Lovin' Life :D

I'm sittin' back, gulping some Chai tea -- hot, black, sugar but no milk -- listening to some Rue Morgue Radio and waiting for my baby to wake up, hehe.

I GOT TO TALK TO HER!!!

It's been a while since I have heard her voice because of her hectic work schedule lately, but I actually got to TALK talk to her tonight!!! She called me up! It was SO NICE!!! :D

And she told me she'd be online when she woke up, because she's not going into work as early as she has been!

YAY!!!

I mean, of course, Yay for her because she gets to settle back into her 40-hour work week.

...well... and... you know...

...FUCKIN' YAY FOR ME 'CAUSE I GET TO CHAT WITH HER MORE!!! hee-hee :D

I'm a bit giddy. Can ya tell?

It's amazing what Wendy does for me! I mean, my life hasn't sucked these last couple of weeks or anything. I've been happy and having fun. But then chatting with her online or talking to her on the phone just makes life BETTER! Mind you, life is GREAT... and then she somehow makes it BETTER than great!!!

How on earth does she do that?!!

She's amazing!


Oh, I watched the 4th episode of DRIVE and it rocked. Not as bad-ass as Ep 3, but good. Only it ends in a way that makes you REALLY wanna see the 5th episode, which won't happen any time soon. :(

Fox bastards!

Dude, if I ever get a TV station, I am SOOOOOO gonna let shows find their audience!!! In fact, I'm only gonna have shows that are good. And you know how I'll know they're good? I'LL like them. I won't even look at ratings and crap like that. I'll air good shows, and I'll make whatever money I make, and I won't dump a show after 4 episodes because it didn't catch on with the FIRST EPISODE!

Network idiots.

Sorry.

Blah.

I'm rambling, aren't I?

BUT I GOT TO TALK TO MY BABY TONIGHT!!! hee-hee :D

Okay, I really DO need to work on the script. Tommy's coming over tomorrow to meet about the short, and it would be nice to have the latest rewrite finished.

So talk to ya's later!

DRIVE

Just finished watching the 3rd episode of the new-and-already-doomed Fox show DRIVE.

It took 3 episodes for me to actually fall in love with it, but I have!

GOOD show!

Only 4 episodes have aired, and the last 2 will air this summer, according to the official website.

I don't know what it is, maybe it's growing up in the '80s with all those Sylvester Stallone flix, but I'm a sucker for an underdog story. Tell me about a quality show that got shit-canned by the network before it had a chance to really blossom and I'm a fan!

And Fox is fantastic Bad Guy in these types of stories, because they are notorious for shit-canning great shows! I mean, FAMILY GUY had to make millions on dvd and reruns before Fox finally desided to give the show another shot! (What idiots!)

And don't even get me started on FIREFLY.

Actually, DRIVE bears more than a passing comparison to FIREFLY: It has the same showrunner and the same star, Tim Minear and Nathan Fillion, respectively.

So if you're a sucker for underdog stories like me, you still have time to catch up on the 4 episodes that air and be ready to watch the last 2 this summer. Check out DRIVE's MySpace page to watch all 4 episodes. It's totally worth your time!!!

And like I said, I enjoyed the first 2 episodes, but it was Episode 3, "Let the Games Begin", that made me fall in love with it!

Oh and, the episodes are in order from last episode aired -- top -- to the first episode -- bottom -- so here's the order you want to watch them in:

1. "The Starting Line"
2. "Partners"
3. "Let the Games Begin"
4. "No Turning Back"

Another option is iTunes. You can currently buy all 4 episodes for $7.96. That's the exact price you would pay to buy all 4 individually at $1.99.

I would do that, but I don't have any money at the moment. Besides, I figure after the final 2 episodes air in a couple of months I'll just buy all 6. I doubt the iTunes episodes will go away, but there is a possibility the free ones will.

So if you have ANY possible interest in watching Nathan Fillion haul-ass around America trying to win a secret, illegal street race in order to save his abducted wife, go check out the first 4 episodes now!

Btw, did I ever mention that I met Nathan Fillion?

Well, not MET met him, but I saw him all up close. At the Screenwriting Expo. He was with Joss Whedon.

Yeah, I'm sure I mentioned it.

He's an inch or two taller than I am. :)

Okay, go watch some fun TV! OH! And the video quality is REALLY GREAT!!! If your computer and Net setup can handle video well, you'll really enjoy it! (I recommend bad-ass speakers, too, with bass! It enhances the viewing experience!) (I'm so lucky my brother/roommate is a geek!)

:D

My I.Q. -- 133 or 125 apparently

Holy schiza, I just spent maybe half an hour reading old blog posts because I thought I had blogged about scoring a 135 I.Q. before. I skimmed from the beginning of my blog in May 2005 and made it through October 2005 before I decided "Screw it! It doesn't matter!"

I don't remember if or when I documented the results of my last www.tickle.com/test I.Q. test, but I remember that the score was impressively high.

So tonight I'm puttering around on the Net and see an ad for the Tickle.com I.Q. test and decide to try it again.

This time I scored a 133. If memory serves, I dropped 2 I.Q. points. :(

That's not even the worst part, lol.

At 133, though, my "Intellectual Type" is said to be "Insightful Linguist".

I can dig on that.

Apparently -- according to Tickle.com and their Classic I.Q. Test -- I am "highly intelligent and have the natural fluency of a writer and the visual and spatial strengths of an artist."

I can get behind that, too! :)

(I should HOPE I have the natural fluency of a writer!)

And if I wanted to purchase a 15-page report on the results of my test I could have. But it's rent time, so no such frivolities for me, lol.

Then I took this Career Interest Inventory and was informed that my "top career area is Fine Arts". I apparently am "a naturally creative person who possesses a unique perspective on the world, and ultimately" I "want to share that vision with others."

I know, you're shocked, right?

Still, I was enjoying the stimulation of these tests, so I decided to give the Super I.Q. Test a shot, and maybe even knock my score back up to the high 130s.

No such luck. :(

I dropped ANOTHER 8 POINTS, down to 125!!!

This is over the course of MAYBE an hour!!!

And I'm not drinkin' or anything! Just taking tests!

Still... I liked what this test had to say. The way I think about things makes me an "Intuitive Investigator," it would appear. And I can dig on that: I'm all about intuition and have been told mine is fairly keen, and I'm all about investigating -- students call it ""studying" and writers call it "research" but whatever you call it it's the acquisition of knowledge baby!!! Plus "Intuitive Investigator" sounds kind of supernatural, like I'm Allison DuBois or something! :)

The test results went on to tell me "you have multiple talents and can do anything you set your mind to. You're able to detect numerical patterns easily and are able to grasp the true complexity of the world, both in its details and in a more abstract form. You've got a sharp logical mind and are adept at using words to get even a difficult point across. The combination of all these things makes you truly brilliant."

Who doesn't want to hear THAT every once in a while? :D

So even though I'm not as intelligent as I was a year or 2 ago, I guess my ego can handle the blow.

Still, I was reading about I.Q. on Wikipedia.org and it appears that when examining I.Q. data they tend to group scores like Below 75, 75-90, 90-110, 110-125 and then Above 125. So even if I took a legitimate I.Q. test and came up 125, I'm still at the low end of the High End of the spectrum. So that's pretty cool, right?

I can't see myself taking an I.Q. test for real. My fear has always been that I might discover I'm not as smart as I think I am, lol.

When I admitted this to my friend Daniel A. (I know a few Daniels) he asked if I was afraid I might start doing stupid things "like putting thumb tacks on your peanut-butter and jelly sandwich?" LMAO :D I don't know why, but that mental image slays me!

I should probably be writing now.

I mean, I am writing, but I should probably be working on the short. Brian came up with a cool way to amp-up the horror element, and it was BRILLIANT! So I should probably be rewriting the script.

But I feel lazy.

Maybe I need a nap.

I wish I could snuggle up to my Gnomey Goddess. It's almost 9:00 am where she is. I'll bet she's nice and snuggle-able right now! :)

Joss Wheadon Truly Loves Us!

Just finished BUFFY #2...

GENIUS!!!

Seriously, just really, really great!

ALSO...

I finished watching the first season of THE DRESDEN FILES, and it's BRILLIANT!!! I really like that show! And the big Season Finale episode was very compelling and TOTALLY makes you want to tune in next season WITHOUT RESORTING TO A CLIFF-HANGER!!!

It is SUCH WEAK SAUCE to do that cliff-hanger season ender!!! It's very insecure writing, in my opinion. I mean, you're basically telling your audience "I know I'm not a good writer so I'm gonna FORCE you to come back next season."

I'm not saying every show that uses the cliff-hanger IS poorly written -- many of them are not! I'm just saying that the cliff-hanger is a really insecure gimmick. A well-written show will bring you back next season SIMPLY BECAUSE IT'S SO GOOD!

And THE DRESDEN FILES Season Finale doesn't resort to the cliff-hanger gimmick!!! But you can bet your sweet ass I'm tuning in next season!!! (In fact, I'll probably be purchasing the dvds for the first season as soon as they're released!)

Okay, I'm going back to work now, hehe.

PEACE!!!

:D

P. S. Shout-out: I LOVE YOU GNOMEY MUNTS MUNTS!!! x o x o x o

Back Into 24!

I FINALLY finished Day 3 of 24, and am 4 episodes into Day 4!!!

Yay!!!

I didn't enjoy most of Day 3, but toward the end it became the show I was so addicted too! And Day 4 has started off with quite a bang! The only reason I stopped after Episode 4 is because I needed to get some sleep for work tonight.

I will be SO MUCH HAPPIER when I don't have to have a "day job" and am able to write during the day and watch TV at night, like the rest of the country, lol.

But blah. That's a whole other bag of personal issues, lol.

Got to talk to my baby yesterday and today! That's nice! The fact that w miss each other so much makes even 5 minutes in IM feel like a rare and beautiful privilege.

Have I already said that Brian and I got to see HOT FUZZ Monday night?

I'm kind of just killing time until Gnomey gets back. I woke up a bit earlier than usual and caught her in the middle of chores, heehe.

Actually, I might use this time to figure out something to eat.

PEACE TO ALL!!!

:D

DRIVE, Baby!!!

Okay, so I didn't end up getting a full night's sleep, so Brian and Mom and I did Family Dinner early, which turned out cool because we felt like Chinese and we hit the buffet before everyone else did and the meal was groovy!

BUT...

Due to the half-night's worth of sleep, I ended up crashing instead of going to see GRINDHOUSE. :(

But that's okay...

My dear friend Lothar gave me the series premier of DRIVE to watch, and it was REALLY COOL!!! I couldn't get it to work on the dvd player in the living room, so Brian didn't get to watch it wih me, but I just watched it on this computer and it was BAD-ASS!!! I'm jealous that I didn't think of the concept myself!

There's this manga called BATTLE ROYALE and it takes place in a dictatorial future wherein one of the most popular forms of entertainment is a Reality TV show in which a school is set against itself, and all the students try to kill each other to win the competition. I've only read the first 3 or 4 compilations -- because it's amazingly brutal and affecting -- so I don't know how it ends, but this new show DRIVE reminds me a great deal of that manga series. It seems to be like BATTLE ROYALE meets DEATH RACE 2000 combined in a really believable -- and therefore very SICK -- way, lol.

I haven't been able to chat with my Gnomey Goddess yet, but that's not particularly suprising since she wouldn't necessarily expect me to be online when I have been. I left her a voice-message, though, so I'm glad about that. As long as she ALWAYS feels HOW MUCH I love her, I'm happy; since I always -- ALWAYS -- feel cacooned in her love! :D

My friend, Lothar, wasn't particularly impressed with the series premeir of FRIVE, but I suspect that's because he didn't have quite enough beers in him when he watched it, lol. There's another episode airing tonight, and I hope he records it for me!

Tonight will be cool, no matter what (barring disaster, lol) because Brian and I are meant to see HOT FUZZ at the Drafthouse!!! That should be really bad-ass!!!

I've seen it online and it RULED THE WORLD, so it should be REALLY good on the Big Screen!

Shout-out to My Gnomey Goddess: I LOVE YOU, BABY, AND I ALWAYS WILL!!!

x o x o x o

YAY! The Weekend!!!

Did ya like my little joke? On my last entry? :D

I'm all "There's this documentary about this guy..." hee-hee-hee. But it was really a short Tommy and Brian and I shot a few years ago.

Tommy got this nifty idea about shooting shorts as tests whenever we get an idea about a feature we'd like to make. It's brilliant in 2 ways: First and most obviously, it gives us a really good idea about exactly what it's going to take to shoot the feature we have in mind, and secondly it adds another short to our resumes! This is more important than you might think; when Kelly moved out to L. A. he was surprised to discover that he had shot more films than any of his aspiring-filmmaker friends! You wouldn't guess that to be the case for someone who had lived in Hollywood longer, but it is.

Another (unforseen) benefit is that you get to see if the finished product is worth a year (or more) of your life. In the case of "HAL.com" we were planning to do a mocumentary in the vein of THIS IS SPINAL TAP and the Christopher Guest movies of the late 1990s. Everyone we told about the idea was excited by it. They wanted to see the flick based soley on the concept! But after we finished "HAL.com" we realized that that style of filmmaking really didn't highlight Tommy's amazing cinematic abilities -- and that's something a first-time feature director REALLY wants to do! That's kind of his calling card. That's what gets him future jobs!

And as you could see from "HAL.com", just about anyone could have shot that. Tommy's genius is that he recreated the style of a documentary, but no one in Hollywood (no one that can offer Tommy a job, anyway) will look at it and go "WOW! That looks just like a low-budget documentary! You're a genius!"

So we decided to hold off on the mocumentary idea until after we make a big-ish splash and making movies becomes our day-job.

So anyway...

IT'S THE WEEKEND!!!

And I've got a big one planned, too! If all goes well, this is how it will play out:

Sunday, Family Dinner, natch. Then I hope to catch a late feature of GRINDHOUSE with some free tickets I have! The condition is that they only let you into movies 2 weeks after their release date. So I believe I can finally use one for GRINDHOUSE! (YAY!!!)

Then Monday is kind of packed... First, when I entered the script for our short "The Caretaker" into the Creative Screenwriting Expo Screenplay Competition last year it didn't place or even get an honorable mention or anything. BUT... Last week I got an email from CS offering me a free "career consultation" thingy as part of CS's Screnwriters' Bootcamp! I filled out a questionair online and a professional writer was matched up to me, and we then scheduled a phone consultation for Monday. It'll be 30-40 minutes, and I have NO IDEA what's going to happen, but it'll be cool in any case!

I'm a little excited about it, because it doesn't seem like CS could afford to offer this service to ALL the applicants. So it makes me wonder if maybe my script didn't get a little bit of attention somewhere along the way ebfore it scrubbed-out of the competition.

It's very likely that this consultation is in some way an advertisement for the Screenwriters' Bootcamp program, but still... I would assume the screenwriters who do the counceling, or whatever, get paid, and therefore I still think the script must have caught someone's attention for some reason. So yay! :)

Then, we may or may not meet with Tommy. No idea yet. I don't know if Tommy knows, from week to week, which day he's going to be able to show up to meet with us.

(That reminds me, I need to try to email him and ask him, lol.)

THEN... Brian and I plan to catch the late showing of HOT FUZZ at the Alamo Drafthouse near us!!! I'm SO excited about this!!! I've seen the movie online, but it won't compare to seeing it in a theater!!! I watched every episode of SPACED online, a few times each, and watchign it on dvd was still much cooler! PLUS, I didn't yet know about the genius of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg when SHAUN OF THE DEAD was in theaters here in the States, so I've only seen SHAUN on dvd! t will be SOOOOOOO COOL to see HOT FUZZ on the Big Screen, as it was intended to be seen!!! (And Gnomey, you will be RIGHT BESIDE ME -- in my imagination, lol -- for every frame of the film! hee-hee)

:D

(Wendy got to see it at the cinemas in the UK.)

And then for Tuesday I have no particular plans. But I've still got 8 episodes of THE DRESDEN FILES to get through (10 if Brian's in the mood to watch with me) and I just got BUFFY, ISSUE #2!!! I could read it tonight, but I think I'm gonna hold off and savor it this weekend!

It was SO COOL... Since I found the first issue at my local grocery store I've been checking the magazine section every time I stop in. The last 2 times it was still only Issue #1 (and that's the ONLY comic I've spotted in that store, lol!) and so I figured that grocery stores are probably a secondary market for the book. I figure they probably prints a run, which they distribute to comic book shops, and if they print a second run they ship that off to interested grocery store chains.

But I heard last week that the second issue should be coming out soon, AND IT WAS IN THE STORE THIS MORNING WHEN I GRABBED MY WEEKEND PIZZAS AFTER WORK!!! This HAS TO be the first printing! Which means that I can probably (though not definitely) look forward to a new BUFFY every month when it first hits the stands!!!

Frickin' YAY!!!

I mean, whether or not my hypothesis is true will have to do with how well this second issue sells in grocery stores. But still, one can hope.

And at any rate, I HAVE ISSUE #2 NOW!!! hee-hee :D

Okay, I should take out the trash and check the mail before I slip into my pirate jammies and figure out what I'm gonna watch as I fall asleep.

PEACE, LOVE & HAPPINESS TO ALL!!!

And smooches to my Gnomey Goddess!!! x o x o x o

www.HotAnimalLovin.com

There's this documentary about this guy with this controversial website. It's a couple years old, but I still find it sort of interesting. You can watch it on YouTube.

It's a little odd, but drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

DIRK GENTLY On BBC Radio 4!!!

I don't know how many people are Douglas Adams fanatics like me are out there, but here's some AMAZING news for you!!!

Dirk Maggs (the genius that brought THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY back to radio) is working on adapting the Dirk Gently novels for BBC 4!!! Wikipedia.org reports that this will run over the course of 3 series of 6 episodes each, 30 minutes long apeice. Wikipedia.org also says the first series will begin this october, but Dirk Maggs' website has the first series beginning in December of this year.

I am SO VERY EXCITED about this!!!

I had SO MUCH FUN 2 years ago logging on to BBC Radio's website to catch the last 2 HHGG series every Tuesday! And, naturally, hearing how amazingly well Maggs and Above The Line Productions did with the adaptations made me yearn for a Dirk Gently adaptation!

AND NOW I'M GONNA GET MY WISH!!!

(Now if I could just convince Disney to greenlight the next 4 HHGG sequels, lol. But then, if I'm wishing for impossible things I might as well wish that a treasure trove of unpublished Adams books be uncovered as well, lol.)

So, if there are any others out there who love whimsical, intelligent, surreal humor gear-up for BBC 4's run of Dirk Gently in December!!!

:D

________________________________________________________________

CORRECTION: I use BBC4 in the above entry when I really mean BBC Radio 4. My apologies for any confusion. I've changed the title and added the word "Radio" to clear that up a bit. (Thanks to Dirk Withnail.)

A Day of Rest :)

This Tuesday has sort of been and very much-needed "Sunday" for me.

Last night, as I told you in the previous entry, I spent some time prepping the script for pre-production. There're still more to do, but I accomplished a lot, and today I was gonna hear Brian and Tommy talk about what changes they felt the script needed story-wise.

So before I go to sleep I watch the last episode of Series 2 of SPACED with Brian (completing his viewing of the show; he had missed the last few minutes of the last episode) and then we watch the retrospective feature "Skip To The End" in which Simon, Jessica and Edgar, as well as all the other stars and co-stars and guest stars, reminisce about the show, and the Main Three revisit many of the locations used for the series.

Very nice!

And after that I manage to get to bed at a decent hour, lol!

Then today I wake up and get to chat with my baby for a bit before joining Brian and Tommy to talk about the movie.

It was very productive, but better still, they really didn't have any big changes for me!!! They genuinely like the script! All they were talking about were subtle things!

So YAY!!!

But I had set aside today to think about rewriting. I didn't plan any other projects for myself. So when Tommy left, I had a lot of free time on my hands.

While Brian and I ate (dinner for him, breakfast for me, hehe) we watched episodes 2 and 3 of THE DRESDEN FILES, and that was fun. (We don't have the pilot. But it's a cool show. My first episode was one of the last of the season and I slipped into it with ease, so you really don't have to follow it in order to be able to enjoy it.) Then Brian felt sleepy.

And, oddly, so did I.

So I retreated to my room and watched a couple more episodes of BUFFY: Season 5 and drifted off to sleep. I woke up about 2 hours ago, watched another episode, then logged into my IM to see if my baby popped up before work. She hasn't been, but I'd feel like a bum if I found out she logged in the one morning I didn't, lol. PLUS (and this is the corny bit) I'm far enough into season 5 that Buffy is undergoing some of her major romance trauma, and Xander is actually doing well in the romance department, and I just found myself really, REALLY appreciating the amazing woman that Gnomey is, hehe. And thinking about just how lucky I am, hehe. So I wanted to be able to tell her that if she logged in. :)

And if you're reading now, Baby: Thank you for you!!! x o x o x o Thank you SO VERY MUCH for you!!! And for us!!!

But it's hard to describe just how nice today has been: I get my Gnomey fix, work on the movie with M'Boys, watch a couple of episodes of a good TV show (one of which I hadn't seen before) with my brother, then watch a couple more episodes of another good TV show (both of which I hadn't seen since they first aired a few years ago), drift off to sleep when I shouldn't be, wake up, watch another episode, make some fries & a Turkey sandwhich, and now I'm gonna go watch a few more episodes until I fall asleep and have to begin my work week.

There are times that I get so wound-up and wrapped-up in how much cool stuff I have in my life that I completely forget to take it slow and easy. I forget that sometimes a totally lazy day can be as much fun as the chaos of a 14-hour shooting day or a weekend coffee-house/bar/cinema hopping, or even wild-ass moneky-sex.

It is a much-used cliche that "the best things in life are free", and it also happens to be true. But it's nice to be reminded that one of those nice, free things is just a day filled with... nothing.

:D

GOT TO CHAT WITH MY BABY!!!

Something weird happened yesterday... I couldn't get to sleep. Noon rolled around on Monday and I still hadn't gone to sleep.

So I decided to stay up and see if I could chat with my Gnomey Goddess -- because it was very unlikely I would be waking up in time to chat with her before she went to bed if I hadn't been to sleep by now -- AND I GOT TO TALK TO HER!!!

Which was, as always, very nice.

OMG I LOVE HER SO MUCH!!! hee-hee :)

Sorry. Couldn't contain it.

Um... So when did I last make an entry?

Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Right.

I've watched some more SPACED with Brian. In fact, it's currently his Default Disc... Meaning that he goes to sleep watching it and wakes up and presses Play All. And when he's on the computer, SPACED is running as background noise.

In fact, when I went to bed Monday evening I could hear him laughing at the show! (Don't tell him, because he's already overly concerned about making noise when I'm sleeping, lol. He's developed a sort of super-human hearing in order to keep the TV almost inaudible while I'm asleep. I can sleep through a tornado, but he's just an overly-conciencious kind of roommate, lol.) It was a really comforting and positive way to go to sleep. :)

Also, I have knocked out just A TON of preproduction work on our short last night with the help of this amazing free software called Celtx!!! At work Saturday night/Sunday morning I was able to enter my screenplay into the program. Tonight I went through and "tagged" props and characters and locations and makeup needs and so forth! Now I can print out lists of things we need in order to shoot.

Tommy's coming over tonight, and we need to talk about changes to the script. But the cool thing about this program is that can make those changes without affecting any of the lists I've built if it's not necessary! OR, if it IS necessary it'll take me maybe half an hour (depending upon how much we change) to make all the props/characters/locations/etc changes necessary!!!

One of the reasons we never got around to shooting the short we wrote last year is that we didn't really know exactly how to go about prepping the short. (Not one of the main reasons, mind you; but one of them.) But Celtx is constructed to give you this wide range of options, and you can focus on the ones that you feel are most important... AND, it allows you to organize them with ASTOUNDING EASE!

This isn't an advertisement for the program. (It's free, for one thing, and I don't imagine many people who stumble across this blog are filmmakers, for another, lol.) I'm just so excited about it! My Genius Friend Dave sent me the link to this program at the EXACT PERFECT time for it to REALLY come in handy, and for me to get the most out of it!!!

One of the REALLY cool aspects of the way Celtx works is the tools it provides for the DEVELOPMENT of a screenplay! I hope that after we shoot this short we'll be developing it into a feature-length screenplay to shoot next year. And I can use the character stuff I've already got when I expand the short into a feature!

In fact, I suspect I'll be using Celtx the next time I develop a screenplay (or novel) from scratch!

You have to download it and play around with it to understand what I'm going on about. But it's really amazing! And incredibly easy to use, once you figure it out. I battled Final Draft Pro (one of the -- if not THE -- industry standard screenwriting programs) for a few months before realizing that I know screenplay format better than the program does, and it would be faster for me to write a screenplay with WordPad (you know, the program you find in the Accessories menu of EVERY Microsoft OS).

I've since moved on to Microsoft Word because it allows me to add page breaks, which are handy when preparing a script for printing.

But NOW I'll likely just use Celtx exclusively!

Blah.

lol

Okay, um...

OOH!

As of tonight I have seen episodes 10, 9 and 2 of THE DRESDEN FILES. In that order, lol. My Genius Friend Dave is at work when it airs, so his wife tapes it and he burns discs to loan folks. So I'm catching up on the show. Good series! Very cool!

Ooh, and I watched a Masters of Horror dvd! "Pick Me Up", directed by Larry Cohen! The Masters of Horror series is cool because it's, like, mini-movies directed by the people who know how to direct horror movies. But the dvds are even COOLER because they're PACKED with stuff about how the individual episode was made! So I got to watch a good little flick (I wan't blown-away by it, but it was pretty good) and then I got to listen to the director talk about his approach to filmmaking in the past and in general, and then this particular story specifically... in great detail!

VERY useful stuff!!!

I've watched I-don't-know-how-many dvd audio commentary tracks, and have gained a great deal of insight into filmmaking in general. But I have never before felt as though I had just been taught a Filmmaking 105: Advanced class until I watched this Master of Horror disc!

So it's a very niche thing, granted. But because it's so niche, I haven't been provided with this much detailed information on the subject ever before!

Very cool!

Okay, it's about 15 minutes after Noon in the UK, and that means my baby is probably off to work or about to be headed off to work. So I think I'm gonna wind this down and go to bed.

:D

PEACE!!!

Hope You Had A Good Friday the 13th

I started my Friday the 13th by coming home from work, cracking a few beers and watching the FRIDAY THE 13TH and FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART 2.

Good fun!

...then I woke up to a tapping on my door and my brother asking "You supposed to go to work tonight?"

It was 7:01 pm, and I had over-slept my alarm.

Actually, I believe it's just as likely that I woke up (sort of), turned off my alarm, told myself I needed to get up immediately, then woke up to the tapping on my door and my brother's concerned query.

And things got worse from there.

Work was A NIGHTMARE... for the first 4 hours.

But then things leveled out, and by the half-way point of my shift (about an hour after Friday the 13th became Saturday the 14th) things started falling into place nicely. :)

Then when I woke up this evening...

Okay, there was one negative: My baby's not online. I actually woke up in time to see her (usually, as per our Former Groove, before stuff started getting weird for her and her family) but she's apparently gone to sleep already, or just busy taking care of stuff.

Which is fine. Every time we interact, even if for only a moment, she makes sure I feel loved and feel important to her. I carry around this constant, never-ceasing feeling of being loved. She loves me good and it's with me always! :D

But the real reason I wish she were online is so I could tell her how much I love HER!!! Right now I've got this daily -- sometimes hourly -- influx of wonderful things in my life, these divine gifts that make me glad for every aspect of my life and lifestyle, and I run around so happy that I want to lavish Wendy with my happiness, hopefully blanket her with as much love as she shows me!!! <3 <3 <3 (Those are little text hearts, lol. I know they don't publish as such in this font, but I can't be bothered to mess with the fonts anymore, lol.)

If you're reading this: I LOVE YOU, MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! x o x o x o And THANK YOU FOR BEING YOU, BABY!!!

So that's the only "negative" so far (though not really much of a surprise; sadly, my baby has been taking care of so many things and so many people), and my day if off to an AMAZING start!

First, just as I'm about to turn on the oven -- I've decided that after the bleeder of a day I had yesterday, I'm gonna start today off right with tasty, tasty food -- to cook me a breakfast pizza (that is pizza eaten when I first wake up, not, like, pizza with eggs and stuff on it, lol) Brian asks me if he can buy me anything from Sonic! I'm all "Hell yeah!"

THEN... Something mind-bogglingly bad-ass happens.

Okay, I've been obsessing a bit over the fact that I spent $45.00 for a region-free dvd player, and didn't get one. Well last night, AFTER 1:00 am (hee-hee) I had a conversation that got me thinking.

So I wake up this morning (well, you know, afternoon) and I go online and start reading about dvd region encoding. Is it possible to modify your own player to be a Region 0 player?

Knowledge, my friends, is power!!!

It didn't take my research at all to find a page called VideoHelp.com. You can type in your dvd player's make and find a hack to alter the region of you dvd player!!!

NOW, the new dvd player I just bought AND my portable dvd player (which I use to watch movies in my room, mostly) BOTH are region-free!!!

I can watched SPACED in any room in my apartment!!! :D

Ooh!

And last night (this morning, after work) I stoped at the grocery store to have food for the weekend, and in the magazine section they were selling BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ISSUE #1!!!

If you're a Buffy fan, you have probably heard about this. Joss Whedon is writing the first several issues of a new Dark Horse BUFFY comic. It is the OFFICIAL continuation of the TV series! It is canon! Most people refer to it as "Season 8".

Before going to sleep I read it AND IT FRIGGIN' ROCKS!!!

Seriously, Joss Whedon wastes no time blowing your mind! When I first heard about season 8 I wondered "Where on Earth could Joss go with these characters?"

And now I know that he has WONDERFUL places for them to go, hehe!!!

Seriously, within a few pages you'll be going "OMG!!!"

I haven't had THAT much fun reading a comic book since the first black-and-white issues of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES or THE TICK!!! It's a GOOD BOOK!!!

Okay, Brian's home with food, and I need to eat and get ready for work.

PEACE, YA'LL!!!

:D


__________________________________________________________________

UPDATE:

Before work, I got to watch approximately 2 1/2 episodes of SPACED with Brian!!! And when I left him , he was laughing his ass off at the second-to-last episode of the first series.

Life is good! :D

PREPPIN' FOR PRODUCTION!!!

So I wake up today early enough to exchange a couple of quality words with My Goddess!!! :D

Our schedules are still not meshing, but that's cool. We'll get back into our groove before long, I'm sure. Or -- I guess more liekly -- we'll find a new groove.

Whichever the case, we'll be groovin' together soon! ;)

But in addition to this...

Brian hit me with 2 exciting bits of information at once: He had spoken with Tommy and Tommy's on board with my zombie script as our short film for this year, and Brian had read a little of the script and was already excited about it!!!

So after my lady had to go for the night, I IMed Tommy and told him a little birdy had told me he liked the script. He replied by asking if the little birdy had told me to start prepping for production!!!

Now Brian was already excited by some of the ideas behind this project, and Tommy just wasn't feeling it. So the purpose of the script was to SHOW HIM what this film would look, sound and feel like.

And he liked it!!!

Which, it occured to me a little after I talked to Tommy, is a bit funny, because we just re-enacted a micro version of how films get made. The writer gets an idea and writes a script so that he can articulate this idea to the people who might want to make the movie. If it's a strong enough idea AND he articulates it well enough (there's no "either/or" in movies, it has to be BOTH) then someone helps him get his movie made.

This may seem self-evident, but for YEARS I've been able to sell my friends on the idea, without having to actually write the screenplay to prove the idea works.

This is, actually, not a good thing. It's allowed me to be lazy. For a long time now. Having Tommy question the validity of doing a zombie flick is actually one of the best things that has happened to me in my entire (ametuer) career!!!

And having won him over FEELS AMAZING!!! I feel as though this may -- all things considered -- be my best piece of writing ever, just because I had to EARN this flick, and I feel like I actually did!

Yay!!!


More interesting still... I didn't have any help writing. This was entirely made up of those "gifts" I blogged about a few entries ago, the gifts of idea that writers receive and then craft into stories.

Blah.

So anyway, the next time Tommy and Brian and I meet we're going over notes and tweaks for the rewrite, and I have NEVER been so excited about rewriting a project EVER!!! (In the past, I usually just abandoned a project rather than rewriting it, lol.)

For some reason I feel like a REAL writer right now, lol!!! Like I never have before, I feel justified calling myself a writer!

Ooh, and the cherry on the icing on Gnomey's... I mean, on the cake: I get to work and my friend Domic has scored me some HOT FUZZ swag!!! hee-hee :D I got a few bumper stickers (I put one on my car IMMEDIATELY) and a couple of promotional booklettes that look credentials for Simon Pegg's and Nick Frost's characters! SO COOL!!!

PLUS...

I figured out that HOT FUZZ opens here the same day I get paid!!! I mean, my schedule won't allow me to see it opening day, but Brian & I might be able to catch it Sunday!!!

Btw, if you like comedy -- particulalry SHAUN OF THE DEAD type comedy -- SEE THIS MOVIE AUGUST 20, 2007!!! Seriosuly, a really good Opening Weekend might even lure these Brits over to this side of the Atlantic to do a flick. And even if not, it might make dvd distribution company try just a little bit harder to get the rights and clearances needed to release SPACED over here!

And trust me, you will LOVE IT if you ever see it! In fact, here's Episode 1 to get you started, from YouTube.com. It shouldn't take you too long to track down the other 13 episodes for yourself.

It'll get you fired up for HOTT FUZZ, which opens Friday, August 20, 2007.

:D

Schiza!!!

First off, I apologize if any German-speaking readers who might stumble onto this entry acidentally be offended. But I've been told that "schiza" -- which translates into English as "shit" -- is actually about the English equivalent of saying "darn". Similarly, the word "cunt", forbidden in America by the female population at large (at least, most of the American women I know) is often used as a term of affection in England, the way Americans might say "Whaddup, fool?"

Anyway, I'm way off-topic.

Just read that the earliest Atlantis will go up to the ISS is now June 8th. :(

And if you recall, this is VERY likely to knock them off their ambitious schedule for completion of the International Space Station by 2010. The schedule used to be Atlantis in March, Endevour in June, Atlantis again in September, Discovery in October and Endevor in December. And that would put them a large way ahead in the rush to complete the ISS before the Shuttle program is retired in 2010.

NOW, however, if you look at the above link you'll see that the schedule has been all scrunched up, and if something -- like, maybe, another unexpected hail storm -- should set this new agenda back, one of the missions set for this year will undoubtedly get bumped to next year.

:(

Sorry I'm geeking out about this BUT I WANT A SPACE STATION!!! I mean, I know we've got one now, but I want a BIGGER ONE! I want the whole world to share a space station to rival that of Hugo Drax in the Moonraker movie, or the Justice League in their animated series!!!

Is that too much to ask?

Can't a (36-year-old) boy have his dream realized?!!

You know what? Even if the ISS is completed by 2010, if I ever become a billionaire I'm building me a badass space station and donating it to the planet Earth! I mean, I'm sure Ted Turner and Bill Gates, and probably Exxon and Pfizer, already have their space stations under construction as we speak. But I want a PUBLIC space station! I want regular, non-billionaire folks to be able to hang in space.

And, like, if someone wants to do some research in space for PURELY SCIENTIFIC REASONS -- in others words, not for the purpose of making billions of dollars selling a pill, but just to see how stuff happens differently in space as opposed to on Earth -- then they'll be able to book time on the space station I've donated!

It'll be cool!!!

And, like, if NASA wants to use my space station to help build the first Moon base, or to get to Mars, I'll make it affordable and inexpensive for them! (I'll, like, build that into the terms of operation or something when I donate it.)

Actually, I'm tempted to keep it myself to make sure no government or coporation takes it over and starts misusing it... But then what about after I die? Or when I'm off shooting a movie and can't be bothered with the logistics of who gets to use what parts of the space station when? I'll need to figure out a way to ensure that the EPSS (or "Earth People's Space Station") belongs to the REGULAR population of the planet and never falls into greedy hands.

Anyway, until I become a billionaire, my hopes are that the ISS gets completed by the time I turn 40.

Which means that I'm hoping the Shuttle missions all go off as currently scheduled, and that no more set-backs foul-up the agenda!

Pray with me, won't you?

_ _
__

(That's a little praying face. Hee-hee!)

MEDIUM Online

Sometimes I'm a bit slow on the uptake, so you may already be aware of this, but you can now watch NBC shows online! For free! (Assuming you ignore the monthly cost of your cable modem, hehe.)

Apparently, NBC is one of a handful of TV networks that are putting their content on their websites. So if you don't have TiVo (which I don't) or even cable (which I don't) you can still watch your favorite shows on that network!

I discovered this after catching a great episode of MEDIUM tonight, feeling guilty because I wasn't able to tape it so Brian could watch it, and going online to see if it was on my favorite site for catching TV shows I can't watch on TV.

It wasn't.

But then I remembered something My Genius Friend Dave told me, so I went to NBC.com and found not tonight's episode, but the past 3 episodes prior to tonight's! (Which means that tonight's will probably be online by the time you read this entry -- assuming you don't read it 3 weeks from its writing, lol.)

I'm blogging about this because IT'S FRIGGIN' COOL!!! It looks as though broadcast television is finally catching on to what's happening around them and -- if you can imagine it -- ADAPTING!!!

I say this with surprise, because large corporations aren't traditionally known for their adaptibility. The last 3 decades (if not longer) we have seen corporations lay-off entire departments rather than rework their business strategies. And TV, in particular, has not been known for cutting-edge thinking!!! They make shows based on popular movies, or remake shows that have worked in other countries, or base shows ON OTHER TV SHOWS!

So seeing a TV network looking into the future and actually a step toward it is amazing for me!!!

I just watched 2 highly entertaining episodes of a really, really well-made show online as a result of some foreward thinking by a TV network!

Astounding!

Blah.

Anyway, in case you didn't know about this little mini-revolution in broadcasting, check your favorite network's website and see if maybe they're doing this, too.

And if they're not, you can always pay to watch your favorite shows on iTunes.

But free is ALWAYS better, if it's an option.

Oh, one minor thing: I haven't done any real research -- other than watching a couple of episodes of MEDIUM online -- so I don't know what the story is on the other networks doing this. But NBC has a single sponsor for each episode. So at the beginning of the episode you'll see a bumper telling you who is sponsoring the episode, and 2 comercials placed throughout the episode.

This isn't bad. Remember when TV WAS free? You got to watch free TV because you were sitting through comercials. Only now you're paying your cable company for the privelege of watching all those commericals, as well as the show you actually WANT to see.

Well, 2 commercials for an hour-long program (when you watch online) is AMAZINGLY
acceptable, to me anyway. You've got about 45 minutes good TV viewing and 1 minute of advertising.

If only Hotmail.com were as reasonable. (Is it just me? I check my email from a variety of connections, from last-millinium, barely-eligible-to-be-called-cable-modem to super-fast, and they ALL get bogged down by all the flashing ads ALL OVER the page! Very annoying.)


Okay, that's all I've got this time.

OOH! It's almost mid-April! I need to check on the Shuttle Program and see if Atlantis is going to make the mid-April launch!

Actually, I might go check on that now.

See ya! :D

Half -Way Through My Weekend...

It's already been quite packed, too!

Where to begin?

I got a jump on the weekend by staying up really late Sunday morning to do my laundry.

(I live in a third-floor apartment and we don't have washers and dryers in our apartments. So I have to lug my laundry down 3 flights of stairs and walk to the very center of the complex to the laundry room, then back up 3 flights of stairs until it's time to take the laundry out of the washer and put it in the dryer. 3 trips down and up every time I do the laundry. So naturally I put off washing my clothes for as long as possible. I have enough socks and underwear that I can usually go every 2 weeks.)

The way I talked myself into doing the laundry Sunday morning was that if I did, I'd still be up at 9:00 am, when the office opens, and I could then retrieve my region-free dvd player and Brian and I could begin our SPACED marathon Sunday night!


Of course (as I finally remembered after half an our listening to my iPod outside the apartment complex office) Sunday was Easter.

HAPPY EASTER, btw!!! :D

While waiting for my laundry to be finished, did just about everything I could think of EXCEPT rewriting the short screenplay I hope to sell Brian and Tommy on shooting this year. (This is part of most writers' process I've been assured, lol.)

Then Sunday night I woke up in time to spend plenty of quality time with my lady. :D This was really cool!!! Her poor life has been quite chaotic lately, but normality seems to be reaccerting itself for her, and she got Friday and Monday off, so that's good! We're hoping we can get back into our daily pattern soon.

For Family Dinner Mom took us to a place called Red Robin. It's one of those themed gourmet burger restaurants. I had a burger with 4 cheeses -- one of which was Blue Cheese -- on ciabatta bread, AND IT WAS AMAZING!!! Really great steak-cut fries, too, and all you can eat!

Expensive, though. You can eat great ciabatta burgers at Jack in the Box for less than half the price.

After that Brian and I crashed into each other for a few hours. We'd pick cars, pick a track that looked fun, crash into each other until we both exploded, then watch the replay a couple of times.

Nice, relaxing Easter Sunday evening. :)

After Brian crashed -- "went to sleep" I mean this time -- I spent many, many hours going between Flash, Photoshop, Macromedia FreeHand and SecondLife trying to create new clothes to sell in-world. I had very little success, but it was fun.

At one point I even plugged my jump-drive into this computer... In case I got the urge to work on the rewrite I was supposed to already have done. (I didn't, though, lol.)

As I was working I got the desperate need for Electronica.

I should explain. When I spent all my non-working, non-sleeping time in SecondLife I would listen to hours and hours of in-world Electronica and it rather grew on me. When I was socializing, it was usually at an in-world dance club, so when I was just building things in SL, even all by myself, I started listening to Electronica. It makes anything feel sort of like a party to me. If Electronica is playing uin the background, you're having a good time.


And designing clothes (if you can call what I do actual "designing", lol) is very long and quiet work.

So I went onto iTunes and checked to see if there were maybe any Electronic podcasts. And there are! I found a cool one, IndieFeed: Electronica, and downloaded as many episodes as iTunes would let me (maybe 10 tracks) and made myself a decent little playlist to work to.

When it got close to the time my baby might be logging on I switched to audio commentary for Series 1 of SPACED, ultimately killing time until 9:00 am, when I knew the apartment complex office would be open and I could FINALLY retrieve my region-free dvd player! (My goddess is always off the computer by 7:00 am, so I knew I'd need something to kill 2 more hours when we we finished chatting.)

Unfortunately, my baby didn't get to log in this morning, but I had Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, Jessica Stevenson and Company to keep me occupied until 9:00 am.

So 9:00 am rolls around and I FINALLY GET MY REGION-FREE DVD PLAYER!!! Now Brian will be able to see SPACED in all it's glory!!!

I unplug the other dvd player, put it away, install the new one, pop in a few dvds to test it. I want to make sure it works, first, so I plug in a regular, store-bought dvd.

The player works!

Now I want to see if it plays burned dvds. The other player played a copy of Tron (I lost the original, sadly, several years ago when Brian and I had first moved into this apartment) so I popped that in. The dvd player says that it plays multiple formats in addition to regular dvds. It's supposed to be able to play DivX, wma, mpeg, video cds, dvd-rw, just about anything but QuickTime movies or Flash, it seems!

TRON worked, too!!!

Next I want to make sure I have my HQFS 3-D system hooked up properly, and make sure it works with this new player. So I pop in SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER. (Hey, it's 3-D, okay?)

The 3-D works!!!

Now the second-to-last test: The other dvd player wouldn't play all (MOST really) burned dvds. Sometimes I'd be given a copy of a movie by a friend and bring it home to show Brian and it wouldn't work in the dvd player. I could watch these on my portable dvd player (which sits, immobile, in my room permanently, lol) or on one of the computers, just not in the living room, where Brian and I watch movies. So I pop in a burned dsc that didn't work in the other player to see if it works.

The burned dvd works!

So cool, now the last test. I figured the dvd player would pass all the previous tests because of the way its designed. And I wasn't really surprised when it passed each test. These are really a formality.

I pop the third disc of SPACED in. I chose this one because, for some reason, it doesn't play in the computer in Brian's room. (This computer that I'm typing on now.) I figured if one of the discs was going to be a problem, it would be Disc 3.

"Region Error".

"REGION Error?!!" I bought this dvd player for the sole purpose of by-pasing the region management system!!! To watch movies that I never could watch on a Region 1 player!!! I specifically typed "region-free dvd player" into Amazon.com and THIS player came up in a list of players equipped to watch dvds from multiple regions!!!

There must be something in the set-up, I figured. So I popped open a beer, opened up the plastic bag the manual came in, tossed aside several "Quick Start" instruction pages -- identical except for the fact that they were written in 3 or 4 different languages -- and began skimming every page.

(What can I say? I'm a guy; reading the instruction is a last resort for me. I was around when home videogame systems first started coming out, when home video recorders/players first came out, and I work at a TV station: I'm fluent in the manner in which home entertainment equipment hooks into each other and into my TV. In high school I even shot and edited stuff on VHS, which involves plugging your camcorder into your VHS so that you can record from one cassette to another. So I have some experience with home video systems. But I'm not a Guy guy, where I'm too proud to read directions. Input/output just feels intuitive to me.)

But I do skim every page, because I don't want to get to the next section of the manual, where everything is in Spanish or French, and have missed the one section I'm looking for. (I've done this a few times before.)

I get to the section on region encoding and I read the most disappointing words ever: Paraphrasing, "This player adheres to the Region Management System for diverse video discs, and will only play discs formatted for the appropriate region." Or something very similar to that.

I'm crushed.

I mean, I didn't spend a ton on it, and now Brian can easily watch every Region 1 dvd we own now -- which includes the second series of LITTLE BRITAIN, which is a coup -- but blast and damn! He still can't watch SPACED! (I mean, he can... He can watch it on the living room computer. But it would be awkward for us both to sit there and drink and laugh together. And sharing great Comedy with someone else who gets it is one of Life's very precious gifts!)

So my message to all: READ THE FINE PRINT. ALWAYS.

This particular failing of mine has popped up more than once to go "Boo!", and I suspect God or the Universe or Whomever is trying to really drill it into my head now, lol.

So, a bit dejected, I returned to Brian's room to continue watching the audio commentary for Series 1 of SPACED and get drunk.

On a much cheerier note, I woke up to Brian quoting bits from LITTLE BRITAIN to me, bits we previously couldn't watch together! So Life is good.

But I woke up late tonight. How late? So late that when I went into the kitchen to cook my breakfast pizza (it's sausage and pepperoni, but since I eat it when first wake up it's my "breakfast" pizza) and I notice and empty six-pack of MGD in the trash. This is the brand of beer that Tommy, without fail, always brings to share with us when we have our production meetings (bless him!) and this can only mean one thing: Tommy has been and gone, and I didn't wake up.

Now, Tommy and Brian are tight. They were roommates for a few years, and Tommy was close to my brother long before I grew up enough to realize what a cool guy he is. So I know they had fun. Brian even told me that they raced/crashed-into each other on the PS2 for a while. So it's not like my absence created this huge vacuum.

But still...

I woke up well too late to catch Gnomey online, too.

I was just kind of useless tonight!

How could I salvage this day?

Well... There is that screenplay I should have been working on...

And a few lines of dialogue actually popped into my head!!!

Here's the dirty little secret about writing: Writers don't do the actual creating.

It's been said by many other -- published, professional -- writers. I never wanted to believe it, but the more I write the more I discover it's true.

I mean, blogging is different. That's ALL us. But you may notice that in this case, we're not creating. We're observing. And transcribing those observations in our own, characteristic way.

Steven Pressfield's theory -- as expressed in his EXCELLENT book THE WAR OF ART -- is that we have a Muse who gives us "inspiration" as we work. Stephen King also believes in a Muse (who occasionally "shits" upon his head, lol) as he works.

Here's my personal take: I've noticed that every good idea I've ever come up with, has in fact been a gift from out of nowhere. A notion just pops into my head from out of the blue. Someone of a scientific (read: "not spiritual") bent will say that this is just two or more thoughts that we've already had before combining in a new way in our brains. Someone of a religious nature might attribute this to God or and angel giving us this thought. I believe it's something more like a Guide from the Other Side. You can think of it as an angel or God if that's more comfortable for you, but it sincerely feels like someone from somewhere dropping an idea into my head. And it doesn't feel like MY idea, although it inevitably pops into my head with notions and images and attitudes and so forth that are already lounging around in there. And when I explain it to others, ti always comes out in my language, expressed the way I express stuff.

But it's not MY idea, I believe. The reason i believe this is because when these ideas (a line of dialogue, a character, a dramatic/comedic/horrific situation) pop into my head I feel the same excitement as when someone else tells me a good idea. It's exactly the same as when Kelly or Brian or someone tells me their great idea, only it pops directly into MY mind.

I believe that all we -- writers -- do is craft these gifts of inspiration into a form that is enjoyable (or, at least not completely distasteful, lol) for others to read.

And I think I'm finally beginning to understand exactly what Pressfield and King are talking about when they say that what writers do is practice our craft until the Muse deigns to show up. If we just sit down and start writing, eventually something good will pop into our heads, and then we incorporate that into our story, then rewrite until it all fits together.

I just haven't gotten really good at the "sit down and start writing" part yet. :( I tend to run around and do other stuff until my Muse shows up with something that makes me WANT TO write. (Or, very frequently, HAVE TO write, lol.)

On the one hand, I'm told by professionals that I won't become a professional writer until I learn to start writing every day. On the other, there are so many things I enjoy doing that I'd rather not waste my time churning out crap until the Muse shows up. I can churn out crap all day after I'm a professional writer.

Blah.

So the point of all this:

I decided that if I wanted to make make myself useful this MonTue I should probably work on the script.

Which is when the aforementioned lines of dialog popped into my head! And I HAD TO write them!

CUT TO:

Several hours later I'm spell-checking my completed short screenplay before I save it and email it off to Brian and Tommy and a couple of my writer friends for their critiques!!!

YAY!!!

Still infected with the Writing Bug -- and many, many hours still to go before Gnomey will be waking up to get ready for work -- I plopped down and pounded out this excessively long entry.

Just for YOU. :D

Don't you feel special?

I can hear Wendy in my head going "That was a rather long one, wasn't it?" To which I would shamefully reply "Yeah. Sorry about that. Feel free to skip it; it's just me going on about my weekend so far."

And now I can hear YOU going "Well why didn't you tell ME that at the start of this thing?!!"



Sorry about that.

Attention Earth Enities...

Fellow carbon-based simians, I -- a normal blogger whose language you have ingested visually before and therefore you know that I am one of you and not an observer from elsewhere -- possess the need to transcribe the results of recent synaptic activities within my spherical cranium.

How about this weather we are experiencing?

What it do?

Word.

I derive pleasurable stimulation from ingesting web pages with my visual sensory orbs.

My peeps.

I have an emotionally provocative suggestion for an activity which will undoubtedly prove to be both fulfilling and enjoyable... We should all slather our flesh with butter and garlic and stand, naked, outside our domiciles simultaneously and noon tomorrow!

It is unimportant which time zone we live in as the time difference will conveniently provide a traditional 25-course... pleasure sensation.



For us.

The carbon monkeys.

Not for anyone else.

Anywhere else.



Jiggy.

So Guess What Came In The Mail Today...

(Well... yesterday, by Normal People schedules... Thursday...)

SPACED!!!

And computers are able to play dvds region-free! Nobody ever told me that!!!

Well, now that I think of it, that's probably a lie. I think I can remember My Genius Friend Dave telling me that once a couple of years ago, now that I mention it. In fact, it's likely he told me more than once, but my Swiss Cheese memory is only able to dredge up a mere phantom of one incident.

But anyway...

I got to talk to me Sweet Thang for a bit when I first woke up, and I swear I could not be more in love with her if I tried to be!!! She really is just the most loving and adoreable woman EVER!!!

And after she went to bed I popped in a dics of Spaced: Collector's Edition and watched the Out-takes and then More Out-takes, and then watched a featurette called "Raw Footage"... And I was struck by just how much of a genius Edgar Wright really is!

Here's the thing: Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson are absolutely BRILLIANT as writers and actors (the entire cast is brilliant; Wright, Pegg and Stevenson seem to only be capable of working with comedic geniuses, lol), but when you see how funny a scene is from a single angle -- how much energy was put into the writing, and then later how much energy was put into the performances -- and then you see a scene cut together, as it aired, you realize that Wright is as creative as Pegg and Stevenson are! They have words and actions at their disposal, and we get to clearly see how brilliantly they handle those languages. But Wright has this third -- most of the time unnoticed -- language at his disposal into which he infuses absolutely just as much energy!!!

You may not get exactly what I'm talking about, but I promise you if you watched an episode of SPACED, or SHAUN OF THE DEAD or HOT FUZZ shot by someone else -- with different angles and edited differently -- you would be left with this odd distaste of missing something... Like Spaghetti and Meatballs without oregano or something. You'd be like, "It was good... But... I dunno... I think something might have been missing."

Also, rewatching SHAUN a couple of days ago I thought it was a little unfair that Matt Lucas was in a Wright/Pegg production but David Williams was left out of the fun.

Then, rewatching one of my FAVORITE episdes -- Episode 3, "Art": The episode that inspired the Dynamic Duo to make SHAUN -- I realized that Williams is Brian's former artist/collaborator!!! By now I've seen enough LITTLE BRITAIN to recognize his voices (note the plurality, lol) and his face (even behind tons of makeup) to be absolutely certain it's him without having looked it up anywhere!

So that's really cool for me!

Also, in a weird coincidence, tonight at work I aired Elton John's 60th birthday bash concert, and among the many, MANY celebrity well-wishers were Matt Lucas and David Williams!!! If not for my baby turning me on to LITTLE BRITAIN I wouldn't even have known who they were. But knowing their work (including their Comic Relief special that featured Elton saying one of Matt Lucas's catch-phrases!) I think "OF COURSE they're on here!"

Plus, I get that pleasant little smug feeling that I am one of a small percentage of Americans who DOES know who they are and why they're featured on this special, hehe. ;P Like the way you feel when you watch an Eddie Izzard concert with a bunch of people and you feel like "THEY don't get the joke as thoroughly as I do." (Not because you feel you're necessarily smarter than these people, but Izzard has a way of making you feel like the REAL joke is just between you and him. (The Pythons and Douglas Adams create that effect, too.) (I AM a bit of an Anglophile, aren't I? lol))

And to top this all off, as I was drifiting off to sleep last night I figured out a way to turn the first 12 pages of my short -- which I assumed could be no shorter than 30 pages -- into THE short itself!!! This is cool because instead of writing some 8 more pages, I'm simply rewriting 12 pages! PLUS, this gives me new insight into what it takes to write a satisfying short!!!


Most writers begin their careers selling short stories to magazines and such, but I never had the confidence to do that. I naturally feel comfortable in feature-length structure. I get how it all fits together and feel confident that I can weave all these threads together into a gorgeous, emotionally satisfying blanket... But I never really felt confident that I could produce a decent handkerchief. But last night's (or "the day before yesterday morning's" interms of most people's sleep schedule) epiphany illuminated -- a bit -- the delicate tapestry of the short-form story.

Now, I still need to write it and sell Tommy on the idea.

Which is great!

I got the best of both worlds with this idea: Brian saw the potential in the project, which is just reassuring as someone whose job is to create intriging ideas. But Tommy isn't necessairly addicted to the genre; which means that my story has to be REALLY GOOD to get him on board. This is fantastic because I know that if I do sell him on the movie, IT IS GOOD. If I can sell Tommy on it then we've got something that a lot of people will enjoy.

And THIS is why you want to surround yourself with HONEST friends, and preferably friends with tastes different from your own (in many aspects; not all).

It's funny, too, because when we're writing it's often Brian who can't get behind one of my ideas, and Tommy and I have to sell HIM on it. So I -- for some reason -- really like the fact that now I have Brian and I have to sell Tommy.

Maybe it's just because it makes me feel safer... I know I can ABSOLUTELY trust BOTH of them to be honest about creative decisions. (Not that I didn't know that before, but it's always nice to have something you assume to be correct PROVED to be absolutely correct, I guess, lol.)

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit, hehe.

Maybe I should get some sleep now and get ready for my last Hell Day (knock on wood) at work this week. (I'm particularly cautious saying this this morning because tonight -- or "last night" -- was particularly challenging: several different things went wrong in succession, rather than the usual one or (maybe) two.)

Also, if my cousin Brandy is ready this: THANK YOU for helping the night ease by! It seems like things subsided just before you called and flowed smoothely just after we finished talking. So thanks for the positive mojo!

And since I'm giving specific shout-outs this entry (apparently, lol) Wendy: I LOVE YOU SO VERY, VERY MUCH SWEETY!!! x o x o x o <3 <3 <3

PEACE, YA'LL!!!

I Finally Did It...

I'm obsessed with the work of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg.

I can't help myself.

I'm working on a zombie story, and as a result I've been gobbling up zombie movies left and right... mostly the ones I've already seen several times. And mostly the work of George A. Romero.

But when I think of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) and LAND OF THE DEAD (2005) I keep getting drawn back to SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004).

Despite the fact that SHAUN is so AMAZINGLY FUNNY, it really fits right in with the other DEAD movies! (I would place it after DAWN and before DAY.) Wright and Pegg just SO NAILED Romero's world that the comedy IN NO WAY detracts from the "reality" of the scenario unfolding.

I'm gonna try to make this as short as possible, so I will try to cut out as many details as possible... Wish me luck:

So watching SHAUN again makes me want to watch the episodes of SPACED I have on my iPod again. And many of my most, MOST favorite episodes didn't make it onto my iPod, sadly. :(

And also, watching what came before SHAUN, as well as watching SHAUN itself, makes me want to see what came AFTER SHAUN... namely, HOT FUZZ.

And I found a wonderful opportunity, so I WATCHED HOT FUZZ!!! TWICE!!! AND IT WAS AMAZING!!!

One reviewer simply said that HOT FUZZ did for Cop Action films what SHAUN did for horror. But the truth is that Pegg and Wright are so brilliant that it's not NEARLY that simple!!! These cats HAVE SEEN MOVIES and they KNOW the medium they are working in! They play all the stereotypes and cliches of the Cop film/Action film like some sublimely subtle wind instrument! (Why I pick a wind instrument, specifically, is because any hack can blow in a tube, but it takes a maestro to make that mutha SING.)

Now, I have to note here that I'm not trying to sell YOU on HOT FUZZ. This isn't a movie review or anything like that. My baby (being an actual Brit, and living in the country where the flick was released first) saw the movie well before I did and was -- if memory serves -- less impressed that she was with SHAUN. (She hasn't seen SPACED yet, poor sweetheart.) So I'm not speaking to anyone else's opinion of FUZZ. I'm merely describing my own reaction to the flick.

So FUZZ and SHAUN get me all obsessed over the work of Wright and Pegg, and I re-watch the featurette on the Director's Cut of LAND OF THE DEAD, wherein they play zombies in the flick and meet Romero (and if you look closely at the cover of either of the dvd versions of LAND you'll notice that their zombie characters are featured prominently, right along with Da Man himself, "Big Daddy") and it all eventually leads me to a few hours ago when I ask my friend Pete -- who owns a region-free dvd player (AND the "Ultimate Collection" of SPACED on dvd) how much a region-free player costs...

Not much, he says. You can get them for fairly cheap. But, he informs me, you can't get them from your local electronics' store. He recommends Amazon.com.

I've just gotten my Income Tax return check... So...

I broke down and ordered one... Along with a copy of SPACED: THE DIFINITIVE COLLECTORS' EDITION.

I mean, I could have put that money towards a bill, or simply saved it as a financial safety net... But I NEED to own that series, don't you see?!! I need the audio commentary -- these 2 geniuses talking about what they do and why they do it and HOW they do it!!! I need the extras! I need ALL the episodes, in pristine digital format!!!

Plus, you know... You never know when a region-free dvd player might come in handy. Let's say Matt Lucas' and David Williams' next endeavor doesn't make it across the Atlantic. A region-free dvd player will allow me to enjoy whatever they get up to next either way!!!

Besides, when I finish this script and Tommy and Brian and I turn it into a feature film, it will be so good that we'll be rolling in the dough! And you know what they'll say? They're BOTH say, "Ray Jay, I am SO GLAD that you bought that dvd player and the entire SPACED series that time! It made us millionaires! THANK YOU!"

They'll say that! They will!


You wait and see.

And they'll also say "I've never said this out loud before now, though I've always thought it, but you are such a handsome, sexy man! I wish I had half the sex appeal you possess! Verily!" They'll be so moved by my masculinity that they will use the word "verily"!

And then Gnomey -- who will be living with me as my wife at that time -- will say "You really ARE a sexy, sexy man, Ray Jay! Take me NOW!" and then we'll disappear into the nearest bedroom, broom closet or dark corner and conceive Baby Number Eight.

You just wait.

I'm not a foolish man.

The Ends justifies the Means.

You'll see.