On Habit Forming

It was really rainy and shitty outside when I woke up this morning, even moreso than yesterday. Despite the bleak exterior, I was still able to get work done, thanks to my RoboCoffee 109 and some '80s metal.

The weather got worse. Lightning! Hail!

Now... since getting back to LA, I've been hitting the gym almost every day. I've been doing this not only as holiday bounce-back (literally and figuratively) but, thanks to my father's health issues, I've become very aware of that whole scene. I'd rather spend time in a gym now than a hospital later.

My energy typically dips in the middle of the afternoon. In the past, I'd try to make up the difference with caffeine. These days, I go to the gym, and the shot of energy sends me working late into the night. Now that I'm self-employed, I work even longer hours than ever, even including the writing. But that gym time makes it possible in a painless way.

My point is, noon came and went. The weather got even worse. Not worse by the standards of the real world, mind you, but LA-worse. Still, though... the idea of getting on the bike in a lightning storm was a little daunting. I considered skipped the gym today.

The idea filled me with a severe depression.

Then I thought... what? Huh? After only three weeks, I'm already so deep into this habit that not going to the gym is sad-making?

Apparently. And, as if the world REALLY DID revolve around me, the rain petered out, and the sun came up. I went to the gym.

But my boots and jacket were on already, anyway. Shit, I'm from Chicago. A little rain ain't gonna stop me.

You've Got Another Thing Comin'

Song lyrics are nothing but poetry in another form.

I've been catching up on '80 metal in a big way lately, and I've tripped over some songs that are actually about something real.

For example, Judas Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Comin'."

I've lived my life my this ideas contained within this song for the past seven years without knowing it. Or DID I...?

I Picked Up My Bass Again

For years, my Fender J sat in the corner collecting dust. I picked it up every once in a while, mostly just to run scales and goof around. It was an exercise in pain, for both my fingers and my ears. I'd gotten rusty. I was never exactly a virtuoso in the first place -- I think at my high point, I was what you might call "pretty good." These days? I just fucking suck.

But between starting my own business and this whole thing with my dad, I've been looking to reboot core aspects of my life, get back to roots, set aside the bullshit and just focus on what I came to LA to do: sell books and scripts, make movies and work.

That part of my mental game was coming together. But there was something missing... I couldn't put my finger on it. Until, completely at random, I picked up my bass. I ran scales again. This time, though, I wasn't just going through the motions. I worked to hit the notes, shore up my basics, actually play the music.

Tonight I ran E major one hundred times. It sounds small, and it is, but I haven't put in that kind of woodshed work on the bass since... shit, forever. I used to practice for hours every day after school. I played electric and upright in college. And now to go back and do that kind of practice again... It felt strange at first, but familiar. It was visiting the block you grew up on. It felt good.

I'm going to take it slow, just a little bit every night. I've found it's better to own one scale than to rent eight. Tomorrow I'll work up F major, the night after F#, and so on until I get to the minors. Rinse and repeat.

Though it doesn't have as direct an application as, say, journalism school, the lessons I learned in music have been endlessly applicable to writing, developing and producing. How could I spend so much time concentrating on the tree, while forgetting the roots?

For a long time, I ignored my bass, because I thought I had to devote every waking second of my life on the film career to get things going. But I've found that sometimes you have to go all the way around the world to come home, literally and figuratively.

Mr. Coffee

I got a new coffee maker from my parents for my birthday. Unfortunately, it's sat in its box the whole time since I got it about a month ago.

Until today.

I got back into town last week and, before I could go gallivanting around buying coffee, I had to nail down work-type stuff. Then on Sunday morning, I hit the Hollywood farmer's market and scored a bag of beans (the non-magical variety) from the coffee stand guys. I've been scoring cups of this coffee every weekend I go there to stock up on veggies, and I've fallen in love.

Point being, today I finally had it all: the machine, the beans, the will and the time to make this coffee happen. Long/short: it was a damn good cup o' joe. But I think it could be better if I used filtered water...

Back in LA, and the Wonders of Technology

It was hard to leave my parents with so much still unresolved. But I've started a company, and I have a job to do. I stopped in at the acute care facility to see my dad on the way out of town. He's finally out of ICU, and he was with a physical therapist when I showed up. Still not exactly playing eighteen yet, but the arrow's pointed in the right direction.

I landed in Burbank and wandered out to the longterm lot where I'd parked my bike. It was dusty, but otherwise fine. I jumped on, flipped the ignition, and... nothing. Not even a click. It was dead.

Even when a vehicle is off, there's a slight drain on the battery. Since my bike has a smaller battery, just two weeks was all it took to kill it. And I knew all of this, but remember when I pulled into the lot two weeks ago, I was racing to AZ to see if my dad was going to live or not. I was distracted. Battery cables weren't on my mind.

I asked a shuttle driver if they could send someone out to give me a jump. He came back and said they didn't have the right cables for a motorcycle. Huh?

I knew I could call a tow truck. But then I'd be sitting there for a million years waiting for him, and I'd get raped for money I didn't want to spend on somethig that would take the driver all of ten seconds. Shit, nothing could be easy, could it?

Then I thought... Wait, isn't there a way to push start a bike? I'm not exactly Mr. Mechanic, I didn't have the first idea how.

So I pulled out my iPhone and googled "how to push start a motorcycle." This led me to an instructional video on YouTube. I sat in the bike and watched the video. It seemed really easy. I put the bike into second, ran it down the parking lot for a dozen yards or so, hit the starter and... Voilà! It started!

I shifted it into neutral, got my stuff together and rode it around the lot a few times to charge it. Then I went home. Amazing.

At any other point of time in my life, this would have been a massive, expensive pain in the ass. But I was able to reach into the air and pull down the little piece of knowledge I needed to help myself in this situation.

My script IMPLANT is about this kinda thing, the ability to download whatever skills or knowledge you need into your head. There's even a scene in which the protagonist downloads a mechanics program so he can hot wire a car and escape. And here, I'd just done something very, very similar (pull down information so I could start a vehicle and leave a parking lot) in real life. We've reached the stage at which story elements that are considered "sci-fi" have a shorter and shorter shelf life.

I think that's pretty cool.

An Update, Blockbuster and Jennifer's Body

My father is getting moved to an acute care facility today. It wasn't clear if we'd be able to make this happen while I was still in AZ. But luckily he's stable, and a recent procedure went well, so we can. He's still in critical condition, but I'm taking any little victory we can get.

He's under heavy sedation at night. I bring my laptop along and work while I'm at the hospital all day, so at night I've been taking the opportunity to catch up on movies.

I rerouted my Netflix to my parents' house. But the holidays have played havok with the post office, so I'm only intermittently getting envelopes. (I watched season two of DEXTER). Red Box is cheap and convenient, but NEVER has anything I actually want to see in stock. And then we got a coupon in the mail, with an offer for a month of rentals at Blockbuster for two bucks each, instead of the usual five.

Despite the hard time I often give Blockbuster, both of the reds failed me, so I went with blue.

Blockbuster always seems to have a billion copies of new releases, which is what I wanted. And two bucks is obviously more than a dollar, but I'd rather pay two bucks to watch a movie I want to see than one dollar to settle for something else. Good job, Blockbuster. Now THIS is a business model that actually makes some sense. But I also think it's a temporary measure. The wiser course in the long run may be to push the well-established Blockbuster brand into a VOD delivery system. If they could put a box in the home that delivers any movie or TV episode at any time -- the direction in which we're headed -- before their competition, they'll have a shot at longer-term survival. Netflix is already way ahead of them in some ways, and Blockbuster is reacting instead of innovating. But shit... if they don't at least try, within ten years they're going to be like typewriter salesmen in 1980.

I rented JENNIFER'S BODY.

JENNIFER'S BODY is a mystery to me. It has Megan Fox on the cover, the marketing promised nudity, gore and a lesbian make-out scene, writing by Diablo Cody, and was an R-rated horror-comedy.

Despite all of this, it underperformed rather badly.

Now... horror-comedy is REALLY fucking hard to sell, almost on par with drama. I know this because I love horror-comedies. EVIL DEAD II, DEAD ALIVE, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD... these are some of my favorite movies of all time. I'll let the grad school guys sit around and talk about how brilliant CITIZEN KANE is... I'll be over here watching ARMY OF DARKNESS. When I first moved out from Chicago, it was my sincere goal to get some horror-comedies made. I wanted to add to the pantheon. But I soon found out that it's extraordinarily difficult to get one of these things set up.

And by "found out," I mean I tried for fucking years, without success. The problem is they're very difficult to market. And, if you can't convince people your horror-comedy is the movie they should see on Friday/Saturday night over something that's easy to understand (for instance, a high concept comedy with an A-list star), then they don't.

With that in mind, JENNIFER'S BODY's performance should come as no surprise. But it opened very close to ZOMBIELAND, which fucking killed. This also is an R-rated horror-comedy. So the question becomes... why did ZOMBIELAND perform above expectations, and JENNIFER'S BODY below? Is it just a whim of fate? Or is there a factor we're not considering?

I digress: I'd read a bunch of reviews of JENNIFER'S BODY online. They were overwhelmingly negative. They must have watched a different movie... I'm not saying it's perfect, but I was entertained.

Megan Fox is primarily known for her role in the TRANSFORMER franchise. If you really look at those movies, though, she barely has any screen time. It's hard to get a handle on her at all. (Besides Michael Bay's famously simple direction, "Just look hot.") I thought she was great in the title role. Playing a bitchy high school girl is something she can pull off.

And I really liked Amanda Seyfriend. Between MEAN GIRLS, MAMA MIA! and this, she's played three vastly different characters, and I bought her in all three movies. She's beautiful and talented. I didn't think all of Diablo's lines stuck the landing, the narration was unnecessary and I don't believe the framing device added anything. But this is a movie in which a crappy indie emo band sacrifices a girl to Satan in exchange for stardom, and they sing "867-5309" while committing the murder.

That's a fun night at the movies.

Transformers 2, and Red Box

Last night, after visiting hours were over, I wanted to grab a couple of more movies. I'd been doing some low-level bitching about Blockbuster, so my mom said, "Why don't you go to that Red Box thing? Your dad likes it a lot."


Sure, what the hell? We've got 'em in LA, of course, but there I typically just rely on Netflix.

I went to Albertson's. There was a Red Box. It had a large board showing mini posters of the available movies next to it. The Red Box has a touch screen interface. It was easy to understand, but I was still dicking with it minutes later. I couldn't understand why I wasn't able to find the touch screens for the movies I wanted, until the obvious dawned on me - they were out. Every one. Okay, score one for Blockbuster, which I knew had a bajillion copies of every recent release.

So thus did I get TRANSFORMERS 2, a difficult title to type on the iPhone.

Red Box charged me a buck for this rental, plus tax. It should be noted that Blockbuster is in the same strip mall, about four doors down. They would have charged me five bucks, plus tax, for the exact same movie. In their defense, I would have gotten the movie for five days whereas Red Box wants it back within 24 hours. It's still a buck a day. But if you're the type to sometimes have movies sitting on your counter for a few days before you watch them (which I very much am), there's Netflix.

This is why Blockbuster is fucking doomed. Their core business model is no longer competitive. They're getting their asses kicked by a combination of red boxes and red envelopes. I suppose if I had to watch a non-new release RIGHT NOW, they would fill that gap. But how often does that occur? For me, a couple of times a year, and even then I usually hit a local place like Rocket. It's simple supply and demand. And, once VOD becomes ubiquitous, they're going to be in the horse and buggy business. Blockbuster is a brontosaurus wondering why it's gotten so cold lately.

Anyway, T. (I'm not gonna keep thumb-typing it out). I liked it about the same as the first one, in similar ways.

Bay's considered to be a guy who's an action maestro, and not much good at anything else. My experience with both T movies is the exact opposite. With each, I kinda enjoyed the hyper goofy first acts, with unexpected moments of actual comedy. In the second act of each, we get one really cool Optimus Prime fight. And the third acts are non-stop action, which I ironically found dull.

In the first one, the climactic fight was so fast cut and weirdly staged I had trouble tracking what was going on. For me, it was a lot of shots of something punching somebody, and then something else (maybe?) blowing up. It was hard for me to connect, and so I just watched the images flash by like I was in the summer popcorn version of the CLOCKWORK ORANGE treatment, sans vomit.

In the sequel, the climactic fight involves Shia trying to run a half mile across a battlefield to revive Optimus Prime. It's the longest half mile run in cinematic history. Bay pulled way back on the cutting, so I was able to track the sequence. I just didn't care. It's one long series of booms, like a fireworks show that goes on for four hours. I started watching Phantom Menace videos on YouTube, and glancing at the movie from the corner of my eye. A giant robot is trying to blow up the sun. How do you make that scene boring? Watch this movie and find out.

It also has a weird, shifting tone. The humor is very, very broad, almost infantile at times. And yet we get some salty language, and an overtly sexual come-on scene and drug references. I wasn't offended, just confused as to how those pieces fit with the nosepicker sense of humor. Who was this movie for?

I realized that Bay makes movies without theme. They aren't talking about anything, beyond yelling short sentences at the audience. "Sexy!" "Gross!" "Boom!" "Uh-oh!" He has an admirable respect of the military, but even that's very surface level, like a long Go Army commercial from the '90s. For instance, we're given a government bureaucrat who has no function except to make the military guys look cooler and smarter than in juxtaposition. Is our military so insecure that we need to give them straw men to beat up in summer franchise movies?

But critiquing Michael Bay films is an exercise in futility. The guy gets movies made, and those movies make billions, so apparently he's giving the general audience what they want.

I expect a third movie to come along, I expect it'll be more of the same, and I expect civilization will continue unaffected.

Up

Last night, I stopped by Blockbuster on the way home from the hospital. I'm still not exactly a big fan of the place, but it has its uses. I needed a break to recharge, and watching movies is the best way to plug my head into the wall for a while.


I got UP. I spent the entire movie kicking myself for not catching it in 3D. It's a beautiful movie, beautifully told.

I was struck by the image of our main protagonist literally dragging his past around behind him. And he's very similar to the villain, Muntz, a shadow version of himself. They're both men who have taken their flying houses to this waterfall in South America. But while Fredrickson has done this for love, an attempt to give his wife the adventure they weren't able to share while she was alive, Muntz is there for a negative purpose, to prove to the world he's not a fraud. Alone with his unquestioning servitors, his mind has curdled. He is a reflection of what Fredrickson would have become if he weren't motivated by Ellie's memory.

This is especially telling given that Muntz was a hero to our guy and his wife. But while their perception of the adventure Muntz embodied was filtered through their good souls, the reality was much more flawed, and became dangerous in time.

He's very close kin to the villain in THE INCREDIBLES.

I love Pixar movies because they aren't afraid to create entire worlds around their stories. I always give big points to a movie that gives us something we've never seen before, and a guy wandering around a jungle with a floating house tied to his back with a garden hose while being menaced by a pack of talking dogs... Well, not too many of those around.

But it's not just weird for weird's sake. The setting and narrative are organically crafted, effectively selling us on every turn. It's more of a reflection of the unusual paths the human heart takes us than anything else.

It also offers an excellent example of how to maintain a character who has very little screentime, in this case Ellie. Not only is she a consistent character throughout, she even has an arc - long after she's gone! It's a lesson in master level storytelling.

UP is a strange and wonderful movie. I would go so far as to call it a perfect movie.

The Exorcist

I got very close to losing my father on Christmas Eve. It was one of the hardest nights of my life.


Alone and in the darkness, I was assailed by regrets. Every shitty thing I'd ever said, every time I could have done better and did not... they came for me. They had claws and fangs, they carried whips and knives, and they outnumbered me a million to one.

Since we've turned this corner, I've been able to relax a little bit and consider what happened that night. So naturally I started thinking about THE EXORCIST.

It's generally acknowledged as one of the scariest movies ever made. It's also one of my favorite movies of all time. I find new things to love about this film every time I watch it. I own the book, and I've read it at least a dozen times. There are differences, but the film retains everything it needs from the novel, giving this multi-layered story a visceral aspect that cold words on a page cannot offer.

I love this story because it discusses something I consider to be a deep truth.

Whenever you start talking about THE EXORCIST, the first things that come up are all of the crazy shit that happens to the possessed girl, Reagan. But this is only the surface of the narrative.

Several years ago, I saw an expanded version of THE EXORCIST in the theater... it was one of the last movies I watched in Chicago, before moving to LA. Again, Reagan's creepy spider-walk scene got all of the attention.

However, the true heart of this film is in one of the other scenes that been previously cut, a scene that exists in the novel. In act three, Marin and Karas take a brief respite from the exorcism. (Conducting these things is hard work). Karas wonders aloud why a demon would come to torment a little girl who never did anything to anybody.

Marin says the demon's true target isn't Reagan; it's after the people around her. It wants to show them that they have been abandoned. There is no help, because they are unworthy of love. The demon is trying to get them to see themselves as vile, and thus lose their faith in anything higher, be it a loving God, or just their capacity to do good.

Father Karas had just lost his mother. Not only did he lose her, but she died in poverty. He's a smart guy, a psychiatrist, hence his involvement in Reagan's case. He could have easily gone into private practice, made a lot of money and given his mother the best of medical care, ensuring her a longer and happier life. But instead, he chose the priesthood, and so she lived a pitiful existence in a tiny apartment. It was days before anybody noticed she'd even gotten ill, and she finally dies alone, ranting in the poor house. It's heartbreaking.

He's tormented with guilt. Her death has caused him to question everything, including his faith. And that's why the demon goes after him. This man, who had so much faith that he'd given up so much to follow his path... if THIS guy is wavering well, shit, the demon can break anybody.

In the novel, whether the demon is an actual supernatural evil is much more in question. The climax occurs behind a closed door, whereas in the movie we actually see the demon rise out of Reagan. But the effect is the same... as a metaphor, the demon is the external representation of the internal demons borne by Karas and Reagan's mother. They're faced with their greatest weaknesses, and cannot see themselves as anything but the most evil and vile of creatures, unworthy of love and unable to do anything good.

The demon first speaks to Karas in the voice of a bum he refused to give money. He's a smaller guilt. Later, it appears to Karas in the form of his mother, the core guilt driving Karas. She asks the question Karas asks himself: "Why you do this to me?" Karas loses it and screams, 'You're not my mother!"

This is true on two levels... he knows it's a demon posing as his mother, but he also knows that it's just a reflection of the worst part of himself, a dark mirror held up before his soul. His real mother loved him so much that she would never ask that question, but in that moment he cannot see that. He only hears his own thoughts, repeated back to him by the demon.

There are lots of romantic comedies talking about "love." I don't hold anything against them; they're entertainment, a fun night at the movies. Popcorn.

But there is another love to be found in THE EXORCIST, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and, in a more recent example, THE ROAD. It's the love found in the midst of ugliness, the worst possible circumstances. It's easy to talk about love when you have a couple of yuppie douchebags trading witty one-liners... not so easy when the characters are fighting for the lives and souls. Yet in these darker movies we find a stronger and more pure emotion, a lone flower in the midst of a barren winter field.

And in that way, aren't the demons there to help us see that? In JACOB'S LADDER, Danny Aiello's character tells us that the demons aren't our tormentors... they're our servants, helping us to strip away illusions. It's a painful process, of couse, but nothing worth doing is easy.

So my demons were able to help me see what I didn't understand when I was younger, that these differences we create for ourselves - particularly with the people we love - are so often nothing but petty illusions, and only by clinging to them do we make ourselves vile.

Spoiler in case you're one of the few people who hasn't see THE EXORCIST...

In the final moments, Karas sacrifices himself to save Reagan. In so doing, he proves he is capable of doing good, committing himself to a noble act. He shows the people who attend his death that the demon is wrong. It's a victory. His soul is saved.

No matter what mistakes we've made, or how often we've failed, there is nothing preventing us from continuing to try to do better, revealing our guilt over past sins as only so much weight we carry for no other reason than to give our demons tools to use in our darkest hours.

I wish some lessons didn't come with such a high tuition. But again... would we value them as much if they didn't?

Not Exactly A Christmas Miracle, But I'll Take It

Yesterday, we visited my dad and stayed with him through the morning. The doctor hoped to remove him from the machine that helped him to breathe - the first tiny step toward recovery. He was strong, it looked good. They took him off, and he did it. Whew. The next step would be to give him some tests, see where we were at, and figure out the pathway to recovery. All good.


Good enough that my mom and I went out for lunch, and home for a minute to grab some stuff before heading back.

But as well pulled into the driveway, mom's cell rang. It was the nurse on duty. While taking my dad down for the tests, he stopped breathing. He crashed. They rushed him back to his room and got him hooked back up.

The nurse asked if my dad had a living will (he does). Because, if he could never breathe on his own, if he could never leave a hospital bed... Now we're thinking, shit, are we suddenly having this conversation?After it all looked so well?

We rushed back to the hospital in terror. My dad was out. Unmoving. Unresponsive. I sincerely thought he was going to be gone within the hour.

Eventually, he woke up. He was very weak. I stayed as long as I could. They took him down for more tests.

Christmas Eve was a dark night of the soul. It was an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone. The up-and-down of the days before had been bad, but to repeat the roller coaster - and with even bigger stakes - was torture.

Morning came. I'd been through so much the day before that I woke with an odd feeling of calm. It wasn't that I was no longer worried about my dad, far from it. But it was like my emotional nerve endings had been cauterized. Simply put, I lost my shit yesterday, and today I got it back together.

We got to the hospital ready for anything.

A new doctor was there, Dr. Castro. He said that my dad hadn't lost the ability to breathe. Quite the opposite - everything is stable and strong. But the stoke had made his throat seize up, which happens sometimes. A simple tracheotomy would do the trick. And after that, high hopes.

Dammit, really? All of that over a tracheotomy? Man...

I've already taken two spins on this ride, so I'm not setting exactly dashing through the London streets, looking for a goose to buy for Tiny Tim. But... after the bleak Christmas Eve we suffered, I can at last feel like it'll be a Merry Christmas.

On Health

For obvious reasons, health has lately been a frequent topic of conversation among my family.


The generations before ours didn't think much about it. If you smoked two packs a day, drank a six pack every night and had donuts for breakfast, a burger for lunch and meat and potatoes for dinner... that was just normal.

My mom smoked and drank. My dad quit smoking a long time ago, but he drank and ate whatever he wanted.

And I lived a pretty typical Chicago lifestyle... Pizza, dogs, burgers and beer. I was a vegetarian for several years, but I smoked and drank like crazy the whole time. Yeah, that made sense.

I smoked about two packs a day for thirteen years. For a long time, it was one of my defining characteristics. I can't begin to describe how glad I am that I quit. These days, it's hard to even imagine the activity. I lit rolls of tobacco on fire and sucked on them? Just because? Bizarre.

But even so... When I left my longtime position to start my own company, now that my time is my own, I decided to devote some of it every day to repairing the damage I'd done. For years, I survived on ramen noodles and fast food dollar menus. That same small amount of money would have gotten me organic produce from the farmer's market, but I just wasn't used to living like that, so I didn't. I barely exercised. When time got tight - which was a constant situation - exercise was the first thing to go. And drinking...

It's a journey upon which I'm just now embarking, within the last couple of months. And changing a lifetime if personal and cultural habits isn't easy. But avoiding health problems is worth so much more than the fleeting pleasures of one more beer, the extra large order of nachos.

You don't have to live like a monk, eating one green pepper a day, drinking nothing but water and spending three hours a day on a tread mill. But these bodies in which our minds reside are complex organic machines, with a lot of interacting parts that easily wear out and break. The time we spend taking care of them is rewarded by time we do not spend lying in a hospital bed while our families stand around in an agony of worry.

Healthy living won't create an indestructible force field around you. Jogging every day won't stop a bullet, and eating an apple instead of fries won't prevent a genetic precondition. But why not try to prevent the things you can?

I recently had a lot of trouble with my laptop. I got a new one. Though a MacBook is well regarded for its performance, and an extended warranty protects it, I fully expect to replace it in three or four years. Until cloning technology is perfected, we don't have that luxury.