An American Bystander

The Oscars are fast approaching.

Courtney saw Brokeback Mountain today, and is in agreement: Crash is a better movie. And while I'd probably vote for Crash if I were an Adademy member, I hope Brokeback Mountain wins, mostly because I don't want to hear about a "gay backlash."

Tessie is giving me the evil eye. It's almost time for her to be walked. I can always tell when she wants a walk because she jumps off the sofa (where she is generally entangled in my feet) and crosses to the loveseat and sits there and just sort of looks at me. I assume she's sending "let's get outta here and wander the neighborhood aimlessly sniffing dog piss" signals to me. But, there's a documentary on the tsunami on the History Channel right now, and I'm sort of glued to it.

So while I finish this documentary, ignore my dog's subliminal messages, I figured I would put out into the world some impressions of the Olympics.

1. They suck.

2. While I have no particular sporting abilities, I still laugh when ice dancers fall.

3. I enjoyed watching Lindsey Jacobelis fall. I'm sorry, it's probably wrong to get pleasure out of it. But she totally tried showboating, and paid the price. After they showed her coach and parents realizing that she had wiped out, I sort of wanted to see the representative from Visa ripping up a contract.

4. Dick Button, who calls the figure skating, is a putz. I suspect they've been spoken to about toning down their comments during routines because they were much quieter during the ice dancing. I wish I could read that memo.

5. NBC sucks. Spoilers, people, spoilers. During the first-run of the primetime Olympics, don't suggest I check out your website, where you feature front-and-center the results of the event I'm breathlessly watching. (Okay, I haven't watched anything breathlessly, but it sounded good.) Anyway, I wish I was a Nielson family so that NBC could see me changing the channel and watching the Daily Show instead.

6. Bryant Gumbel expressed his opinion. Why does everybody have to jump down his throat about it?


So enough about the Olympics.

I'm going to Vegas on Sunday for two nights. My mom will be there, so I'll get to visit with her. I'm thinking about trying to get a ticket to Avenue Q.

It's looking like I'm going to be stage managing Menopause the Musical in Upland, CA. It'll be a bitch of a commute, but the $$ is pretty good.

Okay, the documentary has gone downhill, so I'm going to take Tessie for a spin.

It's after 2:00 a.m. and I'm still awake. And it's not like there's anything good on TV to keep me up, and it's not like I'm writing so much I just can't go to sleep for fear of losing my mojo... So no good reason I guess.

Things are decent at this moment, though there is still a lingering question about whether Menopause the Musical will ask me to work the Upland production. If they don't, I might have to scrounge around for another part-time job to round out my work with C. Jay. I will probably try and call somebody tomorrow in the hopes of getting a status on my application.

I got my OutFest submission in, but just barely. I have to complete the full script by March 1, and have barely scratched the surface. It'll be a nail-biter, but I guess I like it that way.

I finally downloaded pics from my shitty digital camera, and will attempt to post a couple of those pics here.

The first couple will be of my dog Tessie taken down on Huntington Beach, where dogs can play off-leash. The other is a pic of me and my friend Esra taken at my friend Lincoln's Australian meat pie shop in Manhattan.

I thought this would be an out-of-control week, but it looks like I'll skate through.

I did a stand-up comedy routine last night, as Uncle Clyde's Comedy Contest at the Ice House in Pasadena. I invited a bunch of people, but one by one they canceled because of the distance. In reality, the drive wasn't that bad, but oh well. Rey, Jan and Alex were there.

This was Rey's first time seeing me perform, and he seemed relieved that I didn't suck. Jan has seen me a few times, and was encouraging. Alex had only seen me once, in a strange basement club with an audience of four, so this was a good chance for her to see if I could make more than four people laugh.

I went faster than I should have. I haven't watched the tape yet, but I'm pretty sure I didn't drop anything that I had planned on saying... I think I just breezed right through. I'll watch the tape tonight or tomorrow and see what I might've dropped.

I didn't win, which was fine. When all of the comedians were huddled up prior to the start of the show, Dave the MC advised us all to not focus on the contest aspect of the show. I remember him saying that the last time I did this show, but I think I actually heard it this time. Also, the guy who I thought was the funniest, got the most laughs, had (what seemed to me) the strongest skills, didn't place in the top three. So, I didn't mind being in the bottom four.

In other (and rather piss-poor) news my car was towed this morning. I was parked on Gardner, and there was a sign saying "No Parking" further up the block, but I didn't see one near where I was. This morning, though, sure enough there was a sign in the general area where my car was (though not on the light post directly in front of where I was parked). Also, the sign wasn't that high up on the post, meaning any SUV could have blocked it. The tow company needs $177 (!!!) for me to get the car out of hock, and I'm sure there's a ticket on the windshield as well. We'll see if I can successfully argue it.

Anyway, I'm going to walk to the tow company (about a 20 min. walk, not too bad), grab some lunch, and polish my submission for the OutFest Filmwriting Lab submission (due tomorrow).