Gym Update

I went to the gym tonight around 10:30…and the bane of my existence wasn’t there! The bad news is that they still haven’t fixed the second treadmill, and there was a different woman on the only good treadmill. She was cuter, but couldn’t possibly be wearing more make up. Make up? On the treadmill? Seriously?

Last night I had a conversation with a friend about the pros and cons of the Mountain Time Zone. Exciting I know. Well, I have a new item for the “con” category. Leno comes on earlier. This was on the whole time I was there – and he was doing my favorite segment. Headlines! The only one I remember was an ad for corn on the cob, and opposite the picture was the misprint “Bathroom Tissue.” Goodness that man is funny.

Anyway, I kill a half hour on the cycle and I couldn’t take it anymore. Leno can ruin anything if you don’t have someone with you to appreciate his idiocy. So I did my run outside, which was a great choice. I was able to open up my speed at the end there better than I have for years and years. I’m starting to feel really good.

I hate for this blog to seem like complaining all the time, but complaining is more fun. I have a ton of things that I am grateful for that are to personal to share other than in generalities of family and health (for the most part anyway.)

PS. Something has gone horribly bad in my refrigerator and I can’t seem to figure out what item it is.

** NEWER UPDATE **

7.30.08 Some guy at the gym tonight actually changed the channel to watch Leno. And he did this on purpose! Yikes!

Way Too Soon

A long time family friend passed away last week. She will be greatly missed.

From the Burlington Free Press:

BECCI GILBERT DAVISON BURLINGTON — Becci Gilbert Davison, 48, of Poirier Place in Burlington, died unexpectedly Saturday, July 26, 2008, in Fletcher Allen Health Care. The daughter of Marjorie Gilbert Carpenter and John Gilbert, Becci was born June 5, 1960, and grew up in Burlington, attending area schools. The family lived in Utah, briefly, before settling finally in Vermont. Following graduation from Burlington High School in 1978, Becci attended the University of Vermont, studying art. Becci married her high school sweetheart Floyd Davison, July 21, 1979. Together they had seven beautiful children—Steve and his partner Maria Notaro, Maureen, Whitney, Kevin, Patrick, Liam and Sean, who were the light of her life. Throughout her life, Becci was a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She took great joy and pride in her faith and used it as the foundation for building a strong and vibrant family. She dedicated her life to serving others by her love, kindness, warmth and generosity. Her extended family and friends will always remember her hospitality; her ability to make holidays, birthdays and any gathering a special occasion, with her special touches, flare and enthusiasm. The greatest joy she had in life was spending time with family and friends, especially at the family camp in Holland Pond, Vermont, where she spent every summer since honeymooning there. Becci loved arts and crafts, cooking and spending time with the lady’s in the hood. She was famous for her German Chocolate Cake, a birthday specialty for her family. She also loved music, singing in her church choir and around the Holland Pond campfire. Becci was predeceased by her parents; her beloved “Noni“ Nora Gilbert; and her fatherin-law, Joseph H. Davison. She is survived by her husband and children and her siblings Linne Shea and her husband Chris and their family, David and his wife Merry Ann and their family. Also surviving are her half siblings, Jamie, Julia and Noah; and her mother’s husband, Mike Carpenter. She is also survived by Floyd’s siblings and mother; her aunts, uncles, many cousins, and friends; along with Tully, who will miss her dearly. Becci was as generous in death as she was in life—requesting the donation of all her organs. Her family is comforted to know her beautiful heart will beat on bringing joy to another family. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to an education fund for her children. Please send contributions to Davison Children Education Fund c/o Joe Davison, 5 Lorri Road, Derry, NH 03038 A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 30, at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Church, 400 Swift St., So. Burlington, with burial to follow in Lakeview Cemetery, Burlington. Public visiting hours will be on Monday, July 28, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Ready Funeral and Cremation Services, South Chapel, 261 Shelburne Road, Burlington. For directions or to send online condolences please visit www.readyfuneral.com.

I Didn’t Do It

That is what I would say if anyone happens to ask me what happened to the annoying woman who dominates my gym.

When I moved to Provo, I decided to quit my membership to 24 hour fitness because my HOA fees include a gym in the neighborhood. No sense in paying for 2 gyms at once. Plus, I was excited about being able to walk to my gym in under a minute. How cool is that? In LA my gym was a mile or so away, but it seemed to take 10 minutes with all the traffic lights, and you wouldn’t want to walk it at night. I had a gym in my complex in Florida, but with my school schedule…I just didn’t take advantage like I should. I promised myself to take better advantage of such a great situation.

Well, I’ve tried. I’ve gone pretty much everyday these last couple months. But this gym closes at midnight, and really - the card won’t open the door past 11. I enjoy working out late. It wears me out and gets me ready to sleep. I can live with those times though. What I can’t live with is this evil woman.

SHE IS ALWAYS THERE

I’ve tried adjusting my schedule.

SHE IS ALWAYS THERE

I’ve tried showing up at 6am several times (a major effort for me), I’ve tried at 2pm, 9pm and every time in between. It doesn’t matter. I am on a streak of about 12 trips to the gym in a row where she is there, and always on the treadmill. One time, it happened three times in one day. I have no proof that she even left that day. Each time I walk in there, I feel like I am the subject of some awful British hidden camera tv show.

There are two treadmills at this gym, but one has been broken for 2 months or so. I call maintenance every week - still, the treadmill blinks its sad broken down message. I use other machines, but the treadmill is my weapon of choice. Sometimes I will hop on the cycle or something and try to wait her out. I’ve given up on this for two reasons. (1) She runs for hours. When the 1 hour limit is up, her hand is already on the button to restart. It is seamless. (2) She often brings her two young boys, and ignores them as they hang like animals from all the other machines – including whichever one I am using.

What puts me over the top though? This woman has no idea how to run. Her mechanics are awful. She runs like she has been stabbed in her side. One of her hands is glued to the front panel (for lack of a better word) so she is basically dragging herself the entire way. I think she would fall off if she took her hand off the machine and swung her arms like a normal person. I don’t think she could keep up.

It is 8:20pm as I finish this post. At 7:45pm I entered the gym to see what I already know. I write this post to vent and to kill some time until I go over and try again. I don’t have much faith that I’ve let enough time pass.

So if anyone ever asks what happed to that woman…I have no idea.

Someone Out There Hates Me

I spend a lot of time at my desk writing. Traditionally, people prefer to create a quite environment that is conducive to deep thought and reflection. Not for me though. I don’t do well in silence. I like to say that when I’m not at least slightly distracted by something, my brain begins to eat itself. Since I can remember, I’ve slept with a fan on. It doesn’t matter if it is 20 below outside. I’ll just add a blanket. I often have the radio going too. New York City is a place I despise, but when I visit my Aunt in Manhattan, one of the things I do enjoy is the soundtrack going on outside, even at 3am. It calms me.

I keep with these preferences even when I write. Only when I am in a major groove or need concentrate REALLY hard on something do I cut out all the outside noise.

Anyway, I love podcasts of radio shows. I listen to a ton of them, but those require a certain degree of processing that does hurt my output, so I will often turn to music that I can use in the background and stay focused on the task at hand. I usually turn to Launchcast to fill this role because of its ratings system, I’ve basically created my own radio station that plays songs I like, and new songs it thinks I might like. I’ve found a lot of cool artists and songs this way.

Launch never has commercial blocks. They usually do a 20 second or so spot every 4 or 5 songs, which is fine. Well, I spent about 5 hours last night working on an outline and one of my worst nightmares is realized.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as annoyed with a television ad campaign as I am with the Folk singing freecreditreport.com barrage over the last year or so. There are so many reasons to hate this garbage. Is it the singer guy? You know, the one who apparently has no clue he is a super tool. Could it be the annoying tune of the song? For me, the lyrics are the killer. Who wrote this nonsense? It makes no sense.

This particular ad is from the 9th circle of hell:

Okay, lets review these lyrics, shall we?

They say a man should always dress for the job he wants,
So why am I dressed up like a pirate in this restaurant?
It’s all because some hacker stole my identity,
Now I’m in here every evening serving chowder and iced tea,
Should’ve gone to free credit report dot com
I could of seen it coming at me like an atom bomb,
they monitor your credit and send you e-mail alerts,
So you don’t end up selling fish to tourists in T-shirts

Just how does one blame the fact that they work in a crappy restaurant on the fact that their credit got messed up? A likely story. So, let me get this straight, you got fired from your really nice high paying job because you couldn’t get a loan on a home or a credit card? Yeah, that makes sense.

The other ads make only marginally more sense.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, Launchcast has been kind enough to all of a sudden replace ALL of its ads with this freecreditreport.com torture. Not only this, but it seems like they have increased the frequency of the ads. I swear last night they were playing these things every 2 or 3 songs.

I don’t know what to do…

Write My Life

Screenwriters are always learning new things. It’s become apparent that no screenwriter can ever know everything there is to know about format, story structure, character development, etc. So we always look to learn more. Books, magazine subscriptions, podcasts, seminars, dvds and blogs. There are two reasons we search these things out. Obviously we want to be better, we want to improve our work by finding little bits of advice that has helped others. The other reason would be to have a legit excuse to not be writing while feeling like we are.

I won’t deny being propelled by motive #2 quite often. But in doing some of the said searching last night I started to think about my own story.

In the 3 act structure of life - with me inching toward speeding toward 30 – I’m entering (or likely knee deep in) act 2. I’ve kind of established who I am, for better or worse. My likes and dislikes are what they are. My problems are what I’ll be struggling with until the end. My goals have been set and I’m on my journey.

I found this in reading one of my favorite Screenwriting tipsters (William Martell)

ACT TWO IS QUICKSAND

Act Two of your script is a constant struggle… and whatever your protagonist does only makes it WORSE! Gets them DEEPER into trouble. Because Act Two is quicksand – the more your protagonist struggles to get out, the deeper they are pulled into the quicksand!

In THE BOURNE IDENTITY Jason Bourne is found floating in the ocean with no memory of who he is. The central conflict/question for Bourne is “Who am ?” – that’s the question which propels the story. It’s not a question with a simple answer – you can break it up into a series of questions… each a step to the answer of the main question… and each providing further questions. Part of Who Am I? is his name. When Bourne goes to the bank and opens the safety deposit box, he finds a passport in the name of Jason Bourne. Now he knows his name… but the passport includes a new question (his address – What kind of place to I live in?) And the safety deposit box contains a couple of other great questions – a gun, money, other passports. These serve to ask the question “What kind of person am I?” The film is filled with questions – What kind of person has a bank account implanted in their hip? “How come I know the best place to find a gun is the cab of that truck?” Here’s where the quicksand comes in – the more Bourne learns about himself, the more dangerous he becomes to Treadstone. The people who KNOW who Bourne is are the same people who are trying to kill him. Every clue he finds to his own identity takes him another step deeper into trouble. He can not find out who he is without putting his life in danger. The more he struggles to get out of the quicksand, the deeper he is pulled into the quicksand.

The more Bourne finds out about himself, the less he likes himself and the deeper in trouble he becomes. It’s quicksand! Remember that the important part of Act Two is the conflict, the struggle. The scenes that set up the conflict and resolve the conflict are necessary, but the audience came for the conflict. While the protagonist is struggling, his life is interesting… and entertaining.

I guess that makes me feel better. Things seem to be going right according to script.

What A World

“What a world, what a world.”

A favorite phrase of a good friend of mine. Usually said in exasperation.

I’m continually baffled by people. I suppose I just don’t “get” them. I’ll never understand how certain people can be so inconsistent, untrustworthy and inconsiderate. Sometimes it’s a wonder anything in this world gets done with so many people featuring those characteristics.

I guess that’s all I needed to say. I’ve run across a lot of these characters lately.

Frozen Over

Some things I will actually miss about the Los Angeles area:

• Really good friends first and foremost.
• It may seem trivial. But its a great place to get salads. There were several places very close to me that I would more than frequent for amazing salads. I’ve not been able to find anything close here. It is a lot easier to be in shape with those kind of options when you don’t feel like making your own food. Some good choices if you are in the area. (1) (2) (3)
• Even when I want to make my own food, it is harder to be healthy. How this area doesn’t have a Whole Foods closer than 30 miles away baffles me.
• Odd celebrity stuff. I don’t like celebs, but sometimes you have a weird sighting or you have THIS. A friend of mine happened to have his picture snapped next to Paris, and it creates a buzz about them possibly dating. Hilarious, and can only happen in one place.
• The UCB Theatre. ( And having it blocks away from my place.)
• Tennis @ Griffith Park.
• Hiking Runyon Canyon.
• Being able to get a good job at any time and in my sleep.

There are actually several other things I will miss. Once I leave a place, I always like it more. But it was time to go…for a while anyway.

So The Truth Comes Out

From The John & Ken Show:

If Al Gore were not a former Vice President and was residing in California the amount of energy he is using would be cause for serious investigation.

Consider the following:

(A) Al Gore has gained considerable weight. Hmmm, could be the result of the munchies?

(B) Why is his home in Tennessee considering so much energy? Could it be there are illicit crops inside the mansion?

(C) Al Gore’s speech pattern. Think of all the pot smokers and how they only use the three word – single syllable speech pattern sentences. The only thing missing here from Al Gore is the “dude” part.

The goofy grin. The blank look on his face. Bizarre and paranoid thought processes.

“The earth has a fever” says Al Gore.

Who else would make such statements?

A lot of new damning evidence on Al Gore and his unreal scam-job the last couple weeks and maybe I’ll get around to a serious entry about it, but I thought this was funny.

I Will Miss You

I was lucky to see him live back in 2001. It was amazing.