Tag Archives: L.A

Cough, Spit & A Fondle

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Today, I realized a few things. Firstly, I have noticed that I have started to consciously swallow drinks. And, by that, I mean, I no longer just swallow water from a bottle or tea from a cup and get on with whatever I am doing. For some bizarre reason, I believe because I think that I have started to gulp loudly when I swallow, I make an effort to control the swallowing. Which, in turn, leads me to focus on swallowing after the third go, lets just say, and I inevitably gulp louder, get the liquid to go down the wrong tube, and I end up coughing, spluttering, and have to spit the water out. In case I choke. All makes perfect sense. To me. In my head. There is a reason for this nonsense.

Moving on, I have also realized, that the 16 block walk to the gym actually does bring up a few random stories. I had just been too anti-San Fran, probably missing L.A like the temptress that she is, to let myself observe the carry on. Unsurprisingly, for San Fran, there is a lot of homeless people on the gym route. Which provide a few interesting scenarios. Again, I was waiting at the lights to cross the road (a mighty place to observe life it seems) when I saw a couple at the other side of the road having a big fight. Screaming at each other. In Chinese. It was near impossible not to watch, or start to slow down walking wise to see what was going on. 

The Chinese woman was freaking out for some reason, although I am only presuming she was, not speaking too much Chinese myself. She did not seem happy, giving me a nice dirty look as I walked up, maybe she was trying to say hello though. Again, the lack of Chinese was a barrier for me. They had a place set-up in the doorway of a bank, with all their stuff there, two shopping trolleys next to the make-shift bed. The Chinese man was backing off, shouting back a bit, but it was plain to see that the woman was kicking him out, of their doorway. They were now taking up the entire path, so she started physically kicking out at him to clear off, threw a blanket at him, then gave one last tirade in Chinese, and the guy gave me. She had kicked him out, he was gone. Across the road he went, to the bank on the other side of the street, and sat in that doorway, with his blanket. Few more words shouted over and back, and it died down. Fight over.

We were all able to go on our way. The path was clear. There were a few of us after building up on the path, waiting for them to finish up, so we could keep walking on. On we went, me drinking back some Red Bull, listening to see if I was gulping loudly for every drink. Few coughs, few splutters, and the can was almost gone. One last drink, and, conveniently, there was a bin to my right. In fairness, I did kind of stop suddenly, but I just noticed the bin, to my immediate right, as I took the last gulp. Stopped suddenly, stuck the can into the bin, but as I did, the person who had been walking right behind me, walked straight into me.

The last big mouthful sprayed out. Not really actually, more it filled up my mouth, caused me to splutter, then half sprayed, half snorted, out my mouth and nose, as I tried in vain to save a bit of dignity and hold it in. Should’ve let the spray just gracefully happen. Must have been quite a charming sight, if anyone had seen it. The person who had bumped into me was annoyed with me, for stopping. I was too covered in Red Bull to remember if I should’ve been annoyed with anyone, probably myself, but it all ended then and there. Continued on to the gym. This was getting more eventful, this was more like it.

Into the gym, did my bit, drinking back the water, needed to refill my bottle up at the water fountain, which is in the downstairs part of the gym. This gym is far quieter than the one in L.A, so you can take your time with the machines. And the fountain. I had a bit left in my bottle, might as well finish it off before I fill her up, so took another big gulp. With my iPod earphones on, I started to think that might be the reason why I was hearing stuff louder in my head, the earphones being on! Which, obviously, made me concentrate far too much on the gulp. And I have already described what happens. Cough, splutter, down the wrong pipe, out comes the liquid. Over the water fountain. Didn’t really get the spout part, but still nobody wants to see someone dribble back over the water fountain. Thankfully, I don’t think the person behind me, waiting for me to finish up, saw any of it. Either way, I gave it a quick rinse. Left it germ and dribble free. 

Leaving the gym and walking home threw up one final piece to this tale. Two days ago, next to the gym, in the bright light of the evening, on a main street, I thought I saw a different homeless couple, getting cordial with each other. As in the full wack. Just with clothes on. Not fully sure, but I was 99% certain. Seeing as they were a foot away from me, in a doorway, while I knocked on the door of the gym, not realizing that it was closed early for a holiday here. I was pretty certain. Leaving the gym tonight, the same couple are sitting in the doorway, not on top of each other or positioned like they were last time. Just sitting side by side. With her hand somewhere. Blatant. Like a hammer.

All of this lead, kind of bizarrely, lead to a feeling of empathy for the homeless folk. For the following reason, which I could relate to, a bit. Kind of. Not that this has ever happened to me, obviously. However, do you remember when you lived at home, and a girl wanted to come around for, eh, a cup of tea? But you didn’t think the best place to bring the girl for a cup of tea, was to your place, for various reasons. You were left wondering, where should we go? Where could you go? Probably not their place, for the same reason. More than likely at the age where a cup of a tea in a hotel was too expensive, have you seen the prices, or you simply would not have thought of it. What were you to do? Have a tea party outdoors? Dodge. Fun once, perhaps, but after a while, probably get a cold. So, what are those without any home, meant to do? Not fair really. I know it is probably not top of their list of priorities, but still, amongst many other problems, that must annoy them.

I am not making fun of the homeless either, far from it. Just observations. I’ll wrap up by saying I got a bit of good news myself today. I now have a marketing company in L.A waiting for my sitcom pitch, to help me with my viral campaign. Plus, I have camera men and lighting crew waiting in the wings to help me out with making a scene or two. Wuu to the huu. Good to have the pressure on. Must get the script finished and get back there. Time is ticking! My Mastercard is running out! Oh Jesus. (That is meant to be a brutal dumb joke. But, now I think about it, it also makes sense. Take it in the dumb joke way. If you get it. Always fun feeling the need to explain a joke). The End.

Song of the day. This is a ridiculously good song, which hopefully will not be wrecked by drunken sing-alongs too soon. I am still scarred from hearing the people in the apartment below doing muffled karaoke for a few hours yesterday. They were horrendous. Mundy & Damien Rice were sang over and over, ruined a few good songs…

The Gardener by The Tallest Man On Earth

Shut Up & Do The Right Thing!

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Pulitzer prize winners, Larry David, and I suppose all those who have a clue about the art of writing, this may not be the post for you. Anyone with a clue. However, if, like me, you were fairly clueless until recently about writing, you might get a few tips from this blogaduu. Finally, finally, after months of knocking on my door, looking for a chance, this post is getting the nod. Big day. Most of this might all seem pretty obvious, but when one chooses to, 99% of the time, ignore the obvious, it can seem revolutionary, once spelt out for you.

Around this time last year, I began to think about writing a sitcom pilot for a college style idea which I had. Not actually write it, just think about writing one. Eventually I wrote the pilot by November last year, roughly. I like to mull things over, think them through. Looking back, I was completely clueless, as to how to approach the sitcom writing. Two feet, head first, jumped in, going in blind, swinging like a drunk man, throwing jokes and structure around with absolutely little to no meaning. This time around, I am as clueless in one sense, but at least have more structure and advice to nudge me in the right direction. Hollywood has provided one source of help at least for free if nothing else. One might say that it is serving its purpose well.

First time around trying my hand at a sitcom pilot, I thought my knowledge of viewing every episode of my favourite sitcoms would put me in good stead to make my own. Surely. To accompany this cast iron theory, I even read a screenwriting book, for the movies I would write and star in after the sitcom, just so I had all bases covered. Started off by making a loose episode outline for myself, while half drunk on a plane. Logically, the next step was to fill it up with scenes of differing lengths, most of which did not really seamlessly gel together as they should, and off I went with it, delighted. Pilot in hand, line up the bids. Looking back at it, I may have mostly been happy with my great name for the show. Surely that alone would get it made!

Surprisingly, I got a bit of good feedback for the pilot. Thumbs up, pat on the head, ruffle of the nicely combed hair, and a bit of stage progression, as in it was passed up a level in a department. However, that was more or less as far as it got with the television stations I submitted it into. Should’ve really thrown the towel in then, pr***s. Shattering my dreams. Might as well give it another go, plus, this time around, I had my blog to work with, the sitcom would write itself! All I had to do was pick three stories out, A, B and hopefully a C, link them somehow, and write them down. My pilot! Happy days! Should take a few days max.

So, for the past week, I have been formulating and developing the pilot episode over in my head. Start off by introducing the characters to the audience, work in their back story, build it up nicely, few jokes along the way, and good to go. I had the blog to back it up, momentum was building, they could reference the blog if needed. Dumb as a mule, so I was.

Somewhere along the way, I made a call to my helpful guide in L.A, to tell him all about the great progress which I was making. “Stop, you need to listen to me, here’s what you must do” I was told. Started off by informing me mainly of the what not to do’s. My week of work was immediately crossed out and had to start afresh. Thank freddie funk it was, seeing I was going down the wrong path completely. And then what I should try to do. Firstly, and this is key, it is not a pilot episode which I am really looking to write. I do not want to bore any reader with character introductions, background stories, build-up or any of that. I simply want to impress the reader enough with my writing, so that from that one episode, or first 10 pages, the reader will ask to see more, meet me, or at least be offended enough to take notice. I do not want to be just another quaint script in front of someone, that they will forget about within 15 minutes hour. Key one was to stand out, don’t hold back.

The following metaphor sunk in with me, so I will re-use it now. If my blog, full of stories, were to be the ingredients, and I was to bake a cake out of them (sitcom series) what I wanted to do was pass around the best slice of the cake to people, something that they will want more of. Not the first slice, or the last one, but the best one, so I should fill that up to the brim with the best I could deliver. No point in holding back, this was the one to get your foot in the door. Shove as much good stuff in. Just make it all work well. The best slice of the cake!

My original idea was kind of scrapped (first episode, the pilot of me arriving in L.A etc) and a whole new approach had to be taken. Being honest, initially my brain stopped churning for a while, annoyed that I had used it up and then discarded all the good work we did together. A few days I think I felt my brain was close to bursting, literally, and I was covered in frogs at the time. (Twitter reference about a dream, follow on!).

Instead, it is now time to push boundaries. It is far easier to tone down than it is to tone up, as the skinny girl said to the fat girl in the gym (don’t worry, that will not be used in the script, ha). Every scene needs to serve a purpose, what is the objective of the scene, does each scene have an element of high conflict (all straight out of a book, but good to be re-told at this time). This raised the bar even more – to be clever, make sense, push boundaries, obviously make people laugh, and all within the time schedule for a sitcom. Once again, like breaking L.A, it sounded almost too easy. 

Thankfully, I have a good few stories that did not make the blog cut. They will now be highly useful for the new approach. Or at least give me food for thought to go along a certain line or angle for the story. I also spent far too much time last week thinking up of a clever name. Absolutely pointless if the rest does not deliver. However, I think I now have both for the show, the name, and also, the outline of the episode that I am writing is coming together. As in today I was able to write out the gist of 17 scenes, all of which linked and were what I was looking for, wuu duu! (I wrote this a few days ago, a new approach again has been developed!).

All I need now is to fully develop it, along with dialogue, and I will be flying. Again, almost too easy. Sure. I have miles to go, but getting there slowly. It is all about the threads coming together in the end, A, B and C. Highly funking frustrating to do, but now that I think I have one cleverly worked out, highly satisfying!

So, up to this point, I had more or less written a few days back. Since then, the writing has been frustrating in the main, pretty good in the minor. However, at least now, I have figured a way out to stop my brain from exploding. My problem has been transferring the brilliant scenes and story line, from my head, to paper. Dumbly, I was more or less, going from the scene in my head, straight to what the characters were saying. For some reason, only today, did I start writing scene snippet outlines, which makes the whole thing far more do-able.

After studying individual episodes of different sitcoms for guidelines, I now have a few structures in place. You would be amazed at how short some scenes actually last in a few sitcoms, but which are vital and brilliant to the story line, all of which is tough to get down. One last thing, and I’ll finish on this, is the tough part of narrowing down what to leave in. Like this post, initially there was no structure. Rambling on, with snippets of humour. Every line of this sitcom has to be funny or necessary. Otherwise it is chopped. Which is tough to do. Cutting frivolous dialogue has been a big challenge of late. All about discipline!

Thats it. I was going to give one last point about how useful it is to always have a notebook with you for ideas or dialogue, but I have already said above that would be my last thing, so I won’t. 

Hopefully this songs will buck you back into life…

The Turning (Chew Fu Refix) by Oasis

And one from the latest Heineken ad… 

Just A Friend by Biz Markie

Loss Of Possibility

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Back to Old El Frisco, good old San Fran. Normal, regular, used to love you but nay as much now, San Francisco. My previous trip back to SF has been blogged about in the past (click here to be reminded if needs be) so I will not repeat my feelings once more. Instead, I will simply describe them in a different way, ha.

About a week and a half ago, I was looking forward to getting out of L.A for a while. Made the call, up to SF to write the sitcom pilot, get away from the madness and random ways of L.A, it would do me good. In fact, I was pumped to go to SF, my pilot needed and was going to be written, time to work! Then, I actually got a job, that will pay me, made a few more contacts, two more job opportunities were then put in front of me, and I had a great week. The whole week was a bit blurry, so I decided not to think about my decision to come up here. The blur has lifted, replaced by the SF fog, but I can now see through the haze. 

Something about San Fran is just not the same as L.A. When I give a homeless guy a dollar in L.A, I usually get a bit of humour out of it (last time I found out that he has more pairs of socks to choose from than I do, odd enough, I should’ve written more on that when it happened). At worst, I get a friendly punch in the ear, well worth a dollar for a story like that though. However, here, in SF, it is different. Yesterday, I gave a homeless guy a dollar, out of habit and also as he looked like he would do more than just give me a friendly punch in the ear if I didn’t. As I put the dollar into his cup, I noticed he was also flicking through songs, on his iPod, one earphone in his ear, the other earphone dangling down, similar to what I was doing at the time. In fact, I got a shudder as if I was looking at a mirror version of myself, only 5 weeks into the future.

However, his iPod was a far newer version than mine. I would almost say it was an iPod Touch, but not fully sure. And I was giving him a dollar? Didn’t feel right. Who needed that dollar more, I pondered, as I realized I no longer had enough for a coffee. To make matters worse, after walking a block further down the street, my iPod gave up on me. The battery didn’t die, it just froze, which has been happening lately. I am tapping on it still like one might on a fishbowl, trying to revive my goldfish, so to speak. Now and again, I get a flutter of the tail, but it is on its last legs. This would not have happened in L.A!

First night up here, I went out with my cousins for a friends birthday. Down to the local pub, then off into the heart of SF’s bustling nightlife centre. And, I noticed a few things. It is far harder to bluff your way past queues here. Nobody cares that you are Irish. Far more jock dudes in the bars. Far, far less quantity of women in the bars here. The women are far less plastic looking here. And on top of all this, the abundance of good looking women is far less plentiful here. However, I suppose they can hold a conversation better and don’t ask “Who are you?”. All depends what you’re looking for really. Personally, I miss L.A. A lot.

At least the public transport in SF allows you to get around the place easily. Unlike L.A, which has none. Well, two buses I think, but no clue where they go to (5% of the reason I walk everywhere in L.A). It could have something to do as well that usually I have nowhere to go in L.A (another 5%). And the buses seem to be used by homeless people only. Not that I am a snob who thinks he is too good for the bus full of homeless people, that goes God only knows where, or anything like that (90% of the reason). So, that is one plus for San Fran, yay San Fran, wuu, hang in there Harvey.

Last night it occurred to me, why it is that I way prefer L-Heey to San Fran. In L.A, I walk 2 blocks to the gym, roughly. Up here, I walk 16 blocks. That 2 block walk has thrown up all sorts of stories, conundrums, encounters and so on, more than I can think of now off the top of my head. Here, the 16 block walk, always, always passes without incident. The loss of possibility is immense. Life is far more regular and normal here. Not saying that is a bad thing, at all. However, in L.A, when are you trying to get a break, make contacts, network, get material, get people interested in your sitcom etc., the possibilities are absolutely endless. You never know who might be buying you a round next, singing karaoke with, or be next to in the gym, and so on. Actors, singers, directors, producers, or simply wannabes like myself, you just never know. And it happens daily, hourly at times, all fairly fun and eventful. The possibilities and opportunities are endless!

Either that, or I just prefer only having to walk 2 blocks to the gym. Although it is not that there have been no funny stories occurring here, there have, just not as many. I suppose the whole interest/obsession people have with Hollywood is a good added bonus to any story though. That is why my sitcom will be based there! And, in case you are wondering, the writing is going great so far! Made a lot of progress today. Went off and bought a big pile of index cards and an A4 writing pad. Which both look well next to my little notebook, which is on top my larger notebook. Alongside my 4 different pens. All sitting next to me on the table, jealous of my laptop. Going well so far, still not one word down on paper. Oh Jesus.

Two songs of the day. First I am a big fan of, mainly for the first two minutes. Not sure why so much, but here it is. After this long winded introduction. I now present you with… The End (Riva Starr Retrip) by The Doors

And the next has been annoying me the past day or so, finally figured out what song it was from having a snippet in my head over and over… Your Woman by White Town (for any Spanish readers, nicely subtitled for you. First and only video I could find that would allow me to embed the Mandy Mhuuure)