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History in the making?

A big day for Smarty Jones on Saturday, hoping to win the Belmont and the Triple Crown. In the Preakness he looked unbeatable. The jockey of Secretariat, who won the Belmont by over 20 lengths, predicts Smarty Jones will do the same. A big race, one not to miss!
    

Memorial Day: Go, Navy!

I never watched a lacrosse game in my life until today. I stumbled upon the NCAA championship game on ESPN between Navy and Syracuse -- and how could a kid from a Navy family not watch and root for the Midshipmen? I even root for Navy during the annual Army-Navy game even though I did my own service in the Army (a family scandal of sorts, but that's another story). Anyway, lacrosse is very exciting and engaging! Best, it is completely without the histrionic egomania that has taken over professional basketball and football, which have become dominated by millionaire jerks. Alas, Navy lost but it was a close tough match. It made me a fan of lacrosse.
    

SCENE

Looking out of windows,
that's what I do with my life.

This morning I watch
the old rooster
hop straight up
seven or eight inches
to pluck an elderberry
while overhead
a cedar waxwing
dines upsidedown.

Looking out of windows,
I think it must be a calling.


THE OLD MAN'S STORY

I been on this farm
all my life & gone nowheres,
no more than twenty miles off
any direction. Shit.

So I got me a van
and fixed her up real nice--
a bed in back & cupboards,
even a stereo radio!
But think I can get away?

I sit in her sometimes
and listen to the radio
in the garage. Shit.


TIME TO PEN MY MEMOIRS

I waited for a letter to arrive,
I waited for the phone to ring,
I waited for water to boil.

I saw the wood rose between gray fence posts,
I saw her asleep beside me in the morning,
I saw the moon glowing in a puddle.

I heard the blue jay's reveille,
I heard Lew Welch read his poems,
I heard her whisper to me in the dark.

I remember it rained a lot.   
5/31/2004 12:46:47 PM | 0 comments

 
Memorial Day: USS Arizona Memorial

My mother always wanted to go to Hawaii and visit the Pearl Harbor memorial, paying respects to her brother who died there. For some reason, she kept putting it off and died before she made it. Years later I was there and made the trip partly in her behalf. It ended up being a strange experience. I was looking for the name of my uncle on the plaque of those who died aboard the USS Arizona when it occurred to me that I was surrounded by ... Japanese tourists. They were snapping photos like crazy. What were they feeling? What do Americans feel when they visit Hiroshima? My mother held a grudge against the Japanese and the Germans all her life, to such an extent that family friction resulted because my dad's brother came home with a German bride. I remember one night as a child when a family row started because Aunt Hermine defended Hitler, saying he put people to work again. The family pretty much ostracized her after that. Curt, who died at Pearl, was a budding country singer, and when I took up the guitar, my mother used to say I reminded her of him. My brother was named after him.
    
5/31/2004 10:54:17 AM | 0 comments

 
Memorial Day

Here is a photo that well could be me at that age, a Navy brat, in a family to whom Memorial Day was a very significant holiday. My mother had lost her brother, to whom she was very close, at Pearl Harbor. Years later she would never ride in my VW because it was a German car, and they were still the enemy.

For many decades I believed that world peace was possible. I don't believe that any more. Moreover, I believe that as a civilization progresses the seeds of its own demise are sown. Part of the "civilizing process" is a distaste for war and sacrifice for the state. Consequently, more fanatical civilizations are able to defeat more "progressive" civilizations because they are more willing to die for a cause. The rise and fall of civilizations, thus, is always a step backward as well as forward. We may be in such an historical time, with the Kamikazes of Kingdom Come more able to get through the long haul of its war against the infidels of the West. When a young man is rewarded with a line up of virgins in heaven for blowing himself up (as long as you take some infidels with you), it's hard to be discouraged my mere force or logic. God is great, let's party!

Perhaps it is symptomatic of the decline of a culture when one of its members can be thankful, as I am, that s/he is not any younger.

    
5/31/2004 07:45:52 AM | 0 comments

Sunday, May 30, 2004  
Sir John Betjeman

Here are two poems:

Late-Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.

I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.

But I've a picture of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shewn
To hold each other tight;

Dark sockets look on emptiness
Which once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.

I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be --

A week ? or twenty years remain ?
And then -- what kind of death ?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath ?

Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust.



Good-bye

Some days before death
When food's tasting sour on my tongue,
Cigarettes long abandoned,
Disgusting now even champagne;
When I'm sweating a lot
From the strain on a last bit of lung
And lust has gone out
Leaving only the things of the brain;
More worthless than ever
Will seem all the songs I have sung,
More harmless the prods of the prigs,
Remoter the pain,
More futile the Lord Civil Servant
As, rung upon rung,
He ascends by committees to roofs
Far below on the plain.
But better down there in the battle
Than here on the hill
With Judgement or nothingness waiting me,
Lonely and chill.


Official website.




    
5/30/2004 09:31:25 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, May 29, 2004  
Recommended screenwriting book

Since I review books on screenwriting, publishers frequently send me review copies to consider. Most, frankly, don't interest me because they repeat something that's already been done better by someone else. Here, however, is a book that does something not overdone and does it well. The book is Ask the Pros: Screenwriting, edited by Howard Meibach and Paul Duran. The subtitle is "101 questions answered by industry professionals," including screenwriters, producers and agents.

Here are a few gems:

Question for writers: What's the worst note you ever received on one of your screenplays"

• "Can you have the character say Yep instead of Yeah?"
  
• "I think maybe the third act needs some aliens."

Question for producers: By what page do you know if something works?

• 30
• Somewhere between 10 and 20.
• Page 2.

Why does so much material get rewritten?

• Because the dialogue sucks...
• ...the writer doesn't deliver on the concept...
• Because writing for the screen is a collaborative business. ...It's the nature of the beast.

How important is winning a screenplay competition in deciding to evaluate or buy a spec screenplay?

• Not at all.
• It has no value...
• Unless you win one of the high profile, truly competitive contests -- Austin, the Nicholl, Slamdance -- it doesn't mean much.

    

The Day After Tomorrow

A rainy afternoon, we decided to go catch the new disaster flick on the very big screen.     

Dixieland Opera?

The jazz station here has a Dixieland show on Saturday and Sunday morning. Listening to it as I was cruising home from an early breakfast, I wondered ... has anyone ever written a dixieland opera? An opera with Dixieland themes, with a jazz combo embedded in the orchestra? An opera based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke, for example. I'll have to ask John. And I wonder if John can compose in the Dixieland style. An intriguing idea! Onward.
    

The class that crashed

I had a very strange, disappointing online class this term. The 8 students were full of energy when we started 9 weeks ago. Given their backgrounds, I thought it might be one of my better classes. Then, halfway through the term, all but two people disappeared. They stopped writing, they stopped participating. They did not respond to my inquiries. They simply vanished! Did I have bad cyberbreath or what? I have no idea. Usually a few students each term disappear -- a phenomenon in itself since the classes do cost money -- but never before has 75% of the class disappeared. All were professionals so maybe work pressures caught up with them. But the courtesy of an explanation would have been nice. Very strange.
    

Opera update

Next week it's time to take the opera score over to the artistic director of the university opera company. If she likes it, there's a chance we'll get a "chamber opera" production in May, 2005. And if she doesn't, well, we continue looking -- and we'll continue looking anyway. John did a big marketing blitz -- good to see him do that! The composer has so much more clout than the librettist. However, I am getting a baseball cap made with "Librettist" on it. How many people have ever met a librettist?    

Companion

Here is my buddy, Sketch. He keeps me laughing.    

The Kerouac Scroll

I still haven't been able to learn if the Kerouac Scroll of On the Road is appearing anywhere in June and July after its cancellation at the small college in Boulder. Anyone know?    

A child's vision of 9/11.     

"How many screenwriters does it take to change a light bulb?"

  

Coming soon
The public release of my memoir.