A page from my upcoming Script Frenzy script entitled Swords of Destiny. (Do not attempt to infringe on my copyright, I got it all worked out to where it's illegal to steal my stuff) [scrippet] INT. CANTINA BAR - LATER
The four are squashed into a small booth.
Etsuko and Benji sit on one side with untouched waters.
Shapiro and Burls are squeezed unpleasantly on the opposite side with half-empty beers.
Buckshot lays on the floor gnawing on a piece of wood.
SHAPIRO Name’s Shapiro. (points to Burls) Burls. (points to dog) Buckshot.
Buckshot YELPS.
ETSUKO Is that your dog? He’s so cute.
SHAPIRO Buckshot ain’t no ones dog.
Buckshot growls.
SHAPIRO (CONT’D) Ain’t cute neither.
BURLS We just like to enjoy the pleasure of each other’s company.
SILENT BEAT.
SHAPIRO I’m the brains of this outfit, Burls is the muscle. (aside) And none too bright neither. (aloud) And Buckshot is good at procuring things. Good at getting rid of undesirables to boot, he can have a pretty nasty bite. Old Burls got bit just the other day didn’t ya?
BURLS Got me in the hindquarters. I could show ya, but I ain’t a standin’ up. [/scrippet]
I'm starting a band. They are kind of an old eclectic rock, indie sounding folk group.
We are called AMNICON and we'll be playing in a town near you.
This is our first album entitled "The Body Says What Words Cannot." If you want copies just drop me a line.
Okay, not really. But that would be cool right?!? Here's a fun activity I found on Facebook but I didn't want to post it there (besides, my blog posts on Facebook anyway so why not kill two birds with one album cover?)
Here are the directions to create your own really cool album cover like mine:
2 - Go to QuotationsPage.com and select "random quotations" The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
I have nothing to report. I'm just sitting here wishing I was through this next scene on my script so that I can get going on the next scene which is more fun.
I can't just skip this scene though because it sets up the legend of the two swords which is integral to the plot of the film. Also it adds a bit of comic relief to the film.
I think I'm having trouble with it because I am so excited to do the action-y bits. Yet, I have planned all these scenes and I can't deviate from the plan.
I'm off now to go write. Wish me luck because it is always harder to get your ideas to flow when you have already moved on in your mind.
I found this guy the other day on my back porch. I tried feeding him and it turns out that he is not very friendly because i think he may be scared. Not quite sure the breed but I am assuming he is part Siamese. I have him in a crate because he is not really house broken. If he is yours please reply.
I laughed at this one for about an hour. And then again when I went to the bathroom.
I wanted to talk to you, but I had to take a shit - m4w
Date: 2009-02-26, 9:06PM EST
Have you ever been just minding your own business, when all of a sudden, you realize that you have to take a shit really bad? Well that's what happened to me this morning.
It was around 8 AM today (Thursday) when I was sitting on Metro North and got that horrible feeling. I wasn't even sure I'd make it to Grand Central. Unfortunately, taking a shit on the train was out of the question. Have you ever seen a Metro North bathroom? My only choice was to sit there an pretend nothing was a matter.
After what felt like an eternity, I finally arrived at Grand Central. I made my way to the front of the train so I wouldn't have to deal with all the people on the platform when I got off. It was at this time that I realized that taking a shit in Grand Central was also out of the question. I think there is probably about a 75% chance that you'll get hepatitis if you try to take a shit in Grand Central. My only choice was to try to make it to my luxury Chelsea office where we actually have sanitary bathrooms.
Now it's probably about 8:10. As I'm running down the stairs into the subway, I notice the downtown 4-5-6 platform is exceptionally crowded. The conductor of the 5 train announces that the 5 train is out of service, and all passengers must leave the train. It must be Murphy's Law in action.
I walked across the platform to get on the downtown 6 train when I saw you standing next to me. You were probably about average height for a girl, brown hair, black or dark blue jacket, green skirt, brown boots, and a great smile.
ON ANY OTHER DAY, I would have swept you off your feet. If you were to ask any of my girlfriends in the last few years, they would probably tell you that I just came up to them on the street, in a book store, in the subway, etc, and said, "Hi," before proceding to charm the a smile out of them. But today was not my day. There was no way I could have confidently talked to you while at the same time pretending nothing was wrong with my bowels.
Anyway, we both got on a very crowded 6 train. I was holding on to the pole for dear life, and you were holding on to the same pole standing across from me. I'm 5'11", brown hair, athletic build, and I was wearing jeans, a blueish t-shirt, and a black jacket. I think you got off at 28th St, but I was in no state of mind to keep track. It could have been 33rd or 23rd.
When I finally reached my office, I ran up 4 flights of stairs (because I couldn't wait for the elevator) and made a beeline to the bathroom, unzipping my pants as I opened the door. I swear, if I had been delayed by even a second because I tried to get your number in the subway, I would have had to call someone to bring my some new clothes. I barely had my pants down when it forced itself out. I ended up using entire industrial sized roll of toilet paper. You have no idea how raw my ass felt after using that much 1-ply sandpaper-toilet paper. I think the toilet itself is in therapy now.
***Summary***
You: Took downtown 6 from Grand Central Brown hair Black (or other dark color) jacket Green skirt Brown boots
Me: 5'11" Athletic build Dark blue jeans Blueish t-shirt Black jacket Normally extremely confident Fears public bathrooms
I just like this one -
The Streaker Tripper - m4w
Date: 2009-03-01, 3:26AM EST
I was streaking through the Diag Friday night at 2:15 am. Coming around the corner of State and Liberty, fast as a naked blur, I bumped into you and we both fell to the ground. I was a little upset with you at first, cuz I scratched my right butt cheek pretty bad, but I knew it was my fault. You said, "Nice New Balances," And all I could say was, "Thanks," with the adrenaline still rushing. In less awkward circumstances, I would have liked to talk to you. I had never run into a girl that fast or naked before... I didn't know how to respond so I helped you up quickly and kept running. Since my friends paid me $100 for making it to Kerrytown with just my socks, shoes, and a big smile, I'd like to take you on a date. You looked pretty fit so maybe you'd like to go for a run sometime. Hit me up! Bye!
I'm writing this instead of working on my script. Or, I'm writing this and then I'll work on my script.
Worked late into the night Thursday doing Time-Lapse Photography at a CVS Pharmacy. It was a lot of fun... okay, it was really boring with little bits of excitement. I was able to see some footage that was shot earlier by the director and it was amazing. Really great stuff.
While looking for the above video in the Time-Lapse link, I stumbled upon this amazing story of Nicholas White who was stuck in the McGraw-Hill building in New York for over 41 hours. Watch the amazing footage below. You can just feel the panic and boredom.
Here are some inserts from the article in the New Yorker.
"The magazine’s offices were on the forty-third floor of the McGraw-Hill Building, an unadorned tower added to Rockefeller Center in 1972. When White finished his cigarette, he returned to the lobby and, waved along by a janitor buffing the terrazzo floors, got into Car No. 30 and pressed the button marked 43. The car accelerated. It was an express elevator, with no stops below the thirty-ninth floor, and the building was deserted. But after a moment White felt a jolt. The lights went out and immediately flashed on again. And then the elevator stopped."
"White has the security-camera videotape of his time in the McGraw-Hill elevator. He has watched it twice—it was recorded at forty times regular speed, which makes him look like a bug in a box. The most striking thing to him about the tape is that it includes split-screen footage from three other elevators, on which you can see men intermittently performing maintenance work. Apparently, they never wondered about the one he was in. (Eight McGraw-Hill security guards came and went while he was stranded there; nobody seems to have noticed him on the monitor.)" "Nicholas White opened the doors to urinate. As he did so, he hoped, in vain, that a trace of this violation might get the attention of someone in the lobby."
"And then he gave up. The time passed in a kind of degraded fever dream. On the videotape, he lies motionless for hours at a time, face down on the floor.
A voice woke him up: 'Is there someone in there?'
'Yes.'
'What are you doing in there?'
"Looking back on the experience now, with a peculiarly melancholic kind of bewilderment, he recognizes that he walked onto an elevator one night, with his life in one kind of shape, and emerged from it with his life in another." Here is some info on Elevators that I thought was downright interesting:
"Nonetheless, elevators are extraordinarily safe—far safer than cars, to say nothing of other forms of vertical transport. Escalators are scary. Statistics are elusive (“Nobody collects them,” Edward Donoghue, the managing director of the trade organization National Elevator Industry, said), but the claim, routinely advanced by elevator professionals, that elevators are ten times as safe as escalators seems to arise from fifteen-year-old numbers showing that, while there are roughly twenty times as many elevators as escalators, there are only a third more elevator accidents."
"The elevator, underrated and overlooked, is to the city what paper is to reading and gunpowder is to war. Without the elevator, there would be no verticality, no density, and, without these, none of the urban advantages of energy efficiency, economic productivity, and cultural ferment."
"In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power."
There was also some very interesting information about newly designed "Smart Elevators" and "Destination Dispatch" which cut down wait times in lobbies as well as help passengers get to their floor quicker than with the button system.
This was a fun bit of elevator etiquette from the article:
Passengers seem to know instinctively how to arrange themselves in an elevator. Two strangers will gravitate to the back corners, a third will stand by the door, at an isosceles remove, until a fourth comes in, at which point passengers three and four will spread toward the front corners, making room, in the center, for a fifth, and so on, like the dots on a die. With each additional passenger, the bodies shift, slotting into the open spaces. The goal, of course, is to maintain (but not too conspicuously) maximum distance and to counteract unwanted intimacies—a code familiar (to half the population) from the urinal bank and (to them and all the rest) from the subway. One should face front. Look up, down, or, if you must, straight ahead. Mirrors compound the unease. Generally, no one should speak a word to anyone else in an elevator. Most people make allowances for the continuation of generic small talk already under way, or, in residential buildings, for neighborly amenities. The orthodox enforcers of silence—the elevator Quakers—must suffer the moderates or the serial abusers, as they cram in exchanges about the night, the game, the weekend, or the meal.
All this has had me looking more closely at elevators. Now I don't press the call button relentlessly because I know that, like the door close button, it is a useless pursuit of alleviating my impatience. It is like creeping forward at an intersection or flashing your lights to try and coax the stoplight to change to green. It doesn't work.
It also made me appreciate the fact that I don't work in a building with more than 12 floors. I have no idea what I would do if I were trapped for as long as Nicholas White was. I would most likely go crazy.
Working up some rambunctious script-writing with this online contest Script Frenzy.
The idea is to write a full-length screenplay/play/teleplay of any genre in a matter of a month. The month of April. There is no prize, just a completed screenplay and a lot of feel-goodness.
I'm really excited to be doing this for several reasons: - I love writing and I especially love writing under a deadline because it helps me crank it out. - You can never have too many spec scripts under your belt, even if they aren't award winningly written. - I have wanted to start writing a feature and write some of it each day (without stopping until it's finished) for some time now. This just seemed like an appropriate time to do it. - I love the community aspect of it. I am a "writing buddy" with some of my screenwriting friends that are participating and others can be my buddies too. That way we can see how each other are progressing and help each other out.
My script is called The Eternal Hero (it's a working title because I hate it and I know I can come up with something better, I just didn't want to waste time on that). The synopsis is:
In a desolate future, a young American boy travels to Japan after his mother dies so he can meet his grandparents, he discovers that the small town that they live in has been taken over by a tyrannical king and he must do everything he can to save them from a lifetime of bondage.
