Moving Pictures

I went to film school in Chicago, back in the early days of the internet as we know it. I thought that in the future, everybody would need somebody who knows how to use a video camera and generate original content. This was six years before YouTube existed -- so I wasn't wrong, exactly. I just thought that my specialty would be a bit more special in the years ahead. Nevertheless, I learned a lot of cool stuff along the way, even if I will likely never have to load a manual sixteen millimeter camera in the dark ever again or edit another movie with actual pieces of tape.

For my last semester of film school, I participated in their "Semester in LA" program. We congregated five days a week on the CBS lot in Studio City, sandwiched between the sets of Big Brother and Malcolm in the Middle. I was among the dozen or so aspiring writers who met in one trailer, while the hopeful producers found themselves situated in another.

 

Our mornings typically began with a lecture. Then we'd have a guest speaker, somebody who actively worked in the industry and could offer some valuable insights. We ate lunch in the commissary amidst the casts and crews of other familiar TV shows, and then we would return to the trailer and spend the rest of the day writing. We had two weeks to write a feature-length script, two weeks to revise it, and then one week to apply for jobs and internships. It was intense. I loved it.  

 

I lived in LA for about two years. I spent my first few weeks in the City of Angels sleeping on the floor of a motel room in a sleeping bag. It certainly could have been worse. Before long, I got an apartment in the Valley with a friend of a friend, and then several months later, his girlfriend from back in Iowa joined us. At the end of our lease, they decided that they should have their own place, at which point I decided that I might as well get out of the Valley. 

 

For my second year, I moved into a basement studio apartment carved out of a very old hotel in Koreatown. Everyone who lived in this building was an artist of some persuasion. It was stipulated in the lease agreement. As you might expect, I met a lot of really interesting people there, some of whom I came to play music with and who brought me along to some cool parties in other parts of the city. There is a kernel of truth to the notion that Los Angeles is place where fakery thrives. At the same time, it's also a place where a lot of genuinely awesome people go to make something of themselves. Most of the people I met were of the latter.

 

My first industry gig out of film school was as an intern for a management company in Beverly Hills, where I read screenplays all day and wrote notes and recommendations for the managers. After that, I worked as a production assistant on a popular television show for a few weeks, which to this day, I still have never seen. I'm pretty sure that I only got the job because the person who hired me thought that I went to Columbia in New York as opposed to the similarly named institution in Chicago, where I actually earned my degree. Even though it was clearly stated on my resume, I never corrected her. I was just happy to be working.

 

In the hierarchy of the motion picture industry, production assistants are at the very bottom. They are generally assigned the menial tasks that don't fall under anyone else's outlined responsibility. One of my jobs as a PA was to bring the newest script over to the star's house. Another time, I had to take two live pigeons in a cardboard box somewhere off set. I released them in a laundromat parking lot, where I saw some other pigeons with whom they could potentially make friends. 

 

On Thursday of week three at the television show that shall remain unnamed and unwatched, I made a simple, stupid mistake. The single light in the tiny mailroom was out, such that I could only see with the help of a disposable lighter. Instead of putting the very important parcel in the express slot as I burned my thumb, I accidentally put it in the compartment with the empty envelopes. I was fired the following day, not long after somebody finally changed the lightbulb.

 

It took me a while to realize that this is how it goes when a job has hundreds of other applicants who would eagerly fill the position tomorrow, despite the poverty wages and lack of benefits. In retrospect, it was probably just as well, considering that my $350 car was not up for the challenge of commuting daily on the 405, as I had not yet moved out of the San Fernando Valley. Still, I think this was when my disillusionment with Hollywood officially began to set in.

 

For the rest of my time in Los Angeles, I got some freelance gigs reading screenplays and writing coverage in between unrelated office temp jobs. In both cases, work was sporadic. Sometimes I would have so many scripts that I hardly left my apartment. Other times, nobody would send me anything to read, such that I could barely afford to leave my apartment if I wanted to. Besides, if I forfeited my parking spot, it might take me forty-five minutes of circling the block like a vulture until I finally gave up and ate another ticket. I learned that LA is a particularly difficult place to be poor.

 

Two years and eight days after arriving in Los Angeles, one particular script and the story behind it led me to Oregon, where I worked on a next-to-no-budget feature-length documentary of my own design. I spent about a month filming it and a year and a half editing it with a friend of mine from film school. With just the two of of us, we made this movie using early digital equipment, all shot on Mini-DV tapes. As you may know, this is not an ideal format. Also, due to the aforementioned budgetary constraints, our playback device was a $200 camcorder that we had to return to the store multiple times. This was also not ideal.

 

YouTube came into existence during that period when we were editing my documentary. By the time we eventually had something to show for our relentless labor, we uploaded it over the course of several nights. The internet was still relatively primitive at the time, and video clips could only be a maximum of ten minutes, so we had to split the movie into nine parts. If you are so inclined, you can now watch it in its entirety. Despite and largely due to the extremely limited means that we had to work within, I am still quite proud of what we accomplished.

 

Fun fact: early film reels could also only be about ten minutes long. As the technology improved, they could be a bit longer, but this is why today sequences in movies (i.e., scenes that are part of a particular cause-and-effect chain of events, like a chapter in a book) are still typically between ten and sixteen minutes.

 

Not long after finishing the documentary, I got married. I continued to write coverage and work on various video projects while waiting to get paid what I had been promised for the documentary, which never happened. That's a harrowing story in itself. After our daughter was born, we moved back to the midwest to be closer to family. Film jobs, of course, are very hard to come by outside of certain epicenters of production, so I shifted gears and went into teaching.

Since that time, I have earned two graduate degrees, taught at several colleges, lived in other parts of the world, and written fifteen or so feature-length screenplays in multiple genres. For a while there, I was writing at least one script per year. That has tapered off lately, as I have been busy with other stuff. I have also learned that it is not much easier to be a screenwriter than any other role in the film industry unless you happen to live where the action is. There are exceptions, of course, but it has been extraordinarily difficult to get anybody to read my work over the years, despite it having placed in or even won some prestigious contests.

I still love movies, and I have not yet abandoned my aspirations in this arena. In fact, I usually have at least one screenplay in the works, even if I end up being among the only people who ever read it. Film is also my favorite kind of class to teach, and I'll be teaching another such course in the spring. I find motion pictures to be the most interesting and effective way to convey big ideas to mass audiences, which is a large part of what drew me to this medium in the first place. 

One if by Train

I love to travel but hate airports. I am also somewhat old-fashioned when it comes to adopting a lot of new technology. (I have owned a smart phone for about two and a half years now. I still don't use it much.) I am also a mostly patient guy who appreciates ample leg room. As such, I may seem the ideal demographic for traveling by train. But you'd be wrong. More about that later.

Until recently, I had not traveled long-distance by rail in the US in almost twenty years. My one and only previous experience with Amtrak left a lot to be desired. It was supposed to be an eight hour trip that took about fourteen, and on the way back, we had to take a bus for part of it because of a rail closure. Shipment of goods always had the right of way over the infrequent passenger trains, so there was a lot of waiting while freight cars passed by in the narrow mountain passages. My daughter was about six weeks old at the time, and this was one of her first ventures outside of the house. That may have contributed to the stress, although in all honesty, she probably handled the trip better than I did. 

When considering my options for going back to Michigan for the past four weeks, it was actually a little bit cheaper to fly. However, once I added in the fees for baggage and leaving my car at the Denver airport for that long, plus gas for driving there and back, the overall cost would have been over three times that. Amtrak should really work that into their marketing.

I also considered driving, but ever since pulling a trailer all the way here (about 1100 miles) in my Volkswagen -- which, by the way, I do not advise -- I am not sure that it is up for the challenge in its current state. The suspension and exhaust need some work, and the turbo engine isn't as punchy since hauling a trailer that probably outweighed the vehicle. Just to reiterate, I do not recommend that. Although in defense of my little GTI, I will note that it got me here without incident, which is why now, to express my gratitude, I drive it as little as possible.

That leaves me with the train. It cost about $350 round-trip, but I had to be flexible with the dates in order to find anything that low. I suspect that early summer is probably peak traveling season outside of major holidays. I went into this knowing that a 26-28 hour trip each way, which is already pretty intimidating, could easily turn into something that took several days. And who knows what kind of weirdos take the train across the country?

 

The Amish. There were lots of Amish people on the train and especially at the station in Chicago. They probably made up about 1/4 to 1/3 of the travelers. The rest were mostly college students and retirees. 

Then there was me. As someone who is both tall and frugal, the lack of legroom in coach is another of the reasons that I tend to dislike air travel. That said, even the cheap seats on the train had plenty of room to fully extend my legs. The cushions were ok but became less comfortable as time went on. For whatever reason, I happen to be the type of person who cannot sleep in a sitting position. Despite being on some very long flights, I have never slept on an airplane for more than a few minutes at a time. Riding the train was no different in that regard. 

 

This no doubt made the very long trip seem even longer. While I had expected the constant rattling on the tracks to be unnerving and the train whistle to be like an alarm clock going off every time we were about to cross a road, it really wasn't so bad. I'm sure that the massive weight of the locomotive contributed to its ability to sail along the tracks, and the whistle was hardly noticeable from inside. Most of the people around me seemed to have no trouble sleeping, except and in spite of the two assholes who brought their outside voices onto the train only to exercise them in small hours of the morning on the way back. Unlike during my trip to Michigan, on the return voyage, I had various seatmates for almost the entire time, which made it a little harder to stretch out and get comfortable. 

Would I do it again? Probably. It really wasn't so bad, and it is kind of nice that I was able to walk less than a mile to and from the train station and my house while my old VW remained parked in my driveway. It was wonderful to see so many of the people I love and spend time with them. Doing so was priceless, and I look forward to the next opportunity, regardless of how I get there. It was also nice to come home a month later, even if my sleep schedule may yet take a little while to recover. 

Crash and Burn

Prior to yesterday evening, I hadn't performed stand-up comedy in about eight years. Even then, my experience was limited to maybe six or seven shows, most of which were for small public and private audiences at the university where I earned my doctorate. None were paid. I did it for fun, and because it was something that I had wanted to do since I was probably about twelve years old. 

 

My experience telling jokes into a microphone started with a summer elective that I took in grad school, and then it kind of blossomed from there. The biggest crowd that I performed for was about three hundred and fifty people at a fundraising event at the college, but most of the other audiences were much smaller than that. On a few occasions, they were entirely composed of professors and other grad students. It was a pretty safe space to learn the ropes, and I could get away with what I thought were some fairly clever jokes.  

As I moved away from the college (both graduating and then physically moving), the opportunities to do comedy pretty much dried up -- unless I wanted to travel any kind of distance to perform at random open mics, which I didn't have much interest in. In shows like this that I have attended and/or participated in, the audience has generally been made up of people who were just waiting for their turns, too nervous about their own sets to pay much attention to anything else. These events are good for practice, but they're usually not much fun for either the performer or the audience, at least not in my experience on both sides of the equation.

 

In the years since finishing the PhD program, I have shifted my focus more to making music and other kinds of writing, while living in much smaller communities that host few if any comedy venues. Even if I wanted to travel to an open mic to perform, now we're talking about at least a two hour drive each way. As a result, it had been a while since I had even thought about writing jokes.

 

When this most recent opportunity presented itself, I reflexively said yes almost immediately, as I remembered having rather enjoyed the experience of making a room full of people laugh. It is one of the rare forms of writing that offers direct and autonomous validation. If a joke works, you get to know right then and there, and it's a pretty good feeling. In the handful of times that I had performed stand-up, I never bombed, per se, but I now realize that this is not the kind of thing that you should ever say aloud.

 

I am not afraid of failing any more than I am afraid of wasps. Still, it sucks to get stung, such that I generally try to avoid it. At least once since I had volunteered to participate in last night's event, I did ask myself what the hell I was getting into. This was a legitimate question, as I literally knew next to nothing about it. I was just excited to do comedy again and figured that the worst case scenario was that it goes poorly and then life moves on. That turned out to be a pretty accurate assessment.

 

None of my material had been workshopped or tested at all. I went into it completely blind and with 100% new jokes. I had absolutely no idea what to expect in terms of the audience or what they think is funny. I basically just wrote material that I thought was humorous and hoped that other people might, too.

Over the past few weeks, I put a lot of work into the stand-up set that I performed last night, usually at least an hour or two every day, often more. Most mornings, I woke up with comedic bits playing out in my head. I wrote, polished, memorized and practiced over two thousand words of material. The idea was to try to connect with the crowd and then take them to interesting places, often by way of what I thought were witty observations. 

 

What actually occurred was a bit of a shitshow.

 

My set was essentially three parts: 1.) Sesame Street-based jokes, 2.) Jokes about running, with an emphasis on marathons, including a brief history lesson on the matter, and 3.) Jokes about being a sad bastard who lives alone and is amused by mindless consumerism.

 

The audience, from what I could tell: 1.) Was not into Sesame Street, 2.) Cared less about marathons than I do, and 3.) Were either much younger than me, or a little older than me. Most appeared to be on a date, and my jokes about being awkwardly single in the era of late capitalism did not land.

 

I hope that I did not spoil anyone's evening or ruin their chances for another date, but very little of my material seemed to resonate.

 

To make matters worse -- much worse, in fact -- the wireless microphone kept cutting out. This rendered my performance very difficult. About a minute or two in, most of my intricately crafted jokes emerged from the speaker as loose, broken syllables, accompanied by jarring pops of static. I tried to listen to what was coming through the PA system while also keeping track of what I was saying, as to stay on script. My brain went into a feedback loop of sorts trying to keep it all straight.

 

At one point, I repeated the setup for a joke three times only to have the punchline lost to the whims of the shitty bluetooth connection. As I was performing, one of the guys involved with the event suggested that I aim the bottom of the microphone at the receiver in the far left side of the room. It wasn't his equipment; he was just trying to help. Meanwhile, as I am taking direction while performing, I attempted to maintain the illusion of spontaneity while also trying to recite all fifty or so of my jokes in a sequence that made sense.

 

Just three hours prior to the event, I had rehearsed the entire script from memory verbatim. Twice. Every word and every pause were where I wanted them. I thought that my set was in pretty good shape. I had it memorized well enough that I could focus on the performative aspects, or so I thought.

 

As it played out in the unpredictable real world, though, I was now being told to aim the microphone in my hand to the distant side of the room at about a sixty degree angle to the floor in order to get a better connection with the speaker. It was a very unnatural way to deliver the material, which ultimately proved not to work, either. However, it took me about four or five misfired jokes before I abandoned the attempt. 

 

I continued to trample on my lines and trip over the segues, while also trying to remember which of my two thousand words the audience had already heard and which were worth repeating. In total, I inadvertently omitted more a third of what I had written and told several parts out of order. I think there might have even been a callback in there to a joke that the audience never even heard the first time around.

 

To make up for the loss of material that I had skipped over, I filled in some of that extra time with awkward pauses. I was dying up there. Except "up there" in this case really just meant across the small dining room, while much of the audience consumed their steak dinners. In fairness, I suppose it's probably hard to laugh and savor a delicious ribeye at the same time, but I can't recall ever having tried it. 

 

I probably could have made a joke about how much I was sweating in my sweater, but I'm glad to say that I didn't. I wasn't that far gone. I did what I could to recover and keep my cool. However, improvisation was kept to a minimum as I struggled to remember my jokes, most of which seemed to work better on the page, while continuing to fight against a PA system that seemed intent to piss all over my set.  

 

Toward the end of the routine, out of frustration and utter hopelessness, I abandoned the microphone and shouted my jokes. That didn't work, either, as it dramatically changed the tone of my delivery, especially for the people in front. They are the unfortunate souls who got to witness this whole mess as it unraveled in real-time.

Crash and burn. It's how we learn. 

Next time, whenever that is, I hope to have a better sense of what I might have in common with the audience, whoever and wherever they happen to be. I would also like to test the PA equipment first. Those are my takeaways from this whole experience. On the other hand, maybe I'll just stick to playing music for now.

It is possible, of course, that I am my own harshest critic, and that the sporadic bluetooth connection bothered me far more than it did anyone else, but I really don't think that's true. Frankly, if I was in the audience, I'm pretty sure I would have thought that it was shit, too, even though these were all jokes that were essentially written for my own amusement, but which I had hoped that other people might connect with as well. 

 

At least it was a free show, so hopefully nobody felt ripped off. Plus I got a pretty good hamburger out of the deal, as well as a story about the time that I went up in flames like an ill-fated firework fiasco. My hope is that my memory of this event gets funnier with time, so that at least some humor comes out of all of this, even if it is entirely at my expense.

I guess what doesn't kill you makes you say, damn, I'm glad that's over. I like to think that any lessons learned from the experience can be applied to next time, which hopefully doesn't take another eight years to transpire.

Cheesecake

How to make a very good cheesecake:

 

(Never mind how it looks. Aesthetics isn't my strong suit when it comes to baking. This is about taste. Yours will probably be prettier.)

 

For the batter:

4 bricks of cream cheese, room temperature

4 eggs, also room temperature

From here, all measurements are approximate and to taste~

1 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup whole plain Greek yogurt

2 tsp lemon (or lime) juice

2 tsp ginger juice (not crucial, but makes a good secret ingredient)

1 Tbsp vanilla extract 

 

For the crust:

1 sleeve of cinnamon graham crackers

Approximately the same amount of vanilla wafers

(crumbs can be substituted with pretty much any kind of dry cookie, per taste)

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

2/3 stick of butter (possibly the whole stick, as needed)

 

- You need a springform pan, as well as a cake pan big enough for it to fit inside with some water. I also recommend parchment paper. Cut a square of it big enough to cover the bottom of the springform pan, then open it up and pinch it in there so that the paper is taut along the bottom of the pan and the corners stick out from the sides. Don't trim them off, as you will need those later for grabbing purposes. I also take cold butter and run it around the inside of the pan, then cut strips of parchment paper to fit. The butter helps hold it in place. I then spray the parchment paper lightly with cooking spray, although this may or may not be necessary. I think it mostly just adds to the color, but it might also help with the crust...   

- Prepare the crust: grind up a sleeve of cinnamon graham crackers plus roughly the same volume of vanilla wafers, then add about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Mix the dry ingredients in a metal or glass bowl. Melt 2/3 stick (give or take) of butter in the microwave. Cover with a coffee filter in case of explosions. Add a teaspoon or so of vanilla extract to the melted butter. I like the Mexican stuff for things like this. It's got a buttery flavor of its own. Combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. Mix with a fork until it is all the same color, darkened by the liquid. If you didn't start with the whole stick of melted butter at the beginning, this might be where you add the rest. It should form clumps, absent of loose crumbs...

- Empty the contents of the bowl into the springform pan. Use a silicone spatula to scrape the bowl and press down on the crust until it is solid. Wrap the outside bottom of the pan in aluminum foil, then put in the fridge until everything else is ready...

- Add about an inch of water to the rectangular cake pan. Put it in the oven. Preheat it to 450 degrees Fahrenheit...  

- Batter up. In a stand mixer (or similar means - a big enough food processor also works), whip the bricks of cream cheese until it is no longer chunky, then gradually add the sugar. Once the sugar is incorporated, add the yogurt. Then add the vanilla extract, followed by the lemon/lime juice and the ginger juice. Blend until fluffy. Stop the mixer. Taste test. Does it need more of any of those things? Now is the time to figure that out, before you add the eggs...

 

 

- The eggs should be beaten in a metal or glass bowl until uniform in color and slightly increased in volume. Taste the batter one more time before you add the eggs, as that is officially the point of no return (unless you want to risk salmonella). Take the bowl out of the stand mixer, then gradually fold in the eggs with the spatula. The key is to not lose any of the air that is trapped in the batter. Keep doing this until you no longer see yellow (otherwise it might taste like scrambled eggs). Be sure to scrape the bowl as you slowly stir it in. Once it is all even and smooth, take the crust out of the fridge and pour the batter on top of it. Scrape the last of the batter out of the bowl and then use the spatula to even out the top of the cheesecake, if necessary...

 

- Inside the oven, the water in the pan should be boiling. As such, when you are ready to open the oven door, watch out for the steam. It could burn you if you are not careful. In my experience, it is also a little tricky to pull out the oven rack without making the water splash everywhere. Meanwhile, you don't want to lose a lot of heat by having the oven door open. On the bright side, this is probably the only dangerous step in making cheesecake. Once the springform pan is gently placed in the water bath, close the oven and set a timer for 12 minutes...

- At 12 minutes, do not open the oven. Turn it down to 350 and set another timer for 45 minutes. Walk away. Do something that you enjoy, but don't forget about the timer...

-  At 45 minutes, the top should be starting to get some color. If so, then you can finally open the oven. As delicately as possible, take the cheesecake out of the water bath and unwrap the foil. Remove the water bath from the oven as well, then put the cheesecake back into the oven without the foil for another ten minutes or so. If you think the top is starting to get too dark, you can always turn it down to 325 or so for this last bit...

 

- When that last ten minutes is up, shut off the oven. Open the oven door a crack, but leave the cheesecake there for now. In five minutes, you might want to open the door a little wider, then take it out in another five. The idea is for it to cool off gradually. It is going to deflate somewhat, but if it does so slowly, then it is less likely to crack. Once it is out of the oven, put it on a cooling rack. Do not open the springform pan. This is very important. Leave it on the cooling rack until the pan is room temperature. At that point, again, without opening the pan, move it to a cake holder that will fit in the refrigerator. Basically, it needs to be left in the pan until it has completely cooled and set. I recommend putting it in the refrigerator (always covered, unless you want it to absorb other random flavors from the depths of your fridge) for between 12-24 hours before taking the next step...

- Good news: you finally get to open the springform pan and see if the dessert maintains its shape. If you were patient enough and followed directions, it should be good. Otherwise I blame witchcraft. Slowly and carefully remove the expanded outside ring of the pan. Take off the parchment paper on the sides as well... 

- This next step requires some rudimentary ninja skills. At the very least, you should have cold, dry hands and be able to do it relatively quickly. This is where you take the cheesecake out of the bottom of the pan and remove the parchment paper. First, you grab it by opposite corners and lift it out of the pan and into the cake holder. Then you roll the parchment paper from under it until you can quickly but delicately lift the cheesecake with your (cold, dry) hand to remove the rest...

- Then put it back in the fridge until you are ready to eat it or add a topping. Go back to that activity that you enjoy for a little while. The thing about cheesecake is that it actually tastes better on day three or four than it would have on those first couple of days, as the flavors continue to meld. So if you've got time, then you might as well wait. Baking cheesecake can be an exercise in patience... 

- If you are making a fruit topping, here is a bonus recipe: take some fresh or frozen berries (if fresh, you may want to set some aside to be added later), cook them over low to medium heat in a saucepan with about 1/4 cup of water. Once they start to soften, mash it with a fork. Stir. Add some white sugar, between 1/3-1/2 cup. Add about 2 tsp of lime juice and 2 tsp of vanilla. Ginger juice can be a good secret ingredient here, too. A little bit of honey and cinnamon can also add a nice touch. In a small bowl, take about 2 tsp of corn starch and mix it with about 1/4 cup of of cold water to make a slurry. Mix with a fork until the consistency is uniform, then dump it into the berry mixture. Stir constantly as it thickens. You may also want to add a few drops of food coloring, but this is entirely optional. Remove from heat. You may need to stir occasionally as it continues to cool and thicken. After a few minutes, transfer to a container that seals. If using sliced/fresh berries, you probably want to add them to the topping now, unless you want them on top of the glaze. Store topping in refrigerator until it has cooled completely, at which point it might be added to the cheesecake... 

   

- You may also want to add whipped cream, which is just heavy cream, powdered sugar and vanilla extract...

 

Enjoy and share. 

 

Another Script Registered with the WGA

I finished writing another feature-length screenplay this week. I think this is my fifteenth to date, although only about ten of them are any good. At least five in there are what I like to think of as practice scripts. Genres that I have written include: broad comedy, historical comedy, historical biopic, animated/family, sci-fi/action, crime drama, psychological thriller, and romantic comedy. This latest screenplay marks my first foray into comedy-horror. It was fun to write.

When I first outlined this project, I had imagined it to be more of a horror-comedy, but then I kept adding more jokes while toning down the horror elements. In the past, I've spent anywhere from three weeks to a year and a half on a screenplay. This one took just under three weeks, including revisions. I think that's a new record.

This latest screenplay is called Dummy, and it's about an evil ventriloquist dummy who seeks to take over the world. I've even got a title for the sequel if it ever makes it that far. It shall be called Dummy 2: Even Dummer. Taking this premise one movie further, Dummy 3 could be called Dummstruck. Then Dummy 4: Dumm Most Harderest. The fifth installment could be the gritty reboot where they actually take the material seriously and treat it as a straight-up horror flick. 

I wrote this screenplay with the idea that it could be done on a minimal budget and that I could potentially direct it myself. Almost the entire story takes place inside one house. I think there are only about ten short scenes that do not occur either inside or outside of this location. It also involves a creepy ventriloquist dummy that gets destroyed over and over, and if audiences are anything like me, I think that they'll take a certain degree of satisfaction in witnessing this.  

Another idea that I'm presently outlining follows a similar design, but right now, I'm imagining it as somewhat of a spy drama. We'll see if I can exercise enough willpower to not turn it into a comedy. This, too, is intended to be done on a minimal budget and is something that I could potentially direct. It also takes place almost entirely inside one house. In my "idea garden," this is one of many works-in-progress.

Over the past several months, I've also gone back over a lot of my older work. Since writing tends to be one of those things that you get better at the more you do it, by that rationale, I become an incrementally better writer with each subsequent work. Therefore when I revisit my old work with an updated skillset, I think that I've been able to polish up these things considerably. 

The thing is, that's true with music, too. I could almost certainly re-record all of my albums now and they would sound better just because of what I learned in the process of recording them. I can also play and sing them all better now than I could when they were fresh, which is more or less when all of my songs have been recorded. The only remedy to this is to keep writing music, and keep making the existing songs sound better when I play them live--not that I have performed since the pandemic began, unless you count sitting outside with an acoustic. 

I have been recording a ton of guitar and piano riffs lately. I think I'm up to eighty-some recordings on my phone. This is usually the first step in the coalescence of an album. If so, I'll be sure to post regular updates on my music page. I have so many articles on there that I just ended up reposting a lot of them. It's been a while since I've written much of anything publicly, as I've been deeply engaged in other matters.