First Draft Complete, Cue Soul Searching

This weekend, I biked out to the end of an isolated pier in Red Hook and read the first draft of my script, out loud, to myself.

This was a big moment for me. Just like it says in the book, there are things I thought were there that weren't there, and things that are there that I had never expected. The most unexpected of the latter: what I have seems to be a completed story. It's a script. It's a first draft, with big chunks missing and other chunks that will need to be completely reimagined and rewritten, but it is a whole script, heavy, made of paper, physically indistinguishable from, say, Good Will Hunting or Poltergeist 2, except for the words on the page.

This is a HUGE relief.

I had gotten so focused on each individual part of the script that I didn't quite understand that by the end I would have a whole thing, a coherent work that I had written, an object made of words.

Right now, I am sitting in the lower 60s section of Riverside Park, reading my reference book, and thinking about what comes next. I am trying to figure out what the biggest changes will need to be so as to make them first. Giving my main character more of a role in the main action of the story seems to be my greatest initial challenge. There will be many others.

In the book it says that once you finish your first draft, you're a writer. I don't know if that's true exactly. But when I was working on the first draft I found that the best time to stop writing was when I started wondering if maybe I was doing absolutely everthing wrong - something I wondered literally every day that I wrote. I assumed that once I'd finished a first draft, I'd spend the next week as drunk as physically possible. Instead, I find myself thinking, anticipating, and hoping just to make it through the second draft.

Wish me luck.

And Waitresses Learn to Hate Food

It's always tricky watching a movie when you're writing a movie. Good example of the worst case scenario: I was watching Empire Strikes Back with a friend last night just after she read the first draft of my script, and she decided to illustrate a point about a central conflict for the main character by saying "See - your movie should be more like that."

No movie should ever be compared to Empire because Empire is (arguably) the best movie ever, and my shitty first draft of a script should even more never be compared to Empire when I know there's a problem with the scenes with the dad character and I'm working on it, thank you. It's like if I tried to pick up chicks at the Cattyshack — it's a losing man's game.

Then there's the TV Tropes effect where you spend so much time thinking about media that you just spend the whole movie waiting for the act break, the page 45 analogy, the part on page 75 where the hero almost give up, blah blah blah.

But - sometimes! - you watch a movie and say "Aha! That part of that movie is great in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as a similar part in my movie will be great!"

This just happened to me.

I am watching Sneakers, an old favorite of mine. Like my movie, Sneakers has a team of people working on a single thing. And it's a heist movie, so it's a team of quirky character actors. Oh, and the cast is fucking brilliant - like, Pres. Roslin, Sundance Kid and Ghandi brilliant.

Anyway, some of the greatest moments in this movie are when everybody these brilliant character actors get to just turn and react to something. There first time Robert Redford casually mentions Mary McDonnell, everyone just turns and looks at him.

It's a fucking genius moment. And, the best thing about this moment - super easy to write. I can watch this moment and think "Aha! I'll bet my movie will have a ton of moments where everyone turns around and looks at one of the other people! I can in some way be as good as Sneakers, one of my favorite movies!"

Now, if I can just work in some light saber battles ...

Action Action

Ugh. Action scenes are hard to write, but it's a sports movie so I have to end with one. I just want to finish this draft so I can get on with my life / start drinking.

Writing Fail?

When you start thinking "maybe I am doing everything wrong," that's when it's a good time to stop writing for the day.

No good can come from taking that thought to any logical conclusion.

More Writing

I opened Final Draft and then got distracted by internet and then went back to Final Draft, and I saw a blank page and panicked.

What was really happening was that Final Draft had opened a blank document and I was looking at a blank document and not at my sports movie that I am writing. I figured this out and opened my sports movie (I am on page 66 of maybe 120.)

What happened before I had time to figure out what was happening was that I saw a blank page. A blank page is just very scary when you are writing something.

Writing

I finally started writing this script again after nearly three weeks off for research and getting the rest of my life out of the way (I also took an additional week off because it was scary to start again).

So far, I think my sports movie has at least one good joke in it. That's a good enough day's work for me.

Possibly an Illustration of the Long Tail Theory

Why are people coming to ribble's?

1) To figure out what the slang in Ocean's 13 means.

2) Looking for titles of porn movies.

3) Interested in women bass players or, occasionally, women wearing overalls.

4) Actually know me and found this through Facebook.

5) Want to read Deadliest Catch fan fiction.

Earworms

"Earworms" is the English translation of a German word that means "songs that get stuck in your head." I like this name - reminds me of something that happens in a Star Trek movie.

I keep track of my Earworms in an iTunes playlist. The rule (and you've got to be strict about this) is that these songs must have no reason to enter my brain or must stay there much longer than they can be of any use.

They do not have to be any good.

I believe that I have by now found all of them. I present my earworms here, in the order they've occured to me over the years, from oldest to newest. From a meta perspective, that means this blog entry represents over two years of work and no more than thirty minutes of work simultaneous.

Cantaloop
Us3

Can You Get To That
Funkadelic

Handcuffs
Parliament

Run on
Moby

Bigger
Propellerheads

Praise You
Fatboy Slim

Dirty Harry
Gorillaz

Feel Good Inc.
Gorillaz

Satan Is My Motor
Cake

Zak and Sara
Ben Folds

It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career
Belle & Sebastian

The Bird That You Can't See
Apples In Stereo

Chewing Gum
Annie

Cities
Phish

The 50 States Song (Live)
Sufjan Stevens

She'z in Control
Chromeo

She Don't Use Jelly
Ben Folds Five

Alpha Beta Gaga
Air

19-2000
Gorillaz

Am I Black Enough For You?
Billy Paul

Mr. Blue Sky
Electric Light Orchestra

Jacksonville
Sufjan Stevens

Crazy
Gnarls Barkley

Up for the Down Stroke
Parliament

Hollaback Girl
Gwen Stefani

Rocketman
Elton John

Y Control
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

My Humps
Black Eyed Peas

All Night Disco Party
Brakes

DARE
Gorillaz

Freezepop Forever
Freezepop

Neighborhood #2 (Laika)
The Arcade Fire

I Turn My Camera On
Spoon

The Man In Me
Bob Dylan

Picture Book
The Kinks

Make Money
Jr Mafia featuring Lil Kim & Biggie Small

99 Problems (Produced By Rick Rubin)
Jay-Z

After Hours
The Velvet Underground

Christmas Time is Here (vocal)
Charlie Brown Christmas

Seven Nation Army
The White Stripes

Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk
Parliament

Girls
Beastie Boys

Appletree
Erykah Badu

Do You Remember Walter?
The Kinks

Tyrone
Erykah Badu

Sister Christian
Night Ranger

Touch The Sky
Kanye West

Road to Nowhere
Talking Heads

Lefty Loosey
They Might Be Giants

Demon Days
Gorillaz

Don't Get Lost In Heaven
Gorillaz

Where Do They Make Balloons?
They Might Be Giants

Good Time
Leroy

Over And Over
Hot Chip

Take Your Mama
Scissor Sisters

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Daft Punk

Crescendolls
Daft Punk

My Doorbell
The White Stripes

Waiting For The Bus
Violent Femmes

The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
The Beatles

Flight of the Conchords theme song
Flight of the Conchords

The Night Chicago Died
Paper Lace

Fantasy
Mariah Carey

Hooray for Hollywood
Rosemary Clooney

Caravan
Duke Ellington

I'm Easy Like Sunday Morning
Lionel Ritchie & The Commodores

Genius of Love
Tom Tom Club

Alternate Route To Vulcan Street
Super Furry Animals

Sidewalk Serfer Girl
Super Furry Animals

Monkey Monkey

I am waiting until midnight to update the First Sundays website. There's some technical reason why I need to do this, but I don't think I understand it well enough to explain it.

I am going to be asleep soon-ish, much earlier than my usual. It's funny, but with all the time I kill in a normal day, I wouldn't say I spend all that much time waiting for things, outside of a subway platform at least. Not working may be part of this - there is just not enough going on that I could legitimately wait for anything.

Waiting is a funny thing. It reminds me of a habit I've developed in my notebooks, the written precursor to this blog and the preferred depository of my thought when I am offline or they are too trivial to be presented publically.

When I can't quite remember what it was I was thinking that I wanted to write down, I have take to writing the word "monkey," then either looking at the word on the page or writing "monkey" again until my last thought comes to me.

I remember when I learned the word "liminal," meaning in transition or on a threshold. It was in high school, the most liminal place someone could ever be.

I guess I don't really mind waiting. I remember when I was putting together a movie with Nadine back in December, there was a time when I had no more producing work to do until Nadine and the cinematographer put together a shot list.

It was the strangest moment, because I knew I'd been productive and I'd accomplished something and I could generally could feel good about thing, but I had to wait a couple of days before I'd be able to advance at all. It was not the same as feeling stuck, feeling that I couldn't move myself forward.

In short, it was a vacation from my own expectations, and it was wonderful. I wrote first drafts of at least two short films over those two days. It was like the perfect example of the conspiracy of circumstance that I tend to think I need in order to be productive for myself.

It's 12:05, and I'm starting to think free association is a good idea for a new feature. Jeez, I must be pretty tired.

ribble's Bad Habits

I've been producing films for First Sundays for only about six months (although I've put more work in some than others), but I've been screening films for over a year.

Screening other peoples' movies is fascinating. I have seen some great stuff that in some cases less than ten people before me have ever seen.

Even the bad movies that we would never show can have their moments. I watch almost everything, no matter how terrible, all the way through to the end for exactly that reason.

I remember one particular film about a man who may or may not be possessed by the spirit of a dead, 70-year-old Jewish woman that was awful, awful. Too long, no one acts rationally, not funny.

In the scene, the maybe possessed man, now institutionalized, is talking to the camera about getting a letter from his fiance, who is now marrying his best friend, and he finally realizes that he's thrown his life away.

For the last five seconds of the movie, the protagonist stops speaking in the 70-year-old Jewish woman voice he's been using for the duration and starts talking in the voice of a normal 30-ish man.

It's an incredible cinema moment. Truly amazing. I watched it over and over. And because no one would ever show such an awful 20 minutes of awful for ten seconds of genius, it is possible that I am the only one outside of the production that will ever see it.


Mostly, though, screening movies means I've watched a lot of bad shorts. It's pretty instructive. There's nothing like watching the same mistakes over and over to warn you off them forever.

I developed a shpeil for people directing audience films [under "CONTEST"] for the first time.

For the audience films, we ask writers and directors to keep their shorts to five minutes or less (about five pages of script).

When we screen films, the bar gets steadily higher for longer movies. Think about it - the longer the film, the more of our limited screen time we need to commit to it. We've got an official cutoff at maybe 25, 30 minutes but it's very, very difficult for a film that length to be funny enough for us to show it. No film is too short.

If you are making a short comedy film, please do everyone a favor and keep it short. Cut, cut, cut - that's my #1 AAA [Star] Most Important Suggestion.

The films I watch can usually tell the same story in a quarter the time because audiences pick up on stuff pretty quick. I have seen so many movies that would take over the world if they cut everything that wasn't funny.


When I give my shpiel to first time directors of audience films, I tell them to only write what they think they can do themselves. In my movie, I wrote in a white truck and a good-looking Southerner because I knew I could get those things. Before he writes, Victor has everyone in the cast and crew write out a list of locations where they know he can shoot for free.

It's not a requirement, but I tell writer / directors to make sure their films take place in more than one location. Audiences start to feel trapped or claustraphobic if they have to stay in one location too long. Usually wherever you're shooting can double as two locations anyway, like one apartment playing two different apartments if, say, two people are talking on the phone.

Plus, there's usually more than one place in a particular area where you can shoot in a single day. Location managers think about this shit all the time.

On a similar note, first-time directors are always afraid to move the camera. Move the camera. If you don't, you will bore your audience to death. Moving the camera makes your movie so much more interesting, it's like night and day.


I would also suggest that filmmakers bring in a DP, even if it's just your best friend who may or may not know how to use your camera. The director is constantly making decisions on a film set. It's best to be able to hand the camera to someone else so that you don't have to worry about keeping the actor's forehead in the frame in addition to, say, how good their acting is.

In the vein of making it easier on yourself, the rule of thumb in independent film is that the ideal number of people to have in a scene is two. Any more, and logistics, camera placement, booming and everything else becomes much more complicated.

For an incredible movie that rarely has more than two people in a scene, watch Brick. Or you can just read me gushing about it over and over again.

Of course, there's no end to the things you can learn about making movies. There aren't all that many masters. But making a movie isn't rocket science, and it is possible to make a good first movie. Start with this and let me know how it goes.

Random Access Culture

Alternate Title:
Schoolhouse Rock [Slash] The World as We Know It

About eight months ago, I was hanging out with some of my cousin the revolutionary's friends when the conversation turned to Schoolhouse Rock.

"Have you watched them?" Codename Judy asked a friend. "They're musicals about things like conjunctions, or how a bill becomes a law. They're really funny. You should take a look."

I realized that Codename Judy was talking about YouTube.

Now, my cousin graduated this month, three years after I graduated. In demographic terms, that makes us both upstanding members of Generation Y, but, in college terms, that puts my cousin and his friends about a generation away from me. Which is to say, MCTR spent the majority of his college years in a post-YouTube world, and I spent the majority of mine in a pre-YouTube world.


A sociological rule of thumb is that technology invented before you were a certain age is commonplace and to be taken for granted, technology invented in your adult life is kind of cool and something you may be able to make a living at, and technology invented later in your life is foreign, alien, not to be trusted and certainly not worth understanding.

I had one of my post-take-it-for-granted moments during this conversation.

Schoolhouse Rock is plausibly timeless in that it's catchy or educational no matter when you watch it, but ultimately it's a very iconic relic of the 1970s.

Up until now that meant that you had to either live through the '70s or go out of your way to watch Schoolhouse Rock. Now, you can watch it any time. Go ahead. It's right here.


Of course, it's not just Schoolhouse Rock. For the first time in history, we can experience the detritus (or at least the recorded television detritus) of any previous culture at any time. Which would mean I just went a long way to demonstrate a very simple point if it weren't for this fact's odd and far-reaching implications.


Like We Even Needed Another Victory For Postmodernism

I took a U.S. television history course at my high-pedigree school and we had a section on post-modernism.

For those of you who haven't been to college (or who have been to college but somehow avoided the idea of post-modernism, presumably by taking a lot of bio classes), postmodernism is the idea that in the present day, there is somehow so much information that we can't reliably run down a definition of anything. Or that there's so much change in the modern day that in a way you can't expect anything to go unchanged. Or it's a breakdown between the signifier and the signified. Or it's something else.

There's a million definitions of postmodernism (which is one of the most post-modern things about it, as my professor was fond of saying without irony). In television history, it's significant because no two people ever have the same experience with television, so there's no common understanding of what it is, or what it means, or its history.


Obviously, YouTube has some important implications here beyond the citizen journalism stuff you can go explore somewhere else, because for the first time we can access these obscure or outdated things whenever we want.

It's a direction television has been moving towards for awhile (rise of DVRs, etc.) I don't want to go in to it too much because there is, by definition, no end to how far you can take the idea of an increasingly postmodern world.


Culture as a Tap and Not a Resevoir

If everyone can access different aspects of culture at any time, maybe we need to think about culture differently, as more of a utility and less as a resource.

Take jokes. In the past, if someone (a comedian, say) made a reference to something, you either got it or you didn't. Humor was time and culture sensitive.


It still is, but now, if we hear a reference we don't understand, we can just google it. We might not get a joke quick enough to laugh, but we may get it the next time.

Take, for example, John McCain's comment (in a blogger conference call, significantly) that his Republican primary opponent Mitch Romney’s immigration plan might be to “get out his small-varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard."

I was watching Stephanopoulos, and a panelist pointed out that the brilliance of that comment was that in referenced no less than two Romney campaign flaps in addition to his the actual point about immigration, leading everyone who talks about the comment to also explain those references in full and so spend a lot more time talking about Romney's problems than McCain had to.

Remember how I was talking last week about how eidetic memory is the ultimate modern superpower? Maybe we don't really need it.


In the imminent future when all Americans can google whatever they want from their personal cell phones, what's the point of retaining information at all? Information changes all the time. What the best schools have already learned is that they need to teach understanding, techniques for learning, and a way to evaluate the relative value information much more than they need to convey the information itself.

It's one difference I also notice between my generation and older ones. We seem to have an almost instinctual understanding of the kind of information on the internet.

It isn't instinct, of course, it's experience - we search casually all the time - but I'm so conditioned to it that it's strange to watch my parents look for information without the internet. It's like another world - a world before google. [via Absurd Notions]


Brangelina: Another Drawback to Random Access

Another weird thing is that there's also a leak factor here. Random access means that bullshit information is written right next to good information, and that characteristic holds true just as well for culture as it does for computers.


Example: around when Teti lambasted me for not knowing offhand the definition of DRM, I just some stupid idea that I ought to be reading the big blogs. Anyway, as a New Yorker, I decided one of the significant ones was Gawker.

Anyway, after a few months, I just had to give Gawker up. I had been trying to figure out why I knew more celebrity gossip than I had at any previous time in my life, and I realized as I clicked back through whatever the hell was going on with Lindsay Lohan at the time that Gawker was probably why.

I was never trying to seek out information on celebrity marriages. I was casually following some series of references and it just happened to me. I still feel like I can't get away from it - I know that Brad is having trouble with Angelina. It's just that this useless, waste of time information is sandwiched next to the good information, like the copy of The Economist next to US Weekly at a newsstand.


I Am Next to You

Okay, I'm coming up on my last point, and it involves a little geography lesson.


Manhattan is an island. Horizontal space is limited. This means that, where in a city like San Antonio, we would build out in to ever-expanding borders, in New York everyone built up.

As a result, New York has always had a lot of people living in a geographically small space that was easy to get around. This led to a thriving regional specialty in all things niche.

Let's say that one in 1,000 people is interested in anime in 1995. In San Antonio (pop. 1,000,000), that's 1,000 people spread all over the city. In New York (pop. 8,000,000), there's not only 7,000 more people interested in anime, they are in a much smaller geographical area, and it's much easier for them to get to an anime store.

So when I came to New York for one of the first times to visit my friend Josh, he introduced me to a bunch of anime that it turned out was really interesting, and which I never would have heard about if it wasn't for my trip to the city.


By concentrating a large market on an island, New York allowed specialty vendors to thrive - which helped increase interest, which spurred the sellers, etc.

Result: New York has consistently been one of the few places in the world where you can pretty much buy anything at any price. And, more than that, it concentrated a community of like-minded people in to a space where they had greater access to each other.

The point is that the internet has lowered our barriers to entry to particular cultures or interests to just time and search capabilities. The niche thrives on the internet. We can find support for a particular cause, like-minded people or markets for niche products almost without any effort.

Random Access ribbles
Whenever I get to the end of one of my Big, Long Essays That Take Forever to Write I feel like I've taken a lot of trouble to explain something very simple.


There would be no way to give this kind of an explanation without the internet - just look at the number of links in this post alone. I'd still be thinking about these things, but the reason I like this medium so much is that I don't have to explain all my references, ideas and examples completely because I can just link to the appropriate information.

In a way (and once again, this is by no means a new idea) this means that we each have access to an entirely new medium to express ourselves. But it also means that there is no end to the depths of the trivial we can explore (for example, after this I fully intend to write about either Manu Ginobili, the weather or my cat.)

It would be one thing if I were spurring the country to a new national debate, but I suspect no one reads these things, but Johnny took his blog, arguably just a series of rants on National Ice-cream Day, and turned it in to a job at The Daily Show, so maybe there's hope for me yet.

Maybe I should send Gawker a resume...

Hippo Talk

Very interesting (and detailed!) discussion of this post about long-distance relationships over at hipporetriever, the blog of one of my friends from college.

Hippo has a great blog and has actually linked to me in the past. Hippo, thanks for trippling my traffic to near twenty-two hits in a single day. Wow!

Three Movies in Three Weeks: Introduction

In which I reveal why I've neglected this blog a bit this past month.

Exactly one month ago, I realized I was going to have to make three movies in the next three weeks: "Mr. September," a short film I was gripping for my friend, Nadine; "A Multitude of Sins," a First Sundays audience film I was writing and directing myself; and "Proud Mary," a short student film that I was producing which was a bit more ambitious than anything I'd ever done before.

Making this many movies in this short a time is, for lack of a better phrase, stupid. Movies are tiring. Film crews work long hours (12-hour days are the norm) and it can be trying, stressful work. And it wasn't like I was just crewing these movies - "Sins" I did completely on my own, and "Mary" I was producing, so I was ultimately in charge of everything for both those films. These were ambitious projects on their own - together, they would have broken a lesser man.

I want to write about each of my three movies, but for now, I just want to say that I did it. I survived. I did a good job - everyone was happy and well fed, I did my job, we got the footage, we made our deadlines, and I couldn't have expected any more out of myself. That alone is cause for celebration. I celebrated by sleeping for a week. Then I cleaned my apartment. I haven't been happier.

Making all these movies in such a short time, along with all the time I've spent as an independent, no-budget film producer (since about mid-January) has taught me a lot about where my skills are, what I'm capable of, what I've learned from a year in the business, and, more importantly, what I don't know, what my options are, where I go from here.

Trying to go back and write about my experience from the beginning is going to be a little tricky, like starting a story with the epilogue. I'm not expecting too much out of myself, but I hope to at least tell you about where I've been and what I've been up to. It's been a hell of a ride.

Prodigiousness

I believe we are entering a new age of prodigiousness in art.

As usual, my argument for this bold and sweeping claim begins with They Might Be Giants.

Many have tried to describe TMBG, and no description is complete without explaining that they've created a tremendous number of songs about a lot of different subjects (name another band that has over 150 "common themes" in their music.)

How do they do it? For one thing, TMBG, aside from their "Band of Dans," is only two people. They are low-rent. They spent years with just the two of them in their apartment, writing music. You can't do this with a band of six recent college grads.


They are also modest of ambition. TMBG have never gotten bigger than they can manage. Part of their appeal is that they are just two family guys from Brooklyn. They also don't mind doing good work that makes them a lot of money.

TMBG are talented, and they're also portable, modest and sustainable. As a result, they've thrived, and they've created over 1,200 songs (counting alternate versions).

My point is that it is getting easier for everyone to be more portable, modest and sustainable.

I've talked about this before at embarassing length, but take, for example, the comics industry.


First chair of comics Scott McCloud says in his afterward to Flight Volume 1 that the seminal volume represents a new generation of comics artists, one that does the work first, then worries about how it will be distributed.

A lot of these artists made a start on the internet, where it is very easy to publish, slightly more difficult to find an audience, and very difficult to make money, or at least enough money to cartoon full time.

This shows two things: first, these artists are not doing it for the money (modesty of ambition.)

Second, if more artists have greater access to an audience without the pressure of a traditional commercial market, they will produce a lot of work.


It's the same with writing. Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail meme, estimates that he has written over 200,000 words on his blog versus 70,000 in his published work. There are no publishers to deal with, no editors between what we've written and our audience, and (ahem) a lower standard for blog posts than published work.

Film is another medium that is quickly losing its barriers to entry. This month, I produced a six-minute short film for three figures - and I spent more than I needed to because I was scared of screwing up.

The surprising thing about that movie was how many people were willing to loan their time, equipment or labor to make my little nothing movie. People like to produce art. Decrease the barriers, and (link via Boing-Boing)

Last point: I read that the market for particular (non-comic) artists does not correspond to the usual rules of supply and demand. If an artist produces more work, she can participate in more exhibits and generate more buzz. Supply increases, so demand increases faster.

Greater access to markets will not only encourage more people to produce art, it will also encourage a larger audience.

ribble's Coffee

Coffee is my favorite beverage. It is the only widely available potable liquid with magical properties.

I first started drinking coffee with my mom, who drinks half-decaf, half-caffeinated coffee with sugar and lots of skim milk heated in a small pot on the stove, so that's how I took my coffee.

Then I went away to school in Wales, where the nearest grocery store was 20 minutes walk in the rain each way. Sugar and especially milk were often not available, so I got used to having my coffee black. Also, we had no coffee maker, so it was plunger coffee all the way.


When I went to college, I drank coffee at the local joint. I went through all the different brews and all the different drinks.

My favorite drink (to stay) was the cafe au lait, which at the Dirty Boy a little metal pot of strong, black coffee, and a little metal pot of warm milk. My favorite drink (to go) was the Jamaican Blue Mountain with a double shot of espresso - basically the strongest type of coffee that could be legally sold.

When I left school and got my own place, I bought a bed and then I bought a coffee pot. I got whole beans from one of the many spots around Park Slope and ground them myself. I had no consistent philosophy on milk and sugar, preferring them when faced with mediocre coffee but letting good coffee speak for itself.


Then I started working in media and drinking coffee with Speedrail. We drank either the really cheap coffee from the deli down the street or the really cheap coffee from the gas station at the corner. In either case, it was always large, light and sweet.

I lost that job and started working on film sets. Film means weird hours, stress and very little sleep. If it weren't for coffee, the film business would not exist. Because PAs never really got breaks and always had the least time for meals, I had time to pour in milk but no time to stir in sugar. (Although, on the one Bollywood film I worked, the craft service guys made a really strong instant with condensed milk and only served it at tea time. It was to die for.)

Now I'm a little bit between careers, and I haven't hit a new coffee philosophy. Will I be a writer, keeping the pot going all day and all night? A producer, forcing lackeys to buy me some very specific type of Starbucks? A film star, demanding only coffee made with organic beans and bottled water? Or maybe a film guerrilla, drinking deli coffee when I can get it?

And 'Writing about Writing' Was Going to Be 'Blogging about Blogging'

Blogger has just released in to the wild a slew of new beta features, including the ability to "label" posts. This has effectively allowed me to breakdown my 147 published posts by topic for the first time. Here they are, from most popular to least popular.

Method notes: if you add up all these numbers you will get a number bigger than 147 because some posts fit in to more than one label and also I've labelled some posts I haven't posted yet. DEAL WITH IT.

Media = Culture (43)
I thought calling this topic "culture" was too snooty (it's a little weird to say "culture" about, say, T.V.), but I didn't want to say "media" because media means something else at this point. "Media = Culture" says it all. It could be this blog's thesis statement.

'Media = Culture' covers everything from reviews to that big-long essay about long-form media only Speedrail actually read. I consider the top ranking of this label to be pseudo-scientific proof that whatever 'Media = Culture' means, it's the thing I think about the most.

That and Katrina Kerns.

But case in point, you know?

Film Industry (37)
I'm probably going to change the name of this topic to "The Business" even though it's a little less straight forward. I started writing about my career in film as a diary sort of thing. What kept happening was that I'd write after the first day, and the next time I wasn't too exhausted to write would be when the production was over. Now I write more by topic.

My Cousin the Revolutionary (19)
Not so much a topic as a subject. One of my few recurring characters. I have to wonder what people think of MCTR when they have only my blog by which to judge him.

Writing about Writing (17)
I tried to keep these to a minimum, but, then, on the other hand, why bother? Mostly I'm happy Writing about Writing is 9% of my posts instead of 50%.

Where I've Been (16)
The continuing series that has stuck around mostly because it's really easy to do. I'm rather bored of it now.

Me (14)
I'm not super surprised that I am not my own favorite topic. These posts also tend to be shorter, on average, than those in other topics.

I am either too modest or too chicken to write about myself except when I really feel compelled to, like when I am trying to figure out my career.

Big Long Essays That Take Forever to Write (11)
Honestly, why do I bother? I like explaining big ideas that I took a lot of time to think through, but I don't know if anyone can actually make it through the damn things. I also feel that working without an editor has allowed these essay to run long, but then I hardly ever reread them myself, so I honestly don't know.

Of course, by the time I've thought one of these topics through enough to write about them, I effectively lose the option of not writing them because I feel compelled to get it all out.

NY F'in C (10)
I spent most of this week in Texas, and it's weird NOT spending all my time talking about New York City. Talking about New York is the only way to survive living there.

Labelled Unlabelled (8)
I feel like most of these are the odd and specific memories I like to catologue, but then if they did have a common topic, I'd be able to say what it was.

ribble's Quest (5)
Probably holds together better than any other topic. Not a bad place to start reading this blog, come to think of it.

Wales (4)
Some day I'll tell you more about Wales.

Boris (3)
Boris is easy and fun to write. When I tell people about him offline, they consider me crazy.

I should write more Boris.

ribble's trying to break up this page

ribble's w00t

Google "ribbles", and you get me. Take that, "Delicious black licorice hexagon sticks imported from Holland!"

A Link Seminar For My Mom

I target my blog to people I know but don't see very often. As a result a significant part of my "audience" is, right now, at this very moment, reading the first blog they've ever read in their lives.

These people may be missing out on the significance of my links. Mine is a hyper-linked brain, and, as Tony Pierce says, links are what seperate bloggers from apes. I think clicking the links on my blog makes it funnier.

Okay, let's be honest. When I'm talking about my audience, I'm talking about my mom.

Mom, who hates computers in general and hers in particular, never clicks a link because she can never find her way back. Mom: click the back button. It's up there in the top left corner of this window. Go ahead - click that link for "back button," then try it out.

Welcome to the future.

First Lurker!

I met my first lurker this weekend, possibly the only lurker this site has ever had. Fittingly, it was a cousin of mine, my cousin Barles. Barles is a very sweet guy and genuine regular reader. Maybe now that I’ve called him out he’ll be man enough to comment. It doesn’t take much.