December 2009
38 posts
Everyone's doing it.
The most valuable lessons of the past decade (in no particular order)
- Working is a lot more useful than networking. Especially if you are female, because while you may be setting a “meeting” the male you’re talking to just wants to have “drinks” and “comment on your outfit” or “touch your leg” while you try to talk about your project. Hand...
Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling... →
I know someone who’s thinking of moving to LA after living his entire adult life in NY. He’s uneasy with this idea. He’s also someone I used to be irrationally, desperately in love with and I spent six years waiting for him to pull himself together. And now he has, but I’m no longer irrationally, desperately in love with him, which is good for a number of reasons, not least of which is...
Saw a public service poster this morning.
“Love them. Don’t shoot them.” And then some pictures of kids and pictures of guns.
Is this all it takes to be a good parent? Not shooting your kids? Well, okay then. I think I’m going to be great at it, when the time comes.
Housekeeping
The URL of this Tumblr will be changing soon. Blah blah DNS A-records not propagating blah blah, so to scrub it clean of Evil Queen Magda, I have to change the address, which will now be:
http://thisispartofthewhole.tumblr.com.
Adjust your bookmarks accordingly, because its newness means it probably won’t show up with the Googling of “Evil Queen Magda”, which is how many of...
I’ve always been good at amusing myself. Those people who need to be around other people - I don’t get them. What freaks! There’s some sort of malfunction there, some sort of fear of being alone with their thoughts.
(Related - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of my favorite movies, a status achieved partially because of this line: Joel: “Constantly talking...
The heading has changed, but don’t worry. As you read this, I’m no doubt tenting my fingers beneath my chin and glaring at something.
Also, last week, the phrase “I’m not really interested in stories about people’s children” came out of my mouth. Poisonous little drops of evil remain.
“And then it came to the fact that I was all there, wasn’t I, and I stamped and screamed yes, and he had obligations in the next room, and he was working in London earning ten pounds a week so he could later earn twelve pounds a week, and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hairband off, my lovely red hairband scarf...
This might already be in development.
Last night’s pisco sour and garlic fries brainstorming session produced the following screenplay idea:
A fading poker tour champion (Will Ferrell) decides to reinvent his career and his life by becoming a competitive eater. (Working title: The Wall or Ring of Fire.)
I don’t have the time or inclination to write this one. Have at it.
Watch“The pills take hold of your mind and flesh, your brain gets strong, you don’t fear death!”
County Animal Shelters to Reduce Adoption Fees... →
You’re not talking to yourself if there’s a dog or cat in the room. Just saying.
From the script for “You Can Count on Me,” Kenneth Lonergan, 2000.
SHEILA: Hey, Terry. TERRY: Hey.
Terry looks at her and smiles encouragingly. She smiles back.
SHEILA: Where’d you get the hat? TERRY: Oh, I got it on the street for a dollar. SHEILA: It’s nice. TERRY: Well, you know, it’s pretty much your standard woolen hat. SHEILA: Yeah, I had a very similar...
“You’ve been in LA for 6 years. You must like it here.”
This struck me as odd, because whether I liked this particular location never really came into the equation. You move to places like NY and LA because you’re trying to accomplish a specific goal. One probably based in art/film/publishing/fashion/music, etc. Whether you like the place is kind of beside the point. ...
“I’m working out again. I’m going to make the sequel to 300. My pecs...”
– Alec Baldwin
I'm going with the alternate explanation.
I’ve been playing music and drinking while writing recently. I’ve never done either before because music is distracting and alcohol just turns coherent thoughts into alphabet soup. But I’ve found that certain kinds of moody music help me plow through manuscript line edit notes like “more intensity” or “more romance” and alcohol helps me pretend I know...
I like how in your 30s, emails threads turn from boasts about how much you drank and how late you got in to competitions over who gets up earlier and who leaves the house less frequently.
Just living the dream, people.
1 tag
Eclipse X
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX
He had convinced me to go home to my mother, at least for now. “An imperfect solution to a complex problem,” he called it. These were made up words, words with definitions in English but when strung together, were rendered meaningless by inanity. I called him on it and he shrugged. We weren’t using a lot of...
Miranda, Madeline, Amelia Noah, Gabriel Cole Ryan Rider, Wyatt, Colin Adrianne, Jax
There’s a chance I get as excited as I do about new projects because of the name shopping I get to do on baby name websites.
“Turn on the television. We have a wedding channel on cable TV devoted to the...”
– Diane Savino
Screw you, New York senate. Maybe you should outlaw divorce if you’re so concerned about the sanctity of marriage.
1 tag
Eclipse IX
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII
I had an audition, a last-minute, early morning thing and I didn’t want to leave her alone. For some reason, the girl had burst into tears after seeing that picture of him and she wouldn’t tell me why. If I had the wherewithal at that moment to step back and observe the situation from a distance, I would have seen it as...
heartbeatcity:
What editors do for writers is mysterious, and does not, contrary to general belief, have much to do with titles and sentences and “changes.” The relationship between an editor and a writer is much subtler and deeper than that, at once so elusive and so radical that it seems almost parental: the editor was the person who gave the writer the idea of himself, the idea of herself,...
