Here's
what I'm doing right now, I'm multitasking. I'm trying to buy a
turntable to convert all my old vinyl records to digital files,
which will be my Christmas present, and I'm also trying to license
a Tears For Fears song and a clip from a Jerry Lewis movie for the
needle documentary. Licensing is totally new to me and I don't know
what they're going to say it'll cost to use these things, but if
it's more than like a hundred bucks I'm going to have to modify
my plans. Fifteen seconds from a 1950 Jerry Lewis movie can't cost
more than that, right? The French want them to give it to me for
free. Also, the other day I made one call to the Southern California
Red Cross trying to get permission to film a blood drive, and they've
called me back seven times. Very thorough, those people. Or else
they want publicity. Or else they're just Hollywood whores.
===
Today
I was on PlaintiveWail
watching God, Inc., which is pretty funny and well-done, and then
I went to the guy's site that made it and found a link to a unique
screenwriting thing. This other guy started "One
Page 2006" where screenwriters post a single page of an
unproduced screenplay with no explanations or excuses accompanying.
I read them all, and they're mostly totally crap because they're
boring and nothing happens, except for Patricia Burroughs' page
one of her Nicholl script which was pretty active and visual. So
I thought about whether or not I'd like to post one and so set about
reading single pages of my latest script, an activity that quickly
enveloped and digested the hours of 9:30 to the present. Me, I am
a great big timewaster. So I'm reading single pages of my script
and quickly realizing that I fall into the shitty boring category,
which is fairly depressing. Almost as depressing as the fact that
I'm blasting Christmas music from the XM Satellite station in the
other room in an attempt to feel something, anything, Christmassy
before the baby Jesus' birthday arrives. But I guess I'll post one
so that you can see what a script page out of my brain looks like.
The
secret is that the missing ones are dead! You can see through it
even after one page. And yes, I did name a college-aged character
"Timmy."
===
28-week
ultrasound was yesterday, and I was very nervous but everything
is fine. At 28 weeks, you see, there is nothing to be done. If suddenly
they realize the baby is completely malformed or lacks three or
four limbs, that's what you'll get. So I heaved a big exhale when
they said "Everything looks good. But he's big." Given
that I weighed 6.5 pounds fully to term when I was born and Gray
clocked in under eight, I figured that even though we're gigantically
tall we'd have an average-sized baby. That is until the doctor said,
"He's gonna be a nine-pounder! He's three pounds right now.
And look how long those limbs are!" All Gray would say on the
way home was, "Small bowling balls are nine pounds!" And
it's not even his vagina.
The
good news is that the childbirth class instructor lady says that
tall women usually have faster labors, so I'll hold her to that.
I didn't really like her story about the tall lady who didn't think
there was any rush to leave home and then gave birth on the side
of the freeway on the way to the hospital, though.
Tomorrow,
more documentary footage will be made when I get my Rh-negative
shot of Rhogam. This happens because I'm blood type O-negative and
Gray's O-positive and if the baby's O-positive then my blood will
start attacking his blood if our blood mingles. There is so much
to know and be stressed about. Being pregnant is like being president;
you age like 40 years in an eighth of the time. And right now I'm
about eighty-three.
