So that's what it feel like to get punched in the face

For those of us who are writers struggling to be paid writers -- or, really various degrees of almost-paid writers and then paid writers -- the outlook is never rosy. That's the business. But the climate these days is bleak. Separates the heard. Survival of the fittest. Faith shall prevail, what with 95% perspiration and a baffling amount of luck. But...this is all common knowledge. And that's even for someone like myself, who's still a teeny-weeny baby writer kicking some sweet-ass new baby smell.

So reading Elana of Girl on Girl's post about being an fairly upper level almost-paid writer was pretty much like a kick in the face.

Really.

But she's funny. So it's not so bad. It's kind of like some smelling salts to make sure you're paying attention.

The Fear is good.

I'm pretty sure.

ps. Seriously, I can't find any good Buster pics from Beef Consomme?

Pros from Dover

And this is pretty much the equivalent of what my Friday was like...



ps. Too bad I hate my day job. Otherwise it might have been a pretty good day.

Bright weekend sundries

1. Bright Star is just as beautiful as they say. Yet another reason I admire Jane Campion so much. It's a movie that made my heart swell with possibilities, and my mind ache at how one couldn't make that movie here in the US, nor could Ms. Campion's career have evolved here either. A moment to wonder and hope, and yet another moment to ponder and mope.

2. Thai food is medicinal. And for a beautiful some, as of late, it is the only choice tolerable. I gladly follow. This weekend I had noodles on Friday, and a curry dish this evening. Wonderful.

3. Adventureland, a second viewing, note #1: Real stories. It's funny how real stories all work so damn well, and yet there's the whole dilemma of people trying to tell such stories and people like me wanting to enact some Fahrenheit 451 action on said materials. We've all read stories and scripts based on such "real stories," and we've all wanted to light those mothers up. We all know it. And yet, Adventureland, among other examples. And I think the catch is that many have said about this particular film that Greg Mottola wrote the story as it could have been, and then opened it as a collaboration to realize the story as it now stood. A work of fiction. And that is the difference. Real made interesting, made alive, and thus changed. So real is just the starting point. And can be a good one sometimes. But dump the ego, follow the story. I'll be thinking about that myself on Mr. Columbus' day.

4. Sushi shops not opening until 5:30p on a Saturday is some major ass BULLSHIT.

5. Productivity is down. Needs to be up. This has been an issue lately as life keeps on trucking, and trucking in my way. Yo, life. Step off. Or step in line. I'm often amazed at those -- and you know who you are -- who seem always so productive in the face of said trucking, clackety-clacketing away like it was all one big F you. I'm impressed by these people -- who know who they are -- but I also want to, like, do the adult version of ding-dong-ditching them. Whatever that is. Regardless: Productivity needs to be Viagra-Up.

6. A note from one of Keats letters that, if anything, made me feel better about a hurdle I've been trying to jump lately in getting a first draft of my Interloper pilot finished:

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

7. Adventureland, a second viewing, note #2: Awkward phases. In some part of the disappointing special features on the disc, Mottola says that Jesse Eisenberg described himself as a director's stand-in for stories about their awkward phases. I love that. No shock there really considering my second realization: awkward phases. A lot of people seem really stuck on suave characters. Everyone has to be disco these days. Me, I'm really impressed by the awkward. If a character is that honestly bare that I identify and squirm, I'm 30 billion times more affected and impressed than when someone is doing their best Brad-Pitt-doing-Dean-Martin. All I'm sayin'.

8. It's a bittersweet writerly balm to watch young, miserly Keats feeling defeated by the world.

9. I Heart Community.

10. From Keats' letters to Fanny Brawne:

I almost wish we were butterflies and could live three summer’s days – three such days with you could fill with more delight than 50 common years ever contain.

ps. It's unfair to make Sorkin follow Keats, especially with what I'm choosing from Sorkin's work, but hell, it's part of my bright weekend, so I'm doing it anyway:

The Office is starting to feel like....work

The Office has been taking a slow, descending trip to Suck over the last couple of seasons. Some ups and downs, but descending on the whole. But this season seems determined to cement the suckage.

The Office is an eccentric portrait of reality. It's kooky enough to be funny, painfully awkward enough to seem real. Though it never really was. It took real touches and distorted them enough to be painfully funny. Anyone who has or does work in an office knows that an office environment is not funny. If anything, The Office can function as therapy for the American white collar working class.

But this season things are getting all too real. Why would anyone want to watch Jim & Pam sink into a gulag of reality?

We've come to like Jim & Pam. He hates his job, but has some unidentified potential bubbling deep down inside of him. She wants to be an artist, but needed the support and the courage to go for it.

And now Jim has decided to take his hated day job seriously and follow in Michael's foot steps. And Pam has decided to forget her dreams cold turkey and become a...sales person. Why? Who knows. But they've both decided to take upward mobility and assimilation very seriously. I guess you hit a certain age and yuppie-ism starts to look pretty good. (Yeah, that's some reality-come-salt-in-the-wounds for anyone anywhere near Jim & Pam's ages.)

So, some questions:

1. Why has Jim never actually even considered an alternative to Dunder Mifflin? And no, other DM branches do not count.

2. That said, what exactly entitles Jim to his newfound success at Dunder Mifflin other from the fact that he's attractive and a man? Why exactly should the aimless class clown skyrocket to management? Comedy aside, any number of people at that branch are probably much better suited to the job.

3. What exactly happened to Pam's art school dreams? They kind of attempted to answer it. But in reality, it looks like, deep down, Pam really just wanted marriage and a baby.

Is this really what we've been watching this show to find out?

It's always been clear that there was a reason that the original Office worked best in its shorter framework. But this is all too depressing. The Office is not only a bit too realistic and Willy Loman this season -- but it's also pretty damn old fashioned.

Talk about a 50's American family. Young man makes good. Applies himself at his job. Wife gives up her kooky aspirations. They settle down. Get married. Buy a house. Have a baby. You add in 1.5 more babies, a lifetime in Scranton, and a steady progression towards a (hopefully) healthy 401k and you've got yourself an Eisenhower era nuclear family.

In fact, what you have is the life that Michael has always wanted. Maybe that is a little funny.


ps. But not really. (Minus Kevin's incessant "What does a bean mean?", that got me...)