Weirdness ensues

The last couple of days have been curious. I've been unable to focus on anything creative; had two headaches...including one snarly one as I was getting ready for bed, which I think came from a pinched nerve or something; and I've been non-stop hungry...something I think I finally satiated, this evening, with four slices of toast, butter and jam with tea.

I'm not on a diet; I'm just trying to cut back on how much I eat at a time. I was getting too used to the monster portions restaurants consistently serve, and my weight was steadily increasing to an uncomfortable stage. And I was doing good. I'm down 12 pounds since Labor Day and still sort of trending downward...but all of a sudden I just could not get full. Maybe I'm cutting back too much.

You see, I rewrote "Mine To Kill" (a horror script I wrote years...and years...ago) over the weekend, setting it in Syracuse and clarifying a couple of points, all because someone MIGHT want to see it, and I wanted it ready to send at a moment's notice. That's pathetic.

But that's screenwriters. We're the needy nerds of the film biz. While everyone else in the film crew gets treated with respect for the various jobs they do, screenwriters are pissed on by everybody from the bottom up. And we exacerbate that paradigm by letting them get away with that shit because we want to get produced and we're afraid if we stand up for ourselves, we won't be. And the truth is...we wouldn't.

And now that the rewrite is done thanks to the flimsiest of excuses, I feel stupid and immature and empty. But I can't face writing, at the moment, and my art is too demanding, at the moment, so I stuff my face. In BBT I can see a bit of myself in every character -- Leonard's dreams of normalcy even though he's brilliant; Sheldon's inability to understand the world around him; Raj's shyness and sense of being lost in another world; and Howard's bravado mixed with a complete lack of awareness of himself.

Tonight as I ate, I watched more episodes of BBT, and got sideswiped by one where everybody winds up arguing and we find out Sheldon can't handle it so reverts to his boyhood comforts -- comic books and toys. That's what brought home to me why I like the show. I see myself in every character and while it's funny in so many ways, it's also heartbreaking.

Okay, fuck tea -- I need booze.

Pictures...

 No feel like make sentences. Instead, show pictures.

These books and papers for "Place of Safety."

Statue at top left is first script award, for "Cowboy King of Texas" (AKA: "King of the Cowboys"). Rest are books and DVDs of all sorts of things.

 Some of other awards following first and my easel with a little art on it.

 The icy-falls of New York.

Windsor Locks, by Hartford. Montgomery factory, closed but by a nice canal and the Connecticut River.

Talk about a horror story...

I am so sick of the GOP and the moral dwarves running for President under its banner, all of them two-bit snakes who don't give a damn about Democracy or an individual's rights...if they don't correspond with what they think is correct. And we've got 10 more months of this shit to wade through.

Even ignoring the neverending "debates" by the contenders, I'm still slathered in the mud and muck they're slinging, thanks to the one-track-mind of our so-called "liberal media." You can't even ignore it online. And all the while, nobody's doing a damned thing about unemployment or the foreclosure crisis or the thieves on Wall Street and in the banks. All we're allowed to pay attention to is these idiots trying to prove they're more conservative and beholden to the rich than the others. It's disgusting.

What's even more disgusting is how some Americans not only pay attention to their lies and deceptions, but think they're great! Newt Gingrich, who not only cheated on his first and second wives but divorced both when they became ill; Rick Santorum, who spouts about how moral and Catholic he is while spitting on the teachings of Christ; Mitt Romney, who lies about everything, period, and has yet to be called on it by the media; Ron Paul, who would happily take us back to the Middle Ages, when serfs were dependent upon their Lords for life; and Rick Perry's just plain so stupid, he can't tell A from B or C and has forgotten he does not run Texas, his Lt. Governor does...and the state's damn near turned into a Banana Republic.

THIS is the American Horror Story. Nothing anybody could come up with would be more terrifying than one of those assholes actually buying or stealing his way into office. And in case you think it can't happen, 2000's election was stolen in Florida by Bush thanks to the illegal intervention of the Supreme Court, and it's highly likely that 2004 was stolen by manipulations in Ohio by the GOP controlled elections board. And look what happened -- Bush damn near bankrupted the country with his tax cuts and wars that have yet to be paid for.

Not that anyone should have been surprised he'd nearly ruin America; he couldn't even find oil in Texas when he was given a company to run by some of his daddy's friends. He's been a colossal failure his entire life, but because of his daddy's connections, he's been allowed to coast right on through.

Tecumseh's Curse is finally coming to fruition.

Opening of a horror film?

What do you think of this as the first few scenes?
---------------------------
FADE IN:

EXT. BELFAST, N. IRELAND HOSPITAL A/E CENTER - NIGHT

(DREAM SEQUENCE)

AN AMBULANCE ROARS UP, SIREN JANGLING. EVERYTHING MOVES WITH A STACCATO, ECHOING, SURREAL RHYTHM. The doors fly open and EMS TECHNICIANS burst out with the bloody body of a middle-aged CONSTABLE on a gurney. PSNI patrol cars (Police Service of Northern Ireland) follow.

DR. THOMAS MacGREGGOR (good-looking medical student) exits the hospital with a RESIDENT and CRASH CREW. The medical team surrounds the gurney as several PSNI CONSTABLES appear.

TECHNICIAN
(Irish accent)
Four gunfire wounds. Three chest, one neck. B-P’s one-seven-nine over six-two. Pulse, four-four. One saline. Two plasma. Crashed, en route.

RESIDENT
(Irish accent)
Curtain one, stat!

IRISH NURSE
We’ve somebody in there.

RESIDENT
Get them out! Call surgery for a consult.

Thomas puts his hand on the constable’s chest.

THOMAS
(Scottish accent)
Bullet fragment’s nicked his aorta. I got pressure on.

RESIDENT
No snap judgements, MacGreggor.

INT. BELFAST HOSPITAL A/E CENTER - NIGHT

Doors crash open before the speeding gurney, MOVEMENT STILL STACCATO; VOICES STILL ECHO. Thomas and his crew work hard. PATIENTS and PEOPLE line the hall. PSNI Constables appear from nowhere, casting hard glares at Thomas.

TECHNICIAN
G-C-S -- two-three-one.

THOMAS
Ready the cart! He’s off to code.

FLAMES EXPLODE AROUND THEM! The LIGHTS FLARE TO GREENISH WHITE. The constable wakes and grabs Thomas, terrified.

CONSTABLE
(Irish accent)
Don’t let me die; I ain’t ready!

Thomas’ eyes jam closed.

EXT. BELFAST ALLEY - NIGHT

BLEAK, DIRTY, STACCATO IMAGES flash as a terrified YOUNG MAN races around a corner to find a dead end. Trapped, he turns and raises his open hands in surrender.

The same constable as on the gurney appears -- and SHOOTS HIM! Then coldly tosses a second pistol beside the body.

INT. BELFAST HOSPITAL A/E CENTER - NIGHT

Thomas wipes his face, smears blood over his eyes.

THOMAS
Bloody bastard...

The Resident glances at him. They roll into a trauma room. Shift the constable to a table and get to work. The uniform is shredded off, equipment is attached, and blood flies everywhere.

FLAMES EXPLODE AROUND THE CRASH CREW. No one notices. The constable’s chest cracks open to show his heart beating.

Thomas jumps back. The flames are gone, the constable’s chest is closed.

The crash crew ignores him. The Resident pumps the constable’s chest.

THOMAS (CONT’D)
Stop! Bullet fragment! By...by left atrium!

RESIDENT
He’s in arrest!

THOMAS
You’re slicing his heart open!

Thomas shoves him aside and cuts the man’s chest open...and FLAMES EXPLODE FROM THE MAN’S TORSO. Smoke fills the room.

EXT. SOUTH BELFAST STREET - NIGHT

COLD and DESOLATE as the constable rapes a WOMAN behind a dumpster. She fights him. He slaps her and tears at her breasts. She gets his pistol, kicks him back and SHOOTS HIM.

His PARTNER bolts from a patrol car and shoots her!

INT. BELFAST HOSPITAL A/E CENTER - NIGHT

Thomas hesitates as FLAMES ENVELOPE THE CONSTABLE.

CONSTABLE
No! Please! Gimme another chance! I’ll make amends. I swear it!

The crash crew keeps working like nothing off is happening.

RESIDENT
Doctor MacGreggor!? Doctor -- !?

SILENCE surrounds Thomas. Everything shifts to SLO-MO.

The constable appears before him, clean, no longer injured, his uniform in perfect condition.

CONSTABLE
Please -- no -- no -- NO!

HE EXPLODES INTO FLAMES AND SCREAMS!

INT. THOMAS’ APARTMENT - DAWN

Thomas bolts awake. He lies on a couch in an under-furnished room. Medical textbooks mingle with the mess of a too-busy bachelor. A crucifix hangs around his neck. He shivers, but not from cold.

He finally rises, swallows some aspirin, dry, and goes to a window, still shaking.

It looks across Thornden Park to the huge SUNY University Medical complex. Just beyond is the cold, hard skyline of downtown SYRACUSE, NY, deceptively calm. A nasty taste fills his mouth, so he grabs a bag of Skittles from a table and munches on some. They soothe him.

DISTANT SIRENS jolt him and MINGLE WITH THE JANGLING SIRENS of the Northern Ireland Ambulance.

THOMAS
No’ again. Please. No’ here.

He hides his face; the SIRENS GROW IN INTENSITY.

Computing 101...01010101010

Today was spent upgrading the operating system on my desktop computer...which I'm still working at. Seems I couldn't re-install Microsoft Office 2004 or Adobe Photoshop CS because...well, I don't know why. But I did figure out how to reconnect to my laptop via Firewire and just shift them over from that. And for some reason that worked. Man, I'd still be behind the 8-ball if it hadn't been for Mac's Genius Bar. It made my day.

I also spent over an hour trying to find the upgrade for my printer's driver. The disk I have was only good through OS 10.4 and won't even load in. And HP was making it hell on earth to find the new driver online. I was close to giving up and deciding to buy a new one when I finally found a link embedded in a post to a thread discussing that very problem...and it lead to an HP site that let me download the correct driver.

So now my e-mail is set up, again. And I can use Safari, again, without being dumped by FiOS. I still have to re-set all my links...of which I had dozens, but I'd saved them all to a Word document and printed that out, to be safe. It's just time consuming.

What was even better? By going to the Walden Galleria for my Genius appointment, I found out there's a Five Guys Burger joint located under the theater. Scarfed down a cheeseburger, fries and a coke. I felt like a commercial.

Time for more tea and some Oreos....no....make that yoghurt. Better for me.

I be jammin'

Drove straight home from Hartford, CT -- about 420 miles in 6 hours. In a white cargo van. I was going to stay overnight in Albany, but I wasn't tired when I hit there so I kept going...and going...and going, just like that battery bunny. And I did next to no thinking the whole way. In fact, my brain is not working at all, right now, because right around Rochester I started getting tired, but since it's only 60 miles from Buffalo, I didn't even think about stopping.

Dunno why I felt the need to get home. It probably wasn't even anything meaningful. But the Motel 6 I stayed in was cheap-assed -- the sheets didn't even cover the mattress -- and I wanted my own bed, tonight. And to have the whole day to myself, tomorrow.

I'll have to start revisions on IF, soon. I've received copious notes from the guy whose life it's based on. We'll see....and yet, I don't know if I'm ready for that, yet.

TLA did take on a dark overtone during this trip. Not sure how I feel about that, either. In fact, everything seems to be up in the air. Like my life.

"Bored now," as Wicked Willow would say. (BtVS reference for those uninitiated.)

Cornell

I've finally been to the campus of an Ivy League school I've heard about for decades...and it's really elegant. Winding roads curl around hills and well-kept buildings from the 19th Century. A gorge runs right through the middle of it all, where the stream cutting into it is frozen over but the waterfall feeding it is only partially frozen. Students already dash everywhere as blue and white busses march past, ferrying them into town or around to a different part of campus. It was actually impressive, for once. Not enough to stop and take photos of, but still...I wonder if I'll get the same impression of Yale when I visit there?

Something I'm still not quite used to in this part of the country is the abundance of water. Buffalo is basically flanked by two huge freshwater lakes, while Ithaca is at the tip of one of the Finger Lakes that seems to go on forever. And as I was driving up the 81 to Syracuse, I noticed this one part of the freeway, where rock had been cut into to better form the road, was thick with white icicles dribbling down over the stone, like a miniature version of Niagara Falls...and it went on for a good two-hundred feet. If I hadn't had a semi behind me, I would have stopped to take a photo of that.

I've been to Syracuse before, actually stalking through the area just over a year ago when driving back from NYC. It's a tough town with only moments of beauty. But what had me interested was possibly setting another story there. I have a psychological horror script I'd written about a woman trying to bring her dead husband back to life and the young intern she blames for his death. Initially it was set in Houston but it never really settled there. For a while I was thinking of Seattle for the the location, and it would have worked well, but then along came "Grey's Anatomy" and kicked that city off the radar.

Then I started thinking -- one aspect of the intern's life is that he's running from an incident that nearly derailed his goal to become a doctor. So he'd want to hide from the world as he finished his education. Well...I researched small towns with universities that had good medical schools -- and SUNY has one in Syracuse. I looked into the city and facilities online and decided the story would work beautifully there. Plus, the teaching hospital's near a park, where a scene on a bicycle could take place very neatly, and it's not that far to Lake Ontario. Done deal.

But then other people started telling me how the script should be, and I began to lose faith in it. It was one of my non-Syd-Field screenplays, where certain things that "needed to happen" didn't happen when Syd says they should. So I put it aside...until I actually came to look Syracuse over. And noticed that park was on a hillside and the city really is not very nice. Which lit the fire under the story, again. Not to a boil, more like a simmer, quietly percolating in the background.

Of course, it helps that I'm now at the point where I have enough confidence in my writing to be able to tell someone who thinks I should change it that I won't. That I like the story as it is. Mainly because I still have people trying to make me change my work to suit them. I learned the hard way that doing so just fucks things up and achieves nothing. You can read earlier in my blog about the last time I tried to rework a script to someone else's idea of what it should be (check out "Bugzters" or BZ, which won awards in its original form but apparently that wasn't good enough). It damaged a friendship.

Anyway, just rambling along since I'm staying the night in Syracuse and saw that icy waterfall and am amazed at how lush with water this area is. Even under a couple inches of snow...and I'm not feeling the push for heavy-duty work on TLA; just notes that seem to be leading me towards a character study of a man who's given up his life to his family and now that he's alone is lost and more than a little pissed off.

Hm, sounds European. Italian neo-realism. Might be interesting.

Makes me laugh

I watched 6 more episodes of BBT and am enjoying the hell out of it. It's been so long since a sit-com made me laugh this much...and had characters that were weird and real and irritating and endearing. I actually feel protective towards Sheldon, and now that I've seen what Leonard's mother is like, I feel for him.

I know what this sounds like, but I meant it when I said I know people like this, who have these quirks and specific intelligences and childish sense of excitement about something like a questing game or comic book. I felt apart from all of that but now I think I have an idea of what it means...and BBT is so elegant in its method of dramatizing that...with laughs.

I'm off to Ithaca, NY, tomorrow, to transport boxes of archives to Hartford, CT, to be shipped to a client. And of course, it's been cold (5 degrees) and snowing the last two days. I don't mind; I'm just worried about how long it will take me to get there. I allowed 4 hours but if the 90 is bad, it may take longer. And that bugs me. Fortunately, I also allowed 3 days for the job, even though in good weather it would only take two.

I'm taking nothing to read or watch or listen to while I'm on the road. I'll be saying in Motel 6's en route to Hartford and back to Buffalo, and I know at least one of them's been refurbished so it'll be livable. And I'll work on this script that's tickling my brain. Title -- "Tony's Last Adventure."

I don't know if it will be action-packed or tender memories or a comedy of errors or what; I just know part of it will be a road movie, and Tony is already dead and buried. The opening and ending will be set in Buffalo. Some of it will be in Florida...probably Key West. And the lead is a 68 year old man named Joe. I've got the back-story, so who knows where this will take me?

I've seen a number of road movies -- "Rain Man", "Kings of the Road", "Two-lane Blacktop", "Grapes of Wrath", "Sullivan's Travels" (where I first got my crush on Joel McCrae), now I need to rent "Harry and Tonto" just to see what that one was like.

But not from Netflix. I just learned they're owned by WalMart. I'd never have joined if I'd known that.

Still I dream

Some people are lost causes. No matter how much they swear they'll change whatever it is they need to change, they don't. Or can't. Or won't. I've known this about junkies and drunks for years. And years. It's the same for any abuser of anything; if they don't want to quit, nothing you can say, think, or do will alter that reality.

I used to think it was laziness and selfishness that was behind such intransigence. Now I wonder it's more a case of just losing the thread that leads them down their new direction and simple instinct pulls them to the old, familiar path. Something safe and known as opposed to the new and untried. There's nothing malicious or deliberate or even necessarily wrong about it all; it's just the way things go. Old habits are hard to break if, deep within, you don't really want to break them. And new habits are hard to take up if they don't overwhelm the old one enough.

I guess I'm now one of the fallen. One of the insane who thinks if he does something over often enough, the outcome will prove different...finally. My addiction? I started working on a script. A screenplay. Again. I've just completed the first draft of a bruising piece of writing and couldn't face the idea of another word on a computer...and the only thing I can think to do with myself, today, is start another piece. Out of whole cloth. That I've been eyeing for a while.

This one has an old protagonist, with his teenage grandson as a tag-along, and I know the beginning and the end. I have the characters worked out in my head. I've already shifted one of the locations. I...I'm lost in the story. And it's ridiculous. I've written 30 screenplays and not one has been produced...and that includes (and currently looks like it will always include) the two I "sold" (for very little money.)

I honestly do not know what to think about me, right now, but the cold, dark truth is -- I still dream. I still fucking dream. With rare exceptions, my first thoughts about a story are, "What sort of movie would it make? And would I want to see it?" And will be till I die. And deep down I do not want to change, no matter how much sense it makes for me to.

May as well commit me now.

It's snowing

Nothing heavy but there and dancing about in the brisk wind like flakes swirling in a delicate globe. My window is open and yet I'm still warm. I think I'm getting to where I like it up here. That, or watching 12 straight episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" while finishing up my shredding and ironing put me in a good humor. Probably a combination; I've always had a multi-level response to things like this, especially in my stories.

Everything is done except for not having my fax machine set up correctly, yet. I've had it hooked up for months but only today found the instruction manual for it and will try to make it work, tomorrow. Once that's done, I'm going to Canada for my celebratory dinner...for finishing the first draft of IF. Normally I wait till I have the story done, or as done as I can make it, but this was such an unusual one for me, I'm having it now. I've got $20CAN in my wallet and that's enough for a decent meal at Tony Roma's.

This year is going to be a wild one, I can already feel it, and I have no idea what that means, yet. The only thing I can see happening right now is finishing up this season of BBT and contemplating the next. I actually enjoy the hijinks of Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, and Wolowitz; not so crazy about the character of Penny, because she's just a bit too typical a blond...except for when she became a gaming addict. Then she got interesting and showed a capacity for intelligent thought. My hope is the producers expand on that...but so far they haven't.

However, Jim Parson's smiley face makes up for all deficiencies. Totally.