November 2007 Archives
This is me hiding from the powers. They'll never catch me!!!
Yes, it's the title of a critically acclaimed Ryan Reynolds film, but it's also what I'm doing right now. Waiting to get fired. It's an odd feeling. I'm sitting in the writers room, going clackety-clack at my keyboard, knowing that at any time the line producer might come in to give me the "We're sorry, but..." speech. It helps that I am looking directly at the words "Workers of the World Unite!," which my boss wrote on one of our whiteboards last night. I am thankful the strike did not begin this morning, because Cliffhanger has set my alarm clock to normal time (it has been on military time since college when I dropped it on its spiteful head), which has confused me to no end. I ended up setting it for 6 PM last night, so when I woke up this morning it was light and I would have been screwed at the picket lines.
But I'm not here to give you strike talk. I would rather talk about... drumroll, please... Timothy Olyphant's morning sports report on Indie 103.1. But Melissa, you might say, don't you think sports are, in general, a waste of time? Why, yes, yes I do. I cannot for the life of me sit through one quarter of a football game without shedding tears of boredom. How is it compelling unless someone gets bone-crushingly hurt, which seems to upset people but is the only thing that can keep me awake? So how is Timothy Olyphant's sports report compelling? Because he finds sports as tear-sheddingly boring as I do!!!! Here's how it goes down: Every morning around 9:45, the DJ calls up Tim, who sounds like he's just woken up and can't for the life of him remember why he's getting a call so early in the morning. He will ask, "Now why'd you call me again?" repeatedly. He will delay talking about sports - he'd rather talk movies, which makes sense, him being an actor and all (and one of the illustrious stars of GO, that gem), he'd rather discuss his kids, his marriage, what breakfast cereal he plans on consuming. Finally, the DJ will get him back on track, and Timothy Olyphant will not have an opinion on sports despite being a commentator. Instead, he will READ THE SPORTS DIRECTLY FROM THE PAPER in a tone that is simultaneously pissed off and apathetic. He will wrap up with one or two tidbits that the paper failed to publish, such as, "There was a horse race this weekend. Know who won? A HORSE!" Brilliant. Seriously brilliant.
Happy weekends to y'all!!!
I have been trying, TRYING, I tell you, to post all through this past week, what with the strike happenings and my grandfather sort of kind of maybe attempting suicide (but the Southern Baptists are cagey with their information, especially when it involves the taking of one's life) and no chess pie leftovers from the Scary Movie fest. It has been a rotten week, yet I am strangely calm. I wonder if it's the Indian food I ate for lunch. Or the fact that I've started a page-one rewrite of the novel I began months ago. I wrote nearly three hundred pages and then realized my two main characters, both near and dear to my heart, were being cagey a la the Southern Baptists. They were nuanced, but they were too much so. That's when I realized they'd been LYING to me, the little sluts; they were wearing masks the entire time!!! Sure, I could see the small things: what they were wearing, what they were doing (I think this is fallout from time spent writing scripts for a visual medium), sometimes what they were thinking. But all their thoughts were strangely... healthy. And I know them well, I do, so I should have caught onto them sooner, because they are most assuredly not healthy. They might think they are, but they are not. So now I am digging deeper, trying not to type anything they tell me that rings false. What have I learned? That rewriting is a bitch. But it also feels really good.
Also, with the now seemingly inevitable strike, I will probably lose my job. Maybe not tomorrow, but definitely within the next couple of weeks. My mother, realizing this, asked me what my plan was, and I immediately jumped on the defensive wagon, "I don't know. I have some money saved up. It's not like there will be any industry jobs for awhile..." Then, Mom interrupted me, "No. I mean, are you going to finish your novel? I want you to finish your novel." Sometimes, most of the time, actually, I'm so glad my parents are my parents. Then I got the big, "Don't cross the picket line" speech from my father, a throwback from his FOP days, I suppose. I am very lucky, am I not?
