December 30, 2005

That Ticking Clock...Two Thousand What?

I’m sick. The body hurts. My whore of a home state infected me. Sweet Illinois…or so I thought. She sent me back to Cali with illness. All is fair, I suppose.

I suppose. What can I say? Bitch was pissed. She can’t let go. I’ve been bedding my current sweetheart going on a year and a half. Somewhere along the way, I fell for her…and now I’ve fallen hard. What’s an inspired, love starved youth to do?

I have boats to say. But…I’ll save my ramble for a later date. Or, more appropriately…a later year.

I can’t believe I just said that shit.

I’d be up till 4. Fraid I don’t love you that much.

Okay, not true. This heart has plenty. And speaking of my heart…I think it’s enlarged. No, I’m not being metaphorically cute. I’m talking medical disorder. For some reason, it’s gotten so big, it oozes, pulses and pops its way through the gaps in my ribs. In turn, I get this stabbing, drop a fire cracker down my aorta and feel it explode…thing.

It’s awesome.

What’s wrong, you ask?

Likely nothing. I pander to drama. But, to be fair and kind, let’s role-play.

I’ll be me. You can be my last call conquest. I take my cue as the lights come up.

~~It’s not that I’ve had bad luck with love…it’s just that I love recklessly. I love deeply. At least I like to believe I do. (This sounds thick, but consider the stage…and performer). I guess you could say that I should’ve learned my lesson. Leave yourself open and you’re bound to get cut. (Take a “painful” slug from your J&D…give her sub-conscious 1.2 seconds to recall a movie or song she thinks she’s now living). Call me a fool, but it’s something I’ve come to expect. But as many times as my heart has been torn in this life, it heals. It grows bigger, stronger…it begs me to take the leap…again…to not be chained down by my past. In complete sincerity, I want to tell you something. I don’t know how much room I have left. That’s why lately, I’ve closed off. I made a promise to myself. A promise that I’ve had no problem upholding…until tonight…until I met you.~~



Oh, Hollywood…

I’m not a piece of shit. Sometimes, maybe…

In my life, I bide time…waiting to be overthrown. Otherwise, I’m a tease who adores the game. It’s just that…if you don’t know me, never trust me.

What? At least I’m honest…here. And that’s some that counts, right?



Anyway, I’ve 2 things for you. SNL again, but fucking wow. Dare you to watch it less than 10 times.

Make that the triple dog variety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=zLElfJ9YCh0



And I found about 20 old, burned CD’s. Digs from my old, polluted computer. How I missed them. Precious orphans. I’ll give a few.

Aaron Lewis – Outside (Live - ’99 Family Values Tour)
Dire Straits – Romeo and Juliet
Joe Cocker – The Letter (Live)
Primitive Radio Gods – Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand
Aimee Mann – Save Me
Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight
Our Lady Peace – Superman’s Dead (Live)



And since I am the Devil’s Advocate…allow me to lend a little New Year’s Eve advice…

Shoot warm Cuervo…find a hot tub. Have a drunken heart to heart with a stranger. Perhaps a second? Get naked. Welcome 2006 in the only reliably fitting manner…leaping off balconies singing cartwheels.

December 20, 2005

Inapropo Refs and Gratitude. Grease pan, bake a 375, 12 mins...

My site, the site you’re eyes are currently dancing…is a gang-bang. No need to waste time on a darling Monday. Analogies will drop early, often.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone stops you with a look? One that informs of a line in the sand. Watch out. They’ll usually follow the declaration with a second look…you just crossed it.

Por ejemplo…

I was in Baja last January, a gringo with a map and no compass…trying to make a movie. On the second night, 145 miles north of Bajia De Los Angeles, I stopped at an abandoned beach 2 miles off the broken and ripped main road. I can almost promise you’ve never seen anything like it. I meant the road…but the beach, too. The road was the sort where you cross fingers for hours on end, praying your car doesn’t shake to pieces and strand you in the middle of the fucking desert. How else should I describe it? It’s a fucking desert!

It was 11:45 Baja time…whatever that means. I locked my doors and clenched my hatchet…which would likely qualify me as a junior barbarian or barbarian in training. That night, one thing was for sure…the banditos were coming for me. I would fight them off, plunge my baby axe into one of their faces and spend the rest of my life in a sub-standard Mexican prison.

Not exactly the thoughts that breed sweet dreams. And that’s not even mentioning the faint, flickering light coming from the other side of the burm. Being an avid explorer, I had to know where the light was being made. I left my car and crossed a small sand dune. Then, another…

There was a beach fire in between my secluded spot and what I thought was an out of season hotel. Wouldn’t you know, that night…3 lovely San Diegans just happened to be tipping a handle of Bacardi by the fire. Looking back, it’s possible they were Sirens.

Why am I telling this story? I don’t remember where I was heading. Perhaps a reference…the last time a suggestion or action of mine inspired a, “line cross.”

I’m lost. An abandoned beach? Rum? Fire? Outnumbered bachelor? Starry, open sky, secret-is-safe Mexico?

Apologies. It just ain’t clicking. Maybe I’m tired. Or, maybe my imagination isn’t firing on all cylinders tonight. You should know which word to underline there. Come now, this is a heart too sweet for that.

At least I like to believe it is.



There’s a line you cross, a barrier when you stray past the semi-taboo and enter into something else. Like I said, this site is and has always aspired to be a gang bang.

And if you’re going to gang bang, fucking gang bang. Commit.

Now that I’ve come this far tonight, I fail to see the romance. Exactly. See how you back into it? How it works on so many…plateaus?

I often have a roundabout style. But for one night, let me translate this merry-go-round…

Thanks for reading. Thanks for writing that you’re reading. Thanks for writing to read. Since I’m not dying for another 90 years, we got a long way to go.

Yes. I could have saved time, if only I began where I ended…

Thank you, no.

December 19, 2005

Saturday Night Live...

Still and always the most untouchable show on TV.

http://img-nex.kongisking.net/kong/movies/121705-SNLJackBlack9.mov

And how tragically John Belushi is Jack Black?

December 14, 2005

Let Me Tell You Why I'm an Idiot...

Then again, when has the power of sight ever failed in painting the more resonant picture? Top of Rockefeller Center in New York City…the newly opened suicide dreamer’s Candyland.

http://homepage.mac.com/winburnsmith/PhotoAlbum10.html

Some things, I’ll never understand. Like heights, for example. Or Vertigo…and why the fuck I put myself through it.

My fingers need to touch foundation, no wandering.
Short, quick breaths…constant shivers.
Testicles retreat into my lower intestines.
People think I’m a 24-year-old crack baby.
I make unsettling, involuntary noises.
I close my eyes and dart through narrow passages with the bravado of John Bobbit moments before his second, “first” sexual encounter.
I laugh to myself…a calming of the nerves.
The alarm in my stomach calls for vomit…but nothing is locked or loaded.

Bitter, freezing wind. Every moment, I waited for it to blow hard enough to dust me off the landing, foster my date with destiny. That never happened.

There were three platforms...and stairs leading to those platforms. This means one could elect to see just one platform and head down…or elect to see all three.

In spite of the buckets of personal anguish I share…I elected to be an idiot. I elected to eliminate the potential regret of not making it to the top.

It’s that same trigger that likes to selectively fire. Tell me what to do? Go fuck yourself. Don’t eat arsenic, it’s bad for you? Yourself, go fuck. The same stubborn shit applies to my own instincts.

My heart beats 54 times every minute. For those 8 minutes I spent on top of the world… double that. And when I walked past an engineer speaking quietly with one of the security officers…

“Not super smooth. The main elevator just crapped out.”

Triple it.

My insides shook something fierce. When I finally made it back down, bet your cabinet of illegal prescription drugs that my hand ran across the marble on floor one. Trust me, it’s not cliché when you feel shit like that.



Of course the city was great. There was a distinct sweetness I was hoping to find. Spirits were high…crowds rampant. Everyone follows “The New Yorker’s Guide to Mastering the Holiday Dating Trifecta: The Scarf-Wrap, Arm Brace and Sidewalk Strut.” I passed dozens if not hundreds of couples with a smirk, freezing my naked face off…knowing they would have a place in my Blogville. Usually…the uniformity would tempt my desire to dish swift facial roundhouses. But in sincerity, I dug it. What else are the holidays about?

But wait…

Breed that, the reflection of another great and wandering trip to our country’s great city…confusion, wonder, exhaustion…and the ache of my desire to return home, to my city of angels…and I’ve earned allowance to drop something a little more profound…

What else is life about?

December 08, 2005

A Fresh Battle and Back to NYC...

I just finished a Mulholland Drive…drive.

As I returned and passed the Beverly Hills Hotel, my mix ran out. A mix that did its job…carrying me through the beautiful valley views.

But, I needed something to carry me home. Lucky for Winburn, Pat Benatar was kickin' it on XM. And I concur, love is most certainly a battlefield. What a fucking jam. Suddenly, dance is my craving.

I haven’t fully ruled out the possibility that I’m partially insane…or that I have serious, bubbling emotional problems. But we’ll get back to that. Perhaps another night. This one might run long.

I treated this week as if it were another one of my be all, end all’s. See, I had another pitch with a studio bigwig yesterday. I’ve been speaking a bit of rabble lately…flaked out on a handful of good souls. Now, you know why.

So I talked with my little chickadee late on Thursday. She had spots to fill. Spots with my name attached, perhaps?

Let me first tell you that landing this gig would be striking oil, gold…golden oil. Whatever. Orgasm. There’s little more I could ask for. I thought I was shooting for a 1-year contract with a salary that tips in around a grand a week. I thought wrong. Apparently, I’ve been shooting much higher. Or, at least…so I was informed. Like, 140% higher. So, they ain’t fuckin' around.

I like to think of myself as a creative individual…with a very active, dancing mind. When she called and asked me to pitch again, no sweat. I know my stuff, I trust my stuff. But, well…let me explain.

You see, the first time around, I went into the pitch with “my stuff” and bombed. Not because “my stuff” is bomb material. It’s that “my stuff” wasn’t going to become “their stuff” any time in the near future. Creatively, we were miles apart.

So she told me to study “their stuff” and fire away. “The sooner, the better.” I spent this past weekend watching movies I would have never otherwise taken the time to see. Very broad appeal, comedic, family-friendly fare. I thought I was in for a shit flavored treat, but when Vin Diesel starts referring to the infant as “Red Baby” in The Pacifier…I mean, come on. Good stuff. I watched a lot of movies this weekend. More than usual.

And I came up with about 30 ideas. From those, I cut it down to 2, set up my meeting and came out swinging. The others were a little too…not for them.

That means roughly 93% of my ideas aren’t even allowed to set foot on this studio’s playground. Trust me, this thing isn’t as easy as it sounds.

I prepare for a pitch about the same way I prepared to pitch back in my days of tossing baseballs. Funny, huh? It’s the same principle as going on stage, as giving a speech, as performing 30 Jacks deep while your friends are filming in the closet...

Okay, that last one, I didn’t even give myself a chance.

But, there’s something really personal about giving a pitch. You’re so vulnerable. The only protection I had was the rationalization that these weren’t my babies, they were my whore children. Derived to impress a studio that has found extraordinary success by following a specific formula. They know what they’re doing, and do it well. I want in.

If the job were mine, you would have been informed in my opening sentence. Following that, my closing sentence would have informed you of my intentions to go on a 122-hour drunkard of celebration. I’m here. I’m sober. I didn’t get the job.

I started right into the first pitch. My greatest challenge in talking creative is staying focused and not diving into, “what the fuck did you just say?” territory. When you’re accomplished, dive all you want. When you’re a young pup, you’ve got to be short and sweet…cut and dry. It’s all part of the pecking order. Right now, executives own me. In 10 years, I’ll own them. But right now…the only time that matters…I have heaps to learn. It’s really fucking tough telling a 2-hour story in a succinct 3 minutes. There’s so much I want to say. So much brilliance I want to demonstrate. It’s the curse of being blessed as a gifted writer.

New readers, take that last bit with a sip of sarcasm.

But if you want to debate the “blessed” remark, you’d better hurry. It wont be much of a debate for long.

That was 100% sincere.

So my first idea…and let me state upfront that the lack of originality pains me. It was Freaky Friday meets The Breakfast Club. I divulge because I doubt it will ever make it to paper. “The Hot Chick” made 35 million in the box office. Come the fuck on. This would make a killing. Especially with my scorching words as its backbone. Yes, scorching.

“The elements are strong…and there’s no way for you to have known this, but the studio is moving away from “high school” movies.”

She’s like a queen who reins with an iron fist over my only insecurity. Plus, I think one fifth of me is in love with her. I don’t know if that hurts or helps the situation.

Next!

Okay, whatever. She passed on my gimmick idea. I wasn’t completely heartbroken. The first pitch was more of an icebreaker than anything. And I needed it. In all honesty, half way through, I hit this terrible snag where I crossed my fingers and prayed for coherence. Pitching is the scariest and most exciting thing in my life.

My second pitch…Elf meets Big Fish. Try spinning that web in a tight 3 minutes. I did…try, that is. Mine took 7. Still, it managed to stand. Why? Because it would be a Christmas classic…hilarious and heartfelt. But what can I say, you have to hire me and find out. I can’t speak my sweet subtlety to you. All I need is some paper, a pen and just a little bit of time. Roll the dice on me. See what it feels like to scream, “Yahtzee, motherfucker!”

She gave me some feedback. The kind of feedback where I try to be brief and not overstay my welcome. At the end of it all, I had to ask…where does this leave us?

I expected her to show appreciation for my time…upon which time, I would thank her for her valuable time. We would endure a clean break and part ways with cheerful holiday wishes. Then, I would run into her at a party 5 years from now with a, “Told you I had skillz. You should have hired me. You could have been the shout out in all my acceptance speeches.” Instead…

“We’ll just keep going back and fourth. Call me with a slam-dunk. January, we’ll go again.”

I had three crammed days and came up with a foul tip. Now, I have 30. Might as well go out and celebrate. Close a door and I’ll kick it open. Leave it open, and it’s over. Baby, come January…I’m taking that job.

Mind you, coming up with a slam-dunk in this town is like pissing into the bullseye of a water gun game at your hometown summer carnival…from 30 feet out.

Since my stream is strong, steady…I say no worries.

The funny thing about life is that you can choose to take every situation in one of two directions.

I’m choosing to take this as someone trying to lasso a wild talent. She hears my thousand mile per hour sputter and sees a project. Give him a month to sand himself out…to sand over those rough edges and that boy could be smooth.



So I’m heading back to New York this Saturday…staying till Tuesday. Need to fill in the last few blanks for the script. Okay, very large blanks. I used to have a deadline. Mid-January. No thanks. I’ll get there when I get there. Especially with the “new development.” I’d be a fool if I took it lightly.

My little scripting vacation is all but over. Come January, time to pimp the charm and land some sweet new means of an LA paycheck.

But things are going. If anything, I’ll always have that. And I’ve written about this quite a bit, but how fucking romantic can it get? These will be the times we all look back and smile. Having no real idea of who we are or where we’re going…fighting to keep that head above water.

We remember feelings. The times we fought, the times we fell, the times we laughed, loved, cried.

And when they’re swirling, which they are…

What a gift.

December 05, 2005

Blanket Blue Ball, you and me both...

I’m trying to think of the last time I shed a tear over something in REAL life. Either way you look at it…troubling.

I just watched a great movie. In America. Really good. Though, talk about botched marketing. It’s some asshole’s fault it took me this long to give it a good look. Anyway, take a guess at what inspired the initial link in my chain of thought?

I’ve been in all weekend. Flaked 2 parties cause I’m buried in headwork. Buried. Of course, this headwork is real work…that will hopefully lead to real work. Got me???

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not always super direct. Ask my ex’s.

They’ve been fixing my apartment complex for 3 months. No, not my ex’s. The Bandaras family of handy men. When they finally leave, I’ll take my stab at figuring out what the fuck they did.

They DO leave El Pollo Loco all over my courtyard. I will CERTAINLY give them that.

I’m fucking salty!

On Saturday, they re-paved the steps leading up to my apartment. Any NORMAL human being would have been confined.

Not this nimble minx…

Hold on…Fuck me, that little slide hits me every time. #6 on August and Everything After. For cliff noters, pick it up at 2:35. Every time and I don’t know why. That whole album is orgasm.

But anyway…

Upon lurching my way across railing in nimble feats of strength and grace, I tore a hole in the ass of my #1 pair of pants. The kind of hole that lures in a sweet whisper to viewing audiences…

Watch closely…magic waits behind but one curtain. That is…if I’m even wearing a buffer…which is rare these days.

I just killed my candle. The wax reservoir escaped. Fucking idiot.

My face is heavy. This is what it feels like to throw your head in a frying pan…on high for 3 days…with a splash of De Cecco.

Crossies. Juices will fly before this chap leaves for NYC. Daddy is about to throw me into the lake…see if I sink or swim.

Let’s get it over with, fuckbags. I’ve got one hell of a crawl stroke.