Oh Danny Boy

I can't wait to see this movie.

It was Inevitable

Well, two days until my vacation and I've gone and gotten sick
Started feeling it last night, but today I was burning up and couldn't really leave my bed. My head pounds, I'm hacking up my lungs, I'm an absolute delight to be around.

I never used to get sick much when I was younger. Now I get a little cold probably every other month. Is it New York? I guess my body still hasn't built up an immunity to the plethora of bacteria and viruses floating around the airs of this little island.

So what did I do all day while I was laying in bed? I watched Siskel & Ebert talk shit on each other. Ridiculous.

I've also been kinda obsessed with 80s syntheizer movie soundtrack music lately. Did you know that Harold Faltermeyer (of "Axel F" Beverly Hills Cop fame) was an engineer for Giorgio Moroder back in the disco years? And Mr. Moroder, aside from scoring movies and disco hits, helped design an Italian sportscar called the Cizetta Moroder?

When I would edit films back in college I would always lock myself in the editing room, turn on John Carpenter's Halloween soundtrack and trim away. I think those old synthesizer soundtracks just have a great, basic rhythm that is easy to put images to. And they are kinda haunting too. My current fave is Moroder's "The Chase" from Midnight Express.

Caught in a Matrix Clause

Last night I dreamt I was in a supermarket buying nouns and verbs and indefinite articles. When I was checking out I got in the wrong line. I was standing in the First Person Singular line but had too many items and apparently wanted the polysyndetic coordination line. I was confused. To top it off they wouldn’t honor my prepositional complement coupons. Thank god I woke up.

Sugarbear Song

When I was 20, one of my my girlfriend's favorite songs was Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight". I just called it the "Sugarbear Song", because that was the only lyric I ever really picked up on. I thought it was funny. "Someone saved my life tonight...SUGARBEAR." She would laugh and tell me, "That's not what he's saying. He says someone saved my life tonight, didn't they." That made no sense and it wasn't what I heard, but I accepted it because she listened to the song more than I did.

Recently, I was talking to my friend Edwin about Elton John. He's a big fan of his. I told him that story and said, "It really sounds like he says Sugarbear. That's weird." And he replied, "That IS what he says in the song. Someone saved my life tonight, sugarbear." And again I laughed and thought it was a silly song lyric. I also felt validated. So if you're reading this, ha! I was right! Sugarbear.

On the other hand, for years I thought ZZ Top sang that every girl was crazy about a SHOTGLASS MAN. I just thought they were saying that girls liked guys who could handle their liquor and do shots. It never even occured to me for many years that the title of the song was "Sharp Dressed Man" and that every girl was crazy about a stylish dresser and NOT a drunk. Boy was I misled.

When I was a kid, I thought Aerosmith sang, in "Sweet Emotion", "A month on the road and not a Geatin from your hand" I had no idea what a Geatin was and even tried to look it up. Eventually I settled on the idea that they were singing "Not a guitar from your hand" like he was complaining that this girl was on the road with them and wouldn't even pick up a guitar to help out the band. The real lyric, "A month on the road and I'll be eatin' from your hand" made a lot more sense, but was also disappointing in some respect. I had for many years thought the girl in the song was a lazy, non-guitar-playing hanger on. And that was an interesting dynamic.

I am glad I am not alone in thinking Nelly Furtado was singing "Hung like bird" instead of "I'm like a bird".

Ah...creative listening. I mishear things all the time. I'm getting old.

What the??!

I just received a package from UPS for internet phone service through Lingo.com.
I don't have a ground phone line (just use my cell) so this would be a good thing to have.
But I never ordered it.
Apparently the order was placed on the 17th. But I have no record of it, on my bank statements, or any email notification. It was also mailed to my old address and my former roommate told me about it. I had to have it redelivered to my new place.
Am I going crazy?
What is going on??

Can I Play With Madness?

You love Iron Maiden as much as I do.
You do.
Go ahead. You can admit it. We're in a safe place.

Ashley Simpson take note: You can still have fun when you're faking it and lip-syncing on television. It's the Nature of the Beast.

Mugged Online!

So, I'm heading to New Orleans next week for my birthday and I just discovered that I've been robbed!

Checking my bank account online, I was surprised to see that I had $100 less than I thought I had. The transactions had not gone through yet, so I checked on what my check-card holds were.

Apparently Verio.com is charging me $20 for a webhosting fee. I don't have a website, nor did I register a domain name, to the best of my knowledge. (If I did, I have no idea what name I would have registered so it would do me no good anyhow.)

There is also a charge from PrivateEye.com, which apparently is some background check service. I never went to this site. Unless someone is checking on me and trying to see how much money I have in my account. I am in contact with everyone from my past that I wish to be in contact with, so I would have no need for their services. But since they are charging me, I wish they would at least inform me of who I was looking for.

Citibank has $50 on hold for something. I don't use Citibank, and don't know what I would have spent $50 on recently.

Geneaology.com charged me a measly $1.01 for never using their services.

Primus Telecommunications is charging me $39.90 for not being a customer. Unless they have something arranged with Verizon DSL (my provider) to double-charge their customers for service, I don't know what could be going on. I've never even heard of them! I think they're Canadian. Fuckin' Canucks. (I was planning to go to Montreal next month for a friend's bachelor party, but now I don't know how I feel about The Great White North.)

I thought I had a rather boring weekend. Apparently I blacked out sometime and went on a wild online shopping spree.

This definitely puts a crimp in my birthday vacation plans. Luckily it's cheap in New Orleans and I'll be staying with friends for the week and my tickets were bought a few weeks ago. But now I have to call the bank and cancel my card, dispute the charges, and probably won't get a new card until I return from my trip. Making the acquisition of cash during my trip difficult.

Oy vey.

The Dude Abides

Rediscovered the sport that is bowling last night. I enjoyed going bowling every other weekend when I was a kid. My parents were both in leagues so I spent a lot of time there when I was young. I even joined the Bowling Club in junior high school. But I haven't been on the lanes in over ten years.

There's a ghetto bowling alley 20 blocks from my apartment that my brother and his friends found last weekend. Went with them last night and we bowled until 3 in the morning, and got pretty drunk in the process. It was a lot of fun.

Jeremiah and I joined up with my brother and his friends after we plotted out a script idea for our entry into the Channel 102 short video series. I look forward to shooting it in the next few weeks.

Saw the Russian vampire film NightWatch (Nochnoy Dozor) tonight and really enjoyed it. Good story. A little heavy on the "cool visuals", but very entertaining. I just love me a good action/horror film now and then.

Maybe someday I'll find a way to rewrite my Vampirates script so that it doesn't seem like a total Pirates of the Caribbean knockoff. (Vampirates was a supernatural pirate film I started writing back in 1997, because they were two genres I wanted to see "mashed up". Unfortuantely when Pirates of the Caribbean came out in 2003, there were many similar story aspects and I had to scrap a huge chunk of what I'd already written. There really are no new ideas out there and chances are quite good if you are working on a story, someone else is writing the same thing. I guess if you follow Plato's theory of eternal forms, we are all tapping into the same consciousness for our ideas. It just comes down to who gets it out to the world first!)

A fun improv class tonight. We did scenes in the style of David Mamet, using terse, expletive-filled dialogue and shady characters and really focused on using that style as a way to speed up the pacing of your scenes and get to the heart of the scene quicker. Which is a good thing to have in your bag of tricks when doing New York-style improv, which tends to be very quick and fast, something I've had a tough time grasping. Too much time spent living in the South I guess. I've gotten very slow in my thinking and reaction time.

And on the train ride back home I playfully flirted with a pretty blonde girl sitting across from me. We spent the entire time sneaking glances at each other and smiling and laughing to ourselves when we caught each other checking the other one out. We didn't speak to each other because we both had our iPods on, providing us with that safety net, but when I got off we both paused, looked at one another and smiled politely, then went on with our own lives. It was nice.

Crazy Like A Fox News Item

Tonight on Fox 5 here in NY, they opened the email forum up with the question: "Do you think the White House should replace Dick Cheney?" One of the answers from viewers made my brother and I bust out laughing.

"No," the email said. "He should be forgiven. We forgave Bill Clinton and what he did was MUCH worse."

Hear that kids? Blow jobs are worse than shooting someone!

Look, they both essentially shot someone in the face. Neither party perpetrated the act on their wife. But only one of the "victims" in the two scenarios required serious medical attention.

I really don't know how you can call that one.

Love Is...A Day Late

Some funny observations from College Humor.Com

Allow me to be pretentious for a moment, or: When your Muse speaks to you, you better fuckin' listen

You begin to meet people who are in the field of
your bliss and they open the doors for you. I say
follow your bliss and don't be afraid and doors will open
where you didn't know they were going to be."
- Joseph Campbell

I talked with an old friend tonight and we had an amazing conversation. Every now and then you feel yourself getting to a small nugget of truth about yourself, but it takes an outside viewpoint to really dust it off and show it to you in the right light. What may have seemed like idle chatter to her really tore the curtains off those windows and let the light in.

This friend has known me for many years and probably knew me better than anyone. Long ago, when were closer I had shared my most intimate thoughts with her. She knew me. And she still knows me pretty well. I needed that lost voice from long ago to tell me what I'd been waiting to hear.

We talked about the "incident" in Pittsburgh 11 years ago. Where I had been beaten close to death. I've always felt that was a turning point in my life. That was where the old me turned into the new me. She told me I had changed after that. Of course that is understandable, given the nature of the incident. But I hadn't changed for the better.

Instead of embracing life and following my dreams with more determination, I retreated into my self, became more reflective. As I told her, the things I wanted to do in life seemed very trivial now. There was an underlying sense of malaise in everything I did. I became overly pessimistic. I believe I lost my faith. Not just in God (which I did. I am now a bit of an agnostic) and the world around me, but in myself.

I lost my passion, that burning desire in me to create art. Oh, I've flirted with it over the years, but never with the intensity I once had. She talked about Joseph Campbell, (ironically I just watched The Power of Myth last night!) and how I always seemed to be someone who "followed his bliss" and that only that would make me happy.

She told me she still believes that passion is in me, but that it is buried under years of neglect and pain.

But recently I feel it coming back. I feel like a bird let out of his cage. I have no security right now, but I am not worried as I have been in the past. I have no chains, or bars holding me back. I am free to "follow my bliss".

I am not sure what my path is. I can only walk it. I know that the daily grind, the nine to five drudgery (as I see it) is not for me. And the nine to five world completely agrees with me. Traditional employment and I are ill-suited for each other. I am taking a step into the unknown. And I will not listen to any advice to try and bring me back into the fold. The search for a stable income and traditonal employment has diverted my attention long enough. Now it is time to sing, to play the fiddle while Rome burns!

I am ready to get to work!

Simple Man

I think my approach to video games growing up has reflected my approach to life and gives some clue as to why I’m still floundering at the age of 31.

A lot of my friends loved video games. I enjoyed them as much as any kid, but at a certain point I got really bored with them. See, as I got older, video games got more strategic and complex. And I never liked those games. I liked games where the goal was to just shoot shit, jump over things or steal gold. Donkey Kong was simple enough. You just smashed things with your hammer and climbed ladders. Pitfall, you just swung over ponds of alligators, jumped over scorpions and stole gold. Pac Man, you just ate dots.

But then games started to have long-term goals. You had to do a combination of moves in order to succeed. You had to think ahead.

That didn’t interest me.

When I played sports as a kid, my goals were also very simple. I had no interest in the rules of the game. When I played soccer growing up, it was just because I liked kicking the ball. When I played football with the neighborhood kids, it was only so I could tackle someone and drive their head into the ground.

I was all about the visceral aspects of the game. Creating a strategy to win was very far removed from my mind. I wanted to feel the thrill of kicking a soccer ball as far as I could. I didn’t care where it went after that.

I don’t play video games anymore because they’ve gotten too complex. I remember playing a game at a friend’s house a few years ago and he explained that I should do this and that to get to the next level.

“Can’t I just shoot shit?” I asked.

He laughed at my unsophisticated approach.

Recently I watched a television show in which one of my short films was presented. The other films on the show were polished and well-produced, and mine stood out as a piece of trivial crap. I hadn’t made the film with any forethought. And I hadn’t planned on seeing it being broadcast anywhere. My brother, and a friend and I just went out and shot a bunch of stupid shit and a few years later I edited it just to learn how to use my editing software.

I reflected on many of the things I’ve done over the years, artistic and otherwise, and that same mentality seems to pervade all of it. Very little forethought. An improvised moment, little or no strategy, purely instinctual.

Perhaps I need a change. Maybe I should take up chess.

Oh the weather outside is frightful

So we finally get the first snowstorm of the season. And the news is all over it. Special reports on how to prepare for the storm, what you should buy and that sort of thing.
It's just snow.
But they show people on the news stocking up like it's the onslaught of another ice age.

Woman: "Honey, what are we gonna do if we're snowed in for several weeks??"

Man: "Paper towels. We'll need lots of paper towels! And canned goods!"

Woman: "Duct tape?"

Man: "Yes! To muffle the screams when we are forced to eat the children."

Woman: "I hope we get home before the storm starts."

Man: "Let's just enjoy our anniversary dinner. You know how hard it was to get reservations here."

Woman: "You think we'll have time to squeeze in a movie? I'd really like to see Firewall."

Man: "I rented Grizzly Man from Netflix. Let's stay in and baracade the house."

Maitre D': "Donner. Party of two. Your table's ready."

Reading is FUNdamental

Currently reading Chris Elliott's novel The Shroud of the Thwacker. Very funny book. As was expected, after having discovered his book Daddy's Boy at a thrift store six years ago. Both are highly recommended.

Also on my suggested reading list is my friend Chris Sullivan's novel-in-progress, That Book I Was Telling You About.

And much to my joy, I have discovered a cornucopia of old pulp novels from the 30s and 40s available online at Blackmask Online. These are all stories whose copyright has run out, so they can be put on the web in their entirety. Tons of The Shadow and Doc Savage stories!

The Screaming Child Car Alarm

We've all grown accustomed to the sound of car alarms. They are no longer a deterrent against car theft. No one pays attention. But what if we changed the sound of the alarm to something that will grab people's attention and scare criminals away?

What if, instead of a loud beeping noise, your car started screaming like a small child? You could spruce it up with cries of "No! Let go of me!" "Get your hands off!" and "Please don't touch me there mister!!"

A Few Thoughts

• Inside the Actors Studio presents Martin Lawrence! Why haven't I seen this yet??? I can't wait for James Lipton's analysis of Big Momma's House 2!


• A bartender from a bar I used to frequent in New Orleans now bartends at a bar around the corner from me in Brooklyn. This is strangely comforting.


• I hate when people say they are "definitely gonna try" to do something. What that means is they are definitely gonna disappoint. You either do it or you don't. There is no try. If you don't want to do something, say so. Don't try to spare my feelings by trying to do something. Because if you don't do it, it still counts against you in the end, no matter how hard you tried.


• If God is always listening, can we sue him for invasion of privacy or is he granted the same leeway as the president?


• "Talents lose their luster if we become too familiar with them, for the outer shell of the mind is more readily seen than its rich inner kernel. Even the outstanding genius makes use of retirement so that man may honor him and so that the yearning aroused by his absence may cause him to be esteemed." -Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658)
  
  What you call laziness, I call cultivating the rich inner kernel of my potential genius.


• If you haven't been to AwesomeTown yet, you must go! Post Haste!


• I love this story about the Star Wars Bus Ride From Hell. This bus driver got kids to cut up each others' clothes with scissors as punishment? What does that have to do with Star Wars?


• Speaking of those little fuckers, I hear that schools are now paying kids to actually go to school. What? I went to school because if I didn't I would either a) get grounded or b) get threatened with physical violence. And there was always the fear I would get held back a year with the guys who always smelled like motor oil. I was definitely born in the wrong time period! If we have to pay these kids to go to school, then ALL their bus drivers should have Star Wars clubs where the kids endure unusual punishment. And we should film it for a reality show!
  

Friday fun

I've been pretty useless all week. I've got nothing to give you.
Except for this: