BLAH

As Mahbod of RapGenius says, these guys just... aren't the same anymore.

• Lift Off lyrics
• Niggas in Paris lyrics
• Prime Time lyrics
• New Day lyrics
• The Joy lyrics
• Otis lyrics
• No Church In the Wild lyrics
• Welcome to the Jungle lyrics
• Who Gonna Stop Me lyrics
• Gotta Have It lyrics
• Murder to Excellence lyrics
• Sweet Baby Jesus lyrics
• Why I Love You lyrics
• H.A.M lyrics
• Illest Motherfucker Alive lyrics
• That’s My Bitch
• Made In America lyrics

BED

Fascinating... I sort of just... didn't really get out of bed yesterday.  That was weird.

SATURDAY

My default mode is lamentation and complaint, but today was really a lovely day.  I can't be bothered to think of things that sucked.  I woke early and did a good bit of writing on a script.  Passed it back and forth with my screenwriting partner Ned, who was at Comic Con and texting me pictures of himself with the cast of Teen Wolf, a show we both love.  Then I took a short break and went to a friend's birthday party at Silver Lake Meadow, an unremarkable patch of grass by the reservoir.  Had brownies.  Saw Ned's wife Sabra and baby Felix, who cooed and gurgled.  Then came home and did more writing.  When I got home the mail had arrived and I got my very first check for TV writing, which was in the scheme of things not very big but was still bigger than all the money I've ever been paid for my novels and short stories combined in the history of my life.  Traded the script back and forth a little more.  Went out again and ate a burger from the Oaks Gourmet, which has maybe my favorite burgers in Los Angeles.  Spent a while in a conversation with a friend I really enjoyed talking to.  Sat out on my deck for a while.  Wanted a rare pack of cigarettes at 2:10 a.m. when CVS is closed, so I went down to Pink Dot, which is like 300 yards from my house.  They close at 2 a.m. and I knocked on the window but they refused to come out and open the door.  But then I noticed they deliver until 3 a.m.  So I called the number and had them deliver to their own front door.  Came back home and did some more writing.  Feeling pretty good.

BIZARRO

Magazine of Bizarro Fiction issue 5 containing my novella The Obese now available on Amazon.  Get it now, or get the novella as a stand-alone (maybe w/ some extra fiction) next year, I think.

I WANT TO SEE IT!

THE VIEW

This is of Highland Park, but the view from my deck on July 4th was very similar.

WEEKEND OVER

I haven't slept since Saturday morning, really... the freeway stuff was all bullshit.  The 405 was closed but the streets were empty... except when I tried to go to North Hollywood mid-afternoon.  I tried to take a little shortcut and hit *other* construction, ended up just hanging out in my own neighborhood until evening, when I drove up to Sunland and it was clear sailing.

I saw a girl put a lizard in her mouth last night and a guy showed me a Straight Outta Compton jacket that Eazy E gave him.  I also got a $2 bill.

That Psychopath Test book was good.  It reminded me of one of my old bosses, who was always intellectualizing reasons to fire people.  But he wasn't a psychopath, he was just a lapdog to his corporate overlords.  I feel like I've known some psychopaths though.  I can think of at least one, maybe two, from Yale.  Maybe one or two from my old job.  I can't think of any I'm in regular contact with right now.

Movie shoot stuff happened last night.  It'll be a little while before there's even a rough cut finished but seeing it get made was an amazing experience, everybody involved was a class act on set, the atmosphere was good despite a punishing schedule, and it was just fucking awesome to see people running around with bloody knives stabbing each other as per the script I wrote.  Chris Jaymes the director -- I have much gratitude and admiration for that man.

Tonight I'm going to watch Breaking Bad, True Blood, and Teen Wolf, and maybe read a script.

ALMOST DONE

They're still shooting The Cottage... visited the set again this week... some of my favorite people got covered in blood packs and done in.  It's interesting to see the movie change as it gets made.  The footage I've seen looks good.  There are some things in it that were added during development or even during shooting.  I watch the dailies and see actors saying words I wrote, and I also see stuff I never heard of before.  There are no creepy doll masks in the script I wrote, but there are going to be creepy doll masks in the movie.  So, cool!

I FEEL LIKE AN EARLY 90S SKULL & BONES GUY

THERE ARE NO WOMEN IN THE THING, OK?



Of all the lame & unnecessary remakes, this is the lamest and most unnecessary. Just stop it already, would you?  Come on.

BIZARRO FICTION ISSUE FIVE / "THE OBESE"

Issue Five of The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction just came out and it contains my novella "The Obese," which will be published along with a short story down the road by Lazy Fascist Press.  Buy a copy!  The magazine is awesome.

TIRED

Got home at like 8 AM this morning (ie 3 hours ago), slept a couple hours, and just woke.  Was on the set of the movie.  Saw Ken Baumann and David Arquette and Kristen Dalton do their thing.  Pretty amazing & fun to watch actors work, and say dialogue I wrote (and improv new stuff, which in this case was all awesome and will prob go in the movie).  The crew guys & girls are all great, fun, good at their jobs.  I took a bunch of pictures and will post some when the shoot is over.  (Here's Ken in Variety yesterday for the movie.)

RELIEF

I've spent the last three days at the mercy of a punishing tension headache.  I woke on, I think, Wednesday night with what felt like a pulsing vice around my skull.  It had been getting worse for about a day but it was so bad in the middle of the night that I thought: I have a brain tumor.  This is it.  It's a tumor.  I'm fucked.  And my health insurance is basically nonexistent.  I spent the next 24 hours massaging my own neck.  The headache has finally gone away.

FIRES TO BE RE-RELEASED THIS OCTOBER

new cover design by Michael Seidlinger!

There is pleasing news: My first novel, Fires, is being re-released by the excellent indie press Civil Coping Mechanisms on October 10, 2011.  Three short stories will be published along with it.  Fires has been out of print since the original publisher, Impetus Press (run by the inimitable Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash), closed its doors in 2008, so I'm thrilled it is back.

As you can see, there is a vivid new cover, painted by Michael Seidlinger.  The new edition will also contain three short stories: "Winter Was Hard" (originally published in a UK magazine called Short Fiction), "Rat Beast," (originally published as a limited edition chapbook by J.A. Tyler's Mud Luscious Press), and "The Girlfriend Game," (originally published and still available online at Frank Hinton's Metazen).  CCM is also the publisher of Noah Cicero's Best Behavior, which contains a character based on me.

I wrote Fires in my dorm room when I was 20 years old.  I want to make a movie out of it someday.  Here are some booknotes about it, wherein I talk about the music I was listening to while I wrote it.  I was thrilled when Michael Seidlinger got in touch and asked if CCM could republish it... much gratitude to them.  I'm glad it will be out in the world again.

SUNDAY

Keeping weird hours... I had plans last night that I failed to fulfill because I simply fell asleep.  When I woke it was after 2 am, so I just watched Single White Female (GREAT until some ridiculous turns in the last few minutes), Swimfan, and Fear.  Then I slept again.  Good times!  Also reading a galley of The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, which my friend Rachel sent me from New York.

Meanwhile, as I read and watch various movies and write a bunch of different things, this otherthing is happening, and I'm very psyched about it.  I can't write any more about it for now, or even "announce" it (though I can link to twitter posts), but it is shooting right now.