Adventures in medical care

I'm technically on vacation right now. My track was on for eight weeks, then we get eight weeks off before coming back in November, but I was offered the chance to teach for the entire vacation and make a shitpile of money, so I took it. I'd love to actually take a vacation and work on my script since I haven't really had a weekday off since February except my brief reunion trip, but when you're juggling bills the way I am you can't afford to turn down the extra dough.

My thyroid glands started swelling up on Monday. By Tuesday it was getting hard to eat solid foods, but it was the last day of the semester and I needed to clean out my room for the teacher coming in. I was being moved up to the top floor for eight weeks so I could move back in November. Don't try to figure it out; our school's a little retarded. By Wednesday it hurt to talk and I couldn't even swallow water without pain, but it was the first day of the new semester and I couldn't leave a new set of kids with a sub, so I went. At this point I'm on a liquid diet, but even that is too painful. I consumed about 800 calories total yesterday, including a bowl of soup I forced down.

What's been really annoying is how delicious my neighborhood smells. I want food but all I can do is chug down fat free chocolate milk.

Last night I finally took a flashlight and examined my tonsils. White stuff. Strep.

So today I went to the doctor. Not the urgent care center five miles away, but the fancy doctor's office by the airport forty-five minutes from my apartment, which is the only doctor in town my medical plan will allow me to go to. After waiting almost an hour, a tiny Asian man comes in, does the exact same thing with the flashlight I had done the night before and says "Oh yeah. You've got THE TONSILITIS." Then he writes a prescription for Penicillin and I'm out. Total actual time with doctor: 4 minutes. They did not validate my parking.

Then there was the nurse in the elevator who kept going on and on to the other nurse about how fabulous her lunch was. It was so much food that she had to take half of it out in this styrofoam container she kept waving under my nose. Had I not been so malnourished, I'd have punched her.

The doctor's office scale put me at 135. I've been going to the gym like gangbusters for six months, losing about a pound a week, in a valiant effort to get myself down to 135. I haven't been to the gym in a while because they fired Trainer for no good reason and he's the main reason I go to that ghetto place, so I'm trying to get out of my contract and follow Trainer to his new gym. At any rate, I'm wondering if it's even worth it. Fuck gyms. I'm going to publish a book: Emily's Involuntary Anorexia Diet. It'll sell millions. Just close off your throat and you won't be abe to eat food anymore.

I tried to drink one of those chocolate Hershey's Kisses milkshakes for lunch because I've got calories to spare today, but it turns out those things aren't actually good. At least I got some Penicillin, although why it takes five pharmacists an hour to fill one prescription is a mystery I will never unravel.

I have a feeling I'm not going to be able to go to work tomorrow either. That's one of the problems with a job that requires you to talk all day - it requires you to talk all day, whether you can or not. Screw that. I'm staying home. Expect some progress on that progress bar.

Somebody else has your idea

One of these was a spec and one of these was a pitch, but they both sold in the same week to two different production companies:

Movie #1: A college student decides to debunk the urban legend of the Mercy Killer, a killer who makes his victims' deaths look like suicides, only to discover that he is all too real and has chosen her as his next victim.


Movie #2: Set in the world of urban legends on college campuses, with one horrifying legend in particular turning out to be true.


I guess they think we've all forgotten about Urban Legend by now.

Brutal killing makes me weepy

Saturday night I watched the penultimate season one episode of Rome. I like Rome. Period pieces are so hard to pull off on television, but as we've all learned, HBO likes nothing more than to accel at a challenging project.

The episode is called "Spoils" and it's about Titus Pullo's descent into the squalor of Rome's prisons and gladiator ring. He's been arrested for murder and must now pay the consequence.

First of all, the characters on this show are complex people. Every episode my allegiance changes as more people betray those who love them or put themselves on the line for others. I'd like to add Mark Antony as my eleventh favorite character on TV. He's loyal to Caesar beyond reason but he's rutheless. He's honest. He makes no apologies for who he is and he doesn't stand for hypocrisy. He's the man with the least scruples but at the same time the one character you can trust to do exactly what he claims he will. James Purefoy is also brutally hot and occasionally appears buck naked. Yay.

But what I loved about this particular episode was the gladiator scene. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.

As Pullo sits in the gladiator ring sadly waiting his demise, the gladiators try to egg him into fighting because nobody wants to watch a straight-up execution. The mistake they make is in bringing up Pullo's military regiment. He goes ballistic, yelling out the name of his regiment as he slices through gladiators left and right. But there is an endless stream of men and Pullo, though an extraordinary badass, is still only a man and eventually they will kill him. His best friend Varinus, the former superior officer turned politician watches in pain, unwilling to risk his career to help his metaphorical brother.

At this point while watching it I was screaming at my television, tears flowing freely down my cheeks, "Save him! Damn your career! Just save him, please!"

Now that's good television. I was completely relieved when Varinus finally couldn't take it anymore and stepped in to save the day. I thanked him profusely, wiping the tears away.

That's why I love television. Somewhere in a writer's room a bunch of writers thought up that plot point and together with the director and a bunch of brilliant actors and crew people took it to the screen and made me feel a genuine emotional connection to people who supposedly lived centuries ago. Amazing.

The best of this week's essays

Prompt:

Choose one of the following questions to answer.
1) Why are the authorities in The Crucible so resistant to believe the girls are lying?
2) What are Reverend Parris' motivations in support of the witch trials?
3) What role does sex and sexual repression play in The Crucible?

You can guess which question most of them tried to answer. Actually, most of them just gave me a summary of the plot. Here are the most memorable responses:

"The story I'm going to write about is named The Crucible written by the author author miller. I will be explaining this story in this essay I'm going to write. I will be writting three body paragraph to tell you my three favorite parts of the story I liked the most."

"In one way Mrs. Proctor knew that she had failed him because she didn't satisfied him. For example when the time of having sex she would just lay there and wouldn't do anything, Mr. Proctor would always do all the work."

"After Proctor had said that he had sex with Abigail, Marry Warren talk too and said that Abigail was the one doing witchcraft and that she was a bitch."

One down, six more to go

Even though the progress bar hasn't moved this week, I have been working on my spec pilot in my head. In the beginning I had a vague idea for a concept that had potential. If you read my post about my favorite TV characters you know how much I love characters who blur the line between good and evil, so the cornerstone of my script is a plan to turn the view of a superhero on its head and I'm pretty thrilled with the mission statement I've established.

My problem has been in developing the characters. I'm trying to play with cliches without having my characters become them, and that's always a challenge. I'm a little worried about giving my characters personlaity quirks just for the sake of quirkiness, because it feels like everything's already been done. So I was thinking about one of my characters, the protagonist's best friend who's a guy with no real conscience who does a shady job for a living, but a job that would get him laid with ease. I was trying to figure out his angle, how to flesh him out and give him more personality, and I remembered something Bill Martell wrote about giving your character a trait that's the opposite of their normal behavior. So I gave my guy a domineering girlfriend. What if this badass criminal who feels no guilt at all about punching some innocent guy in the face repeatedly crumbles at the slightest word from his girl? That's a quirk that adds a little comedy potential in addition to giving us a little more humanity in the guy. I'm basing him on an actor friend of mine who would never be whipped but who makes a fantastic villain, and I really hope he doesn't mind me using this picture of him. He looks exactly like my character needs to.

This guy is now my favorite character in the story. My protag is going to have to get more interesting to keep up.

But then I worry that his new character quirks have probably been done too. I guess there is no real way to be completely creative. There's only 36 dramatic situations, after all, and only so many different ways people can behave. But after all this time we're still surprising each other, so I guess that's something. I can only hope my characters charm everybody else the way they're charming me.

So good so good so good.

Are movies so great because they echo our true lives, or are they pushing us to become more like the fictional versions of ourselves?

Last night I joined the guy from Fever Pitch at the Red Sox/Angels game. Thank God the Sox won because I think I'd still be hiding in the bathroom to avoid his Hulk-like behavior at the ballpark if they lost. Instead, I got hugs and high fives and generally cheerful behavior.

I was Drew Barrymore, but without the laptop. I asked a question about fastballs and got a twenty-minute demonstration of all the pitches that exist. There are more than I thought, and boy do I not remember most of them. I felt like I was in baseball class, but it's more fun than it sounds. Baseball fans kind of light up when they teach you things. It's adorable. It really was like hanging out with Jimmy Fallon.

There was a fist fight nearby between fans of the opposing teams. Why does an Angels fan from LA pick a fight with the big-ass dock worker from Boston? He had a beer-induced concussion and was carried out on a stretcher.

I'd never been to a major league game before because we don't really have any teams in NC. It's a basketball state. But I had so much fun I wish I had tickets to tonight's game too. I think I'm a baseball fan now.

Just when you think the world is against you...

I'm not exactly the world's most organized teacher. My class is laid back and most days I do my lesson planning the night before or that morning on the way in. I know the general idea of what I'm going to teach, but I don't lay out my lessons in advance, and I don't pay careful attention to the objectives and state standards and agendas and other stuff we're always supposed to do to look good on paper. On paper, I look like the worst teacher ever.

In the classroom, however, I get things done. My kids don't always realize they're learning because I don't like to shine the flashlight on the material. I like my education to sneak in when you're not looking and clock you over the head and run off with your woman. That conversation we had about herpes? That was really about the archetype of the goddess figure. Take that, guy who taught that boring methods class. We all know how much I idolize Joss Whedon in my writing life, but Frank McCourt is my teaching idol. I think Teacher Man was written just for me. That tiny Irish man doesn't have time for crappy rules that ignore common sense and I'm the same way.

Still, yesterday a colleague of mine told me I was in trouble. I'd already had a talking to about my pacing (I get off topic and spend days discussing stuff not at all related to the play we're reading, and this makes the play go on for infinity) and I've been caught several times not writing the day's objective on the board or dressing way too casually for education. Then a crazy lady supposedly wrote me and another teacher up for not working hard enough to keep pot smokers off the stairs near our classrooms while we are supposed to be in those classrooms teaching. I have an outside balcony room which I love, but it means I get ditchers out there and I have to shoo them into the building. Apparently the crazy lady didn't think I was doing a good enough job. Probably because while she just yells at them, I tell them that if they don't leave I will just keep annoying them to death with my obnoxious voice until they go to class. My way gets better results. I think she's jealous.

The point is, I was feeling pretty demoralized going into a meeting with my boss. Everybody had to have this meeting at one point or another, but I just knew I was going to get reamed for my lack of professionalism even though my kids are learning. Because that's always bugged me about teaching: a teacher can be the most organized, lesson-planning fool in the world but still spend the entire class period doing worksheets and watching videos, and they get all the accolades because they cross their Ts the right way. Meanwhile, the one who's really teaching gets yelled at for failing to fill out the proper forms on time. In an ideal world I'd be able to do both, but I'm a writer. You know how we are. I'm amazed I remember to put my pants on properly.

So I go into this meeting and my boss is very pleasant and gives me a few pointers and I listen waiting for the big blow of insults, but they don't come. Instead she says the following: "I'm happy. Because when I walk into your classroom your students are smiling. And it's not because they're not doing anything, it's because they're learning."

And that's why I get to keep teaching upper-classmen. I'm good at it. Apparently.

The Ten TV Characters I Love the Most

So Joss Whedon posted his top 25 favorite TV characters, and since I'm attempting to become a prettier, less feminine version of him and I love making lists, I'm gonna copy him and make my own top 10 list because 25 is too hard.

My Ten Favorite TV Characters

10)Weyoun, Star Trek Deep Space Nine. He was a vorta. You might think I'm coming out of left field on this one, but hear me out. Weyoun had some of the best facial expressions, and he did it all covered in latex. He rarely let anything ruffle his feathers. He was always charming and poised and completely devoted to the Dominion. Whenever they wanted to kill him they could just clone him first, so he could die a lot and still show up on the show. But I liked the first Weyoun best, the one who was seducing the Cardassians. He was funny.




9)Vic Mackey, The Shield. Talk about your moral ambiguity. No character in television history has made me more confused about my values. He'll give a prostitute money to get food for her son, then beat the shit out of a suspect and steal drugs from the Armenian mob. He loves his wife and kids, but has no objection to crazy sex with a confidential informant. Perticularly during the first season, I often found myself spending hours puzzling over how I feel about Vic. I have no idea what's going to happen to him when it's all over, but I want to find out.




8)Illyria, Angel. She's blue and she's unfamiliar with our puny human ways. If they had to kill Fred, I'm glad they replaced her with the coolest morally vacuous chick they could find. She's curious about everything and at the same time thinks it's all beneath her. And she considers Spike her toy and wants to keep him as a pet. In the finale she says "I shall make trophies of their spines." And she does. It's just a shame we didn't get more time to know the crazy broad.




7)The Chief, Battlestar Galactica. I know most people would choose the captain or the president or Baltar, but I love Chief Tyrol the most. He loved Sharon so completely he was willing to risk his career to be with her, and she turned out to betray him. But that didn't matter because the Chief is such a good man that he forgave her and even blamed himself for not being able to protect her from Callie, with whom he has his own issues. Plus, he built that cool spy plane.




6)JD, Scrubs. This is my only shout out to comedy.
JD is adorably goofy. I love his outlook on life - so hopeful and appreciative of what he has, yet when things get serious he always knows exactly how to hit it home. I would gladly hang out with JD any time, I just wouldn't date him.




5)Jayne Cobb, Firefly. Dumb, muscular, sex-crazed, hilarious. I adore Jayne. Hell, he's the hero of Canton, how can you not adore him? I always wanted to know why a guy like that would follow Mal around with such blind devotion. There was so much backstory and so much potential in his character. I'm sorry the world will never get to see it. And if you haven't seen Firefly by now, you're missing. Go rent it. Or better yet, just buy it because you'll want to watch it over and over again. And Jayne will make you laugh every time.




4)Logan Echolls, Veronica Mars. I agree with Joss on this one. Logan is complicated as hell. He managed to start the show as the stereotypical asshat rich kid until we learned about his life, and then we all fell in love with him collectively. I cringe every time he tries to sabatoge himself. It's impossible not to respect him because Logan is who he is and refuses to apologize or fake anything. If I was ever in a jam in Neptune I would call Logan first, then tell him to call Veronica's dad.




3)Original Cindy, Dark Angel. She manages to be the gay character and the black character and it doesn't seem forced at all because Valerie Rae Miller owns it. Her vocabulary alone is worth its own dictionary. I wish I could talk like that and get away with it. Hell, I wish I could call myself Original Cindy. Plus, she put herself on the line for transgenics several times when she could easily have kept her head down and stayed out of trouble. She's one awesome chick.




2)Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. He's run through every emotional state possible on that show. He's been evil, pathetic, sweet, angry. He's saved the world a couple of times, but his best scenes were during his struggles as a monster trying to be a man. There is a scene in the season seven episode "Beneath You" when he lays his vampire body over a sizzling cross in the church, demanding to know what God wants of him. He's comic relief so often that when he plays it tragic, it's to perfection. Plus, his sex scenes are steamy. That man oozes sexuality.




1)Aeryn Sun, Farscape. She's beautiful, she's badass, and she looks good in leather. One of my favorite lines in all of television is from a season one episode when Aeryn busts open a prison cell and rescues John Chrichton. Stark, John's fellow prisoner, asks who she is. "That," John Chrichton replies with a glowing smile, "is the radiant Aeryn Sun". That about summed her up for the rest of the series. She was half of the team that sold the romance around which the show rotated, one of the best on-screen romances ever. Plus, she wore a battle pony. She's so cool.



Who's in your top ten?

Today's the day, bitches.

If I actually knew you, you could crash at my place.

So it's getting on in August, and that means it's time for the annual blogosphere question that haunts all aspiring screenwriters across the land: Should I go to the Expo? I hear the worry in your voices, the fear that the ridiculous amount of money you drop to fly to LA and stay in a hotel may only result in hours of boring power point presentations and maybe a free pen. Well, I went to the Expo last year, so let me share my experience and let you decide, because I am nothing if not full of ancient wisdom. Well, full anyway. I just ate dinner.

I didn't exactly go to the Expo as a normal paying customer last year. If there's one thing teachers are famous for, it's our underwhelming salaries, so I volunteered to help so I could get in free. When you volunteer you work one day, and that means you get to use your special pass to go to whatever seminars you want the other days, which is peachy because anything outside the keynote speaker room is extra. We volunteers stand at the door in our free T-shirts and make you look like an idiot by throwing you out if you didn't take the time to read the directions. If you had, you'd have known that you had to buy tickets to this thing ahead of time, loser. Get out and take your composition notebook and your big dorky messenger bag with you.

On my day off I only sat in on Bill Martell's seminar and I actually learned something and wasn't bored. I'm a teacher; that's the best compliment I can give.

I'm pretty sure most of the speakers were not that good. I don't recommend spending your money on the seminars unless you've looked the speaker up and know they have more credits to their name than sitting next to Shane Black one time in film school and copying off his notes. They tend to say crap you could have learned better by reading the columns on Wordplayer.

Speaking of Shane Black, when the boy wonder tried to show up in cognito on the last day he gave his cell number to William Goldman. Some douchetard actually looked over his shoulder and copied it down. I would love to have been in on THAT phone conversation.

At any rate, after I listened to Bill I went to hear John August talk in the big room and learned some things there too. For one thing, I learned that John August is very wise and adorable as hell and that some aspiring screenwriters are amazingly pretentious. I pretty much spent my whole first day sitting alone and listening to other writers go on about how awesome they are and how much everybody else sucks.

The second day I got there early because it's first come, first served in choosing your spot for the day. They make you pick a spot and then you stay there all day, and I wanted the big room because that's where David Koepp, Paul Haggis, William Goldman and my personal hero Joss Whedon were going to be during the day. This is where my teacher advantage really showed itself. Most writers can't get up before noon. I was the first one in line, bitches. 6:30 a.m. I was not going to miss Joss Whedon.

That's how I made friends. There were two really cute guys working the room with me all day and I made friends with them both, one of whom later did me a huge solid that I didn't deserve. I wish I could say I'm still friends with them, but I didn't do a very good job of maintaining. Maybe this year I'll see them again and rekindle.

Anyway, that's also how I had fun. I worked one seminar and learned that most guest speakers are actually kind of common sensey and not really worth the extra ticket price. Then I sat in the big room all day, doing cartwheels (Literally - I made you wait so I could practice gymnastics. Kiss my ass.) while people waited outside clamoring to get in and tracking down microphones so people could ask questions. Anybody who marched up to the mic in the middle of the room to ask a question - that was all my doing. You'd have had to yell if it weren't for me. I'm also the reason no cell phones went off during Joss Whedon's interview. I used my teacher voice to threaten everybody. I wonder if he appreciated that. Oh, and on the video there's one lone cheer for the mention of the X-Men comic. That would be me. I'm all over that bitch in real subtle ways.

Joss Whedon actually looked at me for a minute when he walked by. I buckled like an idiot and stared at him, open-mouthed and shaking. So much for being cool when you come face to face with your hero. Nathan Fillion did not look at me, which is unfortunate because I would have handled that better.

I stayed in that room most of the day and heard all the keynote speakers. That's all I really wanted and that's what I recommend you spend most of your time on. Jeff Goldsmith is a great interviewer, and you get far more out of his conversations with the writers than you will from most of the people trying to justify their pay on the side.

The point is, I had fun and met people. And absolutely without question if you go you must stay for the networking party, a great opportunity to connect with other writers. One word of warning: don't mention podcasting to Jeff Goldsmith unless you're really into it and want to talk about it for three hours.

Do not bother with the pitch fest. Massive waste of time.

If you feel up to it the Open is worth it. I'm not brave enough to try, but I loved watching the scripts presented the final day and the winner definitely got a well-deserved push in the old career. The downside is that you miss everything else that's going on while you write.

So there you are. If you go let me know and we'll meet up for drinks.

We at White Board Markers have no sense of humor that we are aware of, ma'am.

So I suck at comedy. Last time I tried writing a comedy it turned into some kind of generic teen movie with no real jokes. In the five pages of my Earl spec I have completed thus far I only have one real joke, and that's a comment I overheard someone say at the beach that I thought would be perfect coming out of Randy's mouth. The irony is, my dramas include some great comedic moments. I guess I'm funnier when I'm not trying.

So I'm finally giving up the ghost and ditching the comedy. It's time I accept that I'm not funny. Hence the disappearance of the Earl spec from the progress bar.

The good news is its replacement. I was flopping back and forth between two ideas for a spec pilot and neither of them worked. One was a comedy that didn't really lend itself easily to the episodic format, and the other was an expensive sci-fi that had a lot of elements of existing shows. Then I realized that an action feature I was twisting around in my head would make a perfect TV drama unlike anything on the air at the moment but still following a commercial mold. And if Heroes takes off on NBC this fall I'll be in the perfect position to pitch it.

I'll just add Earl to the ever-growing pile of specs I never finished. I learned my lesson. No more comedy, Emily. Stick to what you're good at. Action drama with morally ambiguous characters.

My Jordan's name was Steve

There is a Jordan Catalano in every high school. The hot, broody guy who never gets upset and either plays sports or guitar. He drives a car that he knows how to fix if it breaks down, he has lots of hair that falls casually in his face when he's thinking too hard, he smokes, he knows how to lean against lockers just so, and he doesn't give a damn about your authority when he wants to skip school to go to the beach and surf. And every single girl in the school, whether she admits it or not, is madly in love with Jordan Catalano.

Oh sure, you can tell yourself that Brian Krakow is the guy. He's nice, he's funny and he really gets you. You don't have to work too hard with Brian. There's no sense of danger, no reason to worry because Brian will always be there. Nobody else appreciates how awesome he is, and really, he is awesome. I swear. He's got personality, you just gotta see it. And nice eyes. He has nice eyes. I'm not kidding.


Most of us try Brian Krakow. Many of us end up marrying Brian Krakow. Hell, you might actually be Brian Krakow, and that's okay because Brian wins in his own way. He's in this for the long haul, when the girl finally gets tired of chasing Jordan around and getting hurt when he doesn't emote enough to suit her delicate needs. Because Jordan's not an emoter. That's why he had to get poor old Brian to write his love letters. But that doesn't mean every girl doesn't still want Jordan Catalano.

It doesn't matter how many girls he's cheated on or how many hearts he's broken, or how many times he's patted you on the head and told you what a great sister you'd make. One of these days, Jordan will turn around and see you and realize you're beautiful and change his ways. He'll be the Warren Beaty to your Annette Benning and you will live happily ever after driving around in his car looking cool and making all the popular cheerleading bitches jealous.

Until you're in your mid-to-late twenties. Then Jordan Catalano is kind of a loser. But a boy who used to be Jordan Catalano - that's hot stuff. The reformed bad boy who still maintains some of that residual coolness, the responsible possible father of your children who admits he's made some bad decisions in the past but is so glad he cleaned up so he could meet you and make you his woman. That guy is hot.

The truth is, we never stop wanting Jordan Catalano. We'll always regret not having him, and getting him as an adult is kind of a conquest in itself. That's what makes him such a great character. My So-Called Life nailed every high school girl's dreamboat - hot, broody, nonchalant and a little bit stupid. Poor Brian never stood a chance.

The best of this week's student essays

Prompt: What is a hero? Use a character from any film you have seen recently to define what it means to be a hero in today's society.


Memorable responses:

"[Spiderman] gets to swing around all day and when theirs is trouble he could sens it with is spidy seens know that is ganster. I also like his attitude he is not a cold blooded bastard that acts fuck up. Neither a consided muthefucker he acts like himself just who he is suppost to be."


"Then they say a girl name Lisa so Terminator start shooting they had to take Lisa were they stay at. They had to take the robots a way from her. The boy name Alan he was helping Terminator fight."


"But I think if Superman really excist in this time he would have to be Hood and get to know all the gangs of LA and he probably would be Black with nappy hair and with muscles. But he would be cool with the Bloods and the Crips and that would be his reason for his Red and Blue outfit."

Smallville killed my family

My response to Claude's post ended up running so long I decided to plant that sucker over here.

These are the reasons I can't stand Smallville.

I love superhero stories. The good versus evil, innocents in peril, righteous conquering all despite the frailty of human nature - it's that Joseph Campbell monomyth we've all had beaten into us repeatedly in writing seminars and classes. I even took and entire eight week period in my senior English class to focus solely on the hero in literature, and it's turning into the most fascinating curriculum I've ever used. So even though Superman isn't my favorite of the tights-wearing saviors (I'm a Marvel girl), I was still pretty damn excited about Smallville. I watched the first two seasons pretty diligently, but I just couldn't take it anymore after that.

First of all, Tom Welling, although still brutally hot and I'd totally nail him, is like 57 by now. I'm all for actors who can pull it off playing teenagers, but he was already too old to play the role when they hired him. Now it's just silly. They must have to use Superman's actual heat vision to keep his five o'clock shadow at bay.

But I can get past that - suspension of disbelief and all - if only they didn't water it down so much. Smallville got all WB'd out. You know: predictable, pretty people over-enunciating as they have long discussions about why they keep doing the same things over and over every episode. It's like Dawson's Creek if Dawson could bale an entire farm worth of hay in ten seconds and if he whined a lot more while doing it. In fact, have you ever seen Clark do anything other than bale hay? What the hell do they grow on this farm? Fences? Dirt? Dirt fences?

Then there was Pete. Poor Pete, the only black guy in Smallville. His only purpose in life was to show up at the last minute and tell Clark somebody was in peril, unless it was the one episode a season where they gave him a one-episode hobby like hot-rod racing that put him in the peril, leaving some other perifferal character to alert Clark to Pete's dangerous temporary interest. That is, until the day they packed him off to the land of discarded TV token minorities. Right now, Pete is somewhere playing pool with that Latina from The OC.

But most importantly, the only people who ever really suffer on that show all deserve it. Clark always saves the day. I've literally called the moment the whoosh sent him onto the scene to catch somebody just as they were falling into the ravine, or facing off against a bullet, or slamming their head into a wall over stupid plot devices. Okay maybe that last one was just what I was doing in my living room, but still. At the end of one season they actually had the gumption to blow up Chloe. I was excited. I hate Chloe. She doesn't talk like any high school girl I've ever taught, not that Lana does but maybe Lana's just pretentious. Chloe's annoying. Anyway, after trying to kill her and making Clark save her like four dozen times, they blew up Chloe. Yay. So I tuned in the next season and there's Chloe, not blown up at all. It was all a ploy by Lex or something but I don't really know because that's the last episode I watched.

And what the hell is up with this picture? Seriously?

But speaking of Lex, what's up with a rich dude hanging around with high school kids all the time? Where I come from we call that creepy. And don't get me started on the actual town of Smallville. I haven't spent a lot of time in Kansas, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't look so remarkably like Vancouver. Canyons? Caves? Ravines? Foresty mountain passes? Really? In Kansas? Dammit, Smallville, make an effort here.

I have to go watch an episode of Buffy now to calm me down. Nobody's safe from peril there.

The first cup is free, but after that you have to pay.

I don't like most drinks. I don't drink coffee, tea, milk, diet sodas or anything that claims to be healthy. That leaves water, lemonade and Dr. Pepper. Oh glorious, glorious Dr. Pepper, how I love your caffeinated tangy sweetness and your perky aftertaste. You are the only real beverage I love.

So it's a bit odd that my room became the hub of coffee-addicted students. After the umpteenth time I yelled and kicked desks to wake up my first period, I was told that only coffee would keep them up. When my ex moved out he didn't take the coffee pot, so I brought it in the next day.

A month later, the coffee pot has consumed the identity of the room. All three classes have a self-appointed coffee maker who gets the water and starts the brew, and I keep a small bank next to the pot for donations so that every Saturday I can go to Vons and buy any specific coffee needs we may have for the week. The kids sometimes go through three pots per 95 minute class period. Occasionally they show up with mugs of their own and little cartons of milk.

I have been forced to make a treaty with the vast ant population that regularly marches up to the table to take inventory of my sugar stock. Initially, I had a container filled with sugar, but by the end of the first day the ants raised a flag over it and claimed it for their own in a fairly disgusting display of insect pride. I switched to Splenda packets, but they never give up hope. The still come by every now and then and sniff around, and occasionally get away with a little spilled non-dairy creamer. They share my distaste for the coffee itself, though.

Yes, I am caffeinating the youth of South Central. Most likely, I have hooked them on the liquid crack so they spend the rest of the day as wired little freaks searching for their next fix. But boy do they love coming to my class.

An ode to Pink Bag

Sometime an accessory is so fabulous you just have to take a moment and appreciate its existence. I bought Pink Bag for six dollars from a street vendor in Rome. It's some sort of knock-off of a really expensive brand called "Pinko Bag", which may or may not be some kind of Communist purse.

I love Pink Bag. I love Pink Bag first and foremost because it's not pink. I get weird looks sometimes when people puzzle out why it claims to be a color it is not. What's that bag trying to say? Does it have an identity crisis? Is it color blind? Is that girl carrying it kind of an idiot? It makes for a fine conversation starter.

Pink Bag is so cheap that it's just an empty sack inside. No pockets, no special zippers, no fancy schmancy bells and whistles. Just a little perfectly-sized bag, big enough to hold all the crazy shit I carry - and I carry a lot of emergency supplies in that sucker - but small enough to fit snugly around the shoulder and tuck in close to the body so as to never be a burden on my comfort.

Pink Bag's days are numbered, though. The seams on the inside have started to unravel and get caught up in the zipper. I patiently pull out the Swiss army knife because I keep that in there too, and cut the loose threads, but they soon return. The glittery letters that embody Pink Bag's identity have faded to a dull dust of color over the smooth black surface. It's like watching your favorite pet get weaker and weaker until the day you have to run off to the vet and put it down. Scratch that, it's like watching your favorite accessory become old and busted. Because I love the damn bag, but I love my cat more.

So this is for you, Pink Bag, for however much more time we may have together. I don't care whether you go with my oufit or not, you will always be a part of my wardrobe until the day I have to cut you open with scissors because your zipper will no longer run on its tracks. There will be other purses, but there will only ever be one Pink Bag in my life.

Waiting to Exhale a rain of bullets on your ass

Scott the Reader has an interesting post and discussion about female screenwriters and it got me to thinking. I love action scripts. I'm just not a romcom girl. Give me explosions and cool martial arts battles and swords any day and I'll be happy, as long as it has substance.

So most of my scripts are action-oriented, even my TV specs. I managed to work a fist fight into my House spec, and don't get me started on Supernatural and the ridiculous level of violence I plugged into that one. But I also gravitate toward female protagonists, and that's something seriously lacking in action scripts.

TV has plenty of hot, ass kicking-chicks with substance. Sydney Bristow, Buffy Summers, Xena. But films? Aside from Ripley, who else is worth watching?

Catwoman, Elektra, Aeon Flux, Ultraviolet - not exactly setting the world on fire.


I have a theory as to why. Men did most of the writing and directing, first of all. There is a credited woman on Catwoman and Aeon Flux was directed by a woman, but men still dominated the story construction, and they definitely own the studios. That's bound to affect how the women are written.

But I think it goes deeper than that. All the women who lead in action pics tend to have one thing in common: anger. They're all so pissed off at life and eat men for breakfast, and that's not an appealing hero for men or for women. Take Ripley, without a doubt one of the best female heroes ever. She started as a tough woman, but one with vulnerabilities. She's genuinely hurt when the doctor turns out to betray her, and she runs scared from the Alien much of the time in the first movie. In the second one, she's much badder ass, but she's only that way because she's afraid and she wants to protect those she loves. She's still a woman, after all.


And that's what's wrong with the third and fourth films, among other things. There's still a remnant of that femininity in Three, but by Four she's so angry and confused that's she's a turn-off as a character. She's just a big ball of rage and not really a woman anymore. A woman doesn't have to be enraged to be tough.

What do you think? Am I full of crap or am I a storytelling genius?

My kids are a riot.

This morning I nearly passed out, I was laughing so hard. My kids are a funny little bunch, especially when they're not trying. Apparently, "Marco's" girlfriend ran off with his best friend and he's very upset about it, so he's been talking a lot of shit to the friend. But when the friend offered to fight Marco, he balked and ran across the street, and "Stephanie" finds this unmanly. So they got into this long volley of insults about whther or not Marco should have fought his friend. Then "Juan" chimes in to say that he thinks it's not worth it to get in a fight over a girl, at which point Stephanie turns on him and uses her sharp whit on both boys at the same time, all while I'm trying desperately to get the conversation back to The Crucible by interjecting a lot of "okays" and "yes, but it's Danforth's turn to talk," all while trying really hard to control my laughter. The whole time Stephanie was applying her mascara. She barely even looked away from the mirror. Then in the middle of it all another student let out a loud shriek because he couldn't take the bickering anymore.

I wished I had a video camera. All I kept thinking about was how I hoped I didn't forget the exhange because it would make beautiful dialogue in a teen comedy.

Ten years can improve a lot of bad haircuts

Bonus points to the person who can find me in my shiny blue dress. I'm kind of easy to spot. Taking this picture nearly cost the photographer his life as he stood in traffic, but I think it was worth it. We look fabulous.

I am so glad I went to my high school reunion. I ended up having such a good time that I missed my flight and stayed an extra day. Totally worth the cost of the flight.

It's funny how the core of what we were has never changed. People got better looking and more mature and happier with who they are, but the popular people are still charming and the dorky people are still a little awkward and the same people end up hanging out with each other.

I was surprised by how many people knew who I was. Some of them I had no clue as to how the hell I knew them, but I was glad to see them anyway. One thing that was weird was being hit on by boys I used to play hackey-sack with at lunch. I guess I'm not just "one of the guys" anymore. Also, I apparently just missed out on being named best dressed, not bad for a girl whose standard high school uniform was a flannel shirt and baggy jeans.

Cleaning out my Brain

I'm heading to North Carolina tomorrow morning and will be back on Tuesday. I'm not sure if I'll post or not.

Don't tell Trainer, but I ate a donut today. Why? Because it was there and the ants didn't get it. I'm so ashamed.

The school had a power outage all day yesterday. My room was actually not too bad because I have an exterior classroom - 85 degrees. I'm from a hot climate, so it wasn't so bad, although I did fall asleep at my desk during my planning period. The kids, however, perfected their whining skills. I got a little work out of them, but it's difficult when the light's too dark to read. Class discussion on philosophical issues for the juniors, college stories for the seniors. Power is back today. Good thing, because I had to make a lot of photocopies if I'm going to be out for three days.

I've outlined the plot for my Earl spec. I'll index card it tonight so I can sit on the plane and write like gangbusters, unless there's a good movie on. If it's Gigli I'll get a ton of work done. My objective is to have a working draft when I get back. So if you're on a plane tomorrow and see a blonde girl cracking herself up in the aisle seat, that's probably me. I laugh way too much at my own childish jokes. Why the aisle seat? Because I have a bladder the size of a walnut.

Creative Screenwriting is hosting another screening tonight, this time for Pirates 2 with a Q and A with Terry and Ted. I really want to go but I just don't see how I can get everything together for my trip if I do. I still have to grade papers and call in a sub. And I have to go to Petco.

Plus, I have a feeling every muscle in my body will ache after Trainer is done with me. I think he's as excited about me looking hot at my reunion as I am. I guess that makes sense, because it's his job to make me look good and if people think I'm hot that's a compliment to his own skills. That's why he'd be so disappointed if he knew I ate a donut. I predict an afternoon filled with planks and bicycles.

Shakespeare would be working for the BBC

Have you seen BBC America lately? They just keep hitting them out of the park. The Footballers Wives would kick the crap out of those weak bitches on Wysteria Lane, and rumor has it Life on Mars is another brilliant piece of fiction. It premieres this week.

I've been watching a lot of Hex recently, so MAJOR SPOILER WARNING if you're into that show and didn't see the last episode. The writers went balls out on the way to the season finale.

Cassy is the main character on that show. Blonde, pretty, a talented witch in a line of mystical ancestors, and she recently got pregnant with a seemingly evil demon baby who has yet to do anything particularly objectionable. Her best friend is a lesbian ghost. They kept building up that the ghost was finally going to disappear soon. Her days were numbered; even she accepted it as an inevitablility. No more Thelma.

Then, in the middle of a ritual Cassy jumped under the knife to save her baby, sending her into some dark shadowy oblivion. It happened suddenly, and Thelma had about thirty seconds to say goodbye, but it was long enough to send tears down my face.

They killed off the main character. Killed her in a way that I'd be hard pressed to see how they'd bring her back. It was like something they would have done on Angel, like when they killed off Fred but more shocking because of its suddenness. Good on the writers. They convinced me that Thelma the ghost was out, then killed off the lead. A ballsy move. I can't think of a show on the air in America that would have taken that risk with the story.

If you haven't seen Hex, check it out. The writers have cajones the size of Great Britain.

Drowned rats

Friday night the senior class hosted a luau by our school's pool. It was an all-around successful event. The kids had an absolute blast with no drugs or alcohol, but with plenty of dancing and games and swimming.

At one point our school's social worker proposed to the kids that they should throw one of our teachers in the pool. So they did. His I-Pod got soaked and destroyed, but we got great yearbook pictures. They enjoyed tossing him in the pool so much, they decided to go after almost every teacher there. They got me while I was trying to escape in secret and ran smack into one of my boys, who chased me until they all caught me and dragged me to the pool. Here they are, enjoying themselves. That's me in the blue, in the grip of their glee:



And here is the aftermath:




You know they love you when they throw you in the pool. Either that, or they just want to see you in your clingy wet tank top and skirt:




I have to add this:

One of my students just told me I shouldn't post those pictures because "all my rich friends" would see them and I would be embarassed for them to know I work in South Central.

This is what they think of white people. Our reputation just really sucks, doesn't it?

The Illusionist

Saw The Illusionist last night through Creative Screenwriting's screening series. That's why I love LA. Want to see a movie for free and meet the people who wrote it? No problem. Just another Wednesday night in town.

Anyway, it was a very stylized film. It had just a distinct tone to it, very sepia and eerie music by Philip Glass. It did a good job of catching you up in this world and making you believe in it. It's about a magician who falls in love with an uptown girl who's the assumed property of the crown prince.

The acting was phenominal. Rufus Sewell played his usual over-the-top bad guy. I wish his motivation was clearer earlier in the film, but he does have a nice speech that gives you a glimpse into why he does the things he does. Jessica Biel played an unexpected part and played it well, but the film really belonged to Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. Those two guys can act their pants off. How does Ed Norton mold himself like that? He's charming guy and tragic guy and devious guy all in the same film.

My only problem with the movie is that I saw almost everything coming. It's my fault, really. As an English teacher and a writer, I know foreshadowing when I hear it, and the ending was foreshadowed about ten minutes into the movie. But if you're not sitting there, analyzing the language, the film will catch you up. In that way it reminded me of The Westing Game, or of an episode of Hustle, which is a compliment. It's not so much what the magician does, it's how he does it that mystifies you.

So in that way, the film is true to its intent. It's a nice little fairy tale of love and tragedy and magic and sacrifice. Plus, it's pretty.

Halfrek hugged me.

I met Kali Rocha and she was fabulous. She did a really great job of teaching the class, although I was also impressed with the way the kids payed attention and asked questions. She was even very nice to me when she learned I was a fan and had extremely complimentary things to say about Buffy, Joss and Sarah Michelle Gellar. She was a sweetheart, not at all made of anything scary.

Buffy was her first job. How lucky is that? I want to be that lucky, dammit.

I'm totally getting my picture taken with Halfrek

I am a huge Buffy fan. Huge. Buffy is what all television shows should be, it's the reason I started wanting to write for TV, and if I could have been on any writing staff ever it would have been Buffy. That show is how it's done. I often say I want to be like Joss Whedon when I grow up, but prettier and not a dude. I even go as Buffy every Halloween.

So you can imagine how excited I am that tomorrow one of my friends in a downstairs classroom is bringing Kali Rocha, who played Halfrek, to speak to his class. I'm bringing my class too and I'm very excited. My friend asked me to bring in an episode of Buffy she was on and I was more than happy to do so. A legitimate excuse to show Buffy at work? Pinch me.

I'm totally stoked. Most of the time when I meet TV celebrities I freeze, but most of those times I don't have someone to introduce me. I just hope I don't freak out. Or do what I did the time I came face to face with my hero, Joss. I stared at him with giant doe eyes and stopped breathing until he went away, trailing Nathan Fillion. I'm assuming Kali Rocha will not be trailing Nathan Fillion.

I'm so stoked. Did I mention that I was stoked? Yeehaw.

That other road thingee

Today I was out at Santa Monica on the beach. Lots of hot guys around playing frisbee. Some were even foreign hot guys, and who comes up to me? The forty-something insurance salesman with a wife and two kids. But whatever.

This guy told me he once thought about being a teacher but decided to be an insurance salesman so he could provide for his family. He likes his job, but still kind of wishes he gone into teaching and coaching basketball because that's where his love really lies. He hates the lifestyle of being rich. His kids go to private schools and he lives in the fancy house with the fancy neighbors and drives the fancy car. And in ten years, he said, he'll be a teacher. His kids will be all grown and he can finally go do what he really wants to do.

He's not the only person I've heard say something like that. People tell me all the time how much they wish they could teach, but the money is just not good enough. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to teach forever. I want a staff writing position, and eventually to be a showrunner and executive producer. But in the meantime I do a job that's good for my soul, and I don't regret that. I guess it's easier to do when you don't have kids. Then again, my mom did okay on a teacher's salary.

I hope that insurance salesman does become a teacher some day, and I hope he's not too old to run around on the basketball court when he finally makes his move.

Really? It's been a decade already?

I've decided to go to my class reunion in two weeks. Fortunately the school I went to considers professional achievement more important than getting married and having a family because I don't think I could stand it if I had to get those looks of pity for not having landed a husband yet. Instead, most of our class is still single because we all decided to have strong careers and to travel.

Then again, my career isn't exactly where I want it to be either, but at least I'm making the effort. I think I'm going to use the five hour flight home to work on my Earl spec. Luckily I did not have to settle for a red-eye, so I can actually get work done the entire time. I wonder if I can get a whole first draft done during the flight? That would be pretty awesome. I go home for a reunion and come back with a comedy draft and new memories.

I'm just excited to show off what I look like these days. I was never this in shape in high school. Skinnier, yes, but not in shape. Plus, I know how to dress myself and wear makeup now. I was always trying to hide my looks in high school, I guess as a sort of "fuck you" to the idea that looks matter. I was more intersted in people taking my brain seriously and I thought good looks would get in the way of that. Now I realize that you can use the looks to get your brain in the door. So at the reunion, I'm putting on the slutty dress. Eat your heart out, obnoxious bitch who tried to make me look dumb in front of that cute boy who liked me. You're probably fat and ugly and I still look like a teenager.

(For that, I have to give credit to my good genes, so way to go Mom, and to Will, my trainer. Thanks for the abs, honey.)

Because that's really what the reunion is all about, isn't it? Showing everyone how successful you've become? Or is that just me and my ridiculous sense of competitiveness?

How to run a yearbook on $0 a year

I don't have any equipment for yearbook. Actually, that's not true. Yesterday my rep gave me a camera. So now I have a camera.

Two months ago I requested cameras, computers, printers, scanners and other assorted items. Firday I learned that none of these things we actually ordered. I don't even have tables, so if I did have computers I would have to put them on the floor. The only storage I have is a plastic filing cabinet I bought at Staples. I do have a pretty nifty darkroom door the kids will hopefully tire of playing with, but the actual darkroom doesn't even contain a sink. It's pretty much just a room with red lighting and a lot of electrical outlets.

Not that anybody was going to use it for darkroom purposes anyway. It's going to be turned into the yearbook room when I get equipment. If I get equipment.

I'm not really sure how TPTB expect me to make a yearbook without any computers. Maybe they think people still glue the pages down. Of course, to do that I'd still have to have some glue, and maybe a light table. I just have four walls and some chairs. I even bought the trash can to put in the room.

Maybe we can spend the semester mastering telepathy so we can beam the yearbook directly into people's brains.

I'm not even supposed to...zzzzzzzzzzzz.....

Oof. People tend to envy us teachers for our long summer vacations, and I certainly understand that. While normal people go to work all year with the occasional two weeks off, we get two months of free time to do with as we please. It is nice; there's no denying that.

But we pay for it. Oh my do we pay. I went to a barbecue last night and made a new friend, who invited me out to watch a band play in Downey. Seriously, Downey. Anyway, I got home at 2 am and had to be at work this morning at 7. That means getting up at 6:15. I can't be late to work. You can't really sneak in late when you have thirty kids waiting for you to open the door and tell them what to do. I also had to be prepared to give them work first thing, and I never did get around to making a lesson plan this weekend.

Fortunately one of the girls I was out with last night is a twelve-year veteran teacher. She heard of my dilemma and opened up her bag of presents to give me a class set of a story called "On the sidewalk bleeding". Then she gave me a nice suggestion for a follow-up activity that makes the kids think and draw while I sit here and zone out. That's what I'm doing right now.

Come to think of it, that's a pretty good deal. Yes, I have to be at work at an insanely early hour and I can't be late, but if I plan it well I can spend my day sitting at the computer while the kids stay busy. I have to read out loud for a few minutes and run a little discussion, but that's something I can do in my sleep. Good thing too, because I think I'm actually asleep right now.

Next time somebody wants me to go see a crappy band play in Downey on a Sunday, I'm just going to say no.

Pilots on the horizon

Jane Espenson says everybody's writing spec pilots these days. As soon as I'm done with my Earl spec, I think I'll give that a whirl. I've got two major ideas - one of them an hourlong scifi drama. I'm going to guess that scifi is not selling from unknown writers, right? It's too expensive to produce.

The other idea is a really good one, I'm just not sure about the genre. It's a workplace situation that lends itself to sitcom, but I'm just not a sitcom kind of writer. I'm going to try it for the first time with Earl, but I don't see it being my forte. I could try going in with a partner to write it, but I don't see myself working well in a partner situation either.

I'm thinking instead of focusing on my strengths. I do drama, so I should write a drama, even if the idea is a conventional sitcom one. After all, Boston Legal is that kind of show. So is Sex and the City. Either of those shows could have been straight comedy, but put a twist on the genre by going an hour and incorporating dramatic elements. Who knows, it might turn out so interesting that it gets some buzz. At the very worst it can suck and I'll spend a couple of months honing my skills. Maybe I could turn it into a feature if that happened.

What do you think? Any suggestions on that kind of enterprise? Anybody else tried it?

Caller ID is good.

Last night I got my first ever jealous girlfriend call. I got a blocked call, but I answered it because I have a friend who always blocks his phone even though it's really annoying to everyone else. Instead of my friend, some girl said "Hey!" all cheerful like. She announced herself as Rebecca. I told Rebecca she had the wrong number and she assured me she didn't because my number was in her boyfriend's phone. I told her I still had no idea who she was and she hung up.

What the hell did she accomplish with that? I have no idea who her boyfriend is so I can't help explain why he has my number, which could be for a myriad of reasons. She didn't learn anything about me. She didn't call with questions or anything, just to make an accusation I guess. But the person she should be pissed at is her boyfriend. Then again, I don't even know if her boyfriend did anything wrong since I still don't know who he is. And if you have to go through your boyfriend's phone to see what he's up to, your relationship has bigger problems than some girl's number.

I love how little interactions keep coming up like that. In our daily interaction we get these little glimpses of people, and if we're paying attention they're perfect quirks to add to a character. I'm not very good at making stuff up out of nothing but I'm great at taking what I see and mixing it together. So what Rebecca doesn't know is that one of these days she's going to find herself in a script. That's what she gets for calling me and not explaining herself.

Gimme a show. You know you wanna.

Yesterday was the first day of the new semester. I have a schedule to die for. Junior English first, Senior English second (At the moment it's filled with 45 kids but that will change I really really hope) and Yearbook fourth, although they have apparently decided to make yearbook a dumping ground for kids who have nowhere to go. No matter; I convinced them it would be awesome. By the end of the class period I had them all begging me to be editors.

That's why I can't wait to get to pitch. John August posted recently about superpowers, but I've already got mine. Infectious Enthusiasm. I'm an insanely positive person and when I get excited about something I make it hard for other people not to get excited too. It's my special gift. And I don't even drink caffeine. It's why I can convince the kids that they do like to read after all, or that essays are kind of fun in their own way. Okay, maybe not all of them. But I've converted a fair share.

I'm ready to pitch. I figure if I treat it like a class I can't fail. So I'll bring in a white board and some markers and do a lesson plan on my screenplay. I can't lose. I've got enough spec TV episodes and a ton of ideas ready to go. Now I just need an executive producer to pitch. Any minute now.

Vegas, baby. Vegas.

So calories stay in Vegas too? Because I've consumed a lot of crap this weekend. I came to Vegas to watch two of my friend get married in what turned out to be a comical ceremony filled with giggling. But it was fun. More power to 'em.

For the record, I don't gamble. One guy last night gave me a numbers card. I didn't get a single number. That's why I don't gamble.

It's weird being in Vegas with two married couples and friends who might as well be. It meant I got abandoned a lot at the bars because I was the only person who actually wanted to be there. That actually ended up being pretty cool because it made it easier to meet new people. I met a bunch of people from LA, but last night I hung out with some Canadians. I spent all night quoting episodes of Trailer Park Boys and making fun of their accents.

Even though they live in the desert, the friends I'm staying with don't keep ice in their freezer and they don't put drinks in the fridge. They drink warm soda. They also put chocolate sauce in their granola. Bizarre.

Married people are weird.

Some days it's good to be a teacher

Today is the last real day of school. Technically tomorrow is a school day but nobody's gonna show up. So today I have a handful of students and they are the sweetest things ever. My second period dutifully watched Clone Wars, which I brought in to demonstrate the Joseph Campbell monomyth I went over yesterday. I gave my third period a choice: clean, take an exam or watch the video. To my surprise, they opted for cleaning. Go figure. So they got a trash bag and some paper towels and some cleaning stuff and wiped off all the tagging and whitened all the white boards and ripped all the posters down. They may not write in complete sentences, but boy can our kids make a room sparkle. I'd be depressed if they weren't so damn sweet.

Now it's fourth period and I have three actually students of my own, plus four others that have wandered in from other classes. They're playing Uno. I actually left them alone for half an hour earlier to run an errand. They told me to go, that it would all be okay. And it was.

I really like my job right now. What I thought was going to be a disastrous change will end up being a blessing. I moved to another department in the school and now I have a permanent classroom with lots of storage space. I actually want the classroom next door, but I have so much going for me right now that others don't that I'm going to keep my mouth shut. Maybe I'll get that room next semester. In the meantime, I'm teaching 12th and 11th graders next year. I have been waiting my entire teaching career to teach 12th grade, and yes, I know how dorky that sounds. But I can teach Hamlet now. I have notes I took on how to teach Hamlet three years ago that have just been sitting around waiting. I am a dork and I don't care who knows it.

So next week we start the new year (year-round school) and I am prepared with a new room, new kids, new yearbook and new classes. This is gonna rock a little.

At least I can sleep comfortably

I missed the Disney deadline.

Apparently notaries don't work Friday afternoons. I went to three different places and the notary was out at all of them. Then there was the place where they were signing people up for quickie Botox injections. I didn't stick around long enough to see if their notary was there.

I had the bio done, the script ready, the paperwork all filled out, but I couldn't find a notary in time to go to the post office. That's what I get for procrastinating. I can still go for WB and Universal, but everybody knows Disney's the best.

On the upside, I got my bed put together. Although he wasn't an underwear model, my assistance did come at the hands of a hot young thing who's handy with a screwdriver, although sadly I only know about that in a literal sense. But now I can sleep up high and look out the window from my bed. I have a nice view of Wilshire.

It will have to make up for the Hollywood view I won't be getting this year. Stupid Disney deadline.

Autobiography help

THIS IS AN OLD POST I UPDATED BECAUSE IT USED TO INCLUDE THE NAME OF WHERE I WORK. THIS IS FROM LAST YEAR. NO WORRIES, EVERYBODY. SORRY ABOUT THE CONFUSION.

I'm working on my autobiography for Disney. The deadline is tomorrow. Anybody want to go through this long thing and make some suggestions?


Emily's Autobiography:

I let things slide off me like water off a duck’s back. It helps in my line of work. I’m a high school teacher at MY SCHOOL, the now one-year-old high school in the heart of Los Angeles gang territory. I have Salvi MS-13s in the room with Mexican 18th street kids, all working together to write persuasive essays and read Julius Cesar. It’s a job that requires a little political finesse.
It’s all fairly new to me. A year ago I was teaching high school in rural North Carolina, an hour south of my hometown of Raleigh. There, the big event came when the seniors on the football team put a spraypainted-blue goat on the roof the week of Homecoming. Here, people get shot. These kids have no idea what it’s like to walk around barefoot in the woods. It’s a different world.
The kids always ask me why I came to LA. At first, I didn’t want to tell them because I didn’t think they’d understand. Back home, everybody thinks producers hang around on street corners looking for the next big movie, and it should be another month or two before I’m a household name. They don’t really get it. Here, though, the kids know. They may not live in Beverly Hills, but they’re just as moved as anybody else by the industry around them. One of my students just proofread my script and found a mistake. I was so proud.
Because it’s tough for them. People hear about the difficult trials of teaching in Downtown LA. I’ve lost a student to a gang shooting. Several of my boys get shot at or jumped on a weekly basis. Almost none of them can read or write at nearly the level they should. But they’re just as smart as any country kid from rich white stock, and I think the world should know.
That’s the kind of thing that drives me to write. When I was a reporter for The Washington Daily News in Washington, North Carolina, I was miserable. Everybody hates reporters, and I hated calling people who hated me, so that didn’t work out. Five months there and I was ready to split, so I decided to teach. My mother was a teacher. I just grew up knowing how.
But while I try to turn out better readers and writers and sudoku puzzlers, I’ve been missing my own true love. I write. I have written since that time I won a contest with a story I wrote for a class, a story about my lousy dad and his lousy house boat. I got a BA in 1999 and an MA in 2000, both in creative writing from East Carolina University. When I started teaching, I just always assumed I’d get back to the writing when I had time. I make as much of it as I can, but it’s difficult when you have essays to grade and yearbook pages to edit.
All I really want to do is tell stories. Like Dickens, who spread his tales out over magazines, one chapter a week to make sure people kept coming back. So I tell them to my kids, and they listen enraptured.
When I was in my mom’s class in middle school I used to help other people with their essays. When I was in high school, I was always the leader on group projects. My favorite was the time I made The Song of Roland into a play with a painted cardboard backdrop and sock puppets. Some would consider that nerdy; I call that the only project our teacher still remembers from that class.
I’m a leader, an educator, a writer. I have to be a showrunner. Heck, I run a show right now. You should see the alternate scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire my eleventh-graders created. Hilarious. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a seventeen-year-old Latina fake a crazy Blanche DuBois with a “Southern” accent that sounds more like a drunk exotic dancer. The kind of things I’ve seen these kids do are priceless character moments. I plan to put them to good use.

My Fashion Debut

I finally got pictures from the fashion show. I love this dress, but I'm not sure where I'd wear it if I bought it. Still, it was damn comfortable and fun to walk around in. I had to hold it up to avoid tripping.


The pajama picture was from backstage. It was fun to wear because I got to show my tattoo and my piercing which got a lot of cheers from the kids. At one point while we were all wearing our pajamas in preparation to go out, somebody put "Baby got back" on the stereo and the kids got in a big circle and took turns dancing. That was hilarious. I look pissed because the boy with the camera refuses to stop warning people that he's taking their pictures. As a yearbook teacher, that really annoys me. Good luck ever finding a picture of me at work smiling at the camera. But even though it doesn't look like it, I'm having fun. I just wish I wasn't slouching.


Then there was the vavoom green dress that had people talking the next day. It barely fit and I was constantly worried my boobs were going to fall out the sides. I clearly have an adequate amount of junk in my trunk, though. Apparently, I only know one pose. I'll have to work on that.


I'll definitely be doing this again next year. Rumor has it they'll be specifically designing the clothes to fit the model, just like project runway. By then I'll have a body worth showing off, thanks to my constant efforts at the gym. And I'll be in charge of yearbook so I'll have access to all the pictures and make sure nobody poses with a cheesy smile.

Who needs legs, anyway?

My trainer is evil. We boxed yesterday, which I love, even if it does make my hands kina stinky from all the accumulated sweat various people have left behind in the gloves. But anyway, that oart is fun. The part that's not fun is the fact that he spends the half hour leading up to the boxing destroying my legs. We did every major leg machine int he gym at really high levels of weight for someone my size. And the whole time he was all evil grins. That bastard. Today I can't walk at any kind of reasonable pace, yet I'm going to go to the gym anyway and do my workout because I'm as crazy as he is. I couldn't sleep last night because of the soreness of my legs, although I'm convinced that having a matress on the floor has something to do with it.

I briefly thought about staying home today to recuperate and finish my script for the Disney Fellowship, but I've missed so many days lately and each time it's a disaster for the kids, so I decided to come in. The deadline is Friday, so unless they extend it there's no way I'm going to make it with this script, which is a shame because I think it's really good. But I'm going to try my House script instead because it's finished and has gotten some positive responses from people I trust. Still, it doesn't carry the theme with as much strength as my Supernatural will when it's finished. But oh well. That's what I get for procrastinating.

Maybe I could outsource my dialogue

A dude from The Gap just called my cell phone. My bill was like two minutes late this month and they want their money. I sent in the bill three days ago, though, so there's not really anything this guy needs to worry about. Nonetheless, there he was, clearly calling from India. He had to say who he was with like eight times. I kept thinking he was calling me about some "DAP story". I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what I could possibly have written that would have been shortened to "DAP". Outsourcing is so annoying.

But that highlights something I've been trying to get better about in my writing. Most of us writers tend to make things a little too convenient in our stories. Characters understand each other and are johnny-on-the-spot with whitty comebacks. I don't know about you, but whenever I talk to this guy I have a crush on I sound like a moron. Two minutes later in my car I'm spouting all kinds of awesome responses. But in movies and on TV, people never seem to have that problem. And they never have to deal with stuff like outsourcing phone calls. Except in comedies. Friends did that kind of stuff all the time. I should go watch old episodes. I'm also gonna go read more Salinger because he is the master of naturalistic dialogue. Then I'm going to work on that with my next spec. It's not that I don't do dialogue well because I do, but I think I need to work on the dialogue of miscommunication.

Maybe in the process I can absorb the ability to have better replies when I talk to cute boys. It could be like a superpower.

Ikea beds don't require power tools, do they?

Does anybody have a drill I can borrow? Or a construction worker, perhaps a hot one, who can read schematics?

I bought a bed from Target and I can't put it together. The headboard requires a drill which I do not own, and the frame comes with eight pages of instructions I am completely unable to understand. So for now I'm sleeping on a matress on the floor. On the upside, it makes the room feel like I just moved in, which is always a nice feeling. But I got the frame and headboard specifically because they came with storage drawers and shelves, and until it's built my crap is all splayed throughout the apartment. And I almost can't get through the door behind all the wood slats lying about. I keep hoping some male underwear model with a drill and a construction job will get lost in my neighborhood and knock on my door for directions. I'm expecting him any minute now.

Insert dirty joke about drilling wood beds here.

This place ain't Fuquay-Varina

I love LA. I love the fact that so many people from so many different places all converge on this place for one reason, and that people you'd never have met anywhere else can become an integral part of your life here.

For three years I lived in a town called Fuquay where I knew approximately no people. I spent all my nights in watching TV and wishing that at the very least there was a neighbor I could share Angel episodes with. But people in Fuquay didn't watch Angel so much, and the closest thing I ever got to striking up a friendship with anybody was when the owner of the antique store downstairs tried to get me to come to his church.

But here it's different. A guy I used to date back in North Carolina like five years ago lives here. I went and hung out at his house and met some great people last weekend. A guy I only knew a little in high school lives here, and last night he came over and we had a few dinks and talked about the past and the present. Tonight I'm going to an Ibiza party in Santa Monica hosted by a girl from work.

In North Carolina, I never would have been out with this many different groups of people in such a short span of time, and from so many different backgrounds. It's good fodder for scripts. Unfortunately, it's also a big time killer when I should be home writing them.

So on that note, I have to finish my Supernatural script now in time to get dressed up in all my white clothes. I'm hoping to have the script finished in time for Disney, which is next week. It's gonna be close.

I'm better off leaving them with a monkey

I had to be out for three days during the past week. I was out Firday for - ahem - illness, and Monday and Tuesday I had to go to a workshop downtown. So I carefully thought out three days worth of detailed lesson plans that contributed to the curriculum and kept the kids busy practicing their persuasive writing techniques and studying Amy Tan.

Friday two of my classes were supposed to finish Romeo and Juliet. The sub did that, but also showed it to the class that had a lesson plan. Whatever. I had been planning to leave a movie for them for Monday and Tuesday, but now that they're behind they'll only be able to see half the movie. At least the other classes are still on track.

I came in Monday morning to put in the new lesson plan and noted on it that the students were not to watch a movie Monday at all. They were instead to do the assignments as written, dammit. I even locked the TV cabinet to make sure nobody could get in it. Apparently, handing out papers and sitting down while the kids write is too much work. The sub decided the best course of action was to watch World Cup soccer ALL DAY. No access to the television? No problem. My devious little substitute tried to pick the lock on the cabinet, then borrowed a TV from down the hall and wheeled it in, then eventually found a custodian to open the cabinet. This is what California tax payers paid him to do.

Tuesday I had a different substitute. This sub came in and saw that his predecessor had not done the assignments, so he did them instead. That would seem like the responsible thing to do if this guy hadn't been a psycho. He "cleaned up" my desk because he was appalled at its messiness. By clean up, I mean he stacked things into piles and threw away anything he thought looked like trash. For the record, my kids are awesome. I have some of the best behaved students in the school right now, but my sub still managed to kick three students out of class for talking and spent like fifteen minutes on the phone to my boss complaining about the rest of them. They were so resentful of his behavior that the kids rebelled against doing the assignment. I had one student actually turn anything in all day.

So three days away was three days wasted. And it's not just Los Angeles. In North Carolina one day a sub let the kids watch the NCAA basketball tournament all day and broke my stool in the process. At least here the jobs are a little more competitive so we can actually fire them. Now excuse me while I go figure out how to make up three days of wasted time in one ninety-five minute class.

Donuts and Dr. Phlox

So I'm at a training session today on how to teach "Studio", a class for students who struggle with reading. It's a dumb program, but there is some useable material in its core, and fortunately for the first time, we have a lecturer who has a brain in his head, so today hasn't been so bad. These things are usually abysmal, but they come with free bagels and a day away from the kids where the sub is no doubt ignoring the five hundred pages of work you left as an assignment and showing the class Shrek 2 in Spanish.

Just so you know, if you ever want to lure a teacher into a dark room and steal her brain, offer free food. We'd follow it like a breadcrumb trail, although donuts work better than bread. In fact, I'd put up a teacher's capacity for chowing down on donuts up against a cop's any day, but only if they're free.

John Billingsley goes to my gym. I've seen him there several times, and each time really wanted to say hi and how much I admire his work. The other day he got on the ellyptical machine right next to me. I kept mum. I like to say that I don't talk to actors at the gym because I don't want to interrupr their workout, but the truth is that I'm a big chicken. I don't want to say something to a minor celebrity and come out looking like an idiot. Because I will.

But I suppose I'll have to get over that, because it's kind of necessary for what I want. I didn't say anything to John Bilingsley because I was afraid of looking like an ass. But what if by saying something to him, I opened up an opportunity? We're supposed to constantly be taking advantage of networking opportunities to help our writing careers, right? But it's just so unseemly. Because in reality, there is no unselfish reason to talk to a celebrity, minor or not. It would make me feel good to know that I know who he is, but I doubt he wants a sweaty dork at the gym to bother him while he's trying to watch Without a Trace on that tiny TV over the treadmills. Then again, I'm hotter than most dorks. Maybe he'd be flattered. But I'll never know because I'm a big old chicken.

Why I teach

I haven't posted all week because grades were due and I was frantically trying to grade essays.

But the most exciting thing happened, the reason I put up with all the students who cuss at me and threaten me and don't care. I have a student who's had a really rough life up to now and has gotten in tons of trouble, and recently decided it wasn't worth it. He's really smart, but has a lot of bad decisions to make up for if he wants to go to college. The problem, I discovered this week, is that he never planned to go to college. He never thought he could. He said he just figured he'd graduate high school and get a regular job and that would be it.

But he also started asking questions about writing and publishing stories. After talking to him long enough, I recognized the signs of a truly gifted writer. I haven't read a story by him yet, but the way he sees the world, a way he thought was really weird, is exactly how writers view everything. He changes details of his life to make a better story, he thinks about how a short story would be better if events were different, and he can imagine what botht he villain and the hero are thinking.

So I told him to read Salinger's Nine Stories and write me a story. I'm going to read it and critique it and essentially hold a separate class with him. He's already failed this English class enough times that he's read all the books, so he might as well learn something new.

According to this boy, nobody ever told him he could be a writer before. Nobody ever told him he could be anything. He kept asking me why I cared so much, which made me sad and happy at the same time.

But the best part is, he loves coming to my class and sees a new reason to keep his grades up: he might go to college and become a writer.