Rap

In case you missed it, this is a great moment for rap and comedy in our society. Jon Stewart rips Fox News a new one again for being hypocrites, but this time he does it in the form of Spoken Word.



I don't post this so much because of the politics, but because this whole issue is about words. Rappers used to push boundaries and force us to think about the nature of our society, and even though we've gotten away from it with modern rap, there is still a culture in hip hop of challenging the status quo, and there is still a gaggle of people who like to take lyrics out of context and use them to support silly agendas.

Common's great, and Public Enemy, but here's my favorite: KRS-One.

I write with music

Today I was having difficulty again with a section of my script that's supposed to be pretty funny and at the same time tense. One of those Hey put your gun down no YOU put your gun down no you first! kind of things. I was just staring at the screen, drawing a blank. I just wasn't in the mood for tense comedy.

Then the cat crawled into my lap so I had to pet him for like 15 minutes. You know how that is.

Then I realized I had my music set to "Romantic." I have three different music lists that I cycle through while I write: Romantic, Action, and Writing Music. Writing Music is my default setting, with music that's at a sort of natural pace and won't distract me. Action is lots of fast pace tunes that make me want to run and punch stuff. And romantic music is, well, romantic stuff.

I was listening the Romantic list today because I had just finished a scene where my hot male lead had a moment with my hot female lead, but forgot to switch it over. As soon as I switched back to Writing Music, it's like I pushed a button on my muse. Suddenly I was able to be all funny and whatever.

So another day where I started out sucking and ended up not sucking. Thanks to the ITunes this time.

I'm not sure I can write without music anymore. How about you? You write with music?

Best song ever in a movie

I had a conversation today that reminded me of To Sir, With Love, which put the song in my head all afternoon. I love that song. I used to listen to it as a kid and I always thought it was about a young woman talking to her first love.

In college, my first truly inspired story for creative nonfiction class was a story about my stepdad called "To Sir, With Love" and was about how I always had to call him "Sir" when he was mad.

Then as an adult I saw the film for the first time. I've said this before - want to know what teaching is like? Don't watch Dangerous Minds. Watch To Sir, With Love.

For about three weeks after I watched that movie I had that song in my head, only I couldn't get through it because I kept stopping to cry. Every time I thought about that line "A friend who taught me right from wrong and weak from strong, that's a lot to learn." it just gets me. Sometimes I feel like we've all gotten together and made an agreement that we're going to get through high school together. They drive me nuts, but I love those little bastards.

So given that I loved that song before I knew the movie, and now it has even more emotional appeal, I think if I had to choose a favorite movie soundtrack song of all time, that's probably the one.

You got one? Best song in a movie ever? With words? It doesn't count if it doesn't have words.

Michael Jackson's still got it

The Michael Jackson movie comes out tomorrow. I'm not really into concert films so this is not normally something I'd be into, and true to form, those first few commercials didn't make me want to rush to the theater. The early commercials featured images of Michael onstage, fiddling with his hat and swishing around in his moonwalking shoes, looking creepy in his White Person skin. Honestly that means very little to me.

Then last night I saw an ad that totally changed my mind. It still had Michael fiddling with his hat and swishing around in his moonwalking shoes, and he still looks creepy. But this time over all that footage they played "The Way You Make Me Feel."

Instantly the song brought back feelings of joyous nostalgia. I mean, in two seconds I went from not interested to OMG I think I have to see this.

They say that your sense of smell is closely connected with memory. The smell of moth balls makes you think of grandma, the smell of booze makes you think of your dad. But one song, one little three-minute tune can bring back your entire childhood. Remember dancing around to that song and not giving a fuck who saw you because you were having so much fun? I sure as hell do.

Why on Earth they weren't using the song in that preview before last night I have no idea. Honestly I think you could sell the film better with a black screen as long as you play the song against some cheering in the background.

I haven't been to a concert in ages. I'm starting to remember why I used to go all the time.

Play me a screenplay

I've been thinking about structure lately.

One day when I was 9, while my parents were searching for a hobby for me to take up, they brought home a nickel Bundy flute from the flea market and handed it to me. I learned to play it.

It seems like every girl was handed a flute at some point in childhood. I hear women all the time saying, "Oh yeah, I played the flute," when what they really mean is "Oh yeah, I picked up a flute and learned to play a scale and then forgot about it."

Not me. I actually learned to play the flute. I got a better instrument eventually, but I never got the B foot or the gold plated mouthpiece like some spoiled brats who think they're so awesome but have stringy hair.

I loved my flute. I liked the low notes best and always tried to get second part so I could play the harmonies. While the other girls were coming to blows about who gets first, I would volunteer for second. A band director once said it's probably because I'm an alto, so that's the range where I am comfortable.

I had a private tutor for a while and she thought I had enormous potential, but my mom stopped paying her because she said I didn't practice enough.

But here's why I didn't practice enough. Practice is boring. All those notes and scales and dippy little runs that you have to do over and over - they are not nearly as much fun as making up your own stuff. I was part of a flute ensemble and the band director who knew nothing about flute and never really taught us anything would hand us these little Mozart quartets to play. I don't care how great people say Mozart is, I loathe the man because of how many stupid little derivative flute quartets he wrote that all sound like an inverted "Eine Kleine Nacht Musik." That's right, I said it. Mozart sucks.

Anyway, I was never a very good reader. I'd go to auditions and contests and rock the prepared piece and play the scales just fine and then I'd go into the sight reading room. For those of you who don't know what sight reading is, it's when you get a piece in front of you that you've never seen before and you have to play it right then and there. I always sounded like I'd never even seen a music note before.

But at all those auditions they never had an improv category, and that's where I would have won. I used to start off during practice playing my flute and then I'd get bored with the piece in front of me and go look out the window while I made stuff up. And my mom would say, "Wow that was really pretty," and I wouldn't tell her I wrote it. The band director would overhear me do it sometimes but he never once mentioned it. And then one day I put it to good use by joining a rock band. Those were the days.

So you may be asking yourself, what the hell does this have to do with structure? Okay here it comes.

A screenwriting mentor of sorts has recently suggested I go back to my zombie script and do a new outline to restructure my script, and a member of my writers group is always asking what outlining method you use or suggesting everybody restructure stuff, usually using the Blake Snyder method because he's obsessed with Blake Snyder.

But I find that very, very difficult.

I outline, for sure. But it's a loose outline and as soon as I start writing I veer off and let the story take me through. I always outline, don't get me wrong. I would NEVER suggest starting a story with an idea and a cup of coffee and an hour of wasted time. But I like to improv.

When I play flute I know the notes and the key and the time and the tone I'm going for, and the rest is just filling in the gaps with what sounds right. I think the same way about writing. I know the basics of the story and of course I know how to write a screenplay like I know how to play a song, but I feel trapped when I feel like I'm interpreting too close to the lines.

But I'm trying to play the song the way it's written.

Song Meme

There's a meme going around that I find interesting so I'm going to weigh in.

“Find a song that sums up what you think it means to be a writer and post the lyrics on your blog and why you've chosen it. NB: It doesn't have to be your favourite song, it just has to express how you feel about writing and/or being a writer. It can be literal, metaphorical, about a particular form or aspect of writing - whatever you want.”

So I went through my ITunes and the minute I hit this one I knew it was right. This is how I feel about writing.

I bring you Carbon Leaf's "Comfort."



The lyrics are as follows:

I raced along an empty highway.
I chased the dawn
And cursed the new day,
Out of town, till nobody was around.

Love came along, my favorite enemy,
We hit head-on.
Why you befriended me... I don't know.
There's no need for letting go
When you've already lost control.

My life is open wide
The more you live, the less you will die.
Outside, floating free,
I'm finally open to see...
Could you be any more comfort to me?

Could you be...

You've figured out the warnings
And the reasons why,
You smoothed me out.
I hope you know there's nothing
I could give,
For showing me how to live.

I don't know how
But you know just how I feel.
Sticking out,
Like a dark horse in a snow white field.
Stirred up by the breeze,
Strong but not at peace,
Free but unreleased.

My life is open wide
The more you live, the less you will die.
Outside, floating free,
I'm finally open to see...
Could you be any more comfort to me?
Could you be any more comfort to me?

Caught up inside, all I wanna be...
Try to survive, all alone,
Outside your company.

Could you be any more comfort to me?
Could you be any more comfort to me?

Know your audience

Friday night I went to the OC to karaoke with a bunch of people. Normally when I go to karaoke Best Friend and I go to a place in Venice where there's a stage and a captive audience and room to dance. But the place we went Friday was basically a restaurant where during your turn to sing you sort of wander around with the mic, serenading everybody.

Early in the night some mysterious benefactor - who we all believed was this dude with a cowboy hat and sunglasses - offered $500 for a contest. The first five people to get the whole bar to sing get $100 each.

Now, the place in Venice would have been easy. It's a young crowd and I've been there enough times to know what gets everybody going. Oddly enough one of the better songs is "Gloria." You could also get a big reaction with "Santeria."

But this was not the place in Venice. This was a place in Tustin. The crowd was a little older, less Hollywood, a little more country. The song list was packed with Reba MacIntyre. I don't do country.

So what do I sing that will get these people going?

"Hey Jude" took a prize at our table. Then "Dancing Queen" took a prize for the drunk girls in the back. Then two guys from our table sang something by Queen I think and took another prize for our table. The prizes were disappearing.

I examined my crowd. I had to pick a song that would get them all singing - one song everybody knows, everybody loves, and everybody would sing. One song that would be a hit at any karaoke bar anywhere. A song I can nail in my sleep.

I went up to the guy. There was this dude standing there looking at the computer where my song was listed under his name going "I'm not singing that song. She put that in for me - I didn't put it in. I'm not singing it."

So I said "Hey, that's the song I was going to sing."

So the guy deletes the dude's name and puts mine in. And I sang it. And I ran up to the old people and sang it in their faces. And I ran up to the dude in deep conversation and sang a lyric to him, at which point he went "whoa." And I held up the microphone while everybody shouted along. And I won the last $100.

To be honest, though, I have to admit I kind of cheated. I sang "Sweet Caroline."

Does your mother know?

Everybody and their mom is talking about The Dark Knight today and god knows I want to see it too, but I've got something else on my mind right this minute.

Mamma Mia.

Yes, the ABBA movie. Today this movie is a bittersweet film for me.

When I was a little girl my mom used to teach sign language to teenagers by using ABBA songs. This was before the Internet and before CDs and Itunes and other such nonsense, so we listened to records, then eventually upgraded to tapes. So Mom had to listen to each song over and over and write down the words so she could figure out how to sign them. And I helped.

That means I know how to sign bits of "Dancing Queen," "Take a Chance on Me" and "Knowing Me, Knowing You" among others. Just bits, though. Oddly enough I can also sign the chorus to "Three Times a Lady."

But this is about ABBA.

There was a brief period when I was in college when my mom and I spent a Christmas without Stepfather. Now I love Stepfather, but he was always kind of an anal bastard about decorating the tree. Every light had to be just so and every ornament had to be perfectly placed in the right spot to impress anyone who walked in the door, and if it wasn't exactly right he'd tear everything off the tree and start over.

So this one year when Mom and I got to decorate the tree we had a field day. We threw the lights up all willy-nilly, we put ugly ornaments in front, we mixed colored lights with white lights with blinky lights and had a good time doing it. And we listened to ABBA. Specifically "Does Your Mother Know That You're Out" over and over and over all afternoon.

One year for Christmas my parents bought me the three disk ABBA greatest hits set. The next year for my mother's birthday I copied them onto tapes so she could listen to ABBA in the car.

I always wanted to go see the live musical with my mom but it just kind of never came up.

So when I saw ads for Mamma Mia show up on TV I got excited.

The other day when Officer Beefcake and I were eating pizza on Larchmont some promotional weirdos for the movie marched by with a boom box and beach balls videotaping themselves singing "Dancing Queen." Of course I immediately chimed in and may have ended up on the video, which is probably a special feature for the DVD so, you know, I might be on there. Officer Beefcake was disgusted because beefcakes are morally opposed to ABBA. They prefer Van Halen.

So I'm all excited about Mamma Mia. It's the perfect movie for me and my mom to go see together.

Except that Mom lives in North Carolina and I live in Los Angeles. So today, for the first time in almost four years, I am homesick.

Jump Little Children on Scrubs

I just wanted to share my excitement. I was just watching this week's Scrubs episode, "My Number One Doctor," and the last song at the end played over the poignant stuff was a terrific song called "B-13" by Jump Little Children.

The band is from Charleston, SC. I saw them open for Rusted Root years ago in Raleigh and immediately fell in love.

They are amazing but haven't gotten much attention out of the southeast. Every time I play any of their music for somebody they always want to know who the hell that band is because they sound fantastic.

So I'm very happy because being played at the end of Scrubs means people will be googling the song to figure out who the band is. Well here you go googlers. There was no video for B-13 but here's as equally excellent song called "Broken." Listen and fall in love.