Thursday, August 26, 2004

 

I'm Not Kidding, Give Me Back My Trapper Keeper With The Puffy Unicorn Stickers

As entry into NYU, Tisch, and the Department of Dramatic Writing draws closer, I've found myself repeating the following mantra: Don't Screw It Up This Time.

My undergrad career is not one I'd put on the mantle. I graduated, in spite of my best efforts. I'm fond of one or two projects I did. But looking at the whole sorry soggy four-year plate makes me regret.

For the first two years, I was a terrible student. Awful. Didn't work, didn't try, because I'd never had to try before. I'd always managed to coast along on my own precociousness. Many were happy to let me coast along, because I was bright and carried myself like The Boy Destined For Greatness. It took me two years to realize that university professors don't care if you don't care, but they also don't care to let you coast along, either. Shows how smart I really am.

My third year, I resolved to be a better student, but I got my heart broken for the very first time, and I was in the pain-haze for six months.

That left me to overload on credits my senior year. It was a good one, for someone who'd just discovered the concept of studying, but it didn't make up for three years of sloppiness. I didn't graduate cum laude, I graduated with laundry.

Now I'm going to graduate school, and I hope I'm a little wiser. I offer up a prayer to a God Who Surely Has More Important Things To Worry About, for the coming months.

Oh GWSHMITTWA, walk with me through the MFA Valley, do not forsake me when I write my first essay in ten years, for you know the ones I write here don't count;

Verily, GWSHMITTWA, I shall sing your name during the eight seconds of free time I will have between now and Spring 2006;

And I shall tithe you gold when I have paid off my student loans, so expect a check when I turn 83;

GWSHMITTWA, let my classmates be good eggs, let our projects succeed, let our skills flourish, let my jokes tickle them, and let me tickle them when they aren't looking, and we'll all have a good laugh over a cocktail later;

Speaking of cocktails, GWSHMITTWA, and alcoholic beverages in general, you know that I like the white man's firewater, so let me go easy on it this time, I know that the booze is most sacred in my field, and I shall imbibe of it, but really, last time I drank so much Rolling Rock I turned green, and that was not good;

Lead me not unto temptations, like the conviction that I don't need to work on that paper because I can always pull an all-nighter, or the belief that I don't have to work on that five pages of dialogue because every .doc file I create is made of golden 1s and 0s, or the general attitude that the only thing I need to strike it big is my big talent and...am I beginning to ramble, GWSHMITTWA?;

I shall wrap this prayer up by singing your name in the highest, wherever that is, Norway, I think.

posted by Dan 1:39 PM
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004

 

No Really, I Need My Trapper Keeper with the Puffy Unicorn Stickers

I was shopping in the Staples for school supplies. It was a surreal but familiar sensation, akin to those dreams that set you back in high school, but without the panic of an impending test. And with your clothes on. At least, I think I had my clothes on.

I was browsing through the binders -- which apparently Boeing designed to withstand an airdrop into a combat zone -- and two young, young ladies were wandering the same aisle. I felt a pang of kinship with them: here we were, experiencing the same excitement and anxiety of the upcoming September. Then one of them said:

YOUNG YOUNG GIRL:
ohmygod do I need like three folders just for math?!

And I felt like Methuselah shopping for a new dolly.

posted by Dan 1:35 PM
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Where Is My Trapper Keeper with the Puffy Unicorn Stickers?

Grad school hasn't started yet, and already I have homework.

Homework: To me, the word looks like a relic, like churl or margarine. This antique word does not belong in my vocabulary. Sir, I am thirty-three! I know not homework! Why, the indignity! I am a nobleman, I only ever dine with people of my own height!...

Lost my marbles for a second there. I was talking about homework. It's not even real homework. Real homework is researching obscure dietary laws in Leviticus and cross-referencing them with the eating habits of the Middle East, pre-internet. My homework is simple. I have to come in with two three-paragraph ideas for screenplays. And I'm stumped. Can you believe it?

Oh, I have the ideas for screenplays, but I'm having trouble getting excited about any of them. It's like being on a date with someone you know you should be attracted to, but aren't. They talk, and you aren't all that interested, but you know you should be, so you keep trying to picture them in various hot positions, hoping for a little stimulation down south, and it's just not happening.

With each idea, I wonder if it's marketable, or too marketable, or cliché, or silly, or obscure...I know, I know, I should write what comes from my heart, but my heart is being very coy right now.

I have this one idea that's so obscure, I doubt it'll ever go over. How obscure? Henry VI obscure. Part of the reason I'm going to school is to develop writing that I can sell, and I just don't feel comfortable going into a pitch meeting having to explain The War of the Roses and how Shakespeare's take on it relates to adolescent psychology and modern politics blah blah blah. The idea flashes ART MOVIE in big neon letters. Do I really want to spend a year developing a screenplay that only I would be crazy enough to make?

Another idea I have is marketable, I'm sure of it. Or at least it's half a marketable idea. I know I could develop it into a full one, but the sell-acious aspect of it is making me feel yucky. Do I really want to spend a year developing a screenplay in which yet more sh*t blows up?

These are two of the girls I'm seeing, and there are many others. Which one do I want to get serious with? There's only one way to find out: get naked and see which one I can knock up.

I am just losing my mind this week. Might be all the paint fumes.

posted by Dan 1:08 PM
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

 

Not Ready For Wheaties

As I've said before, I love the Olympics, love it in the way I suspect S&M people enjoy a good smacking. It is sweet agony.

When I hear that Olympic March play, my heart thumps in time (BUM-BUUUUUM-ba-DUM-BUM-DUM-DUM) (very painful and has my doctor worrying). The pageantry, the international camaraderie of sports, the setting aside of political difference to push the potential of the human body, the athletes caught in the apex of their careers, the beauty, the grace of the human spirit...

And then I get two weeks worth of inflated egos, corrupt officiating, international litigation, and the thin whine of endless athletes crying foul. And I take a perverse pleasure out of this too; perverse because I think it appeals to some shoddy corner of my soul that suspects that human beings are hopelessly, uselessly petty. I wonder if this is the whiniest generation in history. I suspect we wouldn't know a stiff upper lip if we kissed Viagra.

Oh well, back to my work in the noble, noble world of theatre.

By the way, I'm already over my sarcasm quota this week.

posted by Dan 1:47 PM
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Monday, August 23, 2004

 

Allow Me To Unhinge for a Moment

Children are stupid. So says Steven Fendrich, president of Pioneer Drama Service.

...Fendrich championed age 6 as the baseline for material to be considered publishable. He admonished several authors for using sophisticated language and references to historic figures children "could not possibly be expected to understand."

He was particularly harsh on Larry Bograd's "Poor Gertie," a flawed but heartfelt musical about a girl whose single and underemployed mother faces eviction. The deus ex machina is not a god but art itself, as the girl's drawings catch the attention of a rich and eccentric gallery owner. The message that art can save the world was compelling and welcome during an election year when Scientific and Cultural Facilities District arts funding is up for reauthorization.

But Fendrich attacked every aspect of the script, saying a family facing eviction was an inappropriate subject for children, as was a girl questioning whether her birth was an accident. He also said kids "cannot be expected to understand what poverty is,"...

Because, you see, children are extremely stupid. That's exactly how it was when I was a kid, and it stands true today.

When I was a child, I had no idea who Van Gogh was. Or Kandinsky. Or Hokusai. More importantly, I didn't want to. For that would have meant picking up one of those strange, dusty encyclopedias on the wall shelf, perhaps sacrificing precious minutes of my weekly "Superfriends" viewing, It would have meant a conversation with my parents, a situation to be avoided at all costs. Or perhaps a dreaded trip to the museum. The horror.

But thankfully, my parents' generation understood that Children Are Stupid.

If a child does not know who a historical figure is, we should not put them in a situation where they might have to ask someone. That would lead to learning, and learning is as great a menace as drugs. Say no to weed, kids, and say no to discovering who Frederick Douglass was.

I'll bet the mother who challenged Fendrich's assertion was some liberal upper-crust snob-mom, who sends her babies to her country club's daycare, and clips their tiny eyelids open for "Baby Einstein" videos. I guess her children know who Van Gogh is, because she lives in a mansion built with djinni gold, but the rest of us live in a modest subdivision I call REALITY. And the sign at the entrance to our subdivision reads, "CAUTION: PEA-BRAINED IGNORAMUS CHILDREN AT PLAY." We're too poor to afford the kind of private-yacht price tag that knowledge of Van Gogh demands. And I promise you that our children don't know we're too poor, because they cannot be expected to understand what poverty is.

Let me repeat: Children cannot be expected to understand what poverty is. To expect that, we would have to expect them to understand that this world is less than perfect. When I was a kid, I understood that I didn't know that my schoolmates lived in soul-sucking poverty. "What's that? John lives with a single mother who works three jobs, next to a crack den? I wouldn't know! I'm a stupid kid! I can't hear you, and stop looking at me!"

Thank God there were no stories around to shatter my ignorance of the existence of poverty and hunger. Oh, except for Hansel and Gretel. And Cinderella. And Jack and the Beanstalk. But other than those stories, no poverty! (And The Little Match-Girl.)

I'd like to thank Steven Fendrich for defending the fundamental value of stupidity. I'm sure he'd be modest and say he's just being realistic and extrapolating the demands of the marketplace. I think he's an idealist at heart. He's learned the lessons of our past, and is using those lessons to lead us into a drooling, slack-jawed tomorrow.

original link via ArtsJournal.

posted by Dan 1:54 PM
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M.I.A.

James Comtois, where are you? Were you eaten by otters? Or perhaps fell down a bottle of Gorilla Glue?

UPDATE: Geez, that was a fast response. The Rogues Gallery has been updated.

posted by Dan 11:00 AM
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Posting Once in an August Moon

These are surely the dog-days, when posts are few and far between. I'd feel bad about my neglect, but others are just as guilty. And not all of us have an endless supply of subs, like some total cheaters I know.

The bedroom is back in one piece, if an unfinished piece. And the toddler did no permanent damage.

posted by Dan 10:56 AM
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