Category: stardate

Second day at work.

There’s this insane coffee machine from Flavia which is on a pod system. Not only is the machine a huge hulk the size of a small beer refrigerator, it’s also accompanied by a giant caddy of all the different drink flavors. Each flavor pack comes in a plastic pouch with a plastic nozzle on the top. You put the entire pouch in the machine and it accumulates the used, empty pouches.

Some drinks take two pouches.   Example: to make a cappuccino you select cappucino, then the door opens, and you put in the creamy topping pouch.  The machine closes and makes the foam.  Then the door opens again and you put in the coffee pouch of your choice.  There’s also a Milky Way topping, which I initially screwed up because I didn’t understand it was a topping and not a drink.  Anyway, it’s a lot of garbage for a coffee.

On top of the superautomatic espresso machine are a bunch of little earthenware pots, which coworkers use for drinking espresso. They look suspiciously like the yogurt pots that St Benoit comes in. The cups have La Fermiere and “www.cermer.com” on them. So… yes. They are yogurt pots. No one here seemed to know this. Whatever. At least we’re reusing something. Although in real life you’re supposed to take those pots back to the store…

I just bought a 1TB external hard drive from SimpleTech / Fabrik, and it is the worst piece of garbage imaginable.

Firstly, the drive comes pre-formatted for PC, which ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem, but it’s formatted read-only, so to use it for ANYTHING I have to completely erase the drive.

Secondly, when attempting to erase the drive with Disk Utility, something about the drive makes the erase operation fail. I tried MS-DOS FAT, which seemed to work, before giving me an error upon trying to use it. Formatting to Mac Extended gives an error immediately.

I’m just considering myself fortunate that I don’t need this in the next few hours.

UPDATE: oddly, someone from SimpleTech saw my posting and sent me a personal email. She apologized for my experience and I sent her some notes. Apparently there is a separate product line that the same company makes which is meant for Mac called G-Technology.

I ended up getting something on special from Fry’s mail order, a 1TB “FreeAgent Pro” from Seagate. The funny thing about this one is it has a glowing bar on it that serves absolutely no purpose other than looking like a prop from a 1980’s sci-fi movie. It does not have a Firewire 800 interface (the SimpleTech one did), which is a bummer, but I’ll take what I can get at this point.

My files are copying now; it’s around 400GB which will take something like 6 hours to duplicate.

BRIAN: Today’s word is
BRIAN: Agnatic primogeniture
BEN: Obligate Siblicide

(Another Obligate Siblicide link)

BRIAN: This olive has been sitting in a glass on your desk for several days.  Is it special?
DIANE: Yes.  His name is Marvin.
BRIAN: … okay I’m going to set Marvin loose.
DIANE: Marvin!  You’re FREE!!!

An actor friend keeps sending me his movie short pitches… the problem is, he’s not written anything on them. Ever. Basically it’s the pitch with the expectation that I (or someone else) is going to “run with” the idea and do 100% of the work.

So since it seems like I’m sending this out more and more, I’m going to paste what I emailed him this time. Actually I’ve sent this out more than once to different people.

Most of the work in screenplay development is not the brainstorming part, it’s the writing part. People are always telling directors their great ideas, hoping that they are going to “run with them.” But not only would this mean a tremendous amount of work on someone else’s idea, it would also be impossible for liability reasons.

Like what would happen if I “ran with” one of your ideas and cut you out entirely? I imagine you wouldn’t be very happy about that. Worse yet, suppose Sam Raimi develops an idea very similar to something I told him about once. Wait a second! He stole my idea! Now I sue Sam Raimi. But his new work very well could have nothing to do with what I told him. To avoid this scenario, most producers/studios do not accept submissions.

Here’s my point: the fundamental problem is that your current contribution (the premise by itself) is not a very significant percentage of the effort on the development, making it unlikely the idea will ever be made into a film. It’s just too much risk (the threat of being sued) for the possible reward (the free premise). I could get a group of screenwriters in a room for an hour and come up with fifty premises for shorts, or maybe ten fully-developed shorts. I could pay them in coffee. Or, to put a positive spin on this, YOU could get a group of screenwriters for an hour and pay them in coffee.

But: here’s a couple of suggestions to edge this and some of your other ideas closer to fruition:

1. Have you ever taken a screenwriting class, or considered joining a writing group? It might be very advantageous!
2. Your pitch is EXACTLY the type of thing that gets pitched at a Scary Cow meeting. You don’t even have to write it yourself. Lots of producers have started with just a premise, and recruited writers, the director, and the crew, right there at the meeting. This is what Scary Cow is for.

Once, when in Hong Kong in the late 1980s, my brother and I saw a comically terrible circus with a drunken monkey trainer, with monkeys who clearly hated him.

He’d yell at them in Chinese. They screeched at him angrily as they they rode little bicycles around while wearing opera masks.

At one point one of them deliberately pooped on the cement walk that was the stage.

You know how when you go to a zoo you feel slightly guilty to see the animals in cages, and wonder if they are being treated well? And you tell yourself little lies to feel less guilty?

Well there was no way around this one. Those monkeys genuinely hated that guy.

My parents were mortified. The whole thing makes me smile when I think of it.

BRAIN: *junior engineer* is a very whimpery guy
OSCAR: yes
BRAIN: I mean his common mode of speech is a whimper
OSCAR: I think every day his mom tells him his dog got run over

We got to hang out with author Neil Gaiman on Wednesday night, at a private ice cream social at Preston’s Candy & Ice Cream in Burlingame.

Even though we weren’t really supposed to harrass him, I snuck in some comics for Neil to sign: a trade paperback of Season of Mists, which was the first Sandman comic I read, and still one of my favorites, and a rare collection of the issues of Miracleman he wrote.

NEIL: who should I sign this to?
BRAIN: Oh, just sign it.
EMILY: Ha ha, you’re going to ebay it?
BRAIN: No, I just think it’s kind of cheesey to have your name on books.
NEIL: you know, it’s funny… the signed books without the owner’s name sell for more while the author is alive… but after the author dies, the books with the owner’s name are worth more. It’s that personal relationship, it adds the cachet…
BRAIN: Hmmm…. how old are you now?
EMILY: Brian!
NEIL: I’m only forty-seven. But I’ve had this cold…

Neil also dropped some hints about his new China-based project, but there are plenty of interviews published about that now.

I met Jen’s roommate on Sunday, who helps on photo shoots with Playboy models, but for product advertisements. She told us about bronzer, a sparkly goo that you put on the models so they will have that dark, tan, oiled-up look, and how the playmates all are the same exact hue of tan already.

We wondered if there is a color swatch the models use to make sure they tan to the exact shade.

She also told us how she worked a set as the “wedgie girl”– the models’ thongs would be in their crack, and her job was to pull it out again. Whee!

We all went out to M Cafe de Chaya for breakfast, and then to the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Ben and I went to Fugetsu-do afterwards for manju supplies, and then flew home.

I went to the Bawdy Caste‘s production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show screening at Lawlor Auditorium in Reno last weekend. That was insane.

There were over 7000 people there, 7500 tickets were issued. Diane was the star, playing Frank N Furter.

Being officially part of the Caste at this show was pretty wild. I sold “Tranny Packs,” little bags which hold all the props you need for the show. My pitch was increasingly aggressive:

• TRANNY PACKS!!! DAMMIT!
• EVERYTHING YOU NEED FOR THE FULL INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, WITH A LIST OF CUES FOR WHEN TO USE EACH THING!
• VIRGINS!! YOU NEED A TRANNY PACK! IF YOU HAVE A RED “V” ON YOUR HEAD, COME BUY A TRANNY PACK!
• YOU’LL BE GLAD LATER IF YOU BUY ONE NOW!
• WHEN THE GUY SAYS “A TOAST” WILL YOU HAVE A PIECE OF TOAST TO THROW? WELL YOU WILL IF YOU BUY ONE OF THESE TRANNY PACKS!
• EVERYTHING YOU DIDN’T KNOW TO BRING IS IN THIS LITTLE BAG! PRETEND YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING!

We sold out at the front, so I went upstairs and sold the rest they had up there. When we were down to one, I grabbed Dan-O’s megaphone and shouted

“I HAVE HERE IN MY HAND THE VERY LAST TRANNY PACK IN THE ENTIRE BUILDING. I WILL START THE BIDDING AT ONE MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS! I WILL ALSO ACCEPT THREE DOLLARS.”

That same weekend the heads of the cast, Jared and Shannon, renewed their vows in their hotel room. Diane and I were part of their wedding party. Shannon’s bouquet was made of inflated condoms.

Another thing: Reno Cal-Neva totally sucks. Everyone was walking around with these big cheesey plastic margarita tubes. I wanted to be cool too, so I ordered a virgin one. They refused to make one for me. Bear in mind I’m trying to pay full price for a virgin drink which is essentially strawberry syrup, ice, and sweet and sour mix. Nope!

The bartenders were pretty obnoxious about it too. So in retaliation I grabbed all the Rocky people I could find (over 20 of them) and led them away from gambling at Cal-Neva, to go lose money at Fitzgerald’s instead. Do the math on that one, morons!