its aint easy..

apparently if you dont like the sensation of chewing on broken glass while standing on the precipice of a 90 story building you shouldnt write a screenplay. or a play. uh oh. arent plays the harder to write of the two? (please tell me no, since thats the direction my creative ship has been sailing in and theres no turning back now) . plays are all dialogue and  little action.  no cut scenes, time jumps, or cgi for the characters to hide behind. plays are subtle.. minute. well crafted.  sentences must carry all the weight. lines must be sculpted right down to the word. then there’s the requisite pauses. the air in the room you have to build. the mood that should permeate. the lighting…all must be conveyed with skilled hand. (i guess in this way playwriting is like screenwriting.)

great plays require a whirlwind of elements coming together and dancing on the head of a pin with exact precision. they require moods to ebb and flow with natural cadence, and  neck jerking countermovements to snap the viewer from any familiar lulls.

so if screenwriting is like being tasked to gnaw off your own arm with baby teeth…then its safe to say that writing a play is like adding an additional 5 km to mnt everest’s peak. after your lungs have filled  with water. and youve run out of oxygen tanks.

dammit. iuts true. thats how i feel writing this thing.

i keep asking myself why did i feel the need to undertake this __venture of being a playwright. (keep the ad in a box for when play is done…) why do i have the endless yearn within to finish this. because the writing process ahs been so damned torturous.

i like to write though. dont i? sometimes i hav to check. yes. i think i do… i enjoy writing this blog. 90 percent of the time. but the play. i only enjoy writing that 20% of the time. its takes me 80% cruel effort to get the the goldmine of the 20%.  but once im there the output feels like heaven.( cue the cure song). the 20% is so fulfilling for me its like taking a big hit of some drug ive never had…yeah. its that good and satisfying to know ive written great dialogue. but its just so damned hard to get to..why?

why does the other 80% blow?

but it must be waded through. the play must be done.  despite the fact my dedication to the matter has waned.  i became preoccupied with other things. did some art. and ive been especially distracted with my exciting new idea for a full length feature film starring two bad asschicks with grenade launchers and flame throwers. (insert handguns and pockets knives instead)

alright..

im moving on. moving back to the grind. the play grinder. the mind grinder. the meat grinder. the brain grinder..the organ grinder… would be great right now to have a little kapuchin with a red vest on and a miniature fez to help me get the play done. but odie will have to do. and he doesnt do vests.. :)

love,

odie mama.

a mind awash in subconscious.

woke up midsleep. round 7 am. the words pressing from my still silent lips were “Sal” and “Mineo”. who in the hell? so i wikied him and found out he was an actor with a burst of fame lasting from around 1950 to 1960. amongst his major film appearances;  rebel without a cause and giant. then for some reason his career quickly spiraled downwards. quote:  “One minute it seemed I had more movie offers than I could handle, the next, no one wanted me.”  poor sal. despite this he still trailblazed.

he was one of the first actors to go publicly gay. he came out of the closet in the 60s. though his film opps slowed he kept working and was making a strong film comeback by the mid 1970s. then. suddenly,  unexpected (as there is no other way in such a tradegy) sal was murdered, stabbed once in the heart to his death. the year 1976.  in the alley by his house in cali. was it a robbery? his dead body lay on top of 83 cents in change.

witnesses described a white man fleeing the scene. yet a black man was arrested and sentenced. shocker. a year later an exact replica of the crime happened. someone was somehow murdered in the same place the exact same way? was it a copycat killer or the original asshole himself striking again? im betting sal’s spare change that it was the original. guess the cops didnt get their murdering man after all. and never did.

this would be an interesting movie subject to explore. though i havent upturned other flagstones on his life that prove wether  theres enough material here to make it a full lenght film.

sals hollywood comback was averted. and his name forgotten. at least by my generation.

now as to why in gods holy presence i had this lost actors name upon my closed lips as i arose i will never know.  i did not dream about him.

could it have been a brain fart beamed down from a star wars program satellite to see who’s catching poison mind milk from the drip feed. well fellas. here i am. little ole me in small apartment lettered a. numbered __. in the middle of a city known as hell.

who cares to hide anyway. they already know where i am. and they have zero interest me. unlike the other crazies who believe someone gives a fuck about them i have no allusions that anyone gives a flying fuck as to what im doing or what im working on. no matter how much of my valuable time im devoted to the cause.

im leaving the rest of this page intentionally blank because im returning to playville and my energy is needed elsewhere. feeling shitty about scene 2. feeling great about scene 1. like a crackhead i revisited it yet again an old scab i keep picking at writers wounds that will never heal. imaginary. real.

“but it will be close to perfect. it will. i can make it so”

alright kids. im signing off. done with sounding neurotic. im not. im fine.

love,

odie mama.

beer me.

hola. im back. having conquered 80 percent of the hardships in scene 2. and 75% of the writing. and its saint patys day which we mortals have managed to desecreate with our drunked and wanton ways. and i need a beer. and its hot out and hot inside my apartment because im fully dressed and ready to go out for a beer. by myself if i have to. on the corner. nothing crazy. perfect beer time. beer me now!  i wish i could take my cat with me. hes such a good moomoo kitty dragon fuzz baby. and he likes beer. and hes better company than most. and i think hes a bit lonely when im not with him. i know he is. but ill be back to see him in a few. and though i would,  thankfully im not going alone.  i am meeting _________ who’s been helping me with the play. so well go over some of the scenes from the play. and over some beer. yay. and hopefully all the drunkards that go over beer every day and find st patys a perfect excuse to get wasted, be slobs, puke and shit and piss on themselves, have gone about their business of doing just that and are already swept off the street and  passed out on a dirty mattress down on _________ or in a perfectly appropriate dumpster filled with dead rat carcasses.. so i can quietly and calmly get some brew. and be left alone. in the city that never respects.

ta da..

love,

odie mama.

dear longtime friend,

dear longtime friend,

you dont know it yet but im basing an important character in my play on you. the character of the nun/sister named nunez. shes kind. completely understanding. soft in manner in speech. i see her hands moving in the ways that yours do. grasping things gently. holding them with care. no one else does that just like you. i have given nunez your details. she is finally becoming real.

and though youre kind in the face of others peoples caca, i want you to know that i know that you know that you’ve never been a pushover. youre not afraid to share your great intelligence and your wonderful sense of humor. i can write freely that you are a truly caring and mothering human being yet strong and resilient. a caretaker. and caregiver.  this is what i see in nunez. she is you. and you are her.

youre also the only person that would go celibate for the love of god! and do so believeably. this chastity vow isnt a character flaw.  rather its a merit to your sense of self. sense of commitment.  not a mere characterization or sidenote to who you are. a critical component exemplifying your faith and your devotion to the cause. as ive been writing this play ive come to understand what taking the vows of sisters and nuns (yes there is a difference) actually means. youve helped me to do that. thank you.

i couldnt have written the character in the play without you, and trust me i tried.

last night as my mind twirled on and on musing and agonizing about believeable dialogue,  i realized something was missing about nurse/sister nunez. i couldnt quite write her lines because i couldnt imagine her immediate reactions to what the mom was serving up in the scenes. or the other sister nurses. or the son.  those parts come later.

but now i see her because i see you (with just the tiniest sprinkle of another friends sarcasm, which isnt your style) and  its all coming together. aka..

its all coming up rosaries!!!

so thank you, thank you. if it all turns out great ill let you know it was you. until then, your secret is safe with me. and all the people that have the pleasure to know  you.

in the meanwhile please settle into the idea that youre a 28 year old bilingual latina ex- missionary to paraguay from texas that now works as a seminary and nurse at st _____  hospital in the suburbs of ______. :) trust me. it works.

love odie and odie mama

 

i now pronounce this weapons week!

odie just unleashed a fury in his litter box.  if that exact moment marines had thrown a few of those beauties into _____ compound he would have begged to surrender. and so my cute cat has inspired me again, on the heels of my flamethrower blog, to write another entry on weapons….

Some of the most rutheless types of weapons are chemical and biological, and one of the earliest forms of biological warfare was the shit bomb. i kid you not. in ancient china they took  mondo amounts of dried turds, parceled them with fireworks powder (their greatest invention), and threw them like grenades at their enemies. not only did the smell make any surviving opposition run like hell, the exploding poopie spread an array of disease. lovely. and thus an early form of the bio bomb was born.

based on the premise that people hate the smell of caca (lets give a round of applause to captain obvious) engineers in ww2 found a way to concentrate “shit stank” in gas form and unleashed it on the enemy. supposedly it was so unbearable it was like being trapped in the subway tunnels of new york city during summertime. this is a smell best described as a homeless man eating raw cocoa for a week, drinking five 40 ounce malt liquor beers, binging on  fallafel, and dropping his pants right then and there to lay a brick on rotting cigar leaves. and then pissing on the whole thing. simmer at 105 degrees +85% humidity for two weeks in july for best results.  yes. its that bad. and you thought mustard gas was bad!

before i end up on a big brother hit list id just like to say that i do not condone violence or use of weapons in any form. this blog is based on a tv show i saw on cable television and on the widely available wiki entry on the subject.  thank you.

other early forms of bio warfare were practiced by the vampire man himself, vlad the impaler, aka dracula. as we know from history (which is always innacaurate) when he wasnt busy with his hobby of impaling enemies he took time out  to cut off  heads of the diseased and throw them into water wells.   his opponents  got a nice big refreshing gulp of illness on those days. as im told, this was highly effective at spreading disease.  vlad also “sent subjects disguised as Turks, stricken with infectious disease, to live among the armies in their camps” . nice guy. this was about the same time  he tried creating an entire forest of the impaled to deter enemies passing through. it worked though. they ran like hell.

other forms of bio weapons; fungus in wells (assyrians), venemous snakes on a plane ship (hannibal), catapulting plague ridden corpses over enemy walls (mongols and turks and russians), sharing dirty blankets (our nice ancestors, british settlers of amerika) and that pretty much brings up up to date with the real scary shit of the 20th century.  which includes a variety of bacteria fungi vectors sprays insects etc… im not going anywhere near  the full array of how they can kill people now even if i had a gas mask and  and level 17 hazard suit. lets just say we all should be glad this stuff his hard to weaponize or wed all be screwed. (due to human error as i usually the case). for more details on the scary shit check wiki.