12:10PM – July 27, 2010 – Yesterday I got to fulfill a lifelong fantasy and play a submarine crewman. It was an absolute blast!

9:12 AM – July 20, 2010 – Still working on my website, getting there, piece by piece!

I know! I can hardly believe I took that, too. It’s certainly one of the best photos I’ve ever taken and has served nicely as the kick in the pants I needed to get my portfolio back in shape. So look for some kind of online version (finally) integrated in this website and in the meantime, you can browse a lot of my photography, both good and mediocre, at my Flickr account, here.

Writing is a horrible, horrible existence. I’m into another period where I’ve convinced myself that I’m not actually a writer. Genuine writers are compelled to write, have ceaselessly wandering imaginations, and most of all, actually produce pages with some regularity. Lately, I feel like I’m 0 for 3. And of all the half formed ideas and potentialities I have been compelled to scribble down by my ceaselessly wandering imagination, none ever seem to make the leap into produced pages.

Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m still thoroughly jobless and completely out of money, relying upon the continuing but strained generosity of my mother. With a sizable To Do list but no obligations tied to specific appointments or even more generally, the outside world, with all the freedom of the day to write, I find it enormously difficult to focus my efforts on what I want to accomplish.

I feel like I can’t even make my point, regardless of the nature of the writing I’m doing. I just wander and ramble, stringing things together, hop scotching from one occasionally nicely worded idea to the next. Ideas are wonderful, but they need sequencing, they need order and structure to convey accomplish their ultimate mission, which is to affect the reader. And somewhere in the middle of that forest of words, I get lost, get frustrated, give up, and return to reloading my Twitter page.

Argh. I have been working on continuing development of the writer’s technique I learned in the screenwriting class I took earlier this year. And no doubt that class and its technique made the draft of the webseries script better by tenfold. Though the script still isn’t perfect, still needs one last polish in a spot or two. I think it’s an adage of writing, though it probably applies to much more of life, that the first 90% takes 10% of the work and the last 10% takes 90% of the work. That certainly feels the case here, where the last 2-5% seems to be a more Herculean task than all that’s come before, though in reality that’s probably just me feeling sorry for myself.

I think more and more often that I need a writing partner, a genuine soul mate of the page that would surely level these impediments and let my genius flow forth unblocked once and for all, washing away the old order of the corrupt and evil world with the brilliance of my ideas and talent. Though pegging a writing partner as the key missing ingredient in so egotistical a construction is, of course, laughably absurd.

Then, of course, there’s also this kind of divided opinion I have about my own writing style, at least when it comes to non narrative writing, which so often keeps me from writing blog posts. On the one hand, I think it’s pretty damn good prose, flowing and articulate, even if it’s sometimes wandering, muddled, and a little comma-happy. But on the other, it pegs me as a pretentious asshole, which of course, I am. But I don’t want to be. I hate pretension and I hate hypocrisy even more. And there’s nothing worse than being a hypocritically pretentious asshole who thinks he’s the shit but can’t even produce a decent blog post, let alone an actual script from start to finish and thinks his only problem is he doesn’t have a writing partner to fix all his mistakes and do all the work for him but thinks he’s some fantastic writer anyway even though he’s rambling and confusing and not all that clever anyway, even in vocabulary (seriously, “pegs” twice in the same blog post?).

But I don’t have a choice (right?). What else would I do? Where else would I go? I genuinely can’t picture any alternatives. No day job I could take and be satisfied with, despite my obsession with politics (DailyKos and Talking Points Memo being refreshed as often as Twitter) and my desire to teach someday (I have to understand something well enough to teach it, first).

So this was a complete stream of consciousness, as it turns out. That’s fine. At least they’re words, that’s something more than the lately usual. And even though this was procrastination – from rewriting the webseries draft, from looking for a job – at least I was writing.

Now if I can just produce some pages.

I need a job.

Now, Talking Points Memo, a blog that everyone should read daily, has asked for readers’ photos to make a slideshow. Two of mine ended up in it (making me, I’ll gloat, the only person to have two) as well as one of them being the thumbnail for the whole thing. I’m extremely proud of both being part of the content of one of my favorite blogs and of the fact that not only did I get to be there for a moment in history, but photograph it as well. As much as for election night and the Inauguration, these are the moments, stacked together, that make up the history of our world. I feel really lucky that I’m not only able to witness it and be a part of it, but play some tiny part in recording it.

It makes me wish I had taken more photos on election night, but truth be told, I wanted to be part of the moment, in the midst of it without worrying about recording it. I wish I had photos of the party at the Rio, of the moment in that small campaign office in northwest Las Vegas when it became official. Ah well, I made the choice and I’m okay with it.

Anyway, here are the Ted Kennedy photos in question and I’ll link my Inauguration photos as well, for good measure.

While Prop 8 is a terrible affront to basic human rights and equality, sadly and unfortunately, I think this is the way this particular battle had to go. Rightly or wrongly, conservatives get a lot of mileage about activist judges making law and defining societal values from the bench. It, like most everything else, is a ludicrous and obnoxiously ignorant framing of how our system actually works, but in this case, had the court overturned a valid election result, it would have played right into this idea, prolonging and making this debate uglier and more difficult than it needs to be.

Sadly, Prop 8 won at the ballot box in a decision made by the people in a free and fair election. As a result, the only way to really defeat it is by going back to that ballot box. Quite frankly, probably more than once. A court ruling would have only made the opposition to equality more certain of their righteousness and more determined to fight on, making them fight harder and less willing to give up.

They will keep trying, over and over again to impose their bigotry on all of us, by any means available to them. To shut them up once and for all is going to take a repeated and forceful declaration by the rest of us, the kind that is inarguable and incontrovertible, the kind which can only come at the ballot box.

I know this is a tough pill to swallow, especially for all the people out there who just want the same rights as their fellow citizens, but the loss of this particular battle makes the next one (whatever initiative ends up targeting Prop 8 for repeal)  more defining – and that’s the one that we’re going to win. And when we do, opponents to equality will have no room to cry about activist judges and liberal agendas. It will only be the voice of the people demanding fairness and equality – the incontrovertable argument of our society.

The gist is to pull some significant event from your history, pick a moment from it, and visualize the setting and action in your head. Recalling as much vivid detail as possible, write out – stream of consciousness style – the scene as completely as possible. Think about the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures. Think about the light and color, about who was there, about what you were wearing and how it felt, about appearance, hair and posture, about everything you can remember.

Then, rewrite the scene out as you would write a scene in a screenplay. Here’s my stream of consciousness, minutely revised from my notebook:

Standing in the second row, crowded in the narrow aisles by the rolling chairs. Books and pictures stacked on either side of the front of the classroom, of planes, of war machines, of war.

The white board at the front, core values written on it, lessons of the day. Air Force knowledge. Backpacks on the desks. Books, notebooks, pens, pulled out, ready to go. Uncomfortable in my uniform, shirt stays pulling my shirt down and my socks up, military garters taut against my leg.

Kids, like me, standing behind me, a row and two back, over my left shoulder, cheerleading the tv screen pulled down over half the whiteboard at the front. On the screen, a city at night, fireballs erupting in the sky, shocking and awing.

That’s for 9/11! a kid cheers. They had nothing to do with 9/11, I respond. A short argument. At the front, the Captain doesn’t say anything. I look to him for help, for resolution, for I don’t know. He looks back, doesn’t say anything, maybe some sympathy in his eyes. Sunlight streams in from the windows.

A city at night, a world away, explodes.

And here’s the scene I wrote out, again minutely revised:

INT. CLASSROOM – DAY

A room adorned with military paraphernalia, mostly Air Force and aviation themed. Over half the white board at the front, a screen is pulled down, showing CNN’s view of a city at night. Regularly and frequently, fireballs blossom, lighting up the city on the TV.

A half dozen kids or so, all dressed in their Air Force cadet uniforms, take their places at desks and unpack their class materials. But their full attention is on the screen at the front. They’re eager and excited by what they see. One kid pipes up:

CADET ONE
That’s for 9/11, Saddam!

CADET TWO
Iraq didn’t have anything to do with 9/11,
this whole thing is unnecessary!

The kids don’t really have an answer, but that doesn’t concern them much. They go back to watching the carnage. Cadet Two turns to the teacher, an Air Force Captain, an imposingly built but friendly looking black man. He says nothing, but there might be some sympathy in his eyes.

Baghdad continues to burn.

FADE OUT.

So there you go, a translation of a stream of consciousness recollection into a screenplay format correct scene. Give it a try: make a list of important events in your life, pick one that you can recall vividly that stands out, and pick one particular moment (no jumps in time or place) from it. Close your eyes and recall as much detail as you can, writing it out in a stream of consciousness. Then, take that description of the moment and write it out as a scene. Decide which details are worth keeping, which should be dropped, and how to succinctly and descriptively paint the picture without wasting a word. Remember, write only what can be photographed and recorded; describe what will be seen and heard and make every moment count.

Good luck.

I had made another in a long series of resolutions to blog more, to blog regularly, to write regularly. I had actually managed to claw towards some success, though still far short of the regularity I sought (and still seek). But I had made progress, until my blogging, even as insubstantial as it was, threw such a monkey wrench into things that it honestly scared me off of the whole thing for a long time. For awhile, there was a simple aversion to even coming near my website, an aversion that coexisted with my continued desire to remake it into something that I’m not embarrassed by. But the point of this post isn’t about that story. Some of you know it, and I’ll tell it at some point – probably with names removed. But this post isn’t that story.

I just wanted to take the opportunity to list, as completely as I can off the top of my head, what I’ve done this past year:

• I worked on maybe close to a dozen short productions, sometimes as a production assistant, sometimes as a second assistant director, sometimes as help for friends or teachers, sometimes as a job for money, and sometimes as a job but not for money.
• I worked on a low budget feature as a camera truck driver and watched well known actors and a professional film crew work on set, day after day.
• I did script coverage and typed hard copies of scripts for a producer.
• I got a couple of jobs and lost them, one which was my fault and one which wasn’t.
• I started taking an acting class and have gone from doing it for the hell of it until I got a day job to becoming part of a community and making real and (I hope) lasting friends.
• I’ve watched two friends leave this town and head home, one with the intention of returning and one without.
• I’ve gone back east four times, three of them within three months.
• I volunteered and worked my butt off to get Obama elected, making phone calls to and knocking on doors here in California (in the primary) and Nevada (in the general).
• I spent the last three weekends before the election in Nevada and was in a regional campaign office in northwest Las Vegas when they called the election for Obama.
• I took some photographs, most of which I still have to upload to my Flickr account.
• I did some writing and no finishing.
• I tried to get some projects off the ground and didn’t succeed.
• I think I’ve progressed, at least somewhat, as an artist, though until I actually finish something, that’s an unfounded assertion.
• I’ve had full blooded conversations with my nephew and met my niece.
• I’ve cut down on the amount of meat I eat, though not as much as I’d like and not as unfailingly as I’d like.
• I’ve generally started to eat healthier, though the exercise half of that equation is sorely lacking.
• I’ve wasted a lot of time.
• I’ve gotten older.

That’s mostly what I can think of at the moment. I’m sure there are other things, but those are the highlights and there are thoughts I don’t quite have my head around at the moment that go along with a list like this. But we’ll call it an evening for now.

Last Saturday, Fig, Chloe, and I went to an LA user group and demonstration for the RED camera and ran into Dorkman in the process. We saw a couple of presentations on various aspects and hung around and asked questions of owners who had set up there cameras for demonstrations. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about my RED order in awhile, having been distracted since the holidays (when I first placed the order) by moving cross country and then setting up shop and finding a job.

Which, speaking of, demonstrated progress this week, when someone from Legendary Pictures emailed Tuesday, asking if I could come in for an interview on Thursday. And I totally would have gone too, if I hadn’t already promised myself a beach day.

But the beaches will be there for at least a couple more years (before the ice slips away from the poles and sends the beach towards Denver), so to the Warner Brothers lot I went and had a lovely chat with two of the guys from Legendary. I got there about half an hour early, leaving nothing to chance, and spent the extra time walking around the lot a bit. From where I parked, the famous water tower was very close by, on the other side of a T intersection with Legendary off to the right, and the back lot past the water tower. As I walked around, trams filled with tourists trundled too and fro and I managed to catch snippets of the tour as they went by. I felt as if I had one foot on the tram and one on the lot. In my shirt and tie, with portfolio in hand, I would’ve been indistinguishable from any other person that belonged there – unless you could tell by my meandering route and gawking eyes. In about five minutes time I walked from Los Angeles (Burbank, actually) to New York to Gotham City to Metropolis to Chicago and back to Burbank again, past Judge Stone’s courthouse, the ambulance bay of County General, and Clark’s subway stop.

Surreality is something I must be prone to, not that this is my first encounter with the screen come to life. But first or thousandth, the difference in dimensionality never ceases to strike at me in a way that I can’t help but marvel at. And not in the typical fanboy way of, “OMG! The courthouse from Night Court!” but just an intense curiosity at the idea of fantasy become reality. Or maybe the other way around. Or the mutability of the two to become the other. Something like that.

But seriously, OMG the water tower that Yakko, Wakko, and Dot live in!

Anyway, at five minutes before the scheduled time, I dutifully walked into the Legendary lobby and had an interview with two of the guys there, who were both very genial. We talked and overall I think it went pretty well, and that’s about as much detail as I’ll go into until I know whether or not I got the job. Either way, the news of whether or not I did will likely be the final word on it, since should I get it, I’ll have to sign a non-disclosure agreement that will probably forbid me from publishing anything on the internet ever again (and receiving electro-shock treatment that will permanently wipe the existence of Aint It Cool News from my brain). All of which I’m perfectly willing to do! Just in case they’re reading.

Otherwise, in my quest to master every aspect of the filmmaking process, I’ve volunteered to be a stage hand for a play at the acting school that includes in its cast some teachers. The past couple of Fridays I’ve helped haul furniture and props back and forth, hanging out with actors that take their craft quite seriously and who are an absolute blast to hang out with.

Also on an acting front (more of a casting front), in the past week and a half I helped Chad in holding auditions for the second half of his movie, now dubbed Apocalypse, CA. In lieu of him finding any real actors to read opposite the hopeful auditioners, I’ve stepped in. All of that’s now done though, with shooting rapidly approaching, which I shall help with whenever I can and not otherwise occupied or employed.

And today I had a phone conversation with Dr. Michael Stebbins, a member of the Board of Advisers for Scientists and Engineers for America and president of it’s Action Fund. After Bill Foster’s special election win in Illinois a couple of weeks ago, I got it in my head that more scientists and engineers should hold public office, and wrote a diary to such effect on DailyKos. One of the commenters pointed me in SEA and Michael’s direction and we were able to talk things over today. We were both excited about me getting involved, and I can’t wait to dig my hands into some of the things they’re doing and want to do.

Also, and finally, I’ve been helping to organize the Los Angeles chapter of Yuri’s Night, a worldwide celebration of Gagarin’s flight on April 12th. The group (they will admit) has been a little late on the ball this year, but things are starting to work into place. The chief obstacle to progress was setting a venue, a task now accomplished, setting the event at Cinespace on Hollywood Boulevard. It should be a fun time, and if you’re in the LA area, you should definitely come down and check it out, or find the nearest Yuri’s Night event near you and check <em>that</em> when the time comes.

Needless to say, last night was an experience.