Catch-up is not a fun game to play

Sorry it's been so long since my thoughts last graced your eyeballs, but I'm back with a quick update. I'm writing this sitting in my favorite chair back home in Alaska, a brown Lay-Z-Boy recliner that is as old as I am (if not older). It matches absolutely nothing in the living room and feels amazing. It has been raining off and on every day since I've repatriated myself back home (albiet temporarily), which I wouldn't mind if I didn't have this damnable urge to ride my bike everyday.

Bottom line is, I want to get out and exercise. Now that my job with the shitty hours is over, I want to live a normal schedule of getting up, working out, jetting off to work 9-6, coming home and eating dinner at dinnertime, and enjoy my evenings not running around dropping off tapes or waiting for producers to stop fucking with their show so I can go home, but going out with friends or God forbid, watching television shows when they actually air.

As you can tell, I'm still getting employment out of my system.

MOVING ON, since coming home I have been tackling my parents to-do list. I do not mind doing this at all. I actually enjoy it. It does however, have the unfortunate side effect of keeping me away from my writing, which takes some time and a few old-fashioneds to get into. Oh well. I'll find the time. To date, I have assembled Dad's new BBQ, taken donations to goodwill, drove three bikes to the shop to be fixed (two flat tires and a tune up), worked on cleaning up the house, and generally been attending what needs to be attended to.

Actually, I feel more productive these last few days than I did the last couple months at my job. Here I have variety, something my brain craves like a fucking drug. For those who don't know me that well, I can and do get bored rather easily. Most of the time it occurs in the course of work, or falling into a routine at home. Once I've figured out how to do something, if it isn't something I really enjoy doing, I get bored, and I quickly figure out a way to do it in the shortest amount of time and the least effort.

But not now. Now the world is wide open, full of possibilities again. While in Alaska, I have a varied to-do list, filled with chores and parties and meetings with friends. And that's just what I needed. Who knows what I'll do once I go back to Los Angeles, but I bet that it won't just be one thing.

Before I go, two quick things. One, in the Seattle airport I saw a rip in a hot girl's jeans on her ass that inspired me to write half a page in my novel. Two, I Mad Men'd myself. I always did want to pal around with Sterling and Draper.

Second-to-last day cause holes in spacetime

Second-to-last days are strange wee beasties, they have this uncanny effect of taking that march towards the final day of whatever you're counting down to and either making the day go by super fast, or excruciatingly slow.

Well, it's my second-to-last day at my current job, and the latter is in effect. So...slow...can't...stand...it. Tomorrow I know will go by super quickly, since I have a plane to catch and have to leave around 2:30pm. And I'm sure I'll write something about last days tomorrow, so I'll keep this short. I'll instead talk about physics.

I know that much of what we perceive of spacetime (so-called because both space and time are the same thing - read a book about it if you don't get it) is based on our observational biases. The saying "A watched pot never boils" comes from when we are waiting for something to happen, and solely concentrate on that event, time appears to slow down because there are no distractions. If you instead read a book and suddenly find out that an hour has passed that feels like ten minutes, that again is your observational bias getting in the way.

Time is fixed and solid, except when it's not. At first glance my previous statement makes no sense, but when you think about it the statement is true. Weird shit has to occur in order to make time swerve from its steady march forward, and I would like to add second-to-last days as one force that caused weird shit to occur to the very fabric of spacetime.

In other news I am going to Mars! Well, my name is on the next Martian rover NASA sends over, so that's fucking awesome.

This will probably piss women off

...but I'm going to make a brief observation of what I view is an awesome part of being a guy. Better than peeing while standing up. As a man ages, if he takes care of himself, remains a good-looking cat (if he's already a good-looking cat). Their wrinkles, their scars, their thinning hair all accentuates his look, giving him gravitas, experience, and a certain ruggedness that people still find endearing.

Women still wanna bone Sean Connery.

Now, there is a limit to this. When a guy gets past 90, in most cases he starts a strange regression, looking less like a man and more like a child. We know he's an old man of course, but the features become strangely young. Life coming full circle.

Why am I thinking about this? I dunno. I think I saw one of those Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man In The World" billboards on the way back from lunch, and saw an older me, sitting in a comfortable chair, wearing a cardigan, swilling an old-fashioned, and having a hot-ass maid giving me my second round. I'll leave it to your imagination if that's a sex joke or not.

I'll also probably be hijacked to the Village and chased around by a weather balloon.

I'm also turning 27 in less than a month, at which point I'll be unemployed, just coming back from a three-week vacation back home, and I'll be moving on to another chapter in my life. There are some upcoming milestones that are peeking over the horizon. My ten-year high school reunion in 2011. My 30th birthday in 2012. My next sexual encounter in 2015 (just kidding - I hope).

But before I become an old man (more than I am already), I rest easy in the knowledge that I have a decent chance of scoring some tail past 50. And that feels pretty awesome.

40 years ago today we aimed high

On July 16th, 1969, three brave men sat in a tiny capsule strapped to the most powerful rocket ever built, pointed at the sky. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins (not that Michael Collins) started their journey that would end in history being made. Four days later, they would reach the moon, and Armstrong's name would be added to the list of people who broke the boundaries of exploration. Polo, Columbus, Magellan, Lewis and Clark, The Wright brothers, Yeager. If you're history is a little fuzzy, Google it.

I wasn't alive in 1969 when man first stepped foot on the moon, I wasn't alive in 1972 when we last went there, but as a kid growing up in the 80's, space always held a fascination for me. Sure, I loved Star Wars and Star Trek, and that had a big influence on me, but reading about the space shuttle, supernovae and black holes was just as interesting.

These three men are true heroes.

As a society I think we have taken for granted the amazing achievement walking on the moon is. When I was a kid, MTV had an ad that had an astronaut planting a MTV flag on the moon. It had become product placement. Even Rolling Rock tried a stunt by writing an ad with lasers on the moon last year. But to me, this achievement shows that we as a species have the potential to take flight from our home planet and continue that driving force of exploration that is at the core of humanity.

Think about it: humans explore constantly. It's hardwired into our DNA. Hundreds of years ago we wanted to know what was just beyond the edge of the map. So we explored, and eventually mapped the globe. We wanted to know what was just beyond what we could see. So we explored, and discovered molecules, atoms, and quarks. We wanted to know what was in the sky, so we built balloons, airplanes, and rockets that took us to the skies and beyond.

40 years ago today, we wanted to know what it was like to walk on a body not of this Earth. And so we went...

The rise of the douche - and what we can do to stop it

We all see it, we all make fun of it. Yet somehow, douche are and have been on the rise. Despite a vigorous anti-douche campaign, this horrific affliction (see what I did there?) continues to assault good taste and classy behavior of gentlemen and gentleladies everywhere. First, we play the blame game:

The Douches themselves: There's a reason decent human beings make fun of Ed Hardy and Affliction shirts, spiky hair that fell out of style circa 1998 and those possessing an Oompa Loompa uber-tan - they try way too hard. And in doing so, they fail. Fail at fashion, fail at relating, fail at life. They're douches, and they have chosen this path.

...and the Women who love them: You know who you are. You're that girl who came up to me in Mexico in 2001 and asked me point-blank to buy you a drink, to which I responded "Are you gonna talk with me if I do?", to which you turned to a douche standing next to me, got your drink, and promptly walked away. The score? Me - 1, Douche - 0.

You're also that club girl that wears too much makeup, peroxides your hair, and takes pictures of you flashing faux gang signs while making kissy faces/sticking out your tongue/pretending you are a lesbian and your boobs are pushed up in a revealing tanktop. You're the Douchette™, and like your male counterpart, you try way too hard and thus you fail.

The Anti-Douches: Stay with me on this one, 'cause it takes a physics metaphor to explain. If you've ever watched an episode of "Star Trek" (stay with me!) you probably heard Scotty complaining about how the warp core can't take much more, how the matter/antimatter injectors are ready to blow.

The key is matter/antimatter. Antimatter is real, and can easily be explained as the exact opposite of matter. Remember the structure of an atom? Protons, electrons (stay with me!), nuetrons? Ring any bells? If not, Google it. One such antiparticle is the positron. Positrons have an electrical charge of +1, a spin of 1/2, and the same mass as an electron. An electron has a charge of -1, a spin of 1/2, and the same mass as a positron. See where I'm going with this?

Science: it's fucking awesome!

The Anti-Douche are those guys who mock the Douches and their manufactured personalities, then go and wear a white v-neck undershirt with a suit vest, skinny jeans that give them chicken legs, and think American Apparel is ironically the height of haute couture. I don't really have a problem with the Anti-Douche, as I like Mirror Spock and if you can rock the look and not seem pretensious or overly trendy, then bonus points to you. However, the supermajority of the Anti-Douche are just as much slaves to conformity as their counterparts. And when matter touches antimatter, they annihilate each other.

Clothing companies: This one is easy. People think shirt X is the coolest fucking thing ever, and after enough people buy it, shirt X no longer is the coolest fucking thing ever. However, a bunch of people still own shirt X, and while some realize their folly (or jump ship and buy the next coolest fucking thing ever, pants Y), many refuse to admit their gullibility and steadfastly continue wearing shirt X. The makers of shirt X, their revenues falling to the popularity of pants Y, come out with shirt X2: shirts united. Some owners of shirt X buy shirt X2, and the cycle continues until, like the matter of a nuetron star, the group of X brand devotees condenses into a small but dense pile of weird shit.

Damn, and my economics lecture was going so well.

Viewers like you!: Much like watchers of PBS, douches are supported by the actions (or inactions) of people like you. And that includes myself. Humans, being creatures of habit that resist change, once having started a pattern of behavior, will only change it when they are forced to. Sensible people like you and me find it easier to make fun of the douches instead of doing the humane thing and staging an intervention. Or putting them down, although that's probably illegal. I'll check on that and get back to you.

Now that we've identified the culprits of this crime, what can we do to stop it?

1) Start by punching them in the face. Seriously. It'll allow you to continue with a level head once all that pent-up frustration has been released. The douches won't mind.

2) Give the douche a better role model. May I suggest any of the following: Don Draper, Buzz Aldrin, Steve McQueen, Chuck Yeager, Top Cat. All of these men show confidence, classic fashion sense, and are real. They are who they are, not what anyone tells them to be.

He's an animated cat and he's still cooler than a douche will ever be

3) Let them know that their behavior is not acceptable in grown-up society. Or children's society or Mini-Society or any society. If they try to break this rule, roll up a newspaper and hit them on the nose, yell "Bad dog!" and rub their face in the mess they made. It's tough love, but it works.

4) Be wary of any potential relapses. Once cured of their douche-ness, the patient still can have the occasional flare-up, especially if the douche was deeply entrenched. Keep them away from Ed hardy outlets, any reports of Spencer Pratt or Platt or whatever the shit's name is, and spray-on tans. If a relapse does occur, repeat step 3 and force feed them "Mad Men" and Steve McQueen movies until they recover.

We can banish douche behavior to the same fate as smallpox and polio. For the betterment of all humanity, we can, nay, we must take this problem head on and remain resolute to the eradication of the douche. If we don't the terrorists win.

Living the High Life

Ever since this Great Recession hit, I've been enjoying the Miller High Life. I like the taste, I like the bottle, and I like the fact that I can pick up a twelver for under 10 bucks. Ahh, yes. In the last several months, I have had these amazing memories thanks in part to this fantastic beer:

- Spending a day at Janiak's, watching soccer and playing drinking games. The beer of the day was actually Miller High Life Light (the blue label), and around mid-afternoon, the bad news came - we were down to our last beer. All drunk, the crowd let out a collective grumble and wondering how exactly we were to fetch more delicious beer.

AT THAT MOMENT, our buddy Mark pointed near the door. "Wait! What's that?" Our heads turn to discover a forgotten 12-pack of the High Life! We all cheered and celebrated, certain defeat turning into incredible victory! A beer commercial come to life, indeed.

- For the now infamous July 3rd BBQ, we ordered a keg of High Life, and consumed it all. Many games of beer pong and flip cup were made possible to the magic liquid that poured forth from that shiny metal shell. I'll never forget that day mainly because I DID forget it - I blacked out around four in the afternoon and apparently participated in numerous adventures. Stumbling to Subway, throwing up on my car, throwing a salad at the house, all gentlemanly behavior made possible in part to the High Life.

- My friend Pat Wengler came over on a Saturday afternoon and we had ourselves a Pam Grier marathon, sponsored by thirty-six bottles of Miller High Life. With every boob shot, every pimp-tastic outfit (King Geooooorge!) and every jive-ass honkey getting the business end of Pam Grier, High Life was there to enhance the already awesome experience.

- Coming home from a long (and now boring) day at work, kicking back, and cracking open one or two Champagne of Beers. Makes everything seem just a little bit better.

So that's my love letter to the High Life. In this economy, its good to know that the common man can grab a decent beer at a decent price. It's my own personal bailout.

I know what I'm gonna do!

If you don't know who this is my finger is wagging in your direction.

I'm gonna pick up writing my novel.

You heard me.

A while ago, I started writing what I thought would be a short novel. Normally I write only in screenplay format (or random blogs), and a narrative in book form would be something I haven't done since I used to write short stories back in high school. And now I'm going to start it up again.

It probably won't be great. Point of fact it is most likely pedestrian and meandering at best. But I'm going to write it. Because that's what I am - a writer. Now that "Zombie Holocaust & You!" is all done, it's time to move on to my next burst of creativity.

What's that you say? You're actually interested in the plot of said novel? Well, since you asked...

In a world...a hero will rise...a champion will fall...

Naw, I'm just fucking around. It's actually about a newspaper reporter living in Alaska during the 1980's. He's a hack, a bit of a drunk, and he gets into trouble on a regular basis. There's some mystery, a lot of humor, and a bit of romance. All set against the way I viewed my hometown while I was growing up.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

T-minus 9 days...

So here I am, sitting at work, a place I only have to show up at nine more times in my life.

AND.IT.FEELS.AWESOME!

When I started here at Actuality, I had my eye set on working my way to becoming an associate producer in the hopes that, after a few shows as AP, I would make that leap to producer and then really wreck shop.

A year passed, and I got restless. Truth be told, I started getting restless three months in. Anywho, a year came and went, and I didn't get out of post. I didn't even get out of the dub room. I did get a raise, which was awesome. Before I could start thinking about what to do now, we were told that the company was shutting its doors and everyone was getting laid off.

So back to the present, where I only have one more Monday to drive out to Woodland Hills, turn on the monitors, and start dubbing copies of footage for the assorted masses of Actuality. I never really got upset over losing my job. This is actually the first job where I wasn't the one doing the dumping. This job has dumped me. And I'm fine with that.

Like any relationship, things change and an ending eventually comes. Now that ending is nigh and I'm ready to move on. I'll get another job. I get to go home for a three-week vacation. My life gets to change. And change is good.

Now, a completely unrelated (yet awesome!) picture:

Things to do

I know y'all don't care, but I need to write out a to-do list that I won't lose. Which happens when your to-do lists are mostly written on Post-Its or cocktail napkins.

- Finish DVD for "Zombie Holocaust & You!"; I just need to buckle down for a few hours and the damn thing will be finished and ready for distribution.

- Work on turning Janiak's new netbook into a Hackintosh. That will be interesting to say the least. And possibly frustrating.

- Try and find actors for this weekend's spec commercial shoot. We have to deliver the spot by July 17th, so there's a time crunch.

- Get working on FUCK! forgot what I needed to put here.

- Press kits! That's what I needed to remember. Press kits and target festivals for ZH&Y!

- Enter my House spec into the WB writer's fellowship.

- Set up a haircut before I leave the 24th.

- Go to that alumni thing the 22nd (see previous post on why I need a smartphone; too much shit to remember)

That's it for now.

I need a damn iPhone

Stop mocking meeee!

A) My fingers hate hate HATE typing out letters using my keypad on my phone. I (unfortunately) do text on a regular basis, and I waste to much time accidentally typing "Thf6dnd" instead of "The".

2) More and more I find myself in the middle of L.A. needing to figure out an address or directions to a store and end up driving all the way back home in order to hop on the internet for 20 seconds.

C) I miss out on what my friends are up to, especially ones I haven't seen in a while. When I was at Hollywood Forever cemetery watching "Jaws" on the 4th of July, a writer friend of mine was also there. If I had checked Facebook while waiting six hours for the movie to start, I could have found her and said hello.

You know what? I need a damn smartphone. I will actually use it to be productive, and I've actually gotten into a busy enough point in my life that being connected to other forms of communication besides a phone call is warranted.

And since I'm a douche-y Mac owner, an iPhone would fit the bill perfectly. But guess what? I have to wait until October 1st before I can buy one at the discounted price. Christ, can't we get rid of these stupid exclusivity agreements already?

Until then, I'll be seeghipp7...FUCK!

Batman & Robin! Holy Awesome!

No, not the shitty Clooney film. The awesome new comic series. Just look at it!

Bam! Pow! The 2nd ish just dropped (um, last week I think), and I haven't been this excited for shit dropping since...wait, I need to rethink that segue. Point is, it's awesome and I feel like I'm eight years old again.

In other nerdtastic news, I recently joined Twitter. Let me give you a moment to let that sink in.

Okay, so yeah, I guess I'm a douche now. Yes, Twitter contributes to the further degradation of the English language (GO English Language! WOOHOO!), yes, I realize nobody cares about what color a random celebrity's pee is this morning, but I figured that I should stake my claim on my name before some schmuck looking to cash in on my awesomeness.

Side note: "Awesome" and all its derivatives is my word of the moment.

Awesoooooome!

For those who care to know what I'm up to, up to the minute details, my Twit name is corywparker. Crazy, I know.

ALSO, I only have 13 more days left at my job. The countdown is on. Highlight of today: free books from the research library. It's getting really boring here.

Six months? Are you fucking kidding?

It's been six months since I've blogged (man, that word is weird/pretentious/bodily-function-esque), and SO much has happened I can't even tell you!

Okay, I will. Just the highlights:

- I'm getting laid off from my current job July 24th, then heading back to Alaska until mid-August.

- I may have a new job when I get back (more info as it develops)

- People in Iran went absolutely apeshit 'cause their supreme leaders are just like any other petty dictators.

- My governor, sweet Sarah, resigned. Good riddance.

- The King of Pop died. News coverage of said event will continue until 2013 at the earliest.

- The evening of July 3rd has been wiped from my memory banks due to Skittle vodka and Jell-o shots. If I don't remember it, ergo, it did not happen. Never mind what the photos say.

- I finally finished my latest short film "Zombie Holocaust and You!", and am in the process of sending it to film festivals.

Other stuff happened too, but that's all I can think of at the moment. I'm going to add more to the blog more often, because I think with the right discipline it will become a good outlet for my creative impulses and...

Oh, who am I kidding? I will post more often, but it will still be the random thoughts and logic leaps that make up my psyche. Hold on tight kids.