Progress... Yay!

For my screenplay I need to know either the layout of a ranch or a ranch house -- don't know which just yet -- so tonight I tracked down a floor plan for a ranch house, and created a ranch layout!

Yay!

I just feel like such a good li'l writer, hehehe.

This info brings me quite a bit closer to being able to precisely map out the action of the flick, so even those it's not words on a notecard, it's a good amount of work.

Also, I slept really, really well this morning/afternoon AFTER I did my structural research... Which has lead me to wonder if maybe my slacking-off on my writing might be the reason I wasn't sleeping well. Wierd as that seems (even to me) I was surprised just how well I slept.

Is it possible my subconscious is trying to be my mom? lol

It's kind of poetic, tho', if that happens to be the case... In the past I have had the tendency to sort of neglect my writing when I have a girlfriend... And on my days off I had one interest and one interest only: GNOMEY MUNTS MUNTS!!! But when I wasn't able to talk to her, I didn't bother with my screenplay.

But then the day I enjoy BOTH my passions (my Wendy-Lady comes FIRST, mind you) I get a great night's sleep... AND I haven't felt all tired and needing a nap tonight!!!

I mean, this is one night here, so we'll see...

OH! My baby has been sending me the most amazing texts today! hehehehe On my way to work I get this one... This woman knows how to CURL MY TOES!!!

Okay, I should probably get back writing.

Research Is The Writer's Pleasure

It's a silly phrase and I don't know entirely what it means, but the implications I do understand I agree with.

Since I've fallen behind on my writing, I decided I needed to "sharpen my saw" so to speak, so I searched the net for some resources on writing horror. (Used to, I would go out and buy a new book about it, but since most resources tell you more or less the same things in different ways and with different emphasis, and since I already own many much-thumbed horror writing texts, I opted for a free refresher course.) And I found a fantastically insightful series of articles entitled "No Bones About It: How to Write Today's Horror" by David Taylor and REALLY ENJOYED IT!!

Like I said, I wasn't expecting to learn something I didn't already know, or even look at the craft of horror writing in a new light. I needed to go back over the basics and see if there were elements I hadn't imbedded into my screenplay's construction yet.

The first 3 parts were very concise and insightful and a great read, and the last part Part IV: Horror Novel Checklist was EXTREMELY USEFUL!!! I've been thinking of screenplay structure using screenwriting terminology for so long, and reading the basic structure of a horror story in horror terms really reminded me of the basic functions of the "Act II Turning Point" and all that!

Blah.

I'm talking Geek-speak, I know, but I was just so excited I had to blog about it!!!

I should get to bed now. Work tongiht, and I don't want to be draggin' ass again.

OMG!!! I almost forgot to share the MOST EXCITING NEWS!!! My darling Gnomey texted me from work today telling me that she has the money for a ticket to visit early next year!!!

I mean, who knows what could pop up and get in the way of her purchasing it, BUT HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THIS WOMAN THAT SHE'S SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING IT!!! :D

I couldn't catch my breath for a long time after I read that message! I mean, we had talked about it before, and I knew she was considering it... But I didn't know just how much was wanting to and how much was planning. Maybe she didn't even know. And it's an expensive ticket (I can't afford it yet) so I would SO NOT be disappointed if she didn't get to make the purchase.

But the fact that she is SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING it just makes me feel all special and imporant inside, lol! Have you been to her blog and SEEN the pics yet? THAT little hotty wants to meet ME in person!!!

The thought alone almost makes me pass out, lol!

Okay... Where was I? Oh yeah, I need to try to get some sleep, lol.

If I can, lol.

PEACE!!! :D

Can't sleep, lol.

I went to bed WAY early this morning, and I think I got about 5 hours of sleep and I woke up... And I couldn't get back to sleep. I have to get back to my regular (well, my NEW sleep schedule) somehow. 'Cause around 2:00 am all last week my body kept shutting down, and all of a sudden I'm just dead tired. And so Sunday night (Monday morning) I actually did take a nap and slept for about 4 and a half hours, then I ended up falling alseep just almost the moment Wendy went to work this morning, slept about 5 hours, laid in bed for several hours, and now I'm afraid that if I go to sleep I won't wake up until well after she's in bed!

I've GOT TO finish this screenplay and get her HERE or get me over there! lol

Omg! I feel so bad for her this morning because the last hour beofre she went to work I was just this dead-eyed, half drooling simpleton... I drank a cup of strong, strong balck coffee (the kind that puts hair on your chest, and other places) and I still couldn't keep up with her, lol.

It's Quiz Night at her pub, and I keep getting these GREAT text messages from her! :D I can't wait for her to get home! (hee-hee-hee)

Oh, and yesterday we played Checkers online for the first time, and I never realized what an erotic game that could be! (At least with her, heheh!) It's been a while since I played checkers, and computer programs sometimes follow different rules than what people do, so I'm setting up this move and she moves one of her pieces into danger. The way I used to play, I would have had a choice: To keep moving with my strategy or to jump her piece.

But she informed me that, "You have to take me."

I caught my breath after a second and I'm like, "I have to take you?"

"Yeah."

COMPLETELY STRAIGHT FACED! The woman didn't even blink! Did she have any idea what I was hearing?

Then she repeated, "Yeah, you have to take me."

So, by golly, I took her! :D

A few moves later I was able to get my pieces moved around to execute a different strantagy, and I taunted her with...

"You see what I'm doing? I'm trying to get you to expose yourself. You know, so I can take you."

Again, she doesn't giggle, doesn't crack a smile, doesn't let on that she has any idea what I'm saying... But she comes back with this gem:

"If you become a King you can take me from the front OR from the BACK."

She knew EXACTLY what I was hearing! lol And was, like, 50 times more clever about it than I was!

Plus, she kicked my ass 3 games in a row.

But with that masterful dead-pan she's got going on, I don't think i could ever play Poker with her! (Not even Strip Poker, because she might loose a shoe or something, but I'd be buck naked!)

In fact, she confessed a little maneuvre that she had pulled when we were playing Minesweeper once that revealed that not only does she just ALWAYS know what's going on, and not only is she crafty, be she knows me much to well for my own good! LOL If I ever think that I'm being clever and playing her, she EXACTLY what my move is and is making her own move that I don't even know about!

The woman is brilliant!

You look at her face and you might be tempted to think "How sweet and innocent," but don't you believe it! You talk to her and think "Poor thing's so nice and kind that she must get taken advantage of all the time!" She is UNBELIEVABLY nice with the kindsness (and generosity and capacity to love) of and ANGEL!!! But NO ONE is taking advantage of my baby! lol Not even me! :D (Not unless she give it, hehehe)

It's so funny, too, because she tells me stories, and the people who only know her superficially well seem to think she's this silly, "immature", playful chick... And they seem to have NO CLUE what all is really going on upstairs.

Fair Warning: If you ever think you're playing Gnomey Munts, she's probably playing you. (And she WILL win, hee-hee.)

Thank God I have such a huge ego! I can see how other men might be indimidated.

Me, I am simply wrapt with admiration!

And... um... OTHER emotions as well... ;)

Sometimes ya just gotta slaughter you some vampires.

I just finished de-infesting the burnt remains of Sunnydale High as Xander, then cleared a creepy old mine shaft as Faith.

It simply had to be done.

It's odd that I am SO addicted to the world of horror videogames.

I don't have some clever point to make about the Human Condition or my nature or anything, I just find it a bit odd. Since I discovered RESIDENT EVIL 2 and RESIDENT EVIL CODE: VERONICA (on the now-defunct Sega Saturn platform) I find that I just sometimes NEED to run around a severely disturbing environment and destroy monsters.

Probably something from my childhood, but I can't be bothered to figure it out.

I got to spend some more time on Douglas Adams's second Earth, reading a few more chapters of SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH to my Gnomey Goddess again tonight. :) I always enjoy that! It's like 2 fetishes wrapped up into a single activity for me! :P

And, natch, I spent A LOT of time talking to, flirting with, being WILDLY inappropriate with and playing games with my dear, darling Wendy-Lady today... And this morning... And last night... And yesterday morning, heheh :) I had to abandon her twice, to get a money order to pay the rent (and one to keep Brian in POPULAR SCIENCE magazines until 2009, heheh), and then to go with Mom and Brian to get him a new cell phone for his upcoming 32nd birthday (Mom's present to him; his was stolen out of his car a few weeks back and neither of us has the money to replaces it).

My Sprint PCS store sucks now! They have, maybe, a third of the inventory they used to have! And you can't walk into it and by the bare-basic Nokia... You gotta buy some slightly-suped-up model that has the Talk and End buttons hidden beneath unmarked buttons that perform NO task that you would ever actually WANT your phone to perform! WTF's THAT about?!

Maybe I'm just old. I've never even owned a picture phone yet.

Still, before I go off on too much of a rant, cell phone are now FINALLY reasonably affordable. Brian's ended up only costing $104. The last time I priced cell phones, the cheapest was right at $200 (with mail-in rebates and all-but-useless customer discounts and all that crap), and the most expensive was $350.

I love Sprint and their service -- and dispite what current competitor comercials claim, I have YET to have a call dropped (knock on wood), but the companies that make cell phones (and don't even get me STARTED on the companies that, so-called, "insure" the phones) are bastards and should have their greedy testicales forcibly removed and fed to them!!! (Except for Nokia, so far.) They produce sub-par equipment and charge WAY to fucking much for it!!! They seem to spend all their time trying to figure out what bells and whistles to put on the next model, ignoring the problems and faults of what they're currently putting out!

Bastards!

Sorry.

See, I think this is why I had to slaughter vampires and demons and zombies tonight. In my subconscious, I was slaying cell phone "manufacturers".

It's amazing how on the way to the Sprint store this low-level agression just built up in me, buzzing around inside of my like 3 loose lugnuts slowly vibrating off a rapidly spinning car tire, signaling the eventual disaster that IS GOING TO HAPPEN, in just a matter of time. And the car ride back didn't diminish the feeling in the slightest.

...but then...

I get home to a couple of IMs Wendy left me, and my heart is suddenly filled with this sense of well-being and safety and joy, then there's no room left for the cell-phone-buzzing-lugnuts and it's forced out of every pore and orifice. (Okay, not the most eloquent or romantic description, but it certainly hits the nail squarely on the head.)

I hope I don't ever take for granted her and what she does for me! I can already see how it would be so easy to stop battling my inner demons and just go running to her to make me feel better! That would be SUCH a waste of her beautiful spirit, and our relationship! Because what we have seems to build off of each other, and it would suck if one of us brought less to any given conversation... It's like a campfire on a chilly desert night: 3 logs is pretty bright and warm, but just adding that forth log seems to make the light and temperature PERFECT. You know?

Maybe I'm getting too far out-there. Sorry.

My sweet Gnomey is dreading going back to work tomorrow. :( I'll only get to see her when she wakes up for a few hours, then when I wake up for a few hours. This last couple of weeks we've enjoyed A LOT of time together!!! And then we discovered -- while she was on holiday -- that text messages and emails just aren't the same as our video-chats. And now that we're going to BOTH be on our work schedules, our time becomes even more limited...

I'm certain it'll all work out for the best eventually -- the Universe seems to give us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it -- but it sucks here, now, in the moment.

Still, I can already see a possible future bennifit: The last 3 days, I've been slacking off on my writing... Not Wendy's fault in the least, but when she was on vacation writing was the main way I took my mind off missing her. So now that she's going back to work, I can see that I may be writing more furiously, lol. Those long hours after she goes to work and before I go to bed may become QUITE productive. lol

OMG!!! She wrote me THE MOST BEAUTIFUL email!!! I mean, everything she writes me is AMAZING, and every email seems to top the last somehow, but this one she wrote me while I was alseep today...!!!

I don't know if I've blogged about it, but one of the aspects of her and our relationship that just SURPRISES THE HELL OUT OF ME is that now, where I once had faith about getting into the film industry I now have CERTAINTY. Somehow, she just made it a fact.

Before, becoming a professional filmmaker was a way to have a better life than I have, doing something I love to pay the bills. I was trying to become a filmmaker to become a filmmaker essentially. But now, my goal is to be with Wendy ALWAYS... and filmmaking -- as wonderful and magical and exciting as it is -- is just a job I'm interviewing for. I'll get the job, sure. But my focus isn't on the interview, it's on spending time with her before the interview and getting back home to her afterward.

I know that must seem like the exact same thing -- becoming a filmmaker will improve my quality of life. But it really is different. My quality of life doesn't need to be imporved. I'm ecstatically, blissfully happy! I don't HAVE TO become a filmmaker to have a better life. I don't have to have a BETTER life. I just need to get a way to make a home and get my Gnomey Goddess here. (And my skill as a storyteller seems the most likely to accomplish that goal, not to be immodest or anything.)

I guess that's the difference I;m trying to illustrate... Before, being a skillfull storyteller was my focus, but now she is my focus, and my skill is no longer in doubt.

Does that make any sense?

Blah.

If you're into actors and acting it might. Many actors who got these roles that made them superstars will tell you that they -- for the first time in their careers, often -- weren't worried about getting that particular role... Often they thought that there was simply no way that they would get it and therefor the audition was just this exercise in formality, or they had something else in their life that was overshadowing the role, so that they were too distracted to really be concerned about getting the part. In both cases, their focus wasn't getting the part. And because they did the work they had to do, but didn't feel the pressure of the end result, their audition tended to shine above everyone else that auditioned for the same role. (We're talking about hundreds, and sometimes hundreds-of-thousands of competing actors.)

So I've spend 14 years and I-can't-count-how-many lifetimes honing my craft. But until now, my focus has always been on "getting the part". But Gnomey comes along, and my focus can't be shifted to anything else! It's not like when I'm at the station collecting my paycheck I'm tripping an stumbling through my day, screwing up everything I touch because I can't focus. It's more like, I do all my work and I do it right, but even if I have 50 things to get right at once, they can't stress me like they could before her, because they aren't as poweful as they once were.

Blah.

I'm really cocking this up. I can't sem to find the metaphors and analogies that make this feeling make sense.

I guess that's why poets have jobs, lol.

Okay, so besides the above mish-mash about how being with Wendy now is like Christ Himself coming down and telling me "You will live to and old age, happily and prosperously, and you will eventually have all that you desire and all that you will grow to desire and more that you didn't even know that you desired, and all you have to do is just be you, so don't sweat any of it," she has offered herself to me in a way that no other woman -- no other person -- has offered themselves to me before: In all my endevours she'll be my muse or my collaborator or the shoulder I can cry on or someone to rub my shoulders after a long day at work. She KNOWS that I (all of us: Brian, Tommy, Kelly, et. al) will succeed, and she will be there for me in ANY capacity I need her to be.

HOW fuckin' GENREROUS is THAT?!!

She doesn't know this, but she's saying this to a cat who has been told by a girlfriend "You can write, just do it when I'm busy." (And aforementioned girlfriend was ONLY busy what I was at my pay-the-bills job.) I have also been told, "No, I believe you'll make it as a writer, but that's gonna be a long, LONG time in the future." (She ended up being right, considering how long ago the statement was made, but I'm bitching about the principal here, not the accuracy, of the statement.)

And after ALREADY making me feel like we WILL succeed, THIS is when she makes this offer to me!!! I mean, she already gave me success -- by permanently altering the way I percieve it and the process of obtaining it -- and now she's offering any help she can possibly offer!!!

Good God in Heaven and all His blessed angels, this woman is the answer to all my most feverish or whimsical prayers!!! EVER!!!

And the REALLY sweet part is this: That's just her being her. That's simply how she feels about me. How do I know? Because of EVERYTHING she says and does. Everything.

Come to think of it, I believe I have some writing to catch up on. :D

Workin' It ;P

Okay, so last night I didn't really get any writing done, after having figured out a 5 Cards Written Or Altered A Day schedule, and I was a little concerned.

But then I got home and rewrote the 15 3x5 cards I misplaced (still haven't found them) AND THEN I wrote 5 new ones!!! So I'm on schedule!!!

Yay!

And then I started a free screenwriting workshop on my writing blog! I'm kinda proud of that, because I have been looking for an affordable screenwriting workshop for, like, a decade! None exists. (Well... nothing I can afford.) I've spent SO MUCH time and money learning teh craft, but in the end it just comes down to ME... By myself... No one to hold my hand through the process.

It's as though the pros and gurus are like "We'll tell you tons and tons and tons, but we won't give you ALL the peices." In fact, they'll tell you how to write the script in great detail, and then say "But first, you have to outline it, which is 60% of the actual job of screenwriting" and then preceed to NOT tell you ANTYHING about HOW to outline, or break the story, or treat it, or whichever method you use.

So in the end I just have to figure it out for myself.

And that's DAMN annoying, lol. I wanted someone to, like, train me or mentor me or something.

So I figure I will be that guy for someone else. (ANYONE else, if they want to read my other blog.)

Plus, it'll be a fun adventure. I am hellbent on the idea that I'm going to write and sell a screenplay within the next 12 months, and the writing blog should provide a chronicle of that.

Blah.

You're bored with me, aren't you?

I GET TO SEE MY SWEETY WHEN I WAKE UP TOMORROW!!!

Yay! :D

I'm gonna go home after work and climb straight into bed in hopes that I'll wake up well early, like maybe 3:00 pm so I get to hang with her before she goes to sleep and/or it's time for that Family Dinner thing Brian and I do on Sundays.

I'm out of my mind with the thought of seeing her again! The texts and emails have been WONDERFUL, but hearing her voice again!!! SEEING that FACE again!!!

Okay, I'm gonna go away now and thing happy, happy thoughts :)

I miss my Gnomey Goddess :(

Wednesday she left for Cornwall with her friends, and she promised to keep in touch via text massages -- and she TOTALLY HAS! -- and I figured it would be fine because she scheduled her holiday to coincide with my work week. So most of the time would me me sleeping or working anyway. And I'll be getting text messages.

It'll be fine...

But now I am ACHING to see her again and hear her voice!!! lol It's crazy! We've probably emailed and text-message-ed each other more in the last 3 1/2 days that since we've been together!

But there's just SOMETHING about those webcam conversations that makes me feel closer to her, I guess. I mean, I don't know what it is that's making me miss her (we haven't even met face-to-face yet!) but somehow I DO MISS HER! So much!

But her texts have been SO GREAT!!! She'll tell me where she's going and what she's up to, and say sweet, SWEET things to me!

One text informed me that she had just fallen over and off a hill, and that her friend had fallen on top of her, and that they were currently laughing their asses off. If the laughing part hadn't been in the message I might have started worrying.

Another said that they were driving past some cows in a field just standing next to the fence, then one cow LEAPS on another and just starts going at it! I was sitting in the living room with Brian and we were talking about his screenplay (I think) when my phone beeps and I get this text!!! I just love the fact that Gnomey's the type of person who sees this and HAS TO share it with me! :D She's SO FUNNY!!!

And MAN! Last night was HELL at work!!! I ended up staying an hour late just to finish up all my stuff from my shift! And normally a night like last night would have had me in a VERY surly mood. But throughout the night I got text messages from her, and everyone just seemed to erase whatever annoying (or frightening) thing had happened to me in the previous hour, and just fill me with this excitedness and happiness and just straight-up JOY!!!

Life can be very, very beautiful!!! (PARTICULARLY if you've got a Gnomey in your life!)

I am SO VERY INDESCRIBABLY LUCKY!!!

Ooh! And -- switching gears ENTIRELY -- I figured out a way to make sure the screenplays keep moving... I devised a schedule of writing/altering 5 3x5 cards every day until we have 40 cards in the correct order and just KNOW that we're ready to write pages.

See, I've read screenwriting books that tell you to write 10 pages a day or whatever until the screenplay is done, and also say to work out the story first with 3x5 cards or by writing a treatment or an outline... But they NEVER, EVER, EVER tell you how to schedule the MOST IMPORTANT PHASE OF THE SCREENPLAY!!! Unless you want to rewrite your screenplay 10 or 20 times, you need to spend MOST of your writing process PLANNING the screenplay. But none of the writing books I've read in the 14 years I've been studying screenwriting have EVER provided a plan opf attack for the preparation!

But luckily, I'm resourceful, and I created one.

It was Brian that helped me out, actually! As I watch him grow as a writer I've been noticing all the answers he needs to questions that I used to ask (and sometimes still do)! And when he asks the questions I sort of go back through 14 years of study... and realize that I never got the answers to many of those questions, either!!!

So I'm now starting to do what I maybe could have done several years ago, if I had trusted my own ability and skill: I'm making it up as I go.

Anyway, this isn't my writing blog; I have a whole other forum for this conversation. The reason I bring up the cards at all is this: You remember how happy I was that I had written 15 out of 40 cards for the Slasher Flick idea? Well, I KNEW I wouldn't be able to work on it last night because even when everything goes right my Thursdays are a bitch. So I'm all ready to get to work tonight... Only I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT I DID WITH THOSE CARDS I WROTE!!!

I have, effectively, lost 45 pages worth of script!

What kind of writer DOES THAT?!!

:(

Okay, I should finish up my shift so I don't have to stay late... again.

Your Fortune

Here's today's Homestar Runner fortune cookie fortune for today:

"Start a little fire. A little one!"

A Couple of Great Quotes

I just wanna take a second to share a couple of GREAT LINES!!!

These are actual quotes from real people I know and cherrish.

The first is from an old, dear friend, and I won't share the context because I don't really know it, and besides I think it's funnier that way:

Tre Castillo: "Any guy that cheats at Scrabble's a f*ckin' hard-on."

Which is CLASSIC, I think! (It tickles my fancy, anyway, lol.)

The second is from my sweet, sweet baby, and I won't share the context because that's not my story to tell, lol.

Wendy Dann: "I'm not a f*ckin' geographer!"

The full story is even funnier, but I would screw it up if I tried to tell it, lol!

Okay, back to work for now... Have much fun!!!

I spent the rest of yesterday listening to SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH, heheh.

I slept well and had some groovy dreams, but can't remember them. I was DEFINETELY with my Gnomey in one of them, but I can't for the life of me remember what we were doing or where we were. (She's at this place with lots of gardens, or maybe one big uber-garden, and I am tempted to say we might have been there, but I'm not sure.)

Then I woke up to an off-line message from her saying she wish I was there with her because it's beautiful! (She also gave me another reason why she wished I were there with her, but that's just for me ;P ) She also said that she got soaked, as it's raining -- my poor baby can't seem to NOT get rained on -- but she said the place is goreous, even in the rain. So YAY!

It sounded like she's having fun, and that's exactly what I want for her!!! :D

I woke up and Brian was re-re-watching BIG TROUBLE -- one of the FUNNIEST movies EVER -- and we got to talking about it's structure (he's really trying to nail-down the structure of his script, as none is really presenting itself at the moment) and that got us talking about my Slasher Flick idea...

I few days ago I proposed that maybe the reason we're having such difficulty with our screenplays is that we're just biting off a bit more than we know how to chew yet. We're working with big ideas that will make great movies, but neither of us has finsihed a feature script that we're proud of. And with a feature-length project, you're juggling a lot of material.

So my suggestions was this: We both know the Slasher sub-genre by heart. He grew up with the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies and I was a FRIDAY 13TH fanatic, so we both know the structure and conventions and cliches and traditions by heart.

So we take a set structure that we're really, really familiar with, and just try to come up with our own take on it.

He's was down for the idea. And today we tossed around ideas, I drug up some backstory I had written before for previous projects, he brought his fresh take and his particular style, and I now have 15 our of 40 3x5 index cards!!!

One approach to writing a screenplay is to break Act I and Act III into 10 3x5 notecards and break Act II into 20 3x5 cards, and each card contains a story moment -- such as "The body is found" or "So-and-so is chased by Bad Guy". That lets you know you've got enough story. Then you arrange and rearrange, and rewrite, those cards until you can tell that you have the movie.

And THEN you sit down with those cards and write the actual pages.

So if you do the math, I have approximately 30 pages of script done... You know, when it comes to that point in the process.

So I'm SO EXCITED!!!

Blah, I'm babbling, aren't I?

Anyway... I should get ready for work now. PEACE!!!

And to Gnomey: I LOVE YOU LOTS & LOTS & LOTS & LOTS & LOTS & LOTS & LOTS & LOTS & LOTS & lOTS & LOTS & LOTS!!! :D

(And for those of you who aren't my Gnomey Goddess, sry, couldn't help myself... I know "Get a room" right? lol)

Cornwall is SO LUCKY!

My baby just left for a week-long vacation.

I'm SO happy for her! She's meantioned this particular trip since we were just friends in SL, so I'm really, really glad that she gets to go!!!

Plus, she said she'll take pictures, and I can't wait to see those! :D

And I also can't wait to hear the stories!!! She and her friend Rachel (with whom she's going) seem to get into a lot of trouble in astoundingly funny ways!!! Just a quick example: I woke up to this text message on my phone: "im a little drunk hehe. love u so much. i punched a guy in the face coz i av the only perfect guy in the world. x" I COULDN'T WAIT for her to wake up so I could hear the story behind that one!!!

So yeah, I'll bet she brings back some great tales next week! ;)

I'm becoming addicted to playing Minesweeper with her! She usually kicks my ass, but I win a game every now and then. But sometimes when she's playing she'll hum along to whatever song she's listening to, and she has a LOVELY voice! And sometimes I'll look over at her webcam and she'll be sticking her tongue out out me, lol!

She's SO MUCH FUN!!!

And I always blush when I read her blog entries! Very ego-boosting! lol Oooooh, and this last entry has a new pic of her up! AMAZINGLY GORGEOUS!!! Instead of Renascance Festivals, in England they have Medievil Dress Festivals, and she posted a pic of her in her gown there. :D

I AM the luckiest dude IN THE WORLD!!!

I need to go have some adventures so I can take pics. I think the last time I got some new pictures of myself was last November when we all went to the CS Screnwriting Expo. I don't get out enough, lol.

Ooh! I should finish one of these screenplays we're working on... Pics on a film set are always cool!

That's what I'll do this week while I'm missing my sweety! Help pass the days faster. :D

My Sweet, Sweety Gnomey!

OMG, I just read Gnomey's latest blog entry!!! LAMO

I've jokes a few times that when my friends see her picture they'll accuse me of paying her to say the things she does about me! So she addresses it in her blog! lol

She is SO COOL and FUNNY!!! I love her to pieces!!! :D

My Poor Sick Baby

Gnomey's ill at the moment :(

But the cool part is that last night (her time... It was morning by my schedule, lol) she was laying in bed and couldn't get to sleep -- that's not the cool part, that's also bad -- and so she let me read the first 6 chapters of SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH to her! :D

That's just SO COOL to me, because we -- society as a whole -- just don't read to each other enough! lol And that's a shame! because we love entertainment, right? We love stories! We watch endless TV and make dates to go to the movies with each others, and tell each other stories over lunch or dinner or at work or parties. But some stories are so perfect told a very specific way that they are published and sold, to be read over and over again by millions.

But when was the last time you read to someone special, other than your child? Or had someone read to you?

It's such a cool and personal way to share with someone you care about!!!

So much cooler than just saying "Oh, you've got to read such-and-such! It's great!" Well maybe I don't have the money to go track down and buy such-and-such. Or maybe I can't read! Huh?! Didja ever think of that?!! And maybe I'm embarrased that, at 36, I'm illiterate!!! You're SO INSINCITIVE!!!

Sorry... I got lost there for a second... Where was I?

Oh, right.

So anyway, she couldn't fall asleep, and I have had some luck with putting women to sleep with my voice (I know, "Don't admit that out loud," right?) so I jokingly suggested I read to her until she falls alseep. (I have MANY TIMES fallen asleep to Douglas Adams as he read me his amazing novles!)

And she liked the idea!!!

So I'm like, "Okay!" :D

And, like, Sunday or sometime I had suggested she read SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH because of the love story between Arthur and Fenchurch. There's something about Fenchurch that reminds me of Gnomey -- a certain sense of fun and kindness, and a certain comfortableness with her own beauty and sexiness -- and there's something about their relationship that somehow reminds me of what I feel when I'm talking to her. I just thought that if I identify with it, maybe she would, too.

Plus, I figured she would enjoy Adam's sense of humor.

So I grabbed my big-ass THE ULTIMATE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE and turned to page 475 and started reading.

Now I'm not the most accomplished reader, but she likes my voice and she likes my accent, and she reassured me a couple of times that I was doing fine. Douglas reads it better -- natch, it's his book -- and I even have a copy of the book-on-tape, but I rather enjoyed reading it to her myself. I got to enjoy the story again, and I also got to feel like I was giving her the story. You know? Like a gift. :) But more personal than, say, mailing it to her, lol.

I do hope I did the material justice! But I heard her laugh throughout, so I think I didn't completely ruin it.

Earlier today -- before I went to bed on what is to me "Sunday night" -- I got to play Showdown Solitaire and Minesweeper with her!!! She kicked my ass, but it was SO MUCH FUN!!!

She is REALLY AMAZING, that woman!

We had gotten to the part of the conversation where I'm just staring at her and can't think of anything interesting to say, and she had told me all her stories for the moment, I think, so she started up a game!

How cool is that?!!

And HOW FRIGGIN' COOL is technology nowadays that we can do that?!!

Okay, I'm talking to us Old Folks for a second: Remember high school crushes? Remember begging your parents to let you talk to your girlfriend on the phone? And you two just go on about how much you wish you could see each other right now, but you can't because it's after hours right now, or whatever? How much do you wish that you could be talking to her in the privacy of your room, and SEEING her while you talked to her?!! You're watching STAR TREK thinking "Videophones would be COOL!"

Or worse, you're all tongue-tied because you've got a picture of her in your hand, staring at it with her on the phone, and you can't think of anything to say other than "You're SO PRETTY" and "I love you SO MUCH". And then she says "Okay... I guess I'll talk to you later..." HOW COOL would it have been to just start up a game that the two of you could play?!!

Who ever chose to make two-player games available to people who are chatting WAS REALLY THINKING!!!

Life is good! :D

So... another amazing day for Ray Jay! :) Now if I can just win the lottery... lol

PhotoJourney

Okay, so I'm chatting with my Gnomey Goddess and I remember that I had promised her some pics of me.

That's us chatting. Aren't we ADORABLE!!! heheheh
Now, I LOVE to have my picture taked (I was in community theater from the ages of 11 to 19; I'm SO an attention-whore) but I'm not as organized as I could be with the actual pics. So tongiht after Gnomey went to sleep, I rounded up some discs that I thought might have pics of me on them, and ended up with a rather random collection of photos...
Which I would like to share with you now :)
First up, we're traveling back in time with a collection I call...

DAYS OF YORE

Let's set the Wa-Back machine for 1987...

My dear friend Laura recently uncovered this Oldy But Goody. It's her and me in Dallas before her prom. She's the hot red-head and I'm the stud-puppy on the right. Laura says we should have been on the cover of Teen Beat or something, and I SO agree, lol! We were hot, and we knew it ;P
I mean NO disrespect, but I don't remember much about Laura's friend in red. I was going to a prom dance in a Big City, and the whole weekend was a blur to me. A fun blur, but a blur, lol.
Leaping ahead to 1990...

And my brother Brian trying to help his neice out with a meal... We discovered later he wasn't doing it correctly.
LOOKIT MY LITTLE TISHA!!! Isn't she the CUTEST prune you ever saw!!!
Then skipping ahead to 1992...

...luckily by the time Tisha was 2 I had figured out the CORRECT way to feed a growing young lady.
And I call this one, simply, "Monkey Toes"

Tisha was so engrossed in THE A-TEAM or whatever we were watching that she couldn't be bothered to bend over to pick whatever that is. So she, very resourcefully, just used her very gifted toes.
This attribute of hers is a little running joke between us. I'll call her Monkey Toes and she'll blush and say she doesn't have monkey toes, and we go on for a bit until she knocks me unconscious to the ground.
But we're just joking with each other...
...she knows she has monkey toes.

I don't believe this photo needs any explaining. Excpet to say that the woman in the photo isn't Tisha's mother...

These are from a photo shoot in 2002.

We just couldn't be any cuter, could we?
And this is from one of Tisha's basketball games.

That stuff on my face isn't an Oreo that melted to my face when I fell asleep, really.
No, really. It's a team tattoo. Honestly

Leap ahead to 2006, and see that Tisha really isn't scarred from her upbringing (REALLY) to a collection I call...

TISHA NOW


See? Look at that socially-well-adjusted mug!



She doesn't like to drink yet, but as a young Texan woman, we're trying to train her right.
(Just kidding. I had nothing to do with the above photos. I stole them off her MySpace. NO IDEA why she's wearing the beer hat, lol.)

And here are some random pics I tossed into a collection I call...

RAY JAY AT WORK/PLAY

This is me and one of my bestestist friends/collaborators, Kelly. We're taking a break from cutting one of his films.

And this is the cast and crew of "HAL.com". I'm in costume/makeup for a small role I played.


And this is My Superhot Best Friend Traci and me after our scene... We play uptight accountants.

This is me at FAO Schwartz in Manhattan, between Darth maul and Princess Amadala.
Interestingly enough, after seeing the blown-up/cut-down version of this pic that I use in my blog profile, Gnomey thought I look a lot like Ewan "Young Obi-Wan" McGregor
(And god bless you, Baby, because you may be the only one who see it, lol. :D But TY so much!!!)

This is Brian and me at Tommy & Becky's Halloween party in, I wanna say, 2003.

We're Raptor Wranglers for Jurassic Park. We're the guys who feed and tend to the velosoraptors at the park.
Get it? Ha-ha. Get it?

This is me in the lobby of the Astor alace -- one of Blue Man Group's permanent installations, and the first one established -- after the show TUBES!!!
I LOVE that pic!

And this is just a recent photo of me.
Any sci-fi geeks out there recognize the shirt I'm wearing?
And there we are. A little photo-journey (more of a sprint, really) of me and my life.
I'm hoping that this time next year I'll be posting photos of Tommy and Kelly and Brian and me working on our first feature film! Stay tuned...

Got Me A Webcam :)

I couldn't stand it any more and I sprang for a webcam so my sweet, sweet Gnomey could see me... and escape if she wanted to, lol.

She didn't run away screaming!!! :)

In fact, twice when I suggested she's too pretty for me she shushed me, lol! (I'm so crazy about this woman!!!)


So yesterday my Gnomey and I BOTH got to see each other as we chatted :)

Only, we keep having mic problems! Yesterday her mic gave out, so I could talk to her but she had to IM to me. And then this morning I tried using Brian's computer, and the webcam worked way better on his computer, but the mic didn't work at all :( So we just IMed, but we got to see each other while we typed.

And then sometime yesterday she started her own blog :) As you can imagine, I'm a fan!!!

If you read the blog, then look at the picture of her, you're gonna be like "Okay, Ray Jay, what lies have you been telling this poor woman?" But I SWEAR I haven't deceaved her in the slightest! And I haven't bribe her, either! I was just as surprised as you were when I read it, lol!

She's just a sweety, what can I say?


So I'm just kind of bouncing around everywhere I go nowadays, beaming and joyous and giggling like a schoolboy :)

Life can be SO SWEET sometimes!!!

Okay, so now I just need to finish these screenplays, get financing to make one and sell the other two THEN FLY TO ENGLAND!!!

Or fly her here... It's been really cold and rainy where she is and she misses the sun, lol. So I have some work to do before Happily Ever After, but I have never seen a BRIGHTER LIGHT at the end of any tunnel!!!

I got to see her!!! :)

Okay, so Monday and Tuesday I stayed up well later than I should have because my super-hot trans-Atlantic buddy is on vacation this week, and I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could! And if you read my previous blog, you know that stayed up too late writing it. So even though I woke up around 1:30 am Wednesday morning, I told myself I was gonna be a good boy and go back to sleep by 10a, so that I could sort of reset my sleep schedule.

I was a good boy and did, but it didn't work. But I'll get to that...

So she wakes up around 3a, and the moment I see that she has signed-on to the messenger I decide I'm gonna be cool and wait, give her plenty of time to wake up and decide she wants to chat.

...and then I immediately IMed her anyway: "Good morning!"

BTW: "She" is Gnomey! Her mom sometimes calls her that because she (Gnomey) created her own language, which she calls "Gnomish". (And I have NO idea if I'm spelling that correctly, lol.) And this language is actually known only to Gnomey! But from time to time she'll slip into it without knowing that she has. So if she, for instance, pointed and yelled "Shoop", she would be pointing to a singular sheep. Or if she said the was looking for the "munts", that would mean she's looking for an item, then name of which she can't currently remember or simply does not know. (This woman COULD NOT be more adorable or fun to be around!!!)

Oh, and the name Gnomey is also nicely obtuse, as her appearance is ANYTHING but gnome-like!!!

But back to my little tail...

So I have no self-control and so I emailed her the moment she has woken up practically, and we chatted, I confused her once because I'm already wide awake and all... you know, ME and she's still waking up. (I chat like I blog, only -- if you can imagine it -- my spelling is worse.) And after a bit she asks "u wanna hear my bed voice" and my response, natch, is "YEAH I DO!"

So then we're talking to each other, live! Her her naturally mellodic voice was a little soar from winning 2nd Place (out of 15 teams) at Quiz Night the night before, so it's actually quite sexy, as well!

And she shoots me some links, some of which I MUST share with you:

George W. Bush sings "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"
Storm Trooper COPS

LORD Of The RINGS Parody

Now, some of these (maybe all of them) you might have seen before. I had heard of the Storm Trooper COPS and seen parts of it, but had not seen the whole thing before. But that first one is a KILLER!!! (The Sunday, Bloody Sunday" one!!!)

And this is actually the second-and-a-half time I've written this blog entry. I tried to write it before I went back to bed yesterday, but for some reason the links messed up the formatting, so half of the entry just would not publish. So I scrapped the whole thing.

Anyway...

She also told me about a band -- that I still need to listen to, lol -- called Nightwish.

And we also spent some time playing Flash games at NewGrounds.com! She showed me where the Adult Games were, and then proceeded to show me some of the funniest video games I have ever seen!!! In fact, just the experience of trying to removed a sleeping woman's clothes without waking her is NOTHING compared to hearing Gnomey triumphantly announce "I got her bra off" or curse, followed by a very disappointed "She woke up"!!! (These sound clips I have replayed in my memory quite a few times already!)

The conversation is even funnier than that, but I don't want to just sit here and recount EVERYTHING that makes her so cool, because... well... that's EVERYTHING about her... It would take a while.

But around 8a she finally had to go. She was meeting a friend for lunch. Gnomey had chatted with me from the time she woke up until lunchtime!!!

And it felt to me like I had lived a whole extra day, hangin' with her! I mean, we talked about all kinds of stuff, watched all kinds of stuff together, played many games... THE WOMAN HAD WEDGED A 4TH DAY INTO MY WEEKEND SOMEHOW! (My weekends are 3 days long, btw.... Yes, it is VERY cool.)

I'm tellin' ya... All Hail the Goddess Gnomey!!! The woman's magical! She got, like, skillz and super powers and shiznit!

And after she logged out I went to work blogging... And it didn't work :( So then I rewrote... no workie, still. So I looked at the HTML to see if I could fix it... I'll let you guess the otucome of that.

But a bright spot, before I decided to scrap the whole entry, was that she texted me while she was with her friend!!! She's SUCH a SWEETY!!! I had told her that I was blogging about earlier and one of her messages to me was "u stil bloggin then, dnt 4get 2 mention how great u r an how much u mean 2 me"!!! That's word for word!!! She said that!!! To me!!! :D (She may not have thought I'd stick it in the blog, tho'... hee-hee-hee!)

Ultimately, though, the entry couldn't be saved and I went to sleep without documenting how much fun I had had and what a great "4th weekend day". But I went to sleep like a good boy right around 10:00 am.

And I woke up, like a bad boy, 3 hours later. :(

She had sent me a text (for me to read when I woke up, bless her!!!) so I texted her... Then emailed her... (Text messages are just so CONFINING to me, language-whore that I am.)

But then I went back to bed... Knowing that I would soon be able to chat with her -- maybe even speak to each other again!!! -- and that if I went back to sleep and got up when i was supposed to she would already be alseep when my alarm clock woke me, I went back to bed.

And tried to go to sleep.

And 4 and a half hours later, I saw that she was online and f*ckin' gave up on f*ckin' falling asleep. (I still had an hour and a half before my alarm was set to go off.)

[Also, I think my body thinks that sleep is just a game or something... It's like a child! My body is like a small child, running around and yelling when you tell it it's bedtime. And you can tell it "You need this or you'll hurt tomorrow, when you're ready to drop down dead and you still have 5 more hours of your shift left, and a half-hour drive home" and it says "okay" and jumps on the bed and bounces a few times before flying into the hall and continuin it's loud and happy little sprint through the house. I;m sorry, my body is a disobedient brat when it comes to sleep. It'll do anything -- ANYTHING -- else I tell it (Don't get sick: "Okay", I'm not gonna exercise, but you don't get too much outta shape: "Okay", Do the splits: "Okay"), but it WILL NOT go to sleep when I frickin' need it to... And then it bitches and moans 3 hours into my shift "Sleep now." No, work now, remember? I explained this to you-- "SLEEP NOW" and I'm passed out in my coffee for the next 20 minutes. Sry... Venting...]

{That was surreal, huh?}

Where...?

Oh, so I give up trying to sleep and she's on and she says "guess wot" and I'm like "what?" and she's "guess" and I'm all.. "Um..." and she says it will make me love technology even more!

SHE GOT A NEW WEBCAM!!!

So for this evening's conversaion, I got to actually see her as we spoke! (And this my first webcam conversation: Remember that I just discovered the microphone Monday or Tuesday.)

And remember how I described Gnomey's smile in the last blog entry? Hearing her voice the first time I guessed that actually seeing her laugh would be, like, a spiritual experience... Like she's got the kind of laugh that just makes you want to see Gospel music. And I was SO dead-on with that prediction!

(She's TOTALLY reading this and she's TOTALLY blushing as she does ;P You should see that, too, it's well hot!!!)

We had a nice long chat before I had to jump in the shower and come to work (and pass out in my coffee for 20 minutes, then another 25 on the computer keyboard 3 hours into my shift becuase SOMEONE doesn't want to sleep when it's available...) and that brings us back to "Do": a dear... A female dear. "Ray": a name I call myself. "Me": a...

Shit, how does that go again?

TECHNOLOGY RULZ!!!

I wonder how many blog entries I've titled that, lol!

Okay, so I just spent the last few hours talking to a hot British chick and watching Britcoms... IN MY BEDROOM!!! :D

It's the COOLEST THING!

So, what does this have to do with technology? Well, on my days off I got involved in this online pyramid scheme, mad a quarter of a million dollars my first day (Sunday), flew to London, took a buss tour, met a 20-year-old hotty and we hit it off right away, so we flew back here to the States -- you know, so she could have a look around -- and we wound up in my bedroom...

No? Not buyin' it?

Okay, so I met her in SecondLife.

And she's really cool! She's very funny and extremely friendly, and it's astounding that we met each other because our personalities just seem to really mesh well! We share a basic philosophy for Life: Have fun and be nice to each other! (That second part is ,technically, part of the first because life becomes less fun when you're not nice to people, as they tend to react to your not-nice-ness in ways that are, to greater and lesser degrees, un-fun. But many people son't seem to clue into that fundamental fact, and so it bears stating.)

So we both want to explore SL and experience all the fun it has to offer, and the same with RL :) (Although, I suspect she's more successful at it in RL than I am, as I go to work and come home and try to make at least one movie every couple of years, and spend the rest of my time writing movies that we can -- hopefully -- make. ;P )

Anyway, we exchanged RL IM addresses and as of yesterday now communicate both in-game and out of it. (And DUDE!!! She's REALLY hot! She's got this smile that's all big and genuine, but her eyes... It's like she figured it all out a long time ago and reallizes that it's all fine, and we're gonna be fine, and we should just enjoy ourselves when we're here! And when you see this smile, you think "Yeah! She's right!") And you couldn't meet a sweeter, more straight-up just GENUINE woman in your life! I don't think she knows what mindgames or gender games even are, lol! She's just REAL!

So I spent all day yesterday with her in SL, and I stayed up until, like, 3:00 pm (I usually go to bed around 10:00 am). I end up crashing out of SL (the game's been laggy and wierd this last month) and she has stuff to do, so we're chatting in IM in RL.

She sends me something -- like a soundclip or something -- and my version of the IM program can't handle it. But she explains she's got this mic and she has to test it out. So something else comes down with an offer to Accept or Decline. Naturally I accept and the IM changes interfaces. Then I hear a female voice (like an angel, you can probably guess) and I laugh out loud, surprised I could be hearing her voice. It's a short clip -- and I didn't even think my computer could play the clip -- and there's silence for a long time. Then I hear her say something else (I don't remember what) and it occurs to me that maybe I'm hearing a live feed.

So even though I'm on a comparitively crappy computer that's still running Windows 98 and am not set up for voice chat, I may actually get to hear the live voice of this super-cool Brit chick!!! I can type and she can respond verbally! HOW COOL FOR ME!!! (I mean, it's a shame she can't hear my voice, too... But I am, basically, a selfish man and don't have a problem when I'm given more than I feel I deserve, lol.)

So I type "Am I hearing you live?" and she says "Yeah"!!!

HOW FRIGGIN' COOL IS THIS!!!

And she DOES have this great voice, WITH the great accent!!! (Though she SWEARS she doesn't have an accent... It's we who have the accents, lol! SHE'S SO COOL! And she's right, too! Because at one point she said she likes my accent, and there was TOTALLY a part of me that boggled at the concept! I don't have an accent, I sound like me... which is what she actually told me. :D ) Now, if you know me well or have read enough of my blog, you KNOW I'm a total Anglophile. I love SO MUCH about the Brits! There humor, their style, their basic take on stuff. I find Britcoms SO much more intelligent that our sitcoms (but then, since I don't get to watch British TV I don't get to see the crap, like I do with our TV), and some of the people who have made me laugh THE HARDEST are Douglas Adams, Eddie Izzard and the Pythons (friggin' ALL of 'em, though, Gilliam is, technically, one of us). So... if two identical twin women were seperated at birth, and one was raised here and one was raised in Britain, and they both (for whatever insane reason) had a crush on me... I would be attracted to the one with the British accent. I can't help it, it's just how I'm wired, for whatever reason will one day make some psychothehripist a rich, rich man.

So I'm my head is REELING at this point! How cool and surreal and just straight-up DIVINE is this! I've managed to charm this really wonderful woman into liking me enough that I get to hear her voice! TECHNOLOGY RULES! (I thought at the time...)

Then she says "I swear I heard you laugh."

Wha...?!!

I don't even remember what I said, and I'm sure it was embarrassingly moronic. But I said something out loud -- like maybe "Did you?" -- and I look up, at the tiny dresser thingy my computer monitor sits on, at the microphone that is plugged into my computer.

And she starts laughing.

You see, apparently all you have to do nowadays to chat overseas via audio with a hot British chick is HAVE A MIC PLUGGED IN. She pushes the right button on the interface, you click on Accept AND YOU'RE TALKING TO EACH OTHER.

This gave her NO END of amusement.

I swear, like, the first 45 minutes of our conversation was her laughing at the primative Texan who had just discovered the microphone.

But see... There are extinuating circumstances here! First of all, back in the late '90s when something said "Plug N Play", it meant that you have to turn your computer off, plug it in, turn your computer back on, go into your Computer Settings, click a few things -- turn some stuff on, turn other stuff off -- then go into your Internet Settings, click some more stuff, go into your Audio Settings... And on and on.

But APPARENTLY, sometime between 1998 and Now, when something says you just have to plug a microphone into your computer and it will work IT DOES WORK.

Programs: Same thing. You used to have to do a tribal dance around your computer while chanting some VERY precise incantation before a program would perform whatever magic you were hoping it MIGHT perform for you.

Still... I can TOTALLY see how someone from another country might see the similarities between me and George W at that very moment.

Anyway, we chatted and giggled (apparently I -- mysteriously -- had NOT lost all my previous charm and/or appeal with the microphone incident) and she led me to this site where I could watch clips from very cool Britcoms. (They just call them Comedies over there, lol.) She wanted me to see a show called LITTLE BRITAIN that she loves. And there's a site that sells the dvd for the first season AND has clips from the show!!! We watched all the clips that were available, then watched the 4 clips for a show called MY FAMILY (which seems really funny!) -- her on her computer and me on mine. And it did not escape me at the time HOW FRIGGIN' COOL this was!!!

Okay, remove the woman in question and replace her with some nerd-guy who's just into the Net and gadgets and making friends... To be watching a Britcom with an actual Brit IS SO ASTOUNDING!!! We're talking about ME, mind you... An Anglophile who may never get to see the Emerald Isle because he has a better-than-crap job that barely pays the bills, much less affords him international travel!

And then, to be doing it in my bathrobe in my bedroom! Technology just RULZ!

Then add in the super-hot 20-year-old who seems to think I'm pretty cool, too, even though she's seen my pics and knows how old I am... My head was ready to explode.

And now I see that it's just after 3:00 pm... and I am still awake.

Still... NICE weekend for Ray Jay :) I pray your last 3 days have been TWICE as cool for you as the last 2 days have been for me!!!

No D Like 3-D!!!

Brian and I just got back from MONSTER HOUSE 3-D!!!

Well...

...that's a bit inaccurate... Brian and I got back from MONSTER HOUSE 3-D about an hour ago, then I bombed around Springfield for a while (PS2's The Simpsons: Road Rage), and then I nuked and ate some burritos while watching an episode of THE SIMPSONS...

But you get the drift: MONSTER HOUSE has been released in a 3-D version, and Brian and I saw it tonight!!!

:D

I FRIGGIN' LOVE 3-D!!!

And it's not that crappy red-blue garbage, either!!! [Allow me to clarify: Red-blue 3-D rocks... IF the film is in black & white!!! Apply the red-blue process to a color film -- like idiots recently have been doing -- and it all-but cancels out the point of using the colors red and blue to create the illusion of depth. But apparently film districutors can't comprehend the "magic" of the third dimension, and so they market films as being in 3-d even though they cheap-out to the point that the process doesn't work ;P]

In fact, it's a new process that they call Real D that uses a higher frame rate to project both the left-eye and right-eye perspective from the the same projector!!! So the theater only needs a single projector (although it's a digital hi-def projector) to shoot both images onto the screen! But we, the audience, get real, poloarized 3-D!!!

(Plus, it's a CG movie, so it's not like they had to rent 2 cameras and use 2 rolls of film for each shot; the cameras are virtual and they can simply render the image from the 2 different perspectives. It's still more expensive/time-consuming. It's like rendering 2 different movies. But you're only doing the pre-pro and production for a single movie.)

And what's PARTICULARLY exciting about seeing MONSTER HOUSE 3-D tongight is that we're going to (knock on wood) see SUPERMAN RETURNS IMAX 3-D tomorrow!!!

We were going to see it tonight, but schedules got changed.

But it's SOOO COOL: Money has been tight all summer long, but we still managed to see SUPERMAN RETURNS opening weekend, and now (again, knock on wood) SUPERMAN RETURNS IMAX 3-D opening weekend!!!

True, I didn't get to give Smith my CLERKS 2 cash opening weekend -- which sucks, 'cause it would have meant more to him and the Weinstiens than to Singer and Warner Brothers :( And Brian and I had to wait to see PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST... but we got to see that one TWICE :)

But...

As Mr. Miagi says in KARATE KID, "Buddha provide". We've been very fortunate with the cashflow... Unexpected money popping up to sort of help us out! :D

So YAY!!! :D

And MONSTER HOUSE 3-D is really cute. It takes place around Halloween, and that's just a great setting for a movie, in my book! :)

Okay, I have some serious laz-ing around to do (at least 3 more episodes of THE SIMPSONS on this disc I've started), so I'll check in again later :)

I just finished reading Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay for NETWORK!!! Which is really cool for me!!!

You can't research Rod Serling without reading the name Paddy Chayefsky, because he and Serling were the benchmarks for what is called the Golden Age of Television. They're the cats that wrote TV movies that got all the critical applause and got viewers all stimulated and talking about that PLAYHOUSE 90 -- or whatever program -- that aired the night before. They were legendary for writing some of the best and most thought-provoking, socially eye-opening dramas ever to air on TV.

And because of this, they get compared to each other a lot by historians.
But none of my research indicated that he ever wrote science fiction or horror, so I was never compelled to try to watch any of his stuff. (Actually, he wrote ALTERED STATES, but the bits & pieces I caught on HBO when I was, like, 13 looked more like a drama thatn a sci-fi/horror flick, so I never bothered to catch the whole thing.)

Okay, but he is widely considered one of the all-time GREAT screenwriters, so there's this tiny part of me that was always curious what all the commotion was about.

At work tonight my friend Lothar insisted that I grab a copy of NETWORK at Walmart while it's still $10. Brian and I are kinda strapped for cash at the moment (one of the curses of being an "artistic type" is that we tend not to be great with money ;P) so even ten dollars seems pretty impossible for the time being.

BUT...

Creative Screenwriting Magazine has this EXCELLENT resource for screenwriters. It's CSWeb, and it has a section where you can read screenplays and teleplays online!!! (It's about friggin' TIME someone did this!!! I have paid ridiculous amounts of money over the last 14 years to purchase screenplays and teleplays to learn proper formatting! I already know it by heart, and my brother has me to reformat his stuff for him, but I'm glad that future generations of aspiring screenwriters will have this resource available to them for free!) And so I reasoned that, Chayefsky being one of the writers we are meant to strive to emulate and NETWORK being one of the screenplays we're meant to aspire to, CSWeb might have the script online for me to read! FREE!!!

And they did!!! :D

See, usually I choose my movies/TV shows for pure entertainment value. But every once in a while I'll brave the odd art flick or drama for educational purposes. But it's rare. So reading NETWORK tonight is one of those proud accomplishements for me, like eating all my spinach or brushing my teeth.

AND... It didn't suck! It was a good read! Like Serling, Chayefsky's all about the big ideas, and finding a way to get you thinking about stuff. I enjoy that. It's one of the reasons I love Crichton and Sorkin. In fact, a few years ago I read THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT just so I could experience it on the page (seen the flick a bajillion times), and it occured to me that Sorkin might have read Chayefsky when he was learning his craft. NETWORK and THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT have some stylistic similarities. (Plus, Sorkin is/was a playwright, and so was Chayefsky, so it would make perfect sense that Chayefsky would be part of Sorkin's cariculum(sp?).)

Ooh! And before I went to sleep last night/this morning I watched 3 of the last 5 episodes of GILMORE GIRLS from last season. For whatever reason (most likely SecondLife) I dropped out of most of my TV shows, but I continued taping them -- knowing I'd want to catch up eventually. So for the entire summer I've had these 3 tapes of GILMORE GIRLS just sitting around the living room, waiting for me.

With my baby's computer down -- and therefor, little reason to go in-world -- I found myself with nothing to do before bed. So I got mostly caught-up.

One problem, though... Usually GILMORE GIRLS episodes feel like stand-alone stories, even when a protline continues through several more episodes. But the 3 episodes I watched last night all felt like almost a single episode. The end of the episode closes several story points, but one (or more) is left wide open, as though Amy Sherman-Palladino is BEGGING you to tune back in next week!

Dude! We love your show! We're devoted like Trekkies! We're NOT going anywhere!!!

It was SO easy to drop out of X-FILES after the 3rd or 4th season because it became mostly a series of mythology episodes. I always prefered the "Monster of the Week" episodes because they felt like mini-sci-fi/horror movies!!! GILMORE GIRLS stand-alones feel like mini-romantic comedies, or mini-family comedies!

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE TV shows that are all about continuity! I remember being so impressed as a kid watching STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION when they'd actually reference something that happened in an episode 2 seasons ago!!! It was like "FINALLY! A group of writers that watch their own show!" And nothing makes a season more fulfilling than when the season finally answers a question that was posed 12 or 20 episodes back! It gives the show a sense of time and history and some root in its own reality!

But besides 24 and ONE TREE HILL, I tend to dislike soap operas. (Even in the case of ONE TREE HILL, the episodes themselves FEEL complete at the end of the hour, usually. Like if you missed next week's episodes, it's okay because you've seen all you need to see... Which, ironically, brings you back for next week's episode, lol.)

ANGEL was mostly a soap, and it was just so very easy for me to drop out of it after 2 seasons. (And that's a JOSS WHEDON CREATION!!!) And really, after Season 3, BUFFY became a soap. But I was just so hooked into that world by the time it happened that there was no way I could abandon it. (But by Season 6 I came awefully CLOSE to dropping out.)

But then, I get that this is probably just me and my finicky tastes. I guess if shows are turning into soaps on a regular basis, it's probably because the rest of the world enjoys it. And I guess I can understand that.

Blah. Whatever.

I'M OFF FOR 3 DAYS!!!

YEE-HOO!!!

I Am Legend

I finally finsihed it!!!

:D

It's good, too! The pace is a lot like the original HALLOWEEN... The first 3/4s of the story movies at a slow -- but building -- pace, primarily keeping alive this tense sense of dread. Then the last quarter of it sort of explodes into stuff happening, and when it's over you're left with this sense of having really, thoroughly lived in this world!

Also (and seperately, really) I can TOTALLY see why so many people have called this the ultimate vampire novel! (I won't spoil it, though. I highly recommend you find out for yourself.)

Also, I looked up the upcoming movie adaptation and got some scoop:

It will be written by Akiva Goldsman who did (I think) a SPECTACULAR job adapting THE DA VINCI CODE, I, ROBOT and A BEAUTIFUL MIND. And although I haven't seen it, I've great great things about his script CINDERELLA MAN.

Also, it looks like he may incorporate some of Mark Protosevich's script, which I'm about half-way finished with and it's really cool so far!!! (He's got some interesting solutions for the structure problem of going from a novel to the Big Screen!)

WILL SMITH is set to play Robert Neville!!!

The only possible problem I forsee (and this is THE big one) is that it's directed by Francis Lawrence, whose only non-music-video credit to date is CONSTANTINE... which puit me to sleep. Visually very pretty, but he didn't make me FEEL the story. It was just a lot of pretty stuff happening. (Like X-MEN: THE LAST STAND in many ways.)

I've seen too many scripts ruined by a director who doesn't GET story... So I'm scared that Smith's and Goldsman's work may be for naught :(

But we'll see. I'll be there opening weekend if I have the money!

Series 1957 B

Know what that is?

It's the secret to life!

... kinda...

I'll explain in a moment. But first, what lead me to it.

Okay, so my baby's computer got sickers and I haven't been able to spend time with her this week.

Which sucks... But also works out well for me. 'Casue when I have a choice, I'm spending every waking moment in SL with her. But when I DON'T have that option...

...I get bored...

...and when I get bored....

I get CREATIVE. (I daresay that most, if not all, of my creativey has been borne of boredom. And with every passing year I get better and relieving myself of the "curse" or boredom... with the VERY pisitive upshot that I become a more creative person.)

And lately I've been obsessed with questions of why I haven't written a horror screenplay that I am proud of yet.

Last night I went through my impressive library of horro flicks, looking for some inspiration, and I could find none.

Then I noticed my comic book adaptation of I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson -- one of the ALL-TIME CLASSIC horror novels EVER WRITTEN. EVER!!! (This book has probably influenced every horror writer who has ever forced you to leave your lights on at night. Most of them will admit it outright, the youngers ones might not even realize it because they were influenced by the ones that admit to having been influenced by Matheson and that book specifically.)

And I could never finish it.

The novel, I mean. It was written in 1954, and I'm a slow reader, so nothing short of Michael Crichton's or Douglas Adams's prose can hold my attention for an entire novel. Most writers, including Matheson, tend to cloak the action and ideas of their stories in detail description. Very artistic and clever, but I'm neither artistic nor clever. I like the ideas and actions of a story to be laid bare before me, right there for me to experience and move on to the next one. (I'm a screenwriter... That's how we do it. It's not pretty, I'm not proud of it, it's just a fact.)

So, I'm SO NOT saying that Matheson isn't a good writer... I'm saying I'm a SUCKY reader. Page-for-page I read A LOT more non-fiction than fiction.

And Matheson's work is written in that "novelist" fashion. So it's really hard for me to really get into. (However, when someone else does the parsing for me, translating his work into pictures and actions -- like the directors of the TWILIGHT ZONE episodes he's written, or the many movies he's written -- I ALL OVER IT!!! I love his ideas and his take on Life and on people and on the world we live in!!! He truly is a GREAT WRITER! But when I'm reading detail-laiden prose my attention usually wanders before I can explore the symbolic depths of the details, so much of the story is lost on me.) (I'm not half as literate as my friends and collaborators will tell you I am.)

So blah...

I discovered that Steve Niles and Elman Brown had adapted I AM LEGEND into a comic book series, which was a small run, but sold well enough to justify repeated reprintings as a graphic novel!!!

YAY!

Right up my alley! (Short of being adapted into a movie. But Vincent Price starred in the one adaptation that Matheson wrote the screenplay for called LAST MAN ON EARTH and it was pretty bad. Not because of the writing, but because of the production. OMEGA MAN is supposed to be a really good adaptation of it, but Matheson didn't write the screenplay, and there were several story elements that were changed... So I'll wait to see it.) (Incidentally, I just noticed on IMDb.com that another adaptaion is slated for 2007 release... Maybe someone will finally get the movie right?)

One of the things I noted from the interview with Steve Niles was that he left most of Matheson's text in tact, adding nothing and extracting very little. So this comic book adaptation would be even closer to reading the novel than usual!.

And when I bought the book and started reading it, I found that that is very much the case. Un fortunately for me at the time.

See, one of the reasons I can't read deatil-cloaked prose is bacuase my own imagination gets ahold of those details and runs off and does it's own things. The physical result of my mind running of with a wealth of discription is that my body has nothing to do and simply shuts down. I fall asleep. Reading description-heavy prose often puts me to sleep.

Not reliably, mind you. If I WANT to go to sleep, and to that end begin reading some description-heavy prose, I find myself mining the text and becoming excited and reading 12 more chapters.

So it's not even useful as a cure for insomnia :(

But if I want to digest a story and begin reading it, and it's the typical detail-/description-heavy style of prose that authors LOVE to write, then I'll fall asleep. And each time that happens, it takes me longer and longer to pick up the book again.

So I got, like, 9 chapters into the comic book version of I AM LEGEND and put it down for several months.

But last night, after my previous blog entry, I went through my horror dvd collection looking for some inspiration to the stroy-structure problems of my current screenplay (not the one I'm working on with Brian, but the one he's working on with me) and I could find NOTHING that could help me.

Then I spotted my graphic novel of I AM LEGEND...

So I picked it up, read a chapter, almost fell alseep, but I wanted to read another chapter, so I did, felt a little less sleepy this time... After a couple more chapters I was finally too tired to stay awake. BUT... I also recognized the narrative as very close to where I had left off in the actual novel!

I was catching up to myself!

I was 60 pages away from finishing the novel when I put it down! So if I kept this up, I might actually FINALLY finish this novel that has inspired so many horror writers before me!!!

Today I read a few more chapters -- feel not drowsy at all! -- and got curious: Where exactly DID I leave off on the novel?

I pulled out my reprint of I AM LEGEND and found the place... Marked by a 1957 $1 Silver Certificate!

I forgot how I had gotten it, but I remember being amused by how different this dollar bill was from any I had known in my lifetime. Plus, the fact that it was printed just 3 years after the novel was published (and 2 years before THE TWILIGHT ZONE would hit the air and introduce Matheson's work to many, many generations of sci-fi/horror fans) seemed amusing. So I had replaced whatever bookmark I was using with this dollar bill that I now had no interest in spending.

I pulled it out and showed it to Brian, who remembered me showing it to him before, but was still amused to see it now. He meantioned a website that tracks where a dollar bill has been, but it doesn't track before 1963.

So I did some Googling, which turned up the Illuminati type stuff I already knew.

Then I remembered my good, good friend Wikipedia which provided me with a wealth of info!

Now, here's where the "secret to life" stuff comes into play:

I was disappointed that I wasn't able to track the bill. Once Brian put that idea into my head it really took hold. I had the idea of simply tracking down the date, 1957, and seeing what interesting things had happened that year (for instance, I'm failry certain that when that bill was minted JACK BENNY and THE ADVENTURED OF SUPERMAN were still popular shows on the radio, a fact which linked me to a portion of the past before my birth by way of this single object). But after Brian suggested that I might be able to track how the bill had spent the last 49 years, I was way-curious!!!

Still, I wanted to know more, so I told myself that maybe this bill was meant to simply tell me whatever it could tell me, instead of the specific questions I asked of it.

I ended up learning about the movement of the US Treasury from the bi-metalic standard to the gold standard, and the uproar that caused, which lead to the creation of Silver Certificates.

Then after that, I was pretty much sated. I can still always go back and look up the year 1957 and see what more the bill can tell me -- that I would never have known otherwise -- but the bill had amused and informed me plenty for tonight.

And that sparked off the idea that the information this bill can tell me is similar to all money, it that it's worth is really what you can get for it. For instance, I believe I remember trying to spend this particular bill when I first got it, but the clerk refused to take it because he doubted its authenticity (since it looks so much different from what currnt $1 bills look like). So in that case, the bill was worth nothing. However, there might be a collector somewhere that has all the Silver Certificates minted except a Series 1957 B... In which case the bill might be worth a couple hundred dollars to him.

But our money is no longer backed by gold or silver... It's backed by "The US Economy". Which means, essentially, that it has worht because just about everyone on the planet agrees it has worth.

Then -- because I'm like this -- I realized that that is not at all dissimilar to our experience as human beings!!! Every second of every day has exactly as much worht to us as we GET OUT OF IT! You could stub your toe and have the value of your life decrease in those moments of intense pain, but someone going through an emotional trauma could stub their toe and curse and shout and then be happy for those moments when they weren't thinking of the trauma, to have their minds actually taken away from the far worse and far less temperary pain they're dealing with.

I know, I'm getting all esoteric again.

But that's me... That's what gives my life richness and value. Just about any given experience holds for me far more wealth than the experience itself. Hell, if nothing else the experience might give me a scene for a story! :D

Or... maybe just something to blog about ;P