xtcian

labor day epidural

8/30/06

A few pictures before I let you go off on your Labor Day Weekend:

Lucy loves her momma, her Aunt Jordi and her Aunt Michelle

she also loves making new friends, like Hilary's daughter Stella!

11am on the West Side Highway last Friday - first rain I'd seen in four months

Sean and preggers Jordana after the Fringe show

Tessa and me in front of gay porn hut on Christopher St.

See everyone next Tuesday, and have a holiday blast!

went to their maker impeccably shaved

8/29/06

This is going to be another chapter in my lifelong treatise on Dorks, but a trip to New York City in the middle of a Los Angeles summer can throw the subject into stark relief. We saw a number of great shows in Manhattan this trip, namely Sweeney Todd, Air Guitar and The Further Cuteness of Hank and Lucy.

Except for the latter, a true current of dorkdom, in all its fabulousness, runs through the work. "Sweeney Todd," which is basically about a barber who kills everyone who comes into his shop, was a revelatory experience: the entire musical was orchestrated by the actors themselves, dragging around cellos, tubas, violins and oboes depending on the song. And this music is no walk in the park - littered with key changes, time-signature craziness, and a touch of opera, it was a tour de force on behalf of everyone in it.

Times may be changing, but I don't think LA would appreciate the show because it's a town that doesn't particularly value its dorks. In order to play Tobias in "Sweeney Todd," you would need to take violin for at least twenty years, piano for ten, voice lessons for a decade, be an accomplished actor, LOOK like an actor, and then make people cry eight performances a week. That limits your potential cast down to a handful of people, and I guarantee all of them come from attic rooms and basements and vast stretches of childhood without friends.

Across town, "Air Guitar" is a much more complicated play than it would seem. It concerns the story of a schlub named Drew who wants to be a famous solo guitarist, but only comes into his own when he picks up an invisible instrument and starts winning Air Guitar competitions around the country.

What's fascinating about this show is that Drew is a dork, whiddling around with his own turgid, navel-gazing music in the darkness of his YouTube-like bedroom, and is only accepted when he parrots the adulatory shredding of his alter ego Ulrich and another guy named, of course, Jammin' Bread.

But there's several levels of dork going on here: Drew himself, and then the actual band Gods of Fire playing the actual music right behind the actors on stage. Further behind them is my brother Sean himself, lyricist Jordana and playwright Mac, all of whom (I don't think they'd mind me saying) are dorks themselves, having sacrificed good portions of their upbringing in order to wow you. It's a meta-meta-experience that was not lost on me, and getting 24 good laughs in was only gravy.

Why do I mention all this? I guess because in an age of irony, an age of parody, of tangential references and constant nostalgia, our generation has done a pretty piss poor job of coming up with something original to say. The fact that hipsters have now fully embraced nerdism in every aspect of culture means that the actual dork is harder and harder to come by. Which is infinitely sad, because they are the ones that will provide the creative fuel to get us through the first half of this century. They will be Lucy's heroes, they will make her friends laugh, they will write the songs that make the whole world sing.

So I say a HUZZAH to the cast of "Sweeney Todd," to Sean, Mac and Jordana, to everyone who is still hellbent on creating new work, discontent to rest on laurels, not satisfied with the easy joke or lazy sarcasm. I hope I'm keeping up my end of the bargain too, and may we never grow complacent.

Sean and I pose in front of the Playwright's Sidewalk plaque in front of the Lucille Lortel Theatre

daydreams answered

8/28/06

Just before the evening of August 6, 2000, I was coming off a suicidal bender. I'd just spent three years in Los Angeles becoming so humiliated by my own character and feeling so dipped in shit that I'd basically given up anything resembling the future I'd hoped for. As a last-ditch maneuver, I'd accepted a position as the Web Editor-in-Chief of one of the last remaining dot-coms in New York City, moved all my stuff across the country overnight, and crammed it into Lars' East Village apartment.

The day before the job was to start, I fell down a set of subway stairs and herniated a disk, putting me in bed for a week and then walking only with a cane. On August 5, 2000, Lindsay Bowen asked me to write one of the 24 Hour Plays and I said sure, I wasn't capable of sleeping anyway. Stuck at 45 Bleecker Street in a humid playhouse, trying to think of a subject, I held aloft my tiny vial of white painkillers, and then it all flooded onto the page.

The show was set for the next evening, and I called a bunch of friends, one of whom was Tessa. I hadn't seen her in three years, and she wrote back saying she was meeting her sister upstate. Fate had to wait another month.

Anyway, I was confident the script was clever enough, but you never know with these things. I nervously showed up to the performance wondering how on earth Sean, Seth and the rest could possibly memorize a whole 10-minute play in a few hours. I sat next to my mom, and then - they let it rip. It was completely unfair that Sean got to say my words, because nobody on earth makes them sound the way he does, but by the end, there was applause during speeches, and by the last blackout, the place went fucking crazy. There was a roar from the audience.

And in one millisecond, seven years of laboring in embarrassing obscurity, every bad date I'd ever been on, the nights staring at the ceiling, the throbbing pain between L5 and S1 on my back... it all went away. My life, from that moment on, turned a corner. Sure, we all had to go through September 11 and I had to have a nervous breakdown and go on drugs, sure sure, but that tiny little play provided a pivotal moment that changed everything.

I got Lindsay to ask Tessa to direct a 24 Hour Play the next month, and my wife and I have been hanging out ever since, but I always wanted to share that moment with her, and never could.

Until Saturday night, that is. They did a Best Of week of the plays, and were kind enough to include mine, and again, Sean and Seth hit it out of the park exactly as they'd done six years earlier. The original Madeline, who was played by Sarah Clarke (who then went on to be the deliciously evil Nina on the first three seasons of "24") was replaced by Maggie Hoffman, who brought her own wonderful intensity. At the end, it felt so amazing, not because they'd pulled it off once more, but because my mom was again on my left, and Tessa on my right. Dorky writers rarely get the chance for such redemption, and believe me, I don't take it lightly.

For our part, we all went out and got hammered until 4am:

back table L to R: Kelly, Tessa, Joy, Brandon. Front table clockwise from left: Jamie, me (with girl drink), Danielle, Michelle, Steve, Scotty, Mac, Ehren, Seth, Maggie, Katie

More on the trip tomorrow, including AIR GUITAR!

robert doisneau would be jealous

8/27/06

Much to say about this amazing trip to New York, but we're getting back on the plane in the morning super-early, and thus all I can say is: after dancing around it for days, Hank and Lucy finally succumbed to the wishes of their television audience.

on a rainswept corner in Brooklyn

i love your work

8/24/06

As evidenced by a little movie you may have seen, Lucy views all computers as a delivery mechanism for her bestest friend in the whole wide world, Hank. Just imagine how excited she was to go to Brooklyn and see the boy in person!

state tree: sugar maple

8/23/06

Kirsten G., Nancy P., Charlie R.

We attended a very small party today on the Upper East Side populated by a fair number of people I really like: Geraldine Ferraro, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel and our own ray of hope from New York, the lovely and brilliant Kirsten Gillibrand. Seeing Ms. Ferraro was a real treat because she was a hero of mine back in grade school - my parents wasted no words telling me how miraculous it was to have a woman this close to the White House. She looked great, and was charmingly deferential to the task at hand.

Nancy Pelosi has had her detractors, even by those on the left who feel like she hasn't attacked BushCo. nearly enough, but her articulation of the Six for '06, the Democrats' new contract with Americans, had this old broken heart beating a little faster. She and Gillibrand talked about alternative fuels, but never mentioned the environment: to them, it's a matter of national security, and more specifically, it's a matter of jobs in New York's 20th District. We have tons of farms that could create ethanol and biodiesel, and Albany boasts one of the country's best fuel-cell manufacturers.

Pelosi also said something I hadn't realized: as of last week, we have now officially been in Iraq longer than we were in World War II. That's a stunning bit of trivia. Unbelievably tragic, too. And there's no end in sight, not as long as certain people are in charge.

Kirsten was funny, concise, smart and so personable that I swear all readers of this blog - even those of you of the rightish persuasion - would be voting for her once you left the building. And of you who care should donate to her campaign, not just because Kirsten is a beacon of light in these dark political times, but also because her opponent Sweeney is a big-time JERK who called Kirsten "just another pretty face."

Sweeney doesn't just get drunk with fratboys on the weekend even though he's in his fifties, he also finds time to screw veterans out of their benefits, bilk senior citizens out of affordable medications, continue a deep friendship with Jack Abramoff and convicted felon Tony Rudy (which puts him in the unique position of supporting sweatshop companies in the Far East that perform forced abortions), take money from Walmart, and receive almost $50,000 in donations from war profiteers like Lockheed Martin and BAE (the second largest contractor in Iraq).

He has one of the worst environmental records in the history of New England, scoring a hard-to-get ZERO PERCENT with both the American Wilderness Coalition and the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, while taking thousands of dollars from electric utility interests like ConEd and Entergy. Seriously, his voting record on the environment makes him look like a Who's Who of the Apocalypse.

Remember those Republican thugs pounding the doors of the city hall rooms during the Florida vote recount of 2000? Sweeney was one of the main ringleaders, leading Bush to call him "Congressman Kick-Ass." Remember "push polls," where a "pollster" calls you up and asks questions that degenerate into personal attacks on a political opponent? Sweeney is doing that right now. THIS GUY IS MY CONGRESSMAN! HE HAS TO GO!!!

Anyway, I've come to look at the 2006 election differently. I will never allow myself to get heartbroken like 2004 ever again. I will never overestimate the American electorate as long as I live. I have zero faith that progressives will be able to turn the tide, and no matter what the poll numbers, I remain convinced that the Republicans will pull something in October that will solidify another win.

It is because I've come to this conclusion that I can help in this race with an open heart. With no expectations, I find I'm more excited to do it. It's a total Sisyphean task, but like Albert Camus, I must imagine futility with a smile. I will go door to door for an awesome woman who remembered Tessa from three years ago and gave her a huge hug - not because I have faith in the outcome, but because it feels undeniably right.

la grande pomme

8/22/06

We arrived in NYC in the late afternoon, and I'd taken a Xanax to get over being the cramped Lucky Pierre of a center seat, so I'm feeling a bit woozy as I post here late at night. I went and saw the first of the 24 Hour Plays where my brother did an awesome reprisal of Dan Kois' play "The Rumor," which was especially newsworthy since the show started at 11pm, and Sean's got his own fish to fry all week.

Just like last year, same week, we stumbled upon the best weather of a summer that was, by all accounts, cruelly hot. It's in the 80s, but pleasant, none of that nad-drenching horrorshow that accompanies temps in the 90s and humidity nearing 100%. For her part, Lucy stumbled down 9th Avenue like she owned the place, stopping to point out people wearing shoes. The funny thing about shoes; a lot of people wear them. Especially in Manhattan.

It has been long enough since our last extended stay that I am no longer feeling like we exactly live here anymore. I don't feel like a Californian either; we're in some liminal state of homelessness. Walking through the West Village tonight, I certainly knew where everything was, but I have lost the kinship I used to share with the other working stiffs I knew from the endless subway rides to the dot-com job.

I've often pretended to still live in places I'd long left - when I went to college at UNC, I still kept a post office box in Tidewater, VA just to have a constant connection. We have an apartment here, but it's rented out, and thus not ours. The day will come when we have to make a decision, if only for Lucy's schooling, but for now, we're very much floating.

free to move about the cabin

8/21/06

We're about to fly to NYC this morning at 5:30am, so wave as we go over. Today's CODE WORD should be provided by... I dunno, how about our conservative friend Matt? Take it away!

qwertylicious

8/20/06

So it seems Snakes on a Plane failed to live up to "an unprecedented tsunami of internet hype" and slunk to... well, #1 at the box office, but not as #1 as some people had predicted. Of course, this cued a bullshitload of stories all with the same premise: the Internet didn't live up to its reputation as a cultural barometer.

Seriously, when are people going to stop writing these pieces? When an "online phenom" doesn't pan out, so-called "real" reporters relish the ineffectiveness of the Web - and when someone like Ned Lamont wins the Democratic primary in Connecticut, the same reporters say it was masterminded by the "angry left" clacking away on blogs and liberal forums.

Either tack is completely reductivist and marginalizing to the power of an internet community. When are these journalists going to learn that the internet is not substantially different than any other mode of communication, and it's mostly full of normal people without an agenda? There was no vast online excitement generated for "Snakes on a Plane" other than the natural rancor reserved for something so stupid. People talked about it because the title itself was the entire pitch for the project, which inspired equal parts rejoicing and shit-talking. It was just parallelism in action; nobody actually had a dog in that fight.

Likewise, journalists like to mystify the Lamont victory, but it had virtually nothing to do with some online cabal. As Susan's plea to newspapers editors says quite well (conservatives, shield your eyes):

***Get over us, for crying out loud. Cut loose with a minimal travel budget for a reporter for a day or two - enough to cover meals at Denny's, a night at Motel 6, a rented Taurus and admission to a county fair - and go talk to some "real Americans." Surprisingly, they're going to be saying the exact same things that are said in tens of thousands of comments and diaries here each week: We're sick of the status quo and we want something done about it, damn it. And I guarantee you, not one in 100 would have heard of Daily Kos or MyDD or AmericaBlog. Yet they somehow managed to vote out an incumbent senator anyway. Go figure.***

There was a day when the internet was nothing but spasmodic computer science majors swapping DOS files; that was called 1979. There was also a day when the internet was 85% yucky guys trading Star Trek fan fiction on Usenet; that was called 1992. Now my Auntie Donna is reading this blog in Pleasant Grove, Utah at the age of eighty-seven, wincing when I use swear words (sorry, A.D.!) And let me tell you, my journalistic friends, if Auntie Donna is reading, the internet is now America.

I've got a word for you, newspaper writers: you're a bunch of mediumists. You think there's only one or two respected ways of disseminating information, and the internet remains this Wild West of crazy YouTube videos featuring suicidal Russian urban gymnasts and bloggers wearing nothing but disheveled underpants. What you don't realize is that your stories about how the Internet is a marginal place... is mostly being read on the internet.

The day will come when it will be considered criminal to fell trees for reading material. All books and periodicals will be on a screen of some sort, the kind you can unfold from your pocket and stretch out to the size of Interview Magazine. I'm proud that folks like Jerry Salley and I wrote the first words some people in the South ever read on the internet, and never looked back. I used to love the feel of a magazine, and the black oily ink of a fresh newspaper, but like a lot of nostalgic habits, I'm moving on.

leo becomes virgo

8/17/06

Lucy hopes your summer is entering the home stretch very nicely!

ladies first

8/16/06

A word about "Free to Be... You and Me." I loved this album more than almost anything in my life; I liked it so much I didn't even ask my parents for it because somehow owning it was too much responsibility. The verse of the title song:
There's a land that I see
where the children are free
And I say it ain't far
to this land from where we are
...featured a chord progression that was so intrinsically beautiful to me that I would wait breathlessly every year for Mr. Feuerhelm, our music teacher at Grant Wood Elementary School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to cue it up. I have to say that one chord progression is the building block of everything I've enjoyed since.

FTBYAM, however, was not a simple relationship for me, and it hasn't aged well. If you click on any of the links from yesterday's blog, you'll see how unbelievably dated it looks, and the sentiments almost single-handedly define the wussyism of post-1960s Sensitive America. Some of the ideas, like Parents are People, seem bizarrely self-obvious, and others, like Circle of Friends, are so obviously quaalude-infested that it's a miracle Kris Kristofferson could get a lyric off.

At the time, it was brilliant casting to have football star Rosey Grier sing It's Alright to Cry, but it sure didn't sway any of my classmates in fifth grade. In fact, FTBYAM became a bittersweet curse. At the time, it was considered faggoty for the kids to call other boys by their first name, so I was called "Williams" for years. It wasn't until prep school that I actually heard my first name used.

Of course, the song every 3rd grader loved from the album was William Wants A Doll, which was easily switched by the entire class to "Williams Wants a Doll," sung in unison as I died a million deaths. It was truly devastating to hear that "s" after "William" every time, looking around, and noticing that even the biggest losers in our grade were in on the joke, relishing their turn to flog the one person that was even lower than they were.

A few weeks later, I mustered the courage to take "Free to Be" at its word. We were required to do book reports in front of the whole class each month, and frankly, I had already read all of the books that were sanctioned by the cool boys: football stories, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Encyclopedia Brown - I was sick of them. By chance, I found myself reading one of the girl books - something from the Betsy-Tacy series - and I was stunned to find out they were pretty fucking good. Why were the Betsy books girls-only?

So the day of the book report came, and the same jock fuckwads kept "reviewing" the same book of football stories, and it dawned on me I was screwed. I fumbled for another book to fake, but couldn't think of one. When I got up in front of the class, I pulled out Betsy and Joe - and the screams of derision were so loud you could hear them outside on the street. I flew into hysterics, started to cry, and because I was a basket case, the teacher sent my ass to the principal.

I don't know if the irony dawned on any of my teachers that "Free to Be," the late-20th century tome on tolerance, was being used to ridicule me, or that it had doled out criminally terrible advice. But lesson learned. It's actually NOT "Okay to Cry" and it's NOT COOL that "Williams Wants a Doll" and as for being "Free to Be," you can go fuck yourself.

I hear that schools are better now, that they don't tolerate that shit as much. I hope so. Because if not, I'm saving pennies to make sure Lucy goes to the most tolerant Quaker Friends school this side of 1974.

now you parlez-vous francais

8/15/06

Hey Lucy!

You may want to know why I listen to the stuff I listen to. If I'd known the exact recordings my dad or mom heard in their youth that formed their tastes, I might make a mix tape of them as well, just to understand what brought them here. I'll make this short as not to bore or overwhelm you.

1. My first Fisher-Price record player, 1970-1975. The following records were on heavy rotation. Heavy enough to induce blood coming out of my family's ears:
Love is Blue by Paul Mauriat (45 single)
Sunny by Bobby Hebb (45 single)
Free to Be... You and Me - Marlo Thomas and Friends (entire frickin' album, esp William Wants a Doll and this unintentionally sad song from Michael Jackson)

2. Kent gives me the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" in 1978. I spend the next five years learning every guitar lick, lyric, and random bit of trivia about the Beatles that ever existed.

3. I get an allowance to buy my own records in 1980. My first purchases:
Glass Houses by Billy Joel
Xanadu by ONJ and ELO (watch the video and you'll understand)

4. Dad gets us the first Walkman in 1981. It is the size of a winter boot, weighs 15 pounds, and we LOVE IT. Recorded the following albums onto tape and wore them out:
Freeze Frame by J. Geils Band
Beauty and the Beat by the Go-Gos
Duran Duran's first album
Ghost in the Machine - by the Police, followed by Synchronicity

XTC circa 1980

5. In 1983, Kent buys me English Settlement by XTC and I buy Mummer on a 10th grade school trip to New York City. Like I did with the Beatles, I promptly learn every chord of every song Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding ever write, culminating in the unthinkably brilliant Skylarking album, and later I use a variant of their band name for my email address, and eventually, the name of my blog.

6. Still addicted to pop even when I get to college in 1985-86, I listen to these albums walking to class:
Hunting High and Low - by A-ha
Songs From the Big Chair - Tears For Fears
The Head on the Door - The Cure
Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti - Squeeze
Temple of Low Men - Crowded House

7. Jon Vaden's girlfriend from high school Betsy Levin makes him a tape for his 18th birthday, including William , It Was Really Nothing and What Difference Does it Make? by the Smiths. I fall in love with Morrissey in the way a very gay man should and play Hatful of Hollow and "The Queen is Dead" until There is a Light That Never Goes Out becomes the first dance at my wedding (to a girl).

The Cocteau Twins

8. While attending Mardi Gras in 1992 and finding myself abandoned in a shotgun shack with a bunch of CDs, I discover the Cocteau Twins and listen to nothing but them for three years.

9. By then, I was in my mid-twenties and no longer able to obsess over bands; whether this was a case of bands getting crappier or my rock 'n' roll heart getting more rigid, I don't know. I still managed to overplay a number of albums leading up to the Millennium, however:
Spilt Milk - Jellyfish
The La's only album
World Clique - Deee-Lite
Kite - Kirsty MacColl
Whatever - Aimee Mann

10. Oh, I could go on, but you get it. Throw in the entire catalog of Steely Dan, Self, Komeda, Kate Bush, The Sneetches, They Might Be Giants, a few nights with Greg and Dillon Fence, and every insane soft yacht-rock AM hit from the '70s, and you will have the DNA of my current pop mindset.

Did 23 years of classical piano and violin training screw me up? Is there a reason there aren't any African-American artists above, other than I'm just a racist? Could any list of music be POSSIBLY MORE TWEE?

I don't know. I'm your dad and I like what I like. Never apologize for your tastes; like masturbation, it's sex with someone you love.

red fish, blue fish

8/14/06

Hey Lucy!

I need to tell you something. You are very, very small. The Pacific Ocean, on the other hand, is very big. It covers about a third of the planet, roughly 69.4 million square miles.

You are about 21 pounds. The Pacific Ocean is 161 million cubic miles in volume. And let me say that I am SO PROUD of your fearlessness. We go to the ocean every evening, and you run into it, clothed or naked, only looking back twice. But I am a little worried that you're not taking the largest body of water in the Solar System particularly seriously.

You even got hit by a big wave last week that knocked you over and filled your sinuses with salt water. This didn't daunt your courage, as you were back the next day giggling at the mouth of the ocean.

In all honesty, perhaps it's not a bad idea. Maybe humanity itself, faced with such inconsequentiality that they turn to religion or cosmology or existential philosophy to make sense of their place in the universe, should follow your lead.

So I'll hold your hand very tightly in the waves, but I'll laugh at them too. I'll try that philosophy no matter where we are. Okay, my sweet?

tropic of leo

8/13/06

It's Flotsam Monday!

1. First off, a happy birthday to my older brother Kent, whom I've lionized here and various other times on the blog. Many of you don't get to meet him because he usually only comes to NY for Christmas, and he always misses the Jartacular because of Detroit's Electronic Music Festival. When Kent comes to Manhattan, however, he always makes it more interesting. We once took him and his family to the long-lost, late, lamented coffee joint Big Cup in Chelsea and watching him in there amongst The Gays was probably the most fun I had in 2002.

2. It has been a few weeks, so I'm assuming all of you who read this have done your one thing, yes? I know I'm not supposed to be doling out marching orders, but if you're not going to take even the simplest steps, feel free to move on to someone else's blog, preferably one where a girl shows her breasts. If you're going to stay, remember we have a gentleman's agreement, okay?

3. Have you bought your tickets to see AIR GUITAR and my 24-HOUR PLAY yet? It's the awesome doubleheader on August 26, less than two weeks away, and it's going to rock your socks off. Here are the ticket links:

Air Guitar at 1pm 8/26
The 24-Hour Plays at 8:45pm 8/26

I'm all ears as to a place to meet afterwards. You're all coming, right? Salem? Annie? Peter Rukavina on Prince Edward Island?

4. Hey, the Frappr map for this blog is sooo much nicer now:

Add yourself if you haven't yet!

5. It's a busy week for our careers; wish us godspeed, won't you?

tea, scones and groans

8/10/06

Two days ago, Tessa and I bought cross-Atlantic plane tickets to London! And back, even! Maybe our timing could have been better given yesterday's news that the British had foiled a plot to take down ten of those airliners, but I have to tell you, I just don't worry about that shit anymore, thanks to Celexa and a good sense of the odds. Besides, her Aunt Loraine is getting married to a Lord, you know, in the House of Lords, and like hell if we're going to miss it.

Yes, we're going to be carbon-offsetting this trip so don't give me any shit.

The Lord from the House of Lords is putting us up in a castle in Scotland for the weekend reception after the wedding, and we can't wait. I only wish Lucy were a bit older so she'll know what the fuss was all about. The big drag, of course, will be getting there, since they've banned all carry-ons regardless of liquid. We're not going until October, so hopefully the restrictions will be a bit more realistic, but have you ever put a 16-month-old on a plane with NOTHING TO PLAY WITH, NOTHING TO READ AND NOTHING TO EAT FOR NINE HOURS?

Seriously, I hope she screams the whole way there.

The Bush Administration, fresh off the humiliation of seeing Lieberman getting his ass handed to him courtesy the residents of Connecticut, was quick to play politics with the potential harm of their fellow countrymen. God, those motherfuckers make me so sick. First, they knew full well the terror plot announcement was coming before their opponents did, so they hammered Democrats on their so-called War on Terror to provide maximum political benefit from today's news.

Oh, go look for yourself, for chrissake. It's easy to find. May I quote?

"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances.

Gee, you'd almost think Bush had something to do with the bust. To quote the AmericaBlog, "The Republicans never did meet a threat of mortal injury to thousands of American lives that they didn't welcome as a political windfall." I agree wholeheartedly. Please, America, see these fuck-alls for what they really are. Nothing is beneath them except your constant contempt.

static in my attic from channel z

8/9/06

I know I'm making you guys do all the work this August, but it relates to career things: today's CODE WORD is...
What kind of TV do you love, and what is lacking from the current schedule?

You can be as lugubrious and as profane as you like.

next time: french onion soup

8/8/06

The way Tessa and I work as writing partners is quite different from that couple in "Friends With Money" - generally, one of us will have an idea, we'll break the story beats together, and then the progenitor will be sent off on sabbatical to write the first draft with little intrusion from the other party.

When that first draft gets done, the other person gets it, says what's brilliant and what needs work, and writes the second draft. This will continue until the changes get smaller and more rapid until we're actually together at the computer fixing periods and semicolons.

The whole idea of writing partners sitting across from each other in a room writing dialogue? I mean, maybe two or three exchanges of that sort will end up in a final draft, but frankly, I don't know how anybody works that way. I'm interested to know how other collaborators (especially married ones, like Sean and Jordana) work, but for us, as long as the basic structure is agreed upon, we work best when we keep a little distance.

I can't say 99% of the juicy stuff we know in Hollywood on this blog, and I don't like representing much about our work life because our careers are collaborative and this blog is not, but I can say this last weekend was quite a doozy for a number of reasons.

A few weeks ago I woke up from a nightmare, walked straight into Tessa's office and said "how do you like THIS for a beginning" and pitched my nightmare to her while wearing boxers with my hair standing straight up. She was captivated (by the pitch, that is) and we spent the next few weeks finding a logical, haunting and surprising end to the pilot - and thus mapping out a whole series.

Since she had first-drafted our last big script (and this was my nightmare), it was my turn to tackle the beastie. At the same time, some people on the local Writer's Guild internet bulletin board posted about a 24-hour writing marathon: show up to the WGA lounge with coffee and snacks and pull an all-nighter to finish your project. First I thought "hell no" and then "that's intriguing" and finally "I absolutely must." I do well in those stunt-writing situations and wanted to get my ass back on track.

Sadly, that WGA event ended up being canceled, but I was still jonesing for the experience. So Tessa graciously and generously took the reins of Lucy for most of the weekend while I booked a hotel room at a nondescript joint in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. I brought my Powerbook, my drugz, and a dry-erase board. My lofty goal: to write an entire 54-page first draft of a one-hour pilot in one sitting. My fallback goal: get to the third of five acts. My worry: getting the teaser and the first act done and then collapsing.

So I checked into this place, made sure they had some sort of room service, and closed the window, as there is something merciless about the Los Angeles sun that can cook away ideas. At 11am Saturday morning, I started. The teaser and first act of the pilot flew by because I was basically recounting the dream. It went so well that I told myself if I could finish the second act, then I could get a late lunch at 4pm.

By the time 6pm rolled around, it looked like my goal of getting the third act done wasn't so insane. There was, of course, the constant pull to read email and obsessively visit all of my favorite sites on the internet, but I managed to control them: I only checked email three times the whole weekend. There were also a ton of movies I wanted to watch on the hotel's cable service, and I was longing to go out and explore downtown, but two seconds of "shuddup about that" and I was back to work.

Tessa called twice, and every time she calls from home, a picture of four-month-old Lucy flashes on my phone. It's so goofy and cute that... well, hell, I'll find it and just show you:

Anyway, when she called around 7pm for Lucy's bedtime, tears welled in my eyes I missed those two girls so much. It made getting back to the task at hand much easier. And thus the third act was done by 8:30pm.

There comes that time during any large project where you start to wonder if you're totally full of shit. In a musical, it happens about a three weeks in; during a novel, maybe two months. Here on a screenwriting stunt, it happened when the sun set. I began to wonder if any of these people were making sense. Tessa and I had mapped out a good beat sheet, but there's always room for paralyzing self-doubt.

The fourth act was grueling and took until midnight. I wondered if I could go home without a final act, and decided that I could not. Since the endings of things are always the hardest, I ordered a shrimp quesadilla from the all-night room service and got to work. Sensing the climax, it got easier. In every pilot ending, there should be a big "reveal" and a huge mindfuck that gets everyone to do a spit-take and reassess their relationship to all the characters and leave you wanting more. We already knew what that was, so it was a nice downhill, fresh powder slide all the way there. It was 3:45am, and I had finished the first draft of the script.

The idea was this: check out of the hotel the next morning and return home victoriously, grab my daughter and hand the pages to my adoring wife. Things did not work out that way.

Since I am a total weenie, I need some white noise in order to sleep; having forgot my little gadget, I downloaded an album of Ambient White Noise from iTunes. I played it over the computer speakers and it was fantastic - got to sleep in minutes. However, I'd fucked up the "repeat" button, and after exactly one hour into deep sleep, my iTunes Library automatically started playing the next alphabetical song at full blast. Which was, of course, Ambrosia's "How Much I Feel."

It took me five minutes to figure out how my dreams had been infiltrated by eardrum-splitting AM Soft Rock, and by then, something bad was happening to my body. Indescribable, yet chronic. The rest of the night was fitful, and when I woke up on Sunday for real, I knew I was sick.

It took five years of dime-store Buddhism for me to drive back to Venice from downtown LA without barfing in the Prius. When I got home, instead of being victorious, I ran into the bathroom, collapsed, and spent three days there and in bed. Only today, as I write these words, do I feel like I've begun to mend. The culprit? You never know with these things, but a glaring choice would be the shrimp quesadilla, two words I can barely string together without horffing.

But you know what? At some point on Sunday, I hobbled into Tessa's office, printed out a copy of the script, and handed it to her. It may be full of mistakes, have a couple of plot holes and some confusing twists, but by god, I got it in her hands.

And she is worthy of my undying affection for so much, but the way she took care of Lucy all weekend and then took care of me for days afterward... she is my heroin and heroine. On a special day like tomorrow, she needs to know that most of all.

it's gonna be a drag... misery

8/7/06

I have been utterly felled by food poisoning and can barely type, so no good word from me today. I'll leave it to someone in the comments to ask a pertinent question... LFMD, how about you?

Please send thoughts of feverlessness and strong tummies my way. This thing is intense, a completely different brand of awful. Take it away...

bank holidays

8/6/06

Because traffic is down, heat is up and exhaustion sets in August, I'm going to be posting only 2-3 times a week until Labor Day. I've also got a backlog of scripts I'm excited to tackle, and since human beings rarely have more than a thousand good words in them a day (with notable exceptions) a lot of those are going to be spilling into Final Draft. Or another program, as soon as someone makes a better one.

It's not that I don't love each and every one of you. You know that, right?

when the hurly-burly's done

8/3/06

These rolling blackouts and natural disasters have got me thinking: have you stopped to notice how incredibly thin our comfort zones have become? The diameter of our comfort zone reminds of those pictures of Earth's atmosphere from space: it seems big when you're in it, but step back a bit and it's as gossamer as skin on a bubble.

Your entire world can suddenly cease to exist in its present form, with the flick of a switch (or, in 2003, by the existence of some trees in Ohio). Once the power goes out, that's your refrigerator and freezer, not to mention internet, air conditioning or any sort of entertainment that doesn't involve cards or dice. The only thing left working is your landline phone (cell phones always fuck up during any outage) and your water, as long as there's no pump. In essence, you and your family are one power line away from being back in the 1890s.

I mention this because Tessa just told me about an episode of "Wife Swap." Apparently a Carmelo Soprano-ish Italian mother of the Stallone family swapped places with a New Agey, slightly granola mom in a beautiful mixed-race family (like GFWD's), and hilarity ensued. The Stallone kids - a prima donna teen daughter and a fat little brother addicted to TV and video games - were asked to meditate, go vegetarian, read books, and turn off the TV for a week.

For their part, the new agey kids had to adopt the Stallone policy of a strictly clean house, television after school, and being on time to everything (which wasn't a big priority for their actual mother). These kids took it in stride, basically liked the experience, and were glad to have their own mother back at the end.

The Stallones, however, had a FULL SCALE MELTDOWN. Without television, with the "forced reading of books" and meditation, they went apeshit. Even the Stallone's mother-in-law tore the New Age mom apart. I'm leaving out tons of great details (of a show I never even saw) but the point is fascinating.

The only real difference between the New Age family and the Stallones was the relative diameter of their comfort level. The Stallones probably sound more like the rest of us than the other family, and I can certainly empathize, but let's not mince words - they were addicts. Addicted to meat, to television, to video games, pop culture, and worse, to a regimented routine. They had been taken over by The Corporation™, whose vested interest is always to reduce a human's comfort level to almost zero, where Their Product can offer the only salve.

I'm not saying my family is any better, either the one I grew up in, or the one I helped create. God knows when the internet or the satellite goes down, my righteous indignation, fury, and eventual jonesing approaches a methadone level. But I would like to widen my comfort level to a plush strip where anything could be possible.

In "My Dinner With Andre," a movie I actually saw, Andre Gregory talks about the professor who decided to walk a different way to class every day for twenty years so he wouldn't fall into a torpor; he would always be conscious and never the "walking dead." I wonder if there's any way my family can do that, even in small doses: no coffee for a week, TV only in Spanish for a week, fully immerse oneself in the ocean every day for a week, eat no meat for a month.

There is a problem. You can decide "I'm not starting my car for a week" or something fairly revolutionary, but it's just not feasible if you have a job. Almost none of it is. A job exhausts the mind and spirit to the point where one's comfort level not only becomes thin and inflexible, it's comforting how thin and inflexible it really is. The less pejorative phrase would be your "simple pleasures," a beer, a scotch, a crappy TV show, a delivered pizza.

The only questions I have begun to ask are these: are your simple pleasures killing you? And, god forbid, if the month-long power outage comes, can you survive it? Would you even know where to start?

Certain friends of mine would be fine, even excel, in the new world order: Bud, Lars and Annie spring to mind. I would hope my little family is flexible enough to expand our comfort level to something outrageous, and though I'm not sure what exercise we can do in the meantime (no hot water for a week? no internet? suggestions?), it'd be captivating to see what happens.

I still have peccadilloes. I will never do Vonage (or any VoIP) because it means when the cable goes, the phone goes. I keep our cable modem and satellite TV separate, so one always works. I'm planning a camp-in-home setup in case LA gets hit with the dreaded 8.5. And I have a stash of painkillers, creams, Afrin, and my beloved Celexa. I'm fine with a wide comfort zone, but my drugs are NON-NEGOTIABLE. Just point me in the direction of the home dook game, and I'll walk there.

powdered toast man

8/2/06

Given that it is the hottest goddamn day of the year for many of you, and also because Development Season is in full swing here in Hollywood, I will truncate today's blog in favor of a couple of grainy movies of my daughter at dinner tonight.

I love Lucy's toes, but this is slightly ridiculous

guess who learned how to "tira un beso" today?

approved by björn türoque himself

8/1/06

A few items to clear up for today:

- TO BEGIN, the dates for the New York Fringe Festival have been announced, and Gideon Productions' Air Guitar musical is opening and closing the festival. I think this one is going to be utterly phantasmagorical and not to be missed. With Sean's musical chops, Jordana's bizarrely inspired lyrical twists and Mac's usual kick-ass dialogue, I'm as psyched for this one as any of their oeuvre.

Select which show you want and buy tickets here. Do it now so that they get written up quickly as a fast seller.

- HOWEVER, Lindsay and the 24-Hour Play Company are also celebrating their 10th year with a stint at the Fringe. I encourage all of you to see as many as these shows as possible, as they feature our friends Mac and Dan.

- IF, THOUGH, you want a double-header of Williams Family Goodness (and who amongst us doesn't), you've got the magic date of Saturday, August 26. At 1pm that day you can see "Air Guitar" on the Lower East Side, grab an excellent Italian dinner in Soho, and then see my 24-Hour Play at 8:45pm in the West Village that very same night. It simply couldn't be sweeter. Here are the tix for those two shows:

Air Guitar at 1pm 8/26
The 24-Hour Plays at 8:45pm 8/26

There will no doubt be a party that night. Somewhere.

- AND, AS FOR YOU, or at least those of you who didn't think Lucy and I could dress ourselves while Tessa was away, my daughter has an ensemble for you:

she picked the shoes herself