Sad News

In La Cañada last week, a huge car carrier lost its brakes and crashed through an intersection, squashing cars and passengers, finally halting inside a charming little book store that my wife and I used to frequent. Vehicles crumpled like pop cans, two dead, a dozen injured and three shops destroyed or damaged. 

Alas, something similar happened last September as a truck descending the Angeles Crest Highway lost its brakes, barreling into a coffee shop parking lot next to the doomed bookstore, mangling seven vehicles. No causalities then, but Cal Trans was notified by La Cañada authorities that these big rigs need slowing. Cal Trans jumped right on it and will, no doubt, cook up something within the next geological epoch. 

Our prayers go out to the victims and survivors.

Sit-Com Completed

With the heavy lifting over on the sit-com, I await reader notes over the coming week. Then off it shall go to my agent. In fact, my agent's office left a message for me on my cell phone last Friday. I haven't heard from them in so long, I thought it was a prank call. I'll have to check in Monday, just to be sure. They may actually have work for me, thus throwing off my busy schedule.

Pre-Beta Reader Polish

Tidying up the script for the Saturday send-out to designated readers. Nothing seems too funny at this juncture since I've seen the lines over and over. But I'll resist the temptation to re-write the whole thing.

Friday Sitcom Update

Up for air after powering through the first two acts. I hope to finish act 3 this weekend, then work on something else for a few days while the story marinates. My goal is to complete another draft and polish, then send out the script to trusted friends for review, spruce it up and off to my agent by the third week of April.

So, by next Friday I will complete act three and polish.

How's everyone been?

Good Catch

About that sitcom . . . I'm looking at notes last night and suddenly come up with a great NEW idea. I jot down some thoughts and it looks even funnier. This morning I'm about to re-file my old idea, when I stop myself. I have "new project fever," a condition whereby anything NEW seems more worthy of attention than something OLD that's encrusted with several problem-filled drafts. Fortunately, I stopped myself. Other than a general incoherence, the OLD contains many usable lines. Info needs to be reshuffled and the acts could use some sanding. So to work. No Evil Dead II laugh breaks. No Iranian loon-theories. No NEW ideas.

Tom and Jerry: Zionist Tools

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In the crazy world of animation, you learn something new everyday. For example, in Iran, Professor Hasan Bolkhari lectured students on how Zionists manufactured propaganda cartoons like Tom and Jerry. He also discovered through his scholarship that the characters were animated by Disney and not MGM. In later lectures, Professor Bolkhari explained why Dora The Explorer was a metaphor for Israeli Special Forces, and why lovable Doug was created in order to manipulate children into accepting Jewish/Masonic world domination. Currently, the Professor is working on a book, I Can't Wait for Iran to Have a Nuclear Weapon.

h/t: The Religion of Peace

Inaugural Talk Like William Shatner Day

Maurice "Brain" LaMarche has declared today to be the first. He . . . explains here. (Sharp inhale.)

Unfinished Writing

I opened the hard copy file on my sit-com. After flipping through three drafts, I opened Final Cut, started a new file, choose sit-com format, closed and saved the file. After which I went to the gym. Could the following action sequence be why I have boxes of drafts and three-ring binders stuffed with the uncompleted?

Ha, no more. This thing's getting finished.

Right after I watch Evil Dead II.



Or maybe I'll write instead.

What Shall I Write Next?

The tribe has spoken: from here, Facebook, plus conversations with my wife and friends, we have a muted vote for the Viking, three votes for the aliens, and a resounding Huzzah! for the sit-com.

Sit-com it shall be. My last draft was October with economic circumstances fast overtaking the story. The fact that times are tough only helps the narrative, though I'm not 100 percent sure just how.

In any case, let Friday be report day. Next Friday, I will have an entry on the week's work. This will continue until I finish a draft.

Should this project succeed in getting me a paying job, we're all heading out to Griffith Park in Los Angeles. If small horses scare you, there's still the wee train ride. (But no boats at Disneyland.)

The Three

So far the tide is running unanimously toward sit-com. In fact, opinion favors a program based on the adventures of a chicken named Flip who can tell the future - or can he? Flip is owned by a man no older than 23 and has a neighbor named Mr. Wilson whose catchphrase is: "Here come da eggs!" Of course, I've crafted nothing that creative.

My sitcom is about three "Dodgeball"-like slackers who inherit a party clown business in Santa Barbara.

Novel 1 tells the story of a young suburban teen who reluctantly helps snotty aliens catch an interstellar bad guy using the power of ventriloquism.

Novel 2 is a graphic novel about a pacifist college professor who, through a bizarre chain of circumstances, finds himself turning into blood-thirsty viking whenever someone says "child crisis" or any other phrase found in It Takes a Village.

Friday will be decision day.

Updates will be bi-weekly.

Pony rides hang in the balance.

Projects Three

I have before me projects three,

A novel,

And another,

And a sit-com, see?

Complete?

Ignore?

Help me decide,

And for such aid,

You'll get a pony ride.

(Paul has infected me with contest fever. The projects will be listed tomorrow. Help me choose which to finish. I can't guarantee any fancy prize, but I can promise a pony ride. And I have.)