You might have been noticing in the Twitter updates, each week I've been setting for myself a big picture goal. So far, I've been getting a lot out of it. Last week's, "one step after the other" was a big success and thinking about these macro-sized things and making them into weekly mantra's can be helpful when you get stressed.
This week's mantra is born out of two things; the first, being the death of Tim Russert, who was one of my heroes. I talk about Russert's influence on me as a journalist over at Flaming Politics, but he's a hero to me because of the way he conducted his life. He was aggressive, tough and successful, but remained true to his roots, cared deeply about passing on his knowledge as much as he was excited about absorbing others and brought passion to all the arenas of his life. I believe, and try to live out, that success should never change who you are, because who you are is what makes you successful. Tim clearly embodied that axiom. Here's a guy who worked relentlessly, put his family first and still showed a generosity of spirit to everyone he met, no matter who they were or where they came from.
The second reason I'm keeping "Let There Be Love" in my head this week is that I'm making real headway on the screenplay and it's reminding me why I love writing stories: They surprise you. I keep referring to the movies as "Close Encounters", because I want to do a big, fantastical commercial film that's grounded in an everyday reality. But the surprise over the weekend is that I'm realizing that what I'm writing is an anti-apocalyptic movie. The usual summer blockbuster is about the world put in peril by a killer storm/alien/large rock of kryptonite and someone comes along and beats up someone else and somehow the world is saved. I think I'm writing a film that inverts that formula a bit. The end of the world always seems just around the corner, be it by the hand of war or science or religion and sometimes it does come, whether its in Darfur, on the beaches of Normandy or on the 82nd Floor of Tower One, but we keep living. In the face of apocalypse, humanity doesn't run screaming into the night; we endure. We don't have the luxury of Superman, so we survive through love.
Now, I just need to, you know- make it sell to the 14-28 year old males. Good thing I put in explosions and hot chicks.
As frequent visitors to this site know, I've been slowly plugging away at a long-term plan for web domination. A small step in the plan's been taken with the soft-release of FlamingPolitics.com. Take a look.
One of the things I love about this site is that it's a free-for-all. Whatever interests me, I write about it. However, this is a terrible way to build a successful website, so I'm in the process of splitting my interests across a few different sites. I'm still not sure what to do with The Modern Romantic. Should I turn it into a new media, writing, creativity blog (as I've been doing the last couple weeks) or should I keep it a personal blog about myself? Would it be better to move all the portfolio stuff over to my own personal website or have I branded the site as "Japhy Grant's website about Japhy Grant" so much that you're all saying "What's the point?" Let me know your thoughts.
My goal this week is to "take chances" as those of you following my Twitter account already know. Here are some great ideas worth looking at and thinking about to get you thinking about what kind of chances you might take this week.
My favorite chef, Mark Bittman talks about "What's Wrong with What We Eat" via TEDTalks. Thanks to Corey for pointing this out. If you like this, I recommend checking out Bittman's Minimalist column in the NYTimes. Us foodies read a lot of recipes, but these are ones I find myself actually cooking. He also has his own blog, Bitten.
Cut down on the Ron Popiel automated iced chai latte makers and specialized glass cleaners (one for tinted, one for clear!) by embracing Urawaza, the Japanese habit of utilitarian thriftiness. Clean socks with marbles, Thanks to Nick, for this one.
Spanish designer Agustin Otegui is rocking my world right now. From creating a nano skin of mini wind turbines that could clad a building and generate power to a chair made out of two shovels, he's finding elegant solutions to complex problems. I found this one all on my own.
And finally, if you want to really blow your brain, listen to Susan Blackmore talk about one of my favorite topics: memes.
Japhy eschews the usual cavalcade of sing-alongs, cartoons, and game show parodies to give you a firsthand, heartfelt, on-the-ground account of the historic marriage decision in his adopted home state of California. You know he's serious, because he's wearing a suit; though it's possible he's just trying to nab wedding invites.
Does this decision really matter? Will we ever achieve true equality? Don't expect the answers here, but it's a good place to start the conversation.
So, I've been racing to finish my screenplay. It's a sci-fi movie and one of the big plot elements has to do with, well-- energy. And I've been sort of tearing at myself at how to handle it in a way that's not "evil corporation". Then I came across this video for the old pre-show opener to The Universe of Energy. You don't really get the full effect here- the screen is made up of rotating tripods, so that it's kinetic. Anyway, the benign corporate futurism of the '80s era Epcot was exactly what I needed.
"In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."-- From the California Supreme Court which invalidated a gay marriage ban, thereby making marriage a legal option for me and all gay Californians.
While I'm not wholly convinced that the Facebook glitch everyone's talking about lists the people who view your profile the most, anecdotal evidence indicates it definitely indicates something. Unfortunately, those douchebags at Facebook have shut the feature off, so if you didn't grab em', they're probably gone. Here are my top stalkers:
An ex I'm still friends with.
This guy I know is totally into me, but hasn't gotten around to saying so.
My hiking partner.
The guy who introduced me to my ex (not #1).
A network TV producer.
UPDATE: This commenter on All Facebook seems to have the most plausible sounding explanation: "I've got a friend that works at the Facebook HQ in Palo Alto. She says it turns out it actually was a coding error on the part of facebook. It was meant to call up the 5 most searched names, but it pointed to the wrong place on the FB servers and called up the 5 people that search for you most. Since its not common knowledge that FB keeps this info outside of your profile, the PR team had to do a little clean up work."
Gone Fishin' (Well, Hiking, Writing and Internet Decompressing)
Hey Everybody!
If you hadn't guessed from my Twitter updates, I'm on vacation! It's the first one I've had in almost two years, which is pretty crazy when you think about it. The first half was hiking and hanging out on the Colorado Plateau and the second half is me hiding out, finishing up my screenplay so my producer will stop leaving me threatening voicemails. I always liked how when the school year ended, everything was put away and you started all new things when school started up again in the Fall. That's what I'm trying to do with this vay cay. Here are some things I want to do when I come back:
Update tMR to Version 3.0.
Short story/month project.
Develop a live show about my religious roadside attractions road trip.
Put together some kick ass videos for BCBGMAXAZRIA.
Reach out to some new publications.
Write some awesomeness for the pubs that already give me love.
Put together the upcoming Mobile Media Workshop (and play with ideas I'll pass on!)
I'm so copping out on new material here. I've been really busy the past few weeks-- shooting a couple of videos for BCBG, writing articles, doing some work on the comic book and finishing up a screenplay, so it's been a YouTube palooza here. Now I'm cheating another way-- by answering your emails via blog:
Greg writes: Just saw that you are a BSG fan. So glad to hear it! I have been coming to you site off and on for about 5 months now and have always found it to be a great place to get a fresh look on things or reaffirm what I was thinking already. Now to also see that you are a fan of the re-imaged Battlestar Galactica makes me just giddy. Have you watched it from the beginning or did you recently start watching it? I also have to agree with you on whining Lee Adama versus HOTT Sam Anders; in my mind there is no competition. Are you a fan of any other kind of sci-fi?
Hey Greg! I joined the BSG phenom about halfway through Season One, which meant a lot of catching up on the miniseries. Like most people, I thought a show about robots named "Battlestar Galactica" sounded stupid and like everyone, I was hooked after an hour. There are no BSG-haters, just people who haven't seen the show yet. That said, the final season is driving me nuts. They've taken serialization as far as you can go and I feel less like I'm watching a one-hour TV show and more a giant movie that's been cut into hour long segments. That said, I'm glad to see that Lee's found a way to make a career out of his whining. And Anders-- still waiting for the badass Cylon side to come out. Hopefully, the arrival of Leoben on Starbuck's cruise ship from hell will light a fire in him.
As far as other sci-fi goes, yeah- I'm a big sci-fi dork. The screenplay I'm working on now is definitely sci-fi, though more in the Twilight Zone vein than anything else. That's one of my favorites to be honest and I've always loved the combination of noir and sci-fi. Heinlen's Stranger in a Strange Land is an important book to me and for some reason I seem to have watched both of Majel Rodenberry's shows, Final Conflict: Earth, who'se plotline about the Latino-looking aliens inviting men and women to become half-breeds in their sex pods, felt like the futuristic equivelent of Imitation of Life and that other show with Hercules on it. When I had the flu recently, I sat down and started to watch Firefly, but I thought it was self-important crap and was relieved to find out Joss Whedon wouldn't be directing an episode of BSG this season after all.
Imagine for the moment that instead of being a bloviating, gossip and porn-filled time sink, the Internet were a giant game with teams creating and re-appropriating content and services to find new and novel ways with connecting with strangers and you'll get an idea of what ZeFrank's latest venture, Colorwars 2008 is all about.
I've been trying to figure out how to explain Colorwars for a week or so now. Users sign up by following "teams" on Twitter and then engage in various contests. Games so far have included a virtual game of rock, paper, scissors, bingo and a nerd rap. Upcoming challenges include a Gogle Earth scavneger hunt and smack talk haikus. And there are prizes; Jet Blue gave out free tickets in a recent contest. But the point of the game, already a darling of Web 2.0 types is to get people to play with each other and instead of developing elaborate new tech to do it, use exisiting tools like Twitter and GarageBand.
That's the wonky explanation I've been trying to avoid. So let me just walk you through it.
Then I started playing games. For instance, there's a game called YoungMeNowMe where you take a picture of yourself when you were young and restage it. Here's my entry.
Another game invites you to design your own merit badge, which as an Eagle Scout, I couldn't pass up. Presenting the Irony Merit Badge:
And finally, one of the contests going on right now is to create remixes of the Nerd Raps. I was aiming for a Gnarls Barkley-sound (that's me doing an embarrassing falsetto), but sort of wound up with Moby. Someday I'll graduate to Cee-Lo. Click on the photo below to listen:
Not all of the contests are this involved, but while I love that my work requires me to use my creativity, it's a lot of fun just play around and goof off now and then. At the same time, I'm connecting to other like-minded people and seeing how they respond to the challenges. The YoungMeNowMe photos, for instance, are amazing.
Colorwars is ongoing and you can join with no commitment. If this sounds super-rad (it is!) I would love for you to join Team IKB, but you can join any team here. All you need is a Twitter account (which you should have anyway--it's this month's Facebook).
Here's some of what I've been working on this week:
An interview with Arthur Dong, director of Hollywood Chinese, a fantastic documentary about the Chinese-American experience in Tinseltown. I could have talked to Arthur for hours-- a really funny, fascinating and thoughtful guy. (The Advocate)
A QnA with photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya. Sort of got me thinking about how the media's job is to define and label things (this is a trend, it is about these kinds of people, it fits into this category) and fine artists are all about introducing ambiguity and challenging the nature of the boxes we stuff things into. Not that any of that shows up in the piece. (Popnography)
The 400 pound gorilla this week is my big feature story on "The Boys of Buzznet", Jeffree Star, Clint Catalyst and Matthew Lush. I'll probably write another blog soley about the backstory to this piece. For the moment, I'll just say I'm pretty proud of it and really thankful for my editor, Shana. (Out.com)
For the longest time I've tried using my online writing as a springboard to getting print gigs, which you know, are more legitimate to Mom & Dad. "Yeah, I wrote this article for Salon." "What's that?" "Um, this...website." But the reality is, I love the internets. I love creating stories and seeing them up the same day. I love the feedback, when when it's "We hate you Japhy Grant" and I love that a story can be told through so many different media. I'm enjoying the challenge of creating a video column and it's challenging fitting a week of politics into 5 minutes in a way that's entertaining. Posting on here was light this week (working on that btw), but you can catch me on the Interwebs here:
Let me take a minute to just say how much I love Popnography. The reality is, at the level of freelancing I am at, what a lot of pubs are looking for is someone who can deftly translate press releases into the vernacular of their audience. This is boring and lame and also incredibly short-sighted. Popnog is a whole different animal and I love that I'm able to pursue my own dorky dorky interests with a bit of 'tude.
Next week, I have a big story coming out that I'm pretty excited about. I'll let you know when it's up. Also, the never ending quest to create a non self-absorbed web venue to hang my hat continues. I'll probably talk more about it later next week.
So, I used my flu as an excuse not to shave. A week later, my face looked sort of dirty--in the right light. The men in my family have almost no facial hair. My Dad's part Native American and my brother and I both inherited the general lack of scruff. Add on top of that the fact that I'm blond and my dreams of being a rugged lumberjack are pretty much never going to come true.
Guys always tell me how lucky I must be not to have to shave, but when I was younger, the inability to grow sideburns haunted me. I even bought Rogaine once and slapped it on my face in hopes that I would grow something. Doesn't work, by the way. Which is all to say that the idea of using a straight razor, along with all the necessary accessories and rituals, really appeals to me.
How to Survive the Flu (Using Mainly the Internet)
Like a fool, on the first warm day in L.A. (you know, when it jumps from the frigid 70s to the low 90s) I decide, "Hey, let's go frolic in the sun!" Now, you have to realize, I'm incredibly pale. I also had been stressing myself about work and well, honestly, had been feeling a little lonely. So, I hiked and sweat and woke up the next day covered in sweat and the conviction I had been beaten with crowbars in my sleep, ie: the flu. But I'm on the mend now, thanks to the Internet! Should you find yourself sick this season, here's my patented prescription that will guarantee you too, shall live to see the Springtime.
First, be sure you're really sick. It's possible you're just lazy or apathetic. Imagine doing something fun. If you find yourself doing it, chances are you're faking it. If you try to do it and start groaning, you have the real deal.
Start groaning. Some people try to be cheerful when they're sick. This is stupid. You're sick, dude: Act like it. If you're a guy, stop shaving. Clothing should be changed only when necessary and then, they should be of the "sweatpant" or "tracksuit" variety. Make your room like a nest. Pile up dishes. Listen to the sounds of children laughing outside and scorn them. While you're scorning them is a good time to scorn everyone who has done you a perceived wrong. You may have to dig back to childhood for this if you're self-actualized happy person, but for most of us, this will be easy. This is a lot like counting sheep and eventually, you'll drift oft to a fitful, hateful sleep. If you're lucky, those who've done you wrong will have horrible things done to them in your dreams. Most likely though, you'll dream of sweatpants.
Wake-up. It's 4:30 in the morning. Your t-shirt is drenched, but your lips are chapped. This is good. It means you are probably going to die. Change clothes, grab another bottle of Italian soda water (you bought this earlier in a semi-delusional state that may also explain why you bought five cans of crushed tomatoes) and go onto the Internet to find out why you are dying. WebMD is the obvious choice, though Wikipedia will be more lurid in its descriptions. I prefer Wrong Diagnosis; mainly because of the name. Narrow your list of potential ailments to Cat Scratch Disease, Bacterial Meningitis, or the far worse Meninginococcal disease. Base this last one on the fact that "whimpering" is listed as a symptom. Lie awake in bed wondering how long you'll have to be dead for before your roommate bothers to check in on you. Pass out.
It is now morning, by which we mean "sometime after 2pm". You're woozy and sad and foraging for food. You eat half a samosa and a cereal bar. You decide to finally check out hulu.com, the internet TV site. You're thrilled to see they have a bunch of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes. You watch all of them. In one sitting. These people are terrible! You don't feel so bad for imagining your second grade teacher being attacked by wolves, now. You then catch up on The Simpsons and maybe a Family Guy or two, then suddenly realize that watching eight hours of TV straight is hard work and you still feel like crap.
Which is why you go for the hard stuff: Sea Otters. WARNING: Sea otters are the Cipro of internet video. Watching their adorable antics in this state may make you cry. You'll remember how you wanted to make a model of a sea otter in G&T as a kid and then you'll watch the little sea otters holding hands so they don't drift apart and you may, just may say out loud "Little sea otter dudes, you know what the drill is. You know what the fucking drill is". Let it all out.
Go back onto Hulu. It's possible you slept sometime between now and then; you really forgot. The mounting piles of dishes by your bedside indicate either that you've been eating or developing a ceramics hoarding fetish. Either way, it's clear you're moving. So, back to more Hulu. Start watching an original Battlestar Galactica. Colonel Tigh is a sober black man! Richard Hatch was once mildly attractive! For some reason (boring!) you check your email while the episode plays in another window. "Checking" here of course means deleting spam and ignoring any email that could make you feel less alone.
Watch Firefly on Hulu because you never saw it and hey, Joss Whedon's like a genius, right? Realize quickly that Joss Whedon's actually sort of a douchebag and tell Summer Glau that it'll be okay because soon she'll be a Terminatrix instead of another of Whedon's girls- who- have- been- turned- by- men- into -weapons -but- will- now- take- control- of- her- power- blah- blah- blah- dude -by-now -you- should -know- that- no-girl -is-gonna -bang -a-guy- who-majored -in- anything- called- womyn's- studies heroines.
Spend a huge amount of time on Wikipedia reading about Issac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. Realize it's not a trilogy. Think about what a cool movie it would be. Find out New Line already wasted millions trying to do that. Remember that you actually only made it three-quarters of the way through the first book when you were a kid. Remember how you made dioramas out of plastic model parts of scenes from I, Robot when you were in elementary school. You sure liked model building when you were a kid. Then read about Asimov's Empire series. Then the Robot series. See if you can find any first editions of The Naked Sun on eBay. Then read up on philosophical arguments about the theory of the mind. Realize that at your heart, you're a major nerd. Feel superior about it. Pass out.
Check emails again, only this time, realize how much crap you have to do. Pass out again.
Read the news. God, the world sucks. Pass out again.
Realize you're probably not going to die. Start to make plans.
Over the next few weeks, tMR is going to move to WordPress. I've been using Blogger forever, but I'm starting up some new sites and projects and want to use the same platform for all of them and Wordpress seems the best choice. What this means is that now and then, tMR is going to be a mess. I'm aiming to make this as painless as possible, but it's going to involve learning more code and frankly, me and coding is always a pretty dicey thing. For you, the move should mean a cleaner, cooler site.
I'm really excited to share with you all the changes and projects I've been working at behind the scenes. This is the first step.
The New York Times Answers My Question About William F. Buckley
I asked Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The Times Book Review and Week in Review, who is writing a biography on William F. Buckley:
"Who in your -- or perhaps Buckley's estimation should you know it -- carries on his legacy of intellectual conservatism? If you had to nominate someone to ascend to the lectern of Buckley, who would it be?"
"How does he do it?" we're all asking ourselves. Sure, Barack Obama is a talented and gifted politician, but that doesn't explain "the movement": The cheering crowds, the inspired-by videos, the accusations that his followers are "delusional". What is the magic spell he holds over his supporters? If we could only figure out where he gets his 'mo' from, we could stop him, or copy him or at least wake up from this fantasy. What's the key to Barack Obama's rise? Just what is the "something" that he claims is happening in America?
Not to steal from Obama's thunder, but the truth is that every sweeping change a nation undergoes, whether for good or ill, is the result of some deep seated national anxiety; be it about taxation, abolition, financial insecurity or something else.
When I was in high school I always wondered why it wasn't until mid-May that my American History teacher got around to teaching about the 20th Century. It seemed that all the most important things; The Great Depression, WWII, Communism, The 60s, all happened then. As I got older, I realized that the consideration was political. While discussing the demise of the Whig Party is no big deal, no teacher wanted to have a parent chew them out for giving Nixon an apology or for judging Reagan's response to the AIDS crisis. But for us living in 2008, we have a clear line between past and present: Our world began on 9/11. Everything before that date is history.
The narrative vision of our country since then has been nightmarish. We're afraid. In fact, we're so afraid, we've declared war on fear itself and those who attack through fear. I won't repeat all the highlights of the last seven and a half years, be it anthrax or Abu Ghraib, the FREEDOM Act or Katrina, but if you're an average American, you feel under attack.
In the first days after September 11th, I wandered around the city imagining how someone could blow up whatever I happened to be standing near, on or under. I think the visceral closeness to the tragedy of that day inoculated me to the later bogeymen. I worked at ABC when the anthrax scares happened and my feeling towards terrorism now, while decidedly unpatriotic, is that it happens. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't be prevented and fought, but if some wacko really wants to blow himself up, there's really only so much we, the people, can do about it. If living in a world free of terrorism means sacrificing our democracy, I'm not sure it's worth the trade off.
But, I'm in the minority on this. Survival trumps all other concerns and as George W. Bush has said on more occasion, the conflict we're in is "existential", which might be what sparked his interest in Camus' The Stranger. I've just never been convinced that America was as fragile as all that and our long history has shown that our greatest dangers have never come from external sources, but from within ourselves.
Now, on that many would agree with me-- and point to the red sate blue state divide in this country. On one side, people like me are painted as fetus-killers who will take the surviving children and teach them to be radical homosexuals who will wage a covert war against anyone who isn't an atheist. On the other, any second an angry mob of fundamentalist Christians (oh fine, Baptists) will come bursting through my door to burn all my books and force me to marry one of their thirteen wives. That there are separate news channels catering to each of these groups signals just how institutionalized our contempt for each other has become.
I changed the slogan of The Modern Romantic yesterday. It's now "Poetry, politics and popcorn." It's Tony Kushner's recipe for what every good play needs and in college, I used to write scenes for my screenwriting class in a notebook I'd covered in gaffer's tape with those three words printed on the front. I only met Tony once, and he struck me as a nebbish, nervous man. His words though, have always excited me.
Before I came out to my Mom in high school, I remember seeing a local production of Angels in America with our gay youth support group. It was my first gay anything and unrepentant Roy Kohn, fabulous and flinty Belize, poor confused Joe and Louis and starry-eyed cursed Prior were the first proper homosexual role models I ever knew; for which I'm forever grateful. For a long time, I wanted to write a novel called "Hello, Supernova", a line from a speech he made in 2004 at Cooper Union. I have an opinion about The Dybbuk and think having a scene in which Laura Bush reads to dead Iraqi children is an act of patriotism. His plays are weird, angry things that shake you and make you think. That he manges to fill the seats is a testament not only to his genius, but to the fact that American political discourse isn't dead just yet.
In 2004, Caroline, Or Change, Tony's first musical, premiered on Broadway. The eponymous heroine is a black Southern maid working for a middle-class Jewish family living in early Civil Rights era Louisiana and the plot revolves around the loose change cup by the dryer. It lasted three months. Caroline's big number in the show is called "Lot's Wife". In it she sings how "some folks march for civil rights, but I can't, I ain't got the heart" and then begs God to "make me forget so I stop bleeding/ scour my skin still I stop feeling/ take Caroline away, because I can't be her/ can't afford her, tear up my heart/ strangle my soul/ turn me to salt/a pillar of salt". She asks God, "Don't let my sorrow make evil of me."
The song randomly came up on my iPod today and it's what inspired this post. Hearing it, I immediately thought of Barack and what it will be like to hear this song again once he becomes President, how a long chapter in America's story of social injustice would be finished. Not that the book would be done, by any means.
Then, I thought about Caroline and how all art that aims to tell history winds up revealing more about the time it was composed in. She's such a reflection of ourselves. I can't tell you how many people have told me, "I don't think Barack can win in a general election because he's black and people are racist", to which I mutter under my breath, "even you, it seems." Michael Chabon talked about how we've become a phobocracy, a country of fear and that "the most pitiable fear of all is the fear of disappointment, of having our hearts broken and our hopes dashed by this radiant, humane politician who seems not just with his words but with every step he takes, simply by the fact of his running at all, to promise so much for our country, for our future and for the eventual state of our national soul." We look at the world around us and it's changing too fast. We look at our own society trembling at the new contours that erupt from every corner.
From the revolutionaries to the abolitionists to the civil rights marchers, when you look at the history of America, whenever we've been given the choice of choosing to follow a dream and perhaps fail at it and fail spectacularly or to live in cynicism we chose the former over the latter. Everything that's ever been good about this country has come from taking the risk in believing in something. That's what it means to make a choice in life.
A Gen X'er pal of mine told me he could never support any President, because they all have failings. We don't trust politicians or the government and deservedly so, but we're just as culpable for why they suck. We're not involved, we refuse to make choices. We believe it's better to reject them all than support one and find out that they aren't infallible god-kings. This is a dangerously anti-democratic attitude. Of course politicians are susceptible to corruption and of course they will make poor decisions. That's why they need our support; without it, they're left to the wolves and lobbyists.
We can choose to support a leader who will do their imperfect best to lead all Americans instead of rewarding a war of partisan attrition where gossip take precedence over governing. We can choose to not allow the heinous deaths of those who fell on 9/11 be hijacked as a justification to start needless wars, throw away human rights and strip the Constitution. We can either stay where we are now or we can choose to live in fear, either of the world abroad or of our neighbors. This is what is meant by "change" in our country.
And when the day comes in January that we inaugurate President Barack Obama, we will look around at each other and at ourselves and we will have changed. We will awake and see that we as a country have changed; that we aren't the thing that we thought we were for so long. And it won't won't have happened by magic, but by the choice to declare we won't let fear make evil of us.
It's the last day of January and I haven't put down my resolutions for the New Year yet! On the one hand, this is great because I got a whole extra 30 days to think about what I wanted to do this year, but on the other, I only have 11/12th's of the year to accomplish the things I want to do. It's a good thing I'm motivated by deadlines.
I promise to refinish my desk a nice walnut stain and find a better monitor stand than a Katherine Hepburn biography stacked underneath a copy of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.
I promise not to stare at my dead actress poetry monitor stand and resent it for not letting me browse its pages.
I promise to go to the gym five times a week but still feel comfortable making fun of people who go to the gym all the time.
I promise not to blame the little baby projects that come up in my head all the time for distracting me from the unruly and less pleasant teenage projects that I need to be working on. Instead, I'll just write down notes for them and come back when they're older and more likely to yell, "You don't understand me!" in a squeaky voice.
I promise to go to Utah this year and have breakfast at "The Merry Wives" diner.
I promise not only to return all emails, but to return them within 24 hours of receiving them.
I promise to translate my enthusiasms for politics into practical service to my community.
I promise to eat only at new (to me) restaurants.
I promise to make brunch.
I promise not to crib from ZeFrank's resolutions format next year.
I promise to not go out and try to beat someone at their own game just because I know I can.
I promise to pick up the phone when people call, even though I loathe phone calls so very very much.
I promise to finish my novel about how much I hate Perez Hilton.
I promise to pick up my art installation at the WOW Gallery that's been there since last year.
I promise either to save up enough money for the awesome Bruce Naumann print I'm in love with or make my own.
I promise to wake-up early on the weekdays.
I promise to cut myself some slack and realize that you can't write four scripts, go to the gym, do laundry and meet friends for dinner all in one day.
I promise not to take the comments I get on my blog personally or if they're anonymous, assume they were written by an irate Perez Hilton.
I promise not to start reading an article on the Internet by clicking on all the hyperlinks, looking up the relevant Wikipedia entries and reading all of those things (and also the links that interest me ad naseum) and then after having 23 tabs open, slowly making my way back to the original article, filled with the knowledge that I know all this stuff already.
I promise to write at least two sentences a day that I'm not getting paid to write or come in the form of an email, chat or Google query.
I promise to launch a website that will make L.A. more fun.
I promise to create something for the smart gay kids.
I promise to not get so bent out of shape when people dumber than me act like I think I'm smarter than them.
I promise to spend more time making Kevin's cats race around for the laser pointer.
I promise not to sing out loud songs I'm listening to on my iPod when there are people around.
I promise to start a business that will be an umbrella for small projects that entertain and inform.
I promise never to mention my 28th birthday again.
I promise to switch it to beer after the second g&t, since it's easier to convince semi-drunk me that he's consuming empty calories when they're malty.
I promise to admit to myself that my blog is more for my own amusement than anyone else's.
I promise to do some sort of theater thing.
I promise to write three screenplays by June 1.
I promise not to constantly try to imagine myself as a dark and tortured soul living on the fringes of society.
I promise to make my ideas and thoughts concrete so that they aren't abstract notions of potential, but real tangible work that I can observe, understand, edit and refine into something that I can show to the world, allowing me to go back out and find the new, the dangerous and the unknown.
I'm off to Boston in (looks at clock) 38 minutes for cold and snow and my Mom's cookies and concerns about my life. I'm loading my iPod up with carols. Here are some of my favorite free Christmas treats on the internet.
Sufjan's Christmas Exchange. The winner is called "Everyday is Christmas", but the folks at Asthmatic Kitty have decided to stream a bunch, ranging from songs about toy shopping to something called "A New Empire is Underway, Even the Kids Will Agree!"
I Heart Christmas. I Heart Lung's free Xmas Ep features the instant classic "Santa Claus vs. Dracula".
A Familyre Christmas. The Danielson Familie and company bring you a very merry freak-folk holiday.
I'm taking a short break here. Some new sections will be added over the next couple weeks, but I'm looking at figuring out a real focus for the site. I've always used this site as a sort of experimental platform for work I'm doing, and I think I'd like to continue that, but I also want to be able to provide you with some regular content so there's a reason to come back day after day. If you have suggestions or want to to tell me what you'd like or would like to see more of, I'm all ears.
Right now, I have a ton of regular writing on my plate. From freelance, to finishing up my specs to that damn novel, the blog isn't getting the attention it deserves. I need to put on my editor's cap and figure out what I can offer and how to best get it to you.
I'll be back after Thanksgiving. Hope yours is a great one!
I'm doing the MySpace/ Fox Storyteller challenge and will be shooting a itty bitty pilot next weekend (weekend of Nov.3) . I'm looking for actors. If you know or are an actor feel free to get in touch. The roles I'm looking for are:
KATE (30s-40s): CEO of a major company, she's part Richard Branson, part Michelle Obama. She speaks her mind and has made her name by having bigger balls then the boys.
JENNY (late 20s): A grad student in the sciences who's also a head turner. Like most of the heroines I write about, she has a thing for singing karaoke. She's also recently divorced. Her work came first.
DONALD (late 20s): Fifteen jobs in six years, all on his parent's dime. A "pretty face" who nobody takes seriously, except for himself, that is.
MATT (late 20s): Serious, with a military background and a quiet belief in Jesus that sustains him through difficult times. His square demeanor hides the fact that he still struggles with his addiction issues.
JAVIER (50s): A money man with political connections who's motto is "Don't tell me what's possible, tell me what's probable".
DOUG (early 30s): An upbeat, eternal optimist as the result of spending too many years at grad school, though he's acutely aware that he has the social skills of a donkey with halitosis.
ERICA (early 30s): A P.R. genius who never says no.
From the Department of The Insufferably Stupid: My friend Danny had his Sidekick pilfered from the WOW Gallery this weekend. The thief snapped a picture of himself--which the Sidekick uploaded to Danny's website (the same principle is what runs my little photo banner). If you know or have seen this dude, email me. If you don't have any leads, feel free to talk crap about Thiefy McStupidHat in the comments.
My laptop's on my kitchen table right now, some tea lights glowing beside me. I spent the last hour helping the old folks and Russians in my building to not freak out since we don't have any power. I calmed Sheila, my next door neighbor down by telling her about the New York blackout and how the whole city came together and a friend of mine stuck a bunch of boomboxes in a pickup truck and had a roving street party in the East Village. I guess I could go out, but it's nice and quiet and I've had a long day.
I had a talk with my friend Nick today about this guy I was in love with a while back and who I saw last night and well, I basically ignored him. Nick was trying to cheer me up and then he stopped, and said "Do you know this song playing on the radio?" I did my usual "Obviously I know (insert cultural reference here)", but he called me on it and made me listen. It's "The Heart of the Matter" by Don Henley, though he grabbed his iPod and played the Indie.Arie version instead ("Because it's more gay--after all, we love black women", Nick said). The chorus says that "it's about forgiveness". Nick said, "I don't really need to say anything" and we sat in my driveway listening to the words and well, they were embarrassingly on point.
It was a messy break-up and neither of us showed our best selves in the process. Determined as I am to make good come out everything and realizing that there's nothing I can do to change anyone but myself, I set out to change myself. At first I did it because I wanted to be so amazing, so good, so attractive, strong, understanding that he would look at me and realize all he lost. I was so angry with him. And people would tell me, "You have to find a way to forgive him." And I would say, "I do! I do! But he won't let me forgive him. He won't even talk to me. How can I possibly forgive him?" Forgiveness is tricky. It's wicked cousin- moral authority is always close behind, ready to convince you that feeling that you're better because you "forgive".
And the truth is, since then I've not let go of my anger. You know the scene in An Affair to Remember when Cary Grant explains to Deborah Kerr, that ever since she stood him up at the Empire State Building, he's met lots of pretty girls, but he asks each of them "Where will you be on December 8th at 6pm?" Not sure if that's the actual date, but you get it-- that's when they were supposed to meet. Well, that's been me, lately. In a lot of ways I'm a better, wiser person-- I've learned to take care of myself, to be compassionate, but every time something resembling a shadow of what I had comes along, I say "Yeah, but where will you be when it matters?" I don't want to take out my anger at one person on another, so I've just given up on dating for now.
And now that I'm determined to get comfortable being my own person, on my own-- the feelings I had for this guy resurface. And it's unfinished work. In a way, all the things that happened between us have made me a better person, but if I don't forgive him, that anger, that fear, that loneliness will eventually defeat me. And that's why this treacly little song matters, Till now, I imagined coffee with him down the road, where I'd tell him how I felt, how I both loved him and was hurt by him deeply and that once he heard how I felt, he would say "I'm sorry" and I would forgive him. I've been waiting for "I'm sorry" for so long; I felt entitled to it. I even feel deep down he knows he owes me an apology. But that's not forgiveness, that's negotiation.
I walked by this guy last night, pretending he didn't exist. But I loved him and I loved him deeply and I don't regret that love. Does he deserve forgiveness? Yeah, because we all do. If a hostage can forgive his captors, if victims of war can forgive their aggressors, if a woman who lost both her daughter and her mother in a drunk-driving accident can forgive the driver, in our own tiny lives, we can (and must) forgive each other and ask for forgiveness.
You know, I was raised in a very Episcopalian family and I was an acolyte (read: "altar boy") and I took a lot of it to heart. I don't think I will ever believe in the idea that Jesus was the son of God or in the idea that you will be judged by your actions and rewarded appropriately in the afterlife, but I believe in the idea of grace. It seems we live in a time where we are constantly pulled apart from our friends and family and that we have to devise new methods of coping with the massive change we seem to all be experiencing in our lives. And a lot of those coping methods mean closing ourselves off to pain and hurt; to become calcified to the pain that life seems to constantly offer. Maybe I'm just predisposed to seeing the sadness of life. But I think all of us, the worst among us included, can change. No matter what we've done, none of us are ruined. None of us are broken. The least we can do is allow those in our lives, and more importantly, ourselves, the opportunity to start anew.
Britney's Self-Service Salon, my contribution to the JUST BRITNEY show, gets the TMZ treatment today with snarky commentary and a video of Perez Hilton and Jeffree Star playing with the piece-- ie: shaving people's heads. Link here.
It's not all blogging, folks. I also do art-- like John Ruskin for the 21st Century (he's more talented, I'm less sexually repressed -- it's a trade-off) I can't help sticking my fingers in all the pots.
Tomorrow is the opening night of the JUST BRITNEY group art show at the World of Wonder Art Gallery, 6650 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood California. I've got three pieces in the show. Collectively, they're called "Britney's Self-Service Salon".
8pm - Midnight, open bar sponsored by Svedka Vodka.
The first issue of The Advocatesince its redesign hits the newsstands today. As you can see, it's got an interview with Hillary that's a must read. Clinton says nothing new, but the piece, by Sean Kennedy, does a great job dissecting the relationship between Hil and the gay community.
Also, I've got two pieces in this issue. One is on Pete Jones, Project Greenlight winner and accidental homo (read it here) and another with Dan Savage about the forthcoming musical adaptation of his book, The Kid.
From the Department of The Insufferably Stupid: My friend Danny had his Sidekick pilfered from the WOW Gallery this weekend. The thief snapped a picture of himself--which the Sidekick uploaded to Danny's website (the same principle is what runs my little photo banner). If you know or have seen this dude, email me. If you don't have any leads, feel free to talk crap about Thiefy McStupidHat in the comments.
It's not all blogging, folks. I also do art-- like John Ruskin for the 21st Century (he's more talented, I'm less sexually repressed -- it's a trade-off) I can't help sticking my fingers in all the pots.
The first issue of The Advocate since its redesign hits the newsstands today. As you can see, it's got an interview with Hillary that's a must read. Clinton says nothing new, but the piece, by Sean Kennedy, does a great job dissecting the relationship between Hil and the gay community.