Brain block

I worked late today and I'm on my own all next week, so no telling what's going to happen.  I've already got two problem shipments driving me nuts so I guess I'll do my best to keep from letting them crash and burn.

Problem is, I can't think, right now.  I got the perfect images for "Hunter" but I'm in a serious phase of dyslexia and have to keep going back and correcting typos because I'll hit the wrong damn key...and it's all because I had boiled eggs and powdered potatoes with gravy for dinner.  I know it.  Too many carbs and too much cholesterol and not enough awareness of reality...and for some reason I feel stoned even though I don't.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm..what can this mean?  Is it post-patrum concussion?  I start giving birth to a new story and it's now messing with my hormones...or testosterone...or LDL or Triglycerides or something.  I wouldn't mind it if I'd actually had something to drink.

Oh...maybe it's Patsy withdrawal.  I do need a nice big glass of Cabernet.

Of course, it could just be a brain tumor or a stroke or something mundane like that.  Who knows?  I have too much going on to be so full of nothing going on.

Okay...I've stopped making sense.  Time to put down the typewriter, take a nice, long, hot shower and kick back.

Oh, fuck -- there goes the fucking fire alarm!

Never been so bored at dinner

I like the Orange Peel Beef at PF Chang's.  It's spicy and even tastes good warmed up over rice, one of the few Chinese foods I actually look forward to.  The Mandarin Beef at Panda Express is another.  Well, I was at the grocer's, recently, and saw PF Chang's has frozen meals available.  One was called Shanghai Style Beef, so I bought it and yesterday I tried it out.  Cooked it just like they said.  And it was AWFUL.  Tasteless, practically, and a little bit slimy.  Not at all what I expected.  I mean, they SAY on the package it's a "savory sauce".  Yeah, if you drown it in Soy Sauce.

Now I've got leftovers and can't throw them out; there's something in my makeup that refuses to toss food unless it's spoiled.  So I guess I'll have to figure out how to make this meal tasty enough to get down.  But no way am I going anywhere near that crap, again.

Of course, it could be me.  I mean, I also like TGI Friday's potato skins (NOT good for you but VERY tasty).  So I tried their name brand potato skin chips in bacon and cheddar.  Again, nothing to the taste.  I had to use Picante sauce to liven 'em up because not even a good Guacamole helped.

So...I guess I'll just have the real deal at the place it's made at or cook my own at home.

My muse has pulled a little trick on me and taken me into a story that's now pouring out.  I don't know what it is, yet -- a novel or a short or something in-between -- but the main character's voice is very vivid and his buddy is just as wild.  Hunter and Vermin.  Don't ask me where those names came from; these guys arrived fully formed and ready to talk.  I may be a whiny little shit, much of the time, but I know to shut up and listen when it's this loud.  Got 11 pages...no, I hit 12.

And no headache.  I wonder if what I was really going through was birth pangs.  Wouldn't that be just like me?

No dancin' tonight

I just don't feel like it.  I'd rather just post some photos of my trip to Utah...give a taste of how it looks as opposed to how it feels.

I found this along the south shore of the Great Salt Lake, not far from a marina and just the other side of the access road to I-80.  Not sure what it was about but it brought so many ideas to mind -- a one-time railroad stop abandoned in the middle of the Depression...a spa where people went to take in the waters of Salt Lake, thinking they were medicinal instead of just rank...or the rail car was a last-ditch effort to revitalize this stop, thinking people would come just to dine in it.  All broken dreams.

I was feeling kind of Frederick Remington when I toyed with this shot of the Colorado River...and sensed hints of the shadows of the Johns Ford and Wayne.  Seems they used this area as well as Monument Valley (150 miles to the south) to shoot their westerns.

Here is the actual coloring of the rocks that stretch for miles and miles and miles along the river.  A billion years of history exposed and tumbling down to be crushed slowly, slowly by the non-stop waters.  I was in awe of the Grand Canyon when I visited there...but this was like traveling back in time to see the beginnings of creation.

This is the view from the house where I did part of my packing job.  These cliffs keep running for miles past where I was standing...almost to forever.  Supposedly, there are cracks in them that are wide enough to walk through, so you could travel by foot from this spot to Moab, which is on the other side of the mountain.  Probably a day's journey...but something I'd like to try, sometime.  Hell, I climbed Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh just so I could see what it was like; why not this, too?

Nasty headache

Actually a pain on the left side of my neck so I think I pinched a nerve.  I've always been prone to problems there, and these beasts take forever to go away.  Advil and Icy Hot are just beginning to work after 5 hours of use.  Ugh.

Problem is, I can't think very well during moments like this so I just coast and get nothing done.  I just want to sleep till it goes away.

Whine.

I think I'm going down to San Antonio for the month of August.  Things are not going well, down there, and apparently I'm the only one who feels enough responsibility to try and do something about it.  Texas in August...God, I so look forward to that.

I'll be in New york City over the Fourth of July weekend on a packing job for an auction house.  Did I already mention that?

Brain dead.  Maybe more tomorrow. Or not.

It begins...again...

I've found the images I want for my characters.

This is Adair Llewellyn.  Making "Dair's Window" a novel has already altered many aspects of how I see him...and using Gentle Ben Cohen (British Rugby star) for his personification adds to it all.

I'm using Charlie David, an out actor, for Adam Barrault.  Doesn't hurt both of them are Canadian and have the same type smile.

 I have always thought Neil Patrick Harris would be perfect as Wallace Carruthers, very neat and sure of himself, a take-charge guy.

 Susan Sarandon would be the ideal Marion Adelle Carter Llewellyn Santini Briscoe Talke...and back to Llewellyn because that's how her name is on the deed to her ski lodge.

And this is Thiago Rufinelli, who works beautifully as Jacob Messner -- attractive in an off-beat way, not the neatest of guys or even the sweetest...but he's brutally honest.





I've already begun shifting the story and am sensing new ways into the hearts and souls of the characters.  So first comes solidifying the spine of it, then comes the bones, then comes the flesh, then comes the life.

Oh...and the humor.  I hope.

I'm not abandoning Place Of Safety...

I'm just in a very unsure place, right now, and want to give my inner workings time to realign themselves.  Having someone who actually lived through the events I'm trying to relate tell me I'd not be able to do it right for the people who know...but it might work out well enough for those who knew nothing...well, gave me a nice kick in the creative balls.  And I need to heal.  I've always been wary of POS and gone through times where I could not picture not completing it to where I seriously think I should ask around for someone else to do it because I'm unworthy.

It's just...I can't give it up.  It's something I'm meant to do.  I know that deep in my soul...and it's slowly working its way through the questions and uncertainties deep in my own dark shadows.  But consider this -- it took God, himself, years to get Moses to go back to Egypt to release the Jews...and I got nobody like God backing me up with his superpowers.  If I did, I'd be living in Derry, right now, letting the life of it permeate through me and into the story instead of doing all my research in books, websites and movies that always disappoint.

Returning to a project where I've already completed one version...well, I've found it rejuvinates my self-confidence to a surprising extent when I shift the story from one form into another that is totally different.  "Lyons' Den" did that, to my surprise.  I actually think I made it stronger, tenfold, than it was in script format, because I let it dig and grow and be as dark and chaotic and light as it wanted by giving Daniel and Tad and Van and the others room to explore.  Granted, it's a relatively easy story based on a published book and play so I didn't have to do a lot to get the storyline going, so I did start from a better place.  That's why I want to practice with "Dair's Window", which is a darker story and one that is completely original with me.

DW has some humor, already, but of the character-type.  Marion, Dair's mother, is a pistol and half.  Jacob has an off-kilter view of life.  Even Wallace's preciseness is a bit funny, at times.  But Dair is dour.  Well, not so much dour as too limited to his own pain.  In LD, I found letting Daniel have his moments of JOY with Tad made it more believable that he'd want to get back together with the SOB, despite the pain he'd been caused.  It made him more sympathetic and real, something missing in the script and play versions I wrote.  I want Dair to grow in the same way.  And I want to build up the darkness of Adam and how he may be using Dair while still loving and needing him.

God, I hope this doesn't sound like I'm trying to justify my shifting focus.  It does still boil down to me not being sure enough of myself to get deeper into the story, just yet...because I'm at the point where things have to match up and make sense and be true.  And it'll be just me taking the hits if I don't succeed, so you can factor in some fear, as well.

But I won't give up.  I hope Brendan understands that.  I know full well..."When the stones weep, so will I..."

I'm seeing hints of their tears already.  Perhaps by August they'll be in full flow.

Why Hotmail Rocks

When I order things or make queries online, I always give my Hotmail.com address and my landline phone number because it's reached the point where online and sales companies buy and sell your information left and right.  With my landline, calls go straight to voicemail and nine times out of ten, sales callers hang up.  With Hotmail, unless you're okay'd by me you go straight to junk, and I clear it out every couple of days.  Just now, I got rid of 240 offers to make money or get free Subway sandwiches for a week or meet single girls (obviously not much research going on there) or buy cheaper insurance.  Then all I have to do is click one box and "delete" and they vanish 35 at a time.

SBCGlobal is almost as easy to get rid of crap, but they're impossible to get hold of.  I got an e-mail from someone saying they were a friend of mine claiming they were trapped in Edinburgh due to a robbery and needed cash to get home.  They'd hacked a yahoo.com e-mail address but then switched two letters around in the name to open a new account.  If you just glance at it, everything looks fine, so I have to wonder how many people thinking a friend was in trouble wired cash off to some scum in God knows where before learning it was a scam?

Fortunately for me, the first time it happened to me was on Hotmail using someone whose phone number I had, so I called them and, sure enough, he was still at home and was warning people his account had been hacked.  He'd notified Hotmail, so I tried to notify SBCGlobal...and do you think I could find any way to get hold of anyone?  I finally found a phone number and got caught in this recording where they would not pass me along unless I had an AT&T phone number to reference.  I gave in and let them know about it through their "feedback" system...which no one will pay attention to.  Especially since the little feedback choices I made on the site were VERY negative.

Technology's no good if you can't deal with the nonsense that comes up, and some of these companies go out of their way to see to it that you cannot contact anyone human anywhere near them.

Today was get the car serviced day and groceries and such.  I had my laptop so reread the script for "Dair's Window" as I waited, and I actually do think I'm going to work on that.  I want to see if I can add some real humor to it; right now it's got some okay moments of lightness but it'll help the story immeasurably if I can balance the darkness even more.

I don't know how Brendan feels about this, and Dair is hesitant about stepping in...but I feel it's right for me to do.  Apparently I'm still a bit spooked, deep down, by the comment someone from NI said about me not being able to truly capture the place for any but an audience that knows little about it, and I need to let that settle down more and rebuild my confidence. 

Again.  I am crazy; I keep doing the same crap over and over and achieve little more than baby steps in my movement forward.  Of course, that's better than going backwards.  Isn't it?

I'm maddening

I got the Season Two AbFab disk and can think of nothing else except watching Patsy and Edina be the self-centered, stupidly stylish bitches that they are.  Patsy getting that high school boy's given me a greater appreciation for her, while Edina's immaturity is both sad and silly.  And their answer to everything is Champagne and cigarettes, sweetie.  I think this is where my recent urge for red wine is coming from...and not a burgundy, like I usually go for, while white doesn't even begin to interest me.  I may pick some up tomorrow as my car's being serviced (and wicked little commenter in my head says, "And you ain't, sweetie").

I'm also a bit ticked off.  I haven't weighed myself in months, thinking I'd been cutting back on the food and DP (I'm down to an average of 2 a day) and had a doctor's appointment for a general checkup...and I've gained 6 pounds!  Shit, I've actually been hungry more in the last couple months than I had in my entire life, and I've eaten more salads and less red meat...and I'm STILL getting fatter?  Fuck that.  From now on, I eat whatever I want.

Except I actually DID like the salads because Wegman's (a local grocer that's like your one-stop shopping center for worldwide food) makes some killer ones for cheap, and I usually toss a can of tuna in with it.  They also have excellent fish and chips (though their coleslaw is merely so-so).

Fact is, I wasn't at ALL active over the winter, just sat at my desk at work or in my apartment and worked on LD and POS.  Small wonder I'm turning into a later-stage Orson Welles.

Okay...I'll go walking...tomorrow, darling.  Tonight is AbFab.

Here we go again

I'm getting the urge to work another script of mine into a novel -- "Dair's Window".  It's a drama about a gay man (Dair) finally coming to terms with the accidental death of his lover and the viciousness of the man's family.  He's won the lawsuit against him and is about to enter into a commitment ceremony with a man he doesn't really love but feels comfortable with when the married best man comes into town with his very pregnant wife and upsets everything.

I set it in a small town in the mountains of Washington state because they offer civil unions and, despite the state's reputation for liberalism, has some serious pockets of right wing nuttery.  And Dair became a stained glass artist from a well-to-do family while Adam, his late lover, is in the US illegally from Canada.  There are hints the man was using Dair...but it's also suggested Adam is the reason Dair was becoming successful in his art.  The new man in Dair's life is Wallace, who was also his lawyer and who is a political animal, while the best man is named Jacob, who used to be involved with Wallace when they both lived in Tokyo and does extreme IT work.  His wife is Setsuko.  Dair's got a mother I based on Lauren Bacall at her feistiest and an Episcopal reverend of a grandfather who marched with Martin Luther King in Selma.

I workshopped the script at Film Independent and am damned proud of it.  It also got into the top ten of a couple of competitions.  However, it looks like it will never see the light of day on a movie screen and I honestly do not understand why.  But I can't get people in the gay productions houses to even read it...and I've tried a number of ways to make that happen.  Nothing.

So it looks like the only way this story will become part of the world is if I work it into a book.  It may not sell extremely well, but at least it will be seen by a few people instead of none.

It's funny...but I posted a first draft on TriggerStreet.com to speed up the feedback process.  The nice thing about that site is you get honest responses, for the most part.  Some people are out to slaughter for no good reason...and I've had them hit me on there, before...still, you can get a good idea of whether or not the story's working.  And I got some very solid response.  What I remember most, however, was just after gay marriage had been legalized in the state of California, not by law but by judicial decision.  One bit of feedback said the script was a bit passe, now that gays could get married there.  My immediate response was, "We'll see."  I had no idea how vicious the fight over it would become and how easily Prop 8 would pass, but I knew gay men and women are still the minority everyone is allowed to despise...and by God, it got proven in spades, thanks to the Mormon Church.

So the story is still valid and current.  For now.  Isn't that disgusting?

So this was funny...

I blew off anything tonight and watched "My Favorite Brunette" with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour...and boy has humor changed.  I can't say we've gotten better because 1934's "Twentieth Century" has moments that are just plain hysterical and which have yet to be matched.  But Bob Hope...no, he's been better, like in "The Paleface" and "Seven Little Foys".  When he's got a good script that follows the format and a director that bothers to block the action.  But this movie...the funniest parts of it are the cameos by Alan Ladd and Bing Crosby and a bit by Lon Chaney Junior concerning walnut cracking.

Bob's a baby photographer who winds up investigating a kidnapping at the behest of beautiful Dorothy who may or may not be crazy...until she isn't and he knows what's really going on but can't even stumble into doing the right thing against the villains.  He winds up convicted of murder and on death row (I'm not doing a spoiler, here; that's where the movie starts from and he tells everything in flashback, even things he couldn't possibly have known).  What's really sad is how the ending is a cop-out.  Very disappointing.  The only reason I finished it is I was ironing.

Nothing else to say, really.  I'm letting my batteries recharge and trying to get all the mundane crap of life done so I can focus on what's important -- POS.  But I can't do that till know the next stage of LD.

I think I'm just lazy.  Always have been.  And that's a hard habit to break.