My Brain Works Funny

What the Hell Happened To Me?

2011-05-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

I don't understand what happened. One day, I was twenty-two years old. I showed a lot of promise, both as a musician and as a writer. I was well-liked; I was sociable.

Then I woke up the next day and took stock of my life. I'm thirty-four. I'm s fat. I've stopped socializing, and keep mostly to myself. I've become cranky. Surly. My back hurts all the time, no doubt owing itself to my excessive weight. I have a job where I was miserable and not making much money, but I don't know what to do. I need the little bit of money I make, even though I'm living hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck. I'm trying to save up enough money to take a trip home to Ohio so my girlfriend can meet my mother, and I'm finding it difficult. Life keeps getting in the way of saving money.

I look around at my peers and I don't understand how they do it. Many of them seem happy. They have children. Families. They own cars - I don't own a car. Some of them own houses, which I'm pretty sure I'll never own. They have adult jobs doing adult things and they take their adult vacations to adult destinations.

They go to wine tastings.

They hang out with their friends.

They look amazing. Seriously, they all look fucking amazing!

I wonder if, on the surface, my life looks really glamorous to them. After all, I work at a talent agency in Hollywood. I'm involved in the entertainment industry. Growing up in Ohio, I never would have imagined I'd end up here. To them, perhaps I've arrived. To me, I have a shitty job and don't even really take the steps necessary to get to where I want to be.

I mean, I'm a screenwriter who hasn't written a word in a month. Instead, I play MLB 2K11.

But I do take day trips to cool places. I hike along the coast. I discover hidden gems in the Santa Monica Mountains. To them, it's quite possible that my life looks pretty amazing.

But I'm fucking miserable. I have a tooth coming out. Did I mention that? It's disgusting, but not surprising. I'm thirty-four years old and I've never been to a dentist. Not as a child, not as an adult. I don't have insurance. I can't afford to go to the dentist, but I'm going to go on Monday morning. My first trip ever to the dentist.

What the fuck is wrong with me.

Karma Chameleon

2007-02-28T14:55:00.000-08:00

There was an old woman sitting maybe ten feet from me. A kindly old woman with a blue button-up cardigan over her maroon turtleneck. Black slacks, because this is the kind of old woman who would never dream of wearing denim.

It had been raining earlier in the day, so her umbrella wasn't entirely out of place, though the large yellow smiley faces didn't quite mesh with the rest of her ensemble. It looked old; rarely-used. Perhaps it belonged to one of her children. After they had moved out of the house, she was cleaning their rooms and came across it. Being the pragmatic woman that she no doubt was, she set it aside for - literally - a rainy day. On her way out of the house this morning, it was the first umbrella she'd seen, and she'd grabbed it.

Anything to keep out of the rain.

I wasn't eavesdropping. I hear things. I don't try to; I just do. What caught my ear was her proclamation:

"God must be on his side, then. But He's on the wrong side. I don't know why God would be on the wrong side, but He is, because he's wrong about this. I know it in my heart."

The rant wasn't odd in and of itself. It wouldn't ordinarily have caught my attention if it weren't for the umbrella. The old, rusty umbrella. The unreliable umbrella.

Punctuating her heretical dialogue was this umbrella. It was a collapsible umbrella, and it popped open midway through the first sentence. She closed it and held it to her chest, presumably to keep it closed. But it popped open, the handle smacking her in the jaw. She closed it once more and laid it across her lap, where it popped out once again, hitting the woman at whom she was monologuing.

This continued, and it struck me that if I was the type of person who believed in a God, this would have profound significance. All of her expounding on the wrong merits of this particular decision by God aside, she struck me as someone who believed in Him. And the fact that she was doubting him -- and getting pelted by an inanimate object in the process -- didn't seem to alarm her at all.

Which makes one think about all the miracles we miss. All the signs we miss. All the warning signals that happen around us but go unnoticed; unheralded.

Or maybe it was just a faulty umbrella, after all.

On The Slate

2007-02-26T22:27:00.000-08:00

I've never been a big fan of Slate magazine. They tend to write lazy, sexist commentary that makes no contribution of any value. "Ten Ways To Please A Man." This only works if the list goes something like this:

1. Show up.

That's it.

But today, I read a wonderful treatise by Marisa Meltzer on the state of the slacker movie.

But that's also a problem with the genre: Slackers are always childlike men, and the objects of their affection always women with their acts together, as if slacking is a uniquely male vocation. Women in these movies are never equals; they may be able to parse the finer points of Josie and the Pussycats, but the issues that really occupy them aren't pop culture ephemera, but marriage, money, and babies. If male slackers are stuck in a permanent state of adolescence, all deep thoughts and long talks and sleeping in, then women are agents of growing up and getting a grip, two things that could harsh any slacker's mellow.

This point particularly hit home with me.

I've always walked a fine line with the role women play in modern American cinema. The romantic comedy genre is littered with women whose role is to change the protagonist - to mold him to their own idea of perfection. They are, on the whole, underwritten and two-dimensional characters with very little going on in their own lives beyond getting their male counterparts to jump through proverbial hoops in an effort to "prove" themselves. To match some image of perfection.

On the rare occasion that an empowering movie with strong female characters comes along, it's an oddity. It's slapped with a label - "chick flick" or "feminist film" - in a subconscious effort to highlight how out of the norm it is. If something shows women to be capable creatures with lives outside of the men that populate their worlds, it must have some sort of an agenda.

I can't say that I've done a great job in my own writing of breaking this paradigm. Regarding my first full-length play, a prominent New York critic said this:

"He writes women with breathtaking ease, treating them not as a gender either greater or lesser, but as human beings - in entertainment, a distinction generally afforded only to males."

But since that piece, my female characters have gotten exponentially weaker.

I have two current projects in the works - one is in pre-production, and while it features three very strong female characters, each is introduced only as a means of "testing" the male lead. The second is still in the script stage. It's an historical drama - a true story about a female explorer who broke barriers in the early twentieth century. But her primary motivation, in real life at least, was to avenge her deceased husband.

Not that my character in the film has to match this motivation. Because of the nature of her journey, her husband's death is vital. But does that have to be the only motivation, or even the primary motivation? It's a difficult model to break - the female who is only special because she is female. Who relies on her gender to separate herself from her peers. Who lacks any sort of distinction in character or achievement beyond that.

So the problem goes beyond the slacker genre, or even beyond romantic comedies. Even beyond romance. It permeates the film industry, and I can't help but think that breaking out of this mold is a vital step in reshaping the way Americans think about gender.

It's something to think about, at any rate. Portraying women as human beings. There just might be something to it, after all.

Marty

2007-02-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

Martin Scorsese has finally won his Oscar, sparing him from the dubious distinction shared by directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick of standing as a paramount figure in his field, virtually unparalleled by his peers, but unable to win a contested Oscar.

Hitchcock, unlike the others, at least helmed one Best Picture winner with Rebecca, his American debut (and some might argue one of the least "Hitchcockian" movies he ever worked on). Scorsese's pictures kept running against bad luck.

In 1976, Taxi Driver got knocked out by Rocky. Scorsese announced a rematch four years later with his own boxing movie, Raging Bull, which was muted by Ordinary People. The next Best Picture nomination wouldn't come until ten years later, 1990, when Goodfellas was whacked by Dances With Wolves. In 2002, Gangs of New York was mobbed by Chicago. Two years later, he would lose to yet another boxing movie when The Aviator went the distance with Million Dollar Baby, only to lose once more.

Not a Forrest Gump or a Titanic in the bunch. All of them legitimately great movies, all of which have aged extremely well (though looking back, many of the Academy voters might feel differently about Goodfellas against Dances With Wolves.)

Five director nominations. To whom has he lost? Robert Redford (Ordinary People), Barry Levinson (Rain Man), Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves), Roman Polanski (The Pianist), and Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby). Not bad company to be in, all things considered.

But it's all moot now. He's broken through. How perfect that among his presenters were Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola -- it felt like an old Hollywood moment. Like now we've taken care of this small piece of business and we can move on into our glory years.

And make no mistake - this was very much a Lifetime Achievement Award for Scorsese. He assembled a top-notch acting corps and handed them a terrific script. He didn't have to be nearly as masterful a director with this genre film as he had to with The Aviator or even as far back as Mean Streets. From a directorial standpoint, it was nothing earth-shattering - certainly not as impressive as Alejandro González Iñárritu's work on Babel. But the Oscars are not wholly about the best man at the best time. Sometimes they are about not repeating mistakes.

When you watched the audience applaud Scorsese, you could feel the love and the respect. Here's a man who has toiled long and hard for his craft; someone who has given so much to so many. And while he was being snubbed by the awards presenters, he kept a smile on his face. He kept plugging away, and you could always tell he maintained his love for cinema.

So congratulations to the Academy Awards for getting this one right. The Best Picture announcement was almost an afterthought; denouement after the evening's climax. Forest Whitaker's and Helen Mirren's awards were merely preludes to the fireworks. Because it was clearly Martin Scorsese's night. And a better night is not often had.

Oscar Grouch

2007-02-24T15:35:00.000-08:00

Until very recently, I never really got into the Oscars. When asked about it, I was the first to point out that Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Arthur Penn, Stanley Kramer, Norman Jewison, James Ivory, and Peter Weir have combined for a grand total of zero Best Director awards - proof enough for me that the award is a sham.

But last year, I got excited because I was desperate to see Crash overcome Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture, despite all the buzz building in the opposite direction. This year, I've got a similar mission: I want to see Martin Scorsese win Best Director.

It's my opinion that Scorsese's problem hasn't been the quality of his work. No one can deny that. It's that his films always seem to butt up against other great films. Lately, he and Eastwood have gotten into the same cycle, with Eastwood coming out the victor so far. This year, Eastwood has been building a lot of great buzz once again.

And for a good reason. Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese may be the two best directors in American cinema today. They simply never seem to miss. Even on Scorsese's bad projects (I'm looking at you, Gangs of New York,) the direction is nearly flawless. The technical filmmaking is brilliant. Actors give the best performances of their careers (Cameron Diaz was wretched in GONY, but still better than I've ever seen her be in anything else).

And I think - and hope - that The Departed puts him over the top.

In other news, I think it's a shame that Children of Men didn't get a Best Picture nomination. Really terrific film - check it out post haste.

So without further ado, my Oscars picks:

Actor -- Leading

Leonardo DiCaprio -- Blood Diamond

Ryan Gosling -- Half Nelson

Peter O'Toole -- Venus

Will Smith -- The Pursuit of Happyness

Forest Whitaker -- The Last King of Scotland

Actress -- Leading

Penelope Cruz -- Volver

Judi Dench -- Notes on a Scandal

Helen Mirren -- The Queen

Meryl Streep -- The Devil Wears Prada

Kate Winslet -- Little Children

Actor -- Supporting

Alan Arkin -- Little Miss Sunshine

Jackie Earle Haley -- Little Children

Djimon Hounsou -- Blood Diamond

Eddie Murphy -- Dreamgirls

Mark Wahlberg -- The Departed

Actress -- Supporting

Adriana Barraza -- Babel

Cate Blanchett -- Notes on a Scandal

Abigail Breslin -- Little Miss Sunshine

Jennifer Hudson -- Dreamgirls

Rinko Kikuchi -- Babel

Directing

Alejandro González Iñárritu -- Babel

Martin Scorsese -- The Departed

Clint Eastwood -- Letters from Iwo Jima

Stephen Frears -- The Queen

Paul Greengrass -- United 93

Best Picture

Babel

The Departed

Letters From Iwo Jima

Little Miss Sunshine

The Queen

Animated Feature

Cars

Happy Feet

Monster House

Art Direction

Dreamgirls

The Good Shepherd

Pan's Labyrinth

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

The Prestige

Cinematography

The Black Dahlia

Children of Men

The Illusionist

Pan's Labyrinth

The Prestige

Costume Design

Curse of the Golden Flower

The Devil Wears Prada

Dreamgirls

Marie Antoinette

The Queen

Original Song

"I Need to Wake Up" -- An Inconvenient Truth

"Listen" -- Dreamgirls

"Love You I Do" -- Dreamgirls

"Our Town" -- Cars

"Patience" -- Dreamgirls

Original Score

Babel

The Good German

Notes on a Scandal

Pan's Labyrinth

The Queen

Makeup

Apocalypto

Click

Pan's Labyrinth

Foreign Language Film

After the Wedding

Days of Glory

The Lives of Others

Pan's Labyrinth

Water

Film Editing

Babel

Children of Men

Blood Diamond

The Departed

United 93

Documentary Short

The Blood of Yingzhou District

Recycled Life

Rehearsing a Dream

Two Hands

Documentary Feature

Deliver Us From Evil

An Inconvenient Truth

Iraq in Fragments

Jesus Camp

My Country, My Country

Short Film -- Animated

The Danish Poet

Lifted

The Little Matchgirl

Maestro

No Time For Nuts

Short Film -- Live Action

Binta and the Great Idea

One Too Many

Helmer & Son

The Saviour

West Bank Story

Sound Editing

Apocalypto

Blood Diamond

Flags of Our Fathers

Letters From Iwo Jima

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Sound Mixing

Apocalypto

Blood Diamond

Dreamgirls

Flags of Our Fathers

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Visual Effects

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Poseidon

Superman Returns

Screenplay -- Adapted

Borat: Cultural Learnings From America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Children of Men

The Departed

Little Children

Notes on a Scandal

Screenplay -- Original

Babel

Letters From Iwo Jima

Little Miss Sunshine

Pan's Labyrinth

The Queen

Have You Seen This Drive?

2007-02-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

Identity theft is a serious growing concern in this digital age. As access to information becomes easier and easier, sorting the good from the bad becomes more and more difficult. Experts guess that there are at least 500,000 victims a year. It seems everyone is trying to limit the average American's risk - software companies, banks, credit card companies, law enforcement. And then there's the FBI.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations - or the "FBI," as the kids call it - is a proud organization with a storied past. They pride themselves on their ability to do their jobs better than anyone in the world.

But what they can't quite seem to grasp is holding onto things. Things with sensitive information on them. The Bureau reportedly loses an average of 11 laptops a year. Laptops with people's personal information splashed all over them. And then there's this Iomega external hard drive that they lost in Birmingham.

The FBI and the Department of Veterans Affairs is seeking information and/or the return of the hard drive that contained personal information on at least a half-million people.

Half a million, or 500,000. Say, that number sounds familiar.

Venue

2007-02-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

I'm considering a change to a new address. I've had a domain name for a while, sitting around collecting dust. I've been slow to move because the last time (from Blog-City to Blogger), I lost most of my readers.

Since now I don't have any readers, it seems like an okay time to move. So I guess the question is... how do I do it? How do I turn my own domain name into a blog? Typepad? Movable Type? I don't know. I really don't know.

Things are going to be a little funky for a while as I sort things out... content will leap around or disappear. I know no one will read this, so I'm not too too worried, but still.

Clientele

2007-02-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

This morning at work, I processed a new client which we will call People For Better Schools.

I sent an instant message to our Sales Director, and this is what ensued:

EcamirG: I guess I'm confused. Does this mean that there are People Against Better Schools?
Sales Director: Yes. There are seven.
EG: But they can't actually count to seven, so you're really just accepting their best guess.
SD: Plus they've got that really screechy woman, so that's helpful when you have to speak over crowds.
EG: Which I imagine they have to do a lot, considering the crowd is X-7, where X=the entire population of the planet Earth.
SD: Technically, it's X-Y-7, where X=the populations of the Earth and Y equals the population of the Earth not in attendance at the PTA meeting in question.
EG: Oh. I don't think a "crowd" can technically consist of a negative integer.
SD: That's only a worry if Y is equal to or greater than X-7+1.
EG: Which, I think it's safe to assume, it usually is. Have you ever been to a PTA meeting?
SD: Of course I have. I'm part of the Citizens Against Better Schools.

Why am I so exhilerated to have such a nerdy conversation?

Brothers In Arms

2007-02-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

In deference to one of my all-time favorite holidays, I'm going to tell a tale of Mardi Gras. I was nineteen, maybe twenty when I played New Orleans on Mardi Gras. At the time, I was heading up a blues band called A Lighter Shade of Blues, and our bassist knew a guy who knew a guy who had a venue on Bourbon Street, near St. Peter, only a few blocks from Jackson Square.

We arrived on a Thursday morning and promptly headed to the French Quarter, where we gorged ourselves on beignets and wandered amidst the mule-drawn carriages, each mule wearing a straw hat that gave it personality and charm. We took in the Pontalba Buildings; the Moon Walk; the St. Louis Cathedral. We feasted on the Presbytere.

As the Friday hit and the Square became more and more crowded during the day, we busked at the Inn on Bourbon, and were overwhelmed with the generosity of the passersby. So many people stopped to listen, and so few walked away without tossing us some token of appreciation – sometimes it was a bauble, a string of beads. Sometimes it was spare change. Sometimes it was more. When we packed up at the end of the afternoon, we discovered to our surprise – among the wrinkled ones and the fives smelling of cheap whiskey – a good share of tens and twenties; the occasional fifty.

We were booked on the weekend leading up to Mardi Gras, and the place was packed every single night. The air was electric. People would duck in to listen to one chart, to have a drink, to share a dance. There was the definite feeling that they were not only part of the show, but that they were the show. We were merely the background music. We were a small contributor to the evening's entertainment. But they didn't greedily take; they encouraged us with every action. They drew us in and we poured our souls into the music. We gave them all that they wanted and more. We played until the early hours of the morning, when we packed our gear and headed to our hotel, collapsing in our clothes from sheer exhaustion.

When Mardi Gras itself rolled around, we woke early and headed to the Quarter, where we ate breakfast under the visage of Andrew Jackson. The revelry started early, and we were swept up in the fervor. We met musicians everywhere we turned – most of them small local groups or travelers like ourselves. A few of us sat in on some other groups' sets. Everyone wanted to hear the young blues band from Ohio. We were immediately adopted into the family.

We headed to our venue and began to play to a fairly limited crowd. We knew that it would take a little while for the foot traffic to make it to us, and we didn't mind waiting at all. We were grateful for the folks who'd gathered early. Many of them wanted to buy us drinks. We had to refuse – we were all too young.

"Too young to drink?" I remember a grizzled old bluesman asking, cocking his head to one side, sure we were pulling his leg. "What's this country come to, someone can play like that can't get 'im a shot of whiskey inside?"

We shrugged the questions off, smiled, and treated him to some Pop Crudup charts. As the night progressed and the party began to build, our drummer, Liam, stopped us. We turned to him. "What's the matter?"

He didn't answer, instead staring vacantly towards the door. We followed his line of sight to a large, hulking figure standing just inside, talking with a small group of partygoers. He called out, "Don't stop now, I'm loving your music." It wasn't his words that stopped us. It was his voice. We knew that voice.

I raised my hands to my eyes to block out the stage lights, and sure enough, it was him. Aaron Neville had just walked into our set and told us he loved our music. We dug in, determined, and finished our set. We were sitting at the bar, taking a break while sipping Cherry Cokes, when he sidled up next to us and held out his hand.

"I'm Aaron Neville," he said.

"No offense, sir," said Liam, "but no shit."

"You guys play local?"

"No, sir, we're from Ohio."

"Don't call me sir."

"Sorry."

He paused and considered. Looked off at the side of the bar, where he recognized someone and waved. Turned back to us with an impish sparkle in his eye.

"You got yourselves a great little sound. You mind if I sing a couple with you?"

And that was how it happened that I played a show with Aaron Neville. As word spread, more and more people crammed themselves into the joint to hear him. No one knew who we were – no longer Lighter Shade of Blues, we became Aaron Neville's backup band for the evening. And that was fine with us.

Mr. Neville sang his heart out, not leaving the stage until an hour had passed. He'd finish one song, and we were sure he'd be ready to sit, but he'd turn back with a coy smile and ask if we knew "Prayin' On The Old Campground." When we answered in the affirmative, he'd gasp and say, "Well, let's sing it!"

It was impossible not to be drawn into his enthusiasm; his presence. And though we were tired and desperately wanted a break, we weren't about to leave the stage until he did. The night wore on, and eventually he bid us farewell to head out into the city and on to bigger and better venues, but for that hour, he owned us. We played our charts better than we'd ever played them; afraid to disappoint Mr. Neville. Afraid to disappoint the audience.

News? What news?

2007-02-19T10:29:00.000-08:00

One of the more annoying aspects of filmmaking (and believe me, there are plenty of annoying aspects of filmmaking) is the fact that you can get what seems like amazing, exciting news... but you can't tell anyone about it.

There are so many degrees of involvement in a project. Actor X might love the idea and want to read the script. Actor X might read the script and absolutely want to be a part of it. Actor X might even go so far as to sign a letter of intent... but until you sign Actor X to the project, it's bad form to talk about them in conjunction with it.

Which sucks, because I really want to scream it from the rooftops. I want to call everyone I know and say We've got an actress, twice nominated for an Academy Award, who loves our script and really wants to be in the movie! But until she signs on the dotted line, I can't. I have to be careful when I do tell it to someone - even my co-writer. I had to explain to him that he can't tell anyone. Not a soul.

But it's such exciting news.

We didn't really have to deal with this in the theatre. We either signed an actor or we didn't. Then again, we would already have funding in place before seeking out actors, so even if we hit on an A-lister, they signed on immediately and we could release the name as part of the marketing. In film, we can't do that, because finding interested talent is part of getting funding.

Anyway, we were energized by the not-news, and immediately set in to do our latest batch of rewrites. We got some good stuff on the page, and we solved most of our problems. There's still one area that really needs improvement, but neither of us know how to fix it, and our producer doesn't think it's a problem at all. Maybe we're being too sensitive, but I doubt it.

Also, it is the part concerning the role that Actor X might want to play, which makes me even more nervous (although she's of a high enough caliber that she may even have good opinions on how to fix it.)

I'm rambling.

Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T22:29:00.000-08:00

It's Valentine's Day (for another hour and a half or so) and I know that - like everyone else - I should post my musings on the nature of love and romance. That I should decry the holiday as some sort of post-modern commercialism of emotion. But really, all I think as I type this is Fuck, Constantine is a terrible movie, and it's also unnecessarily loud. And I also think My roommate has been playing with his own foot for nearly an hour while watching this horrendous movie that he owns on DVD for some reason.

You're handed this precious gift, right? Each one of you granted redemption from the Creator - murderers, rapists, molesters - all of you just have to repent, and God takes you into His busom. In all the worlds and all the universe, no other creature can make such a boast, save man. It's not fair. If sweet, sweet God loves you so, then I will make you worthy of His love. But it's only in the face of horror that you truly find your noble self, and you can be so noble. So... I will bring you pain, I will bring you horror. So that you may rise above it. So that those of you who will survive this reign of hell on earth will be worthy of God's love.

If I'd written that, I would have immediately killed myself afterward. Written by the guys who brought you Mindhunters and Suburban Commando.

Just saying.

You know, Emporer Claudius II banned marriage for young men, because he thought that single men made better soldiers. So this guy Valentine, he goes around and marries all of these young people in secret. He was discovered and put to death.

Seems kind of fitting.

But no, I'm not bitter. No more bitter than I was a month ago when I was single, or a month from now, when I will likely still be single. Meh. Whatever.

On my last birthday, I went out to lunch and sat at a table for one. I made a vow that I wouldn't spend my next birthday eating solo. That I wouldn't be single for another year... not after all the time I've spent single over the past several years. I've been seeing some people, talking to some people. But nothing major. Nothing that looks like it's going to be anything fantastic in two months' time. And that's what I've got: Two months from tomorrow.

And away we go.

Part of me wants to chronicle my attempts to find someone to sit opposite me at the dinner table on my birthday. But I know I'll just be setting my reader up for disappointment. Because I don't even really date, and two months of "So such-and-such sent me an email a week ago and said I was cool. I sent a picture, and I haven't heard back."

That has really been the summation of all of my attempts at online dating.

I don't know.

I'll probably just blog about puppies or something. Or about a certain magazine that should be ashamed of itself for selling out its own journalistic integrity by allowing one political software company to run an ad posing as the magazine's front page. An ad that attacks at least one other rival company which also advertises in the magazine. An ad that does not state anywhere on it that it's an ad; that looks like the front page of the magazine, and that even has the masthead (all in front of the actual front page).

I might just blog about something like that, instead.

Symbology

2007-02-13T14:19:00.000-08:00

I can't help but love Mitt Romney's choice of venues for kicking off his Presidential campaign. What better place for a modern-day Republican to announce his desire to become the leader of our nation than a museum honoring a well-known and outspoken xenophobe and anti-Semite?

In fact, maybe the entire RNC should move into the Henry Ford Museum. It'd be quite touching.

Stepping up

2007-02-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

It had to stop somewhere. In The West Wing, Republicans threatened to try to pass one of their oft-used tactics: The English-as-the-official-language bill. Like the flag-burning amendment and a few others, this is a nice little gem that the righties can tuck in their back pocket and throw out whenever they need to rally the troops.

Few people realize that English isn't the official language of the United States. We actually don't have an official language, and we're not likely to, as a lot of Constitutional scholars believe that it would require an amendment to that venerable document. So the Republicans feel comfortable throwing this on the table, garnering the vocal support of the unwashed masses, and then guffawing once them mealy-mouthed Dems vote it down.

It's something they don't want passed, because 1) That would take it right out of the arsenal, and 2) Once the bill passed and people saw how much money it caused and the problems it would cause in public safety, health, and welfare, they might think less of their Republican friends.

Assuming that that's possible.

So it's really just nice little fodder whenever they feel their support is waning. So it's no surprise that several little "red" communities have passed ordinances making English the official language of their particular towns or counties: Pahrump, Nevada; Taneytown, Maryland; Farmers Branch, Texas (a Dallas suburb); and Cherokee County, Georgia (near Atlanta) have all made English their official languages. Most of the language makes them impossible to enforce, which is just fine, because the Constitutional implications can't make anyone very secure.

So take a city of 600,000 and growing. A city that is home to the nation's largest Kurdish community, and which has been a resettlement site for refugees from Africa and Southeast Asia. A city where the Hispanic immigrant population have boomed. A city where researchers say foreign-born population has grown 350 percent since 1990. Try to pass such a bill in a city like that!

Only they did.

The Nashville Metro Council passed a measure 23-14 last week that would have required all government communication to be in English. But there was a huge loophole: The bill allowed multilingual communication whenever required by federal rules or when needed "to protect or promote public health, safety or welfare."

So a hearty thumbs-up to Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell, who vetoed the measure today, citing violations of State and Federal Constitutions, legal defense, and conversion that would cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars -- "all for no reason."

It went beyond the monetary factor, however, and into the social impact. Mayor Purcell correctly summarizes in this CNN article:

"If this ordinance becomes law, Nashville will become a less safe, less friendly and less successful city," Purcell said. "And as mayor, I cannot allow that to happen."

Now that's what I call service

2007-02-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

From Salon.com's personals section:

So there's no longer any need to go through expensive surgery and doctors if you need a sex change operation. All you need to do is call Salon.com's customer service. Impressive.

Commatose

2007-02-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

The LA Times ran an interesting article regarding David Mamet, whose newest book (Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie Business) has ruffled a few feathers in Hollywood.

One thing struck me in particular about this interview. See if you can figure it out:

Detached from reality as it may at times seem, Mamet's contrarian, matter-of-fact assurance that everything will be OK, that art will find a way to flourish, is a refreshing alternative, anyway, to the hand-wringing, punctuated by apocalyptic pronouncements, that's so in vogue these days. If the rest of Hollywood appears to be in full-on crisis mode, frantically backpedaling as filmgoers shift their preferred viewing environment to their living rooms, their preferred format to the swiftly released DVD, their preferred context to the fast-forward-enhanced home entertainment center, Mamet has been too contentedly busy to read the memo. What he has been reading instead is "a lot of political-economic theory."

I once had an English professor. He loved me. Adored me. He would give me 108 points out of 100. He asked me for permission to publish two of my essays: One on Kurt Vonnegut's Cats Cradle and one on Oedipus Rex. This was when I was a freshman in college. It's all been downhill since then.

The one thing he didn't like was my particular affinity for commas. He taught me wonderful things, like ellipses, semicolons, and dashes. Commas without the comma.

All I'm saying is go back and re-read the paragraph I posted above. This author clearly didn't study with my freshman English professor, is all I'm saying.

Double booked

2007-02-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

It always happens. You always get the best invitation last. After you've already accepted one of the lesser invitations, because you thought there would be no more. You thought you'd gotten all of them. So you say yes. And then... and then and then and then, you get the good invitation. The one you'd rather go to.

Only now, here you are, having accepted another invitation. How to handle this delicate situation?

Well, if you're me, you say yes to both. After twenty-eight years of not receiving a single "Academy Awards Party" invitation (whatever an Academy Awards Party is,) I have been invited to no fewer than four this year.

Four.

And I accepted one early on, at the Actress's place. But that was before The Happy Dwarf invited me to the party she and her husband are throwing. So after discussing things with my friend Mac, who will be going with me, we decided that we'd just have more fun at The Happy Dwarf's party. She's a kick, and I always have a good time when she's around, as opposed to the Actress, who's delightful, but extremely high maintenance and she is going to make me play some trivia game and I don't know. I feel like I'm on eggshells with that one.

But not The Happy Dwarf.

So I RSVPd a yes to both. Which gave me a little time to find an out for the Actress's party, except that it appears that she was bird dogging The Happy Dwarf's evite list, because not more than an hour after I RSVPd, she emailed me:

Why did you accept an invitation to The Happy Dwarf's party? Are you going to her party?

I was working, so it was about half an hour later when I wrote her back to tell her that we would be stopping by The Happy Dwarf's party, but that we still intended to come by hers, as well. Because to me, you can be in transit during the Academy Awards. They're just not that big a deal. Seriously.

But she wrote back:

Sure took you long enough to come up with that one. My party is going to be better than The Happy Dwarf's. The BOMB. Is she going to have trivia? Prizes? Funny hats? I don't think so!

Is it just me, or is that one of the single-most terrifying emails ever received?

So now I feel trapped. I can't weasel out of her party, but I've RSVPd at this other, better party. I can't then turn around, one day later, and cancel on that one. Especially when I'd rather go to that one. I do have the out that I have to work that day, but even though it's true, it comes off as a gigantic lame excuse.

I think I liked it better when I was a pariah and nobody wanted me to hang out with them.

No War Plans

2007-02-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

It's sad that my first opinion on seeing this headline from CNN -

- was, "Well, that's not news. There's still no plans for war with Iraq, either."

Biden Time

2007-02-01T16:01:00.000-08:00

Senator Joseph Biden put in two bids yesterday: First, he officially launched his Presidential Exploratory Committee. Then, several hours later, he made it clear that, should there ever be a Seinfeld movie made, he should get serious consideration to play Kramer.

It was hard to tell, reading his interview in the New York Observer, whether the quote was from the Senator himself or from Black People Love Us.

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

It's too bad that this keeps happening to Senator Biden, because he really does have a very sharp mind.

Still, this is the same guy who, in 2006, said:

"You cannot go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. Oh, I'm not joking."

And two months later, when asked how a Northeast liberal could compete against conservative Southern candidates, he responded:

"Better than everybody else. You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a northeast liberal state," Biden said.

Rarely is a politician in this day and age less politic than the good Senator from Delaware.

Come Again Some Other Day

2007-01-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

When it rains in San Diego, it becomes silent. A blanket of precipitation, covering the city. Today, it rained all day. A cold, gloomy rain that pelted the concrete. The only sounds were of the cars, diminished in their numbers, streaking down the rain-slicked streets of Southern California.

I'm at the bus stop. I want to encourage mass transit; I want to participate. But I can't. I loathe the bus, though I ride it every day. The rain is slamming the street. A large reservoir is forming at my feet. Nowhere to go, it simply waits. It waits for the sun to return; to reclaim it. This town wasn't built for rain; these people weren't built for rain.

A dozen people pass. Two dozen. More. They hunch over, their heads straight in front of their bodies. They frown. They curse with their eyes. The only sound is the wheezing and coughing of a phlegmatic old woman next to men, who clucked her tongue at me when I wouldn't give her a cigarette. It's a gray day, and this gray woman doesn't need my help on her steadfast march to the grave.

The cars run silently down the street. There is no honking of horns. No shouting. No music. No conversation. There's only the rain, falling onto the streets of San Diego.

Gross

2007-01-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

My roommate and his boyfriend decided that they would eat in the living room tonight. Okay, no problem, even though I'm sitting here writing. So they sit a foot or so from me and make absolutely no noise except for the occasional rustle of the Subway wrapper. So all I hear right now is them eating. Chew chew chew rustle chew drink exhale chew chew swallow rustle chew.

It's worse than a goddamned movie theatre.

Table Read

2007-01-23T20:06:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, a bunch of actors I've never met before (and a few I had) got together to read my newest script. It went well... more of it was funny than I thought, and we got a lot of great ideas to enhance the script. Nothing's better than having actors read your script. Nothing can point out the problems quite so easily. The other upside was that Mac (my co-writer on this script,) Waterhouse (who's producing,) and I sat down and beat our heads together.

We're shooting this one ourselves. It's going to be our first feature. Between Waterhouse and me, we have the ability to do a bang-up job on it. And we had some pretty electric energy on Sunday... it seems so attainable. I wasn't sure how I felt about this script, to be honest, but now I see that it's pretty awesome. With some tweaking and some good casting, we could turn out a pretty terrific movie.

It's a nice feeling. We'll see how long it lasts.

Pump Boys

2007-01-16T18:44:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to pretend that Pump Boys & Dinettes is in any way a good show, much less a great one. But I will tell you this: It was one of the most fun shows I ever music directed.

I was sitting at home one day in Ohio when I got a frantic phone call. I glanced at the clock. There reaches a time of day where any phone call I get is a bad phone call. No good call has ever come my way after ten o'clock at night. In fact, now that I think about it, very little good at all has come my way late at night; it's not always directly related to the telephone.

I tentatively pick up the phone. "Hello?"

"EcamirG?"

"That's me."

"This is Mike. I'm doing a show at the Playhouse, called Pump Boys & Dinettes, and I need a music director. Dave said you might be available to music direct?"

"Well, Mike, I have to be honest. I'm having surgery on my wrist in a few weeks. I don't know that I'm in any kind of shape to play a show."

"Okay. Well, would you like to come in and take a look at the score? Maybe play the auditions? They're tomorrow and Tuesday."

Against my better judgement, I agreed. I don't like to play auditions, because truthfully, I'm a lousy sight reader. I always feel like I'm cheating the singers, because I'll just be plodding along while they have to fight against me. Singers have enough to worry about in an audition without having to fight a bad accompanist. But I agreed.

I went in the next day and looked through the score. It was pretty awful, to tell you the truth. There wasn't much there, and what was there didn't look all that great. Plus I had never even heard of the show. But I played the auditions - it turned out well, because all of the guys brought guitars and accompanied themselves. I didn't know that that was going to be part of the audition, and I have to admit that I was intrigued. So I agreed that, if they couldn't find anyone else by the time rehearsals started, I would do the show. That's essentiall agreeing to do the show, because who's going to look very hard for someone else when you've already got some sucker hooked?

The first week of rehearsal came and went, and I went to get my surgery. It was outpatient, and it wasn't much of a big deal. I was back at the piano for rehearsals a few days later. Truth be told, and I didn't want to admit it, but I was having a lot of fun. The cast and the band were one and the same, so going to rehearsal was more like band practice. I was having a blast.

Audiences ate the show up, and even critics rather enjoyed it, surprisingly. I wasn't in love with the material, but I had a lot of fun. I had a very talented set of singers, and I got to play with all kinds of different toys... a melodica, an accordion, synthesizer, piano. It kept me on my toes (since I'd never so much as touched a melodica or an accordion before, so I had to teach myself.) It was fun. A lot of fun.

The show ended and we were a very tight-knit group. We'd spent so much time together, and loved every minute, that none of us were quick to call it quits. So we continued to hang out whenever possible.

Then I moved to San Diego.

I just got an email, however, from the director, Mike. He's been asked to direct the show by another local theatre, and he wants to get the entire cast and crew together to do it. A revival of sorts. And part of me thinks, "Well, I'm so far away now... it'd be silly to go back for one show, which probably won't even pay all that well."

But then I think about the fact that I don't know where I'm going to be living soon. I don't have anything lined up for the time period they're talking about. I haven't been home since June. And it would just be so much fun. So now I'm stuck pondering. It's such a step back, but I don't see why I can't take that step for a show that'd be such a blast to do.

I wonder if I'm resisting because I assumed I'd return as the conquering hero, not as the guy who's just doing another show at another theatre, like I hadn't been gone lo these few years. It seems like a bad idea, but I can't put my finger on why it seems like a bad idea.

Is it worse than any other option facing me at this point? That's the real question.

Adulthood

2007-01-16T15:24:00.000-08:00

Every so often, I look around me at the normal, well-adjusted people. I see how well they seem to have made the transition from childhood into adulthood, and I wonder why I seem so incapable of making the same leap. Why I have so many issues with being an adult, and why I seem so bad at it.

Then, every once in a while, it becomes clear to me that almost no one really makes the leap. That we're all just running around with no idea what we're doing; making it up as we go.

A few months ago, my upstairs neighbor (Glass) was dating someone (The Puppet.) They had a falling out, and The Puppet moved to Las Vegas, where his ex-boyfriend was living. After a month or so had gone by, The Puppet moved back in with Glass, who told us that he knew what he was getting into. He knew that things might not work out.

Some time has gone by, and things seem to be going okay. We see them together often, and they seem happy and friendly.

Then, this morning, I was outside when I saw The Puppet. He was with some skinny twinky boy, and they were packing a pickup truck. Bags of clothes. Furniture. A lifetime being crammed into the back of a Toyota Tundra. I said a curt hello, but The Puppet didn't say anything. Nothing unusual; taciturnity is one of his rare strong points.

I texted my roommate and let him know the score. Neither of us was too upset about it. It was only a matter of time before the two of them had a fight and decided to call it quits. Truth be told, it was a relief to know we wouldn't have to seem him again, at least not for a while.

I don't do well with people who hurt my friends.

About an hour ago, I was standing outside when Glass came home. He hopped out of his truck and said hello. "So you're solo again?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I saw The Puppet packing stuff into a truck. Figured he was leaving."

The look of confusion crossed his forehead, and my heart immediately sank. Oh God, I thought. Maybe I was wrong. I started trying to find a way out. "I thought that's what I saw. Maybe I was wrong."

"Was he packing clothes and stuff?"

Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

"I think so. I'm not sure."

I know if I hadn't said anything, he would've gone upstairs and figured it out. It's not like it was going to completely escape his attention. I know this, but it doesn't help me feel like less of a schmuck when he runs upstairs to his apartment and emerges, moments later, crying.

"He's gone! He didn't even say anything!"

It turns out that the aforementioned Skinny Twinky Boy was the ex-boyfriend. It turns out that he moved back to San Diego last week. It turns out the The Puppet was lying to Glass this entire time, all the while planning to move in with the ex-boyfriend as soon as the time was right. It turns out that he just needed a place to stay, and was going through the motions of a relationship just to get one.

What kind of grown man does this? What kind of human being is so bad at being an adult that he shacks up with someone, all the while planning to leave once the situation improves, and then sneaks out in the midle of the day while that person is at work?

Seven Days Without Prayer Makes One Week

2007-01-15T00:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, I don't believe the title. It was on a church billboard I once passed, and I just really liked it. Much better than the local Vietnamese church billboard which has, for the past two weeks, read: "Believe in Psalms, Not in Palms."

I don't know what that means.

So what has the past week brought me? Some really exciting things. I am organizing a table read for my feature-length script, Chasers. I have gotten some wonderful actors - two of whom are in my "dream cast" - to agree to get together and do a table read for my and my co-writer's benefit. I've gotten my good friend Waterhouse to agree to produce it. We will be taping the table read for the benefit of potential investors, and we hope to begin pre-production on it this year. I will be directing.

OWC and I have been editing our short comedy. It didn't turn out wonderfully - most of the things we expected to be wrong were, with a few surprises thrown into the mix - but it's funny, and it's not a bad effort, all things considered. More on this once we finish it.

I have been working with the local chapter of DraftObama, a grassroots effort to get Barack Obama to declare his intention to run for the Presidency of the United States of America, and then to get him elected. Things are still in the beginning stages, but it's very exciting. It might also make me the only person ever to work on presidential campaigns for both Alan Keyes and for his opponent in the 2004 Illinois Senate race, Barack Obama.

A few years ago, I did some work for a children's theatre in Butte, Montana. One of the kids I worked with was a really cool 17-year-old girl who we'll call The Raptor. The Raptor emailed me this week to let me know she'd be in San Diego, visiting her sister, who (unbeknownst to me) lives only about a mile away from me - two or three blocks from The Actress. We hung out some this weekend, and it's an odd sensation to go out for drinks with someone you knew when she was seventeen and you an adult. Surprisingly, it didn't make me feel old at all. It was just a good time with an old friend.

Went out with my friend Mac, who is 22, and his friends. I invited everyone, but it was rather last minute, so the best I could do was to get a "maybe" from The Actress and her sister. I eneded up spending the evening at the PB Bar & Grill with a bunch of people less than a quarter of a century old. I didn't drink much, but they did, and it was enlightening to watch as the drama unfolded. One girl's depressed because nobody loves her. Another girl's depressed because she and her boyfriend have been together since they were fifteen and she doesn't know what it's like to date. Two guys down in the dumps because of a 23-year-old cock tease, and now they want to hump anything with a pulse. It ended with an ill-fated trip to Effin's, a college bar where one of our party was denied entrance on account of her stumbling into the doorway of the bar. A lengthy debate ensued on whether or not we should go to a "raging house party," and I ended up feeling very old and very out of my element.

A few years ago, I worked at a theatre in Alpena, Michigan (on a side note, said children's theatre in Montana is now run by the woman who ran this theatre while I was there). It was not the highlight of my career, but it did have one thing going for it. It was there that I met the true love of my life, Kathleen. We've lost and regained touch, we've been in and out of one another's life. Sadly, we haven't actually physically seen each other since those dark days. But this week, we decided to live the rest of our lives together in a van by a river. How romantic. No word yet on which coast said river will be on.

Of course, the usual odds and ends - scraping for work, looking for a new place, all that. But it's been a busy time, and overall a good one. This is EcamirG, checking in and wishing you all a fantastic night.

Good morning, Eden Prairie!

2007-01-08T22:10:00.000-08:00

Someone at The Eden Prairie News saw my last post. I would like to welcome all of my new Eden Prairie friends. Hello, Eden Prairie. I've been to your town, and it really is quite lovely.

It's at least eighty small towns above Fayetteville, Arkansas.

90th Best Place To Live In America

2007-01-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

I was recently talking to someone from Fayetteville, Arkansas. She said to me, "I live in one of the top 100 best places to live in America." This struck me as odd, so I pressed her. "It's number 90. It scored higher than New York or Los Angeles," she assured me.

So I did some research, and I'm fairly amazed at what Money magazine is passing off as an authoritative list these days.

Turns out the biggest "city" on their list is Lincoln, Nebraska, which has fewer than a quarter of a million people living in it. An objective observer might think that the Money people were a little biased against big cities. In fact, when you look at the index page, it says "See America's best small cities, plus the 10 best big cities, including detailed city stats and customizable maps."

Now, are you still wondering why New York and L.A. didn't make a list of "America's best small cities"?

(As an aside, I'm not even sure that I like that, of the Top 10 Big Cities, all but four have populations under half a million.

For 2005's list, they essentially admitted this bias by showing the "nearest city." See, if these were cities they were ranking, they wouldn't need that. Guess what happened? Larchmont and Chatham - both with New York as their closest city - came in 9th and 11th, respectively. Yorba Linda, CA (nearest city: Los Angeles) came in 21st.

But that's not the point. If you have to defend your home by saying "Money magazine said it's one of the top 90 places to live in the country," then I'm afraid I just can't help you. Why? Because to call the rankings "fickle" wouldn't even scratch the surface.

Compare the top ten from 2005 to 2006:

2005:
1. Moorestown, NJ
2. Bainbridge Isl., WA
3. Naperville, IL
4. Vienna, VA
5. Louisville, CO
6. Barrington, RI
7. Middleton, WI
8. Peachtree City, GA
9. Chatham, NJ
10. Mill Valley, CA

Now... how many of last year's top ten do you think repeated their titles this year? Certainly, at least one of them would have, were this a completely objective, respectably-balanced experiment.

1 Fort Collins, CO
2 Naperville, IL
3 Sugar Land, TX
4 Columbia/Ellicott City, MD
5 Cary, NC
6 Overland Park, KS
7 Scottsdale, AZ
8 Boise, ID
9 Fairfield, CT
10 Eden Prairie, MN

Looks like Naperville, IL moved up a little, but every other "top ten city" fell precipitously off of the board. What woe! What tragedy! "But how far could they have fallen?" I hear you asking.

They didn't just fall out of the top ten. They fell completely off the board! Wow... imagine, falling from Best Place In America to Live to completely out of the top 100, all in one year. How horrifying that must have been. Maybe the youth of these 9 cities revolted and started playing their rock and roll music and staying up all hours of the night smoking Stallions and playing spin the bottle. Either that, or Money Magazine has a jacked-up formula, and they're more interested in selling magazines to people by making them feel that their town isn't a steaming pile of dog crap in the asscrack of America, so they change their results every year wildly, so that the dregs of humanity can at least dream of this one thing.

I don't know. It's a tossup.

So I investigated a little more, and I found their "formula":

Working with data provider OnBoard of New York and consultant Bert Sperling of BestPlaces.net, we set out to find livable locales that combine the best of city and suburban life. Here's how we did it.

745
Start with places that have populations exceeding 50,000.

670
Screen out cities of more than 300,000 people and retirement havens where more than 40% of the residents are over 50.

201
Eliminate cities with low education scores, high crime rates, absurdly high housing costs, declines in employment or income less than 90% of the state median. Remove bedroom communities and places where people identify themselves as being from a smaller locale within the area.

90
Once we narrowed down our list to 201 small cities, we ranked the remaining places based on what matters most: A Money/ICR poll of 1,005 Americans found that ample job opportunities, good schools, and low crime are the most important characteristics people look for in a place to live. Meanwhile, the most disliked attributes are congestion, high crime, and lack of job opportunities. Using this information, we ranked places using 38 quality-of-life indicators and 6 economic opportunity measures in the following categories: Ease of Living, Health, Education, Crime, Park space, Arts and Leisure.

Rank remaining places on economic opportunity, taking into account income, job growth and affordability; quality-of-life indicators, including risk of violent crime and property crime, quality of public schools, arts and leisure, park space and incidence of stress-related ailments; and "ease of living" gauges such as commute times, divorce rates, population density and weather. Limit counties to one city each, unless the No. 2 city has more than 75,000 in population and a distinct identity.

50
Cull more data on job markets, housing prices, schools, ambience, weather and taxes. Interview local officials, residents and community leaders by phone.

20
Visit and do more interviews. Assess congestion, natural surroundings, the vibrancy of town centers and sense of community.

1
Award No. 1 rank to Fort Collins, based on data and qualitative findings.

So they eliminated places that were too small, places that were too big, places where old people like to retire (read: places with nice weather), "bedroom communities and places where people identify themselves as being from a smaller locale within the area" (whatever that means), places with "absurdly high housing costs" (meaning anywhere that people are willing to pay handsomely for a nice place, or anywhere where rich people live in huge houses that drove up the "average housing cost"), and "income less than 90% of the state median" (meaning that it doesn't matter what your income is - it could be quite good - but if it's less than the median... not the average, but the median... of your state, then you're sunk,) and places that shared a county with other places that fit their criteria. And then they did part of their ranking by using divorce rates. What those have to do with anything, I don't know.

Ninety places survived the cuts, and of those ninety, Fayetteville was dead last.

I don't know that I could personally devise a better formula, but I do know that the formula Money magazine has concocted does not paint a picture of a place I would personally would consider idyllic. For instance, it weighs divorce rates higher than diversity, which isn't actually factored in at all. I can't argue with any of the top ten - I've been to a few, and they really are terrific little towns. I wouldn't personally want to live in any of them, but I've always been a city boy.

But I guess congratulations, Fayetteville, on your title!

Double Delight

2007-01-05T11:29:00.000-08:00

Take two of my favorite things: James Lipton and The Transformers.

What do you get?

Hilarious. Visually, not much. But the audio is brilliant.

Part 2:

"I've had it with the Hollywood lifestyle. I'm tired of toiling for an industry that has no room for an actor over 40, especially one who transforms into a tape recorder. Man, that makes you persona non grata in Tinseltown's intolerant little CDs-and-MP3s-only club. Besides, I'm really getting into philanthropy, and I hope my newly-formed Little LaserBeak's Oasis in the Desert Centers for Disaffected Urban Youth will prove that I'm no longer Soundwave, the evil Decepticon communications officer, but rather Soundwave, the evil Decepticon children's advocate and rehabilitation facilitator."

Comments

2007-01-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

So apparently, when I reset and reconfigured my blog, comments became "Registered Users Only." I fixed this - anyone should be able to make comments now.

You know, if they wanted to.

Save Your Cardboard Boxes!

2007-01-04T16:25:00.000-08:00

Hear me out on this one. You may or may not be glad you did.

Did you know that if you use a ton of recycled paper, you will have saved 7,000 gallons of water, 17 trees, 60 pounds of air-polluting effluents, and 3 cubic yards of landfill space that would have been used had you purchased virgin materials?

Cutting down trees ruins ecosystems, negatively influences human health, and contributes to global warming. The world's rapidly-growing landfills bring their own share of problems.

But you don't just have to recycle - you can re-use! If you're wondering what possible use you may have for a discarded slab of cardboard, here are some suggestions:

Shove it up your ass. Okay, that was uncalled for. I take that one back.

Papier-Mache television. Things you will need to make this: cardboard box, masking tape, 5 sheets of plastic foam, newspaper, sharp knife, wallpaper paste, colored paper (blue and orange), blender, water, screen, black acrylic paint, glue gun and glue sticks, paintbrush, and 2 wooden dowels. Things you will not need to make this: Good taste, a great deal of personal pride. Now click HERE for instructions.

Carton footstools. To make this, you're going to want to get a cardboard carton. Cut two pieces of sturdy cardboard as high as the carton and long enough to fit diagonally between two corners. Cut a 1/4" slit in the center of each strip from the bottom edge to the middle. Turn one strip upside down and fit the two slits together so the strips form an X. Place inside the carton and seal the carton. Cut a piece of cardboard the size of the top surface of the carton. Cut one or two pieces of batting the exact size. Place batting on top of the cardboard piece. Cut a piece of muslin about 4" larger than the cardboard on all sides and place it on top of the batting. Holding the muslin firmly in place, turn the stacked pieces upside down. Wrap the extending muslin over the back of the cardboard as if wrapping a package and tape to secure. Cut a layer or two of batting as high as the carton and long enough to wrap all the way around the outside. Tape to hold. Place the muslin covered piece on top of the carton. Place fabric wrong side up on top of the carton. It should be large enough to go all the way down the sides and have at least five inches extra. Run your fingers down one of the corners fitting the fabric tightly against the corner of the carton. Pin to hold. Repeat at all four corners. Remove fabric from carton, straighten any pins if necessary or remove pins and take a row of basting instead. Sew down each of these lines on the sewing machine. Turn piece right side out and place over carton (with the top "cushion" place). Everything should fit smoothly and snugly. If you feel there is too much excess fabric at the corners remove the cover and cut off extending fabric. Return cover to position. Turn footstool upside down, bring fabric around to the back and tape with duct tape to hold. To tidy things up cut a piece of fabric slightly smaller than the bottom of the footstool, hem it around all four sides and hand stitch it to the bottom of the footstool covering all the raw edges. Good, now kill yourself.

Or... hey, here's an idea!

Give them to me to live in. I may need it. The roommates have given me thirty days to find a new place to live. Can't blame them, really. This was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, and temporary it was! I don't think they're going to cast me into the streets if I don't have a place within exactly 30 days, but I am on the clock officially.

This is getting extremely annoying - all the moving around. Since moving to San Diego in September of 2005, I stayed at OWC's condo in Rancho Penasquitos, moved into the apartment we shared in Mira Mesa, crashed with a gay couple in the University Area, and landed here in Hillcrest. The new place - wherever it is - will make abode #5, or roughly one new place every three months.

I feel like a gypsy. The upside is that with a new place, I should theoretically be able to pull everything out of storage.

Unless I just move into my storage unit.

Love At First Sight

2007-01-03T08:22:00.000-08:00

I'd never believed in love at first sight. But, then, I'd never believed in love. Still, when I'd burst out of the closet that summer – a fresh-faced, innocent man of the world – there he’d been, waiting for me on the other side. Aaron. I may not have loved him, but I loved everything about him. Those soft brown eyes. Those soft brown hands.

I'd been young and naïve, and it's amusing to think back on how easily shocked I'd been by the suggestions he'd whisper in bed. Even more easily shocked by my willingness to take those suggestions. I never doubted him for a moment. The sincerity of his kisses. The truth of his embrace. That was all I needed. Or so I thought.

When I moved to New York, ostensibly to make something of myself, the decision carried with it a burden all its own. Aaron would be staying in Ohio. We never spoke the words, but we were destined to be each other's pasts and not each other's futures. There was no way to ease the pain in his eyes the day we parted. He knew then; I would soon learn.

It wasn't the men that drove me to distraction, it was the City. Teeming with excitement, character, electricity beyond belief. In a City so eager to kiss me, so eager to hold me tight, what need did I have for a man I'd never even loved? A man I never could love?

I'd never believed in love at first sight, until the day I laid sight on New York.

Happy '007

2007-01-01T20:05:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone. Brought in the new year with a new look. Rather than do the typical sappy "Year in Review," I'm doing the ten movies I'm most looking forward to in 2007.

Across The Universe: All you need to tell me is "Directed by Julie Taymor," and I'm in. Stars Evan Rachel Wood, who is turning into a terrific young actress.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A lot of people hate it when one of their favorite books is adapted into a movie. But I like it. If the movie sucks, the book's still terrific. I've been looking forward to this one for a while now.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead: Directed by Sidney Lumet (who, while inconsistent, is among the best when he's at the top of his game) and starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney, and everyone's favorite Seymour Krelbourn, Lee Wilkof.

Charlie Wilson's War: Aaron Sorkin returns to the big screen, with directing legend Mike Nichols at the helm. Unintentionally, all three of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's "in-production" credits are on this list.

The Dead Girl: Okay, so this one's actually a 2006 movie, but I just found out about it. I really liked Moncrieff's Nichol Fellowship winner, Blue Car, and I love to see her move on to this new project, with Giovanni Ribisi, Toni Collette, Marcia Gay Harden, Rose Byrne, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, and Brittany Murphy.

No Country For Old Men: It's the Coen Brothers. Seriously.

Notes on a Scandal: Okay, this one is also a 2006 title, but it hasn't played in San Diego, so I'm still counting it as 2007. Cate Blanchett is picking up serious accolades (as oft she should,) and Dame Judi Dench is along to keep her company.

Synecdoche, New York: If Charlie Kaufman writes a movie, I will see it. It's that simple. But Charlie Kaufman making his directorial debut? This pushes it into the "absolutely cannot miss at any costs" category.

There Will Be Blood: Paul Thomas Anderson returns, this time with an adaptation of an Upton Sinclair novel. I admit, it doesn't exactly sound like a match made in heaven, but PTA has earned the right to experiment a little. Interestingly, most of his usual company is gone. In their place are Paul Dano (from Little Miss Sunshine) and Daniel Day-Lewis.

Transformers: Yeah, yeah. Directed by Michael Bay. Yeah, yeah. I'm a nerd. Sue me.

In other news, did anyone know that Tom Hanks signed on to do a big screen adaptation of Richard Russo's The Risk Pool in 2008?

Looking Out

2006-12-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

I'm with OWC, and we're heading north to Los Angeles. The traffic is light today; we should make good time to L.A. County, where traffic traditionally stops - right near LAX on the 405, just as the Car Pool Lane ends. OWC weaves his way from one lane to the next. Something seems amiss.

When I was a boy, I remember hearing about L.A. - back then, I thought it was all called Hollywood - and immediately conjuring up thoughts of stars and of glamour. Of a town where you couldn't go ten feet without running into a film crew or a famous actor. Now, as I've grown up, I've come to replace that image with one of L.A. (specifically of Hollywood) as a place of despair and of loneliness. One where no one cares about their fellow man; viewing them as so much competition on their way into the industry. There are three cities that I don't like: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C. A big part of the reason is that in these three cities, you have the richest of the rich such a short distance away from the poorest of the poor. You have a section of humanity that has everything in the entire world that they need, and interspersed among them are fractured dreams; broken hopes. People struggling to realize fifty-year-old dreams. Trying desperately to make something of their ruined lives.

A garbage truck is pulling to the shoulder ahead of us on the 8. He's lost a large sheet of plastic. It's fallen out of his truck and wrapped itself around the front end of a red sportster. The driver of the sportster seems angry, but he doesn't pull over. He keeps driving with his new makeshift car bra. Not long after, a dumptruck full of rocks slams over into the car pool lane without signaling. Pebbles fly off the back of the truck, slam into the hood of OWC's car. "Stop hitting my car," he asked the pebbles. They might have listened - it was the last time those pebbles hit his car.

We were on our way to Fotokem to drop off our film stock for Captain Awesome for processing. The official sign of the move from production into post-production: You've shot everything you can shoot (until pick-ups, anyway), and you're just crossing your fingers and hoping beyond hope that everything came out well. That everything's in focus; nothing got caught, unnoticed, in the gate. It's a waiting game while you give your baby to someone else, hoping that they will do their job to the best of their ability and pass it on to you unharmed. It's been a couple of days since we wrapped the film, but OWC and I still look beleaguered; beat. We're both sporting our playoff beards - too tired to shave. It's the official facial hair of drug rehabilitation centers everywhere: The slothful, unkempt, scraggly week or two of growth.

Heading north on the 5 is always stressful to me. I associate it with the trip to Los Angeles; to prepare you for L.A. County, the drivers get progressively worse, beginning around Camp Pendleton and heading north. Beautiful ocean views are intercut with the occasional ugly visage, such as the nuclear power plant (which we call "The Dolly Parton Museum,") the fictional version of which had a meltdown in the seventh season of The West Wing. I transport myself into that mythical universe - constantly on the lookout for any telltale signs of trouble at the plant. I know it's silly, but I just can't help myself.

As we're driving, a palm frond whips across three lanes of traffic and slams into us in the car pool lane. "God damn it," OWC shouts, half in jest. "Stop hitting my car!" The palm frond buries itself, shamefully, against the concrete median.

We pass a flatbed truck. It has a large propeller on the back, and three Turbo Jet engines. I know this because all three are labeled on their sides as "Turbo Jet Engines." I roll down my window, jokingly shout at the driver, "Is that for a movie?" We're nowhere near Los Angeles yet, but for some reason I never get tired of this joke. It doesn't work in Hollywood - the more touristy the worse. It works best in, say, Glendale. Maybe you have to be there. Not long after, we pass a man in a van. He's got a Thule cargo box on top of his van, and it's flapping in the breeze. I make eye contact with him, point to the cargo box, and give a thumbs down. He looks confused, so I repeat the sequence. He flips me off. Maybe we're not so far from L.A., after all.

The wind is trying to make a statement. It's blowing detritus all over the highway, most of it hitting OWC's car to his continuing chorus of, "Stop hitting my car!" We're making good time as we head into Orange County on the 405. It's starting to congest a little - unusual for this far south. We pass three more flatbeds - these filled with crushed cars. Each has three stacks of cars, about six cars high. I roll down my window. "Are those for a movie?" We're loopy. On the best of days, it doesn't take much for something to become a running joke in our circle. This was not the best of days. We were tired, and cranky. We fought constantly - we fought over whether or not OWC had mistakenly referred to Gerald Ford as a "moderate Democrat." We fought over whether or not putting Shawne Merriman, who got caught doing steroids after last year's Rookie of the Year campaign with the Chargers, on the Pro Bowl sent the wrong message. We fought over everything, and over nothing. Our moments of jocularity were punctuated by dark pauses of brooding.

I was antsy. I didn't want to smoke - not with our precious 16mm cargo tucked between my legs, on the floor of OWC's car. It was silly. The reels were taped shut and stored in a box. If smoke could get in, then so could light, and the smoke would be the least of our problems. But I'm naturally cautious when it comes to film. It's simply too expensive - too important - to take chances around. So I was jittery. I was on edge. I wanted nothing more desperately than I wanted to drop it off at the lab and get the damned negative and the work print. To get to a point where things were back in my own hands.

As we approached LAX on the 405, traffic came to a stop. Right where I predicted - just as the Car Pool lane ends inexplicably. It's never made sense to me. If there's anywhere where you want a controlled-speed Car Pool lane, I figure, near a major airport would be the place. The wind didn't let down. As we sat in traffic, I watched something long and green fly from the southbound side of the freeway, make up its mind on its target, and come careening into OWC's windshield. "What the fuck was that?" he asked, not unreasonably.

"I think it was a banana."

"It looked like a frog."

"Perhaps a legume of some sort."

"Well whatever you are, stop hitting my car!"

I looked at the traffic stopped all around us. It's easy to imagine everyone in Los Angeles to be involved in the film industry. One time I was in a Target in West Hollywood, and I came to the realization that we could likely seal the doors and not let anyone out until we'd made a movie. There were probably an assortment of techies, actors, writers, producers, and everything else that we could make a pretty amazing movie that way.

Next to us was a pretty blonde in a red Mustang. Actress, I thought. On her way to an audition. "There was a time in Los Angeles where a blonde woman was automatically an actress," I said to OWC. "Whether she liked it or not." Behind her was a Mercedes SLK-200 Kompressor. Jet black. The man driving it was talking on a cell phone. He had receding hair and wore thick black glasses frames. Producer, I thought. Maybe an agent. Something Jewish.

I had a repeat of my Target plan. If this highway was shut down right now - for an accident or anything - we could all get together and make a pretty awesome movie while we waited. The problem with that plan was that it's almost never an accident that held up L.A. traffic. It's usually wholly inexplicable. As you reach the end of the congestion and cars start moving again, there's nothing noticeably different. No breakdowns. No road hazards. No giant robots coming to Earth to wage a battle against the Decepticons. Nothing.

There was one more flatbed with crushed cars piled on top. The back pile looked to be angled dangerously, like it could fall off if the truck ever gained any amount of velocity. Score one for Los Angeles gridlock.

L.A. isn't an ugly city, not from a distance. And as you clear downtown and head into the valley, there are some beautiful panoramic views. It's easy to see how the early settlers fell in love with this area. The weather is usually wonderful (though on this day, it was cold, windy, and cloudy.) The beach is flanked by mountains. With an hour or two of driving, you can hit virtually any climate you desire. I often wonder what it was like for the film pioneers... holed up in this corner of the world, spending fistfuls of cash on an unproven media. They made it work, and Los Angeles is now virtually synonymous with entertainment. As we creep toward the 101 to head into Burbank, I liken myself to those early men and women. After all, we're traveling at about the same speed they did. Their speed was dictated by the limits of their technology, ours by the actions of our fellow man, and as I watch the clouds roll over the violet sky of the valley, I don't suppose that there's much difference at all.

I look at the clock. We're running late - we just need to drop off the film and to begin our journey back to San Diego. OWC is taking a trip to Arizona and needs to pack. Needs to pick up a desktop he's purchased. I need to buy a new laptop and get some pages in the books on Chasers. The afternoon is slipping away from us, and we need to get turned around in a hurry. As we pull onto the 134, I give up and reach into my pocket for a cigarette. I roll down the window, and take a deep breath before exhaling my smoke out into the world, where it will mingle with a million others' breaths.

Sometimes it's nice to feel assimilated; to feel part of a greater whole. To just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Tooth Fairy

2006-12-26T22:05:00.000-08:00

A recent conversation with Terrible Mother:

Terrible Mother: Thing Three* lost a tooth today.
EcamirG: Oh God. Don't tell me that you do that horrifying tooth fairy thing!
TM: What? Why?
EG: That is a terrible story to tell a child.
TM: Why?
EG: You're telling her that some horrible mutant insect beast thing breaks into her room at night to steal her discarded body parts. Where does she spend her time off, the leper colony?
TM: Do they still have leper colonies?
EG: It's horrendous. And you're teaching them that their body parts have monetary value. If my parents had told me about the tooth fairy, I'd have knocked out all of my teeth to score a little loot.
TM: Your parents didn't tell you about the tooth fairy?
EG: No. You know how damaged I am, right?
TM: Right.
EG: I'd be even more damaged if I had known about the tooth fairy. I might've chopped off a leg. Sold myself on the street. I don't know. Where did this story come from?
TM: When Thing One** was younger, she asked me what the tooth fairy did with all of the teeth. I was caught off guard, so I told her she built her house with them.
EG: That's disgusting. There ought to be an ordinance.
TM: She doesn't, really, though.
EG: How do you determine the monetary value? Do you have to check with Billy's dad to make sure he's not getting a dollar a molar?
TM: My kids all get a dollar a tooth.
EG: A dollar a tooth! I might knock out my teeth right now, just to see if there's anything to this.

* Thing Three is what she calls her youngest daughter on her own blog.
**Thing One is the name allotted to her oldest daughter.

'Tis The Season

2006-12-21T08:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I was waiting in line at the post office when I saw a young woman, struggling with some packages. She was in her mid-twenties. Jet black hair. Infant on her hip. She had three paper envelopes marked, "Fragile," and "Do Not Bend." The postal employee at the counter told her that, if the contents truly were fragile, then the envelopes were not the way to go; that she would need to put them in a box.

So she stepped aside to begin writing the addresses onto some boxes, into which she would put the envelopes. She was having a difficult go of it, and I was about to lose my place in line to go help her, when another customer - a young man with fashionable shoes - finished up at the counter. He came over and asked her if there was anything he could do to help.

She beamed and asked him if he'd mind copying the addresses from her envelopes onto the boxes. When he set to the task, she smiled and said, "Oh hey, awesome. I'm Tanya, by the way." "I'm Jeff," he said.

They finished up, and instead of a heartfelt thank you or Merry Christmas, she turned to him and held up her hand for a high five. Here's this woman - infant in one arm, the hand of which is clutching a large box. Two other boxes tucked into the crook of the other arm, the hand of which is extended into the air for a high five. Jeff looked confused for a half second and gave her a high five, at which point she wordlessly strolled up to the counter to finish up her transaction.

Jeff then walked, awkwardly, outside of the post office, got in his car, and drove away. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed this and thought it odd, but I seemed to be the only one. Not surprising, since I'm usually the only one watching complete strangers interact with one another.

Fast forward to this morning. I was walking out of the 7-11 when I caught another scene. A homeless woman, sprawled out on the curb in front of the store. It's been cold here in San Diego for the past week or so, and she was dressed in flannel with three or four blankets. She called out to a young man leaving the store. She asked him for change.

He reached into his pocket and produced a twenty-dollar bill. Gave it to her. She looked at it with glee, and looked at him as he opened the door to his car. "Merry Christmas," she said. "God bless."

All he said before he disappeared into his car was, "I worked hard for that money. Don't drop it anywhere."

And he was off.

More Than Meets The Eye

2006-12-20T16:11:00.000-08:00

All I hear when it comes to the movie version of The Transformers is a lot of naysaying. The way I see it, even if the movie sucks, it will be wicked sweet. And I don't think it will suck -- especially after viewing the trailer.

Go see it now.

Scorponok Attacks

2006-12-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

Scorponok (sometimes known as Zarak) has always been one of the coolest of the Transfomers characters, though his story has changed drastically through several of the universes.

In "Headmasters," for example, he was one of the Cybertronians who settled on Planet Master - eventually, he took command of the Decepticons. In "Beast Wars," he was Megatron's second-in-command of the Predacons. Through all of his incarnations, however, one thing has always been true: He's a badass.

The upcoming Transformers movie is no different, as the first officially-released production still from the film illustrates:

Youthful Indiscretion

2006-12-14T00:22:00.000-08:00

There are times in a life when everything seems right in the world. You're warm and content and you're fully enjoying life and what it has to offer. Years later, you'll look back on it with wistfulness and joy. If you're lucky, you know it's happening while it's happening. In the summer of 1998, I knew it was happening.

I was a counselor at Blue Lake Fine Arts camp, in western Michigan. It was between sessions at Kent State University, and since I wanted to be a music teacher at the time, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to both practice my craft and to make a little extra cash. Besides, I had always wanted to attend the camp as a kid, but my parents would never let me. Now was my chance.

I'd recruited my best friend, Mandy, to join me there as a counselor over the summer, but she wouldn't be arriving until the second or third day of orientation. So I drove out alone. As you pass Grand Rapids going west on I-96, the pristine majesty of western Michigan begins to slowly sink in on you. Thick, rich forests. Cool, clean air. It was like driving into a dream.

I pulled off of the main road and made my way to the camp, situated deep in the heart of the Manistee National Forest, and it was breathtaking. I pulled into the parking lot and found my way to the registration table. A cute blonde was sitting there. She was Heidi, the camp director. She asked me my name.

"Anthony," I said.

She looked at her paper. Asked my last name. I told her.

"Well, we already have five Anthonys. Any chance you go by Tony?"

I hated the name Tony. I still do. I was not going to go by Tony for an entire summer.

"No, not really."

"Hmm... any other name we could use? Unless you want to go by Anthony. That's certainly okay, too."

In high school, my friends and I (for no other reason than that we were high school-aged boys) used to do impressions of Sesame Street characters. Extremely mean-spirited impressions sometimes (like the time I smeared a Ho Ho all over my face and said, "Hi, I'm Gordon!"). For some reason, we got a real kick out of it, and eventually moved on to Muppets and, finally, McDonaldland characters.

I'd crafted an impression of Grimace that no one will ever beat. I won't tell you the details, but I will disseminate these facts and allow you to draw your own conclusions:

1) Grimace is the only McDonaldland character who does not wear pants.
2) Grimace has extremely short arms. Too short to put on shoes or pants (see Fact #1) or many other things that we take for granted as human beings.
3) Grimace is anatomically incorrect. It is assumed, because of the Pants Factor, that none of the other McDonaldland characters are.
4) Grimace has such a perpetual state of blue balls that he is, in fact, purple.

At any rate, my friend Rob absolutely loved the impression. He called me Grimace all the time because of it. When we graduated, he joined the Air Force and I went to college. He came to visit me once and told all of my roommates, teammates, and fraternity brothers about the Grimace impression. I never showed it to them (as I've never shown it to anyone since high school), but they would constantly ask. "Grimace. Do the Grimace." It eventually got shortened to just calling me Grimace.

So that's the name I had her put down for me. "Call me Grimace."

"Grimace?"

"Yeah. Like the McDonald's character."

To her credit, she was completely nonplussed by this. She wrote down "Grimace" and handed me my name badge. Orientation was to begin early the next morning. In the meantime, I was free to explore the camp, which I promptly set out to do.

I've always been a city boy, and any time I set foot in the woods, I become immediately and horrifyingly lost. This was no exception. What had started out as a simple twenty-minute romp through the forest turned into a two-hour nightmare, until I was finally able to find camp and hobble back to my bunk.

I don't remember much about orientation. I don't remember where we slept. I don't remember much of what we did or what we learned. I remember meeting some really amazing people in my fellow staff members, though. People from all over the nation - indeed, from all over the world - each young and fresh. Each with their own talents, their own way of looking at things. If you've never spent a long period of time with nothing but a group of artists, you are indeed missing out. We talked about Leonard Bernstein for breakfast. We lunched on Samuel Barber. We had dinner while discussing Bela Bartok's role in the development of modern rhythmic standards.

It was amazing.

I remember learning water safety from Jaime, the Waterfront Safety Director. He was Cuban, and you couldn't understand a word he said, but he had a miniature cult following him. Made up mostly of the lifeguards (who were also counselors), but also of the young, pretty people. The Jaime Club was an exclusive group. A clique right in the middle of Bohemia.

I remember the canoeing trip. I was in a canoe with David, who was only the second openly gay man I'd ever met (of course, I met about two dozen more while at Blue Lake, and that's not counting the actual campers.) We were two of the few people present with any amount of canoeing experience, and we finished well ahead of the rest of the counselors by at least a few miles. While they were upriver, turning their canoes and dumping themselves into the Pere Marquette, we were sitting on a submerged log, talking and watching the wildlife come up to the river and drink.

As Peggy, the head nurse, pulled in with her husband Don, David and I decided to take a little swim while we waited. There was only one problem, as I was to discover. I moved away from the submerged log and my foot didn't want to come with me. It appears that a fishing lure, attached to a filament which had wrapped around the log, had then somehow made its way into my foot without my having noticed.

"Hey, Peggy, can you come here?" I called to her.

She was standing on the bank and was in no hurry to get wet. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, really. I just have this fishing lure stuck in my foot here."

"Are you serious?"

"I'm much too funny to use that as a joke."

"I'm not allowed to do anything while you're in the water."

"Are you serious?"

"You'll have to wait for Jaime."

Great. So I had to sit there, attached to an underwater log, while Jaime played splishy-splashy with the cute girls a mile and a half upriver.

I remember meeting on a pavilion and discussing why I thought that Dmitri Shostakovich was the most socially uplifting composer of the twentieth century. I remember that this discussion was part of a group exercise run by a blind woman. That blind woman assigned us to our "units" (the camp was divided into units, with five or six cabins each and a unit director), based solely on our personalities.

She had a gift.

I remember walking around with cards that said "MOOMBA," which stood for My Only Obstacle Must Be Attitude. I don't remember the point, but I remember we would all randomly yell "MOOMBA!" from time to time. I remember falling in and out of love a hundred times. And of course, because it was me, I had a crush on everyone. Three people in particular: David, Ann, and Emily.

Before camp had begun, I'd been dating a soprano from school. Her name was Nikki, and she was slightly insane, but she displayed the one quality that's always been proven to win me over: She liked me. She'd asked me out around my birthday, and I'd spent the last month of the semester hanging out at her place, staying up until five in the morning, talking. It was the first time I'd dated a music major - something I'd always said I'd never do.

Nikki's family loved me. Nikki loved me. I loved me. For whatever reason, this girl couldn't get enough of me. Until I went off to Blue Lake.

While at camp, I remained extremely faithful, despite the constant temptation (and boy, was it constant!). I wrote Nikki once a day. We had one phone per unit, but it was reserved largely for emergencies, and the line was supposed to be kept open as much as possible. We'd sometimes use it to call the other units, but even that was rare. So I didn't call Nikki very often, but I continued to write.

If you've never worked at a camp, you may not realize what a bubble it can be. You're amid this group of people, seperated from humanity, and that is your world. I couldn't tell you what happened in world events in 1998, because I lived and breathed Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. Outside concerns were gone. We had four sessions, each two weeks long. We started with younger kids for the first two sessions, and the last two were high school-aged kids. Between sessions, we'd get the weekend off to recharge before the new group came in. We had one Early Night Off, where we left immediately after dinner, and one Late Night Off, where we left after our campers were asleep.

During the day, while the campers were off on their scheduled activities, we had our own duties. Rehearsal assistants. Staff band. PT. But when we weren't scheduled for something, we were on our own. We often used that time to run to the Meijer in Muskegon to spend our paltry paychecks on necessities. Being one of the few counselors with a car, I was quite popular for that. Other times, we'd just hang out with each other. It was a good time.

After the first session passed, I spent the weekend off in my cabin while everyone else left for Detroit, or Chicago, or Windsor. I tried to call Nikki, but she wasn't in. She hadn't written me back once during the whole time I'd been there, despite my having written her every single day.

As the second session came, I began spending more and more time with Ann. Ann was an electric, feisty little blonde who played the tuba and could kick my ass at soccer any time she felt like it. I loved her. But she was really into the tall, athletic lifeguards. The cool kids. And that was fine, because we were still great friends and besides, I had a girlfriend at home. But one of Anne's campers had become frighteningly homesick. She cried all night and called her parents once a day.

For whatever reason, that camper really took to me. When I talked to her, she decided that camp wasn't so bad, after all. I began spending more and more time around Ann, to keep the camper company when she was lonely. I felt for her.

But one day I went back to the unit and Russell, our unit director, was waiting for me. "Some girl named Nikki called," he said.

"Oh, good!"

"Who is that?"

"My girlfriend."

"Okay, that makes sense. I assumed it was another counselor, so I told her you were with Ann, and to call her unit."

"Oh. No worries."

So I called Nikki back, and she laid into me. She wanted to know who Ann was, and why I was spending so much time with her (apparently, she'd called several times before. I never got the messages). I explained the situation to her, but she'd already decided that I was cheating on her. She broke up with me there over the phone from Ohio.

It sucked, but I couldn't stay upset for too long, because here was this world of opportunity waiting for me. I was a free man.

I started seeing Emily, who had also just gotten out of a relationship, and we became somewhat serious. But then something weird began to happen. Nikki, who'd broken up with me, began writing me every day. Apologizing. Saying what a mistake she'd made. Asking me to forgive her. Not one letter while we were dating, but now something every day. She sent care packages. She sent a needlepoint that said "Music Makes Our Lives Harmony." It was kind of creepy.

The big social event each session was the Camper Dance. The campers obsessed over who they'd be taking to the dance. If you had a date already, you wore your nametag upside down. It was that big a deal. And we, the counselors, played along. We asked each other to be our dates. It was cute.

I guess.

On the day of the Camper Dance, the concession stand always sold carnations. During the fourth session, I came to the cabin to find six carnations on my bed. Written on the note, in a feminine scrawl, were the words "Music Makes Our Lives Harmony. Meet me at the dance, behind the bandshell. Love, Nikki."

My heart stopped. I began sweating. I looked around. Robert, one of my campers, was there. "Robert, did you see who left these?"

"No, man, sorry. I assume Emily, right?"

"Maybe."

The truth was, I was terrified. The last thing I wanted was for Nikki to show up. She was probably still convinced that I'd been cheating on her with Ann, and I didn't want a scene. The truth is, I didn't even want to think about Nikki. I had to devise a plan. I had to find a way out. I was in full-on panic mode. I went to the door, and Aaron, one of my other campers, was coming in.

"What's the matter? You look like you saw a ghost."

"I got these flowers, and they're signed by Nikki."

He looked at them. He tried to control it, but I saw the laughter welling up within him. Then I looked back at Robert, who was silently fighting an oncoming giggle fit.

"I hate you guys."

That did it. They burst out laughing.

"That was brilliant," I had to concede. "Whose idea was it?"

"Robert's."

He nodded. I grinned. "And the writing was Amy's?" Amy was his girlfriend. It was my own little production of Company.

"Yeah. She fool you?"

"It looks like Nikki's handwriting. A lot."

I couldn't stay mad. It was the most devious practical joke ever played on me, and it had been executed to perfection.

Disrespect

2006-12-13T14:08:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention recently that one of my roommates hates watching movies with me. He says that I'm too critical. Just to be clear: I notice things during movies that other people may not notice. An example:

Last night, while watching Stranger Than Fiction, I noticed three things: 1) While Harold Crick is riding the bus, there are about two dozen people standing, holding onto the handrails. There are, however, several empty seats available. Why are people standing? Crick even says, later in the scene, "There are 11 open seats." If you've ever in your entire life ridden a bus, you'd know that empty seats get snatched immediately. 2) Immediately after he gets off of the bus in that scene, the narrator says that he got off (the number might be wrong here) 24 blocks early. Then Crick starts walking the same way the bus came... as if he'd gotten off 24 blocks too late. If he'd gotten off early, he'd have walked in the same direction that the bus was going. 3) In the "cookie scene" (I don't want to put spoilers here), Ana Pascal's cookies disappear in one scene. Simple mistake, happens all the time, but there it is.

Now, even though I may notice these things, and mention them, doesn't mean that I don't like the movie. Just because I laugh at terribly obvious plot devices and over-the-top dialogue doesn't mean that I don't like a movie. I'm a filmmaker; I notice these things, and I think about ways I'd have made the movie better (I might have changed the ending to STF, for example). If I couldn't do this, I'd have no business making movies.

It's not unlike my roommate saying that a company's IT setup could be better. He's an IT professional - he has his own way of doing things. I don't think it's at all rude to suggest improvements.

And I've come a long way - years ago, I - like many young artists - was quick to find the bad in things. I disliked things on principle. I laughed off "inferior" works of art. Now, I'm far more likely to find the good in something. This same roommate, when I was having my Martin Scorsese film festival, said: "I don't like Martin Scorsese movies."

But I'm the negative one. Any movie Scorsese has touched, he can write off and it's fine. If I point out the laughably bad writing at the end of The Da Vinci Code, I'm an elitist asshole.

What I find most disturbing, however, is that even if I don't like a movie, I sit and I watch it and I try to give it my complete attention. He's the kind of person who puts a movie in, goes to the bathroom, makes something to eat, checks his email, has conversations, takes a cell phone call... while the movie is still playing. That's the ultimate disrespect to a movie, and it partially explains why he loves The Fantastic Four but can't stand Mean Streets.

I'm not angry, really. Just disappointed. Because I take it as a bit of an affront when someone says that they can't watch a movie with me - that I'm too negative. Because nine times out of ten, when we're discussing a bad movie, I'm the first to say, "But did you notice...?"

Convert or Die

2006-12-12T15:01:00.000-08:00

Look, I can't top this San Francisco Chronicle article about the Left Behind video game. (Thanks to Skinny Legs and All for turning me on to it.)

I do, however, have some opinions:

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, two online political groups, plan to demand today that Wal-Mart dump Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a PC game inspired by a series of Christian novels that are hugely popular, especially with teens.

I'm sorry, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution? From what? Are there barbarian hordes standing at the gate of the National Archives, ready to plunder the centuries-old document? Perhaps I should send my own group, The Campaign to Promote Hyperbole and Instill Fearsome Monikers, to fight them at the base of the Washington Monument.

Left Behind Games' president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose "spirit points" every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them. They can earn spirit points again by having their character pray.

It's pacifist, you see, because you lose points for killing people. Points that you gain back from prayer (which, unless I'm mistaken, you should be doing anyway, no?) So next time, so long as you pray after filling an Arab with eighty-seven pounds of heart-stopping lead and terror, you should be fine. And these guys aren't even Catholic!

The Rev. Tim Simpson, a Jacksonville, Fla., Presbyterian minister and president of the Christian Alliance for Progress, added: "So, under the Christmas tree this year for little Johnny is this allegedly Christian video game teaching Johnny to hate and kill?"

It's always nice to be reminded that some people just get it. That you can be a Presbyterian minister and still have a healthy sense of irony.

But Plugged In, a publication of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, gave the game a "thumbs-up." The reviewer called it "the kind of game that Mom and Dad can actually play with Junior -- and use to raise some interesting questions along the way."

That's just flat-out heartwarming. Gone are the days of bad games like Super Mario Cart. In are the days of family games, wherein Mom and Dad can counsel their son as he decides the best way to blast non-believers into oblivion.

Don't forget to pray, Son. Jesus doesn't like it if you kill someone and don't pray afterward.

Downtime

2006-12-11T18:55:00.000-08:00

As we rush ever-closer to principal photography, I find myself with more and more to say, but less and less time in which to say it. So today, I turn to the wonderful S at Charming But Single.

A while ago, she wrote an entry called On Nice Guys that's worth a look. S usually writes beautifully from a young, single, Southern girl's point of view, and she always has something interesting to say. Even when I disagree with her, it's impossible to discount her opinion, eloquent and well-thought-out as it always seems to be.

When I do agree with her, as with this entry, it is with great enthusiasm. For those who have never read her, peep this:

I am so tired of hearing about how Nice Guys finish last and women never give them a chance because we are too busy having inappropriate relationships with Jerks who treat us like crap all of the time. So tired that I could bang my head against the wall until my obviously Nice-Guy-hating-brain splatters all over the place.

People are not so easily categorized into “nice” and “jerk.” The guys who you think are “nice” sometimes turn out to be jerks and the jerks could actually be good guys. As humans, we are more complicated than that. We all have our moments. And the people who are stuck at the ends of the spectrum, those men who truly are 100 percent “nice” or 100 percent “jerk” are actually really boring and impossible to talk to. Because the interesting stuff about humans isn’t found in the extremes. It’s found in the middle, where us normal people live, balancing our good intentions and kind natures against our darker side that is more likely to misbehave and call people names, gossip, sleep around, act cocky and generally not always be polite.

In short, sometimes the flaws are what attract us to people. Sometimes the flaws are what make people not boring.

The thing is – I do like really kind-hearted people. I don’t always flock to the biggest ass in the room. I’ve spent plenty of nights talking to plenty of nice, quiet guys who never made the move to ask me out. Maybe they weren’t attracted to me. Maybe they were shy. But they were nice, and I flirted with them and nothing. (Not that every guy has to ask me out in order for him to be considered nice.) So I resent the notion that I (and other women) don’t like Nice Guys.

Now go read the rest of it. Now. No, no. Now

Scorsese, et al

2006-12-10T21:57:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the last post, I decided that this weekend was prime time for a mini-Martin Scorsese film festival at my place. So I spent the weekend with Raging Bull, After Hours, Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Casino, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and Bringing Out The Dead.

My next mini-film festival will feature Ron Livingston. So I decided that Swingers would be a nice segue - it's got the Copacabana steadicam shot from Goodfellas written into it, and it has Ron Livingston.

It's been a while since I saw Swingers, and something struck me... I could never write a similar movie, because everything I have to say about relationships, and the search for relationships, John Favreau said perfectly in Swingers. It's a near-perfect movie for me, and it's aged exceptionally well. I remember when I first watched it, back in college, I thought it was slow. I was wrong -- now it whizzes by -- over before you even realize it.

The scene wherein Mikey calls the girl from the club multiple times, ending with the "This isn't working out" call, is pure brilliance. One of the finest comedic scenes I can recall.

It's wonderful to pull out an old standard that you don't get around to watching very often, and to see how good it still is. A true classic, in my opinion -- with exceptionally young versions of Favreau, Livingston, Heather Graham, Vince Vaughn, and the blind guy from Becker (Alex Desert).

Scorsese Street

2006-12-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

This is incredible. Even better if you're a Scorsese fan.

None of the Above

2006-12-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it's hard to know how much stock to place in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). For instance: Every non-acting credit they have listed for me has been a promotion. When I was an assistant musical supervisor, they listed me as music director. When I was an orchestra contractor, they listed me as a conductor.

So let's just say that they're not batting 1.000.

Still, when it comes to movie rating - of course everything is subjective, but you'd like to think that it reflects what Americans really think. You can't love that Lord of the Rings II: Return of the King is the 4th-highest rated movie of all time, but there you have it. America has spoken. But have they?

Sometimes I wonder. Like when looking at this poll from earlier this week.

Nine films have received nominations in all four acting categories:

A Streetcar Named Desire (Won: Karl Malden - Best Supporting Actor, Kim Hunter - Best Supporting Actress, Vivien Leigh - Best Actress. Nominated: Marlon Brando - for Best Actor)
Sunset Boulevard (Nominated: William Holden - Best Actor, Gloria Swanson - Best Actress, Erich von Stroheim - Best Supporting Actor, Nancy Olson - Best Supporting Actress)
Bonnie and Clyde (Won: Estelle Parsons - Best Supporting Actress. Nominated: Warren Beatty - Best Actor, Faye Dunaway - Best Actress, Gene Hackman - Best Supporting Actor)
Network (Won: Peter Finch - Best Actor, Faye Dunaway - Best Actress, Beatrice Straight - Best Supporting Actress. Nominated: Ned Beatty - Best Supporting Actor. William Holden was also nominated for Best Actor, but lost to his co-star)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Won: Elizabeth Taylor - Best Actress, Sandy Dennis - Best Supporting Actress. Nominated: Richard Burton - Best Actor, George Segal - Best Supporting Actor)
From Here To Eternity (Won: Frank Sinatra - Best Supporting Actor, Donna Reed - Best Supporting Actress, Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster - Best Actor, and Deborah Kerr - Best Actress)
Reds (Won: Maureen Stapleton - Best Supporting Actress. Nominated: Warren Beatty - Best Actor, Diane Keaton - Best Actress, Jack Nicholson - Best Supporting Actor)
Mrs. Miniver (Won: Greer Garson - Best Actress, Teresa Wright - Best Supporting Actress. Nominated: Walter Pidgeon - Best Actor, Henry Travers - Best Supporting Actor. Dame May Whitty was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, but lost to her co-star)
Coming Home (Won: Jon Voight - Best Actor, Jane Fonda - Best Actress. Nominated: Bruce Dern - Best Supporting Actor, Penelope Milford - Best Supporting Actress)

These are nine great, great films, and the question was posed: Which of these is your favorite?

The winner? I care for none of these films.

I can understand not being able to decide favorites between several of these movies. While Sunset Boulevard resides soundly in my Top Three, several of the others jockey for high position. But to say that you care for none of them?

And it didn't eke out a victory. It got 31.7% of the vote - 16.8 more than the second-place finisher, Streetcar Named Desire. It blows my mind.

I know the average American moviegoer is far from sophisticated at times. But these are classic movies, and some of them aren't even that old. Had Lord of the Rings II: Return of the King been on the list, surely it would have won in a landslide. It's disheartening.

Sunset Boulevard is #30 on their "top 250" with an average rating of 8.6/10.
Bonnie and Clyde is #208 with an average rating of 8.0/10.
Streetcar Named Desire is #239 with an average rating of 8.0/10.
Network and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? fall shy of the list with average ratings of 7.9/10.
From Here To Eternity has a 7.8/10.
Mrs. Miniver has a 7.6/10.
Coming Home has a 7.2/10.
Reds has a 7.1/10.

So here are nine films, each with ratings higher that 7/10 - three of them in the top 250 - and more people care for none of them, rather than for any single one of them?

I realize it's an unscientific poll and all of these things, but it's at the very least extremely disheartening.

Rough Cut

2006-12-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

It's a rough cut. The Kool-Aid Man costume is unfinished - there's a skirt at the bottom that we just wadded up, and it looks horrible. The sound quality is bad. Mac magically disappears from one shot to the next, and reappears in the next shot. Brian can't spell "Studio." We know. But it's kind of fun, no?

Back in Dayton, Ohio

2006-12-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

First of all, I apologize for using an Andy Webber lyric as my title.

I recently came across this video from 1957 that shows the effects of LSD on a cat. It was shot at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, nestled in the heart of Dayton, Ohio. My hometown.

WOPR, the Hero

2006-12-05T11:53:00.000-08:00

I don't watch very much television. In fact, I watch two shows now (Smallville, because my roommate is addicted to all things Superman, and Heroes, because it's amazing,) which is almost more than I've watched for the past eight or nine years combined.

Every so often, I'll get a minor addiction to some show... The Surreal Life, The Joe Schmo Show, My Name Is Earl... but it's a passing fancy. Something I watch five or six times and I lose interest. I watched the first two seasons of Project Runway pretty religiously, but if I missed an episode or two, it was no big deal. Same for the first season of Last Comic Standing.

Then came Heroes. I feel the same way about Heroes that I think a lot of people feel about Lost - I tuned in for the first episode, and never tuned out. On Monday nights, I am in front of the television watching it. I bled over into Studio 60, but it lost my interest. I understand it's gotten much better since then, but I can't be bothered. Not even for Mr. Sorkin.

And while I don't discuss very much regarding the show, I could. But I get geeked out over weird things. Like when I first saw Jeph Loeb (known best to me as one of the authors of one of my favorite movies, Teen Wolf) on the Smallville credits as a producer. When he left the show (third season? Fourth?), I felt it lost all sense of direction. He gave it form, and when he left, it lost that form. He is now working on Heroes. My roommates roll their eyes when his name comes up on the credits, because they can't believe I get geeked out over him.

And they don't appreciate my love of the fact that, while Mr. Loeb is onboard as a producer, the series was created by none other than Tim Kring, who wrote Teen Wolf Too! Surely, this fact will amuse anyone!

Apparently not.

Or when Leonard Roberts first appeared on Heroes - a young actor whose work I greatly admire. Or Ali Larter, who I think is primed to really take off (I've loved her since her Doritos commercial. I'm sorry.) Or the fact that Big John Shaft himself played a comatose old man. Or like last night, when John Badham was listed as the director of the episode.

I went berzerk. My roommates looked at me, and I said, "John Badham!" They know by now not to question these little episodes, but they did it anyway. I looked from one to the other and said, "He directed WarGames!" I was met with stony silence. "Nick of Time?" I asked. Nothing. "Blue Thunder? Saturday Night Fever?" They nodded - finally a movie they knew.

But they were unimpressed.

I can't help myself. I suppose I just have to embrace my geekiness and let it ride.

Finger-Raped

2006-12-05T08:57:00.000-08:00

I got finger raped by a drunken midget on a crowded elevator. There, I said it, and I feel much better already.

Last Friday night, my roommates went to the Top of the Park. For those of you unfamiliar with San Diego geography, this is the Park Manor Hotel. On the top floor are two things: A gorgeous view, and a happening gay hangout. I hesitate to call it a bar, though there is a lot of alcohol and very little seating. Mostly, though, it's a bunch of fashionably-dressed men drinking colored cocktails and looking out at Point Loma and Balboa Park.

I do not do exceedingly well with large crowds. I become overwhelmed. I either lock myself in one place with one person I recognize, or I fade away and become merely an observer. Often, I do both.

On Friday night, I was taking it all in, and beginning to feel a little overwhelmed and not a little claustrophobic. Add my social anxiety to my acrophobia, and you get this version of me. Panicky. Sweaty. I wanted to get out of there with my dignity intact.

It was not to be, however, as my dignity has never been lessened as much as it would be within the next few moments of my life.

The elevator at the Top of the Park is always very crowded. There is an actual elevator operator, and they ferry fairies from the bottom floor to the top and back again, all night long. Complete strangers pack in, shoulder to shoulder.

We got in the line to get onto the elevator to get out (we were planning on stopping at our favorite little Mexican place and then heading over to Pecs, another gay bar, this one on the ground floor and a little less overwhelming, as it's largely a "bear" crowd, and not a bunch of glamorous muscle boys and stylish twinks). In front of us, adding to my anxiety, was a small drunken blonde midget girl.

She was there with one other girl and their gay boyfriend, who neither my roommates nor I recognized. They were probably from out of town (one thing about the gay bars in San Diego - there is always a wealth of people from out of town). And this midget was dancing. It was horrifying, because I couldn't stare. In fact, I avoided eye contact at all costs, because I knew if she caught me looking, I'd keep looking, because it's not often you see a midget dance, and it really is quite fascinating.

And quite terrible.

When it came time to get onto the elevator, their party pressed in and we were next, so we filed in as well. They were toward the back. We were toward the front. The midget was at my oblique - kind of behind me, kind of to my side. She was talking to the girl outside of the elevator and gesturing wildly with her hands. Her hands passed the doors' sensors and stopped them, mid-closure. They sprang back open again.

The bull dyke manning (no pun intended) the elevator said, "Girly. Girly, you're holding up my elevator." Her friends said, "Shelby, stop." The lesbian said, "Shelby, stop talking with your hands. Shelby."

And Shelby - this sweet, innocent, fucked-up midget bitch - stuck her finger right up my asshole, and said, "I'm just checking his oil."

It was a straight shot. No how-do-you-do, no nothing. This midget had terrific aim. Straight up. And I felt horrified and violated. And now my claustrophobia tripled, and her friends' laughter rained down on me and I just wanted to cry. My roommates had no idea what had just happened. That I had been finger-raped by a midget while standing inches away from them, and that her friends had laughed and encouraged it.

And it sucks, because it's really funny... being finger raped by a midget. But it's also extremely shocking and violating.

And it really does just go to show... if you can't keep your straight midget girlfriends in line, don't bring them to the gay bar. They'll only end up finger raping somebody.

Religious Conservatives Fear The Modern World

2006-12-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

And, apparently, the not-so-modern world.

Go read this article, detailing the Pentecostals' push to relegate Kenya's world-famous collection of hominid fossils, showing the evolution of humans' early ancestors, into a back room at their National Museum.

Leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal congregation, with six million adherents, want the human fossils de-emphasized.

"The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.

"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory," the bishop said.

Sit In My Coffee

2006-12-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

There's a scene that has played out in virtually every romantic comedy ever created. Boy meets girl. Boy says something that comes out completely wrong. He looks silly, and the girl either falls in love with his vulnerability, or shuns him completely until he can improve on his performance later in the first act.

It's a cute scene. One that shows what liking someone can do to you... your mouth turns to mush. You want to say the perfect thing, but it comes out all wrong. You look like a fool. It also shows that we can love one another through the faults. That people can be compassionate and forgiving and that screwing up can be sweet, cute, and loveable.

However, it's usually complete and utter bullshit.

The modern-day equivalent to this off-on-the-wrong-foot scene would no doubt include the man feeling depressed and sorry for himself for three or four days; his friends would ridicule him and he would take some nobody home from the bar just to prove he "still has it." The woman would make snarky comments to her friends, go home, and blog about it. The blog entry would get thirty comments from people calling the guy a loser and saying what a doofus he is.

It's not gender-exclusive, either. Feel free to swap genders on either character. Or on both. Whatever.

Have we lost the ability to give second chances? Did we ever have that ability, outside of the movies?

If you're at work and someone comes in and they mean to say something cute and endearing, but it comes out all wrong... if this is the first time you've met this person... the next time they walk in the door, will you have already created a nickname for that person?

This odd line of reasoning came after reading Barista Brat's blog about a customer who asked her to sit in his latte to make it sweeter. I don't want to pin this on her, nor do I want to suggest that the actual person in question in the story is innocent. It just got me to thinking.

Had that happened in a movie made in 1994, the guy would have meant something along the lines of, "Can you put your finger in it to make it sweeter?" He meant a compliment. He was striving for a compliment. But it came out wrong. The heroine would no doubt look upon him with knowing, pitying eyes, shake her head, and tell her girlfriends all about it that night.

But here in 2006, I can't help but think that what would happen is exactly what did happen - she'd post about it in her blog, where friends and strangers alike would ridicule the guy. By the time he returned to the store, he'd be Creepy Guy. Or at the very least, "That skeezy guy who asked me to sit in his fucking coffee."

I'm not assigning blame. If anything, I'm the worst about it.

And I know, too, that bemoaning the lack of realism in Hollywood romance is hardly revolutionary thinking, and that this is probably the least of a great many sins the romantic comedy genre has committed, but still.

But it's interesting that the archetype continues to exist in cinematic fiction... that the guy can make an honest blunder and be forgiven quickly, if not immediately. And surely, this also happens. But I have yet to see a story where the opposite is true. Where he's immediately written off and labelled a creep, or a jerk, or whatever.

Anyway, my brain works funny is all.

Class is in session

2006-12-04T11:50:00.000-08:00

For a program chock full of student-athletes who I consider to be among the least classy players in college sports, the Ohio State University football program is headed by someone that's increasingly difficult to dislike.

Part of it is being a Michigan fan. Part of it is being from Ohio and having to deal with OSU fans my entire life. Part of it is that the Buckeyes' coach, Jim Tressel, has been merciless in beating back some terrific Michigan teams. He's got our coach, Lloyd Carr's, number. But the guy is really hard to dislike. Sure, he may turn a blind eye to scores of recruiting violations, players who have no regard for sportsmanship or the law, and an athletic program mired in good-old-boy politics. But then he does something in the spirit of fair play - something which may have repercussions for him - and you have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He's just a good guy.

This article tells of his recent decision not to vote in the Coach's Poll: A vote that would have helped to decide who his team played this year for the national championship.

Ohio State's Jim Tressel did not vote in this week's USA Today coaches' poll to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest, a move the newspaper said could jeopardize his future in the selection process.

"We are disappointed with coach Tressel's decision, but our oversight role does not grant us authority to compel his participation," USA Today's managing editor for sports Monte Lorell said Sunday in a statement. "The agreement with the American Football Coaches Association obligates the panel of coaches to disclose final regular season ballots, without exception.

"Coach Tressel's future involvement in the poll will be part of our annual review with AFCA executive director Grant Teaff."

Told that USA Today was unhappy with him on Sunday night, Tressel acted surprised.

"Maybe they'll fire me as a pollster," he said, half joking.

Tressel said he didn't feel right putting Ohio State in the middle of the decision of who the Buckeyes are supposed to play for the national title. (more)

Can't Fight The Funk

2006-12-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

Every year or two, I get into a gigantic funk. A gigantic oh-my-God-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life-why-doesn't-anyone-love-me- oh-God-oh-God-oh-God-I'm-going-to-die-poor-and-destitute-and- friendless-and-loveless-in-my-early-thirties funk. I almost made it through 2006, but this week was my time.

Usually, these anxiety attacks linger for weeks; months, even. This time, it lasted maybe a week. That's being generous and counting the pre-freakout stage... the stage where I can see things coming, but am powerless to stop them. Like in Kurt Vonnegut's Time Quake, when everything shifts back several years and people get to relive every moment of those years, but are unable to change any of the events or decisions during the replay.

I don't know what made it different this time around, but I suspect it was the three-hour heart-to-heart talk/walk I had with Blue on Wednesday. It's weird... I don't usually talk to anyone when I have these panic attacks. When I start to think that the world hates me and that all of my friends are merely humoring me. I've tried talking to people before, but they just don't understand. They can't grab ahold of my completely baseless and illogical fears.

So I quit trying. The few people who might have understood were far away, and the phone is not an option when I'm in that funk.

Blue is someone I met maybe a month ago; maybe two. She and I became fast friends. But she was most assuredly not prepared for what I had to lay on her on Wednesday. We had had tentative plans to do something, and so I emailed her and said, "Do you want to get together for coffee and a walk on Wednesday? I could use someone to talk to."

It really was that easy. And talking to her was easy; it just flowed. And she understood what I was saying. She understood about feeling like a spectator in life; about feeling that you're isolated and alone. She didn't try to solve my problems. She just let me talk, and she held me closely when she thought I needed it. And it astounds me. Was it that simple all along?

Maulin' Mahler

2006-12-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

San Diego Symphony
Jahja Ling, Music Director
Friday, December 1, 2006 - 8pm
Saturday, December 2, 2006 - 8pm
Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 2pm
Copley Symphony Hall
Jahja Ling, conductor
Jennifer Aylmer, soprano

Program
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Exsultate Jubilate, K. 165
-Intermission-
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 4, G minor
Bedächtig, nicht eilen
In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast
Ruhevoll (Poco adagio)
Sehr behaglich

It looks unassuming enough on paper.

I suppose I've been spoiled when it comes to orchestras. While a Music Theory and Composition major in college, I was able to listen to the Cleveland Orchestra perform weekly, and had several of my pieces performed by them in their Student Reading Series. In New York, there was the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and a host of other top-notch groups.

Since moving to San Diego late in 2005, I have grown somewhat wary of the local symphony programming. Jahja Ling, who I loved for many years in Cleveland, has the tough task of making a respectable arts organization in Southern California. Certainly, we have our share of very good programs - most notably in Los Angeles, our neighbors to the north. But it's proven difficult, at best, to find quality programming here in San Diego. The best talent moves away. The audiences are fickle and unsophisticated. Watching the San Diego Symphony perform week in and week out for the past year has proven to be a great exercise in highs and lows.

Watching the Maestro struggle with an uneven orchestra, continually placing demands on his audience (listening to the patrons discussing Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques was disheartening, to say the least), has been an exercise in patience. So it was with a great deal of hesitation that I filed into Copley Symphony Hall last night - lured by Villa-Lobos, Mozart, and Mahler. Though I suspected that the audience would have a difficult time with Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 and perhaps even Mahler's Symphony No. 4, I was looking forward to hearing Jennifer Aylmer.

I'd heard Aylmer's name kicked around quite a bit, but she was one of those elusive artists that I always seemed to just miss. In 2003, when she appeared in the New York Festival of Song, for example, I was set to attend but was called out of town the night before. When she performed Lukas Foss's Time Cycle in Brooklyn the following year, I was in London. I came back the day after the performance. I no doubt had opportunities to see her, but our stars never crossed. So I was excited to hear her perform. To see if what I'd heard about her is true.

It is!

From the very opening of the Villa-Lobos through the final strains of the Mahler, Ms. Aylmer took the ear on an incredible journey - never once backing off of a phrase; not one second where she lacked incredible charm, grace, and presence while putting forth some of the most lovely singing I've heard in my life. I found myself slack-jawed, glancing around the audience to see if the others were witnessing the same thing that I was witnessing - that is to say, whether or not they were aware that they were in the presence of absolute greatness.

Not only is Ms. Aylmer's technique flawless, but her timbre is enticing; delicious. She is constantly connecting with the audience, as well as with her fellow musicians, and with the conductor and the composer. Quite simply, she owns the stage, but doesn't stop there. She owns the entire building, and everyone inside of it. I've heard some wonderful sopranos in my day, but I can't tell you how strongly I believe that she is, in fact, the best I've yet to hear.

I've recently begun work on my first full-length opera, and though I could never dream that such a virtuous artist should grace my work, I know going forward that I will continually find myself thinking back to last night as I write the soprano arias and thinking, "What would this sound like coming from Jennifer Aylmer?"

Had only the orchestra fared as well. The cello section slogged their way through the Villa-Lobos, and made room for the rest of the strings, organ, and a few winds for the Mozart. The organ was grinding and out of tune, but other than that, it was fine. No orchestra worth their salt can't get through Mozart.

The Mahler, on the other hand, was wonderful at times and downright dreadful at times. The In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast, for example, was a gigantic mess from beginning to end. But the beautiful, haunting Ruhevoll (Poco adagio) was divine, and Ms. Aylmer's entrance in the Sehr behaglich seemed to bring the entire orchestra - and their grateful audience - to life.

Jahja Ling is an extraordinarily capable conductor, and I have no doubt that he will get this group on its feet. Bringing in soloists of the caliber of Jennifer Aylmer is certainly a step in the right direction.

Master of Suspense

2006-12-01T14:05:00.000-08:00

It's no secret: I am a great admirer of Alfred Hitchcock. Even his "lesser" works, like Under Capricorn and Torn Curtain, have something in them to amaze me. But my favorite all-time Hitchcock film is Shadow of a Doubt, starring Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright. It's an understated drama set in Santa Rosa, California. Playwright Thornton Wilder (Our Town) worked on the story, and actor Hume Cronyn came onboard to pen the screenplay, despite never having written more than a short story. It involves a small-town family whose life is disrupted by the arrival of a favorite uncle (Cotten). However, suspicion is raised, and they must decide if he's who he says he is... or if he is in fact a notorious serial killer.

Hitchcock had a reputation for disliking actors - and he certainly placed a lot of demands on them. They had to not only be good actors, but they had to be personable people who responded well to his grim, often childish, sense of humor. But he also had a great many friends who were actors... Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Hume Cronyn, James Stewart.

He loved casting against type, but was often stymied by the production companies. For example, he always wanted to cast Grant in a villainous role. He never got the chance to do it on film. However, I recently came across a small gem - a series of radio programs on CD. Radio adaptations of Hitchcock films. There's Suspicion, from The Lux Radio Hour (1942), starring Joan Fontaine (re-creating her Academy Award-winning role) and Brian Aherne.

There's The Paradine Case, also from The Lux Radio Hour (1949), starring Cotten and Alida Valli.

Foreign Correspondent, from Academy Award (1946), also starring Cotten. The Lodger (the silent-film precursor to Psycho), from a Forecast production of Suspense (1940), starring Herbert Marshall.

Notorious, also from The Lux Radio Hour (1948), starring Cotten and Ingrid Bergman. Lifeboat from The Screen Directors' Playhouse (1950), in which Tallulah Bankhead reprises her role.

Then there's Shadow of a Doubt - a 1950 broadcast by the Screen Directors' Playhouse. It stars Betsy Drake and Cary Grant. Grant plays Uncle Charlie, played by Cotten in the movie. The role is a tour-de-force for Grant. He captures the heightened, manic moods of Uncle Charlie wonderfully. There is a beautiful diatribe against rich widows, and Grant comes alive during it.

Mr. Grant never really had a chance to play this type of character, and this radio broadcast makes one wonder how great he would have been in such a role. He's terrific in this role. It's great fun to listen to.

Breaking Story

2006-11-29T16:55:00.000-08:00

If you click here, iTunes will open. Scroll down, and you will see three Writers Meetings.

This is a pretty badass concept... the writing staff of Battlestar Galactica decided to podcast one of their writing sessions. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be in the big room, now you can find out.

Sweet.

Three pages

2006-11-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

I wrote three pages today. It doesn't sound like much, and there's a reason for that: It's not. Or at least, it doesn't feel like much. Then again, if you were to write three pages a day for a year, you would complete nine feature-length screenplays.

It doesn't sound so bad when you look at it like that.

That doesn't count the days when you stare. You stare at the page; you stare at the computer screen. You stare at the water blasting you in the shower and you imagine a scene... you don't know where the scene fits. You know, despite your own better judgement, that you're going to write the scene and try to "take it from there" - wing a screenplay... what happens after this scene? What happens before? Who are these people? What do they want? Why don't they have it? What are they willing to do to get it? Who doesn't want them to have it? What are they willing to do to stop them?

At least for me, those are the scripts that never find their legs. I need something larger to begin with. I think of a situation. I pattern characters as I need them. Characters who may be compelling, but whose main purpose, ultimately, is to serve the script.

Which is why my Oregon film, tentatively titled The Second Muse, is going so tortuously. I began the script inspired not by a character, not by an idea, not even by a scene... I began it inspired solely by a setting. A place. And then I built characters. Shaped them around actors I like. Actors who have auditioned for me who I couldn't cast. Actors with whom I've worked. Actors I like as people. People I like as actors.

The last part of the puzzle was the plot. And it shows. I feel very safe inside the confines of, say, a thriller. The plot points take up so much of the script that everything else just kind of pops into place for me. So writing like this - a script that has a plot, but a plot that I only know very little about - is difficult. It's one of the few times when I've entered a project knowing that the rough draft may end up being nothing like the finished product.

Usually, my rough drafts are pretty close to the final draft. Changes - sometimes wholesale ones - but everything's more or less in place. Now, I'm flying blind. I'm just trying to get to the finish, just so that I can see where it is. Then, and only then, I will be able to look back on the course and choose a better way to get from Point A to Point B.

It's like policemen clearing a crime scene, this script. When they burst in and rush through the house - their only objective to see if there is anyone inside that they need to get rid of. Only after they've traveled the entire house can they then look back at the individual rooms. Only once the whole house has been cleared can they concentrate on the specifics... the minutiae.

They were three good pages. Three pages that have been living inside of me for a while.

Inevitably, when I start hitting on page 60 - about midway through a script - my mind turns to other ideas I want to write. It almost gives up on the current project, and I have to fight to keep working on it.

My dad had a problem with finishing things. When I was 8 or so, he decided he was going to redo the cabinets. He took the old ones out and prepped the kitchen to install new ones. He never got around to installing the new ones, so for ten years, we didn't have any cabinets in our kitchen. My mom bought a 1986 Camaro when I was ten or eleven. My dad wanted to paint it cherry red. So he stripped off the white paint and put primer all over the front of the car. He never got around to putting the new paint on, however, so my mom drove a car with a delectable primer-and-white combination for the next few years, before trading it in on a new car.

So I guess it's genetic. I have so many scripts that I've jettisoned without the cherry red paint; without the kitchen cabinets.

And part of it is inevitable, I suppose. I'm not going to finish 9 screenplays in a year. I'm not sure I'd want to (though, of course, with rewrites and research, your nine is down to about five or six.) But I don't usually write stories I kind of like to tell. I usually write stories that I desperately want to tell. I've got a list of stories - a hundred long - that I want to write into screenplay format. And I will get to all of them eventually.

But first I have to finish the kitchen cabinets.

The D-Fi Gets Topical

2006-11-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

Today's post is about hate. I have three stories, all related, upon which I would like to touch today.

The first is about racism. It regards Michael Richards, best known as Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld. If you've been living under a rock and haven't heard the story, Mr. Richards was performing his standup routine at the Laugh Factory in L.A. There were some black audience members talking during his show. Eventually, they began to heckle him. This is when he let loose with a string of racial slurs that was captured on someone's cell phone:

Richards appeared on Letterman soon thereafter with this apology:

Like most issues, my stance on this changes from minute to minute. In fact, I might even change my stance as I write this. To the casual observer, this reads as wishy-washy. It reads like someone who is attempting to be authoritative, but who is actually just pretty damned good at seeing all sides of an issue.

Two things intrigue me about the first clip: First, that at the beginning, when he went into the string of "the N word," he seemed primed to make it into a social commentary. He seemed ready to do what the best comedians do - make a joke that makes us feel a little uncomfortable, but which ultimately forces us to re-evaluate social parameters. He did not go this direction, however. He stayed on the basic building block - hurling the word nigger over and over and lording his own heritage over theirs.

The second thing that intrigues me is the chunk cut out during the middle. Richards touches on this during his Letterman apology. It's difficult to know if he tried to turn this into comedy at any point during that missing section. And I think a comedian can make racist statements to bring home a point. I think it's okay. But the more sensitive your subject matter, the better you've got to be to pull it off and to make it work. It's hard... standing on a stage making racist comments can go either way for you. Look at the difference of styles between Larry the Cable Guy, David Cross, Lenny Bruce, Chris Rock, and Richard Pryor. Each could be said to make "racist" comments. Each has their own degree of success.

The discussions I've seen have blasted Richards for falling onto the Katrina reference, but they seem to be missing the point. To me, he's saying, "In Vegas and New Orleans right now, a lot of comics are working to raise money and to achieve a social conscience. I cut their legs out from under them by resorting to this ridiculous behavior."

Do I think Michael Richards is a racist? I guess it depends on your own personal definition of racism. Clearly, he went straight for the most hurtful thing he could say. He went straight to ignorance. Whether or not he has "black friends" or thinks less of black people in his everyday life, this belies a hidden idea that blacks are inferior. Do I think he's a racist? Probably. Do I think it matters that he's a racist? I'm not sure that I do. Many performers have been racist. To me, it doesn't necessarily diminish from their performances.

We go from the first topic - involving racism that is clearly not okay - to my second topic, which touches more directly on a form of racism that is a little more socially acceptable: Anti-Arab racism.

A couple of weeks ago, a student was asked to show his ID while using a computer in the UCLA libray. He didn't have it, so he agreed to leave the library. On the way out, a police officer grabbed his arm. The video shows the rest.

The reported number of times the student was tazed is 7. The student was charged with obstruction/delay of a peace officer in the performance of duty. His name is Mostafa Tabatabainejad.

The first thought on this runs to why the police were called in the first place. I suspect that they were already there. So then my thoughts go to... what the fuck happened?

Let's get some things out of the way: The boy was a student, but even if he wasn't, UC campuses are public facilities. I walk around the UCSD campus often, and use computers there. There is no crime in using a public computer at a public library. Notice the lack of any sort of trespassing charge. In fact, no charges were filed involving anything up to the point where the police officer grabbed a citizen.

One of my acquaintances, who aligns himself well to the right on most issues, tried to tell me that this was okay - because the police warned the man that he would get tazed if he didn't stand up. By that rationale, all a policeman has to do is to say, "If you don't stand up, I will rape you and steal your X-Box," and they will then have the legal right to do so. It doesn't work like that, kids.

If I am in a library or on a university campus, I have every right to be there. In the state of California, however, someone can ask me for my identification. If I don't have it, they can ask me to leave. This is precisely what happened in this case. And then the UC cops decided that they were going to play badass. They got intimidated by the large gathering of students. They lost themselves in the heat of the moment. The cops are Michael Richards with tazers and a badge.

The third topic is a little more personal. Rather than racist, it could be considered religionist. A few weeks ago, I began using this picture as my main MySpace avatar:

In a discussion group to which I belong (the only one, as a matter of fact, to which I belong - and I only belong because the moderator is a friend of mine who pleaded with me to become involved,) we were discussing - get this - dressing infant children and housepets up in ridiculous costumes for Christmas.

One girl commented that she puts her dog in a sweater and thinks it's cute. I said that I disagreed. She then said, "So putting a dog in a sweater is bad, but making light of the Crucifixion is okay?"

I didn't bring it up. Okay, yes, my avatar has a picture of Jesus doing the YMCA. So what? Not only do I not think that it's demeaning, I certainly don't think it pertains to a discussion about dogs in sweaters. But by the same token, I do hate organized religion. Absolutely abhor it. So since this girl called me out, I responded with, "Yes. I think demeaning a living, breathing animal is worse than making fun of a dead fictional character."

Imagine, if you will, the hell that rained down on me from that point forward.

I didn't intend the picture to belittle anyone's religious beliefs, and I truly think that it's a stretch to take it that far. And while I don't mind bad-mouthing religion, I certainly don't make it a point to do it to religionists solely for the sake of being antagonistic.

So I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I hate organized religion and strongly support the dismantling of every single one of them. On the other hand, I don't want to be an insensitive prick. So I apologized if the picture offended anyone, but steadfastly refused to remove it or to apologize for the picture itself.

Part of me wants to roll my eyes and completely dismiss the morons who want to play the card of the "poor, beleaguered Christians who are under constant attack for their religion and barely have anywhere to practice it... woeful Sons of Man!" and part of me wants to acknowledge that my hatred of religion - and of Christianity in general - is as bad as hating homosexuality, or black culture, or womanhood. Not the people, but the social institutions themselves.

And I try to justify it by thinking, "Theirs is a choice. Ours are not." But does that make it okay? Someone can choose to have long hair, but is it okay for me to hate long hair? Part of the problem is in parsing between disliking something, and disliking someone who has that something, or who belongs to that something. In Christianity, this would be called "Hate the sin, love the sinner," I believe.

I don't know. I hate feeling prejudiced. But at the end of the day, if the worst I do is to put up a picture of Jesus on the cross, with three other people beside him doing a campy 70s dance number, I think I can continue living my life.

Projects

2006-11-25T10:08:00.000-08:00

In 1987, Dolph Lundgren made a workout video called Maximum Potential. It's an unremarkable video, lost to the sands of time and good taste, but for one small fact: There was a production assistant attached named Quentin Tarantino. The same year, this PA wrote and directed a short film called My Best Friend's Birthday. An inauspicious career, to be sure.

Five years later, he would make a film called Reservoir Dogs that would grab everyone's attention and catapult him straight into the elite and competitive world of American "auteur" filmmakers.

In 1992 (the year that brought us Reservoir Dogs, actually,) a small short mockumentary was made called Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary. It was co-written and co-directed by a capable fellow named Kevin Smith, along with his lifelong pal, Scott Mosier. Two years later, the pair would team up to create Clerks, an indie-film phenomenon that has spawned an entire universe of films. Smith, too, has landed in the category of "auteur."

In 1963, a film came out called Inesita. It was so obscure as to only receive passing mention on IMDB. The stills photographer was a young man named Martin Scorsese. He was fooling around, making some films on his own. Mostly forgettable titles like Vesuvius VI and What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This? But for the most part, he was working on whatever film - and in whatever capacity - came his way.

Montage supervisor for Elvis on Tour. Supervising editor for Unholy Rollers. In 1973, his "actual" film career would really begin with Mean Streets. He would go on to make a few films you may have heard of: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, The Color of Money, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Bringing Out The Dead, Casino, Cape Fear, Goodfellas, The Aviator, Gangs of New York, and The Departed, to name a few.

In 1965, Haskell Wexler made a documentary called The Bus. He employed a PA named George Lucas. Twelve years later, Lucas would write and direct Star Wars. In 1968, John Cassavetes directed a beautiful movie called Faces. He employed a PA named Steven Spielberg, who would achieve a small amount of fame on his own, later in life. In 1984, the television show Night Court hired a PA named Michael Bay, who would go on to direct Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, The Rock, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, The Island, and the upcoming Transformers movie. In 1993, a Robert Conrad television vehicle was made called Sworn to Vengeance. It used a PA named Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, Cigarettes & Coffee).

I could go on. My point is this: Humble beginnings. Just about everyone had them. At the beginning, it's difficult to pick and choose your projects. You're hungry. You need that break... especially in today's world of digital moviemaking, where just about anything can find an audience and be the next Clerks. The next Reservoir Dogs. It's an important thing to be conscious of when you're slogging through long weekends, battling with props and costumes for a film that, though you yourself love the idea of, not everyone else is rallying around.

When I tell people the premise of the new short, many smile, but they don't seem terribly interested. We fought to get our primary supporting actress. We've fought to keep one of our supporting actors. Our primary supporting actor never came to rehearsals and had to be replaced. Our lead actress quit, came back, and quit again. Our main costume has been an uphill fight every step of the way - we are now on Version 2.3. Our primary set piece, though it looks marvelous, was a financial slap in the face.

OWC and I believe in this film, though. We think it's hilarious. We think it's well-written. We think that once people see the final version, if we can hold everything together long enough, they will think it's wonderful. They will think it's terrific. And even though it's only a ten-minute short, we will be very proud of it. It's not Martin Scorsese's Who's That Knocking On My Door?, but neither is it a Dolph Lundgren workout video.

Getting to the day of the shoot is taking everything we've got. It's taking long days (admittedly, OWC has taken on the majority of the grunt work, and for that I'm appreciative,) but it's helpful to remember that damn near everyone goes through their humble beginnings. Pays their dues. And at times, it has felt like I have been paying my dues for most of my adult life. But small breakthroughs happen - which I don't like to get into until they're real - and it suddenly seems attainable.

It's tiring. It's awful at times. But it pans out. When you have a voice and a vision, people will see your movies. You just have to make them first. And whatever it takes - the long days, the frustrations, the heartaches - it's worth it to get them made. To get them seen.

Write Through It

2006-11-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

I don't believe in Writer's Block. I've been stuck. We've all been stuck. But I always write through it. I'm going to write a lot of crap that will never make the movie, but I push through it.

Yesterday, I was in a slump. Stranded on page 37, of all pages. A major story beat had just happened, and I knew what the next beat was, but damned if I could figure out how to get there. It's a new computer for me (using my roommate's laptop at the moment,) so it doesn't have Movie Magic on it yet. I was writing using an MS Word template. Weird thing about me - I can't jump around on a script when I'm writing in MS Word. In Movie Magic, no problem. In Word, can't do it. Don't know why.

Of course, usually I write everything in a yellow legal tablet and then transfer, but I was feeling lazy. Getting stuck on page 37 will do that to you - make you question if you should really be doing this, after all.

So I started pushing with all of my might... and this incredibly fun, quirky character was born. A receptionist at an office, she has been tasked with making sure that nobody - but nobody - gets into the elevators behind her without an appointment. Guardian of the gate, as it were. She has some long speeches that are genuinely funny. She's delightful.

Problem is, she's entirely wrong for this script. But now I find myself really liking her and wanting to add her to a few other scenes, later in the script, even though I know I'm eventually going to have to trim her out of the screenplay entirely.

It sucks when you have to excise your favorite parts of screenplays for the sake of saving the whole. It sucks in this case particularly, because it's for a film I'm making independently. I'll be directing. Waterhouse will be producing, and I doubt he'll tell me to cut her. I doubt anyone in the creative process will tell me to cut her... and I will no doubt talk myself out of doing so. And we'll hire someone and pay her and shoot the scene and process the film and Telecine it and get it into the editing bay, where the editor will recommend that I cut the character.

And by that time, everyone will be attached to her, never mind the money we spent on her scenes.

So I guess I should bite the bullet and cut her now, but she did help me out of the rut, and I feel the need to at least keep her through the end of the rough draft.

But trouble's on the horizon, to be sure.

Gold Star

2006-11-21T08:41:00.000-08:00

In Homolandia, we have a plethora of verbiage that can overwhelm any young fag making his way in the world. I was a late bloomer - I didn't come out until I was well into my twenties. And that's not even accurate... I didn't even know until I was well into my twenties. Some people don't get that, but there's no way to explain it. I was straight. Legitimately straight. Then I began to fool around with boys. Then it became an exclusive thing.

It's just how things worked out for me.

So there's this large tower of Babel that must be dealt with... hell, even in the bear community we have chubs, cubs, otters, chasers... the list goes on and on and on and on. And one of the key components to the lexicography is the gold star.

Someone who has a "gold star" has never slept with the opposite sex. Not ever. For some people, even milder forms of interaction with women est verboten. Where I come from, for whatever reason, gold stars are fairly rare. Surprisingly rare. Most of us have, at some point, swung. Or bloomed late. Or crossed over for a while. It's not uncommon for my generation of queers, at least back home.

But here, I'm a bit of an oddity for not having my "gold star." And it's the ultimate smackdown... it's an insult that people will reach back to and pull out of the hat whenever they need to trump you. The looks of horror that cross people's faces when they find out cannot be described.

Even once you find another late bloomer and you get excited, ramping up common ground, you need to be careful. More than once, I've heard someone talk about "back when they were chasing women," and the conversation has escalated, and right when I pull out the Ultimate Fact, they back off. "Oh, well I never did that! Ew!"

And I am chagrined.

The real downside, however, is that I actually had more success with heterosexual relationships than I've had with gay relationships. I was good at it. And so there's something in my brain that keeps thinking, "Well, maybe it could work again." Occasionally, women come around that I find attractive. That I think I could date; maybe even sleep with.

In the movie Camp, there is a gay transvestite character named Michael (played by Robin de Jesus, he of the Radio Shack commercial). After sleeping with a woman, he proclaims his concern that, if he gets beaten up one too many times, he may now decide to be with a woman because he knows that he can. My friends hear this and roll their eyes. I hear this and I panic. Because there it is.

It's odd how, if a movie character thinks something that you think, you can no longer count it as some bizarre, macabre flight of fancy. Somehow, it's given legitimacy once it's voiced in a film. Suddenly, there it is. It must be dealt with.

The word "bisexual" irks me a great deal. I'm not a bisexual. Hell, I don't even think that the Kinsey scale is wide enough... six points? There ought to be ten. Fifty. A hundred points. And I still don't know where I'd fall. I don't know if I could be happy with a woman, but constantly I wonder. The sad thing is, I know that most of my acquaintances would then shut me out completely. Not only would I not have a gold star, but I'd be a complete interloper. And I identify as gay. I feel comfortable with the term. I like it -- the community, the classification, the culture. It's cozy... like when you find just the right pair of jeans, and they may not be the best fit imaginable, but they look pretty damned incredible, and you're not going to switch to another pair, because while they may look better or feel better, this pair has the best combination of looks and comfort that you've ever come across. You learn to live with the small problems.

But it's that constant wonder if there's a better pair out there that pisses me off. It's everyone pointing out the small aesthetic imperfections. It's the occasional discomfort.

So would I be happy with a woman? Could I be happy with a woman? Maybe. I don't suppose I'll ever know... I've reached a point where I doubt that any would be interested in me (especially if they thought that I was attainable.) Still, I can't help but wonder.

The Polish

2006-11-20T10:48:00.000-08:00

It's an odd feeling when a production company asks to see one of your spec scripts. As writers, we get so used to slaving away on scripts that will never get made so that we can get hired to work on scripts that will. Too often, the impulse on one of these assignments is to go through the motions. Certainly, few scribes put the passion into them that we put into our own babies.

Every screenwriter in America has two or three or twelve scripts sitting around that he would absolutely love to film. These are, usually, the ones that will never get filmed.

So when a production company wrote me last week and said that they were seriously interested in one of my babies, and asked if I could send the newest draft to them, a knot formed in my stomach. It was already done. Finished. Completed. But I began to wonder... should I polish it?

Polishing is something I trick myself into thinking is beneficial. I go through, look for any typos, grammatical issues, whatnot. I reword a few things in the narrative. I might tweak a line or two. Very little. It's really just glorified procrastination... but when I'm panicked, I will "polish" for weeks at a time. Drag my heels to avoid sending out a promising project, only to have my hopes crushed.

On the outside, it also makes me appear not to be over-eager. It says that I take my craft seriously, which I do. But on the inside, these are not the reasons. These are nothing like the reasons. I'm really just prolonging the moment when someone looks at my baby and says, "Not really our cup of tea. But the writing is delicious! I wonder if you might be interested in working on this property we're developing about seventeenth century robot pirates who fall in love with an exiled samurai king?"

A Solitary Kudo

2006-11-15T13:56:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, the state of Ohio - along with a few other states - did away with their film commission completely. It's too, bad, too. I feel that state film commissions are such an extraordinary tool. They can help you lock down locations. They can provide reasons for production companies to shoot in their state, bringing business in and creating local jobs. Helping local economies.

Actors, technicians, crew members, producers... hell, hotels, caterers, and store owners... all can benefit simply by having a film commission host their information so that producers can peruse them. Locations become exceedingly easy. All pertinent information on permits. Licenses. Everything you need is right there. No producer is going to be turned off by a film commission, to be sure.

And movie productions do bring quite a bit of money into local economies. But many states are getting rid of them, and others have outdated sites with bad information. They're understaffed, fighting against a rising tide of financial woes. Here in California, we're pretty safe. But back in Ohio, we ran into problem after problem that could have been eliminated by simply having one source with all of the information at their disposal.

So yesterday, when I visited the Oregon Film & Video Office's website, I wasn't expecting much. Oregon is close to California, but the weather is not fantastic. Outside of Portland, there isn't a whole lot of film activity.

But I was blown away by their resources.

Mostly up-to-date listings of personnel. An online locations library. Helpful tips and suggestions for filming in Oregon. Waterhouse and I are planning on shooting a movie in Oregon, and I am still writing the script. For a little inspiration, I sent the Oregon Film & Video Office (OFVO) a list of potential locations needs. I stressed that this was for a script that had not yet been completed. I stressed that it was not a priority, and that I would understand if they could not fulfill my request.

So imagine my surprise this morning when they responded with an average of fifteen suggestions - complete with pictures and contact information - for each of the six locations I asked about.

For example, I did not simply ask for an Irish pub. I asked for an Irish pub with very little other excitement around for a few miles, with a nice-sized parking lot. Eight suggestions.

I asked for a Class III rapid with a bank nearby where a van could be parked and three tents erected. Twenty-two suggestions. All with pictures. All with contact information, permit requirements, etc.

For a script that isn't even finished.

So if you're looking to shoot an independent film, I can't stress enough how helpful Oregon's Film & Video Office can be. Plus no sales tax! So consider shooting in Oregon.

What the hell, right?

24 Years

2006-11-11T00:05:00.000-08:00

The AP recently put out an article concerning a new study published in Medical Care.

The researchers found that the average cost of HIV drug therapies is now $25,200 - approximately 40% higher than any previous study has shown. The good news (if we can call it that) is that, while a new HIV patient in 1993 could expect to live about seven years, a new patient today can expect about twenty-four.

That's more than a 300% increase in life expectancy. Of course, it comes at a cost of about $618,000 per patient.

There is good news here. A new HIV patient can expect to pay out about the same amount of money over their lifetime as a patient with heart disease might. But these costs are exorbitant. And a virus that affects the immune system will still open up the floodgates for a variety of other illnesses, even with the best care, that make it difficult at best to maintain a solid working record.

When you factor in the 2003 study that showed that only approximately 55% of patients who should be receiving medications are, it can look pretty bleak. But it's nice to see time and money being devoted to the cause. And with this amount of progress - basically, starting from scratch in the early nineties and reaching a twenty-four-year life expectancy after about a decade of work - the future looks decent.

Now if we can work on making the care affordable, and giving health care to every American who needs it, then we can make even greater strides in fighting this horrible virus.

Faux Pas

2006-11-08T09:18:00.000-08:00

NotQuiteTaye: Hey hot stuff.

Me: Oh hey! Didn't know if I'd ever see you online again, or if that was a one-time thing.

NotQuiteTaye: What are you up to?

Me: Just a little writing.

NotQuiteTaye: Oh I won't bother you.

Me: No. If I didn't want to be bothered, I wouldn't be online.

NotQuiteTaye: Cool.

Me: So what are you up to?

NotQuiteTaye: Nothing. Just talking to you.

Me: You poor thing.

NotQuiteTaye: Haha, no. I like talking to you.

Me: I'm nothing special. Just a guy sitting here in tube socks and a tank top, singing "Karma Chameleon" at the top of my lungs while the neighbors pound on the walls.

NotQuiteTaye: LOL

Me: One of the socks has a green stripe at the top, but not the other one.

NotQuiteTaye: :)
NotQuiteTaye: How tall are you?

Me: 5'8". 5'9" on a good day.

NotQuiteTaye: Short.

Me: Did you just call me a dwarf? Because I recently had a bad experience with a dwarf, and if you're going to stir up bad memories, maybe we should call it a night.

NotQuiteTaye: I like shorter boys. I'm 6'2".

Me: Okay fine. Because I just put He-Man and the Masters of the Universe bedsheets on my bed, and I'm really looking forward to sleeping on Skeletor's face tonight.

NotQuiteTaye: No, I do. I like shorter boys.

Me: If you say so.

NotQuiteTaye: Do you have a bf?

Me: No.

NotQuiteTaye: gf?

Me: No.

NotQuiteTaye: Why not?

Me: They don't like me.

NotQuiteTaye: I don't see why not.

Me: Because of the wheelchair.

NotQuiteTaye: How do you mean?

Me: I had someone a few years ago, before the accident. Didn't last long once I got the chair. Couldn't take it. Couldn't stand the sight of me anymore. Now no one really talks to me.

(he does not write anything for several minutes)

NotQuiteTaye: You're in a chair?

Me: I'm totally kidding.

NotQuiteTaye: FUCK YOU!

Me: That's for calling me a dwarf.

NotQuiteTaye: YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE!

(he changes his display picture to one of him in a wheelchair)

NotQuiteTaye: Welcome to my world.

EcamirG: Holy shit.

NotQuiteTaye: Yeah. Fuck off, prick.

(he does not post for five minutes)

Me: I always wondered what the appeal of a gimp was.

(he signs off -- or blocks me. I'm guessing the latter)

Moving Picture Show

2006-11-07T12:47:00.000-08:00

I went to see Running With Scissors on Sunday morning. On Monday morning, I saw Bobby. Both screenings took place before 11:00 in the morning, but that didn't stop the cinema denizens from stocking up on horrible foods like popcorn, nachos, and Milk Duds.

One thing I hate about the movie theatre - more than people talking, even - is the fact that Americans seem incapable of sitting through a two-hour movie without shoving fistfuls of food into their gaping, slack-jawed heads. Instead of well-crafted dialogue and intriguing plot devices, I'm stuck hearing RUSTLE-RUSTLE-RUSTLE-CRUNCH-SMACK-SMACK-SMACK-RUSTLE-CRUNCH.

It's disgusting.

And popcorn? Is that really where we are as a nation? I'm not exactly a scholar on the history of theatrical snack choices, but I believe popcorn is a throwback to the old melodrama heydey, when theatres would give their patrons popcorn to throw at the bad guy while they hissed at him. It was heavy enough to travel, but light enough so that it wouldn't hurt the actors. You could grab fistfuls and sling them. It was easy to clean up. Didn't stick to the floor or anything.

It was never really intended to be eaten. But it's stuck around. Does anyone actually even like movie theatre popcorn? I think people only buy it because it's become so enmeshed into our brains as part and parcel of the movie-going experience. You think cinema, you think popcorn.

The other thing that bothers me is the shitholes who just leave their trash laying around. On seats, on the floor, wherever. To be tipped over by other people, desperate to leave after an inevitably-shitty movie. Left for the bow-tie brigade, who bust their asses for minimum wage and free movie-viewing priviledges. Poor sots. Left to leave a gigantic sticky mess on the floor. Heaven forbid they throw the trash into the trash cans that are right next to them as they leave the theatre.

Don't get me wrong... occasionally, I decide to see a movie on a whim. I haven't planned it out, so I haven't eaten. Edwards Cinemas has surprisingly good nachos. But I try to finish them during - or before - the previews, and to throw them away on my way into the theatre.

Ah well. I suppose I shouldn't complain. It's just that my least favorite part of going into public has always been the public. RUSTLE-RUSTLE-RUSTLE-CRUNCH-SMACK-SMACK-CRUNCH-RUSTLE-CRUNCH.

Blech. Turns my stomach.

Pressing

2006-11-03T00:15:00.000-08:00

Name: EcamirG
Birthday: The 112th Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Death
Birthplace: Dropped unconsciously onto a bathmat during a Virginia Slims-induced coughing fit
Current Location: Closer to a grammar school than allowed by law
Eye Color: Cyborg silver
Hair Color: Bald, speckled with fecal matter
Height: Tall enough to ride the rides at Coney Island
Right Handed or Left Handed: Tug with my right, tickle with my left
Your Heritage: Half imbecile, half nitwit
The Shoes You Wore Today: Patent leather with a buckle, like Shirley Temple used to wear!
Your Weakness: An invalid laying sideways with her mouth open
Your Fears: That I will be discovered with my pants around my ankles playing "Take The Corpse's Temperature" in the city mortuary
Your Perfect Pizza: Oven-crusted with lightly-seared placenta, covered with flamingo vomit
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year: I'd like to stop setting Mexicans on fire for no reason
Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger: "Your ass looks amazing in those diapers"
Thoughts First Waking Up: "There's hardly any blood left in this bedsheet at all! Thanks, OxyClean!"
Your Best Physical Feature: My fourth vertebrae is a marvel of human physiology
Your Bedtime: 10 minutes after I get the tranny blood out of my pubic hair
Your Most Missed Memory: Being face down in a pillow with whiskey being breathed into my face from the side by my uncle
Pepsi or Coke: Hot dog water
McDonald's or Burger King: MEAT IS MURDER!
Single or Group Dates: I prefer single dates and group scat parties
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Nestea Jim Jones Anniversary Special Green Tea
Chocolate or Vanilla: Hooker blood
Cappuccino or Coffee: Coffee makes me shit, but cappucino makes me enjoy it more
Do you Smoke: Only when babysitting
Do you Sing: I frequently hum Lionel Ritchie songs while I'm being raped
Do you Shower Daily: I prefer to have dogs lick the sweat off my balls and neck
Have you Been in Love: With a double-fisting nun named Mom
Do you want to go to College: Yes, because that's where the sexually confused emo boys congregate
Do you want to get Married: Yes, to Laci Peterson
Do you believe in yourself: I didn't until my only Son was crucified by Pontius Pilate
Do you get motion sickness: While the bullies hold me upside down with my head in the toilet
Do you think you are Attractive: Yes, while doing volunteer work in the burn ward
Are you a Health Freak: Not since I had the accident with the Sperm-Granola Smoothie in the blender
Do you get along with your Parents: I did until I killed them for the insurance money
Do you like Thunderstorms: Yes, because they cause youngsters to huddle under my covers
Do you play an Instrument: I play spoons and the rape whistle
In the past month have you Drunk Alcohol: No, but I've purchased it for minors
In the past month have you Smoked: Poles
In the past month have you been on : Cialis
In the past month have you gone on a Date: I was never into that. I prefer to go right next to them and them shove their noses in it and hit them with a rolled-up newspaper
In the past month have you gone to a Mall: Yes, to buy my sister an athletic supporter
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos: No, because Oreo threatened to call my P.O. if I so much as TOUCHED her box
In the past month have you eaten Sushi: No, but I keep a roll in my pocket to impress the local schoolkids
In the past month have you been on Stage: In Mexico, with a donkey
In the past month have you been Dumped: Yes, on my chest
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping: Twice in the kiddie pool
In the past month have you Stolen Anything: Two babies and a prosthetic testicle
Ever been Drunk: One night after playing for a Billy Joel cover band
Ever been called a Tease: A cancer patient once called me that while I dangled morphine over his face
Ever been Beaten up: On a playground by a group of concerned parents
Ever Shoplifted: I smuggled a gerbil out of the store without using my hands
How do you want to Die: I want to be sawed in half while felching Jack Klugman
What do you want to be when you Grow Up: Dominican drug lord
What country would you most like to Visit: Utah
In a Boy/Girl..
Favorite Eye Color: Black and blue
Favorite Hair Color: Brown with blood running from the roots through my fingers
Short or Long Hair: Chemo-thin
Height: Under four feet
Weight: Seventy-five pounds and willing to vomit
Best Clothing Style: Torn
Number of I have taken: I'm sorry; what?
Number of CDs I own: Three - all Huey Lewis
Number of Piercings: Both nipples, with beer can tabs
Number of Tattoos: The number isn't important, as long as they were made by an inmate
Number of things in my Past I Regret: 6,592,500 - about 6 million Jews; 200,000 Gypsies; 200,000 people with disabilities; 80,000 Freemasons; 100,000 Communistis, 10,000 homosexual men; and 2,500 Jehovah's Witnesses... just kidding, lighten up. I don't regret the Jehovah's Witnesses at all

A Complaint To The California State Karate Association Regarding The Mr. Miyagi School of Karate

2006-11-02T11:41:00.000-08:00

After seeing Daniel LaRusso take home the trophy last year at the All Valley Tournament, I am inspired to switch dojos so I can train with Mr. Miyagi. Previously, I was a member at Cobra Kai Karate. While there, I earned my purple belt.

I am in dojo shock when I discover that Mr. Miyagi does not use colored belts to mark advanced levels of study. His training is also vastly different from the training I received at Cobra Kai. During the first few weeks, Mr. Miyagi has me wax his classic cars, paint his house, sand his porch, and mend his fence. I am suspicious, to say the least. However, when I challenge him about his methods, he attacks me. As I fend off his blows, I discover I have gained blocking skills I was not even aware of.

Mr. Miyagi tells me to withdraw $1,000 from my bank account and arrive early the next morning. I show up, and he instructs me to take each $20 bill, thrust it forward, and place it in his palm. If I do not perform the motion to his liking, he makes me take the 20 back and repeat the motion until I execute it perfectly. After five minutes, all the money is in his palm. He asks if he can borrow it. I agree, partly because I am grateful for what he has taught me, and partly because he has already placed the money in his pocket and walked away. After that morning, I do not see Mr. Miyagi for a week, but he left a detailed list of chores for me to do, such as mowing his yard, weeding his garden, reshingling his roof, and building him a gazebo.

When he returns, he informs me that he went to Cancún for spring break. I ask him to help me with some new moves I was learning during his absence. He vomits into his shrubs, which I had just spent hours trimming, and passes out under the California sun.

I show up to his house the next day. He still looks hung-over. I ask him if he can return the money he borrowed. He tells me he will fix my bike for me. "Then we even, Ricky san." I tell him I just want the money back.

I think about returning to Cobra Kai. I have mixed emotions about their "no mercy" policy. At least Sensei John Kreese never borrowed money from me, except that time he needed 15 cents for a Snickers out of the vending machine in the Cobra Kai locker room.

I tell Miyagi I want to win the next All Valley Tournament. He laughs and pokes me with a chopstick. When he sees I am serious, he tells me karate is not for winning trophies, it is for defending one's life. I say fine, and ask him to pay me back the money I gave him. He mentions fixing my bicycle again. I tell him I don't have a damn bike. He is adamant, though: "I make any bike Miyagi Turbo." Finally, after I hammer home the idea that no bike bartering is going to happen here, he agrees to coach me in the All Valley.

The day of the tournament, he doesn't show. In my first fight, I try to wax on, wax off. That doesn't help when the guy is roundhouse-kick-onning and roundhouse-kick-offing my face. I am down and out. I spot Miyagi in the crowd; his lips are around a bottle of sake. I learn that no motion you do while building an English-garden-style gazebo will help you score a point in a karate match.

In my next match, I am seriously injured by my opponent. I can barely move my left leg. Miyagi comes to my side, smelling of booze and suntan lotion. "Rest, Ricky san," he says. He starts to massage my leg, but I soon realize he is just patting me down for money. He gets nervous and tells me to "always look eye." I push him away and tell him he's an idiot for thinking I'd keep my wallet in my gi while fighting a karate match. He asks me where my real pants are, and then, after a minute of silence, walks off. As I get dressed, I can see him peeking over the lockers, watching for where I have stowed my wallet.

Halloween

2006-11-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

No dressing up this year for Halloween, and I'm a little disappointed. Back home, Halloween is the gay Christmas. Every gay man dresses for Halloween. But this year, none of my roommates dressed up. None of my friends dressed up. None of my neighbors. No one had a party. It was eerie.

It sucked, actually.

And not one Trick-or-Treater came to our door, either.

Bah humbug.

A letter from Madden's lowest-rated player

2006-10-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

(copied from here)

To: John Madden
CC: Electronic Arts Sports
From: Ethan Albright
Re: Being the worst rated player on Madden ‘07

Hi, John, my name is Ethan Albright. I play line for the Washington Redskins. You probably already knew that, so I’ll continue. I am writing in regards to the overall player rating of 53 that I have received in Madden NFL Football 2007. I feel that this is fucking bullshit and you should kiss my mother-fucking ass. Ahmed Carroll was rated a 78 and the Packers just cut his ass on a Tuesday morning after his performance in a Monday night game. That is pretty terrible. The worst part is that his overall rating was sniffing 80.

You know what, John? Two can play this game. I rate you a fucking 12. I rate you a fucking 12 in Ethan Albright Football 2000-ever… except for in the category of ball-licking. That is where I will spot you a 98 rating. You will receive this score because I will never give your blubbery ass a 99 in any category. Take that, pencil-dick. Go do Al Micheals or something. Boom. Score one for Red Beard.

It’s also pretty wonderful that my awareness rating was 59. You make it sound like I wake up in the morning, helplessly shit and piss myself, then lose three of my teeth before I discover that I am trying to eat a rock for breakfast. Fuck, John, I understand you saying that I am slow and lacking athleticism, but a rating like this pretty much labels me as retarded. Rod “He Hate Me” Smart has a 52 in this category. Electronic Arts is saying that seven rating points separate me and the breathing embodiment of the perfect oxymoron. Rod Smart struggled to arrange words in sentence form. Cave men had better hold of the English language. The only actions that separate point values of ignorance at this embarrassing level are things like using your own toothbrush to wipe your ass. I basically edged out Rod by my lack of shit teeth. If I take a night school class, could you bump me up to a 60?

I guess I just can’t fathom the fact that I am the absolute worst player rated out of the entire NFL. Fuck, man, there are some shitty guys out there. Amongst everyone, I was rated the absolute worst.

I have received the impression that you feel that I am lacking in the agility category. I should consider a walk through my living room where I don’t crash through a wall or kick over furniture a resounding success. My agility rating on your game is 33. It makes it sound like I just topple over if I start walking too fast. Ted Washington is rated a 40 in agility. He is listed at 365 pounds. If Ted Washington tied a white lady up and made her wear a metal bikini, he’d look just like Jabba the Hut.

John, you are such a fucking dick. I also noticed that my kick return rating was a 0. I was rated a fucking zero? So you feel that I shouldn’t even receive a 10, or even a 5? You are pretty much saying that I couldn’t even fall forward on a ball kicked in my direction. I would just stand there and let the ball bounce off of my fucking face. Fuck that, John, I returned an onside kick 6 yards in 2002. You should have just slapped a - 4 on me and had the EA staff ambush me with paintball guns.

Finally, I would like to comment on an unlikely topic, my pass coverage ratings. I see that I am a better at man-to-man coverage (31) than zone (21). Fuck me sideways with a lunchbox. Where did these scores even come from? How much time is spent coming up with the pass coverage ratings of offensive lineman? Can I have that job? Let’s see here, I think that Orlando Pace would be slightly better at jumping intermediate routes than Larry Allen. While I’m at it, I can assign the passing ratings for offensive lineman as well. I can use mine as a guide.

I was rated with a throwing power of 17 and accuracy of 16. Orlando Pace has a 22 power and 17 accuracy rating. Did someone at EA really put time into figuring out that Orlando Pace edges out Ethan Albright in both throwing power and accuracy? I will challenge him any day. My horrible passer ratings are of greatest misfortune to my son, Red Beard Jr. The poor boy is not only hideously ugly and covered by freakishly large freckles. He also has to suffer through playing catch with me and my senile-elderly-woman-type passer ratings. A session of tossing the pigskin usually consists of me missing my son by thirty yards in sporadic directions. I led him in front of a fire truck once and my wife kicked my ass. This is because of my 76 toughness rating. Yes, a 76 is far better than the other ratings, but I’m a fucking lineman, damn it. NFL Linemen are considered to be synonymous with toughness. According to your game, I am a retarded, uncoordinated, pussy-ass fuckwad that can’t fall on a kickoff, throw, or spell. I am, however, slightly better at manning up on a receiver than dropping into zone coverage. You lose your mind more and more each year, old man.

Fuck you, John. Please expect to find red pubes in various meals you consume for the rest of your life. If you fuck with Ethan Albright, you call down the thunder.

Rot in Hell,

Ethan Albright

Social Conscience

2006-10-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

OWC and I headed over the bridge last night to meet up with Dave, John, and Scott, who were in town at a conference. They're all product liability lawyers and some of the more erudite people I know.

They were staying at the Hotel del Coronado, so we first met up for dinner at Miguel's Cocina Coronado and then it was off to the Brigantine for drinks, and back to their hotel for more drinks.

At any rate, it was a good time. We discussed California politics (two of them are from Texas, and another from Alabama,) films and directors, and music. It was a pleasant conversation that didn't end until 3:AM. It's nice every once in a while to sit down with people who have strong, valid opinions and can enunciate them and carry on a heated but civil debate.

The conversation - the good part of it (which translates to being "the part that takes place once everyone is good and drunk and the night is late and pretty much everyone else has cleared out and gone to bed for the evening, but four or five of us are left, talking and smoking cigarettes") - revolved around film. Specifically, around the question of what makes a film great?

We discussed favorite films. I am a huge Billy Wilder fan, which is an opinion that the others did not share (Some Like It Hot was filmed, partially, at the Hotel del Coronado.) OWC is a Star Wars fan, and I like the movies okay, but the out-of-towners do not think that it is a great movie. They wouldn't even spot me "cultural icon." They do not like Kevin Smith. They do not like The Matrix for the same reason that they do not like Kevin Smith: It feels like talking to a sophomore undergraduate about philosophy; full of pretentiousness and half-understood philosophical theories, it is aimed at people who do not know much, and is aimed at making them feel as if they understand more than they actually do.

We all agreed on two things: 1) Alfred Hitchcock may be the best storyteller of all time. He mixed financial success with artistic integrity at least as well as anyone before or since. 2) I had fun watching it is the one argument in favor of a film that no one can ever take away from you. It is not objective, and the strength of the argument lies therein.

It's always intrigued me that you can take five or six people, all very schooled in the appreciation of film, and run down a list of a hundred movies. On the vast majority of those movies, someone is going to like it and someone is not. Clearly, taste is subjective. Appreciation is subjective. We have visceral responses to movies, and that's a good thing. But people hide behind this... people with no clear basis for their opinions consider them to be as valid as the opinions of someone schooled in film.

You'll see it often when people respond to critics. The vast majority of well-known critics know what they're talking about. Agree or disagree with their points, they have every right to hold them. They've made a study of film their entire lives.

But there is not a single opinion - valid or otherwise - that everyone is likely to share. Let's take a look at my top ten favorite films ever:

1. Sunset Boulevard
2. Some Like It Hot
3. American Beauty
4. The Lady Vanishes
5. Teen Wolf (Yes, I'm serious)
6. Grosse Pointe Blank
7. When Harry Met Sally
8. Magnolia
9. Unforgiven
10. Five Easy Pieces

That list changes constantly. The point of bringing this up is to illustrate that just about everyone would have a problem with at least one of the films on my list. I have worked hard in film and theatre my entire life. I'm a writer. I'm a director. I'm a fan. I've watched thousands upon thousands of movies... and these are my ten favorite. So you'd think that that would mean something. It does. To me.

I strongly dislike a number of films that people - even "film people" - absolutely love. Titanic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dogma, Bottle Rocket, Boogie Nights, The Matrix, Boondock Saints. I can articulate my reasons. I can pick the films apart. But some people genuinely enjoy the movies, and as much as I would love to be able to hold it against them, I just can't.

What, to you, makes a film great? What are some of your favorites?

Jackholes

2006-10-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

This is disgusting. I hope that these people die.

Waterhouse

2006-10-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

Waterhouse is a good friend. We worked together in New Hampshire many moons ago - he was the technical director at a shitty summer stock theatre, and I was the musical director. We were both mistreated and abused, and quickly formed a bond. I lived in Ohio at the time and he in Oklahoma, so we rarely saw one another, except when he was in town on one of the many tours he worked - David Copperfield, The Cure, Depeche Mode.

Then he moved to L.A., and not long after, I moved to San Diego. Still, for the first year or so I was here, we rarely saw one another. We talked a little more frequently on the phone, but we didn't see much of one another.

Then we did the Oregon trip. Now, we hang out as frequently as possible. We're working on several projects together, including one that we want to film in Oregon. I'm in the treatment phase on that screenplay. He works for a major production house, and knows several of the readers, and is going to pave the way for one of my scripts, with luck and talent, to get made.

It's funny how connections work in this business. They are its lifeblood. And while there are ways to make them once you're in town, they're not as strong as the ones you made before you knew you were making them. Everyone uses everyone here. Everyone's on the defensive. So it's the connections you made years ago, when you were both struggling for a shitty theatre in New England, that seem to matter the most.

They tell me everyone has them. That friend of a friend whose childhood babysitter is now a rising starlet, appearing in a host of independent features with a major studio contract on the horizon. Even if it's true, I don't know how you track that person down, much less make it sound even a little legitimate when you meet them -- like you're not some dillhole off the street.

But Waterhouse? We knew each other when, man. We ate lunch together every day at the Applebee's in North Conway, New Hampshire, where our server was Polly Clapp, the sister of NYPD Blue's Gordon Clapp. And here we are, years later. He's hooked me up with costume designers. Props masters. Producers. Actors. I've helped him turn his ideas into full-fledged scripts. And, soon, full-fledged movies.

It's great. It really is. It makes me glad that I chose this field, sometimes. Because as terrible as it can feel... with everyone using everyone else... sometimes it's nice to know that there are good, genuine people out there.

Stupid People

2006-10-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

I recently read someone discussing how "Stupid People should all be locked up," and it got me to thinking. There's one thing that Americans can all agree on. Whether white or black, Jewish or Christian, gay or straight, male or female... everyone hates stupidity.

The problem with this is that nobody considers themselves to be stupid. Think of the stupidest person you know. Now, ask them if they hate stupid people, and I guarantee they'll launch into some kind of tirade about the guy at the DMV or the Asian lady that almost hit them with her car this morning.

Case in point: The Blue Collar Comedy Tour. It can be said, without equivocation of any sort, that the fans of the BCCT are some of the stupidest human beings on the face of this - or any other - Earth. Yet these mongoloids get behind a comedian who proclaims, "Here's Your Sign." "Here's Your Sign" is a reference to the theory that stupid people should be forced to wear a sign (it was completely ripped off from an old George Wallace routine, but that's neither here nor there.) These people will guffaw and slap their knees and nod their heads with enthusiasm.

I was never a Bill Clinton fan until he left office. Now I look back with awe and with fondness, and I think... How nice to have a president that actually might be able to teach me something. He's one of the greatest minds of his generation. Yet people exist who will suggest that he is stupid. These same people, many of whom may have a hard time with things like "math" or "history," consider their political opinions to be just as valid as his (and more valid than any celebrity, no matter the celebrity's actual level of intelligence and/or awareness.) It's amazing.

So my point is this: Person X wants to lock up stupid people. Person Y is a stupid person. However, Person Y does not view himself as a stupid person, and also wants to lock up his own definition of stupid people, which might include Person X.

We are a nation of savants, sometimes.

Part of the problem is that we have allowed this notion of "street smarts" to creep into the vernacular. We have "book smarts," some will claim, and then we have "street smarts." Book smarts are all well and good, but you can still be awfully stupid - or so these people seem to think. We have allowed the concept of applied intelligence to run amok... people have claimed it without knowing what it means. They think that if they can score a discount at the bargain bin of the local Wal-Mart, because they know how to look, that that puts them in the same league -- or, Hell, a higher league in some cases - than Nobel Laureates and Rhodes Scholars.

While the concept of street smarts (and "people smarts," for that matter) is a valid one, we've allowed it to go unchecked for far too long. Next time you hear someone suggest that all stupid people should be summarily executed, brief them on their own qualifications for avoiding said genocide. Chances are, they will fail miserably.

Being anti-stupid is like being pro-education. Everyone is pro-education. Everyone (okay, everyone but the Christian Church) wants kids to be smart and educated... we just all disagree on the way to make that happen. And, in fact, on the definition of intelligence and education. It's a nice, vague way to say something good that nobody can disagree with... education good, stupidity bad.

But don't listen to me. I may, in fact, be stupid. Quiz me.

Naudition

2006-10-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

Movement on the writing front this weekend:

1. I've been asked to submit for a writing fellowship with a popular children's programming network. Now, this might seem odd to you who know my writing style (from The Night Julie Taymor Cried: TERRANCE: Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fucking fucker fuck fuck), but I think I may give it a shot. Problem is that I need to write an episode for a current live-action half-hour show, and I don't know any. Other than that, though...

2. Spoke with several management companies about repping Hubbard's Folly and/or Reunited. The former is an historical drama, based on a true story, that will probably be sold to Hallmark. The latter is a high-concept comedy written by OWC and me that could attract huge talent and be a movie that everyone talks about. I'm swinging for the fences at this point.

3. For some reason, San Diego actors and actresses are notorious flakes. But it gets very annoying when they set up a time to meet and a place to do it, and then end up not showing up, anyway. I can't tell you how much time we've wasted waiting for actors who just don't show up to an audition that they themselves scheduled and confirmed. I also can't begin to tell you how annoying that is, though I'm sure you can take a pretty good guess.

4. Costumes for Captain Awesome may take a giant leap forward today. We'll know for sure in a few hours.

5. OWC and I are working on a re-cut of Roulette. The first cut is decent, but there are some issues I have with it. So we will re-cut.

Not an exciting entry today, and I apologize. I spent most of last week sick, and now I'm just trying to get caught up on things.

Just Letters

2006-10-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

I'm having an inordinate amount of fun today playing at Just Letters, a giant board full of magnetic letters.

There are several people playing the same board at once, and some of them are dickholes, so it's difficult to get anything written. But it's inexplicably fun.

Thanks go to Mindless Munkey for showing me the light.

Yo Joe!

2006-10-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

Today, I took one of those calculated risks that has the potential - however slim - of paying off major dividends. While doing some research, I found that a certain producer has acquired the live-action rights to G.I. Joe. It's one of the guys who is behind the upcoming Transformers movie, and I'm actually really excited to learn that someone's working on this.

G.I. Joe is a fascination of mine. I collected the toys. I read the comics. I watched the cartoons. I can quote much of the original movie. In short, I would kill to have the opportunity to work on this film.

So today, I wrote a letter offering to write the screenplay completely on spec. This means that, if he doesn't like what I spend six months writing, he doesn't owe me a dime. It's a calculated risk, because producers are rarely willing to do this. In fact, the WGA does not look favorably upon it. If word gets out, I could get bitten pretty hard.

But so strong is my desire to pen this script (and I do not have the credentials to get the gig through any conventional means) that I am willing to risk this.

It seems silly for a property as banal as G.I. Joe, maybe, but I am so eager to do this that I will do anything for the opportunity. Here's hoping it doesn't ruin me!

Palko for Heisman?

2006-10-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

Don't look now, but the Pitt Panthers are 6-1, and while they're within single digits (in points) of being ranked in any "real" polls, they are #25 in the ESPNU Allstate rankings. This weekend, they play Rutgers - the winner of this game becomes one of the teams to beat in the Big East, and will have at least a chance to win the conference.

Why is Pitt doing so well? Quarterback Tyler Palko.

Palko's got a 188.59 Rating - the highest in college football. He's also ranked in the top ten in virtuall every statistical category: He's got a completion percentage of 70.8 (5th), 10.3 yards per attempt (2nd), 1661 yards (10th), 17 touchdowns (T-4th), and only three interceptions thrown.

Granted, his biggest outburst came against the Citadel, but if he can lead the Panthers over Rutgers, I think he has to become a legitimate contender for the Heisman. It then becomes all about what can he do against West Virginia and Louisville - his last two games, and his two biggest.

Both at home, by the way.

It's an unorthodox pick, to be sure, but I think people around the country should really be taking notice of Palko.

Road Trip: A Story Told in Pictures

2006-10-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

I was going to write out a lengthy treatise on Waterhouse's and my trip to Oregon to watch the Oregon-Oklahoma game, complete with just about every picture we took, but then I decided that it would be just way too long and riddled with pictures of varying qualities.

So, instead, here is a link to the photo album.

Waterhouse called me up and asked if I would be interested in taking a road trip to Eugene, Oregon for the Sooners-Ducks game, and I readily agreed. I wasn't working on anything at the time, and I needed a change of scenery. So I caught a train up to Simi Valley, we piled into his truck, and off we went up the 5.

Fourteen hours later, we were in Florence, where we would be staying for the night.

I need to say some words about Oregon... not only is it amazingly, stunningly, breath-takingly beautiful, but it is filled with some of the more amazing people on the west coast. Without exception, everyone with whom we crossed paths was exceedingly friendly and helpful.

We had driven straight through the night, so we caught some shuteye, grabbed some breakfast, and were off to explore the scenery.

Then we headed east to Eugene, about an hour's drive, to hang out with Terrible Mother. We went to a place on campus that, surprisingly, had been overrun by Sooners fans. We couldn't stay out too too late, however, because we were still rather exhausted. My apologies to TM if I was horribly out of focus the entire evening.

In the morning, we ate breakfast at the Gingerbread Village Restaurant in Mapleton, and I'm not kidding you - if you're ever anywhere nearby, you must try their gingerbread pancakes. Absolutely marvelous. Seriously.

If you're the type of person who might care what happens at a college football game, then you already must surely know what happened at this one. It's the most talked-about game of the season. But I don't want to get into the controversy; let's just talk about how amazing the Ducks fans were. Sure, there were some punk kids who talked some shit, but for the most part, everyone was beyond friendly.

In the parking lot before the game, several people came up and offered us a place to tailgate. During the game, there was some back-and-forth, but everyone left at the end of the game (and a huge portion of the Ducks' fans streamed out with 4:20 left - I'm not kidding about that number - and missed the great late-game comeback) turned off "opponent" mode as soon as the game was over, and came over and congratulated us on a great game. The long, scenic walk back was spent talking college football with some very knowledgeable fans. Overall, I was just flat-out amazed.

It was a fabulous trip, all things considered, and I can't wait to go back.

Friday the Thirteenth

2006-10-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

My friend, Waterhouse, invited me up to L.A. this week to catch the premiere of The Tripper, which debuted on Friday the Thirteenth to open up Screamfest L.A. Waterhouse worked on the film, which was shot in Santa Cruz, so we were fortunate enough to be able to attend the after-party, as well.

While governor of California, Ronald Reagan released over a thousand mental patients from institutions across the state. In The Tripper, one of these released patients dons a Ronald Reagan mask and goes around killing hippies at a Free Love Festival in the Redwoods. It was directed and co-written by David Arquette.

Though not a huge fan of horror films, I was impressed with The Tripper. The premise is good for the genre, the writing was sharp, and the casting was terrific. Paul Reubens, Jason Mewes, Arquette, Courteney Cox (in a small cameo,) Brad Hunt, lovely and talented up-and-comer Marsha Thomason (who I adore,) Josh Hammond, Jaime King, Thomas Jane, Balthazar Getty, Paz de la Huerta, Lukas Haas.

Lots of famous faces on hand afterwards... ran into Garry Shandling and Fred Durst. Paris Hilton. Larry Thomas (the Soup Nazi) bummed a cigarette from me. I did get to meet the majority of the cast, but was disappointed that I was unable to get a word with Courteney Cox. She was standing just a few feet from me at one point, but unfortunately, none of the people I was with knew her well enough to introduce us. I can't be that guy. I have to be introduced.

Especially because one of the reasons I wanted to talk to her was to pitch a script. You're really just being a douche when you approach someone at a party, apropos of nothing, and try to force a script into their hands. I did get to meet Mr. Arquette at the end of the night, and he was a terrific guy. High grades also to Thomason, Hunt, Hammond, and Stephen Heath, as well as those accompanying them, all of whom accepted me readily into the fold and treated me like an old friend.

On a side note, Fred Durst is looking a little rough these days:

Back

2006-10-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm back for a bit. We'll get the old look back, too, at some point.

Just bear with me.

Go Flashes

2006-10-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

It's not often that a Kent State University alum gets to be proud of his alma mater's football team, but this year, things are changing. This year, after a rocky 44-0 dismissal by Minnesota and a 17-14 heartbreaker against Army to start the year, the Golden Flashes are rolling.

Yesterday, they beat Toledo, 40-14, to stay atop the leaderboard in the Mid-American Conference. They've won five in a row for the first time since 1976, and are 4-0 in MAC play for the first time ever. They stand, now, one win away from bowl eligibility.

To put it in perspective, last year we won only one game, and that was against Division I-AA Southeast Missouri State.

Tough games coming up on the schedule, notably against Virginia Tech. But we could conceivably finish up with seven or eight wins - the first winning season since 2001, when we limped to 6-5. Before that, the last one was 1987, an emboldening 7-4 season.

There's a chance, however slim, that we could post our first ten-digit winning season ever.

Ever.

How have they turned things around? Well, a lot of it has to do with second-year coach Doug Martin, the former offensive coordinator under Dean Pees (who left to take a position with the NFL's New England Patriots.) But a lot of it has to do, too, with something else entirely.

A few years ago, an unheralded freshman quarterback came to Kent from Upper Marlboro, Maryland. His name was Joshua Cribbs. In the third game of his freshman year, against West Virginia, he was asked to start. In his first start, he ran 20 times for 144 yards and was 13-of-31 passing for 117 more yards. Not stellar stats, to be sure, but it did make him the first Kent State quarterback since 1996 to rush and throw for 100 yards in one game - and he scored on an 84-yard touchdown run - the longest in the history of Mountaineer Field.

Joshua ended that season as the first true freshman in the history of Division I-A college football to rush and throw for 1,000 yards. He would become the second player ever to do it twice - the first to do it in back-to-back years. He would become only the second player ever to throw for 7,000 yards and run for 3,500 yards in his career (Antwaan Randle-El, of Indiana, accomplished the same feat, despite being moved to wide receiver his senior year.)

Cribbs is now a wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns, who are happy to have him. He made the club as an obscure rookie free agent in 2005 -- that is, after being asked to return kickoffs and stick his nose in there as a coverage man on special teams.

He averaged 24.3 yards per return, having a 90-yarder for a touchdown and setting a franchise record with 1,094 return yards.

He's done even better this year. He won AFC Special Teams Player of the Week honors three games ago when he had returns of 65 and 53 yards in the 24-21 win at Oakland. He went into last weekend with a 27.8 average, fifth-best in the NFL, and, on the strength of his 64-yarder against Carolina (which came despite the fact he was plagued by a bruised hip), raised that to 28.2.

I bring this all up for a reason, and that reason's name is Julian Edelman. Julian comes from even farther away - Redwood City, California. Another unheralded running quarterback, he's amassed 1,221 yards passing and 418 yards rushing (only about eighty fewer than the team's leading rusher, Eugene Jarvis) in seven games this season. It's an outside shot, but it's conceivable that, over the remaining five games, he could top 2,500 yards passing and 1,000 yards rushing. Factor in the MAC conference title game if they get there, and a bowl game if they get there, and it's almost a sure thing.

However things turn out, it's nice to be able to look forward to Saturdays again for a Kent State fan.

Coffee and Cigarettes

2006-05-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

It didn't have to end as badly as it did. I was as willing to give as he was to take, and perhaps even more eager. It's not my fault I couldn't read his mind. It's not my fault he kept it all bottled up and when he said I love you he meant I love you and not I love everything about you and want to learn more about you so that I can love that, too, and I want to be there with you so that we can have our own stories - together - to remind one another of as the years pass; inside jokes that cause our friends to roll their eyes and wish us dead; secret, hidden wants and desires that we open up to one another and though we secretly judge each other we do it anyway and we're sadder and happier and wiser and far more foolish than we've ever been in our entire lives.

That's what I meant when I said it.

I meant that I loved his eyes and his ears and his nose hairs that kept growing back even though I knew that he clipped them every morning because sometimes I was lucky enough to see the tears on the corners of his eyes, swimming about - unheralded - in his tiny crow's feet. I meant that when I smelled Nobile I thought of him every time and of how I will never be able to see someone again who wears that fragrance, because they will all be him from now on. I meant that I held a secret longing to kill the both of us, together, if that was the only way we'd live together for the rest of our lives, even though I knew that that was creepy and scary and morbid and that normal people don't think that but I'd never admit it anyway and it's not like I'd act on it, but it had its own romantic appeal and that was impossible not to admit.

No one's ever accused me of being in fine mental health.

But no. He simply meant he loved me, because that was as far as he'd thought it out, and anyway wasn't he just a normal guy trying to live a normal life and wasn't I just some other guy that, yeah, he happened to love and that was great and all but let's not get carried away with it and let it change our entire lives?

Perhaps he had a point.

But he missed out on something. It never turns out the way you planned it. It turns out better and worse and weirder and more normal and more beautiful and uglier every time, and the more you thought about it, the longer you were able to stave off disbelief and reality, the more blissful and the more sorrowful you'd become.

It didn't have to end with hatred and with anger. It could have survived with it, but it shouldn't have ended with it. And he knew it. He knew that as long as he was scared of me and the more he hated me, the more he'd eventually want me. The emotional pangs were not completely severed, and I knew and he knew that they'd eventually morph and change shape and cover every emotion, one of which was bound to be love. One of which was bound to be desire.

So he began to call me. Just chatty at first, but the hole got deeper and deeper. He knew he was caught, but he also knew how horriblewonderful being caught had been, and how it would be so much betterworse the second time, and he wanted to just be friends, or so he thought, but no one ever said that it was possible just to be my friend.

I want more. I deserve more. I demand more. I get more.

And he wanted to give it, even if he didn't know it yet. So when he called and he said, "Hey, I'm out of cigarettes, and I'm too drunk to drive and get some more," I thought how odd at the same time I thought how inevitable and I winked at the phone. He didn't see it. I waited. "Would you mind bringing some over to me?"

He didn't want cigarettes. At least not exclusively. And I, in my state of shock and confusion and sleep-deprived madness, didn't realize that cigarettes didn't mean cigarettes. It meant coffee. As in Would you like to come up for some coffee? Only I didn't realize that until later. At the time, cigarettes meant cigarettes and it meant being taken advantage of. It meant I know you don't have anything better to do than to wait on me hand and foot and come at my slightest beck and call, which was so true that I had to prove it false and I said no, I'm in for the night.

I said I'm in for the night.

And I hung up the phone and I went to sleep and I woke up this morning and I realized over a cigarette that he didn't want cigarettes. He wanted cigarettes.

He could have had as many cigarettes as he wanted, though, if it hadn't ended so badly. But my emotions are hermetically sealed and once I'm done I'm done and that's cool I don't need to bring you cigarettes because there's a new sheriff in town and anyway who in the hell do you think you are? You had a thousand chances for cigarettes, but all you could do was love me, so from now on get your own damned cigarettes.

Kryptonite Aplenty at David Mamet's "Romance"

2006-04-30T21:40:00.000-07:00

It's a deflating feeling that every child must go through - learning that their father is not, in fact, Superman. Finding that he's fallible. Seeing that he's broken. Imperfect. Between David Mamet's two recent comedies, Boston Marriage and Romance, I have learned that my father (or, in this case, David Mamet) is, in fact, not Superman.

I went into the Lyceum Theatre to see the San Diego Repertory Theatre's production of this venerable playwright's newest comedy, and I expected a good time. I hoped for greatness. For anyone who's never seen Mamet on stage, it's a must. Everyone should experience it once in their life. And I hoped to give my roommate that experience. This play, however, is not your typical Mamet.

David Mamet is at his finest - and his funniest - when he's at his most intellectual. He's the definition of an academician. I have fought tooth and nail with friend and foe alike over the artistic merit of his work. And while it wasn't a complete failure, it was clear that this play failed on more levels than it succeeded.

My friend Kari once suggested that Mamet's "shtick" is to put the audience in a situation - a world where the characters have some kind of insider lingo - drop them in right before or right after something big has happened, and not explain to the audience what's going on. To be intentionally cryptic and to pass it off as an intellectual exercise (which would explain the appeal of The Cryptogram). In Romance, nothing is in the least bit obfuscated, and the result is flat, contrived, and ultimately disappointing.

The play concerns a case against a chiropracter who assaults a chiropodist (who is inexplicably absent in said case, as is a stenographer, a jury, and any sense of decorum.) While the Jewish chiropracter is being dressed down by his Episcopalian lawyer after blowing his testimony, they become embroiled in a giant riff, dressing down each other's religion in what could have been a poitically uncorrect tour de force. Along the way, the chiropracter discovers the solution that will bring about peace in the Middle East - and how fortunate, because there are peace talks happening right across town!

Then we move to the home of the procescutor and his life partner, Bernard (or "Bunny.") They are having a spat, which is exacerbated when the defense attorney calls him at home and asks him to agree to a continuance.

Then it's back to the courtroom, where the judge takes too many prescription pills, Bunny shows up, and wackiness ensues.

The humor is meant to be offensive, but Mamet seems incapable of rising to the challenge here. Instead of continually expanding the scope or intensity of the material, he seems to treat it with kid gloves, retreading the same material over and over, often even using the same phrasing. For someone renowned for his vocabulary, it's disappointing, to say the least, to hear the same trite insults played out over and over again. He falls into the trap of non-sequiters ("I did it. I attacked the chiropodist. And... I fucked a goose") and tired plot devices - such as when Bunny walks into the courtroom and can't see because of his missing contact lens - except when the situation warrants it, such as when he's pulling items out of his bag or giving asides (part of this is in the staging, of course, but there are random eye-rollers throughout.)

The performances that director Sam Woodhouse manages to elicit from his ensemble are uneven at best. John Altieri is positively delightful as sex kitten Bernard, costumed gorgeously by Jeannie Galioto. Peter Van Norden's turn as the Judge was at times brilliant and inspired, particularly in the opening scene, where his vacant grin is the perfect touch. And Matthew Henerson gives a bold and fantastic performance as the Prosecutor.

Steve Gunderson makes the best of his role as the Defense Attorney, straight man role (in more ways than one) though it is. However, Steve Lipinsky gives a rather uninspired performance as the Defendant. Ruff Yeager as the Bailiff and Craig Huisenga as the Doctor do nothing to improve their poorly-written roles, and at times seem out of touch with the rest of the ensemble.

There are certainly funny moments throughout, but they're too few and far between to really amount to much in between vapid one-liners and sophomoric attempts at shock humor. When Mamet allows himself to rely on situational or intellectual humor (such as the Defense Attorney's "No one can draw a bunny that inexpertly"), rather than broad strokes of bad non-sequiters, he is at his best.

Sound Designer Rachel LeVine has her moments to shine, and she takes them. Scenic design by Nick Fouch and lighting by Jennifer Setlow are adequate, if not overly awe-inducing. Costume Designer Jeannie Galioto really shines in this production, however. It's almost worth the price of admission to see Bernard's and the Prosecutor's second act costumes.

Almost.

Dave Eggers deleted my blog

2006-04-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

Dave Eggers deleted my blog. Not Dave Eggers, directly. I deleted my blog because of Dave Eggers. Sort of. I was reading his Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Actually, that's not entirely true. I was reading the "Acknowledgements". I was at page fourteen and I wanted to pull my brains out, through my ear, make a noose with them, and hang myself from the eaves of Panera.

As I'm reading these "Acknowledgements," Mr. Eggers' smugness became too much to bear. His wink-and-a-grin made my body ache. I wanted to scream, "I get it, Dave, I get it! You're clever! Okay! Okay, okay, okay already!!!" And then I stopped, and I realized that that must be precisely what it's like to read my blog. Never mind the story - let's take a moment to be cute and clever and draw attention to the narrator... away from the narrative.

And I came to realize that there is but one reason that a writer does this... because they're afraid of the narrative. They're afraid that it's not good enough. That it's not well-constructed. They become "in on" the joke. They're pulling your focus away from the story to themselves. They're entertaining. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

And I decided then and there to delete the damned thing. Because my friends feel obligated to read it... okay, they actually don't. Most of my posts generated one and a half comment (the half being some quasi-witty rejoinder by me in reference to the comment.) The comments were either from Wendykat or from some random passerby who happened to stumble in from the rain after Googling some random combination of words like "tits," "cheese," and "saucy Sausalito sausages in a savory swordfish sauce." And they'd read some drivel I'd written, and they'd talk about the air conditioning in their office, or some such thing that never really bore any association with what I'd written.

It became clear to me that this is precisely what I'd do if I were ever to meet Dave Eggers. I would spend the entire time discussing air conditioners and why the perm never caught on in Sweden.

It's too much to inflict on an unwary, unsuspecting public. So I no longer will.

adopt your own virtual pet!

I Am Somewhere In The World

2006-04-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

In most of the world, it is already my birthday.

In parts of the world, people are celebrating right now. They are drinking. They are being jovial. Not because it's my birthday, but because there is always someone in the world, somewhere, celebrating. Drinking. Being jovial.

I do not have plans for my birthday. I tried to make plans with someone, but that someone told me that I have "too many friends" to not have anyone else to spend my birthday with.

I do not know who these friends are of whom this person speaks, but I have to admit. It was quite a classy blowoff.

A Scene. With apologies to Harold Pinter.

2006-04-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

A: Pray with me.

B: I can't.

A: I know, but I wish you would.

B: I wish I could.

A: But you can't.

B: I just... no.

A: No.

B: Maybe another time.

A: It's worth it.

B: Is it?

A: Maybe. Probably. If you believe.

B: What was that pasta you made the other night?

A: That... the pasta?

B: That you made. It was terrible.

A: Was it?

B: It was some kind of...

A: There was spinach.

B: It was like you were cooking for dogs.

A: Spinach ricotti. Or linguine.

B: And it tasted bad.

A: I am. Cooking for dogs.

B: We're not dogs.

A: But you won't pray.

B: I told you...

A: I know, but I wish you'd change your mind.

B: I wish you were a better cook.

A: I'll try. Will you try?

B: My arms.

A: I'll try that, too. Just wait a minute.

B: I'm not going anywhere.

A: Spinach fettucini.

B: It was terrible.

A: Do you think...

B: I barely touched it.

A: How about the men?

B: The men? The men have no choice.

A: Choices. We have choices.

B: Free will.

A: Free will. You're god damned right.

B: But the dogs...

A: They'll eat it.

B: Do you think so?

A: What choice do they have?

B: It's got to be better.

A: I'll try. I will; I'll try.

B: It won't help.

A: No, probably not.

B: Good night.

A: Is it? Oh.

B: Yeah.

A: I didn't mean to... good night.

B: No, it's okay.

A: If you get a chance...

B: What.

A: Right.

B: Exactly.

A: Right.

I Don't Care For This Show

2006-04-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

It's like a game show, almost. Like a sick, fucked-up, really dumb game show.

The Rules:

1. Move to a city where you know nobody. Nobody.
2. Move in with a couple.
3. Do not own a car. Rely on said roommates for all travel purposes.
3a. Make sure said roommates do not do much traveling, and are less likely to do so when it is you who wants to do said taveling.
4. You have six months to get to know people, with no car, and while working a forty-five hour week.
5. One day, have the roommates announce that they are moving out, and that you will not be moving out with either one of them.
BYRULE A: It is vitally important that you not know that, during this time, you should be looking for potential roommates. In fact, it is preferable if you are led to believe that you will in fact be moving out with one of your current roommates.

But it's no game show. It's my life. I've now got twenty-five days to find a place to live or be homeless. Everyone says that every homeless person has a story, and I suspect that many of their stories may well start off this way.

I've got a few options to consider:

1. Move back to Ohio, tail between my legs.
2. Just make the move to L.A. already.
3. Save up just enough to make it to Sydney and never look back.
4. Find a roommate. Right fucking now.

So I've opted for #4, with #2 a distant possibility. I've spent approximately, on average, seven out of each of the last twenty-four hours searching for a roommate. It's like trying to become a Mason. There's always someone who "has a friend who might be looking for a roommate." There's someone who knows someone who just bought a townhouse in North Park.

I would kill to live in a townhouse in North Park.

There's the odd Internet site where you blindly email people who say that they have rooms to rent, and you never hear back from them. It's like Internet dating, but with real-life consequences. It's not just humiliating when your witty email goes unanswered; it's a potential life-threatening issue.

So you keep looking. You track people down. You make long-distance calls. You leave prattling voicemails. You worry. You worry a lot.

And the prize, if you're a lucky winner, is the chance to spend rent money on some overpriced hovel downtown. No, sir, I don't care for this game show one bit. Not one bit.

erotic haiku

2006-04-04T20:50:00.000-07:00

by EcamirG

i see you're naked
could you grab me that washcloth?
i'm too short to reach

I'm not saying I'm overqualified, but...

2006-04-01T21:43:00.000-08:00

It's a little disheartening when you send out a memo with a word as simple as dichotomy in it and your supervisor comes to your desk to ask you what it means.

Directorial Styles

2006-04-01T09:34:00.000-08:00

I recently had a discussion with some friends - actors and directors alike - about their preferred methods of working. Each one, naturally, had their own ideas. For example, I try to cast actors who listen. By that, I don't mean that they listen to me. I mean that they listen to the words of the script. That they listen to themselves. That they listen to the moment. That they listen to the other actor in the scene.

I also prefer that an actor make every scene about someone or something else - ideall, about the other actor in the scene. This is where "emotional events" take place - not internally, but in trying to affect someone else.

There's a scene in Pulp Fiction after Harvey Keitel has bitched out John Travolta, and Travolta says to Samuel L. Jackson, "Don't give me that look." I think it's one of the most beautiful moments in all of film, and largely because of the way it was staged. It was a long shot, where most directors would likely have inserted Jules giving Vincent "a look." Tarantino doesn't do this, and yet... there's an emotional event there. I think it's a prime example of actors engaging with each other.

I'm not a very technical-minded filmmaker. My philosophy is this: I can throw the camera on a table in the corner and, as long as I'm getting engagement from my actors, people will watch the movie. As OWC reminded me last night, the pivotal scene in the original The Manchurian Candidate is out of focus. No one cares - the performances still come through.

I love actors who ask questions, but more importantly, I love it when they can turn the answers into something playable; something personal. It's fun to play with psychologies and backstories and yadda yadda yadda, but if it doesn't play, it doesn't play.

I also like people who are flexible. I don't ever want to inflict my viewpoint onto an actor, but I do want them to be open to hear me out and consider things. Often, we am able to find a third choice - some sort of middle ground between the actor's choice and my own - that works splendidly and makes everyone happy. But I need actors who are willing to talk and to listen in order to do that, because that's how the juices get flowing.

Most importantly - and this likely owes to my theatre background - I love rehearsing. I actually love the process more than the product. If I could endlessly rehearse with no opening curtain... no shoot date... I would. Because I love actors; I love working with them to find all these amazing little moments in a script that most people wouldn't be able to sit through and read... but once it becomes associated with these performances - with these nuances - people fall in love with it. I love the idea of falling in love.

I am a big admirer of Judith Weston, who wrote some terrific books called Directing Actors and The Film Director's Intuition. In the latter, she chronicles some directors' working styles. I, personally, find it fascinating how many wildly different ways there can be to get the same basic end result:

Steven Soderbergh (interviewed after Out of Sight): "I try not to ask actors how they like to work, I try to find out, and that's where rehearsals come in. I try to have a week to ten days of rehearsals, which is really for me, not for them. It's for me to watch them, and get a sense of how they like to be treated, how to communicate with them so that I don't have to figure it out on the set, where I'm not as patient. All the actors are different so you have to treat them accordingly."

John Boorman usually rehearses three weeks, in the afternoon, then he has mornings for the other preparations for the movie. After rehearsal he does a final draft of the script. He only shoots what is in the shot, has a very low film ratio, and uses no improvisation on the set.

An observer on the set of The Thin Red Line reported that Terrance Malick limits himself to such comments as, "Take a pause," "Look over at the river," and "Let'd do another one." He was also described as loving "scenes going wrong." He lets actors do take after take until their own loss of control becomes the character's.

Steven Spielberg begins rehearsal on the set by telling actors just to perform the scene any way they want.

A screenwriter described Stephen Frears' method thus: First, he hashes out, with the writer and producer, in excrutiating detail, every nuance of the script. Then, "He walks on the set and says to the actors, 'How do you want to do this?' And the actors come up with all sorts of ideas. He vetoes some, accepts some, and then turns to the cameraman and says, 'Can we accommodate this? Great, let's go.'"

Woody Allen: "All I ask for in an actor is believability. So all I say to them on the set is, 'talk faster,' 'do less,' or 'try to be more believable.'"

Philip Kaufman shot Quills in sequence.

Michael Mann... writes "phantom dialogue" for the actors to use as subtext during rehearsal.

Gina Prince-Bythewood:

She's a Little Bit Country, He's a Little Bit of a Dick

2006-03-28T06:53:00.000-08:00

Looking back, if I had to do it all over again knowing what I know now, I would have handled it differently. But, given the circumstances, you can hardly blame me. After all, I was only twenty-one. Jesus, was I ever twenty-one?

Andy Webber was turning fifty and the West End was hopping. Never has there been that much celebration of mediocrity. At least the George W. Bush victory party in 2004 was celebrating ineptitude. To me, that seems a lot more apt. If you can be completely and horribly inept for four years and get away with it, you can party.

Being mediocre for fifty doesn't seem that great an accomplishment.

But I digress.

Of all the musical directors in all of the land, they chose about fifteen to work on the Royal Albert Hall Celebration of Andub. One of them was a young nobody from Ohio who had only one New York credit to his resume. He could hardly even be called an up-and-comer. He... was me.

I'd sent in my resume and some copies of my work, and someone somewhere loved them. They called me, and we chatted and chatted and chatted and they asked me, "What do you think of Lord Lloyd Webber's music?"

I paused. "I think it's very pretty," I said, because I do. As long as they kept asking about his music, and not about his shows or about the way he worked his music into said shows, I was safe. And they never did.

A few weeks later, I got a call back. "This is Michael Reed, the music supervisor for the Webber Celebration. We'd like for you to be a part of it."

So that was how I - a young American college student from the Midwest who hadn't been to Europe since he was nine months old and who had never even seen an Andrew Lloyd Webbe show in person - became one of the assistant musical directors for one of the biggest shows in the history of London theatre.

They sent me the lead sheets ahead of time, and I learned that I would be heading up "Close Every Door" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and assisting on "No Matter What" from Whistle Down The Wind. The performers? Donny Osmond and Boyzone, respectively.

I didn't know any better. When I walked into rehearsal with Mr. Osmond, I'd done all of the research I'd have done for any other gig. I had a sound in mind. I knew what I wanted. And I began to work with him. He stopped, midway through my speech on the second line.

"What's the matter?"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to explain how I want it to sound."

"How you want it to sound? Look, I don't know if you know this, but I've been doing this number to standing ovations in Toronto eight times a week."

I bit my tongue. I actually hadn't known. I wasn't even all that heavily into theatre at the time, except as a composer. I didn't keep up with the goings-on. I didn't pay much attention. I'd written a few shows, but the only ones I knew tended to be the old warhorses on which I'd worked. The fifties-style book shows.

I hadn't done a lot of theatre at the time. I'd done a Music Man. A South Pacific. A How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, a Guys and Dolls. A My Fair Lady. It was an easy way to pay the bills. I was quite good at it. Really, not knowing what the numbers were "supposed" to sound like (and having some really great opportunities afforded by Tams Witmark and Music Theatre International to open the scores up, reorchestrate them, rearrange them, and make them my own) gave me something of an edge. I could take shows and revolutionize the way that they sounded - simply because I didn't know any better.

"I understand, but that's in the context of a show. This is a stand-alone number."

"It doesn't matter! I'm not changing it."

"With all due respect, Mr. Osmond, they hired me for my ear. I'm the musical director."

"I'm not changing a thing."

His voice started to tremble, and he looked away.

"This is no reason to cry, Mr. Osmond. I'm only trying to help you look and sound your very best."

"I'm not crying!" he lashed out. Tears were now visible. He gathered up his things and stormed out. I saw him, through the door, talking animatedly to one of the producers.

Then, he came back in with Michael Reed in tow. "Tell him!"

Michael looked at me. "I hear there's some sort of misunderstanding."

"No misunderstanding. I'm trying to work. He seems to have run off."

My rehearsal pianist snickered. That hadn't helped matters, really. Michael looked at Mr. Osmond. "Donny, baby, what's the matter?"

"He wants me to change it! To change it all!"

"I don't know that I want you to change anything. I'm trying to work. To get your input. But you steadfastly refuse to even listen to me."

"Look," he said, putting his face inches from my own. There were streaks in his makeup. Christ, he really had been crying, I thought. Then, Christ, he's wearing makeup to a rehearsal. "People are going to watch this - to pay for this - because it's Donny Osmond singing. Not because it's you music directing."

"I thought they were going to pay for this because it was Andrew Lloyd Webber's birthday?"

Another laugh from the rehearsal pianist. Thanks and all, but not now, kid.

"Regardless, no one is paying because it's you on the podium."

Then Michael Reed saved me with two words: "Not yet."

Thanks, pal.

Don't mention it, kid.

We gave Mr. Osmond a few minutes to compose himself while Michael pulled me aside. "Listen, just do it his way. Pick another battle, another day. This is good enough resume material without it coming out your way. Think about it."

So I did. And I capitulated.

"Mr. Osmond, would you mind taking the number from the top, just with the pianist?"

"No, that'll be fine."

And it was. It got polite applause and melded in with the rest of the numbers in the show. And I put it on my resume and I got some pretty sweet work out of it and that was the end of that.

But that night, I overheard Andy Webber ask Michael Reed if he'd noticed that Mr. Osmond's makeup was streaky, "as if he's been crying." Michael Reed caught my eye and it was all either of us could do to not to burst into laughter on the spot.

Had To Be A Big Shot Last Night

2006-03-22T18:45:00.000-08:00

This story reminds me of the time I lost a job because my penis was too big.

Oh, and because I'd broken my wrist and couldn't effectively play piano.

Mostly the penis thing, though.

A Poem

2006-03-19T11:20:00.000-08:00

I hate when you tell me you love me
And you think that you mean it,
But I know that you don't.
So I wonder how to break it to you,
Tell you all the things
That you're bound to find out
If you watch me long enough.
To save you the pain and aggravation
You're destined to confront
When the truth comes out,
Which it always does.
I drove by your house last night
And I wanted to stop and knock,
But I always think that it's creepy
When I do that,
So I just kept driving
And I stopped at the market
And bought a pack of cigarettes,
Which I smoked on the way home.
I looked at my phone
And I willed it to ring,
But it didn't,
And I hate to make the next move
Because I never know how.
I rush things.
I do it all wrong,
And I don't want to fuck this up
Because I probably love you,
But I know that I shouldn't say that yet
Because I never say it right,
But it's true,
And when it's true,
You have to say it right,
Or it's too much to bear.
So I turned off the phone
And put in a documentary
On Troy Duffy
Called "Overnight."
It's a cautionary tale,
And it helped me escape;
Helped me make it through the night
Without thinking of you once.
Which is a feat of which I'm proud,
Because I usually think of you
Every ten minutes
And remind myself
That you don't love me.
Not the way you think you do.
And you probably never will.
So it's only a matter of time
Before you break my fuckin' heart,
So I thought you should know
That I wish I could hate you.

Still Waiting

2006-03-14T20:37:00.000-08:00

I've been done for some time now, but I don't want to go. I don't want to go on principle alone. I've been here for twenty minutes. Twenty short minutes.

But there's this guy... he's got something. Something wrong with him. Some mental deficiency. He's "not right in the head," as my grandmother would say. Which is fine. But on top of that, he's a fucking douchebag. We have this computer room at our apartment complex. "Business center," they call it, but it's not much of a business center because the printer is always busted and only one of the two computers gets Internet access.

Which is where said douchebag enters the picture.

This guy likes to come in and announce that he's ready to use the computer. As if I'm supposed to stop what I'm doing simply because he has arrived. He sits down at the other computer - the one that does nothing - and makes noises. Slams things. Groans. Gets up, leaves, and comes back within twenty seconds. I've timed him.

He loudly proclaims that he's, "still waiting for (his) turn" every two or three minutes. I hate him. On principle alone, I stay for thirty... forty minutes sometimes. Just because I can. Because I've never seen him give up the computer for anyone. Because if you can't wait ten minutes while someone is doing something important before you hop on and play games online, then fuck you.

That's what he does. Plays games online.

"Still waiting."

"I bet."

I usually say nothing, but sometimes I'm compelled. I often sit, silent, and do what I have to do. Fuck him.

Oh look... I think I'll go check my email again. Maybe I got something important.

From Across The Room

2006-03-13T20:08:00.000-08:00

Alex had spotted her immediately, and never fully let her leave his sight the entire evening. He stayed close enough to be overheard in his witty, intelligent banter, but he never introduced himself. He couldn't. She was too good for him. He knew it, and if she was anything like all the ones before her, she knew it, too.

She was exactly the type of girl with whom he was destined to fall in love - she was young and beautiful with intelligence, sophistication, a great sense of humor, and a laugh that went on for days. She was also exactly the type of girl who would never want anything to do with him.

And that's why it was so surprising later, when she introduced herself to him. "Hi, I'm Toni." He smiled, not quite sure that it looked like a smile. He looked around nervously. The backs of his ears got sweaty. His mouth went dry. He suddenly became very, very aware of everything about his body. His balding hair. His too-shiny forehead. Jesus Christ, why didn't I use that facial cleanser today? His large frame. He tried to pretend that he wasn't that fat, but it got brought up too many times in too subtle a way to not be true. He was enormous; he knew it. Why didn't I start going to the gym when I said I would? I'm fucking hideous. Look at me!

"I'm Alex."

And something amazing happened. She talked to him. She listened to him. She seemed genuinely curious in him - in a room full of interesting, attractive people, this goddess had for some reason chosen him! He found himself telling the same witty stories in the same clever way that he had a hundred times before, but there was something different. She was paying attention. It was intense.

She laughed at the funny bits. She pouted at the angry bits. She touched his arm at the sad bits. She got it. There was a connection. He began to panic. He began to plan their life together, without meaning to. Finally, here was someone who truly understood him. Someone who had every right not to be attracted to him, but who had decided to go ahead and do it, anyway. And he was grateful. Every moment of their lives together, he would show her his gratitude.

He knew what he was doing as he was doing it. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn't stop himself. The more conscious he became about it, the more detail he began to put into it. On Wednesdays, he'd buy her roses. On Thursdays, he'd write her sonnets. He'd write a role for her into his next screenplay. Hell, I'll write my next screenplay for her. He became more and more aware that all he had going for him was his wit; his talent. He had to make it work. He had to use it for all it was worth before she caught on that she wasn't in the least bit attracted to him.

As his mind raced, it became clearer and clearer that she was interested. She kept coming back to him through the evening. Checking in. He'd spy her across the room talking to some other boy and he'd feel the pain of rejection, ripping his heart in two and stomping on it. Then, fifteen minutes later, there she'd be.

As the party began to wrap up, she cozied up to him. "You interest me," she purred to him. "I want to know more about you. Where did you come from? Who are you, really?"

And he answered her, as honestly as he knew how. Which was painfully honest. She drank it in. He began to forget, talking to her, how ugly he was. How bald he was. How fat. He began to think that this thing may just happen. She told him she loved him. "You do?" he asked, caught offguard. "What do you love about me?"

"I love your mind. I love that when you talk to me, you really talk to me. I love that you make me laugh. I love that you're honest." She leaned in closer. "I love everything about you. I love that there's so much more to learn about you. I love the idea of learning it."

When they went home that night, they separated at the parking lot, but not without a dozen or so goodnight kisses and a promise to get together real soon. He went to bed that night and couldn't believe himself. He nearly cried at his good fortune. He laid in his bed and said out loud, "Maybe I won't die alone," and it felt good to think it after the hundreds of nights where he was sure that he would.

He tossed and turned all night, imagining their next encounter. He played it in his mind a thousand times, and it always ended the same - with her in his arms.

The next morning, he woke and called his friend George. "George! I'm glad I went to your party last night. Thank you so much."

"You're welcome. I'm glad you came, too. What's up?"

"George, I think I'm in love."

"Oh yeah? I thought my ficus looked a little wilted after you left."

Now he remembered why he didn't hang out with George all that often.

"No, with a girl."

"Who is she?"

"I met her at your party last night."

"Oh? Who?"

"Her name is Toni."

There was a pause. "Toni?"

Alex was afraid to continue the conversation. He could see its fiery descent laid out in front of him, but he had to know. He had to ask. "What's the matter, George?"

"Toni's... well, she's in a relationship, Alex. I mean, she's got a boyfriend. Great guy, really. Smart, funny, talented. Good looking guy, too."

Fuck, Alex thought. Smart, funny, and talented were his. It was what was supposed to make him more attractive as he got older and the pretty people's looks began to fade. It was supposed to make him relevant. But here was someone who had all of that and the looks. It pissed him off. He wanted to scream.

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, I'm sure. In fact, they're getting married soon. Two weeks. I'm in the wedding party."

Alex's stomach tightened. He swallowed back the bile. He wanted to drop the phone and scream. He wanted to call George a liar, but he didn't. Because George Spanos might be a lot of things, but he was certainly no liar, and Alex knew it.

He hung up the phone and dialed Toni's number. A man answered, and Alex knew it was him. He sounded so fortunate. You can hear it in a man's voice when he's dating the perfect woman. Even when he's down, he's never too down. Even when he's angry, he's got a twinge of calmness. There's a quality to his voice. A quality that says that everything is okay, because when I go home tonight to the woman I love, it'll be her.

Alex knew the sound. He let the phone drop to its cradle, and he sat down on the chair behind him. He allowed himself to slide into the chair. His extra weight carried him deeper into the cushion. He closed his eyes and let the sun fall without turning on any light. He stared at the wall and he knew. He knew that no one would ever love him, and that even if someone did, it would never be her. And to have that brief taste made things worse, really, because no one else would ever compare.

She'd ruined him with whatever game she'd been playing. He knew it. He cursed himself for falling for it, but he knew all the while that it was no game. That she'd meant every word. Somehow, though, that only made it worse. As the sun settled below the horizon, he reached into his pocket, drew out a cigarette, and lit it. He sat in silence in the room - the only light coming from the tip of the cigarette - and he cried.

Knife Fight

2006-03-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

It's an age old question: Who wins in a knife fight between a finger and, well, a knife?

The Competitors:

Click on the picture for the solution. Perhaps not for the faint of heart. Or for those who like a lot of "light" in their pictures.

Office Romance Gets Out of Hand

2006-03-03T08:55:00.000-08:00

Hey Jewel,

This is yet another P.O. that you've sent and resent to Magnaflow. I talked to Jean, and she couldn't find it. She mentioned that, for whatever reason, they've been having trouble getting some of our batches. And whatever's causing that seems to be occurring whenever you resend them.

Could you resend that and follow-up to make sure that she receives it and it gets into the system? Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

PO Number: 298023
Quantity: 1
Part Number: 35176
Item: Magnaflow Round Straight Exhaust Tip

Regards,

EcamirG

---

EcamirG, Jean has confirmed this now. Thanks.

---

Awesome. Perfect. What are you doing the rest of your life? I'm free.

EcamirG
---

Yea....it'll be perfect. We'll get married and get a house and have kids and....oh wait. Damn. Well, it was almost a perfect idea.

---

I was thinking we could just skip ahead to the part where we're a bitter old couple who don't get along and constantly fight. And I could wear Bermuda shorts and socks with sandals and sit in a lawn chair in a wading pool in our driveway with a garden hose and I could throw rocks and insults at the neighborhood children. Meanwhile, you'd be the old crone that they think is a witch and they throw rocks through our windows and call you names and you peek through the blinds and call the cops on them when they're misbehaving or skipping school and finally, one fateful night in late October, the neighborhood children could rise up as one against us and in a true display of mob mentality, things will get out of control and escalate quickly until they burn our house down with us inside of it.

And later, as they live their lives, this horrible truth from their childhoods will haunt them all, and they'll live their lives secluded from the world. Shut out even from themselves. Unable to face what they have done, they'll become more and more distant from the world until they hole themselves up in a hotel room with nothing but a loaded handgun and a bottle of bourbon - a bad combination under the best of circumstances. And they'll drink and make long distance calls and end their lives as they lived them - alone and unloved; haunted by this horrible reality of their youths.

Anyway, I was just thinking we could skip ahead to that part.

EcamirG
---

I've always wanted to ruin the life of at least one child. I just thought it would be one of my own.

---

You'll have to hurry to catch up with me. I've been ruining children's lives since the summer of '93.

EcamirG

Interview

2006-02-27T12:54:00.000-08:00

You write a lot about friends. I write a lot about friends because they fascinate me. I don't have any. Not any good friends.

What, to you, is a good friend? I try to be a good friend. I try to pay attention - to give my friends something so that they don't have to ask for it. To me, that's a good friend. I have friends - I have people who will give me what I ask for. That's easy. But to intuit what it is that someone needs - because I don't like asking - that's tough. That takes selflessness. That takes love.

Do you think that no one loves you, then? Yeah. I mean, it's hard for me to imagine otherwise.

You write a lot of suicidal characters. Is this related? I don't know if that's fair. I guess. I guess Andrew is suicidal in "Working Title." Well, he's not, but he does commit suicide. But he's dying. And Christie in "The Night Julie Taymor Cried." Because she hits on it - no one really loves her. Not really. I spend - okay, this is a scary fact that not many people know about me - I spend maybe forty minutes of every waking hour thinking about how to kill myself in a way that no one I care about has to walk in on my body or to have to clean up the mess. That would be horrible. I'd rather not impact their lives with my death.

That's disturbing. I don't think it is. I mean... I don't think about it when I'm around people. Even if I don't like them, or if we're fighting. As long as I'm engaged with them. If I'm in a room of people, but really alone, I think about it. And I've come up with some great ways...

Like Christine's monologue? The highway rest area. Yes. Of course, I've never done it, because I'm not courageous enough. Which makes me hate myself more, knowing that I can't do it. Anyway, that's one reason I don't drink.

Because you'd kill yourself? Maybe. Yes, probably I would. At some point, if I drank enough, I'd kill myself.

Getting back to the themes of your writing. I wasn't aware that I had any.

There is a melancholy to it, certainly. A sense of needing to escape. To escape from societal concerns.

From labels, mostly. Definitely. I don't like them. I don't like "gay" or "straight." I'm neither. But I'm definitely not bisexual, either. White, black. Everyone's biracial. At least. Religionist. Male, female. It just leads to this... this formulaic bullshit. You are this, so you do this. I can't be bothered, you know? I'd rather do what I do because I'm me, not because "guys do this." Even if it's true, where does it get you?

You recently moved to San Diego. I did.

Are you happy about the move? Not with the move. I'm unhappy, sure. It's just me - this greater isolation. I'm just as unloved as I was in Ohio, or in New York, or in Sydney, but I don't know anyone here. I don't have the - the temporary distractions. The routine. That false sense of belonging to something that I had before. I feel like a... the few times I'm actually hanging out with someone - usually one of my roommates - I feel like such a burden. Like there's something they'd rather be doing. Someone they'd rather be with.

So you're depressed. I don't think I am. I know it sounds like that, but no. I don't think I am. I mean, I'm happy, I guess. It is what it is, and I don't know what else to expect. There's not this magical future where people will suddenly like me. Where they'll love me. I know that much. This is the life I'm living - the life I've lived - and I don't see it changing. It hasn't yet, you know? It's me. Obviously, it's me.

And so you keep writing. And so I keep writing. And I guess I use it - how could I not? And maybe someone reads it and they know that they're not alone. It's cheesy, but it's how I feel when I read Augusten Burroughs or Michael Chabon - like here's someone who gets it, and we'll never meet, but at least it gives me some vague sense of hope. It gives me a fighting chance. And I'm not the only one who's alone and disconnected and unloved. I know that. Maybe someone else will read me and they'll know that they're not alone being alone.

And maybe they'll love you. Maybe they'll love my writing. But that - it doesn't get you through the day. When you put the book down, the loneliness sets back in. It's not permanent. I wish it was, but it's not. It's not permanent.

There is a large degree of Chekhov in your writing, no? I think Chekhov is fair. The one I get more often is Pinter, and I don't really think that that's fair. To Pinter, I mean. My writing is so rhythmic and so... silent... that people immediately say, "Pinter." Or "Mamet." Which is fine - they're definitely influences of mine. But I don't think that, stylistically, we're very similar in our writing. Certainly not in our subject matter.

Who else influences you? Neil Simon. People think that that's so odd, but it's true. I think Neil Simon is so very underrated as a playwright. His writing is gorgeous, though. I think Tennessee Williams, too.

Really? That's surprising. He's a strong influence, whether or not it shows in my writing. "Streetcar Named Desire" is the reason I write. It was the play I read that made me think, "God, I wish I could do that."

And do you feel that you have? No. I don't think it's in me. I don't think anyone could. That play is on a different level as far as I'm concerned. It's sublime.

And that's as good a note as any on which to end this interview. Thank you so much for your time. The pleasure's all mine. I still get giddy when someone treats me like a "real" writer. Thank you.

Bleed Your Way To The Top

2006-02-24T19:30:00.000-08:00

I've found out the key to success in corporate America: You must maim yourself in a grisly, horrifying manner. Leastwise, it seems to have worked for me. In a way, at least.

See, last night while setting up a screening of all of the Cold Hearted auditionees so that Mac and PH and I could talk about them and whittle them down to ten for callbacks, I had to open up an S-Video cable. Being an electronics component, said cable came in the same impregnable packaging that all electronics equipment seems to come in these days. In fact, the more innocuous the component, the more fierce this fortress of plastic seems to become.

There didn't seem to be a scissor nearby except in OWC's and The Scientist's room. And, since The Scientist was napping and I didn't want to wake her, I decided I'd grab a knife to free the S-Video cable from its tenacious stronghold. You see where this is going, I think.

Did I mention that OWC used to sell Cutco cutlery, and that he has a lot of said Cutco cutlery laying about the kitchen drawers? He did. He does. No, EcamirG. We see where this is going, and we refuse to believe that you're this dumb.

I am.

So I'm swiping the knife across the plastic. It takes hold, and it fights a valiant fight. They rumble, and the knife gets pushed aside by the Badass Plastic. And, fearing to ever show its face again, it heads for someplace to hide from the world. Someplace like, say, my left index finger.

Only my left index finger isn't such a great storage place for a knife of this particular caliber. For, you see, it doesn't open. It's a finger. Well, the knife had something to say about that, as well. "Who says that fingers can't open?" said the knife. And, being a very proactive knife, it proceeded to make my finger do exactly that.

To make a long stort short, I sliced off the tip of my left index finger. I woke up The Scientist to ask for a Band-Aid. This was about a pint of blood before I realized that I would have to go to the Emergency Room. With no tip on my finger, it soon became clear that there was nothing really keeping the rest of my body inside. The Scientist drove me to the hospital. We drove past the Clergy Parking, the Doctor Parking, the MRI Patient Parking, and the Hospital Staff Parking to the Emergency Room Patient Parking, conveniently located just a quarter of a mile from the Emergency Room itself.

Why the fuck do the clergy get to park so close? It's not like they're the ones dying.

Twenty minutes later, triage. I was really bleeding. They gave me some new gauze. I bled through it in seventeen seconds flat. They sent me back out to the sickening waiting room. Ten minutes later, registration. Give us your money, please.

It was a small waiting room, and it was packed to the rafters. I looked around. A lot of sick people. No one who'd had to ask for new bandages four times, though. No one except me, that is. But I'll be damned if they didn't take every last one of them before me. While I was bleeding all over the waiting room - ruining every piece of gauze in the hospital - they took the coughers. They took the moaners. They took the head traumas. They took the twisted ankles.

They took everyone but the creepy guy who was there - sans insurance, mind you - over an ingrown hair. I kid you not. He was at the emergency room over an ingrown hair. With no insurance.

"If you want, I'll drop my pants and show you," he actually said to the nurse.

Two hours later, I was in. They'd been saving the cute doctor for me, at least. A bit Jewish, a bit Italian, a little scruffy, a little shy. Nice choice, Sharp Memorial. Touche. He had to numb my finger four times. He thought the local had worked after two. I disagreed with him. He got me a third time. "How does it feel now?"

"Warm."

"Warm?"

"And it's throbbing."

"It shouldn't be."

"Perhaps not, but it is."

He looked at me with some skepticism. Because, really, who wouldn't lie to get that great local anesthesia? Boy howdy, that's the real reason me - the pianist - lopped off my finger. For the local anesthesia.

Finally, he seemed to come around. He jabbed me again. This time it took. Three hours later, I was off to Rite Aid for Vicodin (one of the more pointless painkillers in the world.) Then it was home for a few hours' sleep.

So today, as I'm sporting my big white bandage, everyone kept asking me about it. The COO of the company came over and asked about it. I told him, and he started telling me about the time his brother was in the hospital, and he was so good that their dad bought them each a gift - a toy car for the brother, a pocketknife for the COO. Then, less than an hour after leaving the hospital, the COO had sliced a big gash from his thigh, and they were back at the hospital.

Good times.

Anyway, so our Content Manager comes over to talk to the COO, and while they're talking, one of our CSRs and our Supervisor are having a grammatical dilemma. So they say, "Let's ask the writer." The Content Manager, thinking that they meant him, turned around. They asked me. I answered them. He disagreed with my answer. I explained the answer to him. He finally agreed that I was right.

Then he said, "So you're a writer? What do you write?"

I told him. Short stories, screenplays, plays, some copy, some grants. He seemed very interested, and mentioned that he'd just hired one copywriter and might be looking for another very soon. We discussed some details, and he seemed really impressed, and said conspiratorially, "Don't tell anyone I want to steal you, but I want to steal you."

It would sure be a hell of a promotion. More money. Lots more money, I think. Less work. Well, less at a time, anyway. An office. Sort of. I'd have to share it with three or four other guys, but it beats a cubicle in a noisy call center. It sure does.

I know nothing will probably come of it, but it's nice to think that it might. That someone in Southern California might stay true to their word and not just say something because it seemed like the thing to say.

At any rate, it'd be a hell of a story to tell. "How'd you get your job?" "I cut off my fingertip."

Very Van Gogh.

(As an aside, I ordered The Scientist flowers as a Thank You for taking me to the E.R. She got flowers, and I got nothing. That's what I've gotten. Not sympathy. Not a card. Not even a god damned hug from anyone. No pity cuddles. No kiss on the cheek. Where the fuck is the sympathy in Southern California?)

(Also, please pardon my shit typing. I have actually become pretty good at nine-fingered typing, but it's not as fast as I'd like, and there are still mistakes to be had. But by the time I'm done, it's taken far too long to go back and proof. Incidentally, the number one mistake typists make when they lose their left index finger? In my brief but prolific career, it is accidentally substituting x for c.)

Politicking The Old-Fashioned Way

2006-02-11T08:48:00.000-08:00

Let's politic a little, shall we?

Last week, while listening to Jimmy Carter speak at Coretta Scott King's funeral, I turned to my roommate, OWC. "Watch," I said. "They're going to bitch that he's politicizing Coretta Scott King's funeral. And when they do, I'm going to laugh. And I'm going to point. That annoying kind of pointing where you put your finger a half inch away from their eye and they get all hot and a little sweaty and they turn red with embarrassment and they can't really think straight, so they do the first animalistic, impulsive thing that comes to mind and they swat your finger away. Then they get all huffy and mad - only they're not really mad. They're shamed, because you've got them dead to rights."

Imagine. Politicizing the funeral of someone so meek and apolitical as Coretta Scott King. It's like making Joe Montana's funeral all about football. How dare they? It's better to remember the completely benign things that she did, and completely ignore everything she stood for. That's how I'd want to go out.

No, it's better to politicize the deaths of American soldiers. Twenty-year-olds who stand for relatively little. Coretta Scott King? Shameful, politicizing her death. How dare they?

Only then, they did. They started kvetching about it. OWC called me. "All day," he said. "All day, they've been complaining about it." And you can't help but roll your eyes and laugh. Lovable little dumbasses. I used to be you - you can't fool me.

While I'm on the subject, here's the thing that concerns me about political parties: everything. The same people who immediately were up in arms over Bill Clinton lying under oath a few short years ago are now completely fine with a president who is so out of tune with the laws of the United States that he doesn't consider a warrant necessary for wiretapping. An administration so backwards that they are comparing years of illegal surveillance to a probable cause search-and-seizure.

If you will, Mr. Alberto Gonzelez, do the honors:

"During his remarks in a packed law school lecture room at Georgetown, the attorney general also said the legal standard the administration uses in deciding whether to carry out surveillance on people with suspected al-Qaida ties is equivalent to the standard required for complying with the Fourth Amendment, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures.

The reasonable basis standard, said Gonzales, 'is essentially the same as the traditional Fourth Amendment probable cause standard.'"

First you've got Michael Hayden saying that the standard under the Fourth Amendment is "reasonableness" and not "probable cause." Next, add Gonzalez trying to help a brother out with this. Naturally, when they say "reasonableness," they mean "reasonable," which means "reasonable basis," which means "probable cause," which means... oh shit, wait, that's the standard for getting a warrant.

They can't even get their lies straight anymore. Why the fuck aren't more people completely God damned pissed off about this??? What if they found out that they were on the list? Would that do it? Would that finally get people up in arms? "Sorry, we were spying on your book club, because we thought it might have ties to Al Qaeda." "Oh, that's okay. No harm, no foul. Just kidding about that sex-with-my-neighbor's-daughter thing last week, though. Ha ha, you know. Jokes. I would never... I mean, she's seventeen! Just a kid still! Ha ha. You understand."

It really begins to show how fucking braindead some people are. It's become like some bad zombie movie, these people. Bush say is good... Is good... It's as though they're too proud to turn away now. It's like getting on the wrong train. The realization begins to settle on you. You notice little things amiss. Wrong neighborhoods. You begin to panic. Most people would get off and figure out a way to get things right. Some people - and these are the people that the super-partisans remind me of these days - just stay on the train, because to get off would just prove that they'd made a mistake, and they're too proud to admit that. So they end up at some remote station in the middle of the High Desert - miles away from their destination. All for pride's sake.

They stand for nothing. When I was president of the Kent State College Republicans, we were against Big Government. A few short years later, they love Big Government. Oh, spying on American citizens without warrants? Awesome!! Oh, Department of Homeland Security? Bitching!!

We stood for fiscal conservatism - keeping a little in the bank to draw on down the road when times is tough. Now? Hell's Bells, why didn't anyone think of this tax-cut-and-spend policy sooner?? Now we can have all of our money and the government can spend exorbitantly!!

Maybe in a month or two they'll be pro-abortion, anti-religion, and pro-gun control. And you know what? These fuckasses will go right along with them. It seems as though they're willing to change their entire world view simply because the Administration asks them to. It's fucking sad - and don't you Democrats start thinking you're much better. Any more, it seems like you choose what you're for and against based solely on how the Republicans go on the matter. "What's that? They're for potato chips? Well then, potato chips are the devil! Let's hold a rally against potato chips!!"

How anyone can defend these wiretaps is beyond me. They'll throw around terrorism, 9/11, national security, and all the other buzzwords that have kept their minions lockstep in line, brainlessly joining the parade. And I'm all for that. Yes, absolutely, keep me safe from terrorists. Keep my nation secure. But don't fucking illegally wiretap me to do it. Get a warrant. Do the shit that everyone else in the world before you had to do. Do the shit that's set up the way it's set up for a reason. The threat of terrorism is not unique to your Administration. You're not the first to have to deal with these issues. Stop acting as though you are - as though this is a pressing issue that requires immediate action, and so should be exempt from having to obey the procedures.

And for God's sakes, stop it with the potato chip love. It's hurting America.

Dear Project Runway

2006-02-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

You done me wrong this time, PR. This almost tops the Wendy Pepper Debacle of 2005. The fact that Santino now stands at the precipice of Olympus fashion week is unacceptable. He's mocked you, Tim Gunn. He's screamed at you, Michael Kors. He's ignored you, Nina Garcia. Is this where you're willing to go for "good television"? Honestly?

My oh my. Kara, Santino, Chloe, and Daniel. At least two of these people have no right being anywhere near Fashin Week.

Oh well. The die is cast - but am I the only one who's noticed how bad this year's group is compared to last year? Outside of Daniel Vosovic, there's no one who just consistently brought it the way Austin and Kara brought it. There's no one with a unique, powerful style like Jay's. There's no one (not even Santino) who could get under your skin like Wendy Pepper, while winning just enough challenges to limp always forward.

Then again, last year there was no one quite as beautiful as my Nick Verreos. And I loved his designs, personally. I must not be the only one - Brenda Strong wore him to the SAG Awards:

Ah, well. Most of you don't care. Eat me. I was upset last night. Even OWC said that it was bullshit. And it comes down to Freddy Leiba thinking that this was sexy:

Sweet Christ Almighty.

All I'm saying is that Daniel V better win this thing. This is bush league. Freddy Leiba, you can go to hell, you hear me?