wilderworks

The first MP3 that I remember downloading was Julian Lennon's "Too Late for Goodbyes." My gray NEC laptop could play it, sure, almost always without skipping, but it could do nothing else at the same time. The 1GB hard-drive eventually squeezed almost 25 other songs onto it, and that was about all it could hold. Since I'm in the middle of moving from Van Nuys to Los Angeles, while simultaneously meeting with two different producers and writing two different screenplays, Keely stepped up and wrote a blog post about me for me. (She did not actually do that for me at all). And now I'm going to violate her copyright and use it as my own blog for this week. click here

Here's my story. I moved to Los Angeles in 2005. On January 6th, 2005, I was in Las Vegas, taking down Christmas decorations from Caesar's Palace hallways and cypress trees (business, not pleasure). I took the Santa hat off of the mini statue of David's head. Just as we were finishing up, I was offered a three-month internship at a small LA management company. (Let's give them the codename Dryad Management.) All I knew about the company was the address, and that's more than I knew about LA. Dump was in Rhode Island. She and I had been waiting for this news. I got back to New Jersey on the night of the 10th and packed. Dump arrived in New Jersey on the 12th. And we started cross-country bright and early on the 13th, a caravan composed of my car and one U-Haul, with my parents, my brother, Dump, and my dog Baker. After a few hundred miles, Baker crawled inside the lining of my convertible's top and only stuck his head out. This is how he opted to travel the bu...

Giving my screenplays and associates codenames was so much fun, I've decided to continue assigning codenames to everyone in the blog. At this point, it's no longer to protect the innocent (In this case, I would be the innocent, and the protection would be from litigation).  Rather, it's just for fun. This is my friend and current roommate Dump . We met in college, lived together briefly in Harlem, and then moved to Van Nuys in 2005. She is a partner in Misplaced Planet and is presently a Production Coordinator on a new TV pilot for Fox. This is my girlfriend Beezie . We've been dating for about two years, and we're trying to move in togethere. We also met in college, but we weren't close at the time, and then we didn't see each other for about six years. Finally, we met up again out here in Los Angeles, I gave her a small role in Zaniness Ensues , and she continued to avoid me. This is my dog Baker . He's a Fox Terrier. He was born on January 10th,...

I've opened the window, and I'm making love to the world. So to speak. It's bikini season, boys, and though it took a lot of hard work and tedious preparation, I'm proud to say, I'm finally in shape. I'm going out shirtless. Keep in mind, now, I'm not entirely naked. Some of my best assets are hidden. I've assigned codenames to all my most attractive screenplays. Older and abandoned screenplays remain exposed, but if they get too much industry attention, too many ogling eyes, I'll cover those up too. I've given pseudonyms to most of my good business associates, and removed references to most of my bad business associates. Real names are never used, except in the case of friends, family, and people that I own. Similarly, I've taken down all the intimate details and scenes that I'd previously posted from my writing projects. In the future, I will probably continue to post details and draft scenes from new and ongoing projects, but I...

We're All Sherman Oaks Adjacent, Now Last night, I waited much longer than usual to walk the dog. When I finally went out, it was dark. I don't generally care about that sort of thing. I lived happily in Harlem, and now I live in the similarly regarded Van Nuys. Luckily, I don't believe the local news represents the world, and neither do cop shows, so I've never acquired any appreciable fear of city streets or dark alleyways. Instead, I've found for myself that “bad” neighborhoods are full of nice people. No, it's the well-off places that you gotta worry about. Those people are monsters. My particular sliver of Van Nuys is a little, densely-populated cityscape hemmed in by post-industrial-wasteland sprawl to the north, and suburbanized-hipster-family sprawl to the south. I'm right on the border of Sherman Oaks, which used to be the southern part of Van Nuys, until the brown people started moving in, which encouraged the white people to flee. They hi...

Yeah, coffee shops, I'm talking to you. Particularly coffee shops in the vicinity of Century City. It's swell that so many of you are open at 7AM. It's fantastic that you have nice furniture with comfortable workspaces and free wifi. But this is Los Angeles. If you put a sign in your tiny parking lot that says parking is limited to, say, 20 minutes, or hell, even 45 minutes, then I can't spend my morning there, working and buying your coffee and snacks, now can I? And thus, I end up at Norm's. Where the spoon is a different length every day. You'd think they'd have bought the spoons in bulk.

I got sick last Friday and stayed home from work. I don't know if I was authentically infected with something, or just suffering from extremely bad allergies, general exhaustion, and a profound lack of will power. But there was no rousing me from bed all that day. That night, I stayed up late working on a "steam punk" costume for Alli, for a wedding she would attend Saturday morning. The awful truth is, I don't absolutely love these super-cute themed social activities. It sometimes seems like a lot of childless folks treating their existential ennui with tossed-off arts-n-crafts. Worse, they often strike me as somewhat self-congratulatory. Like, " Look how clever and creative we are! Take another picture. Facebook will love this! " Like, folks proudly taking the path less traveled by walking continuously one foot to the left of the more traveled path. Like, everyone making boat-rocking gestures while staying as stone-still as possible. " But i...

In LA, we have no weather. It's sunny and warm almost all of the time. For the most part, the weather is predictable and reliable. It's so agreeable, I've mostly forgotten that weather is a thing that happens. And thus, having been denied that outlet to deliver its reminders, here, it is instead through the traffic that the Universe makes its indifferent and chaotic nature known. The weather is almost always nice, so the Universe orchestrates the traffic to shout: "I'm still capricious and cruel, folks - and don't you forget about it!"  What a lousy drive. How much longer can I tolerate a life that it this bare-faced random, this boldly arbitrary? A person deserves the illusion of meaning and sense! If the traffic can't even bother to put on a show of making sense, well, then ... I'll do something, I tell you. I will do one hell of a something.

What's Up With the Finger? Yesterday evening, when I arrived home, the power was out in my building. I walked Baker and checked out the neighborhood. I took some pictures of LADWP cones and broken electrical pipes, but there were no trucks or crew-persons to photograph. When I returned to building, many of the neighbors were out in the hall, because they were desperately bored, having already been deprived of their television and internet for an eternity lasting upwards of forty minutes. The halls were very dark. It's a bit of a walk in my building, from the entrance to my door. And on my floor, there lives a gigantic mammal. She appears to be part Dalmatian, part Great Dane, part Prehistoric Hippopotamus. She is energetic and nosy and, as best I can tell, entirely unspoiled by human discipline. This is probably the hippo in her. She is also spotted, which is the Dalmation, and has floppy jowls and big pointy ears, which is Great Dane. I believe her name is Bella....

Fake Real Problems Easter weekend found me performing the role of Charlie Kaufman in a presentation of the voice-over monologues from Adaptation , brilliantly delivered, full of the self-loathing and crippling doubt that made it famous, three shows a day. Click on those links up there. I'm not sure I'll be posting what I wrote while in that role. Yes, I started this blog to record the process of screenwriting. And yes, those carefully constructed rants of despair are certainly an aspect of it - at least for me, and apparently for Charlie Kaufman, too. But no, I don't think I'll be sharing them just now. Not without some sort of framing device or additional perspective to add. They require something more to make them less... redundant. One thing is for sure: I'm going to start keeping track of these profoundly angry times. I have two on record now. I'm curious whether they are periodic, and if so, whether I can predict them. I'd like to know when th...

Bored It drizzled on the drive down, but not even enough to wash away the dry white smear on my windshield. It's another overcast day, but this one has less charm than the first one, somehow. Perhaps this is all becoming routine, and the small daily variations are losing their power to excite. On that theme,I had pancakes today. They're always fantastic. But the coffee is a little weak, and the crowd is a little noisy. For a couple days, I've been constructing the movie in outline form on a website called checkvist . And now, having worked on it for another morning, I can say for confidently: it is tedious, and not helpful. I'm losing information, and I'm wasting time encoding the story into an outline form. I'm too methodical to make a sloppy outline, and I'm too bored to finish a thorough one. The only realization I've come to while doing it? I probably don't need Jon to go to work on the first day. And that means Maggie's poo-fli...

Left 7:13 AM | Arrived 7:38 AM This morning the 405 flew, and I arrived about the same time I always do. I can't explain either part of that statement. The ease of travel may have been due to a six-car pile-up, just north of my entrance, that choked back the usual overflow passing through the Galleria corridor. It may have been due to increasing amounts of spring break being observed by colleges in the area. It may have been because Passover begins tonight at sundown, according to my calendar, but not according to my Jewish friends. I'm not sure. As to how I arrived at the same time, despite traffic being non-existent? I can't even begin to guess. Like advanced branches of quantum theory, Los Angeles traffic will never make intuitive sense to the human mind. Our species simply wasn't evolved to interact with systems this foreign and complex. Even with mathematics and metaphors, we can barely bridge the gap. We can't predict it. We can't explain...

I am back at Grounded Cafe . It is 10:15 AM, and I just dropped my dog Bacon off at a new groomer, not too far from my apartment. It's called Mr. & Mrs. Dog . The woman there seemed very nice, but her accent was a rare form that I absolutely could not place or penetrate. I followed her almost entirely by making guesses about the meanings of her gestures and by constructing my replies such that they could have sprung entirely from personal inspiration, not strict response. When she said "vaccinations?" I asked her to repeat it three times, the third time by softly saying, "I don't understand what you're saying," because "vaccinations" started with an "O," and only had three syllables. "Ossendens" is the best transcription I can make. I'm not making fun; I'm simply describing how hopeless I felt. In any case, Bacon won't notice, and she seemed optimistic despite my warning: he won't let me clip ...

Left 7:09 | Arrived 7:39 It's overcast and silver-lit outside. It's the first time that the sun hasn't been rising, blazing in my window as I drove in, peering over my shoulder as I sit here. I rather like it. It brings a timeless quality to the morning. It could be anytime on a cloudy day. A slick-haired Hispanic businessman, wearing a goatee, a pink shirt, and a neck brace, just asked me if I was sitting here yesterday. I told him "Close. I was right up there. But yeah." He nodded silently and stepped away. I ordered only fruit and coffee. As usual, the fruit is cantaloupe and some sort of greenish-yellowish melon. I cut them into little pieces. This will cost me about $4 or $5, but I will tip at least $3. I want to establish the point that the staff gets the same, no matter what I order.

Left 7:06 AM | Arrived 7:37 AM The angle of the sun is changing. Earlier everyday, the sun blazes through the windows of Norm's, laying itself across the whole restaurant. If I sit with my back to it, I can block its glare from my screen with my body, but it is orange-gold and blinding. Today I will have two eggs, over easy, with sourdough toast and a side of fruit rather than hashbrowns. Let's see how that makes me feel. Then again, I really prefer scrambled to over easy. . . EOE or ES. I'm wondering if the immense increase in morning coffee consumption is adding to the inflamed taste buds in my mouth, or to the sore growing on the inside of my cheek. Meanwhile, allergy season has amped up to 9 or 10 out of 12 on the daily pollen reports, and the inside of my nose is dry and bloody, stinging and burning. Pressing the tip of my nose can squeeze a tear from my eye, like a tear dispenser. Daily running and walking is making my legs, knees, and upper-ass ache. I'...

Left 7:06 AM | Arrived 7:42 AM I was stupid and lazy last night and neglected to plug in my Asus Linux netbook, and so I'm on this vastly over-sized Apple laptop, which reduces my focus and - still, after almost a year of using it almost daily - feels like I'm typing with my thumbs tied to my wrist. Let's be honest here, folks, Apple spaces their keyboard keys too far apart, and their text navigation hot-keys are insufficient for intense writing and revision. There's no question that their keyboards look good. The question is, why don't they type good? Why must I suffer? My roommate has a new Apple laptop, and the keys are spaced so far apart that I can't rest my fingers comfortably on all the home-keys at once - and I have relatively longish fingers. I have similar feelings about the operating system itself. I find it clumsy in many complicated multitasking situations, particular with any software that utilizes multiple windows. In particular, it is vastly ove...

It's Sunday. It's almost 1 PM, and I'm out at Grounded Cafe , a coffee shop and internet cafe on Ventura Blvd. I found it with the Yelp application on my cell-a-ma-phone , and I decided to give it a try. There is another place with free wifi and pay coffee recommended by the program: it's called Crave . I drove past it. It looks very busy and bohemian, and there wasn't any street parking within five blocks. So, maybe next weekend. Maybe never. I am trying to reduce the cost of these writing expeditions by making them coffee-only, or snack-only, instead of full-meal. Perhaps I could do that at Norm's, but it feels wrong. It feels like I'm taking up a profitable booth. This is likely ridiculous, since the booths are rarely even close to filled. But coffee shops are places where you are supposed to do this sort of work. I guess this is who I've become. My binary opposite. Someone who writes in public. Necessity makes for strange bedfellows, even when we...

The term "space madness" keeps coming up while I'm working on  Sick day . It first appeared because, at 8 AM, I couldn't remember the phrase "cabin fever." And then I remembered the episode of Ren & Stimpy . And that's why I capitalized it. Space Madness . I don't know how universal an experience Ren & Stimpy was. I remember vividly watching the first seasons as they aired, sometimes with groups other boys at a friend's house. I was 11 or 12. A few years later, they were off the air. People younger than I was may have missed them entirely. Research , and the memory of a friend who was a few years older in 1991, and thus more savvy to how these things worked, reveals that Nickelodeon fired the creator John K after the second season. By coincidence, reviewing the episode summaries, I only recall episodes from seasons one and two, which are where all the classics reside. Anyone who saw seasons after those would've had a completely dif...

I am at the Lamplighter on Van Nuys blvd, about two or three miles from my house. It is Saturday, and it  is 11AM. That's about two hours before I usually get up on weekends, and 2 hours after my alarm clock started going off. In any case, I am here, and my laptop is open. I have one hour before I need to pick up Beezie at the airport. Then, I suspect I will be taking her to her place to take care of the cats, and then taking her to various dealerships to look at used cars, since hers was destroyed in an accident about two weeks ago. I'm not feeling nearly as motivated at this hour of the day. Perhaps I'm just feeling less mentally sharp. Perhaps it's because the text messages and emails and conversations with my people, my mother, my roommate, my girlfriend, have already begun, and my mind is unable to focus on fiction and storytelling. Once again, I have this nagging emotional tug telling me that people are needing my attention. Perhaps, on the weekends, this ...

Left 7:03 AM | Arrived 7:34 AM Can I pause here to mention how deeply I wish I could just stay here at Norm's, hour after hour, writing, researching on the internet, and being a writer - rather than scurrying off to the vortex of distraction that is my paid employment? Can I pause here to mention how much this strange, difficult, and expensive exercise has reminded me that I actually enjoy coming up with stories? As it turns out, I just don't enjoy doing so in competition with the demands of the world, with everything vying for my attention.