marines we are leaving

It is official, I am changing blogs. [new blog ]

I started this blog [the one you are at now] in January 2006, so it seems appropriate I change blogs now at the end of 2006 to start the new year 2007 with the new blog. Also this is really the time to do it since you cannot transfer old posts out of the new blogspot beta blogs and I would be stuck here indefinitely if I do not jump now. Also I just discovered [oh the horror] someone else I know with the exact same template as this one on blogspot [oh my god she is wearing my dress] so this move is not a minute too soon.

This will be interesting since everyone I know in the blog world who links to me links to this blog and for sure that will take a year of catch up.

I am a very bad blogger too. Going through the archives, there is only one blog post in May. One. Jeez. What a slacker. Oh, wait, I am talking about me. Um. Jeez, I must have been really busy in May. [coughcoughyeahbusyslackingcoughcough]

Okay. Enough coughing. Come visit the new blog . I will post something witty or clever to make it worth the trip. I think. If I am not busy slacking....

That is the new blog click it --> http://celluloidblonde.wordpress.com

p.s.: sometime soon here i am going to start deleting old blog posts from here so that all that is here is the message go to the new blog, the new blog has all the original posts though so you will not be missing anything, IF you go to the new blog

and now in an uncharacteristically impetuous move

Okay now I am playing with an entirely different template.

How, um, out of character.

[not really]

::: celluloid blonde
:::

feeding the blog

Okay, I have not been feeding the blog. I know that. But, I have been doing THINGS blog. That counts, right? THINGS blog?

See, I have discovered this very cool template on Wordpress and have sort of duplicated the blog there. This was an accident brought on by getting dragged into Wordpress to play around with wordpress templates to see what they could do and then discovering this template there I really like. So then I had to play around to see if it was possible to import posts from a past blog to a new blog because well I do not want to lose all the old posts and hello, it is, but you better do it right the first time because you cannot re-import and playing around with this and not knowing what you are doing you lose a few posts. [Um. Oops.] But, voila, it is an ALMOST duplicate blog, with MOST of the old posts, and a prettier, though harder to operate, template.

Okay not everyone would think this is prettier but I do, I like plain, and it blends in with my other sites much better than the current template and that is sort of the point. The blend. So --

Now I have to figure out what I am going to do here. Keep the blogspot blog? Move to the wordpress blog? Throw clothes in a suitcase and run away to the island of no blogs?

Jeez. Decisions.

Oh. Go see the wordpress blog: wordpress blog

Correction. Go see the real and for true wordpress blog: real and for true wordpress blog

convos between me and aj

aj [4:14 AM]:
Adams.
aj [4:14 AM]:
You need to tend to your blog.
aj [4:14 AM]:
It is feeling neglected.
max [4:14 AM]:
I know. Sigh.
aj [4:14 AM]:
November 26 you slack ass.
max [4:14 AM]:
Wow really, November 26? No wonder I have blog guilt.
aj [4:15 AM]:
Yeah you suck.

rupert

This is Rupert. He is a friend's dog. This photo is just too great.



To me that photo of Rupert is so damn cute he had to make a second appearance on dogshatebush.com .

I am such a sucker for Rupert dogs.

thanks

Today I give thanks for food and shelter. I have done without both in my lifetime. And you see a lot of people doing without both in Hollywood. Especially on a day like today, a holiday when the streets go quiet, the people are gone – except for the people who have nowhere to go. They are still there. In alleys. In doorways. Quietly weathering the holiday alone, often on an empty stomach, on what is going to be a long, dark, cold night.

There but for the grace of God go I.

Thank you God.

the seagull

Nine seagulls just showed up and did an aerial dance outside my window. Now they are doing fly bys in formation.

It used to be I had one seagull visitor regularly about this time of morning. He brought friends today.

It is funny to me to have seagulls in Downtown Hollywood.

she clicks, she scores

Cujo just slammed home second place on the Tetrizz Big Dog Board.

Yay! Yay! Yay!

876,000 points. That is the second highest score of all time. Not even Eponymous can knock that down.

Yay!

:::
tetrizz :::

google this

So I was visiting Pooks' blog and she has this thing on her blog that says her blog is worth tens of thousands of dollars and there was this link you could hit that told you [according to whom and based on what I am not sure] how much your blog was worth and I hit it and it told me the Damn Blonde blog is worth $6,209.94.

Cool. Something to hock if this writing thing does not pan out. Then I thought, Hey, what does it have to say about Seemaxrun? You know, my beloved website that I built with my own little hands?

The blog evaluating estimator thingamajig told me Seemaxrun is worth zilch. Zero. Nada. Triple zeroes.

Jeez.

That is okay though. I asked it how much google is worth and it said zero for google too.


The blog evaluating estimator thingamajig: How much is your blog worth?

i hate the russian

I hate the Russian. Every day I have to kill one to three new accounts he creates on the Seemaxrun forum.

Every.

Day.

Day after day.

Week after week.

Month after month.

It is bone numbing. Exhausting. It goes on and on. He never stops. He is like the Terminator bunny of Russian attack spammers.

I just do not think one individual could be this freaking stupid he would keep going after months and months of having every single new membership created in the forum eliminated. Right? I mean, no one is that stupid right? It has to be something else. Something insidious. Something on purpose. Like mind torture? On purpose personally directed mind torture?

It is George Bush. He is pissed off about those dog and cat sites and now some peon secret service guy has one job: Impersonate a Russian and torture me. Right?

[Hey, George? Torture me to high heaven, your machines are still rigged and everyone knows it you cheese head.]

Blasted cheese headed rusky impersonating machine rigging torturing cheaters....


Your Tortured by Fake Ruskies Adams Girl

jury duty

Oh. My. God.

My agent is on jury duty.

Don't those bastards know my life ceases to exist when my agent is detained by jury duty?

How many poor writers are crippled right now because they snatched one agent off the street? Shouldn't that be against the law?

Let. My. Agent. Go.

I have finally discovered who is responsible for this drunken blogging frenzy. Faulkner. Yay!

Okay, not really, really it appears to be this guy [or girl?]:
http://rulebrittaniea.org/2006/10/18/the-drunk-is-nigh

But. Faulkner is my hero. King of the run on sentence which is maybe why I love him so we have that in common which works for me.

And, in honor of Faulkner, I am popping open a beer. Yay!

wait

Wait. I have just been informed drunken blogging night goes on all night. There is still hope.

fuck!

I just was told tonight is drunken blogging night. And I am not drunk or blogging.

And no one told me?

Okay, I am blogging, and checking the clock. It is midnight. I could still pull it off.

Oh who am I kidding? I just missed drunken blogging night.

This is such a travesty.

all hallow's eve

Tonight I know, truly, I am getting older. This is the first Halloween it has not been a goal to dress up and go out. Instead, I am at the computer writing assignments for a class and cast lists for a film.

If I pull off the film there may be a costume party though. Hell with that, a costume ball.

Sirens scream all over Hollywood. And I think about people past, in my life, and what All Hallow’s Eve means, really means, and would I really be disturbed if any of them showed up?

Not the important ones. The ones that mattered.

I think there has been too much death in my life. Halloween is different now.

And no, you cannot share any of my Reese's. Get your own candy. Jeez.

frosty beverages

I am drinking a frosty refreshing beverage chilled by a refrigerator. My refrigerator. Here where I live. I can just walk over there and open a door and presto, frosty beverages in a spiffy fridge that works no ice packing required.

Yay!

This would sound way more exciting to you if you had just gone a week without refrigeration.

Love & Kisses,

That Frosty-Beverages-R-Us Adams Girl

today i am a god

Today I dropped new memory into the computer.

Nifty, right? Except. It did not work. It took the whole computer down. So here I was thinking, Oh fuck, I killed the computer. This is so bad! Bad, Max, Bad!

I pulled the memory card out and the computer worked again. I put it back in. No good.

The thing is. A memory board should not do that unless something is horribly wrong. And. Well. Something could be horribly wrong. I could have ordered the wrong memory board. But I messed around with things, looked things up, I started to get mad. I mean, I am not a stupid girl, and while I do not no like taking computers apart and adding new components because I am always panicked about the static electricity thing that I have never even seen slow down anyone who slams computers apart and together again, I was pretty damn sure I ordered the right board. I mean, I know the computer, it was the right board, it had to be, right?

So. I started over.

Took the computer apart again.

Put in the board again.

[This is actually pretty simple on a G4 cube, it is like Legos, you put the little piece in and apply pressure and click, it is in place and should work, it is not freaking rocket science already, it should work.]

This time the system came up and the computer knew it had more memory. Yay! Only every time I launched a program, the computer shut off. Okay, this computer is a G4 cube. It has a light sensitive on off switch. A tech guy took it apart the other day and put it back together. I think, this is not a memory issue, this going on and off thing, the only reason this thing should be shutting off and on, if that memory board is working, is something is messing with the light sensor and/or the computer reading its own damn material.

[This was a big issue when the computer first came out, this light sensor thing, I had to replace a computer washer just to make this thing work right the first time straight out of the factory.]

So. I take it all apart. AGAIN. Praying to the Gods of static electricity and promising I won't care if socks stick to my panty hose in public if they just don't fry the computer. AGAIN. And. I check the hard drive mounting.

Hello. Tech Guy did not tighten one of the screws right. One of the screws that, if it is off, well, the whole machine loses balance at a really special alignment that effects the whole on off switch scenario that is light sensitive on this computer and can crumble if just one little rubber washer isn't just right.

I tighten the screw.

I put it back together.

Everything works.

Holy Bejeez! It WORKS!

YAY! YAY! YAY!

Okay. Today. I. Am. A. God.

Do not panic. I always feel this way when I surmount an insurmountable computer problem. I will get over myself in a few hours. Just let me experience a moment of abject godness for fixing something that should not have been off in the first place and actually being savvy enough to work backwards and figure out what to check to find out what was wrong in the first place and also charming the Gods of Static AND going into the computer not once but so many freaking times and -- it works. It all WORKS.

YAY! YAY! YAY!

The computer has SO much memory.

YAY!

Oh. And if all the I am a God today stuff gets too out of hand, just remind me I put a screw driver through one of the freon pipes in the freezer three days ago and am packing ice just to keep my Cokes cold till I get around to coping with that. But wait a day. I want to be a god for at least a day. Then you can remind me about the dumb freon your fridge is dead because that is no way to defrost a freezer fiasco.



Love and Kisses,



Your I Am A God Today Adams Girl


ps: i have a working printer and scanner again too yay!

pps: is there something mildly off about a person who puts computers before food?, you know i won't even touch or bother with that refrigerator til the computer is all up and running hot i wonder if i should worry about that...

system terrors: part two

Okay. I did it. I started the god awful arduous process of updating the computer system. This is always bad news. I know that going in. But you have to do it because those freaky software people make it harder and harder to not do it over a span of, oh, maybe three minutes since the last system install. Probably holding out six years is a monumental feat. But they win, I lose, I have to do it. So I pull up my boot straps, and, shivering, go for it.

So far, I have the computers talking to each other, the mail program up and running again, the calendar and address book functioning, and the majority of important programs including the legacy software operational. That only took, oh, um, three days of staying up till 4 am to get everything backed up, loaded, transfered, shuffled into the right system folders, and running in sync -- and only cost me 6 years worth of saved emails which now live in a zone commonly referred to as "Oh fuck that was REALLY important."

The printer won't work. I reloaded the drivers, reloaded the patches, reloaded the keyspan drivers, and the computer knows the printer and drivers and keyspans are there. Well, Classic Nine knows the printer and drivers and keyspans are there. Word doesn't. Word doesn't even want to talk to anything related to System 9. Word is demanding some other fancy printer. This is a problem.

ICQ is also a dead soldier -- and for no good reason. This ICQ program is supposed to work on either system on the computer, and won't. [Also I know I have been fighting computer issues too long when I want to kill a friend who for the third time has told me just load ICQ 5.1 it will only take five minutes when I have told her three times THERE IS NO FUCKING 5.1 ICQ FOR THE MAC. See? Getting a little testy here. Hmm.] I think ICQ is having fire wall issues. It did not have those issues on the other system though so makes no sense to me it would instantaneously go unhinged over a new system it is supposed to be operational on. Two systems it can pick from and neither one is working so who the hell knows? Not me. But I am seriously wanting to maim ICQ people about now. [Hint, if you are an ICQ person, this might not be a good time to pop by.]

This is just stuff I know is not working. There is always something lurking in the fray you do not know about that will leap out and surprise you after a system upgrade, but hey, a non-fuctioning printer and no computer communication with the internationals, that is a small set back, right? I mean, I am just a writer, IT IS NOT LIKE MY JOB FUCKING REQUIRES I PRINT ANYTHING!

Uh oh. I am typing in all caps again. Time maybe for another break....

Love and Kisses,


Your [Die ICQ Die] Adams Girl


p.s. Say, if you suspect you are supposed to be in my email address book, um, you are not the whole address book blew up along with the saved [important] email send email so I can click a button that puts you back in the book rebuilding this monster manually, well, that may be a while.

p.p.s. Okay, icq is fixed now so I guess it is safe for icq people to pop by again. And now for the final hurdle. The printer.

hore water

I am too lazy to post on my own blog so I am now stealing blogs from others.

This is really funny to me. The photo looked better on a black background though.

Go see the original blog appearance of hore water: white eleven

[p.s. hey aj i am really questioning your moral fiber here]

take that eponymous

Okay I have to save that so when eponymous sees I made it back onto the big dog board and goes into a rage and beats me back down into my place in the tetrizz heirarchy there is a record.

Look at little cujo kicking eponymous's ass.

Yay!

[okay not really, eponymous kicks everyone's ass except klh's but it is a good tetrizz moment and it will not last eponymous is on task with that upstart cujo]

send us your dogs

So I am revamping the political sites. They got a little derailed back when my very nice but sort of out of his head on medication landlord started showing up in my bedroom at 7 am waving a gun around and never quite got pulled all back together after that but, it is time, an election is coming. Which probably won't work unless someone actually points out, um, those ballot machines are rigged and you cannot win a rigged election no matter how many people vote or in which direction, it is still going to come out, well, rigged. Doy. I am not sure why nobody seems to be noticing that but there it is. Your vote doesn't count if someone rigged the machines.

In spite of that, well, it is time to mock Bush and harass Fox News some more, i.e. wake the sites back up, so go visit http://dogshatebush.com and send us your dogs. And say, do not panic if you do not have a dog, you can go visit http://catshatebush.com and send us your cats. And if you have no pets? None? At all. Go visit http://skinthefox.com and write a mean letter to a Fox News sponsor.

Better yet, do all three.

that workshop thing

Okay, so I have this workshop I run, and at the moment I am moving certain types of information off the main seemaxrun site in an effort to compartmentalize or whatever, hey, it is a little whacky right now, but, you guys are here, so here is the workshop info:

5150 The
Workshop

My main goal at the moment, and this will sound sexist as hell but it is not, is to bring some male voices into the 5150 workshop. It is off balance gender speaking at the moment. If you rock and are a girl, hey, I will take you. I do not turn down talent even if you have a green tail or something. I just am trying right now to make some sort of gender balance happen there. Which could, um, go tragically wrong.

ps: hey, also, do not go crazy sending in you are steven spielberg here using a hotmail address, everyone has to send in real id to join this shop and that is not a "we are kidding" sitch, that is solid

just for pooks

This is just for Pooks because I know it will make her crazy and I sort of like making Pooks crazy...

The other day, I was talking to someone about desks. Someone who needed it explained you do not burry a zen sand garden under a stack of papers. I stepped away from my desk and snapped a photo.



Um, Pooks? No Alluvial Layers.

system terrors : part one

So. I am at this terrible software crossroads. Software crossroads are what people with a hell of a lot of legacy software have to navigate when/if they upgrade system software. See, system upgrades, without fail, cause enormous problems. A million things stop working, you have to go hunt up patches, if you are lucky and know what patches to go hunt up, or if you know someone savvy Mac who knows what patches you need.

If you are not lucky you keep talking to stupid uninformed Mac store people who helpfully suggest you rebuild your desktop which, hello, never works. My smart Mac person is gone. And I have been fighting a system upgrade here a long long time.

And I mean, a long, long time.

One of the computers is operating on Mac OS 9.04 or something like. That is a five year balk right there. That is how long I refused to risk system upgrade frenzy on the big computer.

The other computer is on Max OS X, [Tiger, grrrr], with a higher version of Mac 9 on it to make stuff that won't work on OS X work. They call this "Mac Classic." I call it "Stuff doesn't work on OS X so your best fix is load two systems." Which actually is not a stupid idea, I had that one like ten years ago and always have two operating systems at my disposal on the big stand alone for just that reason. Which, um, freaks people out because you are not supposed to do that but I do and it works. I just do not call it classic. I call it "Back up to make legacy software work."

Meanwhile, the internet is boxing my ears on the big computer, so I have to play these games, like alternate between browsers on that computer and if those do not work, go to the little computer and hit Safari or something to get a site up that has outpaced the old system stuff.

This is getting kind of ridiculous and I have the software disks, you know, Tiger [grrr] and Classic [liar] that I could put on the big computer. I have all the disks.

But you know what happened last time I touched the big computer's system?

The printer wouldn't work. Wouldn't work for a solid week till I figured out I needed an HP patch and went and downloaded it. And that was only the most immediate DID NOT WORK problem. There were others that in the end took about 3 months to straighten out.

So here I sit. Thinking, Wow, I could just do it. Stuff the disks in that little disk port, put 'em on, see what happens. Except, what would stop working when I did? Dreamweaver? That would be a big problem. How about Fireworks? Oh huge problem. Flash? Nasty sitch there. Probably nothing can kill Photoshop, which I hate and refuse to use unless it is an emergency and, like all creatures of death, Photoshop probably can only be killed with a stake through the heart, beheading, and cleansing fire with a priest overseeing the whole thing in a purple stole. But, what about Word? I do not write in Final Draft, I only have that device of the devil to read stuff I must read in Final Draft. I do not write in it. I write in Word. But. Okay. Word I have two versions of that would not actually be a huge problem I know one version on the little computer works with Tiger. But what about Fetch? What about Palm? WHAT IF I UPLOAD A NEW SYSTEM AND MY WHOLE FUCKING ADDRESS BOOK SHUTS DOWN?

Excuse me, I think I need a pedicure....


Your In Systems We Fear Adams Girl


ps: usually i would not name a thoughts piece "part one" just assuming there would be a second part but, um, hello?, system upgrade?, that is a franchise on terror bigger and toothier than jaws you know this is just the beginning....

pps: go see my site i am bringing back http://celluloiddog.com go on it is a good site i loved it enough to resurrect it.

ppps: for the people who keep asking, yes, that is me doing my nails, it is not that hard, go try it.

celluloid dog

I am bringing a site back. Mainly because someone coerced me, but also because I always really liked this site. It has a new name. I have been arguing with old code. Maybe you will like it:

celluloid dog

something funny adele said

Okay I do not feel pithy but this cracked me up:

"Some people are like slinkies, they don't really have a purpose but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs."

That was Adele.

Also, if police are reading, we did not push Susan Miller down those stairs that is our story and we are sticking to it.

Love and Kisses,


Your Slinkies Are Fun Adams Girl

meme revenge

Dear Bemused Blogger: If you are reading this meme, as of now you are officially meme'd.

Nifty trick, yes?

What is gingivitis?

Oh like that really exists.

What would you name a dog you really disliked?

"G.A.N.: Go Away Now."

What was the last lie you told your boyfriend to avoid an argument?

Like I have a boyfriend. Say, do you have Mirco Bergamasco's phone number?

Do socks that disappear in the dryer really go to the Baby Jesus?

Doy. Everyone knows that.

When is the last time you bought a piece of lingerie that was not white, beige, or basic black?

Oh like I would answer that. Perve. [author's note: this response shamelessly lifted from adele hourigan, whose answer was better than mine, damn her, and who will have a nifty website I can reference here soon]

Hi, my name is Flash, how do you like me so far?

If that is followed by Gordon, I am dialing 911. If that is prefixed by Macromedia, I am pulling a gun.

Yay! Meme frenzy!


Love and Kisses,

Your Meme This Adams Girl

oh holy jesus: part deux

For some reason I just out of curiosity was hitting what's new links. I do this sometimes. And I hit the Max and Cow link. And I am watching Flash Max & Cow, cracking up thinking, Wow, that was really funny. [I crack myself up a lot, I do not even care if you think it is funny, I do, and that is good enough for me.] And I get to episode 3, which to this day is only an html link because I got too busy to flash out episode 3, even though [scary] there are actually seven episodes, sorry you cannot see them, but meanwhile, there I am seeing the flash eps, and then I get to 3 which is only html ready and hit the link and --

Dead link.

No go.

I think, huh? Is the link bad?

I backtrack. I try to go to the html pages. But, hey, no go there either. And what I discover is, an entire section of Max and Cow is gone, missing, not there. A huge fucking file. The whole thing. Except for two flash episodes.

There was a big shake up on the server the sites are on a while back. This shake up is so long ago I do not remember even a date here. I do remember doing a lot of clean up and reloading and cursing. But it never occurred to me then to check Max and Cow pages then. All of which means --

Sometime this year, Max and Cow went down.

And stayed down.

Ahhhhh!

Max and Cow is one of my favorite things. I think it is all up now. I am not sure. It is late. I am wonky. I could be wrong. I do know a hell of a lot of test pages went up right along with the real pages -- which is going to play hell with search engines -- because I just loaded the whole damn file, forget what is supposed to be up and what is not supposed to be up. Loaded it all. Scary. Wonder what the search engines will grab that they are not supposed to. But. Hey. If you haven't, go see Max and Cow. It is one of my favorite things. And write me back if one of those links does not load okay?

The Adventures of Max & Cow



Love & Kisses,


Your Girl With Cow


ps: there was an entire ftp disaster around here in may courtesy of my cable provider [thank you creative environments] so we are going to back up and pretend really hard this is a june thought even though it is, um, july oops -- that is so far as seemaxrun is concerned, if you never visit seemaxrun, well, there were blog posts and you are fine, i think

action!

So. There I am. Reading an exciting action script. [Well what should be an exciting action script but we will get to that.] So far, it is an exciting action script. It opens on cool stuff. Something Matrixey. People in cool clothes pulling cool power weapons and pulling even cooler stunts. Diving through air. Leaping tall buildings. Defying motion normal humans cannot defy. Everything looks good, everything is barreling along, the clothes are cool, the characters are cool, the setting is cool, the action is cool, I am totally expecting cool action, and then --

It starts raining and everyone sits down to play cards. And play more cards. And play more cards. And, yes, MORE FREAKING CARDS.

Fifteen pages later, I flip forward and do a page count on just how long these characters are going to play cards.

And they play cards a long LONG time.

Okay. Listen. If I were reading a script about high stakes poker and some card savvy gambler fighting for his life? I might expect a fifteen or twenty or thirty page [well okay not really but still at least the subject matter would be appropriate] card game to just crop up in the middle of the script. I mean, it is a script about card playing, maybe it could happen. But this is not a gambling script. And this is not a card player script. This is an Indiana Jones script. Or a Matrix script. Or a King Solomon's Mine script. Or a Lord of the Rings script. And --

Are characters saving the world from evil?

No.

Characters are playing cards.

For.

Thirty.

Freaking.

Minutes.

Listen. Take a step back. Think about what you are writing.

An.

Action.

Script.

Ask yourself --

Would Frodo sit down in the middle of saving Middle Earth and play five card stud for half an hour?

Would Neo?

Would Indy?

Oh hell no.

Action characters save the world and that is just not how you write an action script.

But. People are doing it. Every day. Over and over again. I keep seeing it. Action stops for no good reason and characters start playing cards. Or some mundane thing. That takes up a quarter of the freaking script.

Okay. Do not do that. Ever. The end.


Your Don't Do That Adams Girl

today's nicholl thought

For the love of God. Use good brads. What were you thinking?

more magic tricks

Yes it is another magic trick. I am teaching a Learning Annex class in June, July, and August on how the hell to survive the second act. And here you thought I just turned water into wine....

Screenwriters: Break Through the Second Act Stall
With Hollywood Screenwriter and Author Max Adams

There you are writing your screenplay. You've read the books. You've taken
the classes. You've learned the game. Now, you are barreling along,
creating a masterpiece that is surely headed for Oscar stardom, when... you
hit the second act and the story comes to a standstill. What just happened?

It's known as "the second act stall" and if you've ever met this monster
while writing a screenplay, you need this class.

Award-winning screenwriter and published author Max Adams will demystify
the screenplay's second act and show you why sustaining a single act through
sixty pages does not work. Come learn how to conquer the "stall" and get on
your way back to a solid script that can sell.

Max will cover how to:

•Break Act II into manageable sections
•Sustain dramatic tension
•Escalate turning points
•Raise story stakes
•Create climactic breaks
•And more

Max Adams is a recipient of the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in
Screenwriting from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and has
worked with Columbia Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone, Universal,
Tri-Star and Disney. Produced films include Excess Baggage, starring Alicia
Silverstone (credited), and the 2004 adaptation of The Ladykillers, starring
Tom Hanks (uncredited). She has taught/lectured at USC, the Austin Film
Festival, the Film Arts Foundation, Gotham Writers' Workshop, and the New
York Film Academy, and has served as a WGA mentor and a Nicholl Fellowship
Judge and Reader. She is the author of "The Screenwriters' Survival Guide:
Or, Guerrilla Meeting Tactics and Other Acts of War."

Course 479P

Sec. A, June 28, 2006 6:45-9:30 pm
Sec. B, July 31, 2006 6:45-9:30 pm
Sec. C, August 29, 2006 6:45-9:30 pm

Members online fee $39.99 | Online fee $44
Members course fee $44 | Course fee $49

For locations [which I am hoping like hell are in Hollywood if not they will probably be in Santa Monica, wow, wide spread] and sign up info visit http://learningannex.com or call 310.476.6677

sasquatch is in the house

Something horrible has happened to my ftp connection. I suspect it has something to do with my incredibly web unsavvy building management and their incredibly bad building server and the incredibly not efficient IT team that allegedly services a server I can only guess they bought on sale at Ikea or something. And, for the moment, I cannot even update Seemaxrun, let alone other sites I supervise, because the fun IT people have totally fucked up the port servers and now the connections out are blocking all ftp access and sending. You gotta love Creative Environments. They put the "creative" back into the internet experience.

Meanwhile, I can access the blog. Oh irony of ironies. The blog is so much newer than the site which is years old, I am afraid to think how many years old. And the message board. Just not my damn site. This makes me curse a lot. But --

My friend Brian's band Thicker Than Thieves is coming to town and playing at The Whiskey in Hollywood June 29th. Brian's nickname is Sasquatch and I have never asked exactly why his nickname is Sasquatch but it is and the band is great and of course I will be there you might want to check them out: http://www.myspace.com/17371422

See you at the show. Oh, and buy tickets early because word is they are bringing a party bus up from San Diego and the San Diego party people might hog tickets.

Love and Kisses,

Your I Will Be Dancing This Month Adams Girl

*Note, okay, that is the wrong date, I will be dancing July 29, not June 29. My bad.

elvis is dead

So. Um. Elvis is dead.

I know. It is sad news. I am broken up over it too. And normally I would not drop such sad news into a conversation, but, there is a reason I bring this up.

See. I read for the Nicholl. [For the uninitiated, Nicholl is an annual screenwriting competition for five fellowships from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences named after screenwriter Don Nicholl.] Nicholl gets a lot of scripts. So I read a lot of scripts. This year reading started late because of a small online forms dilemma, but it is underway, and I am reading scripts, and whammo, before I even hit 50 scripts, I have hit four "Elvis" scripts.

Four does not sound like a lot till you start thinking about those numbers in the grand scheme of things. If I read forty scripts and four of them feature Elvis, well, we are talking one out of ten scripts with Elvis making an appearance.

Now ask yourself, how many scripts with Elvis making an appearance prominently feature "Fat Elvis vs. Thin Elvis" jokes?

You got it.

A LOT.

It is not that I have anything against Elvis. Personally, I like Elvis. He reminds me of my grandmother. She used to get me Elvis music for birthdays and holidays, she thought he was grand, and I loved my grandmother and to this day everytime I hear Yellow Rose of Texas -- which granted does not happen a lot in Hollywood but it could -- I think of her and that works for me.

But. I am going to probably read between 200 and 300 scripts before reading is over for Nicholl. Not in one day. But over time they build up. And if numbers stay constant here, that means 20 to 30 scripts with Fat Elvis vs. Thin Elvis jokes in them.

I really doubt this is different for any of the other Nicholl readers, I mean, we get these scripts at random, no one is singling me out saying, Hey Max digs Elvis, he is associated with fond thoughts of her grandmother, let's give her all the Elvis scripts. So odds are all other Nicholl readers are going to be reading 20 to 30 scripts featuring Elvis too.

One of the little boxes we have here to stick a number in is labeled "originality."

Think about it.

mom was right -- once

My hand is peeling. I eye it. Why would my hand be peeling? I have not been out in the sun really, I have not burned myself --

Oh. Wait. There was that "battery acid" incident.

I thought battery acid was just made up by my mother to terrorize me right before she made me go take batteries out of things. I have never actually seen battery acid or any evidence of battery acid's existence ever before and did not really believe in "battery acid," but there I am taking batteries out of a gadget [not a sex toy you pervs] and the little part that snaps open has some liquid on it on the inside and I am thinking, That is weird, where did that come from? Were my hands wet? And trying to wipe it off, and thinking, hmm, this liquid spot is sort of shaped like a battery, and I find more inside the gadget and ON the batteries I just knocked into my hand and I am thinking, This is really weird, gee, I hope this is not "battery acid," ha ha Mom --

When my hands get really mad really fast anywhere this stuff has touched them like they want to be rinsed off AND RIGHT NOW DAMMMIT.

Wow. Battery acid. Who knew?

super hero mark

Okay super hero Mark is coming to help me hang more stuff and also, he has all the hardware to do it. This is kind of shocking to me I do not even know how to pronounce this stuff, fear being mocked in a hardware store trying to ask for it, and have no idea how or why anyone would just happen to have it lying around. It is special widgets for supporting and embedding things in concrete which, you know, I do not just have in the desk drawer next to the paper clips. I figure most people do not. I say, Mark, what exactly do you do? He is a VP at a construction company. Apparently, Mark built bridges and stuff in his youth and now tells other people how to do that. Real bridges. You know, like the kind cars drive over to cross rivers and gorges and stuff? And, they do not fall down? This explains why Mark could just singlehandedly whip up a second story to his tall ceilinged loft using metal beams. Holy cow.

oh. holy. jesus.

The upstairs neighbor has an electric drum set.

This guy is an insomniac. And he has a lot of toys. He gets them shipped in by train I think. Some of them are more traumatic than others. Like. When he got new ski boots, he thought the appropriate action was to put them on every night and hop. Over and over again. On a concrete floor. Until 5 am in the morning. For three nights running. Until I tracked that easter bunny down and talked to him about hopping at 5 am on concrete floors in ski boots.

Now. A drum set. An. Electric. Drum. Set.

What kind of !@?!! sets up an electric drum set in an apartment? You put a drum set in a garage. You put a drum set in a sound studio. You do not put a freaking electric drum set in an apartment with neighbors one wall away. I do not care if they call it a "loft." It has attached walls.

He is chagrined I have a problem with the drum set.

weekend dog

I am walking back from the farmer's market and a car pulls up next to me. It is my neighbor Mark. Mark is really nice he helped me hang pictures on concrete walls which is kind of tricky. He is also usually dressed way down when I see him around the building so it is startling to have Mark pull up next to me in a Jag. A Jag? Wow, Mark, who knew? More startling than the Jag is a little dog in the front seat. I say, Mark, I did not know you had a dog. He doesn't. It belongs to the young girl in the back seat who is his daughter. I have heard about the daughter. I did not know about the dog. So this must be Mark's weekend with his little girl. And her dog.

This is very funny to me. I know people get weekend visitation rights with children. I just did not know the dog comes with. It makes sense. If I was traveling between parents, I would take my dog. It cracks me up.

unfortunate moment #3,00,457.19

From the land of truly bad typos, a really unfortunate Easter greeting sent to a student:

"Happy Eater Bunny."

It does not help this student is a lesbian.

that goofy website

Seemaxrun got 12,000 unique visitors last month. Probably because I left town for a week. Whenever I leave town it is a 10,000 month for the site. I do not know why. It just works that way. [Say, I wonder what would happen if I left the country?]

This seems like a lot of visitors for some simple little writer's website. In the grand scheme of things it is not big numbers. But for a personal site it is. At least to me.

Jeez, I guess I should make myself more presentable or something with that many people stopping by.

Excuse me, I have to go shave my legs.

Your Not Presentable by Half Adams Girl

loose change

I do not have much to say about this. I think everyone in America should see it. It is a documentary about 9-11. Go see it. Think about it:

loose
change

the space time continuum

The world as I know if just shifted. Like a big earthquake thump. Bam!

Jessica Simpson turned down an invitation to the White House.

She did it because she felt it was inappropriate to link a charity she is involved with to a political fundraiser.

Military men, who are in violation of military law when they do it, are appearing at Republican fundraisers.

And little Jessica Simpson just said no.

I suddenly like Jessica Simpson a lot.

jessica
snubs republican fundraiser

dear diary

Dear Diary:

Met Steven for breakfast to give him notes on his new project. Dashed to Four Seasons for my super secret sexy rendezvous with Colin. Went through an excruciating work out with my super sexy trainer. [Too bad that guy is gay. He has the best abs.] Stood in at a bachelorette auction and got won by George. Fancy dinner and drinks was fun but he got sort of fresh. Sheesh, you would think that guy dropped a million at that auction. Oh. Wait. He did. Never mind. Anyway, it was for a good cause. Orphans. Diamonds in the mail from my favorite jewel thief. I wonder if these are too hot to take to a jeweler? Candy and flowers and an Arabian stallion from that Arab sheik who keeps stalking me. Jeesh. That guy does not understand "no." Okay, he does not understand English. Finished the night off with Cristal and a Princess Mononoke dvd. The horse thinks Mononoke needs more horses. We are having big discussions on whether horses get to sleep on the bed. The horse is bigger. He may win.

Okay just kidding.


[Like I really get up for breakfast meetings. Pfft.]


Love and Kisses,


Your Living the Dream Adams Girl

city rain

It is a beautiful night tonight. It is raining in Los Angeles. I have the big glass doors open so the air can come in. It is not like country rain air, where everything smells green and like plants are waking and growing. It is city rain air, the air and water that washes away the debris of thousands of cars and people that have built up like a film over the whole city till you almost cannot see the sky. Country rain air is the air of new growth. City rain air is the air of reprieve and redemption.

I sure love the rain.

something is searching

You know of all the cities in the U.S. I have been in, New Orleans was always the one I liked. The one I thought, if I could live anywhere, that would be it. Well, except for the weather. The weather in N.O. always really sucked big time. But there was so much good about New Orleans it made up for that and hell, that is what air conditioning was invented for.

And I think N.O. was that way for a lot of people. A lot of places in the U.S. suck, and people have to be in those places, but, there is always N.O. If it all got to be too much I could always have gone off to N.O. and drawn chalk figures on sidewalks or sold po boys or something.

Now that is gone. And in the part of me that sees big patterns in things and machiavelian movements that are bigger than people, you know, that does not always look accidental. It looks like the places that are safe havens are being slowly eradicated, while out there, something is looking, and closing down avenues of escape.

I know that is paranoid as hell. But sometimes it feels like a sentience is at work and not in a good way, closing off avenues of freedom and pinpointing every last person on the planet with more numbers and more ways of finding people and keeping track and I do not like it much.


Your Something is Searching Adams Girl

haggis be damned

So Pooks sent me this link, http://dateahotscot.com where you vote for the sexiest Scot and are entered to win a free trip to Scotland. Ooh la la, cute guys in kilts and a free trip to Scotland. It does not get much better than that. Natch my browsers immediately decided they did not like the Flash in the hot Scot page and would not let me see any pictures so I had to do some evil tech stuff to make that all work and then I got fun video clips and voted for a Scot and I am entered. I tell Pooks she has to go with if I win. I do not know what her husband will think about that but hey she got me into this. Me I think she should enter too and then if she wins she can take me but Sam is definitely not going for that. Sheesh. Husbands can be so unreasonable.

bring on the fries

So Sunday is my birthday. I do the Max thing. I tell people on Thursday that Sunday is the big night and where I will be.

My birthday celebrations are generally an eclectic gathering of who can get free or is free with three days notice. The invites always say rsvp. People never rsvp. My birthdays are mystery nights. The guests are the presents. Surprises. I like them that way.

I get email from one friend he will be there if he survives the Long Beach chili cheese fries eating competition. I wonder if this is wise. I am suddenly glad the party is outside on a roof.

The Long Beach chili cheese fries eating competition features $10,000 in prizes. $4,000 goes to the winner.

I say, Jeez, that is better than a lot of screenwriting competitions.

My friend says, Yes, sadly, chili cheese fries are better than most scripts.

He has a point.

It still seems wrong you can get a bigger prize for eating chili cheese fries -- and have better odds of winning -- than you can winning most screenplay competitions.



Your Birthday Adams Girl

cut cats and politics

Okay here is the cut cat. And I do mean cut. Look at this monster.

This is Twink and this totally cracks me up,



And here is the politics. Which is not as cut or cute.

Move On Org has just emailed me the President has broken the law. I guess he has overstepped the powers of the Patriot Act and is not just wire tapping "suspected terrorists," he is now wire tapping anyone he damn well wants to. Your plumber. Your hairdresser. Your daughter. The, um, Democratic Party?

Move On Org went to a good deal of trouble to explain to me why tapping general citizenry is illegal and bad. And why I should write my Senator and explain to my Senator, who I guess isn't up on law and government, just being a Senator and all, this is illegal and bad. Move On Org gave me addresses and everything to make it easier for me, a citizen, to explain the law to a Senator.

Here is the thing. This "President" has fixed two elections, threatened to take over presidential headquarters by force during an election investigation, has forged security documents, has outed a secret service operative working in the line of duty, [that is treason, by the way], has lied to Congress, has lied to the Senate, has lied to the American people, has started a war with a foreign nation bent solely on the purpose of destablizing a sovereign economy and nation -- based on forged information and documents created by his staff for the sole purpose of personal profit, has supported torture and chemical warfare and broken every agreement signed to by this country and others of the Geneva Convention, has attempted to place persons on his personal payroll on the Supreme Court, and when that did not work has pushed people through who might be on his payroll and damn sure are not popular choices with either political party, has paid alleged "news reporters" to proliferate positive propoganda about his agenda and smear opposition, has pushed through protocol that calls for mandatory drugging of school children, actually got into office in Texas by planting phony bugs in his office and claiming the opposition did it, eventually sending that opposition to jail to rot, ignored security breifings of a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, used that, the most sympathetic event in U.S. History, to alienate every other nation on the planet, alienated my country and separated it from the United Nations, and left citizens of New Orleans to die in a flood rather than pulling people out of there using the National Guard, instead orderring the National Guard and the military troops sent there to shoot anyone looking for food and just toss the bodies who would know different with so many dead bodies --

Now.

I am supposed to write my Senator because this "President" is listening in on private citizens' sexy phone calls.

I can see why Move On is working this angle. Spying on the Democratic Party is what got Nixon outed. But no one is brave enough to even name this as political spying. No one is even mentioning that. And, with the amazing numbers of clearly breaking the law items already on this "President's" claim to fame?

I just think it is ridiculous I keep getting email that says, "Is the President breaking the law."

Yes. The "President" has broken every law known to man, God, and dog.

Stop asking me. And stop telling me to beg Congress or the Senate to do something about it. Clearly, they will not, can not, or choose not. Or this guy who is the foremost criminal of the world at the moment would not be in office leading us all to Hell.

*Editorial note: This is the first blog I have ever had trouble posting. It keeps coming back, Try again in 10 minutes. Wow, I wonder if the content is flagged. Cough cough cough.

the crimson car coat

I have come to a travesty of a realization.

I am boring.

This is a terrible thing to realize. My cat was interesting. My dogs were interesting. Me?

I am dull.

And all those fancy clothes in the closet? Crimson velvet car coats? Gold Dolce & Gabbanas? That are supposed to suggest I am not?

I never wear them.

My life is work. Every day. Every minute. Every hour. Every week. Every month. Every year. Every moment. Work.

I call a girlfriend and she tells me about a person climbing the house to sit in the hot tub on the bedroom deck. It is a good story. Then she says, What are you doing? What are you up to?

Work.

That is what I do.

I work on a pitch.

I work on a spec.

I post a lecture for my class.

I pick snails off a plant. [I worry about the hard water at the new place and wonder if there is a way to soften it for the plants. Oh that is exciting. Jeez.]

I review a student's work.

I read a book someone is looking for an adaptation on.

I put together a story outline.

I confirm a meeting.

I watch a dvd of a director's work.

I fire off an email to my agent about the director's work.

I put together a list of dream directors for a project.

[Dream is right. Damn. It.]

I watch another dvd. Not for me. To see someone's work.

I confirm a meeting.

I.

Just.

Work.

Cripes.

I need to wear this crimsom car coat.

dog year dog rules

The party was fun. Dog wore Mardis Gras beads and a shirt that on the back said "My Year My Rules"

and had this giant chicken piñata [sp?] he wrestled, and I am going to pretend there are absolutely no connotations to a man wrestling an enormous papier maché chicken outside of send the Year of the Rooster out and usher the Year of the Dog in

Most people were betting on the chicken but Dog had a fancy wrestler's mask --

and the chicken did not --

which I guess made all the difference because Dog won -- well sort of won Dog AND the chicken ended up on the floor but the chicken was missing its head and Dog still had his attached so we will say Dog won

and here we are in Year of the Dog. Yay!

p.s. there were more men than women at the party so it was not the all girl smooch bash i thought it might be, dog did not introduce me to the cute guy at the party, i heard a great love story that is true -- the kind of true you cannot put in a movie no one will believe it -- from another writer

year of the dog

I am getting worried about this blog. It seems to be all about snails. And, natch, I found ANOTHER SNAIL. I swear there is a snail bunker in this planter. This snail went to live by Mail & More. Mail & More's greenery is nicer than the Rite Aid greenery so maybe holding out was a good thing for this snail.

A friend of mine is having a Chinese New Year's Eve party tonight. We are entering Year of the Dog. My friend's name is Dog. I suspect this is a secret plan to get a bunch of good looking women in one place and sneak smooches. I mean, Year of the Dog? A guy named Dog? New Year's Eve? It has got to be about good looking women and smooches. I wonder what the feng shui aspects are of that? I wonder what it is going to be like being at a party comprised entirely of good looking women and Dog.

That is okay. I owe Dog. I talked him into having a Tupperware soup party with the lure of cute Tupperware girls and every girl who showed was not single I can do an all girl Chinese New Year's Eve party to make up for that.

I do not remember what Chinese year I was born in. This is for sure because whatever it is, I did not like it and promptly mind wiped it. Probably something unfortunate like an ox or a rat or something. I would rather be a Dog. Dog was probably not born in the Year of the Dog either though. I will have to unravel that tonight -- what year was Dog born in really?

I am taking bubbles. Bubbles are festive if soapy and I have this whole bottle of bubbles that looks like a champagne bottle that actually Dog got me one birthday that I have never used. This seems like an appropriate occasion.

See you in the Year of the Dog.