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Hey children. Sorry about the sporadic nature of my entries of late. This is just a fucking nutso week. I'll try to describe what's been happening. The Job. It's ending. I arrived at work on Monday, only to be informed that between our HR and Corporate HR, decided they were only giving me one week. So that means I'm out. On Friday. Tomorrow. I've been here for three years, and no one even came "down" to talk to me. I just heard it through my terribly angry and upset boss, who is also a friend of mine. So tomorrow I'm going to go up there and talk to them. Figure things out. I got a lot of good info from readers (thank you for that) but I am still confused. I'm just going to talk to them and find out if there's a way I can get anything, at least unemployment from them. I suppose I should also call my Temp Agency, but I'm afraid they'll try to find me another job, which I don't want right now. I'm looking forward to some down time. I already have a plan to take money to recap soap operas every day for friends who have to work during the day. I have an open slot at 1PM if anyone wants to sign up. I'm only 5 bucks a show! Anyway, so I've been slowly packing my things up. My Homies went home yesterday as did my flippy monkeys and most of my toys. It's amazing how much shit I have collected here. It's amazing how much has happened here. I'll go into it later, but I will indeed, in a weird way, miss this place. I'll miss what happened here. And in the way I miss any part of my life once it ends. I guess that's what we do. But there is not one part of me that doesn't think this is coming at the right time. Sure, I'm worried about money and know that in terms of pure timing, with the strike and recession, it's not good, but I've needed to get out of here for a while, and now I am. And I'm glad. Work. I recently wrote a treatment with a writing partner. A treatment is basically an outline of a screenplay. It was an idea I've had for years and we fleshed it out together and ended up getting together a few nights a week for the last couple weeks. Well, the treatment ended up going past usual treatment length to about 17 pages. Anyway, people with whom I've been working read it and loved it and set up pitch meetings on it, where basically we go into studios and production companies and such and tell the story in 15 minutes or so. Most of the producers are people who already have read at least one of my scripts and like me, so they're interested in hearing another idea. Anyway, the point being that you can sell the pitch, and THEN write the script, instead of writing the script and just hope to sell that. We're planning on writing the script anyway, even if it doesn't sell as a pitch - which we don't really totally expect it to, being that it's our first pitch and also, we're only a few weeks away from the strike and hardly anyone is buying. But anyway, so I've been staying up late late late to get ready for these meetings. After a flurry of phone calls yesterday, we suddenly had a pitch at 10am this morning, from someone who wanted to be the first to hear it. So. We stayed up late last night at my place rehearsing the pitch. It's a lot like telling a story to a friend, but with two people who had never done it before, it was sort of hard to figure out what to do, where to pass it back and forth, where to interject if the other forgot a key element, etc. The first time we did it - pitching to a basketball on my easy chair - we went about 15 too long, so most of the night was spent figuring out how much we could leave out without missing crucial components of the story. Anyway, we had the first meeting this morning and it went very well. (This kind of shit is ten times easier for me being an actor.) We used our notes, which we didn't want to do, but the producer seemed to really like the story and stayed with us the whole time and said nice things afterwards and blah blah blah. Again, the point being that we got through our first one and didn't bomb. We did darn well. So, we have four more early next week (good, because I have no job to go to anymore). Plenty of time to fuck it up. Also, I'm sick. Tuesday night a cold just came and kicked my ass. So I've been feeling like total shit while trying to deal with packing and getting ready for the pitches, and… I'm going away this weekend. I'm going up for Easter to visit my mom, which is terrible timing but that always seems to happen to me. Anyway, it'll be great to see my friends and my mom and we're seeing Hedda Gabler at my new favorite theatre in the Bay Area so that should be fun. It's going to be a very busy time, and I'm afraid I'm not going to get to see everyone I want to. But then again, I always get a great sense of grounding when I go home. LA: you need to get the fuck out of it, very often. A lot of other things have been keeping me busy lately, including a new show for MBTV coming up and ThreeWayAction junk and prospective job offers and the possible option of another script of mine (which could give me a few much needed bucks) and blah blah blah. Also, the two year anniversary of Plaintive Wail is coming up. Man, can you smell the excitement? You can? Lord, take a shower then. Damn.
It seems you've been living on your own.
Lonely and free.
Looking to make yourself known.
Same as me.
Well I see you in the public eye.
I see you're looking fine.
The boy would be a businessman.
And he signs the bottom line.
Singing, company man, do what you can with my name.
Rock n Roll, man here I am.
I'm staking my claim to fame.
He's got the smiling face of a friend.
Still you're not quite certain you know him.
The smile turns into a grin.
What do you owe him?
You know you owe him.
So if there's something you do well.
Something you're proud of.
Better to save some for yourself.
If that's allowed.
The crowd will never know you.
You'll hardly know yourself.
They'll turn you 'round and blow you up.
'Til you think you're someone else.
Company man, do what you can with my name.
Rock n Roll, man here I am.
I'm staking my claim to fame.
He can turn your time to gold.
You better make as much as you can my friend.
'Cause his money will turn you old.
And they need a young man.
The job takes a young man.
Company man, do what you can with my name.
Rock n Roll, man here I am.
I'm staking my claim to fame… speaking of which. You know who has the smiling face of a friend? Charles Durning. You know who is one of the sneakiest sons-of-bitches in Hollywood? Charles Durning. You think I'm kidding. You think this is another one of my ha ha Downey-stop-using-drugs-and-get-serious-why-don't-you jokes, but it's not. If you're ever unlucky enough to come across Charles Durning, cross the street. I'm serious. You'll thank me.
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