At Least The Fire Is Out

Thing/people who are bugging stee right now:

The Save Karyn girl
Deion Sanders on the NFL pre-show
The supermarket checkers’ strike
Allergies

…This weekend we had a Halloween party. Well, I had a Halloween party. No one else wanted me to have one, including the woman I live with, but I spent so many years bugging my friends with houses to have parties, that now that I live in one, I sort of feel like it’s my duty to provide people with a place to hang out. So I bought booze and food and candy. Tons of candy. I even went out the day of and bought more candy, because I didn’t want to face the problem of last year when we learned that we’re in one of those neighborhoods where people drive their kids to Trick or Treat. Which is fine with me. However. Word must be getting out on some Craig’s List of Good Neighborhoods to Panhandle Candy because despite the fact that it was pouring rain, we ran out of candy in about two hours. Now, it’s no secret in my circles that I love candy. I’m the sort to arrive at a poker game with beer, maybe a cigarette for a break (I’ve turned into a not-really-but-sometimes-on-the-weekends smoker, which works for me so don’t show me any thetruth.com ads about how that’s not really possible), and a pack of Skittles. (Which I did on Saturday night.) So part of my buying 18 bags of candy was to ensure that I would get a few Bite Sized Butterfingers at the end of the night. But as it turned out, the kids had some sort of meter hooked up to our candy bowl—because the minute we ran out, they stopped coming. The little bastards timed it perfectly. So all I got were a couple measly caramels. Lame.

As a kid, I was the one who actually saved a few candy bars, trying to make them last all year. Pretty fucking nasty when it’s August and you’re eating a hard candy corn and a Baby Ruth from under your bed, but it worked for me. The notion then that you could just buy candy whenever you wanted from a store, year ‘round, was great, but it somehow always tasted better from that big bag in early November. I thought my friend Ben was the unluckiest kid in the world when I learned his parents would take away his entire bag of candy and dole a few bars out, throwing the rest away. How terrible is that? I remember feeling very bad for him… but not bad enough to share.

Because I decided what to dress as early, I made the theme of the party to fit my costume. It was “Famous Losers”—picked by Pamie. She was Courtney Love, bedecked with prescription pill bottles and lace. I went was Steve Bartman—the fan who kept the Cubs out of the World Series. Now, I know it turned out to be a hugely popular choice (second probably to Roy with a white tiger attached to his neck) but in my defense, I came up with it The Day After the game. I realized how popular it was when I tried to find a Cubs hat, and came up dry after going to about 10 stores. “Everyone has been asking for Cubs hats. It’s weird,” said the Big 5 guy in Burbank. Thanks, dude. And no, for the ninth time, I do not want an Arizona Diamondbacks cap. Five hours of driving around later, I bought a blank blue cap and ended up making a red and white Cubs “C” out of paper and having my girlfriend sew it on. Not ideal, but it worked. And when I put the green turtleneck and black sweatshirt and cap and glasses and headphones on, I really sort of looked like the dude. A little too much. I freaked Pamie out by asking her to “touch my ball.” Looking in the mirror, I gained a huge amount of sympathy for the poor dude. And then also for me.

At the party we pulled out all three TV’s and had horror movies playing silently on all of them. People came as everything from Bonnie and Clyde to Gallagher (and Gallagher 2!) to Perry Mason’s rival, who only won one case during the entire run of the show. The best pun-ny use of the “Famous Losers” theme was Shereen who came as “Little Bo Peep.” Hee.

…And in the Department of “No Shit, Hollywood People Are Sleazy!”—at the party, I learned a terribly upsetting piece of news. There is a producer/exec I’ve worked with before, who recently called me to ask about a script I wrote years ago, to see if it was still available. He joined a new company and they needed product. So I did some notes on how I’d change the script based on some ideas he had, and then waited. And he never got back to me. Too busy. Etc. So anyway, apparently he took a meeting recently with a writer I know, and gave him my script, intimating that this is a script they might buy, and would need someone to rewrite! In other words, he doesn’t even own my script yet, but already has decided he wants someone else to do the revisions. All together now: I fucking hate this town sometimes. He didn’t count on that information getting back to me. Oops. So now if he calls to buy the thing, knowing he’s planning on kicking me off the project anyway, I get to say, “Um… no!”

…The TV show I’m writing is nearly done. I turned my draft in to the producers last week, and soon I’ll get their notes before we hand it into the network. While I have no idea how they’ll react to it, I found it surprisingly easy and fun to write. Not only is it half a film script in length, but I was taken through so many rounds of notes on my outline, that by the time I sat down to write it, I knew every single tiny scene, including random pieces of dialogue. So: TV is easy! Unless, of course, they don’t like it, and then, it’s not.

…Speaking of Ben of the parents stealing his candy: I learned this weekend that Ben’s wife Darcie, who he married nine weeks ago, is eight weeks pregnant! Way to waste no time, buddy.

…Last night we had an Indiana Jones trilogy film festival. It lasted from 4:30 to midnight. I think Kate Capshaw’s performance in the second film may be the worst performance ever captured on celluloid. Watch it again if you think I’m wrong. Watch her running around the castle bedroom waiting for Indy to come fuck her. Watch her squealing about the bugs. Watch someone with no comedic timing or physical grace be relied on to provide the comic relief for the hundredth time. And then tell me I’m wrong.