It’s an incredibly mellow day. I’m having a difficult time with the concentration thing. In fact, I think I’ve given up on concentrating altogether. I was working on Strange Angels, but realized that I was having difficulty seeing the forest for the trees. Or looking at the whole forest, but forgettng the trees. Or I wasn’t looking at either forest or trees and was too caught up with moss and lichen instead. in fact, don’t think I was even in the woods at all. It was more like a creative underground parking lot. And I began to daydream about writing the thing as a novel instead.

The thing of it is, the script is so unusual and ridiculous, that I’m going through the familiar process of falling into hatred with it. It can’t possibly be good, I think. It’s just too strange, yet it’s just not unique enough. It didn’t come to life. I’m like Dr. Frankenstein after the lightning storm, only my creature lies dead on a filthy gurney, unmoving, quiet, and kinda ugly. You know, I’ve wasted my time, it’s just going to make people scratch their heads, nobody will want to read it. It’s all a process. This hatred is part of the creative thing.

So then I think, maybe it would be better as a novel. And I start plotting to make time to work on that. The same thing happened with the delicate skin. In the end, I was happy with that one. So what we’re probably dealing with here is a case of project burnout. I’m going to retire into creative mode and think about future projects for a while…

Camden Toy came in to Rocket on Sunday evening. I had already known him as a customer (he’s got kind of a memorable name) but it wasn’t until showing Mark the episode “Hush” from Season Four of Buffy that I spotted his name in the credits. He played one of the “Gentleman” in that famously cool episode. Ryan and I called him on it the next time we saw him. Graciously, he gave us a few photos. turns out he’s been a reglar in the Buffyverse for a while, most recently in the WWII episode of Angel as the very Max-Shreck-like “Prince of Lies.” Check out the amazing makeup:

“Did you guys miss the Oscars?” asked a man at 9:30, as the first post-show customers began to trickle in to the video store.

“No, we didn’t,” I said.

“Oh, you guys got to watch them in here?”

“No,” I said. He looked at me funny. I clarified, “We didn’t miss ’em.” He got it, and laughed.

Sara and I killed time on one of the slowest Rocket nights in memory by watching Nightmare on Elm Street movies. We started with the third one (The Dream Warriors.) It’s a fan favorite, but I’ve never considered it one of my own favorites. Actually, I love it, as I love all those flicks, but I’d rank it lower than most people. The best line of the series comes from that one, however. The nun, voice low with awe and portent, breathing the words, “The bastard son of a hundred maniacs!” Yep, that’s Freddy.

We actually kept track of the winners on the web while we worked. Sean Penn won. Cool. Errol Morris won. cool. Zellweger won. Bummer. What else won? Sofia Coppola. (Thanks, Dad!) Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens. Cool. Anything else? Return of the King. And oh yeah, The Barbarian Invasions…

“Check this out! This is the part where Jennifer Rubin’s needle tracks start singing for their supper.”

“And look, Freddy’s fingers turn into needles!”

“How does he die in the second one?”

“I can’t remember. i just remember the end, with the bus driving off through the desert, and the guy in back going, ‘I’m GAY!!'”

“You know, in the beginning of the next movie the dog pisses fire…”

Sara and I munch on Mike & Ike’s. Life is good.

Just wanted to remind everyone how amazing the Either/Or album is by Mr. Smith. And I just remembered why Between 10th and 11th album by The Charlatans UK is so amazing. Simply this: Track 10 – (No One) Not Even the Rain.

It was the Sara, Will and Ryan show tonight. Business was brisk, but when you’re as cool as we are, no one really notices. We were all in a good mood, we all had energy (Sara and I came in to work with coffee) and we all had lame jokes to tell. As I said to the others at one point, “It’s like a well-written comedy show where all the jokes are bad.” In fact, I’ll let you in on a couple:

Ryan, when a customer asked about the latest Ron Howard flick that should have been in but wasn’t: “I’m afraid The Missing is missing.”

Sara, when a customer asked about a recent documentary that we didn’t have in. “It looks like the Friedmans have been captured.”

And me: Actually, I can’t remember my brilliant joke. But it must have been equally as bad.

No actor sightings that I remember, although there were a few great customer sightings. The ever-attractive Candace dropped in to return The Desk Set, which was a good sixteen days late (she had a good excuse–and I gave her a killer deal even though she actually has a boyfriend.) Stacey came in as well. i got to chat with her briefly, but it was too busy to “connect” and then there were a host of other regulars and nutcases.

Tomorrow, it’s just me and Sara doing the Sunday night thing. And yes, it’s Oscar night. I think that’ll make for a cool evening. I’ll stay away from the Hollywood Blvd area and just wander down to Rocket via La Brea. It’ll be the second year in a row that I’ve skipped the Oscars. And I used to watch them religiously. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen only about half of the nominated flicks. My friend Maria put it best:

“As for movies, too boring for words. Next Sunday is going to bring 4+ hours of little hooded dwarves and I couldn�t be less thrilled. I�m hoping Charlize treats us to a Halle Berry-style breakdown during her acceptance speech to provide some amusement.”

I just don’t really care anymore.

Clearly I’m having some problems with text overflow. I’m not able to work on it today. I’m working on an overview of the various writing projects on my slate for a meeting later today. No way I can let myself be distracted by time-swallowing HTML. I’ll fix it later.

ELBOW – Cast of Thousands

These guys are really cool. It’s the closest thing to Catherine Wheel I’ve heard in a long time, without really being anything like them. I always categorized CW as Pink Floyd meets Radiohead. These guys are different, but Guy Garvey sounds so much like Rob Dickinson the comparison is inevitable. Anyway, It’ll tide me over until the other guys pull a new album together.

I think I’ve decided to limit exactly what can be downloaded off this website. After thinking about it a little, I decided that there’s just no need to post my scripts in their entirety. Too much work has gone into the developing of those things. So I’m gonna limit them to their first thirty pages, perhaps password-protecting the full scripts. this doesn’t really affect anyone. I just wanted to write something for the new blog…