late night musings

God, what a year it’s been. No exciting new news to report — very much the same old same old. I did have an epiphany about my situation. Mmm. Epiphany’s too strong a word. I had some insight — that is that when I’m stressed, upset, etc. my pain is worse than when I’m relaxed. I try to remain relaxed now. Get my tensions out on paper and I don’t hurt quite so much.
I’m seeing a surgeon on Monday. He’s the doctor I saw after having surgery on my arm. That was in 2008 — when I broke the shit out of my left arm and wrist. It’s good I’m seeing him — he’s a friend of ours and is a spine specialist. He’s going to reevaluate my case, see where I am in terms of healing. If the disc has shrunk enough then he says I should keep on doing what I’m doing. If not, well, then we’ll figure out some steps. Oddly enough my left arm has been hurting like hell for about a month now. It’s swollen at the fracture site and I can feel scraping inside my arm whenever I flex my wrist — like one of the screws is loose, scratching around in there.
In my state of mind, mourning the loss of my dog, I’ve been watching old episodes of MST3K. Don’t judge me. They’re all on YouTube. They remind me of a happier time, twenty years ago when I was younger, healthier. I’ve never been one for nostalgia but I’ve got early 90’s nostalgia. I didn’t think I ever would be nostalgic as my present was always better than my past and my future always seemed better than my present. Perhaps again at some point it will be like that again. Or perhaps I’ll be satisfied with my present. I’m sure I will. At the present though, well I get through the present by looking to the past. I’m not quite ready to trust the future just yet.
I also discovered a BBC series called Pulling on Netflix. It’s fantastic. It’s one of those dry, unfunny half hour shows the Brits do so well. It’s funny sort of but mostly it’s deeply painful. Sort of like the original Office series. Strangely episode 3 in season 1 and season 2 is the "funny" episode. And it is, they’re screamingly funny episodes — somehow enough to pull me through the unfunny but nonetheless compelling remainder of the series.
We had a meeting with Kirstie Allie about a series. No details to reveal just yet. I like the idea. And yes, I like her. I know — she’s a complex person with some spiritual baggage, shall we say? It’s okay — she’s funny as hell. I’d like to try and make the idea work if possible. We have an in with the new president of Showtime — plus Fat Actress did well for them. So who knows? I’m thinking a lot about TV right now. Feature films seem so dead-end while production of half hour TV in the US has gone up by (no joke) 1000% since 2009. There are a lot more orders for half hours. We struck out with Heartland Radio. That’s how it goes I guess. I’ll keep trying in the meantime.
They put me on the thesis committee at school again. I thought for sure I would not be asked back. It may even be an oversight that I’m there. I don’t want to be there but I’m not going to complain. I’ll just show up and do it. It’s a terrible situation. We have to read the scripts that the students want to turn into their thesis films and then approve or disapprove of the scripts, narrowing it down to a field of 28 out of maybe a hundred scripts. I don’t think we should be telling the students what is or isn’t a good script at this stage in their academic career. If I asked everyone on the committee to weigh in on the Oscar picks there would be a wide degree of opinion about what films were worthy and what films were not. It’s the same with the thesis scripts. It’s impossible for us to be objective. As a result the same weepy melodramas get picked every year and anything outside of that gets rejected. I think we’re stifling innovation. Yes, the scripts, about 99 out of 100, are terrible. The problem is, we reject that 1 good script every year. It stands out because it’s different. Let them make their crappy films without intervention from the committee. They only wind up resenting us and hating the school. They’d be better off if they had to take responsibility for their horrible script instead of saying "I was forced to direct something I didn’t want to direct."
I sure do miss my dog. Sad clown.