It's 6:28am and I'm about to enjoy my 4th episodes of a personal Twilight Zone marathon. A dear friend gave me Season 3 of the Definitive Edition of The Twilight Zone a few Christmases back, and it's been long enough ago that many of the episodes have slipped my memory, so I'm able to enjoy them again, almost anew.
I say "almost" because when I was a kid I bought Marc Scott Zicree's amazing book The Twilight Zone Companion and have read it many, many, many times over the last 2 decades. When I found the unabridged audiobook version on Audible.come, I bought that and have been listening to it again.
Anyway, the Definitive Edition of The Twilight Zone includes a segment in each show before the closing credits called "And Now, Mr. Serling". After each show, Rod Serling would pop up on-onscreen and tease next week's episodes. Then he would take a beat, then plug the brand of cigarettes he was (presumably) smoking. (If you're not actually that familiar with The Twilight Zone you may not realize that Serling was a serious smoker, and often appeared on-camera with a cigarette in his hand. And in the late-1950s and early-1960s, there weren't any FCC rules about people smoking on-camera.)
I was watching the "And Now, Mr. Serling" segment of "Showdown with Rance McGrew" and laughed out loud when, while doing his plug for Chesterfield cigarettes, Rod raises his left hand (which had been hanging inconspicuously by his side for most of the segment) to reveal he's holding a pack of Chesterfields!
My knee-jerk reaction was to be sad that poor genius Rod Serling had to do commercials in order to tell his amazing stories! The Young Artist in me, naturally, rebels at the injustice of this master writer being forced to whore his brilliant show (in a subtle way, mind you, in as dignified a fashion as one might hope for an advertisement) in order to get it on the air.
But then the Older, More Experienced Guy spoke up and made a fascinating point...
Any serious fan of Serling's work knows how Serling's writing was often adversely affected by changes demanded by the sponsors of the shows. Serling was famously anti-censorship, and rightfully so! His body of work was most infamously tainted and neutered by censorship by sponsors!
Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky are often remembered as two of the most important writers in Television's infancy. Serling wanted to entertain, sure, but he also wanted audiences to think. He wanted us to consider what was going on in the world, and how we live our lives.
And this was sort of antithetical to what advertisers want. Advertisers do not want us to think, they want to tell us what we want. That's what advertising is. It's the difference between Google and Bing: Rod Serling (and other thought-provoking writers) are like Google, in that they simply show us what's out there, and advertisers are like Bing in that they want to show us what they want us to see. If Serling writes a teleplay about racism in the South (in the early '60s) and one of the sponsors is Coke, and Northerners tend to prefer Pespi while Southerners tend to prefer Coke (again, this was the early '60s; I don't know if the delineation is still true) then Coca-Cola isn't really going to be thrilled with a TV show that's all about racism in the South. It's not because Coca-Cola was evil or racist, it's because they're paying for people to watch a program during which they can advertise their product.
But when they demand changes to the production of Serling's script that dilute the dramatic integrity of the piece, Serling (and Serling's fans) will naturally paint the advertisers as the villain.
HOWEVER...
Rod Serling created The Twilight Zone as a means of telling relevant stories without sponsor censorship.
He realized (and stated often) that if you tell a controversial story about racism in the South in the 1960s, but set it on Venus instead of in the Southern United States, the network and the Sponsors probably wouldn't catch the reference. The audience would understand what the story was commenting on, and we will duly think about the human truths the show wants us to consider. But the bureaucrats whose job is to de-fang stories with too much bite (which might upset some of the folks paying the bills) weren't really likely to see what was going on until the episode aired, and the rest of the world saw it with them!
It was a brilliant strategy, of course, and others have followed in Serling's footsteps. Gene Roddenberry did the same thing with every incarnation of Star Trek.
So immediately after laughing and feeling sorry for Mr. Serling as he holds up a pack of Chesterfields and assures us that "twenty-one great tobaccos make twenty wonderful smokes," I realize that if it hadn't been for the adversity of advertisers in Serling's career, I might never -- NEVER -- have known who he was!
Seriously!
I don't watch Dramas! I'm not going to hang out with a bunch of racists for 2 hours! I watch Sci-Fi and Horror and the like! If racist hicks are being haunted by the ghost of one of their victims, I'll TOTALLY watch THAT! But if it's just a story about how some people are too ignorant to allow other people to live in peace, I am so not interested in spending my time with those dumb fucks!
A specific example: The episode I just watched "Showdown with Rance McGrew"...
If this were a Drama, it would be the story of how phony and weak a TV cowboy is and how the Old West, as portrayed by Hollywood (in the '50s and early '60s), is absolutely nothing like what happened historically. Rance McGrew is a spoiled Hollywood TV star, and a coward, and a wimp.
I don't want to hang out with that guy for half an hour!
But because this was an episode of The Twilight Zone, that Hollywood dude meets the real Jesse James, who sets him straight about the way Old West outlaws really behaved. he terrorized poor McGrew (the way McGrew terrorized everyone on the set in the first half of the episode) and though the episode ends a little tragically for McGrew, it's a fun romp for the audience.
The point I'm trying to get to here is that The Twilight Zone forever changed my life after the first episode. the show went off the air 6 years before I was born, and yet even today it inspires and influences me! Rod Serling inspires and influences me! And had it not been for Network and Advertiser censorship, The Twilight Zone wouldn't have happened!
And I know this is presumptuous, but I think if Serling were with us today, he might agree with that. Serling seemed the type of guy with a great and realistic sense of perspective; he would probably downplay the influence he has had on generations of writers and storytellers, but I don't think he would have any problem crediting censorship for helping him create his legacy. (He would also be quick to point out that thought he wrote or co-wrote 92 of the show's 156 episodes, there were several other writers -- including Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Earl Hamner, Jr. -- had as much to do with shaping The Twilight Zone as he did...even though die-hard Serling fans, such as myself, might argue the point.)
But here's a bigger consideration: If censorship hadn't driven Rod Serling to create The Twilight Zone, would Star Trek exist?
How many works of speculative fiction are a direct result of Serling's couching of important stories within a fantastical premise? I mean, Sci-Fi authors had long been setting their social criticism within fantastical settings. Serling didn't invent the literary tradition. But he popularized it! The Twilight Zone was (and is still) viewed by tons of people who have never read Heinlein or Asimov or Clarke or Matheson or Bardbury, or even Verne or Wells!
Paddy Chayefsky is still hailed as a great and important writer, but I'm not sure I've seen any of his work. I never saw Network, but I did read his screenplay for it. But the rest of his work...I have no clue.
Had Rod Serling had an easy, painless career of telling the exact stories he wanted to tell in the way he wanted to tell them, I may never have ever head of him, or read a word of his work, or seen a single film/TV show produced from it. But because censorship drove him to create The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's work is a part of me! It has irrevocably altered who I am, and who I will be! And if my daughter, or my friends or family or coworkers are at all altered by my presence in their lives, they are also altered by Rod Serling's work!
How amazing is that?!
So even though I'm sad about the grief Rod endured because of advertisers, I'm also kind of grateful. Those meddling bastards gave me The Twilight Zone, which is to say that they gave me the gift of Rod Serling!!!
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
JUST GOT TO CHAT w/MY BABY TWICE!!!
HOLY SCHNIKIES!!!
It's been a while since my Gnomey goddess has been able to get online. We've been keepin' the romance alive via texts and emails a lot lately.
BUT LAST NIGHT, THE DROUGHT ENDED!!!
Oops...
I just updated my Facebook status with a declaration that I just chatted with my baby twice in 4 hours. Which is accurate, but we video-chatted at 3:00pm (9:00pm on the Emerald Isle), and then we IMed for a bit around 1:00am, and then we video-chatted again just now -- around 5:30am.
So my update is technically correct. But what I intended to communicate was that I got to see her and hear her voice twice within a 24-hour period.
WHICH IS AWESOME!!! :D
AND...I don't know how, but I actually made progress on my outline!!!
More about that:
Okay, so I think I finally have my "first" novel and I've been slowly (VERY slowly up until tonight) chipping away at the outline.
First I got the general genre I wanted to write, then I found a circumstance I like (combination of location and why my characters are at the location). Then last week I worked-out a rough idea of how many and what types of people my cast might consist of. And I also figured out what my monster is going to be and exactly why it's killing folks. (When I said I had to work out my genre, I knew it was Horror, but there are many sub-genres to choose from, and I had to figure out which sub-genre I wanted to play with. I went with an update of the 1950s Creature-Feature. It'll be cooler than it might sound.)
HOWEVER... A clock has begun counting down!
I mean, I've always had the general countdown of "When I sell my first couple of novels I may be able to finally see the love of my life in person!" But generalized goals don't motivate as well as very specific ones. Changing-Your-Life-Into-Your-Dream-Life is too big to believe you can accomplish it. However, "Finish my outline before I take a brief vacation to go visit my mom next weekend" is a very useful goal because it's something I feel like I can actually achieve!
So I have roughly a week (and a half, if I need it) to complete my outline.
The reason, you may ask?
Because the Outline stage is where the "heaviest" creative "lifting" is done. You're making the BIG choices about the overall shape of your story.
You're still making hundreds of smaller, subtler choices when you write the actual pages. So you're still enjoying the creative process. And sometimes your characters behave differently than you thought they were going to, outline be damned.
However, the outline prevents that dreaded smasher-of-aspiring-authors'-dreams: The question "What happens next?"! With an outline, you KNOW what happens next! Even when things start going differently than you outlined them to!
I'm nowhere near the first writer to put it like this, but outlining is like taking a trip: You consult a map and plan the course you will take to your destination. Now, if you miss your turn-off, you can reconsult your map and figure out which street you need to turn onto to get you back to the highway. You still arrive at your destination, because you had planned out how to get there. But if you hadn't planned the trip, it might have taken you A LOT LONGER to arrive where you were headed. (And that's assuming some inbred mutants didn't pop your tires and chase you through the woods with their chainsaws! Always make a plan!)
So anyway, TONIGHT I made some serious progress in my outlining. I figured out who my main cast will be (the specifics of who they are and what they want during the course of the story), and what all their dramatic conflicts will be!
This is HUGE because if I think of a cool thing that can happen I have one, maybe two scenes. But when I know what my dramatic conflicts are, I have the bulk of the story!
Example: If one of my characters is a bank robber who has just pulled off a heist, and he and his partner duck into a Retirement Community sales pitch to hide from the cops and give themselves alibis, and his partner plans to double-cross him, I have several scenes right there!
1. The robbery
2. The escape from the bank
3. Ducking into the Retirement Community sales seminar
4. Making excuses (to one or more characters) why they are here
5. Trying to blend in
6. Main Guy notices Partner is acting weird
7. Partner tries the double-cross and succeeds/fails
8. Main Guy responds to Partner's duplicity
9. Maybe they try to keep their cover despite what's going on between them
...and so on.
That's 9 scenes. Depending upon how long I allow each scene to play out, that could be 9 chapters!
And that's just culled from an off-the-cuff situation I came up with an a single dramatic conflict. (Well, 2 if you count the dramatic conflict of them trying to fit in with a bunch of would-be retirees.) (Come to think of it, but 3 really, because the cops chasing after them is another dramatic conflict, which has to be resolved eventually.)
So I already had my main Story Conflict. Now I just needed realistic people with realistic problems who were going to be experiencing the Story Conflict! THAT'S MY WHOLE STORY! :D
And doesn't it seem a bit coincidental that I made such a huge dent after waking up early to see my Gnomage for the first time in a while? ;)
That woman is SO GOOD for me, in so many ways!!!
I had to post this, if for no other reason than to give myself a time-line I can look back on to check my progress on the novel. (My "first novel" if it sells, lol.)
And...you know...
...TO CROW ABOUT GETTING TO SEE GNOMEY!!! :D
I hope your weekend has been even half as fulfilling as mine has been!!!
It's been a while since my Gnomey goddess has been able to get online. We've been keepin' the romance alive via texts and emails a lot lately.
BUT LAST NIGHT, THE DROUGHT ENDED!!!
Oops...
I just updated my Facebook status with a declaration that I just chatted with my baby twice in 4 hours. Which is accurate, but we video-chatted at 3:00pm (9:00pm on the Emerald Isle), and then we IMed for a bit around 1:00am, and then we video-chatted again just now -- around 5:30am.
So my update is technically correct. But what I intended to communicate was that I got to see her and hear her voice twice within a 24-hour period.
WHICH IS AWESOME!!! :D
AND...I don't know how, but I actually made progress on my outline!!!
More about that:
Okay, so I think I finally have my "first" novel and I've been slowly (VERY slowly up until tonight) chipping away at the outline.
First I got the general genre I wanted to write, then I found a circumstance I like (combination of location and why my characters are at the location). Then last week I worked-out a rough idea of how many and what types of people my cast might consist of. And I also figured out what my monster is going to be and exactly why it's killing folks. (When I said I had to work out my genre, I knew it was Horror, but there are many sub-genres to choose from, and I had to figure out which sub-genre I wanted to play with. I went with an update of the 1950s Creature-Feature. It'll be cooler than it might sound.)
HOWEVER... A clock has begun counting down!
I mean, I've always had the general countdown of "When I sell my first couple of novels I may be able to finally see the love of my life in person!" But generalized goals don't motivate as well as very specific ones. Changing-Your-Life-Into-Your-Dream-Life is too big to believe you can accomplish it. However, "Finish my outline before I take a brief vacation to go visit my mom next weekend" is a very useful goal because it's something I feel like I can actually achieve!
So I have roughly a week (and a half, if I need it) to complete my outline.
The reason, you may ask?
Because the Outline stage is where the "heaviest" creative "lifting" is done. You're making the BIG choices about the overall shape of your story.
You're still making hundreds of smaller, subtler choices when you write the actual pages. So you're still enjoying the creative process. And sometimes your characters behave differently than you thought they were going to, outline be damned.
However, the outline prevents that dreaded smasher-of-aspiring-authors'-dreams: The question "What happens next?"! With an outline, you KNOW what happens next! Even when things start going differently than you outlined them to!
I'm nowhere near the first writer to put it like this, but outlining is like taking a trip: You consult a map and plan the course you will take to your destination. Now, if you miss your turn-off, you can reconsult your map and figure out which street you need to turn onto to get you back to the highway. You still arrive at your destination, because you had planned out how to get there. But if you hadn't planned the trip, it might have taken you A LOT LONGER to arrive where you were headed. (And that's assuming some inbred mutants didn't pop your tires and chase you through the woods with their chainsaws! Always make a plan!)
So anyway, TONIGHT I made some serious progress in my outlining. I figured out who my main cast will be (the specifics of who they are and what they want during the course of the story), and what all their dramatic conflicts will be!
This is HUGE because if I think of a cool thing that can happen I have one, maybe two scenes. But when I know what my dramatic conflicts are, I have the bulk of the story!
Example: If one of my characters is a bank robber who has just pulled off a heist, and he and his partner duck into a Retirement Community sales pitch to hide from the cops and give themselves alibis, and his partner plans to double-cross him, I have several scenes right there!
1. The robbery
2. The escape from the bank
3. Ducking into the Retirement Community sales seminar
4. Making excuses (to one or more characters) why they are here
5. Trying to blend in
6. Main Guy notices Partner is acting weird
7. Partner tries the double-cross and succeeds/fails
8. Main Guy responds to Partner's duplicity
9. Maybe they try to keep their cover despite what's going on between them
...and so on.
That's 9 scenes. Depending upon how long I allow each scene to play out, that could be 9 chapters!
And that's just culled from an off-the-cuff situation I came up with an a single dramatic conflict. (Well, 2 if you count the dramatic conflict of them trying to fit in with a bunch of would-be retirees.) (Come to think of it, but 3 really, because the cops chasing after them is another dramatic conflict, which has to be resolved eventually.)
So I already had my main Story Conflict. Now I just needed realistic people with realistic problems who were going to be experiencing the Story Conflict! THAT'S MY WHOLE STORY! :D
And doesn't it seem a bit coincidental that I made such a huge dent after waking up early to see my Gnomage for the first time in a while? ;)
That woman is SO GOOD for me, in so many ways!!!
I had to post this, if for no other reason than to give myself a time-line I can look back on to check my progress on the novel. (My "first novel" if it sells, lol.)
And...you know...
...TO CROW ABOUT GETTING TO SEE GNOMEY!!! :D
I hope your weekend has been even half as fulfilling as mine has been!!!
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Magical Weekend
I should totally be writing right now. But I'm having a cool weekend and I just want to blog about it!
First off, I'm having a really great time, but I don't expect my weekend to necessarily be fascinating to anyone else, so please feel free to blow this entry off if it gets boring.
But it started with the successful payment of my rent Friday morning when I got off work! This is a beautiful and wonderful thing! Our management is really strict about rent, and payday fell in such a way this month that getting rent in under the deadline was a bit sticky...but we did it!!! :D So my weekend began with a resounding success!!!
When I woke up Friday night, I knew what I wanted to do: On a recent episode of Hollywood Babble-On with Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman, Kevin mentioned this low-budget Sci-Fi flick called Monsters, which he raved about. And checking with Netflix, I discovered that I can stream it! So when Brian got home Friday night, we streamed Monsters on the BluRay player, and IT WAS AWESOME!!!
This past Halloween we streamed several low-budget Horror movies, and I seem to recall that each was worse than the last. (In one film, presented as a documentary about a paranormal investigation, many scenes began with a graphic at the bottom of the screen telling us at what time the scene was starting. Coincidentally, EVERYTHING worth including in the documentary happened at the top or the bottom of the clock -- meaning that everything happened at 1:00 or 2:00 ("the top of the clock") or it happened at 1:30 or 2:30 ("the bottom of the clock"). It was uncanny! (Not to mention unrealistic and unimaginative.))
So watching Monsters was a real revelation, because it was GOOD!!! Mind you, the title not withstanding, Monsters is a Sci-Fi flick and not a Horror flick. Someone hoping to see Godzilla: All Out Monsters Attack! or even Cloverfield might be disappointed. The film is thoughtful and realistic, and very engrossing! At one point we paused it for a restroom break, and were shocked to discover that we had already watched more than an hour of the flick, and only had 20-something more minutes to go! It was that enthralling!
It was really cool to catch a movie that didn't get advertising or any media attention that was actually fulfilling to watch!
However, having just seen a wonderful movie on Netflix (and remembering our previous bad luck with low-budget, unknown flicks) we decided not to stain our experience and just switched to a few hours of conversation, then followed that up with Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory.
Have you seen this show?
It's this great Sit-com about a pair of young physicist roommates (Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons) who have this all-American hottie (Kalye Cuoco) move in to the apartment across from theirs, and -- with the help of their other scientist friends (Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar) -- wackiness ensues. But it's smart wackiness! The jokes are genuinely clever, and the science is real!!! (The show employs actual physicists as consultants.) And it's genuinely charming, too! I get a kick out of spending time with these cats and watching their antics!
So far, Brian & I have watched the first 2 seasons, and Disc 1 of the 3rd season.
I really should be working on my script right now. :( But I'm really enjoying rehashing my weekend! :)
So Saturday, I woke up needing HOT DOGS!!!
Sonic has this promotion going on, and my last day of work was plagued with adds for these 4 hot dogs their selling for $1.99 each. In particular, I was mesmerized by the concept of the New York Dog: sauerkraut, grilled onions, and spicy brown mustard!!!
Now, I'm not usually a sauerkraut fan, unless it's stuffed into pockets of bread with hamburger meat -- a dish Mom used to make for us called German Hamburgers. AWESOME!
And I'm never an onion fan, unless their sauteed into mushy submission.
But, for whatever reason, the concept of the New York Dog had taken hold of my imagination, and I simply HAD TO try one!!!
So when I woke up Saturday morning (okay, "afternoon") I ran to Sonic and grabbed myself and Brian a New York Dog and a regular Chili Cheese Coney -- the Chili Cheese Coney was for safety: If the New York Dog was a dismal culinary failure, then I KNEW I would enjoy the Chili-Cheese Dog, and the meal would ultimately be a success!
Turns out, the New York Dog ROCKED! The next time I have some money, I may treat myself to a few of those! :)
Also, for me, this was quite a novel treat, lol. We usually can't afford to eat out, so being able to wake up and just go grab some breakfast is a special experience! (I feel all shiny inside!)
As we ate, Brian had The Big Bang Theory playing, which was nice.
After breakfast I dragged my laptop into the living room and worked on names for my characters, and worked on the general plot of the story.
Oh! That's worth talking about in itself...
Okay, so I started 2011 with the dogged determination that I will finish and shop a novel and/or screenplay! Probably more than one, but I don't need to put too much pressure on myself. So I started the year working on a particular novel that simply didn't want to go anywhere, so I switched (in early January) to a story that Brian and I had been working on (on and off) since at least 2006. Stop me if this sounds familiar: A slacker-type dude meets a Gray alien and they are pursued by Men in Black and have comedic adventures.
Sound familiar?
Maybe because that's the basis for the new British Comedy Paul!
The ever-brilliant Simon Pegg and Nick Frost beat us to the punch!
I have half-written and partially-written the script for this idea based on a character Brian created a couple of times, but it was never good enough for me and I always shelved it. In January I decided that I would finally make a go of it: No shelving it this time, write it to the finish and put it out into the world, whatever happens. One of the main reasons I felt the need to go full-bore with this idea was because I know what some people joke about but few people are willing to actually admit to with a straight face: There really, truly is a Collective Unconsciousness out there, somewhere, and if you've got a really great idea, 5 other people have also stumbled onto a very similar idea, too! So if you want to make your living telling unique stories, you damn well better strike while the idea is still NEW!
We struck while the idea was still new. But then we shelved the idea, twice, until I felt like I could do the idea justice. And now the idea has been done justice...by someone else!
That's the other thing: If you're a spec writer -- meaning you're writing for no pay, in hopes that when you're finished someone will buy your work from you (on speculation -- or "spec" -- of an eventual sale), as opposed to writing an assignment (paid) -- then you're already several steps behind in the game.
In other words, if Simon Pegg and I get the exact same idea at the exact same time, and we start writing that idea at the exact same time, Simon Pegg has to write the script, rewrite the script, then show it to a producer he knows. I, however, have to write it, rewrite it, then send it to agents and producers and studios. Now, as my script is going through the spec channels, these people are holding off on reading it for as long as they can because they have a billion other scripts they have to read this weekend, and all of them will SUCK! These poor Readers will force themselves to trudge through some of the worst writing the English language has ever produced, but they will keep whittling away at that pile of spec scripts (a pile that does not get any smaller, I might add) because that's their job.
Now, my script won't suck. But they have NO way of knowing that. They don't know my name. They've never heard of me. They have absolutely NO reason to believe that my script will be ANY better than the last 25 scripts they read this weekend.
The good news is that once they do get to my script, they will enjoy the read, and they will be SO RELIEVED to have not wasted their time (this time) that they will show everyone they know! They will happily tell everyone that they DISCOVERED the next great screenwriter! (That's their secret wish, in the heart of hearts, but they dare not voice it aloud because hard experience has proven to them that most of us spec writers are unskilled wannabes who appear to enjoy wasting their time by inflicting our talent-less garbage upon the Reader's talent agency/production company/studio.)
However...
Simon Pegg actually KNOWS some producers! He can get his script directly to them -- bypassing those poor, overworked Readers altogether. And -- just as, or more, importantly -- those producers know HIM! I say "Simon Pegg", and if you know who he is you think "funny, talented, smart" or any other number of positive adjectives. You hand a producer my script and he/she hands it to one of his/her Readers; you hand her/him Simon Pegg's script and she/he takes it home and reads it that night.
And that's all as it should be. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have spent many, many years proving that they are talented and entertaining and that people want to pay to see their work.
I pay to see their work!!! (I proudly own both the British and American releases of both Spaced and Hot Fuzz!) (I only own the American release of Shaun of the Dead.) These guys are AWESOME!!!
I'm going to see Paul as soon as (1) it's released here, (2) I have the money, and (3) I have the time off!!! :)
However, this created about 9 hours of stress for me, though, because when I saw the first commercial for Paul I went into shock. I had no idea what I was going to do next.
However, when God slams a door, She always opens a window, as the saying goes...
I had been struggling with Brian's & my story because it was coming along in spurts and sputters. I would get one piece of the story, and then I would hit a brick wall. (The problem I often have when writing.) And like all problems I run into over and over again, I have to look for a common denominator...and that common denominator is usually ME.
What was I doing wrong?
My Genius Friend Dave gave me some advice Monday night which amounted to this: make it easy on yourself. Much of writing (and, generally speaking, much of CREATING -- be it drawing, acting, comedy, animation, directing, producing, just CREATING ANYTHING) is grunt work. There are parts of writing which take great skill and consideration, and parts of writing that simply require practice. Genius Dave suggested that I try to do as much of the grunt work as possible up front, and try to save the really tough stuff until as late in the process as possible. And this makes sense to me! Do the things I know I can do well right at first, get as much done as I can do, and don't burden myself with the really perplexing aspects until I absolutely have to -- which just happens to be after I have easily accomplished most of the work! (Then it's too late to back out!)
In the past, I tried to tackle the hardest parts all up front...and I usually didn't finish the project.
At my age (I've celebrated my 39th birthday twice now), I have sort of run out of time for failure. I kind of need to just get out there and do it. Now. Before I no longer have the energy required to attempt to start a new career while working a day job. (I really got to this point years ago, but I didn't understand then what I understand now.)
And, as I said, I was really only stuck for 9 hours because, thankfully, a brand new situation appeared in my head as I arrived home after work that morning, and I sensed that I could turn this situation into a feature-length screenplay!
And that's what I should be working on right now, really. But I'm going to finish this blog entry.
So, anyway...
I told Brian the idea, and he laughed (an EXCELLENT sign) and so I'm hopping over to yet a third story in 3 months. (Btw, the reason I finally dumped the first story idea was that it was largely a Horror story, and after years of trying to write Horror I wanted to hop over into Comedy territory. I much prefer laughing to being scared. And I'd rather be thought of as "that funny guy" than "that disturbing, creepy dude." I guess I'm getting old.)
So while Brian replayed a The Big Bang Theory disc Saturday, I came up with character names and worked on the plot of the screenplay for a few hours.
After Brian went to sleep, I went into SecondLife, curious to see if anyone had created any TRON places yet. And to my joyful surprise, SOMEONE HAD!!! I bought some free Tron outfits and a free Tron identity disc, test drove an old-school Light Cycle, and bought a new-school one, then drove around this Tron-scape for a while.
Here's a quick glimpse of my fun:
Someone made a cool replica of the TRON: Legacy tanks. They're a bit small (judging mainly from the game TRON: Evolution, since that's the best experience of the scale I have had so far) but it's still way-cool! :)
Then there's the old-school, Classic TRON game grid...
...complete with full-scale Recognizers! :D
But there is also a new-school Light Cycle grid!!! (Why the f@&k didn't the makers of TRON: Evolution have the sense to create an entire Light Cycle level for their game?!! (If there is one, I haven't found it. There's just this one section where you're fleeing from mass destruction, so you race through the entire Light Cycle sequence in a couple of minutes. You don't have time to just drive around and explore the world. :P )
And whoever created these TRON sims went to the trouble of recreating Flynn's in-grid place! (In the bg.) VERY COOL!!!
Just a thoroughly fun place to hang out, this!!!
I ended my Saturday with some MST3K on DVD.
And now we have reached today, Sunday...
A couple of weeks ago, I bought TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY for my laptop. I have the PS2 version, but since buying the X-Box type game controller, I find I rather enjoy playing games on my laptop more. This is convenient, because not only can I play these games while I'm away from home (which I never am, unless I'm at work, but I enjoy the theoretical possibility, none the less) but if Brian is watching something in the living room, I don't have to interrupt him because I've gotta get my game on. I really enjoy starting up an audiobook and disappearing into a familiar game as I listen. (A habit I probably picked up pre-Gnomey, when I would spend hours in SL doing...well...nothing.) It's a wonderful vacation! Like sleep, a couple of hours spent in a videogame world can feel like a day...and then you still have the rest of your day left for other pursuits! Or, you can listen to the whole audiobook and spend virtual MONTHS in the game!
But I've sort of played TOMB RAIDER LEGEND to death, and TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD is a bit laggy on my laptop, so I bought TR ANNIVERSARY -- which I still haven't completed!
However...tragedy struck when I took my TRA out of my disc drive for some reason or another, and when I put it back in, IT NO LONGER WORKED!!! My drive couldn't read the disc!
But I've encountered this before, and I had found an easy fix: I get My Genius Friend Dave to back the disc up for me and play the backup.
Easy-peasy, right?
Not this time!
TRA seems to be rigged so that it won't play a copy. It asks you to insert the original disc into the drive, not the copy.
But what if my laptop won't read the original?!!
TRA doesn't have an answer for me, and apparently doesn't care. please insert original disc, not a copy.
F@&K YOU, TRA!!!
But that doesn't help.
But the reason I'm telling you all this is because I woke up with a hint of optimism in my heart and soul, and I stuck my original TRA disc into my DVD reader, just to see what would happen, AND IT WORKED!!! :D So I got to start off my Sunday in the Tomb of Qualopec and St. Francis' Folly!
Then I joined Brian in the living room for some more TBBT, and then we filmed a segment of "Kitchen Magic" for YouTube.
I might explain here that Brian & I shop at Magic Geek, and they're having a contest. Brian entered the contest, creating this cheesey magic-guy character who comically (but ably) performs magic in his kitchen. The clip is fun!
But, being a writer and performer, Brian envisioned this guy having a "lovely assistant" -- his bathrobe-clad roommate whom he had dragged in front of the camera to help him do some of his magic tricks.
Guess who the "lovely assistant" is. ;)
I've always enjoyed the physical juxtaposition of Brian's and my statures -- he's short and built like an 18-year-old swimmer, and I'm tall-ish and...not skinny -- and I prefer playing the straight man, so I adored this idea from the moment he proposed it!!!
Plus, doing stuff for YouTube is hassle-free: You're not going to make any money at it, so your only motivation is the fun!
So tonight we shot out first "lovely assistant" segment. It was a blast! :)
After that, we finished off the rest of Season 3, Disc 1 of TBBT (Brian had already seen most of it, but it was all new to me). And then I came in here to journal my fun little weekend.
Now I'm thinkin' I'll open up my TO DO files (instead of giving this new screenplay project a name, I've simply created a "TO DO" folder in which I will place all future writing projects, for the foreseeable future) and maybe knock out a few pages. And then I'll probably see if my DVD drive can still read TRA and play that for a few hours while listening to the rest of Aunts Aren't Gentlemen by Sir Wodehouse.
I hope your weekend was AMAZING, and I hope your week is even better!!!
:D
First off, I'm having a really great time, but I don't expect my weekend to necessarily be fascinating to anyone else, so please feel free to blow this entry off if it gets boring.
But it started with the successful payment of my rent Friday morning when I got off work! This is a beautiful and wonderful thing! Our management is really strict about rent, and payday fell in such a way this month that getting rent in under the deadline was a bit sticky...but we did it!!! :D So my weekend began with a resounding success!!!
When I woke up Friday night, I knew what I wanted to do: On a recent episode of Hollywood Babble-On with Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman, Kevin mentioned this low-budget Sci-Fi flick called Monsters, which he raved about. And checking with Netflix, I discovered that I can stream it! So when Brian got home Friday night, we streamed Monsters on the BluRay player, and IT WAS AWESOME!!!
This past Halloween we streamed several low-budget Horror movies, and I seem to recall that each was worse than the last. (In one film, presented as a documentary about a paranormal investigation, many scenes began with a graphic at the bottom of the screen telling us at what time the scene was starting. Coincidentally, EVERYTHING worth including in the documentary happened at the top or the bottom of the clock -- meaning that everything happened at 1:00 or 2:00 ("the top of the clock") or it happened at 1:30 or 2:30 ("the bottom of the clock"). It was uncanny! (Not to mention unrealistic and unimaginative.))
So watching Monsters was a real revelation, because it was GOOD!!! Mind you, the title not withstanding, Monsters is a Sci-Fi flick and not a Horror flick. Someone hoping to see Godzilla: All Out Monsters Attack! or even Cloverfield might be disappointed. The film is thoughtful and realistic, and very engrossing! At one point we paused it for a restroom break, and were shocked to discover that we had already watched more than an hour of the flick, and only had 20-something more minutes to go! It was that enthralling!
It was really cool to catch a movie that didn't get advertising or any media attention that was actually fulfilling to watch!
However, having just seen a wonderful movie on Netflix (and remembering our previous bad luck with low-budget, unknown flicks) we decided not to stain our experience and just switched to a few hours of conversation, then followed that up with Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory.
Have you seen this show?
It's this great Sit-com about a pair of young physicist roommates (Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons) who have this all-American hottie (Kalye Cuoco) move in to the apartment across from theirs, and -- with the help of their other scientist friends (Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar) -- wackiness ensues. But it's smart wackiness! The jokes are genuinely clever, and the science is real!!! (The show employs actual physicists as consultants.) And it's genuinely charming, too! I get a kick out of spending time with these cats and watching their antics!
So far, Brian & I have watched the first 2 seasons, and Disc 1 of the 3rd season.
I really should be working on my script right now. :( But I'm really enjoying rehashing my weekend! :)
So Saturday, I woke up needing HOT DOGS!!!
Sonic has this promotion going on, and my last day of work was plagued with adds for these 4 hot dogs their selling for $1.99 each. In particular, I was mesmerized by the concept of the New York Dog: sauerkraut, grilled onions, and spicy brown mustard!!!
Now, I'm not usually a sauerkraut fan, unless it's stuffed into pockets of bread with hamburger meat -- a dish Mom used to make for us called German Hamburgers. AWESOME!
And I'm never an onion fan, unless their sauteed into mushy submission.
But, for whatever reason, the concept of the New York Dog had taken hold of my imagination, and I simply HAD TO try one!!!
So when I woke up Saturday morning (okay, "afternoon") I ran to Sonic and grabbed myself and Brian a New York Dog and a regular Chili Cheese Coney -- the Chili Cheese Coney was for safety: If the New York Dog was a dismal culinary failure, then I KNEW I would enjoy the Chili-Cheese Dog, and the meal would ultimately be a success!
Turns out, the New York Dog ROCKED! The next time I have some money, I may treat myself to a few of those! :)
Also, for me, this was quite a novel treat, lol. We usually can't afford to eat out, so being able to wake up and just go grab some breakfast is a special experience! (I feel all shiny inside!)
As we ate, Brian had The Big Bang Theory playing, which was nice.
After breakfast I dragged my laptop into the living room and worked on names for my characters, and worked on the general plot of the story.
Oh! That's worth talking about in itself...
Okay, so I started 2011 with the dogged determination that I will finish and shop a novel and/or screenplay! Probably more than one, but I don't need to put too much pressure on myself. So I started the year working on a particular novel that simply didn't want to go anywhere, so I switched (in early January) to a story that Brian and I had been working on (on and off) since at least 2006. Stop me if this sounds familiar: A slacker-type dude meets a Gray alien and they are pursued by Men in Black and have comedic adventures.
Sound familiar?
Maybe because that's the basis for the new British Comedy Paul!
The ever-brilliant Simon Pegg and Nick Frost beat us to the punch!
I have half-written and partially-written the script for this idea based on a character Brian created a couple of times, but it was never good enough for me and I always shelved it. In January I decided that I would finally make a go of it: No shelving it this time, write it to the finish and put it out into the world, whatever happens. One of the main reasons I felt the need to go full-bore with this idea was because I know what some people joke about but few people are willing to actually admit to with a straight face: There really, truly is a Collective Unconsciousness out there, somewhere, and if you've got a really great idea, 5 other people have also stumbled onto a very similar idea, too! So if you want to make your living telling unique stories, you damn well better strike while the idea is still NEW!
We struck while the idea was still new. But then we shelved the idea, twice, until I felt like I could do the idea justice. And now the idea has been done justice...by someone else!
That's the other thing: If you're a spec writer -- meaning you're writing for no pay, in hopes that when you're finished someone will buy your work from you (on speculation -- or "spec" -- of an eventual sale), as opposed to writing an assignment (paid) -- then you're already several steps behind in the game.
In other words, if Simon Pegg and I get the exact same idea at the exact same time, and we start writing that idea at the exact same time, Simon Pegg has to write the script, rewrite the script, then show it to a producer he knows. I, however, have to write it, rewrite it, then send it to agents and producers and studios. Now, as my script is going through the spec channels, these people are holding off on reading it for as long as they can because they have a billion other scripts they have to read this weekend, and all of them will SUCK! These poor Readers will force themselves to trudge through some of the worst writing the English language has ever produced, but they will keep whittling away at that pile of spec scripts (a pile that does not get any smaller, I might add) because that's their job.
Now, my script won't suck. But they have NO way of knowing that. They don't know my name. They've never heard of me. They have absolutely NO reason to believe that my script will be ANY better than the last 25 scripts they read this weekend.
The good news is that once they do get to my script, they will enjoy the read, and they will be SO RELIEVED to have not wasted their time (this time) that they will show everyone they know! They will happily tell everyone that they DISCOVERED the next great screenwriter! (That's their secret wish, in the heart of hearts, but they dare not voice it aloud because hard experience has proven to them that most of us spec writers are unskilled wannabes who appear to enjoy wasting their time by inflicting our talent-less garbage upon the Reader's talent agency/production company/studio.)
However...
Simon Pegg actually KNOWS some producers! He can get his script directly to them -- bypassing those poor, overworked Readers altogether. And -- just as, or more, importantly -- those producers know HIM! I say "Simon Pegg", and if you know who he is you think "funny, talented, smart" or any other number of positive adjectives. You hand a producer my script and he/she hands it to one of his/her Readers; you hand her/him Simon Pegg's script and she/he takes it home and reads it that night.
And that's all as it should be. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have spent many, many years proving that they are talented and entertaining and that people want to pay to see their work.
I pay to see their work!!! (I proudly own both the British and American releases of both Spaced and Hot Fuzz!) (I only own the American release of Shaun of the Dead.) These guys are AWESOME!!!
I'm going to see Paul as soon as (1) it's released here, (2) I have the money, and (3) I have the time off!!! :)
However, this created about 9 hours of stress for me, though, because when I saw the first commercial for Paul I went into shock. I had no idea what I was going to do next.
However, when God slams a door, She always opens a window, as the saying goes...
I had been struggling with Brian's & my story because it was coming along in spurts and sputters. I would get one piece of the story, and then I would hit a brick wall. (The problem I often have when writing.) And like all problems I run into over and over again, I have to look for a common denominator...and that common denominator is usually ME.
What was I doing wrong?
My Genius Friend Dave gave me some advice Monday night which amounted to this: make it easy on yourself. Much of writing (and, generally speaking, much of CREATING -- be it drawing, acting, comedy, animation, directing, producing, just CREATING ANYTHING) is grunt work. There are parts of writing which take great skill and consideration, and parts of writing that simply require practice. Genius Dave suggested that I try to do as much of the grunt work as possible up front, and try to save the really tough stuff until as late in the process as possible. And this makes sense to me! Do the things I know I can do well right at first, get as much done as I can do, and don't burden myself with the really perplexing aspects until I absolutely have to -- which just happens to be after I have easily accomplished most of the work! (Then it's too late to back out!)
In the past, I tried to tackle the hardest parts all up front...and I usually didn't finish the project.
At my age (I've celebrated my 39th birthday twice now), I have sort of run out of time for failure. I kind of need to just get out there and do it. Now. Before I no longer have the energy required to attempt to start a new career while working a day job. (I really got to this point years ago, but I didn't understand then what I understand now.)
And, as I said, I was really only stuck for 9 hours because, thankfully, a brand new situation appeared in my head as I arrived home after work that morning, and I sensed that I could turn this situation into a feature-length screenplay!
And that's what I should be working on right now, really. But I'm going to finish this blog entry.
So, anyway...
I told Brian the idea, and he laughed (an EXCELLENT sign) and so I'm hopping over to yet a third story in 3 months. (Btw, the reason I finally dumped the first story idea was that it was largely a Horror story, and after years of trying to write Horror I wanted to hop over into Comedy territory. I much prefer laughing to being scared. And I'd rather be thought of as "that funny guy" than "that disturbing, creepy dude." I guess I'm getting old.)
So while Brian replayed a The Big Bang Theory disc Saturday, I came up with character names and worked on the plot of the screenplay for a few hours.
After Brian went to sleep, I went into SecondLife, curious to see if anyone had created any TRON places yet. And to my joyful surprise, SOMEONE HAD!!! I bought some free Tron outfits and a free Tron identity disc, test drove an old-school Light Cycle, and bought a new-school one, then drove around this Tron-scape for a while.
Here's a quick glimpse of my fun:
Someone made a cool replica of the TRON: Legacy tanks. They're a bit small (judging mainly from the game TRON: Evolution, since that's the best experience of the scale I have had so far) but it's still way-cool! :)
Then there's the old-school, Classic TRON game grid...
...complete with full-scale Recognizers! :D
But there is also a new-school Light Cycle grid!!! (Why the f@&k didn't the makers of TRON: Evolution have the sense to create an entire Light Cycle level for their game?!! (If there is one, I haven't found it. There's just this one section where you're fleeing from mass destruction, so you race through the entire Light Cycle sequence in a couple of minutes. You don't have time to just drive around and explore the world. :P )
And whoever created these TRON sims went to the trouble of recreating Flynn's in-grid place! (In the bg.) VERY COOL!!!
Just a thoroughly fun place to hang out, this!!!
I ended my Saturday with some MST3K on DVD.
And now we have reached today, Sunday...
A couple of weeks ago, I bought TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY for my laptop. I have the PS2 version, but since buying the X-Box type game controller, I find I rather enjoy playing games on my laptop more. This is convenient, because not only can I play these games while I'm away from home (which I never am, unless I'm at work, but I enjoy the theoretical possibility, none the less) but if Brian is watching something in the living room, I don't have to interrupt him because I've gotta get my game on. I really enjoy starting up an audiobook and disappearing into a familiar game as I listen. (A habit I probably picked up pre-Gnomey, when I would spend hours in SL doing...well...nothing.) It's a wonderful vacation! Like sleep, a couple of hours spent in a videogame world can feel like a day...and then you still have the rest of your day left for other pursuits! Or, you can listen to the whole audiobook and spend virtual MONTHS in the game!
But I've sort of played TOMB RAIDER LEGEND to death, and TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD is a bit laggy on my laptop, so I bought TR ANNIVERSARY -- which I still haven't completed!
However...tragedy struck when I took my TRA out of my disc drive for some reason or another, and when I put it back in, IT NO LONGER WORKED!!! My drive couldn't read the disc!
But I've encountered this before, and I had found an easy fix: I get My Genius Friend Dave to back the disc up for me and play the backup.
Easy-peasy, right?
Not this time!
TRA seems to be rigged so that it won't play a copy. It asks you to insert the original disc into the drive, not the copy.
But what if my laptop won't read the original?!!
TRA doesn't have an answer for me, and apparently doesn't care. please insert original disc, not a copy.
F@&K YOU, TRA!!!
But that doesn't help.
But the reason I'm telling you all this is because I woke up with a hint of optimism in my heart and soul, and I stuck my original TRA disc into my DVD reader, just to see what would happen, AND IT WORKED!!! :D So I got to start off my Sunday in the Tomb of Qualopec and St. Francis' Folly!
Then I joined Brian in the living room for some more TBBT, and then we filmed a segment of "Kitchen Magic" for YouTube.
I might explain here that Brian & I shop at Magic Geek, and they're having a contest. Brian entered the contest, creating this cheesey magic-guy character who comically (but ably) performs magic in his kitchen. The clip is fun!
But, being a writer and performer, Brian envisioned this guy having a "lovely assistant" -- his bathrobe-clad roommate whom he had dragged in front of the camera to help him do some of his magic tricks.
Guess who the "lovely assistant" is. ;)
I've always enjoyed the physical juxtaposition of Brian's and my statures -- he's short and built like an 18-year-old swimmer, and I'm tall-ish and...not skinny -- and I prefer playing the straight man, so I adored this idea from the moment he proposed it!!!
Plus, doing stuff for YouTube is hassle-free: You're not going to make any money at it, so your only motivation is the fun!
So tonight we shot out first "lovely assistant" segment. It was a blast! :)
After that, we finished off the rest of Season 3, Disc 1 of TBBT (Brian had already seen most of it, but it was all new to me). And then I came in here to journal my fun little weekend.
Now I'm thinkin' I'll open up my TO DO files (instead of giving this new screenplay project a name, I've simply created a "TO DO" folder in which I will place all future writing projects, for the foreseeable future) and maybe knock out a few pages. And then I'll probably see if my DVD drive can still read TRA and play that for a few hours while listening to the rest of Aunts Aren't Gentlemen by Sir Wodehouse.
I hope your weekend was AMAZING, and I hope your week is even better!!!
:D
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Working Vacation
I'm enjoying Day 2 of a 5-DAY WEEKEND!!! WOO-HOO!
The end of 2010 was a bitch, and I knew I would have to burn a couple of Vacation days to recover and start 2011 fresh. But this year, instead of just grabbing the first days of the year that were available, I bid my time a planned a bit...I intend to have a Rough Draft of Brian's & my novel finished by April Fools' Day. So I am taking Monday and Tuesday off as Vacation days, in hopes of getting further with the novel.
My reasoning, when I concocted my scheme, was that by mid-February I would have a clearer impression of what was keeping me from finishing (the writing problems that lay in my path). I believe my reasoning was sound! Had I taken 2 days off last week, the novel would have had a less Comedy tone and a more Action/Adventure thrust.
Still, as of today (Saturday), I haven't done much actual writing work. Brian & I have had a VERY useful discussion about the story!!! That's awesome!!! But yesterday was about blowing off steam, and today has been about necessary tasks: I got my car inspected, got the oil changed, and sent off the payment to get my car registered. So YAY! there!!! :)
Currently, I am enjoying some drinks as I listen to the audiobook version of Murder, She Wrote: The Maine Mutiny. (I am so obsessed with Murder, She Wrote lately that I bought all the audiobboks from Audible.com. What's wrong with me? Is it because I just turned 39 for the second year in a row, and now I'm going to start baking my own bread and gardening?! I have no idea! But, for some reason, I DIG Jessica Fletcher and her adventures!)
Also, I've been reading old Captain America comics. It's cool; I am transported back into a world that I enjoyed when I was 15 or so. Captain America's New York in 1971 (back when he was teamed-up with The Falcon) is a cool place to hang out in! Not quite as cool as Cap's New York of 1983 (when I was reading each issue as it popped onto the shelves, and his partner was Nomad) but still a very evocative and (somehow) rejuvenating place in which to hang!
Also, may I just say that visiting New York in 2002 was slightly disappointing?
I mean, NOT REALLY disappointing...see, new York had -- back in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s this image of this filthy, chaotic, cesspool teaming with victims swimming together through this tide of humanity. You could TOTALLY believe that there were these superheroes and superhero groups operating throughout The City because there was so much pulsing humanity everywhere that Optimus Prime could do close-up magic tricks on a corner all day you might not know about it until you picked up the New York Times the next morning.
But, I mean, growing up with Marvel Comics (and, of course, all the movies of the '70s and '80s), you got this idea of this dirty, and yet somehow magical metropolis, where anything could happen!
And then, apparently, Mayor Koch happened, and teamed-up with the Disney Corporation, and now NYC is totally Family Friendly.
Now, as a tourist in NY for 5 days, I AM NOT COMPLAINING, lol. I mean, I was staying in Brooklyn -- when I was growing up, Brooklyn was supposed to be one of the toughest 'hoods in New York -- and I felt completely comfortable waking up in the middle of the night and going downstairs and across the street to buy some cigarettes and have a smoke outside. A lot of my time spent in New York (specifically, NYC) was spent on foot during the night hours, and I never once felt threatened or uneasy.
But there is this little-boy consciousness within me -- the cat that still reads Captain America comic books -- that is the slightest bit disappointed that New York is so safe and snug. You know what I mean? I mean, I would rather not be eaten by Jaws...and yet...part of me thrills at the thought that there may be a "Jaws" out there, trying to eat tourists, lol.
The cocktails are tasting TERRIFIC, so this may be an appropriate place for me to bid adieu.
MAY YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!!!
:D
The end of 2010 was a bitch, and I knew I would have to burn a couple of Vacation days to recover and start 2011 fresh. But this year, instead of just grabbing the first days of the year that were available, I bid my time a planned a bit...I intend to have a Rough Draft of Brian's & my novel finished by April Fools' Day. So I am taking Monday and Tuesday off as Vacation days, in hopes of getting further with the novel.
My reasoning, when I concocted my scheme, was that by mid-February I would have a clearer impression of what was keeping me from finishing (the writing problems that lay in my path). I believe my reasoning was sound! Had I taken 2 days off last week, the novel would have had a less Comedy tone and a more Action/Adventure thrust.
Still, as of today (Saturday), I haven't done much actual writing work. Brian & I have had a VERY useful discussion about the story!!! That's awesome!!! But yesterday was about blowing off steam, and today has been about necessary tasks: I got my car inspected, got the oil changed, and sent off the payment to get my car registered. So YAY! there!!! :)
Currently, I am enjoying some drinks as I listen to the audiobook version of Murder, She Wrote: The Maine Mutiny. (I am so obsessed with Murder, She Wrote lately that I bought all the audiobboks from Audible.com. What's wrong with me? Is it because I just turned 39 for the second year in a row, and now I'm going to start baking my own bread and gardening?! I have no idea! But, for some reason, I DIG Jessica Fletcher and her adventures!)
Also, I've been reading old Captain America comics. It's cool; I am transported back into a world that I enjoyed when I was 15 or so. Captain America's New York in 1971 (back when he was teamed-up with The Falcon) is a cool place to hang out in! Not quite as cool as Cap's New York of 1983 (when I was reading each issue as it popped onto the shelves, and his partner was Nomad) but still a very evocative and (somehow) rejuvenating place in which to hang!
Also, may I just say that visiting New York in 2002 was slightly disappointing?
I mean, NOT REALLY disappointing...see, new York had -- back in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s this image of this filthy, chaotic, cesspool teaming with victims swimming together through this tide of humanity. You could TOTALLY believe that there were these superheroes and superhero groups operating throughout The City because there was so much pulsing humanity everywhere that Optimus Prime could do close-up magic tricks on a corner all day you might not know about it until you picked up the New York Times the next morning.
But, I mean, growing up with Marvel Comics (and, of course, all the movies of the '70s and '80s), you got this idea of this dirty, and yet somehow magical metropolis, where anything could happen!
And then, apparently, Mayor Koch happened, and teamed-up with the Disney Corporation, and now NYC is totally Family Friendly.
Now, as a tourist in NY for 5 days, I AM NOT COMPLAINING, lol. I mean, I was staying in Brooklyn -- when I was growing up, Brooklyn was supposed to be one of the toughest 'hoods in New York -- and I felt completely comfortable waking up in the middle of the night and going downstairs and across the street to buy some cigarettes and have a smoke outside. A lot of my time spent in New York (specifically, NYC) was spent on foot during the night hours, and I never once felt threatened or uneasy.
But there is this little-boy consciousness within me -- the cat that still reads Captain America comic books -- that is the slightest bit disappointed that New York is so safe and snug. You know what I mean? I mean, I would rather not be eaten by Jaws...and yet...part of me thrills at the thought that there may be a "Jaws" out there, trying to eat tourists, lol.
The cocktails are tasting TERRIFIC, so this may be an appropriate place for me to bid adieu.
MAY YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!!!
:D
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Straight-To-DVD Not Necessarily A Bad Thing Anymore...
One of the painful lessons I learned back in the 1980s was that "Direct-To-Video" (VHS, back in the day) usually meant that the flick wasn't good enough to get theatrical distribution.
The breaking of my DtV cherry was a little turd called A Return to Salem's Lot. I loved the Tobe Hooper adaptation for King's vampire tale (Barlow is still one of the coolest-looking vampire in cinematic history, to me!), so when my then-girlfriend and went to the video store to rent a scary flick for a date night, and I saw (what I thought was) the sequel to Salem's Lot, I snatched it up!
What the flick turned out to be, however, was a confusing mess of "and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens" storytelling, written and shot and acted very poorly.
It was a bitter disappointment. Before that, I had no idea movies could get that bad! In fact, I don't know if I'm even remembering this correctly, but I could swear the "movie" was shot on videotape! (I recall a shot where everything is on fire, and fire looks different on videotape than it does on film.)
In my late teens and early twenties I had taken chances on DtV flicks, and the perception held.
In the 1990s, though, Disney began sequelizing their blockbuster animated movies into DtV -- and those sequels were pretty good! If you liked Disney's Aladdin, then The Return of Jafar was a fun little flick! The animation clearly wasn't good enough to cut it on the Big Screen, but the story was good!
Anyway, the reason I'm going on like this is because I just watched a couple of great DtV flicks! They're part of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies.
I don't remember exactly who started it, but whenever Marvel or DC release one of their Direct-to-Video features, they almost never disappoint!!!
The only exception I can think of is Batman: Gotham Knight. What a cynical piece of make-a-quick-buck-off-a-hot-property that was! If you haven't seen it, please don't bother. I swear to you, in one segment, Batman -- as well as most of the characters -- is shaped like a potato with toothpick legs and arms! Some may call it "artistic license" but I call it lazy! If an artist is so despondent about drawing an iconic character like everyone who has come before him, he should simply avoid iconic characters, not defile them! There were some segments that were well written, and maybe a couple that were well animated, but my memory is that no segments were both, and that the viewing experience as a whole was not worth the time or money I spent.
However, on the positive side DC Universe Animated Original Movies does not appear to have made that same mistake since!!! It appears they took a stylistic gamble, it failed (that is to say that it failed artistically; I'll bet they made their money back on the project), and they learned their lesson and moved on! Kudos to them, I say, for being open-minded and brave enough to take the chance and wise enough to learn from the experience!!!
Anyway, this elaborate lead-in is by way of sort of explaining why is was such a joy to me to watch Batman: Under the Red Hood and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse this morning!
I streamed them on Netflix, and it's such a delight to do that and get such a thoroughly pleasant surprise!
I mean, when you stream a theatrical release that has gone to DVD, you have a good idea what you're going to get. (The movie is likely to be, at least, watchable; that's why the studio paid so much to get it into theaters first.) And when you stream a Direct-to-DVD flick that you've never heard of before, you also have a good idea what you're going to get. (The movie may be watchable, but it's not likely to be good; otherwise it would have gotten a theatrical release, or at least aired on a Network or Cable station before it went to DVD.)
But when you stream one of Marvel's or DC's straight-to-video titles, you can bet that the movie will at least be good, and it may even be great!
The flicks I watched this morning were great! :D
Plus, I'm really enjoying a quaint, quiet Sunday! Friday was about drinkin' with my brother, blowing off steam from the work week, and watching the thoroughly awesome Red!!! Then Saturday was about getting my taxes done (YAY!), washing some dishes, working with my brother on our novel, and then watching some SpongeBob. (It had been a while since either of us had seen some SpongeBob, so I picked up a collection from the $5 bin at Walmart. Home Sweet Pineapple is the collection I got.)
Today, I still need to do some writing, and I really need some clean clothes. But since I share a laundromat with the rest of my apartment complex, and most who live here keep Normal People hours, I figure it might be best to do my laundry during the wee hours, when I'm not likely to be competing for an open washing machine or dryer. And I don't really have an excuse not to do my writing right now, except that I'm really diggin' on this simplistic little, no-pressure existence of just watching Netflix movies and TV shows (I caught a couple of Season One episodes of Murder, She Wrote episodes after my DC-palooza).
When I was a kid, one of my childish goals for my life was to watch movies and TV shows all day long, every day. As it is, I don't have cable at home (Time-Warner is the devil and they will not get my money if I can help it, unless and until they stop gouging people and start offering fair packages at reasonable prices!) so I'm not even tempted to spend all my time watching TV. And I'm actually thankful for that! I get A LOT more done because I'm not sucked into the boob tube. Still, the fact that I don't waste much time watching TV makes wasting a large chunk of today way on Netflix somehow particularly enjoyable! :) It's kind of novel.
I haven't decided if I want to return to Murder, She Wrote (I never watched the show when it was on the air, because it seemed to Young Ray Jay like some boring "grown-up's show"; but lately, I've become more fond of Mysteries -- I blame Agatha Christie, Sir Author Conan Doyle and Castle) or if I should hop into Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam while I have the time. I'm a huge Captain Marvel fan from way back, and one never knows when one's life is going to get unexpectedly busy.
Well...it looks like I just answered my own question. :)
I hope the rest of your weekend is blissfully fun AND relaxing!!!
:D
The breaking of my DtV cherry was a little turd called A Return to Salem's Lot. I loved the Tobe Hooper adaptation for King's vampire tale (Barlow is still one of the coolest-looking vampire in cinematic history, to me!), so when my then-girlfriend and went to the video store to rent a scary flick for a date night, and I saw (what I thought was) the sequel to Salem's Lot, I snatched it up!
What the flick turned out to be, however, was a confusing mess of "and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens" storytelling, written and shot and acted very poorly.
It was a bitter disappointment. Before that, I had no idea movies could get that bad! In fact, I don't know if I'm even remembering this correctly, but I could swear the "movie" was shot on videotape! (I recall a shot where everything is on fire, and fire looks different on videotape than it does on film.)
In my late teens and early twenties I had taken chances on DtV flicks, and the perception held.
In the 1990s, though, Disney began sequelizing their blockbuster animated movies into DtV -- and those sequels were pretty good! If you liked Disney's Aladdin, then The Return of Jafar was a fun little flick! The animation clearly wasn't good enough to cut it on the Big Screen, but the story was good!
Anyway, the reason I'm going on like this is because I just watched a couple of great DtV flicks! They're part of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies.
I don't remember exactly who started it, but whenever Marvel or DC release one of their Direct-to-Video features, they almost never disappoint!!!
The only exception I can think of is Batman: Gotham Knight. What a cynical piece of make-a-quick-buck-off-a-hot-property that was! If you haven't seen it, please don't bother. I swear to you, in one segment, Batman -- as well as most of the characters -- is shaped like a potato with toothpick legs and arms! Some may call it "artistic license" but I call it lazy! If an artist is so despondent about drawing an iconic character like everyone who has come before him, he should simply avoid iconic characters, not defile them! There were some segments that were well written, and maybe a couple that were well animated, but my memory is that no segments were both, and that the viewing experience as a whole was not worth the time or money I spent.
However, on the positive side DC Universe Animated Original Movies does not appear to have made that same mistake since!!! It appears they took a stylistic gamble, it failed (that is to say that it failed artistically; I'll bet they made their money back on the project), and they learned their lesson and moved on! Kudos to them, I say, for being open-minded and brave enough to take the chance and wise enough to learn from the experience!!!
Anyway, this elaborate lead-in is by way of sort of explaining why is was such a joy to me to watch Batman: Under the Red Hood and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse this morning!
I streamed them on Netflix, and it's such a delight to do that and get such a thoroughly pleasant surprise!
I mean, when you stream a theatrical release that has gone to DVD, you have a good idea what you're going to get. (The movie is likely to be, at least, watchable; that's why the studio paid so much to get it into theaters first.) And when you stream a Direct-to-DVD flick that you've never heard of before, you also have a good idea what you're going to get. (The movie may be watchable, but it's not likely to be good; otherwise it would have gotten a theatrical release, or at least aired on a Network or Cable station before it went to DVD.)
But when you stream one of Marvel's or DC's straight-to-video titles, you can bet that the movie will at least be good, and it may even be great!
The flicks I watched this morning were great! :D
Plus, I'm really enjoying a quaint, quiet Sunday! Friday was about drinkin' with my brother, blowing off steam from the work week, and watching the thoroughly awesome Red!!! Then Saturday was about getting my taxes done (YAY!), washing some dishes, working with my brother on our novel, and then watching some SpongeBob. (It had been a while since either of us had seen some SpongeBob, so I picked up a collection from the $5 bin at Walmart. Home Sweet Pineapple is the collection I got.)
Today, I still need to do some writing, and I really need some clean clothes. But since I share a laundromat with the rest of my apartment complex, and most who live here keep Normal People hours, I figure it might be best to do my laundry during the wee hours, when I'm not likely to be competing for an open washing machine or dryer. And I don't really have an excuse not to do my writing right now, except that I'm really diggin' on this simplistic little, no-pressure existence of just watching Netflix movies and TV shows (I caught a couple of Season One episodes of Murder, She Wrote episodes after my DC-palooza).
When I was a kid, one of my childish goals for my life was to watch movies and TV shows all day long, every day. As it is, I don't have cable at home (Time-Warner is the devil and they will not get my money if I can help it, unless and until they stop gouging people and start offering fair packages at reasonable prices!) so I'm not even tempted to spend all my time watching TV. And I'm actually thankful for that! I get A LOT more done because I'm not sucked into the boob tube. Still, the fact that I don't waste much time watching TV makes wasting a large chunk of today way on Netflix somehow particularly enjoyable! :) It's kind of novel.
I haven't decided if I want to return to Murder, She Wrote (I never watched the show when it was on the air, because it seemed to Young Ray Jay like some boring "grown-up's show"; but lately, I've become more fond of Mysteries -- I blame Agatha Christie, Sir Author Conan Doyle and Castle) or if I should hop into Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam while I have the time. I'm a huge Captain Marvel fan from way back, and one never knows when one's life is going to get unexpectedly busy.
Well...it looks like I just answered my own question. :)
I hope the rest of your weekend is blissfully fun AND relaxing!!!
:D
Saturday, February 05, 2011
TISHA In Austin!!!
So last night around 2:00am I'm watching Jeeves & Wooster (a new Brit-Com discovery for Brian and myself) and my phone rings.
Who is calling me when I'm actually awake and able to talk?
IT'S TISHA!!! :D
She and some friends drove down to see Skrillex at Austin Music Hall tonight (they're there as I type), and she was winding down for the evening and suddenly realized, "I'm in Austin!"
So we caught up a bit and made plans for breakfast around 1:00pm today.
She got up around noon (early for her, she informed me; and I didn't have to tell her it was early for me) and called me to plans for food. She was coordinating with her friends, trying to figure out some place cheap: "Wendy's? Wendy's is fine by me. (pause) We're in Austin. (pause; then speaking to me) Thundercloud Subs."
I dig the image in my head that one of her entourage asked "Where are we?" and then, discovering they were in Austin, decided they needed Thundercloud! (I have no idea if that's how it played out, but I like to think it is.)
It worked out nicely because I set my alarm for noon (when Tisha and her friends were planning to wake up) and I tried to get to sleep around 3:00am...
I ended up finally falling asleep around 4:00am. But that's still a triumph for me! On work nights -- when 9:00am is a desirable time to meet Morpheus -- I often don't pass out until 11:00am or later. So getting to sleep so early was awesome!
Then I slept for about an hour and a half, woke up from a really cool dream, obeyed Nature, then went back to sleep and repeated this twice more. I finally woke up around 9:30am with a brilliant idea for the novel Brian and I are co-writing, and I finally ran out of stuff to write about the time my alarm clock went off!
Then Tisha's wake-up call.
A WONDERFUL way to start the day off!!!
So I was showered, shaved, dressed and on the road a little after 1:30pm when Tisha called to say that they were going to eat at some of those parked food trucks on South Congress (near Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds).
Then, about 5 minutes later, she called back to say they were eating at Homes Slice Pizza.
Ah, to be young and spontaneous again! :)
When I got there, I roamed around a bit and played Cell-Phone Tag with Tish until she finally told me they were actually outside More Home Slice Pizza! (I had only just learned of Home Slice Pizza! I had no idea there was also a More Home Slice Pizza! (And how COOL is that idea!))
So we finally located each other and Tish introduced me to her boyfriend and her friends -- all of whom are VERY groovy folks!!! -- and she warned me that they may, any or all of them, spontaneously burst into English accents throughout the day.
I didn't mention that Brian and I are currently watching the complete series of Jeeves & Wooster (or that our discovery of Jeeves & Wooster was the result of my finally breaking down and reading several of P. G. Wodehouse's stories and novels originating those characters) but I did favor them with my limited range British dialects (you know: posh, Londoner, more southerly England) and they approved.
And I wasn't the one to brag about my British hottie this time; it was Tisha! :D (Thank you, Gnomey, for making me a little bit cool in my daughter's eyes!!!)
Then we set about strolling up Congress and popping in some of the shops.
It was a groovy day!
I'm sad to say that I hadn't seen Tisha for...well, it seems like a year or more! It was really cool to get to spend some time with her!!! And her friends; Tisha always hangs with cool folks! It reminded me of cruising around the mall in the '80s with my buds. (Except -- a note for readers that are 40 or older -- the term "bud" has a different meaning now than it used to.)
The only drawback to this day is that it is now 9:55pm, and I ant to go to sleep.
I shouldn't go to sleep. I should stay up until at least 6:00am so that tomorrow isn't such a fight to get back into my normal sleep schedule. But I may go ahead and crash out and worry about the consequences tomorrow.
Am I terrible? Am I terribly old? ;P
I'm not really concerned. I GOT TO HANG OUT WITH TISHA TODAY!!!
:D
Who is calling me when I'm actually awake and able to talk?
IT'S TISHA!!! :D
She and some friends drove down to see Skrillex at Austin Music Hall tonight (they're there as I type), and she was winding down for the evening and suddenly realized, "I'm in Austin!"
So we caught up a bit and made plans for breakfast around 1:00pm today.
She got up around noon (early for her, she informed me; and I didn't have to tell her it was early for me) and called me to plans for food. She was coordinating with her friends, trying to figure out some place cheap: "Wendy's? Wendy's is fine by me. (pause) We're in Austin. (pause; then speaking to me) Thundercloud Subs."
I dig the image in my head that one of her entourage asked "Where are we?" and then, discovering they were in Austin, decided they needed Thundercloud! (I have no idea if that's how it played out, but I like to think it is.)
It worked out nicely because I set my alarm for noon (when Tisha and her friends were planning to wake up) and I tried to get to sleep around 3:00am...
I ended up finally falling asleep around 4:00am. But that's still a triumph for me! On work nights -- when 9:00am is a desirable time to meet Morpheus -- I often don't pass out until 11:00am or later. So getting to sleep so early was awesome!
Then I slept for about an hour and a half, woke up from a really cool dream, obeyed Nature, then went back to sleep and repeated this twice more. I finally woke up around 9:30am with a brilliant idea for the novel Brian and I are co-writing, and I finally ran out of stuff to write about the time my alarm clock went off!
Then Tisha's wake-up call.
A WONDERFUL way to start the day off!!!
So I was showered, shaved, dressed and on the road a little after 1:30pm when Tisha called to say that they were going to eat at some of those parked food trucks on South Congress (near Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds).
Then, about 5 minutes later, she called back to say they were eating at Homes Slice Pizza.
Ah, to be young and spontaneous again! :)
When I got there, I roamed around a bit and played Cell-Phone Tag with Tish until she finally told me they were actually outside More Home Slice Pizza! (I had only just learned of Home Slice Pizza! I had no idea there was also a More Home Slice Pizza! (And how COOL is that idea!))
So we finally located each other and Tish introduced me to her boyfriend and her friends -- all of whom are VERY groovy folks!!! -- and she warned me that they may, any or all of them, spontaneously burst into English accents throughout the day.
I didn't mention that Brian and I are currently watching the complete series of Jeeves & Wooster (or that our discovery of Jeeves & Wooster was the result of my finally breaking down and reading several of P. G. Wodehouse's stories and novels originating those characters) but I did favor them with my limited range British dialects (you know: posh, Londoner, more southerly England) and they approved.
And I wasn't the one to brag about my British hottie this time; it was Tisha! :D (Thank you, Gnomey, for making me a little bit cool in my daughter's eyes!!!)
Then we set about strolling up Congress and popping in some of the shops.
It was a groovy day!
I'm sad to say that I hadn't seen Tisha for...well, it seems like a year or more! It was really cool to get to spend some time with her!!! And her friends; Tisha always hangs with cool folks! It reminded me of cruising around the mall in the '80s with my buds. (Except -- a note for readers that are 40 or older -- the term "bud" has a different meaning now than it used to.)
The only drawback to this day is that it is now 9:55pm, and I ant to go to sleep.
I shouldn't go to sleep. I should stay up until at least 6:00am so that tomorrow isn't such a fight to get back into my normal sleep schedule. But I may go ahead and crash out and worry about the consequences tomorrow.
Am I terrible? Am I terribly old? ;P
I'm not really concerned. I GOT TO HANG OUT WITH TISHA TODAY!!!
:D
Saturday, January 15, 2011
January 2011 State of the Union
The Union is good, baby!!! :D
And when I refer to "the Union", I am, of course, referring to me.
That is to say, things are groovy here in my little universe! :D
Just a couple of days ago my Gnomey-Goddess texted me to tell me that she was cooking, and to ask what dish I would like her to cook for me when we finally get together!
I mean, HOW frickin' COOL IS THAT?!!!
This is an AMAZINGLY hot chick who has stuck with me in a long-distance relationship for 4 years (because, in 4 years, I'm still trying to figure out how to make a living that can bring us together finally) and the question pops into her mind, "I wonder what dishes Ray Jay will want me to cook for him."
OMG!!! How AWESOME is that!!! :D
Now don't get me wrong here: When Gnomey and I are married, I'm not looking for a life where she cooks and cleans and I drink beer and watch TV or anything. lol In fact, I am actively trying to develop my culinary abilities now, so that when Gnomey & I are together I'll have an array of dishes I can cook for her. I'm not fantasizing about subjugating my future wife and cramming her into some 1950s Americana fantasy of "how it was back in the Good Ol' Days", lol. (Dude, she would so kick my ass if I even tried that crap, and that's a lot of what I love about her!!!)
Still...you have to be overwhelmingly flattered to find out that your lady thinks about things like what dishes you would like her to cook for you!!! OMG!!! :D
So Ray Jay's doing well right now!!!
And then, on top of that, thanks to some very generous Christmas money from my mom, step-father and Gan-Gan, I NOW OWN A KINDLE!!!
I got the Wi-Fi variety (I'm paranoid that if I had gotten the 3G version, they would find a way to charge me a monthly bill for the 3G service later on, down the road; besides, Wi-Fi gets me books just fine, thank you very much!) and I splurged and bought the protective case with a built-in book light, and I bought an extra recharge cord, and then I bought a small library of books for my Kindle! (Most of them are paranormal reference books that I will be dipping into from time to time for the foreseeable future.)
AND...I converted a text file of a friend's NaNoWriMo novel and downloaded it to my Kindle, and you would not believe how much easier it is to read off my Kindle versus reading it off my laptop!!!
I'm not trying to sell you on the Kindle, mind you, I'm just crowing about my new toy...but THE KINDLE IS SO AMAZING TO READ FROM!!!
Okay, it fits in your hand like a paperback novel, only BETTER because it's a fraction of the width and weight! But you can adjust the size of the text so that it is as large as a hard cover OR LARGER, so the print is actually easier to read! Plus, there is a Page Forward and Page Backward button, one on top of the other, on BOTH sides of the device! So you can flip forward or back by pressing your thumb (righty or lefty)! So you can tear through some prose if you're really exited about what you're reading!
And check it out...The Kindle power cord can be plugged into your computer, OR it can be plugged into A WALL SOCKET!!! they somehow managed to design an adapter that can recharge a media device FROM A WALL SOCKET!!! (My iPod and my OPAL mp3 player both have to be recharged from a computer! Not my Kindle!)
So all the great things my friends have been telling me about the Kindle? ALL TRUE!!!
I'm particularly jazzed about the fact that I can control the typeface (/font size)! When I joined Texas Spirits, Paula wanted us all to read Ghost Hunter's Guidebook by Troy Taylor, because there were several newbies joining the team all at once, and she (very astutely) wanted to make sure we were all on the same page about investigation technique. So I bought the book, and I was frustrated by the font and typeface that the publisher had chosen! First, it was a smaller press, so they chose a smaller typeface (font size) so that they could print more words on fewer pages. (It's a sound economical choice, but harder on the reader.) But they had also chosen a "spooky" font, so the words were even more of an eyestrain! Despite Taylor's excellent information and writing style, the book was such an annoyance to get through!
If I had had my Kindle back then (I don't think I could have afforded the Kindle back then, honestly; I think they were $240 or something) I could have changed the font and typeface to my preferences and zoomed through the book in no time!
And here's another nice point...
I have maybe 10 books loaded on there now -- 8 of which I want to keep on there; and one of the books is actually all 5 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels plus a Zaphod Beeblebrox short story!!! -- and I've barely made a dent in the 3-Gig storage capacity!!!
Very soon I will load ALL the Sherlock Holmes novels/short stories by Arther Conan Doyle, and I'll bet I still have way more than 2 Gigs of storage!
So life is way-groovy right now! :)
Then, last night, I woke up to a Little Caesar's breakfast! Brian was asleep, but he had, apparently, ordered us both some Little Caesar's before he passed out! He got me Sausage & Mushroom, but he had slipped in 2 slices of his Pepperoni & Mushroom for my dining pleasure!!!
HOW FRICKIN' COOL IS THAT?!! Little Caesar's doesn't deliver, so my little brother went out (in the rain) and picked up these tasty pizza pies for us to enjoy!!! He wasn't even awake to receive the praise when I discovered this, lol! He's just all "Here's some awesome food that will drive you mad with pleasure; I'm going to sleep now"!!!
My only consolation is that I have recently discovered Alessi Pesto, which can turn a piece of buttered bread into a gourmet Italian snack food. It also turns pasta, butter and Parmesan Cheese into a meal you feel like you should have paid $50 for!
PESTO RULES!!! :D
So I'm trying to convince myself not to feel guilty about this ASTOUNDING gift of delicious food my brother has given me.
Also, Brian & I have become re-obsessed with magic, lol! When we discovered Chriss Angel and Mindfreak back in 2006 (thanks to Our Genius Friend Dave) our childhood interest in performing magic tricks re-ignited. Angel makes a traditional illusion feel like he just invented it on the spot.
No, that's not it: Angel makes an illusion feel (somehow) like he's performing REAL MAGIC.
So anyway, this year Angel released several magic tricks to toy stores, including this huge set with 250 illusions. (You get the props/gags for, like, 12 illusions, but the How-To book tells you how to do many, many variations on those illusions. so you're really getting something like 75 different illusions. You could perform a 90-minute magic show with what you get, if the people you're performing for have never seen a single magic show in their life.)
For Christmas, I persuaded Santa to give Brian this Chriss Angel magic set.
Brian frickin' LOVED it!!! I swear, I think it has been a long time since I got my brother such a PERFECT gift! This has fired-up his imagination and enthusiasm in ways I simply could not have predicted!
AND...it lead him to do some research, which revealed that there was a 500-illusion Chriss Angel set out there!
His first thought was to buy the 500-illusion set for me, and borrow any props/gags he needed (should he find himself performing magic). But I finally convinced him that he (because of his enthusiasm and interest) should own the more complete magic set. His nature is to want others (particularly his brother) to have more than he has, but I finally logic-ed him into simply buying the set for himself.
To make a long story short(er), we've been watching Seasons 1 & 2 of Mindfreak (the only seasons we own) a lot lately, and we've been talking a lot about illusion-performance technique.
To be perfectly honest, I am dying to make salt disappear into my fist, and then pour it onto the table for somebody!!! Or to disappear a signed dime and make it reappear somewhere else!!! But I don't find myself in many social gatherings, and anyway I should probably practice more before I perform these tricks in public.
So 2011 has been pretty magical for me, so far.
Ooh!
I went to the store to buy some beer for the weekend, and I found a copy of Season 4 of Samurai Jack for $10!!!
$10!!!
I bought it!
Gendy Tartakovski is one of the most BRILLIANT animators (we're talkin' Brad Bird-/John Lasseter-/Phil Vischer-/Matt Groening-brilliant) of our generation, and I get to own a whole season (the final season, even) of his work for $10!!!
So that's what I plan to fall asleep to tonight (/today, I guess).
OH!!! AND...
Last Saturday Brian & I got to see TRON: Legacy for the 3rd time at the Lake Creek Alamo Drafthouse!!! I had Fried Pickles while I watched the flick! (First time -- excluding a failed attempt to make my own a couple of years ago -- since the late-80s that I've enjoyed that particular taste sensation!)
TRON: Legacy (in 3-D) so friggin' ROCKS!!!
Okay, it's way past time for me to go to bed...
I hope you all have an EXCELLENT weekend!!!
PEACE & LAUGHTER!!!
:D
And when I refer to "the Union", I am, of course, referring to me.
That is to say, things are groovy here in my little universe! :D
Just a couple of days ago my Gnomey-Goddess texted me to tell me that she was cooking, and to ask what dish I would like her to cook for me when we finally get together!
I mean, HOW frickin' COOL IS THAT?!!!
This is an AMAZINGLY hot chick who has stuck with me in a long-distance relationship for 4 years (because, in 4 years, I'm still trying to figure out how to make a living that can bring us together finally) and the question pops into her mind, "I wonder what dishes Ray Jay will want me to cook for him."
OMG!!! How AWESOME is that!!! :D
Now don't get me wrong here: When Gnomey and I are married, I'm not looking for a life where she cooks and cleans and I drink beer and watch TV or anything. lol In fact, I am actively trying to develop my culinary abilities now, so that when Gnomey & I are together I'll have an array of dishes I can cook for her. I'm not fantasizing about subjugating my future wife and cramming her into some 1950s Americana fantasy of "how it was back in the Good Ol' Days", lol. (Dude, she would so kick my ass if I even tried that crap, and that's a lot of what I love about her!!!)
Still...you have to be overwhelmingly flattered to find out that your lady thinks about things like what dishes you would like her to cook for you!!! OMG!!! :D
So Ray Jay's doing well right now!!!
And then, on top of that, thanks to some very generous Christmas money from my mom, step-father and Gan-Gan, I NOW OWN A KINDLE!!!
I got the Wi-Fi variety (I'm paranoid that if I had gotten the 3G version, they would find a way to charge me a monthly bill for the 3G service later on, down the road; besides, Wi-Fi gets me books just fine, thank you very much!) and I splurged and bought the protective case with a built-in book light, and I bought an extra recharge cord, and then I bought a small library of books for my Kindle! (Most of them are paranormal reference books that I will be dipping into from time to time for the foreseeable future.)
AND...I converted a text file of a friend's NaNoWriMo novel and downloaded it to my Kindle, and you would not believe how much easier it is to read off my Kindle versus reading it off my laptop!!!
I'm not trying to sell you on the Kindle, mind you, I'm just crowing about my new toy...but THE KINDLE IS SO AMAZING TO READ FROM!!!
Okay, it fits in your hand like a paperback novel, only BETTER because it's a fraction of the width and weight! But you can adjust the size of the text so that it is as large as a hard cover OR LARGER, so the print is actually easier to read! Plus, there is a Page Forward and Page Backward button, one on top of the other, on BOTH sides of the device! So you can flip forward or back by pressing your thumb (righty or lefty)! So you can tear through some prose if you're really exited about what you're reading!
And check it out...The Kindle power cord can be plugged into your computer, OR it can be plugged into A WALL SOCKET!!! they somehow managed to design an adapter that can recharge a media device FROM A WALL SOCKET!!! (My iPod and my OPAL mp3 player both have to be recharged from a computer! Not my Kindle!)
So all the great things my friends have been telling me about the Kindle? ALL TRUE!!!
I'm particularly jazzed about the fact that I can control the typeface (/font size)! When I joined Texas Spirits, Paula wanted us all to read Ghost Hunter's Guidebook by Troy Taylor, because there were several newbies joining the team all at once, and she (very astutely) wanted to make sure we were all on the same page about investigation technique. So I bought the book, and I was frustrated by the font and typeface that the publisher had chosen! First, it was a smaller press, so they chose a smaller typeface (font size) so that they could print more words on fewer pages. (It's a sound economical choice, but harder on the reader.) But they had also chosen a "spooky" font, so the words were even more of an eyestrain! Despite Taylor's excellent information and writing style, the book was such an annoyance to get through!
If I had had my Kindle back then (I don't think I could have afforded the Kindle back then, honestly; I think they were $240 or something) I could have changed the font and typeface to my preferences and zoomed through the book in no time!
And here's another nice point...
I have maybe 10 books loaded on there now -- 8 of which I want to keep on there; and one of the books is actually all 5 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels plus a Zaphod Beeblebrox short story!!! -- and I've barely made a dent in the 3-Gig storage capacity!!!
Very soon I will load ALL the Sherlock Holmes novels/short stories by Arther Conan Doyle, and I'll bet I still have way more than 2 Gigs of storage!
So life is way-groovy right now! :)
Then, last night, I woke up to a Little Caesar's breakfast! Brian was asleep, but he had, apparently, ordered us both some Little Caesar's before he passed out! He got me Sausage & Mushroom, but he had slipped in 2 slices of his Pepperoni & Mushroom for my dining pleasure!!!
HOW FRICKIN' COOL IS THAT?!! Little Caesar's doesn't deliver, so my little brother went out (in the rain) and picked up these tasty pizza pies for us to enjoy!!! He wasn't even awake to receive the praise when I discovered this, lol! He's just all "Here's some awesome food that will drive you mad with pleasure; I'm going to sleep now"!!!
My only consolation is that I have recently discovered Alessi Pesto, which can turn a piece of buttered bread into a gourmet Italian snack food. It also turns pasta, butter and Parmesan Cheese into a meal you feel like you should have paid $50 for!
PESTO RULES!!! :D
So I'm trying to convince myself not to feel guilty about this ASTOUNDING gift of delicious food my brother has given me.
Also, Brian & I have become re-obsessed with magic, lol! When we discovered Chriss Angel and Mindfreak back in 2006 (thanks to Our Genius Friend Dave) our childhood interest in performing magic tricks re-ignited. Angel makes a traditional illusion feel like he just invented it on the spot.
No, that's not it: Angel makes an illusion feel (somehow) like he's performing REAL MAGIC.
So anyway, this year Angel released several magic tricks to toy stores, including this huge set with 250 illusions. (You get the props/gags for, like, 12 illusions, but the How-To book tells you how to do many, many variations on those illusions. so you're really getting something like 75 different illusions. You could perform a 90-minute magic show with what you get, if the people you're performing for have never seen a single magic show in their life.)
For Christmas, I persuaded Santa to give Brian this Chriss Angel magic set.
Brian frickin' LOVED it!!! I swear, I think it has been a long time since I got my brother such a PERFECT gift! This has fired-up his imagination and enthusiasm in ways I simply could not have predicted!
AND...it lead him to do some research, which revealed that there was a 500-illusion Chriss Angel set out there!
His first thought was to buy the 500-illusion set for me, and borrow any props/gags he needed (should he find himself performing magic). But I finally convinced him that he (because of his enthusiasm and interest) should own the more complete magic set. His nature is to want others (particularly his brother) to have more than he has, but I finally logic-ed him into simply buying the set for himself.
To make a long story short(er), we've been watching Seasons 1 & 2 of Mindfreak (the only seasons we own) a lot lately, and we've been talking a lot about illusion-performance technique.
To be perfectly honest, I am dying to make salt disappear into my fist, and then pour it onto the table for somebody!!! Or to disappear a signed dime and make it reappear somewhere else!!! But I don't find myself in many social gatherings, and anyway I should probably practice more before I perform these tricks in public.
So 2011 has been pretty magical for me, so far.
Ooh!
I went to the store to buy some beer for the weekend, and I found a copy of Season 4 of Samurai Jack for $10!!!
$10!!!
I bought it!
Gendy Tartakovski is one of the most BRILLIANT animators (we're talkin' Brad Bird-/John Lasseter-/Phil Vischer-/Matt Groening-brilliant) of our generation, and I get to own a whole season (the final season, even) of his work for $10!!!
So that's what I plan to fall asleep to tonight (/today, I guess).
OH!!! AND...
Last Saturday Brian & I got to see TRON: Legacy for the 3rd time at the Lake Creek Alamo Drafthouse!!! I had Fried Pickles while I watched the flick! (First time -- excluding a failed attempt to make my own a couple of years ago -- since the late-80s that I've enjoyed that particular taste sensation!)
TRON: Legacy (in 3-D) so friggin' ROCKS!!!
Okay, it's way past time for me to go to bed...
I hope you all have an EXCELLENT weekend!!!
PEACE & LAUGHTER!!!
:D
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