April 30, 2021

Yesterday, I did a sunset skate along the beach path from Venice to the Santa Monica Pier and beyond. We had six people in total, and it was cool! My and one other person were quite a ways behind the other four. I have been improving, I swear. The woman I was skating with told me that she's worried skating is her personality now, and I feel that. At least on Instagram, I've only posted about skating for the past little while. That is because it's the only thing I've been doing. 

Just now thinking about a friend from growing up who I follow on Instagram. She got married and then divorced and is now taking all these girl trips with three other (presumably) single women in their early 30s. It's bars and booties, and low cut dresses, and heavy foundation. It's not a bad scroll. They're out their in a dangerously coiffed pack, feeding off fun and freedom. Desperate to get back in the game with their own sexiness, their sexiness amplified by the women around them. Like life is white hot and ready to blink out at any time.  

What else? 

My husband and I went over to a couple friends' (a friend couple's) house last night. This was after skating. The four of us just talked for a while, and it was the first time in a long time that I've been able to do that with a relatively new person. Being in it and losing track of time because it's interesting. I hope they didn't mind how long we stayed. 

Mlog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

RED ROCK WEST 

1993

Directed by: John Dahl

Written by: John Dahl, Rick Dahl

Watched: 4/28/21

Red Rock West is a Western/Thriller about a man from Texas who drives to Wyoming looking for work and then can’t seem to get out of a town called Red Rock West. He’s an honest man, back from Vietnam, who can’t seem to catch a break because of his injured leg. When he arrives in town (after not getting the oil rig job he drove up for), he’s mistaken for Lyle, a hitman from Texas that the bar owner hired to kill his wife. Taking the job, Michael (protagonist played by Nicholas Cage) goes to the wife’s (Suzanne) house and warns her that her husband’s trying to kill her. She says she’ll pay him double to kill the husband. Well, Michael takes the money and drives out of town that night only to accidentally hit a man. Michael takes the man to the hospital, where it’s discovered the man’s been shot twice. Michael has to stick around for the police to arrive and he discovers that the bar owner is also the sheriff. The sheriff tries to kill him, but Michael escapes by getting picked up by a man who turns out to be the real Lyle. Michael goes to Suzanne’s house to warn her again and tussles with Lyle. Then eventually Michael finds out that Suzanne and her husband (Wayne) are both criminals and they and Lyle all go out to get Wayne’s money that he buried. Lyle and Wayne get killed in the kerfuffle and Michael and Suzanne hop on a train with the money. Suzanne pulls a gun on Michael, but Michael disarms her. Then he scatters the money off the train car and throws Suzanne off with it. Fortunately, Michael has kept a couple of stacks of bills for himself. 

Long summary! I liked a lot of things about this movie. The way the early plot works is nice. I like how in the opening scenes we see Michael shaving next to his car out in the desert and how he’s kept his nice white shirt in the trunk up until the last minute to ensure that it’s crisp and fresh for when he first meets his employer. We’re shown that he’s honest by how he doesn’t steal an unattended cash box at a gas station even though he sorely needs money. It’s all well set up and the later conflict tests him along the same lines. Two complaints: 1) it’s never explained why this husband and wife want to kill each other. The answer given is, Well, you know, marriage. 2) Part of the plot hinges on Michael going back to Red Rock West on Suzanne’s insistence. They’ve slept together, but I don’t at all believe that they have such deep feelings for one another that Michael would risk his life going back there. The plot largely works except for the relationship reasoning, which is of course really important. 

Rating: ★★1/2 

April 29, 2021

Man, I slept so hard last night. I went to bed around 10:30pm and could barely peel myself off the mattress at 9am this morning. I figure it must be my biking/roller skating routine that's wearing me out. 

Yesterday, I had a nice time at the rink. I actually spoke to two different people, which was nice. And I'm feeling like I actually might be improving a little, especially with my backwards skating. A man had a speaker and was playing his music. It was nice to listen to someone else's playlist, to their preferences. He was keeping it upbeat, and the whole thing put me in a good mood. 

What else? 

The writing's been good lately, although it doesn't feel like it's coming fast enough. Although, I guess, if I were pumping out a new screenplay every two weeks it wouldn't do me that much good. I'd run out of money with all the contest submission fees, that's for sure. I just feel ready. I want to get into the ring. I've got a good baseline skill set and work ethic. I'm ready for the next level. 

The Audacious bookclub for this month was yesterday. Roxane Gay interviewed author Dantiel W. Moniz. Her short story collection, Milk Blood Heat, was great. It's also Moniz's first published book. If you think that means it's Blog Time, you're right! 

Blog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

Moniz, Dantiel W. – MILK BLOOD HEAT

Published: 2021

Read: 4/2021

This a short story collection that largely takes place in Jacksonville, Florida (the author’s hometown). Moniz writes about ordinary human experiences, many of which society places under taboo. The stories are about desire, death, grief, about good and bad behavior, about being animal, about being human. 

I listened to this book as an audiobook, but after I finished I ordered the physical copy. The stories deserve a re-read, I think. There’s something about short stories in particular that makes me want to have them with me. I’m far more likely to crave one and want to re-read it at a moment’s notice. I love novels, but I’m less likely to go back to them. I feel a kinship to Moniz’s subject matter. I’ve also been finding myself writing about the darker parts of girlhood. She talked, in her interview with Roxane Gay, about how society cloaks girlhood in frivolity – in pastels and softness – when in real life it’s darker, earthier, bloodier, more metal. I find that to be true as well, there’s always this hum of danger. A girl’s body is dangerous, for herself and others, it seems. 

Rating: ★★★★

April 28, 2021

Yesterday, I read the first draft of my husband's book, Wildhaven. I liked it a lot. I'm going to write my notes here (because I need to send them to him), and I can write anything I want on here. 

1) Pace/Style - the writing style and the pace of the writing is fairly similar throughout. Think about speeding up the writing pace -- and/or changing the writing style to make it more impressionistic rather than descriptive -- when the character is going through intense situations. Note: at times Chris ought to be in shock, write like he's in shock. The running commentary in his head ought to be disrupted in some way. 

2) Jay's character is set up wonderfully in the beginning, but then we don't hear/see much of him throughout the middle. He's a great character. Think about keeping him prominent throughout the book. 

3) In the Mikey chapters, you sometimes call his older brother Ronny. 

4) Voice -- Mikey and Chris are similarly aged and both within the confines of Christianity. I'd try to make the voice in Mikey's chapters a greater departure from Chris's voice than it is right now. (It's already different, but I'd make it even more different if you can.) Although, I do like that the characters have some similarities because that makes them coming together in the end feel satisfying. 

5) The ending is a little ragged. I think all the elements are there but they might be in the wrong order. The intensity should continue to ramp up until the climax is actually over (and the mountain has exploded). Right now the intensity ebbs before the climax is done. It's jarring and feels unrealistic. We should really depart from normal camp, by this point. 

Okay, I think that's it. Will send to Mitch! Like I said, I think his stuff is good. I hope he gets published soon. 

Mlog time! 

**SPOILERS**

LE SAMOURAI

1967

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville

Written by: Jean-Pierre Melville 

Watched: 4/26/21 

Jef Costello carries out a hit on a man who (presumably) owns a nightclub. He’s seen y the piano player and several other people in the club. He’s worked out a tight alibi, but when he’s picked up by the police, they think that he’s their man. The alibi works (for now) and Jef is released. When he goes to pick up his payment for the hit, however, the man he meets tries to kill him. His employers figure he’s dangerous since he was seen. Jef gets away and tries to figure out exactly who hired him – trying to get to them before they get to him. Jef manages to dodge the police and kill the man who ordered the initial hit. He’s under contract for one more hit and goes back to the club, this time not trying to hide his presence at all. He stands in front of the piano player, pointing his gun at her, the police arrive and shoot him to death. They discover his gun had no bullets. 

I should add that his original alibi was upheld by his lover. The police continue to hassle her, figuring they can break her. When Jef returns to her, he promises to put everything right – which is presumably his motivation for committing suicide by cop. 

This move is pretty cool. Very spare and atmospheric. Little details give us big clues. Like for example, Jef’s spare studio apartment has a birdcage in the middle with a finch. Jef is able to tell, based on the finch’s behavior when his room has been bugged or when someone is hiding out. Later, when Jef goes to his lover, he can tell that she’s in distress even though she denies it. She’s like the finch. Jef is intuitive and observant. The movie also does a great job of showing us Jef is very good at his job while also making a bunch of things go wrong for Jef. He’s rogue, very competent, and up against the world. It’s pretty great. 

Rating: ★★★

April 27, 2021

Yesterday was chilly and windy and I abandoned plans to go skate at Mar Vista. My friend has been emailing back and forth with their rec center staff about cops getting called on roller skaters. There's no love between the staff and the skaters, it seems, even though skating on the rink is probably the nicest thing to do in the whole facility. No, the rink is for hockey players -- who aren't even allowed either. Because COVID. Even though, obviously, social distancing is way more built into skating than it is to, say, sitting in the park (only yards away from the rink) with your big group of friends. 

It was a little bit of a down day. I'm less busy because I'm not teaching any classes right now. It's hard to keep the energy and pace up. I watched Richard Herring play in his self-playing snooker championship live over Twitch. That helped me feel a little better. Herring has a bracket where he pits two of thirty-odd characters together. He plays both characters and the interviewer and the commentator. There was a contentious and close match between Me5, Self-Doubting Me, and Me11, Female Me. A lot of sexist remarks in the chat, and from Richard (doing the interviewing), I have to say. But Female Me kept it cool. She won the day, both in snooker and in her calm straight-talking approach. I don't actually know the rules of snooker, which amuses me. 

I bought bread for toast at the grocery, yesterday. We don't ever seem to have just regular bread around the house. I was torn between getting 7 Grain and getting 12 Grain. Same brand. Same price. I couldn't tell the difference at all except one, apparently, has more grain. I got the 12 Grain because maybe more grain is better. If more grain wasn't better, you think they wouldn't put so many in there in the first place. Did I make the right choice? I'll never know. 

Mlog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

BEING JOHN MALKOVICH

1999

Directed by: Spike Jonze

Written by: Charlie Kaufman 

Watched: 4/25/21

Craig Schwartz, a puppeteer, gets a job as a speed filer in an office on the 7 ½ floor. The half means that the ceiling is half the height of a normal ceiling, so everyone can’t quite stand up. It saves on rent. He falls in love with a woman in the office, Maxine. One day, he discovers a portal behind a filing cabinet that leads him to inside John Malkovich’s mind. He tells Maxine about it and the two go into business together, renting the service out to other people. Craig’s wife, Lotte, comes to the office and also falls in love with Maxine. She can’t get enough of being John Malkovich, and Lotte as Malkovich starts a sexual relationship with Maxine. Craig steps in, locking Lotte in the chimp cage in their apartment. Eventually, Craig is able to stay in Malkovich longer than the usual 15 minutes, and he’s able to control Malkovich. Malkovich (with Craig at the controls) announces that he’s no longer an actor, he’s a puppeteer, and he takes the world by storm. Eventually the man and group that uses the portals to live forever kidnaps Maxine (now pregnant) and forces Craig to leave Malkovich. Then Lotte and Maxine get together – the child is Lotte’s. Maxine got pregnant when Lotte was inside of Malkovich. The movie ends with Craig looking through Maxine’s daughter’s eyes. Maxine and Lotte are now a long-term couple. 

The 7 ½ floor thing was my favorite. Although the mud shoot portal to inside JM’s mind was good too. And how afterwards you got dropped from the sky next to the New Jersey turnpike. All good. On Wikipedia it talks a little bit about the development of the film. Kaufman just put in elements that amused him. I like that – I want to do that. But maybe that’s only allowed if you are Charlie Kaufman. Both Catherine Keener as Maxine and John Malkovich as John Malkovich are great. Amusing! 

Rating: ★★★★

April 26, 2021

Yesterday, my husband and I met some friends at the Sepulveda dam. Most of us roller skated, and a couple people just sat around and drank beers and talked. It was really nice, and it was the first time I had been there, plus I had brought the other people along, and in the end it worked out. Made me feel good. It was pretty empty, which surprised me, but apparently (I read later), the cops have been giving out citations for people being there. (There were no signs against it or anything like that.) I wonder if the city gets itchy anytime someone's enjoying themselves but not spending any money.  

Also, my husband got published for the first time recently. Really happy for him! It took him over a month to discover that he got published as he was submitting around using an email address he rarely checks. 

Blog time! 

**SPOILERS**

Horowitz, Anthony – MOONFLOWER MURDERS

Published: 2020

Read: 4/2021

Ex-editor Susan Ryeland is contacted by the owners of a fancy hotel in England. Their daughter has gone missing, and they think it has something to do with a book one of Susan’s former clients wrote. (The client, mystery writer Alan Conway, had died.) The characters in the book were inspired by Conway’s visit to the hotel after the murder of Frances Pendleton, one of the hotel guests. The missing daughter had read the book and concluded that the wrong man was in prison for that crime. Susan investigates and then reads the novel – which is included in full – and then solves the murder. 

I really liked Magpie Murders (2016), which follows the same lead characters (Susan, Alan, etc.), but this one I thought was just okay. Maybe it’s because in Magpie, the meta/nesting nature of the novel was, well, novel. This time I’m less impressed by it. Plus the actual mysteries just weren’t that good. There’s a red herring in the “real” murder investigation where a man is trying to get Susan to think he committed the murder because his wife is overbearing and he wants to cow her. It’s such a stretch. And then in the nested mysteries – the one from Conway’s book – one of the solves is straight out of Ocean’s 11. 

Horowitz is praised because he writes in the style of the golden age of mystery writers (read: Agatha Christie), but I’m not sure if he himself takes the genre seriously. In this book, he does fine but it doesn’t have the magic of a Christie novel. It doesn’t seem to have the conviction. 

Rating: ★★1/2 

April 25, 2021

My husband and I went to our first night out to eat in 13+ months! It was our Vaccination Celebration as my husband is 10 days past his second shot. (I got mine a couple of months ago through my work.) We spent over $100 at a nice restaurant -- it was a proper night out!  I had two cocktails, which was one too many, and I woke up in the middle of the night very thirsty. I got some water at 2:45am, and then had The Terror for the next hour or so. I half dreamed that one of my husband's childhood friends was trying to kill us. Then I dreamed I was with a group of people, and we were roller skating really fast in a grocery store. 

Speaking of The Terror, I'm reminded of how Jami O'Brien was talking about the terror of writing. She was saying that she worked as a writers assistant for some amount of years. She was working long hours and not doing any writing of her own. The long hours of work definitely contributed, she said, but the main thing was not being able to overcome The Terror. Every time she mentioned the terror, I thought of that TV show on Hulu. But it was striking for me to relate so strongly to her problem. For years, the hardest thing about writing was starting writing, and the emotion that kept me from beginning was pretty close to terror. The past while, it's felt easier. This blog has helped -- break the writing seal early and often. But it's also helped that I've been working so hard on my executive functioning in general. I'm better able to drive myself, to start or finish whatever it is I want to start or finish. Because of that, I feel a bit more confidence, which lowers my stress, which makes the whole process that much easier. 

What else? Going to skate at the Sepulveda Dam today. It's my first time checking it out, and I've invited a handful of people to join. It's everybody's first time, I think. I'm excited. It'll be a mini adventure. 

April 24, 2021

Yesterday, my husband and I hung out with two friends, people who are relatively new friends. Afterwards, I had the familiar feeling that I didn't do a good enough job. In social situations, especially when it's not one-on-one, I feel unsure as to what I'm supposed to be doing and unsure if I'm doing it well. Once I'm close enough with a group of people, that feeling goes away, but I like meeting new people. I'm interested in finding out about their lives, their personalities. I want to feel good about group social stuff. It was a reminder that along with the good things coming back post-COVID, some of the bad things might come back as well. I'm hoping I can get rid of that stress and inadequacy. It seems pointless to lug it through life. I want to listen to maybe some of the things it's telling me: listen well, be sensitive to others' needs and feelings, make people laugh and do what you can to make them at ease. But then let the rest of the performance anxiety go and just manage to have a good time. 

Second thing! Feeling good about the number of things I've got out there, right now. Any of them coming back as a "yes" would be awesome. But of course, the best thing is to forget about them and just work on the next thing. I still get excited though. Still hope for that slim chance of good news. And not being pessimistic with that "slim chance" statement. The success rates for these things are very very small! Objectively, there is a slim chance. 

Third thing! Thinking about that book my friend had me read. I forget the title but it was about not reading books. The premise was essentially -- there are too many books to read. As soon as you start reading one book, you're neglecting to read every other book in existence. You should be reading books about books, if you really want to get a grasp on literature. You should just be reading titles of books and short summaries, then just check out what the critics have said, and move on. The fundamentally true point the book raises is that it is impossible to read everything. It's impossible to read all the things you're "supposed to" have read. It's the same with movies and television. The publishing industry or the entertainment industry, or cultured society in general, doesn't give a damn that its expectations for the individual consumer are impossible. That's your problem not theirs. I admire the sense of simply refusing to try to accomplish the impossible. Of pretending you've read or seen more than you have. Of not feeling bad about it because the rules of the game were not fair -- or possible -- to begin with. 

I've got that monthly membership to Cinefile Video. Plus you know about my Mlog. It's been fun, inspiring, and artistically adventurous to just wander around in all the movies that have been made. (Cinefile might not actually have all movies ever made, but I'm telling you they must be close.) I enjoy it, and I think it's been giving me ideas and making my writing better. However, I'm not going to be able to see all 10,000 titles in their collection. Of course not, even after doing this for years at 2-3 movies per week, I won't make a dent on the things I'm supposed to have seen. It's fun; it's futile; it's endless. 

April 23, 2021

One month until my birthday! 

Yesterday, I went to a zoom event put on by Women's Weekend Film Challenge. It was a panel with Jami O'Brien - the showrunner of Industry on HBO - talking about being a showrunner. She gave us a rundown of how she landed in LA. It included, at one stage, losing her job, her boyfriend, and her apartment in NYC. A friend, who wrote for television, encouraged her to come out to LA, and offered her a couch to sleep on. She did it, and eventually she was able to work her was up the TV-writing career track. 

This morning, I'm thinking about how failure might precipitate good new directions in life. I mean, maybe if she stayed in New York and continued to pursue playwriting she might be a famous playwright by now. Who knows? But when you sort of fail out and need to pick a new thing, maybe that can be good because you're going to pick the best of your possible options. If you haven't failed out completely and are still pursuing an old goal, you may be taking routes that aren't very suitable. Does that make sense? After failure there's the chance for a clean slate and a best option. 

I'm wondering if I had to pick a new route -- if I had to -- what would be the best one. Maybe trying to get an admin job at one of the pharmaceutical companies where my friends work. That could be more money potentially. Maybe it would be to try to get into Engineering. To do that, I would probably take another year in LA and take a bunch of science courses at SMC to brush up. Chemistry, Calculus, Physics, maybe even Bio, why not? I'm enough years past my BS that I think retaking undergraduate classes would be good before going for a masters. And SMC classes are good and cheap. 

Or maybe it would be something else. Someone else floating in with an idea or an offer. Anyhow, Mlog time! 

**SPOILERS**

THE HIDDEN 

1987

Directed by: Jack Sholder

Written by: Bob Hunt 

Watched: 4/22/21

A man robs a bank by calmly shooting the man carrying the money bags and the officers around him. He then walks to his car, a Ferrari, pops a tape into his deck, and takes off. It becomes clear that the man – straight faced the whole time – has no escape plan. The cops chase him all over Los Angeles, and he ends the spree by crashing into a barricade of police cars, getting shot up, and then suffering from burns as his car (next to him) blows up. In the hospital, nearly dead, a big black alien looking thing (a lot of squirminess and tubes) crawls out of his mouth and into the mouth of the man in the hospital bed next to him. That man then gets up and goes out to steal cars, commit murder, and rob banks. FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher shows up to take over the case. He seems to know about the alien/parasite thing. He gets the lead detective on homicide, Thomas Beck, to help him. Through their interactions, we come to guess that Gallagher is also an alien in a people suit. Gallagher is hunting the other guy because that guy killed his partner and wife and child and everybody. Gallagher needs to shoot the alien when he’s in between bodies with a funny-looking alien gun. 

He won’t confide in Beck and Beck ends up locking him up – after realizing he’s not an FBI agent at all. Gallagher tells Beck the truth but Beck won’t believe him. That is until the police chief (occupied by the alien) comes in and shoots up the police station. Then Beck lets out Gallagher and the two work together. Beck gets shot. Gallagher finally kills the alien thing. And then in the end, right as Beck has died in the hospital, the alien in Gallagher (a beam of light) takes over Beck’s body and life. 

This movie came out in my birth year! How nice. The opening bank robbery and car chase scene was pretty awesome. It was making me think of Baby Driver (which is also awesome). (Actually, another loose tie to Edgar Wright, I rented this movie because it was one of the ones Joe Cornish recommended on a recent Instagram post.) There are comedic elements as well. Beck gives Gallagher an Alka-Seltzer since the night before, Gallagher had a beer with dinner and had obviously never drank alcohol before. Gallagher puts the tablet in his mouth and Beck explains he was supposed to drop it in the glass of water and drink it. Later, someone gives Gallagher an asprin and glass of water, and G puts the asprin in the water and drinks it. Plus, the bad guy has trouble with one of his older bodies, all herky jerky and losing blood. It’s very reminiscent of the bug alien in Men In Black. Actually the alien gun looks a lot like the guns in MIB. (The Hidden, of course, came out 10 years before MIB. I can’t find anything online that draws a direct connection between the two movies though.) 

I also liked this part where the bad guy asks Gallagher how he’s enjoying being human. It’s during a shoot out and Gallagher and Beck are taking cover behind a wall. Gallagher says that he likes it okay and smiles at Beck. A nice moment. Anyhow, I thought the movie was solid.  

Rating: ★★★

April 22, 2021

 My husband and I are officially pushing our Edinburgh Fringe Festival trip back to August 2022. I'm bummed, but airline shenanigans made it seem more prudent. Plus, I'm hoping Fringe will be back in fuller force by 2022. It would be great if Richard Herring and Alice Fraser were there, for example. 

My Baby Teeth outline isn't going great. I'm having Act Two problems. The main character doesn't have a very strong goal, especially early on. She's more put-upon than anything else. It's a big issue. I should have flagged it and done something about it from the beginning. She's being put upon, you know? Maybe I'll just start writing "refer to the Gremlins script" instead of writing pages. I'm liking the class, but I keep complaining that it moves too slow. I need to actually go at my own pace, of course, and not let the pace of the homework assignments "hold me back." 

I'm not sure what to do about return to work. It's still a couple of months away, and I like my job enough that I'm inclined to just go back to fully in-person. But the company is giving people a lot of leeway if they want to work part-time remote. If I want to take advantage of something like that, now would be the time to set it up. But I also don't want to seem less committed to my boss. My job requires him to go to bat for me every few years because the contract runs out. (The next time it's up is end of June 2022.) It seems better to be in person so that he feels motivated to keep asking for my position to be continued. 

I might do something like ask for a few weeks a year that I can work remotely, mostly to go stay with my parents and not have to use holiday time. That was really nice over this past year, and it would be great to be able to see my nephews more often. 

April 21, 2021

I turned in my pitches yesterday! My friend looked them over before and gave me a couple of good ideas to add and a few tweaks to make. She approved of the work, overall, which was encouraging. One of the pitches I like enough that I might write as a proper rom-com on spec if the streaming network doesn't want it. I'm not really planning to write rom coms, but if I put my head down and work, screenplays don't actually take me that long. 

I roller skated from Venice to the Santa Monica Pier and back. My husband came with me but was running instead of skating. I realize that it's not a very far distance and, compared to my husband, I don't skate very fast. He was somewhere between a walk and a light jog when he was staying back with me. 

Derek Chauvin was convicted on three counts for the murder of George Floyd yesterday. The reoccurring internet posts (at least on my time line) have been: it's accountability not justice; justice would be if George Floyd was still alive; a one-off guilty verdict doesn't prove that the system works; we should be thankful to Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old who filmed the murder. I know better than to take a guilty verdict for granted. I'm glad that George Floyd's family and friends at least have that. 

April 20, 2021

The cat has been sleeping between my legs right near my pelvis. It makes it really hard to move, and I've been waking up in the middle of the night sweaty and overheated. There's not enough room to go on one side of her or the other. I should just push her off because she's affecting the quality of my sleep. But she's too cute, and I would feel bad. Plus, I'm taking the fact that she's sleeping on my side to mean that she likes me better than my husband. 

I think I may have talked about this before. One of the women in my UCLA Extension Class is very conscientious about getting everything right. She takes the hero's journey structure very seriously, for example. It reminds me of how in basketball I got very concerned with running the plays correctly, with getting low on defense, with boxing out. At some point in there, I forgot that the whole point of the game was just to put the orange ball through the hoop. In the end, however you could score points was good -- and keep the other team from doing the same -- the things we learned in practice were tools, not ends in themselves. I want to take this woman from my class and sit her down in front of a film screening. Say, "See, this is a movie. You're trying to do one of these." 

This sounds a little stupid, but I feel like writing every morning like this has helped me sort of see me. Like, I can feel there's a kind of frame work that I'm writing through. I can sense these vague edges whereas before it was like looking out through an endless pane of glass. 

April 19, 2021

Yesterday, I went to an aerial lyra class with a friend. It was this hanging hoop rigged up in a loft apartment in downtown. My friend has been going 2-3 times a week for two years, so she's really good. I wasn't expecting to be able to really do anything as it was my first time. But I was able to get up and do a move called the mermaid. Afterwards, the four of us in the class hung out with the instructor and drank wine spritzers around her kitchen table. She runs lessons for hoop and pole (taught by her business partner) out of her apartment. She and her business partner also make things -- candles, macramé and wine bottle plant holders, masks, etc -- and sell them at the Los Feliz flea market. I'm not sure how she makes enough money to pay rent on an apartment in DTLA. Maybe she has a day job as well and just didn't talk about it. It was fun. I think I'm going to buy a five pack of lessons and go with my friend until she moves to San Diego. Why not? 

I like how there are these different communities in LA: the aerial community, the rollerskating community. Who knows what else is out there? Some, like the aspiring screenwriter community, is too big and disjointed and solitary and depressed to really be a community. I'm hoping to rediscover/reinvent my experience of LA after quarantine. To finally find the way to break in, not to the entertainment industry, but into wherever it is that people actually hang out. 

April 18, 2021

I still haven't come up with my pitches for that producers. Right now, I'm trying to think about how to do the And Then There Were None version of the romantic comedy. They're all stuck together on an island or snowed in somewhere -- there's no way in or out -- and one by one something's happening to them. What's happening? Who is doing it? I think death is too strong, right? Maybe they're getting "love sick"? 

Oh! The protagonists has invited all her ex-lovers (for some reason). Her internal conflict, or the thing she needs to learn, is how to move on and not dwell in the past. This makes the protagonist more than a little coo-coo though, right? I think it's going to be hard to balance all these genre requirements. It needs to fit the beats of a rom com; it needs to have a crime/thriller/mystery angle; and it needs to be funny. 

Yesterday, my husband and I rode our bikes down to the El Segundo brewery. We had a pint there and then split a can sitting on the beach. There was so much going on along the beach path. Some kind of biker event going on in a parking lot. (One of the bikers had the word "erection" embroidered on the back of his jacket, like it was his last name on a basketball jersey.) 

My friend is doing the 365 days of skating challenge. She needs to get on her skates every day for 365 days and post about it on Instagram. She couldn't do it yesterday because she was on a plane all day, so she asked me to sub for her. (Apparently, there are rules and that's a concession that rules allow.) I wasn't planning on skating because of the bike ride, but I told her I was willing to put on my skates and mess around in the breezeway. I don't know any tricks. (I'm progressing as slowly as possible.) And I wanted to maybe do something interesting for her video, so in the end I decided to make it a narrative short. 

 

April 17, 2021

My stomach has been upset lately. Gas. 

Skated at Mar Vista last night. It was really fun. They had the DJ and the lights and people were drinking wine in the penalty boxes. I don't really have anything more to say, so on to the--

Mlog! 

**SPOILERS**

Oh, I also wanted to say that my cat sleeps next to me in bed every night. My husband gets up before both of us, so in the mornings it's just me and her being lazy together. It's really nice. I searched online to find out what it meant. "What does it mean if my cat sleeps next to me?" I wanted to find out if she loves me. The internet says she loves me. :) 

FLESH GORDON

1974

Directed by: Michael Benveniste & Howard Ziehm

Written by: Michael Benveniste

Watched: 4/16/21

It’s a sex spoof on Flash Gordon. The characters are Flesh Gordon, Dale Ardor, and Dr. Flexi Jerkoff. They have to save earth from the evil Wang’s sex rays. Upon arriving in Wang’s kingdom, Wang wants Dale for his bride and Wang’s daughter, Amora, wants Flesh for her husband. Amora takes Flesh on a love ship shaped like a swan and the two have sex before Wang blasts them out of the sky. Amora gifts her power pasties to Flesh. Then Flesh and Dr. Jerkoff go to save Dale from getting married. Dale’s whisked away by an underground band of lesbians, though, first. Flesh has to fight them and their pet beetle man monster in order to rescue Dale. With the help of Prince Precious, the rightful heir to the throne, the trio defeats Wang and saves the Earth. 

This movie is not that funny and not that sexy, but the animation and the special effects are good. The best part was the stop motion beetle man. Wikipedia tells me this: “In the early 1970s, [Jim] Danforth was hired to do a model animation sequence of a "beetle man" for the underground feature film, Flesh Gordon (1974). Not comfortable with the film being a semi-porn comedy, Danforth requested that his name not be included in the credits, but the film's producer, Howard Ziehm, included his name anyway, as "Mij Htrofnad" (spelled backwards).” The film also features a yellow-faced Wang which is atrocious.

Here’s a picture of the rocket ship: 

 

Rating: ★★

April 16, 2021

Things have all taken longer this week than I've anticipated. Stuff I had planned to do Wednesday and Thursday has now piled up today, Friday. And I had planned on doing different (and time consuming) stuff over the weekend. I have to put together two rom com pitches, and I don't watch rom coms. Even more than not watching, I feel like I maybe don't get rom coms. Like certain ways women are assumed to be wired, for me, are hooked up all backwards. My friend was recounting a time where a handsome guy showed up outside her dorm with flowers and threw rocks at her window. The other girls on her hall woke her up in wonder. She said that it was nice getting the flowers, but it was even nicer having the other women see her get those flowers. By contrast, I am horrified by romantic gestures. They make me want to run and hide. They embarrass me. I don't like people looking at me, in the first place, and looking at me for that reason feels even worse. 

Anyways, what I'm saying is that I worry my instincts are off for the genre. But I've got a chance to pitch rom coms, so I should pitch some rom coms. 

Blog time! 

**SPOILERS**

French, Tana – FAITHFUL PLACE

Published: 2010

Read: 4/2021

Faithful Place is the third book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. This time the protagonist, and first-person narrator, is Detective Frank Mackey. He’s an Undercover detective who hasn’t been home or contacted his family in 22 years. He reconnects with his family, living in the neighborhood of Faithful Place, when a suitcase is found from the night Frank left. He and his girlfriend had planned on running away together to England, but on the night in question, she never showed and Frank figured he got dumped. It shaped his whole mindset over the course of the rest of his life. But, he finds out, she was murdered. Her body was under a slab in the basement. As he’s digging (facts, I mean), Detective “Scorcher” Kennedy on the Murder Squad takes over the case. The two men don’t get along and Scorcher wants Frank out of his hair. (I’m doing a poor job on this summary.) Anyways! Frank’s family is a mess and then Frank’s younger brother gets killed, and in the end Frank finds out it was his older brother who killed both. When Frank hauls his older brother in, all of Faithful Place turns their back on him, feeling he should have just killed his brother instead of turning him over to the police. 

This was the shortest and least-deeply conceived book I’ve read by French so far. It was still an interesting and good read though. It had this quote I liked: “I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags.” 

The events in the book were objectively dark, but they didn’t feel as dark as stuff in her other books. And it wasn’t as scary either. Basically, nothing can beat the blood-soaked shoes from In The Woods. Oh! This is not particular to this book, but I forgot to say it before. The pleasure of a lot of detective novels (and crime shows like CSI), is how the detectives put things back together. They take a crime – and uncertainty – and sew it neatly back up, making everything right again. In French’s novels, the detectives and the investigations do the opposite. They take an already broken situation and rip it into shreds. They uncover far more that shouldn’t be said, seen, or felt. In the end, the case is almost the worst for having been solved. 

Rating: ★★★

April 15, 2021

Yesterday, I had walktails with a friend. (We drank cocktails and walked her dog.) I'm trying to be more expressive of my thoughts and opinions, even if they're contrary to my friends' point of views. I don't want to do this excessively. I'm not interested in being argumentative. I guess it's just that I want to be able to switch into that gear, as opposed to being in the Supportive Friend gear 24/7. I think it went okay yesterday. I noticed that the conversation felt more risky than it would in SF mode, and I walked away from it feeling more tired. I'm also realizing that I could be paying closer attention, -- I've been reading another Tana French novel and her detectives pay very close attention --  watching people for reaction, noting the little gaps before they speak, stuff like that. Why? Because if I'm going to be switching into different friend gears, then I probably should know when it's a good idea to do it. 

My husband and I watched John Oliver's episode about Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Facilities. It was horrifying, especially since it's something I worry about anyway. I don't think I want to have kids, so my care and status at the end of my life is a big question mark anyway. Maybe by then no one will care about me. On top of that, I'm trying to get into a silly industry and make a living as a writer. The second best thing to having your kids take care of you is having your gobs of money take care of you. I guess fingers crossed that I have gobs of money by then.... 

In this week's zoom podcast salon, one of the participants (a guy in his 30s living in Seattle) disclosed that he had a vasectomy appointment scheduled and was kind of freaking out about it. He said that he knew he didn't want kids and had come to the conclusion that he shouldn't be putting the burden of birth control entirely on his partners. He also said he'd been having reoccurring nightmares of getting someone pregnant. He's mostly a quiet stoic-seeming computer-ish guy during the conversations, but this had got him running a hand through his hair and his voice up a few notches. I thought it was interesting - and actually pretty amazing that he was taking responsibility and control of his reproductive capacities. Good job, that guy. We support you in whatever you decide. 

April 14, 2021

Finished reading the scripts and writing up the coverage for my producer, yesterday. I was surprised by how good the scripts were. They were written by the same person and were both rom-com Christmas movies with detective/mystery/crime genre trappings. The writer did a great job of using clear and to-the-point scene descriptions, while also painting a picture -- or outlining a rough sketch :). She also wove her plots together cleverly and fairly seamlessly. She hit her genre conventions and was able to string her scenes together like a beaded necklace. Everything flowed nicely and seemed to fit. Plus there were parts that were genuinely funny. 

This writer lives in Massachusetts and has written nine made-for-TV movies. It's nice to see someone with thorough competence, like she has, carving out a living for herself as a writer. 

Second thing, I brought my camera to the rink yesterday and worked up the courage to ask a few skaters who were working on triples if I could snap pictures of them. They said yes! The photos turned out okay. The scenery at the rink isn't all that exciting. I still need to process a few more of them and send them to the skaters over Instagram. I hope they like them enough to let me try taking some more photos. It's a really nice little scene, rollerskating in LA, I'd be stoked to have the chance to document it.  

April 13, 2021

I skated yesterday (Monday) for the first time since last Thursday, and it felt like I'd never been on skates before. I'm exaggerating but trying to say that aptitude for something seems to go by the wayside surprisingly quick. I remember back when I used to rock climb it was the same way. Same with painting. 

My friend is doing the skate 365 challenge, meaning she's going to skate everyday this year and post a photo or video for proof on Instagram. She will likely be very good by the end, right? It made me think of how we all are doing the Being Alive 365 challenge. You'd think it would make everybody pretty good at life, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Although maybe that's negativity talking, more people are doing just fine rather than not, probably. 

I have another freelance assignment from the producer I used to work for. I meant to get the whole thing done yesterday, but I only finished half of it, which is putting the squeeze on today. The rest of my week is going to be manageable, I think. It's just today where I have a bunch of stuff that I either have to or want to get done. The producer has also told me that I can send him pitches for romantic comedies with a mystery/detective twist. I'm going to give it a shot, of course, but romantic comedies really aren't my genre. End of post. 

April 12, 2021

Yesterday was tough. Owed a bunch of money in taxes. (How does this always happen? I put the lowest number on deductibles and put money pre-tax into retirement. And still!) Then, when my husband and I tried to plan our Scotland/Norway trip that got pushed from last year, we found out that the airline we have credit on doesn't do flights to/from the US anymore. So I'm not sure what's going to happen there. Maybe we'll just lose that money, which would suck. 

We're trying to decide whether to push it to August 2022. Presumably the Edinburgh Fringe would be more back to normal by then, which would be a plus, as it's the reason I want to go in the first place. But I'm itchy to travel and to be thinking/expecting this trip for two full years makes me more itchy. Erghhh. 

Change of topic: part of the Adam Buxton interview with British Olympic figures skaters Torvill and Dean has stuck with me over the past couple of months. Adam asked the skating couple if they were especially good when they were starting out. If a coach or mentor realized what potential they had and snatched them out of oblivion. They said that they weren't particularly good. Good enough to keep advancing through lessons but not obviously better or more talented than their peers. They said what made the difference was that they both took skating as seriously as the other. They were both committed to making the routines perfect, the timing perfect. 

I think that's really great. I'm reminded of an undergrad we had in the lab. She took it really seriously. She came in early; she talked to her mentor all the time. She rehearsed her poster presentations in the conference room. She practiced. She showed up to lab and it was like her mind was locked in to what she needed to do. She published a paper before she graduated and got into MIT for grad school. Of course she was smart -- just like Torvill and Dean must've had some natural talent for ice skating -- but I'm interested in that other thing. Whatever it is that allows a person to set their mind on something. To take it seriously. To be caught up in the pull of the thing and to serve it. 

What does that look like for writing (screenwriting, podcasting, filmmaking, etc.)? I have ideas of reading and analyzing a screenplay every week -- it would be great to do that with a group of people and have a discussion, like a non-science version of a journal club. Watch movies and MLog about them. :) Write everyday. Keep working on projects. Go to festivals or conferences where possible. The networking is also probably something... It's tough because all these ideas are coming from me, which means I've probably already implemented them (or tried to... I could read more scripts). Become Torvill and Dean! 

April 11, 2021

I finished teaching my first full series of high school Physics, semesters A and B, Newtonian through Modern Physics. I took Physics in high school. Our teacher was the track coach and through the second half of the semester he was gone a lot, in the hall talking with the assistant track coach next door. We did some cool stuff with Newtonian Physics. We had a lab where we had to calculate where a ball bearing would land, after it went down a ramp and out a second-story window. Kinematics and math worked, it turned out. You could actually predict where that sucker was going to hit the ground. Amazing. 

In college, I did really well in Newtonian Physics (semester A stuff in high school terms). Force, momentum, free body diagrams. All that was no problem. When we got into Thermodynamics and Electricity and Magnetism (especially), I struggled. I chalked it up to me using visualization when I solve problems. Figuring stuff I couldn't see in my mind was harder to solve for me. I took my success and failures to be intrinsic to my in-built talents and proclivities. 

But, now that I'm teaching high school physics, I realize what all should have been on the curriculum back when I was in school. I've noticed that in my high school, we spent most of our time on Newtonian Physics -- and lo and behold, I did well on Newtonian Physics in college. In high school, we didn't cover Electronics at all (Ohm's Law, Kirchoff's Laws, etc.). In my college Electronics class, I struggled. 

I'm not trying to say my struggles in college were a direct result of my high school teacher's omissions. Actually... maybe I am saying that. My point being that having a good foundation ahead of time -- having seen the stuff before -- really helped me out later on. And instead of putting that together, I assumed everything was up to my innate abilities. I figured it was all just feedback on how smart I was or wasn't. 

My takeaway from this realization is to try to stop thinking everything's saying something specific about me. If I take a class or participate in an activity, and I feel like I'm struggling while the people around me are not, instead of concluding "I'm bad at this," I should allow for the possibility that others have had more experience than me, prior training.  

Lastly, as I kick around the idea of going back to school to get an MFA, I've decided to take some community college classes first. Both to help me figure out if film making is actually what I want to be doing, and also to maybe give me a leg up if/when I get into a program. 

April 10, 2021

Yesterday was Friday, and I tried to make some progress on BABY TEETH, the screenplay I'm writing. I had the beat sheet done and was happy with it until I took two weeks off to rewrite another project. When I came back to the beat sheet it felt drab. So I started thinking of ways to totally pull it apart or spin it around. I am going to combine two of the main characters into the protagonist. But I've decided, for now, to not switch the protagonist to the mother character. For class, my homework is to write up to the inciting incident. So I reworked the first part of the beat sheet and started on pages. 

Oh! That stuff wasn't all that interesting. What I meant to talk about was finding an early script for Gremlins. I'd like some of what's good about Gremlins -- which may be my favorite movie -- to be good about Baby Teeth. So I decided to read the Gremlins script to try to get some additional ideas. Well, the script I found is an earlier draft -- the spec before Spielberg got his hands on it, apparently. It's quite a bit different and darker than the final movie, so far. (I haven't finished reading.) 

MLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

FLASH GORDON

1980

Directed by: Mike Hodges

Written by: Lorenzo Semple Jr. 

Watched: 4/9/21

Flash Gordon, the quarterback for the New York Jets, crashes a small plane into the lab of scientist Hans Zarkov after Ming the Merciless of the planet Mongo (and emperor of the universe) starts toying with Earth. Dr. Zarkov kidnaps Flash and his companion Dale Arden and brings them with him on his rocket ship to confront Ming. Ming takes the three captive. The Earthlings realize that Ming is a psycho and that he has kept the people from the moons of Mongo under his thumb by pitting them all against each other. Flash, through his bravery and decency, convinces the Hawkmen and the men of Aboria to “team up” and overthrow Ming. 

Brian Blessed is the leader of the Hawkmen and he is great. So loud, such a big mouth. All of the men (except for the Earth men) wear eyeliner, which is also great. The costumes are GREAT. The music – done by Queen – is great. The look is great. The movie seems to have a good handle on what it wants to be. An action comic movie that’s put in the work but doesn’t take itself too seriously. 

Rating: ★★★★

April 9, 2021

Yesterday evening, my friend and I drove to Venice to take part in a Sunset Skate, a group of quad skaters rolling from Venice to the Santa Monica Pier and back. We were late, so by the time we got there the group had already left. That was more or less for the best though, as it was the first time my friend and I had tried out that path. We're used to the smooth contours of the Mar Vista rink. This was sand, pavement, mottled asphalt, slight inclines, bicyclists and pedestrians, the whole works. 

Initially freaked out, we nearly quit after five minutes, but we decided to ride it out a little farther and eventually got more comfortable. We made it all the way to the Pier and back! But weirdly never ran into the big group of skaters. When we were done, we sat on the outdoor patio of a bar by the beach and drank a beer. The first time I've done that in LA in over a year. I'd call it a success! Even though I did not look cool or relaxed at any point during the skate. My butt muscles were clenched like iron and my eyes were glued to the path in front of me. There are some flamboyant characters in and around Venice, but I didn't pay attention to a single one of them. 

I'm looking forward to going again next week. 

MLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

GIRLS TRIP

2017

Directed by: Malcolm D. Lee

Written by: Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver

Watched: 4/8/21

Ryan and her posse of friends haven’t hung out together in four years, so when she’s invited to be the keynote speaker at the Essence music festival in New Orleans, she invites the crew to come along. Ryan’s trying to keep her lifestyle brand together by hiding her crumbling marriage. She and her friends party hard, and by the end of the trip, Ryan realizes that she can be honest with the world because, even if she loses her husband, in the end she’s not alone. 

The dialogue and the acting was often pretty stiff. The total standout was Tiffany Haddish in the role of Dina. She had the most outrageous lines and fully committed to them. My favorite set piece was the one where Jada Pinkett Smith’s character gets stuck on a zipline across Bourbon street and has to pee. She ends up peeing in an explosive fire-hydrant-level torrent. Then Dina swings in to save her and pees like that as well. That made me laugh. 

The movie also had what felt like a lot of b roll – footage of second lines, of the characters standing around drinking, etc. Not the tightest script. The movie was fun and made a lot of money, and I hope more movies like this get made. (And I hope they get better.) 

Rating: ★★

 

April 8, 2021

 It was a slow day yesterday, work- and project-wise. So I lay on the couch with one ankle resting next to my sleeping cat and read the screenplay for THE FAVOURITE. 

SLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

THE FAVOURITE

2018 (Film Released) 

2017 (Final Shooting Script) 

Written by: Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara 

Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos

Read: 4/7/2021

Sarah is a lifelong friend, confidante, and secret lover of Queen Anne. She dictates policy from her position and tries to convince the Queen to push forward in England’s war on France. Meanwhile, Abigail, Sarah’s cousin and a lady who’s fallen from her station, shows up at the castle. She works as a lowly servant until Sarah promotes her to lady’s maid. Abigail schemes her way up from the bottom, seducing the queen and getting a noble to marry her. She ends up taking Sarah’s place and convincing the Queen to banish her from the castle. By the end, Abigail has everything she wants and perfunctorily performs her role as the Queen’s lover (and she’s terrible at running the household). Sarah and her husband are exiled from England, and the Queen loses the woman she loves. 

I really like this movie. The way you slowly learn what’s really going on in the castle – the audience is realizing it right along with Abigail. I like how the script builds sympathy for Abigail and really shows why she’s so desperate to rise from her low station (the awful conditions, the punishments, the horrible treatment by the other maids). I also like how the script lobs these little shockers into the midst. Example: 

 

The writers are not afraid to go for the jugular. Abigail sticks her hand in lye. Sarah gets dragged by a horse and picked up by a brothel. Period dramas are so often pristine and proper. It’s wild and fun to have one that’s bawdy and dark like this one is. I’m going to rate the script lower than I do the final movie because while the script is good, the direction, scene design, and especially acting put the movie over the top. 

Rating: ★★★1/2 

April 7, 2021

Yesterday, I went to an Alice Fraser salon. (She sets up these zoom hang outs for her Patreons, and there's usually 8-12 people there.) It was really nice. It felt refreshing and intimate (as I told her in a message later, feeling a little bit like a weirdo). Most of the people on the zoom call were from the UK, but there were a couple of Americans and Australians as well. The contemporary world is complicated, and the internet makes it more so, but I was thinking about how amazing it is. How I can talk to people around the world on a random Tuesday afternoon. How I can dig through podcasts, following idea threads or linking various people together, finding out more about how people who I've never met are thinking and living.  

April 6, 2021

I picked up my husband from the airport last night. Yay! He's back. I didn't get enough sleep to make up for my lack of sleep the night before. Fuzzy head. The beginning of this week is a lot lighter than most of my weeks for the past 1,000,000 years. It's a weird feeling, but I probably need a break to slow down and reassess my life. Take a rest from the persistent drumbeat of Onwards.  

BLog Time! **SPOILERS**

French, Tana – THE LIKENESS

Published: 2008

Read: 4/2021

The Likeness is the second novel in French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. This time, we see through the eyes of Detective Cassie Maddox. She’s in DV (off the Murder Squad) after the events in In The Woods when a body is discovered of a woman who looks exactly like her. Her old boss in Undercover, Frank Mackey, convinces her to go undercover as the dead girl to try to find out what happened to her. She joins a close-knit group of postgrads who are all studying literature. There’s four of them, in addition to Lexi – the dead girl and mystery woman who enrolled in Trinity under a previous undercover alias of Cassie’s – living in an old manor house. They all own the house together and Daniel, the ringleader/dad of the group, hopes that they can live together happily forever. Cassie finds out that Lexi was looking to share her portion of the house and get out of there – on the run and living a thousand lives, as was her MO. Cassie likes the group and the lifestyle so much that she starts keeping things from Frank and seems to be forgetting about Sam, her boyfriend in Murder. But she’s eventually pulled out of it by the fact that she’s doing her job. 

French is an incredible writer. The more I read her stuff the more I like it. My only complaints with this book was how unlikely the situation was – even though French does put a lot of work in addressing it and justifying it. I like that the premise is ludicrous, but it’s also ludicrous, you know? My second complaint was that Cassie keeps a couple things secret from Frank “on instinct” which translates to me as “in service of the plot.” It’s the Buffy conundrum, where most of the conflict would be resolved if at any point Buffy just told her friends what was going on. 

I love how strong the characters were in this book. Strong as full and striking. Cassie’s also just plain strong, in the sense that she’s good at her job – but not like a super hero or genius or anything like that. What I mean is that she’s brave and observant. She’s a good detective. French is also brilliant at setting and will also take a bit of text time to philosophize on modern Ireland. It’s all interesting and completely absorbing. 

Rating: ★★★★★

April 5, 2021

I missed one yesterday. 

Yesterday was Easter Sunday. I spent the whole morning making monkey bread and deviled eggs. The monkey bread dough rose and pushed the melted butter and sugar out of the bundt pan and onto the oven floor. It smoked like crazy. I'm planning on cleaning it out later today. 

The cooking took me hours. It was my first time trying to make either of those things. I'm really enjoying cooking. Picking out recipes at the beginning of the week -- getting to try out anything that I want -- and then getting all the groceries. It feels good to do something that isn't on the computer, that isn't primarily mental work. I like buying and using all these tangible things. Meat, tomatoes, green onions, packages of noodles. The stuff that people write poems about and paint as still lifes. It's an easy way to get a little bit of novelty, a great venue for trying new things, especially because I haven't been cooking for very long. I have never cooked most things before. It makes me feel capable in a grounded way. Plus there's so much pleasure in it. 

I also am pleased that I like to do it because -- finally -- it's a way to perform my gender that feels natural and enjoyable to me. Feeding myself, feeding others. Marshaling a kitchen. Making my apartment homier, as in more like a home. It's all essential and ancient and warm. I text photographs of what I cook to my mom sometimes. I want to let her know that even though I may not have kids or go to church, I do cook. I'm participating in my gender and in tradition in some way (even though what I cook is not what she grew up feeding me). 

I wanted to add something about my experience at the pop-up skate event on Friday. Everyone else there is better than me. They have the combined abilities of gymnasts, ball room dancers, yogis, and ski jumpers. They fly spinning around the rink. I do my best to just stay upright and not run into anybody. My friends and I took a break, at one point, to rest and have a beer over on the picnic tables. I kept my skates on, hobbling around in the grass. When we went back into the rink, I had this moment where I knew I was not going to fall. More than a moment, like half an hour. I'm not sure if it was the false confidence of the booze or if I'm just slowly getting better. But for that little while, I was wrapped in security and it felt great. 

Lastly, I stayed up until 3am last night listening to my audiobook. My husband was out of town this week, and I generally did a good job self-regulating and sticking to good routines. It's tough though, to make good decisions -- decisions against your inclination -- when it's just you. Plus the book was really good. (I'll write about it tomorrow.) I finally went to sleep and not long after I woke back up. Then I felt my bed start to slip and rock. Three earthquakes between 4 and 5 am. I went back to sleep. 

April 3, 2021

My butt is sore from skating. My friend and I went to a roller skating pop up event - a whole skate party - at the outdoor rink in Mar Vista last night. We skated for two and a half hours.  There were lights and a DJ and a bunch of people who were way better at skating than me. It was like United Skates in the flesh. It's the first party I've been to in over a year. It felt really special. 

I also finished my third draft of my screenplay Breaking Up Is Easy. I think it's really good. I submitted it to a bunch of contests (Nicholl, Austin, Screamfest LA, Slamdance) and spent a fortune. I'm fairly certain submitting to contests is NOT the way to go. You have to make it into like the top 0.5% for it to be useful, and even then nothing is guaranteed. Plus, you're at the mercy of random readers, most of whom are like interns at best. But I wanted to submit anyway. Wanted to get the script read by a few people at least. 

It's 2pm already and I haven't changed out of my pajamas or really even left the couch. 

MLog time! **SPOILERS**

BARBERSHOP

2002

Directed by: Tim Story

Written by: Mark Brown, Don D. Scott, Marshall Todd

Watched: 4/3/21

Calvin’s been running his dad’s old business, a barbershop in the southside of Chicago for two years. He wants to be his own man and open up a recording studio. He’s driven the shop further into debt with his side hustles and get-rich-quick schemes. So he sells the shop for $20,000. But during that day, he realizes what exactly the barbershop means to the community and what it means to him. Meanwhile, a couple of guys have stolen a cash machine from a nearby bodega. (They spend the entire movie trying to break into it without any success.) The police are looking for the thieves and pull in one of Calvin’s barbers. Calvin bails out his barber and the two of them manage to buy back the shop, track down the thieves, and get the $50,000 reward for finding the cash machine. 

This was one of those chatty, slice-of-life movies. The best parts were the conversations among the barbers and patrons, their particular struggles and how the community helps them out. I always watch movies with subtitles on because the sound mix always seems to be off and I hate missing bits of dialogue. Whoever captioned this movie made the decision to write out all the dialogue in Queen’s English. It was like… not what the characters were saying at all. Like a character would say “bruh” clear as day, and the captions would read: brother. It was weird. 

A lot of the best lines went to an older character named Eddie. Actually, the general message – monologue-wise – felt like a paen to respectability politics. Like, black people ought to be on time and not spend their money on Land Rovers, etc. etc. A bit along the lines of, if black people just shaped up then they wouldn’t have all these problems. Side note: it looks Kenya Barris wrote Barbershop 3 (2016); that could be interesting…. 

Rating: ★★★

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April 2, 2021

Jumping straight into MLog BLog because I've been behind on that. **SPOILERS**

Theroux, Louis – GOTTA GET THEROUX THIS: MY LIFE AND STRANGE TIMES IN TELEVISION

Published: 2019

Read: 3/2021

Louis Theroux is a UK Documentary presenter. Which means he’s the one on camera interacting with subjects and asking them questions. His career’s focus has been largely on American fringe groups and cultures. A bit like an on-camera Hunter S Thompson, but a lot less drugs. I came to Louis’s book in my progression down the Adam Buxton rabbit hole. Louis went to the same upper-class boarding school as Adam and Joe. Louis’s parents were well-off and very liberal. His dad is the American travel writer, Paul Theroux. (His cousin is the actor Justin Theroux, who was the director character in Mulholland Drive!) The book talks about his early life and education, how he got into television (through a lucky break, landing an on-camera roll on Michael Moore’s show, TV Nation, even though he had had no previous TV experience), and a bit about the documentaries he’s done. Oh yeah, and a whole lot on his relationship with Jimmy Saville. 

Like I said, I knew of Louis’s only because he was a regular on the Adam Buxton podcast. This book was a pretty good inroad to Louis’s work. He’s funny and does a thorough (a Theroux) job of describing his docs and what the making of them was like. If I had seen a bunch of the documentaries in question, it might have been a bit dull. Like someone telling you exactly what was in a movie or book after you’ve already seen or read it. 

His privilege, in his route to a career in TV, hit me like a tidal wave as I was reading. He comes from a wealthy and artistic family, he had an elite education (private school then Oxford), he had dual citizenship because of his dad and was able to move from London to California and then to New York easier than I could have moved from Colorado Springs to Denver. Then, on top of all that, he also appears to get outrageously lucky. Not that one should ever really approach someone else’s journey as the blueprint for breaking in, but Louis’s is definitely not one I’ll be able to emulate. 

Stuff I like about him: doggedness, quick to a joke, slow to judgement, a penchant for getting out of his depth, but also a strong equilibrium that’s difficult to totally upset. 

Rating: ★★★

LE TROU

1960

Directed by: Jacques Becker

Written by: Jacques Becker, José Giovanní, Jean Aurel

Based on: The Break by José Giovanní

Watched: 4/1/21

Four cell mates are planning to escape when a new inmate, Gaspard, is moved into their cell. Gaspard is taken with how much camaraderie and good feeling there exists between the four. They all share their food parcels, sent in from outside. (And of course, as a French film, the food looks lovely. Cheeses, bread, jams, smoked meats.) Gaspard, in turn, offers to share his parcel of food. Eventually, the four let him in on their plan to escape. They’re working – folding cardboard into cardboard boxes – and they use the cardboard to cover the hole they’re digging in one corner of the cell. They break through to the basement of the prison, and from there, they go down into the sewers. The sewer line is blocked by concrete to prevent escape. So for several nights, the men take turns digging a hole around the concrete barrier. By the end of a night of working, they’re able to break through. They follow the sewers to outside the prison. But the two that do need to go back and tell the others. The five of them plan their escape for that night. However, Gaspard is called into the warden’s office. He tells Gaspard that his wife has dropped the charges against him. He should be out as soon as the magistrate drops the case, which could take a few weeks. 

Gaspard returns to the cell and assures his cell mates that he did not give away their plan. Gaspard had told Manu, one of the other men, earlier that he felt more right with them in their escape efforts than he had ever done before in his life. That night, as the men are ready to make their escape, a whole rush of guards shows up. They strip the other four prisoners to their underwear and get ready to send them to solitary confinement. Gaspard is led to his original cell. As he passes the four men, one of them looks at him and says “Poor Gaspard.” 

I love that ending. I feel like it was saying that Gaspard, even though he’s soon going to be free, is more pitiable than the men who now have to stay in prison. They experienced purpose, brotherhood, loyalty. He has none of those things. 

Man, there are a lot of long sequences in this movie of these guys loudly digging their holes. But those long sequences did help confer on me how much work these men were undertaking and how risky and claustrophobic it was. It has that underlying quality of joy. Working hard together towards freedom. Tricking the authority. Taking your and your brothers’ lives into your hands. There were wildly silly parts as well, like two of the men avoiding a patrol by shimmying around the opposite of a column, one of the men on the other man’s shoulders. 

It sounds like the other two films by this director worth seeing are Touchez Pas Au Grisbi and Casque d’Or. I will put them on my list. 

Rating: ★★★★

April 1, 2021

My friend who I wrote about a few days ago, assuming no one would ever read the post did read the post. WHOOPS. She was cool about it though, more bemused and interested than anything else. It's strange to operate in the world under certain rules -- what you can or can't say, do or not do, venture into or not -- and then to find out the rule was arbitrary. A line on a basketball floor rather than a fence. 

I helped someone on my basketball team submit an Individual Artist Fellowship application to the California Arts Council, yesterday. It made me feel good. I really hope she gets the money. 

The roller skating drama has continued. I had a better handle on what I wanted to say about it yesterday. But now it's the morning and I gave blood yesterday afternoon, not feeling up to snuff. But I will do my best anyway. 

I've been thinking maybe the movie there (or just episode of CSI, let's be honest) is a pretty blonde instagram skater is found dead in the rink. There are a lot of suspects. There's the local skaters who she's snubbed or scammed. There's the hockey players, sick of roller skaters taking over the rink. There's the rich neighborhood busybody who's upset about the music getting played in the rink. There's the skater's own Instagram-famous friends who are jealous because their skate pages aren't quite as popular. There's the skater who's signature move the dead skater stole and claimed as her own. 

The detectives would have to make inquiries on a number of lines. They'd try to understand the group dynamics. "Well, there's OG skaters, people who've been skating for a long time; there's the indoor skaters and the outdoor skaters." He puts up a photo representing the crowd for each. "There are the pandemic skaters." "Bandwagon?" "That's right." 

Then there's the breakdown along identity: race and ethnicity. Latinas passing for white and getting the same gigs as the white girls. Light skin vs dark. Gender and sexuality. And of course who you support vs not support. Who do you talk to on the rink. Who who you put in your videos. 

I admit my CSI episode is not the most sensitive way of handling this story line. It came to mind because there's so many possibilities for conflict, so many lines of division. So you could write it with a lot of suspects in frame, all coming from a different POV. Wanting the skater dead for a different reason. 

Man, I finished Louis Theroux's book Gotta Get Theroux This several days ago but still haven't written my Book Log (BLog) about it. Stuff's been coming up. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will dedicate the post to Louis Theroux. 

Happy April!