Superheroes et al. (Holiday Report – part 2)

Sweetie and I spent a week with my father and step-mother. Activities involved were: golf (only once), hiking (twice), watching TV (every day), eating pie (four times [twice for breakfast!]), [redacted] (twice), hot soak in the rec room hot tub (twice), and eating out (twice). It was a good time and my folks were very generous, but we overstayed by a day or so.

We went out to the links the day after we arrived and I popped my shoulder out on the first tee. It’s an injury that occurs when I’m tired and nervous, haven’t played for a while, feel rushed and haven’t warmed up properly. Some of you may remember that I did the same thing during a golf excursion as part of a certain Las Vegas bachelor party. It hurts and is a bummer. Regardless, I hit some good shots, and ended up having fun. Dad, my stepmom and I tried to go back out the day before we left, but a crazy storm blew in and we decided against it. I have, as you might guess, a desire to compete with my father at golf. The dream of every son is to thrash his old man, and the golf course is our squared circle.

-- Post script to our first day of golfing: there was a pack of teen-agers on a mesa above the course who were shouting mockeries through a PA system at the golfers. For example: "Good show, old bean!" And, " I like your pink shirt." It was very distracting and also totally surreal. --

Sweetie and I drove up to Zion one day. We spotted a Golden-crowned Kinglet and had to stop for an adult deer crossing the road to meet it’s brothers. We hiked up a trail (the Hidden Canyon trail, if I remember correctly), and found ourselves alone hundreds of feet over the canyon. I hung my feet over the drop-off and laid down on the trail. Looking up the vertical walls of the canyon in to the sky I had ten seconds or so of transcendence. Amazing. That’s why people take drugs, man.

We watched Spider-man 2 with the parents and also The Day After Tomorrow, which my dad called “really good science-fiction.” I guess he just wanted us to know that he didn’t endorse the film’s lefty politics.

We ate cherry pie with strawberry ice cream, and pecan pie with whip cream.

[redacted]

The rec room pool was very nice. The “weight room” was a treadmill, a stepper, a stationary bicycle, a small rack of chrome dumbbells and a tower of weight machines assembled, apparently, by Spanish Inquisition. The rec room hot tub was great.

Now, if you get to southern Utah, you must check out the Blue Bunny. Blue Bunny is a sit-down ice cream parlor and so much more. We went there during the “Santa Claus Pajama Party” and, as a former professional Santa, the Blue Bunny Santa is as close as you get to the real thing. This guy was good.

Anyway… There’s so much more to say about the trip. We were visited by the superbeing D-Nyal, whose power to pretend ignorance, regift presents, parrot his evil masters, and self-medicate is far greater than that of moral men. He can only be defeated by the parakeet Paraclete - David Allen Sibley. Thank you, David.

Holiday Report

Writing to you from Utah today. Please enjoy a classic Free Media Report article from a few years ago.

Starbuck Finalizes Uni Deal

LOS ANGELES – Coffee giant Starbucks Coffee Corporation announced today that it has finalized its purchase from Vivendi Universal of subsidiary Hollywood movie studio Universal Pictures.

Howard Shultz, Chairman and Chief of Global Strategies for Starbucks, announced the acquisition today at a board of directors meeting in Seattle. Starbucks bought Universal Studios and its lucrative film library outright for 5.2 billion dollars, nearly half a billion dollars less than the French company spent to purchase Uni from Matsushita in 1995. The move gives Vivendi a much need cash infusion that will help the beliegured company avoid bankrupcy.

Running of the studio will be supervised for Starbucks by current Executive VP of Merchandizing, Marketing and Brand Development, Melvin Hartwang, who will be promoted to Overseer of Studio Operations and will report directly to Shultz. Shultz said that Starbucks has been contemplating a move into the entertaiment industry for some time.

“We have the ability to make more films, cheaper,” Shultz said.
Changes in studio operations, which were outlined in an investor’s packet, include closing down Universal’s offices in Los Angeles, firing all household, clerical and writing staffs and moving essential employees to “film production plantations” in South America, East Africa and Indonesia.

“We can merge our current network of coffee producing real estate with our new film production business quite seamlessly. The cost for us to shoot in Costa Rica versus Los Angeles or even Canada will be pennies on the dollar. Using digital technology, we will be able to pump the footage Stateside for ‘roasting’, and then serve it up fresh at theaters or new micro-theaters in the stores,” Overseer Hartwang said.

When questioned about the ethics of runaway production, Hartwang said only, “Starbucks is very proud of its role as a good corporate citizen and we will continue to act in strict accordance with our own Corporate Social Responsibility Statement.”

Vivendi Chief Jean-Rene Fourtou, who replaced former head Jean-Marie Messier this summer, said after signing the the papers on his yacht anchored off the Grand Cayman Island, “good riddence.”

Starbucks trades on Nasdaq as SUBX and closed up 2 1/2 at 23.25 Friday.

Um, dude, it's take your pick day...

Door Number 1 – Fascism

Door Number 2 – Big Brother

Door Number 3 – Imperialism

I have a coworker who thinks that Bush is going to be impeached after the 2006 midterms. I think that’s wishful thinking, but, god, I’m wishing real hard. What’s scary about the neo-conservative philosophy is that it’s largely based on fear. Fear of poor people, fear of brown skin, fear of The Other. It’s especially hard to take that the White House authorized warrant-less domestic spying on behalf of protecting the people of the United States. His actions make us less American. It’s good that he’s still relatively young. There’ll be plenty of time for him to face the firing squad.

***

I want to throw some crazy props out to J.C. Coates. You are a baller among bloggers. Your stats are amazing. Double doubles on the comment boards. And a behind the back slam dunk with two dead dogs. All net!

RE: my use of “ludacris.”
I just didn’t know how to spell “ludicrous.” And I was too lazy to look it up, but I did know how to spell the rapper's name.

RAVE

As I see from my console, it has been nearly two weeks since my last post. I am sorry to all of you who were looking for some follow up. I sent ME a thank you card. NK is in London for two months. I have a few phone calls to make. One to a pair of writers, the S's (a strictly a get-to-know-you call). Another to an agent, PC, she's reading Sandow. Also to the fellow I ate Thanksgiving dinner with. My friend JTK and I are working on a pilot spec - a ludicris endeavor except for the fact that I know somebody who knows somebody who wants to look at it. I need to write a regular spec to make it fly. I don't have one. I'm thinking Scrubs. DS wants to send out Chronic Psycho after Sundance. That's the summary from the writing front.

Sweetie wants me to tell everyone that I beat her with a foam bat. I have never beat her with a foam bat.

My rave:

I am a huge fan of the redesign of the US currency. I love the new twenties and the overall look of the new bills. Classic with some modernist talking points. But it is in the realm of coinage that the new currency design is really taking flight. The state quarters have been, till now, mostly novelties (with the exception of the gorgeous Connecticut). However, the scheme has come of age with the introduction of the Kansas quarter. The new Kansas state quarter, if you haven't seen it, is beautiful. The usual image of Geo. Washington on the obverse, but on the reverse a humane and amazingly transcendent image of a buffalo among wild flowers of the plains. Absolutely sublime. Simplicity as art. After the confusing, inelegant jumbles of such quarters as (backstabber that I am) California and Minnesota, the Kansas shows the power of coinage as a venue for public art.

In addition, the new 2005 nickels are wonders of cutting edge design. The enlarged and slightly off-set image of Thom. Jefferson on the obverse brings a "cents" of motion to this piece. I particularly enjoy the way the scripted word "Liberty" seems to be flowing out from his mouth. Together with the buffalo reverse (which is a tribute to the original buffalo nickel and which the Kansas quarter evokes) these new nickels show that US currency can be both beautiful and meaningful.

Kudos to the U.S. Mint and the Department of the Treasury!

Out.

No title this week

The “holiday season” has come. Sweetie and I spent a nice day at home. She made pies and I went to the driving range. Then, we took one of Sweetie’s friends up on her invitation to Thanksgiving dinner. Very good food. I missed the traditional formal accoutrement of the holiday celebration, however. Would a table to sit at have been too much to ask for? Also, Sweetie’s friend’s boyfriend was a great and friendly guy, but a screenwriter. He’s made about as much money at it as I have, which is to say not a lot (maybe he’s made a little, I don’t know). Regardless, I almost always feel an awkward jealously thing when meeting other screenwriters. A big plus is that he has the potential to be a golf buddy.

(You thought I was going to get all introspective about my jealousy, but no.)

Typically, this time of year I feel a malaise. An ennui. I get grumpy. Why? Could it be that I don’t like to spend money on others? Maybe. Is it that the sun doesn’t provide the nourishment that it usually does? Could be. Is it lingering memories of my youth? Definitely. It sucks to have to pick which of your parents to spend Christmas with and that stuff sticks with you. (If you’re reading this and you are one of my parents, don’t beat yourself up about it. You did the best you could. I’ve got my issues, and I’m sure you have your issues.) This holiday grumpiness thing will come up in future posts. So be warned. But that's all for today.

Briefly:

- Walter, the guy who lived in his van on the street behind our house, has moved on. His truck and van are both gone. Where did he go? Did he migrate? Did the cops force him to go? I can’t say and I can't say I’ll miss him, but I’ll never forget him. Go with God, Walter.

- I had my meeting with ME at his house. It was cool. He made me coffee and we hung out. Just two writers shooting the bull. He didn’t want to read Chronic Psycho, but I didn’t care.

(Special to Sweetie’s mom, you could also send your support over the ethereal wires for me and DS to sell Chronic Psycho for low against mid to high sixes. [that’s Hollywood talk for “enough money to pay off all of our student loans and have enough left over for half of a house”.])

Chronic Psycho Qu'est Que C'est

The Chronic Psycho reading was last night. Had a good turn out. Sweetie and me were the only ones not to read. The script has come a long way since I batted it around with the other CP, our friend in Singapore. The script is, in descending order, a stoner-comedy-horror-sex film, although it’s clearer to say stoner-horror comedy with a couple short episodes of explicit sex, nudity and phantasmal genitalia.

All the readers were exceptional. People were laughing throughout the reading. Sweetie and I worked hard to set the right tone for the evening. If I had had my druthers it would have been in the afternoon, but it was difficult to find an afternoon that was good for everyone. The trick is that it seemed like it would be a party because it was at night, but really it needed to be more like work, because it is my work. I debated getting some weed for the reading, but ultimately didn’t. I didn’t want to put out alcohol either at first, but we put out some beers and a bottle of wine and it all worked out fine. My big worry was that people would get drunk or high and not have good feedback or not read their parts well. That turned out not to be an issue.

The most gratifying thing was, and this is corny, I know, was that people seemed to be genuinely entertained by the script and to enjoy it.

The next step is to start getting some attention to it. I’ll show it to ME (a big time comedy writer), perhaps he’ll read it. My friend DS is very interested in it, and in fact, he has been a driving force behind its development. He read the first draft and encouraged me to continue to work on it when most of the other comments were ambiguous or reflected confusion with the script. The script had an uneasy birth. Anyway, I believe that DS wants to send it around with the intention of getting it produced. My goal is to get paying work. That’s my mantra: Chronic Psycho brings paying screenwriting jobs.

A Post on "Getting Out There"

So the in the wake of the BigEvent the good work of our little nonprofit continues on. We have liquid assets for the moment so I’m going to buy some nice bookcases for the office. The preparations for next year’s awards begin as box after box of books come in to be judged. That’s why the need for bookcases. I’m also making a lot of phone calls thanking people. Which leads to...

I emailed big deal screenwriter ME (he’s the guy who polished my draft of the BigEvent script) yesterday. We’re going to get together next week for a chat about the “the business.” If I’m lucky he’ll agree to read Chronic Psycho. I’ll also tell him about Not for Profit, a sit-com I worked up last year for a contest. And since he created a sit-com that ran for five seasons he may be helpful. That’s the comedy angle.

I have also emailed RS, a big time working writer who I met at the awards. I asked him if it might be possible to chat. And if he agrees then I’ll ask him to read Sandow. He (and his wife) is completely in line with the “manifesting” and “positive vibration” action that is happening in my life right now. So I feel good about him.

There are two other writers who are also prime targets. I have not quite figured out the correct approach for them. Why I think of Hollywood people as skittish deer, I don’t know. Anyway. I have some comedy writing and some dramatic-period writing. Those are my two prongs.

My Free Will Astrology horoscope said this week, “People with less skill than you have won out because they had more raw drive than you. Now I'm alerting you to the possibility that the same damn thing could happen again soon unless you take vigorous action.”

Whether or not astrology is based in reality or not is something that I don’t want to debate. But let me tell you the truth of the above statement has moved me to vigorous action, and that’s the important thing.

I want to be able to support me and Sweetie (and little Rabbi Jr. when he or she comes along) with my writing.

Also, we are reading Chronic Psycho this weekend at my house. Having a few people over. It's kind of scary to open the thing up like that, but I think it's a great and important step.

BigEvent = Rebirth! (this is part 2, read part 1 first!)

5:30 p.m. The biggest fundraiser of the year approches in an hour and it looks like the eighty page program book will not arrive in time. For all the time and money we spent on it this is a disaster. It also means that the guests won't know what's going on, and the funders won't see their ads. This is a BFD.

I am nearly shivering with nerves. Thankfully our room captain has ordered his minions to move the twenty pound gift bags – did I mention that there were 400 of them? - from the staging area into the ball room. They are also placing them under the seats, a separate job. Didn’t have nearly enough people for this thing. There was no way we could have done it ourselves. It’s hard to get volunteers for the middle of the day on a weekday. Thankfully, Kid and her team of eye-rolling undergrads have done a bang-up job on the silent auction and it is now finished. Unfortunately that also means that they are going up to the room to change. No more help. I see the bag stuffers going up to change into their party clothes as well. I can only hope that my team has stuffed enough bags.

I too must go up the room to change. The thing will start soon. I’m wandering around. Not quite blindly. I made photocopies in the hotel business center. At $2.49 a minute it came to $18. That’ll go on the expense sheet. I need to change. The show must go on. I don’t know when it happened that I became the primary contact with the printer. I think no one else wants to know that the iceberg is coming. So. With Sweetie trailing me, she’s my booster tonight, I decide to go up to the room to change. No tribute/progam book. Failure is pushing her arm down my throat and stirring my insides in preparation of ripping my viscera out through my mouth.

But before I do, I decide to make one last call to the printer. Standing outside the valet parking, surrounded by cocktail dresses and sport coats, I call the printer.

“Can I talk to Jim?” I say.
“He wants to talk to you,” the guy who answers the phone says.
A pause.
“Hey, Rabbi, how’s it going? Did you get the poster and the postcards? I sent them over separately?”
“Yeah, Jim, I got them, thank you. What’s up with the tribute book?”
“I sent it over with two guys. I sent two guys in a white van.”
I look up and rounding the corner is a white van.
“It’s a white van?”
“Yeah, I sent two guys…
The van pulls up next to me, blocking half of the valet parking lane. The driver leans out the window.
“You from the printer?” I ask the driver.
“Yeah,” he says.
“They’re here, Jim. Thank you.”

I hang up the phone and me and one of the guys take half the books inside while the driver directs traffic around his lane blocking double – no triple! – parking job. I hold up the sample book for the event planner. Anuses unclench.

The helper and I go back out. We get the last half of the books.

The rest of the event went off well. I showered and changed. Sweetie ironed my shirt. My god I love her. I went downstairs and helped the PR folks round up photo ops.

The last-minute-script-rewriting board member arrive with an insert page for the MC. She gave it to him. Of course when the program actually started he ignored it.

Also, I ran into NK. (Read my summary of my relationship with NK here.) The first thing he said to me was, “I owe you a phone call.” I was so gratified. He had gotten Sandow but hadn’t yet read it. But he said that he would. I told him how I had been fretting about not contacting him directly when I sent Sandow. “Don’t worry. Just keep sending out your stuff,” he said. It was incredibly heartening.

The program went on. Sweetie and I split a meal. Some of the program was awkward, some of the speeches were blah, but it did tend to get better as it went on. And Gore Vidal has more stagecraft than Madonna. Wonderful.

Wonderful.

BigEvent = Holy Crap! (part 1)

I am writing this at 3:30 a.m. the night after the annual Big Literary Event. I tried to go to sleep at 12:30 and then woke at 3 a.m. with the adrenaline still working on me like Bolivian marching powder. I just had a shot of some Canadian whiskey that my father gave me last Christmas – the only alcohol in the house – to take the edge off. I hate that crap. Still I needed to do something.

My anxiety nearly overwhelmed me. I was very close to curling into a corner screaming and crying. I was eating my own head and digesting my own heart.

How can I explain in this short forum how much pressure I felt and how much nearly went wrong?

To begin, I got to the office yesterday morning, the morning of the BigEvent, knowing that there were changes to the program script to the Big Literary Event. What I didn’t know is that the night before I had sent the wrong version of the script to the president of our board, who had commented on it and sent it back. In addition she had sent it around to two other board members. So on a day when I shouldn’t have even been in the office I was spending two hours making changes to the script and hoping that I didn’t bruise any egos when they found out that we wouldn’t be using the draft they commented on. I did what damage control I could beforehand, but this feeling of waiting to be pounced on by board members loomed all day. Eventually it happened, but I’ll tell that tale when I get to it.

After driving in the rain to the Historic hotel in downtown Los Angeles, me and my small team got going putting together the gift bag. Now this bag weighs about twenty pounds. It is canvas and included a book by Gore Vidal as well as books by four of our literary winners, three magazines (Including a magazine weighing three pounds! We weighed it!), a very new biography of a blacklist collaborator/film director, and five postcards. This was the manual labor that consumed my day. Luckily we were able to get the wonderful, magnificent folks at the hotel to actually move the bags from the staging area to the room and they also put the bags under the seats. Those guys rock and they are great. Always do your events there. (I will comment now on my co-worker who wanted more help putting the bags together, help that would have come from the silent auction team. Understandably she wanted help. But I had to keep telling her that the silent auction is fundraising. The gift bags are not, and silent auction comes first. Ultimately, of course it all got done.)

Now we come to the soul churner, the seemingly never-ending bamboo under fingernail treatment. There’s this thing called the tribute book. It’s eighty pages long. It’s the program for the event, listing everything that happens. It’s also has essays on all the important awards, excerpts of the literary winners, and, most important, advertisements bought by our donors. Our printer told us that the book would be there on Tuesday, the day before the event. The book didn’t come on Tuesday. And by the time I got to the hotel at noon on Wednesday, the book still wasn’t there. Our event was in six and a half hours. I called the printer. He was still putting it together. He told me two-thirty. I was worried. It wasn’t my project like it was my responsibility, but I did much of the work writing the book and I had some control about how it was handled. It got to the printer late. I could have gotten it there sooner, and really I should have worked much harder to get it there sooner. Anyway. It needed to be there. If there’s no book, then the sponsors who bought ads would get very, very mad. So mad we might not get money from them. Two-thirty and three o’clock roll around. Still no books. I call the printer. It’s three o’clock, three and half hours before the start of the event. The printer tells me something like, “We’re still gluing them. They will be there at four-thirty.” Oh, god. This is the point when I started feeling the doomed gut feeling that I’ve only had in the past during life-changing personal failure. I was flipping out inside.

About this time I spent a half-hour on the phone with a board member who insisted on making script changes. It was too late, I told her, the script is done. We have no computer here. She pitched me on it. I told her I didn’t have the equipment. She insisted. Ultimately she and my boss agreed that she could bring in a replacement page. Half an hour. Like I’ve got nothing better to do. I returned to the assembly of the gift bags. I was close to tears although I don’t think it showed.

Four rolls around. No tribute books. I call the printer. He’s sending some other smaller things. But not the tribute book.

Five comes. Sweetie calls me. She’s leaving work. She’s going to help with the audio-visual components of the show. We’re an hour and a half out. Still no tribute books. Sweetie helped my heart quite a bit. I got a little of my mojo back.

Stay tuned for part 2...

Other Stuff

So, with Libby’s “Not Guilty” plea, it appears that the administration, and the right in general, has sunk its entire nest egg in rope manufacture. Rope that they are using to hang themselves. This gives me some breathing room for other stuff.

Here’s the NK update. I guess he’s retiring. I heard about NK from a co-worker. He’s a big time manager of two of “the greatest actors of their generation” (my quote) as well as some other folks. I asked my co-worker to hook me up and she very graciously did. He spends a lot of time in London so I gave him Constance (I hadn’t finished Sandow or I would have given that to him). He read it, which was very cool, and then he met me and gave me some general feedback. He also gave the contact info for a couple of producers in Britain. I made phone calls and sent emails but nothing came of it. Then I made my mistake. I sent him Sandow without telling him personally. We had discussed the script before I finished it, but I hadn’t gotten his explicit assent to send it over. I told his assistant that I was sending it, but I should have known better. Anyway, that was a couple months ago. I've seen him since then, but he hasn’t mentioned Sandow.

Oh! And I saw him at the theatre one night, and I think he saw me, but I was too chicken to go say “hi.” So, now I hear he’s retiring from management. Should I call and follow up now or what?

The BigEvent at work is looming. Three days. I’m excited. I finally got the script for the program to the Big Time writer who is doing our rewrite. Now if he can get it back in time we’ll be sailing smooth.

My fortune from Empress Pavilion was, “A new work opportunity will avail itself.” What could it be?

And finally some prognostication that will get me thrown one of those secret black site jails... With all the press that the Supreme Court has gotten lately with the death of Chief Rehnquist, Roberts' two nominations, Meirs, and now Alito, the profile of the Court has been raised to a dangerous degree. The Secret Service (or whatever agency performs this function) needs to step up security around the Justices of the Supreme Court. Especially if Alito gets confirmed, the temptation will be too great for potential assassins. The attack could come from either the left or the right, both have plenty of reasons to knock off a Justice. A left-wing nutjob might target Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas (we can only hope – just kidding, ha, ha. You can put that down now…) or even a confirmed Alito to “re-balance” the court. Probably a more likely scenario would be a right-wing nutbar going after Souter (poor David, no respect) or Ginsberg. The reasons are obvious. Can you imagine heading into 2008 with three Bush Supreme Court appointees? (If I disappear in a few days call my congressman!)

One thing to look for with Alito, what are his corporate rulings like? Does he tend to favor corporations over voters or does he side with the people? This will be the silent, but deadly issue of the Roberts Court (Stinky poo!) I’ve heard that Roberts rulings in this area are dismal, tending to favor corporate rights rather than individuals.

Black Sites

Listen, you can hear it...

What's that you say?

It's the sound of an administration trying to unring the g-d d-mned bell.

This stuff is just going to keep on coming.

NBC and the Washington Post report that the CIA is detaining, interrogating (and certainly torturing) al-Qaida captives at so-called "Black Sites" in the former Soviet Union. Known to only a few in the administration and to the operatives working there. No oversite.

Doesn't it make you want to vomit? Or cry?

I'm not evil. I don't want my country to be evil either.

Hell of a Week: Libby, Meirs, BigEvent

I just hit 70,000 playing this game on the Xbox.

So much to write about...

LIBBY ET AL.

We know now that the Bush Administration (in the wake of the Libby indictments and the non-dismissal of Rove) has no compunction with lying to America, and that they feel no obligation to do anything that doesn't profit them.

"A Poem for George W. Bush"
Profit. Profit. Profit. Profit.
Profit.

Bush should fire Rove. Rove should step down. Can you imagine saying to your own boss, "Well I wasn't indicted!?" Sweetie thinks that Bush would fire Cheney before he'd fire Rove. Why? Because Bush is a mouthpiece for Rove, not his boss.

These were the people who were supposed to be so concerned with national security? They are leaking names of CIA agents. How does that jive?

MEIRS ETC

Harriet Meirs. I kind of like her now. She reminds me of my old aunt Ollie. Still she was about as unqualified as a nominee could get and be nominated. Who knows what kind of Justice she would have been? I applaud her withdrawal however as a defeat of cronyism.

Unlike a lot of folks on the left I am not afraid of all conservtive Justices. I am afraid, as I said, of liberal Federalism. But I am also afraid of the conservative shunning of civil rights. Particularly in the burgeoning realm of "torture jurisprudence." Come on, Roberts, you're gonna get these cases and when you do, please, step up to plate and lead the court in the humane direction. Torture's not cool, man. "Stress interrogation," my ass!

THE BIGEVENT

The BigEvent is coming up. Things I dropped the ball on - not getting an important writer's magazine for the gift bag (it was an easy phone call that I didn't make), and I didn't actually send the script for the program to Important Writer for a punch up. I think number 2 may been subconsciously on purpose. I have to do some tweaks on the script over the weekend. We'll find Another Important Writer for the punch up next week.

I think Neurotic Co-worker A hates me now. She actually asked me after I spent the day on the other side of the wall working on the program book, "Do you like sitting in the captain's chair? Do you like being where the action is?" I could only say, "Yes, I do."

I busted ass on the tribute book. It looks good. I learned a little Quark.

WRITING

I busted ass on CP as well. I don't know if one script can handle so may shifts in tone. All I can say is, "Enter the fire!"

A Final Surprise Link

Arianna declares, "Bigger than Watergate!"

Arianna Huffington threw the glove on the ground today by declaring the coming Bush White House scandal could be "bigger than Watergate." I listened to Left, Right, and Center then moved over to the Newshour and watched David Brooks and Timothy Olyphant "gossip."

While that prediction may not come true, I think it will. There hasn't been this much unhappiness, in an administration or the country, since the Carter administration. Someone forgot to lock the zoo; all the animals are running loose. With the budget hanging around his neck the president is not a threat anymore. Congress doesn't have to play ball because the party is hemorrhaging - gasp! - conservatives. The party is loosing its intellectual and moral spine. These are not people who will join the president in a well sung chorus of God Bless America and think that their interests are his interests.

Anyway, the breakdown of the right is coming. Thank G-d.

And damn, maddog's pick and roll is geologic in timescale. Tayshaun be up at the hoop and maddog's all still like, "I post you, heathen!" and Tayshaun be hittin' the ground, "one-two-three-your ball, b**ch!"

Moved back into CP this morning. I worry about wrecking it. I like the script very much. I think it's almost there.

Man I'd love to go see the Clippers play. I want to get that big game package. Watch Steve Nash do cartwheels over people's heads! Watch and Holy Sh*t! I just looked on yahoo (collaborator pigs!) and Sam Cassell's playing for LA. Right on! That's so cool. I think he's great.

He's never going to leave Rochester is he?

"Sam we'd love you to play. What? What's that? You've getting treatment for your back at the mayo clinic? Oh. Well, do try to pop in and see us in LA when you get a chance. Before Christmas maybe?"

More likely is he'll be fine until Christmas, and then, "Oh, I have a pain!"

WRK SUX!

Actually work doesn't suck. It just takes time away from other things that I should be doing - like my rewrite of CP. I've been going in earlier than ususal, staying later than usual, and otherwise busting my ass at work in preparation for the BigEvent. I like work, but things I would change about my work are: I get an intern, I get a raise, I work from home two or three days a week and (there must be something else...) I get to do more interesting things.

What to say about work... The history of the organization is rich and in need of mining. My nonprofit was run in the past very well and then was taken over by a chain of executive directors who virtually bankrupted it. There would be a good LA Weekly story in it for the right reporter. Maybe that reporter is me. Maybe not. I'm not really a reporter. I would love to write a history of the organization however. Moreover, I'd love to read one.

And mas propinas to Ali. Thanks for coming over to see the pizza pan and pizza wheel. Sweetie made a wonderful pizza and we all had a very nice time dining al fresco on the garage.

Sweetie's going out of town over the weekend again. It makes me sad and reminds me of being left alone when I was a child, but I have to remember that I am an adult now. I am a big boy. I have my own things to do.

My Advice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiv%27ah

Yesterday my co-worker Y Que was qvetching about a request his fiancee made. She wanted him to go a comedy show after work. He wanted to stay home and drink beers, watch the game and work on his poetry. Then the fiancee switched the request, she called and said that she wanted him to go with her to sit shiv'ah with her for a co-worker. Now Y que isn't a bossy man. He likes sports and wanted some time to himself.

me: You absolutely cannot go. If you go now, you'll be doing things that you want to do for the rest of your life. You've made plans. They're with yourself, but you made plans.

I heard him say these words to her as I left for the day.

When he came in this morning, I learned that he had gone.

I also told El Jefe and the other co-workers on the other side of the wall that separates our office what I had told Y que and El Jefe told me that I gave him, "the worst advice in the world."

So that's it.

In other news me and sweetie finally bought a real pizza pan and what they call a pizza wheel to cut it with. And there's a guy who works at Vintage Books publicity who's a real jerk.

I have started the (second) rewrite of Chronic Psycho. It's coming along well.

I think we all know the truth

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/09/miers/index.html

Harriet Miers a(n):

a) Robot
b) Alien
c) crony
d) post-op transexual
e) all of the above.

The correct anwser is, of course, e. She is an alien-cyborg programmed to be devoted to the Bush family. She was also "delta-gender" on her old home planet of Tex'jas, but she had to get reassigned after Dubya got drunk one night and punctured her pollination ganglia. So sad. Now she'll never metathasize. Her parents weep, all three of them.

I would prefer a robot to this woman. At least a robot could be programmed to memorize the Constitution. Is there a Turing-type test for Constitutional interpretation? How would it be? Surely a computer could do a better job than that flake Souter - formerly my favorite Supreme Court Justice until he started getting those calls in the middle of the night from 41. What happened David? Now I don't know who to root for. I hate Thomas but at least he voted the right way on eminent domain. I really fear the new federalism.

Must sleep now. I have to get up early and see a screenplay about some revisions. I have to get these revisions done. I can feel the window closing. DS is enthusiastic about it. And I dig that. I like his honesty. I will keep you up to date on the progress.

Oh, I played nine holes of par-3 golf. Scored a 37. That's a good score for me, but most satisfying was having the lowest score in my group. I hit at least four greens, and shot 17 for the first 5 holes, but I also took two 6's. Still the winner of the day. Someone should have bought me a beer. Someday soon I am going to really spend some time to get this game into my body.

Sweetie

Sweetie got home today from way out of town. She looked hot. Tired and jetlagged. But hot. I parked at the wrong airport terminal and I had to circumnavigate the Encounter restaurant three times to find my car. What should have been a pit stop turned into a major excursion. Anyway we got away safe and she's sleeping in the next room. Probably close to unconscious. Is sleeping unconscious?

It seems like the rest of the office has figured out that the BigEvent is happening soon. It's kind of fun. I like it when we're all working on one big thing instead of each person having their own projects. There's plenty of work, but most of it will get done. And Jefe actually had the interns take shit to the storage unit instead of me. Damn. I must be moving up in the world.

The cats sleep at my feet. I chatted with a coworker today about Democrats not sticking the knife in or as he said, "kicking them while they're down." I don't think that's a good idea yet. Even the mid-term elections are a ways off. The democrats need to give the right as much rope as they need to hang themselves.

It's working out tomorrow and who knows what else.

I watched Human Nature last night. What a strange film! I liked it but I can't say that it was easy to watch. There were some boring stretches. The film is distancing and presentational. And I never would have thought that the ending would be... I'll tell you later. Anyway it seems that Gondry and Kaufman took all the flaws from Human Nature and corrected them for Eternal Sunshine. Crazy hyperreal presentational fx in Human Nature, gone in Eternal Sunshine. Distancing multiple points of view in Human Nature, gone in Eternal Sunshine. Ditto the bummer ending. The very, most redeeming part of Human Nature was Miranda Otto's performance and French accent. The film is very, very tightly constructed, like a swiss watch or a jungle ecosystem or an office ecosystem. And the cruelty. It's a very cruel film. "Remember, when in doubt, you should never do what you truly want to do." Especially the message. The message is so hopeless.

Percival Everett's book WOUNDED was recommended to me today by Jefe.

God to Publish Again

LOS ANGELES - God, best-selling author and supreme deity, announced at a press conference today His plans to come out with a “major new book,” RK Media Report learned today. Held at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, the press conference attracted attention from both the publishing world and the global public.

God stated that after, “a period of dormancy” during which He published only periodically under pseudonyms He was ready to, “clarify some things and add to my body of work and publish under my real name, The One True God.” When asked about His previous bestsellers, the Torah and the Quran, God said that He was “still very pleased with them. They’re obviously close to my heart, they sell well and I‘m happy for all those who’ve taken comfort in those words and who pray to Me everyday because of those books.” When asked if the new book would be a sequel to those, He said, “I can’t ignore them, certainly, but there are a number of issues to be dealt with which neither of those books adequately address.” He said that, “senseless violence” would be a primary topic for His new book but He did not elaborate. Asked when the new book would be finished, God said only, “soon.”

Questions about the Christian New Testament were deflected, “I didn’t write it,” God said. “It was a collaborative effort by a very talented group of men, but I didn’t write it.” When asked by a reporter from Daily Variety if He had even read the Christian Bible, God added, “no comment.”

The conference lasted only seven minutes, but has created violent tremors in the publishing world. Bertelsmann is reportedly offering a ledger-clearing eleven-figure advance for any new work by The One True God. Even small imprints such as Green Integer have put offers on the table. “This will be a real career-maker for a few lucky people,” one unnamed industry source said.

A spokesman for Oprah Winfrey said, “this is the kind of book she [Ms. Winfrey]’s always wanted,” giving rise to rumors of re-birth for Oprah’s influential Book Club. The obligatory appearance by God on the Oprah Winfrey Show would be a coup even for show biz power-monger Oprah.

The One True God is not currently repped.


-- Correspondent Augustine R.

Radio Io 70's

http://www.radioio.com/radioio70s.php

Not everyone will get into it, I guess. But I love it. Thank you Radioio.

Work. Work. Things are getting hot with the BigEvent. With the BigEvent coming up things are getting hot. Getting hot with the BigEvent things are. Wow. Work. All these people working. Work, work. We're missing one of our number from the office. It's hard to go into how I feel about it. The politics in the office are bizarre. There's one who wants to quit but she refuses, and the one who doesn't want to quit, but she doesn't want to work, either. I came home last night and started to work on instinct. Weird.

There having auditions for celebrity look-alikes at universal studios this weekend? Should I go as the celebrity that I'm supposed to look like? I'd have to go to Japan. Japan, safe like a clam shell.

bird flu

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051004/ap_on_he_me/bush_avian_flu

You're going to give me a "heads up" when martial law is declared, right?

What do you know about Ken Saro-Wiwa? He was executed 10 years ago in Nigeria. Very interesting case. I never heard about it before a couple weeks ago. I think he must have had a deathwish. There is so little justice in Africa.

P.S I think I'll post this on my blog. I don't have one yet. It's getting there. I'll give you a link. http://rabbikubota.blogspot.com/

Sent that email to NK

Working from home

Working from home rocks! Actually no. I like going to work, it's just too far away. Man, talk about a commute. Mine is on the border between hell and a hard place. But, I like going to work. That's one reason I suppose I've stuck around. I wouldn't stick around if I didn't like it. I'm glad that no one really yells or freaks out when a minor mistake is made.

I work for a local not for profit. I never would have thought I might end up there. Its an interesting world.

On the Run for Fun

I spent the day at the West Hollywood Bookfair. It was quite fun. I always enjoy those events. I picked up a used Joe Sacco book for five dollars and I stood around in the sun to watch Neil Gaiman talk. He's going to be working on the Eternals for Marvel. That's something I'll have to check out. He talked a little about his blog and since I'm such a fan of Ali's blog it was the crystlizing event. I give in.

Sweetie is out of town right now. She's in Berlin with the Opera. I have to admit that I'm jealous but who wouldn't be.

I saw NK at the book fair. I got to talk with him and tell him that I saw him at Deadend. It was weighing on my chest, actually it was more like a shackle around my ankle. Anyway, I felt weird calling him and asking him to read the script. But now I can do it. I'm going to send him an email when I get off here.