January 17, 2003
5:18pm Friday

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS LIKE I DO

I don't think I'd be very happy if my last name was Glasscock or Cockburn or Butts. These poor people, as if life wasn't hard enough. Lipschitz, too. Not good.

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I've been filling my hours with culture, or the closest thing 2003 in America's got to offer by way of it. I saw Morning's At Seven at the Ahmanson downtown, which was entertaining and had a great cast (the original Broadway people, I think), but still I'm sort of dumbfounded at what gets produced for the masses and is considered to be top-hit entertainment. Plays, I think, have gotten dumber in the past ten years. I don't even need Chekov or anything, but I want to have to think a little. I want to be moved. The good part was saying hello and "great show" to Paul Dooley afterwards as we walked past him, when what I should have added to it was, "Your wife is one of my favorite writers!" But alas, we all know I'm a dope when it comes to saying what I should be saying to the actors in this town.

Then I saw Chicago (the movie, not the play), and then I saw Adaptation, and then I rented Unfaithful after having a conversation with Gray about why I thought the boy at the video store checkout counter might be a better mate for me than him, which had everything to do with Dogtown & Z-Boys and 24 Hour Party People and New Order and nothing to do with actual divorce. I think maybe Diane Lane should get an Oscar for Unfaithful. A nomination, definitely. Richard Gere should get nothing. Adaptation was excellent for the first two acts... and then it lost me. Maybe that's a Spike Jonze thing to do, because I remember it happened in Malkovich, too. But I wanted to like it all the way through so much, and almost did. Almost.

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I'm reading The Lovely Bones and I think it's okay but totally nothing special, and it gives me new hope that what the American public wants isn't perfect literary fiction but just something with a decently entertaining story and a couple of dramatic tear-yanking scenes thrown in. Why I care about this I know not, because I can't write fiction to save my life.

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Burbank is not in fact heavenly, as indicated by the sign, which I know all too well after spending three days in San Clemente and then coming home and comparing.

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I take back my Safari kudos -- the one thing I absolutely need it to do it won't do and so I veto its existence: when uploading photos to ebay, it hangs and freezes forever. People won't buy what they can't see!

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What I said here the other day about becoming a TV writer's assistant or at least working in a TV show office and getting a script assignment via in-house inroads has paid off in the biggest way for my aforementioned friend, who not only got two script assignments, but now has been pulled into a staff writing job for what is one of TV's biggest shows. It works. It works indeed.

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Lastly, our favorite HGTV House Hunter hostess Ms. Suzanne Whang (pronounced Wong, of course. Wouldn't you?) will soon be starring in a Universal movie opposite Ben Stiller as an insurance agent. She'll be bringing all kinds of angst and ennui to that gig. Watch out, co-stars.