Well, I'm all moved in.
I found a great place right in Hollywood (Cherokee and Yucca) for the astonishing price of $1025 for a studio. But it's big and cool and I like the people in the building.
No job yet - which is awesome. I'm not going to seek employment until the Nichol deadline (May 1st). Hopefully I'll be able to get a good stack of entries done and get some traction with this year's contests.
I've been treating writing as a job - eight hours a day, whether I like it or not. It's been an intersting change. I've found I write very differently when I have all that time, rather than scrambling to get something done in my one hour of free-time.
When I come to a big, important scene, I can decide to spend all day on [i]just[/i] that scene. It's great to be able to spend all that time considering it, "unpacking it", and looking at it from many different angles. It's a valuable thing to learn and I'm really glad I have the cash to take this time off.
Other than that, I've pretty much just been hanging out - unpacking, getting the feel of the neighborhood, etc. I like it here. Yesterday, they were filming "Shark" on my block - I saw James Woods drinking coffee. Later that day, I was walking back from the internet cafe and saw them giving Vanessa Williams her "Walk-of-Fame" star. Maybe I'm a dork, but I think that's a cool neighborhood to live in for a while.
I still haven't found a decent bar in the neighborhood. It's all either hot-shit night clubs or ironic hipster dive bars. Not my scene really. I'll find a good one though. God knows I'm giving it the old college try.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
Monday, December 11, 2006
Las Vegas, Nevada
I'm driving out to LA for a couple of days to check out neighborhoods and whatnot.
Pretty much, I've got it narrowed down to Hollywood, Los Feliz, or Silverlake. I'm also going to give a glance through Burbank, even though I have it on good authority that I would hate the Valley.
Yesterday was my last day of work for the year. Off until Jan 3. Sweet.
Pretty much, I've got it narrowed down to Hollywood, Los Feliz, or Silverlake. I'm also going to give a glance through Burbank, even though I have it on good authority that I would hate the Valley.
Yesterday was my last day of work for the year. Off until Jan 3. Sweet.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Eleven Fun Facts About My Co-Driver, Marty
11. He looks like a lumberjack. Or Mr. Clean - he gets that one a lot. Either way, his shoulders are almost as broad as I am tall.
10. His wife is a total babe and he's very protective of her. He won't even tell other guys at work what casino she works at.
9. He only yells when someone swears at him. (Not around him, at him.) If he yells at you, he will scare the shit out of you.
8. Briefs.
7. He doesn't go out drinking ever. You can't make him. Not even on his birthday, when you're stuck in Muskogee, OK.
6. Supposedly, when he does drink, it's brandy old-fashioned sweets.
5. While he's never talked about it, if he's flipping through channels and comes upon an episode of "Will & Grace", he will watch the entire thing, every time.
4. He has the most obvious 'fake laugh' I've ever heard.
3. At least twice, when he was wearing a Packer shirt, people have asked if he's on the team.
2. Sometimes, he takes his ten-year-old daughter's iPod on trips. I shudder to think what he's listening to.
1. He's a former bodybuilder and was Mr. Kenosha 1992. The pictures are hilarious.
10. His wife is a total babe and he's very protective of her. He won't even tell other guys at work what casino she works at.
9. He only yells when someone swears at him. (Not around him, at him.) If he yells at you, he will scare the shit out of you.
8. Briefs.
7. He doesn't go out drinking ever. You can't make him. Not even on his birthday, when you're stuck in Muskogee, OK.
6. Supposedly, when he does drink, it's brandy old-fashioned sweets.
5. While he's never talked about it, if he's flipping through channels and comes upon an episode of "Will & Grace", he will watch the entire thing, every time.
4. He has the most obvious 'fake laugh' I've ever heard.
3. At least twice, when he was wearing a Packer shirt, people have asked if he's on the team.
2. Sometimes, he takes his ten-year-old daughter's iPod on trips. I shudder to think what he's listening to.
1. He's a former bodybuilder and was Mr. Kenosha 1992. The pictures are hilarious.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Bend, Oregon
I think I have senioritis.
Not an allergy to the elderly - although I used to think I had that too, back when I worked the breakfast shift at George Webb's. Upon further reflection, I'm pretty sure that was just a burning hatred for this old guy Fred, who was as close to an arch-nemesis as I'm ever likely to have. (The whole time I worked there, he ate breakfast and lunch there every day, and he sent something back every meal. There were also menacing glares and, at least once, he pointed his fork at me in a threatening manner.)
No, my senioritis is in the I'm-a-senior-in-high-school-and-I-just-don't-give-a-shit-anymore sense.
Now that I've put my notice in, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to care about a job I hated in the first place. I'm about three seconds from saying "to hell with it" and leaving all day. At this point, a stubbed toe would probably put me over the edge.
Double that for this move. I capital-h Hate our customer.
It started with the second thing out of her mouth: "I have to ask you not to play with our dogs. They're very rare." Which is A. fairly wtf if you ask me, and B. probably just an excuse to point out that her dogs are expensive.
But the big thing was how she treated her daughter. Her thirteen-year-old "adopted Russian daughter." Whose name is Tori. I had to ask the daughter what her name is, because Mom doesn't introduce her by name.
She introduces her as, "my adopted Russian daughter." Always. To the cable guy. To the new neighbors. To the movers. To everyone. I heard the phrase at least a dozen times.
Which would irritate me on its own, since it reeks of bragging about her own altruism while hammering home to the daughter just how adopted she is. But it sucks extra because the daughter is pretty awesome.
In her room, I found a collage she did for art class. I barely consider collages to be art, but this thing was amazing.
She used a bunch of images about her life, all of which had lines in them: a razor-wire fence, a pregnant belly with that line they get, a jet contrail, a girl on a tight-rope, etc. And she glued them together so that the lines connected perfectly - it was one long line. At first all tight together, but slowly loosening until it was a thin little line with all these knots - drawings of knots, photos of knots, actual knots glued to the paper. Then the line disappears off the page.
Flip it over and the line continues to the center of the page, where, in letters so small I had to squint to see, it said, "I wonder if I'll ever see my mother again."
This is a thirteen-year-old.
Despite an apparent fondness for expensive art, it was stashed in her daughter's closet along with a bunch of great paintings she did. And she insisted on calling her "my adopted Russian daughter" not "my daughter who does awesome and heartbreaking works of art" or something. (Of course, that would've irritated me in a whole other way. But still.)
That and a bad habit of saying things like, "I'd like to see the entertainment center upstairs to see how it looks, but it's probably going in the basement." and I basically spent all day fantasizing about hitting her in the face with a ball-peen hammer and jumping the next plane for LA.
So that's pretty much where I'm at with work.
Since "sociopathic tendencies" sounds so ugly, I'm calling it senioritis.
Not an allergy to the elderly - although I used to think I had that too, back when I worked the breakfast shift at George Webb's. Upon further reflection, I'm pretty sure that was just a burning hatred for this old guy Fred, who was as close to an arch-nemesis as I'm ever likely to have. (The whole time I worked there, he ate breakfast and lunch there every day, and he sent something back every meal. There were also menacing glares and, at least once, he pointed his fork at me in a threatening manner.)
No, my senioritis is in the I'm-a-senior-in-high-school-and-I-just-don't-give-a-shit-anymore sense.
Now that I've put my notice in, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to care about a job I hated in the first place. I'm about three seconds from saying "to hell with it" and leaving all day. At this point, a stubbed toe would probably put me over the edge.
Double that for this move. I capital-h Hate our customer.
It started with the second thing out of her mouth: "I have to ask you not to play with our dogs. They're very rare." Which is A. fairly wtf if you ask me, and B. probably just an excuse to point out that her dogs are expensive.
But the big thing was how she treated her daughter. Her thirteen-year-old "adopted Russian daughter." Whose name is Tori. I had to ask the daughter what her name is, because Mom doesn't introduce her by name.
She introduces her as, "my adopted Russian daughter." Always. To the cable guy. To the new neighbors. To the movers. To everyone. I heard the phrase at least a dozen times.
Which would irritate me on its own, since it reeks of bragging about her own altruism while hammering home to the daughter just how adopted she is. But it sucks extra because the daughter is pretty awesome.
In her room, I found a collage she did for art class. I barely consider collages to be art, but this thing was amazing.
She used a bunch of images about her life, all of which had lines in them: a razor-wire fence, a pregnant belly with that line they get, a jet contrail, a girl on a tight-rope, etc. And she glued them together so that the lines connected perfectly - it was one long line. At first all tight together, but slowly loosening until it was a thin little line with all these knots - drawings of knots, photos of knots, actual knots glued to the paper. Then the line disappears off the page.
Flip it over and the line continues to the center of the page, where, in letters so small I had to squint to see, it said, "I wonder if I'll ever see my mother again."
This is a thirteen-year-old.
Despite an apparent fondness for expensive art, it was stashed in her daughter's closet along with a bunch of great paintings she did. And she insisted on calling her "my adopted Russian daughter" not "my daughter who does awesome and heartbreaking works of art" or something. (Of course, that would've irritated me in a whole other way. But still.)
That and a bad habit of saying things like, "I'd like to see the entertainment center upstairs to see how it looks, but it's probably going in the basement." and I basically spent all day fantasizing about hitting her in the face with a ball-peen hammer and jumping the next plane for LA.
So that's pretty much where I'm at with work.
Since "sociopathic tendencies" sounds so ugly, I'm calling it senioritis.
Monday, December 4, 2006
The Eleven Weirdest Things I've Seen In A Customer's House
11. A collection of Bocce Balls numbering in the hundreds.
10. Dozens of cigar boxes full of burnt-out light bulbs.
9. A breath-taking bunch of sex toys including anal beads and an eighteen-inch double dildo - in a house owned by the most white-bread couple on earth.
8. Thousands of rounds of ammunition, hidden behind everything in the house.
7. A collection of antique eye-glasses. Creepy!
6. A box full of thousands of naked pictures of a guy's wife, spanning at least thirty years.
5. Every single episode of "Married with Children", taped off TV.
4. A full-sized plaster statue of a nude, semi-chubby woman.
3. A drawer full of "Official Temple Lingerie" in the room of a Mormon bishop's buxom daughter.
2. The creepiest piece of taxidermy ever made, consisting of various animal parts combined to look like a humanoid alien. It was horrifying.
1. The nude breasts of a fortune-500 company CFO.
10. Dozens of cigar boxes full of burnt-out light bulbs.
9. A breath-taking bunch of sex toys including anal beads and an eighteen-inch double dildo - in a house owned by the most white-bread couple on earth.
8. Thousands of rounds of ammunition, hidden behind everything in the house.
7. A collection of antique eye-glasses. Creepy!
6. A box full of thousands of naked pictures of a guy's wife, spanning at least thirty years.
5. Every single episode of "Married with Children", taped off TV.
4. A full-sized plaster statue of a nude, semi-chubby woman.
3. A drawer full of "Official Temple Lingerie" in the room of a Mormon bishop's buxom daughter.
2. The creepiest piece of taxidermy ever made, consisting of various animal parts combined to look like a humanoid alien. It was horrifying.
1. The nude breasts of a fortune-500 company CFO.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Holbrook, Arizona.
I'm giving notice at my job tomorrow, so this seems an appropriate time to start the "moving-to-LA-to-be-a-screenwriter" blog I've been vaguely planning on starting. Also, John said I should.
February 12th will be my last day.
I hope to find an apartment with availability on the first of March. And maybe a job.
Actually deciding on a date has made the whole thing seem very, very real. It's all I could think about the last two days: all the things I have to do by then, the potential for failure, the inevitability of seeing my friends less.
And how utterly cliche the whole thing is. The guy from the midwest moving to Hollywood to take his shot. There will be ten thousand of me out there, literally. Everytime I tell someone from California about my plans, their eyes glaze over. There's the old joke that you can't throw a stone in LA without hitting eight screenwriters.
Which makes wonder if I have the requisite arrogance to pull this off - to see many thousands of people failing at a task (failing forever, most likely), and believe that I can succeed. I know the odds, the ratio of scripts written to scripts purchased. Believing I can sell a script means believing that I can write a script better than, roughly, 44,700 others.
Ugh.
February 12th will be my last day.
I hope to find an apartment with availability on the first of March. And maybe a job.
Actually deciding on a date has made the whole thing seem very, very real. It's all I could think about the last two days: all the things I have to do by then, the potential for failure, the inevitability of seeing my friends less.
And how utterly cliche the whole thing is. The guy from the midwest moving to Hollywood to take his shot. There will be ten thousand of me out there, literally. Everytime I tell someone from California about my plans, their eyes glaze over. There's the old joke that you can't throw a stone in LA without hitting eight screenwriters.
Which makes wonder if I have the requisite arrogance to pull this off - to see many thousands of people failing at a task (failing forever, most likely), and believe that I can succeed. I know the odds, the ratio of scripts written to scripts purchased. Believing I can sell a script means believing that I can write a script better than, roughly, 44,700 others.
Ugh.
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