March 2003 Archives
March 27, 2003
Thursday Wrap-Up!
I woke up at 8 a.m. today. I have no idea why, and furthermore, I have no idea why I was simply unable to fall back asleep. Despite the fact that I’m a lazy person and a college student (a deadly combination), I enjoyed waking up early. I felt like I was able to actually accomplish something before I settled into the normal routine. Maybe I’ll start getting up earlier on a regular basis, around 6 or so, like I used to in high school.
Nah.
In addition to not being able to go back to sleep, I was feeling oddly and uncharacteristically motivated to do school work. Maybe this was a subconscious trigger that woke me up, saying, “Jesus, you lazy fuck, you didn’t do any of your homework today, and there’s no way you’ll get it done in the hour before class, so do it now.” I am doubtful of that explanation, because I’ve half-assed plenty of assignments an hour before class, and my subconscious has never bothered me about it.
Whatever the reason, I finished all of my screenwriting homework for today (and we, surprisingly, had quite a few assignments), and I finished all of my assignments for my Intro. to Literature class (except for finishing my paper, which is due before midnight but which I just can’t seem to convince myself to do), and all of this prior to 10 a.m. So I had a few hours to putz around, and then I left for school.
Shortly before class began, the Filmmaker came in and gave me a copy of his storyboards. He also showed me the photographs he took last Sunday. Damn, do I ever not photograph well. He also said we’d be moving props on Sunday (courtesy of the StanMobile™, since apparently only suburbanites own cars), and we’d be shooting Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. So look for some exciting updates concerning the film next week!
Additionally, in screenwriting I have been assigned what they’re calling a “first reader.” Logically, he’s the guy who reads my stuff first, so I can get constructive feedback from someone other than the professor. By the same token, I read his stuff and give him feedback. This week was the first time we had something for a first reader to read — our documentary treatments.
(For those unaware, our screenwriting curriculum is divided into three sections: documentary, narrative, and experimental.)
In order to celebrate and honor my personal laziness, I recycled the documentary treatment I wrote last semester in Writing For Television (we had an identical assignment), which concerned a fictional character who I’ve been passing off as a genuine person because it’s not worth my time to find and interview an actual person.
Meanwhile, my first reader wrote a genuinely touching documentary, in which he himself was the main character. He basically delved into his father’s life, interviewing the man (who I guess he barely knows), and he sort of discovered that, despite a rift they had had since childhood, he and his father are actually remarkably similar. He also explored some homosexual themes, because I guess my first reader is himself gay. That sort of threw me for a loop, because it came out of left field in the middle of his treatment. I guess I understand him not making a big deal of it, but it seemed like that was a major source of conflict between him, his father, and his stepfather. However, he wrote about it as if it were nothing.
So today, we discussed those things, and we also pitched out narrative film ideas to one another. His most promising idea almost made me laugh out loud — it was all about the subculture of so-called “bug chasers” and “gift givers.” For those who don’t know (and by gum, you should!), “bug chasers” are people who find the idea of contracting HIV extremely erotic. Conversely, those who are willing to pass on the disease are called “gift givers.” And quite a gift they are giving!
Personally, I find the subject so comical and baffling, I’m glad he’s actually willing to write (and possibly shoot) a script that explores that sort of deviant sexual underworld. He also gave the impression that this is a phenomenon that only occurs with homosexual males, though I’m not sure how true that is.
Posted by Stan on March 27, 2003 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | School Rants
March 26, 2003
Midterm Fun!
I took my politics midterm today. I totally forgot about it, and I lost my study guide so I couldn’t even cram during humanities. I think I failed the entire essay portion (which was 50% of the grade). I suck.
Still, I came up with a new idea for a book that I fleshed out on the train ride home. I think I’ll do some preliminary outlining tonight. I don’t need to do much research, so maybe I’ll try writing this as I research for my Big Novel™.
Or maybe I’ll be too preoccupied with Trading Spaces fan fiction (thanks again, Ian!) to get much writing done.
Posted by Stan on March 26, 2003 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
March 25, 2003
Oh, Emo!
I was just running some errands, and I was casually flipping through radio stations, which I don’t think I do often enough. I stumbled upon a station that was playing a song that was so stereotypically emo, it probably could be mistaken as parody. Acoustic guitars, girly-man singers, and bland pain.
The lyrics went like this (I’m paraphrasing): “I will always be alone, I will always be alone, unless you come to your senses.” Because obviously his relationship problems are only the damn woman’s fault, as is usually the case. Women. Where do they get off existing, am I right?
I tried to look up the song and the artist because for a second I was under the impression that that actually mattered. It’s impossible to find, though, because when you plug in “i will always be alone unless you come to your senses,” the hits are enormous — LiveJournals, GeoCities sites, and even one site that explains the intricacies of “coming out to your parents” (this cannot be a coincidence).
Posted by Stan on March 25, 2003 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
Oh, the Humanities!
Man, I think up some hilarious titles.
Yesterday, my humanities class was sort of tense. And bizarre. Moreso than usual.
Retroactive Note: the nicknames that I use for my fellow classmates are not explained until May 1st, 2003.
The professor was angry, which is unusual. She’s ordinarily very peppy and pleasant. And single. Not yesterday, however. When I walked in, she was sort of slumping at her desk, staring down at her notes for the day. This was disheartening, because I’m always extremely tired on Monday mornings, and her cheeriness often manages to wake me up.
Plus, she’s hot.
The other surprising thing was that I managed to show up before everyone. Usually The Workhorse is at least there long before I am, but he was nowhere to be seen. He waltzed in a few minutes later, enraged that he missed his train. (I think he likes getting to class 90 minutes early.) He noticed that our professor was looking a tad glum, and he wondered why.
I jokingly said, “She’s probably still pissed about the guest speaker on Monday.” I don’t think I mentioned this, but we had a truly awful guest speaker last Monday. He spoke about the Spanish Civil War, of which nobody in the class had any specific knowledge, read a poem by Langston Hughes about the Spanish Civil War, and then tried to engage us in an humanities discussion. He failed spectacularly, as we really, honestly had no idea who Franco was, what Moors were, and why we should give a crap about fascism in 1930s Spain.
Apparently the reason this guy spoke to our class was because the Liberal Education School is searching for candidates to replace somebody in a high position who is retiring at the end of the semester. I assume the purpose was to show what bright, motivated artists walk our campus’s hallowed halls, but since nobody was able to really discuss anything, I assume their mission failed.
Meanwhile, our professor was in a flying rage over this guy. She fought the heads of the department tooth and nail, but she’s a new-ish, part-time professor, so she has no real say in pretty much anything. She was so pissed off that this guest speaker came, she didn’t even show up to class that day. She told The Workhorse, who as usual was there 90 minutes early, that she was going upstairs to actually get some work done.
So flash forward back to yesterday. I’ve just made my little comment about our professor being pissed about the speaker on Monday. Her head snapped up, she stared at me, and she shook her head. “No, it’s not that,” she said. Huh. Perhaps she was having obscene personal problems. That was none of my business, which ordinarily doesn’t stop me, but she was hot, so I decided not to pursue it any further.
People continued to wander in during the ten minutes. This girl who generally sits next to me showed up early. I can’t for the life of me remember her name, which I think is sad because I actually like her. She often makes sarcastic comments that amuse me, and I in turn make sarcastic comments that amuse her. And she actually understands what we’re learning about, which is impressive considering the intellectual capacity of most students here.
This is important only because when she came in, I think she was trying to flirt with me. And I actually felt comfortable enough to flirt back without totally humiliating myself. I look forward to possibly pursuing another failed relationship with her.
Then, The Cheat and The Girlfriend showed up. They’re an odd couple. I saw them in the lobby, but I guess they didn’t get on the elevator, because it took them another ten minutes to get to class. Everything seemed fine then, but when they showed up to class, The Girlfriend was crying, and The Cheat was trying to console her by saying horribly inappropriate things. I thought this had something to do with the nugget The Cheat had dropped on me last Wednesday: they thought The Girlfriend was pregnant.
Anyway, through heavy tears and nasal congestion, she shouted at him, “I DO NOT GET A ‘C’ ENGLISH. IT JUST DOES NOT FUCKING HAPPEN.”
Clearly, this was more important than her possible pregnancy.
They put down their bags, performed a scene by Bertolt Brecht, and then decided to take it back into the hall, thankfully; we were all starting to get a little uncomfortable.
Back to the professor’s glumness, The Workhorse tried to cajole more out of her while I discussed Starbucks with the girl next to me. I used to work there, she works there now; coincidentally, her manager was the one who taught one of my training classes way back when. He was an amusing guy, and he made the class a lot less irritating than it could have been. I know this because the other two classes were taught by a humorless Russian woman. They were not fun at all.
At any rate, our professor finally revealed that she was in fact mad about the guest speaker — but only because the Liberal Education School was insisting that we have yet another guest speaker after spring break. So we flipped out, and we all — including the professor — discussed methods for rebellion.
The girl next to me hatched a plan for a walk-out; since the speaker would be witnessed by several departmental higher-ups, it would be an effective form of protest to simply stand up and leave. Our professor said she would not consider it an absence if we did it, but perhaps it would be more effective to write a letter to prevent the speaker from showing up in the first place. We could each write separate letters, or we could petition as a group.
I am thinking we should petition as a group. I will propose this idea to the girl next to me. Perhaps we can write it together, just the two of us, and our love will blossom as a direct result of our hatred of a common enemy.
Or not. Who knows?
Finally, during class, we spent most of class dissecting the last half of Act I, Scene 1 in King Lear. It’s kind of fun, because I get to create the impression that I’m smart because I get Shakespeare. So does the girl next to me; we’re the only two who talk anymore, which I find funny.
There’s a guy in my class who I thought I wrote about once, but I guess I didn’t. He thinks he’s really smart (and he is, in a way), and he really loves to hear himself talk (which is annoying as all get-out). During our first unit, on ancient Greece and all the great western thinkers of that era, it was very difficult to get him to shut his damn trap.
Since we studied the art of the Italian Renaissance, and now have moved on to Shakespeare, he doesn’t talk or think he’s really smart anymore. I guess he doesn’t really get Shakespeare. He just sits in the back of class like a lump of shit. I noticed him leaving class yesterday, and he seemed so sheepish and unconfident.
I wanted to point and laugh.
Posted by Stan on March 25, 2003 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
March 24, 2003
Of Emdashes and Life
Well, through a strange and baffling miscommunication between myself and MovableType’s “search-and-replace” feature, I accidentally changed every single question mark on this blog into an emdash. So I had to go through every entry, sorting out which was an actual emdash and which was a question mark.
Rereading the old entries, I realized something: my life is fucking boring.
Posted by Stan on March 24, 2003 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
March 23, 2003
The Meeting
On Thursday, the Filmmaker did not arrive at class until four o’clock (class starts at two, and the break is at 3:30). After class, I asked him where, specifically, we were meeting on Sunday. This was his extremely specific response: “At Michigan and Chicago.” Okay, it was pretty general, but I knew where it was, how to get there, and what he looked like, so I figured eventually I’d find him.
He said, “I work around there, so I figured we’ll meet there at noon, and then we’ll have lunch and I’ll show you the space. I’ll call you with more details and the specific address.” My response: “Okay.”
So Friday passed with no call from him. Saturday almost drizzled by with nary a word from the Filmmaker, but he called around 8:30 with more details and the specific address. I was bothered because I was watching my new Gone with the Wind DVD, goddammit.
He said, “Do you know the downtown area pretty well?”
“I know it pretty well,” I said. I did.
“Okay, do you know where the Ralph Lauren Polo is at Michigan and Chicago?”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t. Still, out of four corners of the intersection, the Ralph Lauren store had to be at one of them. Plus, it was right near the old water tower. It wouldn’t be hard to narrow down.
“Let’s say we meet there at noon. There are a bunch of sandwich shops around there, so we can do donuts or something.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I had never before heard the expression “do donuts” in terms of ingesting food. Usually, it was used to describe spinning a car around in a circle over and over again. That did not seem like an easily accomplished feat in a sandwich shop, so I assumed he meant we would find a sandwich shop that sold donuts, and we would buy and eat said donuts.
He said glibly, “You do do donuts, don’t you?” There was far too much consonance in that question, but I responded affirmatively because the only thing I love to eat more than chocolate is donuts.
“That’s good,” he said. “I think the true sign of whether or not somebody is an American is whether or not they do donuts.”
I realized later that this was a joke. At the time, I thought he was either trying to test whether or not I was an actual American (I do have the roguish good looks and athleticism of an international spy). I thought this was odd, because while donuts are pretty traditional in America, I had been given the impression at some point that they were invented by the Dutch. Dutch people are not Americans.
Here is what I said, as those thoughts shoved my love of Vivien Leigh out of my head: “I agree with that.” This was followed by a stilted laugh; I still wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not.
“Okay,” he said, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okey-dokey,” I said, because I’m somewhat of an enormous dork.
We hung up, and I finished watching my movie. Then I watched Trading Spaces. It was a good night. I may not be able to hang on to a girl for more than three months, but as long as I have Vivien Leigh and Paige Davis, I’ll never be lonely again.
So this morning, I headed downtown, found the Ralph Lauren store, and I was about fifteen minutes early. The Filmmaker was not there yet, so I went into the store and started browsing. I saw a decent-looking striped shirt that would look good with one of my suits. The shirt was $225, which cost more than both of my suits combined. I decided maybe I should stick with Target, and I went back outside and leaned against the building until the Filmmaker showed up.
He came with his girlfriend, an aesthetically pleasing African-American girl whose name I cannot spell or pronounce. She walked with us for a few blocks, then veered off toward a building I didn’t recognize. We continued east down Chicago Avenue and approached a large, hodge-podgey Gothic sort of building that apparently houses Northwestern University Medical School’s labs. This is where the Filmmaker worked.
He took me up to the sixth floor, showed me his office, which looked basically like my physics professor’s office: messy and full of beakers and chemicals and shit. After the tour of the crampt office, we went up to the fourteenth floor, which is where the dreaded room is. It’s basically an ancient boiler room, full of menacing, low-hanging pipes. It’s so old, though, that the boiler has been removed. An ancient fuse box sat in one corner, a dusty chair in another.
It was exactly as he described it: a dank, concrete room. Dirtier than I expected, smaller than I expected, but still dank and constructed of concrete. There were two windows: one gave access to the roof, and one showed a view of Fairbanks Court.
He explained the premise of the film and showed me his storyboards. It’s essentially a metaphor for the way people simply swallow the shit shoveled at them by the government and news media. I won’t go into more details than that, but it’s a fairly odd thing.
After he showed me The Space, we wandered over to Jimmy Johns, which makes sandwiches. I had Jimmy Johns once before: they deliver 24 hours a day in Champaign-Urbana, and when I was staying with my sister, she ordered an enormous Italian sub for me at 3 a.m. I thought that was fascinating, and I briefly wished that I lived in a genu-wine college town. That dream was squashed with approximately every other incident that occurred on that trip, but that’s another blog entry…
As we ate, the Filmmaker explained to me what his goal was for the day. He wanted to snap photos of the shots he wanted. He had two reasons for this: (1) it’d be easier to set up the shots he knows he can get once we actually begin shooting, and he’ll know the angles and how to light them and so forth before we start shooting; and (2) he wanted to turn the photos in as his storyboards instead of his drawings, which he thought were crappy (compared to the stick figures and vague shapes I pass off as storyboards, his were still-life renderings). This, I guess, explained why it would take so long, although as it turned out, we were done at about a quarter of three. Two to six, my ass…
Anyway, while we ate and he snapped off photographs, we talked about a lot of shit because we don’t really know each other well at all. He’s totally normal, which surprised me. He doesn’t have this tremendous “Ohmigod, I’m an artist!” attitude or anything terrifying like that. I still don’t understand why he wanted me in his film, but at least I know it won’t be a horrible experience, and I may actually — gasp! — make a lasting, legitimate friendship as a result of this. I don’t think such a feat has ever been accomplished at beautiful Columbia College in Chicago’s rustic South Loop, but I’ve always thought of myself as a social trailblazer.
After all, I was the first in my high school to endorse and utilize a strict policy of nudism.
Posted by Stan on March 23, 2003 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | The Filmmaker Diaries
March 22, 2003
Progress of My Columbia House Ruination Project
Allow me to brag for a little while.
Thanks to my elaborate Columbia House scamming, I am now the proud owner of the following DVDs:
The Blues Brothers (Collector’s edition)
Bowfinger
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Collector’s edition)
October Sky
The Royal Tenenbaums
Save the Last Dance (shut the fuck up, I liked this movie, you fucking bastards)
Wonder Boys
Bullets Over Broadway
Deconstructing Harry
Manhattan Murdery Mystery
Dr. Strangelove
Best in Show
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Gone With the Wind
Frailty
The Goonies
Pulp Fiction (Collector’s edition)
All the President’s Men
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Office Space
The Shining (1980 — though I admit to being one of the three people who liked the remake)
The Sting
Groundhog Day
Night of the Living Dead (30th Anniversary Edition)
Big Trouble
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Pink Floyd: The Wall
Total cost (deepdiscountdvd.com - includes 8.25% IL sales tax): $517.35
Average cost/DVD: $19.16
Total cost (Columbia House - includes 8.25% IL sales tax & shipping/processing charges): $832.28
Average cost/DVD: $30.83
Total cost to me (includes 8.25% IL sales tax): $192.06 ($29.05 of which has been paid)
Average cost/DVD: $7.11
I saved 63% off of deepdiscountdvd.com’s price and 77% off of Columbia House’s price.
A winner is me!
Posted by Stan on March 22, 2003 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Money Troubles
March 19, 2003
Exciting Update on My Movie Stardom
As we all should currently know, I am right about to become a movie star. I’ve been invited to star in some dude’s student porno, and as such the phone calls have begun. Most of my friends know I’m not a big phone guy, so I don’t get a lot of calls.*
Then again, most of my friends wouldn’t call me even if I liked being on the phone.
The phone isn’t the problem, though: it’s my increasing paranoia about the weirdness of this whole film thing.
Anyway, the Filmmaker called my cell phone today while I was in class; I got the message on my way home, and I figured, “Bleh, I’ll see him in class tomorrow, so it’s no rush to call him back.” Apparently this assertion was inaccurate, as he called my house a few hours later and left a similar message (I didn’t pick up the phone because the caller ID was a number I didn’t recognize from somewhere in the Loop — the phone number he left on my cell phone didn’t match).
So I called him back after Buffy, and I answered the questions he posed on my VoiceMail (1. Would working over spring break be a problem?; 2. Can we get together this weekend to discuss the project?). Then, he told me that when we got together he’d show me “the space,” which is a “dank concrete room in the place I work” (his actual words). He volunteered lunch (goddammit, he better pay! — I don’t go dutch on the first date) before the tour of the space and the details of the project, so I guess we’re doing that Sunday.
Based on the choice of pronouns and his general demeanor, I got the distinct impression that (1) I’d be the only one attending this little soiree, (2) it’d for some reason take four hours for him to explain the complexities of his three-minute film, and (3) the “dank concrete room” would be the perfect place to torture and anally rape me, though I’m not sure why anybody would want to.
These confusing leaps of logic sprang to my mind, but I’m terrible on the phone. Part of the reason I hate it is because I’m apparently so bewildered by the technology behind telephony that I find it difficult to do things like, for example, ask the questions that spring to mind. “Where exactly is this space?” “Where are we having lunch?” “Why will this take four hours?” “Are people who aren’t you and me going to be there?”
Of course, I asked none of these questions. For some reason, I do much better in person than on the telephone, so when he gives me “details” tomorrow in class, I will be sure to ask them.
Until then, I’ll prepare an elaborate ball of toilet paper and cotton balls to soak up the blood.
*My sister, who calls me at least twice a week, is well aware of my hatred of the phone, but she dismisses it as an excuse I made up so I don’t have to talk to her. She should be aware that I could make up much better excuses than that.
Posted by Stan on March 19, 2003 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | The Filmmaker Diaries
March 18, 2003
Politics
I got my paper back from my Politics class yesterday. I got an A on it somehow. My professor wrote this comment: “Great paper. I like the tone in which it is written and the insights it offers.” I think she might have misread the entire paper.
Still, you gotta love a class where you compare the President of the United States to Hitler, Otto von Bismarck, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein, with no real research or logic behind the comparisons, and you still get an A.
Posted by Stan on March 18, 2003 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
Five Steps to a Better Blog!
I have a lot of friends with LiveJournals. And they have a lot of friends with LiveJournals. And they have a lot of well-wishers with LiveJournals. The LiveJournal community is fascinating, if not utterly baffling, but it really did make me realize that, as a blogger, I am not maximizing my emo potential. So I’ve constructed a series of rules that will alllow readers to really feel my bland white-boy pain, instead of just reading and laughing uproariously.
1. Quote emo lyrics
This one will be the most challenging, I think, because despite the emocity expressed on this here blog, I don’t really listen to or enjoy the emo music. Sure, I have heard it. I’ve been to parties at Jive’s house. But I’m not a big fan, as I really don’t like the music despite my seemingly innate ability, as a white suburban male, to relate to such issues as “my boy/girlfriend broke up with me,” “my parents are such a drag,” and “somebody stole my pot.” I am also quite the master of crying about things and writing songs about them.
And yet I’m not into emo, and I don’t want to be. Maybe I’ll open this one up to the more general “quote song lyrics.” Few people understand the emotional impact of quoting a line or two, or in some cases an entire song. It shows that you are in such a tough place emotionally that you can’t even express your own anguish — you need some neophyte poet to do it for you. It’s admirable, really.
I think the best way to utilize this is to take a variety of quotations from different songs and string them together into one long, soupy blend of crap. An example:
Nothing is real but pain now
Come back to me
Touch me with a ten foot pole
I’m rockin’ the suburbs.Then I saw that man
In his black suit and Cadillac.
He is full of death
And misery.A total system failure
Of life.
Wow! If I made more entries like this, my “profundity” level would increase fiftyfold.
2. Share some of my original — and angst-filled — stories and poems to display exactly how I’m feeling
This one will be the most do-able, since I am a writer (or at least I claim to be). The easiest way to truly express your pain is through your own words. Many LiveJournalers write poems and stories, and they include excerpts of them for their many LJ friends to read. I’m not sure if they do this because they are desperate for encouragement, or just to show how fluidly they can express their pain via the magic of fiction (read: thinly veiled excerpts from real life, with different names). Here is an example from my own book of one-stanza poems that I began writing after my girlfriend dumped me:
I am full of misery
I let her get away.
If I just had a chainsaw,
That fucking bitch would pay.
Or an example from one of my unfinished works of fiction (I think I wrote this in high school):
By sunset, most of the skaters were long gone, but a few of them were still there on that evening.
“Hi, guys,” Jack said, amiably as always.
“Fuck you,” one of them said as Jack opened the glass doors.
“What did you say?” Jack asked, stopping and turning around.
“I said, ‘Fuck you,’” the skater repeated. He was a pink-haired freak. The vast majority of his pierceable face was pierced more than once.
“That’s what I thought,” Jack said.
“What’re you gonna do about it?”
Jack thought about it, and realized what the skater meant. “I’m not gonna fight you.”
“Who’s asking you to fight me? I was just stating my feelings towards your joviality,” the skater said.
“Ooh…big word for a fucking idiot,” Jack replied.
“Oh, so I’m an idiot, now?”
“I’d say so.”
“Get him, boys,” the skater said.
The skater and his three friends, each of whom had equally hideous facial piercings cluttering up their faces, advanced on Jack.Jack awoke in a prison cell.
Pretty shitty, huh? Yeah, but it’s full of raw teen angst, so post away!
3. Be as ambiguous as possible
It is a common rule on LiveJournals to constantly talk about how you don’t want to talk about things. I’ve always thought this was stupid, because if you’re gonna keep a public journal, document everything you want people to read. If you want to keep something so personal that you don’t want people knowing about it, just don’t bring it up at all.
Now I realize that this was misguided thinking, and I feel like a fool. Ambiguity is a helpful device for readers of my blog: if they have no idea what I’m talking about, it leaves them salivating for more; if they know exactly what I’m talking about, they feel like they’re in some sort of elite power circle of ultimate friendship. Either of these reactions are good things. As an example, here is what my infamous entry The Protest would look like if I were to ambiguitize it:
Man, last night was weird, and I have the bruises to prove it.
(Note: This example could also be used to describe the many long nights I spent with a she-male named Kamar.)
The technique of ambiguity especially helps if you give a wink to either those who are left out or those who are among the inner-circle. For example:
Man, last night was weird, and I have the bruises to prove it.I won’t go into details because those who should know about it already do; everybody else should just let it go.
And with something that simple, you have your readers eating out of the palm of your shit-stained hand.
4. Be more suicidal
There are many things I’m not. One of them is suicidal. Considering the shape of my life, one would think that I contemplate suicide on an hourly basis, but the truth is I’ve never really thought much about it. Despite how much I hate my life sometimes, I’m so afraid of death that suicide has always seemed logical. I never really understood those who thought it might actually be a better alternative to living.
Maybe that’s just because I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife. As Diane Keaton says: “Oh, sure, when people die they live for all eternity? What would they do with all that free time?” Damn, she’s funny.
At any rate, I’ve discovered once again that I am fully wrong on this. Everything is more like Ozzy Osbourne says: “Suicide is the only way out.” Of course, the Ozzman was referring specifically to those with drug problems and sanity issues, not guys who can’t handle getting dumped or girls who are so in love they think the only way to prove it is to die.
But that’s neither here nor there. Suicide is cool. Suicide is all the rage. All your friends are doing it! In fact, I’m going to commit suicide right now. Here is what I would say in a blog entry if I were to off myself right now:
Goodbye, cruel world.
I have a statuette on my toilet. It is actually a sculpture of a toilet, with a man inside it, hand on the flusher, looking depressed and generally horrible. Below it, the phrase “Goodbye, cruel world” is engraved. Every time I read a LiveJournal entry that’s even vaguely suicidal, I think of that statuette and laugh for nearly a decade.
Yay suicide! Now I’m going to go cut myself so my parents will notice me!
Shallow cuts, shallow cuts…
5. Make sure all my titles are references to songs, movies, or television shows
There’s an old saying among writers that everybody takes their titles from one of two sources: the Bible or Shakespeare. Since most LiveJournalers have never read Shakespeare — except when it’s assigned for a class, and even then it’s 50/50 — and they reject the Bible because how could there be a God when they have to suffer so much, most titles come from Smashing Pumpkins songs, the contemporary equivalent of Shakespeare, or Pulp Fiction, the contemporary equivalent of the Bible.
So, to once again use my old infamous example entry, The Protest, how could I possibly change the title from such utter bluntness into something ambiguous, maybe even a little confusing, that comes from either Pulp Fiction or a Smashing Pumpkins song?
It was hard, but here is what I came up with one of the following: “Drag me in with maybes” or possibly “I’m a mushroom-cloud-layin’ motherfucker, motherfucker!”
And there you have it. An emotastic LiveJournal in just five easy steps!
Posted by Stan on March 18, 2003 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | Random Musings
March 16, 2003
Deconstructing Harry
I have no social life, so I spend most weekends watching TLC, trying to identify why I have such a terrifying attraction to the overly perky Paige Davis. Unfortunately, now that TLC has developed an army of terrible reality shows, they no longer play Trading Spaces and While You Were Out marathons every single weekend, so when there was nothing else on, I decided to watch Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry, which I’d never seen before.
This movie was conceived and made during the bloody aftermath of the Mia Farrow/Soon-Yi Previn disaster, and boy does it ever show. Allen plays Harry Block, a nightmare vision of his usual persona — a narcissistic, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, pill-popping, borderline psychotic infidel whose primary crisis throughout the film is separating his life from the world of fiction. He’s a writer who can’t function in life, so he creates completely separate, fictional universes where he can survive, because he can have complete control over everything. And he always comes out the hero.
The plot is a pretty loose excuse to introduce as many characters from Block’s life as possible, to show us his personality, and to show us how he “fixes” the events of his life in his books. Harry is being honored by the university that kicked him out so many years ago, so he needs to go upstate to accept the award. He also needs to find somebody to go up there with him, so he won’t be alone.
Block pathetically trudges from person to person and intersperses that with vignettes from his novels and stories, portraying Block’s idealized life and comparing it to his actual life. In his actual life, he’s alienated every person he’s ever met, with the exception of his son (who shouts “Fuck God!” and “Pussy Pounder!” at his mother), a hooker, and a hypochondriac. He uses every moment from his life as fodder for his books, not caring about the real-life consequences of his writing.
In the end, Harry goes to Upstate with the hooker, the hypochondriac, and the son (whom he kidnaps). He makes pit stops at a restaurant where he and his second wife got into an enormous fight, at his sister’s house, and he ends up talking to characters from his books, who give him a glimpse of how the consequences of his actions affected those around him. It’s basically the anti-It’s a Wonderful Life.
When Block shows up at the campus with a hooker, his kidnapped son, and the hypochondriac (who, it seems, was not a hypochondriac — he died on the trip), he is almost immediately arrested by his most recent ex-wife (played by Kirstie Alley, who was surprisingly non-annoying) and jailed until his ex-girlfriend (Elisabeth Shue) shows up with her new husband (Billy Crystal), and everything ends happily.
This is easily Allen’s most hate-filled movie, which is saying something, and it’s probably his most personal in many ways. I also think it’s his best. It’s a black comedy, but very little of it is played for laughs. It’s funny as hell, but unlike most of Allen’s comedies, nobody is ever really hammering home a joke, and when they do, it’s incredibly offensive. It also evokes an incredibly somber tone. Even then “happy ending” is pathetic, because Harry never learns anything. He just keeps chugging long. If anything, he’s worse than he was when the film began (with an ex-lover trying to shoot him).
The thing I admired most about it is the fact that, through all the bad shit that happens in the movie, all of it is Harry Block’s fault. This isn’t an autobiographical movie specifying the personal details of his imploded relationships that points the fingers at everybody else; he blames himself, and he probably should. He’s also essentially telling viewers what he really believes: that he can function in art, but not in life, so get off his fucking back already.
I also love the way Allen tackles the subject matter, but I don’t want to say much because I think it’d ruin the effect that it has. All I’ll say is, he tackles this theme — of people who are able to function only through art — which is as old as Aristophanes, and he probably crafts the best film around it that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a whole assload of movies on the subject (I don’t think many European directors are aware that there are other subjects to tackle).
Rating: **** (out of 4)
Posted by Stan on March 16, 2003 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Reviews
March 15, 2003
The Doctor Is [REAL IN]
After roughly five years of stalling, I finally shelled out the money for a new Dr. Grip pencil. On a whim, I also bought the dreaded Dr. Grip roller ball pen.
I admire the new design on the pencil — it’s springier, and it’s easier to load the lead and replace the erasers.
And the pen is, quite simply, the best pen I’ve ever owned.
All in all, a good week for office-supply purchases.
Posted by Stan on March 15, 2003 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Career-Based Rambling
March 13, 2003
I Am Now a Movie Star…I Guess
I was sitting in my Screenwriting class today, minding my own business, casually checking out this really hot girl who was sitting two seats away from me, when I noticed a guy simply staring at me. When I looked at him, he didn’t stop. He just kept staring. Then, eventually, he stopped, but the damage had been done. I know I’m bizarre looking, but that’s not license to stare at me, to contemplate a face only a cement mixer could love.
Then, during the break, things got even stranger. He came up to me and said, “I’m making a film.” This is not a shocking revelation, as we were in a film class that is a requirement for the film major. But still: why me? In that class, I have never given even the faintest indication that I’m some big-time actor-guy. I usually just keep to myself and occasionally mix things up by cutting. This leads me to the conclusion that there is something about my chiseled physique that is appealing for his film.
But I said okay. Since I had a remarkably difficult time finding actors for my Production I films (I usually ended up using other students from that class, and vice-versa), I thought I’d be nice and help this guy out. So he gives me a sheet of paper to write down my contact information, and as I’m doing that he goes into a brief explanation of the film. He says I play a violent, drunken sexpot. Very few people look at me and think, “That there is a violent, drunken sexpot.” Maybe he was at that shitty war rally.
I found the entire thing odd. Afterward, it was like we were best friends. Every time I made a comment in class — which I wouldn’t have done, except every person in class was required to say something about everybody else’s pitches — he would nod at me in agreement, or smile bemusedly, or say something like, “That’s a really excellent point.” Suddenly I was Homer Simpson: “Is he coming on to me? … Oh my god, he is coming on to me…” and so forth. Although, in retrospect, that wasn’t really the vibe he gave off. It was really the typical “I’m a Columbia student, it’s hard to make friends here, so be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you.” Which is cool, I guess.
But suddenly I’m concerned. He never really went into details about what I’d have to do in the film, except that I’d be throwing a television off the roof of a building in a fit of anger. That I can do, assuming it’s a small, lightweight TV. But he didn’t say much else, except “there’s a lot of sex and violence. More violence than sex.” Which I guess is cool, because I’ll probably end up making out with and dry humping a girl (jeez, I hope it’s a girl…) without any actual strings attached. I’d never balk at an opportunity like that.
Still, what if it’s something really bizarre? Like, for example, “in this shot you’ll streak down the State Street median, in the Loop, in rush hour. And bear in mind it’s far too late to back out and leave me high and dry now, you rotten son of a bitch. Strip!” I will do a lot of things for my art; streaking is not one of them. In fact, I only do nudity if it’s tasteful and if it involves dry humping women. Jeez, maybe I should hit the gym. Many, many, many times in a row. And consult a plastic surgeon.
He also says that it’ll be “two or three nights,” which is another consideration. I don’t have any night classes, but I can’t pull three all-nighters in a row, even if I don’t have class the next day. I need my beauty sleep. No, seriously. One time I pulled a closing a shift at Starbucks followed by an all nighter of homework followed by an opening shift, and I went home and crashed instead of going to class. Why’d I even do all that homework?
Oh well. He’ll e-mail me with details. I guess nothing’s set in stone yet, so, as they say on the streets, “We have no written contract, so fuck off.” But if the details include the phrases “dry humping,” “making out,” and/or “attractive girl,” I will certainly be hot on this project!
Damn, I need a girlfriend.
Posted by Stan on March 13, 2003 8:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | The Filmmaker Diaries
March 11, 2003
World Domination™
I just finished writing a paper about…well, let me just paste in the title, which pretty much sums it up: “Nationalism, Globalism, and Pontifications on Whether or Not the World Has Changed in Any Way Whatsoever Since the Roman Empire.” I didn’t really find an answer to my rant. I guess it’d be a big fat “no,” but since I was allowed to simply rant about the way I feel about things, I didn’t want to bog it down with details like “supportive evidence” or “facts,” so I remained purposely vague.
Oh well.
Posted by Stan on March 11, 2003 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
Researching for the Ladies…
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve begun preliminary research on a novel that might possibly be more unpublishable than The Great American Parade. When I research this type of thing, I do it in a very specific way. I’m not sure if this is unique or mundane, so I’ll describe it in full and exciting detail, citing examples from my current research material.
Depending on how valuable the research material (in this case, books) is to the project, I will either buy the book or find it at a library. I buy it if it is absolutely crucial. The novel I’m working on deals with mainly religious themes (with a sci-fi slant), and, as often as possible, I’d like to cite specific supportive text from major religious texts. So, for example, I bought a copy of The Holy Bible, but I’ll go to the library and take extensive notes on the various differences between specific types of Judaism and Christianity.
This is primarily because I don’t know dick about religion. It’s just never something I really gave a crap about. It still isn’t, but if I’m going to write something that’ll openly mock all the major religions, I figure I should at least know something about them so I don’t sound like an Orbified Bill O’Reilly.
With my copies of religious texts in tow, I can begin the exegesis, which is a fancy word for “analysis,” and this is where things get sort of complicated. I have A System™. The System™ is this: multicolored Post-Its (pink, blue, and yellow) and matching highlighters mean different things. I also have stenographer tablets in legal yellow and white. All of these mean different and terrifying things.
The yellow Post-Its and highlights are quotations; the blue are (somewhat long-winded) ideas expressed by the text, which are summarized on the Post-It but highlighted in full; and the pink are strange plotlines or stories that could be abused in the novel. Meanwhile, I use the legal tablets to flesh out various thematic and thetic elements (and the ways in which they are supported by or detracted from the text. The white tablets are reserved for character descriptions (as I think of them), possible plot ideas (and, if necessary, corresponding text), scene starts, descriptions, dialogue passages, etc. Basically, the creative stuff I think of that the research inspires. The different creative aspects are demarcated through creative use of colored ink to headline whatever it is (e.g., red pen for a character description, blue for a plot idea). However, the meat of it is written in pencil.
So that’s The System™, and that’s how I research materials I own. In the case of researching stuff I don’t own, it’s pretty much the same, except instead of Post-Its and tablets, everything is written on big, yellow legal pads. The haphazardness is given order via colored ink and highlighting. If a quotation is too long to write without my hand falling off, I’ll Xerox it. Otherwise, I copy it by hand.
Pretty simple, IMO. And fun! No, seriously. I really like researching. I almost like it more than the actual writing. Almost.
But all this researching brings me to the discussion I had last night with Sarah. She asked me why I never go on dates anymore. Instead of citing the obvious, such as my grotesque physical appearance and clammy hands (which would cause her to shout things and throw shit at me through phone lines, like in Ghost Dad), I explained to her that women seemed to be turned off by my general existence.
I elaborated by saying that modern, urban hipsters don’t seem to be particularly excited by a geeky guy with his nose buried in a Bible that is filled with Post-Its and notes paperclipped onto it. I think they either assume I am starting a cult, trying to gain entrance into a cult, or plotting to make abortion clinics explode. And, hey, maybe they’re right. Like I said, I’m not very familiar with the intricate details of religious texts — one of those three could be the end result my studies.
Sarah said that if I was smart, I would buy a t-shirt that said GENIUS AT WORK. After explaining all the reasons why that’d be a hideous misnomer, not to mention that fact that it would do nothing to dispel the idea that I am a possible cult member, she said I should print up my own t-shirt, and it should say, I’M REALLY NOT A FREAK; I’M JUST RESEARCHING A NOVEL.
I thought that was actually a good idea, although a bit wordy. And since I actually am a freak, I thought the best idea would be to to chop that part out, and just leave it at I’M RESEARCHING A NOVEL. Then I thought I should add, ASK ME HOW! to show that I have a sense of humor, even if it’s a shitty one. Plus, maybe some idiot girl would ask me how, and then it’d be easier to start a conversation. Women don’t usually like my ice-breaker of, “I don’t drink, but I wouldn’t mind getting you loaded.”
Which leads me to the inevitable conclusion: I will finally print up my dream t-shirt, the one that says RAISE THE ROOFIES! with a drawing of a girl, unconscious on a motel-room bed.
Posted by Stan on March 11, 2003 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Career-Based Rambling
March 6, 2003
Negativity
As usual, I was talking to Sarah the other night, pissing and moaning about how awful my life is. She said to me, “I just don’t get why your life is so bad. You always complain about it, but I don’t see why.” That made me stop in my tracks, because I had absolutely nothing good to say in response. All I kept thinking was, “Holy shit, she’s actually right. I bitch about everything, but nothing’s really wrong.” I told her I bitch because I like it, despite the fact that (usually) nothing is wrong.
She didn’t get it. If nothing’s wrong, why do I bitch? I tried to explain, realizing already that I sounded like a big dumbass, that I make things wrong, in my head, so I’ll be able to complain about them. I have no legitimate problems, certainly none worth complaining about.
I’m not starving. I’m not even struggling to make ends meet. I live in a good neighborhood in a (generally) decent town where everybody’s totally insane but few people commit any memorable crimes. I’ve had my share of laughable romantic liasons, some of which actually lasted for more than a week. I am able to get a college education. I have parents who don’t openly dislike me, and usually pretend to support me even though I’m usually being an idiot.
In other words, things are okay. I read somewhere that people who hate life and the world, in a cruel and ironic trick of nature, usually live longer than people who are happy and pleasant all the time. I don’t know about that. It feels good to stop hating everything all the time.
I doubt it’ll last, though. I’m not really wired for positive thinking, no matter how good I may have it. In fact, I’m the kind of guy who, when told his life isn’t so bad and so he should quit bitching, would actually do something to make his life bad enough that it is worth complaining about.
Then again, I’m the kind of guy who stopped eating meat for six months — not because of some kind of animal-cruelty protestation or because a doctor told me I wasn’t allowed to, but because of a secret fear that the government was selling us meat made from humans. And the worst of it is that I wasn’t so worried about eating human meat — my problem was the fact that the price was so high.
“There’s a word for people who think everyone’s out to get them.”
“That’s right — perceptive.”
— Woody Allen
Posted by Stan on March 6, 2003 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Stories of Pain and Humiliation
March 1, 2003
It’s Sad When This Is What I Consider Flirting…
(09:47) Stan: Enjoy your party.
(09:47) Stan: I’ll be there with you in spirit, slipping roofies into your drink and praying for the best.
(09:49) Sarah: thanks
OMG SHE SAID THANKS! SHE IS MINE! SHE WILL BREAK HER ENGAGEMENT AND LEAP INTO MY OPEN ARMS!
…or not.
Posted by Stan on March 1, 2003 9:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Fumbling Attempts at Relationships
