I finished the beat sheet for my screenplay and now I just have to type it up and write the first 10 pages. I'm still deciding about whether to leave all the baseball stuff in there and just start with my character in the locker room after a shitty game. But I like the baseball stuff. Julie, my screenwriting teacher will probaby cut it out anyway. I don't even have a scene just with the character and Pac Bell park, which is part of the reason I wanted to write a baseball story. I wanted a hometown player who now plays on a different team to come to Pac Bell Park and freak out, thinking this park could have been his, if he only stayed put. I might put that scene in yet. If I do that, I think I'll put a scene in act 1, where my character runs into his old little league coach. The purpose of that scene will be reinforce the idea that the ballplayer is pretty damned bummed he's not a part of the team, he rooted for as a child.

I like the idea of Pac Bell Park as symbol for renewal. Certainly, that's the way the ad people for the SF Giants pushed the park during that first year. Baseball, the way it used to be played, in downtown stadium and played by homegrown little leaguers. It's so not like that in professional sports anymore, but hey the marketing people can push the dream, the lie, can't they? Can I help it if I'm going to help to push the lie and use Pac Bell Park and symbol of redemption and renewal for my baseball character? Since I'm writing fiction, I think I can use a lie or two in a story that's all made up.

Walking three miles a day is really hard on my left foot and my left hip. I just walked two today and will be on this schedule for another week to give my left side time to get used to walking again.

I can't wait to get started on my next story, the one I'm calling Texas Dreaming, kind of like California Dreaming, only it's so not. But I like the play on words. I also got an idea for a story about a woman who's about to have a nervous breakdown. I remember writing a story about this in junior high. Another old story coming back to haunt me. Then other story about a woman whose brain is sick, like my friend Amy and in that movie Iris. Maybe if I write about my brain dying, I'll be able to get what Amy went through in those last days. Of course, it's so fictional because a real person with this disease wouldn't be able to write anyway.

I got a whiff of it while walking yesterday. A panicked voice saying, "can't stop, must be keep going, can't stop, can't stop, can't stop, can't ever stop, must keep writing, if I write, I can keep it at bay. I can fight it, I know I can. Damned doctors, what do they know, they can't even cure the common fucking cold. Witch doctors, all witch doctors. Keep writing, don't stop, don't stop." It will be interesting to explore what the panicked voice is trying write about. Portents of my future, maybe? Who knows? They say we're all going to end up with some form of brain degeneerative diseases one day, when we're really old. Maybe it's time to look into to the future, my future to see how bad it's going to get, like my own time machine.

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.

So much has happened to me since my last post. I've been trying to write for half an hour a day at cafes and it's been working. I wrote 3,000 words and finished a short story I've been working on since February 1999. It started out as a free write in February 1999. I left it alone and didn' think about it till April 2001, when I decided to submit it for a writing class assignment on bad free writes. At the same time, my writing group was talking about writing from a weird character's point of view. For whatever reason, I let my writing group read the freewrite, thinking we'd all get a laugh about what I bad piece I'd written. I was so shocked when my writing group members said they loved it and thought it was the best piece of writing I'd ever done. I was so intrigued by their comments that I decided to try and flesh out the free write into a story.

That free write, called Crazy Eddie, is now finished. YEAH!!! I haven't finished a story since April 2001, when I was in that writing class that I ended up totally hating. That's 11 months without finishing a story, which is way too long to go without finishing a story.

The hardest part is still to come for me, the editing and the rewriting. Right now, Crazy Eddie is about 20 plus pages. I think the story can be told in 15 pages, maybe 16 or 17 pages, so I've got alot of cutting to do.

I also finished writing the opening scene and first scene for my screenplay. I still have to rewrite the beat pages, do the outline and then do a character study for all of my major characters. That's going to take some time and much hard work.

What I've found out from all this cafe writing, is I'm not blocked with my writing. I just can't, for whatever reason, write at home. I can only write in librarie or cafes or in malls. I thought my writing block and laziness was due to another serious reason, but I just needed a change of writing location. I'm sure I'll get sick of writing outside of my home and then be able to write at home again, but until then, I have to do what works.

I don't even write with headphones and music. I can concentrate with all the noise through all the noise that goes on. I used to do all my homwork in the college grill, so I'm no surprised I can concentrate in a crowded cafe. Writing is such a solitary pursuit. You sit at home all alone, at your computer or writing table and you're by yourself. Even with the TV on or the stereo blasting, you're still by yourself.

When I take personality tests, they always say I'm a social person who needs to be around people. When I read this conclusion, I usuall get a chuckle because I consider myself a shy and reticent person, who needs alot of alone time. Maybe those personality tests were right after all. Who knows. All I know is that since I can write outside the home, that's where I'll have to write for now. At least until the need subsides.

In between all this writing, I saw Training Day and Iris. I loved Training Day. I hope Denzel Washington gets the Oscar for Best Actor. He should have gotten one for The Hurricane so the academy is obliged to give it to him this year. They're not going to give to Russell Crowe. He's been acting like such a jerk lately and Hollywood is very provincial about stuff like that he probably alienated many voters. He's also an Aussie and the only actors who've gotten two Oscars have all been Americans, Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks. And both of these guys were "nice" guys who never made any trouble for themselves or Hollywood. They'll never give it to Tom Wilkinson either. He's a Brit and although his performance was great, it was so understated, too understated maybe. Best actors winner performances have always been larger than life. Sean Penn is too much a Hollywood renegade, so they won't give it to him either. Now Denzel, he plays by the Hollywood rules and is a nice guy.

Denzel's performance was so against the good two shoes type he usually plays. He was a mean, bad ass black, ghetto talking cop. And he was so damned believable too. You'd think the guy was playing bad guys all his life. Ethan Hawke was no match for him, but I could see why Ethan got nominated for best supporting actor. He was also playing against his normal type and academy voters, most of whom are actors or failed/wannabe actors love that kind of casting.

The movie itself was very violent and there was a major gratuitious sex scene shot with some naked hispanic chick Denzel was bonking in the movie. The woman was butt nekkid in the movie for absolutely no reason, other than the fact that she had a great body. Since the movie was obviously geared towards boys, I guess you have to have a naked chick scene in there somwhere no matter how far fetched it is.

I loved Iris. They really got the Alzheimer's deterioration right. I was reminded of my friend Amy who died recently and how the nurse told me that she was like an Alzheimer's patient. Judy Dench was great and so was was Jim Broadbent. Kate Winslett was good too, although I got tired of looking at her nekkid body. I loved the actor who played John Bayley as a young man. He looked so much like this guy I had crush on in college named Drew. I met Drew when I was a freshman and I had a crush on him for two years. We became friends but he made it clear to me that he wasn't interested. I was so bummed but we still managed to emain friends.

Drew took a year off from college but visited school off and on, since he was living in the area. Then came the last semester I was in school. Out of the blue, Drew told me he was now in love with me and wanted to go out. And I was like huh? I was so over him by the time he declared his undying love. Talk about bad timing. He freaked me out so much, I hid out from him at a girlfriend's house one weekend to avoid him. My girlfriend told me he was asking everyone where I was. I thought he'd given up and went back to my apartment Sunday night, but as luck would have it I ran into him.

We talked and it was so hard. I really still liked him but as a friend now and not as a love interest and I had to explain it all to him. Somehow he ended up spending the night at my place and we tried to have sex, but it was so so useless for me. I was so not into him. Then I got so mad at him for stressing me out that I treated him really badly the next morning. I regret that now, but at the time, the situation completely frustrated me to no end. Thank god, we managed to remain friends even though it was so awkward for the longest time.

I lost touch with Drew when I got married but always looked back at our relationship fondly. I really did still like him. We got along so well and we could talk for hours. We were even into the same kind of music and liked so many of the same things. Drew was also a bit of anglophile like me. He was also the most charming and the most polite man I've ever met in my life. He was always in a good mood and so cheery. I loved this quality about him because I couldn't be in a bad mood around him. Part of me wished that I didn't rebuff him when he offered his love, but then there's the other part that says, he deserved it. He rebuffed me when I was in crush with him and I was in crush with him for two whole years. When you're 18, that's a damned long time.

I got back in touch with him a few years ago, when I saw his number in the college alumni directory. I just called him out of the blue and I was surprised that he still remembered me. He was living in Iowa at the time. He even told me he had spent a couple of years trying to find me. I felt bad that he did that but so flattered at the same time. I had no idea how into me he was and his slavish devotion to finding me was proof. Too bad I changed my name, although if he did find me, he would have found me married.

We traded letters for the next year and he was just like I remembered and I found myself falling in love with him, and wishing he would move out to California. I couldn't see myself moving to Iowa. In one of his last letters, he said that we blew something really special that we had in college. I cried when I read that because he was right in a way, although I still had hopes for us. But I guess he gave up on us because he stopped sending letters. I kept writing letters to his address but I never heard anything back. To this day, I don't know if he's dead or if he just decided to move on because he couldn't rekindle the feelings he had for me in college or if he met someone and got married. I don't know.

I'm resigned to it all. We were obviouly never meant to be, me and Drew. We tried three times and each time, the timing was so totally off. I wished we could have stayed friends though, but maybe when you're older that's harder to do, especially when you live so far away from each other. But in my heart, Drew holds such a special place in my heart. He's not the guy who got away, but the guy where the timing was off the worst for both of us.

To this day, I think he would have been a most compatible marriage partner. I think part of me is still looking for a very charming and incredibly polite man, who is always cheery and in a jolly mood, like Drew. And one day, I hope to find him.

I saw I am Sam tonight. It wasn't as schlocky as I thought it would be. The previews made me think the movie was going to be tearjerker and who wants to sit through that. But, since Sean Penn was nominated for Best Actor for this movie, I made myself watch it. Penn's performance was very studied and controlled. You can see his brain thinking away, trying to figure out his next move. But other than that, his performance was stunning. His physical gestures, Sam's way of walking, the way he held open his mouth all the time was rivetting. I liked the fact that he played the character of Sam without judgment and the movie filmed Sam that way. The director could have easily made the audience feel sympathetic to the Sam character, but it's not that easy. Sam is retarded and you get to feel the embarrassment and shame that his mental handicap causes the pepole around him. But Sam is not to be pitied or glorified. He's just retarded and like most people, just trying to get by in ths world with a kid.

The filmmakers really made the social services people come off like the cruel heartless liberals that the right wing media says there are. Those social services people were drawn so one-dimensional and just plain mean and nasty.

I'm not sure if Sean will win. I still have yet to see Ali and Training Day. Ali is no longer in theatres even though Will Smith was nominated for an oscar. I'm thinking it might be Denzel Washington as the winner only because he did get overlooked for his performance on The Hurricane. But Sean Penn, I don't know. His character work was flawless, controlled and very complete.