March 31, 2021

Okay so. There have been some goings on. Drama at the skate rink! It's all happening over Instagram. There's a group of skaters who primarily skate at Mar Vista and Venice who make their money (possibly?) by skating. They've got thousands to a couple-hundred-thousand instagram followers, and occasionally they throw up a sponsored post or get recruited for an ad campaign. They are predominantly white women but not exclusively. 

As far as I can tell, these are the primary complaints: 

1) Lessons -- these skaters charge $$$ for lessons, which they then half-ass or -- allegedly -- they take the payment but don't show up at all. The sense is that they're basically just charging money for people to hang out with them. What rankles further is the impression that they came up receiving lessons and mentoring from black OG skaters for free. 

2) Cliquishness -- a superficial friendliness with a run of exclusivity underneath. They've invited people to skate with them and then told them the wrong location. They've been cagey about skating locations in general, even if they're not currently skating there. There's a sense that you have to be This Skilled, This Stylish, with This Many Instagram followers in order to talk to them. 

3) Doing it for the Gram -- the complaint that this group of skaters are benefitting from the local skate community but not giving anything back. This might be the underlying thing. They're working on creating a fictional world via Instagram. This is a candy-colored California with bright retro clothes -- a sun-drenched carefree groove -- full of free-wheeling skinny blondes. It's a scene where beginning skaters don't exist, where women of color don't exist. (They see these skaters as "ruining" their videos.) It's a spectacle that's working for them online, which seems more important to them than whatever is happening IRL. 

I don't have an especially hot take on any of it. People have been cordial to me, even the group in question, and other skaters -- mostly skaters of color -- have been friendly and nice enough to give me tips. (I have the feeling that everyone looks at me with a certain amount of pity. I am not very good.) 

I'm attracted to the rink because it makes me feel good to skate, it's good exercise, it's nice to see people as I'm still working from home, the music is good, and there is a kind of community or subculture going on. It's cool. It makes me feel like a baby Tom Wolfe with a view into an authentic and creative SoCal experience. But on the other hand, Mar Vista is just a public outdoor hockey rink. There's no physical or financial barrier to entry, and as a public park, no requirement for being friendly or making friends. 

My last thought is that it's too bad someone's not making a Zine (as far as I know). If not a Zine, just some kind of creative expression/media that's for the people who are actually skating, rather than thousands of anonymous people from all over the world, scrolling by passively. Do it for the rollers not the scrollers everybody.

For more info, check out @seirasage and @kaysk8s_ on Instagram. 

March 30, 2021

My husband left this morning to fly to Seattle to spend time with his parents and siblings over his spring break. I'm staying in town, as I still have work, I have a screenplay to rewrite, the pandemic, and it's nice to save some money by not buying too many last-minute plane tickets. My husband and I haven't been apart very much in the last several years. I think it will be interesting to get some time to myself, but I'm still a little sad. Luckily, I can go skating nearly every day and that way make sure I get out of the house and at least see other people. 

Mlog time! 

**SPOILERS**

TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME

1992

Directed by: David Lynch

Written by: David Lynch, Robert Engels 

Watched: 3/30/21 

It’s the sequel to the TV show. We’re introduced to a similar circumstance as the beginning of the show: a beautiful blonde woman has been killed and a letter is found underneath her fingernail. The two FBI agents have some dealings with the small town cops and then one of them disappears. After that, we see the events leading up to – and including – the murder of Laura Palmer. A lot of the scenes had lovely, trippy, and upsetting moments. A mixture of humor, horror, and sensuality. But it was weird watching something that seemed to think it was a mystery, but of course was not. Not only did I know what was going to happen in the end, but most of the scenes felt like subtext turned into text. The things that the TV show left unsaid, left imagined, implied were spelled out for the audience in a way that felt both boring and unnecessary. Laura also seemed to get into more trouble than was logistically feasible, like an amount of danger and bad behavior that she’d need a secretary just to help her keep track of it all. It’s a Lynch film so it was worth checking out. (For example there’s a cryptic dancing lady clown person in the beginning who serves as a bunch of exposition, which I liked. And there’s a close up shot of someone eating porridge which was quite nice.) But this has been my least favorite of his films so far. 

Rating: ★1/2 

March 29, 2021

I submitted an application to the California Arts Council, yesterday. It was for an Individual Artists Fellowship. I applied for the lowest tier at $5,000.  I focused on audio producing and editing in my proposal, saying I'd use the money to produce another audio play (Unknown Number). 

I just zoned out for a bit thinking about Unknown Number. I have people in mind for actors and director. Imagining the situation, trying to see if they'd really fit. I'm excited to do it, whether or not I get the grant. I think it would be a good experience and, hopefully, a good example of what I'm capable of. 

The money itself would be great -- unrestricted funds! The holy grail. But almost more than that, it would be incredible to have that vote of confidence, that validation. After spending years in my professional life helping other people with their grants, I could win a grant of my own. It's silly, but maybe my boss would announce it in lab meeting. I would blush. It would be very cool. 

I also submitted a screenplay (Hell House) to Screamfest LA, yesterday. I found it when I looked through a list of previous CAC grantees. A friend of mine had advised me to send my scripts in to more genre-based stuff. These script competitions are expensive and are probably the wrong path. But I'm submitting more broadly this year, and we'll see what happens. 

6PM Update

I write blog posts in the morning when I'm sleepy and can never think of anything. So here's some 6PM proof that interesting things really do happen to me. 

I was at the grocery store and I found a thing of kiwi berries. Tiny little kiwis that you can eat like grapes. A couple of months ago, they started selling these bell peppers that were red, orange, and yellow STRIPED. Plus any regular day, they have squid steaks and full tilapias and pollos asada at the deli counter. This is just the grocery store, but they're coming up with things I've never seen on the regular. ("On the regular" is not how I really talk, I don't think. I've been trying to be conscious of when I'm using appropriated or semi-appropriated phrasing, which is probably a dull, mildly self-important sentiment.) Let's try again: They're regularly coming up with things I've never seen. Or just: They're coming up with things I've never seen before! That's fine. See, I can just say that. 

Unrelated. Something I've been kicking around in my head is wondering why people (seems like mostly men) get so into politics. Knowing about it. Having opinions on it. Tailoring their selection of facts to meet their opinions. I wonder if it's a satisfying or meaningful pursuit, aligning yourself in your mind with things that have Significance. Better than looking at one's own life? Than connecting to the regular people hanging around, like family or coworkers? I don't mean the topics at hand are unimportant -- of course, taxation, economics, social norms, media narratives, etc, are important. But I'm wondering about the people who spend a lot of time, effort, and emotional energy just having thoughts about them. 

If it is a kind of escape hatch, a way to forget ones own life and focus on things that are grand and serious, I get it. My own life regularly surprises me with how low stakes it is. How, contrary to my thinking in elementary school, I might not be destined for the history books. But superficially hitching your wagon to Big Things maybe distracts from the somewhat grinding job of finding and creating real meaning. From discovering new agricultural delights at the grocery store. 

March 28, 2021

My friend and I went camping at San Clemente State Beach this weekend. It was only a little more than an hour away, and we were gone slightly less than 24 hours. But it was a triumph -- the first time we've gone camping together just the two of us. The campsite was beautiful. On some bluffs right next to the ocean. I ate an edible and enjoyed the hell out of two double-mallow s'mores. 

My friend and I grew up together. Our families used to go camping every year. We'd drive hours just to arrive at a nondescript campground in the middle of nowhere. We'd hike miles to see a tiny trickle of a waterfall. It's pretty incredible to so easily go camp by an ocean. 

I still feel restless, though. I'm ready for something to happen. (Preferably something fun or good.)  

March 27, 2021

I attended a virtual panel hosted by Women's Weekend Film Challenge. It featured Ruthy Pribar and Daniella Nowitz, the director and DP (respectively) of the Israeli movie Asia. They talked about the movie and about the relationship between director and DP. Then they watched clips submitted by participants and gave them quick critiques. It was really cool! I liked hearing how the use of camera styles and cutting helped tell them about the scene and its characters. Stuff I wouldn't have thought about. 

I reread Hell House (I talked about this yesterday, I think, and was more sour on it.) and found that I was taking stuff out. Especially the last line in a scene. Back when I was writing it I was worried that the reader wouldn't understand what was going on. When you've got it all in your head, it's hard to know what's going to be obvious to the reader vs what's obvious to you. It had been a couple years since I looked at the script, so I could approach it from a reader's POV, having forgotten the step-by-step action. I had been telegraphing in a bunch of places, which I took out. Allow the audience to make those leaps, hold on to a bit of mystery especially if the meaning is clarified in the following scene. 

MLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

MOONSTRUCK

1987

Directed by: Norman Jewison

Written by: John Patrick Stanley

Watched: 3/26/21

Loretta (Cher) is engaged to marry Johnny, a man she likes but doesn’t love, much to her mother’s relief. He mother thinks marrying someone you love breaks your heart. Johnny leaves to Sicily to be with his dying mother and asks Loretta to try to reconcile with his younger brother and ask him to come to the wedding. Loretta meets Ronny (Nicholas Cage), Johnny’s younger brother and the two fall in love/have sex. Loretta insists that she has bad luck. She waited for the right man in her first marriage and two years later he got hit by a bus. She tells Ronny they can never see each other again. He agrees as long as she goes to the opera with him. They go, and while there Loretta sees his father with his mistress. She goes home with Ronny again. The next day, Johnny comes back from Sicily – his mother having miraculously recovered – and Ronny comes over to meet the family. Loretta’s mother confronts Loretta’s father about the affair and he agrees to stop. Loretta decides to tell Johnny about her love for Ronny. Johnny shows up and breaks off the engagement, thinking that it was their engagement that made his mother sick in the first place. Then Ronny asks Loretta to marry him and she agrees. 

I really liked this movie. It treated serious things sillily and took silly things seriously. Nicholas Cage and Cher are great in it. The whole cast is great. It’s a romantic comedy that fulfills on its promise to be a romance (as opposed to merely a “rom”). It has an undergirding of real pain, depth, loyalty because it includes the love stories of people who have been married a long time, people who are faithful and those who are not, of people who are looking for things in love they’ll never be able to find. 

Rating: ★★★★

March 26, 2021

I wonder if people get into politics - in the arm-chair-quarterback kind of way - because they run out of interesting things to think about. I am bored. Nothing ever changes. I remember how when I was in school, each year meant something. 4th grade, 5th grade, freshman year, sophomore year. It felt like I was actually leveling up. Like I'd been given chance after chance to get what I wanted: cool friends, good grades, a staring role on varsity. But now five years slides by with barely any notice. 

My thought life. I worry about productivity, career, my health, my fitness. About being too old and too behind. About not doing enough, early enough. It's exhausting and dull. This was my attempt to try to skirt the drudgery of adulthood. Instead, I have uncertain drudgery. 

Is it in my genes? Evolutionarily, is my body full of focus and meaning surviving to child bearing years, and after that it's like -- I don't know. Talk amongst yourself. Who cares. 

Just running out the time. 

I reread and made minor changes to a screenplay I wrote a couple of years ago called Hell House. It's better than I remember it being. Surprisingly good. I submitted it to three contests, figuring that way at least it will get read. I'm not sure there's actually anyway in. A shot at being a screenwriter might actually be by invitation only. 

When I was an intern, I read scripts submitted to one of the big competitions. I loved this TV pilot about a fictional Bulls franchise if it were being coached by Michael Jordan (who was suffering from a gambling addiction). It was excellent, and I gave it a great review. I expected to be seeing it on HBO in a few years. Maybe the writer went on to get an agent, staffed on a show. Maybe he's doing well. But of course, that show never popped up again. 

All this and I've been telling my mood app I'm feeling "good." 

March 25, 2021

A couple of birdies landed in the bush in front of Phryne's window. Exciting times here this morning. I had a lot of meetings, yesterday, AND I skated at the park. It filled my whole day and I didn't get anything additional done. Being on my routine (finally) has been great, but I wonder what I'd feel like if I let the productivity go for a while. If I just read books and watched movies all day like that character from Tana French's book. That might not be nice for Mitch. He's probably worried a little already that he might be married to a freeloader. 

I've been reading Louis Theroux's book, and Mitch and I watched an episode of his documentaries last night -- the one with the Phelps family.  All Theroux all the time anymore. It's weird feeling, how I had never heard of Adam Buxton (and before that Richard Herring, and before that Susan Calman), and now I know a lot about him, Joe Cornish, and Louis Theroux. This whole mini world of middle-aged British men who have had interesting careers and some celebrity. They feel like a staple of pop-culture, but of course they're not -- at least not for Americans, especially Americans like me who's pop culture is pretty limited. It's one of those instances of when, once I find out about something, I feel like everybody already knows about it, and that anybody who doesn't know about it is hopelessly behind the curve. 

Time to MLog. Although this next one is a documentary. Do I want to start a separate DLog? I don't think so... I don't really watch enough docs to justify that. 

UNITED SKATES (Documentary) 

2018

Directed by: Dyanna Winkler and Tina Brown

Watched: 3/23/21

This doc is about skating culture and notable skating rinks across the US. It follows three main storylines: 1) Phelicia and her five kids (all avid skaters) in Los Angeles that struggle to find places to skate as one-by-one the rinks in LA close; 2) a family of three in North Carolina that’s trying to start a skate night at their local rink to attract black folks (better music, etc.); and 3) a rink in Chicago that’s having to close its doors despite hosting national skate parties, where people come from all over the country to skate. It also covers the segregated history of skating, how (in LA at least) all the musical artists came up through rapping and DJing at the skate rink, and the racism still going on today – cops at the black-coded “Adult Nights,” certain dress codes and wheel restrictions designed to discourage black people from skating, etc. 

The music was great. The skating was incredible. And the storylines were full of pathos. The documentarians did a great job at showing what skating and the skating community meant in the lives of the people it followed. It showed skating as a form of communion, expression, release, and identity. 

Rating: ★★★★

March 24, 2021

I have a sensitive friend. She gets annoyed or offended by remarks or behavior that generally blows by me, unnoticed. She also has a vast and deep memory for these slights. One of our biggest fights to date was a time when I thought an old movie she liked had misogynist undertones.  She once burst into tears in my car after group lunch hangout because she was upset over the way the bill was settled. 

The old movie aside, my other slip up when it comes to this friend was the explanation I gave as to why I didn't cast her in one of my audio projects. I told her the director and I were trying to get "real actors." Obviously this was a mistake as my friend had acted in high school and college. What I meant was working actors, people who are hoping to make -- or are currently making -- acting their career. I want these audio plays to have the maximum impact they can, and I think casting people because acting is their ambition helps to do that (as opposed to casting people because they're my friends). Anyway, I said the wrong thing. She remembers. 

But happily, those are the only two instances I'm aware of. (Writing this post would be a third, of course, but I'm confident that no one is going to read this blog. It being a true internet backwater.) My present concern, is that I have a feeling that my friend is getting bored of me. I've navigated the treacherous waters of offense so well, I've been agreeable enough, mild enough, bland enough, that not only have I not triggered her, I've put her right to sleep. 

Either I'm a smooth operator or, I am in fact, just kind of boring. 

BLog Time! **SPOILERS**

Hobson, Brandon – THE REMOVED

Published: 2021

Read: 3/2021

Written from the perspective of each family member (Maria, mother; Ernest, father; Sonja, sister; and Edgar, brother) 15 years after the death of 15-year-old Ray-Ray at the hands of police. Ernest and Maria take in Wyatt, a foster boy, who is maybe the reincarnation of Ray-Ray and helps to heal Ernest’s Alzheimer’s. Sonja, in her 30s and who enjoys trysts with younger men, starts a wobbling relationship with a man who turns out to be the cop who killed Ray-Ray’s son. Edgar is addicted to drugs and enters The Darkening, a Kelly-Link style sub reality, where people go when they take too many pills and maybe commit suicide. Edgar meets an acquaintance from high school who uses him to make a holographic game about shooting Indians. 

My summary of it makes it sound more exciting than it is. There’s not a lot going on in this book. And the stuff that is happening is too repeated and drawn out. We’re told that Wyatt looks like Ray-Ray 1,000,000,000 times. The only storyline I liked was Edgar’s. The other storylines seemed somehow both predictable and too reliant on coincidence. The writing style was clunky and repetitive. Maybe the author was going for a kind of Hemingway vibe? But it definitely made reading slow-going and arduous. 

Rating: ★1/2 

Got to talk about the documentary United Skates tomorrow! 

March 23, 2021

Stayed up late on a writing assignment. I have plans of asking to get paid before I submit my work. (I think it's the only way to ensure I actually do get paid and not have to spend months tracking it down.) It's a reasonable request, given the history, but I'm still nervous about giving offense. The only way to get over that is practice! Here I am getting practice. 

Biking to the roller rink, skating for an hour, and biking back feels fairly easy and low impact, but I'm always sore the next day. It's using different muscles, maybe, than your standard walking. 

It's probably clear I'm not finding a lot to say this morning. Still too tired. Just waking up. I'm worried that being an adult -- this phase of adulthood and later -- is going to be no fun. Like, even when you set out to have fun: a party, a roller rink, a theme park. That it won't be as good as when I was younger. I miss that feeling of abandon and elation. Of course, as with everything, that might be the pandemic talking. I haven't gone to a party of a theme park in over a year, so I don't really know what I'd feel going to them now anyway. Even drinking is less fun now, though, you know? Even the chemicals don't seem to be working as well in my body. Is it all this work? Working all the time making me serious, myopic, and boring? Do adults even have friends? I don't know.  

March 22, 2021

I got some more freelance work last night. Unfortunately, it's a little more involved than last time, and this is from the people who it's tough to get to pay me. (They will, of course, send over the money promptly if they want me to do another writing assignment for them.) I'll be writing that stuff today. 

Yesterday, I went skating with a couple friends and then met another friend for outdoor dinner with her parents, who are in town. I'm not improving much at the skating, but my legs are getting stronger. It's fun and relaxing and the bike ride over is nice. 

I've been listening to Got To Get Theroux This, a memoir by Louis Theroux. I hadn't heard of him before I started listening to the Adam Buxton podcast, and now I'm learning a lot about his life. It's interesting to read how things went down for another person, especially a wealthy arty person from the UK. The moves he was able to make because of advantages like dual passports (British and US, as his dad is American), a private British school education plus Oxford, and money not seeming to be an obstacle are staggering. It's nearly like learning that he did, in fact, get his letter to Hogwarts. (What a disgusting name for a school, I'm just realizing. Hog warts?) He was able to get his start through internships and low-paying magazine jobs in New York. Would I be able to swing that? Even after working for over a decade and having a bit of savings? I don't think so. It is that thing where everyone has to figure out their own way in, of course. Louis just took a path that I wouldn't be able to find much less follow. 

Mlog time. 

**SPOILERS**

IT’S ALIVE

1974

Directed by: Larry Cohen

Written by: Larry Cohen

Watched: 3/20/21

Frank and Lenore are expecting their second child. It’s been 11 years since their first son, Chris, was born and Lenore had been taking birth control pills in the meantime. When the baby is born, it kills everyone in the birthing room except for its mother. Then it escapes. The media finds out what has happened and releases the names of the couple. Frank loses his PR job and wants revenge, essentially, on his monster child. The child ends up back at its parents’ house and doesn’t kill its parents or brother. It seems to know that they’re his family. The police corner the child in the Los Angeles sewers, and Frank tries to rescue it instead of kill it. The cops shoot it to pieces anyway. On the ride back to the house, they learn that another child like it has been born in Seattle. 

There really isn’t a ton happening in this movie. The reveal that another child has been born indicates that it’s the birth control pills that Lenore has been taking that have caused the mutation. I think the best part was how quickly society turned on Frank and Lenore and their monstrous baby. Because as difficult as having a child with health issues is, I think it might be the social stigma that’s most galling. The ostracization that comes with being different or “defective” is sad and chilling. Of course, Frank is the main character in this movie even though the conflict and horror experienced by Lenore is much more complex and extreme. Men only thinking men’s experiences are interesting or important is what’s happening there. It’s like the time I went to a Christmas Eve church service, and the pastor bent over backwards to bring Joseph to the front of the story. Bro, he’s not in the text much for a reason. 

It’s also interesting that, like in the 1954 giant-ant movie Them! which also end in a shootout in the LA sewers, the movie ends abruptly after the monster has been eliminated. Nowadays, audiences require more resolution, I think. There has to be another interpersonal conflict going on which gets wrapped up at the end. Anymore, it’s never just about killing the monster. 

Rating: ★★

March 21, 2021

Hello! Yesterday, I finished up my Baby Teeth beat sheet. I'm happy with it. My class is taking a two-week hiatus, in which time I need to rewrite/polish up Breaking Up Is Easy so I can submit it to some screenplay competitions (Nicholl, Austin, Slamdance, and the UCLA Extension one -- I haven't applied to those last two before). Submitting to contests is a definite long shot. There's a 0.5% chance of placing meaningfully. But it's an open field for submitting. You don't need to know anyone to at least get a shot. That's more than you can say for pretty much everywhere else. 

Last night was a double feature chez moi. So here's a two-part Mlog! 

**SPOILERS**

PIERROT LE FOU

1965

Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard 

Written by: Jean-Luc Godard

Based on: Obsession by Lionel White

Watched: 3/20/21

The Wikipedia plot summary of this one is pretty good. Pierrot (whose real name is Ferdinand) is melancholic, unable to find anymore meaning or pleasure in life, so he runs away from his wife, children, and money with an ex-girlfriend, Marianne. Marianne is clearly mixed up in something as there are rifles all over her unfinished apartment, plus of course, a corpse. Police and gangsters pursue the couple as they flee from Paris towards the Mediterranean. They burn one car (and the money inside it) and drive another one into the sea. They live on an island for a while, Ferdinand reading books and writing poetry. Marianne gets taken by the gangsters and murders her captor. The couple gets separated for a while, and when they’re reunited, Marianne betrays Ferdinand. She convinces him to help with her brother, Fred’s business gun running, but Fred is really her boyfriend and the two run off together with the money. Fred pursues and shoots them – but he’s pretty chill about it – and then he wraps his head in dynamite to commit suicide. At the last second, he wants to live, but he’s unable to stop the fuse in time and so blows up. 

By coincidence, this is the same kind of movie as Wild At Heart, which I watched the night before. Lovers, crime, the road. Bonnie and Clyde, another of this kind, came out in 1967, only a couple of years later. I wonder if there was something culturally that was making it a trend. People wanting to escape the confines of society to just fall into the passion of another person. My favorite part of the movie was a scene right after Ferdinand realizes Marianne’s duplicity. He’s on the dock with a man who hears a love song that’s not there. It’s a song that tears him apart. Every time it’s played he’s had a significant heart break. A woman rejects him. A woman loves him but he doesn’t reciprocate. He gets married and is chained to a woman for ten years. Ferdinand tells him he’s a “fou.” 

My least favorite scene is one where Marianne is in yellow face. That part is awful. 

Rating: ★★★

And actually -- I'm going to save the second Mlog for tomorrow. I've been idly working on this blog post all morning. Time to do something else!  

March 20, 2021

My husband and I went to a drive through Stranger Things experience. One of our Fusion coworkers also works at stuff like this and got us a ticket. It was both pretty cool and not very enjoyable. Including driving time to down town LA, we spent around 3-3.5 hours in the car. It was like a very slow road trip. But on the other hand, it was a feat to behold. They converted a massive parking garage into a whole Stranger Things interactive adventure. You drove through and watched actors play out scenes. There were also big screens set up where you watched spliced sequences from the show. The sound came through your car radio. They set up physical decorations and used a lot of lights. It was creative. A nice example of thinking through limitations rather than letting them deter you all together. But yeah, a lot of sitting in the car. 

I met my friend and we went rollerskating at the outdoor rink, yesterday. Spent an hour and a half skating and got sunburnt. The other skaters there are incredible. Spinning around on one foot, leaping through the air, doing splits and shit. Somebody always brings a speaker and they've got music going. It's really fun and a 1000% cooler scene than I have any business being a part of. But they haven't kicked me out yet. 

Mlog time! 

**SPOILERS**

WILD AT HEART

1990

Directed by: David Lynch

Written by: David Lynch

Based on: Wild at Heart by Barry Gifford

Watch: 3/19/21

Lulu’s mother hires a man to kill Sailor – Lula’s lover – and when the man attacks Sailor with a knife, he defends the man and kills him instead. Sailor spends two years in prison for manslaughter (he’s a manslaughterer). When he gets out, Lula brings him his snakeskin jacket, a symbol of his individuality and personal freedom. Lula and Sailor run away together, headed towards California. Lula’s mother hires a detective and a hit man to come after them. It’s the same hitman she hired to kill her husband, and she thinks Sailor knows about that incident. Sailor maintains that he saw nothing. The two run out of money in Big Tuna Texas. Lula tells Sailor she’s pregnant. Sailor agrees to rob a feed store with Bobby Peru, but during the job, Peru turns on Sailor. Sailor gets away and Peru is shot by police before shooting off his own head. Sailor goes back to prison, this time for six years. When he gets out, he figures he’ll be too much of a hassle for Lula and their son. But then he gets a vision from Glinda the good witch and decides they should be together after all. 

Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern have great and weird weird performances in this movie. They’re cartoonish, but they mean it? If that makes sense. The movie reminds me of the toys my mom makes for my nephews. It’s a cloth bag with a clear plastic window – fully contained – and there are a bunch of little objects inside. You have a list and try to spy all the little objects inside. The movie’s like that – a bunch of symbols and tokens jumbled together, coming to light one at a time. I did really like the scene where Lula’s mom, in her guilt/grief/intensity, covers her whole face in lipstick. Worth watching, but it’s been my least favorite Lynch film so far. 

Rating: ★★

March 19, 2021

I am tired! Yesterday, I put part one of Sarah Someone on The Host pod feed. I wonder how many people (if any) listened to The Host that are not currently following me on Instagram. I spent some time and money working on advertising it, so it's possible. I had a vague notion, before I started releasing The Host, that people might just come across it. I put it out into the "world" after all. But the internet is not like a regular place. People won't just wander by your stuff and maybe decide to check it out. If they're not directed there, they won't ever see it. I'm getting distracted. 

I'm wondering if anyone will ever search down the rabbit trails I'm leaving. Follow this project to this other one. No one is reading this blog, I know, and I think that means no one is looking for me online. That's good, maybe. 

Something else -- I'm following Celeste Barber on Instagram (me and 7.2 million other people). She recreates posts by hot women on IG, usually "influencers." But she, Celeste, an average-sized woman - not a dancer or a gymnast - hams it up for comedy. It shines a light on how silly the things the influencers are doing. It reminds me of discussions on how often photographs and film are performed for the male gaze. Our assumed audience tends to be a straight guy who is, presumably, licking his lips. When you replace a man with the woman in the image, have him hold her same pose, it becomes ridiculous. The thing that looked totally normal is revealed to be slightly insane. 

It's interesting to me that Celeste can accomplish the same thing. She's still a woman and not unattractive, but something about her costumes and performances defangs whatever sexy gyrations the influencer had used to perform her hotness in dead sincerity. Celeste makes the swimsuits with holes cut in weird places, the domestic mockups of grand opulence, and the butt wiggling for the gaze of everyone, not just powerful horny men. And it's gotten to the point where she often has more followers than the women she's parodying. It's something! 

March 18, 2021

I had a bad day yesterday. The outside world got to me. 

On the drive back from Colorado, I listened to some of Louis Theroux's podcast, Grounded. He interviews Rose McGowan, who talks about the complicity of Hollywood in Harvery Weinstein's crimes. How when she was called up to his hotel suite at Sundance, the two men who brought her up could have warned her. Even something small as a "watch out" when she went into the room. But the didn't say anything. Theroux had interviewed Jimmy Saville before he died and before that it had come out that he was systematically sexually abusing children. Theroux wondered aloud to McGowan if he had made a mistake in not digging that up in the interview. She thought he had. The rumors about both Saville and Weinstein were pervasive. People knew if they didn't know know. McGowan talked passionately about how if she had known anything, she wouldn't have been quiet about it. She wouldn't have let people get hurt, even if tanked her career. And I believed her. 

Listened to an episode of Scriptnotes yesterday, for the first time in a while. Jon and Craig were talking about moral sticky spots that they run into in their careers as screenwriters. One of the questions was about a showrunner's behavior. It seemed like it wasn't criminal behavior, more along the lines of an abusive or toxic work environment. Like I imagine they shout a lot. Jon and Craig didn't clarify, but they did say that they had heard accounts about that person's behavior from multiple sources. They didn't feel like they were obliged to do anything about it. They weren't implicated in the behavior just by knowing about it. This might be a dumb question, but is there not an HR anywhere? Being an asshole is nowhere near as damaging as being a rapist, but people still get hurt. A person's quality of life has a lot to do with their job, with the people they work with. 

My approach to getting into the industry is that I have to be undeniably excellent. That I need to have multiple strong and memorable samples, and that I need to get lucky. It's hard for me to fathom that someone can go on succeeding in the industry while exhibiting behaviors that would get you fired anywhere else. Why don't they say to that showrunner, you know a lot of people would love to have this job? TV is a collaborative medium. (Life is a collaborative medium.) Why are we putting up with this? 

Craig talked about how everyone has weird stuff that they don't want going public. That's why you don't speak out against someone else's behavior unless you have good evidence. If you speak up, they'll just counter accuse you. It made me wonder, do we all have dark/weird shit buried? Is it, like Craig said, part of being human? And if we do have dark/weird shit, does that make other people's worse shit justifiable? Jon and Craig have taken a protective stance. They're going to get along to get along. (That's not the phrase, is it?) They're scared, but they're not even the ones likely to fall into the cross-hairs. That's going to be people with a lot less power, people who are young, not men, and not white. If weird/bad behaviors are dragged into the light, en masse, a lot of people will get hurt -- Craig's right. And I can't help but think that's intolerable because systematically, it's the wrong kinds of people. It's people like him. 

I also listened to an Adam Buxton podcast where he's interviewing Louis Theroux (from a couple of years ago). They're talking about the Me Too movement. It was around the time where Aziz Ansari and Chris Hardwick were being called out. Buxton went the same place Craig did (I'm using first vs last names willy-nilly here); he thought about his own past coming to light in that way. How people could speak out against him when he really did nothing that bad. It's an instinct that bums me out. Like men and boys have this protected right to hurt people on their way to self-realization. It's an attitude that doesn't count the cost lost on the women's side at all. It's not even considered. It makes me realize that even figures I like and respect aren't people who would take my side if something happened to me. They'd worry about how accountability in one area might worm its way back around to affect them. 

I don't think things are getting better. 

March 17, 2021

I had a dream that I was an intern in a weird high-stakes company meeting. The scientists were unionizing. I've been reading too much about Gimlet. 

In the autopsies of what went down at Reply All, the reliance on black and brown contractors, junior producers who worked way harder than senior producers and for less money, the lack of a formal structure to move up in the company, haha I was going to say I wonder what the root cause was. But that's a lot of cause right there. It seems to be getting placed at the feet of Alex Blumberg, his lack of leadership and a bias toward public radio people who have gone to Oberlin. Or maybe it was the power and pressure of being a fast-growing media company. Maybe it's capitalism, the pressure to make your job your whole life if you're going to survive, and then how your job becomes everything - money, friends, validation. 

There's something about the way the Bon Apetite story was unfolding, about how Gimlet is unfolding, that drives it closer to home. I could see this coming out in a lot more companies. It's like, of course - the structure tells you that you're not doing enough. It makes it really hard for some people to get in and move up, while others pass go no problem. All based on race, nepotism, education, some vague notion of coolness. Of not needing it. Of starting on the inside. 

Changing gears. 

A family friend is 18 months past when he was diagnosed with cancer. He had been given an estimated 18 months to live, and he's still here. He and his wife went snowshoeing yesterday. They gave him a cookie with candles in it, "18." My mom sent me pictures, and it's hard to recognize him. He didn't used to have white hair, for one, but also his face is different. I don't think I've seen him in the past 18 months, and the difference is shocking. 

I keep thinking about how my dad is 70 now. That's properly up there. Like you can kick it 70, and people are like, oh well, right. Old age. I don't know what to do about it. Call him more, I guess. 

March 16, 2021

I talked to a friend last night who's been in the same boat for months (and maybe longer). Every time we talk, he tells me he's really depressed. Or really sad or frustrated or angry. Each time, the self-diagnosis is that he's not doing art, not setting a good enough example for his kid, not going far or fast enough in life. But then I talk to him a month or two later and he says the exact same stuff. 

I'm not sure how to assess it. Is depression something that can just steal whole years of your life, and there's nothing you can do about it? Is making art just something he thinks he ought to be doing, but not something that's important enough to actually do? What actually gets someone to change patterns of behavior - what's actually effective? And does it come from inside the person or is it an external thing? 

I appreciated listening to the Blindboy podcast episode where he talks about watching out for the start of bad cycles and cutting them off at the head. Noticing if he's procrastinating and not letting that spiral. Making sure to perform the ritual of going to the store to buy real food, cooking himself a good meal, and enjoying it while he eats. Of making sure he works out enough. Sleeps enough. Paying attention to when something is making him feel bad or isn't fun anymore. Starting the day with small wins in order to build momentum to bigger ones. Getting in a routine where he makes art -- improvising songs on Twitch inspired by the video game he's playing. 

Thinking about those things has been helping me, I think. Walking, cooking, calling friends and family regularly, keeping this blog, roller skating, writing, planning out my week (making sure to not overdo it) and then trying to stick to my schedule. 

It's hard to see someone stuck. And to hear them ailing from some of the same complaints that have been going on for as long as I've known them. 

BLog time! 

**SPOILERS**

Sayers, Dorothy L. – THE NINE TAILORS
Published: 1934
Read: 3/2021
Lord Peter Wimsey’s car breaks down on New Years Eve in the village of Fenchurch St. Paul. He and Bunter are picked up by the rector of the church. Wimsey steps in to be a bell ringer as a flu has hit the town, and one of the bell ringers is out sick. He helps with the nine-hour peel that is to ring in the new year. The flu is a doozy, first striking down a woman in the village who’s husband is an invalid. He dies too some months later. When they open up the grave to put his coffin next to hers they find an unidentified dead body. There’s a back story about how years ago some emeralds were stolen and never recovered. The death involves those old missing emeralds. The case stalls out when Wimsey and the constable catch out the men involved but realize that each thought the other actually did the murder. What’s more, they can’t figure out what the man died of. The book ends with the sluice gates failing and the town rallying around the church preparing for the flood. Wimsey climbs the bell tower while the bells are ringing the alarm and almost doesn’t make it out again. The dead man had been tied up in the bell chamber during the nine-hour peel. It was the ringing of the bells that killed him. 
I’m not sure if I had heard a dramatization of this book before. As soon as Sayers started talking about the nine-hour peel, I figured there was someone up in the bell chamber. (She notes that the trap door to it was locked.) The last third of the book goes on about how they don’t know who killed the man or how he died, and it’s fairly obvious that it was the noise and clamor of the bells. There were lots of funny part to this book – not large comedic sections or anything, just good little turns of phrase that made me laugh. Also, Sayers gives a decent amount of information on English bell ringing – it was my favorite part. Maybe when Mitch and I go to the UK we can check out a country parish church or even hear a bell ringing. I’d definitely appreciate it more now. Ian Carmichael read the audio book, and he did a great job interpreting the ding bang bong, etc. As well as giving the number sequences (indicating the bell ringing progression) all different pitches, approximating what the peel would sound like. Always worth it to read a Sayers novel, but Gaudy Night was considerably better than this one.    
Rating: ★★

  

March 15, 2021

Daylight savings is messing me up. I got to sleep too late and couldn't wake up early enough to do a blog in the morning. (What if this blog becomes a blog mostly about writing a blog? Would that be interesting?) 

Something I've been kind of thinking about -- I've been watching David Lynch movies, you know? He seems like an artist, right? Like he wants to make a particular thing, something kind of new, that will make people feel things they don't normally, and maybe think a bit more than they usually like to do. Ana Lily Amirpour, writer/director of A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, seems the same way. I read how she said, for that movie, that she loved everything that was in it. The songs, the clothes, the settings. She wanted to make something that transcended, I think. 

It just seems in contrast to most of what I've run into in TV and screenwriting classes. I know a movie is a big lift for an artistic vision. I forget who was talking about how it seems silly to need George Clooney in order to fully express one's self. A very cheap movie still costs thousands of dollars, so there has to be some market appeal. BUT. 

What's the fastest way to sell a screenplay? What are the top ten tricks of screenwriting success? How can I be a professional ASAP? I need a passable story and a house in the hills sooner rather than later. 

I get it, but. When you're already kind of shooting the moon -- I mean, the odds of making a living as a screenwriter are really low -- why not go further and try to be a genius at it. Master it. See if you can create something new. Be interested enough to try to see if you can get to the bottom of it. 

March 14, 2021

I had a dream that I was on some kind of mission or voyage with a pretty big team. We were on foot, and I was the navigator, so for the fist part of the dream I was out front, making a lot of readings, a lot of decisions. We came across these small glowing crystals that were growing on some rocks. It was outside a pretty big building, like an old prop house or antique store or something. High ceilings, cluttered with stuff, abandoned, covered in dust. For some reason the crystals really gave us pause. I took photos of them that night, and they seemed to react to my flash. (I could also see that underneath there were a couple of small fossils like the ones in animal crossing.) We could tell for some reason, that they were bad news. 

That night, the leader of the group held a team meeting. I felt nice not to be the one having to make the decisions about these crystal things. I was just the navigator. The leader looked like Jessica Chastain. She counted six women and six men. That meant we were missing two men. Where was the guy who joined us recently? The guy who talked to us about art? He was a little guy. The other guy missing was our brawn guy. 

An older guy in the group, a scientist or doctor, was saying something about the crystals. About how we shouldn't be out with them. Then, I saw in the front window to the building, the brawn guy approaching in the morning light. I figured the door was locked. But he opened it easily. 

"That's not good," the older man said. 

We scattered. I peeled off to the right and ran through a door to another room. Then I started running up a flight of stairs. The big guy followed! Why hadn't he gone after the bigger group? Why had I decided to run up stairs and a handing staircase in the middle of the room no less? (I wondered, afterwards, if the crystals were messing with my judgement.) The guy, of course, saw me on the stairs. He swung up them -- like a monkey -- with ease. I turned around and ran by him down the stairs. But of course he could go down even faster than he could go up. He turned around, leapt, and got me. 

It's no fun being the first one to die on an adventure! (Well, the second one, I guess. We can assume that the little art guy got killed outside by the big guy the night before.) I was thinking Jessica Chastain would keep me safe. I wanted to know what the crystals were, where they came from, how they worked. Was this a Thing type scenario, where the alien parasite infected us one by one? Or was the big guy the crystals only designated host? (I did get the sense that the trouble was we breathed them in. They were tiny, the ones you could see, would make sense that smaller dust-like particles could get into our lungs.) I was the navigator! I had done my job! I think. 

March 13, 2021

I'm distracted this morning. Looking at Twitter and Instagram and scheduling out which screenplay competitions I'm going to apply to (Nicholl, Slam Dance, UCLA Extension, Austin). The drive back to LA plus the push to release Sarah Someone has knocked me flat. (I was supposed to write a letter of recommendation for a student last week and just didn't -- the actual deadline isn't for a while, so that's fine, but I had told him I'd have to him by Friday.) 

I'm applying for an individual artist grant through the California Arts Council. That's exciting. The money would be about 1/6 of what I make in a year, so pretty significant. Plus, it would be amazing to be able to say to the PI of the lab I work for that I got a grant too. It would be validating for me as an artist, as well. A state agency believes in me! I'd think. Although I shouldn't count the chickens, obviously. 

Yesterday was a great day at the rink. It looked like it was going to rain, but it only sprinkled a little. Someone had complained about people being on the rink. I'm not sure why, maybe the noise? There's not much noise and it's never after 10pm. But people play music. Anyhow, the park put a lock on the gate to the rink, but by yesterday, someone had peeled back the chainlink -- so the frame of the gate is still there, but you can walk right through it. Someone brought their speaker and was DJing. People were skating and working on their new tricks. It was happy and fun and free and it felt nice to be back in LA. 

My husband and I watched Eraserhead last night. So here's a MLog! 

**SPOILERS**

ERASERHEAD

1977

Directed by: David Lynch

Written by: David Lynch

Watched: 3/13/21

Henry lives in a dark bedsit apartment near factories and the rumblings of trains. The beautiful woman across the hall, who always looks wet for some reason, tells him he got a message from his girlfriend, asking him over for dinner to her parents’ house. When he arrives, he gets the bad news: his girlfriend has had a baby, of sorts, and now the two need to get married, move in together, and take care of it. The baby is a glistening baby dinosaur head and swaddled flat sack of a body. It cries all the time and doesn’t want to eat. Henry’s girlfriend-turned-wife, Mary X, has had enough and flees back to her parents’ house. The baby gets sick and Henry’s able to nurse it back to health. He receives a small box in the mail with a squirming parasite-looking-thing inside of it. He keeps it secretly in a free-standing cabinet. He has dreams that a lady lives in his radiator. She has a deformed face and sings along to a pipe organ. When the sperm baby things start falling from the ceiling, she steps on them and kills them. Henry dreams his head comes off and a small boy takes it to a factory. They test it out, and sure enough, it’s good for making erasers. In the end, Henry un-swaddles and kills the baby. 

So this is David Lynch’s first film, and I’m relieved to say it’s not very good. Parts of it are great – the soundscape, the music, the cinematography (dark dark dark, black and white), the mechanics of the monster/baby. But it’s not really a story, not beyond, Man it’s weird when you get someone pregnant. Impressively, the whole thing was made for $10,000, and I enjoyed reading how it took over a year to film, off and on as they had money or not. I’m getting around to the confidence and mindset of, Well, of course you just make things. And if you run out of money, you stop for a while until you can afford to start back up again. 

Rating: ★★

March 12, 2021

Stuff I was thinking about last night in bed. 

Well, it started yesterday actually. Two video posts in a row on my Instagram feed started with a woman close to the camera, smiling and setting it up, then backing up and waving. It was weird seeing that motion back to back, and I thought it would be cool if everyone on Instagram posted a close up video of their eyeball for a day. You could scroll through a mass of big twitching eyeballs. On the search page, you'd see a grid of strangers' eyeballs (the most popular eyeballs). We do things like the bucket challenge or black out to raise awareness for causes. Could we do something collectively just because it would be weird? 

While I was in bed trying to sleep, my mind kept working on it. I think I want to try doing one of those big grid images that looks weird in the feed, but if you look at my profile it becomes a 3x3 picture. I want to try taking nine photos of my face, each one a close up of the area it will occupy in the grid, and then put it together and see how it looks. It will be like art. And people will probably not like it? I don't know, it feels like there are definite ways you're supposed to use Instagram. And then maybe I'll put up my eyeball video and try to get that trend going. 

Last thing, I need to put this in my regular notes, but there should be a bake sale happening at parents' night in my screenplay. That way Winter can rally the students to attack the teeth with baked goods. 

March 11, 2021

I crashed yesterday afternoon. I've been listening to plenty of British stuff and you can tell because I was saying to myself, I feel shattered. I really did feel shattered. We got Sarah Someone officially out! Here it is on Spotify. Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts are taking their sweet time approving it, so it's mostly just on Spotify.  Everybody involved was posting about it on their Instagrams, and it was fun. 

At work, my boss decided he wants to go after the CIRM grant after all, which is due next week. And I missed the lunch-time socratic seminar on Henrieta Lacks at my teaching job. (I still haven't read "The Immortal Life of ..." and I know I ought to. I'm interested in human subject regulations in research, and we even use Hela cells in the lab from time to time.) Like I said. Shattered. 

A brief word -- I feel like maybe I've lost any social skills I once had? I talked to two groups of people on Zoom on Tuesday, each for an hour, and I had the vague feeling that it did not go well. I talked too much? Or too fast? My jokes didn't land. I turn red when I'm talking on Zoom because I'm nervous. Hot and sweaty. The thing is, I'd really like to be able to connect with people. To be comfortable and have a good time. I want to be good company, not just someone who's around because she can work hard on other people's projects. We all (in LA) have been in quarantine for a year, so maybe I'm just out of practice. And maybe the bumps in the conversations weren't only my fault. But ugh -- I just want to be normal and fine socially. 

Had intended to use blog time to work on my Artist Narrative statement for the California Arts Council grant I'm applying to. But I didn't start early enough, and now it's time for work. Next time! 

Update 1:25pm: I feel pretty good. Walked to Starbucks and got myself an almond croissant. Had enough stars saved up to cover it, so it was free! 

March 10, 2021

Sarah Someone is live today! Here's its RSS feed: https://pinecast.com/feed/sarah-someone 

It's crazy how easily I forget emotionally how much of a pain in the butt this project was to complete. We recorded my friend's ninety-minute audio play completely remotely. The recording itself took 5 full days in July 2020. Then, I realized there were all these problems on the recordings -- vocal distortions, a computer fan, the jingle of a dog collar, and intermittent traffic noises. Four different mics and five different recording rooms meant that everyone sounded like they were in different rooms using different recording equipment. (Go figure.) And working with a director for the first time meant that I had to do many more cuts on the editing end than when I was working on The Host. 

It's all been worth it, but this little project has been a part time job for the last eight months. I felt, at times, like I'd never be done with it. It was a morass that covered my foreseeable future. But now that I'm finished with it, I'm like, Yeah! I'd work on something like that again. 

I am feeling more confident right now about approaching people to work on projects. Even intimidating people. (Most people are intimidating.) Having Sarah Someone and The Host under my belt makes me feel like doing this stuff is normal. If you want to do more, you just come up with and idea, or link up with someone who has an idea, and ask people to get involved, have a conversation of what being involved entails, and then you get started. Maybe it feels more straight forward now because I'll be able to trade on past projects, meaning people will be able to look at the work and decide if they wan to collaborate. Without projects under my belt, I had to trade entirely on social credit, which is scary because that's not something I feel like I have gobs of. And of course, I don't want to lose friends over radio plays. 

But so far so good. 

March 9, 2021

I went on a big grocery run yesterday, but I didn't buy milk (or any breakfast food) so I couldn't make my overnight oats. I think maybe I'll eat applesauce this morning instead. 

There's a new billboard up in front of my apartment. (The billboard itself has always been there, what I mean is that the advertisement has changed.) The old one had been up for almost a year. It was for an urban clothing brand, I think. Although I guess it could have been a music group. It was up forever, but maybe I never really looked at it. Calls into question the effectiveness of these billboards, maybe. It was three black men sitting in a row, looking at camera. My apartment is up on a hill on a frontage road to Santa Monica Blvd. The billboard is down on the main road, so it's nearly level with us. When I sat on my couch, I could make it so it looked like the farthest left guy on the billboard was staring through my apartment window. His face was perfectly framed by a pane of glass. Layers of graffiti got added over time. That was exciting. Changing it up a little bit. 

Now there's an advertisement for the marines. It's weird to think that those three guys, the clothing brand or the musical act or whatever, got stripped down, their faces folded over or crumpled into a ball. Do they incinerate old billboard ads? Do I need to think of the man's face slowly turning black while fire bites along his edges? Even then, he maintains my gaze. Unflinching. 

March 8, 2021

Haven't gone grocery shopping yet, and since we were gone for four weeks, my husband and I have no food in the apartment. For breakfast this morning, we got Starbucks. I drove Mitch into work -- it's his first day back in person in a year. It reminded me of Trainer Tips on YouTube. It's this young guy, Nick, who plays Pokemon Go every day and then makes videos about it. He lives in Long Beach, and his routine is he wakes up, records a little video, goes out and plays Pokemon Go for an hour, and then he gets breakfast. (I haven't watched the channel since COVID-19 hit, so he might be doing something different now.) Him getting breakfast was always my favorite part. Long Beach is great for food, and Nick eats by himself, talks to the camera, and enjoys the hell out of it. I tend to have immediate needs in the morning. Coffee now! Water now! Food now! But there's something adventurous about getting out in the world first and then seeking out your breakfast. Our Starbucks run, this slight deviation from the norm, has me reminiscing about our time in Thailand, where first thing every morning was a search for a coffee as big as our head. Thinking ahead to Mitch's and my trip to Scotland. Do they have coffee there? Or do they only believe in tea? I can't wait to find out. 

Script Log (SLog) time! **SPOILERS** but come on, you've seen this movie before

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU

Script Revision: 1997

Movie Released: 1999

Written by: Karen McCullah Lutz & Kirsten Smith 

Directed by: Gil Junger

McCullah manager: Seth Jaret at Jaret Entertainment

Smith agent: Bill Weinstein at Verve Talent and Literary Agency

Smith manager: Josh Goldenberg at Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment 

Logline (from IMDB): A pretty, popular teenager can't go out on a date until her ill-tempered older sister does.

Read: 3/6/21

Cameron, from North Dakota, is new to a giant high school in Portland, Oregon. Michael takes him around, introducing him to the school dynamics. There are the coffee kids, the cowboys, the white Rastas. Cameron sees Bianca, a sophomore and the most gorgeous girl in school, and is immediately smitten. The problem is that Bianca can’t date until her older sister Kat does, and Kat is smart, scary, and hostile. Michael and Cameron hatch a plan to make this happen. They pick Patrick, a scary hostile guy himself, to be the suitor, and they rope in Joey – an affluent and self-absorbed tube sock model – to pay Patrick to take Kat out. Joey wants Bianca for himself. Patrick agrees and slowly wins Kat over. We find out that both his and Kat’s gruffness are defenses (armor/masks), and that they’re red-blooded humans underneath. Kat eventually finds out that Patrick was paid, but Patrick insists that he’s fallen for her for real. In the end, Kat forgives him and the two go out together. 

I read this script on the drive from Colorado to Los Angeles, and it felt like watching a movie. The whole thing felt energetic and specific. I liked how the writers created their own high school cliques instead of going for your standard jocks, nerds, stoners. The script is darker than I remember the movie being. For example, Kat’s friend Mandella spends much of the movie trying to killer herself (like with the spiral wire from her binder during class) and it’s played for laughs. (She wants to die so she can be with William Shakespeare.) Also, Joey is beaten so badly, first punched by Bianca several times and then mobbed by the student body, that he spends several days in the ICU. I like this darkness, it makes the movie less cute. But it kind of shocked me as well. Maybe the script is darker than the movie or maybe I just remember the movie as lighter because of its pink font and bopping sound track. Lastly, there are genuine jokes. It holds up as a comedy. McCullah and Smith have also written Legally Blonde and Ella Enchanted. They’re a powerhouse. 

Rating: ★★★★

March 7, 2021

You know those artists who were sick as kids and had to spend like a whole year or whatever inside? They come out noticing more things, imagining things more vividly, filled with a deeper appreciation for everyday life outside the sick room. I'm wondering if anything like that will happen because of the ongoing COVID quarantine. If it's happening already, it might be in my appreciation of junk food and snacks. I've already talked about how amazing McDonald's is (as have plenty of other people). I'm also appreciating the bulk gummy bears they sell at Sprouts. Like, I can imagine someone coming from another country and asking what's good in Fort Collins, and me telling them you have to get the bulk gummy bears from Sprouts. They're a little bit bigger than your standard gummy bear. Soft without being oozy in anyway, and the colors include pale green and dark green, sea foam blue and dark blue. Purple, red, orange, pale yellow. A really good mix, and the taste is good too. Sweet and tangy. My family thinks the different colors taste differently, but I'm not sure. 

I also went a bit hog wild at the Flying J Travel Plaza on our drive back to Los Angeles. (We got back at 8am this morning.) They had all these different flavors of Ruffles and Lays. Lime, lime jalapeno, ranch jalepeno. I felt like I had stumbled across true abundance and bought one of each. What delights will the chip scientists/artists come up with next? 

When you've had nothing going on for a year and can't go to restaurants, can't see films, can't attend concerts, I guess you may start getting your kicks from gas station chip variety. But why not? These companies spend a lot of money on these products; a lot of people are working very hard to put them out. Maybe they're something to marvel at. 

A lot of dudes in the Utah travel plazas not wearing masks. It felt shocking and obscene. As always, I can't wait for this to be behind us. 

March 6, 2021

My husband and I are driving back to Los Angeles today. It's a 17-ish-hour trip, and I usually take the late night/early morning shift. It's uncomfortable and makes me feel all weird, but I've got a couple of audiobooks, so hopefully it'll go smoothly. We'll be leaving a big house to return to our one-bedroom apartment. I'm a little sad that our cat won't have so many windows to sun in and beds to lay on. She likes it here and probably wonders why we don't make more money to provide for her various luxuries. The moment of truth on leaving day is once we're all packed and it's time to get her into the crate. She knows what packed suitcases mean and will hide under the bed, so we have to get completely ready without her noticing. 

Talked to Mitch last night about how it's hard not to approach life in LA from a place of scarcity. Scarcity of space, of money, of time, of opportunities. It's easy to feel like my efforts are never going to be enough. I hold two convictions in my head at the same time: 1) I'm never going to make it, and 2) I'm bound to make it eventually. 

Also last night, Mitch and I played ping pong. We've played quite a bit since being here. There's a table in the basement. Mitch beat me every single game. They're frequently close games, but this trip no victory for me. After we had finished playing, he told me I was a really good loser. If it were him it would have ruined his night. What a compliment. 

Reasons to go back to LA: to be surrounded by talented motivated (desperate?) people. To ride my bike to the roller rink at the park in Mar Vista. To be ready for the possibility of doing mushrooms in the desert. To eat good food. To go to the beach. To watch great stand up comedy for cheap. To feel like I have an outside chance of writing for a living. Reading Harlan Ellison was a big boost for a while. Maybe I ought to go back to doing that. He seemed to overpower everything by just writing a lot. He cared about the writing, the short stories, the science fiction community. He loved the writing by his contemporaries. He wrote for TV but acted like he detested it. I mean, he was probably a jerk? But reading him makes me feel like I can be an individual creator and that that might have some power. That I don't have to be overly awed by the studios. I don't have to feel like a slug because my parents aren't powerful people in the industry.  

Sarah Someone is coming out soon! And I think, at long last, it's starting to sound pretty good. 

March 5, 2021

My parents went back down to Colorado Springs yesterday. We had played our closing rounds of Euchre and ping pong the night before. (My mom and I did very well at Euchre. My husband and I did very well at ping pong.) Even though I complained about my dad's interjections about politics, especially early in the morning, I'm a little sad they left. 

My mom is an excellent grandma to my two nephews. She sits on the floor with them and listens to what they have to say. She doesn't mind being silly or playing Candy Land five times in a row. She brings thoughtful presents to help their growth, like books and puzzles and a mini trampoline. I'm proud of her. 

Last night, I had a dream about a friend of mine who died of an enlarged heart the year after we graduated from college. It had been a traumatic slice of my life in general, and I took the loss hard. I still have dreams about it from time to time. Sometimes, in my dreams, he's alive and it's been a misunderstanding. Everybody in the dream looks at me like I'm acting crazy in my relief. One time, I had a dream that I was talking to him and something kept nagging at me. There was something I was supposed to tell him. As I woke up, I realized I meant to tell him that he was dead. Last night, the dream was a plot to capture my friend. He was 6'5" and 350 pounds, so it wasn't the easiest thing to pull off. They lured him into a room and shot him twice with a tranquilizer gun, like he was a bear or a gorilla. They pushed me away, treated me like I was going crazy. In protest, I was going crazy. Flipping over plastic chairs. Interrupting a board meeting. Telling its occupants that they had nothing but empty energy. Whatever that means. 

Last thing, I've been discouraged by the stuff I'm reading about Gimlet Media. I listened to their podcast Start Up back when they were just beginning. I felt like I knew who they were, trusted that they were dedicated, hardworking, and genuinely trying to make art. I probably have a too rosy view about podcasts in general. They've become a business now, one that has to angle its every move to show that you can efficiently turn audio stories into dollar signs. Anyway, I read Glass Walls, a post on James T Green's blog. It was depressing and alarming. I've been on the wrong end of the employee/contractor divide myself, and when I've been on the employee side, I've seen people on the contracting, temp, or float pool side. They're run around and around, always being told they don't have exactly what it takes to cross the arbitrary line into relative security and health benefits. Every company claiming that they don't have the money, when what they really mean is this money is not for you. 

March 4, 2021

I've been taking a lot of pleasure in cooking lately. Yesterday, I made a pork tenderloin and root vegetables for my husband, parents, brother and his family. As I've mentioned before, Budget Bytes has helped a lot in the transition from never cooking to cooking regularly. Another part of it had been my aversion to anything domestic, anything feminine. I want autonomy, self-determination, and respect. I want to spend my time training and creating in the public realm, not at home in the kitchen. But it's weird how nice it is to cook, given that it feels like women have been pushing to get out of the kitchen since the '50s. I have no desire to go pro at the cooking thing, either through restaurant work or cook book creation or anything like that. It's just really nice to be able to put away my other stuff, cue up my audiobook, and spend an hour or so making food. It smells nice. It involves things that have grown in the ground or been slaughtered for the energy bound up in their fat and muscle cells. It's entirely analogue for a goddamn change. No chance for anyone to market their products at me. 

It does seem to come at a steep price, the pleasure in cooking, in hanging out with kids, in making a domestic life your priority. The price of that work and good feeling is dependence on an outside source of income. The price is a lack of respect, a sense that, like a child, you never left home. It feels like a trick to punish people for indulging in the good life. 

Ever since reading Detransition, Baby, I've been thinking about what it means to pursue femininity. To think of it as desirable, or at least a thing that can be turned up or down. Leaned into or discarded. Rather than a mark that will endanger me and hold me back. Maybe, like home cooking, there will be more to enjoy. 

Book Log time! **SPOILERS**

Turton, Stuart -- The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle 

Published: 2018

Read: 03/2021

        Lord and Lady Hardcastle have reopened their country manor house to host a party, ostensibly reintroducing their daughter to the local society. She's been in Paris for the past 19 years, ever since her brother was murdered at the house. Our protagonist, cowardly Dr. Sebastian Bell, witnesses a murder in the forest and doesn't remember who he is. We steadily learn the rules of this place. We are someone named Aidan Bishop who is, over the course of a day, going to inhabit eight different hosts. His task is to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle and present his answer to the Plague Doctor (the ref, sort of) by the end of the night. If he can do this, he will be freed. If not, he'll start the loop over again, his memories wiped. Two other people are trying to solve the murder. One is his friend (Anna) who is trying to protect him, in exchange for him figuring out how to get them both out. The other is stalking his hosts, maiming and killing them. Mostly the time loops, as he jumps between different hosts, are the same, but he sees that some things actually do change. He has more self-determination than he previously thought. Aidan, his eight selves, and Anna work together to solve the mystery and escape the terrible place. 

        It took me a while, when I started reading this book to adjust to the fact that it's not a straight whodunnit. The memory loss in the beginning made me roll my eyes hard, especially with how hacky it felt compared to Tana French's use of the trope. I rolled my eyes again at the body swapping and the time loops. (Turton also goes on and on about how fat one of the characters is and how awful and shameful his life is because of it. Give me a fucking break.) It took a while to trust that Stuart was going to use these gimmicks towards a greater purpose. Eventually, I felt like I was reading a long Doctor Who episode, Heaven Sent specifically. If that were my initial expectation I would've started enjoying it earlier. As soon as I got calibrated to the genre cross, I liked it a lot. Stuart unravels a satisfying and intricate plot web. He uses some of the tricks I'm used to from Agatha Christie, chiefly people not being who they say they are. And he does a nice job exploring what it would mean to be inside of another person, to share their emotions, predilections, and traumas. To be frustrated by their faults and slowly appreciative of their strengths. For example, the Butler character's skin is covered with burn scars. When Bishop is inside of the artist, he sees the Butler as beautiful and interesting. He appreciates his face so much more than other people's boring symmetrical ones. 

        Turton seems very hesitant about writing female characters. Bishop has eight hosts and they're all men. The other female characters are either pure madonnas or wretched whore maniacs. I saw online that Netflix is turning this into a miniseries. I hope they make some of Bishop's hosts women to help balance that out. It matters whether you get a character who's eyes you can see through. 

        I really enjoyed the plotting and the genre-crossing. Less enthusiastic about the characterization and fat shaming. 

Rating: ★★★

March 3, 2021

I've been getting a ringing in my ears lately. Another sign of my future demise, maybe. 

I deleted Two Dots from my phone! That's happened every time I've come to the Fort Collins house. Something about it makes me want to make trace squares out of four similarly-colored dots. But it makes my brain turn into a zombie. I lose motivation for anything else. All I want to do is go into the oblivion of the dots, completing one circuit after another. It's so much easier, and sometimes more satisfying, than finishing my other projects. 

I got a little bit more freelance writing work this morning. That's nice. Speaking of finishing projects, my friend's audio play that I'm producing and editing is nearly at the finish line. I just have to carry it across. 

Yesterday was tough for motivation. I wasn't interested in reading/responding to my classmates assignments. I didn't want to work on the audio play or my own writing. I didn't want to do anything, so I walked a lot and listened to my audiobook. Then I played animal crossing and listened to my audiobook. I'm liking my audiobook, and it was one I was rolling my eyes at at first. 

I told my parents yesterday that they didn't need to keep asking me leading questions about teaching. I like teaching the little bit at Fusion that I do, but I don't want to go into teaching full time. (Not at this point, anyway. I'm aware that if I really wanted a change of career, teaching is one avenue that I'd have a little bit of a leg up on.) I told them research administration was an actual career -- and it is! It's holding me over while I try to chase down this screenwriting thing. 

I have reflected -- and checked my mood app -- that I don't work on my individual writing for many days of the week. My screenwriting class is helping me to make sure I'm making some progress on Baby Teeth, but it's not as much as it could be. And I'm not feeling the spark for it right now either, and I think that might be because I'm working on it once a week instead of six times a week. After the audio play is done, I'm hoping I can prioritize the writing -- the screenplay, short stories, and whatever else I feel like. 

I wonder if I should be pushing for more. Everyday, it's more or less the same: a list of projects, a list of meetings, work to do for various works. Hoping it adds up to something eventually, like in a story where all the narrative elements dovetail at the end. How do people decide whether they're living a worthwhile life? 

March 2, 2021

A friend from college came out as bisexual last month. She's married to a man and did a Q&A on her blog about how they're not getting divorced and are still going to be monogamous. There were 11 or 12 questions like that, complete with gifs. She had only come out to her close friends a day before she made it public on Facebook, so I'm not sure who exactly was asking all those questions. 

We also went to a Christian college together, and she maintained (until recently, apparently) that homosexuality was a choice and a sin. She talks about being an LGBTQ+ affirming Christian in her blog but doesn't mention ever thinking/saying that being gay was a sin. She doesn't talk about the change of heart. She just appears, fully formed, as an apparent expert on bisexuality. 

She says she's not coming out for attention. She's coming out because it'll mean she no longer has to pretend to be straight. 

I went to the Audacity Book Club zoom event last night. Roxane Gay talked with Torrey Peters about her book Detransition, Baby. Peters talked with security, insight, and grace. She talked about how Cis people look to Trans people for ideas about gender. Straight people to Queer for ideas about family. They're the people who see that the traditional set up doesn't really work for them and are going about trying to figure out new ways of living. She said that Cis women are -- in some part -- starting to look to queerness as well because the system doesn't really fit them either and they want alternatives. 

Maybe that's the case for my college friend, even though she maintains that she is happy with her current status quo. I'm wondering about claiming an identity without any change or follow-up action. Maybe she's laying the groundwork for a change in her life, even though she says that she's not. She's not forfeiting any of her straight white woman privilege (or acknowledging it).

I wonder if she thinks about how her life could have been different if she grew up in a different environment, if she had come out earlier, dated women. Maybe coming out now connects her to that would-have-been life. And maybe as a straight white lady myself, I just don't get it. I certainly am not some qualified queerness gatekeeper. 

On my college friend's Facebook post, several other women (who are married to men) from our Christian college said that they were bi as well. Is that anything? It feels like a queerness smash and grab. Is it meaningful? Do I have to regard these women as an embattled sexual-orientated minority, now?  I'm confused and would like someone more qualified to weigh in. 

March 1, 2021

Having trouble getting my blog written in the morning because as soon as I walk downstairs, my dad wants to talk to me about politics. His first words to me this morning were, "Do you think they should send kids back to school in person?" (For the record, I think they should as soon as teachers get the chance to get vaccinated. To make them go back now, when immunity is only weeks away seems like a big Fuck You.) He also wanted me to solve taxation. He thinks real estate tax should be abolished. He thinks that sales tax should be the major tax because it's more efficient. I pointed out that sales taxes disproportionately impact poorer people. We've had this exact conversation before. 

It surprises me that I enjoy political satire like The Bugle and Last Week Tonight. You'd think I would run screaming, by this point, of any mention of anything remotely political.  I've experienced random cortisol spikes throughout my life; my dad, out of nowhere, challenging me to solve all of society's ills. Another one from the morning: how can they allow tax fraud to happen? Apparently, there's been a lot of fraud around people claiming unemployment under other people's names. How can they let that happen?