Fun With Headlines

It's a big world we live in. Scientists have confirmed this, but only after measuring it, and then soaking their feet and taking a long nap. And being a big world, there's a lot going on in it. Let's take a look at what's going on today, shall we? Your headlines are next:

Madonna, in Malawi, Refuses to Talk About Adoption.
Michael, in Sacramento, refuses to talk about Madonna. Moving on.

U.S. to Push for UN Climate Deal But No "Magic Wand".
What?! There's a magic wand on the table and we're not going to push for it? Are we mad? We could not only fix our economy with one of those babies, but turn North Korea's missiles into pudding!

Violent Video Games Can Improve Vision.
Excellent. Now tomorrow's gun-toting psychos won't be forced to wear glasses. I'll sleep more soundly knowing that their aim will be better.

Erratic Black Hole Regulates Itself.
Can't quite put my finger on it, but something about that headline sounds vaguely dirty.

Panel Passes Park, Beach Smoking Ban Bill.
What?! They're banning parks, beaches AND smoking? Big government is out of control!

Nude Alpine Man Who Jumped Through Windows Tasered.
Apparently something was distracting police enough to have not heard his "don't tase me, bro!" plea. Dr. Manhattan, please report to the ER...

Rumor: Text Messages Can Kill.
Next time you get a text message that says, "bang"? Duck.

Space Smells Funny, Astronauts Say.
And I'm to believe that an astronaut opened up a window at some point and took a whiff?

Woman Arrested After Shackling Self To Husband.
Um, sweetheart? That whole ball-and-chain joke was SARCASM.

Brains or Beauty? Women Still Conflicted.
I wasn't aware there was some point where women had to choose. That would explain a lot, actually.

"Pink Panther" Jewel Thief Suspect Held in Cyprus.
Police request he find some way to stop the saxophone music as it's keeping the other prisoners awake.

NJ Officials Find 80 Cats in Feces-Filled Home.
Hate to break it to you, folks, but where do you think all those cats go at night after the "Lolcats" photo shoots are done?

NY Company to Launch Mexican-Made Kosher Tequila.
Oy! No mas!

Driver Begs Cops to Shoot Him After 130 MPH Chase.
After a 130 MPH chase, I'm guessing he didn't have to beg them all that hard.

Man Puts Finger in Gas Tank, Gets Stuck for Hours.
There's a Polack joke buried in there somewhere. I just have to find it.

HIV Transmission Captured On Video.
Yes, we know. It's called "porn".

California May Reduce Carbon Emissions by Banning Black Cars.
Racist!!!

New Lossless MP3 Format Explained.
It doesn't lose. Next question?

Smart Grid Computers Susceptible To Worm Attacks.
Keep your computers away from dirt. Problem solved.

Diners Can 'Have a Ball' at Testicle Festival.
Leaving me with no punchline whatsoever. Well-played, Associated Press. Well-played.

Your Sunday Break From Wordiness

Today we're going to take a break from my yammering and give your eyes and brains a rest. Let's just take a look at some fun graphics off the web, shall we? If you need to see one larger, click on it to make it so. Thanks to our friends over at failblog.org for these Sunday funnies.

The Weird Fat Kid

I spend a lot of time on my patio, working at my laptop, or sometimes just listening to a podcast on my iPod. As such, I get to observe, sometimes just out of the corner of my eye or in the reflection of my glass door or laptop screen, the goings-on in the apartment complex around me.

Neighbors come and go with the seasons. For the most part, my fellow residents are older. This is a slightly upscale complex (definitely upscale compared to the place across the street), and it costs a little more than your average college student or just-getting-started career person prefers to pay. There are occasional exceptions. I've been fortunate enough to have the occasional attractive college girls move in. Not that I have any intentions for, or illusions about, attractive college girls, but something about having them around just makes a man feel better about the place he's living in. When other guys drop by and spot the nubile things sunning themselves by the pool, a man can bask in the warmth of dude envy, despite the fact that he's only used the pool once since he's lived here and has maybe said hello three times to any such girls in passing. If he, himself, is not a swinging cat, at least he can feel like he lives in a fairly swinging joint.

There's currently a couple of college-aged folks living across the way and upstairs, and the loudness of their social gatherings, with people coming out to smoke on their patio, is a sometimes annoying but mostly welcome change of pace. Being surrounded by nothing but old people all the time can make you start to feel like an old person. Nothing wrong with a little injection of extroverted youth. But they won't be here long. Experience has taught me this. You tend to change apartments a lot when you're young, not hunker down and stay in the same place for five years, like I have. With age comes a need for stability and familiarity.

So in my time here, plenty of neighbors have come and gone, both young and old. The cool hairdresser. The guitar-playing stoner guy. The hot girl next door who left to go join the FBI (that's a whole other story). The Asian family with the hilarious twin boys that tired me out just watching them run around the complex. But through all those cast changes, there's been one constant in my view from the patio.

The weird fat kid.

I never consciously chose to call him that. It's an unkind title to tack on a kid. The designation just sort of formed in my head over time. I started seeing this kid, maybe nine or so years old, off and on. I'd see him walking around the complex, following its sidewalks, very slowly. He never appeared to be walking to get to any destination. He was just walking for to sake of walking. And by "fat" I don't mean he was obese. Just overweight for a kid his age, the kind of state that makes you realize its in his genes, not caused by any overwhelming ice cream ingestion. He always wore baggy clothes, his tee shirts (when the weather was warm) always untucked, but his pre-teen gut still showed through.

It didn't take long for me to notice that his walks were not random. There was a pattern to them. A pattern to the path, and a pattern to the time of day. I'd always see him, first, when he came into view coming ploddingly around the rental office. Often he'd be carrying a stick. He would always stop there in front of the office, and would lean down and look at the same plant - the exact same plant, every time. Sometimes he would whack or poke it with his stick, sometimes he would just stare. Then he'd rotate, and stare out across the small parking lot, just standing there for a few moments. Then he'd start walking again, methodically slow, and stroll past my patio. He'd then disappear beyond my building, following the walkway around another one of the buildings in the back.

Sometimes when I'd get home from work, I'd park my van and get out, and would see him on his rounds. Often he'd just be standing there, swinging at an overhead branch, lazily, with a stick, or looking at the mailboxes. Then he'd move on. During the summer months, when my upstairs neighbor kept his sliding door and living room window open, I'd avoid smoking his place out by having my cigars elsewhere in the complex. I'd wheel to the front or the rear of my building, iPod turned on, listening to music or a podcast or some kind of motivational book-on-tape, maybe just thinking over something I was writing and working out story or character problems. Often, this would happen during the kid's rounds. His turtle-like stroll would bring him around the corner, and he'd pass me. He wouldn't turn the other way, seeing someone in his path (as your average person would be more apt to do when that person in the way is in a wheelchair). He go around me, and would pass too close for social comfort - must people have an innate sense of personal space and give others a wide berth, but not this kid. It was like he felt unable to deviate from his pattern of travel. Like if I was directly in it, he might have just crawled right over me.

Maybe it was these too-close walk-bys or just the repetition of his movements, spied from my patio, but something about this kid started to annoy me. I didn't WANT to be annoyed. It wasn't a conscious thing I thought about. But something in my head, when he'd appear, would make me think - and not necessarily in clear words - "Oh, great - it's the weird fat kid again". His predictability grated on me. His fascination with the same plant, his need to look at the mailboxes as though they were going to do something unexpected like stand up and start singing a show tune, made me want to shake him and tell him to go play a videogame or something like a normal kid, or watch TV. Read a book. Anything! Something normal! Someone needed to tell this kid that he was acting weird, and that "weird" is a one-way street to no friends, Dr. Who and eventually dying alone surrounded by your collection of Pokemon figures. He'd appear and I'd think, "Isn't Wopner on at three? Definitely. Definitely three."

Over time, though, I inevitably started thinking deeper about this kid. One day it finally occurred to me that I'd never once seen him with his parent or parents. He lives on the other side of the complex, but it's not a big place. I'm sure I must have seen whoever his guardian is. And though I probably had, I had no way of knowing if he/she/they was connected to him, because he/she/they was never WITH him. For all observation told me, he might well have been living here alone. I wondered what kind of home life he must have. There were two possibilities - either his parents worked or were gone so much that he was always on his own, or he was so invisible to them that they didn't even notice he was out wandering around by himself. Or a third possibility was that his living situation was such that he needed these regimented, meandering walks just to get away from it a couple of times a day.

I got to thinking of something my ex-girlfriend had told me once. She was in a psychology class at the time, and the professor was asking people about habits that they had. She'd volunteered her own, one that I hadn't even noticed - that she always tended to do things three times. If she were to scrape her shoe on a step to get mud off it, for example, she'd do so three times. Or if she scratched an itch, she'd do so two extra times. Her professor suggested to her that she did that habit from feeling a lack of control in her life - perhaps from growing up a military brat and having to move so much as a kid as she had. That was her way of having some control. This kid made me think of that. Was this routine his way of having some control, some certainty in his life? I grew less annoyed with him, and began feeling sad for him. There were a lot of possibilities to explain his behavior, and none of them sounded good.

Seasons would pass, and I'd continue to see him, and slowly see him grow. He'd put in a little more weight, he'd get taller, his hair would get longer (or later disappear in a buzz cut, only to grow out again later). For a while, I saw him start walking with another kid, a skinny kid who looked a couple of years his younger. This made me feel good. He had a friend, someone else from the complex, obviously. I'd see them hang out, sometimes at the pool in the summer. Some time after, though, I noticed they were hanging out with an older kid. And this kid genuinely bugged me. Loud, obnoxious, had a mouth like Lenny Bruce. Swore constantly, seemed to pride himself on his vulgarity and sexual humor, though he couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen. While never having kids, I suddenly felt like a parent, and knew that fear parents have of their kids hanging out with the WRONG kids. This was clearly one that would have been my nightmare as a father. I felt an urge to find WFK's apartment, talk to his folks (if they existed, and he wasn't living alone in some kind of pre-teen witness relocation situation) and ask them why they weren't keeping a closer eye on their son and the company he was keeping.

Eventually, both his associates stopped making appearances, and it was back to business as normal again. Five years I've lived here, and, as recently as this afternoon, the kid - now into his teendom - is still making the rounds. He walks sentry around the complex, a touchstone to my life here, a presence I could set my watch by, if I wore a watch. It's not something he's outgrown. And I've still never seen an adult walking with him, or getting into a family car with him, or out looking for him to call him into dinner. WFK walks alone. I no longer resent his presence, no longer harbor any irrational annoyance when he takes his daily slow march. I hope for him. I hope that something - a good high school experience, a cherished hobby, or, heaven forbid, a girl - comes into his life and replaces his walks. I hope that whatever seems to be missing from his life is finally found, and that he'll grow into a happy, well-adjusted adult, one who goes out and explores the world outside this little complex and makes his mark there.

And not one who, say, buys the same three frozen dinners over and over again, ends up listening to the same selection of familiar songs on his iPod (despite having many more to choose from), tends to watch the same movies time and time again, and ends up on the patio at roughly the same time each day, smoking the same brand of cigars year after year...

Man, I need to lose a few pounds...

NOTE: I meant to point out that the photo used above is NOT the kid in question. That's a random Google image search photo I plucked off the net. No, I am NOT taking photos of my neighbors. And now, my lawyers feel better about this post.

Six Degrees of Charles Bronson

You ever have one of those spit-take moments when you're flipping around cable and find an old movie, and you spot a well-known actor in a very early, and sometimes very embarrassing, role?

Last night I ended up on "Death Wish II", the Charles Bronson vengeance-fest from 1982. And out nowhere I was like, "Holy crap! That's Laurence Fishburne!" Yes, heralded thespian Fishburne was playing one of the members of the sensitively multi-racial gang that ended up raping Bronson's housekeeper and his daughter. Guess you have to start SOMEWHERE, right? While this wasn't his actual start (he was in "Fast Break" with Gabe Kaplan and in "Apocalypse Now", both in '79), he still wasn't a known actor by any stretch.

This took me back to, many years ago, catching the original "Death Wish" on cable with a few of the guys. We were all shocked and tremendously amused to find Jeff Goldblum playing one of THAT film's raping gang members. Not that rape is amusing, but how can you not laugh at Jeff Goldblum, over-playing crazy to cartoonish levels, spouting out the line, "I"ll show you how to paint! I'm gonna paint her mouth!" Ironically, the rape victim was also Bronson's daughter. A lot of rape in Bronson's films. I assume that's so we'll hate the bad guys enough to where we'll have no problem when Bronson methodically guns them down. Note that the other laughter in this film with the appearance of Freddy "Boom Boom" Washington, from "Welcome Back Kotter" fame, as a street hood trying to rob vigilante Bronson with the famous line, "Give me the money, honey!".

Interesting that both Goldblum and Fishburne had early starts in Bronson crapfests. In 1992, when both their careers had started taking off, they ended up in the same film, playing the lead roles in the Bill Duke-directed film "Deep Cover". Both would later go on to success in major box office smash franchises ("Jurassic Park" and "The Matrix"). And, ironically, both Hollywood icons are currently playing roles in television crime dramas ("Law and Order: CI" for Goldblum, "CSI" for Fishburne). They've each followed similar and successful career paths, and both somehow overcame their gangta rape-a personae from "Death Wish" films - both films that now, for me, will be very useful when playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Hey, wait a minute - Freddy Washington was in "Welcome Back Kotter" with Gabe Kaplan, and Fishburne was in "Fast Break" with Kaplan. And after that, Kaplan was in...

Oh. Never mind.

Like A Boss

(Based on the The Lonely Island song, "Like A Boss". You can enjoy this tune on iTunes. However, please do not download it if you don't want to deal with the language used in it.)

Mr. O'Connell, thank you for coming to your performance review.

No problem.

So now that you're technically your own employer, it's fair to say that you, in fact, are now the one in charge?

Absolutely. I'm the boss.

Okay, so take us through a day in the life of "the boss".

Well, the first thing I do is...

Sleep 'til lunchtime! (like a boss)
Avoid shaving! (like a boss)
Take a shower! (like a boss)
Watch some cable news! (like a boss)
Put some pants on! (like a boss)
Read some email! (like a boss)
Drink some Slimfast! (like a boss)
Take some heart pills! (like a boss)
Hit the laptop! (like a boss)
Do some writing! (like a boss)
Get the writer's block! (like a boss)
Get distracted! (like a boss)
Flirt with neighbors! (like a boss)
Give massages! (like a boss)
Make out by the pool! (like a boss)
Do soap sculpture! (like a boss)
Deliver babies! (like a boss)
Learn karate! (like a boss)
Talk to squirrels! (like a boss)
Teach geometry! (like a boss)
Rubik's cube! (like a boss)
Try to solve it! (like a boss)

(Damnit, no one's ever going to figure this $#@% thing out it's no use I SUCK!!)

Break the cube! (like a boss!)
Hack the White House! (like a boss)
Steal some intell! (like a boss)
Catch Osama! (like a boss)
Get a medal! (like a boss)
Go on Oprah! (like a boss)
Raise an Army! (like a boss)
Conquer Finland! (like a boss)
Fight a monkey! (like a boss)
Stop global warming! (like a boss)
Date both Jessicas! (like a boss)
Alba and Simpson! (like a boss)
Build a spaceship! (like a boss)
Fly it to the Moon! (like a boss)
Play some golf there! (like a boss)
Take a nap! (like a boss)

Uh huh. So that's an average day for you, then?

No doubt.

You...make out by the pool, catch Osama, go on Oprah, play golf on the Moon and then take a nap?

HELL yeah.

And I think at one point there you mentioned not being able to solve the Rubik's Cube?

Nope.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you did.

Nah, that ain't me.

Okay. Well, this has been eye-opening for me.

I'm the boss.

Yeah, no, got that. You said it about four-hundred times.

I'm the boss.

Yeah, yeah, I got it!

I'm the boss.

No, I heard you, see you later.

(And if you're not a The Lonely Island fan, none of that made any sense. I shouldn't write these things this late at night. Thank you for your time).

In case of bad economy...break glass!

Ah, leave it to a Sacramentan to shatter the notion that a business can't thrive in a tough economy.

From KCRA's news site:

SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. -- A glass repairman in suburban Sacramento County broke windows to drum up business, sheriff's investigators said.

Andrew Krogh, who runs AA Glass and Mirror from his home on Watt Avenue, was arrested Monday night and booked on six felony counts of vandalism.

It started with a simple broken window at Quality Business Machines. Office manager Pam Lassiter said a glass repairman quickly approached her with help.

"'Here's my card, I can make you a deal, get it boarded up for you,' so on and so forth. We took him up on it, because we'd never had a glass problem," Lassiter said.

But at least 15 broken windows later, it had become a frustrating and expensive mystery.

"It was driving us crazy, and I felt like -- we even added cameras to the side of the building, in areas by the street, to see if we could catch these guys doing it," said Mike Hogan, video services manager.

Last Thursday, another window break turned out to be a breakthrough. Hogan matched surveillance video to the times of the glass break alarms, "and sure enough, I saw the white van," he said.

Sheriff's detectives traced the van to Krogh, who was arrested after students at a martial arts studio spotted the van cruising past.

"Times are tough, people are pretty much willing to do anything to get money these days," Lassiter said.

And let's give it up for Sacramento's martial arts students, for helping foil the crime! He would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling kung-fu kids!

So Say We All

Battlestar Galactica is now over.

The new one. I'm assuming you knew there was a new one.

Friday night was the final episode of the five-year series. When the final script was written, it was meant to be a two-hour event. But there was too much. It ended up three hours and twelve minutes, and was split over two nights. But the final two hours (and twelve minutes - and note that fifteen to twenty minutes were cut from that and will be added back in when the DVD set is released) was Friday, and the faithful gathered around their TV sets - or computer screens - and watched the end of a most amazing journey.

Television did NOT see this show coming. No one expected anything from a remake of a gloriously campy sci-fi show of the 70s but kibble for nerds. They had no idea that soon, against all expectation, TV Guide would be calling it (and I quote...as you'll be able to tell by the quotation marks), "The Best Show on Television". It sidelined everyone. It wasn't campy. It was gritty. It was dark. It was heartbreaking. It was challenging. It was controversial. It was, at times, uncomfortably sexy. And it was nothing anyone had imagined it would be.

One of my favorite writers, Joss Whedon, gave this as a piece of advice to anyone trying to tell a story: have something to say. Even if you're writing a Die Hard ripoff, he says, have something to SAY about Die Hard ripoffs. Battlestar Galactica had something to say. A lot of things to say, actually. About human beings. About religion. About racism. About 9/11. About the war in Iraq. About torture. About history. About Bob Dylan (?!). And yet, I'm sure there were some who casually watched the show to see the shiny spaceships and didn't even realize it was saying all those things. Science fiction, at its best, has always been philosophy masquerading as candy. It's held up a mirror to humanity, and if humanity didn't always like what it saw, then it was doing its job right. Galactica carried that standard high, and waved it proudly. It reminded us of what genre television can be if we're willing to let it.

If you're one of the people who missed Galactica - and I'm going to assume that you are, which is why I'm not discussing the finale's content at all - then I'm going to challenge you to seek it out. Even if you don't find some grander meaning behind it all, I can at least guarantee you a journey you'll never forget - gripping stories, mind-blowing twists, wrenching drama that will haunt you long after the credits roll, performances that will stun you (from actors like Edward James Olmos, who referred to BSG as the "best frakking job I ever had")...and, yes, shiny spaceships, and some of the best special effects you've ever seen on television. And if watching it makes your head hurt? That just means you're watching it right.

Thank you, Ron Moore and David Eick, for giving us this show. Thank you, cast and crew, for bringing it to life. Thank you, Katee Sackhoff, for that smile you gave me in San Diego - I'm sure it meant as much to you as it did to me (it could happen...). We'll miss you, Battlestar Gallactica.

Nothing but the rain, sir.

Nothing but the rain.

Can we get back...to the future?

One of the first things I learned in screenwriting class was about backstory. The metaphor used was that of an iceberg. Imagine an iceberg in the water. The ten percent that you can see, above the water, represents what shows up in your screenplay - the story, characters, etc, that the audience experiences. The other ninety percent is below the surface, unseen, left in the depths. That ninety percent of all the history you put into the tale and its heroes never gets used. However, the leap of faith you have to take is that by you having come up with that other ninety percent, and the knowledge you gained from it shaped those characters, and your story, in such a way that a greater depth and realism is there, one the audience can feel, one that brings the story to life and makes the viewers sense that history, even if it's not spelled out for them.

But there are reasons why all that backstory you spent your time on can't be in your screenplay. One, you could never fit it all in to a two-hour movie. There's not a lot of time in a murder mystery tale to chronicle the high school experiences of the lead detective. But more importantly, it doesn't belong there. Storytelling is about the here and now. Even if you're telling a story set in the past, that story is, for the viewers/readers, NOW. Backstory, as fascinating as it might be, is there to serve your story, not to be your story. Stories are about immediacy, and they're about moving forward.

This is why the prequel movement of the last couple of decades is really starting to grate on me. They make sense - if there's a particular world or character(s) that we ended up loving, then it follows that we'd want to know more about it/them. If the writer did their job right, we could feel all that delicious history buried in the story, and it made us hungry for more. The thing is, I can love chocolate cake, and after finishing a piece can be so pleased with the experience that my mind (and stomach) tell me that I want more, more, more! However, if I follow that impulse and start devouring more and more pieces, the experience is going to change to something completely different, and one not so pleasing. I'll get so bloated and miserable that I may completely forget why I loved that first piece so much, and may decide I never want another piece again.

Not all prequels are bad, or are a bad idea. They can be quite a treat, if done right. Stepping out of the realm of film and into novels, an example that comes to mind is Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series. In the first three books, we got teased with bits and pieces of what the world of the Gunslinger was like before "the world moved on", and it was a fascinating place that just screamed for more exploration and explanation. In the fourth book, the bulk of the tale was a novel-length flashback into that world, and it was fantastic. It could have been done wrong, but it in this case, it became the best part of the series.

But Hollywood and television have taken the prequel, and the flashback, to ridiculous heights (or depths). They've become obsessed with milking more money out of us by looking backward in popular properties, to the point where the word "prequel" causes me to roll my eyes. The most painful example of this is the Star Wars prequel trilogy. We ALL wanted more Star Wars, and we obviously weren't going to get all those actors back to make more sequels. They were all (or at least most of them) so sick of Star Wars themselves by the end of the first trilogy that they were relieved to move on (though not all of them did. Seen a Mark Hamill film that didn't go straight to video lately?). So this seemed like a good idea. It ended up, however, souring many fans on Star Wars forever, leaving them bitter and feeling betrayed. And why? Because it committed many of the sins of the prequel/flashback method.

1) BAD RET-CON. "Ret-con" is a term common to TV/movie nerds like myself. It stands for "retroactive continuity". This is where a writer creates the backstory after the fact, inventing a history and forcing it to fit into the original "present" story. This method is filled with possibilities for lazy, cliched storytelling. Darth Vader built C3PO! Huh? Darth Vader grew up on Tatooine, like Luke! And yet never thought to look for Luke there later? Obi-Wan Kenobi was a young Jedi Knight in the prequel era! Uh...why was he in his sixties twenty years later in the first Star Wars film? Square pegs get jammed into round holes because the ideas seem "neat". Which leads right to problem #2:

2) CRAPPY RESEARCH. Come on, there were only three Star Wars movies. That's six hours, at most, of research to do. Yet writers of prequel material seem unwilling to take the time, coming off like they read plot summaries only. How does Leia have memories of her mother when her mother died at birth? How did all knowledge of the Jedi - when there were thousands of them - disappear from the galaxy after only two decades? Why doesn't R2D2 ever tell the mind-wiped C3PO that they used to be buddies in the old days? Why does Obi-Wan say he was trained by Yoda when he was trained by the never-before-mentioned Qui-Gon? Why is there a beach on Kashyyyk when the whole planet is one big forest (okay, that fact came out in the novels, I guess, so that could slide). Why did the first Death Star take twenty years to complete, but the second one seemed to be nearly done in like a month? If you're going to go back and build a history for an established property, continuity is your first a most sacred responsibility. Everything has to fit. Why, then, do so few writers seem to pay it any mind? This happens in TV show flashbacks as well as film. I remember an episode of "Angel" that flashed back to Angel and Spike running into each other on a submarine during World War II. Uh...no one saw the Buffy episode where Spike first appeared, and said that he and Angel hadn't seen each other in a couple hundred years? These are things the fans all know...so why are the writers so oblivious to them? Errors like this pull the viewer right out of the story, and make the story lose all its credibility. Don't even get me started on Highlander 2.

3) RIDICULOUS OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF CHARACTER ORIGINS. Human beings are very complex, with a lifetime of experiences and lessons shaping the people that they become. Prequels and flashbacks boil these down to simple, and often silly, shortcuts. The best example of this for me comes from another Lucas property - Indiana Jones. In the opening flashback of The Last Crusade, most of all the character quirks of Indy are explained in events of the course of one day. In one sequence, he learns how to use a whip, learns to hate snakes, gets his fetish for the fedora and jacket look and develops a bromance with a roguish carbon-copy of his future self, defining the persona he'll later take. Oh, and he was named after the dog! Ha ha! Ugh. In Star Wars, the mysterious, mystical means of Jedi fading away lost all its intrigue when it was boiled down to a quick scene of Yoda telling Obi-Wan, "Oh, by the way - Qui-Gon found a way to come back from the dead. Why don't you study that method for the next twenty years so you can pull the disappearing act in the next film? Don't worry - I'll learn it, too. I'll have plenty of time to do so, as I'll be abandoning the fight against the Emperor and the dark side and going to hide in a swamp like a little bitch."

4) NO SUSPENSE. The greatest problem with the prequel is that, assuming we saw the "original" story, we know how it's going to end. We know what's going to happen to the characters we know. We know Vader's going to become evil, we know the Emperor wins, we know Yoda's going to move to a cabin in the swamp, we know that all these other Jedi are going to die. There are no surprises (except Jar Jar, which was quite a surprise for everyone...). While it's interesting to see these histories play out, there's no "what will happen?", no drama, no suspense. This makes them, by definition, less engaging. There's no forward movement. These tales are stuck in the past with their endings already written.

The movement has grown, and continues, and is there to create profit instead of serving the viewer. We got an unnecessary remake of "Manhunter" in the film "Red Dragon", just so a new "prequel" to the infinitely more popular "Silence of the Lambs" could cash in. We then got the don't-know-anyone-who-saw-it pre-prequel called "Hannibal Rising". We've gotten "Halloween" prequels. "Exorcist" prequels. By and large, these have been crap, as will most endeavors motivated by money and not by passion.

One of the biggest franchises, like Star Wars, to fall victim to this is Star Trek. Time has stopped in Star Trek. This began when the last Trek series, "Enterprise", was set in the past. Now there's a new prequel film coming out in about a month, tracing the origins of the original cast. I'll admit, this is one, after seeing the trailer, that I'm very excited about, but my first response to the idea was to sigh. There's no reason why the Star Trek universe can't continue on in "real time". It's really big universe they've created, one that doesn't rely on a set collection of characters played by existing actors. There are limitless stories than can be told there, but the studios seem convinced that it's all over, and that the past is the only fertile ground for new adventures. Star Wars, too, has many places to go. One could easily jump into the future and do an ongoing story of, say, the children of Han and Leia, or other characters. Yet, the current animated series out there is stuck in the Clone Wars era (telling us of a war that we know the outcome of already - and one that's a prequel TO a prequel, for crying out loud), and the forthcoming live action Star Wars TV series is set between the two trilogies. Why not look ahead? Why not give us something new?

Battlestar Galactica just ended a few nights ago. There's a story with a (very) definite end. A sequel would be impossibly silly. A new series is coming, though - "Caprica". You guessed it - a prequel series. While there's the part of me hungry for more Galactica tales, the other parts has that same sinking prequel feeling of knowing nothing "new" will come of it. Galactica, at least, has the excuse of a completed tale. Things like Star Wars and Trek do not. There are places to go in both cases - but the men behind the curtain refuse to take us there.

Perhaps the solution to all of this is to simply to stop going over old ground - stop with sequels, and stop, too, with sequels (yeah, THAT's going to happen), and with remakes. There's a whole new generation of writers out there inspired by these past properties, with exciting new ideas of their own. Maybe our love for these worlds has blinded us to the idea of demanding new stories, new characters, new ideas. We, as fans, are as much to blame for the beating of dead franchise horses as the studios. Maybe instead of demanding more of the same, we need to be exploring the new, creations that take us out of our comfort zones and treat us to new epic journeys of imagination. Maybe we, too, need to force ourselves to look forward (and outward) instead of always looking back. Maybe the web revolution, which is starting to give modern storytellers a voice outside of the established studio/publishing system, will open those doors for both them and for us.

Or maybe "Breakin' 3: The Beginning", will soon be coming to a theater near you.

Mental Health Check on America

This weekend, four police officers were shot in Oakland, California. At a traffic stop, a wanted parolee with a long criminal history opened fire, killing one officer and effectively killing another (while technically brain dead, he's only being kept alive pending decisions on organ donation). The suspect fled the scene, and was later found and surrounded, where he killed two more police officers before being shot and killed himself.

At the scene of the first killing, a crowd of about twenty hung around after the dead and wounded were taken away...and "taunted" police officers there. This is allegedly a reaction to a police shooting in Oakland back in January. Anger at this has caused mocking celebration over four police officers dying in a single day.

Everyone's heard of the "Octo-Mom". When news started getting out about this woman, already with many children and on government assistance, had eight more children on purpose, public sentiment started turning quickly against her. She hired a publicist. This publicist quickly dropped her as a client, however, due to the many death threats coming into his office. Yes, death threats.

AIG is all over the news, and the nation is now outraged to find out about the millions in bonuses being paid to management there, using government bailout money. Many of those managers who received the bonuses now have private security stationed outside their homes - guards and dogs. Why? Because they have started receiving death threats to them and their families.

After the controversial passing of Proposition 8 in California, which banned gay marriage in the state, someone created a web page that not only listed the names of all the people who contributed to the campaign to pass this proposition, but provided maps to these people's homes. On a message board where I was posting about this, I expressed concerns that this page - effectively a "hit list" - could be very bad for public sentiment for the movement to repeal this proposition. How would a news story about children of these donors being scared to leave their homes because of angry protesters outside help things...or, heaven forbid, if something happened to one of these kids? The response I got? "**** those kids. They get what they deserve."

Am I the only one that's noticed that America is becoming more and more unbalanced? Notice that the issues above aren't all right wing or left wing issues. There's a mix of both, with reactors being from both ends of the spectrum. I can remember a time when people got fired up over issues and heatedly discussed them and maybe arranged protests or business boycotts. Now, Americans have reached a place where they feel justified, if they're angry about an issue, in calling for the deaths of those involved. Death threats themselves used to be big news. Now, they're just the expected response to just about any sensational news story. There's no longer any concern for keeping the moral high ground. Two wrongs make a right. People not only have no problem with such extreme measures, but feel they're entitled to them.

Maybe I was foolish to believe that the increasing levels of national instability I saw during the far-too-prolonged presidential campaign were going to resolve themselves once the election was over. But the fever is still burning, no longer restricted to issues of politics and war. Every new headline brings the rage, the bloodlust, the calls for people's heads...even on issues that don't even directly involve the enraged. We're increasingly becoming a nation of pitchforks and torches, and with each new scandal, the disturbing trend grows. A mob mentality is permeating every part of our society, and it's become almost a requirement to have a screaming, spittle-spraying opinion on every topic our cable news, message boards and blogs present us.

This disturbs me more and more each day. Reasoning and contemplation are becoming signs of weakness. Scorching email forwards wrapped in bumper-sticker slogans and hearsay are filling inboxes daily. A psychosis is spreading, claiming new victims by the hour. I don't want to live in a nation of witch trials, where tar and feather are the tools of expression. Is it too late to come back from this brink, or are death threats soon to become death sentences, and reactions to them become nods of approval?

America needs a mental health day. And soon.

Pantalones en Fuego

I was still in San Diego, working for GEICO insurance. A few months before, the Cameron Crowe film "Almost Famous" had come out. I saw it in the theater - it was one of my birthday movies. I have this annual tradition where, on my birthday, I take the day off and spend it in the theater, seeing a minimum of three movies, sometimes four. This particular year, "Famous" was one of them, and I completely fell in love with it. Sadly, I was in the minority. It didn't do great box office. I think the whole concept confused people - it was set in the mid-70s, an era that popular culture doesn't realize existed. To them, and to much of the public, because of this, American history skipped right from hippies to disco. The arena rock era of music has been erased for lack of popularity. For me, someone who started on music early and remembers music like Frampton, Seger and the Allman Brothers, this was a hell of a treat, and a nice flashback. Though the music was secondary to the great story, fantastic characters and signature Crowe movie magic.

It had just come out on DVD, and I hadn't gotten my copy yet. I happened to bump into a co-worker, who knew of my interest in the film. He let me know that he'd already gotten his copy. And, he pointed out proudly, he'd gotten the director's cut. What?! I had read nothing about there being a director's cut! I'd have killed for one! Again, with pride, he stated that there was one, that it said "director's cut" right on the box, and, his his words, there were some "really nice extra scenes with all those ladies". His voice became purposefully sleazy when he added this tidbit.

Back at my desk, I got on the phone. I was going to head right to Target after work and get my director's cut of my beloved film, and couldn't wait to get home and check it out. The doofus (affirmative action has required chains like Target to hire a large sampling of the doofus community to meet the doofus quota) was confused, used the word "Uh..." repeatedly (if you speak Doofus, you know that this word has several meanings in their language, kind of like a Hawaiian thing), put me on hold several times, and came back and told me he could find nothing but the standard version they carried. Maybe Target just wasn't stocking the special edition. Or, maybe he was just a doofus. Either way, I didn't feel like wasting a trip to Target to find out.

I left work and stopped at Blockbuster on the way home. There, in the window, was the "Almost Famous" poster. I headed in, and they had copies for sale. But no director's cut. I asked the guy behind the counter about it. He, too, spoke fluent Doofus. He got into his computer, scratching his head (a common doofus non-verbal affectation) and said he could find no listing of a director's cut. I insisted to him that it existed - after all, I knew someone who had a copy. This ended up going nowhere, and led to him looking at me like the wheelchair I was in probably meant I had mental limitations as well, so I called it quits on that before he started asking me if there was someone I could call to come pick me up.

I headed home and hit the internet. Amazon. Google. Every vendor that I could find that sold movies. DVD release news as well. Nowhere was there any mention of a director's cut of the film. And it was during this long search that it finally dawned on me.

My friend had lied.

And he had. While there would eventually be a director's cut (the "Bootleg Edition", which I bought the day it was released, and one I hear is now out of print), there was none that day. I sat there, confused and increasingly annoyed. Why would this guy have told me that there was one? And not just that, but that he had it, and he gave me specific details about it? Why would he send me on this really frustrating fool's errand on the basis of a blatant, verifiable lie?

I suppose it wasn't the first time I'd experienced this personality type before, but it was the first time it was connected to something important to me, and affected my life, in its own small way. The world is filled with people who tell tall tales, exaggerate details, and even make up events to make themselves appears cooler, or more interesting, or more attractive to another person. But this usually involved things like tales of hookups with girls from the Niagara Falls area that there's no way to trace. How could someone be so thick as to pull something like this and not know that they were going to get found out?

Well, MY personality type being what it is, I didn't confront him about it, but did stop hanging around with him after that. I've got no time in my life for people who would purposely mislead me for their own sociopathic, self-serving reasons. Trust is something important in any relationship, no matter how casual. And if you violate that trust, then you've broken an unspoken contact, and the consequences are that the deal is off. Friends don't tell friends that director's cuts of cool-ass movies exist when they in fact do not. Made me kind of sad for the guy, though. It made me wonder how many other instances like this there have been in his life, and how his apparent desperation to make himself more appealing to potential friends has likely left few friends in his life. The fabled self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hope he eventually got a clue and took the leap of faith on the idea that people, believe it or not, can sometimes accept you just the way you are.

A Toast - to Walking-Out-Early Movie Guy

Here's to you, Walking-Out-Early Movie Guy.

We've all seen your work, and marveled at what you do. When we're in the theater, and the film is coming to a climax, we're befuddled when you, suddenly, get up and walk out of the theater, right after the bad guy's gone down, right when the music changes and the crane shot rolls by of the police cars and ambulances surrounding our hero as he's savoring his hard-fought victory. Somehow - though your methods are beyond us - you know that the movie's about to end, and, proud and confident, you rise up from your seat, suppressing a knowing, slightly smug grin (though, we know, humble about your intellectual superiority over the rest of us unobservant simpletons), and stride toward the nearest door, avoiding, with ease and grace, the exiting tangle of humanity that we'll be trapped in two minutes after your departure.

As far as we know, lost in our gape-mouthed viewing as we are, the film could still be hours from ending. But you - you understand things more deeply, read the signs and divine the portents. While we're slaves to the screenwriter, helplessly trapped until the story has completely finished and the credits begin to roll, you cast aside the shackles and rise above the preordained. You are your own man, a free-thinking maverick who lives by his own rules. You're a bold libertarian, a vanguard of cinematic freedom.

We're not bothered by the fact that your brave actions draw our attention away from the hypnotic screen, pulling us out of the story as our eyes reflexively catch on you standing up and crossing in front of us. No, our enjoyment of the movie pales in comparison with your need to prove, and justifiably so, that your wisdom dwarfs our own, and the lessons we learn from your actions far outweigh the money we laid down to view an entire film, start to finish.

And what does it matter that you never see the end of the celluloid play? That you've lived the last quarter century thinking that the original Terminator ended when the big rig exploded? That Aliens, to you, climaxed when Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop arrived back on the ship? That you think Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is only about an hour long? Or, even less importantly, that you've never had Ferris Bueller speak directly to you after the credits? Or discovered the true fate of Neil Patrick Harris in Harold and Kumar 2? Or found out about the Samuel L. Jackson moment in Iron Man? None of these things can measure up to that feeling of self-validation when you step from the dark theater, pointless final dialogue still rolling somewhere behind you, and feel that surge of pride in your well-honed forethought, knowing that you'll be in your car and driving away while your peers are, like media puppets, reading the soundtrack list in the credits. You're the captain of your own destiny, standing above the masses, always looking forward. Those who dare complain about your actions will find themselves shamed when, after you've saved up all that time, those precious one to two minutes each film, you use it to cure cancer, or design the alternate fuel vehicle we all desire, or write the opera that brings the world to tears and enriches the nations that have suffered for its absense in silence. We know what you do is for the greater good, for all mankind. And words cannot express our gratitude for it.

So a toast - to you, Walking-Out-Early Movie guy. You have our undying thanks, and our eternal respect. Stand fast, friend, and carry on. May your days know no end - or, at least, may they end a couple of minutes before they're supposed to.

A Good Thursday.

76 degrees outside in the city of Sacramento.

I'm wearing a tee shirt - no jacket or hoodie - outside for the first time in 2009, I think...cold wuss that I am. No need for either today.

I've got a couple of cigars left.

My first unemployment check finally showed, and my California tax refund finally deposited in my account (I did my taxes back in January - but that was before I realized my state didn't have any money left).

As of today, it has been exactly one month since I took my last bitchy, whining insurance claim call, and it's possible that may have been the last one ever. And one month after losing my job, the world still hasn't ended yet.

I don't have to shave.

I'm creating again. I can almost feel doors opening in my mind, more and more each day, that I didn't even realize had closed.

Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies only cost $1.59 a box.

It's a good Thursday.

The Most Fun You'll Have Today

You ever find yourself at a web site and think, boy, I'd love to see cows pooping all over this site. Or see bombs drop on it. Or have the chance to point a gun at it and shoot holes in it!

I know...who HASN'T, right?

Well, now you can do all this and more. Thanks to our friends over at Netdisaster, you can punch in any URL address, and choose which special effect you want to unleash on that page. As you can see here, I vandalized my blog. But you may prefer to watch ants crawl all over the CNN site (here's a tip - start that ant thing on any web site, step away from your computer, and let someone else walk into the room and see it. And hear them scream), or have wasps sting the DNC or RNC's home page. I just used the "flood" effect to drown my blog! But more importantly, I just went to Michaeloconnell.com and totally shot holes in my own face! It was soooo boss!

So drop on by the site and try it yourself. I promise you literally MINUTES of amazing fun. I only hope you have a web page for the company you work for available - so you can make a cartoon guy take a pee on your boss.

You Stay Classy, Sacramento!

Congratulations, Sac-Town!

In 2007, I know you were disappointed to find yourself only ranked 16th in the nation for auto theft. Well, you can shake THAT shame off! According to current statistics, Sacramento ranks 4TH in the United States for stolen cars! Woo hoo!

This new report shows that Sacramento has roughly twice the auto theft rate of other cities its size. And as a big shocker to citizens of Sacramento, the majority of Sac car thefts happen around the Arden area. Who would have thought?!

Interestingly, police authorities in Sacramento state that only about 7% of the stolen cars in the capitol city are stripped and sold for parts. They say that most of these cars are stolen because the thief "needs a ride". Specifically, to drive from crime scene to crime scene - that is, to go commit burglaries, go to deal drugs, or to go acquire more drugs. For whatever reason, these enterprising scamps are helping move Sacramento up the ranks, so hats off, crank fiends! We salute you!

And cheer up, Sacramento citizens, if you're disappointed in only making it to fourth place. At least we've still got the worst-ranked basketball team in the NBA! Keep the pride alive!

Happy St. Paddy's!

I was going to say "top o' the mornin to ya", but to be accurate, it's "middle o' the night to ya". Figured since it's now a couple of hours into St. Paddy's Day, it was safe to get the early greeting out. Hope you have a great and green one, wherever you are!

2:17am where I am, out on my patio. And you know what? It's 55 degrees out. Beautiful! We were supposed to get a little rain today (technically, yesterday), but I never noticed any - not that I left the apartment much. But the next two days are supposed to be gorgeous and in the low 70s. I'll take it! Moments like this one, right now, are my favorite. Not really cold outside...serenely quiet...very peaceful. The car traffic is at a minimum so it's so quiet I can hear the hum of my laptop's hard drive. Glad I decided not to use the iPod out here tonight. I prefer the sound of the near-silence right now.

Hey, you know what's hard? Trying to find an artist. I spent a lot of time today online, trying to find someone to work on my graphic novel script. This is a pain. And no, for those of you thinking the question, this is not a job for Tim. Tim's working the Nice Guy, and it's a miracle he has any time to work on that book. He's a married man! No, Tim's got that and another little possible project of ours, so he'd have no time to crank out a hundred pages of graphic novel. So I'm looking for another artist for that.

It's a tricky business. Your first option is to post up an ad on a board. There are several good sites for this. But I've been down that road before, back when I was first taking a stab at comic writing. The results can be...kind of scary. You get a lot of responses, but the problem is, the majority of people responding...? Well, there's a reason why they're not currently working on anything else. I'm not trying to be mean, here. I'm just saying when I'd get the samples, they were nowhere near publishable quality. God bless 'em for trying, though. Hey, they're out there working it, trying to hook up with a writer, following their dream. I'm just looking at publication as my goal, and I have to be realistic about the artist I work with. Nobody looks at a comic or graphic novel on the shelf and picks it up for the snappy dialogue. People buy for the art. If it's not there, no one's going to care about my story. So I'm putting off the ad until the next step to avoid that depressing (but necessary) email flood.

So I've been hitting artist sites. The best-known one right now is deviantart.com. Sounds dirty, but it's not, I swear. This is a very cool site for artists. They get their own page, a place to post up their art, a journal they can write in, and a comments section where other members can post notes about each piece. It's a great network place for artist. And also a great spot to browse around in to find artists you like and might want to work with. This, too, however, has been depressing today. I haven't had much luck finding a middle ground. The majority of it, today at least, was embarrassingly bad. Much of it looked like it was drawn by school children. And it occurred to me - maybe some of it was. And that's pretty cool, if there's a kid out there with a love of drawing who's gone as far as to create a page to showcase his vampire drawings. He/she is taking steps early. Rock on. But I think the bulk is just people who want to draw, but really can't. Hey...I'm not the one to take the illusion away from them. I can't even draw at ALL. If they want to cling to the "I'm an artist" persona, that's all good. Just doesn't do me a lot of good. Lots of bad anime, bad big booby bad girl art, bad macho guys with guns art, bad "furry" art (don't ask...there's a group of folks out there that believe Disney and porn should be combined...), bad "Twilight" fan worship art, bad elf art... A veritable sea of cringe-inducing scribblings. It can be a bit overwhelming. But you push on, because somewhere in all that, there's a gem waiting to be found. One hopes.

The other end of the spectrum is finding AMAZING artists. I found one guy in England whose stuff is remarkable - and almost as important, there's a LOT of it. This is one of the three things I look for. Quality (which I tend to define as an understanding of basic anatomy and a lack of obvious artistic laziness) is first, of course. Then you look for quantity. Any artist can get lucky with a good shot once in a while. The trick is, can they do it regularly? If someone has five or six shots max on their gallery, that either means they only put up their best stuff, and it's likely the rest of it ain't that great, or it means they don't draw that often and only have a few pieces to put up. This means that chances are good they're not going to be able to draw page after page of comic story, and definitely not with any workable speed. Which leads us to #3 - this is, actual comic pages. Not all artists can tell a comic story. Some don't want to, frankly - it's not their thing, and they love to do pinup shots and portraits. I look for someone's comic pages to see 1) if they do it at all, and 2) if they do it well. Some artists admit that storytelling is just a mystery to them and they don't do it. And these artists can do really well doing commissioned shots and comic covers and all manner of commercial art without any need to be a storyteller. I've known a lot of awesome artists like that. They're just not what I'm needing right now.

So this British guy had amazing talent, over twenty pages of gallery (with about 24 shots per page), and comic pages. Clearly, he was a pro. Aha - there's my next problem. At that end of the spectrum, *I* become the weak link. These guys don't NEED me. They're professionals, and expect to get paid. They're looking at me like I'm looking at artists, asking "So what have YOU done and why should I waste my time with you?" Few of them are going to want to do what I'm looking for, which is work together and put together a pitch to sell to a publisher, putting off payment until the book sells. These guys are artists for a living, and have to put food on the table, and don't have time to jerk around. So I go back and forth between "Ugh, what's up with all these amateurs?" to "Oh, wait...I AM the amateur." The dream is to find that budding, hungry artist that shows some talent and hasn't hit it yet, and is looking for some way to show their work, something that will allow them to move on to other, better paying work. That guy or gal is out there. I just need to keep looking. At this rate, though, I'd better move on to the ad soon.

Though I'm not giving up on the British guy. He's actually not right for my graphic novel (he's not a very "real people" artist, more into the fantastical), but I'm already trying to come up with some kind of project that would fit his style and his likes (you can tell from an artist's gallery, if it's big enough, what kind of stuff they most like to draw). We'll see...

Speaking of which, back to a little more searching, and then it's time to call it a night. Or, in this case, a morning. Yeah, my days and nights are starting to get turned around. Figured that might happen. I've always been a night person, but my career turned that around quite some time ago. Though I was trying to avoid this and keep on a day schedule, circumstances (illness) have been keeping me up, so I may end up a night owl again. I'm cool with that. Long as I stay productive.

On to more bad goth art!

Have a great St. Paddy's, all.

Welcome Home, Jackie Earle Haley.

I missed the big "Watchmen" panel summer before last at Comic-Con in San Diego. It was going to be wall-to-wall crowded - in the biggest venue at the convention center - and it was up against a Joss Whedon panel, which I can't ever miss. I ended up not going, but a buddy of mine there got out of it, called my cell, and told me about the casting news - this was either the official announcement of them or close to it, because no one had heard anything at this point.

He didn't have much to tell, as clearly, they weren't grabbing any big names for the film. Billy Crudup I knew (from my obsession with the film "Almost Famous") and found myself really interested in how he'd handle Dr. Manhattan.

But the big news that floored me was the casting of Rorschach. If you read Watchmen, the graphic novel, then you know that this casting is pivotal to the whole thing. Watchmen nerds have, for a couple decades, debated over who should play that role. And when my friend told me who'd they'd gotten, that rare word came to mind when it comes to Hollywood casting - "perfect".

If you're part of my generation, you remember Jackie Earle Haley. But not by name. You'd know him immediately when someone mentioned who he played in the original "Bad News Bears" or "Breaking Away". Both were career-making films for him. Unfortunately, Hollywood had had a different career in mind for him - based on "Bears", it was supposed to be as a teen idol, something his bad boy, motorcycle-riding character was fast turning him into. Unfortunately, puberty changed that. The Next Big Thing he was supposed to be turned into a short, skinny young man with a serious acne problem. The roles became fewer - so much so that, like most of us, you probably never saw him again after "Breaking Away" (unless you caught the "Breaking Away" TV series on ABC, which was cancelled after six episodes, where he reprised his memorable role as "Moocher", and was the only one of the four male leads who jumped from the film to the show). Hollywood didn't want him anymore - a story as old as Hollywood itself. His acting days appeared to be over.

And then came a call from Sean Penn - in the 21st century. Sean was the lead in the upcoming "All the King's Men", and when discussions came around about who should play the part of the character Sugar Boy, Sean immediately wanted Jackie Earle Haley. Jackie had been out of Hollywood for years. He was finally tracked down - on his honeymoon, no less - and was told there was interest in him for a film. A film with notable small actors in it - you know, like Sean...and Anthony Hopkins...and Kate Winslet...and Jude Law...and James Gandolfini. He sent them his audition tape, landed the role, and suddenly, Jackie was an actor again.

Right after, there was a role available in the film "Little Children". Director Todd Field got an audition tape of Jackie's, and was blown away. When he asked Kate Winslet about working with him, she couldn't stop raving, and insisted that, if he was auditioned, that she be allowed to fly in and do the reading with him. He got the audition, and Kate did it with him as promised. And at the end of that audition, Todd Field turned to Jackie and asked "Do you want the part?". Jackie did, and in 2007 was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor oscar for it.

And now, Jackie's back again, in his first ever big-budget Hollywood blockbuster - stealing the show and delighting fans with his dead-on adaption of Rorschach in a film that purists have been waiting for for almost twenty years - almost a long as Jackie's been waiting to get his career back. And just like with "Watchmen", I feel that the wait has been worth every minute.

Welcome back, Jackie. We missed you. Here's to making up for lost time.

So Long, "ER"

I watched the very first episode of ER when it aired, back in September of 1994. I was still living in Arizona at the time. When the buzz was first going around about it, the big news was that it was a TV series created by Jurassic Park writer Michael Crichton. That was creating excitement for some. For me, as a big-time fan (as a kid, even) of St. Elsewhere, this was a promise of the return of medical drama to NBC.

Loved the pilot, had my mind blown by it. This had zero cheese in it! It felt completely real. The characters were all very non-network, believable and identifiable. The medical parts were clearly very, very well-researched with great attention paid to every detail. And the drama was so compelling you couldn't take your eyes off this thing. I had definitely found a new show.

It was an obsession of mine for quite some time, too, one that followed me back to Sacramento. One of my roommates (soon after to become my only roommate), Aaron, started watching it with me, and once he and I left the house we shared with the other guys and got an apartment, it was a major part of our joint TV-watching schedule - particularly since it was part of the line-up that comprised the golden age of NBC's "Must-See Thursdays" (with Friends and Seinfeld in there, both at the height of their popularity).

It also went with us when we moved to San Diego. But things started to wane there. With original cast members leaving and new ones coming in, Aaron started to lose interest, and I'd end up watching it myself. At some point, circumstances caused me to walk away, too - can't remember exactly why, but it probably had something to do with having too much other TV to watch, plus all the basketball (I was in my certified NBA junkie period back then). I think it was around season seven when I let it go. I was sad to, but it was starting to look less and less like the show I'd started out with, and I figured with it having gone on so long, it wouldn't be around the much longer anyway.

Oops.

We're coming up on the end of the fifteenth and final season of ER. Fifteen years. No too shabby. I still haven't watched the show since I walked away, with the exception of the big event that was the final Mark Greene episode in season eight, but have occasionally glimpsed its progression through promos for upcoming episodes - watching as the entire main cast was replaced with newbies (played by some actors that I really like, though, from their other work) and getting that sort of sad feeling of knowing that something I was so close to moved on without me, and now belongs others, not to me.

It was one of those promos this past week that made me set the DVR for last night's episode. With the show finally closing up shop for good, they decided to take an episode to have some of the former cast ("All your favorites", the commercial promised) return one last time. Noah Wyle's Dr. Carter had (from what I gather) already come back this season (he was the last of the original doctors to leave the show - I think that was about four years ago?), and for some reason, he's about to have a kidney transplant. The ad showed me my old pals Carol Hathaway (played by Julianna Margulies) and Dr. Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle), and that was good enough for me. George Clooney was not shown, leaving an obvious impression of "Right, like they could afford HIM for something like this". Still, though, I remembered the final Carol episode, way back in season six - she was having to choose to stay or to go be with Doug (Clooney) in Seattle. In the end, she leaves and gets on a plane. We see her going around the back of his house to find him, and we see a figure out on the boat dock, his back to us, and quite a ways away. I was thinking, then, how I felt kind of ripped off, since they were obviously just using some actor in a sweater to represent him, since Clooney had already left the show and gotten too big for TV. But, low and behold - he turned around, and there was Clooney. It would have been such an insult to the fans to not be given that moment, and I think Clooney knew that. So while setting up the DVR for this, I started wondering if maybe they might be pulling something like that again...

Well, it would have been a nice surprise, but unlike the last time this happened, there's the internet. Oh, we had the internet in 1999, sure (where else were we going to spread Y2K doomsday predictions?), but it wasn't anything like it is now. So last night, just as I was about to go start some dinner and watch the ER ep, I stopped off at my My Yahoo page to check something, and spotted the entertainment news headline - "Clooney Returns to ER". Spoilers! Arg! Ah, well. Would have been a fun surprise, but I wasn't going to let that ruin my enjoyment.

Watching this big reunion ep was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. This is likely because I have the first three seasons on DVD, and just recently finished up season three, so the memories and the impressions of these characters are close, not something ten years in my past. Just as watching those seasons again brought back all my feelings about the show and these characters and reminded me how much I loved them, seeing them like this, not as ghosts from reruns but their characters in present day, having aged and moved on with their lives as I have, made me feel like I, myself, was reunited with them, catching up with old times.

I was very pleased with how the story got put together. Once I saw the "Carter needs a transplant" plot on the commercial, I just assumed that was the dramatic catalyst to get all these characters to fly back to Chicago and be there for him. Not so. "ER" has always been about capturing real life, and real life doesn't always work that way. So Carter wasn't even reunited with Carol and Doug. Our look at them came with cutting to the hospital in Seattle where they, now married and with kids, both work, with Doug as chief of surgery (or something...I can't recall) there. A pair of the new ER cast members from back in Chicago were there waiting to pick up and fly back a heart for transplant, and Carol and Doug were having to try to convince a grandmother (guest star Susan Sarandon) that her brain-dead grandson is really gone and that his organs can save the lives of others. Very old-school "ER" situation, and seeing Doug and Carol back in one like it was fantastic. A favorite moment of that sequence is when Doug goes into the break room for coffee and talks with the new cast members, finding out they're from County back in Chicago. He asks about different doctors, all names familiar to ER fans, only to find that none of them are there anymore (except Dr. Anspaugh. Hey, Donald's still in the house!) and that the newbies haven't even heard of them. That moment rung to true to anyone who's ever found someone who works at a place where they, themselves, used to. I've done that. Just did that recently when I called a former insurance company I worked at and asked the adjuster there about some names. No one still around. People move on. Life moves on. And co-workers rarely keep in touch once they're no longer together every day.

What was great about the Seattle part was that a kidney was now available too, and Carter was the next one on the list. Doug and Carol ask the County docs if they can transport the kidney back with them, too, having no idea that it's for Carter. And they never know. In their final scene, with them in bed, Carol gets a call that lets them know the heart made it in time and saved the woman. And that the kidney made it, too, and went to "some doctor". Bravo. They play a major role in saving their (and our) old friend and don't even know it. That's "ER". Great reappearance by them, and a big thumbs-up for Clooney for once again showing that he remembers well, and respects, where he came from.

As much as I liked Carol and Doug, I was always about the John Carter / Peter Benton dynamic. Carter was our "eyes" when the show first began, an intern just starting out, and we followed him from the beginning of his career. And his resident was the very intimidating type-A doc known as Dr. Benton (I don't believe Carter ever called him by his first name throughout the run of the show, and thankfully did not in this ep either, as it would have felt wrong). Their up-and-down, often tense and often hilarious (but painfully so) professional relationship was one of the best parts of the early seasons. So seeing Benton (a surgeon there are Northwestern, where Carter was getting his transplant - another detail that I loved, because why would he have it done at the lower-rent County Hospital, realistically?) walk into Carter's room and surprise him was an amazing treat, as was seeing how they reacted to each other after all the history between them. It felt really right, a huge relief to me (as one of the old-schoolers suspicious of new writers who might not "understand" the characters as I, myself, of course do). What an awesome moment when Carter shows Peter a picture of his wife, and Benton's amused and surprised reaction - "You? YOU married a sister?". Awesome. I really soaked up the weight of these characters and all the many things they've been through - much of it that I went through with them - and felt heavy pangs of nostalgia...and my own age. Loved seeing their reunion, and also Benton's choice to want to be in the operating room as an observer, where we got treated to some old-school Benton as he schooled the cocky surgeon performing the operation. A great moment, as was their final one in the recovery room, where Peter talks Carter into calling his estranged wife to try to fix things. These characters, fifteen years later, are still saving each other as much as they're saving the patients.

As my expectations were low for this, not believing that it was going to "feel" right, I was pleasantly and gratefully surprised at how much it moved me. I also found myself smiling at finding out that several of the supporting cast are still hanging around, right up to the end - Chuny, Jerry, Haleh...all old friends of mine too, and as important to the run of this remarkable show as the big names. I'm really glad I decided to step back into this world, even if only for an evening. Once I can justify the spending, I plan to keep picking up these seasons, first reliving all my favorite eps from the past, then moving on to the new tales and new characters to find out if they'll click with me like the old ones did. Looking back on all the shows I've watched over the years, and all the ones I've come to call my favorites, "ER" still stands out as #1. It raised the bar for TV drama so much higher, and challenged network television to live up to its example. Like so many other people in these final days of it, I'm thankful for "ER", wish it a very warm and fond good-bye, and will miss it. Thanks for the memories, guys. Thanks for everything.

Now get me a CBC, Chem 7 and chest x-ray. Stat.

MOVE, people!

Pimping "Trust Me"

There are TV shows that you watch that, if you met them in person (if a show had arms, legs, a head and all that), you'd greet with a handshake. There are others that you'd high-five. And there are some shows of yours that you just couldn't help but hug.

I want to hug "Trust Me".

The minute I heard about this show I was locked in, simply because some mad genius had decided to put Tom Cavanagh and Eric McCormack together in the same show. NBC's "Ed" ended up being one of my favorite shows of all time (and I'm still twitchingly bitter that they haven't worked out all the legal issues to get it on DVD), and it's star, Tom, was one of the main reasons. This was someone I'd never seen before, and he amazed me with his natural, confident comedic talents and his everyman quality that made you unable to NOT root for him. And while I occasionally watched "Will & Grace" - not enough to qualify me (in my book) as a serious fan - I was always blown away by the hilarious Eric, and he was cemented as one of my favorite comedy guys after I saw him in the film "Free Enterprise" (a film I've seen countless times, because my friends at the time it was first out on DVD wanted to watch it over and over). Two of my favorite comedy actors in the same show! Gold!

My DVR was on it the first night it came out, and I was not disappointed. I love this show! It's about an ad agency (some refer to it as a modern-day "Mad Men") and the people who work there, and mainly about the two main characters, played by Tom and Eric, creative partners and long-time friends. Another huge bonus was the surprising return of Griffin Dunne, a guy I've been a fan of since the 80s (mostly for "After Hours" and his gorily hilarious role in "An American Werewolf in London") who has SO been needing more work! He plays their boss, a world-weary and jaded ad lifer.

Another surprise for me was Monica Potter - surprising because I didn't even recognize her the first couple of episodes. It's not like I ever saw her in a lot of things, but she made quite an impression on me during her appearance in (shudder) "Con Air". This was strictly a guy impression, nothing to do with her acting. I remember thinking what a perfect face she had, and what an awesome nose. She was like a cuter Julia Roberts (they look like relatives to me). All she really had to do in that role was look cute and look worried about hubby Nicholas "put the bunny back in the box" Cage, so it wasn't really a showcase for her talent. Based on that role, I couldn't even confirm that she HAD any talent.

But here we are, years later, and - here's where I get myself in trouble with my female readers - she's gotten older. People age, even in Hollywood, though many don't do it noticeably (surgical assistance helps with that), and Monica did. The photo above is a bit misleading as, on the show, her hair is always pulled back and she wears minimal makeup, because her character doesn't go in for that kind of thing. She's not young, cute and spunky anymore. And yet, now no longer tied to cute, spunky roles, she's now shown herself to be this AMAZING actress! I adore her character! She plays the new gal in the office, a brilliantly neurotic and desperate one, someone obsessed with her career who's not rich in what you call "the social skills". She's a complete breath of fresh air in the bland landscape of TV show characters. Now I finally am a huge Monica Potter fan.

The rest of the cast adds loads to the show. Geoffrey Arend (whom I know from a one-time only but very memorable appearance on "Undeclared") and Mike Damus play the younger screw-uppity creative team on their floor, great comic relief. Sarah Clarke (best known to TV fans as Nina on season one of "24") is fantastic as Eric's wife. And Donna Murphy, who plays the big boss, creeps me the hell OUT. This is because it's like they based the character directly on MY former big boss my last job, who causes the air in the room to gain tremendous weight just by stepping into it. Just seeing her come on screen makes me involuntarily set up straighter in my chair and try to look busy.

The show's called a "drama" (because TNT's whole ad campaign is about drama), but it's a great combo of comedy AND drama. The writing is superb, and I'm not just talking about dialogue. They do an excellent job if building in seemingly unwinnable situations, really making you worried for the characters - and this is a great teaching show for me, with writing, as I'm way too nice to my characters and need to learn this. I experience a warm "wow" after each episode ends, that rare sensation of realizing you've just watched a really quality show. I'm hooked. And I'm afraid to check the ratings, because I've gotten hooked on so many shows in my time that get yanked away from me and break my heart. I hope "Trust Me" is around for a good long time.

So if you're looking to try something new that will hopefully ring your bell as loud as its rung mine, "Trust Me" airs on Tuesday nights on TNT. And now's a great time to start, since this coming Tuesday they're showing back-to-back new episodes. And if you want to check out the handful that have already aired, you can always go to TNT.tv and watch full episodes on your computer. In my opinion, it's well worth your time, and I hope you'll find a new favorite program to eat up more of your precious evening time like I have.

Of course, I have more if it to spare than you do right now...

Uh...I meant he was raping childhoods FIGURATIVELY....

Making its rounds on the web today is 125-page transcript of the original story meeting between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan to develop what would become the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. A handful of pages of this showed up in a Raiders book that was published, but now the whole thing has shown up on the internet, and it appears to be leak from inside Lucas Arts.

Whoever leaked it has the gratitude would-be screenwriters and film nerds alike, because its a rare and fascinating look at the birth of one of the most beloved films of all time. I can't wait to rifle through this whole thing and experience the process of giants in the field of cinema knocking out characters and story. This is a huge piece of film history, and a hell of a find.

In the midst of it, however, is a disturbing moment of genuine WTF?

Remember the scene in Raiders, at the bar, when we're first meeting Indy's former love, Marion Ravenwood? Post-slap, she lays into him about what he did to her. The dialogue goes like this:

INDY: I never meant to hurt you.
MARION: I was a child! I was in love.
INDY: You knew what you were doing.
MARION: It was wrong. You knew it.
INDY: Look, I did what I did. I don't expect you to be happy about it. But maybe we can do each other some good.

Apparently, she meant that first part LITERALLY. Let's cut to the transcript of the story conference, and take a look at how old Lucas thought Marion should be during their initial "affair":

(Note that the "G" is for George, the "S" is for Steven and the "L" is for Lawrence).

G — I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven.

L — And he was forty-two.

G — He hasn't seen her in twelve years. Now she's twenty-two. It's a real strange relationship.

S — She had better be older than twenty-two.

G — He's thirty-five, and he knew her ten years ago when he was twenty-five and she was only twelve. It would be amusing to make her slightly young at the time.

S — And promiscuous. She came onto him.

G — Fifteen is right on the edge. I know it's an outrageous idea, but it is interesting. Once she's sixteen or seventeen it's not interesting anymore. But if she was fifteen and he was twenty-five and they actually had an affair the last time they met. And she was madly in love with him and he...

S — She has pictures of him.

So in George's mind, a grown man having a sexual relationship with a girl who's eleven or twelve (or as uninterestingly old as fifteen) really isn't that big of a deal. Hmmm. Apparently Lucas' thoughts on pedophilia are kind of the same as they are on slavery - it's not really that big of a deal as long as everyone involved is okay with it. Yipee!!

Just a note, Mr. Lucas - when a grown man is having a relationship with a pre-teen girl, it's not called an "affair". It's called "rape". I would think after the past few films you've done, you'd have a much better understanding of that word...

All over the place on a Tuesday

I've been sleeping in more since the big job loss, as getting enough sleep, for a change, was one of my goals. I'm doing pretty good at it. I've finally reached the point (it's been a long time) where I CAN sleep in again - for a long time I'd lost the ability to do so, no matter how late I was up the night before. Now I can set my alarm and actually stay asleep until the alarm goes off. So...bonus.

But today I was up at a normal hour (7:00am) in preparation for my phone interview with E.D.D. to get my unemployment stuff going. They're so backed up that I applied (online, because you literally cannot get them on the phone anymore) the day after my release from corporate servitude, which was 2/20, and the soonest my phone interview was able to be scheduled (per the letter I got) was today, 3/10. Someone was supposed to be calling between 8:00am and 10:00am, so I was fully expecting a call at 9:59am, but to my surprise, the call actually came in about 8:20am. Cool.

Didn't care much for how the call went. I was never really clear what the point of it was - that is, what purpose it served - and the woman who phoned me was pretty annoying. First, she would ask me questions and then would constantly cut me off when I tried to answer, which made me feel like she never really got my full answers. And there was an accent barrier, so it was difficult for me to understand her, which doesn't help. And she was obviously in a big hurry to get on to the next call (with as many people applying for unemployment in Cali these days, can't really blame her for that), so the whole thing felt rushed. It ended abruptly, with her telling me they had to contact my employer next and would call me back in 7-10 days. I tried to get more info - I just sent my paperwork back to them that technically starts the first check, so does that mean a check will be coming, or a check won't get sent until after I get the call back in 7-10 days? She never really answered that. She gave a couple of quick answers that indicated she heard me ask a DIFFERENT question and then ended the call.

So with the "will I be able to pay the rent, the bills, etc" question still looming, I'm finding it hard to get my head in the right place and relax and get on with other stuff. My brain's everywhere. Too much to do, never sure where to start, always feeling - the moment I do reach for something - that I should be doing something else instead that's more important. It's like being back at work...only I'm doing it for free now.

Trying to feed my brain with writing info. I'm going back through two of my all-time favorite books on the topic - "Writing Unforgettable Characters" by Linda Seger and "Screenplay" by Syd Field. Those always jazz me. My buddy Kevin is also sending me his copy of "Story" by Robert McKee, which is supposed to be the shiznit when it comes to screenwriting. I found a bunch of other books on Amazon that will remain on my wishlist until I have money coming in again...and will then (unlike when I had disposable income and didn't give a rat's ass about spending) be bought one at a time and completed before I order the next one. I'm enjoying what this experience is doing to my ways of looking at and doing things. It's been a total paradigm shift on how I view money. In a good way.

Spending time on writer message boards as well, and finding good blogs and web pages on the "craft" as well. I really want to immerse myself in the learning here, to make sure what I'm producing is going in the right direction. I'm getting some writing done, mind you, but not as much as I plan to (again, I feel like that pending money thing is keeping me from full commitment somehow). And I've found that my creative mental muscles have really atrophied. More than I'd expected. Stephen King describes writing as the process of "teaching the mind to misbehave". We're not conditioned, as adults, to make up fanciful stories. We're supposed to work, work hard, be responsible, seek stature, be realistic. I didn't realize I'd been doing that for so long. I'm having trouble, which I never thought would happen, tapping back into that inner well of creative freedom and inspiration I used to revel in. I'm getting there, but it's not as easy as it once was, because my mind still feels like it's "misbehaving". As it should be - I just need to reteach my mind that this is exactly what it's supposed to be doing. My brain's still stuck in a cubicle.

I still haven't relaxed enough to be able to watch a whole movie at home, but I finally, Sunday night, was able to lay down on my couch for the first time since the big boot - instead of watching TV from the wheelchair, from the kitchen, while eating a meal, which is all I normally allow myself. I'd had some DVRed stuff stack up and didn't want to fall behind. I watched Dollhouse, Trust Me, and How I Met Your Mother. Even with scanning through commercials, I was on the couch for over two hours! Woo hoo! Not that I want to do that a lot, but it was a good step for me. Man, I've got to lighten up. What's the fun of being unemployed if you can't catch the occasional flick on DVD?

Okay, just took care of a few things at home, now I have to grab a shower and take care of some things out on the town (I'm waiting until after the lunch hour is over to avoid that traffic), then back to continue on some character profiles for the graphic novel. Here's to hoping the 7-10 day thing is just an overestimate, and I'll have a clear answer (and a check) soon. Looking forward to that sigh of relief.

Shameless Plugfest: "The Lounge Axe"

Here we continue a feature at Michael O'Blogger that highlights content over on my main site, michaeloconnell.com. These items may be something you've never read/seen before, or something you just haven't checked out in a long time (if you're one of our long-time readers).

This time around, the Plugfest shines its shameless spotlight on something called "The Lounge Axe". The idea for this story came to me one day when I was looking through some old photos I had of my friends from back in the 80s/early 90s. As I browsed, I found myself thinking, "Say, if you put some of these together in a certain order, it almost looks like we're all in a band." And the minute I thought that, the Lounge Axe was born.

This idea was a simple one - taking a group of otherwise unrelated photos, putting them in narrative progression, and building a story around that. The story became the tale of a fictional band that rose to amazing heights in the hair-band rocker era of American music with a unique sound that the world (briefly) fell in love with. The band - and the story's supporting cast - is made up of friends of mine, and the whole thing is written in the form of a VH1 Behind The Music retrospective. The history of these bandmates is a weird mix of fact and fiction that keeps you on your toes and wondering which parts really happened and which didn't. Apparently it was effective, because a few years back, I got an email from a random guy who stumbled upon it on the web, a guy who used to live on the same street I did (the street where the house the band shared is reported to be), and he thought it was a real band and wanted to know what years we lived there and "made our music". I consider that a high compliment.

So if it pleases you, I invite you to take a trip back to the 80s and witness the meteoric rise and epic fall of the band that introduced the world to "lounge metal". Consider this your backstage pass. The Lounge Axe awaits!

Your Emperor Has Spoken

First off all, I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me as Emperor of the Universe. I'm honored by your faith in my ability to lead and guide all of creation, and will do all that I can to live up to the trust you've put in me.

So to start things off, I wanted to toss out a few of my Empirical edicts, or new rules that the universe, under my rule, will now follow.

1) The use of the word "Really?" as a snarky response has been banned. Not the word itself, when used as an honest request for confirmation, but rather the now painfully overused comeback on message boards and in live conversations. This particularly applies to the "double-really". "You voted for him? Really? Really?" When everyone on Earth uses it, it's no longer clever. Therefore it is banned, as all things in my universe must be clever.

2) Unless you are actually British, you're no longer allowed to use the phrase "spot-on". I know...I've used it myself. But in the end, it makes the American user sound like a wannabe and a sad Anglophile. I have stopped, therefore you, my subjects, will follow my example.

3) "Okay, that's true - except when it isn't!" This, too, in banned as snark. A little too close to "I know you are, but what am I?" in spirit.

4) Stephen King is no longer allowed to write the words "Boogie" or "Honky-Tonk". He is also banned from ever writing black characters again (fans of King will realize that your Emperor has "forspecial" reasons for this...). He will also be required to apologize to the universe for the end of the Dark Tower saga and will be forced to rewrite the final book - by hand, in a cave, by candlelight, surviving only on Campbell's Tomato Soup and rainwater until it's finished and finished right.

5) American Idol will now be replaced with Swiss Idol, a weekly contest focused on yodeling. Just to mix things up a little.

6) No matter how much a film makes in box office profits, studio executives will henceforth have their salaries reduced by a scale determined by the critical performance of the film on the Tomatometer at Rottentomatoes.com. The more negative the reviews for the film, the less money executives will make. This should encourage film studios to produce higher quality material, and should greatly reduce the influx of new Nicholas Cage movies.

7) All YouTube commenters will be rounded up, have their computers taken away from them, and be handed shovels. They will improve the universe's infrastructure by working on road, landscaping and sewage projects, and will continue to do so until such time as they learn to use the written word correctly and effectively. This will apply to all YouTube commenters because my research staff have verified that there has never been a single either useful or legible comment left after a YouTube video in the history of that web site.

8) Texting during a film, in a theater, will result in hobbling.

9) The memorial service for George Lucas will be held this Tuesday at Skywalker Ranch, and will be televised on all major networks. Applications for young writers/filmmakers/visionaries to take over and save all of Lucas' tortured creative properties will be accepted starting Wednesday.

10) Production on the new Firefly series will begin immediately, and it will become the flagship program for the new JWN, or Joss Whedon Network. Those who have expressed the opinion in the past that Joss Whedon is "overrated" will also be given shovels.

Please stay tuned for further edicts. You may now return to your measurably enriched lives. Your Emperor loves you.

Watched.

Wow.

I went and saw the Watchmen film today, at the 12:00 PM matinee show, day after its opening. I skipped the opening night event for four reasons: 1) Thought it might sell out and my non-Fandangoing buddies might show up and not be able to get a ticket to view it with me, 2) I'm trying to save money now, so matinee prices are a good idea, 3) the schedule worked out best for all the others I was going with, and 4) it seemed the best chance to witness what I was looking forward to almost as much as the film - idiot parents bringing their children to see it because, after all, it's a super-hero movie! Biff! Socko! Pow! Rape! Wait...what?

The group that could make it was me, Tim, Barrie, Jessica, Kyle, Sarah, Rich and Travis (Rich's son, who, unlike his other who stayed home, is not a kid. Rich has a brain). It wasn't a sellout, but was nicely full. And soon enough, there were the parents with their eight-year old kids. I turned to Rich and said "Golf clap for crap parenting", and we did so. They weren't the only ones. It's called the internet, parents. Or it's called knowing your alphabet and being able to recognize the letter "R".

I really don't want to go fully into the film until I've had a chance to see it a second time, which I plan to, next weekend, at the IMAX theater with some peeps who couldn't make it today. Just wanted to give some non-spoilery basic thoughts here.

It's difficult to put the reaction into words, as there are a lot of contradictory emotions for people like myself who are very familiar with the source material - the 1986/87 graphic novel (which was a 12-part comic initially before it got collected into a graphic novel) written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons. You have to understand, first, how much that graphic novel meant to those of us who were comic fans in the 80s, just how revolutionary and mind-blowing it was. It's still considered by many, to this day, to be the pinnacle of the art form. Ironically, it's been imitated so many times that people I know who read it this century weren't as impressed, as they felt they'd seen so much like it before. But this is the one that started it all, the deconstruction movement in the super-hero genre, the move to stop treating comics like children's literature and speak to adults, and the raising of the bar of the genre and form to literary levels. In context, there's nothing else like it. It still stands up.

And those of us who are such big fans have been waiting a very, very long time to see it reach the screen, and have debated endlessly on whether such a thing should even be attempted. There have been several attempts in the past two-plus decades to get the project going, but all have ended in failure, and it took the perfect storm of heightened interest in super-films and the resume of visionary (is he just going to punch the next person who uses that word to describe him?) director Zack Snyder to finally flip the light to green. Expectations have been, to say the least, high. The courage to even attempt such a thing, knowing what was on the line, says a lot about Zack's testicular fortitude.

The wait is over, and, twenty-two years after my friend Kevin, up in his attic bedroom, got wide-eyed and said "You haven't read Watchmen?!" to me and handed me issues 1-9 (all that were out at the time), I have seen it. How am I feeling? Overwhelmed is a pretty accurate word.

Yes, I dug it. This world and its characters were brought to life on screen with painstaking attention to detail, and we, as fans, were treated with the same respect that was paid to the source material. It's all there. The costumes. The sets (right down to Gunga Diner and the news stand). The flashbacks. The brilliantly alt-universe 1980s, filled with the familiar (Nixon...Kissinger...Pat Buchanan?!) and the not-so-familiar (the airships, the electrics cars). This is what we wanted, and we got it. And it was glorious.

But with all this gratitude for what's included comes the unavoidable feeling of loss (that you walked in expecting) for what was left out. Key scenes, key characters...the ending. But there was forgiveness for that from most all of us, knowing from the start that it was impossible to capture EVERY part of the comic epic in one film, even one stretched to two hours and forty-five minutes. So I was grateful for what was still there, and felt they made good choices on which parts translated to film and which didn't. You wanted the weird plastic ball-in-them cigarettes, but you were aware that they'd just look too weird in "real life". But for every loss, there was a treat, from the Tijuana bible to the Rorschach mask that we were TOLD in the comic was always shifting, but were now able to SEE shifting. In short - a full-on dorkgasm for the informed.

But it's that part that concerns me for non-informed movie-goers, stepping into this thing for the first time. It was clearly made for those who know. Does it stand on its own as a film for those who didn't read the graphic novel? I have no accurate way to gauge that. There were a couple people with us who fit into that newbie category, but I don't think they felt completely able to voice their true opinion, surrounded by as fawning fanboys (the rest of us) after the credits as they were. I'd like to check with some more folks who just wanted to see what all the talk was about, and gave it a try. I fear that, for them, it's going to be a big head-scratcher, and come off as a big, convoluted (yet stylish) mess. And that's too bad, if that is the case. As much as I'm happy with the love shown to the faithful, the first responsibility to any translation is to make it work in the new medium, accessible to all. The Lord of the Rings films did that for me. I never read any of the books (pause for the collective geek gasp...), but experienced them for the first time as films, and they're some of my favorite films ever. I'd like the new Watchmen curious to be able to have the same experience, not feel like they paid their money only to find out they were required to study up first to be able to enjoy it. I'll get more people's thoughts in the days to come. This should be interesting.

Me? Very happy. Can't wait to check it out for time #2, and find more neat details that I missed the first time around (I'm sure there are many). And of all my friends that have now seen it - the ones who either read it one time twenty years ago or multiple times since - have been uniformly raving. Good stuff for us. Hope it's good stuff for you.

I got home and found out that there's a web link to a video showing the opening credits (a five minute sequence) of the film. There's a HUGE amount of backstory involved in Watchmen that's explored in the novel, but since they didn't have time to get into all that, they very cleverly chose to summarize the history of this America's super-heroes in this sequence that ended up being one of my favorite parts of the film. So if you know nothing of Watchmen, give this a go and see if it interests you enough to get you to the theater. If you haven't seen the film yet, and you're already a Watchmen fan, this WILL get your ass out the door and to the multiplex. And if you're like me and have seen it, and just want to relive part of it...here's your chance. I definitely recommend expanding to full screen. And cranking up the volume! Let's all sing along!

Watchmen Opening Credits

Behind the Music

Have you noticed that we, as Americans, don't really pay a great amount of attention to the lyrics of the songs we love? If it's bouncy, catchy, danceable, whatever, we just dig it, play it over and over, and never ponder much on the words that the singer is belting out.

I got to thinking about this the other day when I was listening to to Liz Phair's "Why Can't I?" on the radio. On the surface, this a love song, and a pretty happy one, about hooking up with a dude. I'm sure it's a song many girls listen to while dreaming about their Mr. Right, or the new guy they're just getting involved with, when it's still all fresh and new. However, if you really listen to the lyrics? This is a song about a girl who's about to cheat on her boyfriend with a guy who, himself, has a girlfriend. If you're a woman, and you're like most, you just got really defensive about your beloved tune and shouted, "Nuh-uh! It's about new romance, and meeting this great guy, and it's about pure love, and...and..." Lyrics, please: "Holding hands with you and we're out at night/Got a girlfriend, you say it isn't right/And I've got someone waiting, too". It's a song about cheating on your boyfriend. With a guy who's sneaking out on his girl. Not the story most women have playing in their heads when they've got the iPod in and they're singing along happily with the chorus.

We don't have time in our lives to bother with things like reading or paying attention to the words. We just want a tune that makes us feel good and has a few key phrases in it that we can get behind. We'll process and remember those few words, and let them paint the song as a whole for us. Hence, during the 80s, many couples would be all lovey-dovey on the dance floor to the tune of Journey's "Lovin' Touchin' Squeazin'". Hey, come on! It's about lovin'! And touchin'! And squeazin'! All good things, right? No, it's about a guy who's near suicidal because things have gone bad with his gal, and she's out banging someone else, and he's consoling himself with the thought that the guy she's banging is going to be cheating on her soon and she'll want to die as well. Is that the song you really wanted to be dedicated to your sweetheart on the local radio station? Well, I guess it had a lot of "na na na"'s in it, so that makes up for the other stuff.

Aerosmith. "Dude Looks Like A Lady". It's just so darn catchy and rocktastic that countless head-banging rocker dudes have cranked it loud or thrown their devil-sign high in the front rows of Aerosmith shows to the hard-hitting beat of it. If you were around for that bizarre hair-band era of American music history, you'll probably recall that rocker dudes were not particularly tolerant when it came to things in the, uh, alternative lifestyle arena. It was all about the macho and the misogyny and all things testosterony. And yet, there they were, bouncing their thick manes of hairsprayed locks to a song about scoring with a tranny. And oddly not seeming to know this at all. Even today, those dudes (now with shorter hair because they eventually had to get jobs after they knocked up that gal who looked so good in the ripped jeans at the Dokken concert) will deny that, saying that it's common knowledge that the song was written about Poison's Brett Michaels, he of the heavy makeup and Breck Girl 'do. Hence, about a dude that looks like a lady. Okay, guys, that works for the title. But the rest of the lyrics? If it's about Bret Michael (or Vince Neil, as other say), then Steve Tyler is obviously quite fond of Bret - "Let me take a peak, dear/Do me do me do me all night/Turn the other cheek dear/Do me, do me, do me, do me". If you're a 'Smith fan who has no qualms about cross-dressing hook-ups, then power to you. I'm just saying - seeing as how the average late 80s rocker dude used every opportunity to call Depeche Mode fans "fag", Cure fans "fag", and just about every other male who didn't have really long hair and eyeliner on (?) "fag", the irony of their lack of notice of these lyrics is quite funny.

Suzanne Vega. "My Name is Luca". Hands-down the #1 feel-good ditty about child abuse EVER.

Third Eye Blind. "Semi-Charmed Life". Used for just about every movie trailer in the 90s. An anthem for a generation. And why not? Who doesn't love a jam about crystal meth and oral sex? Do do DO, do do DO do...

Heart. "All I Want To Do Is Make Love To You". I just want a baby. Bone me, and get out.

Tony Robbins said that we are "deletion creatures" - we selectively ignore some things and focus on others. It's how we keep ourselves from mental overload in a society with so much sensory avalanche. It's why the Rolling Stones can sing lines like "You make a dead man come" and Bill Gates will go, "Yes! That's the song we want to push the new Windows!". It's how Republican candidates can decide to use "Born in the USA" as a campaign song, thinking it's an intensely patriotic song, and get sued by Bruce. Paying attention to lyrics is occasionally interesting, but really, why let it get in the way of enjoying a memorable melody?

All we hear, by and large, is radio ga-ga. So don't worry, radio - everyone still loves you.

Jimmy Failin'

So the big NBC late night shakeup started this week. As you may recall, said shakeup, in the end, will consist of Leno moving to a 10:00pm show, Conan taking over the Tonight Show at 11:30pm, and SNL alum Jimmy Fallon getting Conan's spot on Late Night in the 12:30 AM slot. At the moment, Leno's still doing the 11:30 show, but the transition has begun, with Conan having done his final Late Night and Jimmy Fallon having taken over as of this week.

You always want to catch the first episode of a new talk show, if for no other reason than to be able to brag about it years later. I'm able to say I watched the very first Conan ep of Late Night after Letterman bailed. So during his final week I was able to sound all connected and relevant, telling people, "Yeah, I remember watching the very first one...", as if this will somehow impress your average internet surfer who was still crapping their own pants when I was doing that. But it makes you feel part of the history. Sometimes that works out, like with Conan. However, I also caught the first eps of the shows for Chevy Chase (ugh...) and Magic Johnson (ugh!!!). Seriously, who gives a talk show to Magic Johnson? I'm a HUGE Magic fan from back in the day...for his ball-play. But I'd also seen enough interviews to know that Magic, while being a very good speaker, is NOT FUNNY. And his speaking is much better suited for children's books-on-tape than bantering with other adults. So Chevy (anyone remember the Doritos ad campaign he was part of during his show's run, and how they did a follow-up commercial about his commercials being cancelled like his show? That was much funnier than his show) and Magic didn't stand the test of time. But you want to be there to find out, just in case.

So I've been setting the DVR this week and have watched the first three airings of Jimmy's attempt at talk show immortality.

In honor this weekend's premiere of Watchmen in theaters, and with a nod to my favorite Watchmen character, Rorschach, I will sum up Fallon's run thus far by saying--

Hurm.

Understand that I walked into this fully knowing that shows like this (and new hosts) need a little time to get their feet and get their confidence up. So one expects awkward pauses, clumsy gags, some growing pains. So I'm handing out the benefit of the doubt like candy here. I didn't show up gleefully waiting to watch someone's career implode, like many who've tuned in praying for a train wreck. I just can't do that with Jimmy. There something about the guy - an underdoggy, one-of-us quality - that makes me want to root for him. More than anyone who's stepped into this line of work the past couple of decades, he makes me imagine what it would be like if *I* got a talk show. Screenwriters dream of creating characters like that that put the audience in their shoes, that make you live the drama right along with the hero. Jimmy is that hero. I stopped being a big SNL watcher around the era of Mike Meyers and Chris Farley, so it's not like I was a regular fan of his. But he's a funny, likable guy, and one I really dug in movies like Almost Famous (few people seem to realize he was in that, mostly due to the beard) and moments like his hosting of the MTV movie awards. I'm on Team Jimmy. I had my Jimmy hat and my big foam finger ready, and wanted to cheer.

The first night was surprisingly painful to watch. I expected ups and downs, but I can't pinpoint a single "up" thinking back on it. Okay, scratch that - there's one. He did an intro bit before the show, guest-starring Conan, where he was in his dressing room while Conan was packing up all his stuff and acting bitter and giving dour advice. It's not that the bit was that funny, but I really liked the way they ended it - not on a laugh, but in an unexpectedly honest statement. Conan's asking Jimmy who his guests are the first week, and Jimmy's excitedly rattling off these A-list celebs. Conan says, "Uh, huh" and then asks him who they have lined up for the SECOND week. Jimmy, suddenly deflated and facing reality, says they have one of the guys from Survivor (the show, not the band)...from season one. Conan nods. Jimmy's quiet for a moment and then says, "So that's how it's going to be?". Conan looks at him, very seriously, and says "That's EXACTLY how it's going to be." And that was it! They ended it like that and went into the opening credits. I thought that was genius, the unexpected play-it-straight piece of honesty. I liked that a lot.

Unfortunately, there was still about fifty-seven minutes more to go.

Opening monologue? Not good. It was off, and he was clearly struggling with it. The first audience bit (I do like the way they're doing audience participation each show) involved a game show called "Lick It for Ten", where items are brought out for these members to...well, to lick, for ten bucks. I'm sure it sounded funny in the writer's room. Then came the Robert De Niro interview. Your first guest ever, and it's a lousy interviewee like De Niro? Who came up with THAT? It was extra, extra painful to watch, even if you discounted the flummoxed Fallon's really obvious flop sweat. There was a pre-taped bit with him and De Niro even, a scene from a film they fictionally did together called "Space Train", about an astronaut afraid to fly, so he has to take a train into space. Huh? It was a bad SNL sketch idea, and looked like De Niro had been hosting a stink episode some time in the past and they were showing a clip of it. It failed. The "blonde mom demographic" bit they did? Fail. Justin Timberlake's interview? Hmm. Some moments there (can't stand that guy's music, but he's really quite a funny dude), but not enough to save it from being a FAIL. I felt really bad for Jimmy, because I know that first show was his worst nightmare given form. I can only imagine what it must have been like for him cruising the internet the next morning. So much for building any confidence.

Second ep came. Another moaner of a monologue. The post-monologue bit with the audience was actually a clever idea. Maybe it's only funny to people like me who are regular Facebook users. They did this thing where they superimposed a Facebook profile page on the screen, and pointed the camera at particular audience members and put that head shot on the profile pic spot. And then they'd show what the Facebook status update for that person was...humorous ones, obviously. And you'd get to see that audience member's reaction. Very Carson-like, something Johnny would have done if they'd had Facebook back then. It didn't go really well, but I liked the notion, and it could work for a regular feature. The big score for him was getting Mayor Bloomberg to show up (and sit there in the audience unannounced and be one of the Facebook people). He got to do a bit with the Mayor, a part of which was the Mayor making a crack about Jimmy's sweating from the night before, so that was well-done. The interviews were better. You can't really go wrong with Tina Fey, and obviously she and Jimmy are known to work well together. They had a good time with it. Jon Bon Jovi was pretty funny as well, and I enjoyed the bit they did where they brought in an actual Bon Jovi superfan to sing "Wanted Dead or Alive" karaoke-style to Bon Jon, who got to sing a duet with him at the end of things. Still, though, not working well. Know what else doesn't work well? Internet Video of the Day. Isn't someone already doing that on another show?

I've just watched ep 3. Same problems to start, but a funnier bit after the monologue. I thought "Beef Solvers" was clever and has potential. It's supposed to be about celebrity beefs - such as, as showcased this ep, the one between Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. And about Jimmy trying to finally solve them. He has a couple of audience members come up, and he puts a sign on each (two males for this one - one got the "Jennifer Aniston" sign hung around his neck, the other the "Angelina Jolie"), and has them read off cards to each other containing dialogue that expresses the celeb's "beefs" with one another. His first guest was Cameron Diaz, who should have been his guest the first night (personality of 10 compared to De Niro's 3). He seemed really relaxed with her and was much funnier. Their dance-off they had after the interview was quite the crowd-pleaser. His interview with Billy Crudup? Occasional misfires, but mostly better. No greatness yet, but less suck, which can't be a bad sign.

The one element of Fallon's show that's always on, though, is the band. He's managed to land himself the coolest band to ever grace late night talk - The Roots. Normally you barely think about the music going on when the host is first introduced and comes out on stage, but I'm always aware of their music and totally digging it. Loving these guys. They've also earned the unique honor of becoming America's #1 band that everyone now pretends to have heard of and been a fan of before this week. That's a prestigious accolade.

The show's main problem is that it doesn't feel organic in any way. Everything feels scripted, down to the interviews. Now, yes, we know that celebrity guests don't just pull up at the studio, come in, sit down on the couch and start talking to the host with no idea what questions are coming. But the successful shows create that illusion of spontaneity. As viewers of Fallon, we keep realizing at the end of things that the jokes and such between guest and host are planned out in advance, and we're left with this irrational feeling of somehow being tricked. Aside from this, Fallon stammers continuously, his comedy timing is off (for someone who worked in front of a live studio audience for years, he's surprisingly inept at creating audience rapport), his bits aren't very well thought out, and his interviews tend to involve a lot of cutting the guests off and going into drawn-out stories of his own life. You can tell that the potential is there with Fallon, but you're just perplexed as to why it's not surfacing yet. Again...maybe it's just going to take time.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is not great. And yet, I can't stop watching yet. Maybe it's that underdog thing again. I want to see him rise above the sub-par start and surprise everyone with a monster comeback. I'm guessing he can't wait for the next two nights to be over. He's probably just trying to survive the first week, and is focused on week two as the fresh start (if I were him, I'd have a lot of drinking planned for this weekend). I still like Fallon, and I want him to succeed in this. Not enough where I'll keep on watching for that much longer, but I feel like I need to ride week one out, at least. So I will.

Jimmy, if you're listening (it could happen), try to weather the critical bashing and sail on. Relax - it's your show, it's your studio audience, and it's your sense of humor that got you this far. Trust that. Be yourself. Wing it more. Trust your guests to be interesting all by themselves. If you're booking the good ones, they will be. Chat with the band more (you still seem kind of scared of them. I swear, they're not going to rob you). Continue playing with the audience - that makes people at home like you more. Just get these first week jitters behind you and get in your groove. I think you can do it. Own it, Mr. Fallon!

And consider less licking.

Ways to be cool

I found this posted on a message board I go to. Click on it to blow it up bigger if you can't read it. This was written, obviously, when the poster was a kid (or young teen), and he just came across it and decided to scan and share it. At that age, we're all trying to figure out how to be cool. I just love the way this kid took such a systematic approach to it, and the way the brains of youth work are always hilarious - as evidenced by some of his brainstorms for reaching coolness. I guess if I learned to speak "European", I'd be cool, too.

Not as cool as I'd be if I hung out with Steve, of course...

Soggy Bloggy

Not going to let a little much-needed California rain keep me off the patio. No sir! I got my hoodie on, got my table as far from the end of the patio as it can get to avoid any unwanted rain splashy on the laptop, got one of my final cigars going (can't really afford those anymore, which can't really be a bad thing), and I'm trying to keep up the pledge to keep myself blogging.

Man, got some depressing news regarding my now-former company. Got an email from Tim (who's still there) letting me know that they just let another guy go - Dan. That really sucks. Dan's a great guy. Dan was one of the very few people who, along with me, got their Wyoming licenses first. In insurance, certain states require you to get a license to handle claims there. Wyoming is one, and it's one of the states my (former) office handled. But getting that license is a PAIN, because you have to take this horrifying test that covers every area of insurance (even though most of it isn't the type of insurance you deal with). I still get the shivers thinking about that period when I took the test. I felt like I was trying to pass the bar exam or something. Hundreds of pages of RIVETING insurance knowledge to memorize. I hadn't realized how long it's been since I've been in college until I had to study again. Those last two weeks before the test were a nightmare. And then I finally headed down to the testing center and got it over with - and surprised the hell out of myself by nailing it! I say surprised because, as they told me when I was first informed I'd need to get the license (it wasn't optional for me, because I was the only total loss guy at the time, and they needed someone to handle totals in Wyoming who knew what they were doing), most people fail it the first time. You have to get 70% to pass. I worked with people who'd taken and failed it multiple times. So most people did everything they could to avoid getting theirs. It was sort of "requested" but not required back then. So Dan and I got ours, and we, and a couple other folks, handled all the Wyoming claims. Good news was that, back then, they offered a bonus for passing the test and getting your license. Dan and I got $500 for our troubles. Sweet! But, as time went on, management got tired of people NOT volunteering and made it mandatory that all claims people start getting their licenses. So with that many people having to do so, the bonus was taken away. This made me and Dan the smart ones. Lot of good that ended up doing us, huh? At the time I left, only one other guy in my unit had passed the test. Everyone else had failed. Some more than once.

So, anyway, that bummed me out. Dan's good people. I hope his skills and awesome customer service ethic get put to better use somewhere else real soon. Maybe Dan and I should move to Wyoming and start our own detective agency and solve moose-related crimes.

Speaking of my hoodie? I swear, I'm going to end up wearing holes in this thing. I'm wearing it all the time. This is my Kings hoodie that I bought at Sacramento airport a couple summers back. I was getting on a plane to San Diego, and realized I'd forgotten to pack a sweatshirt, and knew I'd be spending some late evenings kicking it on my buddy Tony's patio. It wouldn't be jacket cold, but the evenings can get a little cool in Diego. So I went into the sports shop at the terminal and picked this thing up. Initially I didn't use it all that much. But this winter? DAILY. I've been rocking this thing every evening when I get home, since I do like my patio time, and it also keeps me from having to use the heater inside if it's not too chill. I love it. The size is just perfect. The hood's not too tight and keeps my ears warm, and the sleeves are just long enough to pull down over my hands to keep my fingers warm when I'm typing. And now it's no longer just evening wear. It's an all-day thing. Going to miss it when the weather starts getting better, but hopefully that'll make it last for next winter.

Ah, I love moments like this one - when it's pouring down rain but the sun suddenly comes out. I'm a fan of meteorological irony.

Just contemplating the at-home lifestyle right now. We've all played the little fantasy in our heads of all the things we'd do if we had some time off work, right? The danger you get into when it becomes a reality is that time is really subjective, and it's easy to let days just disappear on you. The thing with me is that I've got SO many things to do, I'm feeling paralyzed making a decision on which ones to tackle and when. There have been some required things that have needed to be done to deal with the situation, and I'm still doing those. And I've been catching up on sleep, probably the best part about this. I've been getting about four or five hours of sleep a night for...man, long as I can remember. For health's sake, I'm making myself make up for that, and it's been good, but I still can't shake that "sleep is a waste of my time" feeling, knowing all the other stuff I should be doing. I've been making lots of lists this first week. I'm trying to capture everything in my life that I need and want to do, all the projects, writing and otherwise, that need my attention. It's a hell of a list. The problem is sifting through it all and figuring out where to start. Most important, I think, is that my fingers are hitting keys every day, no matter what it is I'm writing. I need to work into the discipline of regular writing. Hopefully with little steps each day, finished projects will start to appear from the ether of the effort. I've got a lot of reading to do, too. Not recreational reading (though there will be some of that, because the nice thing about being a writer is that reading that kind of stuff IS part of the writing process), but getting back to my screenwriting and general writing books, plus reading a lot of screenplays to get better with the form. What I really need to do, and haven't yet, is set myself on some kind of daily schedule instead of just frantically reaching for all the dozens of things crying out for my attention. I'd like to work in chunks of time each day for all the things I've gotten so behind at - email, education (I want to learn Photoshop, web design, Illustrator, Flash, Excell), writing, etc. I've always believed (from experience) that the less time you have, the more time you have, as we tend to be more focused when we have a finite amount of time to work with. The problem is that I now HAVE the time, and it's too easy to take that for granted. So my hope is to not.

Speaking of which, better get back to it. Got to start the search for an artist crazy enough to tackle a 128-page graphic novel and not get paid up front for it. I know he (or she) is out there somewhere. The search begins.

Thought for the day: Do whatever you can to find a way to see "Taking Chance", the HBO film starring Kevin Bacon. It will move you in ways you can't imagine. Powerful stuff.

Make that five million and one

So, for those of you that haven’t heard – and I think that’s still most of you at this point – I have grown tired of hearing statistics and feeling left out by not being a part of them. I am envious no more! I am no longer shut out of this exclusive (but rapidly expanding) club, but can now claim membership and all its privileges!

Yep. I’m unemployed.

I’ve been out of a job for just over a week now. I’ve let a few people know, but I figure after a week it’s about time to get the word out proper. As the old joke goes, I haven’t actually LOST my job – I still know where it is, but now when I go there, there’s some other guy doing it… The details aren’t important. The short version that I’m out of a job, and the bigger story is that I’m not sure how exactly I fit into the “job” world anymore. I have a lot of things to sort out.

As a rule, I don’t talk about my medical issues – the MD stuff, I mean. I’ve never really seen the point. The disease is a fact of my life, nothing’s going to change that, and giving other people all the details about how and where that’s going really doesn’t serve much of a purpose (except to depress people). I’ve been through some changes the past several months (or longer). It’s a progressive disease, and every once in a while, it’s going to progress. I’ve been through it before. Sometimes the changes are so slow that they happen over months and years, so subtly that I don’t even notice they’ve happened. Sometimes there are bigger jumps. One happened during the end of my time in Arizona, leading into my first time back in Sacramento. That’s when I gave up walking as an option, put away the cane, and started using the wheelchair full-time. And that was fine. I’d been fighting that off for a long, long time, and reached a point where I was comfortable with the surrender. It wasn’t just the walking. There was a noticeable drop in overall muscle strength. Those are the strange times. Those are the times when your brain hasn’t quite caught up with where your body has gone, when you instinctively reach for something on a shelf and can’t figure out, for a moment, why your hand won’t go there. Oh…because I can’t lift my arm that high anymore. I forgot. Like I said…strange.

I’ve been very fortunate (and still am) to have the type of Dystrophy that I have and the longevity I’ve enjoyed. Not everyone with MD is as lucky as me…lucky enough to live independently, take care of themselves, drive, carry on a “normal” life. So I accept the changes, when they come, without fits of whining or dismay. As I’ve said before, I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone paralyzed or severely and permanently injured in an accident or combat. To be just fine one day, and to be someone (physically) totally different the next? That would be an unfathomable challenge. Me? It’s not like I’ve ever been “just fine”. This is who I am, and what I know. Changes come, but they come over merciful periods of time. They happen at a speed that allows me to process and work into them. Some faster than others, but certainly none that happen overnight.

The latest changes have really been coming on for a while. There was a time, for example, when climbing in and out of other people’s cars was an easy thing for me. Just grab the car door, stand up from the wheelchair, lower myself into the seat, all’s well. That stopped being easy a good while back, and more recently, has became a giant throbbing pain in the ass. I’ve reached a point where riding with someone else only works in a have-to situation. If my folks are in town and want to go out to dinner, I’ll no longer jump in their SUV with them. I’ll get in my own van, with its handy wheelchair lift, and follow them to the restaurant. I prefer driving to riding anyway. When you spent as many years as a full-time passenger as I did, you enjoy making up for lost time.

My strength has been affected, and that’s led to some side-effects. The heart thing was already happening, but I took a drop in cardio output along the way. The unexpected surprise was my lungs. I hadn’t seen that one coming. I remember the day well when I first really noticed it, and went to my doctor (my regular, non-MD doctor) and asked why I was having trouble breathing. And I got his usual diagnosis. “Huh?” Doctors are retards. Testing indicated my lung capacity had dropped, and I was no longer able to take a full, deep breath – that kind of deep, big yawn breath, I mean. Which makes yawning odd, by the way. I do the yawn, my body reacts like normal, and even though I’m not taking in any more air after a certain point, my mouth still stays open and goes through the motions. Old habits, I guess. So, to be clear, I can still breathe (a fact which I hope is apparent, as I’m sitting here typing this right now), just not in quite as manly of a way anymore. So between heart and lung changes, fatigue has become a problem, and I get winded pretty easy. I’ve been in denial about this for some time, so it’s oddly cathartic to admit it. There’s this, and there’s a whole array of stomach issues that you really don’t want to hear about. And all this has added up to me missing more and more work. It’s made getting to work on time, if at all, a very serious challenge.

Well, at least for the moment, that’s not something I have to worry about.

I want to make clear that this is not some big “woe is me” rant, and I’m not in some deep funk over the whole situation. I had the luxury of knowing for a while that the unemployment thing was likely, so maybe that helped. But when it finally happened, it was not the crushing thing you’d expect. Maybe I’d had time to get used to the idea. Maybe I just realized that I was in a job that made me miserable and worked me to death and was making me miss out on the rest of my life. It felt right. I’ve found my life is broken down into clearly definable chapters, and I can usually sense it when one’s about to end and another begin. This had “meant to be” written all over it, one way or the other. Again, no depression. A few fears, but not many. I feel very positive about the chance to take a good look at my life and what I’m doing with it and start something new, whatever that something new may be.

So for now, I’m one of those people you hear about on the news (or maybe someone you know, or maybe yourself), waiting for that first unemployment check to come. Naturally, this is causing a lot of dramatic lifestyle changes. But I’m not all that bummed about those either. I’m strangely enjoying the chance to reevaluate and reorder my life, and to be forced, for once, to make some of the hard decisions that I’ve kept putting off and putting off while working long hours and coming home too tired to do much else.

Where is it all leading? Good question. At the moment, I’m exploring one possibility with this period of “free time”. It’s possible that this may be the time to quit screwing around and finally get serious about the writing. I’m never going to know if I have what it takes if I don’t even produce enough to make that decision. I have a book (non-fiction) that I’ve been making notes on for some time and have yet to start. I have files filled with screenplay ideas. I have a completed graphic novel script that just needs an artist to get itself off the ground (and it’s one I’m pretty excited about), plus other outlines and partial scripts I need to manifest. Maybe, while I’m working all this out, I can finally do what I’ve always felt I was meant to do, instead of getting by in a career that’s treated me very well but has left me empty and burdened with regret. Maybe it’s time for a real honest-to-gosh mid-life crisis that turns everything around. Maybe. Just maybe.

And along those lines, I do want to try to blog more (to keep the writing muscles going between those hard-fought moments of inspiration), so I need to get this all out so the rest to come will make sense. I’ll try to capture this period of my life on “paper” and see if that’ll help me make sense of it all. I haven’t gotten in a rhythm with any of that yet, but I’ve been understandably distracted.

As I said, this is more candid than I’m normally apt to be about my condition, but one of my problems with being a writer has always been self-censorship. I sacrifice honesty for the sake of the status quo and not upsetting people. If I want to write, I need to write the truth, and maybe it’s time I started living that ideal. So my apologies if this all comes off a little shocking. But it’s my life, and I’m cool with it, and a writer’s first responsibility is to share his life with the world. So…successful test.

The end of things here is that I’m okay. I like challenges these days, and I like to find the opportunities and seemingly crappy situations. Silver linings are everywhere if you look hard enough, and I’m looking. I’ve got some lifestyle adjustments to make, and I’m cool with that. I’ve got a future to figure out, and that emboldens instead of frightens me. I’m feeling good about it all, and looking forward to seeing what’s over the horizon. But I’m taking that journey to the horizon one day at a time. For now, that’s good enough for me.

So, the new chapter begins. Stick around and see where it all ends up. I’m hoping for some twists and a hell of a third act. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

Onward.