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Happy labor dabor, heroes.  I hope you’re all having a brilliant, chimerical, labor-free day.  For the most part I myself am taking it easy, Final Draft shall stay quiet for at least one day, but the one endeavor from which I will never cease, will never vacation, is my love for you all.

The highlights of my holiday weekend are thus:

1) My filthy assistant is coming down to the beach to visit me, which is most awesome.  I suspect hugs may even enter the equation.  She is bringing her boyfriend who is, I believe, from Equatorial Kundu, so that’s nice as well.

2) Saturday morning around four in the AM I received a telephone call from Mr. Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade and that was fucking sweet.  Inside the dizzy, vast jungles of my mind he sits atop clamoring mountains of other scribes in a magical land of awesome, chilling up there with the likes of Dylan Thomas, Dante, Sorkin-Allmighty and Brian K. Vaughan, and to speak with him for just a few minutes was, to say the least, decadent.  On a related note his wife gave birth to their second child over the weekend and I want to extend my warmest congratulations to them.  Surely that child will grow up to possess a vocabulary that would stagger even me.  Mazel tov, sir.

3) Today we launch my latest endeavor to rule all media: A new webcomic called “The Cutting Room.”  This is Mr. Mcpheely’s baby, he just asked me to write some strips and I told him I’d drop some words for him once a week.  It represents a fun little romp through my fucked up thoughts and if you have any interest in hilarity, please check it out.

4) Also Penny Arcade related, G and the boys made it back safely (barely, from what I hear) from melting the collective face off of PAX, and though I couldn’t be there myself I followed the tweets and the overall consensus seems to be that they dealt in fucking murders out there in Seattle.  I expected nothing less and am proud as punch of all of them.  A finer group of killers one could not hope to come by.

All in, a pretty rad-tastic weekend/week/thing despite Roddick’s heartbreaking loss to a GIANT from Greensborro on Saturday. And surely there is even more daunting beauty just around the bend with the new movie starting pre-pro this week and new opportunities for love and for greatness with each passing moment .  To the universe-entire I offer, nay, I challenge you: Bring on the wonder.

Hope you’re all having even more kickass times than me.

Get a beverage of your choice and live like you just escaped a bear attack, because, really, didn’t you?

E

If all this distance ain’t gonna bring you to me, then what’s the point of all this patience…

When Adam Duritz asks if I’ve seen him lately, I’m staring right at him but I know what he’s asking so I don’t say anything.  A few years ago he was out on the radio just starting to change and a few years after that I was doing the same thing in Art Houses and festivals and in your living room.

And when he says he doesn’t need anyone I know he’s lying because I’m lying, too.

When he says, “Somewhere out in America it’s raining” I expect the sky to open up at his command.  If anyone could control the weather with his words it would be him (or Destro).

Can I tell you one thing I remember about you, sir?  I can tell you a hundred things.

I could paint you a picture.  I could paint you in blue and red and black and grey.

Adam and I have a strange relationship considering the fact that we’ve never met.  This is going to sound completely fucked, I know, but the way I feel about him, it’s the way I’ve felt about a couple of the girls who walk around trailing pieces of me like a kill.  He’s like a girlfriend.  I know it’s fucked up but when he’s happy, I’m happy.  When he tells me “I’m very much in love these days,” I think, oh, sweet, we’re in love.  I wonder who we’re in love with.  When he’s excited, it is infectious.

When he tells me to make my eyes empty circles I think, I’m way ahead of you, brother.

And Michael Franti, what can I say?  I like a song about war crimes with a beat I can dance to.  Or, as Mr. Mcpheely pointed out, overturn a police car to.

I saw the man moonwalk barefoot during a medley of Jacko songs.  Barefoot.  A feet I didn’t think possible.

I went to an epic show Friday.

Epic the way you mean it.  Three and a half hours of rock and jumping and dancing with strangers.  Three and a half hours of Crows and Franti and Dylan and Guthrie and Stones and Grateful Dead and cute Jamaican chicks and whiskey and ten dollar Bud Lights and when they all came together to sing Redemption Song, at least for those few minutes, I was redeemed.

I saw the Saturday Night Rebel Rockers Traveling Circus and Medicine Show a few days ago.  And it was fresh. To.  Death.

Get a beverage of your choice and scatter me, please,

E

I wanna be a lion…

So I’ve been trying to write a letter for a few days now.  Maybe a week.  Definitely not more than a month.

Probably.

And the fact that I’ll almost certainly never send this note, this epistle, this hymn, this bullet, lifts none of its weight.  The syntax needs to be perfect, the composition holy, the heart precise and flawless.  With this letter as much and maybe more than ever I need to be a surgeon with my words.  But the biggest stumbling block, without doubt, is the honesty of it all.  I need to tell the truth, unobstructed and unadulterated.  Free.  August.  But I lie for a living.  I am professionally dishonest.  Trying to tell the truth is anathema to all that I am.  Like trying not to get headshots in Halo, I’m working against muscle memory.

Like any artist I try to use my lies to tell the truth, but honest honesty?  Madness.

In my search for fineness, for genius, for truth I decided to look to some of the greats for inspiration.  In order to say the things I need to say the way they demand to be said I need to see very, very far.  I need to, once again, climb the shoulders of giants.

And while scaling the literary history of love I found some brilliance let slip from the mouths of Lord Byron and Samuel Clemens.  I found something raw, ancient and still new in Napoleon’s devotion.  (Say what you will about that weird, tiny prick but adored his Josephine.)  I found ferocity in the love of a man without fear, a man unburdened in the knowledge he would die tomorrow, his ardor found scrawled on a parchment and resting on his corpse.

In my search I found beauty, which, we all know, is truth.

And I also found something unexpected.  I found a website selling pre-written love letters for 34.99 a pop.

What?

I mean…what?

That’s half a step from hiring a hooker to fuck your girl for you.  And, by the way, I mean half a step worse.

I’m not going to link these people because I don’t want to drive traffic to this den of tackiness, this hole, but I will share with you some of their samples.

These are actual excerpts from this site untouched by me except to copy and paste.

Dear Charlotte,

You do not need to impress me or do anything to make me love you more. I love you…

Okay, well, first of all, that’s pedestrian as shit.  And I feel sure someone who buys his love letter on the intertron is not real hard to impress.  But mostly what I’m worried about here is, what if the girl I’m into isn’t named “Charlotte”?  What then?  What do I do?  I’m fucking lost.

They also have letters for those of you who see someone you fancy on Match.com (or whatever you kids are using these days) but just don’t have the words.

I am a gentleman who is seriously looking for a nice lady to develop a life-long love & companionship. I have read your profile and would like to trade emails with you if possible….

…If you are looking for a nice gentleman, please reply and I will tell you more details about myself.

Warmest regards,

Justin

Are you seriously looking?  Seriously?  Did you seriously even graduate high school?  Do you seriously not know that “lifelong” is one word, not a hyphenate?  Also, I feel pretty sure it’s “possible” to trade emails with someone.  Because of the internet and all.  If this person would like to, well, that’s a whole other kettle of monkeys.  It’s nice to know you are a nice gentleman, though.  All those fuckhead gentlemen are really screwing things up for you guys lately.  The bastards.

Also, what happens if she does dig you, Justin? (If that is your real name!)  Are you going to find a site with pre-made personalities?  Will you buy a new you, with new details to share?  A new passport and a new face?  And if so, are you a fucking spy?  And if so, you should really be able to think on your feet a lot better than this.

Ridiculous.  Tis rhubarb.

One last, kids.  One last.

My Dearest Susan,

You make every moment worth every other moment, good and bad.

I’ve read that twelve times and I have no idea what it means.

I so like the person I am with you.

I so hate the person you are.

With you I’m strong, capable, and even heroic. You inspire all that is good in me…

Heroic?  Capable?  You can’t even write your own damn love letter you feckless shit-stick.  And she clearly doesn’t inspire shit except a charge of 35 dollars on your damn AMEX.

With fondness, respect, honor, duty and an overflowing cup of love…

Matthew

Oh!  Okay.  I just realized that Matthew is a twelve year old girl.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been so mean but, I mean, “an overflowing cup of love?”  That’s just sad.  And kind of gross.

What happened to you?  You’re a mess.

I got some love on my pants.  Because my cup of love, you see, is overflowing…prematurely sometimes…

Also I clicked on their link to read the testimonials of their “satisfied customers” and I got 404’d (page not found).  Which is pretty funny.

I get searching for words; I do it all day everyday.  I get how hard it can be to articulate something that seems bigger than you can know.  Something that seems unapproachable.  Love has a way of feeling like the beginning and the end of the world and it’s not, but it can seem that way when it comes and goes.

I get girls that can leave you lost.  Girls that can spin you like no ten bottles of tequila could.  I get it.

And this is a hard world filled with hard boys and hard girls.  You can’t really get away with “Juliette is the sun” anymore.  I get it.

But damn.

It’s one thing to get a little turned around in a cacophony you don’t quite understand.  It’s one thing to crib a little from Byron.

But.

You don’t order love from a menu, children.  It doesn’t come in a .pdf or a box of any shape.

I don’t actually know anything about this sort of thing, but I’m pretty sure I’m right about this.

And speaking of Byron:

My Heart -

We are thus far separated – but after all one mile is as bad as a thousand – which is a great consolation to one who must travel six hundred before he meets you again.  If it will give you any satisfaction – I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes – and as cold as Charity – Chastity or any other Virtue.

-Lord Byron to Annabella Milbanke, his future wife.

That’s how it’s done.

Get a beverage of your choice and tell someone you love her (or him if it is a him).  In your own words.  It can’t be worse than that shit.

E

I had a pocketknife that I won in a fight that I carried like it was gold.

Sorry I’ve been absent from the blarg for a little while.  I haven’t been feeling particularly funny or insightful or, you know, human for a little while for reasons I have no interest in going in to.  But it does bring me to something I want to say to Rob Thomas.

You’ve been married for a decade, Rob.  Might be time to stop writing breakup songs.  I’m just saying.

Also, for those who come ’round for actual, like, 207 movie news (fools!) I am currently working through eight trillion re-writes on the new movie, the script is quite strong at this point and we have, so far, collected several times the budget of For Catherine with which to make this movie so, yeah.  I’ll tell you more when there’s more to tell and so on and yadda yadda.

The real reason I’ve called you all here, though, is to mention that my friend Poops called me today to tell me that last Sunday a fireman got into an argument with a bicyclist, while driving, on Tunnel road in my once (and future) hometown of Asheville.  Apparently this firefighter fellow took issue with the fact that the bicyclist was riding around a busy street with his child on his bike.  This could be dangerous.  I see the firefighters point.  I guess the guy on the bike didn’t really believe how precarious such things can be, though, so the firefighter decided to prove to him what a dangerous activity this is by doing the only reasonable thing and SHOOTING THE GUY IN THE FUCKING HEAD!

What?

“It’s not safe to ride your bike on this street with a small child.”

“Really?  Seems safe enough to me.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

“I have a gun.”

“What?”

BAM

“Seem safe now, motherfucker!?!”

That is seriously the craziest thing I have heard all day and this is a day, by the way, in which I was told the story of a horse fucking a man named “Mr. Hands” to death.  Seriously.

Apparently the bullet went through and through the guys bicycle helmet but didn’t actually hit the dudes head so, you know, score one for whoever decided not to give firefighters weapons training.  The fireman has been put on paid leave pending the investigation.

Paid leave?

Investigation?

“Did you shoot this guy in the head?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He wasn’t being very safe.”

“Fair enough.”

Investigation over.

For some reason this thing reminds me of a news item from several years ago when a cop shot a guy to death for threatening to commit suicide.  Except this makes even less sense.  If that’s even possible.

Peoples is crazy.

By the way, this is what the guy looks like.

Ashevilles Bravest. Wait, craziest. I meant craziest.

Get a beverage of your choice and, fuck me, I don’t even know…

E

I tried so hard to give you what you need…

Before I say anything else, you’ve got to see this:

Now, if anyone can tell me what the hell is happening in this picture, please do.

Hello Folks,
I’ve got to say, I’d rather be reading one of E’s posts than writing my own, but since he’s busy, you know, writing movies and stuff, I figured I’d share a little something of my own. It’s not about indie movies, but it is about indie art. Comic books specifically.

I’m up at grad school in Middlebury, Vermont at the Bread Loaf School of English pursuing my MA in literature. It’s pretty cool. I mean, when I think literature, I for some reason always think of Dickens, but my three classes are about as far from Dickens as you can get: The Age of Hitchcock, The Graphic Novel, and The King James Bible. That’s right, I’m spending my summer watching movies, reading comics, and perusing the Bible. What a life I live. Anyway, as part of my graphic novel class, a classmate and I have set out to make a comic of our own about the school we’re at. We call it “The Graduals.” Here’s a sample page:

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Isn’t that Paul Muldoon in the background, the Princeton professor who is also the editor of poetry at the New Yorker and who The Times Literary Supplement called “the most significant English-language poet born since the second World War.”? Yes. Yes it is. Well done. I thought he was hard to pick out, but you’re right there he is. And yes, he was on The Colbert Report recently. I’ve even embedded the video right here:

You wish Ethan would post here more often, don’t you?

Speedy Delivery:
Remember the good old days when the phrase “sex scandal” couldn’t be uttered without the name of some prominent Democrat? It was then followed by outraged Republicans talking about things like “family values” “traditional America” or why they’re morally superior to everyone else. The Kennedy’s, Clinton, even Eliot Spitzer not so long ago. It was an odd equation in my mind. Democrats = thoughtful, compassionate, and absolutely sex-crazed.

It’s because of that phenomenon that the recent string of Republican drama has really unnerved me. Two prominent Republican governors have admitted to affairs in the last week, which is just two more Republican bodies strewn about a rather lopsided battlefield—if I were a Civil War scholar, I’d make some reference to something and sound a lot cooler. But what the hell, man? The odd equation for these guys was supposed to be Republicans = moronic, self-absorbed, and sexually repressed. What’s up with the sex scandal? Palin’s kid being pregnant probably fits into this phenomenon somewhere; maybe even Rush’s drug addiction; but I thought Republicans were supposed to be caught doing financially dodgy things like Ted Stevens of Alaska–this is also the guy who famously called the internet a “series of tubes.” There’s also a hilarious remix right here. But that’s beside the point.

Someone reminded me of Bob Dole’s viagra commercial yesterday, and suddenly it all made sense. Republican’s aren’t sexually repressed; they were just impotent. Think about it. Democrats are generally younger and healthier than their Republican adversaries (this last election is just one example). Now that Republicans can get their groove on, they’re becoming just as awful as everyone else. And I’m writing a book about it. Just got to figure out a title. So far my ideas are How Viagra Killed the Republican Party, Stiff, or Republicans: Getting and Giving the Shaft

Who knew that a tiny pill could bring down the most evil cabal since Lucifer and his band of angels rebelled.

In completely different news, a big fucking storm named Larry came through town and really fucked shit up, most notably and tragically Olivia’s pad. Check it out:

Luckily, she and Adrian are all right.

Anyway, watch out for Larry and any Republicans with glints in their beady little eyes.
-Mac McPheely

So I haven’t whored for anyone in a little while and I need to make sure all my whorin’ parts are in working order.  As any good prostitute can tell you there’s nothing worse than rusty whoring parts.  They squeak and make an awful racket.  At first you think it’s just the bedsprigs but, nope, it’s the whorin’ parts.  And that’s just icky.

So let’s get to it, shall we?

In a slightly different incarnation the band “By Morning” was kind enough to contribute a song to the trailer for my first film “For Catherine.”  The trailer turned out to be tremendous, some might say better than the film itself, and their song “Crew of Sleepless Nights” was a big part of what made it work, I feel.  For that I will always appreciate these guys.  In recent months, however, they have reworked their lineup a bit to include one of my closest friends as their front man and so my obligation to spread their power-pop gospel has been solidified.  This band, in my admittedly novice estimation, has been long searching for an identity and with Josephine Wilton (for whom I have previously whored) at their helm I have no doubt that they will find themselves and set a course for new worlds.  Finer worlds.  Worlds made entirely of awesome, rock, groupies and jam.  Because everyone loves jam.

They have just released a new EP titled “Arietta,” the entirety of which may be heard at their myspace page (where you can also see any number of pictures of them sitting on couches, but sitting like rockstars!) and downloaded on-the-free at their bandcamp (tee hee) site.  They would also like you to follow them on twitter which is well and good though in no way nearly as important or awesome as following me on twitter.

So, yeah, do your ears a favor or two, hit up those links and if they come near you, feel free to go out and see them live.  There’s nothing on TV these days anyway.  And when you do see them, make sure to tell Josie how much he reminds you of Scott Stapp.  He loves that shit.  LOVES it.

My second and final (for the day) bit of whoretacular (side note: according to firefox spellcheck, “whoretacular” actually is a word.  It’s a great day for America) action is dedicated to my favorite big sister Erin.  She is an incredibly gifted actress as well as being a top-notch sister, and can be seen performing a live sitcom-play-thingy at the Browncoat (yes, named after Firefly, which is totally sweet) pub and theatre in downtown Wilmington, NC every Monday at nine.  I can’t seem to find a single direct link for either the theatre or the sitcom-thingy, so you’ll just have to take my word for it, but if you’re in the Wilmywood area I’m sure you could do a lot worse than to watch an extraordinarily talented young woman elevate a bunch of words on a page into honest-to-God Art.

That’s all I gots for now, kids.  Hope you’re all living the dream.

Get a beverage of your choice and leave the money on the dresser,

E

I’ve loved like a fountain, and it’s left me with nothing…

I read the Movieline website most days.  They do a feature every now and then called The One Page Screenplay which is pretty self explanatory I feel.  Among others, Rian Johnson, the man responsible for “Brick” one of the best movies of the last decade or so, and also a cat who looks surprisingly like my brother did one recently which can be found here.

Anyway, the idea of it amuses me so I thought I’d try my hand at doing one.  So here it is.  I hope you enjoy it.

I call it, “UltraUltraSound” for some reason.  But thanks to my bro it is now called “Life Finds a Way.”

A slightly bigger version can be found here if you like.

No.  I don’t know what is wrong with me.

Get a beverage of your choice and create someting dope, why don’tcha?

E

Line up the bastards, all I want is the truth…

So a week ago whilst digging around in my lappy bag I found an old CD containing a bunch of files dating back to circa aught two and even before.  (NO!  Surely not!  No one was alive back then!)  Many of these artifacts are so ancient I can no longer open them – anyone remember clarisworks? My computer doesn’t.  But I was able to open a few of my old screenplays and, whoooooooboy.  I know many people out there thought For Catherine was too wordy (and it was) but, man, you should see the shit I rejected.  Actually, for the most part, you shouldn’t.  No one should.

One of the most interesting finds was the Deadpool movie I wrote, which I’d actually forgotten I did until Craig reminded me about it a month or so back as we discussed the new Wolverine movie and the fact that a Deadpool flick has been greenlit.  I was so.  Damn.  Far.  Ahead of my time.

Anyway, so I decided to read it and it’s not great.  The first half is really quite crap but some stuff in the last act or so made me chuckle and so I thought some of you might get a bit of a laugh out of seeing a couple of my earliest pages.  Deadpool was the second screenplay I ever wrote and – until I went and rocked spec scripts for 30 Rock and Psych just this year – remained the only time I’d written other peoples characters.  So, yeah, anywho, here’s a couple of screencaps of pages that made me laugh.  I’m quite sure this is the last you’ll see of my Deadpool work,  so soak it in like Chinease rain…whatever the fuck that means.

These pages fall fairly deep in the story where Deadpool, a hired killer, bassically, is trying to turn his life around and be a better person…maybe even a hero.  *wipes away a single tear*

I’m sure Weasel meant to say “You’re” absolutely right, and we’re missing some commas but my slender grasp on the English language was even more emaciated back in the day.  Also I never really edited this thing…

At the time I don’t think I even realized the irony of throwing the french word “cliche” in there right after talking shit about France.  Also at the time I had a real beef against France and for the life of me I don’t think I knew why.  That Bob Barker line kills me to this day, though.  Maybe it’s just me…

Then we skip ahead a few pages and they’re still talking about the same thing.  But it’s still kind of amusing.  To me at least.  I’ll say this, though, you’ll likely never see a superhero movie with more jawing about inane shit.

Good times.  Also, apparently Deadpool didn’t need to become a hero to get Arquette to stop making movies, it seems to have come to pass just fine all on it’s own.

And, since I’m cleaning out the proverbial closet, I thought I might also share a single page from the “207″ script which, after HUGE overhauls went on to become a little moving picture I call “For Catherine.”

This page comes to us after the brilliently originally named “Ethan” character had been caught in a bit of a love triangle.  Dun dun dun!

I might use that fucking like rabbits bit again at some point.

So, yeah.  There that is.  Thanks for tripping down memory lane with me sirs and madams.  I hope you’ve enjoyed your time in the way-back machine.  You are now free to move about the cabin.

Until next time, heroes, get a beverage of your choice and forget not (ne obliviscaris for all the Campbells out there.)

E

Rich people die unhappy, that’s what Daddy said…

So Awesome Day is upon us once again.  For those who are new to my ramblings or those who do not catalogue each of my glorious syllables in a special, perhaps gilded, mind-drive (for shame!) Awesome Day is part of my continuing, global and lifelong mission to turn things I hate (in this case my birthday) into things that kick ass (in this case Awesome Day).

Awesome Day is the day each year when I ask each of you to do something wonderful, something divine, either for yourselves or really anyone.  Tell that barista that you’ve had your eye on that she ensorcels you, jump the fuck out of a plane and flip physics a bird as your chute unfurls behind you and you quietly make gravity your bitch, throw a last-minute Awesome Day party to wallow in fellowship or just take yourself to a spa or a baseball game and remind yourself that shit need not be as fast as all this.  As small as all this. 

It’s the day I hope we each remember that life is not simpling for living, it is for being alive.  The day when we declare that the damn Buddhists got it all wrong.  We should not be here now; we should be extraordinary here, now.

We live lives of mortgages and classes and car pool lanes, we exist, evanescent, between bus stops and borderlines and we can’t go balls-out all day everyday.  It’s like driving Excite Bike with the B button; you can only do it for so long before you get pulled over for overheating.  But on April 24^th we line our world-entire with those little arrow things that allow us to do whatever the fuck we like.  On Awesome Day we remember that we are infinite.  On this day we are each of us risers. 

For my part I began my Awesome Day celebrations moments ago (it’s the 24^th somewhere) by giving what little was in my paypal account to Invisible Children, a group of cats and kittens trying to stop children from being abducted and tortured and abused and forced to kill people.  Philanthropy is not a requirement of Awesome Day, it’s just something I can’t afford to do all that often, so I did it for this day of days.  And while I encourage you all to celebrate in unique ways, in ways that are as selfish and as shallow as you like, I also offer these two cents: Charity is no longer the purview of the wealthy and we are all in this together.  Money is not an end, it is not a proper goal, it is not a life; it’s a vulgar tool with which we can craft many splendored things.  I would like to use what I have to build a structure for our love. 

Get a beverage of your choice and celebrate good times come on!

E 

He had a heart of stone…