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| Monday, September 7th, 2009 | | 12:17 pm |
Still Alive, just not really here
Hey everybody. I know it has been forever since I posted and this isn't really going to be some massive update or anything. I'm not sure why LJ and I have drifted away from each other. Maybe it's an attention span thing, or because I'm less in need of online venting, or maybe with Facebook and Twitter I've been updating more frequently with my status updates, etc. I'm still keeping my account active and all that but not sure about the next time I'll actually write a proper blog. For those that want it my facebook address is http://www.facebook.com/josefthegeek and it's pretty much the same for twitter: http://twitter.com/josefthegeek | | Monday, June 29th, 2009 | | 2:54 am |
Thoughts on TV Dads
Sorry for being so AWOL lately. What with Facebook and Twitter being so much more fast paced, I seem to have lost the attention span for full on blogging, so if you're on either of those social networks look me up. Tonight was different though. Something just made me want to blog. Just finished rewatching "Alias," hence the post earlier with one of the best Jack Bristow quotes ever, and although it's late it got me thinking. I watch a good amount of TV shows, but only the good ones, and I've noticed that some of my favorite characters in my favorite shows* are dads. Some characters that I don't even love through out the whole show, I like the best when they're in their dad roles. Admiral Adama on "BSG," when he's giving Lee some tough advice, possibly while boxing. Homer Simpson on "The Simpsons," when we see how much he really does try for Lisa and Maggie's affection (something I feel that's been lost in more recent seasons). Just the memories of characters like Harry Morgan on "Dexter" or Nathaniel Sr. on "Six Feet Under" have a big impact on their sons' lives. Even a smaller character like Rose's Dad from "Doctor Who," shows that in his life he was devoted to trying to make is wife and daughter happy, despite a string of failure and bad luck. Like I said, I may not like them all the time and they aren't all the greatest dads who ever lived but when they really put their hearts to it they can be wonderful fathers. Two that always stick out in my mind and are hands down my favorite TV dads are the previously mentioned Jack Bristow as well as Keith Mars from "Veronica Mars." These are both dads of only children, who both happen to be daughters. They're so similar, but also incredibly different. Whereas Keith has always been very close with his daughter and mostly supportive of her, Jack has just as much love for his daughter but has so much difficulty showing it early on. The biggest similarity is their uncompromising devotion to their daughters and how they will do absolutely anything, make any sacrifice, to keep their girls safe. Both men were also betrayed by their wives when the daughters were very young, forcing Sydney and Veronica to grow up primarily without mothers only reuniting with them later in life...which never really turns out well.** Something about these characters and how much they truly love their daughters really gets to me, despite not having or being a daughter or even having an especially wonderful father. It's weird. I do see pieces of myself in these two characters, though. I know I grow to be very loyal and have a tendency to be a little overprotective of my friends. Hopefully we'll never be in an "Alias" kind of situation with guns pointed around, but I can see myself in that Jack Bristow kind of role not hesitating to shoot somebody threatening the life of my friends. For whatever reason I've felt paternal towards many of my friends at times, so I'm sure that ties in with it somehow but I'm not sure which caused which. I'm also not exactly sure what motivated me to write this all down and publish it online but I did anyways. Regardless, I know that I want to be like that one day. Right now I'm still young and enjoying that fact along with my lack of responsibilities, so I'm all kinds of not ready to be a dad yet but years and years down the line I hope I'll be that kind of man. Except for the whole part with the mother betraying the father, that I could happily do without. *Unfortunately there will be no Joss mentions in here, since his shows lack any strong father figures. There's sort of one who I won't mention for spoilers' sake but he doesn't REALLY count. While Giles very much acts as Buffy's father figure, and a brilliant one at that, I'm not sure I can include him especially since some of their drama and his character growth centers around him never settling down to have a family. **This thought brings to mind a small air of sexism, but I don't think it's completely founded. Part of me is wondering if there is a trend that in order to have a strong female character we need to giver her a strong father figure, almost implying that these children are more boys with breasts than they are girls. But even Adama has an intriguing relationship with his son and Nathaniel's spirit with his boys. Plus there will always be Buffy. Possibly the strongest female character on television in the past decade, raised by a single mother. Something about this one character standing as a champion helps make up for damn near anything. Current Mood:  insightful | | Saturday, May 9th, 2009 | | 3:42 pm |
Closest to done version, but I need a title!
I've got another "finished" version of my script but I feel like it's just gotten better and better and I'm rather happy with where it is now, and have addressed much of the constructive criticism I have received. I want you guys to be able to read it, but I'm not sure how I can attach a PDF file on here for you guys. Emailing is tough because it's in a program called Final Draft which I'm sure none of you have, and saving it as an RTF messes up the formatting, etc, but PDF keeps everything pretty intact and correct. So if anyone knows how to do that, let me know! Or I can just email it to you if you want this recent version. Onto the other issue: As mentioned before I can't use "Undead Anonymous" for a title anymore, so I'm between three new titles and wanted to open it up to a poll. Adem likes "The Whining Dead," Andy likes "Life, Afterlife." and I'm leaning to "Night of the Whining Dead." I'd still like to hear from John, the producer, and get his input. But for now what do you guys think? Vote and let me know! Poll #1397395
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3 Since Undead Anonymous is out, what should I title my sketch? Current Mood:  accomplished | | Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | | 9:14 am |
It's almost over, but it's only just beginning!
Ooh, how ominous! What a cryptic title, huh? Spring semester is almost over! The One-Acts have closed and I'm glad they're done with. My Geek culture thesis for my English class is pretty much done, as the rough draft is finished but could still use from work. We only have one more meeting in that class and that is just for the final. My stagecrafts final is that same day, next Tuesday, and then that's over with. Technically we have a final meeting for the directors' class Wednesday night, but that's hardly a real class. I'm glad summer is almost here (except for the heat). I'm looking forward to not having to get up at 5:45am to get to class any more! I did sign up for three summer classes. Two are both video and online classes with only two meetings the whole session. Those are Astronomy and some health class, both of which meet requirements to get my AA and both are reportedly easy A's. The third class is the theater production class because I my sketch is officially 100% for sure getting produced this summer!!! It's going to be work but I'm super excited to really be at the helm of something like this. We did a read through with the writers for all the sketches going on this summer and mine got a very good reaction. It's actually already getting a little bit of a buzz, too which is cool. I've had to change the title because apparently "Undead Anonymous" was just used for some short film made over in the television department recently. But the concept is fairly different, I was never terribly happy with my title anyways. The front runner for the new title is "Life, Afterlife." Other possibilites I kind of like are "The Whining Dead," "Postmortem Secret," and "It's Not Easy Being Dead." We begin casting next Monday the 11th and we're going to have a total of six shows over three weeks, on June 15, 17, 22, 24, 29, and July 1st. I'm hoping we can get a lot of people to come out and see it. Other than that I don't have any set plans for the summer. Granted there's probably going to be a lot of rehearsal time to get everything down in the short amount of time, and I will have those classes to do at home, but I really want to find some time to go to the beach this summer. At least a few times. Ideally I'd like to go about once a week, just to get outside and swim in the ocean (which I love doing). Hopefully with no job and no regular class meeting times I can swing that. I feel like there's so much more updating I should do, but I feel like with Facebook and Twitter I've just been offering little snippets and tidbits over the past few weeks months, so those of you who are my friends on there are somewhat in the know. I'll probably have more blogs coming up, going over the directorial process since I'll have to restrain myself from being honest wiht my actors or fellow directors until the show is done! Adios and Allons-y! Current Mood:  upbeat | | Thursday, April 9th, 2009 | | 10:54 pm |
Buffy Quote Chain
Sorta tagged by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) beerbad in a way. Instructions: When you see this, post another Buffy quote in your LJ. Let's see how long this can go on.
"It's a doodle. I doodle. You too! You do doddle too!"
Current Mood:  tired | | Friday, April 3rd, 2009 | | 12:57 pm |
| | 11:14 am |
Making a Comeback!
I got a car! It's nothing great, nothing to show off or be super proud of but it's something and means that drama session is over with. It's a White '91 Mazda 626 4-Door. It's got about 160k miles, which is a lot but not terribly super high, and everything else seems to be in good condition according to my mechanic. It doesn't have a CD player and could do with a nice wash, but these are little things. The point is I have a vehicle and it is mine! Also yesterday I got my first unemployment check in the mail, which hopefully will be "the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche" since once I get the first one, they should start coming on a regular basis. It will be very nice to have a steady cash flow again, and to start paying back my dad and Karen for all the car help. This is all topped off my this morning, when I checked my bank account online and found another $657 just transfered in! I got the direct deposit option when I filed my taxes, so rather than send a check they'd just transfer the funds directly to my account, which they did! Won't last long, but it's nice to see four digits before a decimal point in my account. Another neat little thing, last week after my text-post about waiting in the UCLA dental office, I went in and got a filling done. That's not the neat part, just wait. Since it was being done my students working on some kind of state exam they did it for free! And since the guy doing my teeth was awesome, but I think had been screwed over with people not showing up before, he gave me a gift card to Best Buy...for $100! So I went to Best Buy and used that money towards a quadrupling my RAM on my laptop, which doesn't give me more storage space but allows it to run much more smoothly and play Warcraft without nearly as much lag. I still want to get a desktop in the near future, but this upgrade will last me for a good preiod of time while I pay back Karen. In non-financial news, the current one-acts are going...well they're going. A few of the shows have had cast shake ups with actors dropping out or getting fired, so now my wife is being played by the writer/director Tina who is far less attractive than the girl originally cast. Andy's show had an actor quite because he found out he was getting fired, but Andy was able to find an actor to replace him rather quickly. The Chili show I'm Assistant Directing is coming along, and so far only has a couple moments from this one actor, Jeremy, that actually make me laugh. Other than that it's pretty meh and I don't think it's going to get as many laughs as Ray wants. Some of you may have gotten emailed my Support Group sketch. Well it's official (mostly): it WILL be produced this summer! Andy has John's approval to put on an 2 Week run some time this summer with four nights of sketches or one acts and four nights of whatever Andy wants to do, and then one matinee of each. So far we're lacking scripts for the sketch night, only three solidly approved scripts and a few others that have been submitted but not really loved by Andy. He really likes mine, though, so that's very cool and I'm looking forward to casting this and then actually see something I wrote performed on stage. It'll be pretty trippy, I think. If anybody else wants me to email them the script, comment with your email and I'll send it to you. So all in all, things are making a bit of a come back. As mentioned in a previous post, I'm on spring break now and don't really have many solid plans, which is cool. My dad wants to go to Disneyland to celebrate the whole car thing being over with, plus he hasn't been in a while. Andy had also mentioned possibly going to Universal in the next week, which would be cool since I haven't been in a while. Other than that, I do have a small amount of homework to do over break, but mainly I'll be hanging out with Adem and Lauren and levelling my rogue on WoW. Current Mood:  giddy | | 1:32 am |
Marry, Boff (Screw), Kill! [kinda nsfw]
Was tagged by beerbad . 1. Comment on this entry and I will give you 3 people.
2. Label which one you would marry, shag and throw off a cliff.
3. Provide pictures and names of the 3 people.
4. Post this meme with your answers. She gave me three fictional characters: Rose Tyler, Pam Beasley, Jaye Tyler
Marry: Pam Beasley
This was the only easy one. She seems like she'd be a really fantastic person to spend the rest of my life with. Plus she's an artist, which is always a plus. She does seem like she could be the kind of person to "settle down" but still make time for fun stuff and pranks.
Had to include this non-Pam picture of Jenna, too :)
Bone/Screw/Fuck/etc: Jaye Tyler
This was a tough decision and I'll explain why not Rose in the next section. But I think Jaye would have a very good balance sense of straightforwardness and agression, and would be pretty okay not letting things "get complicated" (which I assume is part of the contract since this is seperate frome the marriage category). Plus her trailer is actually kinda sexy in a really weird way that I don't quite understand.
Kill: Rose Tyler
![[billie_piper1.jpg]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xCziYAevpNE/R7XMp9EH84I/AAAAAAAACHg/4sZMKy3ms04/s1600/billie_piper1.jpg)
Now don't get me wrong! Billie Piper is absolutely gorgeous and I would love to see her naked, get with her, whatever, but Rose...Rose seems like she'd be a crier. I mean every once in a while she shows some spunk and frivolity, but I feel like she'd burst into tears if I stepped on a spider. I'm really sorry to kill you Rose, but maybe if you weren't so weepy you'd be in bed and not the bottom of a cliff. Sorry. Still love ya'!
If you want to take it, leave a comment and tell me and I'll think of three for you to marry, fuck, and kill!
| | Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 | | 1:40 pm |
Posted using TxtLJ Officially on Spring Break! Whoohoo! | | Monday, March 30th, 2009 | | 3:40 pm |
| | Friday, March 27th, 2009 | | 11:49 am |
Posted using TxtLJ But the good news is I may have a car by tomorrow! | | 11:31 am |
Posted using TxtLJ Blurg. Waiting at the UCLA dental office for an hour and a half and I completely forgot to bring a book. | | Monday, March 23rd, 2009 | | 11:39 am |
One more reason to fucking hate my mother
I finally called my mom this morning to tell her about the accident. Honestly, I didn't really want to but it was necessary because her name is the first name on the credit application we went through to get the car, so she has all the paperwork regarding the payments, loans, etc. regarding it. My dad and Karen are thinking that since the car was still being paid off, that may affect aspects of my insurance, so we'll need to get those documents to be sure. So I call my mom and when she answers I ask "what's up" just to make sure she isn't busy at the moment, but she gives that snotty response of "I don't know, you called me." I'm just being poite, okay? I ask her if she has a couple minutes, and she does so then I get into the reason I called. I started everything off with "Don't worry, I'm fine" and then went on to explain that I got in an accident, the car is totalled, and I need any documents she has related to the car. There was a long awkward pause until she just says "Well I'm not home now." I said that's okay, she can look when she gets home. Another short awkward pause before she asks, "Whose faul-,"cuts herself off and just asks "What happened?" I tell her what happened, how CHP was there quickly, how the other people never got out of their car, and how the car is at my friend's house now. She was pretty silent throughout the story, with no air of worry or concern at all. I make the long story short and afterwards she says, "well I'm not happy about this." What. The. FUCK?! Should anybody be happy about this? I got pretty pissed off about that but held it down long enough to ask her once more to look for the documents when she gets home and said bye. I called my dad to tell him about what happened, but only got his voicemail. So I called my mom back and chewed her out a bit, I told her I wasn't drunk or high or on anything, and asked why she sounded like she thought it was my fault. She didn't answer the question and changed the subject by asking why my dad and I don't go to the dealership to get the paperwork if we needed it so quickly. I didn't think of that, but even so her name is still the name on everything so they would probably only give it to her which is what I said to her. I asked her why she sounded so angry at me more than concerned and she said "well you said you were fine." What a keen observer of human behavior. After this incident, and once I get the papers related to the car, I think I'm really done dealing with the god damn ice queen. I've been paying my own phone bill, and the only things she's helped out with are payments and insurance related to the car. If she stops paying for those, it'll harm her credit more than mine. She's more upset about the car than about me. Yes, I'm fine and the car is not, but I wish she could see the car and see how close I came to being very not fine. Current Mood:  baffled/pissed off | | Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 | | 10:22 am |
The Accident
I've never been in a car accident before. That kinda changed early yesterday morning. Adem, Lauren, Justin, one of Lauren's friends, and myself had gone out to this small dive bar in Burbank that has Karaoke sometimes. We all drank varying amounts, but I was driving home so I kept it to one beer (nothing for me). Adem had about 7 shots, but wasn't terribly drunk actually. Around 1:45 Saturday morning, the bar was at Last Call and we were done for the night, so we got in to my car and drove back to Justin's, dropped everybody off except Adem and myself since I had to take him back home to Agoura. On the 101 Freeway North, right around White Oak, Adem was trying to find a song he liked on my iPod. I wish I could remember what song, or what we were talking about but then I noticed that there was a jeep or some SUV in front of me, in my lane, that seemed to be slowing down for no apparent reason. All of a sudden, they're stopped dead and their flashers are on. I brake quickly and try to swerve out of the way, but I guess I didn't turn quick enough or my skidding made me lose too much control to turn into one of the open lanes. I didn't swerve enough and the front driver's side of my car slammed into the back passenger's side of the stopped jeep, pushing them forward as my car continued to the right a little more. The next minute or so is, honestly, kind of a blur or like a flash of quick images. Thinking back on it, which I'm trying not too do too much, reminds me of something like a movie trailer, where there are quick shots of frenetic action and then black, then more quick shots, then black. I remember how quickly we stopped and then the car was filled with some kind of smoke or powder and everything had just shut off. I couldn't pull my car over to the side of the road, even. The impact had affected the hinge of my door, so I really had to shove to get it open, but I did. Luckily Adem and I were able to walk out without assistance. There was another car that stopped right after us to check if we were okay. After that there was a lot of cursing and freaking out on my part. Thankfully there were two California Highway Patrol cars there within literally moments after the accident. They stopped traffic on the freeway, and used one of their cars to push mine over to the shoulder and against the railing. I immediately called my dad prefacing that I'm not hurt, but told him what happened and where we were. It took him a while to get to us, being at his girlfriend Karen's at the time, but he came. Meanwhile Adem and I were talking to all the different officers who showed up on the scene. I had handed my license and all of that information to Adem when I called my dad, so there was some confusion about who was driving and whose car it was, but we got it figured out. They asked us if we had anything to drink and we were both honest (although Adem just said he had "a few shots" and didn't specify that "a few" meant seven). Since Adem wasn't driving they didn't do any sobriety test with him. I said I had one beer a few hours ago, which the officer shrugged off and just had me follow his finger which was no problem. I had to go over the incident a number of times with a couple different officers, but I never spoke with or even saw the people in the other car. I asked the police and they said the other people were okay but I found it odd that they never got out of their car, and were able to drive it over to the side of the road after the accident. I'm hoping that their odd behavior was due to being under the influence of something, because apparently that will drastically change things in my favor. After a short while a tow truck showed up to take my car away, but I still don't know what happened with the other car. One of the officers gave me a collision report card, and after discussing what happened a few more times my dad and Karen showed up. Adem stayed over at our place for the night since we all just wanted to sit and breathe and he didn't have any pressing matters he needed to take care of at home. The next morning we slept in, since we didn't get home until after 4 am. Karen, the amazing woman she is, took us all out to breakfast in the morning and then was such a rock through the whole ordeal. She's realy professional about everything so her help was invaluable when contacting the insurance company and talking to the tow truck guys. But now I've got a claim filed with my insurance company and should hear back from them by Tuesday or so. My dad and Karen are already working on getting me a rental car for the immediate time being, as well as finding an inexpensive used car, probably from Craig's list or something. It was a horrible, scary experience but I have to be thankful for the little things, and some of the big ones too. I mean Adem and I were going at least 70 mph and hit a stopped car on the freeway and we walked away with nothing more than a few bruises and airbag burns. I've got a bruise on my left shoulder from the seat belt, my left knee from hitting some part of the dash, and a small abrasion on my right wrist from the airbag. My side of the car was the one that impacted so I got it a little worse than Adem, but he's got a nastly looking bruise/welt/thing on his face from the airbag. We could have been a lot worse off. Plus my laptop was in the backseat and that's fine (well not fine, but as good as it was before and not affected by the accident). I had a few CDs in the changer that are gone now, but they were all burned but one and that's on my computer anyways. My iPod is still alive somehow. Oh and there was some work that needed to be done on my car that we don't have to do now. I've mostly been trying not to think about it. Going back to those moments just causes me anxiety and I start beating myself up for not doing things differently which I know I shouldn't do but can't help doing. It was tough seeing my car in the daylight yesterday, all smashed up in the front and seeing how close the impact came to where my legs were. And I really liked this car, so I it was hard having the open casket funeral for her. I never really called my car by a name, but I did name her River since she was blue. I had wanted to get a license plate that said "(Hands)S OFBLU) with a frame saying "Two by Two, Hands of Blue" and had just been thinking about doing that again with my unemployment at tax money. As hard as it was for me, I think it was even harder on my dad who had to see how close it was and had to think about how he almost lost me. He's been trying to comfort me and tell me we'll work through it and tell me how I have so many people around to help me, but I can see how scared he still is. I know we can work through it, but it's going to be very hard getting past this. Current Mood:  morose | | Thursday, March 19th, 2009 | | 8:06 am |
Posted using TxtLJ I need to come up with a topic for a research paper in my English class. My two broad areas of interest that could work are organized religion and geek culture. Any ideas of ways to narrow either of them down to a more workable or researchable thesis? (Edited to combine what ended up being two separate posts) | | Thursday, March 12th, 2009 | | 10:49 am |
"It's not finished...it's finished."
So I finished the first draft of my 10 Page sketch. It's working title is "Undead Anonymous" but I'm thinking of changing it. If I didn't say what it's about before of you've forgotten, it is about a support group for the undead. There is a ghost, mummy, vampire, and zombie plus a witch and a wolfman. They all have problems that mirror real life addiction (drinking problems, overeating, agoraphobia) and comedy ensues. The script still needs some work and revisions, but the first draft is done and that's an accomplishment. Now I'm just in the editing stage, which is a little easier for me. I sent it to Adem who gave some feedback, but admits he went a little overboard and pretty much began writing the whole thing. We respectfully disagree on a few points, but only because we have different visions for this and since I'm writing it I win. Otherwise it's Adem writing something with my name on it, which is not what I want. If any of you want me to send you what I have, let me know and I can email it to you. Again, keep in mind that it is only a sketch not a full one-act and it is only a first draft. I did check with Andy and he said he will definitely be producing his own show this summer at Moorpark. The sucky thing is that for some reason, the theater will be dark on the weekends, so our performances will only be Tuesday through Thursday which is a big plate of lame. Even so, it'll be an experience. I've been dealing with my unemployment rather well, but I haven't gotten my first check yet and funds are starting to run thin. Hopefully I should get it soon, but at least I know how much I'm going to get: $304 a week! Which is in fact double what I was getting while working at Massage Envy. My cousin Brandon also finished my taxes for this year and I'll be getting a nice refund on that, again due to not working. I never thought I could get so much money by doing nothing. I feel guilty sometimes, like I'm exploiting the system, but really I'm playing by all the rules and just getting lucky. I like to think of it as my own Karmic retribution. ( Watchmen Pictures )For anybody who has seen the movie or read the book, check out Saturday Morning Watchmen. Basically a parody video if Watchmen were a Saturday Morning Cartoon from the late 80's or early 90's. Has a very Ninja Turtles feel to it. Hilarious. Final thought: I play World of Warcraft. I've been playing it a lot recently, due to the pressure of certain friends :) but when I see somebody in the cafeteria or library at school playing WoW on their laptop, they just seem so pathetic. I know when to stop and how to take breaks. It's kind of sad really. Just another publicly accepted addiction. Current Mood:  good | | Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | | 10:21 am |
Bitter Sweetness
Guess who's once again headed for unemployment? That's right, yours truly is being let go for the second time in the space of a year. It's a bit different this time, though. I'm more being laid off than fired. Chelsea told me on Friday that I'm going to be "let go" by the end of the month, which is next Saturday. I was pissed about it at first, since after all the strife with Tiffany and my hours, I generally had been trying harder to get along with people here and feel I had done pretty well. But the owner here, Jim, is "all about the numbers" and because I sell the fewest memberships I am one of three people getting laid off (thankfully Gina is one of the three). I tried to explain that I work the fewest hours so it makes sense that I would have the fewest memberships, but I guess logic doesn't matter. Chelsea sent me home early that day, and while I kept my cool talking to her in her office, stormed out of the actual building and kinda punched a door on my way out. I don't know why it's always doors. I hurt my hand and probably bruised the bone if that's possible but at least I made a dent in the door. After that I headed home and talked to my cousin online about unemployment. He said that as long as I'm not fired for a specific cause I shouldn't have a problem collecting. I'll get back to that later, though. That night, Friday, I went to a bar called Saddle Ranch at the Universal City walk with Andy, Tina, and some other theater people. Now...I wouldn't say I don't remember the evening, but it does get a little fuzzy at times. I know that I had two beers, two shots and a large carafe of an AMF, or "Adios mother fucker," which contains about six or seven different types of alcohol so I was rather drunk the rest of the night but I didn't black out or throw up or do anything other than act like a fun albeit girl crazed drunk. I remember asking one of the guys in our group to be my wingman and find me someone to make out with. I think I also kept saying I should have stayed there after some of us left. Don't worry, I wasn't driving. But after Saddle Ranch Tina drove Andy's car to this place in Culver City called Tito's Tacos that, obviously, serves tacos, and is next to another restaurant called Johnnie's and their signature is a pastrami sandwich. Andy's raved about these places many times, so we all got Taco's from Tito's and Pastrami from Johnnies. And I'll admit it, those were some really good tacos and that was a damn good pastrami sandwhich! I think even if I wasn't drunk I would have enjoyed it. After our late night dinner we went back to Andy's, where most of us had left our cars, and waited until some of us felt sober enough to drive. Thankfully I didn't have work the next day, so not getting home and in bed until about 4 am wasn't a big deal. Satuday I actually only slept until about 9 or 10 which was surprising and disappointing considering how late I was out, but I didn't do much of anything most of the day so I was still resting even if it was a waking rest. In the evening I met Lauren and Justing and we drove to another one of Lauren's shows. It was with one guy from her band and two new girls and they hadn't played with before. It was a really interesting set with guitar, drums, vocals, and one of the girls alternated between a violin and a cello. It was different from what they usually play, but I'm a sucker for strings so I enjoyed it a lot. We didn't feel like staying for the rest of the bands after their piece so we headed out and at some point decided we felt like causing mischief and at some other point Justin had mentioned he had an air rifle and at yet another point these two ideas were combined. So we went back to Justin's, grabbed his air rifle and some pellets and drove around Burbank looking for fun. We stopped at some hill with a pull over zone and spent the next hour or so trying to shoot out a street light. We were able to break the outer casing but couldn't get the bulb. There was also an empty beer bottle in Justin's car so he set that on the cub opposite of us and challenged me to shoot it. As he's walking away he's saying "I dunno, it's pretty far and kinda hard to see from where you are." I shattered that freakin' bottle on the first shot! I felt very satisfied. Afterwards, we took this picture with Justin's phone.  So even with the lack of jobness information I still had a pretty okay weekend, plus my dad's girlfriend gave him some interesting information which he passed to me. Unemployment will usually be based on your highest earning quarter for the past 18 months. And you know where I was last year? Working at InQ making quite a bit more than I am now. I couldn't collect umeployment from that since I was fired with cause, but this time is different. So it's quite possible that I will be getting about twice as much from unemployment as I was earning here (probably about $270 a week as opposed to every two weeks). So that's the sweetness of the bitter news. Weird kinda break, huh? | | Monday, February 16th, 2009 | | 3:27 pm |
Anybody want to help me with my English Comp homework?
One of our two assignments due tomorrow is to write a paragraph each describing what an "enlightened" person and an "unenlightened" person would look like in 2009. It's one of those cases where it's so broad and open that I have no clue where to start. It doesn't have to be much, just a paragraph but I'm in the middle of a wide open field and have clue which way to start moving. Any ideas which direction to go? Current Mood:  confused | | Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | | 10:22 am |
Hey guys. I'm at school and have about an hour and a half to kill. I want to post something but don't really know what to write about. Things have been happening, but not really anything terribly exciting. I also feel like I've been doing too many "catch up" blogs that go on for three pages or so and that doing such long posts probably turns you off since they may look rather daunting. Perhaps I'll just list a few snippets that I feel are worth talking about and then let you fair folk decide what you'd like to hear more about. That way it's like a brief little catch up blog but if there's something that you guys actually want to hear about, I can ramble more. Sound good? Poll #1347033
Open to: Friends, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3 Which topics would you like me to discuss further?
Crap, I saw that I misspelled "you're" as "your" in one of my poll questions and it's bugging me. I don't know how to go back and edit the poll now. This is the best I can do. Current Mood:  boredCurrent Music: Some weird guy humming. | | Friday, January 23rd, 2009 | | 8:14 pm |
I know what I'm going to do!
With all this bid'ness with the crappy scripts and everything, Adem and I have both ended up in similar places. After he read all the scripts in the original email I forwarded, he decided to write his own one-act and did so in the space of about two hours. In that time, he wrote something funnier than any of the other scripts I had read this semester. The kid's got talent. More than most of the other people writing at Moorpark, anyways. The first script he wrote is entitled "A Visit to Grant Harbor Bay" and is a comedy about a young couple having dinner with the woman's mother. The mother brings a male prostitute to dinner as her escort, doses up her son-in-law with GHB, and hilarity ensues. There's a running gag where the husband keeps trying to take his pants off and his wife has to keep fighting for him to stay clothed (which is somewhat remeniscent of times spent with a drunk or very stoned Adem). A day later, I forwarded him another script that, while not as bad as the rest, was still heavily flawed. It was a human rights kind of piece, but had a lot of monologuing and a staple of these shows: the pointless narrator. One of segments involved a lesbian coming over for dinner to a straight co-worker's family's for dinner. So Adem wrote his own 20 page story of homosexuality that nearly had me in tears by the end, in a good way. It focuses more on the parents of a gay son than on the son himself, with the mother being supportive of her son's happines and the father just meek and uncomfortable with it all. I thought it was very well written. I came up with two ideas as well, but haven't actually started writing yet. The first idea is a bit simplistic and would based on the Del Taco gatherings that happen after the directors' meetings and rehearsals in the theater department. Six or seven characters drawing from the people I hang out with there. There would be one character loosely based on me, who would be the new guy to the group. He wouldn't exactly be the main character, but the show would start with his enterance and end with his initiation and acceptance into the group. That makes it sound a little cheesy, but there would be more going on and it would all be about the character interaction. The gimicky kind of thing I would use to keep the pace going would be crossfading the lights anytime a character moves from one side of the stage to the other, representing the inside and outside of the restaurant, and each time they shifted we would jump into the middle of a conversation (again based on actual things I've heard) such as "Dude you cannot have a succesful rock band without a bassist!" or "Oh, and that shot of the sun, when she's on the tower about to jump..." It would be mainly comedic, but with heart. My challenge with that would be breaking the actual story of it all, as well as developing the characters into something more than just copying my friends. I'd also want it to be entertaining to people who aren't in our group, so it isn't just a 20 minute in-joke. The other idea I hade woke me up in the middle of the night...well okay, my cat woke me up in the middle of the night but this idea kept me awake. I started thinking that every show I've seen in the black box is some kind of drama, some kind of comedy, or some kind of mix of the two, and that there are so many other genres out there that are not being utilized on stage. First thing that came to mind was horror, so I started thinking: A slasher show or parody could be fun, but so much of those stories are based on gore and the actual killings, plus editing and music. Werewolves wouldn't work on stage, not the way I want them. Vampires are overdone in every medium (and there was a vampire comedy last semester). And zombes...zombies are fucking perfect! So I started going over a story in my head: First off, we wouldn't actually see any zombies until the very VERY end, and even then it would only be their silhouettes. Mostly we would just hear them, so I'll get some people together and prerecord some zombie moaning and groaning and maybe some violent eating sounds. The story would focus on a couple (and possibly one more character, if I find it necessary) just getting into this house after losing the rest of their group to the undead horde. Anything off stage would just be other rooms in the house but the entire story would take place in what would be the living room of a one story house. After a few minutes for these characters to give us some backstory and create tension, another character comes to the door begging to be let in and he thinks that our two main characters are actually the previous residents whom the new guy had known. I've decided the former residents will be named Shaun and Anna to reference Shaun of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead (2004) respectively. There would be times where we dim the lights as the characters would try to sleep, and as the lights dim, the sound of the zombies moaning and shuffling would fade up. Eventually all the characters will have to die, but the final "shot" (I know it's not being filmed, but my mind works in movie-terms) will be the main female character sitting center stage with a hand gun. The lights fade down almost to black so that we can just barely make out her shape, then the front door flies open as a mass of undead come rushing in. We hear two or three gunshots, then the woman screaming over the zombies' growling and such, and then nothing. I think if I get the story broken out really well, start writing it in the next month or two, then I'll have plenty of time to polish and rewrite before we submit them in July or August. If I can pull this off and get what's in my head on stage I think it could be really fun, and hopefully at least a little scary. Plus since the only time we ever actually see any zombies they are in darkness, we don't have to worry about makeup or special effects. The only budget would really be having to get some good looking fake weapons, since I think any plastic toy guy with a red tip on it would take away a lot of the tension of the story. So probably some airsoft guns or something like that would work. I kinda wish I could just write this all now and make it happen, but that's me. I like the instant gratification. I'm worried that because there's so much time, I won't write it or if I write it I won't finish it or if I finish it I'll forget about it. However it only needs to be about 20 pages so it'll be hard to get bored. Adem gave me his copy of Final Draft, so I may just start writing in the next couple days. Earlier the better. Current Mood:  excited |
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