Obama for America

BARTLET OBAMA FOR AMERICA

President Bartlet: You think the strike against me is, nobody likes the smartest kid in class?

Toby: Oh I don't know, sir. Being the smartest kid in class is usually a pretty good pitch. It's not a strike, unless you watch it sail by.




Toby: You're a good father. You don't have to act like it. You're a good man. You don't have to act like it.

You're not "just folks."

You're not "plain-spoken." Do not- do not - do not - act like it.

Bartlet: I don't want to be killed [in the election.]

Toby: Then make this election about smart. And not. Make it about engaged. And not. Qualified. And not.

Make it about heavyweight. You're a heavyweight.

Bills and Phil

Can someone please tell Bill Donohue to please go fuck himself?

I am so, so surprised to find out that this reactionary two-bit right-wing activist was behind the call to fire Bill Maher. After all, he's the guy that doesn't want us to read His Dark Materials because it's an evil atheist plot to get kids to stop believing in God.

Best to stop there. I'm too tired to rant.

Roll Me Under New Madrid

My bed was rocking last night, baby.

About 4:30 in the AM I was awakened to the sensation of slowly rocking back and forth. Like I was lying on a huge Jello mold that someone has jostled.

Then I heard a rattling from somewhere in the house; probably the glass doors on a cabinet in my den.

Hmm. I bet it's an earthquake, I thought.

At this point I suppose I should have shot up in either a) curiosity or b) terror, but all too often I've been waking up around the 4 AM mark, stressed about this or that, and unable to fall back asleep.

And so, while the Wabash spur of the New Madrid Fault started shaking up southern Illinois, and when I was waked up by the small tremors in northern Illinois, I simply turned over and went back to sleep.

There's more important things out there that'll keep you up at night.

Writing H&V

There was a section of the play I'm working on that was giving me trouble. Middle of the second act--wasn't sure how much story there was left to tell at that point, and what the characters should be doing by then. I knew how it ended, but I didn't know how they were all going to get there.

Had one of those "ahhhhhhh, yes, that's how it should g0" moments earlier today and now it all seems to be coming together. I was in my car, going to pick up a few things, when an image jumped into my head. Scribbled down a few notes and wound up turning around and spent an hour or so writing new dialogue for Scenes 4 through 6.

I get into a weird mode when I'm writing. I tend to forget about everything else around me and I find myself in a weird, absent-minded professor state. The story just acts itself out over and over in my head and I follow one storyline for a while and then I back up and try it a different way and then if I like something it goes down on paper, either a battered notebook with a red cover or a small Moleskine notebook that I carry with me everywhere.

And when I type it up, it's on the laptop, because that feels more like a typewriter, and typing on a typewriter still feels more like writing to me.

Listened to a lot of Paul McCartney at first, while I wrote, then Townes Van Zant. Spent the other night listening to Astral Weeks and drinking a bit of whiskey, just sitting in my chair well past midnight, lost in thought and letting any old idea take root.

It's interesting to see what a story starts out as, and what it winds up. This one's a play about college, or at least part of it is. But more and more it seems to be about family. And something about whether or not you can grow out of your family, like you grow out of clothes as you grow up. But I haven't got all that figured out yet.