Sha-Toe

Look! That's me in the Chateau Marmont. Soon I will be there, but not as a tourist who gets chastised for taking photos on the premises.

To that end I have just finished writing the cold opening (a cold opening which I can add to my show biz vocab, means that the dialogue starts while the opening credits are running) of my sitcom rewrite. I wrote the second half of the opening scene about 3 weeks ago, but since this effort is going to be my calling card for a new career, I was agonizing over those first crucial 10 seconds of dialogue. 

My Script Goddess talked about how sitcoms require a bit of exposition by their very nature ("expo" another show biz word that still confuses me, but has something to do with showing and not telling) but she gave me a few techniques to slip them in under the radar.  Alas, a sort of meta-understanding of expo helped me write the scene backwards.

Anyhow, the opening scene is now in her hands to make sure I am not making any big conceptual mistakes from the getgo.  

Boring contract job ends today, but thankfully it has allowed me  to become cashed up for a month. So I can first-draft this rewrite while looking for my next gig with ample breathing room. 

I Want

I want to sleep. I can't sleep because I have spent most of the weekend sleeping. And now I'm wide awake when I could be sleeping. And now I'm thinking when I could be sleeping.

I'm thinking about what I want. And I know what I want. I want the things that money can't buy. And these things are intangibles. They cost nothing, but are priceless. Beyond any Mona Lisa or A Thorn from The True Crown.

I want peace of mind. I want implacability. Steadfastness. Transcendence over whatever it is that is going out "out there". I want a feeling of the Universal, whatever that is, I want steadfastness, to stay on some course, any course that leads to something that is not found in any particular place or in any particular person or object. I want to be resolute in this pursuit and I want to be tolerant of anything or anyone that may appear to bar the way to a sense of the sacred. And I'm not talking about some particular brand of Jesus here. I'm talking about a sense of perfection that is rooted in the dissolution of expectation. In short, I want not to want. Not even to want to sleep, although it would be great that after writing this I could manage to get into bed and start sawing logs for the next 7 hours.

Blue Rinse Redux

I'm not sure it's just the car that should be called Blue Rinse.  

In an effort to Pimp My Ride by Pirelli-Girling on the hood I pulled a muscle in my left hip that necessitated a day off work in bed and several mg's of Ibuprofin. 

I have a massage booked for next week.

Nuff said.

Road Kill

Here are a couple of cars I did not get:

A 1973 BMW three wheel Bubble Car. [I know I was sort of blond then]

A 1950's Porsche.

Neither of these cars are mine.

What I got instead is a 1995 Chevrolet Beretta. I have yet to have myself photographed in or next to my new car.  I'm not sure it fits my image. But then again, who am I maintaining my image for? Most of my friends like me.  [Did I just write that? Sorry, It's very early and I did not get more than 5 hours sleep-YET managed to get up, meditate for 30 minutes and sit down at my computer to do this...where am I going with this? Oh, okay] Most of my friends like me. Hmmm.... [thinking...followed by more thinking and a quick ciggy break for yet more thinking]

Ok, it's like this, I think, because I just thought about it: ALL of my friends like me. But not everyone I know likes me, probably because I talk too much and too often. But I am working on that. I have been practicing The Art of Listening More Than Talking. Making the effort and all that, which is hard to do in a Conservative State. During an election year. But I did hear a recipe for breaded, deep fried pickles (or gherkins for my UK readers), which really surprised me. As a rule I avoid deep fried foods which tend to lead to anti-social bodily behaviors on my part. But I never knew that one could deep fry a pickle/gherkin, let alone roll it in a batter of flour and egg beforehand. It's not something that has ever occurred to me. I am actually kind of surprised that it would occur to anyone for that matter. Like the first guy to eat an oyster. Had to be very hungry and patient. That was at work. I then heard a bunch of other recipes for breaded, deep fried foods, but I was so lost in the contemplation of the Deep Fried Pickle that I could not really follow the rest of the conversation. Anyhow, nothing was as memorable as the DFP. But I think the fact that I Listened, and Did Not Give My Opinion made me more likable to the little group of people, or folks would be more appropriate than had I said "Gross" or "Bleccch" or "Oh my God Sweet Jesus"! Even though I was thinking that really loud in my head.

Blue Rinse

Just back from Aspen where I met with what I have come to know as my Script Goddess. The new beat sheet (see previous blog for Show Biz Vocabulary that I am building, to which I can now add "Show Runner", who is the person who hires all the writers and basically, uh runs the show.) Anyhow my Script Goddess who was the "show runner" for Arrested Development has given me the green light on my new beat sheet.  It's time to start the next rewrite on this thing.  So...I think my blog will morph, temporarily to being more of a photo blog for a while as I am now engaged with The Beingness of Sitcom Writer.  But I have to crank out one more proper blog as I now have a new car (see previous blogs for the adventures of car buying in OKC) where I will show you all of the cars I do NOT have, and the car I do have.  It is not so much as a hotrod as a tepid rod. I call her Blue Rinse.

Russell Brand

I just listened to British Comedian Russell Brand's podcast on BBC Radio. I had kind of heard of him in passing when he was doing Big Brother's Little Brother and I was flipping through the channels of an evening. But largely the extent of my familiarity with him was that he emerged from Kate Moss' house early one morning during one of her break-ups with Pete Dorghty, or Dourghtey, or Dorghtey. Fuck it. The junkie musician guy.

I was thinking that I would really enjoy Russell Brand a lot if Xanax figured into the equation.  

But the Xanax is for him, not for me.

That's not a dig. It's just how I see it all working out for me.

You can download his podcasts here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/brand/

James and The Blue Cat

I have just received my very first comment on my blog!

This is a huge milestone in the world of Bloggery, or Blogdom, or Blogitaina, or something. The comment comes from James Henry, (not to be confused with Henry James who has been dead for a long time) no other than the publisher of:

www.jamesandthebluecat.blogspot.com 

and one of the writers of, among many other things, The Green Wing, a British Sitcom that eclipses Scrubs by a long shot.

James is A Full Time Writer.  He is not at an electronic accessories company in Oklahoma City clipping paths around images of...electronic thingys for a 1000 page catalog of, um thingys for Consumptive Americans.  I don't mean consumptive in the sense of tuberculosis. Or do I?  I think American Consumerism is a sort of disease, like alcoholism. Or tuberculosis, actually.

Anyhow, I have the first comment on my blog. A quantum leap and a 25% increase in my fanbase. That might be pushing it. He did not say he was a fan. He just recommended a podcast. So a 25% increase in my readership. A milestone.

I also heard from my friend Janet that she read the blog start to finish.  She was telling me that she recently heard about Laughing Yoga (Mira Nair, of Monsoon Wedding made a documentary about this) and that she thought that my blog qualified.  These little tidbits keep me going. Janet is my accountant who is mentioned in a previous blog. Hi Janet!

Another thing that is keeping me going, that has in fact injected some much appreciated oxygen into my writing is that I heard back from my Sitcom Mentor that my new outline, or Beat Sheet (part of the new show business vocabulary I am acquiring. So far I have Beat Sheet and Cold Opening, which means the opening credits are rolling as the episode starts...) Sorry. Tangent.  She says that my new Beat Sheet is ready to go, but this time she called it a "treatment." So I now have 3 works. Here is what she said:

"Just read treatment. It's great. The story is solid, the characters are great, the details show a real writer's eye for detail."

I know we are meant to find appreciation and acceptance within.  Like, "until you love yourself, you will not find love outside of yourself"...or something like that.  But I am new to this show business stuff and I need outside approval from time to time.  Besides, I don't want to come off as smug, like those self-loving people do.

I have to go now because the electrical thingys await me, but not before I select an image for this blog, which will be difficult as I can't think of any images that relate to this blog.

Okay, I found one. It's me with Chutney and Snort. Snort is nibbling on my hair.  This was in January when I was last up in Aspen and went to a dogsled race in Redstone.  And I am going to Aspen next week, where I will meet with my Sitcom Mentor, who also grew up in Aspen.

And now through a roundabout way the image relates to my blog, and Snort definitely approves of my hair, and so do I.