Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Saturday, June 28, 2003 The Pitch: It's like The Return of Martin Guerre meets Two-Lane Blacktop! So, dude. I'm, like, back.Got back yesterday, in fact, but decided to spend quality time with the girlfriend rather than dashing off to update the computer. As for me, now, it's kind of quiet here at work, so I thought I'd update you quickly about some of the coolio stuff I did. Get down before it all fades out of my mind... Lemme see, first, we got on the damn plane which was an adventue in itself. Patrick (also known as Chuck, as am I, in case you didn't know) and I were supposed to meet at the Oakland airport. Edi dropped me off right at 5:00 a.m. or so, and I checked in at the front, got tired of waiting for Patrick to show up and so checked in at the front desk and headed back to the gate. Because, ho-ho, my license is expired (news to me!), I got the extra-special treatment at security where I got sneered at by three different people, shuffled to a different line, had to take off my shoes, and had a security guard jam a magic wand into my crotch from both directions: It was kinda like participating in an adaptation of the Story of O, as staged by an all-airport security cast. Additionally, the guys-who-might-be-terrorists-since-they-let-their-license-expire line was wayyyyyy shorter than the rest-of-you-poor-sonsabitches line. So even though I had to sit in a chair and put my shoes back on while a security guard threw a five dollar bill on the nightstand table and sneered, "Here, buy yourself something pretty," I got through the line about fifteen minutes faster. Works for me. Then came the waiting for Patrick to show up. This led to much comical pacing and stomach clutching from me. I would walk from our gate to a payphone and back again, fretting about whether I should call Chuck or not. On the plus side, everyone was telling me the flight we were on was delayed because of mechanical problems and there was still no idea on how long it would take for it to get fixed. On the minus side, the idea of flying to Atlanta without Patrick to move his stuff seemed like not much fun. Oh, crap, and of course, now the work starts to come in. Lemme get back to you... posted by Jeff | 10:46 AM | Tuesday, June 17, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Deliverance meets Planes, Trains & Automobiles! Jeezis. Packing, packing, packing, with a certain amount of stress thrown in. And as always, my priorities are incredibly screwed: I spent the majority of this day preparing my music. Yes, that's right, I'm sure to run out of clean everything a day and a half in but at least I'll be listening to some excellent music on the way.I will, too, thanks to mighty ol' Emusic. Wow, it was pretty great being able to scour through the stuff I had downloaded and hadn't listened to yet, just to find all sorts of great stuff. There should be a good mix of old stuff and new stuff to listen to. Patrick has some sort of converter so he can patch his MP3 player into the car stereo and I should be able to do the same. So, yeah, at least I'll be giving myself scurvy and sunburn with good tunes in my ears. I'll try to keep you updated while on the road. Patrick has talked about updating a journal on the trip, as he did last time he travelled. I'll figure out a way to link there from here, or maybe post here or something. I'll be around, is what I'm saying, and if not, well, I'll have a pretty good excuse. posted by Jeff | 2:45 PM | Monday, June 16, 2003 Telegraph | News | Love is in the air That is where the prospect of a tall tale comes in. Whether it is true or not, the locals are convinced that ever since Pfizer, the American-owned company that manufactures Viagra, started producing the drug's active ingredient in its Ringaskiddy factory the townsfolk have become Ireland's gold-medal winning sexual athletes.As a hoax, it's a darn savvy one, the sort of thing I could imagine the villagers of the film 'Local Hero' coming up with... posted by Jeff | 12:09 PM | Penny Arcade! German, it's basically like English. English, you know, spoken by a monster, underwater, into a walkie-talkie. posted by Jeff | 9:24 AM | The Pitch: It's like Bloomsday! Yes, Bloomsday today, which the palm pilot reminds me of every year, catching me by surprise. I wonder what Joyce would think, if he would think it worth thinking, of my little glorified calculator reminding me of his fictional day. Like a pocketwatch that reminds of you to kiss your loved ones. Next year is the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday--I bet the hotels of Dublin are booked for that already, but man, would I want to be there. Robert Anton Wilson said it best when he observed the genius of Joyce is such that he got an entire country to celebrate the day he got a handjob. Looked at it that way, the idea of paying through the butt and travelling halfway around the world for the centennial celebration is revealed as exactly as foolish, and as exactly as divine as it should be.O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.Hard for me to read something like that and then go on to grouse about my lack of sleep, frustrations with writing, and like that, so perhaps more later (crabbiness, like youth, springs eternal). posted by Jeff | 8:27 AM | Sunday, June 15, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Waiting for Lefty meets Enter the Dragon! So the totally edited version of Enter the Dragon is on, and I'm watching it anyway. What a scam--it's not letterboxed either so the fight scenes are particularly uninvolving--it's like watching Bruce Lee swat flies. And yet it seems better than writing this month's Fanboy Rampage, although I have a really vested interest in writing it sooner rather than later.I'm thinking of all the things I have to do before I go on the trip--and of course one of those things is make a new music line-up for my RIO player. And I have to get my hair cut. I keep thinking if I go do those things first, I'll save myself time in the long run, as opposed to writing. Yeah, that's the ticket. Time-saving. posted by Jeff | 1:25 PM | Saturday, June 14, 2003 The Title: It's like The Firm meets Dumb and Dumber! I know it's just me being a complainer and a short-timer (only one more day after this and I'm on vacation), but today has been doing the work of the never-ending asshat. Every time I finish up his edits and return them to him, he give me more, scrawled out in a hand more suited to sheets of paper with three lines at the bottom and a big space up top for drawing a picture with crayons.Did Ratner's Star help? Ratner's Star is not helping. Ratner's Star is an amiable sham, perhaps a hardworking one, but a sham nonetheless, as Delillo does an impressive job of writing about mathematics without apparently having ever met a mathematician. I haven't met many in my time, but the ones I did loved nothing more than ripping apart the slightest trace of ignorant bullshit, the exact type of which seems to freely flow from the mouths of almost every character in this book. Even though I'm finally at a scene that reminds me of someone actually talking about math (pg. 183), it doesn't strike me as a discussion between two math guys. But I'm still reading the damn thing. I'm still reading it because of the various bits of comedy, and a million other ideas that I can be sure will never coalesce (because that's just not what the '70s Delillo books seem to be about, frankly), and the idea that maybe I'm just reacting not to Delillo's suckiness but my own state of suckiness. I'm in one of those states where I'm hating everything I write, and the similarities between Ratner's Star and my own crappy crap is like trying to remove an eyelash with a dropper filled with Tabasco. Shit, piss, fuck. Shit, piss, fuck. Oh, and Edi's out of town and the two times I talked to her today (1) I caught her at a crucial part of her trip and she had to call me back; and (2) she called me back when it suddenly turned into a cocktail party up here with co-workers jabbering at attorneys who showed up suddenly, and of course Asshat suddenly appeared with more edits. I'm just glad I'm out of here in an hour and then I can do something relaxing like, say, slamming my head in a car door for ten or fifteen minutes. Shit, piss, fuck. Shit, piss, fuck. posted by Jeff | 7:00 PM | Thursday, June 12, 2003 I'm finished with my half of the New Comics for the CE newsletter (normally I do the whole thing, but I'll be gone next week when the Previews blackline comes in, so I just did the stuff where Bri gets advance info via email). I've got a Fanboy to get out of the way too, but that'll have to wait until Saturday night at the earliest. For now, it's get myself cleaned up so I can spend some quality time with the self-described "moody girlfriend." This nonstop Classical music thing is working out okay, but I'd trade it in a heartbeat for The Moody Blues' "Knights In White Satin," which I've been abnormally fixated on for about two weeks now. There's a hilarious Italian version that gets played at the Italian joint Edi and I frequently go to, a cover that is even more outrageously over-the-top and dramatic than the original. But recently, I had two consecutive days when a radio station played the original while I was driving and there's a thick section there in the middle that's like being on really good drugs. Don't ask me how, I just know that's what I feel. So even though this Dvorak "Silent Woods" thing is okay (this music is exactly the stuff they used to play all the time in the Tincan Mailman, the used bookstore in Arcata, and listening to it makes me feel like I should be thumbing through musty paperbacks) but it's no pretentious, working-too-hard '60s quasi-psychedlia. posted by Jeff | 4:31 PM | The Pitch: It's like Immortal Beloved meets Amadeus! Weirdly, I'm listening to classical music. (and contrary to my header, I'm actually listening to music from the Romantic period)(which I thought didn't include Beethoven but I guess it does. Huh.) I got so damn tired of having to try to pick out my music for while I was working that I decided to try Musicmatch Jukebox's radio service. That got annoying quickly, as I'm not willing to pay a premium to select the artists I like but I was spending too much time hitting the skip button on most of the random pop channels. So I tried to to pick the station I would mind the least or ignore the easiest. And voila: classical music from the Romance period (1820 to 1869). I'm kinda liking it so far--this piano concerto by Grieg is a little overwrought at the moment but I liked the first third of it just fine. And they can the selections short and peppy for untrained buffoons like myself. Perfect stuff for reading solicits and riffing on upcoming comics. posted by Jeff | 12:22 PM |MPR's The Writer's Almanac The Difference Between Pepsi and CokeI think the peoms Keillor chooses for his site are flummery about 35-40% of the time, but this poem by David Lehman really knocked me out. posted by Jeff | 10:48 AM | The Pitch: It's like The Thing meets The Neverending Story! So Jackie's friend Sandwich apparently got hired on to go to Antarctica and work."Did she pass all the tests?" "Well, some doctor was giving her crap about her asthma, but she was like, 'What do I have to worry about that for? It's Antarctica!' And then they made her blow into this tube, and...." "No, I mean, like the psychological tests. Don't they give you a battery of psychological tests to see if you can handle Antarctica?" "What, you don't think Sandwich could pass a psychological test?" "Dude, I don't think I could pass a psychological test." "Jeff, you could pass a psychological test." I'd like to think that's true, but this is the sixth or seventh day in a row I've lifted the windowshade and seen sunless sky. And it's pretty damn depressing. I can only imagine what it would be like to be in Antarctica and only get four hours of daylight and have those hours be worse than this. There are a lot of reasons I'm looking forward to next week's cross-country trip, but the instant I lifted the shade this morning the whole sun and heat thing just jumped another few places up the list. Mmm, and I'm on page 159 of Ratner's Star. Nothing new to report, other than it's striking to me how much less reading and writing (unless I'm on assignment) I do on my weeks off. posted by Jeff | 9:33 AM | Tuesday, June 10, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Wonder Boys meets Santo Vs. The Zombies! When I come home at night now, I take off my shoes and break this little three dollar whatsit I bought with Edi at the knick-knack store on Sunday. It's a transparent yellow warty thing and the idea is to massage your feet by running them over the bumps, which I do. And it feels good. But it's nothing like the original--this plastic mat of almost-spiky reflexology nubs that you stand on--I tried at Lily and Bruce's in Palo Alto a few months ago. That shit jabbed pain-pleasure needles right up into my kidneys and bladder and made me sweat and my eyes want to leak. I can't even begin to tell you how much I want one of those. But this chintzy quick-fix is pretty good, less pain and less pleasure, but I can feel my arches (well, what I have instead fo arches) start to loosen up.I had Palak Paneer and garlic nan from Shalimar tonight--some sort of good favor returning to roost as Cherry went and got me some and wasn't hungry herself. I tried to interest other people in it, but no luck. Fools! And I'm on page 135 of Ratner's Star. If you set up The Andromeda Strain to be a skewering of academia, you'd get a good chunk of Ratner's Star. And it seems to me something more--there's quite a few places where I think Delillo deliberately fucks up the order of who's speaking, so you have to read and reread the passage. Clearly, the exchange of paragraphs means character x is talking, yet clearly the voice is that of character y. Considering the book makes fun of both those who insist that nothing can be truly known, and those who insist anything can be truly known, it's a smart choice but audacious as fuck. And yet I'm already trying to figure out how best to pack the other pouch of my bag. Currently, it's two Kafka books, but I'm leaning toward a Kafka book and a potboiler--that Dan Simmons book John recommended, I think. Hmm. Now I'm thinking the only reason I mentioned the foot massager and the Palak Paneer is so you don't think the only things I think about are my wonderful girlfriend and the books I'm reading. I wouldn't put it past me. posted by Jeff | 8:42 PM | http://www.theonion.com/onion3922/five-disc_jazz_anthology.html LOUISVILLE, KY—A five-disc jazz-anthology box set, lovingly assembled to give novices an appreciation and understanding of the uniquely American art form, remains unopened nearly two years after its purchase, sources reported Monday.God, I have this. And it's just like the article says: I haven't tocuhed the damn thing at all. posted by Jeff | 12:33 PM | The Pitch: It's like Speed meets Dead Poet's Society! This morning, I got on the 52 at 6:26 a.m., about five minutes after it was supposed to show and driver (not anyone I recognized) knew it, too. He almost overshot my stop, braking heavily in the middle of the street and sent all of us on the sidewalk rushing out to board. I stepped on and everyone sitting down had a look of queasy amusement, like someone had just told an inappropriate joke. I made it to my seat just as the driver stomped on the gas, making the bus bound forward. At the corner of Silver and Mission, he realized he couldn't make the light and jammed on the brakes and everyone in the sidelong seats slid into heaps at the front of the bus. I jammed my legs against the seat in front of me and still felt the inertia want to flip me over into the aisle.And then, oddly, the guy next to me, said "New [something that starts with d]?" I would've thought he was saying driver but the meter of the word was all wrong. I turned to him. "I'm sorry, what?" "I said, 'New Delillo?'" I held up the book in my hand. "Oh. This. No, it's from the '70s. Ratner's Star." "I've never seen it before. I've read some Delillo but I haven't read that." "Yeah, it's good." I slipped over the plastic seats against him as the bus veered around a corner. "It's about math." "Huh." He said. "Yeah, that's not one of the ones I'd read." I really did want to ask him which ones he'd read but the drive from my stop to BART station is normally about three minutes--the driver had made it in just under two and I was already getting up to leave. "Have a good one," I said as I lurched to the side door. "Yeah," he said, and then went back to looking out the window. I stumbled off the back door and around the corner of the bus into the street. So I guess I think Ratner's Star is a good book. Or, at least, I'm willing to say so in the midst of experiences one might describe as 'life-threatening' I had just gotten to an excellent paragraph about a visit to the beach that culminates in a riot, and in the next paragraph, there was this: "She was extremely frail, her body quivering as though suspended from the end of an eyedropper." And I'm getting back into the rhythm of a Delillo novel, which means refusing to fall for the alluring dangling carrot of the plot, and choosing instead to walk through the gallery of the chapters at my own pace, admiring the sculpted precision of his sentences. And the rich deadpan wit of his dialogue, of course, which is more abundant in this book than others and yet initially more frustrating: I found it hard to believe a twelve-year old math prodigy would be so understatedly sarcastic to adult peers until I realized he was actually fourteen and from the Bronx. (Delillo was once asked if Bob Dylan was one of his heroes, to which he replied: "Someone from the Bronx doesn't have any heroes.") But I think I can see, even here in one of his more acclaimed early novels, a certain exhausted mannerism in the prose which I'm guessing he goes on to eliminate in The Names. Or maybe since this is the fifth Delillo book I've read in roughly a year (and the fourth from the '70s) I'm the one exhausted by the mannerism, not Delillo. Rather than reading the rest of the books in order, as I have been, I may just skip up to Mao II and/or go on a bit of an extended break as far as Mr. D. goes. posted by Jeff | 10:40 AM | Monday, June 09, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Lethargy meets Ennui! Perhaps Kundera's The Art of the Novel has spoiled me in some way, because I'm 47 pages into Ratner's Star and I am not loving it. In fact, the turning of each page has been assigned a corresponding level of appreciation, the majority of which vacillate between "a duty" and "a chore."I've been grumpy, groggy and depressingly alliterative the last few mornings (the most successful bit of my morning writing involved keeping myself from attaching either the words "substantial" or "stupendous" to the word "stipend." The lawyers are making lawyer noise on the wah-wah phone so it's back to work for me. posted by Jeff | 11:52 AM | The Editing Room - The Matrix Reloaded: The Abridged Script posted by Jeff | 8:55 AM | Monday, June 02, 2003 This isn't a pitch. Around the time of my last entry, I started thinking about what sort of research I'd have to do for this screenplay idea. And--I hope I'm not giving too much away here--I was wondering how to get my hands on a lot of heavy metal music without paying a ton. The idea of bumming metal off friends at CE kinda bummed me out, because I'm not expecting to like the stuff, I just need to listen to it. Then I remembered I'm a subscriber to Emusic. Sure enough, I've got access to over three hundred artists and well over a thousand albums categorized as "Metal." I've got several stashed for download (oooh, and they've got "Love Comes in Spurts" by Richard Hell. I've always wanted to hear that.) (And, no, Emusic didn't characterize that as metal; something about look at all those band titles made me think of Richard Hell and the Voidoids.) and will get 'em when I get home tonight. I'd think every music critic in the world would have a sub to Emusic--it makes writing about stuff you barely know anything about so much easier. posted by Jeff | 9:13 AM | The Pitch: It's like Porky's meets Cremaster 2! This was a big chunk of what I did last week. This week I can look forward to entering forms for Julian and (I hope, hope, hope) writing my own material. I had a crazy idea for a screenplay when I was with Edi this weekend, one that's, as they say, so crazy it just might work. That's my goal for this week. posted by Jeff | 8:43 AM |The Pitch: It's like Will You Please Be Quiet, Please meets The Unbearable Lightness of Being! I know I use this too often as a crutch but I love that Keillor mentions in today's Writer's Almanac entry that it's the anniversary of the day Raymond Carver stopped drinking:Raymond Carver, the writer who helped revitalize the short-story for a whole generation of readers and writers, quit drinking on this day in 1977. He said, "If you want the truth, I'm prouder of that, that I quit drinking, than I am of anything in my life."That's awesome, isn't it? And the Carver poem at the top of the entry is impressive, too. posted by Jeff | 8:35 AM | |
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