Today's menu: a surf-n-turf mix of post-birthday let-down and mid-week crisis, with a side order of "what the hell was that dream about last night?" The dream was pre-waking. For some reason I had to get up an hour earlier than normal because I would need the extra time to get all dressed up in a Fred Astaire tux to do this morning's town hall webcast. I was going to be hosting it like one of those guys who used to host the after-school movie. "In today's movie, Ginger Rogers does Wall Street by way of Busby Berkeley in the rollicking 1935 musical Hostile Tender."
I think I'm just bummed that my life never approaches the cleverness of either my scripts or my dreams.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Countrie Matters: the flashback that never made it
While going through all the stuff I wrote that never made it into the new play, I found this, which I wrote very early on (in late February, while I was still in the "what is this play about again?" stage). It's too good to disappear, so here it is. It takes place instead of (or in addition to) the Ophelia/Laertes scene that's in the first act of Hamlet:
LAERTES: Once more, farewell, my sister. I am for Paris
To lay a rose upon our mother's grave.
OPHELIA: And zinnia and rosemary for me.
LAERTES: Ophelia,
For you I will unflower all of France
And make a garden of our mother's tomb.
OPHELIA: Laertes,
If you were not my brother, you would be
The mirror of my earthly aspirations.
What of our father? Is he still unmoved
By your departure?
LAERTES: Oh, as still as stone
To look at, but beneath his flinty skin
Bubbles a pit of molten disapproval.
He is incensed against my trip to France,
And had I not petitioned to the King
To grant my leave, I would be cribbed here still,
A baby woodcock in my father's snare.
OPHELIA: You blame the rosebud for its prickly thorns,
Forgetting that our father was not nettled
Until occasion forced him to be fretful.
His parents dying young, he never knew
The steady anchor of a governor,
But like a lost and frightened boy, marooned
Upon an empty ship, he was constrained
By cruel fate to play both crew and captain,
To give the orders and to see them done
And sail his life without a map or guide
Through reckless waters to a reefless shore.
LAERTES: Yet see what time has done to that bold youth,
For now the wreck of his life has become
Our reef. Each time I try to plot the course
Of my pursuits, he bulls onto the bridge,
Wrenches the wheel away, and runs for shore,
As if my life is his to live his way
In compensation for the debt I owe
To him for bringing me into the world.
OPHELIA: And yet, in his cold way, he loves us still.
LAERTES: When he says love, he means obedience.
OPHELIA: And is it any wonder? Yes, he commands
Like a scarred captain on a battlefield--
But his life has been his mortal enemy--
Taking our mother, who became an angel
Almost as soon as she became a bride--
Stealing his youth and all his cherishments
And leaving in their place a crushing burden
That would have driven Atlas to his knees.
LAERTES: A weight he flaunts and uses to drive us
Down to our knees when we stand up to him.
He lives to make our voices speak his words,
Like a musician who can only teach
By playing all his students' notes. Oh please,
My sister, while I am away, do not,
Do not let him play you. Make your own music.
OPHELIA: Sweet brother. How you do forget my place.
I am my father's instrument, until
He finds a likely man to call my tune.
They say Prince Hamlet is a fine musician.
LAERTES: Not so--he is an instrument--a lyre.
OPHELIA: There sounds an envious note.
LAERTES: Ah no, Ophelia--
'Tis admiration--would my tongue could spread
The honey from a flowered phrase like Hamlet.
All I can do is beg you to remember
That his warm voice and all the pregnant words
Which he delivers in his vows of love
Are but a whisper to the shout of blood
Which seals you as the sister of Laertes.
Despite your worth, Prince Hamlet's will is not
His own--he is the son of kings, and you
And I are but the children of a tyrant.
What choice he makes cannot be circumscribed
Beyond the line of which he is the issue,
For he himself is subject to his birth.
OPHELIA: As are we all, who share the sacred blood
Of family. If I looked in your heart,
I would see something of our father there.
LAERTES: And something of our mother.
OPHELIA: I wish I knew her.
LAERTES: I see her only vaguely, a ghost in velvet.
OPHELIA: And I perceive the wheel of time, which made
My grandmother bring forth into the world
A little boy who never knew his father--
And he in turn brought forth a little girl
Who never knew her mother. What is left
To come round to our children, yours and mine,
But the blessing of a full and happy family?
And that's it. I wrote a note to the effect that this is where Polonius comes in and says something stupid, but I never got around to writing it, so insert your own version of a "To thine own self be false" speech here.
LAERTES: Once more, farewell, my sister. I am for Paris
To lay a rose upon our mother's grave.
OPHELIA: And zinnia and rosemary for me.
LAERTES: Ophelia,
For you I will unflower all of France
And make a garden of our mother's tomb.
OPHELIA: Laertes,
If you were not my brother, you would be
The mirror of my earthly aspirations.
What of our father? Is he still unmoved
By your departure?
LAERTES: Oh, as still as stone
To look at, but beneath his flinty skin
Bubbles a pit of molten disapproval.
He is incensed against my trip to France,
And had I not petitioned to the King
To grant my leave, I would be cribbed here still,
A baby woodcock in my father's snare.
OPHELIA: You blame the rosebud for its prickly thorns,
Forgetting that our father was not nettled
Until occasion forced him to be fretful.
His parents dying young, he never knew
The steady anchor of a governor,
But like a lost and frightened boy, marooned
Upon an empty ship, he was constrained
By cruel fate to play both crew and captain,
To give the orders and to see them done
And sail his life without a map or guide
Through reckless waters to a reefless shore.
LAERTES: Yet see what time has done to that bold youth,
For now the wreck of his life has become
Our reef. Each time I try to plot the course
Of my pursuits, he bulls onto the bridge,
Wrenches the wheel away, and runs for shore,
As if my life is his to live his way
In compensation for the debt I owe
To him for bringing me into the world.
OPHELIA: And yet, in his cold way, he loves us still.
LAERTES: When he says love, he means obedience.
OPHELIA: And is it any wonder? Yes, he commands
Like a scarred captain on a battlefield--
But his life has been his mortal enemy--
Taking our mother, who became an angel
Almost as soon as she became a bride--
Stealing his youth and all his cherishments
And leaving in their place a crushing burden
That would have driven Atlas to his knees.
LAERTES: A weight he flaunts and uses to drive us
Down to our knees when we stand up to him.
He lives to make our voices speak his words,
Like a musician who can only teach
By playing all his students' notes. Oh please,
My sister, while I am away, do not,
Do not let him play you. Make your own music.
OPHELIA: Sweet brother. How you do forget my place.
I am my father's instrument, until
He finds a likely man to call my tune.
They say Prince Hamlet is a fine musician.
LAERTES: Not so--he is an instrument--a lyre.
OPHELIA: There sounds an envious note.
LAERTES: Ah no, Ophelia--
'Tis admiration--would my tongue could spread
The honey from a flowered phrase like Hamlet.
All I can do is beg you to remember
That his warm voice and all the pregnant words
Which he delivers in his vows of love
Are but a whisper to the shout of blood
Which seals you as the sister of Laertes.
Despite your worth, Prince Hamlet's will is not
His own--he is the son of kings, and you
And I are but the children of a tyrant.
What choice he makes cannot be circumscribed
Beyond the line of which he is the issue,
For he himself is subject to his birth.
OPHELIA: As are we all, who share the sacred blood
Of family. If I looked in your heart,
I would see something of our father there.
LAERTES: And something of our mother.
OPHELIA: I wish I knew her.
LAERTES: I see her only vaguely, a ghost in velvet.
OPHELIA: And I perceive the wheel of time, which made
My grandmother bring forth into the world
A little boy who never knew his father--
And he in turn brought forth a little girl
Who never knew her mother. What is left
To come round to our children, yours and mine,
But the blessing of a full and happy family?
And that's it. I wrote a note to the effect that this is where Polonius comes in and says something stupid, but I never got around to writing it, so insert your own version of a "To thine own self be false" speech here.
The BladeRunner of Comic Books
God's birthday present to me: the fact that this seminal (in all senses of the word) work is back in print. Yeah, the color is muted and different from the original (he said, checking pages against the Graphitti reprints of the First trades that I picked up this winter) which means the graphic design elements don't jump out at you the way they did 25 years ago, but still. Talk about something that hasn't aged and was wa-a-a-a-ay the hell ahead of it's time. Media-driven culture? Check. More original logos and graphics work per-page than any ten modern magazines? Check. (God bless you, Ken Bruzenak.) Video crawls under CNBC broadcasts? American Flagg had it first. Talking head video driving the story in Dark Knight Returns? Everywhere in American Flagg. All the commercials and video stuff in Robocop? Totally swiped from American Flagg (Chaykin even gets a minor credit to [cough] make up for the fact [cough] that he was ripped off). And the Philip K Dick analogy even holds true to the premise (there's a Mars colony here, just like in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?-hell, just like there is in almost every Dick novel). Highly recommended.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Weekend Update
The Slow Decline Of Musicals. Saw A Catered Affair Friday night (thank you, Laura!) and our entire post-show discussion can be summed up with the words "When did composers stop writing songs for Broadway musicals?" It was like watching a dozen people sing to the underscoring of a Warner Brothers melodrama, which describes both the musical style and the memorable nature of what was playing.
The Extended Television Episode. Saw X-Files:I Wanted To Like It I Want To Believe Saturday morning. Far too much fake drama (They need your help, I don't want to help, please help me, this is too much for me, this is who I am, goodbye then, I'm worried about you, let's go to an island together) and not enough creepy weirdness. Most entertaining part of this made-for-TV movie? The guy who started snoring after ten minutes and then left fifteen minutes before it ended. Basically a police procedural with telepathy grafted onto it. And if you've seen the movie, then you know that I use the word "grafted" deliberately.
The Rise of Illiteracy. During Sunday night's Red Sox game, ESPN put up clips about this year's Hall of Famers, one of whom is manager Dick Williams, who brought the Sox from the cellar to the pennant in '67. One of the stats they cited was "Cy Young Award winner: Jim Longborg." When I saw that, I did an Uncle Tonoose spit take. Hey ESPN--his name is LONBORG. And you can look it up.
The Extended Television Episode. Saw X-Files:
The Rise of Illiteracy. During Sunday night's Red Sox game, ESPN put up clips about this year's Hall of Famers, one of whom is manager Dick Williams, who brought the Sox from the cellar to the pennant in '67. One of the stats they cited was "Cy Young Award winner: Jim Longborg." When I saw that, I did an Uncle Tonoose spit take. Hey ESPN--his name is LONBORG. And you can look it up.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Life at Trampley Nixon
Great day at the company last week. We wrote down 10 billion dollars in mortgage loans, but because the Street expected us to write off 10.25 billion, our stock went up a dime. Yay defying expectations! Proof yet again that the Stock Market is exactly like the New Hampshire Primary -- it's not about winning or losing, it's about whether you meet, better, or disappoint targeted expectations. You can get 40% of the vote, but if you were expected to get 50%, you lose; you can come in third with 11%, but if you were expected to get 2%, you win big! It's like a gambling casino with pundits!
This week's dictionary entries:
Action items. All the shit nobody wants to do. In school, these used to be called “assignments” or “homework,” but because they require the same amount of work-at-home hours to complete, it took Corporate America about fifteen minutes to come up with a sexy synonym that implies adventure instead of mind-numbing, time-consuming overtime. This is particularly ironic because the main features that make up an action movie (adventure, violence, profanity and sex) are the same for an action item (the adventure is not getting fired, the violence is visions of killing your manager, the profanity is muttered under your breath and the sex is you being fucked over).
Action Figureheads. Managers who promise change, results, and transformationals, and then assign the real work to you.
Best practices. Actually obeying the letter of the law as opposed to squeezing through the usual loopholes. All corporations promote best practices as a standard; the fact that they have to promote them at all gives you some idea of how standard they really are.
Deep dive. A presentation which supplies verifiable facts as opposed to the usual bullet points and jargon. Deep dives usually take place (a) when people start asking intelligent questions that poke holes in the normal day-to-day BS that passes for information; (b) there is a special interpretation of the facts that needs to be understood so that the facts can be ignored; or (c) when an army of facts needs to be deployed to support a particular world view. In UFO terms, this means that deep dives (a) use facts to make believers think twice; (b) use facts to make believers look misinformed; or (c) use facts to make believers look stupid. The implication being that all the information we gave you originally was shallow, if not totally wrong, and this is what you really need to know –- until we do a deep dive on the deep dive. (See PRESSURE DIVE.)
Deliverables. All the shit nobody wants to do wrapped up in garbage bags.
Dentist Appointment. Job interview.
Depression. The “Fire!” that always clears Wall Street’s crowded theatre. A word that is never, ever (ever ) spoken aloud when discussing the stock market, which is proof positive of the stupidity and herd mentality of investment bankers and stockbrokers, as well as the house-of-cards stability of the current market economy, which can be blown over by a single whispered run-on-the-bank-causing stock-price-plummeting three-syllable word.
Doctor’s appointment. Second interview.
Initiative. The corpse of change; change after it’s been covered in makeup and filled with embalming fluid. The equivalent of looking at the body of your grandmother in an open casket and thinking “I could swear I just saw her breathe.”
Once. Legal definition: always. If a woman has had sex once, then in the eyes of the law she’s a slut; if a man smoked pot once, then legally he’s a dope addict; and anyone who’s ever been caught telling just one fib is legally a compulsive liar who can not be believed in a court of law no matter how much he swears he’s telling the truth.
Robust. Something that actually works, as in, “We need a robust server structure.” Most often used to describe either a goal or a potential outcome, thus implying that the current state of affairs is static, moribund, and possibly dead.
Sick Day. Third interview.
Urgency. Panic. When someone in management uses the phrase “sense of urgency,” head for the hills and don’t look back. Learn from history -- Custer at the Little Big Horn had a sense of urgency. Travis at the Alamo had a sense of urgency. The French at Den Bien Phu had a sense of urgency. They all soldiered on regardless. Do the same at your own peril.
This week's dictionary entries:
Action items. All the shit nobody wants to do. In school, these used to be called “assignments” or “homework,” but because they require the same amount of work-at-home hours to complete, it took Corporate America about fifteen minutes to come up with a sexy synonym that implies adventure instead of mind-numbing, time-consuming overtime. This is particularly ironic because the main features that make up an action movie (adventure, violence, profanity and sex) are the same for an action item (the adventure is not getting fired, the violence is visions of killing your manager, the profanity is muttered under your breath and the sex is you being fucked over).
Action Figureheads. Managers who promise change, results, and transformationals, and then assign the real work to you.
Best practices. Actually obeying the letter of the law as opposed to squeezing through the usual loopholes. All corporations promote best practices as a standard; the fact that they have to promote them at all gives you some idea of how standard they really are.
Deep dive. A presentation which supplies verifiable facts as opposed to the usual bullet points and jargon. Deep dives usually take place (a) when people start asking intelligent questions that poke holes in the normal day-to-day BS that passes for information; (b) there is a special interpretation of the facts that needs to be understood so that the facts can be ignored; or (c) when an army of facts needs to be deployed to support a particular world view. In UFO terms, this means that deep dives (a) use facts to make believers think twice; (b) use facts to make believers look misinformed; or (c) use facts to make believers look stupid. The implication being that all the information we gave you originally was shallow, if not totally wrong, and this is what you really need to know –- until we do a deep dive on the deep dive. (See PRESSURE DIVE.)
Deliverables. All the shit nobody wants to do wrapped up in garbage bags.
Dentist Appointment. Job interview.
Depression. The “Fire!” that always clears Wall Street’s crowded theatre. A word that is never, ever (ever ) spoken aloud when discussing the stock market, which is proof positive of the stupidity and herd mentality of investment bankers and stockbrokers, as well as the house-of-cards stability of the current market economy, which can be blown over by a single whispered run-on-the-bank-causing stock-price-plummeting three-syllable word.
Doctor’s appointment. Second interview.
Initiative. The corpse of change; change after it’s been covered in makeup and filled with embalming fluid. The equivalent of looking at the body of your grandmother in an open casket and thinking “I could swear I just saw her breathe.”
Once. Legal definition: always. If a woman has had sex once, then in the eyes of the law she’s a slut; if a man smoked pot once, then legally he’s a dope addict; and anyone who’s ever been caught telling just one fib is legally a compulsive liar who can not be believed in a court of law no matter how much he swears he’s telling the truth.
Robust. Something that actually works, as in, “We need a robust server structure.” Most often used to describe either a goal or a potential outcome, thus implying that the current state of affairs is static, moribund, and possibly dead.
Sick Day. Third interview.
Urgency. Panic. When someone in management uses the phrase “sense of urgency,” head for the hills and don’t look back. Learn from history -- Custer at the Little Big Horn had a sense of urgency. Travis at the Alamo had a sense of urgency. The French at Den Bien Phu had a sense of urgency. They all soldiered on regardless. Do the same at your own peril.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Weekend Update
Three days, four movies. Mad Detective (WTF in a good way), Hancock (WTF in a bad way), Mamma Mia! (check your brain at the door and sing along), and The Dark Knight (HFS in the best way possible).
Sweating. I don't remember it being this hard to get six people in the same room for a two-hour rehearsal. But then again, the last time I tried to do something like this was about six Presidents ago, when the world was young, the dollar was sound, and an hour was really 60 minutes long, instead of its current inflationary rate of 20.
Chilling. Read The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross, an excellent sequel to The Atrocity Archives. It's a fun-house mirror Bond movie take-off with Lovecraft demons, bureaucratic entanglements, high-tech magic, and Tom Holt similes (to coin a phrase: Cthulhupunk).
Freezing. MATTHEW THE SUCKER: Oh, look who sent me an e-mail!
BODYGUARD MATTHEW: Freeze! Now put. The keyboard. Down.
MATTHEW THE SUCKER: Maybe I'll text her.
BODYGUARD MATTHEW: Put. The cellphone. Down.
MATTHEW THE SUCKER: Can't I even just --
BODYGUARD MATTHEW: I don't have time for this, pal. Assume the position.
Sweating. I don't remember it being this hard to get six people in the same room for a two-hour rehearsal. But then again, the last time I tried to do something like this was about six Presidents ago, when the world was young, the dollar was sound, and an hour was really 60 minutes long, instead of its current inflationary rate of 20.
Chilling. Read The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross, an excellent sequel to The Atrocity Archives. It's a fun-house mirror Bond movie take-off with Lovecraft demons, bureaucratic entanglements, high-tech magic, and Tom Holt similes (to coin a phrase: Cthulhupunk).
Freezing. MATTHEW THE SUCKER: Oh, look who sent me an e-mail!
BODYGUARD MATTHEW: Freeze! Now put. The keyboard. Down.
MATTHEW THE SUCKER: Maybe I'll text her.
BODYGUARD MATTHEW: Put. The cellphone. Down.
MATTHEW THE SUCKER: Can't I even just --
BODYGUARD MATTHEW: I don't have time for this, pal. Assume the position.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
