Thursday, April 30, 2009
The gods are messing with me again
Didn't get the subnotebook before I left for class ... but then in my office, checking the tracking, I see it was left "at the front door" at noon, which means they left it at someone else's front door. So now I have to track the goddamn thing down in the neighborhood. Jesus.
8-year-old Saudi girl divorces 50-year-old husband
CAIRO – An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday.
Read the story
And it's not even from the National Inquirer. Different eras of civilization always have co-existed but only with modern media have we had to know about one another on an hourly, make that minute-by-minute, basis. What would it have been like to live at a time when you learned about the assassination of your president days, weeks, or months after the fact?
Citation
Last night I watched a documentary of the great Calumet Farms racehorse Citation. I grew up with this horse, and I remember our family following the news to see if Citation would become the first racehorse to earn one million dollars, which seemed like an incredible feat. My granddad picked a longshot that ended up beating Citation late in the horse's career, another incredible feat. Citation is considered to be the great horse between Man of War and Secretariat (i.e. better than Seabiscuit) by most racing experts. With Santa Anita and Hollywood Park in our area, both going strong, it was easy to become a racing fan in Southern California in the 1940s and 1950s.
Pleasant surprise
The best midterms were on the bottom of the pile, including a couple of first rate "professional" scripts. Great to find!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Kid at Xmas
My eee pc arrived in Pdx today ... so delivery should be tomorrow as scheduled. Will it arrive before or after I leave for the university? At any rate, Friday obviously will be test drive day!
Second wind
Need a second wind to finish the midterms. Maybe I'll finish them tomorrow morning. Not as many good scripts as I'd hoped, this class a [remainder of this post has been removed by request.]
Midterms
A leisurely day reading midterms. This typically marks the turning point in the class, the point at which most students finally understand what screenwriting IS and are able to write without shooting themselves in the foot. There are usually quite a few good short scripts in the midterm batch. I look forward to reading them and tomorrow we'll share the best ones with the class.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tracking the eee pc
Landed in Sacramento today ... onward north, scheduled Thursday delivery. Kid at Xmas.
Checking in
Moving right along with the student conferences. This is time-consuming and exhausting but it's actually one of the better things I do in class. Really gives me a better sense of where individual students are at on the learning curve.
Screenwriting on the eee pc
Heard from a screenwriter who uses Celtx on his eee pc for screenwriting and loves it. Good to hear! Mine should arrive in a few days. Can't wait to give it the usual test runs, etc., and to see how this fits into and changes the rhythm of my work day. I've been reading a lot about it and have pretty realistic expectations, I think. I'm certainly not abandoning the AlphaSmart, my on the road writing tool, but I think I'll find ways to use the two together. I still hope the eee pc finds into the pouch on my AS bag. This would make life simple indeed.
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