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Pondering Hate And Love In The Wake of Destruction

jelewis8 — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 03:34:54 +0000

Seeing images on the television and internet of a town made famous first by a football team, now by a shooting–a town you know and love with all your heart, a town you lived in for five years, a town you never thought would see come to any harm–the grainy footage, the rough, battle-like video footage, made larger than life from a cell phone vantage point, brought every bullet home, made every ugly shot ring out like pricks of anger and hate and rage, each deadly and destructive. In the wake of such proximity–made all the more potent by the fact that I am 3,000 miles away–I am left with nothing much to feel except what thousands of people are feeling.

For perhaps the first time in my life I found myself angry–not necessarily at God, though perhaps a little of me was–but angry at the world for being the cruel and harsh place that it is. I was angry for the first time at senselessness, irrational hatred, at the destructiveness of human nature. I was angry at the injustice of the world. I was angry that all of us, every one of us, wears the hood of indifference over our eyes most of our lives, but for brief moments like these, someone cuts holes for our eyes to see through, and we understand, like waking from a dream, just how brutal, brutish, and short life is. My anger became mirrored in the questions I began asking the wind: What makes us so prone to these events? Why are we such vulnerable creatures that we can simultaneously create such terror for our fellow man, and on the flip side, experience such pain and loss at the hands of one of our own. What other species does this?

My sadness has slowly crept into numbness, and from there, I’ve begun to feel something again, a little blood has come back into my veins, and I’m adding prayers to those same questions. I do still ask them, and I’m asking them of God, who made us, because the part of me that knows the whys and hows of our human nature isn’t satisfied by those answers. There’s something deeper here, something so startlingly outside our grasp that to even probe its thick skin is to open wide a torrent of unimaginable answers.
So my questions, directed at first in general, became more focused. I started asking God to help me to understand, and in the absence of understanding, to give me peace and tranquility.

The truth is I am and will be touched by this more than I’ve been touched in the past because part of me has been opened wide by the realization that this is our future–it always has been. As a species, we are the most terrible, the most wanton, the most cruel. Because we have knowledge. Because we have power. And because we understand that to wage violence is to become God for a day. The shooter, who had a name once, lived out his powerful dream, and now more than thirty are dead in my town.

That’s the scary part.

Now here’s the amazing, wonderful, hopeful part.

We all are touched by the terror and the horror and the sadness. Whether we are Hokies or Wahoos or Trojans or whether we despise all sports and mascots and affiliations. We are all touched to the core. And the universal response is not hate. It is love. Flawed love, love tainted by hurt and anger and distance that many years and many hugs will not cover. But it is love nonetheless.

The footage featuring gunshots has not been replaced by hope–but it’s been drowned out by it, and the numerous images that are coming out of Blacksburg now are ones of compassion, of family, of incalculable love. Hokies united in maroon and orange, a family of 40,000 people who are more united now than ever before, because a strange man with dreams of deity strove to break the bonds of love, and failed.

Whatever that may do to the individual psyches of anyone involved in this horrific crime, the result is not the anguished cry of the hopeless, but the battle song of the triumphant, the hymn of those remaining. It is a song of love.

Though I don’t have answers from God, or understanding, I do have hope, and I do have peace. And I don’t have anger inside, because I have love. Somehow, through it all, we possess love. May God bless that abundantly through this tragedy.

To the victims, I love you, though I never knew you. Restare in pacem eternis.

2006 Year In Review

jelewis8 — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:44:45 +0000

2006 rose from the ashes of 2005 like a sphinx (well, what else would rise from the ashes?) and promptly sat around for twelve months watching television. It was quite simply the laziest year on record. And that includes 1937, in which depressed Americans, poor, hungry, tired, and huddled, decided they’d had enough of being poor, hungry, tired, and huddled, and simply sat around waiting for the economy to recover. Which it did three years later when the Nazis, taking it upon themselves to end the ridiculous global deflation, started murdering Jews, gypsies, and hobos. This naturally got women and Democrats upset, and they began pouring money into the bullet and tobacco industries.
But that was then.
2006 had no such resurgence in nationalism. American Idol continued to annoy the crap out of non-American Idol viewers, OJ Simpson managed to keep his name in the news, while Michael Jackson stayed mostly out of the news, and Saddam Hussein got hanged and refused to rise from the dead, proving once and for all he’s not the frickin’ Anti-Christ. The economy improved, or didn’t, depending on whether you believe George W. Bush is the Devil/Anti-Christ.
In the world of sports, some teams won that some people didn’t want to win, but others did, and likewise, the opposite also occurred. Technology continued its inevitable march toward ultimate Skynet domination, culminating in a cell phone that actually started its own S-Corporation, buying Google then selling its stock to the Sultan of Brunei. 2006 was the year of the African baby, which was more popular than the newly redesigned Tickle-Me-Elmo. Madonna and Brangelina got in on the poverty baby craze, proving that rich people can actively affect the lives of one or two people at most. Lindsay Lohan gained on Paris Hilton for “most whorishly unlikeable person ever” and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes bought seven pounds of Indian rice and curry, shaped it into an infant-like shape, and called it Suri.
In books, James Frey’s Million Little Pieces was discovered to be a fabrication after gaining widespread popularity on Oprah’s Book Club selection list. This enabled him to gain even more notoriety and fame, and book sales soared. Meanwhile, The Cold Goodbye languished on the not-so-bestseller list, even though it was a slightly better-written book.
Oil prices were quite high during most of 2006, and blame was laid at the feet of Halliburton, George W. Bush, Capricorn One, unscrupulous Arab sheiks, Iraq, and Mel Gibson. When gas prices fell, blame was passed on to the Democrats, who won back much coveted seats in the House and Senate. The Democrats, not used to taking such abuse, quickly passed the blame onto Karl Rove, who smiled smugly. He always does that…
2006 marked the deaths of several old people, some of whom were former presidents. The North Koreans tested their first thermonuclear device, which turned out to actually be a dreidel and a Black Cat. Immigration worries in the United States caused several people to consider building a fence a few meters in length to help curb the illegal influx of aliens into Area 51. Fidel Castro contracted a brutal cold and while under recovery, set his twin brother Raoul–who looks EXACTLY LIKE HIM–in power. The CIA, unsure of how to proceed, aborted a planned Gulf of Cows invasion.
A bunch of Russian spies and statesmen met their demise at the hands of the avian flu; the KGB claims to have no working knowledge of or pill form of the disease. Iran continued to flout its Iranian-ness, and former President Ronald Reagan rose from the dead briefly to deliver a moving elegy for former President Gerald Ford, who was not eaten by rabid wolves. Genocide, or possibly Kofi Annan, festered in various African nations, prompting the UN to say, “Whatever.” Bono, lead singer of the band known as WeAreUS2 and famous Africa-lover, sang The Bribes Go Marching In (Your Pockets)” to help raise money for Katrina victims, who after two years, still hadn’t decreased the level of debauchery displayed at Mardi Gras, even though the French Quarter was still technically “under water” and “disease ravaged.”
Denmark suddenly got some press by publishing cartoons depicting Muhammed in various nudie poses. Islamists were understandably upset, but then were given a year’s supply of Hagen-Daaz ice cream, and the furor and beheadings decreased noticeably. However, the housing market continued to sag like a middle-aged man’s midsection, causing an increase in the use of anti-depressants and anti-gay rhetoric in middle class households.
Pluto lost its planet status, leading to more beheadings, and a British terror plot to force the airlines to serve better food on flights failed dramatically, leading to reduced comfort and security and an increase in the amount of gels, liquids, or sprays delivered to US landfills. Contributing to the general level of unease in the country and the world was spinach, which decided to become a deadly toxin for a few weeks. Migrant worker wages were reduced from $.05 per hour to $.03 as whole spinach crops were ignited in the streets and bushels of innocent produce was dragged from its refridgerated grocery shelves and destroyed. National morale was at its lowest.
However, the day after Thanksgiving, traditionally called Black Christmas, reignited the souls of US citizens everywhere, causing people to kill each other in fits of Playstation 3 related patriotism. Zeal increased as the year wound down. Republicans staunchly defended their big-government, pork-spending, corruption-tolerating ways, Democrats attacked Libertarians’ power-lusting, environment-touting ways, and Donald Trump gave moralism a boost by telling off Rosie O’Donnell and Miss Teen USA in one week.
It was, as you can see, not a very interesting year. Which makes 2007 all the more important, for if the future of this nation is to be secure, safe, and fun, we must first ensure that our years are at least worth writing about. While the nation remains divided on the best way to go about doing so, it is united against terrorism, e. Coli, and a bloated federal government. The future looks about as good as it ever has, thanks to a blooming good start to the greatest 2007 ever.

Touring Wine Country

jelewis8 — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 15:19:04 +0000

It turns out that Napa Valley is the valley where rich wine snobs go to purchase overpriced bottles of stuff you can buy with a different label anywhere else and call it average. But not Sonoma. No, Sonoma Valley has a different breed of people. Down to earth people. Humble folk. Just small vintners, really, but special in their own way. And quite willing to sell you a bottle of overpriced wine if you’re silly enough to keep drinking the $10 samples they keep shoving under your nose. Smell the bouquet!
Down, naughty cynicism! I’m sorry, don’t really know where that came from.
Of course I had a great time up in the northern parts. For all its grandeur and size, California doesn’t seem all that huge. Driving it is a cinch, if you’re willing to zip around the slowbies, and the view is mostly gorgeous, with western hills lying like folds of clean laundry, the golden sun blasting them into something that resembles a fantasy novel book cover. The air is crisp. You breathe in deeply. Well, you’re pretty sure it’s crisp, even though you’ve got the A/C on.
We passed a stockyard, and not the kind where you see bearer bonds and ticker tape and electronic money. The cows look vaguely peaceful. The differing opinion in the car is that they look depressed. Actually, I believe the phrase was “not having much fun.” But really, what kind of fun can cows have? The occasional butting of heads, stomping in huge piles of feces, rubbing up against the fence to alleviate that annoying itch that’s been bothering you. And then that long walk up the slotted plank to the first of many cages that will eventually lead directly to a nail gun and a mallet.
I’d say they’re having a ball compared to that last bit.
Anyway, it’s one reason I eat animals. I’m alleviating their suffering. If we assume they suffer. Is it really suffering if your existence as a cow, which isn’t entirely blissful to begin with, is compounded by being moved to a stockyard where, admittedly, there isn’t much grass, and the smell isn’t entirely up to Calvin Klein standards, and the end is graded in letters A-D? Food for thought, and not at all pun-worthy.
Sonoma is the bees knees. There’s a lot of little wineries that specialize in trying to convince visitors their wine is just as good as the big wine producers. They occasionally succeed. I play Designated Driver for the morning portion of our journey through the land of grapes. I just can’t imagine it’s much fun to start drinking that early, and anything that could convince me that it was fun would probably be the Devil’s own, and I can rely on scripture to beat it back. The last thing I want to be is an alcoholic writer.
Well, an alcoholic housewife isn’t high on the list either.
We stop at one winery that has, no joke, Roman columns around a ruined mini-forum area. There’s Romanesque statuary, and llamas. So it’s not quite Tuscany, but A for effort. Inside we meet the caretaker and presumably owner, who claims to have been banned from Hawaii and gave himself a black eye whilst cliff diving. I also note that his cheeks and nose are a bit sanguine, and I’m guessing that business has been brisk already. He turns us on to a flight of wine which he explains in exquisite detail. We learn a new word, organoleptic, which you now are required to look up. I’ll wait.
Good?
The owner flirts with Lauren, who grins and bears it. It’s the highlight of the trip. The next winery we visit we tell the pourers where we’d come from. “Ahhh, Mr. Aloha…” they say knowingly and somewhat disparagingly. They then rush to reassure us he’s the best in the business. But that initial response speaks volumes. And they hand out wine like it’s free. It is free! The samples are, at least. Mike gets hammered and Derek eats all the free green olives they’ve got, and I get bitten in the hand by a psychopathic chihuahua the size of my fist. How appropriate her name is Lily.
We go to lunch then, stopping at the Sonoma Cheese Factory, which isn’t so much a factory as it is a store where cheese is sold. I didn’t see any cheese making going on. Highlight of the visit is walking past a suited up pseudo-agent with a goatee and a walkie talking secret-agent speak. Actual dialogue: “Ah, this is a status report, I’m behind the Cheese Factory.”
After we move on to a little winery owned by a crazy man named Kaz whose photoshopped face graces EVERY SINGLE PRODUCT HE SELLS. Ego, anyone? His wine isn’t very good. I’m tasting now, but this guy’s wine actually turns me off to the very idea of drinking. His port is great, oddly enough, but I’m not really in a dessert mood. Plus he’s stingy with his pour.
St. Francis of Assisi has a vineyard, but the grounds are like the Wal-Mart Home and Garden of wineries. Everyone is slightly severe and the grounds are a little too well kept, as if you expect to be able to lift up the potted plant and see the little tag that tells you what sort of garden setting it fits into. They have a statue of St. Frank, and I pose, giving him my sunglasses and feeling the love. Thanks a ton, Frankie.
Next we visit Lesden, and it’s an English castle with a beautiful fountain in the front. There’s more people interested in the fountain than the wine, I think. We take pictures and then wander inside, where it’s so frighteningly austere you’re afraid to touch anything. It’s like a museum. They even have velvet ropes blocking the stairs leading to the second floor, where undoubtedly they have bags of riches, or casks of unopened Amantillado, or Rumpelstiltskin. Eventually we end up in the “Specialty Room” where a Hassidic Jew looking guy named Chris (with the voice of Ben Stein) serves up $95 wine. I’m thinking though, it’s the end of the day, are you really going to detect quality wine after drinking grape drink the whole day earlier? But Mike and Lauren seem to like it, and it’s fun taking pictures of everyone.
But then it’s time to go. We drive back in the California sunset, arguing over whether California street signs dot their “i’s”. I doze in the back and wait for night, but it’s still hours off.
Tomorrow, the end.

Fere Est Perfectus

jelewis8 — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 02:54:54 +0000

Well, I suppose that just about qualifies me for a short break. After finishing my first book in about a month and a half back in November 2005 (woot!), I then took the next ten months to write the second book, though technically I took almost three months off for various employment reasons. Now, at least, I no longer have to wallow in the shame of having to say “It’s almost done,” which, if I had a crest, would be labeled in a fine Roman script across the bottom, guilded letters of Latin writ large: “Fere Est Perfectus.”
Nevertheless, just because I’m “finished” doesn’t mean I’m done. I still have the editing, which is a painful process because I never know what’s worth keeping and what needs to be stripped away like old paint until about a month after it’s been written. Which explains every single blog post I’ve ever put online. I also have a tiny…tiny scene I’m considering writing…not because it’s a necessary addition, but because I’m wondering if the obscure reference I leave in the very last line of the book will give readers the necessary clue to deduce the ending to one story thread that seems to be left hanging. If not, it makes readers mad to think I’ve cheated them of a resolution. Though thinking about it, I’d rather commit the sin of omission than to give too much away in a reckless narrative denouement.
The bizarre thing is, I was entirely unprepared for today. I woke up at approximately six in the AM, right arm asleep, drool leaking from my lips, having just emerged from a horrific dream in which I burned down my apartment by cooking for a bunch of guests, only to leave the gas stove burning whilst I cavorted over to a friend’s house to watch the telly. Everything I’d ever left in my apartment whooshed through my mind as I realized that for the moment, my life was slam-bang screwed. No more independent feature film. No more novel. No more screenplays. It’s funny. Of all my “possessions”, the ones I value the most are the ones that don’t really exist in physical form. The possibly thousand or more dollars of DVDs and CDs, my clothes, my camera, my cereal…I didn’t even consider them in my dream. Which makes me realize that what I truly hold dear in my daily grind of work is my writing and film editing–all electronically accomplished, all vaguely transient in their existence. What is written on the screen isn’t really there. It doesn’t actually exist. That’s the great illusion of our time, that what we see for much of our lives is tantamount to magic. This word, this period, this sentence. This blog. All imaginary. Even my decreased hits aren’t really there. Which somehow makes it all either more or less depressing, I’m not sure which.
But once these things make it past your cornea, past the blood-brain barrier that separates the thing from the thingness, this all becomes infinite in its existence. Moreover, it’s a copy of the original, yet isn’t stored exactly as a copy, but a reasonable facsimile thereof. You read, you comprehend, you store the vague memory of the thing, and it is carried along until discarded by the next image, the next visual that takes precedence in the neural binding. We don’t think about it, but the whole world is like this.
What it says to me is that I better back up my shite before my apartment burns down. Not even renter’s insurance is security for the imaginary words that exist only on a microdot. But yay for me, I finished! I’m happy and exhausted, and so very ready for bed. So tomorrow I begin again. Hopefully with better results. Because I always strive for that higher goal.
Perhaps “Fere Est Perfectus” is not a bad motto after all.

John Waters World

jelewis8 — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 16:46:53 +0000

I have, I suppose, my first official pitch meeting today at 1PM, which is not to say I’m confused about whether today is in fact the correct date for the meeting–I have gone through one rescheduling already, so my confidence in the date and time are pretty near the temperatures of a supernova’s initial .02 nanoseconds of explosive insistence that the rest of the universe look at it. Look at me, I’m a freakin’ supernova. I’m a raging ball of atomic death, borne from substances that make fire seem like the stuff they dump on the Rockies every year. Have some freakin’ respect. (I don’t know why I made my supernova like Robert De Niro, but that’s blogging for you.)
I use “I suppose” in the sense that I am under the apprehension that this is actually a pitch meeting. It might be a facial calisthenics exercise session for the agent I’m pitching to. Maybe he needs a laugh. Maybe it’s remodelling week down at 24/7 and he’s desperate for some aerobic and cardiovascular stimulation. This could be the cheapest gym session I’ve ever paid for. Don’t worry, I’m not paying to see him. That’d be therapy, and I haven’t arrived at the conclusion that I’m an Anonymous in need of a Twelve Step Program. But gas ain’t free. It ain’t even cheap. It is a quality fire starter. I’m not necessarily going for success here–just trying to avoid being turned into a live-action wicker man.
But I’m actually positive, buoyant even. I have a sore throat, which I intend on telling him straight out. That’ll limit my talking time, which almost always works in my favour. Next I will pitch him the basic premise, which naturally I won’t be telling you, because my blog is searchable, and Hollywood has ears like a freakin’ marmot. This 30 second premise pitch will be enough to sell him on the concept, leading to champagne tumblers and chorus girls and an amazing rendition of “You’re In The Money!” I will then spend the next six months churning out a script that I think is worth about $.04 at the recycling center. The agent and I will hammer out ideas, developing ad nauseum, until finally he calls me up and gives me the John Dear bit, only without the sympathy votes. He’s moving on to someone who isn’t an artistic fraud and who actually seems to want a positive bank balance.
But hey, in Bizarro World, the script is actually seventeen midgets who’ve concocted an insurance scam involving hobos, dead cats, and a 1978 Harley, and the pitch is actually me getting drunk at a St. Patty’s Day party in Des Moines. And the agent…well, he’s a corpulent John Waters looking for the next anorexic Divine. So really, when you break it down that way, things aren’t so bad at all.
Since I am still trying to finalize said pitch (read: start), I’m going to cut this blog entry short. But I just thought of something. I suppose this might be the beginning of a Hollywood-esque bent to some entries. I have threatened such things before, but this is the first time I’ve ever been within handshaking distance of real life representation. There are no certainties beyond the fact that it’s going to take me almost an hour to get to the agent’s office, so my time is short. The blog, however, she remains.
Sundance beckons too. Oh, so much to do. So few midgets with insurance scams…

The Hows Of Love

jelewis8 — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 08:11:44 +0000

Where was I? Leaving some of you panting with curiosity, or possibly just thirsting for a strong ipecac. Ewwww! Love! He’s in love! What’s next, a save the rainforest crusade? Essays on the Free Trade coffee movement that will save mankind? Why not just an all-”Hello Kitty” Fringecast to top off the nausea?
But you know you really love the juicy stuff, especially when it has to do with yours truly. The funny thing is, even a year ago I’d have been mortified that anyone knew I had a sweetheart. It’s a mindset I somehow developed whilst still in the womb that girls were creatures to be admired and appreciated from afar, and if one had to be “in a relationship” with one, it must be conducted with the utmost secrecy. Harriet Tubman would have had fewer secrets than I, were I to be thrust into a relationship with a girl. And God forbid the news get out. In my minimal bug brain, I thought if everyone knew, it would be the beginnings of social asphyxiation for me, and you know what that would mean…I’d lose sight of the sun. Friday nights would become the purview of the dreaded woman-beast that had me willingly committed to her every whim. And of course, the endless mockery of my single friends, who would know the utter stupidity of my predicament, chittering like locusts whenever I stepped out of the room to conduct a one-on-one phone convo with the girl of my dreams.
Sigh. I was such a moron [And he says it like it was all so long ago. --Ed. Hey, how about a little support from you from time to time?].
So I’m a little reserved about my love life. And it’s made doubly painful by virtue of the fact that my love life weighs 450 lbs. and watches soap operas all day from lack of exercise. I show it off sometimes as a circus exhibit. People think I’m weird. But really, it’s just to pay the bills.
Anyway.
Without delving into the science of it all, what chemicals bonded with which protein packets to form endorphins which swirled into my brain like a swarm of attacking dingoes, I will say I’ve known Emily since my latter college days, and from the moment I first saw her, was smitten with an infantile, schoolboy crush that I naturally suppressed with a little pill I like to call Avoidance. You see, when you’re attracted to someone and you don’t know how to handle it, you make like they don’t exist. If they enter your sphere of habitation, then you make amends as soon as is socially responsible, hasten to your room, and wish you had the balls to talk to her. Oh, how you wish. But you don’t. And you probably never will, because you are a male and she is a female–an attractive one at that–and she could never see you as the kind of sensitive, non-gun toting, wannabe writer that you sort of want to be (at least in theory).
So I hid. And cried myself to sleep. Okay, so not quite that bad. But I was apparently oblivious to her interest in me, even back then, to the point of having my roommate imply to me that she had already expressed interest in me. Which played out, not like a romantic movie in which the lovable loser eventually gets the girl through a series of wacky adventures, but more like the failed romance writer’s short story of the guy who was oblivious to a cutie who came around every once in awhile, and eventually, they lost touch. The End.
There’s a reason romance movies feature exciting people with exciting lives…kissing. Boring people don’t kiss. Boring people give up after half a try. Fun people take chances, and eventually end up in bed together. Or if they are chaste, share an appropriate kiss and hold hands whilst walking down a Paris lane listening to the French maids singing about their formerly provincial lives.
Good Lord, have I written this much without saying anything at all?
Well, time flies when you don’t have a clue. But here’s where the juice gets interesting. My film career actually brought us together. Emily happened to be at the Progeny Film Festival in Blacksburg, where my film Red State (Buy the DVD!) was being screened (Winner, Best Sound, 2006), saw my name associated with that amusing mess, and remembered her schoolgirl crush on me, which led to a frenzied rush to her computer where she Google-stalked me, discovering that I have no privacy whatsoever.
No, in truth, it was a slow process of occasional contact via IM, email, and eventually phone, leading to what can only be described as a resurrection of the same feelings I’d experienced as a younger, less experienced lad. But this time backed by a bit more knowledge and understanding, I felt far more confidence in a friendship with her.
You know when you just click with someone, it just works, everything slides into place, and the result is a harmony that defies description or categorization. It’s different for different people, and everyone has their ideal. So I won’t attempt to write all the feelings I went through to arrive at the point where I realized I didn’t just like Emily as a friend. Besides, they’re none of your damn business. Why am I even telling you all this?
Because I love you so much, dear readers, I can tell you this much: Love can happen when you least expect or want it to. I’m not saying you don’t have a choice. I’m just saying when the choice comes, what are you going to do? Run up to your room? Hide away and imagine some romance of the senses?
Or do you fly to New York and try something risky?

Gatsby Memories

jelewis8 — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:10:48 +0000

I fell in love in New York. Not with New York, though I do have the makings of a small affair already with that city that I may need to break off before Los Angeles finds out and kicks me out of the house. Please don’t tell her–it’d break her heart. No. I fell in love in New York officially, though I’d been getting all the indications earlier that it was something serious. The trip there was entirely to ask her opinion on the subject and to see if she’d want to make a go of it, 3,000 miles and change between us notwithstanding. She was with me one hundred percent, and so now I’ll have to change all my business cards so they no longer read “I’m single, ladies, so get me on the way up!”
Her name is Emily.
But first, the Bay House portion of my trip. I went to the Bay House this weekend, compliments of the Clark family, whose wholesome and generous nature are keystones of the entire cabana experience. It’s a house on the Chesapeake Bay, though I’m never sure if it’s located on the Maryland or Delaware side. I think it’s Maryland, due to the fact that other than Baltimore, the state really has nothing else going for it, and a sister needs some charity from time to time. Delaware, on the other hand, has a really fantastic screen door industry (props to those who get the reference).
A typical bay weekend involves drinking, dancing, smoking, listening to rock ‘n’ roll, and even the occasional co-ed skinny dipping, which is all done, somehow, and ironically enough, with all Christian morals protected in a fuzzy lockbox of virtue, so it’s all mostly scandal-free, though we can be loud at three in the morning with several Cosmos and glasses of wine as social lubricant. Among friends, it makes any activity so frictionless we free slide over metaphor and cigar smoke as easily as Raul Castro on his brother’s dime.
This weekend, we had the added pleasure of a fourteen foot powered boat and a jet ski, which was fun enough for me until I realized the sun’s fun rays also contain a deadly toxin called Sunburn. I had lathered myself with lotion which supposedly has anti-sun agents working hard upon your skin, staging mini-battles right there on the epidermis. Unfortunately, the bloodshed and the lack of field coverage resulted in a slight reddening up my back, on my forearms and hands, and even on my legs. Fortunately, the attrition was not so terrible that I was in pain. The redness diminished after a few days and settled into one of my better tans. How ironic, or perhaps just pathetic, that I didn’t get a decent tan until going to the East Coast.
Saturday I smoked a vintage cigar, birthday compliments of Evil, and by vintage I mean sixteen years old.
AH-MAZING.
Combined with a sweet wine buzz, surrounded by wonderful friends, some of whom I’d not seen in over a year, with a great dinner tucked away, the Delaware shore of the bay glowing, lights out on the water blinking and undulating, and the night sky pierced by the occasional shooting star–the beginnings of the annual Perseid meteor shower, I believe–it was a captivating and perfect moment of pure ease, the kind of ease only a Gatsby in his happiest of moments could relate to. Those moments are fleeting, but while they last, they have the low treble of fluted leisure, a sublimity of sureness and comfort. You can’t take those moments with you into traffic–they pass like the wind with the first stopping of the flow–but you can write of them with fond remembrance, and know that there will be future bay weekends. It’s all a perspective thing.
The same thing goes for love at long distance. But this has gotten long without me knowing it, and the day stretches forward. I have a career to pursue, unfortunately. Tomorrow the next, and arguably more intriguing section of my journey to the East Coast. Until then…

A Truth Universally Acknowledged

jelewis8 — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 06:31:59 +0000

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that on the day before a trip out of town, all hell will break loose and nothing you plan will come to fruition. I’m heading out of town for a week tomorrow morning, and natch, I have obligations and necessary contortions I must force my life into to accomplish all that I need before leaving. It never works out the way you envision, and today was more convoluted than usual. In spite of my intentions to the contrary, I found myself in want, not of a wife, but of more time.
It figures this would happen a day after turning twenty-six. I feel the weight of responsibility bearing down on me like a pack of piranhas. Not particularly heavy, maybe, but who cares when your various members are being chewed to pieces by the Amazonian water terrors. I used to have nightmares about piranhas, about swimming in muddy shallows in the middle of the South American jungle, about feeling the first tender nibble, and then the awful, awful pain as the entire flock of them launches en masse upon my calves and then my torso as I buckle with the extreme agony of being eaten alive.
That’s sort of what I felt like today, only metaphorically it was somewhat more nebulous and miasmic. By the way, I learned the word ‘miasma’ from a video game, and it has become my favourite go-to word for anything pertaining to clouds, confusion, or sheep. Try it out sometime. A swirling miasma of sheep. It grows on you, believe me.
So I have all these best laid plans, which started ganging aglee-ing by around 11:00am, when a trip to Best Buy to purchase microphone cables ended in a classic case of resident floor staff member with a look of either intense gastro-intestinal difficulty or confusion.
ME: Do you sell XLR cables here?
HIM: SKR?
ME: No, XLR. Like for microphones.
HIM: Hmmm, I have no idea. Ask that guy over there. His name is Allen.
ME: You’re very helpful.
So I go over to Allen. He gives me an appropriately baleful stare (down, as it happens, since he’s about six feet taller than me), then nods as if I’m harmless.
ME: Do you sell XLR cables?
HIM: FLR?
ME: X-L-R. You might know them as DMX 4.5, or…
HIM: Oh. XLR. For microphones.
ME: Yeah. For microphones.
HIM: I have no ide–wait. No. We don’t.
ME: Really? That’s strange. Seems like you would have something like that, seeing as how you have everything from washers and dryers to the latest XBox iteration. This is an audio component. Pretty standard cable. And you’re an electronics store, specializing in audio/video components and equipment.
HIM: I like XBox.
Okay, so some of that may have been dramatized for effect. But it sort of defined the rest of the day for me, which seemed to move in a slow motion tumbling motion. Everything seemed coated with a numbing pudding glaze, giving the day a sense of unaccomplishment, like everything I did was offset by the fact that it was very little in terms of actual productivity. I had a job interview which ended up lasting an hour and a half, even though I only talked to the interviewer for five minutes of that time. The rest was filling out paperwork. I took an English exam. We shook hands, and I didn’t get the vibe from him that we really connected, not in the way that I want to connect to a potential employer. I’d really like to get the eye contact that says “I’d buy you a drink right now if I wasn’t on the clock…and currently in AA on Step 4.” That’s the kind of soul connection I want. But that may be asking too much. Perhaps I should just go for them not battling an unexpected facial tic when I tell them how much I expect in a salary.
So life in LA after a year, right? It’s been a year, I should have stories, right?
The problem is, I’ve told pretty much all the good stuff, embellished by degrees and nuance heretofore unseen except with electron microscopes. Sure, there are moments of space, which I have kept to myself for either personal reasons or the fact that telling it would bore even the most boring bore that ever bored the crap out of everyone else by telling a boring story–even him–which leaves the blog entries from the last year. You can troll back through and find the gold among the fools, if you care to look. I know I promised a year in review, but this is pretty much it. I survived. I made it. I have a blog to prove it.
And that’s the modern myth.
Sorry, no Fringecast today. That was one of the ganged aglee’d thing that didn’t happen because the fates conspired with Betty Crocker to make that godawful pudding crap that was stuck to everything. We did have topics, and even a funky interview set up with a funky cool internet geek chick. But that just means next time will be ball-busting good. Or bad. Whatever 80′s term that indicates deferred Awesomeness.
I will be gone for the next week. Posting will suck at best. As in, it won’t happen. Go visit some of the sweet sites on the sidebar, or catch up on the Fringecast archives (also on the sidebar). Or go out and have a life for a week. Cuz you know you’ll be back. So will I.
Thanks for visiting. See you next week.

Sentimental Gentleman

jelewis8 — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 01:17:11 +0000

I’m 26, which makes me sick to think of how much time has passed and I haven’t done anything to make the world a better place. Not that anyone really does. At best the best person in the world is able to affect it in a way that resonates throughout history, but even then, the history books tend to skew slightly and memory gets washed over like bleach on a stain. History and memory are all we have to go on, to try to fix things. As individuals, we make things more like the way we want them, not as much the way things should be.
Ewwww, I just vomited maudlin all over the page. Sorry about that.
Last year I was in Las Vegas, sitting at a casino resort pool with my laptop on a table, smoking a cigar and writing a script which, to date, is still not finished. It’s a Garden State-esque script, without that one line “So there’s that,” from Zach Braff, the one that comes out sounding like he’s auditioning for Clueless 2. One thing I’ve discovered, writing scripts over the past few years, is that I enjoy delving into characters far more than I enjoy plotting out intricate storylines. Don’t get me wrong, characters are bound up in a story, but I sometimes wonder if my storylines aren’t subsidiary to my characters. But I’m trying. My sitcom is very plot-heavy, with characters getting only a bit of development along the way (though there’s clearly an arc).
Twenty-six means a lot of thing. I have to work hard to avoid moving into that “Creepy Guy With No Job” realm where my daily visits to the coffee shop with me on a laptop don’t devolve into the sad but maybe inevitable scenario in which mothers with children take the long way around my table to avoid my odd glances as I attempt to pierce the veil between this world and the one in my head. I figure as long as I keep one hand on my latte mug, I can get away with the innocent youthfulness look for a few more years.
I don’t remember ever doing the soul-searching this year’s turn has brought. There hasn’t been much to see, fortunately. It’s like a peek around the corner of a small peaceful country town. The view is sparse, but you know the big city encroaches eventually, covering even the farmlands with roads and buildings and industry and commerce. It’s the way of the future. There’s lots to see and do, and it’s just over the hill. So really, twenty-six isn’t so bad. It’s all in your perspective.
I love Los Angeles. Coming out here has been great for me, for my career (still jobless at 12 months!), and I’ve only suffered through three parking tickets ($135), two major car repairs ($669.70), a roommate getting hitched (go John!), and with luck, I’ll have agent representation by the end of August. Oh yes, I’ve made a few really good friends (you know who you are) and have had the pleasure of working on some great projects that have given me a better idea of what kind of people I want to work with in the future. Things are happening. Life is happening. I haven’t been making other plans, which is why the year went by so quickly. Life at 26 looks pretty sweet when you know everything has been prelude to what’s ahead.
Ah, hell. I don’t care that I’m being a sentimental gentleman. It’s my birthday, isn’t it?

A Year’s Prospectus

jelewis8 — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 23:53:20 +0000

I returned from San Francisco last night around 11:20, after a grueling drive back along the 5. Driving there is like waking up from a wonderful dream. Driving back is the long wait of horrible anticipation before brain surgery. And it’s not just San Francisco. Any drive of four or more hours has a special quality of exquisite delight or depression. Every hour passed is a knife. It only depends on whether it’s being removed from or stuck into your flesh.
San Francisco is like no other place on earth, and you can say that even knowing full well it’s exactly the same as every other place on the planet because it is global, in the same way that Siberia and the Solomon Islands and Antarctica are global, in the same way that people are global, no longer confined to their little plot. San Francisco keeps a person looking straight ahead, always toward the water, always toward the setting of the western sun.
This week promises to be interesting, though that usually doesn’t translate to the blog very well, for reasons which I am about to elucidate. Generally my life is easily graphable, following a line which resembles a desert hovering along the asymptotal horizon, which implies not an excess of things which might be put into memoirs, unless memoirs were suddenly redefined to writing about the life of someone whose very existence is less interesting than that of a fuzzy caterpillar. And it’s true, let’s face it. Caterpillars go through incredible transformation a short time after being born, becoming something nature hardly has words to describe for sheer complex beauty. Meanwhile, I’ve been in Los Angeles a year, and I still have the same two pair of shorts I brought out with me. Wear them constantly.
But it’s not the kind of thing that sells books.
Nevertheless, I figured I could take this week to discuss two milestones, one being my birthday tomorrow, and the second being an LA resident for a year on August 9. I’m sure that sounds like the beginnings of a maudlin look back at the past year, with fruitless pondering of what I could have done differently, what things have occurred to bring me to this point in life, blah blah blah. Please shoot me in the head if I start doing that. I’d hate to write it ~~more than~~ as much as you’d hate to read it.
No, what I would like to do is make this a hilarious, E! Hollywood True Stories kind of looking back, where secrets are revealed, photos are taken, and lawyers gather like vultures to sue each other’s clients because the picking gets so vicious. In short, I want to say exactly what I’ve been wanting to say all this time, but needed a year in which to establish residency, so as not to taint what I have to say with the hint of illegitimacy. Now that I’ve been here long enough, my words might have some weight. Just not as much as anyone who’s been here longer than me. But that’s the advantage of having a forum. People tend to listen if you shout loud enough. Even if they’re just rubberneckers trying to catch a glance at the crazy guy on the corner shouting weird things and wearing no pants. So watch and wait, people. There’s good stuff a’coming.
Oh, and by the way, in case you were wondering, yes. You did just spend five minutes reading something with absolutely zero content value. I’m kind of like the LA Times that way.
See you tomorrow.