The Spring Semester Blues

But it's not going to be a regular thing, so don't hold thy breath.

That day for me is this Sunday. The 13th. My life won't be perfect, my life won't be easy, but I'll be doing better. Why Sunday? Because today I had to hand in the term paper that was due and Saturday I shoot my final project for Directing class. This means that I have my two finals and my script for Writing class to worry about, and being able to focus on that script is what I want. Dedicating at least the last two weeks of this months strictly to writing would be grand.

But until then, I've been working on my final projects. This is, of course, the final month of spring semester, which means all final projects are due. You wonder why I haven't been around? This is why:

• Sunday: I did some work in the morning, then Darin and I went out to brunch at the house of some people we met through Dave Feldman. I was less than my usual charming self, mostly because all I could keep thinking about was the work I had to do. At 2:30 I asked Darin for the car keys and he said, "Why? I'll just be a few moments." I left anyhow, went home, did some work. Lay down for a nap. For some reason, Sprint kept calling, which was both weird and not very conducive to napping. I guess I fell asleep, although I didn't think so, because Darin came home at about 6 and, after I didn't answer the doorbell, let himself into the house through the backdoor (which he then promptly locked, for all you would-be burglars). He told me he was going out to dinner and a movie with Harry and I would be alone to work. I napped for an hour, got up, and worked on my Film History term paper -- The Singing Kid, a less than stellar film by Broadway's favorite kid, Al Jolson -- from 8 until 12.

• Monday: Got up at 8, went to Babylonian. Jeffrey kept me hopping all day long. I had contemplated trying to do a little bit of schoolwork here and there; gave up on the idea. Wondered why I ever burdened myself with an internship and told him I couldn't come in on Wednesdays any more. Cut out of there earlier than Jeffrey wanted me to (4pm) and went home. Darin left at about 6, because Monday is my long school night. Went shopping for a window screen to block off my working area from the sun and then went to school from 7pm to 10pm. Came home, went to sleep.

• Tuesday: Got up at 9, started writing. Wrote until 11, showered, dressed, went to school, dropped off my 16 pages to get photocopied. Went to the library, watched The Singing Kid, went back and picked up my photocopies, went to writing class from 3 to 6 (and we never even got to my scenes) and then Brooke's class from 7 to 9. When I came home I was surprised by Darin preparing dinner, Wild Mushrooms and Curly Pasta with a side of Broccoli, for us. It was yummy. That's 1 down, 299 to go (he has a goal of cooking 300 times this year). If I'd had more energy, he would have gotten lucky last night, but no can do.

• Wednesday: Got up at 7:30, dashed off to school. Sat through lecture -- this Film History teacher is a total loon, maybe this is what happens to you if you get a PhD in this stuff -- and then through Desperate Hours, an okay Humphrey Bogart flick. Came home. Found the woman from the cleaning agency Darin hired had gone through our house like a tornado and the place almost looks decent now. I'm afraid to be anywhere near her, because she might try to Endust me.

Today I have to:

• Find some actors and line them up for Saturday.
• Maybe find a couple of GSPers to appear in my little flick, but I can't count on it -- they're doing term papers and scripts and productions as well.
• Write my script for the Saturday shoot.

Tomorrow:

• Get the camera.
• Go over the shoot with Gonzo, my DP.
• Go to Script Analysis and watch a really bizarre Polanski film, The Tenant.

I was going to do something with vampires for my final project for Directing class, but I've had to throw that idea out: too many production values. No production is easy, but when you throw out night shooting and street shooting and use basically one location in your home, you make life a lot easier on yourself.

I admit that I have failed in the way of creativity as well when it comes to what my final directing project concerns. It's about a graduate student who's in the middle of moving, in the middle of the semester, and is feeling stressed from every angle, who finally snaps -- and takes it out on the most annoying person in her class. When I tell other GSPers about this idea and I get to the part about "the most annoying person in class" they love this idea, because they know exactly whom I'm talking about. Kathleen can't wait to edit it, Justin wants to help out on it. I figure that doing this project will release some of our tensions and maybe make some people laugh, because right now we're at Murder on the Orient Express tension levels, and people are lining up to do Bernice in.

I know that I'm bad in the way I let stress and tension get to me. I let it affect me and it shows. I'm supposed to hold it in and smile like a normal person or let the rage out, but I'm too honest for one and too polite for the other.

For example, in my writing class, I am extremely annoyed by the testosterone-poisoning that the class has right now. The way writing class works is, everyone brings in pages and assigns other students roles and we read the scenes. Well. Most of the class is male and they write mainly male characters. They will not assign the two females in class (Kathleen and me) male roles to read -- one guy actually said, "This really needs to be read by a guy."

What becomes horribly obvious to me with the roles I read is that a)these guys, at this level, couldn't write a female character if their lives depended on it and b)the females, far more so than the secondary males, are plot devices. Egregiously so.

The teacher never points this out.

I don't want to be the whiny woman who says, "You know, these women characters are really trite and cardboard..." but they are. I'm not saying I'm the best writer of male characters, but I do try to make them characters who have a purpose beyond fucking the lead or doing (so help me god) a strip-tease or supporting the hero in his quest.

The other part of the poisoning that gets to me is that every other word is "fucking". I don't have any problem with foul language; I use it myself (see above). But I recognize it for the lack of imagination that it is -- why do you think a book of Shakespeare's insults is so popular? The use of "fucking" -- never "shit" or "cunt" or "dick" or anything else, just "fucking" -- isn't even used well: it's just for color. To give the dialogue some edge or something. Well, surprise: it ain't edgy, guys, it's just repetitive.

And here's another one that bothers me that I haven't brought up because I can't figure out a way of bringing it up that doesn't attack the writer: one guy is writing a story about a white guy getting involved with the Nigerian political conflict. So once again, a black story is told through a white guy -- I find that offensive. But whatever. No, what bothers me is that every scene he's brought in is full of cliches that were hackneyed in the 40s.

• The hero wants to join the Nigerian rebels to free his fiancee from the clutches of the evil military dictator.
• They let him join in on the raid. (Should I bring in the Evil Overlord list, do you think?)
• The fiancee, who's being held prisoner in the military dictator's dungeon, has been repeatedly tortured but has not revealed the hero's whereabouts.

I mean, where do I begin.

For one thing, let's be real: you do not break into a modern dictator's heavily fortified and heavily armed encampment using wire cutters and machine guns. You try to break in through walls of concrete or even walls of steel with wire cutters and the evil overlord's henchmen are going to laugh, right before they fire an anti-aircraft missile in your general direction.

A trained guerilla rebel force does not let any white boy join up, just 'cause his fiancee is in the pokey.

Speaking of the fiancee, anyone who's grown up in the good ol' US of A who hasn't been trained in intelligence or counter-intelligence is not going to withstand torture. I'm going to be screaming where Darin is the second they show me the bamboo shoots, let alone stick them under my fingernails. Let alone apply electric shock to my privates. Let alone let me gang raped by soldiers. Let alone let me be raped by animals, such as German shepherds who have been specially trained for just that duty. Ask Amnesty International about other fine practices of modern dictatorships. No, no, in this Nigeria, she's been battered around and shot up with heroin, but she's remained tough.

This is a bullshit script. I'd like to see my fellow writers aspire a little higher.

But other than that, I'm fine. How you?

It's after 4pm. The cleaning lady is still at it. Good Lord. She got here at 10.

I finished designing the side-by-side columns for this page, and I had to fall back on a horribly kludgey solution for how to get the non-matching columns. The "width" attribute was not working. Anyone know why?

I also can't figure out why the dividing black lines have suddenly gotten fat. I didn't touch those lines of HTML at all.