I am just about ready to switch banks.  I always go in instead of just using the drive-thru, and the last three times I've gone in, I have had the teller try to get me to sign up for a credit card.  And they just won't take no for an answer.  The last time, I was finally like, look.  I have one card, I only use it for online purchases, and I pay it off every month.  I do not want another credit card.  I have no need for another credit card.  And I could see the teller wanted to ask me one more time anyway, and if she had, I was going to ask to speak to the manager.

Now they're calling me at home.  I've been called twice this week, and once last week, and once the week before that.  It's starting to get ridiculous!  Like, how many frakking times do I have to tell you no?  It's driving me crazy.

Started drafting on our new slimmed-down, one-hour TV pilot for Scriptapalooza.  UT Laura is doing the teaser and acts one and two, and I'm doing acts three and four.  Beginning to draft, for me, is always the hardest part.  Researching, writing the treatment, working out the structure, doing the beat outline, editing, revising, polishing - those are the writing parts I like.  Drafting?  HARD.  (I'm sure this is no different for anyone else.)  Like, what are my ins and outs for each scene?  Do I have the right setting?  Am I finding the most expedient way to move the plot forward, advance character, convey any necessary exposition without making it seem like exposition - all at the same time?  Is my dialogue in character?  How's the pacing?  Are these scenes in the right order?  Ugh.  Sometimes I just feel like I have the movie/episode all up in my head already, and if I could just download it... Now, I know that the actual process of writing means I discover things that I never would have thought of otherwise, and once I get into it it feels great and I like it.  Like, drafting after page ten usually goes well.  But those first few days, those are the ones that are rough, that I tend to put off.  Which is why it's great we have a deadline, because I can't procrastinate at all.

Still, this is one of the reasons why I draft longhand and leave my house to do so.  No frakking around on the computer, no spider solitaire, no organizing my files.  No "I'll just watch this episode of TV...as research."  Just get out of the house and write.

So, last night I'm at the library, and back at the A/V counter they have a trivia question up each day.  If you know the answer, you get, like, a Starburst or something.  It's fun.  I was waiting in line, and while the employee was unlocking the DVD cases, the woman in front of me turned and asked if I knew the answer to the question - "Who founded the Sundance Film Festival in 1978?"  I told her the answer - Robert Redford.  She asked, "Why is Sundance important?"  So I started to answer - "It was one of the first ways for independent filmmakers to have an opportunity to present their work and potentially find a larger audience--"

And then the A/V employee, a young man probably around my age, turned around and talked right over me.  "Sundance was one of the first festivals that exhibited independent films.  Studios could buy them and distribute them, and that wouldn't have been possible before."  And the woman in front of me nodded, smiled at him, took her movies, and left.

I mutely gave the man my DVDs and card, waited for him to unlock them and check them out, and walked away.  I didn't make any small talk like I usually do, and I certainly didn't answer the question.  And as much as I would have liked to say something, I knew there was no point.  Sure, you could probably say he didn't even realize he had done it, and that calling someone on that is the only way they'll learn, but I did not have the patience for it right then.  But if I had decided to say something?  Here's what I would have said:

"Buddy, I studied film at USC.  My professors included Leonard Maltin, Tom Holman, Todd Boyd, and Drew Casper.  I actually worked on a documentary short that played independent festivals.  DO NOT MANSPLAIN SUNDANCE TO ME." 

Jeez, things may not have gone as planned after USC, and none of that up there actually matters, but at least I know about movies.

(I kind of feel like Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest, when Tim Allen yells at her to stop repeating everything the computer says.  "I have one job on this ship, and it's stupid, but I'm gonna do it!")

Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show.

I've been thinking of this one off and on since I first started this meme, and have finally come to the conclusion that I will refrain from answering, based on principle. I hate the term "guilty pleasure" whether it refers to TV, movies, books, or any other kind of entertainment. There's a connotation that something should be "worthy" of having attention bestowed upon it, that, for instance, a TV show should be "good," however one defines that, and if it's not, then one should feel guilty for enjoying it.

I think I first had an aversion to the term when I started seeing it in conjunction with genre shows; SF shows with small followings referred to as "guilty pleasures," as though we were all hiding in our homes, curtains securely drawn, hoping the neighbors wouldn't come by and see us watching a show about aliens or robots or monsters. Worse than just watching, enjoying. "Guilty pleasure" is just another way of expressing genre bias most of the time, whatever that genre may be - no one ever refers to a straight-forward drama as a guilty pleasure. It's always SF or fantasy or reality or silly comedy.

I figure that if something entertains you, then you shouldn't feel guilty about it. There are lots of different reasons for watching a TV show - the genre, the writing, the stories, characters, actors, mise-en-scène, the music, some combination thereof, the whole package - and whatever those reasons may be, they're legitimate enough to spend your time on. Why feel guilty about that? Why apologize for liking something? I don't watch any TV shows out of a sense of obligation - once I feel that way, I stop watching - I watch because I enjoy them. Even if one show isn't as objectively "good" as something else - which can be hard to determine - that doesn't mean it still can't be entertaining. I don't have any guilty pleasures. I'm happy to admit to everything I watch, and don't care what anyone else feels about it.

Day 05 - A show you hate.

This one was tough. Usually if a show's not doing it for me, I just quit watching it. I pride myself on not being one of those angry, bitter people who invariably post incessantly about a show they profess to hate yet continue to avidly watch every week. You know the ones. "I tuned in again and it still sucks! I hate every character, they're all pale shadows of their formerly wonderful selves! If only I could write for the show, I'd do this and this and this! And then it would be perfect!" I don't do that.

The most I could muster up for any show I watched at one point and then quit watching was indifference, or disappointment. But hate?

And then it hit me.



I've watched exactly one episode of Two and a Half Men, back at UT, in TV writing class; someone was writing an episode for the comedy half of the semester, and I felt I should see at least a single episode to have some basis for my critique, to be a little more familiar with the show. I don't think I ever even smiled, let alone laughed. 2.5Men wouldn't necessarily earn any of my ire just for being an unfunny sitcom; there are a lot of those. What irritates me about it, what really just enrages me, is the fact that it is so very popular.

Popular! One of the highest-rated shows on TV! And it's awful! And I just think of all the really, really great shows that I've loved that have been canceled after two seasons, or one, or half of one, and how great they were, and brilliant and awesome, and no one watched them because they were all off watching stupid shit like 2.5Men. I mean, seriously.

CHRIIIIIISTOOOOOOPH. (Although Laura and I were trying to figure out what his metaphor-driven speech for his inevitable SAG win would be; something about all the wonderful ACTORS he worked with and he was just a simple ACTOR but then he became part of a great ensemble of ACTORS...you get the idea.) I was also happy with: John Lithgow, Michael C. Hall ( :( ), Meryl and Sandra, Jeff Bridges, RDJ, Glee, Chloe Sevigny. The acting categories for film seem to have fallen into place, although comedy and drama being split up does nothing to help clarify the Sandra vs. Meryl race.

The one thing that drove me crazy about the Globes tonight? The whole Haiti thing. I mean, it is an absolutely horrific tragedy and everyone who is able to help and feels so inclined should do so. That said, I am so beyond sick and tired of overpaid actors standing on a stage, pretending to be so noble and humble and yet only being pretentious and self-serving, going on and on about how they know "what's really important" and how we should all donate money because they've donated money and obviously we, the common folk, should follow their lead. You know who actually donated a shit-ton of money? Sandra Bullock. Did you hear her say anything about it? No. Because she's one of the few who actually understands that charity isn't just another publicity device. If I had heard one more of them go on and on about dear generous Clooney and his tireless efforts blah blah, my head would have exploded. There was the same exact song and dance after 9/11 and the tsunami and probably something else I'm missing, and it's like, Hollywood? I do not need you to be my conscience. I do not need you to remind me that bad things happen in the world, and you're just an actor and your life is so great but now you've been reminded of how precious it all is and why don't I pick up the phone while I watch you in your $10,000 dress and jewels thanking your "team" as you hold a gold statuette. Seriously, STFU.

To continue with the previous post's theme, I cannot find my disc for Photoshop. I can find every single solitary random mix CD I burned for my younger sisters ten years ago, but my Photoshop CD? I cannot find it. I can find the disc to install Windows 95 but my Photoshop CD? I cannot find it. I can find the disc for Tetris that came for free in a can of Pringles, but my Photoshop CD?

I CANNOT FIND IT.

GUYS, I AM GOING TO CATCH ON FIRE.

So, you should never buy a new computer. I'm just saying. The trials and tribulations ever since I bought that thing, it's like I was actively shaking my fist at Fate or something and he was like, "LET'S DO IT, AHA." First of all, since I've been using a laptop for almost five years, I had completely forgotten about the need for a monitor; I dragged in Marshall's old one from the garage, and I don't know what he did to it, but the connections were so jacked up; the screen was green and I couldn't change the contrast or brightness, it would randomly black out for up to a minute at a time, it couldn't run certain applications in full screen, et cetera. Today I finally got down to the thrift store and bought an old one for five bucks that while gigantic and cumbersome, actually works, so there's that.

Back to the day I set the new computer up. I thought, oh, transferring my files will be a breeze! I keep absolutely everything on my external hard drive! And I do mean everything: all my pictures, everything I've written in college, all my scripts, videos, my music, icons, everything. Everything.

Everything.

So when I plugged in my external hard drive and the new computer didn't recognize it, I was bummed, but not discouraged; I would have to burn DVDs on my old computer and that would take a while, but no big deal. Until I plugged it back into my laptop and that didn't recognize it, either. And I tried again and again, and turned everything off and turned it all back on, and safely removed over and over, and plugged in a few more times. It didn't recognize the device.

I sat downstairs and literally cried for ten minutes.

We took my hard drive to one of the computer tech places and they plugged it into a computer that was running Linux and everything popped up okay, and the guru literally had no idea why it would do that, but we took it back home and plugged it into my old laptop and it worked. So it wasn't a total loss, at least. In the end, it took 23 DVDs to burn off all my data. You can imagine how long that took.

Set up iTunes, and of course I didn't get to keep my play counts, my playlists, my date added, and all the rest of my meta data. Of course. I read, like, twenty different tutorials, and short of manually editing my .xml file, there's apparently no way to keep all that stuff when you transfer over to a new computer. Thanks, Apple! Also, my one hundred songs that I've either purchased, or gotten as a free iTunes download, or Laura has? Have to be authorized. Can you do that if you don't have a connection to the internet? Ha! So I have to go buy a twenty foot ethernet cable, oh yeah.

Thank God, my version of Final Draft still installed. I don't know what I would have done.

God, this month. It's been one of those months. Have you ever had long periods of time - not just a day, or even a couple days, but seemingly endless successions of days - where everything just. I mean, I have felt like this pretty much every moment of every day of December.

It's like if there were a movie, called Murphy's Law, and you saw it, and looked it up at home later, and found out it was based on a book, and when you went to the bookstore, found out it wasn't just a book but an autobiography, and you read it, and even more things happened because obviously they can never fit in everything from the book into the movie, and then you get to the end and you're just glad that's not your life, and then you turn to the author picture and note at the end and then you realize IT'S ME. I WROTE THAT BOOK.

And it's not big things. The house hasn't burned down, the old blue van still drives (today I got it up to 35 mph!), I am healthy. It's the cumulative effect of a million tiny things: I have to take off my glove to open the door because the doorknob sticks, and that makes me drop my keys, and when I bend over to pick them up my purse falls off my shoulder, and my iPod drops out and hits the concrete, and I pick it up and stick it in my pocket, and as I walk inside, the headphone cord gets caught around the railing and the speaker part gets pulled out from the earbud and the whole apparatus will no longer work. (True story, btw.)

It's all of that, plus the animals. I think five animals is too many. I read somewhere that a dog is like a very bright three year old, in terms of its intelligence and behavior as well as how you should treat it; I think our dogs are more like really dim, perhaps developmentally challenged, two year olds. Spencer plays this game called WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GO NEXT I WILL GET THERE FIRST, and if he's not tripping me, then he's herding me or making me stop and wait for him to sit still before I can try walking again. He barks at everything, and when he barks, Princess barks. The cats just roam around and attack each other and gallop up and down the hallway and knock Christmas tchotchkes on the floor and cry because they haven't eaten in one entire hour and they're going to staaaaaaaarve.

And then there's the picking up after my family, and arguments over who gets to watch the nice TV, and piles of clean clothes in the living room and I folded all the laundry I am sure as hell not going to put it away for you, and loud people during sleepy time, et cetera.

I need a holiday. A very long holiday.

It's snowing. Snow is falling from the sky.

Why is it snowing?

WHY IS IT SNOWING?

WHY IS IT SNOWING?

WHY IS IT SNOWING?

I can't get into my photobucket. When I try and log-in, it tells me my username or password are incorrect. When I ask for them to email the link to change my password, the site tells me that my email address isn't connected to an account. I've sent two emails to their contact address, and have received no reply and nothing's been fixed. This started on Saturday. I'm going to wait one more day - for a total of three business - and then I will hunt down a phone number, because I pay for that stupid thing, and this is pissing me off.

This whole week, I have woke up at 5:30 instead of 6:30. It's too early to get up and get ready, but too late to really fall back asleep properly, so I end up lying there in a fugue state and then am way tired when the alarm does finally go off. So.

Dear brain,

Stop waking me up an hour early! Amuse yourself: construct another dream, go to standby, I don't care! Just stop it. I MEAN IT. DON'T MAKE ME COME UP THERE.

I've been the maternity sub for the 7th grade language arts (or writing, if you don't want to be stupid about it, but that's a different gripe) teacher for the past week, and it's been exhausting. Not because I don't love teaching writing, because I do, but because I spend three-quarters of my time babysitting the dozen or so (male) students who will not just shut up and sit still for the love of God. My faith in the future of humanity is slowly eroding.

I forgot to write about my jury duty experience! It sucked, oh my God. I didn't get paneled the first day, or even have to go in the second. Then I was put on a jury for a case about aggravated indecent liberties with a child. Which was as wonderful as you can imagine. I thought it was a pretty straight forward case - when a man says, I never touched the seven-year-old granddaughter of my wife, but if I did, I may have just thought it was my wife, then you know he did it. But not only did the jury end up being hung, and they had to declare a mistrial, but I didn't even get to deliberate. I was the alternate. I had to sit in the jury lounge for two days, which was longer than the length of the actual trial, and just...imagine what stupid, boneheaded things people were saying in his defense. Argh.

That was my first experience with jury duty; I've always been away at college before. What have you guys experienced?

Okay, here's my rant on the VT thing. Which is not even about the shooter, because I can't get into that right now. It's about the stupid frak who ran out to take cell phone coverage.

Hey, idiot? See those cops out there? That are trying to protect people's lives? Okay, let them do their jobs. Do not distract them. Do not RUN CLOSER TO THE BUILDING WHERE A CRAZY PERSON IS KILLING DOZENS OF PEOPLE so that you can capture it on your cell phone. Did you hear the panic and fear in that cop's voice when he screamed at you to get away? That's because STUDENTS ARE DYING in there and you're getting in his GODDAMN WAY, YOU ASSHOLE.

It pisses me off that you're alive and on CNN like you're some kind of hero, and 32 kids are dead. If I ever see you in real life, I will punch you in the throat.