three chainsaws

It Would Be So Nice If I Was Here

2011-09-06T18:19:00.000-04:00

Some years ago, I was at a party with a former fiance^* discussing future plans withmy mother's cousin, regarded as an aunt by my brothers and sisters as befitsthe relationship she and my mother shared. This aunt of mine was oftenthe only person in the room to cut through the fat and get down to the meat ofthe matter. We told my aunt that we were putting off our wedding untilwe'd saved enough money. "There's never enough money," shecountered without pause. "Never." She took another dragfrom her cigarette and added, "Now that that's out of the way, what'sstopping you?" She'd rolled right over our roadblock and nowexpected us to charge forward without delay. This same aunt, as my familybecame adults and parents and homeowners themselves, grew into a confidant forthe rest of my siblings. I didn't have her phone number. It's notthat I didn't like her or wouldn't have spoken to her, it just never occurredto me to wonder what she'd think about a situation. I think she found meinscrutable anyhow, she rarely addressed me in person without someone elsethere, as though she thought no matter what was discussed, she'd better have awitness.

The look my aunt would get in her eyes,the narrowed stare as though hoping to adopt x-ray vision and look right insidemy head for clues, is a look I've seen many times inmy life. I don't think I'm particularly mysterious. In fact, I'veoften shown my cards and blown whatever advantage I've had over others,choosing to disclose rather than withhold and finding afterward that I wishedI'd been a better puppet-master. I've been labeled publicly as arrogant,and I've been told I'm the most modest person folks have ever met. I'vebeen both uncaring and incredibly giving. Aloof, friendly.

The true answer probably lies somewherein the middle, but in looking back on these opinions, the more negative theopinion of me, the more extroverted the opinion-holder. Those who holdcourt wherever and whenever just don't get me, because I'm their polaropposite. Don't get me wrong; you can spin me off into the lengthiest oframblings if you push the right button. The problem is, people don't always findthe right button, and when they have, sometimes they'd glanced it with theirelbow as they were passing by on the way to what they really wanted to discuss. I'm not an all-topic conversationalist. It's not that I don't havean opinion. It's just that I don't assume you'd find my opinioninteresting enough to discuss, and the reason I think that is because much ofthe time, I can't find your opinion interesting enough to discuss.

Don't confuse this with misanthropy,although I'm guilty of having momentary ambitions toward becoming amisanthrope, particularly on the 6 train when standing between a music loverwith $2 earbuds and someone using their cell-phone to seed their contacts withtheir mundanity. It's just that small talk, the mother tongue of socialengagements, is pointless torture for me. If I ask you about the weather,it's because I want to know whether one should put on a sweater before leavingthe house. I'll make the attempt to pick up your loose threads of chatter;I'll tell you what I've heard from family in the southland about currentweather trends down their way that may turn north, I'll chime in about thelatest movie I've seen if it relates to your anecdote about seeing lastweekend's #1 hit, I'll compare music libraries and try to get you to divulge the one song on your iPodyou wouldn't want your friends to know is there, and I'll gladly discuss yourkids and their activities, mainly because I'll want to discuss my kids and getmy brag on (my kids are pretty awesome, you'd brag too). But if I walkinto a room and there's a spot where everyone is gathered to hear what that oneguest is soapboxing about, I'm going to get within earshot to make sure he'snot saying the building is on fire and we all need to get the hell out, andthen I'm going to find the crudité.

I've always been that person that atfirst wondered why people didn't think the way I did, then tried hard to think likethey did and finally tried to be comfortable with my own way of thinking. I didn't put a label on myself, I've been mislabeled enough todistrust the very idea. However, my wife stumbled upon anarticle that's eight years old, yet speaks to me as if written thismorning. Rather than slapping me in the face with shame, the article letme know it's not some personality defect to not love to be surrounded by peopleat all times, that this isn't some bad mood to get over. The article alsointimates that while people who think the way I do are in the minoritygenerally speaking, we're in the majority in creative fields.

Society is dictated by those with thebiggest mouths. That's not me. That won't be me. I'm not anextrovert.

I'm an introvert. It's not anobscenity, not an insult. My brain fires a different way and allows me todo different things than most people do. I think writing is one of them. It was certainly a comfort when I was younger to be able to sit and writefor a few hours, write assignments, stories, essays. Adults aren't"supposed" to do that. We're not "supposed" to go offto another room and be creative. We're not supposed to be contemplative,to sit quietly. We're supposed to be sociable, go out to a club, go tothe movies, gather our friends for a beach bonfire like some goddamn beercommercial. Clearly the philosophers of old were wasting their time, theyshould have been shaking their booty instead of sitting on their ass, thinking.

The bottom line is this: Everyone gets afair shake from me. I have made it a tenet in my life for a long time toaccept people for what and who they are, because I truly believe you can'tchange people, they're always going to turn out to be what their chemistry andupbringing has made them. There are always exceptions, but let's behonest, how many exceptions do you see on a regular basis? That's whythey're called exceptions. So, everyone gets a fair shake from me. If we become friends, that's terrific. If you think I'm arrogant oraloof, you'd better have hard evidence, because telling me what I'm thinkingain't gonna cut it. You're not going to read my mind if you don'tunderstand the language.

^{* About that former fiance - It struck me as I typed that phrase that you don't really hear people talking about failed engagements all that much. I mean, they happen, I'm not that unique. I guess it's the stigma we usually pin on failure, like you must have done something wrong in order for the relationship to have gone south. The only thing I did wrong was get engaged to the wrong woman. Failed marriages you hear about, sure. What was I supposed to do, get married and then find out she'd been unfaithful? I guess that's another way I've been thinking differently than most people.}

Can't You See I'm Workin' It Out?

2011-06-15T15:37:00.003-04:00

Amazon.com Widgets

I used to host a show on my college radio station dedicated to showtunes. It ran on Sunday nights and had been running for years, so it had a great following with lots of requests. I'd get a call every week for "Workin' It Out" from They're Playing Our Song, the musical that starred Robert Klein and Lucie Arnaz with a book by Neil Simon, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager and music by Marvin Hamlisch. I had heard of the show, but hadn't seen it or heard the album until that first call. With a three hour show to fill each week, I was happy to play a song from that listener's favorite show each show. In the song, Klein is working on composing a song while Lucie Arnaz is trying to collaborate and juggle her personal issues at the same time. Hey, I never said the inspiration for this blog was original.

When I was blogging over at The One Year Push, I had an interaction with a reader when I'd pretty rashly decided to stop blogging and whined about not having reader feedback in a long while. That reader said a few things that struck me personally, and I copped to the criticism because he/she was right, I didn't have the right to whine about not getting feedback when I wasn't showing much progress in my goals. I wasn't progressing, and the blog showed it. I went on with it a bit more, changed the storefront and tried some more without pressuring myself to post on a regular basis. Up until a few months ago, that's where things stood. I'd taken a break from blogging and from writing, thinking perhaps that I'd be better off then at focusing on work and family.

You can see this coming, can't you?

Nope, it didn't work. I didn't feel the fulfillment I'd feel when reading back a scene that had just burst out of me. I'm not going to find much fulfillment at work (yeah, who does), but I do at home, my family is incredible and is the driving force behind me getting back to writing. Plus, someone I'd worked with in the past has become a producer and has been encouraging me to give him completed work to show to his partners. He's just read a treatment I've written and liked it a great deal. I've got other ideas I'd left in the dust that deserve better treatment, so I'm brushing them off and writing new treatments. Aside from my old colleague, I've got a few other people in the industry I haven't shown any work to, so once I've got a block of items to be read, I can go to them as well.

I'm more hopeful than ever that I can make an honest run at this. I just have to keep myself pushing harder than before.

Maybe it's good that it doesn't make sense, because what if it did?

2011-01-30T01:06:00.000-05:00

Life is what happens when you plan to keep blogging. My initial interest in keeping a blog was to write about keeping balance between work, family and writing. While I hope I've been good at keeping my family as the major priority, work has been unrewarding lately and I haven't been able to concentrate to write much (more on that some other time).

My son is now six and my daughter is three. To say I'm enjoying them would be an understatement. I'm an unapologetic enthusiast, the president of their fan club. I've been involved in scouting with my son, even volunteered to lead his den and just spent more time than intended building his pinewood car for the pack's annual derby. My daughter treats each moment like she's Auntie Mame, living to the fullest extent she can muster, always smiling, talking, laughing. We're having a great time.

My wife has a friend, someone who'd been in the same field as she, who also has two kids roughly the same age as ours. I've never met this friend, never met the kids or their father, either. It will sound odd to you, but today I am thankful I have not met them. I don't know what they look like when they smile or laugh. I don't know how tall they are, how they line up walking together as a family. I don't know where they go to dinner all together on those nights when they're all out together and it's suddenly too late to go home and cook. I don't know how their voices sound, whether they find themselves joining in when one of them hums a song.

I'm glad I don't know them because right now they are experiencing a pain I never want to know. They've lost their six-year-old son, lost him after four years of incredible bravery and heart as he fought against an equally incredible and aggressive cancer.

Six-year-old boys aren't supposed to fight cancer. They aren't supposed to inspire strangers with their fortitude. They are supposed to play dodgeball and video games, build a race car with their father. Little sisters aren't supposed to wake up one day without their big brother, go solo in their childhood where once there was a partner. Parents aren't supposed to plan memorials for their child, they're supposed to plan where their child will spend their school day.

This does not make sense and it will go on not making sense.

Hello, My Friend, Hello...

2010-09-25T00:35:00.000-04:00

Just after midnight at the end of the workweek here on the east coast, and it's perfectly understandable that a moderately hip guy like myself can let the lateness of the hour and the fatigue of the week affect him so much that a little unintentional Neil Diamond quote slips out.

It's been a summer of family outings, trips to the ballpark, Saturday morning tee-ball followed by afternoons at the beach. I've enjoyed my family's company very much these last few months. My son has just entered the first grade and is determined to be more grown-up (don't rush it, kid) and my daughter is approaching the age of three with the demeanor and attitude of a kid four times her age, plus my wife and I have just celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary, which also marked ten years to the day since we first met. I am truly blessed beyond what I could have dreamt of for myself ten years ago.

I have been writing, albeit that form of writing that can best be described as spitballing and is often referred to by others as daydreaming. I came up with the endings of a couple of specs I've been breaking and can now fill in the gaps moving backward, which is a departure for my usual approach of spilling out the toy chest and tearing loose with abandon. I've (big surprise) never been a disciplined writer, this has always been my downfall, but I'm planning to use the gaps I'm able to take during my work day to wrote more efficiently.

As I was thinking along these lines, I stumbled upon a listing for this book on Amazon: The Coffee Break Screenwriter.

Okay, now let's rewind about three or four years when I started renewing my ambition to become a produced screenwriter. I had already created an account at Zoetrope when it first hit the web, had a couple of specs under my arm, and had little idea how to proceed, but one thing I did know was I hated how many books I'd purchased about screenwriting. I hated how other writers championed their chosen screenwriting guru like they were facepainters at an NFL game. I even tried starting a group on Zoetrope called "Screw You, Guru" where people could vent about ridiculous adherence to hard rules, especially when those rules dictated and informed your script with the same formula that you'd seen in countless movies. I'd vowed back then never to buy another book on screenwriting.

Why the change of heart? Isn't the first thing they tell you about fixing a problem is that the first step is realizing you have a problem? I have a problem using short bits of time to work on my writing.

I think I'll pick this book up. Hell, it beats spending ten minutes doing a crossword.

Better Late Than Never

2010-05-03T13:58:00.001-04:00

I wasn't going to enter the Nicholl competition this year. I hadn't been focused about doing a polish on the script I'd thought I'd submit and I didn't feel like I had the time to do it justice. I went out to a movie on Saturday night and put the whole thing behind me.

However...

When I went online Sunday, I read that the application site had undergone some major outages the night before and that the submission deadline had been extended.

The regret I'd been suppressing won out. I took a look at my last draft and found it tighter than I'd remembered. I made the additional changes I'd wanted to make, read the script through again and made the PDF.

The extended deadline was 3 PM Eastern time. As I uploaded the script, I saw the clock on my computer switch from 2:59 to 3:00.

I would have felt bad over the next year if I hadn't gotten one in there, but I think next time I'll shoot for the early deadline.

Handicapping

2010-04-30T14:23:00.001-04:00

Three weeks ago, I was working on a new blog post about handicapping the Nicholl Fellowship. I don't know a thing about picking winners, but I thought it would be provocative and fun to check into past winners and see if there were any predictors to be found, a way to gauge what's likely to win and what isn't.

I was a couple of paragraphs in when I got a text from my brother. Our mother had been rushed to the hospital.

My mother, aside from her many fine qualities, was a dedicated smoker, as most people from her generation look to have been from her photos of parties and nights at the Copa. She had started in her mid-teens and continued for 45 years or so until her lungs were so wracked that she often spoke through coughs and we could understand. Twelve years ago, she started having serious breathing issues that eventually turned out to be chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with a congestive heart disease chaser. She was prescribed a prolonged steroid treatment that went on longer than it should have and one day her body just flat out stopped working. She was on a bed in the hospital with no time to get her parish priest to her side, so the hospital chaplain read her the last rites as we, her children, watched in stunned silence. Then we waited and waited for an end that didn't come. She finally stabilized and within two days was sitting up and ordering us around. She had a long rehabilitation and returned home after several months. Over the years there have been returns to the hospital followed by increased needs at home; an oxygen tube, a part-time aide, a walker. Some days we'd show up at her door to find her full of pep; some days she'd just sit, unable to get to her feet without help.

The years in between were very good to me. I met my wife, we had our two children, I moved from a creative but stagnant career into a few more interesting and worthwhile fields, all things I could not picture for myself at the point when my mother first fell ill. Had my mother died twelve years ago, she would not have been able to see my bride walk down the aisle toward me; would not have answered my calls when I needed to vent as my wife and I butted heads with hospital staff during the labor process when my son was born; would not have seen how much my daughter resembles herself at the same age, a curly blond with piercing blue eyes.

The years since her initial crash have had so many medical interventions that my mother decided a year ago, once she was determined to be worthy of hospice care, that she did not want to be revived should she falter again. She spoke with us all, her five children, then to her teen and adult grandchildren. She gave us each tokens from her life and started us on the road to prepare for her death, which she believed would come within weeks if not sooner. It came as no surprise when she somehow graduated from hospice care to just needing a part-time aide again. Her aide would share movies with her (I was floored this past Easter Sunday to find a bootleg copy of Avatar in her bedroom) and help her with sewing projects. On Easter, Mom presented us with a blanket she'd finished for my daughter. We weren't expecting to visit her for Easter, we had plans elsewhere, but we drove over to her house afterward as a surprise to her and the rest of the family, some of whom also had not planned to be there but somehow changed their minds at the last minute.

Three days later she was in the hospital, having collapsed in her living room. Her aide, although familiar with my mother's wishes, having read the DNR and placed it with the rest of her medical information, called an ambulance anyway. Once at the hospital, she was tubed and sedated. We were shocked, but hoping there might be some hope that with minimal intervention from that point on, Mom would have a chance at recovery. When the sedation was ramped back to gauge her capabilities, she took the opportunity to non-verbally request that the tube be removed. The doctors convinced her to allow them two days to process how she'd respond to minimum treatment. She had severe pneumonia in both lungs and looked to have had a heart attack that was curbed by the internal defibrillator she'd been given a couple of years back.

After the weekend passed, the doctors crunched the data. They called my oldest sister, my mother's health proxy, and asked to meet us all the next morning. We didn't need to stretch to figure out what was going to happen next. We met at my mother's bedside the next day to hear that she was not recovering and they had determined she was capable of deciding whether to allow or deny further treatment. A short time later we met with the hospital's risk management specialist to see whether we had any objections to this plan. We didn't.

For all the hospital dramas you've seen, you'd think there were more doctors than nurses. Everything happens with at least one doctor there, usually two or three. When someone dies like my mother died, surrounded by family hoping the patient will be comforted by their presence and touch, there aren't any doctors. There isn't an improvement to life to be made, nothing to be saved. Doctors don't dally in the intensive care ward, they move like butterflies, alighting briefly before disappearing into the sunlight. The last medical professionals to help my mother were two nurses, one of whom had been tirelessly helping her since her admission. They moved her up on the bed, sitting her up as best they could, then removed the breathing tube, replacing it with a mask providing oxygen, the dial for which the nurse turned up to the maximum. My mother had collected nurses in her previous hospital stays, often getting visits in one ward from personnel from another ward, leading to our confusion when we'd arrive to find nurses there on a social call alongside the nurses assigned to her care. My mother collected people from all over her life. Since I'm the fourth of five kids, I thought the people I'd see along with her in school or at a doctor's office or in a supermarket had known my mother from past visits or from an old neighborhood, but she usually had just met them and was already laughing and sharing stories. I meet new people like I'm administrating a leper colony, so my mother's gift for making strangers her own remains a phenomenon to me.

Just like she had done before, my mother stayed in the game, leveling off and breathing on her own, able to communicate with us, her eyes opening a bit to take us in, her five children expanded to nine with the sons- and daughters-in-law there, all of them embraced by her as though they were her own. Her levels remained the same for two hours before they spiked and then fell suddenly. Alarms were pinging urgently, but instead of a few people running in to intervene, one nurse came in to switch the monitor into Comfort Mode, silencing the alarms, hiding the readings, and she left without a word to us. When my mother died, we each had a hand extended to touch her. Skeptics will tell you there is no way to tell without instrumentation when a life passes. I can only say that we felt her leave, and I can only hope we helped as she left.

Previously on Three Chainsaws

2010-03-31T13:35:00.002-04:00

I lost my e-mails last week. 4757 messages in my inbox. At first I thought it was just the application being balky. After all, I know what I'm doing, I'm a computer technician, I service hundreds of users for a living, this couldn't be a user error, couldn't be my error, never never never.

My mantra since I started this job has been this: It's always the user. Sure, it's not politically correct to think that, but 99 times out of 10 (that's not a typo, I mean 99 times out of 10), the problem begins with the user. They've modified something intentionally or through a misunderstanding of how things work and then they call for help. Thank God they screw up, or I wouldn't have this job. When I saw my mail had disappeared, though, my mantra was off having coffee and I figured it was a software problem.

Ever play one of those damned Facebook games? The kind where you need to accrue friends who aren't actually friends?

Don't play those damned Facebook games. I added my e-mail address to a list of people looking to amass a lot of friends who would make up the ranks of their virtual mob with their own virtual avatars. Eventually I lost interest in the game, but I kept getting requests to add friends. It turns out my e-mail address was then added to a larger list on a blog created for people to harvest addresses to invite to join their mob or their farm or their harem or whatever, with the added bonus that since the listing is available to anyone on the web through that blog, any spammer can pick up e-mail addresses with zero effort, so now I've been getting a ton of new spam.

After putting up with these messages one-by-one, last week I decided to set a rule in my mail client. Being such a handy computer technician, I made a rule that would move any of the e-mails associated with that mass listing into the deleted items folder...Aw, the hell with that, just delete them completely, I don't need to review those! I set the parameters to weed out those messages, then added the caveat that if the sender isn't in my previous senders, torch the message.

Except...I set the rule to sort out those messages, then told it to verify that the senders WERE among my previous senders, and instead of making sure both criteria were met, I made the rule work if either of the criteria were met, effectively targeting Every Single Message. At least I know the app works.

Luckily for me, I was able to get most of them back, but decided I'd take the opportunity to sort through and get rid of that which I did not need. Out went the newsletters from a bargain site I've never purchased anything through. Out went the weekly tech tips newsletters. Out went the almost-endless string of notification e-mails from Facebook telling me exactly what it would tell me when I logged on next.

I was left with a huge amount of e-correspondence with the wife (I've saved every last one, honey) and a great many e-mail addresses I hadn't seen in a long time. In sorting through these, I found a few responses to a callout here two years ago for legal advice. I'd been discussing optioning a script to a producer so that he could in turn shop several projects to some investors he needed to pitch in a hurry before they left the country a few days later. Yes, it sounds like just as solid a plan as it did back then. I might as well have gotten that excited about buying a lottery ticket. I didn't know the whole story then, however, all I knew was what the producer was telling our mutual contact: The investors had $25 million to spend and wanted genre projects set mostly in one location.

I have a script that fit that bill, a genre story (sci-fi/horror) set mostly in one location (a hospital), so at the urging of our mutual contact, I sent the producer the script. He let me know later of his intent to sell the investors several projects that were already packaged. He wasn't going to produce, he wanted to secure the deal for 10% of the investment. I was supposed to be the producer. After adjusting myself to this development, I took the leap and let him know I was fine with the change in roles, but the deal would have to be for 5 percent. He responded that he'd try to just sell the script for that five percent, which he didn't seem to realize was a different deal to try to make entirely. It will come as no surprise that the whole thing evaporated in the space of a few days.

I revisited the chain of events while reading through these e-mails, and one of the messages came from someone with a market research group, a very encouraging and insightful e-mail reinforcing my suspicion that the figures the finder was floating were way over the norm. Something about the message caught my eye this time around.

The sender's address was the very building where I am now working two years later.

About eight months ago I moved downtown in a new position as an onsite tech for the advertising/PR corporation I work for. The work is at the same time more tiring and less mind-numbingly boring than my previous position. My days are usually very busy, but there are also stretches where I can work at my own pace and there is something new on a daily basis. I like it, mainly because I can gain experience that will keep me employable. The job services three large companies based in the building, but there are other smaller companies in the building I don't serve, this market research group must be one of them. How could I not have noticed this before, I thought to myself, I'd been in the building a few times over two years before I moved here and had been giving phone support to the users here. Hell, I've even been on the floor the sender worked on when the e-mail had been sent.

Seeing this link between my present job and the blog made me think seriously about Three Chainsaws for the first time in months. I opened up the blog, read through a bunch of entries, tried to remember what I was thinking back then. It will come as little surprise that screenwriting has not been a priority lately. That chainsaw was placed down gently and occasionally started to make sure it still turned over. I've still been working very slowly on a couple of things I'd mentioned here:

I hammered out a rough outline and revised a treatment for the animated movie idea I mentioned here in anticipation of meeting people last year at a videogame press event for a major animation studio. I met the studio's story supervisor and he politely shot me down before I could even bring up the idea of making them a pitch, but he was otherwise encouraging and made me incredibly jealous of the creative culture they've developed in-house.
I've been revisiting two ideas I had years ago, one for a western about a gold rush town's dying days, the other a romantic comedy that I only started looking at again because I figure it can't be any worse than the releases that have been ripped apart by critics over the last year or so.
I edited the trailers for two independent films that have been well received on the festival circuit in the past few months.

So even though I haven't pursued producing at all, I figured since I've got this one response from someone who may have advice if I get a package together, maybe I can see if their company is still in this building...

Hey, wait a minute. I work on Park Avenue South. This reader works on Park Avenue. Same building number, totally different neighborhood. It doesn't mean I can't make contact, but makes it a lot more unlikely that we've met in the elevator.

At least now I've got the blog back on my mind, and I think I have things to say.

Step One...

2010-03-26T22:56:00.003-04:00

Start posting again.

That feels good.

Been A While

2008-05-29T20:55:00.002-04:00

Things have been a little busy and distracting this past month, sorry to say. I have been making notes and thinking story on a couple of different projects, so I can't say I'd completely stopped writing, but I haven't been turning out pages in a while. That will change in the next week, I'll be working during the day again and should be able to schedule the day around getting some writing done and getting out on the bike. One day in the middle of April, I felt myself dragging while taking the stairs on my way to work. I've always been doughy and never one for dieting, but I'd usually been able to maintain at a somewhat comfortable level. Rather than see that change for the worse, I changed some behaviors (mostly portion control, amazing what that can do) and I'm happy to say I've dropped 30 pounds and I'm headlong into a Coke Zero addiction.

My wife scored passes to a screening of Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a few days before it opened, so we made a date of it, our first movie together in too long. We had a great time, it's a terrific show. Sure, dig a few inches under the surface and you can see the creaking skeleton is missing a few bones, but there's no denying the ride is fun while it lasts. Getting her back into the theater must have flipped a switch, the wife will head out with a friend this weekend to see Sex & the City (Two and a half hours? Really? Really??) this weekend and I'll sneak out some night to finally catch up with Iron Man.

I was sad to see that Sydney Pollack died this week of cancer. Pollack seemed like a class act and certainly possessed enormous talent on both sides of the camera. I was shocked when I learned in high school that the same director made Three Days of the Condor and Tootsie. Just as I was logging on to post tonight, I read that Harvey Korman died today. My parents must have thought I was a strange little kid because I wanted to stay up to watch Carol Burnett on Saturday nights at the age of five.

One of the reasons I liked the new Indiana Jones has to do with how comfortable the movie is with the passage of time. Jim Broadbent tells Harrison Ford they've reached the age where life stops giving you things and starts taking them away. I'm far from that point in life, but when the talents I watched in my youth leave us, it's like I can see that point from here. Rest in peace, gentlemen, and thanks.

family time

2008-05-28T20:01:00.007-04:00

On Christmas night, about 20 minutes before the turkey was projected to hit the table, my son was bopping around the living room playing his prized clownfish-shaped electric guitar when suddenly he stopped and began to shriek and point to his privates. A closer look revealed one of his testicles to be swollen and red to a point that I was terrified meant testicular torsion, a situation where the testicle has rotated and constricted the connecting vessels, cutting off bloodflow.

Four hours later, I listened to a urologist explain that my son, now half-asleep on my shoulder watching The Incredibles on the overhead TV, had developed what's called a hydrocele. The pain had not returned, thankfully, and the specialist told me that hydroceles don't always require treatment, so although it looked like he was sporting a red Spaldeen down there, he advised we wait and see what happened over the next few weeks. The chief urologist told my wife in mid-January to wait another two months to again see if the swelling receded on its own. In March, the chief finally told us we should let him operate. Although I'd been hoping the issue could be resolved quickly, the thought of my three year old going under general anesthetic put my heart in my throat for two months until last Wednesday, the first available date for the procedure.

I scooped the boy up out of a sound sleep at 5:30 am, sat him in my wife's Volvo wagon and we took him to the children's hospital for a 6:30 call. Since he was the youngest scheduled that morning, he got the first slot and at 7:15, my wife walked him into pre-op to meet the anesthesiologist.

I sat in the waiting room expecting a ninety-minute wait. My wife read her paperback and I grabbed a five year old issue of Entertainment Weekly and read about their top 50 cult movies. At 9 am, I looked down the hall toward the post-op area to see if my son had been brought out.

Still not there at 9:05.

9:09.

9:15.

I took off my watch.

The waiting room flatscreens were running Cartoon Network, some manic flashing seizure-bait about seemingly hundreds of blobs with feet and faces named Mister (insert adjective). Mister Noisy. Mister Happy. Mister Rude. Mister Persnickety. And here I sat, Mister Internally-Boiling-Over. The staff that seemed so nice two hours ago now looked to me like they were intentionally moving in slow-motion. The aide who'd told us it was her job to tell us when our son was out of surgery sat at her desk doing paperwork. At indeterminate intervals, she'd stand up, dragging her slides, the flat heels slapping the floor with each shuffle, and buzz herself into the post-op area. I'd watch through the door's narrow inset window as she'd walk the length of the room, check in with the nurses, small talk a bit and shuffle on back through the door, making a hard left to her desk and resuming her paperwork. As she passed within view of the parents awaiting her glance, I wondered if she had trained herself to keep from looking in our direction during her travels.

A father with a tapered leather jacket and tight pants that made him look like he wanted to be a superhero sat down next to me, Blackberry fixed to his ear. From the effort he was making to be heard, my guess is he was trying to speak to someone on the other side of the planet. Underwater. And deaf. Still, he was there waiting on his child's surgery to finish just as the rest of us were, so he got a pass.

At 10 am I turned to look at the post-op area and didn't divert my gaze until I saw the chief urologist coming our way at 10:15. He told us the procedure went flawlessly, even with the addition of a correction for a hernia that was brewing with the other testicle, a problem we'd been warned a prolonged hydrocele could cause. They'd given him a spinal block afterward to help the pain throughout the day. All we had to do was wait for him to wake up.

Two hours later, Jack rolled over and whispered a weak hello. His voice was scratchy from the entubation. He was cranky and couldn't understand why he couldn't spring to his feet as he normally would after sleep. It would take the combination of Daddy, Mommy and a providentially-televised Scooby-Doo to get him calm enough to get dressed. I carried him down to the street, across to the garage and into the car. He was asleep within five blocks. My wife and I tucked him into his bed, dimmed the lights, stood in his doorway and watched him sleep.

Missing In Inaction

2008-04-30T21:05:00.003-04:00

I've spent the better part of the past week putting together some video for a job interview that I had this morning. About six years ago, I left the video production company where I'd worked for about ten years. I'd been what can best be described as a creative strategic partner, meaning I didn't lay out any money other than the sweat and blood I put into the work that made the company its good reputation in our market. Eventually my creativity was undervalued and my strategies were rejected, the boss deciding he wanted to form a merger of sorts with two other videographers so they could go after the lower-end segment of the market. I didn't agree with the merger, didn't think the new partners had anything to offer that would benefit the company and wasn't shy about expressing that belief. It wasn't surprising to the boss when I left.

Right after I left, I shot a cross-country bicycle race for OLN (now Vs.) and landed a freelance corporate job when I returned from the race, then started working part-time in retail in the job I left last year, getting further and further away from working in a creative capacity. The past year I've been working for a company that lends tech support to advertising and PR agencies, and although the people I assist aren't doing what I'd been doing for the most part, I still observe people performing creative tasks for a living and it makes me recall the feeling I'd get when something I'd worked on was completed, that sense of accomplishment. It's the same feeling I get when I finish a good scene or burn through a stack of pages, although I've been doing less and less of that lately.

I stumbled upon the position I interviewed for today and applied as quickly as I could. They requested a demo a few days later and then some raw footage I'd shot afterward to get an idea of my camera sense. The interview went very well, the facility is putting out some good work and since the job is with a major university, I'd be able to complete my degree as well.

Now that all the prep work is done and the interview is over, I can get back to working on some story ideas I've got rolling. The children's movie treatment is getting longer as I work through possible story angles (it's always the second act that derails me with each script, so I'm working cautiously now) and I've unearthed some notes on plotlines I'd thought of months ago that look good on second reading, so I'll work on those next. I just want to get that feeling back.

Hello Goodbye

2008-04-22T19:18:00.002-04:00

In and out fast to tell you the cruise was great and since we got back I've been working on making a change in my professional life, so I'll be updating you at the end of the week. Stay cool.

Out To Sea

2008-04-08T21:17:00.002-04:00

I'll be away until Monday with the family on a Disney cruise of the Bahamas. See you here next week!

If Love Is A Mixtape, Make Sure You Include Some Prefab Sprout (Stuff I Like)

2008-04-08T19:01:00.004-04:00

My latest read was handed to me by my wife as I was close to finishing Then We Came To The End. "You're reading this next," she said. Not a suggestion.

The next morning I opened the book without studying the cover very closely and started reading. Here's Rob Sheffield, a music journalist I know I've seen a couple of times on one of those VH1 "Best Hottest Mostest F****ingest Greatest" clip shows that we're all secretly addicted to, the sirensong of Def Leppard causing us all to crash on the rocks on a lazy Saturday afternoon. The conceit of the book is Rob reviewing his mixtape collection and recalling for the reader the events in his life when he made each tape. The first chapter reads like he's just broken up with his wife Renee, and I was grooving on Rob's style, he's clever without being smarmy, a great mix of the raw emotion he's recalling and the sense of humor that time's perspective has given him. I kept grooving until I hit the end of the chapter: Renee didn't break up with him. Renee died, dropped to the floor in midtask with a pulmonary embolism. I looked at the cover more closely and read the subtitle: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time.

Damn, I just got over The Road, could I take another downer?

Luckily for me I pressed on. This isn't an epic love story, these aren't lovers trapped behind enemy lines during a blizzard running from Nazi pitbull cyborgs. This is the story of two people who fall for each other, fall hard like we can when we're too damn lucky to know we're that lucky. Their initial common touchpoint is the music they both love and that grows into the music they each love and introduce to the other and the music they discover together, and Rob lays it out for us tape by tape, a mental soundtrack that carries their story along. They're one of those great couples you think will go on together forever. And then they don't. It's both heart-breaking and life-affirming, but Sheffield doesn't make the argument that her death and his loss made him stronger. In fact, he finds great identification with a quote from Emerson: "I grieve that grief can teach me nothing[...]."

Rob and Renee were DJs at their local radio station. Some of the happier times of my life were when I was a DJ on my college station. It was the late 80's and our station thumbed its nose at the top 40 sound the local pro station was running into the ground (I think they took 'top 40' literally, they never seemed to have more than 40 songs in rotation). Instead, we played music from the growing college radio scene, bands like Hüsker Dü, R.E.M., 10000 Maniacs, The Clash, Fishbone, The Smiths. Some of the bands we played I can't find record of anywhere, even as I can still hear their songs in my head. For a guy raised on Billy Joel and Chicago, being a DJ there opened my ears to a whole new part of my personality.

One album all the DJs played until you could see through the grooves was Prefab Sprout's Two Wheels Good, known outside the U.S. as Steve McQueen.
I'd first heard another DJ closing his shows with "Moving The River" each week, then began picking tracks blindly during my own shows. One day I was thinking of playing "Goodbye Lucille #1" since I hadn't played it yet, and another DJ passing in the hall rapped on the studio window, shouting behind the glass, "'Goodbye Lucille'!" Sounded like divine intervention to me, so on it went. Divine indeed, the song hooked me and the album became the very first CD I ever purchased. It was pop, perfect pop, baby, yet it was hip enough for the cool crowd. It burned up the UK charts for seven or eight months.

Original album producer Thomas Dolby remastered the album in late 2006 and the band's creative core, singer/songwriter Paddy McAloon recorded acoustic versions of eight tracks for a special two-disc re-release. The remaster doesn't overwhelm the original, merely refines and restores the brilliant shine, and the acoustic tracks are amazing.

Thanks and God Bless, Chuck

2008-04-06T01:02:00.003-04:00

My mother is the oldest of three, with a brother in the middle and her sister Maureen bringing up the rear. They're all in their mid 60's to early 70's now, and the memories of going to their old apartment on the Lower East Side are receding deeper into my vault. My uncle once came home and discovered myself, my older brother and two older sisters piled on his bed watching his postage-stamp black-and-white TV and stormed back out. We were watching Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (as spoilerish a title as you'll ever find, second only to a purported foreign title for Psycho in a land where that word wasn't in the language, The Boy Who Was His Own Mother). My family lived on Long Island then, and going into the city was a big deal, so we didn't do it often. New York was so close, but a world away from our little town.

My aunt Maureen would come out to see us every so often, I loved when she'd sneak into my room just after I'd gone to bed to wish me a good night in French. A story from her own youth that my mother loved to recount with her on these visits was about how Maureen at the age of seven or eight would talk about her friend Chuck that she'd see out on the street as she sat by herself on the front step of their building. Chuck would come and talk to her, ask her how old she was now, tell her how pretty she was. As this went on for some time and as it became clear Chuck was an adult, a stranger adult, my grandparents began to grow concerned. Who the hell was this guy?

Eventually a stakeout was improvised and several days passed with no sighting of Chuck, and then one day my ~~grand~~mother* saw a man she thought she knew walking up the street. As he drew closer, she realized the man wasn't someone she knew, but someone she'd seen, an actor. His name came to her as he approached the front step of the building with a smile: Charlton Heston.

Maureen said, "Hi Chuck!"

Mr. Heston passed away Saturday in Beverly Hills, his wife of 64 years at his side. I recorded Planet of the Apes the other night and just got around to watching it tonight, not knowing he had died. Now I wish I had Major Dundee or The Omega Man or the Richard Lester Musketeer films ready to roll to pay tribute.

edit - I re-checked my source, my mother, and she cleared up my error, it was she that was there with Maureen that day.

Desperately Seeking Treatment

2008-04-01T21:02:00.002-04:00

Hey, look, a rare post about screenwriting!

I've been writing notes on the story for my animated movie project and now I've begun writing up the treatment. As I've never been satisfied with my past efforts at writing treatments, I'm progressing carefully. My (bad?) habit of jumping into the first draft right from the start has resulted in a lower rate of completions than I'd like, so I figure I'll try this the 'right' way. My only problem is I haven't seen too many actual treatments and I'd love to see one from a movie I'm familiar with so I can get a clear idea of how the treatment lines up against the finished product. Anybody know of any I can pick up online?

Stuff I Like This Week

2008-04-01T20:18:00.004-04:00

About halfway through and it's damn funny. If you've ever worked in an office, you know these people. The book is about the gossipy, self-indulgent, procrastinating and deceiving creative crew at an ad agency just after the dotcom bubble burst. I'm currently at an ad agency in a technical capacity, and I can easily picture the people I see every day within the pages of this book. Plus, it's the first novel by a fellow named Joshua Ferris, and you've got to love it when a first-timer knocks one out like this.

Wilco's "Hate It Here" is on high rotation on my iPod, the rest of the album is climbing with a bullet.

Yes. count me in with the BSG fans eagerly awaiting the start of the fourth season this Friday. I'm a few episodes away from the end of the third season and I love the journey this series has taken. Yes, it's set on a spaceship. Get over it. This isn't your daddy's sci-fi, this is a rich character-driven ensemble drama, set on a spaceship.

Stuff I Like This Week

2008-03-26T19:23:00.004-04:00

Super busy at work this week, plus I'm working the nights so I can shuttle The Prince to school most mornings, and when I get time I'm working on my animated-film story (which is nicely coming along), so no blogging of late as you can see.

I am voraciously ripping through a novel during my commute, however, and even though I'm not finished, I feel compelled to recommend Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Even though it's won the Pulitzer and the 2006 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction AND was one of Oprah's Book Club selections, I'm sure my recommendation will make a difference and get Mr. McCarthy some well-deserved recognition [/smirk]. This is a brutal read, gripping and poetic. Read it now.

UPDATE: I've just finished and I feel like I've taken a 2x4 to the gut. Heart-breaking.

Stuff I Like This Week

2008-03-18T18:29:00.004-04:00

I'm going to keep it simple this week and just recommend one thing that I like: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I finally watched this on DVD and to say it is involving and entertaining is an understatement. I'll tell you straight that this documentary works just as well as the good-for-society docs that win major awards do. I found it as compelling and full of insight into American society as Roger & Me and The Thin Blue Line, films I've respected as great contemporary documentaries.

What I'm curious to see is the approach the in-the-works feature version of this story will take. One of the virtues of the doc is how it depicts the extraordinary measures a handful of people actually took against a perceived outsider. If these same measures are taken by characters we know to be portrayed by actors, I wonder if they'd have the same impact. I'd be curious to see the screenplay (currently being penned by actor/writer Michael Bacall).

The accuracy of the doc (as it always seems to happen) is being questioned as people in the film are coming out to tell their own sides, but you can't discount the central conflict between these two gamers with different personalities: one wants to be the king of Donkey Kong, the other wants to remain king of the insular world of gamernerds he's ruled for 25 years.

Patrick, Not Paddy

2008-03-17T18:49:00.002-04:00

I'm no social crusader, I'm certain I'm capable of casual social insensitivity through ignorance, but as a person of Irish descent, this time of year gives me a small amount of dread as I know from experience that I'll see or hear something that makes me upset. Last Friday, I got an e-mail from my company wishing everyone a happy "St. Paddy's Day".

To be fair, I didn't know how derogatory a term 'paddy' can be until I saw Tony Slattery constantly deriding Stephen Rea in The Crying Game by referring to him as 'Paddy' rather than his name. Sure, it's a nickname for Patrick, but it was used primarily by folks looking to demean Irish immigrants as lower-class, uneducated and socially undesirable, both by the British and by Americans. It's how the paddy wagon got its name as these vehicles were usually manned by Irish police officers performing one of the only duties people of their kind were deemed worthy to perform. Certainly the term 'paddy' has lost a good deal of impact since those days, but it is still a term some people are at best uncomfortable with hearing in reference to their countrymen, and certainly their patron saint. Toss that word in the same trash bin as kraut, wop and the n-word where it belongs.

If you want to refer to St. Patrick, refer to him as St. Patrick. He's the only saint most people can name anyway, give the guy some credit.

I'll leave you with a song I first heard about ten years ago. Ashley MacIsaac is a Canadian of Scottish descent who plays traditional Celtic fiddle in contemporary musical settings. When I heard "Sleepy Maggie" the first time, I had to call the radio station to ask what the hell they'd just played, the arrangement was that jarring. The album it's on now goes into rotation on my iPod this time of year.

Stuff I Like This Week

2008-03-11T17:38:00.007-04:00

Liking this poster a lot. Seeing Karen Allen on a movie poster again is a gas.

Seeing Watchmen on the big screen will be sort of a cheat, I think, as the intended and most effective venue for this story are the pages of a comic book. However, that doesn't mean I'm not eager as all hell to check it out when it finally arrives a year from now.

I haven't seen any films that Amy Adams has been in, and that includes every movie on her IMDB page, but I did see her performing at the Oscars and then on this past weekend's Saturday Night Live, and that girl is pretty talented. My mark of a good SNL host is when a sketch seems like only they could pull it off, and everything she did seemed like only she could pull it off.

Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Sue finally get revenge.

And finally, this:

Billy Crystal gets a one-day contract with the Yankees.

I'm no Yankee fan, but I am a Billy Crystal fan and this sounds like a great way to celebrate your 60th birthday. Show 'em where you live, Billy.

Write Me Up

2008-03-06T12:02:00.002-05:00

I haven't been working on the newlywed comedy for the past week, but I expect to get some work in daily over the next two weeks and beyond. What I have been doing is working on an idea for a kid's movie, specifically an idea for a CG-animated movie. What's funny to me about it is that it's based on the same old German genre silent I based Brother's Keeper on, it's just a different and updated take on the material. It's all very loose now, but it would have the relationship between a kid and a surrogate parent at its heart, the idea of accepting someone as family even though they are not related by blood. There's an additional wrinkle that will be the hook, I'll share that later as it takes shape.

What inspired me to try writing a kid's movie (aside from the bombardment of kid's movies I get at home) is that I'll be taking a trip to Disney next month for a Pixar-related event, and I wondered for a moment if Pixar folk will be attending. If I can wrestle a treatment out to bring along, I'd at least be prepared to pitch someone. It's a huge long shot, but it wouldn't hurt to have it in my pocket just in case.

Just When I Was Fully Recovered From Super Mario Thumb

2008-03-06T10:19:00.002-05:00

I'm sort of a closet gamer. Seeing as I'm not 24 years old anymore, I don't experience overnight runs through Super Metroid anymore, but I've got my trusty Nintendo DS for my daily commute (and at least Brain Age 2 tells me I'm mentally 24 years old...Wait, that's good, right?).

When I talk about gaming with people in their twenties, though, their gaming experience is so much different than mine. Before I was 12, video games meant going to the local department store's basement arcade, between the escalator and the barber shop. Once the Atari 2600 came out for the '77 holiday season, all that changed (and the local department store closed a few years later, but probably not because I wasn't feeding quarters to Battle Tank). Trips to the malls that were opening up all around featured mandatory arcade visits, and the gap between arcade gaming and home gaming was wide. Those arcades are gone now that you can rock out Gears of War on your HDTV on your couch, and couch-based gaming is what these younger guys grew up with for the most part.

Now that I've been investigating which Blu-Ray player I want to get later in the year, I haven't been able to ignore the possibility that the Sony PS3 is the best way to go. Much has been made of the fact that the Blu-Ray player standard function profile wasn't nailed down before production began, a perceived weakness the HD-DVD camp was happy to trumpet loudly. Updating the profile should be no problem if you've got the player connected to the internet, but most players didn't have an ethernet connection. The PS3 has had that connection and has already updated to the current profile with the final profile expected by summer. Even with newer standalone players coming, most tech sites agree the PS3 is the best option for Blu-Ray in the home.

But probably not my home. The only game console that appeals to me is the Wii, and that's because it seems like a console the whole family can enjoy, even my non-gamer wife with the secret passion for Centipede and Ms. Pacman (sorry honey, but the first step to recovery is admitting the addiction). After that, I'd have to consider the XBox 360, mainly because some friends have been streaming HD programming through theirs from their computers, a practice that has me completely envious.

Of all these options, none of the popular games appeal that much to me (well, maybe Halo), so again the idea of a console for gaming seems superfluous. Games don't seem to have the charm they'd had back at the outset of home gaming. Warlords was a great multi-player game that pretty much ruled the 2600 at my house. Adventure looks like a third-grader's extra-credit project now, but chasing an ampersand dragon with a sword that looked like an arrow was loads of fun. There was one game for the Nintendo, an import from Japan that was mislabeled as 'Mario Baby' in the video store I managed years ago, that could not be resisted once sampled. This game was always out on rental once word got around the staff, and eventually a delinquent customer kited off with it. I've since found out that it was actually called "Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa". Have a look.

Stuff I Like This Week (Oscars Edition)

2008-03-03T08:26:00.005-05:00

I'm a little late to the party, but since I'm re-installing "Stuff I Like" at the beginning of the week, I'm playing a little catch-up.

After seeing Jonah Hill presenting at the Oscars, I finally Netflixed Superbad. I'd enjoyed Knocked Up and have been trying to watch The 40 Year Old Virgin going on forever (every time we record it on cable, we never get around to watching it), so although I know Judd Apatow is the flavor right now, I haven't immersed myself in his work. The cool thing about Superbad is its melding of the heart Apatow and crew showed in Knocked Up with the best parts of the high-school comedies I loved from the 80's. It's like John Hughes cast Farmer Ted as Samantha and told him to keep it real.

Jon Stewart's comment on classic spectacle meeting modern tech.

I haven't seen the film yet, but I've been listening to the Once soundtrack for a few weeks and it's superb, even out of context. I think once I see the film and know how the songs fit the story, I'll be able to see why everyone seems to be in love with Once.

Three Academy Awards for The Bourne Ultimatum. Well deserved for that rare franchise that just keeps getting better.

The last thing I liked about the Oscars this year? The concern over the low ratings. I don't think it's an issue with the show as much as it is with the process the Academy Awards have adopted over the last several years. The campaigns that studios are able to wage are creating an atmosphere where the nominations are not terribly surprising and the winners are all but anointed (in the public's eye) before the statuettes are even handed out. Promoting a movie once the nominations are out is one thing, but pimping a film as award-worthy to the industry to get an early jump should be frowned upon. Nominations should come from the membership without influence from the studios. Once nominated, promote on an equal-time model. Parity in promoting nominees would mean a big studio couldn't overwhelm the efforts an independent makes in trying to get voters to recognize their nominees, or that the race is decided by whomever yells the loudest and soonest. So Variety makes a little less money, so what.

It might not hurt to make a good movie that has such appeal as to be popular while you're at it. The fact that No Country For Old Men hasn't made a profit is criminal, but the idea that the industry seems to have (as reflected by releases over the last four or five years) that popular movies should be dumb and great movies don't make money is a crock. Some movie is going to come out soon and smash that idea to pieces. The public is waiting not-so-patiently to see that movie.

And Now The Whining Starts

2008-02-29T14:53:00.004-05:00

Dear Diablo,

No one cares what shoes Robert Towne is wearing. Until I read in the newspaper that he's been seen wearing a french split toe from J.M. Weston, whatever you're wearing is between you and your left and rights.

You've been doing really well lately, and you seem like you've got a good head on your shoulders, so you must have been waiting for the other diamond-encrusted shoe to drop. Still, coming off what should have been a universally-accepted bit of awesomeness like winning the Oscar, seeing you get slagged online over your choice of footwear of all things is a shame. Seeing as very few of us will ever take a meeting over which pair of slides we'd be endorsing by way of foot, I don't think too many people can question your behavior.

As for why spec-writing wretches are now gathering with torches and pitchforks against you, it's because you used to be one of them until you started winning awards, and now that the world has seen you win the Oscar, you are most definitely Not One Of Them.

In the end, one can't write with their feet, but if we could, you'd still be a better writer than most of the green-eyed wannabes railing against you. Hold that golden bastard high, you've earned it.

Tom

Reality Rocks My Boat

2008-02-26T18:40:00.004-05:00

I was reading this true story today and I was reminded of the post-Oscar inspiration I was feeling Sunday night, the feeling that juices up your "Yes I Can" a few notches. While sitting up after the show and feeding my daughter a bottle, I was running through story ideas in my head and one idea floated to the top, an extrapolation of the actual experiences of a friend of mine. Since this friend is more than capable of writing out and publishing her story if she wanted to, I've never pursued the idea of putting it to paper myself, but still the idea came back, mostly fictionalized but with the one anecdote I first felt made her story potentially cinematic the only remaining thing specific to her actual experience. The circumstance would be generally the same, but beyond geographic specifics necessary for the story, the rest would be fiction.

I tucked that idea away Sunday and thought of it again today while reading the Cougar Ace story and thinking someone must have snatched up the film rights to the article already since it lays out a macho team of mercenary adventurers on a dangerous mission right at the outset. That led me to thinking about my friend's story and whether or not to arrange for the rights to put elements of her own and her family's life experiences onscreen. Have any of you ever thought about or done something like this? I'm sure the specifics of what to do legally are obtainable, that's not what I'm concerned with. Rather, I'm interested in the dynamic such an arrangement brought to your relationship with your friend or acquaintance.

Wow, Sony Finally Wins A Format War

2008-02-19T19:00:00.004-05:00

I'm into high-def, as is my right as a red-blooded American male. At first it had more to do with the aspect ratio than anything else, the 4:3 AR for television just seemed too narrow for modern programming. Seeing modern European films where TVs were displaying the Euro PALPlus 16:9 aspect ratio made me jealous. As I worked in video post-production, the standard-def 4:3 looked low-class next to even letterboxed standard-def, the equivalent of wearing horse-blinders rotated 90 degrees. While working for a firm a few years back that was remastering stock footage to high-def tape, I got to stare at HD footage all day for a few months and I was spoiled for less than HD at home and at work. I offer this in my own defense in case you're one of those folks that says a show is a show is a show, because there is a world of difference between say Lost in standard def and Lost in HD. Hell, even Jeopardy likes to party in HD.

So it was with interest that I began to follow the format war that a group of manufacturers led by Sony launched against another group led by Toshiba four or five years ago. Back then it was Toshiba's AOD vs. Sony's Blu-Ray, with Blu-Ray the latecoming underdog. Eventually AOD took the catch-all moniker the industry had generally given the emergent technology, HD-DVD.

I was a high schooler when the VHS vs. Betamax war was going on, and since Sony's Beta technology was better (and grew into the Betacam spec used across the broadcast industry), I was sorry to see Sony lose out. Sony has had bad luck with new formats ever since.

Seeing the format war gain momentum online was a new wrinkle, however, and I think the internet had a huge impact on the fight. I'm not talking about the fanboy drivel in forums, but the speed at which news hits the target consumer base. Sites reporting that Warner had dropped their HD-DVD exclusivity last month mere moments after Warner had issued their press release was as big a blow than the announcement itself, I think. The Syms retail chain advertises that an educated consumer is their best customer. Well, educated consumers became Best Buy and Circuit City's worst customers that day, bringing back the HD-DVD players they'd received for Christmas by the truckload. Last week's three 'We're dropping HD-DVD' announcements from Netflix, Best Buy and (the biggest blow of all) Wal-Mart even hit the mainstream news sites. Toshiba never had a chance to try and move their remaining player stock to uninformed buyers.

Toshiba announced this morning that they are dropping their format by the end of March. Of the two last exclusive studios, Universal has already announced plans to release new and catalog titles on Blu-Ray, and Paramount is expected to follow sooner than later. Having just one format should open the floodgates on catalog titles now that the studios know the consumers won't be waffling on which format to buy, so that's great news for someone like me that wants to see some old favorites released. As it is, I'm glad to finally be able to order the new Blade Runner package in an HD format. I just hope Universal gets on the stick and starts opening their catalog up. I'll pick the first three titles for you, Uni: Jaws, The Sting and Serenity.

Look Up 'Cantankerous', There's His Picture

2008-02-15T15:56:00.002-05:00

Years ago in my late teens, I made my way into Manhattan to (what was then) the New York Penta Hotel to my last sci-fi convention. When I was fifteen, taking a ride into the city to look at old posters and props and get David Prowse or Jimmy Doohan's autograph was cool (Mr. Doohan was a gracious and charming man, I must say, but David Prowse was an autograph machine - 'Next, please...Next, please..."). One weekend we saw Tom Savini showing off pieces from Creepshow about a year before release and completely out of context, pulling out Adrienne Barbeau's shredded face (the thing under the stairs was supposed to spit it out onto the floor...Yeah, ick.) and E.G. Marshall's head from a cardboard box. It was an odd time to be a geek; we had great, great movies coming out but there were very few channels of information to learn about them from, and none of them had a lead time faster than Starlog or Famous Monsters, so a convention filled with nerd effluvia was Mecca.

But as I got older, the company that ran the cons shifted their emphasis from pricey New York to Los Angeles and the NY shows began to fade. That last show I attended was moved from the main convention floor to a series of spaces mapped out in one ballroom; tiny trade show to one side, presentations room on the other. I was on my way out when I heard over the PA that in five minutes Harlan Ellison would begin his presentation.

That made me turn around and come back. I didn't know much about the man, but I did remember he'd written a great Trek episode, and that made him cool, so I figured I'd hang for a bit. I wound up staying for the whole hour. Ellison was actually onstage with someone else, maybe a current collaborator, I don't know who, but the other guy obviously knew to be quiet and let the Mouth roar. Ellison was on fire, blasting anything he didn't approve of and lavishing praise on the few things he did (he lit up when someone mentioned Blackadder and he started singing the closing theme song from memory). I couldn't possibly tell you everything he talked about, but I can tell you he can command a room effectively.

Now that the WGA strike is all but buried, Ellison has come out with a statement regarding the settlement. I'd say he's disappointed (and though I usually refrain from cussing on the interwebs when I can, I'm going to let Mr. Ellison have his say any way he sees fit).

HARLAN ELLISON ON THE WRITERS STRIKE SETTLEMENT

YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO RE-POST THIS ANYWHERE:

Creds: got here in 1962, written for just about everybody, won the Writers Guild Award four times for solo work, sat on the WGAw Board twice, worked on negotiating committees, and was out on the picket lines with my NICK COUNTER SLEEPS WITH THE FISHE$$$ sign. You may have heard my name. I am a Union guy, I am a Guild guy, I am loyal. I fuckin’ LOVE the Guild.

And I voted NO on accepting this deal.

My reasons are good, and they are plentiful; Patric Verrone will be saddened by what I am about to say; long-time friends will shake their heads; but this I say without equivocation…

THEY BEAT US LIKE A YELLOW DOG. IT IS A SHIT DEAL. We finally got a timorous generation that has never had to strike, to get their asses out there, and we had to put up with the usual cowardly spineless babbling horse’s asses who kept mumbling “lessgo bac’ta work” over and over, as if it would make them one iota a better writer. But after months on the line, and them finally bouncing that pus-sucking dipthong Nick Counter, we rushed headlong into a shabby, scabrous, underfed shovelfulla shit clutched to the affections of toss-in-the-towel summer soldiers trembling before the Awe of the Alliance.

My Guild did what it did in 1988. It trembled and sold us out. It gave away the EXACT co-terminus expiration date with SAG for some bullshit short-line substitute; it got us no more control of our words; it sneak-abandoned the animator and reality beanfield hands before anyone even forced it on them; it made nice so no one would think we were meanies; it let the Alliance play us like the village idiot. The WGAw folded like a Texaco Road Map from back in the day.

And I am ashamed of this Guild, as I was when Shavelson was the prexy, and we wasted our efforts and lost out on technology that we had to strike for THIS time. 17 days of streaming tv!!!????? Geezus, you bleating wimps, why not just turn over your old granny for gang-rape?

You deserve all the opprobrium you get. While this nutty festschrift of demented pleasure at being allowed to go back to work in the rice paddy is filling your cowardly hearts with joy and relief that the grips and the staff at the Ivy and street sweepers won’t be saying nasty shit behind your back, remember this:

You are their bitches. They outslugged you, outthought you, outmaneuvered you; and in the end you ripped off your pants, painted yer asses blue, and said yes sir, may I have another.

Please excuse my temerity. I’m just a sad old man who has fallen among Quislings, Turncoats, Hacks and Cowards.

I must go now to whoops. My gorge has become buoyant.

Respectfully, Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison

Vote Early, Vote Often

2008-02-11T20:20:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to see there will be a vote tomorrow on lifting the WGA strike, I'm certain the good (everyone gets back to work) outweighs the bad (vocal minority doesn't like the 17-day clause of the deal). There's a nice article covering the human element of the big Saturday meeting here in New York from Sunday's NY Daily News. To underline the point of the article that the average person wouldn't recognize a writer on the street, I noticed CNN.com's front page article on the meeting featured, as a visual representation of writers in attendance, a shot of Michael Moore. Filmmaker, yes, and union guy, absolutely, but hardly your typical TV or film writer.

Already the industry is said to be running in post-strike mode and one can only think that the SAG agreement will be wrapped up before the old agreement expires. I do wonder, though, about the after effects of the strike, the relationships between writers and the below-the-line folk affected by the work stoppage.

Good luck, everyone, it's good to know you'll all be back to work soon.

Let's Make A Deal

2008-02-09T13:43:00.000-05:00

I can't access the particulars of the proposed deal with the WGA from their site since I'm not a member, but I have faith the negotiators have taken care to address the interests of the guild and its members (although I reserve the right to change my mind once the details become more public). I just paid a visit to United Hollywood and see there is already loud vocal dissent, so I'm eager to see what today's bi-coastal meeting will bring forth. My hope is this is a good deal (remember, the idea is to settle the conflict, not destroy your opponent) and that everyone, EVERYONE, can get back to work.

Stuff I Like This Week

2008-02-07T20:34:00.000-05:00

Free videos from iTunes. This week I grabbed the preface to Lost's fourth season, Past, Present & Future. I get as many freebies as I can from iTunes, it helps even out my mental iTunes ledger.

The teaser poster for the next James Bond flick, titled Quantum of Solace. Casino Royale was great, I'm loving the Bond-as-blunt-instrument angle they're using for the character rather than the ridiculous fop Roger Moore wound up playing toward the end.

Using your head. (Yes, I know this makes me the kabillionth person on the web to reference The Play. Get used to it.)

The 50th (and last) episode of Dinner for Five. Vince Vaughn, Peter Billingsley, Justin Long, Keir O'Donnell and Jon Favreau discuss, among other things, chewing tobacco, Ted Levine impressions and The Dirt Bike Kid.

Homemade frosting, made by my wife and son on my birthday. No, there's no picture, the frosting won't last long enough for me to snap a photo.

Giant Inspiration

2008-02-06T12:05:00.000-05:00

If you were watching what happened in a movie, you'd have never believed it. It was too perfect, too much of a dramatic turnaround to be truthful.

It gets more unbelievable the deeper you get into the story. Take a young quarterback, right out of college. He's good, good enough to have won several awards, just not the Heisman, the big prize for college footballers. The kid gets drafted by a team in a small-to-medium sized market, a team that with only 4 wins the previous season has earned the right to pick first from the eligible college pool, but just before the draft occurs, the kid tells the team if they draft him, he won't sign a contract. Already, before he throws one pass, the kid looks like a jerk, maybe one with a chip on his shoulder. After all, his older brother is already in the NFL, having made a huge debut as a rookie quarterback himself years earlier.

The kid wants to play for a big market team, and luckily there's one that wants him in the biggest market there is, New York City. Big team makes deal with small team, giving up the rights to pick college players later that year and the next year, plus trading away the player they'd snagged with their first-round pick. The kid goes to New York, and after such a costly trade, the spotlight is on him.

His first year, however, the kid doesn't start. The team shepherds him along by giving him a mentor, a veteran QB on the tail end of his short career. Halfway through the season, the veteran falters, and the coach puts the kid in as starter for the rest of the season. He loses five in a row, finally winning the last game with a late touchdown. The next two years, the kid is inconsistent, his performance rating far below his contemporaries. The public sours to him, the press routinely referring to him in disparaging headlines.

Now we're in the kid's fourth season, and the most public face (and mouth) of his big city team quits and jumps into television, using his very first broadcasts to tear the kid's reputation apart, calling his attempts at leadership comical, even laughing about whether the kid's "testes [were] finally dropping." The season starts and the team loses the first two games, their opponents scoring a total of 80 points against them. The press writes them off for the year, no one thinking an 0-2 team could bounce back after such a blow. They're down 7 points going into the fourth quarter of their third game when they score twice, putting them up seven, but their opponent drives them downfield in the final seconds of the game. All seems lost, until the defense successfully keeps them out of the end zone, a demonstration of will and strength that will keep the kid's team believing the rest of the season. The following week, they begin a display of defensive force unlike anything they could have hinted at in the weeks prior. Offensive linemen are knocked aside, all-star quarterbacks are plowed into the turf before they can get rid of the ball. The rest of the team is excelling, setting the stage for the kid to come into his own.

But he's still struggling with interceptions and weak decisions. His team wins six in a row, but not against any particularly strong teams. In a rematch against their division leader, they lose again, unable to score a touchdown at all in the second half. A squeakout win the next week, a complete blowout loss the next and two narrow wins follow, but the team is losing key players to season-ending injuries. A loss in a nationally-broadcast game and a win against a low-ranked opponent sends the team into the playoffs in a wild-card berth and brings the kid to his biggest opponent in the last week of the season: The Perfect Team.

No one else has been able to stop The Perfect Team all season. They score an average over 35 points per game. Their star receiver is the best in the game, and is not afraid to tell you so. They've won three Super Bowls in the past six seasons. Their quarterback...well, their quarterback is perceived to be everything the kid isn't. He's confident, a passing machine. He'll close the season with a record 50 touchdown passes. He's a brand name, the darling of the media, a serial-dater of women unattainable to mere mortal men. He's just dumped his actress girlfriend in her eighth month of pregnancy with his baby, but this scandal can't touch him or his greatness as he merely picks up where he left off with the biggest supermodel around, squiring her to all the best nightclubs and into the gossip pages, mostly in the kid's team city, outmatching him socially without blinking. Prepare all you want, work out all you want, practice all you want. YOU WILL NOT BEAT THE PERFECT TEAM.

But the kid isn't phased. He doesn't even look tense. The press, so used to seeing star athletes showing the strain of achievement on their faces like a tribal tattoo, can't reconcile the kid's desire and heart with his puppydog expression. The press even questions the coach, wondering why he'd bother playing the game at all instead of sending in his second-string.

The anticipation for the game is unprecendented for a regular season matchup. Three national networks carry the game. Everyone wants to see The Perfect Team get their Perfect Season.

But someone forgets to tell the kid. He's solid on his feet, throwing for over 250 yards and four touchdowns. In the end, The Perfect Team squeaks by, winning by 3, tying their most narrow point margin all season. Out of this loss, however, a new fire begins to fuel the kid and his team. They know now what they are capable of. They are confident. They're not perfect, but they're hungry.

Every expert in the game says they'll lose in their first playoff game. After all, the quarterback they're facing has beaten them before.

They win, and handily, taking the lead in the second quarter and not looking back.

Every expert in the game says they'll lose in their second playoff game. After all, they're facing a team that's beaten them twice this season, won the division they share and features the next great quarterback leading America's Team.

They win, limiting America's Team to three points in the second half.

Every expert in the game says they'll lose in their third playoff game. After all, they're facing a great veteran quarterback in what could be his last season, a fantasy season that has captivated the media with its poignancy, plus they'll be playing in sub-freezing temperatures in the other team's storied stadium amidst their avid fans.

They win there too, in a game that would be a nail-biter if you dared expose your bare fingers in the -24 degree wind chill. Tied at the end of regulation, their opponent wins the coin toss in overtime and gets the ball first. The veteran begins his storybook drive to the end zone---and throws an interception. The kid gets back on the field and can't get very far. They call on their kicker, who has already missed two field goals that day due to bad snaps from frozen fingers. This time, the snap is good, the kick is good.

The kid is going to the Super Bowl.

Against The Perfect Team.

Every expert and every casual expert and every once-in-a-blue-moon football fan and everyone who watches just for the commercials says they'll lose the Super Bowl to The Perfect Team. The onslaught of dazzling offense and experienced defense will knock them silly. Despite their post-season achievements, the kid and his teammates are still 12-point underdogs. They won't win. They can't win. They'll be playing against destiny and they don't stand a chance.

But they do win the game. It's not pretty or graceful or even perfect, but when it looks like they're down and won't be able to scratch their way back, the kid pulls his team down the field and scores the winning touchdown. They and he are finally celebrated as champions, respected as great players and heralded as making a historic contribution to the game. More people see him named the most valuable player than have seen any other sporting event.

Millions watched this unfold as fans. I watched the game on Sunday and felt inspired. Eli Manning has been maligned by the press, booed by fans and at best underestimated by his opponents, yet he still was able to keep focused on the game, perform at his best and lead his team to fight together, and after the Giants won the Super Bowl, he didn't gloat, didn't brag. He stayed humble and respectful, even on the world stage where he could have said anything in his defense.

This is the measure of a man, a champion, a hero. This is a giant inspiration. Thank you, Eli.

Taking The Day Off

2008-02-05T11:27:00.000-05:00

I've got my feet up, a hot cup of coffee, my daughter snoozing in her swing at my side and the Giants victory parade on the TV. It's a good birthday. I'll see you tomorrow to give you my take on the Super Bowl and what it meant to me (and it's not just about football).

Stuff I Like This Week

2008-01-31T14:38:00.001-05:00

Welcome to a new feature here at 3C, Stuff I Like This Week.

Death Proof. QT breaks every rule and still makes us care about his characters. And oh, 'Ship's Mast' is the craziest game ever.

Anthony Zerbe's eyebrows (I was reminded of these while wondering how random hairs in mine somehow grow several inches overnight).

Ari Hest's Green Room Sessions.

The Fabulous Baker Boys, as viewed at 2 am with my daughter sleeping on my chest.

The idea of Starbucks selling a $1 cup of coffee. The coffee may taste like oil and spent matchheads, but the idea is great.

My Wife Is A Lost Widow

2008-01-28T11:14:00.000-05:00

After a childhood raised in a home with borderline paranoids ("Bad grades? I knew that teacher didn't like you."), I sometimes feel like a recovering conspiracy theorist, especially when discussing with my wife any sour relations I've had with others. She'll lower her brow a hair while I ramble about whatever perceived slight I've been subjected to until I clue in.

However, I still can't help but wonder if my wife engineered the WGA strike to curtail the amount of time I obsess over Lost.

I've had last season's finale stored on the DVR for eight months. Eight months to a DVR is like 75 years to you and me. It's an eternity, especially when we've run into storage issues since the airdate. I just couldn't bring myself to cut it before the new season began, and now that the fourth season is shortened to eight episodes from 16 because of the strike, I'm feeling like I'm going to start scratching at myself and seeing bugs on the wall like Ray Milland once the season nears a close. I'm counting down the days to Lost's return on Thursday night, maybe even more so than the Super Bowl where my beloved Giants will take on Brady and the Boot.

Last week I Netflixed the Season 3 bonus materials disc. Aside from being at once jealous of and intimidated by the creative core of the production, I now also know that if I were airdropped into Hawaii with no chance of returning home, I might just be okay if I can get a daily dose of shaved ice.

Give My Regards To Mesrop Mashtots Avenue

2008-01-22T17:51:00.000-05:00

I learned some valuable lessons yesterday.

Number One: Don't call out for a lawyer on a blog. They don't call back.

I also learned that for all my reticence about getting into the industry in the past, I relatively quickly can psych myself into bluffing my way into being a film producer.

Late last week, an acquaintance (let's call him George) asked a contact of mine if he knew anyone that had any horror scripts. Seems George's LA partner was meeting with a group of potential investors (from Armenia, of all places) and wanted to shop some horror projects to them. My contact called me and I forwarded my script "Brother's Keeper" over to him to have George read. Since George is an experienced music video director and his partner is reportedly a producer, my contact and I both assumed George intended to shop the script with himself or his partner producing.

Nope. Turns out they just wanted to shop a full production package to the Armenians. George at some point, in fact, asked my contact for a top sheet for my script, and my contact shrugged and asked what that was. Then my contact asked me for a top sheet. I asked what that was. Then I realized they were looking for a coverage sheet, and afterward George asked my contact for a budget breakdown.

This was spiraling northward of silly now, as far as I was concerned. Why would this guy think a writer would prepare these things when every serious screenwriting resource says not to, just like scene numbers and cast lists. That's for a production manager to do, not a writer. Plus, this wasn't even a script I intended to shop. I had some years ago considered sending an earlier draft off to an established Canadian producer at a friend's suggestion (the producer was shooting a film set in a hospital, "Brother's Keeper" is also set in a hospital), but the script was in bad shape then after a massive revision, so I declined (regrets...I've had a few...).

Meanwhile, at this stage I'd had no contact with George or any of his partners, no e-mail, no phone call, nothing. I was getting anxious because I'd sent the script off to them and had no paper trail to show for it. Finally, Sunday afternoon, as I was away from the computer finishing up any household tasks before the NFC Championship Game began, George e-mailed me. He didn't mention having read the script, but sent me a draft of a finder's agreement, naming them as the finder and me as the producer.

Producer? ME? I read this over and over after celebrating the Giants victory and burping my daughter. How can I be a producer, I'm sitting in a rental apartment with spit-up Similac on my sweatshirt.

The baby wouldn't sleep right away (she's a Giants fan and was wound up after the game), so I was awake an hour or so thinking about this agreement. This was bad communication, there's no way these guys could have thought I'd written up a proposal to make this movie. Had they simply called me directly, I'd have told them that.

But wait a minute, I began to think.

Why not? Why the hell can't I produce this myself?

The next morning was spent discussing the agreement with an attorney friend of mine. She's who I call before signing anything, so even though she's not an entertainment lawyer, I wanted to her to vet the agreement. The paper was solid (turns out it's a Litwak template), but the amount of the fee was bothering both of us.

They wanted ten percent of the money the investors would pay.

"Can you do this?" my friend the attorney asked. "Can you produce a movie?" She sounded like she was asking if I could scale the Chrysler Building barehanded.

"Why the hell not?" I replied. The truth was and is that alone, I could not. But, I have a friend who is currently directing his second feature. If he wouldn't or couldn't work on it with me, he could surely connect me with folks who could.

"But can you do it, is this something you would want to do?"

Note to self: It might be time to start introducing myself to new friends as a filmmaker. Having to explain to people that know me that I am more than just a fun guy to talk to at parties and the guy to ask about buying a new computer is a pain in the ass.

My attorney did some checking around and I Googled myself into oblivion (go ahead and Google 'finder's fee film', then have fun sorting through the Jeff Probst links). The results we were finding said finder's fees were usually between three and eight percent, depending on the track record of the finder. These guys were trying this for the first time, it seems like, but they must be used to hearing Ari Gold talk about getting ten percent from Vinny Chase, I guess, because they were dead set against changing their minds. I told George ten percent is an agent's commission on a script sale, not a finder's fee on what would be a lot more money. It was no use. They wouldn't consider lower than ten.

I was really disturbed by this when I read a quote from an entertainment lawyer online saying that for budgets over $10 million, finders fees were usually knocked down to 1 or 2 percent since most financial sources were unlikely to approve a higher finder's fee.

The investors, as quoted by George, were looking to spend $25 million.

It was ten percent or no agreement. Two point five million.

I wouldn't agree to it. I was desperate to talk to an entertainment lawyer, but these guys were saying the meeting was this afternoon, we need a signature now, can't sell your project without it...

And then they just kind of went away. Not with a bang or a whimper, but completely silently. There was no reply to my request that they reconsider the high finder's fee, not for my sake, but because it would hurt the budget immensely and because it wasn't the customary amount. I told them I could appreciate their hope to be compensated well, but I argued we had a better chance with the investors if it were five percent.

No reply.

Well, I thought, if they were meeting this afternoon, I guess they just shelved my project and tried to sell whatever else they had. C'est la guerre.

I e-mailed George this morning to ask where we were. I felt bad, like I should feel bad for killing a bum deal before it had a chance to explode in our faces. Plus, since my contact works with this guy all the time, I didn't want to hurt their relationship.

He replied this afternoon that he'd check to see if the investors were interested in just buying the script.

But I thought that meeting yesterday was the last chance to pitch them? And that the Armenians were flying out today? After the tick-tock drama of hocking each other over the agreement, this may still have a heartbeat.

Despite the bad communication, I might just try to get some coverage and a budget drawn up and let these guys or someone else try to shop it as a package rather than just a spec. Couldn't hurt.

But I'm not paying ten percent. The tiny producer in me is standing firm on five.

Unexpected Tangent: Anybody Know an Entertainment Lawyer?

2008-01-21T00:02:00.000-05:00

I've got a question or two and I've been caught short on time.

I'm at tom.blogger _at_ mac.com.

On Juggling

2008-01-18T20:35:00.000-05:00

I took a course in children's theater in college. We produced a play about a troupe of commedia dell'arte players traveling the countryside. As I was playing the leader of the troupe, my professor wanted me to lead their parade into town doing something flashy and he hit upon the idea of having me juggle while walking onstage. I thought about our performance schedule, 10 shows through the local school system in theaters, gymnasiums, outdoors, all of these venues unfamiliar and unpredictable. Could I manage to learn how to juggle and walk through strange environments at the same time? My professor challenged me to do it, saying if I could make the entrance perfectly each time, I'd get an A for the semester. I'm proud to report that I got that A, but it wasn't pretty. One kid threw a tennis ball at me. Once the semester was over, there went my professional juggling aspirations.

I've been married for just over five years to a smart, patient and generous woman. We have two children, a three year old boy and a newborn girl. A friend told me once that having one child feels like a married couple plus one, but having two children makes it feel like a family, and I'm beginning to see what he meant. I feel a bigger responsibility to the three of them than I ever had.

I'm employed as a computer support technician presently, having spent five years working in the retail field for a major computer company. I've been at my present job for eight months, and while I enjoy the work, I've got my eye out for the next step.

If you were to ask me, though, what I really want to do for a living, what would I be passionate about, what would be that job that I love so much that I'd never 'work' a day in my life, I'd tell you I'd like to be a screenwriter. It began in high school, a feeling like the extra care I gave to essays and assignments meant I was having a relationship with words, characters and story that I wanted to continue for life. I had a group of friends that was as much into movies as I was and we saw everything we could, sometimes three in a day, followed by a stop at the video store. I managed that video store a few years later, managed a few movie theaters and finally went to work in the event video field as a way to make money telling stories onscreen as best I could. All the while I kept writing and rewriting whenever I could, but it always felt like I wasn't giving it enough time.

A few years back, I decided to give writing a harder push, pushing myself at first to put together a stronger portfolio of spec samples with my first true attempts to crash the industry to follow. I began a blog, The One Year Push, at first intended to focus on my writing, but eventually veering off into the other areas of my life, my marriage and my daygig. As I'd visit the blog later, especially after having passed my (incredibly naive) one year goal of making a sale, I felt the need to broaden the focus, to allow myself to comment on the rest of my daily life without forcing a link back to screenwriting, even if the whole point of blogging was to force myself to write on a regular basis, to sharpen the tools.

When it came time to think of a new name, I thought back to that semester of learning how to juggle and walk at the same time. In that show, I was juggling plastic apples. If I'd dropped one of those (and I did, plenty of times), I would pick it up and the apple would be none the worse. Now I juggle these three distinct elements of my life: marriage, career, aspiration. Dropping any of them isn't an option, they would bruise. They've all got weight, substantial heft, yet they need to be handled just the right way, I can't just palm them and toss them in the air.

The image became clear, and my blog had its new name.