The preSCRIPTion

After two restful nights in our new, spacious house, it’s safe to report it’s a winner. Last night, I lay awake for a while listening to the sounds of the house and imagining what the source of each one was. It’s fascinating that one person will interpret such things as the result of either discrete physical phenomena or ominous paranormal activity. This four-bedroom house is rather big—or it feels big with just two people in it right now—and does lend itself to the latter. But we decided it was right for us because, well, we plan to populate it in the near future. Room for growth, you know.

My mind was also strafing back and forth over the screenplay in between the pops and cracks. What was the subject matter? What were the themes? Scenarios? How complex should it be? How do I constrain my vision to match the projected budget? What sources of inspiration should I tap into? How safe should I play it? All those things and more darted through the cloudiness and shadows of a mind succumbing to the temporary death of sleep before the conscious dreaming kicked in. Even they offered no hints, no inspiration as to what or how I should write. In the last dream before waking up, I was sliding down a snow-covered hill on my stomach while a girl watched from a window. A dog from my childhood was close by.

There was another half-remembered dream last night. The only thing I recall is a girl screaming in a room that seemed faintly familiar. Why she was screaming I don’t know. But it gives me chills thinking about it. Actually, it almost feels like a real memory and not a dream memory, somewhere along a blurred boundary between the real and the imagined. Funny how the mind, memory, dreams and consciousness interacts. It’s a confounding machine.

(This is a little late…)

Ha! The Social Network beats out Inception for best screenplay at the Golden Globes? Snappy dialogue does not a screenplay make. I’ll take Nolan’s deft elucidation of a rich film-world, thank you. We’ll see what the Academy has to say… actually, maybe I’m caring too much about awards all of a sudden.

As for the other awards, I wasn’t too surprised. I did like ol’ Ricky Gervais sticking it to the HFP and others.

The Golden Globes are on tonight. I’m not a big awards or awards show guy. I have some friends that are into and go to them, and a few have won some awards (nothing major). But it’s not for me. I will be checking to see what happens with Inception, though. That’s a movie that I find quite brilliant, and I’m wondering what the unpredictable Hollywood Foreign Press is going to do about it. More on Inception in later blog posts hopefully!

Been a while since I’ve posted anything. I thought that maybe I could keep up the post-a-day pace, but that’s turning out to be a bit unrealistic. Needless to say, it’s hectic right now, what with this move and unexpected developments.

Speaking of, we’re almost done with the move. Hopefully we’ll be finished either tomorrow or Monday, just in time before the semester starts and Selphia goes back to her second home. Then I can get on with posting more interesting, nontrivial stuff (I’ve got a few topics/posts incoming). Things might have gone faster if a friend of mine would have actually shown up to help. However, this person has been MIA recently, which I kind of find odd.

Urrgg. The paperwork and all that mess is taking longer than I calculated. Yesterday consisted of Selphia and I getting organized and packing up the smallish stuff. I was hoping to start moving some of the larger things today, but instead I had to reschedule with the moving company and continue packing. So, day 1 and day 2 of the move has been relatively uneventful I’m sad to report.

Oh well. It will all be worth it once we move in. The house was relatively cheap, all things considered. It was a victim of foreclosure and the recent housing crisis, allegedly. When Margaret, our agent, came by yesterday to fill us in on the dirty and dull details of the paperwork and the bureaucracy, I remembered that in our haste I had forgotten to inquire about the previous owners the day we signed for it. Not that it matters, but I was curious if she knew any of the circumstances surrounding their departure. To my surprise, she corrected me: “owner, you mean.” Owner? “As far as I know, some man lived there alone for a couple of years.” I found it mildly odd that some guy lived alone in such a big house. As far as his story, she didn’t know. But I always have a sense that Margaret knows more than she lets on through her abnormal charm.

Selphia was the first to notice that, while following our real estate agent Margaret to the impromptu property, we were approaching the university she works at.  It’s probably three blocks away, actually. Upon arrival, the property instantly passed my external view test: it was in a nice neighborhood, it was at least three bedrooms, it looked like it didn’t require any work externally, and it looked like a home. Selphia’s initial reaction was more muted than mine, though. I could tell she was worried about the internal characteristics of the house, but maybe only because many of the previous houses we’ve visited started out the same way. She wasn’t about to get her hopes up again. Strangely, I felt that I was the one who had a gut-feeling this time.

It was startling walking in. The space felt so familiar to me. Maybe something about it reminded me of a long-forgotten childhood home and its unique spatial properties. There was a gravity about the place, mysterious, pulling me through the house, tidal forces tugging at cryptic memories and emotions where words have no dominion. I watched Selphia float from one room to the next and I could tell by her body language and face that this was the one.

However, there were a few very minor glitches. The renovations that kept us from viewing this house earlier were still on-going, sort of. A tall, skinny, mustached man—probably his late 30s or early 40s—was applying a fresh coat of paint in one of the rooms. I asked him what else he was going to be working on and he said that this room was the finishing touch. Also, the closet door in there seemed to have a hole knocked in it or something. In another room, I noticed a closet with various heavy-ish boxes that was perhaps abandoned by the previous owner. When I addressed all of those things with Margaret she grinned and quickly answered that the painter was going to take care of that and other lingering issues before he left for the day. Alrighty then. For some reason, I think not though. I’m calling it right now. You heard it here first.

With the spring semester starting soon, we’re going to get started tomorrow with the move. Bright and early. As for tonight, a little champaign is one thing on the menu.

I just got a text message—yes, a text message replete with mangled txt spelling and grammar—from my old, perpetually-smiling, gaudy suit-and-jewelry-wearing real estate agent. She wants us to make an impromptu visit to a property in a couple of hours. Says that it was undergoing some renovations that are now complete, and that we’ll get the first crack at it. I suppose this is her notion of recompense for dragging us unsatisfied here and there for the past few months.

You know, at this particular moment, I’m game for just about anything besides these script coverages I’ve been working on. Covering a script is kind of like grading a rather large term paper if you were a college professor, but requiring you to actually write out and explain your grading decisions. (Selphia’s gonna love that observation when she reads this.) Frank’s got me doing a few of these that would normally be handled internally within the company. But since they’ve been on extended vacation and I haven’t had much going on, I volunteered. It’s just that sometimes it is mind-numbing tedium, or annoying, reading through a 100 pages of trite and incoherent material. Sometimes I do cover a decent or good script, but I would characterize most of them as almost half-amazing. Yes, I’m riding tall on my high horse at the moment.

So yeah, looking forward to this next property now that I think about.

So it’s been a week since I’ve started this tumblr blog and the new year. So far, so good I must say. A friend of mine, a guy who is on top of all things tech and the web, suggested I use tumblr over other blogging platforms. I’ve dabbled with blogging in the past, but I never got into it seriously—until now. I’m finding it hard to imagine the other platforms being as intuitive and quick to use. I also appreciate the focused and lean social networking aspect, which, he says, is rather lacking on the others.

Tumblr is loaded with insightful, funny, engaging, poetic and irreverent output. I would just like to thank those that have followed me thus far (thanks) and those I’m following (keep up the interesting output). I feel like I’ve already gained significant ground in my search for inspiration and ideas.