Saturday, June 16, 2007

5-2-95

I know the blog's been practically silent for weeks. Mostly because (1) I've been busy with life, and (2) and I just haven't been feeling the blogging vibe. I feel like I'll get the vibe back, I just need a breather.

Anyway, the vibe ain't really completely back yet, but I've been sorting through boxes in the garage and I found something that I have to share. (Why am I sorting through boxes, you ask?) (Because I'm moving on July 1st!) (To the fucking awesomest apartment.) (It's in Highland Park, which is basically Eagle Rock, but supposedly less trendy.)

I've been looking through boxes that haven't been touched in DECADES and I just found this small spiral notebook. Only one of the pages has been used. It's dated 5-2-95, which means I wrote this at the end of my junior year of high school (so cut me some slack):

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5-2-95

--TV Pilot Idea
--ONE hour drama
--setting, foundation: The journalism staff putting togethor (sic) a newspaper for a college.
--Cast: group of twenty-somethings, plus two adult advisers
--Follows all of their personal and professional lives (at school and trying to put their lives together) as they begin to find out who they are. But also there is a common throughline -- they have to put together a newspaper.

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I love it because it's so utterly vague and earnest and boring. I can just imagine the pitch meeting: "So where does the show go after the first episode?" "Oh, you know, there's a common throughline -- they have to put together a newspaper." And then: crickets. (Actually, substitute "newspaper" with "late night comedy show" and you basically have Studio 60.)

Thank god I've learned how to express my ideas in the last twelve years, 'cuz this one sure wasn't gonna get me anywhere.

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A few other things random things found in boxes tonight:

1. two rulers that proclaim: "my orthodontist keeps me straight" (mine certainly didn't)

2. the Howard the Duck soundtrack on audio cassette (yes, that's how much of a dork I am--not only did I see Howard the Duck FOUR TIMES in the movie theater, but I also owned the audio cassette tape of the freaking soundtrack)

3.

4. a jar of nickels (just nickels)

5. a set of Twin Peaks collectible cards (one of them signed by Wendy Robie, a.k.a. Nadine, a.k.a. the inventor of the world's first completely silent drape runner)

6. "Diane...The Twin Peaks Set of Audio Tapes," yes, on audio cassette. This was a collection of all of Kyle MacLachlan's "Diane..." monologues from the show, including some that he recorded just for the tape. (I am in Twin Peaks Geek Heaven right now.)

7. all of my high school I.D.s, including the fake I.D. I bought from Mujibar and Sirajul when I was fifteen. (I was on a high school drama trip to New York and I decided I wanted to get drunk for the first time, which I did, successfully, at Don't Tell Mama's.) (They didn't card me, and if I remember correctly I drank: 1 gin and tonic, 1 rum and coke, 1 rum and hot chocolate, and 2 pina coladas.) (I got unbelievably drunk.) (Here's the funny part: they didn't card me until...I paid for my drinks with travellors checks that said my real name on them, and then they asked to look at I.D. to verify the travellors checks and I gave them my fake I.D. that had a fake name on it. At that point, I'd already drunk their drinks and they just wanted my money.) (By the way, my fake I.D. was the worst fake I.D. in the world.)

2 comments:

christy said...

first!!

christy said...

i really adore your high school drama idea.

i would pay real money to get my hands on a copy of the first 40-page story i wrote, when i was ten, about ziggy and her band of multicultural harvard business graduate friends dealing with an aids crisis that is tearing them apart.

the blond slutty friend got pregnant (duh) and got aids at the same time (maybe with ziggy's boyfriend, but i don't really remember - we'll say it was ziggy's boyfriend, who was black, and so was ziggy, so this was a double affront that he cheated on her with a blond slutty harvard business school graduate)

but anyway. ziggy gets aids too (okay i'm remembering now, it totally was her boyfriend), and the blond slutty girl is actually pregnant with TWINS.

how did ziggy's boyfriend get aids, you ask? well i don't remember going into that. but let's just say, he has some secrets.

so the birth happens. and at that time the nurse runs out of the delivery room screaming, "It's a fucking miracle!" (the most dramatic element of this whole story was actually that I, a ten year old christian girl, wrote THE F-WORD ON PAPER!"

Anyway. The entire story was built around the "fucking" miracle that her babies did not have aids.

But immediately after writing it I found out that that is actually incredibly common.

And my brother read my story once, which was saved on the hard drive, and it started an enormous string of us snooping on each other's work that i won when i inadvertently (and it was seriously inadvertent) told the whole school about his erotic dream involving another girl at that school (who also happened to be his girlfriend).

Which he HAD SAVED ON THE HARD DRIVE.