October 2004 Archives
October 10, 2004
Why I Went to Seattle
Lucy and I have, off and on, been bestest buddies for about five years. I say “off and on” because there were periods, both long and short, where we simply didn’t talk to each other for one reason or another. The best example of this was the time we had dinner together, not an unusual activity for us at the time, and we spent about three hours outlining every single thing we thought was wrong with the other person. We were both really tired of each other, so it was essentially a no-holds-barred “You fucking suck ass because…” session.
This happened in mid-May a few years ago. The next time we talked after that was in August, when I went to Iowa City to see Juliana Hatfield. We had a reasonably good time being passive-aggressive before and during the show. Afterward, I was to spend the night at her apartment, but we got into a huge fight, and I decided to drive home that night.
Funny how that happens, right?
This anecdote illustrates a key fact in my friendship with Lucy: it is relentlessly unhealthy. At this point, we do nothing but fight. Do we fight about anything worthwhile? Sometimes, but since our lives are both equally fucked up at this point, it’s usually a stalemate. Like this paraphrased excerpt from a recent fight:
Lucy: I’m sick of [current abusive boyfriend]. I think I want to go back to [previous abusive boyfriend]. He was an asshole, but at least he was a caring asshole.
Me: Don’t you dare get back together with [previous abusive boyfriend].
Lucy: Like I’m going to take relationship advice from someone dated a lunatic!
Me: She may not have been entirely sane, but at least I’m not afraid she’s going to kill me!
Lucy: Yes, you are!
Me: Why would you think that?
Lucy: Maybe because when you were dating her, you said, “I’m afraid to stay over at her place because I think I’m going to wake up with a knife in my chest.”
Me: …
Lucy: …
So, there’s that.
I have unhealthy relationships with the rest of humanity. Consequently, I decided not only to abandon the small chunk of humanity with whom I am personally engaged for three months — I decided to go right back to the very first unhealthy relationship I ever had: I went to live with my sister.
While there, my sister and I strengthened our familial bond. A couple of weeks later, we descended back into our normal pattern of petty name-calling, frustrated outbursts, and avoidance of one another. It was a great experience!
I also reneged on my loose guideline of “avoid everyone I’ve ever met at any time.” Very few people tried to get ahold of me once I let them know I was going away. The only people who called me were people who didn’t know. And, of course, people who didn’t care, notably Lucy. Oops!
So I spent the summer talking to her intermittently. Over the summer, Lucy leapfrogged from one abusive boyfriend to another; the second abusive boyfriend dumped her shortly after she fucked him because, well, that’s just what the guys she dates do. I’ve figured that out; when will she?
Posted by Stan on October 10, 2004 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
[BLOGpoll] Who Wants to Read My Shit?
In my last entry, I mentioned the “canons” assembled for my portfolio review class. I imagine I’ll be bitching a lot about it, since I can’t stand the professor and — if the first peer’s scripts are any indication — it’s not going to be all fun and games, I wonder if it would be a good idea to put the selections I chose for my “canon” up on the site for you all to read. When my week to be critiqued comes up (it’s November 18th, I believe), I’ll scan the written coverage I receive, along with my notes from the discussion.
So, is that something you, the blog-nation, would like to see? Yes, no, maybe?
Leave a comment or send an e-mail to stan at stanhasissues dot com.
Posted by Stan on October 10, 2004 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Career-Based Rambling
How I Ruined Maria’s Life
I made friends with this girl, Maria, when it turned out I was in every single one of her classes in the spring semester. Bear in mind that she was only in half of my classes, since I was taking twice the credit hours, but at any rate we got to know each other pretty well and became decent friends. Then, I left for three months with no word and came back as if nothing happened.
Unlike most of my friends, all of whom I was consciously avoiding all summer, I felt bad about ignoring Maria. Not bad enough to call her, mind you, but bad enough that she was one of the first three I got ahold of when I came home.
Turns out, Maria was in two of my five classes this semester. That was a reasonably hopeful sign, albeit not a surprising one, since the two screenwriting classes we’re taking is full of familiar faces. It was nice to have somebody to bitch with, though, when things get rough. I like everybody else, but I don’t know that I can trust them to keep the secret bitchings to themselves. Whether I like it or not (mostly “or not”), I’m apparently hilarious. People enjoy quoting the hilarious things I say. I hate it when they do that, because it inevitably gets me into some kind of trouble.
That said, I was looking forward to having some classes with Maria again. That is, until she didn’t show up to our Tuesday class, screenwriting practicum. Turns out she dropped it, since it’s not a class we really need to take, and she’s already taking 15 credit hours; she didn’t need the other three. My take on it is that, unless it was a financial thing (it wasn’t), she should’ve stayed in it, because it’s a really simple class, and the end result is a possible film credit.
Here’s the idea of the class: you’re handed a short story. You adapt it into a 5-8 page script so that it can end up being a 7-10 minute film. You work with Producing IV students to hone the script into the best compromise of your writerly vision and their producerly vision. In the spring, the producers go on to the producing practicum, where they team up with all the other practicums (practica?) — directing, cinematography, editing, sound — and assemble a cast and crew to shoot the film.
Unlike most Columbia films, they really deck the halls out on these guys. Everything’s 35mm, color, with legitimately decent sound and lighting. The practicum classes use the best equipment Columbia has (which is pretty fucking good — it’s just that we don’t usually get access to it without paying to rent it and having a thesis film to make), and the film department apparently pulls a lot of budgetary/legal strings that they normally wouldn’t.
Why? Because, arguably, this is the best undergrad work we’ll do. This is the stuff that will be submitted to festivals and actually get accepted.
And why is that important? Because, believe it or not, influential people go to festivals, watch shorts (especially student shorts), and rub their chins thoughtfully as they read the credits. If a short is well-made (and not many are — just watch IFC and Sundance Channel), it’ll generate a buzz, and that buzz will lead to opportunity.
So, say my name is on the “Written by…” credit of a short film that generates a lot of buzz. People suddenly know who I am. They think, “Goddamn, if this guy can create fully developed characters, put them into an interesting story, and really make me sit and ponder life for a few minutes, imagine what he can do in a feature-length screenplay!” Boy, are they going to be surprised and disappointed!
That’s why I’m taking this class — it’s purely for the glory and potential career enhancement it may give me. It’s not a required course for anybody, so I assume it’s why everyone else is taking it. On Thursday, Maria told me she decided to drop it, because less stress is, to her, more important than a career that she doesn’t seem all that interested in at the moment (more on that later).
So on Thursday night, we do have a class together. This one is a portfolio review. I actually like the way it’s structured — each week, we get a “canon” of one peer’s work, we read it, we give coverage, and the following week we come back and have an open discussion about the various scripts’ strengths and weaknesses. I think it’s great, because we rarely get opportunities to read one another’s work — partly because we don’t have time, partly because we loser writers are very guarded about our work, mostly because we all know it’s shit. Or maybe that’s just me.
You might have noticed the word “canon” in the last paragraph, in sarcastic quotation marks. “Why the sarcasm?” you’re asking, apparently after losing familiarity with the usual tone of my writing because I haven’t blogged much lately.
Here’s why: the professor is a jackass. I’ve heard so many scary things about him, from his hyper-criticism of trivial shit to his arrogance to his jaded pep-talks to the fact that he grades arbitrarily to the fact that he demands you either call him “professor” or “doctor” or, if you’re feeling informal, “doc.” I’ve managed to consciously avoid his classes as I’ve gone through the screenwriting program, but this class is the big hurdle. See, he’s the only professor who teaches this class. It’s the only session. There’s not enough demand for another session to open up, and even if there were, he’d probably teach that one, too.
So, as of right now, I’m screwed.
One other thing about this prof: remember Owen from last semester? Of course, you do. Well, take this as the biggest horror of all: this man is Owen’s favorite professor. And, after having met him, I know why: they are the exact same person.
Okay, not the exact same person. This professor does have a bit more of the all-important social skills; he has a bit more of a self-deprecating wit, rather than a wit that relies solely on insulting or alienating everyone else in the room. He also shaves regularly and isn’t gargantuan by any means.
But man, when they get talking, they’re exactly the same. In all senses. They talk and talk and talk about nothing, rambling in desperate search of a point, and when they run out of things to talk about, they just stop, whether they’ve found that point or not (usually or not). And, even with the professor’s occasional bonus of self-deprecating humor, he will still smugly insult every person in the room, as well as many people out of the room, for no particular reason. Meanwhile, he has absolutely no objection singing his own praises.
I don’t mind people who are confident in their skills. I wish I could be confident in my skills; it’d make me a lot less manic, I think. But there’s a big difference between being confident, like my other screenwriting pals Mike and Gray, and being unrelentingly arrogant, like Owen and the professor.
At any rate, the professor insists that we refer to our “collected works” by their proper name — “the canon.” I have a hard time doing that, because my particular “canon,” and the “canon” of everyone else in the class, defies the actual definition of that word. These aren’t works, completed and collected to be perused by scholars and producers (two very separate categories) — they’re works-in-progress, all of them, even the stuff that’s “done” still needs at least another draft or five before they’ll be ready to show to anyone without any embarrassment.
But anyway, “canonical” or not, here’s the bare minimum of what he was expecting: a wide sampling of our writing, limited to finished screenplays or treatments. No outlines, no step outlines, no works of fiction, no teleplays, and NO unfinished work. He made a couple of exceptions for stageplays, but that was only to examine the adaptation process, since those students had adapted their stageplays into screenplays.
From those rough guidelines, we were to assemble the “canon” in any way we desired: it could be all treatments, or all short scripts, or a mingling of treatments and short scripts, or a feature script and some short scripts, or a feature script and some treatments, or multiple feature scripts. And so on. We weren’t given a minimum or maximum page requirement, because theoretically we’re advanced enough to choose with few to no guidelines.
I went through most of my stuff and chose three scripts: one is the feature I wrote in screenwriting 2, another is a 31-page short script I wrote for my adaptation class, and the final one is an 18-page short script I wrote in my Screenwriting I class. In thinking about it now, I feel like a jackass for not including possibly the greatest screenplay ever written, The Effects of Gun Control and Wartime Situations as it Relates to Livestock and Rural Communities, or: How Bessie Got Her Groove Back. I feel like I should print that out right now and shove it into the professor’s mailbox so it can be included in my “canon.”
In choosing my “canon,” though, I was embarrassed about my feature, but without it, I wouldn’t have enough material to sufficiently call it a “canon.” The remainder of what I have is either worse than the feature, or it’s incomplete. The bulk of my “canon” is actually unfinished screenplays. So I had an option: rewrite a script where everything’s laid out (but really poorly), or finish one of my incomplete scripts, guaranteeing that it’d be either equally bad or worse than what I already had.
And my feature wasn’t really that bad, in the sense of terrible writing. My sister’s boyfriend Jack insisted that I read Angels & Demons, Dan Brown’s “prequel” to The Da Vinci Code; I gotta tell you, the premise is great, but it’s some of the worst goddamn writing I’ve ever seen. And he’s published. So I can say unequivocally that, whatever piss-poor shape my screenplay may be in, it’s still better than this book. And though it may be in the form of a cheap shot, that’s confidence talking (not arrogance).
So shitty writing wasn’t the (whole) problem. My issue was that I know a whole lot of the problems with my script in advance. What’s the point of handing it out for criticism when they’re just going to tell me things I already know?
While I know the only real way to fix the major problems in my script is to do a page-one rewrite, I didn’t have the time to do that in the week I had to prepare my “canon,” so I just went through, chopping scenes that didn’t work at all (or were repetitive) and reworking scenes that weren’t quite there yet but could be with some work. I think it’s in reasonable shape now, though it’s not nearly where I want it. As I said, time constraints preclude actual quality.
Hey, remember when this story was about me ruining Maria’s life? Believe it or not, that digression actually is related to the main idea of this entry (a first, I think).
See, Maria assembled her “canon,” too, and it made her drop the class.
She called me on Monday, when I was still mulling over whether or not it was worth the effort to rewrite my feature. I missed the call, and she left a rather succinct message: “Stan, Maria, call me back.”
I called her back as soon as I got out of class; she didn’t answer. I decided to cut senior seminar, because good God what a waste of time, and I went home. Maria got back to me shortly after I walked in the door, and she told me, “I dropped the portfolio review. I just wanted you to know, because I feel bad that now we have no classes together.”
“Motherfucker,” I thought, but I asked, “Why?”
She explained to me that she “just wasn’t ready.” Everything she’s written in college has been worthless jerk-off material, and she hasn’t had the spare time to write anything legitimately fulfilling to her. For my money, this always seemed like a bad move to me; I understand sometimes you don’t have the time to work with the best ideas, but at least it should be something you’re reasonably passionate about so you can re-work it later, when you either have more time or more experience.
Maria’s philosophy is almost the opposite; she’s just coasting through college, churning out shitty work she cares nothing about, and she’ll throw it all away as soon as she gets a diploma. And then what? Well, she hasn’t thought that far ahead. And I thought I lacked foresight.
But enough about me — were there any other reasons Maria dropped the portfolio review class? Yes:
“Plus,” she added, “you told me it was a blow-off class and they’d just waive the requirement, so I can still go to L.A. in the spring.”
Wait, what?
Oh, shit.
Did I tell her those things? Yup. But — and here’s why my professor, Callie, would slap me upside the head and remind me that she told me not to tell anyone about the string-pulling that was going on for me — there were completely different circumstances when I was supposed to be going. For one thing, I already had the credits in other areas of the film department to graduate with a general studies degree; for another, they thought that I really wanted to go to L.A. this fall. Most importantly, everybody in the screenwriting department knows and/or loves me.
This is problematic for Maria, who currently knows very few people in the screenwriting department, despite it being her concentration. I can’t fault her for that, since I didn’t even really start getting to know any of these people until last fall. You get the right string of bad teachers, and you’ll wind up graduating knowing nothing about anything. Plus, I’m fairly opportunistic, so as soon as Callie described her responsibilities in the department, I made it a goal to get her to know and like me.
So that was my story: they approved my semester in LA application without even looking at it. They didn’t even realize I’m not prepared to graduate and hadn’t taken all of the prerequisites for screenwriting 3 (which I’d be taking in L.A.), which is when they offered to waive them. Partly for my benefit (because they thought I really wanted/needed to go out there), but also to ensure they still had enough people for the screenwriting program to run in L.A. this fall.
Maria’s story is much less glamorous; when she walks into their office, they don’t even know her by name. I hate to get all down on her because she’s a good friend, but if somebody doesn’t know you, how likely are you to stick out your neck for them? Everybody in the screenwriting department is nice, but all they’ll give is the “nothing I can do” routine if they don’t know they can trust you.
I told her as much, and she said she’d try talking to the head of the department anyway. I told her it sounded like a bad idea to me, because she’d basically be walking into the office and saying, “Hey, man, I dropped this portfolio review class because I’m really just not ready for it. However, I’m ready to go to L.A. in the spring if you just waive this class requirement.” For somebody he doesn’t even know, this message will be read loud and clear, because it’ll be printed in red, 64-point, boldface type.
Maria was regretting her decision, too, because she didn’t realize add/drop had ended; sure, you can still drop for a few weeks, but you can’t add after the first week is over. I felt terrible, because I was partially responsible; sure, she was kind of a dumbass for not talking to anybody before she just went and dropped the class, but she did it because of things I said and apparenty didn’t clarify.
So I did what any friend would do: I talked to the head of the department before she could get to him, and I told him I had a friend who dropped the class and asked what could be done to get her back into it.
He told me that she made a “tremendous error in judgment” in not coming to him before dropping the class. Essentially, his only option to get her back into the class is to go to the records department, get down on his hands and knees, and beg for them to correct the mistake. I thanked him for his time and ran away, crying.
But that gave me two ideas. In my four years (and counting…) as an undergrad, if there’s one skill I’ve learned, it’s the fine art of lying your way out of situations. Hmm, I keep thinking I should make some kind of joke about the President, but it just seems too cheap…
At any rate, here were my two solutions to Maria’s problem:
- Go to the records department, kicking and screaming, and insinuate there was some kind of glitch in the computer system (which is extremely likely, anyway) and say that, since she hasn’t missed any classes, they should just stick her back into it, since it’s their goddamn fault anyway. Mwahaha.
- If she really didn’t want to take the class (which seems to be the case), she should NOT talk to the head of the department AT ALL. When the time comes later in the semester, she should fill out a semester in L.A. application, which they will most likely approve, and then say, “Golly, I didn’t know I was supposed to take that portfolio review class.”
Posted by Stan on October 10, 2004 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
October 23, 2004
Lunch
Kelly, a friend of mine from high school, actually graduated college (fancy that) and has returned to the area for grad school. She and I had been meaning to get together ever since I got back in town, but we didn’t until the Wednesday after Lucy brought up moving in with Creepy Dan. I’ve been meaning to blog this story since then, but I kept forgetting.
Kelly and I basically shot the shit for awhile, and eventually, as always, Kelly brought up the subject of Lucy. Kelly can’t stand Lucy. She also can’t stand the fact that Lucy and I are closer friends than Kelly and me. She likes to bring Lucy up to mock her relentlessly. I used to join in, but for awhile I’ve been defending her; it makes it less fun for Kelly, but it doesn’t stop her.
Kelly asked, “Have you talked to Lucy lately?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I talked to her on Monday.”
“How’s she doing?” she asked. “I haven’t talked to her in about six months.”
“Eh, the same,” I said. “Shitty job, shitty friends, shitty life. But she says she’s moving back here.”
“Yeah?” Kelly asked.
“She’s gonna apply to Northeastern to finish up,” I said, “and she’s getting an apartment with Creepy Dan* near UIC.”
“What the fuck?” Kelly demanded. “That guy’s a fucking child molester!”
I started laughing.
“I’m serious,” she continued, “he’s a goddamn psychopath.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and there’s the problem that he’s in love with her. I think her moving in with him is probably the stupidest idea she’s ever had, and she’s had a whole lot.”
“You mean like quitting school to work at Lowe’s?” Kelly asked.
“Among other things,” I replied.
“Wait a minute,” Kelly said, a sudden thought hitting her. “Why the fuck are they gonna live down by UIC?”
I shrugged.
“Is she out of her mind? Northeastern is, like, up the street from North Park,” Kelly said. (North Park is where she’s going for graduate school.)
“Really? I have no idea where it is, but I figured it was down by UIC and Columbia because she said that’s where they were gonna live,” I said. “I guess that’s what I get for assuming she knew what she was talking about.”
“She’s so fucking clueless,” Kelly said. “It’s up by Foster. It’s, like, two blocks away from Higgins. She could probably walk there from her parents’ house.” This is a bit of an exaggeration, but the spirit is the same. Northeastern is way the hell up on the northwest side, almost to the suburbs. UIC is way the hell south. Columbia butts up on downtown, and UIC is several blocks west…living all the way down there would be way the hell out of her way.
Additionally, for somebody as paranoid as she was living in Lincoln Park, UIC’s neck of the woods isn’t exactly better for alleviating her paranoia. There are worse neighborhoods in Chicago, and pockets of that area are actually pretty nice, but if you stray too far in any direction, it won’t exactly lengthen your life.
Of course, she has no idea what the hell she’s doing but refuses to admit it. She’s going on what Creepy Dan, who apparently also plans to attend Northeastern, is saying, and he clearly doesn’t know shit, either. I assume they’re looking into that area because the rent is, generally, pretty cheap. There are reasons for that, but like I said, on the whole it isn’t too bad. Lucy will hate it, though. She’ll probably end up in worse shape than she did in Lincoln Park.
Bear in mind that I knew none of this when Lucy first talked to me about this. I neither knew nor cared where Northeastern was. I figured it was somewhere near UIC, because I assumed convenience would be the only possible explanation for her living in that area, especially since she specifically said she was worried being around that school would bring back bad memories.
None of this will end well. Creepy Dan is a bad start, and living way the hell away from where she needs to be for no reason is even worse.
“You shouldn’t tell her,” Kelly said. “She’s a fuck-up. She has to start figuring out some things on her own.”
“Eh,” I said, “even if I told her, she wouldn’t listen to me, anyway. She is a fuck-up, but part of the problem is she does everything on her own but refuses to learn anything from her fuck-ups.”
“That’s fucking depressing,” she said.
“Yup,” I said. It is.
*Yes, I actually called him Creepy Dan. Everybody but Lucy calls him Creepy Dan behind his back. It’s an easier shorthand, since Lucy used to date a guy named Dan who was much less creepy.
Posted by Stan on October 23, 2004 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
October 22, 2004
Owen Strikes Back
As I’ve stated, mostly in the form of thanks to THE LORD, I have no classes with Owen this semester. Both of my screenwriting classes this semester feature mostly the same people I was with last semester, except without Owen. The main difference: classes are now enjoyable. Except for the portfolio review class, but that’s a whole other thang…
Since school has started, I’ve taken to visiting a girl named Laurie. We had a class in the spring and kind of hit it off. She works in the screenwriting center, so I’ve taken it upon myself to wander in there before my class and flirt with her for awhile while also pandering to her boss so he’ll give me a job. This was rarely my initial intention — the idea was to have dinners with Maria before the portfolio review class, so we could bitch. She dropped the class but is still downtown on Thursdays, so we’d been planning on dinner for awhile, but we never actually did for one reason or another.
So I’ve been hanging out with Laurie, who digs on the Stanbeef. It disappoints me that I went the whole summer without calling her. Not that she was any different than anyone else, but I guess I undervalued the fact that she and I are attracted to one another. I’m kind of retarded, but more on this point later.
Last night, same ol’ shit. I was planning to hang with Maria; it was set, so I left a little early so I’d have 20 minutes or so to talk with Laurie before Maria got out of her class. About three minutes after getting there, a sheepish freshman wandered in, complaining that some copies of Ghost World (one of the scripts studied in script analysis, which apparently is now a mandatory freshman class; this is a good thing) are missing.
Laurie and I went to make the copies together. Because she’s in charge, she has to throw everyone out and lock the door when she leaves. So the sheepish freshman stood in the “homework lounge” (a small area directly outside the center with couches and tables — I’ve never, ever seen anyone do homework there) waiting for us. Over the summer, they installed little, swinging doors to block people out of the offices. They aren’t locked, and they’re so small that even if they were locked, somebody could just lift their legs and step over, but they actually keep the freshman out, which is the goal.
Upperclassmen have no respect for the swinging doors.
So Laurie and I went back to the copy room, made the copies, and as we turned back down the hall toward the center, Laurie saw Owen hunched next to the center’s door. It was closed, but not actually locked, because we were just going around the corner for five seconds.
“OWEN!” Laurie shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”
Owen froze, clutching the door handle, like a deer caught in headlights. Then, he looked sheepishly up at Laurie and me. He let go of the door, which was only open a tad, and it shut quietly.
“You know better than that,” Laurie admonished. Her motherly tone amused me. “When the door’s closed, you don’t go inside. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Sorry,” Owen muttered.
Laurie gave the copies to the freshman, who thanked her and ran away quickly.
We all went inside the center, Owen and I exchanging greetings after not having seen each other all summer.
Owen presented me with a business card with his name, e-mail address, and website URL. “There’s nothing on the website yet,” he explained, “but drop me a line sometime.” Sadly, my schadenfreude instincts kicked in the first time he ever mentioned the site, shortly before the end of the spring semester. I’d memorized his site URL, his DeviantArt URL, and his LiveJournal URL. I checked them periodically over the summer, hoping to be amused by him. Unfortunately, Owen is true to his word: there’s almost no content on any of his sites.
“What do you want, Owen?” Laurie snapped. He was interrupting our flirt time.
Owen explained he needed to get a script for one of his classes. It could be any random script, so he forced me to choose it. I suggested Breaking Away, because I figured it’d be the type of script Owen would hate. I snickered when he agreed to go with it. Laurie demanded his student ID; he handed her a driver’s license.
“This isn’t your student ID,” she grunted.
“I left it at home. Can’t you just type in my ID number?” he asked.
“I have to scan the card in order to get into the system,” Laurie replied.
“Well,” Owen said, changing the subject rapidly, “I can’t find my ID, but check out my new license. It has an updated picture and everything.” He handed her the license, along with his state ID (a worthless card for anyone older than 16; it looks just like a license, except without the information pertaining to driving ability). Laurie stared at the pictures unadmiringly before handing it back to him.
“Wow,” she said unenthusiastically.
“I needed to get them so I can vote,” he said. I hoped to God he wasn’t going to launch into another Bush tirade. I’m not a Bush fan, but Owen has a habit of going waaaaaay overboard. Fortunately, he didn’t, because he stumbled on his student ID amid the other rubble in his pocket. Laurie scanned it quickly, shoved the script in his hands, and we hoped that’d be the end of it.
But no. He stayed.
Much like a tornado, when Owen hangs around, you mostly just want to huddle, shivering, with the nearest person and weep gently, praying it will all be over soon. Laurie and I exchanged that desperate, wishing-we-could-huddle-right-in-front-of-him look before turning our attention to ignoring him. Mildly aroused at that point thanks to our exchanged glance, I suddenly found my cup of tea fascinating. I stared at it blankly to avoid eye contact with Owen.
Laurie, meanwhile, became entranced with the Internet. We sat in silence, Owen staring at us without anything to say. Generally, Owen is not a conversation starter; his problem is that, when anybody says anything at any point in time ever, he will jump on it and twist it into a conversation about Emma Peel or something. Either that, or he’ll say completely in(s)ane things that make everyone silent once again.
We knew the only way to defeat him was to not give him any fuel whatsoever. He asked me a few questions about classes, about the summer, et cetera, which I either answered with monosyllabic statements or with jokes. Without leaving any wiggle room for follow up questions, most of his attempts at starting a long conversation died. Briefly, I felt sorry for him. I wondered if it was a chicken-egg thing; is he so tactless and obnoxious because his social skills remain undeveloped because nobody wants to talk to him, or does nobody want to talk him because he’s always been, and always will be, a social retard?
Laurie decided the silent treatment wasn’t quite effective, so she dropped the j-bomb: “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said to me, “but the boss was talking about possibly needing a fifth person. I’m gonna drop your name if he decides that’s what he needs, so be ready.”
She glanced at Owen briefly, and I realized that this, in addition to being potentially good news for me, was her way of saying to Owen, “Neener-neener, I actually like this guy, and you’re scum to me. Go away.”
Owen understood. “Hey, if Stan doesn’t work out, don’t hesitate to mention my name,” he said to her.
“Oh, I’ll be sure,” she said, rolling her eyes toward me.
I joked, “Hey, maybe I should print out a copy of my resume —”
“— which you won’t need —”
“— so he’ll be really impressed with my string of two-month-long jobs.”
“I have five copies of my resume with me,” Owen offered, apparently under the delusional impression that merely having his resume meant he’d get the job.
“You’ll need all five,” I told him. “I hear he makes lots of notes.”
Owen’s face fell. Honestly, I feel mean taking advantage of gullibility like that, but I simply cannot help it.
“He’s just joking,” Laurie explained, and suddenly we were saved. Two other employees showed up for active duty, which meant Laurie could leave the center. Almost immediately after explaining to the others what needed to be done over the course of the evening, she said, “Come on, let’s go to Jewel.”
I enjoy assertive women, and I have the scars to prove it.
“All right,” I said. We got up and ran for the door. To our dismay, Owen followed us.
Laurie and I exchanged “goddammit” glances as we headed toward the stairwell.
“What the fuck, Stan?!” I heard from down the hall. Bear in mind, this could be anyone, friend or foe, so I wasn’t sure who it’d be. It, of course, turned out to be Maria, and I suddenly thanked the heavens. She’d gotten out of class early.
Maria, so you know, is like the Owen antidote. We all can’t stand Owen, but we try to keep it to ourselves and put up with it, for the most part. Not a great strategy, but much easier to deal with. Maria, however, openly disdains Owen. She was assigned to be his first reader in the spring semester, when he was so unnecessarily hostile, and because of that hostility, she ripped his shit apart. It was fucking brilliant; I know this because I helped her write some of the feedback.
“I just tried calling you,” she said. “You didn’t answer.”
Yes, despite my new phone, I still can’t get a goddamn signal when I’m on the third floor of the film building. It drives me nuts.
“So are we doing pizza or what?” she asked.
Shit. I had the plans solidified, so I didn’t want to renege. Plus, I knew Maria had some sort of warding spell that would save us from Owen. At the same rate, though, I wanted my personal time with Laurie. I was planning to tell Laurie about my dinner plans, but Owen showed up and I didn’t want to get into it. Maybe I should’ve, since the mention of Maria would have made him run away, screaming.
All of a sudden, the whole evening was a fucking catastrophe.
And then Owen headed for the stairwell; thank God, one problem solved. But then there was me, Maria, and Laurie.
“I’m gonna go with Maria,” I said. “We already had plans to get pizza. Hey, you wanna come with us?”
Typically, I wouldn’t invite somebody else along, but Laurie’s special and destroys any mental rules of etiquette I may have.
“No, I was gonna go get a salad at Jewel,” she said. “I don’t want any greasy-ass pizza.”
Touché. I feel like a jackass now, but I forgot to mention the pizza place we go up to is really a pizza-salad joint. I guess they thought out the health-conscious people and decided to offer a little of both. It didn’t really enter my head, though, because Maria and I were planning to hang out and shoot the shit at the pizza place, and I knew Laurie wouldn’t be able to stay. At the same rate, we all could have gotten it to go and shot the shit in the center. It would eliminate the personal time aspect of it, but she’d still be there.
Essentially, I both over- and underthought the situation and ended up botching the whole thing. Status quo.
I thought I might be sabotaging myself, which is not an unusual occurrence with me, particularly after my hilarious string of disastrous relationships.
In the first book of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, there’s an illustration of the gunslinger after the massacre of Tull, with a long trail of bodies leading up to him, standing there with his guns out. Whenever I think about the last four years in terms of my romantic relationships, that image flashes through my mind. I don’t think it’s coincidental.
I’ve had a (and excuse the gunslinger pun here; I should be shot — oh fuck, there’s another one — for this) habit of being a bit gunshy with women lately. My habit of choosing women who seem normal and then turn out to be holy shit crazy is the probable cause. Laurie, on the surface, seems like a really pleasant, normal person. That’s how it starts. I take her out to dinner, and suddenly she’s a fucking nutjob.
Now, this is not me saying all women are crazy; I’m not one of those retarded misogynists who has a couple of bad relationships and decides all women are crazy. It just happens that, in my particular position, I have actually dated mostly insane people. The Ex, of whom I often spoke Way Back When, did do some crazy shit toward the end, but I think it was more immaturity than insanity. Still, dinnerware exploding over one’s head tends to scar emotionally.
And those are just the women I’m willing to besmirch on this blog. If those are the ones I talk about, imagine the horror of the few I haven’t mentioned.
So yes, I’m afraid of going further. I want to, and I don’t. I think that she might be the one not-completely-insane person who digs on the Stanbeef. I just don’t want her to turn out to be a knife- (or plate-)wielding maniac, and it’s holding me back. Perhaps Owen was a harbinger of what’s to come; his arrival may be saying to me, “Dude, back off Laurie. She’s bad news. Run. RUN!”
But here’s the problem with me, generally: that type of thing intrigues me more than it scares me away.
Posted by Stan on October 22, 2004 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | Classic Issues, School Rants
October 20, 2004
Levity
Steve Martin makes fun of notes.
Posted by Stan on October 20, 2004 8:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Random Musings
Junior High School Politics, or: Bad Blood Brothers
My cell phone is a goddamn piece of shit, as almost everyone who calls me will attest (mostly because I say, “Goddamn this piece of shit — can I call you back?”), so I decided to get a new one. I walked up to the Cingular store in town and was helped by a strange man who seemed to be looking above my head every time he talked to me.
While I was there, I ran into an old, old, old, old, old, old friend. And things got weird for me.
You might dimly remember me talking about my old crew from junior high. I mentioned them in at least one entry that I know of, but the hierarchy of friendship has always been sort of muddy.
In the Ben Franklin entry, I called Art the fearless leader, but some time in the midst of eighth grade, he allowed his leadership to be usurped by another friend, Joe. Most of us had been friends with Joe previously (I’d known him since first grade), but Art didn’t know him until we introduced him. They became fast friends, and eventually Art gave up his position as alpha-male to Joe.
Why? Simple: Art was promoted to “low man on the totem people with lots of high school friends.” At the time, very few of us knew high schoolers, but Art was a stoner long before it was trendy, and he had a lot of cousins in high school, so he invariably ended up making good impressions at high school parties. More often than not, he ditched us in favor of his older friends, which we found acceptable. We were in awe of his high school friends, because we weren’t in high school yet, so we didn’t realize that making friends with high schoolers is easy.
Bear in mind, when I break down the strange chain of command, all of this was unverablized but still basically recognized. It’s hard to explain, and I sometimes wonder if my group of friends was the only one to go through this (I sure hope not), but in retrospect, there was a leadership hierarchy that we all followed. The fact that we followed it is kind of the point of this story.
Other than Art, the major players in the Ben Franklin story were:
Mandi and Jenny: Girls who helped me with my assorted life issues by yelling at me and extolling the virtues of drug abuse to solve problems. Can you see why I ended up such good friends with Lucy?
Mike: A funny guy I knew since third grade, and one of the many guitarists in our terrible band.
Mark: An unusual, geeky Mexican guy I met during sixth grade. Most of the sixth graders went on a long trip to some camp in Wisconsin, so those that stayed behind fit into one class, so we all had different schedules and classmates. During that time, Mark and I bonded over mocking our math teacher and were friends ever since.
Nick: Art’s cousin. He was never really a friend of mine. Ever.
Steve: The bass player.
Now add to that:
Joe: While we all hung out with him independent of Art, he ended up becoming the leader rather quickly.
Jeff: Who was friends with all of us but was never quite in the band.
Dave: A strange, porno-obsessed dude.
There were more friends than that, but they don’t really apply to this story.
Here’s a little history lesson involving my life: after Art allowed himself to be unseated by Joe, Nick quickly and willingly disappeared from our circle. Mandi and Jenny mostly just hung out with me because they fucking hated Joe and really were fairly indifferent to most of my other friends — they just liked Art and me.
With Nick (the drummer) and Art (the fourth guitarist) gone, the band fell apart. It was better that way, since we only practiced maybe twice and spent the rest of the time just talking about how we wanted to be in a band.
Enter Dave. Dave had a guitar. Dave had a basement. Dave was reasonably good friends with Joe. Art out; Dave in. Furthermore, to maintain his leadership, Joe got a guitar. We weren’t a band, per se, but we would get together and jam.
Meanwhile, Steve and I started talking — really talking — about a band. He had a gotten a bass by that time, so we thought if me, him, and Mark (the only other guitar player who could really play) got together, we could really make it work. We shared the same musical influences, the same general interests, similar senses of humor, and we had similar philosophies about how to make a band work. We figured if we got a reasonably polished act together, we could find a drummer easily.
Consequently, around this time, Steve and I started hanging out a lot. We brought Mark in on the band idea. Then we brought in Jeff, who didn’t play an instrument but was enthusiastic about picking one up. He was there partly for moral support and partly because, at the time, the band was still all talk. We’d basically just hang out, only playing on the rarest occasions. My work ethic has not improved since then.
You’ll notice some people were left out: Mike, Joe, and Dave. First, none of us really liked Dave all that much; second, Mike liked Dave more than us; third, we all liked Steve more than Joe, so on the rare occasions we invited Joe to hang with us, we got tired of him usurping the leadership. Really, since we were all passive followers, the old, functional hierarchy was somewhat restored: Steve became the leader, and I became his go-to guy for ideas and information.
To give you an idea of how low Joe, our former leader, had sunk at this point, let me illustrate it through a song we wrote during a mega jam session with all of us but Joe (and began playing at every subsequent jam session). We called the song “Joe Sucks.” A rather simple shift from an A power chord to a B-flat power chord, the songs lyrics went as follows:
(Verse) Joe sucks Joe sucksJoe sucks
Joe sucks(Chorus) Joe sucks
Joe sucks(Repeat verse and chorus until boredom sets in)
Virtuosos, we were.
So everybody liked the new arrangement…except Joe. With Mike and Dave hanging together, and Steve, Jeff, Mark, and I hanging out together, his usefulness waned. When we’d be at school, he’d still rule us like a tyrannical king, but after school and on weekends, we’d all ditch him and do our own thing. Joe was not a fan of this at all, so he got together with Dave and Mike and the anti-Steve propaganda began.
You have to bear in mind that Steve was partly his own undoing. He was handed a great position of leadership for no other reason than being extremely likable and intelligent. I don’t really know why he did this, or why he thought he had to do it, but he, essentially, made up a girlfriend.
I don’t know why; perhaps it was our mutual obsession with porn. At the time, though, none of us had girlfriends. None of us had ever really seriously entertained the thought of having a girlfriend. We thought about having sex nonstop, but we didn’t really understand at that time (and some of us are still struggling with the idea today) that there’s more to a relationship than nonstop sex.
Perhaps he thought he needed to make up a girlfriend to justify the reason for his leadership. We all approached hero-worship for a time when he told us just who he was dating, and that worship was legitimized when he announced at one point that the two had performed the dirtiest of dirty deeds.
But the shit hit the fan. I think Art, in one of his rare appearances, was the first to announce that Steve had made up this entire relationship. He actually knew the girl, Erin, that Steve was claiming to date. Art had asked her about Steve, and Erin had no idea what he was talking about.
Dave had already planted a seed of doubt after the infamous “We did it” conversation. When pressed for details, Steve said very little. Understandable, being that it was a very personal moment. On the other hand, he was the first of any of us to even come close to losing his virginity, so we wanted the details.
“What was it like?” Dave asked.
“It was…” Steve paused, searching for the mot juste. “…flowing.”
Flowing? Huh. We all accepted it. Our frame of reference consisted of seeing some porno movies and many, many pictures of naked women, so who were we to accuse him of lying? Plus, none of us even thought he was lying, until he had to go. The first thing Dave said when Steve left was, “Flowing? He’s making it up.”
We all shouted down Dave’s complaints, saying that he didn’t know what he was talking about anymore than we did. Dave believed he did know more than we did for two reasons: (1) he was the supply of all our porn, and therefore he had to know everything (clearly he had the extra time with the material to thoroughly read the articles), and (2) his older brother had supposedly had sex. We didn’t believe it, though; Warren was a whale and an asshole. We couldn’t imagine any woman having sex with him.
That was basically the end of it, until Art’s announcement. While most were hesitant to believe him, I kind of had to side with Art. I had made a personal discovery that I didn’t tell anyone until after the fictional girlfriend came out. Steve was, when you come down to brass tacks, my best friend, and I wasn’t going to use anything against him when I hadn’t even talked about it first.
Ever tactfully, Art made his announcement during a large-group summit in Dave’s basement. Even Joe was there, possibly because he was the svengali behind Art’s announcement. More importantly, Steve was there, so accusations came flying right at him, and all he could do is argue and hide behind the defenses of myself and Jeff (Mark stayed neutral).
Jeff and I believed Steve’s rhetoric; he claimed his relationship with Erin was secret, which was why they rarely acknowledged each other in public and only went out occasionally. In retrospect, this seems way too simple, but Jeff and I had very romantic mentalities, so we found the idea of a secret relationship more endearing than fradulent.
With the heat on, Steve decided to leave while everybody else went upstairs to get snacks and argue further. I went back to the basement with Steve to help him collect his bass and his backpack.
“I can’t believe them,” Steve said. “You believe me, don’t you?”
I looked him right in the eyes and said, “Yeah, of course.” I knew otherwise, though; perhaps that should have been the time to bring it up.
My personal discovery came in the form of song lyrics Steve had given me awhile back. It was kind of an unhappy breakup song, which he claimed to have written with Erin, but it was good. As was the nature of our songwriting collaboration at the time, he handed me the lyrics to set to music, and I stuck them in a desk drawer so I could work on my own stuff.
Maybe a month or two after that, I decided to listen to the Goo Goo Dolls’ album that was big at the time (A Boy Named Goo, har-har). I don’t recall who made that recommendation, but at the time, the general consensus was that the Goo Goo Dolls sucked huge amounts of ass (I still believe that; listening to the album did not change my impression of them much), so it was probably some girl I wanted to ask out.
So I’m listening to this album, and all of a sudden one of the songs strikes me as very familiar. I’d never heard the chords or melody before, but the lyrics were so familiar.
It hit me. I pulled the lyric sheet out of my desk drawer, rewound the song, and listened again. He’d just copied the lyrics of “Ain’t That Unusual.” It made sense, choosing a band he probably liked secretly and logically assumed we’d never listen to. It’s nothing more than a coincidence that I listened to the tape, anyway.
Does this mean he made up a relationship with a girl? No. I guess this is the reason I never lost faith or trust in him, even though in retrospect it all seems so obvious. I was going to confront him about the fake lyrics, but that wouldn’t necessarily lead to an accusation of fake girlfriends. I actually do recall thinking at the time I made the discovery, “Man, Erin and Steve made up song lyrics.”
But now, with the allegations starting to add up, I wondered. And I looked my best friend in the eye and bullshat him. I could have — and should have — told him about my doubts, but I thought that’d make me a bad friend, since at this point he had very little support from our nerdy clique, and at least I, the officially recognized best friend, could stay in his corner.
So yes, at the time, I firmly believed straight-up lying to friends was more acceptable than telling them truths they may not want to hear. Since this incident had a remarkably profound impact on my life, does it now make sense why I’m such a hardass with Lucy? Not that she listens to me…
I went out with Steve and waited until his mom picked him up before going back into Dave’s house.
Then, the idea that ruined Steve was pitched. I don’t remember who brought it up, but it was either Dave, Joe, or Art. I’m leaning toward Art, but I’m not even sure I was in the room when the actual pitch took place, or if it was relayed secondhand because I was outside with Steve. It’s beside the point, though. The point is the idea came out: let’s go to Erin’s house and ask her directly.
I live in a pretty small town, in the grand scheme. It’s not an everybody-knows-everybody place, but it’s pretty close to it. We all, merely by living in this town for our entire lives, knew where Erin lived. We weren’t friends with her or her twin sister — hell, we didn’t even particularly like them — but we knew.
So must of us trudged across town on a cold winter day, making the long walk (we didn’t all have bikes, so we all decided to walk) to Erin’s house. I know some people stayed behind, because my dad came to pick me up and was told by Dave that we had gone for a walk.
I believe it was Mark, Jeff, Mike, Joe, and myself making the trek. Art and Dave stayed behind.
We got to her house and knocked on the door. I can’t imagine what her mom may have been thinking when five guys showed up at her house asking to speak with one of her daughters, but nonetheless, she went and got her.
Erin, stunned that a group of low-class jackasses would show up at her door, wondered what the hell we wanted.
“Are you dating Steve?” we asked, point-blank.
“No…” she said, looking genuinely perplexed.
Mark said, “He told us all about you and how it’s a secret. You don’t have to keep it quiet. We just want to know.”
“I barely even know Steve,” Erin said, actually looking sorry at this point.
But there it was: our answer. Steve had made the whole thing up.
After that, Joe’s thirst for power was pretty much quenched. Mark, Jeff, and I were still overall willing to forgive Steve, although we were mad; I’m not sure if that says how likable Steve was or how much of an asshole Joe was. We mostly just wanted to talk with Steve about it, but Joe squashed that. After all, if we talked to Steve, we might understand why he did what he did, and Joe couldn’t let that happen.
I had little to no involvement in the rest of the story, other than giving Steve the cold-shoulder. Essentially, Joe made a plan for a literal attack (like, a random act of pussy-gang violence) on Steve. I don’t recall who was involved, except that I wasn’t, but they basically ganged up on him in a classroom, tried to attack him, he ran away into the principal’s office (inconveniently across the hall), but they chased him through it anyway and ended up knocking the shit out of him in the main hall before running away to avoid getting caught.
After that, a meeting was called to basically decide on a very open level who would be the new boss of us: Joe or Steve. I dimly recall being violently ill at the time, so I missed the entire meeting, but from what I learned from others, they were all gathered in the park across the street during the recess half of our lunch period, and Steve was confronted verbally instead of physically. Mark and Jeff aired our grievances, Steve accepted our distrust and apparent loathing, and skulked away all by himself. He ditched the second half of school and went home.
After that, we all ignored him, and he ignored us. This ruined my friendship with Mandi and Jenny, who pitied and befriended him for obvious reasons. They took the whole thing out on me; although I was willing to forgive and forget, they chided me for not standing up for him in the first place. While I could have stood up for him on the night we went to Erin’s house, it was more difficult during the subsequent bullying because I wasn’t there.
But hey, I made my bed…
I really found out very little about Steve after that. Our close friendship had ended. He started hanging out with Mandi and Jenny, obviously. They introduced him to tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, three things he was dead against when he hung out with us. I guess being betrayed by your only friends will do that to you.
A reconciliation of sorts occurred our freshman year of high school, when Jeff and I rebonded and became best friends once again (Steve interrupted that) and decided that Joe simply had to go. With Steve’s help, he went. But after that, even though things were “better,” they still weren’t the same. We were cordial and occasionally joked around, but we didn’t seek each other out. It was just too difficult.
I had a few classes with Steve later in high school, and we mostly sat in the back of the room mocking everyone and everything that happened. But that was as close as we got. It seemed like some kind of psychic mutual agreement.
A big step came when he moved. His parents divorced, and he ended up moving to Wisconsin with (I think) his mother. He tracked down Mark, who gave him all of our contact information. He got ahold of us and periodically let us know how he was doing.
The last I heard — and this was a few years ago — was that he was married and working in interior design in Wisconsin. It sounded happy.
Meanwhile, everything else fell apart. Mark and Mike sided with Dave and Joe’s thuggery, Art disappeared (which I explain in the Ben Franklin entry), Jeff and I remained great friends (mostly independent of them) throughout high school. We went through a rough patch during our first year of college, but we got past that. We don’t talk much anymore, though; he has his own thing, and I have mine.
Aside from Jeff and occasional snippets of Art, I haven’t seen any of those people in years, which is surprising since we all, by and large, live in the same place. I know Mark went into the military. He e-mailed me from a nuclear sub a few years ago, and I never responded because I’m an asshole. Of course, he supposedly tried to seduce Lucy last year and then turned out to be engaged, but I’ve heard about 30 sides to that story, so the question remains whether or not he’s as big an asshole as I am.
Today, though, I saw Steve. He’s back from Wisconsin, working at the Cingular store to pay to go to an architecture and design school. I think I was as surprised to see him as he was me. He was extremely cordial and friendly, but I know he was thinking about the exact same things I was thinking about; mainly, what happened during eighth grade. The aftermath and reconciliation don’t have the same resonance as the few weeks that marked the downfall of a great friendship.
And I know his strongest memories are not of our sophomore-year lit class or the rare occasions I’d see him at the smoking lot (visiting friends); it’s all about that year, when we were in a band, becoming the best of friends, and then it all went to shit.
He asked, “Do you still play guitar?” A reasonable question, since we were in a band together and I took the instrument very seriously (still do, though now it’s a hobby rather than an eventual career path), and I played at a few shows in high school, so obviously it’d stick out.
I told him yes, and then he chuckled and said, “Curmudgeon,” and that’s how I knew for certain that he was remembering all that bad shit.
At some point, we agreed to name our band Curmudgeon, partly for the junior-high-angst-filled songs we wrote together, partly as a reference to a B-side by what we believed was the greatest band in the universe (Nirvana). I didn’t even remember that until he brought it up, and when he did, I realized that he probably remembers all that stuff even more vividly than I do, because he got the shit-stained end of the stick.
I walked home, new phone in hand, feeling like the worst human being who ever lived. Should I have exchanged numbers or e-mail addresses with him? Should I have stayed and talked longer (they weren’t busy)? Should I have gotten down on my hands and knees, weeping, and beg for forgiveness?
I realized that I can never right those wrongs, but maybe we can slowly rebuild. He’s in town; I’m in town. Why not hang out? Why not stop into the Cingular store sometime next week and invite him out for dinner or a drink?
I may do that, but I may not. The entire conversation felt extremely awkward; I don’t know if he felt it, or if it’s just my guilt working overtime, but it just felt like trying to rekindle an ages-old friendship would never work. I haven’t had a lengthy conversation with him in about nine years.
We have so much to talk about, and yet I can’t seem to think of a single thing to say other than “Sorry.”
Posted by Stan on October 20, 2004 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | Classic Issues, Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
October 19, 2004
The Schadenfreude Guide to Authorial Competence, or: Somewhere Between Me and a Dream
While I enjoy writing, the main issue in reading my writing is that I just think it’s boring. Assuming it’s not an early draft (which I almost always hate), I rarely have any particular dislike of the characters, the story, or any of that shit; I mostly just find it drab and styleless, because it’s my style, and my style is just a slipshod homogeny of writing I enjoy and/or respect, so I’m constantly reading my work and thinking, “This isn’t terrible, but John Kennedy Toole would have made it funny.”
Last week, I submitted my writing to this portfolio review class. In case I haven’t mentioned it (and I’m way too lazy to go back and check right now), each week the entire class receives a different peer’s work. During the following week, we read their “canon” and discuss it in the following week’s class. Some students are assigned written coverage of the pieces.
So we all submitted our “canons,” and one student with whom “Doc” has a relationship volunteered to have his work already copied in time for this class, so “Doc” passed around each work at the end of class. Our task: assess it.
The student submitted four detailed treatments, a step outline of one of those treatments, two short screenplays, and one feature-length screenplay. (I felt slightly less masculine with my contribution of one feature and two short scripts.) I was assigned coverage of one of the treatments, but I decided to start with the feature, because it’s easier to get out of the way first.
Or so I thought.
Okay, here’s the thing: I’ll admit that I am hyper-critical. Not merely of myself, but of everyone else. That’s how come I hate so many fucking jackasses. I actually think it’s a good thing that I don’t hold myself to a higher or lower standard than anyone else; I also happen to think that I can be kind of an asshole when I don’t like something. Generally, that’s fine, until I have to look the author in the face and say, “This is the worst goddamn piece of shit I’ve ever read.”
I’m telling you, though, this writer made it easier and easier for me to say those words with each page. My rough assessment goes like this, as generally as possible:
- The story doesn’t start until page 76. Everything — and I mean everything — up to that point is back-story that he could clearly, effectively, and interestingly establish in two or three scenes. How can I tell there’s a lot of back-story? Let me put it this way: within the first ten pages of the script, the characters are born. That’s all that happens. And this isn’t a movie about genius babies.
As a consequence of this heavy back-story, when the story gets going nearly nearly two-thirds of the way through the script, he rushes through it to the end. And the only thing that stopped me from coming out and saying this is a terrible script is that everything that happens from page 76 to roughly page 105 (out of 127) is unbelievably good, but it’s so rushed that I want more of it. And that, folks, is how you know where your story starts and ends. - For somebody who takes his damn time with the back-story, he sure has some undeveloped characters. The central characters are thin; the secondary characters are cardboard.
- The dialogue is stiff, forced, and generally on-the-nose. A few characters, in addition to being stereotypes, are over-the-top stereotypes. They’re borderline cartoony.
- All I’ll say about this script’s content is that the main character is deformed, spent his entire life in a basement, and pretty much all he can do is read the Bible. For someone with these limitations, he’s remarkably street-smart when he finally gets out. I think the idea of this character being let outside could be fascinating — hell, he could have an entire story right there — but he seems to know exactly where to go, exactly how to get there, and exactly who he should avoid.
I’m not saying the Bible isn’t a good prep-guide for the world; everyone in that book is a complete dick. However, aside from the human nature aspects, everything that happens in the Bible is really far removed from the modern world.
I, personally, would find it hilarious if there were a John the Savage quality to him. Whereas John the Savage thought and spoke in imabic pentameter and Elizabethan language, because he learned everything about the world from Shakespeare, it would be hilarious if this character thought of the world in terms of a very literal interpretation of the Bible.
Honestly, I would produce and direct this screenplay if there was a scene of the main character asking a teamster to place his hand under his thigh and pray.
Those are my main points. There’s other stuff, but it’s either too minor or too specific to get into. The main thing that vindicated me is that during the discussion, everyone either brought up or agreed with the way I felt. Unfortunately, points two, three, and four were negated by the professor, who shot our asses full of this hot info: the entire script took place in, roughly, the 1920s.
Suddenly, every plot hole, contrivance, over-the-top character, or logical fallacy made sense. There were still problems, sure, but that tiny bit of information made a whole lot of the script much more forgivable. It didn’t change the fact that the story starts way too late, and it actually brings me to point number 5: - There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that this script takes place in any time other than the present.
Sometimes, time period and location don’t make a difference, especially if one is going for a “timeless” story. But in a story about a guy locked in a basement simply because he’s deformed and people think he’s a demon is much, much, much more believable in the early 20th century than it is in the early 21st century.
All he had to do in the writing was give us a little bit of a 1920s feel. A very little bit. Like describing fashions or hairstyles. Or indicating period music. Something like, say, when the characters are born (sometime between 1900 and 1910), perhaps one of the characters is born in a farmhouse, rather than a hospital.
The only indications of the time period come, as I’ve said, from logical fallacies (such as a writer expecting us to believe a group of modern nuns would believe a kid is a demon just because he’s deformed), plot holes (there’s a whole thing about one of the characters being pursued by, and then lost by, the police; by today’s standards, she didn’t technically commit an arrestable crime, and it’d be really easy for them to track her), and shit like that. We aren’t immersed in a 1920s world, so it’s hard to forgive the major problems because we all thought it takes place in 2004.
This is, I have to report, the worst sentence I’ve ever read in the English language. And I’m the guy who has not only read Hubert Selby Jr., but I’ve written the following sentence: “In recent weeks, it has been brought to my attention that I mostly sabotage my somewhat pitiful attempts at relationships by, for example, becoming really hostile, saying things I don’t mean, and then never, ever apologizing for the things I say and do while under the influence of my immense, soul-crushing ego and irritating superiority complex.”* I know what I’m talking about.
This guy’s terrible, incomprehensible sentence made me believe I was a good writer. No, not even a good writer, just not as bad a writer as I normally think I am. I, in effect, got over myself.
Will I go easier on myself? No. Basically, I just concluded that, while my writing is bad, it could be much, much worse.
With that ringing personal endorsement, I bet you all can’t wait until I offer up the samples I used to compile my “canon!”
*What’s telling about this is that I clicked a random month and scrolled down randomly and managed to find a horribly constructed sentence without any difficulty whatsoever.
Posted by Stan on October 19, 2004 6:53 PM | Permalink | School Rants
October 18, 2004
Senior Seminar (2)
Today, Qween showed up to class. Nobody was exactly rejoicing. She blamed last week’s snafu entirely on people who weren’t her, which just pissed me off.
During class, we broke into three groups, read a poem, and drew pictures or created “skits” about what we thought the poem meant.
Later on, Qween got (and took) a cell phone call in class. I imagine it was second grade calling, wanting its assignment back.
I hate this class.
Posted by Stan on October 18, 2004 7:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
October 11, 2004
Senior Seminar
It took me four years, but I’m finally a senior. As such, I’m required by law to take the most worthless class in the history of education, senior seminar. This is a class where a disparate group of students, heading toward the end of their undergraduate educations, gather together to share their feelings about life, love, and future unemployment, and do art projects that even a third-grader would wrinkle his or her nose at because they’re so beyond fingerpainting.
Senior seminar is widely regarded as a waste of every student’s time. It’s such a waste, in fact, that the administration voted to eliminate it from the required curriculum, replacing it, instead, with a year-long freshman seminar program to help students adjust to big-city living after two half-assed days of orientation at the start of the semester. No word yet on whether this is only going to be required for out-of-staters, or if everyone — including folks born and raised in and around Chicago — will have to take it. There is word, however, that this change won’t go into effect until fall 2006 and that students won’t be grandfathered into the change — meaning seniors will have to take senior seminar until the class of 2009. Yay!
My particular senior seminar class is taught by a woman who insists on being addressed as “Qween.” Yes, that’s “Qween” with a “W,” which gives you an indication of how moronic she is. Qween is honestly of the opinion that her class has some sort of value, which drives everyone in the class nuts. Last week (I cut but was filled in by some other students), apparently she only kept the class for an hour or so, and they got big sheets of posterboard and a pack of Crayola markers to — I swear to God — draw a “family map”; that is, a map outlining familial relationships. Not a family tree; this drawing is filled with roads and comical variations on true-life street signs.
Good Lord, I’m glad I cut last week.
I felt I had to come today, because part of Qween taking the class seriously involves her taking the attendance policy seriously. Most of us griped about that today before class. We’re aware we have to do the work for the class, but do we really have to draw stick-figure pictures of our parents and siblings and then discuss them with the class? I barely even tell my friends about my humiliating family; why would I want to share this information with strangers?
So the school’s official attendance policy, followed by this professor, is as follows: you get three absences. If you take a fourth, you’re automatically dropped a letter grade. If you take a fifth, you fail. Two tardies (up to fifteen minutes late) equal one absence; showing up fifteen minutes late or more is an absence. (For those who think this policy is strict, bear in mind that 95% of our courses are three to four hours once or twice a week, rather than the more typical 45 minutes a day three times a week or whatever.)
Since the school is aware of its stringent attendance policy, the handbook is pretty fair when it comes to professors who are late: since 15 minutes late is an absence, we’re legally allowed to leave if a professor doesn’t show up in the first 15 minutes as long as nobody from the office or something comes in to announce he or she is running late.
In my four years and counting of school, we’ve never actually instituted the late-professor policy. Generally, the only times I’ve had consistently late professors were in classes that were actually important, and they were almost always late, rather than completely absent. Sure, we’ve had half-joking discussions about leaving when we’ve reached 15-minute mark, but nobody has ever dared leave, and the professor has generally shown up within 20 minutes.
Why is this the case? Funny thing about Columbia students, dumbasses that they are: they want to learn things when they deem the subject important. So, if a class is in their major, they’d never leave, although nobody would bat an eyelash about leaving, for example, senior seminar.
Which brings me to today. Qween was late. At the five-minute mark, people started to get antsy and chit-chatty. At the 10-minute mark, people started seriously talking about leaving by the 15-minute mark. We all bitched about how fucking pointless the class is, what a waste of time it’d be to stay even if she did show up, and we all decided that she couldn’t do anything if there was a mass exodus.
At the 15-minute mark, we all started writing our names on the board, so that she’d know we at least showed up. Unfortunately, after that point, very few people actually left. Some of them said they had other classes to go to, so they may as well wait. Others, like me, wanted to leave but didn’t want to be the only one.
I stood at one of the two doors to the large classroom and made eye contact with another girl standing at the other door. We looked back at the people doing anything but leaving, then back at each other.
“I’ll go if you go,” she finally said. “We can be partners in crime.”
Was she coming on to me?
Answer: no. We both left the classroom and immediately went in opposite directions.
I was still worried, since three people total (one guy left before the two of us) does not an exodus make. I didn’t care enough to go back and wait, though, so I headed toward the train.
As I went, I called Lucy, who had called me during my first class of the morning. She left a message: “Hey, dumbass, call me back.” Like I said, our relationship is healthy as a horse. (Careful readers will note that me calling back actually does, technically, make me a dumbass.)
So I talked to Lucy and blah-blah-blah, she brought up some random guy she met eight months ago while she was still dating abusive boyfriend #1, but she wouldn’t dump him in pursuit of a better guy, but now she ran into this better guy again, and blah-blah-blah…
Then, she said, “I’m probably moving back to Chicago next year.”
Good Lord, the news I’ve been waiting for. I’ve been trying to convince her all summer to move back home. Not for my sake, since it’d invariably ruin my life, but because she’s ruining her own life by staying in that hellhole. She was actually talking about going back to school and getting an apartment away from her parents, and so on, and I was thrilled — it was almost identical to the plan I’d outlined for her early in the summer, which she’d refused to do because it was too late to apply to get into a different school.
“Yeah,” she said, “so Dan and I were probably gonna get an apartment near UIC, and I’m going to go to Northeastern.”
Dan? Creepy motherfucking Dan? Here I am, working my ass off trying to hit her from every single angle with reasons why she’s throwing her life into the toilet and reasons why it’d be advantageous for her to come home, and she’s having secret talks with Creepy Dan and he’s really the one who got her to come home?
God. Fucking. Dammit.
Not that I’d really be able to do anything about it anyway. My plan was for her to come back, for us to get an apartment, so she could be away from her parents but be near good doctors and (reasonably) good schools. But this plan would only work right now, because I’m leaving for Los Angeles in February and won’t be back until June (if at all). So if she’s planning to start school in the spring, it’s not like I’d be here anyway. And she even brought that up when she reminded me that most leases in the area are for 12 months. I figured I could sublet.
Anyway…does this news please me? Frankly, no. But while Creepy Dan is fucking creepy as hell, he’s still arguably the healthiest person in her life (far beyond me and her parents and anybody she’s ever dated in her life). I’m not sure if this a compliment to her or a detriment to everyone else (including me), but I will accept that it’s true.
But it makes me feel down on myself because, among other things, it’s like she intentionally made plans to come back to this city as soon as I’m leaving. It makes me wonder if she’s finally realizing how pernicious our friendship is. This depresses me, because if she figures that out, rather than trying to work on fixing it like I am, she’d just let it go, citing the “bad influence” that she “doesn’t need” in her life. Not that we’ve never shoved one another out of our lives, but this time it’d be for good.
And it’d be because of Creepy Dan.
This means I’d have to fight for my honor. No, I won’t challenge him to a duel. Really, I’ll just keep working on her. “Why come back to Chicago? I thought your mysterious illness was brought on by seasonal changes…perhaps you should go to a place like Los Angeles, which in addition to having no culture, has no seasons.
“Besides, hasn’t Creepy Dan confessed his undying love for you on multiple occasions? You really think living with a guy like that would be good for you? It’d be much better to live with someone who can barely stand the sight of you, so you have somebody to fight with regularly.”
It’s so easy!
Posted by Stan on October 11, 2004 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | School Rants
