On having a deft touch (not)

This morning I put three minor edits in to Episode 2 of Shelved (the sitcom I’m working on).

The trouble is that the minor edits (and they really were very minor) had a cascade effect.

Episode 3 had a corresponding scene tweak which led to Episode 4 having a comedic device upgrade. As a result, Episode 5 had a re-characterisation and Episode 6 is up for a rewrite tomorrow.

Which is critical really; Episode 6 being the season climax.

In the last draft I thought Episode 6 was right, but with the new thin end of the ‘change wedge’ springing from the scene tweak in Ep 3, the first five episodes now feel tighter; better knitted together.

The dialogue has better structure, the visuals are leaner but more effective and there’s a new running gag which could feed a second season.

I know I suffer from Compulsive Editing Syndrome (and if that doesn’t exist, it really should!), but just once I’d like to stand back from a piece of fiction and be able to say ‘There, that’s finished!’

The hard thing, or so I’m told by the people who have successfully achieved this, is getting the pitch right and attracting the engagement of the commissioning powers.

But I’ve always had a difficulty in letting go, that’s my real problem.

Anyway.

In other news.

Sophie’s laptop has had life breathed in to it and is now almost silently whirring away, like an almost silently whirring thing.

It’s much faster than it ever has been too.

The hard-disk was fried which was why no amount of recovery procedures could get the thing back on its feet. Fiddling about with the registry isn’t going to work if the partitions are crumbling.

So it has a new hard-disk and a fresh install of XP.

I imported a backup of datafiles from one of the EDD’s I use as three-tiered backup devices.

And the hardest job encountered?

Getting the iTunes database to behave itself.

Really, iTunes, who’d have believed it?

As I was *manually* making squillions of adjustments to the content in that piece of Apple software, I was mentally composing a nested conditional SELECT statement and a corresponding nested UPDATE command which, between the two of them, would have tidied the 2,000+ song records, weeded out the duplicates which iTunes insisted on creating in the first place (because of a bad piece of re-routing in the most recent iTunes upgrade), renamed a few tracks to INITCAP *and* produced a tidy-up exception report, when I suddenly realised that my VB skills may not have worked on the Apple product anyway.

And then I thought ‘No, iTunes on XP has to be VB-compliant’.

But it was all academic anyway, because the exception-handling sub-routine would have needed to be about 80 lines long.

So I persevered and just did it manually.

What did I say about having a deft touch? Not?

But at least Soph’s back up and running, and I can now put my EDDs away.

So there is a slight feeling of satisfaction in this house tonight.

The 80/20 Project #10 Should we do celebrity? Part II

The ’stuff Clemence found in the back of her wardrobe’ theme continues.

What I love about this shot is that again, apart from the jacket, she’s wearing everyday items. They may be the Platonic ideal of everyday items, but we all have a jeans skirt around somewhere…

For my version, I had to confront an old frenemy…

Dylon.

Have you experimented with alterations? And did they work for you?

 For more about the 80/20 project look here.



  

  

Time to try out this ’sleep’ thing

OK, so last night we watched ‘Glee’, then tidied up and went to bed. I read for maybe 10 minutes before sleep hit and that was that.

For about half an hour.

WTF?

For 30 minutes I was out of it and then suddenly I was wide awake and nothing was going to get me back off again.

So I got up, grabbed my book and bathrobe and came downstairs where I read, internetted and generally annoyed the hell out of fellow insomniac and all-round nice person, Ali Booker.

But while all this was going on I was also working on a cunning plan.

And I was smirking a great big smirk as I worked.

At 3am the fruits of my labouring (and smirking) were harvested, right up until the point where Sophie came, blinking, downstairs and asked ‘Are you singing?’

I may have looked sheepish.

I had indeed been singing.

Now you may sit there and ask yourself why I had been singing at 3am. Because that’s a good question. And a fair one to ask.

I am sitting here smirking some more because I have the answer.

And so shall you, if you listen to future episodes of This Reality Podcast. Because that’s where my cunning plan, the source of my smirkage and the reason for my 3am singing will be…

Revealed!

Oh yes.

It is good.

And funny.

Well, he hedged slightly, it is funny to me. And I have just unveiled my cunning plan to Soph and she’s gone upstairs to bed laughing loudly as she went.

So I’m going to say, in an authoritative tone that yes, this is a good *and* a funny idea!

Umm…

Can you make sure that the podcast has your skype address/phone number? Because if we call you up you can:

a) take part

b) win free prizes (T-Shirts, mostly!)

c) join in with the new feature that is the source of such 3am mirth and singing.

Just email your skype address or phone number to ‘thisrealitypodcast@gmail.com’ or, if you’ve got skype, just add ‘thisrealitypodcast’ to your address book.

Thank you.

You won’t regret it.

Umm…

Actually you may regret it, but just a little, and at least you’ll be smirking as you regret it! 

p.s. You really should listen to the most recent podcast (#105), the musical content is possibly the richest we’ve ever produced – and that’s not an idle boast!

To stream just that one episode of the podcast to your desktop just click here or you can right-click on that link and save it to your computer and listen to it later. Or why not add it to your iTunes and listen to it on your iPhone or iPod or mp3 player wherever you go? Better than radio!

Barking mad

Why is it that our Government is playing with a proposal that will mean that all dogs will have to be insured – on the off-chance that they cause some kind of damage or kill someone?

And yet cyclists, who we know do cause damage and have killed people, are not going to face the same requirement?

Answers on a bent piece of logic please…

The 80/20 #9 Should We Do Celebrity?

Why, yes, when it’s Clemence Poesy!

What’s so great about the way Ms Poesy dresses is its deceptive impossiblity. We all have black skinny jeans. We have some kind of grey top. I have a white jacket and a mushroom-y coloured scarf. Maybe you do too. Even the car she’s posing in front of is hardly a Jag. But can we look like that in them?

OK, so:

Have you ever tried copying the stars? Did it work?

 For more about the 80/20 project look here.

 

Telling it like it is

There may be swearing in this. If you don’t like that you can f-f-f-fade away…

Lunchtime today I dropped in to one of the public libraries in this county.

I browsed around and, after a while, found an interesting-looking book which I took off to a less-busy – indeed *quiet* – corner of the library.

I’d been reading for about 20 minutes when two late-teenagers (a boy and a girl) came in to the area to use the two public-access internet terminals near where I sat.

They talked to each other across the intervening gap (about 1m80) and they talked to each other across the gap *loudly*.

They had no consideration for me, or anyone else in the vicinity.

It wasn’t just the loudness of their childishly meaningless, inane and mostly monosyllabic chatter that annoyed the hell out of me (and why, for Heaven’s sake would they even think that anyone within 5 nautical miles would be remotely interested in them verbally relaying to each other what they’d just said on their Facebook chat sessions to their ‘friends’?).

It was their complete and utter disregard, their unthinking attitude, the total absence of consideration for anyone else.

That’s what I’m absolutely bloody furious about.

Because the noise they made went beyond ‘talking loudly’.

There was the wheeling over to each other’s terminal, the slapping, the pinching…

And the swearing. The constant litany of ‘fucking’ this and ‘cunting’ that, that came from the pair of them.

Yet less than 3m away was – get this! – the children’s area!

Did the close proximity of the children’s area stop our two future Jeremy Kyle stars from swearing at loud volume?

No, of course it didn’t.

Don’t they know how to behave in a library?

I mean, how old are these two?

Well actually I know the answer to that question.

The girl – Sileas Campbell – is 17 (going on a mental age of 9). I don’t know how old the boy is (but I fully expect that if you combined their IQs, the total score would still be in double digit territory).

How do I know her name?

Because she left her internet terminal to ‘play’ with her friend and she left her Facebook homepage in full, public view.

So Miss Sileas Campbell, not too bright are you?

In fact, you display the same awareness of physical computer security as you show awareness of the needs of anyone else in the library.

If I knew the name of the guy who was with Miss Sileas Campbell I’d name and shame him too.

Whoever he is, he displays the same emotional and mental immaturity, the same total disregard for anyone else and the same lack of knowledge for the correct way to behave in a library.

Their parents must be really proud of them both.

I, however, am not proud to be a member of the same species as this selfish little cunt.

Sileas Campbell on Facebook

Sileas Campbell on myYearbook

The 80/20 Project #8 Gymwear

Henry David Thoreau complained about the mania for buying new clothes for every activity. "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes."

Like many people, I have a nagging feeling there’s something intrinsically wrong about buying special exercise clothes. Beyond owning a good sports bra and running shoes, shiny sportswear smacks of hubris. While trying to become a new person, attention to appearance can seem trivial as well as a direct invitation to failure.

I bought this Zucca top last year. I loved it for the kimono cut of its sleeves and the lightness of its syntheic fabric. For something that’s essentially a sweatshirt, it was killingly expensive. It also immediately developed serious bobbles and snags and is now yoga-wear.

Funny thing is, I don’t mind too much. As exercise-clothes go it’s better than the Marmite giveaway t-shirt I used to wear. The cut remains fantastic and, besides, there’s something virtuous about wearing something old to practice yoga. I love it when my exercise-wear develops a fray. Each hole spells effort, each rip, sweated experience. Sportswear is the Dorian Gray of the wardrobe: as it deteriorates, the wearer emerges shining by contrast.

Thoreau advised, "If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes." That’s a sound principle when it comes to yoga. But I’m not enough of a Thoreau fan to believe that he wasn’t just a little too proud of his rips and tears, and that the desire for old clothes can be just another kind of vanity-trap.

A new wearer in old clothes? Why not a new wearer in new clothes? After all, I’ve earned them, as they said in the Fame opening credits, ‘in sweat’…

Do you wear cast-offs to exercise, or does only shiny new lycra do get you up and running?

For more about the 80/20 project look here.

A consolotary poem for James Cameron.

Oh, James Cameron.
Look at the world you’re the king of now.
It’s not our world – the good world full of talented and interesting people.
It’s not even a real world, is it?
You’re the king of a world you made up in your head.
And your head’s not even very good at making up worlds anymore, is it?
You’re not even the king of Terminatorworld or The Abyssworld.
You’re the king of ‘Pandora’.

In your robes of blue and your spaghetti tree crown, you sit upon a headache-inducing 3D throne of gimmickery and bluster.
‘I may not be the king of Best Directorworld, Best Pictureworld or Best Screenplayworld’ you sneer – you weren’t even nominated for Best Screenplay – ‘but my world broke all box office records!’
But in the back of your spiritual yet war-loving mind you know that those figures were never adjusted for inflation and Gone With The Wind, ET and probably even Forrest Gump shit all over you. And the tickets for those were way cheaper and they didn’t need to be in 3D.

‘I was just trying to save the world by teaching the world a lesson about destroying itself’ you haughtily sigh as you survey your computer-generated domain.
But they already learned that lesson, at the exact same time you did – when they saw Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas. Which were the same as your film. But better.
Instead, they decided they wanted to learn a lesson from your ex-wife.
She was telling us about war and stuff. But, like, real war – the war that’s going on in the real world, which you are not king of. Where we all live. And she is the Best Director.

Difficult decisions

I know I’ve been quiet lately, and here’s the reason…

I’ve spent the last few days mulling a very difficult issue, spent so much time thinking about it that at times my brain felt as if it had a reduced operating capability, while a portion of my mental RAM was allocated to this other task.

Burial or cremation?

Having to decide which – and having to decide which of these for someone else – is more difficult than I had thought.

They’re both so… final, which, given the circumstances, is good, but there’s the almost aesthetic principles to weigh up.

The decision has to fit the person, if you know what I mean?

And that’s so… hard to reconcile.

Because we never really know – not 100% really and truly – another person, do we?

We all have the capacity to surprise – and be surprised by – someone else.

Even if that someone else was your own mother.

You can’t tell me that you *really* know someone, to the point of knowing what he or she wants all the time, no matter how long you’ve known them; I’m not sure I would believe it, not believe it would be so *all* of the time.

So, burial or cremation?

It hasn’t been easy, but yesterday afternoon I decided that cremation would be more appropriate.

However, imagine how I felt when I rang the undertaker to tell them my decision, only to be told that she actually had to be dead first?

I am completely gobsmacked.

[p.s. I'm sorry if this offended you. It did shock Sophie, but I tried to explain that it was just my sense of humour being let out for a ramble. There's no real malice here, it's just a piece for inclusion in my short story anthology]

The 80/20 project #7 – I Give Up

Sometimes, especially on a Sunday, it’s better to wear old favourites. Garments with holes are best.

Feels like pyjamas but isn’t: isn’t even jeans, which I used to wear not only for weekends but all the time during the week. Until recently I didn’t own a pair of trousers, just jeans and more jeans: smart jeans and relaxed jeans; faded jeans and raw indigo; shredded and pristine. Now I’ve kind of given up on them. Skinny has been aroud for too long. Despite experimenting with other cuts, nothing else feels right yet. So I find myself wearing trousers. Who’da thought it?

So what happened to jeans? Are you wearing them today, on jeansday Sunday?

For more about the 80/20 project look here.