February 2004 Archives
February 11, 2004
Strangers on a Train
On the train ride home yesterday, I was — as usual — squeezed onto a seat next to somebody irritating. I enjoy rush hour a lot. This woman was sitting there, reading a book, when all of a sudden she gasps out, “Oh, Jesus.” The tone in her voice indicated that the Second Coming was nigh. I thought to myself, “Ignore her.”
Suddenly, the woman thrust her right hand — the one not holding the book — down into her general crotch area and buried her face into the open book. I had absolutely no idea what she planned to do down there, and I didn’t particularly want to find out. Still, on a train at rush hour, you can take whatever seat you can get, and it’s not like there was room to move around. It was standing-room only. So I thought, “Continue to ignore her.”
Then, she started waving the book back and forth in front of her face, and suddenly I knew what the problem was. “Oh God,” I thought, “she must’ve farted.” Still, you don’t want to jump to too many conclusions. It’s completely possible that she got the vapors or the megrims or one of those other weird ailments you find in 19th-century romance novels (not that I’ve ever read any of those…) and needed to fan herself off.
Then, she inched forward in the seat, exposing the thin, blue, almost-plush lining, and honestly, I thought I was gonna die. I grew up in a house with quite a bilious father, and the gastric explosions I was privy to in my youth were enough to make most mortals go blind. I have to settle for a lack of depth perception, but still, I consider myself tough when it comes to anal stench saturation.
But this…this was out of control, to the extent that a hazmat team showed up at the Western Avenue stop, stripped us down, and sprayed us with industrial hoses. Then, the removed the affected train car, buried it two hundred feet below the surface, salted the earth, and sealed off the entire area with a thirty-foot electrified privacy fence.
Okay, that didn’t actually happen, but it should have. This odor was unbelievable, and it lingered in the air for twenty minutes. Shortly after an explosion of gas reminiscent of Los Alamos, New Mexico, circa 1945, the woman escaped from the train, leaving the rest of us to deal with what she had created. A woman sat down next to me, and I wonder about the ordeal she went through afterward.
Honestly, I’ve been wanting to write about people farting on the trains for months, because it’s really starting to get to me. I understand people get gas — seriously, I really understand — but can’t they just hold it in until they get off? Or, actually, until they get out of the station. I was walking behind this guy at Union Station the other day, and we were on the escalator, my ass right in his face, and he just lets fly. And in rush hour, I’m sitting, and people stick their asses in my face and fart.
What. The. Fuck?
No wonder nobody takes advantage of public transportation except poor people like me and big fat losers like the dude who brought a seven-course Taco Bell dinner (I shit you not, irony sort of intended) onto the train on Monday. Also, I swear the Taco Bell guy wasn’t also me.
Posted by Stan on February 11, 2004 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Stories of Pain and Humiliation
Spam
I just got one of those wacky, nonsensical spams, and the subject line reads: “chordata orchestra petal audacity.” Now, combined, these words make no sense, but I don’t think anyone can disagree that “chordata orchestra petal audacity” would make an excellent name for a rock band.
Posted by Stan on February 11, 2004 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Random Musings
February 10, 2004
The Misadventures of the Pothead
I was sort of excited about my experimental screenwriting class, not only because I’d be taking it with the Pothead, but because it’s being taught by possibly my favorite instructor of all time. Unfortunately, though, the Pothead never showed up. I was asked to call her, which I would’ve done anyway, to find out wassup. It turns out, she managed to fail a class last semester (and an easy class, at that). She adamently refused to tell the story, but she said she’d talk to the experimental screenwriting professor and see if she thought the workload was feasible on top of this class she needs to repeat.
Sigh.
The topics in literature class is neat. It’s about Spike Lee and August Wilson in particular. As I already noted, Spike Lee is one of my filmmaking heroes. I don’t believe I’ve ever noted that August Wilson is one of my (many) writing heroes.
My sister originally turned me on to his writing; she’s a theatre major, so she reads all sorts of piddling crap that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. When she reads something good, she forces me to read it, as well. As such, I’ve managed to read the majority of Wilson’s plays and a few biographies, and he’s really fucking good.
I’m glad I’m taking this class, even though I have the feeling that when all is said and done, it’s going to have an ending not unlike the one featured in Do the Right Thing.
Small word about Spike Lee. Apparently he’s coming the first week of March, although nobody knows the specific dates. Also, apparently he “hates white people,” which is not at all surprising to me, although I think it’s an oversimplification of his feelings. Chances are, they’ll lock me in a cage before I’m allowed to meet him, but I’ve snuck word to a few people I know on the faculty in the film department, so we may sneak around somewhere.
Posted by Stan on February 10, 2004 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
February 9, 2004
The Pitching Class
One of the mega-important classes I’m required to take as a screenwriting concentration deals specifically with the ins and outs of pitching. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be the most challenging class I’ve ever taken, except for one horrible catch: there’s only one teacher, and she was my horrible monster of a Screenwriting I professor.
One of the things I’ve rambled about before on this blog but am currently too lazy to look up was the fact that I had to repeat Screenwriting I. You need to get a B or higher to move on in the curriculum, and I got a C. This was before I knew anybody in the department, and long before I knew I could just go and talk to one of three people and get the requirement waived. Instead, I formally petitioned the grade to a dean who couldn’t care less, and I ended up repeating the course.
I consider this a good thing, since I learned absolutely nothing the first time around, and the second, I had a really wonderful professor who was really on top of his shit. Honestly, I could go on and on comparing the differences between this professor and my first one, but I figure I’m being boring enough just going into this back-story again, so I’ll move on.
I will say, to her credit, that the only day of Screenwriting I that I felt I learned something was the day we learned about pitching. She really seems to know a lot about that, which makes sense since she’s run two management companies (and still runs one based out of Chicago), but she also reads screenplays for a living but can’t for the life of her advise people on writing them. Still, if pitching is her forte, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones and ignore the miserable experience I had in Screenwriting I. And hopefully she won’t remember the three occasions I shouted at her.
The other thing is that she seemed to get really annoyed by the “beginner” students, especially those who didn’t give a shit about writing. Screenwriting I is required for the film major core, so everybody has to take it, and very few people are actually interested in writing (at least when they start Screenwriting I). We did have big problems with people not taking the class seriously, and she was new and inexperienced. She created a room full of people who thought she was cool but had absolutely no respect for her, and once she realized that, she got frustrated and started to lash out, which sort of led to the aforementioned miserable experience.
The difference this time is that the pitching class is pretty much limited to advanced students, most (if not all) of whom have screenwriting concentrations and really want to learn whatever she has to offer. I also know a few people who had her for this class last semester, and they really found it useful. So, again, I’m going into this with as open a mind as I can.
The class itself is pretty small, though that may change. We only had about half the class show up today, which is odd since it’s the first day. I wonder if they’re going to drop. One of the people who did show up, though, was the Token Articulate African-American Fellow (aka, Fellow), who was in Production II with me over the summer. He’s such a funny guy for a number of reasons, the first of which was that he entered class about 10 minutes late, sat next to me, and whispered, “I am so hung over.” Something about his delivery made me laugh out loud, which was probably a bad thing.
A little while later, our professor (who, just for the sake of an appropriate Buffy reference, I think I’ll call the Hideous Bitch-Monster of Death) asked us if we had any general questions about the course expectations, Fellow raised his hand and said, “I have to say that I think Columbia is generally an overrated school, and I’ve had a hard time reconciling the fact that I’m paying so much money to take classes that are taught by people who are clueless and are only interested in manufacturing narrative, studio writers. That’s only been my experience, of course, but I want you to know that I’ll be really upset if you’re just like they are.”
For one thing, I think he has some balls to say that to a professor on the first day of class. It’s one of those things that I think, but I keep it to myself. Then, I go crazy. Maybe he’s healthier than I am, but I was incredibly impressed and the Hideous Bitch-Monster of Death was sort of flabbergasted. All she said was, “If you think this class starts to be like that, you come and see me, because I really don’t want an atmosphere like that.” I actually thought that was sort of classy of her.
Still, I have the same problems with her I had the last time around. For one thing, she never writes anything on the board, and then she gives us really long passages she insists that we write down. The problem is, she talks way too fast. Everybody kept getting her to slow down, but she still wanted to go through it all much faster than we could write it. She was affable enough today, but when I had her last time, she was fine with slowing down a few weeks, but then she started to get really cranky about it.
The other problem: she does a really poor job of explaining basic things, which leaves the entire class sort of scratching their heads. It’s like, we all sort of get it, but we have to ask a bunch of follow-up questions that would be unnecessary if she just but an teensy bit more effort into constructing her explanations. And I know this isn’t just a personal problem, because I wasn’t the one asking any of the follow-up questions — everybody else did that for me. I thought that was nice, since I was barely awake.
At any rate, I think the class will at least be sort of amusing. There’s this lunatic who looks like a non-dwarf version of Peter Dinklage, but he speaks with this hilarious high-pitched voice and is extraordinarily opinionated, except he’s retarded. He really gets Fellow’s goat, and they argued for about 45 minutes during class. It cracked my shit up. I hope they keep that up.
I have no other class on Monday, and I’m trying to avoid work at all costs during U-Pass week. Even though I know they think I’m too stupid to handle U-Pass, I don’t even want to sit around stuffing bags for the next week. I’ll just avoid it altogether.
Tomorrow, I have experimental screenwriting with Pothead, and a topics in literature class with no one I know. Yippie!
Posted by Stan on February 9, 2004 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
February 7, 2004
The Search Is On
When I decided I needed to find a new job, I realized I had three options for on-campus jobs right under my nose (listed in order of priority):
- Work in the English department’s writing center. I’ve been offered a job there before, more than once (but back when I was uninterested in a campus job), and I thought maybe now I’d try taking it, assuming they still remember who I am. Of course, even if they didn’t, my friend Anne works there, and she generally talks it up. I figured she could put in a good word for me.
- Weasel my way into a job in the film department. I’m there more often than I’m in the Wabash building, and the atmosphere is likely to be less irritating.
- I was offered a job last semester by a really desperate-sounding lady in the music department who really wanted somebody to act as her part-time secretary in the evenings. My schedule conflicted with hers, so it didn’t work out, but this semester is different, so I may be able to work something out with her.
- Pretty much any other job anywhere ever. Honestly, the listing of work-study jobs is pretty huge, and a lot of jobs are offered that aren’t even on the list.
And this is just on-campus stuff! If I decide to get a dreaded real job, my options expand almost as far as the mall.
I decided that getting the job in the writing center was top priority, because it’d be really easy and a generally non-annoying place to work. Plus, Anne.
So, I called her up. She wasn’t around, so I left a message telling her I wanted information about hours, responsibilities, pay — basic stuff. She called back about half an hour later to inform me that they had just fired her, along with ¾s of the staff. She explained that there used to be a requirement for Comp I students to take their papers to the center, but the department dropped the requirement, thus eliminating the necessity for such a large staff. Even the people they kept have drastically reduced hours.
“Those fucking bastards,” Anne reacted calmly. I found it interesting how her rage about losing her job (and other bad things that have happened to her this week) managed to transform her from the free-spirit I often find myself attracted to into the seething cauldron of hate I often find myself really attracted to.
Anne insisted we find a job together this weekend. I didn’t really know what to think of that, because normally I’m the one pressing the idea that we should see more of each other, and she’s decidedly (and appropriately) stand-offish. Needless to say, I automatically knew the prefect job for our dynamic duo.
“We should become technical consultants for a porn studio,” I suggested.
She laughed at that, even though I was being serious. So, we hung up, and I said I’d call her back and we could look for jobs, but I haven’t done that yet. I’m sort of worried that, much like my epic adventure into the south side, I might be biting off more than I can chew, if you’ll excuse the disgusting imagery.
That phone conversation occurred on Thursday. Friday was another grueling day, although at least it was sorta different. Instead of being treated like a retard, I was mostly left alone. They made me stuff Valentine’s Day bags because I’m too stupid to do anything else. The bags, I kid you not, contain: one pamphlet on STDs, one pamphlet on why condoms are effective against STDs, two condoms, and two pieces of chocolate. The IT guy came in sometime that morning, and he looked at a desk covered with condoms and chocolates and joked that I’d be having a great weekend.
I laughed because it was funny, but then I got really depressed, because everybody’s having more sex than me, even the IT guy.
Over the course of the day, I got approximately 15 million papercuts. Gosh, the fun of my job. Not that I really care too much about papercuts; it’s just another of many annoyances.
About halfway through the day, an announcement came that made me want to stay at this job for at least another month. Over the course of black history month, my office is hosting a series of screenings, and many of the screenings are Spike Lee films. It’s not exactly common knowledge, but Spike Lee (and particularly Do the Right Thing) was the primary reason I went to film school. I’m sure he’d be ashamed to learn that.
At any rate, he called the office and said he’d be in Chicago, so he wanted to come to one or more of the screenings, which excited…well, pretty much just me. Everyone in the office seems to really not particularly like or respect his work, Malcolm X
This made me unbelievably happy. I still hate my job, but in the near future, I get to have what might actually amount to a life-changing conversation with somebody I idolize.
This won’t end well.
Posted by Stan on February 7, 2004 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
February 3, 2004
Back at Work
So, yeah, I worked yesterday and today, and I’ll be working tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. Saturday, I’m going out with Gina. Sunday, suicide.
Seriously, I like some things about my job. I like the fact that I don’t have to do very much, and when I do, I am mostly given simple tasks. I don’t like the fact that I generally feel excluded from the bulk of the work because Jenna thinks I’m retarded. Or maybe I do, since it gets me out of doing more worthless crap. I dunno…I know I’m not the brightest guy on the planet, but I’m not nearly as dumb as Jenna seems to think I am.
I like the fact that the people are generally nice. I don’t like that I think they all secretly dislike me. Seriously, they may like me; they may dislike me; most likely, they’re totally indifferent and don’t give me a second thought when I’m not in their field of vision. What I’m saying is, I think they dislike me, and that I have the thought bugs me.
I like the fact that I read about 100 pages today. I don’t like the fact that I was asked to man the front desk for the last hour and a half, but I was not allowed to read, use the Internet, play my Game Boy, or do anything generally interesting. See, the U-Passes all came in, and they’re “like cash,” so I cannot take my eyes off them at any point in time. This is bothersome to me because, if I’m reading, I may not be staring right at the U-Passes, but chances are if someone comes in and grabs a box, I’ll notice and give chase. Okay, I won’t give chase, but I’ll probably yell things at the thief.
On the other hand, not being allowed to do anything, with the soul-sucking glare of fluorescent lights overhead, all I want to do is sleep. I drank 52 ounces of coffee, and I still could barely stay awake for those 90 minutes.
That is, until the calls started.
One of the things we’re doing to lend credibility to the office of Student Activities is something for black history month, which I think is called Black Images in Film. I dunno, that sounds too redundant to be what it’s actually called, but knowing this office, I’m probably correct. Anyway, one of the things that was planned is a screening/reception for the upcoming Barbershop 2, hosted by its producers. I would’ve gone, but it costs $100 (yay for charity benefits!) and I couldn’t get a freebie since nobody in the office likes me.
Needless to say, people are very interested in this event. It’s a high-profile movie that will probably tackle issues at some point, and it was film in Chicago, so everybody gets excited about that. But why do they call me?
The first caller informed me that he lives on the south side and proceeded to tell me much of his life story before recounting the epic struggle to get information about this event. See, he had some sculptures or something that were used in the movie, so he felt entitled to go to this screening for free. Which is all well and good, but my general thought is that if he was entitled to go for free, somebody from the production company would have contacted him. Plus, I have no real power, so what am I supposed to tell him.
I asked Jenna, who talked to him herself and explained that nobody cares about his life, so he can either pay $100 or stay home. Sometimes I’m glad she’s around.
A little while later, some guy from one of Jenna’s classes waltzed into the office. She gave him a U-Pass, and then he went into her office and they proceeded to flirt with each other for over an hour. It was a horrible, horrible time for yours truly. Without the ability to concentrate on anything, I was forced to listen to the details of their conversation. I heard about how this guy impregnated a girl and then bailed on her (always something you want to tell somebody you’re interested in one-night-standing with), and I learned some disturbingly intimate things about Jenna’s marriage that make me never, ever want to look her in the eye again.
Seriously, folks, if you have your own office, and you’re going to talk about anything that personal, do the peons a favor and close the door. We don’t like the nightmares.
This leads me to the second call. Some guy from one of the local, generally unread newspapers (I want to say the Chicago Frontier, but that sounds wrong) called up and very arrogantly informed me that he is a member of the press and therefore should be allowed to attend the Barbershop 2 event. Which, again, is fine with me, but I have no authority.
Still, it leads me to wonder. You’re John Q. Reporter, and you want to attend a pre-release screening and reception of what’s sure to be a popular movie so you can have some sort of scoop. Is it really smart to call an office that does little more than promote the screening two hours before it starts? I dunno, maybe he didn’t hear about it until just then, but it seems a little ridiculous, especially in light of the fact that he didn’t even know what theatre it was being shown at.
So, I explained to this guy that anybody who could do anything to help him was already at the theatre preparing for the event. He was flabbergasted, so I put him on hold and told Jenna. She told me to put him through Sally’s office, even though Sally was at Pipers Alley. I thought of asking Jenna what I should do when he calls back five minutes later, but I kept my mouth shut.
Five minutes later, the reporter called back, went through his whole spiel a second time, and I told him I had already connected him with the only person who could do anything for him. He didn’t like that and demanded to speak with somebody in authority. So I got snippy and said, “Well, then, why don’t you just go down to the movie theatre?”
“Where’s it playing?” the reporter asked.
“Pipers Alley,” I responded.
“Pipers Alley?” he asked, stunned, as if he had never heard of the place. This was odd, because it is one of the more well-known movie theatres in Chicago, and I would think that a reporter interested in a movie screening would probably have heard of some movie theatres before.
At any rate, he hung up with me, all huffy and irritating, and I was pleased. Until I realized I could still hear what Jenna and the future victim of her “open marriage” were discussing.
I think maybe I’ll cancel my plans for Sunday and try to find a new job.
Posted by Stan on February 3, 2004 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
February 28, 2004
Partners, or: SHUT THE FUCK UP, OWEN!
Film school is all about teamwork.
Sometimes, this is a simple truth. In production classes, if the students don’t bond together there and help each other out as much as humanly possible, everybody’s film will fall apart. If I hadn’t gotten some editing advice from somebody who was, you know, competent, neither of the films I made in Production II would have worked at all. (It could be argued that they still don’t, but they’re much better than they could have been.) Conversely, if I hadn’t been there to help Gina in Kenosha, she never would have gotten any of those shots done. Or maybe I’m giving myself too much credit…
Sometimes, the idea of “teamwork” is more metaphysical. It’s more like we, as a whole, are a team, so be nice to everyone. If you don’t, it’ll probably bite you in the ass down the road. Two oft-repeated mantras around film school are “L.A. is a small town” and “Don’t burn any bridges.” It’s especially bad, in the grand scheme, if you’re burning bridges and making enemies before you’re even in L.A. or in some power position wherein burning a bridge actually means something. This (along with my physical unattractiveness, unpleasant disposition, and general fatitude) is exactly why I don’t date film students.
Most times, though, teamwork is something thrust on us. We are (unwillingly) divided into groups for no particular reason, except that the professors all believe (rightly, in most cases, although it stands to reason that teaming random strangers can sometimes be less productive than teaming people who get along well) that if we are forced into a team now, it’ll greatly benefit us down the road. You can learn, through forced teamwork, to peacefully coexist with people you’d ordinarily stab in the face.
I don’t dislike group work. For all my misanthropic puffery, I’m actually not aversed to meeting new people. Granted, I’m uncomfortable and awkward, but I’m fine once I get used to them (although that usually takes weeks and an obscene amount of caffeine). But still, I feel it’s always nice to know as many people as humanly possible, and to make sure they all owe you money for one reason or another. Although, given the choice, I’d probably end up doing all my group work with people I already know. I suppose that’s why so few professors give us the choice…
When our professor announced yesterday that we’d be getting into a group to do a really basic task, I was sort of frustrated at the simplicity, but then I thought that we’d get done quickly enough that I could shoot the shit. Plus, I know most of the people in my class, so I’d have my pick of the litter.
Then, she said, “I’ll assign you partners later,” and somehow I knew I’d end up with one of the three people I don’t know at all, and the only one of the three that I have absolutely no interest in ever knowing at all.
I knew I’d end up with Owen.
I have no idea how I knew, but I knew.
When the time came, and our professor had finally gotten Owen to stop talking about his various hilarious theories about the screenplay we were discussing for the week (The Manchurian Candidate), we were assigned in groups. Our professor did a quick head-count, realized we had an uneven amount of students, and decided we’d need one threesome. Meanwhile, I was thinking, “Pleasenotowenpleasenotowenpleasenot —”
“Stan, why don’t you get into a group with, um, Owen?” she asked, then added, “And Kim. That’ll be our threesome.”
I didn’t react at all. I was frozen with both rage and, to some degree, fear. Fear of actually having to talk to him, or maybe of talking to him and discovering I actually like him.
But I didn’t even need to react. My old friend Fellow is in this class (one of three we share this semester), and he reacted for me with the heaviest and loudest sigh imaginable. Owen looked right at me, saw I wasn’t the culprit, and then seemed to get confused. I found that hilarious.
Having Kim, who I also didn’t know, in the group was a slight reprieve, yes, but the completely phony theatricality of that planned “um” made me want to jump across the table and strangle my professor. She knew from the moment she said she’d be assigning partners that she was gonna put me with Owen, and I knew she had to die as a result.
The task at hand was simple: choose one of the characters in the screenplay and do a brief sketch. Not particularly difficult, since it’s a damn good script and all of the characters are pretty fully developed, but that didn’t stop Owen from ruining my life.
“Would either of you two object to the idea that Mrs. Iselin murdered Raymond’s father?” was the first thing Owen said when the group was situated. Then he laughed the laugh with which I have become disturbingly familiar. They say people in wars can often still hear bullets flying, bombs exploding, people screaming, years after the war is over.
I know that when I’m in my 80s, retired and in seclusion somewhere in Switzerland, I will still hear that shrill, obnoxious laugh. It won’t leave me. Ever.
That’s not to say his idea was bad; actually, as I read the screenplay, I kept wondering what happened to Raymond’s father — what did Mrs. Iselin do to him? It’s just the way he presents everything, with this air of pomposity, as if to say, “Man, nobody else could have thought of an idea this clever,” when, in fact, anybody with a tiny bit of common sense would be wondering or inferring that exact idea.
And that piercing, arrogant laugh, like he’s some sort of mad genius, cackling away at his inventiveness, when nothing he said was remotely inventive or clever.
Ordinarily, when Owen pitches his ideas, what he gets in response are murmured, bemused agreements. Nobody ever cares about what he says, but they want him to shut up, so they’ll immediately agree with anything he suggests. Why? Because if you don’t, you face the consequences. Such as him screaming at you. For weeks. About things nobody cares about, including the person who disagreed.
I tried a different method. I’ve already accepted him as my arch-nemesis for life, but that doesn’t mean he has to know it. If I not only blindly support his ambitions but also fill him with unadulterated, unrealistic praise, it’ll be all the more crushing when he inevitably is stomped down by people with actual power. At least, that’s the way I see things.
So, instead of just murmuring, “Yeah, Owen, whatever,” I took that basic rote and built on it. I said, “That’s a good idea. Very Hamlet,” which sort brought it back to something he had said earlier, about Raymond Shaw being a sort of “tragic hero” (of course, it took him 78 minutes to say that). Plus, it compared him to Shakespeare, and not just to Shakespeare, but to arguably the greatest play (if not greatest written work) in the English language.
He looked at me with this glaze-eyed sort of “Whatever, man,” look, and then went on with another of his ideas. This sort of amused me, since he seemed to not have any real idea what the hell I was talking about, which indicates that he hasn’t read what is arguably the greatest dramatic work in the history of the English language (and, basically, required reading for anyone pretending to be a screenwriter, or a writer in general).
I got sort of tired of him after that. He has a tendency to pontificate loudly and at length, cutting off everybody. It’s funny, because Lucy called me the other day, utterly distraught over the fact that one of her friends had mocked Lucy’s self-absorbed tendencies by saying, “You know, it’s called a conversation, not a monologue,” but I personally think that, while it’s very difficult to quiet Lucy at times, the statement is more applicable to Owen. I mean, at least when Lucy lets you get a word in edgewise, she listens to what you’re saying (I swear, she does).
But Owen will go on and on, talking about nothing, and then when you try to comment on what he’s saying, he’ll cut you off and keep talking. It seems like he does this mostly because (1) nearly everything he says has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, so most of the responses will either call him on his bullshit and/or redirect the conversation toward the topic, and (2) generally people disagree with his loudly stated opinions. Of course, most don’t disagree with him aloud because, as I’ve said, he’s not worth the effort, but I believe he knows that people do disagree with him, so he silences any potential naysayers by just not letting anybody else speak.
And that really brings me to the thing that makes me want to destroy him. We pay a lot of money for classes, and it’s really irritating to have them monopolized by one guy who doesn’t even have anything interesting or on-topic to say. But yet he talks anyway. Endlessly. And we don’t get to a lot of what’s on the syllabus, and I think a lot of that has to do with Owen.
When we divided into groups, nearly everybody had very full character sketches, but ours was scanty because Kim and I were huddled together under a blanket of apathy, but Owen just kept going on and on and on and on about how hilarious Raymond Shaw’s childhood must have been with a mother like Mrs. Iselin. Even when we were way beyond the childhood/home life/parents stuff, he kept going back to that again and again and again.
Why did he keep doing that? I don’t know. He seems obscenely preoccupied with the idea that childhood ruins human beings, which I guess is true to some degree, but my general thought is GET OVER IT. You can’t leap into a time machine and fix you rotten childhood, and even if you did, who’s to say you’d be better off for it? I really think that if I had the Sam Beckett-esque ability to fix bad things in the past, I’d be a lot worse off and more maladjusted than I already am (which, honestly, is saying a lot). Hell, I’d probably beat out Owen on the irritating scale.
Your life is what it is, and your past is what it was. If something adversely affected you as a child, the only thing that can really be done about it now is to be cognizant of it and what it’s done to you, and try to change yourself now (if that’s what you think is needed). Whining about it doesn’t help anybody; it’s just really irritating. Unless it’s me whining about The Ex, which many people find hilarious.
Although I actually have this theory, which is part of what bugs me so much about Owen (even though others are much more whiny about particular events in their life), that, barring any sort of really horrible stuff (like sexual/physical abuse or being some sort of crack baby or something), nobody’s childhood was really uniquely horrible. Of all the people I’ve talked to about childhood, and a lot of people seem to think theirs was a terror unlike any others, they all seem to be universally shitty. But that’s sort of what it’s all about; if you don’t learn to accept your shitty upbringing, everybody will end up like Owen at some point or another.
Of course, I’m no sociologist or psychologist, but it’s just one of those things I’ve noticed in talking to people or reading things they’ve written (it seems a lot of screenwriters really feel that stories about bad childhoods are completely original).
Anyway, as far as actual, lengthy diatribes Owen has launched in on, he spent much of our class time talking about the following (other than the whole Raymond-Mrs. Iselin comedy, which I already mentioned):
- A new, more modern brainwashing technique that he concocted after reading The Manchurian Candidate (during a discussion of actual conspiracy and paranoia sightings we’ve witnessed, such as seeing people taking part in what you really believe is a drug deal; off-topic much?)
- How timely The Manchurian Candidate is, despite being written forty years ago (he went on and on and on about this, and while he’s correct, everything he suggested for “modernization” was literally aped from the actual, new update that’s being worked on right now, which the class discussed the night before in our Chicago screenwriter class)
- How Axelrod wrote the script more like a novel than a screenplay (which was both refreshing to read and was a refreshingly on-topic comment, although when he cited a specific example, it was passages of really clichéd dialogue, and not at all from the copy block; I still have no idea why he did that)
And that’s not all, but I’m sort of drawing a blank as to the rest of it. At several points, the professor actually would ask questions and say things like, “Okay, Owen, give somebody else a chance to speak.” Because it’s not like we’re all aversed to class participation — we just don’t get the chance, because Owen asks like every question is directed at him alone. And when others talk and actually say something insightful, he just sits over there in his corner, seething. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but he has such a look of rage and inferiority on his face, it could only be, “These fucking idiots know nothing” or “Goddammit, why didn’t I think of that?”
In summary, he drives me fucking nuts, and I will kill myself if we end up paired together again. Kim and I both had a buffer in each other this time, so it wasn’t like we really had to directly communicate with him. It was also nice, because our professor left for awhile, but when she came back, Owen engaged her in conversation and completely ignored us, so we actually got some work done.
But next time, once we have all the students in class (we were missing three, which means we’ll have an exact even number on days when everybody is in attendance), I may not be so lucky.
Posted by Stan on February 28, 2004 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | School Rants
February 22, 2004
Skate or Die, or: Die or Die
I’m all achy and tired. Last night, I went ice-skating with some friends. Apparently I’m not good at that. Well, I mastered the fine art of clinging to the railing for dear life, but when I tried to mix it up a little bit by making my legs go frantically in fifty different directions at one time, followed by falling flat on my ass, the whole ice-skating thing got tiresome.
Ironically, though, the most painful things to happen to me last night didn’t happen on an ice rink. One happened at the restaurant afterward, when it turned out the girl I had kinda-sorta been set up with informed us all that she had a boyfriend (unbeknownst to the friends who attempted to set us up). I’m still not sure if she saw through the whole set-up ruse as easily as I did and made up the boyfriend so I wouldn’t be insulted that she didn’t like me (I wouldn’t, though; it’s a natural reaction).
The second happened on the train on the way home. This woman, who I really hope was homeless, because if not, she’s got some ‘splainin’ to do. Anyway, this woman got on the train and smelled worse than I ever thought any human being ever could. I mean, I’ve had issues with train-related body odor before, but this was unimaginably bad. Honestly, she smelled like raw sewage. And the worst part? The smell clung to the air for at least 20 minutes, during which I had to breathe very slowly through my mouth.
At one point, this woman maneuvered her way across the train car, and one gentleman sitting a little ways down from me accurately summarized the experience: “Daaaaaaaaamn, lady! What the hell’s wrong with you?”
The evening was rounded out in a way so stupidly ironic, it’s sorta funny. It wasn’t at the time, but looking back (you know, 18 hours), it’s hilarious.
When I got off the train, I went down to the parking lot toward my car. It was pretty warm — mid-30s to low-40s — all day, but when it got dark, it cooled off considerably. So considerably that the puddles dotting the lot had frozen over again.
There I was, crossing the parking lot at my typical brisk pace, trying to get to the car before the hundreds of muggers I often imagine hiding behind cars jump out and steal my money and soul, when I started across a somewhat large puddle. But this was no puddle: it was a large, slick patch of ice. I slid, reeled back, pinwheeling my arms to catch balance. I finally did and took a deep breath, standing completely still so I wouldn’t fall.
I took another step, outside of the slippery grasp of the ice patch, and somehow managed to step onto concrete that was as slick as the ice itself (damn you, black ice!). Unprepared for it, I tried to keep myself stable, but I failed miserably and fell right on my ass. I’m sure a few people saw me, but the lot is dark and empty that late. Despite the lack of witnesses, it was still the most humiliating thing to happen that night.
So now, I have bruises on my arms and hands, and every single part of my body aches in a wide variety of ways. I can’t wait to see what’s planned for next weekend!
Posted by Stan on February 22, 2004 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
More of Owen’s Issues
Sadly, I actually forgot the one event that solidified Owen as my enemy. See, there’s a stairwell in the back of the film building that’s actually a fire exit, but everybody goes back to there to (ironically) smoke, because they’re too lazy (or don’t have enough time) to go outside. I don’t smoke, and I really don’t like being around it, but a friend of mine does. During the break, I really didn’t want to end up trapped in the empty classroom with somebody like, for example, Owen, so I decided to join her in the stairwell and shoot the shit.
Owen was walking down the hall, toward me in the opposite direction, as I wandered into the stairwell. And I stood there for a few seconds, shooting the shit, and suddenly the door bursts open and Owen comes in. Like I said, he has the habit of sucking the energy out of any room (even the lethargy of a smokin’ stairwell), so my friend, myself, and the two other people smoking in the stairwell just sorta stood there staring, like, “Oh, jeez, Owen smokes, too.”
He stared right at me, and I smiled genially, although I doubt it was enough to mask my disdain. Then, still staring at me, he said, “Jesus, I think I’m the only person left at Columbia who doesn’t smoke.” And slammed the door before I could say anything.
“Do I look like I’m smoking?” I asked the others, and we all agreed that what happened was generally fucked up, but because Owen was involved, it was remarkably normal.
But this is his problem: the random assertions based on nothing. I mean, he was obviously saying it specifically to me because, for some reason or another, he has some sort of problem with me (I catch him giving me odd glares all the time), so he comes into the stairwell and attempts to insult me but fails because he’s an idiot. Gosh, I can’t see why his upbringing was most relatable to a Todd Solondz film…
Seriously, I’m generally a pretty passive guy when I’m not screaming at people, but if he wants an enemy, he is going to be seriously displeased with having me as one.
I will ruin his life.
Posted by Stan on February 22, 2004 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
February 21, 2004
Owen Has Issues
So, okay, I’m a geek, right? I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, video games, Woody Allen, and Internet porn. All the people at Columbia are these hippie artist types, who aren’t by any stretch of the imagination “cool,” but I certainly stand out in a crowd comparatively. I’ve been walking around for the last few years thinking I was pretty much the geekiest guy on the entire campus, based on the small sample of classmates, acquaintances, and random students I’ve met during that time. And, consequently, I always feel like nobody ever likes me and they all just sort of tolerate me because it’s not like I’m going away.
But now I feel better. I’ve met Owen.
Last week was our first week of classes, and my one and only evening class is on Wednesday nights. So, I trudged downtown, got some dinner, and went up to the third floor because the goddamn caf&eactue; was packed. There, I found two girls I had a class with last semester talking to a guy I didn’t know. They introduced me to the guy, who happened to be in my class (the girls, unfortunately, were not), so we all sat around chatting for a little while.
Then, I heard a screeching, semi-lispy voice rattle out, “Mr. Paul, wait!” This Mr. Paul, a professor who was entering his office, stopped dead, sighed visibly, and turned to the source of the voice, which was beyond our range of vision down the hall.
“Shit,” the guy sitting with me — Grey is his name — muttered.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s Owen,” he said, indicating the voice we heard.
And then Owen entered our field of vision. He’s an enormous, overweight, ungainly fellow, extremely hairy, with uncombed black hair, extremely thick glasses. If you haven’t yet seen American Splendor, it’s on DVD, and you should really check it out. It’s amazingly good. At any rate, there’s a character in that film (and in real life) named Toby Radloff, who is a self-proclaimed nerd. He’s large, odd-looking, talks strangely, and is borderline autistic. He looks and speaks almost exactly like Owen.
Owen rushed up to this Mr. Paul character, rambled on and on about some assignment from last semester, and Mr. Paul quietly tolerated his blathering before politely brushing him off. Anybody watching this exchange — anybody but Owen — would instantly know that Mr. Paul disliked this guy intensely.
“Who’s Owen?” I asked Grey and the girls.
“You don’t know him?” one of the girls said. “Jeez, you’re a screenwriting concentration and you don’t know Owen?”
“No…” I said, suddenly feeling very left out.
“Consider yourself lucky,” Grey muttered.
“What’s wrong with him?” I wondered, although based on his voice and overbearing personality, I already kinda knew.
“Just wait and see,” Grey said. “I’m sure he’s in our class.”
Now, I’m not one to necessarily make judgments based solely on what others say. Plus, I mean, the guy instantly reminded me of Toby Radloff, and Toby was a strange guy, but he was still pleasant enough. So, even though I people I knew were ragging on him, I wasn’t going to leap on the “Man, do I hate Owen” bandwagon like they were. At the same rate, I wasn’t going to leap into his arms like Balki Bartokomous and declare him my best friend/”dance of joy” partner.
No, I was gonna keep my distance, cautiously observe him, and make my judgment based on that. Like Grey suggested, I would wait and see.
This class is called “Chicago screenwriters,” and the subject is pretty self-explanatory — we’re studying Chicago screenwriters. One of the writers we’re studying is none other than John Hughes, who honestly wrote some terrific stuff in his day. I mean, they were all bubblegummy message movies, but they had a particular edge that sort of shoved them above the rest of the crap. That’s my opinion, anyway. Plus, I always get sort of a warm, nostalgiac feeling, because I grew up watching stuff like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
When we discussed Hughes on the first day of class, Owen loudly announced that John Hughes’ screenplays are terrible.
“Why do you say that?” our professor wondered.
Owen responded that, while most people feel the same nostalgia that I do when watching John Hughes movies, his films are so far from any reality he’s aware of that it makes him sick. He went on to announce that Todd Solondz’s “coming-of-age” portrayals are much more realistic than anything John Hughes has ever done. I’m only aware of one coming-of-age film from Solondz, Welcome to the Dollhouse, which I really didn’t like particularly.
Why didn’t I like it? I didn’t relate to it. Why? Because I, personally, thought it was shallowly unrealistic. It really oversimplified pretty much everything and aligned you with a purposely unlikable character but didn’t give you any reason to understand why you didn’t like her. She just existed. In fact, nobody in the film was likable at all, which would be fine if there was any indication that gave us a reason to side with them anyway. Really, that was my biggest problem with it as a whole. I felt like it kept me at a distance the entire time.
Plus, it didn’t really strike me as particularly realistic, because everything was way too simple. Nobody had any legitimate complexity, not even the protagonist. Even John Hughes, master of the simple formula movie, does a little bit to make his characters mildly complicated. Plus, his movies are escapist fantasy, and intentionally so. Solondz makes an unrealistic movie that masquerades as reality when John Hughes is unabashedly sentimental and not really trying to portray anything real.
Basically, I prefer Hughes. I’m not saying Solondz is a bad filmmaker, even though he has made more than one bad film and he sort of has a habit of screaming that everyone but him is wrong through his directorial voice, but I prefer a sentimental romp to an unnecessarily depressing story.
But that’s just me. If Owen prefers Solondz for whatever reason, that’s his business. Except it’s not his business — it’s everyone’s business, because he shrieks out his opinion at all times and refuses to allow anyone to think any differently than he does. He literally screamed at a guy because he said he liked Ferris Bueller more than Welcome to the Dollhouse.
This is why I don’t like him, and this is why nobody else likes him (including professors). His opinion is god. He’s one of these arrogant writer types who firmly believes everything he says and does is genius but is still so insecure that if anybody disagrees with him, he flips out. He’s Bill O’Reilly, except somehow more annoying.
Another minor example: Owen is also in my genres class, and we got into groups last week and formulated ideas based on articles we found in the newspaper, and then this week we pitched them to the class. He was absolutely thrilled with his idea, but the rest of the class really wasn’t that much. It’s not that we disliked it — we just didn’t like it as much as he did. So, when the next idea was pitched, everybody sort of glommed onto it. Honestly, it was a story we all loved.
All except Owen, and I don’t think he didn’t love it because he really didn’t; I think he just wanted to criticize it because somebody else came up with a more interesting idea. He kept yelling that the main characters had to be “a bunch of rich snobs,” because that’s the only way they would have done what they did.* Which, okay, it’s not a bad point, but it really sort of dumbs the whole thing down. It’s such a cliché to have the rich parents spawn brats and then put so much pressure on them that they do horrible things at a young age. I’ve seen that movie a dozen times, and when somebody in class pointed that out, he totally ignored them and just kept throwing out the “rich” idea.
It’s fine to have ideas, it’s fine to participate, but he got shot down. It’s not like the exact same idea, told the same way, is going to make us jump out of our seats with excitement the third time when it was shot down the first time. If you like your idea and nobody else does, by all means go and write it to yourself. Maybe you’ll sell it for $5 million. Or maybe it was just a bad idea.
I don’t mean to complain, but everyone knows about Owen, and everyone dislikes him. He sucks the energy right the hell out of the room every single time he talks. It’s like stepping into a vacuum for a few seconds until he shuts up and normal life can resume. It’s an odd phenomenon, one that I haven’t witnessed at all since I started college (though I saw it to some degree with people in junior high and high school). Everybody lets him do his thing and tolerates him, because he’s not worth arguing with, even if you can win. I can accept that, and I can let him do his thing, too, because I don’t want to argue with him any more than anyone else.
But if the first two weeks are any indication, this semester is going to be long.
Still, Owen makes me feel good about myself. I’m sort of realizing that when people invite me to go places outside of school, it probably means they aren’t just tolerating me. They’re not avoiding me completely or giving me pity laughs when I make a joke, and they really think my ideas don’t suck. I never get the glazed-eye “man, is it really that rude to check my watch while somebody’s talking?” look; people engage me in conversation.
By gum, I’m liked by people who aren’t pets. And, unlike Owen, I didn’t have to post a sign-up sheet for an online Dungeons and Dragons discussion group in order to find non-pets who like me.
See, people, you don’t need years of therapy or antidepressants to stop feeling glum — you just have to find that one guy on the planet who makes you look like the love-child of Cary Grant and James Bond.
*It was about these three 12-year-old girls in California who were late to school one day, and rather than take a tardy, they for some reason told administrators that a homeless person molested them on the way to school, and he was imprisoned for eight months before the girls finally admitted they had lied. Being that our “genre” is conspiracy and paranoia, the general idea was to follow the girls after they enter into their conspiracy and as they grow more and more paranoid. To expand the conspiracy idea, we thought it might be interesting if one of the parents figured it out and helped them continue to cover up the truth.
Posted by Stan on February 21, 2004 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | School Rants
February 13, 2004
Weekly Music
I’m way too fucking lazy to discuss five albums I’m listening to, although I have gotten some new shit in the last couple of weeks that I’m sure I’ll blog about at some point. As a consolation prize, I’ve decided to ape what I assume is some sort of new LiveJournal fad. I stole this directly from Jonathan Marko, and I guess etiquette dictates that I need to type up the rules, too.
Step 1: Open your iTunes or other lesser MP3 player.
Step 2: Put all of your music on random.
Step 3: Write down the first ten songs it plays, no matter how embarrassing.
(Yay for copy-paste.)
So, here they are:
1. “At Least the Pain is Real” (Neva Dinova, Neva Dinova, 2002)
2. “I Got No Idols (Piano Version)” (Juliana Hatfield, For the Birds EP, 1993)
3. “Groove Stars in the Nighttime” (Sidonie, Sidonie, 2001)
4. “Sneaking Around” (Juliana Hatfield, Bed, 1998)
5. “Tamara” (Juliana Hatfield, Forever Baby EP, 1992)
6. “Vibe On” (Dannii Minogue, Neon Nights, 2003)
7. “Very Funny” (Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs Disc 2, 1999)
8. “Hide” (Matthew Sweet, In Reverse, 1999)
9. “(Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy” (Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs Disc 2, 1999)
10. “Julius Fastbody” (Blake Babies, Nicely, Nicely, 1987)
It backs up my theory that “shuffle” doesn’t shuffle nearly enough. Seriously, out of 584 songs, two of the first 10 are from not only the same three-CD compilation, but the same disc of the compilation. That just isn’t right.
Posted by Stan on February 13, 2004 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friday Five/Albums of the Week
