zoetrope.com

I'm starting my day early for no reason. Usual bowl of chilled monkey brains just so it won't go bad, watching my girlfriend levitate from the other side of the table. She hits her head on the ceiling a lot since I filled her with helium. Otherwise a typical day.

I may check my e-mails and the usual message boards, even though they say "ignore the fruits of your actions." By that rule it makes no sense to see if anyone replies to a post. It would save a lot of time.

Here's a quote that is rattling around in my head lately, like a song that just won't go away so you have to look for it on Youtube or your own collection and hear it until you are cured:

"I've been in high school eight years; I'm no dummy."
- Curtis Armstrong advising John Cusack in Better Off Dead

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088794/

I think it's the ever-present realization that being "smart about movies" isn't such a badge of honor and that when you close in on a decade of discussions (even killing time on someone else' clock as is the case with many of us most of the time) it's not that a seasoned veteran of b.s. can say to a newbie, "Listen here, in my day. . ."

There have been steps forward in the vocation, but if I was one of those annoying people with a five year plan and a one year plan chirping "fail to plan, plan to fail" I might be more in touch with whatever unconscious depression might be going on. Or I might be exactly where I need to be. They say the measure of sanity is the proximity of reality to the dream.

What could I be doing instead of debating whether a given movie may be over-rated or under-rated? I mean, I'd be sacrificing the pay-off of possibly convincing some anonymous teen to knuckle down and see more movies. What could I be doing instead of watching movies? To my left is a $3500 Cannon HX A1 which can shoot some pretty decent HD; it has a nice t-shirt over it so it won't get all dusty. On the floor is the instruction manual torn apart for photocopies. I've read some of it. What a time to realize my instruction-phobia is back in full bloom. I've had meetings and meetings and generated a backlog of scripts. . .

I wonder how many screenplays I can read and review - under whatever accounts or IDs - and have it improve my taste and facility within the form of the screenplay. It's great to stumble across a link to a resource or somebody else's short film and be inspired once in a while or take a shortcut in my political education or current events by looking at articles and clips that someone else labored to collect. I'll get drawn into a debate on zoetrope once in a while, and it's interesting to come away with a vivid projection of someone's character or pathology. Not something to debate or even state outright, of course, because any self-respecting sociopath would take offence at the accusation. I have been called arrogant, but it's hard to make that stick when I'm pretty open about my stupidity.

I know from my job that there are some very functional sociopaths walking around.

Starting to dabble in radio drama again. I wrote a one-act play for the stage in 2001 after I had been on my job for a few months. It had a public reading, went well, and then after 9/11 there was to be a reading of the next draft and somehow I got the date wrong and missed it. I've been re-writing it on the same themes with each workplace. Once in a while a vital layer is added and the story enriched bu higher stakes. A life experience can be an end to itself; a job experience had better add to the writing.

I keep thinking if I really apply myself I can finish watching all the Extended Lord of the Rings DVDs by this weekend, and hear the commentaries. Imagine THAT feeling like a chore to procrastinate about.

Man, when I had nothing, when I had no job or when I thought my job was temporary I would spend days in a library cubby hole doing my storyboards and correcting my scripts. There is a point where everything that drifts into your transom is not there as a sprig of wisdom that has to be absorbed or explored in your life as an artist. Most opinions are the waste material of having consumed movies or TV or gossip rags or having spent all day playing video games (like cigarettes, this last example is one of the few bad habits I haven't picked up yet, much to the disappointment of friends and nephews).

If anyone else does read this, the one thing I can say in my defense is that the chilled monkey brains and inflate-a-date are jokes. If I actually get some cardio at the gym today for a change, I might view this whole thing differently. I might be ready to actually accomplish something today.