Walkabout Thoughts #58

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 31, 2023, Monday

Weather for the day… 59° starting out, 73° when I got home

Podcast for the day is the only one that has a new episode, Marc Maron, WTF? Podcast episode with sNL’s Melissa Villasenor who used to be on SNL:

 

"Ben Shapiro, another small men’s rights grifter”…That from Marc Maron

I just happened to think about Firing Line last Friday night with Amal Thapar, an unimpressive, SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas biographer who supports him and US Constitutional "contextualism" vs "originalism" debate. I find these people, as with the toxic masculinity...the Ben Shapiro comment above, to be superficial and purposely ignorant. Worse, I fear they may really believe their...beliefs. I find them both useful, even functional, but within the confines of reality and humanity (something they forget too often). The Constitution is a "living document". Otherwise it wouldn't have Amendments. End of story. Arguing the Amendments weren't indicating it's a changing document would have been corrected in having had rewritten the Constitution to begin with. They didn't. So, shut...up.
My argument about the Constitution being a living document is simple. Not shallow, but obvious. The Constitution was drawn up. Signed and ratified. And then... it was amended. The definition that is a living document. meant to be updated. Because our Framers, if our Founding Fathers were smart as they seem to have been and, full disclosure, many of them, Freemasons... as I have been, making it in my lodge one step away from the head guy before having to step away due to family matters. Anyway, I’m sure they meant for the Constitution to be amended… Amended… As THEY did, and as THEY, I am sure, expected US eventually to do. But we have a Republican Party who purposely locked up our government and then tried to destroy it, repeatedly trying to end our democracy while supporting a twice impeached, multiple indicted, criminal FPOTUS. The degree and amount of actions against our government in America at large, as well as our citizens, from a party and platform who support wealth and power over individuals...is overwhelming. Again, we desperately need to change our motto from "In God We Trust" to our original and more powerful, more American motto of "E Pluribus Unum"..."Out of Many, One". THAT speaks to strength. To our diversity coming together to make us strong. Not some "pie in the sky-god" doing it all for us, which if  you've noticed, don't happen. Certainly not to a statistically relevant degree (it's coincidence people). Republicans have turned into "Out of One…" to mean, The GOP and fuck "the Many"... all for Power and Money and Self-Aggrandizement. Their true gods. By the way for those originalists who support "In God We Trust" as our motto... how odd. Since "E Pluribus Unum" WAS our ORIGINAL motto... Hypocrite any?

Marc Maron on the new "Barbie" movie: "It’s genius and hilarious. Cleverly speaks to women’s rights and any men who are offended by it are small men in almost every way… Ego wise, dick wise, pseudo libertarian meatheads, who can’t have their balls busted in any way, ever, scared of any smart woman taking a piss out of them...", etc. Too funny. Too spot on.

This is a good podcast for the day. Marc Maron is skewering movie studio execs over Barbie &  Oppenheimer and the cruelty they’re applying to this writer's and actor's strike, especially considering the new AI issues.

And so I have to say the old studio system is long dead, decades ago, but the new system has also become toxic. Just look at what they’ve been doing and look at all the sequels to keep pushing on us. Where is the creativity and the freshness? Where are the leading new voices? I have to appreciate companies like VOYAGE Media (full disclosure) who I’ve worked with... where the Content creator or Story owner, although they have to chip in some finances in the development / pre-production stages… allows anyone access to movie making, and who has a few bucks. I’m not rich, but I had a few bucks. And I went as far as I could until I had to stop because of finances. As also with Interdependent Pictures, who I have also submitted screenplays to (2). They are trying to revolutionize the filmmaking process by basically using profit sharing on each project, among everyone involved. I prefer that over the VOYAGE Media model because there’s great ideas and great people out there who don’t have great resources in finances. This model allows you to either invest time and effort, or money, or both. More you invest, the  more you reap the benefits.

NACA Live conferences. God, this speech to text sucks. Nacca...Naka conferences. Whatever I’ll look it up. But Marc Maron is talking about Villasenor doing the college circuit, how you go to these conferences as a stand up or whatever and perform and they choose out of that selected pool as which people should tour the college circuit. So if you’re a stage performer of such, you should know about this, if you want to get into that. Apparently in the beginning you can end up doing cafeterias, or like hallways or something but hey, it's a gig and when you're starting out you need the practice and exposure, learning the road and networking. I’m interested to hear what she has to say about it because many comics have said they stopped doing the college circuit because of how precious attitudes have become and the whole canceling thing over previous years. I get it, comedy evolves, and making fun of other people, is problematic, but something has to be funny, still. I don’t mind when I am made fun, good God I’ve had a whole lifetime of people making fun of me. Mostly in K-12.
BRIEF ASIDE ABOUT BAR FIGHTS: At some point people got the feeling they were treading dangerous grounds in harassing me. I started out small, got up to 6' suddenly in high school. That, was pretty cool. Karate starting in 5th grade, regional tournaments and such, but you don't walk around jerks who realize that and I found at times, people were so stupid, I had to try to protect them from picking a fight with me. I'm not some big badass, but I know clearly when I can hurt someone or not and some people just aren't smart enough to see that. In the beginning I tried just telling people, but then do thought you were lying. I'm not. I wasn't. I came to realize in my late teens, in meeting assholes who wanted to harass you, you had to COMMUNICATE their danger levels to them in a way they got it. Not just say, "You really don't want to do this." They take it as a challenge. "HEY, I'm not saying at for you to be challenged!" Actually you have to shift to the individuals. It's bizarre what works to shut down a fight. I found one line very well received but you had to be ready to back it up. I always was. "Look, I realize you're just looking for a 'friendly bar fight' but I don't believe in them and I'm just here to have fun and relax. I don't know what your orientation is here but I do not fight. IF I ever do fight, I only know how to kill as quickly as possible. One of us is going to the hospital and one may end up dead. If THAT'S what you're looking for here tonight, you picked the right guy." That has shut down a few drunks seeking a "friendly bar fight". There are other guys you just have to drop them. Others you just walk away. But you have to peg them accurately, or it can go really bad. Of course there were a few times I could have just stick a gun in their face, from out of nowhere. But then you really have to be willing to pull the trigger. I am. Always have been. But I have a responsibility I learned in Karate as a kid, I can't kill you unless I have to and I am responsible for your upcoming pain and death. You don't bring a gun to a fist fight, and you don't bring a knife to a gun fight. The only reason I would ever have pulled out a gun in a fist fight was if I was losing and the guy really was going to kill me. Then all bets are off. As it turned out, apparently I made very good choices because I've been in some ugly situations and have always come out of it pretty well. Part of that life orientation is what they say about, "Don't be in the path of the bullet and you'll be fine." Also for writers, just cut out all the bad parts, and you'll have a winner.

When I saw my first Dean Martin roast on TV, I was a little bit horrified as a kid, but fascinated and locked into a "train wreck" motive. I can’t look, but I have to look at it as it's really so very funny. There’s something useful and productive about being made fun of, or simply being "called out on the carpet." Especially, useful for our leaders and government. And those like Trump who attack people and try to destroy them simply for acting on democracy and journalism. Those like Trump are really anathema to America and democracy, and we should all be offended by those who have glomed onto Trump and his criminality in his sad repeated attempts at authoritarianism.

I’ve been working on my new double version of, "The Teenage Bodyguard" screenplay book with my original version and a newer rewrite. I currently have book copies of two of my screenplays, the other called, "Gray and Lover The Hearth Tales Incident”. Thanks to Dizzy Emu Publishing who did it for me when I submitted to, “All Genre Screenplay Contest”.

But as I think I said in my last blog, it occurred to me after having a version of a book with a single screenplay in it, I should put both versions of "The Teenage Bodyguard" into one book. Which I’m doing. I figured out how to do it by myself. Not that big of a deal. I saved the screenplays as a PDF, as you do from my Final Draft screenwriting software. I found a website to combine PDFs for free which I can then upload to KDP.Amazon, where you configure your books for sale onto Amazon. Nuts, this text to speech keeps locking up and I have to start and restart it. It just stopped working in the middle of my talking and I don’t notice it all the time so I have to back up and redo it… And... I had to come up with a book cover and built one from the version that company had built for me, they had used MY graphic so, cool... but I don’t have to put their logo on this book now, which is nice. I can now use my LGN Productions company as my publisher, which I’ve been doing with other books. But I realized I should use a book prologue where the author speaks about the book. Well, that’s turned into 14 pages and I’ve been editing it for four days and it’s a real pain. But people keep getting this screenplay wrong. I’ve had three directors who wanted to make this into a movie, but I didn’t like their take on it. Everyone keeps hearing that the protagonist is a "17-year-old boy" (young man) in this true crime biopic and they immediately go to "oh teenage boy...hormones...sex... dumb. That’s just not this particular character at all. THAT'S what makes his story so interesting. He's not typical. He’s smart, he’s been trained by the military as a kid in search and rescue. He studied martial arts since young and... he’s just not your average kid. Then he goes up against the reigning crime family in Tacoma, Washington in 1974. He's not terrified as a normal kid would be. he's been trained to stay cool, do your job, succeed! So I thought I should take this opportunity in the book to write up a little about him in the screenplay book and some about how the book came to be, and a little about myself, thus setting up the reading of these Screenplays. I then realized yesterday that I was putting too much in it about myself. Sigh. I started cutting paragraphs. Anyway, I hope to have it done soon so I can submit it and be done with it. Then I’ll order some copies for myself and unpublished it. It will be available then to re-publish whenever I need to. It’s not like I’m really looking to selling this to the public. As I said in my last post, I did tell social media it’s available and if someone wants a copy, get it now because I’m gonna unpublish what’s up there now once the books are received. Then after the movie of it is made, I can re-publish it as the original screenplay. Then one can even publish the screenplay that was actually used to shoot it (shooting script) while in production. Because, as you may know, every movie has several screenplays. A spec script for selling to pass around for people to read. An actual script, which you may even have written first, and then written a spec script from that. People have different ways of doing this. then there’s a production script used on set. And there could be a screenplay of the actual movie transcribed after the fact as it appeared on screen to audiences. So I have the original script I wrote at 123 pages which got producer Robert Mitas interested over at VOYAGE Media. He has worked with Michael Douglas on films. He wanted a different script and so we took months to rewrite it into a shorter, tighter format. Which certainly isn’t my original since as it’s missing 20 pages or so. That's necessary, maybe, but frustrating, as I've already left out so much I could have put into my own, already kind of too long screenplay (spec script should be around 90s pages). But it’s hopefully a better spec or selling script. I need to send it to more screenplay contest. So far I think I’ve gotten three awards as of today for my original version. I’ve sent the shorter version out and it’s yet to win anything.
[UPDATE, after I got home from my walk I had emails that the shorter screenplay was accepted as an Official Selection in the New York Script Awards...they had rejected my longer version so I asked if I can have a waiver to submit the rewritten version (they were in "waiver only" acceptance stage, and I explained the two script situation), and they agreed]
Which doesn’t mean anything actually, either way, any of it. There’s are screenplays I’ve seen that won festival after festival, but never got produced. There’s movies that were made from a screenplay that made a lot of money which never won a festival. I tried for years, sending this script off to directors and producers and managers and agents and studios and production companies and I think I’ve only gotten like, one reply. Which was, "This isn’t for us." Which makes me wonder if they were reading into it the wrong things. Because, the first producer who read it said about it, "This reminds me of “The Place Beyond The Pines", which is a serious drama. And what I was shooting for, here. The people who can get it, not seeing only a teen romp of some sort, who missed that nonsense completely and get it… Well, it’s very rewarding when that happens. Robert kind of got it because I kept saying it while we were restructuring it. And while I we came out with a script that works, having cut some of the things we did, we lost the tone and flavor of what I had originally wanted it to be. So I’ll try to get either produced and we’ll see which one wins out in the end.

Villasenior is talking on the podcast about going to church as a kid. One time her grandmother took her to a new church for confession. Being Catholic, as I was, the priest asked her in the confessional, when she had last confessed. Which is a normal question. She said she didn’t remember. He said, "You’re a bad Catholic and a bad person." WTF? She said (in her mind), well, I’m not coming back. I don’t remember when MY last confession was. Probably around 1969? Mom told us we had to go to church and Sunday school every Sunday until ninth grade when we could make up our own mind. I don’t know why ninth grade. But she only made it through ninth grade in school. She was smart, though not greatly educated. Not self-educated like her mom, who I dearly loved. We’ll both of them. Although, in mom's later years I had to stop talking to her. I was going to a marriage counselor… Yes, we then got divorced, this was the last time around 2002… And while I was still with my wife and the counselor she said, "You know, you don’t have to keep someone in your life who’s toxic." I said, "What? But it’s my mom." She said, "Look. I’m giving you permission to not talk to her. Ever again, if need be, if that's what you think you need." So I thought about it for a while, and that same summer shit happened to where I was done. I heard my last two wives say that, "I'm done." And that's what I said about my mom. You had to be there. I was pretty justified. I'd gone through decades with my two siblings and our mom, round-robin-ing who would deal with her for years until they couldn't and someone would take over. For a period of years I was the one, and that went on longer than with the other two. I served MY time. This was that summer in 2002, after my niece and my son, one thin and 21 and the other thin and 12, respectively, shared our "weekend of Hell", the three of us moving my mother, the two kid's grandmother, out from my stepfather after she had a warrant out for attempted murder on him. lonnnng story and not what it sounds like, though kind of what it sounds like. But after three days and three flights of stairs to move my mother, in the way she was acting... I was done. I'd finally had it. I no longer recognized her as the mother I'd grown up with. That woman was gone, dead, and now...dead to me. The final straw being just as we finish getting her moved in. She was ranting and said something, and this is after a lifetime of intermittent mental and emotional abuse from my stepfather, who never liked me… she made the comment that, "Well you always stick up for him." Which was ridiculous. After all he put me through, you said I always stick up for him and not you? WTF? I stuck up for him that one time, moments before, because what she was saying was total bullshit about him. I’ll stick up for anyone when lies are being told about them. Right is right. I stuck up for him once before that stands out At 12, she took me around family and friends houses to show off her bruises on her wrists. Back in the late 1960s "Look at what he did to me!" First house. Then the second house, she repeated it and I had to speak up. "Wait. You were beating on his chest and all he did was grab your wrists to stop you." I wasn't sure what she'd do, attack ME? No, I think it actually brought her back around to reality. By the third house, her story changed a bit but was still blaming him for the bruises as after all there were bruises? Hey, whatever. After three days of mental and physical exhaustion for myself, my young son and my older brother’s daughter, moving my mom into her new, brand new living community, all the people were very nice, after my son said at one point, "Dad, grandma's being racist about some people"... I’d had it... for me and I’d had it for all of us. This turned out to be a pretty comical movie-moment scene I’ve detailed elsewhere. Anyway, it was weird. I grew up with a loving mother and a stepfather who was really no friend of mine. We'd had our moments, maybe a few times I can remember we made any connection. And at the end? He turned into some sweet old guy saw me as his son as he ended up with Alzheimer’s, and my mother became the abuser. Now he wanted to accept me as his son? WTF? My life has been nothing but a series of conundrums and frustrations, and lack of closure. But luckily, I learned about dealing with all that at a young age. I see people who never learned that. I see men who never tested themselves in their youth, who turned out as bullies and all "agro" and shit. Who couldn’t handle criticism or ever being called out. Unprofessional as adults, even if they’re professional in their job. Life is weird. But it makes for interesting people, and stories. And I'm all about the stories.

A white car just went by with LANDIS GYR and it had a little red beanie laid on the top center. I thought it was a cop at first at a distance. I thought maybe it was a Google maps kind of car, but as it passed I thought maybe it’s one of those lead vehicles when they move a building or something, on the freeway. I have no idea…

Back to Marc Maron and Melissa Villaseñor…

I don’t know what happened, but I’ve been wanting to listen to Marc Maron’s podcast for long time. I like him a lot. I liked his TV show. I like his grouchy character personification. I like shows he’s been in and I like his stand up. I can relate a lot to him. But the past couple of weeks I've been watching him, I mean listening to him on the podcast, more and more. I’ve been wanting to get out of the political bullshit since Trump left office and lost LOST the 2020 election. Got tromped. Trump got TROMPED. And hopefully will again... forever and ever until he gets his multi year multi sentences, imprisonment if it turns into life in prison, and he dies in say a year. I don’t celebrate peoples deaths. But I would. Trump... and Putin.

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to listen to more entertainment oriented podcasts. Lately, I guess it’s summer and podcasts aren’t updated once or twice a week. So I had to find something else and leaned into the entertainment industry. Which is what I do now anyway and so I should be listening to that and... fuck politics. Because they’re so unnecessarily toxic and we now have a right wing political party pushing for authoritarianism and trying to kill our democracy? WTF? Also, when they get in charge they shove crap down their own peoples throats even they don't want? What the hell is going on with those people? So they don't want anymore than we do half the time... sometimes all the time.

They’re talking on the podcast about the personality of a comic and self shaming and stuff. I am, I was raised and taught... differently. I learned from some of the best people, because my mother said that and my grandmother told her always to learn from the best. So, my attitude was to learn something really well and then, as they say, “know thy self". So I’m sure I’ve had times of panic. Like whenever I turned in the papers as a senior technical writer... I'd fret over it a bit until they came back and said how great it was. I think a lot of this came out of karate in grade school. Then civil air patrol in eighth grade. Where you had to really know your capabilities, push past them, and know you could do more than you really could do. I heard when I was younger that, "A good man knows his capabilities." So I’ve always tried to have an accurate view of what I can do. I seem to be accurate as far as other people observations. I always try to check in with my beliefs and update them accordingly. Just like with science, always replace old data with better, new data. But not better bad data, or than your treading into Republican territory. I really do wish they'd get their shit together again. Maybe, one of these days.

Cheers! Sláinte!