Same As It Ever Was

However, whatever software came with her Performa on CD was so simple as to be too hard to use--I couldn't make out heads or tails of what she was talking about. Of course, Angie has a North Carolina accent you could cut with a buzzsaw, so I have to listen really carefully in the first place. Finally:

            DIANE
        Angie, would you like me to come 
        over there?
        
            ANGIE
           (bursts into sobs)
        Oh Diane, would you?

Well, we had to go off to thesis class first; then I'd go over to her house.

Thesis class was, well, strange. Len seemed to be in a strange mood (again)--turns out he has a 6 week rewrite project looming on the horizon and he doesn't know how he's going to juggle that and this class. But beyond that...

He laid into Linda again for doing this, that, and the other, which I know I found very strange because he hasn't read any of her pages for over 4 weeks--she hasn't handed any in because she's tired of getting skewered mercilessly all the time; she'd rather just write the fucker first.

He hammered her so relentlessly that I crashed inside: I'd been feeling pretty good about my own stuff right up until we started discussing Linda's, and then I couldn't face going through it myself. Not that I think I would have; to be perfectly honest he's a lot nicer to me than he is to her. But for some reason Len has got a bee in his bonnet about Linda's stuff. Basically, I have to sit to her left so that I go before her.

But rather than read any of the 40 pages I handed out, I just asked everyone to read them at home and give me their general impressions when we met next week. I know that 40 pages is a lot to go over in detail, particularly when everyone is doing their own writing at home.

Part of me says, "But Diane, you've got only so much class time left in the semester, you should try to wring out of it what you can!" And another part of me says, "You don't have any specific questions to bring up in class--let them read it and tell you whether you're making any sense at all."

All the bullshit in class doesn't make a difference as to whether you can write or not.

At the end of class Angie gave me directions to her house in case we got separated on the way. I followed her across town to Marina del Rey and spent the next several hours trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with this Performa, at the same time as Angie and I were gabbing away at a million miles an hour. One topic to the next: bam! bam! bam! I don't think I ever finished a thought--Angie was on to the next subject already.

After I managed to get some kind of system software onto her Performa, I ran Norton Utilities and came up with B*-tree errors. Then I realized that Norton kept pointing out the same error, over and over again. I called Darin, confirmed that that meant what I thought it meant, and then told Angie, "Let's save what you absolutely have to on floppy disks. We have to wipe your hard disk."

After reformatting it and reinstalling system software (and spending an ungodly amount of time trying to figure out what was wrong with her printer, a problem solved by power-cycling), everything appeared to be better. I hope. At least she's backing up her stuff these days.

I went to the GSP office to pick up mail and find out where Rob's class was being held. I took a flyer out of my mailbox that stated our thesis due date was not April 17, which we had been told and which is the campus-wide due date for theses, but instead was

--> April 1 <--

Kind of a difference, no? I'm not in trouble, because I'll probably do Draft 1 of Act III this week. But some people are still in Act I. Some others, due to story problems, haven't gotten anything on paper that they can keep.

Changing the date by 2 and a half weeks is dirty pool. Particularly when we are now only 6 weeks to the new date.

I went up to Julie, the woman in charge of the GSP program and said, "What?"

She said, "Oh, April 1 is a date I came up with in conjunction with the GSA." The Graduate Screenwriting Association, a student organization. In other words, the students themselves are doing this to themselves.

I gave her what I can only describe as an incredulous look, because what I was thinking was, "Carolann and James, who run the GSA, are both in my thesis class, and I think they would have mentioned if the due date were April 1."

Julie laughed and said, "No, I'm just kidding you. It's always been April 1. It was April 1st last year--scripts are always due on April 1."

All I could think was: this is the first I'm hearing of it. And a conversation I'd had on Wednesday came back to me. I met with one of my thesis committee members (or non-meeting with him):

            DIANE
        When do the committees meet to judge 
        the scripts?
        
            DON
        April 24.
        
            DIANE
        Wow. How many committees are you on? 
        Because that's not very much time to 
        read and evaluate them.
    
    Don gives Diane a curious look.
    
            DON
        What do you mean?
        
            DIANE
        Well, our thesis due date is April 17.
        
    Don regards Diane as if she just stepped off a spaceship.
    
            DON
        It is?

I wondered if my bringing this up was possibly related to this notice we now had in our boxes.

I asked Julie where Rob's rewrite class was and left.

Rob was great. Very energetic. Very enthusiastic. Very happy to have a small, manageable rewrite class--only 3 of us showed up (me, Jackie, and Aaron), with one other person confirmed for the class (Carolann) and possibly one more besides joining (Erica). We talked about our backgrounds, about our opinions of the USC program (all 3--well, all 4, actually--of us gave it mixed reviews), and then our stories.

I gave a very simplistic version of my script--it's amazing how simple the story gets when you haven't looked at it in a while--and Rob gave me one tidbit that I could use for the main character that set lightbulbs off in my head: oh, of course. Not only does it differentiate the main character from another character she's similar to, but it would keep the audience from guessing one of the plot twists later on. Doh!

So a pretty successful first session.

I came home and discovered e-mail from Carolann, telling me that the GSA did not change the thesis due date and she has no idea why Julie is blaming it on them, other than to have a scapegoat. I called her and we talked for a while--it turns out that flyer that mentioned the change of date (which I hadn't read, only glanced at) said that the GSA was responsible for changing for the date. Julie hadn't talked to them at all about it, of course.

I told Carolann about my conversation with Julie. Clearly I didn't describe it well, or Carolann didn't get the import of what I was saying--Julie had told me to my face that the thing about the GSA was a joke. Which seems pretty callous, then, of her to put that on the flyer, no?

So many people had already called Carolann, furious about the date change, that I can already tell there's blood in the water over this. Stay tuned for updates.

After talking to Carolann, I called Linda, who wanted my interpretation of what the hell happened in class with Len yesterday. I did my best. I don't know why Len has it out for her, I honestly don't. I don't know what to say. She asked if she could give me a copy of everything she's done so far and I could go over it before she gives it out, to try and forestall more bloodshed. We're all tired and wasted at this point; Linda can't take it any more.

After that, Darin and I made our shopping list for our party Saturday night. Darin had invited several people over for a dinner, and I figured if he was going to invite people over, I was too, so I invited my thesis class. We had to plan to make a lot of food. We made our menu, wrote down the ingredients, and went shopping. We went to 3 different groceries to find the food we wanted.

We then prepared as much as we could the night before. I used the Cuisinart (possibly the first time since we've been married and received the Cuisinart as a gift), Darin made beef marinade, we cooked green beans, I made a garlic dressing...we were little chefs. I wouldn't want to get this fancy all the time, but it was fun.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Went for a run Thursday morning, but not Friday. Oh well.