August 1 – August 30, 2002
| It’s almost the weekend! |
11:20AM 08/30/2002
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| I’m excited. I’m trying to get things done in a timely fashion over here so I can get the hell out. I’m not sure how to tell my bosses that I’m finishing everything on an accelerated timeline and not just slacking the hell off, but I’m going to figure it out. Maybe there will be lunch with Megan (I’m hungry already) and definitely tonight starts the weekend with an old-school party here in the city. My bike, which I’ve been going out of my way not to miss and cry about, is still at Cycle Therapy at the moment, with half the parts there and half somewhere in the ether. I’m hoping that maybe the parts will come in the 2nd shipment of the day, but I’m not holding my breath. What I am holding my breath for is a bit to eat. What’s good around here? I think I need a cookie. Or something. Any suggestions? |
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| something I noticed |
6:19PM 08/29/2002
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| When you sit and wait for people to stop bombarding you with problems to solve or ignore, it’s time to switch jobs, take a vacation, or find some fucking new headspace–that’s what I have to say about it. In my case, I think all three are in order. It’s so much smarter to pro-actively go after potential problems, to fight fires while they’re just embers, but I don’t have the drive to do that here and now, and that’s a problem for me. I haven’t written, I haven’t lost myself in the world of my imagination, I haven’t done much interesting often enough recently. I know that early career is a selfish time in life (less so than everything that comes before, but still selfish in the general i’ve-achieved-things scheme), but I need to get a little more selfish before I can get back to my old ways. I do like that I can send PAs home early when it’s up to me, but I also know it’s because I haven’t been burned by it yet. After that, I’ll be hard and unforgiving, the way a good coordinator should. |
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| these self-referential entries kinda suck |
9:47PM 08/28/2002
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| it has come to my attention that i update way more now that I have this update script right online and can do it from anywhere. I’m also getting proud of my growing body of reflection, I notice, as I peruse my log and am happy that I’ve written a lot of the things that I have. I wish it was a little more visual, this log, but I think that comes and goes with my time to actually scan or take pictures. Speaking of pictures, I have new ideas for a photo project that I’d really like to do–it involves one model, a couple of lights, about ten minutes of photography and 24 hours of computer work. Also some plexiglass and of two shades. Between that, the roof thing and the room thing, I’ve got a lot of ideas. I think it’s time to persue some of them. We’ll see how that works out. Pretzels for dinner aren’t so good for me, but at least I won’t go to bed hungry. I’m taking some to work tomorrow because we no longer have craft service. I need food during the day to function, and there’s none there. I can’t wait till labor day. good night. |
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| Time it goes so fast when you’re having fun |
3:54PM 08/28/2002
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| But it’s only wednesday, so I’m not sure how I’m going to survive until the weekend. I’m exhausted from last night, but Moby (who was on when I finally got the hell out of work and over there) sounded good. Last year was way better because there was less security and I actually got out on the pier, but last night I could hear fine and we were just far away. We bailed kinda early (“welcome to short-attention-span theatre!”) but then went down to Brooklyn and chatted until close to 2. Katie was falling asleep, but Matuya and I kept finding more tangents to jump onto. Unfortunately, despite her promise to me, Matuya supposedly fell asleep during the ride home, leading me to wonder whether there’s something in the water that makes LI girls incapable of staying awake for car trips. It’s weird. Anyway, work has been crazy (what else is new?), and I have absolutely no life, but that’s okay. Soon I will be unemployed and have absolutely no life. But at least I will write some and maybe learn some. How many pages have I written in the last 24 hours? 0. How many do I have left to write? Lots. I have a lot of reconciling to do, though, and I can’t be this tired and have my stuff make sense. Maybe like Monday night I can be rested enough to force that crap together. That’s IF it’s written. Which it won’t be–who am I trying to kid? There’s SO DAMN MUCH to do…. Geh. I’m going to stop writing this and open Final Draft. Thanks for motivating me. |
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| Sasha, Digweed & Moby tonight |
6:25PM 08/27/2002
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| until I collapse, that is. I’m f-in tired. Hopefully I’ll have a van. Then, at least, things will be easier. Interesting e-mail from Jared today. We’ll see if anything comes of it. Did I mention I’m tired? It’s all Sarah #1’s fault for introdicing me to Ron at that restaurant. Ah well–it’s all networking. |
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| Good morning… |
1:10PM 08/26/2002
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| It’s a shame that I have to sit inside on a perfect day such as this. There is a good side to that, though, because maybe i can tap a key or two to advance the characters in Oral Pleasures. That’s my goal. Of course, my goal was to do that last night, only to discover that my PC was going to keep me busy until late in the night. Damn computers. Anyway, it was a good weekend, if a little weird, because this is the first weekend that my entire family is away and apart. Suddenly I am the close kid, the one easiest to visit and be visited. My baby sister is at college now, Drew’s in Houston, I’m still here in NYC. What a weird world I have awakened to. I called my sister on Friday night to see how she was doing and you know what she told me? She said “Actually, I’m walking by the Dome right now…” and it just about made me explode. For how many years of my childhood was I going to be walking past the Dome on my way back to my dorm during my first weekend as a college student? How differently our worlds can turn out from the way we intend or imagine them to be is boggling my mind at the moment. I guess there’s some kind of lesson here about specifics versus generality, but I’m not sure how to articulate it. It’s like writing screenplays and understanding that there is the thread of the story, its life’s blood, the stuff that makes it unique, and then there is all the trapping, all the wrapping, and everything that, while important to the aesthetic, is ultimately unimportant and malleable to better serve the product as a whole. Some things can change, some things can’t. I didn’t go to Syracuse, but it didn’t change the thread of my life (which, professionally speaking, is making movies) in anything but perhaps an approach-oriented fashion. I wonder, sometimes, about the different paths that we choose and whether they even have an effect on the person that we become or if we choose the paths that we walk because the person we’re becoming is fighting to get out. This is getting dangerously close to a fate vs free-will rant, so I’ll stop it. Long story short (and completely off-topic, unless you’re sitting there wondering why the hell this mental regurgitation is ending up on the screen), I’m looking forward to having weekends off again (that starts this weekend, actually). I’m looking forward to having my mom visit and I’m looking forward to having all or most of a weekend with Katie, including the top-secret Monday off. I’m going from no weekends to three-day weekends in only days. Is that accelerating or decelerating? Whatever it is, it’s fast. Now that this update is done, I’ll close Netscape and open Final Draft, so in slow moments (like this one) I can write a little. But first I’m going to go get food. Maybe sushi. Wanna come? Oh, and lastly, I want to think of something to do with my mom and Katie and maybe a couple of other people on Saturday evening. I’m thinking maybe Arirang and a movie? Maybe something in the city and a movie? Maybe Planet Thailand’s Hibachi and a movie in the city. I think it should involve the city, maybe it should involve eating outdoors, and maybe it should involve a movie, but I’m flexible. Maybe it should involve the beach. Your suggestions on the board are welcome. I’m sorry I wrote so much. |
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| slowly coming around… |
10:38PM 08/25/2002
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| I had forgotten completely how much of a pain in the ass reconfiguring a totally blank HDD is. I have to get everything together, and in light of all the crap that I lost in this last crash, I know that I really aughta back my shit up more often. If only I had the foresight. Anyway, I think it’s about time for me to go to bed–morning brings work again. I owe some newsy updates, this much I know, and I owe some more changes to things that I’ve been meaning to change for a long time. I’ll try to get that stuff in order soon. | |
| still at work |
8:48PM 08/23/2002
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| can you believe it? i can’t. but I’m almost gone, actually. I only have one more thing to do before I am only waiting for Katie, so that’s good. Then I get to go out and party, albeit likely a truncated party because of how tired we (collectively) will be. At the moment, I’m fighting my desire to go downstairs to Liquid and start drinking heavily–it would impair my ability to drive Katie’s car, which I bet she won’t mind, given how much she’s driven today. Goodbye all. |
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| Sweep up the floors, open up the doors… |
9:03AM 08/23/2002
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| yeah turn on the lights, get ready for tonight. Nobody’s romantic cause it’s too early for dancing but here comes the music.Hi everyone. It’s Friday. I get Saturday off (but have to work Sunday – next Friday). I’m looking forward to tomorrow because I really love days off. I was looking at my finances and I was noticing that I would be doing pretty well on the saving money front if I didn’t have to spend so much on my bike. If I wasn’t so afraid of credit cards, I’d put the bike on my card and pay it off slowly. Unfortunately, I’m still paying everything from college off slowly, so I’m not trying to start that spiral again. Anyway, it’s good that I still have work for a few weeks. If it stopped today, I’d be in a helluva lotta trouble. All that aside, I have to figure out a time to write the major scenes for my movie that I feel are needed to push the characters into their necessary arcs. I think that’s a Sunday night thing, depending on the status of my returning visitors. Speaking of whom, Katie returns from her Florida trip tonight, so I get to see her finally. Between that, Lindsay’s party and my day off, I’m really looking forward to my weekend. If I can only write some on Sunday (between working and dropping off Italians at the airport), it’ll be a fun time, especially if everything goes off without a hitch. Time to go–it’s already nine o’clock and I’ve been shirking work for long enough. Emily is at Syracuse today, her first full day there, so everybody give her props for making it there. And give my mom props too, you know, for making it there. |
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| A few notes |
7:24PM 08/21/2002
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| it’s going to cost me $700 to get my bike back. The bike will be fixed, though, and that’s a good thing. “There but for you go I” is from Brigadoon. I didn’t remember last night, but I certainly knew, and, again, the internet saved me. There’s more, but it’ll have to wait. |
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| mo’ money… |
6:43PM 08/19/2002
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| So now it’s going to cost me like $500 to FIND OUT whether my bike is fix-able at all. What a pain in the ass. If it’s not, I’ll sell it for whatever I can sell it for and hope that it’s enough to keep me out of the poorhouse. I’ll use that money to, umm, buy a candle that I’ll light for the soul of my bike and the $3000 that it will have cost me in the 2 months that I owned it. You know, for someone that loves transportation, I’ve certainly had really bad vehicle luck in the past couple of years (witness the Van Debacle of 1999/2000 as irrefutable proof). I must have done some karmic-ly bad stuff to my Saturn or something. And I loved that car. | |
| I can’t believe that it’s almost 11. |
10:45PM 08/18/2002
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| My day off went quickly. It was a good day, too. Relaxing. Reminded me of what it’s like to have a normal life where I can work during the weeks and have weekends off, you know, from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. A good life, that. At least it seems like it from this vantage. I ended the day, basically, by having my feet in the ocean down at Coney Island. It was cool watching the moon rise through the sky; I could hear the waves and even with my eyes closed, there was no question where I was. It was a little depressing, though, because even though I was there, at a beach, it was just a reminder, really, and almost not at all like being at a beach. An odd thought, but one that got me to thinking that maybe the way my parents did it was all right–you know, making plans to have the week at the beach house in like November. It’s far ahead, but I’m almost at a point in my life where I can imagine things that far out. I think for a normal person, that’s not that amazing, but it’s taking me a long time to come to grips with the idea that I could arrange my life in advance like that. I mean, I don’t know what job I’m going to have in one month, much less one year–I don’t know what coast I’ll occupy or what lifestyle I will be surviving then, so how could I plan a vacation? I don’t know, maybe I can. We’ll see. Anyway, it’s a thought.When the waves slide up to your feet and engulf your toes, when the retreating sand pulled by an insistent tide leaves you sinking where you stand, when you can smell the waves before you can hear them, taste the salt on your tongue before the spray hits your face then your soul can be at peace–then you will know you’ve made it home. I would like to make it home more often. |
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| random thought. |
1:58PM 08/17/2002
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| When I was a kid, I stepped on dog crap relatively often. As an adult, I never seem to.Am I immune to this experience now? Have I outgrown it? Do I spend less time where dogs defecate? (remember that I live in New York where dogs’ crap decorates the gutters.)Anyway, that’s your random thought for the day. |
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| money? |
5:39PM 08/16/2002
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| so I called CycleTherapy. Can you imagine what it costs to get a motorcycle fixed in the most expensive city in the world? I couldn’t, but now I can. It makes me want to be a motorcycle towtruck driver. $60/hr just to pick up a bike? That’s pretty steep. Add to that the $65 fee for the tow itself, and you’re looking at easily $185 just to get the bike to the place. damn. And labor to fix is $60/hr. So this thing is going to hurt me. A lot. Anyway, my new “nothing can phase me” attitude is helping me, I think, like the grease that makes ducks’ backs waterproof. ******** this post was going nowhere until I talked with my mom. She helped me understand that there are priorities, and that I need to step up my level of attention to the things that really matter. It was a distressing wake-up call that I’ll not soon forget. Think about what’s important to you. Strip away the stuff you only think is important and you’re left with the stuff that actually matters. Now concentrate on that short list. If your list isn’t about three lines long, go back to the stripping-things-out phase and try again. That’s all for now. |
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| “Sometimes I feel like the world’s on my shoulders…” |
4:56PM 08/15/2002
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| This was, shall we say, a terrible morning. My bike? Turns out that I broke it worse on Saturday when I was trying to fix it. Weak. Talk about a blow to the confidence. I think I have to call and have it trucked. There’s another hundred bucks to the fixing bill. I don’t know if I’ve got the money to get it fixed, in fact, but I have to have a working bike, or else I might as well sell it. THEN (as if that wasn’t enough), I headed back inside to see if i could post a help message online, and my HDD failed. I almost flipped out, needless to say, but then I took a deep breath and went to the subway. Man, what a morning. Whatever, the day has begun, I’ve been at work for six hours, and I’ve got at least nine more to go. This day is going to kind of suck. |
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| Whose house? Drew’s House! |
6:03PM 08/14/2002
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 Here it is–ready and available for all you stalkers out there. This is where my brother (Hot! Single! Tall!) is going to be living. Did I mention that the man has a pool? Oh, yeah, a pool, and he knows how to use it.City of Houston, hide your daughters and lock up your wives, it’s the king of swing and he’s got a brand new pad! Nobody is safe–nobody wants to be–ready yourselves for a coolness explosion. “Why would anyone want to live in Houston?” has just become “How could you live anywhere else?”; there’s no turning back THIS tide. The die is cast, as they say, and we’ve rolled a natural 20 on the stylin’ attribute table, which gives us a bonus of +5 to charm. Everybody look out, because as geeky as that last sentence was, there is twice as much smooth in that new place. Just look at the map–it’s a STAR that marks the spot, for god’s sake! A star. Can… you… deal… with… THAT? Yeah. Congratulations, Dude, congratulations and have fun. |
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| every once in awhile… |
8:34AM 08/14/2002
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| there’s something that piques my interest and I don’t know why. Such is the case with this article over on slashdot. Stuff I’m not really thinking about and that’s unrelated in every way to my life, but somehow seems relevant anyway must get filed away into some bin in my mind somewhere for use later, and I think this is what’s interesting about it for me, at least this morning. That’s all for now. | |
| ramblings |
1:39PM 08/12/2002
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| so yesterday, I had yet another idea for a movie. it’s good to be having them again, but, man, waves of creativity are coming in shorter and shorter tides recently, with longer and longer periods where the sandbar seems to stretch forever. Anyway, this new idea is uniquely un-me-like, and interests me anyway. pretty cool. Anyway, work is busy, and were it not for the fact that I really like the people that I work most closely with, it would be a pretty unhappy experience for me. I’m beginning to wonder if the experience at Bickford was some kind of extreme fluke. Maybe I just need to get out of the office. If I can’t make my movie next (which I desperately hope I can), then maybe I’ll try to work on a set somewhere. It’s all about shorter movies, I think, that, and kickass movies that will make everyone jealous. I mean, if they’re not going to pay me well, I might as well have fun. Also, being tired all the time doesn’t help things. Hopefully over the next few days I can recover a little. The catch-22 of it all is that i wish i wasn’t tired so I could have more fun, but having more fun is what makes me tired in the first place. woe is me. Anyway, it’s Monday and I have to keep telling myself that because I think I’m working every day until Sunday. I guess since I don’t have much of a life, it’s no big deal. Heeheehee. |
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| better than last time, sicker than normal |
8:31AM 08/11/2002
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| good morning. last time I posted I was on the front edge of this illness. This time, it’s more like the middle, I think. I hope it’s the end, but i’m sort of doubting it. I think it’s a stomach virus, and it’s immensely unpleasant, and that’s all I’ll say about it. Well, that and the fact that I’ve lost six or so pounds since I started this job and if I don’t get better soon, another six will definitely follow. After that, I’ll have to amputate a limb to lose more weight. Anyway, I ended up getting yesterday off, which was amazingly fortuitous, considering how awful I felt in the morning. It was also good because Katie ended up having a rough couple of hours with one of her friends and ended up bailing on the whole Yankee thing and coming down earlier than we’d anticipated. It was nice because we don’t get to spend that much time together and since I’m not going to see her for 2+ more weeks now, seeing her much of the day yesterday was a treat. For those of you keeping score, dinner was great–I wish I could have eaten more, actually, but eating a lot is out of the question at the moment. Also, for anyone that doesn’t frequent my board (i’m not sure that anyone that reads here wouldn’t also click over there some), the new news is that Andrew got a place. He’s moving in this week sometime. Congratulations are in order, I think, so go tell him so on the board. Anyway, it’s time to make with the working–I can’t believe that I have to be here today. I’m all by myself today, too, which should be interesting. I’ll let you know, of course. |
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| help! I need a back-eotomy! |
5:29PM 08/09/2002
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| man, i’m in severe back pain. coupled with a headache (think they’re related?) and my weak stomach today and yesterday, I’m in sad shape. Today has been the busiest day of all time, and it’s hard not to implode, esp. with the idea that I will likely have to work on Sunday now. Garsh. I really needed Sunday to work on my bike. damn. Anyway, back to work. |
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| I saw the SIGNS |
11:03AM 08/07/2002
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| I think it was too self-aware and put-on to be actually scary, although there were some genuinely creepy moments in the movie. It was good to see something that played well with the idea of suspense through imagination–the audience was jumping when nothing was happening, purely through anticipation. Anyway, it was a fun flick, I’m glad I saw it finally. Today is something else, and if i wasn’t so damn tired all the time, I’d be working to see Spy Kids 2. Maybe it’ll fall into my lap. Anyway, the weather has been amazing since yesterday–exactly the way summer should be. If only there was volleyball and a beach. If only my cousin would get back to me…. *sniff!* Suprisingly, this week has been pretty good so far (but we’re not halfway done yet, I guess), and I’m banging out an idea for something *not* to write immediately, but instead to pitch. We’ll see what happens with that. |
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| an interesting quote |
8:16PM 08/05/2002
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| There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight. -Vaclav Havel, writer, Czech Republic president (1936- )Hammonds likes this guy, and I like the Czech republic, and I love that a major political power is also a great playwright. That’s all for now. | |
| the thing about site traffic |
2:30PM 08/04/2002
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| it’s an interesting thing to me, the never-ending quest for more hits, more traffic, more visibility. I’ve recently started looking at Alexa, a website ranking engine that uses its own toolbar to track users’ page views on the web. It’s a little bit like a neilsen box, I guess, although for some reason, I don’t want to get an Alexa toolbar the way I want to get a neilsen box. Anyway, my statistics are here. They rank me in the early millions as far as where I fall on the “most visited website ever” list. That’s cool, I guess. I don’t know. The Alexa thing makes me wonder if there aren’t other sites that do anonymous ranking of web sites, but a quick search for “website ranking” on Google turned up only links on how to best get ranked well in search engine queries. Speaking of that, I’m first when you search for ‘clapboard’ on google. That makes me happy. My happy little dot-org is above the identically-named dot-com that I wish I could buy just to post a redirect. Anyway, this all adds up to nothing but an interesting way to spend some time inside on a beautiful Sunday. I’ve actually been on the roof quite a bit today, writing, chatting on the phone, giving my plants some time in the sun. It’s been nice. I’m going to go catch Signs later with Katie, so that should be cool. We’ll see if they fixed the tracking problem that Michael reported. Last night was a lot of fun, there was decadence (a sushi boat that almost sunk like the Titanic and too much sake), dancing (to a decent coverband at the Wicked Monk), random stripping (some not-very-hot girls stripped down to their skivvies on top to dance to the second set of the band’s act), a little impropriety, and a lot of fun had by all (or most). Anyway, time flew. It also flew while Russ and I workshopped what turned out to be the first act of ORAL PLEASURES. We got some really solid stuff out of our truncated timeline, though, and I think we can have some new pages real soon. We’ll see what happens with that, anyway. The script is getting better. I’m getting a clue about how to finance it and how it will be shot. The problem with having a vivid imagination (other than the unintentional flights of fantasy that happen all the time) is that I can build entire empires in my head in the time it takes to spell e-m-p-i-r-e, and then when things don’t work out that particular way, I have a hard time not getting frustrated. I have to concentrate on less empire building and more practical research. More plot work. More scheduling. I can’t wait till fall. Does JetBlue fly to Houston? I’m off to check. Thanks for reading. |
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| note the little changes |
7:38PM 08/03/2002
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| for awhile, I’ll run a photograph at the top of the screen on the right that I’ll change on some regular basis. The ‘Weekly’ tag is sort of a misnomer, but who really cares, right? Anyway, take a look. This is the beginning to a start of a new-content push that I’m starting. Video, too, should hop up here soon. It’s all a matter of time. | |
| Oral Pleasure |
2:03PM 08/02/2002
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| Last night, after the debacle of dinner in midtown (does anyone else think that eating in midtown is usually a soulless experience?), I chatted with Russ about script revisions. He had some interesting and very valid points regarding character arc and structure, and the way they meshed with the things that I was thinking about Angelina’s arc and heightening tensions between acts 2 & 3 psyched me up. We’re set to have a pretty good meeting about changes that need to happen on Saturday before it’s time to party on Saturday night. Maybe most of the work will be done before the end of the weekend. That would be pretty great, especially considering that I haven’t even started a ‘real’ schedule yet or anything like that. I have a target budget, though, so it should be possible to orchestrate the two relatively quickly. Maybe I can even learn how to make a schedule and a day/night breakdown the right way. Wouldn’t that be special? Anyway, dinner last night wasn’t bad, once it got underway–it was just a tough thing to start. After that, I walked across to Broadway and then for a long time downtown while chatting with Russ. It meant that I was up late (because walking 30 blocks downtown at a leisurely pace and then taking 3 trains home is a slow process), but as I said, it was all worthwhile. Tonight should be a low-key thing, maybe something that allows for a movie and a drink or something, so I can be rested for tomorrow. Maybe I can actually work out an fight tomorrow beause I think my roommate will even be home. That would rule. |
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| Happy Birthday to Emily! |
11:23AM 08/01/2002
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| Yeah. I remember doing this last year. But last year I had a picture. This year I don’t. I’m a much worse brother this year, too. Oh, for shame.Anyway, thoughts of my babiest of baby siblings growing up into a wonderful, mature adult aside, my day has begun swimmingly. It’s a little less hot this morning, and I started the day off right (complete with even eating a little). I’m tired, of course, because I’ve graduated to six hours of sleep per night, but that’s okay, because I’m doing less physical activity than I usually do. As APOC, I sit at a desk all day, which takes a lot less energy than running around like a madman on that last gig. It does, however, require a lot of patience, which has never been a long suit of mine. Both things have their ups and downs, and neither come with the joy of creating something that can be called my own, really, unless you count my myriad of lists that I’m making. Fun. I read two Tumminio scripts in the last two days–both funny, well-thought out pieces of work that are a lot more personal than a casual glance would imply. The first Tumminino co-authoring attempt (between Mike and Phil, actually) worked out in the form of a script about a moron and his friends that open a Penguin restaurant. Work calls, unfortunately, so I have to go. Happy birthday to Emily is thing one on my list today, so ammend the list below to read as such. Everyone wish her a happy birthday. |
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Looking for more insanity? Check out the logs in the ARCHIVE. They’re full of this kind of nonsense.
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