Lunch By The TV

I had some blood taken last week. It's not that big of a deal, or it isn't usually. But now I'm wondering what the hell this woman did to me--it's 7 days later and I have a 2.5 inch bruise down my arm. Did she hit a muscle or something? This is highly annoying.

Less highly annoying is the arrival of another piece of furniture that Darin bought last week--and had hoped to have by last night but was sadly disappointed: a big-screen TV. Yes, every single piece of furniture in our living room is changing. This is a big TV. We will watch movies in style on this TV. I'm overwhelmed as I look at this thing. It's bigger than me. That's kind of a scary factoid about a TV.

The reason Darin wanted it by last night, of course, is that TNT aired the first Babylon 5 movie, In The Beginning, followed by the re-edit of the original pilot movie, The Gathering. I watched the first one but not the second. (Unlike my husband, I can actually reach critical mass on B5-related material.)

He came downstairs midway through The Gathering and said, "Other than improving story, characterizations, pacing, tension, and clarity, the re-edit hasn't affected it at all." So he was happy, I guess.

Highly annoying: TNT puts its logo in the lower-right-hand corner through the entire thing.

TNT starts stripping Babylon 5 (airing the entire series from the first episode, 5 days a week) this afternoon. Get those VCRs out.

I'm getting back into the swing of things, USC-wise.

Friday night I talked to Linda on the phone for a very long time. We talked about stories and terror. The stories we're working on in thesis class, the terror of returning to school. Both of us are looking forward to returning to school, because we both enjoy the discipline of it--"We must form a group when this is all over!" Linda declared--but we're also scared.

We have something like 14 weeks and 3 days before our thesis is due. Is this even going to be possible? It seems pretty darn unreachable right now.

Although Linda did give me a really good idea for how to get out of the jam I've been in since early December, which I've been mulling over in my mind, and the more I think about it, the better it sounds.

Linda met us at the theatre for Wag The Dog, but she couldn't stay afterwards, so I didn't get much of a chance to talk to her then.

Today Carolann came over to help me brainstorm ideas about my script and get my feedback on her Act I. I told her the idea that Linda had given me, and she liked it a lot. We discussed for a bit how much we owe to other people who give us good ideas like this--do we have to give them a cut of the proceeds?

Carolann said she'd talked to Erica about this, and Erica's take was, No way, their idea came from our idea and if they hadn't had our idea to jump off of, they would never have had it.

We love this way of thinking.

I'd still buy my thesis group dinner at Matsuhisa (complete with sake) if this script sold.

I gave her my feedback on her Act I pages that she sent me, and I apologized for being so fluffy about my comments--I hadn't thought of a concrete suggestion to make. (That's my new goal whenever I criticize something--suggest something else.) I love her writing--she'd make a great novelist with the way she can depict a city--but something about the events of the first Act felt episodic, not dramatically pushed. She agreed and said that that came from her making a step outline and following it too closely.

Carolann gave me some scary news about one of the classes we're both planning on taking next semester, and now I'm wondering if I should take it or not. Urgh. I can't think like this two days before classes start.

I've been reading Neal Gabler's biography of Walter Winchell, Winchell : Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity recently, and I can barely put it down. It's a fascinating look at a man who got a lot of power--more power than I can imagine one man, especially a newspaper columnist, getting--and the times he lived in. I've gotten to the McCarthy Era, which was the beginning of the end for Winchell, and I have no idea what's going to happen.

Did you know that Ed Sullivan had been a gossip columnist too, before he did some little variety show on TV? There's some great stuff in here.

Gabler also wrote An Empire of Their Own : How the Jews Invented Hollywood, which is another excellent look at the early years of Hollywood and why it developed the way it did. I know that Gabler was on one of the Siskel-and-Ebert clones that popped up during the Eighties, but he's a better writer than that. Honest.