Time...

You lie sleeping. Your breathings slows. Your brain begins to relax.

Your body hibernates. Conserves. Shuffles on anything unnecessary or auxiliary.

Does time work differently for you than it does for me? While you sleep and I sit, awake and alert, are you gaining seconds? Are you slowing time? Will I age faster than you? Will the white in my hair shine through while your hair stays dark? Will wrinkles crease my brow as you remain youthful? Will I die that much sooner than you do? Will you have wished you had stayed awake?

But that remains to be seen. Farther down our string of time. For now, you lie asleep, your head filled with Phillip Glass dreams. I sit awake, watching the seconds pass through the air and out the open window.

Funny how we don't have a clock.

Things I learned from cartoons...

So looking back on some of the cartoons from my youth, here are some things I've learned:


If you find a big sword, it's probably a good idea to shout something like....oh i don't know...By the power of grayskull!

If your twin brother becomes He Man....you should look out for magic swords.

If you are a somewhat decent musician, you'll probably make a good crime fighter.

The same goes for fake athletes.

Oh, and fake actors too.

Yeah, and if your uncle is someone famous....you should at least give it a shot.

If you make a mediocre cartoon of a video game and it fails...then just try again. And...again. And just beat that old dead horse till it turns to dust, really.

Just because your new cartoon has a cool, techno intro; that doesn't make it better than the original. Not when this is the original.

It's okay to be ugly.

Sometimes, you can appeal to kids and adults at the same time, and still be amazing.

If your partner in crime doesn't actually have a brain....things aren't going to work so well.

Some parents are embarrassing. Some....some take that to a different level.

It doesn't take much to get a city job.

And finally...

If you find, that you live in a future where dinosaurs have come back to rule the earth, just get in your car and drive, man.



Till Later...


--Paul

Reviews You Can Use: Seven Pounds

Yesterday, I went and saw the new Will Smith feature, Seven Pounds. (You can see the trailer here)

Before I go on to my review of the movie, I want to digress just a second, and talk something very important.

Vince Vaughn. Vince. I want to level with you. Look yourself up on IMDB. Things are getting bad, Vince. Do you know what you're in right now? Four Christmases. Do you know what movie came right before that? Fred Claus. There's a pattern here, Vince. And it's a disturbing one. Now, I know you're not looking to win any Oscars here. I get it. But is this where it's ending up? Are we just going to have to settle for a vomit inducing lump of crap in our stocking every time it snows? Because we've seen better, Vince. We've seen The Breakup. We've seen Anchorman. We've even seen The Cell for gods sake, man. But Four Christmases? C'mon, Vince. Next year, is it Christmas With the Kranks?

All right. With that out of the way, on to the review.

I will admit. I was mislead by this movie. The poster very clearly states that this is from the director of "The Pursuit of Happiness". And frankly, I had no desire to go see a feel good, luke warm pumpkin pie holiday movie. But once it got going, things were a little different than expected.

The Pacing: The pacing of this movie is...at best you could call it slow. It is ponderous. Some scenes are very long. In some scenes, very little happens (action wise, anyway). But the tone is ok becuse of...

The Writing: The dialogue feels very natural. It is sparse, but genuine. There is a lot of cursing (for a PG-13 flick), but it doesn't feel out of place.

The Behind the Scenes Stuff: Mostly, all of this stays out of it's own way. The cinematography is fairly simple. The direction is light. Because really, what shines here is...

The Acting: This is, undoubtedly, the most important part of this film. My guess is, it'll be the only part we'll see come awards season, and for very good reason: Will Smith is phenomenal. Before I move on to Will Smith, I will take a moment to touch on a couple of the supporting characters... Rosario Dawson puts in a solid, simple performance. Nothing stretching or out of the norm, but it works here. Woody Harrelson is as likeable and warm as always, not electrifiying the screen, but making it a gentler place. And Berry Pepper puts in a small, emotionally clear performance as the best friend of Ben, Will Smith's character.

Now, on to Will Smith. You see, he gets his own paragraph here. Which is because he's not just the lynchpin to this movie. He is the movie. Really, I call this less of a movie, and more of a moving character portrait. It's not so much about what he does, but who he is. And in fact, that makes for fascinating fare. What we see on screen is mostly what we dont; the inner struggle that Will Smith goes through throughout the entire movie is what effects every single action that happens. It's rare that you come across a film that is truly Man vs. Himself. But here is one (the last I remember was About Schmidt). For the duration of the movie, we watch as Smith's character Ben struggles with mountains of grief and sorrow and (for the most part) we're really not sure why. But he handles every turn and every hidden sorrow with grace and elegance, only rarely letting anything boil to the surface.

The twists in the plot are suitable and I didn't catch one of them before it happened, so I appreciated that.

Come awards season, we should see Will Smith's name several times (for very good reason). Hopefully, when the Oscar nods are being announced, he's up there for Best Actor. If not, it's a travesty. But then, god knows that's happened before.

The Final Word: See it. If not at the theaters, then when it comes out on video. I would try to see it before the oscars come out, because Will Smith is likely to be nominated.

Till later...


--Paul

Ah the life of a consumer.

I went Christmas shopping today. So, of course, I was smacked right in the face with the hard hand of consumerism (it's leaving a nasty welt, but it should heal soon).

All of this made me ponder quite a bit. So here are a few of my ponderings...

I started the day with a quick lunch at the land of the golden arches. And as I was eating the best meal two dollars can buy, I happened to glance down at my placemat type thing.
















Free uniforms? Well goddamn! I gotta sign me up for some Mickey D's right now! WHoooo---eee!

But seriously. It's a very noble gesture...I suppose. Because as soon as I thought this, my first thought was, are there people who pay for their own uniforms?

In fact, there are. There happen to be some underhanded, morally corrupt, deal with the devil companies who do indeed make people pay for their own uniforms (I'm lookin' at you, Pizza Hut!). I imagine that if I were in a job that required that, I would be in the interview and as soon as they mentioned the "buying the uniform" idea, I would just stop and say "I'm sorry. I don't believe I can take a job where I, as the employee, have to be paying you...the guy who's supposed to pay me. Because...because that's backwards and wierd and unless Bizzarro Superman is flying in the sky, I just can't do that."


Later on, I was wandering around, and I saw this lovely set of cookware for sale:











I like Paula Deen all right enough, I suppose. I don't begrudge her for hawking cookware. But it got me thinking...if someone is famous, can they sell a product that has nothing to do with what they are famous for? Say, if I became a famous writer, would people buy my blenders? My toaster ovens? My condoms? Could I just slap my face and name on anything and sell it? Certainly not, right? No one is buying Stephen King brand cat litter. The concept is just ludicrous, right?




















Wrong. In the very next ailse, there was the item that proved me wrong. And it's not like these things aren't popular. Because they are. I had one, for god's sake. And it's great! They're great little machines, sold by a man who got punched in the face for a living. Hmm....


And lastly, I wandered into Office Depot to look for a couple things. And I found something entirely different which tickled my funny bone.

















Yes sir, that is a gen-u-ine realistic 3-D fish screen saver. And hold on. Hold on! That's not just one screen saver. That's two. Yes sir, two screen savers. One box. I must be crazy to give away two!

Ah, but they're not giving them away, are you, Office Depot? No. No, and what do they think these screensavers are worth?









20 dollars. 20. Two screen savers. 20 dollars.


A search of "free fish screensaver" pulls up over 436,000 sites giving away this screen saver. And Office Depot wants to sell it to you for 20 bucks. Oh, they also have sub-prime mortgages for you in aisle 6 next to the printers if you're interested.

And to be fair, Office Max sells the same screensavers for the same price.

And the scary thing? People had obviously purchased a few. Good lord.


Till later...


--Paul

So it finally happened.

Tonight, for the first time, I finally felt like a writer.

I was washing a couple dishes, trying to get the internet here to work (I'm really amazed right now that it's working at all), when all of a sudden, a sentence popped out of my mouth:

Nothing is ever destroyed. Not in the universe. Not in our minds.

And I said to myself...damn! That's a pretty good line. And all of a sudden, I started following it with other lines. And these sentences just started pouring out. And the moment when I became a writer came when I sat down instantly and wrote all these lines down. Saying them aloud as I was writing, like a character writing an email in a movie. This strange, stream of consciousness thing was really fantastic. So I would be happy to share it with you. It's rough, but it will turn into something really great.

Nothing is ever destroyed. Not in the universe. Not in our minds.

Energy can never be destroyed. It is only changed into different types of energy. Anger transforms into denial. Which transforms into sadness. We never forget. We never destroy the memories or the feelings which we had. They are only transmutated into other things. Things which help us or destroy us. As regular cells turn into cancer, so too can memories become a cancer of the spirit. Before too long, the tumors of the past eat away at our present lives, until we are nothing. But not nothing. Changed. Changed into something terrible. Where once, life and happiness were obtainable, we become harbingers of grief. We bring with us nothing but regrets in our pockets, and we are a blight to those around us. This is the sickness of loss. The cancer of grief. This thing that eats the survivors. It's why we have funerals. So that we can make some attempt at transferring this energy into someone already dead. Someone who can't be eaten by remorse. Who can only be eaten by the worms. Death is easy. It is living that is so difficult. Why we fight so hard to keep this life sometimes I do not know. For death is so much easier. Even in the far reaches of the unknown, where the energy contained in the body transfers into who knows what. Even that is easier than moving on when there is nothing but emptiness. Life transformed into regret that one wears like a cross. Drags along the dirt, leaving a trail of sadness in its wake.




Like I said, really rough. But it's going to be the basis for a very interesting piece. If you want to see it, I will be performing the final (for then) draft of this piece on January 2nd at Followspot Theatre.


Till later...

--Paul

The depth of human knowledge...

...only goes so far.

I work for an internet search engine.



And it just really suprises me sometimes how little people know. From younger folks, it makes sense. If someone's asking about the color of Patrick's shorts on Spongebob, my guess is, they are of a certain age range (but how are they getting ahold of cell phones?
But if you're asking some of the stupid things I get asked every day...am I really the source to ask about "what's the best sex position"? Or "what's the best way to masturbate?" Or, even worse "is this mucus coming out of my vagina a problem"...this seems more like a "consult your physician" kind of question, doesn't it? It's an interesting job, though. In a lot of cases, (questions that don't have to do with Family Guy or Dragon Ball Z), I feel pretty rewarded in helping someone find an answer they are searching for. I'm able to pick the answer off the tip of their tongue and deliver it to them. Plus, I get to learn things too.

Did you know: Barns are painted red because typically red paint was the cheapest. But also, in the way they used to make red paint, there were ingredients in the paint that helped protect the wood.

Inspector Gadget's Dog? Brian.

Inspector Gadget himself was voiced by Don Adams. Which is ironic, because Inspector Gadget was a satire on the spy genre that people loved in the 60's. Of course, Don Adams was in the king of Spy Satires, Get Smart.

There were two actresses who performed the role of Meg Griffen on Family Guy. Lacy Chabert was first, but left to do other work. Mila Kunis stepped in after that.

I'm still answering questions, by the way. Still.

So, about the writing...

I suppose that part of writing this blog is with the intent that at some point, there will be people who are interested in it, and eventually, follow it for new posts.

So today might be a good day to begin to look at my writing. From my point of view, anyway. At some point, you may read my work and get some other kind of meaning from it. But at this point, I'm just thinking to myself, so it doesn't really matter.

One thing that becomes apparent very quickly is that my characters have daddy issues. Now, some full disclosure here, I probably have daddy issues. It's ok. I understand this in myself. So, because I've got these things going on, so does everyone I write. But I kind of look at it like Sam Shepard and all of his stories about brothers fighting for the affection of fathers. I mean...they're all like that. Yet we love his stories because they are fantastic. Not that I'm comparing myself to Sam Shepard. That would be a little foolish (I'm not the lead singer of The Killers, after all). Just saying that if you make a good story, your bad habits really don't matter.

Wouldn't it be interesting if one day I became famous, and there are all these posts on here from when no one was reading it at all? I would find that interesting....

My first Post

So here we go. This is my first post on this blog....and I suppose this is probably a good time to state my purpose, yeah?

So I feel that I am making the transition from being an actor and such to being a writer and such. And if I am going to be a writer and such, then it's probably pretty key that I...you know...write.

I'm terrible at journaling. I've tried it time after time throughout my life. But I think this is a really important juncture in my life, and it's a good time to give it another shot.

So here I am. Writing on this blog. And what do I want out of it?

Well, hopefully it will do a few things for me. For one, it would be a nice place for people to come and check out some of my writing. From time to time, I will post samples on here for people to read and discuss. Also, I've realized that one of the hardest things about writing is...actually writing. Just the physical act of sitting here and typing. So perhaps I am not working on a current project, play, whatever. But at least I am putting words on the page, exercising my brain and teaching myself the discipline of writing every day.

I will share with you a fun paragraph I wrote a couple nights ago:

He watches his pencil slowly roll from one edge of the desk to the other. The same, slow, steady pace. In this moment, he comes to realize that a penic is not round. It is, instead, a series of sides. Side after side after side. The effect of rolling is illusionary. Instead, it is tumbling, end over end, facets slowly cascading, blending until the effect of a roll is achieved.



Till later.

--Paul