ends up back in Hollywood.

Game on.
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havin' us some fun tonight

So right before we went on vacation to the Caymans, I lost my cellphone. As best I can determine, I either left it on the counter of a local supermarket or left it on the roof of the car while fumbling for keys. Repeated calls turned up nothing, and we could never find the damned phone. I called the wireless company and they confirmed no activity, so we deactivated the account until I could get a replacement phone up and running.

I tracked down a used near-duplicate phone I could get going for right around 50 bucks, so that was painless enough, but what has not been painless has been teh reconstruction of my address book and contact list. Saved in thye memory of that now-lost-forever phone were something like 100 numbers, with more than half of them direct lines to various LA producers and agents and other such Folks An Aspiring Writer Might Like To Know.

Most of the numbers I can reprogram in from saved emails and chatlogs, but there are some which will be difficult to replace unless the reclusive personalities inquestion re-volunteer the info.

Mainly it's just a huge pain in the ass, as it means manually rekeying a hundred names and numbers using the tiny keypad of a cellphone and the clunky multi-key coding used to input alpha text info into such devices, and of course as soon as I think I've entered all of the truly critical names and numbers I remember someone else I need to speak to, and I have to go digging through the computer to track down that info one more time.

Adding more urgency to the task is a impending trip to LA (Catalina Island) for Boy Scout summer camp, which might then include a few days of networking and buttkissery 'round Hollywood proper. Half of my LA names and numbers are still waiting to be re-entered, and I leave for SoCal pre-dawn Sunday and have at l;east four days of work to get done in the remaining two days.

Weeeee...
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a tiny dab of metablogging

Why do some bloggers moderate the comments left by readers?
Surely there's a good reason, as I see too many intelligent people doing this, but for the life of me I can't really see what point there is. if some raving wingnut decides to try and post a comment, does moderating really spare you any work? It seems to me that it creates work in that you now have to consider and deal with every message and comment rather than the one or three curiously moronic ones which might normally appear in a year's time.

The other odd effect it creates is (IMO) a sense of hand-wringing paranoia, as if the blogger just can;t handle the idea that someone might (gasp!) say something unflattering or off-topic and requires a sort of vetting process to protect the gentle eyes and sensibilities of their readers. I've deleted maybe 4 or 5 comments from my blog in three years. I very much doubt that anyone reading here even could be stunned by something so mundane as words on a screen, so my decision to edit (or delete) is usually based upon the question of "is this spam or not?"

I dunno. Maybe my abject lack of popularity and relevance here safeguards me from teh sort of abuse and spam which pushes others to use comment moderation, but for now... it just seems weird.

-=-=-=-

Does anyone even use sidebar links?
I'm linked to maybe two dozen other blogsites, but increasingly I wonder if the links I provide aren't about as useful and well-received ast the click-through ads on a search engine page. Yeah, yeah, people see them—sorta—but does anyone actually use those links? I find I use them a lot—I end up treating my blog page as a sort of home page from which to get to the blogs I want to check on—but I find I seldom use other people's sidebar links, and I can find little evidence to support the notion that anyone else is using mine.

-=-=-=-

Discussion of politics bores me
Yeah, yeah... freedom of speech and all that. "weeeeeee." I'm thrilled that there are people out there who feel motivated to talk about their favorite candidates or political positions, but I hate that I have to wade through that ceaseless stream of warm air just to possibly find some kernel of interest or amusement on some damned fool blog site.

Face it, kids—if you were really that interesting or insightful, you'd likely have a panel-based show upon which to appear, and you'd not need to slum with us land-lubbing locals.

Stick to subjects you understand and are competent to comment upon: recipes, movies, the weather. Leave the political snarking to people who both know what the hell is going on and who have demonstrated some prior ability to snark in an entertaining manner.

-=-=-=-

"Good comment"seems harder and harder to find these days.
I recall a time when there were loads of witty folks patrolling around eager and ready to leave useful interesting responses, but now I see a lot of folks for whom even a basic sentence seems a major effort.

-=-=-=-

I dunno. I was never a huge fan of blogging, but if I were tasked to start today, I'm not sure I would.
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cranky B

back in the saddle again

Well, my week in the Caymans is now done.

One week in which I did not see the internet, did not send of receive any emails, made two phone calls and received none, opened no mail, read no news, saw nobody I knew aside from own immediate family... I basically sat on my ass and read, or snorkeled or swam or ate. And just looked at this view and grinned (taken while eating a sandwich on the patio of our condo).



The Caymans remain an odd mix of overlooked Caribbean paradise and (increasingly) hyper-luxurious accommodations for that class of people for whom "price" truly is never an issue. Beachfront condos sell for 2 and 3 million. Bill Gates owns a penthouse in the biggest fanciest place in town. Paul Allen's 150-foot yacht sails into town a few times a year. Half the folks you spot are wearing wristwatches which cost more than an average family sedan.

Seven Mile Beach is being developed at an incredible pace, with new construction going pretty much anywhere they can manage to get a crane onto the site. Hurricane Ivan supposedly devastated the island back in 2004, but you'd never know that unless you drive away from the beachfront area around to the less touristy sides of the island where you see things like cinderblock shells of homes with the roof entirely gone... huge fallen trees tumbled into stands of driftwood facing an impossibly gorgeous line of surf... ramshackle huts made of corrugated tin and plywood where native families play in yards of freshly swept sandy soil.

The Caymans were discovered by Columbus in 1503, and in some parts of the island it looks like nothing has changed since: tangled mangrove swamps, white sand beaches facing sky blue shallows protected by reefs and rocks 300 yards from shore, almond trees hanging out over the water, royal blue waves smashing into hellish ironshore rocks that slice through your sandals like a hot knife. It wasn't until the development of an international banking scene in the early '60s that anyone other than sailors and sea turtles had much any reason to even notice the place.

Now... hardly a day goes by that you don't wake and find three or four monster floating skyscraper cruise ships have pulled into Georgetown Harbor during the overnight, and armies of sunburnt plodding tourists are marching down the beach and down the main drag, plastic shopping bans in hand as they buy shirts and rum and jewelry and lotion and head out for a day laying on what surely has to be one the most perfect beaches in the world.

At our condo, a pair of manmade rock breakwaters extended 100 yards out from the beach, providing cover and habitat for all sorts of sea life. We found that if we paddled 30 yards past that into the open water and then turned right, there was a reef circling all the way down Seven Mile Beach at a distance of 50-200 yards from shore, in water between 6 and 20 feet deep. One day we trekked down to an especially gorgeous spot on Seven Mile—"Governor's beach," next door to the Governor's Residence—and spent the day paddling around a particularly gorgeous coral head where we'd be surrounded by a hundred silver chub and yellow-striped sergeant majors. Three-foot long emerald parrotfish crunched at the reef. A 6 foot stingray glided by at one point, a small shoot of foot-long squid patrolled alongside me for 10 minutes, and a four-foot barracuda glided past just six feet in front of me at one point. I popped to the surface at one point and realized I was alone, in the ocean, in 20 feet of water, a quarter mile from shore. I giggled, and dove back into the water.

Stingray City remains simply one of the coolest experiences on earth. A totally clean and barren sandbar submerged in four feet of crystal clear water in the middle of the central "bite" or bay on Grand Cayman, tour boats anchor and people wade into the swimming pool like waters to find themselves surrounded by 50 or more southern stingrays who are now so familiar and comfortable with humans that they swim up to you and bump into your chest and back, clamoring for handouts, the oceanic equivalent of stray cats or park squirrels. The rays are so unthreatened that they are content to be handled and caressed and even lifted from the water by visitors. I had a large 4 foot ray that seemed to like me, so I lifted her in my arms and kissed her on the point of her snout as she gently flipped her wingtips and stared at me with those odd cat-like eyes common to sharks and rays. There are other places where swimmers can interact with dolphins, and surely that is a wondrous experience and one which I would love to know one day, but there's something just so damned alien about these rays... they look like something from another planet, and as i was sitting there dancing slow circles with this creature, I couldn't help but wonder if she was as fascinated by the weird creatures she was seeing as I was.

Or, hell, maybe she just likes the free handouts of chopped squid. Whatever—it's an amazing experience, and I was thrilled to see all my kids in the water, giggle and getting these bizarre creature and getting one of those memories that sticks with you for the rest of your life.

Another great day involved a 3 hour jaunt around the beach side of the island onboard "The Anne Bonnie" a three master pirate ship crewed by guys in pirate garb who growl and make the kids swab the decks for a few minutes as they hear tales of the real pirates of the Caribbean who were among the first to find any profitable use for the Caymans. We dropped anchor in 40 feet of gin-clear water, they ran out the prank, cued up the music, opened the bar, and we spent 90 minutes diving from the plank (and the upped deck rails) into the Caribbean. As my oldest said, "if you'd told me that at some point I'd be jumping off a pirate ship into the open ocean and not even thinking about it, I'm not sure I would have believed you."

All in all, a pretty damned excellent adventure, made all the more excellent by the daily return to our condo where I was free to crack open a beer from our fridge and think about how excellent it all was as I looked at sunsets like this one (where the Anne Bonnie sails past on a sunset booze crooze loaded with cruise ship visitors...).



Sometimes... life ain't too shabby.
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heading to Tortuga

Well, Grand Cayman.

Columbus initially named the islands "Las Tortugas" when he discovered them back in 1503, and with their pirate heritage in the 1700s it's likely no coincidence that the name "Tortuga" was used as the fictional pirate town in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride and movies. To this day the official logo of the islands is a cartoon sea turtle with a peg leg and pirate costume.

In addition to pirates and sea turtles, Cayman is known for having one of the great beaches in the world (Seven Mile Beach) as well as some of the best diving and snorkeling anywhere. I'm just looking forward to white sand and clear water and nothing much to do but lay around and grin.

Leaving Sunday (tomorrow morning). Coming back Saturday night.

No more posts til afterwards. Deal with it.

I am gone, baybee.
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the end of the beginning

At or around 3:20 pm Monday afternoon I did something a tiny bit exciting: I saved, backed up, and then printed my first complete copy of the initial draft to [the new thing].

[Note—of course it has a title, but for now I am still keeping that nugget of info closer to the vest than normal, as I love the title and love the way it immediately brings a smile and a guilty chuckle to people when they hear it for the first time.]

At 92 pages, it's far and away the shortest first draft I've ever brought in for a landing. To contrast, the first draft of LILYA came in at 142 pages (and yes, it's been greatly trimmed down and streamlined since then, so get off my back, you sex machine).

There's a weird mix of emotions (at least, there is for me) at this stage of a project. On the one hand, there is of course a rush of excitement and happiness and relief, as I realize "OK, if nothing else I can say i at least completed the damned thing." It's one thing to start a screenplay, and quite another to finish one. Many a writer has disappeared into the dreaded Second Act Wilderness ne'er to be seen again. But having slopped together enough words to know that I have left an unbroken trail of crumbs from FADE IN to FADE OUT surely counts for something.

On the other hand, there's an odd sense of anxiety, as the easy work is now done. Writing is one of those self-absorbed activities where you are pretty much left to satisfy your own desires and predilections, but the moment you complete a screenplay the thing then ceases to have value unless and until it is read by someone else. Face it: an unread screenplay might just as well have never been written, as what's the point of writing a movie script you do not intend to share?

So having completed a draft means that I must confront the fact that I am now many steps closer to that terrifying day when I send my baby out to play with others. You hand your pile of pages to a stranger and leave them to open up your guts and your heart and your brain and say "well, it's not very interesting."

Ooof.

Then, assuming those readers do not commit suicide or move to Butte and leave no forwarding contact, you then are tasked with taking their notes ("needs more cowbell!") and trying to decide first if you are going to give a damn, and second how much of a damn to give. 'Cuz not all notes are equally good, or valid, or useful, or sensible, or relevant, or workable.

But leaping way ahead and assuming you do get useful notes which can be implemented without a loss of sanity or spousal tolerance, you then have to take the script and get it to Someone That Matters. Be it a producer or an agent or a manager or an actor's rep or a well-connected beautician or your cousin's manicurist's best friend from college, the script at that stage has to keep rising up the chain or else again it might as well have never been written.

And assuming then that you find someone with connections who is willing to read your thing, you then have to sit and light prayer candles that this person actually will read your baby, and assuming she does, that she doesn't vomit herself into intensive care, and assuming she doesn't that she likes it well enough to pass it yet further up the great chain, and then you get to start a whole new fresh round of fretting and worrying and realizing that you should have made that hero more likable in that key scene on the bridge or the heroine a little more heroic ("heroinic?") in that standoff in the submarine or the bad guy a little more interesting when he was first revealing His Evil Plan.

But jumping ahead and allowing for a second that you have in fact hit the cosmic jackpot and your pile of pages has impressed all the way to the top, you then hope that some other putz has not coincidentally suggested the same "DIE HARD on a parade float" concept to someone with a more direct line to Spielberg or Cruise or Scorcese or Weinstein, and that somehow your sad little monkeyfist of ideas gets a chance to shine alone in the spotlight of industry attention for a moment or two in which some instant greenlight becomes attached, and then some sweet talking agent calls out of the blue and suddenly tells you how great you are and how badly he's been trying to track you down to rep you, baybee, and everything is coming up roses and oh by the way Sony wants your next project sight-unseen for low seven figures and Halle says you're hot and she wants a baby, blah blah blah, and suddenly instead of writing movies you find yourself trapped inside one even more farfetched than your previous epic about a demonic blimp gone wild.

But first, there must be a pristine un-read and still potentially perfect initial draft.

And that's where we are for now—the end of the beginning.
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Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair...

Change comes to everything, eventually.

The sidebar links have been updated, with some welcome additions (White Board Markers, SoCal Film Group (SFG), and at least one deletion that brings something like a tear to my eye.

Those who have been a part of the great "scriboshpere" of online-networked aspiring screenwriters probably all read Warren Leonard's The Screenwriting Life blog at some point. For years it was one of my daily first stops online, as Warren had oodles of info and links to all sorts of stuff screenwriting related, and he often ran cool little contests on his site which wound up helping a lot of people find and connect to like-minded peers out there on the web.

You'll note the consistent use of past tense in teh above paragraph, as Warren's blog is no more. At some point this past week it lapsed into the past, swallowed by the sands of time (and expired domain registrations) as Warren remains too busy (he has a very cool gig in LA, but it's neither screenwriting related nor really my business to talk about) to worry about a silly damned website.

Still, he will be missed, and I can only hope for his eventual return to our ranks of unpaid unappreciated nobodies. For now, however, when I visit the link to his old blog, the lone and level sands stretch far away.
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on father's day

It's one of those days that sneaks up on me and seems like it will never really be anything more than yet another Hallmark profit center, yet which always ends up affecting me more than I expect.

Part of my cynicism towards Father's Day no doubt stems from the fact that I already spend so much time with my kids. As a stay-at-home-dad (and I'm growing more comfortable with the "Mr. Mom" tag purely out of spite against those who try to seem polite by avoiding it) I get to wake my kids and feed them breakfast and pack them for school and walk them to the bus stop and drive them to pre-school and deliver their homework when I find it mislaid and forgotten on the kitchen table and I get to come pick them up from the school nurse when they spike a fever and I get to go sit in the pediatrician's office and leaf aimlessly through tattered copies of Good Housekeeping (“...wow, that Marisa Tomei really has some interesting ideas for easy chicken dishes...").

Basically, it's tough for me to buy into the traditional vision of what fatherhood is "supposed" to be in suburban America, so all the clichéd hoary old refs to Eisenhower-era stereotypes (golf, yardwork, inability to do anything domestic around the house...) just miss the mark for me.

But then Father's Day rolls around, and inevitably there will be some odd moment or too that kicks me into a weirdly introspective and reflective mood, and I'll suddenly start thinking about capital-F Fatherhood.

This morning we were out of milk. The Wife rolled in from work with the traditional mixed carton of donuts (it's a Sunday thing around here: when Mom works Saturday nights, she brings home donuts on Sunday morning), but donuts without milk is kinda like alcohol free beer. I mean, what's the point?

So I toodle off to grab a few gallon of milk (hell, with four kids I often think it would make better economic sense to just buy a few Jersey heifers and a milking stool...), come back and find that the kitchen table has gifts and cards waiting. As usual, I'd totally forgotten that this day was Father's Day.

What got to me was not the token piece of expensive folded cardstock (I'm just not much of a fan of commercial gift cards), but the homemade little messages each of the four kids had insisted on including in the pile. My oldest gave me four hand-made coupons redeemable for "one hour of quiet writing time — no whining, no fighting with brothers and sister."

Second oldest gave me a sheet of art paper whereupon he had inscribed and decorated as many variations of "you da man" and "you rock" as his ten year old brain could come up with (and it was an impressive collection).

Third son gave me a drawing of a pirate ship and said "I like watching pirate movies with you."

Fourth child (the daughter) gave me some sort of butterfly drawing (her exuberance still far exceeds her abilities...) and said "you are cool like butterflies, daddy!"

(Which, having no real reference and considering the spirit of the occasion, I took as a compliment.)

The thing of it is, as I looked at these odd little bits of paper, I realized that I had the coolest most wonderful gift that these guys could give me. They all see and understand me as an individual person rather than just some iconic symbol of authority. They know me as a writer, and a movie fan, and a lover of words, and a fan of odd imagery and allegory. They don't see me as just "that guy who goes to work," but rather that guy who is a core part of their lives. And when look at them, I see annoying little snot nosed punks, but I also see amazingly interesting small people, people who have these fascinating intriguing personalities and these wild wonderful individual hopes and dreams and expectations for their futures.

Let's be clear: I'm not the easiest dad. Sure, I like to goof around and act silly and play games, and there are a great many things I do which are intended to amuse and entertain my kids, but I am very honest with them that I am not interested in being their friend. I am not their friend—I am their father, and that means I have a job to do, and so do they.

My job is to teach and prepare them for the day when I will no longer be there to save their sorry butts, to grow them into useful functional dependable adults with honor and respect and value. And to do that there will be times—a great many times, in fact— where I am forced to be something quite opposite from their friend. I will be driven by the responsibilities of this job to push them harder than they want to be pushed, to judge and punish for failures and transgressions, to prioritize and delegate in ways that might not always seem fair and might not always be fair.

In short, my oft-thankless job as father is not to be their friend today but rather to try and turn them into the kinds of people I (and others) might one day value as friends and compatriots. Their job is to understand and accept this, and to try and live up to the impossibly high standards I lay out before them.

And this morning I realize that what they gave me, without ever intending or realizing it, was reason to feel proud: proud of what I've tried to teach, and proud of what they have tried to learn.

And that is probably the coolest gift I have ever received.

Happy Father's Day. May your efforts be rewarded.
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B

where have all the movie fans gone?

I was going to talk about POTC: At World's End, but frankly I am sooooo tired of having to wade through the fanboy (and fangirl) nonsense on the subject over at Wordplay forms, I'll just sum up and say that for my money P3 is way better than P2 but still not nearly so good as P1. And Kyra is... oof. "One very nice looking woman."

One sad note about seeing the movie was the crowd, as in "there wasn't one." We went to a local funky artsy place (Alamo Drafthouse) which shows first-run fare as well as some cool classic re-relases and special events. They have a very nice restaurant and serve good food direct to your seat during the movie—an insanely civilized way to see a flick.

I took my 6 year old as part of a "guy's day alone" thing where the two of us go and spend some time with just each other and none of the other sibs (or mom) to bog us down. It was an 11 AM show on a summer day, the Houston heat is already coming on like a jet engine cycling to take-off power, and given that this is advertised as a kid-friendly matineee showing, I expected a few families to be taking advantage.

Instead, we were alone in the theater. Totally alone. We were the only two people watching.

On the one hand, that was kinda cool cuz we had no screaming babies or babbling teens or chattering adults or anything else-- it was just us, a screen, and some food (he had the hot dog and tots basket, I had pizza margherita and a soda), but on the other, at several points I felt lonely and alone in this big empty theater, and then I startd wondering "WHY are we the only ones here? Where are the other kids? The other dads and moms?"

I think the easy access to DVDs and home viewing has to a large extent killed the wonder and novelty of seeing movies as clearly intended: as a communal experience, a shared event. I sat there hunkered down in my seat, my head slumped over close to my son's so that we could point and whisper and giggle at stuff on the huge screen, and I suddenly started to wonder if this is something he'll even have an opportunity to do with his own kids one day, or if this memory will be for him something like the memoroy of cleaning LPs and setting needles into tracks on an album is to me: something of another time and another world, somethign which sounds so bizarre and alien to the next generation that some will suspect some odd joke is being pulled:

"Come on, grandpa... there's no way you're gonna convince me to fall for that! NO WAY would strangers have all paid money to sit in a huge room and watch a movie together! Movies are shown using plasma displays, or direct corteal replay if you're into that and come pre-wired from the clonery...."

A year or so back I took my older two boys to see a revival showing of Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. It was not their first time to see the movie—it is one of their faves just as it was one of mine when I was a boy, and we've seen it a dozen times together at home—but it was the first in a theater, with a crowd.

Afterwards, the boys remarked that it somehow just "felt" different in such a setting.

"That's because movies are not supposed to be an at-home all-alone sort of thing, any more than watching a ball game on TV is the same as watching that same game from the stands. There's just a feeling... an energy... that comes from sharing the experience with others."

I wonder how long this energy can survive, or if it's already on its final legs and one day soon the idea of sitting in the dark, smiling through a mouthful of salty popcorn as light and shadow do their storytelling dance on a huge screen, will seem as quaint and old fashioned as crank telephones and horse drawn buggies.

If so—if this is the last generation for whom "watching a movie" is a shared public experience—then the world just became a tiny bit sadder, a tiny bit less magical.
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B

quick hitters

1) There's a full moon this week, and apparently it's making normally sensible people behave like chimps on crack. I've seen at least a half dozen episodes online this past week wherein friends and acquaintances whom I'd normal-soaked describe as "sane" suddenly go batshit-crazy and start knock-down drag-out slapfights over... so much nothing. Inconsequentialities of the most inane sort. Get a grip, folks, and then hang on tight.

2) Even though I missed the deadline to submit to the Austin Film Festival (dammit dammit dammit), The New Thing is slithering (hehehe) towards something like completion. yesterday I backed up through 80 pages, and I estimate I have another 15 or so to go to bring this sucker in for a first draft landing. Then it'll be time to save, print, and soaked in bloody red ink to fix the multitudinous problems I'm sure I'll find. Still, I laugh and giggle at pretty much every page, and it's commercial as hell, so Hope Springs Infernal yet again.

3) Summer baseball starts tonight. I've been "off" (ha!) for more than 10 days, which is my longest baseball-free period since Groundhog's Day, and I can already feel my shoulders getting tight again, and my hammies starting to get stiff again. It's time to get out and break a sweat and tear some muscle and skin some knees and get a contact high from the smell of horsehide, glove leather, marking chalk, and newly mown grass.

4) I look up and realize with some amusement that IU will be MIA at least three of the next seven weeks, with a trio of water-contact vacations scheduled: once to Grand Cayman, once to Catalina Island, and then to the Blanco River. It's amusing to consider just how different each of those trips (and bodies of water!) are going to be, but it's a pleasant amusement.

5) had occasion to have a chat with an old friend wherein another old friend's name came up for the first time in a few years. This second guy—the one being talked about—once likely was the closest thing to a blood brother I'd ever had: best friend, most trusted confidant, favorite playmate and partner in crime. But as sometimes happens... the winds change. He moves away, I become someone else, and suddenly you start to wonder if a try at re-connecting would even be met with interest: would he just screen the call if he saw my name show up on Caller ID? Would he just ignore a card or email if I managed to track down an address and reach out to contact? It's not a whiny lament—just one of those idly curious observations: it's odd to consider how quickly something which seemed so permanent can be dismantled and forgotten.

6) Had a rare opportunity this past week to go see any movie I wanted in the theater without the kids in tow. I was somewhat surprised to discover... that I really had no interest. SPIDEY 3... meh. SHREK III... get serious. PIRATES 3... ho-hum. I wound up at a friend's house drinking good vodka and spinning wild tales of shame and degradation. Sometimes what I miss more than anything is something as simple as a campfire at the end of a hard day's hunt, with a few familiar smiles shining from the darkness.

7) Golf remains a wholly despicable and useless "sport." No larger point or justification there—I just felt that point needed to be made yet again.

8) I maintain that there is some sort of slow death affecting the blogosphere. Every week it seems as if another one or two formerly interesting blog sites either officially darken or just goes static, with no more posts or comments being made. What blogs remain seem less active, less lively, less engaging. I am reminded of the descriptions of the "heat death" end of the Universe where, billions of years from now, the Universe has expanded to the point that all stars are now hopelessly distant from one another, and many stars have either burned out or dimmed to brown dwarf status, and energy itself bleeds away in a sad endless drip, like the echo of a sustained note fading into nothingness at the fringes of a huge concert hall, just the vaguest memory of all that had once gone before.

Another odd analogy which springs to mind is the image of the last few dinosaurs. Once they ruled the planet for a 100 million years, but then a rock falls from the sky and Things Just Change. Most all die off, and surely at some point there had to be just a handful of the creatures left, looking around at the sad empty world they'd once ruled and wondering "OK, so what do we do NOW...?"

I've been part of such a mass extinction before—when a paradigm shifts somewhere and a sea change comes and a formerly vibrant community of thousands suddenly just closes shop, packs the wagons, and scatters again into the wilderness. Sometimes you bump into one of your old pals from the previous boomtown, and you smile and shrug, but you don't talk about What Happened, 'cuz what's the real point? Still, it's an odd and somewhat melancholy feeling to sense coming on again, as this really feels now like the beginning of yet another major shift.

Take good pictures, kiddos—we might not be long for this current state. Like a giant rock from a clear blue sky, when real change comes it comes hard, fast, and unannounced.
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random blather B

sleep as surrender

T'is an odd conundrum with which I wrestle right now.

It's medium-late—right around midnight—and I am dog-tired, exhausted physcially, emotionally, and intellectually by a week wherein I set myself to accomplish some near-impossible goals, came damnably close, yet failed within sight of the finish line.

There's a load of tasks and duties I might yet tackle right now, yet my eyes burn, my lids feel like they have combats boots hanging from them, and half the words I try to use come out looking and sounding like Cherokee Pig Latin, lacking both form and meaning.

I have to get up tomorrow and oversee some group activities. I have every reason in the world to just shut it down now and crawl into bed and get some badly needed sleep.

Yet I cannot bring myself to do this.

Every time I crawl into bed and turn out the lights to call it a day, I immediately begin to run down the list of things I could have done. More. Better. Differently. The decision to cease combat operations on any given day now feels like a pathetic surrender to all those forces allied to prevent me from achieving my goals. And if this all seems perhaps a tad too "martial" in imagery, well, then fuck you. It's my paranoia, and I'll paint it with whatever colors I damned well choose.

I understand the basis for this odd mindset better than many people realize: as I like to say, "I have many problems, but a lack of awareness of my problems is not one of them." I lost the better part of a decade to self-indulgent laziness and carefree refusal to take charge of those Things That Should Have Been Done. To wake and see the damage done by such laziness can be a truly humbling thing: opportunities lost, potential pissed away, dreams dead and rotting on the ground like last season's fruit.

Another hour's work on the script. A few more notes to long-missed friends. Just a few more ideas on some topic, dumped into a file before they are lost like clouds on a breezy day. Another book to read, another item to be researched, another amazing detail to be discovered. One more chore to tackle today and remove from tomorrow's duty list.

The Wife often grumbles as I pad to bed in the wee hours—2 am, 3 am. What are you doing? Why are you still up?"

"I had things I needed to get done."

Onwards. March or die.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

--Dylan Thomas

God, grant me strength and five minutes more.
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B

the mystery of inaction

As I grow older (and therefore wiser), one thing becomes a bigger and bigger mystery for me: why do so many people seem content to sit on their asses and never exert even a tiny handful of calories toward the effort of actually Finding Their Bliss?

It's one thing to encounter obstacles and perhaps even be stymied by them, but more common is the situation where someone claims to want something—some dream or fantasy of a happy life—and then never does anything to help make that dream a reality.

I've had variations of this same conversation with several friends in recent months: talking to pals who posssess some great talent or ability and claim to have some golden dream they intend to pursue, but who—when it comes right down to it—will never do a damned thing.

I find this tragic and sad. Given the rewards versus the cost, what the hell is so daunting about putting your comfort on the line once or twice a year? What's so paralyzingly scary about trying?

Screenwriting as a career is slightly less farfetched than "professional lottery winner," yet it becomes infinitely more farfetched when you refuse even to commit yourself to a serious effort at success. Similarly, it's a lot harder to be a successful photographer or architect or pearl diver or asteroid farmer or whatever if you just sit at home and piss and moan about how much you want that dream and how hard it is to make that dream come true and how many obstacles exist to make that dream such a difficult proposition.

Life is a rock, sweeheart: it's hard and it's rough. It's supposed to be, as if it was anything less it would hardly be worth living in the first damned place.

Increasingly, I find I have little patience for or interest in people I identify as "all talk and no action." There are those who help push the game forward, and then there is that other 90% of the population who'd rather just sit in the stands and watch, and maybe cheer, and possibly criticize and judge despite having never once had the cajones to gear up and enter the game for even a single snap, a single pitch, a single trip down the court.

I've got stuff I intend to do in this life. I'll either make it happen or I will die in the honest effort.

Those who remain content to do nothing... to dream nothing, to dare nothing, to want nothing... confound and confuse me.
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B

when the bullet hits the bone

So it's been three weeks since last I posted here.

Sue me.

Life has remained an insane cascade of competing events and obligations. Kid events, kid illness, dentists, Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, end of year parties and school functions, dance recitals, yard work, birthday parties, prepping for birthday parties, cleaning up after birthday parties, plus the incredible time and energy spent on little league coaching... oy. I'm ready for some sort of break, but now I look up and realize that I have something like 9 days left in which to tie up the half-written bundle of words and ideas that is my current script project if I am to have ANY hope of getting it in to the contest for the Austin Film Festival.

Speaking of baseball, last night my guys got eliminated from the playoffs. I've always sworn I'll not whine and whimper in public about something as inconsequential as the results of a little league game, but it's been an incredibly frustrating season in many regards. On the one hand I was blessed with the most talented team I've ever had—might ever have—but on the other hand this team has also been subjected to some of the worst weather luck and a slew of the dumbest/laziest decisions by clumsy league officials... my guys hung tough throughout it, but eventually I knew there woiuld come a time when patience, endurance, and luck would all abandon us at the same time, and last night was that moment. In a game we should never have been scheduled to play, my guys played just badly enough at key moments to lose to a team that they outplayed and should have beaten easily.

Bottom line: season over, load lifted, life goes on.

Now I have to kick serious ass in teh writing department in order to realize some goals I set for myself at the start of the year, and after THAT series of goals is met I already have ANOTHER set lined up on the runway, idling and cleared for immediate takeoff. It's a tremendously exciting time, as I suddenly have something like a half dozen ideas and projects rumbling which all seem to have serious potential and interest and viability. The key issue will be time.

Austin Film Festival contest entry and festival reservations are due soon, and I'm already starting to get wound up by that. Old friends are making the return, and some friends are this year going to be in an unusual position: rather than in teh civilian audience, some will likely be badged as working pros, and I am already threatening them with the embarrassingly naive and inane and stupid questions I intend to subject them to.

Current project list and status:

LILYA — I still love this impossible project, as do most folks who've read it. I wish I could make some money off the number of times I've heard "love it, and wish I had 100 million to produce it." But I can't. Nor can I yet find an effective way to get the damned thing to the sorts of players who might be able to prove useful in pushing this beast a few feet closer to consideration for production.

AMAZON — after a year of no real action, this project has some minor spark of new life as we (the co-writers) reached an agreement whereby we're both now cleared to independently develop and submit our own versions of the story we came up with. I have little doubt that the two "competing" stories will soon be so different as to make comparisons moot, but I volunteered some solutions which should help preclude any overly easy comparisons and intereference between the eventual two versions. Bottom line, it seems a fair and amicable separation of property, and leaves us both free to do what we each feel is right and proper by the story. "We shall see."

[SPAGHETTI WESTERN THING] — An odd project which continues to haunt me. One day I love the strange forced mixing of two disparate genres, and other days I look at it and think "I'm building a project doomed on two fronts." What parts I have written I love, and what I deas I intened to roll in I also love, but for various reasons it might wind up again stored until I get a clearer sense of the "do-ability" of the thing.

[COMEDY HORROR THING] — yes, it has a title (and a good one, at that), and a tagline (and a fucking great one, at that), but still I keep this one shrouded in mystery as those elements are so much fun that to share them at all spoils the fun of the eventual reveal when the script is done. This is teh current #1 priority, and the one I am most eager to get ready to read as it has lots of those commercial sorts of elements that give a newbie spec work the best fighting chance for production. A few producers have sparked when pitched the premise, and I hope they enjoy the finished product in a few weeks.

[EPIC HISTORICAL POPCORN FLICK] — this one is on hold while the stink of a damnably semi-similar turd fades from memory. I still love the premise, the characters, and many many of teh cool moments I've imagined and outlined, and some great scenes have already been written, but given that this is another of those projects that would be too expensive for a newbie to seriously suggest be filmed, this one stays in the Dream Locker for that magical happy day when I have Credibility and Experience and Bankability and such. Yeah, sounds funny when I say it, too.

[BIZARRE FROM LEFT FIELD IDEA] — still no details to share other than "there is an intriguing opportunity requiring my participation" and "if it works, it could be instant entreé into the pro ranks." For various reasons the expected rush of creative work on this has been postponed for a few weeks (until other various components are free to be brought to bear... and yes that is cryptic but intentionally so), but work has been done, folks seem interested and ready to receive, and this will be a major issue of attention this summer.

[OTHER NEW OFFER] — a longtime pal suggested the kernel of a story to me which is, in a stretch, loosely inspired by some comments and experiences I've shared. It's not autobiographical in any sense, but more like "extrapolating upon a fanciful impossibly farfetched fairy tale of an idea" but one which could—if done well—have tremendous commercial appeal and bankability. Again, the two issues to watch are TIME and MY ABILITY TO WORK AND PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS. I have been known, on occasion, to have a "strong personality" of the sort that sometimes proves difficult for some folks to live with for extended periods of time. I'm not a bastard, per se, but I can be moody and cantankerous and bombastic and perhaps even a touch arrogant and off-putting, so we'll see how this goes.

Roll in a alf dozen other oddball ideas and dreams that always seem to drift through the scene and that pretty much brings you up to speed.

I'd say more, but I really oughta be working.
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B

no time for love, doctor jones...

Damn.

When did now get here so soon?

My printer is smoking through a last second printout of this year's under-the-wire-as-usual Nicholl Fellowship entry. I have no special hope this year, but it suddenly occured to me that it's a cheap 30 dollar lottery ticket compared to the possible payoff, so why not?

MEANWHILE and anywhoo... I am scrambling to play phone tag with a long-lost college buddy who now works in Hollyweird aho might be extremely valuable and useful to a undiscussed new project suddenly boiling rapidly on the front burner. In one of those weird turns, I find myself the middle link in a chain of connections between talented represented writers on one side and hungry desperate producers on the other. It's all... strange. It has the feeling of one of those oddly perfect situations where you through all the puzzle pieces into the air and then they fall onto the tabletop magically assembled and in perfect order.

But we shall see...

AND the other New Thing is simmering along nicely and will likely be ready to throw at Austin Contests (the regular AFF, as well as the Burnt Orange or whatever they call it now, as well as the Sci Fi contest there), and I am laughing aloud as I look at notes and draft ideas, so that's cool.

AND the oddball cowboy thing still lingers in my mind like the stink from burnt popcorn, so that will surely get attention this summer.

AND there are the usual Other Cool Things yammering in the background, trying to distract me...

All in all, I'm suddenly nipple-deep in Cool Shit, and wondering which of these things will break first and become and actual living breathing project of relevance. I'd babble more, but I gotta go call a guy about a thing...
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B

a funny sense of expectation

OK, so despite the ass-over-teakettle wipeout of a major software burp earlier in the week which cost me 10 great days work at a point where I do NOT have any extra time in which to make up that lost time, I still feel... annoyingly good and optimistic.

Something must seriously be wrong, as I'm hardly ever admittedly self-confessedly (is that a word?) optimistic, but for now I feel good.

Why? I'm not entirely sure. I know that I am buried alive under various distracting and competing obligations— Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Little league, PTA, pre-school, dentists, an ongoing family medical crisis (which has not and likely will not rate specific discussion out here), etc., etc., etc.—yet somehow everything still feels pretty cool.

My present theory is that I am on some odd vicarious high stemming from the success and good news so many of my peers and pals seem to be bathing in these days:

• bestest buddy Julie O is currently in New Orleans on the set of her first feature screenplay sale, now in production with Warren Zide of American Pie fame. Julie's screenplay is one that I remember reading in numerous draft variants over the past few years, so watching it "grow up" and bloom into an actual for-real movie is absurdly cool for me (and others) to witness. I can only imagine (or try) what odd feelings of rapturous joy and nauseating anxiety must be hitting her right now. It's one thing to imagine a movie in your head for years, but to see an army of strangers all spending days in a coordinated effort to turn your words into a movie to be shown on a screen in front of millions... well, I can imagine dread and joy dancing an odd tango.

• pals Steve Barr and Tina Joey (Jingleheimer Schmidt) Anderson recently inked a major development deal with Disney/PiXAR for their long-simmering PLANT LIFE project. Again, it seems like I've been hearing about and watching this little project struggle and fight toward the light for years, so when word came down that they'd finally "bagged the big one" as John C McGinley said in WALL STREET, I think a great many of us wanted to do that thing from the end of OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN—just sob and clap and shout "Way to go, Paula! Way to go!"

• online pal Jonathan King continues to ride a tall and perfect wave of joy as his goofy killer farmcritter epic BLACK SHEEP continues to do good business around the world. I met Jonathan live and in person for the first time in Austin a month or so ago after swapping mail and silliness with him online for years through a group of writers and filmmakers we both know. Again, seeing someone you know stand and grin a painfully wide smile of proud joy as strangers line up to slap him on the back and say "hey, man-- great job!" is one of those cool experiences I never grow tired of, as I get to see someone in a totally honest and real moment of joy without having to wrestle with any of the weirdness and confusion that my own self-loathing would prompt if it were ME in that spotlight.

• on the publishing front, longtime online snarking buddy Cornelia Read hit the big time last year when her debut novel A Field Of Darkness came out to stellare reviews and solid sales. Cousin Cornelia wound up nominated for an Edgar (Allan Poe Award) for "Best Debut Novel," and she just turned in a draft of her follow-up, The Crazy School (coming in early 2008).

Cornelia reports that she's suddenly getting attention and interest from Hollywood, with rumors of possible screenwriting offers blowing in the wind like stray newspaper pages ("where do they come from/ How does this start?"). Again, I've watched Cornelia for years as the manuscript for what would become A Field started as an idea, grew into a major project, found a patron, then a publisher, and then started to garner praise and publicity. It's yet one more item of proof in the case that "absurd dreams really can come true... so long as you are stupendously talented and relentlessly dedicated to chasing down that damned rainbow like you are a hungry lion two steps behind a wounded wildebeest.

• also in books, Deb Chesher is nearing completion on work of her self-published coffee-table photo-opus Everyone I Shot Is Dead. a collection of some pretty freakin' incredible candid and private shots of a heartbreaking number of now-departed names from the rock and roll pantheon. Deb is now based in LA and also chasing screenwriting and producing glory, but in some odd previous life she was a rock babe in the early 70s, partying with and snapping shots of pretty much every major band and player you can think of from that time. The new book chronicles just how many of those folks have passed on and are no longer with us. It's a huge labor of love, and Deb's been pouring insane sweat and soul into this for years, so I have ever faith and confidence that her investment will pay huge dividends, as there's no way either to fake or conceal that sort of passion. (BTW-- pre-ordered copies of her book would surely make excellent Christmas gifts...).

Meanwhile, I sit here hammering away on an outline for what well may be the goofiest screenwriting idea I have ever seriously pursued. Without giving away the coolness, just think TREMORS and you'll be close enough for government work, pal. I've got a fistful of names of producers who all claim to want to see this damned thing when I get it written, and I also have some other projects folks seem excited by and hopeful for, and for a variety of reasons all too disconnected and vague and just plain squirrelly, for once in a long time the absence of anything concrete and definitively encouraging is not in and of itself grounds for depression.

Go figure.
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B

God Bless Texas

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

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

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

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

Saaaaaaaaa-lute.

Happy San jacinto Day, y'all.
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fourth-gen B

just a mild case of inconsolable rage

"Ah, life is like that—sometimes at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us."
--A Christmas Story

People sometimes ask me why I am occasionally prone to be perhaps the tiniest bit cynical and negative about things. I contend that I am not negative, but that I do have a healthy and hard-won appreciation for the way heartbreak can jump from around a blind corner, pistol-whip us to the ground, grab our wallets, then kick us in the kidneys twice for good measure before leaving us in a crumpled bloody heap in some sorry damp allegorical alley, gasping and gaping like a carp on the beach.

House odds do not favor the player in this joint we call Life, and if ever you find yourself riding a long winning streak, you'd better damned well bank some winnings while they are still yours to claim, as the worm will turn, my pretties, and when she does, she turns like a screw.

Coarse thread. Long and rusted.

———

The warning signs were all there: things were skimming along way too easily, way too pleasantly.

I'd returned from my most recent Hollywood fly-by a few weeks back with a dangerously and uncharacteristically upbeat outlook.

I'd found a cool new idea to work on which every LA player i've peeked it to has sparked interest with a wide giggling grin.

I'd discovered a great new card-based outlining program which was letting me free-stroke through the design and brainstorming process like nobody's business.

I'd been kicking ass and taking names for a solid week, and the outline was more than 80% completed with only the first half of the last act left to formally line out in written form. I knew where I was going, I knew how to get there, and I knew the twists and turns I'd likely encounter as I roared down the scenic route to that finish line.

Things were clearly going too good, and my Spidey Sense should have told me to keep my head on a swivel as that callous vindictive bitch named Reality was surely coming soon to slap some sense into me.

Well, yesterday, Thursday 19 April 2007, at approximately 4:19 pm CST, she showed up, fully lubed and ready for disco, baybee.

She smiled brightly, put a well-manicured hand on my shoulder, and leaned in close to whisper in my ear with that sultry voice she always seems to use:

Ooooo... remember me, baby?"

Then up comes the knee, square into the groin, and that too-familiar tide of nausea washes over you before all just fades to gray....

———

There are few things as deliciously evil, as perfectly frustrating, as a well-timed software failure.

38 notecards in an outline program—cards filled with loads of great specific line ideas and scene descriptions, something far more like a proto-draft than an outline, maybe 70 pages of material—suddenly goes "poof" and you remember all those times you've advised friends "remember to back up your work!"

Except this time I had. I'd made a duplicate of the file I was working on and had stashed it elsewhere on my drive so that when that bitch came a-knocking, I'd be protected. Safe-guarded. Ready to rumble. She'd do her nasty business, and I'd just smile and laugh.

Well, there was laughter, but it t'werent't mine, as this particular collapse overwrote my BACKUP copy with a backup of the original file which was being totally corrupted.

What specifically happened? Nobody yet seems able to say. The software people have tried to recover both files and they say "it appears the files have not been altered since 10 days ago," when in fact I'd been working like a demon those ten days. The net effect is that all work down since 13 April 2007 is gone—just gone, baybee. Like it never fucking happened.

So that cool new project I was skimming so happily along with? I'm back to square one. Well, not square one—more like square four or five—but given that only yesterday I was motoring past square number 39 or so, it still sucks muchly the same.

Now I sit here and whine lyrically about the raging anger and numbing depression the situation has stirred, but in my heart of hearts I already realize there are but two options today: either buck up or give up. March or die, soldier.

Contest season looms huge on the rapidly approaching near-term horizon—ten days 'til Nicholl, forty 'til Austin—and I sit here with no pages but only the muddled memory of a nearly-finished outline now lost at sea.

The options left to me now seem limited. Either I kick unholy ass in the next week, or I'm left trying to jump-start my stagnated career for the next year using what little attention I can garner by cold-calling and cymbal-banging. Part of me badly wants to grab a softball bat in frustration and just go use the cat for fungo practice, but instead I'll wax my moustache, button up my waistcoat and adjust the brim of my cap to a properly rakish angle as I remember one of the few worthwhile bits of Gallic military inspiration:

"Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking."
-- message to HQ from Gen. Ferdinand Foch

Fuckin ay, bubba. Once more into the breach.
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Tenacious B (too big to kill, too dumb to quit)