Happy Easter!

Strange Iceland Video

Whaz'sup in Iceland? Just another day of giant puppets and helicopters.

Taxing Thoughts

Due to my knee flaring up, I'll miss a fine tax protest today. MDW will represent the family. Taxes are particularly unfair in Hollywood. You may hardly work for years - ahem! - then sell something for a big score. The government taxes you at the highest rate, as if you'd been sweeping in the long green the whole time.

Considering that you're taxed pretty much on every transaction plus state, local and federal taxes, in addition to tax on interest, property, phone/Internet and capital gains taxes, I can only assert we're gagging in taxes. Having worked for the federal government, I can assure you its not being spent wisely. Just spent.

Less, I think, is more. Someone once proposed a simple, understandable, flat tax. And while there's a thicket of special interests determined to keep the tax code byzantine and dense, enough angry Americans, making enough noise, could once again reclaim their hard-earned money.

Greedy? I think not.

Good Friday

And a good friday it was.

Sci-Fi Bait

I'm completing a tale about a whale-watching tour that gets far more than it bargained for. I'll finish a draft this week, let it set through next Wed., then second draft, polish and send it to my agent. We'd talked about submitting this short story awhile ago to a director who does Sci-Fi channel creature d'jour movies. If Sci-Fi can do "Kracken: Terror of the Deep," they can do mine.

The animation job from Monday turned out be a game show development gig - minus any money for my time. So I politely passed. After all, I'm already working for free on something I like. Tough to beat.

Armored Vehicles I Have Known

As a kid we lived behind an American Legion Post that had a for-real tank out front. From my G.I. Combat comic book collection, I was able to identify it as a M3A1 Stuart Light Tank. The neighborhood kids loved that hunk of metal. It lent a sense of realism to our war games and provided a handy meeting place since everyone knew where it was.

Having just returned from Chicago last month, I gave my sister Mary Pat a report on the old homestead and the many changes that had occurred. She put her memories in verse:

The Tank

My good brother just told me the tank was gone
They carted it off when they tore down the American Legion
The land now holds luxury condos
That don’t know the richness of the ground they sit atop

Every summer the Legion parking lot would fill with the Ox Roast Carnival
Portable rides and games of chance would go up in a matter of days
Stay up for a matter of weeks
Across the alley from our house and in the center of the fair was that big lawn ornament

I got my first job picking up money at the game where you
Throw dimes at glassware until it goes into the glass and you kept it
People would spend 5 whole dollars
To win a glass that cost thirty cents at the Ben Franklin store

Years later I figured out why my parents refused to
Let me take the early morning job polishing the horses
On the carousel
Just me and the 7 fingered boss early every day didn’t sit well with my folks

In winter the parking lot would have all the snow plowed
Back to the alley so there was a tall mountain range of snow
Outside our back gate
We marched a path across the ridge line to the biggest pile on the corner

We would sled off into the street and start full contact snow ball fights
Some little general would form us into a fighting unit
We trained and drilled
Of course this always involved the tank

If it was our tank we would have to scramble under it to escape enemy fire
If it was an enemy tank that day we had to sabotage it
Lodge grenades in the treads
Scramble out from beneath it at top speed and seek cover behind the snow bunker

One cold winter day I came home for dinner frozen solid and full of stories
Wearing my brand new royal blue ski pants with stirrups that were the rage
There were two little holes in the knee
I cringed at the ruin to my fashion fortune and pulled up the pant leg

Bully brother sat on my left and was quite put out that I was fussing my leg
I was too heartbroken to be cowed by him and I kept up my search
My leg was a bloody mess
Bully blanched and I felt a whole lot better with that small victory

As my leg warmed up the cut started to hurt and the questions came raining
It had to be when we were crawling on our bellies under the tank
Mom said it’ll scar
It did and I stroke that place as I write this poem and wonder what they did with

The Tank

Post-Crash Action

A 30-day moratorium on big rigs driving the Angeles Crest Highway. One of my favorite coffee shops sits adjacent to the gutted bookstore, flush in the bulls eye. Let's hope the problem's fixed before a Peterbilt cab crashes into the middle of my BLT.

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?