Not supposed to do it

My best friend and co-writer of "The Bet" and Detox, Chris Smith said that when you tell people that you're working on something it takes the wind out of the sails. This blog is mostly just my own diary that I have decided for whatever reason to make public, so I don't really think I'm "telling people" much if I tell it here - for all you, oh, 3 readers. Anyway. I've gotten 50 pages into a script (which translates to 50 minutes of screen time) that is a full-on horror script. Blood, fun and mayhem. And, yes, boobies. I'm hoping to be done with the first draft by the end of this fourth of July weekend (family vacations and fireworks are impeding my progress). At any rate, this one is A) low budget, B) fun and scary (the way "popular" horror films are) and C) as my producer friend mentioned - serializable. Yes, this could have sequels. And yes, it's fun. And yes, there's boobies - another genre favourite.

So, challenging my dear Smitty's advice, I think there's something good here.

The Verizon guy, Chad and why I love comments.

In response to an article about the verizon guy and that chad guy (i swear he's the "O face" dude from Office Space) for alltel, i found this:

When I was in high school, I worked at the local K-Mart.

That's right. Jealous much?

I was a cashier...then I was promoted to the Books/Stationary section. And in the summer months, I also covered Lawn and Garden. Outdoor duty...sweetness.

My most reflected upon memory of that glorious time, was one day, talking with an employee from another dept - like children's apparel or something.

I can't remember her name, but I remember our conversation crystal clearly.

I was 17. She was maybe, MAYBE, a year older. And she was so supremely happy with her lot in life.

She was engaged to a fella who wanted to be a cop. (Wasn't a cop, wasn't in cop school, but wanted to be a cop.) She LOVED working at K-mart. Loved the discount. Loved working with children's clothes. Couldn't wait to get married. Couldn't wait to have kids.

I asked her about college or travel or seeking anything outside her current realm.

Complete disinterest. She had what she felt was everything. A job she enjoyed. A man she loved. Plans for marriage and a little place to raise rugrats.

Part of me was completely aghast at her. No other goals than to be married and kid-ridden before she was even legal to drink.

But another part of me, and I remember this as such a strong reaction, was kinda envious. While I have my doubts about her contentedness lasting for decades to come, I had never met anyone so happily satisfied with their state of being.

It was like talking to a Martian. A really pleasant Martian.

Maybe Chad is content with his lot.

Or maybe he's just a Martian.

p.s. "You're still a ding dong." does make me laugh. It doesn't make me want to buy into Alltell, but it does make me laugh.

I love the comments section.

Lock down - UPDATE!

So, apparently there are multiple males (that's what the cop people say) living in the house. And one of these males was holding multiple females hostage (which is sometimes okay - well if you can pull it off, it's awesome) and the cops were getting the chicks out one-by-one, save the last one which is when they retreated. Even when they blew in the door with EXPLOSIVES! the dude still wouldn't give up. So they sent in the K9 unit which made him his chewtoy (the dog may have also anally raped him, too, but nobody will corroborate that). Then he gave up and came out and got TAZED (wow, dog fucked and tazed, that's a bad night). My question is, how'd the dog know who to chomp on? And, apparently, they are renting the house. Yay. I want to move. No, I want everyone else to move. To space. Or really far away. And let me swim naked without worrying about the cops showing up to bust some dick with harem issues. Oh, and, if you're the cause of the commotion, and the cops fuck up your shit (tires and door and all that - yes, they shanked his tires) insurance WILL NOT cover it. Lesson learned.

Lock down!

Had an interesting night last night. At 10:45, Michelle and I went upstairs to go to bed and we were looking for something for one of the kids when BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG on the door. I figured it was kids joking around. Then a few seconds later, again, BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG! So I went downstairs and tried to look out the peephole - our porch light is broken - thinking if I opened it, someone was gonna push their way in or some sort of home invasion scenario was going to unfold. But I could hear what sounded like intercoms. So I opened the door a crack, fighting to keep the dogs back.

"It's the police. Stay in your house. We have a situation across the street."

So, I ran upstairs to peek outside. By now, both kids were awake, and Michelle and I were being not so sly spying out the upstairs window. There was a police truck just off to the right of our house in the middle of the street. And a few cops hiding in various places. Even a K9 unit was there. I could hear voices, so I figured there were cops down by our garage below us, just like I could see cops back against the garage door across the street. Then I saw more cops - with guns drawn - in the garage of the house to the left of the one across from us.

Interesting. So, we kept watching, wondering what might be going on. Michelle works for Metro and suspected there was someone who had locked themselves inside. A few minutes later, a cop rushed a woman in handcuffs away from the house and then about seven more cops followed. Now there were even more of them on the street, maybe 20 or so. Then they pulled out one of those bullet-proof shields you see SWAT guys use and the cops that came out of the house lined up behind it and backed away carefully. They were doing the hand signals like you see in the movies. Seemed surreal.

Michelle called 311 and all they would tell us was that someone had barricaded themselves in the house. She tried to get hold of one of her co-workers as i was pulling out the camera when another BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG. I answered the door and the cop said that we needed to evacuate. All things considered, we most likely would have been fine, but the kids were freaking out. Michelle knew that if a barricade didn't end in a few minutes, it usually lasted hours and there was no way any of us was going to sleep until it was over. So we decided to bail and go sleep at her mom's house.

So we piled into the truck in the garage and headed out the back way - which was blocked by every assortment of vehicle imaginable. Cop cars. SWAT trucks. A police/fire trailer that Michelle thought might have robots (cool!). Laptops setup in the back of pickups. Police tape blocking the street. Dozens of people in all sorts of uniforms. Even a negotiator (which was also cool). We had to wait for them to clear the road so we could get through and saw the woman who'd been taken out in handcuffs walking with a police officer (no longer handcuffed).

When we came back this morning, the front door of the barricade house was lying on the ground and the front window was shattered. The back tires of all the cars there were flat. Out next-door neighbor was outside and told us what he'd seen (he hadn't bailed). He said a SWAT truck pulled up in front of the car on the street and then they flattened all the tires. They threw in smoke bombs and flash bombs. And then set up a charge on the front door, ran a line out to the street and blew it open. No battering ram. EXPLOSIVES. The blast shattered the front window. Finally, they got the guy out - who was drunk as hell, staggering around and swinging his bottle of whatever. Apparently they tazed him and that was pretty much the end of it.

EXPLOSIVES! Damn, I wish we'd stayed. Dazed and tazed. Still not sure exactly what was going on. Our suspicion is a domestic violence call. The cops said they hadn't had problems with them before. We also thought it might be drug-related since there have been some people coming and going that don't look familiar. Whatever it was, the chick is back and the door and windows have just finished being boarded up. Fun!

Road trip

Over the weekend I took my first solo recreational road trip. I went to San Diego to visit my friend Rachel (who wrote the song "Hallway" for "The Bet." After I'd gotten laid off, she kept bugging me to come and visit. So I did. I was a bit nervous driving out there on my own - especially since my car is having issues. But I took it in, got it checked and dropped $920 to get some repairs. Still freaky on certain roads, but it was fine for the trip.

It was a nice ride, no traffic to speak of, and once I neared SD it was overcast and foggy. And great break from the 100-degree weather here. I watched as the temp dropped from 98 to 88 to 78 to 52.

I got there about 3pm. Rachel had told me we were going to ride in Critical Mass that night. I was up for it. Until I saw the bike I was borrowing was a townie, not a bmx. BIG difference. I was way wobbly on it and was suddenly very nervous. Not to mention it was in the lowest gear and a bitch to pedal uphill. But I figured I'd driven all this way, I might as well give it a go. As Rachel said, we'd jumped out of a plane together; this was nothing.

As hundreds of bikers gathered around the fountain in a park, waiting to go, there was a thud. Some guy who'd been standing about 15 feet from me passed out. While one of our group ran over to the cop car nearby, he came to, then went out again and I was sure he had just died. But he came to again and seemed fine. An ambulance came and took him away. Not what I needed to calm my nerves. Rachel and I decided we'd bail on the whole event and head back. I was plenty exhausted anyway from the drive and all, so I was all too happy to call it a night.

The next day we went to Salton Sea. I'd never heard of it, but it seemed like a pretty interesting place. Apparently the algae is so thick that it robs all oxygen so when fish get to a certain size they suffocate and float to the surface. Fun! It took nearly three hours to drive out there and the misty overcast skies gave way to sun and heat. When we got there, the smell was so overwhelming we nearly just turned around. But decided to do some exploring.

We'd hoped to find some of the abandoned buildings and such that we'd heard about, but the shore that we were one really held nothing but dead fish. Lots and lots of dead fish. And ground up fish bones. And stink. We'd had enough of the heat and smell and headed back.

That night we went to So Say We All, a Moth-style storytelling event that some of Rachel's friends were in. The theme was "It seemed like a good idea at the time" - which could have described our two pseudo-adventures. After that, we were both dead tired. I was leaving in the morning and wanted to get some sleep, not looking forward to the long drive back.

It may not have been everything we'd hoped, but I was with a good friend so the misadventures were simply adventures. And her dog, Agent Cooper, is probably the cutest damn dog I've ever met. Plus, now that my road trip cherry has been popped (Rachel's words), I'm looking forward to doing it again.

Lots of stuff in the past much days

• Still unemployed, though not poor enough to start whining. I'm getting scarily accustomed to not having a job. Finding a new schedule comprised of family-centric tasks. Odd.
• Really studied script structure over the past few weeks - thanks largely to Michael Hauge's 6-stage Script Structure and this one. Helped to rewrite the first act of Detox, and - soon - the rest of the script.
• May have figured out the key to the new script - which will be called a "weapon of mass depravity."
• Getting a handle on the photography thing. Got my terms sorted and my focus pulled. Just need some interesting subjects. And some lights. And a meter. And a Lens Baby. ... kidding. The gadgets are all nice and fine, but I really love being able to shoot in natural light, which is so unlike my usual aesthetic. Maybe because I don't have all the gadgets.
  
• Finally getting my car serviced. 8000+ miles after his last checkup was due. And two more new tires. That means...
• Road trip is imminent. Gonna head out to see my uber friend Rachel - hopefully - May 29th. I'm gonna be shooting a video for her song "Virgins" as soon as money doesn't suck and maybe get in a less expensive one (or two) on the way. Because...
• I got a Steadicam Merlin. Borrowed it from a friend and it kills the jello effect of the D90. So I can actually shoot handheld video that doesn't make you wanna puke. I just gotta learn how to fly it. You can see a comparison of with and without the Merlin HERE.
  
• Besides all that, I'm really starting to see myself as a person, rather than an employee. Weird thing, that. No one is my boss. And that's making me become my own boss. And that means I'm slowly - very slowly - becoming more aware of what I'm doing and why. And what to change and how. And what I like about myself. Sadly, the last of those is tougher to solve. But I'm getting better. And I've lost 9 pounds. Just another 40 to go. I think I need to actually exercise to get there, though.
  

Wil Wheaton is, well, cool

Unemployment FTW

Don't cry for me, I'm not without income. But I am without schedule, sadly something I was really, oddly, addicted to. It'll be 1:45 and I try to tell myself I need to eat, but I don't know what to eat and spend the next 20 minutes and realize I need to go to the shower and pick up my elder son son from school (my life is now governed by half-hours - half-hour to shower, half-hour to get kid, half-hour to eat, etc).

The job I was really hoping to get was given to some other... someone. Um, yeah. Fuck it.

Did I mention I blew a tire, my battery decided to fuck off and my tires, in some sort of odd mutiny - one of my few consistent comrades, BAT BOY, is even giving up on me - decided to enhance my daily fatigue -by getting out of alignment or balance or whatever makes him shimmy and shake and swerve across the freeway. Now, that I realized the damn guy's out of warranty. Maybe it's his lack of bathing got him, BB, on edge.

Today I watched the end of Donkey Punch, a fair thriller, though it was tough to hear what they were saying in subdued tones late at night with their Leeds accent (and only got to watch the last half hour with the sound up). Then watched, in stops and starts (those half-hours again), what may be the best film I've seen in... years: The Orphanage. It's like a remake of Poltergeist without copping to the remake fuckery and actually one-upping the original. I called them out, then nearly cried, then nearly cried, then was haunted by then film the rest of the day.

As far as what I'm doing? I've revamped the Rubbersquare site, spent much time understanding script structure to where I can finally understand it (and watch The Orphanage and absolutely love it and recommend it and recognize the script structure (and Poltergeist-ness of it), and am rewriting Detox and making sure the new script follows it (which oddly they both already do to a large extent). There's the Detox novelization and a really exciting Mother's Day gift which just emerged today and got me more excited than I've been in weeks.

New site is LIVE

The newly revamped Rubbersquare site is now live. Go ahead, check it out (opens in a new window).

Some of the cool stuff you'll find are information about all of Rubbersquare's projects, like "The Bet" and Detox. There's also the music video for "Hallway" and the short film "Foreplay" - both of which you can watch on the site. There's a news section which connects to the brand-new Rubbersquare News Blog with an option to subscribe. And links to the Rubbersquare network, including this blog, Rubbershop and Rubberforum.

Now that the hard part of designing it is done, it should be easy to add new content and keep the news current.

Why are you still reading? Go check it out.

I re-redid the Rubbersquare site

Yes, I'm a bit... insane, bored, pick your own adjective. Just don't share. But I completely revamped the revamped Rubbersquare site. Why? Because I want something a bit lighter. And I figured out how to get a text feed into Flash whilst keeping the formatting. No, it's not a live update from the soon to be awesome Rubbersquare blog - different from the rubberblog in that the Rubbersquare blog will be press releases, verses the random rants of my head on rubberblog... but anyway. The new BETA site is live at rubbersquare/beta and would appreciate feedback if you are so willing.

Some things to keep in mind, though, are that at this juncture, only the "The Bet" and "Suffer" buttons will produce content. But like the previous revamp, the "Hallway" and "Foreplay" buttons will eventually, before the wide release, give you what you're looking for. I decided to emphasize revenue-generating links first. Call me arrogant. Call me unemployed. Blah. Also, the news feed is temporarily feeding from random "see if it works" content, but will - eventually - feed from the very newly created Rubbersquare news blog. I am retrofitting that beast as we/I speak.

In the meantime, let me know what you think. Fail, win, etc. I am thick-skinned and can take (and actually hope for) criticism.