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Thursday, July 14, 2005

"He had a voice that would make a wolverine purr..."
-Anchorman

so here's a first-draft excerpt since i'm excited about being only FIVE pages from finishing my script "Spunkwater." the story this character is telling is 83% true. i'll tell you what wasn't true at the end of this post. sorry about the stupid names i'm forced to use. maybe it's just me but all names in fiction sound dumb. i wish i could just number the bastards and be done with it. George Foreman had the right idea when he named his kids. anyway, here we go. third act rambling:

---

Jacki sits down on the floor of the dark kitchen, head down, phone against her head.

RICK (V.O.)

...maybe you’re thinking that it’s too
much of a coincidence, all these things
I’m saying. I swear it’s true. This
kind of shit surrounds me. All my life
I’ve dealt with irony and coincidence
and synchronicity. You know those two
apartments that you saw? Here’s something
even stranger. One time I met this girl
and went to her apartment and we watched
some shitty movie and fucked around and,
as the sun was coming up and the alcohol
was wearing off, I looked around and
realized where I was. You know where I
was? In an apartment that I’d lived in
ten years before. How about that shit?
I knew I was in the same building when
we ended up there, I even said something
to her about it. But when I realized it
was the same place, the same corner of
the room I was sleeping in, the same
water tower that I was looking at out
the window, she wouldn’t believe me.
No one would believe me. I ended up
stealing one of her magazines from
behind her toilet to get the mailing
label off of it. Then I made a photocopy
of an old tax form and emailed them to
everyone who doubted me. Then I worried
she'd think I was stealing her mail and i
burned the magazine. Then I worried that
someone would know I was burning her
magazines so I lit a candle. And you know
what happened, after all that? Everyone started
saying that if I did live before, I must
be some kind of stalker. I would have to
be the luckiest stalker in the world I
said but people were freaking out. She
ended up breaking up with me because her
roommate thought that I was probably
stalking the apartment, waiting to hook
up with someone who lived there. Maybe
I had a stash under the radiator or some-
thing, she said. Maybe something horrible
happened there, she said. But all I ever
did was punch through a wall because an
ex-girlfriend put up a stupid Green Day
poster. I looked for the hole and they
must have filled it in with plaster because
I couldn't find it. I wasn’t stalking anyone
or anywhere. Of course now that she’s gone
I’m wondering who lives there. And maybe
it wouldn’t be too weird to figure out
a way to bump into them or get inside...

Jacki lays down on the floor and sets the phone down next to her. She closes her eyes, Rick’s fading voice still in her head.

---

here's a quick list of things that aren't true:

a.) my name isn't Rick
b.) i have no interest in who lives in the apartment now
c.) my friends didn't really doubt me, they just thought it was funny
d.) she didn't care much either. the only person who really thought it was creepy was her roommate
e.) i didn't punch through a "Green Day" poster, it was through a door and i covered up the hole with a "Mars Attacks" poster
f.) the magazine i took wasn't behind her toilet, it was on her kitchen counter
g.) i gave the magazine back the next day
h.) i kind of knew it might be my old place as soon as i stepped through the door
i.) i was hoping that it WAS my old apartment so i'd have something to talk about

p.s. as a bonus for anyone who actually read that excerpt, blogger just added this new feature so i thought i'd try it out:

here's a picture from my camping trip last Saturday. before this basketball exploded and knocked me on my ass (and sprayed my legs with little pieces of burnt rubber) i managed to get a few shots i find to be quite beautiful.

the wood wouldn't burn because it had just rained so me and Nate were like, "hmmm, what's in the trunk!" we started with a road flare, but you can't really sit around a road flare fire and stare too long.
it's kinda like looking at the sun through a telescope.
so after a minute we went back to the trunk and wondered:
"do basketballs burn?"

turns out everything burns.

just not for very long.

::: david - 9:29 PM [+] :::
...

"We don't think you're challenging him enough..."
-Office Space

that last exchange on my comments has to be expanded upon, just so i can make one last point. i need to attack this "rape isn't about sex, it's about power!" statement that's been passed off as truth for about 20 years. here's all the things wrong with this statement:

1.) it was repeated endlessly in the 80s, parrotted by people who watched shit movies like "Disclosure" thinking they were blowing the lid off something and not just quoting a Michael Douglas movie.
repetition + amateur sociologist = nonsense.

2.) it is almost always said to me as if the person saying it came up with it themselves. with the exception of my mom, of course.

3.) it suggests some sort of "battle of the sexes" mantra and this can EASILY be destroyed with one simple example:

imagine a woman standing in front of her eager young class of wide-eyed females saying, "rape is not about sex (annoying pause) it's about POWER. it is about a man controlling a female, it is about a man taking away the self, it is about a man purposely trying to control that which makes a woman an individual, it is about a man trying desperately to erase all the progress that women have made in society throughout history. it is about...

suddenly we cut to a slobbering half-wit with his cock in one hand and a pile of his own shit in the other, standing outside of a elementary school playground. i'm sorry, i meant nursing home.

you see what i'm saying? hard to imagine it as a political statement instead of the animal reflex it is.

epilogue:
another idea to be attacked later (sure to anger and hopefully generate some readers, which is all i really want): the idea that pedophiles are mentally ill and not just horny as shit.

okay. if you work with me you might want to change the station at this point. if you do read the following, remember, "what happens in the blog stays in the blog." because this thing is here to keep me from saying some of this shit out loud. anyhow, i am now going to complain about losing a promotion at work. so here's the chronology of events:

i fill out a "career path" form saying that there is a job there i'd be interested in. while i'm doing it, my co-worker who i'll refer to as MMM (because he's going to be "making more money" than me) who was drawing pentagrams and dragons on his career path worksheet to pass the time, is not really interested in filling his out correctly, i say, "hey dude, you should put THIS job (the one i want) because it's the only one here we'd probably excel at." he writes it down, me never thinking that i'd ever be in competition with him. fast forward a few weeks, the person with this job that i want is going on leave to have a baby. i request to be trained to take over while he's gone, even though i've done the job before (while his predecessor was on vacation) but i figure it will show that i have an interest in this position. MMM also requests to be trained because, what the hell? it's a nice break in the routine. when the man goes to have his baby, it turns out that my regular duties are in a constant state of chaos (like always) and no one even considers putting someone on my old job (because it is by far, THE HARDEST in the joint and people treat it like it's dipped in shit) so i have to stay back and do that crap and MMM takes over the coveted job while the baby is born. when the proud father comes back, MMM and him trade stories about "their" job and become friends. then the bomb drops. the new daddy has decided to stay home with his new baby for good and his job will be opening up. i'm thinking sweeeeet. what a stroke of luck. "career path" was shorter than i thought! then him and MMM spend a week talking about what HE (not me) will being doing when he takes over. i'm scratching my head in the corner. how can they decide who gets the job? i mean shit, don't they interview for that kind of thing? isn't it this looooooong process that involves interviews and phone calls and finally congradulations to me all around? i stay quiet because i have a tendency to overreact and wait to see what happens when the proud poppa finally leaves. then i'm called into the bosses office. i'm told that the job is going to MMM because the dude who was leaving gave HIM his recommendation??? wait a minute. i didn't realize that we got to pick who replaces us. when is that the procedure? if that's the case, things should be so much quick and easier on the companies every time i left a job. i'd just say "HIM!" and point at the guy i liked the most. maybe he's not the most qualified but hell, it's real quick and i talk to him the most! yeah, real quick. quick enough to make my head spin. the other times i saw people trying to get promoted there were open conversations, phone calls, interviews and a couple days of waiting. with this someone got "knighted" during some secret ceremony. so i'm left without this raise that was sorely needed while the guy who gets the job i SHOULD have had is:

a.) 13 years younger than me
b.) living at home with his parents
c.) driving a car that is paid for
d.) newer at this company
e.) coming off a MUCH easier position in the store
f.) going to be working all morning shifts with weekends off
g.) going to be paid more while working less than me

like i said, i can maybe see how someone could say to me that i'm not ready to be promoted to this new position (even though there's NO question that i'm qualified) maybe you need to be there longer? but i can NEVER accept the fact that this dude was a better choice than me. because the guy leaving decided? am i the only one confused by this decision. and you want to know why the dude with the baby gave this other guy his recommendation? seriously? this is 100% true. because their jobs are about 5 five apart and naturally they can talk more AND because the guy who was leaving was into Star Wars and MMM went and bought a bunch of Star Wars figures that he hadn't got yet. i'm not joking. he had a checklist. i saw it. and if someone bought me toys shit, i'd recommend them over anyone else. the point is, why does this recommendation mean everything? so maybe everyone's behavior isn't a surprise, but i am surprised that all it takes is the opinion of the person that is leaving to decide who gets what. what am i missing? time to maybe state the obvious here:

sometimes i can't help but think that a cloud still hangs over my head from beating the shit out of a former co-worker.

okay, enough of that. i wasn't going to say anything because i have co-workers who read this site and i don't blame them. i just had a shitty day where i covered about 3 different positions while my nemesis (not MMM, i actually like him quite a bit) sat in the back all day drinking coffee talking about what she was going to do TOMMORROW. you know, this nemesis has talked shit about me for a long time (this is not paranoia because the people she says shit too always tell me about it and they gain nothing by lying) because when i first got there i called her out on about a half dozen LIES. not just exaggerations but outright lies. like she'd say "do this" and i'd do that and then her boss would ask about what i did and she's say "i never said that!" and i kind of got used to her nonsense thinking she must have Alzheimers, even joking (half joking) that i was going to start tape recording all our conversations, but now that i have this good news about my promotion i'm thinking about her again. is she poisoning the minds of any new people? i know that some people that have come and gone told me later that they were "warned" about me BY HER. how unprofessional is THAT fucking shit. they told me about it later because they were like, "don't know what the hell she was even talking about." well, i'll be paying more attention to her work habits because if someone effects my career path, i think i'd have to affect theirs. wait, i said i had said enough of all that. let me force...myself...to...move...on.

okay, the good news is that besides being broke as fuck i'm very excited to be finishing the climax of a script i've been working on. i was trying to make it 100 pages and STOP there because the last one i tried would have been over three hours. hold on, i have to watch this show...

sorry but godDAMN the end of the movie "28 Days Later" is good. they're playing the music and he's got his thumbs buried in that dude's eyes? what is that music?

anyway, i'll post the excerpt from my script separately so that i can bury this with another post. i feel like i've purged some resentment and i'm ready to talk about anything else.

::: david - 8:42 PM [+] :::
...

"When they said repent, I wonder what they meant."
- Leonard Cohen, "The Future"


Let me get this straight. This month Steven Spielberg made a creepier movie than George Romero? Welcome to crazy world. i saw "War of the Worlds" and, besides a lame ending that comes straight from the book, it's a pretty effective two hours of dread. you got aliens grinding up people and spraying blood across the country-side to help cultivate their sinister red weeds (although you tragically never get to see them smoke it), you got a death ray that detonates people like the Evil Dude's minions in "Time Bandits" (only not as funny), you got a cage on the backs of the pleasingly low-tech war machines that holds mobs of screaming people, waiting for their turn to get sucked into a pulsing alien sphincter.

and what does George give us? "sky flowers?" I mean, fireworks. and sympathetic zombies that only eat the bad guys. and an ending that has the hero laying down his rockets and letting the zombies go, muttering "they're not worth it" wait, that was the shitty ending to "Roadhouse!" remember, after Swayze KILLS like 10 bad guys, he gets to the main bad guy and says "nope, can't do it" the pile of corpses he left in his wake was probably like, "hey! wish your guilt would have stopped you from ripping my throat out earlier, yo!" anyway, that's what happens. the hero really does decide to "live and let live" at the end of what should have been the most apocalyptic disturbing zombie opus of all time. instead it's not as good as the new "Dawn of the Dead." hell, it's not even as good as "Shaun of the Dead." hell, i'm starting to wonder if Joe Piscipo's "Dead Heat" zombie cops-n-robbers shitfest actually gives George a run for his money. at least those movies all had the balls to actually disturb and kill main characters at will. i don't know what George was thinking. maybe it was because there's this appreciation for the zombie "Bub" in "Day of the Dead" and he mistook that for people wanting the zombies to spend a whole movie gazing at fireworks, or sloooowly trying to play with slot machines, or sloooowly trying to play a broken videogame, or sloooooowly trying to wipe their ass...slowly realizing they aren't done shitting....then sloooowly wiping their ass again. i know everyone loves to say, "look at his satire of SOCIETY, what a master of irony! that zombie is still carrying a baseball mitt! holy fuck, i get it!!! we're ALL zombies!" we got the joke years ago.

same with Spielburg's movie actually. his movie isn't perfect either. he has the little girl yell, "is it the terrorists?" (never mind that she must be home-schooled to be dumb enough to believe Bin Laden finally got his LASERS working) and suddenly all the critics are declaring they've cracked the secret of its timely anti-war message like they solved the math problem off the chalk board in "Good Will Hunting." uh, shit blows up...terrorists blew shit up...i get it! actually, if they think about it for five goddamn seconds they'd realize that the only parallel to real life is the fact that the "suicide bomber" in the movie was Tom Cruise. he's the only person to do any damage (before God steps down to wrap things up, of course) by doing something that could only be described as a desperate act of martydom against a huge overpowering enemy. so the message is...suicide bombers good? terrorists bad? no, the message is both obvious and meaningless. the only reason to enjoy this movie is to watch a man run around and try not to get killed by big monsters crashing through treetops. and how about that noise they were making? this might be the best Godzilla movie never made.

you know, "The Aviator," besides being rather dull and obvious and having DiCaprio's face on the box resemble a giant fetus, has much more effective anti-war statements in it. they accuse Hughes of being a "war-profiteer" and, unlike the Republican wannabes in our midst who think if they pretend they're rich, someday they might be rich, this label is considered a BAD thing.

anyway, it's depressing that you can't count on a zombie to be scary in a movie by George Romero. gotta go clean the cat box.

wait, one last thing. because of the London attacks, on the news they were talking about how they've increased security for this Air Show in Pittsburgh and how they've tripled the military around the show and blah fucking blah and i started thinking how eager people are to pretend they're important enough to be in danger. this sorry-ass Air Show is going to be a big terrorist target? they wish it was. next there will be a garrison of troops around one of these stupid plastic dinosaurs sculptures that are on every corner. the whole thing is kind of sad and it reminds me of an ugly girl carrying mace around like anyone would really try to rape her.

::: david - 1:21 PM [+] :::
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