It's A BEAUTIFUL Day!!! :D

I just got back from seeing U2 3D!!!

You haven't lived until you've had Bono standing right in front of you, singing "Wipe your tears away" to you and only you, lol!!!

But I've got to back up a bit...

So I wake up and Brian and I discover the way to remove all out mental blocks to writing, lol!!! I mean, I haven't been blocked in a while, but Brian has. But what's more, this method of developing a story has certain built-in almost-guarantees (because there are no ACTUAL guarantees when you're creating ANYTHING) that allow you to proceed with confidence. (And lack-of-confidence is a HUGE writing block in itself!)

Now, this new information -- gathered from a very reliable source -- is, for me, ON TOP OF the fact that my current screenplay is whizzing right along, no problems, no blocks! This new information will simply speed the process up, immensely! :)

So my day is already off to a smashing start!

After that is breakfast with Mom (who is in town for a few days). The meal? PIZZA!!! Domino's pizza with Double Dave's Pepperoni Rolls!!! (If you haven't had Double Dave's, your life is not quite complete.) Plus, as Brian and I are on our way to meet Mom and this feast she's procured for us, I'm reminded of when Brian & I were kids and Mom would order Domino's. So that was nice.

The reason Mom is in town, sadly, is because her mom, my Gan-Gan, is in the hospital. However, after dining with Mom, Brian & I went to see Gan-Gan, and that was a nice visit! :) It's always alarming when your 70+ (80+?) has to go to the hospital, but it's reassuring when you visit her and she's just as quick-witted and funny as ever! :D

After that, I worked on my writing for an hour and a half, then time for U2!

I HAD THE ENTIRE THEATER TO MYSELF!!!

It was crazy!

It was kind of strange, in a really, really positive way, though...

I got into U2 when I saw the trailer for U2 RATTLE AND HUM back in 1988. I had heard their music, and liked most of it. But I wasn't a fan, necessarily.

Then I go to the theater and I see this trailer... Red background, black silhouettes walking across the screen in slow motion as these exciting notes from an electric guitar slice through my ears, and then the slicing notes become this gorgeous repeated melody that life my entire being into the air and fly me miles through the sky, and then the title card: U2 RATTLE AND HUM, OCTOBER 27, 1988.

That's the way I remember it, anyway. ;P

I don't even remember what movie I had gone to see. I just remember being transported by this trailer and I HAD TO know more about this band!

In particular, I HAD TO HAVE THIS SONG!

Turns out, the song is "Where The Streets Have No Name" from JOSHUA TREE, and the rest of the album is pretty damn good, too, lol!

Being who I am, I also had to buy Eamon Dunphy's UNFORGETTABLE FIRE - THE STORY OF U2 and read it, rereading sections of it several times. (This is back when I was 17 and didn't read unless I absolutely had to, lol.) The book lead me to collect U2's entire discography to date.

I fell in love!

I had them on VYNIL, if you can believe that! (Yes, I am THAT old, lol.)

U2 became my favorite band.

I could go into HOW into them I was, but I'm kind of eating up your Net-surfing time as it is.

But in 1991 I was in L. A. trying to be an actor. I wasn't getting any of the parts I was auditioning for, all my personal relationships were imploding (including my marriage) and life was just sucking, hard-core. I was alone on someone else's turf.

Then I heard "The Fly" on the radio, and I wanted to know who this new, exciting band was. This was an amazing sound! Really fresh!

And then I discovered who it was!

RATTLE AND HUM was the album I listened to the least. I prefered their earlier work, particularly UNFORGETTABLE FIRE and OCTOBER. I guess in the back of my mind I had resigned myself to the fact that U2 was kind of over. I mean, I had seen it many, many times before. Bands put out a few great albums, then put out some not-great ones, then they break up and leave the industry. You still have their good albums, you're just never going to heard new GREAT stuff from them anymore.

But then U2 reinvents itself!!! I mean, "The Fly" was every bit as exciting a fresh to me as "Where The Streets Have No Name" was back in '88!

I got to buy the cassette at the same Tower Records that Richard Gere drove by in PRETTY WOMAN, too, lol.

And I guess this theme of reinvention sort of seeped into my subconsious, because the same month I bought the tape I decided to move back to Texas and get my life back together. The idea of leaving L. A. morphed, in my mind, from a concession of failure into the beginning of the next phase of my life. (Which it turned out to be, actually.)

This isn't an "I Owe It All To U2!" type of story at all, lol. It's just an interesting coincidence, the way the band and their music has sort of been the soundtrack of my life through various stages, from teenager into my 20s and into my 30s, so far.

I'm sure you have a band like that.

Also...

U2 was THE band that I desperately wanted to see live. There were a few of them (the original KISS lineup in makeup, natch), but U2 was THE band. And when they reinvented themselves AGAIN for ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND, I finally got to experience that! (No Doubt opened for them, when Gwen Stephani was still the frontman for a ska band, hehe.)

AND -- and this is a little strange, I'll grant you, but no less emotionally significant to me -- I got to see U2inSL (a SecondLife cover band) with my soon-to-be Gnomey Goddess in SecondLife! She is a U2 fan, as well!!! :D

So tonight I go to see them in 3D, a few months shy of 20 years after they first rocked my world with their first movie. My brother wanted to go with me, but he's had a LONG day and elected to crash.

So I went alone.

And I was REALLY alone, lol! I had the whole theater TO MYSELF! It was, for 90 minutes or so, as thought I had a personal screening room! :P Just me and U2. I could sing along with the songs and giggle with child-like glee at how AWESOME this experience was, just enjoy the movie in any way I felt like!

And I DID, too! :)

And it's sort of cool in a metaphorical sense, because it's great sharing music with other fans, but more often or not, when you're listening to their albums, it really is kind of you and the band. You know? The music speaks to you on a deeply personal level (if it's that kind of music, that is, lol) and you always feel like no one else will ever have the same relationship to that music that you do.

And it's true. Because if you love U2 also, you and I don't -- and can't -- have the SAME relationship to that music. Our experiences are unique.

And even though this is atrocious grammar: My experience of U2 3D was WAY unique!!! :D How many other people on the planet have enjoyed a personal screening of the flick?

Hi, All...

Got a phone call from my Gnomey Goddess a couple of days ago!!! :D xoxoxo

It had been a while, so it was AMAZING to hear her voice again! More musical each time I hear it!!! :D

She told me she was going to be online, but it was late (for me) and so I camped out in front of the computer with PICK OF DESTINY playing... And woke up several hours later! :( She had typed a whole conversation to me, and I missed it. :(

Still, she was so sweet and loving that it made me feel as thought she had curled up with me as I slept, and departed just seconds before I woke up. <3 <3 <3

Oh, yeah... and I've had a couple of other experiences, too, lol. ;P


Um...

Well, I began my weekend sick. :( I was forced to call in Friday and Saturday. I started getting back to well again late Sunday, and I was able to rediscover boredom Monday, lol. But then Tuesday brought some ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and ALIAS, via NetFlix, so that was cool, hehe.

In fact, Brian & I have watched all of season 1 and most of Season 2 of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and we're laughing our balls off!!!

Then, today before work, we watched the pilot episode of ALIAS and had a blast! We have the first 2 discs of Season 1 in our household at the moment, so I predict more fun and excitement!

We just finished watching yesterday's episode of LOTS and O... M... G...!!! The very last word of the episode (just before the LOST logo glides toward the camera) blew both our heads off!!!

LOST-viewing, I believe, must be best as a group sport. It's just TOO COOL to turn to your buddy and go, "Did you see THAT coming?!!" And then you speculate for half an hour afterward about what it all means, lol.

DUDE!!!

I hope I get to watch ongoing episodes of LOST with my Gnomey Goddess, and speculate with her!!! :D She always tends to speculate toward the obsurd, so that will be SO MUCH fun!!! :)

Um...

Today -- Thursday night/Friday morning -- was a bitch. But that's not very interesting to write about.

Oops. My laundry is done. I need to go grab it.

I didn't have anything more interesting to write about, so I'll say "later" for now.

Later! :D

Btw: 2 Shout-Outs...

I LOVE YOU, MY GNOMEY GODDESS!! Thank You For Us!!! :D

And THANK YOU to "Senior David"! You know why! :)

My House...

Okay, first off, I think I made a mistake...

I took these shots of the house I just built late night/early morning...

When I shrink them down to a size small enough to read in a blog entry, the colors seem to condense and become one. :(

Sorry about that.

I hope to do something cool in my house, so that you can see what it looks like in broad daylight.

As I took these pics, I genuinely thought these pics would be fine. But I wasn't thinking about the fact that I would be forced to condense these pictures by 100%, lol.







Okay, so that's the outside of the house at night. I rather like the Mangey Raiders flag on the outside of the house! It's fully lighted, so if you see nothing, from afar, you WILL see the Mangey Raiders flag, hehe. :)



This is inside the side door. The front door is a bit more boring...



Here's the Living Room area...

It looks pretty cool in poor lighting, but you can't see much.



This is a reverse angle on the Living Room. You can see the side doorway (the one with the INVADER Zim poster to the side) down the hall.



Off to the side of the 2nd Floor is a sort of dining room. Here I am sitting at it.



Here is me and my friend Tangie in the 2nd Floor "Common Room" type area.



Just off the 2nd Floor Common Area is my room...



..and here's me sleeping in my bedroom (which you probably can't see because I took these pics during the night/morning)...

And this is Tangie in her room.

She lives on the 3rd Floor. She's a friend to my li'l bro & me, so she rents a room and helps me offset the cost of the land.



She's a bit more creative than I am at decor...







The 3rd Floor is meant to be a sort of Game Space, but due to SecondLife gaming rules, there aren't a lot of games we can play anymore... :(



However...

EVERY home should have a hot tub!!! :)



And so Tangie & I enjoy a relaxing evening/early morning hangin' in the hot tub.




Granted, this isn't the illuminating tour I promised, but -- as I said -- perhaps I'll have a cool House Warming Party or something soon, with better pics so you can see it better. :)

PEACE!!!

Down The Rabbit Hole!

DUDE!

Wikipedia rules, but it's a little bit TOO convenient, lol. I'm starting a new screenplay and I'm still trying to find a "shape" for the story, so I'm researching thematic ideas.

In the course of the last 3 or so hours, I've gone from reading about the theories about simulated reality to reading about natural selection! I think my head might explode, lol.

And that's just the wikipedia articles! That's not even going into more reliable sources. (Which you have to do, because if you look up any wikipedia article on a topic you know well, you'll find inaccuracies and omissions that the article writer missed.)

The scary part is that reading about natural selection doesn't have anything to do with my research, lol. I was reading theories on simulated reality and that brought up questions (just "I'm curious about.." things, not story-based questions, lol) which brought up new questions, and on and on until I look at the clock and laugh out loud at my own meandering mental state.

I haven't found anything that helps my story, yet, either. (Though sometime in the future I may be able to write my own version of THE MATIRX with some of the reading I've done, lol.)

I may get to see my Gnomey Goddess this weekend!!! :D xoxoxo She emailed me a coupld of days ago and told me she may get some down time.

So between getting some lovin' from my lover and working on this bad-ass script, I'm just in heaven!

It's funny, too, because last night at work I was taking a smoke break, and Austin is sch a GORGEOUS city at night, and I was thinking about some TV shows and movies I need to watch as research for parts of my screenplay, and it occurred to me that I am living my dream!

Not completely, of course. My dream is waking up with Gnomey, sharing breakfast with her, then writing for 5 to 10 hours, then hanging with her some more, and maybe going out with her and friends to see a movie or for some Starbucks or something, then going to sleep cuddled up with her.

BUT... One of the reasons I chose writing (and filmmaking in general) as my profession is that I love the thought of watching movies and reading books and learning things ALL THE TIME! :) hen I figure out how to make writing/filmmaking my FULL-TIME job, I will be SO spoiled, lol. ;)

Anyway...

I should probably get back to work. Just wanted to take a break from the idea-overload, lol.

Oh, and btw...

BEWARE THE INFINITE MONKEY!!!

"Missed It By THAT Much"

That's a quote from an old, old movie that you haven't seen unless you're as old as I am. It's called THE NUDE BOMB.

MY BABY IMed ME!!! :D

That's the good news.

I missed her by 12 minutes is the bad news.

Worse still... I was just in the kitchen doing dishes, maybe 15 feet away!!!

How cruel can fate be!

Blah.

I'm a bit grumpy because of that. I know she's been working hard and dealing with family things, and I HATE that when she snuck online for a minute to tell me she loved me, I wasn't there to tell her how much I love and miss her back!

I could use a drink. :( (But payday is coming up in a few days so, naturally, I can't afford one, lol.)

In an attempt to make this entry not so down, I noticed something interesting...

I've been on this Jack Benny kick lately, and reading about him, I discovered that he's got an interesting link to David Letterman.

First, understand that both of these men are comedy heroes for me. I discovered Benny back in the '80s when all my favorite heroes cited him as their inspiration. So I went to the library and checked out some OTR tapes of his show, and quickly fell in love with his humor as well.

Benny was this master of absurdity, using the fact that radio was an aural medium to create these whimsical scenes in your imagination.

Letterman's humor has that sort of quality, too. His Top 10 Lists, specifically, often create these impossibly absurd pictures with words.

Now, I don't know if Letterman was influenced by Benny, but I know Johnny Carson was one of his influences. And Carson was sort of an indirect protege of Benny.

But that's not their link.

Jack Benny's show ran from 1932 to 1955. (His radio show. He had a couple of TV shows, also, which were successful, but I'm talking about his radio show.)

HOWEVER...

After 16 years of success on NBC, the head of CBS stepped in and stole him away. From 1949 until 1955, Benny's show was on CBS.

The reason Benny jumped networks?

The head of CBS recognized what an asset his show was to whichever network aired it and treated Benny with the respect his first 16 years on air rightfully earned him.

Jump ahead a few decades in broadcasting history, and we find LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN debuting in 1982, following Johnny Carson's THE TONIGHT SHOW. Letterman built up a loyal following and legendary status as a comedian over the next 11 years, to be stolen away by CBS, who were willing to give him a show at an earlier time slot (which, to my mind, indicates a show of appreciation and respect for hsi talent).

Now, Benny when on to successfully broadcast for 6 more years.

Letterman has been doing THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN for 15 years now, so the comparison begins to fall apart, hehe. Before his broadcasting career, Benny was successful in vaudeville, while Letterman didn't spend much time in stand-up comedy (plus, the two live forms of performance are pretty different, anyway)...

BUT...

I just think it's kind of interesting that history sort of repeated itself -- in an up-dated sort of way -- 45 years later.

We all geek-out about different things, lol.

:)