Plans and Maybe some Yoga.

Oh dear blog. I have been driving myself nuts lately contemplating the future. Or rather: THE FUTURE!

And I don’t just mean hover boards and meal pills that taste like an entire Thanksgiving dinner. No. I mean my own future (sadly I do not see myself owning a hover board any time soon).

As you well know, I am a failure at life and school, as I was recently rejected from some of the best writing programs in the country. This has left me wondering what I am going to do with myself when I graduate in May. Thus far I have come up with the brief outlines of a plan. I will discuss this plan with you now.

First! I will keep writing. I have been writing my whole life and almost none of it was for school. I am going to get back to a place where I write for the joy of doing it.

So that being said, here is what I am going to do:

I have a play to finish. It is a cute and charming play and I like it very much and have not gone near it in ages because I have been in short-fiction mode since I went back to school. And believe it or not, the LA theatre scene can be broken into.

I have a half-written screenplay to finish. It is kind of about Jesus and it is also kind of funny and I think I can finish it really fast if I can dedicate a couple of weeks to it. Also, I need to have a script in the hopper because the final edit of 'Strange Angel' is almost done. We hope to finally sent it out to the festivals!

Also, I have a 130,000 word novel that really needs some editing and some tender loving care. I think that if I can get it cleaned up then I can send it out to agents.

Also, I have a half-written novel that I adore but just haven’t had the time to go back to because it is kind of complicated to write. It is basically a love story and I think that I have kept them apart for too long!

Also, I have enough short work to put a collection together, so I’m contemplating going to a print-on-demand publisher and trying to self-promote. I know, that doesn’t sound dignified, but everybody seems to be saying that it’s the way publishing is going to work now. I’m tempted to try it out, if only because it’s an area where nothing is set in stone yet, there is no clear path. It’s all “new media” wild west. I find that intriguing.

Also, I have a bunch of short work laying around and I haven’t really been submitting it out to the world, so I need to get myself a new Writer’s Market book and get my work out there.

But before I get to any of that, I think that I need to re-train myself as a writer. Not a student of writing. I think that as soon as I’m done with this semester I’m going to start work on ONE PROJECT. Just one! I think that I’m going to work on a short novel. Something that will let me purge all of this pretentious writerly crap I have been learning the last two years. I need a project that I can write on every day. Something that lets me stretch the way that writing for workshops can’t. I need to get in the habit of sitting in front of a keyboard everyday.

Oh! That also means that I will be writing to you more, my dear blog. So get ready for more of my life (such as it is). I have not really been a life-blogger up to this point, but what the hell. I have to start doing more then posting links, right?
And that’s just the writing.

There actually is real life stuff to figure out too. Violet and I are contemplating moving to a different part of LA when our lease is up in a few months. We live in Santa Clarita (which isn’t really even LA) and it is nice and easy in a yuppie suburb kind of way, but we are thinking that we can get a cheaper rent if we move south, out of this Starbucks Stepford. And I really do want to live in a place. I would love to be able to walk to dinner or to the grocery store. I would love to be able to walk to the corner and buy a paper. I don’t know if that is practical, but there are some places in LA where it is possible. So who knows, this may turn out to be an interesting year.

No matter what happens I think that I will apply to grad school again in the Fall. I need to put together a different kind of list this time. I need to worry less about the funding (it hurts me just to type that) and more about what will be best for me. I need to worry less about reputation and more about aesthetic.

In other news, I am considering taking up yoga. Yes, yoga. I’ve been on overdrive for three years (working and getting myself educated). I was thinking about the numbers the other day and I average about 36 hours of work a week (that includes my time on the weekends), 12 hours in class each week, 8 hours driving (about 45 minutes each way for school) and (on a good week) about 6 – 10 hours of school work at home. So I think that maybe some yoga would help me down-shift. And maybe I will even be able to detox off these god damn energy drinks.

So dear blog, those are my plans, as far as I have been able to conceive of them so far. It is possible that I’m loading myself up with a lot of expectations because I’m terrified of the possibility of stillness, but hey maybe I should get a therapist. I will add that to the list!

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For the Human Beat-Box in All of Us.

Do you like killing time AND making awesome music?

Check out this website: incredibox.com

It is the coolest thing since Walter my Tea Party Robot Baby.

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How to Become Mayor of the Internet!

As you well know dear readers, I was recently rejected from the best of the best MFA Creative Writing programs in the country and now that I only cry about it in the mornings, I am trying to spend some of my time figuring out what I will do with myself once I graduate. One of the things I plan to do is to start using this blog the way that I originally intended, which is to say that I will post more writing on it and even figure out how to write stories specifically for it.

Now don’t worry! I will still post the sort of random and largely irrelevant crap that you come here for.

However, I have also been thinking about how to get more people to read this damn thing. As it is only my Mom reads it (hi Mom!) and that’s cool and all, but I need more people to read it and tell two friends and then those two friends will tell two friends and so forth and so on until I become president of the Internet. Or at least Mayor.

So I have been thinking a lot about what people like to read on blogs and after extensive and exhaustive research and analysis I have concluded that the only things people like to read about on blogs are: politics, tech, and babies (I have also discovered that people most like to look at: porn, cute animals, and porn).

Since I (sadly) do not have any porn or cute animals to offer you, I would like to announce that this blog will, henceforth, be concerned primarily with Walter my new Tea Party Robot Baby!!!



Walter has a built-in iPad, he has profoundly changed my life and my sense of the world and made me really understand love, and he hates Socialism with a fiery passion that borders on pathological self-delusion (though he does not have a clear understanding of what Socialism is exactly and thinks that it means giving public subsidies to pregnant, unmarried, drug-using illegal immigrants).

Sometimes, at night, when I hold Walter in my arms and listen to his 120 GB hard drive gently purr into sleep mode, I softly sing him songs about how much the Founding Fathers loved Jesus and Ronald Regan and guns.

I bet you’re gonna tell your fiends now!

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This cool picture of Walter was respectfully (please don’t sue me) lifted off the Flickr page The Finedon's Secret's which has a bunch of other cool stuff that I don’t entirely understand.

No Country for Kevin Bacon.

The other night I was totally exhausted and I was sitting on the couch clicking back and forth between two different movies. This post gets more interesting, I promise.

I was watching “No Country for Old Men” and “In the Line of Fire”.

I started to think about how, with so many good and/or popular actors were in these two movies that it would be really easy to connect the two somehow Kevin Bacon Style.

Well then I started to think about it and think about it and think about it . . . and it was really hard for me! Now maybe this will be easy for you, maybe I just missed some HUGE connection, but I didn’t think so, which is fascinating because here you have Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich, Rene Russo and then Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harelson, Tommy Lee Jones!

This should be easy, right!

Clint Eastwood has worked with Morgan Freeman who has worked with everybody! John Malkovich has worked with John Cusack and Cameron Diaz! Rene Russo has worked with Mel Gibson! Josh Brolin has worked with Richard Dreyfuss!

But I could not make it work. I was so frustrated.

And then, like a vision, like an angel, who should walk into that meeting room in the Old Executive Office Building and shake hands with Clint Eastwood? Who?



That’s right, Bill Lumbergh himself, Gary Cole.

And like a flash of jagged lightning sent on high from Kevin Bacon I had it!

Gary Cole is in “In the Line of Fire” and also in “Pinapple Express” with James Franco who was in “Milk” with Josh Brolin who was in “No Country for Old Men”.

Success! I was very proud of myself because it was a job well done. It was not pretty and it was not clean and it was not fancy, but god-as-my-witness I stuck the landing.

But something about it still didn’t sit right with me and for days now it has been slowly gnawing at my brain like some sort of water-borne Amazonian disease. And then just now I came up with it! I figured it out! It has the kind of simple elegance that physicists used to look for when contemplating the Grand Unified Theory.

Do you know what it is? Can you connect them?

You probably can, you probably already have, but if you have not then scroll down. But if you want to stew on it for a little while, then don’t scroll down. It is an exercise in freedom.

TTFN.

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“Space Cowboys” staring Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones.

Oh, and because it is (almost) tangentially related, here is a picture of Scarlett Johansson (who was in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” with Javier Bardem, and who is also in love with me).

PostSecret, Still the Best Website on the Internet.

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Visit . Reading this website is what I imagine going to Confession must be like. Or rather, what it must be like to eavesdrop on people in Confession, which is more fun.
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My Misspent Evening.

So right now I am supposed to be doing school work, but I think that I have just about burned out. I am a racecar that has been on fire for three semesters and now I’m just trying to coast my charred chassis across the finish line. It is pretty sad really because I have worked very hard the last few years. This is my fourth semester at CSUN and I have made the Dean’s List the last three semesters, but between you and me I was only working my ass off that hard because I thought that it would help get into grad school. Now that I have been officially rejected, I am starting to care less. At this point I know I just need to pass everything and I will get my degree. So I am going to work just hard enough (on some things at least). This is liberating, but probably in a bad way.

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The House of Representatives is a Classy, Classy Place.

So do you remember how there was a time when the US House of Representatives was distinguishable from a monster truck rally?

Here is an article about how Congressman Randy Neugebauer of Texas shouted “Baby Killer” at one of his compatriots. This is just the kind of high-minded debate that I was hoping for from the leaders of the free world.
It is so short that re-posted it below.


Texas lawmaker: I yelled 'It's a baby killer'

(CNN) -- Texas Rep. Randy Neugebauer says he was the Republican House member who called out "baby killer" during the chamber's debate Sunday night on the health care reform bill.

Neugebauer issued a statement Monday apologizing for the outburst. His statement said he called out, "It's a baby killer," in reference to the last-minute deal between Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak and the White House that secured the support of Stupak and other anti-abortion Democrats for the health care bill.
"Last night was the climax of weeks and months of debate on a health care bill that my constituents fear and do not support," Neugebauer's statement said.

"In the heat and emotion of the debate, I exclaimed the phrase 'it's a baby killer' in reference to the agreement reached by the Democratic leadership."

The interruption occurred as Stupak was delivering an emotional speech defending the deal with the White House that called for President Obama to issue an executive order guaranteeing that the bill would not change existing limits on federal funding for abortion.

The phrase yelled by Neugebauer was initially believed to have been directed at Stupak personally.

"While I remain heartbroken over the passage of this bill and the tragic consequences it will have for the unborn, I deeply regret that my actions were mistakenly interpreted as a direct reference to Congressman Stupak himself," Neugebauer's statement said.

"I have apologized to Mr. Stupak and also apologize to my colleagues for the manner in which I expressed my disappointment about the bill," the statement concluded.
"The House Chamber is a place of decorum and respect. The timing and tone of my comment last night was inappropriate."

The incident evoked memories of Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, who yelled "you lie" during Obama's health care speech to a joint session of Congress in September.

Wilson also apologized, and the House formally reprimanded him for the outburst.
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Despite My Suggestions, Texas Still Exists.

Is there too much lead in the water in Texas? Is that what it is? What the hell else could possible be wrong with them?

You’ve probably heard about this already, but the Texas State Board of Education gets to make “suggestions” to the publishers of school text books and since Texas is so god damn big and has so many school children, publishers basically just write their books to comply with Texas and everybody else in the country just has to deal with it.

Here are a couple of the most are you fucking kidding me? suggestions:

- Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment. Among the intellectual forerunners to be highlighted in Jefferson’s place: medieval Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, Puritan theologian John Calvin and conservative British law scholar William Blackstone. Heavy emphasis is also to be placed on the founding fathers having been guided by strict Christian beliefs.

- A recommendation to include country and western music among the nation’s important cultural movements. The popular black genre of hip-hop is being dropped from the same list.

If your stomach is amenable to bullshit, here is the article.

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Holy turritopsis nutricula!!!

So yeah, this stupid jellyfish has figured out how to NEVER DIE. That’s right. They don’t die.

Read it up and then get unreasonably pissed at these things.

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Music Videos, The Death Of?

I came across this article the other day and it made me sad.

Who Killed the Music Video Star?

Basically attempts to explain why the music video has all but died out. Part of the explanation is simple and obvious; basically MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore. Boooo MTV!

However the second part of the article is a little more interesting. The author makes the assertion that music videos were never actually an extension of an artist’s creative energy, but rather it was always a marketing tool. It was always just a publicity ploy that was trying to get you to buy the album. Since no one actually buys albums anymore, there is significantly less money flying around in the music industry and so, essentially, music videos are no longer cost effective.

How sad that the music video may be becoming a lost art form?

Since I am getting all misty-eyed about music videos, I have posted a few of my favorites below.

Radiohead/UNKLE "Rabbit in Your Headlights"
This video is creepy, cool, and every time this poor bastard gets hit by a car you really feel it. Uuugh!



Prodigy “Smack My Bitch Up”
Probably one of the greatest music videos of all time. Filthy and all Id and simply sublime. WARNING: this is the dirty version and will probably be removed by Blogspot by the time the sun comes up.



Guns N’ Roses “November Rain”
The “Phantom of the Opera” of music videos. It is simply the biggest and most actually epic of them all.



Michael Jackson “Thriller”
Arguably one of the greatest music videos of all time.

Regrettable Lies I Have Gotten Away With.

Since I can’t sleep I have been reflecting on my life and below is a(n incomplete) list of lies that I have told people THAT WERE BELIEVED!

That my family owns a bridge outside of Tracy California where my father taught me how to fish.

That I was adopted (I wrote a two-part editorial about it for my high school paper).

That I dropped out of UCLA medical school.

That I have been to Chicago.

That I would pick up the bar tab (I still feel bad about that one).

That I wasn’t drunk.

That I used to be in a band.

That I ran for mayor of my hometown when I was 19.

That I served in the merchant marines for four years.

That I am a commercial airline pilot.

That I taught myself how to tie a necktie at the age of four.

That I am Jewish.

That I am a devout Christian who is unhappy that I can’t find a church that, “Really practices what Jesus taught. You know?”

That I am gay.

That I used to know how to speak Portuguese.

That I had a short-lived and completely unsuccessful career in pornography.

That I used to own a beat up car with a lot of bumper stickers on it.

That I know how to ski.

That I have performed CPR on myself by leaning over the back of a chair.

That I used to work as a fire extinguisher inspector.

That I got such high SAT scores because they lost my test and my parents threatened to sue the SAT company.

That I had a roommate who could make fake library cards.

That my father is the actor who played the bad guy in the first “Beverly Hills Cop” movie.

That I can change the oil in a car.

That I saw a tornado once when I was in Missouri.

That I accidently swallow paper clips all the time at work.

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Singing Priest Solves Mysteries!

Am I the only one who thinks that a television show about a singing priest who solves mysteries would be homerun smash hit?

I am?

Oh.

Nevermind.

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I Can't Sleep. Because I'm a Failure.

I can’t sleep.
So here we are. Just you and me dear blog, the two of us in the middle of the night while the rest of the world is in bed, all decent and law-abiding and well-rested.

A little bit ago I was in bed and Violet was drifting off to sleep and I whispered to her that I couldn’t sleep and she said that she would tell me a story (sometimes I tell her stories when she is trying to go to sleep) and her story was this:

“Once there was a boy named Jamie and his brain was broken and so he couldn’t sleep.”

And then Violet fell asleep and I was left staring at the shadow of the ceiling fan, just ma and my broken brain.

The truth is that I have been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist of a psychiatrist to figure out that it started about the time I started getting rejected from grad schools. The truth of the matter dear blog is that I didn’t get in anywhere and the fact has had a pretty profound effect on me. I knew the odds going in but a part of me really did think that I would get in somewhere. Someplace. But alas, it was not too be. And I have had to spend a lot of time thinking about it lately. And that’s okay. We all need these kind of set backs from time to time but shit, I occasionally feel like my entire life is a long chain of these sort of setbacks. I mean really, how much character am I supposed to build here?

But I am not going to bitch and moan, at least not too much. I have very little interest in feeling sorry for myself. Well, except for the day I got rejected from Brown. Brown was my Ivy League wet dream and I really really really wanted to get in there. That particular day I was perfectly fine with feeling sorry for myself. But that mostly only lasted the day.

It is pretty late right now and I have always found that this is the time of the day when people either lie the most of are the most honest and so right now I will be honest. The real kicker in all this isn’t the wholesale rejection (of me) by the American creative writing establishment, it is the fact that I was soooooo looking forward to grad school because it was going to be a two year break. And I really needed the break. It was going to be two years to just write. I have never had that in my life. Almost every word that I have ever written has been written in the margins of my life. It usually meant staying up late of getting up early or writing on my lunch breaks. I was looking forward to taking all of this energy that I use to work full-time and go to school full-time and just throwing it at the writing. I wanted, for once, to be prolific. And prolific I would have been.

I coulda been a contender!

Anywho, that’s enough of that.

The reality is that I have another nine weeks of school to get through and then my life will slow to just work and life and I think that I will apply to other schools in the Fall when applications open up again. I figure that I owe it to myself to give it one more shot at this whole being educated thing. In the in between time I have a play to finish and a screenplay to finish and a novel to finish and another one to finally edit. And I have enough short work to self-publish a collection print-on-demand style. Also I’m going to have to come up with two really good pieces of writing for applications in the Fall.

I thought that my last ones were good, but apparently they weren’t good enough.

Though now that I am getting some perspective on the whole MFA Creative Writing thing I think that there is a case to be made that I don’t really write like other people and so maybe I don’t fall into the boxes that these kind of programs want a writer to fall into. Or is that just self-aggrandizing? Maybe it is but – you know – leave me the hell alone about it. I’m a failure! You really want to kick me while I’m down.

It is going to be a little while before I get totally clear of the mental wreckage and fall-out that is rejection on this massive a scale, but when I get really sad about it, I think back to a piece that I read in The Onion when I first moved to LA. It was just a little help wanted box listing the demeaning things that they made their interns do and at the bottom of the box it said, “Creative Writing MFAs need not even apply. Seriously.”

Now I am not now, nor have I ever been, one of those people who thinks that things happen for a reason. I don’t believe that there is a grand design and I don’t actually believe in destiny and if there is a god he/she had better damn well be paying attention to things far more important than me. I say all this just to make the point; don’t worry too much about me. I land on my feet faster and better than most people and I have way more experience at it than most. Also, I’m basically a specially formulated kind of awesome. So I will be fine.

And I will keep you posted.

Sorry if this entry is a little ramble-y, but I’m pretty tired.
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Terror!

So my loyal readers are always emailing me and asking, “Hey, what would happen if you let some of your fancy college-educated friends borrow that notebook that you always carry around in your pocket?”

Well the other night I let some of my fancy college-educated friends borrow my notebook and you know what they did? They drew this terrifying monster (yes, that’s a heart-shaped belt buckle that the terrifying monster is wearing).





Thanks Mike and Erin. The whole Internet thanks you.
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