Ah, New York...and the end of an era...

The train trip was long and slow. We got in an hour late. I worked on NYPDB as much as I could as we crept along, but got so frustrated I had to stop, at times, and walk away. I thought I did a good job with the first edition, but apparently the guy I was writing this for doesn't agree. I'm only on page 67 of the rewrite (out of 349 pages), and so much has been changed, I now have to check it line-by-line. When he adds in stuff, he doesn't put in commas or periods and starts paragraphs in the middle of sentences. Other parts are left untouched except for an occasional extra phrase that doesn't make sense. He even took out sections I'd worked in to help prep the reader for the lead's hallucinations. Ugh.

Suddenly I'm wondering if I should actually read the first edition. This is pretty bad, and if it was published anything like this, small wonder it got negative feedback. Of course, it's my own damn fault for agreeing to do it. I didn't want to, from the start, but because I let myself get talked into it, I'm now caught in my own sense of obligation.

And pride. I don't want people to think my work is that messy or amateurish. I can get reactions like that quite enough with my own unvarnished writing, thank you very much. And have. Granted, my grammar's not perfect, but Jesus Christ, at least I know the difference between their, there, and they're. And I put in periods at the end of sentences. Or exclamation points (which I used to use way too many of ). But oh...this is gonna break my back.

So much for cutting back on whining.

I just learned Peter O'Toole and Tom Laughlin died. O'Toole was a national treasure as an actor. I think my favorite role of his was as Eli Cross in The Stunt Man. You never knew if he was crazy or just crazy like a fox in that, and it helped make you fear for the stuntman's life, though his turn in My Favorite Year was breathtakingly funny. "I'm not an actor! I'm a MOVIE star!" He was who he was, and that's all who he was. Take it or leave it.

Tom Laughlin was a maverick who gambled his own money in making Billy Jack, and it was huge. I saw it when it first came out and loved every second. Now I look back and think it's too black and white in its attitude and actions, but back then it seemed the only way to get anything done in the way of justice was to rip things apart, and he tapped into that, very neatly. He was who he was, as well.

That's three dead in Hollywood, including Paul Walker. Makes you wonder if the superstition is right.

Everything comes in threes.