warning some spoilers included
Before Quentin Tarantino before the modern film god he is today he wrote the screenplay for one of the most underrated movies of my lifetime. True Romance was released in 1993 quietly and went away for many years at least for myself. Over ten years later I see the intro credits to Hans Zimmer’ ” You’re so Cool” on Showtime three in the morning. I vaguely remember seeing the trailer as a kid. A couple years after it’s initial release Quentin wrote and directed Pulp Fiction a movie so huge half my acting class chose scenes from it for monologues in acting class (I went with Forrest Gump). Many aspects of True Romance were in Pulp Fiction the graphic violence, overt racist dialogue, even the non linear structure were trademarks from the True Romance script. However the culture had changed from Romance to Pulp and to be fair maybe the title was confusing to audiences. This isn’t When Harry Met Sally.
I mentioned the structure of the movie before even though it’s a linear three act play. This however is not how the screenplay was written. Tarantino wrote the screenplay scattered in the same manner as most of his films. Tony Scott who’s best know work at this point was Top Gun, decided to keep it simple and I’ll point out the other significant changes later.
It’s early nineties Detroit and the Auto Industry had not been doing well at this time. We are introduced to Clarence Worley played by Christian Slater. He’s a guy at a bar trying to get a date to a Kung Fu triple feature Street Fighter movies staring Sonny Chiba. He jokes about say he’s not gay but he’d fuck Elvis. A few years before this Quentin Tarantino played an extra as a Elvis impersonator on an episode of Golden Girls. So he’s now at the movie theatre alone and by happenstance a girl spills popcorn on him (or is it). She starts talking to him about the movie asked if the guy on the screen is a good guy or a bad guy. Clarence tells her he’s neither “he’s just a bad motherfucker”. Clarence isn’t trying to be a good guy or a bad guy. So it’s a cute meet Clarence and Alabama, portrayed by Patricia Arquette, grab pie after the movie and he shows her the comic book store he works at. They then hook up in similar sex scene style as Top Gun. We see their silhouettes going at it. She comes clean about her background and we are introduced to her pimp.
When people talk about how great of an actor Gary Oldman is few look at his portrayal of Drexl Spivey. Drexl is a white guy with dreads that acts black at least in a stereotypical gangster rap manner. We find out how unhinged he is in a drug deal he takes what he wants to not spoil too much. Alabama and Clarence get married and while getting matching tatoos she’s that’s when she tells him. Clarence wants to get her stuff and start their life new. But first the voice in his head tells him to kill Drexl. That voice is, you guested it, Elvis. He’s not credited but c’mon its Elvis played by Val Kilmer.
Clarence goes to retrieve her things but instead walks out with luggage full of uncut cocaine. How this happens I won’t say (I can’t spoil everything) but the Drexle and Clarence confrontation is one of my favorite scenes. We are then introduced to Clarence’s estranged father and Clarence needs his help to find out what his police friends know. This in turn leads to one of the most suspenseful scenes of the film. Vincenzo Coccotti an associate of mob boss Blue Lou Boyle pays Clarence’s father a visit for one of the best interrogation scenes in film history. One Cliff realizes he can’t lie to protect his son especially once he’s tortured he instead insinuates that Sicilians like Vincenzo are as Cliff puts in “spawned from niggers” to antagonize him enough to end the charade. This writing of the dialogue brilliant buried in subtext, camera work and direction are put together to perfection with the performances of Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken.
Clarence and Alabama are off to Hollywood because of course. Where else can you dump that kind product? Clarence contacts his acting friend who is a terrible actor Dick Richie played by Michael Rappaport his life is shit right now with his lazy stoned roommate Floyd performed by Brad Pitt way to well. So well he easily could’ve been typecast from there. Dick knows someone from his acting class that knows a big Hollywood producer. More excellent Taratino dialogue as Clarence describes the amount of coke in terms a Hollywood producer would get; Dr. Zhivago. After everything is set up Floyd gives the information to mobsters of the whereabouts of Clarence and Alabama through answering questions like a stoner on a gameshow.
Alabama is alone and walks in her room to seem Conccotti’s thug Virgil about six years before he becomes Tony Soprano (James Gandofini). Another great confrontation. Virgil wants the cocaine but seeing the fight Alabama has in her he gives her a fighting chance before he kills her. At least that’s his plan. This is a time before badass women and you would see a man beat the shit out of a woman like Virgil does with Alabama. Its brutal but Alabama is fighting for her life at the same time Virgil mentions his plan to kill Clarence as well. She goes ape shit more tricks than Copperfield to the point of lighting him on fire. Clarence pulls her away. There’s no going back now. They have to make the deal and get the fairytale ending they deserve.
Floyd once again gives the wrong people information and meanwhile the cops have an informant on the deal. They are listening like the audience as we see the deal about to transpire between Lee Donowitz the producer and Clarence. The DEA breaks down the door, After some tension between Lee’s bodyguards and the DEA Conccotti’s men break down a door. We now have a three way Mexican standoff. It’s a massive shootout.
There are two endings to the movie. Tony Scott shot Tarantino’s ending but it didn’t match the movie. Quentin when with a down ending the classic crime doesn’t pay. It’s work but It’s easy to fall in love with the ending Tony Scott chose with the Hans Zimmer track “You’re so Cool” . These two went against the odds to find love and True Romance in the end.
I’ve been caught in a rut. During this time of quarantine with the corona virus going around I’ve become even more unproductive than before. I have this blog and a YouTube channel to explore my creative outlets. This would have been a fantasy as a child and I see my teenage self punching me then making me tap out for being a lazy potato. My off hours from work consist of sharing memes on Facebook, watching political videos catered to my bubble on YouTube and arguing about politics on Twitter.
So many hours have been spent arguing with people on Twitter. I thought Facebook was bad but here I can argue with complete strangers for hours. It’s funny to think these people I’m arguing with I could probably have a beer and a laugh with them. Then again some don’t have a sense of humor and would be triggered by anything. I know because I’ve encountered such people in reality.
Two weeks back a pundit from CNN posted something and a pundit from MSNBC commented on it. The two took turns attacking Bernie Sanders and his supporters. So I had to say at least Bernie can’t raise taxes on said pundit now. Who knew this moment would cost hours of my life. The MSNBC host bragged about her high taxes as if it was an altruistic choice and this lead to a shit show. I brought up the public tantrum on MSNBC after the Nevada caucus. There was no unity or “vote blue no matter who” it was all about stopping Bernie Sanders. My points brought rage from Biden supporters some may have previously been employed by David Brock’s “Correct the Record”. The media doesn’t like to talk about establishment trolls. The strategy was simple. Attack my character by inferring I’m a racist and or sexist then block so I can’t reply in my defense. Maybe because I’m new to Twitter at least in full time use this was surprising behavior. On the bright side I received no death threats from this. That actually happened when I criticized Reagan years back in a tweet.
There was a point when I realized this was a huge waste of time recently. In the battle between keyboard warriors we get lost in the fog. I was arguing against confederate statues pointing at the time they were built in glorification of the confederacy the kkk was in a resurgence. This lead to a pointless back and forth til I was left speechless. I was B- Rabbit five minutes into 8 Mile but for different reasons. To counter my argument the guy posts a video how the Jews were behind the slave trade. Speaking of rabbits this was a rabbit hole I decided not to go down. I’m arguing against racism and this person double down with anti-Semitism.
As bad as things got, there were a few moment when I saw humanity behind the tweets. After I made a snarky comment about virtue signaling the person I’m arguing with about Joe Biden tells me all the good he has done and I had to give him respect though I disagreed politically. For the most part these are people on the other end. It’s kind of amazing. We have this tool to connect with complete strangers and here we are extending our “two minutes of hate”. Maybe we can do better. We need to do better especially now in this time when so many either are or will be struggling soon. This is the dare to be great moment we all could embrace or hashtag our rage. It’s a choice and today I choice to work on my dreams. After tweeting something about the DNC’s ineptitude (Yeah I did this while blogging this not seeing the irony).
The first movie I remember seeing in the movie theatre was Red Dawn. As a child it scared the shit out of me. Maybe seeing kids shot at point range by invading paratroopers looked way too real for a six year old. Over time I would fall in love with movies. Mostly I would see movies on TV edited or worse dubbed with phrases like “Forget you” replacing “Fuck you” and interrupted by commercials. John Hughes and Cameron Crowe would influence my childhood and adolescence often to my detriment. Today I still love the rom coms of the eighties even though the “nice guy” trope has become toxic in modern culture.
I remember the first blockbuster in my teens. It was a game changer seeing Michael Keaton play Batman against Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Today we rave about Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight but the Tim Burton Joker was the first step away from the campy Cesar Romero of the Batman TV show. Of course this wasn’t the first blockbuster. Indiana Jones and the Stars Wars franchise preceded Batman but this was the first time I got to experience the hype we experience every year through Marvel and the new Star Wars franchise. Around this time Video stores were popping up everywhere. As a kid I would go up the street and rent movies like When Harry Met Sally, maybe I was a hopeless romantic. There were goofy comedies and slasher flicks that would also catch my attention. Before that video store closed I rented Clerks also coincidentally the last day I was working at the first convenience store I worked at (there would be many more).
Clerks was the movie that made it look possible to make a movie. It was filmed in black and white, no famous actors in a convenience store. By this age I had wanted to be a screenwriter not knowing all it entailed. After watching my first Kevin Smith movie I’d write from time to time cliche’ ridden ideas with a heavy influence from John Hughes. Today I’m still trying.
So Blockbuster takes over the video store/ dvd rental landscape. For a while I worked at one. A friend and coworker would use our free rentals and we’d pass a blunt and watch. Not knowing at the time that ten minutes was the way screenplays were also judged on. If the movie sucked in the first ten minutes we knew it couldn’t be redeemed. Just the same way if a screenplay doesn’t work in the first ten pages it goes into the paper shredder. Somehow I missed what would become my favorite movie until years later.
True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Ridley Scott somehow slipped through the radar. It was released in the early nineties. The dialogue and gratuitous blood splatter that became Tarantino trademarks was a few years ahead of its time. I would find it in the 2000s watching Showtime late at night. Its a love story with drug smuggling and Mexican stand offs with cops and bad guys. If ever there were movies to influence my creativity in my twenties and thirties they were American Pie, True Romance and Clerks. That’s me in a nutshell. As I read screenwriting books I discovered new films at least to me. I’d go way back to Citizen Kane and back before talkies.
So every Monday I’m going to post about a movie I love. This is quite random. Sometimes it’ll be dumb as Freddy Got Fingered and other days The Godfather. If I can get people to turn off the reboot of a reboot and watch Duck Soup then my work is done.
So this is my first political post on my site and I promise you it won’t be my last. In college I was a history major and throughout my whole life I’ve paid close attention to politics. Everyone has a different belief system when it comes to this subject that has ruined many a Thanksgiving dinners. Presidents from the past have been elevated to saint status to partisan pushing propaganda. There’s a cult of Reagan but also a cult of Kennedy. The media wants us to divide and worship or respective deities. Ronald Reagan who told the Soviet Union in Germany to “tear down this Wall” and magically it was done according to myth. Of course we don’t talk about his military support of Iran, Iraq, and the Taliban. Great job Gipper. JFK almost brought us to the brink of World War 3 in a dick measuring contest with Nikita Krushev. He also increased our involvement in Vietnam that would lead to all out war after his death.
So I look at politics from a lenses of principle. I don’t want war for the purpose of regime change because that leads to blowback decades from now. Also we have in the past supported dictators over democratically elected leaders for corporate interests. I know this sounds like hippie talk so I’ll be real. As uncool as this is like corporations. If I need clean underwear at three am there’s always Walmart and if I’m drunk at home I can black out and have a flat screen TV delivered to my house in two days thanks to Amazon. I also love the big tech companies even though they have likely tricked me out of my privacy with their terms and conditions. So yea maybe I’m not really fighting the power. I’m content with it all.
So yea that’s the capitalist in me. I’m all for the free market but some aspects off society should not turn a profit. Prison is there to keep criminals out of civil society. Rapists, murderers, money launderers should be locked away. I have no problem with my tax dollars paying for this. I have a problem with these functions of society be traded on the stock exchange by companies finding creative ways to be cost effective and increasing profits through imprisonment based on drug prohibition for an example. I’ll get into that later but using this as a means for more low cost workers to increase marketing shares is in my opinion morally wrong.
Another so called industry that should be not be so is healthcare. I pay health insurance all year long yet for some reason I’m afraid to see a doctor when I’m sick let alone get a check up. Let me repeat, I have health insurance. Last year I got bronchitis and was billed a month later 150. First I know it’s not going to be free, second they still manage to make it a pain in the ass for me to pay my bill by sending me one like its twenty years ago. In the rest of the industrial world you pay your taxes and you go to a doctor and your done. Here if you know someone with a major health issue likely they had to post a GoFundMe to pay their bills. But thanks to this system we got Breaking Bad so there’s a bright side to it all.
Meanwhile the military has hired private contractors like KBR and Blackwater (now under another name) in regime change wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Whenever there’s a war there’s profit and many arms companies buy ads on news channels which is odd because I never went shopping at Raytheon dot com but they aren’t selling anything as much as they are buying influence over the pundits telling us what to think. This also applies to pharmaceutical advertising, which fun fact is only legal in the United States and New Zealand. So moral is I don’t trust news anchors or pundits on corporate media. They are bought and paid for and if you’re curious about who the customers are then watch the commercials. War should be a last resort not a means to increase profits.
So basically this is how I felt all my life. I’m by no means a party loyalist since the democratic party often supports unjust wars and drug prohibition. I’ve voted for Nader, almost Ron Paul (a day too late to register republican), Obama and most reluctantly voted for Clinton only to avoid a Trump presidency. I vowed never again to vote for the lesser of two evils. But I’ll get into that more in anther post.
The reason I started this post was so in the future when people think I’m bias in my opinion they’ll know for sure. I am. I’m not pretending to be neutral while narrowing a conversation and push a narrative. So as the primaries begin next month I will throw my opinion out there more often.
Welcome to the new decade. World War Three almost broke out and Australia has been on fire. Well that’s not such a good start. Time to turn off the news I guess. Life is short as I’ve said before so embrace this life. I have a blog and a YouTube channel so might as well work on them. So here I am, typing my thoughts trying to make sense from the chaos. That’s what art is I suppose but it would be pretentious for me to consider myself an artist.
I’m a cashier, busser, telemarketer, burger flipper, etc. Many things but not an artist. I’m just like you on the other side of the screen reading these words between making your way through the day to life of errands and work. We are all trying to find our voice somehow I suppose, trying to find meaning. So let’s do it. I insist you to find your voice and yell it to the world. As for me this is where I go to search for it.
Plan for the Twenties
So I started my first blog in 2010 approximately. It failed for a number of reasons. I didn’t put the time in and that was because I lost interest. There were times I had writer’s block and stared at the screen for hours. Honestly my motive was to make money and quit working a real job. Ideally I imagined blogging from inside an RV and travelling the country or finally having money and time to spend with my girlfriend at the time. Once reality struck I lost interest and years later started another blog but I lost it when I ran out of money and the domain as well. So this is a fresh start and I need a plan.
The blog will be my home for creative projects. There’s a book series I’m plotting out about an uber driver with a grow house. It was a screenplay idea but there world seems to be getting bigger in my mind. After reading Stephen King’s On Writing I realized that this might be the direction I will go. Okay honestly I didn’t read it I listened to it on Audible. That’s in the works and I plan to self publish it.
The YouTube channel will get better unless YouTube goes away like myspace or shuts down my channel for some arbitrary reason. Growing up with MTV having music videos I know not to assume YouTube will aways be there. Remember Myspace? Nothing is permanent here. However no matter what I will continue making videos because I love that process.
As for the rest of Tony Recluse dot com I will blog daily as of now. probably the same time. It will be random and fun. Also some serious topics because let’s be real that’s life. On that not Happy New Year and I will see you tomorrow.
So after I turned forty-two last month I was going to post one of those popular list posts like “42 lessons in forty- two years”. It sounded good at the time but then I started typing and ran into the redundancy of an inflated list. I also felt what do I know? I’m not exactly living my best life and sometimes it feels like a cautionary tale. So instead I will type what I think I know based on life experience.
Get Money
I will always say follow your dreams. That being said sometimes you are going to do things you don’t enjoy to make money. Ru Paul was right, “You gotta work”. Since high school I’ve worked fast food, telemarketing, cashiering, factory work, night security a hotel and I’ve bussed tables. The funny part is the jobs I hated the most you’d think were the best going into them. Telemarketing you get a cushy chair in a clean office but you rightfully get verbally abused by people your harassing at dinner time. The hotel was great eighty percent of the time until the drunken asshole parade returned from the wedding reception. Jobs will suck at times but find something you enjoy since it will be forty hours of your week plus commute time.
There’s a study that says the happiest people earn around seventy- five thousand a year. Of course that will go up with inflation. The reason is you have enough money to live, pay bills and go on vacations without being underwater financially. At the same time at that level you aren’t owned by your wealth and status which can lead to unhappiness of the ultra wealthy.
Also unless you’re a rare breed, no one will want to date your broke ass. Get a job, a second, job and/or a side hustle.
Your body is your vehicle
The better you treat your body the happier you’ll be. Sure sometimes I like to wake up with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and watch Netflix. It’s a way for me to feel good about being single without kids. You can’t do that when you have kids its a bad influence. However hours later I feel like garbage both physically and psychologically. I avoid soda unless there’s liquor in it and that’s not a daily occurrence for me. If I drink too much I spend the day on toilet so I really don’t know how alcoholics function. Maybe they have better digestion than me. Anyhow eat veggies when you can. Sneak that stuff in omelets with cheese. Being a night owl I love coffee and need it. I limit my cigarettes to a couple a day unless I drink in that case its likely half a pack. I’d be hypocritical to tell you not to smoke but keeping it limited is always a good thing. Also don’t do meth, crack, or heroine. That shit will age you.
Use your body. Dance when no one is watching. Run if you can. I developed shin splints a few years back and wasn’t passionate about jogging enough to take care of the situation. I bike daily for my commute. I do this partially for health but also as a ‘fuck you’ the car insurance companies that shake citizens down for protection money and to feel smug to environmentalists in their Prius’.( Just kidding). You don’t need a gym unless you have specific goals. What works for me is a bicycle and the occasion yoga session. Also I prefer to work jobs which include physical activity.
Read More Books
Eventually you’ll be in a position where you don’t have to read. There’s no papers to do and no book reports. Reading becomes a choice. You can just binge watch Netflix with your time away from work but to go deep on any subject matter you need to read. I tend to argue with people about politics so I read opposing viewpoints. I’m fairly liberal but I read The Revolution by Ron Paul and Barry Goldwalter’s Heart of the Conservative. This has also helped evolve my political positions. Good stories and depth inside a character are more easily available in a book as opposed to movies which I love. I’m almost done with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, through it I don’t see how film can do it justice. So much of it is inside the characters head.
If you can’t afford a class there’s always a book on any topic you plan to go deep on. And shit you can even build a library of E Books on a Kindle or chosen device. So basically never stop learning.
Love is the answer
So I’ve gone through finance, the mind and the body. What about the spirit? Okay it’s really simple and encompasses most religion. Love thy neighbor. If it bleeds it leads on the news so we are trained to believe people are evil and we live in a negative world. So ok if that were true then we need more heroes and more good people to balance things out. Yes this is difficult. Customers can be assholes. Family is a pain in the ass at times. Sometimes people suck. This being the case, be helpful anyway even if its for a selfish reason like I have. I love sleep. When I’m an asshole to people my mind replays it and I have a hard to sleeping but when I do good my bed is all comfy and I sleep my way into a temporary coma.
But What Do I Know
This is the part where I allow you the reader to dismiss everything you just read. Like a screenwriter that ends with it was all a dream. I’m just a regular guy in two hours I’ll be on a dishwashing shift because I haven’t figured out how to make money by blogging or making videos. So find your own way. Maybe you’ll live the American dream. You’ll get the house with the white picket fence and the dog named sparky. If you don’t that’s okay too.
Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Mary Schmich
Put the fun back in funeral
So in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey he says to begin with an end in mind as the second habit. Covey writes about imagining your funeral and what you want people in different aspects of your life to say about you. This may be the most extreme version of reverse engineering. Then I guess you live your life accordingly. Try not to fuck anyone over and do good. Tip well and help where needed.
I think of this often especially since I’m out living my father by two years. In fact of out lived a number of friends and family due only to luck. It’ll happen eventually but when I go I want to put the fun in my funeral. So here’s what I want.
A kegger or open bar at the wake and if I’m open casket put a party hat on me. I know it’s considered tacky but I’m encouraging selfies with my corpse. Maybe sit me up Weekend at Bernie’s style. If that’s too expensive maybe a cremation but I want my ashes in little glass bottles to be shared as souvenirs. I’m just spit balling here having a laugh. Of course you can’t have a funeral without music. Here’s a suggested playlist.
The Jack in the Box music so people my thing I’ll pop out of the box.
“Another One Bites the Dust” – Queen
“If I Ever Leave this World Alive”- Flogging Molly
“Harder Than You Know”- Public Enemy
“Float On” – Modest Mouse
“Let’s Go Crazy”- Prince
“You’re Dead”- Norma Tanega (What We Do in the Shadows Theme)
“Highway to Hell” AC/DC
In other words I don’t want tears when I go. I want people to be uncomfortable because I made them laugh at my funeral. Oh yea I don’t want a religious ceremony. I’ve gone to Catholic ceremonies where you’re an extra in the life of Jesus. Doesn’t he already have Easter and Christmas? If praying helps you mourn fantastic but laughter always works for me.
Hopefully this is fifty years or so from now and I still have my wits and bowel control. In the meantime, keep living.
So I’m on vacation. In five days I’ll be forty-two which means I’m another year closer to death. Then again who knows, it could be a week or fifty years so yolo. Anyhow that’s downer and something I’ll talk about in another post. So I took this vacation with a plan in mind. You want to hear about it?
The Plan
So I took off work not to go on any travel adventure but specifically to work on creative projects and this being one of them. I work a lot and that work is on someone else’s dream. My dream however doesn’t include opening and closing a cash register. It’s one of creative pursuits with the possibility for enough money to travel and enjoy life to it’s fullest for the next fifty years. How am I going to do this?
I’m glad you asked, reader. I began my vacation by working on an outline for a screenplay. Its an over the top story of an uber driver with a grow house to simplify it. I spent hours on it then hit a wall. After hitting the metaphoric wall I decided to go out drinking. The fun part of weekend drinking is running into people you almost never see. Of course this socializing helps with dialogue as well. The problem with drinking is that my body doesn’t handle it like it used to. Hangovers were a half day ordeal then like a champ your back at it hours later. Now my stomach makes me atone for the sins of the night before. I’m rambling.
So now my hangover is gone and it’s Sunday. I could go to church but I’m not feeling sociable at the moment. Also not religious so there’s that. Anyhow in the next five days I will post three videos on my YouTube channel, write a first draft for THC (working title) and I’ll be typing on this blog.
Of course like Jack Torrence wrote, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” I gotta have some fun. It’ll include a little bit of touristing the local sites, some more drinking and a bike trip somewhere. Maybe I’ll get into the habit of daily posting. Anyway I’m out for now.
This is my favorite “I’m a pretentious writer” pic. By the way I grew up poor in the eighties and a Salvation Army typewriter sucked way worse than the keyboard on my laptop I’m using now. The ink ribbon would tangle and keys would get jammed and then God forbid you had to edit anything then you get a whiteout strip and type over your mistakes. Years later in the nineties I got to used a Smith Corona word processer and wow the difference. I had all sorts of journey entries saved a floppy disk to. So here I am in the blogsphere and you can be too. Though I warn you reader its a treacherous road that can lead to madness.
To begin
So you want to be a blogger. First decide what you want to write about and why. Is this business or pleasure to simplify? If it’s business than you need to narrow your writing to a specific niche and become an expert on search engine optimization. It gets very complex but people have found a way to make a living blogging about gluten free diets for corgis in Omaha, Nebraska.
I’m not that blogger this will be all over the place. From there you can advertise and get sponsors and affiliates. This helps monetize while you sleep or battle insomnia depending on your lifestyle. Get a name, sign up for hosting, and a platform. I used my Pen Name that’s another story I think I already told. I’m on Bluehost. Their customer service is excellent whenever I feel I need help. Through Bluehost I use WordPress. Now you need a Theme which is the first impression your reader will see. It can look simplistic, feminine, masculine, artsy, futuristic, etc. This is your face for readers to see. Then things will get complicated and technical.
Right now I’m trying to set up auto sharing for my blog posts. Basically that means I when I hit publish it will automatically go to twitter and my Facebook page. However in order to do that I had to copy some coding in a social sharing pluggin and had to walk away. So yeah that was fun.
Eventually you get to write and post pictures as you like. My best advice for newbs is to learn everything you can before you start. Expect to fail and learn from it. that’s it for now on my misadventures in blogging. As things go wrong I’ll post it to let you the reader know what not to do here.
So this is my first post here on my new blog. Welcome readers. So it begins…
After working two double this weekend and running myself into exhaustion I decided do something. Do anything else for that matter. I spent two hours writing an outline for my screenplay as I listened to the crashing of the waves in the background of the Piano Guys playing on my earbuds. They say “life’s a beach” which is true because it’s often overromanticized. You get sand everywhere and the sand fleas are as active as a lunch time buffet and you are the all you can eat. I tried being Zen and develop my protagonist but I couldn’t focus since I’m being eaten at the moment. With a couple days off I’ve decided to work on my dreams. So here I am.
The next day I spent time editing my YouTube channel. The current project is the five year anniversary of a local bar, Sarbez. Its a place with a lot of character. The owner is an artist and it shows. The walls a murals. There’s a retro eighties vibe with cassettes and videos used as wall decorations. Maybe I’ll do a specific post about Sarbez in the future. After the Sarbez Vlog I still have to do one for Nobfest which is held every March at Nobby’s . Nobby’s has become sort of a punk rock band. There’s also live music and lucky for me both bars are in walking distance.
Speaking of the YouTube channel I need to work on more of a narrative maybe structure to it. Basically I want to make it more of a show per se. Yet I don’t want it to be contrived. Basically I need everything I work on to be real and my truth. I’m sure that’s what everyone wants when they find any creative outlet.