Pay no attention

I have a name-tag letting me into this exclusive auction house, with my photo on it, and I have to wear it all times to prove I'm allowed to be there.  A guard at the security station made me hand over my Driver's License and look into a camera so they could have a real-time picture.  Other guards stood by to "sort of" watch, their wary eyes never leaving me.  None of my party was allowed to be alone until we'd all been checked in and ensconced in a room where we were to work.  All very top-drawer security and a strong vibe of "don't even try to mess with us."  I'd be intimidated (well, sort-of) except for one thing -- my name's wrong on the name-tag.

All this fuss and fuddle...and I'm now known as Michael Sullivan.  Not Kyle.  Not Michel.  Not Kyle Michel, as it is on my birth certificate and driver's license and passport and lease and every bill I get.  So legally speaking, it's not me.  I'm a fake.  Shit, I knew that long ago...I'm just amazed it took these folk this long to make use of it.

Oh...and the guard who did the name-tag doesn't like Texas barbeque.  He prefers Chicago style, which apparently is next to sauceless.

San Antonio seems to have calmed down.  My mother apparently took a spill while my brother was out getting some dinner for them both, and then she spent yesterday not wanting to eat.  But today she's feeling better and life is easier.  Or so I'm told.  I'll be down there in a month.

I must be getting used to New York City.  It was its typical busier than hell place, today, and since my hotel's right by the street leading to the Holland Tunnel, I can see how insane traffic still is -- cars blocking intersections so they can sit and wait for cars ahead of them to move even as they don't -- but none of it seemed out of the ordinary to me.  Or impressive.  Not quite a year ago, I sat for over an hour to get into the Lincoln Tunnel to get to Manhattan..and last December did it, again, when I drove down for an interview for "Dining With Strangers", so this line was not that big a deal except we're in the Village part of Manhattan and it looks meaner.  Dunno why anyone owns a car in this part of the city.

Tomorrow night's Indian food...and I hope it's the good spicy kind and not the bland watery type.  I had both when I was living in LA and both claimed to be authentic.  Dunno which is, just know which makes my tummy happy.

I HATE Firefox

It's been acting up, lately, and it just froze up while I was writing a new entry and dumped everything I'd written.  Wouldn't even let Blogger save it.  I just kept getting error messages.

Well, I'm in no mood to rewrite what I did.  It's been a beast of a day, thanks to crap going on in San Antonio.  I'm off to NYC in the morning so I'm going to bed.

When I get back, I'm dumping Firefox.  Safari's given me no trouble at all.

I am large...I contain multiples.

I love that quote by Whitman, shot back at someone who accused him of contradicting himself.  It was a great big "So what?" and done as only a poet could do it.  Of course, small wonder I like it; I contradict myself all the time...and in my work.

Whoo...going through LD this time was a journey in self-discovery.  Especially as regards inconsistencies and being overly explanatory.  Sometimes it's best just to let things reveal themselves as they wish.  So even as I added more words and expanded upon some moments that felt constricted, I cut back on others that felt too explicit.  And wound up with 62,000+ words and 301 pages.  And here I was saying I couldn't add to it without making it crap.  HA!

I wonder if I'm too old to be tested for dyslexia of the thought processes?

Well...I'm in NYC beginning Thursday and staying till Monday, then I have a packing job to pick up and pack and get to a courier service by 5pm Tuesday.  Then comes returning to Buffalo.  I'll be staying in SoHo and meeting with an ex-cop who wants me to make his story into a book.  I'd already written it as a script but no one wants it because they feel it's been done before.  It's all about corruption and drug dealing in the NYPD ("Serpico", anyone?) but in this case it helped drive him to a nervous breakdown.  Which may have been another stumbling block on getting people interested -- the hero doesn't blow away the bad guys in the end; his brain just blows up.  But it'll be interesting to put a face with the script I'd already written.

The recent vote for gay marriage in NY has made me wonder if "Dair's Window" is no longer relevant.  If I should now do it as a period piece of a sort, having it end about three years ago, after Prop 8 is passed.  I don't know.  The story is timeless -- learning to move on after severe loss -- and I can still see there being a huge backlash by the radical homophobes like there was in California, though I think (I hope) the Mormon Church will stay out of this fight.  They got beat up good after the last one.  But you never know with religious fanatics; reality has so little to do with their view of existence.  Michelle Bachmann is proof of that.

Problem is, the freaks're close to taking over the world and leading us to WW3.  What a fun prospect.  Reminds me of a story I heard once, about rats being kept in tight quarters -- when there got to be too many of them to be comfortable, they turned on each other and killed those they'd been sharing space with.  Maybe that's happening now with people.  No place left to go but up and that ain't happening soon, so...CRUSH, KILL, DESTROY!

There's also an old Chinese curse -- May you live in interesting times.  Looks like that's coming to pass, fer sure.

My aching back

Man, I did more walking yesterday than I have in a long time, my satchel slung over my shoulder, and now my lower back is letting me know it was not happy about any of it.  It's been building a nice ache all day and is just now getting back to manageable.  Man...no wonder they say getting old ain't for sissies.  NOT easy.  Plus crap like this makes me cranky and lowers my tolerance for the bullshit going on in the world.

For example, I'm finding there's a new type of solicitation going on, aimed at screenwriers but may also be hitting on all people working in film and TV.  Somebody puts up an ad on craigslist or InkTip or something like that, seeking scripts...and if you contact them they come up with a line of how they're offering a new screenplay competition (enter for a $100 fee and if we get a thousand entries, we'll make the winner for $100K); or are one type of film company that's now "getting into producing with contacts for money" so will you let them use your script to see if they'll offer up some cash; or submit your script for a new posting on a new website so please fill in all this personal information.  It's irritating.  Just sharks preying on minnows.

I was a minnow, once.  Now I'm more of a crab...in every sense of the word.

Off to NYC on Thursday and still need to do laundry and ironing, and now I'm wondering if this job will wind up being anything worthwhile, at all.  It's not promising at the same time that it is.  Rather confusing.  So I may not be there the whole weekend.  Or I may...since there's a possible packing job just up the Hudson from the city.  If the guy's available for me to pick the books up.  And another one in Boston...if the guy's available for me to pick the books up.  All so iffy.

I got a new version of the cover for LD.  The cabin's the same, but something's been added that makes it all okay.  I can not only live with this one...I can be happy with it.  I'm feeling good about this book, now.  I just got done with chapter 12 and have 2 chapters left to rework.  Then I'll let it sit till I'm back from NYC and go over it, again, to make sure I haven't screwed anything up.  I do that sometimes.

Toronto-ness

I spent the day in Toronto with my nephew, who's an architect currently teaching architecture.  He's heading a class of students working on a project in Montreal and they'd come to Canada's largest city to view the massive construction going on.  And you'd never know there was an economic situation anywhere if you judged by Toronto.  New condos, new office towers, road repairs, the place was working it.  Seems Canada missed the nastiest part of the housing bubble because they have regulations on their banks.  Their government also pushed through a stimulus just when it was needed and proved helpful in keeping the recession from getting bad.  Unlike the US where the GOP hates government and wants to drown it in a sea of red ink and the Democrats are letting them do it.

Obama may get another term...which I am NOT happy about since he's little more than a liberal Republican (talk about an oxymoron)...but it's getting to be just as possible that a Republican will take the Presidency, which would be a catastrophe for the country, especially if the GOP keeps the House.  If the Democrats don't stop trying to pet the rabid attack dogs, it's even possible they'll take the Senate.  And then it will be time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Anyway, said nephew wants to go for an advanced Masters in Architecture at Columbia, and I'm going to do everything I can to help make that happen.  He's worried about the cost and he's got a new baby and he's still paying for his student loans from his own schooling...but I told him about how I turned down NYU's Graduate School in Film and have been kicking myself ever since, so he needs to stop thinking about the negative and just focus on what is best for his future.

So...does anybody know anything about grants and scholarships (NOT loans) for Graduate work in Architecture?

Oh...as regards LD, I'm at the point where Van goes for help and feel like the whole budding relationship between Daniel and Van is more organic, now.  It still felt a bit forced in the earlier draft; now Daniel has more of an unspoken need for support.  He's been handling a lot of hell all on his own and it's worn him down to the point where getting back with Tad is a way of just relaxing and letting himself be himself, since Tad already knows about his crazy family and how Ace and Carmen are in his head.  But now Van is an alternative.

Hm...does that make Daniel too needy?  He's strong in so many ways...but does him needing being with someone make him less of a person?  Gotta think about that.

If this makes any sense, good for you.  I had a beer with lunch and it's made me fuzzy-brained.  One friggin' beer.

I'm getting old.

Deviled eggs

You want to know my problem?  I don't just listen to people, I listen to their off-handed comments and take them to heart in ways that are close to stupid.  Which, as I rewrite "The Lyons' Den" for the umpteenth time, I realize I added as a characteristic to Daniel without realizing it.  What finally brought this home to me?  Making deviled eggs.

Now I like deviled eggs.  They're simple -- some mustard and mayo mixed in with a well-cooked yolk and a dash of pepper, slop it back into the white and you're done.  All nice and neat and a good snack.

Well, a couple weeks ago, just before they headed off to London, two of the women I work with mentioned they liked deviled eggs.  And one of them gave me a coupon for free eggs from Target (they had a promotion going where you get a dozen for just coming in to see that they now offer groceries...in a very limited range).  I'd already gotten one free coupon but was going to ignore it half because I'm boycotting Target and half because I've found I really like the organic eggs at Wegman's, even though they cost more.  But I figured any eggs are good for deviling, so I got 2 dozen for free and waited till everyone was back then deviled away.  I made 18 -- that's 36 halves, enough for everyone in the office to have them as lunch.

I even used a recipe that called for a dash of vinegar, touch of onion and some sweet relish, and I bought a container of Oregano to sprinkle over then.  I was feeling very full of myself.  It would be a nice welcome home meal for everyone.  Just one problem -- no one ate them.  I told them they were available in the fridge...and not one person in the office even looked at them.  I had deviled eggs Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday...and when I go in on Monday, I'll still be throwing out 10 halves, because no way will I trust them for lunch.

Did anyone ASK me to do this?  No.  I took it upon myself.  And I've realized I KEEP doing that in way too many ways.  Which segues into me expecting things of people that they, in all likelihood, don't even know are expected even though they've hinted at doing or being exactly what I expected them to do or be.  That's silly...and maybe psychotic.

What's wild is, I unconsciously added that to Daniel.  He can see what people are really up to, but he blinds himself to it.  Why?  Because, as Ace puts it, he's got a servant mentality.  He'll do things that he THINKS Tad wants, for instance, even though during the course of the evening at the cabin he comes to realize Tad never gave a damn one way or the other.  Because the fact is, nobody gives a damn if you do  what you think they want; in fact, they don't even notice.

I got a lot of thinking to do about this...sometime.  Tomorrow I'm heading to toronto to meet up with my architect nephew for lunch.  But one thing's for sure, right now.

I HATE deviled eggs.

Here we go again

The State Assembly of NY just made it all right for gay men and women to marry members of their own sex.  Of course, NOM and their scumsucking followers are threatening to derail it, if they can.  I feel such a sense of deja vu, all over again.  I was in California when the courts extended marriage rights to gays and look what happened there -- the Mormon church funded a ballot initiative that used lies and distortions to scare people into voting to end those rights, which then had to be overturned by the courts, again...and is still ongoing 3 years later.  I hope it doesn't happen in New York...but people thought it wouldn't happen in California and it did.  So we'll see.

I, personally, don't believe in marriage, no matter who it's between.  My father had five of them, my mother...four.  I have a brother and sister each on their second, and of all my friends I only know one couple who are still together...no, two.  All the rest are divorced and remarried or seeing new people.  Most of the "defenders" of marriage -- like Newt Gingrich, John McCain and John Hagee -- are RE-married, and Newt's divorces were especially nasty.  Hell, I even knew one guy who'd been divorced and married four times before he was twenty-three, and that's not mentioning the marriage he broke up.

So my experience with marriage has been that it's a dismal failure, so I can't even begin to understand why anyone cares about it.  Yes, it comes with certain legal guarantees...but that'll only count in states that recognize the marriage, and the IRS and immigration STILL will not automatically accept gay marriage for anything they have jurisdiction over nor will they until all the Bushies are driven out.  So if you have a gay marriage and go to Florida and your partner gets sick and may even be dying, you won't be allowed to see them or make any decisions on their behalf, not like you would with a heterosexual marriage.  And good luck getting that to change, even through the state courts.  Even if you have documentation proving you have the right to do it.  They won't give a shit.  Same goes for marrying someone from another country; immigration'll make your life hell when you try to get that past them.

On top of this...very few people are like geese or wolves; the vast majority cannot mate for life unless forced to (which is how it used to be in the US and still is in some Catholic countries).  So why DO they try?  Why do people buy into the idea that marriage is great and wonderful and the perfect ideal?  It's not like you need it to have sex, anymore.  To me, it's surrendering your freedom.  Like having kids is surrendering your freedom...until they're grown.  Usually.  Yet our world is set up to emphasize how everyone ought to do it...how they HAVE to do it to gain certain rights and privileges.

Man...I'm rambling.  Gotta stop.  But I just got done with the psychotic break part of LD and am still in Daniel's freaked out state. And then I got the first idea for the book's cover from the publisher...and it's nice enough, but I don't think the art department read the book; they just glanced at the synopsis I sent for the back cover.  I mean, I love the isolated feel of the cabin, but the building is just too damn small.  It needs to look more like a ski lodge, not a one-room shack; it's owned by people who have MONEY.  And the title should read "The Lyons' Den".  Oh, and I find it especially funny that the man's tits are over my name.  Too bad he's not somebody I'd bother to look at twice.

Hm...I wonder if they'd add a pistol to the cover?  Maybe under "...Den"?

See?  I'm being a bitch.  I'd probably be working on divorce number fourteen if I'd been married.  Hell, I'm hard enough to deal with when we're just friends or co-workers...and that's with me trying to be nice for the short time we're together.  Imagine me having to do that for 16 hours a day.  I'd go nuts.

Not that I'm not already.

It's the end of the world...

Or close to it.  The GOP has decided to play chicken with the Democrats over the budget ceiling, threatening to not let the nation borrow more money unless Social Security and Medicare are slashed and there are no tax hikes.  This despite even the Chamber of Commerce saying, "Don't do it."  The problem is, you can't negotiate with a rabid dog...and the Republican party has, quite seriously, gone completely insane.  So how to you get a organization run by madmen and maniacs to do what is right?  You can't, not unless they want to...and they don't.  And you can thank the idiots who supported the Tea Party for this.  People let themselves get stampeded into believing a pack of lies put out by the GOP and the attack dogs of the Koch Brothers, and now they're reaping the whirlwind.  The bastards.

So how do you prepare for the chaos soon to follow?  I honestly do not know.  I may wind up living with my sister in San Antonio and eking out a living doing God knows what, since I make my way in a field that will be hit hard by any economic turmoil. My youngest brother will be in even worse shape.  And the fucking Democrats, lead by our wuss-in-chief, aren't doing a damned thing more than they have to in trying to combat it.  It's sort of like watching two ships gliding along on a collision course and neither one seems to be changing course as they pass the point where they can maneuver to avoid crashing, even though it might mean both will sink.

Robert Reich has it right.

Slowly I march...

Step by step, inch by inch...it almost sounds like  the "Slowly I turned" skit from "The Three Stooges" -- or Abbot and Costello or God knows who actually first came up with it.  The best version I've ever seen is this one, off "I Love Lucy."

What's even more hysterical is, later in the show she actually does the whole routine in pantomime as Ricky is leading his band in the song, "Martha."  Watch the video; imagine the hysteria.

Thinking about it, Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett can make me roll on the floor with laughter, over and over.  The closest male who's done that to me is Donald O'Connor, and that was during his "Make 'Em Laugh" bit in "Singin' In The Rain".  It seems female comedians are funnier than male ones.  I wonder why?  Is it because we expect men to be idiots while women are the prim and proper ones or just scatterbrains?  Then Carol Burnett appears at the top of the stairs in a green velvet dress while doing a send-up of "Gone With the Wind" and has a curtain rod atop her shoulders, and you nearly die laughing.

I think the funniest skit I ever saw was when Carol Burnett was playing an escape artist for whom nothing ever went right.  The set-up was that a trunk she's supposed to escape from while underwater collapses the moment she sits on it, showing how flimsy it is, and her handcuffs won't stay closed.  But apparently the producers got the idea of fixing it so the trunk did NOT collapse like it's supposed to and the cuffs stayed locked.  Jesus, her reactions as she tried to get everything to work like it did during rehearsal...I was choking and barely able to breathe, I was laughing so hard.

Damn, I wish I could add something like that to my writing...but I think comedy like this works because of the performance.  I mean, I DID do something like it in a goofy little script called "The Lavender Curse" -- where a butch cop's mind winds up in his less-than-beloved mother-in-law's body, and vise versa, just as he's about to make a huge arrest and she's about to be in a senior lady beauty pageant.  The comments back were -- "Needs to be funnier."  So tell me -- what's funnier than having the mother-in-law's estranged husband show up in her bedroom and rather obnoxiously wanting to get amorous with his wife while the cop's mind is in her body?

I'm sounding like a pissed-off writer, again.  Gotta quit that habit.

More done on LD in steps and stages, as well.  I redid chapter 7 because the timing was wrong for about 20% of the interaction between Daniel, Ace and Van.  It worked...it just didn't work completely.  Now it's a lot happier...and the book is now up to 300 pages.  Seems that I AM channeling Tolstoy.  Or Dickens.

Want one...

Have you seen this?

 It's a 21st century Winnebago, basically.  You can go camping in it...so long as you're not doing off-road in uneven terrain.  Hell, you can live in it, if you want, it's the fold-out kind of set-up.

These diagrams show you how it works, and the bed is over the driver's seat.  Plus it's electric and runs off the sun; there are solar panels on the roof.  Talk about a tiny carbon footprint.  Me want.

Of course, I could just win the lottery and buy a little Renault Kangaroo Mini, fix that up to be a sleeper in the back and toodle all over Europe in it, like a modern day hippie.  No apartment needed, just a drop box for mail that I'd have to go to every so often.  I'm sure I'd get sick of it after a while...but then again, you never know; I may be a gypsy at heart.