Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
|
|
| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
|
|
Tuesday, June 21, 2005 The Pitch: It's like CQ Meets Police Academy! I should be working. In fact, I should be working on the other thing on which I should be working when I'm not working. In short, I'm at the job, it's time for the CE newsletter, and I'm sorta pushing my way through the jungle paths of the Internet, wondering why the people I follow don't update all the time--even as I, myself, do not update not even as half as often as them.I'm actually pretty good at updating the other blog--the CE one, I mean. In fact, during a quiet moment, I added up my wordcount to that blog--first for the month, then for 2005. I've written over 5,000 words for the month of June, and close to 50,000 words for the entire year. That's a lot, I think: probably more interesting than those numbers are the fact that I keep obsessing over those numbers--which may just be my ultra-mild case of OCD, or the sign of my brain trying to work something out. If my output for CE (both blog and newsletter) comes out to close to 180,000 words for the year, is that sufficient? Does it satisfy me? I think that's what I'm trying to work out. Edi made it back from Reno yesterday, and our reunion consisted of trading stories, declarations of affection, and exclamations of fatigue. I thought it a very lovely blend, and hope we can keep a good mix as we move into the last three months of wedding planning. Oh, and of course, now there's a voicemail to transcribe. More later, maybe. posted by Jeff | 11:15 AM | Monday, June 13, 2005 The Pitch: It's like Cube Two: Hypercube meets The Wedding Planner! I've been greatly enjoying writing lately--so much so I've been thinking about quitting.Not permanently or anything (I think). But with the wedding being just a hair over three months away, I'm trying to get my priorities in order. I've been having good luck with writing in the morning but I'll be honest: I do not want to be my typical porky ass self when I get married. Oh sure, I've lost over thirty pounds since meeting Edi, but I would like to lose more. I would like to be fit, or as fit as I can be, so that we can make it through the wedding and trot about merrily on the beaches of wherever-the-hell-we-end-up-honeymooning without me worrying that someone will see us and think Edi is being attacked by a blobby luminescent jellyfish. And one of the best ways to avoid that horrific scenario would be to get my butt in gear and back to the gym in the mornings before work--which would interfere with my prime writing time. Also, there are my various web commitments: here, SC, and my lonely Lazy Bastard site. Intuition tells me I should get a copy of Movable Type, learn how to make it work, and take this blog over to Lazy Bastard. While I'm at it, I should learn PHP and revise the LB site so the movie reviews are searchable, modular and easy to update. Pessimism, in the guise of common sense, tells me I should close this up, leave Lazy Bastard for dead--I think I registered and paid for it through 2009 or something--let Mr. H sort out his own blog, and figure out how to get paid for my writing. (I admit that some, if not all, of this line of thought may have developed after writing close to 2400 words for CE and getting a mere solitary comment for my troubles). Anyway, it's not as sour grapeish as that last fact makes it sound, or at least I hope it isn't. But yeah: time is at a premium over the next three months, four days and I've got to make some decisions about where my priorities will lie. posted by Jeff | 6:42 PM | The Pitch: It's like The Fantastic Four meets Der Ubermensch! Making my morning circuit of the web led to some inspiring quotes I thought I'd share.First from Ed Cunard's interview with comics reporter/critic/essayist/author Tom Spurgeon: What do you think creators today can learn from [Stan] Lee's work, either as a comics creator or as a promotional force? Spurgeon goes on to mention essayist/author Carter Scholz as an influence, and that Scholz had recently written an appreciation of Thomas Pynchon in the recent issue of Bookforum. Googling that, I ended up at a Bookforum page for that issue where a meandering essay on Gravity's Rainbow by Gerald Howard eventually settles in to dishing behind the scenes dirt on the editing and marketing of that book. I particularly like the part where Pynchon asks his editor's assistant what she thinks of the manuscript ("It's quite long," she explained, to which Pynchon replied proudly, "I typed it all myself, you know.") But the real inspirational paydirt is a quote from Pynchon to his editor during the editing of V: "I do not, frankly, know dick about writing novels yet and need all kinds of help." Admittedly, maybe it's just that kind of morning, but I'd love to get that line tattooed across my forehead (and maybe the Stan Lee fact tattooed on, I dunno, one knee so I can see it every time I hang down my head in defeat). In other non-news, I had a very long and involved dream that Edi and I had moved into the dorms at San Francisco State. I think I dreamed such because the idiots next door use our/their front step exactly the way dormitory hallways are used: as the perfect place to stage loud and inane conversations at 4:00 a.m. But maybe also because discussing post-marital plans with Edi (or rather, our shared awe and suspicion at other newlyweds and newlyweds-to-be who actually claim to have any), I subconsciously realized that getting hitched would be my biggest leap into the unknown since arriving at the San Francisco dorms twenty years ago. posted by Jeff | 11:15 AM | Monday, June 06, 2005 The Pitch: It's like Sleepless In Seattle meets While You Were Sleeping! Do they give an academy award for staving off the feeling you've paid ten dollars to watch utter bullshit? Because if there is, Paul Giamatti should totally win for Cinderella Man. It's too long and too painful a story to go into, but I saw Seabiscuit-But-Boxing-Not-Racing-And-He's-A-Guy-Not-A-Horse (the orginal, and I still say superior, working title) this weekend and I ended up getting drawn into mainly because of P.G. Crowe and Zewelleger did fine too with what they had, but it was Giamatti who I want to see again, whereas I kinda don't care if I never see Russell onscreen again and I totally never want to see Renee ever, for reasons I can't quite pin down. Oh, and Jethro's dad was okay too, considering he could have scored a role with more nuance if he'd chosen to play Satan in a Jack T. Chick adaptation.As for the pitch in the title, I was actually glad when our next door neighbor started throwing huge planks of wood and yelling at his cronies around 5:45 a.m. Originally, I'd planned to get up at 5:30 a.m. but at 4:55 had decided that just wasn't going to be doable and reset the alarm for 6:30. So the ensuing plank-throwing and crony-wrangling I took as a message from God (a cruel, indelicate, eye-gouging God) that I should get my ass out of bed and get moving. Like I said, glad I did. I'd given myself a distinct writing assignment for this morning before work and I actually did it, thus allowing me to continue this "how to" book I'm reading, and the new carrying case I'd ordered for the Alphasmart works a million times better for me than the old one (no more forgetting to take it with me in my exhausted pre-six a.m. departures). If I can now somehow sneak in reviews for the CE blog while working this morning, I'll be more or less on top of the game. posted by Jeff | 9:12 AM | Wednesday, June 01, 2005 The Pitch: It's like Assault on Precinct 13 meets Assault on Precinct 13! So some guy on the Internet who likes movies said he liked the remake of Assault on Precinct 13. So I rented it yesterday while trying to feed our addiction to The Wire, and so I have to say to that guy on the Internet: Dude, you are so very, very wrong. The remake of Assault on Precinct 13 was horrible.Edi watched it with me and afterward kept saying: "Assault on Precinct 13 sucked. Assault on Precinct 13 sucked." She did that kind of lowing thing at the end of it: "Suuuuucked." Finally, I had to stop her: "Look, no offense, but you have no idea. It sucked, but it sucked a million times worse because the original movie is a low-budget classic. So please say, 'The remake of Assault on Precinct 13 sucked,' because otherwise it sounds like you're talking about the original." So of course when we went to Four Star Video today, it being One Dollar Wednesday, I looked for the original. "You got Assault on Precinct 13?" I asked the clerks. "The original? I wish," one said. "We got the crappy remake," the other said. "New releases." "Oh!" Edi said. "Didn't that suck? It sucked. It suuuuuucked." "I haven't seen it," the clerk said. "I just assumed." "You have no idea," Edi said. "It's good for the first two minutes and then it's all downhill from there." Interestingly, this is where I noticed both of the video clerks had fallen in love with Edi. "Really?" One said, laughing. "Good credit sequence, huh?" The other said. "I love a good credit sequence." He was also laughing. This is when I realized the horrible power I possess, the terrible responsibility: by having my smart funny girlfriend watch movies I liked with me, by lending her graphic novels I thought she would appreciate, and informing her of the latest developments in geek culture, I was developing an unstoppable killing machine--a woman who could entrance geeks in four seconds and then crush them in the fifth as they realized she was already with the fat, balding guy squinting at the Dario Argento section. It was an empowering moment, mitigated somewhat by the fact they weren't listening to anything I was saying, but looking at her and laughing at everything she said. We just watched the original Assault, by the way (they had it at the Hollywood Video around the corner but not at the "movie lover's video store"--how sad is that?) Edi liked it, and now really knows the extent of the tragedy. And when we return our movies, those poor clerks won't stand a chance. posted by Jeff | 8:44 PM | |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
