All the student academy awards

So AFI students are winning the bronze, silver and gold Student Academy Awards. The presentation happens next month and I’m going because I was the mentor on two of the three award winning projects. I’m a very proud stage parent and am THRILLED my babies are cleaning up with the academy. The gold medalist will be in the running for the Oscar for best live action short next year. It’s a long shot but maybe, maybe one of my students will be at the Dolby Theater come January. It’s not the first time AFI has swept the narrative category and yet the Hollywood reporter consistently rates USC as #1 and AFI as #4. Why, you may ask? USC has a shit ton of money. Their alumni include Lucas and Spielberg who have donated millions to the school. They have a really flashy campus and amazing equipment. But we keep winning the awards… so…?

What’s new with me? Ugh. Eating Trader Joe’s Halloween JoJo’s on the patio and drinking chilled red wine. I feel like a giant chili beast right now. I was all starving skinny after my China visit but the wines have really pushed me back into my fat pants. We have a boarder for the next two months. She was my assistant on my FAILED pilot I shot in Atlanta in 2015. Anyhow, she came to LA to work on a show for HBO and literally could not find housing. Rather than have her contribute to our homeless crisis, I told her she could rent our guest room for a scandalous $500 a month. I literally feel bad about having her pay at all but I wanted her to feel some ownership of the space. Nevertheless she’s taken to hanging out in her room with the door closed. I told her, have guests over. Use the patio, the jacuzzi, the living room. Maybe in time she will feel more comfortable about making herself at home.

I had a facebook fight with a person I used to know a long time ago. About Trump, obviously. She lives in Florida, obviously, and thinks he’s the bee’s knees. It’s just that I have this thing about people amplifying bullshit in my feed. She had this anti immigrant meme that was a weird, stupid and easily disprovable lie. So I called her out on it and it spiraled into this whole thing about Obamacare. Long story short she thinks that the brown folk are getting stuff for free at her expense. I came at her with all the charts and graphs and scholarly papers disproving her every step of the way. Ultimately I was like, “Why are you doing this?” Why was I trying so hard to be right? Dunno. She can live in a tower of lies if she wants. She can amplify white grievance politics. It’s wrong but I’m not sure I can stop it. Also, I just hate him so much. Like today I read how when he first came into office he was saying he didn’t start a war because “our army was short of ammo.” I was all outraged, figured it was some of his usual anti Obama bullshit. But then it turns out we actually did have an ammo shortfall in 2017. Still though, he lies all the time, so when he’s actually telling the truth it sounds like a lie. He is garbage, though. Bias or not, it’s an empirically provable fact — he is garbage.

Our guest house still has not broken ground. We’re like a year and a half into building it and while all the components have been collected at the factory, not a single shovel full of soil has turned in our back yard. My mom loaned me $60K to cover my half of the construction costs. At this rate I will have paid her back before the thing is even built. Are we any closer to having negative interest rate loans like they do in Europe? It’s such a bonkers, unsustainable financial situation. What is even going on in this world. Loans that pay you to take them? This will not end well.