March 24, 2003
10:37pm Monday

I LIKE TO READ A MURDER MYSTERY, I LIKE TO KNOW THE KILLER ISN'T ME

I steal tangerines every morning from a tree on the corner of my street. They're delicious, if seedy. I have a fundamental problem with fruit on trees going to waste. If I could reach the lemons on the tree in the yard behind me that houses the dog who tried to hump Paul once, believe me I would. Share your fruits, people.

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I have not much to say about the Oscars, save this: ha-HA you presumptuous bastard, Michael Moore! When liberal Hollywood boos you, you'd better sit your tired ass down!

And Steve Martin is funny but a lech. That is all.

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For a change, I'm working on something excellent. Last week, working on this Jamie Kennedy Experiment gone expandovision was really hard and not quite so rewarding, even though admittedly there are more difficult things in life than looking at Taye Diggs up close for long periods of time.

Christopher Guest is a genius, though, really. I got the script today and it's 29 pages with no dialogue - the whole thing is improvised. And watching it step-by-step and paying attention to how it's put together is a great education. I had an epiphany while watching the third reel when I found myself sort of clamoring to find out what happens at the end, and it hit me that Guffman, Best In Show and now this are all really successful at picking a huge event and placing it at the end of the movie, gearing everything towards it and making everything in the whole movie about it, filling the characters with intrinsic hysterical drama, and letting the momentum roll. It works really well.

On a semi-similar note, I wrote a short script that I plan to film soon, and I gave it to writers group #2 last week for some opinions. Reactions were favorable, save for one "too many talking heads" comment and a couple other minor detaily things. But these people don't give written comments and they all come to the group with nothing concrete to say and page through their email-printed scripts struggling for adjectives while I practically beg them for criticism. When the second person of the night to "present" (as they like to call it) finished receiving comments, I handed her two notebook-pages of scrawled notes I'd jotted while going through her script and said, "If you're interested, I wrote this stuff really quickly while reading." And everybody was like, "Ooo! Ahhh! You gave notes!" What the. I should be in charge.

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I wish I'd had a camera at Erasure so I could show you Andy Bell's hoop skirt and Gaultier-bustier. My friend and I reminisced (porn star had pit tickets and a backstage pass so he didn't hang out with us afterall, oh dear) about the first Erasure concert we saw together at the Hollywood Palladium when we were sixteen, how we drove two hours and hung out in Hollywood all day and how much fun we had and how we were sixteen! feeling so grown up back then. Ask me if I'd ever let any kid of mine drive from Bakersfield to Hollywood half a year into their driver's license to see a concert nowadays.

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Internet traffic school is over and congratulations, I passed. I have only this to say about it:

"If your car ever gets stuck in the snow or in deep mud there are many things you can do to get out: First, try putting your vehicle into low gear and straighten out your front wheels. Second, carefully press the gas pedal. Slowly drive forward as far as you can, then shift into reverse and drive backwards as you can. Then get into low and go forward again, driving the car back and forth. Do over and over until until the car is free of the snow or mud. If this doesn't work, try putting something under the wheels like carpet or grass or dirt to increase traction."

Why didn't I think of that. Durr! Carpet!

And...

"Brake lights are always red in color and must be located on both the front and rear of the vehicle."

I knew my car was defective, but where are my front-mounted under-headlight brake lights? Can I have my money back?