DVR/Tivo run down this week

-Reaper

I laughed my ass off. I came in knowing it was light hearted and riding on the coat tails of the current comic-superhero trend going on. I will be watching it again although Kevin Smith only directed the pilot so far as I know so we will see where this goes. I wonder if there was a run on Dirt Devil hand-held’s.

-Chuck

Once again, I laughed quite a bit. Being a software engineer by trade I got all of the jokes and enjoyed the set up. I like Adam Baldwin from his FireFly/Serenity days. I am excited to see where this goes. Gratuitous underwear scenes of the hot secret agent are worth at least another weeks worth of attention. I have yet to encounter a porn site that melts your computer. I wonder if Al Gore was the tech consultant.

-Heroes

The whole rehash of the cheerleader conflict was a huge let down for me. The Japanese hero being an Englishman was good. The rest of the story lines were ok. I am dying to know what Mommy Petrelli and Daddy Hero’s powers are. Parkman is my favorite story line. I want to see Noah wtf own some ass for the good guys this season.

-Eureka

This week’s episode was the first one in a long time that I have not laughed out loud. I feel like they are getting too dramatic for the shows premise. I like this show a lot and hope it stays strong but they will need to swing it back to the comedic side of things with deadly consequences. I think they made a mistake by weakening the sexual tension between Jack and Allison. But what the fuck do I know?

What’s Left?

Journeyman – Not sure about this one. Guy reminds me of Anthony Michael Hall for some reason.

The Unit – Dennis Haysbert is the shit and the rest of the cast and show are pretty damn good as well.

Haunted – Some Mathew Fox show on Sci-Fi I hadn’t seen or heard of. Fallen – Kind of a nut when it comes to guardian-fallen-death angels for reasons which will become apparently shortly…

And now I want to talk about Scrubs.

I hadn’t watched the show until recently when 80% of the Comcast cable line up syndicated it. I am fairly certain you can watch scrubs 24 hours a day if your channel surfing skills are above average.

It dragged me. I love the characters, the dialogue, the stories and it makes me laugh all the time. So for my 35th birthday my dear wife bought me the first season on DVD. I am almost done with all of the episodes and I will go back and watch the commentary on them as well.
It’s a great show and I recommend it to anyone who’s likes quirky comedy (give a shout out if you remember Herman’s Head!) with a lot of heart and great dialogue.

"I'm no Superman"

-Jim

Brief Notes

I will be 35 tomorrow.

So many clocks are ticking its making my head spin. A good portion of the writing community seems to think that I am too old to start a writing career. My hair has noticeable gray (thanks sweetie). And to top it all off I can’t find a decent MMO to play to save my life. It feels like the entire gaming industry is incapable of an original thought and afraid to pop that Blizzard tit out of their mouth and quit making World of Warcraft clones.

Writing is going well despite my age. After frustrating iterations of attempting to write off of weak outlines I went back to square one. Grabbed a well known beat sheet example and filled that out. Yes it was Blake Snyders. I’ve met the guy personally and I like him and his approach. I then expanded the beat sheet into scene headings, added a few descriptions, included some notes on twists I wanted to include and a list of characters. I jotted down some general settings/location notes on some of the scenes to get me thinking about where all this takes place and started writing.

What a fricken difference let me tell ya. I’ve read quite a few screenwriting books up to this point; my night stand is piled high with them. Until you start doing it yourself, fail, and then go back and tweak-merge-adopt-adapt-modify a system that works for you, writing isn’t a whole lot of fun. It’s really is a breath of fresh air and the wheels are really starting to turn.

I also began preliminary writings on the other projects I want to do. Wordplay and John August are big on having several projects in some stage of development. I took that to heart and off I went creating a high level beat sheet of my “techie comedy” and a short story piece on my sci-fi space adventure. With three stories at various stages and my “primordial soup” notebook full of ideas and tidbits writing is constantly in my head and it’s a blast.

I also find myself really excited when I find a good title. Some people like to leave that open till later. I find myself really wrapping myself around a good clever title and it seems to drive me to write and keeps things exciting.

Most of these are newbish revelations to the pros but like any job, career or hobby you really don’t get it until you work things out for yourself. It is nice to be pointed in the right direction by a very helpful and giving scribosphere.

A few other thoughts….

Once again the Mariners suck. Thank god my wife bought tickets to early season games when they were still worth the price of admission.

The Seahawks killed me last week. Hasselbeck and Alexander decided to have a team meeting on the Arizona 37 yard line with less than 2 minutes to go, and dropped the fricken ball a which point the rest of the game went like this:
Denial - Oh hell no that just didn’t happen.
Anger - What the fuck are you ass clowns doing? Son of a bitch are you kidding me?
Bargaining - Is there a flag? Call time out? Do over? Mike, say something!
Depression- Fuck, the season is over.
Acceptance - Who’s playing the late game?

After I slipped into a semi-coma on the couch from being blown through the grief fire hose my son came up to me, patted me on the head and told me it would be ok. It was.

If you value your cuddle time or being able to roll over and spoon your wife/husband/whatever, do NOT buy a sleep number bed. The bed is split into two sides where in each person can set the firmness of his/her/it’s side using a control. As comfortable as this is, any attempt to traverse to the other side of the bed to see your hopefully better half is problematic. Let me explain.

I have a fairly high sleep number which means my mattress if firm, i.e. pumped up with air. My wife sleeps on a cloud thus her side of the mattress is deflated quite a bit. I literally fall of a fucking cliff anytime I cross midfield. So now I am wedged in between my mattress and the wife who is elbowing the shit out of me to get the fuck back on my side. Inversely my lovely wife has to clip caribiners to the headboard and use a rope system to get onto my side of the bed. In the event that one of us makes it successfully onto each others sleep space the sleep number is all screwed up because it doesn’t adjust for two people. So you’re together yet bitchy and uncomfortable. That’s hot.

For added difficulty have your 4 year old son constantly fuck with your controller so you truly never know what setting your bed will be at when you get in. There is good news however! Hours of fun can be had if you wait until your partner begins to set their number. As the mattress is inflating/deflating to reach the desired firmness secretly place a leg or appendage on their side of the bed thus screwing with the pressure calibration. They will spend hours tossing and turning and readjusting their number. I advise you do this only on the weekend.

Thanks for reading.

-Jim

The Mistress

I’ve had a mistress off and on for better part of a decade now.

She is a sweet, loving, nurturing, torturous, life sucking, murderous, attention whore. I’ve encouraged my brothers, friends, even my wife to jump on her over the years. I suspect when my son comes of age I will encourage him to get a piece as well.

As you would expect my wife hates her. We’ve had our share of fights over her and who I spend my time with. My argument is would she rather me be down at the bar getting smashed or playing with the mistress?

The good news is she is cheap, coming in around $10-$15 a month with an initial “get to know you fee” of around $50.

I am of course referring too MMORPG’s. In layman terms Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. If you haven’t heard of World of Warcraft by now I suspect you still get your news in paper form.

There is no bigger obstacle in my writing that this wench. It takes so much will power to step away from the keyboard and do some writing. I am not the only with this problem of course. http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/seven-things-warcraft

After reading that blog I kicked my mistress to the curb. Uninstalled WoW and haven’t looked back. Even when my gamers group posted the link to the new WoW expansion I could care less. It’s a good feeling.

But like any good feeling it calls me…every day. So now I play a Warcraft III mod called DoTA. Complex, fun and games usually last an hour. I can get one in before I settle down to write. Problem is I’ve been getting in 2-3 before I start writing and its slowing progress. Gonna have to kick in the will power and bring it back down to moderation.

The thing is I love these games. I love the worlds, being something powerful and cool on the screen, accomplishing tasks, defeating enemies, being recognized for good play. Pretty much all the things any normal human being would want right?

What better way to get all of these things and more than to create it? Build the worlds, make your own rules, imagine the heroes, live their adventures, pit them against your worst fears and conquer them. This, to me is what writing is about. This is what motivates me to create stories.

Cack-handed

“There are many colloquial terms used to refer to a left-handed person. Some are just slang or jargon words ('cack-handed'), while others may be offensive or demeaning, either in context or in origin. In more technical contexts, 'sinistral' may be used in place of 'left-handed' and 'sinistrality' in place of 'left-handedness'. Both of these technical terms derive from sinister, a Latin word meaning 'left’” – Wikipedia

I new something was wrong with me but holy shit.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handed I am a stuttering, dyslexic, schizoid devil child who needs a sound beating anytime I use my left hand.

Oh but wait! While I am not stu…stu…stuttering through my plans for world domination with the evil twin (in my head) apparently I have a predisposition to creativity and intelligence!

“While there is an unresolved debate within the scientific community on how to operationalize both intelligence and creativity, some studies have demonstrated a small positive correlation between left-handedness and creativity/intelligence.” - Wikipedia

Although a small one…shit.

At the moment I am locked in a mortal battle with my left brain that wants me to go back and fix the writing I have up to this point but so far right brain and I are beating him back and things are progressing. If I allow evil lefty to overcome me I will literately write the same damn scene for-bloody-ever.

The story line is a little shaky but I am letting things flow naturally. I have no idea where I am going but I am having fun and good old righty hasn’t let me down yet. I like the free flow of ideas as I write. I don’t judge, I just listen and type.

-Jim

Dreams on Spec

A documentary following three aspiring screenwriters through their painful journey of trying to get their shit bought, made, noticed…anything.

All three subjects had industry contacts of some sort. I would have liked to have seen at least one of the subjects living in a dumpster and knocking on doors of agents trying to get noticed, on the outside looking in so to speak.

It seemed like the subjects were concentrating on their one great script that would ascend them to their WGA cards. One of the first things I learned when I began researching screenwriting was always be working on your next script, always be writing. The two subjects that really put all their energies in their current scripts for months, even years were unsuccessful. We entered the story of the third subject at the point where he already had a director interested.

I liked the show. It was funny and sad. It didn’t pull any punches on how tough the industry can be. The interviews with successful screenwriters throughout the movie were great. The DVD has an extended interview extra that’s worth the price in and of itself.

While the realities of becoming a screenwriter are far out there it doesn’t stop me from visualizing what I want and working towards those goals. I want to tell stories for a living.

-Jim