I cannot seem to shake this thing.  It actually took me about three days to really, really "get" that MJ was really and truly dead.  And I was sad, but...once the tributes and the videos and the radio stations (with Will i am calling in, SOBBING with grief) and all began, the pain started to grow instead of abating.  Someone talked about dancing her "wig off" the first day when all the radio stations and MTV started to play his music incessantly--happened to me, too.  Every song was wonderful.  Every move he makes...miraculous.  You can't help but smile.  And then you remember...it's all gone.  All over.  DAMN.

Oh, but the worst was yet to come for me.  About three days in, IT HAPPENED.  MTV got around to the long video of "Thriller," and...I totally fell apart.  He looks so happy, so...brown, still...and at the peak of his power.  The walk down the street with "his girl" is classic and touching and full of spirit and playfulness.  I marveled, I laughed...and then I cried.

He was more than the sum of his sins, and more than a musician, and I have spent four decades with him as have millions.  I took his genius for granted because it was so deeply woven into the fabric of our lives--I didn't need to see him, he was just...in there, all mixed up with the rest of my memories and dreams and the realities of the world he changed.

There's no making sense of it.  But I know how he died--he asked that doctor to give him what he wanted...and he did it, even though he wasn't qualified to handle that kind of drug.  Celebrities can have anything they want.  And it's not the first time that's led to death, obviously.  And I've known a lot of addicts. sp I understand Lisa Marie's little letter about feeling as if she failed him.  But I know, and have written to tell her, that she couldn't have stopped him even for BIG love.  Which they apparently really did have.

None of it matters.  What matters is that somewhere over the rainbow, he's watching as we all wake up feeling a little bit hollow at the center.  We can't buy him back via the CDs, commemorative mags or memorabilia.  But it's kinda cool that it's all flying off shelves.  It just...won't bring the magic back.

As ET would say--and Michael loved HIM, too--OUCH...

Made it to the FIRST round before the final winnowing out of the Page quarterfinals---gosh, they hype you up with that "CONGRATULATIONS" email and then this year they added a second round before the real quarterfinals...and my quickly little monster baby of a script was just too weird for that last go round.  Ah well...

I haven't seen anything this good in ages, hence, my first post in awhile.  Go read this: Your Rewrite: 3 Angles of attack

And when you stop laughing, DO WHAT HE SAYS!

I've been gone a loooooong time from MySpace, in part because MySpace has been replaced by...well...damned near everything.  But I've also taken a break because I really, really needed to stop and live a little.  When my bro' JY (Styx) came back into my life, I was jolted into the realization that I'd let a lot of things go, in my search for adventure many years ago.  Deliberately, yes.  But over time, I forgot some important, soul-deepening bits of me that needed to be dug up, brushed off and admired, explored, puzzled over...all that.

I also felt the well of my present life running dry.  And you can't write from a dry well.  It was time to live into new some new ideas.  To, again, deliberately NOT write for awhile.  To tell the voices in my head to "chill out," and wait 'til I damned well felt like telling whatever story they were yammering about.  They'd just have to trust I'd do it better when I'd had some time away from the computer screen.  Or...not.  But I was goin' walkabout anyway.  Lookin' for new stories to tell, or ways to tell old stories in new ways.

The optioned script is still in the pipeline, but as you all know, our current economic morass and the SAG issues have made investors skittish.  Having it on my resume does help, I've found...but it's kinda dodgy out there.  My newest, in fact, I'm not showing around 'til July or so, when some folks in the know feel things will thaw a bit.

So...I'm livin'.  Runnin' to see my bro' when I can, lovin' the way my daughter's turnin' out now that she's 22 and the same age I was when I became a rock crit and journalist--she's meeting JY for the first time this weekend, and that fact is not lost on him.  We met when I was that age.  Talk about the circle of life!

There's a script in there somewhere.  But for now...I'm gonna just...live it.  Hope you're doin' the same!

 
 

I just did a little "script" for a trailer of my latest screenplay, just for the fun of it, but also because Blake Snyder recommends it.  And it changed my life--I could finally "see" the movie in pictures...and that it all fit together seamlessly, at last!

Here's a blog entry that explains why you should do the same:

http://ravingdaveherman.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-imagining-your-movie-trailer-is.html

Now go DO it!