Fucking Ben Affleck

I'm enjoying this all way too much. What a great couple...all four of them!

Soooo cute

I'm staying at my best friend's house in San Jose while we do sound in Emmeryville, and she's six months pregnant with her first child. A daughter. Name has changed a few times, so no working title right now. Anyway, she is so cute...all morning she's been going through boxes nesting, totally single focused...I want to hire her to come do my house!

And no, I have no biological urges to have a baby watching her. I'm a total freak of nature. But I'm stoked to be an aunt again!

Here's the rub

LA industry is sooooo incestuous that every guy I know works in the film industry and wants to keep our relationship either a friendship or a real boyfriend/girlfriend thing because they want to work with me in the future and they get how hard it is for women to emotionally disconnect and have just casual sex. Being respected and adored and expected to succeed by my male friends is very flattering...and can be a bitch.

Just got back from an ADR session with Dave and Chauntal, followed by me going to Blockbuster to hit on the witty flirty check out guy. He wasn't working. And the hot guy in the parking lot whose eyes bugged out when he saw me drove off too fast for me to ask him out. Damn, you menfolk keep missing out! Seriously, if you see a woman who looks like a coked-up Jessica Rabbit wandering around LA staring at men's crotches this afternoon, you MIGHT want to take your lunch break and take her home right now...she really needs you to be good to her...

Guh!

Got shot down on 2 different booty calls last night (still haven't picked a boyfriend, so trying to play it safe emotionally). The 24 year old didn't respond, and the hot smart one I almost dated in January (who stood me up for our first date - twice) was busy with taxes and putting his kid to bed and was really worried we'd end up hurting each other emotionally. Probably true. I just couldn't have cared less. Just wanted to hook my leg around his shoulder.

Ack ack ack.

I leave at 2 pm to go back up north into sound and color correction sessions all week, and I'm a walking mess. I don't know how you guys got anything done in your early 20s. Life is the pits when you actually NEED sex and can't get it.

I can't concentrate at all, and if someone said "boo" to me right now, I'd jump ten feet like a cartoon character. Can you actually see me vibrating with nerves and anxiety over the web? I bet you can. Only the most important week of my life and I'm fucked now in the wrong way...

Oh, and Captain Awesome/Mr. Tumnus?

Got up the balls to call him this weekend in San Diego. His phone is disconnected.

You missed seeing me sob the way I did when I mom died.

Magic!

Today is the three year anniversary of my blog, and the day I'm hitting 100,000 hits.

Thanks all for your friendship and ears. I've appreciated being heard.

And I still miss mom.

Tell me what you don't like about yourself

There hasn't been one episode of fifth season Nip/Tuck I haven't wanted to blog after, but I've refrained as I only know writers who are watching it.

There's a really good reason for this.

I often get asked if I can still enjoy film and tv now that I know storytelling structure too well...I've seen behind Oz's curtain...

And often, the answer is no. Not because I can't be swept away still, but because what I see the most often is LAZY WRITING.

Lazy. Writing.

Boring. Trope-filled. Hackneyed. Cloying. Third draft. Obvious. Predictable. Cliche-filled choices. Agenda-pushing. Not-aware/responsible-for-writer's-own-prejudices. Lazy. Writing.

Look. A good film script takes a minimum of a year to write. A "good" one. Because it takes THAT many drafts to fix the above issues. Pistoleras is a great, award-winning script. That I spent two years and 16 drafts and two live readings on.

Writing is rewriting. Not regurgitation, not therapy, not picking the easy way out. And throw in a deep, abiding curiousity for the philosophical whys of human nature. There's a small number of people who have these skills and interests, and a large number of people calling themselves screenwriters.

It's particularly hard to find great TV writing because of the time crunch involved in creating TV. But in the last decade with the advent of auteur-led shows with less episodes... you know my feelings about some of the greatest works of art showing up on cable. FX in particular has championed audacious, balls to the wall artists.

So....

Nip/Tuck.

Poor, misunderstood, red-headed step child Nip/Tuck.

I get that you don't get it. That you think it's too much. Trashy. Just trying to be shocking for shock's sake. Crude. Focused on superficialty. They've even joked about it in their series tagline: The deeply superficial series returns.

No.

It's not true. That's an embarrassingly supereficial reading of what's at play here.

The level of craft that goes into this show astounds me every week. The interest and compassion in unlikeable human behavior. And what they've built into their mythology...

I firmly believe it's a show by writers for writers, and I am grateful for it.

Doubtful that Dirt and The Riches and Breaking Bad would exist without our McNamara/Troy antiheroes charging the way.

I have never seen an episode where showrunner Ryan Murphy and particularly writer/producer Jennifer Salt didn't take a plotline to the negation of the negation. I won't bore you explaining that Robert McKee technique here, but trust me, almost no one is brave and skilled enough to do it. And they have done it every episode for five edgy seasons.

Five seasons of surprising me in every episode. I always guffaw. I always drop my jaw in horror. Nod my head. Even the "bad" episodes. Smile at a universal truth about humans. Reversal after reversal, never the easy uneducated choice. Brilliant.

So here's the deal.

I don't care that you don't know the characters or their intricate backstories. If you have even a cursory interest in storytelling, watch this week's episode. It's the season finale called "Candy Richards", named for the great guest star character Jennifer Coolidge plays. Oh yeah. Watch it for the astonishing world-class acting, directing and editing, too.

It's an astounding work of art. Go bask in it, on whatever level you can find enjoyment. Please? For me? Because I love it and you so?



"Engrossing and utterly fearless..." - USA Today

Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Won best series Golden Globe in 2005.
WGA nomination 2006 for Jennifer Salt for episode "Rhea Reynolds".

"Big -- reveling in the excessive and grandiose...It's the most watched scripted show in basic cable of all time." - Variety

Love at first sight?

Hey, how many of you out there believe in LAFS? I actually do, and have some theories behind it.

Now mind you, I also believe LAFS may totally be caused by instantly recognizing someone who has all the bad patterns and button pusher issues you're working on, which is why many psychologists kindly suggest running away screaming from LAFS and dating someone you're NOT attracted to...

Okay, here's the mulling I've been doing the last few weeks. There was this fantastic "House" episode about a Hassidic Jew who married his wife the day he met her. And one of his amazingly thoughtful defenses of the practicality of this tradition was asking the short bald doctor (sorry can't remember his name!) if he loved his wife, and the response was essentially "as much as the day I met her" followed by his look of shock and conceding that HJ just won the argument. Because that is the way we speak about love in our culture. Not about it growing, but if we're lucky enough to maintain it at that fresh intense level of the first day.

Does this make sense? I wish I was just speaking this instead of typing...

So anyway, then I started thinking about all the great friends I've had in my life. And male or female, I almost without exception knew the day that I met them. Same thing. Just that big ch-chunk thunk Law and order noise of a puzzle piece falling into place. Instant comfort, instant kin. If anything, as I've gotten older I've become even more adept at recognizing my soulmates, no matter what the relationship. So why wouldn't it be the same for a sexual partner?

Hmmmmn...more to chew on this weekend while I'm at an exciting conference in San Diego learning about men's relationship to sex and love.

First time I've been in San Diego since Captain Awesome eviscerated my heart in July...wow I've come a long way since then in knowing who I am and what I want and what behavior is unacceptable to me and in astronomically loving men more in general. Even so, hard not to think of Mr. Tumnus with the kind eyes and mad kissing skills and what it would be like if he kissed me elsewhere. I'd probably black out.

I think I'm going to hide my cell phone so I don't call him, and spend the weekend flirting with other San Diego men. See what comes of that. Perhaps San Diego is on some kind of leigh line of soulmates for me, and I'll effortlessly hone in on one who's ready to see me for a SECOND date...

Heads up!

If you saw The Police on tour last year, odds are good you were forced to buy a Police membership for $100...and agreed to an "evergreen" contract that automatically renews that $100 membership on the same credit card used to purchase the tickets UNLESS you go before it's too late and cancel your membership at thepolice.com

God dammit

The incessant helicopters have started.

Oscar week is a war zone in Hollywood, and I am a huuuuge anti-noise pollution person. Drives me nuttier than usual.

Only five more days to live through...

J'accuse

AOL, of all places, calls foul on the double standard of female vs. male partying portrayals. Hmmmmn. And obviously, yes.

Der.

My bigger interest is in what agenda it's serving the Murdoch-owned, porno-owning AOL conglomerate to bring up media sexism as a news topic....what are they up to exactly? Murdoch is one of the biggest proponents of the schizm between the sexes...so why is big brother lulling us to sleep on this..."Don't worry kids, we've noticed you've noticed, now drink your Kool Aid and take a nap while the adults handle the problem..."

I feel an ugly checkmate coming on...

UPDATE: ha haaaa...whoa, not AOL. New York Times article. Ah so.

Now I'm wondering what feisty content picker at AOL is being fired at this moment for slipping it through...

Where's Marion?

She's aged better than all y'all anyway. Give a dame some credit.

Come on guys. Didn't need 3 hot shots of Cate. We want to see the female archetype we loved.

Join me!

Take the 21 day challenge! I'm wearing my Pistoleras bracelet instead.