Tag: #madwriting

Posted on

UNDONE: The #madwriting

I’m dragging this entry out from the drafts folder in large part because it’s been there since September of last year. It’s a madwriting blog entry about my being an extra in a movie called UNDONE: The Musical. The result was a pretty decent blog entry length-wise, but also incomplete and I never got around to finishing it—I ran out of steam after 30 minutes plus one paragraph. I’m not sure how many additional details I could recall after so long, so I figure I’ll just post it as is and it’ll make for some good reading. If it doesn’t make for some good reading… at least it’s out of the drafts folder.

As a side note, the producers posted the movie online so the cast and crew could see the final result a couple months ago. I downloaded it onto my computer and still haven’t watched it yet. I’ve only watched three episodes of The Big Bang Theory since a friend loaned it to me, so that might give you an idea of where the movie sits on my list of priorities. But onto the blog entry. I have no recollection of what I wrote and I’m not going to edit it 14 months later, so I imagine we’ll both be surprised at what we read when I hit the “Publish” button.
_______________________________________________________________

This is one of those nights where… it’s like something’s churning just underneath the surface, saying “Hey, lemme out! It’s dark in here! And you smell funny! When’s the last time you took a shower?” And quite frankly, this isn’t the kind of blog entry for answering a question like that. Especially since you probably don’t want to know the answer.

But I’ve felt the urge to write something on here for the last couple days, but there’s been one problem: I ain’t got nothin’ to write about. Thus, Internet silence. Okay, technically, I suppose I could write about being an extra for a movie on Wednesday, but it wasn’t terribly eventful. Eh, I guess there were enough mini-events to make writing about the whole thing worthwhile.

Call time was 9:00am on a weekday. That in itself isn’t such a big deal, but given that I was running on about four hours of sleep and had a cold that started rearing its ugly head last weekend, part of me was tempted to call in sick. However, another part of me reminded myself that I made a commitment and the last time I heard from them, they were already running short. Even if I kicked the bucket on-site, they could at least flop me down on the table with a glass tipped over in my head like I passed out stinkin’ drunk.

It was a legitimate possibility, too. The scene was supposed to be a dance club—wear something formal, but something you can dance in. (I think that’s the wardrobe the e-mail was asking for.) Well, I knew what kind of clothes I’d bring to a dance club… sorta. I can count the number of times I’ve been to a dance club on a couple fingers, but if I did go to one, I knew what I could wear.

So there was a possibility of spending the whole day dancing. That would suck. Not that I mind dancing so much, though that’s not what a friend of mine would suggest. I was telling her about the shoot the night before and kept saying (technically, typing on Facebook) that I’m not automatically going to be dancing. If the director wants me to stand against the wall, I’ll do that. She insisted that I was saying that just because I didn’t want to dance, but I’m a practical extra: my job is to do what I’m told. Within reason. (Carrying a big metal door out of the building isn’t part of being an extra, but that was just being nice. The only down side was that the crew guy who asked for help said he’d buy me a drink later, but by the time “later” came around, he was gone. Shit.)

But as it turned out, “dance club” ended up being more of a bar with an acoustic guitar player in the background. At least that’s the only music that played the entire time I was there. And that was just during the last half hour. Nope, during the rest of that time, we had to create our own atmosphere of a club. With some help from a smoke machine. Did you know that breathing the fumes from a smoke machine off and on for 12 hours is bad when you have a cold? I do now.

That’s something else worth noting. The e-mail said the shoot could take up to 10 hours. The last of us left around 9:00pm, 12 hours later. One dude took off sometime around 3:30pm, which is totally uncool. He had made other plans, but here’s a note for anyone out there who wants to be a movie extra: if you’re gonna help out in a movie, expect to spend a lot of time there. If they say “It could take up to ten hours”, don’t schedule something halfway through. It pisses people off.

Anyway, I got there, then changed into a different shirt that they picked from the outfits I brought (and did it in front of everyone because I try to avoid being self-conscious if I can help it). Not to say that it’s a great view these days, but they all had plenty of time to shield their eyes and look in different directions to avoid dry heaving.

We were upstairs in a bar and the set was downstairs, so they brought us down once in a while for a scene. Honestly, it wasn’t that spectacular. It was a lot of standing, moving around, holding drinks… thankfully, we were usually allowed to whisper instead of “silent talk”—moving your lips without speaking—because I can’t read lips worth a damn. I have to stand there with the other person and flap lips… it’s doable, but it’s annoying. And if it’s necessary for the scene, I get to suck it up and deal. C’est la vie, I guess.

I think I get to do a victory dance for one thing: the director had us do something that I thought was a bad idea and he ended up changing it to what I would have done. Mwa ha ha haaaaa… The scene was that some guy and I got up from the bar to walk toward the bathroom (which was heading directly toward the camera). During the course of our stroll, he turned to look at me, then bumped into one of the main characters so that she spilled her drink. I got to hold my hands up and avoid the scene as much as I could, then cross the camera to where the bathroom was supposed to be.

Part of the fun of that scene was the actress getting bumped would pick various obscenities to blurt out when they collided. You never know when something will really resonate with the audience, so try a bunch of stuff and see what the director likes, right? But I remember the first time because as I was swinging around the actress and crossing in front of the camera, I tried to time it so that I was walking past between her sentences. I didn’t want to be between her and the camera when she was giving an important line, so… yeah, trying to time it over and over doesn’t work so well.

Eventually, the director did what I thought he should: the bathroom “moved” from the right side of the camera to the left side. Instead of crossing in front, we moved away off camera into the corner of the room. It felt a lot better for me, I know that much.

[Incidentally, this is the 30-minute mark, so I hit 1088 words during the official #madwriting surge.]

There was one downside, which was probably unrelated to the direction we walked away from the camera. The first time, the guy bumped her, she turned and yelled out, “DICK!” (He was actually a little shocked when it happened—it was the first non-generic obscenity and she yelled it at him specifically.) She was apparently satisfied with that response, because every time we ran the scene from that point on, that’s all she’d say: “DICK!” A couple different camera angles from just after the collision—the two of us were standing off to the side of the room—and it was always “DICK!” I was starting to think she was obsessing about the “DICK!”, but… okay, I think I’ve beaten the “DICK!” joke to death.

Posted on

750words.com: The #madwriting

Time to rumble with some #madwriting! It’s been a long time since I’ve done this and since I still haven’t done my 750words.com writing for the day, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do it. Time to see what I can pull off…

First off, I’d like to say that I have kind of a vindictive streak, at least when it comes to people who deserve it. I’ll try and keep this as general as possible on the off chance that some of the involved parties read this and realize that I’m making fun of them. Basically, it’s an organization with a board made up of a bunch of people. What’s relevant about that is because someone is writing a newsletter for said organization and she wants a certain amount of money. They can’t afford to pay her that much and upon hearing that news, one of the board members sent out a fairly extensive e-mail about how there’s a bunch of money in some other funds, they paid her predecessor that amount, blah blah blah. There’s just one big problem:

He’s her husband.

Upon joining the board, he signed a conflict of interest form and his wife getting money is definitely a conflict of interest. I wanted to help write a simple e-mail about the situation, which really would have been one sentence: “We appreciate your concern, but we cannot accept any input from you in this matter due to your conflict of interest.”

The official e-mail that went out to the board included a lot of additional information and wasn’t nearly as direct and blunt, but it still pointed out the fact that due to said conflict, that board member should exempt himself from the vote. Every time I read that message, I start giggling and thinking about how pissed off he’s going to be when he opens that e-mail and reads it. “You’re not allowed to vote, so you might as well stop bitching now.” I know it doesn’t say that, but that’s what floats through my head, which is why I keep giggling about it. Does that make me a bad person? Eh, even if it does, I’m willing to accept the consequences. He wasn’t nice and started throwing some dirt, he got some dirt thrown back at him and it’s possible that I’m taking too much joy in the situation, but I can live with that.

But since I’m on a madwriting streak here and still have plenty of time to write, there’s something I want to touch on about a comment made on here earlier. Someone was really upset at The Onion because of an article it wrote on Patriot Day, focusing on how young people might be in the army, fighting for… well, they don’t know why. The World Trade Center went down 11 years ago, so 18-year-olds in the army would have been really, really young when it happened and probably wouldn’t appreciate the significance of the event. That struck a chord with me.

It also struck a chord with someone else, but not a good one. Why? Because her mother died in one of those towers. She lost someone very close to her and it seemed like The Onion was tormenting that loss, making fun of it and it cut deep. I don’t blame her in the least for being upset.

Before I continue, I want to emphasize that specifically: if you’ve lost anyone in a tragic accident, you have the right to be mad. Really mad. Whether it was the World Trade Center or shooting up the movie theater while The Dark Knight Rises was playing or losing a family member because someone was driving home drunk… it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. You can attribute the blame to someone—someone could have acted differently and your loved one would still be alive. That “someone” did something really bad and you have the right to be mad. I’ll never question that.

What I don’t… well, I don’t want to say I question it, but I wonder if we should feel obligated to have the same emotional connection to such tragic events. I didn’t lose a loved one in any accidents or incidents or what have you. A close friend of mine lost her brother in Afghanistan, so the war means something very important to her. The blog commenter lost her mother to the World Trade Center disaster, so she’s got a major emotional investment in its occurrence. Me? Not so much. I felt horrible when it happened, but as time has passed, I’ve become somewhat distant in comparison.

In a way, I compare it to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except Kevin Bacon is Death. Kind of a twisted metaphor, but bear with me. If a loved one dies for whatever reason, it hits you hard. One degree. If a friend’s loved one dies, you feel the loss through that friend. Two degrees. You empathize with your friend, but that loved one… there’s simply not the same connection. No one should expect you to want to care as much about the dead person as you do for your friend.

Take it a step further to three degrees: a friend of a friend of a friend dies. Do you know that friend? At all? Sure, there’s a general sense of loss, but if you’re not grieving, should you be considered a bad person for that? It seems like the natural way of things: the closer you are to something, the more it affects you. The further away you are, the less it does. Hell, if you’re grieving for everyone who’s within three degrees, you’re non-functional. Too much emotional trauma. Maybe it’s a way for your brain to cope: you can only handle so much suffering at once before you go into a state of proverbial emotional overload.

And aside from the “six degrees” I mentioned, there tends to be a level of proximity as well: the closer something occurs to you, the more significance it has. If a car crash happens near your house and some people die as a result, it doesn’t matter whether you knew them or not. It was in your backyard—it happened right there. If you’d been two blocks away from your house, you might have seen it. That’s a scary thought, seeing someone die in a fiery car crash. I’m glad I haven’t seen one.

But they happen all the time. I haven’t seen one, I haven’t had one happen anywhere near me, I don’t know anyone who’s been in a fiery car crash, so that idea doesn’t bother me very much. I don’t stay awake at night feeling traumatized about the fact that fiery car crashes happen all the time. If I did, again, emotional overload.

New Yorkers had the buildings fall down in their neighborhood—they had a reason to care. But what if a building collapsed halfway across the world? Did they have the same emotional investment when the tsunami hit Japan, powerful enough to destroy nuclear power plants? Who knows how many lives were lost? Not us. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it was all over the news and people were immensely concerned about what was happening and what we were doing to fix it. The tsunami? AIDS? World hunger? How often do you hear about that on the 6:00 news versus a fiery car crash that happened in your neighborhood?

So I can’t relate with someone who lost a family member when the World Trade Center collapsed—I feel bad for the person, but I wouldn’t be so demeaning as to assume that I feel the same kind of pain. At least for me, it comes down to those six degrees: how deeply something affects me emotionally depends in large part on my own connection to it. What is my relationship to a person, how close did it occur… what kind of effect did it have on me personally? That sounds kinda shallow when I put it that way… I blame Kevin Bacon.

Posted on

#madwriting

The title comes from a couple of female scientists on Twitter who… I’m not sure if they had writer’s block or needed inspiration to sit down and write or what—all I know is that they came up with the idea of “#madwriting”, which basically consists of a bunch of people sitting down and writing as much as they can in 30-minute bursts (and they’re very forgiving if you run past that time). In the past, I’d been okay just watching the Twitter updates, seeing the “And….. write!” tweets, etc. This time, I decided to join in, if for no other reason than to say I did it.

There are actually a few good reasons for me to participate. Given that a lot of the people doing this are trying to write papers or theses, I could have used the burst of speed and energy to work on a paper for school. Unfortunately, I don’t have a topic to write about—there was a long list and we were supposed to send the prof a note with our top three choices (plus an alternate or two… as many as we wanted, really). I made my list and sent it to him on Tuesday night. The problem is that I sent it to the wrong e-mail address.

Consequently, he never got the message and I still don’t know what the topic of my paper is. Shit.

But like I said, I wanted to participate. Plus this is a good way for me to not do the reading that’s sitting next to me. What’s one or two hundred pages between friends? A lot to do before Tuesday night, really, but who’s counting?

So since I can’t write about school, what have I got? I dunno, but along with the paper and thesis writers, there are bloggers out there who manage to come up with material for their 30-minute #madwriting session, so I damn well better be able to come up with something.

Hmmm… I suppose I could write about soccer today, but I imagine people are bored with reading about my epic struggles with playing and playing through injuries. I’m not sure why my shoulder is continuing to hurt, but I’ll be seeing a doctor or chiropractor or someone soon. I sent in a form to the insurance company indicating that I would have future expenses, so I imagine my body will be ready for treatment as soon as the insurance is.

But the weird part is that the shoulder bothering me isn’t the one I went to the doctor about—I strained the muscles in my neck and my left rotator cuff. You’d think that was the problem area. All the physical therapy has helped that side heal pretty well; the problem has been my right shoulder. There’s a thick muscle fiber in there that’s just a giant lump and doesn’t want to go away. Consequently, when I try to take long throw-ins, it protests. Loudly.

I made one or two that were fairly short during the game, which wasn’t a big deal. The first and the last… I put a lot of distance on those and came out right away. My shoulder was not pleased. After standing on the sideline for a couple minutes, it felt okay again, but I don’t want that to be a chronic issue. It’s bad enough that I occasionally twist my knee the wrong way and have to step off the field for a bit—I can’t have more parts of me breaking down.

Thankfully, my fingers are still doing okay, so I can sit here in bed with my feet propped up and laptop in my lap, typing away for no good reason with no specific goal in mind. Man, that pisses me off… I wish I’d gotten in touch with the prof earlier so I could be working on a paper.

Then again, this is kind of typical for me. Back at Kenyon as an undergrad, I’d get close to deadlines on papers and find any excuse I could to write someone other than my paper for class. Hell, that’s when I’d be most productive. “I’ve got a 10-page paper due tomorrow afternoon—time to write another essay about absolutely nothing!” Dunno why that’s the case. Maybe it’s because I didn’t like the work very much, didn’t have the focus needed to work on something that took brain power… riiiiight.

But right now, I have reading that I should be doing, so this isn’t that much of a transition. I suppose nowadays, I’d be more likely to surf around on YouTube or Facebook instead of writing—less brainpower required, more entertainment. I suppose that could be part of the issue. More immediate returns for writing fun stuff (it’s fun), whereas doing actual work isn’t as much fun. I don’t enjoy it as much. Especially when the book I’m reading is boring and putting me to sleep.

Why didn’t I get to bed until 5:00 in the morning? Paradigms. It could be intriguing at times, but when the author started making predictions about the future, that’s when I started to fade. When I’m lying down comfortably while trying to read, it becomes less of a “tired head bob” and more of a “tired book flop”. Eventually, I had to give up and start doing some work on here.

Yes, that’s right, I’m still working on the blog. Not so much anymore (see: this entry), but I still have plenty of entries that could use tags, especially in the “Beauty and the Geek” category. I want to break things up into seasons as opposed to just “Beauty and the Geek” and make the readers sift through everything to find stuff. That’s right, I’m doing it all for you.

So I spent time tagging as well as copying and pasting entries into Word files on my laptop. I started doing that many years ago, which came in handy when shawnbakken.com went down and I lost everything. I still had all the entries backed up on my hard drive, so while it took me a long time to finally get everything reposted (see: earlier this month), it got done. Same thing last night/this morning: copy and paste the content so I’d have it available offline. Tag, then write down the entry dates in a Notebook file (which stretches back to 2003). It doesn’t sound that bad until you consider I had to start midway through PerBloWriMo. Half of December plus all of this year… I think I went through 70 entries. Took a couple hours, fried a couple brain cells, didn’t require any reading from Paradigms. Awesome.

And that’s time. 30 minutes of… I might call it blatherings, but I thought “Musings” sounded like a better category title. Regardless, I haven’t the slightest idea of everything I wrote in here. Hopefully, at least some of it makes sense. If not… I could be in trouble for that paper due Tuesday night.