My dreams are getting so strange—I'd like to tell you everything I see...

April ends so abruptly.

Time is money on so many levels, which is more palpable when you're in Wait-Mode.

On one hand, I'm temporarily relieved of the pressure of revising the latest draft. The latest draft is submitted. For all I know, it's everything it needs to be. I've got the headspace to return to all the other creative projects I've set aside. I can dream about all the possibilities of the next few weeks and months...

On the other hand, another month begins. Rent and other financial obligations. This temporary gig that has allowed me to keep the lights on will, by definition, not last. If I don't line up a win before it's over...

Well, it had to be this way, didn't it?

We will see what happens this week.

Darth Vader and Son

Jeffrey Brown's Darth Vader and Son imagines what it would have been like if Darth Vader had raised Luke.


(I made these animated GIFs!)

An interview with Jeffrey Brown.

Mars Rover

Going into "wait-mode" is fantastic, in the beginning. Because the ball's not in your court anymore. It is a license to kick back and fuck off for a spell. A good time to catch up on doing fuck-all.

The longer it lasts, the more time to worry over what's happening or what's not happening.

But for right here, right now...

Avenge us all

Got my ticket.

Saturday. May 5. 10:20am. (Pseudo-)IMAX 3D. Movie theater near me. $13 with convenience fee. The benefits of the early bird special. Probably have to get there at least an hour ahead of time, though. Advance ticket sales are breaking records.

bawitdaba

Forwarded the latest draft hither and thither.

Now... we wait.

Doing it for the money.

I don't get the people who choose professions or career paths in which they claim, "I'm not doing it for the money..."

Unless you're independently wealthy, I don't get how you can NOT ultimately be doing something for the money. Which is not to suggest that you should loathe what you do to pay the bills but time is precious and the fact remains: YOU NEED MONEY to survive in this world. On a basic level.

Ideally, you want to have a passion for what you're doing... but even if you're not getting paid for it in the short-term, the idea is that you're doing something that would support you further down the line. In some way or another.

Finished up my draft last night. Again. Went through the whole thing and made all the changes it needed. I felt so sure of it, I almost sent it out... but I resisted. I knew that I should sleep on it. Read through it again in the morning, make final adjustments before sending it to the producer. And as I was falling asleep, I thought of one scene that I had to make an adjustment to (because of another change I'd made earlier). This draft has to be tight.

Tonight's the night I send it out.

April 24, 2012.

This wasn't meant to last.

Had a dream I was in a plane that exploded. There was a bomb in the seat directly behind me. That wasn't the strange part. The strange part was that after it exploded, everyone on the plane was instantly transported to a parallel universe where the bomb didn't go off. Yet we kept our memory of it. So in this new universe, the plane hadn't exploded, there was no incident, everyone who wasn't on the plane thought it was a completely normal flight. But all of us on that flight knew that this wasn't the case. That there was another timeline where we were all dead in a spectacle of terrorism. We were all on borrowed-time for unknown reasons. And it was tearing us apart.

I don't love weekends like this past one. The ones where I lock myself up in my tomb, shut out the world and try to force myself to write. And still, the majority of my productivity arrived during the very last hours of the weekend.

I think I may have gotten it done, though. At least, the main thrust of it. What's mad is that there's really just these two main opening character scenes that have been the toughest to get right. After that, everything was relatively easy. And I'll still have to tinker with those two opening sequences a bit further, and go through the whole script and change something key in the last act... but it's pretty much done. I'll send it out this week. And enjoy the luxury of laughing it off for a spell.

Saturday morning, laundry. Somehow managed to get a haircut during the week so Saturday morning was left wide open for laundry.

Sunday morning, I took a stroll over to 10th Ave. I've lived in the area for over two years now and 10th Ave is an undiscovered country. So much quieter than the loud, crowded nastiness of 9th Ave. Between the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the Javits Center, near several luxury apartment complexes. It invites a different sort of traffic. It was my gray, drizzly Sunday morning escape before slouching back to my lot.

Monday. New work week. Last full week of April. 2012.

we could still have it all

This is the weekend. I am going to crank it out. I got stuck on the Wilcox interview last night and it's frustrating but... I can make it work. After that, it's the locker scene, and the classroom sequence culminating with the new Freddy Cuttle intro, and the new test scene, and then the Katie Dockerty mystery/misdirection. After that, we're pretty much off to the races.

Tonight, I've got to hang out in Hoboken to see a band, and it will be good for me to blow off some steam, but I should have ample time this weekend to finish this draft. It's reading well. It's maddening how slow the progress has been but the script's taking the time it needs to take. I will finish this and send this out and I'll have some peace of mind for a small parcel of time before I start losing sleep over it again.

First things first. Finish the new draft.

It's Friday. Deep into April. 2012.

Everything is going to work out.

A Game of Inches

"Gray skies hang across this November morning."

It's the first description in the script I've been hammering on. Sometimes the gray skies hang heavy. Sometimes gray heavens hang low across the morning.

Madness.

I make incremental progress. And I think I've made some more significant strides in the past few days... but in relative terms. I'm finally starting to feel that the opening pages *look* right. It's overly perfectionist bullshit but I just feel that this draft HAS to be perfect. As close to perfect as I can get it. Which means that the first 20-25 pages have to flow just right.

Blogger just updated its post editor. Let's see how this works.

Dick Clark Has a Posse

Richard Wagstaff "Dick" Clark
November 30, 1929 – April 18, 2012
Dick Clark has a posse.

Sisyphean Days

I'd feel better right now—I'd feel easier—if I were making faster progress on my script. If it weren't a process of me getting home from work and banging my head against the keyboard, tracing and retracing over the same words. Adjusting a line break. Or an adjective.

It's like I'm fucking painting with words. At a certain point, it's not about content! The scene is still just a father driving his son to school. But I'm sooo concerned with how each page LOOKS. The flow of words, of lines, of paragraphs—these suggest images. And I know that if this line breaks *correctly*, the entire page is going to be brought into harmony.

I'm going crazy.

What can I do this evening? How far can I get?

Jesus. I've got so much to prove.

Personal Hell

Not a fan of this weather. It's like a July or August day has been misplaced in April. It's oppressive and I'm not ready for it and I can't even be outside and enjoy it because I've got this writing to do. This writing that is defeating me. A weekend spent in my stuffy little Tomb, staring at my netbook screen, trying to find the way home.

I dislike when the weather is nice. I don't deserve to enjoy nice weather until I can get my script in order. I don't deserve a lot of things until I can get my career on the right path.

Life delayed until I can get it together.

Insert Coins to Continue

Discipline can only take you so far. I'll make some better advances this weekend.

Pardon Our Appearance

I know. It's one of those weeks where I abandon you. Rest assured, it's for a good cause.

Here's an animated gif I made in Photoshop, for a change. I didn't even know I could make these things in Photoshop.

"Wacky Jackie" is here to apologize for my absence. Read more about the most expensive Garbage Pail Kids cards you could fathom HERE.

The Life-Sized Starship Enterprise in Vegas

In 1992, plans were in the works to create a life-sized Starship Enterprise in downtown Las Vegas. The model ship would have been roughly as long as the Eiffel Tower is tall, and would have contained all the key rooms and areas from the original Star Trek series. Vegas business owners loved the idea, and so did Paramount Licensing. So what went wrong?

Read about it here.

This is what's wrong with the studio system. It's a business run by the fearful.

Mike Wallace Has a Posse

Myron Leon "Mike" Wallace
May 9, 1918 – April 7, 2012
Mike Wallace has a posse.

PAC MAN: The Movie

What would PAC-MAN look like as a big-budget, sci-fi techno-bullshit action spectacular? Click play.

Brick by Brick by Brick . . .

You go have fun tonight. Choose life.

I'll have fun tomorrow.

Or next week.

Or however long it takes for me to earn it.

I did not go out Wednesday night. Didn't have a drop of alcohol. Didn't make any great headway on my latest script draft. And yet, Thursday morning I still woke up too late to hit my narrow gym window before work. I am not pleased by this.

Weekday alarm gets set earlier from now on. Usually wake up before the alarm anyway. Fuck it.

I don't have forever to get my life together. I've got to work harder to get what I want.

I've been living at a lower standard of existence for too long now. It's fine. It's an inconvenience. But I refuse to make a life out of this.

Thursday's child is Sunday's clown.

I'm getting ready for all tomorrow's parties.

It Didn't Have To Be This Way

The novelty of the regular day job died abruptly Tuesday morning when I was gifted with the additional task of answering phones. I don't mind mindless work. But I'd rather dig ditches than fucking answer phones. I don't even like answering my own phone.

You do whatever the hell you need to do when you need the money, though.

Took a career call at the day job Tuesday evening. Lasted maybe 20 minutes. Some notes on a draft I've been waiting on for a few weeks. The awkwardness of letting other people hear my business. Couldn't be helped. Nowhere to hide at a day job. One with really long hours, no less.

Dropped tax papers off at the accountant's office after work. It's in. Now we just forget about the whole year.

Left the phone charger at the office. Had to happen eventually. The Droid 2 has a pitiable battery life and it serves as my early morning alarm clock. So... no messing with the phone Tuesday night.

April 4th. My mother's birthday. Have to remember to... send her an email or something half-hearted like that.

Infinity Guitars, Go Head!

I hate magical thinking.

Praying is a form of magical thinking.

So is saying to yourself, "If the train arrives in the next 60 seconds, I'm going to get that promotion."

"The next song on my shuffled iPod will tell me what my immediate future holds."

"If I can blow out all these candles in one go, I get a free wish."

I hate magical thinking and I do it all the time, in a thousand little tossed-off moments. The comfort in it is the idea that you have some measure of control over things you have no control over. The idea that there is some order to the Universe.

Maybe there isn't any order to the Universe.

Maybe it's just a bunch of random fucking shit that happens.

Maybe it doesn't all naturally balance out over a long-enough stretch. Maybe karma is a fairy tale. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.

Maybe it's justification for being a bad person...

5 SHUFFLED IPOD SONGS:
1. "What It's All About", GIRL TALK
2. "Won't Back Down", EMINEM
3. "Runaway", KANYE WEST
4. "Me, I'm Not", NINE INCH NAILS
5. "Dorian", FANG ISLAND

Good Luck Bonus Track
"Pilgrimage", NINE INCH NAILS

I Am Gonna Make It Through This Year If It Kills Me

My roommate's away for the week, somewhere tropical. He takes trips like this with some regularity.

I feel like I've put my life on indefinite hold for my career. I don't go on trips. I don't remember the last concert I went to. Rarely see theater that doesn't feature a friend. For the past year (and longer), my tropical vacations consist of a few gin and sodas at a bar.

I don't do the regular things that human beings do. Things I used to do. When I was a human being. Because I've invested everything into this idea of a career. Other people associated with my career seem to lead regular lives—executives, producers, managers, agents. But they can afford it. Me, I've been hunched in a foxhole for the past few years.

It's surprisingly easy to forget how regular human beings enjoy life. I've deferred this idea of "living" until some nebulous future date when I can afford to... kick back.

It's April. 2012.

Nine Inch Nails Dance Party!

Trent Reznor responds:

Many years ago, a young and naive Nine Inch Nails were asked what TV shows they'd be interested in appearing on. As a joke (and likely drunk), they thought of the most absurd choice they could come up with at the time. They were then informed their bluff had been called and were actually booked on said show... They hopped in their Honda Civic touring vehicle (hatchback) and travelled many miles to (I think) NJ for the big show. They had a laugh making fun of the people, their fashion choices and hairstyles. Life was good. Years later, the internet is discovered... There's a moral in there somewhere. Come to think of it, Skrillex may indeed owe me some publishing on that hairdo...

Welcome to April, Misanthropists.