I feel like I've not been very much fun lately. Not in real life, in real life I'm a fucking blast. But here. Maybe it's because my job has gotten less and less fun lately. You see, when you work for the internet division of a huge media conglomerate, people quit left and right. Why? Because smaller internet companies pay more, take more risks, and are much more fun than even a semi-separate division of a behemoth can be. The corporate rigidity goes exactly against everything upon which the net world was built. And so all my friends have been leaving. All my bosses have been leaving. I should leave. I will leave. I've been looking, albeit very casually.

The reason I've remained here for so long is the ease and the flexibility and the people. Well, the people are leaving, for one. And the job is getting harder and harder since I'm left to pick up departed peoples' slack. And thirdly, I don't really need the flexibility as much as I used to. I'm not auditioning much lately. I think my agents are tired of me. That's fine. I'm tired of commercial auditions. And I'm tired of my agents. I'm not tired of acting, but when I get to shoot a great part in a great film (which restarts again this weekend, by the way), it's hard to get it up to go put on a broccoli-head and pretend to be in a salad. And the fact of the matter is that I have a better chance making money writing right now than I do acting. I'm much closer with writing than with acting. So perhaps I should just find a fun job that lets me write stupid shit and that I at least have some investment in. Or at least doesn't sap my soul like that cat sucking the breath out of the pre-alcoholic Drew Barrymore.

So maybe that has made me more bitter than usual.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm a bit tired of the "Industry" right now. So much of what I read, from the trades to the entertainment magazines to the ET-ish shows just bores me silly. (Magazine interviews with stars are soooo hard to read these days because the journalist is desperately looking for a way to present the same fucking material a new way and so they reach for an "angle" like a college theatre director trying to justify setting Hamlet in depression-era Utah. For a good [awful] example of this, read Holly Millea's interview with Sandra Bullock in the last Premiere. Really really sad, the things this poor journalist tries.) I don't know what it is. If I see one more story on where Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are going to get married, I will jump out of a window. If I see one more story on Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston/Gwenyth/Ben/Matt/Charlize/Angelina or any of that crew, I will throw someone out of a window. If I see another ad for a movie or a commercial featuring David Arquette, I will just sit down by the window and cry. It's boring me, folks. And I'm not sure it's a good sign.

So maybe that has made me less focused than usual.

Most likely it's my personal life. My life has been extremely stable for the last 3 or 4 years. No big changes. Now alla I'm single, in this apartment with this, like, cat, staring and meowing at me all the time. I wander around and smoke on my back porch and drink wine and talk on the phone for hours to a long-distance friend while I totally ignore everyone in my life here. I haven't started writing something new, as my other scripts have been sitting on agents' "to read" piles for 2 weeks now, but I just can't figure out how to start. I'm funny and personable but very irritable and I'm being mean to the defenseless like last month when I freaked on my friend's girlfriend for saying something dumb about Meryl Streep, who I don't even especially like. And it would be one thing if this shit was just what it was, but there are more crazy unknowns looming in the not-so-distant future. Variables. Wheels within wheels, my people. And so I can't settle. I'm like the fat farmer who survives one tornado by running down into the turnip shed, and crawls out to what is now the wreck of his yard, only to see a brand new front far on the horizon. So what does he do in the meantime? Whittle, watch a ballgame, and drink? (Hey, actually that sounds like a pretty good plan.)

So maybe that has made me more boring than usual.

But I'm not going to take a break. You poor motherfuckers will just have to suffer through it with me... You know, suddenly I feel a lot better.

Elsewhere...

...Todd and I finally got together last night to discuss our long-on-hiatus comedy group. Basically last Friday over drinks I suggested we start up again, but with he and I more in charge of content. The group hasn't performed since last summer. We were going really well for 2 years or so, with the occasional firing of a badly-behaving cast member. We got a lot of good press and performed at the HBO Workspace and was signed by a big company, but then we all sort of burned out. Shows started getting messy, we got into a lawsuit with our former landlord, our deal went nowhere, and I started having anxiety dreams every night after a show, so we just stopped. We don't want to be an underground L.A. Theatre/Comedy hit anymore. We want, well, to get paid, to put it in crude terms. So that's why we're getting back together - to try to move up a step. Anyway, our meeting last night was to set the ground rules for this new incarnation, and to decide what shows we want to do next.

I've described it briefly before, but basically what we do is put up a film, one film per 3 weeks, somewhat condensed, on stage, playing all the parts. We deconstruct the shows, riff off them, peel them open, and sometimes rip them to shreds in the process. It's tough love, and therefore we generally try to do bad movies we at least kind of enjoy. People also have to have seen them. It's a tough balance. So, we need to pick two or three for this next run, depending on how long the run is going to be.

Here are some of the shows we've done in the past:

Footloose.
The Karate Kid.
The Breakfast Club.
Fame.
Star Wars.
Fatal Attraction.
Poltergeist.
Less Than Zero.
St. Elmo's Fire.
Halloween.
Titanic.
Top Gun.
Ghost.

Plus a few others.

So yesterday we jotted down some ideas. Though y'all haven't seen what exactly we do with these, I can tell you: the first half of the above worked the best. We don't exactly know why. Here are some of the ones we're considering:

Steel Magnolias.
Dirty Dancing.
The Outsiders.
The Indiana Jones Trilogy. (in one show)
Platoon.
Philadelphia.
Forrest Gump.
Flashdance.
The Lion King.
The Sixth Sense.
Pump Up The Volume.
Chasing Amy.
Psycho. (Vaughn/Heche version)
Dead Poets Society.
Eyes Wide Shut
The Green Mile.
The Lost Boys.
Purple Rain.
Do The Right Thing.
Saving Private Ryan.
Sleepless in Seattle.
...and if we ever decide we're quitting and want to go out in flames...

Schindler's List.

Let me know if you have any strong opinion. We aim to please, even though our group motto is:
If you don't get it, you're dumb.

The Corin "Corky" Nemec Happy Song Corner

 
 
You were handsome. You were pretty. Queen of New York City. When the band finished playing. They howled out for more. Sinatra was swinging. All the drunks they were singing. We kissed on the corner. Then danced through the night. The boys of the NYPD choir were singing 'Galway Bay'. And the bells were ringing out for Christmas day. You're a bum. You're a punk. You're an old slut on junk. Living there almost dead on a drip in that bed. You scumbag. You maggot. You cheap lousy faggot. Happy Christmas your arse. I pray God it's our last. I could have been someone. So could anyone. You took my dreams from me when I first found you. I kept them with me babe. I put them with my own. Can't make it all alone. I've built my dreams around you... speaking of which. I once auditioned to be on NYPD Blue. Not a lead, but a very cool guest spot where the Mexican guy... Jimmy Spitz, would be questioning me - see, I would be a "perp". Anyway, Spitz would question me and bang me against the filing cabinet and I'd be all, "I don't know, Man!", and the fat guy would pull him off me and I'd be all, "Police brutality, Man!", and they'd both lose it and start, like, wailing on me. Stage combat, and shit. Very cool Strasberg/Meisner-type shit I could bust out. Anyway... the part went to some black guy. Damn this accursed pale skin I wear like an albatross!
 
 
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