If you have an itch on your foot, in your shoe, DON'T itch your foot with a pen because you will write on your sock.
Monthly Archives: August 2005
The Ideal Pants (a treatise)
Groin.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this exercise it’s that you can’t very thoroughly describe an archtypal pair of pants without using the word “groin” a few times. Oh, I’m sure you can describe a lot of features of pants and vaguely give the location of those features, but if you want to give a position for anything above the knees and not directly associated with the waist, then you probably have to indicate some clue relating it’s proximity to the groin.
If you look at pants as being like a country then the cuffs and waist are sort of akin to the frontiers. The legs below the thigh are like far flung provinces. But ah, the groin! The groin is the like unto Grenich England from which all longitudes are judged, ancient Rome to which all roads lead, a sort of axis mundi of pants if you will.
Yum Gum
So yesterday I used some Cool Mint Listerine mouth wash. I then ate a piece of Wrigley’s Winterfresh gum immediately afterwards. It was the most unsatisfying piece of gum I’ve ever eaten. All of the flavor of the gum was completely masked by the lingering after effects of the Listerine. By the time the Listerine wore off, the gum had lost all flavor and sugar. Yum.
Gentlemen, set phasers to “Sodomize”…
I’d be lying if I said I was surprised…
Update – Mid August 2005
I am currently waiting for Tim to print out some documents on starting a non-profit. Once he does, I’ll review them.
As for writing, I’ve started working on a number of treatments for a potential future feature length film. To date I’ve finished two of these. However, I’d like to write them all out (in treatment form that is) to get an idea of their potentials. The tentative titles are:
- Space Cops
- Galaxy Lords
- Punkies
- Kill the Poor
- Never Trust a Dead Guy
- Night-Mare
- I Put a Robot Down in NJ
- Cyber-Rad
- Bore to the Core
Urbandead
This follows the veins of the discussion on the Zombies!!! board game, that Bear, Loki, Grue, Megan and I played the other month (for which Loki holds a 3-for-3 winning streak) and browser games that I briefly mentioned before on the zoic.com. Out of chance, I was refered to a browser game that I can almost guarantee was partly inspired by Zombies!!!.
Syd Field and Scriptwriting
When Syd Field writes, “Writing is a personal responsibility; either you do it or you don’t. Do it” (204, Workbook), it is hard to tell who he sounds more like, Yippie activist Jerry Rubin and his “Do It” manifesto or a soapbox-Stan Lee and his Spiderman moral, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Wherever you position Field on the spectrum ranging from manifesto to downright silver-surfing-cheese, one thing is for certain: when it comes to the how-to’s of scriptwriting, no name shines brighter and more blinding.
What launched Field to the front in how-to’s of scriptwriting was his book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, published in 1979. At the time it came out, it was one of the first notable books aimed at the everyman to deal with scriptwriting, and as a result it became somewhat of an institution. Like any institution, it is today loved as much as it is reviled. Certainly timing played into the book’s success, yet it does lay out one tried and true blueprint of screenplay writing – a blueprint that many have acknowledged, albeit grudgingly. Field’s name is so ubiquitous when it comes to screenwriting that today he is name-checked even in the most vacuous of wastelands, such as the June 2005 issue of Maxim. On page 56 snuggled between booze ads and pages of bikini girls glossing tips on golf and car-racing, screenwriter David S. Goyer, credited with the story of the 2005 summer blockbuster, Batman Begins, directed by Christopher Nolan, gives advice to budding screen scenarists. The guidance comes in six bat-bullet points and, excluding the last (some sort of frat-meta-speak about a tough scrotum undoubtedly written in by a Maxim staff writer to placate the target audience), appears to be lifted right out of the pages of Field’s book.
IRS 501 c3
If there is a film to be shot, then the grit and grime starts here. At Manager DJ Webb’s suggestion, we’re going to go ahead and apply for non-profit status. As he’s pointed out, at the time we decide to switch over to profit, we will.
The process from both what I’ve read previously, and what DJ Webb has told me (Webb has filled out a mess of these over the years), is quite intensive. In DJ Webb’s words, “Remember the Death Star wasn’t built in a day”. I’m currently printing out the government documentation (an application for IRS 501c3 status) that needs to be filled out along with it’s instruction book.
Here was DJ Webb’s timeline for us.
- August-September 2005 —- Apply for non-profit status
- August-September 2005 —- Form board of directors, develop bylaws
- October 2005-February 2006 —- Flush out Script, audition for actors
- March 2006 —- Awarded 501 c3 Status
- March 2006 —- Request donations/funding
- April 2006 —- Begin Filming
d20 Alternate Mechanics – Armor & Damage Reduction
As Bear and Loki pointed out in response to my last entry on the subject of D&D combat: the regular system may in some ways be strange or unrealistic, but it’s simple. There’s one die roll for attack and one set of dice rolled for damage.
There’s plenty of validity to this view. But D&D actually tries to cram alot of detail into the system with spells, combat maneuvers (at least in the 3.0 and 3.5 editions), and class abilities. My feeling is that the standard D&D/d20 system has come a long way but is stuck at a crossroads. On one hand it’s straddling a fence between the old amalgam of “sub-systems” (one set of rules for damage, one for spellcasting, one for skills, many for
other abilities) and a unified system (saving throws, skills, and attacks all work similarly). On the other hand it’s straddling a fence between a sort of simulationist attention to detail and a quicker, simpler system.
Continue reading d20 Alternate Mechanics – Armor & Damage Reduction
I watch a lot of TV
OK, at Bear/Tim ‘s request I am putting this up. It’s no secret that I luvz my TV, and this is my short list of shows that I have seen 50 – 100 % of. I’d like to say that I have seen 75% + of all these shows, but that’s just not the case.
But if you know me at all – you know I love the sitcoms. I will talk about sitcoms all day if given the chance…