School of Box

Today in class for our final exam we watched School of Rock. Yeah, that's right, our final involved watching Jack Black skid around on the floor in circles going, "dit-dit-dit-dit-dee-deedle-deedle-deedle-dit-dit-dit". Sometimes movie school is awesome.

So the prof is talking about how when we finish our take-home exams, we have to bring them in and put in the TA's box. "Yep, just put it in my box," she says. [and there is snickering]

"Where is your box?" someone asks. "------, tell them where your box is," prof prompts. [and there is more snickering] She tells us it's in the writing office.

"Yep, just put them in her box," the prof continues. "Actually, ------ would love to have anything you put in her box. Whatever you can fit in there. Just go ahead and.." [by now, the snickering has become has become ungated laughter and the TA is hiding her face in her elbow]

"MAILbox!" she screams.

"Oh," says prof, "I get it now. Well, there goes my job."

Best Moment On Set

Riding down the dirt track at dusk at the end of the day sitting in the bed of a pickup truck. Light hitting the tops of the grassy hills to the east, the blackened elegant structures of burnt trees from the forest fires in the purple and green magic hour twilight. So exhausted I feel hot and glowy, but it's the last part of the last day and the evening is cool on my face.

Great Moments On Set: Part Two

We're shooting from this dirt track in Calabasas parkland with beautiful rolling hills of dead yellow grass on all sides. We have all of our gear on the track (including pickup and techno crane and grip gear and all of the etcetera that makes a film set so crazy). Two people on horseback approach and it doesn't look like they'll be able to navigate horses past all our gear with much ease. One rider just rides up along the grassy ridge. The second rider follows the first, although she seems pretty pissed off about it.

Rider: This is totally ridiculous! I can't believe you people! Your SHIT is all over the road!

Her Horse: [shits]

Great Moments On Set: Part One

Super-cute Boom Operator lowers the boom and waits for some technical thing to be fixed.

Key Grip: Is that a gold calculator watch?

Super-cute Boom Op: Yep.

Key Grip thinks.

Key Grip: Are you seeing anyone right now?

News

I like reading the news. You get edges of stories, beginnings and endings that are really beginnings. The best part is, you don't get the whole story, you don't get to know what people really think, just what they say they think and sometimes you don't even get to know the people at all, you just see the strange things someone did and you wonder about what the rest of the story looked like.

See?

On Writing

It's terrible, I hate it, it's painful, it's almost five and I'm dizzy and squinting and trying to get the words down and yet when I think of all the things I'd like to spend my life doing, it's unavoidably necessary to admit to myself that it's probably this.

You Got It, You Got It

Tonight I was talking to my dad and he told me they invented a car that will parallel park for you, via sensors and computers.

There's a great Talking Heads song on the album Naked called Nothing But Flowers about life in a post-apocalyptic world wherein old crap is reinvented into pastoral delight (This was a Pizza Hut/Now it's all covered with daisies) and we all miss our microwaves.

To the automatic-parallel parkers, I say: You must develop your post-apocalyptic skills! You need to understand basic physics and small engine repair! You need to know how to tie knots and pasteurize milk! You need to be able to walk long distances over uneven ground! And figure out which way north lies from the moss on a tree, and what root to chew to keep your teeth clean, and how to lance a blister so you don't get an infection!

You need to be ready to parallel park all on your own.

(You should also know I am an absolutely splendid parallel-parker.)

Daily Progress Report

FOUND POSTER. Rolled up inside another, less desirable poster. How clever of me, foiling any would-be thieves of Emily Carr landscapes.

Putting that thing into its long-awaited frame was about the only thing my hungover head could deal with yesterday. My list of accomplishments are as follows: wake up and decide it would be better to stay exactly where I am. Wake up again. Have a shower. Pick out some clothes (clean ones). Put them on. Cook up some eggs and protein, drink some water, eat a multivitamin. Sit on the couch. Go for a walk to maybe buy milk. Don't buy milk but consider buying a small 99cent pot of ivy. Don't buy the ivy, take pictures of the sunset with phone. Walk past the children's shoestore next to the gelato place where a coven of kiddies are screaming and running in circles. Feel so happy to be childless. Make it home. Do laundry. Expose self to small doses of looking at a screen. Fret about how much work am unable to do in current state. Drink more water. Frame poster and feel joyous. Plan to go to bed at nine. Plan to eat a meal full of wellness-providing vegetables. Take all vegetables out of fridge, look at them on the counter, and realise can't reasonably fit all of them into one recipie. Put some away, cut up others, steam some. Talk to brother on phone. Talk to mother on phone. Look at clock and realise that proper-schedule plan requires going to bed NOW. Realise feel right as rain and ready to get some work done. Go to bed.

Short Ends

Still can't find poster.

Winter creeps in on little cat feet in LA, scared away if you look too closely at it or ask for it too insistently. It's getting cold at night, and sweaters and scarves are merited not just by USC's ferocious air-conditioning, but by the atmospheric situation as well. When I make enough money to buy stuff before it goes on sale I will have so many weird-cute jackets.

Marie Antionette: NG. Read the article on M.A. (the person) in Vogue. So much more entertaining than the splendid-looking movie. All I remember from the movie is them watching the sun rise. But the article talks about how MA's hair turned completely white during the carriage ride away from Versailles. And how she stepped up politically as best she could when Louis stopped talking for ten days and how they were executed and when exhumed they found only a skull, a handful of bones and a pair of garters. I want to see that story.

I've started to wear my mouth guard again because I fear that the things that weigh on my brain during the day weigh on my teeth at night and soon I will grind them down into little stumps. It feels like putting my mouth in a snug embrace for the night. At least it's still in when I wake up. When I first started wearing it, I'd find it on the other side of the bedroom in the morning. Presumably because I took it out and threw it there in the middle of the night. At least I don't wake up with earplugs in my mouth like some people I could name.

Soft lovely light in the living room makes all the difference.

New tactic for writing: get really sleepy and lie in bed and make notes and notes on notes and new ideas and keep going until you pass out. At least later you'll have some kind of wavery strange path to follow in the dark night of the soul known as the day before writing class.

How you can you run a school where getting into the gateway class to graduating is a free-for-all monitored by no one? I can't take the class I need to graduate because the only section I can take is full. The other section has a conflict with another class I'm supposed to take to graduate. Whither sense?