Working on finishing up expanding this 200 word short story for this contest. It's up to 2,113 words. Deadline is tomorrow, November 1.
And it's going to get bigger. Novelizing this baby is going to be my project for NaNoWriMo. Thirty days and nights of literary abandon, indeed!
I love writing :)
9:19pm update: SUBMITTED!!!
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sure, it's poor sportsmanship. But it's also funny as hell.
Via Puck Daddy, please enjoy this video of a most unusual post-goal celebration. It's in Swedish, but that doesn't deter from the awesomeness of a smart-ass getting his prompt, brutal and hilarious comeuppance.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Halloween post of the day: More horse costumes!
Because when you think Halloween, you think horses in costumes!
"I'd better get a boatload of carrots for putting up with this!"
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Halloween post of the day: The Life and Death of a Pumpkin
This just never gets old: Halloween from the pumpkin's point of view.
This was made by Blame Society Productions, the same people who brought the world Chad Vader.
This was made by Blame Society Productions, the same people who brought the world Chad Vader.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
USA Network and Meghan McCain to bravely tackle bigotry faced by rich blonde bimbos
My first thought was this has got to be from The Onion. It isn't: Forest Whitaker and Meghan McCain to share bigotry and discrimination stories at USA Network panel. No, really.
I don't know about Whitaker. With his talent and years of hard work, obviously he was going to succeed in life. Does anyone really want to hear a gifted Oscar winner whining about how tough it all is?
But Meghan McCain...that poor, poor girl. Not literally of course, since she comes from money and privilege few will ever know, but the things she has to put up with, like becoming famous for who her dad is and not via any actual accomplishments of her own...it's just heartbreaking. Add into that getting a book deal simply because of her last name and definitely not her writing ability and I don't know how the poor thing copes.
McCain's problem isn't her weight (as she's fond of claiming), it's her blithe stupidity and misplaced sense of self-importance in the political world. Her privileged sense of victimhood and insistence on blaming everyone and everything but her own lack of intellect on her status as a public joke doesn't help. And don't get me started on her trying to lay claim to a new conservatism, she's about as conservative as Michelle Obama. But by retaining her symbolic "R" she can at least find work as a famous useful idiot and gets to feel important.
Honestly, for all her bleating about it, I don't even think she's really that fat. Chunky maybe, definitely husky, pudgy at worst, but so what? I'm fatter than she is and if that's the worst thing someone can say about me...then I'm probably a really decent, reasonably intelligent person who just needs to eat healthier and exercise more. But if you read some of the crap she comes up with, you can see why she desperately needs a way to try and distract people from her real problem - that despite the golden exposure and opportunity afforded her by her lineage, she just doesn't have the intellectual heft of other well-known female conservative political pundits and that by trying to be just that has opened herself up to being an object of ridicule.
And one more thing - with her family's bucks, unlike the rest of us McCain could easily employ a personal trainer and dietician to whip her into shape. But if she did that, what would she use as an excuse against the "h8ters"?
I do feel bad seeing USA Network being part of this. Over the past few years they've really broken out as a major original programming player, with a record of launching hit shows that is pretty much flawless. I have to wonder who at USA made the decision to send the network down this road. It started with a stridently preachy ad campaign for tolerance, but of course Hollywood-style tolerance, so no icky conservative-types need apply to be "Character Approved". I'm not saying it's a bad thing to suggest that people be nice to each other, as long as it really is all-inclusive, rather than some animals being more equal than others.
I wasn't in the room when the Characters Unite campaign was developed, so I have no idea if it came about from a genuinely sincere desire to make the world a better place or if it's just a corporate image builder. But I do know how ridiculous and calculated it looks to me. Seriously, they couldn't find anyone else more appropriate and worthy for this showcase than a blonde, privileged heiress who misidentifies herself as conservative to show how inclusive and tolerant they are? Hitching your wagon, whatever your wagon is, to someone who is just a joke and not what she claims to be is never going to help your cause.
This comment on the linked article at the top completely, totally hits every single nail on the head. I wish I'd written it:
I wish I was able to attend. The satire potential for this is just off the charts. I can't wait to hear all about it, especially when Whitaker's legitimate stories of bigotry as a black man are countered by McCain's whining about how tough it is not being as hot or smart as a Palin. Seriously, how is that not comedy gold?
I don't know about Whitaker. With his talent and years of hard work, obviously he was going to succeed in life. Does anyone really want to hear a gifted Oscar winner whining about how tough it all is?
But Meghan McCain...that poor, poor girl. Not literally of course, since she comes from money and privilege few will ever know, but the things she has to put up with, like becoming famous for who her dad is and not via any actual accomplishments of her own...it's just heartbreaking. Add into that getting a book deal simply because of her last name and definitely not her writing ability and I don't know how the poor thing copes.
McCain's problem isn't her weight (as she's fond of claiming), it's her blithe stupidity and misplaced sense of self-importance in the political world. Her privileged sense of victimhood and insistence on blaming everyone and everything but her own lack of intellect on her status as a public joke doesn't help. And don't get me started on her trying to lay claim to a new conservatism, she's about as conservative as Michelle Obama. But by retaining her symbolic "R" she can at least find work as a famous useful idiot and gets to feel important.
Honestly, for all her bleating about it, I don't even think she's really that fat. Chunky maybe, definitely husky, pudgy at worst, but so what? I'm fatter than she is and if that's the worst thing someone can say about me...then I'm probably a really decent, reasonably intelligent person who just needs to eat healthier and exercise more. But if you read some of the crap she comes up with, you can see why she desperately needs a way to try and distract people from her real problem - that despite the golden exposure and opportunity afforded her by her lineage, she just doesn't have the intellectual heft of other well-known female conservative political pundits and that by trying to be just that has opened herself up to being an object of ridicule.
And one more thing - with her family's bucks, unlike the rest of us McCain could easily employ a personal trainer and dietician to whip her into shape. But if she did that, what would she use as an excuse against the "h8ters"?
I do feel bad seeing USA Network being part of this. Over the past few years they've really broken out as a major original programming player, with a record of launching hit shows that is pretty much flawless. I have to wonder who at USA made the decision to send the network down this road. It started with a stridently preachy ad campaign for tolerance, but of course Hollywood-style tolerance, so no icky conservative-types need apply to be "Character Approved". I'm not saying it's a bad thing to suggest that people be nice to each other, as long as it really is all-inclusive, rather than some animals being more equal than others.
I wasn't in the room when the Characters Unite campaign was developed, so I have no idea if it came about from a genuinely sincere desire to make the world a better place or if it's just a corporate image builder. But I do know how ridiculous and calculated it looks to me. Seriously, they couldn't find anyone else more appropriate and worthy for this showcase than a blonde, privileged heiress who misidentifies herself as conservative to show how inclusive and tolerant they are? Hitching your wagon, whatever your wagon is, to someone who is just a joke and not what she claims to be is never going to help your cause.
This comment on the linked article at the top completely, totally hits every single nail on the head. I wish I'd written it:
I wish I was able to attend. The satire potential for this is just off the charts. I can't wait to hear all about it, especially when Whitaker's legitimate stories of bigotry as a black man are countered by McCain's whining about how tough it is not being as hot or smart as a Palin. Seriously, how is that not comedy gold?
Saturday, October 22, 2011
If this was Sophie I would be distraught
From the L.A. Times: Cat lost by American Airlines gains fame as search continues.
I really hope he turns up and that he and his owner get a Hollywood-style reunion. If this was Sophie I'd be worried sick about her.
So if you're in the JFK Airport area and spot a wayward, fluffy orange tabby, this is for you:
Animal lovers plan to rev up a nearly 2-month-old search at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday for Jack the cat, a fluffy orange feline whose disappearance at the hands of American Airlines has spawned a Facebook page and a PR headache for the airline.So far efforts to locate Jack have failed. Luckily, Jack got lost in the day and age of social media: Lost Jack's Facebook page.
The date has been declared Jack the Cat Awareness Day by organizers of the afternoon search at the cargo area of JFK where Jack was last seen Aug. 25. That's when Jack's owner, Karen Pascoe, checked the 18-pound cat in for their flight to California, where Pascoe was to begin a new job.
That's where the mystery begins. About a half-hour later, a baggage supervisor called Pascoe and told her that Jack's crate was empty. Searches so far have turned up nothing, and nobody has explained how the cat crate fell open as Jack waited for cargo handlers to load him onto the jet.
I really hope he turns up and that he and his owner get a Hollywood-style reunion. If this was Sophie I'd be worried sick about her.
So if you're in the JFK Airport area and spot a wayward, fluffy orange tabby, this is for you:
In the immortal words of one commenter, "Get back, Jack."
Update 10/25/11: Looks like they found him!
Friday, October 21, 2011
So your friend's "fucking masterful" script didn't get any love from the Nicholl judges. Here's my advice about that.
So here's the deal: You - or maybe "a friend" - wrote something you honestly believe is freaking fantastic, yet you didn't make the final cut for the Nicholl Fellowship, or for Screenwriting Expo, or the Golden Donut, etc. Why not? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? The fix is in, at least that's what a lot of these commenters seem to think about the recently announced Nicholl fellows. One guy in particular expressed this righteous outrage:
The thing is, when it comes to writing contests, it's not a perfect system. Another possibility? Maybe you (or your friend) aren't as good as you think. Or maybe you are. Based on my experience, it could be any number of things but it boils down to this: As much as it's a rush to make the final cut or win a writing contest (and I'm not saying it can't be a career maker) you can't base your screenwriting aspirations on contest results alone. Too many other factors besides quality come into play.
I've judged a couple writing competitions in the past. One was a high school student essay contest with about a dozen $1,000 college scholarships at stake. Entries were not anonymous and politics definitely came into play when it came to selecting the winners. I found this extremely discouraging because I saw a deserving entry bumped for a reason that had nothing to do with quality. There were many more worthy entries than scholarships and one that would have been a winner was bumped for a lesser entry in the name of playing politics.
And then there are the judges. We are not infallible and at times, we are not fair. Each essay was read and judged twice in order to weed out the top contenders, after which we all got together to pick the best of the best. It was at that meeting that I discovered one of the few bad essays I'd read (and scored low) had surprisingly made the cut. The reason? The other judge who read it gave it high marks because she "felt sorry" for the student who wrote it. I did too, but for a different reason: the poor kid was about to go out into the world practically illiterate. But we were supposed to be awarding the scholarships based on merit, not need. And somebody who might have merited it was bumped from the final group because of that judge. Like I said, a lot of things come into play. I never said they made sense.
The other contest I judged was Project Greenlight 3 and all entries (at least at the level I judged at - the top 1,000 online vote-getters) were completely anonymous. I had no idea who the writers were or where they were located, and it never occurred to me to wonder. It wasn't an issue. Each one was read beginning to end and I had no idea how they had placed in the online voting, so I wasn't swayed by that. The scripts themselves were all that factored into the judging.
Of the twenty Project Greenlight scripts I was assigned to judge there were four or five that I thought were absolutely fantastic. I could easily imagine seeing them on the screen and would have paid money to see any of them in a theater. These were good writers who knew how to tell a story and write a screenplay and they had written really impressive scripts. If I was a producer, these writers would have had meetings.
The rest of my scripts were uniformly unimpressive. Gratuitous and poorly written bloodbaths, predictable government conspiracies and other forgettable wastes of my time abounded. People, I even had an Indian burial ground script. One script in particular was so bad that I'm not sure how it made the first cut, unless the writer found a way to hack into PG's computer system to create votes for him or herself. To this day I kick myself for not keeping a copy of it. It had to be seen to be believed. I can't do justice to its heinous awfulness. And yet, somehow, it made the cut.
As absolutely deserving as they were, none of my great scripts ended up being the winner. But as both a reader and a writer I was really impressed with them and wish I could have let the writers know how good they were so they wouldn't feel discouraged that they "lost" to the eventual winning script. My guess is that Bob the Commenter's friends and their "fucking masterful" scripts probably fall into this category.
So it's not a perfect system. But you know what? Keep entering anyway and even more importantly keep writing, whether you win or not. Because whether it's an award-winning screenplay, a novel, a blog or your shopping list, that's what we do. We write. But quit bitching. The world isn't fair and neither are writing contests. Deal with it.
The thing is, when it comes to writing contests, it's not a perfect system. Another possibility? Maybe you (or your friend) aren't as good as you think. Or maybe you are. Based on my experience, it could be any number of things but it boils down to this: As much as it's a rush to make the final cut or win a writing contest (and I'm not saying it can't be a career maker) you can't base your screenwriting aspirations on contest results alone. Too many other factors besides quality come into play.
I've judged a couple writing competitions in the past. One was a high school student essay contest with about a dozen $1,000 college scholarships at stake. Entries were not anonymous and politics definitely came into play when it came to selecting the winners. I found this extremely discouraging because I saw a deserving entry bumped for a reason that had nothing to do with quality. There were many more worthy entries than scholarships and one that would have been a winner was bumped for a lesser entry in the name of playing politics.
And then there are the judges. We are not infallible and at times, we are not fair. Each essay was read and judged twice in order to weed out the top contenders, after which we all got together to pick the best of the best. It was at that meeting that I discovered one of the few bad essays I'd read (and scored low) had surprisingly made the cut. The reason? The other judge who read it gave it high marks because she "felt sorry" for the student who wrote it. I did too, but for a different reason: the poor kid was about to go out into the world practically illiterate. But we were supposed to be awarding the scholarships based on merit, not need. And somebody who might have merited it was bumped from the final group because of that judge. Like I said, a lot of things come into play. I never said they made sense.
The other contest I judged was Project Greenlight 3 and all entries (at least at the level I judged at - the top 1,000 online vote-getters) were completely anonymous. I had no idea who the writers were or where they were located, and it never occurred to me to wonder. It wasn't an issue. Each one was read beginning to end and I had no idea how they had placed in the online voting, so I wasn't swayed by that. The scripts themselves were all that factored into the judging.
Of the twenty Project Greenlight scripts I was assigned to judge there were four or five that I thought were absolutely fantastic. I could easily imagine seeing them on the screen and would have paid money to see any of them in a theater. These were good writers who knew how to tell a story and write a screenplay and they had written really impressive scripts. If I was a producer, these writers would have had meetings.
The rest of my scripts were uniformly unimpressive. Gratuitous and poorly written bloodbaths, predictable government conspiracies and other forgettable wastes of my time abounded. People, I even had an Indian burial ground script. One script in particular was so bad that I'm not sure how it made the first cut, unless the writer found a way to hack into PG's computer system to create votes for him or herself. To this day I kick myself for not keeping a copy of it. It had to be seen to be believed. I can't do justice to its heinous awfulness. And yet, somehow, it made the cut.
As absolutely deserving as they were, none of my great scripts ended up being the winner. But as both a reader and a writer I was really impressed with them and wish I could have let the writers know how good they were so they wouldn't feel discouraged that they "lost" to the eventual winning script. My guess is that Bob the Commenter's friends and their "fucking masterful" scripts probably fall into this category.
So it's not a perfect system. But you know what? Keep entering anyway and even more importantly keep writing, whether you win or not. Because whether it's an award-winning screenplay, a novel, a blog or your shopping list, that's what we do. We write. But quit bitching. The world isn't fair and neither are writing contests. Deal with it.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
YEEEAAAHHH!!!
They really nailed the CSI style on this. Warning: You'll probably OD on block jokes by the time the crime is solved. Presenting CSI: Legoland!
He has a few things he'd like to...axe.
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