Halfbrown

I love this video because it combines my fondness for both Muppets and Pulp Fiction into a swirling mass of pop culture fun.

And the fact that they leave Eric Stoltz as a human instead of Muppet-izing him is hilarious.

A new favorite song from my favorite group, the Foo Fighters are arguably one of the most consistently kick-ass bands around today. Their kick-ass nature is due (IMNSHO) pretty much in its entirety to frontman Dave Grohl.

My two degree’s of seperation from Mr. Dave is the fact that my Fender Telecaster Aerodyne was played, tuned, and futzed with by one of the Foo Fighter’s former guitar techs and all around guitar guru, Danny Mangold; a hell of a nice guy and I’m sad I didn’t get to know him a bit better when he worked on my side of the Puget Sound.

Anyhow, with rockin’ tracks such as “The Pretender” it looks like the Foo Fighters are staying in the business of kickin’ ass!

I’ve never heard of this before today, but a friend sent me an IM earlier that read (paraphrased):

SP: Have you ever heard of this rule? The “Half Plus Seven” rule states that attraction to someone who is younger than half your age plus seven years is creepy.
ME: Never. So I’m stuck with 25 year olds? Screw that! I’m going down to 18. I’m bucking convention! LOL
SP: You are now officially creepy… You are to be shunned by most nuns you will meet.

Now of course I was joking since I am happily married, but the idea that someone came up with that “rule” is interesting. Apparently the idea of the half plus seven rule isn’t new, either. Wikipedia references it, Urban Dictionary has an entry for “Half Plus Seven”, and there’s even a page that has a calculator for it.

Is an age gap any wider than half plus seven really that uncomfortable to people? I guess I see things a bit differently since one of my best friends is happily married to a younger woman, and add to that the fact that I’ve known many couples in a (ahem) May-December romance that works out great, so it doesn’t bother me at all.

It’s funny that most of the vitriol that I read on the subject concerns older men and younger women together, but the idea of a Cougar or a MILF seems (more?) acceptable; which seems like a sort of reverse discrimination if you ask me. I believe that the most important issue is whether or not a couple is happy, if they communicate well, and they genuinely care for each other. I don’t care if a 40-year old woman is dating a 23-year old man, or if a 60-year old man is married to a 37-year old woman; which also happens to be the cut-off for a 60-year old according to the half plus seven rule.

When the movie “Wild at Heart” came out it was huge within the group of friends that I had while Sub School in Groton Connecticut, so the song “Wicked Game” became an instant classic in my heart and mind. Chris Isaak has such an amazing voice, Helena Christiansen is bewitching, and the scenery from that black sand Hawaiian beach is incredible.

It’s a very sexy song…

“A neurotic father goes on a wild goose chase as he secretly follows his 16 year-old daughter on her first date.”

That’s my first-draft logline for my first screenplay, a family comedy entitled “First Date”. And while it’s not necessarily the opener I’d use to pitch to a producer right now, it does accurately detail the general nature of the film.

I’m much further along than I thought I would be, too. I have the protagonist and antagonist fleshed out (including my hero’s story arc), I have my characters goals and corresponding conflicts, and I have all 3 Acts broken down and placed into the 15 beats as described in Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet from his funny and informative book “Save the Cat!”. All major scenes are laid out and I can already see many of the shots in my minds eye. All in all I am very satisfied with my progress thus far.

I don’t know why I love it so much, but something really resonates within me whenever I hear this song. Maybe because it reminds me of early Smashing Pumpkins (and I love their first CD), or maybe there’s a little more emo in me than I realize. Regardless of the reason, when I first heard it I obsessed over it for a month straight; listening to it over and over and over every day and even finding the guitar tabs for it and learning how to play it.

What is that song? Why it’s none other than “Lazy Eye” by Silversun Pickups:

Though not in any particular order, I thought it’d be a good way for people to get to know my and my musical preferences by linking videos to songs that I enjoy.

Here’s one from Morrissey, “Irish Blood, English Heart”:

Ever since I was in Junior High I’ve wanted to be a writer. I fell in love with books in Elementary school, but not until I moved to Maryland in the early-to-mid 1980’s did I think about becoming a writer as a career choice. As luck would have it, however, I bounced back and forth between career ideas for a long time (as most students do) and left writing by the wayside, along with some of my other artistic endeavors such as painting, drawing, and sculpting. But every now and then I’ll have a creative spark hit me and I’ll pick up the pencils, brushes, or a pad of paper and start to create.

To be honest, however, I take a while to warm up creatively, and my creations take a beating for it. There are literally reams of paper lining my shredder basket with stories, drawings, etc. that I’ve destroyed since they didn’t meet whatever standard I had for them at the time. I am very critical of my own work; but every now and again I hit on something which pleases me. Enough to not throw it out within an hour of it’s creation, at least. And recently I have hit upon something that hasn’t made me want to throw it out.

Over the last few months I’ve become interested in screenwriting, and like any hobby of mine I jumped into it with both feet and have been researching books, websites, and literally hundreds of articles on how to write, format, and market a story. Using the book “Save the Cat” as a template for my writing, I have finally narrowed down the half-dozen story ideas to one and have begun the process. I’m very happy with what I have so far, which is great considering I normally don’t get this far with my art.

Stay tuned for more developments.

I’m so busy during the course of a normal day that I tend to not post here, even if I want to. I need to stop that.

Instead of making excuses I’ll be taking pertinent posts from my offline journals, notes, etc. as well as my old website(s) and putting them here for posterity. It makes sense, since I am trying to consolidate things to only a few websites anyhow. So, any post you see on this site before this time/date is possibly from another site, an offline source, or just a backfill that I meant to post but never did.

Evan lost his first baby tooth today. He and I were working on loosening it up a bit when one push of the tooth jarred it almost all the way out. Or what we thought was almost. In fact, it must’ve been kept in by suction or something, because (thinking it was still in there) I handed him some water to rinse with when he accidentally swallowed it; water, tooth and all.

For a split second I thought to myself “We can fish it out later.“, but I quickly realized that’s not such a good idea. So instead he drew a picture of his tooth and the tooth fairy left him $2.00 for his first tooth.