Darth Kittenlover

Pilots are Sexy

2004-04-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

Today I met a pilot at the Santa Monica Airport.

He's a nice guy, about my age, likes to hang out at the airport and watch the planes land. Santa Monica hosts both small general-aviation aircraft and the bigger corporate jets that fly regular interstate routes, and it's got only one runway, so it's interesting to watch how the controllers weave all the traffic together.

This guy I met has been taking flying lessons for a month or so, flying on average five days a week, an hour at a time. He's been a quick study, I guess, according to his instructor, who said that he'd qualified to solo more quickly than any student he's ever had.

Private pilot training is divided into two phases: basic flight training; that is, learning to take off, fly around, not crash, talk to controllers, land. This phase culminates in the solo flight, when the student flies the plane alone for the first time.

Then, once one knows how to fly, one learns navigation: reading maps, using navigation instruments, flying long trips from one airport to another to another.

Today was my friend's first solo flight. He flew with a different instructor, first, to get a second opinion: yes, his skills are such that we trust him in the plane alone. The different instructor taught much differently than his main instructor, having him do unfamiliar maneuvers and fly under different conditions, in a plane he was unfamiliar with. My friend was a little nervous.

But then he got back with his normal instructor, in the plane he'd learned in, and managed to pull himself together. They did touch-and-goes: circling the field, landing, taking off, circling again. Then he pulled the plane off the taxiway and let the instructor out.

It was sort of gusty, and there was a lot of air traffic in the area, and it was getting late in the day, but he pressed on; he took off, circled, got diverted on approach by the tower, and finally eased the plane down to kiss the pavement. "Nice job on final approach," the tower said, uncharacteristically conversational.

He gunned the engine, took off, and went around again. A perfect landing. And a third time: a little overeager; a little harder touching down. But nothing broken.

He taxied back to pick up his instructor, who shook his hand. "Congratulations!" The instructor wrote in my friend's logbook: "1st solo!!" Two exclamation points. One more than usual.

My new friend is a better driver than I am. He's more aware of his environment. He's working harder than I normally work, studying charts and regulations and procedures. He gets up a lot earlier than I do, and he is well on his way to a significant accomplishment: his Private Pilot certificate. Already, soloed, he has successfully performed an exceedingly difficult task that has a very narrow margin for error.

His plan, he told me, as we sat outside watching the air traffic come and go, is to fly to the airport where his father still visits. His father, once a pilot, now watches from the ground as his past climbs into the clouds. His father's health, he refuses to admit, is deteriorating.

His father knows nothing of his flying lessons, yet.

His plan is to fly to where his father sits watching, open the cabin door, wave his hand and say "Here I am, Dad. Hop in and I'll take you for a ride."

His name, as you may have guessed, is Me.

Xanga Sucks

2004-03-26T21:28:00.000-08:00

So I started clicking on random people's Xanga sites, just to see what's out there.

"it's march 1st! yayyy" reads one post, followed by about 16 comments all reading, approximately, "hi lol!!!1!!1!"

Another poster tells the world, "wow, it's been a month and a day since my last post. weird." He/she (the picture is of a llama) previously wrote about how "im such a slacker with this, sorry it's been forever since i've posted."

One girl describes how "I've been watching Full House a lot lately, it's sucha good show!! It's so sad sometimes, k this is boring". Her boyfriend responds to every post. "love you baby! And I miss having 249 with you a lot."

In pale pink type on a white background, one young man writes "wow it's so nice outside". Twelve people comment on this, saying, for instance, "haha" or "ITS A BEUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEGHBORHODD". This is Featured Content.

More Featured Content, from a different site: "im devil and im here to say im best damn rapper in the USA heayyaa". Six comments, including one prolonged transcript of a chat session, in which sWeEtKiSsEz describes how:

"now greg is calling me a prep cuz i like justin i guess
and i am no way in hell a prep
im a punk/athelete
did u see my outfit today?
total punkish"

Some blogs are meticulous accounts of the writer's daily life. Some seem to be comprised mainly of transcriptions of songs, set against a huge background photograph that makes the text hard to read. Other sites are artful, insightful and/or entertaining. But a lot seem to be just words arranged haphazardly, with a careful precise imperfection. As if you threw a bowl of alphabet soup against the wall, and then went through and misspelled all the words that were accidentally formed.

Then I found a site featuring multi-page essays written by a seventeen-year-old guy:

"After I met the man I sat on a bench in the park and I saw a woman get taken up to heaven and squirrels talk to each other in an unknown language and lives change and exsistences become different. I saw a man who glowed and a man who faded into the background like a chameleon and I only saw him because he was standing by a brick wall and looked like brick and a truck drove past and he could not change quickly enough. So I counted myself lucky."

Every day or two this guy writes these long essays, with fifty or a hundred comments from readers, with raw, adolescent boredom and sadness wrapped up together. There's such a volume of it, imaginative and rough, and edged, as if it's written with charcoal.

I clicked on a link, and was taken to his livejournal page, where he's written even more ... poems, here, and stories, and more traditional blogging in a conversational tone, and it quickly becomes apparent that his xanga page is a certain type of creative outlet for him, and his livejournal is another.

To have an outlet wherein you write the same way every time, where that screen eventually conditions you to adapt a certain mindset, the same way that your e-mail login page conditions you to type your password ... to adopt that sort of discipline as a young writer is very important, I imagine, since I never had it. Here on this page I'll vary wildly in tone and subject matter, as do most of us, and as a result it always takes time to settle into a style for the day, and it's never long until I'm done and the next post will be different, and the style flounders, infant.

Ray Bradbury's an example of someone who's nurtured and developed a style. His words crackle like ball lightning, never settling, dancing alight each concept, daring you to comprehend before they press on into the night. I'm listening to this book on CD, in my car, and when I concentrate and listen it's like standing in a waterfall, weight pouring on me, trying to drink, feeling heavy and elated together.

Oddly, it's very easy to get distracted from this book, sitting in traffic, realizing suddenly that I've been thinking about the chemical composition of jet contrails and a paragraph's gone by and I've missed it. The words are oil-slick, loose and wriggling, and they have to be clutched and examined and tasted, or they slide off and flip away.

When I listen, they crush me, steamrolling with imagery. When I glance away, they pass by; but I glance quickly after and think back and still see the faint afterimage behind my lids. I hear the ringing echo and feel the warmth left in the air from their presence, like Montag in 'Fahrenheit 451'. Even when I don't hear them, they pass through me, speaking directly to my dreams. I drive, late on an empty freeway:

"Three in the morning," thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed, "why did the train come at that hour?"

For, he thought, it's a special hour; women never awake, then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men, in middle age: they know that hour well. Oh, God!

Midnight's not bad; you wake, and go back to sleep. One or two's not bad; you toss, but sleep again. Five or six in the morning; there's hope, for dawn's just under the horizon.

But three, now, Christ. Three A.M.

Doctors say the body's at low tide then. The soul is out, the blood moves slow; you're the closest to dead you'll ever be, save dying. Sleep is a patch of death. But three in the morn, full, wide-eyed staring, is living death. You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rise up, you'd slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot; but no, you lie, pinned to a deep well-bottom that's bone dry.

Regarding the AIM/FAR 2004

2004-03-24T00:19:00.000-08:00

Got a few hours to kill? Need a nap? Try this book. Put me out like a light, sitting in the Burbank Public Library parking lot at three in the afternoon. I half-awoke a few times, sure that the kids were laughing at me. Maybe they were. I couldn't tell.

I did learn this, however: Shuffling about the library with swollen cheeks, a week's scruffy beard, unkempt hair and a general malaise gets me the exact same looks from cute high school chicks as does my everyday dashing self.

The only possible explanation, of course, is that I'm just that magnetic.

And it's nice of them to glance quickly away and not look back. Polite. It's a bit awkward to have everyone constantly undressing me with their eyes.

I Coulda Used the Wisdom in Those Teeth

2004-03-22T13:55:00.000-08:00

I don't know what's worse, being chained to the couch taking Vicodin and Extra Strength Tylenol and eating applesauce, or being well enough to go back to work.

On Friday, the dentist lay me down and peered into my mouth. He had a bad comb-over and, Nikki told me later but I didn't notice at the time, what apparently appeared to be half his jaw missing. "What do you do for a living?" he said,

"I'm an editor," I said.

"Really, okay. What newspaper, what magazine?"

"Film," I said, his flashlight in my mouth.

He blinked twice. "The talkies, I guess, huh?"

"Um," I said. "Yeah."

Later they lay me on a slab, strapped me down and knocked me out. Next thing I knew I was waking up. I was still drugged out of my mind, but I was determined to remain lucid. I ran facts through my head as quickly as I could. I stumbled and was guided into a wheelchair, into which I slumped heavily. I could think, but couldn't speak.

They gave me pills. Wheeled me out to the car. I remembered what they'd told me before the surgery.

The receptionist/assistant rattled off her list from rote memory. "No typing with the right hand, use a pen to tap the keys," she said.

I cocked my head. "Because of the IV?"

She nodded. "No heavy lifting, no milk on the first day, no mouthwash for a few weeks, no brushing today, when you do brush, it's down on the top, up on the bottom, no up and down motion for a while."

Who thinks of this stuff?

"You might not go back to work until Wednesday," the dentist told me.

So on the long ride home I called my boss. The same boss that had regaled me with tales of his own wisdom teeth extraction, when they didn't use the IV sedation, when he heard every snapping tendon and tearing ligament.

"Stu," I said, my mouth stuffed with bloody gauze.

"How are you feeling?"

"Just wanted to give you a head's-up," I said. "Dentist said I might be out 'til Wednesday."

"Your dentist is on crack," he said. "I've had that done. You rest up, and call me Monday morning."

The weekend was spent lying on the couch, icing my face, timing the pills so I took enough to dull the pain but not enough to give me liver damage. Gargle with warm salt water every two hours. Ice fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes off. The sheet they sent with me said "Spaghettios [sic] are tasty and nourishing." Who thinks of this stuff?

For the past three nights, my mouth has waked me at four AM to take more Vicodin. I really don't want to be on these drugs. I've been taking Tylenol as much as possible to avoid the Vicodin. Last night I tried to go to sleep without taking anything. That was a mistake.

When the drugs are active, I feel fine. A little sore, maybe. The Vicodin doesn't make me spacey. A little run down, of course. But I'm functional. Lethargic yet lucid.

But I called my boss this morning. "Stu," I said.

"How's it going?"

"I don't think I'm going to make it in tonight."

He called me a pussy. I fumbled for an explanation. "I don't think I should be driving on this Vicodin, anyway."

"You're still on Vicodin? After three days?"

"I've been trying to take Tylenol, but it's only so strong."

He sighed. "Fine. But if you have to stay out after tomorrow, I need a doctor's note."

"Sure," I said as he hung up.

Now, if ever I had a valid excuse to stay home from work, I think this is it. But I know we're a little short-handed at the moment. My two night shift co-workers are a new guy still learning the ropes and a guy who's totally burned out, who's staggered in like a zombie for the last two weeks. So I know why they want me back, and I feel a little guilty about staying home.

But dammit, I don't feel good. My own personal health is more important than whether it means the day shift has to stay a few hours overtime tonight. And although I physically could sit in traffic for an hour and fumble through the night, I don't want to.

And I shouldn't want to. I'm in the right here. Then why do I feel like I'm just rationalizing? Why do I have to sit here and convince myself?

Les Printemps

2004-03-09T01:07:00.000-08:00

How do I know it's Spring?

When I step out of my car at 4:00 am, in the tender hours before the dawn, and I can smell the blooming flowers before the dew dries. The fragrance escorts me through the night.

That, and it was ninety degrees today...

Obligatory Comic-Book Post

2004-03-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

So, let's see what's in the news:

"Its market share slipping, Image Comics has made a change at the top, replacing Jim Valentino, who resigned this week as Publisher, with Erik Larsen."

Hmm. Well, as the one Image founder that's actually consistently put out a book in the decade-plus since Image has been founded, I guess that's good.

"Larsen promised changes under his leadership, including a shift to more superhero books from Valentino's emphasis on "cutting edge, alternative comics. '....[M]y roots are in the more mainstream camp,' Larsen said."

Ah. I see. Because Image's market share is slipping.

"Industry sources have told Internal Correspondence the other Image partners thought that Valentino was taking Image in too much of an 'alternative' comics direction and that they feel that Larsen will be able to nudge the company more toward the mainstream and provide more support for Image's top-selling comic book titles."

Sounds like Miramax. Indie-turns-mainstream. Indie cred lost as market share rises. Erik Larsen the new Harvey Weinstein? Too early to tell.

Image Comics started out as a rebuttal to market-leader Marvel's tradition of corporate ownership of intellectual property. Image's comics are all creator-owned, not publisher-owned. Thus, the theory goes, the risk is off of the publisher and onto the creator. So there's little to be lost in publishing all kinds of stuff, and the market will determine what it wants.

Initially the Image books -- things like Spawn, Youngblood, Savage Dragon, WildC.A.T.S., StormWatch -- in other words, things you may have heard of ten years ago if at all -- were as revolutionary in the arena of mainstream comics as the intellectual property argument was in the arena of comic book copyrights.

After the initial boom, the '90s begat a bubble of Internet proportions around self-indulgent, often-late, often-mediocre comic books. Image's improvements in physical production led to industry-wide upgrades in paper quality and color. Cover prices rose.

Image began to splinter almost immediately. Many of the seven founders -- defectors from Marvel, all -- founded their own "imprints" from which to publish the kinds of books they liked. Jim Lee's WildStorm was eventually bought by Marvel's rival DC. Rob Liefeld's Extreme changed names and publishers a couple times in a slow process of implosion.

Jim Valentino's Top Cow has had arguably the most success long-term, not discounting the meteoric rise and slow fade of Todd McFarlane's Spawn title (McFarlane has now parlayed his comic book success into action figure sales, and singlehandedly introduced a revolution in quality in the world of action figures. He has all but left Image Comics behind). And so Jim Valentino has been Publisher at Image, in that office park on Batavia just south of Katella.

Other ground-level publishers have risen to fill the void the Image initially carved out of Marvel, and Marvel itself under indie-makes-good chief editor Joe Quesada has reinvented itself and rescued itself from a late 1998 bankruptcy. Image's 15-20% market share in the mid-nineties, thanks largely to a sheer volume of mediocre titles plus a few megahits like Spawn, has been gobbled up by all the other indies that Image paved the way for. It's as if Ralph Nader became Secretary of State or something, and it opened the floodgates for third-party candidates.

Meanwhile, in the office park on Batavia, Jim Valentino quietly left the door open behind him. A haven for comic creators with no fear of a corporate machine chewing up and destroying their characters, Jim Valentino's Image has offered to accept submissions and help independent comic creators publish and distribute their work, supplying high-end services like computer color, printing, and distribution. It's as if Disney was looking for home-grown Pixars.

And while all this has been happening, in the background Erik Larsen, an Image co-founder, has been writing and drawing his book Savage Dragon, now improbably at issue #113. The most no-nonsense Image founder, Larsen has proven himself to be a sensible businessman. I have no doubt that Image's new superhero attitude, meant to distance itself from the clamoring hordes of low-run indie comics and reestablish itself as a powerhouse in the marketplace, will be profitable.

The question, though, is whether it will be any good. Image's first popular titles, like Spawn and Youngblood, were a reaction against traditional superhero fare and helped to change a genre's dynamic across the entire industry. The natural progression, as that succeeded, was toward less and less traditionally mainstream content, helping to bring new ideas to the marketplace. Broadly-drawn superhero books like Supreme fizzled out in favor of darker, more genre-ambiguous titles like Witchblade, The Darkness, and Fathom; and fantasy flourished with titles like Battle Chasers.

Marvel, meanwhile, has reinvented its superhero shelves with its Ultimate editions of Spider-Man, X-Men and other popular titles; also, it caters to less clean-cut tastes with its Marvel Knights line. Perhaps the time is here for Image to gently curve back towards the largest market in the industry, but if so, the void that Image once occupied with left-of-mainstream superhero books isn't there waiting for Image to return, and the indie fare that it helped nurture now clutters the shelves.

And the door that Jim Valentino left open to aspiring creators? Only time will tell if Erik Larsen will prop it open with a cardboard cutout of Superman, or perhaps close it altogether. Superheroes and comic books were born together, so it's no stretch to assume that superhero fare will bring buyers back to Image. Whether it be a regression or a renaissance, only time will tell what the future holds for aspiring creators like Stephen and, yes, myself -- creators writing the types of books that Image used to publish.

See Ya

2004-02-11T22:39:00.000-08:00

I gave back our apartment keys today. This is the first time I've moved for no reason.

I mean, I moved to go to college, and then again when they were gonna tear down Cheverton, and then to L.A. to make my place in the world. And sure, it's not a bad thing; the new place is bigger, and nicer, and has more fun places for the cats to explore.

But it's weird, you know, to suddenly pull up roots and change addresses and enlist people with pickups and sign leases and paint the walls and everything. To go to all this effort, just out of the blue. If I was moving cross-country I'm sure I'd have pared down my possessions. But across town? Hell, just throw everything in the trunk!

TCF tells the story of moving across campus at college -- he'd just throw stuff in his car, thinking "it's not even a block away, I'll just make as many trips as I need." He didn't bother to Tetris all his stuff together efficiently. So then he's trying to unpack, running up and down stairs like a sucker, you know, with handfuls of pens or whatever, and it still took forever.

But I digress.

There's something about spackling. About covering up all the holes I've made in the walls over the last couple of years. About purposefully trying to erase any evidence of my having been there. About rendering the last few years moot. About covering my tracks. About erasing my history. About starting fresh.

But not quite, because when I pull the screws from the wall, a little plaster buckles outwards ... and even when I sand down the spackle, a little mosquito bite bump remains in the wall.

If I scratch it, my fingers are dusted with plaster. Dust flies as I sand down the wall. Unconsciously, I scratch my nose. Had I been pulled over, I'd look like a cokehead. A cokehead with a trunk full of guns, no less.

That little mosquito bite, or that stain that barely still shows through a new layer of paint, that will last a day and then vanish when they repaint again -- that's my legacy there. The fuzzy corners I put into the cabinets so the doors don't slam. The screws I put into the refrigerator shelf. The wire I used to fix the chain in the toilet tank. I was here. And damn it, I made this place better.

There's something about leaving a place changed.

About looking at the impressions in the carpet where the couch was, or the table, or the bookshelf, and knowing that the impressions won't come out.

About knowing that if I come back next week, the walls will be repainted, the carpet replaced, but maybe, someone soon will check their mail and find something addressed to me ... and briefly, perhaps, they'll wonder:

Who lived here?

Drivin' Like an Old Person

2004-02-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

Tonight, everyone passed me on the freeway.

Tonight, I drove like an old person. (Except I went around the Santa Monica Farmer's Market, not through it.)

My hands at ten and two on the wheel, firmly within my own lane.

I think my driving is like my handwriting. Quick, loose and scribbly. But I'm an artist, and when I want to take the time, I can make my handwriting look perfect and neat. Tonight, my driving was like that.

I'd like to become a stunt driver. So I could become an artist with the car, too.

The roads are empty at three in the morning. The freeways are wide.

In a metropolitan area with a population of about nine million, you pass people you'll never see again. And so you wonder.

What's the story with the skinhead cab driver? Is his forehead scarred from a knife fight or a can opener? His scowl borne of racist hatred or rapper thuggishness? Was his career choice dicated by family tradition, maybe, or did his research grant fall through?

And, more interestingly, what's the story with the sad-looking girl in his back seat, who's watching the streetlights pass without really seeing them?

The schizo homeless guy at Edgewood & La Brea bows to you sometimes. Sometimes he's there at four AM. Sometimes he's gone at eleven PM. I thought that was weird, his inconsistency, until I realized he didn't have a watch.

What's the story with the slumped figure, sleeping on a countertop inside the Toluca Lake post office at 2:40 AM?

The freeways are wide and empty. It's easy to not notice how fast you're going. Last night, I got a ticket.

I saw someone pulled over earlier last night. Pulled over on an onramp to the 101. "Wouldn't that suck," I thought, "if I got pulled over tonight?"

I sped on. "Wow, I'm going pretty fast," I think I even thought. "Good thing that cop was way back there."

If I had a baseball card, it would have stats on the back:

Years of driving: 8, including learner's permit.

Major, car-totaling accidents: 3
Number that were my fault: 0
(Although I guess I could drive more defensively. Next time I'll be more assertive while waiting at a red light, and maybe a police chase won't terminate in my trunk.)

Minor accidents: 6
Number that were my fault: 4

Fender benders: 10, that I can remember.
Number that were my fault: 9

Pulled over by police: 8, plus 1 red-light camera.
Resulted in a ticket: 6
Pulled over within the last month: 3
Resulted in a ticket: 2
That I am going to contest in court: 1

Parking tickets: 6 or so, but nobody counts those.

Insurance premium: (whimper)

The worst part is, though, the thought that maybe I should put limits on myself. What I mean is, all through school you're taught that you can be whatever you want to be, do whatever you want, all that b.s. ... and one of the things that I want to accomplish in my life is getting a pilot's license.

Well, if I'm this bad a driver, maybe I shouldn't even attempt a pilot's license. I mean, why risk it? I hope I'd be a good pilot, since it's an entirely different skill -- just like no matter how bad a driver I am, I'm still a decent editor. I hope I'd pay close attention, and be very safe.

But the consequences would be so great, maybe I shouldn't allow myself that opportunity to fail.

I've Tried to Deny It

2004-02-06T03:36:00.000-08:00

I'd hate for it to be my destiny. Tonight, when again this trait reared its demon head and spat acid in my eye, I felt nothing but anger -- at myself, for failing.

For what it's worth, I'd like to disown it, like my felonious cousins.

But as much as it pains me ...

Unfortunately, I am the worst driver I know.

If it hadn't been for Mike's tales of the seven seas and the strange wonders of the far-flung globe, I'd almost say that I'm the worst driver I've ever even heard of.

Who Is This Man I Just Met?

2004-01-29T23:12:00.000-08:00

My dad just had one of these surgically implanted in his chest.

He woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks ago, gasping and choking. They took him to the hospital. He had an arrythmia -- his heart was beating too quickly to pump any blood. His heart was beating 240 times per second. His body was starved for oxygen. They gave him the paddles. They saved his life.

See, several years ago my dad had chemotherapy to treat a lymphoma in his stomach. They gave him the maximum recommended lifetime dose of a particular drug. Then, a few years later, the cancer returned, this time in his lymph nodes.

The oncologist, whether through error or indifference, administered more of the same chemotherapy drug that he'd already had the lifetime recommended dose of.

With the second dose, the risk of irreversible heart damage increased exponentially. My dad developed congestive heart failure -- he, who'd had a heart like an ox, working incessantly even into his 70s.

He became short of breath. He had to take pills. He lost his FAA medical certification and thus, his pilot's license. My parents sued and got a malpractice settlement from the oncologist. Money that didn't change the fact that a few weeks ago, my dad woke up in the night, gasping and choking.

Now, he's got the defibrillator implanted. If his heart rhythm goes haywire again, this device will sense it and deliver the shock to 'reset' the heartbeat. It's like having paramedics with paddles, just waiting on standby in one's chest cavity.

There's no telling if the defibrillator will ever be called into action. He's taking pills to treat the arrythmia -- pills whose side effects include possible thyroid, liver and lung damage -- to prevent ever needing a shock, hopefully. But there still exists significant risk.

What it means pragmatically is that he will have to have checkups every few months for the rest of his life. Currently, he can't drive for at least several months until the doctors determine that his condition is stable. He owns a garage, and he can't drive. He was repairing trucks for the British Army in Palestine during World War II, and he can't drive. He once leapt back and forth from a jeep to a tractor, driving them both across 100 miles of Syrian farmland, and now he can't drive.

They had to transfer him to a hospital in L.A. to do the implantation, so I was the family member closest to him. I showed up early at the hospital and found his room. They'd transferred him from the Fontana hospital the night before, taken him from his family to a place he'd never been in preparation for a procedure that he was very nervous about.

When I walked through the door, his sunken cheeks, drizzled with two weeks' worth of white beard, lifted in a smile. "There's my boy," he told the nurse. "This is my son David." And his voice cracked, and he reached for me, and I had never heard him cry before.

My mom had been very upset that the hospital hadn't taken his diabetes into consideration when providing meals. It had been a point of pride for him to control his blood sugar with diet and exercise. Lying in bed, day after day, had driven his blood sugar dangerously high. They gave him insulin for the first time. He listened to the nurse read off his blood sugar readings. "I've never had it this high," he said. "Unbelieveable."

He had some pretty severe mood swings. The doctor wanted to put him on antidepressants. I declined. I was determined to be his antidepressant, myself.

He wanted to know if I was going to church. I knew it would set him so at ease if I was. I didn't say anything. "You should find a church. Lots of good churches out there," he said.

We got to talking about family. "Like to see you settle down," Dad said. "Get a Master's, while you've got the chance. Have some security."

My only brother has no biological children, although he has one adopted son. My sisters have kids with different last names.

Dad got kind of quiet. "I'd like to see an [our last name] grandchild before I die."

He lay in that hospital bed, listening to doctor after doctor deliver their own brand of shackles: the appointments; the medicines, with possible side effects. At first he was hopeful that with the defibrillator installed, he'd be able to reapply for his pilot's license. Now, he can't even drive.

Watching his face fall with every succesive pronouncement, I felt as if my own heart was failing. I read all the forms and pamphlets. I pestered the nurses to remove the IVs, to allow him to dress, to give him the dignity of walking down the hall instead of being pushed in a wheelchair like an invalid. Hospital policy dictates that discharged patients must ride in wheelchairs, to protect the hospital from lawsuits if they fall on their way out. I refused this. My dad had been off his feet long enough.

I helped him dress. I pulled on his socks and tied his shoes. I helped him pull on his sweater. He can't move his left arm above his head for eight weeks, while the surgery heals. His hands were purple from bruising where they'd stuck IV needle after IV needle.

He walked slowly down the hall, face gently downed with beard, his glasses off, shuffling a bit, hands clasped, thin from the half-eaten meals. For once, without the ubiquitous baseball cap and toothpick. He looked so different. So ... beaten.

I drove him home to San Bernardino during rush hour. I called in sick to work. We took a shortcut that wasn't very short. I drove more carefully than I think I ever have.

The first sign that I knew he was going to be okay was when he began to complain about my driving. "Stay in this lane," he said. "Let them pass you, if they want to pass you. Don't go too fast. You don't want to get a ticket."

I called him the next day and his voice came through the phone vigorously, strong and quick. I smiled. I asked him how he was, although I could already tell.

"I'm fine, dad," he said. He has a strange, Arabic custom of calling me dad instead of son. "How are you? Doing good? How's that car? You checking water and oil? Come by sometime during the day, I'll have Juan change the oil for you."

Take an entire day, drive hours out of my way for an oil change I could get for $19.95 at Jiffy Lube?

He's my dad. I'm there.

Good To Know

2004-01-24T18:56:00.000-08:00

In my opinion, chocolate-dipped beef jerky was a success. Not quite a resounding success, but a triumph of ingenuity over logic all the same.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for milk chocolate and cheddar cheese.

In this, as in so many of life's little mysteries, I was wrong.

Hearing Is Believing

2004-01-17T14:26:00.000-08:00

In three weeks, Nikki and I will be moving to a new, bigger, better place in West L.A. This will reduce her commute by about 50%. It will reduce my commute by about -100%.

So now comes the unpleasant prospect of sitting idly on the 405, fighting through canyon traffic on one of the four roads that lead over the hill from L.A. to the Valley, losing radio reception, and letting the quiet rumbling of my diesel lull me into another world. I have to be at work at 6pm, although typically I try to arrive by 5 so my drive happens in the 4:00 hour instead of later. With the new place, for appreciable time savings I’d have to leave in about the 2:00 hour. Which leaves me with time to kill.

The Buena Vista branch of the Burbank Public Library has become my friend. It’s two blocks from work and it has lots of quiet nooks with plugs for one’s laptop. Even the lady who glared at me, chomping deafeningly on cough drops, and then admonished me for the volume of my cell phone couldn’t dampen my spirits. Pity there aren’t more books there.

A much wider selection can be found at the Central branch, down the road a few miles. The Central branch is the kind of library you dreaded going to back in the days when you couldn’t research a term paper from your computer. The librarians are all dough-faced old ladies or mildly retarded teenagers with faces like a bulldog who’s been kicked by a brick. The bathroom is the kind of place I made a mental note of in case I need a dingy, dismal scene for some future movie. The place reeks of kid sweat and boredom.

I decided I’d like to read more by Chuck Palahniuk, so I look him up whenever I’m at the Buena Vista branch. Everything’s always checked out. Until the other day, when I found that the Central branch had an audiorecording of his book Choke.

So I trooped down to the Central branch, held my breath and found the audiobook section. Choke was a Book On CD. The Books On CD shelf was sandwiched between classical music CDs and the Mack Bolan: Executioner section of Books On Tape. There were all of about twelve titles, most of them things like How to Organize Your Existence. I had to ask for Choke. It had just been returned and was still by the circulation desk.

“What’s this about?” asked Dough-Face #6.
“Pretty popular, eh?” I said.
“I was just curious. There’s no summary or anything of it anywhere.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really know the plot. It’s by the author of Fight Club.”
“Ah,” she said, as if that explained everything, and yet nothing.

I thought maybe I could listen to it while doing something boring at work, or while getting dressed at home or something. It’s seven hours long. It languished in my car for a few days. I found myself wishing I had an iPod so I could listen to it in the car.

Then it struck me. At a red light I fired up my laptop. Started it playing. Turned down the screen brightness to save the battery. I’d never heard a book on tape. I didn’t know what to expect.

Music greeted me. A deep announcer’s voice. “Random House Audible presents Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk,” the voice said. It pronounced it PAL-uh-nuk. “Read by the author.”

Was this creepy, actor’s baritone the voice of the author? No, I discovered. Chuck Palahniuk had a vaguely nowhere accent and an even cadence that tended to make sentences sound sort of inquisitive. He read his work without much of the inflection that an actor would bring to the stage. His rhythms brought something more, perhaps, to the text than the way they probably appeared on the page, than the way I would have read them.

Occasionally he stumbled. He stopped for a breath before a nine-syllable medical term. He got a few steps ahead of himself sometimes, and broke the cadence of a sentence. It was nice. It was like he was Homer or something, telling the story around a fire, dredging it verbatim from perfected memory, breezing through vulgarities with the detachment of penance after confession.

When I got to work, I had a peculiar feeling like I’d just been at that red light, that I didn’t remember the rest of the drive. I’d been perfectly alert; my driving hadn’t suffered. But I think I found a way to make that impending commute tolerable.

A True Story

2003-12-29T11:50:00.000-08:00

Mr. & Mrs. Eldred Whipple of Grand Oak Falls, Nebraska saw the flashing banner while checking their e-mail.

Be on a Reality TV Show!

Eldred clicked it by accident, and then six new browser windows opened in quick succession. He blinked at the flurry.

Myrtle fetched her reading glasses. Eldred turned on the desk lamp. They squinted at all the rules and regulations.

Winners Flown First-Class to Hollywood, CA!

They couldn’t print the forms so Myrtle copied them, word-for-word, on the Underwood typewriter. Then she and Eldred sat around the old iron stove and asked each other the questions. The forms were eighteen pages long. The questions were designed to tell the producers what type of people they were, and whether they’d be interesting to watch on TV.

How long have you and your partner lived together?

“Do we count the years I was out in Korea?” Eldred said.
“I think probably,” Mildred replied.

What is the most difficult thing you and your partner have accomplished together?

“Filling out this damn form,” Eldred snorted.

Myrtle wrote their answers in the blanks in her careful, looping script.

“Go ahead and finish mine,” Eldred said, shrugging into his slippers and heading off to bed.

What one thing would you change about your partner?

Myrtle’s pen hovered over Eldred’s form.

“I wish she let me help out more around the house,” she wrote.

**

They came in from chores a few nights later and Myrtle noticed that the forms were still sitting on the kitchen table.

“When does it have to be postmarked?” she asked Eldred.

They raced into town in the old truck. The post office was almost closed. George Simmons had just shut off the porch light.

Eldred blocked the front door with his truck.

“Eldred, you old sumbitch,” George said.

He took the envelope from Eldred’s hand and tossed it behind the counter, towards the mail bin. Then he bolted the front door, took up Lenny’s leash and led the old hound to the truck.

**

There was no response from Hollywood in the next day’s mail, nor the next.

Eldred and Myrtle watched network television every night after chores. Excited announcers promised the new season of reality television, new twists and fresh ideas for America’s viewing enjoyment.

Myrtle looked up from her cross-stitch. “Isn’t that the one we applied to?”

The announcer promised that “you’ve never seen reality as extreme as this.” He said it was “the ultimate in reality competition.” He said there would be roadkill eating, bikini marathons and the hourly elimination of contestants. He said it was a reality show without the cumbersome trappings of reality.

The Whipples were very excited.

“You’d think we’d have heard something by now,” Myrtle said.
“That’s how these things work,” Eldred said. “They’ll probably show up on the porch any day now, cameras and all that, and then we’ll be on TV.”

Myrtle started wearing her hair in curls all the time, even when doing chores.

**

The first episode was a two-hour special that aired on a Tuesday night. The Whipples weren’t on it.

George Simmons found the Whipples’ application on the floor behind the mail bin. He didn’t tell them. He didn’t want them to know what an incompetent postmaster he was.

He set the envelope on a shelf back with the dry goods and stared at it through his entire lunch, every day, one hand idly scratching Lenny's head. Lenny didn't judge him.

**

Incredibly, the Communist Chinese attacked Grand Oak Falls, Nebraska.

They dropped paratroopers into cornfields by the thousands. Their plan was to start in the center and spread outwards, like chocolate syrup in a glass of milk.

Every one an only child, every one armed to the gills, every one bent on corporeal destruction without regard for individual self-preservation. They began by burning the wheat fields.

The sky bronzed with ash. The Whipples woke to an apocalypse.

Eldred pulled on suspenders and straightened his bowtie. Myrtle hurriedly pulled the curlers from her hair, tossing them anywhere.

George Simmons was on Page 14 of Myrtle’s application. He heard a thronging. He looked up. Pulled up his pants and exited the bathroom. Stepped on Lenny's tail. Lenny turned his arthritic neck and bit George in the calf.

The Communists had overrun the store. The dry goods were gone. The wet goods were wet. The walls were collapsed into the street.

The town was burning.

Regimented ranks of AK-47 muzzles marched over the cornstalks. Eldred and Myrtle stood proudly on their front porch. Napalm rained on their livestock. Burning flesh filled their lungs.

“It’s a shame, in a way,” Eldred said.
“Shh,” Myrtle said.
“Take me three weeks to rebuild that shed,” Eldred said.
“We’re going to be on TV,” Myrtle said.

The Communists arrived at the Whipples’ front porch.

“Would you like some juice or milk before we begin?” Myrtle asked them.

The Communists in the front ranks traded a glance.

“Don’t mind her. Welcome to Grand Oak Falls,” Eldred said. “So, what do we do?”
Myrtle leaned close to him and whispered in his ear. “I think our reactions are what make good TV,” she said.

Eldred nodded. He took three steps down the front porch, socked a Communist in the jaw, wrenched the AK-47 from his grip and mowed down a dozen of the suckers before they piled on him like a quarterback.

Myrtle grinned. Her cheeks glowed. They’d probably use this footage in the promos.

Homeland Security

2003-12-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

There’s a lot of things you can’t do at airports – joke about bombs, for example, or brag about the sly way you snuck the porcelain howitzer past the metal detector. One thing you can do in abundance, though, is watch and observe people.

Airports are a distinctly middle-class haunt, like Robinsons-May. There are no homeless people at the boarding gates, no crudely hand-lettered sign asking for spare change as you avert your eyes, crossing onto the jetway; neither are there quadrillionaires spooking the waiting area, wearily reshouldering the free duffel bag from the bank or glowering through a magazine. (Though I was on a plane with Ben Stein once. He was in first class, and neither glowering nor begging.)

It can be a game:

When the guy I’d pegged as an Unreal Tournament maven and devoted Slashdotter sighed, pulled up his dark socks above his worn sneakers and started leafing through Wired, I was vindicated.

It was surprisingly easy to pair up yin and yang, to assign arbitrary partnerships to passengers and thus construct balance in the universe. The doughy English professor with the stuffed notebook, abandoned hair and herringbone coat fit like a lumpy socket into the too-thin, too-blonde, too-tan Mexico veteran one-upping her fellow travelers (“Did you have those people trying to sell you stuff everywhere? Yeah? We didn’t.” “Well, sure we did – until we got back to our resort. So isolated. No cell phone service, no ATM – nothing.”

The loping, dew-chinned guy yanged into the yin of what may have been either a pregnant midget or an obese child.

The off-duty skycap offered me half an orange. I refused, though I was starving. A second later I wondered if maybe I made a mistake. A look clouded his eyes, like I’d offended him. I’d soon learn that his culture was enough different from mine that it was a real possibility.

Him: “I’m from Fiji Islands.”

He went on to tell me, in an accent that was just short of incomprehensible although his fluency was excellent, all about starting out as a flight attendant, moving all over and finally settling in L.A. “For my kids’ education. My son is a doctor, now, in Vancouver. My daughter is a senior at UCLA. She skipped a grade.”

He then goes on to tell me about his two wives. Apparently in Fiji you can have up to four.

“Two wives, eh?” I say. “Do they know about one another?”

“They are sisters,” he says.

Seems that he married a girl – his first wife – and she got pregnant. (Perhaps the pregnancy led to the marriage; his accent meant I got about every fourth word.) As per the culture, she went to stay with her parents during her pregnancy, and he was visiting her every weekend. The 50-mile trek to see her began to take its toll.

So by the time my friend’s kid was born, he was smitten with his wife’s 16-year-old sister. If he left his wife, since she had a child she wouldn't be beating suitors away with a stick, and thus would have to live, husbandless, with parents or family.

So, in a brave show of manliness and responsibility, he eloped to America with the 16-year-old.

He laughed. “You got to do it, you know? What am I gonna do? She’s pregnant, you know, I hadn’t had sex for so long.”

The wife, in shame, lived with his brother. I think the brother may have eventually married her too, or else one of her other sisters. “He said he wants to marry her, but I said you don’t want that, you know?” His brother and his wife didn’t visit him in America. It was only after he went back to Fiji for his father-in-law’s funeral that they decided it would be okay to visit.

He described his other brother, who was a good thirty years older than him and who lived in Australia. The brother had eight kids. I got the impression that Fijian women pop babies like L.A. women pop pills.

He still owns property in Fiji. He was a landowner, a farmer, a padròn. When his kids finish their education, he says, he’ll go back to Fiji and live like a king. For now, he works three jobs to put his daughter through college, refusing her offers to work and help support herself. “Just go to school,” he tells her.

Now, he says, his sibling wives go shopping together in L.A.

Observing people:

Her: “I travel a lot, so I’m really good at trying not to talk to people.”
The guy that’s picturing her naked: “Yeah?”
Her: “The most exciting thing I saw was Tom Skerritt on a plane once. He was old.”
Him: “Heh, cool.”
His eyes flick to her breasts when she turns her head. He’s trying to be genial.
She leans back, reaching for the railing. Misses it. Slowly tumbles backwards over her suitcase. He offers his hand. She doesn’t take it.
Her: “So, which would you rather do, act or write? Or produce?”

Someone, anyone in L.A.: “So, what do you do?”
Anyone else: “I’m an actor.”/“I’m a writer.”
Me: “Hearing those words makes me want to kick you in the head. I don’t know why. But best of luck.”

From now on:
Anyone: “So, what do you do?”
Me: “I’m an embalmer.”
Anyone: “Really?”
Me: “I take things, pump out their blood and prop them up, stiff and well-dressed, for you to file by and admire. No, wait – I’m in advertising.”

Ai Dios Mio

2003-12-18T22:46:00.000-08:00

If you ever watch Spanish TV (and who doesn't?), then watch for Robbie Kneivel jumping his motorcycle over 10,000 clean dinner plates. I might be in the commercial, awesome cholo 'stache and all. For my trouble, I got enough Dawn liquid dish soap to last me 163 years (by my admittedly conservative calculations). I stole a case of the soap, then came back and found that they were giving away bottles as prizes at the crappy carnival booths they'd set up. Man, people wanted that soap.

Quote from one of the ADs, as I was walking to the parking lot with a case of soap on my shoulder: "Hey, that's all coming back, right?"

Me: "You bet."

Where did he think I was going with it?

Done This Already

2003-12-15T02:55:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had a dream in which you recall an event that never happened?

It happens to me all the time. The other night I had a particularly vivid dream - I mean crying, screaming, gut-wrenching stuff - and the drama revolved around the discovery of something I'd done years in the past.

And when I woke, and I realized it was all a dream, I incredulously asked myself "Does that mean that [event] didn't actually happen, years ago?" It took about an hour to wake up enough to realize that no, it didn't.

Now, of course, looking back lucidly, it's quite obvious that it was all part of the dream. But to remember something so clearly, and to have such a sense of the passage of time - having a memory that was solidly planted at a particular place in the past - makes one wonder about all of one's beliefs.

If all it takes is to be in the dream-state to suddenly bring about new, fabricated memories, experiences that are no less real in the emotional responses they provoke for being fiction, and most bizarrely, perfecly concrete thoughts, feelings and occurrences that rapidly and surely vanish from the mind as easily as one opens one's eyes in the morning ... then what gossamer catalyst would it take for our waking beliefs, emotions and experiences to suddenly be proved fiction - or worse, vanish entirely?

I don't know. But I think I might have an idea about something else.

I think our memories are tagged, if you will, with a sort of date-stamp. Things that happened yesterday are filed ahead of things that happened last year, and so on. And in a dream, which is already full of fiction, one particular fiction is tagged with an artificial mental date-stamp and the mind files it away, in order, between graduation and the Grand Canyon.

I think déjà vû is the same thing. I think it's just the same sort of artificial date-stamp, applied in error to short-term memory. Vonnegut called it "bad chemicals". Just some weird synaptic misfire. Immediate memory is interpreted as long-term memory.

Sometimes, when I get déjà vû, I try and 'remember' ahead of schedule, see if I can predict what's about to happen. I don't recall ever being successful.

I Am Not Actually a Physicist

2003-11-25T13:21:00.000-08:00

Since I am a physicist, I have formulated a thermodynamic postulate. Like most postulates, it merely serves to define some phenomenon that already exists and is generally accepted without proof. Well, "generally accepted" may be a stretch, since I just formulated it. I'm certainly not the first person to think about this phenomenon; I may, however, be the first to attempt to define it within the confines of a blog while sitting on the couch in my pajamas as my leftover pasta from last week cools in the microwave.

I call this a thermodynamic postulate since it refers to the movement of energy within a system. However, I refer to creative energy, which I postulate here is not finitely quantifiable like heat energy, but quantifiable on a relative scale. You've felt the loss or the replenishment of creative energy.

The Theory of Conservation of Creative Energy (TCCE) (pronounced 'tacky', I guess)

Creative energy (CE) is not like physical energy, which either exists as matter or as heat. CE is immaterial, so it can grow and diminish bounded only by the constraints of its vessel. It can be slow to start moving, but then is self-perpetuating, like Donkey Kong from Mario Kart.

However -- TCCE states that a particular manifestation of CE, in other words a specific Idea, is in nature like a glob of Silly Putty. It can be stretched slowly, pulled and snapped in half, or moved from one place to another. The fundamental statement of TCCE is that an Idea is portable.

We are not speaking here of a vague Idea like "Pirates are cool." We are speaking of a specific manifestation - like "Two pirates get stuck in a bank vault, and one of them is claustrophobic, so the other one has to put out his partner's eyes so he can't see that he's in an enclosed space." Ideas do not always have to be this dumb.

Now, if I had that Idea, it would reside somewhere - in my mind. It would stay there until one of two things happened: either (a) I took it from my mind and put it somewhere else, say on paper; or (b) I would eventually forget it. Thus, a Catch-22 begins to take shape. We've heard of the practice of carrying a notebook around with you, to write down ideas before you forget them. A good plan, generally speaking. But what that practice does is it takes the ideas from your mind and puts them into the notebook. Follow me here ... and once the ideas are in your notebook, you tend to forget about them. Because they're not in your mind anymore.

Probably this is the subconscious mind thinking "Well, those ideas are secure now. It's okay to forget them." But the net result is that unless you look at your notebook a lot, those ideas are going to be gone anyway.

Writing things down is a great way, for me at least, to stimulate the creative process. If I have half a concept, the physical act of writing helps to get my mind working and the other half will usually appear for the first time as I write it. But then it's there, on the page, and not in my mind anymore. I can read it off the page, of course, but it's sort of like plucking gum off the bedpost in the morning (and why in the world would anyone do that? Resume chewing yesterday's gum? Is gum that expensive? It's got no flavor left. Hell, I can't chew gum for five minutes without getting strangely and fiercely frustrated with it and wanting something to bite down on).

Anyway, TCCE basically states that particular Ideas will move from one place to another, say the mind to the paper, and in doing so will somewhat vacate the space they left. This is one reason why I don't like doing outlines - because after I make the outline, the Idea is no longer burning a hole in my skull trying to get out. That's why you want to tell someone a great Idea you just had - because it's banging on the inside of your skull, overflowing out your ears - and if you give into that, and let some of it out, and tell someone, then there's a little bit left inside.

Revisions work the same way. The Idea's there, on the paper. You're trying to stuff it back into your mind to put it through another cycle and spit it out again. That's why, for me anyway, revisions are easiest if they're one of two types: (a) Minor, syntactical revisions. Clearing out extraneous verbiage, shuffling things for pacing, cleaning up dialogue, that sort of thing. (b) Wholesale revisions - changing the lead character's sex, setting the story in the Renaissance, making the villain a meter maid instead of a cockfight bookie. Because then, it's a whole new Idea.

TCCE means that in general, unless I'm trying to work out a problem or map out something that's too big to keep straight, I don't like to write small things down. If they stay inside my head, then I keep remembering them - something I'll hear will remind me, or whatever. Recently I happened across a bunch of notes I made for a script still in progress. I'd forgotten all about several great ideas I had. Because I wrote them down.

That's why my last post, for example, was so short. Because all my great ideas were on the page that disappeared into the ether, and only their Silly Putty pink remnants remained.

Many times those Ideas will beget progeny on their own, in the subconscious mind. That's part of the creative process - work, simmer, work, simmer. And not writing down - or telling people - or doing anything to minimize the fiery Idea in your mind is all the more incentive to work instead of loaf - because you know that, eventually, you will forget. So sit the ass down and do it before it's too late!

Yes, you. Not tomorrow. Today!

---

In the interests of full disclosure, I have a bunch of Ideas slowly fading away in my mind. I need to work on them. But I wrote this instead. Procrastination will be another day's topic. When I get around to it.

Sailors Take Warning

2003-10-24T12:27:00.000-07:00

There are fires burning all over. The morning sky is red with smoke. I wake up and am in Pompeii. My eyes are daylight-balanced and the sky is tungsten orange. It is a strange sight.

Faded & Empty, or Ripe With Possiblity?

2003-10-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

I've awakened to grey skies for a few weeks, I think. It's hard to tell when I wake, sometimes, because there's always a vague zone of a few hours while I shuffle my mind into the day.

It's October, so it's about time for the skies to turn down the brightness a notch, I guess. I like blue skies, but I also like overcast skies for a different reason. The whole sky's white, like a huge sheet of butcher paper. I want to take a crayon to it.

There's a lot to do when you don't have to be at work until 6pm. I found a life drawing session to attend in Santa Monica. I'd like to go to the Tuesday night sessions, which is geared towards sketching and so is (I imagine) more poses, less time, but the Friday morning's about all I can manage time-wise. It's the same pose for three hours, and then another three hours of the same the following Friday. I'm the only chump in the room with pencils. Everyone else has oil paints.

Maybe I should show up with the oils that I have little if any idea how to use, frown intently at the model for three hours and leave with a passable rendition of the table lamp.

Being Tired is a Funny Thing.

2003-09-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

Especially when you're not tired anymore. I mean, your body's tired, and if you were to lie down you wouldn't come up for 17 hours (as it happened), but when you're walking up and down stairs and answering phones and doing work, you're attentive and focused.

Sometimes. Sometimes, of course, after sitting for a minute perhaps, you're trying to keep your eyes open - and trying to remember what you're doing - and (as it happened) so intent on getting through the night and making sure that everything gets done that you start mixing car horns in with dialogue and wonder why their levels are so different.

Or when you've only slept a few hours, and the alarm goes off, and you twist in bed to look at the clock and see the red numbers and wonder - what are those lights? Ah, they make numbers, if only you could focus your eyes - but do they mean anything? Ah, yes, of course, they mean time.

What is Time?

And you're completely befuddled, lying there with the glimmering red doubling itself in your vision, trying to decide whether Time is something that you need to think more about, and what numbers have to do with Time, and what any of it has to do with making plans, and whether you should make a plan to get out of bed, and if so, when.

All the dots that our minds connect come untethered and when you're tired. The concept of numbers bobs just out of reach of the idea of Time, and just beyond that is the idea that perhaps, what time it is may influence what actions one should take.

The dream-state, as we all know, can do that - can color one's perceptions so that the world as it is becomes, instead, the world as it seems to be, viewed through a clouded glass. And then you sit up, and put your feet on the floor, and as my mom would say 'move from horizontal to vertical', and you wipe the fog from your mind and the world aligns itself back into place, clicking firmly at the seams.

But when you're tired, those seams don't match perfectly, and wind whistles through like your car window on the freeway. And the adrenaline that would normally pump you into overdrive becomes the only thing keeping you from collapsing on the floor, and the whole thing feels not so much like you're on drugs, but like you've just come off drugs, or you're past the buzz-drunk and into the throb-drunk, and you get all that fun out-of-it-ness without all the fun.

You've always guessed that sleep deprivation would be a good torture, when you've read about it at POW camps or whatever, but at Day 4 or 5 you understand it intimately.

And the worst part - the absolute worst - isn't so much not going to sleep, but going to sleep and waking up too soon. Your body needs, now, 20 hours to catch back up to normal. You give it two and a half. Ouch.

Here's something I never noticed, pulling all-nighters at school and such, until I didn't get a good night's sleep (more than 3, 4, 5 hrs) for over a week - it messes up your digestion. I could deal with the nodding off or the fatigue hallucinations - but the cramping stomachaches were just debilitating.

Everyone Knows That Sound

2003-08-29T22:38:00.000-07:00

I'd venture that even if one's never heard it before, one knows that it can't be good. But living in an urban society, everyone knows that sound.

Metal meeting metal. Sometimes prefaced by a screeeechBANG. Those of you who know me, you know that to me, the sound is uncomfortably, sadly familiar. But this time around it wasn't me.

I don't know who it was. I was sitting on my couch when I heard it outside. And everyone knows that sound.

So I found my glasses and opened the sliding door and went out on the patio. Sure enough, at the intersection. A Suburban had hit a pickup. Seemed like the pickup was trying to make it through the intersection at the last second. Trying to save a minute - or, more likely, was going too fast to stop and decided instead to just gun through.

I don't know what happened. But that seems likely.

Everyone was out on their balconies or patios, standing on sidewalks up and down the street, watching. 'Cause they know that sound.

Some of you know that a few months ago, a high-speed police chase terminated in my car. A crazy fugitive woman in a stolen truck hit my car while I was at a stoplight. My car was totaled. She went running and was tackled by a police officer. I later learned that she had taken in a runaway and was beating the child in her closet.

She hit seventeen cars between Burbank, where the chase started, and that intersection in Hollywood.

I called Nikki. Asked if she could come pick me up. She turned on the TV. There I was. Live coverage, news chopper shot. My car and four others, scattered across the intersection like dropped Hot Wheels.

Hey! I was on TV!

Don't Just Shoot Me

2003-08-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

On Monday, Brian and I wound our way toward Newhall, a small town near Santa Clarita. There, at the Oaktree Gun Club, we met people including several world champion shooters, including the 24-year-old world champion shotgun double-trap shooter and Olympic gold medalist; representatives from Glock and Smith & Wesson (the S&W guy had just returned from a hunting safari in Africa, using a .500 revolver as his primary hunting weapon); and a television producer currently putting together a season's worth of episodes on handgunning for the Outdoor Channel.

This was the National Sport Shooting Federation's media seminar, in which they invite entertainment folk (stuntmen mainly, but somehow Brian and I as well) to shoot guns all day and learn the right way to handle and treat and work with real guns - in the hopes that gun use on screen might become more accurate.

If you've ever tripped across a gun-folk message board, you might have seen how they rant about guns on film & TV. Bear with me, please; here's a few authentic excerpts:

" ... Whenever I take a new shooter to the range we start out with my lecture about forgetting everything they see on TV or the movies."

"... It is my fervent prayer that all criminals learn their shooting techniques from the movies ... I had the pleasure of witnessing four young men with Tech-9s at the rifle range yesterday. They too had learned the sideways gunhold taught by the Hollywood School of Violent Behavior ... It causes one to understand why so many innocent bystanders are killed during gang drive-by's [sic]. They hit everything except what they intend to hit."

"... when Sharon Stone picked up a Walther PPK (or /S, I forget) and shot nonstop, taking out 21 TV monitors at the end, I was just insulted. The movie was saying 'We don't have the time to find a gun that will actually shoot this many shots and you're all too stupid to notice anyway.' "

"... I'm sure you've seen enough sloppy gun handling to make your skin crawl. Why is it that the producer/director will spend so much money to make a film and make stupid mistakes that could be solved by sending a few crew members or actors to a basic NRA class for a few bucks? ... Answer: Nobody cares, at least as far as the movie-making/Hollywood crowd knows. When Mr. Director or Ms. Actress perform atrocious gun handling, do they receive bags of mail from their fans asking why? No, because nobody really notices, or cares ... I would bet if the nation's 80 million gun owners rallied and made a stink about this (through letters, e-mails, etc) things would change."

"... [Following a list of inaccuracies] Hollywood... go figure!"

"... On the Simpsons, they have shown someone pumping a round into a side-by-side shotgun more than a few times. Arrggghhh ... The episode where Homer bought a handgun was positively AWFUL."

"... There are many actors who are very good with firearms, very knowledgable [sic] people who are simply doing it the way the director wants it done ... [director John Milius] also reminded me of the MOST important factor in movies....THEY ARE FOR ENTERTAINMENT not for real life training films!"

"...I don't go to movies to see real life. If I did, all of them would be PG."

"... And it wasn't nickel, it was stainless steel. (Hollywood! Pffft!)"

And, finally:

"... I just don't care, anymore. I decided a long, long, time ago, that I would vote with my wallet, and decided not to participate in Hollyweird's latest, and greatest films. I just don't go and spend my money on them. Besides, if a person is reading what they should about firearms, and reloading like they should, and going to the range like they should-- who has time to go to the stupid movies? Hollyweird icons of the silver screen are not my heroes in life. Shoot on..."

Sorry, once I got looking for stuff, I got carried away. Aficionados of anything are of course going to point out errors that they find, and I'm sure I could find car buffs that say such-and-such car can't really accelerate that fast or that Volkswagens can't really find love or whatever, and as an aviation fan I can tell you that Airwolf's afterburners were pure hokum, but that's not the point. What, if anything, I think can be taken from this sort of criticism is that when some people notice errors in storytelling it turns them against the entire medium. That's pretty harsh.

A lot of people don't really get what movies are about. The people that want to edit out every "damn", for example. I respect your right to show your kids or to watch whatever you choose to watch, but please respect mine to make the movie I want to make. Similarly, if you don't want to go to movies because guns are treated inaccurately, maybe you're sort of missing the point of the movies. Maybe you're not the kind of person that really gets a lot out of movies. Obviously, if something so small and (in my mind) trivial is enough to break the camel's back.

Does this mean that, as storytellers, we should be sloppy with regard to accuracy whenever possible? No, of course not. Researching often makes for a better story, more rich with detail and including more of the spectrum of human existence than one's own imagination can provide.

Stephen King says in "On Writing" that when writing a book about, for example, a rural police investigation, he'll usually make everything up to serve the story best - then, in revision, go back and research the rural police department and sprinkle some tidbits of trivia back into the story. Chuck Palahniuk, author of "Fight Club" and other books, says that the myriad of factoids in his writing are invariably true - to build a foundation of truthfulness, so that the fiction feels that much more real.

Specifically, in terms of guns in the movies, a lot of simple errors can be corrected just by having someone on the set - someone that can tell the director that the actor should lock the slide when handing the pistol to someone else, or not to hug the wall when creeping around the corner, or to point the rifles at the ground, not in the back of the SWAT officer in front of you. Some things, like blowing up a spaceship with a .22 rifle, should be dealt with at the writing stage. But a little care here and there can go a long way.

I am not schizophrenic.

2003-08-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

His every move is my instruction.

I follow him everywhere. I shake my head disapprovingly as he tunes the car radio to the talk station. I watch him surf the Internet at work or flip channels on the TV while his laptop sits open and a blank screenplay page beckons him.

He feels my glare, sometimes, and occasionally he'll even turn to look at me. But then he'll blink a few times, and go back to ignoring me.

I wonder what goes on inside his head. When he lies in bed without getting up, one hand scratching the cat's chin. He turns and looks at the clock, and I'm not sure the numbers make their way quite to his consciousness. Or maybe he just doesn't care.

I watch him stumble out of bed and find a piece of string cheese in the fridge. For the past few days it's practically the only thing he's eaten. Unless you count the cylinder of Chips Ahoy that he kept eating, one cookie after another, almost like he didn't know it was happening.

I wonder why he never goes out with friends. Sometimes he does, I guess, but usually he'll call someone up and chat for a minute and I'll kind of hear the person on the other end make an excuse.

"I'll call you this weekend, maybe we'll get together," he'll say. He doesn't throw the phone anymore, though. He used to throw the phone a lot. When he talked to Michelle, sometimes.

Sometimes he'd linger so long that their traded goodbyes would fade into whispers and nothings, and then the sharp beep of the phone turning off would startle him.

Other times he'd say, "Okay, bye" and beep the phone off and hurl it into the couch cushions. He doesn't do that anymore.

I sit next to him as he drives to work. A couple of days ago some rich woman in a BMW was looking the other way and hit his bumper. She looked horrified. He had to yell at her to back up, so they could both move, but she still didn't hear him - or was paralyzed with shock, maybe. He finally pulled forward a little bit and then just kept driving.

When the BMW woman realized he wasn't going to pull over to trade insurance information, she whipped a right turn onto another street and disappeared forever, lest he change his mind. I don't think he was going to. He's had enough trouble with car accidents.

When he stopped at Del Taco on the way to work he checked out his fender. She'd left a pretty good dent. I don't think he'd realized how bad it was. But he opened the trunk and started banging on the inside and popped the dent back out.

I wonder what the BMW woman thought about their little incident. I hope she felt guilty. I don't think he cares. But he's hard to read, sometimes.

He goes for long hours without talking. He'll sit and read for an entire day without moving. Nikki refuses to take him to bookstores, and I can see why. "I'll lose you," she says. "You'll never come out." And if she wasn't there to pull him out, I don't think he would. He's turning into his mother that way, with his stack of library books. He takes his mail into the bathroom. The trash can in there is full of envelopes and junk mail. I think that's kind of weird. But then, I follow him into the bathroom. Who am I to talk about weird?

So I wonder what he would do with friends if he had them. Sure, he laughs with the guys at work, and they look at funny websites or talk trash about the movies they're trying to con people into seeing, but then he goes home and hangs up his keys and plugs in his cell phone that never rings and checks to see what the TiVo's recorded today. By the time he gets home it's one in the morning. And he'll lie there in bed for hours without sleeping, and curse himself when he can't wake up before eleven the next day.

Once I caught his eye in the mirror. He leaned real close to me and told me how he thought that subconsciously, he was afraid of finishing his screenplays and films and such because sending them into the world would mean probably getting them rejected. I think that's B.S., though. I think he was feeding me a line. I think he was trying to rationalize his laziness. Besides, I didn't catch most of what he said. I was too repulsed by his train-wreck hairy nipples. Those things are gross.

So if he ever asks me why his friends don't call, or why he has to go out of his way to remind them that he's around, or why they they're never really more than civil to him ... I probably won't tell him what I really think. After all, I told him to open his mouth and apologize, back then. To write a letter and clear the air, or to call someone and just chat, like you used to. Back then they might have chatted. Today they probably won't.

"Hey, good to talk to you, see you around." They've already forgotten he was there by the time he turns away. I've watched them, after he's started to walk away, but I wouldn't tell him what I've seen. I think it would hurt him. And besides, I think he knows. But he's hard to read, sometimes.

He's said a few things that were wrong, here and there, but by and large, it's what he hasn't said that's gotten him to this island.

So I'll do the same, and I won't tell him what I really should, and instead, when he asks why his cell phone never rings, I'll just smile a half-smile, turn away, and tell him they're grossed out by his nipples.