Category: Random

I hope a brick and mortar bookstore come across this post, because it’s free advice. Maybe you’ve already thought about this, but give it a chance.

I’m allow you to steal it because I have no capital with which to build.

Also, I haven’t updated my blog in a bit, so here’s a random thought:

With a little bit of technology, some seed capital and a bit of faith, I can see brick and mortar bookstores staying alive if they can embrace e-books rather than shun them.

I state this because the digital realm must also embrace the brick and mortar stores in a joint effort.

Imagine if you will, the “inbetweeners”. These are the folks who are new recipients of an e-reader, and there are more and more everyday. They’re anxious to convert for any number of reasons, however, they’re still bound (pardon the pun) to paper because it’s all they’ve ever known.

I consider myself one of these people but I still adore bookstores and it saddens me when they fade one by one from my city. I peruse the shelves of the remaining stores, but I don’t buy anything because I’ve committed myself to the new technology to save paper not to mention the storage issues that come with books.

Why can’t I peruse a brick and mortar, hold the the book, touch the book, read a few pages and then press a sensor on the book to send my purchase to my e-reader via the stores in house database?

I’ve suddenly become a new type of customer.

One that stills enjoys the physicality of the books but not the ability to maintain a library. Look over there, I’ve purchased a cup of coffee and now I’m sitting in a comfy chair reading my new e-book I’ve just purchased. It’s a pleasant evening out away from the house to enjoy a past time that’s becoming extinct.

If the digital realm and the brick and mortar bookstore can find a place together, we’d be able to protect this dying tradition. Books will never complete go away, but the industry is ailing. This could save them.

The following post was a loving homage about my former car written for a contest on the Conan O’Brien show. On the show he asked people to send in stories about their cars. He would then pick one story and blow up the owner’s car on television.  I didn’t get picked, but I like my story none the less. That car kept me on the road for 14 years, took me across the United States several times, and was my best friend at times.

It was the summer of 1996.

I was 26, working odd jobs as a tape rewinder for Books on Tape in glorious Orange County, California. There wasn’t much work out there for a stage manager in those days; I took whatever job came my way as long as it was near a bus stop.

On my last day of work, as I walked away from the building, it started raining… a heavy coarse rain like never seen before. Dogs and cats were falling from the sky and I screamed to the heavens, why me? Why me, God?!

God answered my prayers in the form of a sparkling new deep emerald green machine…and so did my mother by co-signing the load contract to make it happen.

The days were good to us. I loved my car and it loved me.

Until 1998.

El Nino, jealous of my 4 door, automatic window, tilt back support, American made machinery, unceremoniously dropped a tree on the hood. Fortunately, my insurance covered the mischief of the storm and the hood was replaced, but replaced with what?

The sun ate away at the hood, ray by ray, peeling the delicate clear coat back like one painful hangnail after another…and that wasn’t all.

My car became a slave to the film industry. After dragging  jug after jug of artificial blood, sharp implements of destruction and mittens, the inside of my car looked like a teenager after his first shave.

I squelch my anger over these memories by gripping  the steering wheel, causing it to disintegrate faster.

So now, here it is 12 years, later. This once beautiful, yet sensible sedan is a limping visage of what it once was. There will be no Happy Happy Joy Joy songs over this GM POS any more. It doesn’t even deserve a home inside my garage because it pees oil constantly.

Please, Conan, if you have any sympathy, please give my baby what she deserves.  A powder keg of dynamite might be enough to send her to heaven where Saturns frolic on gleaming test tracks and long autobahns… oh who am I kidding.

This car is going to hell.

I’m a big fan of listia.com and I go out of my way to be humorous when writing descriptions of my products up for auction.

Going the extra mile not only entertains the viewer, but also helps sell what is most likely a mundane object. It’s also a way to keep your writing juices flowing and let’s face it; every little ounce of funny helps in this world.  I’ve included some of the comments my auctions have received for …well let’s be honest…for my amusement.  Not to worry, I won’t let the fame go to my head. Click image for full size.

I don’t speak much about myself on this blog because I try to keep my writing life and my personal life separate. I’m not famous, so who the F cares. I feel like opening up.

Someone on twitter recently asked: “If you could travel through space-time to any location or time, where/when & why?”.

This is a loaded question for me.  My answer would have to be: South Coast Repertory Theatre, 1999, Costa Mesa, California.  I would leave my 1999 self a note that read, “Leave the Play-Doh at Home”.

Cryptic enough isn’t it?  Only a few people would understand the reference.

After analyzing my initial answer it made me re-think everything in a Ghost of Christmas Past sort of way.  If the clay had been left at home, connections would not have been made, muses would have been destroyed and I might not have fully realized my passion to become a writer.  Or maybe I would have in another way or another time. The one thing I now know is that ten years of occasionally brushing up against the past has created a screenplay that is quite possibly about to be produced.  Am I angry about my choices? Sometimes. Looking back I was so naive and someone took advantage of that, whether consciously or unconsciously. The burn still stings.

But from the flames, the phoenix rises once more to assign memories I want to forget to characters I’ve put down on paper.  Let them worry about the past, because what was once mine is now theirs and I no longer have to mull over it.

I guess I’m satisfied with the direction I went. It’s hard to speculate where I would have ended up if I did leave the Play-Doh at home. I can’t imagine what life would have been like otherwise.

You might think the first film genre I’d stay away from as a writer would be porn, but actually it’s science fiction.   Blasphemy you cry!  We need more great science fiction in the face of a world that changes on a dime and is constantly on the brink of cultural annihilation.

I love science fiction with every fiber of my being and that’s precisely why I go out of my way to not write the type of stories I enjoy reading.

Insane, I know. But I’ve come to realize that every time I delve deeply into creating some form of entertainment I’m in love with,  a little bit of magic it once held is rubbed off never to be seen again.  Science Fiction is a fragile, jewel and gold encrusted crown to me. If I touch it, inspect it, try to recreate it, a gem may pop off or the gold might flake away.

I want to merely look at the crown and be awed.

Case in point: Theatre.  I LOVE the theatre. I’ve spent many years working backstage as a deck manager and truthfully I have enjoyed every word from back stage left.   I’ve seen the tricky magic bits that launch Scrooge’s blanket across the stage or the miraculous invisible door that Marley steps through in A Christmas Carol so many times I can’t count.

And with every opening night, with every pop of the cork, theatre glimmers a little less for me.  I can no longer sit in the audience without being taken out of the story. I will forever be wondering what the actors are talking about backstage before entering, or which fly rail brings in the backdrop or what a prop looks like up close rather than from the tenth row.

Why on this earth would I want to write hard science fiction (my favorite  sci fi), only to have it ruined for me, the eternal twelve year old sci fi junkie?  Perhaps there’s a lack of bravery in the mix. Perhaps I’m afraid of writing the next panned epic. Maybe. But I yearn to be entertained, and I want to be left thinking about the story, not the special effects or the props when I exit the movie theater.

Repeatedly, I have  started and restarted a science fiction television series, but with every page I write, I feel as if each page is a grain of sand passing through a hourglass which is consequently glued to the shelf.  Irrationally, I believe that if it is a great story, and I am successful with this, the love and worship I have for it (and science fiction) will be torn away.

Can a writer (or anyone else behind the scenes) be entertained like the average movie goer? By virtue of profession have we already broken the magician’s wand?

Am I fooling myself into thinking that the magic hasn’t already left in conjunction with years working backstage or on the set?

What do you think?