I'm glad Halle Berry and Denzel won, but bummed as all heck that The Lord of the Rings didn't win anymore awards. I thought for sure it would get best picture. The picture has two more installments so there's two more chances to go.

I think a Beautiful Mind got best picture because of all the negative campaigning that went on against it. There were articles in all the papers, even in the NY Times that John Nash was a homosexual and an anti-semitic and then days before the Oscars, they had to report that they weren't true at all. It just reinforces my thought that you can't believe the media anymore. I wonder if the NY Times gets how much their credibility slipped when this incident happened. People probably voted for A Beautiful Mind in protest of all the mud slinging.

I liked that picture. I saw it with a friend and we both walked out of it wondering if we were delusional. It was a feel good movie and I think after 9/11, people want to see movies of a person triumphing in the midst of difficulties. This type of personal heroisem makes people feel that if somebody happens to them, they too will be able to triumph over any adversity. And The Beautiful Mind was about the enemy, the disaster, the calamity within your own heard. I mean how do you fight that? But John Nash did. He willed himself to sanity.

I also think there are more people in this country running around on prozac, prozac derivatives like paxil and other anti-depressants than the media is willing to report on. Seeing someone crazy on screen isn't that far off from real life. I know a few people who are kind of like John Nash. Maybe not as bad as him, but definitely not altogether there. People in droves went to see this movie and I think it's because people related to his craziness. I did and I've never bene on an antidepressant.

On to other topics. For research for my baseball screenplay, I bought a book called Baseball's Greatest Short Stories. Who knew there were that many short stories about baseball. The first story is Casey at Bat, which I seem to remember reading a long time ago in junior high.

What else. I'm walking 45 minutes at work now. Taking my two 15 minute breaks, which I've never done ever, and walking around the neighborhood, which is about a mile. I'm also trying to walk at lunch time. With these three walking breaks, I'm walking three miles, burning 300 calories since you burn 100 calories whether you walk or run one mile, and taking 6,000 steps out the recommened 10,000 steps that the authorities are now recommending everyone to do.

It's nice to be outside and walk and take a break from work. It feels so strange though, since I've never ever taken my breaks at midday or at mid afternoon on my own. The only time I've ever taken breaks is when I've been in jobs where I'm forced to do so or I've been so unhappy or angry at a job that I had to take a break to stay sane and not freak out. But that's been awhile since that's happened. I've always seen people at my job taking a break in the lunchroom, and I've always thought these breaktakers were like factory workers or union people or government workers. But now I'm one of them. It's so my karma to become what I've sort of always despised. I'm sure someone who sees on my walks is despising me now.

Thank god for discussion groups on the Net about how to do things with your computer. I was starting to freak out about transferring files from my little laptop to my desktop. I read one the help boards and someone posted a message saying to get Microsoft's ActiveSnyc. I installed this free utility on my pc and it worked. YEAH!!! I thought I was going to have spend some money on getting a card and card reader, but the ActiveSync transferred my files so fast. I think it helps that I'm not transferring large files but just Word files. Nonetheless, I now feel completely secure in writing on my baby laptop anywhere and then coming home and uploading the files to my desktop.

I have to work on my baseball screenplay beat sheet tonight. I have this beat sheet where I'm supposed to have the location, characters and purpose of each scene in my movie from beginning to end. It's a skeleon, an outline, but I have to do for my screenwriting class before I can get on with writing the screenplay.

This beat sheet method is so odd for me. I usually just write and write till I get to an ending. With the beat sheet, you have to have your ending, two plot points and midpoint first and then fill out the scenes between them. Once you get the beat sheet done, you just have to write out the scenes. I don't know if I can do this either. My screenplay idea got butchered in class and it was recommended that I start the movie 2/3 of the way into the story I had written and do it in real time. I have to get this beat sheet done though if I want to take the second section of the class. I won't be able to write my screenplay until my screenwriting teacher blesses my beat sheet. What a pain! I don't understand why you can't just write and write till you get to an end. But, since this is a new writing genre for me, I'm trying to follow all the rules and use the tools that I've been taught. Whether this obeying of the rules makes a difference to the quality of my stories is still yet to be seen.

Well, I guess there's no way to the other side but through it, especially if you can't get around it or come up with a workaround.