Big week this week. Lots to do in every compartment -- parenting, writing, being. Lots. Cousin-palooza kicks off next week, so there'll be even less of me to go around. May be slim pickin's here for a while. All two of you will forgive me, I'm sure.
And with that, I leave you with the Quote of the Day: "I knew we were going to end up showing each other our nipples today."
The first Quentin Tarantino flick I saw was True Romance on VHS. One of the most innocently romantic stories I've seen.
I tried watching Reservoir Dogs, and couldn't do it. Too violent. Then I saw Pulp Fiction, which left me in awe that a story could be told so creatively. This weekend I had the opportunity to watch it again and then Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Since practicing screenwriting, I've started watching movie with new eyes, and as of this weekend have become a fast fan of Quentin. I'll have to see what else of his is out there.
"I wish I had all the hamburger buns in the world," he said, "so that all of you," and then he stretched his arms wide to encompass the four of us, "could squirt ketchup smiley faces on them." But that day he only had one bun. And L. had already squirted.
One of my dad's best friends, a friend from childhood and the one in the story, committed suicide and died Sunday.
I've never known anyone to commit suicide, and being that he was my dad's friend, I can't say that I knew R. that well either. But it still leaves me thinking, why?
Why did he do it?
Why didn't he talk with anyone?
Why didn't we hear him?
The last time I saw him was a year ago. He had stayed the weekend with my parents. When he wasn't socializing with the two of them, Peer and I took him out to see the town. We had drinks at a bar and he talked with us about what it was like growing up bi-racial in the 1940s and 50s in a relatively rural, White part of the country. The line I most remember from the evening, "Well, you knew you weren't going to date any girls." It was hard. People had thoughts and people said things. It affected him. To his core. To his last day, I'm sure.
He also talked a bit about Vietnam. He served as a medic. All he tried to do was save people, and do you know who gets shot? He does. He comes back home and the nation not only doesn't support the war, but they don't support the troops either. I don't know many more specifics than that, only that his back continued to give him pain. To his last day, I'm sure. He did receive a Purple Heart for his service. I wonder if he asked himself if it was worth it.
These were the first two decades of his life, his "foundation."
After sharing stories, we headed home and he kicked both our butts in Scrabble, and we all called it a night. He left a bag or something at the house which we mailed back to him a couple of days later. And that was that. The last I saw or spoke with R.
I don't know what I could have done for him, but I could have done something. He gave me his e-mail address and I never followed-up. Now I wish I had. Maybe things would have been different. Maybe not. But maybe.
If I'm feeling this kind of guilt and am so loosely connected to him, what must it be like for the people involved in his daily life? The anguish and hurt they must be feeling. Does it come close to what he must have been feeling to commit such an act? Or did he hurt even more?
R., I wish I knew you were so depressed these past few days, weeks, months. Had I known, I'd have gathered all the hamburger buns I could for you...
May you rest in peace.
On my first conversation with my Hollywood Guru, he asked me if I really, truly wanted to know the way movies were constructed. "Of course," I said.
"Because I'm gonna ruin it for you," he said back. "It's not gonna be the same."
I'm a classically trained musician and can talk about Sonata form until I'm blue in the face. I'm an avid listener of jazz and once even got to scat solo in front of an entire auditorium (okay, nearly empty auditorium, thank God...otherwise my reputation), and I can rip apart where we "are" in a tune even as we're moving along. Knowing the construction doesn't blow it for me...if it's good music. But then if it's bad music, it ain't worth the listen anyway.
But this whole prose thing? The guy was right. It does kind of ruin it for me. I used to watch movies in "suspended reality." I suppose I still do. But now that I know exactly where we are and it's the same spot every single time, the road's getting a bit too worn for my taste. More than that, the Hollywood Guru taught me a few tricks of the trade to heighten emotional impact and now, when I see them, I'm like, "eh."
Why is it different for me in writing than it is for music? Maybe most movies are too predictable. Not enough nuances. There's an overall feeling, but what about the little notes? The finer details that you don't catch unless you see it a thousand times. And that's the thing. There are pieces -- several if not hundreds -- that I could listen to again and again and again and never once get sick of them.
Think about it. The whole premise of orchestras or even pop music is that you can go to a concert and listen to the same song you know and love. Think about the people who followed the Dead all those years, listening to the same travelin' tunes over and over and over. Or the holiday music. Or graduation music. Or wedding music. Or even the whole entire industry built around iPod.
That kind of thing doesn't happen with movies. You see it once and you know how it ends. Why watch it again? It's already tired after one, maybe two times. I can count the number of movies using all digits on my body that I would agree to watching ad infinitum. For music? The pieces number more than twenty times twenty.
Take for instance, Entourage. Love that show. But now every single scene I'm like, there goes Ari wanting something again and there goes Vince at odds with him because he wants something completely different. It's kind of like, ho hum. Everybody wants something. Nobody's getting it the way they wanted. I get it. But I still love the characters and it's still one of the best shows out there. So I watch, but with too much knowledge.
Now take for instance, Beethoven's Pathetique. Love that piece. And I don't care how many times I try to play or listen to even the first bar -- nay, the first chord -- I get an eerie, sickly, devastated feeling that this train ain't going anywhere but straight to hell. And I've heard that sound thousands of times. And still, the same feeling.
Maybe sound is closer to feelings in its abstraction that prose or physical imitation will never compare. Or maybe I just can't let go of my first artistic love. I can't say I wasn't warned, right? Even so, isn't anybody blowing any fresh air into this thing? Please.
You know it's good when a happily married mother of two can't stop reading about the Hottest Girls on MySpace.
Can I say new child? Amazing.
Ace started the morning with a friendly wake-up from Dad indicating that a morning at the beach was in order. Ace hung so tight to that idea that when I suggested that before hitting the sand, the two of us grab a bite at Starbucks, he was adamant that his very next activity was the beach. Who puts up a fight about Starbucks?
So I took out a trusty scoop of chocolate ice cream sprinkled with 2.5 milligrams of Ritalin and administered the meds. A spoonful of sugar, right?
After convincing him that Starbucks wasn't that bad of an idea, we went. Right on cue, in half an hour, the meds kicked in. We went upstairs to watch an episode of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy while Peer finished getting everything ready.
Normally the television is an adequate babysitter. Enough of a distraction most of the time. Today, the television was actually a vehicle for entertaining. Not a distraction. Entertaining. Wild. He actually watched a show. In fact, when Peer was read to high-tail it, Ace wasn't ready. "Let me finish the show," he said. When on earth does Ace ever finish anything? I didn't know "finish" was even in his vocabulary!
It's been just over an hour since he took the meds, and now the two have left for the beach. The real test will be this afternoon when my parents, sister and brother-in-law come over (read: most all of Ace's favorite people in one room). Usually this degenerates into chaos, spinning, and running back and forth. I'm kind of getting hopeful.
1. Looks like several of the wooden Thomas the Train toys have been recalled as a result of lead paint. Click here for the list. Thanks "Little C" for the tip.
2. Went to the Apple Store today to buy a new battery for my PowerBook G4. The guy told me to go home and check out my computer serial number and the battery's since I could qualify for a brand new one. And guess what...I do! So that rocked.
3. I have an enormous pimple between my hairline and my right ear. It's from where my glasses rub. Gross and I tried popping it. It's still there, red.
4. There's a month and a half until I hear back from Sundance as to whether they want the remaining 115 pages of the screenplay. I'm doing a total re-write (with the exception of the first five pages they requested) and am starting to feel the pressure. I've got roughly 20 of the 115 down. It's going slower than I thought. But it's way, way better.
5. I "met" someone in the Internet Movie Database chatroom whose advice has been top-notch so far. If I'm struggling with a sequence, I'll throw it his way and he provides the best feedback. I don't know who this guy is, but that's also part of the fun. I'm finding the screenwriting community to be pretty friendly considering how cut-throat the movie industry is.
6. Last but should have been first, it's Peer's birthday today! So we had fun with birthday cookies (no cake this year, see last year). I honestly can't believe next year he turns 40. Well. I have a year to plan for the big bash.
1. Still re-writing the screenplay. Taking it slow. One scene at a time. I think it's way better than last time.
2. Feeling a little apprehensive about starting Ace on the medication. The reality is hitting me. I still think it's the right thing to do. I just wish we didn't have to. I read somewhere online that kids under 6 get medicated because they are "reckless" and more prone to physically harm themselves if left alone. That's pretty much exactly where we are. I guess it's just another level of coming to terms with raising a special needs kid.
3. Looking forward to a fun weekend! We're getting out of the city and having some visitors.
So I've been hanging out in a few screenwriting chat rooms here and there and have come to the conclusion that I'm a dinosaur. I'm getting the feeling that the only people who write specs and "chat" are 18 and under. Or maybe those are the most interesting posts to read since they're filled with so much piss and innocence. Anyway...
Peer and I rewound today in the psychiatrist's office. We told Ace's story from birth until now. How he's always been more physical than any other kid his own age. How he reached every milestone significantly earlier than other kids his age -- holding his head up (3 weeks), rolling over (month and a half? two months?), sitting up (four months), crawling (six months), walking (ten months).
And how he literally ran before he walked. We had this empty economy size box of Huggies wipes that he needed to push in order to maintain his balance before he was able to stand or walk on his own. He flew on this thing, pushing it -- running it -- lightening fast from one end of the room to the other. This before he could walk on his own. And once he got the hang of walking (all of one week), the kid was off to the races.
We talked about how at 13 months old during a four hour delay at LAX,
he pushed our cart full of luggage throughout the airport. For four hours. And he still wasn't worn down.
We talked about how cool we thought all this was. We had Mighty Kid. Then he turned one and got physically aggressive. Hitting, biting, kicking, screaming, throwing. Kicking so bad that I stopped changing his diapers when I was pregnant for fear of him kicking the baby too hard. Biting so hard there were teeth marks. We tried every parenting technique we heard and read. And nothing seemed to help. And to this day, we are still dealing with piercing screams and toys flung across the room at a zillion miles an hour.
We talked about how this has made his life and our family life smaller. That we haven't gone out to eat as a family since Tops was born. That our personal lives and marriage gets stressed from it. That we can't do things designed for "normal" kids, like birthday parties, playgroup, or kid activities.
And we of course talked about his safety. About his finger and head injuries. And really, this is what is of most concern. The rest we can handle. We're adults. But as far as safety goes, I can't hover over him all the time. No one can spend every absolute second with him to keep him safe. He has become his own entity, as all of us do, but it's too much responsibility for him right now.
We talked about how every professional who ever sees him -- occupational therapists, psychoanalysts, craniosacral therapists, neurologists, geneticists, speech therapists, as many "ists" that have come his way -- all agree that he is beyond anything they have seen before. So not only do we have a kid who is beyond "neurotypical" range, within the "special kids" spectrum, he takes the cake there too.
We talked and talked and talked. And do you know what he told us? "Wow. This story is impressive." Now, is that what you want to hear when you're in a situation like this? That it's impressive? No. You want to hear that it's been seen before. You don't want to hear that your kid is out of all bounds. But are we surprised? Shocked? Aghast? Not one bit. As parents, I think we know best of all that Ace is as unique as they come. He's our gift, and we need to figure out how to make him shine!
He sees the psychiatrist Tuesday for an evaluation. Given what we have told the doctor and the information he's attained from Ace's school (the "second opinion"), unless something is drastically unusual at the evaluation, it sounds like Ace's going to start Ritalin. It's seldom prescribed for children this young, but given his "exceptional" behaviors, it's warranted.
Four lines of white powder on a plate. A sharp knife leads a line into a slit-open cereal bar. Who gets to eat the cereal bar? Ace. What's the white powder? Crushed up No Doze. Feelin' like a drug dealer? Yup.
I've heard that caffeine can work on kids with ADHD, so we tried it. Ace seemed a little better, though we did sit him in front of the tube, also an ADHD drug. And it didn't seem to affect his four hour nap later in the day. We'll try again tomorrow and see how it goes.
