I apologize. I've been busier than I've ever been. Trying to squeeze as much money out of my job as I can, trying to do all of my homework, trying to spend time with my friends and family. Something had to fall by the wayside. Something had to take not just a backseat, but a spot in the trunk, next to my bottle of windshield washer fluid and the golf clubs that were supposed to be used as props in one of the plays at this year's Surfacing, but which never made it into the theatre for whatever reason. And that something was my blog. And it's unfair to you, my readers, for me to have done that.
I haven't been totally silent, though. I have been twittering quite a bit. If you've come here at all and paid attention to the twitter feed at right (----->), you'd notice how active I've been there. You could put all of those together to form one post.
Sadly, for those who have been watching the blog only for information, I hate to say that you missed Surfacing, only because I never posted about it. That's been my biggest screw up. I really am upset at myself for that. If you're friends with me on Facebook or follow me on twitter, again, you probably heard all about it. Or if you saw me in person any time over the last few weeks. It was basically all I could think of/talk about.
Not that this helps, but there will be videos posted. Again, it's not the same.
This year's Surfacing was incredible, though. I told the cast and director of my show today that this was the best experience I've had in theatre, and I meant that. All the shows I was a part of growing up, in high school, community theatre, last year's Surfacing...all good, some great. But this year was different. I don't know why. I feel closer this year to my cast, even though I spent more time last year. I didn't have to direct this year; maybe that's the difference. I want to thank my director, Mac, for taking my play and trimming the fat from the script. I'm sure you're aware, readers, of how verbose I can sometimes be. I'd like to thank Madeline, the Assistant Director, for doing everything that I would have not thought of if I had been left in control, like organizing props backstage beforehand. I want to thank Max, Christina and Dexter for their portrayals of (respectively) Chris, Janette and Kai. I wrote these parts with certain things in mind, but you each interpreted them in your own way, and brought something new and exciting and awesome to the table.
I have never understood the phrase "Just the writer" in theatre. Until this weekend. I was humbled, but in a good way. Lines that I wrote were getting laughs. Sure, some of them were written to get laughs. Others were delivered in a way I didn't think when I wrote them. I thought, "this line should go here" and put it there. I never thought they would get a laugh. And they did. It was very interesting. I could have sat there with a scorecard and divied up the laughs as they came; that one goes to me for clever writing, that one goes to Mac for clever directing, and this one goes to Dexter for clever delivery. It probably would have come out even.
Anyway, back to my apology. I can't say that you'll be inundated with updates. You know that won't happen. But don't give up on me. I graduate in three weeks. Expect a doozy of an update sometime thereafter. Okay? And please, feel free to drop me a comment any time. Encouraging ones are always appreciated. Snarky ones are likely to be returned at a later date with extra snark attached. Sort of like an interest bearing deposit. Ye be warned.
Showing posts with label Apologies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apologies. Show all posts
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Tuesday Excerpt...and an Apology...
Friday night, instead of free-writing, I went to the Skyview Drive-In to see Wall-E and Get Smart. Wall-E was definitely the better of the two, but Get Smart did have its moments. I liked a lot of the nods to the original series but, let's face it, Steve Carell, as hilarious as he can be, is no Don Adams. But back to the matter at hand, that being the blog.
The air conditioning unit outside our house sits on a concrete slab on the side of a hill, and to our dismay we discovered last week that with all the recent rain, the concrete slab has started pitching down the hill a bit. And, of course, the rotting crumbling railroad tie retaining wall wasn't going to hold. So, we had a grandiose plan for the backyard, part of it being an overhaul of this section of the yard. I thought a quick fix was in order, but then I realized that, what the hell, why not go for it and do what we want? Well, Kathy had already come to this decision because she's much more quick-witted and right about these things. So we dropped a bunch of money on retaining wall blocks, tools, rocks, etc., everything we need to build not one but two retaining walls in our back yard, to kind of step it down on that side and level out the area where the a/c unit sits. So, for the past two evenings, we've been working on tilling, digging, moving, sweating, and singing chain-gang songs. And so far, the wall is...not even remotely looking like a wall. In fact, at this point, if we get a torrential downpour (the likes of which we have in fact seen many of since March), our a/c unit will probably end up in our neighbor's yard. But we've got clear skies until Thursday-ish, so tomorrow we will work fervently to at least get enough of a wall to actually have it retain something. This also explains why I didn't free write Saturday or Sunday. That, and the suggestions were, um...well, a murder was too general, and the other suggestion was too You Don't Mess With the Zohan. But I did like the idea of making the president go away...
Right, well, there's a lot going on that I would love to talk about, but most of it has little to do with the world of writing. So, forget it, I'll get to the excerpt.
This comes from a writing exercise I did this past semester. We were supposed to write for twenty minutes about an object that held a special meaning for us. And after we were done doing that, it was all out of our system so we could write a few pages about it with some distance, as if we didn't know all of that significance.
I chose a snare drum head from the days of The Hitchhikers. And what you're getting is part of the second half of the exercise, the distanced bit.
===
from a writing exercise, March 2008
When I arrived, Alan greeted me at the door solemnly and showed me in. I was surrounded by Rob’s family, not a familiar face in the crowd beyond Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, Alan, and Rob’s older sister Maggie, who had flown in from Boston where she was at grad school. The food all tasted the same to me, the meatballs sharing a texture with the crackers and cheese. Alan pulled me aside after an hour’s worth of nervous eating and took me up to Rob’s room. He told me to take anything, any one thing, to remember Rob by. I didn’t have the heart or desire to tell him that I already had Rob’s copy of his favorite book, One Hundred Years of Solitude and a hefty portion of his CD collection, but I wasn’t about to turn Alan down. I looked around the room and saw what for me had been an enigma for some time, but that I had never taken the time to ask Rob about. It was a circular object, about fourteen inches in diameter, made of flimsy plastic and coated with something white and scratchy. It was ringed with a metal hoop that gave it its firm shape, and it had been drawn on with markers over and over, so that barely any of it was legible as I stood in the middle of the room gazing at it. I asked Alan if he knew what it was. He said it was the head of a snare drum.
I took it home with me, saying goodbye to Alan and his parents, seeking out Maggie and giving her the hug I had wanted to give her since I was in fifth grade and I thought she was so pretty. I sat in my room on my bed with the drum head in my lap and stared at it. Up close, the drawings and writings were little more legible, as they had been drawn and drawn over it seemed countless times. I didn’t recognize any of the handwriting as Rob’s, and the drawings were altogether too straight-edged to be his. I looked at my wall, saw the poster Rob had drawn for a party we had thrown and compared the drawings. There was no similarity at all; Rob’s drawings were all lazy and relaxed, the angles coming together in acute and obtuse meetings. But the drawings on the drum head were sharp, right-angled. The lines were straight, but his tended to curve slightly inward as he drew. None of the lines were smeared on the drum head, either, but Rob’s lines were almost always smeared from his left hand moving the marker or pen across the medium. I examined the drum head closer, trying to pick out phrases or meanings from the drawings.
There was a tractor drawn on the bottom, smoke creeping from its exhaust pipe, forming the words “The Farm Team.” Next to that, somebody had copied pi out to twenty digits, but many of the later numbers were obscured by a hasty scrawling of “I Like Beth.” Somebody had at one time crossed out the word “Beth” and written above it “Skittles” but the line and the replacement word had been drawn with something less permanent than the original message. I couldn’t think of a single Beth that I knew aside from a distant cousin in Texas. Somebody else had drawn what looked like three Easter Island statues on the left side, under which the initials “B.S.H.” were set out in strong block letters. In the center, a five point star had been drawn and it seemed to provide a barrier against the rest of the marker; within the star, the head was mostly white, with a few dark spots as if something had struck it, and it occurred to me that this is probably where whoever had used the drum head had beat it with his or her sticks. I continued looking around it to see if there was anything else I could read. The same hand that had proclaimed affection for Beth also had written “Do or Do Not, There Is No Try” next to the stone heads, and then the quadratic formula followed in another hand.
===
There you have it!
"Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer - and if so, why?" -Bennett Cerf
The air conditioning unit outside our house sits on a concrete slab on the side of a hill, and to our dismay we discovered last week that with all the recent rain, the concrete slab has started pitching down the hill a bit. And, of course, the rotting crumbling railroad tie retaining wall wasn't going to hold. So, we had a grandiose plan for the backyard, part of it being an overhaul of this section of the yard. I thought a quick fix was in order, but then I realized that, what the hell, why not go for it and do what we want? Well, Kathy had already come to this decision because she's much more quick-witted and right about these things. So we dropped a bunch of money on retaining wall blocks, tools, rocks, etc., everything we need to build not one but two retaining walls in our back yard, to kind of step it down on that side and level out the area where the a/c unit sits. So, for the past two evenings, we've been working on tilling, digging, moving, sweating, and singing chain-gang songs. And so far, the wall is...not even remotely looking like a wall. In fact, at this point, if we get a torrential downpour (the likes of which we have in fact seen many of since March), our a/c unit will probably end up in our neighbor's yard. But we've got clear skies until Thursday-ish, so tomorrow we will work fervently to at least get enough of a wall to actually have it retain something. This also explains why I didn't free write Saturday or Sunday. That, and the suggestions were, um...well, a murder was too general, and the other suggestion was too You Don't Mess With the Zohan. But I did like the idea of making the president go away...
Right, well, there's a lot going on that I would love to talk about, but most of it has little to do with the world of writing. So, forget it, I'll get to the excerpt.
This comes from a writing exercise I did this past semester. We were supposed to write for twenty minutes about an object that held a special meaning for us. And after we were done doing that, it was all out of our system so we could write a few pages about it with some distance, as if we didn't know all of that significance.
I chose a snare drum head from the days of The Hitchhikers. And what you're getting is part of the second half of the exercise, the distanced bit.
===
from a writing exercise, March 2008
When I arrived, Alan greeted me at the door solemnly and showed me in. I was surrounded by Rob’s family, not a familiar face in the crowd beyond Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, Alan, and Rob’s older sister Maggie, who had flown in from Boston where she was at grad school. The food all tasted the same to me, the meatballs sharing a texture with the crackers and cheese. Alan pulled me aside after an hour’s worth of nervous eating and took me up to Rob’s room. He told me to take anything, any one thing, to remember Rob by. I didn’t have the heart or desire to tell him that I already had Rob’s copy of his favorite book, One Hundred Years of Solitude and a hefty portion of his CD collection, but I wasn’t about to turn Alan down. I looked around the room and saw what for me had been an enigma for some time, but that I had never taken the time to ask Rob about. It was a circular object, about fourteen inches in diameter, made of flimsy plastic and coated with something white and scratchy. It was ringed with a metal hoop that gave it its firm shape, and it had been drawn on with markers over and over, so that barely any of it was legible as I stood in the middle of the room gazing at it. I asked Alan if he knew what it was. He said it was the head of a snare drum.
I took it home with me, saying goodbye to Alan and his parents, seeking out Maggie and giving her the hug I had wanted to give her since I was in fifth grade and I thought she was so pretty. I sat in my room on my bed with the drum head in my lap and stared at it. Up close, the drawings and writings were little more legible, as they had been drawn and drawn over it seemed countless times. I didn’t recognize any of the handwriting as Rob’s, and the drawings were altogether too straight-edged to be his. I looked at my wall, saw the poster Rob had drawn for a party we had thrown and compared the drawings. There was no similarity at all; Rob’s drawings were all lazy and relaxed, the angles coming together in acute and obtuse meetings. But the drawings on the drum head were sharp, right-angled. The lines were straight, but his tended to curve slightly inward as he drew. None of the lines were smeared on the drum head, either, but Rob’s lines were almost always smeared from his left hand moving the marker or pen across the medium. I examined the drum head closer, trying to pick out phrases or meanings from the drawings.
There was a tractor drawn on the bottom, smoke creeping from its exhaust pipe, forming the words “The Farm Team.” Next to that, somebody had copied pi out to twenty digits, but many of the later numbers were obscured by a hasty scrawling of “I Like Beth.” Somebody had at one time crossed out the word “Beth” and written above it “Skittles” but the line and the replacement word had been drawn with something less permanent than the original message. I couldn’t think of a single Beth that I knew aside from a distant cousin in Texas. Somebody else had drawn what looked like three Easter Island statues on the left side, under which the initials “B.S.H.” were set out in strong block letters. In the center, a five point star had been drawn and it seemed to provide a barrier against the rest of the marker; within the star, the head was mostly white, with a few dark spots as if something had struck it, and it occurred to me that this is probably where whoever had used the drum head had beat it with his or her sticks. I continued looking around it to see if there was anything else I could read. The same hand that had proclaimed affection for Beth also had written “Do or Do Not, There Is No Try” next to the stone heads, and then the quadratic formula followed in another hand.
===
There you have it!
"Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer - and if so, why?" -Bennett Cerf
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Hey, Elliot, Are You a Blog Lurker? How Come You Don't Comment on My Blog Ever?
Well, the thing about that is I've been using Google Reader to read all of the blogs I check on a regular basis. It's all there in one handy user interface. The only problem is that if I want to comment on the blog, I have to go to the actual blog to do so, and sometimes I'm not done reading all the others. Sorry gang. Especially Mo, whom I know is accusing me behind my back of being a blog lurker. Apologies.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Blurb
Yeah yeah, I know, but it's been crazy with being out of town and decorating the house and decorating the parents' house and school and being slightly sick.
To readers of my blog who have not been made aware of such plans, this Sunday evening at 8 pm, feel free to drop by Ted Drewes on ChippeWatson for Extreme Ice Cream Club's Happy (Belated) Birthday to Me.
Yes, if you are reading this, you are invited. If you can't come (have other plans/don't live in or near St. Louis) that is too bad because it will be the greatest time ever. On a Sunday. In December. In 2007. Totally.
To readers of my blog who have not been made aware of such plans, this Sunday evening at 8 pm, feel free to drop by Ted Drewes on ChippeWatson for Extreme Ice Cream Club's Happy (Belated) Birthday to Me.
Yes, if you are reading this, you are invited. If you can't come (have other plans/don't live in or near St. Louis) that is too bad because it will be the greatest time ever. On a Sunday. In December. In 2007. Totally.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Oops...
In the hub-bub of posting my excerpt and asking your favorite novels, I forgot to ask for Free Write Friday suggestions! Ah! Quick, get those in! And keep answering my "What's your favorite novel?" question. And I find it hilarious that Molly loved the book Trout Fishing in America when I can guarantee you that of all the people I know, Molly is one of the least likely to actually go trout fishing anywhere.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Work work work, work work work work, work work work work work. Oh, and school.
I have not fallen off the face of the Earth. I am just busy. All day with work and school, except for Friday when it's just work, and then the weekends when it's homework for school and spending time with Kathy, friends, family, softball, bike races (but it's the off season now), more homework, and other such stuff.
I warned you at the end of the summer, that my blogging would become scarce as the school year stepped up. And after fall break, I'll be doing CSO Tuesday nights (come to our concerts, I will post about them).
All that having been said, I need to write more for myself, while not letting up on the writing for school. I wrote some great stuff for school, but I don't want to post it yet, or some of it, at all.
I do need to go and pick up some more copies of Currents at Meramec. There have been some people asking for copies, and I find that I have either handed all of mine out or (as is the case with one copy I found recently) spilled coffee (tea? Coke?) on them.
I want more people to check out my blog, too, but I don't have much product to talk up at the moment.
Alright, I will make a concerted effort to blog more consistently. I can't promise a return to the bloggin' golden age of three months ago, but I can promise more than one update every week and a half.
I received word from the Three Day Novel Contest that they have my manuscript. Four months or so until they announce the winners. And while I know I produced a manuscript that was twice as long and at least ten times the quality of my 2004 offering, I wish they'd give me feedback very soon as opposed to never. I don't know. Anybody want to read it? Let me know, I'll, I don't know...pdf it somehow and e-mail it? I can't post it, that violates contest rules. Let me know if you want to read it, I'll try and get it to you. Should be easy for most people. No, I will not print it out and mail it to you, though. It's 101 pages. I already mailed it to Canada once, the last thing I need is to mail it to, oh, I don't know...just out of the blue, New Zealand or some place. Sorry to any of my readers in that part of the world.
Current score at school:
Webster University Eleventy Billion, Elliot 915.2 x 10^-i
Just a little math humor that I don't get but that should give one or two readers a chuckle. Oh wait, I don't think any of my calculus-joking friends read my blog. Hm.
Oh well.
Added a new poll to replace my appallingly stone-aged poll I paid little to no attention to.
I warned you at the end of the summer, that my blogging would become scarce as the school year stepped up. And after fall break, I'll be doing CSO Tuesday nights (come to our concerts, I will post about them).
All that having been said, I need to write more for myself, while not letting up on the writing for school. I wrote some great stuff for school, but I don't want to post it yet, or some of it, at all.
I do need to go and pick up some more copies of Currents at Meramec. There have been some people asking for copies, and I find that I have either handed all of mine out or (as is the case with one copy I found recently) spilled coffee (tea? Coke?) on them.
I want more people to check out my blog, too, but I don't have much product to talk up at the moment.
Alright, I will make a concerted effort to blog more consistently. I can't promise a return to the bloggin' golden age of three months ago, but I can promise more than one update every week and a half.
I received word from the Three Day Novel Contest that they have my manuscript. Four months or so until they announce the winners. And while I know I produced a manuscript that was twice as long and at least ten times the quality of my 2004 offering, I wish they'd give me feedback very soon as opposed to never. I don't know. Anybody want to read it? Let me know, I'll, I don't know...pdf it somehow and e-mail it? I can't post it, that violates contest rules. Let me know if you want to read it, I'll try and get it to you. Should be easy for most people. No, I will not print it out and mail it to you, though. It's 101 pages. I already mailed it to Canada once, the last thing I need is to mail it to, oh, I don't know...just out of the blue, New Zealand or some place. Sorry to any of my readers in that part of the world.
Current score at school:
Webster University Eleventy Billion, Elliot 915.2 x 10^-i
Just a little math humor that I don't get but that should give one or two readers a chuckle. Oh wait, I don't think any of my calculus-joking friends read my blog. Hm.
Oh well.
Added a new poll to replace my appallingly stone-aged poll I paid little to no attention to.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Back On
Alright folks, sorry for the sabbatical, but right before vacation I took my computer to Best Buy and it just came back to me today, a week after I got back from Colorado.
Colorado is much better the second time around. That might have something to do with the fact that the first time around consisted of driving through in the dead of night on my way from Minneapolis to Moab, Utah. There just wasn't much time to get out and look around, you know? I ate dinner at a Chipotle on the way back through to Minnesota, but again, not much really to look at.
I like getting together with my wife's family, because there's always plenty of good food and good company and it's never dull...and we're all very productive. We didn't finish putting the new roof on Jeff's house, but it's not from lack of effort. It's just that we got a little ambitious with all the extra hands and so Jeff enacted a plan that will save him tons on heating this winter, and he built up another roof level. Basically, we stripped the old Cedar shingles and tar paper, built a new set of rafters over the existing plywood roof, put new fiberglass and foam insulation down, covered it with a new layer of plywood, then new tar paper and new shingles. Only, well, by the time Kathy and I left, it was just tar paper and three rows of shingles on the steeper slope side of the roof. The plan was for the remaining hands to split into two groups, one finishing the shingles on the steep side (we're talking steeeeeep, so the more help the safer it would be) while the other half (and half is a relative term, because I think this was the larger group actually) built the new rafters and so forth on the more gentle slope side of the roof.
In the midst of all the roofing, we managed to find time to gather and talk, eat, catch up, play some X-Box, watch (appropriately) The Money Pit, drive up Mt. Evans and Jeff and I squeezed in a short bicycle ride Monday morning before Kathy and I made the return journey. The new car handled the drive out well, the drive back well, and the drive up and down the mountain very well. Acrodyl missed us dearly, and behaved for my father (a first). And, as I said, I've been really without internet for more than a week. But no more! Look for an excerpt tomorrow per the status quo, and Wednesday or Thursday I will be calling for F.W.F. suggestions.
I would like to also formally welcome Jerry back to the world of Blogging. Go read up on Dennis Kucinich and the NHL.
Colorado is much better the second time around. That might have something to do with the fact that the first time around consisted of driving through in the dead of night on my way from Minneapolis to Moab, Utah. There just wasn't much time to get out and look around, you know? I ate dinner at a Chipotle on the way back through to Minnesota, but again, not much really to look at.
I like getting together with my wife's family, because there's always plenty of good food and good company and it's never dull...and we're all very productive. We didn't finish putting the new roof on Jeff's house, but it's not from lack of effort. It's just that we got a little ambitious with all the extra hands and so Jeff enacted a plan that will save him tons on heating this winter, and he built up another roof level. Basically, we stripped the old Cedar shingles and tar paper, built a new set of rafters over the existing plywood roof, put new fiberglass and foam insulation down, covered it with a new layer of plywood, then new tar paper and new shingles. Only, well, by the time Kathy and I left, it was just tar paper and three rows of shingles on the steeper slope side of the roof. The plan was for the remaining hands to split into two groups, one finishing the shingles on the steep side (we're talking steeeeeep, so the more help the safer it would be) while the other half (and half is a relative term, because I think this was the larger group actually) built the new rafters and so forth on the more gentle slope side of the roof.
In the midst of all the roofing, we managed to find time to gather and talk, eat, catch up, play some X-Box, watch (appropriately) The Money Pit, drive up Mt. Evans and Jeff and I squeezed in a short bicycle ride Monday morning before Kathy and I made the return journey. The new car handled the drive out well, the drive back well, and the drive up and down the mountain very well. Acrodyl missed us dearly, and behaved for my father (a first). And, as I said, I've been really without internet for more than a week. But no more! Look for an excerpt tomorrow per the status quo, and Wednesday or Thursday I will be calling for F.W.F. suggestions.
I would like to also formally welcome Jerry back to the world of Blogging. Go read up on Dennis Kucinich and the NHL.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Free Write Friday...um, later this weekend...
I do apologize. I have less than an hour left on a Friday and have just now got around to the blog. I had trouble sleeping last night, went to work an hour early and stayed an hour late, came home and just kinda...crashed. Then I went to Shakespeare in the Park down in Forest Park. Their rendition of Much Ado was unique with an 1890's western theme, and I don't mean that in a bad way. Anyway, so I just got back to it, and as it is 11:11 pm, I am going to forgoe the regular Free Write Friday for now and just postpone it until tomorrow or Sunday, whenever I get the time.
I will also not announce this week's winner, but I would like to thank those people who gave their suggestions. A good crop this week, as always, but I got some new people suggesting which is great. Remember; if I don't pick you this week, keep suggesting. I'll even let you suggest the same thing over and over until I pick it if you would like. Just keep 'em coming!
To sum up; apology, lame reason, tangent, tease, sycophantic praise for audience, summary.
That is all.
I will also not announce this week's winner, but I would like to thank those people who gave their suggestions. A good crop this week, as always, but I got some new people suggesting which is great. Remember; if I don't pick you this week, keep suggesting. I'll even let you suggest the same thing over and over until I pick it if you would like. Just keep 'em coming!
To sum up; apology, lame reason, tangent, tease, sycophantic praise for audience, summary.
That is all.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Tuesday Excerpts
Welcome back to my fifth consecutive Tuesday Excerpt Post!
YAY! Five in a row! I wasn't lying when I said I was going to actually start blogging for real! I rock.
Alrighty, let's get this train wreck a rollin.
For this week, I'm excerpting a bit from the very third bit I wrote for my playwriting class. We were given the exercise to write a dialogue about two people trapped together. I chose the trap to be less mental and also less physical; it's just two people at a nearly empty bus station four hours before their bus is supposed to leave. Enjoy!
===
from Trapped Exercise, January 07
SETTING: A bench at a bus terminal.
AT RISE: Mike and Ellen sit on the bench surrounded by their luggage.
MIKE
Obviously, not that many people traveling to Chicago on Greyhound this morning.
ELLEN
Still the astute observer, huh Mike?
(She digs in her backpack and brings out her ticket)
MIKE
(overly emphatic)
This will be a fun trip, won’t it?
ELLEN
(looking at her ticket)
Hey, Mike, what time does the bus leave?
MIKE
Six sharp, I think.
(checks watch)
ELLEN
You think? Six sharp, you think? Master of details, you are not.
(hands him her ticket, keeping her finger on a part of it. she taps.)
MIKE
What?
(she taps)
What am I supposed to be looking at?
(she taps)
Use your words, Ellen.
ELLEN
(snatching back the ticket)
Ten o’clock. You got me out of bed at this ungodly hour to sit around a bus terminal for four hours? As if facing a fourteen hour bus trip wasn’t enough time to spend with each other?
MIKE
(reaching into his coat pocket for his ticket)
I honestly must have read it wrong.
(scrutinizes his ticket)
Okay, yes, I read it wrong. I apologize.
ELLEN
You read everything wrong, Michael.
MIKE
Ellen-
ELLEN
Perfect.
(she gets up and paces in front of the bench, removing her coat and placing it over her bags)
Perfect.
MIKE
Honest mistake.
ELLEN
Just like forgetting to keep a reading journal in your lit class was an honest mistake? Just like forgetting my fucking birthday was an honest mistake? Just like-
MIKE
(irritated)
I get your point.
ELLEN
Oh, you’re a very honest man, Mike. If it weren’t for so many of your little honest mistakes, you wouldn’t be on academic probation, I could have slept in--I was up until one packing, I almost got three hours of sleep--and maybe you wouldn’t be sitting in a freezing bus station at 6 in the morning with your ex-girlfriend.
(she turns away from him and picks her coat back up, puts it on)
MIKE
Yeah. About that; I was hoping that, while we’re back home, we could maybe--
ELLEN
Fat chance.
MIKE
--give ourselves a chance to--
ELLEN
Fat. Chance.
MIKE
--work things out.
ELLEN
(turns to face him)
Fat. Chance.
MIKE
You want to go back to the dorms? Go.
ELLEN
Yeah, what, if we call your roommate, will he come pick us up? Should I call a cab? Walk the seven miles back in the snow?
MIKE
Well, then, think of something else to do.
ELLEN
You just take whatever comes, roll with the punches, fly by the seat of your pants, and whatever other cliches come your way, huh?
MIKE
You knew that.
(reaches into his other coat pocket and removes a piece of paper)
You used to like it.
ELLEN
Bullshit.
MIKE
(reading)
“Mike, I can’t tell you how much fun I had over fall break. I can’t believe we’ve lived within four miles of each other our entire lives, but we had to move to Boston to find each other.”
ELLEN
What?
MIKE
(continuing)
“Utah was breath-taking. And to think I was going to spend the week watching movies in my dorm. I’ve never been very spontaneous, and I’m glad you forced it on me.”
ELLEN
There’s a big difference between spontaneity and irresponsibility.
MIKE
(looking up from the paper)
Really?
(reading)
“I always thought it was just irresponsibility that made people neglect the status quo for something that seemed on the surface more glamorous, but now I know that it’s better to put life on hold long enough to actually live.”
ELLEN
Let me see that!
(she snatches the paper from him and scans it)
Ah! Nice selective editing.
(reading)
“I always thought it was just irresponsibility that made people neglect the status quo for something that seemed on the surface more glamorous, but now I know that sometimes it’s better to put life on hold long enough to actually live for a moment before returning to our obligations.”
(she tosses the note back at him)
MIKE
It was worth a shot.
===
There you go, another Tuesday, another excerpt. And another missed Monday, for which I apologize. I barely got any sleep Sunday night, just could not fall asleep for whatever reason, and after staying super late at work Monday, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. For real. So, I missed a day. But I had my interview at MasterFile today, and my potential boss is the son of one of the counselors at my old high school. I'm not sure if that helps completely, but hey, it's something, right?
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. -Author Unknown
YAY! Five in a row! I wasn't lying when I said I was going to actually start blogging for real! I rock.
Alrighty, let's get this train wreck a rollin.
For this week, I'm excerpting a bit from the very third bit I wrote for my playwriting class. We were given the exercise to write a dialogue about two people trapped together. I chose the trap to be less mental and also less physical; it's just two people at a nearly empty bus station four hours before their bus is supposed to leave. Enjoy!
===
from Trapped Exercise, January 07
SETTING: A bench at a bus terminal.
AT RISE: Mike and Ellen sit on the bench surrounded by their luggage.
MIKE
Obviously, not that many people traveling to Chicago on Greyhound this morning.
ELLEN
Still the astute observer, huh Mike?
(She digs in her backpack and brings out her ticket)
MIKE
(overly emphatic)
This will be a fun trip, won’t it?
ELLEN
(looking at her ticket)
Hey, Mike, what time does the bus leave?
MIKE
Six sharp, I think.
(checks watch)
ELLEN
You think? Six sharp, you think? Master of details, you are not.
(hands him her ticket, keeping her finger on a part of it. she taps.)
MIKE
What?
(she taps)
What am I supposed to be looking at?
(she taps)
Use your words, Ellen.
ELLEN
(snatching back the ticket)
Ten o’clock. You got me out of bed at this ungodly hour to sit around a bus terminal for four hours? As if facing a fourteen hour bus trip wasn’t enough time to spend with each other?
MIKE
(reaching into his coat pocket for his ticket)
I honestly must have read it wrong.
(scrutinizes his ticket)
Okay, yes, I read it wrong. I apologize.
ELLEN
You read everything wrong, Michael.
MIKE
Ellen-
ELLEN
Perfect.
(she gets up and paces in front of the bench, removing her coat and placing it over her bags)
Perfect.
MIKE
Honest mistake.
ELLEN
Just like forgetting to keep a reading journal in your lit class was an honest mistake? Just like forgetting my fucking birthday was an honest mistake? Just like-
MIKE
(irritated)
I get your point.
ELLEN
Oh, you’re a very honest man, Mike. If it weren’t for so many of your little honest mistakes, you wouldn’t be on academic probation, I could have slept in--I was up until one packing, I almost got three hours of sleep--and maybe you wouldn’t be sitting in a freezing bus station at 6 in the morning with your ex-girlfriend.
(she turns away from him and picks her coat back up, puts it on)
MIKE
Yeah. About that; I was hoping that, while we’re back home, we could maybe--
ELLEN
Fat chance.
MIKE
--give ourselves a chance to--
ELLEN
Fat. Chance.
MIKE
--work things out.
ELLEN
(turns to face him)
Fat. Chance.
MIKE
You want to go back to the dorms? Go.
ELLEN
Yeah, what, if we call your roommate, will he come pick us up? Should I call a cab? Walk the seven miles back in the snow?
MIKE
Well, then, think of something else to do.
ELLEN
You just take whatever comes, roll with the punches, fly by the seat of your pants, and whatever other cliches come your way, huh?
MIKE
You knew that.
(reaches into his other coat pocket and removes a piece of paper)
You used to like it.
ELLEN
Bullshit.
MIKE
(reading)
“Mike, I can’t tell you how much fun I had over fall break. I can’t believe we’ve lived within four miles of each other our entire lives, but we had to move to Boston to find each other.”
ELLEN
What?
MIKE
(continuing)
“Utah was breath-taking. And to think I was going to spend the week watching movies in my dorm. I’ve never been very spontaneous, and I’m glad you forced it on me.”
ELLEN
There’s a big difference between spontaneity and irresponsibility.
MIKE
(looking up from the paper)
Really?
(reading)
“I always thought it was just irresponsibility that made people neglect the status quo for something that seemed on the surface more glamorous, but now I know that it’s better to put life on hold long enough to actually live.”
ELLEN
Let me see that!
(she snatches the paper from him and scans it)
Ah! Nice selective editing.
(reading)
“I always thought it was just irresponsibility that made people neglect the status quo for something that seemed on the surface more glamorous, but now I know that sometimes it’s better to put life on hold long enough to actually live for a moment before returning to our obligations.”
(she tosses the note back at him)
MIKE
It was worth a shot.
===
There you go, another Tuesday, another excerpt. And another missed Monday, for which I apologize. I barely got any sleep Sunday night, just could not fall asleep for whatever reason, and after staying super late at work Monday, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. For real. So, I missed a day. But I had my interview at MasterFile today, and my potential boss is the son of one of the counselors at my old high school. I'm not sure if that helps completely, but hey, it's something, right?
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. -Author Unknown
Friday, May 11, 2007
Yes, Yes, I know...
All the trash talk I throw at my aunt Nora, at Mo and Kevin, and at Will-er-Alan, and all the trash talk I threw at Jerry before he decided to deblog himself, and here it's been about two months since my last post. Well, yeah. Sorry.
Lots happened. Won't go into it all. My sister had her baby, run over to her blog to see pictures. I finished up the semester (no pictures there), went to NYC for Spring Break and had a good time running around and all, met up with Joanna and Koushik, got inspired to write a play, wrote the play, added a Journalism minor to my studies, and generally had an okay time running down the clock to May where I now face a summer of drudgery at work with no school to break up the monotony.
But I pledge myself anew at this! I am about to embark on a very rigid search. Soul searching, perhaps. Perhaps a bit of job-searching as well. Somebody asked me a question last night, and it's going to stick with me until I can truthfully and one hundred percent actually answer it. "What do you want to happen?" I have to find that out, then take the steps to make it happen. I need to make it happen.
With that being said, you will be seeing a lot more of me in the Blogniverse (I know that the popular term is Blogisphere, but damn it all, I came up with Blogniverse and that is what I am sticking with!), at least in this realm...probably not so much on the bike side. Frankly, I'm embarassed to even have it exist at this point, because I am a bad cyclist. A good cyclist is one who actually rides his bike. I am not one of those.
So, this is just a "Hey, yes, I know I've been a deadbeat blogger, but I promise to be better, honest!" kind of a post. Upcoming highlights include:
Ruminations on Professor Overmann's comments on my Media Literacy paper.
Commentary on why hiding from your true self is a bad thing (and it is).
Ruminations on Sheila Hwang's grade of A given on my second to last paper of the semester, and why I think it means she wants to do bad things to me in the dark.
Excerpts from works in progress.
Explanations of my preparations for the Three Day Novel contest (in which I will be participating this year, come Hell, High Water or organized Bike Ride).
And, of course, in a month or so, another long-winded explanation of why it's been a month since I posted anything despite my insistince right now, at this moment, that I will post at least every other day the whole summer.
Music to Blog By:
Elliott Smith - Needle in the Hay
Discussed in this post:
Lots happened. Won't go into it all. My sister had her baby, run over to her blog to see pictures. I finished up the semester (no pictures there), went to NYC for Spring Break and had a good time running around and all, met up with Joanna and Koushik, got inspired to write a play, wrote the play, added a Journalism minor to my studies, and generally had an okay time running down the clock to May where I now face a summer of drudgery at work with no school to break up the monotony.
But I pledge myself anew at this! I am about to embark on a very rigid search. Soul searching, perhaps. Perhaps a bit of job-searching as well. Somebody asked me a question last night, and it's going to stick with me until I can truthfully and one hundred percent actually answer it. "What do you want to happen?" I have to find that out, then take the steps to make it happen. I need to make it happen.
With that being said, you will be seeing a lot more of me in the Blogniverse (I know that the popular term is Blogisphere, but damn it all, I came up with Blogniverse and that is what I am sticking with!), at least in this realm...probably not so much on the bike side. Frankly, I'm embarassed to even have it exist at this point, because I am a bad cyclist. A good cyclist is one who actually rides his bike. I am not one of those.
So, this is just a "Hey, yes, I know I've been a deadbeat blogger, but I promise to be better, honest!" kind of a post. Upcoming highlights include:
Ruminations on Professor Overmann's comments on my Media Literacy paper.
Commentary on why hiding from your true self is a bad thing (and it is).
Ruminations on Sheila Hwang's grade of A given on my second to last paper of the semester, and why I think it means she wants to do bad things to me in the dark.
Excerpts from works in progress.
Explanations of my preparations for the Three Day Novel contest (in which I will be participating this year, come Hell, High Water or organized Bike Ride).
And, of course, in a month or so, another long-winded explanation of why it's been a month since I posted anything despite my insistince right now, at this moment, that I will post at least every other day the whole summer.
Music to Blog By:
Elliott Smith - Needle in the Hay
Discussed in this post:
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