The War

September 27th, 2007Blog1 comment

Currently watching: The War on PBS.

Even though I’m a die-hard WW2 history fanatic, I am still learning new things watching this Ken Burns series. Mostly about the homefront and how America was still a deeply segregated country. It was also very interesting to see how news about the war was disseminated to the population. It wasn’t instantaneous like it is today — it was ciphered by the technology of the day (newsreels), but the horror of it all wasn’t censored by the government. The sight of dead Americans galvanized the population, and people weren’t shielded from it. It rallied everyone to make sacrifices instead of just going shopping and being asked not to worry about it.

The series is around fifteen hours total, which each episode being two to two and a half hours. Ken Burns says that his next project will be about Vietnam, although he doesn’t want to start interviewing veterans for another few years. He’s apparently waiting until people are older.

I’ve got a recommendation for pen and drawing tool freaks out there: JetPens, the online purveyor of Japanese pens, mechanical pencils, and neat accessories. It is pen nerd heaven. Highly recommended!

I prefer to use gel pens — however, the smallest point I can find around here is 0.5 mm. JetPens offers 0.35 mm points which are much better for my style of tiny handwriting.

WE HAD CRAWFISH:

IT WAS AWESOME

Dragon of Love on the Sundance Channel

September 27th, 2007General0 comments

Dragon of Love, featuring Angela Wiggins and my main man Randall Park, directed by Doan La and written by yours truly, will begin running on The Sundance Channel starting on October 2nd, 2007 at 7:00 pm. It will be in regular rotation from then on.

You will also be able to watch it online at www.sundancechannel.com starting on the same day.

Check It Out

September 19th, 2007Blog0 comments

My new favorite website covering mad science from the 20th century: Modern Mechanix

Some of these articles are especially great — like everything under the Scary tag. So much good stuff in there that I don’t know where to begin. Actually, yes I do: Bake the Ills Out of Your Dog.

Some really neat news concerning Dragon of Love is coming up soon. Stay tuned…

ANTSY

September 18th, 2007Blog1 comment

Currently Reading:

I just finished reading Scott McCloud’s Making Comics; in there was a chapter on Japanese manga and its artistic/storytelling differences toward American comics. This got me thinking that I should read some manga to see what’s going on there these days.

Yotsuba&! is by the creator of my favorite anime of all time, Azumanga Daioh. This comic centers around a five year-old girl and her dad, and the various adventures they have after moving into a new neighborhood.

There are a lot of things I like about this series. The art style is clean and crisp, with cartoony human characters in front of highly technical backgrounds — it’s a similar style to Herge’s Tintin. The best part are the stories — Yotsuba centers on humorous discoveries of everyday things. Doorbells, balloons designed to scare birds away, and vengeance. You heard that right. One of the stories is all about revenge, and it’s probably the funniest one so far. The whole thing is reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes, and I highly, highly recommend it.

I am antsy. I have completed the outline for my new project; at this point if it were a play, I could begin writing scenes. However, this is a feature screenplay, so what I need to do now is write a treatment. For me a treatment is a 60-80 page novella of the story. This is where the actual writing occurs, and from there it’s a short jump to the actual screenplay format.

But I can’t do that yet. I have to wait. I have to patiently go through the outline again and again, making sure that the things that I see are unconventional. Fresh. Surprising and paced properly. It’s a lot easier to shuffle around an outline and make its structure tighter than to have to rewrite and shift whole blocks of actual writing.

So at times like this I get really antsy. I want to move ahead, jump in and go, but I have to be patient. I have to be meticulous as an assassin. It sucks.

Z

September 12th, 2007Blog2 comments

Currently Reading:

This is some serious desert reading, full of delicious sci-fi bits of goodness. Like the fact that the Israelis have trained special dogs to sniff out human carriers of the zombie plague. This is one of those books that you pore over carefully late at night, hunting out the details. Mr. Brooks has built a fascinating, almost satirical post-zombie apocalypse world. Highly recommended.

It smells like Fall out there again. I could feel it during my last run. The cold is rushing in, and it tickles my spine. This half of the year, the cold half, is my favorite time of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, wearing a jacket again.

For some reason I’m also more productive during this time of the year. I think it’s because I’m less tired from the heat. The cold invigorates me. It’s some ancient feeling in me instilled during childhood. Instead of hibernating I get woken up.

I Love Creepy

September 10th, 2007Blog0 comments

I’ve always held a rosy place in my heart for creepy/macabre things. This post is all about that since I am in a creepy state of mind.

I was recently reminded of The House on the Rock in Wisconsin. The Wiki article doesn’t do it justice; fantastic pictures of this place to be had here. I’ve never been there but I’m dying to go. Everything looks so great and old and creepy. It’s a repository for the products of twisted imaginations. I’m not sure if I could get anyone to go with me to Wisconsin, and I wouldn’t want to go alone. I may not return. Or I may return covered in cheese.

Currently reading:

I had mentioned the TV series here earlier; I really like it, so I went to the library and picked up the book that it’s based on.

I love the narration — humorous, slick, inventive. After reading twenty pages of this thing I was hooked enough to go ahead and buy the sequel from B&N; I’ve heard that the third book in the series is out this month. Now I’m almost done with this first one, and it’s nice to know that my future reading pleasure is secure.

Bowie’s in Space

September 6th, 2007Blog2 comments

Would you drive this car? Personally, I actually would if all the other cars/trucks on the road were equivalent in size. However, no matter how many safety features the Smart has, it looks like it would be vaporized by a collision with a semi on the freeway.

Currently Reading:

I just started this one. I’ve wanted to check it out for a while so I thought it was about time.

So I’m outlining a new project now. The objective for me in the outlining phase is to create a tight structure and make sure every event in the story is sequenced properly. Usually I have gaps in the story, so properly outlining it helps illuminate and fill in those gaps.

I use a combination of a bulleted sequential list on the computer and notecards to outline stuff. The sequential list is great for detail — each scene gets a bullet and I type much faster than I can write by hand, so eventually the entire outline will take shape here. However, notecards are very good for resequencing things and trying out variations of sequences. Also, you can see more at once with notecards. I use these for the broadstrokes of the structure.

I noticed that the methodology I use in outlining, writing, and then editing a project has gotten tighter and quicker the more that I do it. Now it’s pretty much down to a science. It’s good to be able to just work on stuff while I wait for people to deal with my completed stuff in the background. Waiting around doing nothing sucks.